← The Rich Roll Podcast
The Rich Roll Podcast
Rhett & Link On Building A (Mythical) Media Empire, The Price of Public Friendship, & Leaving The Evangelical Church
02:11:06
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- [00:01]
Rich Roll
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- [02:19]
Bryan
And now they've got this thing called.
- [02:21]
Rich Roll
Blueprint AI and you literally just tell it what you do, what you're about, your vibe. And it builds you a custom website that actually reflects who you are, not some cookie cutter template that screams I used a template, but the real deal. And here's the game changer. They've made it stupidly simple to turn your expertise into income. Whether you're offering coaching sessions, online courses, consultations, whatever, you can showcase it, schedule it invoice for it, get paid for it all through one platform. Because here's the truth. Your ideas sitting in your head help nobody. But when you make it easy for people to find you and work with.
- [02:59]
Bryan
You, that changes everything.
- [03:01]
Rich Roll
So head on over to squarespace.com rich roll for a free trial. And when you're ready to Launch, use code RICH ROLL to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or.
- [03:17]
Rhett McLaughlin
We definitely thought of YouTube as a stepping stone to make something in traditional entertainment.
- [03:24]
Link Neal
The traction on YouTube kept growing. On one hand, in the traditional world, we're doing a lot of creative work that never gets seen. Meanwhile, on YouTube, the minute we have an idea is the minute that we can turn around and make it. And we're also making money doing it.
- [03:38]
Rhett McLaughlin
We want to tell increasingly ambitious stories, but we don't want to ask permission.
- [03:43]
Link Neal
The titles are Clickbait, all the thumbnails are Clickbait. But at some point, we're focusing more on connection and less on engagement.
- [04:00]
Rich Roll
So we're going to cover a lot of ground today. We're going to talk about Christianity. We're going to talk about comedy, evangelicalism and entrepreneurship. We're going to get into a little spiritual deconstruction. We're going to talk creative persistence and longevity, the current state of the Internet union, what's important to understand about our rapidly evolving media and entertainment landscape, and most importantly, the importance of true friendship. Before that, I want to let you guys know that I'm in New York City right now. If this sounds a little bit different than it usually does because I'm in a different location, I'm coming to you from our brand new joint in Dumbo, Brooklyn, which we are right now, as we speak, in the midst of setting up and kind of configuring as this second studio to expand my ability to spend a little bit more time in this great city and to make it easier for me and for my team and for our Voicing Change partner podcast to begin recording content with the folks that live here or are maybe a little challenged to travel to la. And all I can say is that I'm super happy to be here. This place is great. The neighborhood is fantastic. The weather has been perfect, and because the city is just so vibrant and buzzing, I honestly just feel more alive right now than I have in quite some time. Definitely in ways that I haven't since the surgery and in ways that I think only New York City can provide. It's like my battery has been operating at 10%, and now I feel like I Just have gotten a full charge, and it feels really good. So it's been exactly four months since I went under the knife on my back, and it's been actually really difficult, mostly on my energy levels, as I've previously discussed. Just feeling kind of generally fragile and unable to engage with life in the way that, you know, I would prefer. And as I usually do, which is trying, given that, you know, it's been summer vacation with the kids home and just being kind of out of it more than I'd prefer. But the two younger kids are back at school now, and I just got the green light to begin pt, which I did just before coming here. So that feels good, like something to actually do to make progress. And being here in New York has just been very nourishing to wake up early and get out on the Brooklyn waterfront at sunrise, to get my walk on, to witness life, to participate in life. And it's made me feel a little bit more gratitude than I've been able to in a while. So, yeah, things are moving forward, and I've got these exercises that I've been doing daily. And I'm just thrilled to be here. And I can't wait for you guys to get a glimpse of this new space where we're going to be recording more and more content out of New York. And the thing about New York is that life just happens here. You know, it's been great. I did this thing a couple nights ago at the 92nd Street. Yeah. With my friend Sanjay Gupta was fantastic. And for those that don't know, doing an event at 92Y is kind of this prestigious thing. So it was an honor to be invited into this conversation with Sanjay and kind of perfect because he's got this new book that just came out called it doesn't have to Hurt, which is all about pain. The mystery of pain, the scientific challenges, and trying to understand this universal experience that is both entirely subjective and also something that's generated entirely in the brain. And he also talks about strategies for preventing pain, for managing it, for ameliorating it, which obviously overlaps with this exploration that I've been on with pain. So that was great. And then last night, I kind of did it again. I took the stage at the IFC Film center here in the West Village to moderate a post Baltimore ONS screening with last week's guests, JD Plasse and Michael Strossner, along with Michael's co star Liz Larson. And that was a thrill because I've been to zillions of filmmaker Q and A'S but this was the first one that I've been personally involved with. And not for nothing, their little movie is making a crazy, outsized impact. Audiences love it, critics love it, everyone last night loved it. And just a reminder that it goes nationwide next week. So make a point of seeing it in theaters and casting your vote for not only great storytelling, but what's great about independent cinema. I'm off to Tokyo on the 12th for two weeks. Did I tell you guys that? I don't think I did. Anyway, I'm going with the team at on for the track and field World Championships and I'm going to be doing a bunch of stuff similar to what I did in Paris with them last summer. I've never been to Japan, so I'm thrilled about that. So if you happen to be in Tokyo, listeners out there, you'll be able to find me pretty easily at the On Labs, which is this giant kind of storefront pop up that on has built where there's going to be all these panels and product demos. They're going to have the light spray robot on site. It's going to be making light spray shoes in real time and you can.
- [09:15]
Bryan
Check that out as well.
- [09:16]
Rich Roll
Group runs, yoga, tons of cool stuff. So if you are in Tokyo or you plan to be there to find out more about that, check out the Instagram account for on in Japan, which is on Japan. And there you'll find a link in the bio with details and all kinds of extra information. And I'll also be sharing stuff on my Instagram, which is richroll. Okay, so Rhett and Link. I met these guys a couple years ago and we've become friends. And these are just two guys that I was enthusiastic to have on the to learn more about and just eager to celebrate. Not just because they're very funny and very talented or even because on some level, actually in kind of a major way, they are actually reinventing Hollywood and building this studio for the future of media. But also because they've done all this while remaining best friends since the first grade by staying true to themselves and by being earnest in everything they create. If you've never heard of these guys, Rhett and Link are best known for a show they do called Good Mythical Morning, which is one of the most watched daily shows on the Internet. It's a show they've been doing for 13 years. At this point they've got over 19 million subscribers on YouTube and essentially this is a show that is more watched than most, if not all network morning television shows to Give you an idea of the size and the scope of what they're doing. At the same time, they run this studio called Mythical Entertainment that operates a series of YouTube channels that all in amounts to 34 million subscribers and 14 billion lifetime views. And they employ something like 200 people to accomplish this. They also have a venture fund and recently became part owners of Hot Ones, which is that YouTube show where celebrities eat wings, you know, which is insanely popular. And these guys are on all the fancy top creators in the world lists put together by publications like Time, Forbes, and Fast Company. And today they're here, and we're going to get to the bottom of all of it. From their evangelical North Carolina roots all the way to today, we talk about what the word television even means anymore. Plus many life lessons on persistence, relevance, creative authenticity and career longevity. And of course, most importantly, friendship. Because for these guys, that is truly what it's all about. So let's get into it, and when it's over, head on over to their YouTube channel to check out the recently released season two of this show they do called Wonderhole, which I'm not gonna spoil it, other than to say that I took Julie to the LA premiere of this recently, and let's just say Julie might not be the audience for this show, but these guys screened two episodes of Wonderhole, and I gotta tell you that she was absolutely delighted by it. So that's it. And this is Rhett. And like.
- [12:23]
Bryan
We'Re in this kind of liminal stage right now where it's unclear what's what, what's television, what's YouTube? I was just talking about this the other day on the podcast that went up today about the state of the union of podcasting in 2025 and how it's so different than when I started back in 2012, and how it's become an adjunct of the publishing industry in many ways. And for the larger, it's supplanted appearing on the late night talk shows and the morning shows. And what you're doing, your morning show is garnering more attention, more eyeballs, more energy and excitement than those traditional shows. I mean, you guys were submitted by YouTube for Emmy consideration this year, which is wild and kind of says all you need to know about where we're at right now. Because there will be a day when you guys will win, or somebody who is doing something in the vein of what you're doing will win.
- [13:18]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah, three years ago we were not considered. So the past two cycles we were on the list.
- [13:25]
Bryan
And Obviously it's in YouTube's interest. Like, they start. Guys like you and Sean Evans start showing up on the red carpet at like, you know, traditional big movie premieres and stuff like that. Like, they're just seeding, you know, this narrative that, like, you guys belong here and this is what's happening. Like, it's all the same thing.
- [13:44]
Rhett McLaughlin
Do we belong?
- [13:45]
Bryan
Do you want to belong?
- [13:46]
Link Neal
That's a really good question.
- [13:47]
Bryan
That's the bigger question, because I think actually you do have a well considered answer to that.
- [13:52]
Link Neal
Those eyeballs watching our show are considered of the value that they're considered compared to somebody watching the Tonight show or Late Night. This discrepancy is still way off. And we think a big part of that is because the brands and the agencies still see them as two completely different things. And for some reason, they need the people who are the arbiters of what is culturally acceptable and cool. And I think that's the Academy still for. For those people. And so we're like, okay, what would it look like if the Academy recognizes that, hey, whoever is actually contributing to the cultural conversation, those are the people that are being considered for awards. So it's not so much to be able to have this award you can put on a shelf and at your LA party, when people come over to your house, they can say, oh, you've won an Emmy for the social cachet that that offers. It's really about, hey, we think that being a part of the cultural conversation to this extent should be considered by the way that we run our business. It should be considered by those entities on the same level, because we're really trying to build something here with the show.
- [15:02]
Bryan
There's a built in irony to all of this because your story is very much one of trying to kind of make it in the traditional Hollywood way, like pitching shows and movies and trying to get stuff made and, you know, getting a show made and having it canceled on you, only to go back and pitch again and go through that, you know, kind of mill that so many people in this town go through. You know, it's only when you're like, basically like, screw that. We're not doing that anymore. We're doing our own thing that you find your way back to. You know, like, this is the path.
- [15:35]
Rich Roll
To the Emmy, you know what I mean?
- [15:36]
Bryan
Like, the irony in that. In the same way that podcasting started as this very loose, kind of organic, free flowing whatever, and now there are people at the highest level of it that are doing it in a way that makes it indistinguishable from the television show that it was supposed to be a contrast to. You know what I mean? All these roads kind of end up back where they began on some level.
- [16:05]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah, we definitely thought of YouTube as a stepping stone to make something in traditional entertainment. When we made our show on IFC Commercial kings, this is where.
- [16:18]
Bryan
Explain who don't know what that is.
- [16:22]
Link Neal
If you go Back to like 2008, 2009, we just had a YouTube channel. And one of the things that we started doing is we started making real local commercials for real businesses.
- [16:33]
Rhett McLaughlin
But we embrace the ridiculous off the wall concepts of the ones that you.
- [16:40]
Link Neal
Would see because they were intended. They were intended to go viral. In that age of going viral, when that was what you were trying to do, you weren't trying to build an audience as much as you were just trying to get that one thing that would suddenly get you into the conversation. So there's a couple of classics like the Red House Furniture, which is a furniture store in High Point, North Carolina. The slogan became the Red House where black people and white people buy furniture. So it became a racial reconciliation message wrapped up in a furniture ad. We had Rudy, the Cuban gynecologist and American auto salesman, which was a guy who had come over from Cuba. He was a gynecologist in Cuba. Now he was selling cars, used cars in High Point, North Carolina, Same place where the Red House was. And so we put that into a commercial. So those ended up getting a lot of commercials.
- [17:27]
Bryan
Pharmacy one.
- [17:27]
Link Neal
Yeah. Butt drugs. Butt drugs.
- [17:29]
Bryan
Butt drugs, yeah.
- [17:31]
Rhett McLaughlin
Chuck Testa, but was a family name.
- [17:33]
Bryan
So it's like, how do we make the best bad local commercial possible, you know, will people will enjoy. And that's. That was a brilliant recipe for a TV show.
- [17:44]
Rhett McLaughlin
We were in our little studio in North Carolina, just the two of us. People would walk in the front door thinking that it was still a barbershop or a beauty salon. You know, it's just that small town vibe. And we were trying to engineer viral videos and then incorporate brands into it. That's how we were. We were trying to make a living and starting to make a living. And the local commercials ended up being. We started to realize they were like a viral video of a bygone era for the most part. So the energy that we were. We were channeling into what's the next irresistible YouTube video that we can make. It clicked that local commercials were also that. And yeah, the process of making those and bringing true stories to the forefront and real people to be the stars of their commercial. The Story behind the ad is what IFC wanted to make into a show.
- [18:50]
Link Neal
So that's why we moved out here, right? Moved our families out here. And we thought, we've done it.
- [18:56]
Bryan
We crossed over 2010, 2011, and we.
- [19:00]
Link Neal
Were like, okay, we've done it. We have officially made the crossover to traditional entertainment. And of course, we had no idea what was coming, including the cancellation of the show. Despite some of the things that we made, ended up having this incredible traction online. Like, I think our most viewed local commercial ever is Chuck Testa, the taxidermist in Ojai. And Chuck Testa, I mean, his individual commercial tagline. This is the irony in it. His individual commercial, when put on YouTube, got more views than the entire season of the show combined, all episodes combined on ifc. But that, again, that wasn't how things worked. So we found ourselves in Los Angeles, suddenly paying rent that was, I believe it was nine times what my mortgage was in North Carolina and basically out of work, but still having this audience that we had.
- [20:04]
Rhett McLaughlin
And I also had a house.
- [20:05]
Link Neal
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [20:06]
Rhett McLaughlin
It was separate from yours completely.
- [20:07]
Link Neal
You know what?
- [20:08]
Rhett McLaughlin
We had each had our own wives.
- [20:10]
Link Neal
And kids, but we had one car.
- [20:12]
Rhett McLaughlin
We did share a car.
- [20:13]
Link Neal
Was it no. Ford Focus. What was it?
- [20:15]
Rhett McLaughlin
Fusion.
- [20:16]
Link Neal
Fusion, yes. We had a Fusion that was at your house some of the time. My house some of the time. Depending on who needed to get fused.
- [20:22]
Rhett McLaughlin
Well, I would drive to Rhett's house and then we would go to his. You had a garage in the back that was like a converted garage. And we were scrambling to figure out what we were going to do because we were determined to not go back to North Carolina with our tails between our legs. And so we were making musical comedy think like Lonely Island. That's. That's what we cut our teeth on for years on YouTube. So we went back to incorporating brands into those bigger budget comedy music videos that did pretty well consistently on YouTube. But we wanted to maintain a connection with our fans. There was a lot of daily content that was really getting traction on YouTube. So we said, what's our version of that? Let's set up a card table. We brought back a show that we had, I guess, in retrospect, we piloted back in North Carolina. And that's when we created good, mythical Morning as a daily touch point for our fans between our monthly videos and then. So.
- [21:33]
Link Neal
But it was never. Morning wasn't a side project. It was never intended to be the main thing. It was never intended to be sort of the heart of our business. And we never thought we would have a team working on it, and we had one person helping us in the. In the early days.
- [21:47]
Bryan
So today that YouTube channel has like 19, over 19 million subscribers at this point, something like 8 billion views. And on some level, it's, you know, it's. It's quite polished when you watch it, but it still has its roots in, you know, something very, like, authentic and grounded and down to earth. And for some people in it, watch it and just think, well, these are just two guys and their friends screwing around, not knowing that this is taking place in a production facility. God knows how many square feet with 120 employees and a CEO and a whole. There's a gigantic kind of machine enterprise behind this. You are, on some level, the prototype for the studio of 2025. In an era in which these legacy studios are kind of clawing for relevancy and trying to figure out what their model is. I mean, CBS is going to slash its shows. The advertising revenue isn't there like these. These behemoths are sort of collapsing under their own weight. And in that collapse, there is this emergent kind of thing happening right now that I see you guys as sort of the tip of the spear of.
- [23:01]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah, over 3,000 episodes of the show. The thing that has remained consistent was our connection with each other and our connection with that one viewer on the other side of the lens. So it was. It's always been intimate in that way. The production value would increase and, you know, we'd add writers and producers in order to free up our time off camera to pursue other projects. But when we sit down behind that desk is two friends who have known each other for 30 now, over 40 years.
- [23:33]
Bryan
Yeah.
- [23:34]
Rhett McLaughlin
And it's real. And we created an environment where we're comfortable being increasingly more of ourselves over the years and valuing that connection, and that's irreplaceable. So I think the instinct that we needed to create something that was a touch point, we underestimated the power of that connection. And so, yeah, it has turned into this bustling studio in Burbank where people wear many hats and express themselves and pursue their own dreams. It's a fun, very challenging thing to.
- [24:13]
Link Neal
Run.
- [24:15]
Rhett McLaughlin
But we work hard to not lose sight of that. The heart of it is this friendship.
- [24:21]
Bryan
And, yeah, it's all contingent upon you guys maintaining a very real friendship. Yeah, it is, because it will collapse under its own weight without that. Right. And so 40 years, you got. You guys have been friends since you were little kids and made this blood oath, you know, and had to literally mythical creatures when you were in, you know, time out at school or whatever. Like, walk us back to the, you know, humble beginnings of. It's like, you know, rock bands, how do, how have you sustained this? Like most bands can't, you know, like people, you know, the human condition is to, you know, not be able to sustain something like this.
- [25:03]
Link Neal
Yeah. Well, it all goes back to 1984 and Ms. Locklear's first grade class in Buoys Creek, North Carolina, where we are both held in from recess for writing profanity on our desks. We don't really remember what we wrote, but in the mythology of our creation myth, it has become Damn in Hell. Damn misspelled as D A M. Cause that's funny, right? And we immediately connected and we're in a really small town where there's, you know, when Campbell University is in session, there's a thousand people, I think, in the. In the entire town. And we are essentially side by side from first grade to 12th grade as best friends. And there's people who rotate in and out of the friend group, but the two of us become, you know, inseparable. And then when we start in middle school, getting attention for doing things together, either just in front of friends, or better yet, you get up in front of the whole class and. Or you, oh, there's a video project where you get to go and you get to do something on video to show to your 8th grade class or the talent show. Oh, the talent show. That's where the, that's the opportunity right before you.
- [26:13]
Rhett McLaughlin
Right before summer, if you were in seventh and eighth grade, you could submit a talent and then like, like friends and family, everyone show up, fill the.
- [26:21]
Link Neal
Auditorium, and they'll be thinking about you all summer. Oh yeah, unless you blow it. But we lived for that. But if you perform, if you take I'm down with OPP during the fall festival and you change it to I'm down with Halloween. Yeah, and change the lyrics. They'll be thinking about you all year. So we started getting this positive feedback, this attention that we craved and. And eventually, yes, when about 14 is sort of heading into high school, that was when we were out in a cow pasture that we would go out to, to chase cows as one of our, our main pastimes. And there were two rocks out in this field. There was a big rock and a little rock. And we developed this system where if you're sitting on the big rock, you could talk, but if you're sitting on the little rock, you can only ask clarifying questions. And so we would just a training.
- [27:13]
Bryan
Ground, literally creating a show.
- [27:16]
Link Neal
And that's how we learned how to communicate and listen. And we started just talking about dreams. And they were very nebulous dreams of essentially, we want to do something big together. We don't know what that's going to be like. Our form of entertainment, like what an entertainer was to a couple of boys in Buis Creek back then was the guy who would come to our school dances and he was a dj, but he was also a magician. It's like that was a full time entertainer to us. We had no concept of going to California and being in media. We didn't even. We couldn't tell you what media was.
- [27:49]
Rhett McLaughlin
I wanted to be a weatherman.
- [27:50]
Bryan
Because you get to hear on TV.
- [27:55]
Rhett McLaughlin
At the state fair people line up for your autograph.
- [27:58]
Link Neal
That's right. They sure do.
- [28:00]
Rhett McLaughlin
I think that still happens. North Carolina.
- [28:02]
Bryan
Yeah.
- [28:03]
Link Neal
Yeah, yeah. That was our paths to getting the attention that we were so desperately craving. Had nothing to do with being on a screen other than like your evening news and.
- [28:14]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah.
- [28:14]
Link Neal
So. But we made this blood oath where we took a rock, cut our palms and wrote down on a sheet, two sheets of paper that we each had. And it basically just said, we're going to do something big together, Rhett and Link. And then we just kind of like put like a bulletprint on it.
- [28:29]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah. It didn't mention the Internet. No.
- [28:33]
Link Neal
Not the only thing. Yeah. At that point was like Trent had that at his house and he was going into chat rooms.
- [28:38]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah.
- [28:39]
Bryan
So I imagine that the introduction of the reasonably affordable home video camera was an inflection point in all of this.
- [28:48]
Link Neal
We got that from my dad. You know, I owe a lot of this to my dad for a number of reasons. He's also like being. He was an entertainer in his own right as a law professor. A very entertaining law professor. But he got a video camera to film me playing basketball in high school so that he could send those tapes to colleges so I could play college basketball. Which was kind of a dream of mine as well. But we took that camera.
- [29:14]
Rhett McLaughlin
Wasn't a dream of mine.
- [29:16]
Link Neal
No.
- [29:16]
Rhett McLaughlin
I mean, I could really keep score. I was really good at keeping score.
- [29:21]
Link Neal
For the girls basketball.
- [29:22]
Rhett McLaughlin
For the girls basketball.
- [29:23]
Bryan
So sort of like if this was Friday Night Lights, like you were more Landry and you're.
- [29:29]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah.
- [29:29]
Bryan
You were Matt Saracen.
- [29:31]
Link Neal
Yeah. He did, however, eventually play soccer for the high school team. I was there the night he scored two goals with his left foot. The only two goals he ever scored with his off foot, back to back. I was one of 12 people screaming very loud.
- [29:44]
Rhett McLaughlin
Thank you, Rhett.
- [29:45]
Bryan
Nice.
- [29:45]
Rhett McLaughlin
Thank you for telling that story.
- [29:46]
Bryan
What's going on in North Carolina? Like, how far away is your town from where Mr. Beast grew up?
- [29:52]
Link Neal
Greenville, which is where he's at, is probably an hour and a half east of us. Yeah, so, yeah, we. And we. In fact, thanks for mentioning that because we recently saw the map of the most subscribed YouTube channel in every state, which if we happen to be in South Carolina or we would have been on that map, or Tennessee or Virginia, we'd be on that map. But thanks to Mr. Beast, we are.
- [30:15]
Bryan
We are. But between the three of you, you commandeer like a pretty, you know, powerful corner of the Internet. More than a corner of it.
- [30:23]
Link Neal
Right. Okay. So we end up doing, you know, doing the, the oath. And that was what kind of just set us on this trajectory to eventually find a way into doing it full time. But again, we had no idea. We went to NC State, we were engineering students, and then graduated and became engineers, believe it or not, for a little bit. But the thing that was kind of unfolding through all of that was we come from very evangelical Christian backgrounds, which we've talked a little bit about this. That's the world that we come from, and we're not really in that world anymore. But that was a huge part of how we became entertainers was in the context of church and in the context of campus ministry with campus crusade, of getting up at weekly meetings and doing monologues and showing videos and playing music and that kind of thing. We've always had this tendency to take a path, an unconventional path, without knowing that that was what we were doing. Whereas somebody else might be like, well, if I want to get into comedy, I'm going to develop a tight stand up routine and I'm going to go to the local comedy club and then maybe I'll get to do that on the west coast at some point or go to New York. And for us it was no, let's go into this place where there's a bunch of Christian college students who are not interested in comedy at all. They're not here for the comedy. And let's give them something that none of them ask for, where the standard for being funny is really, really low because you're competing just against a pastor who has a great opening story in.
- [31:53]
Bryan
His sermon, which is good for kind of getting that early validation that maybe you needed to feel like you were onto something.
- [32:00]
Rhett McLaughlin
Oh, yeah.
- [32:01]
Link Neal
Oh, yeah. We thought we Were onto something built.
- [32:04]
Bryan
In audience available with low expectations, with no choice.
- [32:09]
Link Neal
With no choice. They can't leave blindsided audience. They feel an obligation to be. Be there for completely different reasons.
- [32:15]
Bryan
So this is like your boot camp or the sort of Malcolm Gladwell esque type of tipping point experience in the way that Bill Gates had access to this supercomputer that nobody else did down the street that allowed him to. And you have access to this population of people, like an audience that's available to you to work your stuff out.
- [32:40]
Rhett McLaughlin
Totally. And just like those talent shows in middle school, we lived for the annual conference, the winter conference that we would emcee and create videos and write songs for. So like all year round we'd be. We'd be working up material and testing it out and. And yeah, kind of honing our craft, I guess you would say. Because when we graduated college, this is around like 2000, 2001, you think about. YouTube didn't even exist until four years later, 2005 into 2006, and we had this. An accumulation of videos we had created that we put on our own website. That then when YouTube came along, people stole a few, ripped them, put them on YouTube, and it got more views in a day than it got the previous year on our website. So we're like, okay. Then we started chasing, let's do that on purpose. This new audience. Let's do that on purpose. And we were older, so we had this more responsible. We were. We're both married. I think we. By. We were getting ready to have 2005.
- [33:54]
Link Neal
We both had a kid.
- [33:55]
Rhett McLaughlin
Because we both had a kid, you know, so it was like we were.
- [33:58]
Bryan
How. How old were you guys when you got married?
- [34:00]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah, I turned.
- [34:01]
Link Neal
I was 23.
- [34:02]
Rhett McLaughlin
I was. I turned 22 on my honeymoon.
- [34:06]
Link Neal
Yeah. And I was 23.
- [34:14]
Rich Roll
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- [35:41]
Link Neal
This.
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Rich Roll
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- [37:31]
Bryan
When YouTube is suddenly available, you're poised and ready to go. And when people say like, oh, you guys are OG YouTubers, truly. Like day one, we were, we weren't.
- [37:46]
Link Neal
In the very first wave.
- [37:47]
Rhett McLaughlin
We were like nine months late to the day one in terms of people.
- [37:50]
Link Neal
Who are still around. We had our own website, like Smosh started in the only people that I know that still do YouTube full time. Who started in 2005, the very first year. Smosh. And then everybody else that I know is 2006.
- [38:03]
Bryan
Yeah. Is anybody still relevant from that first wave? Still making stuff. And, you know, putting our footprint on the Internet from those early years. I mean, you got the vlog brothers.
- [38:16]
Rhett McLaughlin
You got Hank and John Green.
- [38:16]
Bryan
Hank and John Green go way back.
- [38:18]
Rhett McLaughlin
You got Phil DeFranco still doing his thing.
- [38:21]
Bryan
Yeah, that's true.
- [38:22]
Link Neal
There's not many.
- [38:22]
Bryan
Not many.
- [38:23]
Rhett McLaughlin
And then you've got Smosh.
- [38:24]
Link Neal
Yep.
- [38:24]
Rhett McLaughlin
I'm sure there's.
- [38:25]
Bryan
Which ultimately, you guys end up acquiring Smosh. Yeah.
- [38:28]
Link Neal
So crazy.
- [38:29]
Bryan
Which is like. Crazy.
- [38:30]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah, we acquired that business, and then it was. And en just half of the duo. And then when Anthony came back, we sold Smosh back to them, and then they took over, and they're doing great.
- [38:45]
Bryan
Right. Okay. So early days, YouTube, you guys have put in your time, you're good to go.
- [38:54]
Rhett McLaughlin
And we're motivated because we've got kids, and we're trying to make this a business. We're not just kids in our bedroom making response videos. And it was a lot about community for a lot of YouTubers who were starting out. There were some comedy troupes, There was some improv groups that we took some cues from. Okay, we've got our own sketches. We can do this. But we were very motivated to try to make it a business, to make a living off of it.
- [39:26]
Bryan
There couldn't have been too many people back then who were thinking in those terms at that time.
- [39:31]
Link Neal
Again, we always go to the low competition environment. Be the first person at the competition that nobody's at is really is what we have always.
- [39:41]
Bryan
Again.
- [39:41]
Link Neal
And I don't think it was intentional. I just think it's just. It worked out that way. So at that time, there were no gatekeepers. Yeah.
- [39:47]
Rhett McLaughlin
So there was no asking permission.
- [39:49]
Link Neal
Right. And so what we started doing is the only thing we knew how to do was, okay, there's no AdSense program, so there's no partner program. So you're not getting any cash for just getting views. So you literally have to get in touch with a brand to get them to pay you to put their product in your video. So we would like. We wrote a song about cornhole the game, and we started cold calling different companies that sold cornhole equipment. Literally, like calling a mom who's running her cornhole business out of her garage. And she. And we were asking for $2,000 as a flat fee to make the video. And then an agreement using something that we had just heard about called a cpm, where you would get paid according to how much, how many views it got. And we just, with the help of my dad, kind of just put together a little contract. And she was like, well, I don't have $2,000. And so. But we eventually get in touch with a couple of guys who were about our age. I think the site was ajjcornhole.com and they were like, you guys are kind of like, us getting started doing this thing. Yeah, we'd love to be a part of this. And that was like, our first contract. And then we did that with a number of other businesses. And then a couple years later, started getting called by agencies directly. And that's when, oh, we're making an entire road trip series for alka Seltzer in 2008. And that was when we started thinking, I think that there is a sustainable business here if we can have enough brands, get excited about what we're doing.
- [41:20]
Rich Roll
But in the back of your minds.
- [41:21]
Bryan
Was it still very much. This is an audition for Hollywood, because we need to drive this truck towards the TV show that we're gonna make with a big studio and a real budget. Or were you YouTube first?
- [41:36]
Link Neal
Sometimes we would get into a place where we could only think about trying to piece together a living. As we were, the number of mouths to feed were increasing. Cause Link has three kids. I've got two. And. And we were focused on that. But, you know, you would have enough conversations. We actually developed a really interesting connection kind of. In 2007, right there in the beginning, we had the opportunity to host a show on the cw. So a network show that was about Internet videos called Online Nation. Horrible show.
- [42:10]
Bryan
Yeah, I saw the video where you guys, like, you're cringing.
- [42:13]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah, yeah.
- [42:16]
Link Neal
But again, that was a point in which we were. We got.
- [42:18]
Bryan
It was like a tosh 2.0 kind of thing. Exactly right. Or it was like America's Funniest Videos type deal.
- [42:24]
Link Neal
So we got this little taste of Hollywood and coming out here, and we met at that point, we actually, you know, became one of the producers on that show, became our manager. And that's when we started what we call, what they called general meetings. We were like, what's a general meeting? Sounds very nonspecific. That's all we knew. And apparently it was when you go and sit down with production company who makes television shows or makes movies, and you try to get them interested. And we didn't know anything about how these worked. So around 2008, we show up, we go into One general meeting where we thought what we were supposed to do is give them an idea. So we're sitting in the lobby, we're looking at the movie posters that they have up, and it's like a comedy company, but they've got some. There's other. Some alien thing here. We end up developing a pitch in the lobby and go in and act as if we've got this movie completely.
- [43:19]
Bryan
Ready to go that you just came up with. You just baked up in the lobby.
- [43:23]
Link Neal
Yeah, and we still love the idea.
- [43:25]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah.
- [43:25]
Link Neal
It's about a band that in this. In the 70s or the 80s, they were added to a broadcast that was sent out into space. Kind of like the Voyager spacecraft was sent out in 77. And so they are a band, like a popular band that is featured on this record that then is intercepted by aliens and the alien civilization becomes enamored with this particular band. Meanwhile, on Earth, this band has gotten old. They've broken up. But now that alien civilization is coming to attack Earth, and only thing that they want and the only way to appease them is for the band to get back together and, like, give an incredible show to this alien.
- [44:03]
Bryan
It's pretty good.
- [44:03]
Rich Roll
It's sort of like waiting for.
- [44:04]
Bryan
Waiting for Sugarman with. With aliens. Yeah. Right.
- [44:07]
Link Neal
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we got a taste of that, and we were like, okay, we can come up with ideas and lobbies and maybe we should write scripts. So we wrote. We wrote a pilot script, and we started having more meetings and that kind of thing. And that was kind of a slow burn. That over the years, things would get even closer to development. And we started getting this taste for what it might be like to actually have a TV show. That was our baby. But in the meantime, the traction on YouTube kept growing, and we started realizing, oh, on one hand, in the traditional world, we're spending all this time writing, writing a feature, writing multiple pilots, having all these meetings, trying to get people to get excited about stuff, doing a lot of creative work that never gets seen. Meanwhile, over here on YouTube, the minute we have an idea is the minute that we can turn around and make it for an audience that is growing. And we're also making money doing it. So it took us a really long time to get to this place where almost all the focus shifted to the YouTube side of things.
- [45:15]
Rhett McLaughlin
And then we get to a point where, well, we've never made that movie that we just pitched to you because, I mean, that's on a different level in terms of, like, the amount of cost and everything you would need to do that. You got to be plugged in, in some way into a traditional entertainment lane. Right. So there's always been this dream of we want to tell bigger stories. We do want to work on bigger projects. We have ways that we want to express ourselves. So there's always been this pull to create bigger projects. And sometimes that meant like, doing the show for IFC or writing more pilots or pitching. And so we would. We would oscillate between ambitious projects that we were dreaming about and then getting turned away and turning back towards what was working for us and appreciating it for what it is. But they're always different, those two lanes, right? The things that were working for us with our podcast with Good Mythical Morning, with our direct fan interaction and building that business and trying to reinvest, but it never turned into making that movie or another movie or television series.
- [46:38]
Bryan
Yeah. I mean, when I look at it just as a fan and as a layperson and trying to understand, like, you know, how you went from where you were to where you are now, I see, like, a very rational, thoughtful progression towards those more ambitious projects, tackling them when you finally have the capacity to do so on your own terms. Because Good Mythical Morning is like the anchor, right? Like, this is the thing that the audience is tuning in for every day. Very loyal, engaged, massive group of people that I suspect on some level is sort of paying the bills and has allowed you to expand your team and your capacity and then make more deliberate choices about what to do with that revenue and investing them in projects that, you know, are of a budget range that you guys can manage. Which brings you to Wonderhole, like, basically, like, you know, here we are, we're having this podcast on the eve of the premiere of season two of this. Of this program, Wonderhole, which is essentially a TV show, you know, half hour comedy. It's. So I was trying to, like, wrap my head around, like, okay, what is this? Right? Like, and in so many ways, it is a television show. It's sort of like, take Nathan Fielder, for example. So I look at what Nathan Fielder has done and what he's doing and how he's kind of, like, expanding the scope and concepts that he's tackling. And on a certain level, he's kind of a YouTuber, right? He's kind of a YouTuber who got plugged into HBO and is making essentially what would work very well on YouTube, just with larger budgets. And you're kind of doing the inverse of that. Like, you're making. You're Making your youtubers who are making a television show with a more modest budget, at least with respect to whatever got spent on the rehearsal. But these things are very much of a piece. They're in conversation with each other. Right. Which brings me back to the kind of initial question that I had for you guys. Like this blended situation that we're in right now where you're self funding your own TV show and. And assuming it's successful, this then gives you the capacity to kind of expand the budgets next time around and be a little bit more ambitious with what you're doing, which is just going to blend these things even more.
- [49:04]
Link Neal
Yeah, I think that the strategy for us has been sometimes you can get really focused on the way that everything is changing around you and the way that the landscape is shifting and anticipating those changes. That's some people's gift. And some people are like, oh, I'm gonna find some white space here or there. Our strategy mostly just because it's all we know how to do when the landscape is confusing, focus. You focus on what you can control, which is what you're bringing to that confusing landscape. And for us, it is a very particular type of creative project that is rooted in that 40 year friendship, is rooted in our sensibility, which is, you know, our POV comes from what we think is funny. Us being silly, having a good time together, our worldview, what it was and what it has become and like what it's like to have your worldview turned upside down. That all kind of blends into this recipe that gives us the ability to create something that only we can create. And all we can do is try to get that out as clearly as possible in a realistic way. And I think that's what Wonderhole represents and why. Wonderhole is what it is in terms of how you would describe the genre, which especially in season two. We did it a little bit in season one, but we really honed in on this very specific strategy in season two, which is every single video, the title.
- [50:37]
Rhett McLaughlin
Don't even call it a video.
- [50:38]
Link Neal
Every single episode, the title and thumbnail of each episode is just like another video that exists out there on YouTube that has multiple millions of views. Whether it is we spent the night in $100 million mansion in a tiny home, or we spent. The first episode is we spent 100 hours on a raft, stranded on a raft. We reviewed one star hotels. These are videos that multiple people have done. Mr. Beast sort of created this type of video. And now there's a lot of people who do their derivative versions of it and to great effect.
- [51:16]
Rhett McLaughlin
And when he says derivative versions, the titles and the thumbnails are exactly the same. The only difference is the person's face in the thumbnail is a different creator, but they're carbon copies. Title, thumbnail, and format.
- [51:33]
Link Neal
But we don't want to do that.
- [51:34]
Rhett McLaughlin
We don't want to do that.
- [51:35]
Link Neal
We don't want to do the same thing.
- [51:36]
Rhett McLaughlin
We want to tell stories, and we want to tell increasingly ambitious stories, but we don't want to ask permission. So we have our original YouTube channel, the Rhett and Link YouTube channel. So we said, okay, what's a way to have our cake and eat it too? We want to maximize the performance of these videos, but we want to create episodes of a television show and be a part of that conversation.
- [52:07]
Link Neal
This is the interesting thing about storytelling on YouTube that we are learning as we go. So what works on YouTube is driven by an algorithm that rewards a click and then engagement and retention. So you have to engage with the title and the thumbnail, and then you have to retain a viewer and so so much. You know, the videos that get. You take Mr. Beast as an example. The videos that are getting hundreds of millions of views, they are essentially a recipe for engagement. It is all about engagement. It is from the very beginning. What draws you in to every single second is optimized for human engagement. And that's not just honestly not exciting to us because we think that when engagement is the end goal, you end up creating something that. I don't know. When I get finished watching a video that's all about engagement, I feel like a little piece of my soul is left on the table. It goes into the ether because it's.
- [53:10]
Rhett McLaughlin
Just a reptilian response.
- [53:13]
Link Neal
It's appealing to something in your brain that I don't necessarily. You know, this in having a podcast, the pressures in every single industry, the way that the very democratic algorithm has influenced news in all media, I don't think is something we're going to look back on and be happy about, right? So if you want to tell stories in the context of that algorithm, you have to have the auspices of that algorithm. That's why the theme for season two is Clickbait and Switch. All the titles are Clickbait, all the thumbnails are clickbait. But at some point in the first few minutes of that video, we're going to take you down the wonder hole. That's about something that we're interested in, is a story that we think would be entertaining, but. But we're focusing More on connection and less on engagement. And that's going to mean lower views. We're not going to get 100 million views on a video. I don't think we could if we wanted to, but also I don't think we would ever try, because what we would have to do in order to do that is not something that really resonates with us. So that's this question of operating in this algorithm that's all about engagement, but then trying to actually make a real connection with people in the way that is happening. You know, when you talk about Nathan Fielder, who is a big inspiration for us, the rehearsal is just so crazy and so weird and so awesome. And it's about plumbing that. He's plumbing his own depth, right? Personally, and his eccentricities and making something that only Nathan Fielder can make. You know, you talk about it working on YouTube. I don't think it would work on YouTube because I don't think you could package it. I think what works from the rehearsal are the clips. They may work on YouTube shorts or may work on Instagram or TikTok, but the show itself, I think, lives best in a curated environment like hbo, where somebody else is having a say in, hey, we've got some stuff we want you to watch of a certain sensibility. But it isn't driven exclusively by people's impulses to click on something. There's a difference. There's a different dynamic there.
- [55:21]
Bryan
It is a strange and unfortunate situation that not only YouTube, but the Internet at large is constructed in this way. And, you know, I. I spent a lot of time thinking about this, like, in what I do, like, what would I have to change about what I do in order to optimize it to, you know, grow the audience? And it's really a decision of personal ethics and values more than anything else, right? And, like, I want to stay in love with what I'm doing. I want to make sure that what I'm doing is delivering meaningful value for the audience. And in order to play the game of hijacking the algorithm, to, like, you know, serve the agenda of audience capture is just not something I'm interested in doing, while also being aware that I'm running a commercial enterprise and it has to survive and. And I would like it to grow, and I would like the people that have already subscribed to actually see it, you know, when gets posted and all of these things, right? These are all things that we have to think about. But what's brilliant about Wonderhole is this click and switch idea behind it. Because essentially, just to kind of underscore the conceit of it all, you are taking something that works, that's proven to already work on the Internet. So, for example, what's it like to fly in a $30,000 first class suite in a fancy airline where you have like essentially your own apartment? There's lots of videos out there that do very well on this. Casey Neistat did an incredible one. You know this works, right? So it's like, all right, well, we're going to start with this. Like, what would it look like if you guys did this? And there is a Nathan Fielder piece to this in the way that you set it up, you're like, okay, you know, if it was Nathan, what would you on some level, if it's Rhett and Link, like, what is their weird approach to this? And it sort of starts out in a way that you. You kind of. These things start out and then it just. The switch is it ends up catalyzing this insane adventure that has nothing to do with the premise of the idea to begin with. But you're in for the ride because you guys are engaging and you're telling a story that the viewer gets wrapped up in and suddenly you're in this completely different place that has nothing to do with the idea that got these people to click play in the first place.
- [57:35]
Link Neal
Yeah.
- [57:35]
Rhett McLaughlin
And hopefully you're better because of it.
- [57:38]
Bryan
Right?
- [57:39]
Rhett McLaughlin
You know.
- [57:39]
Bryan
Yeah. You're left nourished. Not with the. Did I just get manipulated in some kind of fast food? You know, like I have a hangover. Like some kind of hangover from having.
- [57:48]
Rich Roll
Been forced to watch okay.
- [57:50]
Link Neal
In the fast food.
- [57:51]
Rhett McLaughlin
And we've tried really exactly.
- [57:52]
Bryan
Conscious intention.
- [57:53]
Link Neal
And this is so. This is so real to us because all while Wonderhole is being made and we are super excited about the stories we're telling there. We continue to make good mythical morning. I mean, that's coming out every single day.
- [58:11]
Bryan
That's crazy.
- [58:12]
Link Neal
Well, Monday through Friday, basically year round. There's a couple of breaks where it goes to three times a week. But that show is all about connection at its heart. It's the two of us just hanging out with each other, having a good time. You are invited to be the third friend in that friendship every single day. But we've been playing that algorithm for almost 3,000 episodes. And literally, when you say fast food, fast food is so clickable. There's just something about us deciding that we're going to tell you what the best chicken sandwich is, what the best cheeseburger is, and there's something irresistible about that. Now, would we at our. If we were creating a show from the ground up right now, would it be like, let's taste test burgers? It's like, no, it's not. There's not. It's not a passion. It has though.
- [59:04]
Rhett McLaughlin
I do like a good smash burger.
- [59:05]
Link Neal
Yeah. Yeah, we have a really good time doing it and I especially like to eat. But we have been sort of riding those two rails at the same time with good mythical morning for a very long time of if you don't. There's so many people who haven't been able to avoid our faces and thumbnails on YouTube who are like, okay, I think I know what this is and I'm not interested in it. And I completely get that because me personally, if I saw the thumbnail of me holding up a burger and making an engaging face, that's not the kind of thing that me as a 47 year old dude would want to click on. But what we have found is that enough people click and are like, oh, it is kind of about the burger for the click. But it's about the connection and the friendship once I'm there. So we've had to do that growing a business in this environment and then it was okay, how else can you do that? Can you do that with a longer form comedy and Wonderhall takes a slightly different approach to that.
- [60:02]
Rhett McLaughlin
And can you infuse even more meaning into, you know, if we're working with the power of stories and we're tricking you or some people into that clique and then we're switching it up. We really tried with season two to identify the themes that we were exploring and, and elevate our craft, I guess is the best way to say it. And you know, I know that there's a lot of creators out there who don't want to just emulate what's going to work to get the clicks. They have something to say. And I think it is a real question of is YouTube going to be the place where those creators can say those things, you know, in a, in an episode we're really excited about. We are inspired by the format that Ryan Trahan amongst a few other creators made popular, which is going and staying at a one star hotel overnight and seeing how much of that nightmare from the reviews is actually true. Now that's intriguing, right? You can see why it's getting tens of millions of views and so many creators are jumping on the bandwagon. But for us, we were like, okay, what story do we want to tell? We know at the very beginning we're going to be taking the black light out. We're going to be looking in the drawers and seeing what nightmares are to be found. And we know in every hotel room there's either a Bible or a Book of Mormon or sometimes both, thanks to the Gideons and the Latter Day Saints. Right.
- [61:50]
Link Neal
So we said, what if when you open that drawer, you found something other than either a Bible or a Book of Mormon? And can that be a way for us to explore our own spiritual journey? And can we get our friend Rainn Wilson to make a cameo?
- [62:07]
Bryan
Yeah, it's like a really fun Trojan horse. The gate is easily opened for that Trojan horse to come in. And then you sneak up on them with a bunch of soldiers who want to talk about your spiritual transformation.
- [62:25]
Rhett McLaughlin
Or at least who should you believe. How powerful is a personal testimony, especially when your best friend is the one who is now telling you that. That he's totally changed his worldview. How do you respond to that? And how do you earn trust? You know, so these are the type of things that we do explore. Yeah, but it's very silly. So it's.
- [62:50]
Link Neal
There's a hot tub baptism.
- [62:52]
Rhett McLaughlin
There's a hot tub baptism. But for us, it's not just about getting the chip off our shoulder to make a television show or to be talked about in the same conversation as a Nathan Filter. Even though that feels really good and I really do appreciate you drawing the comparisons, we really try to focus on what do we have to say and what type of experiences as creators and creative people do we want to curate for ourselves and bring our audience along for the ride? If we're going to lose a little money in the short term to make it without asking permission, we're gaining the experience of doing it and maybe staying engaged after all these years.
- [63:44]
Rich Roll
I'm in the process of recovering from a pretty major surgery, and this has left me thinking a lot about legacy, the relationship between what we do now and what we're actually leaving behind for future generations.
- [63:58]
Bryan
Missions.
- [63:58]
Rich Roll
Well, my friend rj, who founded and runs Rivian, thinks about this constantly. Sure, he builds electric vehicles for all kinds of adventures, and amazing ones at that. His mission, however, is way bigger than that.
- [64:13]
Bryan
A mission that is informed by asking.
- [64:15]
Rich Roll
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- [66:23]
Bryan
A high quality television program can be made on YouTube and succeed maybe. Yeah.
- [66:31]
Rhett McLaughlin
Well, right now that's the question.
- [66:33]
Bryan
Well, okay, so we'll find out, right?
- [66:35]
Rhett McLaughlin
I think we'll find out.
- [66:36]
Rich Roll
Season one did well.
- [66:37]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah.
- [66:38]
Bryan
Well enough for you guys to say, let's do it again and invest your own money in it. I mean, you know, so there's the, the show itself, the philosophy behind it, the creativity and what you're trying to say, and then there's where it fits in in this media landscape in terms of like the shift that's occurring because it's a big deal. Like you're making a real television show and you're putting it on YouTube. It's kind of an amazing thing.
- [67:06]
Link Neal
And I think it comes at a time when that merger of these platforms in the mind of the consumer is essentially here because the interface has merged. So now it's just, yeah, the YouTube.
- [67:24]
Bryan
Is just another little kind of icon on your smart TV. Just like Netflix or.
- [67:30]
Link Neal
Right. Amazon, Paramount plus, when my dad is deciding to watch a YouTube video or a Netflix show, you know, as somebody who's almost 80 years old, it's like, you know, that the transition has, the merger has happened in the mind of the consumer. I mean, the question that we're basically exploring on a daily basis is, you know, what are the limits? What are the limits of the kinds of stories you can tell in an environment that really does. And the reason that we've been so successful with Good Mythical Morning is we have a relatively low input in terms of resources and a great output in terms of views and, you know, the amount of runtime of minutes of video that we put out into the world in any given year, it's going to be 99% GMM compared to wonderful six episodes that are about a half hour. We do more than a half hour of content for Good Mythical Morning and Good Mythical more the show after the show every single day. So we're exploring like, what does that look like financially? So I think that where our, our mind is set is we are now really taking that look inward to what are the things that we want to bring into the world. How can we do that in a way that we don't necessarily have to rely on anyone else, but we're a little bit agnostic when it comes to certain projects might make sense in certain places. And of course, YouTube's always going to be our first option because we've got the, the audience there. But I think we're just kind of, we're exploring it as we go because in order for something like Wonderhole to really work, we don't have any sponsors. We didn't incorporate any sponsors into either. Either season. We could have worked really hard to have like a commercial break, but we were more like, hey, let's get the creative right and worry about that. That later. But that would be an example of how you could potentially do it. If you get a presenting sponsor to present a whole season or something to.
- [69:28]
Bryan
Do, it is, you know, you hold some kind of upfronts and you pre sell advertising on it, or you get one brand and make it, you know, like a Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom sort of thing where they underwrite the entire thing or you do like the studios do and you finance it with outside investors. And there are equity participants in this. I mean, I know that these things are already happening. You know, Colin Samir talks about, they talk about this stuff all the time. Like there's a whole world in which you Know it again. It's like, okay, well it's all going back to the way it was before YouTube began. And it's just another version of like the studio system essentially.
- [70:10]
Link Neal
Right. Yeah. It always kind of works the same way. It's like the value of someone deciding to watch the thing that you've made and that is going to come from either some sort of subscription fee or advertising. It's like until they invent a new way.
- [70:24]
Bryan
I mean you were able to do it because GMM is so successful and is this revenue generating thing. But you know, eventually it will be the show that is the revenue generating thing and that becomes a self perpetuating thing that allows you to do more things and bigger things.
- [70:40]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah, I think determining that we weren't going to let anything stand in the way of us making the next thing unlocked, we trust that that's going to continue to unlock our future. You know, even if everything, if we're having to scale back on ambitions now for season two of Wonderhole or the project after that, it's. We're still incrementally expanding, but even more importantly we're getting stuff out there.
- [71:12]
Bryan
Yeah.
- [71:12]
Rhett McLaughlin
You know, and trusting that is gonna doing things leads to things, you know.
- [71:18]
Bryan
But your future relies entirely upon your friendship. Right. So like how do you nurture this? Like clearly if you guys aren't friends off camera, like you're not going to be able to be friends on camera. Right. And you have this incredible friendship that you've been able to nurture and sustain for so many years. Like what are the principles and secrets behind that? I'm sure there have been difficult moments.
- [71:45]
Rhett McLaughlin
Okay, I'll give you a recent anecdote if I think you're okay with this.
- [71:51]
Bryan
Sure.
- [71:52]
Rhett McLaughlin
So we took vacation over the summer apart. This is like the second year we've taken like a multiple week vacation and we set up our production schedules. Matter of fact, we had to tell our team over a year in advance that we wanted to take multiple weeks off in July. And then they tooled our production schedule so that retooled it so that we could do that. And we basically didn't talk to each other. So towards the end of this I'm like, hey, when are you flying back? He was in North Carolina. I was like, you know, if you're coming back on Saturday, we could probably get together Sunday and just start to basically compare notes on what our breaks have been like. Because we see it as kind of like a soul searching rejuvenation time very much needed before we go into the office on Monday and just get right.
- [72:48]
Link Neal
Back into it, hit the ground running.
- [72:50]
Rhett McLaughlin
That actually didn't work out for us to get together that day, but I got an email in my inbox. Now, first of all, the fact that I even saw the email. I don't check a lot of emails, especially on a break.
- [73:02]
Link Neal
Well, you know what I did after I emailed you? What did I do?
- [73:04]
Rhett McLaughlin
You texted and said I sent you an email. That's what it was. And what was the subject line of the email was very unusual for Rhett. And it was like, thoughts about our friendship.
- [73:19]
Link Neal
Yeah, something like that.
- [73:20]
Rhett McLaughlin
And I was like, oh, shit, I'm not gonna. I won't usually be like, I'll open this. I'm going to sleep. I'm open this in the morning. Just like, oh, that doesn't feel good.
- [73:30]
Link Neal
We need to talk.
- [73:31]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah, we need to talk.
- [73:32]
Bryan
Email. Right.
- [73:34]
Rhett McLaughlin
And I mean, you can share the specifics of the email to whatever extent you want, but it was thoughts about our connection and. And it was basically. Well, I'll let you put that part in your own ways.
- [73:47]
Link Neal
Well, in many ways it was a. You had sent me a very similar email that we've also talked about at some point, I think with our fans.
- [73:55]
Rhett McLaughlin
Maybe two years ago.
- [73:57]
Link Neal
No, it was like pre pandemic. I think it was a long time ago.
- [74:01]
Rhett McLaughlin
And it was.
- [74:03]
Link Neal
It was during that. I can't believe you're sensitive. Time.
- [74:06]
Rhett McLaughlin
Time compresses for me.
- [74:08]
Link Neal
This was actually.
- [74:08]
Bryan
You're making it sound like this happened recently.
- [74:11]
Rhett McLaughlin
Oh, no, my story happened three weeks ago.
- [74:14]
Link Neal
Three weeks ago. But the original email to me was.
- [74:17]
Rhett McLaughlin
I sent him an email 2017.
- [74:19]
Link Neal
2017. Because it was the year we were doing Buddy System, which was our scripted show on YouTube, Red YouTube Originals. And we were also doing a version of Good Mythical Morning that had five videos a day that was funded by YouTube. And we were going crazy. That's when I started going to therapy. But he sent me an email at that time which essentially said. It basically said what you've already stated.
- [74:41]
Rhett McLaughlin
If we're not prioritizing our friendship for each other, we then the fuel is going to burn away for everything that we're sharing with everybody else. And I've just felt the need for us to reconnect as friends. And we learned something about translate that into content.
- [75:03]
Bryan
Content. Was that something that emerged out of an imbalance in your relationship in terms of how each of you interfaced with the work and what you do?
- [75:14]
Link Neal
I think it was a combination of being both of us being burnt out because we were doing too many things.
- [75:18]
Rhett McLaughlin
Way too many things.
- [75:19]
Link Neal
But also the way that it's a little bit of a love language thing, which I think is also what the, you know, really the background for this most recent email. And it was that, that I, like Link, wants quality time. But quality time for him isn't necessarily us working together. It's let's do something and hang out and have fun without talking about work. Whereas I get my hobby in so many ways is what we do. And so I'm like, hey, when we're figuring out this problem together and we're creating this stuff together, that feels like quality time to me. And I realize it's not the same type of connection. And Link is like, I gotta have a connection that doesn't just live in the work because then you're like a couple that's together for the sake of the kids.
- [76:06]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah, we can't keep doing this for everybody else if we're never doing it for just the two of us. And so that was my kind of wake up call email to him that then, you know, immediate response, like, he comes over to the house, we're talking about it. And it was a turning point. It was a refocus and a reprioritization. Now fast forward eight years. Eight, not years, not two. Eight years later, I get this email from Ed. I'm like, oh, now he's sending me one.
- [76:48]
Link Neal
And what I was feeling, it was.
- [76:50]
Rhett McLaughlin
A little, it wasn't the same message.
- [76:53]
Link Neal
So one of the things it kind of hit me and I discussed this with Jesse, my wife, while we were in North Carolina, just the two of us, is so again, our background is evangelical Christians. And not just, hey, we're Christians, but no, we are Christians. And this is the most important part of our lives. To the degree that it was our job for a while.
- [77:13]
Bryan
We worked full time evangelicals.
- [77:15]
Link Neal
Yes. So we worked with Campus Crusade for Christ. We were creating evangelism materials for college students. And one of the things that happened when we were, you know, we basically, it's been well over 10 years since we called ourselves Christians. But when we were in it and we were doing it professionally, but also in those first few years as we were doing YouTube exclusively, we would have these moments where we would come together and I would be like, man, we gotta, our priorities are getting out of whack. We got to remember why we're doing this. We got to remember the opportunity that the Lord is giving us. We got to, you know, realize that this isn't about us. This is about him. And we would get together and we would pray together. Right? This was like a regular thing of like, sort of literally a come to Jesus moment that we would have in the context of friendship. And I think that since no longer being a Christian, like that framework, that religious and spiritual framework that allowed for that connection, which is incredibly meaningful to us as friends, was no longer there. You no longer had the language and the framework to engage on that level. It wasn't like we weren't close. But I think that one of the things that's happened and we talk about, you know, we kind of give an update on where we're at spiritually each year on our podcast. And in the past couple years, the sentiment that has kind of arisen is that I'm still pretty interested in spirituality and spiritual things in general, and that's an important part of my life, and maybe not so much for link. And the thing that I've come to realize recently is that, you know, the way that Richard Rohr, my wife, is reading a book by him right now, and I've read a couple by him, but he talks about spirituality essentially being the river beneath the river. It's sort of that grounding and the thing that's beneath the surface. And it's not all the external, shallow things, especially the things that exist in this town where. Where it's all about the transactional nature of relationships and who can do what for you, but it's really looking inward, and it's about a more deeply rooted connection to the soul and the things that make you who you are. The email essentially said, I feel like one of the things that we have lost, not that we never talk about it, but one of the things that we've lost in losing the spiritual framework work is something akin to those times when we would get together and talk about the real stuff and be like, how are you doing for real? Right. And it wasn't like I. We talk about our marriages, we talk about what it's like to be a father. We talk. We obviously talk about what it's like to run a business together, but it was never like that was the. The essential reason for coming together. And so the email was essentially like, I think this is an insight that I've had that. I think one of the reasons that we may be struggling with a connection is that we don't have that framework. And I'm not saying that we have to have a specific framework, but we can just initiate the conversation so that we can have real, meaningful, deep conversations about what's going on beneath the surface. And that was the. Essentially what it was.
- [80:25]
Bryan
And how did, how did that land with you?
- [80:28]
Rhett McLaughlin
Amazing. You know, I was, it made me feel great because he was reaching out to say I value the connection and I miss a certain quality and depth of connection. That was exactly what I was saying in my email all those years earlier. And then to the love language point of it all, I think I was filtering it through the performative nature of friendship. I want to do things. I want to. I want to have experiences together that aren't for someone else to watch. And then I heard him saying the same thing, that I want to connect. I want to have that experience of connecting with you around ideas and beliefs and the deeply held soul level experience. So because that is so much of how he connects. And I'm like, well, okay, well, let's go surfing. I actually think is what I said.
- [81:35]
Bryan
I was like, what's the vehicle for that explanation?
- [81:37]
Rhett McLaughlin
I was like, let's go surfing. And I was like, hold on, I'm doing it again. That's not what he's asking for. I was like, we'll be able to talk the whole time, but we'll both be getting those itches scratched of like we can do something together, we can enjoy ourselves together and we can talk about some. The deeper realities of our experiences. And so it's a. Both.
- [81:59]
Bryan
And yeah, I have.
- [82:01]
Rhett McLaughlin
And we did that.
- [82:02]
Bryan
Two reflections on this. First of all, both of these overtures are very perceptive and mature kind of maneuvers. Short of link your first email, you end up like Metallica because you're headed for a crash, right? You're fending that off before that happens. So you have the insight and the sensitivity to realize like, hey, we're a little off track here. Let's course correct. Before we have to actually deal with some kind of car crash situation which obviously neither of you want. And you were able to successfully do that through mutual respect and communication and all of these things. And then by the time your email comes along, that's a deepening of the same idea, right? On some level. And when you remove yourselves from the evangelical Christian world, it doesn't mean that the quest, the desire, the search for meaning ends, right? What is replacing that? And if it's being replaced with views and engagement and nothing else, that's not going to be great, right? That's another car crash waiting to happen. And so what is that meaning and that idea that you shared, Rhett, about like getting together and being like, you know, like in the way that you were thinking about how you were serving God, like, how can the two of you together, not only with what you share publicly, but in your relationship, like, how can we make this about something greater than ourselves, you know, that has meaning that we share and that's like the sustainable juice of the whole thing, right? Like making it about something more than you and your, you know, respective ambitions and in the three dimensional material world.
- [83:49]
Link Neal
Right. It's. It's more about the soul. And I think the thing that, the thing that I was also communicating and then we talked about that day was I think some of your hesitancy in having conversations like that can be a feeling that you have to have because we come from a place where certainty comes at a premium and certainty was basically the foundation of our Christianity was that you knew that you were right, you believed the right stuff. That was the most important thing. And believing that and being certain of that was kind of the point in a lot of ways. That's at least how we ended up coming out of that machine. A lot of people do, some people don't. Richard Rohr doesn't think like that. But I think, think that has been. Some of your hesitancy is like, well, we start talking about that stuff because I was telling you about that principle of love, your fate, the Amar fati Fati, I think, which Nietzsche kind of talked about was very impactful on Joseph Campbell. It came to me essentially the principle of like, literally embrace and accept and love. Every single thing that happens to you have that disposition. And it came to me three different times in a week and I'd never even heard of it before. And it comes from three independent places. And okay, so it feels like a synchronicity, right? And I think Link's like, how does that impact the way you think about the way the world works? And where I'm at now is like, I don't have to know. Like, it could be that it is a coincidence and there's. It just happens in three different times. It could be that the universe in some force is conspiring to bring this thing about. But to me, that's kind of an irrelevant factor because my experience is that these, this message came to me three different times. And it's a very useful message that's incredibly valuable to me right now in my life, and I want to talk about it with you. And so I think that it was more like, you don't have to have the. You don't have to have the certainty of what the. How it all works. The doctrine in order to experience the benefit of having that conversation and what that principle is.
- [85:56]
Bryan
Am I wrong to imagine link that for you? Perhaps this is a little bit like triggering, just even bringing up these ideas that are maybe quasi religious because of the history in the past.
- [86:11]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah, it can trigger this scrupulosity for me of, okay, now there's something for me to judge myself against and, you know, come down on myself. But what I experienced in our conversation, in kind of putting into practice walking through that open door of that email was a connection while embracing uncertainty. It's like, we don't, we don't need to have answers, especially if we're not on mic, on our podcast, giving our spiritual deconstruction updates. You know, it's that time of year again. So now let's talk about it. We got into that place where we would do it on a mic, and then you're. You're influencing people. And I'm like, well, I don't. I wasn't comfortable with that. But what that was interpreted. I think I was sending the message that that meant I didn't want to talk about it at all. And yes, there are aspects of it that are triggering, but. But the big application of it was, no, we can just rekindle those private conversations where it's like, I don't have a clue.
- [87:25]
Link Neal
And it's about, does it matter?
- [87:27]
Rhett McLaughlin
And it's just about, yeah, it's not about coming to conclusions or any doctrine at all. For me, it's about connection. I think for both of us, it's about connection and me getting reacquainted with the fun of playing around with ideas.
- [87:44]
Link Neal
When I find myself, and I think I said this in the email, when I find myself reaching out to other people and making new connections and new. And forming new relationships with people, and that's the foundation for those friendships, is those types of discussions. But yet I don't have that with my lifelong best friend. That's. I think that's where the imbalance began to. Again, it isn't like we talk all the time, but there are certain things where I'm like, I'm not going to bring that up with him because I don't want that to trigger. I don't want him to think that I'm challenging him to something or whatever. But it was that realization that it.
- [88:20]
Bryan
Was interfering with the depth of your. Of your. Your friendship. Right. Yeah. It is approaching spirituality from the perspective of the question rather than the certainty of the answer. And it reminds me of J.J. abrams, TED talk where he talks about the mystery box. Like every great story, it's about the anticipation of the answer, or it's the quest to discover the answer. And even in your Wonderhole episode, where you have the time capsule, like, that message is implicit in that story, which is that it doesn't matter what's in the box. It's basically the connection that the two of you have in the quest to discover it and unlock it.
- [89:01]
Rhett McLaughlin
Totally.
- [89:02]
Bryan
So that's like a metaphor for everything you just shared.
- [89:05]
Link Neal
Yeah.
- [89:06]
Rhett McLaughlin
And I think we did that on purpose.
- [89:08]
Bryan
I was going to say, was that intentional?
- [89:11]
Link Neal
Yeah, it was. Because we were. Yeah. Well, it's funny, when you're concocting a story like that, you know, a lot of times you've got this idea, and I assume this is what happened with Tarantino in Pulp Fiction, you have this idea of the box, and you probably think to yourself, we'll figure out what's going to be in the box. At some point. Let's tell this story that we want to tell, which is irrelevant to the contents of the box. And then when we have the perfect idea for what's in the box box, it'll be inserted. And I think for us, it was, oh, obviously there's nothing in the box, because it's literally about the process of us setting up this journey in the future to bring us back together and have to spend this time together. The adventure that will go on not only over the course of a lifetime, but in the distant future together when our wives are gone. We're living forever because we've signed some contract. But, yeah, it was maybe initially intentional, but became the answer. And then it was this aha moment. Of course, there's nothing in the process box.
- [90:10]
Rhett McLaughlin
Well, then at the very end, our consciousness, our souls are both in the box.
- [90:16]
Link Neal
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Literally.
- [90:17]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah, right.
- [90:19]
Link Neal
It's us. We're in the box.
- [90:20]
Bryan
Well, I want to understand, you know, the decision to put the evangelical Christian identity into the rear view and what that experience was like for each of you.
- [90:38]
Rhett McLaughlin
I think that placing certainty on this pedestal, it creates an exclusivity that undermines what I loved and still love about Jesus. So this incongruity of love and judgment. Are you in? Are you out? Was a. Was a final straw for me.
- [91:11]
Bryan
Judgment and exclusivity at the cost of empathy and inclusion.
- [91:17]
Rhett McLaughlin
Totally. And the relationships that I had forged with those who were on the outside became a very powerful influence for me to say, you know what? This is not. What. This is not how I'm going to spend My Sunday mornings in. In this particular environment, was that something.
- [91:47]
Bryan
That transpired over a long, extended period of time?
- [91:52]
Rhett McLaughlin
Oh, yeah. And in very much in parallel with the story with Rhett's journey, which is, you know, has similar and then different complexities to it. But, yeah, for both of us, it was like, I mean, I would say over the course of a decade, but I'm not good with the time and the numbers.
- [92:11]
Link Neal
Well, I'm gonna try to condense this into something that, like, just kind of hits the, like, the core of what I think happened. And, you know, as time goes on, I think some of the stuff falls. Falls better into place for me in my understanding of what actually occurred. But I think ultimately we were raised in an environment, and the brand of Christianity that we were. That we were given is one in which it's about what you believe. Like, believing and being. Believing the right thing is really what it comes down to. And believing that it's true. And when I say it's true, it's like, Christianity is true. The Bible is true. Jesus is the only way. Those. These foundational truths were kind of what you were working towards. And yes, it was a relationship with Jesus. We would set a personal relationship with Jesus, and it was about being saved by grace through faith and all that. But you had to have these intellectual ideas sort of lined up and have your ducks in a row, you know, intellectually believing the right thing. And then when you have a mind like mine, which is very curious about, okay, well, you're telling me me that this stuff is true, which means that it comports with reality. That means that the things that the Bible says comport with reality. They should be right. Historically, they should be right. If it touches on scientific things, it should be right. Jesus really did raise from the dead, like, if that's what the Bible says. This is how the Bible came together, all these things. And I just began to look into those things deeply and became thoroughly convinced that there were, first of all, most of it, you could not be certain about in the way that I had been told that you needed to be certain about. But beyond that, there were some things that I was pretty certain weren't the case. Right. I was pretty certain that we weren't. Adam and Eve didn't exist, the flood didn't happen, Moses was probably made up, that kind of stuff. And so the building blocks of the belief system begin to fall apart. Then eventually you get to Jesus and you look at what the evidence for the resurrection is. And I'm like, okay, well, I could believe that on faith, but I don't know if I can believe that from like historically historical standpoint. And then in the meantime, there's a lot of emotional. You're beginning to sort of see everything differently and you start thinking very differently about how we relate to God. And it not necessarily being through this thing that is said to be this specific revelation through this specific scripture, and that begins to essentially seem like people are trying to figure it out about. And this is one of the ways that they packaged it. They also packaged it over here with Buddhism, and they packaged it over here with Hinduism, Islam packaged it in this way. Thousands of different ways it's been packaged this way to connect with whatever is beyond us. And I really don't think we have a lot of grounds to say that one of those is right and the others are wrong. And so that was a 20 year process for me. Really kind of started in college, but began to have an impact to the point where I was like, I'm no longer a Christian, probably about 10 years after college. But in the meantime, everything about our worldview and my marriage and the way that we see our job and the way that see our place in the world was impacted by this worldview of we are children of God. Like, we had the Holy Spirit in us. And if I had met you 20 years ago, Rich, I would have been like, well, you. You're not a child of God. Like, you don't have. You're just the flesh, you just have carnal instincts, but you don't have the Holy Spirit in you.
- [95:47]
Rhett McLaughlin
Now, he wouldn't say that.
- [95:48]
Link Neal
No.
- [95:49]
Bryan
But I would say thinking, though.
- [95:50]
Link Neal
Yeah. And I. And I would say some. I would have a conversation with you and then I would get to recruiting language.
- [95:57]
Bryan
Yeah, yeah, okay.
- [95:58]
Link Neal
And then I would be trying to get you to come to a point of decision where you would place your faith in Christ as the only way to have a reconciled relationship with God and. And to be able to spend eternity with God.
- [96:07]
Bryan
Right.
- [96:08]
Link Neal
And that was. And then when all of a sudden I was like, I don't think any of that's true. And I don't think there's any way to know. Where does that leave you? I mean, I thought that it meant I would get divorced. I thought that it meant I would have no purpose, I would have no meaning because I had been told that, and I had told a lot of other people that, that if you don't like, if you don't understand the foundation of the universe, it's like you don't even Have. Have. You don't even have a foundation for what's good and evil if you don't believe in a God. That is the ultimate moral authority. Right. That's the philosophical foundation.
- [96:40]
Bryan
There's no foundation for morality or ethics without that framework.
- [96:45]
Link Neal
Right.
- [96:46]
Bryan
Basically.
- [96:46]
Link Neal
And then what you realize, what I've realized in practice is that all of the same instincts and all of the same things that I want. I want to be a good father. I want to be a good husband. I want to be a good friend. I want to be a good boss. I want to live a life of service. I want to be happy. You know, I do want to be happy. I want to pursue things that engage my soul and give me joy. I'm still the same person. And when you start finding that you can have all of those things outside of a very specific worldview that says you're right and everybody else is wrong. Now I feel freer than I ever did did when I was a Christian. And it's not. And I don't see it as my job to talk people out of that. I do see it as. Sometimes I get drawn into conversations where I want to try to say, hey, I don't think you can be so sure about this. I love Richard Rohr. Richard Rohr's a Christian. I love the way he talks about spirituality. But I also think that. I don't think that Richard Rohr looks at me and sees a lost soul destined to burn forever because I don't assent to the Nicene Creed.
- [98:00]
Bryan
We had spoken previously. We were at a friend's house, a mutual friend's house, for dinner, and you were sharing with me that, you know, while you're. You were kind of harboring these thoughts and coming to, you know, these realizations that, like, your wife wasn't on the same page. Right. Like, there was this, you know, dissonance there. I mean, the same for you. Like that, you know, it's like that creates a real issue. Right. If you're not cohabitating with a partner who is sharing the same worldview.
- [98:31]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah. I was a chief sounding board for his experience. And so we were connecting over that. Even though I wasn't in the same place, I wasn't far behind because. And the stakes were lower between the two of us because, you know, we probably thought we'd end up in similar places because we always have, literally for our whole lives. But we were taught, and both believed, as Rhett said, that, like, this was a very real and immediate threat to our marriages and our families staying together. So, yeah, for both of us, that.
- [99:14]
Bryan
Was nuclear and extended. Right. In your community and all of this.
- [99:18]
Link Neal
Yeah, there's a perception. I was talking to Jesse about this last night because, you know, I'm still very close to a lot of Christians who think I'm going to burn forever. And I think that the way I am talked to sometimes is. And I remember thinking this is that there is no there. The fruits of the spirit and, you know, wisdom, those things can only exist in the context of a Christian worldview and a correct Christian worldview. Right, right. Like progressive Christianity. Forget that. That's not real. That would. Would be what we have said. And it's just so interesting to. To have this perspective that there's no there. There's no peace and there's no patience and there's no faithfulness and kindness that really exists outside of that. And when you've been told that, it really sets up a traumatic experience for a lot of people. I mean, thankfully, I think that. That there was a smooth transition for us. But when I told Jesse, my wife, the first thing I told her was about evolution, because I was really focusing on, like, where science and faith meet. And we were creationists. You know, we. I didn't necessarily believe that the world was 10,000 years old, but I didn't believe the evolution happened because I thought that you had to have a literal Adam and Eve so you could have a literal fall of man, so that you could have salvation, you know, the original sin. I took that all literally, and not because there's evidence for it, but because it's theologically necessary in order to uphold what my worldview was. But when the evidence revolution became overwhelming and inescapable, by every measure, multiple lines of evidence, I go home and tell her, I'm like, I think evolution is true. And she just began to weep. Because what that meant is that I was taking this giant brick out of the foundation that we had built our lives on. On. And clearly, the next thing was the whole thing was going to fall down, including our marriage. We were headed straight for divorce. Now, that was 15 years ago, and we'll celebrate 24 years next June. Our marriage is better than it's ever been, but there was a lot to unwind and to work through because we had. We've been indoctrinated, you know, and it takes a lot to undo a lot of that.
- [101:39]
Rhett McLaughlin
That.
- [101:40]
Bryan
Was that similar to your experience?
- [101:42]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah, I mean, it was. In terms of timing, there was a bit of a lag, but it was. It was very similar. And Scary and protracted. But we, you know, Christy and I were committed to tearful conversations, and we loved each other, and we discovered that we wanted to continue to invest in loving each other. Other, even if we were told that may be one of the things that we needed to reconsider was that the belief that we couldn't make it was wrong. And that's what we discovered. So, yeah, we celebrated 25 years.
- [102:23]
Link Neal
I'm catching up.
- [102:24]
Rhett McLaughlin
No, you'll never catch up.
- [102:25]
Link Neal
That's how time we're out.
- [102:26]
Bryan
There's sort of making that decision for yourselves and in the context of your relationship. Relationships. At the same time, you know, kind of packed into that is this predisposition to, like, judge other people for what they believe or don't believe. And I would imagine maybe that was kind of hard to shake, Right? If that's baked into you and you're looking at people and saying, you know, this is a child of God and this isn't. And, you know, how are you overcoming that and starting to be able to tell a less judgmental story about other people in this more empathetic and inclusive way?
- [103:05]
Link Neal
I mean, one of the big things is, I'm not saying this is true of all Christians or all evangelical Christians, but for me, as an evangelical Christian, the way that I interpreted all this was that I had the truth, and people who didn't subscribe to my particular worldview didn't have the truth. Even if you were Catholic, I mean, you were still lost, right? If you were a mainline Protestant, you were still lost because you didn't have the theology, right? And so it impacts every conversation when you think that the key to the universe, the most important thing that you can know about, you actually have figured out, and in any interaction, you need to communicate that it is your responsibility to communicate that you cannot have that impact the way that you see people. And I find it interesting because I'm, you know, a lot of people, people talk about us now and they're like, well, now it's just you're on the opposite end of the spectrum. You're just. Now you're just intolerant of people who think, like, who you used to think. And I'm like, no, I think the thing that the place I am right now is that I'm just advocating for uncertainty about things I don't think we can be certain about. And I'm also advocating for accepting wisdom and insight from anyone who can bring it, regardless of where they come from. And in fact, if they come from someplace, that's different than I come from. I probably have more to learn and more to gain than just talking to another person who agrees with me already.
- [104:32]
Bryan
Which on one level you can argue is Jesus. Like, because it requires humility. Right. Like, you have to humble yourself to this idea that you could know all or that you could be certain of anything.
- [104:46]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah.
- [104:46]
Link Neal
Yeah.
- [104:47]
Rhett McLaughlin
For me, my relationship with judgment, you talk about it externally, pointing it at other people and being taught and then literally trained to do that was something that I was never good at. And I was also not comfortable with it. It did. It never. It didn't. I don't think it ever felt. Yeah, it never felt good to me.
- [105:15]
Bryan
You don't comport yourself as if that is your natural tendency.
- [105:20]
Rhett McLaughlin
I don't like to debate. I don't like to argue. I don't. And I'm not gifted in communicating in that way, in the persuasive put together A to B to C. And I think that is a strength and a gift that Rhett has. But for me, I think the combination of those two things, things not being able to do it well and then it not sitting well for me when I, When I left that behind, it was a relief. It's like, oh, good, thank God I don't have to judge. I don't have to judge people and put people in boxes and are you in? Are you out? But the thing that I discovered, and I'm still unpacking is so much of that judgment was internalized and that's directed towards you has been a big part of my journey is, you know, from. From as young as I can remember, being taught and believing that I'm flawed, that I am, you know, at the core, bad. I, you know, I need God to send his son to take the death penalty on my behalf because of. I'm such a wretched person, you know, and so it was very. I was very gifted at beating myself up. Okay. I didn't show enough devotion or I didn't. I didn't. I didn't step up in this way or, you know, just picking things apart. And so that became, you know, I went back and read through my journals, even through college, and it was just picking everything about myself apart in order to present. Present it to God and ask for forgiveness. And it just. I didn't realize how unpleasant of an experience it was until exhausting I got out of it and exhausting then entering into a process of dismantling and, And. And rebuilding of point of view of myself. So, yeah, that's where the, The. The judgment Thing really took its toll on me. Was it still pop up? Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's, you know, you can. You can say the inner critic of it all. And I think that's why for me, I was one. Engaging with the ideas, like you said earlier, could be triggering. It would trigger those. That type of. Type of self judge.
- [108:00]
Bryan
Yeah.
- [108:01]
Rhett McLaughlin
But with each day, with each month and with the passing years, I find myself being more at ease with myself and extending the compassion to myself that has felt easier to give to other people.
- [108:20]
Bryan
At some point, you guys decide to make somewhat of a public declaration of this. Right, Right. And then you had to reap the whirlwind of that and you had shared with me a little bit about what that experience was like. But, you know, walk us through it.
- [108:36]
Link Neal
I will say we did not do it in order to lead an entire generation of children away from Jesus, as we have been accused of doing. I wouldn't take the credit for that, even if it was true. I don't think we have that kind of influence.
- [108:47]
Rhett McLaughlin
But there are people who are commenting. I mean, there's comments that are being typed right now on people, on commentators, videos of. Of our deconstruction stories that are. I'm either praying for their salvation or their demise.
- [109:05]
Bryan
So it is still out there for, you know, an ongoing discourse in the Christian community.
- [109:12]
Rhett McLaughlin
We are seen as a threat and especially because Rhett is, you know, he'll.
- [109:19]
Link Neal
Pop up and still talk about it. I open my mouth about it enough.
- [109:22]
Bryan
Yeah, you did Rainn's podcast. You talked about it. You did Alex o'. Connor. You know, it's like, you know, this. This is in the ether. So it's still. Even though it was a while ago, it's still kind of present. Right.
- [109:32]
Link Neal
And I think, of course, it gives.
- [109:33]
Bryan
People things to write about.
- [109:35]
Rhett McLaughlin
Well, it started right before the pandemic hit, like at the top of the year. We decided on our podcast, Ear Biscuits to tell that our spiritual journey started.
- [109:47]
Link Neal
And let me just say, from a business standpoint, this was not a good idea. It's funny the number of people who comment and say that we made this. First of all, we made the decision to leave our family faith so that we would get the approval of Hollywood. But also then we decided to talk about it so that we would be like virtue signaling or whatever in order to get the approval again of Hollywood.
- [110:08]
Bryan
It's all a big grift.
- [110:09]
Link Neal
But the thing is, is that based on what I see, the money is in going hardcore conservative. And like, really just right now, for sure. Yeah. It's like, I don't know, if you want to build a really motivated audience, that's what you do. But they had nothing to do with it. Was not, was not a business move. Because when you do comedy that like we do, which is very approachable, we don't do politics. On Good Mythical Morning, you want anybody and everybody you can to watch. Why would we alienate anybody? The reason that we talked about it in 2020 was because our background and our faith is such a huge part of who we are. And we've been making this podcast for years, Ear Biscuits, which is separate from Good Mythical Morning, where we had been talking about so many per. You know, every year that went by was we would get into something even more personal, talking about our story. And it's impossible. As we demonstrated today, like, we can't tell the story of our careers and how we got to where we're. We're at without talking about our experience in ministry. And what we did for so many years is we just skipped over that whole formative part of how we got into comedy. It was just, it was weird. And then we were like, we kind of need to disclose where we come from. But there's also this element of that's not where we're at anymore. So the story becomes a story of who we were and who we are and how we went from A to B. And it was really just a. We want to get this off of our chests because it's weird to do so many appearances and so many interviews where we don't touch this thing. I didn't know this was kind of before, like the deconstruction thing was, was popular and people were. It's because there's deconstruction channels now and there's. Everybody's got their deconstruction story or whatever. And it's like whether or not that's even a good word to describe what happened. This was all kind of at the very beginning of that. And that wasn't a part of. We weren't a part of that world. We didn't know any of those people. It was very much like, we just want to be honest and tell our story. And we did not calculate at all the impact that it would have on just the perception, the public perception of who we are. And so many people would feel disappointed and so many people would feel like we were attacking them and that we had, we, we had gone astray and we were leading people astray. That was just short sighted on our part. I should have Been able to anticipate that.
- [112:35]
Bryan
Well, you had seen what had happened to Rob Bell.
- [112:38]
Link Neal
Yeah.
- [112:39]
Bryan
So you knew that, you know, on some level something like that was waiting for you.
- [112:44]
Link Neal
Yeah. But I think because we didn't see ourselves as a spiritual voice, I just thought people would be like, oh, they're not Christians anymore. It's funny, I. I've told Rob about this before, but I was given the opportunity to preach a sermon at my church back in North Carolina in the alts. And it was when his book Velvet Elvis had come out. And I did a whole book, a whole sermon about how wrong Rob Bell was.
- [113:09]
Bryan
Was.
- [113:10]
Link Neal
And I used as an illustration Timothy Treadwell. You know who Herzog made the movie about Grizzly man. And I showed clips of that. And I basically said that Rob Bell is like Timothy Treadwell, and that Timothy Treadwell created his own reality as it relates to grizzly bears. And when you create your own reality, that actually isn't consistent with what's going on. And you say, these bears are nice and the bears are not nice, the bears will eat you. You see how that ends? The bears eat you.
- [113:39]
Rhett McLaughlin
So with the bear, I mean, just using a Herzog film in church is like, so awesome.
- [113:47]
Bryan
Yeah, that is like. That is pretty cool.
- [113:49]
Rhett McLaughlin
So is God the bear?
- [113:50]
Link Neal
God is the bear.
- [113:51]
Bryan
Yeah, God's the bear.
- [113:52]
Link Neal
No, the bears are the ones that Elijah sent down from the mountaintop to kill the kids. Anyway, that's.
- [113:59]
Bryan
But you told this story to Rob.
- [114:01]
Link Neal
Yeah, I told him that I had been against him. He just laughed and he was like, this is not surprising. I've heard worse. But yeah, so because he was a preacher, I think that that was why we thought people would care. But then all of a sudden, we were literally. We were contacted, and this was a bit of an honor, actually. We were contacted by Answers in Genesis magazine. Answers in Genesis is a magazine that is, you know, the organization that built the ark in Kentucky.
- [114:34]
Bryan
Yeah.
- [114:35]
Link Neal
So they have a magazine and they were going to feature us and they wanted to use like a picture or something like that. And I was like, this is crazy that we're going to. We're going to get an answers in Genesis, but it's because we've fallen away. But the pandemic happened that. Because this was like February 2020, I think we told the story story. And then March 2020, the world changed. And so a little bit of the attention was off of us. But it, you know, I literally. I just. I try to stay out of it and try not to read it and see it. Because it's just. It's not good for anybody. And I don't like getting drawn into the mire. But like, Link was saying that that comment was from a tweet I think somebody sent to me, which was a picture of me, and said, there is a special place in heaven hell for guys like this, for deconstruction influencers or whatever we were called. And. And then the comments on that, and, you know, literally one guy saying, I pray for either their repentance or their demise. It's like the only two options for people, as far as they see us, are to become a Christian or to die. And that mentality where I'm torn is like, I just want to make people laugh and make people think and use our comedy to touch on deeper things and not necessarily engage directly about these things, because that's just not what I feel called to do. But the way that this mentality of there are. Like, I would have told you 20 years ago that the days of Christians in America burning people at the stake because of what they believe, those are over. But with the way things are headed in some circles of our country, like, I think that there's people who would line up to burn people at the stake for their theological views. And I don't think we're. We fully awoken to just how significant that is.
- [116:36]
Rhett McLaughlin
And I think they're. And I'm just like, why? And I just conclude that they're protecting something that's not God. God. They're protecting something else. That's how I feel about it.
- [116:52]
Bryan
And that something else is what?
- [116:54]
Rhett McLaughlin
I don't know, but exactly what it is. I mean, I could theorize, but I don't think it's protecting truth in God. I think it. You know, I don't want to guess.
- [117:12]
Bryan
As somebody who is not from that world. I didn't grow up in that type of environment. It's just incredibly strange to me to take these beautiful teachings of this person, Jesus, and morph them into this notion of exclusion, this idea that you would wish harm on another or that somehow, you know, it's weaponized in such a way to separate us. Like, it's just the. It's the absolute antithesis of the teachings themselves. And it's just very difficult for me to understand, you know, how that. How that occurred and how it's still happening.
- [118:01]
Link Neal
Yeah, I mean, I think it's. It really is an illustration of how you can take. Take a religious framework and religious teaching like the Bible, and you can. You can manipulate it, you can make it say the things that you want it to say to protect your own certainty. I mean, I honestly, I think that's what is being defended. I think that people with, I remember, you know, we went to a church and many people from evangelical circles will. Can relate to this, is that there are people in the church who start asking difficult questions, and those people are sidelined. You know, you ask the wrong question and you're not going to be in a position of leadership, you're not going to be able to teach because your theology may be a little bit off. And in an environment where people asking the wrong questions and not continuing to reinforce the party line are ostracized, I think that you begin to develop so much, so much of your identity becomes rooted in you being right about this particular thing and the way you see the world and everyone else being wrong, that anyone who's a threat to that, you can pretty quickly get from here to there where you're like, well, this person is influencing people and making them think wrong things about God. Isn't it better to burn them at the stake rather than to let them believe these things, things to spread these bad ideas?
- [119:27]
Bryan
Well, because any infection of doubt becomes terrifying. It's not only a threat to the organization and the group identity, but it's terrifying to consider. Right. Like, if this thing that we're so convinced of, that we have such certainty around, if we start to question it, then, like, the whole thing unravels and then we're. Then what are we? Who are we? Right. It's a terrifying proposition.
- [119:52]
Link Neal
Well, I think a lot of young men, especially, who are kind of getting, like, the numbers of young men who are kind of coming back to faith or coming to Christian faith for the first time. I don't think that this is where they're signing up for. I don't think that they've connected the dots yet to know that the people who are a lot of people involved in this movement and the things that they actually want, like, there's a really significant movement right now that's being entertained and accommodated by this administration to take away a woman's right to vote. And you think that sounds crazy. You think the Handmaid's Tale thing is just like, well, of course that's not going to happen. And I don't think some of these, like, comedians that got on the Trump train, I don't think that they understood that that was what they were opening the door to, was the repeal of gay marriage, the. The repeal of a woman's right to vote. They may think that sounds crazy, but you just start asking what some of these people want, want, and you'll find pretty quickly they're saying it even more boldly than they've ever said it before.
- [120:53]
Bryan
I think with respect to young men, it doesn't take a genius to understand the, the motivations that might lead, you know, someone towards a faith based organization right now, be it evangelical or otherwise. Because we are in this epidemic of loneliness and we are in a situation in which the economic divide is greater than it ever has been. And, and at the same time, we don't have those third spaces, the community centers and the gathering places. And we don't have the rituals into manhood that we once had. And so there are a lot of millions of young men who are lacking a sense of purpose, who are looking around, not seeing a lot of opportunity and are moreless. And that's a scary, dangerous place. And it's attractive like an organization that seems to have, have answers or at least an affiliation with something that infuses their life with meaning and purpose. Because, you know, the best of these organizations serve that in a really good way. You know, there are, to your point, there are certain aspects of it that are being weaponized in not a great way right now, but that's a real problem that, that needs to get solved. And when you decide, okay, evangelical Christianity, not for us, how do you find your way back to some spiritual connection? Because there's a void there. Right? And you know, for somebody who's science minded, you know, how do you, how do you start to make, you know, create a new story around meaning and, you know, things that aren't, aren't, you know, available to us to understand.
- [122:36]
Rhett McLaughlin
And I think our answers are going to be similar and different. I certainly think there's overlap and it goes back to how we connect and how we conduct our friendship. Like that part of the conversation. Maybe this is an aside, but when you were talking about that third place, I do think that the work that we've done to cultivate our community of viewers, we call them mythical beasts, is it's an inclusive community where we celebrate curiosity and laughter. And not taking yourself too seriously, we have discovered that we were creating that third place through our content on the Internet for a lot of people. And I'm very proud of that. I'm also glad that we shared our stories. I don't regret it because, yes, a lot of people are coming out of the woodwork in order to criticize or try to erase how they perceive our motives and influence but we've had many, many more individuals let us know that. But us sharing our stories resonated with them, and it gave them relief. It gave them a sense of connection, a sense of community, a sense of self acceptance and hope, and a path to move forward in a way that we're all figuring out. So back to your question of, like, yeah, how are we moving forward? I think it is in the context of communities, in the context of. Of loving relationships that I invest in. In concentric circles. And I think that's my approach to spirituality is continuing to do the work to still undo some things that have been built into me my whole life that need to be. Be stripped out and changed and some scarring that might need to be removed. So there's still some of that. But then the rebuilding of those values, I think is, to me, happens in loving connections. And it's not about belief anymore for me or conclusions.
- [125:11]
Bryan
But God is in other people. The collective community is the higher power or the connection that that creates.
- [125:22]
Rhett McLaughlin
It's hard for me to say it. You know, I think what you said sounded really good, but for me, it's like I kind of have to observe my heart at work and the things that resonate. So, yeah, I think that. I think I agree with.
- [125:40]
Bryan
I say that because there's a thing in aa, like, I'm a longtime sober person and, you know, a. Is fundamentally a spiritual program. And a lot of people who arrive on the doorstep of aa, these broken people with, you know, broken lives as a result of, you know, the places that their addiction has led them, also often come in with a very checkered or broken relationship with religion or. Or any concept of God generally, and are put off by the idea that, like, in order to get sober, there's these steps and there's this like, sort of, you know, cloud of spirituality that hangs. Hangs on top of it. And there's, you know, understandable resistance to that. And the way in, or the way to kind of disabuse people of these notions around religion that don't necessarily serve us is to simply say, like, this program requires that you have a connection with a higher power, but that higher power is up to you to decide. And it could just be this group of people right in front of you right now who knows something that you don't, which is, like, how to stay sober for today. Right? Like, it doesn't have to be anything more than that, that the collective group consciousness can be the higher power that you can invest your faith in. And in the same sense that you are lording over this large audience. And it really is a community and there's a lot of love there and there's a lot of connection. And the connection nourishes you to some degree, perhaps like that community and the sense of meaning that it gives your life on some level is its own form of higher power.
- [127:20]
Rhett McLaughlin
I can go with that.
- [127:21]
Bryan
And then maybe your relationship with spirituality doesn't need to extend any further than that.
- [127:26]
Link Neal
And that can be a really difficult thing for people who come from a background in which there was a framework and it was true and it was ever, you know, it never changed, it was immutable. You know, God's word, just like him is immutable, is what we would have said. And so when you take that out of your worldview, the real question is like, yeah, where do I find that meaning? Where do I find that purpose? A friend of mine, Brit Hartley, who was on Rain's podcast, wrote a book called no Nonsense Spirituality, where I think she speaks to a lot of this. And I think that there is one of the fundamental fears, fears of humans is the fear of freedom, that you really actually don't want to have the freedom to come up with what you believe. It's, it is easier to kind of just assimilate into a community where it's like, hey, they figured this out before I ever showed up and I, I assent to these things. It is a easier way to live, to be a part of a community. Who has answered some of those big questions for you, who tells you what happens when people die, when people will born and what do you say when you get married and all that stuff. And so it's a daunting task to think you're going to leave that behind and then what are you going to do? Start reinventing it yourself? And so I do think there are some people who are still a part of faith communities that have a lot of these rituals and a lot of these practices that are incredibly beneficial. And even from a non spiritual like materialist standpoint, these communities and these systems were created to be of benefit to people, people, because we needed them. And they are. And those spiritual practices are whether or not they have some foundational truth to them or not, the frameworks are useful.
- [129:03]
Bryan
Belonging to not just a set of ideas or an idea, but to a group of people. Right. And to the extent that these communities or organizations serve that and we craft our identities in the context of these group identities and our status within these groups is one we kind of contemplate in the Context of survival. Like, we don't want to do anything that's going to get us exiled from that group. Like, that is like a fight or flight kind of impulse. That is.
- [129:34]
Link Neal
Yeah. The community is so important. And what. And what is the foundation of that community? I mean, I think this can be too simple of an answer for people about the virtues of faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. Somehow we created a religious system in evangelicalism where love is not. Not. It isn't the first thing. It's what you believe. It's your faith becomes the measure by which God judges where you're going to spend eternity. But it's not how much you love. You know, it's like, what if it was about how much you love? Like, why. Why is the measure by which God determines whether or not you get to hang in his hood for eternity? Why is that not your capacity to love? Why is it your capacity to believe something that's really hard to believe if you really think about it? So I think that communities that are actually exercising love and are serving people, I think my philosophy is migrate to those communities. And that is going to be some churches that's going to be organizations and nonprofits that are doing work in places that need it. I think if you go to those places and you connect, like Link was saying, with the people who are. Who are leading with love, I think you're going to find more spiritual water than you could ever hope to drink.
- [130:50]
Bryan
I think it's all about love. I think. I think, like, that is the. The question and the answer. I think it begins and ends with all of that. The more that I think about it and the more years that I've lived. Which brings us back to wonderhole.
- [131:08]
Link Neal
Yeah.
- [131:09]
Bryan
Yes, the wonderhole. Like the. The. The rabbit hole of wonder that is. That is love. What is it that you want people to be thinking about or excited about with respect to this new season of the show? How's that for a hard gear shift? I tried to segue it. It didn't really work, did it? I think it kind of, like, fell apart a little bit.
- [131:32]
Rhett McLaughlin
But, I mean, we were in a. We were in, like, this cliche love festival. This is great. I mean, there's a reason why it's cliche, because it's cringy.
- [131:40]
Bryan
Was it. I thought it was pretty.
- [131:41]
Link Neal
No, no, no. I thought it was excellent.
- [131:43]
Bryan
I'm trying to, like, serve up your opportunity for self promotion.
- [131:46]
Link Neal
Yes.
- [131:47]
Rhett McLaughlin
Thank you for that.
- [131:49]
Link Neal
I think it's.
- [131:50]
Rhett McLaughlin
It is a labor of love. How about that it certainly is.
- [131:53]
Link Neal
Yeah. And I think people giving ultimately what we hope to accomplish with what we do is I think sometimes I think our entire career is a little bit of a click bait and switch, even when it comes to good mythical morning and definitely when it comes to one the of Wonderhole is that the aesthetics of what we do because of where we do it and the platform that we do it on. I think there are a lot of conclusions that I would come to about what the content actually would be based on those thumbnails and those titles. And I think Wonderhole is a direct experiment and leaning completely into the ridiculous and superficial engagement of titles and thumbnails on YouTube, but seeing if you can tell a real story that's actually entertaining and funny. We're not like trying to break incredible philosophical ground with a show. We're just trying to figure out how two friends can be funny together in a way that they find engaging. And I just think it's, hey, you may not have ever watched anything that we do, but check it out. This might be your way into our world.
- [132:58]
Rhett McLaughlin
Yeah.
- [132:59]
Bryan
Super fun, you guys. It was really great to have you here. I celebrate everything that you guys are about. It's incredibly inspiring to see what you've built. And I think there's a really, even bigger future lying in wait for both of you guys. You're genius creators and you have built something really powerful and you're using it in all the right ways. You're reinvesting in yourself and continuing to double down on that investment in yourselves. And I think it's empowering for anybody else who's a creative person or creator out there to see what is possible. And I think it's just the beginning. Like, you know, this is. This is a really cool story that is, I think, still in its first act.
- [133:44]
Rhett McLaughlin
Well, thank you.
- [133:45]
Link Neal
Thanks for hold you to it.
- [133:46]
Bryan
All right, good.
- [133:48]
Link Neal
Yeah. Thanks for having us, man.
- [133:49]
Bryan
Yeah. Come back and talk to me some more.
- [133:51]
Link Neal
Yeah.
- [133:51]
Bryan
All right, thanks, you guys. Peace. That's it for today.
- [134:01]
Rich Roll
Thank you for listening.
- [134:03]
Bryan
I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation.
- [134:05]
Rich Roll
To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page@richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive. My books, Finding Ultra Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment and sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com sponsors and finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page@richroll.com Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Cameolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis and Morgan McRae, with assistance from our Creative Director, Dan Drake, content management by Shayna Savoy, copywriting by Ben Prior, and of course, our theme music was created all the way back in 2012 by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis.
- [135:28]
Bryan
Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon.
- [135:32]
Link Neal
Peace. Namaste Sam.