Welcome to "Ear Biscuits" I'm Link. And I'm Rhett. This week at the differently
shaped tables in our own homes, we're going to be exploring
the answers that you gave to our question that we
put out on the social media which was, "What strange, unusual, "or just completely normal
things are you doing "to past the time during quarantine?" Yeah, I've been looking
forward to this conversation because I mean we've been conversing about how we're dealing with this, and of course we'll continue to do that, but I've just been curious
how everyone listening has been coping with this situation as the weeks lengthen and as the reality sets in. They're definitely linked here. Yeah, they are. I think they're literally
getting longer each week. Yeah, yeah, so how am I holding up? How you holding up? Yeah, it's. Your hair's growing. I mean mine has been growing for a while, but you're is starting to--
Poof out on the sides. Yeah. It's changing. Mine has sort of reached a certain stasis even though it's slowly
evolving, but yours is like. Well, I'm not gonna go out
and get a hair cut, so. Well what about those days-- I'm not really motivated, but here's the thing. The side part, well, I'm
not doing a side part. The side regions of my
hair are the issues, You should.
and so instead of saying I'm gonna cut this, and I
might really screw it up, I'm just saying instead of it coming down or just slicking it back, which I tried that for a little bit. Now it's just like I'ma
puff it a little bit. Why I was like tucking it behind my ears. Oh, you tried slicking it back? You know, and trying to keep it at bay with my glasses, and now I'm just like. Well ever since we recreated
that big puffy hair photo, and you did your like
college Mohawk photo, I'm like I'm just gonna go puffier. Shouldn't try to change it. Exactly. I think that's my mentality
in general with this thing is taking what comes to me, and saying this is now a part of my lifestyle. I have a new lifestyle, and I'm trying to adapt
to it, and like I said, some days are better than others for me, and I do think some of
what the Mythical Beast commented that they were doing and how they were adapting
to this lifestyle, some of it resonates with me. Some of it is a polar opposite of me, which might resonate with you. So I'm excited to get into it. I do wanna tell you about the
dream that I had last night, Please do. And maybe get an interpretation. Ooh. Again, I don't know what
percentage of your biscuits start out with some
sort of bathroom humor, more than I would like, but I can't help what I dream about. You going there again? And I mean, it's kind of gross, but it's also ridiculous. Okay. So in my dream, I was at a large high school, and I think that it might have been, it was supposed to maybe
have been our high school, Harnett Central, but it
was completely different and much bigger, and
it was like from today, but I actually feel like it was what the school is going
to be like post virus, like when everybody comes back. Oh, okay, you're gonna
go back to high school after this is over. Maybe as a teacher, I don't know. Probably not as a student. So I had to use the restroom in my dream which happens all the time, but usually-- But you were a student? No, I was like visiting
for unknown reasons, but I was definitely not a student. It wasn't one of the I'm
back in high school dreams which I have had. Number one or number two? That's the interesting thing. So I've had many many
many dreams in my life where I had to do number one, right, and then you wake up and
you're like man I gotta pee. That's trouble. Or maybe you already have. Well, no. Well, I don't wet the bed anymore. I wet the bed until
probably seven or eight. So I was a bed-wetter for real, but I haven't wet the bed in
the double digit ages at all, and at least not on purpose,
not accidentally, and . What? Okay, please keep going. And so one of the. What usually happens is I'll
have to pee and in my dream, I'll find a place to urinate, and then I'll begin to
urinate in the dream, but then I'll still have to urinate because I'm actually not
urinating in real life, right? Urinating in a dream, boy,
that's, that is dicey. It's dancing with the devil, but I've never, again, as an adult man peed the bed in that fashion. Double digits. But in this dream last night at Harnett central in the future, I had to take a crap . Okay. Have you crapped in the double digits? No, I have crapped my pants, but that was on the way
to Dollywood one time. I've never done it in my bed. And so I. I'd go into the men's locker room, and it was vast. It was just absolutely vast, and in the middle of the locker room there were just multiple
toilets, multiple stalls, as if this bathroom had been designed for me to take a poop in,
like you know what I'm saying? It was like my, a dreamscape where many options existed for toilets. Okay. But I go into the stall, and there's a seat, like a toilet seat, but underneath the toilet
seat, there is like a screen. There's no plumbing. There is a screen, like
a square, like a net. Like a colander? Like a colander that won't let anything
look solid go through. It's like a urologist sifter
to get the stones out? Like a pool net. Okay. Like a pool net that catches your poop, and then I look over in the corner and there is a charcoal fire. What? Yes. There's a charcoal fire where you're supposed to
burn the poop after you, at least that is what I
inferred in the dream. I was like, oh, there's
no plumbing in the future. They don't have plumbing. The funny thing is is that I thought it was about toilet paper, but it wasn't about toilet paper. I didn't see any toilet paper, but that wasn't what I was thinking. I was like, man, I'm gonna
have to crap in this net, and then burn it in my old high school, Kind of cool. And I'm not prepared for that. You started getting stressed. So I walked out of the bathroom, but then I still had to take a crap. So I walked back in the bathroom, and in the moment where I
was committing to the BM, I woke up, and I was not interestingly
in need of a BM in real life. That is weird, that is, but was there a net in
your bathroom or anything? Well I'm thinking about
putting one in, yeah. And burning it. That's the way to keep your house warm. Well, that's what they did
on the plains back in the day they would when there were
no trees on the prairie they'd burn in buffalo chips.
Buffalo chips. They would also make
their homes out of it. Yeah. Really? It's kind of a small home. I guess there were a lot of buffalo. They didn't take one and dig into it. They used them like bricks. Yeah, 'cause once it dries, that's stuff nice and ready to. It also loses its stink when it dries. You have to have a drying zone. You just can't flop it out
of the net into a furnace unless it's already burning. If it's like a blazing
furnace, was there already? No, there was, Was there already a blaze going? It was a small fire. Small fire.
Okay. Yeah, 'cause they might
would've doused it. Hmm, so what does this mean? Yeah, please tell me. I mean there's definitely what. I mean there's a lot of
toilet paper talk happening, a lot of, there's a
lot of newfound anxiety around doing number twos for
that reason for most people, but I know we're both working the bidets. So I don't think you're, I
don't think you, have you, and I know you've got
a lot of toilet paper. We've already talked that.
I have no toilet paper. So I know you personally I don't have.
aren't concerned about that. I don't have BM anxiety. And I would that you would
think it would feel cool to be experiencing this in your dream. Like if you were experiencing
this in real life, you'd be like, Link,
you got to come in here. Just like you're telling
me about the dream, but in the dream you
were freaked out by it. Well, I didn't wanna
carry my poop in a net across a locker room and be seen. That's just something that
I don't wanna do anyway, and I don't think that makes me an especially anxious person. I think that makes me normal. I have no. Actually using the bathroom, it's not a problem for me, never has been, but bringing the poop out into the open and moving it across a public space, that is a problem for me. Hmm. You don't want people seeing your log. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Okay. Yes, so this is a vulnerability issue. Oh.
This is definitely. Yeah, this is definitely your. There's something inside of you Some poop?
that needs to come out. And, but you know when it comes out, people are gonna see it, but it's gonna take people seeing it, and that vulnerability for you to be able, for you to destroy it, for you to burn it, for the good of everyone
that you live with. So I actually think. Oh, you think this is my house? Yeah, I think you need to
explore being vulnerable about something with your family members, the people that you're spending day after day after, after night after night with. There's a level of intimacy that you've never had with
your immediate family, and neither have I, and I
think that's what it is. I think you're afraid they're
gonna learn things about you that are gonna stink. That's pretty good, right? I'm glad you're not a therapist . Let me just say that.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! That was, that is good. And hey, by the way, I
think it applies to me too. Well, I'm just saying that in a professional therapeutic setting, you would want someone, you can't. You just you know what you just did? You just acted like a TV therapist or a therapist from movies and television where they always tell
you what's wrong with you in the movies, but in reality, they let you discover what's wrong. So you could have led me down that path We aint got time for that.
a little bit, but you just said it, and so I actually can't accept it because I didn't, I didn't
come to that conclusion. So we got to listen to this later-- That's another problem we have. You can't accept wisdom. I do want to. I just crapped into your net, and you don't wanna burn it. That's your problem.
Exactly. You crapped into my net. That's a perfect analogy. That's my net.
You did say I can crap into my net.
I want you to interpret. You didn't say
I should've know. I would like to clock
into a therapy session. I should have known that I was
stepping into it literally. I do wanna give an update
on the TP situation though. I don't know if you saw the article that Feldman posted in the, in Slack. I saw it, but didn't read it because underneath it
it said six-minute read, and I was like think
of all the other things I could do in six minutes, and you're deflecting, but
yeah let's just move on. No, this is actually. This is one I wanna talk about because the toilet paper thing. I don't know why I hadn't thought of this, and I don't know why it
hasn't been mentioned, but one of the things that is driving the toilet
paper shortage which continues, isn't, I mean panic buying is
obviously contributing to it and the perception of panic buying which leads to more
panic buying and hoarding is a part of it. My in-laws mailed us a
big box of toilet paper because we are about out, and Christie was telling her mom that, and lo and behold, they sent us a box. I was very grateful. Well, but you know what
the problem actually, one of the major problems is the fact that we're all crapping at
home and not at work, and so the toilet paper
suppliers supply commercial, and they also supply the grocery stores, and so most big businesses are getting their toilet paper supply. Now I think Mythical, last time I checked, people go on grocery runs. Bring your own toilet
paper, that's our policy. Bring your own net is
going to be the new policy when we get back.
Yeah, right. There's gonna be a fire
in the bathroom and a net, and you're gonna have to figure it out. And it's gonna be warm in there. Smell a little odd. But basically it's the
commercial toilet paper that's sitting on the
shelves not being used. I mean I didn't think about
it in terms of toilet paper. I thought about it in
terms of water usage. I was like, hmm, everybody's at home. I bet you our electric bill
and water bill is gonna go up, but our electric bill and water bill at the studio is gonna go down. 'Cause I'm thinking about both sides of the coin for us personally, and but also, I mean I'm
assuming that we've got. There's just toilet paper
on shelves in businesses, and there's toilet paper on
shelves in the warehouses that supply the businesses because people aren't
using more toilet paper. I mean I'm eating more beans. So maybe I'm a bit more. Yeah, I'm using a lot less
just out of principle, but yeah, there's like, there's all these sheltered businesses, and they're like full
of that single-ply crap that the corporation's pay for. We don't do that single-ply crap at a Mythical Entertainment,
we don't stand for that. That's why people, businesses
are freaking boarding up there their windows and stuff because I heard that in New York City there's like a 75% increase
in business burglaries. Yeah.
What the crap? What the crap? In the midst of this, you got people. I think they're probably
looking for the single-ply, But you know what's probably gone down? Residential burglaries. I don't think that there's more. I would doubt that there's more crime. I think what we're
talking about is the fact. Actually in my neighborhood,
Christie said that like in the Nextdoor app, there
people are going around and pulling on door handles and stuff. Yeah, yeah, cars. I mean breaking in homes. Yeah, yeah that would be stupid. Because burglars gonna burglar, right? And so they gotta burglar somewhere. And so they're gonna--
Burglar. They're gonna go to businesses. You wanna answer some of these questions? Yeah, let's get into the questions, but first let's make a promotion
for Mythicalsociety.com. We're still open for business. We are not shuttering. Our our shipping pipelines are still open. So we're releasing new stuff. I mean we got this Be Your Mythical Best. This one benefits charity, a portion of the proceeds. So go and browse over there. There's some feel-good stuff. There's some look-good stuff. There's some all types
of ways to rep your boys, and order a little something that you can look forward to
getting in the mail, you know? It's like we're home so much more. The stuff that I order, it's supercharged with positivity. Now, of course, I gotta
wipe the boxes down and leave them in the garage, but like it's nice to look
forward to getting something. Lando ordered a new scooter, he's excited. And you know what he did? Oh, Shepard was gonna get a scooter. Have they been talking? He even went to, oh, he is? Yeah. He went, after he ordered a scooter, he went into Lincoln's room, and he said, "Lincoln, you want a new scooter? "I'll buy you one." Wasn't that sweet? He's like I'm logged in. He's logged in and he's loaded with, he's got so much birthday money, he don't know what to do,
from the grandparents. He bought his brother a scooter. I actually think I bought it 'cause I didn't want him to use his money. Probably.
But that was very kind. But anyway, Mythical.com, do you agree? A lot of the clothing that
we have at Mythical.com incidentally is very comfortable. I mean we don't have
anything at this point that you couldn't just
put on and lay down in. I mean obviously there's a lot of Mythical clothing. Put it on and lay it down, Mythical.com. So do that. We also got a new bumper sticker. Be nicer to people. Right.
Big fan of that. All right, let's. You know what, if you put it on your car, maybe somebody won't burglar your car 'cause they'll see that and be like, ah, I should be nicer to this guy. Move on to the next car. Let's get into some hearings
from you-ins, from you-ans. You wanna read the
first one, or first two? Yeah, these are kind of a pair. So Cam, Cassius Cam, says, again, this is what are you doing to get through the quarantine. "I gave myself a daily
chore/project/workout sheet "and follow it to a tee. "Today's events include
jump rope, push-ups, catalog comic books, and
hang some floating shelves. It helps keep a sense of schedule. Ooh.
Wow. Cam, bringing the schedule heat. Now--
I'm relating to Cam. On the other end of the spectrum, we've got Jamie Always who says, "Not doing all the things
I'd hoped I would do, "I imagined I would be drawing every day "and catching up on my podcasts. "Instead I've shaved the sides of my head, "done endless personality
tests, and lay on my couch "thinking deep thoughts
for hours at a time." Yeah, I think that you
know, what's the saying of the the well laid plans of men? A poop in the net is
worth one in the fire. You know, I can kind of
relate to both of these because I'm very much a planner. You know that I'm very system
oriented, and immediately when I knew we were
gonna be hunkering down, like even the few days leading up to it, I wasn't thinking about
what am I gonna stock up on. I was thinking about schedule,
I was thinking about routine. I was thinking about all the things I was gonna infuse into my life, and I just felt like I
had so much opportunity, and now that we're, I don't know, is this three weeks in? I'm faltering a little bit. I think this is the fourth week. We're in the fourth week now. Yeah. Because we started I think
a little bit earlier, but to me having a routine is, it's no surprise to you,
is a lifeline for me because I just I need
to channel my energies, and so I made up my mind that I'm gonna buckle
down on my meditation. I'm gonna get up every morning, and I'm gonna meditate. I'm gonna do my physical
therapy stretches, and I'm gonna work out. In my normal life, I would
be able to choose one, maybe two of those each day, but there's no way I could do all three. Because you gotta work.
I got excited about that. I got, yeah, I got excited about that, and then I was like I'm gonna, I've got this book on tape
that I'm gonna listen to, and I'm gonna really be engaged. I'm gonna take notes, and I got another book
that I'm gonna be reading, and I just started thinking
about these things, and then I was getting excited, but then some of it goes by the wayside. The stuff that's like
the first morning stuff, I've been able to do. Like I'm pretty happy that I've done 16 days
of meditation in a row. Like the most I've ever done it, The most I've ever done in
a row is like three days? So I feel like I got a lot of momentum, and the app I use it's like it tells me how long my streak is so it,
especially at this point, I'm pretty motivated to stick with it 'cause, man, I'd hate to start over and try to get to 16 again. Yeah, that's why they do that. Yeah, that type of thing
really works for me. Jumping rope, I don't
know how to jump rope. I have done some push-ups. I don't collect comic books, but floating shelves,
now that's something. I mean, and you saw the vlogs. So I've done, I've thrown
myself into cleaning. A little cleaning, yeah. Just a little bit. What about you? How do you relate to this? I mean, you know, I don't know. I am. I'm not a planner, but I am a doer. I think there's a, there is a difference. A lot of, most of the
time, they coincide, right? Because if you're like, well, if you don't set out a
plan, what are you gonna do? I just find myself doing a lot of things, but not, and I think I end up. Once I start doing things
and start realizing that there's a lot of
things that I wanna do, then I start understanding, oh, well you should plan
so you can figure out the order that you wanna
do these things in, and you wanna prioritize them. You actually wanna make them happen. So I think the thing
that's been happening to me is the first couple of
weeks, I was thinking, oh, this is actually, there's this like involuntary slowing down of everything that I think is ultimately something that I can take advantage of, you know personally, professionally. I mean there's a lot of
things that I, a lot of work that I'm trying to do personally, stuff that I talked about in therapy, but a lot of times, it ends
up being the kind of thing that I make some progress and
have a great conversation, and then I actually, I go
to therapy every two weeks, and so I just won't think
about things very many times between those two weeks, and then from a professional standpoint, I mean I know you and I are
always kind of sitting back and evaluating what our
strategy is and what we're doing and what we're trying to accomplish, specifically what we're trying to create, the long term sort of comprehensive plan for Mythical Entertainment, and again, a lot of times what
happens with those things is we get into doing something,
and then that planning, which may happen at the beginning the year or the end of the year, is like, oh, yeah, we. It turns out that we had great intention, and we actually fulfilled
some of these goals, and we executed some of this plan, but we didn't really
check back in with it. Because we just got busy doing, right? So I was excited about
this forced slowed down as a time to journal more,
read more, meditate more. From a personal standpoint,
there's a few things I'm kind of working through like establishing what my values are, and just some things like
I wanna sort of cement, and then from a professional standpoint, we've been talking
about figuring out like, hey, we've got this down time where we, from what we can do as
a business right now is, well, we can keep making content and kind of keep our folks busy, but we also have an
opportunity to figure out like when things get back to normal, what do we want our business to look like, where we want it to go in the rest of 2020 and 2021 and beyond. So I was very excited about that, but then I quickly found
that I was also like, I don't really have to
get up at the same time. I usually get up at 5:50
in order to stretch, eat, get to the gym, then get to work. Yeah. And the idea of getting
up at 5:50 right now feels ridiculous, right? The first week, I was going
to bed at about 11 o'clock which is interestingly which is about when I usually go to bed, but I was waking up at like 8:00, and I was like, oh, that's
nine hours of sleep, and I don't, and it feels good, and I was like is that my body telling me that that's how much sleep I should have been getting all along, but,
Could be. over the course of these past few weeks, maybe because my body is adjusting, but also because I feel like I can't get used to getting up late, and also now that we are kind
of entering into a schedule of creating our content and planning and doing all these things,
I've moved it to 7:00. So I kind of slowly moved
that wake up time to 7:00, and I am doing, it's actually, So we're recording this on a Tuesday, and this week was the week
that I was finally like, all right, I kind of need
to get some things in place because I wanna meditate everyday, I wanna workout it every day, I wanna read, and I wanna
journal every single day. I wanna do those four things, and so yesterday I did all
four before we did any work. This morning, I did the
meditation and the exercise before we did this, but so I don't know. I kind of feel like I'm
somewhere in the middle, like I get this idea of like I sit down, and I have these intentions, and I want, this whole idea that I wanna draw, like I have that Procreate app on the iPad which basically turns your iPad into an endless canvas, right, with every. I mean it's incredible the stuff that you could do on there, and I was actually sitting outside meditating over the weekend, and I was doing a thing
where you kind of focus on the sounds that you
could hear, and I don't know is this is kind of a synesthesia thing that I think most people have
if you really think about it, but like I've always, since I was a kid, when I hear a sound, I
have a mental picture of what that sound looks
like, not a waveform, but just it's, there sort of
it's represented in something. Like a high sound is
represented in a certain way, and a low sound and a round
sound and a bird chirping, and if you really dig into
your mind, you can kind of, oh, I'm actually seeing
something, and so I was like, I want to create a Procreate project that visualizes the sounds,
both color and shape, that I am experiencing
in this meditation moment where I hear the road and
the cars and the trucks and then a bird, my family
behind me in the house talking or whatever, and I like
sat down to do that, and about seven minutes in, I was like, I'm not gonna do this . That's a good idea, man. You can do that. Well, I started to do it
and it became more difficult than I wanted it to be in
order to kind of capture. I think I will go back to it 'cause I really like the idea 'cause I really like the idea of doing it, and then one of the cool
things about the Procreate app, not a sponsor, is that you can do a time-lapse video of
anything that you drew. It's constantly recording
all your strokes. Oh, that's cool. So theoretically, you could play it back, and then I could actually bring it into a video editing program and put the corresponding
sounds as they're painted, and it would do it would create Do it, man.
some awesome video. Just because you haven't, doesn't mean you can't now start. It's a great idea, but then it ends up getting
superseded by things like Work.
work. Yeah, I mean we're still working a lot. I'm surprised at how much we're working. I'm also surprised that even
though I've had a lot of ideas, like I told you yesterday,
I just felt so unmotivated, like more unmotivated than
I can recall ever feeling, just kind of feeling blue, just like a little, I
guess, a little depressed, and just trying to put my
finger on what that is, and I mean the thing that I relayed to the Mythical team because we had our
company-wide meeting yesterday. We try to have one of
those every two weeks so that we're just kind of
giving people, everyone an update and making sure that we all connect and we're all in the same page, but the advice I gave them
was basically the advice I was trying to take for myself,
which is from week to week, it's not like you just figure
out your approach to this. Just like everybody's saying in the news, there has to be a fluidity
and a flexibility to this. There also has to be a sensitivity to how am I doing from day to day, and is the way that I'm approaching this, and is the lifestyle that I'm adopting, is it the healthiest for me? Does it position me to care for myself and care for other people and to cultivate kindness? I mean, you know. I'm sure we'll get into it
eventually if not today, but the challenges of being
in such close proximity with your immediate family is Trying.
It's trying. It's difficult, and it's hard to. We were talking to the kids last night about what grace is and how we can extend grace to each other, but also extend grace to ourselves, and just continually assess
is this working for me, and what do I need to change? Now as an Innergram one,
I am an improver, right? So I do think that way, but I also, and I think that's a healthy approach, but I also think I've
had such a difficult time because control is so important to me, and having a sense of accomplishment every single day is very important to me, and when there's a lot of frustration, I just feel like so much of
what we're having to tackle professionally in this new environment, every time I turn around,
there's a frustration, and it, and my patience
has been wearing so thin, and then I judge myself, and I get down on myself because I'm not relaxing enough. You're just at home, you know. You're able to spend hours with yourself before anybody wakes up, and like you're doing a great job at that. That should be making a
difference the rest of your day. Even the good parts of what I'm doing, I turn into a critique of myself, and I, you know, I don't know. That's just what I'm
processing at this point, but. Well, interestingly, you're a one, which is a perfectionist, and I'm a three, which is
like a performer/achiever, and I mean all the Innergram numbers, and again, we will do
an Innergram episode. We say we would, but the
reason we haven't done it yet is because I just don't like to speak out of school about things, and I don't feel like
I've read enough about it, but anyway, the. You can't perform it well enough? Yeah, exactly, But one of the interesting
things about both ones and threes is that they're both deeply
self-critical, right, for different reasons. It's actually very, it's different, but there's a similarity to it because it has to do
with your performance. Like a one is critical
of how you're performing, but a three is very critical
of how they're performing as well, and so I definitely feel that. I feel we probably
experience it differently, but I feel this is the same thing. It's just like I'm always. You might be thinking
am I doing this right, and I'm thinking am I doing enough? Like that's, I tend to just think about man, I don't want this
time to have gone by and I don't have anything to show for it. Because my tendency as a
three is to find my self-worth in the things that I accomplish. So if I look at this time,
this downtime that we had, it's like, oh, this is an opportunity. This is an opportunity
to get stuff figured out, to get yourself figured out, to get your business figured out, to figure out what your
strategies are gonna be, and to know what you're
going to accomplish, figuring out what you're
going to accomplish, and I think that there
is good in that, right? I mean I think this is one of the reasons that we've done a lot of
the things that we've done is because of the way that
our personalities mix, but both of us are kind of
driving towards accomplishing. I'm kind of driving
towards accomplishing more, and you're driving towards
accomplishing things better. You know?
Yeah. And I think that those two things, that one-three combination is a big key to a lot of things that
have happened for us, but it also can be, you know, your greatest strength is
your greatest weakness, it can be our downfall. One thing that was really
helpful to me the other day, speaking of meditation, was, in the guided meditation that I was doing, talking about kindness
and kindness to yourself, I think incidentally this
is something that growing up evangelical was a really
difficult thing for both of us. I think that we've always heard
the term sort of self-care and self kindness as
an inherently prideful and selfish thing because everything had to be about others first, and I actually think that
if you really want others to be first, then you gotta make sure that you're kind to yourself
and you're loving yourself, not in this, you know, self, the whole the thing
that we began to learn in the 80s and 90s which was all about everybody's special and everybody, all about your self-image. I'm not talking about
that, but I'm just saying being kind to yourself, like one thing that struck
me in that meditation was treat yourself the way
that you would treat others, which what we hear a lot of
times which is the golden rule, we treat others the way that
you would treat yourself, which is an incredible thing
we should all live by it, but there's a different
way to see that sometimes which is I tend to be very
gracious towards people. Like when when I hear you talking about being hard on yourself for not feeling like
you're doing things right, I'm like, oh, come on, man,
don't be so hard on yourself. Like my natural inclination, and I think most of the
people listening will be to, hey, give yourself a break, but sometimes it's very
difficult to direct that type of grace back on yourself. So for me it was like just
know that you're okay. You're accepted. You're not going to increase the love that is available for you by the things that you do and for the way that you do them or for the way that you perform. I mean that's grace. That's what, it's one of the
things I love about the gospel is the idea of grace. You gotta be able to,
you gotta be willing to extend that grace to yourself. It's not easy to do though. Yeah, it's not. Yeah, I appreciate that, and I think let's put a pin in it, and let's move on to other questions, but I think that, or other comments, but it's a good thing
to continue to explore as I continue to take
the, we take the advice that we're giving to each other. You know?
Yeah. Here's one. Erica is lost in the
music, panoramic_soul. "I've been spending more time
than usual with my guitar." I mean we know that must be true because we're looking at where ad dollars are not coming in for YouTube as much. There's been like a drastic
decrease, but we have heard that unless you're like
making guitar videos. Yeah. People are buying ads Music lessons.
on music tutorials. She also said, "Also my old self "is trying this TikTok
thing, and let me tell you, "I feel ancient." I'm sure you're not actually ancient. That's just what TikTok does when we're adopting it at this point, and I know that we both are
now, we're exploring TikTok because we have official Mythical TikTok. So hey, let's do a promo. Follow Mythical on TikTok,
or is it subscribe? See I don't even know what the word is. Well it's funny. I saw, I don't know who
it was, somebody commented when we posted something about TikTok. They were like, oh, this is what the quest for relevance has led to. Yes! You know what, kiss my. You know what, that
person can kiss my butt. You know what, they can kiss ass . This is what we do. This is what, we make
internet content for a living. If you, don't judge us
for getting on Facebook. Am I defensive? Why did I say Facebook? Because you're old and irrelevant. I'm not on Facebook. We're on Facebook. No, we actually. It's funny thing is we've been talking. We've been talking a lot about TikTok, not just because, I feel like it's where Mike, you know. I mean that's what Locke
is watching more so than YouTube at this point. So I think any sort of teenager is there, and there's this very . We talked about this a number
of times with each other that the attitude that we've
had as we've gotten older towards emerging platforms
is every single time they come along, they are
perceived first as an annoyance because if you're in the
digital entertainment business, you see them as a like, ah, an obligation. It's like, ah, I feel like
we've got to do this because, like Link said, this is what we do, and if Mythical doesn't have
a presence in these places, then what are we doing, right? But we haven't really seen
those as opportunities as much as we've seen them as
annoyances and obligations, and one of the things
that we're trying to do during this time is to shift
our, shift the way we see it. I mean, and there's always this
point where you step into it and there's sort of this confusion, and you feel old, and
you feel out of touch, you feel ancient like Erica said 'cause you're like I just don't understand what this is about. You're telling me that the
majority of this content is these like girls and then dudes with very particular
haircuts doing these dances which are nothing like what
I'm actually doing right now because I can't really, I
don't know what they are, but then once you dig a little
bit deeper, you're like, well, yes, it is a lot of that , but beyond that there's some like really legitimately engaging, really authentically funny
stuff happening on there, and that's when I start getting excited 'cause I'm like, oh, I kind of understand what people like about this. I find myself going on
there, not just as a student, but as a user, as someone who is just enjoying it like everybody else, and now there's a shift happening towards what does it look like
from a creative standpoint. So I'm really excited about it. Yeah, which is exciting. Yeah, so. Hey, Erica, just stick with
it a little bit, you know? You find the right things
to get interested in, and you might be excited for you too. Get past the dancing, and that's all I can say is like I'm not, the dancing is not for me. If you get past that, there's a lot more. There's actually some like
serious content on there. People like doing self-help
and stuff, you know? I was reading about you know when Drake's single "Toosie
Slide" first came out, I was reading about it, and he was working on this song, and he reached out to this
this dance choreographer, Toosie, who then said, hey,
I'm working on this song. Can you can you put a
dance to it, 'cause I. That's part of the lyrics, and then the way that it, three days before the song
came out, it drops where? TikTok.
On TikTok. And it's them doing the Toosie slide, which then I proceeded to. I was like you know what? I'mma learn this, and then I did not have the
courage to post it anywhere. Oh really? Well, you should've done that. Lincoln and I were working on it. My wife was not impressed. She actually went out
of her way to point out that she was not impressed
with the Toosie slide. She found it to be an underwhelming dance. Well, the the original
version on TikTok looks great when people who really know how to do it and invented it, do it. Interestingly enough,
the audio in the video I'm pretty sure are out of sync, which and in terms of learning to dance, it's a little weird. Yeah, that's cumbersome. But then, it kind of melds as
other people start to do it and it becomes not as impressive. Yeah, you got to pop it and lock it. You got to keep it tight. I don't even, I haven't even watched it. There's a riverdance aspect to it. Let's move on. Emily Boswell, Emily B. Writer, said, "My husband and I did
a 2,000-piece puzzle, "and now that it's finished, "it feels like there's
a hole in our lives. "I think a lot of people are
doing puzzles right now." Well, you're right, Emily. We had one at the McLaughlin
household, and the puzzle, I believe this puzzle may
haunt me until the day I die, but it's more--
You didn't finish it. It's more likely to haunt Jessie because. How many pieces, and are
the boys involved in this? 1,500 pieces, so by far the biggest puzzle that we've ever attempted to do. Did you already own it,
or did you order it? She ordered it because she was like
quarantine-puzzle time, you know? Mm. Now I saw folly in this
from the beginning. P-U-Z-zle, a puzzle, yeah! Yeah. Because you might guess this about me, but one of the things that
makes me like doing things is like--
Nets. Yeah, nets, fire, and poop is one thing, but the idea. There's some unpredictability
about a process, or there's like insight or
something that can happen, like I like dynamic experiences, and puzzles are by default not dynamic, or by design not dynamic. It is literally the same
thing from start to finish. It is a process that has, you know exactly what the end is gonna be because there's a freaking
picture that you're looking at. What's the discovery? Oh, we made the picture that's on the box. It isn't like there's a surprise
when you put it together. Oh, no, there's a secret little animal that's in the version
that you put together which is, by the way, a good business idea because then maybe people like me would actually wanna do
puzzles, but I just don't like. It's like reading a book twice. It's something, unless
it's a book about a concept that I need to grasp better, I don't like reading a story again. I'm not one of those
people because I don't. So how far did you get? Well, I was not involved at all. I saw them put it on the
table, and I was like, just to let you know,
I'm not into puzzles. It's not my thing, and I don't, and I think by the end of it, you'll also realize it's not your thing. 'Cause I know my wife,
she's a lot like me. I know she ain't gonna
wanna do this puzzle, but over the course of two weeks, we could not use our dining room table because this 1,500-piece monstrosity was being slowly put together. What was it a picture of? It was a picture, and
this is so interesting. They made it, it wasn't
just a 1,500-piece puzzle. It was a 1,500-piece puzzle of a landscape with a house and a barn reflected in a pond that was
reflecting every single thing that was above the fold, right? So. So you had two, it's two puzzles. Yes.
It was inversion. A slightly.
Oh gosh. A slightly blurrier version of landscape reflected in the pond. I mean very, very crisp
for a pond reflection, but ever so slightly
blurry, but not easy to tell when you just take two little
teeny pieces and look at them. It's like is this the blurry one, or is this not the blurry one? So I knew it was gonna
be a complete mind screw just by looking at it, and then it had large patches
of grass and sky that were, there's no point of reference. It's just that's all blue. You should start a YouTube
channel, let's say a TikTok. You should start a TikTok. I'll contribute. Puzzle criticisms. Where you review puzzles
just based on the box, and all of them get a
review of zero out of 10, and you're just convincing
people not to build that puzzle. You know what? This is a TikTok idea, and I love it. Don't do, here's a review. Welcome to my puzzle review. As you can see this one
blah blah blah blah. I give it a zero out of 10 because, and then you just rip it to shreds. I'm gonna do it with this one. And then.
I'll make it. And by the way, at the end of each one, you literally shred it. You get some sort of like big shredder, and you put the puzzle in it,
the box and all the pieces, and you just destroy them.
A paper shredder. I could probably do a puzzle
with a paper shredder. Great idea. Or burn it, burn it. Put it in that and burn it. But that didn't stop my wife from repeatedly revisiting this, and actually there was a couple of times that I felt sympathy
for her, and I sat down. 'Cause it's staring you in the face. Every time you walk past your
table, you've got this thing that's just like thumbing its nose at you, that you know what? You are inadequate. You don't have what it takes to finish me. Right. That's why I don't I
don't like puzzles either, by the way, because I don't
like long-term commitments when the chances of failure
are very, very high. Well, she didn't want to
admit failure, like she went, she got so far into this thing
over the course of two weeks, and there was one time that I sat down, and I just sat down, and I started looking at the way she'd organized the pieces which is she had now organized the pieces, And so I was just like why don't you, and she said don't judge
me, like she interrupted me. She was like I've been working on this. You can't just sit down
and begin to point out why my technique is wrong like
I know you're about to do. So I didn't say anything else, and I just kind of selected a couple. I saw it was a like the
bunch of window pieces, and was like I could
put together this house, and so I got some of the window pieces, and you know over the course
of about 20 minutes or so, I'd probably put like seven
or eight pieces together. I mean that's how long this thing takes. I mean did she even work the border first? She worked the border
first, she did do that. You work the border first, yeah. And, but then, when I presented my little
house that I'd put together, she said thanks, that's the easy part. She was just like, she didn't even accept the house. I mean she did accept the
house, she put it in there. She didn't take it back apart. But then she finally gave, just to close the loop on the puzzle, she finally got to a
place where all the parts that had some sort of
recognizable points of reference were together, and she was
left with this big piece of sky and this big piece of grass
and this big part of a mountain which is still probably 30% of the puzzle, and she just had all these pieces. You didn't know which ones were from the reflection or not the reflection, and they were, you had to just keep trying
pieces over and over again, and it would look like
they were gonna fit, and then she just took the
thing, put it back in the box, and we haven't talked about
it, we haven't talked about it. Oh. We're not gonna talk about the puzzle. She raked it in a box? Yeah, I just went into the kitchen. I mean I went into the dining room, and there was no puzzle, and I was like. I ain't gonna say nothing. Well, I said what happened to the puzzle? Did you, I said, did you finish it? And she just said, no, I quit, and we haven't spoken
since about anything. About anything ever. Oh my gosh, okay. Here's one from Katashi, call
me Kat, underscore underscore. "I've been hoping sew masks "for the health professionals out there." I wanted to make sure that we acknowledged not only Kat's work, but everyone who's doing things like this. I mean that's absolutely amazing, Kat. Thank you for being your
Mythical best, yeah, and I think about all
the health professionals who are out there on the front lines, and I'll add one more
from Jay @goodmythicality, "I've gone from working part-time
to over-time at Walmart, "and when I get home, "all I do is re-watch "Toy
Story 3" with my nephew. "He's two and manages to
forget the plot every time. "I am not so lucky." Yeah, exactly. Who could have thought,
who could have thought that Walmart will be the
front lines for this thing? I mean you know there are
people who are working, stocking shelves, helping make sure that we get what we need and
are able to stay at home. Delivery people. They're passing away. I mean they're not just
getting sick, they're dying. I mean it's heart-wrenching, and it's. I mean it's not sensationalism
to say that they're, these people are the ones
that are on the front lines. Because you know we're talking about how there's a little bit of. We're doing the right
thing by staying home, but at times you feel guilty because there's people who,
you know, they have to work, and then, but their work
requires them to do something that's very much essential,
and it put them in harm's way. Well, and it's also. So for people like Kat to come in and give them masks is tremendous. Well, and staying home is
a very privileged option in this whole thing. There are a lot of people
who don't have a choice. I mean some people. I mean some people are just
still required to go to work whether or not their particular business has been deemed essential just 'cause some employers are doing that, but like you said, I think that you've got your medical professionals, and that's everybody from
the doctors and the nurses and the janitors cleaning up the hospitals and the people supplying
them with the things that they need to do their jobs and the people providing
all the essential services that keep that going, and then all the people who
provide the essential services that allow us to just sit at
home and do what we're doing. There's a reason that the
internet is working right now, and I'm able to communicate
with you, you know? There's people going in
and managing all this stuff to enable us to have
some sense of normalcy, and I just think that
they're the real heroes, and that's a lot of people, and if the only thing you
can do is do what we do which is to stay home , then that's actually, that's you doing your part because that is, that's
flattening the curve is a huge important part of this, but yeah, I heard somebody say that this is gonna be
the kind of thing where, and it's interesting because
I found myself saying thank you for your service to the UPS guy. You know what I'm saying? It's just like we come from a. The way it's always been when
we think about patriotism is we think about our
country succeeding in war against other countries, and we think the soldiers
who fought for our freedom, and we should we
shouldn't stop doing that. We shouldn't stop thinking soldiers, but this is much like a war,
and there is a frontline, and these people are
the soldiers fighting, and then there's the
people behind the scenes making it all happen, and so I think that the definition of
patriotism is changing, and it's also changing the way that we think about this
whole America first thing which has become such a
big thing politically. It's just like I understand
the idea of national pride to some extent, but I think
that one of the things that we've been able to
experience in having a business that might be based in the United States, but a community of people
who watch what we do that knows no borders. There's a very international sense to this community of people that have have gathered around what we do, and you just see their
perspective of where they're at, and you see the life that they're living, and you see that most people want the same things out of life, and you see that this
virus doesn't discriminate. This virus doesn't know about borders. It doesn't know about
the imaginary borders that we've drawn around ourselves. It doesn't know about the imaginary labels that we've given ourselves, and the effort to combat it shouldn't have borders around it. When we think about the idea of a cure, and our president says things like America's got the best
scientists in the world, and we're gonna find a cure, it's like, okay, yeah, American scientists are great, but scientists are great is
really what we should be saying, and the idea that we're gonna
not listen to the knowledge in another place if they
figured something out, and the funny thing is is I read an article where scientists were kind of responding to that mentality, and they were like saying science
has never worked that way. We've never, science
is not a national thing because we know that if you're
doing a controlled experiment in Japan and I'm doing a
controlled experiment in America, we're gonna get the same results if the same things go into it, and so the idea of this
collective global effort to combat this collective global problem, I think is something that we
didn't get to this last week when we talked about the silver lining, but that's a huge silver lining for me is just the idea that
we continue to realize that there is an
incredible interdependence between all humans, and these labels that we place
on ourselves are not helpful. Yeah, and to bring it back to
Jay working at the Walmart, I mean I will think
differently about my mail woman and my delivery guy and the
person stocking my shelves at the at the Ralf's down
the street, you know, and I think that's very good. You know, it's we tip our
waiters and waitresses, you know? I'm gonna do that differently, you know? I'm gonna look for opportunities
to look people in the eye and to thank them, at
least that is my intention. So I'm going on podcast record to be more appreciative of the people that make everything run . So again, we do, we thank you if you're listening, one of those people. You're listening and you're on a route or you're stocking a shelf or you're taking care of your grandkids so that your daughter can be a
doctor or a hospital janitor. I mean there's so many people playing so many critical roles, and now more than ever I appreciate that, how interconnected we all
are just like you're saying. You wanna.
What you think? You wanna wrap things up. You think got a wreck for us? I do have a wreck. This is a wreck that
we've talked about this. I don't know if you made this as a wreck, but you talked about
on a podcast last year how you were going back and
watching "Survivor" as a family. Yeah, our Christmas, our
post-Christmas vacation, year before last, we went to Sedona, and we watched
Yeah, right. "Survivor," millennials versus gen X. Right, so Jessie was on.
It was amazing. Jessie was on the call with her friends of which one is Link's wife, and one of their collective
friends, it said, hey, our family is really enjoying this season of "Survivor," and you know, even when you talked about "Survivor," I think I did, we watched
a little bit of a season, but I just I haven't been back into it basically since the beginning, but Jesse, but there's something when you're a family and you're looking for
things to do together, a lot of times, if that's not a puzzle , it might be on a screen, and so she was like, hey,
Rebecca and her family are watching the latest
season of "Survivor" which is like the 20th,
you know the 40th season, the 20th anniversary or whatever, and it's all the winners, we
should watch it with the kids, and I was like, you
know, that's a good idea. It's a network show which means there's gonna
be like over 20 episodes. They're each like an hour long. This feels like a good way to spend some time together as a family, and so we started that. We're like a few episodes in. I have to say that me
and Jesse and Shepard are the most into it. It's been difficult the whole
depiction a 16-year old, No, Lily and Lincoln
both love it over here. Well, Locke will kind of
get into it a little bit, and then he'll kinda
back off a little bit. So uh-oh. So we'll see. We're gonna keep doing it, but I mean I'm into it in this, You have to sort of acknowledge that like I am watching "Survivor," I'm okay with that , you know? There's a nostalgia to it, and there is, hey, man I told you before, there's something for everyone, except apparently Locke most of the time. I mean you got, if
you're into men and women and basically underwear
in the bush or the brush, Careful. or wherever they are , you got to. I think I told you, I
was really into the way that it's edited and the
way they tell a story. Even the recaps at the
beginning of an episode, if you were to binge watch, and you had just watch
the previous episode, the recaps are great because
they don't recycle footage. They reveal a little different
angle on the same things that you already experienced. It's like it's a really,
really well-made show, everything down to the drone shots and the score changes
from season to season. It's funny that the
difference in our approach because I made the decision,
we made the decision as a family to dive back
into "Survivor" too, but then I like, I said I'm gonna go away and do some research,
and I'm gonna come back with which episode we should watch and what our plan should be, and for us that was let's
not watch the current season. Let's watch, let's start with season 17 which is in Gabon, Africa. It's the first HD season,
and then from there. I mean I read a number of articles that like make recommendations
about which seasons are good and if some of the best seasons, you kind of have to watch a season before if you really want to know the characters that they're bringing back, and so we've taken the
extreme long-term approach that I have. If we're gonna be in this
for a couple of years which we're not,
We're not. then I think I have like
seven seasons we could watch, and of course, I don't
know, we're the Neil's. We might actually do that. Yeah, we would never do that. We're so different in that way. I understand that watching this season that I'm gonna know who the winners are, but I just don't think there's
a world in which we're gonna. There's like over 20
episodes just of this season. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna
go back and do it again, I don't think, based
on the reaction so far. I am still recommending it. You should try it 'cause it is something
I recommend. you can watch as a family. So you're saying
recommend the current one. I'm recommending starting with season 17, and then working up to
heroes vs. villains, and you can read articles. Make sure that you check spoiler free before you do too much research. All right. All right, I agree with that wreck. #EarBiscuits, let us know. Let's continue the conversation online until we speak at you next week. Yeah, thanks for listening as always. To watch more "Ear Biscuits" click on the playlist on the right. To watch the previous
episode of "Ear Biscuits," click on the playlist to the left. And don't forget to click on the circular icon to subscribe. If you prefer to listen to this podcast, it's available on all your
favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for being your Mythical best.
I love the fact that one of them recommended jumping in at winners at war and spoiling all the winners and the other recommended the strangest of all 40 seasons in Gabon. So funny
Rhett and Link are awesome
Worlds Apart just turned into One World for me
Rhetts hair is loooooong
What cave did Rhett crawl out of sheesh