Rhett & Link: Uni Milkshakes

0:00You look like somebody famous. Well, not famous, but they didn't have a word for it. I was like, exactly, you don't have a word for it. It's amazing.

0:22Hey, everybody, welcome to Literally. I got two bros that I love from the podcast world, from Good Mythical Morning. these guys have been, well, Rolling Stone calls them two of the most influential content creators on Earth. Earth. On Earth. I mean, they're like, they obviously are not as good as some of the guys putting on content on Pluto. But on Earth, according to Rolling Stone, Rhett and Link are, You know, Rhett McLaughlin, Charles Lincoln, Neil. Got to give the full names. They're funny guys. Let's get at it.

1:13We're glad to be here. Glad to be here at your, under your power? Yes. Under my power. I like that under my power. Listen, you guys are the media mavens. I love this. This is, by the way, this is my quote, my favorite quote descriptor about you guys rolling stone has called them two of the most influential content creators on earth because i want to know who's like killing content on mars right well we're planning you guys have it on lock on earth it'll happen when we just have really good pr rob is ultimately what that amounts to no fucking shit yeah that and now now we're on your show so i mean it's all coming together for us I had a blast on your show Because you provided me with such good cherry pie Yes That's right Yeah, you made some good choices, you know Did we make it memorable for you?

2:05I'm not going to speak for other people that we had on the show But I do remember noting Rob made some good choices Well, I know my way around a cherry pie Yep There could be other foodstuffs That maybe wouldn't have had quite the quite the positive outcome, shall we say. Yeah. How often are you indulging? Cherry pie. Anytime somebody puts it in front of me. Right. Okay. So you don't actively choose it. You just don't refuse it. Ooh, I like that. It's rhyming. I'm going to use that. Yeah. I choose it. I don't refuse it. That's kind of, here's my thing. My thing is like, if it, I'm not going to go out and seek anything out that I shouldn't have in life.

2:55But if it makes it into the inner sphere, not of my own volition. Yeah. I look at it as the universe. Yeah. Has delivered it to me. And I can, I can maybe partake. Okay. Great. Okay. I like that philosophy. That's because I didn't, I didn't say, Hey, you know, let's order. I don't like, I don't order dessert, for example but if it shows up but if it shows up and my wife knows how to order dessert for me yeah oh so that even counts she's gonna order dessert for you all you can do to be a good husband is eat it it's your duty your marital duty it's my marital duty um yeah tell me you guys how long have you guys been on your show's been on youtube now is it's been you're like how it's insane how long you guys are such early adapters.

3:50Are you going to walk me through your experience on media, on YouTube versus what it would have been like? Well, you couldn't have done it in legacy media. They'd have been like, who the fuck are you guys? You're not doing that. Right. Yeah, we've tried. Yeah, well, for us, the YouTube thing happened. It happened to us because back in - It came to us just like the cherry pies come to you. We didn't choose it, but we didn't refuse it. Oh, three, oh, four, oh, five. We are trying to do the comedy thing. We have our own website, redlink.com. Website. And we think, well, YouTube comes along in oh, five.

4:28Like we didn't really know about it in oh, five. It was so small. Right. But in oh, six, people are beginning to ask us, why don't you have a YouTube channel? And we're like, because we have a website. Yeah. YouTube is for people who don't have their own server. But what was happening, there were literally hundreds, tens, and then sometimes hundreds of people who would come to the website and watch our videos. But you could take those videos and download them. Because it was just a quick time player. Matter of fact, I'm pretty sure when people watched our videos on our website, somehow we ended up having to pay for it.

5:06Oh, yeah. It was based on how much traffic we had. It's an amazing business model. deal with it we had the more popular we got the more money we had to pay yeah yeah it was the model was all screwed up videos but they could also just steal the video and watch it and then people started uploading our videos to youtube where they actually got seen by thousands of people so then we said okay we should do that on purpose so we started in 06 almost 20 years ago now um and that was that was before good mythical morning so that was sketches and music videos and local commercials. We had a whole local commercial stint where we were doing these funny local commercials.

5:45That's actually what moved us out to L.A. But, you know, we kept thinking that this was going to be a stepping stone to some sort of traditional thing. Yeah. Hey, really good news, guys. There's a story about two dads that are divorced and they have to share a beachfront condo and NBC is making it. It's direct to series order. Yes, exactly. We were just waiting for that. Yeah, we were, you know, we did, once we came out here, we had all the general meetings. We were writing pilots. Not too late. We were meeting with producers. We were doing all that. And a few things would work out. Like we had like, we've had one, we've had three TV shows.

6:27We've had one season each. That's our traditional experience. But we've had the complete season. Well, no, that's not true. The what? The complete what? The complete seasons. Well, one of them we didn't even complete. It was four episodes. Yeah, that's true. That was a half season. But then after that, we learned to complete a season. Are these actual TV shows you did? Yeah. Oh, wait, wait, wait. IFC, Commercial Kings was the local commercial show on IFC. We're not going to talk about the first. Let's not talk about the first. No, but we thought that we had made it in 07. We hosted a show on the CW.

6:58Hmm. That was a internet clip show. We spoke in unison throughout the entire thing. Yeah, and we got paid in unison. Yeah, right. We sure did. And it was awful. It was so awful. But we've embraced it. We now show the clips to our fans so they can laugh along with us in our fashion choices. The good news was that we knew it was awful when it was happening. We were a bit embarrassed. It's really bad when you don't know how awful it is. Oh, 100%, right? I mean, I don't know. You want to share a story of something to make us feel better? Oh, yeah. It's your show. No, I just want you to make me feel better on it.

7:39Here's the thing. I just had this conversation with a young, handsome actor who, speaking of the CW, starred in one of their flagship legendary series. Okay. And now it's two years later, and he's out there banging around, doing fine. But he's like, man, do I need to be more picky? or like I got a family and, you know, my business manager told me I have a year to like of money left in the bank and then I got to start selling shit. And like, how do I? And I was like, listen, that is, that's the part of the business that nobody tells you about. Like when you get like a little bit of success, those are the ways you need to think.

8:21And it's like all about living to fight another day. And, you know, all of a sudden, like we're, I feel like what we do, whether we podcast, write, direct, sing, whatever, we're craftsmen and women. We have a craft we do. We know how to, you give us the blueprint and we go and build it, right? You give us the script, we'll go build that character. Like you have an idea, we'll go build that podcast and fill it out. Like we're, we're tradesmen and women. And can you imagine tradesmen in any, in any other trade where they're like, nope, I don't design. No, sorry. I can't build you an A-frame. Don't, I don't like them.

9:04I don't do A-frames. Right. Or, oh, you, oh, you want a Mediterranean? It's like a Spanish Mediterranean house? No, no, it's, I don't really feel it. I don't know. So, so, you know, you, you got to make it, you got to do it. Look, I, and you want to make it, you got to make it. You want to make it, you got to make it. And listen, there's a whole school that came up in the 70s where it was almost beneath actors to actually work. Like Warren Beatty made a movie every three and a half years. And there's still people out there like that. But then on the other side of the fence, you have people like Michael Caine, who took an enormous amount of shit for doing movies that were shit.

9:49But he also did movies that were breathtaking. And I've talked to him about it. And he's like, I'm an actor. I like to act. That's what I do. And by the way, Jaws 2 paid for that house that my mother's living in. You're right. I feel that. You know, so for whatever that's worth, that's my sermon from the mountaintop. Yeah, I feel, you know, the way we relate to that, especially at that point where we were trying to figure out how to gain traction in the world of entertainment when what we really had was each other and a small audience that we were building on YouTube. You know, we would, yes, we would have enough success to then do something like the IFC show, Commercial Kings, or the Food Network show many years later.

10:40But it would always kind of bring us back to where we had more control and more opportunity. And really, it's just saying we have more control was just like a side benefit. Really, it was we have to go where we have the opportunity and where we can reach our audience. And there's always been these cycles of coming back to that realization that like, hey, we got it good over here. The grass isn't always greener just because you want something and it feels more. I think the temptation for us is to skip over to something more traditional because it's legitimizing. And we've been in this world for, you know, two decades now that's been this parallel development in entertainment that's, pretty much completely separate.

11:28I mean, you've got some crossover people, but for us, it's just continuing to realize that, okay, if we can find a way to not ask permission, but ask forgiveness, let's go down that path because at least that's a path forward. And there's a lot of scrambling for us to figure out what was going to work next or what was going to piece the living together. Yeah, and that was the equation for us because it was not getting a gig here and there, which may be more of a traditional thing, but it was how do we build? We had to build a business so we could have a predictable income. And so Good Mythical Morning was a result of seeing that if you could produce a lot of content for very little money, you could accomplish a lot.

12:21because you could, first, you could maintain a very consistent connection with an audience. But that daily show effect, making something part of someone's daily routine, that was big. But then it just so happened that the way that YouTube was beginning to change the model and it wasn't about you have to go get a brand deal here and there, but you literally could make money based on people watching and for how long they're watching. So now we were incentivized to say, hey, you know, let's make this thing 15 minutes. In a time when everybody was making two, three, four-minute videos, I remember there was this, don't go over three minutes.

12:59I remember that. You know, don't go over three minutes on YouTube, you'll lose everybody. And we were like, well, we're going to talk for 10 to 15. And we're not going to edit it if we can help it. Yeah, because we're trying to get this thing out every day. And we sort of lucked into that being rewarded at a really integral time. about 10 years ago is when it started to really be rewarded and the idea that you could have this catalog of videos we already had a few seasons of gmm so you get people in these watch sessions where they're watching four or five six of your videos spending an hour on youtube just on your channel and that's when the business began to really grow

13:52I have friends in this world, and they said they always felt like versus the legacy media. They felt like the Hollywood industry and the legacy media. Oh, bless their cotton socks. Aren't they cute? And now, and now the worm has turned. Right. And all of a sudden, all the big boys are coming on bent knee going, well, can you tell us how you and what have you? And I mean, it's completely shifted now. I mean, I know, you know, Netflix doesn't give one fuck about, you know, Amazon or Hulu or Peacock. The only thing they care about, worry about is YouTube. That's it. Yeah, we've learned that it's so much about connection.

14:45And I think that for us, connecting with that audience, making content that felt like they were the third member of a friendship. Yes. That was their natural inclination. But I think that the reason that Hollywood has said, okay, what the hell is going on here? How do we do this? Because entertainment has always been about connection with an audience, right? And so all of a sudden you've got this new technology where the barriers are down and you're releasing content in the midst of this social media environment. So the level of connection is just so much greater than anything that's ever happened.

15:21because you feel, you know, when we meet people, they begin to talk to us like somebody that you went to high school with. Like, that's how fans interact with us. What did the person say to you yesterday? I mean, the other day at the airport or whatever? Hold on, are you famous? Oh, well, I had a few things. One was, you look like somebody famous. Well, not famous, but they couldn't. They didn't have a word for it. I was like, exactly, you don't have a word for it. It's amazing. It said it to his face. You look like somebody famous. No, no. Well, you look like somebody who's - Well, when you think famous - Almost famous.

15:56You think Rob Lowe, right? You think somebody you've seen in movies and TV. Somebody that you feel like, I don't know how I can connect, but if you see somebody that you've watched on YouTube, you feel like, this is like the guy I went to high school with, you know? Yeah, it's the guy you meet at the, you know, you watch TV at the bar or whatever. You know from the Starbucks. And that, it's funny, that connection used to be like the sort of anthropological discussion of that. I remember having with Michael J. Fox in the eighties when I was doing movies and he was on family ties and we would roll up in his red Ferrari and people would, would recognize us both and watching the different, how we were both recognized in different ways because he was in people's homes and they felt like they knew him.

16:51And because I, at that point, was exclusively doing movies, the way they reacted to me was completely different. And the same now true for what you guys do. And I even see it with podcasts. It's a much more intimate, emotionally connected. Somebody once said that literally even the fact that in a movie you're looking up to someone, physically looking up to them. The angle of your eye makes it an element of untouchability, unrelatability. It makes you kind of like some sort of a weird deity as opposed to somebody that you have like an emotional heart-to-heart connection with. Yeah. And also the size of their head.

17:38It's a big head up there. That's right. Look how big that guy's head is. You can get your head to be like eight feet across in somebody's field of vision. It's like that does something emotionally that they can't process normally. I could jump in a pore. That scares me. I'm not going to speak to him if I ever see him in public. I fantasized about jumping into his pore. I could swim in her eyeball. Right. Exactly. Yeah, it's a real thing. Um, how, how have you, have you, have you gotten to the point where you worry about having done so many hours of content where you go, we've, have we done this bit?

18:21We did this way. We've done this. Wait, have we ever? Yes, definitely. I mean, cause we're approaching 3000 episodes. So good. Mythical morning. It's insane. And, you know, a lot of it is food because food brings in so many people into our world. And then so like five videos a week, two, three times a week, we're doing something food related for years. And then we are then trying to not do food related content the other time in order to create a variety show. You know, this is not just a food show. It's a variety show. So, but you find yourself, we find formats that we can go back to on a monthly basis.

19:09Like once we discovered that our culinary team could make dishes from anywhere on earth, they could emulate them and then they would feed them to us and we would guess where they were from by throwing a dart at a map. And something just as simple as that, you throw these accoutrements on it, like, Okay, we've got our producer playing a cartographer character who measures the distance between the dart and the correct country. But these, you know, these episodes develop a life of their own. And it's like mining for gold because now, oh, we can go back to this for years. Right. We had a series called Will It where we would take an item like pizza and we'd say, okay, will it pork brains?

20:01Will it pizza? Kind of a thing. We're like, okay, we can do this for years if we just do it once a month. But then there's things that you forget you've done and you got to search. We have a spreadsheet. We got a big old spreadsheet. In the writers meeting, there's a monthly pitch meeting. And, you know, Stevie is our chief creative officer, has been with us since sort of the L.A. year. So we brought her on in 2012 and she helped build out the studio and the team. Was she the first hire? Like, that's the other thing I was curious about is when does it go from, like, literally mom and pop to building a team?

20:41We always had just one person helping us edit. that that's the the extent of our team up until stevie and then stevie came on and actually started producing and planning and then built out a team with us so she has this she has the best point of reference for what we've done and a lot of times somebody will pitch something it's like oh well we've done we've actually done something about that particular subject maybe five times but here are the five videos that we've done and here are the different angles so we've got to find a new one. But something we started doing recently that people who've been watching for the entirety of the show, which there's a lot of people who started back in the day, and they were maybe in high school, and now they're starting families.

21:27But we would do something like, okay, we're going to rank all the chicken nuggets from fast food places. Yes. But we're going to blindfold ourselves and see if we can identify where they're from. Super simple concept, very relatable. when we started doing it very few if any people were doing this on youtube but it just worked so well years ago right and so but then that was eight years ago and so we've started this thing these reduxes where we go back and we do it again because we don't remember what we said we liked we don't remember what we guessed so we do the exact same format and then they intercut that eight year ago show that's great that's awesome and see like are they going to say the same thing about a Wendy's chicken nugget that they said, have their taste changed?

22:14Has the Wendy's chicken nugget changed? So we're now beginning to remix those old episodes. And we are getting better depending on what it is. Like we just, that's true. We, we redid our fast food taco taste test. And I mean, it was like eight or 10 years later and from having a failing score of like, Yeah, I almost got all of them right. When we did it again, you went from getting three out of six or seven. Well, we've had a lot of fast food almost exclusively on the show. Seven out of seven. Yeah. Have you ever gone to a, I don't know, a restaurant chain and you're like, yeah, I'll have a Big Mac.

22:54And they're like, no, you fucking won't. I saw what you guys said. I saw what you said. You're not getting a Pepsi. Sorry. Order seven up. I saw you, you know. I went to, I have like the super bougie LA version of that. Yeah, give it. I did not go to, because I don't get that at like Mickey D's or any of the fast food places. But we were, Chrissy and I were invited. I think you and Jesse were invited too, but you were out of town. So we went without you. We were invited to this sushi event, like this private event, very small, invitation only, where a guy's putting on this as an experience. And then he's bringing in the sushi chef, and they got like 20 courses that you're taking.

23:45By the way, just for me, anytime somebody describes what I'm about to eat as an experience, I'm out. You don't like that? I'm Rhett you're very much in And I'm on the fence So we've got all three of these Dude I don't need these You know what I need I need good food I need good food And I need it Quicker than not And And you don't want a story I You don't want a spiel I have too many stories I don't need more For my food I just want to eat I totally get it Listen Here's where I'm on the same page But if they give you sake Every single time You start to like it If the waiter is the one responsible for, like, I went to this place one time that was, you know, fancy 12 course thing.

24:27Jesse and I went and the waiter comes out and he's, you know, he's having to say the thing that the chef has told him to say. And there are all these things that are like personally inspired. And that got annoying because I was like, you don't care about, you just, you know, if he was coming out here and like telling me this story and serving it to me. But like, I don't, yeah, I just want to eat this little thing and get to the next thing. And I think part of it is, is look, we were, I don't mean to sound like a dick, but like we're professional storytellers. We know how to tell a story. Storytelling built my fucking house.

24:59So if you're going to come out with some story with your apron on, don't bring me any of that weak cheese. No pun intended. Like throw, throw down, throw down or just feed me. So if you were, went to one of these, the chef would be shaking in his boots having heard this. Right. My version of that is when I walked in, he, you know, he's been preparing his stories. Yes. For me, Rob. Oh, boy. But it turns out he was familiar with the show because once he introduced himself, like, 10 minutes in, he was like, yeah, when I saw you, Al-Kin, I was like, why the fuck is Link from Good Mythical Morning coming in here?

25:37He doesn't even like sushi. Oh, he knew that. And he was right. He knew. He knew you didn't like it. So I put him on his heels, but I will say he won me over. What did he win you over with? Do you remember? How do you get won over from not liking sushi? That's a big flag you've planted when you're like, I don't like sushi. Well, once you plant that flag on the internet, it's hard to live it down, even if your palate may be maturing. You know what I'm saying? Oh, okay. I don't really like the green paper, that seaweed paper. I don't like that furikake. I don't care what you call it. I don't like.

26:13I don't think that's what you call it. That's definitely not what you call it. Firokake? Did you call it just now? You called it a spice. Firokake. I think it's called nori, right? Nori. What's furikake? That's like a topping for your poke. But it's got the green stuff in it. No, but you're talking about seaweed, dried seaweed that you wrap around. Are you talking about that? Yes. Dude, I eat that by itself. Oh, yeah. I love it. The little squares. Yeah. My kids eat that by themselves. They're crazy. Oh, so good. No, man. So I don't like that. Okay. I'm a sword paper guy. But then there's none of that when you're going like with this.

26:51As long as you don't hit me with the uni, I'm actually okay. Oh, you and I. I'm sorry. We part ways now for permanently. We are permanently parting ways. I'm afraid. You don't like a story and you love uni. I love Japanese. I love Santa Barbara uni. Comes from my hometown, Santa Barbara, best in the world. And Japanese uni. and I can tell you the difference in a taste test. And I don't need it. I can eat it just like with a spoon. What? Yep. See, this guy here will eat anything. And I'm always the complainer, and he's always the, yes, I'm going to eat this. But isn't this one of your few? Well, I haven't.

27:29You don't like liver and you don't like uni. I haven't been able to make myself like liver. But my uni experience, the first time I ever had it, was that, I mean, I didn't have sushi until I was probably 30. Because the first place that came to North Carolina was like a sushi buffet. And so I really didn't have sushi until I came to LA. But we went to this nice place, omakase experience, and there's an uni course. And it was big, and I was, I'm not scared to eat anything. By the way, did it have a quail egg on top of it? I don't recall. Because that's the other thing. They'll throw the raw quail egg on top for good measure sometimes.

28:10I don't remember if that was the case. I just remember it was on the border of, I think I can put this whole thing in my mouth, but I'm not sure, you know, that size of sushi. Yes. Yes. And I did it. And then that was when I realized, oh God, I am not going to be able to get this down. Uh-oh. But it wasn't like a round table. Jesse and I were just at this little table by ourselves. and I was like, I'm going to do something I've literally never done at any meal, maybe since I was a kid, definitely never at a restaurant. I'm going to act like I'm wiping my mouth and I'm going to put it in the napkin.