Rhett & Link: Uni Milkshakes
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Join for free today. Lowe's, we help you save. Loyalty program subject to terms and conditions. Details at lowes.com slash terms subject to change. 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. Hey, 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, you know, they obviously are not as good as some of the guys, you know, putting on content, you know, 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. We're glad to be here. Glad to be here at your, under your, under your power. Yes. Under my power. I like that. Under my power. Listen, you guys are the media mavens. I, I, 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. Cause I want to know who's like killing content on Mars.

Right. Well, we're planning to. You guys have it on lock. On earth. It'll happen. We just have really good PR, Rob, is ultimately what that amounts to. No fucking shit.

Yeah, that, and now we're on your show. 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? I'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 positive outcome, shall we say. Yeah. How often are you indulging in a 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. But 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 and my wife knows how to order dessert for me. Yeah. Oh, so that even counts. She's going to 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. Yeah. Tell me, you guys, how long have you guys been on?

your show's been on YouTube now. It's been, you're like, it's insane how long, you guys are such early adapters. Are 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 nothing. Right, yeah, we've tried. Yeah, well, for us, the YouTube thing happened, it happened to us because we,

It came to us just like the cherry pies come to you. We didn't choose it, but we didn't refuse it. 03, 04, 05, we are trying to do the comedy thing. We have our own website, redlink.com. Website. And we think, well, YouTube comes along in 05. We didn't really know about it in 05. It was so small. Right. But in 06...

People are beginning to ask us, why don't you have a YouTube channel? And we're like, because we have a website. 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. Oh, yeah. It was based on how much traffic we had. It's an amazing business model. It's the deal with it we had. The more popular we got, the more money we had to pay to serve up the videos. But they could also just steal the video and watch it. And they did. 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. Jesus.

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. That's actually what moved us out to LA. But, um, 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 to divorce, we had all the good idea. The general meetings we were writing. It's 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.

We've had three TV shows. We'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 the complete 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 one. Let's not talk about the first one. No, but we thought that we had made it in 07. We hosted a show on the CW 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. I just want you to make me feel better on it. Here'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. OK. 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. And 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 we're craftsmen and women. That's what 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 other trade where they're like, nope, I don't design. No, sorry, I can't build you an A-frame. I don't like them. I don't do A-frames. Yeah, right. Or, oh, you want a Mediterranean? It's like a Spanish Mediterranean house. No, I don't really feel it. I don't know. So, you know. If you want 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, you got to make it. And there, listen, there's a whole, um, there's a whole school that came up in the seventies where it was almost beneath actors to actually work. Like, you know, like Warren Beatty made a movie every three and a half years. Yeah. Um, 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. But 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. But 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. I 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 what was going to piece what was going to piece the living together? Yeah, it was 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. Right. So we could have a predictable income. And so that was 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 because 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. I remember that, you know,

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. Yeah.

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I have friends in this world, and they said they always felt like, versus the legacy media, that they felt like the Hollywood industry and the legacy media, aw, plus their cotton socks. Aren't they cute? And now, and now the worm has turned. 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. And 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's 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 because 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?

About your 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 That's amazing He said it to his face Because You look like somebody famous No no Well you look like somebody who's Well when you think famous Almost famous You think Rob Lowe right? You think somebody You've seen in movies And TV Right?

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 80s when I was doing movies and he was on Family Ties. And we would roll up in his red Ferrari and people 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.

And 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, unrelated ability. 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. It'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 pour. That scares me. I'm not going to speak to him if I ever see him in public. I fantasized about jumping into his pour. I could swim in her eyeball.

Right. Exactly. Yeah, it's a real thing. How have you gotten to the point where you worry about having done so many hours of content where you go, have we done this bit? We did this. Wait, we've done this. Wait, have we? Yes, definitely. I mean, because we're approaching 3,000 episodes of 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. Yeah.

But you find yourself, we find formats that we can go back to on a monthly basis. Like 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 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. We had a series called Will It, where we would take an item like pizza, and we'd say, okay...

will it pork brains, will 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 Stevie is our chief creative officer, has been with us

since sort of the LA year. So we brought her on in 2012 and she helped build out the studio and the team.

Was she the first hire? That's the other thing I was curious about is when does it go from literally mom and pop to building a team? We always had just one person helping us edit. That's 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. So, 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, you know, they were maybe in high school and now they're, they're starting families, but yeah,

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 tastes changed? Has 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. Yeah, that's true. We redid our—

Fast food taco taste test. Ooh. And, I mean, it was like eight or ten 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. You...

a restaurant chain and you're like, yeah, I'll have a Big Mac. I'm 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 a 7-Up. I saw you, you know. I went to, I have like the

Super bougie LA version of that. Yeah, give it. Oh, yeah. I did not go to... Because I don't get that at Mickey D's or any of the fast food places. But we were... Christy 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. By 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 out. 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 understand. I need good food. I need good food, and I need it quicker than not.

And you don't want a story. You don't want a spiel. I have too many stories. I don't need more for my food. Right.

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 it. I went to this place one time that was a fancy 12-course thing. Jesse and I went. And the waiter comes out, and he's having to say the thing that the chef has told him to say. And there are all these things that are 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, we're, 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. So,

So, 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 down. Throw down. Or just feed me. So, if you 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'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,

Ten minutes in, he was like, yeah, when I saw you, I was like, why the fuck is Link from Good Mythical Morning coming in here? He doesn't even like sushi. Oh, he knew that. He was right. He knew. He was right. 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? Like, 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? 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- I don't think that's what you call it, but- That's definitely not what you call it. Furikake?

Did you call it just now? You called it a spice. Furikake. I think it's called nori, right? Nori. What's furikake? That's like a topping for your poke bowl. 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. 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. As 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. It 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, you 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 at a, 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 restaurant.

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, but I kind of thought... 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. I 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. 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. Yeah.

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. Oh, yeah, I know that move. That's a good move. So I haven't been, I haven't tried it again since then. What? So maybe I'll have to have some Santa Barbara and some Japanese uni with you. Blindfolded. And that's how we're going to do it.

Oh, you can come back on the show or we can just meet at your favorite place. We found the next thing we needed. The three of us need to do. It's all about, it's all about Ooni, by the way. Good title. All about Ooni. I think, I think that's going to be a good one. Um, because we are going to have such a hard time with it and you're just going to be very,

So analytical. So I was on a, um, and enjoying, I was on a plane with Gordon Ramsey and, and I love Gordon. He's the best. And I was like, tell me, you're telling me what, uh, you know, that I don't, that would horrify me and prevent me from ordering something. I'm likely to be ordering currently at a restaurant. This is the last thing I would ask him. Hey, ruin something for him. Ruin something I love. Well, he did.

Guess what it was? Oysters. Oh, yeah. Okay. He was like, and he said, you have no idea, particularly when it's at a place that's doing them at scale. He goes, all it takes is one kid. They've gotten busy. They throw some kid over there shucking them who's never done it before. And he gave me one piece of advice, which I love, is if it's not a tap, if the oyster is...

Unattached to the shell it's in, it's a no-fly zone. Because apparently they reuse... What are they doing? They will reuse the shells or they won't be... You don't have any idea how long the oyster has been there if it is unattached to the shell.

So I'm like, okay, I mean, I'm not going to like, you know, Best Buy for oysters. So like, I feel kind of protected, but I've not been able to order them since. I get that. I thought you were going to say Holland, anything with Hollandaise sauce. Ooh, is that, is that, that's bad? Well, I think it's Hollandaise sauce on a Monday at a restaurant. Yellow gravy? Because they're using the Hollandaise sauce that,

They made on the weekend or I don't know, somebody, a chef explained it to me one time. And so we need to do that. This is the other thing we need to do. We need to do a list of nevers. Yeah. And it makes perfect sense. It's like Sunday brunch. You're whipping up that hollandaise. It's as they say, it literally is the chef's kiss. Now you're rolling around at closing time. What do you know? We still have some left.

And now you're rolling around a Monday. We already know. We still have some left. You still have some left. And you know what's in it? Eggs. Yeah, it's eggs from yesterday. And mayonnaise. And you're like, yeah.

I know, but when you start talking about eggs, one thing you're not going to ruin for me is the deathly cookie dough. Don't give me any of this safe to consume raw cookie dough. No, no, no. I want. You want the botulism, whatever you can get. Give it to me straight. Okay, well, let me ask you this. If it's in ice cream, has that killed it? Whatever you're worried about in the raw cookie dough. It slowed it down a little bit, maybe.

Cause we don't know. We don't know what's going on. The cold killed it. Oh, you guys will love this. So check this out. Um,

I don't know if you guys are into sports or anything, but Jack Nicklaus, the pope of golf, I played in his golf tournament this week, and it's in Ohio. It's in Columbus, and it's called the Memorial. It's a huge, huge, huge thing. And this is my single favorite thing I've ever seen having to do with golf or like a dude creating his own world. In the locker room, in the men's locker room, is a milkshake bar with...

tuxedoed attendants. What? And like six of them. So, you know, you order a milkshake and the guys are like, you're waiting there forever. No, no, no, no. There's six dudes and you can have any milkshake you want. The reason I've thought of this is because I had a cookie dough milkshake, but that would be. Yeah. Your wife ordered it for you. She came in the locker room. Yeah. She's my caddy. And then she orders my milkshakes. Yeah.

Hey, that's a good choice. I'm going to go with peanut butter. Do they have peanut butter? They have the Buckeye. So the Buckeye, it's Ohio. Oh, yes. The Buckeye is. It's a big thing of peanut butter. It's a ball of peanut butter with a thinner layer of chocolate. Bingo. The Buckeye. And they are so good. And I was there when they revealed. The ratios are so good. They revealed their newest. And, you know, this is the golf. So it's very staid. You know, golf does not. Golf loves traditions. It does not like change. And that comes to the milkshakes as well.

And so they added the first flavor in like 20 years. And it was, it's real simple, but genius. Strawberry and Oreo cookie. Does Jack personally approve the flavor additions? One would think he would have to. He's got to. He's got to. I don't think anything goes on at the Memorial without Jack's benediction. Yeah.

Now, how did you play? I'm a golfer, so I'm curious. Okay, first of all, it's going to sound like an excuse, but I need to say, without a doubt, and I played with Xander Shoffley. Okay. And he was like, this is...

That's okay. He's like, he's a very good professional golfer. He's like, this is an, and Scotty Shuffler was there as well. And they're like, this, this course is brutal, brutal, brutal. They're the best in the world saying it's the rough was like six inches. It's the conditions that they're about to play. Right. And yeah. And playing there to prepare them for the open. So it's brutal. Um, I, with that said, I was happy. I probably shot 103. Yeah.

Oh, that's... I mean, that's incredible on a course like that. I played Pinehurst one time. And it wasn't in tournament conditions, but it was like number two or whatever. And...

I couldn't get the ball to stop on the green ever unless I just let it land about 10 yards short of the green and roll onto the green. So I could imagine playing tournament conditions. It's brutal. The best thing is the milkshakes. Talking to the real golfers and having the milkshakes. We should do a milkshake test next time. Next time on. Wait, I have more notes for you. Mooney and milkshakes.

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That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash Rob to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash Rob. Oh, I know what I want to ask you about. I know, I know, I know, I know. So your very first thing you guys did when you met.

Was you wrote a song about looking for Mrs. Locklear? Yeah. Well, Mrs. Locklear was our first grade teacher. I know. Did she look like when I see Locklear and I see 1984? Oh, yeah. Oh, she was by far the most attractive teacher at Buies Creek Elementary School. Even two first grade boys could pick up on that. So you guys are like, you were like, whoa, swing for. Yes. And we never forgot it. Tentpole. We never forgot it.

We never forget. Exactly. Yeah, because that's, I mean, we have a fond place in our heart for her because she is the one who introduced us by holding us in from recess on the first day of first grade because we were writing nasty words on it. That's our origin story. And so we did write a song about that. But then the bigger thing that we ended up doing is we

created an entire documentary back, I mean, this is over 20 years. 2003. Of us trying to find her, and we set these ground rules of we can't use any technology. You know, no phones. No internet. Only word of mouth to try to track her down because we, you know, by this time we were, you know,

We were out in the world. We were married with kids. We were trying all types of stuff. But, like, wanting to be filmmakers and, like, documentarians was, like, very— You're stalking. You're stalking. Well, guys, guys, call for what it is. We're making art. You're stalking. You're married men. It's craft. Stalking. It's like you were saying earlier. Our hot teacher. We are shaping craft to stalk our hot first grade kids. I'm so there. Yeah.

Yes, this is great. And it was really fun because we really did it that way. Word of mouth. Where'd you start? Well, down in like southeast part of North Carolina, there is a whole bunch of people with the last name Locklear. And they're all from a tribe of American Indians called the Lumbee tribe.

So, when we went down there, we started meeting people who were, that's their heritage. And we knew that that was her heritage as well. Okay. So, we were like, somebody down there is going to know her. And the crazy thing that ended up happening is we didn't know anything about the Lumbee tribe. We had heard of them and we knew that they were kind of concentrated in that area.

Um, but they didn't have a reservation or anything. And it was because they've never been federally recognized. And so they've been on, they have been on this many years long quest for federal recognition. We end up. Because historically they were never, it was kind of a, I don't know if diaspora is the right word, but there was like, um,

They were, as a tribe, they were never moved to reservations. Like Trail of Tears, you know, all of that. So they were just kind of like hanging out in this area of North Carolina. Right. But they had been trying to... With their own identity. Long story short, the documentary...

becomes about us learning about their struggle. We go to D.C., we go to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. John McCain is overseeing the case. And so we learned about that, and the movie is this sort of parallel story of us trying to find Ms. Locklear while they're trying to find federal recognition. Amazing. Amazing. And we...

It was so much fun because we would say yes to anything that would happen. Like very early, the first time we went down there, we went to kind of the center of the community, a small town called Pembroke. And we just started asking people who were looking for our teacher, Ms. Locklear, do you know anybody? And then everybody kept talking about someone else, this man named Carnell Locklear, same last name. They said, he knows everybody. This is where he lives. We go, we knock on his door.

And it turns out he is just the friendliest guy who's just been waiting for somebody to make a documentary about him. It's just everything you would hope for. An inspiring entertainer that has been, you know... Overlooked. He was probably... He might have been 70. Yeah, at the time. And he was like... And the first question we asked him is...

do you know Lenora Locklear? Here's a picture of her. She was our first grade teacher. And he was like, well, I got these puppies in my backyard. My dog just had some puppies. We could go give those away and see if anybody knows your teacher. And then the next thing we know, I'm in the, Rhett's in the back of his pickup truck with eight puppies. And I'm sitting on a lawnmower

and a trailer being pulled by the truck. I'm just sitting on the back of a lawnmower because we're driving on the road asking people if they know our teacher. And he's trying to, door to door, give away puppies. And it was just such a, it's kind of what you hope for when you're just these, you know, we were just, we had this fantasy of making a documentary film and then to find yourself doing that is like, yes, yes, yes. We had a month to basically follow any story that,

you know, revealed itself. That's fantastic. And so, I mean, without spoiler alert, did you find Ms. Locklear? She was dead. You never found her. That's hilarious. No, we found her. She's dead. It's not much of a spoiler. I mean, it is, but you should still watch it. Did you go to the gravesite and pour one out for her? No, we met her and it was, yeah, it was very surreal. It was a good ending. I love that.

It didn't lead to more documentaries. I think it's one of those itches that we still want to scratch. But I think when we started making those local commercials, it kind of scratched that same itch of working with real people. We were actually gifting commercials to small business owners. We had another sponsor who was underwriting the whole thing. So we were able to give it to them for free, but we would work with these people

real people to make the commercial for them and we would use their stories. So it was this used car lot in the middle of North Carolina. And then the owner was kind of boring, but he was like, you need to meet my head salesman, which what he meant was my only salesman, Rudy.

And then we got to know Rudy. He was this boisterous guy from Cuba. He said he came over on a raft that was attacked by a shark. And he said, I hear I'm an American auto salesman, but in Cuba, I was a gynecologist. And so the commercial wrote itself. It was not Rudy, the American car salesman and Cuban gynecologist. And it was so heartwarming to get to know this guy selling cars. Yeah.

So these are the... You guys, why didn't you start your own ad agency? This is amazing. Oh, we got... We thought about it. We got very close. We almost went down the commercial directing avenue. We were doing that for a little bit. But yeah, I think ultimately we wanted to tell, you know, tell stories. Yeah. And...

Yeah. But that, we go back to that, you know, working with, with real people, we try to find ways to even on our, you know, the, the series that we do, that's more of a scripted half hour called Wonderhole. Um, we like to, it's mostly unscripted and improv, but we'd like to find ways to just get non-actors to participate and just put them in situations and, you know, have those very real human interactions. How do you ever go back there? Do you ever go back to North Carolina?

Oh, all the time. Yeah. But yeah, my wife and I have a place back there. So we're back there all the time. Um, in all of our families, both sides of both families, basically every, right. Everyone's back there. Do you get the, um,

Do you get, can you, do people just go berserk when they see you back there? Every high school? North Carolina is a different, it is definitely a different experience because people in North Carolina don't often see people that they know from a screen somewhere. That's right. And they, they, just the other day when I was there, you know, a guy is talking to me and then he's like, do you, do you get recognized a lot?

You know, I think in his mind, he was like, this could be the first time this has happened this year. He didn't have a point of reference for, does this happen? Like, just like the girl, she was in North Carolina, the one that said, you look like somebody famous, but not famous. That's not how I would describe it. So, yeah, people will, you know, but listen, we have, we can't complain because when the first time we ever came to L.A.,

We were at a restaurant, and I'm going to blame this on Link. We were being egged on by friends from North Carolina, but John C. Reilly was sitting down at a restaurant with his friends, and you went up to him, and I followed you for some reason. And we didn't just say hello. We literally opened with asking him,

after he finished eating, to come outside and record an intro to our podcast. Come on! And so we can never complain about anyone asking anything from us in public, especially you. No, I can't. But I had to go for it. No, you didn't. I didn't.

I shouldn't have gone for it. If we ever meet, John, we are going to apologize. Super tacky, but it's just the mentality that I had. It was that North Carolina mentality that we brought to LA. That's a real thing, that kind of sweet, guileless, aggressively ambitious. Really, I'm from Ohio. I so relate to that. I mean—

I wanted I wanted to be an actor. And at the time I was young, there was a producer named Aaron Spelling that produced absolutely everything on TV. And I wrote him a letter and I was like, I want to come. I'd like to come and see you at the studio. I was in the sixth grade and he wrote back to me. He did. Yes, he did. He wrote back to me.

And he was like, you know, come out anytime, you know, but you should really run it by your parents. Right. And then don't come alone. And then one thing led to another. And I and I don't know, nothing ever came of it. And then years later, I'm in the show called The West Wing and it wins best show at the Golden Globes. And we're going up and the music's playing. We're walking up the stage and I'm passing Aaron Spelling.

who's sitting there for whatever show he had. And I just leaned over and said, when I was very young, you were very, very nice to me. I wrote you a letter and you wrote me back. So thank you. It went up and we got our award. It was like a weird universe thing. So you gotta have a little bit of that, that, that misguided ambition, right? I mean, you got, you got to have it. Oh, 100%. Playing by the rules. Never got anybody anywhere. So did John C. What did John C. Reilly do? He said, man, I,

I'm here at dinner with my friends. He was so nice. That's literally how he said it. And all his friends were looking down. I just kind of melted. I was like, oh, I have clarity now. You are here having dinner with your friends. Yeah. Yeah. And I shouldn't be talking to you right now. That's so. It seems very clear to me now that you pointed it out, John C. Reilly. Oh, this is how Hollywood works. You know, like people don't start making things like in the lot after they have dinner. Yeah.

Yeah, we had to learn. I've had to learn so much the hard way. Yeah, that's true. I don't know. Because you just try it. And, you know, with us, just to give you credit, Rob, I don't know if you had somebody egging you on, but, like, we have each other. We've always had each other to say,

Yes, we just took an L, but we got to keep going. And we're in this together. You know, the level of support and egging on has made all the difference in the world. And I really can't imagine anybody in the world of entertainment making it on their own. I mean, whether you're a creator in the digital space or whatever it is, I don't envy that.

It's funny you say that because I just yesterday, even today, at this point in my life, man, I've been making this up on my own since I was eight years old. And I sometimes go, it's obviously worked, but I wonder if I'd be better or if I'd have a better life or I'd be easier to deal with. Not that I'm not easy to deal with, but I would have a better system if I had

a mentor, somebody to bounce it off of. And I've never had it. Never. I mean, there's not to say that I haven't had people in my life who, you know, managers or agents who've been supportive or producers or directors or certain family members. But like when you start when you're eight, you're just, you're just, you're always the guy who's coming up to somebody at the table and going, hey, what about, you know, I feel like I have my jazz hands on all the time. Still like, look, what about this?

What about a podcast? What about a book? I feel like that's like, like, I would love to like just fucking chill and let somebody else run it. Yeah. I mean, and we, yeah, we can, we can divide and conquer. That's the other part of this, you know? Oh, you're not feeling it today. Well, then you're going to have to care. Well, that's the other thing is where, where I think it,

It really shows itself as my reticence to delegate anything to anybody. Because that's why I was fascinated. When did you hire your person? Because like, right. I feel like if I don't do it, it's not getting done for sure. It's or it's going to or it's going to be done in a way that I don't like. Like, that's what my.

of doing it all, making it up in my head and like willing it and then take, as you say, taking L after L and then win, L, win. It's like if I don't, if I don't, like if it doesn't come out of my brain, I don't know what it would be like to come out of somebody else's brain and go, oh, that's so cool. I never would have thought, thank you. I don't have it. And that's something, you know, we see that with a lot of content creators because there are so many of them are just on their own island and they are

doing every single piece of their content. They're editing it, they're promoting it, they're managing their social media and the stuff we did for years, the two of us, but that letting go a little bit and saying, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to let someone follow their instincts and edit this thing and,

You know, I'm going to... They've seen what the template that we've established, but if they can get to 90%, then maybe that last 10% and the choices that they make, maybe it'll breathe some life into it or whatever. I think that there's... It's been... We would not be still making Good Mythical Morning, I'll tell you that right now, if we were doing it the way we did it in year one and two. Right. Just the sustainability of it. Right. Having a team that now is...

essentially making the show that we're reacting to. And they're drawing on this ethos that we established from the beginning. But the specifics of what is going to happen in each day, we actually find we make a more entertaining product when we're reacting. Yes. Oh, 100%. You know? Yes. So sometimes that delegation leads to an evolution of the product that A, makes it keep going, but also makes it more interesting for you.

Because it's not just all coming out of your mind. Yes, that makes 100% perfect sense. Yeah, and there's a couple of levels that are different paths that I think we experience. You know, when you, as a creator or an artist or, you know, an entertainer, if you have ideas...

Of what you want to do and you want to go after it, but you don't have enough time because you're doing all the other stuff, then that's a great way to like harness that motivation to hire people and delegate when it's like, I'm not able to get here because of this, but I really want to be here. I want to make this. I want to make three things instead of one. And so.

that's how we started out. But then you get to a point where, like right now we have 100 employees working out of our studio in Burbank. And you get to that point when you start to delegate and then they have ideas or things spin off or hatch that have a lot less to do with you. But then you find yourself supporting and running other content streams that are coming out and also a team. So you become this kind of like

We find ourselves in this CEO, like, business role. And, like, the head of, like, you know, a next generation studio. These are all fun things to say. Yes. But it's a totally different career path. No, but you are... You know, if you start to delegate too much, you might find yourself being in charge of a whole lot of other things. And then you got to deal with that. So, I'm...

I guess I sound like I'm complaining about it a little bit. No, no, no, you don't. It's a different thing and it's hard. We have to prioritize us continuing to be content creators first. Yeah, it can get away from you, like the business side of it. So there's a good and bad to the delegation. It can get away from you. It's so funny, like on...

And again, back circling back to the legacy media, like everybody's trying to figure out the new you guys are there. It's like the everybody wants to be where you guys are. That's the great irony is everybody wants to create a new studio using all of the new technology that exists to, you know, low overhead and go right to the people and but do it at scale. And how do you do it when you're entrenched with.

gigantic office space and, you know, 75 mid-level managers. And like, it's like, you guys are there. It's sick. I mean, we're having a good time. It's a lot to constantly figure out. I'm sitting here in the big fancy studio and everybody's, everybody's like a nod and going, yep. That's right. Yep. It's you. Everybody's trying to reverse. Everybody's trying to reverse engineer everything.

being up on the Mount Rushmore of, of entertainment. You know, I need to be, I want to be the scrappy startup guys. How do we do that? Right. Yeah. Right. That's where the business is. Well, you guys have been great. Thank you for, for coming on. Um, it was super fun. We really got to do this. We got to do this. Anything. Yes. We got, we got milkshakes, two gross things. We could do a gross episode where it's like,

Can you imagine fucking eating Ooni and a milkshake even in the same day would be disgusting. Or with the same dish, an Ooni milkshake. Oh, dude. I can tell this is going to happen. I'm not comfortable, but that's a good sign. That's a really horrifying. Yeah.

And we get Jack Nicklaus to join us. I'll see if we can get Jack on FaceTime. Can you imagine? Yeah. Maybe you work that angle and we'll provide the milkshakes. Yeah. That doesn't really sound like a fair...

uh, I bring Jack Nicholas and you guys go down to, Hey, we all have something to bring to the table. That's right. That's right. Yeah. That makes sense. All right. We will make it happen. Um, thanks guys. This was a blast. Appreciate you. Yeah. Great to see you, Rob. Thanks for having us. All right. I'm going to go have some uni, um, and, um, some, uh, $2 a day, uh, oysters, all you can eat oysters, a phrase you never want to hear.

ever. By the way, I don't think you want to hear all you can eat anything is sort of my takeaway from today. I will see you next week and hear you and see you. Don't forget we're on YouTube. You know, we're speaking of YouTube. I'm on YouTube. I'm a person. My show's real. It's on YouTube too. You fancy men in North Carolina. Eat it. Anyway, it's time for me to get highly caffeinated. I'm getting out of here. Thank you so much. See you next time. Right here on Literally.

You've been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe, produced by me, Sean Doherty, with help from associate producer Sarah Begar and research by Alyssa Grau. Engineering and mixing by Joanna Samuel. Our executive producers are Rob Lowe for Low Profile, Nick Liao, Adam Sachs, and Jeff Ross for Team Coco, and Colin Anderson for Stitcher. Booking by Deirdre Dodd. Music by Devin Bryant.

Special thanks to Hidden City Studios. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Literally.

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