5 stars
Right off the bat, I have to confess that this review might be just a little bit biased – I, dear reader, have been watching and listening to these two personalities since I was a mere eleven-year-old child. When Film and TV started doing podcast reviews, I knew I had to share with the world (or at the very least, the few readers of this paper) my favourite podcast– and my favourite people from the internet.
Ear Biscuits is a podcast “where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time”, as they say in their recently invented tagline. And really, that’s genuinely what it is. The podcast is voiced by ‘internetainers’ Rhett and Link, most commonly known as the guys from YouTube that eat weird (often inedible) foods on their show Good Mythical Morning in order to appease their voracious viewers. But Ear Biscuits is where they talk about anything and everything, ranging from light-hearted funny stories about their father-son camping trip in Death Valley, to deep, introspective conversations about their biggest regrets in life.
The podcast, although having a relatively simple concept, shines precisely because of this: there is minimal planning and scripting, making it so that there are genuine, authentic conversations between the two friends. It goes back to Rhett and Link’s roots and how they started out their YouTube career – in a small garage-turned-studio, talking about events that happened in their everyday life or revisiting interesting memories from their childhood (did you know that these two forty somethings have been best friends since first grade?!). One year ago, they came out with a series of episodes called “The Lost Years” where they revealed a large gap of time from their past that they had kept hidden from the public eye; their story about how they were evangelical Christians, and how that led them to become missionaries, earning money only from the charity of others with a family to feed, both having married very young. Their spiritual deconstruction and the process of their change in their beliefs are incredibly interesting stories to listen to.
Whether it is more of a serious, thought-provoking conversation, such as the one about their experiences with therapy, or hearing about how both Rhett and Link had the first same girlfriend, Leslie; what ultimately makes this podcast great is how personal and raw it is, and how much of their life they share. Having known them for nearly ten years of my life now, consistently following their YouTube videos starting all the way back from their first show Good Morning Chia Lincoln, I feel as though I’ve grown up with two internet father-figures guiding me through life. Never has an episode of Good Mythical Morning or Ear Biscuits failed to cheer me up even in the worst of times. So, for my sake, and perhaps to validate my (extreme) loyal fondness for them, give the podcast a try: I recommend “Link’s Camping Night of Horror” for a more humorous one, or if you want to listen to an episode with a background closer to home, definitely try out “What Happened to Rhett’s Mom in Scotland”!
Image: The King of Mars via Wikimedia Commons