At VidCon, Rhett & Link Discuss Their Past, Present, And Future

For people who wish to take a deeper dive into the world of YouTube, there are now several podcasts hosted by the site’s homegrown stars. Grace Helbig, Shane Dawson, and (most recently) What’s Trending all run their own audio series, but if you ask me, no podcast better gets to the heart of the YouTube community than Ear Biscuits.

Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal (aka Rhett & Link)’s weekly audio dish, which features online video content creators as its guest stars, routinely offers high-quality conversation and fascinating personal insights from an entertainment duo that has one helluva pedigree. McLaughlin and Neal have been in the online video game since way back in 2006 and have since amassed roughly two billion views and 11 million subscribers across two YouTube channels, orchestrated, starred in, and distributed innumerable pieces of high-quality branded entertainment, had a stint on television by way of IFC, and made quite possibly the best Christmas video of all time.

In short, these guys know what they’re talking about, and we recommend Ear Biscuits highly. For those reasons, we’ve decided to bring it to you. We’ve partnered with Rhett & Link’s Mythical Entertainment to share new episodes of Ear Biscuits as they arrive each Friday through the end of the season. We hope you find these conversations to be entertaining complements to our coverage of the online video industry.

As it turns out, the first episode of Ear Biscuits we’re sharing doesn’t have any guests. Instead, it features Rhett & Link on stage at VidCon, in front of an audience of their fans, who they call “Mythical Beasts.”  Over an hour, the two YouTube stars answer questions from their viewers; along the way, they meander across a number of different topics that follow their videomaking partnership from its humble origins in North Carolina to its current star status.

Rhett & Link’s Q&A session begins on the day they met, in the first grade. They became fast friends with their own dreams; while McLaughlin aspired to be an architect, Neal set his sights on the world of meteorology after receiving inspiration from a local weatherman named Bob DeBardelaben. Based on these goals, Neal suggests that he has come closer to reaching his childhood profession of choice. “I’m living my dream,” he jokes, “sometime I’m in front of a green screen, and there could be weather on it.”

As they grew up, Rhett & Link began to work closely together, and their collaborative relationship was the subject of one of the more interesting questions they fielded at VidCon: How, a fan asked, do you put up with each other all the time? As McLaughlin answers, “conflict is guaranteed, communication is key…in any relationship, there’s going to be conflict. We’re constantly bouncing ideas off of one another and working on things and trying to fine-tune something…we approach things very differently, which is a strength, but it’s also a source of conflict.” This dedication to open communication is a key part of one of YouTube’s top bromances. It’s also a specific strength for Ear Biscuits, which relies heavily on the honesty of its hosts and guests.

While their friendship has held fast, their videomaking process has evolved. As they explain, YouTube’s 2012 algorithm change, which supported longer videos with high watch time, affected the popularity of Good Mythical Morning, Rhett & Link’s morning talk show. GMM is now the centerpiece of Rhett & Link’s online video presence, but they aren’t about to let the music videos and sketches on their original channel become a thing of the past. to their plan to balance their talk show with additional sketches on their main channel. Ask they look “to create story-based content [like series and feature films] online,” they will release “more sketch comedy on the main channel.” “The main channel is not dead,” said McLaughlin. “It will continue to become more active.”

The episode is a must-listen for their fans, and an interesting hour for anyone who is curious about the internal chemistry of one of YouTube’s foremost duos. Check it out below, and be sure to check back each Friday on iTunes & SoundCloud for regular updates from Ear Biscuits.