Episode 27: Fatherhood, Ostrich Attacks, And Free Pigs With James Breakwell
In episode twenty-seven of The Babylon Bee podcast, editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle talk to James Breakwell, proprietor of Exploding Unicorn, whose social media reach is in the millions. James is a professional comedy writer and author of several books, most recently How to Save Your Child from Ostrich Attacks, Accidental Time Travel, and Anything Else that Might Happen on an Average Tuesday. They discuss parent shaming, dad fails, surviving insane animal attacks, and how getting famous writing comedy for a living is extremely repeatable. Follow James Breakwell on Twitter (@XplodingUnicorn). Show Outline Introduction - Kyle tried out his improv routine on Ethan and Ethan makes it weird and uncomfortable. They get into a discussion about weird names like Melvin. Story 1 - Gardener In Background Of Kaepernick Video Receives Call From Washington Redskins Story 2 - 'Rise Of Skywalker' To Introduce First Lesbian AT-AT Story 3 - Bombshell Report Reveals Trump Has Been Mooching Off Pence's Netflix Account For Years Interview - James Breakwell Hate Mail And Love Mail Subscriber-Exclusive Content - Story 1 - House Hears Testimony From Renowned, Unbiased Legal Scholar Hillga Clintonheimer Story 2 - 'Guardians 3' To Feature Most Sinister Villain Yet: Single-Use Plastic Bottles Become a paid subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans
In a world of fake news, this is news you can trust.
Shilling for big satire since 2016.
You're listening to the Babylon Bee with your hosts, Kyle Mann and Ethan Nicole.
Hey guys, welcome to the Babylon Bee Community Church.
I'm your very excited youth pastor, Kyle.
And I'm his wife, Karen.
They always have a really nice wife standing there with a huge smile and rosy cheeks.
I like on the ads for those churches when the wife always has her arms around the husband's.
Yeah, they're in the back.
She's behind him.
She's like riding on him like Yoda.
And she does like the and it'll say pastors.
There's always sunbeaming out from behind them.
That's God.
Pastors Bob and Cindy.
Yeah, it's always Cindy.
And I noticed when I was a kid, and I don't know if this is just an 80s thing, but how many pastors were named Ken and Mel?
Not a lot.
I knew a Mel, but he was the tech guy.
I didn't know a pastor.
I don't know any Mels that weren't pastors.
Pastor Mel?
Not Gibson, but Mel something.
What race were they?
white the only male i knew was a arian the only male i knew was a black man oh so I don't know what's Mel short for Melvin?
Probably.
Mel.
Yeah, must be Melvin.
Who looks at a newborn human being and goes, Melvin?
Looks like a Melvin to me.
Melvin.
You can tell.
Anyway, we're really excited that you're here.
We're so excited.
We are.
Are you guys ready to worship Jesus?
I said, are you guys ready to worship Jesus?
I am.
This feels weird.
I can hear you.
I don't know why I jumped into being your wife.
I don't want to say anything.
You made it awkward.
Yeah, I did.
You didn't warn me we're going into this.
I'm really uncomfortable right now.
This is my new thing is I've decided I come up with an intro thing and I just dump it.
I like to just dump it on you.
Just, yeah, and then see what happens to me.
It's like your little experiment.
We're doing improv here.
All right.
Sorry, everybody.
Sorry.
Welcome to our.
Welcome to the Babylon Bee podcast.
Yeah.
Our improv session.
So yeah, we have a cool episode today.
We're going to be meeting with the guy who explodes unicorns for a living.
His name's James.
James.
Breakwell.
Breakwell.
And we talked about that in another, I think maybe last podcast we were joking around about that last name.
How maybe breaking wells is like the job that his family had, and they had to go around breaking wells.
Yeah, because we had interviewed him previously and then made a joke about him, even though we hadn't.
Our chronology is all messed up.
Yeah.
Yeah, we're going to talk about being dads mostly.
It's a lot of dad talk.
Yeah, the guy's an internet humorist and he draws, I don't know if draws is the right words, but he does publish comics.
And viral humorist.
Yeah, so it was a really good conversation.
We're all fathers, so a lot of discussion of fatherhood.
Father Enos.
Very silly.
It's a very silly conversation.
A lot of dad jokes passed around the table.
Father Enos sounds like the name of a priest or something.
Father Enos?
Oh, Father Enos.
Yeah, okay.
I am Father Enos.
You know, you usually get a monopoly on those kinds of jokes.
You're like, hey, that sounds like this.
I know.
And so I wanted to horn in on your territory.
Thank you.
Stay out of my territory.
Hey, that's another audio clip we need.
Breaking Bad.
Do we?
Not really.
That's probably the only time I would ever apply.
All right.
Well, first, before we get to our hard-hitting interview with James Breakwell talking about dad stuff, are you ready to jump into Stories of the Week, Kyle?
I sure am.
I'm so excited.
Every week, there are stories.
These are some of them.
Gardner in background of Kaepernick video receives a call from Washington Redskins.
Now, I know Ethan's going to have a lot of thoughts on this, being a huge fan.
What exactly is a Kaepernick?
Is that kind of like a leprechaun?
What is a Washington Redskin?
That runs across the screen.
Yes.
There have been Kaepernick.
That's exactly what it is.
Sorry.
No, my only Kaepernick joke is that he has a giant afro and then it weighs him down so he has to kneel down.
That's all I got.
Did we ever do that, Joe?
No.
We should have done that.
He didn't get enough likes, I don't think.
Oh.
Such a dad joke.
Yeah.
Well.
But I could Photoshop his fro huge.
No, I don't care.
I'm not holding on to it.
It'll be some bonus content for subscribers, the Photoshop of.
That's the glory of the podcast.
You can hear all the jokes we didn't get to make.
Yeah, if you want to hear all the jokes that weren't good enough to make it on the Battle On D, we squeeze them in.
Listen to our podcast.
This is one of those jokes you have to explain to me.
So when I do the Photoshop, you're like, this is what's happening in the sports world.
This Colin Kaepernick guy is not getting accepted to teams, but he really wants to be.
Something like that.
I'm not sure that he actually wants to be.
Okay.
But he is putting himself out there.
He did this whole workout video that he sent to all the NFL teams and said, hire me.
It was like Uncle Rico in Pole and Dynamite.
Is that normal?
Is that protocol?
I don't know if that's normal.
It's probably fairly common.
I just wanted to send this video of me working out.
Well, you guys are the ones who gave your demo tape to Switchfoot.
Is this any different?
He casually drop it.
When you're Kohler Kaepernock?
Karpernach?
Kohler Kopernach?
Kohler Kaepernick.
That's like the version where we don't want to get sued.
And so we make a Kohler Kopernik.
Kohler Schneebernock.
Well, no, it just seems funny.
Like, okay, I don't really want to be on a team, but I did want to drop by this video of me working out.
Yeah.
Well, he thrives on the controversy.
For your pleasure.
He thrives on the controversy, and then nobody wants to touch him because he's so controversial.
And then it's like, oh, all these people are racist.
They didn't hire me.
You know, that kind of.
So anyway, he does this video, and one of the receivers in the video, you know, so in football, then there's a quarterback who throws the ball, and then there are these receivers who receive the ball.
Yeah, they go out and they catch it.
And so this guy's kind of a background player in the video.
It's kind of like giving birth.
Because Kaepernick is trying to highlight how good he can throw.
And this guy's just going out and catching the passes.
Gotcha.
That guy got signed.
Oh, that really happened?
Yeah, that guy got signed onto an NFL team.
Oh, I thought you were just being a jerk with this story.
And so then our, so, yeah, the joke is Gardner walks by and then he gets.
I think the funny thing, too, is that it's probably on AstroTurf.
Oh.
And yet he's mowing.
Somebody's knocking on our door in the middle of recording.
Welcome to the podcast.
Hi.
This is our.
We got mail.
It's a rare day that we got mail.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Oh, this is from Stand to Reason.
Stand to Reason.
We're going to have Greg Coca-Long.
I can't wait.
That's probably what this is.
He's going to drop some mad apologetics.
This is Greg Hogel's book, Tactics, Updated and Expanded.
All right, cool.
He's going to teach us how to convert atheists.
A game plan for discussing atheists' minds convictions.
That'll be next week's episode, maybe.
You don't want to make any guarantees ever?
I don't know.
That might be the week we have to publish a Christmas one, depending.
No, no, no.
We don't know.
We could talk about this not while we're recording.
Anyway.
Probably.
Anyway.
How about the next story?
Are we done explaining that one?
Anything else?
Colin Kaepernick?
So Kaepernick was the guy who was kneeling.
He did the whole kneeling.
Yeah, he's a kneeling guy.
He's one of the few sports people I know the name of and face.
I actually don't.
You know, a lot of people are like, I hate this guy.
He knelt for the anthem.
I think it's a free country, and if he wants to do that, that's cool.
Yeah, okay.
But then, you know, if that becomes too controversial for teams, then don't complain that no one wants to hire you.
Yeah, exactly if that's the thing you're going to do.
It's cool.
Whatever.
Deal with it, bro.
You know, believe in something.
Yeah.
Even if it means sacrificing everything.
Just do it.
That was the Nike ad.
I'm sure you got no money for.
I got to say, I'm really impressed with how informed you are on this story, Ethan.
What?
You like, remember that this is the Nike ad?
Because I make jokes about all this stuff.
Yeah, I'm just, I'm impressed.
No, I made that because I made a meme of that with Jim Jones.
And it said, believe in something.
It was really dark.
Oh, yeah, everybody was doing the believe in something memes.
That's right.
Anyway, go ahead.
What's the next story?
Oh, man.
This is more territory for me.
Rise of Skywalker to introduce first lesbian at-at.
I was wondering, I just threw in.
I was going to go, I could say A-T-A-T or at-at.
Which one is it?
It's A-T-A-T.
Oh, dang it.
I screwed it up.
I've heard some people call it at, but I always call it.
At ATT.
It's like all terrain assault transport or maybe all-terrain armor and transport.
I think there has been some debate.
Why is there one dash?
It's like, I don't know.
I guess it looks cool.
All-terrain.
Is all-terrain one word?
No.
For normal people who don't know what Star Wars is, this is a giant walking robot in Star Wars.
So you guys know?
Just trying to help out normal people who aren't nerds.
Well, you don't have to really be a nerd to know that because this was the most popular Star Wars film.
I didn't know.
I watched Return of the Jedi multiple times.
This is the one I watched the most as a kid because I loved the Ewoks.
And I never knew those things were called at-ats until you guys did a joke about it.
And I was like, what is an at-at?
It sounds like a...
Well, they weren't really featured in it.
It sounds like an Indonesian primate or something.
They weren't really featured in Return of the Jedi.
They might have had some in there, but it wasn't.
It was more of the ATT.
They're in there, right?
The AT-S-Ts are the ones in Return of the Jedi more.
Because those are the chicken walkers that the Ewoks go.
Are they similar?
Well, they're big robots, sure.
Those are the two-legged ones that like.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Those are the AT-S-Ts.
Wait.
All-terrain scout transport.
Oh, yeah.
The Ad-At has four legs.
They're the same.
They're close enough.
Come on.
Okay.
I mean, they're completely different.
You know, one's for use for scouting and one's more for a direct assault.
They both look like farm animals that got turned into a robot.
And they shoot lasers out of them.
What farm animal is it?
With a face of like a shy guy from Mario 2.
There's a reference.
I'm sorry.
My wife texted me.
What?
The shy guy from Mario 2.
Remember the shy guy?
Yeah, what does that have to do with how I think?
I always thought their face looks like a shy guy.
Anyway, sorry, that was really odd.
It's kind of the blank black eyes, sure.
Yeah, just blank.
I think there's a newer thing with that face like that in anime or something.
Oh, I've seen that.
Yeah, I don't know what it is.
If you know what it is, let us know.
Shy guys, actually, Super Mario Bros. 2.
Yeah, I loved Mario Brothers 2.
So that wasn't a Mario game originally.
I was obsessed with that.
Yeah, it's so weird.
You pull up turnips and throw them.
I'm a plumber, so it was a different game.
So it was a different game in Japan.
And the actual Super Mario Brothers 2, Japan decided it was too hard for an American audience.
So they took some completely different games.
Does it exist somewhere now?
You can download it?
Yeah, it's Toky Tori or something.
I'm going to mess it up, but something like that.
Yeah.
Wow.
So the actual Super Mario Bros. 2 has been released now in America as Super Mario Brothers, The Lost Levels.
Oh, wow.
Anyway.
Okay, that's yeah.
We are going off on all sorts of things.
The Rise of Skywalker supposedly is going to have some LGBTQ representation according to JJ Abrams, his A-T-A-T.
I did like your Photoshop, which I got a lot of credit for.
Yeah, that's your favorite of my Photoshops.
Is it a lot of the pink?
I don't call that hairdo.
A lesbian hairdo.
I jumped on the grenade of in the morning searching lesbian haircuts on Google.
It was, I do it all for the people.
I do it for you guys.
So thank me for my service.
I feel like that haircut is pretty popular across most like a lot of dudes have lesbian that kind of lesbian spoop going on.
The lesbian spoop.
Yeah.
Well, it was hard because, yeah, there's a, it's just kind of a general progressive looking haircut.
Yeah.
So you have to like, how do you get an actual lesbian?
I think dying in pink was smart, yeah.
Pink, yeah.
Anyway, cool.
Yeah.
Well, that's it.
That's good.
Great progress in the Star Wars universe.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Story number three.
Bombshell report reveals Trump has been mooching off Pence's Netflix account for years.
Bombshell.
Bombshell.
The walls are closing in.
This is the beginning of the end.
Explosive.
I don't know.
It's all over.
Hard-hitting.
Game over.
You have way more of these than I do.
Hashtag Trump resign now.
Mike Pence is preparing to take over.
Yeah.
Because Trump is going to be out any minute now.
That was basically the feeling I got from every bombshell that has been released from this impeachment hearing.
We have that audio, but I'm wondering if this plays.
Let's do it.
My only fear is if it plays, YouTube might flag it because it's a YouTube video audio clip.
We can just try and see what happens.
Let's do it.
Yeah.
Breaking news.
A bombshell.
Today is a turning point.
Today was historically bad for President Trump today.
We talk over him in peace.
We're at a turning point here.
Beginning of the end for the Trump presidency.
We have another bombshell.
Mike Pence might have to assume the office of the presidency.
Rumblings of the word impeachment.
Breaking news.
Rumblings.
I believe this is the beginning of the end.
I do too.
It's really the beginning of the end.
I do too.
Maybe he's killing the walls, closing in on him.
All the walls closing in on him.
Walls closing in on him.
Breaking news, a new bombshell.
One astrologer says this means the beginning of the end for President Donald Trump to resign.
Trump is going to resign.
Is this the tipping point?
I know we've said it over and over.
You think this is a tipping point of the whole thing?
This is a tipping point.
And over and over.
Breaking news, President Trump off the rails.
This is the beginning of the end today.
The beginning of the end.
Breaking news tonight, new bombshells.
So I saw this video clip on Twitter.
Eric Erickson, the conservative dude, shared it.
I don't know who actually compiled it, if he did it or not, but he shared it on Twitter and it got 20,000, 30,000 retweets every week.
And these are clips going back like two or three years of just the same talking point.
Bombshell.
The beginning of the end.
Yeah.
The walls.
It's always something like if another president had done it, it would not be a bombshell.
Not at all.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not that I don't think Trump does bad things.
Like, I think he probably has done some horrible things.
But when we get mad about that, but you know, not other things.
It's just.
Trump is silly, and it gets kind of tiring making fun of that.
And he almost makes it so you're kind of lame if you do, because he's already ahead of you.
Yeah.
But the media's response to Trump is incredibly silly as well.
Yeah.
And no one's joking about it as much.
So it's like, it's more ripe for the jokes, I think.
Something.
Yeah.
We might have mentioned it here before, but Frank's observation that this is a comedy.
Yeah.
This is a comedy, but the media treats it like it's a drama.
And that's what, that's where all the humor comes from from the media.
It's just like Trump doing all this crazy stuff.
And the media's like, this is so serious.
Maybe he's just a goofball.
I don't know.
Yeah, every tweet has to be taken so seriously.
Did you see the one that where Brian Stelter was counting all the Trump typos?
And it was like on his Sunday CNN show, Reliable Sources.
And he's got, there's this great picture of him, a screenshot of him from his show.
He's standing there and there's this chart, and it's like a detailed graph of all the typos on Trump's Twitter account.
That's so, yeah.
There have been some memorable typos.
Cafe was a good one.
Yeah, that was a great one.
That was just.
It wasn't even a typo.
Yeah, I don't know.
That just seemed like a Twitter, a tweet that he just passed out in the middle of.
Have you ever been on Twitter or whatever, and like you're starting to fall asleep, and you realize you touch stuff while you were falling asleep?
Yeah, and it's just like a mess of letters.
That's what I guess happened there.
That's my guess.
Okay, here, the tweet was despite the negative press, despite the constant negative press, Cafe.
Oh, yeah.
I forgot about that.
I love that it just drops off.
I'm still, yeah.
Does anybody?
Oh, that's old news, but I'm curious what he was trying to get to there.
It sounded to me like he was trying to say coverage, like despite the constant press coverage.
And then he was going to say something else.
I was up for like eight hours.
Like, you're right.
It's totally lucky he fell asleep.
Yeah.
Because it was like 3 a.m.
It was up for a long time.
It was like 3 a.m. or something.
So it's like he fell asleep.
It became a meme overnight.
That's so good.
I don't know how we're going to explain to our kids.
I know.
You know, in like 20 years.
What this was like to be in the middle of all the middle of this.
Yeah.
Like how insane it was.
Oh, yeah.
But we're able to laugh.
And that's what makes it fun.
It's true.
It's true.
We should.
It's the meaning, the true meaning of the season.
To laugh at Trump.
To laugh at our entire whole process.
Yeah.
That's good stuff.
Speaking of laughter.
You want to talk to famous internet comedian James Breakwell?
Yeah, he's a funny guy.
And we try to be funny.
And there might be some good laughs in this interview.
Let's do it.
He's ready.
Hi, James.
Hey, look, it's James.
James.
One other thing we wanted to mention is that we do have a Babylon Bee store.
It's been up for a while, and some people are still emailing us and saying, hey, you guys should have a store.
But we already have one.
So go to shop.babylonbee.com or just go to babylonbee.com.
You can find our store link there, our shop link.
We have some cool stuff for the holidays.
We have an Everyone is on the naughty list shirt with a picture of Calvinist Santa, which is just glorious.
You can tell those Walmart employees how you feel about happy holidays because there's one that says, if you say happy holidays, I will punch you in the face.
And Ethan's favorite is a shirt that says candy canes are gross.
So if you think candy canes are gross or you just want some cool Christmas stuff, go to shop.babylonbee.com.
Probably running out of time to get him time for the holidays, so do it quickly.
We've also got other stuff non-Christmas related.
We got a popular one that's got a picture of Mount Rushmore on a shirt, but it's got GK Chesterton and J.R. Tolkien and McDonald and Lewis on it.
So give that a look.
Some cool stuff, bugs, hats, lots of fun stuff.
So check that out.
Presenting an exclusive Babylon B interview.
All right.
Well, we're sitting here with a comedian of internet fame.
Yes.
A man with an insane amount of Twitter followers.
I don't get it.
I've been working on, like, I've had a TV show, and I've been trying to get Twitter followers, and I cannot get over, like, the digits I'm in.
They're just, I'm stuck there.
So I want his secrets.
James Breakwell, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
That's the introduction.
I like how friendly we are.
Our very first thing is saying I don't know how he has so many followers.
I appreciate the honesty.
You got to remember that with the internet.
Over a million.
Anything you want.
It's like the monkey's paw.
Like if you want it bad enough, you'll get it, but there are horrible, horrible consequences.
Maybe I don't want it bad enough.
There you go.
Yeah, but because you're not like Kanye West or something.
You got like over a million followers.
It's insane.
Yeah, it's cool.
But it's like, you know, real celebrities, like they have fame and it bleeds over to Twitter.
I just have Twitter and then I try to make it bleed over to real fame.
And it's really hard making that process go backwards.
The train does not want to go in that direction.
Yeah, I was talking to my wife and I said, look, my tweet got, you know, over a thousand retweets.
And she's like, so does that give you any money?
No.
It happens to me to my wife.
I'll show her.
Look all the retweets I got.
And she's like, good for you.
Take the trash out.
So you are exploding unicorn on Twitter.
Yes.
And our official introduction of you is that you're a professional comedy writer and author of several books.
And most recently, this is a mouthful, how to save your child from ostrich attacks, accidental time travel, and anything else that might happen on an average Tuesday.
Yes, it turns out there is not a maximum length for titles.
You can just jam as many words in there as you want.
My next book is going to be entirely the title.
It's just going to be like 7,000 words long.
That's a good idea.
Yeah.
So, I mean, so how prevalent are ostrich attacks and how worried should we be about that as parents?
Extremely worried.
I mean, if you're not worried about ostrich attacks, quite frankly, you're a terrible parent.
I mean, I just, when I go outside, I look around for them.
I'm kind of scared of birds in general, but ostriches are definitely at the peak up there.
You know, I live near in Indianapolis and there's ostriches at the zoo.
You never know when they'll escape.
Actually, I've been to an ostrich farm before, too.
I had a relative who was close to one and those are some freaky birds up close.
So it just makes sense that I wrote a manual to protect your kid from them.
And I don't know if you looked over that section there, but it's pretty good life-saving advice.
If I were an ostrich, I would be pretty worried if I saw somebody holding this book.
They're like sock puppets with somebody who had really long skinny arms.
Yeah, the weird thing was like they had to warn us when we went and looked.
It's like, don't get in there with it because it might kick you to death.
But if you, like, how you survive an attack, apparently, is you hold up a broom and it thinks you're a bigger ostrich.
And I'm going to go let my dog in.
He is freaking out.
It took him half an hour to realize I was home and I'm going to let him out now.
Hold on.
I'll be right back.
Okay.
Sounds good.
Yep.
Sounds good.
I was wondering if that was an ostrich in the background.
One of those barking ostriches.
Yeah, one of the rare African spotted barking ostriches.
Barking ostriches.
Red crested.
I was like adding red-crested to animals.
Yellow, yellow-bellied, barking ostrich.
Sucking.
Yeah, the yellow-bellied.
Yeah, sorry about that.
Sucking.
I've been home for half an hour and he didn't notice.
Like, I could have, if I were an intruder, I could have murdered the entire family and he would have just slept through it.
He is very delayed.
If an ostrich attacks us, we will not be able to depend on him for protection.
That is for sure.
Yeah, I have a dog who just at the park the other day, there was a, because we live, people really like coyotes out here.
They, you know, name the schools after them.
There's statues everywhere.
There's a statue of a coyote in the park.
Yeah.
My stupid dog could not would not stop barking at it and trying to see what's behind and like just convinced it was real and it was just had learned how to do some put itself into some cryostasis.
I don't know what the thought was going on.
I'm convinced their ignorance is selective though.
Cause like, you know, they'll bark at the mailman when the mailman's like two miles away.
They just know.
But one time there was a raccoon on my enclosed back porch and it came in there and it was eating their dog food.
Like I had two dogs back then and my dogs were sleeping like inches away on the other side of a doggy door, did not wake up.
It's like, oh, dogs, you knew what was going on.
You just didn't want to get beaten by a raccoon.
So I'm pretty sure they're faking it.
Yeah, because I have two dogs and the other one was just like, dude, it's a statue.
Like, look, I'm standing by it.
Just come up here.
How good would your dog have looked, though, if the statue really did come back to life?
I mean, that would have been like his ultimate moment.
So don't knock it.
The one time a statue comes back to life, he's going to be so vindicated.
True.
Well, so let's talk about keeping our children alive.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a good thing.
Yeah.
That's the basic requirement for parent, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think there's a huge difference between someone who is going to be a parent soon or has never had kids and they're always like, here's all the things I'm going to do for little Sally and here's all the programs they're going to be in and here's all the activities they're going to do.
And then you have kids and it's like, I have kept them alive too.
They're alive.
Yeah, there definitely should be a pass-fail metric to parenting.
If your kid makes it to adulthood, I think you were in some capacity a good parent or at least an adequate one.
And I'm okay with being adequate.
The only thing about that is if there's a parent listening who lost a child, I would feel really bad for them to hear that and go, oh, I'm a bad parent.
Why did you have to bring this down?
I brought it down, sorry.
Yeah, that's the life of a Twitter comedian right there.
Tell a joke about anything, literally anything.
You're like, hey, hey, you can't joke about peas.
My kid died from pea poisoning.
Like, what?
Anything.
One time somebody unfollowed me because I let my kids eat corn dogs.
Like, it just, you never know what's going to set somebody off.
And after a while, you just, you just kind of stop killing.
You just accept the fact that you're a terrible parent for all kinds of reasons and you move on.
Yeah, the parenting thing is crazy.
My wife will get on these little groups on Facebook and you can post anything and there will be a mob of psycho moms who will like tell you you're an evil parent.
Oh, yeah.
Depending on the brand of car seat you're using or what it could be anything.
The amount of ways they find to get angry is shocking.
They really, they think they're like saving your child's life.
I've written books about saving kids from zombies and ostriches and I doubt I've really ever saved a child's life.
I don't have any illusions about that.
But these parents who like, if you ever post a picture of your kid in the car and they see how you buckled him in a car seat, like they will scream at you or in all caps, type at you that your kid is going to die.
There was a huge controversy a few years ago.
I posted my kids wearing coats and car seats and people just went nuts.
And I finally just started blocking people.
And like months later, people would like follow me on like, if I blocked them on Facebook, they would follow me on Instagram to start yelling at me again.
It's like, come on, guys.
Odds are my kids will survive.
And if not, well, you always make more kids, I guess.
It's true.
Yeah, I remember it's always changing with the car seats.
Like my oldest boy, my oldest boy, it was like, yeah, we put him in the front-facing car seat when he's two or three or whatever.
And then the next one, it's like, oh, not until he's four or five.
And now we've got a 12-year-old that's still sitting in the back, the back facing.
Yeah, if your kid is under your, you know, if they're, if they're not 30 yet, they're in a car seat now.
Those are the, those are the current rules.
I mean, and you think about it, too.
Like, when I was a kid, like, they were like, oh, you're supposed to have the, or when I was a baby, you know, the wisdom was you, you have a baby sleep on your stomach.
They're like, oh, no, your baby is going to die.
You got to make them sleep on their side.
And they're like, oh, no, that's going to make them die.
Like, they just, we're just over time for the generations rotating babies around.
I'm sure pretty soon they're going to tell us to have them like sleep on their heads in a headstand position or something.
It's the only way to keep them alive.
Yeah, I always want to know, like, how did the human race get here?
Like, how did we manage it this far?
Before all these tiny detailed rules for every baby would have died.
You have to figure we have a default for survival.
Must be pretty, pretty good at it, because humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years before anyone wrote a parenting book like, what about all those generations?
How do we even get here?
I'm, it's just shocking.
We all didn't get eaten by giant bears or something.
Well, let's talk about bears.
So Ethan has written a book called, uh, bears want to kill you oh, and his, his basic message is, um, bears will kill you, you know, but go out, and go out in a blaze of glory anyway.
You seem to be saying that the that you can survive the ostrich attacks.
So are bears more dangerous than things like ostriches?
Bears are the very first animal in the very first chapter of the book, or the first chapter with actual dangers to it after the introduction.
Yeah, I love the bears in this and uh, there are some good survival tips.
Basically, you got to get the bear on your side because uh, otherwise they're an unstoppable killing machine.
But they're very unmotivated because you got to remember.
So they, they run faster than us, they can out fast, outfight us, they can outclimb us, they can outswim us like, if they wanted to, they could be the dominant species on the planet, but they're not.
They have so much power that they just go and they're like, you know what i'm gonna do.
I'm gonna go sleep for three or four months and i'm so terrifying that nobody will mess with me.
Imagine being so far up the food chain that you could take a three or four mile you know month power nap and nobody is going to touch you.
So that's, that's what they've done with their ambition.
So it's all about understanding their motivation.
When they come after you, don't mess with that power nap, and if they do come for you, it's probably because they're protecting their cubs.
You know, you've got cubs of your own if you're a parent, so you got to get on their side.
Show them.
Show them that you are suffering as a parent just as much as they are, and maybe, rather than getting mauled to death, you guys can just kind of gripe back and forth and then go your separate way.
So there's there's a lot of ways they could that can play out, but i'm i'm very optimistic.
It's possible to survive.
Well, I always wondered why, what there?
Why aren't there hunters who, if bears, take these long naps?
Why aren't there hunters who just go out into the forest carrying a pillow and they just sneak, sneak into the cave and then just smother the bear in its sleep.
I've i've got to imagine the hunting seasons are organized to accommodate that, but I I can't say for sure.
I've never, i've never, hunted a bear.
I I like to stay safely in states where bears don't live so I can talk about them from a distance.
I like to think that at uh like BASS PRO SHOP they have all those throw pillows and that's really what they're for, like they.
Can these guys go in there trying to find their pillow to go smother a bear with?
Can you imagine like how many man points that would be for smothering a bear?
Like the manliest thing I ever heard of somebody doing with a wild animal?
There was a buck during, like running season.
It came through somebody's plate glass window because it saw its reflection and you know, deer are stupid and it burst into the house and it couldn't figure out how to get in.
So this guy, he was like in his 60s.
He managed to lock this buck with antlers and everything.
He managed to lock it in the master bedroom and then he hears the bear or not the bear, the deer just bouncing around and they're destroying everything and he thinks.
And he thinks to heck with this.
I'm not going to let this deer destroy stuff.
So, rather than keeping it trapped until animal control goes back, he went in and rustled it to death.
Can you imagine rustling a buck to death like that?
Uh, the fact that he did not get stabbed to death I uh he uh, he.
He wins the man contest for all time.
So to the buck's death, not to his death yeah yeah no, he had.
Had he died in the process, I still would have given him man points, but that would be a very different lesson from that story.
That's the other kind of hunting i'm curious about.
If hunters like hid in trees and then, as the, as the buck walks by, you grab its antlers and twist its neck and break the neck like ninja hunting I, I think that uh, people who oppose hunting would be okay with that then, because you know you're kind of on even footing, if not a disadvantage a little more even, like if I had a buck and a human like in a in a boxing ring, I think I put my money on the buck, I think, I think unarmed, I think humans are pretty screwed.
Yeah, it's true.
So you, you write a lot about fatherhood.
Tell me, tell us, your fatherhood story.
Did you always want to be a dad?
Um, did you always see yourself become?
Because you have, is it?
Four daughters?
Yes, three daughters.
I have four daughters.
They're nine seven, five and four.
Um, i'm very proud of remembering that because they you know, kids keep changing ages inconveniently, so it's hard to keep track of.
I can barely remember my own age, but I got to remember theirs uh so um yeah, I always wanted kids.
I'm the oldest of uh, seven kids from a big Catholic family.
I'm the, so i'm.
I.
I wanted.
When I was a senior in college, I was 22 or 21, and that's when my youngest brother was born.
So that's how far of a spread we have there.
I didn't want seven kids.
That seems like that seems like a few too many.
Uh, especially given the quality seems to diminish after the first one.
You know, I was obviously the best child but uh yeah we, we wanted a big family.
I always kind of figured I would have four boys and I ended up with four girls, because that's that's what happens when you make plans, but it turns out girls are pretty awesome.
So yeah, we had our first one in Uh in 2010, and then I started tweeting about them in uh in 2012.
So I had, I had built up a lead of a few kids before I kind of put it on the internet.
I used to uh, I used to blog.
Blogging was dying.
I couldn't go anywhere with that and then I kind of started writing these jokes um, this format of back and forth conversation with my kids on the internet, and that's ultimately what started growing my twitter following and what eventually made me grow uh, go viral.
So people could ask, why the heck do you have a million followers?
And I can't give them an honest answer.
We all just kind of scratch our heads and wonder, yeah, I think every man kind of thinks about you know the son they'll have, and they don't.
They don't really think about what being a father of daughter, a daughter, would be like.
Yeah, and I know, for me it was really kind of eye-opening because I have two daughters, uh-huh and uh and I think my friend, a friend of mine, said this, but you know, when you have a son, you think that's, you know, you think your son, that's my son, but then when you have a daughter, she's like that's my daddy, like she possesses you, but it's, and it's in a really special way you're like this.
It's oh, it feels much more heroic.
I don't know, but my relation to my daughter is something I never could have described until I, until I had a daughter.
Yeah, and below a certain age too they're, they're kind of androgynous.
People ask me, are you gonna try again for a son?
Well, first of all, if I kept doing that, i'd end up with 95 daughters.
It's just, it's just never gonna happen.
No matter how many tries we get, they're gonna be all girls.
But I, you know, it's like, it's not like you're a failure as a father or a man if you have all daughters, it's just uh, you know you created this human being.
You raise them as best you can, you try to protect them from ostriches and you move on.
I, I taught them, you know to teach them all the important lessons, how to protect themselves from zombies, how to love Star Wars, all that.
It's just.
They also like the Disney princesses too.
So try to try to raise well, well-rounded human beings as best I can who hopefully, when they're adults, won't blame me for all the problems in their life.
They uh, The jury's still out on that one, but I'm optimistic.
I like when people say that, like, are you going to try for a boy?
I'm like, well, how do you try?
Wear a Raider's hat or something.
Yeah.
Wear monster truck.
I messed up last time.
I was so close to a boy and I just botched at the last second.
This time I'll get it right.
Oh, man.
Geez.
Yeah.
And it's weird too, like to have family planning conversations with strangers.
You know why they do it because they see you.
They know nothing about you.
Like you're standing at the park.
There's another parent.
All they know about you is that you exist and you have kids.
So the next logical question is, well, are you going to have more kids?
Are you going to have a boy?
But at the same time, it's like, really, you're kind of asking about my sex life there.
I don't know if this is what a conversation I should have.
So, you know, a guy I met in the park 30 seconds ago, but hey, it's 2019.
All the information's out there.
Everything's on limits now.
Yeah.
All the conversations my wife has with complete strangers.
I'm like, do we have to talk about this?
This is weird.
Oh, moms are in a whole different.
I can't say any of them on this podcast.
Yeah.
Well, with moms are in a whole different league, too.
I mean, not only are we talking about like bodily fluids of the kids, but moms will talk about breastfeeding and all this kind of stuff.
And with people, it's like, you don't even know this person.
Who is this?
But yeah, you can't say that as a guy.
You just got to roll with it.
I didn't realize how psycho people are about breastfeeding until I became a parent also.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, cow.
Wow.
So tell us how you're involved in breastfeeding, Ethan.
Emotional support.
Okay.
And you know, that was.
I'll just leave it at that.
Yeah.
In my second book, it's called, you know, it's another lengthy title because I, you know, just have to do that to make life as difficult as possible.
It was called Bare Minimum Parenting, The Ultimate Guide to Not Quite Ruining Your Child.
And it was kind of about all these conversations, the arguments you get in with people over car seats, over breastfeeding, over whether or not you're going to be a stay-at-home mom or dad or you go to work.
Like we act like these are the most important decisions in a child's life.
But do you ever go up to like a 40-year-old and be like, I bet your mom breastfed you or you're only succeeding because you went to a good preschool?
Like eventually we all kind of average out into being mediocre adults.
And that's what I remind myself of all the time.
Like it doesn't matter if I get my kids into the very best of this or that because ultimately we all just kind of average out and chances are we're going to be who we're going to be or at least that's what I tell myself so I can sleep at night.
Yeah, you have to constantly just kind of dial back what you're I think you have this perception that you can form and shape your children before you have them.
And a lot of people that don't have kids really think this.
Yeah.
Like you see people on Twitter, like they'll take a picture of someone else's kid in a line at like the airport and it'll be like, control your kid, lady, whatever.
It's like, there's no controlling your kid.
I mean, within some boundaries there is, but when they're in no mood to be controlled, they're not going to cooperate.
Yeah.
Unless you resort to like extreme physical violence and you just can't.
You have to think this day and age.
You have to think about your own life too, because it's not like, you know, we think that we are the most important factor in our kids' life.
It's like, it's all on us.
It's all up to us.
But you look back at your own life.
It's not like, I'm only who I am because of my parents and I had nothing to do with it.
It's all on them.
If mom would have breastfed me for another two months, I would have been so much better.
It's nice.
We're like, oh, yeah.
You know, they helped me get out of the house, you know, to a certain point, but then I made my own choices.
I have my own interests on my own person.
It's like, our own kids are going to be that.
It's kind of the ultimate act of narcissism to think that as parents, it's all up to us.
But really, kids have free will too.
And on some level, they're going to do what they're going to do.
I just had kids so that I could quote them saying adorable things that support my political views on Twitter.
I love those tweets.
The more complicated, the better.
My kid came up to me and said, Dad, why is there a Federal Reserve that controls all the monetary systems in our country?
And then he cried, and I held him close.
And then everybody clapped.
Yeah.
My kids are only vaguely aware there's a world outside of YouTube.
So, you will not be getting any of those tweets from me here.
What YouTube streamers do they watch?
Oh, everything that's terrible.
They used to be hooked on the unboxing videos where kids open toys.
And it drove me crazy.
They would watch videos for toys they already owned.
Like, why don't you go and play with this toy I bought you?
So weird.
Yeah, my youngest ones do that.
And then the older they get, then they start watching other kids playing video games they already have.
And it's, I've gotten on them before.
And at some level, it's like, well, I don't want to go out and play football, but like, I'll watch people play football on TV.
So I get that.
But at the same time, like, I don't have a stadium in my house that I can go play with.
Like, you have this game.
You own this game.
Just go play it yourself.
And I feel like a good parent when I force myself or force my kids to play video games now rather than watching other kids.
We've fallen a long way from the days when we got sent outside in the morning and just told to play outside all day.
Yeah.
And I know I noticed Target is now they'll sell like the YouTube, the little kid YouTube streamer, the branded stuff.
Like there's a Ryan, Ryan's toy review or something.
Oh my.
And they'll sell his little toys that he opens or he does a little surprise egg thing and they go surprise.
They sell the surprise eggs and my little toddler is like, oh, you know, Ryan, right?
It's insane.
I actually get sick to my stomach when I look at that.
That kid is just, I mean, he's worth like 20 million.
He makes like 20 million a year playing with toys.
And it's like, apparently, I didn't exploit my kids enough, you know, because it's like, you guys aren't bringing in 20 million a year.
What's going on here?
And the crazy thing is, like, so we've got, you know, all these channels, all these streaming services, all this stuff.
The stuff on YouTube is such low quality.
Like, my kids watch this running commentary with like this guy in the guy fox mask, like the game master or something.
And it's like, okay, these have the production values of a couple college kids like putting together an independent film at the last minute.
And they're making, you know, millions of dollars for this stuff.
And it's like, you have professionally produced like Star Wars movies over here.
You're not interested in it.
And it should inspire me to be better, but really, it just makes me bitter that my own YouTube garbage doesn't make as much money.
I'm not going to try harder.
I'm just going to whine about it.
Yeah, I feel like I should be morally opposed to it, but really, if I'm honest, I'm just jealous that I didn't think of this.
Exactly.
That blippy guy, he is out there just like pointing at trucks.
And like, man, every time I see somebody strike it rich on YouTube, I'm like, well, yeah, I'm a failure.
We should start a blippy support group.
Garbage trucks.
Garbage.
So my son is obsessed with Blippy.
And if you're a parent and you haven't experienced Blippy, then you're lucky.
Yes.
But Blippy dominates YouTube.
It'd be nice.
We're going to try to get him.
I'd like to get him.
I'm curious to know what this guy's real life is like.
Yeah.
So he has a song about garbage trucks.
And my son, who's two, discovered garbage trucks through Blippy and excavators and backhoes.
And so now all week long, he asks me when the garbage truck's coming.
We have just every day we talk about the garbage truck until it all builds up to Monday when we're going to take the trash cans out to the street.
And he'll sit in my lap and he'll stand up like, or he'll kind of like, you know, completely like standing up straight, super energetic.
This in the air.
This in the air and like braveheart.
He's like, it picks up the trash can.
It dumps it.
Yeah.
Running commentary.
And he's talking about it the night before.
This isn't, this isn't while it's happening.
Wow.
In before bed, super energized.
And then so this happened this morning.
Every Tuesday morning, it's almost like it's like the second coming of Christ.
He like hears it coming.
He's like, it's there.
He runs out in the front yard and he's just like jumping all over the place and he's going full Pentecostal.
Wow.
Because the garbage truck is dumping.
And you go, it's dumping it.
Yeah.
That's what he yells.
That's why I don't get people who like they take their three or four year olds to Disney World.
It's like, one, they're not going to remember it.
And two, in the moment, you could have saved thousands of dollars and spent like 25 cents taking through the car wash.
They are so easily amused at that age.
Just go for the free entertainment.
Totally.
Yeah, that age.
Two is a waste.
Don't take your two-year-old to Disneyland.
You're a fool.
Don't take your two-year-old out of the house.
They're basically wild animals at that point.
Yeah.
Well, the whole house is fascinating to them.
They don't need to go anywhere.
Absolutely.
Maybe the playground.
You know, since we're talking all this dad stuff, is there, what do you guys think about playgrounds?
I've always hated them.
Really?
Really?
I like playgrounds.
The only thing I get now is that it's nice to have your kids be distracted, be distracted by them, but I hated them as a kid.
What was the specific?
What was the thought process behind that?
Did they do something to you?
Was there a traumatic injury there, or you were just bored?
I think I just felt like I was like, I felt like I got it.
Like, oh, I get what you're trying to do.
You're trying to tell me how to have fun.
Like, oh, he set up these things and you play on them.
We, the bars, we swing on them.
You're questioning the systemic norms of going down the slide.
What am I used?
Some kind of animal.
It's like when you give a hamster a little wheel and it's just like, oh, I will run on this now.
So were you happy with just big open sections of woods or did you frown on all physical activities?
I grew up near the woods and I love the woods.
But if you found out somebody planted those woods for your enjoyment so you could exercise, you would have hated them.
Yeah, if all the trees were the same.
You're like, man, don't fall for the system, kids.
Exactly.
I was like, I'll punch it.
The man wants us to go on these swings.
I love that you were taking down the establishment at such an early age.
It boded well.
Did you try to tell other kids not to fall for having fun?
Did you act?
No, because now that I have kids, I get it.
I'm like, oh, yeah, go have fun.
Go out there and have fun.
But it's still, they still find like the two-year-old doesn't play on the little playground.
He goes and plays in the big playground where he's climbing super high.
And if he falls, he'll die.
Oh, yeah.
I still have to go over there.
I can't just sit there on my phone like I want to.
I admit there's a real sweet spot.
There's an age where they enjoy the playground, but it's like they're too young, then they're falling off, and they're too old.
My oldest, he just sits under the slide and reads when we go to the park.
And you have to have the chance of death.
Like if you go to a real, you know, modern, safe playground, the kids know they can't get hurt.
They lose interest.
You gotta, the best ones are like that.
They have the old rusty slides with like no sides on them so you could fall and break three or four bones at once.
Like that's where the thrill is.
I just watched a video about a guy who climbed a giant mountain in Yosemite without a harness or anything just because he needed that adrenaline.
I think kids want the same thing when they go to parks.
That's why the first thing they do, they don't go up the ladder.
They go up the slide backwards.
And the sooner they can fall off and hurt themselves, the better.
Yeah.
But all these new parks, all these new playgrounds like have electronic games and stuff.
Oh, wow.
Have you guys seen that?
I have not.
What park are you going to?
I guess I live in a Ritzer.
The Rit Ritzier area.
The one with all the holograms and everything, apparently.
All the new parks that are built, they have solar-powered electronic drums on the playground structures, and they have pianos and little Simon says games and stuff everywhere.
I've never seen that.
I would ask where you live, but I suspect there are armed guards to keep people like me out.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
You have to get by the butler before you can experience that.
Is it just because it doesn't snow here, we can get away with that?
I guess.
I guess.
But I do agree there's something that's more natural about the big rickety play.
We went to a church once that we started going to, and the playground was like the, you know, when you swing.
The original one.
When you do the swing, it's like the whole, the entire structure starts to tip wobbles with it.
And there's splinters everywhere.
And, you know, that's a lot more natural, I think.
So you draw comics.
And I want to say that your style is, it's like, it's like Picasso if he had access to Microsoft.
Yeah, I mean, my drawing is terrible.
The actual inspiration behind my characters is the symbols on the bathroom for men and women.
And just like, I can do that.
You look at that.
You know, that's a man.
That's a woman.
That's as much as I can draw.
And I actually, I do all the drawings in Google Drawings.
And I told myself someday I would learn how to draw and do something better.
But there's so much of a gulf between what actually looks good and what is kind of passable.
You can tell what it is.
I thought I was better off focusing on being bad in the same way every time so it looks like a style rather than teaching myself to actually be good at it.
So yeah, so I'm going to have these bathroom stick figures forever.
But I've got three books out now.
Two of them have these stick figures on them.
They pretty much are all that's on my Instagram feed.
And then I've got a guided journal for kids coming out again that has it in there.
You can sort of tell what stuff is, and it takes me like 10 seconds to make each one.
So it's mass-produced garbage.
It's like the YouTube strategy, but it actually worked for me.
So I'm going to stick with it.
Yeah, well, I mean, we talked about how you get so annoyed with these kids' shows on YouTube.
Well, I'm here.
I'm this guy that I learned how to draw like the hardware.
Oh, did you really?
I draw real comics and stuff.
And you're killing it on the internet.
So I never should have done it.
I should have just stuck with stick figures.
Your mistake was getting good at something.
Never, never try.
That's the Homer Simpson lesson right there.
Because once you do that, you're competing with all the best in the whole world.
Yeah.
So if you just stay.
Yeah.
If you compete on the level of just stick figures, then people, like if you draw a face on something, like, well, that face doesn't look quite right.
I can't laugh at this joke.
If you just don't give them a face at all, they're like, okay, I guess I'm okay with that.
So I just, and I even like, I was so, because I have a website where I post them too.
I was like, I have to let people know that I think I suck so I can just head off that criticism.
So I think I called it unbelievably bad.
Like that was, that was my starting point.
When you start down there, it's a lot easier to lower people's expectations.
And so far it's been working.
So we'll go with it.
That's a great marketing idea.
Someone's like, oh, unbelievably, unbelievably bad comics.
Let's see how home these are.
It's like, oh, what could they even say to me to insult me at that point?
You just take it away from them.
These aren't bad enough.
Well, make them worse.
I could.
I'm sure I could.
My stick figures used to be a little worse.
I figured out now I've been using that free Google drawing program long enough.
I can draw more complex things.
Like this last book had unicorns and mammoths and dinosaurs in it, all that stuff.
And I start to worry.
It's like I'm getting a little too ritzy here.
I'm going to lose my roots.
So I have to go back to the bathroom stick figures sometimes just to keep it real.
You have to go back to the gym where you trained in.
See my original sensei.
Yeah.
Well, I have to, as our family expands too, you always have to add stick figures.
For the first book, like the header on my Twitter profile is all us.
And we're doing the same poses on the cover of my first zombie book where everybody is holding some kind of weapon that's definitely inappropriate for children their age.
And then, you know, we got two pigs now.
And so I, so my latest book, I had to put the pigs on the cover.
People would wonder where they went.
So I'm learning how to draw new animals just as we acquire them and add them to the family.
You have pigs.
We have two pigs.
I'd call them mini pigs, but people freak out when you use the word mini.
They go, there's no such thing as mini pigs.
But, you know, potbelly pigs are mini pigs.
They're not a full-size pig when it's, if you let it, usually you eat them, you know, six months to a year, but if you let it go to three or four years old, it'll weigh 500 pounds.
My, my bigger pig, who's three years old, is probably about 70, and she comes up to 70 pounds, and she comes up to my knees.
And then the other one's just over a year old, and she's a little smaller than that.
So yeah, they're house pigs.
They go in and out through a doggy door.
They sleep in my daughter's beds.
I have not managed to work that tip into a parenting book yet, but I'm sure I will.
Let your kids bond with pigs.
It saves some problems.
Keeps them very warm.
Cuts down on the heating bill.
But are you going to be eating them at any point?
Oh, no.
These are pet pigs.
We live in town.
They're just like potbelly pigs.
They're just for like milk.
That's the meet the Fockers line.
You can milk anything with nipples, but no, they will not be milking these.
They are two girls, though.
So, I've got four daughters and then two female pigs.
Wow.
What made you decide to just get two pigs?
I always liked him.
My dad was a pig farmer when I was a kid.
Then he hurt his back and we moved off the farm.
And, you know, kids early on, they want to be president or they want to be an astronaut.
I wanted to be a pig farmer.
That was my goal in early life.
And I guess I just never really grew up.
And later in life, I found out about mini pigs and I was married and we had built a fence for the dogs.
And I thought, you know what?
There's nothing stopping us from getting this, except I was married.
So there definitely was something stopping us from getting that.
And my wife forbid me from spending money on a pig, but she did not forbid me from getting one for free.
And so I just wanted from stealing.
I had from stealing.
Well, I didn't even have to steal it, although it was practically a steal.
I decided, you know what, I'm going to use my useless internet fame for good for once.
So I reached out to pig breeders and I found one and I said, hey, if I give you social media promotion online, will you give me a free pig?
And they agreed.
They said, if you get us enough likes on Facebook, we'll give you a baby pig.
So I went out and appealed to my followers.
I said, hey, help me endanger my marriage.
Let's do this.
And I have never seen the internet come together so fast.
And a week later, I had my free pig.
And my wife, you know, she cannot say no to a good deal.
So this is an expensive pig for free.
And it's like, I think I could use the same logic.
Like, if I found like a baby rhino that was like, you know, free, I think I could probably take it home if I convinced her it was like a thousand percent off or something.
That's that's the line.
That's amazing because I was listening to this whole thing thinking, I actually always wanted a pot-bellied pig, but I know my wife would never go for that.
Have you?
And the money and the expense, but like, but yeah, if I convinced her that I got an amazing coupon, pig coupon.
Yeah.
She'd be totally on board.
Yeah.
I got an amazing pig group on.
And then she'd be like, oh, buy it.
We saved.
Imagine the amount of money we saved on the thing we were never going to buy.
Have you considered leveraging your Babylon B fame into it?
I mean, you have to find out.
You got it.
Find out if they'll let me.
If any listeners have access to pigs that you think maybe please let us know.
What I really want is a pet possum.
Oh, I always wanted a pet.
Things have some teeth on them.
I get this image.
I get this image of you, James, that you're like in this house five years from now and you have all these pigs.
You have like hundreds of pigs.
They keep showing up in the pig.
And your wife's standing at the door with a suitcase and she's like, it's me or the pigs.
Oh, there was, you know what?
It almost came to that point with pig number two.
So convincing her for pig number one, I couldn't use the same trick again, but there was like a farm down in Kentucky somewhere that got like too many pigs and they just like abandoned the farm and too many pigs turned into like 500 mini pigs and they were all abandoned.
Oh my god.
And these rescue agencies went in there and they like had hundreds of pigs to give away.
I told my wife, I was like, we got to get one of these.
We're going to be saving a pig's life.
It's the right thing to do.
And she's like, you want to go and get a feral mini pig that's never been in human contact and is full grown and bring it into the house.
And I was like, yeah, it's a great idea.
It was not a great idea.
But then when I found another pig we could get as a baby, well, this one wasn't quite free, but it was almost free.
And when compared with like the giant feral pig that would kill us all, the baby pig that was pretty cheap seemed like a good idea.
So that's the key to a happy marriage right there.
Always push the worst alternative and then pull back a little to what seems like the better deal.
That's how you get two pigs.
Yeah.
That's the same marketing strategy from your cone.
It is.
I guess I'm kind of a one-trick pony.
Now I feel terrible about myself.
Unbelievably bad pig or kind of okay pig.
Yeah.
And it turns out she is the better pig so far.
The bigger pig has been in this house long enough.
She's getting smart.
So she's like, you know, like the raptors in Jurassic Park, they never attack the same spot on the electric fence twice.
They go around testing it.
So she's been working her way through the cabinet.
She figured out how first she figured out how to, the ones that swing horizontally, she figured out how to pop them open with their snout.
So we had to put a child lock on that.
Then she figured out how to like grab drawers with her teeth and pull them out.
And she's been working her way through them one by one.
Like I've never gone through and child proofed all the drawers at once.
I pig proof the house just like I child proof it.
You just wait for something to go wrong and then you fix that one particular thing and you pretend like nothing else will go wrong.
And the other day, there's like this giant drawer that's so heavy my kids can't even pull it out.
And she grabbed it with her teeth and pulled it out and ate an entire bag of barbecue chips.
So she's, she's, she's rapidly escalating her break-in skill level.
At some point, she's going to just lock us out of the house and this place is going to belong to her.
So what do you guys feel about what do you guys feel about these people who kind of they consider their pets to be like a child?
You have to not have children to think you're not thinking.
I guess.
Like people that don't have kids and they have two dogs are like, those are my babies.
I have to commit all my time to my two dogs, fur babies.
Yeah, my fur babies.
You know, and I don't doubt the emotional commitment.
I'm sure they feel like that, but I feel like I don't even love my kids as much as some people love their dogs.
Like, oh my gosh, I got to get home.
My heart just fills up when I get home.
And it's like, I bring my kids home and they just scream at me.
Like, why'd you pick us up from daycare?
I was having fun.
Like, man, this is, yeah.
Parenting, there's a whole new level of like psychological warfare going on there at all times.
And, you know, your pet is never like going to grow up and surpass you.
You don't have to worry about that.
Like you're always at the top of the food chain.
I don't think, feel like that's always the case with kids.
There's an added challenge level there.
Well, your dog is never going to have an emotional breakdown because you like took away the iPad.
Yes.
Or whatever.
Like it's always going to worship you.
Like if you take away the iPad, it's going to go, oh boy, thank you for taking away the iPad.
Like it doesn't care.
It worships you no matter what.
That's how it takes.
And I sound like a good parent on the internet because, you know, you don't tweet about the crying and the temper tangent so much unless they're funny.
Like if they're just sad and demoralizing, you don't put them on there.
But like in public, I look like a terrible parent because, you know, I've got four kids and I would say they cry an above average amount.
I haven't taken a poll.
I've done no statistical analysis here, but it seems like they're at all times, at least one of them is crying.
And people always say, you know, they're like, oh, my daughter has me wrapped all the way around her finger.
Like my kids have cried so much, it has lost all emotional impact on me.
And so I'll be out in public and one of them will just be bawling.
And so the other people are like, oh, aren't you going to comforter?
It's like, no, we are so over this.
Socks are not worth crying about.
I'm just moving on with my day.
I look heartless, but it's effective.
Yeah, I have an issue with mocking my children too much when they cry.
Cry some more, baby.
Here we go.
Here we go.
That's good.
More drama, more drama.
Bend over me.
My go-to move.
Make a fist.
I tell them, go cry somewhere else, which if somebody saw me do that on a YouTube video, it would be the end of my career.
But like here in the privacy of my own home, it's like, no, it's effective.
Go cry upstairs.
Whatever you're doing, it's not going to change my mind.
And when you're done crying, come back here and be a person.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
But good thing is there's three other kids.
So out of the four of them, I'm sure at least one of them will turn out right.
That's why, you know, people who have only children, man, that's a lot of pressure.
You got to get that one kid right.
There's no do-overs there.
I couldn't do that.
No, yeah, I think that's a bad idea.
People that have only one kid, my advice, you need, because they start helping each other out and taking care of each other.
Having just one kid, they focus on you because they got nobody else to play.
And then you always got to have a friend over and you have to be nicer to the friend than you are to your own kid.
You got to clean up the house.
Yeah, a lot of pressure.
And if you can only have one kid, that's fine.
I understand.
But don't think that one kid is easier than two.
I think two and up is easier.
Yeah, exactly.
Though I do think it got real at four for us.
I was like, okay, now we're fully outnumbered.
And they're spread out from like teen to two.
Oh, wow.
You know, I got a 13-year-old to a two-year-old.
And so they're going through all different levels of drama.
Wow.
You've got the godfather mode there.
You know, the godfather three.
Just when you thought you were out, they pulled you back in.
So we got our youngest is four now.
They're all potty trained and out of diapers.
When we go out in public, we don't have to have a diaper bag.
I told my wife, it's like, I can't go back.
Like, when you're done with, like, for a while, we always had like two kids in diapers and changing diapers was like breathing.
It was no big deal.
But now that it's done, it's like, I can't go back.
I cannot start changing diapers again.
And when I, and when I have like one of my nieces or nephews uses diaper changes together, they're like, I don't know what to do.
Don't look at me.
I've never done this before.
Yeah, I fantasized about the day that I can take our car seats and all our diaper materials and things out into a field and just beat them with a crowbar and turn them.
And that will be the end of it.
I cannot wait.
They will be eaten by feral pigs.
Did you go the minivan route too, or did you go for the SUV?
We got the fake, it's like basically a minivan body, but it just has an SUV front to make people think we're ah, I gotcha.
And sporty.
That's the occasion.
I went all in.
I embraced my uncoolness.
And I had to justify it too.
So my first book about surviving the zombie apocalypse, I wrote an entire chapter about how a minivan is the ultimate vehicle for defeating zombies.
And I almost convinced myself to believe that.
So you are on the opposite side.
You are the SUV enemy.
I actually, I actually kind of, because I had a minivan before I had kids when I was in a band and I was a youth, a youth pastor, kind of.
I was a youth group leader, like a young one.
But I was always hauling kids around and then equipment.
And I love my minivan.
You don't realize how much they can haul when you take it out.
Like I had a seven-foot taxidermy bear I gave as a prank gift to my brother at his wedding.
It was dressed in a tuxedo, but like to get that thing there, minivan, man, you could, you just take out the seats, you lay it down, you can stick literally anything in the back of a minivan.
Like they could, you could transport like a Saturn V rocket back there.
There's room.
When I had my minivan, I worked at a sign shop and I professionally did lettering for vehicles, vinyl lettering.
And so I made those letters for people that, you know, see, someone has like a Trans Am and then in, like old English letters, it says like Trans Am across the windshield or whatever you know, whatever cool their car is, whatever classy things, thatever cool thing yeah, like gangster cars.
So I put, I put Minivan in like chrome old English letters across the windshield of my minivan.
That is very good respect.
I gotta say I admire that.
You were the.
You were the alpha of the minivan world, exactly.
Well now, all the seats actually fold into the floor and I remember when, growing up, my dad we would, you know, go play hockey at the park or whatever.
When you got to take them all in, he'd take them all out, lug them into the garage, throw in all the hockey nuts and hockey gear so heavy yeah, ours are.
So that was ours are half and half the back seats fold down, but the middle ones, like I think one of the car companies had the folding middle trademark so none of the other car companies can do it.
So you get, you still got to pick them up and, like I try to work out as much as I can, I always think I'm, you know, getting stronger doing all these push-ups and pull-ups and then I go and pick up one of those stupid captain seats like nope, not any stronger, I've made zero progress.
Yeah yeah, it's just because it's bulky and awkward.
It's the ultimate guy line.
It's not heavy, it's just awkward.
Yeah, all right.
Well uh, if people want to follow you, mr. James, where should they do that?
You can find me on Twitter at exploding Unicorn, without the e.
I'm on Facebook.
Just search for Exploding Unicorn on there as well.
On YouTube, you can look for James Breakwell.
Or if you want to find my latest book, you can go to Amazon or your retailer of choice and type in James Breakwell, or search for my latest book, how to save your child from ostrich attacks, accidental time travel and anything else that might happen on an average Tuesday.
It will probably protect you on other days of the week as well, but I have not tested those days, so don't, don't try it out just yet.
Beautiful, we didn't even get into the time travel.
I guess I'll have to be next time.
Next time yeah, all right.
Well, thank you, mr. Breakwell.
Thank you for having me, until next time.
What a pleasant interview with James Breakwell.
His name should be James Chatwell, because we enjoyed chatting with him.
You know, pleasant is the exact word that I would use, Ethan.
Is it?
Well, a lot of times we interview people that are involved in very serious things, or like I mentioned, are a lot smarter than us.
And James might be smarter than us.
Yeah, but he didn't wear it on his sleeve.
The space, he was able, he condescended to our level.
You know, he was able to come down and say, okay, it was light.
It was very light compared to many of ours.
Yeah, it was nice.
It was nice to just goof off and be stupid.
We don't have to worry about politics or.
We've got to talk a lot about pigs, which I always like talking about pigs.
Yeah.
Speaking of pigs, some people sent us some hate mail, and we're going to read it now.
All right.
A good old hate mail.
We got some simple hate mail here.
All right.
This is from someone.
And she says, stop sending me your satirical junk.
In quotes.
And that's in quotes.
I like the scare quotes.
It's like we called it satirical.
It is weird, yeah, that it's in quotes that satirical junk is in quotes.
Maybe it'd be quote, yeah.
Maybe she meant to quote just satirical.
Because it'd be like if she said, stop sending me air and then quote unquote garbage.
It's like, who quoted it?
It was garbage and why?
Yeah.
It is confusing.
Well, it's almost as if we labeled our own site satirical junk.
And it's like Babylon B, satirical junk you can trust.
And she's like, I don't like this satirical junk.
Well, we're sorry.
Sorry.
Stop sending it to you.
Did we stop?
Yeah.
We're going to go to some positive stuff.
I like people that don't click on subscribe.
They send an email.
It's like, take me off this list right now.
They have to have that human interaction.
Those old people always respond and say, unsubscribe.
They imagine somebody typed that up for them and sit send that morning.
Why do you keep sending this to me?
Who are you?
Are you in my house?
They're just evil people that just type things to them all day.
All right, let's do some positive stuff.
Here's some love mail.
Love mail.
Let's do some love mail.
This is an Apple podcast review.
This is a very good one.
Do you want to read this one, Ethan?
All right.
I don't know what his voice sounds like.
That's okay.
This is a great review we just got.
He says, thank you guys.
Wait, I think it's a he, yeah, J.B. Garcia.
Thank you, guys.
I've come out of a very dark and impersonal world of sin and darkness.
When I was genuinely converted, I became a dark and impersonal Christian, and it was so horrible.
I didn't even really want to be a Christian because of what I was turning it into.
But after hearing this podcast, it has totally changed my view on everything.
I can be a Christian and have a sense of humor and enjoy movies and humor, and being a Christian can be a joy.
Thank God.
Three exclamation points.
Keep up the awesome work, guys.
That makes me very happy.
Yeah, that's warming.
Warming.
Just a general warmth feeling.
Is there any particular body part?
Murphy.
Usually he says heart warming, so I don't really.
Murphy sounds like mercy with a lisp.
Head warming.
Just my general chest and belly area.
Just warmed.
Yeah.
Jolly belly warming.
Yeah.
So that is exactly what I wanted this podcast to be when we talked about doing a podcast.
Like we said, we have tried different formats.
We tried doing satirical things, making it real funny, and we tried other stuff.
But just chill out, everybody.
That's what we want.
You know, we're Christians and we talk about Christian things.
We talk about non-Christian things.
And it's okay to laugh.
Yeah, just an environment where it's just not weird to be bringing up your faith in the middle of a conversation.
Yeah.
I know that before I became part of the Babylon Bee, I knew I really wanted just like, I wanted to meet the guys behind this.
I just wanted to, I would love to sit in a conversation.
When I came on, I was very excited to make a podcast and be part of that.
So all these podcast reviews give us warm fuzzies.
I think there is a concept like you, before you're a Christian, you're having a lot of fun and stuff, and then you become a Christian, and God's like, well, time to stop all the fun.
That's true.
Looks like the party's over, you know, that kind of thing.
And I think what's cool about becoming a Christian is that God makes you into the person that he always wanted you to be.
You know, now you're enjoying things to his glory.
You know, he redeems a lot of those things.
Yeah, and you're kind of standing back from everything.
And you can kind of have a sense of humor about it because you have an overall picture of where things are headed.
You're not sitting there thinking, I have to, you know, the president and the politics.
I know, can you imagine being like a nihilistic atheist during the Trump administration?
I mean, that's why those people are so freaking out about it because it's their everything.
Yeah.
Or if you're their only hope.
If your goal is to create a utopia on this earth into like then every single thing that doesn't go towards that, you're freaking out about it.
You can't laugh about it.
Heaven and hell are constantly at war on the earth, like in this reality.
And you have no idea who will win.
Yeah.
It's possible that everything ends in disaster.
Yeah.
If you don't believe in God and Christ.
Yeah.
So.
And the great white throne judgment.
The great white throne.
Yes.
Okay.
I need to go use the great white throne after this conversation.
Oh my gosh.
That's going to get cut.
And here we go.
Let's.
We're going to cut things off and we're going to go into our subscriber portion.
So if you want to get full-length ad-free podcasts, go to BabylonB.com slash plans and you sign up at any level and you can get access to a full gigantic podcast.
So much content you won't even know what to do with yourself.
You're going to be shiny.
You can drive into downtown LA for traffic and you still have content left.
Well, maybe not.
I don't know.
Depending on where you're going from.
You can always listen to it again or listen to it on 0.5 speed.
Yeah, listen to it super slow.
Like you have to listen to Ben Shapiro to understand him.
That same speed.
And anyway, so subscribe to get the full thing.
Even if you don't, please drop us a review on iTunes.
Share us with a friend.
Tell them how the Babylon Bee podcast has changed your life.
And warmed you.
And body warmed you.
It's a bodywarming cast.
All feedback and love mail.
Go to podcast at BabylonB.com.
Yeah.
You can even try to send questions and stuff.
Send anything to podcast at BabylonB.com.
And I think we're still looking for Christmas stories.
Yeah, we need Christmas stories.
Funny ones, scary ones, weird ones.
Any Christmas thoughts or stories or whatever you have?
Send it to podcast tobylonb.com.
We're going to have a heartwarming time by the fire.
If you want to keep up with Ethan, go to on Twitter.
You can go check him out at Axe Cop.
And Kyle is at the easy to read handle at the underscore Kyle.
I think we should do that in unison this time.
The underscore Kyle Kyle Kyleman.
See you guys.
Yes.
We'll see you next time.
See you guys next time.
Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dylan for paying the bills.
Adam Ford for creating their job.
The other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines.