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Time English (United States) Language 2 Action
00:00
[HANK] Did you then do high school?
00:01
[BRENNAN] No. [HANK] Ever?
00:02
[BRENNAN] Nope.
00:03
[HANK] You just had four years. That doesn't.
00:05
The math isn't mathing. [BRENNAN] This is going to sound really weird.
00:08
I started attending college when I was 14 years old.
00:11
[HANK] I'm Hank Green, and I desperately want to learn how people have learned.
00:16
And so, I'm talking to people about that.
00:19
And today I'm talking to comedian,
00:20
writer, performer, and all around great guy, my friend Brennan Lee Mulligan.
00:25
We're talking about his life, his career and, his college journey.
00:31
So, I want to talk about your, like, how your education journey and stuff. Are you-
00:35
But are you working on anything right now?
00:37
[BRENNAN] Uh, so, always more
00:40
awesome seasons of Dimension 20, Junior Year's coming out right now.
00:44
We've got a few seasons in the can for that.
00:45
[HANK] I forgot to add to your list
00:47
Professional Dungeons and Dragons player.
00:49
Which is a real thing
00:50
that is a job [BRENNAN] Yeah.
00:52
[HANK] some very few people have.
00:53
[BRENNAN] Very few people have it. Believe me, we wake up in a sense of stunned
00:57
and bewildered gratitude every day. (Hank chuckles)
01:01
but, Dimension 20, Dropout, Make Some Noise.
01:05
The podcast World's Beyond Numbers is going great.
01:08
Bunch of fun projects.
01:10
And the- and the greatest project of all my wonderful family with my wife,
01:13
Isabella Roland, who we're going on tour with our improv show Bigger! this spring.
01:18
And we also welcomed a new baby into the world whose name and face we are sitting on until such
01:25
time as she can speak in English and say that she's cool with us sharing that.
01:28
[HANK] Well, I gotta say, I do not.
01:31
I have a seven year old. I still don't trust him to be,
01:33
He can speak in English, but I'm not trusting him.
01:35
[BRENNAN] You're like.
01:36
[HANK] He's like, I want a million subscribers.
01:38
And I'm like, no!
01:39
[BRENNAN] I had this conversation where I was like,
01:42
I was like, listen,
01:42
there are pros and cons to accumulating a wide viewership.
01:49
A lot of the pros require you to have done it
01:52
through some professional activity, not getting them because of your dad.
01:57
[HANK] Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [BRENNAN] That kind of just brings the negatives
02:00
and very few of the positives. [HANK] Exactly. Yeah.
02:02
So you have always been a storyteller.
02:05
You've always been-- You create in your mind and you share that with the world,
02:09
do you have an idea of when that began?
02:11
[BRENNAN] Pre memory. (Hank laughs)
02:15
My mom and dad are very wont to remind me. My dad always reminds me that I corrected
02:21
his bedtime stories I like noted him. [HANK] Oh yeah, Warren does that.
02:24
[BRENNAN] Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
02:25
Where it's like it's like hey like he's like.
02:28
And then there was a purple wizard
02:29
who rode a tiger, and I'd be like, he rode a lion.
02:32
Like noting, you know.
02:33
[HANK] Yeah, I'm like, you tell the story then, dude.
02:35
Like, I don't need to, do I need to be here?
02:37
I don't know.
02:38
[BRENNAN] You seem to have such a clear grasp of how these events unfolded.
02:42
and then my mom, I think that, like, the thing I credit
02:46
as, like, an early, like, oh, this is going to be what this is.
02:49
[HANK] Yeah. [BRENNAN] Is my mom, who was a comic book writer.
02:52
[HANK] Oh.
02:53
[BRENNAN] wrote Starstruck, the author, iconic book SciFi author Elaine Lee,
02:59
sat down at an old Macintosh computer back in the early 90s.
03:03
And when I would tell stories, she would type them.
03:06
She was like I was dictating stories to her.
03:08
And even though that is like the foggiest edge of memory
03:11
for me, [HANK] Sure.
03:13
[BRENNAN] I know the impact that having,
03:16
your mom, having a grown up go
03:19
Actually, this is very important.
03:20
The story about a tiger mouse and the story about how
03:23
you should be allowed to walk with your socks and no shoes outside.
03:26
And we're going to write this down.
03:29
And that was a very-- [HANK] It sounds like a true story
03:30
that you remember, or at least apocryphally
03:32
has been told. [BRENNAN] Yes.
03:34
[HANK] Yeah. Is there is there a,
03:36
similar situation with regards to gaming? Because that is always a thing as well.
03:40
[BRENNAN] That started when I was ten.
03:42
gaming started when I was ten years old.
03:45
once again, we have to shout out, noted sci fi author Elaine Lee.
03:49
(Hank chuckles) My mom, who, I was--
03:53
This may not be a surprise for a kid
03:54
that memorized a lot of animal facts -- I was horrendously bullied in school,
03:59
you know, put into trash cans and kicked around the playground.
04:03
Bad, bad luck, bad time.
04:06
and I was taken
04:07
out of school, so I had a my education was,
04:11
I went to a Waldorf school for preschool.
04:13
[HANK] Okay [BRENNAN] K through four.
04:16
And by the end of fourth grade, the bullying was bad enough
04:18
that I, was taken out of school, and I homeschooled for four years.
04:21
[HANK] Wow. [BRENNAN] Very
04:23
heroic effort on my mom and pops part.
04:26
Big lift from them that they were as artists and freelancers,
04:29
able to kind of educate us and still be working.
04:33
And, uh, during that time,
04:38
I got put in karate classes and I for self-confidence
04:42
and self-defense, and my mom had me join a DnD group for, like, socializing.
04:47
She put up a notice in October Country, this local little game store.
04:50
[HANK] I have heard about something called the Wayfinder Experience.
04:53
Did that come soon after that?
04:54
[BRENNAN] That was the same year. Or shortly thereafter. When I was 11 years old,
04:58
I started attending this LARP camp nearby.
05:02
[HANK] And you can't get bullied at LARP camp.
05:04
[BRENNAN] You cannot get bullied-- [HANK] Cause everybody's
05:07
everybody's been through it.
05:08
[BRENNAN] Well, that's the thing, is you're resetting.
05:10
You've basically been sorted by society.
05:13
And you go, okay, we're here at the Island of Misfit Toys.
05:16
I guess we get to start over.
05:18
[HANK] Okay, so LARP is live action roleplaying.
05:20
So it's like you are you are playing a game pretending to be
05:24
in another world, universe, have different, different rules of some kind.
05:29
[BRENNAN] There's, I believe there's a documentary premiering this year about Wayfinder
05:32
called We Could Be Heroes.
05:33
That's all about the camp and everything like that.
05:35
And yeah, it's it's it's a it was an incredible, artistic,
05:40
welcoming, passionate, nerdy community that also just had all the great stuff