thank you - sincere post from branson

I’ve always had to ask myself “how sincere do I want to be?” when I talk about e1. This has worked as a pretty good strategy most of the time. But now I’m looking at how we have hit 300 episodes, and I think I would like to make a remark. Sort of how on your 30th birthday you realize that you won’t have another notable birthday for ten years, I look at 300 episodes and I think, man, when’s the next one that matters? 500? That’s like three years away. I’m not waiting for that.

I also don’t want to just tell my wife Alana, Charles, Andrew, Joel, all my friends and my family that I love them. It’s true, but it doesn’t leave a lot for you guys to read at home. I was trying to think of what I want to say, what I want to tell you guys. I give a lot of advice, professionally. Outside of E1, I work as a job coach for a non-profit. The one thing I have learned from that job is to say as little as possible to get your point across. Nothing muddies the water like excess words, kind of like this sentence here. This is my advice: Start a creative project with your friends. This is my second piece of advice: If you’re going to start something, you might as well do it right.

We started E1 as a bit. Andrew and I would play PUBG together and bullshit. All we would do is riff. Alana has always told me, in astonishment, that she is amazed about how little I know about what is going on in my friend’s lives sometimes. I don’t know if that’s a personality trait or a personality flaw, but when it came to who I was friends with, I gravitated towards deeply unserious people. I want to riff, I want to goof off, I want to talk about Osama Bin Laden in the post trying to drop step Karl Malone. When Andrew and I started discussing what the podcast would be like, I already had a two-year-old word document full of ideas, but the only thing for sure that I knew was that I didn’t want to just talk. I wanted to put smidge more effort into it, and I loved Comedy Bang Bang, so I wanted to go character based. Neither of us had done improv before or taken any classes on it, but it was easy.

Andrew was effortlessly funny, and I was able to brazen and loud and dumb and people seemed to like it. Andrew has this ability move sideways on a joke. I always go for the most obvious joke; Andrew has this ability to sort of predict what the most obvious joke is and then make a joke making fun of that joke without every saying the obvious joke. He’s effortless and natural. He is a deeply caring and deliberate man with a huge soul.

I was living with Joel and Charles at the time. I met both in college. Charles, I met freshman year in a creative writing class. I don’t remember how or why we decided to start hanging out. I just know we got wasted one night. He’s been the exact same the entire time I’ve known him. I’ve never met a more hard-working, stable, creative, and joyful person. He is a treat to be around and a true professional.

I met Joel, formally at least, in my senior year of college. My first senior year of college. We had been at the same parties and knew some of the same people. It was a literature class and we both talked in it too much. Joel was one of the first guys to really question me, engage with me in a way where he wouldn’t just let me do bits all the time. Of course, this was a bit sometimes, so he kept me on my toes. I owe a lot to Joel personally, and so does E1. Joel is kind, passionate and one of the best friends you could ever hope for. He has come through for me countless times. Thank you for inviting me to the Chicago Table.

Lastly, I want to thank my wife, Alana. I’ve stolen so many bits from her. I’ve never had a bigger supporter in my life than her. During the first E1 live show, she was going around talking to everyone, giving them free t-shirts, introducing people to me, just generally acting like the First Lady. She has heard some of the most disgusting one-sided conversations from the other room while I’ve been recording. She is the most capable, intelligent, quick, and charming woman I have ever met, and I’ll forever be grateful for her bad taste in men.

I never thought E1 would be anything. I never had the expectation that we could get any sort of financial stability from this. I think that’s the only smart way to enter media. As a business, it’s stupid. It’s mean and cynical and near impossible. We recorded it for about two months before releasing the first episode. We had a backlog we were proud of. I remember texting Alana from the Lake of the Ozarks telling her I was going to release a podcast and feeling like the biggest goober in the world. We released it to mild applause. Couple months later, we made a patreon. Years passed. We caught the tail end of the podcast window, got Charles into the regular rotation, got the Felix bump, the Covid bump, the Joe Biden bump, and suddenly in a flash it’s six years or whatever and you have to write a post summing it all up that ends up being longer than you expected and full of yourself drinking your own bathwater.

I love E1. I don’t know what my life would look like if I didn’t have E1. Creatively, emotionally, financially – I truly don’t know where my life would be without it. It helped me get a wife. That’s nuts. I think I’m just lucky, but if I’m not lucky, then that means I can give some advice.

1. You don’t age out of doing creative projects. I know work is tough, I know you are tired, but don’t stop writing. Don’t stop telling jokes. Don’t stop painting. People will tell you that it doesn’t go away, but it does. It really does.

2. Whatever you make, make it good. Don’t make an imitation of anything and don’t make anything for engagement. If you want clicks, make a twitter account where you post gifs of animals. You decide what the metric for good art is. Have a vision, don’t be lazy.

3. If you do something collaboratively with people that you care about the most important thing is joy. If everyone’s happy, everyone’s fair, and everyone’s kind, it will be reflected in what you make.

Lastly, I want to thank you all. We’re completely dependent on you guys and I want to thank you for supporting us. Thank you for supporting us through all the episodes, from the storyline arcs to the abstract concepts to the episodes where I got too high and phoned it in. Fuck the fans was always a bit.

Thank you for letting us get away with 300 episodes of E1. E1 Forever

- Branson