- Could you live alone for 30 years? - Let's talk about that.
♪ (theme music) ♪
- Good Mythical Morning! - ♪ (Everybody needs a little time away) ♪
♪ (I heard her say from each other) ♪
- It's true. It's not just a very catchy… - (whispered) Nice!
- …Chicago song, which I am downloading - (whispered) That was so nice.
immediately after that. And it's gonna be in your brain -- if you know the song --
the rest of the day. You're welcome. If not, you should look into it. It's a
- great song. But it's wise. - (exhales) Wow.
- Everybody does need a little alone time. - Yeah.
- I mean, we just spent… - A few weeks.
- Vacationing apart. And now our - Apart.
- relationship is healthier because of it. - You think so?
Our relationship with the Mythical Beasts is healthier because of the hiatus.
I believe it. I believe it. But there's some people, as it turns out, who need
a little bit more than "a little time away." They need decades away.
- Maybe 30 years. - I'm talkin' 'bout hermits, y'all.
Okay. We've got some insane hermit stories for you today, and we have a
special little surprise packed into the middle of that hermit sandwich.
- Stay tuned for that! - (laughing)
Lemme start by telling you about Christopher Thomas Knight,
- A.K.A. the North Pond Hermit. - ♪ (Why don't you tell me about) ♪
- ♪ (Christopher Knight) ♪ - Are you gonna do Chicago the whole time?
- ♪ (I'm sure it will be all right) ♪ - Now, I say that in a really sensational
voice, but it's actually kind of a boring story when you think about it, because...
- Bore me! - back when he was 20 years old in 1986,
right after Chernobyl happened, he went off into the woods in central Maine.
Not because of Chernobyl. He just uses Chernobyl as a way of remembering when it
- was. He has no reason why he went away. - Okay.
He just went.
- Hey, hermits need not reasons. - And he stayed there for 27 years!
He didn't tell his family where he was going. He made no contact with anybody
the entire time, except one hiker who happened to go by his campsite, and
apparently he said, "Hi." That's it.
- 27 years, he says, "Hi." - 27 years, "Hi."
That's it. For 27 years. Now, before 1986, this guy had never been camping. Ever.
This is like your first tattoo being full-body leopard spots.
- (laughing) - he went full, headlong into this right
- into this experience. - By the way, I'm sure that's been done,
too, but we should save that for another episode.
He never lit a fire, for fear of being found. He never went away from the camp
- except during the nighttime. - Dude, we went camping that one time --
and it wasn't the first time we'd ever been camping -- and they wouldn't let
us start a fire. And we were immediately like, "Well, we should just leave."
Yeah, he's like, "27 years I could do that." No campfire! The best part of
camping. He didn't even get that. But how did he live?
- Poor guy. - If he doesn't have a fire, if he's not
doing anything except saying "hi" to one person in 30 years...
- (laughing) - He stole stuff. A lot of stuff.
- Oh, really? - 40 robberies a year. Over 1000
robberies over the years that he was out there.
- Oh, wow. - He would go to homes, schools, summer
camps, and he would get all his supplies, including his underoos. He would steal...
- Dude would steal underwears? - Yeah, probably dirty ones.
Just off of the floor. That's why you should never put your dirty underwear on
the floor. You always put it in the hamper, because a crazy hermit might
- come and be like, "Oh, free underoos!" - "Scoop it up! Pull it up!"
- Don't do that. He also stole… - I picture him wearing the underwear
- outside of his clothes, like… - Yeah, I'm sure that's what he did.
All hermits do that. It's called the exo-underwear-skeleton.
- (laughing) No, it's not. - No, it's not.
- "No, it's not." - He even stole a 10-year-old's
- Halloween candy stash. - (laughing)
I don't know how they knew that he did that, but...
- This dude has no moral compass. - It was not a video for a Jimmy Kimmel
thing. It was actually just a legitimate -- he just stole the candy from [the kid.]
- Did he have an actual compass? - He obviously wasn't out there forever.
He was caught. What did he do? Well, there was a guy, a game warden named Terry
Hughes, who made it his life mission to catch the North Pond Hermit. And so
- what he did… - This sounds like a movie.
He would be played by, like, that guy from Avatar (gruff voice) "Who looks
- like this!" - The general.
"Hey, man! I've been huntin' for you for 27 years."
(gruff voice) He set up a camera at Pine Tree Summer Camp, because
Christopher had been known to go in there and steal things. And he put a motion
sensor behind the ice machine, because, "I figure after a while this hermit's
- gonna need some ice." - "I put underwear's all over the floor."
"I lured him in with dirty underwear right to the ice machine."
- (Link and crew offscreen laughing) - So then...
- And it worked? - …sure enough, on April 3rd, 2013,
at 1:00 AM, the silent alarm goes off. And he goes up there and he finds the
North Pond hermit in the kitchen, snooping around. He has a gun -- not the hermit,
but the general -- and he holds him at gunpoint until the authorities show up.
- They end up catching the dude… - You called him the general.
- …arresting him, (laughing) - (laughing) He's not a general.
Only seven months in prison! Seven months in prison, which he said did more
damage to him than the 30 years that he spent in the wilderness, and now he's out
and he's on probation. And I'm assuming that one of the conditions of probation
- is no camping. - Right.
- And underwear on the inside. - (laughing)
Wink, wink did the judge. (laughing) I hope the judge didn't wink, wink.
- Mm-mm. He didn't. - All right. I have another super
sensational hermit story, but first, it's time to get to the meat in the hermit
sandwich: a little new surprise that we worked up.
It's time for "It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times."
Okay, here's how it works. One of us -- and it's gonna be you, 'cause we're going
- alphabetical -- has to do something - Yes.
that is the best and the worst, good and bad...
- (unison) At the same time. - …and then make a decision if you'd
- ever do it again. Link, - Okay.
Pick a card. Any card.
Rhett, I'm gonna pick this card. This one card.
- "Get a massage while being fed sardines." - Okay.
♪ (rock music) ♪
All right, we've got this new spot to do stuff like this.
- Whoa, you took your shirt and your - (laughing)
- glasses off. - I'm getting a massage.
Okay, let's bring in the masseuse.
(crew laughing offscreen)
- Chase is the masseuse? - Chase is the masseuse.
Did you think we were gonna get an actual masseuse?
- Like a Swedish masseuse. - I will be feeding Link the sardines.
- Link, again… - A massage from Chase is not under
- the "best" category. - No, no. Chase is good at a lot of things.
- He owns a chinchilla. - Period.
- (Chase laughing) - Okay, listen. I'm gonna be feeding
you these whole sardines while you get this wonderful massage.
I'm thinking the massage is the good part, and the sardines are the bad part.
- (laughing) - The best of times, and the worst of
times, and you're gonna tell us whether or not you'd ever do this again.
Okay, you can start the massage whenever you want to, Masseuse Chase.
Something just dripped. Was that off of you, Chase?
He's got lotion. He dripped some lotion on you.
- (through laughter) You're kidding me? - No, he's not a profesional.
- He just owns a chinchilla. - Ooh. Ooh.
- Ugh! - (crew laughing offscreen)
- Ooh! I bit it! - (Rhett) Bite it!
Man. It's just so awkward that, like, Chase works for me.
- (muffled) But not as a masseuse. - Think of him just like -- you're at
a resort. You're just [at a] resort… No, you're at the mall!
You're at the mall, and one of those guys stopped you and said...
Don't hold back, Chase. I need this.
(broken voice as Chase is hitting his back) Okay. I don't wanna eat this
- [inaudible] sardine. - Oh, you just… come on, man.
I don't wanna use my hands, 'cause I gotta be limp.
- (Chase and Link laughing) - Oh my goodness, this is awkward.
- I don't wanna eat any more of this. - That's part of the experience.
- I don't want any more! - (crew offscreen laughing)
- Okay. - I got some -- ooh!
(Rhett) He's really working the elbows now.
Oh. Oh, gosh! A little higher!
- Okay. Oh, there you go. Oh… - Okay, Link. Have you gathered
- enough information about this… - (Link) OoooooOOOHH!
- (Link) Good gosh! - …experience to gauge..
- (Chase laughing) - …to gauge whether or not you would
- do it again? - Yeah, I'd do it again.
- (Rhett and crew offscreen laughing) - All right! This has been...
It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times.
♪ (rock music) ♪
- All right. - Oh, man.
- How you feel? - Good. I've been chipmunkin' this stuff,
- though, I'm… (chewing) - (laughing)
- I still hav to get it down. - Oh. Well, just proceed.
(hits table) (loud chewing)
Oh, gosh! There's some noises being made.
Mm. Very oily.
- My back. And the sardines, like I said. - Oh.
All right, got another hermit story for ya, and really great breath for this part.
(inhales) Oh, wow. It's like a cat got out of a dumpster.
(laughing) And crawled into my mouth.
1974, during the Vietnam War, Ho Van Thanh.
His home -- this is kinda sad, to start off with -- his home was destroyed by
a bomb that also killed his wife and two of his sons. This is during the
Vietnam War. Well, he immediately just grabs his other son and runs into the
jungle. Yeah, which totally makes sense, - Gets outta dodge.
- right? Not necessarily a hermit, except - Mhm.
- that he stayed there for 40 years. - In the woods.
40 years in the woods without contact with anyone except the son.
Now, he was 42 years old when he went in. So his son, who was 2 at the time,
grew up to be a 42-year-old in complete isolation. They were even isolated from
the ground, for the most part. He built a...
- They were flying? - No, he couldn't fly. He built a
treehouse, 16-foot off the ground. They fashioned loin cloths out of
- tree bark. - They went all in. They went all in.
He had pants, but he folded his pants up neatly in the corner of the treehouse,
and they stayed there for 40 years. He used bomb shrapnel to make knives
and axes,and he cultivated tobacco, like he and his son smoked tobacco
- and just lived out there for 40 years - Could be worse.
until locals -- I say locals, but there were kind of venturing out farther to
get firewood -- they come back with a report of two "junglemen"
- living out in the forest. - "We found some junglemen."
Of course, it's Ho Van Thanh and his son, living in their treehouse.
And they sent the authorities out there. The authorities bring 'em in,
and it turns out that he spoke a few words, but (stammering)
His communication had broken down severely.
- The dad. - The dad. But the son didn't know
anything, except for just a couple of words. over the course of their 40-year
isolation, they stopped speaking, even to each other.
- This is a little sad, at this point. - No, but they were thriving out there...
- But they were communicating. - …smoking cigarettes.
They were communicating. (grunting) (inhaling)
Yes, with hand signals, they communicated. And so that's how
they would communicate when they were brought back into civilization.
They were given 1900 dollars to build a house, which they built.
Oh, you can build quite a house for that.
Well, they built a nice house. Here's a picture of him sweeping -- the son --
- sweeping out in from of it. - And are they now speaking to each other?
They're starting to speak a little bit more, and the son is learning to listen
- to music on his cellular telephone. - That is a tough thing to learn how to do.
- (both laughing) - You know, lemme teach you how to do this.
But I can totally relate. When I worked for my dad for a summer -- he whisked
- me away and we built a treehouse -- - (laughing)
no, we would lay tile and paint houses. But my dad got into this...
- Pretty much the same. - rhythm of not speaking to me.
He would grunt and use hand signals. And it was extremely frustrating.
And then I found that sometimes, I'll do that with the kids.
- You that with me. All the time. - Yeah, if I want you to pick up something…
- (grunting) - (lauhging)
- I don't grunt like a caveman. - (grunting)
But I'm more like (stammering)
You sound like the Swiss chef. (impersonating the chef)
So I believe this would be my life
if I went to a treehouse. I would come back doing hand signals with one son.
Well, you outta take Lando to the woods and see how it turns out.
And when he comes back, I'll teach him how to listen to music on a cell phone.
- (both laughing) - But yeah, they're adapting back into
society. Good for them! The junglemen, coming back strong, man.
Are you a hermit? Uh, that watches Good Mythical Morning?
- (laughing) - If so...
- Leave a hand signal dan below. - Please, yes.
Thanks for hand signaling and liking this video.
- Well, it is a hand signal. - Yeah.
You know what time it is.
- I'm Riley. - I'm [Aubrey].
- It's time to spin The… - (unison) Wheel of Mythicality!
We're on Snapchat. Our account is called realrhettlink. Real. Rhett. Link.
It's real. We're Rhett. And Link. Snapchat. Do it.
Follow that. Click through to Good Mythical More. Rhett's got an amazing
story of an amazing encounter while being a hermit on vacation.
- I got a vacation story, too! - "Soccer moms!"
- (southern accent) Laureen. - Hey, Joanne.
- (whispering) Did you hear about Marlene? - Marlene?
She got a new… minivan. It holds 14 people. 16 babies.
- Well, that's a maxi-van. - Hoo hoo hoo!
- You know what I'm sayin'? - It's got a built in cracker machine, too.
- It builds crackers? - I makes Goldfish crackers.
You press a button, and every little toddler gets a Goldfish cracker.
I've heard that it's got a cannon in it, too.
- A cannon. - It shoots t-shirts.
(laughing) Yeah, it's got a t-shirt cannon in it, too. I heard about that.
she goes the NBA basketball games and shoots them from center court.
That doesn't make any sense. I didn't know about that.
- I thought that's where they shot t-shirts. - Mm...
- Arena, football? - Well, but you know what? She's such a
- gossip. I hate her. - She is. She cannot...
- (everyone on and offscreen laughing) - …shut her mouth!
[Captioned by Kevin: GMM Captioning Team]