The two guys who turned a first-grade detention into a $36M/year media empire.
Every weekday morning since 2012, Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal have sat down in front of cameras in Burbank, California to produce Good Mythical Morning - a daily talk show with no broadcast network, no studio executives, and 19.5 million people tuning in. The show has aired over 3,000 episodes, a run that puts it comfortably past most American sitcoms in longevity. It is the longest-running daily talk show on YouTube.
The numbers tell part of the story. Forbes ranked them #4 on the 2025 Top Creators list with $36M in annual earnings - behind MrBeast, Dhar Mann, and Jake Paul, but ahead of nearly everyone else. Rolling Stone named them the second most influential content creators of 2024. Good Mythical Morning has accumulated 10.8 billion total views. Their Mythical Entertainment network, headquartered in Burbank with around 80 employees, spans 76 million combined subscribers across multiple channels.
But the numbers miss the architecture. Rhett and Link did not just build a show. They built a company, a philosophy, and a word. They coined "Internetainer" at a time when the idea of making a full-time career on YouTube was treated as either naive or laughable. They were neither. They were engineers - literally. Both graduated from NC State, Rhett with a civil engineering degree magna cum laude, Link in industrial engineering summa cum laude. Before Good Mythical Morning, Rhett worked at Black & Veatch and Link at IBM. They quit to bet on themselves.
The bet compounded. In 2019, Mythical Entertainment acquired Smosh, one of YouTube's earliest and most iconic comedy properties, for $10 million. They launched a Food Network show, a scripted YouTube Premium series, books that reached the New York Times bestseller list, and a podcast that won a Shorty Award. In 2024, they premiered Wonderhole - a new unscripted series with a distinct comedic identity - which returned for Season 2 in August 2025 with guests including Rainn Wilson and Danny Trejo. In March 2026, they launched a 24/7 streaming channel on Roku and celebrated Good Mythical Morning's 3,000th episode.
The thing Rhett and Link figured out that most media companies are still learning: daily output compounds. Showing up every day for 14 years creates something no viral hit can replicate - a relationship with an audience. They call their fans "Mythical Beasts," and those Mythical Beasts are not just viewers; they are a community that sustains a media company. That is the actual business model underneath all the food challenges and absurdist experiments - consistent, joyful presence, at scale.
Embrace your weirdness. It's what makes you unique. Never lose your sense of wonder.Rhett & Link's Book of Mythicality, 2017
19.5M subscribers. 10.8 billion views. 3,000+ episodes. Monday through Friday since 2012, with a summer format (Good Mythical Summer) airing three days per week. Home of Will It?, Let's Talk About That, and the best-friend dynamic that built an empire.
Watch on YouTube →A bold new unscripted comedy series premiering in 2024 and returning for Season 2 in August 2025. Guests have included Rainn Wilson, Kate Flannery, Rob Huebel, and Danny Trejo. Called "a big creative risk" by Rhett & Link themselves - it paid off: 8.9M+ views in Season 1.
Watch Wonderhole →A long-form podcast where Rhett and Link talked with extraordinary candor about their lives, friendship, faith, and creative process. Won the Shorty Award for Best Podcast in 2016. After nearly a decade of episodes, it announced an indefinite hiatus in October 2025.
Mythical.com →Three books and counting. "Book of Mythicality" (2017) hit the NYT Bestsellers list. "The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek" (2019, co-written with Rhett's brother Link) reached #13 on the NYT list. "Spaghetti Head & Chicken Fingers" - a children's picture book - arrives June 2026.
Good Mythical More is the after-show where cameras keep rolling. Mythical Kitchen is a food-focused spin-off channel. Together with Good Mythical Morning, they give Mythical Entertainment a multi-channel presence that captures different audience segments and viewing habits.
Explore All Channels →Commercial Kings on IFC (2011) documented their North Carolina local-commercial era. Buddy System aired on YouTube Premium. Inside Eats with Rhett & Link ran on Food Network in 2022. In March 2026, Mythical launched its own 24/7 channel on Roku.
Creator Traits
Fun Facts
They met September 4, 1984 at Buies Creek Elementary School in North Carolina. Both were sent to detention on the very first day of first grade. Sitting next to each other, they wrote "blood brothers" on a piece of paper and both signed it. That paper is gone. The friendship is not.
Both graduated NC State with engineering degrees - Rhett in civil engineering (magna cum laude), Link in industrial engineering (summa cum laude). They took actual engineering jobs. Rhett worked at Black & Veatch. Link went to IBM. Both quit. The engineering background is not incidental; the systematic approach to content creation - the daily output, the structured segments, the repeatable formats - reflects minds trained to build systems that work.
Before Good Mythical Morning, before the millions of subscribers, Rhett and Link were filming low-budget local commercials for small businesses in Harnett County, North Carolina. They were so good at making bad commercials on purpose that IFC gave them a television series about it. Commercial Kings aired in 2011. They moved to Los Angeles. Then they built everything else.
Good Mythical Morning hit its 3,000th episode in March 2026. To put that in context: most American network sitcoms never exceed 200 episodes. Most late-night shows celebrate when they reach 1,000. Rhett and Link, producing five days a week with a crew of 80 people, have built a show with three times the episode count of The Tonight Show's entire Johnny Carson run.
We're Internetainers - we entertain people on the Internet.Rhett & Link - self-coined descriptor, circa 2012
"Embrace your weirdness. It's what makes you unique. Never lose your sense of wonder."
"We took a big creative risk with Wonderhole - and it paid off."
"The only rule for sharing ice cream needs to be: if you're not willing to make out with this person, you shouldn't share ice cream with them."
"We describe ourselves as 'platonic soulmates' - a friendship so close it mirrors the emotional depth of a lifelong partnership."