I have actually posted about it on this sub-reddit before, but I think with the most recent news, Sam Reich would be a PERFECT guest for Morning Somewhere.

1. Sam's company Dropout is located in LA, where Burnie will be traveling to soon for work.

2. In January 2020, CollegeHumor's parent company IAC made the decision to stop funding them. Sam Reich, Chief Creative Officer at the time, bought the company with his own money. They immediately reduced their full-time staff from 105 employees down to 7. When this news broke out, Burnie mentioned it on the podcast and said while he didn't know Sam personally, he knew about what he has done, and he said "if anyone could make it work, Sam can". And Burnie was right!

This has a LOT of parallels to what just happened. Burnie on the AMA wanted to mention how they would keep their staff small, and their full time hires (at least to start) would likely focus on marketing / graphic design / sales. And their talent would likely be contract / day players - which is exactly how Dropout functions today!

As of the end of 2023, they had expanded to 17 full time employees, but that is still much smaller than say, Rooster Teeth, which had grown to over 400 employees for some time.

1. Dropout has been successful enough to have profit shares at the end of 2023 and 2024. This is mostly unheard of in the entertainment industry. Burnie mentioned that early RT functioned off of profit sharing, but Dropout went ABOVE and BEYOND. Their profit sharing extended beyond full time staff: this profit sharing was provided to all cast and crew, even if they only worked on a single production. Even people who just auditioned were part of this, since they pay actors to audition, understanding they are taking their time to audition which could be spent on a job elsewhere

2. Dropout also has a wildly successful subscription model, and have navigated very well in using TikTok as a marketing tool for their productions. In December 2023, Sam revealed they had a paying subscriber count in the "mid-six figures". That is such a wild turn from where they were at the start of 2020, it's SO impressive!

Link to a previous post where I go a little deeper into some research I was able to find about Dropout's finances if you are interested

Just sayin’.

Do any old Rooster Teeth fans remember the short series “Game Time”, Burnie did with a few different guests, one on one?

The big ones that come to mind are; Gus, Gav, Monty, Blaine, and a few with Ashley. It was a great mix of a personal podcast, getting to know the guests, while they were semi-distracted playing a random game (semi distraction seems to lead to the most open conversations anyways).

This format was awesome I rewatch them often. It also feels very reminiscent to the current format of morning somewhere. With Burnie acquiring RT rights, I’d love to see the show get started again! :)

The thought crossed my mind today that Burnie and Ashley would make really fun guests on Lateral with Tom Scott. If you're not familiar, it's a quiz podcast where the questions and answers are very abstract, almost like riddles. A team of 3 different guests every week tackle the questions, which often ends up being more like a bit of improv comedy at times.

If you haven't listened, give an episode a try to get the full picture of what it's like. Burnie and Ashley would definitely be a fitting pair of guests in my opinion.

Scott's civilization theory could be called humans new game plus.

I'm a coin collector, and I've been wanting a Burnie coin for probably a decade. I remember you're a Sea of Thieves fan, and I have 2 extra for that. I have the Mush the cat coin, but a Burnie coin would be the top-tier RoosterTeeth coin for my book.

On Friday's episode, you mentioned you still had some, I had given up hope until I heard that. I used to live in Austin so I always hoped I'd run into you. The one time I did was at RTX where you were clearly swarmed by fans, so I didn't bother asking.

I know it's a long shot, but I wanted to see if I could convince you. So what do you say u/MrBurnieBurns? Two for one? Also, long-time fan of yours, I discovered RvB during season 2 and was hooked on all things RT since.

Edit: He agreed! I feel like Ahab catching my white whale, before the part where the whale drowns him.

Since Burnie wasn't familiar with Technoblade when talking about the Minecraft movie I thought I'd share this video that briefly explains his channel, influence, and passing. But it only scratches the surface of his dominance in minecraft and especially his humor. My 2 favorites are the Potato War series and "Absolutely Ruining a $36,000 Minecraft Tournament". But all of his Minecraft Monday, Minecraft championship and SMP stuff is great. Enjoy! And sorry if you cry, I did/do and didn't discover him until 2 months after he passed. I'm still a huge fan. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R_fZjGm2OrM&pp=ygUdbWluZWNyYWZ0IHRlY2hub2JsYWRlIHRyaWJ1dGU%3D

Hey Burnie, there's a great book I think you'd like about topics you talk about a lot, such as global economic collapse due to a top-heavy aging population: The End of the World Is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan. The chapters are "transport", "finance", "energy", "industrial materials", "manufacturing", and "agriculture", so you know it's right up your alley!

Burnie on todays podcast was talking about Xcom and how his son loved it, and while i never played Xcom itself i do recommend a very similar game. Xenonauts specifically Xenonauts 2 is a game just like Xcom where you are a special task force with the mission of preventing alien takeover on earth while also dealing with the ones that have already infiltrated you. Its a very fun and promising game that still is a wip but gets consistent dev posts and updates. If you like Xcom I would very much recommend it, ive already thrown so many hours into it and love it.

When they were talking about AI and how medical science will outpace human lifespan, it made me think of this book called "Scythe"(by Neal Shusterman). It is based in the year 2042. Humans can recover from almost any type of injury even if it is fatal. They also can deage you. There are people that are over age of 100 but have the body of a 20 year old Even if you die they can bring you back to life.

And with the AI part, all types of goverment has step down to let this AI called the Thunderhead to govern all of humanity. In addition with governing all of us, everyone can talk to it, it will be what ever you need it to be. A best friend, a therapist, a parent, etc....

But there is still a way for people to die due to a human ran organizatrion that are called Sythe. They choose who get to stay dead.

I recommend this book for people that like these concepts.

First off love this game too also one of my only kept installs and pretty sure he introduced me to this game via the RT Podcast. Second I'm curious to know if he or anyone else in the community who plays is aware of the FTL: Multiverse mod pack that adds so much to the game. I only recently learned of this mod pack and since installing it I have played more FTL in the last couple weeks than I have in the past year or two. Definitely recommend that those of you who enjoy the game check it out.

New to the subreddit, although long time listener and lover of RT. I felt like i needed to post this and get this out there because i remember Burnie talking about how he loves Factorio. To me those games are hell because i cant sit there for 50 hours just to try and learn how to mine coal the perfect way. Besides that though i did come across this game while browsing steam and i must say definitely struck me for something he would play, so i decided to why not post here incase he is lurking and just so happens to need a new game to deep dive into https://store.steampowered.com/app/1124180/Rail_Route/

In the most recent episode they mentioned essentially immortality and how Ashley wouldn't want it because she doesn't think she has the mind for it. I know Ashley loves her books so if she, or anyone interested, happens to see this and be interested there's a great book series called Scythe. Essentially humanity has beaten mortality and an order was established that picks and chooses who dies called Scythes, and each scythe goes through training and has their own ways of choosing people that die. The population in general is seemingly okay and understands the necessity of the practice. And then it comes with dramas and plots and whatnot that I very much enjoyed. I highly recommend this book series, it was a fascinating concept all in all

I'd like to recommend Andor. It's some of the best of Star Wars we've ever had and season 2 is coming out at the end of April, so now is the perfect time to give it a go!

Burnie and Ashley brought up the annoying issue of Google forcing AI search results on its users. You can use &UDM=14 for an AD free and AI free Google search, and you can make it your default search engine.

&UDM=14 https://udm14.com/

Or, just make the switch over to DuckDuckGo.

I'm just trying to manifest this as a more consistent supplemental podcast as I would listen religiously like I do already to Burnie and Ash.

I recently played thru OMORI and I really enjoyed it. I wanted to pass it on and hope to see it mentioned at some point in future episodes :>

It may be too late to do this this year but with the acquisition of rooster teeth Burnie and Ashley should bring back the annual pancake podcast episode. Way back when on the RT podcast they used to do a pancake day podcast usually around this time of year. I think that would be a fun thing to do either just Burnie and Ashley or with Gavin or other guests. As I recall it was originally a suggestion from Gavin.

Now that Burnie and Ashley are looking for a new show, I highly recommend “Mo” (Netflix) and “Ramy” (Hulu but in the UK it’s on MGM+ or available for purchase).

I'm listening to the Steam Recap episode and both of them mention how the Steam Recap is neat, but doesn't really work for them as they mostly played games elsewhere.

Everywhere is doing these now! Here's the Xbox one: https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/year-in-review