The end of the year provides ample time to look back before looking ahead. Christmas cards are arriving in your mailbox, sharing a year’s worth of growth. Pictures are being posted from inside happy homes, showing siblings getting along and cookies being baked. And maybe you’ve scheduled a call (or zoom) with someone you finally found time to catch up with, or someone you wish you could be with instead.

The new year looms over us, but let’s not look there yet. Let’s not look. This year may have thrown the plans of every single person out the window, but some good things came of it. This website and podcast were birthed from the fires of this year, so let’s just do a quick walkback of all the fun that’s happened.

As was written back in the very first blog post, the idea of this podcast started being tossed around in the month of May, after Brent and Matt collaborated on a video submission to their college improv troupe’s suddenly-virtual end of semester variety show. And that video wasn’t enough for them. The creative spark had been struck and a fire was about to start burning, we just needed to find out what could fuel it the longest.

A Never-have-I-ever podcast was proposed, as was a podcast focusing on best friends, but reviews stole the day. We recorded four a test episode and we thought it went great. But also realized how green we were. But after sharing it around, we felt confident enough to proceed, and we recorded four episodes before dropping all of them on launch day.

To date, we have released 28 episodes and published 25 blog posts. That’s half a year of episodes - on our current weekly release schedule, anyway - and over a full day of audio, of just us boys, being silly and making fun. And it’s a lot of words with a good number of pretty pictures in tow.

And while some episodes perform better than others, and some reviews give greater goofs than others, this has been a success, through and through. Having never done this before, we’ve gotten our routine down to a science. And it just keeps getting better.

One afternoon, a certain Yelp review tickled us, so we revisited that Yelper and learned he was an Elite. After reading more reviews, we resolved to get him on the show, half-serious, half-kidding. But we did it, and not only did we get an in-depth and insightful look into what being an Elite means, we also made a great friend in the process.

We learned about half a dozen accidental inventions, a handful of historical events, and the storied Three Wolf Moon shirt of meme legends. And we’ve learned about a lot of people. What they spend their money on and how things make them feel. And how that makes us feel.

And that’s why this show can live until we’ve decided we’re done with it. Because whatever people create with their words - whether reviews or podcasts reviewing reviews - their words have power and someone will be there to read and listen.

With any luck, they’ll check out the shop and see the changes that have been made there since day one. Or they’ll tell a friend, so we fine fools don’t kid ourselves into thinking that Fiverr ads are the way to go (our review: not really worth it).

Looking ahead for just a moment, you can count on us to just bring more, and more, and MORE of the same fun that we’ve brought all along. More segments, more guests, and more intrigue.

We’re glad we’ve made it this far and we’re so thankful you’re here as well. It’s fun for just us, but it pleases us to no end that we can share our silliness with you. So again, if you’d like to share our silliness with someone you care about, it would mean the world to us.

But you already do.

Until next time, keep those stars shining.