Chapter 1: What are the current challenges facing society today?
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do and there's no end to it.
We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. We sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes as if that's the way it's supposed to be.
Chapter 2: How can we express our frustration about societal issues?
We know things are bad, worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller and all we say is, please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radios and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.
Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
You've got to say, I'm a human being. God damn it. My life has value. So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore! I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!
On this episode of the Commercial Break.
YouTube, Restream.io, Kik, Twitch. Go to one of those platforms. Watch us do this live. Get involved. Engage with the content. We would love, love, love to have you. That is ultimately our end goal. Is that none of this means anything if you're not engaged with the content. None of it means anything if you're not engaged with the content. We used to do the show just for ourselves.
But after 880 episodes, we've decided we want to get you involved. Brian got a little less selfish, just a little less selfish and decided, well, what about them? What do they want?
The next episode of the commercial break starts now.
All right. All right. A little slow on the buttons, but it's been, you know, like four weeks since we've recorded.
It really has.
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Chapter 3: What changes are being made to the podcast format?
Three years and four years in a row. Four years? Every year we've been doing this commercial break except for one, the first one. I have had some kind of illness directly after Thanksgiving. One year it was salmonella. One year it was norovirus. One year I think I had COVID. And again, norovirus again this year. And it hit me like a train. Hit my head and my stomach. Like a train.
It was terrible. Anybody who's gone through this this year, and I know a number of people. I know a number of people who have because I'm sure I gave it to a number of people.
I've been reading about how the cases are way up.
Yeah, it's nasty this year. It really is. Norovirus is that nasty virus that sticks around forever on everything. You can't get rid of it. And we haven't had it in the house. So we had Thanksgiving. It was just fine. Everyone was perfectly lovely. And then late on Friday, most of the day was OK.
I ate something on Friday night and then I went to bed and my stomach was really bothering me, like really bothering me. I was like, God damn, Brian, like, you know, you got like something's going on there.
It was burbling and gurgling.
Yeah. Three thirty in the morning. I woke up. I went to the bathroom. I won't get into it, but I it was terrible. But I just went to the bathroom and then I went back. I managed to lay down. I managed to close my eyes. 4.30, I woke up. My eyes opened, and the only thing that I could hear myself talking to myself, run. Get up. Run. Go, go, go. Yeah, run.
I knew how nauseous I was, and I knew it was coming, and I needed to get to the toilet, and I did. Astrid came in. All the commotion woke everybody up because I throw up like a two-year-old.
Yeah!
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Chapter 4: How has the podcast evolved over the years?
And that meant we had to take off time and we had to kind of, you know, do the commercial break on the fly when I felt up to it. And actually, for the first time in six years of the commercial break, we missed a scheduled episode on Friday. I don't know if you noticed that, but... And we missed it not because I was still sick. I was not. But because decisions have been made.
People have been talking. Things have been changing. We've been chewing the fat, so to speak. Synergies are happening. We're focusing in. We're getting holistic views. We're looking at the data. We're parsing all the information and the analytics. Looking in our third eye. Looking in our third eye. Looking at our anus chakras. And big decisions have been made. And here it is.
There's just no other way to say this. And I know that some people, this will be disappointing to other people. It'll be quite a relief. I think to most people, it'll actually be quite a relief. The commercial break, there's too much commercial break. And I think we can all agree on that. We've oversaturated the market. Yeah. And it's gone. It's done two things. It is made.
It is made us, first of all, creatively feeling a little stuck. But then also, I think if I'm taking the temperature of the audience because I can look at certain data and parse it and give it a good whirl and spin it around my head and chat and chat, even chat thinks there's too much commercial break and that's its job.
And I think what has happened is it's just too much information, too much commercial break coming at an audience and therefore dilutes. And, you know, we might do five hours of the commercial break a week. Maybe an hour of it is good. Maybe an hour of it should exist. The other hours we are doing because we have pigeons hold ourselves into this so many episodes a week. We've loved it.
It's been a good run. But I think now we need to think about being more. I think we need to think about quality over quantity.
Strategery.
Strategery. That was the funniest fucking thing in the world when George Bush said that and then Will Ferrell did it on Saturday Night Live that weekend. I remember watching that live and I just pissed my pants. If I had, I had TiVo or streaming, I would have gone right back. It is too much, too fast. And it is, we are leaning into content just for the sake of creating content.
And I don't think that that is serving us well here at the end of 2025.
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Chapter 5: What are the hosts' experiences with illness during the holiday season?
Let's call it youtube.com slash the commercial break. Follow us, subscribe, hit the notification bells. We will let you know when we're going live. We will do that on Instagram. Also call it one o'clock each Tuesday and Thursday. we will not be doing interviews every week moving forward.
We will be doing strategically, we will take strategy and we will place guests where we think we need them, but we will not be doing them obligatorily every week moving forward. Additionally, we will release those episodes that we record on Tuesday, on Wednesday, the ones that we stream on Thursday, we will Release on Friday.
So if you're listening on the podcast version, we will do Wednesday and Friday. We will do those on video. You will be able to see them all on Spotify moving forward. So if you have the video enabled Spotify application on your phone, welcome to the 21st century. Chrissy and I will use chat TCB and we will ask it how we exactly we put those videos on Spotify and we will do it.
Actually, I was doing it for a while, but I stopped at the request again of other people that were not me or the listeners. But so that's how it's going to go. And that starts immediately. And we love you to death. All of the people who've been listening to the commercial break, so many of you for a long time interacting with us.
If we've been a little quiet on the phones lately, it's because we've kind of been stewing in our own world over here. It's time for a change. Six years of the commercial break. It's time for a change.
Yes, it is. That's the only thing that's constant.
That's the only thing that ever stays the same is that nothing ever stays the same. And we have done a lot of content and we have done a lot of content very similar to other content that we've done. And so it's time to just change it up a little bit, grow up a little bit, change up a little bit, slick it up a little bit.
Brush coat of paint.
Yeah, amen. And streamline the show just a little bit. Make it, you know, less about volume. And I think that's really the underline here is that the commercial break will be Chrissy and I. It will continue to be Chrissy.
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Chapter 6: How do cultural differences affect relationships?
She was in some group chat somewhere going, fuck, I got to do another episode. Okay. So that is the state of the state with the commercial break. Stay with us. We welcome your advice, your thoughts, your input. Go to the chat. Go to the chat on one of the platforms, YouTube.com. Restream.io, Kik, Twitch. Go to one of those platforms. Watch us do this live. Get involved. Engage with the content.
We would love, love, love to have you. That is ultimately our end goal is that none of this means anything if you're not engaged with the content. None of it means anything if you're not engaged with the content. We used to do the show just for ourselves. But after 880 episodes, we've decided we want to get you involved.
Brian got a little less selfish, just a little less selfish and decided, well, what about them? What do they want?
Yeah, I'm interested to hear from people.
I think it'll be fun when we do. Yes, I think it'll be fun when we do. Okay, let's take a short two or three minute break and we'll be back. We got to pause for, I hope, sponsors. I don't know. Maybe they're there. Maybe they're not.
It's all a big experiment.
It's all a big experiment. Welcome to content creation in 2025. Yeah. Okay. We'll be back.
Okay, you're probably wondering why I, Rachel, have taken over the voice duties at TCB. It's pretty simple. Astrid asked me to shut Brian up, even for a minute. Well, lovely Astrid, your wish is my command. Do you want to help Astrid too? You know you do. Leave a message for her or me or Chrissy at 212-433-3TCB. That's 212-433-3822. You can be on the show too. Just call and say something.
Anything. Or text us and we'll text you right back. Promise. Then head over to tcbpodcast.com and get your free sticker. It's your constitutional right to a sticker and we must abide. You get the point. Follow us on Instagram at The Commercial Break and watch all the episodes on video at youtube.com slash thecommercialbreak. Best to you and Astrid. Especially Astrid.
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Chapter 7: What lessons can be learned from the Zac Brown Band's recent performance?
Three years. Three fucking years. I mean, that is some. Yeah. That takes a high level of maturity to do that. Right. But I don't think this story is not unique. There are so many situations where someone did someone wrong song, but they, you know, they bring them back into the fold. It's just like it's a community of love and forgiveness. And I wish that upon everybody.
I mean, quite frankly, a lot more of it, not less of it. Mm hmm. And that's why it drives me crazy when I hear all this shit talking going on about Venezuela right now. It's like it's largely not true. Of course there are bad people. Of course there are bad people. There should be news to nobody.
Yeah, in every culture, in every country.
Yes, but it's ā I don't know. Anyway, okay. So I have some ideas about how we might invite that conversation into the commercial break and make it more focused and less scattered. You know, it's like if you listen to a week of commercial break, Brian's talking about Venezuela four times in a week, but it's just not concentrated conversation.
It's just like, you know, me kind of making an off-the-cuff remark. So maybe we concentrate in a little bit more on that. And then also maybe having nothing to do with Venezuela, maybe we...
invite our listeners in to ask for our advice on a particular situation romantically or otherwise i love those too we don't do enough of it mainly because we don't have enough of that type of engagement we don't ask for it so people don't engage with us in that way i also think that's why maybe some people don't engage with us at all because we don't ask them to we say we say text us but what does text us mean you know hey loved your last episode which one
Number 622? Yeah, number 898.
Oh, you mean 1,000 episodes ago? I forgot what I even talked about. That's the other thing that's terrible about creating so much content. Is I honestly, it goes in one ear and out the other. I have no fucking clue what we talked about.
I'll have people say, yeah, I listened to that latest episode and it was so funny. And I'm like, what did we say?
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Chapter 8: What are the future plans for the podcast and community engagement?
They did two shows this weekend. They're doing two shows next weekend. They're doing a couple shows in January, like four shows in January. And the visuals were stunning, as they always are at Sphere. But...
butt and there's a big butt I was going to say what were they I'm always curious as to like what it was a lot of that Jimmy Buffett type okay like but here's what I have to share with you and I'll show this I can't show this on the stream but I will show it to Chrissy and you can google this okay do Zach Brown sphere intro that's what I want you to do intro okay and now watch this
Oh, I want to show you from the beginning all these yahoos talking about this. Let me explain it to you, and then I can show it to you afterwards. Okay. The sphere's dark. All of a sudden, a little red door comes at you. There's a boy standing at the red door, and you start hearing knocking. Toot, toot, toot. Toot, toot, toot. Toot, toot, toot. And then a Pink Floyd, The Wall song starts playing.
And it is goodbye. Whoa, whoa, whoa. It's a song about war. It's a song about being scared. It's a song about waking up to nightmares, right? It's the beginning of Pink Floyd's The Wall. But the imagery that went along with it was highly, highly focused on nightmare fuel. Big skeletons on fire. Yeah. Demons crawling everywhere. The boy eventually is sitting in a bed. He sits up.
He's got a knife in his hand. It's bloody. It's fiery. It's weird. Wow. And then when the Zac Brown band comes on and starts popping, starts singing the songs... He has a crown on, a red crown that looks like the same crown that the skeleton, a.k.a. Satan in some people's opinion, was wearing. This huge glass crown, red, fiery, on top of Zack's head. Yes.
Yes.
And this continues for the first few minutes. Now, out of context, it's easy to see why some people who are inclined to get upset about this type of stuff, Satanism and worshiping Satan and devil worship and all that, would be able to take that first three minutes and totally take it out of context. And man, have they. They have gone wild on social media.
Uh, you know, Zac Brown sold his soul to the devil. This is a portal toā Sphere is a portal to hell. Everyone there has been indoctrinated. Now they're all Satanists. You know, you need to leave now. Don't go. I can't believe Zac Brown, he sold his soul to the devil.
While other people who stayed and actually watched the fucking show said this is a journey that he takes you on from his troubled childhood through to redemption. And that's like the whole show, right? The storyline. And that it gets much brighter and better and clearer as you go on. But you'd have to be there and watch the whole two and a half hours, whatever it was.
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