Oh, sorry, you're signaling me. Well, as you can tell, it's my first time doing a livestream on YouTube, trying to get the feel of things. But welcome, you all. I mean, jeez, there's... How many people are in the chat right now? We got 6,100 people here. That is incredible. But let's go ahead and start this off the right way. So because this is a YouTube live stream, and we've never done this before, we were instructed that it's very important that the first thing you all do, if you're a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious that is, is you go ahead and just mule kick the like button right in the teeth to kick this thing off. We need the like button just destroyed at the onset of this live stream, because that's how people find out we are live on YouTube. So go ahead and kick it off with a mule kick to the like button. And also, just thank you for being here. This is a big day for us. Like I said in the mid-roll, we have been slaving on this passion project here. Let's see which camera am I looking at.

For over a year on this graphic novel here, this is probably one of the things I... This is one of the few things that I am genuinely so proud of. This came together so beautifully. But really, the purpose of this livestream is not only to highlight this big announcement, but also to take it back to how we even got here as a community. I think it's sometimes lost on me that so much has happened in the past couple of years, from my initial first couple of cringy posts on TikTok that went nowhere to now having this amazing team and this amazing community. And so I wanted to take this livestream as a chance to I'm going to bring some people up to speed about how we got here. Maybe you only recently found the channel. And then I also want to talk about the origin story behind this book, because there is actually a pretty funny story behind why we're even doing a book. And then after that, we're going to transition I guess, like an interview-style livestream, where I'm going to speak to two very important people who are playing huge roles in the Ballin Studios, Mr.

Ballin Universe, but specifically, they played huge roles in the creation of the graphic novel. So again, how we got here. So for those who don't know this, I was in the military until 2017. I got out of the military, and I struggled to find my way in the civilian world. But then in early 2020, I was beginning to experiment with social media content on TikTok. I basically saw the value of social media. It just seemed like if you do it right, you can basically have a mouthpiece to the world. It's the one place where you really get that opportunity. And so naturally, I was on all these different social platforms trying to figure out what content worked, and none of it worked. There was I think there was one point, it's like, one of my most embarrassing pieces of content I was making is there was this trend in the early days of TikTok in early 2020, where they had all these filters on TikTok that you could filter yourself as you're recording. And there was this one that was autotuned. There was this goofy trend on TikTok where people would tell these really dramatic stories about themselves, personal stories, but they would sing it into their phone, and it would get autotuned.

I don't know why that was a trend. But I remember I was out at the Starbucks parking lot in Doyelstown, Pennsylvania, where I used to live, and I'm sitting in my truck singing this song about how a grenade nearly killed me in Afghanistan in 2014. Needless to say, it was a little bit shocking when that video hit the airwaves. It did really resonate with the audience the way I hoped it would. But no, seriously, I was doing... Man, in the early days of TikTok, I was doing sketch, comedy, and I was doing Nerf gun trick shots for a little while, which I thought were pretty cool. Didn't really take off like Dude Perfect did, but I was close. I got a couple of videos. It got like 100 views. That was pretty cool. But no, I was actually at the end of my rope. I was frustrated with how poorly it was going on my social media game. And I was at this water park in Pennsylvania with my family, this indoor water park, Great Wolf Lodge, for those that have been there. And I'm there with my wife and my three kids. I had these two documents in my computer that had all the different ideas I had for social media, for TikTok content ideas.

One of the documents was things like, sing your dramatic story about getting nearly killed in autotune, and also sketch comedy, and all these different things that weren't working. Then I had this other document on my computer that just said Dyatlov Pass, which you all, I'm sure, are familiar with, but if you're not, it's the story about these hikers that go missing in the 1950s, and their bodies are found in various stages of decomposition, and their clothes are all ripped up. People are missing body parts. There's radioactivity. It's a totally crazy story. It's technically solved now, but I think it still is considered unsolved because people aren't really satisfied with the answer. Russia, in 2020, came out and said it was an ice slab that fell down and wiped out the hikers. But before that, when I was talking about this story on TikTok, there was no solution. I told the story of the Dyatlov Pass. Basically, I had this one other topic magic idea in this document. And because all the ones on the other sheet hadn't worked, I was like, Well, I'll try this random story that I happen to like because I'm a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious.

And even though this is a huge departure from all the stuff I've been trying, I felt like I didn't have that much to lose. So I record myself in the hotel room at Great Wolf Lodge doing the Diatlov Pass, and it's still on my TikTok page. If you want to go check it out. And I left my phone in my room because me and my kids and my wife are going to the indoor water park, and my phone will get wet. So left my phone in the room. And when I came back to the hotel room, just a few hours later, my phone wouldn't open at first. I was trying to slide my phone up, it wouldn't open. And it was because I had notifications on for TikTok, and I was getting so many comments and likes from this Diatlov path story that my phone couldn't really handle it. It was like my phone was broken. When I finally loaded up TikTok, there was 5 million views or close to 5 million views on this video. To that point, I I had never had anything go viral in any capacity on any platform. And so this was leaps and bounds better than I had ever done.

And I didn't think, oh, boy, here's my career now. I can go crank out these stories and become Mr. Balin. It was more like, that was really cool, and I want to see if I can repeat success. And so I wound up making a ton of TikTok videos, and they all were very successful for the most part. There were some that were pretty bad. Most were pretty good. Transitioned to YouTube, and the rest is history, so to speak. That brings us to Mr. Ballon becoming a thing. But books, in general, are a big part of my life and always have been, the same way storytelling really has been a huge part of my life and my family's life. For context, my family who are all on this live stream, so hello to my family, they are all these incredibly brilliant storytellers. In many ways, I was actually the sheep of the family with regards to my life direction as a young kid because I did not take school seriously, was not doing well, I just screwed off a lot. Meanwhile, my family are these incredibly accomplished storytellers and writers. But ironically, now I'm a storyteller as well, so full circle.

But growing up, storytelling, because my sister and my father are journalists, Pulitzer Prize winning journalists, I have my other sister, this incredible scientist, and my mom's a professional writer who wrote the podcast, the majority of the podcast. Because I was around these people that were so good at storytelling, it just rubbed off on me. I think that's actually why I'm good at telling stories. I was raised to be a storyteller. But growing up, books were really a big part of our lives. My parents read to us not just when we were kids, but as we got older, we'd go on camping trips and we'd break out The Giver. And my mom and my dad would read The Giver to us. So they'd read A Wrinkle in Time or Call the Wild. Just reading was a big part of our lives. So I ended up joining the Navy in… So this is the funny story about books and how we landed on the graphic novel. I joined the Navy in 2010 with an intent to become a Navy SEAL, and it's a long process, but the first step is you go to Navy Boot camp, and it's not even really…

It's not specialized, really, at all. You're just going through basic Navy Boot camp. And then once you finish the two months of Boot camp, you go on to the the hard stuff, so to speak, the Navy SEAL training side of the house. And so when I went to boot camp, I had done all this research on the hard stuff about Navy SEAL training, basically post-boot camp, what happens next. And I was really well-versed on what the prep school was going to look like and what test gates existed in the six months of basic underwater demolition SEAL training, which is the most hard part of the training. But I had done no research on boot camp because I was like, it's two months of basic boot camp. How hard can it Everybody goes through boot camp like, That's nothing. So it turns out it was not nothing. Navy boot camp was quite possibly the worst part of the entire two years of trying to become a seal, because the way it works is you go to boot camp in Chicago. I have all sorts of stories about boot camp. I'm going to ramble about boot camp here for a minute.

Actually, here's my entrance to boot camp. So I'm very pea-shy. Sorry to get into this, but it's relevant to the story. I need privacy when I go to the bathroom. And in boot camp, you have to take a drug test. The first thing you do is you take a drug test when you get to boot camp. And in preparation for this drug test, I had drank like 4,000 gallons of water when I got to Chicago, where boot camp is, I land in the airport. I'm like, All right, got to get ready for this drug test. And I drink all this water. And I didn't realize that your drug test doesn't happen for hours and hours and hours later. But they don't tell you that. You're just this pathetic recruit. They don't care about. And so by the time you get bused to the compound where you're going to start boot camp. It isn't like they're like, Hey, who needs to go to the bathroom right now? We'll give you your drug test. Instead, it was like, We're not going to tell you when you're going to take your drug test. You're just going to sit in silence and you can't go anywhere.

And so for six hours, I was in such excruciating pain because I had to go to the bathroom, but they weren't letting me to the point where I finally... Think about this. I am a brand new recruit at boot camp. They're screaming drill sergeants. They're called RDCs in the Navy. Everywhere. You I can't even move without getting screamed at. And finally, I just stood up and ran to the bathroom. And they're like, What are you doing? And I was like, I have to go. And I ran to the bathroom. Yeah, so I was able to go, and I passed my drug test. That was great. But anyhow, I get to boot camp, I get past my drug test, and very quickly, it dawns on me that boot camp really is not that I've experienced this, but it's an awful lot like prison, or it certainly feels like prison. You don't have any control over For anything you do all day long. You are basically under the thumb of your RDCs all the time. And if you've never experienced something like that, you stop feeling human. I mean, you don't do anything that's human. You just are told what to do all the time.

It's miserable And also just the fact that our instructors in boot camp, they were not Navy Seals, but they knew most of the kids who were in this particular division, the class I was in, were scheduled to try out for the SEAL teams. But none None of us have done anything. We're recruits. And so our instructors looked at us like, Oh, you think you're better than me? You think you're going to go on to become a Navy SEAL? You don't know anything about that. You're going to quit. You suck. And so it's like, your instructors were particularly evil to us because they thought we were trying to act tough because we're going on to be to be seals. Anyways, so boot camp was horrible. There were times where, I forget the name of it. You had to put on all of your clothes, like your turtlenecks, and your T-shirts, and all your uniforms You're bulked out and all your stuff. And they'd make you run around your, it's called your compartment, which is where your bunk beds are, and do all these push-ups with your scene. You're so bulky, you can barely move. I remember my job in the Navy, in boot camp, I should say, I was the laundry petty officer, which meant I went in the laundry room and folded underwear all day.

Then sometimes they'd make us just sit up against the wall and do air squats, but for two hours. Hey, just sit there for a while. Man, I hateI did boot camp so much. But early on in boot camp, they allowed us to write letters back home. That's a big part of boot camp. You mail some letters, you send them home, they write them, and your family writes back to you, hopefully. And my mom was just a champ. A lot of people wrote to me. So thank you to everybody who wrote letters back to me. But I realized pretty early on in the first couple of days that I was just going to be so miserable in boot camp. I hated it so much. I hadn't thought about the fact that I'm going to spend two months in just a living hell. That's what camp is. And so I wrote a letter to my mom early on just being like, I hate it here, and I need something. I need anything to help me escape the torture of this place. Because I basically was saying, I was like, Do you have any ideas of what I could do?

And we both exchanged letters. We began talking about different books I liked. And my mom, she wrote to me. She was like, Here, I'll send you some books. And then at night, when you're in your rack, your bunk bed, your rack, you can read these books, and that will help you escape. I thought that was a great idea. And my favorite author at the time, and still one of my very favorite authors, is Lee Child, who writes the Jack Reacher series. It's all over Amazon Prime now. There's a movie with Tom Cruise in it. But the Jack Reacher series is this amazing action series with just the main character Jack Reacher is 6'5 and never loses a fight. Every scene in the book, you know what's going to happen. Like, bad guy approaches, Jack Reacher is going to win, and it's going to be awesome. So it's this just classic action book. Anyway, so my mom tried to send a copy of a Jack Reacher book to me, and I was so pumped, so excited to get this book because my life is just awful in boot camp, as does everybody else is. And I was just, I need something to escape.

The mail finally comes week two, and boot camp is eight weeks long. And the way it works is mail gets delivered to the Navy, and then each respective division sends one of their students to go collect the mail, and they come back with a big cart. And at night, they would come right into the middle of your compartment. That's where your beds are. And one by one, they'd just call out the recruit's name. They'd come up, get their mail, go back to their bed. And then once everyone had their mail, it was lights out. You sit in your bed and you read your mail. And the funny thing was, our instructors, even though they knew that this was part of the boot camp experience, that you're allowed to read your books in your bed or your letters in bed, they would shut off all the lights. So you get your stupid mail, and then you get in your bed, and they're like, All right, yeah, enjoy And your letters, lights out, blacked out. They're completely pitch black inside the compartments. You can't even read. And so guys are going to the little lights in the bathroom.

And also in the bathroom, they take all the doors off the bathroom, which is great. So no privacy. But it's like you're either in the bathroom using the light near the toilet to read your letters, or if you were lucky enough to have a little red light in your little locker, you could read it. And I did. I had a red light. I think I had a red light. Anyways, I get this letter from my mom, this highly anticipated letter that's going to have this book. I open it up, and clearly, somebody had already opened this letter, the Navy had. They screen everything sent to you. And in this case, they were basically trolling me, the Navy was, because they opened up my mail and they saw there was a book in there, and they were like, No, he doesn't get the whole book. So they ripped out a chunk of the book. So all I had was pages 20 through 68 of this book. And so I opened it up and I'm like, Wait, I don't have the book. I have a portion of the book, but I didn't care. It was like, Boot camp was so miserable.

Okay, I'll pick up a random book on page 20, and I'll read these 20 pages. And then I'll wait for my mom to send more installments of this book because I'm missing them. But the staff in the Navy knew that I was getting portions of this book sent. So they would make sure that they would give me the wrong section. So I'd get pages 20 through 40, and then the next one would be pages 100 through 120. They never wanted me to have a cohesive story. And so I got it in bits and pieces. But it was the best experience, even though it was not the way I would have wanted to read this book. It provided escape for me. I mean, even though, again, I'm totally out of order, it brought peace to a very stressful situation. And it was like, that was the moment that I realized I'm in love with books. I mean, books are a big part of my upbringing. And now as an adult, I was really seeing the power of books. It helped me in the Navy. When I went to SEAL training, so when I I went to SEAL training.

So I finished Navy Boot camp on the strength of reading these snippets from this book from my mom. So shout out to my mom, Jessie. She's on here. I went to the hard part of training, which follows boot camp. You go to a prep school for a couple of months, then you go to San Diego, where you go through the six months of Navy SEAL Boot camp, if you will. That's Buds. And Navy Boot camp was miserable because it felt like jail. Buds, the six months of Buds, was miserable because it's extremely physically grueling and you sleep. And so at night, we would come back to our our compartment, if you will. But instead of it being this big barracks with 100 recruits, in Buds, you're just in these small rooms with three other people, so two bunk beds. And you get back to your room at seven or eight o'clock at night, and you have all these collateral duties you need to do. You got to shine your boots. You got to clean your knife and sharpen your knife. You got your little UDT vest, which is this crappy life preserver. You have to shave the rust off the bevel of the screw.

And there's all these meaningless tasks that you have to do. And all it is, you must do them every night, and you're checked every day, it keeps you awake a really long time because they're these monotonous tasks. And so you're done at seven, but you don't finish your collateral until 10 or 11 o'clock at night. And so you're like, beat. And you have to get up at 4:00 the next morning to go jump in the ocean and get beat up all day. And so most people would finish their collaterals and go to bed because that's the only thing they wanted to do. But I had discovered in boot camp that having that little bit of time to read, that escape provided so much to my mental health that at the end of the day in Bud's, I would finish shining my boots and all that. And even though I was beyond tired, I would open up the Western novel I was reading, and I would force myself to read, even if it was a couple sentences, just anything, because the book was the one place I found comfort in such a stressful environment. And so that really helped, actually.

I would say that really helped me get through the hard parts of the beginning of training. And so I didn't think down the road I would make a book, but I've always had it in the back of my mind. It would be really cool to produce a book of my own. And this is before I became Mr. Balin. And so it's always been in my mind, I end up becoming the storyteller Mr. Balin. And we got to a place now where we have a really incredible team of people now behind the scenes. We have nearly 50 people working across the company at Balin Studios. And And I have some incredibly talented people that help me with research and writing, and topic finding, and everything. And it just felt like this is the time to finally take my dream of making a book and actually bringing it to reality. And the graphic novel, this is not... I just want to be clear here. This is not like a, let's just take some random stories and slap them in a book and call it good. This was so much work because what we did is we We not only had stories that we were remastering.

There are going to be five remastered stories that are going to be inside of this anthology. And then there are four feature-length big stories that are completely brand new. We really took our time identifying, and I can't get into the actual topics, but we really took our time figuring out which topics worked best for us. In fact, I think this is probably the best time to actually make a transition here and She is one of the people that I'm going to be speaking to today. But before she comes on, I want to give you a little background on who she is. So my sister, Evan Allen is her name. She's my sister. We grew up together as a result of that. She is a prolific reader. I remember when I was growing up, it's like Evan would read at least a book a week, and that would be very little. I mean, it was common to go on vacation, and Evan would crush seven books in four hours, just reading 24/7. So Evan is this prolific A terrific reader. She went on. She graduated college, and she went to the Boston Globe as a journalist, and she became just this unbelievable journalist.

She's won a Pulitzer Prize. Even though she wouldn't say this, she's quite possibly one of the best journalists in the world. I know she's probably totally embarrassed that I said that, but that's definitely who she is. She also happens to be just an incredibly lovely person. Her and I are very close, and she has been helping me behind the scenes for quite some time, sister to brother. But very recently, she actually came to Ballon Studios and is now the head of creative at our studio. She helps develop new projects. If we lose Evan at this point, the company falls apart. That's how valuable Evan is to just the creation of content at our company. Evan just has an eye for really good story topics. She's excellent at finding the salient points in a story that really make it stand out. Having Evan, who is in many ways 10X the storyteller I am, be a part of not only Ballon Studios, but specifically, she and I spearheaded our side of the equation for this graphic novel. Actually, I would really say, Evan spearheaded this. I said to her, I'm like, I need someone who can really put an enormous amount of emphasis into ensuring that everything that goes into this graphic novel is on par or better with anything we've made, whether it's podcast, YouTube.

This can't feel like a step down. It needs to feel like a step up, if anything. This is over a year ago, and Evan and the rest of the incredible team that was a part of it, they worked tirelessly. The stories they found, the writing they did, it's just unreal. How do I…? All right, I'm plugging the Oh, really? Is it working? Nice. Can you hear me? Can you hear me, please? If you can, say something. Bark twice if you're in Milwaukee. Who knows that reference? No sound. Wait, it's back. Let's do it. It's okay. It's okay. I don't know if you can hear me or not. Oh, really? Is it working? Oh. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? It's pretty good. Okay. Okay, it's fine. It's fine. Okay, so we're going to have to flex this a little bit. So sorry about that. As you can tell, it's our first time doing a YouTube livestream. Actually, what you don't know is that it's really complicated trying to get multiple guests on at the same time. So unfortunately, we're going to probably just have to cut the guest portion of this. And instead, you're stuck with me.

And let's see, what can I do with this time here? Is there anything else that I didn't... Oh, here we go. So a couple of things while I still have you. The release date of the graphic novel is going be October first, if you haven't already seen that. So that's my birthday. October first is the release date. You can pre-order this book right now at book. Bollenstudios. Com. So definitely get over there and do that. And also, this is going to sound like I'm just trying to do this because it would be cool, but there's actually a practical reason for this. If enough pre-orders occur, this book will make the New York Times bestsellers list. That's pretty much the way it goes. And so we need as many pre-orders as possible to do that. But really, because of the investment that we need to make to create one of these, time, money, the team, we need to be sure that there's a real audience for these books. And so when we say we want you to pre-order this thing and get it to the best sellers list, it's a way for us to be confident, if that happens, that this is going to be a worthy thing for our team to invest into.

We would love to crank out 50 of these because they're actually pretty amazing to make. But again, it's business, so we got to make sure that there's an audience for it. It would be amazing if you go to book. Ballinstudios. Com and you pre order a copy today, that would be awesome. Also, because we're not going to have a chance to hear the rest of Evan's talk, I do want to just highlight the fact that Evan, my sister, is absolutely instrumental at this point to just running content in Ballon Studios. She's my right-hand, and in many ways, I'm basically under her. She's so good at this. She really knows what she's doing. And so our collaboration has been awesome, and she's been huge with this book. Evan, thank you. Another person that we're not going to be able to have on, it's unfortunate, is Rob Prior. Can we at least play? Is it possible to play his little highlight video? Okay, so here's the video. The guy who made the cover of this graphic novel is a very famous artist who, nick Widders, the CEO of Ball and Studios, my manager, you all have definitely heard of nick if you've been on any of these live streams before, he contacted Rob and basically said, We loved your work.

We really want you to do this. Rob Rob is such a character. The dude goes on tour with super famous rock bands and paints live on stage with them. Metallica and ACDC is one of the two, for sure. I know he goes on tour with major, major rock concerts, and he paints with both hands, accurately with both hands. And he looks like this big bodybuilder. He's this super cool guy who's just this rogue artist, and he painted this in five seconds. This is like, Oh, yeah. Here you go. Here's your cover. It's so easy for him. So Rob, unfortunately, will be able to be on here. But here is his highlight reel to give you a sense of who this guy is. The amazingly talented, mad genius, Rob Pryer. Bob Pryer. Rob Pryer. Rob Pryer.

Rob Pryer.

Sweet. I'm delayed watching the video from my phone. So that's Rob Prior. And somebody in the comments just had a great idea. Sometimes just simple ideas are the best ones. And it was just call these people and put them on speakerphone. So I'm going to call Rob Prior right now, the guy you just saw the video for, and we're going to talk to him. Of course, I can't get his... Actually, what's his number real quick? Because I'm looking at his FaceTime number. I'll make sure I got the right one. How I got it? I'm good. About as DIY as you get. Hey, Rob, you are officially live, but via audio. Into the mic. It's about as janky as it gets. How are you doing, man?

I'm good, man. I'm good. I'm in Washington, DC on a family vacation.

Very nice, dude. But we just watched your highlight video, and that's about the coolest artist highlight video I've ever seen. Although, admittedly, I don't know if I've seen too many cool highlight reels of artists, but that was amazing, dude.

Well, thank you, man. Thank you. I'm honored you think so. I do a lot of crazy stuff.

Yeah, well, you paint with two hands, live on stage with AC/DC. That qualifies. It's pretty wild.

Oh, yeah. I got I got to tell you, though, Painting Live, it's got its own form of energy. So I never quite know what's going to happen, whether I spit on the painting or...

I never know. You never know. Yeah, I find myself sometimes needing to spit on my computer, and I'm not sure if I'm going to when I'm writing videos. So, dude, tell me, what was the energy like? How did you feel making this cover for this graphic novel? Because It was beautiful. It is exactly what we were hoping for.

Thank you so much. No, it was fantastic. I mean, look, I got to paint you. And then I got to paint this really cool backdrop of just cool stuff. And when I was painting it, just by the way, you mentioned AC/DC. I was almost solely listening to AC/DC throughout the entire painting.

You channeled AC/DC, I can tell. It's hard core, dude. I did.

It had to be hard core, raw, and cool. So I was like, AC/DC it is.

Yeah, actually, the other day, I was with a couple of other big podcasters. We were doing a show with them, and we brought the book over, and they really were seriously impressed that this is actually someone's drawing. They assumed it was AI. It's so well done. They're like, Wait, so what program did you use? And I was like, No, look closely. This is an actual painting. And he did it in a day. He's like, Yeah, go. That's awesome, dude.

Well, it helps that I I'm playing with both hands, right? I mean, it just makes me go faster and faster and faster. And if I've got loud, good music, and I get into the groove, and I got into a solid groove on that one.

I can tell, dude. Well, it came out amazing. And And I really appreciate you hopping on the call real quick to do this. I'm so thankful you're able to do this. And for everybody who's watching this or listening to this right now, go check out Rob Pryer's Instagram page. It's just @robprier, right? Is that your handle?

Yeah, I'm almost sure.

Well, honestly, you can- It might be Rob Pryer art.

It might be Rob Prior Art.

He will be easy to find on the Internet. There's nobody like Rob Prior. Look for Rob Prior on the internet. Look at some of his artwork. It is unbelievable. And I'm not just hyping it up because he's here. He is the best guy we could have possibly commissioned for this book. And Rob, thank you so much for being on here and for flexing to the phone call here. And take care, man. Enjoy your vacation. And we can't wait for the book to come out, dude.

I can't wait for it, John. And it couldn't be for a I'm a better, fantastic human being.

So I love you guys. I love you, too, man. Thanks, dude. I'll talk to you soon, man. All right, man. Later. And so that was Rob Prior. Pretty cool guy. Pretty cool guy. But, yeah, seriously, if you look closely at this cover, when you all get your books, there's little tells that this is actually real art. I mean, this guy used pencils and water colors. And I don't know. It's just with the advent of AI everywhere, it's cool to have a throwback to just old-school original artwork. So that's Rob Prior. There's a couple of other people that I want to mention who I'm not going to call. There is Rob Vendetti, who Evan mentioned before she was cut off. Rob Vendetti is in the world of graphic novels and the world of comic books, there are some big names. There's really none bigger, at least on the writing side of the house, than Rob Vendetti. This is the guy that you hope to get to work with you on creating a graphic novel. When I say he is the best in class, he's the best in I could say the same thing for the artist who put together the artwork in the book, not the cover art, because that was Rob Prior, but in the book.

Andrea Mutti, he's an Italian artist, he put together these just stunning visuals. It's like he was able to see into my mind, because I would have these long calls with them, and I would go over my creative direction of how I want the story to go, how I would tell it. And he was able, Andrea was, to see what I saw in my mind's eye, and he would put it to paper over and over again. And Rob Vendetti, who was taking... I would basically tell a story, or he'd get a version of the story, and he would take it, and he would convert it into not comic book-speak, but just You're now relying on a visual medium and a little bit of text. You're walking a thin line about how much text to include on each page. And Rob was so good at just picking out just little snippets from the story really needed to be on the page. And the result was, I'm telling you, this is an immersive graphic novel. You will open it up and immediately be struck by just the high-quality premium nature of this. And I'm not just selling. It's like, I'm just proud of this.

And also, just to give you a sense of how we created the new ones, the new stories that are within this book, we treated it as if we were writing a brand new YouTube story. We actually fully filmed it out, everything. So this will have the feel in many ways of a of YouTube, but put to paper. And then also there's one other element of this that I think is really cool, which is I have found in reading the comments and in talking to you all, all you fans of The Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, that there's a little bit of, I guess, comfort that comes with watching, especially the YouTube channel, that even though the content itself is pretty dark, that me, the host, provides a safe environment for you all to consume the content, that it It feels like a buddy. And again, I'm regurgitating what I've been told. I'm not trying to hype myself up. But we've seen that people feel a sense of comfort that I'm the person telling them the story because it reminds them of just their buddy telling them a story. It feels relatable. It feels authentic. And so in this book, we found a really creative way to basically bring me into each story.

I'm not going to tell you how we did it. It's not like otherworldly. It's not like this amazing, crazy thing, but I think it's very clever, and you'll notice it right away. But The Mr. Volunt character, me, your host, is definitely integrated into every single story in a really cool way that is reminiscent of what you get on YouTube. And so so much thought and care went into what this is going to be. It's, I think, over 200 pages. It's beautiful. It's worth your time. It's worth your money. Again, if you pre-order it now, we have the real potential to make the New York Times bestsellers list. If that happens, we will divert a a huge amount of our team's time and energy into making more of these. But it's just it's such a process making these things that we need business proof that this is something you all want. So mean it. Go check it out, book. Voluntstudios. Com. Pre-order your copy now. And then also, let's see, is there anything else that I'm missing here? Oh, my goodness. What I'm wearing, if you haven't noticed, it's not a flannel. It is the brand new...

Sorry.away from the mic? Very good. Okay, sorry. Getting stage directions here. Brand new This is a T-shirt, brand new merch. It is the Valley of Headless Men, which, in my opinion, is quite possibly one of our best stories that we did on YouTube. So here's the front. I don't know if you're zooming in or not on this. Okay, whatever. Here you go. Headless Am I in my own frame. Cool. It's the Story T. If you look at this T-shirt closely, and actually, you can get this shirt if you're on book. Ballandstudios. Com, and you scroll all the to the bottom. You can see the shirt, and you can buy it there. Also, if you just go to ballinstudios. Com, you can just shop merch as well. But this is based on, obviously, the Headless Valley, but there's all these little Easter eggs on the back. This was everything is intentional. Let's put it that way. The back of the shirt, you're going to find little symbols and little Easter eggs that tie into the story. Great material, beautiful-looking shirt. So there you go. You should go get yourself a Headless Valley shirt. But most importantly, I would say, though, is Booked Up, pre-order a copy of the graphic novel.

Now, you got to get your Strange, dark, and mysterious in book format now, because before it was all podcast or video or this or that, you got the books now. You got to do it. So go pre-order it. And I think now is probably a good time to stop and do a Q&A. It's a little bit catawampus because of our technical difficulties, but I'm going to go ahead and load up the livestream right now and see what some questions are. So the questions do not necessarily have to be about the book, but they can be. Let's do some questions. This is a really important one. Are the stories in the graphic novel Good for kids? I'm going to say yes, because we actually definitely gave that some thought. But I would say that it's probably closer to the PG 13 range, just because there's a couple of stories in there that are graphic enough that I wouldn't necessarily feel good about young, young kids reading through it. But for sure, there are stories in this book that we thought these are safe for kids. Parents, when you receive this, I would definitely scan through it and just confirm that you feel the same way.

But I'm confident in saying this is definitely on the PG 13 side. Actually, to give you maybe some unintentional insight into the topics, we looked for stories that had really cool psychological twist to them, where really is theater of the mind and not gruesomeness. Although we don't typically trend towards gruesomeness. There are some stories we do that are, but this is more like, whoa, I can't believe that happened. That's the feeling you get at the end. And also, I just wanted to put this out there. I can't give away the topics, but the topics are really good, especially the ones that we chose that are... Well, the new ones are amazing, but the remastered ones, I'm telling you, there's some good ones in there, and And the way these were put to paper is better than I could have expected. I mean, these are an incredible lineup of stories. But yes, PG 13. But again, parents definitely confirmed that you agree with that. All right, that was question one. My chat is going so quickly. I can't read a question. Hold on. I'm going to call Evan. I'll call Evan. Actually, you know what? I'm a spare, Evan, because she was just told that she can dip out.

I don't want her to get cold-called and then immediately brought up again. Evan is here with us in spirit. And let's see. Actually, you know what? No, we got to do a question. We got to do a question. Here we go. Can you guys find a question? Thank you. Okay. Question is, what is one of the books that left the single biggest lasting impression on you? Here you go. I would say that actually the Jack Reacher book, which I think it was the one from Boot camp, it was called The Killing Floor. I think that was the one, and it's one of his earliest... It's one of the earliest books in the series. That one had a huge impact on me because it was the one I read in Boot camp. In that regard, it was highly impactful. I'd say The Giver, which I mentioned actually was read to me by my parents when we would to go camping out in Western Massachusetts as kids. The Giver was a book that I now don't fully remember the plot to it, other than to say everyone was assigned jobs within this community, and there was one job that was to have all the information about everything that existed.

I believe that's what it was. But with that came holding on to—I'm probably screwing up the summary of the story—but it was like there was one person that had to also feel and hold on to all the bad stuff, all the suffering and all that. It was this really important job, but very sad and dark. When this guy dies, he has to pass off this responsibility, the giver, is this person's name, to the next generation of person who's going to take on this really painful and very important role. I believe that the book is really about the transition of the young boy becoming the next giver. I'm so sorry if that's completely wrong, but I haven't read it in a while, but that one was a big I'm trying to think. Actually, honestly, the Harry Potter series, I read that when I was a kid, definitely. But then also when I was in Afghanistan on deployment, I read the... Not all of it. I read the first five books again on deployment, and that helped me escape as well. Books are an escape, and that's what I like. So, man, Harry Potter. If you haven't read Harry Potter, it's a good series.

It's a good series. All right, next question here. Thank you. Oh, so the book, the graphic novel, Mr. Ballon presents Strange, Dark, and mysterious: The Graphic Stories. It's available on October first. So if you pre-order now, I think that it gets delivered by October second. I was on Amazon today, and I saw that the delivery day was October second. So, yeah, there you go. That's the date. And there's an option for a signed copy. I think that's on there. So just mentioning that, if you're interested in that. If my little John Hancock means something to you. Okay. Would I ever Would I ever do an audio? Is that the question? Would I ever do an audiobook? Yeah, I would. Yeah, I would. I mean, I feel like I do a lot of audio recordings. That seems like something I might do. How do you cope with burnout? The question was, how do I How do you cope with burnout? Truthfully, the only real way to cope with burnout, certainly at the level that we're at as a company, is to have a team. Fundamentally, burnout is when one person is doing one thing for too long.

And For sure, that happens. For sure, I feel that way. But I have this incredible team. What you don't see right now is there's two people in the room with me. There's Jeremy, who's in charge of editing. He runs the whole department. And Drew, who you know from Discord, who runs our Discord, and he's getting more and more involved in Ball and Studios as well. They're sitting off to the side secretly. But I'm surrounded by talented, incredible people that are not the first round of employees. This is the fifth iteration. I mean, these are people that we're basically recruited in to do really, really specific and technical things. That is what has kept me from burnout, because I was burning out hard in 2021. It wasn't until nick Widders came in as my manager and then became the CEO of Ballant Studios, and then we hired some people, and it was hard to relinquish control. But as soon as we had some people helping out, it allowed me to avoid burnout. Even though this isn't a question, I'm going to ask this question to myself, What's the deal with your mom, John? I'm glad you asked.

My mom is awesome. She's on the stream right now. Jessie Thuma is her name. She is a huge part of the growth of the studio. She and I work together on the podcast. When we decided to launch the Mr. Ballon podcast, my mom was working at the library. She was a librarians, and she was like, You seem like you're burned out. I'd love to help you in some capacity with writing, because my mom's this prolific writer. I was like, Yeah, I can't keep doing this. Writing 7,000 words a week plus writing YouTube and doing all this stuff, it's just too much. I'm not going to be able to keep this up for very long. And so not for pay, not for anything. My mom came over and just began churning out these epic scripts for the Mr. Ballon podcast. And it absolutely is the reason the podcast was able to just keep on going. I wrote Start to finish, I think, the first five episodes of the podcast. And then I definitely was and still involved in the final touch-up of every script because I'm the one that memorizes and tells the story. But my mom, she is the reason that that podcast stayed on the air.

Frankly, she's the one who gave it the style that it has. When we got the Amazon deal that really allowed us to reinvest in the company and scale up, I look back at my mom coming in and writing that show when I really needed it, and that was a big pivotal moment. My mom is That's awesome. So Jessie, I know you're in there. Love you. You're awesome. Cool. Next question. How do you prepare for videos? I see a lot of body language, which makes you an amazing storyteller. And what elements of scares do you find the creepiest? This was from Leslie Machado. Thank you, Leslie. Do you want the truth, or do you want my contrived answer? The truth. Got it. Okay, so how do I actually prepare for videos? There's the formal stuff that I do, which is I'll get a script from, actually, usually for Evan. This is for YouTube videos? Yeah. Evan will be the last person to see a script that's going to go to YouTube, and she'll send it to me, and then she and I will go over it. We'll talk through the story, and I'll make whatever changes I need to make.

And then once I have the final version of the script, I sit down with it, and I'm looking in the direction of where I sit in my studio, and I read the story several times over, and I think about what's going to happen at which point, where do I need to highlight this and that. And it takes me It took me maybe two hours to just read and consume the story to the point where I feel like I've not memorized it because I don't really memorize the script. I memorize the story, like what happens in the story where I can rift in different directions. And so that's the professional side of what happens. And then I get behind the camera and I'm like, Man, today is going to be the day that I'm going to hit record, and it's just going to go so smoothly. I know the story so well. It's just going to be so easy. But then as soon as I hit record, the first 20 minutes are basically me not being able to say a single sentence, being very self-conscious of how bad I sound, second-guessing everything I'm doing, to the point where I'm screaming, literally at the top of my lungs, and running around in my studio out of frustration.

And eventually, I leave, and I go downstairs, and I cool off. And then I come back up about 25 minutes later when I'm totally, I'm still mad, but less so. And then I begin to film after deleting the first 20 minutes of footage, and then it typically goes pretty well. So lots of prep, a little bit of a freak out, and then I slip into flow, and I record the story. That's the process. And you know what's funny is I know I'm not alone, especially in the podcasting world. I've met a bunch of other podcasters, and there's definitely... It's really hard to go from being yourself to recording, to go from zero to one. It's really hard. Silence to speaking, especially at the beginning, the cold open, it's really hard to do. I had this weird, almost nervous tick that I have. When I would start recording videos, I used to have this set up in front of me that I actually still use, but it was like a box that sat on a table, and the tripod sat on top of the box, and it positioned the camera towards me. I'd be sitting there trying to tell my story, and I'm fumbling my words.

I can't get it going. Eventually, I developed this habit to recenter myself where I would look at what was in front of me, and I would just say the things I saw in my field of vision. This sounds totally weird, but hear me out. Right in front of me was a box and a camera. And so I would say, Okay, got to calm down here. Box and a camera. Okay, let's go. And it became this weird thing that I say to reset myself before I speak again. So every time I'm struggling, if you watch a raw take, and I'm sure Jeremy has probably seen me do this a few times, I try to cut them out because it's weird. But all throughout the video, it'll be me like, I've screwed it up again. All right. Box and a camera. Here we go. And then I'd start telling the story again. So people have weird stuff they do, but it's just hard to go from speaking like a normal cadence to speaking where you're being recorded. It's a little awkward. So take some time, take some freaking out. Next question. What's one of the stories are you proudest of?

Okay. Are you highlighting that? Okay. Sorry. So what is one of the stories that I've covered? Oh, here we go. This is from Jessie Shorty. What is the proudest video you've done on the YouTube channel by far. Okay, so what is the story I'm most proud of on YouTube? And it's not because I'm wearing this shirt, but I will say it's the Headless Valley for sure. Let me move out of the way. That's delayed. Anyways, you can see it, the Headless Valley. And the reason I'm the most proud of this one is not only was the story, in my opinion, quite good, but also in order to make that particular video, which is the… I think the YouTube video is called The Valley of the Headless Men. I think that's what it's called, but it's been dubbed the Headless Valley in real life. That's what it's called in Canada. In order to tell it, I needed to look at all these different anecdotes over a span of a hundred years, and no one, at least I couldn't find a full... No one had put together in a timeline all the different weird things that had happened in this valley in Canada that's been dubbed the Headless Valley.

It's a long story, but the short version of it is you had all these gold prospectors that were... Well, let me back I'll give you a little more. Up in Canada, in the northern part of Canada, is a thing called the Northwest Territories. It's this big swath of land that's basically a big forest, and virtually nobody lives there. It's unbelievably unpopulated. And I think that it's... I think Germany has 50 million people. I'm screwing up the stats. Basically, it's this huge space with very few people living there. And on top of it being fairly isolated, it's also really hard just to get to the Northwest Territories. There's not a lot of easy ways to get there. And then also within the Northwest Territories, there's this one spot called the Nahani Valley or the headless valley, that is, even by Northwest Territory standards, the Nahani Valley is really hard to get to. You can't fly there. You can technically walk there, but it requires basically really intense mountaineering to get into the Nahani Valley. And it's also It's now a park. It's a national park. But because it's a national park, the park rangers have closed off a lot of this valley.

Even though they don't say this is the reason, it's because in those areas, lots of people have died and have died and been found They had their heads missing, hence the name Headless Valley. You have this place that's really hard to get to. The only people that I could find that had lived in the Nahani Valley for a long period of time was this native tribe that was living out there. I think there was 10,000 of people living there. Inexplicably, I think it was in the early 1800s, this tribe was living there. They had their whole community in the valley. Then a gold prospector had gone into the valley because it was known for having gold there, and so he would risk it to get in there. He discovered that, practically in the span of 24 hours, the entire tribe had vanished. He had been there one day, and he saw them, he saw some of the leaders, he walked by and waved, and then the next day, everything was gone. Their tents were gone. There were still supplies on the ground. It was a sudden disappearance of 10,000 people. Then after that, you had all these other prospectors that were going into this valley to look for gold over the course of 10, 20 years, and many of them died and were found with their head missing.

If you haven't heard this, if you have not heard this story, it's called The Valley of Headless Men on YouTube. Pretty sure it's called that. It could be called The Headless Valley now. We might have changed it. But the writing I'm very proud I tied together about six or seven anecdotes in a way that ratchets up the intensity all the way to the very end. Actually, just to tease the story, at the end of the story, there's one of the creepiest sequences that I've ever done on any story, where it gives me chills just thinking about it, and it has to do with the naked girl. So when you get to that point in the story, when you get to the naked girl scene towards the end of the headless valley, you'll know what I mean. It is one of the creepiest things. The sound design was excellent, so shout out to Jeremy, who's standing right next to me. Sound design was awesome. The images are great. So headless valley, that's my top choice. And again, here's the shirt. So if you like the headless valley, if you're a fan, you got to get this shirt.

You can get it on ballinstudios. Com or go to book. Ballinstudios. Com. Start by pre-ordering your book, and then go to the bottom of the page and get your merch. All right, we'll do one more question. This is from Bayly Edwards. How do you find to balance family time and making content? Does it ever affect your mental health doing such dark stories? Does a certain story stick with you that you can't shake? This is Bayly Edwards. Thank you. Good questions. So balancing family time is really only possible because I have a team of people that support me. Prior to having a team, there was no balance. In fact, basically, I told my wife, You have to do everything family-wise, take care of kids, do everything, and I have to work 24/7 to make this a thing. We We were very much in support of each other, but in the early days of starting this YouTube channel, it required so much time and energy that I really just couldn't do anything else. I am not complaining about that. In the least, it's just a reality. If you want to stand out in a very saturated marketplace place, which is being a YouTuber, it's like you get your opportunity, well, you got to capitalize on it.

When I had the chance to go to YouTube, I knew this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to create a platform there. That's why you saw five videos, 3, 4 Even five times a week because it was like, I'm just going to do my max effort. It would happen that after about six months of that, of working 24/7, it was untenable. Like untenable. I had put on a bunch of weight. I was completely miserable. I was spending almost no time with my family, basically none. I have young children, and I did not like that. We ended up cutting back on content, and we brought a team in, and I think the content has improved, and it's much more consistent. Frankly, now My role in Ballant Studios, overwhelmingly, is just to be the guy telling stories. That's the thing I'm really good at. That's why the channel is growing as it is. And so that's the thing I'm responsible for. People pick up virtually every other aspect of work, and it's my job to just perform. And it puts a lot of pressure on me, but it's the thing that I'm good at. It's the thing I want to do.

And so now my life is very, very balanced. It's still very time-intensive to create content, of course, but no more than anybody else who's got a job that's pretty time-intensive. The balance is good now, but it's only because of the team. That's question one. Next question from Bayly was, does it ever affect your mental health doing such dark stories? It does, but not nearly as much as you'd think. I think that there's an element of you disconnect when you're done. In order to tell the story, you really need to inhabit it and learn it and appreciate it and understand who's in it. But when it's over, it's like I turn off the Mr. Ballon thing and I go see my family. That's frankly been good for me. I don't want to live in these stories all the time, and I've made a real conscious effort to compartmentalize, which is actually something you're taught to do in the Navy SEAL teams. Compartmentalization is definitely a thing. It can be very unhealthy. It can also be very healthy, depending on what you're compartmentalizing. But it's worked for me. Then the last part of this question from Bayly, which will be our last question overall, is, does a certain story stick with you that you can't shake?

I'll stick with my own personal story. I sometimes say it was this woman. There was a story about a woman named Geraldine Largay, who went hiking and got lost, and she ended up passing away because she couldn't find her way out again. I would say that that story really reminds me of my mom And so that's why it really shook me up, because it just felt like I was reading about my mom passing away from getting stuck out in the woods. It was so horrible. So that was just emotional. But right now, I think that the one I would say is either my own personal story, so what I saw in my room still haunt me, the story that's my first YouTube video, and it's about what I saw in that cabin in New Hampshire with my two friends when I was 16. That's a very popular episode, but if you want to check it out, it's The very first one, What I saw in my room still haunt me. Then the other one would be the September 11th video. I reached out to a guy named Mike, who was in the South Tower on 9/11, and he survived.

But he was there basically when it collapsed. He was in the tower. I ended up reaching out to him, and I got his story. I got information directly from him, and I told his story with his permission. His family all approved the story, but it was just very emotional because it's a terrorist attack, and there were lots of people that lost their lives. His perspective is one that I had not really heard because Anyways, he saw some of the worst parts of 9/11 firsthand, and it was just a very intense video to create. In fact, this is not in any way an exaggeration. I was trying to film the last part of that story, the 9/11 story, where I had to talk about the people that decided to jump instead of wait for the building to collapse or wait for the fire to take them, and I couldn't do it. It was so difficult for me to tell what Mike told me about what he saw It just choked me up. It was just devastating that I actually had to push the video back a week because I could not film the ending. So if you were there when I was putting out the 9/11 video, you'll recall, I had to say, Hey, this video is going to be a week late.

I didn't say why, but it was because it was just a very challenging video to make. But I was very happy with how it came out, and Mike got in touch with me afterwards, and he said, You memorialize the story in a way that I'm very thankful for, for posterity. I can share this with my family, and that means a lot to me. So definitely was worth it. So on that fairly dark note, this is going to be the end of the live stream. But again, one more time, the book. Boleynstudios. Com is where you can pre-order the graphic novel that comes out October first of this year. If enough of you pre-order this book, this will make the New York Times bestsellers list, which will tell us that we need to invest more heavily in more books, and we have the team ready to do it. We just need the signal that this is the way. So get your pre-orders in. I Again, this is something we, at the studio, are so proud of. We have had just such talented people working on this. So yeah, book. Ballinstudios. Com. Pre-order your book. Also, new shirt, Headless Valley shirt.

You can get that at book. Ballinstudios. Com at the bottom of the page, or at ballinstudios. Com. Thank you to Evan. Sorry, your interview got cut short. Thank you to Rob. Thank you to my mom on stream. I think my dad's on stream, too. Scott, good to see you. Maybe my other sister. My whole family is probably on stream. So love to you guys. Thank you, Drew. Thank you, Jeremy, who are here with me in the studio. Take care, everybody. See you next time.