2 Bears, 1 Cave with Tom Segura & Bert Kreischer
MrBallen Traumatizes Tom Segura | 2 Bears, 1 Cave
Mon, 05 May 2025
Check out MrBallen’s channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@MrBallen SPONSORS: - Buy Jack Link's Duos at https://JackLinks.com/DUOS or at your local convenience, gas, grocery store or subscribe and save on Amazon. - Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at https://square.com/go/bears! #squarepod - Make life easier by getting harder and discover your options at https://BlueChew.com! And we’ve got a special deal for our listeners: Try your first month of BlueChew FREE when you use promo code BEARS -- just pay $5 shipping. - Brought to you by BetterHelp. Visit https://BetterHelp.com/bears to get 10% off your first month. On this episode of 2 Bears, 1 Cave, Tom Segura is joined by the legendary storyteller himself—MrBallen! Get ready for an epic conversation as they dive into some of the wildest true crime mysteries and horror stories, including the chilling unsolved case of the Yuba County Five and a gruesome incident on an oil rig that will haunt your dreams. They also explore mind-blowing topics like habitable exoplanets, Katy Perry’s space adventure, and MrBallen’s incredible journey from Navy SEAL to YouTube sensation. Don't miss this one—it's a mix of mystery, mayhem, and a whole lot of laughs. 2 Bears, 1 Cave Ep. 287 https://tomsegura.com/tour https://www.bertbertbert.com/tour https://store.ymhstudios.com Chapters 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:15 - The Strange, Dark, & Mysterious World Of MrBallen 00:07:29 - Why True Crime? 00:14:03 - The Stories That Stick With You 00:28:10 - The Yuba County Five 00:35:45 - Exoplanets 00:40:57 - Katy Perry In Space 00:44:47 - First Day On Seal Team 2 00:58:44 - New Career Path 01:10:06 - Grenade Moment Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is MrBallen and what does he do?
Welcome to another episode of Two Bears, One Cave. My regular co-host is having his spine fused. And so while he's out, we have a great guest. If you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious, don't forget to hit that subscribe button like you're slapping the tip of your penis on your partner's forehead. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce Mr. Ballin. Dude. All right.
Very nice, dude. I love the care that was put into that intro.
Thought about it.
That's the move, man.
Is that because you're Japanese? Why do you do that?
I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I started doing that. Like, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, that's all we do. That's all we do. And then I end it with one of these. Like, all right, into the stories. And then I just...
I just never stopped doing it. I was watching that, and I was like, cool, I like this.
It feels kind of martial artsy. You know what's funny is I do that so often, because I record all the time. I'm always making episodes, and I routinely forget what I'm supposed to say that I've said a million times. I don't know what it is. You'll forget that thing? All of it. Really? When it gets to, if you're a fan of The Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, then you come to the right.
And I'll just black out. I just black it out. I have to do seven takes.
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Chapter 2: Why are people fascinated by true crime stories?
For people that don't know, that are watching this right now, or listening... If they don't know, you, Mr. Ballin, have a wildly successful YouTube channel.
Thank you.
Where you tell stories about things that are strange, dark, and mysterious. True. And you have, like, what, 10 million subscribers or something?
Just about. We're going to hit 10 million, I think, next week.
Next week.
I think it's next week.
Yeah, soon. And what it is, is, like, it is, like, you sitting... And literally... telling these stories like the the whole thing i because i was i was i was listening to you explain how you made this transition into this thing but the part i didn't i didn't get like is this just a field you always had an interest in like did you always like stories like this
Kind of. I would say that the transition from being in the military to then telling spooky stories on the internet was not one I had planned. But I personally was always drawn to strange, dark, and mysterious content. Yeah. That's the stuff I like to listen to and watch on the internet.
The same, dude. The same. Like, I am your audience.
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Chapter 3: What are some of MrBallen's memorable stories?
It isn't that I didn't like it. I felt like it would be more connecting if the host was on camera. And it was like you were hearing somebody tell you the story. Because a lot of these channels, they do voiceover over dark imagery and video, and that's fine. But I just thought it's more engaging to hear some of these stories. It's a campfire setting.
I was going to say, it reminds me of... Actually, I feel like when you're a kid and an adult tells you a story, you know?
Yeah.
Like, it's kind of like you just go, like, tell me... Like, my kids every night are like, tell me a story. And I'm like, I'm out of fucking stories, man. Like, I've been telling you... They're like, tell me a story of when you shit yourself one time. And I'm like, I've told you. I've told you the four times I can recall. And they just want more stories. But there is something about, like, your...
channel and the way you're telling these stories, it feels like. I'm like, oh, I'm like a kid watching an adult.
And truthfully, there was no strategy for that other than it's how I would have wanted to be told a story. And so in the early days, like the first couple of years from 2020 to 2022, I mean, when I was doing all the research, writing everything, I would create a script. But the process of researching the story and writing the script out I internalized the story.
And so I would have a script on my laptop off camera. But you had already like, yeah. Right. So I would sort of like look at the script and then tell the story. But I would do it in bursts. And I would often do like multiple iterations where I'd change it a little bit. And it just sort of worked. It sort of put me in a position where from that point on, I had to maintain that style.
And so I got better and better at, basically, I read a script in order to learn the meat of the story. And then I just tell it.
And so for research now, because it feels like obviously there's an endless amount of stories out there, but you still have to get the story. Do you solicit stories? Are you guys just out researching stories? How do you actually get the story?
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Chapter 4: What happened to the Yuba County Five?
Chapter 5: How does MrBallen find and create his stories?
Yeah, you like it, right?
It's incredible. But we have, you know, I want to say like 15 or 20 people that are just basically looking in different parts of the world that we have an Asian correspondent who's like only looking at like, you know, Chinese material that we wouldn't even know how to sift through to find stories. But again, they sort of fall into that public domain.
And it all gets filtered to our writer's room, and I work with the writer's room, and we make scripts.
And you have a second graphic novel coming out?
We do, we do. This is the official cover art here. I'll set it up right here. Yeah, so we did a graphic novel last year.
Where Nightmares Live.
Where Nightmares Live. This is the second one. I'm trying to put it in frame here. Yeah. It's a collection of nine stories. Half will be new, half are fan favorites, and it'll come out later this year.
Well, let me ask you this, because you probably have some insight on this now from having done this for a few years. Yeah. Which is, so there's certainly a segment of the population, obviously, that loves this kind of thing, right? Like I said, I'm one of these people. When I go home and I...
want to wind down i look for i like suspense i like thrillers yep i like mystery yeah crime like these are the things that like i don't know engage me right yeah my wife sits there and she goes what's wrong with you she's like this all you put in your fucking head it's all this negative dark shit and i'm like yeah yeah this one calms me down calms me down and i this is what i enjoy and she's like you're mentally ill you know um but like
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Chapter 6: Are there other habitable planets in the universe?
Without being in a situation where you get smashed.
So you're safe that way. Yeah. And so he goes to the platform. Again, it's nighttime. It's very windy. It's storming. And they're like, hey, it's right down there. And he's like, okay. So he goes down one level to the platform right below. You know, he can see his colleagues, you know, 20 feet above him on the platform right above. And he's like, all right, send down the harness.
And so they feed this harness, just a three-point harness that's connected to a metal rope or a line. And they put it right down through that mouse hole on the platform above him.
And that metal line that the harness is connected to feeds all the way back up to this winch that's controlled by a winch operator that's, you know, a couple platforms up in this, you know, glassed in sort of like overlook where they can actually see the whole platform. They can see the folks on the upper platform. They can see sort of Gordon, but they sort of have eyes on everything.
And so they feed this harness down through the mouse hole. It gets to Gordon, puts the harness on, and then he gives the thumbs up to the folks right above him. And then they in turn turn and they call out to the winch operator like, hey, you know, he's ready to go up. And again, this is routine for everybody. Yeah. So the winch operator hits start and the winch slowly begins to retract.
And slowly but surely, Gordon is lifted off the ground on the lower platform and he's brought up, you know, 10 feet or whatever it was until he could access the section of the drill that he couldn't before. And he, you know, waves to the guys at that point, says, I'm good. I can see what I need to do. So the guys above him, they in turn, they wave to the hoist operator like, all right, stop it.
He hits the button. It stops. And so now Gordon is where he is. You know, he fixes the drill. It's all it begins to work again. Everything's great. And so he signals to the guys above him like, hey, I'm ready to go back down again because he is done. And so they turn and they ask the winch operator to go ahead and lower him.
And so the winch operator is like, OK, he hits the start button and then just kind of like starts looking off into space. Like this is his only job is literally pushing this button. Yeah, that's all he does. And so he's not really paying attention. He didn't realize that he had not reversed the settings of the winch, that instead of flipping it to now when he hit start, it lowers Gordon.
He had left it in retract mode. And so when he hit start, the winch began to continue to raise Gordon up towards the platform above him where that mouse hole is. And so now he's not moving quickly. This is a slow moving winch. And it's like, you know, 10 or 15 feet until he would even get to the platform above him. So it's not like, oh, my God, stop the winch. It's more like, come on, dude.
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