Summary
Get ready to laugh — and then call your parents immediately.
Seth and Josh Meyers may have more than a few IMDB credits between them. However, with or without the star power, they swear they couldn’t be more relatable — especially when it comes to having absolutely disastrous and utterly hilarious family vacation memories.
Moreover, to prove this point, the brothers — with precisely two years and 11 days between them — are fondly looking back at their family vacation memories and how those experiences shaped them in their new podcast, launching today.
Podcast Introduction
“Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers,” as Josh explained, is loosely inspired by “a series of bad moments on what might have otherwise been good trips that we keep talking about some 40 years on.”
He adds that familiar feeling of having a terrible trip that was so awful at the moment but can now collectively bring laughter is “something that we wanted to tap into with other people.”
Family Memories
You know, like when the entire Meyers family went on a ski trip that only Josh was looking forward to, only to have him break his leg on the first run, forcing Seth out on the cold slopes alone as a seven-year-old. Or the time the family ran from a torrential rainstorm at Busch Gardens, only to realize later they left Josh in the theme park.
“Stress brings out the true version of everyone in your family,” Seth said with a laugh alongside his younger brother. “All the pretense is dropped when things go really sideways — say in an airport or at a hotel that doesn’t have your reservation.”
“I’ve seen my parents turn against each other in some of the most beautiful locations I’ve ever been lucky enough to visit,” the host of “Late Night with Seth Meyers” added.
However, that’s the thing about traveling with family. When things get gnarly and you have nowhere to go, you simply have to come together and rally, the brothers explained.
“There was always an unstated but understood rule in our house that if you were gonna be crabby about something, or if you were gonna be not any fun to be around, you could tap out and go to your room,” Josh said. “And then, just come back when you’re ready to hang out.”
Keeping It Civil on Trips
One more way the Meyers always kept it civil on a trip? A simple deck of cards.
“No matter where we went, what kind of vacation we were on, we would always play card games at the end of the night,” Seth recalled. “We had those touchstone moments that we could return to, and they were a little ritualistic that helped us get back on the same page.”
Though they aren’t the only ones laughing about the past. Throughout the upcoming season, they’ll ask their famous friends like Amy Poehler, Pete Davidson, and Tom Holland to do the same. Consequently, according to the Meyers brothers, bad family trips really do make stars just like us.
“If a star is wearing the same dress as you are, drinking the same Starbucks, like, yeah, I guess they’re just like you. But when they’re sleeping on a pullout couch at a Howard Johnson’s on the way to go see their grandmother, that’s when they were really like you,” Seth said. “And it’s stories about those times in people’s lives that we’re really interested in.”
Sage Advice for Family Vacations
As for how you can at least plan to have the perfect family vacation, the brothers have a little sage advice. “I personally think a lot of family trips go awry because too much is scheduled,” Seth advised. “So leave yourself some downtime.”
While Josh agreed on the downtime, he also said having a few marquee activities planned that everyone can enjoy goes a long way too. “Have some tentpole activities that you have planned so you know you can hit some big things before you go on the trip, so you can really be excited about it,” he suggested. “And have times carved out where you’re just at the hotel, or you’re just walking around in town, and play it by ear.”
And, most importantly, try to remember you’re getting the chance to spend quality time with the most important people in the world — your family. “At the end of the day, you go to beautiful places,” Josh said, “but it’s the people that you’re with on a vacation that are going to make that vacation.”
New episodes of “Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers” will be available every Tuesday starting today, June 27, on Apple Podcast and Spotify.
