Hey, everybody. This is Ellen Weatherford with Just the Zoo of Us. This is your favorite animal review

podcast. And I'm a little bit starstruck this week because I have one of my favorite people

in the world recording with me today. This is Patch from Tier Zoo. Say hi, Patch. Hey, how's it going

everybody? Thanks for having me on.

Thank you so much for coming on. So I'm just going to get right into it. I know you from your

YouTube channel, your series of videos called Tier Zoo. Can you tell us a little bit about

Tier Zoo for people who maybe haven't heard of it yet? Yeah, it's a bit high concept.

What I normally tell people when I get asked that question

is it's wildlife ecology and evolution through the lens of gaming. It's so good. So, you know,

for people who haven't seen it before, you're kind of making tier lists and assigning statistics

using gaming mechanic sort of terminology and applying it to real world ecology.

It is so good and so funny.

What got you into doing a YouTube series like this?

Yeah, there's a few different sources that I attribute to it.

Starting with the Super Smash Brothers community, when I was in college, I got really into the video game series Super Smash Brothers and tried to get competitive at it.

There was a club at my college of people who were very competitive.

And I had like grown up playing it.

And I was like the best of my friends.

But never did I encounter actual

people who'd studied the game and knew very specific mechanics and knew even more about my

favorite characters than I did. And so delving into that scene and learning all of the intricacies

of Super Smash Brothers was really interesting. It was very engaging,

...