Billy Crudup

Billy Crudup (The Morning Show, Jay Kelly, Almost Famous) is an Emmy and Tony Award-winning actor. Billy joins the Armchair Expert to discuss his interpretation of his findings on Finding Your Roots, how he both appreciated and struggled with having a dreamer for a dad, and the story of his parents getting twice married and divorced. Billy and Dax talk about his sentimentality sometimes sneaking up on him, wanting to create for his son the stability and consistency that he didn’t have growing up, and rebelling against his father by getting a master's degree in acting. Billy explains the galvanizing moment when he realized he wanted to pursue acting as a craft, feeling useful when he can tell a good story, and why doing television scared him when he was just starting out. This episode is sponsored by AlexaPlus. Learn more at amazon.com/newalexa http://www.amazon.com/newalexa. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  Vocal exercises.

• 0:08Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Oh, no, it's a mess.

• 0:13Dax Shepard?

  Armchair expert.

• 0:16Dax Shepard?

  I'm Dax Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman.

• 0:18Speaker 00

  Hi.

• 0:19Dax Shepard?

  Hi. I was giggling because I tried to do it quietly.

• 0:22Speaker 00

  They're gonna hear it. I'm gonna leave that in.

• 0:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you're gonna leave that in. Okay. Today's episode is someone I idolize as an actor. His name is Billy Crudup. He is a Tony and Emmy Award winning actor. He's very sparkly and magic-y. He's very, yeah, he's very special. Almost Famous, Watchmen, Big Fish, Sleepers, of course, The Morning Show. New season is currently out now on Apple Plus TV. And he is in a new movie in theaters November 4th now. In theaters now and on Netflix on December 5th. J. Kelly and it's got the clone doctor in it.

• 0:58Speaker 00

  It sure does. And Adam Sandler. It's a big movie.

• 1:01Dax Shepard?

  It's a big old movie. No bomb back.

• 1:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:04Dax Shepard?

  Incredible. Please enjoy Billy Crudup. Armchair Expert is proud to have Alexa Plus as our presenting sponsor. The all new Alexa Plus is your smart proactive AI assistant. Just chat naturally about anything and watch your to do list disappear. It learns your style and anticipates what's next across Echo, Fire TV and more. Learn more at amazon.com/newalexa. We get support from Quince.

• 1:33Speaker 00

  I have to say, I am so ready for fall. I want sweaters. I've been craving a true crisp morning where I actually need a jacket. I can't wait.

• 1:42Dax Shepard?

  I'm fully there. The second it dips below 70, I'm like, this is my season. Give me the layers, give me the boots, give me a reason to wear something other than a t-shirt. And honestly, that's why I love Quince because fall is when your wardrobe actually has to show up. And everything at Quince is 50 to 80% less than similar brands. We're talking 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at $60.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  $60. $60 for cashmere that you'd expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price. It's amazing. Gets me every time. It really shouldn't be real, but it is because they go straight to the factories. They skip the middlemen and they just hand you the savings. The stuff isn't trendy. It's the kind of pieces you grab over and over because they work every time.

• 2:22Dax Shepard?

  The 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters for me are it. When I look at Steve McQueen, this man owned a couple of sweaters he wore all the time and he looks iconic.

• 2:31Speaker 00

  It's a uniform.

• 2:33Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  And Quince isn't just about the clothes. They have hotel quality bedding, cookware, bath essentials, thoughtfully designed furniture. You can really go there and outfit your entire apartment or house. So if you're in need of any kind of fall refresh at home too, same quality, same attention to detail for every corner of your life.

• 2:51Dax Shepard?

  Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Fantastic. I got you guys a pumpkin spice latte if you want one. No, I don't know what that is.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  How charming.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Are they have never had one. This smell really puts me off.

• 3:40Dax Shepard?

  That's not a real taste.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  Distilled pumpkin?

• 3:43Speaker 00

  Well, no, there's pumpkin spice. That's real. All spice is real. These are real spices, you guys.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  But how do you make pumpkin spice? Is it from the peel? Like you dry out the peel?

• 3:54Dax Shepard?

  The seeds, grind up the seeds, mix with a little paprika?

• 3:58Speaker 02

  No, I don't think that's how it works.

• 4:01Speaker 00

  Good thing we do a fact check.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Oh, there you go. That's a good place to start.

• 4:05Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:06Dax Shepard?

  Billy, where are you staying?

• 4:07Speaker 02

  At a little boutique hotel called the Chateau Marmont.

• 4:10Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I would have guessed. I would have guessed. All of you boys do chateau.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Well, this one Naomi set up.

• 4:17Dax Shepard?

  Is she also in town?

• 4:18Speaker 02

  She is in town. She's got a premiere for a show she did, and a couple of days ago, she got a star on the Walk of Fame.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  So we had a ceremony for that.

• 4:26Dax Shepard?

  Were you in attendance?

• 4:27Speaker 02

  I certainly was.

• 4:28Dax Shepard?

  I didn't go to my one.

• 4:29Speaker 00

  I know, that was embarrassing.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. You were working out, I guess?

• 4:33Dax Shepard?

  I was busy lifting. I was in the middle of a sack.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Well, dude, then that's a total bro excuse.

• 4:38Dax Shepard?

  What are we gonna do?

• 4:39Speaker 02

  I mean, I could lift that stone.

• 4:41Dax Shepard?

  I could say goodbye to these gains. But they're temporary and that star's permanent. I'll get to it.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  I went to hers.

• 4:48Dax Shepard?

  You were there?

• 4:49Speaker 02

  That's generous.

• 4:50Dax Shepard?

  And then there were protesters there. The anti-vax community hates us, so they were in full force screaming at her. What a day to remember. I'm sad I missed it.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Holy cow, okay? That is a different sort of spin.

• 5:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, not what I think a young actor envisions when they think of getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Could you guys just for a second, quiet down? Just give me one second.

• 5:14Dax Shepard?

  You can berate me afterwards.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Total agreement, but I just need a second with my star.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  It also is funny because, you know, in the pictures, you're always sitting by the star, but you're sitting in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Oh, correct.

• 5:26Speaker 00

  It's disgusting.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  That is not for the faint of heart.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  No.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  But neither is this business.

• 5:30Dax Shepard?

  No, you're right.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  The cesspool of this business.

• 5:33Dax Shepard?

  They did a number on Trump star. Have you seen that?

• 5:35Speaker 02

  I have not.

• 5:36Dax Shepard?

  Oh, people have gone. Have you seen it?

• 5:38Speaker 02

  They've gone to town on it?

• 5:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it's gotta be hundreds of people. There's no way one person could be responsible for the amount of damage. It looks like there's been acid involved and pickaxes and I mean, it is. It's a mess.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  I guess I'm not terribly surprised.

• 5:51Dax Shepard?

  I think I just saw an article that the city was finally like, we're gonna have to remove it. It's a big hole in the ground now.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  Oh, boy.

• 5:57Dax Shepard?

  Now.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Well.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  We're doing voices?

• 6:01Dax Shepard?

  I just heard my voice there, which doesn't always happen. Do you have people who do impressions of you?

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Negative. Actually, there is one young comedian who does impressions, very good impressions.

• 6:13Dax Shepard?

  Matt Friend, insanely tall?

• 6:15Speaker 00

  We just had him on.

• 6:16Dax Shepard?

  We just had him on.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  I think he lives in Seoul or around, Naomi and I are downtown in New York and he came up to him and said, "Hey, hey, nice to meet you." And I'm like, "Hey, nice to meet you too." And he said, "I do impressions." And it turns out, he did one before and I think it was Kimmel or somebody else had forwarded it to me and I gave him a critique back on it.

• 6:34Dax Shepard?

  Okay, because it was him doing you.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  It was him doing my character on the morning show, Corey Ellison.

• 6:39Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  Specific.

• 6:40Dax Shepard?

  So him doing Corey, played by you.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Exactly, because there is no Billy here.

• 6:45Dax Shepard?

  I know that.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  I transform.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  Now, we're here for Billy. Billy only.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, Billy's boring.

• 6:52Dax Shepard?

  Boring Billy. Oh, boring Billy. Were you at Disco, Disco as a kid?

• 6:56Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 6:57Dax Shepard?

  And boring Billy, I guess.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  And boring Billy as an adult. Actually, that's a good way to be an adult, I think.

• 7:02Dax Shepard?

  All right, so now, as you arrived here today, did you have any fear that I would tell this story that I always tell about you? You must have.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  I did not.

• 7:10Dax Shepard?

  It didn't even cross your mind.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  Why would you do that?

• 7:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's so inappropriate. He would never do that.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  No.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  But he's gonna.

• 7:16Dax Shepard?

  I'm not gonna because I know you don't want me to.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  What does 500 million streams mean?

• 7:21Speaker 00

  It means a lot of people are gonna listen to this story.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:24Dax Shepard?

  That's the amount of tributaries that feed the Amazon. That's it. 500 million streams.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  Because this is a green, uh, I see. Okay, good.

• 7:32Dax Shepard?

  We're off-grid. I one time had the rare honor of hearing Billy make love.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 7:40Dax Shepard?

  I want to keep it as clean and not offensive to Billy as possible, but I've never, ever, ever heard someone receive that much pleasure in my life. I felt very inept and insecure. I've thought about it many, many times.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  People in the house, that was not coming from my vicinity.

• 7:56Dax Shepard?

  The calls of pleasure, I just was like, when's this gonna end? But anyways, when I saw Billy, I just had to tell him, you know, I think about that often and that was 20 years ago.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  Yep, it was about 20 years ago.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  That's why he's been in the gym ever since. He's trying to compete.

• 8:13Dax Shepard?

  Still, Kristen's never made noises like I heard some 20 years ago.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Good for you. You're allowed to take that.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Are you sure they weren't complaints?

• 8:21Dax Shepard?

  No. I was like, I should bring them water.

• 8:26Dax Shepard?

  I'm worried about everyone's hydration.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Exciting for that person.

• 8:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, let's talk about Mansetta, New York? Is that what it's called?

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Very close. Manhasset.

• 8:40Dax Shepard?

  Wow, when you pronounce it, I now realize it sounds like a bunk version of Manhattan. Oh, you guys did Manhattan, we're gonna do Manhasset.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  My suspicion is they're all drawn from Native American tribes in the area.

• 8:52Dax Shepard?

  Stolen.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  It hadn't occurred to me before.

• 8:54Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  But there are quite a few places in this country, the names originated before we got here.

• 9:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  And I suspect Manhattan, Manhasset.

• 9:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Maybe in that family.

• 9:05Dax Shepard?

  Where is it?

• 9:06Speaker 02

  On the north shore of Long Island, exit 36, I think, or so, about 30 minutes outside of the city. My dad was selling textiles in the late 60s, early 70s in Manhattan, so he would take the train.

• 9:19Dax Shepard?

  And when you say textiles, big bolts of fabric?

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, my dad was from North Carolina. The town that he grew up was called Henderson, North Carolina, 30, 40 minutes north of Durham. My grandfather was Vice President of Marketing for Hared Henderson, and so my dad wanted to go out on his own, so he went with a competing firm.

• 9:37Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  Burlington.

• 9:38Dax Shepard?

  Any relation to the Burlington Coat Factory?

• 9:40Speaker 02

  I believe there is a relation. You'll have to, like, I don't know the precise one, but there was quite a bit of yarn coming out of North Carolina, and so my dad would sell the cotton to the garment district in Manhattan.

• 9:52Dax Shepard?

  Now, grandpa, was he charmed by that? Did he say, oh, my son has pluck?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  There was almost nothing my grandfather was charmed by.

• 9:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  He was a fascinating guy. He was extremely cantankerous. We called him Pops. My grandmother Dee, who died the day I graduated high school, was an absolute angel. She was the greatest. Priscilla was her name.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Ooh, where Dee come from?

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Well, I'm not sure. It's a great question. It was Dee and Pops.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  But I don't know why. Both of my parents were only children, so they didn't have grandchildren before us. They were the names that they went with, but it's a good question. I'll ask my mom. But when my grandmother died, my grandfather was a widower, and I was going to school now 45 minutes away from him.

• 10:38Dax Shepard?

  See Chapel Hill.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  Ah, great school. I love Chapel Hill.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Great campus.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:43Dax Shepard?

  Tar Heels?

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Tar Heels, yes. Well done, Dax, yes.

• 10:46Dax Shepard?

  Now we're getting somewhere.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, two years or a year before I got there. So we did not have the Jordan era teams. And then after I left, we won the championship, I think, a year later or two years later.

• 10:58Dax Shepard?

  So you were kind of a rebuild period?

• 11:00Speaker 02

  We were a rebuild period.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  You got Jordan there.

• 11:03Dax Shepard?

  He followed Jordan.

• 11:04Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 11:06Dax Shepard?

  Right? Jordan came before you.

• 11:08Speaker 00

  What I wanted.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Jordan did come before.

• 11:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. He kind of followed Jordan.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  That reminds me of another story, but I'll save that one. So my grandfather took it upon himself to say, we're gonna have lunch every week at the same restaurant.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  Top of the hill?

• 11:23Speaker 02

  It was not Top of the Hill. It was the Rat Skeller, which is sort of underground and was a restaurant when he was at Chapel Hill in the 40s and was a restaurant when my dad was at Chapel Hill in the 60s.

• 11:35Dax Shepard?

  And your dad's a third.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  My dad's the third. My brother's the fourth.

• 11:38Dax Shepard?

  So a lot of tradition happening here.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  There certainly was for a while. Actually, I did Finding Your Roots with Skip. Have you done that?

• 11:44Dax Shepard?

  I did it.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's pretty incredible. I mean, it's a very unique experience. I confess, the way that I processed it when he showed me the family tree, which dated back to Charlemagne in 700 something, whatever, France.

• 11:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Gaul.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Which means essentially, I come from a long line of bureaucrats because they all filled out the paperwork. Marriage certificates, death certificates, birth certificates. That's how he can trace all that stuff.

• 12:12Dax Shepard?

  You're right.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  So I didn't feel any particular pride.

• 12:14Dax Shepard?

  Did he say that's the farthest back he's been able to get someone?

• 12:17Speaker 02

  No, and it turns out, most people are descendants of Charlemagne.

• 12:20Dax Shepard?

  Like Genghis Khan.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I felt great about it until I looked it up. It's like, oh, you're one of 600 million. The tree of Europeans coming from Charlemagne. But because both of my parents were only children, didn't have aunts and uncles and cousins and stuff, there wasn't much history.

• 12:36Dax Shepard?

  You were curious.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  I was very curious. So I also thought it would be just a wonderful opportunity for my family to have. And trust me, it was replete with bad stories. They're Americans through and through. The first people. That got here late 17th century, early 18th century. There were slave owners.

• 12:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Were congresspeople. There were people who fought on both sides of the civil war. People who were in POW camps. He showed me a picture of one of the POW camps.

• 13:02Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Confederate people who were held in the Union Confederate camps. I'm thinking this is why I inherited it. But my parents and grandparents seem to insist that civics was a part of your responsibility as an American.

• 13:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  I was on the student council and that kind of stuff. I was a boy scout. Not a great one.

• 13:19Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  You had a couple badges?

• 13:21Speaker 02

  More than a couple badges. I particularly like not tying.

• 13:24Dax Shepard?

  Do you have the knife?

• 13:25Speaker 02

  I had all the gear. I'm sure it's in a box somewhere. I would love to find it.

• 13:29Dax Shepard?

  Skip would like to get his hands on that stuff.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  Mail it on over.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  I don't know about that. I'm not convinced of it.

• 13:37Dax Shepard?

  I don't want to do too long on it, but here's the other thing. So it's like you're going to go in there and you're going to find out you're related to someone historically famous.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:44Dax Shepard?

  To which I'm like, I don't feel any ownership over. I'm not proud. And then they hit you with your family on slaves.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:49Dax Shepard?

  And then conversely, I don't feel guilty about that. I don't know what to do with that info. I didn't own slaves.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  You didn't, did you?

• 13:56Dax Shepard?

  No. But it's put on you as if you got an out process like, fuck, I come from people who own slaves.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  I think of it similarly, but not the same, which is if you want to understand a bit of what this strange experiment of America is called, which is so different than most other countries.

• 14:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  There's not a pluralistic democracy that has a GDP like we do. A very interesting, strange thing that has all sorts of consequences that we're seeing right now. And a lot of it is about trying to understand, well, what is it people were trying to do, maybe collectively or separately? Why were they fighting about it? Why did we have to come together about it? Why did we have wars about it? And my son and I were talking about it quite a bit during the lockdown. And it was a way to sort of study what this country in general writ large is trying to do by focusing on your lineage.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I like that.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  I didn't feel a responsibility to any of the great stuff. I did feel attendant to being an American. For whatever reason, I think that's important.

• 14:55Dax Shepard?

  I wish I had talked to you before I did it. Your pitch of it just now was so succinct. It's like you wrote it a month ago.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  That's my thing is I write stuff, I memorize them. I put on other people's clothes and I pretend it's myself.

• 15:09Dax Shepard?

  But now back to grandpa taking you to the restaurant.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  He was angry. He was a pretty impressive amateur athlete. In high school in North Carolina, he set records in track and field, in football and in boxing, records that stood for 30 or 40 years.

• 15:24Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  He was a tough guy. And then he went to World War II and the bombers. He was the radio guy and the thing blew up in his ear and made him deaf.

• 15:31Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  And I'm not sure if his just general vibe was anger. He was tough on my dad. My dad was an only child. So he did not take kindly, back to your question before, about my dad working for a competitor.

• 15:43Dax Shepard?

  Would they get into it at like Christmas?

• 15:45Speaker 02

  They got into it all the time. It was a lot of passive aggressive kind of stuff. When I was at school going to lunch with him, then I was in the middle. Because my dad, he wasn't terribly reliable financially. He was a fascinating guy, totally charming.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Is he with us?

• 15:58Speaker 02

  He's not with us. He died in 2005.

• 16:00Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  The same age as my grandmother, died at 63. They both smoked and you know, my dad liked Pall Malls.

• 16:05Dax Shepard?

  My dad's 62, Vantage Mental 100s.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so his whole body went cancer.

• 16:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  He didn't want to mention the lung cancer part of it, because then that would mean he had some responsibility.

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  So he would always talk about the blood and the brain and the bone and all the other ones. But it was also lung cancer. He was really a lovely person. I liked being around him. Huge dreamer. There was no obstacle that couldn't be overcome. Framed things a little differently, but that also meant he was kind of divorced from reality. It also, I think stemmed from his father being punitive towards him growing up. My dad felt like he had hit the jackpot in order to be a success. Cause my grandfather's way of loving was to toughen you up. Every lunch with me started with, alright, what are you screwing up now?

• 16:51Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 16:54Dax Shepard?

  Luckily, the list was long.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  It didn't help, by the way, that my first semester, I had a 1.7 GPA. I had to learn a few things about college. If you don't go to a class, you should probably drop it rather than taking the zero. You know, you do that a couple of times. Doesn't matter if you make As in the other ones. The average works out. But my grandfather did that to my father growing up. It planted the seed that my dad was never good enough. So my dad had the inclination to pay him back with major success. I think that was internally what was going on with my dad. But that never happens to people, right? You just don't hit the jackpot. You have to grind out of life. And occasionally, a door opens, you get a ray of sunshine, and it closes.

• 17:33Dax Shepard?

  Jackpots happen, but with the odds of the lottery.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Precisely.

• 17:36Dax Shepard?

  You're looking at tens of millions.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Empirically speaking, yes, you go, all right, I've got about 20 more million tries and then I'm going to hit it.

• 17:43Dax Shepard?

  Right, right.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  My dad, each time he pulled things, like, here we go. This is the one.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  I know it. Anybody else here have coins? You know, and so his whole thing, anybody else here have coins? That is how we grew up. So the lights would go out. And in the dark, you'd hear, ah, damn it. My mom would go, Tommy? And he would go, ah, the mail, his postal system, I sent that dang check. Very difficult for him to take responsibility. So consequently, when my grandfather and I were having lunch, often my dad hadn't paid the bills. I'm going to place part of the blame of this on my father, my 1.7 GPA. When he told me he had paid the tuition, so I was pre-registered, that was in fact not true. So when I went to pre-registration in order to get the classes that you might attend as a freshman, like anything after nine, they were all gone.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  So I ended up with a slate of 8:00 AM tough classes. That happens twice a year, and there were lots of other bills to pay. My dad was constantly saying he had paid them. My grandfather was extremely reliable, and he was there for lunch, laying on the horn.

• 18:46Dax Shepard?

  This is the exact same dynamic, by the way. My Papa Bob worked at Wonder Bread Bakery, 45 years, saved everything he made.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  That was your grandfather.

• 18:52Dax Shepard?

  My grandfather. My dad's dad, played by the rules, plotted along, and was safe. And my dad was a car salesman. He started many, many businesses. He went bankrupt many times.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:04Dax Shepard?

  He owed my grandpa money his whole life. But then my dad would make a ton of money and start buying a lot of stuff and he would never pay anything back.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  My dad never made anybody. That would be the difference, yes.

• 19:14Dax Shepard?

  You had never made any.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  He was a hustler, so he knew how to survive enough.

• 19:18Dax Shepard?

  Cause he was a salesman of fabric, but also he was a bookie.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Here's what happened. And again, this is conjecture on my part because I didn't get to ask my dad this, but my younger brother was very close with my dad. I think my dad was making up for lost time with my younger brother and they became very close when my younger brother was in college in Austin. And they would have lunch every week. He intimated at a certain point about correspondence to organize crime at a certain point in our lives. That being said, when you were in the garment district in New York in the late sixties, early seventies, it was replete with mob guys. And my dad thought they were awesome.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  So he liked to dress like them.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  He liked to gamble. He was a bookie. He was a loan shark. He carried a gun, you know?

• 19:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, great. This is wonderful.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  He took my mom to the funeral of one of the mob bosses. And my mom, who was like a debutante from South Florida.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  That's what I was gonna ask.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Was like, Tommy,

• 20:10Speaker 02

  what are we doing here?

• 20:11Dax Shepard?

  Whose funeral is this?

• 20:12Speaker 02

  My dad's like, ah, this is great. We got Junior over there. Bingo Slim Jins over there.

• 20:16Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  It was a wise guy funeral.

• 20:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  And so that started my dad's relationship with this sort of alternate economic system.

• 20:25Dax Shepard?

  Well, what reminded me is you have a story about him taking you to something, but he's got to stop and collect.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:32Dax Shepard?

  Someone owes him money.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 20:33Dax Shepard?

  But he's got to also pick up this dude.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  That's right. It's heavy, Mr. O.

• 20:37Dax Shepard?

  Mr. O.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. After the second time, my parents got divorced because they were divorced, then remarried to each other, then divorced again.

• 20:43Dax Shepard?

  How long was the gap?

• 20:44Speaker 02

  They were divorced when I was six and then they remarried each other when I was nine.

• 20:48Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Divorced again when I was 12.

• 20:50Dax Shepard?

  What a ride.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  My mom and dad adored each other. My dad could not keep it together.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  And he was divorced for the second time now and had a singles apartment in Dallas, Texas.

• 20:59Dax Shepard?

  Because really quick, you live in New York till eight and then in eight, you moved to Texas.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  We moved down to South Florida at six because my mom was from there after they got divorced the first. So we were in Miami. I went to three different schools there, first, second and third grade. Not because I was kicked out of them.

• 21:13Speaker 00

  No, I would never think that.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  I could feel.

• 21:16Speaker 00

  I would never think that.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Just needed different schools for each of those grades. And then we moved to Dallas, where the new business opportunities were. He was opening a company. I think this one was Coffee Elite. It was a coffee additive that they would sell to like prisons to turn one pound of coffee into 10 pounds of coffee.

• 21:36Dax Shepard?

  It was like cutting coke. It was the baby laxative of coffee.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Well, Coffee Elite was not so elite. It was just a front for his booking operation.

• 21:50Dax Shepard?

  And when he'd get you excited like he was too, because like when my dad had new business, we'd be the first business and he pitched. I'd be like, we're gonna be rich.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  The inflatable ice chest, the Brock umbrella, it's good products. He did have an interest in marketing, so he would try to buy the patents for products that had underperformed in the marketplace and try to remarket them in a different way. He was just never successful from a financial perspective.

• 22:13Dax Shepard?

  Sure. Evaluating it by how much money it generated.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Quantifiably, whether or not you can pay your bills, or he would say make your nut. He did not.

• 22:20Dax Shepard?

  He did not make his nut often.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  But he always thought that he was going to hit a home run. He got cancer when he was about 61, went into remission, and at that point, he realized that I was having some success in my career. So he was always wanting to partner on a new business venture. And you know, I would send him checks from time to time, just if he needed to make ends meet. But I was like, Dad, I'm not a business guy, not saying, and if I was, I would not be in business with you.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:48Dax Shepard?

  Even with my minimal acumen in business, I know not to partner up with you.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  I'm thinking of the red and the black. It feels like you're mostly in the red.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  I think that's bad.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  He was often asking if I wanted to be a part of a business. And by this point, after he had gone into remission, to his way of thinking or the way that he would tell the story, he had somebody at the Vatican who had endorsed. Do you remember those old box sets? Of cassettes.

• 23:18Dax Shepard?

  Like self-help ones?

• 23:19Speaker 02

  It could be self-help where you would buy a set of 40 cassettes and they would be in like a briefcase. And so his was the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament in Spanish that he was gonna sell to Central and South American countries because it was endorsed by the Vatican. And so I was like, so you're taking advantage of people's faith. I don't think that's something I am going to partner with, but since you've never paid me back for any of the money I've given before, how am I structure a loan for you? I structured a loan for him. He set the terms. The first payment came due. He defaulted on the loan, declared bankruptcy, listed me as one of the creditors and died six months later.

• 23:59Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, no.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  And when I got the letter, he was like, that doesn't mean a thing.

• 24:04Dax Shepard?

  It speaks to his optimism that he was taking the time to file bankruptcy with six months left. Like, just let it rip. You're gonna die. Who gives a shit about the collectors?

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Well, even when he was in hospice, I remember he was withered. You could barely hear a whisper, but if you could make it out, he was saying, I'm gonna beat it. And you're like, oh, buddy. I mean, it's just whatever he needed to hold on to.

• 24:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course. You're laughing now, but were you laughing then? Or were you so angry about this?

• 24:33Speaker 02

  It's a great question because I was angry when I got to be an adult. But when I was younger, the times that were scary were the drunk driving times. My brother at 13 or 14 had to take over the wheel. Those things were not fun. But the guns and all, and the colorful people and the new ventures. I mean, we went to flea market after flea market. We were always finding these new products. There was constant optimism. And occasionally, he would be on the right side of the line as a bookie. He was not a very good bookie, which is really bonkers, because it seems like that's a lock to play the house in those. In any case, I think there's probably he's gambling on the side as well.

• 25:12Dax Shepard?

  He's making sure the bets are equal.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Back to the jackpot thing. Oh, I made 10 grand this year. I'll put it all in red. Why not turn it into 20? Or lose it all? He had a riot shotgun next to his bed. And his instructions were, all right, don't go near that.

• 25:26Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:27Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  So it didn't feel totally dangerous, but as I got older, obviously, and was in a relationship myself, I began to see how his lack of self-reflection and his inability to take responsibility was not a virtue.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  In a mentor.

• 25:44Dax Shepard?

  But also you are paying the ultimate price, which is like you're moving non-stop, it sounds like.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  I went to nine different schools by the time I finished high school.

• 25:53Dax Shepard?

  Right. So you were probably buffeted by having two brothers. You're in the middle. If you're an only child in this scenario, you're probably pretty fucked up.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  And the three of us, we were posse.

• 26:03Dax Shepard?

  And you just look at each other and you're like, all right, this is batshit crazy, right? And as long as they both agree, this is batshit crazy, somehow we're good now.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  It definitely helped. And you know, we all had our different way of developing our understanding of our father later, but when we were younger, we just revered him. I found a journal, like 1981, I must've been like his 12, and I'm talking about how my dad's a winner, of being a winner is the most important thing in the world. And I'm so proud of my dad because he is the ultimate winner.

• 26:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  You know, he just had that energy about it.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  I do think there's a moment though, that people hit, which you obviously hit at some point. I hit it recently with someone in my life who was sort of a mentor when I was younger. And it was like, oh my God, this person's so great. And then you hit adulthood and you realize the reason they were so great is because they were your age mentally. And then once you pass them, you can start seeing.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  What a great observation.

• 26:54Speaker 00

  Oh, actually, that's just very immature. That's very childlike.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  And then that's very disappointing to feel.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  That's perfectly said. I totally agree. Also too, when you get to be the age they were, when they were parenting you, and you realize, oh, I don't think I would have done that. That's a really risky thing to do. Obviously, it was a different period of time. They were smoking in the car, no seatbelts, cooler in the backseat, feeding them Miller High Life while the windows are up. My poor older brother, he never smoked, but boy, was he exposed to a lot of secondhand smoke. Cause I smoked when I first started acting out of nerves and because I guess my parents smoked. And my younger brother smoked too, but my older brother, he was just around it all the time.

• 27:33Speaker 00

  He might as well have just started smoking.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  Why not?

• 27:36Speaker 02

  But I think that considering how young they were when they were making these mistakes, you have both a kind of appreciation and empathy for them and also it's exasperating.

• 27:45Dax Shepard?

  How were you dealing with the starting new schools nonstop?

• 27:49Speaker 02

  It was extremely helpful that my older brother Tommy, we were a year apart in school. He was a year and a half older, but he was a junior when I was a sophomore and he always set the table.

• 27:58Dax Shepard?

  Was he a stud?

• 27:59Speaker 02

  He entered St. Thomas, well, we both entered St. Thomas Aquinas in 1984. So he entered the school as a junior and was the senior class president as a senior.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  Wow, in a year.

• 28:12Dax Shepard?

  Find his footing.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  And so when I walked into the classroom, it was always like, oh, you're Tommy's brother.

• 28:17Dax Shepard?

  Was he handsome and tough?

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Yes, both of those.

• 28:19Dax Shepard?

  Both of those.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  And he was a catcher on the baseball team.

• 28:22Dax Shepard?

  You had a mate.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  When my career started to have some success, he was working as a publicist at MGM. He had been tending bar on the Upper East Side, Mad Hatter, it's the name of the place. I waited tables there in the summer. A woman who was a regular there said, you're not working here anymore. You're going to come to MGM and be my assistant, just by the force of his own personality, you know? And so he starts as a publicist and when I would go to these premieres or I'd have some event, Tommy would be there bulldozing the crowd. He's like, I've taken care of Billy here, you know? You want to talk to that person, they'll talk to that person.

• 28:55Dax Shepard?

  A fun.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  And he's just that kind of guy. So that was one thing that really helped. The other thing was because it started very early in our lives, adaptability and this sort of carnival life felt very familiar.

• 29:07Dax Shepard?

  What it sounds like is you either adjust and you can do it or it destroys you.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think your point about having siblings, the three of us were aligned, really looked after each other. And certainly my mom as the consistent one who had to make the money and go to PTA meetings and be involved, back to the civics thing, she was involved in the community. She did the lion's share of mentoring and responsibility.

• 29:34Dax Shepard?

  I grew up very similarly and then I lived in this first apartment I had for 10 or 11 years and I lived in the next house for 16 years and never wanted to leave.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  The apartment that I've had in New York. I've had for 20 years.

• 29:47Dax Shepard?

  Right. Were you a freak? Like, I was a freak about my bedroom. My bedroom had to be the same.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  I did not renovate till I was in a relationship with Naomi. Occasionally, I would do things like build bunk beds for my son or try to fix all of the problems myself or install the appliances myself.

• 30:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  I did not want things changing. And I think at a certain point Naomi realized that there was a slight indentation in the couch where I watched my baseball games for long enough to put an indentation in the couch. When she would walk into my apartment, it was like her eyes would bleed, you know? She's really interested in design. And frankly, my son and I were the occupants of that apartment. It was for us, you know?

• 30:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  We had a couch like that is because we like watching movies together. It all seemed incredibly comfortable and a lot of the stuff. I had this thing, somewhat sentimental, and sometimes it kind of sneaks up on me in the ways that I'm sentimental. Like I said, I had a very close relationship with my grandfather. And when he passed away, nobody really had room for a lot of this stuff, except for me. I took the share and put some of it in storage and then kept some of it in my apartment. They had these beautiful glass blown lamps. They reminded me of my grandparents' house and of him, and they were just kind of romantic looking. But they were sitting in my closet in my new apartment 20 years ago. And at a certain point, I said, I think I should hang these on the wall.

• 31:08Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  And so I got some.

• 31:10Dax Shepard?

  Of course you should.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  But they're not a sconce. Put them into the. Okay. They weren't plugged in.

• 31:15Dax Shepard?

  The decoration.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  And I realized if you looked at it a certain angle, that you could imagine those lamps in a two-story house. That one might be in the den downstairs, and that one might be back up in the bedroom. So I think I was trying to bring in some of them. Interesting. To everybody else, they were like, what in the fuck are those lamps doing on the wall?

• 31:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What are they doing up there? You turn those on?

• 31:36Speaker 02

  No, not the actor. He's the lamps guy.

• 31:37Dax Shepard?

  Do you find that you read up on the wall there and you need a lamp right there?

• 31:40Speaker 02

  I did have this idea of getting an electrician to put in plugs.

• 31:44Dax Shepard?

  Yes, I would love it.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  But I never got around to that. So to your point, I wanted for my son to have some stability and consistency.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 32:01Dax Shepard?

  We are supported by Alexa Plus. All right, let me tell you about something I'm genuinely excited to talk about. The all new Alexa Plus. Look, we're all juggling a million things these days and this thing is designed to actually make your life easier. It's like having a conversation with someone who really gets what you need. Picture this, you're planning a night out and instead of opening 12 different apps, you just have one conversation with Alexa and it handles everything. Dinner reservations, entertainment, the works. It learns your style and puts thousands of services at your fingertips. What I love about this concept is how natural it feels. You're not barking commands, you're just talking. And it works across your compatible devices, Echo, Fire TV, and more.

• 32:43Dax Shepard?

  It's your all new, smart, proactive AI assistant. And honestly, the idea of having AI that actually anticipates what you need? That sounds pretty amazing to me. Check it out at amazon.com/newalexa. We get support from AG1. Fall is that time when your body and mind are getting ready for the winter. You're settling in, bracing for the cold. Your body's already running a deficit from the shorter days and broken sleep patterns. You don't want a nutrient deficit stacked on top of that too.

• 33:14Speaker 00

  That's where your AG1 routine earns its spot. It's not fixing your sleep or your alarm time. It's giving your body what it needs so the dark mornings don't tank you before you even start. One scoop cold water every morning before anything else.

• 33:26Dax Shepard?

  AG1 Next Gen has 75 plus ingredients, vitamins, minerals, pre and probiotics, superfoods, backed by four separate gold standard clinical trials. Key nutrient levels improved with three months of consistent use.

• 33:40Speaker 00

  That's the part people miss. It's not a one day fix. It's what happens when you stay consistent.

• 33:44Dax Shepard?

  It's an easy, everyday thing. I've added it to my morning routine and I'm going to tell you, I actually love the taste of it. It's like Pavlovian. I drink it and I know, mm, I'm going to get that little vitamin buzz.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  Well, that's also the thing. When you do it first thing in the morning, you already feel kind of self-esteem because you're like, I already did something good for myself.

• 34:02Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Go to drinkag1.com/

• 34:05Dax Shepard?

  And for a limited time, get a free immunity bundle, including a bottle of omega-3 fish oil and a bottle of vitamin D3 K2 with your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/dax. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Armchair Experts sent you. This episode is supported by Helix.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  Dax, is there anything better than crawling into a perfect bed on a cold fall night? Candlelit, hoodie on, maybe even some rain outside. The dream.

• 34:40Dax Shepard?

  That's the dream. You just described one of my ideal fall nights.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  I know. And thanks to Helix, my bed actually lives up to the vibe. All I had to do was take the Helix Sleep Quiz and within two minutes, they matched me to a mattress built for exactly how I sleep. I have a midnight mattress. It also has cooling technology, which I really

• 35:00Dax Shepard?

  Increasingly so.

• 35:01Speaker 00

  I need it. I have to have it. And I heard that you're supposed to sleep at a cold temp for optimal sleep. It's very, very helpful.

• 35:11Dax Shepard?

  She is not wrong. I have one too, and it's been such a game changer for sleep. And I love that they make it so easy. Free shipping right to your door. And with their happy with Helix Guarantee, you'll get a full 365 nights to try it. A whole year to live in that cozy. They've got over 20 mattress models, so no matter how you sleep, they've got one for you.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  And it's not just us saying it. Helix has been named the most awarded mattress brand by Forbes, Wired, and more. You gotta try it for yourself.

• 35:38Dax Shepard?

  Go to helixsleep.com/armchair for 20% off site wide. That's helixsleep.com/armchair for 20% off site wide. helixsleep.com/armchair. We are supported by Walden University. You know that feeling when you've been thinking about making a move, going after the degree, the promotion, the thing you keep telling yourself you'll get to someday? Walden University is built for that moment. For over 50 years, Walden has helped working professionals get the W, the knowledge, the skills, and the confidence to create real change in their Careers and communities. Their programs are designed around your life, not the other way around.

• 36:20Dax Shepard?

  With Tempo Learning, available in select programs, there are no rigid schedules or set weekly deadlines. You move at your own pace. And Walden's faculty aren't just academics. They're practitioners who bring real world experience into everything they teach. From your first class to career coaching and beyond, Walden is your partner the whole way. Take the first step and learn at a pace that works for you. Visit walden.edu/waldenuniversity. Set a course for change. Certified to operate by CHEV. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've thought about trying therapy with our long-term partner, BetterHelp,

• 36:59Dax Shepard?

  insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. October 10th is World Mental Health Day, but you don't need a day on the calendar to give yourself permission to talk to someone. I've been in therapy for a long time and the stuff rattling around in my head always just quiets down the second I say it out loud. And it doesn't have to be some big life crisis. Maybe it's a work thing that's taking up too much space or hard relationship moment, or just a feeling that something's off. That's enough. That's worth talking about.

• 37:30Speaker 00

  You know, I love therapy more than anything. Gets me through. Often I'll want to cancel because I'm like, I don't really have anything to talk about. And then I'll go and I have some major revelation.

• 37:41Dax Shepard?

  You know, I was just talking to a friend who has just started it. And I said, one of the most powerful elements of it is just hearing yourself say out loud, the thing that's been ruminating in your head and how different it sounds once it's out into the world. You gain perspective immediately just by hearing yourself say it.

• 37:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, you do.

• 37:57Dax Shepard?

  If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks and eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. Don't have insurance or live outside the US? You can still get 10% off your first month. Do yourself a favor and just try it. Future you will be grateful. Visit betterhelp.com/dax to explore your payment options. That's better H E L P dot com slash DAX.

• 38:31Dax Shepard?

  It's funny, having kids makes you recalibrate.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  I'm sure I wanted it for myself, too.

• 38:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Did you pay any price for all that moving?

• 38:39Speaker 02

  I would say it benefited.

• 38:40Dax Shepard?

  When did you start acting? In high school?

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Even before that, actually, at camp. Anytime somebody said, "Does anybody in this class want to put on a costume?" I'd be like, "Yep, I'll do that. That's not a problem." That was for the new guy. I was the new guy trying to fit in and class clown was my angle.

• 38:54Dax Shepard?

  Nice.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  And so anytime I got a part in anything, I was happy to humiliate myself for it.

• 39:00Dax Shepard?

  Did you do anything, though, as far as preventing you from creating deep friendships?

• 39:04Speaker 02

  I have some lasting friendships from the time I was born to my oldest best friend, Rayfield Pembroke, 4th grade, Dallas, Texas. We're still extremely tight. Had dinner with him two weeks ago and still have fantastic friends from high school and college.

• 39:20Dax Shepard?

  Because back then, you moved ultimately to Fort Lauderdale. You can't call your buddies in Texas because it's too much money to make it.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  It's too expensive.

• 39:27Dax Shepard?

  Like, I don't think young people realize that, like, you couldn't talk on the phone.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  I became possessive of those friendships. I realized that people around me had been friends since 1st grade. And when I started to see that, I would reach out to Rafe. When we reconnected in high school and then when I was in college and subsequently thereafter. You'd have periods of time where you'd build different friendships. But it was really important to me to return to those friendships. So in a way, it did build the skill of attending to your friendships in whatever way you can, you know?

• 39:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Well, it was going to require effort if it was going to be maintained, and you did.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  And it also gave me an incredible opportunity to live different kinds of ways in America. There were times when things were great and we were living in a nice house somewhere. And there were times when things were not so great and there was a little precarious between... Texas and Florida and North Carolina and New York. I've lived in a lot of different ways in this country.

• 40:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  And I think it's a beautiful country in that way. And to get to experience the different kinds of people in that way, albeit not always great for a child growing up, it definitely had its virtues. So I think that's another reason I have incredible affection for this place and the people in it.

• 40:39Dax Shepard?

  How do you pick North Carolina just because of grandpa and dad?

• 40:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 40:43Dax Shepard?

  Because if I had left New York and then I was in Texas and then Fort Lauderdale, I feel like I would be like, I need to get back to New York immediately.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Well, it's interesting. We left New York when I was six and we were on Long Island. So I only have kind of frosty memories. I didn't feel in possession of New York. We weren't in Manhattan. It was like another kind of place. And if you go to Carolina, you're going to have all sorts of Carolina swag up in your house. And so my grandfather and my dad had signs, you know, indoctrinating you, the propaganda. If God was in a Tar Heel, then why is the sky Carolina blue? You know, that kind of stuff.

• 41:15Dax Shepard?

  Nice, nice. Yeah, good point, too.

• 41:17Speaker 00

  We just love it.

• 41:20Dax Shepard?

  Hard to beat that.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  So there was a kind of mystique surrounding that university. And my brother ended up going to Texas Tech. And so it was sort of left to me to carry that tradition. Truthfully, I did not get in on my own merits. I was a part of a legacy group. I know full well how this country works, frankly, on the legacy bullshit.

• 41:40Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Because I am a benefactor of it. And it really started to haunt me at school because 85% of the student body was in state. And so getting in from out of state was really difficult. And I was a good student and I was very active in sports. I was on student council. I did all the things that you should do. I was a well-rounded student, but still definitely not good enough.

• 42:03Speaker 00

  It's so hard to get into that school out of state.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  So hard to get in. And because my dad and granddad went there and because my dad knew somebody at the admissions, I'm certain the reason that I got in. I did not like that at all. I felt like a fraud when it started to really dawn on me.

• 42:17Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 42:17Speaker 02

  And I think that was a part of me branching out and saying, I'm going to cut my own path as an actor. And that's why I got my masters. I paid for it.

• 42:23Dax Shepard?

  This is fascinating. You weren't floundering there though, right?

• 42:27Speaker 02

  No, I was. Thriving, actually. I mean, I loved it.

• 42:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's an interesting thing you focused in on. I would feel that way if I got there and then I was an embarrassment and I wasn't rising to the level everyone else was on. But if I was thriving.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  I was grateful for it, but I realized as well that there was another candidate out there that was probably more qualified that didn't get it. Yeah, I saw it up close and personal. So when I decided to go and get my masters, I was mostly hedging my bets because I realized that there was nobody in my family that was in the entertainment business. I didn't have any reason to think that you could actually have a career. And most of the mentors in my life were teachers. And so I thought I would really love a life as a teacher. I really love performing, so I would love a life as a teacher of acting.

• 43:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh, interesting. So when you went and got your masters, you were mostly thinking, well, I'll teach.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  I was. I was hedging my bets. I would like to act professionally, but since nobody does.

• 43:21Dax Shepard?

  Again, you're rebelling now against your dad, which is like, I'm going to be ultra realistic.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Correctly. I'm going to be responsible.

• 43:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  I wanted to pay for my applications, you know, $50 fee here, $100 fee there. I wanted to drive to the auditions. I wanted to get in on my own merits if I got in anywhere. When I got into school at NYU, that felt like an enormous accomplishment.

• 43:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  In the way that Carolina did not feel like an enormous accomplishment, even though I still had to survive at school and do as well as I could. So that was a big part of me establishing my own sense of self.

• 43:55Dax Shepard?

  You were in the Tisch School?

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Yes, it's called the Grad Acting Program because the undergraduate is the Tisch School and they're all a part of Tisch. But the undergraduate has three or four separate acting components. And the graduate program is a conservatory style program where there's 20 people in each class and you have three years. And you just spend day and night studying voice, speech, text, movement.

• 44:23Dax Shepard?

  Kristen went to Tisch undergrad.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:25Dax Shepard?

  And she did Alexander Technique breathing into people's mouths and the young men are wearing sweatpants and people have boners.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  You're not breathing into people's mouths, man. You're not. He says it every day and it drives me nuts. It's not true. What you do with the Alexander technique? It's just a way to find a neutral spot so you can process air through your lungs and create a good, reliable sound with your voice.

• 44:47Dax Shepard?

  A nice, consistent.

• 44:48Speaker 00

  And listen to his voice.

• 44:49Dax Shepard?

  That's one of the best.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  Alexander techniques really worked out.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  Breathe into each other's mouths.

• 44:55Speaker 00

  I know.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  The sweatpants is dead right. And we had this incredible Alexander teacher, whose name will come to me in a second. But he had like four acolytes, is that the right word? The people who followed underneath him. And so you would typically not get with the grand master of Alexander. You'd spend most of your time with the other person, but occasionally you'd get a session with him. Sometimes he'll do table work where he'll try to help you align to your spine. You're trying to figure out how you naturally hold your body so you can find a more neutral place of starting. And then build a character from there. And so he'll be like doing some work on you and you're lying there trying to readjust yourself and breathing. And he'll listen to your breath. He put his head on my chest at one point.

• 45:36Dax Shepard?

  Now we're getting somewhere.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  No.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  And then I hear.

• 45:39Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  And I start laughing.

• 45:41Dax Shepard?

  He tells sleep.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  The laughing will come up and he goes, and take a breath in.

• 45:46Dax Shepard?

  So it's even worse, Monica, than I said. It's going to sleep on each other while you're breathing in each other's mouths. It's like sleeping with each other.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  We didn't breathe into each other's mouths.

• 45:54Speaker 00

  There's no breathing into each other's mouths. I also study theater, so I take some umbrage with this because I did not breathe into anyone's mouth. This is funny. My rafe, that's his name, right?

• 46:05Speaker 02

  Yep, you got it right.

• 46:05Speaker 00

  My rafe is Callie and she actually is in marketing at Netflix and she did the Jay Kelly trailer. This all circles.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Oh, you're kidding?

• 46:13Speaker 00

  Yes, but she brought up the other day that in one of my acting classes, I have no memory of this, but I had to wear a mask, like a blank mask.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure, yeah. Mask work.

• 46:22Speaker 00

  And mask work, yes.

• 46:23Dax Shepard?

  That's mask work.

• 46:24Speaker 02

  Neutral mask, we call that.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  That's right. We had to wear it around campus.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  Oh, no. Wait, where was this?

• 46:30Speaker 00

  University of Georgia.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. So you're a bulldog?

• 46:33Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 46:34Dax Shepard?

  But her mask, her mask liked Alabama.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  No.

• 46:38Dax Shepard?

  Roll tide.

• 46:38Speaker 00

  The mask is neutral.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  That's a way to get killed at Georgia if you operate well with it. She was like, no, we would try. To find you on campus while you were walking around in your mask.

• 46:50Dax Shepard?

  Cause they wanted to laugh at you.

• 46:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, and they wanted to like distract me, but I had to not pay attention and be neutral.

• 46:55Dax Shepard?

  Could you not remember walking around campuses with a mask on?

• 46:59Speaker 02

  No, that's cute. I mean, that's like hazing stuff.

• 47:01Speaker 00

  It is.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Acting is already so humiliating.

• 47:04Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it's so embarrassing.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  It's not a bad idea in general to get you used to the idea of rejection, which is a common denominator for us actors for the rest of your life.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. Anyway, I was pretty impressed with myself because I was like, man, I was committed.

• 47:18Dax Shepard?

  You don't even remember. You were so in character, you weren't even imprinting memories. Yeah, Monica's brain was offline.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Man, I do remember neutral mask words. It's good stuff.

• 47:26Dax Shepard?

  This is really great and a bit informative to my broader questions about your path. But you're not hell bent on being a professional actor.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  I wasn't until the first day of acting school, when you have something called showings, where the incoming class does the monologues that they did to get into school. And this is the first year, second year and third year. The second year does scene work and the third year does whatever they end up doing, whether it's a personal piece or scene work. When I saw a collection of 60 other young people who were actually invested and interested in a craft, and I saw the shit that they were doing, I thought, oh no, that's exactly what I want to do. I just needed to be around people who were taking it seriously.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Now, at the time, I was targeted to get my masters, et cetera, but there was no question that they rung a bell in me.

• 48:22Dax Shepard?

  Well, now it wasn't a pipe dream. It was a reality that was observable in all these other people. So maybe it didn't seem so crazy.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  And you know, at Carolina, I wasn't a theater major, even though I did theater because I knew my dad and my grandfather would not accept that. So I was a speech communications major. What the hell did that mean? It meant you took class in broadcasting and marketing and rhetoric, but they also, they had a performance studies concentration. So I could take classes like oral interpretation of prose and poetry. My dad thinks I'm doing marketing, but meanwhile, I'm figuring out how to do like a James Joyce short story as a performance. I'm having a ball.

• 48:59Dax Shepard?

  You're doing monologues.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  And I'm doing monologues and getting A's, most importantly, to make up for that not so stellar 1.7 GPA.

• 49:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that we started with.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Trying to right the ship. So I did a lot of performing and I also did work in the theater department there where there were two teachers there, Susanna Reinhardt and DeeDee Corvenus. I took introduction to acting with them and they were like, you can sign up for whatever class you want. You have such an interest in this and you have so much energy. I took the whole slew of classes in the acting department and I did performances there. So I was around a lot of people, but we were undergraduates.

• 49:33Dax Shepard?

  And you're in North Carolina.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  In North Carolina, it wasn't, you know, Playmakers has a great repertory theater and they produce really good work. But it wasn't the same kind of thing as seeing these hyper ambitious, focused, obviously professionally talented people. Robin Weigert, who's a fantastic actor, she did this monologue that she wrote that was an imagined discussion between, I hope I'm getting it right, but I think it was Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso. And she was like Meryl Streep and she was in my class.

• 50:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  I'd just never seen anything like that. It was incredible.

• 50:08Dax Shepard?

  So you graduated in 94 and then you get your first big Broadway plays in 96?

• 50:13Speaker 02

  94, actually. It was about six months after I graduated school, I landed a part in a Tom Stoppard play.

• 50:20Dax Shepard?

  Arcadia?

• 50:20Speaker 02

  Arcadia, yep. That was at Lincoln Center.

• 50:22Dax Shepard?

  Were you shocked to have success that quickly after graduating?

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Definitely. And my friends and colleagues made sure to make me feel like I should be shocked.

• 50:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  Everybody was extremely happy for me.

• 50:34Dax Shepard?

  Now, I'm a Philistine, but I understand Tom Stoppard is what everyone has a boner for. Like all my friends that are super into acting, he's the dude. You've done a couple.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  I have. His writing is just unusual. He's got a fascinating mind and English is his second language, or maybe his third or fourth. I'm not sure. I think he was born in Czechoslovakia. His attendance to language is just unusual. He thinks on different levels at the same time. And he was actually there for rehearsals. Trevor Nunn was directing it. I used to watch these tapes called Acting Shakespeare. They were like VHS tapes. That had the Royal Shakespeare Company and Trevor Nunn was the youngest at that time, I think artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, talking about monologues. And it was like Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Anthony Hopkins, Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, just badasses. And so all of a sudden, this guy that I was watching in

• 51:24Speaker 02

  high school, talk about text and language and how to lift it and perform it and celebrate it, was directing me in this Tom Stoppard play. And Tom Stoppard's there. So Tom Stoppard, back to the point about his use of language, I tried to say very little because I did not want to get fired. And I was like, sorry, Tom, is that a double entendre there? And he'd go, perhaps, or maybe a triple, could be quadruple if you take the time.

• 51:50Dax Shepard?

  What do I do with that?

• 51:52Speaker 02

  He's incredible. I'm like, is that playable? He's like, no, definitely not. But if you were asking.

• 51:59Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  Just a brilliant, brilliant mind. And that character in particular, he's like this tutor to this 13 year old math prodigy. He wants to be Byron. He thinks of himself, he's like, ah, I'm a fucking tutor. And so like, he's got to make all of his jokes to himself, but the audience gets to share in that. So he's a great conduit for the audience and he's a romantic figure. And then he dies saving her. That's like winning the lottery, that part. You come out of school into the professional life as this hero, this incredibly articulate, beautifully dressed, ironic hero.

• 52:36Dax Shepard?

  Dangerous first hit.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Definitely nowhere to go but down from there.

• 52:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that'll get you hooked.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  We had a cast, Robert Sean Leonard, Victor Garber, Paul Giamatti, Jenny Dundas, fantastic actors up and down the line. So there was a great support system in it.

• 52:50Dax Shepard?

  Now, when you're doing that, and it's working, it's heaven, are you content? Or are you like, I want to do movies? Where are we at and where we think is next?

• 53:01Speaker 02

  I wasn't thinking about that, no. The sort of training that I had implicitly or explicitly was suggesting that it might be a good idea to take as many different kinds of parts as possible, so that you will build some level of versatility to combat the Periods of time where you are uncastable, which just happens. So I was interested in that parts and it didn't matter to me whether or not they were in film or on the stage. I discovered pretty quickly though, that television scared me because I had auditioned for, it was a news show, it was a pilot. They wanted me to do a screen test and I was in New York and I was standing on the corner, I think 57th and 6th on the payphone with my new agent, Philip Carlson.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  And he was telling me that I had to sign a deal and I was like, cool. What does that mean? He goes, well, this deal is a seven year deal. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Seven year deal for what? He's like, the show. I'm like, but I don't have that part. And I'm like, they don't want to fly you out unless you're gonna do it if they cast you. And I'm like, do what? I read one scene.

• 54:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 54:07Speaker 02

  How will I know what it is that I'm going to do?

• 54:10Dax Shepard?

  You're gonna do this scene for the next seven years?

• 54:12Speaker 02

  I'm gonna do this scene for the next seven years? That's not gonna be great for the whole versatility game.

• 54:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  That scared the shit out of me and I kind of stopped. I was lucky enough to make enough money to cover my expenses.

• 54:24Dax Shepard?

  You're not.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  My nut, as my dad would say. And I was ready to do that, not to make money, but I was lucky enough to make enough money.

• 54:33Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so when you get in sleepers, cause the play's 94, sleepers is 96. And just to remind everyone who's in sleepers, cause you might have forgotten, it's Brad Pitt, it's Kevin Bacon, it's Robert De Niro.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  Dustin Hoffman, Jason Patrick, Mini Driver.

• 54:47Dax Shepard?

  What?

• 54:47Speaker 02

  Directed by Barry Levinson, who made some of my favorite films growing up. Oh, the Baltimore trilogy.

• 54:54Dax Shepard?

  Avalon.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Phenomenal filmmaker.

• 54:56Dax Shepard?

  What could be more exciting?

• 54:57Speaker 02

  Nothing.

• 54:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So. How do we compute that? Like first play's a Tom Stoppard and then our first movie's like fucking De Niro and Hoffman?

• 55:04Speaker 02

  I was shitting myself.

• 55:06Dax Shepard?

  Were you intimidated?

• 55:08Speaker 02

  It was Jason Patrick, Brad Pitt, Ron Eldard and myself, who were supposed to be four buddies. And we got sent to juvie and not treated well. Ron Eldard and myself, our characters did not turn out well. We became a part of the Westies. We were all molested and beaten. So Brad Pitt was able to get out of it in some way. Jason Patrick was able to get out of it in some way. But Ron and I got caught up in it. Anyways, we were paired up for most of the scenes. He had a very similar approach to acting that I did. We were really acting nerds. That was a safety net for me. We talked shop a lot, sat there marveling over De Niro on the stand, playing a scene. You know, we could barely hear him and watching him work.

• 55:48Dax Shepard?

  Did you have the type of personality, did you try to talk to these folks between takes?

• 55:52Speaker 02

  No, I mean Dustin Hoffman, he played our lawyer. So he would talk to us and he was extremely entertaining, often trying to steal our lines. And my dad, Justin.

• 56:00Dax Shepard?

  Not his first rodeo.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  No, but he was incredibly charming. And my mom came to set one day and he made this big thing of like jumping over the, what do you call them, benches or what's in the courtroom where the people sit.

• 56:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, the pews.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  I know, I want to say pews, but it sounds kind of churchy.

• 56:17Dax Shepard?

  It is.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Well, he leapfrogged over them and it was like, what's her name? It's George Anne. George Anne! And my mom was out of her skull. She still has the picture of me and Dustin and her from that day.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  What a moment.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  That was an amazing moment. There were lots of aspects of that that were novel in a way that you can't describe. And you're trying not to fuck it up. I don't know anything about film.

• 56:40Dax Shepard?

  Your dad must've been going berserk.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  My dad started to go berserk when I did Without Limits. And it was about an athlete, Steve Prefontaine. My dad started to get on board because Without Limits was the first time I was starring in something. He actually had this hilarious habit where he was terribly interested in words. And somebody who tries to use big words, but always gets it wrong.

• 57:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  And my dad was kind of like that, but he had a word a day calendar. And on his answering machine, he would always leave, he'd say, you missed me this time. However, I am going to give you a gift today. The word of the day is superfluous. Superfluous.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  And he would change it every day?

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, regularly. If it was every day, probably not, but regularly.

• 57:23Dax Shepard?

  And me teaching you this word is in fact, the definition of the word.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  Because they're superfluous.

• 57:28Dax Shepard?

  You don't need to know this.

• 57:29Speaker 02

  And he might say something like, hey, Bill, you were superfluous in that.

• 57:35Speaker 00

  And you're like, oh, okay.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  He got the super part.

• 57:38Speaker 00

  Sure, maybe going for.

• 57:39Dax Shepard?

  Superb. Okay, so Without Limits, Prefontaine, you're already a runner. That helps. People love to play Prefontaine. This is not, this has happened a few times.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  Well, you know what happened, actually, is they were part of the same creative team. The producers, writers, directors, Tom Cruise was gonna do it first. Then there was some disagreement about how to proceed. Of course, he wanted to. He's the best on-screen runner we've ever fucking had. A hundred percent. Nobody runs as fast as he does. A hundred percent. It's terrifying how fast he runs. During the period of time that they were fighting about how to make it happen, he felt like he aged out of the part.

• 58:16Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  So he became a producer, but what happened was, I can't remember who it was, the producers or the writers, but one group got enough money to start making the movie. At which point, the other group was like, we have to make the movie first. So they were literally in a race, and I had no idea. I had been cast. I moved up to Eugene, Oregon, where we shot a bunch of it. I went to the field where he ran, and somebody said, which of the movies are you with? And I was like, which of the ones?

• 58:50Speaker 02

  And that was when I learned that there was a competing movie happening at the same time.

• 58:54Dax Shepard?

  Okay, that was the Jared Leto version.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  That was the Jared Leto version. Ours was called Pre first. And because theirs came out first, and it was called Prefontaine, they had to change the title, and it became Without Limits.

• 59:05Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay. This is like Wyatt Earp and Tombstone.

• 59:09Speaker 02

  Exactly the same. Speaking of which, I'm about to go to London to do a stage adaptation of High Noon. So I've been watching westerns, and Patrick Wilson turned me on to a whole bunch. I didn't really know the western genre so well. My Darling Clementine, if you like the Wyatt Earp story, Henry Fonda plays it. It's awesome.

• 59:26Dax Shepard?

  My Darling Clementine. Okay, I like those movies. I like a western.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  They're very applicable to right now. And what you discover is... A lot of the writers, the guy who wrote High Noon, the movie, was blacklisted. If you re-watch High Noon under these circumstances, you see it's really not about that kind of heroism. It's about cowardice in the face of a violent threat. And how people kind of turtle up, even for somebody who they have lionized before, if they feel like it's not in their best interest.

• 59:59Dax Shepard?

  So it was about McCarthyism?

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  The big red scare was people giving up names, people being blacklisted, companies not wanting to put out anything that might be perceived as left-leaning. So yeah, that culture, you watch those movies that were made in the 50s, and it's essentially, how do you make a civil society out of a lawless community? So without laws and the rule of law and consistency with the rule of law and its application, what you have is a bit of chaos. And can you have a civil society in a chaotically structured environment?

• 1:00:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I become very aware of you, of course, like a lot of people my age, almost famous. I watched a little clip of you and Sam Jones today, which was kind of funny.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  Oh, he's awesome.

• 1:00:46Dax Shepard?

  He's the greatest, and I loved his show off-camera. It was so great. But he's talking about, he actually was the one who had to photograph you for the cover of Esquire, by just coincidence.

• 1:00:58Speaker 00

  He's a great photographer.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  Oh, he's a fantastic photographer.

• 1:01:01Dax Shepard?

  We still, all of our artwork is shit he took of me nine years ago.

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  He's a phenomenal photographer, but I was, this can't be a nice story.

• 1:01:08Dax Shepard?

  Well, no, it's not nice or not nice, it's that it was not for you.

• 1:01:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was not.

• 1:01:14Dax Shepard?

  I think that's my big curiosity from looking at you from afar.

• 1:01:18Speaker 00

  What wasn't for you?

• 1:01:19Dax Shepard?

  Being famous.

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  Oh, so cover of magazines, got it.

• 1:01:23Dax Shepard?

  It didn't feel right?

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  I'll tell you what happened was, in the 90s, there was this big rush by entertainment glossy magazines, and there were a lot of them. To discover the next big thing. So there was something called the it guy or the it girl. I'm sure they still have it. I sound like I'm 104.

• 1:01:43Dax Shepard?

  No, you're right.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  We had things called the it guy.

• 1:01:46Dax Shepard?

  It used to be more in your face.

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  It was different.

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  It was intense.

• 1:01:50Dax Shepard?

  They crammed some people down your throat and you rejected them.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  Most people.

• 1:01:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I want to say someone's name, but I don't want to say their name.

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  I was aware of those kinds of things. They were happening before people actually produced anything. I was not feeling terribly confident. I feel like I did good professional jobs in movies, but I didn't think I was giving like memorable performances. But they thought I photographed well, so they wanted me for their magazines.

• 1:02:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  And I realized I didn't want to be a model. I didn't want to wear somebody else's clothes. I was just interested in acting. I definitely didn't want to talk about myself or talk about my personal experience because how am I going to be able to convince people that I'm somebody else if they know all this shit about me? And I'm also not that good. So, you know, that was a conscious strategy on my part, much to the chagrin of many people I worked with.

• 1:02:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so this is kind of common. We've interviewed a bunch of people. They're hesitant to be interviewed because they have this old architecture of you don't want people to know the real you so that you can convincingly play with these other people.

• 1:02:46Speaker 00

  Neutral mask, if you will.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  Neutral mask, if you will.

• 1:02:50Dax Shepard?

  Breathing in one another's mouths, damping on each other's chests.

• 1:02:54Speaker 00

  No, no, we already talked about that.

• 1:02:55Dax Shepard?

  No nerves.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:02:57Dax Shepard?

  I think a lot of actors said, well, I don't want everyone to know me because then they won't be able to believe me in this. That's the logic they've employed. But I do think simmering under that are some fears.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  I'll tell you this, I was not unambitious in my work. I went after some shit. People would say sometimes, oh, you don't want to be a star. I was like, did you see Watchmen? You think I was not trying with Dr. Manhattan? I mean, I wasn't demureing. Almost Famous wasn't meant to be a niche drama. It's just that it didn't work, you know? Almost Famous lost money.

• 1:03:28Dax Shepard?

  It did.

• 1:03:29Speaker 00

  That's insane.

• 1:03:30Dax Shepard?

  This is so weird, right?

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  And I was number one on the call sheet. And since I wouldn't do press either, it wasn't like my rate was going up. So I wasn't getting a lot of the opportunities. You know, I had to audition. I had to put myself on tape with dummy sides for Alien Covenant. At this point, when that came at forty seven or something, I've been in a lot of things. I wasn't demure from that, but I wanted to do it on the merits of my work.

• 1:03:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  Not on a magazine's interest in exploiting my cheekbones, which by the way, is cartilage from my hip. So I don't walk so well now, but I've got these great cheekbones.

• 1:04:05Dax Shepard?

  You had them put in from your hips.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, from when I was young. My parents did that.

• 1:04:08Speaker 00

  Oh, good for them.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  They wanted to set me up for success.

• 1:04:10Speaker 00

  They thought ahead.

• 1:04:11Dax Shepard?

  They made the right call. They're gorgeous.

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  I remember sharing a story about going to a couple of different schools. And the way that the writer rendered it was that he had a very difficult upbringing. And that was one of the first articles that I think came out. My mom was in tears.

• 1:04:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  So I think there was also a part of me that was protective of my parents and the people around me.

• 1:04:37Speaker 00

  But also, it's kind of sounds like it's the UNC thing all over again. Like, you really are only comfortable if you feel like you really earned something.

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 1:04:46Dax Shepard?

  There we go, Monica. You kind of circled.

• 1:04:48Speaker 02

  I think that's a good observation. It's hard for me to be comfortable in general because I think I realize how much luck there is in life. I walked into, even though, you know, we talked about some of the difficulties of childhood, I walked into a fastball in my life. I got really lucky in a lot of different ways.

• 1:05:02Dax Shepard?

  I'm gonna go one step further on that. So I think you were feeling like your dad if you were to jump in the spotlight and do all these things. That would have been a very dad move.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  Definitely. Live fast, die hard.

• 1:05:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  That is not a long career.

• 1:05:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 1:05:17Dax Shepard?

  So that's what I mean is there might also have been in the mix a little bit of, I'm still defining myself as not being like my dad.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  I am absolutely sure. I think that's in so many aspects of my young adulthood.

• 1:05:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Speaker 02

  Is trying to figure out the ways I'm the same, the ways I'm different. How can I embrace the things that I loved about him that are in me without accept- The things that were difficult.

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  And often they're the same thing. That's what's so hard.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:05:43Dax Shepard?

  Well, the irony is if you're me and then you just wake up and you look at the mirror and you're like, oh, I'm him. I tried to be the opposite and I just really became him.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  I did this show called Hello Tomorrow.

• 1:05:54Dax Shepard?

  Which I love, by the way.

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  I appreciate that. Thank you. It's a sort of death of a salesman sort of story.

• 1:05:59Dax Shepard?

  They're selling plots on the moon.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  Selling plots on the moon, exactly. He's a traveling salesman in a retro American future. So he's selling time shares on the moon. Except there are no time shares on the moon yet, but he believes that, well, it was totally coincidental. We shot in Menhasset, the street, like in the opening sequence.

• 1:06:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  That's in Menhasset. On every call sheet, they list a hospital and the hospital is North Shore Hospital, the hospital that I was born in.

• 1:06:23Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 1:06:24Dax Shepard?

  And you're playing your dad.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  I'm playing my dad.

• 1:06:25Dax Shepard?

  Yes, you are. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  And when I look at pictures from that and some of pictures of my dad, I mean, it's like spitting image.

• 1:06:35Dax Shepard?

  You're so good. When you sit down in the diner with the guy who wants nothing to do with you, the way you turn that whole scenario.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  Oh, thanks, dude.

• 1:06:42Dax Shepard?

  Was so fucking skillful. You can't really act your way into it. There has to be some kind of cellular salesman in you.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  You know, my dad, there was a kind of curiosity, even in the word thing. He was curious about things. He loved people much more than I do. Terribly interested. You know, he'd get into a cab and, hey, how you doing up there?

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  Give me your name. I see it and I don't exactly know how to pronounce it and I'd like to be correct. And the guy's name is like, it's John. He's like, oh, John, wonderful to meet you, John. I'm Tommy Crudup. You can call me TC, Big T, Top Dog, whatever you like. It's my son Billy. I like calling Disco. You can call him whatever you like too. He's an actor, John. Now tell us about you.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 1:07:27Speaker 02

  And then he would lean into the conversation.

• 1:07:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, so gregarious.

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  Typically, by the end of it, trying to get John to be a business partner with him.

• 1:07:35Speaker 00

  Sure, sure.

• 1:07:37Dax Shepard?

  You ever thought about selling Spanish bibles out of the trunk of this thing?

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  What are your thoughts on the inflatable ice chest, John?

• 1:07:44Dax Shepard?

  Go great in this cab.

• 1:07:45Speaker 00

  Unique.

• 1:07:46Dax Shepard?

  From the outside, what I have observed in the kind of theories I've come up with about you, and it's substantiated by people I run into who know you, which is like, you're an actor's actor. Every actor has a boner for you. It's a fact. Even the actorious actors, there's a ton of reverence there. And a lot of the guys that I know that are really fucking good, they all admire you in a very similar way.

• 1:08:10Speaker 00

  And Jennifer Aniston, we just had Jennifer Aniston on and she said the exact same thing.

• 1:08:14Dax Shepard?

  I feel the same about her. But I was like, oh, this is one of these unicorns who was not pulled towards a ton of money like I was and loves the stage and just prioritize that. And it seems almost impossible for someone to make that decision. If you're like me and you're a greedy little pig and you want security. So I've just always been curious from afar of like, wow, this guy has some kind of integrity that I really can't imagine having.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  Is this broadcast? Cause I'd like to put this out all over the place. I really appreciate that setup there, Dax.

• 1:08:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:48Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:08:54Dax Shepard?

  This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I have my dream job. I get to talk to folks I admire like crazy and ask them virtually any question that I want to. I can't imagine a better way to spend my time. But even dream jobs have some not so dreamy parts. The stuff that gets in the way of the actual work. Now that's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work. They actually do it. Start to finish. Cases closed, requests handled, no extra work for you. So you and your team can focus on what matters most, which for me is, are they obsessed with male bodies on the same level as I am?

• 1:09:36Speaker 00

  They never are.

• 1:09:37Dax Shepard?

  To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. We get support from our sponsor, Lilly. For adults with obesity or with excess weight and weight-related medical problems, it's time to find out about Foundo or for Glibron. Foundo is a once daily prescription GLP- ...medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off.

• 1:10:08Speaker 05

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• 1:10:48Speaker 05

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• 1:11:05Speaker 06

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• 1:11:50Speaker 06

  I get ad-free, I get background play, and there's like a ton-

• 1:11:53Speaker 02

  More in there. You should try it. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. So try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com/premium. Trial eligibility varies. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. That's a mouthful.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  My interest was in trying to exploit the best of my potential. This kind of goes back to civics because you should contribute to your community. And if you have a skill set that's applicable in some way that can contribute to your community, even if it's stupid storytelling, if you can be really good at it, you can be really useful in a certain sector of somebody's life. You know, this is part of their life. They need a half hour break. Like that guy in Hello Tomorrow, that character feels really useful when he can light that guy up with a little bit of hope. And I feel useful when I can tell a good story and I can collaborate with people with disparate upbringings and ways of seeing

• 1:12:57Speaker 02

  and create something that none of us imagined individually. One of the reasons why I love New York, why I've been there, it is pluralism, right? Smashed in your face, you know, it is just compressed, distilled. And so the audience is there.

• 1:13:09Dax Shepard?

  There's a Hasidic Jew sitting next to a cowboy.

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  And on your way to work on the train, you're going to sit next to all of those people. And one of them is going to tell you to fuck off once a day. So you're not going to be able to get a big head about it. But you're going to be a part of the community.

• 1:13:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  And so I suppose that's one reason why the theater in particular, I think the biggest reason is because that's where I've had some of the best parts. You know, how do I turn down some of those parts? I studied this kind of work so I could apply it in this way. So if somebody's going to give me an opportunity, I should get off my ass and do it and keep my cost of living low. That's another big thing.

• 1:13:43Dax Shepard?

  Well, one thing I happen to know about you is you did have a safety net from 1998 to 2007, I want to say.

• 1:13:51Speaker 02

  Oh, more than that.

• 1:13:52Dax Shepard?

  More than that. Yeah.

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  I was actually just.

• 1:13:54Dax Shepard?

  Don't say the what.

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:13:56Dax Shepard?

  1998 to 2005.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  A big safety net.

• 1:14:00Dax Shepard?

  And I've printed something up for you and I hope you'll cold read this.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  I certainly will.

• 1:14:04Dax Shepard?

  Because Monica probably doesn't know this and this is great. Yeah.

• 1:14:08Speaker 00

  Oh, this is exciting.

• 1:14:09Dax Shepard?

  This is a treat for you.

• 1:14:10Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  Prada sunglasses, $548. Striped blouse from the row, $1,600. Hermes Birkin bag.

• 1:14:21Speaker 02

  Thirty-eight thousand, five hundred dollars. Realizing halfway home from Santa Monica that despite how cute you look, you're gonna Tonka in the car.

• 1:14:29Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no. Stop. Stop it.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  Priceless. There are some things money can't buy for everything else there's faster cart. I don't even know what Tonka means.

• 1:14:44Speaker 00

  You shouldn't know.

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  Does that mean shit yourself?

• 1:14:46Speaker 00

  Yes, it is that.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  Is that anybody and it's capitalized? I can do another, I can do a better tape.

• 1:14:51Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. Let's go get, that was to warm up the pod. This is like that thing I wrote.

• 1:14:56Speaker 02

  Realizing halfway home from Santa Monica that despite how cute you look.

• 1:15:00Speaker 00

  It's Dora. It's Dora.

• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  Hold on, hold on, I'm a professional. You know, if you pay me a little money, I'll take it very seriously.

• 1:15:08Dax Shepard?

  This is the only way we're getting the campaign back.

• 1:15:09Speaker 00

  Oh, oh. I think I deserve some money for this.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  I can guarantee in the 13 years I did it, I never had to say thirty-eight thousand, five hundred dollars.

• 1:15:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, right?

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  Realizing halfway home from Santa Monica that despite how cute you look, you're gonna... I can't do it.

• 1:15:29Speaker 00

  It's a po- oh my god.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  That's incredible. That's great writing, I gotta tell you. That is, that is writing that came...

• 1:15:35Dax Shepard?

  chimpanzee. Did you watch this great doc we watched? It was about these people who...

• 1:15:39Speaker 00

  I mean...

• 1:15:40Dax Shepard?

  No, that's the good one where they fight. Chimp crazy, I think.

• 1:15:43Speaker 00

  Is that what it's called?

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  I don't know it.

• 1:15:45Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:15:46Dax Shepard?

  All these people who tried to own these chimps, they end up getting their faces eaten off, right? But one of the chimps was Tonka. And Tonka would wipe his doody on the glass. And they'd go, Tonka! And they had to make Tonka clean his... So when Monica had an accident, she's been referring to it as Tonka-ing.

• 1:16:02Speaker 00

  I said, I said, I felt like I was Tonka. Like, I was just an animal with, like, no control.

• 1:16:09Speaker 02

  We have a friend, Naomi and I, who is desperate to write a book called Shit Happens, about all of those kinds of stories.

• 1:16:15Dax Shepard?

  Our favorite stories on earth are... We call it unauthorized evacuation. We have a prompt on Fridays and people tell us stories of their unauthorized evacuations.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  There was another one that I really liked where somebody thinks they're gonna pass wind and something else where it's, "I gambled and lost."

• 1:16:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:16:33Dax Shepard?

  People say, "I trusted a fart."

• 1:16:35Speaker 02

  I haven't heard that one.

• 1:16:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, "I trusted a fart." But I'm gonna try it, I'm gonna try it, okay?

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  Let's see.

• 1:16:42Dax Shepard?

  This is you. Prada sunglasses, $548. Stripe blouse from The Row, $1,600. Hermes Birkin bag, $38,500. Realizing halfway home from Santa Monica that despite how cute you look, you're gonna tonka in the car, priceless. There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard.

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  I mean, there's a professional. Thank God he was not around in 1997 when I was auditioning for that.

• 1:17:08Dax Shepard?

  But that's a gift of all gifts, right?

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 1:17:11Dax Shepard?

  That gives you the freedom to have the exact career you wanted.

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  I was just texting last night with one of the producers of the MasterCard campaign. Greg Lotus is his name.

• 1:17:22Dax Shepard?

  You're so good with names. It's kind of a mad name.

• 1:17:24Speaker 02

  Joyce Thomas, she started the whole thing. Joyce King Thomas. By the way, what if they're all made up?

• 1:17:29Dax Shepard?

  They could be. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:31Speaker 00

  You're selling it, though.

• 1:17:33Dax Shepard?

  Do you know Timothy Olyphant?

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:17:35Dax Shepard?

  So he does what you're saying, but he really does it. He says Deborah so-and-so, and then that's not who it was. And he started saying names when we interviewed him. I go, stop. You know, these aren't the real names.

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  It's very possible.

• 1:17:47Dax Shepard?

  They're close, though.

• 1:17:48Speaker 02

  It's important to give these two credit, though, because Greg wrote to me last night, and Joyce is at the point where she could be in the advertising Hall of Fame or something. And he was like, would you write something? And I wrote exactly that. She worked for an advertising agency, and they were often trying to get an account, to win an account. So they would do a temp version of what they were doing, or do a real version of it, and try to give it to the company, in this case, MasterCard. But I did one for Champion Athletic Wear and MasterCard, and I was just doing it for the session fee and getting some experience doing voiceover. She called my agent and said they won the account, and they just wanted to use the voice that they used in the track. And I gotta say, the first year or so, even though I was making some money, I didn't understand what I really

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  had. And I was kind of like, oh, this is a pain in the ass. I gotta go up to 20th Street again and go record. It was about two years into it where I realized, this is the gift of a lifetime. So you're right. I had an enormous safety net. I mean, when you're starting out, if you can bank on 20 grand, 50 grand, whatever it is a year. Your life opens up creatively. You don't have to take those jobs. You don't have to do seven year contracts or the marketing. You just work your six months at a time. Try to keep yourself employed, stay in the game, take the good parts that you can. But I'm telling you, by year 10, I could walk in, do 20 spots in about 20 minutes.

• 1:19:11Speaker 00

  And it's iconic. It's a cool thing to be a part of.

• 1:19:14Dax Shepard?

  It's actually one of the greatest. It became a cultural phenom.

• 1:19:18Speaker 02

  I occasionally would be invited to these charity events, be like a golf event. Cause I played golf when I was growing up and I like competing at anything. So I would show up at these charity events and I'd walk up to the foursome and I'd say, hi, I'm Billy Crudup. I'm your celebrity fifth man on the team. And inevitably I'd get, no, you're not. And I'd say, uh, well, I think this is group number 40. He's like, I just paid 10 grand for Goose Gossage. Who the fuck are you? And I was like, nah. I'd have the MasterCard in my bag. So I'd just wait until like the third or fourth hole, after I'd had a birdie or something and helped the team. I'd go, so you guys don't like theater? You don't get to see a lot of theater? Well, there are some things money can't buy. And they go, well, get the fuck out of here.

• 1:20:03Dax Shepard?

  It's a MasterCard jerk. Yes. Yeah, fuck Chichi Rodriguez or whoever I wanted to play with. Look at Arnett, Arnett, like he's been GMZ trucked for like 25 years. Oh, I'm so jealous. Okay, we've arrived at Jay Kelly. Let's talk about Jay Kelly.

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 1:20:21Speaker 00

  Also, we've had Reese and Jennifer. You're the third morning.

• 1:20:24Dax Shepard?

  I can almost not do any more morning show. We just, yeah, we've had almost the whole cast.

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  That has been, by the way, another blessing, getting that part. I mean, that was just great. Good luck. Fun season this season, so I hope you're tuning in to the morning show.

• 1:20:37Dax Shepard?

  Yes. So everyone, check that out. That's still airing on Apple Plus right now. I don't think we've reached the end of the season yet. You're stellar on that, of course.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  Thank you. Jay Kelly, know about that.

• 1:20:46Dax Shepard?

  Hermès bag. I looked up those prices. I wanted it to be real. That's what a fucking bag costs. 38.5.

• 1:20:52Speaker 02

  38,000?

• 1:20:54Speaker 00

  Not all of them. I mean, I don't have one.

• 1:20:56Dax Shepard?

  The one I looked up.

• 1:20:57Speaker 00

  That's tough. That's really tough.

• 1:21:01Dax Shepard?

  Okay, let's talk about Jay Kelly. So Jay Kelly, Noah Baumbach.

• 1:21:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:04Dax Shepard?

  We love Noah Baumbach.

• 1:21:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Terrific director.

• 1:21:07Dax Shepard?

  Squid in the Whale is the first thing I saw.

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, amazing. Kicking and Screaming back in the day. He's made so many good movies and has been such a consistent filmmaker and such an interesting filmmaker for a long period of time. Very hard to do. I think if you make one good movie as a director, like a good movie, you're probably a really, really good director. If you make two good movies, you're probably one of the better directors of your generation. If you make three good movies, you're fricking great.

• 1:21:39Dax Shepard?

  You're ready for the history books.

• 1:21:40Speaker 02

  They're really hard.

• 1:21:41Dax Shepard?

  They're really hard. People underestimate.

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  Herding cats, especially if it's something that you have written and then you've got your own guts in there on the paper. And that's a hard thing to sustain. And Noah has done that for a long period of time. And there's a beautiful script about a movie star.

• 1:21:56Dax Shepard?

  George Clooney.

• 1:21:57Speaker 00

  Yes, I know. I know. Well.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  Perfectly cast in the sort of twilight of his career. Looking back, back to your earlier question, saying, was it worth it? Or what did I do wrong? Or what did I do right? And he's got two grown children.

• 1:22:10Dax Shepard?

  The last is leaving.

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  Exactly. And he starts to have a bit of existential crisis. And immediately, narratively in the film, his mentor dies. So he ends up at a memorial for his mentor and all of a sudden his north star is gone. And his children are sort of out of the picture. And one of his former acting school friends and roommate is at the memorial as well. And they haven't seen each other in a long time. And so Jay Kelly, George, is feeling like nostalgic. He's like, hey, man, you want to go get a beer? And so the character I play is his acting school buddy. And we go get a beer. We start to bond about, oh, who's still working?

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  And basically, nobody is working still. One of them does voiceovers from that class. Jay's the one who took off and just kept flying. But it turns out the character I play is holding on to some things. George's character, Noah built into it a little bit of a narrative. Where George's character says to my character, oh, you were always the one we looked up to. You were the great actor in the class. I mean, I could watch you do anything. I could watch you read the menu. And so then that's what the character has to do in a way that is impactful. Yeah. And so the way that Noah had written it, he was describing a kind of like method acting. That is not the way that I work. And the way that I work is, like I was saying before, storytelling.

• 1:23:36Speaker 02

  I just want to try to tell the story that the writer has written and that the director is trying to compose in a way that makes the audience become involved. I don't try to manifest emotion. If emotion comes in the playing of a scene, I'm not afraid of it. But the aim is to accomplish the story, the event of the scene. Why is the scene in the movie? Why is this scene in the play? All right, let's make sure that the three of us as actors collude to make sure that event happens. And then whatever happens in between, you're listening to each other and then you have something that is creatively novel because you're all trying to be witness to it at the same time. And this one is saying, no, this event has to happen. And I kept telling him, no, I'm not sure that I know how to do that.

• 1:24:19Speaker 02

  So I told him, I'll tell you the way that I work, and I think it could work in the same way. And I describe it exactly the way that I did now, which is kind of long.

• 1:24:30Speaker 02

  This is one scene in the movie, you know? And he's listening very patiently to me. I was actually in London doing a play at the time and they were shooting part of it in London. So on the day off, I was going to go and do this scene. And I kept writing to him saying, you know, what if it's kind of like this? And he'd listen and say, oh, that's an interesting idea. And then I'd come in for rehearsal, me and George and Noah rehearsed. And George is like, yeah, I hear you're going to try some new things out. And I was like, yeah. And, you know, we wouldn't quite get to them. And I was noticing that the script wasn't changing. And like two weeks before, I was like, geez, I better figure out some fucking method shit. So I did a quick and deep dive into whatever I could in their repertoire.

• 1:25:13Speaker 02

  And during the day's work, I said to Noah and George, I got no idea how this is going to go. So I've got a lot of. Backup plans, but just bear with me if you could.

• 1:25:23Dax Shepard?

  Is that easy or hard for you to say out loud?

• 1:25:25Speaker 02

  It's okay to say now because I know that I want to be helpful. That's my baseline.

• 1:25:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:29Speaker 00

  It's not ego.

• 1:25:30Speaker 02

  I don't want to be destructive to it. It doesn't mean I'm not passionate about, I'll have these discussions with the writers, great writers on the morning show, Carrie Aaron, the first two seasons, then Charlotte Stout, the second two seasons and their whole team. And if something doesn't sound right to me, or I feel like it's going down a way that I don't understand, we have big creative discussions. I don't have any problem having that kind of discussion if I don't understand the story. This one was more about accommodating my ability to tell it in a way.

• 1:25:56Dax Shepard?

  Like what Noah probably wanted to say is like, I understand you work that way, but the character you're playing doesn't work that way.

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  Correct. And I'm like, but no, I'm a 57 year old actor. I've been doing it for so long.

• 1:26:06Dax Shepard?

  This character that I wrote that you're gonna come play does it different.

• 1:26:09Speaker 00

  It's kind of life imitates art a little bit.

• 1:26:12Speaker 02

  It was. It was really great. And to be asked to do something that you don't know how to do, that's a big gift. But the reason why I'm saying all of this is because that's the pretext for George's character to go on a journey of discovery. So if I don't make that work.

• 1:26:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:29Speaker 02

  Him going away dramaturgically doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

• 1:26:32Dax Shepard?

  Failure to launch, we'd call it.

• 1:26:33Speaker 02

  It's a failure to launch. It was a really great experience and I had known George and wanted to work with George. But moreover, the stories about George and Adam Sandler and their partnership.

• 1:26:47Dax Shepard?

  Does Adam play as agent or something?

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  Plays as agent.

• 1:26:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. They didn't give us the movie. Normally I would have watched.

• 1:26:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, we tried.

• 1:26:54Dax Shepard?

  The trailer. So I'm piecing together who Sandler is.

• 1:26:56Speaker 02

  Sandler is his longtime agent and Laura Dern is his publicist. I mean, there is a murderer's row in that cast of great actors. And Noah, the way that he described it, he was feeling somewhat disenchanted with movie making after he made a film called White Noise. And it wasn't received in the way that he imagined it would be received, or the story didn't land in the way that he had hoped it'd land. And it felt kind of cynical about it. And this is sort of a beautiful, not necessarily love letter, but description of the carnival life that we lead. It's gilded with the George Clooney. Charm and like and also a beautiful heartfelt performance. And every part of it, you know, I only worked for like three or four days, but I'm at every press thing. I love being a part of this group.

• 1:27:41Speaker 02

  So much. Oh, you guys want me to show up in Venice short? I'll buy my own ticket. You know, like whatever.

• 1:27:47Dax Shepard?

  Cover of Esquire magazine?

• 1:27:48Speaker 02

  You got it.

• 1:27:48Dax Shepard?

  I'm up for it now.

• 1:27:51Speaker 02

  Oh, that magazine folded? Damn it. I'll do the online version. I'm riding their coattails as far as I can. It was a beautiful thing for me to be a part of and a really gorgeous film.

• 1:28:00Speaker 00

  I talked to Netflix and also some personal publicists and I was like, guys, if there is a movie that the armchairs would want to see. Cause our listeners, we call them armchairs. We talk so much about this, about looking back on your life and the things that seem like they're going to be so great. Aren't necessarily so great. I mean, it's so us, Callie, my Callie, she obviously saw it a long time ago and was like, it's so good. And it's about this. And I was like, that's our audience. So I really encourage the armchairs to see it.

• 1:28:32Speaker 02

  Expand on that by way of saying, I do think that's an American phenomenon in particular, this notion, and we talked about it a bit with our fathers too. That my great life is about to begin because it's the land of opportunity and abundance. You're sure that your gilded life, and what better way to describe that than a movie star?

• 1:28:50Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:28:51Speaker 02

  Who we think somehow as a completely protected gorgeous life, free from any kind of malady at all.

• 1:28:58Dax Shepard?

  Royalty.

• 1:28:59Speaker 02

  Well protected from the mundane realities of living. And if you are busy looking forward to your future, you miss the life that you're having.

• 1:29:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:10Speaker 02

  And so I think it's a great metaphor for some kind of American discontent too.

• 1:29:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:18Speaker 02

  I'm taking more of a sociological kind of take on the movie itself is just lovely.

• 1:29:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I had one question. What is it like to work with Tom Cruise? We went on this summer, my family did, we called it Tom Cruise's Cruises. And we watched almost the entire canon.

• 1:29:34Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:29:35Dax Shepard?

  So we watched all eight Mission Impossibles.

• 1:29:37Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:29:38Dax Shepard?

  You're in the third one. You're fucking great.

• 1:29:40Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:29:41Dax Shepard?

  And I got so obsessed with him. And this is not my observation. This is Adam Scott's observation and he too is a huge Tom Cruise fan. And I was like, I go after doing this summer thing where we watch all of his movies. You really forget how insanely good he is in Rain Man. He's like playing someone that's completely not Tom.

• 1:29:57Speaker 02

  I don't forget. He was incredible in that movie. That is a phenomenal performance.

• 1:30:03Dax Shepard?

  So I said to Adam Scott, I'm like, this is gonna be a dumb sentence, but I think Tom Cruise might be the most underrated actor alive.

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  That's hilarious.

• 1:30:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, because obviously.

• 1:30:10Speaker 02

  Do you remember those Tafts?

• 1:30:11Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:30:12Speaker 02

  Always had this rabid intensity that is unusual.

• 1:30:16Dax Shepard?

  But what Adam said, and I think it's really astute. He said, I think Tom Cruise's gift as an actor is he is acting solely for the audience sitting in the seat, watching the screen and his understanding of what their experience is gonna be with that lens on, with me at this distance, doing this with my eyes. That that's his genius. And I was like, I think you're right. I think he has a better idea than anyone's ever had about what this thing I'm doing right now will be experienced as in one year on that size screen.

• 1:30:49Speaker 02

  I completely believe that.

• 1:30:51Dax Shepard?

  When you're acting with him, what kind of things are you observing? Cause you must be equally fascinated just to get to work with him.

• 1:30:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, you have to catch yourself a little bit because he's a star. I grew up loving movie stars and he's one of them. Risky Business smacked me right during high school. Tom Cruise was the man because he was a producer on Without Limits. I had some superficial interactions. He was always incredibly supportive, like Billy, what do you need? We're gonna make that happen. Well, let me tell you about that experience. And in the way that I think of it, this is what's going on there. Like a team player. There were two moments that I'm thinking of now. One was because J.J. Abrams made that movie. J.J. is a brilliant man. In the movie, I play somebody with duplicitous motivation. There is one scene in particular where I reveal to Tom Cruise the extent of my duplicity. And.

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  It comes in the form of a monologue while he's tied up and been beaten up. I only do well with text if I have time with it. I can memorize things, but not well, I mean, anymore. I think everybody who's an actor probably got into the business because they could internalize text. That was the way their brain worked. Otherwise, it's just too intimidating. So as you get older, it starts to atrophy a little bit. What was once a special skill is sort of gone. In any case, I had this monologue that I realized too, like the Jake Kelly thing, was pretty important for the plot of the movie. And JJ, when he sent it to me, he said, don't memorize it yet because we're working right now. And as we're working on the script, and they were shooting also while they were working.

• 1:32:26Speaker 02

  And about two weeks out, I said, JJ, that monologue's about a page long and I want to kill it for you. So I want to start memorizing now, so I'm just going to go with what I've got. And he writes me back, definitely don't.

• 1:32:37Dax Shepard?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:32:37Speaker 02

  Because the names are changing and the order, it's in flux right now. A week out, I go, dude, this is DEFCON 1. I'm in triage mode here. I have to start. And he's like, it's coming today, three days before. Billy, I can promise you, the morning we're shooting it.

• 1:32:54Dax Shepard?

  In the make up trailer?

• 1:32:55Speaker 02

  In the trailer, I get the pages.

• 1:32:57Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:32:58Speaker 02

  This is how I'm recalling it. It may have been the day before, but I believe it was in the trailer. Cut to Tom tied up, me off camera, reading the text.

• 1:33:07Dax Shepard?

  Thank God they're shooting his side first at least.

• 1:33:09Speaker 02

  His side first.

• 1:33:09Dax Shepard?

  Practice.

• 1:33:10Speaker 02

  Give me some practice. Turn around to me, total panic attack, melting under pressure.

• 1:33:15Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:33:16Speaker 02

  Can't remember anything. This is what Tom Cruise does. Billy, you ever worked with cue cards? And I was like, uh, no, Tom, I have not ever worked. We're working with cue cards today. Has somebody read it, the whole monologue? And this motherfucker is holding the cue card like right here, so he can still have an eye on it.

• 1:33:32Dax Shepard?

  Still giving you.

• 1:33:33Speaker 02

  So he's giving me everything here.

• 1:33:37Dax Shepard?

  Where he's got the card over here. And I'm doing everything I can to not play the scene like, you really should go after the rabbit's foot. When you would go to Central America, that's a bad idea.

• 1:33:51Dax Shepard?

  But JJ and Tom are so good that they made it work.

• 1:33:53Speaker 02

  But Billy, when you go home at night and you lay in your.

• 1:33:58Speaker 00

  Oh, man. Well, you said you needed it.

• 1:34:00Dax Shepard?

  I told him I needed it. And JJ was like, no, it was totally fine. We'll make it work.

• 1:34:04Speaker 02

  It's great, but I could have done so much better, Dax.

• 1:34:07Dax Shepard?

  OK, so that one's a little bit of the girl who got away. You want a second chance?

• 1:34:11Speaker 02

  Tom saved me on that. And the second was my father died because I had about maybe two weeks work on that movie, but it was spread out over several months. And during that, my father passed away after he had cancer. And we had a memorial for him. Then I had to fly to Los Angeles on Monday to work on Monday. And Tom, as he did every day that I was there, came bounding into the makeup trailer. How are we doing today? You know? We're looking good here. We're on fire. Ready to go? Let's go. Good attitude. Good to see you all. Wonderful people here. So he goes, how are you doing? And in my head, like, I start doing all this social calculus. I'm like, oh, which way do I do this? And I said, well, actually, Tom, my father passed away, so I was at a memorial over the weekend.

• 1:34:57Speaker 02

  You haven't been consoled until you've been consoled by Tom Cruise.

• 1:35:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh, tell me what happened.

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  Because that motherfucker is right there. Like, he came in to the point where I was like, no, it's totally fine. I mean, everybody has a dad. They all come and go. What are you gonna do, Tom? Terrific.

• 1:35:11Dax Shepard?

  He's built for it. He's fearless, right?

• 1:35:14Speaker 02

  Built for it.

• 1:35:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he's like, this is awkward for most people, but I'm fucking going in.

• 1:35:18Speaker 02

  I'm coming right in.

• 1:35:19Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. That's sweet.

• 1:35:20Speaker 02

  I thought it was.

• 1:35:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Well, Billy, this has been so much fun.

• 1:35:24Speaker 02

  It's been my pleasure.

• 1:35:25Dax Shepard?

  I'm submitting with you, as I told you, we got to spend some time this year over the summer. We did a lot of dancing.

• 1:35:31Speaker 02

  Yes, we did.

• 1:35:31Dax Shepard?

  We did a good two hours of dancing together.

• 1:35:33Speaker 02

  Your family are some dancing fiends.

• 1:35:36Dax Shepard?

  Right back at you.

• 1:35:36Speaker 02

  A great time.

• 1:35:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Naomi's got major moves.

• 1:35:39Speaker 02

  I hope she slows down at a certain point because I try to keep up and I'm like.

• 1:35:45Speaker 02

  Is it the right arm or the left arm? Which one should I be looking out for?

• 1:35:48Dax Shepard?

  You were not signaling that at all.

• 1:35:49Speaker 02

  I like to keep up.

• 1:35:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, it was great. I adore you. I think you're magic. I'm so glad you came in. Everyone see J. Kelly, November 11th in theaters. You don't make it, but you should. It'll be best consumed there.

• 1:36:01Speaker 00

  You should.

• 1:36:02Dax Shepard?

  December 5th.

• 1:36:03Speaker 02

  I'll tell you why it should be seen in a theater. Because there's a tribute to J. Kelly in the movie. J. Kelly is attending a tribute to himself. And in that, they use George Clooney footage.

• 1:36:16Speaker 00

  Oh, fun.

• 1:36:17Speaker 02

  Real footage. Spoiler alert, but it is worth staying to the Bitter Inn in the theater. If nothing else, I mean, you're gonna have a great time in the movie. Wherever you see the movie, whenever you see the movie. But in the theater, it's pretty awesome.

• 1:36:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, awesome. I hope everyone checks it out and please come back.

• 1:36:31Speaker 02

  Absolutely will. Thank you guys for having me. This has been a pleasure.

• 1:36:35Dax Shepard?

  I sure hope there weren't any mistakes in that episode, but we'll find out when my mom, Mrs. Monica, comes in and tells us what was wrong. He wears short shorts. If you dare wear short shorts, ne'er wear short shorts.

• 1:36:51Speaker 00

  I don't get that, if I'm being honest, because ne'er doesn't wear short shorts.

• 1:36:56Dax Shepard?

  Well, in this case, ne'er does wear short shorts.

• 1:36:58Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:36:58Dax Shepard?

  In the commercial.

• 1:37:00Speaker 00

  I know, but it doesn't make sense.

• 1:37:01Dax Shepard?

  I know, ne'er can't wear shorts.

• 1:37:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, is there like a little pair of tiny shorts on the ne'er bottle?

• 1:37:06Dax Shepard?

  Let's think about this. If you dare wear short shorts.

• 1:37:08Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:37:09Dax Shepard?

  Ne'er. Maybe they're using where like a verb or not a verb.

• 1:37:15Speaker 00

  Like never?

• 1:37:16Dax Shepard?

  No, like, um, ne'er wear. Like, that's a new term. That's like, you ne'er wear'd it, which is, which is no hair.

• 1:37:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:26Speaker 00

  Ne'er wear means no hair on.

• 1:37:29Dax Shepard?

  Oh, why am I wearing headphones?

• 1:37:32Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, you just wanted to.

• 1:37:35Dax Shepard?

  Well, we were just doing. We were doing Armchair Anonymous.

• 1:37:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:38Dax Shepard?

  And then I got used to it. So that's crazy.

• 1:37:40Speaker 00

  You still can if you want.

• 1:37:41Dax Shepard?

  I was like, what? You sound really loud in this fact check. It was like, cause I'm, I'm no longer hearing you in my ears the way I used to.

• 1:37:47Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:37:48Dax Shepard?

  We have this dista between us. You're at the distant end of this conversation.

• 1:37:53Speaker 00

  Um, okay.

• 1:37:55Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:37:55Speaker 00

  First things first, I have a huge question to ask you.

• 1:37:57Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God, I love huge questions.

• 1:37:59Speaker 00

  Do you eat the skin of the baked potato?

• 1:38:05Dax Shepard?

  You know, I did it when I was a kid and now I love it, especially if it's a little crispy.

• 1:38:09Speaker 00

  So you like cut the whole baked potato, you eat bites that have skin.

• 1:38:15Dax Shepard?

  I usually eat the organ meat out of it.

• 1:38:18Speaker 00

  Okay, you eat the inside.

• 1:38:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and then I cut up the remaining, uh, skin. Again, if it's crispy, I, I prefer that. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes it's damp.

• 1:38:28Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:38:28Dax Shepard?

  And then it's just like you're eating like damp bark.

• 1:38:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're eating a brown paper bag.

• 1:38:34Dax Shepard?

  That was sitting in dirt. You're eating dirt. That's why it's that color. I think they're white on their own. You scrub them, they're white.

• 1:38:39Speaker 00

  Maybe certain ones.

• 1:38:40Dax Shepard?

  Not russets.

• 1:38:41Speaker 00

  I don't think russet, they're brown.

• 1:38:43Dax Shepard?

  What made you think of this? Did you have a baked potato last night?

• 1:38:45Speaker 00

  Not last night.

• 1:38:46Dax Shepard?

  And do you call it a baked potato or a big potato?

• 1:38:49Speaker 00

  I call it a baked potato.

• 1:38:50Dax Shepard?

  Well, you're, you're portraying your southern roots.

• 1:38:53Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:38:54Dax Shepard?

  I'm treading very carefully.

• 1:38:55Speaker 00

  Why?

• 1:38:56Dax Shepard?

  Because you hate when I claim southernness appropriately.

• 1:39:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, you don't have southern roots.

• 1:39:03Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm, I am, I am a southerner.

• 1:39:05Speaker 00

  You have a house in the south.

• 1:39:06Dax Shepard?

  In the south.

• 1:39:07Speaker 00

  I will say you have a house in the south.

• 1:39:09Dax Shepard?

  A house in the south.

• 1:39:11Speaker 00

  Listen, I was at a restaurant and a baked potato was bought by Jess. It was a twice baked.

• 1:39:19Dax Shepard?

  Mmm.

• 1:39:20Speaker 00

  So I don't know if.

• 1:39:21Dax Shepard?

  That guarantees crispiness.

• 1:39:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:39:24Dax Shepard?

  Good.

• 1:39:24Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah. So I see him cut this potato.

• 1:39:31Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:39:32Speaker 00

  And eat it like a, um, a steak.

• 1:39:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:37Speaker 00

  And I was sh- I was like.

• 1:39:41Dax Shepard?

  Mortified.

• 1:39:41Speaker 00

  What are you doing?

• 1:39:43Dax Shepard?

  Right, like he was a psychopath.

• 1:39:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, like you are not supposed, that's not what baked potatoes are. It's to eat the, that's just the vessel for the inside.

• 1:39:50Dax Shepard?

  The wrapper.

• 1:39:51Speaker 00

  It's the wrapper, exactly.

• 1:39:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:53Speaker 00

  It's like if you ate an orange by cutting it and taking bites. It's like, no, no, no, you're not supposed to eat that peel.

• 1:40:02Dax Shepard?

  I mean, that's a little more harsh, but, because there's no version of an orange peel tasting good. And there certainly is a version of a potato skin.

• 1:40:11Speaker 00

  So this is why I wanted to ask you, because he, he was like, you don't eat that? And he was like, you don't eat potato skins? And then that was an interesting point because I was like, oh, I mean, I, I have eaten potato skins, but not like this, not.

• 1:40:28Dax Shepard?

  By the way, I love potato skins. I haven't had them in so long. I would go like this. Slice, slice, slice, slice, slice, slice.

• 1:40:34Speaker 00

  You would? Take that, that knife is scary.

• 1:40:39Speaker 00

  Okay. So like, oh my.

• 1:40:41Dax Shepard?

  I thought maybe it'd stick in really cool.

• 1:40:43Speaker 00

  You're acting willy nilly. Listen, so I wanted to put this out there. I was like, I gotta ask Dax's opinion on this and there's a high chance that he too.

• 1:40:54Dax Shepard?

  But I don't do it like him. And I think that's cool. He does it like that. He's mixing.

• 1:40:58Speaker 00

  Texture.

• 1:40:59Dax Shepard?

  It's like full bodied for him. It's super nuts.

• 1:41:01Speaker 00

  It, it is. He's, he said, he mentioned the crispiness a lot, like you have now mentioned crispiness.

• 1:41:08Dax Shepard?

  It's imperative.

• 1:41:09Speaker 00

  I just, I'm, I'm just shocked. I never, I would never been exposed to anyone eating the outside of the baked potato.

• 1:41:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Ever?

• 1:41:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. That's why I like.

• 1:41:20Dax Shepard?

  I think when we were at Bricktops, I want to say I took down a baked potato and then I did eat the skin.

• 1:41:26Speaker 00

  You did?

• 1:41:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think.

• 1:41:28Speaker 00

  I thought that was the way you ate it.

• 1:41:31Dax Shepard?

  I think it is the majority of people eat it that way, but I don't think, I, I think that's 70 30. Rob?

• 1:41:38Speaker 00

  Uh, I don't eat the skin, but it wouldn't freak me out if I saw someone eat. It wouldn't?

• 1:41:43Dax Shepard?

  So somewhere in the middle of us, which is generally his chosen safe path.

• 1:41:47Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:41:48Dax Shepard?

  Through these minefields.

• 1:41:50Speaker 00

  I, I just didn't even know it was an option.

• 1:41:52Dax Shepard?

  Well, are you open to trying it?

• 1:41:54Speaker 00

  Blown open.

• 1:41:56Dax Shepard?

  Well, are you open to trying it?

• 1:41:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:41:58Dax Shepard?

  They're good. I mean, again, potato, he had a great counter. Potato skins are fantastic.

• 1:42:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. I guess I'm open to trying it, but I too have this idea that it's a paper bag.

• 1:42:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, now do you eat at Little Dom's ever?

• 1:42:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:14Dax Shepard?

  Okay. So we, we almost never eat there because I'm always freaked out that there's a line.

• 1:42:17Speaker 00

  Oh, sure.

• 1:42:18Dax Shepard?

  But we happened to be in the mood to go out to eat two nights ago. We were in a rush and it was 5:30. And so that's a great time to hit a restaurant. Side note, there were three birthdays in a row. Restaurants thing for all three of you. It was so fun. I felt like it was in Italy.

• 1:42:33Speaker 00

  I was there on Friday.

• 1:42:35Dax Shepard?

  Two nights ago.

• 1:42:36Speaker 00

  Tuesday.

• 1:42:36Dax Shepard?

  Tuesday night. So you've eaten there.

• 1:42:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:38Dax Shepard?

  They do a whole baby potato and they're smashed and cooked. Those are incredible. And those have the skin on them.

• 1:42:44Speaker 00

  They do. So I said, I said, it's not that I'm against eating the skin on a potato. I've had smashed potatoes. I've had plenty of skins on potatoes. It's specifically the baked potato.

• 1:42:57Dax Shepard?

  But how about a, um, when you eat a, eat a bread bowl?

• 1:43:00Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:43:00Dax Shepard?

  A soup. Do you eat the bread?

• 1:43:02Speaker 00

  So.

• 1:43:03Dax Shepard?

  Cause I think that's the best comp.

• 1:43:05Speaker 00

  I eat the, a lot of the bread inside the bowl.

• 1:43:10Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:43:10Speaker 00

  Cause I, the bread.

• 1:43:11Dax Shepard?

  Leave the husk.

• 1:43:12Speaker 00

  I do. Every now and then I'll peel off like a little bite and stick it in. But no, I'm not.

• 1:43:18Dax Shepard?

  I miss a bread bowl like crazy.

• 1:43:21Speaker 00

  We can get you a gluten free one.

• 1:43:22Dax Shepard?

  I don't think so. Gluten free bread in general is pretty shit.

• 1:43:26Speaker 00

  It's tough.

• 1:43:27Dax Shepard?

  Now, what's so interesting is like Kristen is now taking a stab at gluten free sourdough bread. God bless her. She's worked very, very hard. There's been like nine or 10 batches. They're never really comparable in any way.

• 1:43:40Speaker 00

  Uh oh.

• 1:43:40Dax Shepard?

  So sourdough bread.

• 1:43:42Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:43:42Dax Shepard?

  Yet she makes gluten free waffles.

• 1:43:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:43:45Dax Shepard?

  That are kind of sourdough with the starter.

• 1:43:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:43:48Dax Shepard?

  Those are fucking dynamite.

• 1:43:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:43:50Dax Shepard?

  Those might be the best gluten free, you know, alternative in the bread space. They've also really nailed pizza.

• 1:43:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:43:58Dax Shepard?

  They have figured out pizza.

• 1:43:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. Sometimes I even choose gluten free crust at Lucifer's.

• 1:44:04Dax Shepard?

  Like you've a cold line Lucifer's. It's been a long time.

• 1:44:06Speaker 00

  Can we hear about your day yesterday? Are we allowed to hear about it?

• 1:44:10Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure. My first filming day in, I think, five and a half years.

• 1:44:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. How was it?

• 1:44:15Dax Shepard?

  Well, it was great in that I accomplished my goal.

• 1:44:19Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:44:19Dax Shepard?

  Which is in the morning when I meditated. I really was really thoughtful and mindful. I was like, I just want to go today and not have any power struggles.

• 1:44:32Dax Shepard?

  I want to be a joy to be around and I want to service the director and in this case, the star.

• 1:44:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:44:40Dax Shepard?

  And the project and, um, and I did that.

• 1:44:43Speaker 00

  Good.

• 1:44:44Dax Shepard?

  And I felt really good about it.

• 1:44:45Speaker 00

  Great.

• 1:44:45Dax Shepard?

  Cause I feel my cockles coming. It was like six 30. I gotta be on set at six 30. I was like, that feels early. And I look at the call time. It was like eight. Why am I there an hour?

• 1:44:53Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:44:54Dax Shepard?

  And I was like, and shut the fuck up and show up at six 30. And then I went into the wardrobe fitting.

• 1:45:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:45:00Dax Shepard?

  And, um, the costumer was an arm cherry.

• 1:45:05Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:45:06Dax Shepard?

  Which made me so happy right away. That was lovely. And then I had a, uh, I forget how fun it is to order breakfast on set.

• 1:45:14Speaker 00

  That is fun. What'd you order?

• 1:45:15Dax Shepard?

  Um, I, they, I said, do they have gluten free bread? Ding ding ding.

• 1:45:18Speaker 00

  Waffles?

• 1:45:19Dax Shepard?

  No. I said, do you have gluten free waffles with a sourdough starter?

• 1:45:23Speaker 00

  That my wife makes.

• 1:45:25Dax Shepard?

  And, uh, they did. And then so I had a fried egg sandwich with bacon and cheese and mayonnaise. And it was fucking outrageous. And I ended up going with my gold tooth. You know, I had two different.

• 1:45:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:45:37Dax Shepard?

  Options.

• 1:45:37Speaker 00

  You had a grill.

• 1:45:38Dax Shepard?

  A grill and gold tooth. I went with the gold tooth. People liked that. That was great.

• 1:45:42Speaker 00

  Great.

• 1:45:43Dax Shepard?

  And.

• 1:45:43Speaker 00

  I see you're not wearing it right now.

• 1:45:45Dax Shepard?

  I'm not. Well, now then I've, now I'm in a tricky sitch.

• 1:45:48Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:45:49Dax Shepard?

  Which is now that tooth is for that.

• 1:45:52Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:45:52Dax Shepard?

  So now I don't want to be all around town and on the show and stuff. And you see it nonstop. And then when you see that, it's not like a, oh, that, that's a thing. So I kinda, I fucked that up until the whole project's over.

• 1:46:03Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:46:03Dax Shepard?

  Which is a long time from now. Like, I think March.

• 1:46:06Speaker 00

  Okay. Interesting. So I do want to say that I did notice in a recent edit, this edit, actually, you were touching it a lot.

• 1:46:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:18Dax Shepard?

  I did not touch it at all in my scene.

• 1:46:20Speaker 00

  No, I know that. I'm just saying, I think like maybe subconsciously.

• 1:46:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:46:24Speaker 00

  Of course, because there's something weird in your mouth.

• 1:46:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're just like checking.

• 1:46:29Dax Shepard?

  I know it feels like it could be popped in just a tiny, a hair more.

• 1:46:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:46:34Dax Shepard?

  This is why, and if you watch Parenthood, it's a mess. Like you, oh, no, not Parenthood. Little bit there and then bless this mess. Since I've never worn a wedding ring in real life, when I have a wedding ring on, I just touch it nonstop. I can't not cause it's this foreign thing. It's so clear. I'm not used to having a ring.

• 1:46:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:46:52Dax Shepard?

  That's where I'm a bad actor. You'll see some of my bad acting when I just play with it.

• 1:46:56Speaker 00

  Bad acting comes out when you have rings.

• 1:46:57Dax Shepard?

  Well, in my defense, I do see some guys playing with their wedding ring a lot. It is a thing. It's a fidget spinner.

• 1:47:02Speaker 00

  I do think when they first get it, there's a lot of that. I do think over time it becomes second skin.

• 1:47:08Dax Shepard?

  Do you know what's great about Aaron? He's pretty clever.

• 1:47:11Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:47:11Dax Shepard?

  He gets 10 packs. His wedding ring has these like rubber rings.

• 1:47:15Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:47:16Dax Shepard?

  And he like knows he's gonna lose them. He plays with them. And just he has a bunch of, he has a ton of wedding rings.

• 1:47:22Speaker 00

  That doesn't sound like a wedding ring. That just sounds like a regular ring.

• 1:47:28Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:47:40Dax Shepard?

  Okay, that brings us to something fun. And this is maybe unethical.

• 1:47:46Speaker 00

  Uh oh.

• 1:47:46Dax Shepard?

  If it goes sideways. I guess by the time this comes out, we'll know.

• 1:47:49Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:47:51Dax Shepard?

  So I very much want Christmas lights down in Nashville.

• 1:47:54Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:54Dax Shepard?

  I want it to be like a spectacle.

• 1:47:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:47:57Dax Shepard?

  And I got a bid and it was, it was insane. It was offensive.

• 1:48:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:03Dax Shepard?

  It was offensive. I can't help but be offended. I cannot imagine that was the price that non-actors would have received.

• 1:48:08Speaker 00

  Okay, you think it's personal.

• 1:48:10Dax Shepard?

  I do, I do, I do. Um, I'm like, what is this place gonna be? Like the North Pole for this price?

• 1:48:16Speaker 00

  That's what you want.

• 1:48:18Dax Shepard?

  Let's just put it this way. I said, well, fuck, I'm sure for three grand, Aaron would be happy to go down there for a week and string lights up.

• 1:48:25Speaker 00

  So it was three grand?

• 1:48:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no. It was.

• 1:48:28Speaker 00

  Thirty?

• 1:48:29Dax Shepard?

  Seventeen thousand to put. I was like, are you fucking kidding? It's offensive.

• 1:48:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know that world.

• 1:48:36Dax Shepard?

  Like, in my mind, I'm gonna overpay Aaron three grand to do it. Let's just put it this way. I said to Aaron, hey, you wanna go decorate the house for three grand? He's like, fuck, yes. I'd have to drive Uber for, you know, two weeks or three weeks or whatever. Hold on, let's not.

• 1:48:53Speaker 00

  I'm serious.

• 1:48:56Dax Shepard?

  Oh man, you keep doing this.

• 1:48:58Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:48:59Dax Shepard?

  This is what happened on Race to 270 and it cost me four times.

• 1:49:02Speaker 00

  I'm sorry, but people deserve what they deserve.

• 1:49:05Dax Shepard?

  Well, there's two, okay, there's a lot of issues. You're saying five because the bid was 17.

• 1:49:11Speaker 00

  I'm not actually, I'm not.

• 1:49:13Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:49:14Speaker 00

  I think that's actually a hard job. I think that's a.

• 1:49:17Dax Shepard?

  I don't think so. I've strung Christmas lights on my houses for the last, I'll, you know, do it here.

• 1:49:22Speaker 00

  I know, but you get like.

• 1:49:23Dax Shepard?

  It's a day.

• 1:49:24Speaker 00

  About it.

• 1:49:25Dax Shepard?

  It's a day. At best, it's a day. So anyone in America is making three grand for the day? I think that's a damn good fucking wage.

• 1:49:33Speaker 00

  We are making way more than.

• 1:49:35Dax Shepard?

  Don't talk about what I make. We're talking about this, that this is a very.

• 1:49:39Speaker 00

  I'm just saying, if we're gonna use that as like a daily.

• 1:49:43Dax Shepard?

  I can't believe I'm getting shamed into five grand for a day of hanging lights. Also, he's gonna be hanging in Nashville, driving my shit around, having a blast.

• 1:49:51Speaker 00

  No, but you gotta separate that.

• 1:49:53Dax Shepard?

  It's a fun time.

• 1:49:54Speaker 00

  I need you to separate that. Okay, I'm, I guess I'll pay him the extra two.

• 1:49:59Dax Shepard?

  Now, did I am, so I, I was like, hey, do you wanna, do you wanna go down to Nashville and do this for three grand? He was like, absolutely, you know, let me find a couple of days and all. So, and then the flight, I had to buy a plane ticket.

• 1:50:12Speaker 00

  Listen, that's not part of it. That's not part of it. It's his, it's his work.

• 1:50:17Dax Shepard?

  You're gonna have me up to like 18 grand all in. I should have hired the professional company that probably look a lot better.

• 1:50:23Speaker 00

  Well, that's the thing. How good is it gonna look?

• 1:50:25Dax Shepard?

  I have very low expectations. I want it to be colorful. If he over delivers, great, but I'm not expecting him to do a great job.

• 1:50:31Speaker 00

  He has to get on ladders and stuff like.

• 1:50:34Dax Shepard?

  There we are. There we are. You're at the, you're at the heart of the issue.

• 1:50:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:50:38Dax Shepard?

  Now, let's go back in time. Aaron was a roofer for 15 years.

• 1:50:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:50:42Dax Shepard?

  He lived on a 30 foot ladder.

• 1:50:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:50:44Dax Shepard?

  So if there's any guy for the job in that department, it is Aaron. He lived on a ladder.

• 1:50:49Speaker 00

  Um, I'll poke a hole in that in a minute.

• 1:50:52Dax Shepard?

  You're, I'm gonna get you there. I'm gonna poke the same hole.

• 1:50:55Speaker 00

  Okay, great.

• 1:50:55Dax Shepard?

  So I'm just like, he said yes, I've said great, I've bought a plane ticket and a couple of days go by and I'm just like. If he falls.

• 1:51:03Speaker 00

  I know. I know.

• 1:51:05Dax Shepard?

  We had such a laugh about this. I called him, I FaceTimed him. I'm like, I'm starting to get a little worried that you fall off a ladder and die while you're putting, I don't want Christmas lights that bad.

• 1:51:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:51:15Dax Shepard?

  So please, like, if you gotta rent a bucket or whatever. He's like, I think I, you know, like, the little machine you drive and it's got an arm on it. You sit in the bucket and it's got a remote control.

• 1:51:23Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:51:23Dax Shepard?

  He's like, I'm way more afraid to be driving a bucket around through your yard and fucking tipping the thing over on the sidewalk or some shit. And I'm like, that's kind of a good point. But we were saying, we had such a laugh. We were saying that at the eulogy, I would be giving the eulogy. That's okay. This is our sense of humor.

• 1:51:38Speaker 00

  I know, but I don't want, yeah.

• 1:51:40Dax Shepard?

  I said, at the eulogy, I would say, some people have suggested that I may have saved Aaron's life by sending him to treatment. I don't know about that, but what I know for sure is that I have killed Aaron.

• 1:51:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:51:52Dax Shepard?

  Killed my best friend because I wanted Christmas lights. So listen, we had a long talk. I'm like, look, it looks dicey. I don't give a fuck. They don't have to be up that height. And then we were joking, what if he just put them all on the bottom?

• 1:52:04Speaker 00

  The floor?

• 1:52:04Dax Shepard?

  That would be the first step. We just go there, they're all laying around the bottom of the wall, like they just, like the pants fell down on the decorations. But we had a long talk and we had, uh, we have some safety measures in, in place.

• 1:52:17Speaker 00

  I don't want him to go.

• 1:52:18Dax Shepard?

  I want him to wear a Life Alert, uh, Medialert bracelet. So if he does fall off the ladder, he can hit a button.

• 1:52:24Speaker 00

  I don't like it.

• 1:52:25Dax Shepard?

  Oh my God, he can handle decorating a house. He's very competent.

• 1:52:29Speaker 00

  He's extremely competent, but look.

• 1:52:30Dax Shepard?

  Don't you think I could go decorate the house? Would you be worried about me?

• 1:52:33Speaker 00

  I don't like that either. I don't. I wish, I would like you to farm this out to a professional because that house is big and there are a lot of high areas.

• 1:52:45Dax Shepard?

  Very modest.

• 1:52:46Speaker 00

  It's huge.

• 1:52:46Dax Shepard?

  It's a very modest home.

• 1:52:47Speaker 00

  I'm not doing that. It's a huge house and it has, it has high areas.

• 1:52:52Dax Shepard?

  One high area.

• 1:52:53Speaker 00

  Also, is it gonna be on the boat area? What's that called? Dock?

• 1:52:57Dax Shepard?

  The dock?

• 1:52:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:52:58Dax Shepard?

  No, I'm not gonna have him decorate the dock.

• 1:53:00Speaker 00

  Well, that's cute. I bet the other people would do that.

• 1:53:03Dax Shepard?

  Well, another side note to this is I don't want him to have to go get all of the, um, lights.

• 1:53:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:53:10Dax Shepard?

  So I have been ordering lights ahead of time that are getting delivered there.

• 1:53:14Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:53:15Dax Shepard?

  So I ordered a ton of lights.

• 1:53:17Speaker 00

  So is this, is the original bid, that thing, did that come with the lights?

• 1:53:22Dax Shepard?

  I should hope so.

• 1:53:23Speaker 00

  Right. I assume it does.

• 1:53:25Dax Shepard?

  I would hope so. Um, but again, I went for broke. You can't spend a thousand dollars on lights. Your whole place, they're, they're so cheap.

• 1:53:34Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:53:35Dax Shepard?

  So anyways, I ordered like 11 strands, probably like 1,200 feet of this one kind.

• 1:53:40Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:53:40Dax Shepard?

  That Kristen liked, cause you can make, you can change the colors. And then I was like, I want those kind that like rain down.

• 1:53:46Speaker 00

  You like icicles?

• 1:53:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And they're not, cause there are icicles that are like hard plastic. These are like little ropey, you know?

• 1:53:52Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:53:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're right. Aaron calls them that too. That wasn't the name on Amazon, but anyways, I'd already ordered all these ones and then I changed my mind.

• 1:54:00Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:54:01Dax Shepard?

  And I'm like, well, he's got to decorate trees and shit too, if he, if he wants. He's going for a week. It's like a.

• 1:54:08Speaker 00

  Next.

• 1:54:08Dax Shepard?

  Okay. So I then ordered like 1,300, I ordered a quarter mile of the kind that I like.

• 1:54:16Speaker 00

  The icicles?

• 1:54:17Dax Shepard?

  Yes, the icicles.

• 1:54:18Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:54:19Dax Shepard?

  There are so many, when he arrives, there's gonna be so, I bet I'll take him one day to unwind all the lights.

• 1:54:26Speaker 00

  You're, more to my point, this, this job has gotten enormous.

• 1:54:30Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I'll give him five grand.

• 1:54:32Speaker 00

  Okay. Also.

• 1:54:33Dax Shepard?

  Should've never brought this up. It was a $2,000 mistake.

• 1:54:36Speaker 00

  Listen.

• 1:54:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:38Speaker 00

  Uh, just because he was a roofer.

• 1:54:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:40Speaker 00

  Doesn't mean he's still capable in the same way, because listen, I just went to play mahjong at Anthony and Allison's house. And they have a young daughter. She was excited to show me she's been working on splits and she wanted to do a split contest.

• 1:54:56Dax Shepard?

  That's part of mahjong?

• 1:54:58Speaker 00

  No, the daughter.

• 1:54:59Dax Shepard?

  No, but what's splits?

• 1:55:01Speaker 00

  Splits.

• 1:55:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh, do the physical splits?

• 1:55:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just like, we're hanging out with the kids before we play mahjong.

• 1:55:07Dax Shepard?

  You're just bouncing around from topic to topic. It was like mahjong.

• 1:55:11Speaker 00

  Was it clear, Rob? Nah, I mean. Yes, it was. God, he can't see anything. Okay. So, you know, she's like, yay, Monica's here. And then, and I made that part up, but like in her head, she was.

• 1:55:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh my God, my, all my dreams have come true. Monica's here.

• 1:55:29Speaker 00

  They do get excited when friends are over.

• 1:55:31Dax Shepard?

  That wish on that falling star worked.

• 1:55:35Speaker 00

  So Alison told her daughter, you know, Monica is gonna really love seeing your splits because she used to do splits all the time and she was a cheerleader. She was really bragging about me, you know?

• 1:55:49Dax Shepard?

  Of course, building you up.

• 1:55:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:55:50Dax Shepard?

  You're a legend now.

• 1:55:51Speaker 00

  And they were all very impressed by this.

• 1:55:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:55Speaker 00

  And I, and, and she was like, can I see? And I was like, well, first of all, I'm not in the right attire. And second of all, I can't do them anymore.

• 1:56:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:04Speaker 00

  Not even close.

• 1:56:05Dax Shepard?

  Right. You gotta maintain that.

• 1:56:07Speaker 00

  Just because I was once a huge professional

• 1:56:10Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 1:56:11Speaker 00

  doesn't mean I can still perform in the same way.

• 1:56:15Dax Shepard?

  Okay, counterpoint, are you ready for it?

• 1:56:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:17Dax Shepard?

  When Aaron was a roofer, he had two bundles on his shoulders all the time. He was a drunk. He was smoking cigarettes while he climbed ladder.

• 1:56:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:28Dax Shepard?

  He was hungover or even drunk.

• 1:56:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:31Dax Shepard?

  And he was heavier.

• 1:56:32Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:56:32Dax Shepard?

  So in many ways, you'd be more safe to assume he'll be much better on the ladder now than he's ever been.

• 1:56:40Speaker 00

  No, but he's not in the routine of doing it. It's, it's

• 1:56:43Dax Shepard?

  I just had him run drills. He's been climbing a ladder all week.

• 1:56:46Speaker 00

  No, you haven't.

• 1:56:47Dax Shepard?

  I'd leave that up to him. Look, here's, here's what, at the end of the day, I would trust myself to put the lights up. And I have the same faith in him than I have in myself.

• 1:56:56Speaker 00

  Can he wear a helmet?

• 1:56:58Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:56:59Speaker 00

  Please.

• 1:57:02Speaker 00

  Please, can he wear a helmet?

• 1:57:03Dax Shepard?

  I was thinking, I was, there was a way for him to tie in.

• 1:57:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, a carabiner. Yeah, I would love that. I know.

• 1:57:11Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 1:57:12Speaker 00

  I'll give him $500 extra if he wears a helmet.

• 1:57:15Dax Shepard?

  Well, text him.

• 1:57:16Speaker 00

  Tell him that. Or I'll, yeah, well, text him. I need proof, though. I need, yeah.

• 1:57:21Dax Shepard?

  This is getting crazy. What if he goes, I'm just not coming. This is, you guys have now scared me. He's like, I was just gonna go hang lights, which I do at my, he already did his own house this year. I'll give him $50 for football. Pads. Okay.

• 1:57:33Speaker 00

  Wow, the prices really.

• 1:57:35Dax Shepard?

  Armchair is bald and see if those sponsor. But he's like, he looks like he's a goalie for a hockey team and he just falls off the ladder because he's got too much shit on. Safety glasses and fucking gloves.

• 1:57:46Speaker 00

  I mean, the number is really getting up there. I think it's, I'm happy for him.

• 1:57:50Dax Shepard?

  So that's what's, um, that's what's brewing.

• 1:57:53Speaker 00

  Are you gonna do this house?

• 1:57:55Dax Shepard?

  It's done.

• 1:57:58Dax Shepard?

  Isn't it underwhelming?

• 1:57:59Speaker 00

  So you aren't doing it?

• 1:58:00Dax Shepard?

  No, we, Kristen did hire someone.

• 1:58:04Speaker 00

  Exactly. You didn't put lights up here. So we don't know if you're still capable.

• 1:58:09Dax Shepard?

  This year I did it.

• 1:58:10Speaker 00

  This year, that's what I mean, this year. This year, you're both 50. Things change.

• 1:58:14Dax Shepard?

  We're both in better shape, though, than we.

• 1:58:15Speaker 00

  It's nothing to do with that. It's equilibrium.

• 1:58:18Dax Shepard?

  Uh, mine's great because I do so many, you know, I do my bicycling.

• 1:58:22Speaker 00

  But Aaron doesn't.

• 1:58:24Dax Shepard?

  He plays pickleball all day long.

• 1:58:25Speaker 00

  That's not for equilibrium.

• 1:58:27Dax Shepard?

  And, and, and his, his balance is.

• 1:58:29Speaker 00

  Okay, I'm gonna give you $3,000 to not have Aaron.

• 1:58:35Dax Shepard?

  This is getting very complex. We're gonna have to bring an accountant in.

• 1:58:41Dax Shepard?

  And someone's already mad at me, rightly so. Someone's already in their car going, you're gonna spend three grand on your fucking Christmas lights?

• 1:58:49Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:58:49Dax Shepard?

  Like, that's what I make in a month. So already.

• 1:58:51Speaker 00

  I know. And that's understandable.

• 1:58:53Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:58:54Speaker 00

  That's understandable.

• 1:58:55Dax Shepard?

  Absolutely.

• 1:58:56Speaker 00

  That made me excited for Christmas. I love that. Now, I have another question for you real quick. Okay, you know how I had to, twice I've had these pierced?

• 1:59:04Dax Shepard?

  Ear infections?

• 1:59:05Speaker 00

  That had turned rancid.

• 1:59:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:07Speaker 00

  Both times.

• 1:59:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:10Speaker 00

  Do you think I could try it on the other ear?

• 1:59:15Speaker 00

  Because they were both on this ear and maybe this ear just has a sensitivity.

• 1:59:21Dax Shepard?

  You're gonna hate this answer, but if you do it and your ear falls off, I'm simply not gonna feel bad for you.

• 1:59:30Speaker 00

  Hey.

• 1:59:30Dax Shepard?

  Because you have been taught this lesson twice painfully. And if you have to learn it a third time.

• 1:59:36Speaker 00

  How many rock bottoms did you have?

• 1:59:38Dax Shepard?

  Okay, but no one was in support of it. No one was like encouraging me to hit another bottom.

• 1:59:42Speaker 00

  But we're compassionate.

• 1:59:43Dax Shepard?

  Okay. So if you, if you have one ear.

• 1:59:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:59:47Dax Shepard?

  Thank God it'll be the right side, that you're not getting shot on.

• 1:59:50Speaker 00

  No, this one, it would be it falling off.

• 1:59:53Dax Shepard?

  Right. And you're, the camera's here.

• 1:59:54Speaker 00

  Oh, oh, oh.

• 1:59:55Dax Shepard?

  If you're picking an ear to lose, that is the correct ear to lose. Well, you can shave that side of your.

• 2:00:00Speaker 00

  Your head too. Oh, and then it's just smooth. The whole thing's so smooth.

• 2:00:03Dax Shepard?

  Ear hole. Shave sides in the ear hole.

• 2:00:07Speaker 00

  Okay, so you think no.

• 2:00:09Dax Shepard?

  I think no. I think I think you learned your I think your ears said to you, hey, Monica, we don't want these up there.

• 2:00:14Speaker 00

  I know.

• 2:00:15Dax Shepard?

  But you're so you think it's gonna change the whole game.

• 2:00:18Speaker 00

  I just love the way I do.

• 2:00:19Dax Shepard?

  Can't you do like clumpy ones?

• 2:00:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, so this is the problem. So I have a cuff.

• 2:00:25Dax Shepard?

  Cuff, we call it.

• 2:00:26Speaker 00

  We call it a cuff, but all the I keep buying cuffs.

• 2:00:30Dax Shepard?

  If you dare wear ear cuffs, cuffs wear ear hairs.

• 2:00:36Speaker 00

  So I I keep buying cuffs.

• 2:00:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:39Speaker 00

  And they're all my ears small.

• 2:00:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:42Speaker 00

  So they're always a little too big. And so they're fall. They're not sitting where they need to sit on my ear.

• 2:00:47Dax Shepard?

  You pinch them.

• 2:00:48Speaker 00

  I try. It's they're nice cuffs. Like you can't.

• 2:00:51Dax Shepard?

  You use pliers.

• 2:00:54Speaker 00

  Players.

• 2:00:55Dax Shepard?

  Monica, here's what you do. You get pliers, but before you get to pinching.

• 2:00:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:01:00Dax Shepard?

  Put some duct tape on the inside of both the pliers so that they don't leave creases or marks on your earrings. So just put tape around the pliers and then just give them a pinch.

• 2:01:09Speaker 00

  I don't know how to.

• 2:01:11Dax Shepard?

  You don't know how to operate pliers?

• 2:01:12Speaker 00

  I'm not good at manual activity.

• 2:01:14Dax Shepard?

  Pay Aaron three grand, he'll come and.

• 2:01:16Speaker 00

  I will. I will. I'll trust him to do that.

• 2:01:20Dax Shepard?

  Aaron's gonna be so rich at the end of this.

• 2:01:22Speaker 00

  I know. So, no, I have tried and like some of them do squeeze, but then it still opens up and then it slides and I'm pissed and.

• 2:01:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:31Speaker 00

  You know, I'm I'm meant to have some in there permanently for my look, you know, my look is meant for it.

• 2:01:40Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:01:41Speaker 00

  But my ears are saying no.

• 2:01:42Dax Shepard?

  What if you put a little, a little piece of two sided tape on the inside of the cuff?

• 2:01:46Speaker 00

  So that it sticks? Yeah.

• 2:01:49Dax Shepard?

  Sounds cumbersome.

• 2:01:50Speaker 00

  It sounds uncomf.

• 2:01:52Dax Shepard?

  Could get irritated as well.

• 2:01:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I do think like, okay, so I have two, I have, you know, two piercings here and I have two ears currently.

• 2:02:04Speaker 00

  And I have had two piercings for a long time and then I have a third piercing. And the other day, I put three earrings on one side.

• 2:02:14Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:02:15Speaker 00

  And I could not get the earring into the third hole on my right side.

• 2:02:21Dax Shepard?

  You didn't try hard.

• 2:02:22Speaker 00

  No, I did.

• 2:02:24Dax Shepard?

  Cause Lincoln puts an earring in my ear and that hole was closed for 25 years.

• 2:02:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I don't know what to tell you.

• 2:02:29Dax Shepard?

  Do you want her to put it in?

• 2:02:31Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 2:02:32Dax Shepard?

  It's only a grand for her, cause she's a minor.

• 2:02:34Speaker 00

  You can try it. Um, no, I can tell like on this side, I was basically re, I was repiercing it. And it, whatever, that was fine. And then I was trying so hard to repierce on this side, but I think because the hole's a little close to the edge, it was not working.

• 2:02:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:48Speaker 00

  And that's fine, you know, whatever. And then that night I took out all the piercings and, and other than just my original piercing, everything was so inflamed.

• 2:03:02Dax Shepard?

  Come on, you can't, you can't, it's not an option for you. You have a lot of gifts. And of course you're gonna have some not gifts. And in this case, it's that you don't have that freedom.

• 2:03:13Speaker 00

  I'm not willing to live a life where I can't have two.

• 2:03:16Dax Shepard?

  Then you're just gonna be impussed and inflamed and, and.

• 2:03:20Speaker 00

  I know.

• 2:03:20Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:03:21Speaker 00

  I'm just telling you like.

• 2:03:22Dax Shepard?

  You're just warning me.

• 2:03:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, that if you see some goo, like I'm choosing that.

• 2:03:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:28Speaker 00

  Okay, but you're saying no to the piercings. Okay.

• 2:03:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's just my vote.

• 2:03:32Speaker 00

  I mean.

• 2:03:32Dax Shepard?

  Rob, watch him pick the metal, Amy.

• 2:03:34Speaker 00

  You better not.

• 2:03:36Dax Shepard?

  Uh, you should do it.

• 2:03:38Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:03:39Dax Shepard?

  Natalie has ear issues with her piercings too, so. And you, you enjoy dealing with those? I know not to. Talk about it? About it.

• 2:03:49Speaker 00

  That's fair.

• 2:03:50Dax Shepard?

  Far much wiser than me. He's more like a 70 year old grandpa. He learned to shut the fuck up better than me.

• 2:03:55Speaker 00

  But you also, to be fair, have had to cut the earrings out.

• 2:04:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, which I like.

• 2:04:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, you enjoy that. So I'm kinda surprised you aren't for this.

• 2:04:04Dax Shepard?

  Against my own self-interest here because it denies me the chance to be a hero.

• 2:04:08Speaker 00

  You love performing surgery.

• 2:04:10Dax Shepard?

  I mean, a hero.

• 2:04:11Speaker 00

  Hero.

• 2:04:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Do you need me to narrate anything?

• 2:04:14Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm good.

• 2:04:15Dax Shepard?

  Your arms or anything?

• 2:04:16Speaker 00

  Oh, I do. Okay.

• 2:04:17Dax Shepard?

  She don't mean to narrow your forearms?

• 2:04:19Speaker 00

  But I am gonna do a laser hair.

• 2:04:21Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:04:22Speaker 00

  On that removal. I had a hair removal. All right, well, I guess let's do some facts. I have other things to say, but we'll be back.

• 2:04:28Dax Shepard?

  We'll be back.

• 2:04:29Speaker 00

  All right. Now, we start the episode off by talking about pumpkin spice.

• 2:04:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:04:35Speaker 00

  And I'm here to tell you what's in pumpkin spice.

• 2:04:37Dax Shepard?

  Perfume.

• 2:04:38Speaker 00

  Nope.

• 2:04:39Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:04:39Speaker 00

  Typically includes cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and cloves. Delicious!

• 2:04:47Dax Shepard?

  Okay, but Monty, don't you think that's the taste that you're tasting? I don't think pumpkin is real. I don't think it's in the mix. I think what you're tasting is like, that combination of those very unique flavors, we've labeled pumpkin flavor. I don't think that's real.

• 2:05:03Speaker 00

  The name can be misleading as it does not contain pumpkin itself.

• 2:05:07Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. I didn't even, that was the last line.

• 2:05:10Speaker 00

  What is commonly used to flavor pumpkin-based desserts and drinks.

• 2:05:14Dax Shepard?

  I think that's what everyone thinks pumpkin tastes like.

• 2:05:17Speaker 00

  If you just take the inside of a pumpkin, you add that, those spices in?

• 2:05:23Dax Shepard?

  What you're tasting and what you come back for?

• 2:05:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:05:26Dax Shepard?

  Is that. The, the, the pumpkin is just like a vehicle, and I'd argue a poor one, for delivering this incredible alchemy of tastes.

• 2:05:36Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:05:37Dax Shepard?

  And perfumes.

• 2:05:38Speaker 00

  But you know, it's a little...

• 2:05:40Dax Shepard?

  Like, rest assured, there's no pumpkin in your pumpkin spice latte.

• 2:05:43Speaker 00

  There's pumpkin spice.

• 2:05:45Dax Shepard?

  But that's not, there's no pumpkin in it.

• 2:05:47Speaker 00

  You're right.

• 2:05:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. That was a cute mashup.

• 2:05:51Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:05:53Dax Shepard?

  Punkkin.

• 2:05:54Speaker 00

  There was a punkkin, a little baby.

• 2:05:57Dax Shepard?

  A CC little baby.

• 2:05:59Speaker 00

  She looks so cute.

• 2:06:01Dax Shepard?

  She had a radical mohawk.

• 2:06:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, because her dad's a hairstylist, so he did her hair perfect. And it, oh my god, was she cute.

• 2:06:07Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it was outrageous.

• 2:06:09Speaker 00

  Oh, um, okay, okay. So when you buy pumpkin spice, the little container that says pumpkin spice, this is what you're getting.

• 2:06:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're not getting any pumpkin.

• 2:06:20Speaker 00

  Oh!

• 2:06:21Dax Shepard?

  And you could have called it carbuncle spice.

• 2:06:23Speaker 00

  No. You know what they should call it? And actually, this is appropriation. I'm gonna say it. Ow, my head.

• 2:06:33Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:06:35Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 2:06:35Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:06:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh, what's in there?

• 2:06:41Speaker 00

  Some sort of scab.

• 2:06:43Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah. From your hair towel?

• 2:06:46Speaker 00

  Maybe.

• 2:06:47Dax Shepard?

  Too damp, too much moisture.

• 2:06:52Dax Shepard?

  I just pictured your room at night tropical when you're wearing your hair.

• 2:06:57Speaker 00

  Oh, my.

• 2:06:57Dax Shepard?

  Towel, because it just keeps all that moisture in your hair and somehow makes the whole room tropical.

• 2:07:02Speaker 00

  I don't sleep in it.

• 2:07:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you don't?

• 2:07:06Dax Shepard?

  What do you do? You just dry your hair with it?

• 2:07:08Speaker 00

  No, after the shower, I tie it up, put it in its towel. And I like, you know, bop around for a while.

• 2:07:15Dax Shepard?

  Hours?

• 2:07:16Speaker 00

  Like an hour.

• 2:07:18Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:07:18Speaker 00

  Sometimes only 15 minutes.

• 2:07:21Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:07:21Speaker 00

  And then I take it out and then I sleep on a silk pillowcase that night.

• 2:07:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, only that night?

• 2:07:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:07:29Dax Shepard?

  Because why?

• 2:07:29Speaker 00

  If I, if it's wet hair, I sleep with a silk pillowcase because I, because silk pillowcases are notoriously better for your hair. I don't really necessarily think that.

• 2:07:39Dax Shepard?

  Might be a pumpkin spice latte thing.

• 2:07:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, it might be misleading. But I buy in when I'm trying to have that hair the next day.

• 2:07:49Dax Shepard?

  You might as well do it.

• 2:07:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:07:50Dax Shepard?

  It's not gonna make it worse.

• 2:07:51Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 2:07:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:52Speaker 00

  Okay, appropriation, because these are all the things in chai.

• 2:07:57Dax Shepard?

  Ah, uh huh.

• 2:07:59Speaker 00

  So I feel a little like.

• 2:08:01Dax Shepard?

  Just different doses.

• 2:08:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, probably.

• 2:08:04Dax Shepard?

  Of those things.

• 2:08:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:08:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:08:07Speaker 00

  Okay. It's a grievance.

• 2:08:09Dax Shepard?

  I'll tell you, I guess if you're, if you're talking about appropriation to chai, then yes, I think you have a, an argument. If you're saying appropriating the pumpkin, because there's really no pumpkin, but they're coasting on people's.

• 2:08:21Speaker 00

  I'm saying pumpkin spice is appropriating chai.

• 2:08:24Dax Shepard?

  I got you, I got you. Because I was gonna say then, well, they're kind of lifting the image of the pumpkin.

• 2:08:30Speaker 00

  Sure, the pumpkin is winning.

• 2:08:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the pumpkin's a big, dumb, ugly.

• 2:08:34Speaker 00

  No, it's a.

• 2:08:35Dax Shepard?

  I love them. But you gotta acknowledge.

• 2:08:38Speaker 00

  I love them.

• 2:08:39Dax Shepard?

  I love them. They're not uniform. They're always dented. They always look like they have a tumor somewhere.

• 2:08:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, that not the ones I pick.

• 2:08:46Dax Shepard?

  They're an ugly offering and they're enormous. They have elephantitis.

• 2:08:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, yuck. Okay, how many tributaries flow into the Amazon?

• 2:08:57Dax Shepard?

  Oh God, there's gotta be thousands.

• 2:08:59Speaker 00

  One thousand one hundred tributaries with seventeen of them being longer than fifteen hundred kilometers, nine hundred and thirty miles.

• 2:09:07Dax Shepard?

  Whoa.

• 2:09:09Speaker 00

  Okay, is Manhasset the name of a Native American tribe? That was his guess.

• 2:09:16Dax Shepard?

  Right, or that it was a Native American word. Yeah.

• 2:09:20Speaker 00

  And he's right. Manhasset is named after the Native American word Manhanset, which means island neighborhood. This name comes from a tribe of Native Americans who lived in the area before European settlement and used the nearby bay for fishing and shell fishing.

• 2:09:38Dax Shepard?

  So then he was right in that Manhattan is also.

• 2:09:40Speaker 00

  I think you added Manhattan in there maybe and it all sounds right.

• 2:09:44Dax Shepard?

  He's smarter than me.

• 2:09:45Speaker 00

  He was smart.

• 2:09:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:09:46Speaker 00

  He was very smart. Is Manhasset exit thirty six off Long Island? No, he's not smart.

• 2:09:52Dax Shepard?

  Thank God.

• 2:09:53Speaker 00

  Exit thirty six on the Long Island Expressway is for Singerton Road. Manhasset is served by nearby exits such as exit thirty two for Little Neck Parkway, which is west of Manhasset and further east exits that lead into the area.

• 2:10:08Dax Shepard?

  The LIE, isn't that what people say?

• 2:10:11Speaker 00

  Probably. Okay, how many people are descendants of Charlemagne?

• 2:10:16Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:10:17Speaker 00

  It's estimated that nearly everyone in Europe is descended from Charlemagne.

• 2:10:25Dax Shepard?

  What?

• 2:10:26Speaker 00

  And therefore related to him and each other. This is because Charlemagne had at least twenty children who established royal lines. And due to the large number of people in Europe, genealogies fold in on themselves, making it statistically certain that nearly all Europeans share common ancestors like Charlemagne.

• 2:10:43Dax Shepard?

  Whoa, whoa. It's not that he fucked as much as Genghis Khan.

• 2:10:47Speaker 00

  Doesn't seem like that because now I looked up Genghis Khan.

• 2:10:51Dax Shepard?

  He had thousands of children.

• 2:10:53Speaker 00

  An estimated sixteen million people are direct male line descendants of Genghis Khan.

• 2:10:59Dax Shepard?

  Direct.

• 2:11:00Speaker 00

  Which is about point five percent of the world's males population.

• 2:11:05Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 2:11:06Speaker 00

  This figure is based on studies of the Y chromosome, which is passed from father to son. Millions of other people are likely descended from him through female ancestors, but this cannot be traced genetically using the same method.

• 2:11:15Dax Shepard?

  So it's double. It's not like he had only had male offspring. I'm sure he had fitty, fitty.

• 2:11:19Speaker 00

  It's insane.

• 2:11:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:20Speaker 00

  Do you think I am a descendant of him?

• 2:11:23Dax Shepard?

  No, I don't.

• 2:11:26Speaker 00

  Do you think I am a descendant of Charlemagne?

• 2:11:28Dax Shepard?

  Nope. I think you're a descendant of Sid Arthur.

• 2:11:33Speaker 00

  I'm more likely a descendant of Genghis Khan than Charlemagne, if we had to pick.

• 2:11:38Dax Shepard?

  On its, what do they say? Premifacia?

• 2:11:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, uh, perma-

• 2:11:43Dax Shepard?

  Premifacia.

• 2:11:44Speaker 00

  Stephen Dubner said that multiple times.

• 2:11:46Dax Shepard?

  Premifacia.

• 2:11:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:11:47Dax Shepard?

  Uh, uh, uh, on the surface-

• 2:11:48Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:11:49Dax Shepard?

  That makes sense, but, uh, they both had empires, and I don't know which one's spread closer to India or not, even though I did read the Genghis Khan book, which was great.

• 2:11:59Speaker 00

  Maybe I'm a descendant of both Charlemagne and Genghis Khan.

• 2:12:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh, double whammy.

• 2:12:05Speaker 00

  Um, secondhand smoke rates, I looked that up for fun. Nothing related to the episode.

• 2:12:11Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:12:12Speaker 00

  I'm just kidding.

• 2:12:12Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:12:13Speaker 00

  I'm kidding, it came up. According to the CDC, secondhand smoke is responsible for an estimated 41,000 deaths per year in the United States. This includes 7,300 deaths from lung cancer, 33,900 deaths from heart disease, and 400 deaths from sudden infant death syndrome. Yeah, no one likes that last one.

• 2:12:34Dax Shepard?

  That's from living people who live with a smoker, I guess?

• 2:12:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:12:38Dax Shepard?

  Ugh. You shouldn't have to do the time if you don't do the crime.

• 2:12:40Speaker 00

  I know, it's sad.

• 2:12:42Dax Shepard?

  I was, uh, inundated with secondhand smoke in my childhood.

• 2:12:47Speaker 00

  I know.

• 2:12:47Dax Shepard?

  Cause my father smoked in the car with the windows up, and then my grandparents smoked, and I was with them a ton, and they both smoked.

• 2:12:54Speaker 00

  How long, did your dad smoke till the end of his life?

• 2:12:57Dax Shepard?

  He quit smoking, I wanna say 10 years before he died.

• 2:13:00Speaker 00

  Okay, so mostly.

• 2:13:01Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:13:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:13:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and really voluminous levels of, he would go through these phases. Like, I remember my mom telling me this time when they were newly married and he had started this company selling door-to-door mini bikes, and he was like, he was all in.

• 2:13:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:13:17Dax Shepard?

  And then the company collapsed, and they couldn't deliver orders, and like, he was done. He didn't know what he was gonna do, and she said that he sat- In a Lazy Boy for like two months straight, all day long, every day. And just chain smoked cigarettes, smoked like five packs a day. And then one day woke up and took a shower, put a suit on and went and got a job somewhere else. Uh, but he'd have these, yeah.

• 2:13:39Speaker 00

  Depressive.

• 2:13:39Dax Shepard?

  Even when he was, uh, healthy and sober, he still smoked like two and a half packs or more a day.

• 2:13:47Speaker 00

  That's a lot. As you know, my dad smoked smoking for me.

• 2:13:52Dax Shepard?

  How long did he smoke?

• 2:13:55Speaker 00

  Smoked a long time. Cause in India, they smoke a lot.

• 2:13:59Dax Shepard?

  Four years old.

• 2:13:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, he started as a baby boy and then.

• 2:14:03Dax Shepard?

  They did in Papua New Guinea, probably not anymore, but as recently as like 15 years ago.

• 2:14:08Speaker 00

  Kids.

• 2:14:09Dax Shepard?

  They wean children from breastfeeding with cigarettes.

• 2:14:11Speaker 00

  Oh my God.

• 2:14:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:14:12Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:14:13Dax Shepard?

  And no lung cancer.

• 2:14:15Speaker 00

  Really?

• 2:14:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Well, on the ethnographies where they did chest X-rays, there was no lung cancer.

• 2:14:20Speaker 00

  That's strange.

• 2:14:21Dax Shepard?

  That's what all these people build their theory on that like it's really the chemicals that are in the American cigarettes. But I, I don't agree with that, but that's where it comes from.

• 2:14:30Speaker 00

  Huh. But yeah, yeah. He smoked a lot and then he, he had to quit for his little girl, no pit stops.

• 2:14:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, no pit stops.

• 2:14:37Speaker 00

  But, uh, it took him a couple, a couple tries.

• 2:14:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Does he desire it ever? Does he like see it in a movie ever? I kind of want to bang a dart with a joke.

• 2:14:45Speaker 00

  No.

• 2:14:46Dax Shepard?

  Come on. When he's 80, he's not gonna.

• 2:14:48Speaker 00

  He doesn't want to anymore. Quit for his no pit stop.

• 2:14:51Dax Shepard?

  Him and I sitting out on the porch of either his southern home or my southern home, banging some Camel Lights, just reminiscing.

• 2:14:59Speaker 00

  I think he has like what you have with drinking. Like there's nothing about it that.

• 2:15:03Dax Shepard?

  Doesn't even think about it.

• 2:15:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. He switched to, to, to get off of it, he switched to a pipe.

• 2:15:12Dax Shepard?

  That's silly.

• 2:15:12Speaker 00

  And then he had to get back on, he missed it. He had to get back on it. Yeah. No, but I think he got back on the pipe or something and then, then he was done.

• 2:15:21Dax Shepard?

  And you know, when we say on the pipe, generally in the eighties, we're talking about the crack cocaine.

• 2:15:24Speaker 00

  No, this wasn't like that.

• 2:15:26Dax Shepard?

  It's just weird for you to say, my dad got back on the pipe.

• 2:15:29Speaker 00

  He talks, he's sometimes talks about his pipe. Okay. Now UNC, speaking of southern.

• 2:15:36Speaker 00

  Homes. Um, UNC is an incredibly hard school to get in out of state.

• 2:15:41Dax Shepard?

  Is it?

• 2:15:41Speaker 00

  Yes, and I, my, one of my best friends went there and it was like a big deal.

• 2:15:46Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 2:15:46Speaker 00

  Out of state students make up no more than 18% of the first year undergraduate class at UNC Chapel Hill due to its UNC system policy.

• 2:15:54Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 2:15:55Speaker 00

  And then I thought this is interesting, I wanted to look up hardest, okay, United States public colleges ranked by lowest acceptance rate, but I wanted public colleges.

• 2:16:05Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I like this, I like this a lot. Fingers crossed.

• 2:16:09Speaker 00

  What do you?

• 2:16:10Dax Shepard?

  Well, I feel like Berkeley is gonna be very high on that list.

• 2:16:13Speaker 00

  And that's what you want?

• 2:16:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I want all the UCs to be high on the list, yeah, yeah.

• 2:16:18Speaker 00

  Well, congratulations. UCLA is number one.

• 2:16:21Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow, I did not see this coming. This, this is a big, I'm proud of you for rea-, if I were you, I would've saw that and been like, I didn't even see that, I'm gonna keep going.

• 2:16:32Speaker 00

  I, I am a woman of integrity.

• 2:16:36Dax Shepard?

  Number one in the whole country.

• 2:16:38Speaker 00

  9%.

• 2:16:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:16:41Speaker 00

  And, but we're out of-

• 2:16:43Dax Shepard?

  Also, they've passed Berkeley, because when I went there, it was Berkeley then UCLA.

• 2:16:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, uh, out of state, it's-

• 2:16:49Dax Shepard?

  Not looking good.

• 2:16:51Speaker 00

  Really fucking hard.

• 2:16:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:52Speaker 00

  Um, number two is the Naval Academy.

• 2:16:55Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:16:56Speaker 00

  I'm kinda surprised they count that, but sure.

• 2:16:58Dax Shepard?

  All right.

• 2:16:59Speaker 00

  Um.

• 2:16:59Dax Shepard?

  Let's throw that out, that's bad.

• 2:17:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't count that. Berkeley is next.

• 2:17:05Dax Shepard?

  Number two.

• 2:17:06Speaker 00

  Then we got Air Force Academy, I also don't-

• 2:17:08Dax Shepard?

  No, okay, so what's number three?

• 2:17:11Speaker 00

  Then we got Military Academy, no.

• 2:17:13Dax Shepard?

  Okay, although we wanna say to our, uh, men and women in the service, obviously this is very important and we're, and we're grateful that it's so hard to get in.

• 2:17:20Speaker 00

  It's just not what we're meaning to do here.

• 2:17:22Dax Shepard?

  No, we want state colleges in the civilian world.

• 2:17:25Speaker 00

  So we got, we got UCLA-

• 2:17:27Dax Shepard?

  So far, all we got is UCLA and Berkeley.

• 2:17:29Speaker 00

  And Berkeley, and guess what number three is?

• 2:17:31Dax Shepard?

  Well, you're smiling so big as if it's UGA, but I, it can't be.

• 2:17:35Speaker 00

  But it can't possibly be!

• 2:17:36Dax Shepard?

  I, I would say it's U of M.

• 2:17:38Speaker 00

  No, it's not.

• 2:17:39Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 2:17:39Speaker 00

  It's Georgia Tech.

• 2:17:41Dax Shepard?

  Georgia Tech, okay, so you're feeling some pride?

• 2:17:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, cuz my dad went to Georgia Tech.

• 2:17:45Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay, okay, okay.

• 2:17:47Speaker 00

  Um, then we-

• 2:17:49Dax Shepard?

  Just to remind people, you, you went to UGA, right? UGA?

• 2:17:54Speaker 00

  Oh my god, this weekend I got the cutest vintage Georgia Bulldog shirt.

• 2:17:58Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you did?

• 2:17:59Speaker 00

  It's so cute, I love it, I can't wait to wear it. Okay, then we got UVA. University of Virginia.

• 2:18:07Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:18:07Speaker 00

  Then we got University of Michigan.

• 2:18:10Dax Shepard?

  Oh, boy. So number five or six? Once we dump all those fucking military academies?

• 2:18:15Speaker 00

  Okay, if we're not counting military, we have one.

• 2:18:17Dax Shepard?

  UCLA, let's just remember the list. UCLA, Berkeley, Georgia Tech, UVA, U of M.

• 2:18:23Speaker 00

  Michigan, number five.

• 2:18:24Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:18:25Speaker 00

  Uh, and then UNC, Chapel Hill.

• 2:18:27Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Well, this is a, this is a good day for me.

• 2:18:30Speaker 00

  I also don't necessarily trust this because I am absolutely not on board with the next few.

• 2:18:41Dax Shepard?

  Well, really quick, what's the percentage at U of M in number five? If UCLA was nine percent? Eighteen, so do, twice as hard.

• 2:18:49Speaker 00

  We got some more UCs a little further.

• 2:18:51Dax Shepard?

  You know, this would, this would guide my decision on what college I wanted to work at in the admissions department. I would not want to work at UCLA. So it means you have to sift through

• 2:19:04Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 2:19:04Dax Shepard?

  tens of thousands of applications to get down to your nine percent. That's too much work. I want to go to a place with like a seventy-eight percent acceptance rate.

• 2:19:13Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:19:14Dax Shepard?

  So that I'm only reading an extra thirty-some percent.

• 2:19:17Speaker 00

  How did you even get into that school if this is the way you think?

• 2:19:21Dax Shepard?

  I know. A corner cutter, a short cutter?

• 2:19:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:19:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:26Speaker 00

  UGA is on this list. It's on the second page.

• 2:19:29Dax Shepard?

  Okay, what number is it?

• 2:19:31Speaker 00

  It's not, it's not.

• 2:19:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, we didn't get a number?

• 2:19:33Speaker 00

  No, we didn't.

• 2:19:34Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:19:34Speaker 00

  We also threw out some other numbers.

• 2:19:36Dax Shepard?

  Did they just list all the states?

• 2:19:38Speaker 00

  No.

• 2:19:38Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:19:38Speaker 00

  There's a lot more.

• 2:19:40Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay.

• 2:19:41Speaker 00

  There's five pages.

• 2:19:43Dax Shepard?

  Is, is, is Penn not a public?

• 2:19:46Speaker 00

  Penn is private, I think.

• 2:19:47Dax Shepard?

  University of Pennsylvania, huh? Private.

• 2:19:51Speaker 00

  That's why it's so expensive and like Wharton.

• 2:19:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay, Horton.

• 2:19:54Speaker 00

  Anyway, that was interesting.

• 2:19:57Dax Shepard?

  Wow, I feel really good now. That was, that felt really good.

• 2:20:01Speaker 00

  I'm like, I just really resent, I want to be, I

• 2:20:06Speaker 00

  You're making it so hard.

• 2:20:09Speaker 00

  You're making it so hard.

• 2:20:12Speaker 00

  Cause you, you were a California resident.

• 2:20:14Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:20:16Speaker 00

  I just want to.

• 2:20:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.

• 2:20:18Speaker 00

  I just want to say that.

• 2:20:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, and you were a Georgia resident.

• 2:20:26Speaker 00

  I regret, you know, only because of this, I deeply regret not applying to some other schools.

• 2:20:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:33Speaker 00

  I only did the white.

• 2:20:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, like the joy you'd feel right now if you go like, well, I turned down UCLA.

• 2:20:37Speaker 00

  Out of state.

• 2:20:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. I don't know though if that would have.

• 2:20:42Speaker 00

  How dare you?

• 2:20:44Dax Shepard?

  Well, Monica, Monica, Monica, Monica.

• 2:20:46Speaker 00

  We have the exact same IQ to the point.

• 2:20:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 2:20:52Dax Shepard?

  I'm gonna let that one just go away.

• 2:20:58Dax Shepard?

  Do you wanna get into that one? I don't know that I have a higher or lower IQ than you. But what I maintain is that that wasn't an IQ test. That, that's just, I'm gonna, okay.

• 2:21:09Speaker 00

  Our, on our cognitive test.

• 2:21:11Dax Shepard?

  On our cognitive test.

• 2:21:12Speaker 00

  The, to the point.

• 2:21:14Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 2:21:15Speaker 00

  Tenth of a point.

• 2:21:16Dax Shepard?

  You, you can be smarter than me.

• 2:21:17Speaker 00

  I'm not, I'm not saying I am.

• 2:21:19Dax Shepard?

  I'm just saying that wasn't IQ test. Okay. Now, what was the other thing I was upset about?

• 2:21:25Dax Shepard?

  You made a lot of inflammatory statements really quickly.

• 2:21:27Speaker 00

  Get into UCLA?

• 2:21:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I do know.

• 2:21:30Speaker 00

  Okay, let's hear it.

• 2:21:31Dax Shepard?

  It only, and it only got worse. We would, I can answer if you would go in or not, because I know what the starting GPA was for freshmen at UCLA.

• 2:21:41Speaker 00

  You mean entering freshmen?

• 2:21:43Dax Shepard?

  Yes. I recall that you did have a 4.0, right?

• 2:21:47Speaker 00

  I graduated from Georgia with, uh.

• 2:21:50Dax Shepard?

  Not Georgia, your high school.

• 2:21:51Speaker 00

  High school? I didn't have a 4.0.

• 2:21:53Dax Shepard?

  You didn't have a 4.0?

• 2:21:54Speaker 00

  No.

• 2:21:54Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. And so, and nor did I.

• 2:21:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:21:57Dax Shepard?

  But the starting average grade point for a freshman was 4.08.

• 2:22:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:22:03Dax Shepard?

  The average person had gotten all A's and did some AP classes and got A's.

• 2:22:07Speaker 00

  Actually, I would, I need to go back. I, I need to know what my GPA was because I did get, I was in a lot of AP classes. So I got a lot of bonus.

• 2:22:16Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 2:22:17Speaker 00

  So I don't really remember, but let's just say I got a 4.08.

• 2:22:22Dax Shepard?

  Let's, that's a big thing to assume. That's, that means you never, ever got a B.

• 2:22:27Speaker 00

  No, I got, I got B's.

• 2:22:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:22:29Speaker 00

  I did not do well in, um, physics.

• 2:22:34Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:22:35Speaker 00

  Or chemistry.

• 2:22:37Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:22:38Speaker 00

  I mean, and when I say did not do well, that means B's. I never got below a B in anything.

• 2:22:43Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:22:44Speaker 00

  And.

• 2:22:45Dax Shepard?

  Jim, how'd you do in gym?

• 2:22:46Speaker 00

  I did great. I am a great athlete.

• 2:22:48Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay.

• 2:22:50Speaker 00

  I did like forty-five pull-ups.

• 2:22:52Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:22:53Speaker 00

  I was so light back then.

• 2:22:54Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 2:22:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think those were the Bs, physics and chemistry.

• 2:22:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay, which is incredible, but I do think things would have ruled you out for admission.

• 2:23:04Speaker 00

  I don't know about that because, um.

• 2:23:06Dax Shepard?

  You're not ready to admit that.

• 2:23:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, it was probably the average entrance. So some people got in under that.

• 2:23:14Dax Shepard?

  And conversely, many people had four-point-twos.

• 2:23:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, but some people had three-point-eights.

• 2:23:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, if they had a two thousand on their SAT or whatever the hell is.

• 2:23:26Speaker 00

  Such things, see.

• 2:23:27Dax Shepard?

  Eighteen hundred.

• 2:23:28Speaker 00

  Sixteen hundred.

• 2:23:29Dax Shepard?

  Sixteen hundred.

• 2:23:31Speaker 00

  Which I also did not have.

• 2:23:33Dax Shepard?

  Right, okay, okay, so.

• 2:23:34Speaker 00

  I think my essay would have really been compelling.

• 2:23:37Dax Shepard?

  I tell myself that my essay is what got me in.

• 2:23:40Speaker 00

  And, and I would have got a diversity bump.

• 2:23:45Dax Shepard?

  Okay, now we're talking. You got a little, little pop.

• 2:23:48Speaker 00

  Diversity bump, both as an Indian person and as a southern girl.

• 2:23:54Dax Shepard?

  No, you don't get that.

• 2:23:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, you get that.

• 2:23:56Dax Shepard?

  They're not trying to.

• 2:23:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, they want that.

• 2:23:58Dax Shepard?

  Make sure the people from the south.

• 2:24:00Speaker 00

  I think they want that. Okay, um.

• 2:24:03Dax Shepard?

  Maybe southern Indian like Carol, but not southern.

• 2:24:07Speaker 00

  I'm working on with two southern.

• 2:24:09Dax Shepard?

  You think you have three?

• 2:24:11Speaker 00

  Okay, um, now, Alexander Technique. He talked about teacher, like a very prominent Alexander Technique teacher at UC, uh, excuse me, at NYU, uh, not on the list because that is a private school.

• 2:24:27Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm. You can get in with like a two-point-three, I think. And a four-hundred on your SAT.

• 2:24:33Speaker 00

  And I, I, I think it might be Mona Stiles because she taught the Alexander Technique for decades before her passing in twenty-twenty at the Graduate Acting Program at NYU. I do think he said he, so, you know, I'm confused.

• 2:24:49Dax Shepard?

  I feel like he said he as well.

• 2:24:50Speaker 00

  He did. It might be, it might be, we don't need to know, might-be's. You don't need to do that.

• 2:24:56Dax Shepard?

  We don't deal in hypotheticals here.

• 2:24:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. Tom Stoppard is Czechoslovakian. He got that right.

• 2:25:03Dax Shepard?

  Great.

• 2:25:04Speaker 00

  And...

• 2:25:04Dax Shepard?

  I guess I should read a Tom Stoppard play.

• 2:25:07Speaker 00

  Great place. I wonder when you, when you come over to my new house.

• 2:25:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:13Speaker 00

  If you'll be impressed by how smart I am because um, I have like so many plays.

• 2:25:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh wow, yeah.

• 2:25:24Speaker 00

  That I read and studied and you can flip through them and you can see my notes.

• 2:25:28Dax Shepard?

  Okay, they'll be on display in your new house?

• 2:25:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, right now they're like behind the couch. They're hard to see. But in my house, you're gonna be able to see them better and I think you're gonna have a whole new opinion on whether or not I could get into UCLA.

• 2:25:42Dax Shepard?

  Okay, alright, DVD. Okay.

• 2:25:46Speaker 00

  Um...

• 2:25:47Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I can't believe UCLA was number one. That really went my way. That's like a real blessing.

• 2:25:52Speaker 00

  You went to that school.

• 2:25:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:54Speaker 00

  As an in-state president.

• 2:25:58Dax Shepard?

  Even, I mean, worse, you wanna keep piling on as a transfer student, which is also easier.

• 2:26:02Speaker 00

  I decided not to say that.

• 2:26:04Dax Shepard?

  Okay, you felt like that was picking, punching down.

• 2:26:06Speaker 00

  That was a little too much.

• 2:26:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's punching down.

• 2:26:10Speaker 00

  Well, that's it.

• 2:26:11Dax Shepard?

  Alright. Well, that was lovely.

• 2:26:14Speaker 00

  Uncle Baby Billy. Not Uncle Baby Billy, but you know.

• 2:26:18Dax Shepard?

  Billy Crudup.

• 2:26:19Speaker 00

  Billy Crudup.

• 2:26:19Dax Shepard?

  Uncle Baby Billy Crudup. Alright, love you.

• 2:26:21Speaker 00

  Love you.