Pod Insights Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard Toto Wolff (team principal of Mercedes F1 team) About this episode Toto Wolff (Inside Mercedes F1: Life in the Fast Lane) is principal of the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team. Toto joins the Armchair Expert to discuss the tragedy of being a string bean, his parents emigrating to Austria after the war, and crashing at 189 mph attempting a new lap record at the Nordschleife. Toto and Dax talk about the luxury of being a vulnerable man, being no-nonsense Capricorns, and Dax invites Toto to live in his guesthouse. Toto talks about whether mental health and being a champion are mutually exclusive, the biggest drama in all of F1, and finding his niche between business finance and the love for the stopwatch.
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Transcript 26,432 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dax Shepard? Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. Experts on expert.
0:05 Dax Shepard? Guys buckle up, grab an extra pair of pants.
0:09 Speaker 01 And a helmet.
0:10 Dax Shepard? And a helmet. My number one crush is here today. Toto Wolff.
0:15 Speaker 01 He's a worthy crush.
0:17 Dax Shepard? Oh my God.
0:18 Speaker 01 He was fantastic. He had such a fun personality. I was, I was very surprised.
0:22 Dax Shepard? Right? I'm fascinated by someone that can be as serious as he is to make that team function. And then as goddamn playful and fun as he was outside of that. So if you're not into F1, doesn't matter, you'll still love this because we're mostly talking about kind of mental health and the struggles of being a manager and all these things.
0:40 Speaker 01 His life.
0:41 Dax Shepard? But for context, he is the team principal and CEO of AMG Mercedes, which won eight constructors championships in a row, which has never happened. No one's ever come close to that.
0:54 Speaker 01 For F1.
0:55 Dax Shepard? For Formula One. His accomplishment there will likely never be.
0:59 Speaker 01 So cool.
1:00 Dax Shepard? Taken away from it. It's just an unparalleled success as a team principal and a CEO. He's as good as you could be at this job. He is a part of a really interesting new book called Inside Mercedes F1: Life in the Fast Lane by Matt Wyman. Great read. If you're interested in the workings of that team, which are really fascinating, that's a great starter. Please enjoy Toto Wolff. We get support from Quince.
1:28 Speaker 01 Okay. Can we talk about the fact that the holidays are already here? It's crazy. I feel like I blinked and now we're in gifting season, which I'm not really mad about because I do love giving gifts. And Quince is making it so easy to find something great for everyone on my list, including myself. Because let's be honest, self gifting is a love language.
1:47 Dax Shepard? Quince is seriously the gift that keeps on giving. Their high quality staples are made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14 karat gold and Italian leather, full on luxury quality at prices that won't wreck your holiday budget.
2:03 Speaker 01 It's the dream. The cashmere sweater is starting at $60, down jacket. It's wool outerwear, cashmere accessories. You and everyone on your list are staying cozy and looking incredible all season long.
2:14 Dax Shepard? Well, I'm gonna tell you this, it just got chilly for the first time this year in California. And I'm so excited and I'm wearing my Quince cashmere right now.
2:21 Speaker 01 It's great.
2:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and I am going to gift this to some of my friends. I hope they're not listening.
2:26 Speaker 01 Quince is also more than clothing. They've got fine jewelry for your significant other, leather bags for your bestie, hotel quality bedding to set up your guest rooms, chef-grade cookware. That's an amazing thing they offer here. And it's such a good gift because people don't like buying cookware for themselves, but it's very important. And they also have five-star luggage, another good gift that people don't like buying for themselves.
2:49 Dax Shepard? Give the gift of quality this holiday season. 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. We get support from Quince. Okay, so I have a confession. I'm the worst holiday shopper on the planet. I wait until the last possible second, I panic, and then I end up buying something nobody wants. But this year, I've cracked the code and the code is cozy. And Quince's bedding makes it so easy because the quality is exceptional. It's the kind of gift people actually use and love long after the holidays.
3:33 Speaker 01 Yes. Okay, can we talk about their European linens?
3:36 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
3:36 Speaker 01 Because Quince's 100% European linen gets softer with every wash. Most bedding peaks the day you buy it and then it's all downhill. This is the opposite, and their organic cotton bedding is breathable and incredibly soft. It's hotel-quality comfort for your own bed.
3:50 Dax Shepard? You crawl into bed and you're like, wait, did I accidentally check into a Four Seasons? Quince just makes it easy to create a bed you'll actually look forward to getting into. And their quilts, coverlets, and duvet inserts make any bed and any gift feel complete.
4:05 Speaker 01 Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you can get and give luxury-quality pieces without the luxury price tag.
4:16 Dax Shepard? I mean, guys, I put these on The bed of my children. They are wrapping my little babies and I feel great about it.
4:22 Speaker 01 Mine are striped. They're so cute. They're very fashionable and very comfortable. And it's not just bedding. Quince has everyone on your list covered with Mongolian cashmere sweaters, fine jewelry, leather bags, chef-grade cookware, five-star luggage, and more.
4:36 Dax Shepard? Give the gift of quality this holiday season. 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 you where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show.
5:12 Dax Shepard? Feel free to use that pillow as well if you need it. This sucks. We're getting a new couch.
5:15 Speaker 02 No, I think it doesn't.
5:16 Dax Shepard? Okay, you're fine.
5:17 Speaker 02 Can I put the feet on?
5:18 Dax Shepard? God, you're fucking gorgeous in person, Monica. How overwhelming is it?
5:22 Speaker 01 You are very handsome. I know. And you're very tall.
5:25 Dax Shepard? Bit taller than me.
5:26 Speaker 02 A tiny bit, but you're better trained.
5:28 Dax Shepard? There's a lot of nerdy things I did today. I was gonna wear bigger shoes.
5:32 Speaker 01 Oh, you were?
5:32 Dax Shepard? Because I hoped to be as tall as him in the photo. And I even considered putting on my work boots. And I'm like, you can't cheat. What are you wearing?
5:38 Speaker 02 No, I'm wearing flats.
5:40 Dax Shepard? Okay, good. You're on the floor too. But yeah, that crossed my mind, as you just saw, I opened one of my garage doors, hoping you would be interested in my cars.
5:48 Speaker 01 And how did that go? You guys were outside for a few minutes. Did you like them?
5:51 Speaker 02 I liked it a lot because it's a good mix between, you know, there's a Mercedes, obviously.
5:55 Speaker 01 Yes, obviously.
5:56 Speaker 02 And then I like the bikes. I'm riding bikes as well.
5:58 Dax Shepard? Oh, you are?
5:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
6:00 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay. What do you ride? Like a tour adventure bike?
6:03 Speaker 02 What is called? It's a vintage bike.
6:05 Dax Shepard? MV Agusta?
6:05 Speaker 02 An MV Agusta I have as well. So the story with the MV Agusta is more interesting than the Austrian bike I just mentioned. So one day it rings at the door and we are having scheduled dinner with Louis in Monaco. So he knows Susie for a long time. There is cars, so he comes for dinner. He rings at the door and says, come down, please. And I'm saying, no, come up. We're up here. No, no, there's really something I'd like to show you. I take Susie. So we're going down and he's there with his bike. And it's an MV Agusta Lewis Hamilton edition.
6:32 Dax Shepard? Okay.
6:32 Speaker 02 So I said, well, it's great, the bike. Is that what you wanted to show me? And he says, it's yours. And I said, how come? He says, you know, you've done so many great things and you and I together and I've never given you a gift. So I want to give you the number one of a 44 edition.
6:48 Speaker 01 Oh, wow. That's so cool. That's sweet.
6:50 Dax Shepard? That's a very sweet present.
6:52 Speaker 02 So the other one is a Triumph Thraxton, which was converted by a German tuner to proper cafe racer. And that's the bike I ride every day.
7:00 Dax Shepard? Okay. I don't know if you saw on the grid. Sorry, Monica, I'm going to wrap up the technical stuff.
7:04 Speaker 01 No, it's okay. I have a sense this is going to be fairly.
7:06 Dax Shepard? You had appropriate expectations.
7:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, I did. I did. I did. I have a Mercedes too that we should tell Toto.
7:11 Dax Shepard? I'm about to defame Lewis.
7:13 Speaker 01 Oh, boy. Okay.
7:15 Dax Shepard? Because Toto, he didn't give him, Lewis earned them, but he got seven championships under Toto's direction.
7:22 Speaker 01 That's right.
7:22 Dax Shepard? You and I were working together for three years and I bought you a C43 AMG.
7:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, I got a present three years in.
7:28 Dax Shepard? That's much better than MV Agusta.
7:31 Speaker 02 I got another present, which is worse.
7:36 Speaker 02 So you know, drivers are very particular with helmets and Lewis has all of the helmets that he's collected. So giving helmets away for him is a real struggle.
7:44 Dax Shepard? Yes.
7:44 Speaker 02 So I got lovely helmets from Valtry or from Nico in the past, but I knew they are less emotional about it.
7:50 Dax Shepard? Yes. And can I ask quickly, he has a new helmet every race, right?
7:52 Speaker 02 No, I wouldn't say every race, but for sure, like every second or third race.
7:57 Dax Shepard? Because I notice new paint jobs.
7:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, they change. And I think he's given me his most special one.
8:01 Dax Shepard? We did.
8:02 Speaker 02 Yeah. When Niko Lauda died, who we were very close, both of us, he made a Niko Lauda designed helmet for the Monaco race in 2019. And he won it, holding on to, I think Daniel was behind him. It was a huge struggle. So he gave me the Niko Lauda memorial helmet, the Monaco race win. And he wrote something nice on it. And I think this is a piece of memory that's priceless.
8:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. New goal in life. We're gonna ride together at some point.
8:28 Speaker 02 We can, yeah.
8:28 Dax Shepard? We can be far down the road when we're retired or something. Okay, let's start in Austria. First of all, we're both Capricorns. Even though I don't believe in astrology, I can feel your Capricorn.
8:37 Speaker 02 What is that?
8:38 Dax Shepard? Very determined. My feelings are kind of secret. I can't show vulnerability. I'm on schedule. I have to win. I'm going to beat myself up until I. Do I'm managing everything.
8:49 Speaker 01 No nonsense.
8:50 Dax Shepard? No bullshit, tell you the truth. Does this sound familiar?
8:54 Speaker 02 That sounds familiar, but I don't really in astrology either.
8:57 Dax Shepard? Me neither.
8:57 Speaker 02 You neither. So there is something that maybe Capricorns have in common is that they are born into cold January.
9:03 Dax Shepard? Boom.
9:04 Speaker 02 Boom.
9:04 Dax Shepard? Yes. The world is a hostile place when you arrive.
9:07 Speaker 02 Exactly.
9:08 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. Especially in Austria.
9:10 Speaker 02 Absolutely. Thinking whether Detroit or Austria is more hostile.
9:14 Dax Shepard? It depends if we're including homicides, because I think Detroit has, yeah.
9:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, it has. And maybe also the freshness of the air.
9:21 Dax Shepard? Yes, yes, yes.
9:22 Speaker 02 But that's why you're a car person also, no?
9:24 Dax Shepard? Now, I was shocked to learn this this morning, that you're not Germanic, you're not Austrian. Your dad is Romanian and your mother is Polish.
9:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:34 Dax Shepard? And were they immigrants or had they grown up in Austria?
9:37 Speaker 02 My father was born in Bucharest and they immigrated after the war, interestingly. And I think there was a big wave of antisemitism back in the day. So my grandparents were called Rosa and Herschel. And when they moved to Austria, they called themselves Olaf and Maria.
9:54 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
9:56 Speaker 02 It's like the opposite. We are not Jewish.
9:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:59 Dax Shepard? Wearing lederhosen and blowing horns, really saying I'm Austrian.
10:03 Speaker 02 Exactly. And my mother came to Vienna when she was 18, speaking no word of German and studied medicine, became a doctor. So that's why they met.
10:11 Dax Shepard? Now, mom was a physician. What type? Like a family doctor?
10:15 Speaker 02 Anesthetist.
10:16 Dax Shepard? Anesthesiologist?
10:17 Speaker 02 Yes.
10:17 Dax Shepard? Oh, wonderful. She had all the drugs.
10:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:21 Speaker 02 She took some herself, but that's a different story.
10:24 Dax Shepard? Sure, sure, sure. What did your dad do for a living?
10:26 Speaker 02 He had a transport company.
10:27 Dax Shepard? Oh, he did?
10:28 Speaker 02 And I know what you're referring to in Austria. Back in the day, you had to prepay the VAT for your customers. So that was taking a lot of risks. So that went belly up.
10:36 Dax Shepard? So he was struggling and mom was succeeding in a pretty dramatic way?
10:41 Speaker 02 No, I think my father was very successful at a young age. I was born into money, but then he lost. Old and had brain cancer.
10:49 Dax Shepard? You're eight years old?
10:50 Speaker 02 Yeah. And at the beginning it was benign. And then over the next few years, it got really ugly to a degree that it was incurable. He struggled for so long because he got operated and operated and operated. And then he changed his personality. And when a son is in his teenage years, you need your dad.
11:05 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
11:05 Speaker 02 You need your dad to look up to, to love, you need your dad to hate and to fight. He wasn't present anymore.
11:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah, because you were eight when he got diagnosed and then you were 15 when he died.
11:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:15 Dax Shepard? Your parents also got divorced when you were eight. It had no relation to the brain cancer diagnosis, did it?
11:20 Speaker 02 No, the divorce was that, sorry, that must be a kid or my wife.
11:26 Dax Shepard? Let's see.
11:26 Speaker 01 Feel free to answer. We also.
11:27 Dax Shepard? I'd love to say hi to Suzie if she's there.
11:30 Speaker 02 Suzie, I'm right in the podcast.
11:31 Dax Shepard? Hello Suzie, I love you.
11:33 Speaker 02 No, no, I'll pass you over. I'll pass you. I'll pass you over. I'll pass you over.
11:36 Speaker 01 Oh, this is so exciting.
11:38 Dax Shepard? Suzie, no, listen to me. This is such a delight. If my wife dies and Toto dies, I'm sprinting to you. Okay? I just want to say, what a dynamo. A beautiful race car driver who also runs an academy. What more does someone need?
11:54 Speaker 01 Pretty cool.
11:57 Dax Shepard? All right, I'm going to turn you back to him, but I'm delighted to hear your voice. All right, here's Toto.
12:01 Speaker 02 Hello.
12:01 Speaker 01 How fun.
12:02 Speaker 02 Okay, sleep well. Okay.
12:05 Dax Shepard? Oh, she's going to bed.
12:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, she's in Scotland. And so I have this override and ringtones. It's my wife and my two children.
12:11 Dax Shepard? You need to show me how to do that.
12:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, like an emergency bypass. So it always rings, even though I don't have a ringtone. I have the phone never on just when they call.
12:19 Dax Shepard? Okay. Yeah, I need to figure out how to do that.
12:21 Speaker 02 It's apologies.
12:21 Dax Shepard? Because mine's just never on. Well, if we become friends, text me.
12:24 Speaker 02 I do.
12:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we don't need to talk on the phone.
12:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, but I can give you an emergency override, like a bypass. So if there's something that really bothers you, you just call me.
12:31 Dax Shepard? If I'm in a really bad situation.
12:33 Speaker 01 I'd be careful. I'd be careful with giving him that. Also, you can't ignore calls then. If Kristen calls.
12:39 Dax Shepard? I'll have no excuse.
12:40 Speaker 01 Oh, I didn't get it.
12:41 Dax Shepard? No, what I got to figure out is how to put it on her phone because she doesn't ever, ever answer. But what I think happened is I was asking you about your parents divorce and Suzie was always there. And then she hit a button to call to interrupt that question. Because she's like, oh, Toto is not going to want to talk about that.
12:55 Speaker 02 No, I talk openly about it.
12:57 Dax Shepard? You're wonderful.
12:58 Speaker 02 Because this is who I am.
12:59 Dax Shepard? Yes, this is later in the conversation, but I'll say you and I have a blessing. We're big enough and we fit the role enough that it affords us a willingness to be vulnerable in a way men have a hard time doing. And I think it's a luxury.
13:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:14 Dax Shepard? If I had a different life, it would be much harder for me. So I recognize it is easier for me than someone else.
13:19 Speaker 02 And we need to speak up about it because people look up to us and they think we're not vulnerable. I had these moments where I felt inadequate. And if I had somebody telling me back in the day, I have what you have and I suffer, but I'm still successful, that would have given me a lot of hope. And I didn't have hope at times.
13:35 Dax Shepard? Yeah, in your teens and this happens, but mom and dad separated. So that was separate from the diagnosis.
13:40 Speaker 02 That was related to the failure of the company. I think my dad made my mother sign some collateral and she got a house, like an apartment building from her dad for the marriage. And that was gone, plus a credit. So that was already my father was very ill, didn't know anymore what was right and wrong. And then she said, trust is very difficult to build and it's gone. So that's where they separated. But I have no bad memory about the separation, to be honest. They never had a bad word with each other. They kept that away from us. It was more seeing my mother struggle to make a living for us and my father not having had any money anymore. And that went so bad that I saw people coming to him, asking basically to empty your pockets. That was tough for a young man.
14:21 Speaker 01 Did you have brothers and sisters?
14:23 Speaker 02 I have a young sister, but she's not so young anymore. She's two years my junior.
14:26 Dax Shepard? The thing I thought of, and this is a tricky question, but my dad got diagnosed with small cell carcinoma in August and he was dead on January 1st. So it was like a three month thing. And then my stepdad got prostate cancer and that was like a two and a half, three year thing. And I'll say the stress of having a loved one have a condition that you're not sure when the end is. I found the experience with my dad much easier to process. It's like, okay, this is happening. Let's spend the next few months together. I'll clear my schedule. I'll take you to your appointments. I find it very hard and the notion that your dad had this condition for seven years and you're just kind of like, where are we at? What's going to happen? That feels Very stressful. And then a guilt when you feel relieved it's over.
15:10 Speaker 02 Exactly. First of all, sorry to hear about your dad and your stepdad. A terrible guilt because it was at the point that his life was miserable. And I saw it and then you lose the connection, you lose respect. And it came to a point that when he died, I think today in hindsight it was better for him. But I thought it's better for all of us. And the guilty feeling that you have.
15:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
15:32 Speaker 02 Was so bad and it's something that I only processed in the last few years.
15:35 Dax Shepard? Well, you're a kid.
15:36 Speaker 02 Yeah. So you can't in a way analyze the feelings that maybe you could because you were an adult. But for me, that guilty feeling of thinking is better for my dad to be gone.
15:45 Dax Shepard? Well, you kind of wish it be over for them.
15:48 Speaker 02 And myself and my sister. So I think also we were so close. I remember being on his deathbed and obviously you're not seeing your father anymore. Like the strong personality that people talk about. And these memories for a 15 year old and a 13 year old sister. I'm not sure I would do the same me as a parent.
16:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
16:07 Speaker 01 Well, you're mourning twice. First you mourn them with the diagnosis. But they're dead essentially before they're dead because they changed completely.
16:16 Speaker 02 Yes.
16:16 Speaker 01 It's hard to deal with. They've been gone for a while.
16:19 Dax Shepard? But to me, that was a huge gift because I had so much resentment. They got divorced when I was three. He had a great life. We lived kind of poorly. I had a lot of judgment of him. And there was the moment where I looked at him and you're right, he was not the big demonstrative alpha male. He was a little boy on a bed and I thought, oh yeah, he's like a little boy. And he's always been a little boy and I'm still a little boy and you never stop being a little boy. And it actually dissolves so much resentment to see he's just a human that's scared. That was weirdly a gift.
16:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think as an adult, it's a gift, but.
16:51 Dax Shepard? Not at 15.
16:51 Speaker 02 Not at 15.
16:52 Dax Shepard? No, no, no.
16:53 Speaker 02 No, not at 15. There was certainly memories that are hugely difficult to digest as a kid. And as I said, you know, I'm 52 today. I would say that I probably processed it in the last five years only. That I look at it, I feel more calm and reassured in my own existence. Only now I have found peace with him dying over so many years and also with my mother. Because my mother wasn't present at all because she needed to earn the money and she needed to look after her. And protect herself. So my sister and I were at home. We had Polish housekeeper. That was good for the language, actually, but she wasn't there. Now she's seventy nine. She's not well and she says to me, I wasn't a good mother. And I say, I forgive you because I know how difficult it was to be at home and see the suffering, but at the end you're also responsible of how I am today.
17:38 Speaker 02 So I'd rather as a kid not having trauma, but I'm fifty two years and if you ask me whether I'd rather be who I am today or a white elephant, I'd rather be who I am today.
17:47 Dax Shepard? I think that's the weird piece you have to come to with your past, which is if you're lucky enough to end up somewhere you're happy with, as you have and I have, and I have kids I love so much and have a great wife. I go, well, fuck, I wouldn't tinker with anything because I still want to end up right here. So I gotta understand and process that it was hurtful and these things happen and also have a weird gratitude for it and like it too.
18:07 Speaker 02 Exactly my thoughts and my feelings.
18:09 Dax Shepard? Did something prompt five years ago? Why five years ago did you start confronting that?
18:13 Speaker 02 I think that I was so busy in my life to get things done and I always had that anxiety about failure. I said it jokingly that I'm a half empty glass person. I always stare into the abyss. Everything could be finished tomorrow. The racing could be ending, the winning ends. The money could be all gone. My wife leaves me for the hairdresser.
18:39 Speaker 02 I don't believe that anymore, by the way.
18:40 Dax Shepard? It'll be her trainer, not her hairdresser.
18:43 Speaker 02 There is always dangers and only in the last few years, I thought if everything was to end today, I could go with a good feeling.
18:52 Dax Shepard? You're there.
18:52 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
18:53 Dax Shepard? If I were you and I set out on this journey first as a race car driver, then pivoting and becoming an investor in teams, then becoming a team principal and a CEO and having all this success. Five years ago, you would have been on your six constructors championship in a row. And if I were you, I would go, wow, we did absolutely everything we wanted to do. Where is the elation? Why aren't I whole? Why don't I feel content? Why am I still scared?
19:21 Speaker 02 You're absolutely right, but I lost that anxiety. I'm thinking I have a Wonderful relationship with my children. Like you said about your relationships. I have the best wife that I can imagine. I have done what I wanted to do. And that's why I would have peace if I would be dying today. And that would have been in a way been destiny. But then there is a certain risk that's coming with that too, contentment. And that's not good.
19:46 Dax Shepard? It's scary, right?
19:47 Speaker 02 No, I don't want that.
19:48 Dax Shepard? Cause you have no fuel.
19:49 Speaker 02 I wouldn't say no fuel, but there is this moments where my anger is gone. So I need to proactively condition myself and say, what are my objectives? And in two thousand twenty, when the music stopped for someone that likes the music and doesn't like time. I had a year that I was really bad mentally and I had to reflect. Do I want to go back as an investor and look at multiple companies and be on the board? See businesses and technology that interest me and the variety of it. Or do I want to consider as a racing person, as a basically a one trick pony? And I came to the conclusion that I found my niche between business, finance and the love for the stopwatch and the honesty for the stopwatch.
20:32 Speaker 02 And at that moment, I really proactively intellectually decided there is more to do and more to win and more to conquer. But it is more with an emotion that is less anxious about success. But the drive isn't gone. It's channeled in a different way.
20:48 Dax Shepard? Okay, great. So this is my huge fear is that my motivation for the last forty nine years has been you're lazy, you're a piece of shit, you're a failure, you're an embarrassment. And now get up and do things to disprove that theory. And so the great fear of mine is can I write from a place of happiness and love? Can I act from a place of happiness and love and not fear? Could I win from a place that's not fear based? And that's a leap of faith. I'm like midway there. I'm not where you're at. I don't fully trust that without some bit of cancerous rumination, I'll actually be motivated.
21:25 Speaker 02 But you have two years to, you know, get over this. And those two years were important for me. But it's that, I think, imposter syndrome and all of the characteristic you mentioned, they have softened. They haven't completely gone away, but they're conditioned in a healthier way. There's many people that don't want to go to a psychiatrist because they fear that they're losing their ability. Artists, writers, people that have a lot of creativity, that don't want to go to sort out their mental problems. They don't want to go on medication because they believe this is a huge fuel of their creativity. Because how often do we actually spend time in thinking about our objectives? And the analogy we are having in the team is being between the dance floor and the balcony. We are on the dance floor most of the time.
22:10 Speaker 02 That is in action.
22:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
22:12 Speaker 02 When are we going actually on the balcony and looking down what's happening on the dance floor and thinking about what's my long-term strategy here? What is it that I believe I should recalibrate?
22:26 Dax Shepard? A lot of these different tech gurus have this built-in moment in their schedule. For some people, it's like four days a month, or it's a week a month, or it's a month a year.
22:35 Speaker 02 Bill Gates is a reading week.
22:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah, takes that stack of books and he sits in his little cabin and he allows himself to stop staring at the thing in front of him and get that kind of wider perspective. You can't really do that, or how would you do that? Because you have 23 races and then in the off-season, it's maybe even more work because you have the next iteration of the car coming out next year. So how on earth do you build in that time?
23:00 Speaker 02 So I do it actively. For me, for example, flying in an airplane and I do 600 hours a year. For whatever reason, I don't enjoy watching movies. I don't enjoy listening to music. I like reading and the reading gives me a stimulation of thinking about those things. So I stare at the ceiling. I do it in the mornings. I take my time in the mornings for myself and lying in bed for another 20 minutes allows me to do these things. So it's actually activities that run in a way on autopilot. And I don't know if you know that, there is a scientific explanation to that. Why do you have your best ideas in the shower, in the toilets, while shaving? In the car because your brain is actually active, but it's on autopilot. You're doing all of that.
23:45 Speaker 02 So that is why we have those creative moments. And for me, it's also lying in bed or it's flying in an airplane. I think a lot about those things and I write them down.
23:53 Dax Shepard? That makes sense, and I relate to that. I need a certain level of distraction where you're right. The subconscious is driving the car. I'm not actually driving the car. It's just happening. And that's the perfect amount of activity that allows me to wander in my head because I'm doing something. So I'm kind of liberated to do that.
24:09 Speaker 02 But we're all different, interestingly, because when I'm having an activity that is where I need to put some force in, for example, you know, going to the gym, you're doing lots of that.
24:17 Dax Shepard? Thank you for noticing.
24:18 Speaker 02 Or going for a walk to do my 10,000 steps. For me, this is like a meditation in the activity itself. I'm not capable of thinking about anything else. But Suzie, when she goes on her 20,000 steps a day or in the gym, she comes back with lots of stuff that she writes down. So we're all different.
24:36 Dax Shepard? True.
24:37 Speaker 01 Do you think the fear of failure being so intense is because you saw your dad lose everything?
24:42 Dax Shepard? My dad lost everything too, by the way. My dad like was rich, then poor. Filed bankruptcy three times before he died.
24:48 Speaker 01 There wasn't a consistency there. You saw everything go away. So I can imagine that makes you feel like anything can go away at any moment.
24:55 Speaker 02 For sure. That is a scar. That was like a perfect storm because they tried to have me in a private school, in a French school in Vienna. So I saw the rich kids. And you're not a poor kid in a poor environment where everything is pretty normal. But you're seeing the rich kids and you're seeing them going on the fancy holidays. I remember exactly that moment, Christmas holidays, last day of school. And there is this friends of mine that got into the car with one of the dads and they went off skiing, the three of them together. And I don't, the suffering of that very moment is still so much in me.
25:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:28 Dax Shepard? Do you know what that fucking garage is all about? Is that I wanted the cool BMX bike. Kids had the cool BMX bike, the GT, the Haro, the Hutch, and I didn't.
25:37 Speaker 02 Compensation mechanism.
25:38 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and I wanted that fucking bicycle and this is the bicycle. I'm still healing the wound of the bicycle.
25:44 Speaker 01 I know, but the problem is you get the bicycle and then it doesn't work.
25:47 Dax Shepard? No, exactly. It's the fantasy.
25:48 Speaker 01 You go skiing and it doesn't work. Then you're like, well, now what?
25:51 Speaker 02 It does.
25:52 Speaker 01 Did it work for you?
25:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, 100% does for me.
25:54 Speaker 01 Wow, I'm jealous of that.
25:57 Speaker 02 100% does for me.
25:59 Speaker 01 You're like, I'm fixed now.
26:00 Speaker 02 No, not completely fixed, but I know there was these things I wanted to take. There is this nice skiing place in Austria where everybody went and it was very expensive. And it's actually a small village and there is nothing particular. But having a place there was a life target and I have now. Actually, there's probably better places. Then also going through this car and bike motion. I remember my dad only had a very, very old BMW, 10 years old. And it was damaged, but he didn't have the money to actually repair it. And the friend's dad had, I don't know if you remember, Mercedes AMG 560 SEC.
26:33 Dax Shepard? Oh, baby.
26:34 Speaker 02 That's exactly down your line. Now, when I look at your garage.
26:37 Dax Shepard? The problem with those cars is impossible to work on, but continue. I love them. That's Miami Vice.
26:42 Speaker 02 That's Miami Vice.
26:43 Dax Shepard? Ground effects.
26:44 Speaker 02 Exactly.
26:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
26:45 Speaker 02 When I showed these cars to Susie or to my children and said, that was my dream. They say, seriously? Yes, it looks awful. A Porsche Turbo, you know, the three liters, the early ones.
26:57 Dax Shepard? How about a rough 911, R U F F?
27:00 Speaker 02 Roof. It's a German company.
27:02 Dax Shepard? Okay, sorry.
27:03 Speaker 02 Wasn't a big thing back in the day. You did these tuners, didn't exist in that form. But black 911 Turbo, three liter, four gearbox, the Widowmaker.
27:13 Dax Shepard? 930.
27:14 Speaker 02 930. That was exactly.
27:16 Dax Shepard? Slant nose. Oh, baby. I do think when you don't have a dad around for some of these pivotal rites of passage, you have to go get a lot of these exterior things to comfort yourself that you are becoming a man. Do you relate to any of that stuff, the masculinity portion?
27:31 Speaker 02 No, the masculinity portion doesn't relate to me. When my father got ill, I had that feeling, I took so much responsibility on for my sister, that I wanted to be an adult. I wanted to be in control of my life. I didn't want to be embarrassed for my parents anymore. And that attitude of being the man in the house happened when I was very young. So I never struggled with that. It was more about the things that I saw from parents of my. Friends that were successful. This is what I wanted to achieve, like a Ferrari car collection, for example. Or one of my closest friends today, and I love him to bits. His dad was the president of the local football club.
28:12 Speaker 02 There was this famous sports show on Monday evening, which was called Sport am Montag, which was Sport on Monday. And it was prime time and only the best people were there. And I remember him being there. And I thought, one day I would like to be in this sports show because that means success.
28:28 Speaker 01 Wow.
28:29 Speaker 02 And then these things happen and you realize they're so nice because you kind of say to yourself, I can't believe it, I'm there now.
28:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, full circle.
28:39 Speaker 02 Full circle.
28:40 Dax Shepard? And for you, it works.
28:41 Speaker 02 For me, that works.
28:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that's great.
28:43 Speaker 01 That is great.
28:44 Dax Shepard? I think that's kind of rare.
28:45 Speaker 02 Is it?
28:46 Dax Shepard? I think so. And I don't know what part is American and what part is your culture and being European. But I don't know, America, you know, it's like, do this, make this, be this, be special, be unique, be individual. And then you do those things and what you kind of feel like is, oh yeah, and all I've accomplished is I've kind of alienated myself from everyone. It doesn't feel as fun as I thought it was gonna feel like. You start questioning the whole promise of it, but I'm delighted that's not happening for you.
29:11 Speaker 02 Maybe because, and you will think that's counterintuitive by being in Formula One. I have never felt, well, that's actually not true. I wanted to say I've never felt surpassing people. But what I felt was anger against all the people that let my dad down. So at the beginning, it was like, I'm gonna show you. And they were obviously a generation above me, but that was important.
29:31 Dax Shepard? Really quick, who were you gonna show? Was there a list of actual people or is this an idea of people?
29:36 Speaker 02 No, there was a list of actual people that didn't respect my father. But that was the early years of my professional life. When I started to think about it, I'm actually trying to meet my own expectations. And you know that sports show on Monday was my own expectations. I didn't want to be on telly because I wanted to show that I'm there. It was only for me and it is still today. When I'm not having the success and not achieving the objectives that I set myself, that is where I feel humiliated towards myself. Interestingly, not anybody else.
30:09 Dax Shepard? Right.
30:09 Speaker 02 I'm in an absolute competition against myself, not a relative competition to others.
30:15 Dax Shepard? I completely relate to that. Yeah, as I say, you shouldn't ever compare yourself to someone else. You should only compare yourself to previous versions of yourself. The things I didn't fantasize about that I've gotten, because I've gotten a lot of stuff I wasn't even bold enough to fantasize about. And those things are really fun, because I didn't have a fantasy and an expectation of how I was going to feel and how much I was going to like myself, or what kind of self-esteem I would have. I didn't have anything built on top of this fantasy. So the things that have happened that were unexpected, now those I really can enjoy. I don't want to downplay how much joy I do get out of this crazy privileged existence I've had.
30:51 Speaker 02 And it's good, because you're 50 years old, and you're actively enjoying things, experiences, material things. And there is many people who don't. And for them, it's just the next thing, and the next thing. And they come to the conclusion that it's actually not what they expected. And then you're in a vicious circle of if you can afford to buy more and more and more, and seek other relationships, you know, suddenly your marriage is not good anymore, because you've seen the next, I was about to say blonde, but obviously, that's not what I meant, it's more of a cliché.
31:23 Dax Shepard? Five foot tall Indian princess?
31:25 Speaker 02 Of course, yeah, yeah.
31:27 Speaker 01 No, I know what you mean. Next bombshell.
31:29 Speaker 02 Seriously, you're very attractive.
31:31 Speaker 01 Oh, thank you. That's so
31:32 Dax Shepard? Oh my God, I'm so jealous of you.
31:34 Speaker 01 That's so nice. That's so nice.
31:37 Speaker 02 But always the next thing, you know, the grass is always green on the other side, and that's not what I have.
31:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:44 Dax Shepard? Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
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33:02 Dax Shepard? This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Every family has that one holiday tradition. Nobody actually enjoys, but everyone keeps doing because stopping it would feel like a federal offense. For me, it was a specific meal situation that I will not name because my family listens. But at some point you have to ask yourself, am I doing this because I love it? Or because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't?
33:24 Speaker 01 Yes, and that question applies to so much more than the holidays. I think a lot of us carry these invisible rules about how we're supposed to spend the holidays. We're supposed to see what it's supposed to look like. And when you start unpacking that with a therapist, you realize half of your stress is coming from rules you didn't even write.
33:41 Dax Shepard? This is where BetterHelp can be a great resource during the holidays. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences, which means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recs.
34:00 Speaker 01 I just love therapy. I've been avoiding it recently or not avoiding it, but I was like, oh, I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy. I haven't canceled, canceled, canceled, but then I-
34:08 Dax Shepard? You start feeling it.
34:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, because then I had it this past weekend and I was like, oh my God, I'm just, thank God, thank God for her. Yeah.
34:16 Dax Shepard? BetterHelp is now in network with more than 125 health plans with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members. And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 20% off your first month. Sign up and get 20% off at betterhelp.com/dax. That's betterhelp, H E L P, dot com slash DAX.
34:40 Dax Shepard? This episode is supported by Helix.
34:43 Speaker 01 Okay, can we talk about how November is basically survival mode between the holidays, the travel, the hosting, the cooking, the everything. Sleep is the one thing keeping me from completely unraveling.
34:54 Dax Shepard? It really is the foundation, and I think people underestimate how much a bad mattress is quietly ruining their day. You wake up stiff, your back's angry, you're already behind before your feet hit the floor.
35:05 Speaker 01 That was me before Helix. I took their sleep quiz, which is so fast. It took me like two minutes and they matched me to a mattress that actually fits how I sleep. Not a guess, not a firm or soft coin flip. It's a real match. I have a midnight mattress and I really like it. I was noticing it because I actually had to sleep in one of my other beds recently that doesn't have a Helix mattress on it and I really could tell a big difference in my sleep.
35:27 Dax Shepard? Temperature was all over the map.
35:29 Speaker 01 It was a mess. I need a new one.
35:30 Dax Shepard? Look, they've got over 20 mattress models. So whether you sleep hot, need extra back support, or you've got a partner who moves around all night, there's one built for you. Plus free shipping and a 365 night happy with Helix guarantee. That's a full year to decide.
35:45 Speaker 01 Helix has been named the most awarded mattress by Forbes, Wired, and more. So it's not just us being enthusiastic. The experts agree.
35:52 Dax Shepard? Right now, Helix is running their Black Friday sale with up to 30% off. Go to helixsleep.com/armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. That's helixsleep.com/armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. helixsleep.com/armchair. We are supported by Squarespace. So here's something I think about a lot. Most people I talk to on this show, the ones doing really interesting things, they all had a version of their work that existed before anyone else saw it. It was just theirs, notes, ideas, projects they were tinkering with, and then at some point they made the decision to share it. That's the part that's scary, right? Going from I'm working on something to here's what I made. Rob went through the exact same thing, building our site on Squarespace,
36:36 Dax Shepard? and what made it doable was that he didn't have to become a web developer overnight. He just had to show up with the idea. Squarespace handles the rest. Beautiful templates that actually look like you hired someone, built in SEO so people can find you, email campaigns. Scheduling analytics all under one roof. No code, no patchwork of random tools. And honestly, the thing I keep coming back to is how low the barrier is. If you've got something you've been building quietly and you're ready for people to see it, Squarespace makes that leap feel a lot less traumatic. Head to Squarespace.com slash DAX for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
37:22 Dax Shepard? Now, I do have some questions about how you got to where you ended up. There's a couple of gaps in what I can learn about you that are curious to me. Like, one is you go at 18 and you see Formula One, or you go to some racing.
37:33 Speaker 02 No, not Formula One.
37:34 Dax Shepard? Okay, but you go to some racing event and you go, I want to do this. Now, 18 is too late for you to do that.
37:40 Speaker 02 Much.
37:40 Dax Shepard? We know this. You had to be karting at six. So how on earth did you end up racing Formula Ford without the karting background?
37:48 Speaker 02 So I didn't have an interest for motorsport. I had an interest in road cars because of my past. It was quite disappointing to find out that my first car my mother bought, it obviously didn't have any money, was a Volkswagen Beetle. It ended against a tree six months later, and I would say I was disappointed.
38:07 Speaker 01 You manifested that?
38:09 Speaker 02 I manifested that, yeah.
38:10 Dax Shepard? Had just enough horsepower to crash into a tree. Barely enough.
38:15 Speaker 02 So there is a famous road through the Viennese forest around the city, which is called the Höhnhstraße, and they had in the 50s, 60s, 70s, a very famous race there because it's cobblestone. And when it's wet, that starts to be tricky. So that was my road. It's about, I would say, 10 kilometers, very twisty, very fast. And I raced with my friends there with the Beetle. And one day in the rain, I woke up on a Saturday morning, thought it's raining, it's great. I'm gonna take the Beetle onto that Höhnhstraße, that road. And bang off, I went against a tree. The steering wheel even broke.
38:46 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
38:47 Speaker 02 So that was a crazy stuff, which we did back in the day. I rented a Porsche and there was a straight with, I don't know, a kilometer with a huge bump in the middle. And each of us was trying with the others in the passenger seat of the maximum speed we could achieve before braking for the next corner. Like 240 kilometers an hour. That's crazy. But back to your question.
39:09 Dax Shepard? I just want you to know, I've been in a lot of those passenger seats and I hate it.
39:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, but as a kid, you almost don't realize the risk.
39:15 Dax Shepard? You're in another zone.
39:16 Speaker 02 It's like you talking about your daughter, you want her to ride a motocross bike rather than sitting on the back and crashing with somebody who wants to show off.
39:24 Dax Shepard? A 16 year old trying to impress her.
39:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, to be masculine.
39:27 Dax Shepard? Masculine, yes. And his masculinity journey.
39:30 Speaker 02 Exactly. For me, it was, I didn't have the sport on my radar. And then I visited a track in Germany, the Nürburgring.
39:36 Dax Shepard? I've driven it, so fun. You have a record there?
39:38 Speaker 02 I have a record there, yeah.
39:39 Dax Shepard? In a 911 RS?
39:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was the big fat 911.
39:44 Dax Shepard? 2009?
39:44 Speaker 02 Yes, GT2 RS, whatever the racing version was, but the one with the most powerful engine, naturally aspirated engine.
39:51 Dax Shepard? Do you remember your time?
39:52 Speaker 02 It was a 703, but the track was different because it wasn't the new asphalt, so it was much bumpier and riskier. And that record was, I think, 705, but crazy dangerous.
40:04 Dax Shepard? There's nothing like it.
40:05 Speaker 02 No, there's nothing like it. And I was already befriended with Niki Lauda, who had his crash in Formula One there. That's why he burned. And he said, why did he do this? He's so stupid, so dangerous. Nobody cares what you're doing on the Nürburgring.
40:14 Dax Shepard? I care.
40:16 Speaker 02 I was in a bit of a midlife crisis. And so that was on a preparation lap. The car was already feeling odd, the tires were falling apart. And then I said to myself, and that is the amateur approach, I'm gonna give it one try whilst already knowing that the car had an issue. And then one try, I was up 15 seconds. So it would have been a 640 or 635.
40:36 Dax Shepard? Whoa, anything sub seven is.
40:38 Speaker 02 It's very fast, yeah. Today, a good time is around 620 or so, but that was 15 years ago. And the track is a completely different one, as I said before. Parts that are flat today were never flat back in the day. So the car felt odd, and I thought, I'm just gonna finish the lap. And then I had a puncture.
40:54 Dax Shepard? Oh.
40:54 Speaker 02 In the most dangerous part, you know, the foxhole where it's going down and there's a big compression, 289 kilometers an hour, which is how much? 210?
41:04 Dax Shepard? It's like 175.
41:05 Speaker 02 Really? Only?
41:06 Dax Shepard? 300 km is 180 miles an hour.
41:10 Speaker 02 179.
41:11 Dax Shepard? I got that pretty fucking close.
41:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, but you played it down. It's not 175. It was 175.
41:17 Dax Shepard? I was up by four.
41:18 Speaker 02 Is it 179?
41:19 Dax Shepard? Four by 175, I don't know what percentage I was up. That's less than 1%.
41:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, but is it 179 straight or is it? Wow.
41:28 Dax Shepard? Let's round out.
41:30 Speaker 02 One hundred is important.
41:32 Dax Shepard? You're right.
41:32 Speaker 02 That's huge.
41:33 Dax Shepard? So you're right, you're right, you're right.
41:35 Speaker 02 So one eighty nine.
41:35 Dax Shepard? It's too fast with the puncture.
41:37 Speaker 02 Yes, right rear puncture, went off into the guardrail, went onto the roof, didn't go into the forest and into the trees, which was lucky, and I slid two hundred fifty meters and stopped. Camera is still on, I'm stopping the car, it was on fumes, and I'm de-plugging my radio and I'm getting out of the car and you think everything is normal. And then they found me behind the guardrail with the helmet and the hands on, lying on my back like I was sleeping. And I have no recollection of that.
42:06 Dax Shepard? Oh, really?
42:07 Speaker 02 So in the shock with the adrenaline, got myself out of the car.
42:10 Dax Shepard? No concussion, no.
42:11 Speaker 02 Massive concussion.
42:12 Dax Shepard? Massive concussion.
42:13 Speaker 02 They found me there unconscious, they put me in the ambulance and they were taking me to the local hospital there, oxygen on. And the worrying bit was that I had an ache in my spine and I started to feel tingling in my legs. And I thought, I can't believe that. I mean, Nikki was right.
42:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
42:32 Speaker 02 And I'm going into the hospital, they put me in an X-ray on MRI, pulled me out and there's a nurse and I'm saying, can you just please tell me whether my spine is damaged? And she says, I'm not authorized to give you that information.
42:45 Dax Shepard? That's not what you want to hear.
42:46 Speaker 02 No.
42:46 Dax Shepard? That means I'm gonna go get someone to tell you your spine is injured.
42:49 Speaker 02 Bad news. Exactly. Yeah, and I'm still having the tingling, but obviously you then make it up also.
42:54 Dax Shepard? Right, now you're really feeling some tingling.
42:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, now you're feeling it. You don't feel anything anymore.
42:58 Dax Shepard? Go to move it, oh my God, I can't move it.
43:00 Speaker 02 Yeah. So the doctor comes and he said, you're fine with the spinal cord, but you have some fractures in your vertebrae, compression fractures.
43:09 Dax Shepard? Whoa.
43:09 Speaker 02 I'm sorry to say, Mr. Wolf, but one of your eyes is tilting into the inside. What? So I had a view deviation. So because of the concussion, you know when the eye does this? How do you call it in English?
43:21 Dax Shepard? Jaeger, cross-eyed.
43:22 Speaker 02 Cross-eyed, it was a concussion. So they got me into the Frankfurt neurology with a helicopter. They checked me again there and said, that is worrying and we gotta keep you here. And I said, no, no, no, I don't want to go to Vienna. A friend of mine is a neurologist. So they said, well, you can't go to Vienna. The road is too fast in the airplane, you can't fly because of the pressure. So the doctor that I had in Vienna jumped into a private jet.
43:45 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow.
43:45 Speaker 02 Picked me up and we flew at ten thousand feet.
43:48 Dax Shepard? Oh, so you didn't have to pressurize it?
43:50 Speaker 02 So I didn't have the pressure. Came to Vienna and then that was the diagnosis and I couldn't sleep on my back for two months because of the vertigo I got spinning like you're fully drunk. I lost long pre-COVID smelling and tasting. The nerves were damaged. It came back, but everything tastes like cardboard.
44:09 Dax Shepard? You were not with Suzie yet. 2011, you got married?
44:14 Speaker 02 Yes.
44:14 Dax Shepard? So this is two years before Suzie?
44:16 Speaker 02 That's how I met her, the accident, actually, because she was on a fitness camp with all the other Mercedes drivers. She was an official Mercedes driver in touring cars.
44:23 Dax Shepard? She was also a development driver for Williams for F1. That was later. Okay.
44:28 Speaker 02 But she was on Mercedes fitness camp and I was a shareholder in the touring car team back in the day, but we didn't know each other. And there was a rumor between the drivers that Toto had a really bad accident. And they decided who would call me in hospital? And they decided Suzie would call me.
44:41 Dax Shepard? Okay, but you didn't know each other? Or you're just in passing?
44:43 Speaker 02 In passing. And that's how we started.
44:46 Dax Shepard? What did she say?
44:47 Speaker 02 Well, she said whether I was okay and she heard about the accident and we started talking and it was a half an hour phone call. So the accident was-
44:53 Dax Shepard? Can I paint a picture of how perfectly programmed Suzie was to meet Toto? So Suzie's dad owned a motorcycle shop in Scotland.
45:02 Speaker 01 Okay, she's from Scotland.
45:04 Dax Shepard? She's Scottish. Her mom came in to buy a motorcycle, presumably in the 60s or 50s or something early for a woman to walk in and buy a motorcycle.
45:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, she's cool.
45:14 Dax Shepard? So then the owner fell in love with her.
45:16 Speaker 02 More the 70s. She would be pretty upset if it was the 50s or 60s.
45:20 Dax Shepard? Okay, so sorry, Sally, you didn't mean it. I was selfishly putting her at our age. She's just not. But if your mom and dad are motorcyclists and the dad races and then you race all growing up, you're like, yeah, I recognize this. This is my dipshit dad. I think I love him.
45:39 Speaker 02 Exactly. And you know, he raced in the Isle of Man.
45:41 Dax Shepard? No.
45:42 Speaker 02 Motorbikes.
45:43 Dax Shepard? No.
45:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
45:44 Dax Shepard? He did? On like a two-stroke back in the day?
45:47 Speaker 02 I don't know, but it was the Isle of Man.
45:49 Dax Shepard? Fuck that.
45:50 Speaker 02 And that's why they got the kids into karting, because they felt that two wheels were too dangerous.
45:54 Dax Shepard? But you know, Suzie, karting champ, woman racer of the year multiple times, one of the only women to ever drive an F1 car, development driver at Williams.
46:03 Speaker 01 So cool.
46:04 Dax Shepard? Driven in practices at F1. She's a bad MF'er.
46:09 Speaker 01 So your kids, there's no question, but they have to try this.
46:12 Dax Shepard? Well, we were just talking about that.
46:15 Speaker 02 None of that. For the elder ones, Benedict is 23. He studies in USC in Los Angeles.
46:20 Dax Shepard? Oh, amazing. Your kid goes to school here?
46:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, my daughter also.
46:23 Dax Shepard? Oh, we really should be friends then.
46:25 Speaker 02 We should be.
46:25 Dax Shepard? We've got a great guest house.
46:27 Speaker 02 Okay.
46:27 Dax Shepard? You saw the cars you can borrow. I know you're only legally allowed to drive that E63 wagon, but that's fine.
46:32 Speaker 02 No, I drive all your vintage car. The truck would be exactly my car.
46:36 Dax Shepard? Okay, great.
46:37 Speaker 01 Wow.
46:37 Speaker 02 That's exactly. So the elder ones weren't interested at all. I remember when Benedict was five or six, I took him to the local kart track in Vienna and he said, I don't really want to do it. Can I go in the play park? And I thought, it's just a matter of getting him into the car and then he will love it. So I said, do a few laps. He said, three laps. Okay, three laps. So I was thinking, I'm sure it's gonna go well.
47:00 Dax Shepard? That's two extra laps. He only needs one to fall in love.
47:03 Speaker 02 Exactly. He came in after three laps and he said, that's it. Can I go to the play park? And it was clear he had no appetite.
47:11 Speaker 01 Good for him.
47:12 Speaker 02 But the small one is, I have a seven year old and he's really into it.
47:15 Dax Shepard? Yeah. So I had the same experience. I tell my daughter, she already rides a dirt bike. I say to her, look, I'm not pressuring you, but if you want to race karts, I'll race old man class. We have a tour bus. Let's do this. You and I will go to races. And she's like, all right, let me try it. I take her to K1 and she goes out in a group. It's under 12 and there's like five boys older than her and they're way faster than her and she gets a little intimidated. And she comes off and she goes, I don't want to do this. And I go, okay.
47:45 Dax Shepard? Because I'm trying to give her the childhood I was dreaming of. And you just have to let it go.
47:49 Speaker 02 Maybe it comes back.
47:50 Dax Shepard? Well, now we're 11. We get into the situation you were in. So we'll resume the story. You're 18. You go to this thing.
47:55 Speaker 02 But one second for the 11 year old. Suzie and I are of the opinion that that can flip again. So Carlos Sainz, the old man, told me that Carlos had an accident when he was six or seven. They stopped racing because the old failure was too dangerous. And a few years later, the son said, I want a go kart. So I don't think that 11 per se is too late if a kid is really into it.
48:18 Dax Shepard? True.
48:19 Speaker 02 They're more conscious. They are more able to learn. You're still building your synapses. So I think that still goes.
48:25 Dax Shepard? But you can at least relate. You go there, you got high hopes. This is going to be this wonderful thing we share. And they go, this isn't for me. This is your dream. And you go, okay.
48:33 Speaker 02 She's a pointing.
48:34 Speaker 01 Now she's moved on to her mother's dream. She's doing musical theater.
48:37 Dax Shepard? Musical theater. I would cry at either. When I watch her sing, I cry. And if she was winning races, I would cry.
48:42 Speaker 02 You're cheering now for musical theater. And whatever they do, we start to cheer for it.
48:48 Dax Shepard? You just want them to love something. I want them to love something. I don't care what it is. Just love something and chase it. That's all I want for you. I want you to be on the chase.
48:58 Speaker 02 But maybe they're too young for loving something. You know, we're putting all this pressure on the young generation. You know, you've got to have a passion and you've got to have a real interest and you've got to perform in school or at sports. I let my kids be and they're looking at Instagram and everybody's perfect. Everybody's a millionaire, has a sensational body.
49:17 Dax Shepard? They're on a boat all the time.
49:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. And so they're thinking, I'm inadequate. I'm letting them be. And my son, you know, is in his senior year. He's thinking about what to do next. And I'm taking all pressure off. I say, you don't need to have a passion at 23 because I didn't. The motor racing was gone by 23 and I seriously didn't know what I was interested in apart from making money.
49:39 Dax Shepard? Had you gone to college at all?
49:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, I was a dropout. When the racing ended, I also dropped out of college. Said, I'm going to start working now. And I would have been the youngest guy working. And I didn't care what it was. There wasn't anything like passion. One door opened, the other one closed, and another one opened and another one opened. And I'm taking the pressure out by saying, don't look at me. This is my 52nd chapter. You're in the 23rd.
50:00 Dax Shepard? Right, right, right. I was more lost than you can imagine at your age. Relax, breathe. Well, then that's my next mystery. So you pivot again, you race for a while and you're good. You're not good enough to be in F1 and you're likely too big. As I tell everyone, the only reason I'm not racing for AMG is because I'm too tall.
50:17 Speaker 02 We would be the ones with the earrings and championships on our bells.
50:23 Dax Shepard? It's rare you hear a tall guy complain about being tall. Too tall, yeah. Poor us.
50:28 Speaker 02 We all try to be small.
50:29 Dax Shepard? My shoulders are just too wide. Oh, no.
50:33 Speaker 02 Or see biceps. You know, the biceps would be a real problem.
50:37 Dax Shepard? But you pivot and you get into business. And as I understand it, and as the lore suggests, you start raising money for startups or tech internet. That's kind of newish. There's a lot of opportunities and what you start doing is going to companies and saying, I will help raise money for you, but I want some equity.
50:53 Speaker 02 Exactly.
50:54 Dax Shepard? Why the fuck did they trust you to do that? You didn't have any equity of your own to bring to the table, I can't imagine.
51:00 Speaker 02 So my friend and business partner since 30 years, Renee, was saying exactly that to me back in the day. Why the fuck should they give you equity?
51:10 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you don't deserve it.
51:12 Speaker 02 And what do you know about IPOs?
51:14 Dax Shepard? Right.
51:15 Speaker 02 So I still went there and for whatever reason convinced them and said, there is no downside for you. If I'm not raising the money for you or we're not IPO in your company, then you're not giving any shares to me.
51:26 Dax Shepard? You're like an agent, kind of. If it works out, give me 10%.
51:29 Speaker 02 Exactly. That was my selling story and it worked.
51:32 Dax Shepard? Okay. Have you started to acknowledge the gift you and I were given? This has hit me over the last five years. As things have been explained to me and I've changed my opinions on things. I was brought home to a single white trailer, ton of violent step dads, addiction all through the family. It was a rough go. So when I heard white privilege, I was like, what privilege did I have? Sure, some white kids have a lot of privilege, but I didn't have any. I was stuck on that. And then I had this moment of clarity where I was like, oh, I was a fully functioning addict for 10 years. I drove around the city. All the time with coke in my car. I was drunk half the time. I interacted with police. And I went, oh, that's the privilege. If I were black, I would be in prison for the rest of my
52:14 Dax Shepard? End of story. I would be shot. I didn't talk to police with the right amount of respect. You know, there's no way. And I was like, okay, yeah, I do have a ton of privilege. I've just now come to own the fact that being six two is a lot of it. I've directed movies. I've gone into studios and said, give me $30 million. You can trust me. I'll lead this group of 100 people into this end zone. You believe I can do. And a lot of it is I'm just tall.
52:37 Speaker 01 It looks like confidence.
52:38 Dax Shepard? Yes.
52:38 Speaker 02 So first of all, now we know each other for 45 minutes.
52:43 Speaker 02 You have aura, charisma, you're convincing, you're intelligent. That are the USPs. Or this is your character. Maybe it gives you credibility of being tall, but I have seen pretty successful men that were tiny.
52:55 Dax Shepard? Christian Horner.
52:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:59 Speaker 02 He's more square.
53:02 Speaker 02 But I think he's laughing about that.
53:04 Dax Shepard? I like Horner. I interviewed him. I had a good time.
53:06 Speaker 02 Well, let's not go too far, but I think he can laugh about it. So there is tiny men that I have met who were very powerful and successful. Look at Bernie Ecclestone.
53:14 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, F1's littered with tiny men who are powerful and successful. The drivers.
53:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, many that have failed drivers and saw the humiliation of not being good enough. There's not many successful drivers that made a success out of a management career.
53:26 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
53:27 Speaker 02 I think you're reducing yourself to your height or to your physical.
53:30 Dax Shepard? I think it's in the mix. I think it's one of the gifts I was given.
53:33 Speaker 01 Well, I think it's made you feel confident. It's had that impact. And so then you exude confidence and that's compelling to people.
53:40 Dax Shepard? Yeah, chicken or egg, I guess.
53:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. I will say with the privilege thing, though, I think privilege is not the right word. I mean, it's the easy thing that's been spread around, but it's more benefit of the doubt. It's like white benefit of the doubt, really.
53:54 Dax Shepard? I'm gonna assume this kid's not high on drugs.
53:56 Speaker 02 I think if you go back to a white trailer and you have abuse and alcohol, you had a rough upbringing and that is part of your trauma and your humiliation that shaped you. Addiction, certainly is a self destruction phenomenon, in my opinion, or because it's just fun.
54:13 Dax Shepard? Have you had any pull towards that? What's your relationship with alcohol?
54:16 Speaker 02 Obviously, everybody was into alcohol at a certain stage. That worked really well for me.
54:21 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When it works, it's fun.
54:23 Speaker 02 Exactly. So I was never into drugs in my school. Everybody would smoke joints. I didn't smoke any cigarettes. Everybody smoked cigarettes as well. I felt that it never worked. Obviously, you got munchkins and you were giggling a lot, but I felt it doesn't work for me. But there was an incident. We were in an apartment of a friend of mine, sixteen years old. So the whole purpose of the Saturday night was smoking a water pipe or whatever. So we did all of that, didn't give me a lot. And then I left the apartment and walked about ten minutes to the subway station. Down in the subway station, and you know, there's this yellow lines where you wait for the metro to come. And I stood there, I realized I didn't have any shoes on.
55:00 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
55:02 Speaker 02 So I am walking back into the apartment, ringing at the door. This stone friend of mine opens the door and I'm saying, I forgot my shoes. And that made their night. They were laughing it off. So it had an effect. But I was too scared of the rest. I was already mentally fragile and I was scared that it would leave me in a dark place. That's why I never dived into it. But we tried a lot.
55:27 Dax Shepard? Oh, you know, another reason we might not be seeing eye to eye on the height thing is yours came really late, didn't it?
55:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I think that's a big distinction. I've been this size since I was twelve.
55:36 Speaker 02 Ah, okay. No, with me, it was catastrophic. You know, I was one eighty, which is six foot, and my weight was under pounds.
55:43 Speaker 01 Wow.
55:45 Speaker 02 So that was pretty bad.
55:47 Dax Shepard? That was me in high school.
55:48 Speaker 01 String be.
55:49 Speaker 02 We weren't very attractive for the girls.
55:51 Dax Shepard? No, I had a huge nose, a terrible haircut. I was so skinny and tall. It was rough.
55:56 Speaker 02 Same for me. So more humiliation.
55:58 Dax Shepard? Do you identify with being handsome? Like, when people tell you you're handsome, do you accept that that's reality? Or do you still think, nah, I think you're confused?
56:05 Speaker 02 I think you're confused. You do.
56:06 Dax Shepard? Isn't that wild? Yeah, me too. I'm like, no, no, I'm an ugly duckling from high school. No one liked me.
56:11 Speaker 02 But that's maybe why you're working out, you're trying to compensate it because you're really not believing in that.
56:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly.
56:17 Speaker 02 And then I don't want to look at myself too much because that is vain and narcissistic, but I still do.
56:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
56:24 Speaker 01 We're a human.
56:25 Dax Shepard? I look at you enough. I follow Suzie's Instagram and she's really generous. There'll be pictures of you wakeboarding, pictures of you holding the kid over your head on the beach. She's helping us out.
56:35 Speaker 02 But she would never post like a swim trunk photo. For her, that's ridiculous. And I'm a grown up man and I shouldn't do the Instagram thing of a racing driver showing off.
56:46 Speaker 01 She's keeping you humble.
56:47 Speaker 02 She does. And you know, we have fun at home when you're in front of the mirror and you're doing some stupid posing.
56:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
56:51 Speaker 02 And she says, that's really turning me off. Don't do that.
56:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah, she's direct.
56:57 Speaker 01 I'm glad you have her. That's good.
56:59 Speaker 02 We learned pretty early that our family life is only good if our marriage is good. So when you look at the way she talks about herself, number one is wife, number two is being a mother. And that's very unusual.
57:13 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
57:13 Speaker 02 And the career comes third. So she would say, I want to have my own career. But if I had to compromise on number one and number two, I wouldn't compromise.
57:22 Dax Shepard? And nor I.
57:23 Speaker 02 Nor me.
57:24 Dax Shepard? I wouldn't do it either.
57:25 Speaker 02 She's such a good manager or entrepreneur. I think she could do much more and she could base herself in London or so. And she says, I don't want it. And I'm saying to her, you know, if you were to have a career in motorsport and you were conflicted with me, I would step out of an executive role. It's anyway a lot at the moment and become a dormant shareholder. But she says, let's look at the big picture here. I think we gotta rely on you.
57:50 Dax Shepard? You have to be realistic about who can do what. There's been moments in our marriage where we should prioritize her career. It's generating much more money. And then there's been times where mine's generating more money. So we gotta prioritize mine.
58:01 Speaker 02 Absolutely. And I was also put off, you know, when you're following this cliche of being with a model or.
58:06 Dax Shepard? I'm embarrassed for those guys.
58:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, me too.
58:09 Dax Shepard? I see them and I go, where's the personality? Where's the challenge? This is embarrassing for you.
58:14 Speaker 02 But I think you need to go through that. First of all, they're never yours alone because they seek recognition as well. If a girl stares at her own pictures on the computer, that's a warning sign for me.
58:27 Speaker 02 Staring too much.
58:28 Dax Shepard? Yes, yes. There's a healthy version.
58:30 Speaker 01 You say that all the time about not wanting models, but you did try it.
58:35 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, yeah. I attempted to raise my own self-esteem through other women. And I didn't like myself anymore. When I looked in their mirror and I was over, I was like, oh, this doesn't work. I can't absorb their high status. I'm trying to, but I can't.
58:49 Speaker 02 I'm not following that cliche. And when I see men, like you say, said, what are you thinking?
58:54 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
58:54 Speaker 02 A friend of mine, he got together with this beautiful lady and he was very famous. And she left him now. And Suzie was very pragmatic to him. He said, what did you expect?
59:04 Dax Shepard? Right, right, right. What did you think? Was that the end of this?
59:07 Speaker 02 Exactly.
59:08 Dax Shepard? For people who don't know a lot about F1, and obviously this podcast is largely women and not F1 fans, although we've turned a lot of people into F1s, Danny Ricciardo.
59:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, we love Danny.
59:17 Dax Shepard? Daniel and I are really good friends and he's been on a bunch of times.
59:20 Speaker 02 I wear his merchandise. He brings me that stuff. It's great.
59:24 Dax Shepard? Monica wears it too.
59:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, I love it.
59:25 Speaker 02 Super cool.
59:26 Dax Shepard? He has a very great eye. He's a wonderful dude.
59:29 Speaker 01 Talk about charm.
59:30 Dax Shepard? Oh.
59:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, and he's always so positive.
59:33 Speaker 01 Yes.
59:34 Speaker 02 How this ended is a real shame. How they didn't give him the platform because he's done so, so well. But I don't think it's the end of his career, the style that he has with his fashion collection.
59:44 Speaker 01 Oh, he's gonna be fine.
59:45 Speaker 02 He's gonna be fine, for sure.
59:47 Dax Shepard? So for people who don't know, Formula One is 23 races and it's all over the world. And not only is it all over the world, it is not planned with any seeming logic. So it's like you'll be in the Middle East one race and then the very next race you're in Europe, then you're in the US, then you're in Asia. You live seven, eight, nine months of the year, weekly adjusting your sleep schedule by 12 hours sometimes. I don't know how that's manageable. How many miles a year do you fly?
1:00:13 Speaker 02 I don't know miles, but it's about 600 hours.
1:00:15 Dax Shepard? How are you managing your sleep? What is your routine? I want to hear about how you exercise. You've got a gorgeous physique.
1:00:21 Speaker 02 Oh, but it's not on your level.
1:00:23 Dax Shepard? No, it's gorgeous, especially considering your schedule. I've talked about it with my friend Charlie, who owns a CrossFit gym. He is an Adonis. And we both go, the other route to go would be Toto, which is like, this guy's clearly an athlete. He's not bulky, but he's lean. It's a look. That's what Monica, that's what everyone likes. Yeah, yeah. That's preferred. This is for other guys.
1:00:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's a man to.
1:00:47 Dax Shepard? Man thing. This is still insecurities from junior high. Yeah, exactly.
1:00:51 Speaker 02 I think he has a more intellectual angle if you're not too bulky.
1:00:55 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:00:56 Speaker 02 But you are bulky there.
1:00:57 Dax Shepard? What do you do for your physical fitness, for your diet? Anytime I learned something, we did the same thing. I loved it. One was I eat the exact same meal every single day. But I want to hear about what you eat, how you deal with your sleep and what's your exercise routine? And what is your kind of mental health approach to the highest pressure job someone could have?
1:01:14 Speaker 02 So let's start with the last one because that's most important. I am more at risk of a bore out than a burnout. That sounds like stresses where I'm most comfortable, but it is. But unfortunately, it's only a coping mechanism. I would love to sit on a stool in a coffee shop in Greece or Sicily and not do anything and read a newspaper. But I can't. My mind is too busy. The more pressure I have, the better I feel. That's my real comfort zone. I had to take decisions at the age of eight.
1:01:45 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Yeah, right.
1:01:46 Speaker 02 I never think about it. I go in a restaurant, I look at the menu, it takes 10 seconds. So I only wear the same clothes. Louis thinks about me, I'm the most boring fashion guy.
1:01:56 Dax Shepard? Well, he is very fashionable. You guys are fun opposites. Yeah, it is.
1:02:00 Speaker 02 We are very fun opposites.
1:02:01 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is fun. It's a odd couple. It's a great odd couple.
1:02:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, we are. He hates everything I wear. He hates the most my shoes that are coming from a tailor in Vienna. He doesn't take any more clients and I'm showing them and he says, this is the ugliest pair of shoes that I have ever seen. But that's part of simplification. I wear the same trousers, the same shoes in every color. Blue, beige, gray suits, it's all the same. So I'm not thinking too much when I'm packing. But in terms of the mental health, I think as long as I have to solve problems, I'm really in a good space. When it's calm and comfortable, I can take it for 10 days. A holiday or so, I start to not feel well at all. It's not like I want to be busy, but it's like I'm going into a darker place because it needs the balance. I realized we took a holiday in Sardinia, which is a beautiful place for three days in July, mid-season.
1:02:50 Speaker 02 And I remember floating on my back in the sea, in the azure water. And I thought, I feel so. Oh, great. We went to the same place for three weeks holiday.
1:02:59 Dax Shepard? Three weeks.
1:03:00 Speaker 02 I never felt good.
1:03:03 Speaker 02 It got worse and worse.
1:03:04 Dax Shepard? I tell my wife, I'm like, I'll go anywhere, I'll do anything. But every other day, I gotta get in the car on the island and go explore. I gotta do something novel. I gotta stimulate. I gotta meet some people.
1:03:14 Speaker 02 I don't wanna necessarily speak to people, but I wanna be in the middle and look at them.
1:03:19 Dax Shepard? Yes, a piazza in Italy.
1:03:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:22 Dax Shepard? I can do that for seven hours.
1:03:23 Speaker 02 Exactly.
1:03:24 Dax Shepard? For dinner.
1:03:24 Speaker 02 A few cappuccini.
1:03:25 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:03:27 Speaker 02 And look at them and think about who are they, what's their life.
1:03:31 Dax Shepard? Is it as romantic as it looks?
1:03:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly.
1:03:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:03:34 Speaker 02 But I don't wanna talk with them.
1:03:36 Dax Shepard? Okay, I'll do the talking.
1:03:37 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:03:37 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:03:38 Speaker 01 When you guys go on your buddy.
1:03:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah, motorcycle trip.
1:03:41 Speaker 02 And I'm listening. I think we're a good combo.
1:03:44 Dax Shepard? So the mental health, when you're on the road and you are in the middle of the season, do you have a checklist?
1:03:49 Speaker 02 I tried all sorts of meditation, transcendental meditation, Ayurvedic meditation, then with a mantra, mindfulness, breathing, Jacobson, I did all of that. Doesn't work for me because it's too calm. Trying to calm my mind doesn't work. I need the opposite. I need activities that stress me. That's why racing a car is so fine, because there's nothing else you can think about. I like going to the gym and go ballistic, so I can't breathe anymore. I'm into freediving.
1:04:20 Dax Shepard? Oh, you are?
1:04:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, I do lots of that.
1:04:22 Dax Shepard? Because you saw the Deep Blue, the Luc Besson movie as a kid?
1:04:25 Speaker 02 Le Grand Bleu, the long version. Did you see the long version?
1:04:28 Dax Shepard? Of course, Jean Reno.
1:04:29 Speaker 02 Fantastic. So I do this. I got George and Lewis into freediving also.
1:04:33 Dax Shepard? Really? What's the farthest you've?
1:04:35 Speaker 02 Thirty-five.
1:04:36 Dax Shepard? Thirty-five meters?
1:04:37 Speaker 02 Meters, on and fifteen feet. So I'm not using weight, it's just swimming down myself. And Netflix made quite a thing. There's an episode of George in Drive to Survive next. So we went freediving. They had a full camera crew, two boats, divers in the water, scuba divers to look at us and do all of the filming, mainly for George. So I'm the semi-pro and we're doing this first dive with the world champion that is coaching us. And the first dive is an accommodation dive, so you go. Five, 10 meters, your body gets used to it. So the mind says, okay, we are here in uh, abnoe mode. Uh, we need to hold the breath and manage our energy level. So I'm doing my accommodation dive 25 meters, 75 feet.
1:05:20 Speaker 02 And I'm going down at 10 meters and I feel so great. So I'm thinking I'm gonna go all the way down. It's easy. I feel a little bit of a pressure in my right ear. Pang, I do my eardrum.
1:05:30 Speaker 01 Ah.
1:05:31 Speaker 02 First shitty dive, the whole Netflix thing is gone.
1:05:35 Dax Shepard? You look like a chump.
1:05:38 Speaker 02 George does his three meters, seven meters. And by the end he was at 25 as well. So yeah, that wasn't my greatest moment. But freediving is great because you can't think about anything else.
1:05:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah, the exact same story, but a little different. They wanted to do a story on me for some TV show and they
1:05:53 Speaker 02 So.
1:05:54 Speaker 01 Maybe it's a child.
1:05:55 Dax Shepard? This is great.
1:05:56 Speaker 02 Benedict, my son.
1:05:57 Dax Shepard? Oh, wonderful. Let's see what he's up to. Tell him you're in Los Feliz.
1:06:01 Speaker 02 Hi, I'm in a podcast, really fun one. You wanna speak to the guy?
1:06:04 Dax Shepard? Ask him if he's heard of it, Armchair Expert.
1:06:06 Speaker 02 Armchair Expert. He knows that he looked at it because I said to him, can you check out that I should be doing this?
1:06:10 Speaker 01 To make sure it's good.
1:06:11 Speaker 02 You're in the podcast.
1:06:13 Speaker 01 Wow, Dax, you're getting everyone.
1:06:14 Dax Shepard? Benedict? Oh, I'm good. This is Dax. You're going to USC? Yeah. And what are you majoring in? In business. In business. You didn't get pulled towards film and television? I did not. I don't know if I like this. I don't know if that was the right move.
1:06:31 Speaker 01 Oh, boy.
1:06:32 Dax Shepard? My sister was in the car, she's doing comms. She's doing comms. But what's your name? I'm Rosie. Hi, Rosie. We've got a whole plan laid out. Your dad's gonna start spending a ton of time here in LA at my guest house. So obviously you guys will be in the mix quite a bit. You're living downtown. Benedict, you're doing everything wrong.
1:06:48 Speaker 01 No, no, let him be. He's doing great.
1:06:52 Dax Shepard? You need to major in film directing and you need to live in Los Feliz and we gotta get you straightened out. And I know we're running out of time. This is your senior year. All right, I'm gonna turn you over to your dad now. Your dad's getting frustrated. This is his time and not your time.
1:07:06 Speaker 02 Hey, nein, ich bin kommend in Air from Dax. Wir wollen Kostet ein Poli. Bye bye.
1:07:10 Speaker 01 One phrase, Dax knows.
1:07:11 Speaker 02 What is the?
1:07:12 Dax Shepard? How much is your shirt cost? Viva Costa de Puli?
1:07:14 Speaker 02 Viva Costa de Puli, yeah.
1:07:16 Dax Shepard? Come on, I'll send you the boys.
1:07:17 Speaker 02 I'm sending them the address.
1:07:18 Dax Shepard? Okay, great, great, great. Okay, you need to be stimulated. What about sleep? How on earth do you deal with that?
1:07:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, so we had a NASA doctor that gave us sleep plans. And say, this is how you are accommodated for jet lag. Because obviously astronauts in 24 hours, I don't know how many times they have a sunset and sunrise.
1:07:37 Dax Shepard? Every hour and a half. They're going 17,500 miles an hour around a 24,000 mile object.
1:07:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, so they need to sleep somehow. And the truth is, our eyes react to daylight. So we were wearing shades when we took off, even if it was day in the airplane. We were eating breakfast at four o'clock in the afternoon because it was breakfast time in Japan. But now, after many years in the sport, I changed my thinking and what I do. And that is, I just don't care.
1:08:04 Dax Shepard? You don't stress about it?
1:08:05 Speaker 02 I don't stress about it. I sleep wherever I can. In the plane, I sleep or when I'm awake. I'm not looking at the time zone of arrival. I arrive and it's daylight or night and I try to sleep. And if not, I'm taking a little bit of a melatonin or we have also sleeping pill if you work the next day. Not the heavy stuff and it's only fall asleep pill. It's not the one that puts you into coma.
1:08:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:08:26 Dax Shepard? Right, right, or makes you get up and make a grilled cheese in the middle of the night. And not, no. Or walk to the subway with your shoes off.
1:08:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, and when you're like, ooh, wow. And you can't pronounce it.
1:08:36 Dax Shepard? I'll take a second one of these.
1:08:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:08:40 Speaker 03 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.
1:08:47 Dax Shepard? We get support from No Bull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.
1:08:57 Speaker 01 That's when you really need to ground yourself.
1:08:59 Dax Shepard? Exactly, and that's why I keep my training routine through the holidays. It's the whole No Bull idea. There's a no bullshit training brand built around consistency, honesty and just putting in the work. It's not about adding more pressure to an already packed schedule. It's about having the gear and the habits to move through the season your way. My personal favorite, all three of them. The shoes are fantastic. The Outwork, the Outwork Flex and the Drive Two. I like the Drive Two because it's a hybrid and I lift, of course, but I also like to do what's called box jumps.
1:09:29 Speaker 01 Ah.
1:09:30 Dax Shepard? Right? I do a lot of jumping onto a little platform and I want a little more flexibility. And boy, do they deliver.
1:09:36 Speaker 01 And if you're a cardio person and you're running and you also need to be lifting.
1:09:40 Dax Shepard? And the style is banging. I don't know what to say. Beautiful style, very breathable, very, very comfortable, lots of support. They were built for lifting.
1:09:48 Speaker 01 They also make a great holiday gift. You know, I love gifting, a purposeful one that actually supports someone's goals and routines. And it's not a gift that just ends up in the back of a closet.
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1:11:14 Speaker 02 I was in Japan with Suzie and we were in this hotel in Tokyo and I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep. So I took a half of a sleeping pill and she gets up and I said, why are you getting up in the middle of the night? And she says, it's nine o'clock in the morning. And I was, fuck, I just took a sleeping pill.
1:11:30 Speaker 01 Oh, no.
1:11:30 Speaker 02 She did all the sightseeing. I slept for the whole day. I sleep when I sleep. I'm awake when I'm awake, but I follow my nutrition discipline in a very, very strict way.
1:11:42 Dax Shepard? I know breakfast is two pieces of pumpernickel toast, extra crispy, tomato, cheese?
1:11:49 Speaker 02 No tomato, ham.
1:11:50 Dax Shepard? Ham, ham, ham, ham. And an espresso and a sparkly water.
1:11:55 Speaker 02 I don't do it anymore.
1:11:56 Dax Shepard? What don't you do?
1:11:57 Speaker 02 I don't do breakfast anymore.
1:11:58 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:11:59 Dax Shepard? That's done.
1:12:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's done. I do a cappuccino.
1:12:02 Dax Shepard? No breakfast?
1:12:03 Speaker 02 No breakfast because I feel like that is useless calories. I'm not hungry anyway. The cappuccino is a little treat. It does me feel a little bit sick afterwards, so I'm not hungry.
1:12:15 Dax Shepard? The right amount of nausea.
1:12:16 Speaker 02 Exactly. And then I'm having lunch and dinner and for lunch, wherever I am on the racetrack, I only eat the same. And that is chicken breast, some vegetable, tomato, and I treat myself to half a glass of full sugar Coca-Cola. That's good for digestion.
1:12:30 Dax Shepard? Okay, half a glass of regular Coca-Cola.
1:12:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, not your half-pregnant Diet Coke.
1:12:36 Dax Shepard? Right, right. You're disgusted by that. You're smarter than Bill Gates and I, but continue.
1:12:41 Speaker 02 You got me on that one. Dinner, try to do lean protein, but then I can indulge as well. If I see something really nice on the menu or if the local food is marvelous, then I will have.
1:12:53 Dax Shepard? Big plate of pasta when you're at Monza?
1:12:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, the pasta.
1:12:57 Speaker 01 Do you drink wine?
1:12:58 Speaker 02 I don't drink wine. I don't drink beer because of the gluten. It doesn't do me any well. If I'm drinking alcohol, then it's full blast vodka.
1:13:07 Dax Shepard? That's the Romanian in you.
1:13:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, Polish. You don't drink huge amounts and you have to like 20 minutes, you're already having fun.
1:13:14 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:13:14 Speaker 02 The liquid is not huge and you're not mixing, so I don't feel sick. I don't feel bad next day.
1:13:19 Speaker 01 Hungover. Nice.
1:13:21 Dax Shepard? Okay, I have just a couple of remaining questions. These are just curiosities. March 15, March 16, these are the names of your two companies. Are those people's birthdays?
1:13:30 Speaker 02 No, that was the day I set the company up, so I wasn't very creative. So I said, why don't we do the day today?
1:13:36 Dax Shepard? Okay, and then just by coincidence in 2004, it happened to be March 16?
1:13:40 Speaker 02 No, I took the next date.
1:13:42 Dax Shepard? Okay, so it had a reason at the beginning and then it didn't have a reason at the end. Breakfast, we talked about.
1:13:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, working out because you're a gym person. I'm not a cardio person. Are you a cardio person?
1:13:51 Dax Shepard? I hike. That's the extent of my cardio. I can't get on a treadmill. I can't jog.
1:13:56 Speaker 02 Cycling.
1:13:56 Dax Shepard? Cycling.
1:13:57 Speaker 02 We're too tall for bicycles. We're looking like huge gorillas on this tiny little thing.
1:14:02 Dax Shepard? Even me on the race motorcycle, I look ridiculous. People will comment when I post pictures, I think I look so cool and they're like, is that a normal sized bike?
1:14:09 Speaker 02 Exactly.
1:14:09 Dax Shepard? Normal sized bike.
1:14:10 Speaker 02 Exactly. And we're not good with aerodynamics as well. So we have a deficit against everybody else.
1:14:15 Dax Shepard? Yes, but under braking, it's good. If I sit up, I pull a lot of drag.
1:14:18 Speaker 02 Like Valentino Rossi, put your leg out also to balance.
1:14:21 Dax Shepard? Were you there the day that Valentino and Lewis swapped?
1:14:26 Speaker 02 No, but I had to give permission. So I gave it and I think they both enjoyed it a lot. Lewis is the annoying kid in school that does everything right and fast.
1:14:34 Dax Shepard? He was quite good on the bike.
1:14:36 Speaker 02 Yeah. So I tell you a story about biking secretly that didn't tell me. They went testing with my head of strategy, who is also a keen motorbike guy and one of the engineers. And I couldn't get hold of him for two days. And then I'm calling Lewis, my engineer picks up and he says, it's all good. All is fine. We just finished biking and just whatever you hear, he's all fine.
1:14:55 Speaker 01 Uh oh.
1:14:56 Speaker 02 I said, what happened?
1:14:58 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
1:14:59 Speaker 02 He fell. But he was four seconds off the MotoGP pros only.
1:15:04 Dax Shepard? No.
1:15:05 Speaker 02 It's unbelievable. The body feeling that he has is what makes him a champion.
1:15:09 Dax Shepard? But in that doc, Valentino is my god. I mean, that is number one. People have Jordan, I have Valentino Rossi, the doctor, 46. He's everything. The spirit of him, he's so elegant. Everything's so great. He was not terribly far off Lewis in the car. I thought what he did in the car was kind of mind blowing.
1:15:27 Speaker 02 I think for motorbike guys, it's easier to drive car fast than for car people because it's just so much more complicated with balance on the bike.
1:15:36 Dax Shepard? And I think the braking on a motorcycle takes some real work.
1:15:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:15:40 Dax Shepard? But my favorite part of that doc is Valentino Rossi. There's this great documentary with these two come together. They're both Monster Energy athletes. So I think it was sponsored by Monster and Valentino gets to drive his F1 car slash Toto's F1 car.
1:15:53 Speaker 01 I see, I see, I see.
1:15:54 Dax Shepard? And then Lewis rode Valentino's MotoGP bike, which is a fucking handful. This is like a 320 buck.
1:16:00 Speaker 01 But he did, great, okay.
1:16:01 Speaker 02 Goes much faster than a car, but doesn't brake because obviously you have no contact.
1:16:06 Dax Shepard? And the corner speed's lower, but yeah, they're going 225 miles an hour at every track. It's nuts. But anyways, Valentino Russell, he's got the cutest personality imaginable. And he is a Formula One nerd. He's been watching and he loves Lewis and he loves Bono, Lewis's race engineer who's always in his ear. So he's been watching for years and he's hearing Bono say to Lewis, push, push, push. So Valentino gets in the car and he goes, hello, Bono? And he goes, yes, Valentino? And he goes, will you tell it to me? A push, push, push? And Bono says, push, push, push. And he's like, ah!
1:16:40 Speaker 01 He's been waiting his whole life for that?
1:16:42 Dax Shepard? Yes, it was the purest moment.
1:16:44 Speaker 01 God, isn't it funny though? You can be the absolute best at what they do, the top of their field, their phenoms. And yet they want to be the best at something else. Like, we are not satisfied as people. It is crazy.
1:16:56 Speaker 02 But they are from a special breed also, never satisfied.
1:17:01 Speaker 01 Yes. I mean, I guess that's how you get to be those people.
1:17:05 Speaker 02 I hope I'm not saying anything that would be important for him, intimate. He asked me once, you'd rather be successful or happy?
1:17:12 Speaker 01 We have talked about this too.
1:17:13 Speaker 02 And I said, what is it with you? And he said, successful.
1:17:17 Dax Shepard? You want to hear verbatim one of my questions to you?
1:17:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:17:20 Dax Shepard? Are there certain endeavors that are inherently antithetical to mental health? The goal of a healthy human should be to feel worthy of love and affection regardless of their status or accomplishments. But that simply cannot be the goal of a person pursuing victory or perfection. How do we make peace with that? Your human goals are antithetical to almost your career goals. As a human, what we would strive for is that I'm worthy of love and affection, just because I exist. But in racing and business, it's not that. That's not the rules of the game. So you're balancing what you want as a human and then also what you want as someone engaged in an endeavor.
1:17:59 Speaker 02 But there are people that are really happy with their lives and they don't thrive for being in some kind of record books. Whatever our KPIs are, our various KPIs, yours of the two of you will be very different than what you want to achieve to mine specifically.
1:18:12 Speaker 01 Was your answer happiness or was it success?
1:18:14 Speaker 02 Since a few years. Are converging. Before it was success only.
1:18:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:18:19 Dax Shepard? You're also sixteen years older than Lewis?
1:18:22 Speaker 02 Twelve.
1:18:22 Speaker 01 He's my age.
1:18:24 Dax Shepard? Well, he's two years older than you.
1:18:25 Speaker 02 He's fourteen in January.
1:18:26 Speaker 01 Oh, Capricorn.
1:18:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, Capricorn. You know that. I'm not into birthday, you know. I forgot.
1:18:32 Dax Shepard? Geburtstags?
1:18:33 Speaker 02 Geburtstag. I forgot my wife's birthday.
1:18:35 Speaker 01 Oh, that's not a good.
1:18:37 Speaker 02 So we were in a hotel in Stuttgart. We were coming down in the lobby. There is my team waiting for us and they're all, happy birthday. So we. And I was like, oh, fuck. So everybody looked at me because they know I'm not good with these dates. Every day needs to be a birthday. Why need to celebrate that you're already older than you are?
1:18:57 Dax Shepard? I couldn't agree more. I think it's embarrassing to have birthday parties. All of it's embarrassing.
1:19:02 Speaker 01 Nice.
1:19:03 Speaker 02 But I get that you're celebrating that you're still alive. Maybe that's the reason. She's looking at me and she laughs and said, I had it all prepared for the afternoon.
1:19:11 Dax Shepard? That's what you said. Wait till you see what's coming in noon. You're texting someone on your team.
1:19:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:19:17 Speaker 01 Help, help.
1:19:19 Speaker 02 No, I got a card. But she knows me. So we have a weird age gap of this twelve years, but the gap is more like, not a dad and son, it's more like brothers.
1:19:29 Dax Shepard? It's not father-son?
1:19:30 Speaker 02 No, no, no. We are much more peers, friends than father-son. We can vice versa play different roles if the other one needs the support or, you know, difficult periods.
1:19:42 Dax Shepard? I don't want to ask you this question because I don't think you're gonna like it, but it crossed my mind. Was there any part of you that was relieved that Lewis decided to leave and that you never had to make that decision?
1:19:52 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
1:19:53 Dax Shepard? You couldn't make that decision?
1:19:54 Speaker 02 I couldn't make the decision from a personal standpoint. We owe him so much. And I didn't want to do the decision as Mercedes, letting the greatest champion ever go.
1:20:05 Dax Shepard? It's so disrespectful.
1:20:06 Speaker 02 And maybe he felt that also. That's part of it. He knew that Antonelli is in the pipeline. It was something that I almost had in the back of my mind that that would happen.
1:20:16 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I think it's heartbreaking, but I also think it's the best version of what could have happened.
1:20:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was a curveball thrown at us and it still feels weird that he's gonna wear a Ferrari over or next year and drive the red car. It's just a bit surreal. But we had this seventeen-year-old in the pipeline. I didn't want to miss out on him like I did with Max back in the day. I didn't have a car. So that is all falling into place.
1:20:37 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:20:37 Speaker 02 And I can kind of get where he's coming from because we weren't successful. Our car was not quick enough. Certainly had a mega offer on the table. Every Formula One driver wants to drive a Ferrari.
1:20:47 Dax Shepard? I think that's it for me. Like as someone who loved someone, even if I wanted them in my life still, I would understand like, yeah, that's what Schumacher did. That's what you do.
1:20:56 Speaker 02 I want the best for him, even though I'm gonna aim to beat him next year, but I want the best for him also from a personal side.
1:21:02 Dax Shepard? I had a little fantasy when he left that you were somehow gonna get Adrian Newey and Max.
1:21:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:21:10 Speaker 01 Me too. I also have that fantasy.
1:21:13 Speaker 02 So what can I say?
1:21:15 Dax Shepard? You can't say shit.
1:21:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think on the engineering side, I'm really happy where we are. We're not having the success on track that we would want to. We had three race victories this year, two on merit. But I feel in a really happy space with James Allison being our technical director. We are reorganizing the team. We've hired, we have like some people go and on drivers, yours, Max and I, we always had a correct relationship. It suffered a bit in 2021 because it got dirty from both sides.
1:21:40 Dax Shepard? Mm hmm. Also, it sucks you were on the inside of it, so it's not as pleasurable. On the outside, what a year.
1:21:45 Speaker 02 What a year, yeah.
1:21:46 Dax Shepard? What a fucking year.
1:21:47 Speaker 02 And it's part of a great success we're having today. It was really dramatic. And I remember the topic that nobody wanted to touch on many Christmas tables was Trump, Brexit and Abu Dhabi 2021.
1:21:59 Dax Shepard? Right. I've been in many fights on my own. I have a single question about that event.
1:22:03 Speaker 01 Can we give some context for people who don't know?
1:22:06 Dax Shepard? The most improbable thing happened, which is in 2021, Max and Lewis entered the final race tied at 235.5 points. Something like this.
1:22:16 Speaker 02 I don't remember the point. Impossible, same points.
1:22:19 Dax Shepard? And a half point somehow. Add up the improbability that he has 2,500 employees making a car. Red Bull has 2,000 employees. You have all those variables, different designs, two different human beings.
1:22:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:22:31 Dax Shepard? They're finishing every single qualifying within a hundredth of a second. There's too many variables for, it's impossible. Now you add in through all this dramatic season, there were points taken away, there were laps given back, there was judgment. Calls they land at 235.5. It's not possible. The race goes on. Max is not going to win. He is behind three cars that have been lapped. There's an accident. The race goes under a safety car, so everyone's bunched up. Now, here's my question. As I understand it, and I could be totally wrong. They unlapped cars that have been passed. So the person between Max and Lewis, they're number one and two, but there's three cars in there. But they're in spots 18, 19, 20.
1:23:15 Dax Shepard? So the rules, as I understand them, is that under a safety car, the cars in between are allowed to unlap themselves. So they're allowed to go out in front of the lead car and join the back of the pack where they belong.
1:23:25 Speaker 01 I see. Okay.
1:23:26 Dax Shepard? But what's really weird is that they don't unlap them right away. That to me is like, this is the problem. It's not like who did what. It's like, they should have been unlapped right away. They weren't. So four laps goes by and then they make a decision with one lap left to let them unlap.
1:23:39 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:23:40 Dax Shepard? Max is on brand new tires. Lewis is on 13 lap old tires. The safety car pulls up and Max passes him within two turns and he wins the championship. It would have been Lewis's eighth championship, which would have made him surpass Schumacher. The stakes could not have paused. I mean, the drama of it, it'll never get better. Now, my question, and when I've been in arguments with people, I'm like, are you saying that they don't unlap cars? Are you saying in that situation, they shouldn't have unlapped cars?
1:24:04 Speaker 02 The strict interpretation of the rules is you need to unlap the cars and make them join at the back. So take one box, we win the championship. It's clear because there's not enough laps left and the race finishes under safety car. The second version is, once you make the cars unlap, you need one more lap before green flag. We win the championship. The third one was more of an outlier against the rules. But we could understand is give it the last lap. So you have a green flag lap and not behind a safety car. Then Lewis would have won because there was a few cars in between.
1:24:36 Dax Shepard? Well, that's questionable.
1:24:37 Speaker 02 Three or four cars in between.
1:24:38 Dax Shepard? I mean, Max potentially could have got by them and I don't know.
1:24:41 Speaker 02 But I, you know, was anyway not part of the rule. We couldn't have pitted for fresh tires because we were in the lead. We would have given up position.
1:24:47 Dax Shepard? That's right.
1:24:48 Speaker 02 And then the race would have ended up under yellow or safety car. So we would have lost the race. So five laps to the end, we are world champions. There is no scenario.
1:24:57 Dax Shepard? You've won.
1:24:58 Speaker 02 We've won.
1:24:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:24:59 Speaker 02 One, I can see in the garage already. And then someone decides.
1:25:04 Speaker 02 The rate of world championship should end with a lap. And what you say, unlapping those cars in the middle is unheard of. Both drivers were deserving champions because of the up and down during the season. And probably both of them should have been world champions.
1:25:18 Dax Shepard? I'll argue too, you had a better car than Red Bull that year.
1:25:20 Speaker 02 At the end, not the first half of the year. I think Lewis was the stronger driver in the second half. Max was in the first half and the same with the cars. They should have both had the trophy. But on that day, in that race, the race was decided and it fell the other way.
1:25:34 Dax Shepard? This is the most controversial thing in all of it.
1:25:36 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:25:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, probably in most sports.
1:25:39 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:25:40 Speaker 02 That was so clear that the referee decided to do something which was not in the rulebook. Not even a judgment call, but just not in the rulebook. But having said that, it was more like the madness of it.
1:25:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah, the chaos and the confusion.
1:25:55 Speaker 02 Exactly. And I felt that the other side, and that's not Max, but you know, there was not a one sentence in saying that was a difficult day for Mercedes.
1:26:03 Dax Shepard? That could have gone either way. We got lucky.
1:26:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, they are both deserving champions. Today it went against Mercedes, it went against us before. There was not one word from Christian or the other team.
1:26:14 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:26:14 Speaker 02 In acknowledging that it was like entitlement.
1:26:17 Dax Shepard? I'm guessing though, because it was so disputable that to even say that sentence would have felt like it could have tipped it. I don't know.
1:26:25 Speaker 02 We would have said it.
1:26:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, it would have been the right thing to do. There's humans at the end of all of this.
1:26:31 Speaker 02 Exactly.
1:26:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and I entered the sport through Drive to Survive.
1:26:34 Speaker 02 Did you?
1:26:35 Dax Shepard? Yes.
1:26:35 Speaker 02 Really? Okay.
1:26:36 Dax Shepard? I was like, this is boring. They don't pass each other. What is this racing? Who cares? And then when I learned what's happening technically, I was like, oh, this is way more in depth and interesting than it seems on the surface.
1:26:48 Speaker 02 And I think the drama helped the sport also. Drive to Survive happened when everybody was at home. And believe it or not, our strongest growing demographic is young females, 15 to 24 year old.
1:26:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, because there's all these hot boys driving around.
1:27:01 Speaker 02 Is that the reason? We don't know really why.
1:27:03 Speaker 01 It's part of it for sure.
1:27:04 Dax Shepard? It doesn't hurt.
1:27:05 Speaker 01 It's definitely part of it.
1:27:06 Dax Shepard? Charles is a supermodel. Danny was the cutest guy in the world.
1:27:09 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:27:09 Dax Shepard? Lewis is gorgeous.
1:27:10 Speaker 01 They're all gorgeous.
1:27:11 Dax Shepard? There's only a couple duds in the whole group, about 20 guys, that's.
1:27:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:27:15 Speaker 01 The women do, they're like, that's my guy, that's my guy.
1:27:18 Speaker 02 There's something for everyone, no?
1:27:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:27:19 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah.
1:27:20 Speaker 01 Also, that show is just so well done.
1:27:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:27:22 Speaker 01 They really get you invested.
1:27:24 Dax Shepard? Now, that was one of my questions. I'm keeping you too long.
1:27:26 Speaker 02 Don't worry, we were on the phone for quite a while, so.
1:27:29 Dax Shepard? You're a very smart person. You're also very incentivized because you own a third of the team. You're experiencing this from a lot of different viewpoints. You're a team principal, you gotta win, but you're also an owner. And so I think you naturally saw that when Liberty Media came in and bought this and they expressed this goal of making the entertainment more present and the sport, but bringing the entertainment up. I've heard you talk about it and you're like, initially we were like, eh, that's a little scary. But I think you're a business owner and this worked. I mean, fuck, the first time I went to Coda, the race weekend was 120,000 and it was 440 last weekend.
1:28:05 Speaker 02 Single biggest event in the United States last year. Who would have ever thought that a Formula One race?
1:28:11 Dax Shepard? It fouraxed.
1:28:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:28:13 Dax Shepard? So you, at some point, in the first year, Mercedes and Ferrari didn't participate and drive to survive.
1:28:18 Speaker 01 Oh, I remember that.
1:28:19 Speaker 02 It was a blessing in disguise for the sport because so many other personalities were featured.
1:28:24 Dax Shepard? True. We wouldn't have had Danny, we wouldn't have had Gunter, we wouldn't have had-
1:28:27 Speaker 01 It was huge for Danny.
1:28:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it was a blessing. We got to learn a lot about a lot of other drivers. But at some point, you're smart enough and incentivized enough that you go, okay, great. So I get it. This entertainment thing's kind of working. And now you too have to assume a character in this soap opera. And I'm wondering, A, how easy that was for you to take on. I've been to races and been in the paddock and watched you walk around. You're a full-blown movie star at that race. You know, you're on your scooter and the people are excited. Having to be a character in the soap opera, how has that been?
1:28:56 Speaker 02 So I think one of the features of myself and what I'm looking up to in other people is authenticity. We kind of feel when somebody is not authentic, you know, and even if you're intellectually not capable or you're not thinking about it, when you watch someone on telly or in a movie, or you meet someone, instinctively you say, I don't like that person or I like the person. And for me, there's a lot of correlation with being authentic. And I don't want to walk away from that. So whatever I do, whether the cameras or the microphone points to me, I'm trying to always be authentic and not act for the cameras. Super important.
1:29:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that's hard, though.
1:29:29 Speaker 02 It's super hard.
1:29:30 Dax Shepard? It's tempting. It's right there.
1:29:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's why we didn't play it the first season with Ferrari. I didn't want all of my people to be distracted by a camera and then suddenly-
1:29:37 Dax Shepard? Performing.
1:29:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:29:39 Dax Shepard? Distracting.
1:29:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, of course. The camera points on you. So I never do that. But you understand that the show is so successful that there is a lot more visibility of yourself in Formula One that has happened. For me, the kind of status in terms of media visibility happened very late in my life. I was forty five, forty six. So I see it with a certain skepticism, surprise. Why would people wanting to take a selfie with me? And I look at the benefits.
1:30:08 Dax Shepard? I could show you right now, exchanges between me and Brad Pitt, talking about you.
1:30:15 Speaker 02 Because here is the.
1:30:16 Dax Shepard? I'm gonna take full credit for this in front of you. He and I love MotoGP. I watched Drive to Survive. I text him, watch this documentary. Text me when you've finished. I know it'll be within twenty four hours. He texts me when sixteen hours. This is incredible. I'm so in. Next is, he befriends Lewis. I'm learning that he's going and hanging out with Lewis. And then I said, yeah, but let's talk about Toto. And he said, listen, I have this text. This is gonna kill you. Toto's also a great dancer.
1:30:49 Speaker 02 Where did he get?
1:30:50 Dax Shepard? He was somewhere and he saw you dancing. He's like, you're not gonna believe this. Toto's also a great dancer. I'm like, oh, fuck, this guy's got it all.
1:30:59 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:31:00 Dax Shepard? Brad Pitt is completely enamored by you. That's a very weird turn of events at forty five.
1:31:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely. So I generally am not starstruck. And I admire people that are really good in what they do, independently whether they are famous or not. But there was this moment when they started the documentary, they were interested in my role. And I think Javier Bardem plays a little bit of a Toto. As a team owner and team principal, by the way, a super guy, curious, interested. We're talking about this and we are agreeing on dinner at our house in Oxford. He rings at the doorbell. Brad Pitt walks into the house.
1:31:35 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:31:35 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
1:31:36 Dax Shepard? It fucks you up, right?
1:31:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:31:37 Speaker 01 He's not human. He's like, it's a different thing.
1:31:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, George Clooney. I mean, there's not many of them, no?
1:31:44 Dax Shepard? I know. But even in that group, it's Brad Pitt.
1:31:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's Brad Pitt. And that was a moment where I thought, we've come a long way. That Brad Pitt is coming to the house.
1:31:53 Dax Shepard? How does Susie handle Brad Pitt at dinner?
1:31:55 Speaker 02 Well, she obviously says to me that she likes me much more. She has to say that.
1:32:00 Speaker 01 Don't worry, don't you worry.
1:32:04 Speaker 02 That was such a moment, but I'm looking at it, like I said, with a little bit of curiosity, why all of this is happening and I haven't found many advantages of being on TV. I mean, you get a better table in a restaurant.
1:32:13 Speaker 01 But yeah, other than that, that's sort of where it ends.
1:32:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, because you need to have your own vanity under control and I'm realizing that I like that. And then I try to dial myself back and say, that is just linked to the role. A politician is recognized by everyone. The moment a politician is stopping the activity, nobody cares. And the same is in many other jobs. You're CEO of a company, doesn't matter anymore. You stop as an actor or I stop in my role, that's gone. And I think you need to be prepared that if one day you step out of the hamster wheel, that this is gonna stop and that's why it shouldn't play a big importance to us.
1:32:47 Dax Shepard? Well, this has been an insane pleasure. My very last thing is Monica has only liked a single car. I try to get her interested in cars and she does not care. She likes a single car, the Mercedes 300 SL.
1:32:58 Speaker 01 It's a beautiful car.
1:33:00 Dax Shepard? Toto has one.
1:33:00 Speaker 01 You do? What color?
1:33:02 Speaker 02 So I sold all the other cars.
1:33:04 Dax Shepard? You did?
1:33:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, I had to tick the boxes in terms of what I wanted to have and achieve and then I sold them all.
1:33:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah, they're stressful.
1:33:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, also I didn't feel like it was authentic anymore, me driving around in an old Ferrari.
1:33:17 Dax Shepard? Right.
1:33:18 Speaker 02 So I only kept the Mercedes's and I have two of these, one roadster convertible and one gullwing.
1:33:24 Speaker 01 That's the one.
1:33:25 Dax Shepard? Although you'd be happy in that convertible.
1:33:27 Speaker 01 Oh, I want that.
1:33:28 Dax Shepard? He and Suzie look so elegant and I feel like I'm watching like a 60s Italian film.
1:33:33 Speaker 01 That's a beautiful car.
1:33:34 Speaker 02 The gullwing, you know, is great, but it's getting very hot in there. There's no air conditioning. The engine in the gearbox is right underneath of you, so in LA it would be troublesome.
1:33:42 Speaker 01 I love the heat. I can take it.
1:33:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah, synergies.
1:33:45 Speaker 01 I can really take it.
1:33:46 Speaker 02 So when you're next in Europe, tell us, we'll take you out in the gullwing.
1:33:49 Speaker 01 Oh, I'll do it. I will do it.
1:33:52 Dax Shepard? You bitch, that was my invite. That'd be like if Matt Damon invited.
1:33:56 Speaker 01 Oh, that'd be like if Matt Damon invited you to dinner.
1:33:58 Dax Shepard? Oh shit, that happened.
1:33:59 Speaker 01 You didn't bring me, yeah. I wonder, hmm, I wonder how that would feel.
1:34:01 Dax Shepard? I deserve this. Great ending.
1:34:03 Speaker 01 That's right. That's right.
1:34:04 Speaker 02 I take you to. We look a little bit like Frankensteins in the car, the two tall guys. So I'm taking the seating pillow out. So I'm not looking too stupid.
1:34:11 Dax Shepard? Okay, okay.
1:34:12 Speaker 02 And then I fit under the steering wheel.
1:34:14 Dax Shepard? So this is my very last one. So your wife is an incredible driver. I have to imagine she probably could turn better lap times than you at most places.
1:34:22 Speaker 02 Yes, and I'm proud of that.
1:34:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah, as you should be.
1:34:25 Speaker 02 She was a professional driver. She says, what do you expect when we are getting this question asked? So we were karting in the past and she's always two seconds faster. And then I thought I'm gonna trick her. Obviously, I'm heavier. So I put 25 kilograms of ballast in the car.
1:34:39 Dax Shepard? Oh, great.
1:34:40 Speaker 02 So that's the wife of my children.
1:34:41 Dax Shepard? They're maybe here.
1:34:42 Speaker 02 They may be here.
1:34:42 Dax Shepard? Okay, great. We're landing the plane.
1:34:44 Speaker 02 So I put the weight in her car, two seconds. She says the car is actually pretty good.
1:34:51 Dax Shepard? Very stable.
1:34:52 Speaker 02 I got myself special qualifying tires, red Vegas.
1:34:56 Speaker 01 Oh, wow. Oh, you went for it.
1:34:58 Speaker 02 Your finger sticks on them. Two seconds.
1:35:01 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:35:02 Speaker 01 I love this. Good for her.
1:35:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, she's really quick.
1:35:05 Dax Shepard? Well, Toto, this has been as fucking fun as I could have ever imagined.
1:35:09 Speaker 02 For you, Monica, too.
1:35:09 Speaker 01 So fun.
1:35:10 Speaker 02 It's just cup stuff.
1:35:11 Speaker 01 No, you're a star.
1:35:13 Dax Shepard? We kept it pretty not tech, Nicole.
1:35:15 Speaker 01 It's great.
1:35:16 Speaker 02 I saw Monica rolling her eyes a little bit. Oh, no, we're talking.
1:35:19 Dax Shepard? I also want to throw this out here.
1:35:20 Speaker 01 I always roll.
1:35:21 Dax Shepard? Before we sign off, you allowed a journalist to write a book about what you're going through right now, which is a lot. And it's called Inside Mercedes F1: Life in the Fast Lane. And you guys all participate. It's a very good book to learn exactly what's happening on that team.
1:35:35 Speaker 02 I was generally not a book fan because I get asked quite regularly about biography or autobiography. And my answer is let's do that when I'm 80. Because now people say I've been successful and let's write about it. But what is if I continue to fail now? So I don't want to have it stop at 50 and then...
1:35:53 Dax Shepard? Take a nosedive.
1:35:54 Speaker 02 Exactly. So let's write it when I'm 80.
1:35:56 Dax Shepard? Let's make sure we get to the finish line.
1:35:58 Speaker 01 Did though.
1:35:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, or when I'm gone, then you can have a real summary.
1:36:03 Speaker 01 Right, that's so true.
1:36:04 Dax Shepard? Soup to nuts.
1:36:05 Speaker 02 Exactly. I mean, we're suddenly over halftime, both of us, and I hope so. We're over halftime.
1:36:10 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:36:11 Speaker 02 But that book is different and special because it gives an insight into how the team operates. It's not an ego story. It is just the operation of the team. So I was a bit skeptical, but the journalist embedded himself really well. It is a little bit of a nerdy book for the operations of a Formula One team, but it seemed very interesting.
1:36:27 Speaker 01 That's cool.
1:36:27 Dax Shepard? It's very interesting. It's very well written, and I recommend people who are interested at all in this to check that out. Inside Mercedes F1. It's been a blast. I hope we get to talk to you again, and we will soon be on a twisty road in something.
1:36:39 Speaker 01 Yes, please.
1:36:39 Dax Shepard? Oh, you guys will be first. In the 300.
1:36:41 Speaker 01 Can't wait.
1:36:42 Dax Shepard? All right. Be well.
1:36:45 Dax Shepard? We hope you enjoyed this episode. Unfortunately, they made some mistakes.
1:36:54 Dax Shepard? Good morning.
1:36:55 Speaker 01 Good morning.
1:36:56 Dax Shepard? We were both feeling sweeter today.
1:36:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's officially festive time.
1:37:00 Dax Shepard? How awake are you?
1:37:02 Speaker 01 Um, I'm 22%.
1:37:07 Dax Shepard? 22? That's pretty low.
1:37:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:37:09 Dax Shepard? Lowest you've ever been on a.
1:37:11 Speaker 01 Took a shower.
1:37:11 Dax Shepard? Oh, good.
1:37:12 Speaker 01 Normally that wakes me up, but yeah, it's early for the listener.
1:37:16 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:37:17 Speaker 01 It's nine. That doesn't feel that. That doesn't sound that early.
1:37:20 Dax Shepard? But on a holiday.
1:37:21 Speaker 01 On a holiday.
1:37:22 Dax Shepard? It feels absurd.
1:37:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:37:24 Dax Shepard? Um, yesterday was Thanksgiving.
1:37:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:37:26 Dax Shepard? In our universe right now.
1:37:28 Speaker 01 We were out and up late.
1:37:30 Dax Shepard? Mm hmm. Yeah. What time did you go to Slumber?
1:37:32 Speaker 01 What time did I leave? Like 10? I think I left around 10 and then I had a little work to do and then I had to work on today's gift guide.
1:37:41 Dax Shepard? Oh, you had to do that at night.
1:37:43 Speaker 01 I had to do a lot at night.
1:37:44 Dax Shepard? What time did you fall asleep?
1:37:46 Speaker 01 I probably fell asleep at like 12:30.
1:37:50 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay.
1:37:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:37:51 Dax Shepard? So not horrendous.
1:37:53 Speaker 01 No. I made a huge mistake yesterday. So when we were on the group chat, the girls' group chat, figuring out timing for Thanksgiving.
1:38:03 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:38:04 Speaker 01 Kristin wrote, come over around 12 and we'll eat around 4.
1:38:08 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:38:08 Speaker 01 And I read, I don't know what happened. I read that as. Come at four, like I missed the 12 part. So I thought it was arrival time was four, which I did kind of think was late.
1:38:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:38:22 Speaker 01 I didn't love that choice.
1:38:24 Dax Shepard? No, the day's over.
1:38:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, but I thought, oh, she just wants it to be fast. So, okay, and then I.
1:38:32 Dax Shepard? Really quick, hold on. So I too am in the intentions judging business. But when I come up with an intention, I do also evaluate. So when you were like, yeah, she wants it over fast. You're like, that sounds right.
1:38:45 Speaker 01 It's not that I was like, oh, it's bad. She wants it over fast. It was just like, oh, maybe, I don't know.
1:38:51 Dax Shepard? She wants it in and out this year.
1:38:53 Speaker 01 That it could be, so I just, I just didn't want to question it. So then I planned my whole day around a four o'clock.
1:39:00 Dax Shepard? Oh, boy.
1:39:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:39:02 Dax Shepard? So what did that mean?
1:39:03 Speaker 01 I had to make two dishes.
1:39:05 Dax Shepard? Right, two beautiful dishes, potatoes.
1:39:08 Speaker 01 Two sets of potatoes, one sweet, one mashed. And I was editing an episode and I had a whole plan. I was gonna like, wake up leisurely and edit this episode.
1:39:19 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
1:39:20 Speaker 01 Make my thing.
1:39:21 Dax Shepard? Oh, sip up.
1:39:22 Speaker 01 Plenty of time.
1:39:23 Dax Shepard? Coffee drink.
1:39:24 Speaker 01 Laura texted and said, based on Cece, her baby's nap time. She was, she said she'll probably be around one. And I was like, one, she's gonna come three hours early? What's she thinking because of the baby? So then I scrolled up and I saw, and at this point, it was 11:30.
1:39:44 Dax Shepard? Oh, boy.
1:39:45 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:39:45 Dax Shepard? Okay, so you were.
1:39:46 Speaker 01 So then I went into a panic.
1:39:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and you were on a course of action at that point.
1:39:51 Speaker 01 But I got there at 2:30.
1:39:53 Dax Shepard? Which was very late from my perspective, but I didn't know about the erroneous 4:00 PM start. So I was in a position of like, everyone's coming at noon and then at noon, nobody comes.
1:40:07 Speaker 01 Oh, I hate. When that happens.
1:40:09 Dax Shepard? At one, nobody comes. And then I go to my insecure place of like, oh, wow, no one's coming to our Thanksgiving.
1:40:17 Speaker 01 Even though you knew everyone was coming.
1:40:18 Dax Shepard? I fast forward to whatever poor sucker does show up semi on time, they're gonna be like, where is every? No one wanted to come to this party, I guess.
1:40:27 Speaker 01 That's funny, because, I mean, I guess it's the same thing you're thinking about me reading Kristen's texts, but that feels outrageous to me because the only people there were our friends. So no one would ever, no one thinks like that when it's just a pod. If it was a random party, yes.
1:40:41 Dax Shepard? It was starting to getting a little embarrassing, though, that the kickoff time was noon and we didn't have anyone at one, I don't know, thirty?
1:40:48 Speaker 01 This is the problem with the girls only being on the text.
1:40:53 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's not great.
1:40:54 Speaker 01 Yeah. And do you think most friend groups, it's like that? It's just the women?
1:40:59 Dax Shepard? Chitter chattering, chatter chatter chatter. I do, I do.
1:41:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm trying to, my friend group at home, similar.
1:41:05 Dax Shepard? Guy chains are very specific. I'm only on a few of them. I'm on like one with Wobbly Wobb for Formula One.
1:41:11 Speaker 01 Oh, nice.
1:41:12 Dax Shepard? And that's just, you know, so and so's getting fired. Yeah, they're fucking, they're gonna rule that, you know, it's not like.
1:41:17 Speaker 01 With Matt and Charlie, too?
1:41:18 Dax Shepard? Yeah, Matt, Charlie, Jethro, Wobb, myself. Who else is on at Wobb anymore?
1:41:24 Speaker 05 That's it.
1:41:24 Dax Shepard? That's it.
1:41:25 Speaker 01 That's sweet.
1:41:26 Dax Shepard? From all the boys that had to be in communication for F1.
1:41:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, I love that. You're keeping it up.
1:41:30 Dax Shepard? If you see something outrageous in the F1 community, that's where you sound off. But there's very little.
1:41:36 Speaker 05 Logistics.
1:41:37 Dax Shepard? What?
1:41:38 Speaker 05 Very little logistics happening in there.
1:41:40 Dax Shepard? Correct. And this is maybe, again, I don't know if this is specific to me or this is common gender wise, but there's a lot of things and you, and you're not a fa- a fan of a lot of these methodologies I have. And I agree, they're flawed, but for me, they're most efficient. Like, I don't ever ask, when there's twenty people over, I don't say, who's in the mood for sushi? It's like, I know this group, I know what people like. I mean, a bunch of food will arrive and no one will care, as long as there's food there.
1:42:07 Speaker 01 You make the decision for the group.
1:42:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I don't do the hour and twenty minutes to order thing.
1:42:12 Speaker 01 That's fine. There's two ways of being.
1:42:14 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and I, yeah, exactly. And I'm not angry at the other approach, other than. Then when I'm hungry, I'm like, oh my God, how long is it going to take everyone to decide on this? And then everyone's got anyways. So similarly, it's like, here's a time to do a thing if you want to or not. There's never a bunch of haggling over it or fine tuning. Also, a window that I would have never, all blessings to my wife. That's confusing to me. Starts at noon, dinner's at four.
1:42:37 Speaker 01 Well, that makes sense.
1:42:39 Dax Shepard? It's too gray. Like if I'm at home, like, what does that mean? When are people coming? Do people come two hours before dinner?
1:42:45 Speaker 01 No, for Thanksgiving.
1:42:47 Dax Shepard? I wouldn't have told them when dinner starts. So I just said, be here at two.
1:42:49 Speaker 01 No, she has to tell us because we're all cooking stuff. We have to know like.
1:42:55 Dax Shepard? I cooked the most in my house yesterday.
1:42:57 Speaker 01 What'd you cook?
1:42:58 Dax Shepard? I made five trays of shitty biscuits. Four pounds, biggest yield ever.
1:43:01 Speaker 01 That was, they were fantastic.
1:43:03 Dax Shepard? How many G?
1:43:04 Speaker 01 Like four, probably.
1:43:05 Dax Shepard? That's a good amount.
1:43:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:43:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:43:07 Speaker 01 You cook the most in your house.
1:43:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:43:09 Speaker 01 But everyone was making a lot of things and you have to plan it time wise because of oven times. Do you need to arrive with it hot? You have to know what time dinner is starting.
1:43:18 Dax Shepard? Yeah, okay. Great. I don't know, four hours, take your pick, throw a dart at the board. Seems a little, and, and we got what we, we, what we sewed, which is like, you wandered in at two thirty. Someone was there at one forty five, someone gave me three.
1:43:32 Speaker 01 It's fine.
1:43:33 Dax Shepard? It was all fine.
1:43:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's the way it's supposed to be, really.
1:43:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah. I want to open the door like I'm in Sweden. Have you heard this joke about Swedish people? Like if you throw a party and you announce it to your coworkers that I'm having a party at 5pm. They say in Sweden, the doorbell will ring. And when you open the door, all 52 guests will be there at, at two minutes before. Yeah, they're all there. It's not like one person's early. The whole group will be there at the exact same time.
1:44:02 Speaker 01 Well, that's funny because on a previous flight, this bird, we did talk about like arrival times and being late and parties.
1:44:09 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
1:44:10 Speaker 01 Cause David was acknowledging, oh, it looks like in America, people arrive late.
1:44:15 Dax Shepard? Whenever they're in the mood to get there.
1:44:17 Speaker 01 Which.
1:44:17 Dax Shepard? They give them a nice four hour berth and just land somewhere.
1:44:20 Speaker 01 Think about any party, like a Halloween party. You don't go at the time.
1:44:24 Dax Shepard? That's my point entirely. Think about a Halloween evening party. If there's so much anxiety, it's, they said it starts at eight. No one's probably getting there at eight. You don't want to be the one person there. And then you're like, I guess that really means 10, 15, everyone, right? And you have all this anxiety and you can't plan it right. If it was just like, forget the eight. Forget the early arrival. Let's go with when people are really gonna come. Let's say this party starts at nine thirty.
1:44:48 Speaker 01 But then people will come at eleven.
1:44:50 Dax Shepard? Well, I think everyone's just responding to this willy nilly, broad strokes.
1:44:55 Speaker 01 Well, I would have.
1:44:55 Dax Shepard? There's a four hour window of arrival time.
1:44:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, technically, I was actually an hour and a half early.
1:45:02 Dax Shepard? To dinner.
1:45:03 Speaker 01 To the one I thought was the arrival time.
1:45:06 Dax Shepard? To the hang time.
1:45:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:45:08 Dax Shepard? Yeah. You're right, though. It was the pod, so I didn't get too insecure. But if that was like my birthday party.
1:45:12 Speaker 01 That's how we normally do. We just roll in and roll out.
1:45:15 Dax Shepard? By one thirty, I would have canceled the birthday party. Like, if it started at noon, and at one thirty, it's still just my family sitting there. And then my anxiety of who is gonna be the first one there to see that I'm a nerd, that no one came. I just cancel it.
1:45:27 Speaker 01 Were you sitting on the couch, like?
1:45:29 Dax Shepard? I try to make myself a little busy. I'm like, I'm gonna go, I don't wanna be sitting at the door when people walk in like, hi, and I'm on the couch in my Thanksgiving best. Anyways, spectacular Thanksgiving.
1:45:43 Speaker 01 Beautiful Thanksgiving.
1:45:44 Dax Shepard? Really, another, another perfect Thanksgiving.
1:45:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:45:48 Dax Shepard? What were your highlights? I'm sure you can guess mine.
1:45:51 Speaker 01 I can guess yours. Um, you played volleyball. Okay, that was your.
1:45:55 Dax Shepard? Christmas volleyball.
1:45:56 Speaker 01 Thanksgiving.
1:45:56 Dax Shepard? When I grew up, we went to a family reunion in Sturgis, Michigan, at the LeBeaus', and it was at the motel. And there's a conference room, and you had a big, huge, I don't know how many there were of us, thirty five, there's six kids and caring kids. And then you played, um, football in the field. It was cold as hell. All the uncles and stuff, kind of fun. I can't, the kids couldn't really play football. The adults are running around tearing hamstrings and stuff, and the kids are like, I'm open, you know?
1:46:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's so cute.
1:46:27 Dax Shepard? You're just out there running around, I guess.
1:46:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, and acting like you're a part of it.
1:46:31 Dax Shepard? Yes, and then you're a big boy, like your uncles.
1:46:33 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:46:34 Dax Shepard? Throwing a football. So we didn't have a sport contingency out here. And I really like now that volleyball might be an option.
1:46:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:46:40 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:46:41 Speaker 01 My favorite was secret turkey. That's always so lovely.
1:46:44 Dax Shepard? Secret turkey. And again, I remember, and already knows how it works, Lily assigns it. But I will say this year, I think people try to top themselves from the previous years. It's on a kind of an untenable course.
1:46:55 Speaker 01 It is. It's getting out of control.
1:46:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it was like that present.
1:46:59 Speaker 01 Ryan made a knife.
1:47:00 Dax Shepard? He forged a knife, and he made the handle out of wood.
1:47:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:47:06 Dax Shepard? I'm guilty of the thing I've yelled at you about.
1:47:08 Speaker 01 Thank you.
1:47:08 Dax Shepard? My do not disturb was on.
1:47:09 Speaker 01 Changed her all her ways. Cause you say one mean thing. One critical thing.
1:47:16 Dax Shepard? Highlights of secret turkey. What do you think were?
1:47:20 Speaker 01 Oh, God.
1:47:21 Dax Shepard? I'm biased a little bit. I'm so impressed with Delta's hot air balloon baseball. What a present.
1:47:27 Speaker 01 She made such a cute one.
1:47:28 Dax Shepard? Twenty five hour man, twenty five man hours at least.
1:47:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, these presents took forever.
1:47:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah. I want to talk about, you gave a advent calendar.
1:47:37 Speaker 01 I did. I made it.
1:47:38 Dax Shepard? To Molly.
1:47:38 Speaker 01 No, to Amy.
1:47:39 Dax Shepard? To Amy, correct?
1:47:40 Speaker 01 Yes, I made one.
1:47:42 Dax Shepard? You said Molly is Amy. You gave it to Amy.
1:47:45 Speaker 01 So I bought these little boxes.
1:47:48 Dax Shepard? You purchased those?
1:47:49 Speaker 01 Purchased the cardboard boxes.
1:47:50 Dax Shepard? At a box store, cardboard box store?
1:47:52 Speaker 01 Amazon.
1:47:53 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay.
1:47:54 Speaker 01 Amazon Prime.
1:47:55 Dax Shepard? Oh, you can order them?
1:47:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:47:56 Dax Shepard? They come in a sheet and you assemble them? Oh, great.
1:47:59 Speaker 01 So I assembled all of them and then I made them into a Christmas tree shape.
1:48:04 Dax Shepard? Is that standard advent calendar?
1:48:06 Speaker 01 A lot of them are made into Christmas tree shapes. Not all, some of them are rectangles, but I wanted to make it festive. And so I drew on each one, I drew like the number and I drew all over each box. And after the third box, I thought, I am not gonna make it. I can't do it.
1:48:25 Dax Shepard? Well, great. I'm glad you brought this up. I wouldn't have said anything, but I looked at it and it was enormously impressive. It was huge. I want to say it was like twenty eight inches tall.
1:48:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was huge. It didn't fit in a trash bag.
1:48:37 Dax Shepard? Eighteen inches wide, maybe twenty four inches wide, twenty four, let's say. The top boxes were like pictures and drawing. And then I noticed on the bottom, I just noticed it says like twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, twenty, like.
1:48:48 Speaker 01 Twenty two, twenty three, twenty four. That wasn't a cheat. That was, I knew you would think that. Oh, my God.
1:48:53 Dax Shepard? I don't know about advent calendars.
1:48:55 Speaker 01 I actually anticipated Eric was gonna say this out loud.
1:48:59 Dax Shepard? Well, I didn't say anything, of course. I didn't want to humiliate anyone. But you just told me you started phoning it in and I thought, oh, that makes sense.
1:49:05 Speaker 01 You didn't even let me finish. Okay. The, the reason the bottom is just the bottom wrote twenty two, twenty three, twenty four was out of brown marker and it just said it. But that's because that's the stump.
1:49:17 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:49:19 Speaker 01 That's the stump. The rest is the tree. The top had a star on it.
1:49:22 Dax Shepard? Oh, beautiful. It was hugely impressive. I don't know why you're upset.
1:49:27 Speaker 01 Because you're, oh my God, you're so gaslighty. You're like, I see you phoned it in. I don't know why you're upset about that.
1:49:35 Dax Shepard? At the end, it looked like at the end you were like, that's enough.
1:49:37 Speaker 01 That was the stump.
1:49:38 Dax Shepard? Okay, so it was supposed to look like wood.
1:49:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:49:40 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:49:41 Speaker 01 And the, after the third one, I thought, I can't do this anymore. This is.
1:49:46 Dax Shepard? This would be a five day project.
1:49:48 Speaker 01 And then I thought, this is for Amy. She's an angel. She's a true angel on earth.
1:49:55 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:49:56 Speaker 01 She deserves this. So it was a five day project.
1:49:59 Dax Shepard? Okay, I didn't listen to the end.
1:50:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, you didn't. I did not.
1:50:02 Dax Shepard? So the bottom was a choice. You can see from the layperson at the end, it just said, oh wow, it was written in black.
1:50:08 Speaker 01 It wasn't black, it was brown and gold.
1:50:11 Dax Shepard? Oh, it was gold too.
1:50:13 Speaker 01 Anyway, I glued all the boxes together and then.
1:50:16 Dax Shepard? Did you use a hot glue gun?
1:50:17 Speaker 01 I had to.
1:50:18 Dax Shepard? Or Elmer's glue?
1:50:19 Speaker 01 Tried Elmer's, it didn't work. I had to use Gorilla and Super.
1:50:23 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:50:23 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:50:24 Dax Shepard? Did you get a bunch on your fingers?
1:50:25 Speaker 01 Yes. And then I glued all of that to a piece of cardboard and then I had to X-acto knife around it.
1:50:34 Dax Shepard? Oh wow, for structural integrity.
1:50:36 Speaker 01 I bought an X-acto knife.
1:50:38 Dax Shepard? Oh my God.
1:50:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:50:39 Dax Shepard? All ordered off of the internet?
1:50:41 Speaker 01 No, some of them are Postmates.
1:50:43 Dax Shepard? Did you go, oh, Postmates, okay. But you never went to an arts and crafts store?
1:50:47 Speaker 01 Did I go to Blick? No, but I use materials I have purchased from Blick before.
1:50:53 Dax Shepard? Okay, alright.
1:50:55 Speaker 01 Anyway, it was really fun. And then I had to fill each box up.
1:50:57 Dax Shepard? So that's, all this was leading up, we got derailed by my observation and my apologies, but I'm dying to know what's inside.
1:51:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, everyone is.
1:51:05 Dax Shepard? I've never owned an advent calendar. I've only seen them in Christmas Vacation.
1:51:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:51:09 Dax Shepard? And there's chocolates inside usually?
1:51:11 Speaker 01 Normally. But these are real treats.
1:51:14 Dax Shepard? Are there any you can say that by the time the Saturday show have opened those three days?
1:51:17 Speaker 01 Okay, Amy, if you're listening, no, because this is hers, it goes all the way through December, her calendar. So Amy is listening because she's, as I said, an angel. She listens to everything. So please, cover your ears, turn this off.
1:51:30 Dax Shepard? Okay, right.
1:51:31 Speaker 01 Fast forward.
1:51:32 Dax Shepard? Ryan too, because he's not a good secret keeper. Remember, he tells Amy.
1:51:36 Speaker 01 Okay, right.
1:51:37 Dax Shepard? I don't want you to know about Cosby. What about Cosby? No, I don't want you to know.
1:51:43 Dax Shepard? That's a real life thing.
1:51:44 Speaker 01 It is. Okay, so both of you fast forward a couple of minutes. So yeah, there's like, well, she opened one. We let her open one. It was a sheep ornament.
1:51:53 Dax Shepard? All right, beautiful ornament.
1:51:55 Speaker 01 Um, I got her like a little lip, cute little like lipstick, um, some measuring spoons.
1:52:04 Dax Shepard? Oh, fine. There's like 25 presents in there.
1:52:07 Speaker 01 Well, every other one is a real present. It was like a really cute wine stuff.
1:52:12 Dax Shepard? Is this a can of chocolate?
1:52:13 Speaker 01 Um, two teas.
1:52:15 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:52:15 Speaker 01 Fancy teas.
1:52:16 Dax Shepard? Drinking tea.
1:52:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, she has a tea drawer, so I figured she could put, make her tea drawer cute.
1:52:22 Dax Shepard? That's great. How long do you think it took you to make this present?
1:52:25 Speaker 01 It took a really long time. Plus then the purchases, plus the, yeah, it was an adventure.
1:52:30 Dax Shepard? My family had commandeered the entire dining room table, put plastic over it, and this was going on for three days.
1:52:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:52:38 Dax Shepard? And there were two full days where the three of them all sat at this table doing art projects, competing over the oils and the paint.
1:52:45 Speaker 01 They all did paintings.
1:52:47 Dax Shepard? There were a lot of meltdowns and blowups. So God bless. I stayed out of there.
1:52:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:52:51 Dax Shepard? I went up to the attic with my new light board to make my present for Matt.
1:52:55 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:52:56 Dax Shepard? Which was a collage, I guess you'd call it.
1:52:58 Speaker 01 It was a collage. It was very, very, very good.
1:53:00 Dax Shepard? Oh, thank you.
1:53:01 Speaker 01 You drew a lot of things that were Matt's favorite things.
1:53:05 Dax Shepard? Maple Leafs logo. He's very into Muay Thai kickboxing right now. So two Muay Thai fighters. Picture of him holding his baby that I got off of Instagram. And then above his head, a sim racing setup, which he loves. And then scissors, because he's a hairstylist.
1:53:22 Speaker 01 I know. It was very cute. And you framed it.
1:53:25 Dax Shepard? I think this guy's the limit with this light board. It's an enormous cheat, but as we talked about, you and I, there's a lot of fun in assembling and then interpreting what your collage is gonna be.
1:53:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:53:36 Dax Shepard? And now I have a whole new fantasies about being able to use the light board to draw like a downtown city scape, and then put my weird characters in them. So hybrid, do a little photorealism, and then my weird character.
1:53:49 Speaker 01 I like that.
1:53:50 Dax Shepard? I've got a whole fantasy about my life with this light board.
1:53:53 Speaker 01 Wow, wow. That's great. What a good hobby.
1:53:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:53:57 Speaker 01 I love that.
1:53:58 Dax Shepard? It's pretty fun. Speaking of the light board.
1:54:00 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:54:01 Dax Shepard? On a previous fact check, I said, I couldn't do a crow.
1:54:04 Speaker 01 That's right.
1:54:04 Dax Shepard? Couldn't do it. But I got this light board and now I got a crow.
1:54:06 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:54:07 Dax Shepard? And so now the
1:54:09 Speaker 01 The sweatshirt.
1:54:09 Dax Shepard? sweater is complete.
1:54:11 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:54:12 Dax Shepard? So they're gonna go on sale Friday, December 6th. That is in
1:54:19 Speaker 01 Two days.
1:54:20 Dax Shepard? Two days at 9:00 AM Pacific. So if you're in New York, that's noon, Dingle's lunch break. If you're in the mountain areas, I don't know, maybe 11:00. Maybe if you're
1:54:29 Speaker 01 Just check your time zones.
1:54:31 Dax Shepard? Central. It's 10. I don't know.
1:54:33 Speaker 01 I'm having stress for everyone's time zones.
1:54:35 Dax Shepard? I can't keep mountain and central straight, which one's earlier than the other, but Pacific time, 9:00 AM. And you go to armchairexpertpod.com.
1:54:43 Speaker 01 It's a very cute sweatshirt.
1:54:45 Dax Shepard? I really like it.
1:54:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:54:46 Dax Shepard? I think it turned out really, really cute.
1:54:48 Speaker 01 It did.
1:54:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:54:49 Speaker 01 It did. It's really nice.
1:54:50 Dax Shepard? Your mouse is the best part.
1:54:52 Speaker 01 And everyone's seen the mouse at this, well, not everyone, but a lot of people have seen the mouse at this point because it has appeared on my gift guide.
1:54:59 Dax Shepard? I read day one of the gift guide.
1:55:00 Speaker 01 Oh, you did? Okay.
1:55:01 Dax Shepard? And what are you gonna guess my favorite joke is in it? There's one.
1:55:06 Speaker 01 Did you read Substack or did you read just Instagram? Oh, you read the whole thing?
1:55:10 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:55:10 Speaker 01 The joke about Kristen on the phone?
1:55:12 Dax Shepard? No.
1:55:13 Speaker 01 I don't remember.
1:55:14 Dax Shepard? Blowing out all of her candle.
1:55:15 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
1:55:17 Dax Shepard? I think some people might miss that. Maybe not. Maybe that's really obvious. But she only turned one.
1:55:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:55:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you blew out all of her candle.
1:55:24 Speaker 01 I did.
1:55:28 Dax Shepard? That's really funny.
1:55:29 Speaker 01 Thanks.
1:55:29 Dax Shepard? Okay, so Secret Turkey was an incredible success. Other call up, again, Delta made a hot air balloon with like a structure in a floating balloon.
1:55:41 Speaker 01 It was incredible.
1:55:41 Dax Shepard? Made the balloon a baseball. Ace loves baseball. Ballast on the side of the basket, like sandbags.
1:55:47 Speaker 01 It was so cute.
1:55:48 Dax Shepard? Light fixture inside that I guess replicated the fire going up. I don't know if that was just decorative.
1:55:55 Speaker 01 I think it was just festive.
1:55:55 Dax Shepard? Festive.
1:55:56 Speaker 01 How'd she buy a light thing? She bought it off Amazon?
1:55:59 Dax Shepard? I think she went and watched a tutorial on how to make a hot air balloon.
1:56:04 Speaker 01 That's so cool.
1:56:05 Dax Shepard? Laura gave me a beautiful photorealistic.
1:56:10 Dax Shepard? I like saying that word.
1:56:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:56:12 Dax Shepard? Um, charcoal drawing of Little Mr. Texas.
1:56:16 Speaker 01 That's right. It should probably go in here.
1:56:19 Dax Shepard? It should. Runner up.
1:56:20 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:56:21 Dax Shepard? Runner up, Little Mr. Texas.
1:56:22 Speaker 01 If you missed that episode with Matthew McConaughey, that was the first time he was on.
1:56:26 Dax Shepard? So I, you know, I have this very, very, um, arms distance relationship with him. We've done a few things together and I'm considering, I think I want to take a picture of that and say, I received this as a gift. Do you, where do you, how do you think that lands on him?
1:56:39 Speaker 01 I think that's a good idea. Yeah.
1:56:41 Dax Shepard? Okay. You never know if stuff's flattering or is bordering on weird and obsessed.
1:56:46 Speaker 01 Well, yeah, cause I mean, I guess he'll be like for Thanksgiving. I mean, you might have to explain the whole thing.
1:56:51 Dax Shepard? There's a lot to unpack. If you, if I, let's just reverse this. He sends me a picture that a family member or friend drew of me and gave to him.
1:57:01 Speaker 01 You'd love it.
1:57:02 Dax Shepard? I'd love it, right? As long as it was a flattering picture.
1:57:05 Speaker 01 You would love it. And I think he would love it.
1:57:07 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we're both kind of similar in that way. What do we call that? Attention whores? What is it?
1:57:17 Dax Shepard? Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
1:57:30 Speaker 01 Rob put a box by my head.
1:57:33 Dax Shepard? Wait, what's going on?
1:57:34 Speaker 01 I don't know. I don't.
1:57:35 Dax Shepard? You, oh my God, you have, there's gifts already?
1:57:40 Speaker 01 Wait, what? Oh my God. Sweet. Stop.
1:57:44 Dax Shepard? Oh, is that an Emily burger? Pretzel bun?
1:57:49 Speaker 01 What? In the world? She made this?
1:57:52 Dax Shepard? Oh my photorealistic.
1:57:55 Speaker 01 Celebs on sandwiches. This is so flattering.
1:58:00 Dax Shepard? Can I get a better look at it?
1:58:01 Speaker 01 And it's an Emily burger?
1:58:03 Dax Shepard? Oh my God. How does, how do they find the picture of Emily Burger?
1:58:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, that was perfect.
1:58:13 Dax Shepard? You know what's interesting? What do you think I'm gonna say about this rendition of you?
1:58:17 Speaker 01 That my mouth looks big?
1:58:19 Dax Shepard? I don't really ever think you look like your mom. But in this rendition, you look a bit like your mom.
1:58:26 Speaker 01 I could see that. I actually, I actually think it's pretty good.
1:58:30 Dax Shepard? It's outrageously good.
1:58:31 Speaker 01 Like accurate.
1:58:32 Dax Shepard? Somehow a bit of Nirmie is in it more than normal.
1:58:35 Speaker 01 I mean, I look like her.
1:58:37 Dax Shepard? Wow.
1:58:38 Speaker 01 This is so flattering. Celebs on sandwiches.
1:58:41 Dax Shepard? This is a big moment.
1:58:43 Speaker 01 I, I mean, I've got gifted this a few times to people. It was on my, I think, original gift guide, Celebs on Sandwiches, my, my original.
1:58:52 Dax Shepard? Oh gee, original guide.
1:58:55 Speaker 01 Wow, how sweet. Okay, well, that's, that's really flattering. Thank you, Celebs on Sandwiches.
1:59:03 Dax Shepard? You know what's gonna be weird? Okay, so Kristen had you.
1:59:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, she did.
1:59:08 Dax Shepard? And she did this beautiful painting.
1:59:10 Speaker 01 She did.
1:59:11 Dax Shepard? By hand of you.
1:59:12 Speaker 01 It's incredible. It's gorgeous.
1:59:14 Dax Shepard? And all kinds of positive affirmations written along it.
1:59:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was beautiful.
1:59:20 Dax Shepard? But I am starting to think, like, you have an inordinate amount of photos and paintings of yourself now for your house.
1:59:28 Speaker 01 I think this should live here.
1:59:29 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:59:30 Speaker 01 With yours.
1:59:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah, mine's right behind your head, so maybe yours should be behind my head. I don't know how that'll work. All to say, you have quite an, an interesting bank of art now you've accumulated. And I just wonder, like, on a first date, when a guy goes into your house, and there's like a ton of paintings of yourself.
1:59:49 Speaker 01 I think it's fine.
1:59:50 Dax Shepard? It's fine, right? It'll be seen as playful.
1:59:53 Speaker 01 I, I have a lot of art.
1:59:55 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:59:55 Speaker 01 So it's not, it's not that the only art I have is.
1:59:59 Dax Shepard? We'll be able to hold all that's just you.
2:00:03 Speaker 01 Like you did.
2:00:04 Dax Shepard? When I was, yeah, 20 years ago?
2:00:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, when you lived alone.
2:00:08 Dax Shepard? Oh, boy, I didn't know what to do. I just printed up photos from movie stills that they send you. That's rough.
2:00:14 Speaker 01 It's okay.
2:00:15 Dax Shepard? It's not us, it's really.
2:00:16 Speaker 01 It happened.
2:00:17 Dax Shepard? I know. I didn't know what to do.
2:00:19 Speaker 01 I know. So I feel like you're, you're projecting a little bit of your own.
2:00:23 Dax Shepard? Probably my own embarrassment from past.
2:00:26 Speaker 01 Yeah. This is gonna live here. Um.
2:00:30 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I guess we could have unlimited pictures. Of ourselves here.
2:00:32 Speaker 01 How sweet.
2:00:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that's really special. And on an Emily burger. Pretty jealous about the food item. I mean, I can't complain because I've got a Coney dog from Detroit, which is great. But boy, that's.
2:00:45 Speaker 01 It's really nice. Okay, well, yeah, Thanksgiving was a big hit. I'm really thankful to our arm cherry. I mean, Thanksgiving is in the past now, but I'm still thankful to our listeners, our beautiful arm cherries.
2:00:58 Dax Shepard? Me too, me too.
2:00:59 Speaker 01 We're so lucky. And this is for Toto.
2:01:03 Dax Shepard? I want to say there's something we earmark.
2:01:06 Speaker 01 You wanted to talk about Max Verstappen.
2:01:09 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, thank you.
2:01:10 Speaker 01 And I told you to wait till this week, because Toto.
2:01:13 Dax Shepard? Well, I just simply want to say he's this. He won his fourth title in a row. It's been a really dicey year for him. Red Bull's finishing third or fourth in the Constructors Championship, so their car is not by any stretch the best. Yet he still managed to win.
2:01:30 Speaker 01 Crazy.
2:01:31 Dax Shepard? Lot of it because of this impossible rain race he had two races ago in Brazil, which when they make the documentary like Senna about him in 20 years, this race is going to be a good 15 minutes of it. Started in 17th in the rain, finished first by 20 seconds, passed 11 people in the first 11 laps. Drive of his life.
2:01:54 Speaker 01 Wow.
2:01:54 Dax Shepard? Incredible year.
2:01:56 Speaker 01 Oh, so cool.
2:01:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:01:57 Speaker 01 Congratulations to Max. Congratulations to Toto for being.
2:02:01 Dax Shepard? Well, Toto won. Toto, which Mercedes has been struggling so bad, Vegas, they came in first and second.
2:02:07 Speaker 01 Nice.
2:02:07 Dax Shepard? So this is good timing.
2:02:09 Speaker 01 Also, I love Toto. Absolutely loved him. He was such a, he was so much more playful than I anticipated.
2:02:17 Dax Shepard? He's a rascal. That was a reveal.
2:02:19 Speaker 01 Enjoyed him so much. So now I'm for team, because now that Danny isn't on racing.
2:02:27 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:02:27 Speaker 01 I don't have anyone to root for.
2:02:29 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:02:30 Speaker 01 So now I root for Mercedes because of Toto.
2:02:32 Dax Shepard? Okay, great. That's great.
2:02:33 Speaker 01 So I'm gonna buy a hat. It also makes sense.
2:02:36 Dax Shepard? It's definitely the team you would have wanted to support anyways.
2:02:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:02:40 Dax Shepard? It's the classiest team. On the grid.
2:02:42 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:02:42 Dax Shepard? You wouldn't want to support an energy drink?
2:02:44 Speaker 01 No, I don't. Okay, now, some facts. He brought up Nicky Laude.
2:02:51 Dax Shepard? Yes.
2:02:51 Speaker 01 It's a hard word to say, a hard name to pronounce.
2:02:54 Dax Shepard? Was it spelled L A U D E?
2:02:56 Speaker 01 D A. It's spelled correctly. It's just like, it seems like you're being pretentious, but you're not.
2:03:04 Dax Shepard? Nicky Laude.
2:03:05 Speaker 01 Right.
2:03:06 Dax Shepard? Nicky Laude. I think that's what you're supposed to say, Nicky Laude.
2:03:09 Speaker 01 Okay, he is Austrian.
2:03:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah, Laude, that's why it's Laude. Nicky Laude. I love Nicky. He's a mentor, Laude.
2:03:19 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:03:20 Dax Shepard? Oh, how about this? I'm gonna ask your name.
2:03:23 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:03:24 Dax Shepard? Oh, boy, how do I do this? Okay, I'm gonna ask your name and you're gonna say Nicky Laude.
2:03:29 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:03:29 Dax Shepard? What's your name?
2:03:30 Speaker 01 Nicky Laude.
2:03:31 Dax Shepard? What is your name?
2:03:33 Speaker 01 Nicky.
2:03:38 Dax Shepard? Cause Laude sounds like louder. It's pretty good.
2:03:45 Dax Shepard? One more time.
2:03:46 Speaker 01 No, we already did.
2:03:47 Dax Shepard? But maybe it'll be fun a second time. What's your name?
2:03:50 Speaker 01 Nicky Laude.
2:03:53 Dax Shepard? What is your name?
2:03:56 Speaker 01 It wasn't better the second time. It was great the first time.
2:04:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah, my timing got worse.
2:04:01 Speaker 01 Oh, my God. Okay, now, um, he competed in Formula One from nineteen seventy-one to nineteen seventy-nine, and from nineteen eighty-two to nineteen eighty-five. He won three Formula One Drivers' Championship titles, and at the time of his retirement, held the record for most podium finishes, fifty-four. He remains the only driver to have won a World Drivers' Championship with both Ferrari and McLaren, and won twenty-five Grand Prix's across thirteen seasons.
2:04:28 Dax Shepard? Hmm, and was horribly burnt.
2:04:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:04:31 Dax Shepard? In a mid-career crash, and kept at it.
2:04:35 Speaker 01 It's amazing.
2:04:36 Dax Shepard? Didn't care.
2:04:37 Speaker 01 Yeah. He's passed. He passed in twenty nineteen. He died in his sleep at seventy, where he had been undergoing kidney dialysis. He had experienced a period of ill health exacerbated by his lung injuries from the nineteen seventy-six accident. He had a double lung transplant the previous year, and kidney transplants in ninety-seven and two thousand and fifteen. His body really went through it.
2:05:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah, double lung and double kidney. Now we're get, we're now we're like, we're twenty percent through all the organs being replaced.
2:05:08 Speaker 01 Did you just kiss your hand?
2:05:11 Dax Shepard? Did I what?
2:05:11 Speaker 01 Did you just kiss your hand?
2:05:12 Dax Shepard? Kiss my hand? No, I just went like that.
2:05:15 Speaker 01 Oh.
2:05:15 Dax Shepard? I always, I neurotically make sure the corners of my mouth, that's a rough one for me.
2:05:20 Speaker 01 When you see people with that?
2:05:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah, a bunch of paste in there. I can't, you don't, you don't have it and you don't ever have it.
2:05:27 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:05:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah, but.
2:05:29 Speaker 01 I know, I know what you mean and it is gross.
2:05:31 Dax Shepard? With a really sticky mouth, that to me, I'd rather smell something, and I already said smells are my worst.
2:05:36 Speaker 01 You'd rather smell something?
2:05:37 Dax Shepard? I can't deal, if I'm watching like a TED Talk and someone's mouth gets really, really dry and starts doing that, I'm like, fuck, I can't listen to it. Cause even if I look away, I can hear it. I don't have misophonia, but I do just in that.
2:05:52 Speaker 01 I, I understand.
2:05:53 Dax Shepard? Do you understand that?
2:05:53 Speaker 01 I do, I, I do. It's not, well, it's funny to me that you'd rather smell it because I think what's gross is I do think it has a smell.
2:06:03 Dax Shepard? Yeah. It's just so sticky.
2:06:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, alright. So, um, he was 70 and, but he lived, he lived a life doing what he loved. Oh, when I thought you were kissing, I thought you were giving him like.
2:06:17 Dax Shepard? Oh, a send off?
2:06:18 Speaker 01 Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
2:06:21 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:06:24 Dax Shepard? Have you been jealous in movies when you watch the cat? What is it? Geno Flect? Is that what it's called?
2:06:28 Speaker 01 And they do this?
2:06:29 Dax Shepard? Geno Flect? You touch your forehead and your sternum and then your both sides. You do the cross. Yeah. I, I like that pageantry.
2:06:37 Speaker 01 I do too.
2:06:38 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:06:38 Speaker 01 But I feel really, can you knock on wood? Cause I feel like we shouldn't have just done that a few times.
2:06:42 Dax Shepard? And that brings me to one thing that we left out that we need to address. Definitely the best, um, secret turkey of the night was Eric took 30 pounds of candy and somehow made a painting of Lauren Matt's baby in candy.
2:07:02 Speaker 01 Yeah. He made a portrait of Cece out of candy.
2:07:04 Dax Shepard? And it was at both times very good.
2:07:08 Speaker 01 It was.
2:07:09 Dax Shepard? And it was absolutely terrifying. It was one of the most horrific photo. It looked like the most evil baby in the world. It looked like, um.
2:07:16 Speaker 01 Michael Myers.
2:07:17 Dax Shepard? Michael Myers. It looked like the baby was wearing a hockey mask, a goalie's mask.
2:07:21 Speaker 01 Cause he used white saltwater taffy for the face.
2:07:23 Dax Shepard? Yes, and it was insane looking and there was hair.
2:07:27 Speaker 01 But there was also a resemblance to her. It was, it was. It was pretty good.
2:07:31 Dax Shepard? Back to knock on wood, I was like, that feels like, um, that feels like.
2:07:34 Speaker 01 You thought it was a bad omen.
2:07:35 Dax Shepard? I thought it was a curse.
2:07:37 Speaker 01 No, it wasn't.
2:07:38 Dax Shepard? To a, um, a voodoo doll.
2:07:41 Speaker 01 I know, but it wasn't. It was a sweet.
2:07:43 Dax Shepard? I think that needs to be.
2:07:44 Speaker 01 No, it was a sweet portrait made of candy by Eric and he put a lot of time into it and.
2:07:50 Dax Shepard? And the eyes are just black. They're so dead.
2:07:52 Speaker 01 Has to curse it. Eric didn't curse it. That's how spirits work.
2:07:57 Dax Shepard? Powers as well as he should, though. He might accidentally curse it. Okay.
2:08:01 Speaker 01 Okay. Speaking of, um, Detroit versus Austria homicides. The city, city of Detroit finished 2023 with 252 homicides, which is the fewest recorded since 1966. We like that.
2:08:15 Dax Shepard? That's great.
2:08:15 Speaker 01 Trajectory.
2:08:16 Dax Shepard? Great trajectory.
2:08:17 Speaker 01 Now, there isn't any information about Austria in 2023, but there is 2017.
2:08:24 Dax Shepard? There probably hasn't been a murder since 17.
2:08:26 Speaker 01 Exactly. There were 54 intentional homicides in Austria.
2:08:30 Dax Shepard? In the whole country.
2:08:31 Speaker 01 In the whole country in 2017, although now I'm looking at the word intentional.
2:08:36 Dax Shepard? Well, we wouldn't count vehicular homicide.
2:08:39 Speaker 01 What about if you're shooting?
2:08:41 Dax Shepard? You're hunting.
2:08:42 Speaker 01 If you're hunting in Detroit and you.
2:08:47 Dax Shepard? Not a lot of.
2:08:48 Speaker 01 I know, but that would count if you accidentally killed someone.
2:08:52 Dax Shepard? Well, no, because that wouldn't be intentional. It'd be accidental.
2:08:55 Speaker 01 No, I know, but I'm saying in the Detroit one doesn't say intentional. So maybe they're including accidentals.
2:09:02 Dax Shepard? Hmm. Maybe.
2:09:04 Speaker 01 Um, Isle of Man.
2:09:06 Dax Shepard? Really quick, what's the population of Australia?
2:09:08 Speaker 01 You mean Australia?
2:09:10 Speaker 05 Uh, 9.13 million.
2:09:13 Dax Shepard? 9.13. So about 10 times the size of Detroit. Detroit's under a million people.
2:09:18 Speaker 01 Really?
2:09:19 Dax Shepard? Yes. 10x the people and 1/5 the murders.
2:09:23 Speaker 05 Yeah. 630,000 in Detroit.
2:09:26 Dax Shepard? So we could say that's actually a 50x.
2:09:30 Speaker 01 All right.
2:09:30 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:09:31 Speaker 01 Isle of Man is a self-governing British Crown dependency in the Irish Sea between England and Ireland. And then, yes, it has this big race that it's a big deal. Annual cross-country motorcycle race.
2:09:44 Dax Shepard? Race around the island. It's the most terrifying thing. It is in all of motorsports, the absolute pinnacle of craziness. It's the Mount Everest of motorsports.
2:09:54 Speaker 01 Well, that's it for Toto. He was lovely and I really, really enjoyed him.
2:09:59 Dax Shepard? Okay. And really quick, um, this should have been said at the beginning, but now we're here at the end. We are here early on this day because this is one among your most special days of the year.
2:10:08 Speaker 01 Yes.
2:10:09 Dax Shepard? You and Kelly are going Black Friday sale shopping, but at places without Black Friday sales.
2:10:15 Speaker 01 Well,
2:10:16 Dax Shepard? Which is really incredible.
2:10:17 Speaker 01 They have like 20% off in certain stores. We go to Brownwood Country Mart and it's very, very, very fun. And I'm re- I'm so excited to go do that with her.
2:10:28 Dax Shepard? Hours will you spend there?
2:10:29 Speaker 01 Just a few and then we'll come back and then we're going to go to, uh, Rolling Greens, the plant store and get some Christmasy items too.
2:10:36 Dax Shepard? Fun. What, what time will you start drinking at the mart? Right away when you get there?
2:10:40 Speaker 01 No, no, we don't always drink.
2:10:43 Dax Shepard? Oh, you don't?
2:10:44 Speaker 01 No, we'll probably get coffee and then we get lunch. So when we get lunch, sometimes there's wine at lunch, but it's not like, we're not like carrying around flasks.
2:10:53 Dax Shepard? Oh, you're not, no flasks, no wine silks?
2:10:55 Speaker 01 No, um, but I'm excited for that. And then tomorrow's pig day. I get my Christmas tree.
2:11:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah. It's a very busy three days.
2:11:02 Speaker 01 It's my favorite stretch of the year.
2:11:04 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:11:05 Speaker 01 I'm excited. Um, and it's sort of a ding ding ding. Cause it's like F1.
2:11:13 Dax Shepard? Oh.
2:11:13 Speaker 01 Um, F1 race is kinda like this stretch of the year.
2:11:19 Dax Shepard? Hmm.
2:11:20 Speaker 01 Final lap.
2:11:21 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay. Okay.
2:11:23 Speaker 01 Also on my gift guide that I put out today, I included an F1 coffee table book.
2:11:29 Dax Shepard? I saw it and it was titled?
2:11:32 Speaker 01 F1, the impossible.
2:11:33 Dax Shepard? No, no, the actual.
2:11:35 Speaker 01 The Little Prince.
2:11:36 Dax Shepard? The Little Prince. I thought this was very playful and fun.
2:11:39 Speaker 01 My, all of them, each gift guide this year, five, there are five of them.
2:11:44 Dax Shepard? Are book themed.
2:11:45 Speaker 01 Correct.
2:11:45 Dax Shepard? Yeah. The first one. It was about her.
2:11:48 Speaker 01 No, the first one was The Time Traveler's Wife.
2:11:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah, Wife.
2:11:53 Speaker 01 Oh, sure.
2:11:54 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
2:11:55 Speaker 01 Then it was Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, my favorite book. Those are more mundane items.
2:12:00 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
2:12:00 Speaker 01 Uh, then it was-
2:12:02 Dax Shepard? What's Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow about?
2:12:03 Speaker 01 Well, it's about this, these gamers, but the title to me represents like, it's just day after day after day.
2:12:12 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:12:12 Speaker 01 So it's mundane items. Then it was For Little Fires Everywhere. That was a candle theme.
2:12:17 Dax Shepard? Yes.
2:12:18 Speaker 01 And today was Little Prince.
2:12:19 Dax Shepard? That's another good book, too.
2:12:20 Speaker 01 Tomorrow, do you want to hear Lord of the Rings?
2:12:22 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow. Oh, Jew- this is, this might be your peak creative endeavor thus far.
2:12:31 Dax Shepard? Can I throw a book out as a challenge and then you gotta come up with gifts that?
2:12:35 Speaker 01 Next year.
2:12:36 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay.
2:12:37 Speaker 01 I was only five days. Well, sure, go ahead. Let's see.
2:12:40 Dax Shepard? Of Mice and Men.
2:12:42 Speaker 01 It would be armchair themed.
2:12:43 Dax Shepard? Oh, and it would have our holidays-
2:12:46 Speaker 01 Mice and Men. So it'd have our holiday sweater on it. It would have celebs on sandwiches.
2:12:53 Dax Shepard? This is great. Amber mugs?
2:12:55 Speaker 01 It would have amber mugs.
2:12:57 Speaker 05 Budanoki mugs?
2:12:58 Speaker 01 Oh, so I almost put salty sea dog mugs, but they're sold out and it felt un- felt a little-
2:13:07 Dax Shepard? Well, it's like a waste. No one can get it.
2:13:09 Speaker 01 I did put a candle on that's always sold out, too, but I had to.
2:13:13 Dax Shepard? You had it.
2:13:13 Speaker 01 Um, best boy statues.
2:13:16 Dax Shepard? What if you're just putting stuff in here for sale on your, your gift guide? You need to tell us.
2:13:22 Speaker 01 And, um, one of the gifts for that will also be Bax cashmere sweater in, that's a long game. It's like, they sign up and they get it in 50 years. So I did it.
2:13:37 Dax Shepard? And you get updates. Like, once a year, you get a photo of how big your sample, uh-
2:13:44 Speaker 01 It is getting smaller.
2:13:46 Dax Shepard? I know.
2:13:46 Speaker 01 You need to add some.
2:13:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah, well, we got a, we got a crop due.
2:13:50 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:13:50 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Okay, well, um, holidays are upon us. I'm so happy. Thanksgiving was a blast and now onward and upward onto Christmas.
2:13:59 Speaker 01 Yay.
2:13:59 Dax Shepard? Let's go. Pedal to the metal. I love you.
2:14:01 Speaker 01 Love you.
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