Rerelease: Roy Choi

On today's episode, we revisit Roy Choi's episode from March 10th, 2022. Roy Choi (Broken Bread, The Chef Show, Kogi) is a chef, author, and television personality. Roy joins the Armchair Expert to discuss how he went from having a gambling addiction to being an award-winning chef, what Asian immigrants had to do to navigate the American system, and how important food is to Korean culture. Roy and Dax talk about what happened to restaurants during the pandemic, how most people in America are a product of fast food advertising, and what reforms he would like to see in the food industry. Roy explains what his experience was like teaching English in Korea, that he has never been a collector of material things, and that he believes there isn’t enough Asian representation in American media. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome, welcome, welcome.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Welcome, welcome, welcome.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  Scared me.

• 0:08Dax Shepard?

  I didn't know what he was gonna do.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  Me either.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  I had nothing planned. I winked.

• 0:13Speaker 00

  I got scared.

• 0:14Dax Shepard?

  What's your name? You gotta introduce us.

• 0:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  I'm Rob.

• 0:17Dax Shepard?

  Have you ever heard the show?

• 0:18Speaker 01

  AKA Wabi Wab.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  This is Monica Padman.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Dax Shepard.

• 0:24Dax Shepard?

  Oh, thanks for having us.

• 0:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, thanks for having us.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  We're picking our favorite episodes of the past and my pick is Roy Choi.

• 0:32Dax Shepard?

  I wanna add, it's always Roy Choi. Like, when we did Best Of that year, you were like, "I don't really care who you guys pick, we gotta have Roy Choi." So I'm just curious.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  Great pick.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  I just loved him.

• 0:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  The Asian-American journey he takes us through and kind of his outlook on food and making it kind of attainable for people and not just this high-end level of elitism.

• 0:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 0:58Speaker 00

  He's also an incredible addiction story, gambling addiction.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Gambling.

• 1:02Speaker 00

  That is wild.

• 1:03Dax Shepard?

  It's an awesome episode.

• 1:04Speaker 00

  It is.

• 1:04Dax Shepard?

  It is. That gambling thing for me.

• 1:06Speaker 00

  I know. That's one that you don't forget.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10Dax Shepard?

  I think about it often. Like, I'm constantly talking about addiction to people and occasionally we'll be talking about gambling and it's like, half of what I understand about the whole thing is from him. The notion of looking in the mirror and going, "We just have to get even."

• 1:23Speaker 00

  Get even is such a metaphor, but no spoilers.

• 1:26Dax Shepard?

  Ah, wow.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  No spoilers. Here's Roy Choi.

• 1:31Dax Shepard?

  We get support from Quince.

• 1:33Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:53Dax 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.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  It's the dream. Cashmere sweaters starting at $60, down jackets, wool outerwear, cashmere accessories. You and everyone on your list are staying cozy and looking incredible all season long.

• 2:19Dax 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.

• 2:27Speaker 00

  It's great.

• 2:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I am going to gift this to some of my friends. I hope they're not listening.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:54Dax 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. This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  What?

• 3:26Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I need to talk about something that doesn't get enough respect, the Quarter Pounder with Cheese. This is not a casual burger. This is a crafted burger. We're talking 100% fresh beef cooked right when you order it. No artificial flavors, no fillers, no preservatives, just beef doing what beef is supposed to do. And here's a detail I love. There's a cowbell sound in the kitchen. When somebody orders a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a cowbell goes off and the grill master throws a fresh patty down. That's like having your own entrance music at McDonald's. I want a cowbell for everything in life. The onions are hand topped by someone who just knows the right amount. Two slices of cheese laid out in a star pattern, so every single bite gets cheese. And two pickles side by side, so you're never in a pickle desert.

• 4:10Dax Shepard?

  Every bite is accounted for. Someone engineered this thing with love. I love a Quarter Pounder.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  Me too. That's my order. It's a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. I love it. I didn't know they put so much effort that they did a star formation. I should have known because you can taste.

• 4:28Dax Shepard?

  You can taste it. Yeah. The love. Don't tell anyone this, but I'll put two of them back.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm not surprised.

• 4:34Dax Shepard?

  The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Fries and a Drink, now $8 for a limited time only. Only at McDonald's. For a limited time only, prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California, and for delivery. Fresh beef not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Offer not valid for delivery.

• 5:06Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Rathers and I'm joined by Minister Mouse, the Duchess of Duluth.

• 5:15Speaker 00

  Oh, let's bring, yeah.

• 5:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the section chiller.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 5:20Dax Shepard?

  That's grown on you a little bit, hasn't it?

• 5:22Speaker 00

  Um, I guess with time, things will just wear away at you, you know?

• 5:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're right. Like, they make you really angry for a while and then just who has the energy?

• 5:31Speaker 00

  You don't have the energy. Yeah.

• 5:32Dax Shepard?

  I think we've talked about it, but like when you catch yourself putting energy into staying mad.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Oh, sure.

• 5:39Dax Shepard?

  Like, a lot of times it's just a runaway freight train in your head, right? And then they did this, and then they did this. For some reason, I can see it in my mind when I'm like, well, now I'm actively trying to remember.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  Ah, that's a good thing to catch yourself on.

• 5:51Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  All of us.

• 5:53Dax Shepard?

  Someone who doesn't do that, a nice, nice boy.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  Oh, who?

• 5:56Dax Shepard?

  Roy Choi.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 5:57Dax Shepard?

  Roy Choi is a restaurant entrepreneur and acclaimed chef and a bestselling author.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  It's one of my favorite interviews.

• 6:04Dax Shepard?

  Yes, it was one of these heart connection ones.

• 6:07Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 6:07Dax Shepard?

  I think. He has several restaurants, Kogi BBQ, and incredible restaurant, Best Friend at Park MGM in Las Vegas. But most importantly, he has this tremendous show called Broken Bread, and it is out now, season two. That's an Emmy Award and James Beard Award-winning series that looks at food and how interwoven it is with culture. And it's fascinating and it's kind of. He uses it as a route into healing, connection, wonderful stuff.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  Is it, dare I say, anthropological?

• 6:40Dax Shepard?

  Absolutely. Aren't all things?

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:43Dax Shepard?

  Please enjoy Roy Choi. I have virtually the same Jordans in that color scheme.

• 6:49Speaker 03

  They came as a set with dunks and Air Force Ones from Undefeated. And they did like a whole series where they're doing kind of like a Godzilla, you know, like a battle between Godzilla, King Kong battle.

• 7:01Dax Shepard?

  I had a pair in high school that I just want more than anything. Do you remember the Air Escapes?

• 7:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they were kind of like Air Force, I guess. And mine were kind of a gray and a blue and a white. I just keep waiting for them to come out with those.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  Bet you don't have the original pair.

• 7:16Dax Shepard?

  I know. It's even hard to find a picture of those things because they also came in brown and white. And I really would love the brown ones. I've looked for them many times.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  I got some friends in street. We're like, oh, let me drop a, drop me a super or drop a little, a little seed for the Air Decks release.

• 7:35Dax Shepard?

  I want to ask you about it because I imagine we're come from a semi-similar situation, which is like, I wanted Jordans so fucking bad. Of course, we couldn't afford them. And I was in an interview in Detroit five years ago. The person interviewing me had on a brand new, beautiful set of fours. And I was like, oh, my gosh, you've kept those that beautiful? I'm sorry, they were fives. And he goes, no, they're like a month old. They just came out. And I was like, hold on a second. I literally had no idea. He goes, oh, yeah, go to this thing. And in the interview, I hit send and bought like three pairs of the ones I always wanted. And now I just can't fucking stop.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 8:11Dax Shepard?

  Do you have a ton of sneakers?

• 8:13Speaker 03

  I don't. I only wear what's given to me for free.

• 8:16Dax Shepard?

  Smart.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Smart.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Not like as big a shoe fiend as most people are. I'm not like a sneaker head. I just like, I like wearing shoes. I don't like collecting them. You know, so like as soon as I get them, I wear them and then I go on to the next one.

• 8:27Dax Shepard?

  I do too.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  I've never really been a collector of many things. I don't know. I've never had attachments to like material items.

• 8:33Dax Shepard?

  Was there anything, Noah, as like a junior high kid, that you wanted that you couldn't have that you've now gotten?

• 8:40Speaker 03

  No, that's pretty weird. Yeah, I mean, I've had addictions and I've gone down really deep holes and I've stayed attached to many, many things like just where I won't let it go. And I've written like horrible love letters on the back of pizza boxes, like the John Favreau scene in The Swingers, like on the first date. So I've gone down dark holes, not that I'm perfect in that way, but I've never been attached to material items.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  So interesting.

• 9:04Speaker 03

  I don't know why, but I think it might have been a foreshadowing or precursor to who I ultimately became, which is creating businesses that make no money.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  Well, it's my destiny from childhood.

• 9:19Dax Shepard?

  Well, yeah, you and I share the addiction thing and I can't wait to talk about that. It's not often that my guest has also smoked crack. So it's like, right? I can't imagine you get interviewed by a ton of people that have smoked a good deal of crack either.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Well, they're not open about it.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  Or they may not have ascended to a level where they're actually in a position to.

• 9:39Dax Shepard?

  To look back on it because that really weeds out the recreational users in the addicts.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  It does.

• 9:44Dax Shepard?

  There's not a lot of like recreational.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  And I feel like I moved to the front of the classroom with crack because it was, it was one week. It was just a burner of seven days, just complete roller coaster all the way through.

• 9:57Dax Shepard?

  The lips are burnt to fucking oblivion.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  To oblivion, walking through the fucking hell's kitchen. That's where all the crack was being sold in New York. I went so far through that I came out the other end and I was like, this shit sucks. I'm done.

• 10:09Dax Shepard?

  So that's it. You just had a nice seven day run.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:11Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  Vacation in Cancun.

• 10:13Dax Shepard?

  That's incredible. I have to say you found yourself in the perfect environment because you do not want to be like day six of smoking crack in the wilderness. You want to be around other zombies.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  And New York was really like that at that time. I'm from here. Speaking of pizza boxes and love letters, I went to go visit a girl that I met in Korea. And without warning her, I showed up at her doorstep in Providence, Rhode Island.

• 10:34Dax Shepard?

  Women love that.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  They love it. You guys love that, right?

• 10:37Dax Shepard?

  It doesn't feel dangerous at all.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  And this is before texting. This was just the knock.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  The text was the knock.

• 10:43Dax Shepard?

  You had an address, a hard address.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  A hard address, show up and then I knock on the door and then obviously it didn't go well. So then I ended up in New York. At the YMCA, it was $7 a night in Times Square and that whole street that I stayed on was like Crack Avenue, man. It was zombies, like it was crazy.

• 11:00Dax Shepard?

  What year was this?

• 11:01Speaker 03

  It was 94.

• 11:02Dax Shepard?

  I was just gonna say, I was living in downtown Detroit in 94 and yeah, it was just ubiquitous.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:09Dax Shepard?

  It was rare to see somebody not struggling with addiction out on the street. It was heartbreaking, but I didn't feel so bad because I was partaking, so who cared? I think we should just start first and foremost with, you were born in Seoul, mom and dad met here, but mom's North Korean, dad's South Korean, then they moved to South Korea, had you, and then you now come to LA at 2?

• 11:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they both came here for college, graduate school. So my mom was from a well-to-do family. My grandfather was a gangster. He was Tony Montana.

• 11:38Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really, really?

• 11:40Speaker 03

  My maternal grandfather, so.

• 11:41Dax Shepard?

  Can you just tell me the timeline, the Korean War is 50?

• 11:43Speaker 03

  50 to 53.

• 11:45Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  Up until 50, they're living in North Korea and the war happens, they all flee. But my grandpa's a G, he figures things out, he gets to Seoul. I mean Seoul at that time was basically dirt roads and buildings all blown up. It was just crazy at that time. The war was coming off of the Japanese occupation. Because it's the peninsula in the Pacific Ocean, we were at the brunt of the whole Cold War between communism and the US.

• 12:08Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  And Korea was the pawn in between it all, because that was the foothold into Asia.

• 12:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  And so, most North Koreans came down, crossed the border, it closed, he's in Seoul, and it's like Tony Montana in the detention center, washing dishes in Miami.

• 12:22Dax Shepard?

  Tony Montana is a Scarface reference, just so you know.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  I actually did know that, even though I haven't seen Scarface.

• 12:27Dax Shepard?

  I didn't want to insult you, but I also didn't want you to be left behind.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  But it's kind of one of those zaps.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  I'll update my references. Yeah, and so he figured things out, he was hustling the whole time and he eventually took over, kind of like what you would call midtown Manhattan, like he took over and owned pretty much all the real estate. So my mom's family was very well-to-do, but that's a whole nother story because they lost everything. They had nine sisters, two brothers, both brothers got addicted to gambling and lost the whole fortune.

• 12:55Dax Shepard?

  So you come by this addiction stuff honestly?

• 12:58Speaker 03

  It's crazy, yeah, and so they sent her here to art school. Dad came from. The total opposite. He came from the country in the south, ended up in the city. His father was just, you know, a normal, everyday banker, but he figured it out and became like the head of his class. So he came on a scholarship to America. They met and then they decided to go back. I always make fun of him. I'm like, why the fuck you go back? So they went back and they realized, because for a lot of immigrant families, once you taste America, it's hard to go back to where you're from.

• 13:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but I also understand the desire, and I don't know that this was theirs, but to like make it where you're from.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  I think part of it's Korea comes from a very Confucius model, very like male dominated, very respect your elders, respect your parents, always pay tribute to your family. So I think they were going back to do things right, but once you taste America, they were here in the sixties. They were driving like beautiful cobalt blue Impalas, wearing Ray-Bans, smoking cigarettes, drinking scotch. And they go back and I think they realized as soon as they step back in Korea, they're like, we gotta get back.

• 13:57Dax Shepard?

  Well, also they have a new thought, which is you.

• 14:00Speaker 03

  I forgot about this. This is probably the reason why they came back. I was born with a deformity.

• 14:04Dax Shepard?

  Oh my goodness.

• 14:05Speaker 03

  I totally forgot about that.

• 14:07Dax Shepard?

  What was the deformity?

• 14:08Speaker 03

  I was born with a cleft palate.

• 14:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, a pretty bad one. So cleft palate is when your whole top part of your lip is ripped open.

• 14:15Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yes, yes, yes.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  So you're born with a hole in your face, but back then in Korea, like they were stitching people together with duct tape, you know? So like, I don't think they saw me come out and they're like, they didn't know what to do.

• 14:26Dax Shepard?

  I'm assuming then it comes out kind of sealed where the crack is, so you can just lace those together and hope for the best. It's a surgery.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  It's a surgery, yeah, but there weren't many of them in Korea, I think, at that time. And again, like you're talking about a industrialized country, coming off of war, mainly built around textiles, not the most advanced medical equipment and training in the world. They stitched me together, it was all messed up, but the thing is, because Korea or any country outside of the United States is so homogenous. What happens is if you have anything that is just slightly different, as little as being bow legged, buck tooth, whatever, you stick out and you can't make it.

• 15:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, if you're fucked up looking, this is the spot for you.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  America is the spot for ugly ass motherfuckers.

• 15:08Dax Shepard?

  Somehow you put all these ugly freaks together and there's some beautiful people.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 15:14Speaker 03

  I forgot, that's why they came back.

• 15:16Dax Shepard?

  Okay, and then in your childhood, they owned a liquor store, they had a restaurant, they had a dry cleaning spot, they ultimately went into jewelry, starting with door to door and then becoming a successful business. And you also moved nonstop, is that?

• 15:29Speaker 03

  Absolutely, every couple of years. Because again, when you're an immigrant in this country, the whole folklore or tale of coming with nothing in your pocket is a true story.

• 15:38Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  It's a real thing.

• 15:40Dax Shepard?

  I took an LA geography class in college. The Koreans have a pretty damn good network once you're here, right? Like the whole Alhambra area, they loan within their community and they help people start businesses. And there is a nice network for Koreans.

• 15:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, Asians did that with each other, especially Koreans, because no one else would take care of us. We're the forgotten minority in many ways.

• 16:00Dax Shepard?

  Big time, because you're the model minority.

• 16:02Speaker 03

  Or people think or assume that we're getting benefits that other minorities aren't.

• 16:07Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  But in many cases, we're not. We're just invisible and forgotten. We're still getting the no's and the closed doors and the racism. It's just coming in ways that aren't so overt.

• 16:17Dax Shepard?

  There's a few different minority groups that America doesn't seem to have much compassion for. Jewish folks, because in general, the Jewish folks they know were their doctor or they've done well in this country. A lot of people have those experience with Asians as business owners or classmates. And then they ignore this whole other section. And they seem to have a lack of compassion, which we extend to everyone else who's a minority group.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And just because a certain sector of a certain race or population or culture is successful, that doesn't mean that everyone else is successful.

• 16:47Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Or that everyone else has opportunities. If you look statistically, and I know this podcast is about like nerding out and getting the details and info, if you look at the economics behind a lot of Asian communities within the United States, we rank as probably the poorest.

• 17:02Dax Shepard?

  Right. We're only thinking, and I'm going to be speaking way too broadly and generally, but we are only thinking of the Japanese student visa. We're not thinking of the Hmong or the Southeast Asians. We're not thinking of any of those people.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And every country and every culture is so different from each other, but we all get grouped into one.

• 17:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you've traveled Asia... Each place is different as imaginable, really.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  It's very different. The food, the culture. I mean, we don't even look the same. But again, it's just the ignorance sometimes of anyone that's not from that part of the world. It's just easier to broad stroke things and put everyone into one box. What's funny is, is that most people that get subjugated to that type of stereotype or that type of broad stroking, we don't think that way about anyone else.

• 17:47Dax Shepard?

  Although I do have a friend who's Chinese who moved here when she was ten. And she was like, I could not fucking tell one white person apart. So that's also a thing.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  Oh, is that the thing?

• 17:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, in fact, we even had a female black professor who studies this. And she said, all in groups can't recognize out groups.

• 18:02Speaker 03

  Really?

• 18:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so black folks think white people all look the same. White people think Asians look the same. Asians, when they first get here, think we all look the same. And by we, I mean white people I'm speaking for.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  Looking at Matt Damon right now behind you.

• 18:14Dax Shepard?

  Right, how would you know? Is that me or is that Matt Damon?

• 18:17Speaker 03

  I did think it was you when I first walked in.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  But that was just out of glance.

• 18:25Dax Shepard?

  But anyways, yeah, it is a phenomenon that we all experience. It's just like, we get really, really acute wisdom of differentiating our group because we're around it nonstop. And then we don't have much experience with other groups.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  Maybe the only difference is sometimes white people just take it to the next level.

• 18:40Dax Shepard?

  Oh, they certainly do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're the worst offenders because we then take that and then we build a whole system off of it.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  Well, also because you don't have to know what it feels like to be marginalized. So like, if you're on the other end of someone just grouping you in, you're just intellectually aware that that's wrong.

• 18:59Dax Shepard?

  Well, you pay a different price because the white people are the key holders to every opportunity. Whereas it's not reversed.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  Like, we have to know the difference.

• 19:08Dax Shepard?

  Exactly.

• 19:08Speaker 00

  And white people don't have to.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, well put.

• 19:11Dax Shepard?

  The other thing I found really, really fascinating, and again, I was in this class in 99, so we were not very far off the LA Rodney King riots.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:20Dax Shepard?

  And so much of that, I feel like, was explained in this class. One of them being this intense tension between often Korean store owners and black customers in these neighborhoods.

• 19:34Dax Shepard?

  And they broke it down in the simplest ways. Like, the way you show respect in Korea is to not engage eye contact, is to be quiet, is to basically answer when asked a question. Like, that's how they would show respect to a customer that comes in the store. And then for the black community, it's literally the opposite. It's just a tinderbox of cultural differences.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, but again, that was only a microcosm, a little sliver, that the media blew up and that even professors and teachers and curriculums blew up into representing the whole relationship between the Korean community, the Asian community, the black community. If you really go down to the streets, if I could take you guys to Watts right now, Compton, South Central, anywhere, we can go all the way back to the 80s and early 90s to now. There's always a Mrs. Lee, a Mr. Park, a Mr. Kim, whoever, that runs a store that has great relationships with the neighborhood. And what you mentioned about the cultural differences, yeah, that existed, but there was also nonverbal acts of love that were shared amongst each other, whether that was

• 20:36Speaker 03

  tab systems also being just included in the neighborhood, brought to family picnics and gatherings, stuff like that. It went both ways, but there were certain cases where people were stubborn against each other.

• 20:49Dax Shepard?

  And so you were in that. You lived at, for periods, in South Central. And what was your personal experience?

• 20:55Speaker 03

  I just get along with people. And so there were times where I hated my family or my culture for treating certain people certain ways. And there were times where I had to stick up for certain things. And there were times where I was caught in the middle of it. Where I was doing beer runs or stealing stuff, and then the store owner's Korean. But I'm just an American kid hanging out.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  You know, you grew up in Detroit area. I'm just a street kid hanging out in LA.

• 21:17Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 21:18Speaker 03

  With a bunch of other knuckleheads.

• 21:19Dax Shepard?

  Doing hood rat shit.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  Doing hood rat shit.

• 21:21Dax Shepard?

  That's right.

• 21:22Speaker 03

  Not even thinking about any connections to your family or anything.

• 21:24Dax Shepard?

  That you're betraying your family.

• 21:25Speaker 03

  That you're betraying anything, you know.

• 21:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, Confucius don't mean shit to me, you know. So I'm just going in there grabbing shit, and then I'm running out, and then all of a sudden, I see the face of disappointment behind the counter.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  And to have to carry the weight of that, it sucks. Like, that's...

• 21:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, those kids were being kids, and you were betraying your people.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:47Dax Shepard?

  The stakes are so different.

• 21:49Speaker 03

  And then you gotta go out the store and then just continue to be a kid.

• 21:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  But then you're carrying the weight internally, especially when you're Asian. You kind of have to maneuver through that where you're carrying a lot of this silent guilt or this silent shame.

• 22:04Dax Shepard?

  Shame, yeah, yeah.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  When you're just doing American shit.

• 22:06Dax Shepard?

  That's right.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  You know, like just growing up.

• 22:09Dax Shepard?

  How many places did you live, do you think, between arriving at two years old and then, let's say, going off to the military school?

• 22:17Speaker 03

  Eight to 10, yeah.

• 22:19Dax Shepard?

  Now, here's a really easy theory to concoct. I moved a ton as well, and I crave control like you can't imagine. Do you think cooking was like, oh, gosh, here's this eight by eight area that I am in total control over, and I know what the outcome will be if I do it correctly?

• 22:35Speaker 03

  I did unconsciously confront that because I was so immersed within cooking. So sometimes cooking is all we have as families, and especially my family and my extended family. So as Asian immigrants, especially in the era that I grew up, we took a lot of shit, man. It was part culture, part language, part just not knowing how to react. But a lot of that stuff, you just keep quiet and you just put your head down and you just keep going. People yelling horrible things at you, throwing things at you.

• 23:04Dax Shepard?

  Ton of the hip hop that I love that came out of LA in the late 80s, early 90s is just chock full of negative Asian stuff.

• 23:12Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. It was hard for me to grapple with, especially when like Cube made Black Korea.

• 23:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 23:17Speaker 03

  You know, it was hard for me because those were my heroes.

• 23:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  And then all of a sudden, they're saying these really horrible things about my family, and it was really hard for me to reconcile the two for a very long time. And I think ultimately, I think that came to define the philosophy of Kogi, the truck. Instead of reacting in road rage towards it all, I kept it with me and it took me a long time to figure out what will my reaction to it be.

• 23:41Dax Shepard?

  It's so cool because I think the majority of people are going to feel at least the pressure to commit to one side or the other.

• 23:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:49Dax Shepard?

  As opposed to thinking like, I insist on weaving these together.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  Building bridges, yeah. But sometimes those bridges can take 30 years, like for me, you know? But ultimately, I'm just so happy that I stayed alive long enough to be able to build that bridge. But we ate a lot of shit. So that's just the way it was. But part of it is language, too. Language and culture, because when things get pushed too far, I've seen my uncles kick nine people's asses at one time. So it's not that we can't fight back, or that we won't. It's just that, in many cases, the first wave of immigrants, Asian immigrants, didn't know what the proper protocol was.

• 24:25Dax Shepard?

  And let's add that this normal system to deal with that, you're not included. Nor were black folks were included. So a white person, instinctually, they know to call the cops.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  And you got to remember, a lot of countries that these people come from, the cops are corrupt. The governments are corrupt. That's the whole reason they're here in the first place. So then you have that, you have the language barrier, you have the cultural incomprehension of what you're supposed to do. So that's why food is so important. Because during the week, it's so hard, that the only time that we had together was through food. And all my extended family, my aunts, my uncles, my parents, they would just be cooking all the time. Like, all the time. And I don't mean like making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I mean, like, making stews, broths, dumplings, like, full-blown restaurant shit, you know, in their apartments. And then we would all meet on the weekends and have these, like, tremendous potlucks every single weekend. It was like growing up with Quincy Jones as your dad, or something. Or like,

• 25:20Speaker 03

  Steph Curry, like, how Steph Curry grew up, like, on the NBA arena. You know, like, that's how it is for us with food. So I never really used it as a space of, here's my little private Idaho type thing.

• 25:31Dax Shepard?

  It was a given. Yeah. I'm curious what owning the restaurant in Anaheim was like. Were you like, oh, great, this is a gateway to peace? Or were you ever like, fuck you? You're the same fuckers that are yelling and saying shit behind my back, and now you want to come and enjoy this insane food? And act like that ain't the case?

• 25:50Speaker 03

  I love how you just put it all, because for people that are marginalized, we never hold any grudges in many cases.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  You don't have the luxury to.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  And in many cases, when we do have opportunities, we're just giving back because we're survivors and we know our self-worth and we know ourselves. Whether that's the African-American culture, all the way to Asian-American, to whoever. We know where we come from, we know what we represent. And so you can't just stop it. It just keeps growing and mushrooming. And so for us, it's just about sharing. So no, we don't hold those grudges at all.

• 26:20Dax Shepard?

  I am totally shame-ridden to report that in Michigan in the eighties, if people went out for Chinese food, you'd hear several of the families trying out their Chinese accent. You'd see people taking pictures that were offensive.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  The sad part is you go outside of LA, it's still like that. Anywhere that's not like New York, LA, San Francisco, it's like that. But we saw during the pandemic, even New York, LA, San Francisco had to deal with Asian violence too. In that same pattern that you just described in the eighties, which is so bizarre. I always equate it to the world that you come from, Hollywood.

• 26:53Dax Shepard?

  Well, let's make clear, I don't come from.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  You come from Detroit. The place you found yourself is because we don't have enough stories and representation within Hollywood. So people are still living off of this idea of who we are. This representation through Mickey Rooney or Sixteen Candles of who we are. We don't have Asian addicts, we don't have Asian people who fail. We don't have the euphoria of Asians that are dealing with sexual problems. Because we don't have any stories told about us in those manners. What happens is the image of who we are is still trapped. It's almost like trauma, it's trapped within this era and this age.

• 27:31Dax Shepard?

  Well, where I'm from in Michigan, my introduction to someone speaking in an Indian accent is a cartoon version. Which we've actually had a lengthy, yeah, we had Hank on to go through that whole thing. And I, again, am embarrassed to say that had I not had a best friend who was Indian and really learned the story and really learned how few people represent her, until Mindy arrives, it's like, who's Monica on TV? The studios, networks, all these people, they had a market-driven assessment of everything, which is like, well, who's gonna go see this? And they were wrong. John Chu's a friend of ours, Crazy Rich Asians. It's enormous. Everyone was wrong, as it turns out.

• 28:09Speaker 00

  There's just room now for more niche stories. Like when it was just the network TV shows.

• 28:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, three TV shows.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a big risk, being realistic about who people are. Like, they want tropes.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  I agree with that, but I also don't agree with it only in the fact that with all the streamers out there and all the content and all of the shows being bought every single day right now, someone's Zoom pitching a show. The proportion of Asian storytelling is still not represented.

• 28:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. What percentage do you know of the US population we could consider Asian?

• 28:41Speaker 03

  Well, when you say Asian, you have to consider Pacific Island. You have to consider India.

• 28:45Dax Shepard?

  I will not consider India. That's a longstanding debate.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  He always wants to separate them.

• 28:50Dax Shepard?

  I carve them out, yeah.

• 28:51Speaker 00

  I include.

• 28:52Speaker 03

  I argue that as well. Y'all make it in Hollywood. Y'all got big eyes, features, everything, you know? Us Asians, you know, with no eyelids, you gotta deal with. You still gotta deal with the racism and stuff. But, um, but yeah, you gotta consider all that. I don't know. Can you Google percent of AAPI?

• 29:10Dax Shepard?

  Rob is an eighth Asian?

• 29:12Speaker 00

  No.

• 29:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he's an eighth?

• 29:14Speaker 00

  No, he's not.

• 29:15Dax Shepard?

  An eighth Filipino. So his, what is it? Twelve and a half. Twelve and a half. So.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  Twelve and a half.

• 29:19Dax Shepard?

  His wife is half Filipino. So his son is 25%. And since he's his dad, he's 12.5%.

• 29:27Speaker 00

  I hate this. That's not how it works. And I'm scared that some people will really think that's how it works.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  That's like contact high.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 29:36Speaker 00

  We said maybe Rob, he has enough kids, he'll be actually over 100% Asian.

• 29:40Dax Shepard?

  More than his wife.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  Then you'll be truly Asian because you'd be overachieving.

• 29:46Dax Shepard?

  He has seven or eight kids. He's gonna be like 200% Filipino. It's gonna be so fun.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  5.7%.

• 29:51Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  And I think that includes Indian.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  So only 5.7% of the country is Asian?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  According to the 2019 Census Bureau.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  That's because probably like 25% more didn't fill out.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. This is tricky.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  There's no way there's only 6%.

• 30:15Dax Shepard?

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• 30:57Dax Shepard?

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• 31:37Speaker 00

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 31:39Dax 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 the shoes are fantastic. The Outwork, the Outwork Flex, and the Drive 2. I like the Drive 2 because it's a hybrid. And I lift, of course, but I also like to do what's called box jumps. Right? I do a lot of jumping onto a little platform and I want a little more flexibility. And boy, do they deliver.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  And if you're a cardio person and you're running and you also need to be lifting.

• 32:21Dax 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.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  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 the closet.

• 32:38Dax Shepard?

  Stay stronger than the season. Head to nobolproject.com all holiday season to shop new deals every week. We get support from Skims. Okay, I have a confession. I genuinely love matching pajamas. It's the best part of Christmas morning, really. Everyone in the same matching set, looking ridiculously cute in front of the tree.

• 33:00Speaker 00

  I love matching pajamas. I'm literally going to be in coordinating sets with all my friends this holiday season because I got them, spoiler to my friends who are listening, the same Skims pajama set I've been living in. They are so soft and cozy and they look cute. So you can leave the house and go get a late night hot chocolate, be cozy.

• 33:21Dax Shepard?

  It's so great how Skims has sets for everyone, too. Women's, men's, kids, even your pets. So nobody in your life has to be left out this year.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  I have a bunch of different pajama sets. One of my favorite is the organic cotton sleep long sleeve set.

• 33:37Dax Shepard?

  Okay, tell me more.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  So comfortable, very chic, too. The top is a button down, but very, very soft, easy to sleep in. But as I said before, you can multipurpose this and look super cute.

• 33:50Dax Shepard?

  Hot chocolate runs. It's like the pajamas we grew up in, except without the scratchy polyester that made opening presents feel more like a hot yoga class that nobody signed up for.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  All the nostalgia, none of the discomfort. Shop my favorite loungewear and pajamas at skims.com. After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you. Select podcasts in the survey and be sure to select Armature Expert in the dropdown menu that follows. If you're looking for the perfect gifts for everyone on your list, the Skims Holiday Shop is now open at skims.com.

• 34:19Dax 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?

• 34:42Speaker 00

  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, who 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.

• 34:58Dax 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.

• 35:17Speaker 00

  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-

• 35:25Dax Shepard?

  You start feeling it.

• 35:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, because then I had it this past weekend and I was like, oh, my God. And just thank God, thank God for her. Yeah.

• 35:33Dax Shepard?

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• 36:03Dax Shepard?

  So in your really interesting story of moving everywhere, having all these different interests, making dumplings at A, mom selling her own signature brand of kimchi around.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:14Dax Shepard?

  You first go to Korea out of college or before college?

• 36:20Speaker 03

  Well, first time I went was in high school. My parents took me there when I was 16. That was the first time I ever went back.

• 36:25Dax Shepard?

  Did you speak Korean?

• 36:26Speaker 03

  No, I have never really spoke that good Korean. I understand it because you know, parents speak to me in it, but I don't speak that well. I always say like I'm like a LA Chicano, but in Korean. My Mexican homies like, they don't speak Spanish, you know, but they understand everything. Their grandma or mom's yelling at them, but they don't speak yet.

• 36:43Dax Shepard?

  Once mom hits that certain pitch in her voice, you start understanding. Whether you know the words or not, you're pretty sure on what's being said. So when you went to Korea though, you taught English there?

• 36:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was later on. That was in college. I don't know if they're still doing it now, but there was a whole era for us as like second generation Koreans, where we just like, we're fuckups here and then we're like fucking gods over there. Like we're like intellectual savants over there because we speak English.

• 37:09Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay. Oh, fun.

• 37:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it was great because you go there and you'd make like a ton of money. And you'd have a class that was just completely into you and you could say whatever you want. I think the whole time I taught English, I don't even think I really taught anything.

• 37:25Dax Shepard?

  Sure, he's a broad, I'm swagging.

• 37:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just talked.

• 37:30Speaker 03

  And they just kind of took the class to like hear the words and hear the lingo and the rhythm.

• 37:37Dax Shepard?

  This sounds like a dream job for me because I just love to talk.

• 37:40Speaker 03

  It was the podcast before podcast.

• 37:44Dax Shepard?

  It sounds like you were already so immersed in the culinary culture that going there must not have been that big of a, or was there still another level that you were made aware of once you were there?

• 37:55Speaker 03

  No, I think once I got to Korea, what amazed me is just how fluid and affordable food is, but it's still the same food. Here in the States, the difference between nutritional food, delicious food and processed food, it's all an economic barrier, right?

• 38:11Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 38:12Speaker 03

  And so anything that is below a certain price is usually fast food in most cases. But in Korea, it's not that way at all.

• 38:19Dax Shepard?

  Right, there's no system for that.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  When I first started going there, that just really opened my eyes to like, you know, food being so cheap yet so delicious.

• 38:27Dax Shepard?

  It's like more democratized.

• 38:28Speaker 03

  And just filled with nutrients, chili paste, ginger, garlic, green onions, different herbs. And so that opened my mind because it made food a part of culture. I was young. I was in my, you know, early twenties. And here, when you're in your early twenties, you go out of the club or whatever. All you're doing is just debauchery or going through the drive through and yelling into this fucking intercom. Eating fries and Big Macs and this and that.

• 38:53Dax Shepard?

  My order, I can tell you right now, there was a Jack in the Box in my house in Santa Monica. And five nights a week, I was in there ordering the ultimate cheeseburger. And then six of those tacos with the fucking buttermilk dipping sauce. And I'd go sit in my lazy boy and just get myself into a food coma and pass out.

• 39:10Speaker 03

  That's it. And but over there, it opened my mind to like, food is a part of it all.

• 39:16Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 39:16Speaker 03

  So it's not just complete destruction of your body and soul and everything. And then lazy boy and conk out and then wake up.

• 39:23Dax Shepard?

  Wake up hating yourself and have to get drunk again to deal with it.

• 39:26Speaker 03

  It's like you can sometimes have the best meal of your life.

• 39:29Dax Shepard?

  And feel good afterwards.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  And feel good afterwards and spend like five bucks and stay there till like four thirty in the morning.

• 39:35Dax Shepard?

  That almost doesn't exist in this country.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  It's getting better now, obviously with the street food that's evolved. But also just food culture has evolved in the last twenty years here.

• 39:45Dax Shepard?

  What do you think is happening with the younger generation? Cause I have a theory on it. People love to write these articles like millennials care more about avocado toast than owning a home. And on the surface, you're like, okay, so then I guess the implication is they're economically irresponsible. But the older I get, I go like, oh, no, no, these are people who have chosen experiences over objects.

• 40:04Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:04Dax Shepard?

  And that's what's scary to everyone, actually, is because our economy runs on selling objects, not experiences.

• 40:10Speaker 03

  I know you had Dave Chang.

• 40:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:12Speaker 03

  He started it all. He started this wave, you know, and Kogi came on the heels of that. But really it was Momofuku that kind of broke the mold and really allowed a pathway for this millennial generation to really have something to connect that experience to.

• 40:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it was like the first punk rock Asian food offering.

• 40:31Speaker 03

  Yep, and it became a part of culture and he became culture and the restaurant became culture. And that just led to so many things to where now food is probably more in demand than sneakers.

• 40:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Harder to get sometimes than sneakers. We've definitely come a long way. Now that we're in it, it's hard to imagine a world where it wasn't like this. Even twenty years ago, people weren't going from city to city and having lists of like, okay, where's the best place to eat?

• 40:56Dax Shepard?

  When I grew up, there was a class aspect to it that of course I rejected. So it's not just that I didn't think that was a good use of my money. It also represented to me. Elites, like, oh, these fucking idiots are spending $600 on dinner. Like, there was a whole chip on my shoulder about it.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  I agree with you on that, but also the reality was that way, too.

• 41:16Dax Shepard?

  You had to spend that much.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  Because food was separated. So, anything that was chef-driven, or ingredient-driven, or market-driven, or even considered to be a part of whatever is the hottest thing in that city at that moment, was all driven by price. Price and experience and your parents or an older generation going. And that's why I say it was Dave who broke that mold.

• 41:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  By opening Momofuku, what he did was it broke the levy to where the saltwater and the freshwater merged together, you know, and created a whole new thing.

• 41:47Dax Shepard?

  Came in as she were.

• 41:49Speaker 03

  Came in as she were.

• 41:50Dax Shepard?

  Exactly. Yeah, so, like, we would have the once-a-year nice meal. And then, of course, when we would go there, I would feel less than the whole time. And, yeah, I've never felt that way walking up to Momofuku or any of these places. I don't get that anymore.

• 42:03Speaker 03

  The feelings you had were real because that's exactly how they looked at you.

• 42:06Dax Shepard?

  And the staff. I sometimes would be like, God, this fucking waiter's treating us like we don't belong here. That was another, I don't know, that was in my head, or it was happening, or a combination of both.

• 42:15Speaker 03

  It's real. I wrote about it in the book, too. Like, we've always been a family of food, right? So, like, we would go to restaurants, and as I got older, I would, like, research these restaurants and try to take my families. Or when we had family visiting, I would go to the hottest restaurants in town.

• 42:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  And, you know, you get treated as if you don't belong there. And, you know, this waiter's fucking, he doesn't know anything either.

• 42:37Dax Shepard?

  He's a victim, too. Yeah, he's not the upper class, or he wouldn't be working there.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  He wouldn't be working there.

• 42:41Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes.

• 42:42Speaker 03

  But he somehow, he's developed this language and this style, and they're just trying to get you out of there. Now, things can not only be tailored, but they're also meeting you where you're at, versus you having to put on a nice suit and go to a fancy place.

• 42:59Dax Shepard?

  And I think the staff has increasingly felt cool that they're doing it. Not that they're like, they too should be blue-chip family, third-generation wealth.

• 43:09Speaker 03

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 43:10Dax Shepard?

  Like, they've got a different swagger, which is cool.

• 43:12Speaker 03

  They don't have to wear all the same uniform, you know? They can come to work with what they're wearing and have their own style.

• 43:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  And there's just been an evolution of what service and style is in America, and what is considered to be excellence. And not just in food, I think across the board, and there you see it with fashion, you see it with everything. But I think there's been an evolution of, again, what excellence is. Before excellence was defined by that, what you just said. The rich, blue chip, third gen, all that. But now excellence can be defined in any way, and you're seeing that in food.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  I think before it used to be, it was hard to have, it was limited because it was fancy. But I still think there's something to be said about wanting something limited or that you can't have. But now it's like, you make a reservation and you go pick it up in an alley and they drop it off to you. And you have to, it's like a secret thing. And it's not fancy, but it's still like exciting and exclusive. Like, I think exclusive is still.

• 44:08Dax Shepard?

  But for the right reason.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 44:09Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 44:10Speaker 03

  What you're touching on is, the exclusiveness is cool because it's like nerdy exclusiveness now. And there's real scarcity because there's only so much that can be produced, you know? And so, it's a beautiful thing right now.

• 44:22Dax Shepard?

  Boy, I've really kind of under, I don't want to say under-valued, but under-recognized how much of our culture is driven by food. Of course, I always think of film and music and fashion, but I don't think I've really incorporated as much how food drives so much of this. Well, I come from a foodless culture is probably why.

• 44:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're Midwest, grew up in an era where you were being infiltrated by the fast food, advertising, frozen food system. That was all deliberate. You are a product of that experiment. I just spoke with Alice Waters, who is the godmother of this movement of organics, of eating sustainably to the ground. What happened in the seventies is that this was a deliberate act by the advertising and food corporations to feed us this idea that things need to be fast. Fast, disposable, our time is money, we need to keep it moving. There's no time for food. Because all the time should be focused on what you need to do to push your upward mobility.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  To get rich, basically.

• 45:23Speaker 03

  To get rich.

• 45:24Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  And so, food was the casualty. And there was millions and billions of dollars behind that, that fueled that advertising to get us to that point where we were completely desensitized and numbed to even caring about food.

• 45:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  And it took until probably like the early 2000s for us to break out of that. Cocoon, I'm just so glad because we could have never evolved beyond that. I see the picture in my mind of everything that was from the seventies until the year 2000. And it's so bizarre. It is so bizarre for a country to completely devalue food to the lowest level, to where it actually you are being told that you don't even have to eat.

• 46:03Dax Shepard?

  Ideally, yeah, you'd eat a capsule at the beginning of the month that would nourish you for the next thirty days.

• 46:08Speaker 03

  Because there's no time for it. There's no time for it. And none of it matters and flavor doesn't matter. Nutrition doesn't matter. Nothing matters within this realm of food. Growing it, wasting it, eating it, cooking it, nothing.

• 46:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God. This is so fascinating. So will you please tell us about how you started watching Emerald Lagasse?

• 46:32Speaker 00

  On the Food Network?

• 46:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, on the Food Network.

• 46:34Dax Shepard?

  And that kind of like changed the course of your life?

• 46:37Speaker 03

  It wasn't really an obsession more than it was a last cry for help. You know? So I was here in Los Angeles. This was 1995. I had just come off of a four-year deep addiction dive into gambling.

• 46:52Dax Shepard?

  What was your game of choice?

• 46:53Speaker 03

  It went from this game called Pan9, which is a kind of a card interpretation of Pai Gow. And it's similar to baccarat, but you use four cards. You use three in the hole and you can pull one.

• 47:06Dax Shepard?

  Are you getting chills right now explaining it?

• 47:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:08Speaker 00

  No.

• 47:09Speaker 03

  Getting nine, pictures are zero, it's the whole thing.

• 47:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 47:12Speaker 03

  And then it eventually led to poker and then high limit poker.

• 47:14Dax Shepard?

  Texas Hold'em or?

• 47:15Speaker 03

  Texas Hold'em.

• 47:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  And then playing like.

• 47:18Dax Shepard?

  At Commerce every day?

• 47:19Speaker 03

  At Commerce every day, yeah. Bicycle Club Commerce. Back then, it was before the whole World Series of Poker Day, so it was like.

• 47:25Dax Shepard?

  Just Doyle Brunson was popular.

• 47:26Speaker 03

  It was me against Doyle Brunson.

• 47:28Dax Shepard?

  Stu Unger.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, Stu Unger and Telly Savalas, basically. There was no like real no limit games. It was all structured. And it was a big game. It was like I eventually made it to like 2040, which is a pretty big game.

• 47:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you can get into thousands of dollars of troubles.

• 47:42Speaker 03

  And in your twenties, you know, losing $10,000, $20,000, a lot of money. And a lot of that money sometimes is borrowed. So I burned a lot of bridges over those four years. And I was basically couch surfing and I didn't have many other options left. The only other options were pretty much being a rail bird at the casino. That was all I had left. And a rail bird is they toss you a five dollar chip to get a water or a coffee or something like that, you know?

• 48:07Dax Shepard?

  Did you have the obsession, I read Dostoevsky's The Gambler? Now, I have had every addiction, but that one, for whatever reason, blew over me.

• 48:15Speaker 03

  You're lucky.

• 48:16Dax Shepard?

  I'm so fucking lucky.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  Because it actually, not only destroys you, but it's a forest fire. It will destroy everything around you.

• 48:22Dax Shepard?

  In The Gambler, the component I was missing, that I couldn't latch on to, was, at least the book claimed, this obsession with getting even.

• 48:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:30Dax Shepard?

  Did you have that?

• 48:31Speaker 03

  I have it every day still. You don't even think about the money. There is no value in the currency at all. And all you do, every single day, when you look in the mirror, is just promise yourself, when you get even, that you'll quit.

• 48:42Dax Shepard?

  They've done all these adrenal studies, too, that gamblers are getting their biggest high when they're losing the most.

• 48:48Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 48:48Dax Shepard?

  Which is fucking so abstract for a non-addict.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  So crazy, yeah. What happens is, because it's all delta and chips, the amount of money that you go through, 10,000 feels like $10. So that's where the adrenaline from losing comes into play, because you're desensitized.

• 49:03Dax Shepard?

  The other thing that I think that addiction has over all others is the financial pull. It's like, there's no way in which I can construct some fantasy where I'm gonna go get the money back I spent on coke.

• 49:14Speaker 03

  I agree with that, but also, just the magnitude of what you're spending on it will never equal gambling.

• 49:20Dax Shepard?

  Right. I can't do 10 grand of coke in a day.

• 49:23Speaker 03

  In a day.

• 49:23Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  In an hour.

• 49:25Speaker 00

  I think what's also tricky about gambling specifically is if you're a successful person, or you have the brain of someone who pushes themselves and is motivated and wants to be a successful person, you are gambling. Like, we've all gambled with our lives. We moved to LA with no money to try to be an actor. Like, that's a gamble.

• 49:41Dax Shepard?

  That's a straight flush, for sure.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I mean, so it's that balance, right, of knowing when to gamble and when you can't.

• 49:49Dax Shepard?

  Also, you're in the judgment business, so you sit down at these tables, you have this added ego going like, "Well, five of these guys are much dumber than I am."

• 49:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. You always sit down and say, "I could take them." Everyone around you is a loser. That's a big part, too. And everyone has their 15 seconds, somewhere or another. And so what happens is, you're swimming in this kind of lagoon of losers, and then all of a sudden, you pop up, and then you're the hero, and-

• 50:15Dax Shepard?

  You confirm the story.

• 50:16Speaker 03

  Everyone flies- Box to you and you're in this room and it's the best fucking feeling in the world. I'm not gonna not admit it. It's the best feeling. All of a sudden, all these dreams that we have in the real world get condensed and clarified into that moment for you. So it becomes more than just the gambling. It's like, there's something poetic about it. And so for four years, I was on that road.

• 50:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh my God, that's an eternity. It probably went by like this for you.

• 50:42Speaker 03

  It went by like that. And I was on my last couch, just like this, in the middle of the afternoon, just like this. And Emeril came on and I had an out of body experience. This was 1995, so this was before the Emeril Live. People don't talk about out of body experiences that much anymore. I know in the eighties and nineties, they used to talk.

• 51:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh, everyone was having.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, yeah.

• 51:02Dax Shepard?

  Surely, if I was on a.

• 51:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, David does it, but I had one and he came out the TV and.

• 51:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh wow.

• 51:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, he came and he kind of slapped me around. He's like, what the fuck, you know?

• 51:13Dax Shepard?

  Oh wow.

• 51:13Speaker 03

  What are you doing? And I kind of woke up. I have that tendency too, to where I can like drop things on a dime. It happened with crack, like we were talking about.

• 51:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 51:21Speaker 03

  On the seventh day, God created.

• 51:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I write it.

• 51:25Speaker 03

  I click crack. And yeah, there's sometimes I'm just done with shit. This was like before the internet was popping. So like this is when you went to bookstores to research shit.

• 51:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 51:35Speaker 03

  So like I was at bookstores all day, just researching, you know, I knew what it meant to cook food, but I really didn't know what it meant to be a chef. And I enrolled in night school here in LA. It was a culinary night school. It was on Robertson in Melrose, you know, right across from Chaconis. Learning and then the whole time I was selling at my lowest points. I'm a bit of a Mr. Magoo. I always end up in this huge pool of luck. The Kogi truck was no different. At this point, I had spent the next year and a half basically working, selling mutual funds, which is basically a used car salesman selling.

• 52:07Dax Shepard?

  Package securities.

• 52:08Speaker 03

  Package securities. I had a briefcase. I had one suit. I had like three ties, one suit. I was going around and I was really good at it.

• 52:18Dax Shepard?

  Well, this is in the era where most of those were generating like 10% mid nineties.

• 52:23Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 52:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 52:24Speaker 03

  And I was really good. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was like at the racetrack. I would close my eyes and I would pick one and it would fucking hit.

• 52:32Dax Shepard?

  It's kind of like gambling 2.0.

• 52:33Speaker 03

  It's like gambling 2.0. And I made a bunch of money. I paid everyone back.

• 52:38Dax Shepard?

  Oh wow.

• 52:39Speaker 03

  I mended all my bridges as much as I could. I went off to culinary school.

• 52:43Dax Shepard?

  You kinda got even.

• 52:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I kinda got even. I'm really big on like, I like to tidy shit up spiritually and also physically. Like, the whole philosophy of when we started Kogi, I wanted to be like a graffiti artist where no one would even know we were there, other than the fact that they could see what we just did. Cause we would crush it here on the streets, like 2,000 people just flash mobbing on the streets. But I would always say like, when we leave here, it has to be as if we were never here. And it's just a big thing for me to like tidy things up like that.

• 53:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, leave the world as you found it or better. And just so people understand the power of the Kogi truck who don't live in Los Angeles. On Parenthood, basically, we all took our turn ordering the Kogi truck. Everything was commemorated with the Kogi truck.

• 53:26Speaker 03

  I remember you guys on my calendar.

• 53:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 53:29Speaker 03

  All the time, Parenthood, yeah. I remember those days, yeah, Parenthood.

• 53:32Dax Shepard?

  Probably driven by May Whitman. I bet she brought us to the Kogi.

• 53:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would drive so far. It would just be on social media or the website or something like, find out where it's gonna be that day and go. It's so good.

• 53:45Speaker 03

  We have few shows that were very loyal to us, just like Parenthood. Brooklyn Nine-Nine is another one.

• 53:50Dax Shepard?

  It's insane. Just if you've not had one, I'll put this up there with the Emily Burger, which is, you're eating these tacos, cause it's Mexican-Korean fusion.

• 53:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:58Dax Shepard?

  You're having this beef that's been marinated in a way you're not expecting in a taco. The onions taste different. Like, yeah, when I'm eating that, and this was before I was really even into food, this part of me starting to be into food is like, holy shit, everything that's on this thing isn't there to look like something. I can taste each thing. That's new.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  That's one of my favorite moments when I see folks that aren't expecting anything, when they first bite into a Kogi burrito or taco or quesadilla and their eyes just open and there's a holy shit moment.

• 54:27Speaker 00

  Yes, it is.

• 54:28Speaker 03

  I love it. I've seen so many of those moments over the last 10 years. That all happened because of that out of body experience from Emerald. If I wouldn't have been on that couch in that moment, obviously maybe something else would have, but I believe in these like, kind of like, intersections of life. Because of that, everything unfolded for me in the second part of life.

• 54:48Dax Shepard?

  How old were you in that, that you were what?

• 54:49Speaker 03

  I was 25. And then I went off to culinary school when I was 27.

• 54:54Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so I once watched you with Favreau. You made him a grilled cheese.

• 55:00Dax Shepard?

  I'm assuming it was on The Chef Show.

• 55:03Speaker 03

  The first time I made a grilled cheese with him was on set of Chef the Movie in 2013, and he had the clip rolling. So I was John's custom model, right? And so we were always by each other's side. I was in his ear. I was his corner man. And even before-

• 55:17Dax Shepard?

  That's a Rocky reference.

• 55:18Speaker 03

  Oh. Oh, yeah.

• 55:22Speaker 03

  Even before shots, like, I would be like just behind camera and it would be like, "Put your elbow up a little bit," or "Make sure you bend down and look at the cheese from this and that." And so we would be doing that all the time. It would just be natural. But one time, he just kept the camera rolling and then he put that in the credit scene.

• 55:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh, right, right, right. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. We get support from Superhuman. Look, I love what I do. The conversations, the ideas, the creative stuff, but there's this whole other layer of work that eats my day alive. The inbox that never ends. Docs I need to get through, threads I'm behind on. And by the time I've dealt with all that, the stuff I actually want to focus on gets whatever's left. What I needed was something that just works where I'm already working. Not another tab to open, not another thing to set up. Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly, is different. It's already right there. Inside your email, your docs,

• 56:23Dax Shepard?

  your browser, you don't go to it. It's already working alongside you. You're deep in a long thread, highlight it, and it pulls the key points. About to send something important? It flags what doesn't add up before it leaves your hands. It knows your style, your workflows, and it just backs you up without getting in the way. A thought partner that's already up to speed, at your service, not after your job. So do yourself a favor and try Superhuman Go from the makers of Grammarly. Find out more at superhuman.com.

• 56:53Dax Shepard?

  This episode is supported by Helix.

• 56:57Speaker 00

  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.

• 57:07Dax 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.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  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.

• 57:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 57:37Speaker 00

  That doesn't have a Helix mattress on it, and I really could tell a big difference in my sleep.

• 57:41Dax Shepard?

  Temperature was all over the map.

• 57:42Speaker 00

  It was a mess.

• 57:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 57:43Speaker 00

  I need a new one.

• 57:44Dax 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.

• 57:59Speaker 00

  Helix has been named the most awarded mattress by Forbes, Wired, and more. So it's not just us being enthusiastic, the experts agree.

• 58:05Dax 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 get support from our sponsor, Lilly. For adults with obesity or with excess weight and weight-related medical problems, it's time to find out about Foundo or for Gleepran. Foundo is a once daily prescription GLP-1 medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off.

• 58:49Speaker 04

  Foundo should not be used with other GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Foundo is safe and effective for use in children. Don't take Foundo if you're allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had major lary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type. Stop and call your doctor right away if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, or severe stomach pain. Serious side effects may include inflamed pancreas and gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes. If you're nursing, pregnant, plant to be, or taking birth control pills, and before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. Taking Foundao with an insulin or sulfonylurea may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and may cause kidney problems. Once Daily Foundao is available by prescription only

• 59:31Speaker 04

  in 0.8mg, 2.5mg, 5.5mg, 9mg, 14.5mg, and 17.2mg tablets. Learn more at foundao.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX. Now is perfect to talk to your doctor about Foundao.

• 59:46Dax Shepard?

  We get support by Peloton. You know that feeling when you're spiraling over a problem and you just can't figure it out? When that happens to me, I need a change of pace. And I've found that running is the best way. It takes my brain out of the driver's seat, and I come back with a fresh perspective. Running can be freeing and cathartic, and Peloton helps you feel all of that. And now that feeling fits wherever you need it with the new Peloton Tread Flex. It's movable and foldable, designed to fit your life. So next time you feel stuck, you can go for a run literally anywhere, whether that's in your office, living room, or even the attic. Plus, they have classes with expert instructors and programs to meet you at any level and keep you moving. Let yourself run.

• 1:00:30Dax Shepard?

  Explore the new Peloton Tread Flex at onepeloton.com.

• 1:00:41Dax Shepard?

  I gotta say, I've had this moment twice. Monica and I had it while watching-

• 1:00:45Speaker 00

  Salt, fat, acid, heat.

• 1:00:46Dax Shepard?

  Where they were in the Italy episode. And we started looking at each other like, "We're gonna do this, right?"

• 1:00:50Speaker 00

  You gotta go to Italy tomorrow.

• 1:00:51Dax Shepard?

  "We need to get on an airplane tonight."

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:54Dax Shepard?

  And then that grilled cheese, I was like, "I think I'd cut my pinky off to taste that grilled cheese right now." Oh my God. And the care that went into it, the amount of butter. God bless the amount of butter that was used.

• 1:01:07Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I mean, that's the number one thing is most people don't put enough butter on anything.

• 1:01:13Dax Shepard?

  Right, right. Or salt.

• 1:01:15Speaker 03

  Or salt. And again, going back to the conditioning of us not enjoying flavor. The amount that we somehow got to the point of convincing ourselves was enough is like way, way below anything substantial.

• 1:01:29Dax Shepard?

  But I can see the connective tissue, which is for 35 years, we eat all this processed garbage food. Everyone's putting on weight. So now we're all in this mad grab to figure out how to not get so overweight.

• 1:01:39Speaker 03

  And then butter becomes the...

• 1:01:40Dax Shepard?

  So then butter's ruled out. Salt's gonna lead to hypertension. All these things. It's like, no, no. Eat shit with real ingredients. You can probably have that much butter and things will be okay.

• 1:01:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, we were so deranged that we would eat all of that processed food. And then the things that are supposed to be delicious, we would make undelicious because we're compensating. Yeah. Whereas really, the key to life is eat delicious food from the start. And then you can indulge because it's actually good for you all the way through. So yeah, that grilled cheese, that was the anchor to the whole thing.

• 1:02:11Dax Shepard?

  I imagine that's what was shown to pitch the show.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, it wasn't just me. It was John too. He did all the sound mixing for the grilled cheese at Skywalker Sound. So the same thing, the same machines or whatever they use for lightsabers was used for grilled cheese.

• 1:02:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Dolby Atmos.

• 1:02:28Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, that's amazing.

• 1:02:29Dax Shepard?

  The grilled cheese is cooking in all corners of the room.

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  Yes. Yum. And it was just all those little things that, you know, John, he's just such a genius. And he's just thinking about every little nuance and every little thing. And it was just all the points of the universe coming together into that one grilled cheese.

• 1:02:47Dax Shepard?

  John is like the most willing pupil in the world. And he's fucking been rewarded so greatly for it because he can go to you and say like, I don't know shit. Teach me how to do this right.

• 1:02:57Speaker 03

  Have you ever witnessed how fast John can synthesize something? Have you witnessed it yourself?

• 1:03:03Dax Shepard?

  Yes, it's incredible. He was gonna do a project at one point and he actually called me, which was great. Says, I got nothing to teach him.

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Dax Shepard?

  But he was doing something based on early hominids and he knew I was an anthropology major. So he's basically like, what textbooks do you have? And let's chat. And this was the first time I kind of got to have that role for five minutes. But yeah, within 10 minutes, like, he's got it.

• 1:03:25Speaker 03

  He's got it.

• 1:03:26Dax Shepard?

  Almost annoyingly so. Well, this is four years of my life. I'm glad you got it.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  Yes. Same thing with Cookie. It was 20 years of my life. 20 years of my life and he got it within five minutes. And so he did come in with what you had described of, I don't know anything. Teach me everything.

• 1:03:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:43Speaker 03

  I'm completely a sponge, but he would be proficient at it within minutes.

• 1:03:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's very impressive. Oh, fuck him. All right, let's talk about your show. You are in second season of Broken Bread and your show has a really kind of noble pursuit in what you're covering and what things you want to expose. And we've touched on a few of them, but right out of the gates, the first episode, you go down to, is it 26th Avenue Night Market? And I guess just if you could really quick, what happened in the pandemic to the restaurant business?

• 1:04:17Speaker 03

  Completely folded.

• 1:04:18Dax Shepard?

  Do we know what percentage of restaurants went out of business?

• 1:04:21Speaker 03

  I don't know what percentage, but my armchair guess at it, it would be 30, 40%, you know, of small businesses.

• 1:04:28Dax Shepard?

  Wow, wow. And those are the ones we want most to be out there.

• 1:04:32Speaker 03

  Because it was a game of charades this whole time. I think that's what the pandemic exposed is like, one, a lot of the reasons people are opening restaurants, including my family back in the day, is because there's no other outlet. No one's hiring you. There are no jobs available for non-English speaking people. But what we saw in the pandemic is that the restaurant model itself is so flawed because it doesn't allow anyone to get any step forward. But the illusion of it actually hurts the industry more than it helps it because every restaurant looks like it's busy. So the meeting in the alleyway for the sandwich or going to the noodle spot or the Thai joint down the street, you know, and here in Hollywood, and you can't get in.

• 1:05:15Speaker 03

  People are waiting in the parking lot. It's so packed. Mindy's outside of Chit Lada, you know, she can't get in. Whatever, you know, it looks like something amazing is going on. But behind the curtain, maybe Chit Lada can last a week without money. It's hard to fathom that because usually when something looks good on the outside means it's probably pretty good on the inside.

• 1:05:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I remember having this in the early 2000s when Rosco's had declared bankruptcy. I was like, I've never been there where there wasn't a 30 minute wait.

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, so what happened is it's the energy, it's the action that keeps things afloat. And then once everything stopped, everything was exposed. And literally within the first week of the pandemic, you saw restaurants just say, I can't, I have no more money. And then it turned where people lost everything, but then started a cart or street food. And that's how Avenue 26 started to really blossom and emerge.

• 1:06:08Dax Shepard?

  What is the side of the equation that's so fucked up? Is it that we don't pay enough for food? Or is it that the food, I kept hearing in the episode that the food is really expensive? What part is broken in the equation?

• 1:06:19Speaker 03

  There's multiple. Part of it is we don't pay enough as consumers for food or certain types of food. Again, going back to racial marginalization and stereotypes and things like that. We will go to an Italian restaurant on the west side and pay $42 for pasta because of all of the folklore and storytelling behind it, which helps a restaurant thrive. But we won't pay more than $6 or $7 for pho or for chow mein. We're not paying enough. There are no loans really for a lot of people. So a lot of this money is self-generated money. It's check to check money that they're using to keep their business afloat.

• 1:06:57Dax Shepard?

  And I'm right in that. I think restaurants are the highest fail rate of any business people start.

• 1:07:00Speaker 03

  Highest fail rate.

• 1:07:01Dax Shepard?

  The dangerous loan.

• 1:07:02Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And then just the mathematical equation of opening a restaurant makes no fucking sense to the capitalist system that we want to thrive upon. For example, if we were to sell just product like this model right here, we have what's called margins, right? Which is very simple math. You buy this product, you create a certain quantity, you leverage your purveyors to give you a certain price, you maximize efficiencies and you make 30, 40% profit. Restaurant business has 5% profit if you're doing well.

• 1:07:33Dax Shepard?

  Even the big boys.

• 1:07:35Speaker 03

  The big boys are different because they're able, the larger you become, the more you're able to leverage your pricing with your purveyors.

• 1:07:42Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:07:42Speaker 03

  And you're able to compromise decisions based on qualities. And a lot of times they have investors that give them runway to make it up. But if you're a small business, okay, so the basic numbers are about 30% food cost. It's about 20 to 30% labor cost. So that's 70% right there. And then you have fixed costs, rent. I know this is not the most exciting podcast information, but you have costs, utilities, paper goods, toilet paper, plumbing, all that stuff.

• 1:08:10Dax Shepard?

  A squirrel system, internet.

• 1:08:12Speaker 03

  POS system, point of sale system, taxes, all that. And that's another 20, 25%. That's 95% right there, just off the top of my head. And that leaves you with 5% profit.

• 1:08:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's wild. So what's the fix? It's all those things.

• 1:08:27Speaker 03

  It's all those things. And on top of this, because the profits were so little, the industry itself was living off of exploitation. We don't have any safety nets. We don't have insurance. We don't have healthcare. We don't have sick pay. We don't have PTO. We don't have vacation time, none of that stuff. So there are a lot of changes that need to be made. I don't know if they're gonna be made because now that things are getting back open and stuff, everyone's kind of rushing back to the same things. This was an opportunity for us maybe to take a step back, put value into food again, raise some prices a little bit, maybe put a surcharge on certain things, maybe a certain form of like, kind of like a tax in a way, but like a good tax, you know, where it's shared amongst people.

• 1:09:09Speaker 03

  And I think it's also a philosophy and a mindset of like, we shouldn't want people to live less than. And I think that's the most important thing to think about, whether it's farming or restaurant business or any service business, the entry point is also the ending point, you know? And that's the problem with the system. There's no way to progress within it.

• 1:09:30Dax Shepard?

  Right, you have to change stations. And who's the guy who owns Shake Shack and those other restaurants?

• 1:09:34Speaker 03

  Danny Meyer.

• 1:09:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so what do you think of his approach? I remember seeing a 60 Minutes on it where like he got rid of tipping at the things and the food just costs more.

• 1:09:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's the right idea. A lot of big restaurateurs like that, the problem is it doesn't trickle down to the mom and pop. So I think that we need those leaders like Danny Meyer or Thomas Keller or whoever the case may be to create the systems and then use their power to demand that these systems trickle down to everyone and become a model for the whole industry itself because they're the leaders of our industry.

• 1:10:07Dax Shepard?

  I'm glad you're here to talk about this because I also don't think this is a problem many people are just aware of, to be honest. Yeah. I watched the 60 Minutes just a few weeks ago and it was about 20 million Americans quitting their job between January and February. And the number one was hospitality. That was the biggest sector that lost employees. And then construction oddly was in there, which is generally pretty high paying. But do you think that we're at a kind of unique time where no one wants to fucking do these jobs anymore? And that the leverage is going to shift a little bit to the employees?

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  A lot of employees are holding out for that right now, hoping that the industry itself will change.

• 1:10:37Dax Shepard?

  I'm just fascinated by what's potentially on the table for everyone right now.

• 1:10:41Speaker 03

  What I want to just state also is that it doesn't mean that there shouldn't be affordable food because there should, right? But the argument right now that we're facing because of the pandemic is that the reason why it's so flawed is the only answer is not just that we as a consumer need to pay more for food. The reason why we need to either pay more or look at the whole system is because it's not that everyone is not making enough. It's just that all of the costs around them, what you're making in a restaurant doesn't allow you to live within a city.

• 1:11:11Dax Shepard?

  Right, where the restaurant is.

• 1:11:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, everything is just too high right now.

• 1:11:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:15Speaker 03

  And so the only thing that is being forced to continue to be low or cheap is food. Whereas everything else is being raised.

• 1:11:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, inflation's hit everywhere.

• 1:11:25Speaker 03

  Inflation hits everywhere. You can't expect the restaurant industry to just stay stagnant while everything else continues to multiply.

• 1:11:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Speaker 03

  And all we're arguing in the restaurant industry is that just let the restaurant industry multiply with everything else. So if you don't want your noodles or your burger to be $30 or $20 or whatever and a third of that goes to the staff to help them, then let's lower some of the other things around it.

• 1:11:50Dax Shepard?

  Or you know, like what LA Unified does and I might. Have this wrong, at least when my ex-girlfriend started teaching at Crenshaw High, was you get some mortgage deals. For teachers, there's some help from the government to live in the areas where they teach. Otherwise, no one in LA that's teaching could live in LA.

• 1:12:08Speaker 03

  Can't afford it, yeah.

• 1:12:09Dax Shepard?

  You just wonder if like that could fan out to a lot of things we value and we want.

• 1:12:14Speaker 03

  Well, things are so unbalanced now that I'm like the least political person in the world, but I think that we need some form of like democratic socialism. We still need to be a capitalist country. There still needs to be the opportunity to make it big at any moment in life. Just tripping over a rock, you could become a star or whatever, you know? We need that, but things are just so way out of whack right now that we need something in the middle to be able to sustain at least just a basic form of life. People can't even get to sea level right now, and that's the problem.

• 1:12:43Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'll tell you, as a staunch capitalist, the part that makes a ton of sense to me is, Apple made the best mousetrap. They should be worth a trillion dollars.

• 1:12:52Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:12:53Dax Shepard?

  I'm for that. But they couldn't have made that mousetrap in India. They couldn't have made it almost any other country. That's why we have 80,000 of those companies and most countries don't have any. So this country is a place where that can happen because it has an infrastructure, it has a university system, it has employees, it has all this stuff. That needs to be recognized. On some level, it would just be dishonest to not say that the system itself helped create this trillion dollar company and that some part of that trillion dollars needs to continue to nurture the system that can allow more apples.

• 1:13:27Speaker 03

  That's exactly it. That's that democratic socialist, whatever you want to call it.

• 1:13:31Dax Shepard?

  I don't want the government owning fucking chip manufacturers, but I do want the people who have profited from this amazing system to keep the system working in a healthy manner, because I think without it, we won't have those.

• 1:13:42Speaker 03

  We won't. They could do whatever they want to do to trick the IRS and save money. Take that money and then create a fund that will balance things out just a little bit, because right now it's just too unbalanced.

• 1:13:53Dax Shepard?

  Well, I want someone to do some hard science of what the earned credit would be. Like, if they wanted to launch Apple anywhere else in the world, what incurred expenses would they have also generated? And I'm not even. Asking for all that, but like maybe half of that.

• 1:14:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:05Dax Shepard?

  We we put back in the system. My last question on this is, have there been any movements so that multiple restaurateurs can co-op themselves? So that they can have the leverage when they're ordering the beef and they're ordering the vegetables?

• 1:14:19Speaker 03

  I think we're heading towards that. I think the reason why it hasn't existed because the restaurant industry has been so fractured.

• 1:14:25Dax Shepard?

  And your competitors.

• 1:14:26Speaker 03

  Your competitors, there's ego. It's almost a sport. It's almost a sport. There's a lot of like ego involved. You want to be the best. You don't want to share your secrets. But then there's also this other factor of fast food and conglomerates and chains.

• 1:14:41Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's who you're competing against.

• 1:14:42Speaker 03

  They've done it. They've gotten together to create a baseline of pricing. So that's existing. And then you have the individual restaurants that are all fighting for whatever crumbs are left and not sharing information with each other. But now, since the pandemic happened, I think there's a move towards that. And the last thing I think that needs to change is the tipping system. What I think is unfair about the tipping system is that we live in a restaurant system where certain people within the restaurant can make a thousand dollars a night. You know, servers work four hours. And then most of the people working in the restaurant, the other eighty, ninety percent are only making minimum wage.

• 1:15:18Dax Shepard?

  Even the cooks, you would like before this was told to me, I would have assumed they were the highest paid.

• 1:15:23Speaker 03

  Because this is a bootleg of a European system that was brought into here that lives off of this kind of fantasy that we're all living in Downton Abbey or Bridgerton. You know, like things have to be presented in a certain way. There has to be a language that's used. There has to be a face that is synonymous with the illusion of what service is. But I hope that we can move to an era where it doesn't matter how you look or how you speak or whatever the case may be, that everyone makes the same. If that could happen, that could help a lot because these restaurants where servers sometimes are coming in and again, just literally walking in at four forty five, right? They start at five, they leave at nine when the last table is served and they're walking out with a thousand dollars.

• 1:16:07Speaker 03

  If that money was distributed evenly across to everyone, I think there could be a lot more balance. Just on a micro level with each restaurant.

• 1:16:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, there's, I think there's been lawsuits about that when, when people have tried to do that.

• 1:16:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, because again, it's a draconian system that exists that if you mess with it, there's grounds for people to bring lawsuits against you because you're taking money out of people's pockets and this and that.

• 1:16:30Dax Shepard?

  We were talking to Dan Savage, kind of privately, and he was talking about servers in Austria for some reason. And that when you just pay those people in appropriate hourly way. And they have healthcare and they have leave and they can have children. You stop being patronizing to them. Oh, you know, this, this kind of fake niceness that people have, because we all can feel the guilt of it. We know. So it's just like, you know, would it be crazy if just everyone got paid a real thing? And it wasn't like each table was this do or die. They like me, they don't like me, I'm gonna make no money or a ton of money. Like any other job, just like every time you did your job, every time I did a line acting, they came over and say, I don't know, it's a little cuckoo.

• 1:17:12Speaker 03

  It is.

• 1:17:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:13Speaker 03

  You hit it right on the head. Like if every line you said and someone had a wad of cash and tipped you.

• 1:17:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Favreau either gave me nothing or he gave me 20 at the end.

• 1:17:23Speaker 03

  And then so your mind is like, do I kiss his ass? Do I do better? Do I tell him to fuck off? That's a whole nother podcast. The amount of things people say about you in the water station.

• 1:17:35Dax Shepard?

  Well, I worked at CPK for a while.

• 1:17:37Speaker 03

  Oh, you know.

• 1:17:37Dax Shepard?

  I've said those things.

• 1:17:38Speaker 03

  You've said those things, right?

• 1:17:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Well, I just want to say, your show has a ton of great episodes that explore all kinds of fun things. From seed to table, we talk about the sovereignty of seeds, which is so fascinating.

• 1:17:50Speaker 03

  That's a, I think, a topic you would really enjoy on this podcast. Get some specialists in here. We're on the verge of losing seeds.

• 1:17:57Dax Shepard?

  And is this where like, as I understood, I saw some 60 Minutes on it or something, whereas like Roundup has a seed that Roundup works perfect for. I'm sure a lot of companies do this, so I'm not singling anyone out. But then some of that seed will blow into another farmer's field and that seed is actually, has a trademark on it.

• 1:18:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:18:13Dax Shepard?

  And so now they sue them for that.

• 1:18:15Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:18:16Dax Shepard?

  This is how it works.

• 1:18:17Speaker 03

  Not only that, but we're also losing the diversity and the dynamic nature of the seed. Seeds are only being built and constructed to survive and be durable in a very specific weather pattern, very specific growing pattern and style. Again, going back to minimizing flavor and individuality and dynamic nature into just something that is indestructible.

• 1:18:41Dax Shepard?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:18:42Speaker 03

  We're 50% there as a human race. The world's seeds are owned by four corporations, 50% of them are. This is actually a great sci-fi movie. There's a whole network of young farmers and individual farmers that are fighting against this in the way farmers do with a smile and really a beautiful heart and saving these seeds in their pockets.

• 1:19:04Dax Shepard?

  Are they heirlooms?

• 1:19:05Speaker 03

  Heirloom seeds.

• 1:19:06Dax Shepard?

  If you're listening and you've never had an heirloom tomato, like a real one, it looks grotesque. It looks like a spoiled brain of an elephant, maybe. It's not going to draw you in with its convolutions. Fucking taste one of those things. Oh, my God. It's like you can't even say that that's a tomato and the other thing I get is a tomato.

• 1:19:24Speaker 03

  And so the world that a lot of the seed protectors are trying to save is that world. And the world that the corporations want is the gas-flushed tomato, where all tomatoes are round and red and look the same. And if we're not careful, we will get there. I know, again, it doesn't seem that realistic, but if we start eating all the same foods, right? If we're only all eating one tomato or one seed of a tomato that's engineered, if we're all only eating one form of broccoli or only one form of onion, what will happen to us is we will all eventually become somewhat of an android. We will all become the same.

• 1:20:01Dax Shepard?

  Well, the same microbiome.

• 1:20:03Speaker 03

  Same microbiomes. We're eating the same thing. And all those things are controlled and they can be moved like a joystick to however they want us to be.

• 1:20:12Dax Shepard?

  Well, as we're finding out, like, we're having all these autoimmune diseases as a product of a lot of this stuff. So now that'll get confronted eventually. They'll acknowledge, oh, this gives it... And then so they'll steer it to, you know, we'll have another product to solve the first problem.

• 1:20:23Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And that's what the seed protectors are fighting.

• 1:20:25Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God, so cool. And then you got Chuck D and Lomaret Park, which is so cool.

• 1:20:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that's about black entrepreneurship, which is not the topic a lot of people talk about in the uprising in racism and resistance here within America, is that there is the stuff that is up front that is very important. Brutality, violence, a lack of access, lack of upper mobility. But the fact that the African-American community doesn't own any property or land... Is one of the most detrimental and we focus on that in the episode. In this capitalist economy, if you don't own any land, you're always at the mercy of someone else.

• 1:20:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and then your children are born without any of that generational wealth.

• 1:21:02Speaker 03

  Any generational wealth.

• 1:21:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, it has to start there in many ways.

• 1:21:06Speaker 03

  It has to start there and that's what we address in that episode and we show examples and we show arguments and all this.

• 1:21:11Speaker 00

  What network is the show on?

• 1:21:12Speaker 03

  It's on Taste Made and KCET.

• 1:21:14Speaker 00

  Taste Made, that's where my tiny.

• 1:21:16Speaker 03

  Tiny Kitchen, yeah.

• 1:21:17Speaker 00

  Tiny Kitchen was on, yeah.

• 1:21:19Dax Shepard?

  Oh my God, I forgot that you guys are.

• 1:21:21Speaker 00

  Cohorts.

• 1:21:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, peers in the food space. Well, listen, man, I'm so happy for you that as a man with many addictions, you've somehow figured out the same thing I figured out, which is you just get to go hang out with all these people you're probably super fascinated with. And that's your fucking quote job. So tip of the hat to you and to me and to Monica.

• 1:21:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:40Dax Shepard?

  So great to finally meet you and hang and I wish you a ton of luck and everyone should find and record and watch. You might have an out about a experience. Don't rule it out. Broken Bread, season two. Check it out now. And if you want to learn more, please go to brokenbread.tv. That's so simple to remember. Brokenbread.tv. I think you can go there and get activated if you want to get involved in some of these issues you cover. And Roy, what a fucking delight.

• 1:22:06Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:22:07Dax Shepard?

  I hope next time we meet, we're eating something.

• 1:22:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, please.

• 1:22:12Dax Shepard?

  And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Badman.

• 1:22:22Dax Shepard?

  I can't believe you dress as a teddy bear now. This is your new look, teddy bear.

• 1:22:26Speaker 00

  Every now and then.

• 1:22:27Dax Shepard?

  Do you know this, um, the history of teddy bear?

• 1:22:30Speaker 00

  Oh my God, no.

• 1:22:32Dax Shepard?

  But it's called a teddy bear?

• 1:22:33Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:22:34Dax Shepard?

  It's very mean.

• 1:22:35Speaker 00

  Oh no, cancelled?

• 1:22:38Dax Shepard?

  No, Theodore Roosevelt, who was a hunter, he was on a big hunt and he didn't have the heart to kill this certain bear. They had cornered.

• 1:22:47Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:22:48Dax Shepard?

  And then the newspapers made fun of him.

• 1:22:49Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:22:50Dax Shepard?

  Teddy's bear got away or whatever. And then they started making adorable little bears as if to say like it was so cute, he couldn't shoot it. So that's why they're called, they were Teddy's bear.

• 1:22:59Speaker 00

  Oh my God.

• 1:23:02Dax Shepard?

  Isn't that wild?

• 1:23:02Speaker 00

  That's. Crazy. You know so much.

• 1:23:05Dax Shepard?

  Well, I read a, I'm trying to think where I just found this out, but I did tell the girls that. And then it led to a little six minute history of Theodore Roosevelt. And at the end of it, Kristen said, you just know that much about Teddy Roosevelt? I was like, no, no, I read a great biography on him. In fact, I only remember six minutes of what was an incredibly awesome 25 hour biography. But incredible life, Theodore Roosevelt. Yes. He was a sickly boy.

• 1:23:36Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:23:36Dax Shepard?

  He was very sickly. He had asthma quite bad. And he wasn't allowed to play with other boys and he was weak. And he became a learned man. He went to college and whatnot. And at some point he was like, I hate this. And he went out to a ranch in the West and he became a cowboy for years.

• 1:23:52Speaker 00

  Oh my God. First he was a sickly boy, then a learned man, and then a cowboy?

• 1:23:56Dax Shepard?

  And then a cowboy, and then very strong and gained his confidence. And when he came back, people could not believe what happened to Teddy Roosevelt.

• 1:24:04Speaker 00

  Three times gains?

• 1:24:05Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Well, maybe six times. He was a sickly boy. And he completely got over his asthma and he was strong as an ox and a very principled man and very strong. And he'd overcome that.

• 1:24:17Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:24:17Dax Shepard?

  No one could build the Panama Canal.

• 1:24:20Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:24:20Dax Shepard?

  Three countries had given up. Many different companies had gone bankrupt. And Teddy said, we're fucking doing this through hell or high water. And he did it.

• 1:24:29Speaker 00

  Um, speaking of strong boys.

• 1:24:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:32Speaker 00

  Um, we have a big announcement.

• 1:24:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you're right.

• 1:24:35Speaker 00

  Go ahead.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  A little baby at home.

• 1:24:38Speaker 00

  We have a new armchair baby.

• 1:24:40Dax Shepard?

  A new armchair, some ween sandwich.

• 1:24:44Speaker 00

  Rob had his little baby boy.

• 1:24:46Dax Shepard?

  Can we know his name?

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's Vincent Gregory.

• 1:24:49Dax Shepard?

  After Vincent D'Onofrio. D'Onofrio, if you're listening, congratulations.

• 1:24:53Speaker 01

  Big fans, big fans.

• 1:24:54Dax Shepard?

  Vincent's an awesome name.

• 1:24:56Speaker 00

  It is. I love it. It's very strong.

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  It was two of my great grandfather's names.

• 1:25:00Dax Shepard?

  Really?

• 1:25:02Speaker 00

  No brainer.

• 1:25:02Dax Shepard?

  Also legendary motorcycle company from England, the Vincent Black Shadow, the most valuable motorcycle in the world.

• 1:25:09Speaker 00

  Also, Vince Vaughn's name.

• 1:25:11Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  Vin Diesel.

• 1:25:14Speaker 00

  Oh. Okay. And how's it? Going.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  Isn't like to sleep much, but he's, he's a good boy.

• 1:25:22Dax Shepard?

  Good boy, good boy.

• 1:25:24Speaker 00

  Good boy.

• 1:25:25Dax Shepard?

  Also, Rob now seventeen point five percent Filipino siding siding stuff.

• 1:25:33Speaker 00

  No, wouldn't it be twenty four?

• 1:25:34Dax Shepard?

  I can't read it. My math is, he's twelve point five.

• 1:25:37Speaker 01

  I think I'm up, I'm up to twenty five.

• 1:25:39Dax Shepard?

  Twenty five.

• 1:25:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, because he was twelve point five with Calvin and then another twelve point five.

• 1:25:43Dax Shepard?

  You're right, he's twenty five. So now he's matching Calvin and, and Vincent.

• 1:25:47Speaker 00

  This is a ding ding ding because we actually talked about that in this episode.

• 1:25:51Dax Shepard?

  Oh, we did? Oh, right. Of course we did because he and Roy are both Asian.

• 1:25:58Speaker 00

  And me.

• 1:25:58Dax Shepard?

  No. See, that's what's weird. You're not, Rob is.

• 1:26:01Speaker 01

  Well, does Vincent get more since I was twelve and a half when I had?

• 1:26:05Dax Shepard?

  Oh. Great, great point. Yeah. So mom was fifty, you were twelve point five. So I don't know.

• 1:26:11Speaker 00

  Sixty two point five. So he's, he's.

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  But then do I gain more?

• 1:26:16Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:26:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, then you're more than twelve point five, then you're.

• 1:26:19Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God. Someone needs to crunch these numbers. Yeah. So Robbie's now up in the twenty eight percent, thirty.

• 1:26:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:26:28Dax Shepard?

  You're closing in on Natalie. I love it. You're gonna leave her in the dust.

• 1:26:33Speaker 00

  I just want people to know that none of this is real, just in case.

• 1:26:36Dax Shepard?

  Hold on though, hold on. I just found an error in that. He does not, Vincent did not get your twelve point five percent. Okay?

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:26:43Dax Shepard?

  Because, see, because Natalie cannot be made more Asian by the children.

• 1:26:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:26:49Dax Shepard?

  So if you were twelve point five and then you made Vincent twenty eight percent, then that would make Natalie. We can't have her going up. Okay?

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:58Speaker 00

  Well, why? Why is it only the dad that gets to move up?

• 1:27:01Dax Shepard?

  Well, because it's only fun if the Chicagoan becomes Filipino. It's not fun if the Filipino becomes more Filipino.

• 1:27:08Speaker 00

  I mean, I think it's great fun.

• 1:27:10Dax Shepard?

  It's all great. It's really great.

• 1:27:12Speaker 00

  We should get Vincent a teddy bear. Ding ding ding.

• 1:27:15Dax Shepard?

  Ding dinggle. Oh, my gosh, I got more news.

• 1:27:18Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:27:19Dax Shepard?

  You know what? My, my animal, the one that represents me from a child.

• 1:27:23Speaker 00

  Crow.

• 1:27:25Speaker 00

  Oh, fuck. I know polar bear.

• 1:27:26Dax Shepard?

  Yes, polar bear.

• 1:27:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:28Dax Shepard?

  Crow's my favorite animal.

• 1:27:29Speaker 00

  I thought you were gonna tell a crow's story.

• 1:27:31Dax Shepard?

  Close. Polar bear.

• 1:27:32Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:27:32Dax Shepard?

  Polar bear's what my mom's always called me, because my hands and feet were so big. And I had lots of posters of polar bears and a polar bear stuffy that I loved, okay? Guess what I read the other day?

• 1:27:43Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:27:43Dax Shepard?

  You're gonna fucking shit your little, um, polar, your little teddy bear outfit. Yeah. All polar bears are left-handed.

• 1:27:50Speaker 00

  Oh, no.

• 1:27:52Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Yes, it's in this great book. Lincoln's got this series of books. It seems like something I would have bought her, but I didn't. She found this on her own and she ordered all of them.

• 1:28:02Speaker 00

  She's her dad's daughter.

• 1:28:03Dax Shepard?

  It's versus versus. So Komodo dragon versus king cobra.

• 1:28:07Speaker 00

  Oh, cool.

• 1:28:07Dax Shepard?

  Polar bear versus grizzly bear. Who would win in a fight?

• 1:28:10Speaker 00

  Oh, boy.

• 1:28:11Dax Shepard?

  And then en route to this hypothetical fight, you learn all about the animal.

• 1:28:15Speaker 00

  Fine.

• 1:28:16Dax Shepard?

  Yes, and we learned in that book that all polar bears are left-handed.

• 1:28:20Speaker 00

  That's so sim. It's crazy.

• 1:28:22Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my god.

• 1:28:22Speaker 00

  That just got added to the sim. That wasn't a thing?

• 1:28:25Dax Shepard?

  You're right. I knew a lot about polar bears before.

• 1:28:28Speaker 00

  Like, two weeks ago, my dad put that in there.

• 1:28:31Dax Shepard?

  I wonder, what if I read a thing that says they're all dyslexic?

• 1:28:36Speaker 00

  What did it say? Would a polar bear beat a grizzly?

• 1:28:39Dax Shepard?

  I can't even remember who they gave it to. I think they gave it to the polar bear, but they fucking gave the victory over the Komodo dragon to the king cobra, which is preposterous.

• 1:28:48Speaker 00

  Really?

• 1:28:48Dax Shepard?

  Yes, absolutely preposterous. A fucking Komodo dragon is like 600 pounds.

• 1:28:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. Aren't they slow?

• 1:28:55Dax Shepard?

  No, they're quick, but more than anything, their skin, they're nearly a pachyderm.

• 1:29:00Speaker 00

  Oh, my god. Pussymus?

• 1:29:02Dax Shepard?

  Pussymus pachydermis. That king cobra's not even gonna penetrate that scaly skin. Also, the fucking Komodo dragon has poison of its own. Its whole mouth is poison.

• 1:29:12Speaker 00

  Ew.

• 1:29:13Dax Shepard?

  You can smell them for so long away, because their poison's bacteria in their teeth. They let all the meat they eat rot into a gross poison, so that when they bite an animal, it goes septic.

• 1:29:25Speaker 00

  Wow, yuck.

• 1:29:27Dax Shepard?

  So anyways, I do think they gave it to the polar bear. It's a really interesting matchup. You want to know why?

• 1:29:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:33Dax Shepard?

  Now, the polar bear is the tallest bear on earth.

• 1:29:36Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:29:36Dax Shepard?

  Standing at 10 feet tall. Grizzly bear, good sized grizzly is about eight feet tall. Still, imagine that. Shaquille O'Neal, seven foot two.

• 1:29:46Speaker 00

  So like its back is 10?

• 1:29:48Dax Shepard?

  No, it's on its hind legs.

• 1:29:49Speaker 00

  Oh, got it.

• 1:29:50Dax Shepard?

  Which they do, they go up there.

• 1:29:51Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:29:52Dax Shepard?

  Look at me.

• 1:29:52Speaker 00

  Say hi.

• 1:29:53Dax Shepard?

  So the grizzly is, is eight feet tall. The polar bear is 10 feet tall. But the grizzly, because it hibernates, they can get up to, I forget what it is, maybe 1,400 pounds or something.

• 1:30:05Speaker 00

  Oh, God.

• 1:30:06Dax Shepard?

  Whereas the polar bear is like maybe 900 or some, whatever.

• 1:30:09Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:30:09Dax Shepard?

  It's not as heavy. So the grizzly bear is more, more mass, but the polar bear is taller. But now what you have in the polar bear's arsenal is that it only hunts. It doesn't eat foliage and shit like a grizzly bear. It just kills things.

• 1:30:21Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:30:22Dax Shepard?

  The grizzly eats salmon. It'll eat a caribou and get its hands on one. But mostly it's eating a ton of berries, honey.

• 1:30:28Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:30:29Dax Shepard?

  Right? It's less of its life is spent in combat killing.

• 1:30:33Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 1:30:34Dax Shepard?

  Now, on the other hand, grizzly's claws are much bigger. There's so much stuff to consider.

• 1:30:40Speaker 00

  Wow, and our grizzlies are brown, right?

• 1:30:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:43Speaker 00

  Like me.

• 1:30:43Dax Shepard?

  Yep, they're all brown bears. The brown bear can go by brown bear, grizzly bear, Kodiak.

• 1:30:50Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:30:51Dax Shepard?

  Polar bear is just polar bear. But its name, Ursula, it's like Ursula meritaimanus or something. It's the water bear.

• 1:30:58Speaker 00

  But polar bears are white.

• 1:30:59Dax Shepard?

  Beautifully white. In fact, Monica, they're translucent. That was in the book.

• 1:31:04Speaker 00

  Really?

• 1:31:05Dax Shepard?

  Their hair is actually translucent.

• 1:31:07Speaker 00

  It is?

• 1:31:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but when all late, and their skin's black.

• 1:31:10Speaker 00

  Nah.

• 1:31:11Dax Shepard?

  I'm not lying to you. These are the facts from the book.

• 1:31:14Speaker 00

  So would you say that if you're a polar bear, I'm a grizzly bear?

• 1:31:20Dax Shepard?

  No, I wouldn't.

• 1:31:21Speaker 00

  Okay. But I have big claws.

• 1:31:24Dax Shepard?

  You do.

• 1:31:25Speaker 00

  And brown.

• 1:31:27Dax Shepard?

  That's right.

• 1:31:27Speaker 00

  And I.

• 1:31:28Dax Shepard?

  And you're a bear. You're a teddy bear. So polar bear, grizzly bear, teddy bear.

• 1:31:34Speaker 00

  Um, okay.

• 1:31:35Dax Shepard?

  If you were in the Ursula genus.

• 1:31:38Speaker 00

  Uh huh. What would I be?

• 1:31:39Dax Shepard?

  A black bear.

• 1:31:40Speaker 00

  Really?

• 1:31:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:41Speaker 00

  Why?

• 1:31:42Dax Shepard?

  Because they're so cute. They roll down the hills, they're smaller. They eat almost all berries.

• 1:31:52Dax Shepard?

  Share expert. If you dare. 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. 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.

• 1:32:35Dax Shepard?

  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 dramatic. 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.

• 1:33:09Dax Shepard?

  Pandas are too boring for you. They're not playful enough.

• 1:33:12Speaker 00

  But they're so cute. They go down, the babies go down the slide.

• 1:33:15Dax Shepard?

  At the zoo, you're right. They're very active at the zoo.

• 1:33:18Speaker 00

  Oh, I love them. Okay, but you're the bear expert. So.

• 1:33:23Dax Shepard?

  The bear expert.

• 1:33:24Speaker 00

  So I'll take your word for it that I'm a black bear.

• 1:33:27Dax Shepard?

  God, is that a boy thing?

• 1:33:30Speaker 00

  To be into bears?

• 1:33:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, or just animals?

• 1:33:33Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I, you know, hate to do this, but stereotypically, you said you changed it to animals. And that makes me think, no, it's actually not a boy thing. Cause girls love animals.

• 1:33:44Dax Shepard?

  They do. They love cats, but I guess I'd love to know the demographic of these discovery shows about lions. Like, I want to know male versus female, who's watching?

• 1:33:54Speaker 00

  I have no interest in watching that.

• 1:33:56Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:33:57Speaker 00

  Okay, speaking of like stereotypes and gender. I have a sad story.

• 1:34:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good.

• 1:34:05Speaker 00

  It's kind of, I guess it's unethical because I'm really just going to tell a story that the Daily told.

• 1:34:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay, great.

• 1:34:11Speaker 00

  But we love the Daily.

• 1:34:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh, we love the Daily. Also, people were like. When we had our Birds Aren't Real, Armchair and Dangerous, people were like furious.

• 1:34:20Speaker 00

  Why?

• 1:34:20Dax Shepard?

  In the comments. This was already on the daily. It's like, okay, we also have guests that are on other shows.

• 1:34:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. Are you sure they were mad or were they like, oh, this was also? Because when I told Erica, she was like, oh, I heard that on the daily. That's so awesome. I'm excited to listen.

• 1:34:36Dax Shepard?

  Some were just like that.

• 1:34:37Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:34:38Dax Shepard?

  And then others were like, get real, guys. We already know this is fake. It was on the, you know, it was more of like an angry. What was clear is that the people who commented, as always, had not listened to the episode.

• 1:34:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, true.

• 1:34:50Dax Shepard?

  That became very obvious by their.

• 1:34:51Speaker 00

  I love that episode.

• 1:34:53Dax Shepard?

  It's my favorite, maybe. Armchair and Dangerous.

• 1:34:55Speaker 00

  Okay, so there was a very powerful daily from last week about Ukraine. And they spoke to a few different men involved. And it's just like, it is so heartbreaking, the whole thing. And just regular people who just have to like, one guy was just like working and bringing food to his office. And then he had to go and then, but for me, like, the saddest one was this guy who is gay.

• 1:35:23Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:35:24Speaker 00

  And is like, I never picked up a gun. I don't want anything to do with that. I'm not violent. He like tried to get to Poland and they said no, because he was a man. And he's like, but I don't want it. I can't do it. I don't have the constitution for it.

• 1:35:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:40Speaker 00

  And it made me just so sad that it was like, well, you're a man, so.

• 1:35:45Dax Shepard?

  Oh, right, right, right. Um, it's interesting. Okay, good. Let's do this. Let's dance. You know, I'm, I'm the first person to be really critical of men. So much of what we do is toxic. It's, it's controlling. We've, we've been the dominant gender and women have paid the price. They sat at home and cleaned.

• 1:36:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:36:06Dax Shepard?

  And gave us kids and we did whatever the fuck we wanted. And as long as we were making money, that was the deal.

• 1:36:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:36:11Dax Shepard?

  Terrible. But when it's time for the men to show up, we also need them.

• 1:36:14Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 1:36:15Dax Shepard?

  And it's, it's time for the men, and this is when, this is the thing we do good. Like, it's, it's our time. Unfortunately, the world isn't such that everyone can stop having that role. There's still Russia. There's still North Korea. So this is the part, in my opinion, it's like, yep, there's a bunch of terrible shit that go along with men. Also, when there's a bobcat in the house, it's time for us to do our thing. This is what we evolved to do.

• 1:36:41Speaker 00

  But I, yeah, I disagree. I mean, I think if you are a man who has evolved to do that, then yes, please. Like, now is the time. Please stand up. Please help. But not everyone.

• 1:36:52Dax Shepard?

  I guess I'm speaking more broadly as like, I don't totally disagree with the policy that, yes, women and children, I believe should leave, and I believe the men should stay to defend the country.

• 1:37:02Speaker 00

  I think people should stay to defend the country if they believe they can.

• 1:37:08Dax Shepard?

  That's good.

• 1:37:09Speaker 00

  You know, because I think some women also are like, yeah, I fucking can. And they are. Some are. But also, I don't think it's fair to classify all men as capable of that. Like, they're not.

• 1:37:19Dax Shepard?

  Well, no, but they should be running supplies. They should be grabbing the other guys who want to kill people ammunition. They should be pulling people out of rubble and helping with medical stuff. Like, there's a role for many, many people in a war, other than shooting people. And just like I would say to a woman, like, well, here's the shit deal of being a woman. You gotta pass a child through your groin.

• 1:37:39Speaker 00

  Well, you don't have to.

• 1:37:40Dax Shepard?

  You don't have to. But if you're gonna have a child.

• 1:37:43Speaker 00

  It's on you.

• 1:37:44Dax Shepard?

  That's one of the downsides of being a woman. It's like, you're gonna have to pass this thing through your body.

• 1:37:49Speaker 00

  Yes, correct.

• 1:37:50Dax Shepard?

  And the downside of being a man is, when your village is being attacked, and they are trying to steal all your women and children, you are the person that's gotta fight. You're physically bigger. You've evolved to do this. This is your time to do your thing.

• 1:38:05Speaker 00

  I really do see what you mean.

• 1:38:07Dax Shepard?

  But I'm probably not saying it well.

• 1:38:08Speaker 00

  No, no, you are. I just think it's too complicated to put a blanket on it and say, men.

• 1:38:14Dax Shepard?

  Well, you're right, because I don't mind that there's women staying to fight. I think that's radical. There's many women staying to fight.

• 1:38:19Speaker 00

  Right, but I think it's okay if you're a man who's like, I'm too scared for this. I don't know.

• 1:38:25Dax Shepard?

  My thought though is this, if they did that, right, they're like, ah, men who aren't into it bail. And now there's the 1% who literally don't think they can run water to people.

• 1:38:39Speaker 00

  But they might just not want to get killed. And that's okay to be a man who doesn't want to get killed.

• 1:38:44Dax Shepard?

  And I'm not judging. I don't know what I would do. I'm not in judgment, but I'm saying, let's start with saying the person doesn't want to go to Russia and live in Russia. If they don't want to live in Russia or be under Russian rule, and they want the Ukraine to remain an independent state, they have to participate in that.

• 1:39:04Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:39:05Dax Shepard?

  Or surrender and move now to Russia. Does that make sense?

• 1:39:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:39:10Dax Shepard?

  I mean, I'm harsh. I'm trying to get this a little black and white so we can proceed.

• 1:39:13Speaker 00

  No, I just don't think it's black and white. I think that's exactly what I'm saying.

• 1:39:17Dax Shepard?

  But I'm only getting to the point where if you do believe Ukraine should be defended, it's not okay for you to bail. So you're the 1% who's decided absolutely there's no service you can provide, or you're too scared. Now, when they let that 1% out, one strata up from that, that thinks they mostly don't want to be there. They see all these dudes running. There's kind of no shame to it. They join. Now everyone's running away from the thing and then Russia got Ukraine. So that's what I'm seeing. You're working backwards from, do you want to keep Ukraine independent? If you do, I think there's probably only one way for them to have a shot, and it's not half the men deserting the country. And I think as soon as you let some of the men desert the country, just more will follow

• 1:40:01Dax Shepard?

  because they won't be embarrassed anymore. It's the worst of all options, which is a fucking human conflict with death and weapons. But if you're even going to do it, you must work backwards from how it could possibly be successful. And it's not to willy nilly let some people decide and some people not. There's like a certain reality to the situation, I guess.

• 1:40:20Speaker 00

  No, no, I get that. I mean, I guess a small part of me is like, why don't you let the people leave who want to leave? And then there are people here who want to go. Like, let them go.

• 1:40:30Dax Shepard?

  There are people going, yeah.

• 1:40:31Speaker 00

  I don't know. It's sad. It's just so sad. I hate it.

• 1:40:36Dax Shepard?

  I guess the other option, let's look at all the options. You could say like, everyone in Ukraine should just get up and leave. They should go to all these other countries so that no one dies and say to Russia, here you go. Now you have Ukraine. Uh, we don't want to live under your rule. We'd rather live in Poland or Hungary or all these places. Now, all those countries have to deal with that. That's a side note. Those people now, they, they had a life in Ukraine and we don't know that they'll have a life elsewhere.

• 1:40:58Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:40:59Dax Shepard?

  Um, so they're not just maybe giving up this piece of real estate. They're giving up like their whole life.

• 1:41:03Speaker 00

  I don't like this option. Like, I agree. I don't think this is a good option.

• 1:41:06Dax Shepard?

  Right. So what's the other option? The other option is try to resist and make it's go on so long that the sanctions have enough time to truly cripple the place. That just involves everyone's gotta fucking get ugly now. I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:41:19Speaker 00

  It's my personal disposition to be like, there's a big bully and we're a strong person on the playground.

• 1:41:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:30Speaker 00

  And like, we gotta do more to help the vulnerable person.

• 1:41:35Dax Shepard?

  Right. So like you wish we were doing more.

• 1:41:37Speaker 00

  I, but I don't.

• 1:41:38Dax Shepard?

  I wish we could. I wish we could.

• 1:41:40Speaker 00

  I know. I could, I don't.

• 1:41:41Dax Shepard?

  If they didn't have nukes, we can't initiate, uh, even, I mean, you want to be as dark as you can get. You have to let Russia take over Ukraine before we have nuclear genocide on foreign earth.

• 1:41:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I agree. I agree.

• 1:41:54Dax Shepard?

  But I do think, I think this is the strategy, which is hopefully goes on long enough. It's embarrassing enough that the will of the Russians becomes very obvious. They don't want anything to do with this. This was a huge mistake. Everyone's fucking broke and they fucking, they revolt and they get rid of that bozo.

• 1:42:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:42:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, did you hear this cool thing that Elon Musk did?

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, his, he brought internet to the Ukraine.

• 1:42:14Dax Shepard?

  Yes, someone from the Ukraine trolled him. He's like, wow, you're going to space and you can't give us internet?

• 1:42:20Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 1:42:21Dax Shepard?

  He responded, Starlink will be up in five hours. He had already been working on it. So fucking Elon Musk gave, has put internet in there.

• 1:42:29Speaker 00

  That's awesome. Also, there's like all these small independent ventures people are doing. Like you can like put money in Airbnb.

• 1:42:38Dax Shepard?

  I gave some money.

• 1:42:39Speaker 00

  It can go directly to the people.

• 1:42:41Dax Shepard?

  Yep. In fact, no, yeah, no one's touching it, but the.

• 1:42:43Speaker 00

  And I think Etsy is the same. Etsy shops and stuff like that.

• 1:42:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Ashton and Mila have a really cool thing. They're matching up to three million dollars.

• 1:42:50Speaker 00

  Oh, amazing.

• 1:42:51Dax Shepard?

  People will go and do that for the humanitarian side of it.

• 1:42:54Speaker 00

  Wonderful.

• 1:42:55Dax Shepard?

  She's Ukrainian.

• 1:42:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:57Speaker 00

  I'm sure this is hard. All right, switching gears.

• 1:43:01Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:43:02Speaker 00

  Roy Choi, this is one of my favorite interviews in a long time. A mix of things, like so fun, like a great person to be around, but also very vulnerable and open and so smart. I just really enjoyed it.

• 1:43:17Dax Shepard?

  The part that blew my mind was the gambling thing. It was so fun to get to talk to somebody that had a gambling addiction. I don't really have, I have zero experience with that and it was illuminating.

• 1:43:29Speaker 00

  The whole like, uh, just needing to get even.

• 1:43:33Dax Shepard?

  Waking up in the morning, looking in the mirror and saying, I hope today's the day I get even.

• 1:43:37Speaker 00

  So I can quit.

• 1:43:38Dax Shepard?

  Yes, and also all I need is five bucks to do it. The endless belief that that could happen again. Oh, wow.

• 1:43:45Speaker 00

  And like, we do talk about this, but it's, I guess it's hard to do when someone's sitting there. Like, the Kogi truck is huge. Like, you don't know, you don't live in LA and you don't know them, you might not, you might just say, oh, this is just like a chef who has a food truck. Like, it's an enormous institution here.

• 1:44:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:04Speaker 00

  Anyway, okay, I said last time we did the fact check, oh, Sedona. I was in Sedona and-

• 1:44:10Dax Shepard?

  We had a heartbreaking situation.

• 1:44:12Speaker 00

  We did.

• 1:44:12Dax Shepard?

  That was painful. I didn't like that.

• 1:44:14Speaker 00

  We recorded and we lost half.

• 1:44:16Dax Shepard?

  More than half.

• 1:44:17Speaker 00

  Okay, we lost most.

• 1:44:20Speaker 00

  So if you're wondering what happened on the fact check last time, and it, cause it starts kind of abruptly, we, we lost half.

• 1:44:26Dax Shepard?

  My, my unit shut off. But yes, we were gonna get a Sedona update from you.

• 1:44:30Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, it was, it was incredible. It was for Laura's bachelorette party and we stayed at Enchantment Resort, which is enchanting as ever.

• 1:44:40Dax Shepard?

  I saw a picture of you. There's now, there's now a treasure trove of pictures of you that like, should be posted, but won't be.

• 1:44:48Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:44:48Dax Shepard?

  So I saw one last night.

• 1:44:50Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:44:51Dax Shepard?

  It was a little mouse asleep on a bus with a white claw on her hand.

• 1:44:55Speaker 00

  Oh, it was posted.

• 1:44:57Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it was?

• 1:44:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I didn't post it, but-

• 1:44:59Dax Shepard?

  Who posted it?

• 1:45:00Speaker 00

  Uh, one of the girls, Liz.

• 1:45:02Dax Shepard?

  Okay, well, mom did it. Mom has it on her phone.

• 1:45:05Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:45:06Dax Shepard?

  And I said, this would be a great post, but Monty wouldn't like it. There's a couple of things going on there. Go ahead.

• 1:45:12Speaker 00

  Wait, I want to hear from you, what is-

• 1:45:14Dax Shepard?

  You look six years old. You are, because you're curled up with your head on the window sleeping. And for whatever reason, the angle, you look so tiny. It looks like a kitty cat sleeping on the bus. And then you have a white claw in your hand. It's so adorable.

• 1:45:29Speaker 00

  I, I don't like that picture because my neck looks bad, really bad. And also, it's deceiving. It looks like I drank so much white claw that I like passed out.

• 1:45:40Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:45:41Speaker 00

  And that is not what happened. There was like three sips out of that white claw. And really, that whole time, I was like trying to sleep and trying not to puke.

• 1:45:51Dax Shepard?

  Right, because you were having a little bit of motion sickness.

• 1:45:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, on that bus. It wasn't my favorite ride, two, two and a half hours of my life, but that's okay.

• 1:46:00Dax Shepard?

  Which says a lot, because you were riding with me the last time you went up that mountain. And I was driving a k-trillion miles an hour.

• 1:46:07Speaker 00

  True.

• 1:46:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:08Speaker 00

  I think it was because we just got off the plane, like something about all the different motion and I don't know, I just- Because I was, I was actually fine on the ride back. Anyway, so, the last fact check, we didn't have time to go through the Playboy article, but I said we would do it this time.

• 1:46:25Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay, okay.

• 1:46:26Speaker 00

  So, I'm gonna read it.

• 1:46:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh geez. This is, by the way, you're not gonna let us post this thing. You're gonna read a 20-year-old article of me, and I'm embarrassed already.

• 1:46:34Speaker 00

  Do you want me to not? I don't know if it's-

• 1:46:36Dax Shepard?

  No, do it, do it, do it, do it.

• 1:46:37Speaker 00

  Okay, 20Q, Dax Shepard.

• 1:46:40Dax Shepard?

  Hmm, oh god, this is-

• 1:46:41Speaker 00

  The headline is, oh, this is a nine-minute read, it tells you, that's cool. "The comic turned actor, parentheses, and drugged out bad boy turned vegan gentleman on failure and success."

• 1:46:54Dax Shepard?

  Hmm, they caught me in the one year I was vegan.

• 1:46:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, 2012. Is success what you thought it would be? Oh, God, no. What if I tried to do an impression?

• 1:47:04Dax Shepard?

  Do it.

• 1:47:05Speaker 00

  No, I can't.

• 1:47:05Dax Shepard?

  Oh, God, no. I go to movies. I see me self. Me not feel better about me self. Me think we would feel good, but feel bad.

• 1:47:17Speaker 00

  Oh, God, no. But it's impossible to know until you've had success that it doesn't alter your daily struggles. When I was a struggling, grounding, I thought if I had the life I have now, I wouldn't have to brush my teeth anymore and I could eat cupcakes all day.

• 1:47:30Dax Shepard?

  I'm still saying that. I need some new material.

• 1:47:33Speaker 00

  It's just your truth.

• 1:47:34Dax Shepard?

  I thought I could cupcake all day.

• 1:47:40Speaker 00

  In fact, I have to do the same shit I've always had to do to not feel miserable, which is work out, journal, eat well, do something for somebody other than myself at some point every day, even if it's just to dogs, those little fuckers.

• 1:47:51Dax Shepard?

  Hmm, OK, not bad yet.

• 1:47:53Speaker 00

  That's cute.

• 1:47:53Dax Shepard?

  OK.

• 1:47:54Speaker 00

  So was that really you driving like an outlaw on hit and run?

• 1:47:57Dax Shepard?

  Oh, this, yeah, this is to promote hit and run. That's right, OK.

• 1:48:00Speaker 00

  100%. I'm from Detroit and my life has been driving cars. In high school, it was drag racing. Then I worked for GM because my mother had a company that put on big car shows for journalists. We'd rent out Michigan International Speedway and I got tons and tons of seat time in these crazy cars that a 16-year-old should never be allowed to drive. I fucking love cars and I've wanted to do a car chase movie all my life.

• 1:48:19Dax Shepard?

  Hmm, OK.

• 1:48:21Speaker 00

  It's like weird to say fucking knowing it's in an article.

• 1:48:25Dax Shepard?

  Playboy.

• 1:48:26Speaker 00

  But it's Playboy.

• 1:48:27Dax Shepard?

  Ding ding ding, bong bong bong.

• 1:48:28Speaker 00

  OK, three. Correct us again, but it also appears that your super hot, super famous co-star and fiance Kristen Bell was actually buckled in alongside you. For every bit of it. Naturally, the producer had booked a stunt double, but Kristen said to me, "No, if you're driving through a barn and jumping other cars, I need to be there with you. We're going to go out together."

• 1:48:47Dax Shepard?

  Hmm, romantic.

• 1:48:48Speaker 00

  Yes. She sounds like a keeper. Kristen's a good girl. She grew up very Christian, went straight to college, did great in school and started work immediately. She's charitable and philanthropic and rescues dogs. So when we met, our backgrounds were opposites. All the things I'd done were terrifying to her and she had a hard time believing I would ever be able to stay married and monogamous and a father and all those things. For the first year and a half, we were together. That's what we battled over almost weekly. How terrifying were you exactly? It's so weird when you turn 18 and are released into the world and then just start piling on terrible habits. From 18 to 29, I was a heavy smoker, heavy drinker, drug addict, terrible eater, and philanderer. The past eight years since I got sober have honestly been about trying to peel back each of those habits to get back to the 12-year-old kid inside who was tremendously excited about life. Six.

• 1:49:33Speaker 00

  Give us a snapshot of you in your party years.

• 1:49:36Dax Shepard?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:49:37Speaker 00

  I just loved to get fucked up. Drinking, cocaine, opiates, marijuana, diet pills, pain pills, everything. Mostly, my love was Jack Daniels and cocaine. I was famous for going out on Thursday night to have a couple of beers, and that just led all the way to Saturday night. I would meet people here and there, and then I'd be in a hotel room with four strangers. Oh, they're tapping out? Well, someone new showed up. Well, what's your name? Yeah, I love to go dancing. I lived for going down the rabbit hole of meeting weird people. Of course, come Monday, I would be tallying up all the different situations, and each one got progressively more dangerous. I got lucky in that I didn't go to jail.

• 1:50:06Dax Shepard?

  White privilege. I was referring to, I knew it was white privilege.

• 1:50:09Speaker 00

  Oh. How much you've grown.

• 1:50:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, kind of. I think these are all the same stories I just still say.

• 1:50:14Speaker 00

  I got lucky and I didn't go to jail. Or worse, says the person. And you said, oh, God, yeah, my nose is completely sideways from a drunken altercation. I'm missing a knuckle because of a drunken altercation. Somehow, I was usually able to get sober for work. I got sober for my first movie without a paddle, but then I was fucked up. I got sober for Idiocracy, but then I was fucked up for three months. Then, right before I started Zathura, I knew I would get sober for that, so I went to Hawaii to relax, and that's when things went from bad to worse. I ended up in a car accident with a local on the way to get coke, which didn't stop us from going to get coke. Then it wasn't coke, it was crystal meth, but I did it anyway. Eight. How exactly did you get a big Hollywood career?

• 1:50:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and sum that up in four lines.

• 1:50:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Well, I spent many, many years unemployed. I was 20 when I moved to Los Angeles. I went on probably 600 commercial auditions and couldn't book any of them. I went through the Groundlings. Everyone there had agents but me, and it was a ridiculously amazing group. I was there with Melissa McCarthy, who was nominated for an Oscar, Octavia Spencer, who won an Oscar, Tate Taylor, who directed The Help. Success is just a war of attrition. Sure, there's an element of talent you should probably possess, but if you stick around long enough, eventually, something's gonna happen, you know? You first got people's attention as a pretend IRS agent who made Justin Timberlake cry on MTV's Punked. What was that like? Because JT was such a marquee name, MTV was nervous I would fuck up the bit and we'd have nothing to show for it. His garage was packed full of MTV brass telling me what to do. I wasn't nervous, it was pure adrenaline.

• 1:51:37Speaker 00

  What made Punk such a golden opportunity was that once the person arrived, I was directing the show. No one could yell "cut" or tell me I was going too far. I don't think I would have popped on a format other than that, you know, right out of the gate. That's... makes sense.

• 1:51:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:51Speaker 00

  10. You studied anthropology at UCLA. Ding ding ding!

• 1:51:54Dax Shepard?

  Ding ding ding ding ding!

• 1:51:55Speaker 00

  Oh, this is interesting. What's your anthropological assessment of Ashton Kutcher's success?

• 1:52:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh, see, he's trying to get me to shit-talk.

• 1:52:03Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:52:04Dax Shepard?

  All these... See, this is what I'm talking about, print. He's... Right now, he's like, "How do you explain Ashton's success? A, why does that need explaining? You're not asking me to explain Brad Pitt's success."

• 1:52:13Speaker 00

  I guess that's true, but like, when we get interviewed, they ask us all the time, like, "Can you explain the success of this show? Like, what is it about this show that's made..."

• 1:52:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but why are you asking me about Ashton Kutcher?

• 1:52:23Speaker 00

  Well, people ask about you, to me.

• 1:52:25Dax Shepard?

  They ask you, mate, how I got to...

• 1:52:27Speaker 00

  Like, what is it about... And maybe they'll say "y'all."

• 1:52:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I don't think...

• 1:52:32Speaker 00

  But I always answer with "you."

• 1:52:33Dax Shepard?

  This was the thing, and the people wanted to hate Kutcher. Especially these journalists. They wanted to say he was only there because he was good-looking. And they wanted to catch me doing that.

• 1:52:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, this is what you said.

• 1:52:43Dax Shepard?

  "He's only here because he's good-looking." I thought I said that.

• 1:52:46Speaker 00

  "We are incredibly social animals and we're constantly searching..." Well, see, this is... You went anthropological. That's good.

• 1:52:52Dax Shepard?

  Okay, good.

• 1:52:53Speaker 00

  You followed the rules. "We are incredibly social animals and we're constantly searching for some order of who's alpha, who's beta, who's zeta. Ashton's definitely an alpha. People want to dislike him because he's gorgeous and successful. It's fair to hate somebody like that. I relate. If he wasn't a crazy, driven, hard worker, I would find it all offensive. But he's like Tyler Perry. How do you not respect Tyler Perry? It's easy to make jokes about the guy, but he writes, directs, and stars on a TV show, then writes, directs, and stars in a movie, all in one year? And certainly, once you actually get to know somebody, it demystifies them in everything they go through. When Ashton and Demi broke up, I felt bad. These are people I eat dinner with. Brad and Angelina, that's another story. I don't actually know them, so I'm as curious as the next person. Will they get married? What's their life like? And of course, I would love to see them engaged in coitus."

• 1:53:33Dax Shepard?

  Well, some things never change.

• 1:53:36Speaker 00

  Oh my god. Okay. Okay. "You realize people have said that about you and every famous, beautiful woman you've dated. I get that. People want to see us bang."

• 1:53:51Speaker 00

  People want to see us bang. But here's the funny thing about the response I've been aware of to my dating famous people. It's been very negative. I'm either not good looking enough, not a good enough actor, or not successful enough for these people. It's ironic, really. Guys should be excited that I got Kristen Bell. If Brad Pitt gets Kristen Bell, it's like, well, of course he did. With me, it should be, oh, good, a normal looking guy got her. Maybe I'll get me a Kristen Bell. But guys hate my guts for always dating women I have no right to be with. What's your secret? I attribute it to being funny and a good dancer. And I'm tall, which will get you places as well. I'm also wired for it. The times my brain works fastest are when I'm doing improv on a stage or meeting coeds in a bar.

• 1:54:32Dax Shepard?

  Coeds?

• 1:54:32Speaker 00

  Coeds. Yeah, I haven't heard you say that.

• 1:54:34Dax Shepard?

  No, I've lost some stuff. Thank God. Most of it, I'm just embarrassed with how much I'm recycling shit from 90s.

• 1:54:40Speaker 00

  That just means it's real.

• 1:54:41Dax Shepard?

  Okay, well, okay, that's a positive statement. Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

• 1:54:45Speaker 00

  You picked a career in which you're surrounded by gorgeous women. Okay, also, this is Playboy. Let's just remember that. There is a reason, perhaps, that a lot of the questions skew this way.

• 1:54:55Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's a nice way to look at it, but I think I'm right about this.

• 1:54:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55:00Dax Shepard?

  There was a moment where I was more famous for having dated famous people.

• 1:55:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55:04Dax Shepard?

  Which, I get it. And that's why Stern wanted me on. That's why Stern was willing to have me on. I was this guy like, why was he dating her and her and her? And that, hopefully, I'll come on and talk about those people that are much more famous than me. So that's also happening.

• 1:55:18Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:55:18Dax Shepard?

  Luckily, I got on to Stern and he disliked me and was fascinated by my drunk log.

• 1:55:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55:24Dax Shepard?

  But this guy, that's why I got a story in Playboy. Is they want me to dish on celebrities. And I know it, too, going in. So it's like, I'm being protective, and that's why it infuriates me. Well, you'll get to that.

• 1:55:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's interesting for me because I don't know you as that. I don't know you as someone who's famous because of who you dated.

• 1:55:46Dax Shepard?

  Right. You saw me first in Parenthood.

• 1:55:50Speaker 00

  Well, I saw you in Punk'd, but I didn't, like, know you.

• 1:55:52Dax Shepard?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:55:53Speaker 00

  But yeah, yeah, you got popular.

• 1:55:54Dax Shepard?

  And that had changed by Parenthood. But if you're the, quote, dude from Punk'd who's dating Kate Hudson, people are like, what the fuck?

• 1:56:01Speaker 00

  It's definitely changed. You picked a career in which you're surrounded by gorgeous women. Does the urge to merge ever go away? Sammy.

• 1:56:09Dax Shepard?

  I think he's saying, do you want to fuck your co-stars?

• 1:56:11Speaker 00

  Oh, no, it doesn't. I wish it did magically. This is overly deep, but I have to put women in the same category I put drugs and alcohol. It's an outside thing that I try to use to make my insides feel better, and I've learned that it just doesn't work. I have to keep my urges in check.

• 1:56:27Dax Shepard?

  He wasn't expecting that. He didn't want me to be like, no, I find it damaging because I'm unhappy.

• 1:56:34Speaker 00

  I'm in touch with myself. What's your relationship like with Craig T. Nelson, your TV dad on Parenthood? Craig T. Nelson is the coolest person I've met, my identical twin, only we're separated by 30 years or whatever. He's raised cars forever. We both have big noses. We're both tall. We're both goofy. We've both been around a lot of craziness. He's a guy I superfan at work, the way I superfan Burt Reynolds, whom I got to work with on Without a Paddle. Burt Reynolds? All the way. My house is a living shrine to Burt, much to KB's chagrin. I have a urinal. You do?

• 1:57:04Dax Shepard?

  I had one, yeah. Kristen tore it out.

• 1:57:07Speaker 00

  You had his urinal?

• 1:57:08Dax Shepard?

  The old house, when it was four bedrooms, had this really small bathroom that when you sat on the toilet, I couldn't sit on the toilet. My knees would hit the wall. So I'm like, I was a bachelor, so I ripped that fucker out. And I've always wanted a floor-length urinal. So I had a floor-length urinal, and when my buddies would come over, I'd fill it with ice like they do in those restaurants.

• 1:57:27Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:57:28Dax Shepard?

  And it was auto-flush and everything.

• 1:57:30Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:57:31Dax Shepard?

  Doesn't that sound great, Rob?

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  It sounds nice.

• 1:57:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:34Speaker 00

  I have a urinal, and above it is a poster of Gator with a personal message that says, "To Dax, you're a hell of an actor, but more important, a hell of a man. Love and respect." I would go to his trailer every day just to hound him for stories because I had so many unanswered questions. Like Jackie Gleason was a very well-known and admitted functioning alcoholic, yet 80% of Smokey and the Bandit is him traveling at high speed. It's clearly him driving, and it begs the question, what were the safety protocols when Gleason was driving?

• 1:58:01Speaker 00

  Bird's answers were implausible. The physics of what he told me couldn't happen, but who gives a shit? They were great stories. I love that man. Did you feel that way about John Travolta?

• 1:58:09Dax Shepard?

  See, again, why are you bringing up Travolta? Go ahead.

• 1:58:12Speaker 00

  Did you feel that way about John Travolta when you were in Old Dogs? Well, they say you shouldn't meet your heroes, and that's probably good advice unless you employ the strategy of hanging on to your daydream of who they are. Urban Cowboys on my top five dramas of all time, so Travolta could have been lighting other cast members on fire, and I would have just seen Bud climbing off the oil rig, or the guy from Pulp Fiction. I'm like those female fans who saw Elvis on his last tour. They didn't see the 300-pound beach whale on the stage. They were cheering and crying for the guy from 1956 swaying his hips.

• 1:58:39Dax Shepard?

  So I didn't even really answer.

• 1:58:40Speaker 00

  No, you did a good job of aiding that.

• 1:58:42Dax Shepard?

  I like Travolta, though, for the record. Sweetheart.

• 1:58:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. Seventeen. Bo Bridges looks pretty good in your new movie, and he's no spring chicken. What's he like? When I saw his age was 70, I almost crapped myself. I would go, "Jesus, Bo, you're not supposed to be able to punch somebody out in a scene at 70. My grandpa couldn't have done that. What's your secret?" And he goes, "I've been a vegan for 12 years." I was like, "Damn, I need to think about this." And then I saw For Works Over Knives, that documentary, and I was like, "I'm in. I've been a vegan since January." I feel like I'm time traveling. Eighteen. And how are you feeling? It's nothing like the pill in The Matrix, but damn good. Like, 15% across the board in every respect. I sleep 15% better, my allergies are at least 15% better, I have fewer body aches, my skin looks better, I'm never starving, and I never need to ride the couch feeling completely full and disgusting.

• 1:59:30Speaker 00

  Nineteen. So your vices are pretty much under control. I think I have a pretty good handle on my isms, but it takes a long time. Each third or fourth bad thing you give up, you still have to hold on to one. I'm still on nicotine, I pound about a dozen of those Comet throat lozenges a day, I still drink gallons of coffee. Twenty. And you still drive like a maniac. I'm still super into driving too fast on motorcycles, yes. I have a Suzuki GSX R1000. That was hard to read.

• 1:59:59Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:00:00Speaker 00

  That's just for the racetrack, and I can get up to 190 on that. When you're going that fast, you're thinking only about what you're doing in the moment. It's the closest I could ever get to Deepak or God or something like that. You can't think about tomorrow or what happened yesterday. You just absolutely have to be thinking second to second to second about what you're doing in that moment. I don't think I could survive without doing something like that.

• 2:00:19Dax Shepard?

  So I imagined the part?

• 2:00:21Speaker 00

  I don't see, or maybe you-

• 2:00:22Dax Shepard?

  Oh, maybe they took it out.

• 2:00:25Speaker 00

  Maybe, or maybe they asked you-

• 2:00:27Dax Shepard?

  No, maybe they took it out for this, because- It's now online.

• 2:00:30Speaker 00

  Maybe.

• 2:00:31Dax Shepard?

  The printed version hadn't. Yeah.

• 2:00:33Speaker 00

  Shit, I need the printed version.

• 2:00:35Dax Shepard?

  That's weird.

• 2:00:36Speaker 00

  Unless they just asked you and it was annoying when they.

• 2:00:40Dax Shepard?

  No, no, my issue is they didn't say those names. And then he put, you've been with whatever question it was about stars.

• 2:00:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:47Dax Shepard?

  Go back to that question. It was like maybe 12.

• 2:00:52Speaker 00

  It was, um.

• 2:00:54Dax Shepard?

  What's your secret? It was around that one.

• 2:00:55Speaker 00

  Oh, what's your secret? 12.

• 2:00:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Oh, wow. That's weird. So what is that question?

• 2:00:59Speaker 00

  Well, also you picked a career in which you're surrounded by gorgeous women. Does the urge to merge ever go away? Also, you realize people have said that about you and every famous, beautiful woman you've dated.

• 2:01:08Dax Shepard?

  Comma, and then he listed three names.

• 2:01:12Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 2:01:13Dax Shepard?

  And then I just go like, well, I guess my secret's dancing and blah blah. So it would looks like I didn't correct.

• 2:01:18Speaker 00

  Oh, I see.

• 2:01:19Dax Shepard?

  That was taken out. I know, I know my, I went apeshit and my publicist called and was apeshit. So I wonder if in subsequent things.

• 2:01:27Speaker 00

  They probably retracted it.

• 2:01:28Dax Shepard?

  Uh, okay. That's the only explanation. All right. Well, now I'm not, I'm fine now.

• 2:01:33Speaker 00

  But that was a fun journey.

• 2:01:35Dax Shepard?

  Was it?

• 2:01:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, for me.

• 2:01:38Dax Shepard?

  I'm not too embarrassed by that.

• 2:01:40Speaker 00

  Good.

• 2:01:40Dax Shepard?

  We didn't learn one thing about me, though. We already know this about me, right?

• 2:01:43Speaker 00

  Well, you said coeds.

• 2:01:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I said.

• 2:01:47Speaker 00

  So you used to say coeds.

• 2:01:48Dax Shepard?

  And coitus. I used to say.

• 2:01:50Speaker 00

  You still say coitus.

• 2:01:51Dax Shepard?

  I still say coitus. Okay, so just coeds. I gotta get that back in.

• 2:01:55Speaker 00

  Oh, you wanna bring that back? Okay, so I looked up the Asian population. Well, Rob looked it up real time and said 6%. But then I was looking at the breakdown in America.

• 2:02:08Dax Shepard?

  Of the 6%?

• 2:02:09Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:02:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:02:11Speaker 00

  And 24% are Chinese, 21% are Indian.

• 2:02:17Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:02:17Speaker 00

  19%.

• 2:02:18Dax Shepard?

  So we don't have 6% Asian. We have about 4% Asian and 2% Indian.

• 2:02:23Speaker 00

  19% Filipino, 10% Vietnamese.

• 2:02:27Dax Shepard?

  Filipino is number three?

• 2:02:28Speaker 00

  19, yep.

• 2:02:29Dax Shepard?

  Ding ding ding, Rob. Congrats. I got two of the top three in here.

• 2:02:33Speaker 00

  That's right. Okay, 10% Vietnamese, 9% Korean, 7% Japanese, all others 15%.

• 2:02:40Dax Shepard?

  Wow, Japanese are that.

• 2:02:41Speaker 00

  Small.

• 2:02:42Dax Shepard?

  That, yeah.

• 2:02:43Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:02:43Dax Shepard?

  Huh, that's interesting. I thought Hawaii is very.

• 2:02:48Dax Shepard?

  Very high concentration of Japanese people.

• 2:02:51Speaker 00

  Maybe all of that is in Hawaii.

• 2:02:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Oh, wow. Did you think it was higher? I don't know why I thought that.

• 2:02:58Speaker 00

  No, because.

• 2:02:59Dax Shepard?

  I know why I thought that.

• 2:03:00Speaker 00

  Okay, go ahead.

• 2:03:00Dax Shepard?

  No, you go.

• 2:03:01Speaker 00

  No, I don't have.

• 2:03:04Dax Shepard?

  I think Japan was so talked about in the 90s as being this economic power. So I think just.

• 2:03:10Speaker 00

  Oh, I see.

• 2:03:11Dax Shepard?

  You know, it's like a lot of, you don't hear about Miramar ever, former Burma.

• 2:03:15Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:03:15Dax Shepard?

  When was the last time you heard about, you know, you don't hear about a lot of these countries. They just don't make headlines, but we were obsessed with Japan the way we're obsessed with China in the 90s.

• 2:03:24Speaker 00

  Well, but I think that's actually a reason why there's less here because it was a successful country.

• 2:03:31Dax Shepard?

  They're not escaping.

• 2:03:32Speaker 00

  They don't need to leave.

• 2:03:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Really good point.

• 2:03:36Speaker 00

  Okay, Asians now make up about 7% of the nation's overall population. This is according to 2021.

• 2:03:42Dax Shepard?

  Minus 30% of that from India.

• 2:03:46Speaker 00

  Not we're gonna include us.

• 2:03:50Speaker 00

  I looked up poorest Asian communities in US. Asian Americans had a poverty rate of 10% in 2019. Three percentage points lower than the overall US poverty rate, 13%. Mongolian and Burmese had the highest poverty rates among all Asian origin groups at 25%. More than twice the national average and about four times the poverty rates among Indians, 6%.

• 2:04:16Dax Shepard?

  So Indians are at 6%.

• 2:04:18Speaker 00

  Says so.

• 2:04:19Dax Shepard?

  I'm just overachiever, overachiever.

• 2:04:21Speaker 00

  Well, always.

• 2:04:23Dax Shepard?

  I guess we're going against what stereotype we're trying to break, which is the model minority. You shouldn't feel bad for them, which is not the case.

• 2:04:30Speaker 00

  Also, no, I've had an explanation for this that my dad came up with, which is they learn English in school there. So it's easier. And I think there's really something to that.

• 2:04:39Dax Shepard?

  But also they came, it's all, it's all about too what we let in, right? So like the Philippines, the reason they're all nurses is because we said we'll let all the nurses in from the Philippines. And y'all.

• 2:04:50Speaker 00

  Indian people.

• 2:04:51Dax Shepard?

  Focused on engineering.

• 2:04:53Speaker 00

  And professors and stuff like that.

• 2:04:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we said you can come on in if you can do that.

• 2:04:57Speaker 00

  Okay, I wrote, my mom used to love Emerald on Food Network. Bam.

• 2:05:02Dax Shepard?

  Bam. Did I tell you I got the bam?

• 2:05:05Speaker 00

  What's that mean?

• 2:05:07Dax Shepard?

  On that trip, so much happened on one trip.

• 2:05:10Speaker 00

  What trip?

• 2:05:10Dax Shepard?

  When I was famous for 30 seconds and they invited me down to the Sugar Bowl to go out on the field for Nokia. And do the Nokia halftime thing. They said you can come down first class tickets for you and friends. So I brought Aaron and Adrian. And Bree and I went, and this is remember on my birthday and I went to a slot machine, not a slot machine, a video poker and I got a royal flush.

• 2:05:36Speaker 00

  Why?

• 2:05:37Dax Shepard?

  Right out of the gates.

• 2:05:38Speaker 00

  This is not ringing.

• 2:05:38Dax Shepard?

  And then we were all staring at like, oh my God, royal flush. This is like three grand or whatever. And then we just stared at it and stared at it like, why isn't it paying us?

• 2:05:45Speaker 00

  Oh no.

• 2:05:46Dax Shepard?

  Why isn't it paying us? And then I hit the like, the button. I didn't save them all. I didn't think to save them all because it was already the perfect thing. None of us thought so.

• 2:05:53Speaker 00

  Oh no.

• 2:05:55Dax Shepard?

  And it just redelved me a shit hand.

• 2:05:58Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 2:05:58Dax Shepard?

  So that's a once in a lifetime occurrence. You'll never forget that. Then Aaron and I were on the balcony and we were throwing the beads, but we were purposely throwing them in the horse poop because all the horse cops were pooping all over the thing. Purposely throwing them in the horse poop to see if people would pick them up and wear them. And they did.

• 2:06:16Speaker 00

  Oh my God.

• 2:06:16Dax Shepard?

  And it was a great entertainment for us.

• 2:06:18Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:06:18Dax Shepard?

  But back to, part of the thing was like, would you want to eat at Emeril Lagazi's restaurant?

• 2:06:24Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 2:06:24Dax Shepard?

  I forget the name of it. And we said, of course we'd like to go. We went and I said, can I get the bam? And he fucking came out of the kitchen and dropped our dishes and gave us the bam.

• 2:06:37Speaker 00

  What?

• 2:06:38Dax Shepard?

  What do you mean what?

• 2:06:39Speaker 00

  What do you mean he gave you the bam?

• 2:06:41Dax Shepard?

  Bam! You just said it.

• 2:06:43Speaker 00

  Oh, you're saying he said it.

• 2:06:45Dax Shepard?

  He said it. He dropped our food.

• 2:06:46Speaker 00

  Emerald.

• 2:06:47Dax Shepard?

  Emerald.

• 2:06:47Speaker 00

  Oh my God, he was there working?

• 2:06:49Dax Shepard?

  Yes, well, because it's a big, big week there and he was at his own restaurant.

• 2:06:52Speaker 00

  Oh shit.

• 2:06:53Dax Shepard?

  And he came out of the kitchen.

• 2:06:54Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:06:55Dax Shepard?

  And he put our chowder down and bammed us.

• 2:06:58Speaker 00

  That's cool. That's a sim.

• 2:07:00Dax Shepard?

  This is all in like three days.

• 2:07:01Speaker 00

  What year was this?

• 2:07:03Dax Shepard?

  Whenever Punk came out. By the way, I'd never seen him say bam. I just knew, you know how you know things?

• 2:07:10Speaker 00

  Sure. It was in the zeitgeist.

• 2:07:11Dax Shepard?

  It was in the zeitgeist.

• 2:07:12Speaker 00

  Okay. About restaurants, 60% of new restaurants fail within the first year. And nearly 80% shutter before their fifth anniversary.

• 2:07:21Dax Shepard?

  Oh man, that's why it's so hard to get a loan for one. You do look like a cosplay person. I know I said that the last time you wore this, but you really look like a furry. Is that what they're called? They go to convention, Rob, you know all this stuff.

• 2:07:35Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:07:35Speaker 01

  Furries is a sexual thing.

• 2:07:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:07:37Dax Shepard?

  Right, yeah.

• 2:07:39Dax Shepard?

  But they go as creatures, right? And they rub up against each other, furries?

• 2:07:42Speaker 01

  I think it's separate, I mean, people dress for cosplay for like comic books and...

• 2:07:47Dax Shepard?

  And for furry play, I think.

• 2:07:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess.

• 2:07:49Dax Shepard?

  Why do you think it's called furries? Because they're wearing little bear outfits like this.

• 2:07:53Speaker 00

  Well, I think they're wearing like hood, they're like really in a costume.

• 2:07:57Dax Shepard?

  Oh my gosh.

• 2:07:57Speaker 00

  This is Skims.

• 2:07:58Dax Shepard?

  I know.

• 2:08:02Speaker 00

  Okay. Over 110,000 eating, drinking establishments in the US closed for business temporarily or permanently in 2020, with nearly 2.5 million jobs erased from pre-pandemic levels.

• 2:08:17Dax Shepard?

  Ooh.

• 2:08:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:08:19Dax Shepard?

  Woo, woo, woo.

• 2:08:21Speaker 00

  Yikeses.

• 2:08:22Dax Shepard?

  That has to be the sector that was hit the hardest.

• 2:08:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then they don't want to come back.

• 2:08:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they're done. Hmm, that was a big one. And I loved it.

• 2:08:31Speaker 00

  Juicy.

• 2:08:32Dax Shepard?

  Um, okay, great. Love you.

• 2:08:34Speaker 00

  Love you.