Caroline Fraser (on serial killers)

Caroline Fraser (Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Caroline joins the Armchair Expert to discuss why Christian Science churches and parishioners are disappearing, consequences of healthcare ideologies and practices defined by religious exemption, and tracing her interest in writing about violence to growing up in the 70s. Caroline and Dax talk about why the Pacific Northwest is so associated with serial killers, women’s relationships to and the ethics of true crime, and her argument that violent crime is a human health issue. Caroline explains Missing White Woman Syndrome, why mass murderers and serial killers might be following different kinks, and whether she feels more paranoid as a result of writing this book. 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.

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman. We have a Pulitzer Prize winning author on today. Caroline Fraser. She's got many great books. Prairie Fires, God's Perfect Child, Church. And she has a new book out now called Murderland. Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  We love serial killers. You, you are showing on Netflix.

• 0:33Dax Shepard?

  Please enjoy Caroline Fraser. We get support from Quince.

• 0:39Speaker 01

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• 0:58Dax Shepard?

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• 1:14Speaker 01

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• 1:25Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm going to 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.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 1:33Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:37Speaker 01

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• 2:00Dax 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 supported by Helix.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Okay, can we talk about how November is basically survival mode? Between the holidays, the travel, the hosting, the cooking, the everything. Sleep is the one thing keeping me from completely unraveling.

• 2:35Dax 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.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  That was me before Helix. I took their sleep quiz, which is so fast. It took me like two minutes and they matched me to a mattress that actually fits how I sleep. Not a guess, not a firm or soft coin flip. It's a real match. I have a midnight mattress and I really like it. I was noticing it because I actually had to sleep in one of my other beds.

• 3:03Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Recently.

• 3:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 3:04Speaker 01

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

• 3:09Dax Shepard?

  Temperature was all over the map.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  It was a mess.

• 3:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  I need a new one.

• 3:12Dax 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.

• 3:26Speaker 01

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

• 3:33Dax 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.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  In New York, it's seltzer. They call it seltzer and it's different.

• 4:12Dax Shepard?

  And they're not moving off of it.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  No, they're not.

• 4:15Dax Shepard?

  You and I were alive when New York seltzer water was all the rage. Do you remember that whole era of our lives where those were everywhere? Those little bottles?

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And they came in flavors.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 4:27Dax Shepard?

  Black cherry maybe was a popular one. Yeah, I remember those hit the market and my father just couldn't get enough of them.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  He loved.

• 4:35Dax Shepard?

  He went all in on the New York seltzer.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  How fun.

• 4:40Dax Shepard?

  It's funny, the arc of things that are novel.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:43Dax Shepard?

  How exciting they are, and they almost seem like, oh, well, these are gonna be around forever. And then everyone just tires of them.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:50Dax Shepard?

  That's my prediction with AI-generated media.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  Oh, I hope so.

• 4:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's like really interesting at first. And the more you see of it, you're like, oh, yeah, I get it. They can do anything and really, who cares?

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Except those babies. They make really cute babies. Baby videos. They get me every time.

• 5:10Dax Shepard?

  You'll be falling for any of the baby videos.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  You're gonna get some now that we are talking about it.

• 5:15Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you grew up in Seattle in the 60s and 70s. And I want to talk first a little bit about the Christian Science book, God's Perfect Child, Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church. So it's rare that I get to talk to someone who grew up Christian Scientists. And that was your experience.

• 5:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're all disappearing. I mean, demographically, they just kind of peaked during the 70s and then just fell off a cliff, really.

• 5:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  And now, you know, they're all dying because they don't accept medical care. And they have never figured out how to draw people to the religion, really. I mean, it's a, it's a very chilly kind of experience to go to a Christian Science church.

• 6:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Because it's just reading, you know? People just read Mary Baker Eddy's book, Science and Health, which is possibly the most boring book ever written.

• 6:12Dax Shepard?

  Do they read the Bible as well?

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it's kind of secondary.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  In a way, yeah.

• 6:18Dax Shepard?

  So even in just researching you, I'm embarrassed to admit, I had no clue that that had been invented by a woman, that religion.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  And she died in 1910. And they kind of pretended that she didn't really die.

• 6:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, they did.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  They made her like a deity?

• 6:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, she's buried in this spectacular cemetery in Cambridge.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  Massachusetts in this monument where you kind of can't tell is somebody actually buried here. Oh. And they put a phone famously in her tomb in case she resurrected herself so that she. No, and say, let me out.

• 6:58Dax Shepard?

  And it's connected to a live phone line?

• 7:01Speaker 03

  Well, it was.

• 7:02Dax Shepard?

  Church is paying.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  I don't know what the status of it is now.

• 7:05Dax Shepard?

  I'd love to get the number for that and just drive her crazy in there.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  No, you don't want her to haunt you.

• 7:11Dax Shepard?

  What were the unique circumstances by which she was able to write a book that was then taken on and practiced by so many people?

• 7:19Speaker 03

  Well, a lot of it had to do with the, you know, failures of medical care at the time because there were so many things that you could get that you couldn't really treat. And a lot of doctors were quacks or didn't know what they were doing. And so, you know, if you got TB or something, I mean, it was just, there were a lot of things that were a death sentence. And so, anybody who came along and said, oh, you know, if you pray about this, if you know the truth, that was their big kind of formula, then everything will be resolved and you'll be fine.

• 7:56Dax Shepard?

  So, your father, this is curious to me, your father had a PhD from Columbia?

• 8:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, in education.

• 8:04Dax Shepard?

  In education.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:07Dax Shepard?

  And yet, he was a devout Christian scientist and he did not believe in matter?

• 8:11Speaker 03

  That's right, yeah. That's a foundational tenet of the religion is that the physical world doesn't exist and that it's just an illusion, a kind of fantasy that we're all having. Whoa.

• 8:27Dax Shepard?

  Kind of the Matrix kind of simulation. There may be a head of the curve on the sim.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. Weird.

• 8:33Dax Shepard?

  How long into it were you going along with it? When did you start having some major disagreements? Or can you recall in your own life when you started going, is this possibly how it all works?

• 8:44Speaker 03

  Part of my problem always was my relationship with my father because he was so difficult and I just kind of kept wishing he would go away. Can we get rid of this guy?

• 8:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And did you sense your mother was in accord with how you were evaluating him? Or was she?

• 9:02Speaker 03

  Well, she was not raised in the church.

• 9:04Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 9:04Speaker 03

  He was. And so he was incredibly devout and kind of doctrinaire about everything. And I don't think I, you know, as a child, sort of consciously thought, oh, this is a load of crap or something, you know, not until I was like in high school. But I associated the belief so much with him.

• 9:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  Because he was so into it. And like, he would sit on the couch. And he had, he always kept the, the books next to the couch and would read sometimes. And we would kind of have to sit at his feet and listen to this.

• 9:42Dax Shepard?

  Wisdom.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  And, you know, and he was always sort of enforcing the belief. If I got sick, for example, threw up in the car or something, that was like a big deal.

• 9:52Dax Shepard?

  What was the solution for that? Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  Well, the whole way it was framed was that these things are kind of your fault.

• 10:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God.

• 10:00Speaker 03

  Because you're not practicing.

• 10:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you're not praying. Manifestations of impurity, kind of?

• 10:06Speaker 03

  Yes. And manifestation is actually a huge word.

• 10:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it is?

• 10:10Speaker 03

  In science and health.

• 10:11Dax Shepard?

  Well, maybe I should join. That came very organically to me. Maybe I would really respond. You would be horrible. No, I'd be a bad, bad member. I'm kind of attached to matter as a concept. Yeah, exactly. What prompted you to write the book?

• 10:26Speaker 03

  At the time that I started, the church was going through this kind of big crisis where they had invested all this money. It was kind of their last ditch attempt to invest a bunch of money in a TV, you know, a news organization that they were trying to launch. And by way of this, they were going to attract new members and appear, you know, on the kind of international stage. And they had very high hopes for this thing. And yet they made a bunch of mistakes. They invested too much money.

• 11:01Dax Shepard?

  Turns out the TV business is kind of hard. You need to be an expert to be profitable.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  Yes. And at the same time, in the eighties, there were all these, what they called the child cases, which were various cases around the country where Christian Science parents were prosecuted for the deaths or neglect of their children who had died under, you know, really pretty grotesque and preventable circumstances. Yeah. And I think prosecutors by that time had just gotten sick of this whole phenomenon and were like, we're going to make sure to kind of put the kibosh on this by prosecuting a few people.

• 11:44Dax Shepard?

  But you do explore in your book, there was a moment where they had lobbyists where they were effective at getting themselves kind of inoculated from that type of prosecution, right? How did that work?

• 11:54Speaker 03

  I mean, ironically, this was during the seventies, at the same time that Nixon had ascended to his position of power. And a couple of Nixon's most powerful lieutenants, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, were Christian Scientists. And some of the people who worked for them were Christian Scientists, like this guy Eagle Crow, who you may remember. Eagle Crow? Eagle Crow was his name.

• 12:24Dax Shepard?

  Was he native or he just has a very native name?

• 12:27Speaker 03

  No, it's E-G-I-L. Oh, wow. Not like the bird. That is unfortunate.

• 12:32Dax Shepard?

  I was like, it's a Native American Christian Scientist working for Nixon. This has got to be the most unique person.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  But anyway, so there were these Christian Scientists in positions of power, and they used that to basically kind of push through various federal acts, legislation, regulations that would allow, mainly on the state level, but some on the federal level, that would allow people to refuse vaccinations, for example.

• 13:03Speaker 03

  Or any sort of healthcare.

• 13:05Dax Shepard?

  Under the guise of religious freedom.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  That's right. These were called religious exemptions and they still exist in most states.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:15Speaker 03

  And Oregon overturned theirs because one of the really terrible things about this religious exemption stuff is that all these other religious nuts, you know, in addition to the Christian Zionists. Yes. And so like in Oregon, there was this thing called the Church of the Firstborn, who did not believe in any kind of healthcare for mothers having babies. And so all these women were having babies who died within a few days because they had problems giving birth or various other things that could have been addressed in a hospital setting.

• 13:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the infant mortality rate for these Christian scientists was some standard deviations above the national average. Yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Christian Zionists had always had kind of carve outs.

• 14:09Speaker 03

  In a weird way. And so like I was born in a hospital, but it was in a with a doctor who I think was friendly to Christian Zionists. They were kind of okay with glasses or dental care, although I remember my father had his wisdom teeth pulled with no.

• 14:29Dax Shepard?

  Anesthetic.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  Anesthetic. So it was fungible.

• 14:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's what always has been an issue for me is humans are full of contradictions. I don't think anyone has a monopoly on contradictions, but I do find that in religions in particular, the contradictions start piling up at such a degree. The Amish, they can't have anything electrical, but they can borrow their neighbor's car. Like, that's such a curious part, and I don't know how people make peace with the inconsistency.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  There's a lot of mental gymnastics that goes on to justify a lot of the things.

• 14:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so in 2017, you wrote Prairie Fires. I'm laying this out because they share some connective tissue, as we'll get into with Murderland, but Prairie Fires, the American dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Am I saying Ingalls right?

• 15:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:14Dax Shepard?

  So I didn't even know who she was, but she wrote.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  I do.

• 15:17Dax Shepard?

  Did you read?

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Girls, yeah. Are you Little House? I was when I was younger, much younger. And then they made it into a show and I watched the show too.

• 15:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, what is it called?

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Little House on the Prairie.

• 15:29Dax Shepard?

  Little House on the Prairie. What drew you to write about her?

• 15:32Speaker 03

  Well, I'd read the books as a kid and loved them.

• 15:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 15:35Speaker 03

  You know, I was always really into reading because I think it was a sort of way to learn about the world that was outside of the religious.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:45Speaker 03

  You know, framework. And I loved those books. I mean, they're great adventure stories about a girl.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  And her family and they, you know, are sort of about family and domesticity and farming. And, you know, all my grandparents were farmers of one kind or another, or most of them. So I think I kind of recognized my family's kind of immigrant journey to the Midwest and struggling to survive out on the plains. You know, all that seemed like it was adjacent to my family's story. So that was kind of fascinating to me.

• 16:26Dax Shepard?

  You won the Pulitzer for that, the National Book Critics Circle Award. Numerous awards for that. Did that come as a surprise to you?

• 16:36Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 16:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I would imagine like you as a writer is not terribly different than me as an actor, which is like, I'm doing it for a long time. There's some period where I go, oh, right, we're not really in search of an academy. That's really not what we're going to be getting in our lifetime. And if it just happened out of nowhere, it might be surprising. So it must have been.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was. It was a kind of a bolt out of the blue. I mean, I had no idea. Because I mean, for one thing, it's a biography of a children's book author and they're respected, but maybe not the center of the literary universe in some ways.

• 17:12Dax Shepard?

  And what do you think was the proprietary angle that made it so appealing and well received?

• 17:18Speaker 03

  I think a lot of it had to do with the history, you know, that I was kind of presenting her as a historical figure who had been through all these pretty major events.

• 17:30Dax Shepard?

  We would modernly call her, like, she'd be high on the ACE score. She had a lot of trauma, if you look at her life.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:35Dax Shepard?

  Endless uprooting, scary people maybe lurking around. I mean, it's a very heightened arousal childhood.

• 17:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, she was somebody who survived, like, really bizarre and terrifying catastrophes, you know, the locust invasion of the 1870s, in which, like, trillions of locusts fell out of the sky. Oh, my God. And destroyed their farm and their crops and...

• 18:01Dax Shepard?

  One of the harshest winters of all time.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, the hard winter of 1880. They practically froze and starved to death.

• 18:10Dax Shepard?

  And then a crop failure one year, and that's all you're betting on? I mean, it's one after another.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, and just sad. She had a child who died less than a month after he was born, and their house burned down. So she sort of went through it all. Yeah. And then just survived for many years, kind of working at odd jobs. And then finally, you know, in her 60s, which is really pretty late to adopt a new career, she, with the help of her daughter, who kind of bullied her into it, started writing these memoirs, which turned into the fictional stories of the Little House books. She's writing them during another crisis, because it was, you know, the Dust Bowl and...

• 18:57Dax Shepard?

  It just won't, the hits won't stop.

• 18:58Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. And so that kind of unfolding, all the history behind her life and the writing of the books, I think people really responded to the history, which is itself kind of...

• 19:13Dax Shepard?

  Harrowing.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:15Dax Shepard?

  Okay, Murderland.

• 19:17Dax Shepard?

  Very juicy. Our theme that we're exploring is in general, you're kind of attracted to violence or exploring violence. Yeah, that's like a theme that runs through a lot of these. Do you have an explanation for that fascination? Let me just say iTunes, very interested in violence.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was thinking about that Vigo Mortensen movie, you know, a history of violence.

• 19:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  Because I think that phrase is meaningful to me. I guess it has a lot to do with being, you know, a kid in the seventies, which was an incredibly violent era. You know, crime rate was going up, up, up, kind of topped out in the eighties.

• 19:59Dax Shepard?

  The economy was stalled.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  You had the Vietnam War.

• 20:02Dax Shepard?

  Vietnam.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  So it was a really violent time and everybody was kind of tearing their hair out like, you know, why is this happening? You know, are we just terrible people?

• 20:15Speaker 03

  And it became this societal question, why is this happening? And people had all these sort of theories about we're losing our morals or people are not going to church.

• 20:26Dax Shepard?

  People are leaving the church. Yeah, yeah.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  So that's always a kind of perennial favorite. And at the same time, you have all these serial killers. I think for me, looking at the serial killers was just kind of one extreme.

• 20:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and you're looking specifically at the Pacific Northwest, which both makes sense, A, because you're from there. I could see why you'd be interested in it. But the Pacific Northwest does have this eerie stereotype. It's lumber, it's aeronautics, it's Starbucks, it's serial killers.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Is it associated? I didn't know that.

• 21:06Dax Shepard?

  From the region, we have Ted Bundy, the Green Mile killer Gary Ridgway. He killed 49 people.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  Wait, I don't know about him. Oh, my God.

• 21:15Dax Shepard?

  Forty-nine people.

• 21:17Speaker 03

  That's a low end.

• 21:18Dax Shepard?

  That's what he was convicted of. Yeah.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Wow, probably.

• 21:22Speaker 03

  Way more.

• 21:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 21:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:24Dax Shepard?

  Robert Lee Yates, 13 folks, the I-5 killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 21:33Dax Shepard?

  This is the Mount Rushmore of serial killers. Yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  It really is.

• 21:38Dax Shepard?

  So what have been the common explanations?

• 21:40Speaker 03

  People talked about the weather and the lack of light for, you know, much of the year. And also the Joan Didion people going to the West Coast, running out of land, people who are sort of antisocial or sort of they washed out elsewhere. They washed out on the East Coast or Midwest or whatever. So they end up kind of trapped in this place.

• 22:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  This is true of Alaska, too.

• 22:08Dax Shepard?

  Well, I was gonna say that the reason that opinion is appealing to me is Alaska's number one per capita for serial killers. And I've been there and that too is like, everyone there is like, I had to get the fuck out. Like, the anger by which that drove them to Alaska is pretty common.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  It's definitely weather, then.

• 22:25Dax Shepard?

  Or just the spirit of who wants to go live in the middle of nowhere, I think, is curious for a social primate. That's a curious desire. Okay, so those were kind of well-worn explanations. And as you set out to write this book, what did you start discovering? We start the book, weirdly, with a lot of geology.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  You love geology.

• 22:46Dax Shepard?

  I do love geology, so I wasn't bothered by it. But I was like, well, this is an interesting place to start is maps.

• 22:52Speaker 03

  Those explanations that we just talked about seemed like, you know, reasonable things to talk about, but they just never felt like enough. And I'm thinking about this, you know, the, the kind of aha moment of it came when I was, my husband and I were kind of thinking of moving back to the Northwest. And so I was looking at these pieces of property. There was an ad, a real estate ad for a piece of property on Vashon Island, which is just across Puget Sound from Tacoma.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  And I read this ad and it said remediation required for arsenic or something like that. And I was like, what?

• 23:33Dax Shepard?

  On an island with no industry.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  Yes. Bashan is just a kind of farm, you know.

• 23:40Dax Shepard?

  Edenic.

• 23:41Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. Strawberry farms were a big thing on Bashan when I was a kid. So I thought, how the heck did Bashan get arsenic on it? And about, you know, five minutes later of Googling, I see the smelter in Tacoma. And that that is the source of the arsenic on Bashan Island. What's the smelter? The smelter is the Asarco, American Smelting and Refining Company, which was built right in the center of the city of Tacoma. And the smelter was originally a lead smelter and then a copper smelter.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  But for years, like decade after decade, it's just pouring tons of arsenic and lead into the air. And so I said, hmm, that's interesting. I wonder what all that lead did to people. Yeah.

• 24:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 24:37Speaker 03

  And like, again, you know, you Google lead. And what you find out is that lead is associated with aggressive behavior. And kids especially who are exposed to lead show a tendency to become impulsive, irritable, aggressive, and in some cases, violent. Hmm.

• 25:02Dax Shepard?

  It's replacing the calcium that should be there in your brain during development. And you're impairing regions that would be in charge of impulse control and other things. Right? So it's a structural damage in the wake of lots of lead poisoning.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  Right.

• 25:17Dax Shepard?

  Quick question before we get into the nitty gritty of it. When you go into a book like this and you're curious about an alternative explanation, you don't start with an alternative explanation. You are just kind of open to discovering an alternative?

• 25:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. And this in particular is not something that I can. Prove, one of the things that was so intriguing to me about it was, you know, Ted Bundy grows up in Tacoma, Gary Ridgway grows up just to the north of Tacoma. Charles Manson is imprisoned for five years on McNeil Island, just across from Tacoma. And so all three of these guys are kind of in the same place at the same time. And this answers your geology question because that line between the three of them just kind of leapt out to me like, oh, this is fascinating.

• 26:12Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 26:18Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  I love matching pajamas. I'm literally going to be 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.

• 26:53Dax 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.

• 27:03Speaker 01

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

• 27:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay, tell me more.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  It is 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.

• 27:23Dax 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.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  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 Armchair 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.

• 27:51Dax Shepard?

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• 28:56Speaker 05

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• 29:14Dax Shepard?

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

• 29:56Speaker 01

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• 29:57Dax Shepard?

  To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.

• 30:03Dax Shepard?

  We get support from Instagram teen accounts. So we talk a lot on this show about how the world is different now than when we were growing up. And one of the biggest differences is obviously social media. And I think a lot of people wonder, okay, what's actually being done to make it safer for teenagers?

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Which is a fair question.

• 30:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so Instagram has got something called teen accounts and they come with automatic protections built in by default. So anyone between 13 and 17 is automatically placed into this experience. They get age appropriate content settings, contact limits, so that by default, only people they're already connected to can message them. And time management tools, daily time limit reminders, and also sleep mode that mutes notifications from 10:00 PM to 7:00 AM.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Sleep mode is genius.

• 30:48Dax Shepard?

  Right? And here's the thing, for anyone under 16, a parent has to give permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. The guardrails are on and Instagram keeps building new safety features to create age appropriate experiences for teens.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  I am really glad Instagram is helping to give parents peace of mind with teen accounts.

• 31:07Dax Shepard?

  Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.

• 31:22Dax Shepard?

  Are you able to aggregate any public data from Tacoma in general? Are they over indexing as a total population for certain things?

• 31:34Speaker 03

  That's one of the really frustrating things about Tacoma is that Asarco controlled that area so completely and was so central to the economy during the time when it operated that they did not do and did not allow any, you know, wholesale testing of a lot of this stuff. There were some limited testing of kids involving arsenic, but not.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  Lead and they certainly do know now how much lead. I mean, there's a GIS map generated by the Washington State Department of Ecology that will show you how much lead was in Ted Bundy's front yard.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 32:22Speaker 03

  And his backyard. And so you can see how much lead people were getting.

• 32:27Dax Shepard?

  And when and if you've compared that data, say, the lead in Ted Bundy's front and backyard to the primary exposure of lead to kids and everyone in the seventies and eighties was lead gasoline being emitted from cars. What I read today was like 58% of lead was being absorbed from the exhausts of cars. So if, if that was the primary contributor to lead poisoning, how did that level of exhaust compare to the level that was just sitting in their yard? Like if an average person was consuming X amount of lead, how much were these people living that close consuming?

• 33:06Speaker 03

  Well, for a place like Tacoma, it was a double whammy because it was leaded gas, but it was also significant amounts from the smelter. Chemists and scientists can actually identify the molecular component, you know, like in El Paso, another place that I talk about. They actually did studies that show that the lead that was polluting a lot of the city directly came from the smoke stack, the asurco smoke stack that was in El Paso.

• 33:37Dax Shepard?

  They have a fingerprint.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  Yes, they do. And I don't think they did that in Tacoma, but I mean, since they have spent millions of dollars trying to clean up the lead, I think a good portion of that did come from the smelter.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  That's so interesting. Also, I'm sure it's not everyone who's exposed to lead becomes a serial killer, obviously, or becomes that impulsive, but maybe you have some predispositions that that pushes you over the edge.

• 34:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Potentially.

• 34:06Dax Shepard?

  There's a whole theory that overlaps what you're suggesting. There is a lead crime hypothesis, as people will know or not know. From this period, mid eighties till now, we've seen homicides get cut in half. We've seen overall huge reduction in crime. And there is innumerable theories. Freakonomics put forward the abortion explanation, right? That you had a lot less unwanted kids entering the population. That's what you're seeing the result of. A lot of folks will say, well, the interconnectivity of police forces improved. So you saw this with Ted Bundy, right? He's like moving from one place to another. It's just down the road and no one knows the same thing's happening.

• 34:52Dax Shepard?

  One county over, so that's kind of an explanation. And then there is this lead crime hypothesis that we see the outlawing of lead in fuel and in other places and that we're seeing now kind of the response to that. So like, walk me through some of the people that you have outlined in this book and just kind of tell me how you think that fits in or doesn't fit in with any of these theories.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  I don't know that we're ever going to tease that apart in terms of, oh, we can assign this number to the abortion.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's no way to know.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's very difficult, but they have done a number of studies looking at the connection between violent crime and psychopathy and lead exposure. So, so we know there's something going on there.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:42Speaker 03

  I think the question is, how much do you assign to that? And what became a sort of, you know, obsession for me during COVID was sort of looking at where each of these guys grew up and what their lead exposure might have been. And some of them, you can't answer the question, but for the people who lived in Tacoma, it's pretty easy. You know, when I was sort of doing the research, you know, I looked at the smelter in Tacoma, which was owned by Osarco. I mean, they own stuff all over the West, but one of the other big lead and copper smelters they owned was in El Paso, right on the border across from Ciudad Juarez.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  And when I saw that, I thought, oh, there's no serial killer that's from El Paso. Google that, what pops up? It's Richard Ramirez, because he grew up there.

• 36:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  He's not associated with it, because he killed people in Los Angeles. This is the Golden State Killer? Richard Ramirez is the Night Stalker. Oh, the Night Stalker, right, okay. 1986, I think. Got it.

• 36:52Dax Shepard?

  Well, what was Ted Bundy's childhood like?

• 36:55Speaker 03

  Well, it was quite disrupted, because he's born in a foundling home, essentially. His mother gets pregnant outside a wedlock, she's sent off, kind of enshamed, have this baby in a place that's run by nuns, and she has the baby and leaves it Hmm. for two, three months. If you go and look at what psychologists and psychiatrists have to say about that.

• 37:20Dax Shepard?

  Attachment theory, yeah.

• 37:21Speaker 03

  That's a real issue. She goes back to get the baby, takes it home with her to her home in Philadelphia, which is fondly known at the time as the City of Smelters. Whoa. Has incredible lead pollution. And so, he grows up there. His mother remarries. He seems to have been confused about the status of this stepfather, like he thought maybe it was his real father. So, there seems to have been a lot of confusion, a lot of anger about his mom, and you start seeing him acting out at a very young age and doing violent things.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  And that's another thing that all these guys have in common, is they start having these fantasies about women, about murder, about rape, very young.

• 38:16Dax Shepard?

  And did Ted ever say why he was doing it?

• 38:19Speaker 03

  It's one of the really frustrating things, though, about him, is that they talked to him a lot, they got Him to make statements, most of them hypothetical and a kind of if I had done this, I would have done it that way. Right.

• 38:36Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 38:37Speaker 03

  Because he wouldn't admit culpability.

• 38:39Dax Shepard?

  Like OJ's book.

• 38:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, if I had done it or whatever, oh my god.

• 38:43Dax Shepard?

  Jesus.

• 38:44Speaker 03

  I know.

• 38:44Dax Shepard?

  That's so dark.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  But there's so many things we just don't know. We don't even know how many people he killed, when he started killing.

• 38:52Dax Shepard?

  You got the first one you know about is this an eight year old?

• 38:55Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 38:55Dax Shepard?

  That he took out of a house.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  This is a theory. We don't know for sure because she has never been found. He would never admit to it. Although in other cases where we know for a fact that he didn't kill the person, when he was asked about it, he would just say, no, no, I didn't do that. And it turns out he was right about those. In the case of Anne Marie Burr in Tacoma, who he may have killed when he was 14, he said stuff like, oh, I never went to that part of Tacoma, which is not true because his uncle lived around the corner. He said, I was too young to have done that. You know, the more somebody kind of embroiders on their

• 39:40Speaker 03

  denial, the more it kind of sounds like they're lying. And it isn't consistent with the other way. Right.

• 39:46Dax Shepard?

  What do you think the ethics are of true crime? And why are women predominantly the creators and the audience of true crime?

• 39:55Speaker 03

  This is a fascinating phenomenon. I think, you know, Anne Rule had a lot to do with this because her relationship to true crime, I mean, she was making a living at it as a single mom, writing for detective magazines. But I think she also experienced it as a way of like, the more I know about this, the safer I can be almost, and the safer my daughter will be if we know who these people are, if we understand where they came from and how they do what they do, then it becomes a kind of protective. Yeah, it's like having the knowledge.

• 40:39Speaker 03

  Right. That's now why so many women are drawn to it. But of course, the ethics are just all over the place. The desire to sensationalize this stuff is almost overwhelming.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  It's undeniable that violence is a human health issue. You know, I mean, where's it come from? You know, why do so many men commit violent crimes? So I think it's legitimate to engage in conversations about it, to write books about it, to examine the history of it. And I also think it's useful to kind of pull it out of the standard treatment where you kind of have a silo. You know, you've got a book about Ted Bundy and a book about the Night Stalker and a book about Jack the Ripper or something, but you're not looking at the whole.

• 41:36Dax Shepard?

  There's no synthesis of it.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  That's right. And so I think historically, it's useful to look at.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very Malcolm Gladwell to kind of be like, this is what was going on for all these people. Oh, wow, there is a through line.

• 41:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, my explanation has always been kind of intuitively just, we are all afraid of the thing that we have the highest probability of dying from. Although ironically, we don't, because we don't care about dying and stuff. But the flashy stuff that we have no control over, we tend to fixate on. And there was this moment going around last year where women would ask men when the last time they talked about the Roman Empire was. I don't know if you saw this.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  How often do you think about it?

• 42:19Dax Shepard?

  Think about it, talk about it. And it really did lead me down the path of like, well, that isn't, I recognize the reality of that. And then go further, World War II in color. What husband isn't watching World War II in color? And the wife is like, what the fuck is the obsession with World War II? But it occurred to me, that's how we die. We die in war. We have been dying in war at the level of tens of millions and we're not even one generation out of it. My father was in Vietnam, you know, people went Desert Storm. Like, that's how young men are gonna die. So guess what? We're pretty interested in war. And we consume it over and over again, because that was the high likelihood of how we will die accidentally. And so it just kind of makes sense that women have found their way to being murdered by men.

• 43:04Dax Shepard?

  Or abused or hurt. And men are focusing on getting killed in a war.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  And there was that other sort of meme thing that happened about bears, you know, women.

• 43:15Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right. Would you rather be trapped?

• 43:18Speaker 03

  If you're hiking alone in the wilderness, who would you rather encounter? A bear or a man?

• 43:25Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was a big thing.

• 43:27Dax Shepard?

  And women pretty, because there's only said bear?

• 43:30Speaker 02

  A lot of people said bear.

• 43:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:31Dax Shepard?

  Guys, I don't know if that's the right decision. If we just look at statistically, the kill rate of bears versus random.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  I know.

• 43:39Dax Shepard?

  I think the message is important.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can imagine walking through the woods and then seeing a random man. That is so terrifying. I don't know if it's more or less a bear, but that's a real fear.

• 43:50Speaker 03

  My husband and I once did a sort of six, seven month stint at this place above the Rogue River. It was like a writer's retreat thing that didn't, you know, have electricity or whatever. And it was really remote and we did see bears and mountain lions, which was very exciting. But the scariest thing that happened when we were out there was when this guy came hiking out there and he had a rifle with him, which he said was for bears.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 44:19Speaker 03

  But you just don't really know.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Ooh.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:24Dax Shepard?

  Let's talk about missing white woman syndrome.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  That just came up on a show I was watching, You, the show You.

• 44:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  About a serial killer, basically.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a huge thing where white women are obsessed with other white women going missing or abducted or raped or murdered or whatever, when in fact, most violent crime is being experienced by women of color.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  It doesn't get all the headlines.

• 44:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Compton had a serial killer that was worse than most of these other ones that got headlines. But he was killing black prostitutes and no one cared. Some astronomical number of them and no one even put together that this was happening.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  Right, that grim sleeper killer in LA was killing women, most of whom were black, most of whom were prostitutes for decades. And nobody was really paying attention. And recently, this guy made a documentary about that and actually went to the community and talked to people and they all just said, nobody cared. Nobody's even been here to ask us these questions. Women who had been involved, women who had been attacked by this guy said, you're the first person who came and talked. To us about it. So it's a huge.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  And even on the podcast and the true crime stories, it's like who you're choosing to put at the center of the story. Often it's a white woman because yeah, that gets more clicks.

• 45:51Dax Shepard?

  What is genetic science? How is it shining a light on some of these cold cases?

• 45:57Speaker 03

  Oh, well, they've of course caught the Golden State Killer who you mentioned. That was the big one, but I think there have been a couple others whereby they can go back and they can find, even if they don't know who the person is, they can, using DNA from the case, they can locate a relative of some kind and, and kind of move forward until they can pinpoint the, the exact person. But I also think that all the stuff that we now know about neurology and brain development, that should also be playing a part in how we sort of think about violent crime.

• 46:39Speaker 03

  Cause we know now, I mean, the whole football brain injury thing is huge. Because some of these guys had significant brain injury from being beaten or being in an accident or something. And so that I think is another thing that should be looked into.

• 46:57Dax Shepard?

  Interestingly with that, we just had a CT expert on. Weirdly, the mechanism becomes the same as lead, which is it is an area of the brain that is now obstructing communication with other parts of the brain. And the result of that is yeah, a lot of unpredictable.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Erratic.

• 47:12Dax Shepard?

  Erratic, often violent behavior. Did you consider in this, because another thing that I don't hear pushed forward a lot in all these different explanations, what seems quite likely to me is the contagion effect of these things. So it's like, yeah, it had this enormous peak and serial killers seem to beget other serial killers in the same way that reporting on suicides leads to outbreaks of suicides. That psychosomatic illnesses are contagious. When people see this in press and in the media, other people do it. How much do you think was it just a self? Fueling phenomena. I would say now it's been replaced with school shooters. We can easily identify these patterns of when they're heavily reported.

• 47:57Dax Shepard?

  All of a sudden, we have another outbreak of them.

• 47:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, although I wonder about that because the serial killers, the vast majority of them are motivated by the sexual compulsion. They're getting off on what they're doing. Whereas the mass shooters, that seems to be a slightly different. Yeah. But I mean, they're both obsessed with getting credit. Of course, they do and the publicity of it.

• 48:24Dax Shepard?

  Notoriety.

• 48:25Speaker 03

  The mass murderers seem more motivated by that celebrity aspect. Their manifestos, their, yeah. And obsession with guns and so forth, but I think it's a different kink.

• 48:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 48:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I can see that. Whereas the serial killers, the wiring got crossed in some devastating way that left them with this sexual compulsion to do the same thing over and over again and achieve gratification through that. And that seems really different.

• 49:00Dax Shepard?

  Now, in all of this research and formulating this theory, did you have any vision forward? Do you have any, I mean?

• 49:07Speaker 03

  Prescription?

• 49:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, any prescriptions?

• 49:10Speaker 03

  No, and I think what I wasn't doing was writing a kind of academic argument or a thesis about this because I was more interested in a subjective approach, one that kind of captured the era and the feeling of it and the look of it and my sort of memories of it. Because that felt like a kind of drama that people could maybe relate to. There have been great works of academic histories of lead and the corruption that allowed lead to become such a huge factor in this country.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  So those are out there, you know, they've been done. I think I was after something a little less programmatic and more expressive or evocative of the era.

• 50:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it feels like you felt like these stories were missing context.

• 50:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 50:11Dax Shepard?

  And that you wanted to provide this context. And then even furthermore, these things which are.

• 50:18Dax Shepard?

  Incredibly low percentage things. These are statistically negligible, really. One in 13 million is the current estimate of serial killers, you know? But that in some ways, these larger societal problems do feed into that downriver. That this is yet one of the many downriver effects of this kind of corruption and greed.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:39Dax Shepard?

  And lack of accountability.

• 50:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  When you were researching this book, did it make you more, are you more paranoid now, post-writing this?

• 50:48Speaker 03

  No, I don't think so, because I think it was a factor of that time. I mean, I'm more paranoid probably about like keeping the door locked.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:59Speaker 03

  And the windows locked. I mean, that serial killer at the end, Israel Keyes, who I kind of close with him. And he would always say, yeah, why don't people lock their windows?

• 51:09Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 51:12Speaker 03

  So I'm more aware of things like that, maybe. But I wouldn't call that paranoid.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, that seems just sensible.

• 51:17Dax Shepard?

  Tell him why, laziness.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  No, yeah.

• 51:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, just laziness.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 51:22Dax Shepard?

  Oh, well, Caroline, such a fascinating topic and such an interesting look at it and way to evaluate it. It's such a pleasure meeting you. Murder Land: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, Seattle, Washington. Yeah, I mean, minimally, you have to be a little more optimistic because the trajectory has been pretty consistent. We are getting better at this somehow, yes.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  Yes, we are. And crime is down, actually.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  We'll see what AI does.

• 51:46Dax Shepard?

  There's something to be learned on that little spike during COVID. That could be a telling when we fully understand what happened there. Oh, that's exactly, we have all these corollaries, but these corollaries now make this a little more compelling.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:58Dax Shepard?

  Well, thank you so much. I wish you tons of luck with the book.

• 52:01Speaker 03

  Thanks a lot.

• 52:11Dax 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.

• 52:54Dax Shepard?

  Explore the new Peloton Tread Flex at onepeloton.com. 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?

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Yes, and that question applies to so much more than the holidays. I think a lot of us carry these invisible rules about how we're supposed to spend the holidays, 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.

• 53:38Dax 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.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  I just love therapy. I've been avoiding it recently, or not avoiding it, but I was like, oh, I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy. I haven't canceled, canceled, canceled, but then I-

• 54:05Dax Shepard?

  You start feeling it.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  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.

• 54:13Dax Shepard?

  BetterHelp is now in network with more than 125 health plans with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members. And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 20% off your first month. Sign up and get 20% off at betterhelp.com/dax. That's betterhelp, H E L P, dot com slash DAX. 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

• 54:57Dax Shepard?

  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, 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.

• 55:42Dax Shepard?

  We are supported by Walden University. You know that feeling when you've been thinking about making a move, going after the degree, the promotion, the thing you keep telling yourself you'll get to someday? Walden University is built for that moment. For over 50 years, Walden has helped working professionals get the W, the knowledge, the skills, and the confidence to create real change in their careers and communities. Their programs are designed around your life, not the other way around. With Tempo Learning, available in select programs, there are no rigid schedules or set weekly deadlines. You move at your own pace. And Walden's faculty aren't just academics. They're practitioners who bring real world experience into everything they teach.

• 56:25Dax Shepard?

  From your first class to career coaching and beyond, Walden is your partner the whole way. Take the first step and learn at a pace that works for you. Visit walden.edu. Walden University. Set a course for change. Certified to operate by CHEV.

• 56:45Speaker 06

  Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at.

• 56:53Dax Shepard?

  Hello.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 56:54Dax Shepard?

  Welcome back to the Big Apple. It's a scorcher today.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  It's hot out.

• 56:58Dax Shepard?

  The only thing I was looking forward to about leaving Nashville, where the day I left, or the day before I left, it was like 95. They do the real feel, kinda like they would do in Michigan with the wind chill, or what it really feels like.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 57:12Dax Shepard?

  And it was, it was 95, but it felt like 100. And it did.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:16Dax Shepard?

  So it's like, oh, that won't be bad.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Sticky.

• 57:18Dax Shepard?

  Go up to New York, get a little fresh air.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:21Dax Shepard?

  It's 95 today.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Today is hot, yeah. Yesterday, though, was, in my opinion.

• 57:27Dax Shepard?

  Tolerable.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 57:28Dax Shepard?

  It was hot yesterday, too.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  It was.

• 57:30Dax Shepard?

  I do think real feel.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Real feel.

• 57:32Dax Shepard?

  When you're surrounded by buildings.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:35Dax Shepard?

  It feels hotter. There's no breeze.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  It's true, but when I, so when I left the hotel, when I left the airport, I had a sweatshirt on. And I got to the hotel, I had to drop my bags, my room wasn't ready. And so then I was walking with my sweatshirt on for a while, and I was like, I'm fine in my sweatshirt.

• 57:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but you.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  I know.

• 57:58Dax Shepard?

  You really run cool.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Let's talk about this. Okay, so I went home to see my parents and it was, it was so hot there.

• 58:08Dax Shepard?

  Probably even hotter than Nashville, right? It's a little bit further south.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  It felt similar, but yeah, it was, it was so hot. And, but as we know.

• 58:17Dax Shepard?

  We looked up the humidity.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  We did.

• 58:19Dax Shepard?

  It was 1% higher.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:21Dax Shepard?

  It's a little bit more humid and it was 1%.

• 58:23Speaker 01

  It's pretty much the same, but there's something a tiny bit different, and I was right. But yeah, so I went, I got to my parents' house and I was like, oh, I'm gonna walk to the grocery store. And my parents were like, it's too hot. And I said, it's fine. It's close. It's very close.

• 58:43Dax Shepard?

  How far did they live from the grocery store?

• 58:46Speaker 01

  Very close. Like, let's see.

• 58:47Dax Shepard?

  Could you put it in miles or kilometers?

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Less than a mile.

• 58:51Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  Definitely less than a mile. To me, no brainer.

• 58:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  And then, you know, they're like, it's, it's too hot. And I was like, it's, it's fine. It's gonna be fine. And then it turned into this crazy, like, you can't. And I was like.

• 59:08Dax Shepard?

  They were like, worried you were gonna die?

• 59:09Speaker 01

  Yes. They made, they.

• 59:11Dax Shepard?

  Did they load you up with water and stuff?

• 59:12Speaker 01

  No, they were like, you can't go. Like, I'll drive you. And I was like, well, no, you don't, don't drive me. And then I was like, well, I'll just drive if you're that worried. And they're like, well, you can't drive because this car is here. And, and, and then my aunt was coming over and it's like, she won't be able to get in. And I was like, well, I'll take mom's car. And like, you can't. She, she just bought it. You don't know how to drive that car. And I was like, oh, I was there for five minutes. And I was like.

• 59:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  I gotta go.

• 59:37Dax Shepard?

  I'm shocked you even agreed to drive a car, which was shot down, but.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  I, I know. I already was being like, I don't want to do this. It's fine. I'll just drive.

• 59:45Dax Shepard?

  You were bending over backwards.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  I was. Thank you for acknowledging that. And, but then ultimately I was like, I'm walking.

• 59:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  And then I'm a big girl.

• 59:55Dax Shepard?

  I'm a biggest girl in this house.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  I did. I did. I said, I'm 37.

• 59:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  I live in LA. I'm okay.

• 1:00:02Dax Shepard?

  Weeks away from 38.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Well, just don't say that.

• 1:00:05Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  Okay. Um, so I left. I walked. It was very hot.

• 1:00:13Dax Shepard?

  At any point, did you think they were right?

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  Okay. No, but I was starting to feel like, I think I'm getting like, in my head about it.

• 1:00:20Dax Shepard?

  A little anxiety, panic attack feeling.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  And then I made a whole story in my head where I was like, this is what they do. They, everything's so scary.

• 1:00:32Dax Shepard?

  They planted the fear.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Yes, they planted the fear. And now I'm like, feeling fearful about a thing I have zero fear about.

• 1:00:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  And this is my whole life.

• 1:00:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  And look what I've overcome.

• 1:00:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So then you felt good. You're like, I've overcome this.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I also felt like righteous.

• 1:00:50Dax Shepard?

  Being in the South really has forced me to think about temperatures way more than I normally would. There's so many weird, inconsistent things about it. One is.

• 1:01:02Dax Shepard?

  When you walk inside of a house down there.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:06Dax Shepard?

  The air conditioning is only set at like, I don't 78 or 77 or something in the house.

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Dax Shepard?

  Which feels ice cold, but in LA.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  You would never.

• 1:01:18Dax Shepard?

  You need it at 72.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, you would never have it on 78.

• 1:01:21Dax Shepard?

  Why is, why does it feel complete? It feels colder in the house in Nashville. Cause relative to outside, but then you do the myth, the temperature is not higher. Like when we get into late August, September, October in LA, it'll be 98, 100.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:37Dax Shepard?

  It won't feel as hot as 93.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  Real feel.

• 1:01:40Dax Shepard?

  Real feels different.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Different.

• 1:01:42Dax Shepard?

  And then I still don't understand why the gap in the AC has to be so much more dramatic out west. It doesn't make any sense.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  I think it's, well, I guess I don't know, but I think like we always set in the summer to 78 and in the winter to 68. That's like what you're supposed to do eco-friendly wise, but also money wise.

• 1:02:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  So from, for my parents, it's always about money and spending. So.

• 1:02:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  Is it, it's probably more, it probably requires more energy.

• 1:02:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, of course.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  To cool.

• 1:02:13Dax Shepard?

  More.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  It when it's hotter outside.

• 1:02:16Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  So that's why people are doing, you're just saying it feels different.

• 1:02:21Dax Shepard?

  You don't feel warm in the house. Like, were you feeling warm in your parents' house at 78?

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  No, but I don't feel warm at 78.

• 1:02:30Dax Shepard?

  But if you walked into my house in LA in September and it were 78, you would go, why don't you guys have the air on?

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 1:02:39Dax Shepard?

  I'm telling you, cause our bedroom will be 78 and I can't go to sleep.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:02:42Dax Shepard?

  In LA in the, in the summer or when it's hot. We're not really hot in the summer, we're hot in the fall. It's very confusing. It's, I can't believe that something like temperature and humidity could be that relative.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is weird. I mean, humidity changes the whole game. That's the.

• 1:02:57Dax Shepard?

  Changes, yes. It throws the rules out.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:01Dax Shepard?

  It did remind me too, like, um, my whole childhood in, in Michigan, I never once was in a house with AC. Maybe my dad's, when I go to my dad's on the weekend, he would live in a condo and he would have air conditioning, but never in my house growing up.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:03:15Dax Shepard?

  No, we never had air conditioning. My grandparents, Papa Bob and Grandma, no, no AC. Every window had a box fan in it.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:23Dax Shepard?

  It was noisy as hell.

• 1:03:26Dax Shepard?

  That made it kinda tolerable.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  It was, is it, it gets hot there?

• 1:03:30Dax Shepard?

  Oh my god, yeah.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Then why didn't they have it?

• 1:03:32Dax Shepard?

  It was too expensive.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:03:35Dax Shepard?

  It wasn't, most of the year, like, I think everyone was just like, yeah, you just gotta get through July and August.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Well, that's, that's how California is now, because it used-

• 1:03:44Dax Shepard?

  You gotta get through September and October.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  Exactly, and it, it didn't used to be like that, so most apartments and stuff, they don't have AC.

• 1:03:52Dax Shepard?

  You're not gonna put in-

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  You have the box.

• 1:03:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and you're not gonna put in AC for something that you only need for 20 days a year.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:58Dax Shepard?

  Like, in Santa Monica, when I lived there, almost none of, none of those apartments had AC.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03Dax Shepard?

  And you only needed it, like, nine days a year in Santa Monica.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  And it's changed, like, it's gotten a lot hotter in LA over the past 10 years. So, like, now, I think these apartments do need AC, but they don't have it.

• 1:04:20Dax Shepard?

  I wonder, I wanna look that up.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:04:22Dax Shepard?

  Cause I do remember, in Santa Monica, there were, there was always a few brutal weeks that Bree and I would be like, in there smoking cigarettes, again with a box fan in the-

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:35Dax Shepard?

  Window and one out the back, trying to get a little airflow.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, has LA gotten hotter? But you don't like the way that's worded?

• 1:04:45Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no, that's fine. I'll sign off on that search. From 1990 to now.

• 1:04:50Speaker 07

  AI overview says yes.

• 1:04:52Dax Shepard?

  By how much?

• 1:04:54Speaker 07

  Approximately 2.5 degrees in the last 50 years.

• 1:04:59Dax Shepard?

  50 years?

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Hmm. Okay.

• 1:05:03Dax Shepard?

  Uh, I don't know, and you cut that into a third.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  I don't know, I just know when I lived with Anthony-

• 1:05:09Dax Shepard?

  You also, though, live further east.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  I live further east, but I live-

• 1:05:13Dax Shepard?

  You were at Fairfax.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, you think that's much cooler?

• 1:05:17Dax Shepard?

  It's, it's, um, seven miles closer to the ocean.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  That's true, but it wasn't-

• 1:05:22Dax Shepard?

  I'll tell you, Santa Monica's a full 20 degrees cooler.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  Santa Monica, yeah, even, that's fine, but it-

• 1:05:27Dax Shepard?

  That's fine, I can accept.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  I, I understand that, uh, Santa Monica, but the Grove was hot?

• 1:05:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  But not as hot.

• 1:05:35Dax Shepard?

  That's a fun thing in LA. So, our house in LA is a good 10, 15 degrees warmer than Santa Monica. But then I drive one mile on the 101, I go over the hill into the valley and then it's another 10.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, the valley is so hot.

• 1:05:52Dax Shepard?

  It's like 30 degrees hotter.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:54Dax Shepard?

  Within two miles.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  So fun.

• 1:05:57Dax Shepard?

  Mountains.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Mountains, valleys.

• 1:06:00Dax Shepard?

  Seabreeze.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Um, equa- aqua da-

• 1:06:04Dax Shepard?

  Did you ever use Seabreeze?

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  No, tell me about it.

• 1:06:07Dax Shepard?

  I think that was like an astringent for the face for acne.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  Seabreeze?

• 1:06:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the stuff that they were selling us in the 80s was-

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  That wasn't around when I-

• 1:06:16Dax Shepard?

  It was not good for your skin. It was just like, put turpentine on your face.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  Seabreeze face cream I'm gonna put?

• 1:06:22Dax Shepard?

  No, it was like a-

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Face cleanser?

• 1:06:23Dax Shepard?

  Cleanser.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Seabreeze astringent, sensitive skin.

• 1:06:28Dax Shepard?

  Is it still?

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  It's still.

• 1:06:30Dax Shepard?

  Okay, then I take all that back. I don't want to be sued. It's a great, great product. When I used it, it made my skin a little dry.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you do have to be careful, obviously, with astringence.

• 1:06:40Dax Shepard?

  They used to think you should just dry your face out in the 80s.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I go to corrective skincare.

• 1:06:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  And, um-

• 1:06:47Dax Shepard?

  One of your many personal sponsors.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  I actually, so I kind of freaked out because I have a little breakout now. Now everyone's gonna be staring and that's fine, but I was like-

• 1:06:56Dax Shepard?

  Can I tell you something right now? You do not have a breakout?

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  I do. And I do.

• 1:07:00Dax Shepard?

  I worry about your sanity if you think you're having a breakout right now because I'm staring at your face and so is Rob.

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  Listen, I have makeup on. I have makeup on.

• 1:07:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  Anyway, I, um, I was like, oh, fuck, like, maybe she doesn't work anymore.

• 1:07:13Dax Shepard?

  Decided she had retired while you're gone?

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  I got so worried. I was like, I think maybe she's like, lost her touch or something. And then I was looking at my calendar and I was like, oh, oh my God, I am about to start my period. It really snuck up on me.

• 1:07:27Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  I didn't know. And, and that is standard. I'm definitely gonna have, regardless of corrective skincare, a, a, a little breakout.

• 1:07:38Dax Shepard?

  You could bathe in Seabreeze, but every 28 days you're gonna-

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  I'm getting something. I'm getting something. But she does, for my skin anyway, she likes it to be dry.

• 1:07:51Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  You know, I use a cleanser. By the way, people who don't live in LA and are like, "I want some of these things," or "I need help," I think you can buy some of these products on her website.

• 1:08:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  So yeah, so I use a cleanser that makes my skin pretty dry. And it's good for my skin. And then I use ice on it.

• 1:08:16Dax Shepard?

  Did you ever do Accutane?

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  I've never done it.

• 1:08:18Dax Shepard?

  You never did?

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  I was scared of it.

• 1:08:20Dax Shepard?

  You were scared of it?

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  I did everything else. So I took the antibiotics.

• 1:08:25Dax Shepard?

  Because it can, what, it can have kidney outcomes or?

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Also like some mental stuff.

• 1:08:31Dax Shepard?

  Interesting.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, like some depression.

• 1:08:34Dax Shepard?

  Again, we're not doctors. We don't know. We love Seabreeze. We love Accutane.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  This is all alleged.

• 1:08:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  This is alleged. Yeah, some like depression, some potential suicide allegedly.

• 1:08:46Dax Shepard?

  There'll be a very easy correlation, not causation, because think about why you're having the acne. You're having more hormones.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:53Dax Shepard?

  You're at an age where you're starting to have more of those.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  Yep, it could be that. But also, it's really, it's like intense, I think. It's kind of like a carpet bomb.

• 1:09:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I have several friends that did it. But I have several friends that like had really bad acne and then they never did.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. You can't like get pregnant.

• 1:09:13Dax Shepard?

  You're not supposed to drink on it?

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  Probably. And then you can't get pregnant like for a while.

• 1:09:18Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  Which always is a little when you hear that. It's like.

• 1:09:22Dax Shepard?

  If you have it in your teenage years, maybe don't get pregnant as well.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, but people have acne like me when they're adults.

• 1:09:29Dax Shepard?

  Would you call what you have acne at this point?

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  Doesn't have any.

• 1:09:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:37Dax Shepard?

  The floors. You could get down on the floor.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  Oh, boy. Yes, I would. I say I think I have it under control.

• 1:09:45Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  But yes, at any moment, I could slip.

• 1:09:50Dax Shepard?

  If someone said, "Does your friend Monica have acne?" I go, "No."

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  That's nice.

• 1:09:55Dax Shepard?

  I would. I would never, ever describe. And the many things I could list about you, acne would never be on that list.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:10:01Dax Shepard?

  Ever.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  Well, that's nice, but you'd be lying to them.

• 1:10:06Dax Shepard?

  Would you, Rob, ever say that Monica has acne?

• 1:10:10Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  Oh, that's, that's very nice. But also, what's he, what are you guys gonna say right now? Like, that would be, if I did-

• 1:10:17Dax Shepard?

  I would just not bring it up.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  Well-

• 1:10:19Dax Shepard?

  You got to understand, like, I, when, when I just don't bring it up-

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you asked Rob, you put him on the spot.

• 1:10:25Dax Shepard?

  That was compromising, for sure.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:27Dax Shepard?

  That wasn't fair.

• 1:10:28Speaker 07

  But I said not bad skin.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:30Dax Shepard?

  I also ask a lot, yes, I put him on the spot.

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:35Dax Shepard?

  B, that was A.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:38Dax Shepard?

  B, I only ask questions that I'm certain are gonna be, that it's not gonna be hard for him.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:10:45Dax Shepard?

  I know he would never describe you as having acne. I just know it.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Well, that's-

• 1:10:48Dax Shepard?

  We've talked about it a bunch of times while you're running around.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  Oh, you're my back. Okay, great. Um-

• 1:10:52Dax Shepard?

  Like, we'll be having lunch sometimes, I'll go, "You think, uh, Monica's got acne?" I'll be like, "Monica, Monica?" "Yeah, Monica." "Our Monica." "Yes." "No, why would you ask that?" That's what he, that's what he says when I ask him that.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  He says, "Why, why would you ask that?"

• 1:11:08Dax Shepard?

  "Why would you ask that?" Of course she doesn't.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:11:10Dax Shepard?

  When we're having lunch.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  And then he's like, "Well, what do you think?"

• 1:11:14Dax Shepard?

  "No, of course not. But I heard her say she had acne. I was like, bitch, look in the mirror. You ain't got acne."

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  "What should we order?"

• 1:11:21Dax Shepard?

  And then he goes, "You shouldn't call her, bitch." And I go, "I say, I only say bitch affectionately. I never use it pejoratively." And then, we stopped talking about it.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  And he says, "I don't know, I don't know if she'd like that."

• 1:11:30Dax Shepard?

  Then we're in the weeds.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, obviously. Listen, it's not, this is, it's not crazy. Like, I do, I go to a place that is acne-centric.

• 1:11:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  And it is why it's under control for the most part.

• 1:11:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  I also had acne for so long. It's not like, this isn't like I was a teenager with acne. Like, I am, I have-

• 1:11:54Dax Shepard?

  I am an acne.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  -acne skin.

• 1:12:00Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:12:07Speaker 08

  Confidence, it's listening to your gut. It's moving forward even when the path ahead is unclear. For nearly 160 years, Pacific Life has helped people keep their promises, building confidence for generations. Whether you're confident in your financial future or just beginning to envision it, we're here to help. Ask a financial professional how. Pacific Life, the power of a promise. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska. And in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 1:12:43Dax Shepard?

  I am an acne.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  No one can tell me I'm not an acne.

• 1:12:46Dax Shepard?

  I'm Monica and I'm an acne.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Oh, acne, what a horrible name for it, too.

• 1:12:50Dax Shepard?

  It's not bad.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  I think it's bad.

• 1:12:53Dax Shepard?

  I'll tell you what's bad. I was not gonna tell this story.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:12:58Dax Shepard?

  I'm reading the Mark Twain book, as I've said a million times. I happen to be in a section for the last couple of weeks where almost every night I'm hearing about is carbuncles.

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  Okay, teach me.

• 1:13:10Dax Shepard?

  He's got these carbuncles. He's on tour in Europe and he's got carbuncles like on his thighs and they're these big cysts, boils, cysts. And just the name carbuncles, it's such a rough fucking name. Like shingles.

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, shingles, yes, but carbuncles.

• 1:13:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my carbuncle hurt. You're like, oh.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  But it sounds kind of whimsical, too.

• 1:13:31Dax Shepard?

  I do like that it has car in it and buncles are fun.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Buncles fun.

• 1:13:34Dax Shepard?

  But you don't, I just, this is crazy. So I've been kind of obsessing for a couple of weeks about carbuncles.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:42Dax Shepard?

  Just because I keep hearing it all night long as I'm falling asleep. Carbuncle, carbuncle. So I take a bike ride five days ago. We have a whole night. We go out to Nashville and then we go see Superman.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  Oh, fun.

• 1:13:55Dax Shepard?

  Great movie. Our boyfriend's so good in it.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 1:13:58Dax Shepard?

  Nicholas Holt. It's really funny, by the way, when like Lincoln starts liking somebody a lot and like she has no interest in our job, but then.

• 1:14:08Dax Shepard?

  She of course is loving Lex Luthor.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Dax Shepard?

  And I go, I go like Nicholas Holt's so good in this. And she goes, you know him? And I go, yeah, honey, I've interviewed him a couple of times. You have? Yeah, we're, we're friends. We text each other. You are like, it's only in those moments.

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  You text him.

• 1:14:24Dax Shepard?

  I text him. It's pretty one direction.

• 1:14:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:27Dax Shepard?

  But anyways, we see that and then we go and, and I am feeling all night likes. I almost felt like my boxers were pinching my thigh or something, right?

• 1:14:36Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:14:36Dax Shepard?

  I get home, I pull down my pants and I have fucking like a marachino cherry hanging off my.

• 1:14:44Speaker 02

  Hanging?

• 1:14:45Dax Shepard?

  Inner thigh. It's so swollen. It's irritated.

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  Were you worried it was a tick gone bad?

• 1:14:51Dax Shepard?

  No, no. I immediately went, I have cancer.

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:14:54Dax Shepard?

  Of course. This is like, it's now coming out of the skin. I have cancer. Of course I have cancer because this house is too nice. I mean, literally, I was so quick to think, of course the shoe's dropping. I have cancer. I'm in a panic in the, in the bathroom by myself. And then I go, man, I think AI is really good at identifying, you know, radiology charts and stuff. I take a photo of it.

• 1:15:16Speaker 02

  Great.

• 1:15:17Dax Shepard?

  I upload it.

• 1:15:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:15:19Dax Shepard?

  And I, I did, this is a little dicey. I did say, is this a boil?

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:15:25Dax Shepard?

  So you started with, I was hoping, I could have potentially led the witness.

• 1:15:28Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:15:29Dax Shepard?

  But it was like, yes, this looks, this is definitely a boil. And I'm like, oh my God, I have a boil.

• 1:15:34Speaker 02

  A boil is a bad word.

• 1:15:36Dax Shepard?

  It's terrible. I don't want a boil.

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  I do prefer acne to boil.

• 1:15:40Dax Shepard?

  I'm like, oh my God, I have a boil. How did I get a boil?

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  What made you even think it was a boil? Why wouldn't you just say like?

• 1:15:46Dax Shepard?

  I was just like my, my best, like my, my Hail Mary pass was that this was a boil. And it was, right? But in reading about this boil, now it gives me this long thing. It's a four uncle.

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:16:01Dax Shepard?

  If you get multiple, they become carb uncles. I was like.

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:16:07Dax Shepard?

  This is impossible. I've been obsessing about carbuncles and now I have, I'm en route to a carbuncle.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  I know you don't wanna believe in the sim, but like, come on.

• 1:16:17Dax Shepard?

  I know. If the sim was fairer to everyone, I'd believe in it, but I just can't get on.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  But just cuz, okay, this is in, like, okay.

• 1:16:24Dax Shepard?

  I think, oh, I think we'll get sidetracked on that. But, um, so, and then, and then I really enjoy this interaction with AI. It says, if there's any more information, you know, and I say like, okay, well, I took a long bike ride this morning, blah, blah. And then it means like, that makes a lot of sense. People who cycle get them often because you're wearing extra tight clothes.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:16:46Dax Shepard?

  And what a boil really is, is generally staph infection.

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:16:51Dax Shepard?

  And I'm like, oh my god, now I have a fucking staph infection. I'm not pumped about that either.

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  That's not good, yeah.

• 1:16:57Dax Shepard?

  It tells me to do hot compresses four times a day and it'll probably clear up on its own.

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:17:02Dax Shepard?

  But I'm not happy with that because we have to go to New York in 36 hours.

• 1:17:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And staph infection can turn into shingles.

• 1:17:09Dax Shepard?

  Yes, I did get one round of the vax. Hopefully that would have protected me. Anyways, um, I, I find a doctor that'll take me in Nashville.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  Great.

• 1:17:19Dax Shepard?

  Kristen's already gone with Lincoln at a vocal lesson. The Richardson's are leaving Delta. I don't want her to be home. So I have this like mad dash race to this doctor. I get there. I love the nurse. She's so fun. And she, I think I'm going there to lance it. They go, yeah, come in, we'll lance it.

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:17:41Dax Shepard?

  And then we'll give you a, an antibiotic. And she's like, ah, I don't think that needs to be lanced.

• 1:17:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:17:49Dax Shepard?

  And I'm like, oh man, I really wanted you to lance it. And she goes, I really wanted to lance it. I was excited for you to come in and I'm gonna lance it and all that's good. She goes, but I don't, I'm not even sure it's a boil. It looks more like just a big blood blister.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:18:06Dax Shepard?

  But you're leaving tomorrow.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  Blood blister, also not a good word.

• 1:18:11Dax Shepard?

  All preferred to staph, carbuncle, fernuncle, and boil. So I'm disappointed. So I'm so anti-compress, hot compress. Kristen's always begging me to do hot compresses on stuff. I'm like, what the fuck does that do? Get in bed that night. I do a hot compress for 15 minutes.

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  Felt so nice.

• 1:18:33Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  Oh, it hurt. Oh, it burst.

• 1:18:36Dax Shepard?

  It just starts opening.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:18:38Dax Shepard?

  Yes. I took pictures along the way, many pictures. And then it just, it completely like drained. So I was like, god damn, this hot compress thing really worked. So that night I actually went to bed feeling pretty good because I, it was drained, antibacterial spray, Neosporin on top, huge bandage, woke up the next morning, took it off, loved what was happening on the bandage, flat as a pancake.

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  Great.

• 1:19:04Dax Shepard?

  Now I'm down to a small Band-Aid. Everything's delicious.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  Great. Don't say delicious.

• 1:19:10Dax Shepard?

  It looks pretty delicious.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  This is not the time to say delicious.

• 1:19:13Dax Shepard?

  You're not in a position to say.

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  Okay, fine.

• 1:19:17Dax Shepard?

  Let me ask you this. Are Marachino cherries delicious? Because that's what the first thing.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  They're not for me.

• 1:19:21Dax Shepard?

  They're not for you.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Only armed cherries.

• 1:19:24Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Cherries. I had a cherry.

• 1:19:26Speaker 01

  Okay, so what, so you got the small Band-Aid, that's it? But then you also have a wart? What's happening?

• 1:19:32Dax Shepard?

  I don't know what's happening.

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  Is it a wart?

• 1:19:35Dax Shepard?

  That's a side thing.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  I know, there's another thing.

• 1:19:37Dax Shepard?

  I don't want to talk about my wart. I was happy to talk about it.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:19:41Dax Shepard?

  You know me, I like talking about things that have already resolved themselves.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  It's so confusing.

• 1:19:46Dax Shepard?

  I know, I have a weird.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  You just.

• 1:19:49Dax Shepard?

  Pattern of honesty.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  You just talked.

• 1:19:51Dax Shepard?

  I'll be honest about anything once it's over. Like if I've shit my pants, yes, I'll never tell you while I'm shitting my pants that I'm shitting my pants.

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  Okay, well.

• 1:20:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm falling apart, I guess.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  I hope.

• 1:20:02Dax Shepard?

  So I have a, I don't know if it's a wart. I just felt something on my thumb. I'm like, if that's a word I want to handle it.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  What if it's a farm uncle?

• 1:20:10Dax Shepard?

  On that erodes.

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  And are you worried it's a farm uncle?

• 1:20:14Dax Shepard?

  Farm uncle.

• 1:20:17Dax Shepard?

  A carbuncle.

• 1:20:18Speaker 01

  No, that's when there's a lot.

• 1:20:19Dax Shepard?

  That's a lot. No, we're all, yeah, we're at farm uncle level.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  Okay, speaking of like this.

• 1:20:24Dax Shepard?

  Gross stuff that's happening to me.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  My friends, when I was home, I was with my friends from home and.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  They had bedbugs this summer.

• 1:20:36Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  And the pictures are on, on.

• 1:20:42Dax Shepard?

  They eat you up, right?

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  She's covered in bites.

• 1:20:47Dax Shepard?

  It sure wasn't scabies.

• 1:20:50Speaker 01

  It was bedbugs.

• 1:20:51Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  And both her and her husband.

• 1:20:54Dax Shepard?

  You have to burn your house down virtually, right?

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  They were in another, they were at their parents' vacation house.

• 1:21:01Dax Shepard?

  Thank God.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  No one else in the house got, is just in that room.

• 1:21:05Dax Shepard?

  There was a big New York City bedbug thing I remember reading about a couple of years back.

• 1:21:09Speaker 01

  A long time ago. Disgusting.

• 1:21:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's rough. We're talking about gross stuff.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:14Dax Shepard?

  So after dinner last night, I'm like, oh, I'll walk through Central Park on the way home. I love Central Park in the summer. And soon as I get on the path, I'm hearing all this rustling in the bushes. And every time I look over, I see a rat in the undergrowth. And then I just start seeing rats all over the walkway. And I'm like, I guess if you look at them like squirrels, we don't mind squirrels.

• 1:21:34Speaker 01

  It is like, it's racism against rats.

• 1:21:37Dax Shepard?

  Speciesism.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  It is, it is.

• 1:21:38Dax Shepard?

  Species.

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  Haven't I, even mice versus rats, we think mice are so cute.

• 1:21:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, miniature mice.

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:21:46Dax Shepard?

  If you were a miniature rat.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  Honestly, I'm offended even just hearing that. Yeah, I, that's so bad. And it's, but I feel bad for them. They're.

• 1:21:56Dax Shepard?

  They're just little animals on the planet trying to make it work. But they were, I couldn't believe how many were just running around the pathways. And no one seemed.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  Worried.

• 1:22:06Dax Shepard?

  But me.

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  Do you think?

• 1:22:08Dax Shepard?

  I was like, are they gonna bite my ankles? What?

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  Do you think there was a dead body?

• 1:22:12Dax Shepard?

  I don't, I would have smelled it. Dead body smell.

• 1:22:15Speaker 01

  Maybe your smell is gone because of all this other stuff that's, you're having sickness.

• 1:22:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, possibly.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  I mean, all of those rats in one spot to me.

• 1:22:25Dax Shepard?

  Wouldn't they be all over the dead body chowing down instead of running around the path?

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  They.

• 1:22:29Dax Shepard?

  Or they telling their friends?

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're gathering. Yeah, they're gathering.

• 1:22:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  Um, but, oh wait, real quick, because we're talking about dead bodies.

• 1:22:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  Which, that's, that's really distasteful what I, what I just did. Because I am going to talk about some sad stuff, which is Malcolm Jamal Warner died, which is so sad.

• 1:22:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  So sad.

• 1:22:52Dax Shepard?

  Swimming.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you guys never take my drowning talk seriously.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  Just saying.

• 1:23:01Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  And then, and then Ozzy Osbourne died.

• 1:23:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Do we know what, of what?

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  I think just a hard life.

• 1:23:09Dax Shepard?

  Hard life.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  He was, I mean, it was like, he was.

• 1:23:11Dax Shepard?

  Hogan, too.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  So, exactly. So this is what, so when I was with my friends from home, they, they were like, well, Ozzy Osbourne had died that day. And, and they're like, well, you know, these things come in threes. And I was like, no, that's not real. And they're like, we'll see.

• 1:23:28Dax Shepard?

  And they were right.

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  They were right.

• 1:23:30Dax Shepard?

  They do come in threes.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  I don't like that.

• 1:23:32Dax Shepard?

  The Hulk Hogan thing. So my friend Dean texted Aaron and I.

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:37Dax Shepard?

  A picture of Hulk ripping his shirt off.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:39Dax Shepard?

  I didn't, I hadn't heard he died.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  Oh, you just thought it was a random.

• 1:23:42Dax Shepard?

  I just, yeah, which would not be unlike Dean to just randomly send a Hulk Hogan picture.

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:47Dax Shepard?

  And luckily, I wrote, "A God Among Men."

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  Oh, that's nice.

• 1:23:52Dax Shepard?

  And then an hour later, I found out he's dead. And then I was like, oh, he was letting us know. Did I? And I'm like, oh, no, that really worked.

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  It really worked.

• 1:24:01Dax Shepard?

  It almost worked better. I don't even know if I would have come up with something as appropriate.

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:24:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  Okay. Is there still a phone in the tomb of the woman who invented the Christian Scientist Church? She said that they put a phone in there.

• 1:24:15Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  In case she came, in case she like.

• 1:24:19Dax Shepard?

  Woke up.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  Rose.

• 1:24:21Dax Shepard?

  And wanted to order pizza because she was starving.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  She was starving. She was under there for so long. Um, okay. According to a longstanding rumor, a telephone was installed in Mary Baker Eddy's tomb at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This is not true.

• 1:24:36Dax Shepard?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:24:38Speaker 01

  The origin of this rumor seems to center around the circumstances following Eddy's death on December 3rd, 1910. After her funeral on December 8th, Eddy's casket was kept in Mount Auburn Cemetery's receiving tomb until the graveside could be made ready. In order to protect against vandalism, the casket was guarded around the clock. At that time, a telephone was installed for the guards to use. It was removed after the casket was transferred to the gravesite in January 1911.

• 1:25:04Dax Shepard?

  You also have to imagine what a phone in 1910 was. I think it was an enormous plywood box.

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:25:12Dax Shepard?

  I don't even know if they had plywood yet, but a huge, remember, you never watched Green Acres, did you? You're too young.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  No, I don't think so.

• 1:25:19Dax Shepard?

  Do you know the theme song?

• 1:25:21Speaker 01

  Sing it.

• 1:25:22Dax Shepard?

  Green acres is the life for me. Farm living is a. And then Ja Ja Gabor would say, darling, I love you, but give me Park Avenue.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:25:33Dax Shepard?

  You are my wife. Goodbye, city life. Green acres, we will.

• 1:25:40Dax Shepard?

  Well, that was a mess, but I got some pieces.

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  OK, so they left the big city. Yeah, it does.

• 1:25:44Dax Shepard?

  He drug Ja Ja Gabor out of the big city and took her to a farm. It's plus this mess, I guess. Yeah.

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  What about it?

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  Telephone.

• 1:25:54Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, I was gonna say, on that show, they had the kind of telephone you pick up and you hold the big part to your ear and then you talk into the little mouthpiece. And there was an operator and that phone was enormous. And I, and that was, that was probably set in the 40s. I don't know. So just imagine how big it is. That's all I'm saying. It might have been the size of a casket.

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  How are they even having it outside?

• 1:26:19Dax Shepard?

  At the cemetery?

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:21Dax Shepard?

  I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  With the guards who were, who were using it or whatever, like.

• 1:26:27Dax Shepard?

  And you used to have to crank it. I don't know if that was to supply electricity. I don't know. You had to crank the fucking thing. I kind of wish I had one, actually.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  You could probably auction for one.

• 1:26:36Dax Shepard?

  I'd love to have one in my car. I'd take up the whole passenger seat and that would be my cellphone in the car.

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, when we, remember when, I mean, things have moved so, so fast. Because when we watched What Lies Beneath, they're on a cordless phone in that.

• 1:26:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  And it's, it just looks wild.

• 1:26:55Dax Shepard?

  Yes, and we've been doing the Tom Cruise marathon and yes. What's even crazier is to watch early Mission Impossibles because it's like the highest tech CIA. A covert shit and you're kind of looking at all the stuff and it's like, you know, your iPhone would do way more than every single thing in the movie.

• 1:27:12Speaker 01

  It's so weird.

• 1:27:13Dax Shepard?

  I know.

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:27:16Dax Shepard?

  Oh, Lord.

• 1:27:18Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:27:19Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my heavens.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  OK, how many states have religious exemptions for vaccines? Forty-five states and DC allow for religious exemptions to school vaccine requirements. These exemptions allow parents to decline vaccinations for their children based on religious beliefs. The remaining five states, California, a ding ding ding, Connecticut, Maine.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  A place I really want to go. Mississippi, which I'm very surprised by.

• 1:27:50Dax Shepard?

  That's shocking.

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and West Virginia do not allow religious exemptions.

• 1:27:55Dax Shepard?

  You'll get surprised, you know?

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  You will get surprised.

• 1:27:58Dax Shepard?

  West Virginia, I am Mississippi. I'm interested in.

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. Can the Amish borrow their neighbor's car? Not have electricity, but borrow their neighbor's car. Well, Amish individuals cannot own cars due to their religious beliefs. They can't and often do accept rides from neighbors or hire drivers for transportation. The key distinction is that they are allowed to be passengers in vehicles, but not drivers or owners.

• 1:28:26Dax Shepard?

  Not drivers.

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:29Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so I guess you go to your neighbor's house and go like, "Take me up to Rite Aid."

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they better not be Amish.

• 1:28:35Dax Shepard?

  The neighbor?

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, and don't they all kind of live amongst one another?

• 1:28:39Dax Shepard?

  Well, they probably strategically make sure it's every other one like, "Boy, girl, boy, girl." They're like, "You gotta, make sure you got one worldly person to the left or right of you in case you need to go to Rite Aid."

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is interesting because you would think if this was the case, you'd see more Amish people just amongst, um, non-Amish people. So that, yeah, they could like reap the benefits.

• 1:29:03Dax Shepard?

  Where my grandparents had their motel in Sturgis, you saw that. It was like, and you would, it's, and you can tell because out there, none of the power lines are buried. So you're driving and you're seeing power lines come off the main power lines into a house. And then the next house, there's no power lines going into. And then, so you literally could just drive down the road and see exactly who was Amish and who wasn't. But I gotta say, I'm often critical of religions. And Amish is quite extreme, of course. But I love the Amish solely because of Rumspringa. I think it's so rad that they go, go out, not just you can, you should.

• 1:29:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:42Dax Shepard?

  Go out and spend a year in the worldly world. And we want you to decide to be here. I think that's fucking, that's all you can ask of a religion, really. What I hate is like trying to, to mask. Reality from the practitioners or hide truths, or as this term, put it back on the shelf. We've heard in under the banner, all these ways to like stifle knowledge and information. That's my issue mostly with religion. So the fact that they encourage a full exploration, I think is awesome.

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  I think it's awesome too. I'm a little more pessimistic about

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  the actual chances of coming out of from Springer and and having a true assessment. Because you've grown up, you know, it's like you've grown up being told these things about the modern world. And then you're just like thrust in the modern world is scary if you're thrust in.

• 1:30:39Dax Shepard?

  But be clear, again, they're living among the modern world. It's not like they're unaware of it. They're driving in their horse and buggy down the road with, you know,

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:47Dax Shepard?

  Porsche's driving by.

• 1:30:48Speaker 01

  But if they're being told like, that's not a good way of living and then you're in it. I think it's hard to then be like, yeah, I love it. I think it would take a lot, maybe longer to fully adjust than they have for the little spring break.

• 1:31:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I just don't know of any other, I don't know of any sect of Christianity that says, go become Muslim for a year, go become Jewish for a year.

• 1:31:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:14Dax Shepard?

  Practice on full other religion and we're confident you'll return to ours.

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:19Dax Shepard?

  Is is just rad.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay. Is Alaska the number one per capita serial killer state? Yes. California has the highest total number of serial killings, but it's not the most, the most.

• 1:31:34Dax Shepard?

  Just like California, a high GDP.

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:31:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I just was watching Newsom in an interview on a podcast, talk about the amount of money that California gives to the federal government that it doesn't take. So we're in a like $81 billion surplus that California gives to the federal government. Whereas Texas, and I love Texas, make no mistake, is in a $71 billion deficit.

• 1:32:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:05Dax Shepard?

  From the federal government. So, you know, 150 billion dollar difference there.

• 1:32:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's something I like. I remember during the fires.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  When Trump was like threatening to like,

• 1:32:20Dax Shepard?

  Not help us.

• 1:32:21Speaker 01

  Not help us and not give us aid and stuff. My, I was talking to my dad about it and he was like, "Good luck. All California has to do is say then we're not contributing to the federal government and the whole country is, is riding on that money."

• 1:32:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, in New York and...

• 1:32:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, the country is propped up on California.

• 1:32:45Dax Shepard?

  I think about eight states. Yeah.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:47Dax Shepard?

  Somewhere in there. Yeah. Which is rad, by the way. I love it. That's why, that's why we're a union. We all benefit and there's, yeah.

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  Um, okay. So what is the current estimate of serial killers? While pinpointing an exact number is impossible due to the clandestine nature of serial killing, it is estimated that there are at least 500 serial killers currently at large and unidentified in the United States. The FBI has previously stated that for every one serial killer apprehended and brought to trial, three more may emerge and begin their criminal activity. While the number of active serial killers has decreased significantly since its peak in the 70s and 80s, there is still a concerning number operating undetected. The decline is generally attributed to advancements in forensic science, policing, criminal justice and technology, making it harder for serial killers to avoid capture.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  For example, the number of known active serial killers in the US dropped from nearly 300 in the 1970s to fewer than 50 in the 2010s. Despite this downward trend, the FBI estimates that the problem is far from eradicated.

• 1:33:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they kinda, yeah. Law enforcement, the risk they run is they get a little tunnel vision. Like even if they're seeing a very clear pattern of decreasing, they're like, "Don't you dare think about..."

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  Don't get too excited.

• 1:34:01Dax Shepard?

  Cutting our funding. Yeah. It's still raging.

• 1:34:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:06Dax Shepard?

  It's, it's definitely come down. It's very interesting. I don't think we really have the answer yet. I think there's, well, Eric and I were talking about on this trip. You know, there's weird outlets for people now and weird ways to pacify people that didn't exist. Like you could sit in your basement and just blast people all day long on video games and you could be talking to other dudes on headsets and yelling at them and being aggressive and you know, all kinds of shit can happen online and you wonder, is that pacifying a lot of people that otherwise would be out roaming around delinquent and bored with these weird ideas? I don't know. There's some explanation and it seems like it has to be correlated to technology, whether that's also it's way harder to get away with

• 1:34:51Dax Shepard?

  it. I'm sure that's part of it. But again, I don't believe serial killers exist or don't exist because of deterrence. I think if you're that way, you're that way. It's not like, oh, I was gonna be a serial killer, but then I find out you get the death penalty. So then I wasn't a serial killer. I don't think, I don't think it works that way.

• 1:35:08Speaker 01

  Me either. It's definitely a, I think it's a brain, it's a disease. Like I think it's like psychopathy. I mean, okay, so here's an interesting question. Do you think if they discover a gene that is a serial killer gene?

• 1:35:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  But it only appears in the eighth month of the pregnancy. You can only test it. Do you think the country would be like, yeah, you can abort that child that late in the game?

• 1:35:51Dax Shepard?

  I think it would be split. I think a lot of people would say, no, you can't kill. Again, everyone that's anti-death penalty would say, no, you can't just kill somebody. That's not the right of any of us or any government. But they would have to live in a very interesting way. There'd have to be some monitoring at all times. Like if there was a known gene.

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:14Dax Shepard?

  And again, it's so tricky of a hypothetical because so often people are genotypically one thing and then phenotypically not that thing. Like you could, you know, things happen that prevent the expression of those genes. So you could have that gene and probably not, it not happen. So it's very, very tricky. I think a more compelling.

• 1:36:38Dax Shepard?

  Aspect that's that is ahead for us is there's that gene should and CRISPR is is totally ironed out and and dependable. Would there be legislation that on that eight month, on that eighth month, you have to use CRISPR to edit out that gene? I think people would sign up for that.

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. It's pretty scary.

• 1:37:02Dax Shepard?

  Serial killers or CRISPR?

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  Serial killers.

• 1:37:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:06Speaker 01

  Then we would be putting in so much, it would require a lot of funding to like, monitor those people or put them in a place or, you know, whatever.

• 1:37:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:18Speaker 01

  And I don't like, I don't know if people would go for it.

• 1:37:21Dax Shepard?

  I mean, you see the obvious, the pushback would be it's like a very slippery slope. That's eugenics, right? So we're weaning out.

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  It is a slippery slope. That's why it's an interesting.

• 1:37:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  Conversation.

• 1:37:31Dax Shepard?

  It's, yeah.

• 1:37:32Speaker 01

  Comment if you'd say yes on the bill.

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  All right, well, that's it for Caroline. I hope everyone can sleep at night, even though they're scared.

• 1:37:49Dax Shepard?

  They're scared.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  It's so scary.

• 1:37:52Dax Shepard?

  Oh, spank a chowder.

• 1:37:57Dax Shepard?

  All right, love you.

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  I love you, bye.