Darby Saxbe (on Dad Brain)

Darby Saxbe (Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men’s Lives) is a clinical psychologist, tenured professor, and researcher on family stress and the transition to parenthood. Darby joins Armchair Expert to discuss growing up in an academic household, her parents’ dramatic divorce, and watching her surgeon father suddenly learn how to become the primary parent. Darby and Dax talk about why fatherhood research has lagged behind motherhood research, what happens chemically and neurologically to new dads, and how hunter-gatherer societies, Barcelona playgrounds, and Swedish “latte papas” reveal very different models of raising children. Darby explains why “dad bod” is a real thing, how dads’ brains physically change when they engage in caregiving, and why kids may need more community, boredom, roughhousing, and freedom than modern parenting usually allows. Check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds: https://www.allstate.com/ 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 Dax Randall Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Lilly Padman. This was a big exception. As you know, UCLA and USC are rivals.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 0:12Dax Shepard?

  They're the enemy if you went to UCLA. But I got over that so that we could host our guest, who is a professor at the University of Southern California, clinical psychologist and tenured full professor at the University of Southern California, Darby Saxby. Also, my favorite name of a guest, I think we've had.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Great name.

• 0:29Dax Shepard?

  Darby Saxby. What a fun, fun name. She has a new book out called Dad Brain, The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men's Lives.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  This is really important stuff.

• 0:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, she will tell us in this, although historically only men have been researched for medicine, which is an atrocity, mostly only women have been researched for parenthood.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 0:52Dax Shepard?

  So that's, that's, that's the counterbalancing disparity. And so she has studied men, thank God, and she's studied dads. And now we've learned a lot about it and it's very exciting.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  It's really fascinating chemically, like what goes on.

• 1:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Dad bod. We get a scientific explanation of dad bod.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  We sure do.

• 1:09Dax Shepard?

  Finally. Please enjoy Darby.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Saxby.

• 1:13Dax Shepard?

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• 1:16Speaker 01

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• 1:25Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:48Speaker 01

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• 2:06Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:15Speaker 01

  It's a uniform.

• 2:16Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:17Speaker 01

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• 2:34Dax Shepard?

  Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from AG1. Fall is that time when your body and mind are getting ready for the winter. You're settling in, bracing for the cold. Your body's already running a deficit from the shorter days and broken sleep patterns. You don't want a nutrient deficit stacked on top of that, too.

• 3:10Speaker 01

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

• 3:23Dax Shepard?

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• 3:37Speaker 01

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

• 3:41Dax Shepard?

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

• 3:51Speaker 01

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

• 3:58Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Go to drinkag1.com/dax and for a limited time, get a free immunity bundle, including a bottle of omega-3 fish oil and a bottle of vitamin D3K2 with your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/dax. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Armchair Expert sent you.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Nice to meet you.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Monica, very nice to meet you.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Thanks for coming.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Oh, my pleasure. Hi.

• 4:48Dax Shepard?

  Look how many items you have.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  I really brought a lot of stuff.

• 4:52Dax Shepard?

  Hi, Jack. Nice to meet you. Yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, you never know how much downtime you'll have, so I figured I could do some grading.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  You're thinking ahead.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  I could do some texting.

• 5:02Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure, sure. We're in Ohio, because you know, I'm right up the street from you. I think you'll be the guest we had this.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  You're from Michigan.

• 5:08Dax Shepard?

  Yes. And were you in the shadow of Cedar Point?

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Oh, of course. Yeah.

• 5:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, well, how close to Sandusky were you?

• 5:15Speaker 02

  So, so I'm from Oberlin, so it's like a small college town. It's between Toledo and Cleveland.

• 5:21Dax Shepard?

  Right, as is Sandusky.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  As is Sandusky.

• 5:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  And yeah, you know your Cedar Point well.

• 5:27Dax Shepard?

  Oh, come on. It's my religion.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:30Dax Shepard?

  Did you have a season's pass because you were so close?

• 5:32Speaker 02

  You know, my parents were nerds, so we actually didn't go there that often, even though it's really close. But my mom now has a house on Lake Erie.

• 5:42Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wonderful.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  And so we go every summer for like a month. And it's like one of the only things to do with the kids is take them to Cedar Point.

• 5:49Dax Shepard?

  How old are your kids?

• 5:50Speaker 02

  They're 14 and 17.

• 5:53Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I don't see. They run wild there?

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, they love it.

• 5:57Dax Shepard?

  Cheese on a stick, the cable ride. I'm so happy for them. I'm ashamed that I haven't brought my kids to Cedar Point yet.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, you should go.

• 6:05Dax Shepard?

  Honestly, it crosses my mind. I'm like, I'm not doing a good job as a parent.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're failing.

• 6:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Last year, we went to Dollywood for the first time.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  We're going in June.

• 6:14Dax Shepard?

  You are?

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Yes. So my book tour is a road trip to Dollywood.

• 6:18Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  So it's a book tour, college tour, road trip to Dollywood. It's like a triple purpose book tour.

• 6:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, this is fun.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  So we're gonna drive from New York down to Tennessee.

• 6:29Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  And stop along the way in DC. I'll do some book stuff there. My daughter's gonna look at some colleges.

• 6:35Dax Shepard?

  Ooh, tour Mount Vernon.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 6:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're gonna go to Charlottesville, look at UVA.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Which is where my husband went.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Great school.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Totally great school. And then we culminate at Dollywood.

• 6:47Dax Shepard?

  This is the... Huge upside of being a professor is you have a summer man. Lucky kids. Okay, so mom and dad, both doctors, one's a surgeon, one's a.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Internist.

• 6:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so as a kid, they were married to what age for you?

• 7:03Speaker 02

  I was nine when they got divorced.

• 7:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay, how many siblings?

• 7:07Speaker 02

  So I have an older half sister and then two brothers who are my full brothers. So my dad has four children altogether. My mom has three.

• 7:15Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so when they met, he had already been married and had a child.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 7:20Dax Shepard?

  Okay, now, this is very scandalous by all accounts.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:24Dax Shepard?

  Your mother had a patient?

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:26Dax Shepard?

  Okay, please tell us.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Yes, so she treated a patient who was dying of cancer. And cancer treatment often takes a long time. And she fell in love with the patient's husband during that process.

• 7:40Dax Shepard?

  David?

• 7:41Speaker 02

  And I think that was with the sort of awareness and consent. I don't know the full story because I was a kid when all of this happened.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  This is wild.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  But so they fall in love and my mom ultimately marries David.

• 7:54Dax Shepard?

  Left your father for David. By the way, I have to imagine that's not an insanely uncommon thing in that situation. Because you are seeing a man at potentially his best, or worst.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:06Dax Shepard?

  Caring for a dying spouse. You're going like, wow, this person's very loving, they're committed. You're showing a very nice side of yourself.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think he truly did love his wife who died. You know, it was tragic. So it wasn't like he was looking to move on and she just happened to be there. It was a process.

• 8:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  How old was everyone in this situation? You were nine.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  I was nine, my brother Beau was six, and my brother Tom was three.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  And how old was your mom?

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh. She had me when she was 31, so she was 40.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Now I'm 49, so that seems young to me.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  But at the time, she was super old.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Did they tell you right away what happened?

• 8:48Speaker 02

  We knew that my mom was moving out and it was sort of a process. Like she moved to an apartment down the street and then later that year moved across town. Oberlin is a small, small town, so across town is like two miles. I could ride my bike between our houses. Yeah. And so then we did this joint custody thing, so every other week I would switch. Between my mom's house and my dad's house. But at first, my dad just got sole custody because my mom was the one who left.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  And the courts in Ohio were like.

• 9:19Dax Shepard?

  Whore.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:20Dax Shepard?

  I'm gonna give the kids.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Divorced woman.

• 9:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, we're of a similar age. And so I'm a child of divorce. Certainly in my neighborhood, I want to say it was like one in every 15 houses, not half. It was still like I wasn't allowed to hang out with certain kids because they didn't like that I had a single mom.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, like I felt like the first kid I knew whose parents were divorced.

• 9:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  Even though, yeah, statistically, it wasn't that uncommon.

• 9:45Dax Shepard?

  How much does your dad fall into the surgeon stereotype? Because your dad's a surgeon. And there's a stereotype, and we've interviewed a bunch of them, and it's pretty fucking consistent, I'm gonna have to acknowledge.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  So you're gonna say the stereotype is what, like power hungry?

• 9:58Dax Shepard?

  I don't even know power hungry, but a little bit arrogant.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 10:01Dax Shepard?

  A little, I don't want to say narcissist, is that the wrong word? But there's this true confidence and a bit of, they feel like they've mastered something that is almost godlike.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  I think some myopic thinking a little bit.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  It's crazy. So I helped my dad do surgery. We did these sort of charity trips to the Dominican Republic when I was a teenager. And I was allowed to scrub in and kind of assist.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  I know, which is like probably really unprofessional, actually. I think there was one time I almost passed out. But it was the first time I ever saw my dad in that role.

• 10:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  And I was like, it's like a superpower.

• 10:37Dax Shepard?

  It is.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Like you're literally cutting into a human body.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Saving them.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  And then you're moving things around. It's like a crazy power.

• 10:46Dax Shepard?

  Put them back together, and they work.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they work. So I was kind of blown away.

• 10:50Dax Shepard?

  It's worthy of some confidence.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  And I always thought my dad was like a pretty humble, low-key guy. But in the OR, you have to be like the king.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:02Dax Shepard?

  So that's the other factor that I don't even blame them so much is the role is such that you are at the top of the decision-making. This is the same as a director. Like, have you been directing movies for 25 years? Guess what? You start kind of thinking everyone should value your opinion a little more than they should. It's just kind of inevitable.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, as a professor running a lab, I work with my. Grad students and I'm like, they have to listen to me.

• 11:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  It's a powerful narcotic.

• 11:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, then you go home and you're like, oh, right. No one here gives a shit.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  Oh, no, my kids could not be less impressed.

• 11:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So suffice to say dad had virtually zero experience dadding, even though he was your father until this divorce. And he had quite a rocky road, but he did figure it out. So just tell us what the experience was like once mom was out of the picture.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I will say that my dad, having read the book, thinks that he was very involved when we were little. So in his defense.

• 11:52Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  And when I tried to qualify it, the book didn't make so, but he was, I think, an eighties dad. He was pretty hands off. He was not super involved in our daily routines, our bedtimes.

• 12:05Dax Shepard?

  He didn't know what time you went to school, probably. He didn't know what time your school ended.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  He was doing his own thing.

• 12:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  He was going to the Masonic Lodge. So my mom left, all of a sudden, he is the sole parent. And he had to figure a lot of stuff out, like he made dinner for us. He cleaned the kitchen.

• 12:22Dax Shepard?

  You guys eat lunch for school.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Woke us up. He packed our lunches. He actually made really good lunches. He was good at it. I think the meticulousness that you need to have where you're scrubbing in as a surgeon made him like a very natural cleaner of the kitchen.

• 12:36Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  I think he kind of leaned into it. He was tracking our routines. He was driving us to school. He became the parent.

• 12:45Dax Shepard?

  But Andy also had moments where he like threw TV sets out in the snow and stuff, right?

• 12:49Speaker 02

  He had a temper.

• 12:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's overwhelming.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:52Dax Shepard?

  Especially if you haven't been doing it.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Exactly. And I think he was like, what is happening here?

• 12:57Speaker 01

  His life is really falling apart.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he was depressed. And yeah, like my brothers, one morning, wouldn't wake up to go to church. And he took the TV set out of the wall and was like.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh, yeah, yeah.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  Into a snowbank.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:14Dax Shepard?

  It might shock people to know how often those types of solutions cross your mind.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:20Dax Shepard?

  Like when you're a dad, you're just kind of like, okay, so the problem is these iPads? Easy fix. I'll throw these fuckers in the trash. We have these impulses. I can eliminate the problem entirely. It's not the move. But I have to fight through a lot of these urges.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  Yes, I've made the threat to throw my kids' phones out the window. Many, many times.

• 13:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. You then go on to get a PhD in psychology.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Yes, in clinical psych.

• 13:46Dax Shepard?

  What's so funny is in your book, you say that all research is me-search. I had never heard that term, and we heard it yesterday. Or Monday. It is. And you guys all know that as standard, but I'm like, how could we have interviewed this many social scientists and not?

• 13:59Speaker 02

  Two in one week. Every time you interview one, you should be like, what's wrong with you?

• 14:05Dax Shepard?

  And someone finally said, when I asked that question, like, you don't study something on accident. We're all trying to answer some weird question that irked us since childhood.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:14Dax Shepard?

  And that person said, yeah, well, all research is me-search. And then you said it. So you were drawn into studying parenting. Does it start specifically with fathering, or is this general parenting?

• 14:24Speaker 02

  So originally transitioned into parenthood, and I was curious about couples and how they navigated relationships and roles. And I worked on this big study at UCLA, which was called the Center for the Everyday Lives of Families, where we basically camped out in families' homes.

• 14:41Dax Shepard?

  Oh, boy. Like anthropologists.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and there were a bunch of anthropologists on the study team. And so it was this cool collaborative study. And we tracked them around their houses. We borrowed this technique that you use for primate research called scan sampling, where we were recording their movements, like every 10 minutes. Where is everybody? What are they doing? And so we had this really cool corpus of data, and I worked with the cortisol data, which is stress hormone data, to see how are their physiological stress levels tracking with their relationship quality? And how they feel about their homes. And so that kind of got me interested in family stress.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  And then I wanted to kind of go to the source, which is, you know, when does a couple become like a triad? When do they start a family, basically? And so when I had the chance to start my own lab at USC, I knew I wanted to do a transition to parenthood study. And I got interested in fathers, actually. Part out of convenience, which was that I knew I wanted to do a brain scanning component. And as a postdoc who was starting to plan this study, I was not allowed to go into the scanner because I was pregnant.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  So I was working on a neuroimaging study and they were keeping me out of the neuroimaging suite. And you can scan pregnant women, but it's just like a couple layers of extra care. And so I was like, how am I gonna study women's brains? Well, why don't I scan the dads? And then as soon as I thought of that, I got really interested because I kind of dug into the research on fatherhood and there's so much.

• 16:17Dax Shepard?

  It's scant.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  And I got fascinated with that.

• 16:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so historically, medical research has been extremely asymmetric and we've studied men, you know, at a really high rate to the detriment of a lot of women's health. But this is completely reversed, right? I think in the book it says, well, one in 10 journals on this topic are about fathers, the rest are about mothers.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Exactly. So our parenting research, research on the parent-child bond, research on the transition to parenthood, it's completely mother-centric.

• 16:48Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  So we just don't really understand men's experiences of parenting as well. And I think there are emerging research programs that are attempting to answer these questions and that was one reason I was excited to write the book.

• 17:03Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so let's start with just mammals. How frequent do mammals father their offspring? Maybe we should pick some terms, right? Because you can father offspring, but we're going to talk about the process of raising or being involved. So what should we call that? Fatherhood?

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so in the book, I kept calling it hands-on fatherhood. And then I was like, I'm talking about mammals. So should it be like paws-on fatherhood?

• 17:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  You know, like tendrils-on fatherhood, depending on. So I guess active fatherhood is a good term, right? So you can sire offspring, but to be involved in their actual rearing, turns out, humans are pretty unusual because we do have human fathers who are actually involved in day-to-day care. And so actually, if you look across all the species, fish, males are primary. Parents. Birds, bi-parental. Males do a ton of parenting. Frogs, lots of male parenting. But in mammals, it's fairly unusual to have bi-parental.

• 18:02Dax Shepard?

  Is that because of mammary glands? Is that because we have a unique style of feeding our young?

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Exactly. Which is where the term mammal comes from, right? So it comes from milk. So literally, it's baked into the term that this is a mother-centric animal.

• 18:15Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  And I mean, you do have some examples of primates and rodents where males are participating in rearing. But what makes humans unusual is the sort of flexibility and the fact that we raise children kind of collectively. And so that's called cooperative breeding or allo parenting. And that's sort of our signature style of how we raise kids.

• 18:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we only kind of see this in primates. You see this in primates to varying degrees, right?

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:43Dax Shepard?

  Really social group animals where you're going to have aunties helping and you're going to have wet nursing and you're going to have a lot of different things.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Exactly. Like a lot of shared care. So you kind of need a complex social brain that can track who's safe. And the reason I think that style originates is just because our babies require so much care. Like our human babies are so half-baked when they emerge. And so you really need this tag team. And then fathers become really important.

• 19:12Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so now let's talk about hunting and gathering groups or societies or whatever you want to call it. First, we must point out the vast majority of time we've been here. We've been here for 300,000 years as a species, give or take. And agriculture comes around 16,000 years ago. So we're talking about 95% of the time, we have been here, we lived a certain way, which I think we regularly underestimate. Monica and I get in some debates sometimes. And I'm like, you have to accept that we were designed and wired to function in a certain dynamic that we no longer do. And there's a ton of challenges that come with having left that design.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:52Dax Shepard?

  Rather left that context with the same design.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:55Dax Shepard?

  So let's talk about what parenting looks like for hunting and gathering groups.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Hunter-gatherers. Live in these small, sort of mobile bands of 20 to 30 people. There isn't a lot of private, enclosed space. We don't have our big houses and our backyards. So, everybody is helping everybody. And parenting looks pretty collective. And that can include fathers. So, there's all this cultural variability in how much men are doing. But in hunter-gatherer societies, you sort of have these egalitarian social structures because you sort of don't want to compete for resources because everything is shared. And you have some flexibility around gender roles because women actually are bringing

• 20:43Speaker 02

  in as many calories as men.

• 20:45Dax Shepard?

  Oh, way, way more. They're responsible for like 90% of the calories.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  They are really important resource gatherers, which is why it's funny when people are like, "Women shouldn't work, they should just mother."

• 20:54Speaker 01

  They've been working since the beginning of time.

• 20:56Dax Shepard?

  No, what's very weird is that they didn't work for a few hundred years. That's what's really weird.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Like, we had this strange blip where women sort of stayed home and were specialized to the domestic realm.

• 21:05Dax Shepard?

  But again, they lost their whole support system, so kind of they had to.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so going back though to, I talked to an anthropologist who studied this hunter-gatherer tribe called the Aka. And the men are super hands-on with the babies. They're holding babies. I think they're within arms' reach of their babies about 47% of the time.

• 21:27Dax Shepard?

  They let a baby suckle from their nipple that's not even giving milk.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Exactly. Like, you'll see a group of men hanging out and they're drinking wine and they're all holding babies.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Cute.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  You know? I know, it's adorable.

• 21:38Dax Shepard?

  But there's huge variation within hunting and gathering groups. So then the other one is, what is it, the Kipsigis?

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, the Kipsigis. And if you think about how much fathering are men doing, it's like, well, how does the culture make its living? In the Kipsigis, which is a different tribe where there's this totally different style of fathering, there are all these prohibitions against men picking up babies and interacting with babies too much in the first year after birth.

• 22:04Dax Shepard?

  It's emasculating.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  It's unmanly, exactly.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  But how did that even evolve?

• 22:08Speaker 02

  So there, the resource gathering is more... More risky, it's more hazardous. And so you end up just getting more specialization.

• 22:16Dax Shepard?

  You're not bringing a two-year-old along on this hunt.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  Exactly. So you might be involved as a father with older kids, right? You're gonna take older kids along to show them how to hunt. But you are not carrying babies around the way the Aka are.

• 22:29Dax Shepard?

  Well, think of the Inuit. Only the males are hunting whale and other fish. And they're out in these canoes. You're not bringing one or two or three. You know, you're not bringing out a young boy. And so they're pretty self-sufficient. So in that case, it would make total sense that that's how they would function.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 22:46Dax Shepard?

  I think there's a lot of dynamics that are worth thinking about from that hunting gathering. And we kind of already talked about it. But I often say, in my own experience parenting, I feel so blessed that I studied anthill. Because many new parents talk about the moment they drive home from the hospital with the baby in the backseat and they're like, oh, Jesus. We don't know what we're doing. But I've watched hundreds of hours of video of children in hunting and gathering societies. They rear themselves. A nine-year-old's in charge of like 12 kids. Everyone's climbing a tree. Many are falling out. People are breaking bones. They're so fucking resilient. It's crazy if you get to see how we actually live for so long. So I kind of didn't have that panic just because I got to observe

• 23:29Dax Shepard?

  how we're really designed to do it. We're pretty resilient.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, kids are designed to, I think, be somewhat free-range. Having a parent who's on top of a kid at all times is actually not always the best.

• 23:43Dax Shepard?

  Minimally, it's not how we live for most of the time.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Exactly. You got mixed-age playgroups is like the classic kind of configuration for how kids are learning. They're learning from their peers.

• 23:54Dax Shepard?

  Even if we had stayed egalitarian in sharing the parenting duties, it still would have become much, much different. Because to your earlier point, we lived in long houses. There was always someone around to help. Everything was communal. And then we ultimately evolve into like, single-house dwelling with just two people. And even if both people had split it, which they didn't, it would have been infinitely more stressful. A uniquely stressful way to rear kids, the way we do it.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is not how we evolved as humans. We need community support. And yet, we live in suburbs, we're car-dependent. We don't have our extended family nearby. We don't have those multi-generational networks.

• 24:39Dax Shepard?

  If you knocked on your neighbor's door in any apartment, LA, I need you to watch my baby for three hours while I go to... They would panic, right?

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Or you'd be like, something's wrong with them.

• 24:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, who would trust me with their baby? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 24:51Dax Shepard?

  It's a very bizarre way we're living in some regards.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  It's like money-driven, really.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  I mean, that's part of why we live away from our parents and stuff. It's like, we're gonna go chase success. And even your house is an example of success.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. It's this kind of late capitalist way to live.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:08Dax Shepard?

  So you had a Fallbright Fellowship, and you went to Spain in 2019. You got to kind of observe how they do parenting there. So what did you gather from them? Because obviously, there's huge cultural differences in how we're all doing it around the globe. So tell us a bit about different places and how they're doing it.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was super fun. So my kids were pretty young when we did that. They were eight and 10. It was right before the pandemic. So it was good timing. And we did like the playground tour of Barcelona, just like every playground. And there were a lot of young parents out and about. And I think it's because, like most countries, except for the US, there is really generous maternity and paternity leave. So your home, you have flexibility in those early years. And so the whole society just feels a little more oriented to what young kids need. Public places, like our apartment is on a square, where, you know, you have the café, where people are smoking and eating tapas,

• 26:07Speaker 02

  and you have the old guys on the bench gossiping. And then there was always a play structure. All the squares have a little play structure. So there are just a lot of public spaces for kids. And so it feels more integrated.

• 26:19Dax Shepard?

  And what were you observing about fathering there?

• 26:22Speaker 02

  I would see men outside our apartment window pushing strollers around and hanging out with each other. And there was more... More of a sense, I think, of connectedness and a kind of society of fathers that you just don't see as much in the States when you're kind of more isolated in your home.

• 26:41Dax Shepard?

  What happens in Sweden? What's going on in Germany?

• 26:43Speaker 02

  So my husband's sister lives in Sweden and raised her kids there. And you've got really generous, year-plus-long maternity leaves. And you also have really affordable early childcare that's high quality. So the stress level there for parents, I think, looks really different. And for fathers in particular, because you have these kind of paternity leave incentive programs that are designed to normalize and de-stigmatize dads taking leave. So basically, the couple gets a certain amount of leave. Some of it is earmarked for dad. If he doesn't take it, it goes away. They lose that benefit. So a lot of men take it because that's a free benefit.

• 27:20Dax Shepard?

  It's like vacation days.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:22Dax Shepard?

  You gotta use them.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  Totally. So you have, it's called the latte papas, which is like this society of guys who are like holding the little to-go cups.

• 27:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  And just walking around the cities.

• 27:32Dax Shepard?

  With Bjorn's on and stuff.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Exactly. So again, it's just like a very normalized thing that men are going to be very hands-on because it's baked into their policy.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  It is so weird because I feel like even here, even when there are paternity leaves, a lot of men don't take the full thing.

• 27:49Dax Shepard?

  Well, again, it's emasculating.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:50Dax Shepard?

  It's like your buddies at work are gonna be like, you're fucking going up. You know, like, there's a stigma about it.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  And there are studies on this, that men are really reluctant and they think they're gonna get punished at work. And I think we still have this ideal worker idea that you sacrifice everything for your job. And if you take time off after a baby's born, you're a slacker.

• 28:11Dax Shepard?

  Or minimally, you're removing yourself from advancement.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:15Dax Shepard?

  You're not out competing a coworker. Someone else will get the account. There's a lot of different pressures.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:20Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so when you started studying this in your lab, we had some stereotypes, right? We had this notion that mothers are natural parents and mothers and nurturers. And then we know all these physiological changes that happen to them, both when pregnant, we know about their hormones changing. We all accept this. And know this, and then just the general assumption is like, probably nothing happens to dad. Even I think when we first had kids, I was susceptible to that. Where I was like, I think this crying is at a different volume to me than it is to her. I think she has better chemistry than I have currently for this. So let's talk about first what you started finding when you would look at what happens to dad between conception and birth.

• 29:05Dax Shepard?

  Cause there's all these documented changes for mom. What happens to dad in that period?

• 29:09Speaker 02

  With mom, you can literally visibly see her body changing, right? If it's a biological pregnancy. And with dad, there's a lot going on under the hood. So there's research that suggests that testosterone levels drop, oxytocin levels change, a hormone called prolactin changes as well.

• 29:28Dax Shepard?

  What does prolactin do?

• 29:29Speaker 02

  You can tell from the name, it promotes lactation.

• 29:31Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  So it's very good for breastfeeding, which obviously is not that helpful for dads. And in men, surprisingly, prolactin levels before birth seem to predict, at least this is what we found in our lab, predicted dads kind of bonding and motivation to parent in the early postpartum period. So we found that guys with higher prolactin levels prenatally had more enjoyment of the infant postpartum, were spending more time with the infant postpartum. And it's interesting because in fish, and I mentioned that fish are primary caregiver fathers, if you dump prolactin into the water, fish will start acting really paternal. So it's actually a hormone that kind of turns on fatherhood in fish. And it turns out it might work in a similar way in humans.

• 30:17Dax Shepard?

  Wow. Well, the testosterone thing is fascinating. I'd like to hear what the current theory is on why that drops. To me, it seems quite obvious. It's like, you're gonna need maximum patience and minimized aggression.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Exactly. They don't want you to squeeze and pop the baby.

• 30:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, like we just don't need a ton of testosterone.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  You don't need that grip strength.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 30:37Dax Shepard?

  When you're scared and there's a baby crying, you don't know how to solve it. Do we think that's why it lowers?

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, we need high testosterone if we're competing for mates. It will help us to be competitive, to focus on our status. To be aggressive. And it's not that useful when we have a new baby. It's not as adaptive to sustain high testosterone levels. And testosterone comes at an immune cost for the body. So having jacked up testosterone is not that helpful to us when we're in a context that doesn't require that competition.

• 31:10Dax Shepard?

  What doesn't reward it.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Exactly. And so even in birds, you see higher testosterone at the start of breeding season when birds are like trying to find a chick. I mean,

• 31:23Speaker 02

  a female.

• 31:23Dax Shepard?

  That's where we got it.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Testosterone levels will drop once a male has sort of completed mating and needs to take care of hatchlings. So it's like this normative change that's occurring over the transition to fatherhood. And then there's probably a rebound, right? And then dad maybe knocks up a new bird. But it looks like you see kind of similar patterns in humans, rats and primates as well. So testosterone levels sort of fluctuate with your reproductive demands and also with your reproductive strategy. So if you want to maximize your number of offspring, you probably want high T. But if you want to actually do a good job of parenting, you want lower T.

• 32:04Dax Shepard?

  And also you're not as prone to create more progeny that you would have to then care for, but be divided because you've just had this one. It's almost like going out of estrus a little bit for a primate.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Right. There's like this life history theory that sort of determines when does it make sense for our hormones to change to support our different roles?

• 32:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 32:30Dax Shepard?

  We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking your gas gauge before hitting the road? You genuinely thought you could make it? You were wrong. That's a very long stretch of highway where you learned exactly how far fumes can take you. And it's not far enough. Yeah. Checking first is an excellent plan. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds. And for fast, reliable help when you need it, add an Allstate roadside plan. Today, you're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary. Insurance and roadside assistance plans are subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Insurance provided by Allstate North American Insurance Company, Northbrook, Illinois.

• 33:12Dax Shepard?

  Roadside assistance plans provided by Allstate Motor Club, Incorporated and Allstate affiliate. We get support from Scottsdale, Arizona. Monica, with summer ending or heading into fall, I've been researching a nice, quick getaway location and I keep coming back to Scottsdale, Arizona.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Ooh, Scottsdale's good. What's drawing you to it?

• 33:30Dax Shepard?

  Well, first of all, I have this wonderful memory of going there as a kid when I would go see my stepdad when he was working out there. The weather is perfect in fall. Warm, sunny, no humidity, and you can really do whatever you want with your time there. I want to do a sunrise hike through the Sonoran Desert, be surrounded by Saguaro, and then at the same afternoon, just completely melt into a spa treatment at one of their luxury resorts.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Oh, that sounds amazing. I want to do that. Also, I was there visiting my brother once and I loved Old Town Scottsdale. It's so walkable. They have galleries and cute little restaurants and shops. The food scene alone is worth the trip.

• 34:09Dax Shepard?

  What I keep reading is that it's luxurious, but not stuffy. There's no pressure to do it a certain way. You can explore public art, check out the architecture, go off-roading in the desert, or just sit and watch a sunset.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  It really is the perfect fall reset.

• 34:23Dax Shepard?

  Learn more about all Scottsdale has to offer at unwindinscottsdale.com. 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.

• 35:08Dax Shepard?

  They're practitioners who bring real-world experience. Into everything they teach. From your first class to career coaching and beyond, Walden is your partner the whole way. Take the first step and learn at a pace that works for you. Visit walden u.edu Walden University. Set a course for change. Certified to operate by CHEV. We get support from ZipRecruiter. Oh, get recruiting. So I went down this rabbit hole the other day on real holiday jobs that exist and I couldn't stop. Somebody out there is hiring a ham glazer, a professional ham glazer. Another place is hiring a lead elf, implying a whole hierarchy of elves I had never even considered. Here's the thing,

• 35:51Dax Shepard?

  these jobs need real skills. People like that are hard to find. Whether you're hiring for one of these roles or any other role, the best way to find qualified people who are genuinely excited about your role is on ZipRecruiter. And right now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/dax. Plus ZipRecruiter has a new feature that shows you the most interested qualified candidates first, so you meet the right people faster. No wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. Let ZipRecruiter find the right people for your roles, seasonal or otherwise. Try it for free today at ziprecruiter.com/dax. At ziprecruiter.com/dax, meet your match on ZipRecruiter.

• 36:42Dax Shepard?

  Okay, now until this book, I would have thought I was, well, not terribly unique, because I did get some anecdotal information, but we were one time at an ultrasound appointment at the OB and they're measuring Kristen's weight and I decide to hop on that scale. And I just simply hadn't been on a scale in, I think, four or five months. And I just looked at it and I go, holy shit, I've gained like 20 pounds and I didn't even notice. That's never happened in my life where I just gained 20 pounds without noticing. And I've talked to other dads who have done that as well. Have you observed that? What's happening there?

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Totally. So dad bod is a thing. It's like this humorous.

• 37:18Dax Shepard?

  Trop.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. But it's. A real thing. Men actually do often gain weight across the transition to fatherhood. And it kind of connects back to what we were just talking about, like that normative change in testosterone is one of the drivers of sort of adiposity or weight changes.

• 37:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, reduction of muscle mass, which is burning less calories. So there's that element working. I was more thinking of it in a nurture context, which is like, she's eating like crazy. So I'm just joining her. Like, is that what's going on?

• 37:45Speaker 02

  You see it in primates too. So they increase in body size across a mate's pregnancy. It might be because a larger body is more imposing. They can more easily pick up offspring. And it's also like you want some reserve in case there's scarcity.

• 38:02Dax Shepard?

  Right. You might have to be giving your resources to another. That's really evolutionarily poignant, right? As I need a little buffer because I'm about to share now.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is true, I think, for why women gain weight, right? Because we gain more weight than our babies are gonna weigh. Like, I was super bummed when I realized that.

• 38:20Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, like four act. Yeah, five.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  I was like, this baby is not thirty five pounds. Where does the extra weight go? But it's like, you actually need some reserve because who knows, there could be a famine.

• 38:31Dax Shepard?

  Well, and you're going to be burning two thousand extra calories a day to produce milk if you breastfeed. Exactly. Whatever the number is, it's something very high.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a high calorie demand. So it's like your body actually has to be sort of beefed up. So it might be that there's a similar process happening for dads.

• 38:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. What other things are happening in that window before baby arrives? So there's the body, there's the hormonal drop. What's going on psychologically and behaviorally?

• 38:57Speaker 02

  So the hormones are changing. So psychologically, we can see mood disorder risk. Postpartum depression is something we think of as like a mom only phenomenon. It can totally emerge in dads. There's evidence that new dads have about twice the prevalence of depression as just men in the general population.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 39:17Dax Shepard?

  While mom's pregnant.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  It can be before birth, it can be after birth. Yeah, so it's like, we call it postpartum depression, but it's really perinatal. It's like across that transition. And if you think about it, it's like a lot of the same risk factors that moms experience, like sleep deprivation, increased stress, identity conflict, role confusion, relationship stress, and hormone changes. It's like that perfect storm. So that's affecting men too.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, the moms are gonna hate this. They love that they can claim the hormone changes.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  I talked to a perinatal psychologist and we actually talked about this exact thing. She said she's gotten a lot of pushback because she's tried to get postpartum depression in men more recognized and some of the advocacy groups are like, can't moms just have this one thing?

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  And she's like, yes, but also if men are struggling, that's not great for mom either.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 40:09Dax Shepard?

  No, it's helping moms to understand dads.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's important.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:13Dax Shepard?

  Okay, again, this is very anecdotal, but this is what I've observed. I've seen a lot of people trying to get sober who tell themselves, I'm gonna get sober when I have a child. And then you watch them, and I've watched addiction ramp up, not decrease, in a very unmanageable way as that date approaches. It's over then, so cram it in now. And I'll even admit that during the first pregnancy, there is a new finality on the table that is very unique. I can't undad. It's permanent.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:50Dax Shepard?

  And I think that creates some angst and some fear. And you feel like, oh shit, truly now I'm an adult. I see a lot of antsy behavior in expecting fathers.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like getting a face tattoo.

• 41:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  But even that, you could get removed. It's maybe the only permanent thing.

• 41:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're gonna be a dad for the rest of your life, no matter what now. You might not be a husband for the rest of your life.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  Whether you show up or not, maybe you don't raise them or whatever, but you've created.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  But that kid will exist. Yeah. I think it's terrifying to a lot of men.

• 41:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's quite a ride.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  And women, yeah.

• 41:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, everyone.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Scary.

• 41:25Dax Shepard?

  Okay, how do dads experience childbirth?

• 41:28Speaker 02

  It's interesting because if you think about it, men have not been present at childbirth for most of our human history. Childbirth has been this participatory experience where human women need a lot of help, but it hasn't typically been that the helpers have been men. And so we are kind of doing this experiment in just this last like 150 years, right? Where you have male. As part of the birthing experience, either as doctors or as fathers. And stereotypically, men were kept out of.

• 42:01Dax Shepard?

  Oh, they would tell you, don't go in there.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:03Dax Shepard?

  Like, it's better for your marriage if you don't see that.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 42:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, in the 50s.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, in the 50s, and you see the dad is handing out cigars, right? In the waiting room, he meets the baby once it's been washed.

• 42:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and her makeup's on.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah, she's brushed her hair.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:19Speaker 02

  Seeing birth, I think, really rocks a lot of dads' worlds, right? It's like, both in, I think, really good ways and also in ways that can be hard. Because it's this powerful experience, there's nothing like it. It can be scary for mom, it can be scary for dad, things can go wrong. Things can also go beautifully well, so there's just a lot of variability.

• 42:41Dax Shepard?

  It's a very heightened experience. And increasingly, people have emergency C-sections, which is the way it happens, certainly in LA. It's like, almost everyone you meet with children our age, they have the same story. It's like, I was in labor for 14 hours, the heart rate crashed, emergency. So, that was my experience, right? I'm not only seeing that, I'm also seeing my wife get operated on. I saw my wife opened up and her organs being moved, and it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:06Dax Shepard?

  This is terrifying. I'd say the beauty of it, and I just want to flag, I'm just gonna tell my real experience. I'm really paranoid it's gonna sound like virtue signaling, like I'm an ideal. I don't want that to be, I'm just gonna tell you the truth.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:19Dax Shepard?

  The amount of respect and admiration you have for your wife when you see what they go through, in my opinion, is not to be missed. You go, whoa, whoa, whoa. Well, first of all, you might have the moment I had, which is like, you're so afraid you're gonna lose her. So that's its own experience. And then to see what they go through, you're gonna minimally be grateful to that person for the rest of your life, because they went through that for this thing you love. It's very powerful.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is very powerful. My first birth was pretty straightforward, but the second one, I lost a lot of blood, it got complicated.

• 43:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  And my husband was terrified. And I still hold that against our son, you know, every so often.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  Clean your room.

• 44:03Dax Shepard?

  If he was a Nobel Peace Prize, you can go like, okay, you're now even.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 44:06Dax Shepard?

  You're just now even. You're out of the hole.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Yes, you've made up the debt.

• 44:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so once the baby's there, dad's brain changes.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  We, in our lab, scanned men whose partner was midway through pregnancy. We then scanned the men again about six months after birth. And we found that men's brains were losing gray matter volume, which is probably reflecting a process of streamlining and pruning and becoming more efficient.

• 44:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it sounds bad. It's kind of counterintuitive. Because mom's brain shrinks too. That's a little more well documented. And you think, oh, my brain shrinks. Well, it's like, no, but it weirdly is working more efficiently now.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Exactly. And the brain shrinks at other windows in the lifespan too. So in early childhood, we're in this kind of stage of lots of exploration and tons of inputs. And then as the child kind of gets ready for school age, the brain is actually losing gray matter volume. And it's becoming more streamlined and kind of cannibalized along certain pathways.

• 45:02Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  So it reflects a process of learning. It's like you're consolidating.

• 45:06Dax Shepard?

  It's almost like if you think about refining a product, an engineer, one of their main tasks is like, which of these components is redundant I can get rid of? Your whole goal is to keep getting it smaller and smaller and smaller. And I guess that's what's happening in your brain.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. You want like an efficient brain. And the parts of the brain that seem to shrink are the social cognition regions, which are linked with empathy, responsive caregiving. So that sort of supports the theory that it's not like a deficit model. Something isn't getting taken away, but it's rather this adaptive plasticity.

• 45:40Dax Shepard?

  You presumably have sample groups where it's like there's varying levels of participation. Are you seeing more shrinkage and increased participation? What's happening there?

• 45:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So as men are spending more time with babies, we see more gray matter volume decrease. So it was the men in our study who said they wanted to take more time off after birth. They were spending more day to day time with infants. They told us they enjoyed interacting more with infants. They had stronger bonding with the babies even before birth. And then they had stronger bonding after birth. Those were the dads that seemed to show the greatest changes, like the greatest reductions in gray matter volume. So those dads looked the most like... Previous studies that have focused on moms transitioning to parenthood. As men engage in parenthood, they're kind of building this parenting brain.

• 46:32Dax Shepard?

  I just love how flexible the human is.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  I know.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:36Dax Shepard?

  It's really wild. And if he doesn't do that, his brain will be perfectly set up to do whatever occupation he's doing.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  We often think of the brain as like this fixed organ, but it is reshaped by our social experiences. And parenthood is one example of a window of plasticity where we want a brain that can mold itself to serve the functions of a parent.

• 47:00Dax Shepard?

  You have this incredibly new and novel experience we're all having.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  It kind of goes against this idea that women are natural nurturers. That's why I think, you say we debate, but I'm saying this. I think anyone can be a nurturer, not just a woman.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  And that's exactly one of the reasons I wanted to write this book, right? Because we sort of assume like women are built to kind of parent instinctively. And it's really the opposite. It's as we engage in parenting, we learn and then we sort of build a neurobiology that supports that.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, humans are built to nurture.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  We all have this sort of parenting brain that's ready to go when we are ready to deploy it.

• 47:41Dax Shepard?

  What happens to dad's hormones once baby has arrived? It's a continuation of that lowered testosterone and stuff?

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:48Dax Shepard?

  And you have a beef with oxytocin, yeah? Will you lay out your beef with oxytocin?

• 47:53Speaker 02

  I love it and I hate it.

• 47:54Dax Shepard?

  Okay, tell us.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  And it's because the research literature is a mess on oxytocin because it's super hard to sample it well. So you've probably heard it's the cuddle hormone, it's the love hormone.

• 48:04Dax Shepard?

  Women get a dump of it after an orgasm.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  If you hug for 20 seconds, you get a release.

• 48:09Dax Shepard?

  A little blast.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, massage. And all of that has a grain of truth, but it's hard to sample it because by the time it gets to your bloodstream, it's already moved on, like it's an organ that's active in the brain. So if you really want to sample it accurately, you need to take cerebral spinal fluid, which, you know, not a great idea.

• 48:26Dax Shepard?

  No one's signing up for it.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  No one wants to come into the lab and do a spinal tap. It's hard to sample it accurately and then the way that you. Say it in the lab, this gets kinda in the weeds, but there are different ways to look at it. And those ways don't always track well with each other.

• 48:40Dax Shepard?

  I think another fair way to also look at it is we really have only diagnosed, I don't know, six neurotransmitters. Like, we only have a chemistry set of five, six hormones. And we have behavior that's in the tens of billions of permutations. So at best, you're looking at some ratio of many different hormones acting in concert to produce an outcome, right?

• 49:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:03Dax Shepard?

  We're so attracted to a singular cause, we'll go, boom, that's it, dopamine, it's causing all this. Well, it's like in conjunction with a lot of things, right?

• 49:12Speaker 02

  Exactly. We are filled with all these different inputs. And we sort of glorify oxytocin. Or I often hear as a cortisol researcher, people say, my cortisol is too high. I have to treat my cortisol. It's like, no, you want high cortisol in certain contexts. And I think this is true with testosterone, too. You want to be flexible. You wanna have a biology that can adapt to your context. And so there's no such thing as overly high this or overly low that. It's like, how flexible are you?

• 49:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think what they mean is that this system has been hijacked, which does happen all the time. And your cortisol levels are responding as if you're being chased by a lion, but you have a deadline due. You know, there's some hijacking of the system.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, because we live in these complex worlds that don't reflect what we need to survive. When I teach this to my undergrads, I always say, if I'm having a fight or flight response because I'm stuck in traffic, what am I gonna do? Like, run across the freeway? Not adaptive. So it's like having all the blood go to my large muscles is not helping.

• 50:22Dax Shepard?

  You hit your brake pedal extra hard.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it makes me yell at the other drivers, but that's not super adaptive either.

• 50:28Dax Shepard?

  Right. But it's like, the cortisol's not the problem. It's the situation that hijacked the cortisol response.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  Right. It's our interpretation.

• 50:36Dax Shepard?

  That's what's happening to dad's cortisol once the baby's arrived.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  So the cortisol literature, also a bit of a mixed bag. Some studies find higher cortisol in new dads. Some studies find lower cortisol. It's very situational. But we do know, and I found this in my lab, that hormones like cortisol, prolactin, and testosterone track within couples. So it may be that dads are kind of in training with a pregnant partner or with a new mom to sort of help jumpstart their own process of whether it's neurobiological remodeling or behavioral repertoire. It's like there's something about proximity to the partner.

• 51:16Dax Shepard?

  There's a mirroring, right?

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:18Dax Shepard?

  Dads' and moms' hormones are fluctuating, if not at the same levels, in the same pattern-ish.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Exactly. So there's like a synchrony within cohabiting couples.

• 51:28Dax Shepard?

  Which is dangerous and beneficial.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  Right. And actually, I've found that when cortisol patterns get too strongly linked, that's a risk factor that makes couples report more dissatisfaction.

• 51:40Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes, yes. Someone should be resetting their cortisol at all times, probably.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, you need to be balancing.

• 51:48Dax Shepard?

  I feel very blessed in that we read this. So we got this book, Brain Rules for Babies, in anticipation of our first child arriving. And in maybe the introduction, it says quite starkly, I'll forget the number, but it was either 60 or 70%. A child will make 60 or 70% of relationships worse. That is the data, right?

• 52:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:09Dax Shepard?

  And I was like, just helpful to know. Going into this, this isn't going to make us happier with one another, per se. Odds are, it's going to make us less satisfied with our relationship. So like, gotta be extra aware of that high probability. So let's talk about what you call the parenting crisis.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  I often say to people, like, if you think that having a baby will save your relationship, bad idea, right? If anything, it's going to make it harder.

• 52:35Dax Shepard?

  It's going to shine a magnifying glass.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Exactly. This was true for my husband and I. Like, you go from being fun time friends who can go catch a movie or go out to eat to like, you're running a small business and your product is the care and feeding of your baby.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Is the most important product of all time.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Right? But you have to strategize. And trade off and in the middle of the night, maybe neither of you feels like getting up. There is so much more of a breeding ground for conflict. When you're both tired, you're both kind of figuring out these new identities. You don't really have the same opportunities for fun. So it is a real challenge for a lot of couples.

• 53:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I would even add too, it's like the general pattern, there's lots of exceptions, but also you've probably chosen to have a child at the moment where you felt most stable and kind of financially sorted and all these other things you were waiting to gel before you commit to that. So it's like, you're probably going from the high watermark of the relationship. For Kristin and I, it was like, oh, we're starting to travel a lot financially, we're good. So it's gonna be a huge swing.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you're like, how can I screw this up?

• 53:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, let's see if you can fuck this whole thing up.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  This is like just when my husband and I got to a place where our kids were older and could take care of themselves. We started getting pets.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  Why do we have more things to take care of?

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Have there been any studies, this would be so interesting, studies of couples where the father is not the biological dad? Do they still experience all these hormonal changes and things like that?

• 54:11Speaker 02

  Totally, yeah. So I talk about, there's one study where they looked at adoptive parents and it was gay male couples who had adopted a baby. And then they compared them to heterosexual couples.

• 54:24Dax Shepard?

  With adopted children?

• 54:25Speaker 02

  I think they were all biological parents.

• 54:27Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, you had this adoptive sample. And they had in the heterosexual couples, like a primary caregiver and a secondary caregiver. I think they basically treated mom as primary dad as secondary. And then in the gay male couples, they said, who's the primary caregiver? Who's the secondary caregiver? And what was cool was that the primary caregiver gay male dads looked just like moms. If you looked at their brain responses to baby. And the secondary caregiver dads looked like heterosexual.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  So it kind of shows you how, again, adaptable the brain can be, right? That men can build these primary caregiver brains.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:07Dax Shepard?

  Part of this crisis in you said is like you have this whole new list of chores. So when you're observing outcomes, is this crisis less or more when things are split more equitably?

• 55:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it seems like couples fare better when they have a more egalitarian balance. But what's interesting is that parents are pretty bad predictors of what that's gonna look like. We did a study where we brought couples into the lab. These were the couples in our longitudinal sample. And we said, what's your plan for splitting up baby care? We gave them a worksheet. We asked them to sort of estimate on a scale for each of 10 different baby care tasks. And then we brought them back six months after birth and said, well, who's doing what? And in every case, they had overestimated how much dad was gonna do before birth.

• 56:00Dax Shepard?

  And my guess too, did they even agree about how much mom and dad were doing when asked six months later?

• 56:05Speaker 02

  Dad thought that he was gonna do more. And then after birth, he thought that he was doing more.

• 56:10Dax Shepard?

  That's right, yeah.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  So dads are sort of estimating a higher contribution at both time points. But the couple was also just overestimating how much of an even split they were gonna achieve.

• 56:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so this is tricky, and I think it's like it's so generational, right? So when I compare my parenting to my father's, I mean, A, he split when I was three. But even when he was there for my brother up till eight, I'm doing a thousand X of what he did. It's really hard to quantify what's happening. There are these markers that seemed obvious, like my goals were like, I wanna do half the feedings. So at night, we both have to wake up four times. I wanna do two of those diapers. I was hell bent on every other one. I'm gonna do it. There's some aspect, the kids do go to mom. There is something primitive going on that needs to be acknowledged, even though I'm very progressive and I want all this to happen.

• 57:05Dax Shepard?

  There's some realities to once you have a kid. It's like, we were both present nonstop, but in the car, Lincoln would be like, mama. Yes, honey, mama. Yeah, hon, mama. She just loves saying mama over and over again. There is a pull. On mom, even if all the chores are split evenly.

• 57:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:21Dax Shepard?

  There's an emotional drain that is really hard to right-size.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  Yes, and I think it's hard to optimize a balance ahead of time. We were not surprised, actually, that moms ended up doing more after birth because there are a lot of reasons for that. If she's breastfeeding, the baby gets more comfortable with her early on. Moms also have this head start of pregnancy to kind of develop that bond. And moms may even just have more time off from work. And so moms themselves may want to be the primary parent. It doesn't necessarily mean that there's something wrong. But we did find that the more dads were doing, the happier they actually were with parenting. So dads who were participating more had lower parenting stress

• 58:09Speaker 02

  and moms had better relationship satisfaction.

• 58:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. This is where I'll say that this will go against any fear I have of virtue signaling. I reverse engineered selfishly why I wanted to do, in my mind, half. I didn't do half. I'm sure I didn't do half. And I'm sure I overestimated what I did. And I'm sure she has a better account of what I did. But my reasoning was, I'm very opinionated. I care a lot about what decisions we make about the school and the sleep schedule and all the stuff. I can't sit idly by and just have my partner make all those decisions. It felt very important. And I knew I needed to earn my seat at the table. I'm like, there's no way I can blow in at night and kiss them goodnight and then tell them what approach I think we need to use because she'll go bullshit. You don't even know them.

• 58:56Dax Shepard?

  You don't know what they're like on their meltdown over this. And so I just selfishly very much wanted to make decisions together. And I just knew you don't get that right if you're sitting it out. So that would be my call to dads. It's like, if you want to say in this, you got to fucking earn the say.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think a lot of men increasingly, because you flagged a really important thing when you said you're doing so much more than your dad did or than your grandfather did. Contemporary men are doing way more hands-on childcare than men. Previous generations in the US. And I think men themselves, if you say, what are the most meaningful things you do in your life? Being a parent is up there and it's a similar number of men will rate that as their highest priority as women.

• 59:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  So it's also like, not only do men want to be involved, it's like, there's a value.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  A pride, yeah.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:48Dax Shepard?

  I know we live in LA and we send our kids to a charter school that's pretty progressive, but, and I might be mis-evaluating it, but I do drop off every morning. And if it's not 50/50, it's probably 30/70. There's dads everywhere. When I was a kid in elementary school, I never saw a child's dad once in my life. You know, unless mom was in the hospital or something. So relative, I can a little bit understand why guys of this generation are overestimating our outputs. It's like, it's so drastically different.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Well, women are also working so much more that you have to decide who's taking the kid to school. It's not a given, but my parents both worked, so it was a split. Whoever could do it often was my dad because she also was gone. So I think as women have become much more in a breadwinner position, it's helped with a lot of this egalitarian nature of parenting.

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  The funniest thing happened when I was home in Georgia. I was with all my friends, they all have kids.

• 1:00:44Dax Shepard?

  Last weekend.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, last weekend. All the kids were running around and these two, their dad and their mom were sitting next to each other. They came up to the table. They said, "Mom, can dad take us to the grocery store?" And I started laughing so hard. And even he said, "Why aren't you just asking me?" He was sitting right next to her. It was so funny. That was the instinct, was to ask mom's permission. It just made me really laugh.

• 1:01:11Speaker 02

  That's the default, yeah, a lot of the time.

• 1:01:13Dax Shepard?

  Well, also, it might be game theory, right? So they know mom says yes more than dad. If they ask dad to go to the store, he's gonna say no. But if they ask mom, they're used to getting a yes, so maybe mom will be able to get dad to say yes. There's a lot of

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  It's smart.

• 1:01:27Dax Shepard?

  strategy going on.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  Maybe if they were separated, but the fact that they were right next to each other, it was such a stark, like, clearly that's the person to ask.

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:37Dax Shepard?

  But in our house, we have domains, right? There's stuff, it's no problem for me to say no to. There's stuff for her that's no problem to say no. And they just know, if they want this thing, they go to me. If they want that thing, they go to her.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're smart.

• 1:01:47Dax Shepard?

  They're clever little monkeys.

• 1:01:48Speaker 02

  They know who to ask. Yeah, my kids know who to ask for takeout. My husband is much more likely to order.

• 1:01:53Dax Shepard?

  Are there ideal roles for dad in regards to parenting? I'm thinking about like play and sports. And I know for my girls, like wrestling, they just love to wrestle me. Mom did not want to fucking wrestle. I love to wrestle. Are there roles that we are more geared to take on?

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, the kind of roughhousing parent, the play parent. So dads do a lot of what's called proprioceptive touch, which is like moving babies around in space, right? If we're moving a child around, like picking them up, throwing them up in the air, chasing them, tickling them. And so there's a lot of evidence that dads just gravitate to that style of play and that that style of play is really rewarding for kids. Kids seek it out, they benefit from it. It builds their confidence, it builds their risk tolerance.

• 1:02:45Dax Shepard?

  Their balance, their agility.

• 1:02:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think the sports dad is kind of a continuation of that. It's a domain that a lot of dads feel comfortable kind of having mastery of.

• 1:02:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think we always get into these murky waters of what we're supposed to be doing versus what kind of yields better outcomes. Are there domains that are best served by mom or dad? I mean, play is one of them, but can you think of others?

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think even with play, like I'm always careful to not be too gender essentialist, right? Because there are totally moms that love to wrestle and are physical. And there are totally dads that are the more cerebral parent or the more affectionate parent. But I think what works best for kids is when each parent has their own relationship and the kid gets exposed to different styles, right? You can have a really secure attachment to more than one parent. And the research suggests that dads and moms don't actually have dramatically different levels of attachment to their kids. So it's healthy for kids to realize there are safe, secure caregivers that I can depend on. And if this person isn't available, I can go to this person.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  Sometimes that's a childcare provider. Sometimes that's mom or a grandparent or a dad. Different people have their own style. And kids, again, learn to be adaptable, they learn to be flexible.

• 1:04:06Dax Shepard?

  But there's no dead end streets, or are there? And we're just afraid to admit that.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  Like, what would a dead end street be?

• 1:04:13Dax Shepard?

  I don't know. I just think of this imperative someone said, and it's just proven to be true, which is like, you should not teach your kids to do stuff. If you want to take them skiing, bring in an outsider. They don't do well listening to you for that kind of thing. Or if you want to teach them piano lessons, get someone else that doesn't have all this murky. So I just wonder if we're trying to encourage men or women to do things that like, it's not really gonna bear the outcome we want.

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do think because we don't have the collective network of caregivers that maybe we evolved to have, a lot of pressure is on mom and dad, the nuclear family. And they're trying to play all roles in a kid's life. And I think as to whether parents can be good teachers, I know for my kids, definitely not.

• 1:04:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  They don't want to listen to me. My son is in a phase where he wants to make hip hop beats all day long. My husband is a music producer. Oh, wow. And you'd think. Yeah, exactly. It's like, you know, dad does this for a living. He could advise on your beats. Like, no interest. I think it's good for kids to have their own things.

• 1:05:17Dax Shepard?

  Again, a brand new concept. With the exception of when someone's partner died, the stepparent is like an entirely new construct.

• 1:05:31Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:05:37Dax 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? Which is a fair question. 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.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  Sleep mode is genius.

• 1:06:22Dax 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.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

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

• 1:06:42Dax Shepard?

  Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. We get support from Skims. So Monica just informed me that she's a girl's girl and I nodded like I knew exactly what that meant.

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the girls who get it, they get it.

• 1:07:02Dax Shepard?

  Okay, but for those of us who are clearly not girls, walk me through it.

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  Well, you know how much I love my Skims fleece joggers because the plush fleece is so soft, it's cozy, it's really comfortable without feeling too heavy. Well, I went to friend them and she would not stop talking about how comfy they were. She almost didn't give them back to me, which was upsetting, but I'm a girl's girl, so I let her have it.

• 1:07:23Dax Shepard?

  Great, great, great.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  So the sleep sets are awesome because they are very soft and comfortable, but they're cute. If I'm in my sleep set, I feel fine about going down the street to pick up my food. I'm still looking cute, but I'm comfy and I'm cozy.

• 1:07:37Dax Shepard?

  Roger.

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  A really fun thing to do is if you're going on vacation with your girlfriends, to get matching Skims pajamas. I've done this with Callie and it is so fun. First of all, the pics are so cute, but also it's just fun and friendship.

• 1:07:51Dax Shepard?

  So a girl's girl is looking out for your friends with better loungewear. I get it. Am I one of your girls now?

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  You are. You and the other girlies can 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 our show in the dropdown menu that follows.

• 1:08:10Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:08:36Speaker 04

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• 1:09:15Speaker 04

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• 1:09:33Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:10:17Dax Shepard?

  Explore the new Peloton Tread Flex at onepeloton.com.

• 1:10:28Dax Shepard?

  You yourself had a kind of a fun arc with Dave that I'd like to hear about. And tell me what the role of a stepparent is, a father. I've had only bad, well, the last one was good, but I've had really bad experiences.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I had a sort of bad experience that became good. I did not want my parents to get divorced. I blamed my stepfather. And we had a really combative relationship when I was a teenager. Lots of fighting, tears, yelling. And he was a really good cook. So that was actually one thing that helped me forge a connection with him. But beyond that, if you had asked me when I was like a 14 year old, I would have said my stepdad sucks. And it was really only as I got older that I appreciated. He was a poet, he was a writer, he was a translator, he was an English professor

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  at Oberlin, where I grew up, and was this like source of wisdom. He loved to travel.

• 1:11:31Dax Shepard?

  It sounds like the antithesis of your father, who's a surgeon in many ways.

• 1:11:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, different vibes. And I think I got a lot from both of those relationships. When I became an academic, it was partially because I had seen David. I mean, basically, his job just seemed fun. He could come home early after teaching a class and play Nintendo baseball. And he just seemed like he had a really chill job. And my parents were always working. So I was like, well, obviously being a professor is great. If that's my plan.

• 1:12:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think you were right.

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  I think I was. How little did I know how hard it would actually be to get there. But now it's great. But he really inspired me. I think I learned a lot from him.

• 1:12:11Dax Shepard?

  It's a tough role.

• 1:12:13Speaker 02

  It's totally hard. You both don't want to supplant the parent, but then also you are acting as a parent. So it's just a breeding ground.

• 1:12:23Dax Shepard?

  You're like a perpetual substitute teacher.

• 1:12:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:12:26Dax Shepard?

  But the rewards for stepfathers, do we observe those in the same way we see the biological fathers?

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think our framing around. Stepparenting has been so negative that people see the bad stepfather, the bad stepmother, and even in fairy tales, like the evil stepmother. And if you look at the research, a lot of kids who grow up with stepparents say this relationship is really valuable. And so to whatever extent a real bond can form, it can serve a lot of the same positive functions that a biological parent bond can form, right? Like, we don't need to be biologically related to a kid in order to take care of a kid. That kind of goes with the whole allo parenting idea. We evolved to sort of know how to take care of each other. And that could be through adoption, through stepparenting, or through biological parenthood.

• 1:13:17Dax Shepard?

  Tell me how fatherhood would best be seen as a public good. How would we all benefit from that?

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  The more we can kind of empower men to participate fully in care, the more we can value care as something that isn't just the domain of one gender. That requires some investment. I think it requires really smart policy. And it requires kind of cultural change, right? To kind of see men as natural caregivers. I think it's interesting, we're living in this era where it feels like there's a resurgence of neo-traditional gender roles. The trad wife and the sort of breadwinner male. To me, that runs a little counter to our evolutionary history, which is about flexibility and not about getting locked in to this is the job of moms and this is the job of dads.

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  So I really think that if we were a society that really valued the welfare of young kids, we would be a society that champions fathers. Not to the exclusion of mothers, but fathers are really important for mothers' well-being, too. And we would be a society that really puts its resources into how do we nurture the next generation of humans?

• 1:14:32Dax Shepard?

  Do we have any proof of concept elsewhere that we can say this is a worthy investment? That it yields some kind of a result we all want or benefit from?

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:14:42Dax Shepard?

  Because like, you're an employer and you don't have kids, you don't care. About kids and you're thinking about kids. It's like, I don't want to, you know, I can see that being a tough sell unless we have some data that would say somehow the whole tide lifts. But yeah, what do we have to demonstrate?

• 1:14:55Speaker 02

  The research is finding that when companies have parental leave, paternity leave, it's good for retention. It's good for employee well being. It's actually unfortunate. Just in the last few weeks, there have been some headlines that some big companies are actually cutting their parental leave programs. Sort of a cost cutting thing, but it's really good for worker loyalty and for worker productivity. And then we have these international models where we have more generous leaves in other countries. And you do see that as dads are getting more access to federally funded, paid paternity leave. They're getting more involved. It's better for the couple relationship. It's better for mom's health outcomes. It's better for the kid's health outcomes and it's better for the father himself.

• 1:15:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So let's talk about the fun benefits, the kind of long term impact that fathering has on men.

• 1:15:46Speaker 02

  In the short term, right? You're losing gray matter volume. Your hormones are changing. It's this set of challenges. In the long term, the evidence is that becoming a parent is neuroprotective. So work on both fathers and mothers finds that if you look at how the brain is aging, you have markers of a younger looking brain when you have children. And so these are big scan studies that look at thousands of people in later life. And they find you can use like a computer machine learning algorithm to basically gauge the age of a brain. And people's brains look younger relative to chronological age if they are parents.

• 1:16:26Speaker 02

  And you see that for fathers as well as for mothers, which tells me it's not just a pregnancy hormone thing. It's about caregiving. It's about social integration. And we also know from longitudinal work that the quality of a man's relationships is what's really important for his health and well being in late life.

• 1:16:45Dax Shepard?

  And men tend to be lonely.

• 1:16:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:16:48Dax Shepard?

  Right?

• 1:16:48Speaker 02

  Men are at risk for social isolation, which we know is a factor in all cause mortality.

• 1:16:53Dax Shepard?

  Worse than smoking.

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  Yep. It is super bad for you. And we know this from the longest running longitudinal study, which was done at Harvard. They recruited men who were undergrads and a comparison sample of inner-city Boston teens. They followed them through the ends of their lives and are now following their grandkids. So this is like a hundred-year study.

• 1:17:15Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  And they found that more than your income, your job prestige, it was the quality of your relationships with people close to you that predicted a longer, healthier life. So the more I think we can encourage men to invest in relationships, the more we can benefit their health. We have this manosphere idea that men need to be making lots of money, dating lots of women.

• 1:17:41Dax Shepard?

  Driving lots of Lamborghinis.

• 1:17:42Speaker 02

  Lots of Lamborghinis. That is not really what's good for men.

• 1:17:48Speaker 01

  Or anyone.

• 1:17:49Speaker 02

  Or anyone, or for society.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:51Dax Shepard?

  Well, let me just try it out before we decide.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  I've tried it.

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  I guess it's worth a shot.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  I'm trying it.

• 1:17:57Speaker 02

  How many Lamborghinis can you drive?

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 1:18:00Dax Shepard?

  One study that came out that made headlines last year that thrilled me to no end was this impact on men having daughters specifically. Are you aware of this one? It's cumulative as well. And so on average, it was like 1.7 years longer a man lives per daughter. And there doesn't seem to be an end to that. So if the man has five daughters, he's looking at like eight and a half years extra life.

• 1:18:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I think it's that social connection. Do you have a support system in later life? Do you feel like you're part of a community? And we know that that is so important for human health.

• 1:18:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. This would definitely be kind of more of a psychological analysis of it. But I think...

• 1:18:46Dax Shepard?

  Men interacting with little girls allows them to embrace a whole side of themselves that has been excluded to them.

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:58Dax Shepard?

  For lack of a better word, the sweetness of the exchange has to be restorative. It's just such a beautiful feeling. I could cry thinking about like just what my little girls give me, what they allow me to experience. I don't know where else I go get that.

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  Right, we don't really let men have a lot of variability in how they express themselves. We have very strong opinions culturally about what makes a man masculine. And dressing up like a princess and doing a tea party usually is not part of that.

• 1:19:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  But I think a lot of men enjoy playing with different sides of themselves.

• 1:19:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:37Speaker 02

  And that's totally healthy and fun.

• 1:19:40Dax Shepard?

  I also think when you have a son and you're a man in this country in 2026, you still have this notion like, I've got to toughen this kid up, right? Like, that's my role here is to present him to the world capable of taking on any challengers. That's not the funnest way to parent, like making a kid tough and then feel good. No one enjoys it. Whereas you don't walk in with that ridiculous notion with your daughter. I have to make them both savvy and aware of the world, but I don't think they need to punch other guys out at the bar at any point, you know?

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  Let's hope not.

• 1:20:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, or tell a coworker to fuck up, like all these things we think we have to pass on to men that we don't necessarily think we have to pass on to girls.

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  Right, like we're tough on our sons in a way that we're not.

• 1:20:23Dax Shepard?

  I hate watching. It's so cyclical, it's crazy. You just gotta go to a playground and watch how parents handle boys versus girls. It's like a lot more grabbing them by the arm. We're still pretty rough on boys.

• 1:20:34Speaker 02

  Boys need a lot of love and care and nurturing.

• 1:20:37Dax Shepard?

  Maybe the most.

• 1:20:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe the most.

• 1:20:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, their instinct is to smash everything with a stick. You gotta be like extra on them to show them a different way. I just want to finish on this because I read your New York Times article that I really, really liked. It was just kind of a general call. To ignore your kids to some degree. So just tell us a little bit about what's happening and what we could adopt maybe from hunting and gathering.

• 1:21:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. And the idea for that op ed came actually from research for the Dad Brain book.

• 1:21:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh, did?

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  Which was that I was interviewing this guy Barry Hewlett, who is the anthropologist that studies the hunter gatherer fathers. And he was just telling me about childhood in this society. The model of parenting is just different because it's about learning less through direct instruction, like you're in a classroom, and more about modeling. Like, you're following adults around and you're emulating what they do. And I think we've got it totally backwards in contemporary society, where we parents follow our kids around and create our lives that are molded around their interests. We're taking our kids to tons of activities. We're putting our kids in special classes. Kids actually aren't getting the opportunity to watch adults work.

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  Our jobs are so atomized and hard for kids to grasp because they're happening on screens that kids aren't moving around the adult world very often with this sense of here's what I can imitate and what I can be. So my argument was that parents should just do boring things with kids because actually it's good for kids to learn how to be patient and watch other people. And maybe that means taking them on social calls or to the gym or to the bank. I remember going to the hardware store with my parents as a kid, being bored out of my mind.

• 1:22:24Speaker 01

  Oh, I was so miserable.

• 1:22:25Dax Shepard?

  Talking to a neighbor, you'd be stuck with your mom, talking with a neighbor.

• 1:22:28Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 1:22:29Dax Shepard?

  When is this gonna end?

• 1:22:30Speaker 02

  Yes, like having tea with the 90-year-old woman down the street, having to sit there. That's how you learn how to talk to other people, how to take turns in a conversation. And so if everything is crafted around the kid.

• 1:22:45Dax Shepard?

  How are you not gonna produce a narcissist? If you are the center of the world, literally, and then you leave the house and you find out very abruptly, oh, no, no, you're not the center of the world, you have to join other people's worlds.

• 1:22:57Speaker 02

  Right. Like, it's actually better for kids to learn how to... Go along with a group, how to be an observer, how to integrate yourself. And I think we sort of do try to create these kids who just, the whole universe is revolving around them. And it's not normal in the grand scope of human history.

• 1:23:18Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  And despite being a parent who, as I wrote in that op ed, thinks that parents should let their kids chill out, I somehow have gotten sucked into the team, sports, baseball, club team.

• 1:23:28Dax Shepard?

  Well, if they love it, they love it. That's fine.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  And it's like, my husband's thing, he loves it. He plays baseball. He's a coach.

• 1:23:35Dax Shepard?

  I got no problem with someone whose kid desires to do something and you support that. That's not my issue at all. My issue is the kid doesn't like soccer. Half the people there, I see it. When our kids were in soccer, ours hated it. And then half the other kids hated it. I'm like, what are we all doing? Why are we insisting that this is something that has to be done? No one here is enjoying this, except for the ones that are into it.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. I know, but then that becomes a finish what you start. I mean, there's so many layers to all of this.

• 1:24:02Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  I do think a lot of kids are like, I want to play soccer. Johnny's playing soccer. We're going to do it together. They start and they're like, I hate it. But I do see a value in, well, you're a part of this team and you got to see this so you don't ever have to do this again, but we're seeing it through. I understand that.

• 1:24:16Dax Shepard?

  That's how we handled it all? We just didn't come back for the second season?

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's fine. But it's like, team sports are real. They teach you things and they teach you that. You've committed to this.

• 1:24:24Dax Shepard?

  But we had a great expert on, it might have been a childhood psychologist, who was saying, it's also important to figure out what it is your kid likes about it. Cause you could not be diagnosing the right thing. Like, a lot of kids that like soccer, they like being outside or they like being with friends. It might not be soccer they like. You got to actually figure out what is the thing that they are craving. It might not be the obvious thing.

• 1:24:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. In another cultural context, that could just be them running wild with a band of kids.

• 1:24:53Dax Shepard?

  That's right. With some hammers and some nails, saws they shouldn't have.

• 1:24:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, machetes.

• 1:24:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I had access to all that stuff. Well, Darby, this has been delightful. This is a great book. I'm really glad you're studying this. I think to your point, the more we appreciate that.

• 1:25:12Dax Shepard?

  are designed to do this too. I think that'll help further an expectation that they should do it. Yeah, I can't see an outcome that's worse with dads being more and more involved in taking on more things and feeling like, no, they're designed to as well.

• 1:25:25Speaker 02

  I agree. I think dads can feel empowered that they actually do know what they're doing and can learn.

• 1:25:32Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so the book is called Dad Brain, The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men's Lives. Thank you so much for coming in and I look forward to reading all the work you do in the future.

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  Thanks. This was super fun.

• 1:25:47Dax Shepard?

  Hi there. This is Hermium Hermium. If you like that, you're gonna love the fact check. Ms. Monica.

• 1:25:54Dax Shepard?

  Cute shirt.

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  Thank you. I'm wearing one of our new merch items.

• 1:25:58Dax Shepard?

  It's very cute.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  It's so cute. It's like a butter, like a very light yellow.

• 1:26:03Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  And it has a really cute graphic.

• 1:26:06Dax Shepard?

  It's very eighties.

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it has like an eighties graphic and it's, it's, it fits really well. I really like the fit on it.

• 1:26:14Dax Shepard?

  It's got a nice, nice fit.

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  Kinda cropped. Not really, but just.

• 1:26:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think it's a little cropped.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  Shrunk in. Yeah.

• 1:26:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  It's very cute. Something crazy happened yesterday night.

• 1:26:24Dax Shepard?

  For both of us, you don't even know yet.

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 1:26:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, this is gonna be a, no, you go. Cause it's letting you know this, it got more eventful.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  Wow. Yeah, there was a huge crash.

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  From, I was, I was working, or yeah, I was, I was in my office doing some work and then there was this huge, I had made dinner, so it felt like this was coming from the kitchen.

• 1:26:51Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Um, and it was this enormous crash and.

• 1:26:57Dax Shepard?

  Did you think at any moment there had been a vehicle crash outside your house? No.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  No, it was definitely in my house.

• 1:27:04Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it just was so loud and then.

• 1:27:07Dax Shepard?

  Thunderous.

• 1:27:07Speaker 01

  Yes. And then I went out there. And I there's a full mirror in my bathroom like

• 1:27:15Dax Shepard?

  Size of the whole wall.

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  Size of the entire wall mirror completely crashed all over the ground.

• 1:27:20Dax Shepard?

  I didn't say it last night, but there's gotta be a couple hundred years of bad luck. I mean, that's a that's an enormous mirror. If one little mirror.

• 1:27:28Speaker 01

  Why would you say that? That's a crazy thing to say to me.

• 1:27:32Dax Shepard?

  I was looking, I was like, oh, there's so many broken shards. There's so much broken mirror.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that sucked.

• 1:27:40Dax Shepard?

  It's because, right, you had a sink.

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. A temporary sink.

• 1:27:44Dax Shepard?

  A temporary sink.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  I had a temporary sink in and they had taken it out yesterday to put in the new, the real sink. Prepare it for that like today or tomorrow or Monday or whatever. And that sink was.

• 1:27:59Dax Shepard?

  They underestimated how much that sink was holding up the mirror.

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  Okay, I have a really interesting pickle.

• 1:28:05Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 1:28:05Speaker 01

  I I have to go really quickly to sign something.

• 1:28:08Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:28:08Speaker 01

  Is that okay?

• 1:28:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  Or I won't put it.

• 1:28:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  I didn't have to sign it, actually.

• 1:28:14Dax Shepard?

  What, you didn't?

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  No. But I caught him.

• 1:28:17Dax Shepard?

  What was it?

• 1:28:18Speaker 01

  A DHL package.

• 1:28:20Dax Shepard?

  But what was in the packy?

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  Boots that I got from an au- the auction.

• 1:28:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. You you were involved in a boot auction?

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  Well, I went to Lakes Auction.

• 1:28:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, right, right, right.

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  And I won these boots. I just got delivered. And you normally have to sign for DHL.

• 1:28:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they are strict about that, but not in this case.

• 1:28:42Speaker 01

  Started running. He was already in his the van was on. He had to do this.

• 1:28:47Dax Shepard?

  You were waving your arms.

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:49Dax Shepard?

  You're like, I am here, I can sign.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  I did. He said, I left it at the door.

• 1:28:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so it's been delivered.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:54Dax Shepard?

  I don't want to interact with you. It's already delivered.

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:58Dax Shepard?

  Okay, back to your mirror.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:29:00Dax Shepard?

  You took it really well.

• 1:29:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I as I said, I'm I'm privileged.

• 1:29:05Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  I'm very privileged because I well, first I called or I texted my dad, Bill.

• 1:29:12Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  And my Uncle Joe. And I said, well.

• 1:29:17Speaker 01

  This just happened.

• 1:29:18Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  Um, think must have been doing more than anticipated. Exactly. And, uh, Bill called. He was just like, oh, my God. You know, he was, and he was very sorry and Joe, and same with Joe. Um, and I was just laughing.

• 1:29:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, good.

• 1:29:39Speaker 01

  It just really, but again, that is very privileged. I mean, at first I looked at it and I was like,

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  oh, what, how do I do that? How do I clean this up?

• 1:29:50Dax Shepard?

  Exactly. You know, you're, you're in the sweet spot of they just finished your house. So they're gonna respond. Yeah, they're finishing it.

• 1:29:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:58Dax Shepard?

  Where it gets dicey is like in one year if that mirror falls off, right? Or in three years, like at what point do these builders are no longer responsible? So, you know, in 15 years and that's, that's where my story takes place.

• 1:30:11Speaker 01

  Okay. So, yes, I thought, well, fuck, I wish I had a husband here who would deal with this.

• 1:30:19Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:30:20Speaker 01

  Um, but I don't. So I just told Joe, I was like, I'm just leaving it.

• 1:30:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna leave it. He said, yes, leave it. We'll take care of it tomorrow.

• 1:30:33Dax Shepard?

  Perfect.

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  Um, and so, yeah, that's extremely privileged. I had, I knew I really wasn't gonna have to deal with it. I of course am having to deal with it in other ways. I, now we need a new mirror. Now we need, you know, that's a whole annoying to do. He just texted me very sim.

• 1:30:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:30:50Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, it was just very startling.

• 1:30:55Dax Shepard?

  Ah.

• 1:30:56Speaker 01

  Very loud.

• 1:30:57Dax Shepard?

  Scary.

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  Very scary. Um.

• 1:31:01Dax Shepard?

  Thank God you weren't in there popping a zit.

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  Or, right, or even on the toilet. It, I mean, it was, it was.

• 1:31:07Dax Shepard?

  Glass was everywhere.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  Everywhere. And your child and her friends had come over like 20 minutes before that.

• 1:31:14Dax Shepard?

  They might've caused it with their energy.

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  They had crazy energy.

• 1:31:18Dax Shepard?

  Sleepover, three of them teenagers, they're fucking all got in these crazy outfits. They painted their whole face. And I so relate to this. This was me at the same. They just wanted to go out and make a little noise, you know, they wanted, they wanted to stir up the world.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Trouble, but really not, not really.

• 1:31:34Dax Shepard?

  Exactly. They're not ready to. Yeah. They got a response that they should get.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:38Dax Shepard?

  And then they're like, ah, these boys are crazy. I'm like, girls, look at yourself.

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:31:43Dax Shepard?

  What did you think?

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  What'd you think you were just gonna like?

• 1:31:45Dax Shepard?

  People were gonna just not notice.

• 1:31:47Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:31:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they all look like, um, Rainbow Bright or something.

• 1:31:50Speaker 01

  They looked nuts. Um, it was really cute and fun. They came over and I did think, oh my God, what if one of those kids was in the bathroom when that happened? And then I get sued.

• 1:32:00Dax Shepard?

  What if I sued you?

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, you sued me.

• 1:32:04Dax Shepard?

  But you took yours well. I was really impressed with how chill you were about it.

• 1:32:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:08Dax Shepard?

  I, um.

• 1:32:09Speaker 01

  Again, that's a privilege.

• 1:32:11Dax Shepard?

  It is privilege. In my journal this morning, I wrote, I'm dying under the weight of my possessions. Because we were in Nashville last weekend and I really went there because I had a boat lift installed in my dock so that I can get my boat out of the water. It doesn't get all gunk fucked up.

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:27Dax Shepard?

  They put it in, it's too shallow. Boat got stuck on the thing. Going to my bus to get something, the bus inverters have collapsed. This is huge. The inverters have stopped. All the batteries have now collapsed. That's a huge project and not cheap. Um, the whole weekend was like, I came to just fix one thing and I left with like eight things I had to fix.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so annoying.

• 1:32:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, there's, I'm not gonna bore you with the list, but while we were there, the sprinkler's fire suppression system in Kristen's office.

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:32:57Dax Shepard?

  Started leaking.

• 1:32:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:32:58Dax Shepard?

  And it's hardwood.

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:33:00Dax Shepard?

  In front of that.

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:33:02Dax Shepard?

  It warped all the wood, ran down the plaster wall, fucked that all up. It's all pushed out. They had to tear out all the wood. You know, it sucks.

• 1:33:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that sucks.

• 1:33:13Dax Shepard?

  And then it gives you this anxiety. It's like, I don't know, the fucking thing leaked that time. What? It's only a year old or two years old. What is it gonna leak again in two years? Well, we'll be out, you know, whatever. So I'm already like stressed to the max.

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:24Dax Shepard?

  Go to bed last night. I was up pretty late researching our guest today. 3am. Kristen, no, maybe Delta got sent upstairs.

• 1:33:33Dax Shepard?

  Dad, come downstairs. There's water leaking out of the ceiling at 3 a.m. Go down into the bedroom they're sleeping in. Sure enough, there's a fucking like 36 inch slice in the drywall on the ceiling and it's just leaking water out. I'm like, where the fuck is that water coming from? I like step outside, I'm looking, oh, my room's above it, but it's, is my bathroom? No, I think my dresser's above that. Pull a panel out of the ceiling, realize, oh, the air conditioning coil system is in there.

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:34:05Dax Shepard?

  It has sprung a leak and it's spraying water and it's 3:00 in the morning. And you're like, okay, how do I shut all this down? Like turning the air off, it's still not shutting off. Then I'm hitting the breaker and now the whole, all the air is off and it's still leaking and we've buckets under the thing. And it's 3:00 and I'm like, I gotta fucking wake up at 6:00 to drive Delta to school. And I got back in bed, I was like, listen, to dream to own a home.

• 1:34:34Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:34:34Dax Shepard?

  And it's also, it's stressful. By the time I laid down at 4:30 in the morning to go back to sleep, I was like, I'm gonna move into a one-bedroom apartment the second these girls are out of school and I'm gonna have no worries.

• 1:34:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:48Dax Shepard?

  But that's not true.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 1:34:49Dax Shepard?

  Cause I want all the upside. But sometimes when it rains, it pours.

• 1:34:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:55Dax Shepard?

  Two ceiling leaks.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:57Dax Shepard?

  In a week with massive damage.

• 1:35:00Speaker 01

  That sucks.

• 1:35:00Dax Shepard?

  I wouldn't feel bad for me. I have too much shit. That's what I was kind of saying this morning. I was like, yeah, you got, you have too much shit.

• 1:35:06Speaker 01

  I know. Yeah, it is, you know, I just, I so rarely feel like, oh, fuck, I wish, not even necessarily like, I wish I had a husband. I mean, that was the joke. That's a joke I made on Instagram, but like, I wish somebody else was here right now. I don't feel that all that often, but I did, in, in moments like that. Do wish somebody else was around.

• 1:35:29Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh. That's what it activates.

• 1:35:31Speaker 01

  I mean, a little, nothing crazy. I texted Jess, but he's, he would've come over, but he's in Texas.

• 1:35:37Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh. And also, what's he gonna do?

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  I know, but it's not about that.

• 1:35:40Dax Shepard?

  It's not about that.

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:41Dax Shepard?

  I'm back in my male way of thinking like, what can I fix?

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  Not about that. It's just about sharing. Sharing the experience.

• 1:35:48Dax Shepard?

  Okay, you ready for this? This was from commenter CB91207. MD here. The women, the reason women often have diarrhea when they are starting their periods is due to the release of pro-

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  Progesterone?

• 1:36:06Dax Shepard?

  No, prostaglandins.

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:36:09Dax Shepard?

  Which cause smooth muscle contraction in the uterus, but also cause smooth muscle in the intestines to contract.

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:36:20Dax Shepard?

  So we got an MD answering your belly issues every time you're on your period.

• 1:36:25Speaker 01

  Wow, then how come everyone doesn't have it? Not everyone has that.

• 1:36:28Dax Shepard?

  Maybe they're being secretive about it and they're too shy. Maybe they're embarrassed that they have bottom issues when they have their-

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  Wow. Okay, well, that's good.

• 1:36:39Dax Shepard?

  Thought you'd want that update. It's not you, it's the pro-

• 1:36:45Dax Shepard?

  That's-

• 1:36:45Speaker 01

  It's still me, though, you know?

• 1:36:47Dax Shepard?

  I mean, it's still happening to you, but it's nothing you're doing.

• 1:36:50Speaker 01

  It's still me who's gross. It's still me who's gonna poop in my car. I can't just be like, well, it's the prolactin.

• 1:36:58Dax Shepard?

  That's what I just tell people. Like, if you were in your car doing it and someone saw you, like, ew, great. You go, wait, it's the prolactin.

• 1:37:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, what?

• 1:37:05Dax Shepard?

  Like them.

• 1:37:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:07Dax Shepard?

  You judgmental prick.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  I think the first time it happened was also around that time. I do think it was sort of connected to my period.

• 1:37:13Dax Shepard?

  So you just wanna, I think you wanna be mindful of your calendar.

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:17Dax Shepard?

  For your flies and not do a lot of big cross-town appointments.

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  I have-

• 1:37:22Dax Shepard?

  Just try to, on those three days, just go like, I never am more than a- The PMS symptoms are for a full week?

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  Mine are.

• 1:37:31Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so for that week, we never, we never get more than a mile away from home.

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  No, I can't.

• 1:37:36Dax Shepard?

  You can't live like that?

• 1:37:37Speaker 01

  Can't live like that.

• 1:37:38Dax Shepard?

  Then put a trash bag in your car.

• 1:37:39Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 1:37:40Dax Shepard?

  Are you excited for summer? Kids are getting out of school, not mine, but many kids are out.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  Well, yeah.

• 1:37:46Dax Shepard?

  Lincoln got out, they're still in, yeah.

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  Um, I am so excited for summer. When I was, this morning, your child, as previously mentioned, was wrapping up her sleepover. It was so cute and they were playing outside, summertime for them. And Anna was there and I was like, man, I'm so jealous. I'm so jealous of them right now.

• 1:38:12Dax Shepard?

  But what specific?

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the, it's the level of carefree. You are never gonna have it again.

• 1:38:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Yeah, the kids know the ceiling's all fucked up, but they're not worried about that.

• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  They have nothing to worry about for two months.

• 1:38:27Dax Shepard?

  Well, you know what they do have to worry about? That'd be easy to like, under, to, to misremember how powerful it is. The amount of angst in preoccupation they have about who's going to whose birthday party and what rung of that ladder. Like, I got to drive everyone to dinner last, not everyone, I got to drive the three teens to dinner. And I was hearing them in the backseat. My favorite thing in the world is to drive them places with their friends, because they forget I'm there. And I, what just happened?

• 1:38:56Speaker 01

  My stomach roused.

• 1:38:56Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:38:57Speaker 01

  It wasn't a fart. Oh yeah, I sent you a picture of the mirror and you said, what happened? Did you finally fart? And I did laugh really hard. That was very funny. Okay, anyway, they were in your backseat.

• 1:39:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and just, you do forget the amount of anxiety that, that you were carrying about all the social pressure.

• 1:39:15Speaker 01

  Yes, that is true.

• 1:39:16Dax Shepard?

  That's at a peak. And, and you and I aren't sit, like, this just happened, right? You were like, oh, you're going to the Hanson's Memorial Day party? I'm like, oh, I wasn't invited. And you're like, I'm sure you were. And then we both, we both looked and we, we hadn't been sent the invite. That, that never happened. Kristen didn't have it and I didn't have it. It was just a mix up.

• 1:39:32Speaker 01

  But it's not, because your name was. Showed up on my on on the list. You can see who's been invited and both of you were invited.

• 1:39:41Dax Shepard?

  Was it through Evite?

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:39:43Dax Shepard?

  Where did you see my name? Like on the group email or on an Evite?

• 1:39:46Speaker 01

  On the on the. Paperless post, whatever.

• 1:39:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, exactly. So that never that never got to me.

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it might be in your spam.

• 1:39:55Dax Shepard?

  No, no, I looked. I looked everywhere. I don't. It did not get to me for whatever reason.

• 1:40:00Speaker 01

  You're gonna have to take this up with Amy because she is like, yeah, I sent it to them.

• 1:40:03Dax Shepard?

  I believe that. All the all of it's true. She sent it. It didn't come. So maybe I've blocked paperless post or.

• 1:40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:40:11Dax Shepard?

  Whatever the reason is, I didn't have it and I searched everywhere. And and Kristen didn't have it. So neither of us had it. And I was like, oh, maybe we weren't invited. And literally, we're like, okay, that's fine.

• 1:40:26Dax Shepard?

  Chuck along. If I was 13.

• 1:40:31Dax Shepard?

  And we had invited, it would rattle me. And now I'm like, yeah, if I'm not, someone doesn't want me at a party, fine.

• 1:40:39Speaker 01

  That's still rare.

• 1:40:43Dax Shepard?

  Sure. I'm only saying I used to be plagued by where am I? Who invited me? What am I missing out on? So that's an anxiety I had. And although we don't have playing on the trampoline, what I have that that offset that was like, it doesn't bother me if I'm not invited to the Hanson party for whatever reason they thought. There's too many people or whatever they thought. I'm fine with it.

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  But don't you think like, this is interesting, but I guess I feel like. Maybe I wish you did care. Like, I mean, you were invited. So this is. This is why I can I can do this thought experiment is like if all of a sudden they stopped inviting you to things. If they stopped inviting me to things. I would. I would be like, what happened? These are my close friends that I used to be invited to all of their things. If they decided to stop, that means something has happened. I've done something, or they, something's gone on. And I care about these people, so I'd like to figure out what it is.

• 1:41:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I'm at a place in life where I don't have the thought of like, what happened? What did I do? My only thought is like, whatever reason they didn't want to invite me, it's kind of, I don't care. It's none of my business. They decided, for whatever reason, not to invite me. I know we haven't had a falling out. I know nothing weird's happened. I'm sure I'm gonna see him next week. I'm not, I'm not doing any of that stuff where I think like, something must be wrong. I'm just like, oh, whatever, you have a party, you didn't invite me? I have parties, I invite some people, and I don't invite all people. There's no comment on whether I want to be friends with those people or not. It's just like, on that day, I had these four people over, and I don't know. If you saw it on Instagram, and you're upset, and you're filling in all these blanks that there's issues now. That's the all-on-you.

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  Well, again, that's where I disagree, but, yeah.

• 1:42:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I guess all I'm saying is I now, at 51, have the internal security of I'm not really worried about thinking about what I'm not invited to.

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:42:58Dax Shepard?

  And if someone doesn't want me to be at their party, that's totally fine with me. I don't want to be at someone's party that didn't want me there.

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  But more, it's deeper than just being at the party. It's, is this relationship good? And if you value the relationship, I would think you'd want it to be good.

• 1:43:15Dax Shepard?

  If I text Amy, and she didn't get back to me, and then I text her again, and she didn't get back to me, now I'd be concerned, because we have a personal relationship that we respond to each other. If I don't go to one of her parties, that's not how I'm evaluating whether we're connected or not, or we have a good friendship. It's more, when I reach out to you, do you respond? Do we reciprocate? Are we good? Whether I'm at your birthday party, or your Halloween party, it's, I don't know. That's not what I came for.

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  All right, right, right. Um, yeah.

• 1:43:50Dax Shepard?

  So anyways, I'm just saying, I think I, I have other concerns and worries, but I also, I've also been completely liberated from a big bunch of concerns that used to bother me.

• 1:44:01Speaker 01

  Well, I just thought like, oh man, they just have nothing, they have nothing to think about for two months, nothing hanging over their head, no homework, no work. Even if you don't have work for two months, it's like, when will I ever, when I get back to work, what are we gonna have to do? Will I ever work again? Well, is like, it's, there's a lot of fut- thinking about the future.

• 1:44:20Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:21Speaker 01

  Uh, when you're an adult and that doesn't, I don't think that ends and then you, yeah, you just, you don't get those, those summers back, you don't get those summers back. So I was jealous, but I'm also so happy for her. And it looked so fun and sleepovers are so fun and I miss them.

• 1:44:40Dax Shepard?

  I do a lot of playing.

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:44:42Dax Shepard?

  In the sun, like I feel, I said this to you out in the yard, I feel like them in the summer.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:44:49Dax Shepard?

  Like I have that sense of I'm waking up and today I'm gonna play with my friends.

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  Uh-huh.

• 1:44:54Dax Shepard?

  And my play's different, I'm on like on a boat instead of a trampoline or I'm on a dirt bike in my yard or I'm playing pickleball, whatever it is.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:45:01Dax Shepard?

  I do have that sense of like, oh, it's, it's playtime.

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 1:45:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 1:45:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Wanna do some facts?

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's do some facts.

• 1:45:53Dax Shepard?

  Darby Saxby. Doesn't it sound like that could be a character in a fun English?

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  Yes. It sounds like it's from, well, it sounds like it's from Fight of the Conchords because Darby is, is one of the actors on that show.

• 1:46:07Dax Shepard?

  But I'm more picturing like a little girl in a rain slicker in, in London.

• 1:46:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's cute.

• 1:46:12Dax Shepard?

  Darby Saxby.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:46:13Dax Shepard?

  Meet Darby Saxby. She loves her parents, but not her Uncle Mike.

• 1:46:19Speaker 01

  What did Uncle Mike do?

• 1:46:20Dax Shepard?

  Uncle Mike is a chimney sweep who gets dusty's all over her favorite stuffies.

• 1:46:26Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:46:27Dax Shepard?

  See, now we got a story.

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  I love it. I bought in. I want to know more.

• 1:46:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, well, she addresses the situation.

• 1:46:35Speaker 01

  Know more about Darby. But you know, she's gonna be mean to her Uncle Mike and her Uncle Mike's just sweeping a chimney.

• 1:46:41Dax Shepard?

  And then wants to play with her stuffies because he's lonely. That's what she's gonna figure out.

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  Compassion, she's gonna learn compassion for Uncle Mike by the end.

• 1:46:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:50Speaker 01

  Hopefully it's like three or four books.

• 1:46:51Dax Shepard?

  Her stuffy will tell her, we don't mind getting dirty if it's to keep someone happy and feeling loved.

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:46:57Dax Shepard?

  And then she's gonna give her Uncle Mike a big hug at the end.

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:47:02Dax Shepard?

  And he's gonna go, oh Darby, I wasn't expecting that. You've never given me a hug. And she's gonna hug him and then he's gonna cry with such joy that the tears will wash away all the soot.

• 1:47:13Speaker 01

  All the dirt.

• 1:47:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:15Speaker 01

  Oh, I love that ending.

• 1:47:17Dax Shepard?

  It's a tear, tear bath.

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  Listen, um, the one thing though, I don't like about that story is that the stuffies are, are like, they are being codependent.

• 1:47:28Dax Shepard?

  Only if they mind.

• 1:47:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they're covered in.

• 1:47:31Dax Shepard?

  You're projecting.

• 1:47:32Speaker 01

  No, they're covered in dirt.

• 1:47:34Dax Shepard?

  But they're stuffies, like they don't care. Like the dirtier, the better.

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  They know Darby doesn't like it and they know like it itches them.

• 1:47:43Dax Shepard?

  Well, I don't know if.

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, dirt itches.

• 1:47:45Dax Shepard?

  If you're, yeah, if you're an animal and you have dermis, these is stuffies.

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  Okay, but they talk, so you know, so we're, we're playing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think they have feelings, like, um, physical and emotional.

• 1:47:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:48:00Speaker 01

  Um, you know, one time I got dirt.

• 1:48:03Dax Shepard?

  Unlash it, T?

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  No, stuck. Okay, this is so gross. I'm sure I've told you that I got dirt stuck in my neck.

• 1:48:15Dax Shepard?

  I thought you were talking about your stuffies, but you're, this whole time you've been talking about yourself?

• 1:48:22Dax Shepard?

  You're, okay, I gotta rewind. You don't like hugging chimney sweeps. You don't like, I got it.

• 1:48:29Speaker 01

  No, I'm saying, I'm saying I feel for these stuffies because I know what it's like to have dirt.

• 1:48:37Dax Shepard?

  Dirt stuck in your neck? How did that happen?

• 1:48:42Dax Shepard?

  And it couldn't be cleaned?

• 1:48:45Dax Shepard?

  How long was this dirty in your neck? You had a dirty neck for a while?

• 1:48:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:49Dax Shepard?

  How long? What's going on? What happened to your neck?

• 1:48:53Speaker 01

  Okay, um, I was like 10 or 11 or, God, I hope I'm not 12.

• 1:49:01Speaker 01

  And I was at my, we were at a family event, my grandparents' house, and my mom was like, looked at me and was like, what's on, something like, what's wrong with you? Something was like wrong with my neck.

• 1:49:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:16Speaker 01

  Now, I have a huge crease across my neck. I've had it like high cholesterol since I was a baby.

• 1:49:23Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:49:24Speaker 01

  I hate it.

• 1:49:25Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:49:26Speaker 01

  But I've always had it. And, um, and it was really dark.

• 1:49:30Dax Shepard?

  You had been accumulating some dirt and lint and stuff in the fold.

• 1:49:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:49:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's natural.

• 1:49:37Speaker 01

  She, they all laughed at me because they realized it was dirt. Like, you know, she was nervous. Like, she came over.

• 1:49:43Dax Shepard?

  Sliced your throat or something.

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And then she's, uh, she's touching it and dirt's coming off.

• 1:49:48Dax Shepard?

  Getting everywhere, probably.

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, like all the stuffies, you know. And, um, then they all laughed at me. I didn't clean my neck and I have to clean my neck. Monica, you gotta clean your neck.

• 1:49:57Dax Shepard?

  Uh.

• 1:49:59Speaker 01

  Um, and I was really embarrassed. I probably cried. I'm sure, I'm sure I cried.

• 1:50:04Dax Shepard?

  Have you seen this video of Malala talking to, quote, Indian mom?

• 1:50:07Speaker 01

  Mm-mm, I don't think so.

• 1:50:08Dax Shepard?

  It's so great. It's like, or an Indian therapist.

• 1:50:11Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:50:12Dax Shepard?

  And Malala's like, yeah, so I got shot. Okay, I'm hearing you got shot. A lot of people get shot.

• 1:50:19Speaker 01

  Like not taking it.

• 1:50:22Dax Shepard?

  Yes, everything she says is like, stop being a baby.

• 1:50:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:26Dax Shepard?

  And that might be your fault.

• 1:50:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:28Dax Shepard?

  And it sounds to me like a lot of poor me, you know?

• 1:50:32Speaker 01

  To stop being a victim.

• 1:50:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so funny. You've not seen this clip?

• 1:50:36Speaker 01

  No, I haven't. It's really funny.

• 1:50:37Dax Shepard?

  I'm trying to think who sent it to me.

• 1:50:39Speaker 01

  That's very funny. Yeah, you know, my mom will do that. She, for a long time, if like I complained about something that was like from them.

• 1:50:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:47Speaker 01

  You know, she would be like, when are you gonna, like, when are you gonna understand your own person? Like, we're not, basically, like, we're not responsible for any of your damage.

• 1:50:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:59Speaker 01

  Which like.

• 1:51:00Dax Shepard?

  I respect it.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  I guess I get it.

• 1:51:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  Um, but she did laugh at me when I had dirt on my neck, and probably because I was taking a bath by myself way too young.

• 1:51:09Dax Shepard?

  That's what you think?

• 1:51:09Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:51:10Dax Shepard?

  And you didn't know to clean that crease?

• 1:51:11Speaker 01

  No one taught me.

• 1:51:12Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:51:13Speaker 01

  Who's supposed to teach me?

• 1:51:14Dax Shepard?

  Well, I bet you're.

• 1:51:15Speaker 01

  Mommy.

• 1:51:15Dax Shepard?

  I bet that crease has never been dirty again.

• 1:51:17Speaker 01

  That is right. Now it's all dried up.

• 1:51:20Dax Shepard?

  Could you scrub it?

• 1:51:21Speaker 01

  Cause I put extra soap in there.

• 1:51:23Dax Shepard?

  Do you actually soap that?

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do.

• 1:51:25Dax Shepard?

  To this day?

• 1:51:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wash my neck, yeah.

• 1:51:28Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:51:29Speaker 01

  I can't risk walking around with dirt neck again?

• 1:51:31Dax Shepard?

  I don't wash my neck.

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't have a crease. Ugh.

• 1:51:35Dax Shepard?

  I've got Adam's apple.

• 1:51:37Speaker 01

  It's not the same.

• 1:51:38Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  Rob, do you have a crease? I don't think so. Huh. So unfair. Well, this is actually ding ding ding, since it's for Darby and that's parenting.

• 1:51:47Dax Shepard?

  Dads, yeah.

• 1:51:48Speaker 01

  Dads, yeah. My dad, I don't think laughed at me.

• 1:51:51Dax Shepard?

  He didn't even see it?

• 1:51:52Speaker 01

  He did not see it. They were like, look, and he's like, I don't see anything.

• 1:51:56Dax Shepard?

  Exactly.

• 1:51:57Speaker 01

  That's where I get my, that's probably where I get my non, um, my non judgment.

• 1:52:03Dax Shepard?

  Sherlock would say my powers of observation. So you'd have to say like, my deficit of observation, maybe, or something.

• 1:52:08Speaker 01

  But I'd like to, I'd like to twist it and make it positive. Like, that's where I get my just non judgment.

• 1:52:15Dax Shepard?

  My nonchalance.

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  I wouldn't say I'm laissez faire or nonchalant, but I don't make judgments about people because I can't see what to judge. So that's a cool thing about me. Um, okay, you said that we've diagnosed like six neurotransmitters. Scientists have identified over two hundred neurotransmitters.

• 1:52:35Dax Shepard?

  Sounds a little off.

• 1:52:36Speaker 01

  Which are the body's chemical messengers. Um, so yeah.

• 1:52:40Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:52:41Speaker 01

  Okay, Brain Rules for Babies, you guys read, you said a child will make sixty or seventy percent of relationships worse. In Brain Rules for Baby, author John Medina notes that more than eighty percent of marriages experience a significant drop in relationship satisfaction after a child is born.

• 1:52:59Dax Shepard?

  Even better.

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

  But.

• 1:53:01Dax Shepard?

  Eighty percent.

• 1:53:02Speaker 01

  John Gottman, who we love.

• 1:53:04Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:53:05Speaker 01

  He highlights sixty-seven to seventy percent of couples see the quality of their relationship plummet within the first three years of a baby's life.

• 1:53:12Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm. People just need to have that warning.

• 1:53:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's good to know.

• 1:53:16Dax Shepard?

  And they should know it'll pass.

• 1:53:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, when you're in it, you don't think it's gonna pass.

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:20Dax Shepard?

  You're like, what have we've traded this for that, for sure.

• 1:53:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, percentage of men who rate having children as a high priority, like highest priority. So this says about fifty-seven percent of men ages eighteen to thirty-four want to have children one day, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Surprisingly, this means men are now more likely to prioritize having kids than women, who report a desire for children at forty-five percent in the same age group. Wow.

• 1:53:49Dax Shepard?

  This whole world is flipped.

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  Flippy flip flip.

• 1:53:52Dax Shepard?

  Women in college at sixty-five percent, the boys wanna have kids.

• 1:53:56Speaker 01

  Well, it's all connected. I think all of that is connected, because if you're in college, as a woman, you have big career aspirations, you're not thinking about having kids, you're thinking about doing that.

• 1:54:07Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:54:07Speaker 01

  Interesting. Now, studies on men having daughters. Yes, research suggests that having daughters increases the life expectancy of fathers, but the opposite is true for mothers.

• 1:54:20Dax Shepard?

  Did it say that?

• 1:54:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:21Dax Shepard?

  They live less long with daughters? Come on.

• 1:54:24Speaker 01

  Listen, it says for fathers, studies including landmark research published in the American Journal of Human Biology show that a father's lifespan increases by an average of seventy-four weeks for every daughter he has.

• 1:54:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so that's about one point, whatever I said.

• 1:54:37Speaker 01

  Sons were. Down to have no significant impact on a father's longevity. Why? Researchers theorize that having daughters may lead men to adopt healthier lifestyle choices, taking fewer risks and build stronger emotional support networks. Additionally, adult daughters are traditionally more likely to provide care and support as our parents age. That's interesting. You can read more about the research.

• 1:54:58Dax Shepard?

  Well, they used to. This new crop.

• 1:55:00Speaker 01

  We'll see, yeah.

• 1:55:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they just want to have kids. I doubt they're gonna be around for that shit either.

• 1:55:04Speaker 01

  Now, for mothers, the physical toil of having children impacts mothers differently. Research shows that mothers experience a reduction in lifespan of about ninety-five weeks per child, regardless of whether the child is a son or a daughter. The cost is largely attributed to the biological and energetic demands of pregnancy and lactation. Interesting. So my dad got seventy-four more weeks for me, but he didn't get any for my bro.

• 1:55:28Dax Shepard?

  And your mom lost a hundred and eighty-some weeks.

• 1:55:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  Your mom lost.

• 1:55:33Dax Shepard?

  That's, that's four years.

• 1:55:35Speaker 01

  On Elizabeth and Andy's podcast recently, they were talking about this, like when you start counting how many months you have left.

• 1:55:42Dax Shepard?

  No, it's not a fun, it's not a good idea.

• 1:55:44Speaker 01

  It's not a good idea.

• 1:55:46Dax Shepard?

  No, no. You don't even need to do it.

• 1:55:48Speaker 01

  Let's not do it.

• 1:55:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:50Speaker 01

  I already did it.

• 1:55:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:55:53Dax Shepard?

  I know that.

• 1:55:54Speaker 01

  Ah, all right, well, that's it. Darby didn't have many facts and it was a great episode. I hope men listen and women listen because I hate, this is gonna sound like woman bashing or mom bashing, and I don't mean to do that.

• 1:56:08Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:56:08Speaker 01

  But I do think moms should realize the impact of kids on fathers. Like, it's not not having an impact on them.

• 1:56:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, well, there's like, there's upsides and downsides of this stereotype that the dad isn't even relevant, is not naturally a parent.

• 1:56:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:56:28Dax Shepard?

  So it's like they get out of a bunch of shit they shouldn't get out of.

• 1:56:30Speaker 01

  All right, I guess, yeah.

• 1:56:32Dax Shepard?

  But then also they get denied all this lovely stuff and

• 1:56:36Speaker 01

  Well, and also moms-

• 1:56:37Dax Shepard?

  They're seen as totally expendable, which is not a nice thing to be seen as.

• 1:56:41Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:56:41Dax Shepard?

  It's not like what you want.

• 1:56:42Speaker 01

  And, but it's not even, like, you know, I do think moms, for a lot of obvious reasons and understandable reasons, do a lot of like, well- It's a default me, which it often is, but it can be changed is the whole point. Like, I think it's important for everyone to listen to this.

• 1:56:58Dax Shepard?

  I do think this is changing pretty rapidly.

• 1:57:01Speaker 01

  Yes, again, because of women in the workforce. Because my dad dropped me off, he would drop me off at school.

• 1:57:09Dax Shepard?

  On Monday and pick me up on Friday.

• 1:57:12Speaker 01

  Yep. No, he would drop me off at school and we would listen to that rain song.

• 1:57:19Dax Shepard?

  Beer Gabriel?

• 1:57:19Speaker 01

  No, it's like rainbows and sunshine. No, not that one. That's Kermit. This one is like.

• 1:57:29Dax Shepard?

  No, that's Rainbow Connection.

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  I love Rainbow Connection.

• 1:57:41Speaker 01

  Peggy Lee? How does that go? I don't know. Sunshine rainbows. Sunshine lollipops and rainbows by Leslie Gore. I see that. Sunshine after the rain or something? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's this. Let's listen.

• 1:57:58Dax Shepard?

  Wow, you and your dad were having fun.

• 1:58:00Speaker 01

  It's not that.

• 1:58:01Dax Shepard?

  Fuck, yeah. Can you imagine? You were trying to keep a low profile. If I saw the one Indian family in my school pull up and the door open, that song was fucking blasting. And I was 10, I would just have to fill in so many wrong assumptions. Like, oh, wow, Indians love dance music.

• 1:58:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I forget the song. And that's sad. That was our song.

• 1:58:24Dax Shepard?

  I wonder if you called him. He won't know, right?

• 1:58:26Speaker 01

  I bet he'll remember.

• 1:58:27Dax Shepard?

  You think so?

• 1:58:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, he'll listen with his little dodo.

• 1:58:29Dax Shepard?

  TBD. I think about that daily, because I'm nearing the end of.

• 1:58:34Speaker 01

  Drop offs?

• 1:58:35Dax Shepard?

  Delta's.

• 1:58:37Speaker 01

  Drop offs.

• 1:58:37Dax Shepard?

  Elementary school drop off. And we ride the motorcycle every morning, which means I'm guaranteed to have my koala backpack on.

• 1:58:44Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:58:45Dax Shepard?

  Every morning.

• 1:58:46Speaker 01

  You wear her backpack?

• 1:58:47Dax Shepard?

  I wear her as a backpack. She's sitting behind me and she's like, holding on to me like she's a koala bear.

• 1:58:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:54Dax Shepard?

  And we talk while we're riding.

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  It's hard to hear.

• 1:58:57Dax Shepard?

  She just gives me squeezes. And so like, I'm excited to not have to be out the door at the same time every day.

• 1:59:04Speaker 01

  You're gonna miss that.

• 1:59:06Dax Shepard?

  It's, yeah. As much as I don't like getting up and having to deal with it, I absolutely cherish that every day of my week starts with my koala bear on my back.

• 1:59:16Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:59:16Dax Shepard?

  I love it. Break your heart. They'll break your heart. They'll make your heart and then they'll break your heart. That's right. I love you. Love you.