Suleika Jaouad (on creative alchemy)

Suleika Jaouad (The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life) is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and bestselling author. Suleika joins the Armchair Expert to discuss why in a memoir you should save the sharpest knives for yourself, being excited when something holds up a mirror to our ugliest parts, and moments of creative injury and the validation that can come from them. Suleika and Dax talk about finding her sense of belonging in books, choosing to play the double bass, and meeting the love of her life Jon Batiste at band camp. Sulieika explains how her leukemia was misdiagnosed as burnout syndrome, the experience of witnessing her worst day alchemize into one of her best, and why the only way for her not to be consumed by her fear during her illness was to collaborate with it. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dax Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Monsoon.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Hi there.

• 0:08Dax Shepard?

  Hi, today we have Suleika Juad.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:14Dax Shepard?

  Who we've been dying to meet since, I mean, we met her in real life a couple of times, but ever since. Watching that incredible documentary about her and John Batiste. She's such a special, incredible person. She's a bestselling author. She's an artist, an advocate. Her books include Between Two Kingdoms and now The Book of Alchemy, A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life. She's insanely inspiring as a person.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, this was a beautiful conversation.

• 0:42Dax Shepard?

  It really was.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  And even though Dax and I get into it at the beginning, we will revisit it in the fact check and you can stick around for that.

• 0:53Dax Shepard?

  I can't wait. This is also news to me.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 0:56Dax Shepard?

  All right, please enjoy Suleika. We get support from Quince.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Okay, can we talk about the fact that the holidays are already here? It's crazy. I feel like I blinked and now we're in gifting season, which I'm not really mad about because I do love giving gifts. And Quince is making it so easy to find something great for everyone on my list, including myself. Because let's be honest, self-gifting is a love language.

• 1:20Dax Shepard?

  Quince is seriously the gift that keeps on giving. Their high-quality staples are made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold and Italian leather, full-on luxury quality at prices that won't wreck your holiday budget.

• 1:36Speaker 01

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

• 1:47Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm going to tell you this, it just got chilly for the first time this year in California and I'm so excited. And I'm wearing my Quince cashmere right now.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 1:55Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Quince is also more than clothing. They've got fine jewelry for your significant other, leather bags for your bestie, hotel-quality bedding to set up your guest rooms, chef-grade cookware. That's an amazing. Thing they offer here and it's such a good gift because people don't like buying cookware for themselves, but it's very important. And they also have five star luggage, another good gift that people don't like buying for themselves.

• 2:22Dax Shepard?

  Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from our sponsor Lilly. For adults with obesity or with excess weight and weight related medical problems, it's time to find out about Foundo or for Glibron. Foundo is a once daily prescription GLP-1 medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity or some adults with overweight

• 3:03Dax Shepard?

  who also have weight related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Foundo should not be used with other GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Foundo is safe and effective for use in children. Don't take Foundo if you're allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had major area thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type two. Stop and call your doctor right away if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck or severe stomach pain. Serious side effects may include inflamed pancreas and gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes, if you're nursing, pregnant, plant to be, or taking birth control pills and before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. Taking Foundo with an insulin or sulfonylurea may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and may cause kidney problems. Once daily Foundo is available by prescription only in 0.8 milligram, 2.5 milligram, 5.5

• 3:54Speaker 02

  milligram, 9 milligram, 14.5 milligram, and 17.2 milligram tablets. Learn more at foundo.lilly.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX. Now is perfect to talk to your doctor about Foundo.

• 4:23Dax Shepard?

  I did a movie that shot New Zealand and they would go, "You want your trickies?" And I'm like, "My what?" "Your trickies," which were my track pants.

• 4:31Speaker 03

  I see.

• 4:31Dax Shepard?

  Which is what they call sweatpants. But it was trekkies and everything is e's.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  It's very playful. It's very cute.

• 4:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's very cute.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  It is very cute. I go by Suleika sometimes.

• 4:42Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you do?

• 4:43Speaker 03

  Do you add I's or Y's to your names?

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Yes, they call me Moni.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Moni.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  You don't really.

• 4:48Dax Shepard?

  I don't get Daxi too much.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  Daxi's a lot.

• 4:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's like Daxi Waxy.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  Daxi Waxy.

• 4:56Dax Shepard?

  Daxi Waxy Twiddle Tom.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Twiddle Boy.

• 4:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, how to emasculate a man and just add a Y to the end of their name.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 5:04Dax Shepard?

  Maxi, Maxi Pad.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Maxi Pad.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  It all circles back to periods.

• 5:09Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 5:10Dax Shepard?

  We can't get off the topic, you and I.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  I know, we really can't.

• 5:13Dax Shepard?

  It's my favorite topic.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Speaking of women, did everyone see Taylor Swift got the rights to her music back today?

• 5:18Speaker 03

  I did not see that.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Today, she bought them back.

• 5:22Dax Shepard?

  Are you celebrating?

• 5:23Speaker 01

  I am. I almost wore a Taylor shirt, but I forgot.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  Are you a Swiftie?

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love her. I love her for those rea... I mean, I love her lyrics and stuff, but she's a boss. She just will not quit until she gets what she wants. It's so cool. And I was talking to a friend about it this morning because I was getting so many texts like, "Oh, my God."

• 5:43Dax Shepard?

  That's such a phenomenon.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  I know, but because it's a female thing. And I do think so many women, regardless of who they are, they see themselves in her. It's such a gift that she has that you can just place yourself on her. So when she has these wins, even though she's a legitimate billionaire, you take them almost as personal wins.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  It's true. And she's been so open about the struggles.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:09Dax Shepard?

  I love her. I love the impact she has visibly on my daughters, mostly my oldest. And I've gone to the concert with her. What a gift to give this little girl. But I have tiny criticisms and they're not permitted.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 6:23Dax Shepard?

  Anytime that happens, I get very flared up about responsible critique.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  What are your criticisms?

• 6:30Dax Shepard?

  Well, would you... That Swifties in general, there's no room for any kind of possible. She's incredible. Also, I don't love the endless victim narrative in the breakup songs.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:44Dax Shepard?

  But I'm not allowed to say that.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 6:46Dax Shepard?

  And then the rights to her music thing is a little one-sided, what everyone perpetuates.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 6:53Dax Shepard?

  Go ahead, because you're already, do you see that physical reaction?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  But I don't know if you know all the stuff.

• 6:58Dax Shepard?

  I do. I've watched two documentaries about it.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Okay, so what is the one-sided factor?

• 7:03Dax Shepard?

  She could have gotten them back.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  She tried to get him back from Scooter.

• 7:08Dax Shepard?

  She didn't want to pay what Scooter paid to buy the recording company that owned the recordings. She wanted to be let out of that deal and have the music. And they said, well, it costs this much money. And she said, I'm not paying that. And Scooter Braun paid that. It wasn't Scooter who owned the music. He bought the recording studio, of which her father owned a percentage of.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  We're gonna have to do a big fact check on this.

• 7:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  So are you someone who when there's a topic that is too hot to touch, it makes you want to talk about it?

• 7:37Dax Shepard?

  It's not specifically that, because actually I can dodge a ton of the hot-button topics. It's when you're not allowed to question it.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  Like a sense of censorship?

• 7:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that healthy debate's not invited. And I think as topics have to land in a political side now, I mean, you can almost not find a topic that one side hasn't claimed ownership over.

• 7:59Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 8:00Dax Shepard?

  So if I want to pressure test our side of it, I'm anti our side and I'm anti my party. I don't like that. That's a real trigger for me. How do you feel about that?

• 8:10Speaker 03

  I am very put off by binary thinking. Anytime there is an all or nothing paradigm, I get activated and I'm drawn to the messy middle. That to me is where the richness is. Like, I like to fumble through my ideas. I like to not even necessarily know if I am 100% sure of what I'm arguing, but I want the freedom to figure it out. That's when I get most excited conversationally.

• 8:36Dax Shepard?

  Me too. So I guess that just the Scooter Taylor thing is like Scooter's the villain. He's an evil man and she's... She's an angel and already the archetypes. Those are too extreme for both people.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  Totally. Even in books, I don't like a clean villain or a clean angel.

• 8:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, those aren't interesting stories.

• 8:53Dax Shepard?

  And a villain who does a few nice things.

• 8:55Speaker 03

  And that feels more believable to me.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, yeah.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  So I'm with you, and this isn't specific to Taylor Swift.

• 9:02Dax Shepard?

  You're not voting on that.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  I'm not even waiting in there because honestly, I don't know enough.

• 9:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  To wait in there.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  But I do feel a kind of knee jerk skepticism. Anytime there are clear narrative roles that don't allow for messiness.

• 9:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  That makes total sense. But I do think there's sometimes some hypocrisy that can happen. Like, when you live a life that's, I don't believe in two sides.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  You do in your life. We have had our own business situation where you definitely feel like there's a right and wrong thing happening here. And it's still messy. I understand points of view on both sides. Like the politics thing, of course, no one's perfect. No one's an angel. Villain is a little bit trickier in that position. But yes, it doesn't mean that one person isn't better.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  For a position. I don't know.

• 9:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm happy to assign gradients to each person. But in the canon of Taylor, it's like Jake Jong Hall's a terrible man. All the exes are like terrible people. And I'm just afraid of that. I'll end my Taylor thoughts at that.

• 10:06Speaker 03

  I'll say as someone who has written memoir, I feel like it is your responsibility when you write in the first person, be it in a song or in book form, to save the sharpest knives for yourself. And I also believe that that makes for the most interesting stories.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely.

• 10:25Dax Shepard?

  We just interviewed Gerard Carmichael, and he has a new special. I don't know if you've seen it yet. Don't be gay. And I've never seen a person go harder on themselves in public. And it's not even hard because obviously, he's at peace with who he is, which is the beauty of it. But his willingness to go like, yeah, and this is what I like sexually. And I want to dominate. It's like, oh, my God, this is wonderful. People don't say this. They think it, but they don't say it.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  I think that's the thing that made me. Fall in love with stories from the time I was really young is that moment when you read something and it can be fiction or nonfiction and you're like, holy shit, I didn't know you were allowed to say that out loud. I didn't know you were allowed to feel that out loud.

• 11:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  And that glimpse of recognition when someone holds up a mirror to the ugliest parts of you or to the parts that were told we need to conceal, that really excites me.

• 11:15Dax Shepard?

  That's in your book, right at the beginning, the dissolving of loneliness because you recognize, oh, I'm not alone in this feeling, this thought, this experience, because I've just read it here from this person. And that's very comforting because really loneliness is maybe the saddest place to occupy.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  And I think it's the epidemic of our time.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 11:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. What was the first thing you read that really ignited that same thing where it's like, oh, I'm not alone in my weirdness?

• 11:43Speaker 03

  So my dad was a professor.

• 11:44Dax Shepard?

  French?

• 11:46Speaker 03

  French literature.

• 11:47Dax Shepard?

  Skidmore?

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Skidmore College. They were strict in some ways, like typical immigrant parents, but when it came to reading, I could read anything I wanted, which is why I read Lolita at age 12.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Oh, amazing.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  There was nothing off limits.

• 12:00Dax Shepard?

  Quickly, I can't let you move on from that. I certainly know what the perspective of an older person reading Lolita is. What is a 12 year old? Because Lolita is roughly, I don't, what is she in that book?

• 12:09Speaker 03

  She's about 12, 13.

• 12:11Dax Shepard?

  She's just pubescent.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  I did not understand it through a problematic lens. Like, I saw the cover and it was the old vintage cover with the heart shaped sunglasses. And I was like, that's cool. I want some heart shaped sunglasses. So that was my first draw into the book. So I will say, I devoured Lolita. I was fascinated by it, especially at an age where, for me, I was having my first inklings of intrigue.

• 12:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:35Speaker 03

  About romance and not sex necessarily, but sexual bodies, what's appropriate, what's not.

• 12:40Dax Shepard?

  This mysterious energy that you're feeling sometimes in your body and without explanation.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Totally. So I credit that book. With inspiring me to write. And also, the end result of that inspiration was a semi-traumatic experience that made it such that I didn't share my writing again for a decade.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 13:04Dax Shepard?

  Someone read your private musings?

• 13:07Speaker 03

  So I was in seventh, eighth grade. As an extra credit project, my English teacher invited the class to write a fictional short story. And so I was reading Nabokov. I was reading Paul Bowles, who wrote these incredible novels set in North Africa with all sort of seedy, subterranean characters. I was having like a real explosion of exposure. And so I went so hard on this extra credit project. I filled up an entire yellow legal pad, maybe 50 pages, with a novella. Handed it in, was so proud of this story. And a week later, everyone got their assignments back, except me. And I was like, cool, cool, cool.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  My teacher's waiting to have a private meeting with me.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  She wants to get it published.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  To tell me how brilliant I am.

• 13:57Dax Shepard?

  Because he's out of publishing.

• 13:59Speaker 03

  All the things. And then I got called into the school psychologist's office. And she was holding my yellow legal pad. And so my story was heavily inspired by my recent reading inspiration.

• 14:12Dax Shepard?

  Were they nervous there was some sexual impropriety happening in the household?

• 14:15Speaker 03

  It featured a 12-year-old Arab-American protagonist who was working as a prostitute in a brothel in Tangiers.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Wow. So you were just combining all the pieces that you were reading a little bit.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  She was an opium-smoking 12-year-old prostitute.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 14:34Dax Shepard?

  I can imagine being your teacher and within a page going like, oh my God, okay. Oh, fuck, what are we gonna? The panic that would set in if you were reading that.

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Well, and the most horrifying thing about it, I was so humiliated, but she never said a word to me about it.

• 14:51Dax Shepard?

  She didn't?

• 14:51Speaker 03

  No.

• 14:52Dax Shepard?

  She left it to the psychologist.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  And I felt really deeply shamed. Like, I felt like I had done something bad and wrong, that I had exposed some part of my psychology that was bad.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  And like, needed professional intervention.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  And so, I kept writing in the privacy of a journal, but it really made me scared to give my imagination free rein and to share whatever emerged from my imagination to anybody.

• 15:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm surprised you rebounded from that.

• 15:24Speaker 03

  It took me a long time. I was so interested by those formative moments, either those moments of creative injury, or those moments of validation. It's that kind of sliding doors-esque exercise, and that question of if we end up where we're going to end up, irregardless of those moments.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  I know.

• 15:43Speaker 03

  Or if they really set you on a path.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you had a different teacher that was like, "I think there's really something brilliant here, let's push her in this direction," who would you have been?

• 15:54Speaker 03

  And maybe it would have yielded the opposite effect. Maybe I'd be an accountant in Cleveland right now.

• 15:59Dax Shepard?

  You can imagine a scenario where they were like, "Oh my god," like the scene in Christmas Story where it's like, "Ralphie, your paper! A++ plus, right." You have that experience, and now you're like, "Oh, I'm supposed to be a great writer. That could also be arresting in some way."

• 16:13Speaker 03

  But it was that ignition of that pilot light of self-consciousness for me, that maybe is happening irregardless at that age, because you're entering puberty.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  Where I suddenly felt very porous to the opinions of those around me, and especially people in authority. And not necessarily in a good way, I was a little bit of a hell raiser as a kid, but I was over-correcting in either direction.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Ah, interesting.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  By either rebelling against it, or really yearning for it as a marker of what I should do next.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Wait, what city was this happening in?

• 16:48Speaker 03

  I went to like, 10 different schools on three different continents by the time I was 12.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  And this was in upstate New York, in Saratoga Springs, where my dad was a professor.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 16:58Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I have a lot of intrigue about Saratoga Springs, having read all these 19th-century patrician class, were they vacation there?

• 17:05Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 17:05Dax Shepard?

  So I have this really vivid image of it, without ever seeing anything. Is it lovely?

• 17:10Speaker 03

  It's lovely, but I was a townie. And so when you're a townie, the second the kind of big hat wearers, the people who come in the summer for the horse races arrive, everybody gets out of there. My family always would like rent their house because that would fund the whole year. So a lot of people do that.

• 17:27Dax Shepard?

  And your dad was on a college schedule?

• 17:29Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 17:29Dax Shepard?

  And would you guys go traipses around the world? Or was it generally with intention?

• 17:34Speaker 03

  Beyond my immediate family, all of my dad's family still lives in Tunisia. All of my mom's family lives in Switzerland. So we would spend summers there. But occasionally what we would do is rent our house. And with the funds from the rental, we would travel for two months. And not in a fancy way. We'd get a ticket, say, to Mexico or Nicaragua. And we had one rule as a family. We were only allowed to bring a backpack for the whole summer.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 18:01Dax Shepard?

  This is, yeah.

• 18:01Speaker 03

  And my parents are not planners. We'd arrive, there would be no hotel reservation. We'd stay in youth hostels and ride chicken buses. And I found this supremely embarrassing. At the age of 12, all I wanted was to go on like a Royal Caribbean cruise.

• 18:17Dax Shepard?

  Yes, with a schedule.

• 18:19Speaker 03

  With a schedule, like all of my classmates were doing when their families took vacation.

• 18:23Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I want to know how your mom and dad met. Because, yeah, he's from Tunisia, she's from Switzerland. This is quite a pairing. And it was in the 80s, I presume?

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Both my parents immigrated to the Lower East Side in the 80s. And my mom, as a visual artist, came here on an artist grant. My dad came here for his PhD. And my dad at the time was working at the United Nations International School. And my mom was trying to be an artist and had a number of side hustles. I don't even know if I should share this. But her sister was a substitute teacher. When her sister couldn't make it, my mom would go in as her.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Oh, nice. I love that.

• 19:02Dax Shepard?

  Who cares?

• 19:03Speaker 01

  A hustler.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  A hustler. And so that's how they met. My mom pretending to be my sister. And there was like a little bit of sisterly tension because my aunt was like, I saw him first.

• 19:14Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wonderful.

• 19:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  How exciting.

• 19:17Dax Shepard?

  Well, both of these Swiss misses both liked him.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  Both of them liked him.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  That's a meet cute.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  It's real meet cute.

• 19:24Dax Shepard?

  There's something in the genetics stew of this all, too.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  There's a real Francophone connection.

• 19:30Dax Shepard?

  They're both adventurers. They both have left their native land. They're both attracted to what they don't know, novelty. Like, there's some clues in here about the recipe that becomes you.

• 19:41Speaker 03

  They're both misfits. They're both the only ones from their family also to have left and stayed.

• 19:47Dax Shepard?

  OK. And how did the religion play out? Was that an issue?

• 19:50Speaker 03

  My dad was raised Muslim. My mom was raised Catholic. I would say they're agnostics bordering on atheism, but they're very much culturally what they were raised as. So my mom had no interest in getting married. Most of her friends in Switzerland have been partnered and have families but have not gotten married. So the idea of marriage is very bourgeois.

• 20:13Dax Shepard?

  They've transcended marriage in a few countries.

• 20:16Speaker 03

  And my dad, you know, my grandmother had 13 kids. Never learned to read or write, never left her village, got married at 14, 15, as was very common.

• 20:26Dax Shepard?

  Well, if you have 13 kids, you got to start right away.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  You got to start early. So he really wanted to get married. So she eventually relented because she needed a green card. And they were very much planning on being together, but had their little city hall wedding.

• 20:41Dax Shepard?

  And do they speak French in Tunisia?

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Yes. Tunisia was colonized by the French, so that's their common language and what I grew up speaking.

• 20:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no kidding. You have siblings?

• 20:51Speaker 03

  I have a brother.

• 20:52Dax Shepard?

  Older or younger?

• 20:53Speaker 03

  Younger.

• 20:53Dax Shepard?

  How did he like this lifestyle?

• 20:55Speaker 03

  It was tough for us as kids. I think as a kid, you want to be normal. You want to assimilate. When we'd go to Switzerland, our cousins would call us their American cousins. We'd go to Tunisia and we were like a little too white to be fully Tunisian. Go back to the US and especially post 9/11, it was always because of my name. Where are you from? Where are you really from? That whole thing. I think we both really struggled to locate some sense of belonging and we dealt with that in very different ways. My brother was very shy and kind of went inward. And I remember, you know, he was an ESL. Elementary school and he came home and said to my mom, I'm the dumbest kid in my class. So heartbreaking. And my mom is like, you're not dumb. You just haven't learned the language yet.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  And I think I dealt with it by becoming the professional new kid. Like I could like walk into a cafeteria and just clock every segment of the social fabric of a school and be like, these are the cool kids. This is the bully. It was like a game of chess for me.

• 21:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Do you feel like you were able to diagnose in order to be friends with this group? I need to be this type of person. You get very chameleon-esque when you're in that position.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  Which is a real skill set in terms of adaptability, but there's also a danger to it in that when you're constantly assimilating, it's hard to locate that through line.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Yes. Who are you?

• 22:21Speaker 03

  Who are you? I remember begging my parents tearfully to let me legally change my name to Ashley because the coolest girl in fourth grade was named Ashley.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  They always were.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  Ashtray as her nickname, which was even more sophisticated. So in my dream, I would be Ashley Ashtray Jaouad.

• 22:40Dax Shepard?

  And Ashtray was not a pejorative. It was celebrated. Yeah. It was cool.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. That does show how cool is so subjective.

• 22:49Speaker 03

  So subjective. I'm like, Ashtray in fourth grade?

• 22:52Dax Shepard?

  We could be interviewing someone else. It'd be like, and I was so bullied. They'd call me Ashtray. Exactly. Yeah, that does suck.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  What about you, Monica?

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Exact same story, but there was more, maybe not more, but shame. My parents didn't make us travel. My mom would make dinner for her and my dad and then dinner for me. Eggs, you know, like American food. I was fighting being Indian, but it was all so extreme and unfair. In retrospect now, when I look back on it, they weren't making us speak any language. Nothing. I hated the way other people saw them or I was worried about how other people were seeing them, especially my dad, because he had an accent and it was in Georgia. I could just be at the restaurant and feel like he's ordering and he's saying this wrong. It's still there.

• 23:37Speaker 03

  I was with my mom last weekend and I have apologized. To her so many times because there is nothing more brutal than your child correcting you in general. But when you have an accent, like she would say TJ Maxes, there was always an extra S or a missing S.

• 23:53Dax Shepard?

  She just moved to Michigan. That's the Detroit thing. We put S's on everything.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  We were with her and she ordered a salad with protein and I knew from the way that she pronounced it, that probably the waiter hadn't understood. And I was like, let me be mature and not regress. And just like, let this be.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:12Speaker 03

  And sure enough, the waitress brought out salad with a side of poutine fries.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 24:19Dax Shepard?

  Were you in Canada? It was poutine on the menu.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  Providence, Rhode Island. So my parents did double down on the culture. We were not allowed to speak English at home because my family members didn't speak English outside.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:33Speaker 03

  And so my mom would make a high pitched beeping sound whenever we spoke in English until we switched to French.

• 24:38Dax Shepard?

  Oh, can I hear that sound?

• 24:40Speaker 03

  It was like, beeeep. It was so annoying.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. That is so funny. What about bringing friends home?

• 24:46Speaker 03

  Oh, so the food thing, I used to lust after just the odorless beauty of a pop tart.

• 24:54Dax Shepard?

  Anything's doper than anything you put in the oven.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Process. The things we now know are horrible for you.

• 24:59Speaker 03

  And I remember being in the second grade and my mom making a cheese plate for my friends. And it was not just any cheese, like really smelly. And I was just so horrified.

• 25:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Your mom put some fucking Kraft singles out.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  It was like, the Swiss thing was embarrassing. The Tunisian thing certainly was smelly, spicy food.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, the smelliness. And I am kind of obsessed with smells and I think maybe that is part of it. Walking into the house and having to check before a friend came over, like opening windows.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Like for no reason whatsoever. It is crazy.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  And I remember saying to my mom the next time, I was like, Please just make macaroni and cheese. And I had an idea of what that was going to be. My friends come over and she had made not what I was hoping for, which was toxically orange Kraft mac and cheese.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Powder.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  She was like grating nutmeg. And I was just like.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Isn't this so sad?

• 26:00Speaker 03

  The thing that makes me feel the worst is I used to throw away my lunches.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  When I got to school and I ate another butter every single day for lunch. And the vanquisher is dead. And my mom was a wonderful mom who took such care.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  She's doing everything she can.

• 26:15Speaker 03

  And making these healthy foods.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, the Kraft mac and cheese, it's so.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  Specific.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  It's so specific. And I would go to friends' houses and they would obviously always have Kraft mac and cheese. It was so good. To this day, I don't know what they were doing to make it different. Because then I was also like, we need to buy this and I need to eat it. And so she did. And I was like, this isn't right.

• 26:36Dax Shepard?

  She couldn't do it.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Like, you're doing something wrong.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  I feel the same way.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  It doesn't taste like it does at my white friend's house.

• 26:43Dax Shepard?

  There's only two ingredients, milk and butter.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  There's no way she was doing anything wrong. But I was like, no, it tastes Indian.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Nothing's wrong with it.

• 26:53Dax Shepard?

  There's turmeric in this. I can taste it.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  You added curry to this. It's so weird how it stays and how it still lives. But now it has so much guilt with it.

• 27:03Dax Shepard?

  I would imagine if you're feeling all these feelings, it'd be all that much more rewarding to be connecting with people via their writing.

• 27:14Speaker 03

  I would say that this whole experience made me an astute observer of the world around me because that was part of the survival skill was observing behaviors. I kept a journal of American colloquialisms and idioms. That way I would try to just like fold into conversation until they sounded natural or slang words that I wanted to roll off my tongue. And so I became really attuned to dialogue. I felt like a little amateur anthropologist all the time.

• 27:44Dax Shepard?

  Slash spy.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 27:48Speaker 03

  It really sharpened my powers of observation.

• 27:53Speaker 03

  But made me interested in those little particularities that make a character come alive on the page, whether it's fiction or nonfiction. And I do think that desire for connection, that sense of belonging, I never found that despite my best efforts, but I would find it in books.

• 28:11Dax Shepard?

  What social rung did you end up in? I know you were at Juilliard at 12, playing the double bass that doesn't scream homecoming queen.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  So I spent seventh and eighth grade trying to become as popular as possible. And that felt like safety to me. It was like a kind of armor. You know, I went to public school. Did you go to public school?

• 28:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  I had a real epiphany thanks to a movie. What is the movie? It's Julia Roberts. She teaches at an all women's college, Mona Lisa Smile.

• 28:40Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  So I watched that movie and I'll never forget the scene on the first day of class. Julia Roberts is a professor. She shows up and all of the girls have already read the textbook. And they are so smart and they were cool in a way that I had never been exposed to. They were cool because they were ambitious and they were talented and they were leading with that. And I came home from watching that movie at the Wilton Mall and was like, oh, however I'm trying to be cool right now is not actually going to lead to what I want, which is to get out of here and to live an interesting life. And the very next day,

• 29:23Speaker 03

  I walked past the lunch table with these cool and an upstate sort of way friends and went straight to the library and was like, I need to get my shit together. And I've always been prone to dramatic shifts like that.

• 29:36Dax Shepard?

  I imagine you have an active romantic imagination of life. You don't want this one, so we must go get the one we want.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like writing a little character sketch for yourself and then trying it on for fit. I have only a few times in my life where I've had like a stark epiphany like that, where it really set me on a different course. But from that moment onward, I remember finding the best student in my class. His name was Patrick and going up to him and being like, will you teach me how to? Study.

• 30:03Dax Shepard?

  And he's like, um, yes. Oh, God, you're the reason kids are like this.

• 30:10Speaker 03

  I started practicing the bass.

• 30:12Dax Shepard?

  We're beautiful. And she was like in the popular group. Yeah, this is fun for him. This is like out of Friday Night Lights. He's like, oh, this is Landry being asked to help Tyra. Yeah, look at him.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Landry's the coolest character.

• 30:21Dax Shepard?

  Well, we learned that. Maybe Patrick is too.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  I became very focused practicing the bass on getting my act together. I'd been a terrible student and kind of getting into trouble.

• 30:32Dax Shepard?

  Smoking cigarettes.

• 30:33Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, all this.

• 30:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, great. Good stuff.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  I had my first cigarette in sixth grade.

• 30:37Dax Shepard?

  Same. Probably gonna be Ash, right? From the IGA, full carton. When I interviewed John, because you famously met at this Juilliard Band Camp, I said, I would have immediately been so attracted to any young girl who chose the stand up bass as her instrument. There's a lot there. That's a real statement to pick that, don't you think? Just generally speaking, in all the school bands.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  I started on piano when I was five and my mom was super strict about it. I had to practice every day. I hated it. And I remember, what grade is it where you get invited to pick an instrument? I think fourth grade. And I remember all the girls clamoring for the violins and.

• 31:17Dax Shepard?

  Violin, the flute.

• 31:18Speaker 03

  The flute, the basses of the orchestra, basically.

• 31:22Dax Shepard?

  Basically, which is a lot of music.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  And nobody wanted to play the bass. We're like a couple of tall, hulking guys.

• 31:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  And I remember thinking of it as like its own kind of misfit or outlier in the orchestra. And that for me was another kind of turning point where I was like, oh, no matter how hard I try, this whole assimilation thing is not working for me. Let me own this.

• 31:41Dax Shepard?

  It also reads as confidence.

• 31:44Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And I really, from the moment I picked up the bass, fell in love with it. Part of it was a way to inconvenience my parents, especially my mom who'd forced me to practice this instrument. It was wildly inconvenient. I couldn't carry it myself.

• 31:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Totally. They had to get a station wagon to be able to fit it in there.

• 32:03Dax Shepard?

  You don't think about it. Your kid picks an instrument. You're like, fuck, we gotta get a different car. Cars.

• 32:07Speaker 03

  Absolutely. It was a nightmare and I loved it.

• 32:11Dax Shepard?

  What about it other than that it was?

• 32:13Speaker 01

  A little different than the norm. It was not basic bitch instrument.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  And it's the only instrument you have to kind of hug with your whole body when you play and you feel every vibration in your chest. And there was something so primal to me about it. I love being the only girl in the bass section.

• 32:29Dax Shepard?

  You're kind of wrestling that instrument.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  It's a full body experience. And I also liked it because I remember my teacher saying, like, your hand isn't big enough to play the bass. And I was like, watch.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  I'll show you.

• 32:41Dax Shepard?

  Also, you get calluses, like you're walking around your whole life aware of this dedication you have.

• 32:49Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 32:55Dax Shepard?

  We get support from Skims. Okay, I have a confession. I genuinely love matching pajamas. It's the best part of Christmas morning, really. Everyone in the same matching set looking ridiculously cute in front of the tree.

• 33:10Speaker 01

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

• 33:31Dax Shepard?

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

• 33:40Speaker 01

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

• 33:47Dax Shepard?

  Okay, tell me more.

• 33:49Speaker 01

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

• 34:00Dax Shepard?

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

• 34:10Speaker 01

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

• 34:29Dax Shepard?

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

• 35:11Speaker 01

  They never are.

• 35:12Dax Shepard?

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

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Which is a fair question.

• 35:35Dax Shepard?

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

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Sleep mode is genius.

• 36:03Dax 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.

• 36:18Speaker 01

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

• 36:22Dax Shepard?

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

• 36:31Speaker 05

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

• 37:07Speaker 03

  So Bandcamp is not a cool place to be, but a badge of honor at Bandcamp is if you play so hard that you not only get a blister, but then you bleed. If you bleed on your strings, you're like super cool.

• 37:20Dax Shepard?

  And then you probably don't want to wash it off, but then you're like, I'm supposed to.

• 37:24Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 37:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, this is getting indulgent, but I want everyone to see. So that Bandcamp, was it in a pastoral, beautiful, was it in Saratoga?

• 37:33Speaker 03

  It was in Saratoga Springs.

• 37:35Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it was? Okay, perfect.

• 37:36Speaker 03

  There was an orchestra camp, which I was in, jazz camp, which John was in, and a ballet camp.

• 37:41Dax Shepard?

  So you weren't in the same discipline within the camp? You remember, obviously, meeting him?

• 37:45Speaker 03

  I did, because he was in a band with my first ever boyfriend. So I hung out with him quite a bit. But John was so shy that he barely spoke to me. Like, he couldn't make eye contact, he had a mouthful of braces.

• 37:59Dax Shepard?

  Skinny?

• 37:59Speaker 03

  Skinny as can be, in like oversized clothing, and just awkward and delightful, and already so brilliant.

• 38:07Dax Shepard?

  That's my curiosity. Did you get inklings of like, oh, this is special?

• 38:11Speaker 03

  At the end of the summer, there was a kind of recital. And I remember he played this piano solo. And mind you, he'd been playing for two years at that point. And everyone gave him a standing ovation. And you're not really supposed to do that at kids concerts, like, because everyone's kid is special and really...

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  And it was just an involuntary reaction.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 38:32Speaker 03

  And I remember thinking to myself, I've never met someone quite like him.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  I have chills.

• 38:39Speaker 03

  And then just totally forgetting about it because it's summer camp.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:42Speaker 03

  He's from New Orleans, never gonna see each other again. And fast forward four years later, and it was my first weekend at Juilliard. And I was on the one train with my friend Michelle. And we see this guy who's like attracting stares because he had headphones on and he was like humming to himself and rocking around and playing the air piano. And everyone was like, who is this crazy dude?

• 39:08Dax Shepard?

  What age was everyone at that point?

• 39:10Speaker 03

  I was 16 and John was 17. I was a freshman at Juilliard, I was in the pre-college program.

• 39:14Dax Shepard?

  And he was just vibing in his own world?

• 39:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can picture it.

• 39:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:18Speaker 03

  Making sounds.

• 39:19Dax Shepard?

  When I'm explaining John to people who don't know who he is, I'm like, you'll never meet anyone that feels more from another planet.

• 39:26Speaker 03

  John and I, we call each other aliens. There's like a wonderful thing when you meet a fellow alien.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  Even if you're not from the same.

• 39:35Dax Shepard?

  Planet.

• 39:35Speaker 03

  Planet.

• 39:36Dax Shepard?

  Or planetary system.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  There's like a game recognize game thing that happens.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 39:40Speaker 03

  So in that moment, I was like, oh, I know that guy. I remembered him because he was so awkward and weird back then, too.

• 39:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:47Speaker 03

  In the most delightful way. And I was like, that's John Batiste from New Orleans. And then I said, just blurt this out. I said, that's the man I'm going to marry someday.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:58Speaker 03

  And my friend Michelle was like, say hi to him. And I was like, no, no, no. And she went, John, right as the subway doors opened, I like ducked and ran. And I totally forgot about it. And she was at our little living room wedding and told this story.

• 40:11Dax Shepard?

  Ah.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  God, life is.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Isn't that bizarre?

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Wild.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  And we had no interest in each other romantically.

• 40:19Dax Shepard?

  Do you have an explanation for why you started journaling so early? Because you have journaled your entire life, which is pretty rare.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  I was a really angry kid with a lot of big feelings. In part from all this moving around and upheaval. And so I think I needed a receptacle for that to kind of get it out of my body. And so I think that was the first impulse. And I always felt so much better after I journaled. And then I think in the course of just trying to transcribe whatever swirl of feelings or thoughts was happening inside of me, I also started to kind of delight in it. Like I started to have fun in my journal. I would read back and my journals are full of lies.

• 41:02Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow, wow, yeah, yeah.

• 41:04Speaker 03

  Things that definitely did not happen.

• 41:06Dax Shepard?

  Like boys you were dating?

• 41:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, boys I said I kissed that I certainly never did.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Why, like fantasy?

• 41:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, there was a fantasy element and a sense of possibility. And there was a lot of trying things on for fit and writing my way into it and seeing how it felt. And so I think from an early age, I realized that the journal is this rare space where you're not doing it for a grade, you're not doing it for anybody other than yourself. It's kind of like a chrysalis, like you get to be your goopiest, messiest, most unformed self, and there are no stakes.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're not turning it in to get critiqued.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  It's not good writing, it's not even grammatical writing. It can just be whatever you want. I could experiment on myself with myself and just see what emerged. And I think I'm someone who I don't actually understand what I'm feeling or what I'm thinking until I write my way through it. I often, and I notice this in my writing, and I don't know what it's like for you, when I went to work on my memoir, all of the first drafts of that book were full of lies, like the story I wanted it to be.

• 42:18Dax Shepard?

  Yes, of course.

• 42:19Speaker 03

  And then I would write it and be like, that does not actually feel true to what I'm actually thinking or feeling, and then I have to go back and revise. And I think so many of us, in the way that we think back on the stories of our lives and on the stories of who we are, they live in the aspirational as opposed to what's actually happening.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Honesty.

• 42:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. But then you weirdly manifest this whole life that you've been practicing in a secret way. You do kind of end up becoming the thing you're fantasizing about a lot.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  And the act of keeping a journal, it keeps... Be honest so that I can then manifest. I know you journal a lot.

• 42:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  But something will come up enough times that I'm like so bored by whatever petty grievance or whatever thing it is, that I'm finally like, I have to do something about this. This is intolerable.

• 43:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  I cannot spend another minute of my one precious life rehashing

• 43:15Dax Shepard?

  Repeating.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  the stupid thing that happened with my ex-boyfriend or whatever it is.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  And in the act of noticing those patterns or noticing sometimes the undesirable things that are coming up, it liberates me enough to actually move towards what I want.

• 43:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  And that's what therapy serves as well. Same sort of thing where it's like, oh my God, I'm talking about this again.

• 43:36Dax Shepard?

  It's embarrassing.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Oh, God, like, I guess.

• 43:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you can kind of get shamed into changing. You're like, this is embarrassing.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 43:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 03

  When did you start keeping a journal?

• 43:47Dax Shepard?

  I sporadically journaled through high school and then I took this really long road trip when I graduated and I journaled pretty good during that. I too, I had this very romantic sense of a life I wanted to live and it was inspired by people I had read. And so the worst version would be to call it like, there's some egomaniacal nature to it.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  To journaling?

• 44:09Dax Shepard?

  Just to the whole thing.

• 44:10Speaker 03

  Were you writing for your future biographer?

• 44:13Dax Shepard?

  Well, writing with the notion I'd be reading it when I'm older, which is like this weird trap. And like, I think you got to learn to break that. Self-conscious, but no audience. It was going to be me and I knew every time I looked back in life, I was always kind of embarrassed by what I thought was so cool. And then it was gone for a while. And then when I got sober, I started journaling and I noticed this crazy pattern where it was like, I'd be religious about journaling every morning and then I went and journaled for eight days and then I'd relapse. And once I figured out that pattern, I think just superstitiously, I decided, if you can't commit to journaling every day, you're not going to commit to sobriety. So I've been journaling for 21 years straight, but I stopped and I noticed you have periods where you stopped.

• 44:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:56Dax Shepard?

  And I want to talk about stopping because I stopped for a period because. The journal was always where I was dead honest. And I started to have some things I couldn't even be honest about with my journal. I didn't realize that till later, but I was like, oh, I stopped writing because I couldn't bear to write in it and not be honest.

• 45:15Speaker 03

  When the truth is too hot to touch. Did the way that you journal change when you were in that midst of the kind of dark night of the soul? In early recovery, were you still writing with that self consciousness? Or were you kind of writing to save your life?

• 45:31Dax Shepard?

  Writing to save my life and writing with great humility. And you can almost track when I'm feeling good and bullish in my recovery. But no, it's the punctuated starts, right? It's like returning to journaling after a two month bender, basically. And the level of humility and lack of self consciousness, just like, I'm gonna die. That's really the pure zones of it.

• 45:50Speaker 03

  I think that for me is always what journaling has felt like is writing to save my life. Like, I'm not actually doing it with the idea of rereading it.

• 45:59Dax Shepard?

  Any vanity.

• 46:00Speaker 03

  No, it is when I'm my most laid bare stripped down self. And when I have only questions, like, I feel like I am entirely made of questions with zero answers. And to me, the epigraph that I included in the Book of Alchemy is that book a line of live the questions now. And eventually someday you'll live your way into the answers, the idea of living the questions.

• 46:22Dax Shepard?

  Living the questions. The book is called The Book of Alchemy, A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life. And I thought, well, first we should talk about what alchemy is. And then I want to talk about the first time you were in the hospital. Because I think that might be the most tangible sense of alchemy I've ever heard. So alchemy is people used to try to turn random objects into gold.

• 46:41Speaker 03

  And it's always been one of my favorite words in the English language. I've always been drawn exactly to that traditional and popular definition of alchemy. This idea of transmuting something base, something considered worthless, like lead, into something precious and noble, like gold. So I think as a kid, I was just interested in it as someone who was interested in magic.

• 47:04Dax Shepard?

  I don't want to be too corny, but I think you were a piece of gold that everyone thought was lead. And you were waiting for everyone to recognize that you were. That's very nice. Yeah, I think that's what's going on.

• 47:13Speaker 03

  It's kind of like the ugly duck leg.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Yes, it is. You're amongst all these people that you're being told they're gold. And you're like, but I'm not like them, but I think I have something to offer here.

• 47:23Dax Shepard?

  I'm valuable too.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I have value, but no one's seeing it.

• 47:27Dax Shepard?

  You have this incredibly literal experience with alchemy. I'm sure when I say hospital, you could probably think of many times where this happened. But I'm thinking you and John weren't romantically involved. I don't know how you come to know each other from the subway to your first diagnosis with leukemia. But you're in the hospital at 22. How have you and John reconnected at that point?

• 47:50Speaker 03

  So we had stayed in touch. It's so funny. We both got honorary doctorates at Brown last weekend.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Oh, congrats.

• 47:57Speaker 03

  Thank you. I know. We felt very fancy.

• 48:00Dax Shepard?

  I'm sorry I didn't address you correctly.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. You can refer to me as Dr. J for the remainder of this conversation. But I was having so much deja vu to that age. I was like, when was the last time I was in a cap and gown with my parents present?

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  So we reconnected this summer I graduated from college and he crashed my going away party. I was a total mess. I nearly missed my graduation because I was so hungover that I slept through my alarm. Like, I was so shamefaced. I couldn't meet my parents' eyes. I was a disaster.

• 48:32Dax Shepard?

  And you just graduated from Princeton?

• 48:33Speaker 03

  I just graduated from Princeton. And I was such a creative kid, but I graduated from Princeton. And whatever sense of freedom and imagination that I'd had, I went into Princeton. I was on a full financialized scholarship and was like, I need to honor the sacrifices my parents made for me, and I need to honor this opportunity. My interpretation of that was I needed to have a practical plan. And so I had no idea who I was, what I was doing. And I had this sense of anxiety. Bezos gave our commencement speech.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  And I remember him saying something about how at the age of 80, you'll survey your life and the choices that you make now are extraordinary. Extremely important.

• 49:22Dax Shepard?

  No, too much pressure.

• 49:23Speaker 03

  And I was like, I already felt like I had failed when I graduated. And I was like, I had no plan, no job.

• 49:28Dax Shepard?

  Well, if you go there on a full ride and you have double minor in French and in gender studies.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  What's your major?

• 49:35Speaker 03

  I did Near Eastern Studies and French and Gender Studies.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Okay, wow.

• 49:38Dax Shepard?

  I would argue too, you're a bit of a vunder kid and there's easy ways to achieve the vunderkin things. And now it's up to you.

• 49:47Speaker 03

  Well, but there are easy ways to continue achieving the vunderkin thing when you graduate. And they're not always the things you actually want.

• 49:54Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:55Speaker 03

  So I was like, maybe I should go to law school. That sounds impressive. All of my plans were about what sounded good.

• 50:02Dax Shepard?

  Of course.

• 50:02Speaker 03

  And how to sound impressive when someone asked me like what I was planning to do after graduation. And none of them actually felt appealing to me.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Were you still playing music throughout this time?

• 50:13Speaker 03

  Not really. I really was so lost. And I reconnected with John and moved to Paris and was working as a paralegal. I was sick at the time and didn't know it. So I had this real sense that something was deeply wrong with me.

• 50:25Dax Shepard?

  When you have leukemia at the beginning, what are the symptoms feeling like?

• 50:29Speaker 03

  So I have a strange kind of leukemia that starts with a disease called myeloidisplastic syndrome, preleukemia. So it moves very slowly until it grows into full-blown leukemia. So I had been sick my whole senior year.

• 50:42Dax Shepard?

  In leukemia, you end up with way too many white blood cells?

• 50:45Speaker 03

  It depends what kind, but not enough white blood cells, not enough red blood cells. So I was constantly getting sick and went to see a doctor. He told me it was probably because of my period and like sent me home with iron supplements.

• 50:58Dax Shepard?

  Your test results are back. You're a woman.

• 51:00Speaker 03

  Exactly. I was exhausted all the time. And saw someone and they were like, maybe you're partying too hard, burning the candle at both ends. All of it was attributed to me and my feelings as a person. I was so exhausted, I would drink eight cups of coffee to get through the day and could not function. My most dangerous.

• 51:24Speaker 03

  Era of self-medication was that year and that summer because I just could not function.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:29Speaker 03

  I thought it was me. I didn't think it was a health thing.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:31Dax Shepard?

  Did you get any cocaine?

• 51:32Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:33Dax Shepard?

  Wonderful.

• 51:33Speaker 03

  Started with Adderall and then big.

• 51:35Dax Shepard?

  That was my drug of choice.

• 51:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would do cocaine and it felt like a cup of coffee. Like, that's how exhausted I was.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  Like, I was like, oh, OK, I can keep my eyes open.

• 51:44Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I have done an A-ball and I could take a nap.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 51:49Dax Shepard?

  I wish I would have bumped into you in Paris in this phase.

• 51:51Speaker 03

  Well, so I went to Paris because cocaine is not cool in Paris. And specifically to get away from the whole crew of people I was hanging out with. Because I knew by the end of that summer that I was in trouble and that I was someone I did not want to be.

• 52:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 52:07Speaker 03

  And that I needed to make a change. And the only way, you know, my whole childhood change was changing your zip code.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:16Speaker 03

  And so I took this paralegal job and was like, I need to get out of here.

• 52:20Dax Shepard?

  But geographic, they call it.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  And I need to start over. And I did clean up my act. And it was without all those substances in my system that I really realized something was deeply wrong. And I kept getting misdiagnosed because as a woman, and especially as a North African woman in Paris, nobody took me seriously. I got hospitalized for a week and they diagnosed me with burnout syndrome and released me from the hospital. Like, I really thought I was going crazy.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's mad.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  And so the weird thing is it was a relief.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  I was about to say, you must have felt so good.

• 52:49Speaker 03

  It really was. I was so relieved.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  At least you're not crazy.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  That it wasn't all in my head, that I wasn't a hypochondriac, that I wasn't making all of this up.

• 52:58Dax Shepard?

  That you are causing it.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Or that, like, you couldn't handle life.

• 53:01Speaker 03

  That's how it felt. I felt like, I remember writing in my journal, I can't cut it in the real world. So a year to the day after graduation, I got admitted to the hospital in New York and spent the whole summer inpatient. And that, to go back to alchemy, is when I feel like I really started to think about the applications of a particular kind of creative alchemy in my life. And it really was John who I feel like modeled that for me.

• 53:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so you're in the hospital room, you're absolutely miserable. Everyone on the hospital floor is miserable. It is a cancer. Wing of the hospital. And John shows up with a few musicians.

• 53:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I'd been in there six weeks. Whatever I thought that whole experience is gonna be like was not it. I had brought a suitcase full of books. I was like, I'm gonna read through the rest of the Western canon. I was like, I'm gonna make this productive. And I didn't do none of those things. And at the end of the summer, I was the sickest I've ever been. None of chemo is working and I was going into bone marrow failure. And that same day that I got that news, John showed up with his whole band because he just learned I was in the hospital. And again, we were just friends. This is who John is. He shows up for people in the most difficult moments and he always shows up. He's the guy who will fly to New Orleans for three hours to see his eight-year-old nephew's soccer game. Oh.

• 54:22Speaker 03

  And so, right there in my hospital room, they started to play for me. And as the sound of the music floated out into the hallway, these patients and doctors and nurses were poking their heads out, like, what is happening here? And everyone started to sing and clap their hands and started to dance. And it was such a profound experience of witnessing this profoundly depressing, musicless place where the only sounds that you hear are the beeping of IV poles and the wheezing of monitors alchemized into this joyous second line. And everybody was so happy. It was one of the best days of my life.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  And it had started as this terrifying day that unlocked something for me and that I felt such a sense of powerlessness. Whatever plans I'd had for how my life was going to go were obviously out the window. But when you're stuck in a hospital bed, in a room with no end date of being released in sight, you have every excuse in the world to do absolutely nothing. And it's so easy to feel like you have no agency and you're ceding control to doctors and to caregivers and to whatever mysterious happenings are taking place in your body. And it was this moment where I started to think about

• 55:48Speaker 03

  how survival necessitates its own kind of creative act. Like, when the chemo sores make it too painful to speak, you have to find different ways. To communicate with your friends and family. And when you're bored out of your skull because you're 22 and you're stuck in bed and all your friends are like out starting their lives, you have to use your imagination to not go crazy. And so I returned to the journal in the most serious way I'd ever returned to it, in a really daily way.

• 56:20Dax Shepard?

  You took this 100 day challenge, basically, yeah?

• 56:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I started using it as a kind of reporter's pad. I would write little details about what was happening in this cancer ward. Like, my neighbor down the hallway, Dennis, who declared a hunger strike because all of the meal trays kept arriving with the food still frozen. And he was like going around trying to rally all of us to join us in this hunger strike. I'd write about the nurses and their gossip. I was watching a lot of Grey's Anatomy at the time because that weirdly was the one thing that made me feel a little less isolated within this experience. I was like, oh yeah, I get this. And I remember asking one of the residents if her life bore any resemblance to the cast of Grey's.

• 57:02Speaker 03

  And she was like, we have just as much sex, but everyone's significantly less attractive. And so I'd write down these little lines of dialogue. And I was like, actually, I don't want to be here, obviously, but this place is really interesting and there's a lot of stuff happening here.

• 57:19Dax Shepard?

  I don't mind being on record saying this, and I've said it before, but people in the medical industry are perverts in the best way possible. They are perverts. That's a good group.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Seems like you were at that time with the writing and then even with John bringing music back into your life, you were kind of getting tethered back to your old self.

• 57:36Speaker 03

  Totally. And it was because I had leukemia, so there were no expectations of me for the first time since childhood. And I think all kids are creative. You're not thinking about being a good artist or a bad artist. You're just playing make believe. And you're able to do that because there are expectations of you to monetize it or turn it into your passion or into your major, whatever pressures we put on ourselves. And so I was just doing it for myself because it was fun. And there was no goal, no outcome in mind. Scarier than even the possibility of death was the idea.

• 58:14Speaker 03

  Of being some tragic story of unmet potential.

• 58:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 58:19Speaker 03

  And more unbearable even than that was the idea of continuing along the path that I was on, where I was really living for what the journalist David Brooks describes as the resume virtues, the traits that make you attractive in the modern marketplace as opposed to the eulogy virtues, which are the traits that were remembered for long after we're gone. Like, were you kind? Were you brave? Did you take interesting, creative risks? It's not about your GPA. It's not about how cool your job title sounds. And so it was profoundly humbling to me. And I started to research our long lineage of bedridden artists and writers throughout history,

• 59:04Speaker 03

  like Frida Kahlo, who was in a bus accident at around the same age and was stuck in bed. And her mom gave her a lap desk and an easel. And she started making the self-portraits that obviously turned her into one of the most famous artists of all time. Or Virginia Woolf, or there's so many examples of people who used that confinement as a springboard for something totally unexpected and as a space that was useful. And that, to me, was exciting. It's always been what's exciting to me about writing is even when some tragedy befalls you, the second you write about it, it becomes grist. It becomes something that you can excavate on the page, becomes material.

• 59:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you even talk about becoming excited for your nightmares. What a reframing.

• 59:55Speaker 03

  I was keeping this journal for myself, writing about a lot of the things I couldn't talk about out loud. I was writing about infertility. And also, there's nothing quite like being sick to humble you. There are so many indignities. You lose your dignity every single day when you are in cancer treatment.

• 1:00:11Dax Shepard?

  You have no privacy.

• 1:00:12Speaker 03

  No privacy.

• 1:00:13Dax Shepard?

  People are in and out of your space.

• 1:00:14Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 1:00:15Dax Shepard?

  Touching you.

• 1:00:16Speaker 03

  I think they designed the backless hospital gown.

• 1:00:19Dax Shepard?

  This is a further fuck you.

• 1:00:21Speaker 03

  Exactly. I'm like, surely there is a better design. That does not make you feel so literally exposed.

• 1:00:30Dax Shepard?

  I know. Why do they need to access your back so much?

• 1:00:32Speaker 03

  They don't. Never once has there been an immediate urgent need for access to the backside.

• 1:00:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Why can't it just rope in the front like a rope?

• 1:00:40Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 1:00:41Dax Shepard?

  I put one on backwards one time. I was like, oh, this makes sense. And then I came out and then I was quite embarrassed. They're like, you have it on wrong.

• 1:00:47Speaker 03

  Someone, not me, should design something.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  I feel like what you feel you're owed in life dissolves immediately when you're in there. Because what you're owed is not having your ass exposed, really. It becomes so real and human about what we deserve and don't deserve.

• 1:01:05Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And in the process, I had such limited energy. I'd have two hours maybe where I felt okay. I had to get really specific about what I wanted to do in those two to three hours and who I wanted to spend those two to three hours with.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:20Speaker 03

  And that was a really useful exercise. I still think about that. I'm like, if I only have two hours today, what makes me feel most alive? Who makes me feel most alive? What do I really want to do?

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  How are your parents during all this? And also just because knowing with immigrant parents, being like, I have to maybe interfere with the server and say how to pronounce this, you're always kind of looking out for them in a different way? Did you feel sort of burdened by that during your time there?

• 1:01:49Speaker 03

  I had worked so hard to be independent. I'm a very proud person. We are a very proud family. Like, I really struggled with the accepting of help and the needing of help.

• 1:01:59Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that's my number one.

• 1:02:01Speaker 03

  And especially at 21, 22, where like the last thing you want to feel is infantilized. You're like, I've got this, even though you definitely don't got it.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  Yes. Whether you're in the hospital or not, you don't got it.

• 1:02:12Dax Shepard?

  Exactly. You're clearly in a nosedive. No one has it, in fact.

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  No one has it. You know, that same guy Dennis who started the hunger strike? He never had any visitors the whole summer. And like, I remember being really struck by that because I was having all kinds of feelings about my friends, some of whom were really there and many of whom were not. Which in retrospect, of course, the people I was Playing beer pong with or doing cocaine with were not like by my bedside, holding my hand as my hair was falling out. So he ended up dying and nobody came to collect his body. And I remember being so humbled by that and shocked by it.

• 1:02:49Dax Shepard?

  That's independence.

• 1:02:51Speaker 03

  Really makes you think twice. And I started to really realize how lucky I was to have parents who were there every single day. My mom, who was like cooking me the very things as a kid that I was tossing in the trash can because the militaries kept showing up frozen. And it really changed my relationship to my parents. When I was writing my first book, Between Two Kingdoms, my mom actually gave me her journals from that time because I wanted to understand her perspective. And that was so sobering. They say there's a word for someone who loses their parents orphaned. There's a word for someone who loses their spouse widow. And there's no word in the English language for a parent who loses their child

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  because it is a hell too heavy for the fabric of language. And so I think for me too, it was this moment of seeing the humanity in my parents. And worse than that, seeing them trying so hard to be brave and strong and knowing that it was devastating. That really humbled me in such a big way. And it also, I think, really made me think about the kind of relationships I wanted and the strength and quality of those relationships, relationships to my family or to my friends or romantic relationships.

• 1:04:12Dax Shepard?

  So in that time, you also start writing this column in the New York Times, Life Interrupted. And then post treatment, which takes three years, you're not cancer free for three years at that point. You go around the country, you drive thousands of miles and you meet people who have written you letters based on that column. And then that becomes the basis for the memoir Between Two Kingdoms.

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:04:34Dax Shepard?

  And then after that, we do the beautiful documentary, American Symphony. John is up for 11 Grammys. You're a successful writer. He's writing a symphony. This should be a wonderful time and it returns. And then in that return, you know journaling is a practice is your superpower. But then your vision gets so fucked up from all the medication. You're only left to paint. But that was the thing. When I watched the doc, I was like, look at this volcano of creativity. Like, take writing away and she just is going to paint endlessly. It's very inspiring to watch your output during that time.

• 1:05:12Speaker 03

  I feel like the most powerful acts of creativity sometimes are born from a place of desperation, from like a savage place of urgency. Again, it's like that writing or painting or whatever it is to kind of save your life. And that's what it was for me. You know, I went into that hospitalization, was getting a second bone marrow transplant, being like, oh, I know how I'm gonna navigate this. I had 10 journals with me. I had my share journal with John, my medical journal, my personal journal. And I was seeing triple and quadruple and having these really intense medication induced hallucinations where I was having nightmares about 10 foot tall giraffes that doubled as IV poles.

• 1:05:53Speaker 03

  And like I knew from having been through this once before that instead of resisting what I was most afraid of, instead of numbing myself against it or like turning away from it, the only way for this to not be a miserable or a solely miserable traumatic experience was to engage with my fear and to collaborate with it. And so I started transcribing these weird hallucinations and nightmares in watercolor. I'm not a painter. I haven't painted from the time I was a kid. And again, it was doing this thing purely for myself without any expectation of it needing to be a thing.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  And I would do one every day. It was like a visual journal essentially. Cause watercolor in some ways is like a perfect medium because you can't control it. Yeah. You're not the sole agent of it. It's like an aquatic dance or something. Yeah, it moves. It moves. And that's the beauty of it. It's like all about the happy acts. On the paper and I became obsessed with it. My nurses every day would come in and they were like, let's look at the new painting. It was like a surrealist art gallery.

• 1:07:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:03Speaker 03

  And this young woman who would come to clean the floors said to me, like, I always clean the floors. I'm here for longer than I need to because I like the way I feel in here. Ultimately, I really believe that that same creativity we have as kids, that we have natural access to is something that if we cultivate as adults, you don't have to be a screenwriter as your day job or a Grammy winning musician or whatever. It is just an energetic shift. Like there's a miracle's fit. You make something where there was nothing before and it becomes something new. It's that alchemy. And that for me is how I've navigated all the peaks and valleys

• 1:07:45Speaker 03

  and tried to look at my life as a sort of creative project that I get to constantly reimagine.

• 1:07:56Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:08:08Dax Shepard?

  Well, I left one part out. So during COVID, given your experience, you started a newsletter, a Substack, The Isolation Journals. And that accumulated hundreds of thousands of readers and participants and it's still alive. And it remains like one of the biggest artist communities in the world, this thing you started. So did that experience with kind of prompting others to get engaged in it, encourage you to write The Book of Alchemy?

• 1:08:33Speaker 03

  It did. And I really resisted writing this book because I worried that journaling sounds unserious. And it also seems so self evident. You need a pen, you need a notebook and off you go. And yet, to your point about stopping and starting, how many times have you bought a journal, filled out the first few pages and then just left the whole rest of it blank? And then bought another one because that journal is ruined.

• 1:08:58Dax Shepard?

  Tainted.

• 1:08:59Speaker 03

  And you have to like start fresh. Totally. I think especially in the The moments where I've fallen off, even as someone who has loved keeping a journal. It's actually a really hard thing to do, to be in conversation with the self. And often when you need it most is when you resist it most. And so that idea of being prompted, and I'm someone who, if you had told me at 20, like right to a prompt, I would have been like, absolutely not. That sounds like homework. I'm not interested in that.

• 1:09:27Dax Shepard?

  Well, there's a section, you quote another writer, a poet, who says like, soon as you tell me, tell us about a favorite memory in the wilderness or some shit.

• 1:09:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:36Dax Shepard?

  And he's like, that's like putting your finger in a goldfish pond and all the goldfish immediately run to the shadows. And I'm like, that's how I feel about prompts. All of a sudden I can't remember one thing.

• 1:09:46Speaker 03

  So to me, it's not the prompt, it's the reading that accompanies the prompt. And so my whole life, especially when I'm feeling stuck, I start by reading something. And the prompt I think of as, it's not homework. You don't have to follow it. Sometimes I read a prompt and I'm like, I hate that prompt. That prompt irritates me. And I write into that irritation and that yields something interesting. It's that kind of kaleidoscopic effect where you just shift the barrel just so and the light falls differently. And so for me, journaling, when it yields the most rewards is when I'm doing it consistently. It's like exercise.

• 1:10:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's like going to therapy once a year.

• 1:10:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. So in order to get myself there, I need some structure, some container and something to prod me.

• 1:10:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I loved your explanation of trying to write the memoir and going to Vermont and getting the cabin. And you're all set up to do it. And then just the agony of trying to write a book. And how the way you broke out of that is just reading other people's work. And I relate to that enormously. In fact, anytime I have had writer's block, my break the glass is Catcher in the Rye. For whatever reason, if I read like three pages of Catcher in the Rye, I remember what I love about writing. I want to do the thing I just saw.

• 1:11:01Speaker 03

  Totally. And I love reading the journals of the writers I admire most. Like I like reading about.

• 1:11:10Speaker 03

  Their struggles with their writing life, or whatever it was that they were dealing with. My very favorite thing to do is to try to sync up the journals of my very favorite writers with the books they were writing at the time and to try to like, understand the movement of what was happening.

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:11:26Speaker 03

  I also think writing is very intimidating to a lot of people. And I think in some ways, the journal is the most democratic of writing forms, because you don't have to be a good writer. And it's actually specifically about not doing precious writing, self-conscious writing, where you're like, how is future me going to think about this?

• 1:11:43Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think a journal is bad if we end up getting copies and it's like, oh, they're just doing a thing. They weren't being honest, or they weren't rambling even. You need some of that to know it's real.

• 1:11:54Dax Shepard?

  But I think what's required to overcome that is repetition and volume. I don't think you get there by starting and stopping and starting and stopping. I think it's like, the act of it consistently will erode that self-consciousness.

• 1:12:08Speaker 03

  I also find that it sharpens my memory. Like, the second I write something down, I remember it.

• 1:12:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:14Speaker 03

  And so it's so easy to just like, tumble headfirst into your life and to have moments that feel significant that you think you're going to remember. And then, obviously, inevitably, you don't. But even in the writing of a memoir, people are like, how do you remember all of this shit? And I'm like, because I recorded it.

• 1:12:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:30Speaker 03

  And the second you write it down, it kind of traps it in amber. Do you have fear of people reading your journals? Or are you someone who like, lies them around, hoping someone will be interested enough to look at them?

• 1:12:41Dax Shepard?

  I don't want anyone to.

• 1:12:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:43Dax Shepard?

  And I don't care.

• 1:12:44Speaker 03

  I feel the same way.

• 1:12:44Dax Shepard?

  I was gonna ask you, I don't ever read any of them.

• 1:12:48Speaker 03

  I don't either. The only one I do like to go back and reread is my joint journal with John. When we first started dating, we were for years so full of angst about relationships and marriage in a way that wasn't even necessarily about each other, but just our own baggage that we were bringing into it. And both of us were spending a lot of time on the road. And we would do the thing that couples do when you're apart, where you have a call and you're like, how are you? How was your day? And it's like, you never really get to the there there. And it's so easy to feel disconnected. So John was like, instead of, because- We were doing morning pages at the time. Instead of doing our three pages a day, what if we direct them at each other? And snap a photo and text them to each other.

• 1:13:29Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so that was my curiosity mechanically, how they get shared.

• 1:13:32Speaker 03

  How it works. So we started doing that. And like, things would come up in these entries or in these letters essentially to each other that I didn't even know I was feeling insane with him. Or certainly would not have come up in a phone call. And all these kind of questions and doubts and anxieties we were having about our relationship. And it's fun to go back and reread those.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  So intimate.

• 1:13:55Speaker 03

  It's so intimate.

• 1:13:57Dax Shepard?

  How long has that been going on? Does it get interrupted?

• 1:13:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, when I was in the hospital, there was like a period of time where we couldn't see each other because he'd been exposed to COVID at work. He was writing letters, but I would do like a voice dictation. And that's the other thing I like about journaling. It doesn't have to be pen and paper. Like John does piano journal entries. I'll sometimes do voice notes when I'm walking.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  The painting you said was a version of that.

• 1:14:20Speaker 03

  From the isolation journals. We did a kind of hundred day journaling project during the pandemic. And this woman, never forget, who had lost her 13 year old daughter, decided that her version of journaling was going to be using her daughter's art supplies to create a visual journal entry every day. It became like a grief journal for her and it was a memory of her daughter every day. And she loved it so much that she kept doing it because she was like, this is the first time I've been able to feel the joy of remembering my daughter and not just the pain of it. And I was like, ah.

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:54Speaker 03

  What a creative and deeply powerful way to engage with your grief and also to reinterpret journaling.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  I have the opposite. I started a journal at the beginning of the year and I stopped pretty quickly. But also, I was very hung up on someone. I live by myself.

• 1:15:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  There is no reason for me to be worried that anyone's gonna like find it, read it. And I was like, should I tear the pages out and shred them every day? Like, I don't want anyone's ever seeing this.

• 1:15:24Speaker 03

  We need to get you a lockbox.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess. Probably, yeah. It's not that I'm writing some major secret or anything. It's just, I don't want anyone to see it and I don't want to see it again. I want it gone.

• 1:15:36Speaker 03

  Is there a feeling of shame?

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  I wouldn't have said so, but the strength at which I was like.

• 1:15:41Dax Shepard?

  It has the whole. Marxist.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it definitely does. It's strong enough that there is obviously something else happening.

• 1:15:48Speaker 03

  I think that's very common.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it might be why people steer away from it. Like, what if someone reads it?

• 1:15:54Speaker 03

  And more interesting than that is what you just said. It's like, what if I read it?

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  I don't want to scroll through and see something from last week that is gonna remind. I want it gone.

• 1:16:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that'd be interesting to write into.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, true, probably.

• 1:16:08Speaker 03

  We just went on tour for the book. We wanted to recreate our living room set onstage. So in Brooklyn, we actually hired a man with a van to take our entire living room furniture to the Bam Opera House, like our couch, our coffee table, everything. The one thing that did travel with us city to city were all of my childhood journals. Maybe 50 or 100 of them. And so I had a suitcase with a combo lock code. Because I'm like, what could go wrong? An audience full of people who are curious.

• 1:16:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:37Speaker 03

  And all of my most shameful. And at one point, we left the suitcase by accident.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:16:45Speaker 03

  At a venue and only realized when we got to the airport. And I had a moment where I was like, you know what? Actually, I'm OK with this.

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:16:52Speaker 03

  Whatever things I'm embarrassed by, whatever particularities feel like so unique to me, it's all good. It's the same shit we've all been struggling with since the beginning of mankind.

• 1:17:05Dax Shepard?

  I also think it's a little bit telling of your own list of virtues. So for me, I think bravery is high on that list. And I think the bravest thing I could do in my lifetime is have no fear that someone would know all of me. And that would be the ultimate kind of self-actualized. Yeah, there's all my journals. I trust that I'm still lovable after you know this. I try to head towards that direction. But I was curious. So I didn't even have a sense of my journals until the fires happened. And then it was like, what are we taking? And I was like, all I want is my journals. I had never put them in bags. I couldn't believe how much room it took up.

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:42Dax Shepard?

  I'm never gonna read my journals I'm writing. Yet I do have this in the background fear that they're gonna get lost, burnt, something. The thought of all that disappearing. Do you have any of that?

• 1:17:53Speaker 03

  This is a great prompt. Susan Cheever, John Cheever's daughter, has a great essay and prompt in the book called Letter from a Burning Building. I'm trying to think. I'd probably grab my paintings. Before, but I think I would grab my journals. And why is that? I don't know. It's not because I need them or want to reread them, but they do feel like morsels of myself.

• 1:18:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Well, the record. Of your existence. Of your existence in a lot of ways.

• 1:18:19Speaker 03

  There's this wonderful Joan Didion line where she says, "We're well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be." And that's how I feel about my journals. They're my past selves and I want to keep on nodding terms with the people I used to be.

• 1:18:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Okay, so the book is broken into 10 chapters and they are prompts. And then within each chapter, and it's like on grief, on love. We go through all these many big segments of life on earth, really. And within each chapter, you have all these contributing authors. There's like 100? 100 people have submitted stories that are kind of prompts. And the list is incredible. Gloria Steinem wrote something for it.

• 1:19:03Speaker 03

  Gloria Steinem is our oldest contributor at 91. Our youngest was six at the time. Lou Sullivan, who's a two-time pediatric cancer survivor. It's sort of a collection of the people who have most creatively inspired me and who are not necessarily what you think of when you think of as creative. Like there's the George Saunders and the Salman Rushdie's of the world in it. But there's also Lou, a man on death row, weeks out from his execution. And a young mother who is about to become a widow, who writes like one of the most beautiful essays and has this beautiful prompt. And the title of it is "I Begin Again." And she's imagining herself beginning again

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  on the other side of this thing that she knows is coming and is happening. And I structured it in those 10 thematic chapters because I did go back for the first time ever and reread all of my journals. And I tried to distill the themes that kept coming up again and again and again. And it was fear and purpose and love and the body. That was sort of the initial conceit of it. And it's kind of like a memoir, an essay that has these long chapter essays. And it's meant to be designed as a sort of hundred day project if you want to do it that way.

• 1:20:19Dax Shepard?

  That keeps coming up. There's as many people that prescribe this kind of hundred day commitment and then see what happens after that. As you said, on beginning, on memory, on fear, on seeing, on love, on the body, on rebuilding, on ego.

• 1:20:33Speaker 03

  My mom was like, why did I kick off the on ego chapter? Cause she's one of the essay contributors. She's like, what are you trying to tell me?

• 1:20:41Dax Shepard?

  On purpose and on alchemy. Yeah. And there's just an incredible list of people that contributed, as we just said. You mentioned many of them, but Anne Patchett.

• 1:20:52Speaker 03

  Love Anne Patchett. Have you had her on? No.

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  I'd love to have her. Yeah.

• 1:20:56Dax Shepard?

  Selman Rushdie, Elizabeth Gilbert, we've had her on Lena Dunham, we've had her on Gloria Steinem, John Green.

• 1:21:02Speaker 03

  John Green was a late addition. So I wrote the on love chapter, which begins with my relationship to his very famous novel, The Faults in Our Stars. Which for me like taught me so much about love.

• 1:21:16Dax Shepard?

  More than Lolita.

• 1:21:17Speaker 03

  More than Lolita.

• 1:21:18Speaker 01

  Thankfully.

• 1:21:19Speaker 03

  Good one. And I read this essay out loud and it was like three days before the book was due to a friend of mine. And I was like, I just wish John Green could have been a contributor to this book. And she was like, did you ask him? And I was like, of course not. He's John Green. And I hung up the phone and I just sent him a cold DM on Instagram.

• 1:21:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:37Speaker 03

  Asking him if he might want to contribute to the book, which by the way, was due in three days, which is super rude. And he sent me an essay and prompt a couple of hours later.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 1:21:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Do you have an allergy to earnestness? It's one of my big allergies. And yet when I'm earnest, I'm proudest of myself.

• 1:21:54Speaker 03

  I said to John the other day, you know, we got to stand at the gates at this graduation last weekend and I was like, God, it's so exhausting to be cool. I don't think being cool has made anyone happier. And seeing the nerdiest of these kids, because you exit these gates right as you graduate. We're like cheering and doing dances. And then the cool kids were just like, they go.

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  Couldn't enjoy it.

• 1:22:18Speaker 03

  They couldn't enjoy it.

• 1:22:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Speaker 03

  And so, you know what? As someone who has had an allergy to earnestness, I think I'm ready to try to live a lifelong case in defense of earnestness.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:31Speaker 03

  I'm just done with the too cool for school.

• 1:22:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:34Speaker 03

  What about you?

• 1:22:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm moving towards it more and more. I think kids are enormously instrumental in that.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  If it's earnest, there's a lot of like fluffy earnestness. Or saccharine. Saccharine leaning in.

• 1:22:49Dax Shepard?

  There's a lot of signaling.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  Signaling, hoping to get a reaction. You can feel that and that's disgusting to me. But someone who just is who they are, saying what they think or believe.

• 1:22:59Dax Shepard?

  That they love and are excited by is so beautiful.

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  That is cool.

• 1:23:03Speaker 03

  That's cool.

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I'm gonna go tell you, my kink is I'll watch these videos of really elaborate wedding proposals or the Olympians dancing on the airplane and I just bawl. I cry the whole time. I'm like, in the face of all the negativity and the face of so many people that can make fun of you, when you're willing to stand up and dance and sing and be beautiful and be vulnerable. What a thing.

• 1:23:23Speaker 03

  And make a fool of yourself and not care.

• 1:23:25Dax Shepard?

  In a world that just can't wait to fucking destroy you for it. It's so brave and beautiful.

• 1:23:31Speaker 03

  It's so brave.

• 1:23:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Well, I feel so honored to know you and John and what a delight to have watched that documentary and fallen so in love with both of you and then get to know you personally. And I think this is, as a devotee of journaling, I think this is the perfect book to encourage people to try this. I really encourage people to write it. You're gonna get to read so many wonderful, different writers. I find it hard to believe that you couldn't be activated by this.

• 1:23:58Speaker 03

  Thank you both. This is so fun.

• 1:23:59Dax Shepard?

  You're prolific. You'll write more books. We'll do it again.

• 1:24:04Speaker 03

  We hope you enjoyed this episode. Unfortunately, they made some mistakes.

• 1:24:12Dax Shepard?

  You compliment my shirt and I thank you for it.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  I really like it. I like the color on it.

• 1:24:17Dax Shepard?

  I need to order more colors of this.

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  What brand is it?

• 1:24:20Dax Shepard?

  That's, we did this last time and I've already forgotten.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  Um, okay, it's.

• 1:24:25Dax Shepard?

  Kmart?

• 1:24:26Speaker 01

  Nope. Weisemade?

• 1:24:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  Weisemade. Let's look it up.

• 1:24:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, order me a bunch while you're there.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Weisemade. W I E S M A D E. This looks very all-American.

• 1:24:44Dax Shepard?

  Classic?

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  Classic.

• 1:24:46Dax Shepard?

  Textbook?

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  Not in a, like, it's, they're affordable.

• 1:24:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you know, I'm not too crazy. Well, I can't say that. I lost the right to say that. I do have three crazy pieces of clothing.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  You also have been giving gifts.

• 1:25:01Dax Shepard?

  That's right. I have some nice sweaters from my friend Monica that are very pricey.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  And from your friend Wad Pitt.

• 1:25:08Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's what I was saying. I have a few items of God's True, which is, you know.

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  So I, I wasn't, I didn't know if saying this would make people like mad.

• 1:25:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  But I, I feel obligated to say.

• 1:25:21Dax Shepard?

  Yes, we should thank publicly.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Brad sent.

• 1:25:25Dax Shepard?

  Our boy, our boyfriend.

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  Our boyfriend Brad sent us some goodies from God's True Cashmere. He sent you a gorgeous button down, green.

• 1:25:36Dax Shepard?

  Which I've already worn in an interview.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  It's beaut, it really is so nice. He gave Kristen a top and pants.

• 1:25:44Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh. Kristen got more than you and I.

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't like that. I don't want to talk about that.

• 1:25:47Dax Shepard?

  It's okay, it's okay.

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  Uh, for you.

• 1:25:49Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  Please don't speak for me. Um, but I got the blanket.

• 1:25:54Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 1:25:57Dax Shepard?

  Have you been using it?

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's.

• 1:25:59Dax Shepard?

  You don't put it on top of you when you're watching your perverted show.

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  I don't want to talk about it.

• 1:26:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh no, you gotta keep that very far away from your extracurricular activity.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:26:09Dax Shepard?

  Cause it's, it's.

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought, I would think you would want me to be using that.

• 1:26:12Dax Shepard?

  I like you using it as chore play, but then getting it out of the whole area when it's time.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  Why? Cause, cause.

• 1:26:20Dax Shepard?

  You want to preserve its like freshness, you know?

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  I think he would like it.

• 1:26:25Dax Shepard?

  He would love it. Yes. If he found out you were incorporating it, he would love it. In fact, let me. Do that and then I'll send him a text.

• 1:26:32Speaker 01

  Okay, so things have really turned.

• 1:26:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Monica's been enjoying sexually the blanket that you gave her.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  It's such a beautiful blanket. And, and it was such a kind gesture. It really was so sweet that he sent us those things.

• 1:26:47Dax Shepard?

  God, now do I tell them now it's now we've opened up a can of worms.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:26:51Dax Shepard?

  Because I was watching on Father's Day, Godfather.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:56Dax Shepard?

  And Marlon Brando has this very, very long scene. People will remember it's when he dies. He's in the, he's in this cute.

• 1:27:03Speaker 01

  Spoiler.

• 1:27:03Dax Shepard?

  No, it's okay. It's a 50 year old movie.

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:27:06Dax Shepard?

  He's in this garden in his backyard playing with his grandson and then he dies, but he's wearing this incredible, looks like cashmere button down.

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:27:15Dax Shepard?

  But it's so, you know, it's set in the 40s or 50s.

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:20Dax Shepard?

  And so it's time specific, but it's got the most beautiful, like hint of, I guess it'd be plaid, but very subtle. It's such a gorgeous shirt. It's so, so distracting that I said to the boys, I was like, I'm like, look at this shirt. This shirt thing. So then I took a, no.

• 1:27:41Dax Shepard?

  But that's interesting because that's also a scene. I, I have the, I can, I took a screen grab.

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  That did not look good.

• 1:27:50Dax Shepard?

  You know, here, I'll send it to Rob.

• 1:27:53Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Yeah.

• 1:27:54Dax Shepard?

  Okay. So this is a gorgeous shirt. I'm so into the hintiness of the lines. Like it's like the silhouette of lines.

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah. It's a green. It's kind of greenish, but like.

• 1:28:06Dax Shepard?

  With yellow.

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:08Dax Shepard?

  Checker. It's incredible. And I, I was just, I was obsessed with the shirt and just imagining being in the shirt. And what did I do? I took a picture of it. I sent it to Brad.

• 1:28:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:18Dax Shepard?

  And I said, was this motherfucker pushing God's true 70 years ahead of schedule?

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:24Dax Shepard?

  Secondly, you, you can manufacture. Can you make us this shirt?

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:28:29Dax Shepard?

  He immediately wrote back and said, oh yeah, he's the original OG and yes, I'm on it.

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  What the fuck?

• 1:28:36Dax Shepard?

  So I might be getting a matching shirt that may. Maybe only Brad and I.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  No, this is.

• 1:28:43Dax Shepard?

  That was made famous by Marlon Brando. This is a hat on a hat on a hat on cherry on icing on cherry.

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  This is way too much.

• 1:28:52Dax Shepard?

  If I can be using him, I'm not kind of.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  Don't use people.

• 1:28:56Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm I'm kind of I'm contradicting what I said about if I knew the president, I wouldn't call the complaint about prescription prices. I am abusing my access to him by asking him to make me a shirt I liked from a movie. But he seemed to like it as well, so we'll TBD.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  Oh, that's exciting. Anyway, it was so nice of him. And the price point is a little different than this tea you're wearing.

• 1:29:22Dax Shepard?

  Yes, dramatically so.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  Speaking of what you just said something and it reminded me of something. You said we. Now, sometimes if you do somebody else's podcast or you get interviewed, they'll ask you, what is your favorite episode? Or what have you learned from the show? And I always forget this, but I need to remember to say it because this is the thing that I think has stuck with me most out of nine hundred plus episodes. We had an expert on. I don't remember on what, but basically he was like, you can tell if people are using you or I or we. The way they talk. And I have never, I I'm so attuned.

• 1:30:06Dax Shepard?

  I am too.

• 1:30:07Speaker 01

  To when people are are doing it.

• 1:30:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that affected me as well. Where I notice it all the time. And in fact, we were watching Rocky with the kids. And Rocky comes home and he finally admits to Adrian and they're newly dating. I can't fight him. I'm gonna, he's gonna beat me. I can't do it. You know, and this is gonna happen and that and he wants to quit. And she goes, oh, it's okay. What are we gonna do about it? And they're brand new dating. And I paused and I said, you hear that, girl? She said, what are we gonna do about it? What could be more loving than this is our problem?

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  It's so sweet.

• 1:30:41Dax Shepard?

  I remember this too, though. And how you can include people.

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:30:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  How you can include and exclude people.

• 1:30:49Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  There's a lot said in the way you identify we, I, you.

• 1:30:56Dax Shepard?

  And I make effort. Do you make an effort?

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  I do make an effort. I, but I'm also like, I'm really sensitive.

• 1:31:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so I think I do a good job about always saying our show and we blank. But when I say, when I'll say it on X and as I'll say, I interviewed.

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, you do say that.

• 1:31:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and then I hear myself saying that, and then I'm like, oh, that's hurtful and I don't mean it. But also, I can, in some way, I conduct the interview. I don't mean we're not doing it. I just mean like, I, I don't know, I, I have the research.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  To me, saying, and I asked, is one thing. Or like, I said, or I, or whatever.

• 1:31:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

  But it, it does like jolt me out when you say I interviewed.

• 1:31:41Dax Shepard?

  And I, I know it immediately.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's interesting.

• 1:31:45Dax Shepard?

  Um, and then I go, oh, that's weird, because I'm, I'm really good at saying our show and we did this, and we have nine hundred episodes, and we blank, blank, blank. We had so and so. I'll always say we had. I'll never say I had so and so.

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:31:58Dax Shepard?

  I'll always say we had so and so on.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:32:00Dax Shepard?

  But then I do often say I, it was interviewing so and so.

• 1:32:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's the thing that I like have real, I mean, I've taken a lot of things, obviously, from the shows, but that one has really stuck.

• 1:32:11Dax Shepard?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  And I, I hear it all the time in the world around me, the way people talk about themselves, or their partners, or their friends.

• 1:32:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:21Speaker 01

  It's, it's interesting.

• 1:32:22Dax Shepard?

  There's all kinds of opportunities for you to do it right or wrong. Like, I'll often say my daughters.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:32:28Dax Shepard?

  And I probably should say our daughters all the time.

• 1:32:31Speaker 01

  Well, no, it depends on if, if she's there, yeah.

• 1:32:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  Our daughter.

• 1:32:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:37Speaker 01

  But if you are not with Kristen. I think my daughters is fine.

• 1:32:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but I still think I should always just say our. And I'll say to people sometimes, why don't you come to my house at eight? And then even that I'll go like, I should have said our.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Interesting. We, I, you, these are important pronouns.

• 1:32:58Dax Shepard?

  Right for triggers.

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  Right for triggers, right for opportunity.

• 1:33:03Dax Shepard?

  Speaking of we. I had a very fun morning date yesterday.

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  Ooh, what?

• 1:33:09Dax Shepard?

  Uh, my friend Ethan Suplee, who you know, I just, he's one of my handful of people I would describe as magic.

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, there's a category in my life of people I've met that I think are magic.

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm really jealous.

• 1:33:20Dax Shepard?

  He's really, really up there. Um, but he was in town and, um, he famously has lost 300 pounds.

• 1:33:29Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:33:31Dax Shepard?

  Through diet and exercise.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:33:33Dax Shepard?

  His Instagram is so fun to follow because he's really embedded now in that space. It was really interesting because I was like, are you taking GLP-1?

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:33:42Dax Shepard?

  He's like, no. I'm like, why? Like, what, what's the reservation?

• 1:33:47Dax Shepard?

  And he's like, he's kind of like circling this thing and he's not really articulating it, but all of a sudden it just emotionally it occurs to me. I go, hold on, is it like?

• 1:33:58Dax Shepard?

  Is it like if they created a pill or a pill or a shot that would allow you to drink?

• 1:34:04Dax Shepard?

  Is it like that? Cause like if they invented a pill that allowed you to drink three drinks, I wouldn't take it. And I'm sure a lot of people would be like, well, why? There's a pill or a shot that makes you not an addict.

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:14Dax Shepard?

  But I have so much baggage in history and trauma with this struggle.

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:20Dax Shepard?

  That's like, A, I don't know if I could ever trust it, even if I was watching it work for everybody. The stakes are just so high.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:27Dax Shepard?

  Plus like all the benefits I got out of it through not having a shot available, that I had to work these steps and learn all these tools. And he's like, that's exact, that's it. And I was like, oh, that makes so much sense. That's so complex.

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  Very complex. And I'm sure he takes a ton of pride.

• 1:34:44Dax Shepard?

  Absolutely, as he should.

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  As he should in, in. You know, on, on his journey to be a healthier person.

• 1:34:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:52Speaker 01

  And I'm sure when you've done that, you take pride in it, that feels like some, a weird shortcut.

• 1:34:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:59Speaker 01

  That doesn't give you the feeling.

• 1:35:01Dax Shepard?

  Right. And the identity and all the other stuff.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:35:04Dax Shepard?

  Um, okay. So, so him and then Jonathan Tucker, friend of the pod.

• 1:35:08Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Jonathan Tucker, that is a deep cut. We had him so long ago. I think COVID.

• 1:35:16Dax Shepard?

  He was in his.

• 1:35:17Speaker 01

  And he was in his car.

• 1:35:17Dax Shepard?

  Red Cadillac.

• 1:35:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:18Dax Shepard?

  Red interior, his eighties Cadillac.

• 1:35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:21Dax Shepard?

  Uh, most colorful, uh, interesting, energetic boy.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh.

• 1:35:27Dax Shepard?

  So the three of us.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 1:35:29Dax Shepard?

  I guess they had done a movie, they'd have done a Nick Cassavetes movie back in the day. And so they remained friends and, uh, oh, and then something really kind of sweet was Ethan was, I don't know if it's, I don't know what it is. Now, Ethan had his own batch of friends. He grew up in LA.

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:35:46Dax Shepard?

  His childhood friends have become the most successful actors of all time.

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:35:49Dax Shepard?

  So maybe that's part of the story. But he did say, do you know of all the movies, and Ethan's been doing movies for 30 years and big ones. Um, he's like, yeah, you, you two are the only two guys I've ever maintained a friendship.

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:36:01Dax Shepard?

  That I made on a movie after the fact.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:36:04Dax Shepard?

  Yes. And I guess I felt grateful and flattered.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:07Dax Shepard?

  And then also like, oh, that's so interesting.

• 1:36:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's awesome.

• 1:36:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Cause I've made, I've kept in touch with a lot of the folks.

• 1:36:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:36:15Dax Shepard?

  Um, but we had a.

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  Well, mm, that's interesting.

• 1:36:18Dax Shepard?

  We debated politics, we lifted.

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 1:36:22Dax Shepard?

  Yes, it was really, it was fascinating.

• 1:36:24Speaker 01

  I think that actually him growing up here and being around.

• 1:36:29Dax Shepard?

  The most famous kid in the world.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  Famous people, exa- the most famous kid in the world and famous people. I bet he has, he is not, there's zero sense of enamoration. With anyone. So he's just like. If I like you.

• 1:36:43Dax Shepard?

  Certainly, but I've never maintained any of those friendships because I was blown away with their celebrity. Like even in fact, like on Without a Paddle, Ethan and I became great friends. He wasn't the star of Without a Paddle. He was like maybe seventh on the call sheet or something.

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:36:58Dax Shepard?

  So.

• 1:36:58Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think you're only being friends with those people because of that, but I, but don't, but you are attracted. You can be, or you were, you are maybe more, so at some point. Yeah, certain people.

• 1:37:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:09Speaker 01

  You're attracted to because of their.

• 1:37:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I could name them. It's like the people that I worked with where it was like, I couldn't believe I was working with them is like, um, Burt Reynolds. Out of the gates. Tina and Amy, when I did.

• 1:37:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:21Dax Shepard?

  Baby Mama, I was like, wow, I can't believe I get to work with Tina and Amy.

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 1:37:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Now, mind you, there were Academy Award winners in Baby Mama, but like Greg Kinnear was in Baby Mama. I think he won for As Good As It Gets.

• 1:37:33Speaker 01

  He did. Great movie.

• 1:37:34Dax Shepard?

  So was I wasn't like necessarily attracted to the acclaim or I want to work with an Oscar winner, but yeah, people who I deeply admired from a distance, when I got to work with them, I was pretty blown off. Or when I got to do the judge, I was like, pretty. Couldn't believe I'm in a scene with Robert Downey after all this time.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, really cool.

• 1:37:52Dax Shepard?

  By the way, I do need to, I need to tie up one loose end on Godfather.

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:37:57Dax Shepard?

  We're midway through the movie and all of a sudden I realize I'm like, well, of course no women like this movie. There's no women in this movie.

• 1:38:06Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:38:07Dax Shepard?

  I mean, there's zero, there's Diane Keaton's in it once in a while. The sisters there getting beat up to justify Sonny beating up the, the husband, but it's like, oh yeah, this is a, this is a movie about all guys.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:19Dax Shepard?

  And, and duh, no wonder girls aren't like clamoring to see Godfather.

• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  Exactly. Although, oh wait, I guess there's an exception, but like Ocean's Eleven is a lot of men, but Julia Roberts is in it and she's so good in it. Oh, I love that movie.

• 1:38:35Dax Shepard?

  And we went to Mission Impossible last night as a family. The kids had never seen a Mission Impossible movie.

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  How did that go?

• 1:38:41Dax Shepard?

  It was good. I loved it. It's not the right starter, Mission Impossible. Cause it's like reckoning. It might be the last one. I don't know.

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  Supposed to be the last one.

• 1:38:49Dax Shepard?

  I don't buy it.

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:51Dax Shepard?

  Um, I hope it's not the last one. Um, but this one was definitely a darker version. Lincoln loved it. Delta was like, that was the longest, worst movie experience of my life. Lincoln now loves it and I was in a catch 22. I'm like, well, my impulse now is like, Lincoln, there's eight of these. Like summer's here. This is what we're doing. We're gonna watch the fucking Mission Impossibles this summer.

• 1:39:14Speaker 01

  This is tricky.

• 1:39:15Dax Shepard?

  And then Delta was like, and then I go, oh, but actually that's a terrible game plan for you, Delta. You you hate it. And she goes, well, I'm open to giving it another try if I'm at home and I can leave. And I'm like, okay, so we're gonna give

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  That's nice.

• 1:39:29Dax Shepard?

  Some of the more uplifting, funner versions of it. Okay. One thing I want to share.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:39:35Dax Shepard?

  This is indulgent. I have long heard the word rapture.

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:39:40Dax Shepard?

  I've always heard rapture. It's almost always been in reference to Jesus. Like the rapture of Jesus's love. I never hear rapture outside of that.

• 1:39:51Speaker 01

  You never hear enraptured?

• 1:39:52Dax Shepard?

  I guess rarely. Just I think every time I hear it, it's like the rapture of his love or something. Anywho, I was, it weirdly happened two times in one night. So maybe it was just me. Probably was just me. But we were laying on the couch watching TV and Lincoln loves to get in and extract whatever's left in my ear piercing hole from 35 years ago. So he said, get in there and root around and try to get the little ball out. And I love that so much when she's digging in my ear. And then I just happened to say, I just like love when you dig in my ear.

• 1:40:33Dax Shepard?

  So then, long after the extraction was done, she was playing with my ear while we watched Friday Night Lights. And I was laying on the couch and this little girl was playing with my ear. And I was like, like just radiating warmth. I felt so at peace and so happy.

• 1:40:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:54Dax Shepard?

  And then that same night, I'm tucking Delta in, just her and I in bed. And we're talking about how I always, I drive them crazy because I pet them and they hate it. So I'm not allowed to pet anyone. If I put my hand on their leg, I can't like rub their leg. I just got to keep it still.

• 1:41:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:41:06Dax Shepard?

  And I always forget. The thing I do, it's a bad habit is when I'm holding their hand, I circle their thumb with my finger. So I'm doing that and then I say to her, sorry, I do that. I go, I think it's genetic. I go, my Papa Bob used to do it to me and my dad used to do it to me. And I kind of loved it. Once I realized they both did it. And then I found myself that I just do it genetically. It's like a tic I do. And then I just said that.

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:41:30Dax Shepard?

  And then we're laying in bed in a way that she's snuggling me in my nook. And I'm holding both of her hands.

• 1:41:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:37Dax Shepard?

  And she starts rubbing her thumb around my thumb because she knows that I like it from my dad.

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:44Dax Shepard?

  And we were laying there and she was doing that. And I just started like, just kind of weeping. Like I was just kind of leaking tears and I could feel her whole body as if it was just like in mine. And then she was this act of generosity and caring about me.

• 1:42:01Speaker 01

  So kind.

• 1:42:02Dax Shepard?

  And I really was thinking like, oh, this is rapture. And it's funny, we're so like obsessed with, did we get enough love from our parents? Or did they do it right?

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:42:12Dax Shepard?

  Um, but the feeling of your child loving you is rapture. It's like so, it's so filling. There's something about it that's just really special.

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  That's lovely.

• 1:42:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it was really one of the most wonderful moments I've had.

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  Well, I'm happy for you.

• 1:42:30Dax Shepard?

  Playing at our, this little sweet girl who's thinking about her, wants to express to her dad that she loves him. Oh, it's like, it's a mega, it's a 10 ton mega bomb.

• 1:42:42Speaker 01

  Well, I'm happy for you.

• 1:42:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it was very sweet.

• 1:42:44Speaker 01

  Good. Um, well, I don't think we're going to top that, so we should do some facts.

• 1:42:48Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:42:51Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  Okay, facts for Suleika.

• 1:43:06Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yes.

• 1:43:07Speaker 01

  What a fun conversation.

• 1:43:09Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  Now we're about to get into it, me and you.

• 1:43:13Dax Shepard?

  Ooh.

• 1:43:13Speaker 01

  A little bit, not really. I don't want to, I don't want to fight. I'm not in the mood to fight.

• 1:43:17Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so this is a very mixed signal. So you go, we're about to get into it. I don't want to fight.

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  Well, I don't, I don't want to fight. So I want us to be nice to each other.

• 1:43:26Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:43:26Speaker 01

  Okay? Because at the beginning of the episode, we have a mini argument. About Taylor Swift and

• 1:43:33Dax Shepard?

  Oh, uh huh.

• 1:43:34Speaker 01

  And the sh- and the, uh, masters and stuff, okay?

• 1:43:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:39Speaker 01

  And we say we're gonna, we're gonna discuss this on the fact check.

• 1:43:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  I asked Nathan Hubbard for some help. Nathan is a big, big music guy. He's the CEO of Firebird Music. He was the CEO of Ticketmaster. He's, he's very, very deeply entrenched in the music world.

• 1:44:01Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:44:01Speaker 01

  He has a podcast that I love on the Ringer Network.

• 1:44:05Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  Great network.

• 1:44:07Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:44:08Speaker 01

  Bill Simmons. Um, he has a podcast called Every Single Album. He does with Nora Princiati. And they, yes, they go into deep, deep, deep stuff about Taylor. So I asked him. I'm gonna read it. I said, hi, I have a question for you and no worries if you don't have time to answer it. Dax and I are in a debate over what happened with Taylor's music and so there will be an upcoming fact check where we discuss it. Dax feels like the zeitgeist narrative about Scooter and her isn't exactly accurate. I need the facts. Any chance you can give me an objective rundown of what happened?

• 1:44:42Dax Shepard?

  First of all, I applaud how neutral that question was.

• 1:44:46Speaker 01

  Thank you. I am here to learn.

• 1:44:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  Okay, ready?

• 1:44:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  He said, Scott Borchetta, who heads Big Machine, Taylor's original label, started shopping the entire Big Machine catalog around 2014. Lots of people got a look at it, including weird places like Twitter and Facebook. Taylor's camp knew about this, but the terms at which Scott was willing to give Taylor back her masters were erroneous. They required she extend her deal with Big Machine and the payback felt arduous. Taylor still feels that before actually selling the catalog, that Scott had an obligation to bring the deal to her, in which case she might have chosen to seek financing to buy the catalog. Instead, it was sold to Scooter.

• 1:45:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Taylor had a lot of issues with Scooter that had already been-

• 1:45:33Dax Shepard?

  But really quick, we just, so the points I've made, this is all very consistent with what I was saying, which is, she was offered a deal, it had an extension, she didn't want to do that.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  Well, she wanted, she, she's saying she didn't have the opportunity to even get financing to do it, that it was then sold to Scooter.

• 1:45:50Dax Shepard?

  But hold on, you, you just, hold on, this is good faith and we're keeping it good. It's important, she did have access to it, but it included an extension with her deal.

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it included things that they felt were crazy.

• 1:46:04Dax Shepard?

  That's right.

• 1:46:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:46:05Dax Shepard?

  Yep, so I just wanted to be clear, because this is one of my main points, is that it was brought to her, she didn't like the terms.

• 1:46:11Speaker 01

  Right, because the, which, I mean-

• 1:46:13Dax Shepard?

  Because the common narratives is like, all this happened, she had no idea, and she didn't have a chance. And that, that's part of my issue is right there, is she was offered it and she didn't like the deal.

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  She didn't like the deal, which, by, as, as people who have been involved in business deals, sometimes, they are crazy.

• 1:46:31Dax Shepard?

  That's fine, that is, I don't mind that she didn't like the deal or that it was a bad deal, I just want it to be crystal clear, the guy was shopping the entire catalog of the label, she was offered this, it would have involved an extension of her services, she didn't want to do it. Okay, now it goes, go ahead.

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  Instead, it was sold to Scooter. Taylor had a lot of issues with Scooter that had been aired, that were clearly exacerbated by his company making the acquisition out from under her. The press around Scooter owning the catalog became painful, right at a time when a lot of money began pouring into acquire music catalogs. Spotify and Apple made it possible to model out the cash flows for music. Shamrock came in and made that acquisition, and immediately reached out to try to involve Taylor. Deals get done based on people and relationships as much as price. They stayed persistent, and as exemplified by her note today, Taylor's note, clearly earned her trust. For them, they get a stamp of approval as they look to invest billions in these assets. Taylor Swift just called them hugely trustworthy, that matters in these transactions.

• 1:47:31Speaker 01

  I think there is some debate around whether she was realistic in her negotiation with Big Machine the first go around, and whether she just couldn't cobble together the funding to make it happen, or thought nobody would buy it without her approval. But there's no debate that she felt betrayed, that she felt she'd been attacked previously by Scooter, and that she became hell-bent for a decade on righting the perceived wrong.

• 1:47:50Dax Shepard?

  Great, yeah, so that, we're not gonna fight, because that's, I feel like that's exactly what I was saying about this story.

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:56Dax Shepard?

  And, again, I don't like Scooter Braun.

• 1:47:58Speaker 01

  Well, that's irrelevant.

• 1:47:59Dax Shepard?

  No, it's super relevant, because the reason it didn't go well is she had previous issues with Scooter Braun. Like, she already didn't like Scooter Braun.

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:08Dax Shepard?

  But like, you take Scooter Braun out of it. They brought her the catalog, she didn't like the deal terms, she passed on it. Another buyer came in, Mike Herbowitz, he bought the catalog, and now she wants the catalog back, and she wants to buy it off Mike Herbowitz.

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  That's a very like- Non-emotional way of looking at it.

• 1:48:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:27Speaker 01

  And these things that are your IP and your creations and your heart and your soul, emotions are real. They're a real factor.

• 1:48:37Dax Shepard?

  I just think if you remove Scooter Brown, which is a perfect antagonist in this story, he's so unlikable. If you remove him from this story, I don't think people would feel the same way. If it's a different human being that saw an opportunity and bought the catalog, I don't think it's this crazy story of her being a victim.

• 1:48:57Speaker 01

  You don't know what's gone on between her and Scooter. There's all kinds of stuff beforehand. That's what was already aired and part of why this was so bad for her is that it was sold to someone that had already, she had already had all kinds of issues with, who's had issues with a billion other artists. They've all left his label. So clearly he is doing something to them that's making that happen. You can't say just because someone is rich, they're not a victim. We don't know what happened in those.

• 1:49:25Dax Shepard?

  I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that. I would say the first deal, she wasn't a victim. It was a standard deal.

• 1:49:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:49:30Dax Shepard?

  And then I'd say the second go around where she attempted to buy her masters, which very few people have done, and there's no well-worn path to that. She didn't like the terms and she chose not to buy it. So I don't think she's a victim there. Like no one forced her to do anything. And then the worst person imaginable ended up getting, paying the price. And that was infuriating to her emotionally and to all the fans and to you. Everyone's furious about who ended up with the rights to it. I don't think that's a healthy narrative to say this endlessly successful, accomplished everything on her own, self-made billionaire.

• 1:50:08Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:50:10Dax Shepard?

  Unfortunately, I don't think in the music space, she's been a victim. She's not one of these people.

• 1:50:14Speaker 01

  Part of the self-made billionaire is because she has been so dead set on this and rerecording the music. And she even says, she said the Eras Tour paid for this. It paid for her to be able to do this. That was explicitly stated at the beginning of the tour. Like this is the point.

• 1:50:31Dax Shepard?

  She wanted to own her masters, which is a rare thing.

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  She wanted the rights to her music instead of her enemy having the rights to her music.

• 1:50:40Dax Shepard?

  Yes. And when she had an opportunity

• 1:50:42Speaker 01

  That is totally fine.

• 1:50:43Dax Shepard?

  To buy up, she didn't.

• 1:50:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:47Dax Shepard?

  Cause she didn't like the deal.

• 1:50:48Speaker 01

  She also didn't have the opportunity. She, she didn't have the money at that time.

• 1:50:54Dax Shepard?

  And that's fine. No artists do.

• 1:50:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:50:57Dax Shepard?

  There's nothing unique happening to her. She wanted to own all her music, which is just really rare.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  Well, whatever. Who cares? She wanted it and she didn't.

• 1:51:04Dax Shepard?

  She couldn't afford it at the time.

• 1:51:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:06Dax Shepard?

  And Scooter could, so he got it, cause the company was just selling this catalog, which happens. And she just wasn't singled out or bullied or victimized.

• 1:51:16Speaker 01

  No one's saying she's bullied. Or I don't know.

• 1:51:19Dax Shepard?

  I think everyone thinks.

• 1:51:20Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know what happened between her and Scooter before. So I don't know.

• 1:51:23Dax Shepard?

  I don't, I don't either.

• 1:51:24Speaker 01

  And I have a sense it's probably something really shitty.

• 1:51:27Dax Shepard?

  I'm being very clear. I don't think Scooter's a great guy. I don't like Scooter Braun.

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  I think if someone who we hate is holding the rights to our, it's not like, it, it's, it's you. They're holding the rights to you. I think it makes.

• 1:51:46Dax Shepard?

  There, well, let's just be clear. He's holding the rights to these recordings.

• 1:51:49Speaker 01

  But Dax, you, you're making, that's so like weird black and white. That's not a create, as a creative person.

• 1:51:56Dax Shepard?

  He has no say over what she performs, what she writes, what she does. Like she, he has zero control over her.

• 1:52:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:04Dax Shepard?

  By owning these masters.

• 1:52:05Speaker 01

  Saying these, her work is her. It's her words. It's her experiences. It's, it's her.

• 1:52:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:13Speaker 01

  If someone is holding the rights to that who you hate.

• 1:52:17Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  It makes tons of sense to me to do everything in your power to take that from them. And that's what she did. That's what the recordings were all about.

• 1:52:27Dax Shepard?

  Not supportive of her getting her masters back?

• 1:52:29Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:52:30Dax Shepard?

  I am.

• 1:52:30Speaker 01

  You know, you haven't said that once.

• 1:52:32Dax Shepard?

  I am. I, I'm delighted she owns her masters. But she owns her masters because she's a shrewd badass, not because she's a victim.

• 1:52:40Speaker 01

  That's fine. You're so hung up on that.

• 1:52:42Dax Shepard?

  I am. I think it's a very terrible narrative for people to have. Yeah, I think it's all a great triumphant story. Here's this woman who created all this music and by George, she ended up owning all of it on top of it. In the same way that the Beatles did, which was also radical.

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I think it's awesome.

• 1:53:02Dax Shepard?

  But it does avoid the bigger thing that we were actually debating. That was one symptom of the larger debate of just when people are beyond criticism. When that's not allowed, I think that's a very dangerous scenario. I think AA should be totally open to criticism and I think there's valid criticisms of AA. Like, I don't think anyone, I don't think anyone should be above criticism.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  I guess. I'm like, I don't know. I listen to all these pop culture podcasts. I listen to all these things and there's a part that I'm like, why? Why does everyone need to have a criticism of someone? Why does everyone need to have an opinion of other people? I'm kind of bored of it. It's like, just, I don't know. I don't know. Especially ironically, knowing people, you and Kristen, who are in the public eye.

• 1:53:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:52Speaker 01

  Who people have criticisms of, who people, why? It's so unnecessary.

• 1:53:58Dax Shepard?

  If Kristen and I made a public enemy out of somebody and we had 50 million fans who are actively angry at a human being. It has to be a one-to-one comp. So Kristen and I have some public enemy that we're talking about all the time is the bad guy in our story.

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  Well, her fans are.

• 1:54:18Dax Shepard?

  I'm sorry?

• 1:54:19Speaker 01

  Her fans are, not her.

• 1:54:21Dax Shepard?

  She is very public.

• 1:54:23Speaker 01

  But she, she doesn't talk about him. They...

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  Talk about him and they've made it, the fans, the Swifties have made it also their identity to take this on for her. She sings, there are songs about him, I mean, they're not his name, but there are clear songs about him, but she's not out there on talk shows talking about him.

• 1:54:45Dax Shepard?

  I, I think if one individual mobilizes 50 million people to hate one individual, I think we need some fair criticism there. I think that's a dangerous situation and it is, I do think it's important for people to go, well, hold on, hold on, hold on. What do you think really happened? How evil is this person? Are they plotting against her? Like, we need to pressure test this ire. And I think, yes, I think definitely when some, one human being has mobilized 50 million people to hate one person, that definitely is a time where some scrutinizing is in, is in order. And if 50 million people hate Jake Gyllenhaal, who doesn't deserve it.

• 1:55:22Speaker 01

  Well, they don't. They don't. They don't all hate, that's the other thing, I think you've made, you've made it such a big deal, like everyone hates, obviously, everyone doesn't hate Jake Gyllenhaal, he has a incredible career, he's doing well.

• 1:55:35Dax Shepard?

  Well, no, I'm saying Swifties.

• 1:55:37Speaker 01

  Well, you can't be doing his level of career and have 50 million people hate you. You wouldn't be cast in anything. You would, if all the Swifties-

• 1:55:46Dax Shepard?

  No, you could, you have, you still have 300 million people to entertain.

• 1:55:49Speaker 01

  That's not, no. I, I, I, not everyone who likes Taylor Swift hates all the boyfriends. In fact, most people don't. They find it very entertaining, they find this all like fun and reading between the lines and who she's writing about and X, Y, and Z. But are they like, that person needs to die, or we can't support that person, I'm not going to their movies? Maybe a chunk. I personally don't know anyone who's like, I'm never gonna go support a Jake Gyllenhaal movie because of her.

• 1:56:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:21Speaker 01

  I've never heard of that. Again, I'm sure there are extreme people, but that's not the norm. So I don't, I also think that's unfair to make like tho- maybe some radical, extreme peop- extreme Swifties the face of all the Swifties. I mean, I don't, I love Jake and I love her.

• 1:56:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:40Speaker 01

  So why can't I be the example of that?

• 1:56:42Dax Shepard?

  I, I think many of her fans have deified her and I think it's very dangerous to make a deity out of a human being. That's what I think. And I think when someone has become a deity in public, whether they're a cult leader or they're- and anytime there is a deity in public, that is the time for a lot of scrutiny. I think that is what the Fourth Estate does. I think that's what people's obligation is. As, and I think it's what, uh, social primate does when one deity has, uh, uh, arose, arisen. I think it's really important for people to go, well, hold, hold on a second. And I think the fact that that's not even permitted is, is scary. And I think anytime that's not permitted, it's scary.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:57:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:19Speaker 01

  That's fine. Anyway, okay. Well, thank you Nathan Hubbard for weighing in. That was very helpful.

• 1:57:26Dax Shepard?

  That was a great answer.

• 1:57:28Speaker 01

  Okay, how old is Lolita in, in the book? Lolita is 12.

• 1:57:37Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:57:38Speaker 01

  At the beginning of the novel. She's 17 when she, oh, spoiler, dies. Dies in childbirth.

• 1:57:45Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:57:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:47Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:57:48Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:57:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:57:50Speaker 01

  I've never read it.

• 1:57:52Dax Shepard?

  I read the first third. It was when I got scared that I could never enjoy a novel again.

• 1:57:58Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:57:59Dax Shepard?

  I was like, a third of the way through it and I was like, oh, this didn't happen. This is someone's weird imagination about falling in love with a 12-year-old. I think I'm out.

• 1:58:09Speaker 01

  I mean, it says, "The novel details a protagonist Humbert, Humbert."

• 1:58:13Dax Shepard?

  Red flag number one.

• 1:58:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Obsession with and sexual abuse of the 12-year-old. Okay, well, Russian, you know?

• 1:58:20Dax Shepard?

  Nabokov is Russian? I thought he was, uh-

• 1:58:23Speaker 01

  Vladimir Nabokov? I, I, maybe he's not, but that's-

• 1:58:27Dax Shepard?

  I thought maybe he's Czech or something.

• 1:58:29Speaker 01

  Oh, maybe.

• 1:58:30Dax Shepard?

  You look up what he is. He's Russian. He's Russian. Yeah, Saint Peter. Petersburg, Russia. Oh.

• 1:58:35Speaker 01

  It would kind of be like Raj Patel not being Indian.

• 1:58:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:39Speaker 01

  We can make some assumptions.

• 1:58:41Dax Shepard?

  Vladimir is a pretty good clue.

• 1:58:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, okay, now, well, we talk about loneliness and, um, you know Vivek Murthy?

• 1:58:51Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  He taught us about loneliness.

• 1:58:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:55Speaker 01

  I-

• 1:58:55Dax Shepard?

  That's more dangerous than smoking.

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's so sim because he was in my dream last night.

• 1:59:01Dax Shepard?

  Vivek?

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Vivek Murthy.

• 1:59:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:59:04Speaker 01

  And then I was listening to this episode this morning and loneliness.

• 1:59:11Speaker 01

  He would, he had fixed my friend's car. He had like taken off a piece and made it a Honda or something. He was like a car guy and I thought I went to prom with him, but I didn't.

• 1:59:20Dax Shepard?

  This is a weird dream. Vivek Murthy as a peer who's a mechanic.

• 1:59:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it was still him, but he had like this, he was able to do this car stuff too.

• 1:59:30Dax Shepard?

  And be your age?

• 1:59:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went to prom with him and then it didn't look like him.

• 1:59:34Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:59:35Speaker 01

  It didn't look like the real Vivek Murthy, but that was the name that was being used.

• 1:59:39Dax Shepard?

  What do you think spurred this dream?

• 1:59:40Speaker 01

  I think the magnesium is making my dreams crazy.

• 1:59:43Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:59:43Speaker 01

  They've been wild lately.

• 1:59:45Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow, wow, wow.

• 1:59:47Speaker 01

  Speaking Dakota Johnson.

• 1:59:49Dax Shepard?

  She's in the dreams now?

• 1:59:50Speaker 01

  No, but on Amy Poehler's podcast.

• 1:59:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:53Speaker 01

  She tells a story about a dream, which you know, you're not really ever supposed to do that.

• 1:59:56Dax Shepard?

  You shouldn't do that. That's a PSA to everyone.

• 1:59:58Speaker 01

  Even though I, I did just do it.

• 1:59:59Dax Shepard?

  Ever tell anyone about your dreams.

• 2:00:00Speaker 01

  Right, but I did just do it. And then she did it on that show and that has gone viral.

• 2:00:06Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it has?

• 2:00:06Speaker 01

  Oh, ding ding ding, because it's about Matty Healy. He has some history with Taylor. Anyway, she had a dream about him and he kept turning into asparagus.

• 2:00:15Dax Shepard?

  Oh, and that went viral. Well, you never know it's gonna go viral, do you?

• 2:00:18Speaker 01

  You don't. Um, why does a hospital gown open in the back?

• 2:00:25Speaker 01

  Hospital gowns are open in the back primarily to facilitate medical procedures and patient care. This design allows easy access to the patient's body for examinations, treatments, and monitoring without requiring them to fully undress, which is particularly helpful for those who are bedridden or have limited mobility. The open back also simplifies gown changes, especially when a patient is soiled or requires frequent changes.

• 2:00:47Dax Shepard?

  Soiled.

• 2:00:48Speaker 01

  So it's more for--

• 2:00:49Dax Shepard?

  Soiling.

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, extreme situation. Oh, bedpans.

• 2:00:55Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that-- now, bedpans make sense.

• 2:00:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:58Dax Shepard?

  But the rest of it doesn't, because I feel like they're looking at the front of you way more than they're looking at the back of you. So if easy access is the point, they're definitely up front way more than they are in back. They'll listen to your lungs in back, but in general, they're tapping all over your abdomen.

• 2:01:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:13Dax Shepard?

  I mean, it's just not where the bulk of the business is done. So it makes more sense to open up the front, but the bedpan totally explains it, I think.

• 2:01:20Speaker 01

  I think it's more for people with not a lot of mobility.

• 2:01:24Dax Shepard?

  Sure. Still, though, if they want to get at the front, it's hard to get at the front with the back-opening gown. You have to take the whole thing off.

• 2:01:31Speaker 01

  Right. I don't know.

• 2:01:33Dax Shepard?

  So I think they've prioritized bedpan, which is the right decision.

• 2:01:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay.

• 2:01:39Speaker 01

  She talked about commencement speeches, so--

• 2:01:44Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 2:01:46Speaker 01

  I think I might--

• 2:01:47Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 2:01:48Speaker 01

  --need to revisit.

• 2:01:49Dax Shepard?

  No. We already did-- if the front half wasn't tailored, then yes.

• 2:01:54Speaker 01

  Let me just say, "Welcome to New York. It's been waiting for you."

• 2:01:58Dax Shepard?

  Okay, that's her opening line?

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:02:00Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:02:01Speaker 01

  Because it was NYU.

• 2:02:03Dax Shepard?

  Because it was what?

• 2:02:05Speaker 01

  I think it was at NYU.

• 2:02:07Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:02:07Speaker 01

  And that's a lyric.

• 2:02:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it is?

• 2:02:10Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:02:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:02:11Speaker 01

  Want me to keep going?

• 2:02:12Dax Shepard?

  On the speech?

• 2:02:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:13Dax Shepard?

  Only if you need to.

• 2:02:15Speaker 01

  Fine, I won't. Um, all right. Well, why don't people in the comments go ahead and write their favorite commencement speech line?

• 2:02:23Dax Shepard?

  Great.

• 2:02:24Speaker 01

  And then we can read some of those.

• 2:02:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I'll know not to look at the comments of this episode because I dared push back.

• 2:02:34Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:02:34Dax Shepard?

  I'll know better.

• 2:02:35Speaker 01

  All right, well, that's it.

• 2:02:37Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I love you.

• 2:02:38Speaker 01

  Love you.