Anna Kendrick Returns

Anna Kendrick (Woman of the Hour, Pitch Perfect, Up in the Air) is an actor and director. Anna returns to the Armchair Expert to discuss being a non-fashion girlie, her feelings on her first appearance on the podcast, and why she ghosted Dax. Anna and Dax talk about her journey growing up in Maine to starring in Broadway shows, how she learned to stand up for herself while also being a people pleaser, and why she doesn’t want to show anyone a new skill until she’s mastered it. Anna talks about how much she enjoys proving herself, stepping in to direct her first film, and how we risk annihilation whenever we enter a new relationship. 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. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Lily Padman.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  We have an old friend here today.

• 0:07Dax Shepard?

  I just want to point out that you went all brown today and I went all gray.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  I'm into neutrals this fall.

• 0:14Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it's a fall. It's a, it's a much larger project.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  It is.

• 0:20Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 0:23Dax Shepard?

  I don't have an explanation. Well, I do. I've been wearing these pants for about four and a half days straight. And I changed my top, my panties, my sakis, and my undershirt and my top shirt.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Now, how long can you ethically go without?

• 0:41Dax Shepard?

  Changing my slacks.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  I was gonna say washing, but I think the answer, I think I might know the answer.

• 0:46Dax Shepard?

  Until they're visibly dirty.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  You get a stain.

• 0:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, because again, I have a layer between the inside and my groin area.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 0:54Dax Shepard?

  So I don't have really any concerns that I'm.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  But you are sitting on a bunch of stuff all day long.

• 0:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I'm never licking the backside of the pants when I'm done with all that.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  You get under your covers?

• 1:04Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Oh, you don't?

• 1:05Dax Shepard?

  That's more your move.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. I do.

• 1:08Dax Shepard?

  Although I did yesterday.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like getting under there.

• 1:11Dax Shepard?

  I went ahead and laid down for a few hours yesterday in the middle of the day.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  That's nice.

• 1:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  It's fall.

• 1:16Dax Shepard?

  That's part of my new look. Okay, our, our, um, our biggest guest of all time is returning.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Yes, huge.

• 1:24Dax Shepard?

  Yes, Anna Kendrick. She's so wonderful. The first episode was so special. It always comes up if ever we're doing an interview. And with good reason. She was so incredible the first time. And she's wonderful.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  This time.

• 1:37Dax Shepard?

  She, no!

• 1:38Speaker 01

  I'm so kidding.

• 1:39Dax Shepard?

  No, she was absolutely wonderful this time.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 1:42Dax Shepard?

  Oh, here's a little update because you'll, well, shit, I guess I'll save it for the end.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:47Dax Shepard?

  Okay, because there was real life growth on her end post-interview, as you witnessed and I witnessed. Okay, Anna Kendrick is an Academy Award nominated actor, Pitch Perfect, A Simple Favor, Twilight, Up in the Air, The Accountant, and her new movie, which I genuinely loved, Woman of the Hour, and I'll add this, she had a consultant on this movie. If you haven't seen this movie, it's incredible. It's about the serial killer that was actually on The Dating Game in the seventies or eighties. It's, it's so well made. She did such a great job, but she had a technical advisor on it. Who was a DA in Orange County for 17 years in the homicide. And he will be our guest on Thursday.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  He worked on this case.

• 2:28Dax Shepard?

  He worked on this case and he was a, an advisor for the film. And then we had him. So in a, in a roundabout way, it's a woman of the hour week.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:37Dax Shepard?

  Um, and he's phenomenal. So listen to him on Thursday. And I'm looking at you, but I mean them. You don't have to. You've already heard it twice. You haven't heard it yet. So please listen to it.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  I'll listen again.

• 2:47Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Yeah. Give it a shot. I will too. Please enjoy Anna Kendrick. We get support from Quince.

• 2:53Speaker 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. Cause let's be honest, self gifting is a love language.

• 3:12Dax Shepard?

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

• 3:28Speaker 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.

• 3:39Dax 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.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 3:47Dax Shepard?

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

• 3:51Speaker 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.

• 4:14Dax Shepard?

  Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8. Okay, I need to talk about something that doesn't get enough respect. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese. This is not a casual burger. This is a crafted burger. We're talking 100% fresh beef cooked right when you order it.

• 4:58Dax Shepard?

  No artificial flavors, no fillers, no preservatives, just beef doing what beef is supposed to do. And here's a detail I love. There's a cowbell sound in the kitchen. When somebody orders a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a cowbell goes off and the Grill Master throws a fresh patty down. That's like having your own entrance music at McDonald's. I want a cowbell for everything in life. The onions are hand topped by someone who just knows the right amount. Two slices of cheese laid out in a star pattern. So every single bite gets cheese and two pickles side by side. So you're never in a pickle desert. Every bite is accounted for. Someone engineered this thing with love. I love a Quarter Pounder.

• 5:36Speaker 01

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

• 5:48Dax Shepard?

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

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not surprised.

• 5:54Dax Shepard?

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

• 6:27Dax Shepard?

  Oh my God, we're wearing the same shoes. We're wearing the same pants. We have 10 pounds on and we have sweaters on. We are the same. We're the exact same person.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Hello. Welcome back. Thank you guys for having me. Oh my God, always.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh, this is a nice sweater. Well, it is. Can we do a full display for you? So matching sneakers, matching pants. We both are in a tank top. Oh my god. We both have a tumbnail. Wow, I'm way off the mark. No, you're in a sweater and denim.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  But you're like a fashion girlie.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Wow, I can't believe you just said that.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  And it does, it does track that I would be dressed in the fashions of DASH as a full, non-fashion girlie. If I was dressed like Monica, I would feel like I wasn't really being real.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  You're not a fashion girlie?

• 7:13Dax Shepard?

  You're not a fashion-y?

• 7:14Speaker 02

  No, not really.

• 7:15Dax Shepard?

  She exudes fashion, but she's not adorned in. You exude elevated.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  Is that triggering?

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Exuding elevated?

• 7:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, because that borders on pretentious.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  I remember my first photo shoots that I ever did. It was for Teen Vogue. I had mostly clothes from Old Navy and so I would cut the Old Navy tags out of the clothes before the photo shoot because I had to change. Then they hand me some really, really expensive item. And I have to hand them my clothes and I wanted them to just think, oh, that's just some shirt from a mystery place.

• 7:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, or like, not salvage, but.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Vintage.

• 7:53Dax Shepard?

  Vintage.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. No, I think that's exactly right. Trying to pretend that I was rocking like the vintage Levi's or something and it was all just like Target and Old Navy. So in a way, when you're saying I exude elevated, I'm like, because in a way, my younger self is thrilled by that. But then I'm going, well, I don't know. That actually feels like kind of a betrayal of, I guess I mean, recently, like a month ago. I was at a photo shoot and I was wearing something. I don't know if it was Old Navy, but it was inexpensive.

• 8:20Dax Shepard?

  Pedestrian.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Pedestrian.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Relatable.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  And I was like, oh, now this wouldn't bother me at all.

• 8:25Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  If the fashion stylist saw that I was wearing something from Target or wherever.

• 8:29Dax Shepard?

  We're smack into the full arc of being alive.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, we are.

• 8:32Dax Shepard?

  Because I was unpunked and I made a total of $16,000 on that show. I had Gap pants and I did have some salvage stuff. We're calling it vintage.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  I don't know, you keep calling it salvage.

• 8:44Dax Shepard?

  What I'm really looking for is.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  That feels like real junkyards.

• 8:47Dax Shepard?

  Where you comb through the discarded.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  You mean goodwill?

• 8:51Dax Shepard?

  Goodwill.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:51Dax Shepard?

  Thank you. What else do we call that? Something shop. My full wardrobe was probably worth 350 bucks. Everything. And then I'm getting invited to photo shoots and events and things like this. And everywhere I go, I'm like, I look terrible. I have very cheap boots on. Everything's amiss. And I have shame about it, or I did then. And yes, now, on the other side of it, I have fake, this is hot news. I've never admitted. My Roadmaster station wagon has fake BBS rims on it. Real BBS wheels for that car would cost $3,800. I got some from China that are actual counterfeit. And I got them for 400 bucks.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  A dupe?

• 9:28Speaker 02

  I feel like this confession is so wasted on me. From your tone, I feel like you're saying something really juicy. That like one person is gonna go, whoa, I can't believe he admitted that. And I am like, you just said numbers and letters is what happened.

• 9:43Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so now we're fully back. Although my guess is, I don't know what my guess is. That's a nice sweater.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  It is.

• 9:51Dax Shepard?

  That's no salvage yard.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  No, I think you might be right. I think I tried to dress up a little today.

• 9:55Dax Shepard?

  Let's take a peek at that.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  It looks cashmere.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  I want to say it's from Reformation.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Very cute.

• 10:00Dax Shepard?

  Monica, do you know what that is?

• 10:05Speaker 01

  What are you thinking? What's your sweater? Why is it so nice?

• 10:08Dax Shepard?

  Velvet. I went online.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  By Graham and Splash Fleece.

• 10:12Dax Shepard?

  How about this? Since we're not fashionistas, neither of us, do you find a brand you trust? And then that's it for me. I go to their website and whatever they have that comes out in my size, I'll just go, okay, I know I can trust you.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  This might be the heartbreak of being a girl. Maybe you could speak more to this than I could. I don't shop all that much. But I'll find a brand that I like and then all the sizing will just change. The next season, everything will be completely different. And I'm not sure what happened.

• 10:38Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Sure. I struggle with, I like this brand so much, but now there's another brand I also like that's even more night.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Look, is it always kind of aspirational? Is it, is it like, ooh, I'm climbing that ladder?

• 10:51Speaker 01

  It is. It is. And I wonder when it will stop for me. So I had a coat. It was very nice. I lost it. And I knew in my heart that I should be very upset by it. This, this is a fancy coat. It was too much money and it's lost.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  But instead you were like, I get to get another coat.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Yes, and I did. And I did. I know. I know. It's problematic. But I had your things. I had the old, I hated it. And I'm not doing the right thing like you're doing.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  You're doing exactly what feels right to you.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, but mine's costly and yours is, yours is not.

• 11:25Dax Shepard?

  Okay, let's talk about.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  You.

• 11:29Dax Shepard?

  Your last appearance.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Can I cry less this time? Am I allowed? My God. I certainly hope you don't want me to cry that much.

• 11:37Dax Shepard?

  No, I don't need you to go through anything deep again.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  You gave us your whole soul and it was really beautiful.

• 11:44Dax Shepard?

  I guess I'm interested. I can tell you from our perspective. First of all, and I told you when I called you the next day. It's really among like my mom and a few others, the most special of the whole seven years. That was incredible. The response was humongous for us. It for sure is our biggest episode. 10 million people have listened.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  I literally didn't know that.

• 12:02Dax Shepard?

  It's enormous.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  It's our number one episode.

• 12:04Dax Shepard?

  I was just at the New Yorker Fest panel this weekend and I'm being interviewed. And the touchstones are really my mom, day seven, and then your episode. These will come up every single time.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Oh, you're kidding.

• 12:14Dax Shepard?

  Yes, I was wondering from your perspective.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Is that annoying?

• 12:17Dax Shepard?

  Not at all.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  We're so proud of it.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm so glad.

• 12:21Dax Shepard?

  And it's encouraging because it wasn't about anything fancy or celebrity. It was about everything we would hope that was good about the show. It was very confirming if anything. But I was wondering, you were on the other side of that. And of course you had some appropriate amount of fear of like, oh, am I letting this all out? And I guess I wondered two years after the fact, what was the response from your side?

• 12:44Speaker 02

  I remember actually, I think it was during the episode, you said something about how this was something really meaningful and me talking about like being on Broadway when I was 12 or something like that, that's just not going to impact someone else's experience and this will. And every now and then someone, like if I'm at a restaurant or something, someone might just slip me a note and wave. And there is a certain energy where I go, oh, I know what this is about.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  And that does make me emotional and I will not cry. I will not. The girl that cries on podcasts, I will not do it. That will not be my fucking thing.

• 13:16Dax Shepard?

  No, you should be the girl who always cries on podcasts because I don't think anyone's checked that box.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  It's a wonderful thing. You're just in touch. That's what we all wanna be.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  But funny enough, this is really, really recently. I am really bad with technology and I'm kind of afraid of a lot of the buttons on social media. I know the ones to press and I just don't press anything else.

• 13:35Dax Shepard?

  Cause you're afraid you'll start live streaming something?

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Basically, yeah.

• 13:38Dax Shepard?

  That happens, by the way.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  But I just figured out that there are all these requests for DMs, cause I have my DMs turn off and I was like, oh, what's in there? And there's a way that you can filter them. I wasn't really sure what I was pressing. I was just touching buttons.

• 13:51Dax Shepard?

  You're exploring.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it was all of these requests from 91 weeks ago. And I was like, what happened 91 weeks ago? And I did this show 91 weeks ago.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 14:01Dax Shepard?

  Wow, wow, wow.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  So that was amazing.

• 14:03Dax Shepard?

  Probably stark to see that.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it was also, I will not cry. It was difficult to be like, oh, there's so many people that really relate.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It didn't get 10 million listens, cause no one understood what was happening. Quantum physics podcasts don't get 10.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. Until you start crying about it.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Let's reform education. I'll just go in and be like, I don't know why people aren't talking about this more. But it's funny, I then listened to the episode when it was released and I don't really know exactly the process of how you guys make the show after the guest leaves. But I was like, everybody should be able, once in their life, to like, tell their story and have Monica edit the story. Because I swear to God, it was this form of narrative therapy where I was listening and I know that I was here for so long and the episode is kinda long. But she just lifted out all this kind of ballast and it really was like, oh, right, cause that part wasn't important.

• 15:07Dax Shepard?

  She edited a movie.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're like, I love that scene, but it doesn't get us anywhere.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  It's not at the heart of the matter and I think I do get lost in the details sometimes. And what a gift that I got to come and do that. And I really felt like I was getting some kind of massive narrative therapy.

• 15:23Dax Shepard?

  I'm glad you're thanking her for that because Monica often goes unsung in that department. Monica will do things to protect your future self. I think people can tell their stories and when they ensnare people too much. Monica knows like, well, I think the message will be the same. We can save that personal, because the hangover of that moment, I think you're really great at that.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Thanks, I appreciate that.

• 15:46Dax Shepard?

  So the people that come up to you, does it feel markedly different than someone saying you're great in Pitch Perfect?

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Yes, and it feels much more connecting, which is not to say that I am whatever about someone saying, oh, you're great in Pitch Perfect, but it kind of immediately makes me want to talk to them.

• 16:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, because they didn't see the best, I don't want to say, I mean, they did see the best side of you, but in a movie, you're seeing the best version of someone lit perfectly and orchestrated. And then I think if someone responds to the real you, I think it tells you, okay, so I can kind of trust you.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  I've been doing press for Woman of the Hour for a while now, and there was one conversation where there was just something a little strange about the conversation. And then, once we were done, they cut the mics and they were telling me their story. And I was like, oh.

• 16:34Dax Shepard?

  That's what I was sensing.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  This is the real conversation. And then, of course, I'm like, well, this is the conversation I want to be having with you, not whatever the fuck that was.

• 16:41Dax Shepard?

  Let's redo.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  You know, I don't want to go to my next thing because it'll be kind of more of the same, but it's really fascinating the way it's just so much more connecting.

• 16:49Dax Shepard?

  Okay, now I've come to tell this story because, as I said, it comes up often that episode. There's a part I tell, curious how you feel about it, which was, the next day, I said to Kristen, I'm like, I don't know how else to explain this feeling, but I feel like I slept with somebody.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 17:05Dax Shepard?

  And I need to call them and make sure they got home okay. And like, you left late, did you get home? Okay, good. How do you feel about last night? Everything's groovy.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  I know what you're saying. And this is one of the things I love about the show and you and all these things, but that is the most provocative way of saying.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:21Dax Shepard?

  But it's the realest for me because it's a very visceral.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  And I remember you said that when we spoke.

• 17:25Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  I was not offended at all because I completely knew what you meant. Was it something very intimate had happened?

• 17:31Dax Shepard?

  Yes. And we were strangers.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:33Dax Shepard?

  So it was kind of like we met at a bar and then we had this insanely intimate experience. He also asked someone the other day if they were half Asian, and they weren't.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Well.

• 17:41Dax Shepard?

  I stand by that question.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  No, I was like, why are you asking?

• 17:44Dax Shepard?

  Because she was lactose intolerant and 90% of Asians are lactose intolerant.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  That is not the reason I was expecting. Wow.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  He takes big swings with his words, as you know.

• 17:55Dax Shepard?

  How about this? I think it's really interesting. When you feel a feeling and it's familiar, but it's a very weird feeling. So my example of this would be when I bought Kristen's wedding ring, when I was handing the man the credit card to buy it, I had this like wave of a very, very, very strong and familiar feeling, but I couldn't place it. And I like handed it to him and I go, hold on a second. And I took it back. Obviously I was receiving some info. And I thought about it for like 20 seconds and I go, oh my God, I know this feeling. It's when you go get a tattoo. And first they put an outline of it on your arm, which is temporary and they transfer it. And then you look in the mirror and you go, okay, I like where it's placed. And then you go, okay, let's do it.

• 18:36Dax Shepard?

  And you know, when you say, okay, that's a wrap. It's done. Permanent. And the only experience in my life prior to handing over the credit card that I knew I was making a permanent decision was tattoos.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 18:48Dax Shepard?

  It's a rare feeling to make a permanent decision. It doesn't happen often. I imagine if you cut your finger off, you'd be like, okay, that's going to be gone for good. So I like when I feel something that's so specific and reminiscent and then I'm like, I need to chase it down. So then I was like, oh yeah, it's a tattoo. Here's the credit card. Let's go. But that's what that was.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  I don't have any tattoos and I'm not married. So maybe I don't know that feeling. I guess the closest thing would be buying a house, but that's not permanent, permanent.

• 19:16Dax Shepard?

  It's not.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Do you have animals?

• 19:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Me either. We're the same. Oh my God.

• 19:21Dax Shepard?

  I bet if you implanted an embryo, you'd go, oh, here we go. This is for the rest of my life, this decision.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Have you done, have you, have you implanted an embryo? No, have you frozen your eggs?

• 19:35Dax Shepard?

  She has. She had previously frozen an embryo with her last partner or a couple. But we're not talking about.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  No, but I have my own.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Got your own stash.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've got a little army.

• 19:45Dax Shepard?

  I'd love to see pictures or whatever they supply.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  But also Kristin texted me this morning.

• 19:52Dax Shepard?

  She did?

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, she texted me and was like, I know that Monica and Dax are so excited to have you back. And it was really so nice because I think I was a little nervous.

• 20:02Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's what I was gonna ask. So I listened to it yesterday. I had listened to it when it came out. And then I listened to it yesterday on my hike. That's always Russian roulette. If you've done a project you like and then you watch 10 years later, you're like, eh, yeah, that thing's not nearly as funny as I remember. All those things are best to just never revisit, I think. But I listened to it and it was really, really lovely. And then I found myself having some nervousness about it. And then I thought, oh, I wonder if Anna has any nervousness.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, a ton.

• 20:27Dax Shepard?

  I can almost see you going like, I'm not coming back. I still love the place, but no need to ever come back.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Oh, that's interesting. No, if anything, I never asked my PR people about coming for this press work because I just thought, well, I did it two years ago. That feels recent. They probably wouldn't want me back. But also, I was feeling weird because I kind of ghosted.

• 20:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's fine.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  So after I recorded with you guys, Kristin reached out once and Dax reached out a couple times and I low key ghosted. And then I ended up voice noting Dax a couple of months later. And I literally had the most cliche experience where I had microdosed mushrooms. And by the way, I just went on Stephen Colbert and talked about like this thing with mushrooms and blah, blah. And I was talking about it like it was my first time microdosing mushrooms. It's just because the story's better. Can I tell the truth on this pod?

• 21:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  You know, you go on late night talk shows and you're like, well, what would make this story more interesting? Of course, you punch it up. It was the second time, but saying, oh, it was the first time is more interesting. But okay, so this was the first time that I had microdosed mushrooms with some girlfriends. It was like during the day. It was what everybody said it would be. It was, oh, I feel a little more present. I'm a little more grateful for the sun and the sky and the grass. And I had what I truly believed to be in a Hemingway sense of the truest thought that I've maybe ever had, which was, I didn't text Dax Shepard back because I am insecure.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  And I voice noted Dax all of this.

• 21:51Dax Shepard?

  And I loved it.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  It was so funny because then, of course, you voice noted me back and you were like, "I'm so glad you said that." And I was worried that after the episode, you were like, "Yeah, regretful in that maybe..." You were worried, "I felt exposed, exploited," or something. Which really was fascinating because in all my years of being a true diet-in-the-wool avoidant type, at my big age, it had never occurred to me that when I low-key ghost on people, they think they did something wrong. I just assumed that everybody goes, "Oh, God, Anna is such an asshole."

• 22:23Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  And I can sort of tolerate that because I'm like, "I guess I am. I don't know what my damage is, but this is like a thing that I do." And I was like, "Oh, of course you think that it's you." I feel so sick to have been like, "Why would you think that? That's what I would think if someone did it to me."

• 22:40Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  So I think I was also a little bit nervous because I was like, "Oh, are they mad?" or something.

• 22:46Dax Shepard?

  Right. No.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  When you say you were insecure, can you deep dive into that a little bit?

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, for sure. I can't speak for anybody else, but certainly my avoidant style, the root fear is always, "If you really got to know me, you would reject me. If you really got to know me, you wouldn't like me." Or you'd discover the fundamental way in which I am wrong, broken, unlovable, etc. So especially being such a fan of the show and coming on and doing this episode, and it was really emotional and revealing. And then I meet Kristen, and Kristen's so lovely. And Kristen literally said something like, "If you think we shouldn't be working on a friendship, I'm just gonna have to disagree." So sweet and lovely. And I really felt, not consciously, but I think subconsciously felt, "Well, this is as good as it's gonna get. Like, right now, they think I'm great. So all I have to do is just not let them discover that I'm totally rejectable, unlovable, etc."

• 23:33Dax Shepard?

  Yes, unworthy of all of this.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 23:36Dax Shepard?

  That's very sweet.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  I'm gonna quit while I'm ahead. This is the ideal situation, never to be seen again.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, very relatable. I want to give a BTS too, because that was fantastic BTS. But after we recorded, you also reached out to me, which was very kind. And you apologized for potentially minimizing my experience of having been gaslit.

• 24:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Because I think the thing about day seven is that we got to see the repair, but we weren't there for the harm. And I know that because of my history, I tend to just want to go like, "Okay, let's jump to the part where everything's fine."

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  And that's not fair.

• 24:15Dax Shepard?

  I had kind of forgot that part was coming on my hike. I definitely remembered your part and then it got to that part and I was like, oh, I got it. Yeah.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's all just my own discomfort with, oh God, is everybody okay? Is this okay?

• 24:27Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it was intense, but I really, really appreciated that so much. So thank you.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  You guys.

• 24:34Dax Shepard?

  So what was fun though, when I listened to the episode on the hike, cause I was like, oh, we didn't even do the normal interview.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  No.

• 24:39Dax Shepard?

  We didn't do the normal interview.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. That's so funny. Cause now when I listen to episodes, I'm like, huh, we didn't like really talk about, but that's fine. There are so many places where people have asked me about like, oh, so you grew up in Maine.

• 24:48Dax Shepard?

  But there are lots of interesting things along the way that I am quite interested in. And in fact, today, when I was doing my research on you, I went back to my original research. I didn't get a one thing. You sat down, we learned your father had just passed.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I was like, wow, I was crying within three minutes. That has to be a record for you guys. And at first I was trying to play it off like I wasn't. I was just getting real quiet.

• 25:13Dax Shepard?

  It was like weeks before and you're like, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  No, I, I mean, the funeral had been on the Friday and we were recording on a Monday.

• 25:21Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes. Okay. Last thing I want to say to you, and then I want to go to the original interview I was going to attempt to do with you two years ago. Hold on. Give me half a second. Cause I just lost it. It was so important too.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  I have a question if you're.

• 25:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, please, please.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Okay. So that was two years ago. You were in a very specific spot as we had just spoken about. Where are you? Like, are you feeling good?

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm trying to be honest about the fact that it is obviously significantly better, but I still have really low moments. And by moments, sometimes I mean months.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  Which I think have actually been in some ways, I don't want to say more difficult, but there's something about the acuteness of despair or distress in the aftermath of something really difficult that even if I wasn't really thinking about it at the time, it feels like, well, this will pass. It's so new. And so when I have really low moments, it's really demoralizing because you're like, it's been years. I'm disappointed in myself. How is this still happening? I thought it would get better and it does and it is, but those moments I have trouble figuring out what to cling to because you're just like, it's just here again. Why? Go away.

• 26:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. There's this saying in AA and I might get it wrong, but it's like, if you think of addiction as like walking into a forest and they'll say to you like, well, you were walking into the forest for 12 years and then you turned around and now you're trying to walk out. The notion that you're going to be out of the forest in 30 days or in a year or whatever is a little crazy. You put 12 years into this thing. So it's like you had six years walking into a forest and now you're three years out. And I've also heard quite often from therapists that there is a bit of a pattern that people generally, it takes them about half as long as they were with somebody to get, have you heard that?

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it did make me like, okay, well then maybe I'm doing the math. All right. We're getting close.

• 27:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we gotta clock our progress at all time. Okay. Remember what I was gonna say. And it's the last thing I'm gonna say about the housekeeping, but it's really just a thank you. So we started this zero expectations, but prior to starting it, I was very, very singularly focused on a lot of different metrics to determine whether I had made it, right? Whether it was you're in this kind of movie or you make this amount of money or you do X, Y, and Z, and then we'll check we're here. And so that interview was at an interesting time because it was like a year into this Spotify deal, which was an enormous windfall of good luck. And in the wake of that, I got very confused. I don't even know how conscious I was. I was confused for a while, but there was a long while where I was like, well, this is weird. We've come to the place we were supposed to get to. In fact,

• 27:55Dax Shepard?

  we're even beyond the place we were hoping to get to. So what is it now?

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Like I've climbed the mountain almost?

• 28:03Dax Shepard?

  I've climbed the mountain and I was a bit wayward. I didn't know how to deal with having been to where I tried to get to in a weird way. And I felt a little purposeless. Not that I was ever doing it for money or for a deal, but it's just like, here's the thing. You won the big prize. Now what? And I'll say after I called you, when I hung up, I thought, I really know what this is again. If I could get to do that once a year or once every few years, that is it. So it was really, really re-energizing. And reconfirming of what the point of it all is for me. So thank you. That was a huge gift for me to have that experience and go like, oh, right, right, right, right, right, right. I'm reminded of what this is.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Well, that makes me really happy.

• 28:46Dax Shepard?

  Good.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  For lots of reasons, especially because, you know, I love the show and listening to it and whatever. I'm not crying. You're crying.

• 28:52Dax Shepard?

  I am a little bit. Okay. You weren't on Broadway at 12. I never got to ask you about that. I do need to know a little bit because I'm interested. How do we go from Maine to Broadway?

• 29:05Speaker 02

  I think that I was just kind of an opinionated, stubborn little kid. And that was something that I wanted to do. I've tried over the years to come up with a really kind of snappy, punchy version of the story. Yeah. But there was just a very convoluted way where someone on my dad's side of the family was getting married in Long Island. And so while we were near New York City, someone knew someone who was like a children's talent agent. So we drove into the city to talk to this agent. And it was mostly because at the time they were putting up a revival of the Broadway show Annie. So every little 11 year old in America wanted to be Annie.

• 29:41Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  In the revival, if you had an agent, you had a slightly better shot of not just getting like kind of lost in a cattle call. And they made me read this Smucker's Jelly ad. They made me sing something and then they made me read like a Smucker's Jelly ad to see if they would take me on as a client. Even at maybe 10 or 11 or something, I remember thinking, this is horseshit. This is embarrassing. What? For a little while, that agency ended up trying to send me on commercials and stuff. And I remember there was a local commercial in New York for Hess oil where around Christmas, they would put out these toy Hess trucks.

• 30:15Dax Shepard?

  Yes, they're very cool, those Hess trucks.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Okay, okay. So this is a thing. Okay. So I didn't grow up with this and they wanted me to come in. I was with a group of kids and sing to the tune of my boyfriend's back. The Hess trucks back and it's better than ever.

• 30:28Dax Shepard?

  Let's go.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  Well, it's better than ever. If you were listening, you would know that the lyrics had been changed.

• 30:37Dax Shepard?

  I'm so sorry.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, we are going to have to let you go at this time.

• 30:41Dax Shepard?

  Wait, but okay.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  We're gonna call you back in.

• 30:43Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  But so. You know, we're singing this song and one of the casting directors was like, let's just try that again. And Anna, could you just look a little happier? And I do remember thinking, even as an 11 year old, like, why the fuck would I be happy about a Hess truck? I'm a child. What in the corny bullshit is this? So they stopped sending me out for commercials because I did not have the temperament. And also, more importantly, they really just sent me out for Broadway shows or national tours, like musicals, really, because I was really small and I had a big voice. And one of my parents would have to drive me to New York City, six hours for 15 minutes, maybe, in a room. And pretty quickly, they were like, this is not sustainable. We both work full time and this is a cute dream for you and all, but we're gonna have to figure something else out if this is something you want to pursue.

• 31:28Dax Shepard?

  And this is before self-taping, like now, maybe those barriers wouldn't even be there.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Probably not. And it was kind of important to pretend that you were from New York, that you were a local hire.

• 31:38Dax Shepard?

  Local hire.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  So my parents sent me and my brother, who was a year and a half older than me, on Greyhound buses to New York City.

• 31:47Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. Cause he was an actor.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was acting at the time, but it was more of he would chaperone me. So I'm 12 and he's 13 or 14. And always the more responsible of the two of us, to be clear. Then I auditioned for this show that I ended up getting, High Society. And I do my song and read the sides and they asked me, oh, can you just come back in tomorrow? So, great news, I got a callback, but where do I stay? What do I do? So of course I'd been told, just say yes in the room, right? So I was like, absolutely, I will see you tomorrow.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Cause I live close by.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Right here. Gonna go sleep in my bed, just a block away. And my brother and I tried to find the cheapest looking hotel we could. My parents called the hotel and like faxed a credit card.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  Did a whole like, yes, our children will be checking in before us, but we'll be along shortly. Because of course, we're not letting a 12 year old and a maybe 14 year old.

• 32:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, cause even if you got on the Greyhound, by the second you got home, you'd have to turn around and get a stack.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  I absolutely had to just do this. And I like washed my underwear in the sink in the hotel room.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  You were mature. You need to do that?

• 32:51Speaker 02

  But luckily, there's this kind of conventional wisdom that you're supposed to wear to your callback, whatever you wore to your audition. So that didn't look strange to anyone. Although eventually, well, coming back to the beginning of our conversation, they were like, do you have anything nicer? Cause I was supposed to, I was auditioning for like a little rich girl and I was dressed like this, but perhaps even more holes in the cardigan and I was wearing combat boots. And I remember them asking me, if you have anything, just a little more like your Sunday best, whatever you'd wear to church. And at this point, my brother and I are down to like our last $30 or something. So we go to Payless and my big solution for how to dress nicer, because this, what I thought was nice was to swap out my combat boots

• 33:34Speaker 02

  for just the cheapest pair of like white strappy church sandals that Payless offered. Rolled back in, in the same ripped jeans and ratty cardigan.

• 33:44Dax Shepard?

  With white shoes.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. And tiny little church shoes that made no sense with the outfit, but they hired me anyway. So thank goodness for that.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 34:00Dax Shepard?

  This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Every family has that one holiday tradition nobody actually enjoys, but everyone keeps doing because stopping it would feel like a federal offense. For me, it was a specific meal situation that I will not name because my family listens. But at some point you have to ask yourself, am I doing this because I love it or because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't?

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Yes. And that question applies to so much more than the holidays. I think a lot of us carry these invisible rules about how we're supposed to spend the holidays, who we're supposed to see, what it's supposed to look like. And when you start unpacking that with a therapist, you realize half of your stress is coming from rules you didn't even write.

• 34:39Dax Shepard?

  This is where BetterHelp can be a great resource during the holidays. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences, which means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recs.

• 34:58Speaker 01

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

• 35:06Dax Shepard?

  You start feeling it.

• 35:07Speaker 01

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

• 35:14Dax Shepard?

  BetterHelp is now in network with more than 120. Twenty five health plans with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members. And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the U.S., you can still get 20% off your first month. Sign up and get 20% off at betterhelp.com slash DAX. That's better help H E L P dot com slash DAX. 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.

• 35:52Speaker 01

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

• 36:13Dax 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.

• 36:23Speaker 01

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

• 36:30Dax Shepard?

  Okay, tell me more.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  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 multi-purpose this and look super cute.

• 36:43Dax 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.

• 36:52Speaker 01

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

• 37:11Dax Shepard?

  We get support from NoBull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 37:24Dax Shepard?

  Exactly, and that's why I keep my training routine through the holidays. It's the whole NoBull idea. There's a no bullshit training brand built around consistency, honesty, and just putting in the work. It's not about adding more pressure to an already packed schedule. It's about having the gear and the habits to move through the season your way. My personal favorite, all three of the shoes are fantastic. The Outwork, the Outwork Flex, and the Drive 2. I like the Drive 2 because it's a hybrid. And I lift, of course, but I also like to do what's called box jumps. Right? I do a lot of jumping onto a little platform and I want a little more flexibility. And boy, do they deliver.

• 38:00Speaker 01

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

• 38:05Dax Shepard?

  And the style is banging. I don't know what to say. Beautiful style, very breathable, very, very comfortable, lots of support. They were built for lifting.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  They also make a great holiday gift. You know, I love gifting, a purposeful one that actually supports someone's goals and routines. And it's not a gift that just ends up in the back of the closet.

• 38:22Dax Shepard?

  Stay stronger than the season. Head to nobullproject.com all holiday season to shop new deals every week. We get support from our sponsor, Lilly. For adults with obesity or with excess weight and weight related medical problems, it's time to find out about Foundo or for Gleepran. Foundo is a once daily prescription GLP-1 medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity or some adults with overweight who also have weight related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off.

• 38:55Speaker 05

  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 majorary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. 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. Nursing, pregnant, plant to be or taking birth control pills and before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. Taking Foundao with an insulin or sulfonylurea may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and may cause kidney problems.

• 39:35Speaker 05

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

• 39:59Dax Shepard?

  Were you too nervous about the impending audition? Or did you guys have fun in New York City in a hotel?

• 40:05Speaker 02

  We felt like it was a real adventure and we were told by our parents to not leave the hotel room except for the audition. And we went and we got brunch somewhere, like a couple of rebels.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Scandalous.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  In Greenwich Village.

• 40:17Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't even know what reputations different New York areas have these days, but at the time that was the cool place with head shops and stuff.

• 40:26Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  We thought we were so punk rock.

• 40:28Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Were they Doc Martens?

• 40:30Speaker 02

  I doubt they were Doc Martens. They probably would have been a Payless version of Doc Martens. That's where most of the shoes came from.

• 40:35Dax Shepard?

  And then you went back in there and then despite this terrible outfit, you got it.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:40Dax Shepard?

  How do you then live there in New York?

• 40:41Speaker 02

  So at the time, my dad was a substitute teacher. So that meant that he could just take some time. And so we found an apartment in Yonkers because that was the only place we could afford. And I actually remember, there's a moment that at the time I remember really being upset about and looking back makes me really happy, makes me feel like kind of warm and fuzzy, which is basically we're living in Yonkers because my dad and I are surviving on a Broadway Actors Equity Union minimum.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Which is, can we say ish?

• 41:13Speaker 02

  I mean, especially at that time, I'm not totally sure.

• 41:17Dax Shepard?

  1,100 bucks, 1,300 bucks?

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Something like that.

• 41:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, somewhere insufficient to live in New York City.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  At one point, I could kind of tell that there was something rumbling in the background about this not really working. And we were in rehearsals and we were starting to do previews for the show.

• 41:31Dax Shepard?

  Your performance wasn't working or the show wasn't working?

• 41:34Speaker 02

  The situation with money was not working.

• 41:37Dax Shepard?

  Got you, got you, got you.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  And I remember walking down this long corridor towards set once with my dad and this producer, I think his name was David, goes, "Hey Will, how's it going?" And my dad went, "Not good, David." And I'm like panicked, panicked, panicked. And my dad basically says, look, when my daughter is 18, she can decide to be a starving artist. That's fine. That's her decision, but she's a child right now and I won't let that happen. That's unacceptable. And of course I'm there going, no, no, no, it's fine. It's fine. I don't have to eat. I'm 12 years old and I want to be on Broadway. I'm from Maine. Like, no. Stop doing this. You're ruining it. And basically the producers worked out a little per diem, which just meant that at the end of every week, things lined up. We were not making money, but we weren't going into debt.

• 42:21Dax Shepard?

  A little living stipend.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  And so we could at least afford rent and food, which is all he was really asking for. But it was a really fascinating moment. And to your point, it is sort of like, oh, that's where I get that from.

• 42:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause I can be a real people pleaser, a fawner sometimes. But then there are times where I'm like, oh, I really talk crazy to people.

• 42:42Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Wow. Okay.

• 42:43Dax Shepard?

  Nice and assertive.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Where you're almost like, I can't believe that just came out of my face.

• 42:47Dax Shepard?

  Earmark this. This is all baked in deeply with woman of the hour.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:52Dax Shepard?

  I can sense there's a ton of history within this thing. But what is dad doing all day? Is he resenting you or is he having a fun experience?

• 43:01Speaker 02

  I think he's having a fun experience. He is one of those people who's sort of endlessly curious. So when the show was happening, I think he would like see other shows. Also, he was tutoring me during the day, but mostly it was like, we're in New York City. Let's go to the UN. Let's go to a museum. So we were taking advantage of every free thing that New York City had to offer.

• 43:19Dax Shepard?

  Is it one of the sweeter memories of you and your dad?

• 43:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's also a time when my dad really got me into interesting movies. Cause we would go to the Blockbuster and I would want to get Spice World.

• 43:31Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  And he was like, we can totally get Spice World, but hey, let's also get something else. So we would watch Spice World and then we would watch The African Queen. And I would go like, oh, that was amazing. Like it was constantly a movie that I was like, dad, no.

• 43:46Dax Shepard?

  Is that Bogart, The African Queen?

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 43:48Dax Shepard?

  Humphrey Bogart.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Catherine Hepburn. But those were the movies that I would end up wanting to watch over and over.

• 43:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's fun. And did you love the experience of being in the show?

• 43:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Also, I've just been so desperate. Since I was a kid to just be a grown up, getting to be the only kid in the cast. There was something really kind of awesome to me about that. And there were all these other kids on Broadway at the time. They were doing a revival of The Sound of Music, so I kind of got to know some of the Sound of Music kids. And Ragtime at least had a little girl and a little boy in it. And so I got to know them a little bit, but I was like, I think I got the best deal here. Cause I'm surrounded by grownups.

• 44:23Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  And they were like so cool and nurturing and sweet. And again, we're like, you should see this movie, you should read this book. It felt like, oh, they see potential in me enough that they're bothering to recommend interesting things to me.

• 44:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 44:36Dax Shepard?

  Well, I thought, and that was by the way, in the two year ago preparation, I very much was thinking of May Whitman. The whole time as I was reading your story, you love May, yeah?

• 44:46Speaker 02

  I love May.

• 44:47Dax Shepard?

  She's number one girl in the world.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Maybe I should check with May if it's okay that I say this, but the night that I met May, we were both teenagers. I'll say that. First time on mushrooms? I think it was her first time being drunk.

• 45:02Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  And she was puking and I was holding her hair back and like rubbing her. Anytime I run into her, to this day, she's like, I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it. But I feel like I should just check if it's fine that I say that.

• 45:15Dax Shepard?

  I can answer for her for sure. The things she and I have talked about on here and continue to. She's so great, but I was so curious about her because we met on the rehearsal for Parenthood and she's playing 15. And I just hear her talk and I'm like, this 15 year old is insanely smart. Well, it turns out she was 22, but that's neither here nor there. And what I quickly discovered was, hmm, this is interesting. She's the best actor out of all of us here. And there are people here with 30, 40 year careers and that are phenomenal, taking nothing away from them. And then I was like, how is this happening? Oh, she's been acting longer than most of us here. That's interesting. And then watching her have to navigate this tedious fucking thing where everyone in the crew is treating her like she was young.

• 45:58Dax Shepard?

  But she had more wisdom and more skill than everyone else. I just ended up being so, it would have driven me nuts if I were her. And I guess I'm wondering if you were.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Late to that at all. Yeah, it's funny. I don't know if this is really what you're asking, but it just occurred to me. I remember when Up in the Air came out and it was the first time I was really doing press in a big way. And I remember thinking, I feel like I need to let people know that I'm 24. Cause I just felt like, God, they're talking to me like I'm a child. It was so weird. I will say, I would then move two reporters down or whatever. And I'd hear the previous reporter talking to Helen Mirren that exact same way. And go like, oh, okay, there's just something really infantilizing about the way that certain journalists talk to you, I guess. But it made me insane. So it was kind of a relief to go like, okay, that's at least happening to everyone.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  But I think I might be kind of naturally doing whatever it is that may, aversion maybe. And I guess I've been doing it since I was in elementary school. It's like just trying to seem so mature, so smart.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  What's that about?

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Well, cause when you're in third grade and everyone thinks you're in first grade. Oh, you were super tiny. There is nothing more humiliating. That is the divider between cool and a loser is you look like a baby. Yeah, baby. So from birth, I'm basically going like, oh, I have to try to prove with my speech or whatever that I'm older. It did get to the point where people would be like, I'm confused. Are you in first grade or are you in middle school? And you just look like that. It was a compensatory thing to try to make up for the fact that I felt like everybody thought I was so much younger than I was. Which most of your growing up, you're like, this is a nightmare. The high school in my town was right next to the elementary school.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  So the big dig when I got to high school was like, you're in the wrong building, babe. You know, I'm like, oh, God. So what are we talking about? Like, were you four foot something in ninth grade? Eighth grade was the first time that I fit into the smallest size at an adult store. Nobody had the clothes that I had. And maybe even then I was doing a lot of like, it's vintage. But it was because it was from The Limited Two, which was a store for children. The Limited was for women and juniors and The Limited Two was for babies. Yeah, for little babies. Yeah, for little babies. Little tiny useless worthless babies.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Those were hard to get clothes, though. They were the ones to have when you were in middle school.

• 48:25Speaker 02

  Yes, but I think like as you got closer and closer to high school, so by eighth grade, wearing the limited two was, you're a baby.

• 48:32Dax Shepard?

  Monique, do you have this stuff?

• 48:33Speaker 01

  I was just thinking that.

• 48:34Dax Shepard?

  Because you know you're a baby.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  I'm a tiny baby as well.

• 48:38Dax Shepard?

  Baby club.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  But I don't have this, which is really odd.

• 48:41Dax Shepard?

  Well, maybe though, so.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  I had bigger fish to fry.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  What were your, I mean, yeah.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  I had race stuff to deal with.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  I'm like, what were your, oh, right, yeah.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, the being the small, I didn't have time to deal with that.

• 48:52Dax Shepard?

  You were too focused on.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  I'm trying to blend it in the other way.

• 48:54Dax Shepard?

  But what's also possible is you could have been this size since you were 12. It's one thing if you ended up, no, you were.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  I was really small.

• 49:01Dax Shepard?

  You were a few deviations below.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  I was very, very small.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  But I remember listening to an episode when I was doing the edit for Woman of the Hour, and you were talking about learning to ride your bike in your garage.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  I could have burst into tears. I felt so seen because I was like, that is such an Anna fucking move to be like, oh, what I'm not gonna do is let anybody see the learning curve.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  What I'm not gonna do is let anybody see me until I'm in a place of mastery.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  And that feels like at least a cousin to the thing I'm talking about.

• 49:37Dax Shepard?

  Baby syndrome.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  Where it's like, I'm gonna get really, really good at something before I let anybody even know that I'm doing it at all.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  100% true. That's right.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  And it was so weird to be listening to that specific nugget when I was in the edit because I was like, I am loving the edit. And I realized I might love it in a way that's a real reflection of my own shit. The idea of going into a dark room with just one other person. So it sort of feels like I'm by myself for 12 hours a day and just chipping away at all the little flaws. And I'm not gonna come out of the dark until it's perfect.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  I'm gonna just get rid of anything that anyone could have an issue with, and I'll be perfect. And then and only then will I come out. It was just such a weird, I was like, I'm in the garage, learning how to ride the bike.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Which is, by the way, of course, not disclaimer, of course, not to say that the movie does not have flaws. It's all I see now when I watch the movie, as I'm sure you can relate to.

• 50:35Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  But at any rate, I was like, I'm Monica trying to ride my bike in this garage right now.

• 50:40Dax Shepard?

  And one day I'll open the garage door. Sure up.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Yep, yep, yep.

• 50:42Dax Shepard?

  But not until-

• 50:43Speaker 02

  But no, no, no, not a moment sooner.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  And I have that even with our edits. It's a similar thing.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Where it's just so meticulous.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  And do you kind of love it?

• 50:53Speaker 01

  I hate it, but I do.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Well, I'm sorry, before you said hate it, you had a real gleam in your eye, ma'am.

• 51:00Dax Shepard?

  Almost mustache twirling.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  I hate it, but I could never not do it. I cannot really hand it. And sometimes I'll go back and I'll listen to a section and I'm like, I think it went out without my edit. This is a mess. This sounds horrible. And of course, that's not true.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  No, it's like one of the cleanest podcasts I listen to.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  But it's what you said, doesn't matter what you've done. You still see the mistakes and the flaws.

• 51:21Dax Shepard?

  Monica and I just had dinner with Adam Grant a couple of weeks ago.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:24Dax Shepard?

  And we trust him very much so. And he was giving gentle nudging advice to Monica to make her workload easier. And like she was all open ears and then at some point he suggested that someone could maybe edit. And the line in the sand was so funny to watch. She was like, looked him dead in the eyes, like, no, yeah, that's never fucking happened.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Also, you opened this conversation with the compliment to my edit. So there is literally, there's no going back. This is the way it goes.

• 51:52Dax Shepard?

  So before you got on Broadway, I've heard you say now in a few interviews that you're kind of embarrassed about your actual knowledge of music. Does that mean you didn't train and you just sang that way and got yourself on Broadway? Or how'd you receive any instruction?

• 52:04Speaker 02

  I was in some choirs growing up, which got me laid a ton.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  And I had an hour lesson every week with a local vocal coach in Maine, who I loved very much. But I don't know-

• 52:16Dax Shepard?

  It wasn't super technical.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Any music theory.

• 52:19Dax Shepard?

  Can you read music?

• 52:20Speaker 02

  I can use it as a guide. There was a period where I worked on it and I could slowly sight sing, but it was very precarious. Walk in a real tight rope and was not something I was like, yeah, this is getting fun. It was stressful and difficult. And also, I think it's probably a skill that I would have worked harder on if music were a bigger part of my career. And it does just feel like I'm getting away with it every time. I kind of show up and I get my voice in shape a little bit right before some project and I kind of manage to get away with it. And so it is just this skill deficit that I feel embarrassed about every two years or something where it comes up.

• 52:56Dax Shepard?

  Well, I've noticed it's very hard for you to receive praise about your singing.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  What?

• 53:01Dax Shepard?

  The platinum song is very hard for you to accept. You seem to be embarrassed that you would have been on the charts.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  Okay, here's the closest I'll get to confidence in this area at all. I think for an actress, I sing very well. And even throwing the very on was difficult just now, but then I'm in a room with musicians or singers. The levels of artistry that exist, you kind of approach true greatness. And you're like, oh, that's so embarrassing for me.

• 53:29Dax Shepard?

  It's a very deceptive form.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, it feels like maybe being like a star runner in high school. And then for some reason you end up around Olympians. You're like, wow, I can't believe I thought I was good at this.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  It's not for some reason, though. That's the mistake. You're like, I don't know how it happened that I ended up around these Olympians. It's because you're so good that you're amongst those people. You have such a good voice. It's crazy.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  I can feel my brain desperately clawing for a joke. Oh, my God.

• 53:57Dax Shepard?

  I know why you feel the way you feel because you can end up in a circle where people around you have a lot more training and expertise. That happens on sets, though, as well as an actor, but that's never bothered me. I'll be in a scene with someone who went to Juilliard and that's fine. There's a lot of ways to skin this cat.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's interesting. I think I used to be really intimidated and embarrassed by my own kind of lack of formal acting training. And then just over time, I really did just go, oh, okay, you went to NYU or you went to Juilliard or something. That's awesome. Well, I will say, actually, On Into the Woods, this was the strangest thing. I was the strongest musician on Into the Woods. And I say that as someone who has been expounding about my lack of musicianship for the last five minutes, people on that set would come up to me and be like, if they're telling me that they're going to change the key to my song, like, what does that mean?

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  And I remember going, okay, I don't know enough about music to explain in high technical detail what that means, but I do know that it would be like if we had blocked an entire scene with all this furniture and then we moved all that furniture five feet to the left, you wouldn't then go sit on the floor because you were confused. Naturally, your body will adjust and so don't worry about it. But that kind of helped me on that set because I did feel incredibly intimidated by like the pedigree on that set. Oh, at least I'm bringing something to the table here. Even though then I would tell my musician friends I was the strongest musician on set and they would go, oh, no.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  Which I was like, I know.

• 55:27Dax Shepard?

  Uh oh.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  It's not like a thing where you can just be a little flattering. It's like a batting average. These things are just kind of concrete and black and white. So my musician friends were like, oh God, you were the star.

• 55:39Dax Shepard?

  Right. What are they gonna do?

• 55:40Speaker 02

  But it felt like, oh, okay, I have like a purpose here. Yeah. But so anyway, I was working with someone else on a different project and their preference was that everyone kind of know their lines and stuff for like the week. So that at any given moment, we could be like, hey, can we just rehearse scene 50? We're doing it on Friday. I'm not sure that they requested it as much as they commented that that's the professional thing or something. And it was just someone whose work I really admired. And so I was like, okay, that's what I'm gonna do. And I did it for the entire time that they were there and on set. And then when they left set, I did wonder, was that the kind of more disciplined thing to do? Was that adding value? Was I being lazy by being one of those people? That's something that this person said was like, you know, those actors that really

• 56:25Speaker 02

  get fully memorized in the makeup chair in the morning. And I was like, I'm one of those actors. I thought, oh, okay, I don't want to seem like one of those actors. And when they left and I had more of the movie to do, I reverted back and I was like, yeah, no, this is just better for me. Yeah. It was really interesting. I really wondered, am I gonna find that there was added value in some way for me? And it was kind of the opposite. I really want to be just on that perfect line of being memorized. So I know it, but it's not stale because I think that's the thing that I am always more worried about. And this is a person who could really put my favorite quality in an actor of just discovery in something that they knew backwards and forwards. And for me, that's just a little bit harder.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  So my preference is to just be memorized right before it's time.

• 57:12Dax Shepard?

  My sweet spot is a little bit of panic. I like to feel a little bit of chaos. I think I have it. I don't know if I have it. I gotta really rise to the occasion. That's my sweet spot.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  Interesting. I would say that in the last five years or something, I was on a set where it's hard to explain. I'm using this word. It sounds bigger than it is. I don't mean it like capital S, but I didn't feel super safe. It was just an emotional thing. I just didn't feel really at home and really safe and really comfortable. And I was doing a scene where I was finding it tough to cry. And

• 57:46Speaker 01

  We know, we know that's not

• 57:48Speaker 02

  Verbit. Monica.

• 57:50Dax Shepard?

  What did you say, Monica?

• 57:52Speaker 01

  I'm just kidding.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  She's teasing me that I Cause I cried so much on our episode.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  So we know that's not hard for you.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  But on set, it isn't hard for me. And I think that it was certainly a muscle I developed. I would say in the first five years of acting on film, it was not a guarantee. I was always a little nervous, like, oh, I have to cry on cue. But then I just got really confident. I knew it wasn't going to be a problem. Great. To the point that sometimes in conversations with friends, I would say something like, you know, that thing when you're talking in your, sorry, sorry. And you know that thing? And they would be like, what the fuck? That was really fucking creepy, uncanny valley. I didn't like that. And I'd have to be like, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Cause I'm so used to just tapping in. Talking about, you know, that thing? And then there's that moment and I just do it. And they're

• 58:41Speaker 02

  like, I really panicked for a second that like something was wrong. And so then there was a set I was on where I couldn't really cry. I mean, I kind of got there, but then by take four, I was really there. So for me, if I was in a low key panic, I think that would be difficult. It's actually the fact that I feel comfortable and I know that I've ridden my bike in the garage enough times that I know that I know how to ride my bike. But because there was just something a little funky on this particular set, I was like, this is the weirdest feeling to just go, oh, that muscle just isn't showing up for me. I'm falling off my bike.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  Like, what is happening? So I don't relate to the panic thing.

• 59:20Dax Shepard?

  I think it's a hundred percent childhood. I love chaos. That's very arousing to me. And so if I can get just a hint of that in a scene, and I think it's just all childhood. And then the other fun thing, you haven't done a TV show for like years and years. What I found fascinating about that is, so for Parenthood, there was, I think, 14 cast members and you're in the makeup trailer and we have a new director every other episode. And you're hearing people talk about how they hate or love this director. I was like, oh yeah, there's no consistency. It's just your childhood. There's no right way to direct people. There's no right way to enjoy performing. It's a great metaphor for a life in general, which is like, there's no right way. There's the one that works for you.

• 1:00:02Dax Shepard?

  And I'd just be shocked listening to an actor say like, they love this director. I'm like, I hate this director. This director is so controlling. But if they had a parent that they really loved and could trust and count on, they like that kind of direction and they feel safe with that.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  It's interesting because as we're talking about this, I'm going, Anna, that's not entirely true. Cause I have been aware for years, but especially when I was directing, that when things are kind of behind and there's a real crunch and there's a panic. I'm like, oh, we're getting the shot. Oh baby, if you think that we're not making our day and we're not getting every fucking shot we need, oh, you got another thing coming and I get real crazy eyes. And even as an actor, I have been accused in the past of gunning for the first AD job, which is like the stage manager of the film set. I want to be the person driving the train and going like, we need to put more coal on the fire. Let's go. And so there was a day where everything went wrong on set.

• 1:00:58Speaker 02

  And you know, everything goes wrong every day, but really everything went wrong. I turned to my cinematographer and I was like, I'm aware that I probably look pretty freaky right now. And I'm probably acting like a lunatic and it probably looks like I just did an eight ball, but I've never done cocaine.

• 1:01:14Dax Shepard?

  Wow, you just made the nail jail I was gonna make. I was gonna tell you, you don't ever need to microdose cocaine because that is the feeling.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  I have known from the time I was a teenager, something about that drug. I was like, I don't need that in my life. The times in my life where I've been adrenalized and confident are the ones that really keep me up at night. So the last thing I need is to foster that.

• 1:01:36Dax Shepard?

  Adrenaline and. Confident. That's right.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  There is something really exciting about my backs against the wall. Watch me fucking make this happen.

• 1:01:44Dax Shepard?

  I love it.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  But it wouldn't be conducive to me dropping into softness and crying, I guess.

• 1:01:51Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  So it's interesting because it does bring out a side of me that I really enjoy. But it's just fascinating.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Do you like to prove yourself?

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's probably wanting to overcome something. I mean, honestly, I haven't really talked about this in press just because it's nuanced and there's not a lot of room for that. But I pitched myself to direct this movie with six weeks to go before I was in Canada doing hard prep.

• 1:02:15Dax Shepard?

  You were attached to the movie for two years. You finally got financing. By the time you got financing, the previous director had fallen out and then it was a scramble to get a director.

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  Yes, I pitched myself and then we had six weeks of prep, which even that is a pretty short prep. And then we had 24 days to make the movie. And I think there was something about that that felt like, number one, sure, I like a challenge and that's a nice thing to say about yourself. So that's not not in there somewhere. And two, I knew that if there was something that was six months away, I would have panicked and backed out and been like, we should find someone who's more experienced. This is a mistake and I didn't have time to panic. I just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other. But also there was something about making a movie in terrible circumstances that gave me a little bit of emotional cushion if it was a complete disaster.

• 1:03:03Dax Shepard?

  Exactly.

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  If I pull it off, I'm going to feel so amazing about it. But because if I walk into something where I've known I was going to do it for six months or a year and it's like a really cushy schedule and we have all the right resources.

• 1:03:14Dax Shepard?

  If you're Tarantino and you have 130 days, it better be fucking perfect.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  It's only you to blame.

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  Yes, but this kind of sprawling, period piece, epic thriller, it has to feel really controlled. And you want to make it look big and expensive in spite of the resources you have. Because we are very happy to have found a home at Netflix, but we did not make this movie with Netflix. This was very, very, very much an indie film. We were on our own. That's it. As frustrating as that was, there were many days that I cried in my car. But I think there was something about it that made me like, well, if it's a disaster. I'll be able to emotionally survive that because I'll be able to tell myself, well, it's because you had 24 days.

• 1:03:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're not a built in.

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  You're trying to do this huge thing. We were really trying to pull off something really ambitious. And I'm so glad that people think it's a big expensive movie, but then I'm like, I would like you to know.

• 1:04:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  That it was not a big expensive movie.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Wow, that's incredible.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  So it's like complicated because I don't want it to look cheap, but also, oh my God. There's like a lot of me playing games with myself. You're like hedging your bets emotionally here.

• 1:04:16Dax Shepard?

  I had the exact same experience. That's Hit and Run is a million dollar car chase movie. I don't know what you're expecting, but if it's watchable, this is a big touchdown.

• 1:04:25Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. And I've been aware for years on set that once a day, someone from some department saves the movie.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  But wow, as a director, I was like, oh my God, at least once a day, someone is saving my ass and everybody else's ass. And I was so happy to have two guys who were really emotionally invested. Some of the day is spent chatting about really emotional, personal stuff. And it's amazing the way that then it kind of shows up in the next decision you make.

• 1:04:56Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  Wait, may I use the?

• 1:04:57Dax Shepard?

  Yes, we have a door now. We didn't have a door then.

• 1:05:04Dax Shepard?

  You do have to move a chair. Is that a Missoni sweater?

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  It is. Vintage.

• 1:05:10Dax Shepard?

  Are you impressed?

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Salvage.

• 1:05:12Dax Shepard?

  Are you impressed?

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  I am impressed.

• 1:05:14Dax Shepard?

  It's hard. You gotta remind yourself what it's like to not know a lot about fashion.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  I know. It is very impressive. It's like if I saw a car thing.

• 1:05:22Dax Shepard?

  That's right. But if you called out, you know, a 60s Ferrari by name.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:05:27Dax Shepard?

  I would high five you.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:05:28Dax Shepard?

  So how old is that garment?

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  That's a great question. You've asked that a couple of times about some vintage items.

• 1:05:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, because like in cars, it's really important what year it is.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:05:37Dax Shepard?

  Like, is that a 1978 Missoni? I want to give Joy Bryant credit. I only know about Missoni because they were selling it at Target and she was so excited. And she kind of explained everything to me.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  That was such a big day.

• 1:05:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  When they did a collab.

• 1:05:49Dax Shepard?

  We were doing Parenthood when that happened. And she was counting down the days like, yeah, like I thought the Pope was gonna visit set or something. So then somehow I really picked up on what the signature proprietary design is.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:00Dax Shepard?

  Was it itchy or is it nice?

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  It's a tiny bit itchy.

• 1:06:04Dax Shepard?

  Earmark for a fact check. I am making cashmere now.

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  Excuse me?

• 1:06:09Dax Shepard?

  Yes, I have it. I'm gonna make you feel it. I have a million tiny little hairs on my back. I've been noticing it in the new gym. I can see it in my reflection and I hate them. So then I was complaining about them and Lincoln said, you want me to shave your back? And I said, I would love that. And Lincoln shaved my entire back.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:06:25Dax Shepard?

  I was sitting on the edge of the bathtub and this little tiny pile of hair was done afterwards. And I picked it up to throw it in the trash and I went, oh, my God, that's the softest hair I've ever felt in my life. I had the girls feel it and we all agreed, that's cashmere. So I'm now collecting it.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  What did I just?

• 1:06:44Dax Shepard?

  And one day I hope to produce a cash-

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  sweater.

• 1:06:47Dax Shepard?

  Brad Pitt's got God's true ca- this is up step above.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  What if his is his back hair and we didn't know this whole time?

• 1:06:54Dax Shepard?

  I thought it was overpriced, it's underpriced.

• 1:06:59Dax Shepard?

  You missed a lot.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  I leave you alone for two seconds.

• 1:07:01Dax Shepard?

  I'm making cashmere now off my own back.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  I gathered that much.

• 1:07:05Dax Shepard?

  I kinda wanna go inside and get the little-

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  I was hoping it was a metaphor.

• 1:07:08Dax Shepard?

  Tough of hair.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Unfortunately not. How much do you have?

• 1:07:11Dax Shepard?

  It's only about the size of that.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  Is it just a pile of hair currently?

• 1:07:16Dax Shepard?

  It's a tiny little-

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Smashed together?

• 1:07:18Dax Shepard?

  And I kept it in a certain spot so I can grow it and then get it spun into wool.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  You might have to start with a sock.

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  My mom does crafting. She does this thing called felting where she makes little like woodland creatures out of special felt. And that seems like it might be a good candidate for a little squirrel or something.

• 1:07:33Dax Shepard?

  Connect us.

• 1:07:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. She'll love it.

• 1:07:35Dax Shepard?

  What she could do is I think cashmere does not come from a goat's chin or something like that.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  It comes from a region and an animal and in that region.

• 1:07:43Dax Shepard?

  Or something. And then there's a goat chin hair. Is it goat chin hair, Rob? It's goats, yeah. So your mother should make a goat that the cashmere comes from, but make it in my back hair.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Meta. Yeah.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  Wow, okay.

• 1:07:56Dax Shepard?

  Okay, most people will have seen Woman of Hour. It's number one on Netflix. Congratulations.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  Thank you. It's nice to be talking about the movie now that it's out.

• 1:08:06Dax Shepard?

  Way better.

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  Cause I do feel like, okay, I don't have to be so precious about like spoilers and stuff.

• 1:08:10Dax Shepard?

  Also, Kristen and Brody did the show right before their show, but I'm like, that would have been so much more fun two weeks after when it was this cultural phenomenon. So the movie is a real story of a serial killer. What year was that?

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  So the movie spans from 1971 to 1979.

• 1:08:28Dax Shepard?

  And the movie, although it is about a serial killer, I think it's very much more about the experience of being a woman. I mean, and it's fucking just around every corner.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:08:43Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:08:50Dax Shepard?

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• 1:09:33Dax Shepard?

  Explore the new Peloton Tread Flex at onepeloton.com.

• 1:09:39Speaker 06

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• 1:10:01Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so there's a couple of beats that come around more than once. And so you have this neighbor, he clearly has a crush on you. You're not dating, you guys go out, he then kind of makes his big move. It's Pete Holmes, he's great, by the way. It's funny, you counter programmed, you took all these really sweet people and made them be mean.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  I know, Tony Hale.

• 1:10:23Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  He's mean in it.

• 1:10:25Speaker 02

  He's a pig. He had a great time. There were some times where I was like, Tony, we're gonna just keep rolling on you or the camera might follow you this time. So if you want to just say whatever. And then we would cut and I would be like, Tony.

• 1:10:37Dax Shepard?

  Tony, how dare you.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  How dare you, how very dare you.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  Wow. Oh, he's such a good boy.

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, but he's also like an amazing improviser. So he was not afraid to get specific.

• 1:10:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:50Speaker 02

  In casting Pete Holmes, I was really looking for the guy who, in a very short window of time on screen, you could go, okay, we're introducing a man and it's her neighbor. And I'm hoping that you're a little surprised that it turns dark or sexual. That it could be that this guy is just in the movie to be kind of this comic golden retriever type. And then there's this turn where even Pete Holmes is someone who just can't really see himself as not entitled to my space and my body and my apartment.

• 1:11:27Dax Shepard?

  And there's a moment where it's like, he's been so friendly, so friendly, so friendly. And then when it's obvious to him that you're not gonna go out with him, he gets mean and angry.

• 1:11:37Speaker 02

  I know, that moment was really interesting because he has not played a part like that ever. And so number one, I wasn't totally sure if it was gonna come across. But yeah, there's that one moment where he's like, do you want to leave? That just makes me like, oh, God, I hate it. It's so cold. He just goes like dead eyed.

• 1:11:54Dax Shepard?

  Well, it's scary. Hold on a second. I was just talking to someone different.

• 1:11:57Speaker 02

  I know. I thought everything was fine. How did we get here? But as an actor on set, there's lots of little things that I do that I keep in my back pocket and I don't tell anyone about. And I really prefer, within reason, just not mention that I'm gonna try like a little thing. Cause sometimes I think it's almost like, oh God, I hate that I'm about to say this, but it's what I imagine maintaining an erection would feel like. Where you're just like, if I spell out everything that's about to happen, something about it will be false or the moment will disappear and get away from me. And then I'll just be trying to get it back. And so there are things that I like keep to myself and I found that bleeding into directing as well. And one of the things was I knew I wanted the killer in the opening scene to touch Sarah's hair,

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  the actress's hair. And then I wanted Pete to touch my hair in this bar scene, but I didn't tell anybody about that. And we filmed the bar scene first and so I was asking Pete to touch my hair. And Pete, God bless him, was like, why on earth would I just touch your hair? Like I just reach out and touch your body? Who would do that? And I was like, lots of people. So it was very sweet. It like spoke well of him that he was so bewildered by the idea. He was like, am I drunk? Why would I just touch you?

• 1:13:08Dax Shepard?

  Have I fallen? I'm steadying myself on your hair?

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  No, literally. But I thought the moment works great. And then funny enough, later that day, we shot a scene where toward the end, the killer asks me for my phone number and he asked, can I try something in the next take? And I was like, sure. And while I'm writing my number now, he reached out and he tucked my hair behind my ear.

• 1:13:29Dax Shepard?

  And he didn't have any knowledge?

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  No. And we kept walking and I called cut and I was like, did someone tell you that earlier today, I asked Pete to do exactly that? And he was like, no, no. And I was like, well, just so you know, I was gonna ask you to do it in the opening scene. And so he does it in the opening scene, but that moment is actually one of the creepier moments in the movie, when he touches my hair. And it was so perfect that of course Pete is, I think, still thinking of himself as playing a super sweet guy. So he was like, why would I just touch you? But the guy who's trying to be in the mind of someone who thinks of other people as just kind of playthings is like, why wouldn't I just reach out and touch your hair? You belong to me.

• 1:14:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Oh, wow. How much of it? So, oh, have you seen that switch? You must have.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:16Dax Shepard?

  Even your relationship we discussed before, aside.

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  That's obviously the one that was most impactful. But yeah, it's certainly not the only time that I've had that experience. And really, the whole movie is kind of an exploration of how did we get here? And how bad is this gonna get? Even when I was pitching myself, I was like, I know that this is not the kind of movie that I'm known for, but this feels like familiar territory to me. These scenes that are around violence really feel like scenes about shame to me. And there's this question in the movie that I've experienced in my life, which is whose shame is this? And how much of your shame am I gonna have to absorb to make sure that you don't really harm me?

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  And the whole end sequence was very different before I signed on. There's this one detail from the real story that feels so important.

• 1:15:12Dax Shepard?

  Was that part of the real story?

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:15:14Dax Shepard?

  She spoke to him that way?

• 1:15:15Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:15:16Dax Shepard?

  Holy fuck.

• 1:15:17Speaker 02

  The way that we have to contort to survive is about, I need to be your mirror right now. And right now, I need to show you that you have done nothing wrong and everything is great.

• 1:15:29Dax Shepard?

  It's like you have to latch on to whatever justification they've told them. So even the way she uses the world, it got wild. That's a very mitigating.

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  This character at the end of the film decides to take on all of his shame. And it's this really perverse agreement between the two of them. Hey, this is how we both walk out of here and feel okay and survive. And I think that there are a lot of people who would have thought to say, I forgive you and I'm not gonna tell anyone. But to think, to say, please don't tell anyone and please forgive me is so genius. And it's saying, hey, all that power that you need to feel, you get to feel it just by like doing something benevolent, which is quote unquote forgiving me. I mean, it's just. It just blows my mind.

• 1:16:20Dax Shepard?

  I'm not shocked. That's a real detail from the real story because it's so specific. That's a hell of a scene. She's incredible.

• 1:16:29Speaker 02

  Okay, can we just talk about Autumn for a second?

• 1:16:31Dax Shepard?

  Let's talk about Autumn.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  The cast in this movie is absolutely dazzling and I remember especially when I was asking the screenwriter to add this sequence to the end of the movie, I told the casting director, I don't know where this girl is, but we're gonna find her and I'm telling you when the lights come up on this movie, the first thing anybody is gonna ask is who the fuck is she?

• 1:16:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:54Speaker 02

  It's exactly what's happening and it makes me so happy. She just sent a tape from Chicago. It's her first movie.

• 1:17:00Dax Shepard?

  No way. I was watching her. She's so good that I was like, she's been great in nine other things and I just am now connecting the dots. It was that feeling.

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:09Dax Shepard?

  The killer is fucking awesome.

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:17:11Dax Shepard?

  Thankless role.

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  Well, no, really, because he is extraordinary in every scene and yet I'm very grateful to him because he had to know that he's not really the focus of any scene, but that doesn't mean he can show up and phone it in because then the scene is ruined. He is doing amazing things in the film.

• 1:17:31Dax Shepard?

  And you might think that this story would only be relatable to women, but I'm very much watching it and I have seen the transition hundreds of times.

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:17:43Dax Shepard?

  Oh my God, yeah. It can be sexual in nature or it can just be, you've threatened my status and I'm going to control you now. Like I've seen the eyes change in a million men, in stepdads and in older boys and I've seen like, oh fuck, we're in a real zone now. It's about to get unpredictable and who knows, this dude's embarrassed and threatened and now we're off to the races. Like anything's possible.

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  And would you say that historically your go-to growing up was always fight?

• 1:18:13Dax Shepard?

  No, I was terrified at times. I remember me and Aaron were just hanging out at his house at 12 years old and this fucking dude rolled up in like an old muscle car and he got out and he wanted to know if we had seen, I don't know what the fuck he wanted. I didn't give the right answer. And I was noticing his mouth was like covered in white. I could smell his breath. It was like fishy. And out of nowhere, this like full grown adult grabs me and slams my head against this telephone pole. And now I'm like, we were just existing and now I'm in this dude's story and it's a crazy person. I don't know them. He's assaulting me. Where's this going?

• 1:18:50Speaker 02

  And was the strategy then just flee?

• 1:18:52Dax Shepard?

  In an ideal world, it's flattery.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:55Dax Shepard?

  No, dude, I'd never fuck with you. You're a fucking badass. If it's a step dad, I was just writing about this. There's this like game we play where we downplay what just happened and we blame it on another thing and we really hunker down on that other plausible explanation to get him out of the shame. Cause if shame takes off.

• 1:19:15Speaker 02

  Traffic was so crazy today.

• 1:19:17Dax Shepard?

  Really in trouble. So I don't think anyone's excluded from that. And it's very, very visceral and familiar. I got to an age and a size where any dude that rolls up to put my head into a telephone pole, they're gonna have their hands full. I got to escape it to some degree. And yeah, if you're five feet tall and 112 pounds, that option's not gonna be on the table for you. If I couldn't have outgrown that, that would have been so paralyzing to me because I hated that. I experienced that a lot and it killed me. And my self flagellation of not being able to stand up to those people or find my voice or say the truth. That hurt way more than any of the interactions did.

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  Oh, it is really hard because I feel like in the last few years, there's been more of a kind of exploration of the fawn response and how that's not a viable, healthy thing. And it is complicated though, because sometimes my friends will talk to me about how that's something that they're working on. And they'll be talking about a situation they were in where they reverted to doing stuff like that. And they're beating themselves up about it. And I'm also then going, but you were just trying to keep yourself safe. It's a survival skill. With your really safe people, that's not something you want to just fall into out of instinct and habit. But in the situation you're describing, it feels like that was not a super safe situation, even if it wasn't in a dark parking lot with a man.

• 1:20:35Dax Shepard?

  Well, the second someone shows you a side of themselves that you couldn't have predicted. Now you have to acknowledge your abilities to predict what's going to happen. They're useless. You just found out that you didn't know this person. And now everything's on the table. The sky's the limit at that point. Cause you know, you no longer have any sense of what this person is.

• 1:20:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. In the movie, my character, I remember thinking that it felt like particularly in the first act, that the question in each scene for her is like, do you see me as human? Or do you see me as something else? And by the end of the movie, she has an answer and it's not a great answer, but it's at least resolution. There's something about knowing that feels a little bit better.

• 1:21:12Dax Shepard?

  I grew up watching the dating game. And for people who don't know, your character, the woman in real life, went on the dating game and the killer was one of the bachelors, which seems insane. That person would have gone on television. Obviously it's telling of how unthreatened he felt by law enforcement or the world.

• 1:21:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. The culture was very much not set up to protect the victims. So he was very confident.

• 1:21:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And for years, people had been saying stuff and nothing ever came to fruition.

• 1:21:41Speaker 02

  As far as what we know, and this is really about like what has been recorded. And there's probably significantly more, but from what we know, he operated for over a decade.

• 1:21:51Dax Shepard?

  And they know about seven and there's some people that think as much as a hundred and thirty, which seems like a hell of a delta. Yes. Rape and murder.

• 1:21:59Speaker 02

  My, it's also the ones that we know about are mostly girls who came from families that were looking for them. So one imagines that particularly in the 1970s, although unfortunately still today, sex workers, men who were perceived to be gay men, those would be people that it would have been a lot easier. This is speculation and we don't know and we can't know.

• 1:22:18Dax Shepard?

  Seven's enough to, yeah, it's the threshold for me. Okay. So having this huge dissonance between having been alive during a lot of this and having seen nothing wrong with it. It's not like I was a little kid watching the dating game and the guests would come out and all they'd talk about is how pretty she is and all that. None of that obviously was seeming weird to me at all. It was like, here's life. Here's what a game show is. This is what happens on a game. And when you look back on it, it's so nuts.

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  It's really nuts, but it's also funny how poor the comedy was. There was a point where we were debating using some of the real dialogue from the real episode. And I will also say the real episode, pieces of it are available online, but the episode in its entirety appears to have been lost to time. So we're kind of imagining what happened in that lost footage. Did the contestant write her own questions and rebel against the show? Probably not. But it was the most interesting thing we could do with that part of the movie. Even the piece of the movie that's a little bit more like an episode of The Dating Game, we had to write stuff that was a little better because if we had just kept the dialogue as it was, it would have been like, is there supposed to be a gas leak in the audience? Like, why are they laughing at this?

• 1:23:32Speaker 02

  Like, one of the things in the real episode, she says, Bachelor number one, like, what's your best time? And he goes, my best time is night. And the audience is just, ah! They're just eating it up. Without all the context of it actually being the seventies, it would not make sense in this movie.

• 1:23:47Dax Shepard?

  Sexual innuendo was a hit.

• 1:23:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:49Dax Shepard?

  It didn't really matter how good it was.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh, I can't believe we're saying that on TV. Yeah, exactly. Because he's saying night, and that means he's talking about sex. And oh, my god.

• 1:23:56Dax Shepard?

  Or Whoopi, that whole show where they constantly talked about, where's the craziest place you made Whoopi? Have you ever seen that clip?

• 1:24:02Speaker 02

  I doubt it.

• 1:24:03Dax Shepard?

  He asks the wife, what's the craziest place you and your husband have made Whoopi? And she goes, in the butt?

• 1:24:10Speaker 02

  Oh, god. No, no, no, I have. Yeah, no, no, no. I was like, it sounds, mm, yep, yep, yep, yep.

• 1:24:17Dax Shepard?

  So watching it now, forgive me for this, I'd like to debate whether or not I want to ask this question or not. It's probably wrong, but you can correct me and I'll learn a lesson. It's so stark and bad. Like, it's so crazy that that's how talk show hosts were talking to young women. Is it possible the women that were experiencing it, they too were in the water? And it wasn't as painful as it feels like when I'm watching it? Because it's just fucking absurd.

• 1:24:43Speaker 02

  This is really interesting. So number one, there is actually one line that is lifted from the real Cheryl Bradshaw episode of The Dating Game, where the host says, she used to work massaging feet, but quit when her boss asked her to work her way up. Oh my god.

• 1:24:57Dax Shepard?

  This is daytime.

• 1:24:58Speaker 02

  In the movie, I kind of bristle at that. And if you watch the episode, she's got a smile plastered on her face the whole time. I obviously can't speak to how she felt about it. I don't know.

• 1:25:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:07Speaker 02

  But there was something that I read about one of the victims. We ended up putting something about it in the movie. This character Charlie, played by Catherine Gallagher, she sort of mentioned something about being a flight attendant and how customers will kind of try to grab her ass when she's putting things in the overhead bin. But that was based on something I had read where the person who was actually a flight attendant would talk about that as though it was very charming and adorable.

• 1:25:36Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:25:36Speaker 02

  Again, unless you're in the 1970s, if I have her do that, it's going to seem like I'm signaling she's an idiot. So the only way for me to have her say it is to have her be a little annoyed by it.

• 1:25:48Dax Shepard?

  That's the interesting thing about now period pieces. When you approach them in modern day, you are doing this weird tightrope walk.

• 1:25:54Speaker 02

  But it is interesting because you go, well, I'm sure that they thought they felt fine about it. Because it's really hard when you're like, okay, so the only thing I can do is be a consumable object. But the alternative is I'm nothing. I'm worthless. So hey, I'm gonna enjoy being consumed. So of course you end up telling yourself that being objectified is great. That's great news for me. And I even remember watching a kind of fact versus fiction thing about the show Chernobyl. In it, they're talking about how, particularly in the first episode, there's a number of points where different Russians go, I'm not sure that we should do that. They're kind of pushing back against a direct order.

• 1:26:35Speaker 02

  And the person who was fact checking it was like, I think that this totally makes sense as a way to dramatize the culture at that time, but in reality, they would have just done it. Yeah, exactly. But you can't just have them do it because then you just go, oh, so everyone in the country at that time was an idiot? You have to kind of have them externalize their own worries in a way that they wouldn't have had they been receiving a direct order.

• 1:27:02Dax Shepard?

  But what I could tell, and I could tell by the fact that you're telling this story. And your performance in it, oh, those details have changed, but there's a very alive aspect.

• 1:27:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. And there's something where obviously it's a period piece and that meant that there were places where playing up the seventies of it all was really fun. But my nightmare would be that anybody saw the movie and walked away with the idea that, oh, man, the seventies were a tough time for women. Good thing that's all in the past now. So there were things where I was like, I kind of wanted to feel timeless and I don't want to super lean into how seventies we could get. In the first scene where we meet my character, I'm, I'm having like a horrible audition and the guys that were playing the casting directors were so great and so funny. I asked them to do this thing verbatim that had happened to me when I was 19.

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:27:48Dax Shepard?

  You say the, what do they say?

• 1:27:49Speaker 02

  They ask me if I'm willing to do nudity and I say, oh no, it's just not for me. And they point at my chest and go, oh, I'm sure they're fine.

• 1:27:58Dax Shepard?

  They assume.

• 1:27:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:28:04Speaker 02

  And, you know, when I was 19 wasn't yesterday, but it certainly wasn't the 1970s.

• 1:28:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:08Speaker 02

  So there's stuff in the movie that is from my experience that unfortunately was very recent.

• 1:28:15Dax Shepard?

  So let me ask you, I think it's interesting to make your first directorial effort be a genre thing, especially a thriller. It's very specific. I was very impressed with how well you did with the visuals of that genre. They're very specific. The way you're building tension, they're shot in a very, very specific way and you really nailed that. And so my question is, was the genre in the story, the compelling piece, or was it this examination of being a woman?

• 1:28:44Speaker 02

  Oh, man, it's so funny you ask that.

• 1:28:46Dax Shepard?

  You've gotten that question a thousand times.

• 1:28:48Speaker 02

  No, not at all. I sent this script to a filmmaker friend of mine when I was debating pitching myself to direct it, mostly as, do you think that this is a nightmare? Here's the budget, here's the timeline, here's the script. Do you think I'm setting myself up to fail? And he talked to me about all that stuff, but he was like, I gotta say, I'm surprised that this is the thing. I've been wondering and hoping if you would direct and this is not what I was expecting. And he's Said, you know, once you're deeper into the movie, I can see some themes that would appeal to you about being a woman in the world. But like especially that opening scene, explain me basically, right? Yeah, help me out. The opening scene was a little different at the time, but it was more or less same.

• 1:29:31Speaker 02

  And I had to think about it because this is a person who's known me for like 20 years. And I was like, well, that should give me pause, right? If he's really gently asking me like, why this? And obviously I agree that all the stuff about being a woman and the kind of peril, large and small, that you find yourself in is appealing. But even that opening scene, I get it. It's a pretty shocking act of violence. It's an upsetting scene, but it doesn't feel like unfamiliar territory to me. Because not to be corny, but the idea of two people on an isolated hilltop, and especially something about being photographed even in a moment of real vulnerability.

• 1:30:13Speaker 02

  It feels like this is the bargain that we're always making when we engage in meaningful relationship. The risk of annihilation is what we put ourselves in, in any moment of vulnerability. And obviously this is a really extreme story and an extreme example. But that moment of going, how did I get here? A second ago, I was in the most beautiful place. I really wanted to open the movie and close the movie in nature. And it felt like nature is this kind of perfect reflection of the duality of intimacy, the terror and the risk versus the warmth and the beauty,

• 1:30:54Speaker 02

  and how like restorative and healing and magical something like the ocean can be, and how dangerous the ocean can be. That moment where you go, oh, something has turned and his eyes have gone dark. And I don't really know what's happening anymore. Or even when you're talking about, oh, this person has just exhibited a behavior that's not predictable. And now anything is possible. It's kind of similar to being on an isolated hilltop and going, wow, this is the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen. And then realizing, I think. I might be lost. Yeah. And I didn't. And I didn't have enough water for a lost version of the hike back. And you hear a coyote in the distance and you go, oh, I'm really not safe.

• 1:31:36Speaker 02

  And that feels like it's at the emotional crux of all that. So it's both, I guess. There's something about a kind of extreme genre example of that feeling that feels really real to me.

• 1:31:50Dax Shepard?

  I liked to, this was an explored and I don't know whether it was intentional or not, but when we talked last time on the show and I was saying what my own journey with coming to peace with being molested was, is owning my own culpability. That was a huge part of it for me and forgiving myself for my culpability. So for me, and again, I'm projecting this onto your movie, but I was like, I like that. There's got to be also some moment of like, I want to be photographed. I'm flattered that this great photographer has interest in me. To me on the hilltop, I would be actively, as much as I'd be afraid of that person, I would be right into the self abuse.

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  This is really tricky.

• 1:32:35Dax Shepard?

  That's my story.

• 1:32:36Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 1:32:37Dax Shepard?

  I want to be very clear. No one had any culpability, but I was like, oh, I can feel being there.

• 1:32:41Speaker 02

  I've had a similar experience. There's stuff that has happened to me where a big part of me getting to resolution was in fact owning, okay, that piece was mine and there was something I wanted and that did get me in that situation. And that frees me up to really place all the anger and shame that doesn't belong to me on the other person where it squarely fucking belongs. So I, I totally get that thing.

• 1:33:09Dax Shepard?

  The whole scene becomes more moving and real to me because it's more complicated than I'm walking down the street. Someone jumped out of somewhere and attacked me. There's more to it.

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  Even every woman in the movie has like a very different personality, which is intentional. And the way that she meets this man is different, which is intentional. And how they interact is different because I know what you're saying. And this is always like a really tricky dance.

• 1:33:35Dax Shepard?

  It is. Because it sounds like victim shaming, but that's why I'm saying personally, no.

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  Are we like dancing close to that line?

• 1:33:40Dax Shepard?

  You're there to pursue acting. And so you yourself have made some weird compromise to be on a show you don't want to be on because you know that's not really what you want to do. But also there's this promise of it could lead to the thing you do want to do. I just like that the reality of the layers are in it. Go ahead.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  That's the thing to overcome. If you're taking that on, that's for you to understand that's not related. This want is not related to that abuse.

• 1:34:05Dax Shepard?

  Agreed.

• 1:34:05Speaker 01

  So you can feel it, but that feeling should be corrected, not, okay, so.

• 1:34:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, to me, just that's what makes it juicy is I can relate to the part where I'm playing a hot dog as a harmonica in an AMPM industrial commercial. Woo.

• 1:34:23Dax Shepard?

  Real life experience, like, what are we doing here?

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  But that doesn't mean then the director can sexually abuse you because you wanted this thing. They're separate. I understand feeling like they're combined, especially when you're prone to shame, but they are not.

• 1:34:39Dax Shepard?

  They are not. And you would hope to tell any victim that, but I'm just relating to the internal battle I've had.

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:46Dax Shepard?

  When I end up places and I find that to be part of a lot of people's experience.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  I think it's harder for you to live in a world where you didn't have a part in it. Where it was something that something bad happened to you and it wasn't because of anything you did or anything you wanted, or.

• 1:35:03Dax Shepard?

  You're right. It's more comfort.

• 1:35:03Speaker 01

  You had zero control.

• 1:35:05Dax Shepard?

  It's more comforting to me probably because if I can identify some role I played, I have control over me. I don't have control over the rest of the world. So if I can isolate some move I would make differently, I cannot be in this situation, which is not true.

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:35:22Dax Shepard?

  I couldn't be walking down the street and I could be.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  It's not true.

• 1:35:25Dax Shepard?

  I recognize it. I just know the internal battle of when I've been a victim. It's not as clean. I wish it were clean like, oh yeah, I'm a victim. For me, it wasn't clean like that.

• 1:35:35Speaker 02

  I am both of you in this moment. It's really hard. And the most interesting thing is I'm aware that I'm thinking of one situation where there is something that is comforting to me about going, oh, that was my piece. It genuinely freed me up to go, and the rest of it is not. And before I did, even if it's 2%, here's my 2%. And that means that the other 98 that I've been kind of wrestling with in the wrong way is all on you. And yet, when I'm talking about other people, when I'm thinking of the women in the movie, I go, they didn't do, I get really protective.

• 1:36:09Dax Shepard?

  And it runs the risk of sounding like victim shaming or that they ask, I cannot be clearer. But that's not what I'm suggesting. Those women were 100% victims. That guy's a fucking monster on planet Earth and that happened. But I also know what it's like to be with the monster and I know it's very complicated for me. I wish it were that clean. I wish it were just like, yeah, bad guy. The dude that pulls up and fucking piece of shit. I'm like, oh, we gotta not walk or, you know, like I'm somehow making adjustments now going forward because I am scared. This person scared me and I'm trying to figure out how to not be scared ever again.

• 1:36:42Speaker 02

  I struggle with this because there's a lot of conventional wisdom that talks about owning your part. And I then get into things with my therapist where she's like, you're working really hard to make this your fault. And I don't know.

• 1:36:57Dax Shepard?

  I think I have a very hard time forgiving myself, but that needs to kind of happen first. I need to get past that little thing before I can even see the objective reality. It's just like, I have a emotion in the pit of my stomach and it needs to be addressed and dealt with. Why am I feeling like that was my fault? Well, what part did I participate in? And so, yeah, and then my spidey sense said, get out of here. And I betrayed myself. I didn't have the confidence. I didn't have the courage. I didn't have whatever else. And then I go, right, that all happened and it's okay. It's very normal to not have the courage. My little girl just came home and someone wrestled her to the ground and she felt powerless.

• 1:37:39Dax Shepard?

  And when she came home, I just wanted to make it very clear to her. I know what it feels like to freeze. I know what it feels like to get scared and be overwhelmed. And that's not shameful.

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:51Dax Shepard?

  We can blame this person later, but I want to deal with the thing I know I would be dealing with. Why couldn't I find my voice? Why couldn't I stand up? And I just want to say, your huge daddy has not found his voice a bunch of times and has felt powerless. And I know it and it's okay. There's nothing to feel ashamed of. That's very normal.

• 1:38:09Speaker 02

  And is this voice the exact same way you talk to like young Dax?

• 1:38:15Dax Shepard?

  No, just young Lincoln.

• 1:38:18Speaker 02

  Okay, well.

• 1:38:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think people have different levels of inherent shame. I think that's really what sort of it boils down to. Obviously, experience and trauma and all those things add to it. But I think there might be some, like, Lincoln is prone to a lot of shame.

• 1:38:35Dax Shepard?

  Genetically.

• 1:38:35Speaker 01

  It is seemingly genetic because there's no reason for it.

• 1:38:39Dax Shepard?

  There's no trauma.

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  See, so there's different ways of handling people when they have more levels of that, I think.

• 1:38:46Dax Shepard?

  It's back to directing. I'm only speaking for me.

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  That's how you are able to get through.

• 1:38:51Dax Shepard?

  That's right.

• 1:38:52Speaker 01

  And somebody else might not need that.

• 1:38:55Dax Shepard?

  And some are like me.

• 1:38:56Speaker 02

  This, I think, is maybe the weirdest thing about my brain. Cause I, for many years, obviously, heard people talk about like self-talk. But I think there's something, this is actually like the weirdest thing that I might say this whole episode. But I am never talking to myself. I'm like talking to an imaginary person in conversation and they're talking back to me. And sometimes it's like my therapist, sometimes it's my mom, sometimes it's my best friend. And I'm just in this kind of constant fake conversation in my head. Occasionally, I'll have a real acute moment of going like, oh, Anna, you fucking dumbass or something. But I'm not talking to myself.

• 1:39:35Speaker 02

  I remember finding out from some episode of like This American Life or something that that's the most common experience and being like, oh no, I'm like a. I'm like having a conversation in my head at all times. Is that the weirdest?

• 1:39:47Dax Shepard?

  I don't trust someone who's not.

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  I'm like you.

• 1:39:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  I don't say to myself, you're bad. I have the feelings, but they almost feel like they're coming at me from somewhere else.

• 1:39:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:57Speaker 01

  That's interesting. I wonder how many people talk to themselves versus ruminating in a different way.

• 1:40:02Speaker 02

  Cause I've heard about people who then say that they don't have an internal monologue.

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  That I cannot understand.

• 1:40:08Speaker 02

  Understand.

• 1:40:08Dax Shepard?

  I feel like I saw that in a movie.

• 1:40:10Speaker 02

  People post about like, what do you mean? It's just like silence up there? So that's not what's happening. There's just a kind of endless conversation in the background.

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  Same.

• 1:40:19Dax Shepard?

  What Monica and I are doing is we are in court cases. There's a trial.

• 1:40:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:40:24Dax Shepard?

  So I have a lot of talking to other people, but it's in a trial. There's exhibit A and here comes exhibit B.

• 1:40:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Funny enough, that reminds me, I know you guys are going to be talking to my buddy, Matt Murphy.

• 1:40:33Speaker 01

  Yes, today.

• 1:40:34Dax Shepard?

  In an hour.

• 1:40:35Speaker 02

  I know it's exciting, but yeah, there is definitely a part of me that's like, oh, I should have been a lawyer. Oh my God.

• 1:40:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:41Speaker 02

  Especially when you see clips of lawyers being real sassy. Where I'm like, ooh, I want to be in that courtroom so bad. I don't really know how Matt is so buttoned up, I guess, in life. So he was the prosecutor of the murderer's retrial in 2010. And he really was a part of the team that connected the dots.

• 1:41:03Dax Shepard?

  You just answered the biggest mystery to me.

• 1:41:05Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:41:06Dax Shepard?

  I'm like, I'm going to interview this guy, Matt Murphy, who somehow was a prosecutor on this case, which was in the seventies.

• 1:41:13Speaker 02

  But how is he so young?

• 1:41:14Dax Shepard?

  And he's still alive.

• 1:41:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:16Dax Shepard?

  And coming to the attic. Okay. So there was a retrial.

• 1:41:19Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:41:19Dax Shepard?

  That solves such a mystery in my head.

• 1:41:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:41:22Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:41:22Speaker 02

  So there was a retrial in 2010 and that was really when a lot of the DNA hits came around. And so it was like, okay, we always thought there was maybe an MO here, but we really only got him for one. This is all in his book. I'm very happy to plug his book. I listened to the audio book and it was like seven of the best true crime podcasts I had ever listened to. It's so fabulous. He really helped me on this movie because we did not have the money to pay him. So he was an incredible, incredible resource, but he's one of the guys that really was a hero in this story. And he introduced me to the person who is now the honorable Craig Robison. But at the time he was dealing with the killer, he was Detective Craig Robison.

• 1:42:04Dax Shepard?

  Wait, was he a judge?

• 1:42:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, now he's a judge.

• 1:42:07Dax Shepard?

  And we say honorable for that. Thank you. You just taught me that. Okay.

• 1:42:10Speaker 02

  It's funny because these are two people who are really the heroes and particularly Craig Robison. He was like 27 and he was the young detective who was finally taking this horrible situation seriously. And then Matt comes in and he's the prosecutor who like puts together all the pieces and some of the ways that they put together their pieces. Looking at photographs and looking at the time that the shadow on that date would have been to prove he couldn't have been at this other place by the time he said he was. I mean fascinating stuff and it's kind of like a ready-made Hollywood story. And the movie doesn't get into any of that. Right. Even though that is a ready-made Hollywood story and it is all true.

• 1:42:50Speaker 02

  It would be really emotionally dishonest to be telling the story of these people who came in and did these incredible things and cared enough. And put this guy behind bars and made sure that he stayed there because after over a decade of no one giving a shit. You go, well, we've got a 90 minute movie, so I don't think we're gonna get into any of that. Because the feeling that I walk away from doing months of research about this case is really like rage. Yeah. And grief and that is a very uplifting story. But there was certainly a focus more on emotional truth than just sticking to detailed factual accuracy.

• 1:43:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and you made a very specific decision to not tell the story of the killer, but to tell the story of the victims, which is awesome. It's crazy impressive. Great job. Fuck. First movie. That's outrageous. It's so good. Probably everyone's already seen it, but if you haven't, it's phenomenal. It's very, very, very well made. I would have swore it was a hundred and fifty million dollar budget.

• 1:43:53Speaker 02

  Oh, sure. Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:43:55Speaker 01

  I have a hard question. Are you proud of it?

• 1:43:58Speaker 02

  Oh, man, that is such a funny, specific question because of course, all I see when I watch it now is like, ah, damn, that cut is funky. It was the best way to cut it, but it's a little funky and it makes me crazy and. With the resources that we had, I am unbelievably proud of the movie and every single person that showed up. It was so passionate and amazing and it just wouldn't be a movie if a single person in the cast or the crew wasn't unbelievable at their job. I owe everyone so much. Of course, I'm biased, but I think the only thing that matters at the end of the day is story and performance. And hey, let's try to make great production design, great costumes, great cinematography. If we do all of that and the performances suck, we did it for nothing.

• 1:44:43Speaker 02

  And I think I drove the casting directors insane because every single part, I would be like, you guys, I know I've said this before, but whoever plays this part has to be amazing. There was not a single one line part that I was like, yeah, whatever. I think I made everybody insane. But I think that's also the reason the movie works. If it works for anybody at all, it's like, because everybody showed up and they were so talented.

• 1:45:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. All right. Well, Anna, this was great again. And you're gonna come back again. I know you're gonna go, oh, we did it twice. So next time you're gonna go, oh, we did it twice. How, do they do people three times?

• 1:45:16Speaker 02

  No, no, here's what's gonna happen.

• 1:45:17Dax Shepard?

  We do people five times.

• 1:45:18Speaker 02

  Here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna leave this and I'm gonna go, oh, it wasn't like super vulnerable and emotional and so, oh, I let everybody down. Do the opposite of last time where I was like, oh, my God, I just cried like a baby the entire time. How inappropriate. There's no winning. I didn't cry.

• 1:45:32Dax Shepard?

  You can't win. That should be the title of someone's autobiography. You can't win.

• 1:45:35Speaker 02

  You can't win.

• 1:45:36Dax Shepard?

  You can't, it can't be won. All right. Well, I adore you and you know, feel free to ghost me as much as you want. I understand.

• 1:45:42Speaker 02

  I'll try not to.

• 1:45:43Dax Shepard?

  All right.

• 1:45:44Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:45:47Dax Shepard?

  He is an arm care expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here. She's gonna let him have the facts. Hello.

• 1:45:57Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 1:45:58Dax Shepard?

  I'm excited to be here today.

• 1:46:00Speaker 02

  We haven't recorded in a couple of days.

• 1:46:02Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh. Yeah, I missed you. I was out of town for a few days. We like a five day break. Yeah, Thursday or Tuesday. Is that five days?

• 1:46:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Wow, it's like a full Thanksgiving.

• 1:46:15Dax Shepard?

  Speaking of which, I really have the tingleys about it being here.

• 1:46:19Speaker 02

  I'm excited too.

• 1:46:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:21Speaker 02

  Are you excited about your secret turkey?

• 1:46:23Dax Shepard?

  No, I mean, receiving it or preparing one?

• 1:46:26Speaker 01

  Preparing one?

• 1:46:27Dax Shepard?

  No, I'm not. You know, this is a big shortcoming of mine. I'm bad at gifts. I'm just bad, like, I'll tell you, I, I, I think about it 30 minutes a day.

• 1:46:38Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:46:38Dax Shepard?

  Which leads to depression. Yep, I spent 30 minutes thinking about this and I have nothing and I'm gonna do it tomorrow.

• 1:46:45Speaker 01

  Remember how great it is?

• 1:46:47Dax Shepard?

  It's fantastic. It's a great thing. I'm not creative in this space.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:46:52Dax Shepard?

  It's a shortcoming.

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  To remind people if they don't know about secret turkey.

• 1:46:56Dax Shepard?

  Erica and Molly's daughter invented it, which is great. And she invented it like three years ago?

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 1:47:02Dax Shepard?

  So she was like 12 or 13.

• 1:47:04Speaker 01

  The first year we were all together and she, she was like, everyone pick a name out of a hat. And this is a very, what's the word to describe Lily?

• 1:47:13Dax Shepard?

  Great sense of humor.

• 1:47:15Speaker 01

  She knows herself really well already. She's very self-assured.

• 1:47:19Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  Like during COVID and stuff, she would put on all these plays. Every time we would go on a big pod trip, she would.

• 1:47:25Dax Shepard?

  Organize a play. She makes movies with the kids and she directs all of them. And there's babies involved and she edits them all. She's really good at that, so.

• 1:47:34Speaker 01

  Can't wait to hire her in eight years. But yeah, no, she's wonderful.

• 1:47:39Dax Shepard?

  Special girl.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  Very, very special. She came to us, whatever, and it was like, pick a name out of the hat and there were people's names. And then also we had to pick another thing that said like, write a story or origami or something. Yes. And you had to match the two and do this by the end of the night. And I was annoyed.

• 1:48:00Dax Shepard?

  We all were.

• 1:48:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:02Dax Shepard?

  We were all annoyed. Like, God, we have homework now.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  Yes. I was like, I just wanted to relax today. And now we have to figure this out and we have to, because it's for a child.

• 1:48:12Dax Shepard?

  Right. Can't break her young dreams.

• 1:48:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:48:15Dax Shepard?

  And we did it and it was spectacular.

• 1:48:18Speaker 01

  It was the best thing we ever, ever did. It was so heartwarming.

• 1:48:23Dax Shepard?

  And then the next year, which is great, is I had never received a text from Lily and it just said, your secret turkey is blank.

• 1:48:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:31Dax Shepard?

  And I didn't even know what that meant, but it was just an order.

• 1:48:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:34Dax Shepard?

  Which was really fun.

• 1:48:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. So for the past few years, we've received with some weeks in advance, our secret turkey, someone in our pod, and we have to make the gift.

• 1:48:44Dax Shepard?

  Correct.

• 1:48:45Speaker 01

  And

• 1:48:46Dax Shepard?

  Or if you're Charlie, you you say you made it, but you really hired an artist.

• 1:48:50Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:48:51Dax Shepard?

  Which is very good.

• 1:48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then we go around and we present our secret turkeys and it's a really special thing to do. And right now you're in that phase where you're stressed out about it.

• 1:49:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:04Speaker 01

  But you're gonna feel good once you accomplish it.

• 1:49:06Dax Shepard?

  It'll be wonderful. It's it's the best part of Thanksgiving.

• 1:49:09Speaker 01

  I haven't started mine, but I know what I'm doing.

• 1:49:12Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. I'm excited to see who you have and I'm excited.

• 1:49:16Speaker 01

  Well, everyone's a good person.

• 1:49:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:20Dax Shepard?

  I basically have a lot of, as much as excitement as I have, I also have a ton of holiday anxiety because it's also limited a sweatshirt edition time.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:28Dax Shepard?

  So this is the time of the year where I've got to let go draw and every time I enter it with the same anxiety that because I can't draw very well.

• 1:49:36Speaker 01

  So it's not true.

• 1:49:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Okay, thank you. Yesterday I sat down with an idea. It was actually your idea. So I I had to draw three different things. I do the first thing. I was like, oh, my God, this is great. I sent it to you.

• 1:49:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, really good.

• 1:49:49Dax Shepard?

  And then I tried to draw the next thing for hours and I just couldn't. I'm like, why can't I draw that thing and not this thing?

• 1:49:58Speaker 01

  Were you looking at an image?

• 1:49:59Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, of course.

• 1:50:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:01Dax Shepard?

  It was just very frustrating and I couldn't, I couldn't do it. And then I was like, and I can't bring in someone to do one of the three pictures.

• 1:50:09Speaker 01

  No, it has to be you.

• 1:50:10Dax Shepard?

  From me. Now I did order a device this morning. I'll have you know that I think might help with this.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  But also I think you are overthinking it and this is because you actually are good at drawing. That your bar is much higher. The thing, can I guess, can we say?

• 1:50:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I wanted to do a crow, a mouse and cherry.

• 1:50:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is so cute. And then you were able to accomplish the mouse.

• 1:50:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, in fact, regardless of that, I do want to, Merry Christmas, I'm gonna frame that for you for Christmas.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  That's so sweet.

• 1:50:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. The problem was the mouse is good enough that the crow looked like a crayon drawing, like the they have to be somewhat comparable.

• 1:50:53Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:50:54Dax Shepard?

  Indeed. It's not like one can be a caricature and one can be photorealistic and then.

• 1:50:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, because the mouse is photorealistic. It has like hairs.

• 1:51:05Speaker 01

  It is so detailed and it's really, really good. But maybe you could dumb da- give me that for Christmas. But then maybe you could do a version that's more crayon like the crow so that it matches, but.

• 1:51:19Dax Shepard?

  So I ordered a light board today, an artist light board.

• 1:51:21Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 1:51:22Dax Shepard?

  So I trace the outside of a shape and then I do all the stuff. And the crow is just a big blob of black and it just, I couldn't even get the shape right. And then to get into the feathers and there's so, there's so many patterns that go all these different ways or whatever. Now a light board emits bright light behind the images you're doing. So like I could put an image and trace it. Yeah, I guess it's a cheat.

• 1:51:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:51:47Dax Shepard?

  Anyways, light boards are really popular and I realized a lot of people are using light boards. Cause once I got on there, there's all these different options and then the stuff I was looking at, I was like, oh yeah, I see that all the time. People are definitely using.

• 1:51:56Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:51:57Dax Shepard?

  Anyways, I ordered a pretty nice light board today.

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  You're turning into a real artiste.

• 1:52:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, maybe this will send me on some kind of a trajectory.

• 1:52:04Speaker 01

  You could probably use your light board to make whatever your secret turkey gift.

• 1:52:09Dax Shepard?

  True. That's a good point. Okay. Great idea. You're marked. Okay, I have a few funny stories I want to tell you.

• 1:52:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:52:16Dax Shepard?

  When I work out, um, there's a lot of mirrors in my gym and there's a lot of backlight. And I don't, when I look in the mirror in my bathroom, there's zero backlight. It's all front light. And so what I see, and that's going to be a ding ding ding. When I see what's so backlight, that's where I'm seeing like, oh my Jennifer, I have so much hair growing out of my trapezias, my deltoids, my back. And then I see like really long stray hairs coming out of my neck, which are disgusting. And while I'm working out, all I can do is focus on those.

• 1:52:46Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:52:46Dax Shepard?

  So it occurred to me, I'm going to keep scissors in my gym now.

• 1:52:50Speaker 01

  Oh wow, okay.

• 1:52:52Dax Shepard?

  So that I can get the things I'm seeing. So yesterday I fully was just going to work out.

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:52:59Dax Shepard?

  And I cut some hairs, then I cut some more hairs. Then I, I gave myself a full haircut when I was.

• 1:53:08Speaker 01

  How can you reach?

• 1:53:09Dax Shepard?

  Do you know if my hair is cut from the last time you saw me? I got like a fresh cut right now. That's because I gave myself a full haircut in the gym and I put a towel down and I would go over the mirror and I would just start cutting and then I would walk outside and shake all the hair off and I'm like, that's it. Now get back to your workout. Working out a little more. Oh, I missed that spot this way. So I was in there working out for about an hour and 45 minutes and I got a terrible workout and I came out with a fresh haircut.

• 1:53:34Speaker 01

  You have an unusual marriage to your hair.

• 1:53:38Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:53:38Speaker 01

  In that you, you sometimes have to like change it immediately. Like remember when you, you had to buy those shavers? You had to buy a razor when you were on vacation with Delta to shave your face in the parking lot?

• 1:53:54Dax Shepard?

  Right. Cause I just hit a maximum capacity. I was like, this thing is way too long. I gotta get it off my face. I felt like claustrophobic for it. And then I also, when I'm depressed, I'll give myself a radical haircut. But that started in junior high and it's kind of like a coping mechanism. It's not like we're gonna reset. There's a new me and I'm not, and also I tend to trim my hair. Kristen points this out all the time. If she sees me like almost like five nights in a row doing some trimming in the mirror when I brush my teeth, she knows I have a lot of anxiety. So yes, I currently have a lot of anxiety and yes, so that you're, you're right about that pattern.

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  Well, do you want to talk about why you're depressed?

• 1:54:33Dax Shepard?

  I have a lot of work anxiety.

• 1:54:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a lot of work anxiety right now.

• 1:54:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:37Speaker 01

  BTS.

• 1:54:38Dax Shepard?

  BTS. Where like I'm some days at eight going like to the family, may I go to bed? May I just go to bed?

• 1:54:47Speaker 01

  Now, if, if this was happening with a family member.

• 1:54:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:52Speaker 01

  What advice would you give them?

• 1:54:54Dax Shepard?

  Well, it happens all the time, you know?

• 1:54:56Speaker 01

  And what advice do you give? Yeah.

• 1:54:57Dax Shepard?

  Oh, so you know, Kristen has depression. So she'll, hers won't necessarily be incident driven, right? It's not like she has a specific thing. She'll just have a wave of it. And yeah, she'll sleep a lot. And there's really, there's nothing I can do or nor do I think I should do. I just go like, oh yeah, yeah. She's kind of in a slump. She's gonna sleep a lot for a while and then she's gonna come out of it. Now, earlier on, that used to scare me. And I was like, is this gonna be forever? And I've just gone through the cycle enough that now I just go like, oh, right. She's gonna organize for a couple of days, really, really intensely. And then she's gonna sleep a lot for a few days and then it's gonna be over.

• 1:55:41Speaker 01

  I guess I'm asking, like, what, what would your recommendations be if there was a prolonged period of what you felt was not a great state?

• 1:55:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, well, yeah, there's steps. One is like, I will gently and have, have like, hey, love, have you, um, have you checked in with your psychiatrist lately?

• 1:56:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:56:07Dax Shepard?

  You know, I'm not saying you can do anything, just like, have you checked in with your psychiatrist?

• 1:56:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:12Dax Shepard?

  So that'll be like one thing I can do. It's evolved because I used to try to fix it.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:18Dax Shepard?

  That's my nature.

• 1:56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:20Dax Shepard?

  And I used to try to talk her out of it or tell her what's good in her life or, you know, gratitudeless. One thing I'll still do, and she, she likes this and it's not, it doesn't trigger feeling judged about being sad is let's go for a walk or let's go for a hike. Like just encouraging, let's go, you know, move around. But I'm still moving around. I'm still doing all my workouts.

• 1:56:44Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 1:56:44Dax Shepard?

  Oh, another great update. So I got the toe thing looked at.

• 1:56:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:49Dax Shepard?

  Guess what I'm doing tomorrow? I'm going to the dentist. First time in 10 years.

• 1:56:54Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:56:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:56Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 1:56:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Guess what else I'm gonna do? I'm gonna have my teeth whitened.

• 1:57:00Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:57:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. What do you think about that?

• 1:57:04Speaker 01

  I think that's great.

• 1:57:05Dax Shepard?

  I've been seeing a lot of pictures of myself from olden days and I realized my teeth used to be so much whiter.

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:57:11Dax Shepard?

  I had, you know, I had four or five years of tobacco use.

• 1:57:14Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:57:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, coming up on a year without.

• 1:57:16Speaker 01

  Are you worried?

• 1:57:17Dax Shepard?

  About it being too bright?

• 1:57:19Speaker 01

  Oh, no, but that is a really funny episode of Friends.

• 1:57:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  No, but like, it hurts.

• 1:57:25Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, it hurts really bad. I remember, because I did it like. Eighteen years ago.

• 1:57:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:30Dax Shepard?

  And it was miserable.

• 1:57:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:32Dax Shepard?

  But I think I'm going to, and they won't like this, but I'm, well, at least when I did it before, you did multiple sessions. And I'm gonna go, I can handle just a li- a little bit of lightning. I don't gotta go all the way and have the insane tooth pain. Like, I won't trade up. I'm willing to just do halfway.

• 1:57:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:57:49Dax Shepard?

  Feel like I wasted some money, but not, yeah, cuz when I did it the first time, it felt like ice picks in my teeth.

• 1:57:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, no thanks.

• 1:57:56Dax Shepard?

  If you, you haven't had it done, have you?

• 1:57:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:57:58Dax Shepard?

  No need. What a bitch.

• 1:57:59Speaker 01

  I use that Arm and Hammer, you know? I, I don't, I keep telling you and you can do it. It's, it's at your disposal, but you just, you just don't.

• 1:58:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but also you never chewed tobacco and you're new to coffee.

• 1:58:12Speaker 01

  I'm new, but I, I drink a lot of red wine.

• 1:58:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's problematic. God, imagine what they would look like if you didn't drink so much red wine.

• 1:58:20Speaker 01

  Do they not look good?

• 1:58:21Dax Shepard?

  They're so white. They're very enviable. It doesn't help that I work with you cuz I'm staring at like as white as they can get all the time. Natural. Now, you're right, you can go way too far.

• 1:58:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can, and you can tell. To me, you can tell. I guess this is the reverse veneers conversation.

• 1:58:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:38Speaker 01

  You gotta be careful, it's a fine line.

• 1:58:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, well, we'll find, you'll see Thursday.

• 1:58:42Speaker 01

  Okay, great. I'm excited.

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  Now, I just remembered we were on camera, so I showed my teeth and, and I remembered something else. People will definitely say, Monica, do you have a hickey?

• 1:58:56Dax Shepard?

  Oh, let me see. And do you?

• 1:58:57Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 1:58:58Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:58:59Speaker 01

  Do you see it, though?

• 1:59:00Dax Shepard?

  I do not.

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 1:59:01Dax Shepard?

  Will you point to where it's at?

• 1:59:03Speaker 01

  Well, I don't remember.

• 1:59:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh. On that side, a little bruise.

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a bruise, which is a hickey.

• 1:59:09Dax Shepard?

  How'd that happen?

• 1:59:10Speaker 01

  I had a refresh of my botox.

• 1:59:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:59:13Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:59:13Dax Shepard?

  They do your neck?

• 1:59:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, they do because I have a very strong neck.

• 1:59:17Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:59:18Speaker 01

  And so they have to put some botox in there.

• 1:59:20Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:59:20Speaker 01

  To make it less strong.

• 1:59:22Dax Shepard?

  Less strong.

• 1:59:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's too strong.

• 1:59:23Dax Shepard?

  What if you woke up in the morning and you went to lift your head up and you caught it? And you came into work and your head was like this and you go, and you go, you ever get toothpaste? Argh.

• 1:59:37Dax Shepard?

  Full talks.

• 1:59:39Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:59:43Speaker 01

  Okay, so in this episode, Anna goes into the bathroom and while she's in the bathroom, you're telling me about your potential cashmere sweater that you're gonna make out of your back hair.

• 1:59:54Dax Shepard?

  Thank you.

• 1:59:55Speaker 01

  That you, I guess, made, you collected some more yesterday.

• 1:59:58Dax Shepard?

  No, I didn't, I didn't, but I see that a new crop is coming in. Did I already say, in case you missed that episode, basically, I discovered I had all this back hair from the backlighting of the gym. I was saying it out loud to my family and Lincoln said, do you want me to shave your back, which I think is a dirty job. I would have never asked her to shave my back. That sounds, well, first of all, like, very vain on my, like, I've got my kids grooming me now.

• 2:00:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:26Dax Shepard?

  But she offered and, um, and I shaved her legs for her.

• 2:00:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's cute.

• 2:00:31Dax Shepard?

  And so.

• 2:00:32Speaker 01

  Oh, have you thought about combining?

• 2:00:34Dax Shepard?

  That's a great idea. Well, maybe, um, two different sweaters. So anyways, so I sat on the edge of the bathtub and she shaved my whole back. And then I collected it to throw it away and I couldn't help but notice, by George, this is the softest hair I've ever felt in my life. I didn't, would have never thought my hair was this soft. So then Lincoln and I decided that I should start collecting it because it's cashmere.

• 2:01:02Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:01:02Dax Shepard?

  And that at some point, maybe when I'm 60 or 70, I'll have enough for a sweater.

• 2:01:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:08Dax Shepard?

  Yes, and so.

• 2:01:09Speaker 01

  So you brought it.

• 2:01:10Dax Shepard?

  I brought it and I keep it in this bag now. I don't know if that's how you spell cashmere. And as you can see from the amount in it, it's gonna take a long time.

• 2:01:20Speaker 01

  It's really, really gonna take, um.

• 2:01:24Dax Shepard?

  But I really wanted you to feel it because I think, um, anyone you tell us to is like, there's no way it's what you say it is, but you're very objective and you don't ever lie to kind of.

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  You spelled it right.

• 2:01:37Dax Shepard?

  I did.

• 2:01:39Dax Shepard?

  I want you to take it out and touch it. And Rob, you're invited to too, but be careful you don't get any stuck to your fingers.

• 2:01:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't waste any.

• 2:01:48Dax Shepard?

  No, I don't have enough to spare.

• 2:01:52Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes, definitely dry your fingers off.

• 2:01:54Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:01:58Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, there's really not a lot to work with here.

• 2:02:03Dax Shepard?

  You can pull it all the way out.

• 2:02:04Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 2:02:05Dax Shepard?

  And you want to go like this between your fingers as if it's a cashmere sweater.

• 2:02:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:02:14Dax Shepard?

  It's okay. Everything's okay.

• 2:02:15Speaker 01

  I'm scared of dropping some.

• 2:02:16Dax Shepard?

  Really enjoy.

• 2:02:17Speaker 01

  Okay, wow.

• 2:02:18Dax Shepard?

  What do you think? Go ahead and touch it with your other finger.

• 2:02:25Speaker 01

  Um, wow. It, it, it is really soft.

• 2:02:31Dax Shepard?

  Have you ever felt hair that soft? I haven't.

• 2:02:35Speaker 01

  Hold on, let me.

• 2:02:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, use both hands.

• 2:02:37Speaker 01

  Well, no, I want to do like a comparative.

• 2:02:41Dax Shepard?

  Now, you could make a snowmobile suit in like a day, but.

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  But not, this hair is coarser.

• 2:02:46Dax Shepard?

  Right, very different.

• 2:02:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really soft. Hold on, what about arm hair?

• 2:02:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I imagine that might be similar.

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  I have a lot of arm hair. That's when they said I was a woolly mammoth. I mean werewolf, one of them.

• 2:03:01Dax Shepard?

  A woolly werewolf.

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

  Okay, it's really nice.

• 2:03:04Dax Shepard?

  Rob, do you want to grab a little? Rob, do you want to to keep your job?

• 2:03:09Speaker 01

  He doesn't want to. Don't make him. Okay, but it is starting to fall.

• 2:03:14Dax Shepard?

  It's okay.

• 2:03:18Speaker 01

  Do you love it? It is soft.

• 2:03:21Dax Shepard?

  Rob, don't downplay it. It's very.

• 2:03:24Speaker 01

  It's. Yeah. I did that on purpose. Where is it?

• 2:03:29Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God, here. Oh, my God, guys, guys, that's so hard to come by. That's like rare earth metals. Yes.

• 2:03:38Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, get this back in here. This is so rare.

• 2:03:42Dax Shepard?

  And to remind people, this is my competitive product to Brad Pitt's God's True Cashmere. My company's gonna be my true cashmere.

• 2:03:51Speaker 01

  Oh, no, it should be called Back's True Cashmere. Because it's almost your name and it's your back.

• 2:03:58Dax Shepard?

  Backs with an X.

• 2:03:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:04:00Dax Shepard?

  Backs Cashmere. Wow, guys, that's a great.

• 2:04:04Speaker 01

  How do you feel about me like just putting a tiny bit of my arm hair in here?

• 2:04:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that would be great. That would be great. That's similar to P baby.

• 2:04:12Speaker 01

  Okay, I got a couple.

• 2:04:13Dax Shepard?

  You did. Okay, great. Yeah, just add it to the.

• 2:04:19Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:04:21Dax Shepard?

  It's pretty special, right? Like I feel, I feel like that came off a bait.

• 2:04:25Speaker 01

  I can't believe.

• 2:04:28Dax Shepard?

  Wait till I have a gallon sized Ziploc bag.

• 2:04:31Speaker 01

  Oh my God. Oh my God.

• 2:04:34Dax Shepard?

  I don't know if this is the best.

• 2:04:36Speaker 01

  Vessel?

• 2:04:37Dax Shepard?

  Vessel, because there's a little, I see little hairs all over. They're not in the little ball they were in.

• 2:04:42Speaker 01

  Every time you touch it, it does lose a little bit of its quality.

• 2:04:45Dax Shepard?

  Thanks for being willing to touch that. I hope it delivered. I'm gonna give it a touch too.

• 2:04:50Speaker 01

  Oh God.

• 2:04:50Dax Shepard?

  I'm gonna see, cause I was just talking about in a way that now I'm wondering, is it as soft as I remember? It got smaller, which is a little concerning.

• 2:04:57Speaker 01

  Well, it didn't get smaller, it got compacted.

• 2:04:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's wow.

• 2:05:04Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 2:05:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we don't have much left after that little, that might be the last show and tell of my category.

• 2:05:21Speaker 01

  Wait, no, it's just, now it's just more compacted, but you're gonna need to compact it.

• 2:05:28Dax Shepard?

  I gotta learn how to spin yarn too, cause that, isn't that part of what I'll have to do?

• 2:05:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, so that's a fact, cause you said that cashmere comes from a goat's chin.

• 2:05:37Dax Shepard?

  Chin hairs.

• 2:05:38Speaker 01

  It does. It comes from the soft undercoat of cashmere goats.

• 2:05:42Dax Shepard?

  Ah, and they're, they're like, they're up in Tibet, yeah?

• 2:05:45Speaker 01

  No, India, cashmere India with a K.

• 2:05:48Dax Shepard?

  Okay, oh right, cashmere.

• 2:05:50Speaker 01

  When we were in India, I did get myself some cashmere scarves from.

• 2:05:55Dax Shepard?

  From cashmere?

• 2:05:57Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:05:57Dax Shepard?

  They, I presume they grow them elsewhere.

• 2:06:00Speaker 01

  But it's like champagne.

• 2:06:01Dax Shepard?

  Yep.

• 2:06:02Speaker 01

  Where you're only really drinking champagne if it comes from Champagne, France. Speaking of things to consume, I just saw a Nora.

• 2:06:12Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  In the movie theater. It's a movie to see in the movie theater.

• 2:06:15Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 2:06:15Speaker 01

  Currently out. It's so good.

• 2:06:18Dax Shepard?

  It is. What's it about? Are you, you can't tell?

• 2:06:21Speaker 01

  I don't really wanna say too much.

• 2:06:22Dax Shepard?

  I prefer that.

• 2:06:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:24Dax Shepard?

  Is there anyone in it I know?

• 2:06:25Speaker 01

  I don't think you probably know anyone in it.

• 2:06:28Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:06:28Speaker 01

  But you will, I think she's definitely gonna get nominated and like might win and she is so good and I mean, everyone's so good in it, but the main. Actress Mickey Madison.

• 2:06:39Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 2:06:40Speaker 01

  She um is.

• 2:06:41Dax Shepard?

  Is a revelation.

• 2:06:42Speaker 01

  It's really something to see. It's so weird because it's like a sad, like there's like sad things that happen, but there's also like, there's, there's such comedy throughout. So tonally, and sometimes I don't like that when tones are sort of all over the place, but they nailed it.

• 2:07:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I like multiple tones in things.

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  Sometimes I think it can feel forced.

• 2:07:07Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 2:07:08Speaker 01

  Um, but it didn't here.

• 2:07:10Dax Shepard?

  But like Hit and Run was like a car chase movie, but it was a relationship movie and it was a.

• 2:07:15Speaker 01

  But tonally, it was one, it had one tone. It was different genres were mixed.

• 2:07:21Dax Shepard?

  I think you can do multiple tones if you're the writer director.

• 2:07:24Speaker 06

  It is. It's Sean Baker. He did, uh, The Florida Project and Red Rocket.

• 2:07:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:07:30Dax Shepard?

  That makes a lot of sense. I think if you're a writer director, like I would be thinking about this when I was doing Hit and Run, because there's like, there's some broad comedy scenes with nudity and old people. Then there's some really violent scenes, but the, the unifying tone is it's everything I like. So it's bizarrely consistent tonally, even though it's like everything I like in one movie.

• 2:07:54Speaker 01

  Right. It's such a good movie. I really highly recommend it. Been some good movies lately. Substance, Enora.

• 2:08:03Dax Shepard?

  Substance.

• 2:08:04Speaker 01

  Substance again.

• 2:08:05Dax Shepard?

  Enora.

• 2:08:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:07Dax Shepard?

  Uh, Poor Things last year.

• 2:08:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, uh, woman of the hour. Ding ding ding.

• 2:08:15Dax Shepard?

  Did you love it?

• 2:08:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's.

• 2:08:17Dax Shepard?

  It's dark.

• 2:08:18Speaker 01

  Dark. Yeah, but yes, so well done.

• 2:08:21Dax Shepard?

  It's very well made.

• 2:08:22Speaker 01

  She, she killed it.

• 2:08:23Dax Shepard?

  The notion that she pitched herself hours before they had to have a director and then had six weeks of prep and then executed that is hugely impressive.

• 2:08:31Speaker 01

  It really is, really is. Very good job, Anna.

• 2:08:35Dax Shepard?

  Good job, Anna.

• 2:08:35Speaker 01

  Okay, I have an update, a huge update. Uh.

• 2:08:40Dax Shepard?

  Ring's back.

• 2:08:40Speaker 01

  My ring is back.

• 2:08:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:42Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 2:08:43Dax Shepard?

  But it's a little smaller now?

• 2:08:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I got it soldered back and I, I think it's a mix of it being maybe a teeny bit smaller.

• 2:08:52Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 2:08:52Speaker 01

  Because of like, you know, they probably have to overlap it a tiny bit to solder it.

• 2:08:58Speaker 01

  Would be my guess. Maybe not. But anyway, it might be a little bit smaller and I think my knuckle is permanently bigger now.

• 2:09:07Dax Shepard?

  A bit bigger.

• 2:09:08Speaker 01

  From the B. So I had to really shove this thing on. It took a while. And while I was doing it, I was like, is this a, this is a, what am I doing? I'm doing, I'm setting myself up for another horrible situation.

• 2:09:24Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:09:24Speaker 01

  But I kept going.

• 2:09:25Dax Shepard?

  And AA, we say doing the same thing and expecting different results.

• 2:09:29Speaker 01

  I know. They say that in AA, they also.

• 2:09:31Dax Shepard?

  They say it everywhere, I think, too.

• 2:09:32Speaker 01

  There's a quote that Einstein says, that's like insanity is the definition. Doing the same thing over and over again. Anyway, I worked really hard to get this on.

• 2:09:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:43Speaker 01

  It is never coming off.

• 2:09:45Dax Shepard?

  Well, maybe I'll, you know, at any moment you want me to take it off. We've gone down this road. I can get it off in seconds.

• 2:09:51Speaker 01

  I hope I die with it on.

• 2:09:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay. I hope that's in a hundred years, but yeah, that sounds fine.

• 2:09:56Speaker 01

  At first, when I put it back on, I had, I had so much fear that I made a huge mistake and that I should not have put it back on and that I'm jinxing.

• 2:10:06Dax Shepard?

  Oh my God, now it's like it's a triple jinx?

• 2:10:09Speaker 01

  Yes. It was, it's a reverse back jinx.

• 2:10:12Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 2:10:13Speaker 01

  Because I really started to believe that the ring was the cause to a lot of bad stuff that's going on in the world and personally.

• 2:10:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:23Speaker 01

  And you did try to tell me that it wasn't the case. You said, I'm not that powerful.

• 2:10:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:29Speaker 01

  Which was a nice thing to say, but I don't believe you, uh, cause a lot. Also, one of my favorite restaurants closed, like.

• 2:10:37Dax Shepard?

  Oh no.

• 2:10:37Speaker 01

  Things started to really.

• 2:10:39Dax Shepard?

  Unravel.

• 2:10:39Speaker 01

  Shit really started to unravel.

• 2:10:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:41Speaker 01

  So, uh, I had to get it back on, but then as soon as I did, I thought, oh, maybe you're not supposed to go back. Maybe this is a lesson in not going back.

• 2:10:50Dax Shepard?

  Right. Not trying to go back to high school or recreate.

• 2:10:53Speaker 01

  Recreate.

• 2:10:54Dax Shepard?

  No, it's a cute ring. It looks great on your hand and you love it. And it really symbolizes something beautiful and you should continue to love it and embrace it. Your first big job and you got a reward for yourself.

• 2:11:05Speaker 01

  I did.

• 2:11:05Dax Shepard?

  I love it.

• 2:11:06Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:11:06Dax Shepard?

  Maybe, can you wear it on a different finger that's smaller?

• 2:11:09Speaker 01

  I can't wear it anywhere again.

• 2:11:10Dax Shepard?

  Cause you can't get it off.

• 2:11:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:12Dax Shepard?

  Fuck. That, that, yeah, that makes me panic, but.

• 2:11:15Speaker 01

  I did make a joke that I think the B. That stung me was of a different political party that I'm affiliated with.

• 2:11:24Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 2:11:26Speaker 01

  Really got in there, you know?

• 2:11:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:11:28Speaker 01

  Did some dirty work.

• 2:11:29Dax Shepard?

  Sure. You know, one of the scariest I've ever been is I have, I have sensed this moment been stung enough that I know I've outgrown my bee allergy. You know, infamously in second grade, my whole face disappeared and I almost stopped breathing.

• 2:11:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:43Dax Shepard?

  And so I had.

• 2:11:44Speaker 01

  You also almost stopped breathing because he put a sheet on your face.

• 2:11:47Dax Shepard?

  He had put a washcloth on my face, similar to what we did at Boba Bob.

• 2:11:52Dax Shepard?

  And I carried an EpiPen and whatnot. And then I got stung and then I went to the hospital and they just monitored me, whatever. I now wouldn't have this fear, but when I was in an archaeology class and we were digging up in the Santa Monica Mountains at Stunt Ranch, a swarm of bees was migrating. And you all of a sudden heard it. And then crazy enough, our archaeology teacher, he had been on a dig in South America and a student got killed, a graduate student by getting attacked by bees. So only imagine what his PTSD is about all this. He calls it out. He's like, everyone's still. And you can hear like, and you start hearing, hearing, hearing it. And we just all sat there. And it was like biblical.

• 2:12:38Dax Shepard?

  It was a cloud. When they went overhead, now mind you, they were still probably 60 feet above us. It's not like they were coming down. But there was a moment where it was a visible black cloud and the amount of noise they made was on par with when a helicopter, when a LA police helicopter flies over. It was so loud and so many ca trillion of them. And I'm thinking I'm allergic to them still. And I remember just like, should I run? Should I not run? Should I run? Should I sit here? Should I run? And I just, I stayed and then they passed, obviously. I didn't die.

• 2:13:12Speaker 01

  Good thing you stayed.

• 2:13:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. You think I would have caught their attention and they would have gone after me?

• 2:13:17Speaker 01

  Teacher said specifically, don't move. I'm glad you listened.

• 2:13:21Dax Shepard?

  That's interesting too, because part of the reason the, the student had died was that everyone ran and he ran kind of up a hill and he got stuck. He couldn't climb any higher.

• 2:13:33Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 2:13:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Sorry, I brought that up.

• 2:13:39Speaker 01

  It's a horrible story.

• 2:13:40Dax Shepard?

  It's not a good story.

• 2:13:41Speaker 01

  It's very my girl. So anyway, so Ring is back. We'll see how the world

• 2:13:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:47Speaker 01

  takes that in TBD. Uh, one other thing I want to say really quick. So I almost did something bad.

• 2:13:55Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good.

• 2:13:56Speaker 01

  But I didn't.

• 2:13:57Dax Shepard?

  I like bad stuff. Tell me.

• 2:13:58Speaker 01

  So I was at a restaurant the other day and I went to the bathroom. Very rare for me.

• 2:14:04Dax Shepard?

  Right, yeah.

• 2:14:05Speaker 01

  I don't pee a lot. It, the bathroom smelled so good.

• 2:14:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good.

• 2:14:09Speaker 01

  Also very rare.

• 2:14:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:10Speaker 01

  To go to a public restroom and it smelled good.

• 2:14:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:13Speaker 01

  And when I was peeing, I saw there was this can, this like big candle lit.

• 2:14:17Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 2:14:18Speaker 01

  I was like, that's the, that's the cause of this delicious smell. And I went and I was trying to see what the brand is and what it was. And I couldn't find it. So I went back to my seat and I asked the server, what is the candle in the bathroom? I really like it. He said, yeah, we get this a lot. It's, it's specifically made for us.

• 2:14:43Dax Shepard?

  You're in a bizarre pattern.

• 2:14:47Speaker 01

  No, is that I know how to sniff out limited a dish.

• 2:14:51Dax Shepard?

  Yes, you do.

• 2:14:52Speaker 01

  And, and he said, oh, yeah.

• 2:14:54Dax Shepard?

  Where were we where you wanted to get the candle holders off the table? Remember that?

• 2:14:58Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:14:59Dax Shepard?

  And I tried to find those can, again, back to my bad gift giving. And I tried to find those candle holders and I was unsuccessful.

• 2:15:05Speaker 01

  Shoot, I don't even remember.

• 2:15:07Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so many things you like at restaurants, it would be hard to.

• 2:15:11Speaker 01

  When I walk through the world, I am like.

• 2:15:14Dax Shepard?

  You're like Terminator, but instead of scanning for risks or threats.

• 2:15:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:15:19Dax Shepard?

  You're scanning for items that could be in your house.

• 2:15:21Speaker 01

  It is, that is how I operate. So he said it's limited with different words. He said it's limited a dish.

• 2:15:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:28Speaker 01

  Then a manager came over and I said, oh, is this about the candles? And she said, yeah, so we get a shipment every Monday. So we'll be getting more tomorrow. You have a big purse. I don't know if you wanna, if you wanna go in there. He said, she said, there's a, there's a lot in there. So there's multiple in there.

• 2:15:52Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God, she was giving you.

• 2:15:54Speaker 01

  She was giving me permission, which is why this was tricky.

• 2:15:58Dax Shepard?

  Can I just say, one, one of my favorites, early, early SNL sketches was, I think Eddie Murphy, or one of the black cast members went in white face. And it was like a fake documentary, like a 60s documentary. So he experienced what it was like to be white. And he goes into a shoe store, he tries on some shoes and he goes, oh yeah, these are great. And the guy goes, take them. And he finds out that like white people aren't even.

• 2:16:23Speaker 01

  Just give it.

• 2:16:24Dax Shepard?

  Paying for anything. Go ahead, just take them. And everyone was like that.

• 2:16:29Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, that's hilarious.

• 2:16:31Dax Shepard?

  This is basically what happened to you. The, the owner's just like, just take it.

• 2:16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:36Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 2:16:36Speaker 01

  Not the owner, the manager, which is why I'm not going to say the name of the place. But I don't want her, I don't want to get her in trouble.

• 2:16:41Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:16:41Speaker 01

  So I went in there with my bag. Really excited. And I opened the cabinet, there's a bunch of these candles.

• 2:16:51Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:16:52Speaker 01

  And so I do, I take one, I put it in my purse.

• 2:16:55Dax Shepard?

  You're the weirdest life.

• 2:16:59Speaker 01

  I started washing my hands and I thought, I can't do it.

• 2:17:05Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:17:06Speaker 01

  Do it. I took it out.

• 2:17:07Dax Shepard?

  Unexpected.

• 2:17:08Speaker 01

  Put it back.

• 2:17:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:10Speaker 01

  And, and.

• 2:17:11Dax Shepard?

  That's kind of good, karmically.

• 2:17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:17:15Dax Shepard?

  You just gotta figure out how to buy them. Or talk about them enough on here that they send it to you.

• 2:17:19Speaker 01

  And I, now I can't say the place. So I really put myself in a pickle. Now I went back to that place and.

• 2:17:27Dax Shepard?

  Like, will you be in bed thinking about what you're in the mood for to eat? And then you go, and then in your calculations, like, I don't even know what I want to eat, but I want to smell the candle. So I want to go eat at that restaurant. Or I want to see the mug. So I want to eat at that restaurant. Like, are you, are you deciding to go to places for smells and the trinkets they have?

• 2:17:46Speaker 01

  Um, okay, so twofold. Yes, in that I will pick locations based on ambiance.

• 2:17:53Dax Shepard?

  Right, right.

• 2:17:54Speaker 01

  And vibe.

• 2:17:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:55Speaker 01

  But no, like, I wouldn't have gone back to Budunoki just to see the mugs. Cause that's in fact taunting.

• 2:18:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, okay, I got you.

• 2:18:05Speaker 01

  I have to have it. Does that make sense?

• 2:18:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:18:09Speaker 01

  I wonder what that's about.

• 2:18:12Speaker 01

  I don't feel safe unless I have it.

• 2:18:15Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:18:15Speaker 01

  Seeing from afar is lame.

• 2:18:19Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:18:19Speaker 01

  Having it is unlame. Write that down. That's a quote.

• 2:18:23Dax Shepard?

  That's a new quote.

• 2:18:24Speaker 01

  Yep. Now, anyway, I was back there with some other friends and a friend offered to take my purse and go get it. This person has not very many morals.

• 2:18:35Dax Shepard?

  Right. I know who you're talking about.

• 2:18:37Speaker 01

  No, you don't.

• 2:18:38Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:18:38Speaker 01

  I know who you think I'm talking about and it's not him. It's not him. It's not Jess.

• 2:18:43Dax Shepard?

  I would have thought Anna too.

• 2:18:44Speaker 01

  It was Anna.

• 2:18:47Speaker 01

  Well, you know who I hang out with, so that's part of it.

• 2:18:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but it's deeper than that. I know Kelly didn't do it. I know. I know Rachel wasn't gonna do that. I mean.

• 2:18:55Speaker 01

  Kelly.

• 2:18:57Dax Shepard?

  It's not gonna be Laura. It's not gonna be.

• 2:18:59Speaker 01

  Kelly might do it.

• 2:19:00Dax Shepard?

  She might. Yeah, she a little.

• 2:19:01Speaker 01

  She's a rascal, man.

• 2:19:04Speaker 01

  Oh, I shouldn't say that. She's, she would never do something like that. Some of Kelly's coworkers listen. I just found out, which is exciting.

• 2:19:11Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Hi, coworkers.

• 2:19:14Speaker 01

  So anyway, I said no again.

• 2:19:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, great.

• 2:19:16Speaker 01

  And in that, and I really hesitated, uh, cause I thought, well, I'm not doing it.

• 2:19:21Dax Shepard?

  It's the same thing. You're gonna get something you didn't pay for and you know, you'll know it.

• 2:19:25Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:19:26Dax Shepard?

  But I'm saying, good job.

• 2:19:28Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:19:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:19:29Speaker 01

  But I do want.

• 2:19:30Dax Shepard?

  You're gonna be able to figure out who makes this candle.

• 2:19:32Speaker 01

  No, I'm gonna be fine without it.

• 2:19:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. That's also a good.

• 2:19:35Speaker 01

  I'm gonna be fine. I don't need it. What's it gonna do for my life? Nothing. I mean, it is gonna make my house smell so nice, but.

• 2:19:43Dax Shepard?

  But you already have a lot of candles.

• 2:19:44Speaker 01

  I have a lot of candles. I have a lot of great candles. Um, none smell like that, but that's okay. And I'll get through this.

• 2:19:53Dax Shepard?

  You'll be stronger for it.

• 2:19:54Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. So that, that, that was my almost stealing. Maybe because I stole when I was young and I, that's like, that was really bad.

• 2:20:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:03Speaker 01

  And apparently my mom cried. Well, that's what my dad told me happened.

• 2:20:07Dax Shepard?

  What had you stolen? More than the cookies?

• 2:20:09Speaker 01

  I stole the cookies and then I stole the boy's sand art.

• 2:20:11Dax Shepard?

  And your mom cried over that?

• 2:20:13Speaker 01

  Well, my dad told me that, but I think he was lying.

• 2:20:15Dax Shepard?

  I don't think she did. Yeah.

• 2:20:17Speaker 01

  I think he was trying to guilt me.

• 2:20:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and it worked.

• 2:20:21Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:20:21Dax Shepard?

  You don't steal anymore. It was a good. What are you gonna say?

• 2:20:24Speaker 01

  Wow, that's good parenting, actually.

• 2:20:26Dax Shepard?

  It's great parenting. Your mother has, your mother was inconsolable for a week.

• 2:20:30Speaker 01

  Well, she seems fine. At night, she's been crying in bed.

• 2:20:34Dax Shepard?

  I don't steal.

• 2:20:35Speaker 01

  Next to me. Well, you tried to steal a parking meter.

• 2:20:41Dax Shepard?

  Well, I did steal a parking meter.

• 2:20:43Speaker 01

  So I don't think you can.

• 2:20:44Dax Shepard?

  Rob a 7-Eleven.

• 2:20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, what are you talking about?

• 2:20:47Dax Shepard?

  I had a compartment in my head. Right?

• 2:20:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:51Dax Shepard?

  When I was younger and an alcoholic.

• 2:20:53Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 2:20:53Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I'm gonna say this one thing. We're going too long and our new goal is not to go so long.

• 2:20:57Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:20:58Dax Shepard?

  But I was just in Kauai. My 40 hour trip was Kauai. I have not been there in 20 years since my last week of drinking.

• 2:21:04Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 2:21:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:06Speaker 01

  Was it Pete? What did it? How did it feel?

• 2:21:09Dax Shepard?

  It felt great. Like I saw the guard rail, me and the dude smashed into on the way to buy ice. I saw the crazy hotel Dean and I were at that I went jogging after being awake for three days. Like I saw the stuff. And I thought, wow, we're back here.

• 2:21:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:29Dax Shepard?

  Look how different.

• 2:21:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:21:30Dax Shepard?

  Everything is.

• 2:21:32Speaker 01

  You should be so proud of yourself.

• 2:21:33Dax Shepard?

  You made the right turn when you left here. It was a bizarre way to reflect on like, what was my life like and my mental health 20 years ago when I was there? And what is it like today?

• 2:21:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:45Dax Shepard?

  And such an obvious decision was made and I'm now there with a family and I'm healthy and yeah, it was, uh, it was, it was rad.

• 2:21:55Speaker 01

  That's wonderful.

• 2:21:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I liked it a lot.

• 2:21:57Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 2:21:58Dax Shepard?

  I kind of thought I would never go back there.

• 2:22:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:00Dax Shepard?

  I got invited to go there, so I don't even know I would ever picked it because it's, yeah, it's my last week and it was a gnarly week.

• 2:22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:06Dax Shepard?

  But it was very fun to be there and just go like, oh man, did we dodgeable. If we would have stayed the course. A, we wouldn't be alive right now. And B, we would just not have the life we have. So it was, yeah, it was cool.

• 2:22:20Speaker 01

  That's lovely. Yeah. Great time to reflect. Well, did that do anything for?

• 2:22:28Dax Shepard?

  My work anxiety?

• 2:22:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, my, my time there was a beautiful, I did, I left all of my worries in Los Angeles and did have a totally carefree, wonderful 40 hours. Is that what you're asking?

• 2:22:42Speaker 01

  Well, sort of. I guess like the, the reflection, like you being able to really, really have a physical reminder of where you were and where you are. And understanding like the, the stuff that's happening is.

• 2:23:00Speaker 01

  Really, really, really frustrating and not really not fun.

• 2:23:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:08Speaker 01

  But in the grand scheme, like, look where you are and what you're doing.

• 2:23:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm aspiring to be there, but I'd be lying if I said I could. I mean, one of the tools I'm employing is like, everything's fine. Everything's fine. Everything, everything at this point could get destroyed and I'd still be very fine.

• 2:23:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:28Dax Shepard?

  So I am cycling through that reminder when I'm doing the other things to help. And then I just get caught in the loop, you know, I get caught in the rumination. You know, my sense of injustice going crazy. And so I, yeah, and then I get stuck in it. And then I say, you're stuck in it, but it has no effect on being stuck in it.

• 2:23:46Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:23:48Speaker 01

  Have you considered reaching back out to your therapist?

• 2:23:51Dax Shepard?

  I didn't consider doing it, but I did have a moment of like, why aren't you talking to your therapist? This would be a time.

• 2:23:57Speaker 01

  It's a good time.

• 2:23:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Yeah, it did, it did kinda cross my mind, maybe.

• 2:24:01Speaker 01

  It's also easy to forget when you've been out of it for a little bit, how helpful it is.

• 2:24:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. But yes, I, I agree with you and that's probably a good idea.

• 2:24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, I think it's, might be a good idea. I had therapy and it was helpful.

• 2:24:15Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good.

• 2:24:16Speaker 01

  Okay, so are 90% of Asians lactose intolerant? 70 to 100% of people in East Asia are lactose intolerant.

• 2:24:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:28Speaker 01

  So, yeah, 90 is right in there.

• 2:24:30Dax Shepard?

  You know what would make you proud of your girl, Lincoln? She had to name all 32 countries on a map of Asia for a test and she got 32 out of 32.

• 2:24:38Speaker 01

  Wow, that's incredible.

• 2:24:40Dax Shepard?

  She even hit me with the name of a country I didn't even know. She knows now, she now.

• 2:24:43Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 2:24:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I thought she was making one up. I gotta get out my Google map.

• 2:24:48Speaker 01

  Okay, when did Missoni and Target do the collab? 2011?

• 2:24:51Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 2:24:53Speaker 01

  Okay, the seahorse situation where you said they're made of dust. Those are sea monkeys.

• 2:25:00Dax Shepard?

  Those are sea monkeys and a lot of commenters pointed that out.

• 2:25:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're sea monkeys and sea monkeys is a colloquial term for shrimp brine.

• 2:25:08Dax Shepard?

  Shrimps.

• 2:25:09Speaker 01

  And it's really just.

• 2:25:10Dax Shepard?

  And it's a powder.

• 2:25:11Speaker 01

  So disgusting, yep.

• 2:25:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:12Speaker 01

  And it's very disgusting.

• 2:25:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:13Speaker 01

  Oh, and then I'm gonna play one clip before we end here.

• 2:25:17Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I love a clip. Those memorable moments from the Newlywood game.

• 2:25:21Speaker 04

  What's the old urban legend, you know, where's the strangest, most unusual place you ever made whoopee? That was, that was, didn't make it on the air.

• 2:25:29Dax Shepard?

  But she actually said that? Well, she said worse. All of a sudden, they, there was an urban legend that went out there that said, I said, where's the strangest, most unusual place you've ever made whoopee? And the lady was supposed to have said, well, that would be in the butt, Bob. And that never happened. That never happened. About five years ago, I get a call from Game Show Network and they said, you better come down here and take a look at this. So I go down and take a look at it and there is this little Caucasian lady from Pennsylvania. Right? Her name is Olga. And I said, where's the strangest, most unusual place you've ever made whoopee? And she says, in the ass. I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, it has to be a location. Oh, oh, sorry.

• 2:26:13Dax Shepard?

  You know, so that didn't make it on the air. We cuckooed that one out. Also, what's his name?

• 2:26:19Speaker 01

  Bob Eubanks.

• 2:26:20Dax Shepard?

  Bob Eubanks. Bob, if the person in your story's name is Olga, you don't have to say Caucasian. We could definitely context clear that.

• 2:26:28Speaker 01

  You know what's funny? I, I almost said, I like that he said that.

• 2:26:32Dax Shepard?

  Because people would say black.

• 2:26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's fair. What's the other one? There's another really famous funny one, which is karate.

• 2:26:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, karate class.

• 2:26:43Dax Shepard?

  Karate class. What was, what's the setup for that? Is it condiments? I think it is condiment.

• 2:26:50Speaker 01

  Oh, is it?

• 2:26:51Dax Shepard?

  What's your favorite condiment? Karate class. What's your husband's favorite condiment? Karate class.

• 2:26:57Speaker 01

  I don't think.

• 2:26:58Dax Shepard?

  I think. I can email you. What will your husband say is his favorite condiment? Oh, I would say his pool table upstairs. Definitely. That's interesting. His pool table upstairs. Annette? I, I never heard that word before, neither. I said karate school.

• 2:27:22Dax Shepard?

  Is his favorite condiment. Karate school.

• 2:27:26Speaker 01

  No one knew what condiment was.

• 2:27:28Dax Shepard?

  No, I would have thought they were confused it with condom. But they confuse it with like recreation.

• 2:27:33Speaker 01

  Right. Interesting.

• 2:27:35Dax Shepard?

  Very.

• 2:27:36Speaker 01

  All right, so that's it. We love Anna Kendrick. We were so delighted she came back to us.

• 2:27:42Dax Shepard?

  We love her, love her, love her.

• 2:27:44Speaker 01

  And, oh, do you wanna?

• 2:27:45Dax Shepard?

  She came to Halloween. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So on the episode, she said she felt bad that she ghosted. And then we invited her to Halloween and she was very, very brave, came all by herself and joined our family outfit.

• 2:27:58Speaker 01

  She did.

• 2:27:59Dax Shepard?

  She was Claire Corningstone or whatever.

• 2:28:00Speaker 01

  Veronica.

• 2:28:01Dax Shepard?

  Veronica Corningstone.

• 2:28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:03Dax Shepard?

  From Channel 4 News.

• 2:28:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:05Dax Shepard?

  Anchorman. Good job, Anna.

• 2:28:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's called growth.

• 2:28:09Dax Shepard?

  Growth.

• 2:28:09Speaker 01

  We love it. We love to see it. Um, all right.

• 2:28:12Dax Shepard?

  All right, love you.