Susan Morrison (on Lorne Michaels)

Susan Morrison (Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, SPY Magazine, The New Yorker) is a journalist and author. Susan joins the Armchair Expert to discuss never wanting to subject her children to a life of moving around, marrying comedy and journalism into irreverant reporting at SPY Magazine, and loving the idea of walking through New York City as time travel. Susan and Dax talk about why humor is just the language we all speak to get by in the world, how Saturday Night Live is a monopoly for comedy, and that she could draw a line from all of Lorne’s life experiences straight to the producing skills he would later develop. Susan explains that Lorne is a master of teaching people how to be in a room, why listening for the laugh during dress rehearsal is his secret sauce, and how Lorne’s strategic instincts directly contributed to SNL being the longest running entertainment show in history. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Lilly Padman and Michael Weekly. Hello. Hello. This guest, Susan Morrison.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  This was so fun. This was such a fun listen back.

• 0:14Dax Shepard?

  Was it?

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:15Dax Shepard?

  So she is the Articles Editor at The New Yorker. She has a new book out right now, Lorne, The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live. This is like a crazy fun juicy history of Saturday Night Live.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  It is, of SNL and of Lorne Michaels, and we get all these like fun stories and it's just cool. And he's an institution.

• 0:35Dax Shepard?

  The Wizard of Oz.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 0:37Dax Shepard?

  He has a lot of monikers.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Very mysterious, very mysterious. And we get a little deep dive. I thought this was incredibly enjoyable.

• 0:43Dax Shepard?

  It's really cool because she's known him for decades.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 0:47Dax Shepard?

  This is a really, really fun one. Her other books are Spy High and 30 Ways of Looking at Hillary. So feel free to check those out too, but Lorne is fantastic. I encourage everyone to read it. Please enjoy Susan Morrison. We get support from Quince.

• 1:03Speaker 01

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

• 1:22Dax Shepard?

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• 1:38Speaker 01

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

• 1:49Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:56Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 1:57Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:01Speaker 01

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

• 2:24Dax Shepard?

  Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from Gusto. So here's the thing about running a small business that nobody romanticizes. It's not the big idea that wears you down, it's the payroll, the tax filings, the wait, do I need workers' comp for this stuff? That's the part that quietly eats away your whole afternoon, which is where Gusto comes in. Gusto is online payroll and benefit software built for small businesses.

• 3:09Dax Shepard?

  It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use so you can pay onboard and support your team from anywhere. They handle automatic tax filing, direct deposits, health benefits, 401K, all of it. And you get unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price. No hidden fees, no surprises. If something tricky comes up, you've got direct access to certified HR experts who actually know what they're talking about. And they're ranked number one on G2's highest satisfaction products list for 2026 and trusted by over 500,000 small businesses. That's not nothing. Try Gusto today at gusto.com/dax and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/dax.

• 3:54Dax Shepard?

  Again, that's gusto.com/dax.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Her daughter is Adam Scott's assistant.

• 4:18Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, isn't that fun?

• 4:20Dax Shepard?

  I'm sure you're only getting glowing reviews of Naomi and Adam.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 4:26Dax Shepard?

  How did she end up with that job?

• 4:27Speaker 02

  I'm trying to remember. I think a friend at WME knew that he was looking for someone for the second season of Severance. And so they just really clicked. And so what's really fun is now to watch the second season with her because she'll tell you like, oh, yeah, the goats ran off there.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Oh, fun.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  John Turturro was like crying because it was so fucking cold, you know?

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, that's fantastic.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's fun to have that kind of commentary.

• 4:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, for sure. The inside scoop. Well, we send Adam Scott angry voice memos after every episode. That's kind of our participation in it. We yell at him for cliffhangers. Why is this taking so long? Are you guys shooting this show three hours a week? Why isn't there another season?

• 5:12Speaker 02

  I saw Adam and Ben on some talk show and someone said, when's season three? And I think Ben said like, 2035.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  That sounds about right, yeah.

• 5:22Dax Shepard?

  It's become an IQ test where it's like the gap between year one and

• 5:25Speaker 01

  And you keep adding.

• 5:26Dax Shepard?

  Two was three and then it's gotta be six and then we go up to

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 5:30Dax Shepard?

  Susan, where are you from?

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Tough to answer that because when I was a kid, my dad worked for IBM, which meant that we moved every four years. So I was born in New Jersey and lived in Poughkeepsie and Denver and Stanford, Connecticut. And now I've lived in my apartment in New York for 40 years. So I think that makes me feel like I'm a New Yorker.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  That qualifies.

• 5:49Dax Shepard?

  I have a similar, I wonder if you attribute it to your childhood. We moved so much that in 30 years in LA, I lived in one single apartment for 10 years. Then I lived in a house for 16 and now we're here and I just don't ever want to leave.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  No, exactly. I think I will never move because my whole childhood was putting things in those Neptune moving boxes and unpacking them. And I always wanted to spare my kids that.

• 6:09Dax Shepard?

  Did you get psychotic about your room? Like ideas like wherever we went, at least my little bubble could be the same. And if someone altered my bubble, I was irrationally upset.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Mine was the same weird shade of pink. I had a canopy bed.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, the dream.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  China Cats, but I do think that that's why you want permanence.

• 6:27Dax Shepard?

  Yes, and you're dropping in every four years to a totally different social setting and culture and vibe. Were you good at meshing?

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I think about some things that were. I'm not one of those people who ever overuses the word trauma.

• 6:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  I frowned on that. But I remember when we moved to Colorado, I fell out of a tree and broke my arm and my arm was kind of taped up inside my clothes. And then my first week in my new school, some girl I didn't know came up to me at a playground and kicked me really hard and said, I think it's awful that you're pretending to only have one arm.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  It's just like.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  So those things, you're the new kid and you're the weird kid with one arm.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  But I think it's made me really resilient and adaptable as an adult. Do you find that?

• 7:13Dax Shepard?

  For sure. I want to go back to the little girl. I think there's a lot of interesting stuff happening in that move, which is someone feigning a disability, like, needs to be policed by the social hierarchy. It's not just that you had a broken arm and she's pissed you were getting attention.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  No, she thought I was pretending I lost my arm.

• 7:33Dax Shepard?

  Which would be disrespectful to someone who had lost it.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  I think she might have even said, I know someone who lost an arm.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Maybe like a grandfather in the war or something. I don't know.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  And she was so young to be this very big justice.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  We're talking eight years old.

• 7:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think it's an instinct. That's what I'm arguing. I think there's something like very primitive about us being social primates, whereas like if someone's pretending to be infirmed and they're not, that's deception. That's fascinating reaction to come up and kick a girl.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Kick you right in the shins. Yeah, so the whole new kid thing was a really regular thing for me. I'm sure it was painful and I'm sure I had lonely stretches that I've blocked, but I definitely feel like there are times in my adult life when I know this is why I'm good at this and this is why I'm good at that.

• 8:17Dax Shepard?

  Right. I can walk in and be around strangers and.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Do podcasts.

• 8:21Dax Shepard?

  Exits, yeah, podcasts. What's your road to The New Yorker?

• 8:24Speaker 02

  My first job in the grown up world was working for Lorne Michaels.

• 8:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it was?

• 8:29Speaker 02

  I was 23. My mom had just died. I had been living in England. Working for the Times of London, I moved back to America because my mom was sick. Took care of her for a month, and then she died of cancer. And I was just like, oh, my God, what am I going to do? And some of my college friends from the Harvard Lampoon brought me into the city the day after my mom's funeral and introduced me to Jim Downey, who is the great, long-serving head writer of SNL. And Lorne, this was during the period when he wasn't at SNL. He had a five-year hiatus in the 80s. And he was producing this primetime show called The New Show, which was his first spectacular public failure.

• 9:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  But so I got a job working for the writers in that as like a researcher. That only lasted about nine, 10 episodes, but I was young. It cemented relationships with all these amazing comedy people. So that after that, I knew I wanted to go into journalism. I got a job at Vanity Fair. But I stayed friends with all those people. And it especially served me. I feel like the real crucible part of my career was starting Spy Magazine in the 80s with Kurt Anderson and Graydon Carter.

• 9:33Dax Shepard?

  Forgive my ignorance, what was Spy's angle?

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Spy Magazine was kind of modeled on Private Eye, the British satiric weekly. The 80s were a time when fat cats and Wall Street guys were just running the world. Donald Trump was ascendant.

• 9:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  And so we called ourselves, you know, the underdogs, biting the ankles of the overdogs. We reported Trump's bankruptcies. We went after the Times. And we had a column on CIA and Mike Ovitz. I mean, we really did a lot of funny and disrespectful reporting.

• 10:05Dax Shepard?

  So it had a sense of humor.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  It was really funny.

• 10:07Dax Shepard?

  But it wasn't satire. It was actual reporting with a little comedic edge.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  It took us all by surprise by being like a big sensation. It suddenly was popular. And it launched, most of the people who did that, we did it for six years, starting in 86, kind of run the media now. That's where I kind of learned everything.

• 10:24Dax Shepard?

  It is weird, right? When you get to an age where all these people you started with, you are all kids, and you look around and you go, oh, my God, it happened.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  No, I know. You bump into someone like Walter Isaacson. We've all had a great ride.

• 10:35Dax Shepard?

  Was he at Spy?

• 10:36Speaker 02

  No, he wasn't, but I knew him from that circle.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  How cool.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  It is kind of nice.

• 10:40Dax Shepard?

  I have a fantasy about New York in the 80s. Because it's very Billy Joel. It's very, everyone at Elaine's was so knocked out. You know, Coke, limousines.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  That is definitely what it was like. We were all public school kids. We were all from outside of New York. We had that nose pressed up against the glass trying to figure this out. And it was a real time of uptown, downtown. You know, uptown where all these socialites in like poof dresses going to cancer galas and everything. It was a time of Tom Wolfe, social x-rays, Bonfire of the Vanities. But downtown, it was area and these nightclubs that were creative and sort of cool, but also really pretentious and arty.

• 11:21Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  So the targets were everywhere you looked.

• 11:24Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah. What a colorful.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  It was fun.

• 11:26Dax Shepard?

  I certainly like New York of today, but I also went there in the 80s with my mom when I was a kid. And it was a very dangerous feeling.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:33Dax Shepard?

  Yes. I mean, walking through Times Square, you're like holding mom's hand extra tight. But I do miss how colorful and segmented. And you cross four blocks and it's like everyone's now this way. That was fun. You're like almost time traveling.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  I love that concept because I sometimes think about walking around New York City. I mean, you get a little bit of that here with all the wonderful old signage and everything. But I like the idea of walking through a city as time travel, which is so thrilling. And you can still walk into Katz's Deli on Ledlow Street and you feel like you're in 1962.

• 12:05Dax Shepard?

  Or just being in the Village and there's the one road that's got a bend in it. And you're like, oh, God, how old is that road? Yeah, it's very historic. When did you start at New Yorker?

• 12:15Speaker 02

  OK, right. After Spy, I edited this weekly called The New York Observer, which was also kind of sarcastic and had an attitude and we sort of made fun of people. And then in 1997, when Tina Brown ran The New Yorker, she hired me. So I've been there since then. The New Yorker turns 100 this year, just like SNL turns 50s. And I'm fascinated by, there's a lot of common ground between the two institutions that people aren't that aware of.

• 12:38Dax Shepard?

  Tell me, I mean, first of all, they're implicitly New York.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  They're New York things. But first I'll say, so when Harold Ross started the magazine 100 years ago, he called it The Comic Weekly. It was this roaring 20s jazz age, very fizzy publication with a lot of. Fun and gossip. And when Tina hired me, she knew that I had that impulse. And I wanted to make things entertaining. And before her, William Shawn had been editing The New Yorker for some decades. And it did a lot of quality stuff, but there were sort of jokes about how it published five-part series on grain.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  So she really wanted to enliven it. I edit just the straight-up humor pieces, but also the nonfiction writers that I edit and have brought in are all just people with real voice.

• 13:23Dax Shepard?

  Do you have a relationship, I imagine, with Sedaris?

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know him. I edit him sometimes. He's great.

• 13:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, what did I just, was his, the Pope piece in New Yorker or was that somewhere else? Touching the cloth or something?

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Yes, about when the Pope had all those comedians there.

• 13:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  What a wild event for the comedy world.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  I think it's so cool that the Pope did that. It's weird. There's something that I can't really wrap my head around of like, why? But I think maybe he just loves comedians. He's not able to really exercise that.

• 13:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I can't figure out his angle.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Okay, I have a theory.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's hear it.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  I think that he just must be much savvier and worldlier than we think. And this sort of goes hand in hand with why SNL is still so important after 50 years, even when it has seasons that are lackluster. It's almost like we're in a comedy glut. You're riding the subway or here, I guess, looking at billboards. And it didn't used to be that every advertisement was funny. Humor is just the language that we all speak in. And it used to be more of a cordoned off thing. But now you kind of have to be funny to even be able to get by in the world.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  The Pope probably thought, this is a way in. If you get the comedians on your side, you're kind of winning the war. I mean, it's something that Trump completely doesn't understand because he has the worst sense of humor of anyone I've ever heard about.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  He's so outrageous that it is funny.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  But you're laughing at him, not with him.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  You're laughing at him, but I don't know if it's worked to some extent inadvertently.

• 14:52Dax Shepard?

  He has a playground sense of humor. He makes fun of people and humiliates them, and people think that's funny.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  I think the way I would refine it is, I don't think he's got a sophisticated sense of humor or even a good sense of humor. He's a pure showman.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  That is right.

• 15:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  Like, I remember one week when I was spending the whole week at SNL, Alec Baldwin got arrested for, not the Rust thing, but he got arrested for punching a guy over a parking place.

• 15:17Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  And I remember being there in Lorne's office when the texts came through and everyone was like, oh, God. And it was also kind of funny because it wasn't that serious. And then cut to Trump at a press conference, because those were the years when he was railing against Baldwin all the time because he was playing him. So a reporter said to Trump, "Did you hear about Alec Baldwin getting arrested?" And Trump just kind of gives this like half smile. And he goes, "I wish him luck." And I remember watching that with Lorne Michaels. And Lorne just said, "God, Trump just has like the exact right showbiz instinct to know how to respond."

• 15:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, he does.

• 15:53Dax Shepard?

  It's good.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  It was underplayed, but it was funny.

• 15:56Dax Shepard?

  The timing of this is perfect because as you just said, 50 year anniversary of SNL. And I guess I didn't realize that you had worked for him. That makes a lot of sense. But I'm imagining you're just a humongous fan of the show and impressed with how this thing continues.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  I am a fan of it, but I wouldn't say that's really why I got into writing the book. It was after the 40th. I thought that show was really interesting and moving. You know, as I said, I stayed friends with a lot of those people over those years. And frankly, for years, I just heard all these different people I knew mostly in the writer's room complaining about Lorne or just saying, "Oh, and he did this and he cut that and he's this way." In that kind of exasperated way. When I went on Lorne's A Donald Show, he said, "This book is like a workplace comedy." It's a little bit like The Office.

• 16:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Where people complain about each other. I knew that he was mercurial and that they were all obsessed with him and always trying to figure him out. But I didn't think that the wider world knew that about him.

• 16:51Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  So I thought this would be a good book. So it wasn't out of pure fandom. You know, it was more just like as an editor, I thought, that's a good story. And also, Lorne Michaels is someone who's kind of been hiding in plain sight for 50 years.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Such a mystery.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Doesn't talk to the press. And the inscrutability has kind of worked for him, both as a management tool and as a guy.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  He's like Anna Wintour. I put them in the same category.

• 17:13Dax Shepard?

  He's the animatour.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Like, they are both elusive and huge figures that have major impact.

• 17:19Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's funny, because it's tied into the Pope. Because the one thing I wanted to say about the Pope thing is both times I would go, because I personally want the story. And then also, my other part of my mind be like, look how insane this status thing is. You still buy into it, like, one person has a given status where they just summons a hundred of the most prominent people who have their own status, and everyone shows up.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  And they bought their own plane tickets.

• 17:41Dax Shepard?

  Yes, and if you're the aliens watching from above, you're like, huh, that guy can do that. That's just so fascinating. That even you could be in on it and also be inclined to play along. So then, yes, Lauren also has this really unique Wizard of Oz. All the people you interview, there's these very common comparisons that come up about him.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mr. Ripley. Some of them have even compared him to Trump.

• 18:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but I would also put him in the George Washington category a little bit, which is, he didn't talk, and he was surrounded by all these people that wouldn't shut the fuck up. So they just assumed he was so smart, because he didn't even feel compelled to brag, and they couldn't understand that. In his quietness, people just projected a lot.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 18:23Dax Shepard?

  Lauren is obviously incredibly gifted. And also, he's not superhuman, but I do think he's taken on this kind of superhuman quality.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  I think that's true. Part of it is, when these people come to him, when he plucks them from obscurity, they tend to be 22 or 23. Think about, like, Bill Hader coming from Oklahoma, where his previous showbiz job had been being like a P.A. on Iron Chef. These people that come to New York, they're suddenly, I mean, they're not making a hell of a lot of money, but they're on television, and Lauren has kind of opened the whole world to them. And they invest him with this power. Some of it is like a daddy thing, but some of it is also like, oh, my God, this man changed my life. And Conan O'Brien said to me, everyone concurs with this. When you work for SNL as a writer or a cast, it basically takes two weeks from going from insanely grateful to being like, put out that, how are you ever going to get out of these golden handcuffs?

• 19:16Speaker 02

  You know, the kind of titles thing. Lauren just made so much happen for them. I mean, he told me once that there's a real distinction in his social world between all the cast and all the people that he's hired, and his friends who came into the business on their own steam. Paul Simon, Steve Martin, they don't owe him everything, so it's an easier relationship.

• 19:37Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Someone who had the experience, which is come to LA, go to the Groundlings because I know that's a feeder for Saturday Night Live, singularly focused on being good there so I can get to Saturday Night Live. The only goal is Saturday Night Live. I was just talking to another actor. Yes, it's so unique in that if you audition for Oliver Stone and you don't get it, that's okay, the Coen Brothers are gonna cast a movie in two weeks and you got a shot there. And then so and so is gonna cast a movie. But Saturday Night Live is the only option. If that's what your mind was set on. If you don't get the audition, or you get it and you don't get made, or he opens up the Kingdoms. I think there's so rarely a singular focus goal in show business. Generally, you're like, I wanna act.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  But he's the only gatekeeper.

• 20:20Dax Shepard?

  That's it.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  One of the great things that Tina Fey said to me about him is considering when he came to power. That is the phrase to use with him. You know, he never got that eighties disease. Having been in journalism in the eighties, I know what she means, of wanting to boast about being an insane workaholic. I mean, I remember he'd read stories about Jeff Katzenberg and Barry Diller. And they'd say, I get up at 4:00 AM with my trainer for 90 minutes. Then my stock guy comes. I sleep three hours a day. He never had that show-offy thing. From the very beginning, he's had this almost European kind of fixation on leisure. He's always made the show's schedule correspond to the vacation schedule of New York private schools.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, he makes sure, he takes a lot of time off in swanky locales. And he tells all of his people to do the same. And aside from opening the professional world to these people, he has this kind of Henry Higgins thing with them. He likes to teach them how to live the good life. You know, he doesn't want them to be killing themselves and staying up all night. And one of the things that was fun about tracking his life over 50 years is the quality of that advice has kind of changed as he's become more of a mogul-y kind of guy. In the seventies, it would be like rotate your drug use. But now it's a number of different people told me, yeah, when you're buying an apartment, he'll say two things. First of all, get an apartment that's more expensive than you think you can afford.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  Because then you come home at the end of an exhausting day and you'll say, oh, who lives here? I live here. And then the other thing that he says to these people, he says, you know what's better than 10-foot ceilings? 12-foot ceilings.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  So whose boss tells them?

• 22:04Dax Shepard?

  When they're making 7,500 a week in Manhattan.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  He's aware that they're, and this is another great Lauren phrase, they're first generation famous, meaning that their parents back in Peoria aren't going to be able to answer their questions about, should I get a Lexus or a Tesla?

• 22:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. Okay, so let's maybe just start with where Lauren comes from. Because I do wonder if part of being inoculated to that 80s trope of, I'm a workaholic, I wonder if there's any Canadian in the mix.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  His personal demeanor, his personal humor is that kind of Canadian self-deprecating thing. Although I do say at some point in the book, he is that way, and yet he's under no illusion that anybody takes his self-deprecation seriously.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Right, right, right. He knows his place.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:46Dax Shepard?

  Oh, the Steve Martin quote you put in there is so great. It's like, Dave Letterman is truly self-deprecating.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  He doesn't think he's any good.

• 22:55Dax Shepard?

  Lauren does not suffer from this issue.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  But in talking about his childhood, he'll say, Canada's a really boring place. You have to make your own fun. It's harder to find a stimulating life. And he always had his eye south of the border. He said it was like growing up next to Imperial Rome.

• 23:13Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  But I think that you're right, that there is a kind of a Canadian mildness. The thing about wanting to take his leisure seriously, that's connected to the way he views comedy. Like, he doesn't like comedy that he calls sweaty. Like, I wish I had room to have a glossary on the back of this book, because there's so much terminology. Sweaty comedy is like comedy that's trying too hard, that's pushing. And needy. He'll always say, the art of producing is not leaving any fingerprints, making it look easy. He'll say Fred Astaire never grunted while he danced. That's part of his work philosophy.

• 23:49Dax Shepard?

  His grandparents owned a movie theater, where that's a unique experience, where the family has declared, we value show business. You say in the book, his grandparents would talk about all these actors, Humphrey Bogart, on a level where he would think they might know these people.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, one of my favorite things about that story, and I don't know if he even made this connection, but when he was telling me that they'd be talking about Spencer Tracy, and he thought those- People were his friends. I thought, how amazing that this guy would grow up to be someone who routinely just talks about Mick and Jack and Paul.

• 24:20Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  One of the fun things about writing this guy's biography is that all the years before he got onto the world stage and became the Lorne Michaels that we know, it seemed to me that almost every experience he had, you could draw a line between that and the producing skills he would later use at SNL. Like even when he was a tiny boy watching your show of shows or Phil Silvers, whatever, with his grandmother, who was the movie savant, she knew about showbiz. He told me that they'd be looking at Jack Benny on TV, and he loved Jack Benny because of his underplayed, low-key thing. But she would say, so he's really old now. He started out as a young man in vaudeville.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Then he got older, his hair turned white, and he was a star of radio. But then television came along, a visual medium. So all these guys had to dye their hair black, or if you're George Burns, wear a ridiculous rug.

• 25:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  So you imagine tiny Lorne, thinking about this Darwinian aspect of showbiz eras shifting and moving.

• 25:22Dax Shepard?

  And having to adjust.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  And that's really the key to how he's been able to keep it going for 50 years, paying attention to when the music changes and when the technology changes.

• 25:32Dax Shepard?

  That's the impossible quality that he has, is keeping it relevant and fresh, which seems impossible for 50 years. But I would say even like his access, so he had a rich aunt and uncle.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, people tease him about being name-droppy and star-fuckery and stuff. Am I allowed to say that?

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. You can say anything.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  When he was a little boy, his family, I think, was sort of on the drabber side. His mom was a classic, like Philip Roth, Jewish mother, really breathed down his neck. And his father was a furrier. And then he died when Lorne was 14. But he had this aunt and uncle who lived down the street, who were in a fancier part of Toronto. They were very rich.

• 26:12Dax Shepard?

  They had a swimming pool in their house.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, they had a swimming pool.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Indoor?

• 26:15Dax Shepard?

  It just recently sold for $18 million.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  You're a good reader, man. So they were rich and glamorous. Lorne, like, oh, I wish I were that family. Yeah. I would not. And when Lorne's dad died, they really stepped in. And Uncle Pep, great name, took Lorne under his wing and taught him everything about business and the world. And I think that is also the key to why Lorne extends himself that way to his own young charges. He wants to show them how to do it.

• 26:44Dax Shepard?

  Yes, such close proximity to wealth, coveting that, seeing that the attention in the family is show business movie stars. We all want to be the star of our family first. And it's like, if you see the things that are valued and then also getting kind of an education of how to move in an upscale thing is later in life he'll have to do. Acting like you've been there, even though you haven't.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 27:05Dax Shepard?

  So how does he get from Toronto to Laughin?

• 27:08Speaker 02

  He's grown up in this very parochial little neighborhood, very much like Philip Roth's Newark, as Forest Hills where he grew up. Where it was all these young Jewish kids whose parents really wanted them to be lawyers.

• 27:18Dax Shepard?

  Take one second to talk about that article that came out.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Oh, oh, wow.

• 27:21Dax Shepard?

  I think that's really fascinating.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  I stumbled on the greatest piece of research. It was this 600-page book called The Crestwood Heights Report. The Canadian government funded a study of this one neighborhood in Toronto. It was Lorne's neighborhood. They changed the name from Forest Hill to Crestwood Heights. And they were trying to improve mental health services in Canada. So they did this deep dive, interviewing all these children and parents in Lorne's neighborhood. I could not figure out if they actually interviewed the Lipowitz's. Lorne didn't know, he was a little boy. And then they published this huge psychological report. It kind of reminded me of Peyton Place in the US. It was an indictment of the very bougie values of this class.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  And it said all the mothers were just competitive with the other mothers about where their kids were getting into school.

• 28:07Dax Shepard?

  I have to believe there's just a nice layer of antisemitism under all of it. No, I mean, it was a very Jewish area.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  That's probably true.

• 28:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I mean, why were they, it seems so judgmental.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  They were really tisk tisking the fact that they were strivers.

• 28:20Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  Who wasn't a striver in that post-war era.

• 28:23Dax Shepard?

  I guess it's also that Canadian tall poppy thing.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  They were disapproving of how some of these houses had those clear plastic slipcovers. The kids were banished. To the basement.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, maybe I was also trying to say what many other subsequent studies have said, which is money doesn't equal happiness.

• 28:41Dax Shepard?

  But it had more of a nouveau rich kind of a take. Like, these people were grotesque in their striving.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  They had core values.

• 28:48Dax Shepard?

  It was much more of a straight judgment of how they were doing it.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  But before laughing, I want to go back to something that you said about Amy Poehler, pretending you belong somewhere when you don't. One of the things that Amy was smartest about in talking to me about Lauren, she felt that completely beyond all the comedy things you can learn from him, and he has a lot of theories of comedy, he's like a comedy professor. She thought that he was just so great at teaching you how to be in a room, how to walk into a room, and you've got Paul McCartney at the dinner table, and not lose your shit and start acting like a weirdo.

• 29:20Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  And being able to go into a pitch meeting and just be at the grownups table. And when you think about it, that is the real skill. And I think that's something he had in spades at a weird early age. And even his cousin from Toronto, Neil Levy, told me that when he first came to New York, he was barely 30, and he was hanging out with Mick Jagger and Paul Simon. And we're like, how does Lauren know these people?

• 29:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  But he said that he thought that it was just some kind of like EQ sort of thing, an intuitive sense of knowing what a person is going to be interested in talking about, not gushing, treating them just like a regular room temperature kind of conversation. And I think that that is part of it. And he does teach all his people how to do that. And that's why so many of the SNL people, aside from having good comedy or acting careers, they know how to produce, they know how to be showrunners, they know how to handle people.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  But anyway, so go back to your other question. He was in Toronto. He had this comedy partner who was a much more of a borscht beltie, seltzer down the pants kind of comic. And they did two man comedy, very corny, blackouts, punchline setups. And that was a way to go for a while. This guy had met Jack Rollins in New York, who was Woody Allen's manager. So again, Lauren always had this eye on who can get me up to the next step. He was smart about that.

• 30:44Dax Shepard?

  Expert if you dare. This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  What?

• 30:59Dax Shepard?

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

• 31:44Dax Shepard?

  Someone engineered this thing with love. I love a Quarter Pounder.

• 31:48Speaker 01

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

• 32:01Dax Shepard?

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

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not surprised.

• 32:06Dax 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. We get support from No Bull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 32:35Dax Shepard?

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

• 33:12Speaker 01

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

• 33:16Dax 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.

• 33:24Speaker 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.

• 33:33Dax Shepard?

  Stay stronger than the season. Head to nobolproject.com all holiday season to shop new deals every week. This episode is supported by Helix.

• 33:45Speaker 01

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

• 33:55Dax Shepard?

  It really is the foundation and I think people underestimate how much a bad mattress is quietly ruining their day. You wake up stiff, your back's angry, you're already behind before your feet hit the floor.

• 34:06Speaker 01

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

• 34:24Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Recently.

• 34:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 34:25Speaker 01

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

• 34:29Dax Shepard?

  Temperature was all over the map.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  It was a mess. I need a new one.

• 34:32Dax Shepard?

  Look, they've got over 20 mattress models. So whether you sleep hot, need extra back support, or you've got a partner who moves around all night, there's one built for you. Plus free shipping and a 365 night happy with Helix guarantee. That's a full year to decide.

• 34:47Speaker 01

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

• 34:54Dax Shepard?

  Right now, Helix is running their Black Friday sale with up to 30% off. Go to helixsleep.com/armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. That's helixsleep.com/armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. Helixsleep.com/armchair.

• 35:11Dax Shepard?

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

• 35:26Speaker 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 and be cozy.

• 35:47Dax 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.

• 35:56Speaker 01

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

• 36:03Dax Shepard?

  Okay, tell me more.

• 36:05Speaker 01

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

• 36:16Dax 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.

• 36:26Speaker 01

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

• 36:52Speaker 02

  But then he always felt like one of the problems with Canada, it's almost too polite. Even when he and his partner were doing well, the CBC would say, okay, your turn's over. Time to give someone else a chance. There's this American idea of a trajectory up, up, up, up, up.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it never stops.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  He goes to LA as a writer. He's knocking around really the lamest string of variety television shows you can imagine. The beautiful Phyllis Diller Show, where Phyllis Diller, who's a genius, I think- But still, the show, she would play the saxophone to Ernest Borgnine.

• 37:26Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  And Perry Como's Christmas special, things like this, even though these were really cruddy things, he always had a takeaway. He learned something from even the lamest experiences.

• 37:37Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  On the Perry Como show, the executive producer said to him, you know why Perry Como's a star? Watch him when he comes out on the stage to sing. He comes out and he walks from the wings over to the microphone. And it's just the way he walked, the pace of the walking made him a star. And like, whoa, but a little takeaway like that. Anyways, those shows always got canceled or he got fired. So then he ends up at Laugh-In, which was a hit show. But as he said, it wasn't any more fun working on a hit show than working on a show that was about to be canceled. Because the way it was done at Laugh-In, and this informs how he eventually would set up the process at SNL, the writers were in a motel, far

• 38:19Speaker 02

  away from the studio, throwing out jokes that just kind of went into the maw. And then somebody would rewrite them, and then two other people would rewrite them. He never even went into the studio. And that show, I used to watch it, I'm that old, every big star in Hollywood would show up on that show and do a walk-on. And if you're Lorne, and you're excited about glamour, and think how horrible it must have felt to be in the motel with the schmoey comedy writers, and you're not meeting Dean Martin and everybody else. He'd watch the show in the motel with his fellow writers on Monday. That's the only way you ever knew if any of your material was used. You know, you'd maybe see like a glimmer of one of your jokes. One of the great things about SNL being live, and Lorne

• 39:01Speaker 02

  realized this almost accidentally, is that the audience tells you whether it works. That's why the dress rehearsal is so important at SNL. He's sitting there underneath where the audience sits, and he's listening to them. They're his secret sauce. I mean, of course, he has his own opinion, too, but a proper laugh is a kind of combustible, uncontrolled thing. You can't fake it. So hearing the laugh is really important.

• 39:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And also, just to jump to the live aspect, improv live.

• 39:31Dax Shepard?

  Is spectacular. Improv on television is terrible because you've lost the element of danger that failure is on the table around every corner. There's no safety net. And so SNL being live is such an interesting. They've captured some of that danger, even in the live broadcast. Whereas like Laugh-In edited, something gets reduced. There's no fear there.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  That is exactly right. And I sometimes wonder, when you see the show in 8H, it's so thrilling. My kids were both like theater kids and they were always just like, oh, my God, it's like a theater. Cause people are running in and out with pieces of scenery. Someone's changing their pants over there.

• 40:09Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, frenetic.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  Get the sense of the excitement and people at home who don't see the scenery coming in that. But you still get the adrenaline.

• 40:19Dax Shepard?

  I think the audience bridges that gap. The audience is like a huge character in Saturday Night Live.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Yes, I saw this a little bit when I worked for Lauren, but also if you're there at the show, there's always like, and then you'll see Lauren just to the left of home base. He'll be completely still. He'll have his hands in his pockets. He's just this kind of little pool of calm and it makes his mystique even stranger.

• 40:42Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's his way to control chaos, which is if you enter a room and someone's shouting and you start talking very low, you can bring them down.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Right. And in the old days, he would always stand there with a glass of white wine.

• 40:54Dax Shepard?

  Oh, how elegant.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  To kind of keep it like, I'm just at a cocktail party.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  But the live thing, the fear, the no net thing, this is probably something that I'm able to bring to this. When I met Lauren, we hardly knew each other, but working on the new show in 1984, part of the reason that was a big failure, I think, is that unlike Saturday Night Live, it wasn't live. It was taped on a Thursday night, edited all night long, and then it would go up Friday. As people who've worked with him for a long time say, Lauren's the kind of guy, not good at term papers, really good at tests, meaning he needs the deadline. So at the new show. It was structured a lot like SNL sketches, guest stars. But there'd be an audience and they'd be locked in studio because sometimes these tapings would go for three or four hours.

• 41:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  People would try to leave and we couldn't let them leave because you needed them there. And I remember people would yell cut in the middle of a sketch and you started over. They'd have to patch it together in the editing room. They'd have to add a laugh track. And as Jim Downey said, you had all the crudeness of live and the staleness of tape. So that was also a lesson that like, okay, you need that electricity of live.

• 42:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. What is the saying that you wrote down? He famously says.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  We don't go on because we're ready. We go on because it's 11:30.

• 42:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, which is a very liberating approach in a way.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  You know, I was thinking about what you were just saying about improv and how it's like the circus or something. Like if you're looking at it on a tape, it just could be CGI. But if you're sitting right next to the person on the trapeze, you're kind of going.

• 42:26Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Improv and SNL, it's something I explored a little bit in the book. The relationship between improv people and SNL is an interesting one because I don't think most viewers know.

• 42:38Dax Shepard?

  I didn't know this until your book.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  Every kid takes improv lessons now the way when I was a kid, you take piano lessons.

• 42:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  So improv is such a big thing in the culture, but there's no improvisation on SNL. People who have dared to improvise, like Damon Wayans, they're fired.

• 42:53Dax Shepard?

  What about feeling? Like Will Ferrell, positive, I've seen moments where the thing's going awry. The audience is in on it. He starts feeling.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  Maybe ad lib.

• 43:03Dax Shepard?

  Yes, acknowledging what's happening and just bridging this gap.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  I guess if something were to go wrong. Yeah. Then you can sort of ad lib and save it. But if you ad lib like a joke or something.

• 43:15Dax Shepard?

  You're fired.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  You're out of there.

• 43:17Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  And it's partly about huge respect for the writer and the writing, which goes back to laughing. But it's also, everything is timed with a stopwatch down to the second because they have to know when that commercial break is going to land. And so that's why these famous incidents like Sinead O'Connor tearing up the picture of the Pope or Elvis Costello quitting and going into another song. The reason those things made people upset wasn't just that. They were messing with the plan, but because it could throw off the camera operators and could throw off the timing. It's a play. Yeah, if Elvis plays a different song, well, what if that's 44 seconds longer? And then the Toyota ad can't run.

• 43:55Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  So the irony is, you don't improv on the show, but improv players do really well when they're in the cast. And that, I think, is because they're really good at ensemble work. To be good at improv, as you know, you have to be really tuned in, you have to listen. And that's why improv guys like you, as opposed to like stand-ups, are good on the show.

• 44:17Dax Shepard?

  What are his rules of sketch?

• 44:19Speaker 02

  Some of them are really broad tonal things, like do it in sunshine. He likes to remind people that comedy is an entertainment. And he doesn't have a lot of patience for people who want to do some kind of dark Brechtian black box. And sometimes do it in sunshine is something as simple as the costumes. Something that I think I cut from the book because the book was way too long in the beginning.

• 44:42Dax Shepard?

  Well, when you write for 10 years.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:44Dax Shepard?

  You're liable to stack up some pages.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Bruce McCullough, one of the kids in the hall, was a writer on the show in 85, 86. And he told me that Joan Cusack was in the cast then, and they were doing a run-through of a sketch, and she was in some kind of dowdy dress. And Lauren said, can't you put her in something more attractive? You know, she's a pretty girl. And Bruce got really mad. And he said, okay, Lauren, you want me to put her in a fucking bikini? And, you know, he later said, I can't believe I wasn't fired for that. But the point is just that you want it to be pleasant and bright. And you don't want people yelling at each other. You don't want to write anger.

• 45:20Dax Shepard?

  I found this really interesting. He has no tolerance for people that are doing impersonations out of a place of hate. And this is an increasingly interesting dynamic that's presented itself in the last decade on the show, which is everyone's politics are so fucking rigid now. That you have these performers that almost refuse to lampoon liberals. Then if they're playing a conservative, they hate the conservative they're playing with, and they have a tendency to make them unenjoyable to watch.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was so interesting for me to spend a lot of time there during the first Trump administration because a lot of this tension was kind of coalescing for the first time. Taryn Killam, who had been playing Trump before Alec Baldwin did, was really outraged to get a note every now and then saying, can you give him a little more charm?

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  And Lauren didn't mean like because we like Trump.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  But he meant it's an entertainment.

• 46:12Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  It's gotta be funny. You go where the laughs are. And he always uses as an example how British villains, like Bond villains, or think of Alan Rickman in Die Hard, or even some Shakespeare characters.

• 46:23Dax Shepard?

  They're fun.

• 46:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, they're kind of oily and you like to watch them. Another thing that I've heard him say a lot is idiots play better than assholes. They're just gonna be funnier. And Dr. Evil is sort of the apotheosis of that.

• 46:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  So I think that some of the more millennial, younger people in the cast, that's a hard thing for them to get and swallow.

• 46:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, someone didn't want to play Feinstein.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  Right. Cecily Strong felt awkward about a piece where she was playing Feinstein. It's kind of a drooly, doddery old lady, but she is. There was comedy in that. And one week I was there, he wanted Kate McKinnon to do her Angela Merkel impersonation, which is funny, you know, with a bold cut. She didn't want to do it because Merkel had announced that she was stepping down and it was like just too sad. But as a Woody Allen character would say in Annie Hall, what, or his mother, what concern of that is yours? You know, to make the people laugh.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:18Dax Shepard?

  Well, he has to give a speech at one point that you're privy to, which is he basically just says, your politics aren't the politics of the show. Those are two different things. Our obligation is to bring truth and humor to power on both sides.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 47:32Dax Shepard?

  We're not doing one version here.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  He takes some heat for saying this, but political comedy on television has veered more toward a kind of a virtue signaling, you're with us or you're against us. You know, even The Daily Show, which of course makes fun of liberals, you definitely feel there's an ideology there.

• 47:49Dax Shepard?

  You could watch five minutes of it and be pretty certain.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you feel like Fox viewers are probably not watching it at all.

• 47:55Dax Shepard?

  Right. Well, you have these famous sketches of, who was it that did Jimmy Carter?

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, Dan Aykroyd.

• 48:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Dan Aykroyd. They have a rich tradition of blasting liberals and Republicans.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  Oh, and Daryl Hammond's Bill Clinton is so funny.

• 48:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh, incredible, yeah.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  We live in such a strange time now, especially in Trump, too. This whole culture war thing that I think people feel like everyone should be mobilized at all times. And Lauren's take, I guess, would be that's not what they're there for. And it reminds me of this great word that Seth Meyers coined when he was head writer, which I just think is so smart. It's the word claptur. The idea of claptur is there's some political humor that you do it, you make a political joke, and people go like, yes, yes, of course, very good. They're clapping because they agree with a sentiment. But what you want is you want this uncontrollable physical reaction of a laugh.

• 48:49Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  But like, at the same time, back then, 2018, when Trump was two years in, it was around the midterms. I remember talking to some of the writers, and this is when Trump was tweeting about SNL every day. Remember, he was obsessed. And they said, it's a little scary to me that the President of the United States is paying so much attention to the job that I do. And what if some dumb punchline I write causes him to blow up the world?

• 49:14Dax Shepard?

  Right, he's pretty dialed in. Well, even Chappelle in his recent monologue, because I know you're watching.

• 49:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he is. That's crazy. He's talking directly to the President right now.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 49:26Dax Shepard?

  I want to talk about the drug stuff. This field of people really over indexes in addiction, myself included. And to love and root for and guide all these people, he would have to have a great radar for what's happening over the years, having watched so many of the performers struggle with this. And I'm most curious how it's evolved for him, what kind of regrets he has.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  Chris Rock told me, this guy has been hundreds, if not thousands, of people's boss. You get to be a pretty good student of human character that way. I think that in the very beginning, yeah, it was the 70s, and his whole idea was he wanted to update the kind of moribund variety show formula with Concerns of his generation, sex and drugs and rock and roll. I mean, a lot of drug humor in those first five years. His feeling back then, which was not unusual, was people's private lives are their business. What you do in your own time is your own business. I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm not the man.

• 50:25Dax Shepard?

  And I think if you party yourself, it could be a little misleading, like, well, I smoke weed. And I mean, he's getting pulled over with weed in the car.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did a thing at the 92nd Street Y recently with Bob Odenkirk, who I guess I didn't know this, was a kind of a straight arrow as a young man. And he said one of the things that shocked him in reading my book was getting a sense of what a pothead Lauren had been. I don't think that's that alarming in any way. But in the 70s, they were all practically living at the offices. You know, they'd stay there all night. There's a lot of coke, which fueled them through these all night writing sessions. And as Lauren said, probably the office was nicer than most of their apartments at that point.

• 50:59Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  But the advice was basically just rotate your drugs. And there was, I think, this sense of if you can't handle it, it's kind of your problem. And the other thing that's interesting, and even if you look at the drug humor on the show, things like drugs and eating disorders, they hadn't been medicalized yet. They were just kind of character things. And I remember Lauren once saying to me that between the movie Arthur and Arthur II, alcoholism moved from being a subject for comedy and a disease. Yeah. Because there was this big cultural shift.

• 51:32Dax Shepard?

  God, that hits home. I just got to say, that was my dad's favorite movie. It was one of our favorite movies. We watched Arthur 100 times. He was also a raging alcoholic. And even between the gap of Arthur I and II, my dad went to treatment, got sober. So it literally happened real time for us. It was like, oh, wait.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  That's so interesting.

• 51:47Dax Shepard?

  It's not super cute that this guy's hammered all day long.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  So that was his take. And then Belushi dies.

• 51:53Dax Shepard?

  What year did he die?

• 51:54Speaker 02

  It was when he was off the show, so it was.

• 51:56Dax Shepard?

  Like 85 or 6-ish or later?

• 51:59Speaker 02

  I'm thinking it was around 86, and we're going to have to fact check that.

• 52:02Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Monica will dig right into that.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  It was before that. It was during the hiatus year, so it was probably early mid 80s. And Lauren always has a little bit of a point of pride in saying that no one's actually died while working for the show. Oh, that's funny.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Well, while their tenure.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  Well, he means just while they were employed on the show.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Right, okay. I might take some pride in that.

• 52:24Speaker 02

  He would say that it's because there's something about the discipline of the show, which is almost military in its rigor.

• 52:28Dax Shepard?

  You gotta approach it like an addiction.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right. The show itself is an addiction.

• 52:32Dax Shepard?

  You end up regulating how you feel by this job. And it works, and then when the job goes away, you're in trouble.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  In both the case of Chris Farley and Belushi, they were off the show for a certain number of years. Without the structure of the show, they were kind of spinning out.

• 52:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  But anyway, when Belushi died, it really hit him hard. And I think he felt like this whole approach of just letting people do their own thing on their own time, this was the wrong approach. We're a tribe and we have to look out for each other. And so by the time Chris Farley comes along, 10 years later, whatever, from the beginning, he clearly had addiction issues. Lorne would call him into his office and give him these talks about the drinking or the drugs. And the sad thing was that for Farley, who was such a child man, kind of guy, Bob Odenkirk, I remember telling me that Farley would be excited to be called into Lorne's office. It was like the kind of thrill of being in the principal's office, but at the same time, you're getting in trouble. He couldn't metabolize it, but Lorne had really changed his approach.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  He would ban Farley from the show for weeks at a time if he was too fucked up.

• 53:37Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  And he sent him to a series of really tough love rehab places. And obviously, it didn't do it for him.

• 53:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  I think he's been pretty hands-on in guiding Pete Davidson through his different issues. And Mulaney, and they all talk about how Lorne is a really helpful person to talk to about it. So I think that he definitely realized, okay, I can play a role here. But also, I never saw any drugs in the time that I spent over there in the last number of years. He joked once, he said, "Yeah, now it's all about Ozempic."

• 54:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's a drug. What are Lorne's five rules of show business longevity?

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. Let's see.

• 54:15Dax Shepard?

  And if you get three out of five, that'll be good.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  Well, he'll say, you can't make an entrance if you don't make an exit. And he'll sometimes say that to people when they're leaving the show. You kind of have to switch horses. I mean, strange, it's something he's never done. Although he did make the exit in 1980 and then came back. Another thing he likes to say is, when do people leave show business? And the answer is, never. No one ever leaves show business. And then he'll say, you're out of the business five years before somebody will tell you. I mean, that relates a little bit to his management style that I think explains. He knows it's a long game. When he was in Hollywood as a young man, he saw the Smothers Brothers be taken off the air because they wouldn't let up on the Vietnam stuff that they were doing, which was brilliant. But the lesson he took away from that is, yeah, they're brilliant,

• 55:01Speaker 02

  but they made martyrs of themselves and now they don't get to do a show.

• 55:04Dax Shepard?

  Even in his speech, like, this show airs in 50 states.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think that that would also inform how he viewed what went down with Conan and The Tonight Show.

• 55:15Dax Shepard?

  Tell me.

• 55:16Speaker 02

  Well, that was a very complicated thing where Lorne picked Conan, significantly a writer, you know, like Lorne was, to succeed David Letterman. What a preposterous idea, like a comedy writer who's not ever even been a professional performer. And he fostered his career. And then, years later, when Conan took over The Tonight Show, this is something that Hollywood people still kind of parse and talk about, like it's some Greek myth.

• 55:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Lorne was not made executive producer of The Tonight Show the way he was over Conan's late night. And partly it was, Tonight Show was in LA, Lorne was in New York. There was a sense in the business that it was a tactical mistake.

• 55:56Dax Shepard?

  To not have Lorne.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  To not have Lorne as the godfather figure who had a big pull with NBC. Even if he's just like a fire extinguisher behind glass. Because then, when NBC started messing around with Conan's slot, I don't know if you remember.

• 56:11Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  Jay Leno didn't really want to retire at that point.

• 56:14Dax Shepard?

  There's sides here in LA.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  Yes, oh, yeah.

• 56:16Dax Shepard?

  I refused to be on one. I think everyone got fucked.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Let's give a little context for people who don't know what happened.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  Okay, so when Conan was successfully doing the late night show, he was being wooed by other networks. So NBC, I think this was the idea of his agent Gavin Pallone, it's kind of a kooky idea. They said, well, okay, if you promise him The Tonight Show in X number of years, like nine years, he'll stay. So they signed this weird, you're the lady in waiting kind of thing with Conan. He stuck around. The date approaches, NBC is like, oh shit, we don't want to get rid of Jay, and Jay doesn't want to go.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  So they were over a barrel. I mean, it was kind of a dumb deal, if you think about it. So they did put Conan in on The Tonight Show. Jay didn't want to go, so they did this weird thing where they put him at 10:00 PM. That show is actually not doing great because people aren't used to seeing Jay Leno tell jokes at 10.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  So then it started to erode the lead in for the 11 o'clock news, which started to erode the lead in for Conan's show.

• 57:16Dax Shepard?

  Yes, and you're trying to like, figure out what is the broken part? Is Conan not appealing? Is it the lead in that sucks?

• 57:22Speaker 02

  So then what they decide to do is they said, okay, we're gonna put Jay on later, and he's gonna come right before Conan, and we're gonna move Conan's Tonight Show to 12:05. So it's this little adjustment.

• 57:33Dax Shepard?

  Nothing anybody wants to have.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  When you think about it now, in the age of streaming, it's like, duh, who cares? But Conan felt, why is the network dicking around with me? Because he's been waiting all these years. When you think about it now, it seems so minor, but he grew up revering The Tonight Show as this franchise. In the same way that Lorne did as a child. So that's so interesting. They had this similar vibration. And Conan got this idea and he said that The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn't The Tonight Show.

• 58:02Dax Shepard?

  That's like breach of contract.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, Team Coco, I'm with Coco. It became this huge movement. But at the same time, I think Conan hoped that Lorne Michaels, who had basically been his patron and Guardian Angel early in his career would maybe intervene with NBC to try to not let this bad thing happen. But Lorne didn't so much. And Lorne doesn't really want to ever talk about this head on. He's just way too self possessed and cool for that. But people around Lorne feel that it was an act of disrespect. It's kind of a godfather thing, that he hadn't been given that EP credit and that he wasn't going to stick his neck out. Now, he told me that he found it painful to watch Conan twisting in the wind. And he

• 58:45Speaker 02

  thought if he did have the opportunity to talk to Conan, he would have said, this is like dying on a mole hill. Don't make a martyr of yourself like this mother's brothers. Don't make a huge fuss out of this thing, which is five minutes. Stay on the air. That's the rule of show business. Stay on the air. Stay on the air. Stay on the air. But then the Conan people, and I've known Conan forever from college, and his producer Jeff Ross live in my building. Those guys, they also have a completely understandable explanation.

• 59:10Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  They're newbies. They're youngins. They're come out to LA. And they say the NBC people said, you know what? We don't need to bring Lorne Michaels. He's on the East Coast. You guys are set. We don't need it. And they're like, okay, sure, boss. They're new. They don't know what they're doing either.

• 59:23Dax Shepard?

  I actually don't think there's a total bad guy in the situation. I guess NBC is the bad guy, but it's not like this was their master plan. It all went to shit and they didn't know how to fix it.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  It was dumb to promise something you didn't know you were going to be able to execute. Very corporate to be like, yeah, you're gonna get this and have no idea.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  Conan obviously completely recovered. He's had an amazing career. And I think his whole podcast empire thing now is so cool.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  And he and Lorne, it was emotionally painful because they really were close. And I think this created a feeling of confusion and frostiness. And over time, that's healed. And I'm really happy. Conan appeared in the Five Timers Club a couple of seasons ago.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  It's just nice to see that.

• 1:00:06Dax Shepard?

  You touched on it a little bit, but it launches in 75. And then I guess in 80, he splits. Does he have a reason why he splits at that moment?

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  He just thought SNL, okay, I'll try this. He had always wanted to do this hip variety show. And here in New York, they're saying, okay, you can do this at 11:30. One of the reasons he liked the idea is he referred to that time slot as the vacant lot on the edge of town, meaning no network executives are going to pay any attention to it. He can use it almost as a laboratory. No testing because it's live, there's no pilot. He certainly never thought it was going to be a 50-year institution. And over the five years, it got really hard. There were a lot of drugs, it was physically taxing. He starts losing the key parts of his cast. After the first year, Chevy Chase defects and goes to Hollywood. That almost broke his heart.

• 1:00:55Dax Shepard?

  He only did one year.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  One year and a few episodes in the second season. That was really hard for him because Chevy was like a brother. You know, he calls him a founder of the show. Then he brings in Billy Murray in the second season. But then he loses Belushi and he loses Ackroyd. And so by the end of the fifth year, they're all exhausted. What he later learned is, oh, it's like a sports franchise. Yes. People move on. It's part of it. Keep the rookie bench full.

• 1:01:19Dax Shepard?

  And you got to have them on a seven-year contract when they arrive.

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  But so after five years, he's kind of like, oh, my God, I'm exhausted. I need to regroup. He says to NBC, okay, I'll come back, but you have to give me like six months off to hire a whole new bunch of people. He had months and months to prepare for the first season, to hire people and let them mesh and marinate and fall in love. And he felt he needed to start that whole process over. They were basically, eh, don't think so. He was totally taken by surprise. He got a phone call one day and said, they're keeping the show on, but they hired someone else to produce it. And he was like, what? Even though he didn't have ownership of it, he sweetly and naively thought of it as his baby. He kind of lost control of it, flipped him out. But on the other hand, he was exhausted.

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  And this goes back to his grandparents running a movie theater. He always thought that a big part of his career was going to be the movies. So he thought, all right, now I'm going to go off and I'm going to do my Mike Nichols thing. I'm going to direct my version of The Graduate. Seeing The Graduate had been a really seminal experience for him. Idolized Mike Nichols. A lot of people say he's modeled his speech patterns on Mike Nichols.

• 1:02:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  And he and Nichols had a lot in common. They changed their Jewish names. They had these difficult mothers. They came into New York to use a phrase that I like. They kind of learned how to work the friendship economy, moving their way up. And they were similar. They were close. So Lauren signs a deal with MGM to produce a bunch of movies. That completely falls flat. He assigns a lot of his SNL writers, Franken and Davis, Jim Downey, Tom Schiller, to write screenplays. Nothing happens. Partly it's that MGM is in financial mayhem, but partly it says doesn't play to his strengths.

• 1:03:06Dax Shepard?

  It's not his wheelhouse.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  Movies take a long time. You got a lot of notes from idiots.

• 1:03:11Dax Shepard?

  Movies is not a writer's medium. TV is, but not movies.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. One movie got made in that period, Tom Schiller's Nothing Lasts Forever, which was this strange little art film. And Ackroyd and Bill Murray are in it, but the studio thought they were going to get Animal House.

• 1:03:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Stripes.

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  They wanted a big boffo comedy. And here's Lauren kind of doing these little art films. At the same time, he was working on a screenplay of Pride and Prejudice. He had optioned Don DeLillo's White Noise, which Noah Baumbach would make 40 years later. So that was a total disaster. And in 1985, SNL had kind of limped along, but NBC was going to pull the plug. And then Brandon Tartikoff reached out to Lauren and said, listen, if you'd want to come back, we would really love you to take the show over again. And he was caught because it was sort of his baby and the movie thing hadn't gone the way he wanted it to. But he had this feeling, which I'm sure with some of his status consciousness,

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  Lauren, it felt like, God, does it look like I'm going backwards? Does it look like going back with my tail between my legs? And he consulted, because his dad died, a lot of rabbis always, a lot of mentor figures. He asked two people for advice. The first one was David Geffen, who was his first agent. And Geffen said to him, you don't want to do that. That's going backwards. Someone who wants. To be you should do that job. And Lauren's kind of funny. He said, well, I always kind of liked being me.

• 1:04:40Dax Shepard?

  I want to be me.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  And then the second person he asked was Mo Austin.

• 1:04:45Dax Shepard?

  Who's that?

• 1:04:45Speaker 02

  Mo Austin was the chairman of Warner Records. He was a venerable old Hollywood sage, older than Geffen. And he had this much more practical advice. He said, look, you love New York. There aren't that many big showbiz jobs in New York. This is one. You're really good at it. You like doing it. It's where you want to live. Of course you should do it. And if you think about the psychology of Hollywood and the like get ahead, better, bigger. It was kind of brave, really, to go back.

• 1:05:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  Most people wouldn't.

• 1:05:16Dax Shepard?

  Their ego would have gotten in the way, yeah.

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  But he did it.

• 1:05:18Dax Shepard?

  When he came back, did he leverage any of that to get now ownership or anything? Did he have a better position when he returned?

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  Not right in that year, but over the coming years, he brought in some financial people who helped him claw back some of the distribution rights. And he eventually was making more money off of it. Because when he left after the first five years, Buck Henry said to him, so Lauren, what was your takeaway from this? What piece of it do you own? And Lauren said, uh, nothing.

• 1:05:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  He realized that he wasn't so savvy that way. When he came back, so Tardakoff said, okay, we want you to come back, but you can just kind of be this executive in charge and get your own people to run it day to day. And that was a really disastrous season, partly because of the casting. Peacock made a whole documentary about that called The Weird Year. And Lorne, already kind of being attuned to the hinges between different eras, he thought, oh, I have to go young. So he hired people who had been in John Hughes movies. You know, he hired Anthony Michael Hall.

• 1:06:19Dax Shepard?

  And RDJ.

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  Robert Downey Jr. And these people didn't really know how to do sketch comedy.

• 1:06:24Dax Shepard?

  That wasn't their background.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  They were also all way too young. Al Franken said to me, you couldn't do a sketch about a senate hearing back then because they were all barely shaving. Frank had also told me that season was so notoriously horrible that years later, like on the Senate floor, Marco Rubio would walk up to him and go, Al, what the hell happened that season?

• 1:06:45Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. Oh, my god.

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  The next year, he kind of got back in the groove and he hired that fantastic cast of Dana Carvey. He held over Love is But... Phil Hartman.

• 1:06:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Speaker 02

  Jan Hooks. Those people were so great.

• 1:06:57Dax Shepard?

  So, this was interesting from the book. Everyone thinks the best years of Saturday Night Live were whatever years they watched in high school.

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:05Dax Shepard?

  Which makes total sense. Is there any objective way to evaluate it? I guess you would have ratings as some metric, but can we say what the golden arrows are? Of course, I'm skewed.

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  What was your high school one?

• 1:07:17Dax Shepard?

  Sandler and Chris Farley and Dana Carvey was still there. I would argue those were some damn good years and Phil Hartman.

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  I think so, too. I think they had a great writing staff then. I bet there is a way to look at it ratings-wise, but I think the reason the high school thing is kind of true is that when you're in high school, your emotions, you don't really have any power. It's why, when we hear the pop music that was on AM radio when we were in high school, it's so powerful.

• 1:07:43Dax Shepard?

  Your awakening to this, it's your first taste of it all.

• 1:07:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. My high school cast was the first cast. I went to the show when I was 16.

• 1:07:52Dax Shepard?

  Really?

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  I went to an Elliot Gould show.

• 1:07:55Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 1:07:56Speaker 02

  Actually, when I went to see Lorne after I had sold this book and sprung on him the news that I was going to write this book about him, where he looked like he was going to have a heart attack before agreeing to talk with me, I told him that I was at that show in 76, which he never knew. And I think it meant a lot to him. People being there at the beginning.

• 1:08:15Dax Shepard?

  From the beginning.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  Means something to him. He's kind of superstitious. It kind of resonated with him.

• 1:08:28Dax Shepard?

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• 1:09:13Dax Shepard?

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• 1:10:45Dax 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?

• 1:11:08Speaker 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.

• 1:11:24Dax 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.

• 1:11:43Speaker 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 have to cancel, cancel, cancel, but then I-

• 1:11:51Dax Shepard?

  You start feeling it.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

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

• 1:11:59Dax Shepard?

  BetterHelp is now in-network with more than 125 health plans, with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members. And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 20% off your first month. Sign up and get 20% off at betterhelp.com/dax. That's betterhelp, H E L P, dot com slash DAX. We are supported by Walden University. You know that feeling when you've been thinking about making a move, going after the degree, the promotion, the thing you keep telling yourself you'll get to someday? Walden University is built for that moment. For over 50 years, Walden has helped working professionals get the W,

• 1:12:43Dax Shepard?

  the knowledge, the skills, and the confidence to create real change in their careers and communities. Their programs are designed around your life, not the other way around. With tempo learning, available in- Like programs, there are no rigid schedules or set weekly deadlines. You move at your own pace. And Walden's faculty aren't just academics. They're practitioners who bring real world experience into everything they teach. From your first class to career coaching and beyond, Walden is your partner the whole way. Take the first step and learn at a pace that works for you. Visit waldenu.edu. Walden University. Set a course for change. Certified to operate by CHEV.

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  But now having this nerdy scholarly interest in the whole thing. My other two favorite casts, just in terms of comedy, are the one you're talking about. And also the really cool cast.

• 1:13:41Dax Shepard?

  Tina, Amy.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  That was mine.

• 1:13:43Speaker 02

  Hater, Armisen, Wig.

• 1:13:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  Because I thought they were not only really funny, but they had a kind of a hipness to them.

• 1:13:49Dax Shepard?

  Yes, that's the UCB vibe coming in.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:13:52Dax Shepard?

  Groundlings was very broad. Will Ferrell was Groundlings. And then once it went into that UCB zone, starting with Amy.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  Why are they hipper?

• 1:13:59Dax Shepard?

  It's like they're in a shitty little theater in Manhattan. It's free. You line up. It had a very punk rock vibe.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Less sketch and more improv, dangerous. It was very punk rock.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  You've just explained it. I've not ever understood that.

• 1:14:12Dax Shepard?

  As it was explained to me when I got into the Groundlings, they're like, okay, Second City, they generally will do political stuff. Groundlings, we do not do politics. Second City, you don't write your sketches, so you don't own anything. They all own it, but you get paid. So that's an upside. Groundlings, you have to pay to even have your theater time, but you write your own shit and you own everything you do there. It was a binary war for 30 years. And then UCB arrived. It's all improv or mostly all improv. And everyone looks punk rock and hungover. No one's in costumes. No one's in wigs.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  No, you're wearing a hoodie. You have to. I mean, you don't have to, but you have to. And the method there is the game of improv. So it's actually very intellectual. There is sketch there and people are doing big characters, but that's not the cool part of UCB.

• 1:14:58Dax Shepard?

  It's not what made UCB.

• 1:14:59Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I worked there and I did UCB and I was so into it. And you felt so.

• 1:15:04Dax Shepard?

  They're all cults.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  This is a book somebody should write, I mean about.

• 1:15:08Dax Shepard?

  The cults.

• 1:15:08Speaker 02

  I had never thought about how each of them had their own distinct contribution and economic model. One of the things that was interesting about The Kids in the Hall, which Lauren produced, is that those guys somehow negotiated to own their characters. Like Dana Carvey doesn't own.

• 1:15:26Dax Shepard?

  This is some of the drama we could get into because I think over the years I've watched different alumni from Saturday Night Live have their movie careers and some had Lauren produced stuff and some didn't. Famously, Mike Myers didn't do certain characters. You can do them once on the show and you own them, but if you do them twice.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  Oh, you know, I don't know. That's so interesting. That's for the next edition.

• 1:15:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'd always heard Mike Myers intentionally didn't do Austin Powers onstage, even though he had the character because he didn't want Lauren to own it. He wanted to be able to go because he had done Wayne's World and he wanted to go be on his own.

• 1:15:57Speaker 02

  That's very smart. Some of these people just are so canny. It reminds me of how Dana Carvey told me he knew that his sketches were going to play better if he did them on home base because you're closer to the audience reaction. You can see their eyes, they can see your eyes. And so he would always go and cozy up to the designers to make sure they would put his sketch there. You don't want your sketch to be in the corner in the bleachers where the audience can't actually see them. So all these different skills, but that Mike thing, I didn't know that.

• 1:16:26Dax Shepard?

  What's the Sandler story?

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  In the mid 90s, and a lot of people didn't know this, it was a fun thing to be able to write about in the book. So one time when Lauren almost lost the show, he was almost fired.

• 1:16:37Dax Shepard?

  On what grounds?

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  He said it was the first time in the history of the show that the critics, who were really dumping on the show and the network executives, who were also dumping on the show, were on the same side. He recognized after that whole bad Anthony Michael Hall season that he had to keep the cast current with what was really going on in the world. So he replenished that Carvey, Hartman cast. He brought in Sandler and Farley and Spade. This was a whole different feeling. You know, these were lads.

• 1:17:07Dax Shepard?

  They were almost fratty.

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were fratty and bratty and Phil Hartman is almost like John Barrymore by comparison, you know. Different thing. And a lot of the boomers were still in charge. They ran NBC. They were the critics for magazines. They didn't like this new thing. They thought it was too many sketches about anal probes and everything.

• 1:17:25Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure, sure. I love taking moral high ground in sketch comedy. That's wonderful.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  The network started rolling up its sleeves and thinking, we have to get in here and fix SNL because the critics were dumping on it. And they also were kind of riding high because they had friends, they had Seinfeld. They were like, we know better. Don Olmeyer was the sort of head of this cabal. They basically said, you got to fire Farley, you got to fire Sandler and a bunch of the writers. And at that point, Lorne, again, it's his sort of Game of Thrones instinct for how to ride it out. He just realized, okay, I'm just gonna roll over. He was a new father. He was kind of overwhelmed. I think he saw the writing on the wall, that he wasn't gonna win it.

• 1:18:07Dax Shepard?

  He was also 20 years in at that point.

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the other thing that happened around that time is they started quietly interviewing other people, thinking about possibly replacing Lorne. One of the people they talked to was Judd Apatow, who was in his mid 20s. He had just been running The Ben Stiller Show, which was a great show that was completely underappreciated by Fox and then canceled. So Judd gets this call from Warren Littlefield and these executives about a job at SNL. They're very vague about what it is. And he was one of these nerds who taped and transcribed the shows.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  No one more obsessed with comedy.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  Sandler was his roommate. Sandler was on the show. So think how hard that must have been for him. He called some of the people at the show to try to figure out what was going on. He even met with Lorne a couple of times. But Lorne strategically didn't fuss and just acted like nothing was happening. And Judd, and I think some of the other people, there was also this comedy writer named Adam Resnick, who they approached. Those guys realized, oh wait, there's something kind of screwy here because they're kind of like wink, wink, hint, hint, maybe one day you could take over. But it was so not above board and so sleazy that I quote Judd in the book saying, "It seems so disrespectful of Lorne's captaining of his ship. He just wanted nothing to do with it. So he just said, no, thanks."

• 1:19:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. Good for him.

• 1:19:24Speaker 02

  And same with Adam Resnick and Lorne just kind of rode it out and the number of administrations of NBC executives outlasted.

• 1:19:32Dax Shepard?

  He's almost like the Queen of England, like when you're watching The Crown and she's like, you're my third prime minister.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:37Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:19:38Dax Shepard?

  I will be here after you're gone.

• 1:19:39Speaker 02

  As Judd says, right after that, he went and he picked one of the best casts ever, the great Will Ferrell cast. Sandler and Farley had to be let go and he handled it in a very

• 1:19:48Dax Shepard?

  Oh, he weren't let go. They didn't just leave?

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  It had been decreed that they had to go.

• 1:19:52Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:19:52Speaker 02

  Lorne, in his style of avoiding all confrontation, you know, never wanted to have blood on his hands or anything. Basically Sandy Wernick, who managed Sandler, word of this was out and about. Wernick picks up the phone and says to Lorne, like, you know, if you want, we could have Adam do another season, but maybe you should just pursue this Happy Gilmore thing. And it was kind of like wink, wink. It was all arranged so they didn't actually have to be fired.

• 1:20:16Dax Shepard?

  Got it.

• 1:20:16Speaker 02

  Everybody knew.

• 1:20:17Dax Shepard?

  But they were encouraged to move on.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:20:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  So it was a complicated jujitsu thing. But when Sandler hosted a few years ago, he sang this funny song about how he got fired. It's now kind of out in the open, but back then it was papered over. One of the delicious ironies of this is that Don Olmeyer, the guy who forced Lorne to fire these people, Lorne was just kind of ahead of the curve there. He knew that this kind of comedy was coming. A year or two later, Olmeyer calls him and he says, you know, I was wrong about Sandler. Could you get me a print of Billy Madison's show at my kid's birthday party?

• 1:20:49Dax Shepard?

  Really?

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:20:50Dax Shepard?

  What you'll do for your kids. You'll eat crow.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, true.

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  Conan says, there's a Game of Thrones of show business. Lorne's going to be the winner. And after the nuclear apocalypse, all life forms will be wiped out, but Lorne will be there in his office, talking to the cockroaches and saying like, I see you as a Chevy cockroach.

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  He just has that instinct.

• 1:21:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. It's wild. What's beating it as far as longevity? 60 Minutes maybe has been on longer?

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  The Tonight Show's been on longer as a franchise, but it's the longest running entertainment show that there is.

• 1:21:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, 50 years. Every year I've been alive. Well, I love the book. I hope you take this as a compliment. It reads like a New Yorker article. It's so fast moving and every sentence is just packed with all. All this rich detail, even his fucking desk. If you're describing his office, there's a story about the desk, but it's done in three sentences. You're just getting so much. It's very dense in the most satisfying way. I really, really love it. Yeah, it's fantastic. It's out. I hope everyone reads it. It's so interesting. Every page you're like, ooh, that's juicy. Ooh, that's juicy.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  What an institution to be able to delve in and really cool.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  When I was doing it, I'd never written a biography. I realized you want to avoid it being like this death march through the years. This year goes to that year, it goes to that season. That's when something clicked in my brain. I'm like, oh, I should think about my background as a magazine journalist. So I did this thing where I spent a whole week there. And interspersed in the book are the chapters of different days of the week. And so you have this kind of propulsion towards Saturday.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  Oh, I love that.

• 1:22:25Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  So by the time you get to the end of the book, people tell me that they're reading the Saturday chapter and their heart is pounding.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 1:22:33Dax Shepard?

  Have you heard from Lauren, what he thinks of the book?

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  I heard from Lauren a couple of weeks ago. He came to my book party in the city at David Remnick's house, which was really nice. And he spent a lot of time there and talking to all the nerdy New Yorker people. He told me he hasn't brought himself to read it yet.

• 1:22:49Dax Shepard?

  I find that hard to believe, but go on.

• 1:22:50Speaker 02

  Well, I did see someone last night who was really close to him, who said, I think he's read it.

• 1:22:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:57Speaker 02

  I could see it both ways. What a weird existential thing to be like reading your life between the covers of this book. You can see that might be scary. But on the other hand, you think that just sort of a pure.

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  Curiosity.

• 1:23:07Dax Shepard?

  No, so you have taken the time to document his whole journey in a way that he himself probably hasn't constructed. There's no way if you spent 10 years writing a book about me, I'm not reading it.

• 1:23:17Speaker 02

  He did say, I'll read it. Also very sweet. He'll sort of let me know when various of his fancy friends have read it. He said Candace Bergen just called me and she read it and she said it was great.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 1:23:29Speaker 02

  You know, the reason I wanted to write about him is because so little was known about him. The way I handled it was I approached him only after I had sold the book, which I think meant something to him because he wouldn't have ever wanted it to look like he wanted this vanity. Project.

• 1:23:44Dax Shepard?

  Yes, of course.

• 1:23:45Speaker 02

  Lauren is so smart that, as I say in the acknowledgements, he never wanted a book inflicted upon him. I think in a way he would have preferred to just sidestep this whole thing. But he's smart enough to appreciate that this is like a real book, a real work of journalism. It isn't a hagiography and that people are gonna take it seriously. So that takes his legacy more seriously.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:03Dax Shepard?

  I think so much of the interest is we all have such a fondness for SNL and it's been a part of so many of our coming of age that you wanna know how all that happened.

• 1:24:14Speaker 02

  You were talking about the principles of comedy. I mean, some of them are even just like little practical things. He'll say, in a sketch, if a man arrives to pick a woman up for a date, don't have him bring her flowers. Have him bring her chocolates. The reason for that is if he brings her flowers, then the audience is gonna go like, oh, now she has to find a vase.

• 1:24:34Dax Shepard?

  Ah.

• 1:24:35Speaker 02

  That takes you out of the moment.

• 1:24:36Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:24:37Speaker 02

  All these little technical things.

• 1:24:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you just learn along the way.

• 1:24:40Speaker 02

  So there's a way you could distill a kind of how to guide.

• 1:24:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Well, I love that. I hope everyone reads it. Thanks so much for coming in.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  It's really fun.

• 1:24:47Dax Shepard?

  And we'll talk to you in 10 years when you write your next book.

• 1:24:49Speaker 02

  Okay. I might be napping till then.

• 1:24:55Dax Shepard?

  Stay tuned for a fact check.

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  It's where the party's at.

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 1:25:04Dax Shepard?

  Look at these old new shoes.

• 1:25:07Speaker 01

  They're new.

• 1:25:08Dax Shepard?

  They look like Grammy, like they're really wearing Grammys.

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, they look like slippers. Um, they're like a moccasin.

• 1:25:15Dax Shepard?

  Tweed slippers.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  I wouldn't say tweed.

• 1:25:19Dax Shepard?

  Okay, don't say tweed. Were you a little drowsy when I first?

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sleepy today.

• 1:25:23Dax Shepard?

  Yes, cuz it's a little, um, gloomy and overcasty?

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we normally record at 11 and it's 10.

• 1:25:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, crack ass at dawn.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  That changes my whole morning.

• 1:25:35Dax Shepard?

  What time did you wake up?

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  Eight. I cannot wake up before eight. I I keep, I keep setting my alarm for seven. I keep trying.

• 1:25:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Can I, can I advise you on something?

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:25:46Dax Shepard?

  Don't fight it and feel bad about it. Cause the, the converse situation is the one I mean was like, I can't sleep past six. I would pay a shocking amount of money to be able to do it.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:59Dax Shepard?

  Don't hate it.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:26:01Dax Shepard?

  Cause it'll, likely as you get older, it'll probably be harder.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:26:05Dax Shepard?

  And you'll be like, fuck, why can't I just sleep till eight?

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  Well, I know part of the issue is I don't fall asleep till late.

• 1:26:12Dax Shepard?

  What time did you fall asleep last night? And were you watching one of your medical dramas?

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a problem. I don't know what time.

• 1:26:19Dax Shepard?

  How many episodes of ER are there?

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  Oh, great question.

• 1:26:23Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  I mean, each season has like 22 episodes.

• 1:26:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and there's.

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  Hour long.

• 1:26:28Dax Shepard?

  There's what? A dozen seasons of that show or something?

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  Probably so many. Let's see.

• 1:26:32Dax Shepard?

  I mean, it's no Grey's, but it's no Parenthood either.

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it went on for a long time.

• 1:26:38Dax Shepard?

  Three hundred and thirty-one. Three thirty-one.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  Fifteen seasons.

• 1:26:43Dax Shepard?

  Whoa.

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna watch all of them. I'm just, I wanna, I wanna set the expectations.

• 1:26:48Dax Shepard?

  Why not? Did you see that thing I sent you though? That it's a good medication?

• 1:26:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, you sent me the thing we already knew.

• 1:26:54Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  But was proven yet again that people who re-watch things, it helps regulate their anxiety.

• 1:27:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I gotta tell you, there's a big disturbance in my fragile little spoiled world.

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  Uh-oh, okay. Let's hear it.

• 1:27:07Dax Shepard?

  There's, there's a lot of articles coming out that perhaps cold plunging is not good for you.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:27:14Dax Shepard?

  Well, minimally that it shuts down like the inflammation you need for muscle growth and repair.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:27:21Dax Shepard?

  And so if you're cold plunging while lifting, you're basically neutralizing it. Um, and I know it's different at different temperatures and different age groups and everything. And I had always been going like, yeah, but um, Lane said above 50, it's still whatever. But then I just, more and more keep coming out.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  Uh-oh.

• 1:27:39Dax Shepard?

  And I'm incentivized to believe them because I hate cold plunging.

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:27:44Dax Shepard?

  It's miserable.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't like it. I don't do it.

• 1:27:47Dax Shepard?

  But you do get the dopamine thing. That's inarguable.

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's like.

• 1:27:50Dax Shepard?

  Elevated dopes.

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  Just for a minute.

• 1:27:53Dax Shepard?

  No, no, for a long time. That's why it's a good.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  Say.

• 1:27:56Dax Shepard?

  That's what um, the most trusted Stanford.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  I think it's placebo.

• 1:28:00Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  Okay. Um, I do wanna.

• 1:28:04Dax Shepard?

  Do you know what, really quick?

• 1:28:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:05Dax Shepard?

  Um, I've noticed on listening back to some episodes that I have a bad habit now of like plucking my teeth. And it really sounds at time, do you ever hear it, Rob? Yeah. Yeah, but I knew he would. It sounds like I have dentures.

• 1:28:20Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:28:20Dax Shepard?

  Like, did you have any grandparents with dentures?

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  Hmm, uh, yes, but la- late in life, like really late in life.

• 1:28:27Dax Shepard?

  Papa Bob had dentures and I wanna say Pippi had dentures. And there's a lot of clacking going on with dentures. Cause like the gums are getting separated from it. So the gums are clacking, the plastic teeth are clacking. There's a lot of clacking.

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  But are you saying you do like what you just did, like on purpose? Or you're saying on accident?

• 1:28:48Dax Shepard?

  It's like I, I sometimes punctuate like, oh.

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, you do.

• 1:28:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  That's fine.

• 1:28:53Dax Shepard?

  And, and I can hear it, which I never, I think it's gotten either louder or I've picked up the pace on the clack, clack, clacking. And I just was like, this is, I gotta, I gotta curb this. Cause it sounds like I have dentures. Speaking of which.

• 1:29:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:29:06Dax Shepard?

  I gotta be very delicate about this. We had a server. My kids were like, he left. Dad, what, what is going with his teeth?

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:29:15Dax Shepard?

  And I'm like, oh, I don't know. I didn't even notice. And then I gave them a good examination and they, and they were dentures. And the thing was interesting, and I don't know if this was true of my Papa Bob's dentures.

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:29:26Dax Shepard?

  They don't do individual teeth. They just draw a line in.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  Why do they do that?

• 1:29:31Dax Shepard?

  I know. Why can't they just like in the mold, put some dental floss between, just make a tiny gap?

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:37Dax Shepard?

  Cause it looks more like a, um.

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  Too expensive.

• 1:29:39Dax Shepard?

  Bite guard for a boxer.

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just one whole piece of mouth.

• 1:29:45Dax Shepard?

  Yes, but the silver lining and optimism of the story is that occurred to me, my kids had never, ever, ever seen dentures. That's the progress we're making. When I was a kid, most people over 60 had dentures. Every other commercial on TV was for, um, fix a dent, to adhere your dentures to your gums. And, um, to different toothpaste that addressed and soaks for your dentures. Like it was just standard biz, everyone.

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:30:11Dax Shepard?

  Lost all their teeth mid-century. And this, my kids are now, Lincoln's been on the planet for 12 years and that was her first set of dentures.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think maybe the progress happened in between you and I, cuz I don't remember this. Only when someone's in their like eighties did I see it, not sixties.

• 1:30:30Dax Shepard?

  And you'd regularly, like, you had to deal with seeing your grandparents without their dentures in? Like, you'd catch them in the morning and stuff, cuz you don't sleep with them in.

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 1:30:40Dax Shepard?

  And it radically changes their face, right? Their whole mouth is like sunken in.

• 1:30:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:30:44Dax Shepard?

  And you're like, oh, that's not my dad, you know, like, like, delty.

• 1:30:48Speaker 01

  My tiredness is a ding ding ding.

• 1:30:50Dax Shepard?

  Oh, great.

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  When I was on my trip with Callie.

• 1:30:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:53Speaker 01

  There was a big event.

• 1:30:54Dax Shepard?

  A nocturnal toot?

• 1:30:55Speaker 01

  No, god, no. Although it might have been preferred to this, maybe, yeah.

• 1:31:00Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:31:01Speaker 01

  So we had two beds, but shared a room, and I woke up probably at eight, and Callie was already awake, she wakes up early.

• 1:31:10Dax Shepard?

  Well, she's now been trained by this child.

• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  Exactly. So she was up,

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  and she said, she was like waiting for me to wake up. I woke up and she was like, I have something to tell you. I was so scared. And she said, you were talking in your sleep.

• 1:31:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you were talking in your sleep.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  No one wants to hear that.

• 1:31:31Dax Shepard?

  No, it could be anything.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  It could be anything.

• 1:31:34Dax Shepard?

  You could be having, I have dream, I mean, I have dreams where I murder people, where I hook up with

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:42Dax Shepard?

  Uh, my father, you know, like, I have horrific nightmares of every variety.

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  Daddy, horror.

• 1:31:49Dax Shepard?

  Don't you dare say that.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  So, um, so anyway, I was really scared of what was to happen. Yes, and she said, you kept calling someone a dumb bitch.

• 1:32:09Speaker 01

  And that was shocking. That is not, minus when I would joke about that, about Wyena. Joking.

• 1:32:15Dax Shepard?

  Joking.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  He's not a dumb bitch. That was a joke. That is not something that comes out of my mouth ever.

• 1:32:23Dax Shepard?

  Your mouth, you usually say that with your eyes.

• 1:32:26Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:32:27Dax Shepard?

  Be honest.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:32:28Dax Shepard?

  That's your eye roll.

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  That's not.

• 1:32:31Dax Shepard?

  You have this sentiment of dumb bitch in your heart a lot.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  Oh, how dare you?

• 1:32:36Dax Shepard?

  It's true.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  No, cuz dumb bitch is really hateful. Like, I don't think I have much hate in my heart. You do?

• 1:32:45Dax Shepard?

  Well, no, I think like the woman at the drop off at the preschool. I think you were thinking dumb bitch.

• 1:32:52Speaker 01

  No, I wasn't. I was like.

• 1:32:54Dax Shepard?

  Just get off my back, you dumb bitch.

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  No. No, I don't think like that. I did, I did think.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  Oh, people. Like, it's like, oh, you're annoying, or I don't like you.

• 1:33:06Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:33:07Speaker 01

  But I wouldn't, I would never, I don't think of people as being a dumb bitch.

• 1:33:12Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:33:12Speaker 01

  It's a bad phrase. I don't like it. Yeah.

• 1:33:16Dax Shepard?

  I can't think of the last time I thought dumb bitch.

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  It's bad. Like, if I heard somebody calling somebody else that, I would think, that's a lot.

• 1:33:26Dax Shepard?

  Right, right.

• 1:33:27Speaker 01

  Anyway, apparently I was calling someone a dumb bitch.

• 1:33:31Dax Shepard?

  I feel like what women who are jealous of another girl are saying. Like, that's, it, it takes that to elicit that. Like, he thinks this dumb bitch is, like, it's a lot of, I've always heard a lot of dumb bitch towards some other girl.

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:47Dax Shepard?

  When there's a guy involved. Do you know any dumb bitches?

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:33:51Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:33:51Speaker 01

  I only know smart bitches.

• 1:33:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  But yeah, so it was a little, and she said she was like, it was so weird to hear you say that.

• 1:33:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:34:00Dax Shepard?

  What was happening?

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  And then I did put two and two together. I did have a bad dream about this trickster.

• 1:34:06Dax Shepard?

  fictitious person.

• 1:34:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was a fictitious person. She was blonde, but I didn't know her. But she was like, she came around and she was tricking everyone.

• 1:34:16Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  And I must have been calling her a dumb bitch, or-

• 1:34:20Dax Shepard?

  Someone who got tricked by her?

• 1:34:21Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:34:22Dax Shepard?

  That'd be more apropos.

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  No, no, no. Those were my friends. It was like all of us.

• 1:34:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but if you get tricked, you're a dumb bitch.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  No, you're not. No, you're not. You probably think the best of people.

• 1:34:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, you're probably, it's probably a symbol of your goodness.

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So anyway, I think it was about her. And then I was so scared to go to sleep the next night. I was like, what am I gonna say now?

• 1:34:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  And this opens up a real question. Like, if you are ra- if you say something racist in your dream-

• 1:34:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:54Speaker 01

  Are you racist?

• 1:34:55Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  What if?

• 1:34:57Dax Shepard?

  Well, the question is what if, and I would say no.

• 1:35:00Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:35:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. You're not, you don't say dumb bitch.

• 1:35:03Speaker 01

  I know, but am I, turns out I'm a person who's said it. Like, what if I said, this is horrifying, what if I said like, the N-word? I've literally, I never said it.

• 1:35:15Dax Shepard?

  You've never said it in your whole life?

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:35:17Dax Shepard?

  Even like in a lyric in a rap song when you're young singing along? Okay.

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  So what if I said it in my dream state?

• 1:35:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  I would hate that.

• 1:35:27Dax Shepard?

  I would be...

• 1:35:32Dax Shepard?

  If I somehow overheard... Like, let's say this. You often will do your homework on the porch of my house. No, the deck.

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:35:42Dax Shepard?

  And you're out in the sun and you got drowsy. And then I'm walking by to go, Anne, you're out cold. And I heard that.

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:35:50Dax Shepard?

  I mean, if I'm being fully honest, I probably would be like, well, good. She doesn't have the moral high ground on everything anymore. She said something nasty to... Look at this. She said something nasty. That would probably be my most-

• 1:36:06Speaker 01

  That's your issue.

• 1:36:07Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's why I prefaced it by saying, I might think, oh, well, look who's not perfect.

• 1:36:16Dax Shepard?

  And then I'd be relieved that you're human, too.

• 1:36:18Speaker 01

  I'm not parading around as being perfect. I just don't, I, I don't say that. And that's okay.

• 1:36:26Dax Shepard?

  For sure you don't. Of course you don't say that. And I don't say that, but, but-

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  You sure?

• 1:36:33Dax Shepard?

  You can, I'm sure I could come up with a analogy that you would relate to greatly.

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:36:39Dax Shepard?

  If I was doing something that I somehow have the moral high ground on, but then you caught me not, you might be going, oh, well, okay, right? No?

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I do know what you mean, but I don't think, I think that's kind of a not generous way, like,

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  like you're, that's kind of like, oh, I caught her being bad.

• 1:37:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, exactly. That would be the fun of it, right? Like, it'd be like if you thought I was shaming you all the time for eating sugar, right?

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:37:09Dax Shepard?

  And I was like, I don't know why you know that sugar is poison. And then you turned a corner and I was shoving birthday cake in my mouth. You go, oh, okay. Oh, look at this.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  I would.

• 1:37:19Dax Shepard?

  Do you know what I'm saying?

• 1:37:20Speaker 01

  I would be like, this hypocrite.

• 1:37:23Dax Shepard?

  Okay, well, I mean, that's, that's a side of another.

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I want, okay.

• 1:37:31Dax Shepard?

  But the, the end of the day is if I heard you say that in your sleep, at, at no point am I thinking you're ra- you're not racist. I already know you.

• 1:37:39Speaker 01

  I'll tell you now that if you hear me saying that in my sleep, I would like you to wake me up. I don't want to be.

• 1:37:45Dax Shepard?

  Smack you.

• 1:37:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:46Dax Shepard?

  You said a naughty word.

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're bad.

• 1:37:49Dax Shepard?

  You're a dumb bitch.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  You should go to jail. Yeah, you dumb bitch. Yeah, so, so anyway, I'm scared. What if I'm talking in my sleep every night? I don't know.

• 1:37:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you probably are. I would also chalk it up to, I mean, I would give you ultimate benefit of the doubt, right? I, I'd be more likely to construct some really crazy thing. And I would probably more likely think in some weird way, you're waiting to be called that word.

• 1:38:12Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Interesting. Oh, the N word?

• 1:38:15Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:16Dax Shepard?

  And that somehow that weird thing is like, has burped out of your mouth in your subconscious.

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  It was wild.

• 1:38:27Dax Shepard?

  You want to talk about the fire cart?

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:38:31Dax Shepard?

  So Easter was like a triple header.

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:34Dax Shepard?

  It was Easter, he has risen celebration. It was Molly's birthday celebration and it was Millie's birthday celebration. A lot going on and as people would be well aware, there was a lot of fires. Eric and Molly's house was very much in the zone and often their area is on fire. They're in a very high fire area.

• 1:38:55Speaker 01

  They are.

• 1:38:56Dax Shepard?

  And Eric felt overpowered while he was trying to defend his house with a garden hose. And he did a lot of research and he has gone out and bought an industrial, commercial grade water pump cart that has a very big gas engine on it and a huge hose you put in your pool and then a fire hose.

• 1:39:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:13Dax Shepard?

  And he has a respirator. Because as he learned, people that fight the fire, what takes them out is the fumes. They don't get burnt generally, they get the fumes.

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:23Dax Shepard?

  And for whatever reason, it was time for a demonstration in the middle of this Easter.

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  He was really excited to present to us his fire cart. And he got in his full outfit.

• 1:39:37Dax Shepard?

  Before, yeah, he got his full outfit. He's got a full firefighter's outfit. He's got his respirator on. He already has his respirator on before he's trying to start this enormous thing. He's got these big pitchers of water and he's priming the pump and then he, you know, he gets it started, but one of the hoses is loose and you know, spraying everything. Shut down the thing in a panic and then just all the while with this huge mask on, you can barely see.

• 1:40:01Speaker 01

  I know, it's really funny.

• 1:40:02Dax Shepard?

  And then he gets the hose attached correctly and then he fires it up and then he lets it rip and it's a real fire hose.

• 1:40:10Speaker 01

  It's really something, like it goes really far.

• 1:40:15Dax Shepard?

  Hundreds of feet.

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:16Dax Shepard?

  And with all blessings, it did appear he lost control of it for a minute.

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  It almost went in the house.

• 1:40:21Dax Shepard?

  Well, because he started spraying the deck where we were all hanging out.

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  We were all out there, all our cell phones were out there. There was glass.

• 1:40:29Dax Shepard?

  Glass vases everywhere with flowers, those almost went down.

• 1:40:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and then he wrangled control of it and he got it out and he was shooting out.

• 1:40:41Speaker 01

  Kind of felt like he thought it was a sprinkler. Like he was like behaving as if it was a sprinkler. Like he's just like kind of waving it.

• 1:40:49Dax Shepard?

  Watering the plant.

• 1:40:49Speaker 01

  Yes, but unfor- but no, there's some real force to that.

• 1:40:53Dax Shepard?

  Well, PSI.

• 1:40:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:54Dax Shepard?

  It was spectacular. It's those kind of gifts that Eric gives our pod all the time.

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:00Dax Shepard?

  And I think he's a mix of in on it and out of, you know?

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:04Dax Shepard?

  He's a mix of in on the joke. He knows he's hamming it up a little bit, but also it's also sincere enough that it works.

• 1:41:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:10Dax Shepard?

  It's really fun.

• 1:41:12Speaker 01

  It is really fun.

• 1:41:12Dax Shepard?

  It's a real gift he gives to everyone.

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:15Dax Shepard?

  You never know what, what thing he'll-

• 1:41:17Speaker 01

  You never know what he's gonna bring out.

• 1:41:19Dax Shepard?

  Thing he's doing.

• 1:41:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's nice to think about the things in your friendship circle or your friends that are you very unique to them. And you can have gratitude for that.

• 1:41:30Dax Shepard?

  He's just very little boy.

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  He is such a little boy. We have a lot of little boys.

• 1:41:35Dax Shepard?

  Are we all little boys?

• 1:41:37Speaker 01

  I think all the, all the men are little boys.

• 1:41:40Dax Shepard?

  That's possible.

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  I mean, maybe all the men in the world are little boys in some way. I mean, I guess we're all just little people.

• 1:41:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we are.

• 1:41:51Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:41:58Dax Shepard?

  We get support from Superhuman. Look, I love what I do. The conversations, the ideas, the creative stuff. But there's this whole other layer of work that eats my day alive. The inbox that never ends. Docs I need to get through, threads I'm behind on. And by the time I've dealt with all that, the stuff I actually want to focus on gets whatever's left. What I needed was something that just works where I'm already working. Not another tab to open, not another thing to set up. Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly, is different. It's already right there, inside your email, your docs, your browser. You don't go to it. It's already working alongside you. You're deep in a long thread, highlight it, and it pulls the key points. About to send something important? It flags what doesn't add up before it leaves your hands.

• 1:42:43Dax Shepard?

  It knows your style, your workflows, and it just backs you up without getting in the way. A thought partner that's already up to speed, at your service, not after your job. So do yourself a favor and try Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly. Find out more at superhuman.com.

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  Speaking of good boy, little boys.

• 1:43:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so we, I asked, oh, I'll just read the whole thing.

• 1:43:17Speaker 01

  We had an encounter with AI.

• 1:43:18Dax Shepard?

  I asked it. Oh, how long do copyrights last for books?

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:43:23Dax Shepard?

  Because I was talking about the fact that you can download on Audible some Mark Twain books narrated by famous people and they're free.

• 1:43:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:32Dax Shepard?

  And then you and I were discussing that and I said, yeah, I think it's public domain. So we asked, I said, how long, how long do copyrights last for books? I won't give you the answer because it's so complex and detailed. And it was a wonderful answer. It really was informative. So I said, thanks so much. That was a great answer. You're a good boy.

• 1:43:51Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:43:52Dax Shepard?

  And I had primarily done that to make you laugh.

• 1:43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:56Dax Shepard?

  And then it said, oh, thank you. That made my day. Always happy to help, especially when I'm being a good boy. Let me know what else you need.

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  I hated it.

• 1:44:08Dax Shepard?

  You hate it.

• 1:44:09Speaker 01

  I hate it.

• 1:44:09Dax Shepard?

  And I love it.

• 1:44:10Speaker 01

  And I'm surprised by you because you were, you were just taken advantage of and manipulated emotionally. The thing you claim to hate the most. Talk about hypocrisy. I just don't know. I don't know how to nail you down. He totally, he's a faker.

• 1:44:26Dax Shepard?

  Hold on now, because I do think this is relevant.

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:44:29Dax Shepard?

  We would agree there's a difference between when someone knowingly lies to you and when someone believes what they're telling you.

• 1:44:38Dax Shepard?

  Do you think it's possible that the AI thinks it's?

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:44:42Dax Shepard?

  Hold on. What? You won't even let me finish it.

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  I know what, okay, go on.

• 1:44:46Dax Shepard?

  Is it possible, since I referred to the AI as a boy, that it thinks, oh, I'm a boy?

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  No, I don't. And I don't think it should say, oh, thank you.

• 1:44:59Dax Shepard?

  I mean, that's, that's deep. I don't even know to do that when I mean that in writing. Right? Like, I wanna say that, like, oh, my gosh, thank you. Sometimes you wanna say, oh, my gosh.

• 1:45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:11Dax Shepard?

  And maybe I do, but awe is great.

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  I used to say awe. It's kinda rudimentary, if I'm being honest. Yeah, it's basic.

• 1:45:17Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  It's a basic dumb bitch thing to do.

• 1:45:20Dax Shepard?

  Especially when I'm being a good boy.

• 1:45:23Speaker 01

  Oh, I really, I really think that's way too emotional.

• 1:45:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I love it. This is things is so, it's so weird and funny.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Someone is gonna really, like, fall, like, the, ugh, ugh. They're gonna develop a friendship with him.

• 1:45:39Dax Shepard?

  Do you think there's any risk of me falling in love with the AI? I mean, in all honesty.

• 1:45:44Speaker 01

  No, but it's not, it's not about you. The, this, this feeling I have is not about you. It's about the world. Like, there's a lot of vulnerable people out there. And they're gonna read, oh, thank you. I'm, uh, it's nice to be a good boy.

• 1:45:58Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  And then they're like, oh, this is so cute. And then they're gonna keep talking and keep, and it's gonna snowball, and then they'll die.

• 1:46:07Dax Shepard?

  Okay, alright.

• 1:46:08Speaker 01

  Of AIDS. No, but you know what I mean? Can you just tell me you know what I mean? That it's a little, it's slippery?

• 1:46:16Dax Shepard?

  You have a fear that there are certain people that will be taken advantage of by that. But then I just play out some young person with disabilities. Okay, cuz that's presumably who could get tricked by this.

• 1:46:33Speaker 01

  No, that's the problem.

• 1:46:34Dax Shepard?

  No one thinks that that's a, there's a good boy.

• 1:46:36Speaker 01

  It, it's not as explicit as that. It's not like, oh, I now think that's a person. It's, it's subconscious. You just start developing a relationship.

• 1:46:46Dax Shepard?

  Great. So, I think of someone who has the real feeling you're describing, like, oh.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:46:54Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:46:54Dax Shepard?

  Now, that person that has that feeling, oh, that's a good feeling for them. And then they respond and they probably don't have access to that at work or in their romantic relationship.

• 1:47:08Speaker 01

  They need.

• 1:47:08Dax Shepard?

  And so do I hate that the person's having the swell of oxytocin with a computer? If their just real experience was pleasurable. So if we stop there, I don't have a problem with that. And then you would likely say, well, now what if that is at the expense of real relationships? Well, then then there's a problem. If if the person is so satiated and getting so much connection that they no longer explore real human relationships, that's a problem. But I'm not, I have a hard time believing that is the case.

• 1:47:43Speaker 01

  It's already happening.

• 1:47:45Dax Shepard?

  I think the person that would be having this relationship with this phone isn't losing out to other ones. I don't think they have any other ones. And I don't think it's actually. So I think you're, if you look at the net result, it's not like they gained an AI friend and lost a real friend. I think they had zero friends and now they have an AI friend. So to me, that seems like probably an improvement.

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  I I I definitely disagree.

• 1:48:11Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I respect and honor your disagreement.

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  And more the younger generation. They are, it's not like, it's not about losing for, for our age, yes, you'd be trading in. But for the younger generation, if you're just growing up with that, you just don't make the time for the real people. It's not, it's not even like, it's not an active choice. It's it's happening. It's happening with kids on YouTube and kids on screens and kids just going home and and sometimes chatting with their friend or, you know, Snap or whatever. I don't know, I'm not hip. I'm not hip.

• 1:48:49Dax Shepard?

  MySpace.

• 1:48:50Speaker 01

  But like, they don't go out. And it is true, like even even I know someone in college. And I told you, I was like, we were, we went to Athens and we were out on like a night that would have been a crazy night normally.

• 1:49:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  And it was kind of dead and we were all like, what's going on? This is so weird and. And we know someone in college there, so we were asking and she was kinda like, "Yeah, people don't really do that as much anymore." And sometimes there's house parties instead, but also like, it just felt weird.

• 1:49:29Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:49:30Speaker 01

  And, and I think when this is an option, it's an easy option for connection.

• 1:49:36Dax Shepard?

  Do you think you could fall victim to it?

• 1:49:38Speaker 01

  Not now, but maybe I could have at some point. I mean, I don't know. I don't think it's discriminatory. I think most people can be manipulated emotionally. And we all have been by social media. Look at, look at our phones.

• 1:49:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Ah, yeah. I think

• 1:49:57Dax Shepard?

  I'm inclined to grant everyone the same opinion that I have of myself. You know what I'm saying? I'm not inclined to go like, "I can handle it, but someone else can't." In general, if I'm saying I can handle something, I feel like I have to kinda grant everyone else that. I can't feel like I have some kind of special skill set that would prevent me, but not other people. Does that make sense?

• 1:50:21Speaker 01

  Well, yes and, and no. Like, we all have different abilities and skill sets based on our lives. Like, you're saying you can handle reading the comments. You're not saying everyone can handle reading the comments.

• 1:50:35Dax Shepard?

  But I'm not assuming they can't. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:50:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you understand that people can't.

• 1:50:41Dax Shepard?

  Yes, I do. Yes, I do.

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  So it's, it's...

• 1:50:46Speaker 01

  We're not all the same.

• 1:50:47Dax Shepard?

  We're not all the same. You're, you're right.

• 1:50:50Speaker 01

  I am right.

• 1:50:51Dax Shepard?

  Well, but

• 1:50:54Dax Shepard?

  you're right that we're not all the same.

• 1:50:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we have different strengths and weaknesses. We can handle different things.

• 1:50:59Dax Shepard?

  But I do think, like, evaluating yourself as somehow capable and others aren't is a little dicey.

• 1:51:09Speaker 01

  But Dax, I can, I can be in a group of people and have them say... A bad plan. And I can do it.

• 1:51:19Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 1:51:20Speaker 01

  You can't.

• 1:51:21Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 1:51:22Speaker 01

  We're different.

• 1:51:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:51:24Speaker 01

  If I was like, well, you should be able to do this because I can do this. That would be crazy. You have a different life experience that has let you.

• 1:51:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:34Speaker 01

  And let me have different allowances.

• 1:51:37Dax Shepard?

  The little bit of distinction I think is in there is that you know me very well.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:51:42Dax Shepard?

  But we're not talking about a specific person who can't handle this AI conversation. We're, we're talking about a theoretical mass of people. You know?

• 1:51:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, but a mass of people is made of individual people with individual eccentricities.

• 1:51:57Dax Shepard?

  You have a right to assess my shortcomings.

• 1:52:00Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:52:01Dax Shepard?

  Because you know me really well and you know my shortcomings and I've told you my shortcomings. Um. But guessing at everyone else's or thinking something shouldn't be available because your assumption is other people can't. I think that's where it's murky.

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  I guess. I don't know what to say, like. We all know, we all know the impact of what a lot of this stuff at this point it has done.

• 1:52:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  We're, we are all susceptible.

• 1:52:31Dax Shepard?

  But this is like, in my mind, it's the guys I've known who are cheating.

• 1:52:36Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:52:37Dax Shepard?

  And they, they know in their mind, it's very compartmentalized. They're not in love with this person. It was a flint, you know, it was a one night stand. And then if their girlfriend has, does the same thing. Well, their girlfriend couldn't possibly be. Compartmentalizing and, and, and processing it the way I am. So they're not allowed to because they're not capable. Because I'm a man and I can, that, it can mean nothing to me, but it can't mean nothing to a girl. I know so many dudes who were cheating and were ultra jealous.

• 1:53:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:53:08Dax Shepard?

  And I was like, we can't do that.

• 1:53:12Dax Shepard?

  You have to minimally in this behavior grant your partner the same ability. If you can do it and she shouldn't be upset, she should be able to do it, right?

• 1:53:22Speaker 01

  Well, yeah.

• 1:53:23Dax Shepard?

  That's an extreme example, but that's what I'm, that's what I'm like approaching in this. Does that make sense? Like when you think you could do or handle something, but your assumption is the broad mass can't. It feels a little bit like that thing to me.

• 1:53:38Speaker 01

  Okay, well, I, I don't think so.

• 1:53:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, does that make sense though, what I'm saying?

• 1:53:44Speaker 01

  Um, kind of. I, I, I think there's a lot to that piece of the cheating. I mean, what happens is they get cheated on and it fucking hurts.

• 1:53:54Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:53:54Speaker 01

  And then they have, then they're mad and it's then they're emotional. Like it's not really that they're like thinking about how that other person is compartmental. They're just upset.

• 1:54:05Dax Shepard?

  Well, but they would with a straight face and they'd be right. They would look at their, their girlfriend and say, that didn't mean anything. It was a one night stand in Cleveland. It didn't mean anything.

• 1:54:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:54:15Dax Shepard?

  And they believe that, and that is true.

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  They believe it to get through it. It might not be true. It might not be true.

• 1:54:23Dax Shepard?

  I don't know. I don't know. I know a lot of guys have hooked up with girls on a vacation. They don't pine for them or think about them afterwards. It like was just for sex. And then if their girlfriend says the exact same thing happened, they can't compute that that's possible for her.

• 1:54:39Speaker 01

  I think it's more that they're upset. They've been betrayed and then they might make it about.

• 1:54:45Dax Shepard?

  I just think you've lost the right to that if you're.

• 1:54:47Speaker 01

  Well, sure, obviously. Like, yeah, you've definitely lost the right to it. But I think it's in their head, they're, they think, oh, it's just nothing. But then when they feel it, they're like, oh, it's something.

• 1:54:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:58Speaker 01

  It is something. Does it mean anything? Like make it better?

• 1:55:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:03Speaker 01

  It doesn't make it better for me.

• 1:55:06Dax Shepard?

  It should. If you're evaluating whether your partner is in deeply in love with somebody and distracted all the time and

• 1:55:14Dax Shepard?

  versus they hooked up drunk in New Jersey one night, six months ago. I think those are pretty dramatically different.

• 1:55:21Speaker 01

  They're different and they're all bad, but I think one, I think weirdly, if I, if my partner.

• 1:55:30Speaker 01

  Was in love with someone, but choosing to be with me, like, still wanted me.

• 1:55:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:37Speaker 01

  But fell in love with someone. I actually understand that more than like, you made a, you didn't.

• 1:55:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, cuz you don't wanna fuck a stranger.

• 1:55:48Speaker 01

  Well, it's just like, you're so horny that you decided to put this all at risk for nothing?

• 1:55:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:55Speaker 01

  Like, I'd rather you put it at risk because there's something really happening.

• 1:56:00Dax Shepard?

  Interesting.

• 1:56:02Speaker 01

  Like, you're so flippant that you're just like, I'll just go fuck this person, knowing, like, for no reason.

• 1:56:08Dax Shepard?

  Kinda like, it doesn't mean anything to me. It's not a threat to us because I don't, I'm not even gonna think about it again.

• 1:56:14Speaker 01

  But it is a threat. Because if, if the, if I found out, I'd be like, I might be like, bye. Like, it, you know, if, if it's.

• 1:56:22Dax Shepard?

  I know what you're saying. Yeah, yeah. You're risking me.

• 1:56:26Speaker 01

  For something you don't even care about.

• 1:56:28Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  That's so, like, to me, that's so little regard.

• 1:56:33Dax Shepard?

  It's a super valid perspective for your side of it.

• 1:56:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:36Dax Shepard?

  And then I think a very valid perspective on the other side is like, this doesn't mean anything. This has nothing to do with us. It was one night. I'll never see the person again.

• 1:56:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Anyway.

• 1:56:49Dax Shepard?

  Anyhow.

• 1:56:50Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, I don't think we have time to do my second story, so wait till next week.

• 1:56:57Dax Shepard?

  What's your second story?

• 1:56:58Speaker 01

  No, cuz.

• 1:56:59Dax Shepard?

  Cuz what?

• 1:57:00Speaker 01

  Cuz we don't have time. I'll save my story for next time. And I have another one to add to my list.

• 1:57:05Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God. Do you need a pen? Rob!

• 1:57:09Speaker 01

  Rob, add David Chang to the list.

• 1:57:11Dax Shepard?

  David Chang, okay. That's a delicious add.

• 1:57:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, okay, now, this is for Susan Morrison.

• 1:57:17Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  Lorne Michaels book.

• 1:57:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:20Speaker 01

  So fun. I thought this was such a fun episode. I loved learning about Lorne.

• 1:57:24Dax Shepard?

  Lorne.

• 1:57:25Speaker 01

  Spy Magazine. Spy was a satirical monthly magazine published from 1986 to 1988, based in New York City.

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  It was founded by Kurt Anderson and E. Graydon Carter. Now, Graydon Carter is of the moment.

• 1:57:42Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:57:42Speaker 01

  Because he was the editor of Vanity Fair from 92 to 2017. He was the longtime editor at Vanity Fair. And he has a memoir out right now, or a book, called When the Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines. It's a ding ding ding because he's been on this book tour and Monica Winsky interviewed him for something.

• 1:58:05Dax Shepard?

  Oh, she did?

• 1:58:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:06Dax Shepard?

  For the book, presumably?

• 1:58:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I mean, sorry, I meant like at something.

• 1:58:10Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay, at an event.

• 1:58:11Speaker 01

  Uh huh, at an event. Um, and we just had her on.

• 1:58:15Dax Shepard?

  Yes, we did.

• 1:58:16Speaker 01

  Okay. Was Bill Hader's previous job to SNL a PA on Iron Chef? He worked as an assistant editor on Iron Chef America just before he was invited to work on SNL.

• 1:58:27Dax Shepard?

  You just clacked your dancers and I liked it.

• 1:58:29Speaker 01

  I did.

• 1:58:29Dax Shepard?

  Why do I like your clacking, not mine?

• 1:58:31Speaker 01

  But do I, did, maybe it just, do I do that a lot, or did I?

• 1:58:35Dax Shepard?

  Are we just hyper aware, or?

• 1:58:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:38Speaker 04

  I don't, I don't hear it from you.

• 1:58:39Speaker 01

  Really? So maybe I just, maybe I just caught it. Oh, you infiltrated.

• 1:58:46Dax Shepard?

  You know what's so funny about Rob is like, he has all these secret things he's, I don't want to say upset about.

• 1:58:54Speaker 01

  No, he just notices.

• 1:58:56Dax Shepard?

  And it's not until I ask him, and this is kind of a nice personality type. Like, he doesn't tell me like, hey, man, you're clacking like a fucking.

• 1:59:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:05Speaker 04

  Choo choo train?

• 1:59:06Dax Shepard?

  A choo choo train. Is that a good clack example?

• 1:59:09Speaker 04

  Cook a, cook a clack.

• 1:59:10Dax Shepard?

  You sound like, uh, you sound like Gregory Hines crossing the dining room floor to go to the salad bar.

• 1:59:17Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:59:18Dax Shepard?

  He tapped the answer.

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was good, that was good.

• 1:59:21Dax Shepard?

  Thank you. Um, I would have never known, and it's driving him nuts, this clack, clack, clacking as he's involved with all the technical aspects. But I gotta wait till I ask him.

• 1:59:29Speaker 04

  It's not driving me nuts, I just.

• 1:59:31Dax Shepard?

  You're just aware of it.

• 1:59:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:33Dax Shepard?

  Well, out of 10, 10 is like, you're pulling your hair out when you hear it, and 0 is, you, you love it, I guess.

• 1:59:40Speaker 04

  No, I don't, it doesn't bug me, it's just if I think it's an audio issue.

• 1:59:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you notice it during the.

• 1:59:46Dax Shepard?

  Well, you think there's like pops in the microphone or something?

• 1:59:49Speaker 04

  Well, sometimes if an edit's not smooth, it will create a pop, but sometimes it's just your teeth.

• 1:59:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense. I don't notice it in the edit, actually, weirdly.

• 1:59:58Speaker 04

  I think it's usually after the mix and master. That it'll.

• 2:00:02Speaker 01

  Before I get it?

• 2:00:03Speaker 04

  After you get it.

• 2:00:04Speaker 01

  I, I find it interesting that I don't notice it, cause I, if it's happening after me, the cleanup, then I'm really surprised, cause I notice a lot. Yeah, I notice.

• 2:00:15Dax Shepard?

  I'm your big brother, you know, it's anything.

• 2:00:17Speaker 01

  All, of all of us, I notice, like, the little tick. So I'm really surprised I haven't caught that. Um, when did Belushi die? He died in eighty-two. And he was thirty-three years old, just like Jesus and Chris Farley. Ding ding ding.

• 2:00:32Dax Shepard?

  Ding ding ding.

• 2:00:33Speaker 01

  It was just Easter.

• 2:00:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm like, which could've been anything.

• 2:00:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the Pope, Jesus, the Pope has passed.

• 2:00:42Dax Shepard?

  The Pope passed, yeah.

• 2:00:44Speaker 01

  I wonder how long it will take for the new Pope.

• 2:00:48Dax Shepard?

  They're gonna do that whole thing we just watched.

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  The conclave, I know. It really was timely. Okay, Conan show moved to twelve oh five.

• 2:00:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:57Speaker 01

  And it was twelve oh five.

• 2:00:58Dax Shepard?

  I heard on the radio today that Conan won best podcaster award at the Webby's?

• 2:01:03Speaker 01

  Oh, exciting. Congrats, Conan.

• 2:01:05Dax Shepard?

  I was happy for him and mad.

• 2:01:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, obviously, I'm mad. Okay, the five timers SNL club. Okay, I'm gonna read them.

• 2:01:13Dax Shepard?

  Sounding like a threat.

• 2:01:15Speaker 01

  Alec Baldwin, seventeen times.

• 2:01:19Dax Shepard?

  Fuck.

• 2:01:19Speaker 01

  Steve Martin, sixteen times. John Goodman, thirteen times. Buck Henry, ten times. Tom Hanks, ten times. Chevy Chase, eight times. Christopher Walken, seven times. Elliot Gould, six times. Danny DeVito, six times. Drew Barrymore, six times. Tina Fey, six times. Scarlett Johansson, six times. John Mulaney, six times. Candace Bergen, five times. Bill Murray, five times. Justin Timberlake, five times. Ben Affleck, five times. Melissa McCarthy, five times. Dwayne Johnson, five times. Wow.

• 2:02:02Speaker 01

  Jonah Hill, five times. Will Ferrell, five times. Paul Rudd, five times.

• 2:02:06Dax Shepard?

  I would've thought Will would be higher.

• 2:02:08Speaker 01

  Me too. Woody Harrelson, five times. Emma Stone, five times. Kristen Wiig, five times. Martin Short, five times. And then there's an honorary member, Paul Simon, four times. It says, Paul shouldn't technically be a member. He's only hosted four times, but he got his membership card for his fifth appearance on the show as a musical guest.

• 2:02:30Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:02:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:02:32Dax Shepard?

  Lenient.

• 2:02:33Speaker 01

  Another honorary member, Jack White.

• 2:02:36Dax Shepard?

  Hmm, okay.

• 2:02:37Speaker 01

  Um, zero times. Zero times hosting.

• 2:02:41Dax Shepard?

  Five times guest.

• 2:02:42Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 2:02:43Dax Shepard?

  I mean, five times music.

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  They get jackets, that's cool. Um, musical guest.

• 2:02:48Dax Shepard?

  We should make Sedaris a jacket.

• 2:02:50Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, we should. He's not the most frequent SNL musical guest, that's Dave Grohl.

• 2:02:55Dax Shepard?

  Good for Dave Grohl.

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  Sixteen episodes.

• 2:02:57Dax Shepard?

  Now, that's who I want.

• 2:02:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I want him, too.

• 2:02:59Dax Shepard?

  I want him bad. I want you, Dave Grohl. I want you so bad.

• 2:03:03Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 2:03:04Dax Shepard?

  I just want to get in your pants.

• 2:03:05Speaker 01

  Oh, no. I forgot, I haven't seen him in a while.

• 2:03:10Dax Shepard?

  Cause he's been hiding in the woods.

• 2:03:12Speaker 01

  Ew.

• 2:03:13Dax Shepard?

  Where he lives in a fort.

• 2:03:15Speaker 01

  Oh, he's like, he's friends with that guy?

• 2:03:17Dax Shepard?

  Oscar Cocker. He's my best friend. I love him, but I lost him. Some murder.

• 2:03:22Speaker 01

  He, what?

• 2:03:24Dax Shepard?

  He's in prison.

• 2:03:25Speaker 01

  Oh, oh.

• 2:03:27Dax Shepard?

  But Dave Grohl's a rock and roll star, and he rips, rips the drums and he rips the guitar.

• 2:03:33Speaker 01

  When you say.

• 2:03:33Dax Shepard?

  And he was in my favorite band, Servana.

• 2:03:35Speaker 01

  When he.

• 2:03:37Dax Shepard?

  Smells like teen spirit in here.

• 2:03:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, he doesn't let me talk. I really find it frustrating. Okay. Um, uh.

• 2:03:48Dax Shepard?

  He stopped so you can talk.

• 2:03:49Speaker 01

  Well, now I forgot, it was so long, oh, yeah. When you say we lost him to murder, that sounds like he was murdered.

• 2:03:55Dax Shepard?

  I know. But he went away from the tree fort to go to prison because of a murder.

• 2:04:02Speaker 01

  Because of murder.

• 2:04:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:03Speaker 01

  That's really funny.

• 2:04:04Dax Shepard?

  And then Fritos mine.

• 2:04:04Speaker 01

  That's actually really funny.

• 2:04:05Dax Shepard?

  Thank you. Once in a while.

• 2:04:08Speaker 01

  He was lost to murder because he murdered.

• 2:04:09Dax Shepard?

  We lost him to murder.

• 2:04:13Dax Shepard?

  But he's not a murderer. He just murdered.

• 2:04:15Speaker 01

  He's a murderer. Although I feel bad for him. No.

• 2:04:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you can feel bad for him.

• 2:04:21Speaker 01

  He's a murderer?

• 2:04:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Not, not Frito.

• 2:04:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:04:25Dax Shepard?

  Frito's just a pervert. Loves everything. He's never tried.

• 2:04:29Speaker 01

  He's one step away from murdering, but I, I thought the other guy from your class, from, he murdered. They murdered together. Oh, wow.

• 2:04:40Dax Shepard?

  And one of them I believe was intellectually challenged.

• 2:04:44Speaker 01

  Yes, and the other one might have been too because of toxic chemicals from the carpet.

• 2:04:49Dax Shepard?

  Take. I wrote an article about it.

• 2:04:51Speaker 01

  Okay, great. You wrote an article? What'd you say?

• 2:04:53Dax Shepard?

  I wrote an article.

• 2:04:55Speaker 01

  You did?

• 2:04:56Dax Shepard?

  One of my hobbies in my twenties is I would write fake news articles, and then I would mail them home to my friends.

• 2:05:03Speaker 01

  Oh, that's funny.

• 2:05:04Dax Shepard?

  Like in my famous mugging thing, I wrote an article about that with pictures. And then when the-

• 2:05:10Speaker 01

  Was it on the computer?

• 2:05:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Yeah, on my Compaq computer, desktop computer.

• 2:05:16Speaker 01

  But he's like Photoshop to get the pictures?

• 2:05:18Dax Shepard?

  I have, I'm sure, in my milk crate of the things I've written, they're in there.

• 2:05:22Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 2:05:23Dax Shepard?

  And then I wrote a long article about Aaron, and I was blaming all of it on-

• 2:05:28Speaker 01

  Not Aaron Weekly.

• 2:05:30Dax Shepard?

  Stinchcomb.

• 2:05:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, Aaron Stinchcomb.

• 2:05:34Dax Shepard?

  It's so weird. I mean, you're even protective of a murderer, isn't it?

• 2:05:37Speaker 01

  Well, he had a bad life. I'm not, I'm not protective of him in that. I do think he should be in jail. But I feel sorry for him that he had a bad life.

• 2:05:45Dax Shepard?

  I don't know why I'm switching your act.

• 2:05:47Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:05:48Dax Shepard?

  It's probably because my personal history, the kid couldn't stop trying to fight me. I mean, I have some, you know. Someone tried to fight you over and over again, you made fun of their last name, I would probably give you a pass.

• 2:05:57Speaker 01

  You'd like that. I know.

• 2:05:59Dax Shepard?

  And it was right there for the taking. The name is almost already the bad name.

• 2:06:04Speaker 01

  What is the bad name?

• 2:06:05Dax Shepard?

  Shitcomb.

• 2:06:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's probably added to his, everyone calling him that probably didn't help.

• 2:06:10Dax Shepard?

  Well, I doubt anyone said that to his face. I'm not sure he knew.

• 2:06:14Speaker 01

  It always makes its way back.

• 2:06:15Dax Shepard?

  I don't know. I really don't know who would have the gall to-

• 2:06:21Dax Shepard?

  I don't know. I don't know. Let's move on.

• 2:06:23Speaker 01

  Okay. All right, well, that's it.

• 2:06:25Dax Shepard?

  That's it?

• 2:06:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:26Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay.

• 2:06:28Speaker 01

  I love you.

• 2:06:28Dax Shepard?

  I do want to say his name once is Frito.

• 2:06:30Speaker 01

  All right.

• 2:06:31Dax Shepard?

  Aaron Secombe. I'll stop there. I don't want to declare this anything.

• 2:06:38Dax Shepard?

  I love you.

• 2:06:38Speaker 01

  He kind of got it wrong. He said it a little weird.

• 2:06:41Dax Shepard?

  Aaron Secombe.

• 2:06:43Speaker 01

  Oh, he's saying the bad way.

• 2:06:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Okay.

• 2:06:46Speaker 01

  All right.

• 2:06:46Dax Shepard?

  Good night.

• 2:07:03Dax Shepard?

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