Keith Payne (on the psychology behind the political divide)

Keith Payne (Good Reasonable People, The Broken Ladder) is a professor and author. Keith joins the Armchair Expert to discuss the effects of economic segregation, the roots of our current divisions, and how some people feel about dating others with opposite political views. Keith and Dax talk about the psychological immune system, the better-than-average effect, and how tribalism plays a role in people’s politics. Keith explains the geopolitical effects of the Mason-Dixon Line, how education levels can predict someone’s political affiliation, and the misconceptions of how income is effecting our politics. 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/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

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

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:06Dax Shepard?

  Hi. I have for six and a half years spoke about one of my favorite books called Broken Ladder. And the author of that book is Keith Payne, who is a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  Very esteemed school.

• 0:22Dax Shepard?

  Very. Is it?

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. Of public schools.

• 0:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  It's like, it is one of the best ones.

• 0:28Dax Shepard?

  Par excellence.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:29Dax Shepard?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 0:32Dax Shepard?

  Berkeley.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Berkeley's public?

• 0:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's the University of California, Berkeley. Can you believe it? That one does feel like Stanford, right?

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think that's for fakes. Just like University of Arizona State.

• 0:45Dax Shepard?

  Hold on a second. You got to lay off of ASU. They don't have a lazy river. We covered this. They're a good school, good people. Back to Keith. He is, in addition to being a professor, he's also an international leader in the psychology of inequality and discrimination. He has a new book out that is tremendous. It's called Good, Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide. I hope people will bear with me. I know it's a little bit of my soapbox. So important to me and so excited that a guy who had written a book completely unrelated to that topic, that I absolutely love tackled this topic because I think he did it in such a beautiful way. So check out Good, Reasonable People and enjoy Keith Payne.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  And check out Salty Sea Dogs.

• 1:29Dax Shepard?

  Oh, right.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  And I get a kickback. Just kidding. I don't. I don't get a kickback.

• 1:36Dax Shepard?

  Paola.

• 1:39Dax Shepard?

  We get support from Quince.

• 1:41Speaker 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.

• 2:01Dax Shepard?

  Quince is seriously the gift that keeps on giving. Their high-quality staples are made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere.

• 2:10Dax Shepard?

  14 karat gold in Italian leather, full on luxury quality at prices that won't wreck your holiday budget.

• 2:17Speaker 01

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

• 2:28Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm gonna 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.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 2:36Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:40Speaker 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.

• 3:02Dax Shepard?

  Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  What?

• 3:34Dax 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 a

• 4:20Dax Shepard?

  Counted for someone engineered this thing with love. I love a quarter.

• 4:24Speaker 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.

• 4:36Dax Shepard?

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

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not surprised.

• 4:42Dax 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.

• 5:17Dax Shepard?

  It's almost aggressively close to your face.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Now lean back. Okay.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Whatever you're most comfortable with.

• 5:22Dax Shepard?

  If you want him lean forward, just roll it forward. He flew in from North Carolina.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Where there's a hurricane.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was a hurricane. It missed our part of the state, but the western part of the state, like Asheville, which is a beautiful, gorgeous town.

• 5:35Dax Shepard?

  The mountains just got demolished. A lot of that part of the state. It's terrible. Yeah, I have a friend who lives on the Gulf Coast and he was sending me videos and the house flooded then caught on fire.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 5:46Dax Shepard?

  Holy smokes.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Is he okay?

• 5:49Dax Shepard?

  He is okay, but their whole life is upside down. Yeah, that's rough.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Nobody who lives in the mountains of North Carolina, or a lot of the places that this hurricane went, ever thought that they would see a hurricane because when hurricanes come in North Carolina, it's like a couple of days of rain. If you're not on the coast. And so it's getting wild.

• 6:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, similarly, I hope to escape a heat wave that's coming by traveling to Wednesday.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:12Dax Shepard?

  You do.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Going home, missing it.

• 6:14Dax Shepard?

  Let me start by saying, I hope it got back to you. I was the biggest fan of Broken Ladder. Did that ever get to your door that I talked about it a lot?

• 6:22Speaker 02

  People told me that you had mentioned my name on the podcast and that was back before I was familiar with the podcast. I'm embarrassed to say.

• 6:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, then that's fine.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  And at the At the time, I was like, oh, okay, that sounds fun. I'm like, let me look into this. And I was like, holy shit. I didn't realize the podcast was so big and I didn't know you were who you were at the time. And I found out all this stuff since. And so I was so excited when I got the invitation to come on.

• 6:44Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good, because I loved The Broken Ladder. I loved it. We could do two hours on that. In fact, I would love to do two hours on that. But alas, we're not. We're gonna do two hours on your new book. But I would love to chat about a few of the things in there I learned. Well, first of all, what year did you graduate high school?

• 6:56Speaker 02

  1993.

• 6:57Dax Shepard?

  Same.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Oh, you guys are the same age?

• 7:00Dax Shepard?

  Same age. Also, he had sanded down and painted his Monte Carlo by himself, or maybe with some help. Your brother did the painting?

• 7:08Speaker 02

  My brother owned the body shop, so I did most of the

• 7:11Dax Shepard?

  Shit work.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  Unskilled labor, and he did the painting.

• 7:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And then drove it away to college, drove fast on his way to college. And then also, as you're kind of explaining your ability to click back into your previous worldview or mindset, I relate to you deeply. I feel like I have a very similar kind of background in a working class. My family's all from Kentucky. You grew up there. As much as I loved this Broken Ladder book, which felt so academic, then learning this personal story about you, I thought, oh, likely why it appealed to me so much that we have this.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Do you think it's an authentic hillbilly elegy?

• 7:45Dax Shepard?

  Ah, in a sense. Were you triggered by the hillbilly elegy? I hated that book. And I was very vocally against it.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Even before.

• 7:51Dax Shepard?

  Long before. It was political.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. I felt tricked by the book because the first half, first two thirds, I thought, oh, this is an interesting memoir of his experience. And my experiences were kind of different, but he's just telling his story. And then you get to the last chapter, and it's like, nothing from that. It's all just like, and here's why conservative policies are the right thing. And so I felt like it was all a bit of a bait and switch. I like a memoir that doesn't just lead up to his talking points.

• 8:19Dax Shepard?

  Right, a knockout punch. Yeah. Everything you just wrote was the proof for this theory I'm gonna draw up on the end of it. I didn't even think the memoir stuff was real. I'm like, that's not really how it works. I think you've heard these stories, but I don't think you were there for these stories. I don't know. That was my hiccup about it. But Broken Ladder, I just want to talk about a couple of things Broken Ladder, because they stuck with me so deeply. And I think They do work their way into your new book in a lot of ways, but tell us about what happens on airplanes. If you remember that data, I know it's been a while.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:48Dax Shepard?

  But I think that stuff's fascinating.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, so some airplanes have a first class section, some don't, and those that do have a first class section, a lot of them board at the front. So you walk in the front and if you're in coach like me, you walk right past all these people who are already seated in the first class seats.

• 9:06Dax Shepard?

  They're having cocktails.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're eating their chocolate chip cookies or their champagne and you walk past these folks and they don't even make eye contact, right? You just walk to your coach's seat.

• 9:16Dax Shepard?

  Well, can I tell you, as someone who's in those seats now, later in life, I'm embarrassed. That's why I don't look at you. I'm sure you imbue from me that I think I'm better than you and don't want to look at you, but I feel ashamed that I am there and you're not.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  That makes sense. And what's cool about that as a psychological experiment in real life is that it's literally like a status ladder laid out physically. You walk past the people who are on the highest rungs and then if you're going to coach, you find your place, right?

• 9:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  And so some planes board at the front like that, but some planes board sort of in the middle. If you're on a plane that you have to walk past the first class to get to the coach seats, researchers found that incidents of like in-flight troublemaking, violence, tamper outbursts and things like that are much more likely if you're in a kind of plane that boards from the front and you have to walk past and come right up close with that inequality between the coach and the first class compared to if you're on a plane that boards in the middle. So you don't have to see that.

• 10:19Dax Shepard?

  You don't have to have four seconds of feeling less than en route to your seat.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's several times more likely to have a violent incident in the air.

• 10:28Dax Shepard?

  It goes further if there's not a class distinction on the plane, then it drops even to its lowest point.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:34Dax Shepard?

  But I think the most salient point that you end that example with is that you would be inclined to position that as a story between the haves and the have-nots. And then in fact, it's the story of the haves and the have more. Who are flying are already the haves by every metric.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  Right. An airplane ticket is expensive. Poor people don't fly much. Everybody on that plane can afford several hundred dollars for the cheapest ticket in most cases. And so what it highlights is that it's about a relative difference between, like you said, the haves and the have mores, which is one of the themes running through the book, which is that a lot of the things we think about and we attribute to an issue of poverty is actually an issue of inequality. And so being in a context like that plane with the first class cabin that you walk past, in which no one is poor, but some people have much more than others, it ends up psychologically triggering a lot of the same thought processes that we associate with poverty.

• 11:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And then even more shocking than that is that abject poverty that we would measure, below the poverty line, the results of that in your later life outcomes, your life expectancy, your educational attainment, your incarceration rate, your health. We would think those would be really, really adversely affected by poverty. But in fact, people who perceive that they're poor have worse outcomes than people who are abjectly poor, but don't perceive themselves as poor.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Right. So there's sort of two things going on. It is the case that being raised poor does predispose you to all these risk factors that you were just talking about. But over and above that, if people rate themselves as feeling relatively poor compared to others, then regardless of where they stand in terms of actual monetary income and things like that, it still predisposes you to all of those behavioral risk factors that you were just talking about. Two different things going on simultaneously. They're both happening. Yeah.

• 12:31Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Well, let me ask you this. Are your outcomes worse if you feel poor versus you are poor but don't feel poor?

• 12:38Speaker 02

  It's hard to make a one to one there just because one is measured in dollars and the other one's measured in like scales that people fill out. But the way I would say it is that even if you have few resources, if you feel like you're just as well off as everybody else, that sort of buffers you against a lot of those risks.

• 12:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And where it's like most painful. Is when people are living in the shadow of these huge gaps. Like, there are cities that it's dispersed much more evenly. And then there's really dramatic cities. This would be, I would imagine, one of the top cities for that?

• 13:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, LA, New York. These big cities that are wealthy are also highly unequal. It's hard intuitively, hearing about it just on news stories, to separate wealth and poverty from the degree of inequality. You have to do fancy statistical analyses to separate that in the research literature. But one way to think about it is that the poorer people in LA or New York are not much poorer than the poorer people are in any little Midwestern small town. But the rich people in cities like that are phenomenally wealthier than the rich people are in Des Moines.

• 13:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  And so it's the size of that gap, even if it's driven by the extremely rich, that predisposes people to health problems, to impulsive behavior, to less psychological well-being.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  And is it a proximity thing? Because we don't really have suburbs here. And New York City doesn't really have suburbs. We're right on top of one another, everyone. Like, Beverly Hills is right next to a place that doesn't have a lot, you know?

• 14:08Dax Shepard?

  I think the suburbs mitigate it, though.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying.

• 14:10Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Literally, where we're at, across the street, is a dramatically different socioeconomic bracket. It's 13 feet away.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and in suburbs, at least, you could live in a suburb and never really have to see these extremely wealthy people unless you drove there.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  This is a question I've always wanted to answer, and I've been trying to figure out how to answer it, but I don't know the answer to it yet. So what you're describing is sort of economic segregation, right? Where the rich people live here and the poor people live there. And on the one hand, we know that segregation, whether it's racial segregation or economic segregation, is associated with a lot of bad stuff. It makes life worse for the poor people, who are just surrounded by other poor people and don't have the opportunity to see people who are doing better. At the same time, what you guys are describing is that, in a place where everything's segregated, you don't see the level of inequality. You only see the people who are similar to you. That part of it might buffer against the effects of inequality, but be shittier for the people who are on the poor side of town.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 15:06Dax Shepard?

  There are societal differences around the world. Where if a population of people tends to up compare or down compare, that changes radically depending on where you're at in the world. We're a big up compare society, right? We're always looking and comparing ourselves to people above us. But there are many that would compare themselves to people below. And then their kind of mental health benefits from that greatly. So when I was reading the book, so I agree with you. It's a huge problem. I've experienced it personally. Then the solution for it, my question is, do we think we can augment and change reality to suit everyone? Or do we think we need tools to help us with this psychological hiccup?

• 15:47Dax Shepard?

  That if I have an ice cream cone, I'm great as long as the guy next to me doesn't have one. But if someone's eating a banana split next to me, now I'm miserable. Does everyone need a banana split? Or do we need to figure out how to stop that line of thinking and have tools in place?

• 16:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the answer is both because if you look across different countries, among rich, developed countries, I'm talking about in particular here because among countries that are very poor, where people are struggling just to have enough to eat and so forth. Inequality is not the main concern, right? It's the poverty.

• 16:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  But if we're talking about Western Europe and the United States and rich, developed countries, the countries that are more equal, Norway, Canada, Sweden.

• 16:23Dax Shepard?

  Scandinavians.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Those countries do a lot better than the United States on all of these outcomes, both longevity and physical health, but also well being and a longer life and a better life. And it's predicted by the level of inequality. So I do think there's some level of solution that makes sense to talk about on the policy level. The idea, in my opinion, is not to get rid of all inequality, but make it a level where you can actually imagine attaining the next level up as opposed to where the people who have a lot are just in a completely different universe.

• 16:51Dax Shepard?

  Well, and then I would add too, that they have access to things that other people don't have access to. So you can't climb the ladder.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Right. Part of what's making those more equal societies more equal is not just things like tax policies. It's also universal access to higher education. It makes that pathway something that's reasonably attainable.

• 17:11Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Did you see Gavin Newsom signed a bill for California colleges? That there's no more donors or. Legacy.

• 17:20Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Which is pretty cool and that definitely will have an impact.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  In addition to the political stuff, there are psychological tools that we can use to reduce the behavioral or psychological impacts of inequality. We normally go around by default comparing ourselves upward to other people and that has costs and benefits. So if you compare upwards to other people who have more than you or are doing better than you, it's actually motivating. We shouldn't downplay that.

• 17:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  You shouldn't compare yourself to like Jeff Bezos, but you should compare yourself to like somebody in your life or somebody at your work who's similar enough to you, but maybe a little ahead of you that you could take inspiration from that.

• 17:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, not Jordan, but the dude who scored five points more than you in the game, maybe.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Right, but at the same time, it makes us feel bad. It stresses us out. I think it depends on what are your goals in that situation? Do you want inspiration to work harder and focus? Or do you want to have some of the stress taken off of you? Because if we compare downward to other people who aren't doing as well, that feels great, but it also is demotivating because we can sort of rest on our laurels.

• 18:20Dax Shepard?

  Unfortunately, like all things, there's not a right or wrong. It's gotta be some weird percentage you work out in your life that results in happiness, I guess.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  Most of us don't ever think about that. We just sort of do it by default. And I think one powerful effect of the research on this and knowing about it is that you can stop yourself and say, wait, what am I doing here in this situation? Why am I comparing myself to that guy? And who should I actually be comparing myself to?

• 18:42Dax Shepard?

  And even maybe what are my real goals other than what I'm coveting is just flashy?

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 18:47Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so your new book, Good Reasonable People, The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide. This is really fun because we just had another professor on with a book called Tribal and almost debunking a little bit the very popular tribalism explanation of our political divide, acknowledging where it exists, but also not looking at it as such a negative thing and rounding out our understanding of what we know about that, us, them, in-group, out-group thing. So that's been kind of helpful. And so that's maybe one look at the issue. You look at it through a bunch of different lenses. And why I'm most excited about this book is I don't really have many causes. This is maybe the only one that I constantly am fighting for.

• 19:28Dax Shepard?

  Monica and I's fights the most recent month have been around this topic.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Oh, great.

• 19:34Dax Shepard?

  Well. The book, I think you have a similar goal as mine, which is we have got to stop looking at half the country is bad, or half the country is racist, or half the country is hateful. And by the way, or if you're on the right, half the camp is whining babies and snowfla-, you know, whatever stereotype they handed you in your in-group, we gotta break out of that. And so this book really kind of systematically looks at how we get there, and then a lot of hiccups and thinking that get us there.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:04Dax Shepard?

  What motivated you? You give a good story about your brother and Facebook.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  So there was a period of time there when I was online a lot on Facebook and Twitter, and I find myself getting into these arguments, and some of them were just with random people. But the ones that were really painful were the ones with my own family members. And I talk about this argument with my brother right on the first pages of the book, in which he's a Trump-supporting conservative Republican, and this is during the Trump administration, and he's saying what great things Trump has done for the country, and I'm arguing that, you know, it's so obvious that Trump is just terrible. How can you believe this? We get into this back and forth. I find that so painful, and for a long time I found it so inescapable. And so that was part of the motivation for writing this book, is how can you both stand up for the principles you believe in, and not just be sort of a

• 20:52Speaker 02

  wishy-washy, like, nah, everybody's different, there's no right answer, but at the same time, not get into those going-for-the-throat kind of arguments that we get into, both with strangers, and more importantly to me, the people who you're close to.

• 21:05Dax Shepard?

  You state some of the data that's out there. I forget what percentage, but it's younger people saying across the board they couldn't date anyone outside of their own political party. I think of these great examples, like, I remember growing up and getting a real bang out of the fact that the raging Cajun was married to, you know, a strategist for the Clinton campaigns, married to-

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Mary Madeleine?

• 21:26Dax Shepard?

  Mary Madeleine, strategist for the Republican campaign. And I thought, that's admirable. That's really cool that those two love each other, and they have completely different opinions. And that's like an anthem now. That's insane. The followers of either of those people would feel like it would be a betrayal for them to love and be in a relationship with someone on the opposite side. Go ahead.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  I mean, I think up until very recently, I agree. And also, I do agree. If you can make a relationship work with someone who has different values than you, great. But our fight from the other day was about this, and I was saying, I don't think- I could date anyone who was voting for Trump in this election because there's actual values on the table that affect me directly. And I don't see the problem with me saying, I don't think I could partner up with someone who doesn't have my best interest.

• 22:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  I'm not saying I have to hate that person, or I'm getting in a fight with them, but I don't need to partner with them. You disagreed.

• 22:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I did disagree. I do disagree. If I asked you to describe Kelly and why you're best friends with her, you would list all these qualities. And you wouldn't say, and she's a Democrat. You know, like, I think the core, her character, what you like about her, really, I don't think her political identity would come up. Or if you were asked to describe why you liked any of your friends, I don't know that that political identity would come up. It'd be like, they're dependable, they're thoughtful, they listen to me, they're caring, they're loving, they're generous. There'd be all these things. So my objection is this very abstract thing of a political identity, the fact that it could nullify all these actual qualities in a person is scary to me.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is the most intimate person you will have a relationship with, your partner. So I feel like even a friend, I could have a friendship up until a point with someone who was like, I want, you know, a Muslim ban, or abortion, that's a big thing, or IVF, that affects me. So of course, I'll probably be like, yeah, we can hang out at a party, but I don't know if I'm going to share my deepest, darkest secrets with you. I mean, I think we're allowed to have boundaries up there.

• 23:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  What do you think?

• 23:32Dax Shepard?

  So when you hear that, that little light debate, by the way, that was very light and respectful. It got a lot more heated, and in front of our boss last time.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  That's who we are.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  I think it's admirable if people can date somebody with deeply different views. I don't know that I could do it personally. My goal is a little bit more modest. I think we should be able to talk about politics without literally wanting to hurt each other. The broad strokes idea for me is that this is necessary just to keep having a normal democracy where we argue about ideas and we solve it with voting, rather than assassination attempts and violence. So I have a variety of different political views in my acquaintance circle, and definitely in my family. But the ability to just go home for Thanksgiving and be interacting with people as people, rather than having these tense political debates, or trying to avoid the political stuff, is the most important part for me.

• 24:28Dax Shepard?

  Well, you talk about this weird flip that also happened where it used to be, when you were growing up and me as well, there was this dynamic where a child would go to a parent and say, I'm gay, and then kind of wait whether they were going to accept or reject them. And now you have young people publicly on social media talking about having no choice but to reject their parents because of their political point of view. And just kind of an interesting flip and very similar through whatever their point of view is, I'm going to reject this person. And that's kind of interesting and feels newer.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  That might be one of the effects of social media, right? Because older people are more involved in politics. They have more money to donate to candidates. But the young people are the ones driving social media. And so I've talked to a lot of people who are parents who are worried that their kids are going to go on social media and just drag them.

• 25:23Dax Shepard?

  Write them off publicly.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it's the kids with the power in terms of those kind of platforms.

• 25:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I have that fear. I'm not naive. You have to be different than your parents. I was different than mine. My girls are going to be different than me. I hope they can accept that. Or I guess I'll probably just fucking join them. I won't lose them over it. Maybe that's the power they have. But yeah, you talk about some warning signs and you list three of them. And one is where democracy unravels into civil war. So one of them is dehumanizing. You want to talk about dehumanizing a little bit?

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Right, so if you look back through wars and genocides in history, you see this pattern where either the two sides in wars or if it's just sort of a lopsided genocide situation where the power holders, they tend to talk about the other side in dehumanizing ways. So things like Hutus and Tutsis calling each other cockroaches, Nazis calling Jews rats and vermin. What that does is it says those people aren't human, so they're not really of moral concern. You treat them like animals. Well, we kill animals when it suits our purposes, right? And so it makes it so much easier to engage in violence if you have convinced everyone that the other side are not fully human.

• 26:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, outside the circle of moral concern, you wrote, and I thought, oh, my God, yes, that is so powerful. The second you decide they're not the same thing as you, then the sky is the limit. And we do it in even less malignant ways in that the Germans were Jerry's or Krauts. Anyone we've been at war with, now we don't do it. But the long history of our wars, we gave everyone a name as well to help the soldiers dehumanize the opponent.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we're doing that politically right now. A study came out a couple of years ago in which it showed participants this image that looks like sort of an ascent of man image, where on the left side, it's like a hunched silhouette of an ape. And then each picture in turn stands up a little straighter till on the right side, it's a silhouette of a human standing up. And it asked Democrats and Republicans to rate how fully human Democrats and Republicans were. And the more people identified strongly with one party, the more they rated the other party as basically being apes.

• 27:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  And that's just a terrifying study.

• 27:34Dax Shepard?

  It is. He has like Planet of the Apes. No one's shedding a tear when you gotta fight the apes to maintain law and order. Yeah, that's scary. And then I've seen this in recent times, which is I saw liberals take some pleasure when COVID deniers would die or go into the hospital. And I was like, this is a little scary. I don't agree with their opinion. I don't think it's good. The moment we're happy someone died or got tragically ill through their own ignorance, I don't know if that's where we want to be. And then there were people on the right that were happy gays were dying of AIDS.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's terrifying. And this is one reason I basically got off social media, because at times, engaging in these debates, I found myself feeling those kind of emotions, you know, schadenfreude that something terrible is happening to the other side. I was like, this context of social media is making me somebody I don't want to be.

• 28:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another of these three warning signals would be political differences, aligning with racial or religious differences.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that's a big part of what's happening right now for the US. Fifty, sixty years ago, being a Democrat or a Republican didn't say much about what race or religion you're likely to be. Today, if we know just your race, your education level, and what part of the country you grew up in or live in, we can predict with really high rates of accuracy what party you're in. And that's scary, too, because it's one thing to say, all right, well, my party lost this election. We'll try again the next time. But if every election is a contest about everything you and your groups hold dear, then everything is an existential crisis, and it's much more motivating to go beyond just politics and get violent. And that's a really scary risk factor that we have right now.

• 29:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, in the book, you say it's 90% of black Americans are Democrats, 2/3 of Hispanic Americans are Democrats, 80% of Republicans are white, yet only 60% of white people are Republicans. So it's pretty stark how everyone's filing into these political identities.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  And I think that goes to the heart of the matter of the book, which is that the social identities are the way we're finding our way to politics. And we've always defined us and them in ways that make sure that I find that I and my people are good and reasonable people, right? That's where the title comes from. It didn't used to be so neatly divided with left and right, Democrat and Republican. So now, the ways that we define who's good and who's reasonable lines up perfectly with left and right, almost. And that's the source of why we're not just disagreeing with each other, but we're more and more hating each other.

• 30:11Dax Shepard?

  Any member of either of these sides would give all the issues that led them to this side. But if you were an alien hovering above Earth, looking at it, and you go, oh, yeah, that's all good, that those are the issues. But A, the issues have changed nonstop. They're foot-flopping back and forth. And if there's a 90% chance of you're black, you're ending up in this party, there's something going on other than the issues. And if there's a 70% chance if you're a Christian, you're going to end up... That's interesting.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  But you don't think that does have to do with what's being presented on each platform? Because one group is speaking to a religious group, which the other is not so much. And then vice versa with social programs and things like that.

• 30:52Dax Shepard?

  I guess it's a chicken or an egg thing. It's like if you're born into this group, you will have these opinions and this identity. You'll just inherit it in a sense.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  I guess.

• 31:03Dax Shepard?

  I see what you're saying.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Well, isn't it interesting, though, that we all feel like we've thought through the issues? Right? None of us is like, I inherited this issue. We all think that we've reasoned our way to our opinions and we've done our own research. And yet, from the outside, I like that alien perspective you mentioned. You can predict before somebody's born, if you just know what kind of family they're being born into and where they're going to be born, you can predict which arguments they're going to find persuasive. So both are going on, but I think we see it from our own first-person perspective as I'm reasoning through the arguments. But we can step back and see it from that alien's perspective, because I can tell how you're going to reason through those arguments.

• 31:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, right. You're going to reason through it, but I'm also going to tell you where your reasoning is going to take you. It's pretty interesting. And then I like this part that we have a universal, again, both sides have a universal tendency to believe that people who are different than us are irrational or foolish. I hear this all the time. The most generous they could give the other side is to say, well, if they knew what I knew, they would think like I would think. The notion that you could all know the same thing and have a different opinions beyond comprehension.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's why we always tend to think that if I just explain the facts to them, if I just explain the evidence, then they'll come around. And then we're just blown away again and again by the fact that we explained the facts and we explained the evidence, and they just won't accept the truth. And that's because we're so entrenched in our own perspective, not realizing that the reason and evidence are tools that people are using on both sides of the debate to find a position that reassures them that they're good people.

• 32:37Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 32:43Dax Shepard?

  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 benefits software built for small businesses. 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.

• 33:24Dax Shepard?

  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. Again, that's gusto.com/dax. We get support from NoBull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 34:08Dax Shepard?

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

• 34:45Speaker 01

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

• 34:49Dax 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.

• 34:57Speaker 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.

• 35:06Dax Shepard?

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

• 35:17Speaker 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.

• 35:28Dax 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.

• 35:39Speaker 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.

• 35:56Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Recently.

• 35:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 01

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

• 36:02Dax Shepard?

  Temperature was all over the map.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  It was a mess.

• 36:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  I need a new one.

• 36:05Dax 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.

• 36:20Speaker 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.

• 36:26Dax 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. 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.

• 36:59Speaker 01

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

• 37:19Dax Shepard?

  Hmm. 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.

• 37:29Speaker 01

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

• 37:36Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 37:37Speaker 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 multi-purpose this and look super cute.

• 37:49Dax 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.

• 37:58Speaker 01

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

• 38:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's what we were gonna get into. And you say the fundamental source of our division is our need to flexibly rationalize ideas in order to see ourselves as good people. That is so profound. Will you give the example? Well, let's get into psychological immune system. Define that for us.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the psychological immune system is a phrase that psychologists use sometimes to talk about all of the psychological maneuvers we use to sort of protect our self-esteem, protect our ego, and basically reassure ourselves that we're good, we're okay, we're valuable people. It's kind of coping or defense mechanisms as older ways of talking about it. Same sort of stuff.

• 39:00Dax Shepard?

  And can I just add, what I love about the way it's framed in this is it's not even about being great or being a genius. It's just about being good. Everyone has a pretty baseline desire to believe that they are good. That's kind of sweet. It's not even that ostentatious.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, you know, some people want to believe they're better than others, but that's a big individual difference. Everybody at some level has this basic desire to think they're good enough. They're just a valuable person.

• 39:24Dax Shepard?

  Tell us what happened when you heard the Tara Reid allegations against Joe Biden?

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Right, so Tara Reid had accused Joe Biden of sexual harassment. Maybe it was even sexual assault, I can't remember now. And that was going on during the election campaign. Biden versus Trump. I just remember going through this cycle of thoughts as soon as I heard it. My first response, because I was very pro Biden, was, oh shit, this is terrible. And then my immediate second thought was, eh, she's probably lying anyway.

• 39:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  And then I thought, well, wait a minute, we just went through the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. And I remember arguing to people that you should take women's complaints of sexual abuse very seriously, even if they can't provide all of the proof, we should still really consider that. So I was arguing both sides of this issue in my own head. And then where my head went next was, all right, well, even if she has a credible claim, Trump has been accused of way worse by way more women.

• 40:19Dax Shepard?

  The gymnastics.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  I just find myself going back and forth. And this all happened over the course of about two minutes. And by the end of it, I got to a point where I convinced myself that even if the allegations are true, it's not going to change my vote.

• 40:33Dax Shepard?

  That's right.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  And that was kind of the point, my brain was always going to take me there, one way or the other. And it's kind of hard to realize that, but all of us, if we are honest, can probably find times when we do that.

• 40:45Dax Shepard?

  A thousand percent. And it's coming so quickly, as you describe it in the book, like you're in the kitchen making coffee. You hear that, you go through that whole, I know I'm good and I'm going to vote for this person. So how do I take this very inconvenient piece of information and reduce it in a way that I can hold on to this notion? I'm still good and still going to vote for someone that may or may not have done this.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  We always assume that people's just sort of take in information. And then if the information conflicts with their beliefs and the evidence is strong, they'll just change their beliefs. But that's not psychologically realistic. What people do is start with that premise that I'm good and here's what I believe. And then how do I make this new information add up to being consistent with that? And there's always a thousand kinds of mental gymnastics that we can use. We can say that, you know, the source of that information is biased. You can say that's not relevant. What about this other thing?

• 41:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  And when other people do that, they engage in what about ism, or they move the goalposts, or they change the subject. We see them doing it and we notice it's incredibly frustrating. But what we don't realize is that we're probably doing the same thing.

• 41:44Dax Shepard?

  I reflect back on the Monica Lewinsky scandal and

• 41:49Dax Shepard?

  And at the time, I remember, and my family was very left. My mother and I were like, someone's sexual life has nothing to do with them running the country. This is such a witch hunt. It has nothing to do with the job we asked this person to do. We don't care what he's doing sexually. Of course, if it was our opponent, it's a much different analysis. And yeah, I've just caught myself a bunch of different times going like, oh yeah, I totally. If I like the person, I'm probably going to figure out a way why it's a little different. Or the ultimate good is still worth pursuing. And that may even be the most rational decision. But minimally, I have to grant the other side the same kind of empathy in that situation.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Right. And it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to come to agree, right? You're probably not. But if you are able to bring yourself to the point of having that empathy and understanding that they're doing the same thing you're probably doing. Now you're a human talking to another human rather than that person out to destroy my country is spouting all this nonsense.

• 42:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Can you tell us the difference between reasons and causes for reasons?

• 42:53Speaker 02

  If you look up the dictionary definition of a reason, it says a cause for acting or a justification for why you acted. And I think that ambiguity in the definition is so interesting because we usually think of it as the cause of our actions. Why did you go to the store? I needed some milk, you know, something as simple as that. But whenever we're dealing with complex social identities, the stories we tell to explain why we did something often aren't really the causes of why we did it. Nobody ever says, I voted for this candidate because this is the racial group in the geography I was born into, which is actually a cause of why they adopted many of their beliefs. Instead, they say, this is a value that's important to me. This is a fact that matters.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  And so we point to the reasons to justify why we did something as if they were the cause of our behavior. But in a larger sense, what's more psychologically interesting, if you want to understand what's going on, is why did that person adopt those reasons?

• 43:50Dax Shepard?

  And would it be fair to say that for your in-group, you're pretty willing to accept their reason? And then for the out-group, you're quite suspicious of their? Reasons.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, all you have to do is give me any reason if I am already inclined to believe you. But if you are my out group or my opponent, not only am I gonna not take your reason at face value, but I'm probably going to say, no, that's not the real reason. You're just rationalizing some other darker motive.

• 44:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you give some inane examples like dad goes to the grocery store because he's got to cook dinner. Then there was one about mom and then you would intuit something completely different despite what she told you.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  Right, I think the example I said was mom has been working too hard, she says, as she cleans up the shards of dad's broken whiskey glass. Right, so why did she drop the whiskey glass? Maybe it's not just she's tired. So whenever the situations get socially complex, a simple reason is probably not the whole story.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  So let's say we all get here. We have empathy for a group we don't identify with and we get it. It's like, I understand why they're coming from it from that point of view. I come at from this. Then what? So we appreciate that the other person's different from us and then we can be civil. That's the goal, right? I guess that's Keith's goal.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  That's a lot. We shouldn't discount that. Where we are in American politics today is not anywhere close to what you just described. Where we can appreciate where both sides are coming from and be civil because that not only allows us to sort out our differences with votes rather than bullets, but also it allows us to have a conversation. And I mean, that's what you guys do here. It's so important to be able to have a difference and still have a conversation. And we shouldn't discount how important that is.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 45:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, because even in my utopian view of this, I'm not asking everyone to sell out what they believe and hold dear to them. What I'm asking is you don't have to align yourself with companies and products to demonstrate your political affiliation. You don't have to be online screaming at people and fighting with people. There doesn't have to be these riots we see. To me, we already have the roadmap. We already have had dramatically different views and they've played themselves out when people vote as a democracy should, but we haven't necessarily had all the name calling and the otherness and the violence and the hate and the. Fucked up Thanksgivings and the families breaking apart. We don't need all that wreckage as a result of our different opinions. We just gotta go vote.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  I agree, but I guess the part about the brands. Do you have a problem with someone who only buys American cars?

• 46:26Dax Shepard?

  I don't, but I'd have a problem with anyone that only bought cars from pro-life companies.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  These are still identity markers, like America is an identity marker and so is whether you agree with abortion or not. And so I think you sometimes don't like, it came up also in the car, where somebody brought up that they have a Tesla. Rob, are we allowed to say it? Okay, Rob has a Tesla.

• 46:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  And he is done with his lease or almost done with his lease and was thinking about getting another car. And you said, are you gonna get another Tesla? And he said, well, I don't know the whole Elon thing. I like that car, but that's making it hard for me. And I feel like you didn't like that.

• 47:07Dax Shepard?

  I don't like it. I understand what Rob's saying and I understand what you're saying. You don't wanna put money in the pocket of somebody you disagree with, who's also quite politically active in funding your opponent.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:18Dax Shepard?

  I get that. And that's a totally defendable position and it has merit. But if you play out where that all goes, so now every CEO has to declare all of their political.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  No, they shouldn't. But if they are being very vocal, then why would you ignore it?

• 47:33Dax Shepard?

  The only reason, so yes, that in the short term is a very, very, again, defendable. I get it. It's a very legitimate point of view. But if you play that out where now every time I see a Tesla on the road, I know that's the opponent. And I know that these four grocery stores have aligned themselves with LGBTQ matters and pro-choice. And so that grocery store is for Democrats and then this chain of grocery stores is for Republicans. You're just further accentuating this huge divide. Now, if we all lived in two different countries, it'd be great, but we don't. We live in one country. I do believe in buy American, yes, that is our group, that we can be harmonious. We can be at ideological, opposite ends of the spectrum is Russia.

• 48:17Dax Shepard?

  It's not gonna cause any. Riots or fistfights or gun shootings in this country because of it. So if we all line up, every product now, if every product declares where they're at on the political spectrum, they'll just be endless, it'll really rule out the chance that you can bump into someone, have a nice conversation with them, then later discover they have a different opinion of you. You might as well at that point, move to a state that they declare is only for Democrats. I don't think it's healthy to go down that road. Yes, it's a great point on the surface, but I think if you play it out, then it's just a million different indicators that you're on the opposite end. I don't see that as very constructive for us as a country. Keith, sorry, we monopolize that.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  People have studied this, and I think it's really interesting. So we call them identity markers, right? Things that you wear or show off to advertise to the world who you are, which groups you're with. It's really common and pretty deep seated thing that we do. You know, I went to a Catholic school where we had uniforms and people went to such great lengths to wear a Metallica T-shirt underneath the uniform shirt. So you could see them advertising what kind of person they really are. And so I hear you that it can add to divisiveness unnecessarily, but I think it's a really strong current to swim against because we really want to show everybody who we are and just as importantly, who we're not.

• 49:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I get the urge. I totally do. I had bumper stickers. That's like our easiest way. Can you tell us ideology without ideas? And I would love for you to talk about better than average. I think it's healthy for all of us to have some humility and just say like, either if you're right about your opinion on the left or you're right about it on the right, you still have the same broken brain. There's not two different brains.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  When we read newspaper articles about what Democrats think and what Republicans think, it's all so focused on issues and sometimes even on values. But the portrait of the ordinary voter academics have kind of known about for decades, but it never gets out there into the general press is that if you actually ask somebody about their opinions on issues and principles and you look at what they say, they're incredibly inconsistent over time. So if you survey them now and six months later, Tell you something completely different many times. So the correlation between what they say at time one and time two is really low. And if you look at the correlation between what they say on one issue and what they say on another logically related issue,

• 50:41Speaker 02

  the correlation is also really, really weak.

• 50:43Dax Shepard?

  What's like a hard example of that?

• 50:45Speaker 02

  So you would think somebody who wants to cut taxes would also be in favor of like cutting government benefits.

• 50:52Dax Shepard?

  Right, because how else would you do it?

• 50:53Speaker 02

  Right, you would think that somebody who's interested in increasing government support for education might be also interested in increasing government support for helping the poor. But none of those things are very well correlated with each other. Look at people's actual opinions. Whether they have the right or left opinion on one issue tells you very little about whether they have the right or left opinion on other issues, even when they're logically related like that.

• 51:19Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  And so if an ideology is just a coherent set of interconnected principles and ideas, the typical American doesn't really have a political ideology as we normally talk about it. On any given survey, if you were interviewing Republicans, they'll say some Republican sounding things.

• 51:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  And if you're interviewing Democrats, they'll say Democrat sounding things. But if you ask them six months later, they say a different set of Republican or Democrat sounding things, as if they're just sort of winging it and telling you whatever talking points they've heard recently for their side. And that seems like a lot of what people are doing. So the political scientist Phil Converse discovered this back in the 60s. And then recently, political scientists thought, surely that's different where now, so polarized. Everybody's got a left or a right position on everything now, right? And so they replicated all these studies, and they replicated perfectly in today's environment. So they estimate about 85% of American adults have basically no political ideology, if you define it as an interconnected coherent set of ideas. Something like 15% do,

• 52:18Speaker 02

  but those are basically people who are academics, journalists, people who work in politics. We get this idea that people have these coherent ideologies because we usually watch journalists talking to academics or journalists talking to professionals in that realm. And they have coherent ideology. They eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff. The point is that ordinary people are dumb or clueless. It's just that this is not. What they spend their time thinking about. For most of us, why would we? And so they have this sort of general identity related pull toward one group or the other. And we tend to sort of say whatever comes to mind. When the survey asks us a question, we answer however will make us look good and look like a reasonable, consistent member of our group.

• 53:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  And so that's related to the better than average effect because we go around not only assuming that we're a good person and everything has to sort of add up to that, but we tend to assume that we're better than average on any trait that we care about. Not every trait. Like, if you ask me how good I am at juggling, I would readily admit that I'm terrible. I can't juggle at all. But if you ask me, are you a good friend? Are you a good parent? Are you good at your job? Even though I know about the above average effect, I kind of want to say I'm better than average.

• 53:33Dax Shepard?

  It extends to like driving. If you ask people if they're above average drivers and everyone thinks they're an above average driver.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, even if you do that survey with people who are hospitalized for a car accident that was their fault.

• 53:47Dax Shepard?

  Isn't that incredible?

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good.

• 53:49Dax Shepard?

  They're still better than above average. And so how do people then, when they prove to not be above average or they get some really undeniable evidence that they're not above average? How do they compute that?

• 54:01Speaker 02

  There's 100 different ways, right? It's sort of like getting information that you don't agree with politically. You can always find some way to discount the evidence. You can find some way to say, that's not what's really important here. What's really important is this other dimension on which I do excel. You say I'm bad at this. I'm like, well, can I interest you in this other thing that I'm good at? And so we're very good at being sort of slippery reasoners. And that's good because it actually is psychologically healthy for us. One group that doesn't have this rosy perception of their own self-worth is people who are clinically depressed. And most of us, most of the time, are not depressed in part because we're going around reassuring ourselves about how good and adequate we are.

• 54:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we wouldn't want half the population to take on the fact that they're below average. In any given domain, half the people are below average. It wouldn't be good for us, for half of the world, to think they're below average at something.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Right, and it wouldn't be good for them.

• 54:55Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  So they don't.

• 54:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, back to the incongruity of their expressed political identity and what they actually think. I think we have some popular polls right now that really point that out. It's like you have over 70% of America being polled and being against the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and yet you have half the country on the right that will vote differently.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Some of my favorite examples of this are about conspiracy theories. So there's lots of conspiracy theories on the right, and those are the ones I see, given my media consumption. And I had the impression going in that this was a left-right thing, that conservatives are really into these wacky conspiracy theories, but people on the left can't be fooled that way. Because maybe they're too smart or they're too educated. But some recent research looked at this and found that the kinds of theories they believe on the left and right are different. But you can create a fake conspiracy theory in which you just make up something and say Republicans are conspiring with people in the medical industry to take control of your healthcare and benefit themselves. Do you believe that? And Democrats will be, "Yeah, absolutely."

• 55:56Speaker 02

  And so all you have to do is say, "Insert enemy group here is conspiring with, insert powerful group here, to do nefarious thing here." And both sides are very eager to endorse that kind of conspiracy theory. I think the difference between left and right, to the extent that there is any, on those kind of beliefs is that Republican politicians have figured out how to use that more. And I think people on the Democratic side, in terms of the elites, the leaders, the politicians, have not been as prolific at it. Frankly, if we find somebody who's like a Trump-like character on the left, they'll absolutely be able to fool a lot of people on the left.

• 56:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they don't tend to be about lizard people on the left, but there's food conspiracies, there's health conspiracies. I hear conspiracies all the time on the left that are more in that realm. But they're just as irrational or imply so many people are keeping secrets. And, yeah, nefarious bad actor controlling all these levers. You did an experiment, and I'll forget the details of it, but basically people in the experiment, two different groups, earned the same amount of money. But they were told on one side. Will you tell us about that experiment?

• 57:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we set up a game in which they are supposed to pick some stocks. And we give them a little bit of seed money to invest in these quote-unquote "stocks." And we do a simulation of the stock market, and they can win a little bit of money back if they do well. And in reality, everybody made the same amount of money. But we told one group that they did better than 89% of all players. And we told the other group that they did worse than 89% of all players.

• 57:22Dax Shepard?

  Oh, man.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's brutal.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:24Dax Shepard?

  I just want to remind everyone, they did the same.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  They did the same. And we asked the people in both groups, like, why do you think you performed as you did? And the people in the winning group basically said, oh, it's my hard work and skill and talent. And the people in the losing group said, this game is rigged against me. I was disadvantaged. You need to change your experiment for the following reasons. So different explanations. And then we added a layer to the game in which we kind of had like a taxation and redistribution thing going. So we said, all right, we're going to charge people who are the top performers 10% of their winnings to help offset the losses of the people in the other groups. What do you think about that? And of course, the people in the group that were going to benefit from that were like, thumbs up. And the people who were getting taxed said, this is a terrible idea because did you see my comment about my hard work and talent? Right?

• 58:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  So it's so easy to sort of recreate a lot of the differences we see between Republicans and Democrats based on just which group they belong to. In one version of it, we even told people, this is not about anything you did. We actually randomly assigned your outcomes here. And people in the losing group were like, yeah, I suspected all along. And the people in the winning group basically didn't believe it. They still thought they earned their winnings.

• 58:35Dax Shepard?

  Even if you land in the lucky group, you're still above average. You're like, yeah, I got the winning ticket of the lottery.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  And so people immediately just start spinning stories about why am I in this position in light of the fact that I'm a good and reasonable, competent person? If you keep that part in mind, it all makes sense. Because it's the same kind of people. It's not like personality differences. People are just randomly assigned.

• 58:57Dax Shepard?

  You flip that group, they're going to behave exactly the same as the other group. If you're below average, it was rigged. And if you're above average, it's a meritocracy.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Right. I think so many of the things that we attribute to personality or value differences when it comes to politics have to do with those sort of contexts that you either are born into or happen into by your life circumstances. I don't buy into this idea that there's like a liberal mind and a conservative mind. I think we're all just sort of doing the best we can to make sense of the world from whatever group positions we ended up in.

• 59:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and you point out that there is some reigning theories, right? There is one theory that if you give liberals and conservatives these personality tests, You're gonna see that liberals score higher on the open mindedness, personality trait, and go on down the line. But as you point out, you're looking at, in the best case, if they were choosing out of five, it's like a difference between one. It's like 10%. It doesn't nearly approach the explanation we would need.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  Right. It's true that Democrats score a little higher on openness to experience, for example, than Republicans do on average. But like you said, out of a five-point scale, it's like one-point difference. It's not these massive differences and doesn't come anywhere close to explaining why like 90% of black Americans would vote for Democrats and 60% of white Americans would vote for Republicans. You can't explain 90% effects with a 10% difference.

• 1:00:12Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  And is it really that all of these groups that vote for Democrats are just wildly open to experience? Probably not.

• 1:00:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I found myself getting defensive about your rejection of that because mine that I hung on to is in either the molecule or more or dopamine nation. And you do find different dopamine levels in liberals and conservatives, which would explain the willingness for change. But again, that level of dopamine difference is probably in the single percentages of how different their dopamine levels are.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  Right. There are some real differences in terms of personality and things like you're pointing out. In research studies, if it's statistically different from zero, we go, yay, we found an effect. And we so often don't look at how big the effect is. It's just amazing that with a handful of questions about what social groups you belong to, we can predict like with 90% accuracy, how you're gonna vote.

• 1:01:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, there's most certainly some black Americans with lower dopamine levels than a lot of conservatives. So that can't be the smoking gun.

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:09Dax Shepard?

  So let's get into some of those things. Tell me about Lincoln's map, this term we all know, kind of Mason Dixon line, where that originates.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  Mason Dixon line was drawn by these astronomers, Mason and Dixon, who were brought over from England to the United States to draw the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland. The Penn family wanted to know where Pennsylvania ended and where Maryland began. So they drew this line, but it just happens to also line up with this ancient coastline from the Cretaceous period ended up covering the southeastern portion of the United States, what today is above water. That area was below water about 100 million years ago. And that ocean had a ton of these single-celled organisms called cocoliths, cocolythophores. And each one had a little shell of calcium. And when they would die, the tiny little microscopic shell would fall to the bottom of the floor.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  And over millions and millions of years, it covered everything in this calcium that became chalk, a kind of limestone. And the southeastern portion of the United States became rich with this chalk, as did, like, on the other side of the Atlantic, the white cliffs of Dover are made of the same stuff. It turns out that chalk is really good for soil conditions for growing cotton. So the combination of the hot climate and that kind of soil meant that the southeastern portion of the United States became the most profitable place in the world to grow cotton at that time. Cotton is a very labor-intensive crop. So the southern slaveholders were able and willing to exploit the labor of enslaved people to do that work.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  And so wherever cotton expanded, slavery expanded too throughout the 17 and 1800s. And so what today we call the Mason-Dixon line just happens to line up with where that chalk stops. It doesn't really go north of it.

• 1:02:56Dax Shepard?

  Were they observing that, Mason and Dixon?

• 1:02:58Speaker 02

  No, it's pure coincidence. Oh, wow. We call the Mason-Dixon line the border between the South and the North. It just happens to be the border between where the soil was great for growing cotton and where it wasn't. And that's what set the South and the North on these radically different trajectories around race and around slavery in the 19th century. So Lincoln's map was this map that Abraham Lincoln used in 1860, based on the 1860 census, as he was strategizing for the Civil War that was sort of looming at the time. And what the map showed is each county in the southeast of the United States, each county was shaded a different shade based on the percentage of the population in that county that was enslaved.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  And the reason he was using that to strategize for the war was that he knew that the states that were most economically dependent on slavery were going to be the ones who were most likely to succeed. And the ones that had slavery but Weren't as dependent on it, could be persuaded to stay in the Union. And that's basically what happened. So the border states like Missouri and Kentucky, Maryland were persuaded to stay in the Union. The ones below that, that had a higher rate of slavery, ended up seceding. And what's interesting is that that didn't only predict the likelihood of secession, but you can predict all sorts of aspects of modern society based on the number of people who were enslaved in that 1860 census.

• 1:04:20Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. Like what?

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  Well, you can predict the rate of residential segregation. So places that had more slavery then are more racially segregated now. You can predict the level of racial inequality in terms of things like poverty rates or upward economic mobility. You can predict school segregation, differences in health outcomes. All of these sorts of things were set in motion because of the slave society. But that set up structures like which neighborhoods are the black neighborhoods, which neighborhoods are the white neighborhoods, that are still in place today. And you can predict the politics of people today based on that same 1860s census data.

• 1:05:00Dax Shepard?

  And at the same variability within each of the counties.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's not just some broad north-south difference.

• 1:05:07Dax Shepard?

  Right. Within the South, there's a huge variation, I'd imagine.

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, even county to county. If one county ended up with not much chalk because it was higher elevated and mountainous and ended up not being good for cotton, and the next county over grew a lot of cotton, you can still detect the political differences between those two counties today. The way that the political differences work is that it's race specific. So black Americans are highly likely to favor Democrats today, and even a little bit more so in counties that had more slavery. And it goes the opposite for white Americans. They're more likely to favor Republicans today if there was more slavery in that county in 1860.

• 1:05:43Dax Shepard?

  Does that explain, which has always been a head-scratcher to me, North Carolina? In that it has voted liberal in the past, and it's in the South. And there's a couple of these that I wouldn't explain away by racial demographic. Like, for Georgia to go, that makes sense. You have Atlanta. North Carolina, to me, was always a little bit like, oh, that's interesting, they're more liberal than the rest of the South.

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Historically, that's been the case, but over the last several election cycles, it's been polarizing more by race and it's a 50/50 state. There's a lot going on with North Carolina. I can get into the weeds there if you want.

• 1:06:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  But part of it is that racial dynamic that's happening. Part of it is the effect of gerrymandering. So you have a state that's basically 50/50 Democrat and conservative that has a Republican supermajority in the state house. That's all because of gerrymandering rather than the votes of the people. But at the same time, you have parts of the state, the mountainous parts in the West, that because their soil and altitude wasn't good for cotton, never had extensive slavery. Places like Asheville have a completely different vibe today that are in the mountains than other places that are lower altitude and closer to the coast.

• 1:06:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, wow.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  Also, a lot of universities there that I imagine bring a lot of...

• 1:06:50Dax Shepard?

  What a perfect segue because the next topic's education.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  Look at that.

• 1:06:54Dax Shepard?

  So, education, how do we fold education into this divide?

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  Well, it didn't used to be the case that education was very predictive of whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, and it's still not very predictive today if you're not white, which is interesting.

• 1:07:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:07:08Speaker 02

  So, education is predictive mostly for white voters. So if you're white and don't have a college degree, you're very highly likely to favor Republicans. If you're white and you do have a college degree, it's sort of 50/50. There's a lot of variability, but more likely to favor Democrats. And part of what goes on there with education, it's complicated because we look at this difference between college-educated people and people without a college education, and we tend to say, well, that means that going to college makes you liberal.

• 1:07:36Dax Shepard?

  Or once you get smart and educated, you'll naturally be liberal.

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  Right, and neither of those really seems to be the case. The biggest driver of that effect is that more liberal families are sending their kids to college compared to more conservative families. So if you look at how liberal or conservative people are when they show up to college and how liberal or conservative they are when they graduate, there's almost no change.

• 1:07:58Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  So it's a selection effect or a sorting effect primarily. The exception to that is that there does seem to be some evidence that the experience of being in college leads to changes around racial attitudes. And around understanding of what racism is, that tends to pull toward democratic voting.

• 1:08:19Dax Shepard?

  That would probably be your personal experience, yeah?

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure. I grew up in a town called Macio that has 400 people in it. That was outside of a bigger town called Owensboro that has like 50,000. So that was the big city. But I think I hadn't met a black person.

• 1:08:33Dax Shepard?

  Hundred percent white, the population.

• 1:08:35Speaker 02

  You grow up in an environment like that, and if you're seeing on the TV news about like racial disparities and poverty or crime or things like that, I think the natural interpretation is me and everybody I grew up with, we don't commit crimes. We're the good people. And so you attribute it so easily to something essentially different about black people and white people. It took going to college for me and explicitly learning about the history of slavery and Jim Crow and segregation and all of these things that today we call systemic racism.

• 1:09:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I would have thought the effect would have been more just being around those people.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, exposure.

• 1:09:13Dax Shepard?

  Like they say, like the Vietnam War was one of the best things that ever happened for race relations. It was like one of the first times people were forced to live with one another in an integrated army.

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's part of it too, because I mean, going to college was the first time I'd been around a diverse group of people, period. So it's partially the experience, but it's also partially the learning of history.

• 1:09:34Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:09:41Dax Shepard?

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• 1:14:47Dax Shepard?

  I want to talk about income now because income also is, uh, this is a big one.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  Predictive.

• 1:14:53Dax Shepard?

  Well, yeah, and then I think we have some stereotypes about how it works and then maybe you can enlighten us how it actually works. But what are the stereotypes about how income is affecting our politics?

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  Right, well, the stereotype is that poor people vote Republican against their economic self-interest and that rich people vote Democrat, sometimes against their self-interest too, right? Because if you're a rich person and you vote for Democrats, they might raise your taxes. And we have this trope that working-class people vote Republican and professionals vote Democrat.

• 1:15:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  It's half true, but it's also misleading. Depends on how you define working class. So the way that pollsters define working class is usually, do you have a college degree or not?

• 1:15:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:15:34Speaker 02

  Because you can measure it in a simple question. By that metric, yeah, people with a college degree are more likely to vote Democrat. People without a college degree are more likely to vote Republican. But if you look at income, that's correlated the opposite direction. People who are poorer are more likely to vote Democrat and people who are richer are more likely to vote Republican.

• 1:15:52Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  That makes sense to me.

• 1:15:54Dax Shepard?

  It makes sense, but it's not what we're told.

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  In recent elections, I feel like everything got so topsy-turvy. I think for so long it was this, right? If you are below the poverty line, it benefits you to vote for a Democrat because there's more help there.

• 1:16:09Dax Shepard?

  Social welfare.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  But it just flipped, I feel like, in the past couple of elections where people now think that poor people are voting Republican because they're ignorant or whatever, all these problematic stereotypes.

• 1:16:21Dax Shepard?

  I think the left is seeing the person they put on the news that's on the right and it's the guy with the Go Brandon flag at the truck pole and then they go, okay, that's the right. The guy's got no money, yet he's gonna vote for this guy who could help him. I think that's what's like infecting our stereotype about it. Does that make any sense?

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  It's also really confusing because people with college degrees do earn more than people without a college degree. And so we conflate the two. It's really hard for us to separate in our heads. If you have a college degree, you're more likely to vote... Democrat, but if you're wealthy, you're more likely to vote Republican. But people with college degrees tend to be more wealthy. So how do we separate that? Statistically, we can do that, no problem. You just run a regression analysis. But people don't do that in our ordinary intuition.

• 1:17:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you could easily credit the income for what is actually the diploma divide.

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:17:11Dax Shepard?

  Talk about the lottery winners. This is a fun.

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  I told you about this study in which people were randomly assigned in our experiment to be told that they made more or less than other people and that changed their attitudes about meritocracy and stuff. In the lottery studies, this is a way of getting outside the lab and looking at people in real life. And the cool thing about a lottery is that it's actual random assignment in life. It's literally random choice. So if you look at lottery winners compared to other people who play the lottery but haven't won, people after they've won a lottery, they start voting more conservative. That self-interest in terms of caring about marginal tax rates and stuff like that kicks in pretty immediately. But if you ask them, is it your self-interest that has led you to care about this stuff?

• 1:17:57Speaker 02

  They would probably tell you, no, no, these are the values I've always held.

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:18:01Dax Shepard?

  That less tax equals more job opportunities and overall is better for the economy. You just go out and find an answer that would help you maintain your self-image of being a good person.

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:18:13Dax Shepard?

  It's hard to know if they believe it or not, though, too. That's what scares me because I'm reading this and I go, well, I'm not a unique alien. I'm a human being with all the same biases and hiccups and pitfalls. And as I've made more money, has that affected my opinion on taxes? I still vote liberal, but yeah, I would go, well, what's interesting is this state, which has the highest taxes available, does not have the best services, does not have the best roads, does not have the best landscaping, does not have fewer people on the street. So I go into a place of, does it work? You know? That's, I guess, probably my own way to be against being taxed at 50% and still feel like a good person.

• 1:18:57Speaker 02

  Right. So have you become more sympathetic to like more libertarian ideas over time? As you had more money or do you think that didn't change?

• 1:19:05Dax Shepard?

  No, in fact, weirdly, I was libertarian when I was broke. And then post 2008 financial meltdown, when I learned about credit default swaps, I was like, oh, no, no, we need a lot of regulation.

• 1:19:13Speaker 02

  I see.

• 1:19:14Dax Shepard?

  Like the system, Adam Smith and laissez faire, it's too complicated. So, no, I went the other direction. But as I get older, there are liberal policies around me in California that I'm totally disenfranchised by. There are a lot of liberal policies that I've seen in action here that I no longer believe in. But it hasn't overridden my higher calling of reproductive rights and inclusion. There's a lot of things, it's complicated and it's hard to track. Am I getting older or have I gotten wealthier? I don't know. I'm just a human trying to approach being objective about myself.

• 1:19:46Speaker 01

  I do think here in LA and New York, probably it is weird because we do have such a huge wealth disparity and a lot of very wealthy people here. And yet it is a consistent liberal vote over and over and over again. I'm from Georgia and I think in Georgia, what you're saying adds up to me 100%. The more money you have there, the more the people I know who have more money vote Republican. And people who have less money vote Democratic. And I think that's more indicative of the rest of the country. But how did we get to the point where we were not voting for our self-interest?

• 1:20:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's hard to think about it on an individual level, right? Because over time, we get older and on average, we get richer and we get more educated too. But in the aggregate, if you pull these things apart, they point in opposite directions. More education pulls for more liberal voting, more income pulls for more Republican voting. What you guys were just describing is about the ways that issues come and go. You can have a complex mix of beliefs about political issues. And even if you tally up, how many of your beliefs are liberal ones? And how many of them are conservative ones? That's not really what predicts how you vote. It's more about which social groups do you feel like are your people? And so in the example of California, people might be higher income, but they will be horrified

• 1:21:07Speaker 02

  by being a Trump supporter. Right. Because it's more cultural and it's more social, even if they are more libertarian or conservative about tax policy or things like that. Again and again, I come back to how important the social groups are. And those are the things that reassure us that we're a good and reasonable person and a good member of that group.

• 1:21:27Dax Shepard?

  I think that's so accurate, and I observe it in others, and I'm probably approaching that point where it's like, there are people that we have liked in the past that are expressly liberal, but everything they're saying is not. They're not going to give up that identity marker, despite the fact that all of their opinions really are now conservative. And I'm comfortable saying I'm a centrist now.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  In a way, that's hopeful, right? The fact that we have issues and principles that overlap so much more than we think we do. So you just explained ways that you're on the left and ways that you're on the right. If you talk to a Trump supporter, you could probably find just as many ways that they're in support of issues on the left. And it defies our stereotypes of people being just 100% drunk to Kool-Aid and buy into everything that their side believes. And that's actually a good basis for being able to talk to each other and to stay connected, because a lot of the stuff we believe is more in common than the groups we profess to be a part of.

• 1:22:24Dax Shepard?

  My hunches were both getting hijacked by a identity. That's like my deepest, real feeling is that I think people on the right are getting hijacked by it, and I think people on the left are getting hijacked by it. You look at these weird polls, like I said, 70-plus percent didn't agree with Roe v. Wade, so that's interesting. Why are we all acting like we're enemies when 70% of us agree on that? Okay, let's get into solutions. The book is fantastic. People should read the book. You really get into rural versus urban, country people. Can you tell us water witching really quick before we get into solutions? I want to get into solutions.

• 1:22:56Speaker 02

  Right. Water witching, so sometimes it's called witching, sometimes it's called dowsing or divining. It's this folk way of trying to find water, where to dig your well, using like a forked tree branch, right? So we did this in my family. We had well water, and so every few years, it would get Stopped up here and have to have a new well sunk. And so he would go cut a branch out of the tree and which to find the right place to sink the next well. And I was just captivated by this as a little kid. I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

• 1:23:26Dax Shepard?

  It's magic.

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was magic. And I wanted him to teach me how to do it. And finally, one time he did. I did it. And as I was walking along the yard, holding the two branches of this Y-shaped stick, I felt it's like starting to pull down toward the ground. And I held on and it twisted so hard that the bark twisted off in my hands, you know?

• 1:23:48Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 1:23:49Speaker 02

  And I was just blown away by this magic. And my dad had this whole theory about how it works with the electricity in your body resonating with the electricity flowing in the water and all of this stuff. At the time, I was fully on board. And I remember years later, in college, learning that this folk practice is common, yet debunked scientifically and all of the reasons that we psychologically fool ourselves into believing that the branch is pulling down when it's actually our own unconscious motions twisting the branch. And I think it's a great example of the ways that these sort of social experiences are way more powerful than just facts, right?

• 1:24:30Speaker 02

  Because if somebody had come and told us at the time, well, actually, this doesn't work scientifically, we'd have just been like, get out of here. I don't care what that pointy-headed professor has to say. Because it was an experience, it was just electrifying, and it was about like me bonding with my dad. And those social experiences are so much more powerful than any kind of fact or evidence you can provide. It's a good example of the way that our emotional experiences are pulling us in directions politically in ways that you can't really hope to override just with more fact.

• 1:25:05Dax Shepard?

  Especially Second Amendment, I'd imagine.

• 1:25:07Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:25:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I grew up shooting guns.

• 1:25:10Dax Shepard?

  This is another one, by the way. This is one of these polls that doesn't map, like reproductive rights.

• 1:25:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:15Dax Shepard?

  Vast majority of Americans are in favor of the Second Amendment.

• 1:25:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the vast majority of Americans. Gun control is like, you shouldn't be able to have an AR-15 or whatever. Yeah, so the public's not conflicted about this. It's the politicians who are using it as a wedge item, right? So I'm sort of like the average American. I'm not horrified and terrified by guns because I grew up with them.

• 1:25:37Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:25:37Speaker 02

  I think it would be a good idea to not be able to have an automatic weapon and kill many people at a whim. And a lot of people are just emotionally horrified by the idea of even having guns because they've never been around them and they seem like a scary object. A lot of that has more to do with our personal experiences than our emotional reactions than a reasoned policy analysis.

• 1:25:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Okay, so winging it together is the last chapter. This is kind of a sweet way to think about this. Tell us about winging it together.

• 1:26:05Speaker 02

  A big part of the argument in the book is that we don't have these deeply divided ideologies. Most of us don't have much of an ideology at all. We have these social groups that divide us. And we sort of are winging it by just finding something to justify our perspective that makes us seem like a good and reasonable person. And so if we can realize that I'm probably doing that and you're also probably doing that, it sets the stage for being able to accept that I'm just a person trying to make sense of the world and you're just a person trying to make sense of the world.

• 1:26:35Dax Shepard?

  And you're trying to be good, actually.

• 1:26:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're trying to make the world a better place.

• 1:26:38Dax Shepard?

  You have to grant people that.

• 1:26:40Speaker 02

  And it's almost impossible to do online. You have to be talking to an individual to be able to do that well, I think. But if you are able to realize that they're just trying to make sense of the world and be a good person and make the world a better place, but they're starting from different starting assumptions and different groups that they're trying to be a good member of. It's much easier to have a good civil conversation. It really helps if you understand about the psychological immune system and that psychological bottom line that I'm a good person. You can say, well, if this person is disagreeing with me, what is that doing for them? How is that reassuring them that they're a good person? And how is my position reassuring me that I'm a good person? And then you're two humans trying to do the best you can to both be good, reasonable humans.

• 1:27:24Speaker 02

  And if you're in that situation, it's much better than yelling at each other and having a fight online or having an argument at Thanksgiving dinner.

• 1:27:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and also I'll be stealing Jelani Cobb. Do you know who Jelani Cobb is? He's a Columbia professor. I heard him speak this weekend and he told this incredible story. So this is his. I think what can happen when you start there is this example. Jelani is a Brooklynite. He hates the Red Sox, was flying to LA to see the Dodgers play the Red Sox. And obviously, he's going there with the hopes that the Dodgers will destroy the Red Sox. And he's sitting next to a guy on the plane and that guy is also a New Yorker flying to LA to see this game. And he assumes that he's hoping that the Red Sox will get slashed. And the guy says, I'm hoping the Red Sox win. And he's immediately can't compute

• 1:28:15Dax Shepard?

  why this New Yorker would be doing that. What a betrayal of being a New Yorker. What kind of guy is this guy? Was he secretly always a Red Sox fan? And he continues to talk to the guy and he discovers that in this guy's rationale, the Yankees had lost to the Red Sox to go play the Dodgers. So if the Dodgers beat the Red Sox, it means the Yankees were the third best team. But if the Red Sox smash the Dodgers, the Yankees are probably the second best team. And Jelani's like, that makes a ton of sense. Like, I'm not going to be rooting for the Red Sox in this contest, but wow, wouldn't have even thought of this bizarre way you could come to this. And it's pretty defendable.

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:28:55Dax Shepard?

  It's not going to be my opinion, but it changes the person to a maniac who's rooting for the Red Sox when he's a New Yorker into, no, it's in a weird way, or a different way than his, still supporting the Yankees somehow. And I think so many of our divides are that way. We're assuming the kind of worst case scenario of why they've come to this opinion. They have hate in their heart, or they have all these different things. And you might minimally learn that there's a different cause for this thing. And you can still hate the Red Sox. You can still vote the way you want to vote and have all your core beliefs.

• 1:29:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. When you say, why do you believe this? Normally, people will hear, why do you believe this policy? And they'll say, well, I think it will be effective for the following reasons. It's a fundamentally different question to say, why do you believe this? And by that, I mean... What does this do for you as a person? How does this relate to you being a good person?

• 1:29:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:47Speaker 02

  In that case, if that person got a chance to explain their reasoning, then it immediately makes sense. In politics, the first layer is not that. The first time you ask somebody, why do you think this? They give you a talking point. They give you a piece of evidence from some study they heard about. And then you start refuting that with some other evidence. None of that's getting at what's actually driving these differences. So I think a better question is to literally ask the person, what does that policy have to do with you being a good member of your social groups? And asking people to engage about how that connects to them as a person, rather than just recite what they heard about some policy.

• 1:30:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they want to give you the factual proof of why this opinion is the only opinion that one could have if they were rational and sane. Not at all what impact it has on their own identity or their sense of why it's a good thing.

• 1:30:39Speaker 02

  Right. And if you give people that opportunity, in my experience, you can ask people personally, why is this something appealing to you as a person? And a lot of times, people will give you a story about, well, I grew up with guns and I'm comfortable around them. And this is why I think they're actually good for the following reasons. And then they're talking about themselves. It's just much easier to accept that this is a decent person sitting across the table from me, that we just happen to disagree on an issue.

• 1:31:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I'm so delighted you wrote this book, something I think about all the time. And it's very disheartening where we're at. And I hope that this book can help people. Again, not all come up with the same conclusion or opinion, but not have to scream, shout, punch, kick, shoot at. You know, I don't think that those are the ways forward. So I hope everyone reads Good, Reasonable People: The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide. Keith, you've done it two for two. Great book. Keep going.

• 1:31:33Speaker 02

  Oh, thanks.

• 1:31:34Dax Shepard?

  Well, great meeting you. Thanks for coming.

• 1:31:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  It was Halloween yesterday.

• 1:31:48Dax Shepard?

  I know, but before we talk about Halloween, which I can't wait to do.

• 1:31:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:31:51Dax Shepard?

  Favorite night of the year.

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  Your favorite.

• 1:31:53Dax Shepard?

  You haven't commented on my new hat.

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  I, well, we were talking.

• 1:31:57Dax Shepard?

  We were really, yeah.

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  About serious stuff.

• 1:31:59Dax Shepard?

  We were really talking about some serious stuff.

• 1:32:00Speaker 01

  But I did notice it and it's very cool.

• 1:32:02Dax Shepard?

  Isn't it cute?

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:04Dax Shepard?

  Good job, Erin Weekly.

• 1:32:05Speaker 01

  It's a Ted Seeger's hat. Did Erin design it?

• 1:32:08Dax Shepard?

  Greg Davis designed it. He's our, Greg Davis is our like genius graphic guy for Ted Seeger's. Cool. But Erin, I think, had the idea in the past, whatever.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  It's cute.

• 1:32:16Dax Shepard?

  I'll tell you who didn't do it, me. And it arrived and I was like, wow, they knocked it out of the park.

• 1:32:22Speaker 01

  It looks great. Hats are fun. I.

• 1:32:25Dax Shepard?

  I just scratched myself doing that trick.

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:32:28Dax Shepard?

  That wasn't even a good trick.

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  I didn't even see it. Oh, shit.

• 1:32:32Dax Shepard?

  I wanted to snap my head off really quick for, I thought that was gonna look cool for like one second. Even while I was doing it, I was like, this isn't gonna look that cool. And then I scratched my forehead while I was doing it.

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  It got bad.

• 1:32:40Dax Shepard?

  You know how you can like this with a cowboy hat?

• 1:32:42Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:32:42Dax Shepard?

  You can reverse.

• 1:32:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:43Dax Shepard?

  Pull it off from behind and do a roll.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, spin.

• 1:32:46Dax Shepard?

  Tuck and, tuck and roll. You guys don't call a flip a flip, right? It's a tuck?

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  Back tuck, yeah.

• 1:32:51Dax Shepard?

  Back tuck.

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. If it's backwards.

• 1:32:53Dax Shepard?

  BT.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Also, if you do three toe touches and into a back flip, you call that a triple toe back.

• 1:33:00Dax Shepard?

  Triple toe back sounds like reverse back. Anything with back.

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  It does.

• 1:33:05Dax Shepard?

  Sounds weirdly perverse.

• 1:33:07Speaker 01

  It does.

• 1:33:07Dax Shepard?

  And I like it.

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  Okay, Halloween was last night. Unfortunately for our listeners, Halloween was a while ago.

• 1:33:12Dax Shepard?

  That's another thing I wanna address.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Sorry, guys. Halloween was a while ago, but it, uh.

• 1:33:19Dax Shepard?

  Really fresh in our memory right now.

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was also, it was yesterday to us. We'll be transparent. Also, because by the time you're listening to this, an election will have happened. So the fact that we haven't talked about that is not because.

• 1:33:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  You know, obviously the world, some, a major event has happened in the world and we can't talk about it yet, cause.

• 1:33:36Dax Shepard?

  We don't know the results.

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  We just don't know the results. But Halloween.

• 1:33:39Dax Shepard?

  And maybe even while you're thinking about this, you're probably decorating your home with some hints of autumnal color and some turkey decorations. You might even be transitioning into Turkey Day.

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  I know. I hope, I don't know if Alison Roman's gonna do her Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving episode again, but last year, that was my entire recipe list for mon's giving.

• 1:34:00Dax Shepard?

  For mon's giving.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:02Dax Shepard?

  Okay, was Allison.

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:04Dax Shepard?

  Well, I could see the challenge for her is like, once you do a Thanksgiving meal, what are you gonna all of a sudden do Hawaiian pizza next year? It's a, it's kind of a one and done meal, no?

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  She's done it a couple of times.

• 1:34:16Dax Shepard?

  And she changes it?

• 1:34:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, she adds new things, changes it up. Some, some things are classics, like the stuffing. She pretty much keeps that standard.

• 1:34:24Dax Shepard?

  Turkey always, yeah, we gotta.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  Last year she mixed it up. She did turkey legs, which was great. Yeah, it was really good.

• 1:34:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, like a dark meat?

• 1:34:33Speaker 01

  I don't know if people remember, but I made a big mistake and I was able to text her. That's my privilege in life. I was able to text her for help. She's a pregnant Allison, which a big congratulations to her.

• 1:34:47Dax Shepard?

  Wonderful.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Very, very exciting.

• 1:34:49Dax Shepard?

  Well, maybe she'll incorporate that in. Maybe there'll be more pureed foods for babies. Pureed, would you want pureed stuffing?

• 1:34:59Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:35:00Dax Shepard?

  No, yeah.

• 1:35:01Speaker 01

  Part of it is the texture.

• 1:35:01Dax Shepard?

  What sounds grossest on the menu pureed? The turkey or the stuffing?

• 1:35:06Speaker 01

  Turkey. Meat pureed is not.

• 1:35:10Dax Shepard?

  Can you puree meat?

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could just blend it.

• 1:35:13Dax Shepard?

  And then they pour it into a form and that's patty.

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  They don't puree it, do they?

• 1:35:18Dax Shepard?

  Well, isn't it liver and stuff?

• 1:35:21Dax Shepard?

  Trigger warning, ah.

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  You know, I, I heard, I heard something horrible and I was in the house the other day, your house. You were eating your elk. And Kristen came in, she looked in the fridge and she said, did you finish the elk? And I said, oh no, you're doing this too?

• 1:35:35Dax Shepard?

  She said, did you eat my elk? Now there's his and hers.

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  Oh no. Well, I, I asked with fear, oh no, have you done, are you doing this too? And she is.

• 1:35:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. It's weird you have this position because you did take a bite and you didn't dislike it.

• 1:35:53Speaker 01

  I did not dislike the taste, but I really feel it in my body. Like, I feel grossed out by it.

• 1:36:01Dax Shepard?

  You do. But if you think about, and I'm not, I'm not a non-GMO, organic, that's just not my.

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  Bag.

• 1:36:12Dax Shepard?

  It's on my bag. Even though I'm not that way, you would agree at least that the like the Holstein cow, it hardly resembles this thing that we started with. I mean, it is like, you know,

• 1:36:24Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:36:24Dax Shepard?

  It's a very refined product of selective breeding. We've kind of created this thing.

• 1:36:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:36:31Dax Shepard?

  And elk is like, our ancestors were pounding elk. They were.

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:36:36Dax Shepard?

  That was a good animal for us to try to bring down.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  I think you're right. I just don't want to be my ancestors.

• 1:36:42Dax Shepard?

  That's fair. Yeah, you went indoor plumbing.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:45Dax Shepard?

  Healthcare. You just reminded me, I gotta make a dentist appointment.

• 1:36:49Speaker 01

  Oh, what's happening?

• 1:36:50Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm taking it on all sides now, from Richard Isaacson to my internist to anyone who finds out I'm not going, lets me have it.

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:37:03Dax Shepard?

  They finally wore me down. I gotta go.

• 1:37:05Speaker 01

  Arm cherries?

• 1:37:06Dax Shepard?

  Oh, they're mad too. Yeah. Not as mad as they were about the toe, understandably. But um, I gotta get down there.

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  Okay, I think that's a good idea. I need, it's time for me to go to mine too. My great dentist, Appa.

• 1:37:18Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  Dentistry. Yes.

• 1:37:20Dax Shepard?

  Dot com.

• 1:37:21Speaker 01

  We are. It's not Paola. I love it.

• 1:37:23Dax Shepard?

  I think it's Paola.

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 1:37:25Speaker 04

  Do you have a coupon code for them?

• 1:37:27Dax Shepard?

  Do you have a URL? I also, I just want to own that. I know it's frustrating to be around me at times because this was last night's declaration I made. And even as I was saying it out loud, I kind of thought they're so sick of this. So we generally brush our teeth as a family.

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:37:44Dax Shepard?

  Because you gotta kind of oversee them and make sure they're not telling you. So it ends up, we all kind of brush our teeth.

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  That's cute.

• 1:37:49Dax Shepard?

  In our bathroom.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:37:51Dax Shepard?

  And so I had brushed my teeth. And then, and I did a great job not eating a bunch of candy. But I was a little peckish because I was in the car for so long.

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:37:59Dax Shepard?

  So I took a couple of these oat bars with me to bed and Delta saw that. And she said.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  Post brush?

• 1:38:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, post brush. And she goes, Daddy, you can't eat after you brush your teeth. And to which I responded, and I don't even know if this is true, but I vaguely remember hearing this. That the reason you're brushing your teeth is that over a certain amount of hours, the food on there turns into tartar and then plaque. And what you're really doing when you brush your teeth is interrupting that phase before it can turn into plaque.

• 1:38:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:38:32Dax Shepard?

  So I said to them that, and really, my only, my only commitment is to interrupt that phase every 12 hours. And I'm gonna wake up in the morning and brush my teeth before that phase could have happened. And I could look at all their faces and they're like, A, I don't know, this, this doesn't sound right. B, why is this guy, why is he gonna do everything so fucking different? Either brush your teeth after the snacks, but guess what?

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  Or just say, I know, I'm not supposed to, but I'm doing it.

• 1:38:59Dax Shepard?

  I'm being naughty.

• 1:38:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:01Speaker 01

  That's the truth.

• 1:39:02Dax Shepard?

  Maybe I'll apologize to them. Well, no, it is the truth that I'm being naughty, but it's also true that I believe what I said.

• 1:39:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:39:09Dax Shepard?

  What do we do with that?

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  I don't know. I'm with them.

• 1:39:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, of course. And you're subject to a lot of this stuff, you know?

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  Did you, did you, was it the first time you were like, oh, I lost them?

• 1:39:21Dax Shepard?

  Well, no, I've definitely thought that in the past. I just, I had a moment of recognizing, but then some part of me is like, isn't that the fingerprint of life? Like, you know all the rules and then you kind of cobble together these ones you, you subscribe to and you don't. And that's just kind of your little, um, your art piece of your life is like, yeah, I know. And that's, that doesn't make any sense. That's in contradiction to this other thing.

• 1:39:43Speaker 01

  I know. We do this. That's what you say.

• 1:39:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:47Speaker 01

  You don't say, well, I'm actually just interrupting the cycle of plaque. So, cause if they went into their bed and ate a bunch of candy, that'd be bad.

• 1:39:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it would be really sugary. Well, then, because I recognized they were like, they didn't know, they don't know what to do with, you know, that whole, with me. And then they all left to sleep elsewhere.

• 1:40:09Dax Shepard?

  And I was laying in bed.

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  Like, let's get out of here.

• 1:40:13Dax Shepard?

  Am I sure on this thing I just said?

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  Rob, you wanna look it up?

• 1:40:17Dax Shepard?

  Sugar's sitting on your teeth for eight hours.

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  It's bad.

• 1:40:19Dax Shepard?

  Even if it doesn't go through its whole cycle. By the way, I can already read the comments in my mind. There's gonna be some dentists going like, that's, this, this cycle you're quoting, that doesn't exist. I got myself open to the idea that I'm wrong.

• 1:40:32Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  I think you're wrong.

• 1:40:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:39Speaker 01

  Maybe not about that. Like, maybe there's something to be said about the plaque, but it's still bacteria is forming.

• 1:40:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  That's why your mouth smells and it's bacteria.

• 1:40:49Speaker 04

  Well, so food turns to tartar in your teeth in about 24 to 72 hours.

• 1:40:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:40:54Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. So I could be brushing my teeth once every three days, it sounds like.

• 1:40:58Speaker 04

  Uh, but bacteria in your mouth mixed with saliva and food particles to form a soft sticky film called plaque. This can happen as soon as 20 minutes after eating.

• 1:41:06Speaker 01

  Ah, 20 minutes.

• 1:41:08Dax Shepard?

  But then how long can you have plaque on your teeth before you get some damage? That's a good search.

• 1:41:16Speaker 01

  We need to have a dentist on. We should have a dentist on.

• 1:41:20Dax Shepard?

  Educational. Yeah, we should.

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Speaking of, this is a sad transition, but it is important that I say it. Because, um.

• 1:41:28Speaker 04

  Do you want? I can give you an answer really quick.

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:41:31Speaker 04

  Uh, plaque can start to begin become damaging within a few days if left unre removed.

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  But it builds, though.

• 1:41:38Speaker 04

  It hardens into tartar within 20, 24 to 72 hours.

• 1:41:41Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so I'm not completely off base.

• 1:41:43Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:41:43Dax Shepard?

  This whole little story I have is rooted in something. Thank God.

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  Okay, but Rob, will you type in, why do you have to brush your teeth?

• 1:41:50Dax Shepard?

  Well, come on now, that's.

• 1:41:51Speaker 01

  No, that's, that's the.

• 1:41:53Dax Shepard?

  When you wake up in the morning, it's a quarter to one. You want to have a little fun. You brush your teeth.

• 1:42:01Speaker 01

  Did you make that up?

• 1:42:02Dax Shepard?

  You brush your teeth. No, that's a fun song you sing with your babies when they're little.

• 1:42:06Speaker 04

  Brushing at night removes food particles, acid and bacteria that have built up throughout the day. Brushing in the morning removes bacteria that may have built up overnight and causes bad breath.

• 1:42:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Bacteria is, you know that heart disease starts in the mouth.

• 1:42:21Dax Shepard?

  I, well.

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  Do you know this?

• 1:42:24Dax Shepard?

  I. That's a huge statement.

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  It's.

• 1:42:27Dax Shepard?

  Heart disease starts from a lot of different.

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  It can start from a lot of different things.

• 1:42:33Dax Shepard?

  What can definitely happen is infections in the mouth can go to the brain. Infections in the mouth can go to the lungs.

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  Bacteria.

• 1:42:39Dax Shepard?

  I just want to say, I, I don't eat every night after I brush my teeth. It's a one off. It's once in a while.

• 1:42:45Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:42:45Dax Shepard?

  But I will tell you, my breath isn't better or my breath's not great in the morning, no matter whether I ate a couple of bars or not.

• 1:42:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:52Dax Shepard?

  You know, it's not, it's not like you brush your teeth at night and then you wake up in the morning, your breath smells great.

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:42:56Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 1:42:57Speaker 01

  It's causing more bacteria.

• 1:42:59Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:42:59Speaker 01

  And it, then it's harder to get rid of that bacteria.

• 1:43:02Dax Shepard?

  Let's say one more thing.

• 1:43:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:43:05Dax Shepard?

  You gotta make yourself brush your teeth at night. You don't have to in the morning. Like for me in the morning, I cannot wait to clean things up. But at night, things are fine in your mouth.

• 1:43:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:17Dax Shepard?

  I'm not like, it's not like come 10 PM, I'm like, oh God.

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  If I skip brushing teeth, it's because I've skipped everything. I'm just like, I can't move.

• 1:43:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. How often do you do that? Cause I think it's probably only six times a year. Where I go, fuck it. We're not brushing our teeth tonight and you're gonna, but then, and I go, you can handle one night of not brushing your teeth. But then I go, it's gonna be a pattern.

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:43:43Dax Shepard?

  I get nervous of my addictive personality and then I, like if I skip once, I'll, it'll probably, I'll be dealing with this for six months, but that's not been the case.

• 1:43:52Speaker 01

  Okay, that's good. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I'm not gonna lie and say I've never done it. I, I've done it.

• 1:43:57Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  But it's.

• 1:43:59Dax Shepard?

  Especially for you, if you're tipsy, I think it's much harder when you're tipsy to be handling all your chores.

• 1:44:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:44:06Dax Shepard?

  It's like people that are drunk fuck without condoms more than sober people do, right? Like a lot of decisions get made in.

• 1:44:11Speaker 01

  That's true, but, but I have such, I, I care a lot about my fate. I ha, I have to unfortunately care a lot about my skincare routine. Yes, I have to.

• 1:44:23Dax Shepard?

  Your skin, I got my hair, my thinning hair.

• 1:44:25Speaker 01

  But because I have to be very, very, very diligent about the skincare routine, I don't really skip the brushing because I'm already in there.

• 1:44:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  It's like if I'm already up. By the sink is not a problem. It's the getting up.

• 1:44:38Dax Shepard?

  I agree. And I'm gonna add, and I think I've already talked about this on here before, so forgive me if I have, but and thank God, Erin, really. I have a couple of different people that relate to me. I hate showering so much. Now, when I'm in there, I like it, but theoretically, I'm like, it's such a waste of time. It's just like this chunk of time where I can't, I don't do anything else productive. I have a real hard time with it. The other thing, a bad habit of mine is when I'm brushing my teeth, because only one hand is required, it's the only time in my life I'm insistent I can multitask. I'm always like, okay, I'm gonna brush my teeth, but I'm gonna walk into the room and grab my socks, and I'm gonna walk over here, I'm gonna do all this stuff, and I'm gonna pee while I'm brushing my teeth. I'm so annoyed that I have to spend a minute and a half doing this thing,

• 1:45:20Dax Shepard?

  that I end up trying to do a bunch of things, and inevitably, what always happens, I can't learn this lesson enough, I find that I now, I've now taken on something that requires both my hands, and I just have a toothbrush hanging out of my house. It doesn't save me any time. I always, somehow I end up needing both hands.

• 1:45:34Speaker 01

  I have noticed this in the movies, where people are like brushing their teeth and doing other stuff, and like they have the toothbrush in their mouth, and they're doing stuff, and like, that's a big trope in movies and television. And I can't do, there's toothpaste everywhere.

• 1:45:51Dax Shepard?

  Everywhere. You ever get toothpaste everywhere?

• 1:45:57Dax Shepard?

  You ever been brushing your teeth and get it everywhere?

• 1:46:04Dax Shepard?

  I'm dying to see, I wanna walk into your bathroom, and it's just fucking all over your shirt, and some's in your hair, eyebrows are covered in toothpaste.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  It's not, but it's an effort to not.

• 1:46:15Dax Shepard?

  Do you look like?

• 1:46:16Speaker 01

  It's on my face.

• 1:46:17Dax Shepard?

  Do you look like the woman from Chimp Crazy, when she has the numbing cream on her lips?

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  Tanya, yeah, I do. I think if you're brushing your teeth properly, like, you're really getting it places.

• 1:46:27Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure, sure. Maybe you use an excessive amount of toothpaste, and you get too much palming.

• 1:46:31Speaker 01

  How much toothpaste are you supposed to use?

• 1:46:33Dax Shepard?

  I think less than we do, as with everything, right? We always use way more than we need to. So my hunch is, you know, more, but I would like you to take a picture tonight of how much paste you put on your teeth. Maybe we'll post that.

• 1:46:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:46:46Dax Shepard?

  Because I know people are dying to know.

• 1:46:47Speaker 04

  A pea-sized amount.

• 1:46:48Dax Shepard?

  A pea, I'm going much bigger than a pea. For sure. I bet I'm going three to four peas.

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  This is big toothpaste.

• 1:46:56Dax Shepard?

  Oh, big toothpaste has convinced us. Well, because in the commercial, you grow up watching these great commercials and they do that beautiful wavy.

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Perfect, minty swirl.

• 1:47:10Dax Shepard?

  I'm most, do you have one in your mind? Because mine goes to an exact one.

• 1:47:14Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:47:14Dax Shepard?

  What's yours?

• 1:47:15Speaker 01

  It's green and it has that red stripe in it.

• 1:47:18Dax Shepard?

  It's the one that had three colors.

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:47:20Dax Shepard?

  What was, what was that brand?

• 1:47:22Speaker 01

  It was like AquaDite or something.

• 1:47:24Dax Shepard?

  Aquafine, uh, you're right. It was Aqua something.

• 1:47:27Speaker 04

  Aqua Fresh.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  Aqua Fresh.

• 1:47:29Dax Shepard?

  They had the very best insert shot of toothpaste of all time.

• 1:47:34Speaker 01

  And yet I never used Aqua Fresh in my entire life. That's not a toothpaste I've ever used. I use Arm & Hammer. Love it.

• 1:47:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we don't, we don't need to get into that.

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  Of course we do. Yes, I love it. And that one, you can't make a swirl.

• 1:47:47Dax Shepard?

  Rob, can you put things on this TV? Or no, that's got to.

• 1:47:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I can.

• 1:47:51Dax Shepard?

  You can. Will you put up the image of the Aqua Fresh?

• 1:47:54Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:47:55Dax Shepard?

  Like if you can find that classic thing that Monica and I are both thinking of. Maybe this is Mandela effect though. Maybe we're gonna see it and it's like red. That's another good one.

• 1:48:03Speaker 04

  It's on the box.

• 1:48:05Dax Shepard?

  Who is red? Colgate? Remember that used to be red?

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  I think you're thinking of like cinnamon gum.

• 1:48:11Dax Shepard?

  I don't think I'm thinking of cinnamon gum, but I know one of the toothpastes was red. Anywho, should we get into Halloween? Well, Rob pulls it up.

• 1:48:18Speaker 01

  We gotta get into Halloween, but I want to share my sad news.

• 1:48:22Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:48:22Speaker 01

  That was connected to dentistry.

• 1:48:24Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:48:24Speaker 01

  Um, because on Sync, we, we talked a lot about dentists.

• 1:48:28Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:48:29Speaker 01

  And so, um, I do want to share with people. We, we posted about it, but I, I know a lot of our listeners listened to this. And so if you missed it, we did decide to bring Sync to a close. These are hard decisions to make, obviously. They're always sad decisions and I'm really, really proud of that show.

• 1:48:50Dax Shepard?

  As you should be.

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  And I know Liz is as well. But you know, the real truth is everyone is spread so thin. Everyone, her, me, all of us.

• 1:49:01Dax Shepard?

  The team.

• 1:49:02Speaker 01

  And it's like, at some point, you really realize you're at capacity and you have to figure out where to make space for yourself in your life and other endeavors that I don't know about yet.

• 1:49:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. You're pretty much, you're either, well, that's, okay, so I'm looking for

• 1:49:20Speaker 01

  Mine's

• 1:49:20Dax Shepard?

  The actual, like, a photo of the toothpaste on, um, a toothbrush, but, but, boy, look at that, that already brings back, is that even still, are they still rocking and rolling? I haven't bought Aqua Fresh in some

• 1:49:34Speaker 01

  But also, the one I'm thinking of is green. It's green with like a red stripe in it.

• 1:49:39Dax Shepard?

  Well, this is harder to find than I thought.

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  I just want to wrap up that

• 1:49:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, please.

• 1:49:43Speaker 01

  That, um,

• 1:49:44Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yes.

• 1:49:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, we really

• 1:49:46Dax Shepard?

  I, I was, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm not giving it the respect it totally deserves. Um, I was so distracted by toothpaste in my audacious claim of last night. Um, yeah, you're, you're either recording or editing all day, every day.

• 1:50:01Speaker 01

  Also, our job specifically, of course, understandably, it's a big job. It, there's a lot of things to approve, there's a lot of things to, there's a lot of things to do, there's a lot of things that producing requires. And so, I, I just

• 1:50:15Dax Shepard?

  Schedules are hard, too.

• 1:50:16Speaker 01

  Schedules are hard.

• 1:50:17Dax Shepard?

  And I went through this, so, of course, I had F1 and I absolutely loved it, but, you know, it was, it was a, a little bit more work than I could handle in addition to some other, um, things, which I talked about earlier, but, cease and desist letters and whatnot, but still, it was, it pushed it over to where it's like, well, now this is pretty much all I do, and I'm, I'm less good at the primary job. Because I, I am not showing up as rested and excited to explore all this stuff. It just, you know, there, there is some kind of critical mass where

• 1:50:49Speaker 01

  There is a critical mass, and I, I guess also part of why I want to say that is I want to also remind people and give them permission to like, to take a second and ask yourself if you are at your max capacity and if you can really take some, because it's very hard, it's really hard to like First of all, and anything is very hard.

• 1:51:09Dax Shepard?

  Well, especially something you love.

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  And something you love and something that people love.

• 1:51:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's the biggest.

• 1:51:14Speaker 01

  That's really hard. It feels like you're letting everybody down.

• 1:51:16Dax Shepard?

  I have felt terrible running into F1 fans when they're really disappointed.

• 1:51:20Speaker 01

  We have, we have like incredible listeners, incredible, and I do feel sad. I also wasn't going to be able to do it in a way anymore that was servicing those people.

• 1:51:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  And you just have to, you just have to make hard decisions. It sucks, but it's part, it's like, it's, it's part of life.

• 1:51:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  So that's, that's that.

• 1:51:41Dax Shepard?

  Tons of love. I always loved being on.

• 1:51:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was a great show. I'm really, I'm really proud of that show and I'm really proud. I was thinking about this the other day. I think potentially the most proud of Race to 35.

• 1:51:57Dax Shepard?

  Yes, I would imagine so because we hear so often how impactful that was.

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:03Dax Shepard?

  To a lot of women.

• 1:52:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:05Dax Shepard?

  Maybe some men. Well, we did hear a men, a men, we heard a men tell you they were grateful for the perspective because they couldn't have really understood what was going on.

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:14Dax Shepard?

  So, yeah, some men too.

• 1:52:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:18Dax Shepard?

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:52:25Dax Shepard?

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• 1:53:08Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:53:32Dax Shepard?

  Halloween.

• 1:53:33Speaker 01

  Halloween.

• 1:53:34Dax Shepard?

  I mean, we got to because now it would be 17 weeks after Halloween if we didn't. I mean, we can sum it up.

• 1:53:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:40Dax Shepard?

  You were, you and Anna, or the Olsen Twins.

• 1:53:43Speaker 01

  We were Mary-Kate.

• 1:53:44Dax Shepard?

  Anna told me last night she was Ashley.

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  She is.

• 1:53:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:48Speaker 01

  Because she's an A.

• 1:53:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh, right. And you're an M.

• 1:53:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we were Mary-Kate and Ashley, straight to VHS, the You're Invited video, RSVP. That's what they say.

• 1:53:58Dax Shepard?

  You got it, dude.

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  And when I put on my outfit, which was a t-shirt and over, short, shortalls, and little tennis shoes and a backwards hat.

• 1:54:09Dax Shepard?

  It was a jumper. It was a jump, jump, a jumpy.

• 1:54:13Speaker 01

  It was a backwards hat.

• 1:54:14Dax Shepard?

  Kind of.

• 1:54:15Speaker 01

  I gave myself some bangs with my hair.

• 1:54:17Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:54:18Speaker 01

  And I looked in the mirror and I was like, I look nine.

• 1:54:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, big time. Yeah, you looked hysterically.

• 1:54:27Speaker 01

  I looked so young.

• 1:54:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. You looked like a little guy.

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  It made me happy. It was like, God, I can still look nine.

• 1:54:34Dax Shepard?

  I can still play nine.

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:36Dax Shepard?

  In case the opportunity arises.

• 1:54:39Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, so I'm like.

• 1:54:41Dax Shepard?

  What's your dream, I guess?

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  When is that? And then tonight, we're going as Mary-Kate and Ashley, the Roe era.

• 1:54:47Dax Shepard?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:54:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:48Dax Shepard?

  Nice, nice, nice.

• 1:54:49Speaker 01

  It's a dual day thing. Now you.

• 1:54:51Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so we were, and to remind everyone, it's assigned. It's assigned.

• 1:54:56Speaker 01

  For you.

• 1:54:56Dax Shepard?

  The girls vote, the girls fell in love with Anchorman this year. So we went as the Channel 4 News team. Oh, I'm gonna forget people's name, but I know the actress's name. Linkin was Paul Rudd.

• 1:55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:07Dax Shepard?

  She looked incredible.

• 1:55:09Speaker 01

  She really did.

• 1:55:10Dax Shepard?

  Mustache, chest hair, cool leisure leather jacket. And I will say, the funnest part of Halloween for me last night was, I saw the magic of what The Groundlings is, where you put on a wig and a mustache and all of a sudden, the character's there.

• 1:55:25Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:55:26Dax Shepard?

  You look at yourself and you know exactly how to move. And Linkin was just on fire. Every photo of her, she is in deep, deep character.

• 1:55:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:55:36Dax Shepard?

  And she's crushing. And then we discovered something else. Have you seen the pictures of Kristen in the photos?

• 1:55:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:55:43Dax Shepard?

  I think this is next to impossible. That's a full impersonation of Ron Burgundy, just in the face. Can you see that from where you're at?

• 1:55:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:52Dax Shepard?

  Do you need to hold it closer?

• 1:55:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I can see it.

• 1:55:54Dax Shepard?

  I don't know if I've ever seen someone do a full impersonation just by moving their face.

• 1:55:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:00Dax Shepard?

  There's no voice or walk.

• 1:56:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great.

• 1:56:02Dax Shepard?

  You look at that photo and you go, oh, she's playing, that's Ron Burgundy.

• 1:56:05Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:56:05Dax Shepard?

  That's clearly Ron Burgundy. I was, I'm not gonna claim I was good at Champ Kind at all. This is me as Champ Kind.

• 1:56:12Speaker 01

  That's good, yeah. And you know him, did you send it?

• 1:56:16Dax Shepard?

  I did.

• 1:56:17Speaker 01

  My birthday buddy.

• 1:56:18Dax Shepard?

  Your birthday buddy.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  Keckner.

• 1:56:19Dax Shepard?

  Sweet, sweet David Keckner. Yeah, that was a fun costume. I kinda liked it cuz I could still dance in it.

• 1:56:24Speaker 01

  When you were just walking around, just like you were in a suit.

• 1:56:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, kinda been like a fashion-forward suit.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  When you weren't wearing your hat.

• 1:56:29Dax Shepard?

  Right. That hat was hot. I had to take the hat off in the car.

• 1:56:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:33Dax Shepard?

  And we had Shake Shack Truck, which was awesome.

• 1:56:36Speaker 01

  It was great.

• 1:56:37Dax Shepard?

  All the neighbors came and ate hamburgers.

• 1:56:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so cute.

• 1:56:40Dax Shepard?

  Delicious. By the way, I had, I had the gluten-free. I don't generally ever like it. It was phenomenal. I ended up eating two. Did you get in any burgers?

• 1:56:47Speaker 01

  I did, I did. It was so delicious.

• 1:56:49Dax Shepard?

  And then the hayride. So why don't you, I was in the car the entire time.

• 1:56:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:53Dax Shepard?

  But I added this year Black Lights, ate Black Lights. I added Fog Machine.

• 1:56:57Speaker 01

  Uh huh. It was, it was fantastic.

• 1:57:00Dax Shepard?

  Okay, good, good, good. I didn't, you, you only took one ride though, yeah?

• 1:57:05Dax Shepard?

  I don't know who was count, I wasn't counting.

• 1:57:08Speaker 01

  I normally take one ride.

• 1:57:10Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  Cuz I like, I like an excuse to walk. You know this.

• 1:57:14Dax Shepard?

  And it's fun. The neighborhood's gotten more and more and more fun. It's really, every year it gets better and better and better. Like, this is, I am so, like, touched and heart-filled by the notion that I li, it reminds me of Michigan. Like, I live in a neighborhood now where people love Halloween and they put a lot of effort in, and they invite people into their homes, and everyone's in a great mood. God, is it fun. And there's these little, um, little pods of people walking through the neighborhood. And they always, they generally get on the hayride in a pod. So I get to see, like, different groups of friends up the back.

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  It's so, it's so sweet. It does feel like maybe the only time that strangers are like amongst each other.

• 1:57:51Dax Shepard?

  We have some new members of the neighborhood and they're going hard. Like, they've shown up. Like this is a, a, a neighbor that just moved in. This is her first Halloween and she turned her whole house into an exhibit.

• 1:58:04Speaker 01

  I did go to that party. I didn't go through.

• 1:58:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you didn't?

• 1:58:09Speaker 01

  So I just went to the end.

• 1:58:11Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I thought you did, cause when I pulled up, we had our pod on. They all got out there and then cycled through and then got back on.

• 1:58:16Speaker 01

  Right. I had our, yeah, I wasn't on the hayride then, so I was just at the party.

• 1:58:21Dax Shepard?

  You were protesting the hayride at that point. I gave, um, Lincoln a lot of praise. I gotta throw out there too, that Delton, the picture is incredible. Cause she was playing Brick, Tamlin.

• 1:58:29Speaker 01

  Oh, God, she was so good.

• 1:58:30Dax Shepard?

  And she looked so dumb in every photo. She made herself look, she was just like, like she, she nailed it.

• 1:58:34Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:58:35Dax Shepard?

  I was the weak link in the family.

• 1:58:37Speaker 01

  Everyone really was amazing. And then Rob, Wabi Wab came with his family.

• 1:58:42Dax Shepard?

  Did you have fun, Wabi Wab?

• 1:58:43Speaker 04

  Yep, yep. The boys had a blast.

• 1:58:45Dax Shepard?

  Good.

• 1:58:46Speaker 01

  They're so cute.

• 1:58:47Dax Shepard?

  I think I knew how tiny Vinny was, but I didn't know how tiny Vinny was. When you guys showed up, Rob, and I looked at Vinny, I thought, this little person is too tiny for the world.

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  No, he's so.

• 1:58:59Speaker 04

  He's a small.

• 1:59:00Dax Shepard?

  He's impossibly cute. He might be the cutest kid I've ever seen in my life.

• 1:59:03Speaker 01

  I know. I think so. And he was, what was he in?

• 1:59:05Speaker 04

  He was a mystery machine.

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, mystery.

• 1:59:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah. The whole, your whole crew was.

• 1:59:10Speaker 04

  Scooby doo.

• 1:59:11Dax Shepard?

  Scooby doo.

• 1:59:11Speaker 01

  It was really cute.

• 1:59:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, Vinny's still the smallest in his preschool.

• 1:59:16Speaker 01

  Oh. With just the cutest face on earth. Oh, my God.

• 1:59:22Dax Shepard?

  Beautiful skin.

• 1:59:23Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:59:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:25Speaker 01

  These mixed children, I, I mean, I haven't said this.

• 1:59:27Dax Shepard?

  Enough.

• 1:59:29Speaker 01

  I haven't said it enough or out loud really, but when we were in Austin, I'm gonna get in trouble for this, but whatever. We were in Austin. I met an amazing armchairy.

• 1:59:39Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:59:39Speaker 01

  When I was at a sushi, oh, Rob's sushi place, Uchi. This is Uchiba. But I was at the sushi counter and, um, I was, happened to be sitting next to an armchair. She introduced herself to me and she was so lovely.

• 1:59:54Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  And she was gorgeous.

• 1:59:56Dax Shepard?

  Strikingly beautiful.

• 1:59:57Speaker 01

  She was beautiful. And I come to find out, she's half Indian.

• 2:00:03Dax Shepard?

  Now, did she supply that information or did you inquire?

• 2:00:05Speaker 01

  The person who was with her.

• 2:00:07Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:00:08Speaker 01

  Asked me if I was Indian.

• 2:00:09Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  And I said, I hesitated and then I said, yes.

• 2:00:13Speaker 04

  No, duh.

• 2:00:15Speaker 01

  Because you know, you know what I always and I and like this is my of course baggage. But what I want to say is, well, my parents are from India. And that is normally what I say, but I've tried to stop saying that because I'm like, just do it. Just whatever. So anyway, I said, yes. And she said, she is too. Her mom is Indian. I was like, oh, my gosh. And then I got really committed to procreating with somebody not of my race. I need a mixed child because they look like that. And they look like Vinny and Calvin like it's, I think it's important I do this for the world.

• 2:00:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:54Speaker 01

  The combo of all this stuff is really nice.

• 2:00:58Dax Shepard?

  You know what a lot of it might be too, is currently, and this will change, is there is still a slice of novelty to it. Like, I wonder how much of it is what you're attracted to is you're seeing novelty. You're seeing some mix of these two ethnicities that you have an idea of what those ethnicities look like on their own.

• 2:01:20Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:01:20Dax Shepard?

  And so it's, it's all, and I would just say that that that supports the claim that like, what's beautiful is novelty.

• 2:01:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it wasn't like I looked at her and I was like, hmm. I can't figure out what's happening. I didn't think anything about that. It was only when she, the other lady said it that I was like, oh, that's why. So I'm going to take that on for society.

• 2:01:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  Just letting people know. I might do, I might like have a few different kinds.

• 2:01:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay, great.

• 2:01:53Speaker 01

  Just to see.

• 2:01:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:01:54Speaker 01

  Okay, so you, of course, did your hayride. Did you, was there anything new? Was there any big moments?

• 2:02:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I will say this, I've already talked and slash bragged about it a lot, is the, the route itself is quite tight.

• 2:02:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:07Dax Shepard?

  I live for this turn into an alley that is almost impossible. And that's enough to do. What has always been on the plate is I'm also DJ, so I've got my playlist, but then I've cycled through it once or twice, then I feel, I start fretting over, we need some fresh blood in the mix. So now I'm going through my phone and I'm pulling the trailer and I'm going in the, and that's always been on the table. So I'm juggling a little too much. Well, now I added in these smoke machines. Now the smoke machines, unfortunately, you can't just turn them on and have them work, at least the ones I got.

• 2:02:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:02:37Dax Shepard?

  So I have to be also hitting a remote control every, the countdown's 200 seconds. So it's like I fire it up, I start driving, 200 seconds later, they shut off.

• 2:02:46Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:02:47Dax Shepard?

  Every time it shuts off, I've got to return on the remote, I got to re-put on 200 seconds on the timer, and then I got.

• 2:02:52Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 2:02:53Dax Shepard?

  So I was, and I have three of them. So I have, on the dashboard, I had like, I had my iPhone on the armrest for the tunes, and I had these three remotes to operate the fog machine, and I got to refill the fog machines with the fluid every, I don't know, 20 minutes.

• 2:03:06Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:03:06Dax Shepard?

  So I'm hopping out of the car to refill the things. So I had a lot going on.

• 2:03:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:03:11Dax Shepard?

  But I like a lot going on.

• 2:03:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:13Dax Shepard?

  You know?

• 2:03:15Speaker 04

  Did it start on fire at one point?

• 2:03:17Speaker 01

  It did smell like fire.

• 2:03:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it smelled terrible. One of them, the only one you could turn on and it would run for a really long time, I had two different brands going, that one, when it ran out of oil, it kept going, and I think it kind of like burnt the oil, and all of a sudden, and this was a great thing, and he deserves a really special shout out, Ryan Hansen came as Ken on rollerblades.

• 2:03:37Speaker 01

  It was incredible.

• 2:03:38Dax Shepard?

  And so what he did is held on to the back of the trailer and did tricks, and like, he was on his blades going on the route. And then what was helpful about that for me is that when anything happened on back, he could quickly rollerblade up to the front and tell me what was happening.

• 2:03:52Speaker 01

  That's.

• 2:03:53Dax Shepard?

  Like, one time a little person wanted to get off early, great. Another person, can we get off at the top of the hill? Yeah, I'll stop there.

• 2:03:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:03:58Dax Shepard?

  And then one was, he rolled up, he's like, I think the brakes are on fire. I was like, oh, boy. Okay.

• 2:04:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:03Dax Shepard?

  So I was like, okay, the trailer doesn't have brakes.

• 2:04:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:04:07Dax Shepard?

  It's not a big enough trailer. I can't imagine Eric's Tesla's brakes are on fire from this very slow seven mile an hour crawl through the neighborhood. So then I got out like, oh, God, do we have some kind of electrical fire?

• 2:04:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:19Dax Shepard?

  And it was that one smoke machine, and yeah, it's. Stunk.

• 2:04:21Speaker 01

  It did.

• 2:04:22Dax Shepard?

  My apologies to those folks that were on that.

• 2:04:23Speaker 01

  I was on that.

• 2:04:24Dax Shepard?

  You were, oh.

• 2:04:25Speaker 01

  I loved it.

• 2:04:26Dax Shepard?

  Home team got the shit ride.

• 2:04:27Speaker 01

  That's good. That's what you want.

• 2:04:29Dax Shepard?

  That's.

• 2:04:29Speaker 01

  You want it to be us. Yeah. And I, Molly and I were looking at each other like, hmm, there's a smell.

• 2:04:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:36Speaker 01

  And then we got off.

• 2:04:37Dax Shepard?

  Once you smell that smell.

• 2:04:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So I lost some customers. This just makes me think really quickly. This is one of the few times where I will be very generous. And but in truth, it's not generosity. Do you find that when you cook, let's say you cooked three chicken breasts?

• 2:04:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:53Dax Shepard?

  And you have guests over.

• 2:04:54Speaker 01

  Oof.

• 2:04:54Dax Shepard?

  I'll always take the shittiest one. Like if I've cooked five steaks and one's a little not done right. I take that one.

• 2:05:00Speaker 01

  Yes, you have to.

• 2:05:01Dax Shepard?

  Which seems really nice, but really it's my ego.

• 2:05:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's to show off.

• 2:05:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I don't want anyone to eat a less than perfect steak.

• 2:05:08Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 2:05:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So in that same way, I guess, yeah, I guess I'm glad the pod had the stinky smell.

• 2:05:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it was still, it was fantastic.

• 2:05:16Dax Shepard?

  It was really fun.

• 2:05:16Speaker 01

  And it was.

• 2:05:17Dax Shepard?

  I would say it's the best one.

• 2:05:19Speaker 01

  That's good. So they're getting better and better.

• 2:05:20Dax Shepard?

  They're getting better. And I have some more, now I have ideas for next year.

• 2:05:23Speaker 01

  Oh, exciting.

• 2:05:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:24Speaker 01

  Very exciting. Okay, let's do some quick facts.

• 2:05:27Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:05:27Speaker 01

  We're way over. Keith, Keith Payne, great.

• 2:05:31Dax Shepard?

  Oh, God, I like Keith Payne.

• 2:05:33Speaker 01

  So great.

• 2:05:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:34Speaker 01

  So smart, great message. We love it.

• 2:05:37Dax Shepard?

  He keeps knocking out of the park.

• 2:05:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:39Dax Shepard?

  He's a great writer.

• 2:05:40Speaker 01

  Yes. Current poverty line. What's the current poverty line? The federal poverty level for 2024 for one person is 15,000.

• 2:05:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:05:51Speaker 01

  For two, 20, well, 20,448 dollars. Three people, 25,820 dollars. For four people, 30. So like a family of four, 31,000.

• 2:06:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:02Speaker 01

  The poverty line.

• 2:06:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, raising and keeping four people alive on 30,000 a year before taxes with rent. Oh, I mean.

• 2:06:11Speaker 01

  Impossible.

• 2:06:12Dax Shepard?

  So hard. Although if you're listening in some other country, you're like, are you crazy? There's lots of countries where.

• 2:06:17Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:06:18Dax Shepard?

  That's a.

• 2:06:19Speaker 01

  But their poverty line is different.

• 2:06:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, way, way lower. It's all relative.

• 2:06:22Speaker 01

  It's all relative, like in this country, that's extremely hard.

• 2:06:26Dax Shepard?

  It's almost impossible.

• 2:06:26Speaker 01

  Pretty much impossible, yeah.

• 2:06:28Dax Shepard?

  And then you're doing cash, same cash day loan shit with a terrible interest rate. The whole system's set up to disproportionately punish.

• 2:06:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:37Dax Shepard?

  I'm reading a book right now, I think I told you, I'm reading on Audible Nate Silver's new book.

• 2:06:42Speaker 01

  Mm-mm, you didn't tell me.

• 2:06:43Dax Shepard?

  Um, you know Nate Silver? He does, he does, he's like a statistician and he's always, especially around election time, he's always front and center. He does, he does these models.

• 2:06:52Speaker 01

  Uh-huh.

• 2:06:52Dax Shepard?

  And, um, this book is about risk-taking. And it talks in there about the lottery is just, if you really look at it, it, it's just kind of, um, a way to make money on low-income people. If you look at who buys lottery tickets and how much of it that the state keeps of it, it's just kind of, it ends up being a bizarre tax on lower-income people.

• 2:07:17Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:07:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:19Speaker 01

  Because they, they think the reward is worth the risk.

• 2:07:23Dax Shepard?

  Well, they gotta try something, right? And then the, the state is keeping this huge percent, it's not like it just goes to the winners.

• 2:07:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:07:31Dax Shepard?

  So this huge chunk of it comes out, he goes state by state. So, I mean, at best, I think it's like 30%, in some states, it's like 80% they're keeping of the thing.

• 2:07:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:39Dax Shepard?

  And it's just low-income people paying the state.

• 2:07:43Speaker 01

  This is so tricky, cause like, yeah, that sounds awful to me, cause it just feels like poor people.

• 2:07:49Dax Shepard?

  Who pays the highest interest rate, low-income people.

• 2:07:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're getting, and yeah, so it feels like poor people are getting taken advantage of. And then also, I think it depends on what the state does with that lottery money. Cause like in Georgia, it's used towards education.

• 2:08:01Dax Shepard?

  The big sales pitch to every state to get the lottery is that it's going to education. But then there's been a lot of, uh, op-eds about how, how much really gets to education. So, and it's not, it hasn't worked out in the way, in many, many cases, that it was promised to work out.

• 2:08:16Speaker 01

  Cause like I did, that was my, the Hope Scholarship in Georgia, the reason I have free tuition is because of the Georgia Lottery.

• 2:08:21Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it is?

• 2:08:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:22Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay, that's great.

• 2:08:23Speaker 01

  And that's why they, that's how they have the Hope Scholarship there. You have to, though you have to qualify, in order to qualify, you have to have a certain grade point average.

• 2:08:31Dax Shepard?

  I always bring this up, but it's like so many of these thought processes really end up boiling down to again, kind of Kantian or utilitarian, cause like you could. You could look at it just from a content point of view and go like, yeah, if someone wants to buy a lottery ticket, they should be free to buy a lot. They want to buy a lottery ticket. And the state should take that money and use it for something good. Great. That on the surface, that's, that's very defendable. But then if you just step back and you're, what are the results of it? Well, the results are that the, the lowest income people in the state are paying for education.

• 2:09:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:09:05Dax Shepard?

  That doesn't like.

• 2:09:06Speaker 01

  And also, I hate to say this, but like, paying for education for people who are doing very well.

• 2:09:12Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh. Well, or I'm sure that scholarship, the whole scholarship does benefit a ton of low income people, but disproportionately low income people aren't going to University of Georgia.

• 2:09:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, it's actually probably help. It's probably, it gave me free tuition.

• 2:09:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:27Speaker 01

  And my parents could have paid.

• 2:09:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So it's just interesting. Like, both, both arguments are really fair.

• 2:09:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:34Dax Shepard?

  But at some point, you gotta like zoom up 30,000 feet and go like, well, what at the end of the day, what's happening?

• 2:09:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:09:39Dax Shepard?

  Well, poor people are paying for education.

• 2:09:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. But then what happens, like, do you just take away the lottery? Which is like, fine with me, because I don't play, but I had a lot of people would not like that.

• 2:09:50Dax Shepard?

  I wonder if it should be a, the, a tax base we're trying to create. I don't know if, if, if that's the place we should be looking for tax revenue.

• 2:09:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:00Dax Shepard?

  To me, that's maybe like the kind of ethical, like, they should have a lottery, but 100% of the money should go into the pot to be won by the people who want to play.

• 2:10:08Speaker 01

  Right. I see that.

• 2:10:10Dax Shepard?

  Should, should the state?

• 2:10:11Speaker 01

  Taken.

• 2:10:12Dax Shepard?

  Find a different way to fund education?

• 2:10:14Speaker 01

  But then it would be privately run. The lottery would be privately run, which might get a little tricky.

• 2:10:21Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 2:10:23Speaker 01

  It's all, okay. Well, this is a ding ding ding, because I, I spoke about Gavin Newsom's bill. So Governor Gavin Newsom today announced that he has signed AB 1780 by Assembly Member Phil Ting of San Francisco to prohibit legacy and donor preferences in the admissions process for private nonprofit institutions. Legacy status and donor preferences have long been excluded from the state's public university admissions processes. The University of California system eliminated legacy preferences in 1998.

• 2:10:53Dax Shepard?

  From the state.

• 2:10:54Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 2:10:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:10:55Speaker 01

  I like that. Okay, so we talked about Keith's town before he went to college. It was like 100% white.

• 2:11:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:02Speaker 01

  Only around white people. And then I looked up, what are the towns with 100% white population?

• 2:11:07Dax Shepard?

  That's a dangerous search. You're now on a anti-white nationalist.

• 2:11:11Speaker 01

  Also, last, the last fact check, I was looking up the like Deutschland thing. I'm definitely on list. For sure.

• 2:11:18Dax Shepard?

  We've got a single person, Sal.

• 2:11:21Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:11:22Dax Shepard?

  And they're, this'll shock ya, they're not white.

• 2:11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Sometimes those are the most dangerous ones.

• 2:11:28Dax Shepard?

  That great movie with, uh, what's his tush? Cutie Pie from Ken.

• 2:11:32Speaker 01

  Ryan Gosling.

• 2:11:33Dax Shepard?

  He played a, uh.

• 2:11:34Speaker 01

  White nationalist?

• 2:11:35Dax Shepard?

  He played, yeah, Nazi who was Jewish. And it's a real story.

• 2:11:39Speaker 01

  I know. There, I mean, there are, this is.

• 2:11:42Speaker 04

  The Believer?

• 2:11:43Dax Shepard?

  The Believer.

• 2:11:44Speaker 01

  Oh, I never saw that.

• 2:11:45Dax Shepard?

  It's really good. He's great.

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  He's so great. It says here, this is AI, I'm gonna be clear.

• 2:11:53Dax Shepard?

  Fourth coming.

• 2:11:53Speaker 01

  There aren't any cities in the United States that are 100% white cities.

• 2:11:57Dax Shepard?

  Cities, yeah.

• 2:11:59Speaker 01

  But here are some cities with high percentage of white residents.

• 2:12:01Dax Shepard?

  Can I guess number one?

• 2:12:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:03Dax Shepard?

  Salt Lake City, Utah.

• 2:12:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:12:05Dax Shepard?

  Oh. My apologies.

• 2:12:09Speaker 01

  Columbiana, Ohio.

• 2:12:11Dax Shepard?

  Columbiana?

• 2:12:12Speaker 01

  Uh huh, it's called Columbiana.

• 2:12:14Dax Shepard?

  Not Columbia.

• 2:12:15Speaker 01

  Ohio, 99.3%.

• 2:12:18Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:12:19Speaker 01

  Kirtland, Ohio.

• 2:12:21Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:12:21Speaker 01

  99.3.

• 2:12:23Dax Shepard?

  All right.

• 2:12:23Speaker 01

  Guess what's third?

• 2:12:24Dax Shepard?

  Milford, Michigan.

• 2:12:26Speaker 01

  You're close with Milford. Livonia.

• 2:12:29Dax Shepard?

  Livonia. Papa Bob and Grandma.

• 2:12:32Speaker 01

  96.5%.

• 2:12:34Dax Shepard?

  Except, wait, 90, so we can, we, we can actually figure out what percentage Sanjay Gupta's family was offsetting that? Cause that's where he's from.

• 2:12:43Speaker 01

  Oh my God, that made me, that just made me feel very sad.

• 2:12:47Dax Shepard?

  It did?

• 2:12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:49Dax Shepard?

  He liked Livonia.

• 2:12:51Speaker 01

  That's hard.

• 2:12:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:52Speaker 01

  It's hard when it, the numbers are not like this.

• 2:12:55Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 2:12:56Speaker 01

  And that.

• 2:12:57Dax Shepard?

  It can be really hard and he seems to really have enjoyed growing up in Livonia.

• 2:13:00Speaker 01

  Oof, okay, um.

• 2:13:03Dax Shepard?

  I think his mother was like one of the, the first female engineer at Ford.

• 2:13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:08Dax Shepard?

  Something cool like that?

• 2:13:09Speaker 01

  Knoxville, 90.9.

• 2:13:12Speaker 01

  Parks of Parksburg, Vienna, West Virginia. There's a Pennsylvania, Altoona, Pennsylvania.

• 2:13:21Dax Shepard?

  I guess maybe Salt Lake has Latinos now. I'm kind of shocked Salt Lake's not. When I'm in Salt Lake, I feel like, oh yeah, this is a very white city.

• 2:13:29Speaker 01

  Scottsdale, Arizona, has eighty seven point nine percent.

• 2:13:34Dax Shepard?

  That feels right.

• 2:13:36Dax Shepard?

  Your vacation destination with your Indian parents.

• 2:13:38Speaker 01

  I went there once, yeah.

• 2:13:40Dax Shepard?

  You were probably being watched around every turn.

• 2:13:42Speaker 01

  Probably was.

• 2:13:43Dax Shepard?

  They were like, everyone you walk by, they're like, okay, I got eyes on the, uh, the Indian family. Well, they seem to just be arguing amongst themselves. They don't seem to have any plan to attack us. They seem to be pretty engaged in their own dispute.

• 2:13:56Speaker 01

  That's about right.

• 2:13:57Speaker 04

  Salt Lake City is sixty five point two percent white. Twenty one percent Latino or Hispanic.

• 2:14:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:14:03Dax Shepard?

  That's interesting, white cities.

• 2:14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. That's it.

• 2:14:07Dax Shepard?

  That was it.

• 2:14:07Speaker 01

  That's it for Keith.

• 2:14:08Dax Shepard?

  Okay. I love Keith. I really hope he keeps writing books that keep expanding my mind.

• 2:14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, same. And he was also like, he had such a great demeanor.

• 2:14:18Dax Shepard?

  He's kind of a best boy.

• 2:14:19Speaker 01

  Soft demeanor, yes, best boy. Oh, my God, Best Boy was on Connections the other day.

• 2:14:25Dax Shepard?

  I know. I hadn't played it, but I read it in the comments. Did you play it and see it?

• 2:14:32Speaker 01

  I didn't get, I mean, I got it as the last one.

• 2:14:34Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:14:35Speaker 01

  But it was companies with one letter changed, so Best Buy.

• 2:14:42Speaker 01

  It was hard. It was really hard.

• 2:14:44Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I want to go back. I want to look at the other ones.

• 2:14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:47Dax Shepard?

  I'm so delighted they're archived now.

• 2:14:48Speaker 01

  Oh, I love it.

• 2:14:49Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Archives are where the party's at.

• 2:14:53Speaker 01

  Also, Rob, today on Minis, um, Wabi Sabi was a clue.

• 2:14:57Dax Shepard?

  Ooh, Wabi Wab Sabi Sabi.

• 2:14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:02Speaker 01

  All right.

• 2:15:02Dax Shepard?

  All right, love you.

• 2:15:03Speaker 01

  Love you.