Tyler Perry

Tyler Perry (The Six Triple Eight, I Can Do Bad All By Myself, Diary of A Mad Black Woman) is an actor, playwright, producer, and filmmaker. Tyler joins the Armchair Expert to discuss how he realized that his journal could be a play, his fear of comfort, and growing up to leave the door open for somebody else. Tyler and Dax talk about seeing a black middle class for the first time after relocating to Atlanta, the things children walk through, and moving storytelling into TV because it was a bigger arena. Tyler explains being a loner by nature, the unbelievable true story he wanted to tell with The Six Triple Eight, and learning to build toward where he’s going rather than from where he is. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by the Duchess of Duluth.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Hi there.

• 0:06Dax Shepard?

  Great sweater. You got a new sweater with two different colors, blue, very light on the sleeves.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 0:11Dax Shepard?

  Starry night in the middle.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Oh, do you think this is blue?

• 0:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, what do you think?

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Oh, no, it's, it's purple for sure.

• 0:21Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I'll buy that.

• 0:22Speaker 02

  It looks blue on the TV back here, too.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  What do you, what are you seeing?

• 0:27Speaker 02

  But I can see the purple now.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  What color is my face to you?

• 0:29Dax Shepard?

  Pure white.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 0:30Dax Shepard?

  Like the driven snow.

• 0:34Dax Shepard?

  Our guest today is Tyler Perry and I just got to say right out of the gates, this is a very mind blowing experience. I don't know what I thought about Tyler Perry. I mean, as a person, other than I had seen this incredible 60 Minutes segment on him one time and I knew he had had a really incredible story that he overcame. So I knew that he was very honest and stuff, but just as a, as a human, he was just a very powerful and special presence. My God, did we like this so much.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Really very, very special. I had an inkling before it would have that extra sparkle on it and it did.

• 1:10Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Well, listen, Tyler Perry is a filmmaker, a playwright, an actor, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Sisters, House of Pain, Madea's Family Reunion, Alex Cross, and his new movie out now, which is doing really great. I've noticed it's always in the top couple there on Netflix, The Six Triple Eight with one of our favorites, Kerry Washington. This is a very, very special episode. Please enjoy Tyler Perry.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  And Happy New Year.

• 1:38Dax Shepard?

  And Happy New Year. And to all a good night. We get support from Quince.

• 1:45Speaker 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.

• 2:04Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:20Speaker 01

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

• 2:31Dax 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.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 2:39Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:43Speaker 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.

• 3:06Dax 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.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  What?

• 3:38Dax 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 You're never in a pickle desert. Every bite is accounted for.

• 4:24Dax Shepard?

  Someone engineered this thing with love. I love a quarter pounder.

• 4:27Speaker 01

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

• 4:39Dax Shepard?

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

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not surprised.

• 4:45Dax 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.

• 5:19Dax Shepard?

  Would you like a coffee or a diet coke?

• 5:22Speaker 01

  That coffee is for you.

• 5:24Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that's a cream top. It's very famous coffee.

• 5:27Speaker 03

  Cream top? No, I'm not a coffee person.

• 5:29Dax Shepard?

  You're not a coffee person.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Good for you.

• 5:31Dax Shepard?

  I don't like some of the things I'm learning about you right away.

• 5:34Speaker 03

  Tell me.

• 5:34Dax Shepard?

  You're early.

• 5:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:36Dax Shepard?

  And you don't like coffee.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  I love your chair though, man. This is my size chair.

• 5:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  It's a biggie.

• 5:42Dax Shepard?

  You really should consider ordering one of these online because I didn't realize I was ordering like a big and tall version. Cause I'm a big guy and.

• 5:50Speaker 03

  You could get two of me in here. Beside you. Yeah.

• 5:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. My feet barely touch the ground if they do.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  Where'd this come from?

• 5:56Dax Shepard?

  Online, lazyboy.com.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Lazyboy.com.

• 5:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. You gotta get someone on that. Do you own any lazy boys?

• 6:02Speaker 03

  I don't.

• 6:03Dax Shepard?

  You don't? Because your style aesthetic won't permit you to or you're afraid of comfort?

• 6:09Speaker 03

  A little bit of both.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  A little bit of both. Don't want to be too comfortable.

• 6:13Dax Shepard?

  Can't get too comfortable. Did you like miniature things when you were a kid? This is a weird first question, but I can elaborate.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  Please.

• 6:20Dax Shepard?

  Like you would go to, where would I see miniature stuff?

• 6:24Speaker 01

  A dollhouse store.

• 6:25Dax Shepard?

  No, I would never be in there. I like the idea of feeling like a giant.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  I would imagine you don't want to be a giant because you're already tall. It's surprising you still have it because you're tall.

• 6:36Dax Shepard?

  Well, not to jump directly into trauma, but I feel like both of us probably desired to be 80 feet tall as kids.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  For me, it was the opposite. I wanted to be smaller. I would always slouch and didn't want to be seen.

• 6:49Dax Shepard?

  You want to be invisible?

• 6:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:51Dax Shepard?

  But the notion of being like the Hulk and you can defend yourself and no one can hurt you, that didn't enter the fray.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  No, because the strong men for me in my life weren't good men. So I wanted to be the opposite. And being tall and being big, I was always at the end of the line and always, don't hit him back. Listen, my cousin, who was smaller than me, and he would bully me. And his mother would mount, she'd say, you can't hit him back. You're too big to hit him back. Just don't hit him back. Just, just you're too big.

• 7:15Dax Shepard?

  You just gotta take it.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, just gotta take it. And then one day I lost it and hung him on the clothesline in the backyard.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Oh, mine.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. And ran home, told my mother, I was like, I couldn't take it anymore. She said, what'd you do? So she goes and get the kid down and she's laughing all the way. But yeah, I wanted to be smaller.

• 7:30Dax Shepard?

  They were kind of right to tell you to not hit back because look what happened when you did.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly right. But that's my thing. I am the most gentle guy in the world until I'm pushed way too far. Then it's a whole nother side.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Pushed to your limit.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, it takes a lot to get me there.

• 7:44Dax Shepard?

  So I was enormous for my size as a kid. And in all the class photos, it looks like I flunked a few grades.

• 7:50Speaker 03

  Because you're so big.

• 7:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it looks like he's in the wrong class. Did you stand out like that?

• 7:55Speaker 03

  Oh, for sure. I was the tallest and the biggest and the smartest and it was a lot.

• 8:00Dax Shepard?

  And this in New Orleans?

• 8:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, New Orleans.

• 8:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So what were the virtues that were prized at that time? Obviously not those things.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  No, growing up, my mother was a woman who completely gave a lot. So it was all about giving and helping each other all the time. And because we didn't have much, but we had more than others in the neighborhood. We were always a place to come if you were in need. And my mother was really, really great at that. I would wake up in the morning, sometimes at the morning, step out of the bed and I would step on somebody on the floor like, who is this person? And my mom would be like, they needed a place to stay. Be quiet. Don't embarrass them.

• 8:31Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 8:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a lot of that for sure.

• 8:33Dax Shepard?

  And was she finding these people at church or all over?

• 8:36Speaker 03

  We lived in New Orleans, which was the big city and most of her family and the man that raised me, his family were from the small country towns outside. And when the two of them got married and moved to New Orleans, it was family members that took them in. So it's always your door had to be open for somebody else.

• 8:50Dax Shepard?

  Right. And siblings?

• 8:52Speaker 03

  A brother and two sisters.

• 8:53Dax Shepard?

  Older or younger?

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Younger brother by 10 years and two sisters by five and six years.

• 8:58Dax Shepard?

  So did you feel included at all? Or do you have little brother complex?

• 9:01Speaker 03

  My brother's 10 years younger than me, so we never were close.

• 9:04Dax Shepard?

  But with the sisters?

• 9:05Speaker 03

  With the sisters, no. There was always something that was off for me in the family. Like, I didn't feel like I belonged. So I was never able to be extremely close to any of them. It was really, really strange.

• 9:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I gotta tell you, I saw the 60 Minutes profile you did, however many years ago. It had to be over 10 years ago, probably. And it was insanely moving.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  I appreciate that. Thank you.

• 9:25Dax Shepard?

  Particularly when you're visiting that house, and I think we come upon the crawl space.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:31Dax Shepard?

  It's not planned, clearly. And you're just having a moment where you go like, oh, yeah, I hid and I spent so much time in this crawl space.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:40Dax Shepard?

  That was heartbreaking.

• 9:41Speaker 03

  Chantel, you told me this was light and happy. Where are we going? Okay, all right, all right, Dex. Okay, Monica, okay. All right, I'm with you.

• 9:48Dax Shepard?

  Well, you told him light and happy.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  Light and happy, but no, no, no.

• 9:52Dax Shepard?

  I'm light and happy while talking about my trauma.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  We're gonna need the weed. Yeah, to walk down the side of the house and see that crawl space, little cubby house where I would hide from the abuse. And it was painted robin egg blue. I remember the blue paint that I found somewhere in a rusted can and painted it with such a beautiful light blue. I now realize that what that blue was for is that people would paint their ceilings or their porches blue so that wasp and other things wouldn't build nests because they thought it was the sky.

• 10:22Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Yes, southern thing.

• 10:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  Now realizing that robin egg blue was to represent the sky. It was a pretty painful and rough time. It was hard.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Real metaphor also, like, keep the wasps away.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, or keep looking to the sky. Keep looking up all around you.

• 10:36Dax Shepard?

  All right, well, look, we can keep it light and fresh.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I wanna go where you wanna go. Let's go, let's go, let's go.

• 10:42Dax Shepard?

  Well, because I think you and I are among very few men that will say out loud, I got molested.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:47Dax Shepard?

  I think that's important. I'm sick of talking about it, but I think it's important.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  Let me tell you why I think it's important. The far reaching effects, I don't know about what happened with you, but for me, having my abuser be a female, I just found out at 54 was rape. To be able to associate that with rape was weird because it was a female.

• 11:08Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  And also the man at church. So the far reaching effects of the trauma of sexual abuse and the sexual confusion that children walk through and tried to figure that out, that I had to walk through was really, really profound. I worked so hard at trying to understand it. That was the most difficult part of my life, just trying to understand what had happened.

• 11:30Dax Shepard?

  Why it had happened or why the people that perpetrated it could have done that?

• 11:34Speaker 03

  Why it happened to me and why I couldn't shake what they did.

• 11:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  And as children, we'd have this ability to hold on to the pain of what it was and make it about our fault. Well, what was it in me that made that man do that or that woman do that? And growing up and coming into adulthood and trying to excise that, to get it out, to understand it was really, really challenging.

• 11:59Dax Shepard?

  I had a very bizarre breakthrough with it that thus far as I share this, I've not heard a lot of people relate to. But the confusion from my perspective was like, yeah, it was man on man. So this opens up this hole, especially where I grew up in Detroit. I guess now I'm gay. So there was like this bad thing happened to me and then I think this makes me gay, which is its own crisis at that time. And so then the notion I would ever tell anyone wasn't on the table because that would have been telling everyone I was gay. Again, in the eighties in Detroit where that's not going to work.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  That's it.

• 12:30Dax Shepard?

  It is. Then hearing once I did say it, oh, it's not your fault. You know, you were a kid and that just didn't really alleviate any of the. And so for me, the work was I had to first acknowledge and own my part. This is what people don't like, but for me to get over it, it was my spidey senses were going off. I was in a place I knew I shouldn't be and I didn't leave. And I have that pit in my stomach. I can remember how that feels and I didn't listen to my instincts. I first had to go, yeah, that part happened and I actually got to forgive myself for that. And once I was like, that all happened, you knew better, you should have gotten out, you felt those feelings. It's not like it came out of complete blue for me. And that's okay. Cause you were like eight years old and eight year olds.

• 13:15Dax Shepard?

  Choose poorly than I did. For me, it was allowing myself to forgive the eight year old who didn't listen to his spidey senses.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  It's powerful, but it's unfair. Let me tell you why.

• 13:24Dax Shepard?

  That's what people say.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  I didn't really fully understand it until I had a child and I could see my son at the age of the traumas that I was experiencing going, look how innocent and beautiful and pure.

• 13:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  And this innocent and beautiful, pure child does not have the ability to make those kinds of decisions. So for me, it wasn't feeling the sense of, oh, what's happening, what's happening? Is this wrong? This wrong? It was somebody sees me and appreciates me and is telling me I'm special. Someone was kind and their agenda was about grooming rather than it being about kindness. And I tell anyone, any man, any woman who's been sexually abused as a child, if you don't have a child, if you don't have relatives, if you see a kid on the playground, watch, not creepily, but watch the innocence of that child and then try and judge yourself through the innocence of that child. That's unfair.

• 14:20Dax Shepard?

  It is. And that's what I came to. But I first had to grapple with this guilt feeling I had. Just to hear that it wasn't my fault was not sufficient to make it go away. I needed to kind of confront, what was the darkness? The darkness was I felt like I should have known better and done something differently. And I just needed to explore that.

• 14:37Speaker 03

  That's the man judging the child. Cause the man or the teenager or the young man would clearly be like, what are you doing? This is crazy. Why are you here? But if you take away the innocence and the lens of the way the child saw it, then you're robbing yourself of it. Here is the most freeing part of it for me that I found at 54 in therapy for the first time in my life. There's something called an arousal template that I had no idea about that from the age of three to seven, I could be wrong on the ages, but the therapist will tell you this three to seven, your arousal template is set as a kid, even though you're not sexual. So if someone comes along and interjects something into your arousal template, be it culturally, be it rape, molestation.

• 15:15Dax Shepard?

  Violence.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  Violence. All of those things being put into your young child brain becomes a part of your arousal template, especially for men and for me being a little Boy, the thing gave me the most shame was when the molester would say, you liked it. Look, you're erect.

• 15:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  That's the struggle. How can I be a heterosexual boy, know I like girls and have the same sex thought and desire? That was hard to understand, but understanding that the arousal template in your brain sets that.

• 15:43Dax Shepard?

  And has been hijacked.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  And also, this is the thing that blew my mind. Once it's set, it can't be taken away. And for me, wrapping my mind and soul around all of that was very freeing.

• 15:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  How did you handle it before you went to therapy? Like, what were you telling yourself?

• 15:59Speaker 03

  A lot of people would say, oh, my God, you're so profound. Look how hard you work. Look how much you've done. A lot of the success that I've experienced in life was because I wasn't dealing. I was just working. I would work my way through it and relationships wouldn't really work out because I would just work and work and work and work. And no matter how much work that I did, when the work would stop, I'd be faced with these things happen to you. What do you feel about it? Who are you? What are you? And I just got to a place in my life where it's like, I'm not going to live this way anymore. And at 55, I'm the freest and clearest version of myself that I've ever been.

• 16:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that's wonderful. All of it's a sword, right? So I would argue that part of your arousal template being set in the way it was does predispose you to be able to handle what comes your way and results in the success. So my thing is I thrive when shit's hitting the fan and spent a lot of my life seeking those out. We set this thing at a 50 instead of a 10.

• 16:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:50Dax Shepard?

  So it's like, I'm asleep unless I really got to be aware of how to get out of this situation.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, man.

• 16:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, same for you.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  What I didn't know, because recently I've been doing all these tests. When I went to this session, they were like, okay, let's test you for autism because there are certain things that you are doing that are on the spectrum. So we went through all of these tests and what we found is that a child like me having to live in that kind of chaos and trauma constantly. I became hyper vigilant in everything. I trained my brain to see, to watch, to protect myself in every way, which is where I work today.

• 17:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  So for you to say that you were in a moment of chaos is where you thrived. It's what happened to the little boy and what he Needed to be okay or to feel like he was loved. And I've run into people like that and it's one of the saddest things that I've seen because the more I try and say, hey, this is what peace feels like. There's all of this resistance to it because it's scary.

• 17:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I was set on this trajectory. There's some parts of me I'm gonna have to accept. I'm not gonna erase the hard drive from the arousal format.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  Which is very important to understand because you can make yourself insane trying to figure out what has happened, why is affecting me in this way. I've had very few sexual partners at 55 and people go, oh my God, you're this huge guy, really successful. Sure, you're all over the world. No, not me. I do believe that all things work together for your good, even though if they're awful and horrible, I have to believe that. Which put me in a wonderful position in running the studio because when you have people coming to you with their dreams in their hands and they need a job or wanna be on a show. If I had been another person, then maybe I would have been doing things that were horrible. But because of what I went through and because of how much I understand the pain of that, I would never inflict that on anybody. So it put me in this great position to help as many people as I could

• 18:40Speaker 03

  safely hit this next level in their lives, right?

• 18:44Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  So all of that is incredibly important to me.

• 18:46Dax Shepard?

  What's interesting is I think you and I went almost in opposite directions based on similar things, which is kind of fascinating.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that happens. I had a friend who had been sexually abused and he had hundreds of partners.

• 19:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  While at the same time he was abandoned by his mother. So you could give him 10,000 females and it wouldn't fulfill what he was looking for.

• 19:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  And he and I finally sat down, have some real deep conversations about what's going on. I even hired a private detective to try to find the mother that abandoned him.

• 19:18Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  So that he could talk to her. I was thinking that hopefully that will help him.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, closure.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, there are people who go to these incredible extremes. You can go that way where everything is sex and then you go the other way where for me, I didn't wanna be thought of as sexy. Being tall was a problem because when people would see me, they'd think, oh, this tall black guy, the stereotype or whatever that is.

• 19:39Dax Shepard?

  Well, you embody masculinity in our simplest definition or stereotype.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Yes. So carrying all of that and trying to walk through and work all of that out was a journey for sure.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  When you would have sexual partners, did you feel like, sorry, this is so personal, but what did you feel after the fact? Were you like, I didn't like that. I don't like sex anymore, or I'm ruined, or I'm fraudulent? What were the feelings?

• 20:05Speaker 03

  There was one woman who I was completely in love with. I was in my early 30s at the time. Because I wasn't very experienced, I felt less than.

• 20:13Dax Shepard?

  Inadequate.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  Inadequate. And that was something that made me shy further away and back into myself of going, okay, I don't want to be judged based on my lack of experience because of what I've been through.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a weird cycle.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. So at 54, this past summer, I've been thinking about it for a while. It's like, okay, Tyler, you've worked this hard. You've got this beautiful kid. You've had this amazing life. What happens when you're not working? Why aren't you happy when you're not working? Because the work became the drug and the adrenaline. So to take that moment and stop the work and say, okay, let's go and look inside and see what's happening and see the full effect. This program I did was so fantastic. Before you go in, there are thousands of questions that you answer. So they have a clinical profile of who you are mentally walking in the door. For me to walk in and be confirmed in who I thought I was, was so freeing. To have all of these therapists, I think it was nine that I saw

• 21:09Speaker 03

  in total, because it's a very intensive thing for seven days, 10 hours a day. And then you sit in the room and all the therapists talk about you and you listen.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 21:17Speaker 03

  Oh, wow. And to hear them talking and affirming the good person that I know that I am, and the issues and the way to work through them was very freeing for me. This one woman I love, she would say to me every day I walk in, because when you go through these profiles, it's like, do you drink? I was like, I have a drink on occasion. Have I ever done any drugs? And they're like, no, I tried to spot when I was 40, didn't really like it. I have a gummy every now and then, but if I get too weird, I don't like feeling out of control. But they were fascinated because I'm not an addict.

• 21:45Dax Shepard?

  That's shocking to me. You were like an 80% chance of being an addict.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  And that's exactly what they were saying to me. And there were these group sessions. I'm going, I'm not going to be in these group sessions, man. I'm Tyler Perry. I don't know about this. And she said to me, there have been people who've come here who are famous who did not do the session. And came back to do the group sessions. So I was in the group with these wonderful people who had shit that they were dealing with to sit in and hear their stories. It made me find the commonality. There was a through line for all of us, and I think that for all of humanity, man. As much as I'm excited to be here, talking to you, my hope is that by sharing this, somebody hears something that goes, maybe that's what I'm dealing with.

• 22:23Dax Shepard?

  A thousand percent Tyler, because owning a studio is not very relatable.

• 22:28Dax Shepard?

  But the other stuff is you read The Body Keeps The Score, any of these books, it's like thirty percent. I mean, it's huge numbers of us who have gone through this stuff and you would think you're the only one, at least when we grew up.

• 22:38Speaker 03

  And we grew up in a time where you could not talk about it.

• 22:40Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Because if you said anything, you're gay and being gay at that time was a horrible taboo thing. I'm so glad we're at a place now where people can just be themselves.

• 22:49Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 22:50Speaker 03

  There was a kid recently, I don't know a lot of younger singers and performers, but he was singing on stage and I saw him talking about his sexuality, trying to figure it out. And my heart went out to him because he's so young and what I wanted to scream was look into the arousal template, figure out what happened. Walk it through so that you're clear in a sense of this is what happened. And also there's so much shame, you have to chase the shame down of what that feels like. And that's the thing that freed me just to look at it like I am ashamed of the why. And also understanding that was not my fault. I did not deserve that. They gave that to me and it wasn't mine to carry. Here's the thing that I've been trying to work through the most as long as I have been dealing with what they both gave me to carry.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  It has denied me the ability to love freely, openly, and be in a relationship that is healthy and whole for a very long period of time.

• 23:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  I have another friend on a guys' trip in Jackson, we're sitting around talking and he's talking about how when he was six, his older brothers are making him have sex with these women. And he's laughing and he's joking about it, laughing at everybody around the table, they're all making jokes and I'm quiet and I'm just like, guys, I'm sorry, I gotta challenge you on this. He's like, no, no, no, no. So when we got to a moment where we could talk in private, he broke.

• 24:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  Because I had him look at his child. I was like, is that okay for your six year old? And then it's like, whoa, because you realize you've been judging the child that you are through the lens of your adult life.

• 24:24Dax Shepard?

  It's so misleading.

• 24:25Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 24:25Dax Shepard?

  Can I ask really quick, how do you feel about men in general? I'm kind of relieved to hear you are on a dude's trip in Jackson. I'm not expecting you to be excited to become friends with men.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  Really, why?

• 24:36Dax Shepard?

  Well, given the dad, and that seems very scary and that perhaps men in general.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  No, no, I've got great guy friends, great female friends.

• 24:44Dax Shepard?

  For me, most of that carnage was driven by dudes.

• 24:47Speaker 03

  My mother was the balance for everything for me, and she wouldn't let me see things one way. She worked at a Jewish community center for most of my childhood. She would educate me about what Jewish people went through. My mother just would not let me see things one way. So I wouldn't lean toward one group or one sex of a group. I always base people on, are you a good person? And I have a really good sense of people, which came from that childhood of being hyper vigilant. When I walk in, I'm like, hmm.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, are you skeptical when you walk in? Are you like?

• 25:17Speaker 03

  I'm not skeptical. I'm immediate on what I feel. I don't talk myself out of what I feel.

• 25:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so I think that's the gift that I've come to realize I'm grateful for, which is someone sits down in here and I know within 30 seconds if they've had our childhood.

• 25:30Speaker 03

  Exactly right.

• 25:31Dax Shepard?

  I see how they look at the doors in the room. I see how they look over at Rob and I just go, oh, we're on the same team here.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. And also the understanding of what we had to survive and how our brains taught us. It's like a deer drinking water. They're always looking up. They can't just drink the water and relax. I drove into my property the other day and there was one laying down. I had never seen a deer lay down and the deer was laying there and looked at me as I just rode by on my bike and never got up. And I thought, what a great place to get to in life where you can just lay down in a green pasture and just be okay.

• 26:06Dax Shepard?

  And not be fearful. Do you have a hard time sleeping?

• 26:09Speaker 03

  No, I sleep well.

• 26:10Dax Shepard?

  And you always have, or is that post trip to this great place?

• 26:13Speaker 03

  I don't know if I always have, but what I know I do is work myself to exhaustion. So the sleep is good, but I also do know how to stop and check in. See if I'm okay. Go away. Get quiet. I like to be alone. I'm a loner by nature. I could spend days and weeks and months in the mountains by myself.

• 26:32Dax Shepard?

  You have to police yourself, I imagine, with isolation?

• 26:35Speaker 03

  Of course, especially having a 10 year old now. It's like, hey dad, hello, soccer practice over here.

• 26:40Dax Shepard?

  Real life's happening over here.

• 26:43Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so he's 10.

• 26:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:44Dax Shepard?

  I have 10 and 11. It's so fucking fun.

• 26:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's so good.

• 26:48Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so at a certain point, again, it'd be shocking to people, I think, to learn that someone as smart as you, you didn't graduate high school.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  I got put out of high school and had to go to PM High School to get my diploma. It was a high school that was at night after school for adults and people who got kicked out of school.

• 27:04Dax Shepard?

  Right, dudes who were smoking cigarettes in the parking lot.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  Who wanted to go to school.

• 27:07Dax Shepard?

  And then in your early twenties, you're watching Oprah.

• 27:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, picture that, right?

• 27:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. You're watching Oprah. You learn about journaling as a way to process your thoughts and you really decide to take that up.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was looking through some things recently and I ran across one of my old journals.

• 27:25Dax Shepard?

  From that era?

• 27:25Speaker 03

  The early 2000s. And I opened it up and I started reading and I just sat there. I was reading for hours. I called Oprah up. I was like, listen, go pull out your journals and read some of the stuff you were going through 20, 30 years ago. It was so spiritual. I was in tears. It's like you had written your own Bible of the things that you had come through. And to go back and look at them and see how far you've come was so beautiful to me. So I would tell anybody, journal, write, and then go back years later and see.

• 27:50Dax Shepard?

  When you were reading the one from 20 years ago, what were you wrestling with that you now realize your past? Does it also give you a sense of humor about all the stuff you obsess about?

• 28:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was just like, oh, I hope the show works. I don't know how I'm gonna pay this. Light bills, $3,000. I go back and look at those things and go on, look at where you were. I'd come through being homeless. So I was writing it from the point of view of where I was and not where I was going. Understanding where you're going is so much more important. I've learned to build for where I'm going rather than where I am. And looking back on all of that stuff and reading all of those moments and those memories, it really was powerful for me.

• 28:32Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 28:38Dax 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 benefit 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. If something tricky comes up,

• 29:21Dax Shepard?

  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 Quince. Okay, so I have a confession. I'm the worst holiday shopper on the planet. I wait until the last possible second, I panic, and then I end up buying something nobody wants. But this year, I've cracked the code and the code is cozy. And

• 30:05Dax Shepard?

  Quince's bedding makes it so easy because the quality is exceptional. It's the kind of gift people actually use and love long after the holidays.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Yes. Okay. Can we talk about their European linens?

• 30:16Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Because Quince's 100% European linen gets softer with every wash. Most bedding peaks the day you buy it and then it's all downhill. This is the opposite. And their organic cotton bedding is breathable and incredibly soft. It's hotel quality comfort for your own bed.

• 30:31Dax Shepard?

  You crawl into bed and you're like, wait, did I accidentally check into a Four Seasons? Quince just makes it easy to create a bed you'll actually look forward to getting into. And their Wilt, Coverlets and duvet inserts make any bed and any gift feel complete.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you can get and give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag.

• 30:56Dax Shepard?

  I mean, guys, I put these on the bed of my children. They are wrapping my little babies and I feel great about it.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Mine are striped. They're so cute. They're very fashionable and very comfortable. And it's not just bedding. Quince has everyone on your list covered with Mongolian cashmere sweaters, fine jewelry, leather bags, chef-grade cookware, five-star luggage and more.

• 31:16Dax 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 you where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from NoBull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post-summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 31:47Dax 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.

• 32:24Speaker 01

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

• 32:28Dax 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.

• 32:36Speaker 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.

• 32:45Dax Shepard?

  Stay stronger than the season. Head to nobullproject.com all holiday Season to shop new deals every week.

• 32:53Speaker 03

  We are supported by Squarespace.

• 32:56Dax Shepard?

  So here's something I think about a lot. Most people I talk to on this show, the ones doing really interesting things. They all had a version of their work that existed before anyone else saw it. It was just theirs, notes, ideas, projects they were tinkering with. And then at some point they made the decision to share it. That's the part that's scary, right? Going from I'm working on something to here's what I made. Rob went through the exact same thing, building our site on Squarespace. And what made it doable was that he didn't have to become a web developer overnight. He just had to show up with the idea. Squarespace handles the rest. Beautiful templates that actually look like you hired someone, built in SEO. So people can find you, email campaigns, scheduling analytics, all under one roof. No code, no patchwork of random tools. And honestly, the thing I keep coming back to is how low the barrier is.

• 33:42Dax Shepard?

  If you've got something you've been building quietly and you're ready for people to see it. Squarespace makes that leap feel a lot less traumatic. Head to Squarespace.com slash DAX for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

• 34:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay. So you started at what age do you think?

• 34:09Speaker 03

  18 or 19. I was watching the show and I started journaling and I didn't use my name because at that time we wouldn't talk about the things that you and I just talked about.

• 34:16Dax Shepard?

  Right, right.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  I would use these different characters and a friend of mine found them and goes, man, this is a really good play. And I thought, hmm, maybe it is a play. What I write about is this character went through this. I was talking about adult survives of child abuse and rape and molestation. So I moved to Atlanta.

• 34:29Dax Shepard?

  Prior to that, did you ever fancy being a writer?

• 34:32Speaker 03

  I didn't.

• 34:32Dax Shepard?

  What was your rationale? You're clearly very bright. It's not working in school. It's not working at home. What were you thinking you were destined to do? Were you so confused?

• 34:42Speaker 03

  I definitely wanted to be an architect. The man that raised me was a builder and I wanted to build houses. But when I wrote this, I always loved entertainment, but I never thought you can audition.

• 34:50Dax Shepard?

  You're trying to be invisible, not center stage.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. So having my friend encourage me and doing that first play and seeing people, the 1,200 that I thought would show up and only 30 did. Having the 30 people's reaction to the show speak to me in my soul. I was like, whoa. So that sparked something for me.

• 35:09Dax Shepard?

  And you went in this incredible journey. So you moved to Atlanta in 1990?

• 35:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, early 90s.

• 35:14Dax Shepard?

  And I think we gotta do one second. It seems obvious to me, but why Atlanta from New Orleans?

• 35:19Speaker 03

  Hurricane Katrina literally blew the roof off the poverty that was in New Orleans. Mardi Gras was amazing and the tourists are on Bourbon Street and St. Charles Avenue. And it's beautiful and it's amazing, but two blocks behind those mansions is where we were in the ghetto. We're drive by shootings and police brutality and murders and it was just insane. So some friends of mine invited me to Freaknik, which is the Black Spring Break. Black kids went to Atlanta, white kids went to the beach for Spring Break. I don't know what that is about. I got there and while everybody's partying and dancing and drinking and I'm realizing that I see black people doing well.

• 35:54Dax Shepard?

  I'm from Detroit, so I would go down to Atlanta and I'd be like, this is a completely different version than I've ever seen. There's black folks in Escalades and they have nice houses. They're at the nice restaurant. This was unimaginable in Detroit in the 90s.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I think I'm probably six years older than you.

• 36:10Dax Shepard?

  Five, yeah.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  So you get it. And being a black person and then never seeing a black person be successful unless it was a pimp or a preacher, to come to Atlanta and see their doctors, their lawyers, they're in suits.

• 36:22Dax Shepard?

  A full middle class.

• 36:23Speaker 03

  I'm home, so I loaded up my Hyundai and moved right to Atlanta.

• 36:27Dax Shepard?

  You put up a play and as you say, only 35 folks.

• 36:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, 30.

• 36:31Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 36:32Speaker 03

  Don't give me the other five.

• 36:33Dax Shepard?

  I'm gonna give you five.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  $12 a ticket.

• 36:35Dax Shepard?

  We're in and out of the bathroom. You didn't count.

• 36:39Dax Shepard?

  You undertake from that moment, something that is, I think, very rare in our business, which is, you then take the next six years, I guess, to refine, to rewrite, to rework, to restage.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  No.

• 36:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  Well, no wonder it was impossible. I see you do your research. That's good. That's good. But no, it was the same show and every year I would try to do it, it would fail. But there was somebody in the audience at every show, that's what I call a ram in a bush, who wanted to invest in it every time. The most I saw was probably 1,400 people in New Orleans in a theater that sat 3,000. But out of that, somebody said, well, let's keep this going because during this time, there were a lot of plays, these black shows that were traveling the country and making lots of money for black people. It was on something that's affectionately called the Chitlin Circuit.

• 37:24Dax Shepard?

  The rename's weird. Urban.

• 37:26Speaker 03

  There's a rename?

• 37:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they rebranded it.

• 37:30Speaker 03

  Kind of like Aunt Jemima, you have to rebrand it. I'm just gonna call this shit what it is.

• 37:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  The Chitlin Circus is when black performers could not perform in white establishments, they would travel all over the South into all of these different places and become famous among their own people. So here I am doing this play in the early 90s and hitting some of these spots where black people were allowed to go everywhere. But the spirit of the Chitlin Circus was still there where black people supported each other. And for my play to not work all of those years, then in 1998, take off one night.

• 38:01Dax Shepard?

  So the play itself didn't change all that much?

• 38:03Speaker 03

  It didn't change. You know what changed? The play was about adult survivors of child abuse who had forgiven their abuser because it was a happy ending. They all forgave the abuser, the woman who did all this stuff to him. And I hadn't forgiven my father. So it was hypocritical that I'm in this seat and I'm talking about forgiveness and it hadn't happened for me. So in 98, he and I got into a really heated argument, the man who raised me. And I forgave him. And that is when the show changed.

• 38:30Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  It was spiritual for me. I went from nobody being in the audience to having eight sold out shows after I forgave him. And the forgiveness was such a scary thing for me because I didn't realize how powerful it was for me. It was my anchor. You're with me. What are you thinking? You got something on your mind to say?

• 38:47Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm dead with you. A, I'm thinking resentment is drinking poison, hoping the other person dies. My own father, my resentments. I'm thinking of you being Christian, how it's probably compounded that you weren't able to achieve forgiveness in the context you were in.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  But also anger is helpful. If you take away anger, you have to make room for compassion. And that is very hard to do. It's much more gray.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  The ripping away of my anger toward him was like a car that kind of runs on gasoline. Then all of a sudden you fill it with diesel and say, go, be motivated. Because everything I was doing, every time I was trying to work, it was like, I'm gonna make some money, I'm gonna take care of my mother, I'm gonna prove to you that I am something because you said I wasn't shit. Once that was gone, and I forgave him, it didn't matter anymore. I had no motivation to keep going, even though the purest sense of where I started was about making enough money to take care of my mother so she didn't have to be with them. So forgiving him ripped that from me. I had to figure out, okay, how do you operate now? I also found this out in therapy. I shifted from the anger to caregiving and I did not know that my caregiving was a problem.

• 39:54Dax Shepard?

  Is the caregiving still an attempt to be safe?

• 39:57Speaker 03

  The caregiving is an attempt to save everybody else, but I hear what you're saying.

• 40:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm trying to find this crossover because I don't trust people. What's someone gonna do? And then I have tactics. So if you're a woman and you're in love with me, I feel safe because you're probably not gonna hurt me if you love me. If you're a man and I think I can dominate you, you're gonna know not to try to hurt me. If I can make everyone in this room laugh, I'm totally safe because people aren't swinging when they're laughing. So I have these techniques and I guess I would have just imagined that if you're the caretaker and you're benevolent, you would expect the reciprocity would be kindness.

• 40:26Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. I would expect that if I'm kind to you, you'll be kind to me or you'd be kind to somebody else. However.

• 40:32Dax Shepard?

  It doesn't work that way.

• 40:33Speaker 03

  However, yes, I let all that go years ago. I gave up expectations, which was a problem.

• 40:38Dax Shepard?

  You're not an AA, but you'd be great in AA. Expectations are resentments under construction. That's the same.

• 40:44Speaker 03

  Wow. I gave up expectations because I thought if I'm good to this person, if I'm kind to this person, if I'm doing this and they give me their ass to kiss or just become horrible, then I'm gonna feel bad because they did that rather than going, I'm just gonna be good to you, whether you do whatever you want to do or not. You do what works for you. I'm just gonna be good to you.

• 41:02Dax Shepard?

  Right. For me.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  For me, because my entire life was based on the anger and now I've shifted. So I've gotta do this for me. But where it became a problem, and I could not wrap my brain around this when I first started talking to these folks, they were saying, Tyler, caregiving is a problem. I'm like, how is that a problem? It's such a good thing. It's a problem if you're using it to cover what you're dealing with. So I was caring for everybody else. So I wasn't dealing with what I was dealing with or going through.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  You weren't caring for yourself.

• 41:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's kind of like that classic codependent paradigm too, right? And I imagine you probably collected folks that needed a lot of help, not intentionally.

• 41:38Speaker 03

  I absolutely didn't think it was intentional, but as I look at my life now.

• 41:41Dax Shepard?

  It's a suspicious amount.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  This is beyond suspicious. I have a tremendous amount of people who need a lot of help.

• 41:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you've come up multiple times on this show from people you've helped. We had Prince Harry on, you opened your doors to him. You are someone who extends yourself and you said your mom did it too. So I assume there's also a deep knowing because she did that as well.

• 42:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  But you're known to be very generous.

• 42:09Speaker 03

  That's incredibly kind. Thank you, Monica. I appreciate that. It's good when people will acknowledge it and say it. So it's really great. Thank you.

• 42:14Dax Shepard?

  It's frustrating and confusing when it actually leads to their resentment. And understandably, once you unplug from the whole system, yeah, they feel shittier. And they weirdly resent you because you're helping, you're sort of a reminder that they need help. And that's a very tricky dynamic to navigate.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  I set limits on how far I'm going to go. I'm going to help you to this point and you got to get up and be on your own because I'm not going to let you be dependent on me for everything. And then they get angry because of where you stop.

• 42:42Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 42:43Speaker 03

  I've seen that, of course.

• 42:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  But listen, it's okay. It's not okay, but it's life. You keep moving. You deal with their anger, whatever way it comes, but I always know my intention. My intention is pure.

• 42:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Monica, cut this out because I say it too often, but my mother said the best thing to me ever.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  Why do you want to cut it out?

• 43:00Dax Shepard?

  Because I say it too much. It just sounds redundant, but we can leave it if you want.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, because if you say it a lot, then somebody may hear it for the first time.

• 43:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay, you can be the judge of it. So I call my mom, I'm complaining about someone else asking me for money. And she's very generous and lets me go on and on, comforts me. And then she says, you know, Dax, in life, you can either be the person calling for help or you can be the person that gets called for help. Who do you want to be? And I was like, oh, definitely the person that gets called for help.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  I know, but that's come to bite you a little bit.

• 43:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, so.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Because you don't like calling anyone for help and everyone needs to call someone for help every now and then.

• 43:34Dax Shepard?

  That's true. That's true. But just given those options, it was very helpful for me to reframe my frustration with it, which is like, well, I could be in the other side of this equation. There's another option there because I found this out because I was helping so many people and they just kept coming back, kept coming back. Well, I need this. I need that. I was praying about it and I clearly hear this voice, which I believe inside.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  Me to be the voice of God. It's like, stop, you are blocking a midnight. And I thought about that. I went back and looked at what midnight represented in the Bible. Sometimes God designs midnights for people to go through. And if you run and rescue them all the time, you're not making them better. You've robbed them of the thing that would make them better.

• 44:10Dax Shepard?

  That might change them.

• 44:11Speaker 03

  Or be that thing that gets them up and gets them on their feet and gets them going.

• 44:14Dax Shepard?

  The catalyst.

• 44:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:16Dax Shepard?

  Okay. So you forgive your father. That's fascinating. People should know, not to make you go through it again, but you were born a junior. And at 16, you changed your name. So just to accentuate the stakes that were on this relationship. It was very strained.

• 44:29Speaker 03

  From childhood, I knew this man was not my father.

• 44:31Dax Shepard?

  And it turned out to not be your father, which is crazy.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Wow. You just knew it.

• 44:35Dax Shepard?

  Did you talk to Carrie about this?

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, Carrie Washington. She had a.

• 44:38Dax Shepard?

  She was on about her book and that estrangement from the family and not being able to put your finger on it. And that fucking huge looming, what is going on?

• 44:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I was a kid asking my mother all of my life, remember asking, is he my father? Her answer would always be the same. I hate to tell you this, baby, but he's your father. I asked her on her deathbed, is he my father? Same answer. I hate to tell you this, but he's your father. It's 15 years ago this week that I'm dealing with this. So I'm a little emotional as I'm thinking about it.

• 45:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  When she died, it didn't sit well with me. So I did a DNA test with my brother and I. DNA test comes back, we don't have the same father. So I'm like, okay, well.

• 45:14Dax Shepard?

  One of us isn't dads.

• 45:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I knew he was his. He is his spitting image, everything, his attitude, his voice. So then I do another test with the man himself, and I'm not his child. And if I could wake my mother up for five minutes, I'd be like, hey, can you just tell me? Because what I want her to know is that I wouldn't judge her. She was 24 years old. This man was beating the shit out of her. She was in misery. And if there was a man that loved her, hooray for her. That makes me smile and happy to know that somebody loved her because of the way he was treating her.

• 45:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, any moment of comfort you would want for her.

• 45:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. But on the other hand, my mother was deathly afraid to be in the house by herself. There's a story of her being home alone with my two sisters. I wasn't born yet. And she was screaming and banging on the wall. It's a double house for the neighbors to come over and help because somebody was trying to break in the house. That's all I know about the story. I don't. Feel that I'm the product of a rape, but because I have all of these looming questions that are out there, I wish she had just told me if she knew.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  She might have believed this, whether she knew or didn't know, you can start believing a story. I think we talked about that with Carrie. In some ways, I think everyone just believed it.

• 46:29Speaker 03

  That's right. My mother was an extremely kind, giving and loving woman, but she's also very, very private. So I want to give her the dignity of what she believed, but I knew it from childhood.

• 46:40Dax Shepard?

  Isn't that weird?

• 46:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 46:42Dax Shepard?

  And it wasn't because of physical resemblance.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  No, it was just, I could not understand how this man could look at me with such hate.

• 46:48Dax Shepard?

  So you believe he knew as well?

• 46:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then there were clues. I think I was probably in my late teens, early twenties. They were sitting out on the porch and he said to her, oh, that's where that boy gets those eyes from. My eyes are kind of webbed in between. And she tells me, and she's like, he said, you have my eyes. And I thought, you've been married to this man for 30 years and he didn't know what your eyes looked like. So those kind of moments that made me go, hmm, so you're wondering where my eyes came from? And you finally see her in there. So it was a different time back then.

• 47:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So you find some forgiveness for him.

• 47:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. Are you cool now?

• 47:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you cold?

• 47:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. Have you cooled off?

• 47:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 47:25Speaker 03

  All right. Turn it off.

• 47:25Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  We didn't have to turn it off.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  Are you cool now?

• 47:33Dax Shepard?

  That could have meant so many things.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:34Dax Shepard?

  Cool.

• 47:35Speaker 03

  No, no, no. I'm sorry. Cause it blows right here.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, we just had Morgan Freeman on and he did not want it. He did not let the air.

• 47:43Dax Shepard?

  But then conversely, we had Jeff Bridges on, he hated how hot it was. So it's like, I don't know, what are you gonna fucking pick? You can't trust anyone in that scene.

• 47:49Speaker 03

  That's right. That's right.

• 47:50Dax Shepard?

  So low and behold, these plays become hugely successful. The amount of them you are doing is staggering. You're doing 300 a year.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  Sometimes 360, 370 a year.

• 47:58Dax Shepard?

  And not in one theater. So you're traveling.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  It's all over the country. Eight to nine shows a week, sometimes 10.

• 48:03Dax Shepard?

  It becomes impossibly successful.

• 48:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. If you look at Maxine's Baby, that's my mother's name on Prime Video, it kind of lays out the whole story. It's pretty fascinating for people to see.

• 48:12Dax Shepard?

  Okay. So there's a doc about that?

• 48:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:14Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  A documentary about my life that Armani Ortiz and the mother of my child did. Because she was the only one I would trust to give that kind of access to me. They followed me for 10 years and it tells the whole story from when I started all the way up until the studio opening.

• 48:27Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I'm definitely watching that. I'm ashamed that I don't know that yet. I spent all this time reading about it.

• 48:32Speaker 03

  It's her fault.

• 48:33Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 48:35Dax Shepard?

  The light and airy fun armchair. I don't want to embarrass you, but there's a point where at least minimally Forbes goes, this show has generated a hundred million dollars. It's generated 20 million in merch. At that age, you must be more successful than you had ever even dreamt of.

• 48:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it wasn't enough. I was scared.

• 48:52Dax Shepard?

  Okay, that's my question. So in my mind, all this was going to fix a lot of stuff.

• 48:56Speaker 03

  I didn't think it would fix a lot of things. I was worried about it staying. How long is this going to stay? And I'll never forget telling my mother she could retire. She had diabetes. She was very ill, working with the kids at the center. And I was saying, you should retire. And I hung up the phone, just praying, God, please let this place to keep working so I can take care of her. I just worried every day that it was going to end.

• 49:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 49:17Speaker 03

  It's a scary feeling. All of a sudden, there's money, there's income, there's more than enough. My pathology wasn't more than enough. My pathology was you got money when you ran out of money, because that's how it was. You had to wait till the next two weeks till you get your next check. So to go from having nothing and being homeless and living on the street to the first year of making money, making a hundred and something thousand dollars and getting to the end of the year and not having a dime to pay taxes because I had given it all away. And then the next year, making a million and the next year, seven million. It was all of this learning and progress and I had no one to teach me or walk me through or talk to me about how this works or what this means. Nobody in my family had any money.

• 49:56Dax Shepard?

  Were there not mentors available or you weren't good at availing yourself to mentorship?

• 50:01Speaker 03

  There weren't any available.

• 50:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm going to grant you that. Even in Atlanta.

• 50:04Speaker 03

  Right. And also I didn't trust because if you told me this was going to work or to do this or to do that or invest in this, I just didn't trust it.

• 50:11Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so I wouldn't trust it either, but mine would be you want something if you're just going to be nice to me. There's no way I would trust a mentor. They must have an ulterior motive. That's my hang up with mentorship.

• 50:21Speaker 03

  You still feel that way?

• 50:22Dax Shepard?

  No, it's lessened. I mean, we're talking about stuff that's like 30 years old and 10 years old and eight years old, but no, it's lessened and I can ask people now.

• 50:28Speaker 03

  Lessened, but it's still there.

• 50:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but yeah, that's how deep that fear is, I guess. Here's this man who's got status and wealth and he likes me for some reason. And my next thing is to have a dream where he wants to get sexual.

• 50:42Speaker 03

  That's the sad part of where we come from. Our traumas, the things we've been through will automatically make our antennas go up and think, why are you being so nice to me? What's wrong with you? You've got wealth, you're after something.

• 50:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 50:55Speaker 03

  I used to work so hard to try and dispel that for people. Like, no, this is just about somebody being kind to you because I know what that's like for somebody to be kind to me. I've given away cars and houses and paid for kids to go through college and did so much stuff for people that it got to a point where I was like, I don't want to meet them. I don't want to shake their hands. I want to just stand over here and see that they're doing well because I don't want them to have that mentality.

• 51:22Dax Shepard?

  You know, probably they're like, yeah.

• 51:24Speaker 03

  Imagine somebody walking up to you and your car's broken down to give you a new car. What do you want? What is this going to cost me rather than just understanding that there are people on the planet who are just kind?

• 51:34Dax Shepard?

  Well, and let's add now on the other side of it, which this state of mind was truly unimaginable for me growing up poor, which is like, oh, the only joy I'm actually getting out of this thing that I thought was going to be so spectacular is giving people shit. I don't mean like family members. I mean tipping an obnoxious amount every time I eat a cheap meal. That's more fun than anything. That server doesn't need to worry that I'm a creep that wants to do something.

• 51:57Speaker 03

  Exactly. What does that do for that person? What does this do for your spirit? You as a person? And how do you pay it forward? That's why we say, what can I do? Nothing. Pay it forward.

• 52:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Find someone that's in a mean shittier spot than you are.

• 52:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:08Dax Shepard?

  Okay. So then going into movies, there's a point where the show's incredible. It's generating a ton of money. You're working.

• 52:16Speaker 03

  Too hard.

• 52:16Dax Shepard?

  Which is your dream 24/7, no time to think about anything. Why get out of that?

• 52:20Speaker 03

  We went from 2000 seat theaters to arenas and couldn't meet the demand. So I thought, okay, there's a hunger for this kind of storytelling. So let me move into television.

• 52:32Dax Shepard?

  Got it. It was just a bigger arena.

• 52:34Speaker 03

  It was a bigger arena and I didn't have to be everywhere at once. I could be on a screen in 2000 locations and that's. And I really began to understand this lack of representation for black people in storytelling. And especially my kind of storytelling for black people, because there were lots of shows that were directed at black people, but they weren't told from the point of view of a black person who had experienced it. So that's why I think shows and movies are still going to number one is because I'm telling it from a point of view that we really get. No matter what critics say, no matter what anybody says.

• 53:05Dax Shepard?

  Okay, weirdly, we've already laid the groundwork for this. And I was talking about it in the trauma aspect. So I wanted to hear from you how you process that huge dissonance between what it's doing commercially and what it's doing critically. And so my own pet peeve about this is I think it's people removed from that situation, telling the people in the situation how they're supposed to process it and enjoy it and like it. There's something very condescending about that specific type of criticism.

• 53:35Speaker 03

  I don't like metal music. Metal is not my thing.

• 53:37Dax Shepard?

  Right, sure.

• 53:38Speaker 03

  I can't relate to it, but I don't criticize it and I don't judge it because it's not for me. It's not directed to me. It's not something that I can say, I like this music, so this music's crap. No, that's just not for me. And it's the same way when I think about the work that I do. It is specific in nature and it speaks to a specific audience. And to have a critic come along and say, well, you have zero percent on Rotten Tomatoes, like fuck your tomatoes. When I was first starting out, I had two critics in my show at the Kodak Theater. Sit on the same row, I watched him make notes throughout the show too. They reviewed the exact same show. They saw the exact same thing. I read both reviews, the last time I read reviews. And one guy thought it was amazing. The other guy thought it was the worst thing he'd ever seen.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  So I thought, hmm, this is opinions. This is what people think. And it doesn't really matter as long as I'm clear about the intention of what I'm doing.

• 54:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but you know, I think there's something a little deeper going on with your work particularly. So yes, two people could watch The Graduate and they're going to have different opinions. But I'm going to argue, and this is something that's very burbling up all around us and no one really wants to talk about it, which is there is an elitism.

• 54:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 54:48Dax Shepard?

  And it's condescending and it's judgmental and people feel it and they go out and vote in response to that. And I think this particular thing reeks of elitism. It reeks of, we know better, you should be doing this, you should be showing what should be, not what you experience and recognize. There's something about it that feels very removed and judgmental. It doesn't feel like it's coming from the inside and being judgmental.

• 55:12Speaker 03

  I would agree.

• 55:13Dax Shepard?

  This happened to Sandler too. Critics fucking hated him. Every movie is an enormous, a third of the country loves the movie. Now, I have different opinions than other people and I might not like stuff or like stuff, but I like to think I don't get onto a soapbox of it's lowbrow or it's cheap or it's bad or mine's better or superior. It's just, all right, that audience likes this, this audience gets that, audiences get what they want without the deep judgment of it all.

• 55:39Speaker 03

  Completely true. Also, to layer that is the understanding of what it's taken for me to be able to be in this business and to have this many hits and this much success and have to fight tooth and nail to get a budget that's anywhere near a Sandler movie.

• 56:00Dax Shepard?

  Despite all the success.

• 56:01Speaker 03

  Despite all of it.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Still.

• 56:03Speaker 03

  To this day.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Wild.

• 56:05Speaker 03

  With Paramount have these shows on BT that do huge numbers for my audience, but the budgets are far lower than any of the other shows that are on some of the other parts of Paramount.

• 56:15Dax Shepard?

  Comparable audiences.

• 56:16Speaker 03

  For sure. And then it's like, oh, no, no, we have a formula for you, which is basically you are black. This is your box. Here's where you stay because your audience is going to do this much for us in returns. And that has been since I've been in the business. So I have found a way to navigate through that, to take what I've been given, to make sure the actors and actresses are paid well. At the same time, figure out how do I make this work and grow a business? It's been challenging.

• 56:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 56:45Speaker 03

  Because I would like to have one opportunity to have a even playing field. Just one where it said, okay.

• 56:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, here's your track record.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Do it. Who else?

• 56:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:55Dax Shepard?

  Okay, your string of movies that are gigantic hits, I'm gonna add just for fun. Do you know who Joy Brian is?

• 57:01Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 57:02Dax Shepard?

  Okay, she and I were married on TV show together for six years. But when we saw each other every day at work, I would say, hello. And she'd go, Larch, who's talking about Larch?

• 57:10Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 57:11Dax Shepard?

  And it was our favorite, our salutation for six years was, hello. What you talking about, Larch? Nobody's talking about Larch.

• 57:18Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. Yeah, culturally, a world all her own.

• 57:23Dax Shepard?

  I love it. So once you get into TV, I do have one logistical question. When you do House of Pain, first season, I'm presuming you just funded 10. You went out and made 10 episodes?

• 57:34Speaker 03

  Yes, I did, because I was talking to my agent and said, I want to do a sitcom. And they're like, oh, well, just do one. I was like, no, no, no, I feel like I need to do 10. They're like, Tyler, nobody does 10. That's not how it's done.

• 57:44Dax Shepard?

  That's not how this works.

• 57:45Speaker 03

  I was like, no, no, I want to do 10. They're like, okay. So I went to Atlanta, filmed the first 10. They were awful.

• 57:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 57:51Speaker 03

  And I put them in the can and nobody wanted them in Hollywood. Then the UPN and WB merged. I think they became the CW. And at the time, there were about 10 or 12 black shows on the air. Those shows all went away. So all the affiliates, this is during the world of syndication, were pissed. So they were calling around Hollywood, what do you have? What do you have? Well, I got this guy with Tyler Perry, he's got 10 episodes. And they're like, Tyler, you got those 10. They're like, yeah, they want them. Like, okay, so they put them on and all these different affiliates. The ratings were higher than what was there before. Blew their minds.

• 58:23Dax Shepard?

  So just explain the affiliate for people. So you've got in your town, Atlanta, you got your own news station. That's its own affiliate of NBC, but there's hours of the day where they don't have programming.

• 58:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. They don't have the programming to put things in. Or after the prime time hours, they wouldn't have the show to put in. So when they put this show in, it got these crazy numbers and they all just went crazy. And they're like, oh, Tyler, this is so great. We got a call from this network. They want to order 10 more. Another one said, oh, we want 20. I was like, no, I want 100. I want 90 episodes. Everybody's like. What are you talking about?

• 58:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you keep timesing this by 10 and you shouldn't. You make one pilot, not 10, and then you get nine episodes with a back order.

• 59:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they told me it's not gonna happen. Nobody's gonna do that. I was like, well, I'm not doing it because I knew 100 minutes indication.

• 59:08Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 59:08Speaker 03

  So I wanted somebody to commit to 100 episodes and that was Turner TBS.

• 59:12Dax Shepard?

  Have you watched that doc by chance?

• 59:14Speaker 03

  No.

• 59:14Dax Shepard?

  Ted Turner on Max?

• 59:16Speaker 03

  You want to turn that back on, don't you?

• 59:18Dax Shepard?

  So bad, but I'll sit.

• 59:19Speaker 03

  Go ahead.

• 59:20Dax Shepard?

  What's your heat level right now?

• 59:21Speaker 03

  I'm with you, Turner.

• 59:22Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 59:24Dax Shepard?

  You know what a solution would be is to actually use the thermostat on it and just not make it frigid.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  That seems right.

• 59:29Speaker 03

  Or just turn it on, just freeze yourself.

• 59:31Dax Shepard?

  Now, watch this, I'm gonna go up to 20. It's also in Celsius.

• 59:34Speaker 03

  Okay, then we're all screwed.

• 59:38Dax Shepard?

  Let's travel to Europe right now and enjoy some Celsius.

• 59:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:41Dax Shepard?

  Okay, because what I'm so confused about is when I go to the Wikipedia page for House of Pain, it says like 336 episodes, which is impossible.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think we're at 400 something now.

• 59:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay, and I go, no, and there's no show has 400 episodes. And then I'm looking at the breakdown of seasons and yeah, it says season one is 10. And then it says season two, 100.

• 59:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:59Dax Shepard?

  How does that work? Were they airing twice a week?

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  I don't know how they were airing. All I know is I was working my ass off. It took me nine months to shoot all 100. I would shoot two or three episodes a day.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:00:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my Lord.

• 1:00:13Speaker 03

  But all of that was because of the situation I was in.

• 1:00:17Dax Shepard?

  Right, the economics demanded.

• 1:00:19Speaker 03

  How do I shoot this quickly? Because they're not giving me the money. How do you make this work? Even now, when I'm doing movies, I'll shoot a movie in five days, seven days, 18 days.

• 1:00:27Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:00:27Speaker 03

  Because when I'm talking to the DP, unless there are specific shots that we want at a specific time of day, I'd like, listen, with all the digital stuff that we can do today with lighting, make this beautiful and let's figure out how we do it. I've worked with some amazing DPs who have found the way to do it. Jasmine's Blues, which is on Netflix, was the first movie I ever wrote 28 years ago now. It is the first time I ever fell in love with filmmaking and I just filmed it in 22.

• 1:00:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. Okay, so you go on this impossible run. You have so many TV shows, you have so many movies, you open up the studio, you become friends with the queen bee. You then have shows. I had one question about, I've met the queen bee a few times and boy, does she deliver.

• 1:01:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, she's amazing.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  The queen bee is tricky because it does sound like you're talking about Beyonce.

• 1:01:08Dax Shepard?

  I'm talking about Oprah.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Dax Shepard?

  The original queen bee.

• 1:01:10Speaker 03

  How is she queen bee? Oh, you're talking about Oprah. Okay, got it.

• 1:01:13Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you thought I was talking, see?

• 1:01:14Speaker 03

  Beyonce is Beyonce.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:01:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I count her as a friend, too.

• 1:01:22Dax Shepard?

  But Oprah, I had one little question on that. So you end up, the haves and the have nots, you do eight seasons on OWN and it's huge for them. It's a great success. Is it tricky at all to be friends with the owner of the network when you're making the stuff? Cause those are kind of inherently often at odds, those two roles.

• 1:01:39Speaker 03

  It was tricky, but we were determined to prove that we could work together and make it happen. And the friendship wouldn't suffer.

• 1:01:45Dax Shepard?

  You had to keep that as a priority.

• 1:01:47Speaker 03

  Definitely had to keep it as a priority. And there were times when it got tough.

• 1:01:50Dax Shepard?

  It's gonna get tough. You guys have opposing interests all the time.

• 1:01:53Speaker 03

  Even with Oprah, yeah, it got tough.

• 1:01:54Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:01:54Speaker 03

  But what we realized and both understood is how important the friendship is to each of us.

• 1:01:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay, let's talk about the six triple eight. How does this come your way?

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  I got a call from Nicole Avant, who was coming off the tragedy of her mother being murdered here in LA. Eighty something year old woman is at home in the evening and some gang banger breaks into the house in Truesdale and shoots her.

• 1:02:16Dax Shepard?

  In Truesdale. For people don't know, it's like one of the fanciest neighborhoods in all of LA.

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. And her father, Clarence Avant, who was known as the godfather, he and Quincy Jones were such mentors.

• 1:02:25Dax Shepard?

  Great doc on him.

• 1:02:26Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:02:27Dax Shepard?

  That his daughter made, who you're talking about.

• 1:02:28Speaker 03

  That Nicole. She's like, Tyler, I really feel like you should do this movie, the six triple eight. My mother and I feel like you should do it. Our mother passed. Like, I feel like my mother wants you to do this. And I thought, whoa, I've never heard this story. So she sends me this scissor reel from Carrie Seelig and Peter Guber, executive producer on the show. And I saw this scissor reel about 855 black women in World War II. I'm like, who knew?

• 1:02:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. What 855?

• 1:02:50Speaker 03

  Wait, 855 black women were in Europe in World War II as a part of the war effort? I thought, you're kidding me, right? She's like, no, this is real. And there are four or five surviving members. I said, where? So there were two that were really with it. There was one woman, her name is Alina King. She died this year. She was 99. I'm like, I'm getting on. Plane, I'm going to see her right now because she's 99. I want to sit and talk to her before I start this script. And I walk into her house. I don't know what to expect. She's 99. I'm thinking she's going to be in a wheelchair. What's her memory going to be like? This woman comes down the stairs, her lipstick done, her hair.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:03:23Speaker 03

  This is Mr. Perry. It's a pleasure to meet you. She was still driving. She was still going out dancing with her friends.

• 1:03:29Dax Shepard?

  Oh, man.

• 1:03:29Speaker 03

  Her memory was as sharp as ever.

• 1:03:31Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  So I sit down and I ask her, I was like, so I know you were a part of the six AAA. Tell me about it. What made you go? And emotion, eyes well up with waters, 77 years. She goes back and she tells me about a young Jewish boy named Abram, who was her very close friend.

• 1:03:46Dax Shepard?

  The lead of your movie, which I watched last night, is the woman you interviewed.

• 1:03:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50Dax Shepard?

  The first one?

• 1:03:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:51Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. Tell that story. It's so good.

• 1:03:53Speaker 03

  She's telling me about this young man named Abram who died in war. He wanted to go and do something for the war and to fight Hitler. She was so emotional because he'd only been there a few weeks. And all of that emotion came back to her in that moment. I saw it in her eyes. I was like, this is the way in to the movie. This is the story. She's telling me what happened and how much she loved him.

• 1:04:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. How do you anchor this huge story in this very intimate, personal one? And in the movie, she's from Philadelphia. She's kind of in love with this boy. He's in love with her. It's unrequited till he's about to leave and then he's dead.

• 1:04:24Speaker 03

  I would say about 80 or 90% of what you see in the movie is factual. I had to take some liberties.

• 1:04:28Dax Shepard?

  Of course.

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  But a lot of it's factual than things she was sharing with me. And her memory was sharp. Like you could look at her face and see that she could almost smell the moments and the memories that she was talking to me. Two weeks later, I had a script. I sent it to Nicole. I was like, listen here. And they're like, you're kidding me. We read it, tweaked it, worked on it and started filming.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:04:48Dax Shepard?

  And there's so much stuff that immediately burbles up without you having to really shine a light on it. Even her story, she's very smart. She's very capable. And she doesn't want to go clean and cook for men. But going to school, which would be a very natural next step for her is

• 1:05:09Speaker 03

  Too expensive.

• 1:05:09Dax Shepard?

  Off the table.

• 1:05:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:10Dax Shepard?

  What options are there left? So that right there is kind of telling. Then there's this other great moment where all these women enlist. And now they're taking a bus ride down to the

• 1:05:19Speaker 03

  The train, yeah.

• 1:05:20Dax Shepard?

  Oh, the train. They're gonna go to boot camp. And two things are happening. One, some white dudes walk in and go, let's get the white people out here. We got to segregate this train. And you're like, oh, wow. Yeah. 1944. That's where we were at. But I think even crazier to think about was like, all these women from the north are coming down. And they're like, what the fuck is going on? You could time travel still in 1944. You could teleport to a much crazier place.

• 1:05:47Speaker 03

  But also, women of that day were very aware of racism, no matter where they were.

• 1:05:51Dax Shepard?

  Sure. Well, she was already experiencing it in Philadelphia.

• 1:05:53Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:05:54Dax Shepard?

  But just that level could happen on a train ride is also really stark.

• 1:05:58Speaker 03

  Time travel, across the Mason Dixon, and you're in a whole new world.

• 1:06:00Dax Shepard?

  Right. Okay. So then we meet Kerry Washington, and she is the leader of this group of women. She's phenomenal, as always. Your first time working with her?

• 1:06:10Speaker 03

  Second.

• 1:06:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay. What do we think of her? I'm in love with her. I think she's so fantastic.

• 1:06:14Speaker 03

  I think that you're spot on. You're in love with her on and off camera. She's amazing. We worked on For Color Girls in 2010, and this was our second time working together because between that time, she had done so much. I wanted to find something worthy of her. This role, she's playing Charity Adams, who led these women, who was 26 years old at the time.

• 1:06:30Dax Shepard?

  She's 26?

• 1:06:31Speaker 03

  She was 26 years old, leading 855 women. Kerry and I were rehearsing. All of these women, the spirit of them were with us through the whole thing. When I was finding different sets, I would look at the pictures and look at the historic references. Like, this is the exact place. It was like so weird. But she and I were rehearsing in a dressing room, and there's a knock on the door, and it is the transportation guy. And he comes up, he says, I want to show you something. I got this trunk I want you to see. So we come out, and I have this on video. The transportation guy was a World War II buff. And he would go to these auctions and buy all these World War II materials. So he brings his trunk and he puts it at our feet. It is Charity Adams' trunk.

• 1:07:06Dax Shepard?

  No. No, it's not.

• 1:07:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. With her uniform in it, her tulip tree, a letter in it. We both got chills.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:07:13Speaker 03

  All these moments of these women letting us know that they were there and they wanted to see.

• 1:07:16Dax Shepard?

  That feels impossible.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  So special, spiritual.

• 1:07:19Dax Shepard?

  And the transport dude found it.

• 1:07:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Dax Shepard?

  Wow. But then you see what she's up against. It's all these half steps. We had Malcolm Gladwell on talking recently about, what do you actually need for representation? And something and you find that like one woman on a board does nothing. She's a token and no one's gonna listen to her. Two is like, she's got a friend.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  They can come and raid, but nothing really happens.

• 1:07:39Dax Shepard?

  And then it's three, there's this like magic number of three where now you get three women on a board of nine. And now they can be themselves and they can really enact some change. And I was just thinking about Carrie's roles, like she's the leader of this one black battalion. And she's the only one there and when she's meeting with these generals and stuff, they're placating her. They're just getting through it. They gotta do this thing. And you realize like, oh my God, to be in that situation, actually get anything done seems nearly impossible.

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, and for them to do it and do it well. Another challenge was the stories about the mail. Like, how do you tell a story about the mail?

• 1:08:14Dax Shepard?

  Thank you. If I'm you, I'm like, I don't know, man. Where's the big explosion with the mail?

• 1:08:18Speaker 03

  Exactly right. And Carrie was the same way. It's like, how do you tell a story about the mail? But I think that we discount what the mail meant then, because there was no email. There were no text messages. Mail was a life and you had all these soldiers fighting and they hadn't gotten mail in months because of the Battle of the Bulge and they're moving around so much. So the morale was at an all time low and you had hangars full of 17 million pieces of mail that needed to get to the soldiers to boost their morale and take them through the end of the war.

• 1:08:46Dax Shepard?

  Well, and also you do a good job at pointing out there's a mom. I'm sure this part might be artistic, but a woman waits at the gates of the White House, basically to talk to.

• 1:08:54Speaker 03

  Eleanor Roosevelt.

• 1:08:54Dax Shepard?

  To say like, I don't know if my son's dead or not.

• 1:08:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57Dax Shepard?

  I haven't heard from my son in a year. Yes, morale, but I think more about all these people that were cut off, just assuming the worst for months and months and months at a time. And you can't call anyone to get an answer. Are they still alive? That must've been the most agonizing for those parents.

• 1:09:10Speaker 03

  Of course, can you imagine?

• 1:09:12Dax Shepard?

  No, if I wave goodbye to my daughter and I don't know for a year whether she lived or not.

• 1:09:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, awful.

• 1:09:16Dax Shepard?

  So no one wants to deal with the situation. The army doesn't, they're like supplies. That's all we gotta worry about. We can't be worrying about mail. And so they throw them a bone and they intentionally give them six months to sort all this out.

• 1:09:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:29Dax Shepard?

  Thinking, well, that's impossible. They're gonna fail.

• 1:09:31Speaker 03

  It's impossible because of the vermin who had eaten through a lot of the package. You couldn't make out the names from the rain and the weather.

• 1:09:38Dax Shepard?

  The World War Two of it all.

• 1:09:39Speaker 03

  The World War Two of it all, yeah. And this impossible sorting task where they had just thrown all this mail into these hangars.

• 1:09:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, where do you start with 17 million pieces of fucking mail?

• 1:09:48Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:09:49Dax Shepard?

  And these gals, God bless them, they got the job done in 90 days.

• 1:09:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:53Dax Shepard?

  It's kind of impossible.

• 1:09:54Speaker 03

  Pretty amazing.

• 1:09:55Dax Shepard?

  It's a great story.

• 1:09:56Speaker 03

  Thank you. I'm excited about it.

• 1:09:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. Everyone's really, really good in it.

• 1:09:59Speaker 03

  Let me have you rephrase these gals, these women?

• 1:10:02Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:03Speaker 03

  These women got it done?

• 1:10:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. So these women, they got it done in 90 days.

• 1:10:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:07Dax Shepard?

  Help me out. Is gals offensive?

• 1:10:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. In the movie, he says, step aside, gal. And the gas from black women in the theater was like, oof. So, yeah, gal is offensive. It's like boy calling a black man a boy.

• 1:10:18Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good, good, good heads up. I didn't know gals.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  Everyone's learning.

• 1:10:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of it, I could sense you were shooting. Well, I know you have a White House.

• 1:10:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:27Dax Shepard?

  So I'm like, we're shooting at his White House. So to be at your studio, I was curious of the plays, the writing, the films, the TV show. Where does the studio rank in that as far as the amount of pride it gives you when you try to integrate the fact that you own a studio?

• 1:10:43Speaker 03

  I tell you, the thing that warms my soul the most is the understanding that it was once a Confederate army base where there were soldiers plotting and planning on how to keep 3.9 million Negroes enslaved. And now that land being owned by me, how great is this country that that could happen? So if that could happen for me, I don't care who you are, where you come from. America is an incredible place to just be and dream and live and grow. And as many problems as we have as a country, we are still a great nation that when we galvanize and come together, we can do anything.

• 1:11:13Dax Shepard?

  I still want to be here more than any other place.

• 1:11:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. Nowhere else in the world.

• 1:11:17Dax Shepard?

  But the fact that it's tangible, does that feel special?

• 1:11:20Speaker 03

  It does. My father would build houses. He was a subcontractor and he would get paid his $800 and he would be so happy. Oh, I got my money. But I watched a guy that he sold the house, usually a white man, sell the house for $80,000. And I always wondered, why won't you do that? But looking at it from this point of view, I realize the burden of being the man who owns the house.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:40Speaker 03

  I don't have any partners. I don't have shareholders. So when that $100,000 light bill is due, I've got to pay it. That 180 plus million dollars in payroll for all the actors and everybody, I've got to pay that every year. So I understand the blessing of it. I also understand the burden of it. And I also understand the exhaustion of it all, but I'm grateful for it.

• 1:11:59Dax Shepard?

  I just feel like it's so tangible versus what we do. Which is like, I write, then I make it, it gets seen, then it's kind of gone, maybe it gets seen again. To have something that tangible, I feel like it would force me to experience what's happened. I feel like this visceral, real, tangible 3D space might force me to go, no, no, for real. You built this shit. This wasn't here, then you came along, now it's here.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  It's like reading the diary in some ways.

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  The journals, yeah. And I get that. And every time I drive through the gates, I am reminded of how profound and wonderful this moment is, especially because there's so many people who wanted to do it. I can't tell you the last person who developed a studio of this magnitude. You think about Disney and Warner Brothers. So to do it at this time and at this level has really, really been profound. But every time I drive in the gates, this is God's honest truth. When I'm tired, when I'm exhausted, when I'm just like, okay, how much longer can you carry this? I'm reminded of all the people who wanted to do it. For some reason, it fell on me to do. And also watching people come through the gates who had never had a shot at this business makes me go, you can go a little further.

• 1:13:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:05Speaker 03

  Listen, at 55?

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:08Speaker 03

  I'm gonna be 70 soon.

• 1:13:09Dax Shepard?

  In two seconds.

• 1:13:10Speaker 03

  That's the way I look at it. Right. 55 came so quickly. I'm just like, what does the next 15 years look like? While I'm still able to run up and down the stairs and enjoy my life, what does that look like? And how much of this beautiful gift of the studio is going to be a blessing to that or a hindrance to it?

• 1:13:28Dax Shepard?

  Right. What about Black Panther being shot there?

• 1:13:31Speaker 03

  That was pretty cool.

• 1:13:31Dax Shepard?

  I feel like that's a real moment where you're like, oh damn, this gamble also worked out.

• 1:13:35Speaker 03

  One of the first things with Chadwick.

• 1:13:37Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really? And would you pop in at all? Are you the studio owner there?

• 1:13:40Speaker 03

  No, no, I'm not that guy. I respect everybody's privacy and what they're doing. I'll wait. If I get invited by the director, like Ryan invited me on the last day to set, I thought that was really great.

• 1:13:49Dax Shepard?

  Much different owner walking in.

• 1:13:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:51Dax Shepard?

  Well, it's staggering. I guess my only thought is how do you figure out how to enjoy it all? I think that's the last kind of hill to climb, isn't it? How do you really integrate it? How do you enjoy it? How do you accept it? How do you believe in it? How do you not fear?

• 1:14:04Speaker 03

  I'm finally at a place where I've got the right team in place to run it, so I can step back a lot. And as soon as I got there and was like, okay, great, we're good, here comes AI. It was like, you might want to rethink everything you're thinking here. So it's like, here's a whole nother challenge to deal with.

• 1:14:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Oh, I have one last question about this. Could you ever mentally be at a place where you go? I did it. It really happened without feeling like you have to keep pursuing it.

• 1:14:32Speaker 03

  I'm there now.

• 1:14:33Dax Shepard?

  Oh, well, congratulations.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  That is huge.

• 1:14:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, I feel like I've done it. There's nothing else. If six triple eight wouldn't have come along, jazz band was like the pinnacle for me. 27 years to make it. I'm like, okay, now what? So I'm there.

• 1:14:45Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  Contentment.

• 1:14:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:47Dax Shepard?

  And you got a little boy, so that really takes care of a lot of it.

• 1:14:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:50Dax Shepard?

  All right. Well, I hope everyone checks out the six triple eight. It's in theaters on December 6th, and it's on Netflix December 20th. I think this is going to be enormous. Are you still surprised when you have hits?

• 1:15:00Speaker 03

  I'm thankful.

• 1:15:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah.

• 1:15:02Speaker 03

  I'm not as surprised as I am thankful every time.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  That's a good answer. I like that.

• 1:15:06Speaker 03

  But when it's a shitty movie, that hit, thank you. But six triple eight is amazing.

• 1:15:11Dax Shepard?

  Well, Tyler, this has been so fun. I don't think I ever thought we would meet. Of course, like everyone else in America is very aware of you. I watched the 60 Minutes profile. I was very charmed and thought you were wonderful.

• 1:15:21Speaker 03

  And you're gonna watch Maxine's Baby.

• 1:15:23Dax Shepard?

  And I'm definitely gonna watch Maxine's Baby.

• 1:15:25Speaker 03

  And your wife, I know it always goes back to your wife.

• 1:15:27Dax Shepard?

  Well, as it should.

• 1:15:27Speaker 03

  Your wife, I was doing People's Choice Awards and somebody was supposed to present the humanitarian award and she stepped up to do it at the last minute, and the teleprompter went out.

• 1:15:36Dax Shepard?

  Oh, sure.

• 1:15:37Speaker 03

  And she was like, I don't need a teleprompter to talk about him. I'll just wink it. And it was really great.

• 1:15:41Dax Shepard?

  Oh, great.

• 1:15:42Speaker 03

  I'll never forget that because she was grace under fire.

• 1:15:45Dax Shepard?

  Well, wonderful meeting you. I hope everyone checks out the film and I hope we get to do it again. Or maybe just bump into each other. Not working. That would be fun, too.

• 1:15:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, a lot of fun. A lot of fun. I love it.

• 1:15:54Dax Shepard?

  All right. Take care.

• 1:15:55Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:15:57Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:16:04Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:16:29Speaker 05

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• 1:17:11Speaker 05

  in 0.8 milligram, 2.5 milligram, 5.5 milligram, 9 milligram, 14.5 milligram, and 17.2 milligram tablets. Learn more at foundo.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX. Now is perfect to talk to your doctor about Foundo.

• 1:17:27Dax Shepard?

  We are supported by Walden University. You know that feeling when you've been thinking about making a move, going after the degree, the promotion, the thing you keep telling yourself you'll get to someday? Walden University is built for that moment. For over 50 years, Walden has helped working professionals get the W, the knowledge, the skills, and the confidence to create real change in their careers and communities. Their programs are designed around your life, not the other way around. With Tempo Learning, available in select programs, there are no rigid schedules or set weekly deadlines. You move at your own pace. And Walden's faculty aren't just academics. They're practitioners who bring real-world experience into everything they teach.

• 1:18:10Dax 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. This episode is brought to you by Dell. Gifts mean more when they have the power to give more. They can inspire more discovery, give more confidence and unwrap more of who you are. This Black Friday, give a gift that goes beyond the box. The Dell XPS 13 laptop. With a beautiful design and cutting edge performance, it helps you unlock more possibilities. It's the thinnest, lightest XPS laptop yet.

• 1:18:53Dax Shepard?

  With touchscreen, a backlit keyboard and long lasting battery life to power you through your day. Built with a durable aluminum chassis, weighing just 2.2 pounds and Intel Core processors. It's fast, reliable and portable enough to keep up wherever you go. Visit dell.com to explore the possibilities of XPS. While shopping, you'll also find great perks like Dell Rewards. Fast free shipping, premium support and financing with flexible payment options. Plus, you can find great deals on monitors and accessories. That means you can score a whole new setup now for less. This Black Friday sale is one you don't want to miss. Head to dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 1:19:38Dax Shepard?

  This episode is supported by Helix.

• 1:19:42Speaker 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.

• 1:19:52Dax 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.

• 1:20:03Speaker 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.

• 1:20:21Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  Recently.

• 1:20:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

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

• 1:20:26Dax Shepard?

  Temperature was all over the map.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  It was a mess.

• 1:20:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  I need a new one.

• 1:20:29Dax 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.

• 1:20:44Speaker 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.

• 1:20:50Dax 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.

• 1:21:11Dax Shepard?

  I sure hope there weren't any mistakes in that episode, but we'll find out when my mom, Mrs. Monica comes in and tells us what was wrong. Hi, Moni.

• 1:21:20Speaker 01

  Happy birthday.

• 1:21:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  It's your birthday today.

• 1:21:26Dax Shepard?

  It's a birthday miracle today.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  Oh, because you've been very, you're, you're, okay, first of all, we're not together. You're in Mexico City.

• 1:21:33Dax Shepard?

  I'm in Mexico City and I just want to start by saying what a place everyone should come. It's incredible. This is a very, very special place. I've never been. So yes, we were having the very best trip and I'll tell you some of the details, but then Lincoln, three or four days ago, she started throwing up and it was really rough. And she got really kind of scary sick because I was like, do we need, uh, what? You know, you're trying to figure out like, when did you go to the hospital?

• 1:22:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, what point? Yeah.

• 1:22:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So that was really rough and that was going on. She had been completely lifeless and zero energy for like 48 hours. And then New Year's Eve was fine. And then New Year's morning at around nine in the morning, I was like, oh, I got something sneaky going on, but I didn't, I wasn't panicked. And then I, and I'm going to spare you the details, but then I went to the bathroom and then I had. I mean, really just the most violent throwing up I've ever had. And that went on for eight hours. And I was certain I gave myself a hernia, but the throwing up and the other stuff I won't

• 1:22:50Dax Shepard?

  mention, duty stuff, um, was truly nothing compared to the laying in bed, um, shivering like crazy, all of my muscles cramped. I really, I mean, kicking opiates, motorcycle accident, none of this was the single worst I've ever felt in my whole life for eight hours. I was like, and I had it in my head like, oh my God, if I, if this is for 48 hour or Lincoln at that point was on 50, I was like, I, I, I don't think I could make it like, why isn't my body just stop letting me experience this because it's way too much.

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:26Dax Shepard?

  And it was, it was just torture. And then Kristen brought me a Zofran and a, and then I'll leave about eight hours into it. I took that, I was able to sleep, I slept for four hours and then I woke up last night around, I don't know, eight PM and I was like, I was okay. It kind of passed. And then Linky was starting to come out of it too. So everyone else did fun stuff and she and I just hung out, went to the, um, hot tub to soak our achy bodies. That was fine. We did about 10 minutes. That was our big adventure. And then we laid in bed and watched Little Women, the Greta Gerwig one.

• 1:24:03Speaker 01

  That's a great movie.

• 1:24:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Okay. This trip for me has been a total revelation about Greta Gerwig. I, I knew Barbie, but I hadn't seen Lady Bird.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  Oh, what a movie. It's such a good movie.

• 1:24:18Dax Shepard?

  What a movie. Do you know I didn't see it because I thought it was a period piece? Like the cover and the title, I for some reason thought it was a period piece, not a high school coming of age movie.

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, but then Little Women is a period piece.

• 1:24:31Dax Shepard?

  But now I just love Greta. I would watch, um, I don't know, Name Your Worst, I'd watch a horror film that she made at this point. So now I became obsessed with Greta Gerwig. And then, uh, last night I was like, let's watch Little Women. Well, that's an incredible, perfect movie too.

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  It is. She's so good.

• 1:24:47Dax Shepard?

  Then I did research on her, Monica, like I was going to interview her. I did like an hour of research on Greta Gerwig, just for my own edification and fun. I had no idea she was like a hugely successful actor before.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:02Dax Shepard?

  She was a our best director.

• 1:25:07Dax Shepard?

  And I didn't know she was married to Noah Baumbach.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, they've done stuff together.

• 1:25:11Dax Shepard?

  You know, all this stuff. I didn't know any of this.

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  I know it all.

• 1:25:15Dax Shepard?

  You are a know it all. So anyways, all to say, I woke up this morning and I actually feel really fantastic.

• 1:25:21Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm so happy to hear it. I was very scared for all of you guys. And we came up with a plan B in case I figure there's no way.

• 1:25:32Dax Shepard?

  There was no way yesterday at 7:00 PM. But then I heard you had an idea that I almost felt like I wanted to stay sick, so you'd have to do it.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought, you know, we were on it. Rob and I were on a text and we were trying to figure out, I guess we'll just come on and say happy new year and tell people you're sick and you'll be back. But then I thought.

• 1:25:51Dax Shepard?

  Dead in Mexico.

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So then I thought maybe I would do 50 facts about Dax.

• 1:25:58Dax Shepard?

  That's a lot.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  For your birthday.

• 1:25:59Dax Shepard?

  Were you intimidated? That's a lot to commit to 50 facts.

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  I can do it.

• 1:26:04Dax Shepard?

  I can do it.

• 1:26:05Speaker 01

  I know I can do it. But I but so maybe I'll save that for another day.

• 1:26:10Dax Shepard?

  That was a very thoughtful idea.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  It's 50. How do you feel?

• 1:26:14Dax Shepard?

  Yesterday I was like, oh, wow, I'm not gonna make.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:26:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yesterday I was like, oh, my God, I'm gonna not make it. I thought for sure I was gonna outlive my dad for so long. I was like, oh, no, we're gonna come in 13 years before.

• 1:26:28Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Apart from health, how are you feeling about your?

• 1:26:33Dax Shepard?

  Second half of a century that I'm entering?

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:36Dax Shepard?

  I think I'm mostly thinking about the thing that's tripping me out is like, okay, wow, I'm a half of 100 years old. I just watched Little Women. That was only set 150 years ago.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:47Dax Shepard?

  That seems like a million years ago.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:26:50Dax Shepard?

  In fact, we were watching the movie and there's these beautiful mansions in the movie. And I said to Lincoln, you realize none of those mansions have toilets inside? Like, as fancy as this looks and is how much you'd want to live there? All these people in their fancy dresses are going across the yard to shit in a wooden box.

• 1:27:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they aren't brushing teeth.

• 1:27:09Dax Shepard?

  Nothing is good. It looks pretty. But so then when I think, well, that's not terribly long ago. Two more of my lives ago?

• 1:27:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:18Dax Shepard?

  It starts to put time in a weird. Or it's like, all these things that feel so far away, they're not that far away. And then I then, of course, I think, well, life's really short.

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:29Dax Shepard?

  But mostly I'm happy and I feel good and I'm very excited to see you because I haven't seen you in a long time. So I think we should rewind all the way to your Christmas at home.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  Okay, um, I went home for Christmas.

• 1:27:42Dax Shepard?

  To Duluth, Georgia.

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  You know, that's also a weird thing. This was sort of the first trip. I didn't refer to it as going home.

• 1:27:51Dax Shepard?

  Oh, what did you refer to it as?

• 1:27:54Speaker 01

  Like, I'm going to Georgia to visit my family.

• 1:27:57Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I don't know about that.

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  I mean, home is where the heart is, but also I think, like, I just, we've talked about this before, but every time I land here in LA.

• 1:28:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  I, I'm home here.

• 1:28:16Dax Shepard?

  You're an LA boy.

• 1:28:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm a cookie boy and an LA boy.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  And I visit my parents in Georgia.

• 1:28:24Dax Shepard?

  Huh, that's interesting because I still, when I go home, when I go to Michigan, I think it's home.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  I, God, yeah, now I feel sacrilegious. Like, it's not, it's still a huge part of me, but I guess I'm sort of coming up, not coming up, I guess, because let's see, what, this year, this year I will have been here 15 years.

• 1:28:46Dax Shepard?

  Right, right. So not half your life yet.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  Not half my life, but I was in Georgia for 22 years. So, I mean, I'm a, like, in a, in seven years, I'm gonna have reached the same point.

• 1:29:03Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes. I'm at 60% as of today.

• 1:29:08Speaker 01

  Your life.

• 1:29:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, because I moved when I was 20 and so for 30 years I've been in California.

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:29:15Dax Shepard?

  And 20 I was in Michigan.

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  So you, you have lived in California longer than you've lived in Michigan. Isn't that weird?

• 1:29:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, by like 50% longer. Yes.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  You love percentages today.

• 1:29:27Dax Shepard?

  I love it.

• 1:29:28Speaker 01

  Because it's his birthday.

• 1:29:29Dax Shepard?

  I'm gonna still do fast math when I'm 50.

• 1:29:33Dax Shepard?

  You went to your parents' house, not home.

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  And it was, it was lovely. You know, it's your, I'm always trying to figure out the right amount of days.

• 1:29:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  Where I am enjoying myself. It's relaxing. I'm getting time in with the family, with friends, but I don't overstay into the point where I become.

• 1:29:58Dax Shepard?

  Cranky.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  Quanky.

• 1:30:01Dax Shepard?

  Quanky.

• 1:30:01Speaker 01

  And I did pretty good. Uh, I think it was like, I think it was like a day and a half of, of quankiness.

• 1:30:16Dax Shepard?

  Y'all ever get toothpaste? Arwar?

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  Arwar?

• 1:30:26Dax Shepard?

  So, oh wait, the, the, the last day and a half or the first day and a half?

• 1:30:30Speaker 01

  No, the first days are great. Like, that's the thing. And then I, and I feel so good and everyone's so happy. And, and it, it feels like, oh, I could, I could like live here again, probably, in this house. And then five days is, I'm starting to turn, I'm starting to call it my parents' house. You know, things, things are changing. Um, yeah, cause so I, my mom got me this necklace from my gift guide. Um, it's a shark.

• 1:30:59Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:31:01Speaker 01

  It probably.

• 1:31:01Dax Shepard?

  Well, that worked out absolutely perfectly because I bought you the same necklace and it got lost.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  Yes. And so you got me a different one.

• 1:31:10Dax Shepard?

  When I reordered, I just, I changed my mind on the reorder. I mean, truly, that's a blessing from above because you would have two shark necklaces. What, you don't need that.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would, I would have to return one and then that would be a really crisis of conscience.

• 1:31:24Dax Shepard?

  Who's you return?

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:25Dax Shepard?

  Well, you gotta return mine and have Nirming deserves to.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  I know, but, uh, but I sent her links. So it's not like.

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  She came up, although in some ways you just got it off the

• 1:31:42Dax Shepard?

  That's right. I mean, you also in a subversive way told me what to get you as

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. But anyway, I got the shark. I love it. And I was wearing it and my mom said, she was like, oh, it's looks so nice. Why'd you pick? Why'd you pick a shark? And I said, oh, because I'm a shark. I'm a shark. When it comes down to it, and I said, in business, and she said, with your parents too, sometimes.

• 1:32:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  And then I just looked at her like this.

• 1:32:14Dax Shepard?

  Like a shark?

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:16Dax Shepard?

  You should have bitter. You should have ran. You should have lunged at her and snapped your

• 1:32:19Speaker 01

  You want to see a shark?

• 1:32:20Dax Shepard?

  Jaws at her. You want to see a shark? I'll show you a shark. You know what I think is really gross about sharks is that their upper teeth move to. You know that?

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  No, what?

• 1:32:30Dax Shepard?

  You know, like our top teeth are fixed. They don't go anywhere. Just the bottom mandible moves up and down. The top teeth aren't coming up and down. They're just stationary.

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:32:39Dax Shepard?

  Those fucking sharks, the top comes down too.

• 1:32:43Speaker 01

  It comes down or up? Well, I guess both.

• 1:32:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. It does the same thing as the bottom.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  Whoa, that's so cool.

• 1:32:52Dax Shepard?

  I don't like how it looks when they lunge at a seal or something. You see the top teeth descend. It just makes it that much more terrifying.

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  That's a New Year's resolution for me.

• 1:33:01Dax Shepard?

  It's one step away from the whole set of teeth just turning into a vortex in like, you know, eviscerating the prey.

• 1:33:10Speaker 01

  Ew, eviscerating the prey. That's me. That's me in 2025.

• 1:33:17Speaker 01

  What are your, do you have any resolutions?

• 1:33:19Dax Shepard?

  I do. This year I tried to break it into different categories, like professional, you know, physical, spiritual. There's another one. It's probably the most important one. Professionally, I really want to finish my memoir this year. Physically, and this has been a little bit influenced by watching Sprint, season two over the break. I need to do, I need to. It's been out for a while, Molly.

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  Whoa, no.

• 1:33:48Dax Shepard?

  It's so good. And yeah, I didn't know that either. But Molly had already seen it.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:33:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. So sprinting, I really, biking's my new thing, but I'm gonna try to this year do biking and sprinting. So that's a physical goal.

• 1:34:05Dax Shepard?

  And then spiritually is finding my way back professionally. I this is spiritual professional.

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:14Dax Shepard?

  To focus on what I love about work and not the outcome, I guess. I could really, really hunker back down into that.

• 1:34:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like that.

• 1:34:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. What are your resolutions?

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  I also have sort of different buckets.

• 1:34:29Speaker 01

  But I also have very tangible ones. I think tangible ones are the ones that are best. Like they're the highest level of succeeding. Like Max's resolution is to learn how to do a split.

• 1:34:43Dax Shepard?

  Ooh, I think it's too late for Max. I once read if boys don't do that by the time they're 10, they can't physiologically.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Really? He was pretty.

• 1:34:50Dax Shepard?

  He should do a little research.

• 1:34:52Speaker 01

  We said that was a great resolution and he was surprisingly kind, like sort of flexible.

• 1:34:58Dax Shepard?

  Max is my arch nemesis. The notion that his thighs are that much bigger than mine and he can do the splits. I feel like he has too much muscle to do.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  And he's a little taller than you.

• 1:35:07Dax Shepard?

  Well, I don't know.

• 1:35:09Speaker 01

  Not on your birthday. Today is not. Today is not.

• 1:35:13Dax Shepard?

  Depends how you quantify it, I guess. If you use inches, yeah, sure, he's taller.

• 1:35:17Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 1:35:18Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I forgot to what medically I want to I'm seeing allergists this year. I gotta stop blowing my nose all day.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a good one.

• 1:35:26Dax Shepard?

  And then I have a vanity one, too.

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  Uh huh. Okay.

• 1:35:29Dax Shepard?

  I want to start getting facials.

• 1:35:31Speaker 01

  That's a great one. That also feels, it just feels really nice and luxurious.

• 1:35:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, well, I'm 50 and sometimes I look at my, my nose in the mirror and I'm like, it looks like a catcher's mitt. Like, I think I need to pull a couple of layers off of the skin or something. It's starting to look really leathery.

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  It's not, but you could do a peel, a light peel.

• 1:35:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, a couple of times a week, maybe.

• 1:35:52Speaker 01

  Oh, God, this is.

• 1:35:55Dax Shepard?

  That youthful skin underneath.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  You just have bright red, like your muscle shows.

• 1:36:01Dax Shepard?

  I keep fluctuating. I keep going like half the time, probably even more than the half the time. About 80% of the time I go like, yeah, let's get this face all leathery and fucked up. There's something charming about that in an older man. And then one day I look at my face, I go, baloney. I can get facials. I live in a city with a lot of good facials. I should make my skin look rosy and youthful.

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  It's such a good encapsulation of you in general. You're like, I'm this masculine, Midwestern guy, and I'm leathery, but really you're not. You.

• 1:36:35Dax Shepard?

  I'm vain and I live in Hollywood and I'm an actress.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:38Dax Shepard?

  Who are we kidding?

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, just own it.

• 1:36:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:43Speaker 01

  I have a skin one too. It's to restore the skin barrier on my legs and that means to lotion every day.

• 1:36:53Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. Skin barrier is what it is technically.

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  Because the skin barrier on my leg, legs are a bit rough.

• 1:37:08Dax Shepard?

  Listen, this is working perfectly with my New Year's resolution because we haven't recorded in like eight days and I'm having as much fun right now as I have on a roller coaster.

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  Again, it's just like the first five days, it feels so freeing. It's like, oh, I don't have to think about that. And then start feeling itchy and you need it.

• 1:37:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  You need it.

• 1:37:28Dax Shepard?

  And I want to add about your skin, Delta and I, so on New Year's Eve here, before I got sick, which was great, the hotel nearly set itself on fire. It was launching all these fireworks from the roof and we're on the top floor. So about 14 inches from our window is where the fireworks were being set off from. And I'm going to send you a video. It's the like, I'm talking a lot of fireworks where our whole room filled up with smoke because we had the windows open watching them. So, and then. They were playing music in the courtyard and everything. So we, there's no way we were going to go to bed before 2am. So Delta and I were in bed together and it was about one and the music was really loud and we couldn't sleep. So we watched the Christmas special and

• 1:38:12Dax Shepard?

  numerous times during the Christmas special on the closeups of you, I thought, well, I don't know what more she would want out of skin. It looks absolutely flawless and beautiful. And I'm just not sure what Monica's aiming for, if not what she has in the Christmas episode.

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  Well, that's very nice. Um, I mean, it's been a journey. When I was looking, I looked through all my pictures from 2024 to do a post and I can, like, the beginning of the year was bad, really bad, really, really, really bad skin. Okay, I guess I'll shout this out. I had, so people know about my witch, but I have an, I feel, I feel guilty, but I gotta be honest, I have a new person and she's not a witch. She's a real woman. Um, and she doesn't have powers. She has skill.

• 1:39:11Dax Shepard?

  Right, right. Yeah.

• 1:39:12Speaker 01

  The place is called corrective skincare.

• 1:39:14Dax Shepard?

  But is it all the way on the west side?

• 1:39:15Speaker 01

  Santa Monica. Exactly.

• 1:39:17Dax Shepard?

  See, this is where my, I go to the 80%. Let's just stay leathery. Cause I'm like, yeah, I want whatever you got going. Cause it's certainly working.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  I know, but you don't have, you don't have adult acne. I hate that phrase.

• 1:39:31Dax Shepard?

  I do too.

• 1:39:32Speaker 01

  I know. It's, it's almost an automotopia.

• 1:39:37Dax Shepard?

  Uh, there is something really, there's something about it. Yeah.

• 1:39:42Dax Shepard?

  Well, wait till you have, I would now have geriatric acne is what they'd have to call it.

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Oh, no. I'm gonna have, I'm gonna be dealing, I'm gonna have that. Um, but no. So you don't, you have different issues. I don't, I think she is really amazing. Corrective skincare is very, very amazing at clearing.

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  AA and then also and then also making like she does light peels and stuff. Anyway, she she has changed my face for sure and helped it so much. And I have a routine and I use a couple of her products and I also ice my face morning and night. That's a pro tip.

• 1:40:22Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:40:23Speaker 01

  Wow. And I think that's helped a lot.

• 1:40:26Dax Shepard?

  Okay, let me ask you this. Does she like the east side? Like, are there any favorite restaurants she has? Could we get her like five clients on the east side and then buy her lunch and she'd come out? No.

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  No, because you know why? She lives in Orange County and now she only is there one day a week, even in Santa Monica. So it's getting, it's like, I should, I'm afraid to say.

• 1:40:49Dax Shepard?

  Once a month.

• 1:40:50Speaker 01

  We'll pay, I would love that. I would love that.

• 1:40:53Dax Shepard?

  But we get like four or five east side clients, put her up at car and now we got something.

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  We really got something, although I, I, you know, a resolution I had once was to be more positive. And I think I've done that. And I look at going to Santa Monica as an adventure. It's like going on vacation, but like a bad, like kind of a bad one, like the one you're on. And.

• 1:41:18Dax Shepard?

  Well,

• 1:41:20Dax Shepard?

  people should know too, they're probably thinking like in LA, how far could this be? And if you look at a map, it'll be very, very deceptive. I mean, it's sincerely, it can be 90 minutes both directions.

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  It is, it is 90. It, if you go.

• 1:41:36Dax Shepard?

  It's the same distance to go to Santa Barbara to get a facial.

• 1:41:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, but I plan it well where I plan a dinner with our only friend who lives on the west side. Sometimes she can't do it, which is rude. Then on my own, I'll go to dinner if that's the case, or I'll go work somewhere. I will say that when I had my Tonka.

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  That was, that was me.

• 1:42:06Speaker 01

  I don't want to give too much details, but I was in Santa Monica.

• 1:42:10Dax Shepard?

  You're trying to get home from Santa Monica.

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  That's, yeah.

• 1:42:14Dax Shepard?

  Okay. I, I also have a Tonka adjacent story, but because I already had this poisoning yesterday, I, I, I don't want to

• 1:42:24Speaker 01

  You want to wait?

• 1:42:24Dax Shepard?

  overwhelm the audience. I'll, I'll wait, but I, on the departure of this trip, had a real emotional and Tonka-like experience.

• 1:42:34Speaker 01

  You did.

• 1:42:34Dax Shepard?

  But I'm gonna, like, cannot fill the first episode of the year

• 1:42:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:42:38Dax Shepard?

  with double whammy on that.

• 1:42:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:42:41Dax Shepard?

  So Easter egg.

• 1:42:42Speaker 01

  Ooh, exciting. Um, okay. So I have to restore the skin barrier on my legs that with lotion. I realize I, I do have a kind of tic, like I pick at my legs a lot.

• 1:42:56Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:42:57Speaker 01

  And so they're kind of really messed up. Um, so I gotta restore that. And then, um, I want to, I've journaled two days now.

• 1:43:06Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you have?

• 1:43:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:43:08Dax Shepard?

  Congrats.

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  It wasn't even a resolution. I didn't write it down, but I found a notebook and I've done it for two days.

• 1:43:16Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good.

• 1:43:17Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:43:18Dax Shepard?

  The journal's a great place. I don't, you don't really have any resolutions of quitting anything, but I think the journal's the best place to put your numbers on the corner because you see them piling up. Like I just hit 365 days without dip because last year's resolution was no more chewy tobaccy.

• 1:43:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Wow. And you did it. Congratulations.

• 1:43:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And so on my journal, you know, I see, oh, what, 365 days without, and then you get a little encouragement to stick with it that day. So if you, I don't know, you're icing or whatever thing you want to be consistent about. If you keep a little tally in your journal, you get to see that climb and it's very encouraging.

• 1:43:54Speaker 01

  Ooh, I like that. I'm impressed that you, knowing you.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  Um, that you aren't paranoid about your journals. Like I am so, I wanna lock on it. It doesn't have one, cause it's like a nice journal, but I'm afraid somebody's gonna open it and start reading it. I live by myself.

• 1:44:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:17Speaker 01

  So the risk is low, but I am like, I'm kind of consumed by that. I, I thought, should I rip the, should I write it and then destroy it?

• 1:44:26Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:44:27Dax Shepard?

  Well, okay. Let me hit you with, like, I write in it with even much deeper knowledge that I'm going to die, and I don't presume my kids will ever have the interest of doing this, but if my kids choose, there is a daily account of my life for the last 20 years. Should they ever wanna read it? And it's all in there. And that's at one time scary, and then at another time, kinda comforting the notion that they're gonna struggle in life for sure. It's the ride, and they're gonna be ashamed of themselves, and they're gonna make mistakes. And I have this, if they're so inclined,

• 1:45:05Dax Shepard?

  I, I have 20 years of huge mistakes, and still walk, keep going, and keep trying. And, and so I, I write in it knowing there's a, a possibility that my children will read.

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  Oh, do you censor yourself because of that, or no?

• 1:45:21Dax Shepard?

  I don't. I know.

• 1:45:23Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:45:24Dax Shepard?

  I think the more I've learned of my parents' struggles, it did nothing but comfort me and make me less self-loathing and, you know.

• 1:45:34Speaker 01

  But you're really only comfortable with them doing it after you die, though, right?

• 1:45:38Dax Shepard?

  I don't know. You've been around me. I tell them pretty much everything already.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  That's true. You don't have any deepest, darkest secrets that you don't want anyone to ever know? I do.

• 1:45:49Dax Shepard?

  Well, now I wanna know them. I'm gonna break into your apartment.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  No, see, no. I'm, okay. My new plan is the next morning, I'm gonna rip the old page out and light it on fire.

• 1:46:00Dax Shepard?

  No, can't you get a safe at least? Don't do that.

• 1:46:03Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:46:04Dax Shepard?

  Cause you might want to write a memoir one day and, and our memories are so, are, are complete fabrications.

• 1:46:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:11Dax Shepard?

  As we know, so like even right now, this memoir I'm currently writing really is only going to take me to like adulthood, right? And then I'll have the gap between moving to LA and being an addict and then getting sober and starting to work. That'll probably be a second one, but it, I mean, this sounds so indulgent, but regardless, in my mind, there's three.

• 1:46:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:46:34Dax Shepard?

  And what's exciting to me is the third one, there'll be no, I'll be able to read. Like anytime I tell an event of my life or the story, I can go read that day and, and actually know what happened. It'll, that will, the third one will probably be the only one that's approaching accurate of reality.

• 1:46:51Speaker 01

  It'll be the most boring one.

• 1:46:53Dax Shepard?

  Probably. Well, yeah, all the other ones all have been the victim and the last one you'll realize I'm the perpetrator.

• 1:47:00Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. That's a twist. The twist in the series is kind of cool.

• 1:47:05Dax Shepard?

  But don't burn it, Monty.

• 1:47:06Speaker 01

  I'm burning it. Um, because, because I think for me, the purpose of the journal is potentially different than yours. One is just to get back in the habit of writing.

• 1:47:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:22Speaker 01

  And two, it's to release. It's not to document. It's more emotion. It's more about feelings than what is happening. So.

• 1:47:35Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:47:35Speaker 01

  I, I like, I think I'm kind of okay with burning it because it's, it's just like I'm giving that up to the universe. I'm releasing that. I don't want to reread it.

• 1:47:49Dax Shepard?

  Okay. But, and by the way, I don't really ever go back and read my journal.

• 1:47:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:54Dax Shepard?

  But I have on a couple of occasions and one thing that's very useful about it, as I've already said on here many times, is when you can see a pattern you've been stuck in for a very long time and you see it in writing, there is something very powerful about seeing that and going like, well, it's up to me. I'm going to continue to like, this isn't a new feeling I have. This isn't a new reaction. This is the same fucking thing I do all the time and it's in black and white and I have a choice to continue it or to stop it. And that's where I think it's useful. What if you put it in some second location and you don't have your name on it? So if someone found it, they'd have no fucking clue who, whose secrets they're reading.

• 1:48:33Speaker 01

  I think it's going to be obvious.

• 1:48:36Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you do.

• 1:48:38Speaker 01

  What I'm like.

• 1:48:39Dax Shepard?

  The one thing I really agree with you on.

• 1:48:41Speaker 01

  At work at Armchair Expert.

• 1:48:43Dax Shepard?

  Every, yeah, I guess if every entry has to do with someone famous you interviewed that day, they'll go, well, it's either Rob's, Monica's or Dax's.

• 1:48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:55Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:49:02Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:49:46Dax Shepard?

  the new Peloton Tread Flex at onepeloton.com.

• 1:49:57Dax Shepard?

  The one thing I do think is incredibly powerful, and I think this is what I use it for more than anything now, is there is, and the documenting part, it's not like I'm documenting it for posterity, or I think I've even ever been writing in it, thinking I'd consult it for something. It's that I wake up and the day often feels insurmountable, and I am pessimistic, and I think I can barely get out of bed and nothing will happen. But the act of having to say everything that happened yesterday, I see, oh no, yesterday you felt that way, and look, all these things you did.

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:29Dax Shepard?

  The more important thing that's happening now is like, I wake up with a rumination, and I'm committed to putting down the rumination. And once I get it in writing, the absurdity of it generally cuts it in half, or even more sometimes. The whole, that realization I had about Bradley's movie, where it's like, I saw it, I hated it, I got an interview on that day, I don't know what I'm gonna say, I'm now writing about that. In the writing of it, I realize, oh, I hate it, because this movie's about me.

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:57Dax Shepard?

  Or, you know, the part of me I hate the most, and then what clarity that gives me, and then I end up loving it. So.

• 1:51:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. I probably, I'm probably just gonna burn it, but I, I think it's good. I actually, I think it's more like making the bed, which I don't do, but now I kind of see the value. It's, it's, you've, in the morning, you've accomplished something. You did something. You wrote some stuff down, and like, if that's a goal to write some stuff down every day, then you've already done something positive for yourself, and you can like, whatever happens the rest of the day, one, you accomplish one thing.

• 1:51:40Dax Shepard?

  Monty, erase everything I just said. Yes, I think that's the number one thing of all of it.

• 1:51:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:44Dax Shepard?

  Which is like, you just, what you've shown is you have a commitment to yourself, and, and, and you did it. And so you feel, yeah, you feel, it's like exercising. You're like, alright, I did things I didn't want to do to make myself better, and that implicitly feels great.

• 1:52:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:52:01Dax Shepard?

  Do you want to know one of the sickest parts of myself?

• 1:52:05Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:52:07Dax Shepard?

  I always make my bed. I would anyways, but I also, there is a part of me that like, I make my side of the bed.

• 1:52:16Dax Shepard?

  Because often Kristen's still in it.

• 1:52:18Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 1:52:19Dax Shepard?

  But even if she's not in it, I'll just make my side.

• 1:52:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:52:23Dax Shepard?

  And this is really disgusting part of me. But part of me goes, well, there's the evidence. Like I made my side of the bed. I'm key, I'm, I'm committed to keeping this room clean. So there could also, once you have, live with someone, you might start making your side of the bed just to shame them.

• 1:52:39Speaker 01

  Oh, no. I think that should be a res- no, I think that should be a resolution for you that you make her side of the bed too, as a generous act.

• 1:52:52Dax Shepard?

  I'm overselling that a little bit for comedic value, but it does happen.

• 1:52:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I understand. I understand where it comes from.

• 1:52:58Dax Shepard?

  Well, here's really what I don't, I'm not making it thinking I'll shame her, but I occasionally I'll see my sides made and hers is messy. And I, and I do think, I hope she notices that I've made my side.

• 1:53:12Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Um, the only, the only time I make my bed is if I am leaving for out of town. I make it. And that, I only started doing that because Callie once told me, we were in high school, that she, we were young. And I think we were going somewhere and she made her bed. And she was like, yeah, I like to, if I'm going on vacation, I have to clean my room and make my bed and everything in case I die.

• 1:53:43Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that's not where I thought we were going. I thought she wants to return to a clean slate.

• 1:53:47Speaker 01

  I know. That would have been the normal answer. But yeah, in case she dies and then people like, you know, are coming in there. She wa- it's like, it's a clean.

• 1:53:56Dax Shepard?

  I have the complete opposite. If I thought I was gonna die on vacation, I would set my room on fire before I left. Like, I wouldn't give a fuck.

• 1:54:03Speaker 01

  It's more for like, what will happen for the people? Like, they'll come in her room. It needs to be in order for them.

• 1:54:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:11Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:54:11Dax Shepard?

  She's the type that would have killed herself at the Colonial Motor Inn to not make a mess for anyone.

• 1:54:16Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 1:54:18Dax Shepard?

  So my grandma Midge would have found her.

• 1:54:19Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Okay.

• 1:54:22Speaker 01

  That's really bad. Knock on wood.

• 1:54:24Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:54:24Speaker 01

  Hold on. Knock on wood. Okay.

• 1:54:27Dax Shepard?

  Okay, one more thing. Christmas was great. We had a great Christmas.

• 1:54:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:30Dax Shepard?

  Really, really fun. TT and Bear came over in the morning and that's Carly and Yurdi. And then we left on the 26th to come here and I committed us to a hot air balloon ride.

• 1:54:41Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:54:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And you had to wake up really early, like five in the morning on vacation to go. And I was a tough sell and our drive there and that was the day before Lincoln got sick. So Lincoln couldn't come and mom couldn't come. So it really was like on the fence. What are we gonna do? We gonna still do this thing? And it's so early. We went anyways. Delta was so afraid the whole ride there, watching them inflate the hot air balloon. Getting into the basket was almost impossible. She almost, she just almost was like, fuck this. I'm not doing it.

• 1:55:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:19Dax Shepard?

  I coaxed her into the basket. There's pictures of me holding her before it takes off. And I had said in the car, Delty, I will, I would bet all of my money that at the end of this, you're really going to want to do it again. Like I feel that confident about it. I would probably bet everything. And she goes, well, you are gonna lose everything. That's what she said. The balloon took off, Monica. I promise you, we weren't even 15 feet in the air. And Delta goes, Daddy, you're gonna win that bet. This is my favorite thing I've ever done.

• 1:55:55Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:55:56Dax Shepard?

  And it was, it was among the greatest things I've ever done. This is, this was so incredible. There were so many hot air balloons. Oh, maybe I'll post a picture on this episode. There was probably 50 or 60 hot air balloons. All up and you hover above the pyramids.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:56:19Dax Shepard?

  And you just float around for like an hour going up and down. And there's all these beautiful hot air balloons and it was Molly and Dahlia and Lily and Eric and Delty and I. And it was about as cool of an experience as we ever had. And then the dude set it down. We were going, we were touching the tops of the trees as we floated in. He put it on this little, like the size of your yard of your current new house.

• 1:56:49Dax Shepard?

  Over power lines, like a foot over it, brings it down and landed it on the fucking trailer of the truck where it gets transported in.

• 1:56:58Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:56:59Dax Shepard?

  This guy was such a top gun.

• 1:57:01Speaker 01

  Oh my goodness. That's so cool.

• 1:57:05Dax Shepard?

  Spectacular.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  Oh, I love that. Well, I'm proud of her, but also I'm proud and shocked and impressed and shocked that you are comfortable in that environment. Letting someone, exactly, letting someone steer you above earth, really. And yeah, so that's good.

• 1:57:31Dax Shepard?

  This guy was great and you should know, all I did, half, about half of the time I watched him operate it in preparation if he passed out.

• 1:57:40Speaker 01

  Okay, so you were aware.

• 1:57:43Dax Shepard?

  I started clocking like, okay, wow. So when he gives a gas, he had like three different throttles to put heat into the balloon. But when he would put that in, there was about a 45 second delay before the actual elevation would change or not. So I was like, okay, wow. If I know if we're coming at a tree, I gotta predict 45 seconds from now, we need to go. So I was really, I was monitoring like a hawk thinking I might, I might have to land. And Eric goes, after we landed, he goes, yeah, I don't think you could have done that. You could have flown us around, but I don't think you could have made that landing. And I'm like, I don't think so either, but I certainly would have given it a shot.

• 1:58:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you would have. Wow. Okay, great. Well, that sounds wonderful. I'm glad you guys got to do that.

• 1:58:24Dax Shepard?

  That was a big time, once in a lifetime.

• 1:58:26Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 1:58:27Dax Shepard?

  Experience. Yeah, it was really special. And my littlest buddy, we just had so much fun in that basket together. I've been having the best time with Delty on this trip. My God.

• 1:58:38Speaker 01

  That's so sweet.

• 1:58:38Dax Shepard?

  Just couldn't be more in love with her.

• 1:58:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's pretty perfect. Okay, I have a couple of facts.

• 1:58:45Dax Shepard?

  Okay, before you get into those facts, I just want to say. About Tyler Perry. I thought about him so much after this interview. Really, I gotta say tied with anyone else we've ever interviewed. I just, all week I kept thinking about him. And he might be one of the most unique people I've ever met in my life. He has such a softness and kindness. And also this firmness with his boundaries and beliefs. It was like this really unique combo of this beautifulness and also self-assuredness and not going to be led anywhere he doesn't want to go.

• 1:59:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:23Dax Shepard?

  Something about him I felt was just so magical.

• 1:59:26Speaker 01

  I do too. I mean, he's just like the walking representation of glass half full. Like he turned, he really turned his some very traumatic events into something he could, you know, be proud of. And it's

• 1:59:44Dax Shepard?

  And his bravery, talking about those topics.

• 1:59:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:48Dax Shepard?

  Um, fully exceeded mine. And I, I just thought that was really, yeah, a real privilege to, yeah. I love too that he was like, wait, you told me this was gonna be fun to do as a publicist.

• 2:00:01Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:00:02Dax Shepard?

  And then I said, well, it can be fun. We can do a fun version. He's like, no, no, no, actually, let's do, let's go.

• 2:00:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's do the real thing.

• 2:00:09Dax Shepard?

  That was so rad.

• 2:00:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too. Me too. Yeah, he's really special. When I was home, um, I drove past, uh, his studios. Well, the exit for his studios. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, my God, I did it. I said, I'm home. Wow.

• 2:00:24Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you're back.

• 2:00:25Speaker 01

  I'm back. Okay, turns out it's just where I'm not.

• 2:00:29Dax Shepard?

  You can have a couple homes.

• 2:00:30Speaker 01

  Okay, that's nice.

• 2:00:34Speaker 01

  All right. Okay, now he mentioned the arousal template. He said that's set from around three to seven, ages three to seven. Yeah, so there's a belief that each of us has a sexual arousal template, a map in the brain of what we find sexually appealing. Although researchers do not fully understand how or why the various things to which we're attracted appear in our arousal template, it is clear that by the time we are four to six, our arousal template is largely in place, even though we are not yet sexual. It is also clear that as we age, elements can be added to our sexual arousal template, but not eliminated.

• 2:01:10Dax Shepard?

  Ah, you can just throw in more kinks, I guess.

• 2:01:15Speaker 01

  I guess so. Yeah, but it makes sense. It's like why one person is interested in one thing and others are not.

• 2:01:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I had a little realization on this, or not a realization. I launched a new theory on this trip. I was listening to Nate Silver's most recent book and he was, in a very respectful and, and smart way, he was poking holes in

• 2:01:42Dax Shepard?

  effective altruism.

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:01:44Dax Shepard?

  Our good boy McCaskill, who we had on.

• 2:01:46Speaker 01

  We like him.

• 2:01:46Dax Shepard?

  And utilitarianism. He had a couple of really good pushbacks for all of it. And they're very solid, as I also believe that Peter Singer and McCaskill's points of view are very, very solid. And my conclusion was, you know, everything's already been fleshed out. These theories and philosophies in life, they've been explored since Greece and probably before. They're all here for us. And I think we are just biologically unique.

• 2:02:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:19Dax Shepard?

  And I guess our childhoods and our zip code and our socioeconomic. And there's just an offering for us that'll feel most correct. I don't think any of them are necessarily superior. I just think there's, there's a lot of really good fleshed out ones. And you'll just be pulled to one.

• 2:02:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:37Dax Shepard?

  And the notion that yours is the one, or someone else's is the one, isn't really it. There's just these offerings and you have some predisposition and some bias and, and certain ones will just appeal to you more than others. And I think you're just born that way, that you'll be drawn to these certain ones. Does that make sense?

• 2:02:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does. I, I don't know if you're biologically like drawn so much as what you're exposed to kind of becomes your default. We're all trying to be as safe and happy as we can be. So whatever is giving us individually that feeling, we're gonna chase. And yeah, that's not the same thing for everyone.

• 2:03:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think most of my life I've thought, well, one argument will have the most merit. Like somehow, if you can quantify it, and even that was a part of utilitarianism. He said, you know, the reason utilitarian is very tempting as a philosophy is it is our innate desire to quantify things. So if we can say, oh, four people died versus 12 people, that's very simple.

• 2:03:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:40Dax Shepard?

  It's 12 versus four. Well, were those 12 Nazi party members and the other four were Mother Teresa and her pals? Like, no, actually, that's not necessarily true. But the appeal of quantifying and being able to compare two numbers is very attractive to a lot of us.

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:56Dax Shepard?

  And, and biologically, like, we have such different dopamine levels naturally. You know, like, there's such a variety of how much dopamine you have or depression you have. And I think we're all inclined. It's also kind of what Payne was saying, Keith Payne, about, isn't it interesting that although you've thought through the arguments and you're sure the conclusion is correct, isn't it weird I could have predicted what conclusion you would have come to before you were born, based on your ethnicity and your zip code? Like, that kind of, that theory still, I think, is what I'm getting at, is like, yeah, there's just a lot of really good, well-thought-out theories and philosophies, and those ones will just appeal to us for whatever reason, and others won't.

• 2:04:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree.

• 2:04:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:39Speaker 01

  Okay, cities where black people are thriving, because we were talking about Atlanta, my home.

• 2:04:48Dax Shepard?

  My number one home, my only home.

• 2:04:52Speaker 01

  According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the top 10 are Washington DC, Austin, Texas.

• 2:05:01Dax Shepard?

  Is this in order, or is this just?

• 2:05:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is in order. This is ranked. Number one is DC.

• 2:05:06Dax Shepard?

  More than Atlanta?

• 2:05:07Speaker 01

  Should I go, should I go 10 to 1?

• 2:05:10Dax Shepard?

  Wow, too late now.

• 2:05:12Speaker 01

  Damn it.

• 2:05:13Dax Shepard?

  Wait, those are above Atlanta?

• 2:05:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Atlanta's number five.

• 2:05:19Dax Shepard?

  Okay, hit me. So DC.

• 2:05:20Speaker 01

  DC, Austin, number two. Number three, Provo, Utah.

• 2:05:26Dax Shepard?

  Shocker.

• 2:05:26Speaker 01

  Number three is Poughkeepsie, New York.

• 2:05:29Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's gotta be four, right?

• 2:05:30Speaker 01

  Oh, hold on. No, sorry. Three and they're tied. They're tied.

• 2:05:35Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:05:36Speaker 01

  Provo and Poughkeepsie are tied for three and four. Atlanta is five.

• 2:05:42Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:05:42Speaker 01

  Six is Oxnard, California.

• 2:05:45Dax Shepard?

  That's where our boy Anderson Pax from.

• 2:05:48Speaker 01

  Oh, no way.

• 2:05:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:51Speaker 01

  Oh, cool. Seven is San Antonio, Texas. Eight is Raleigh, North Carolina. Nine is Baltimore, Maryland, and 10 is Ogden, Utah. Utah has two.

• 2:06:07Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I'm good. Okay, I gotta imagine if you Google least amount of black people in any state, Utah's gotta be number one, right?

• 2:06:17Speaker 01

  No, well, Rob will.

• 2:06:18Dax Shepard?

  So have they interviewed the 12 people that live in Provo and they're thriving like crazy?

• 2:06:22Speaker 01

  I don't know. But this, no, this is.

• 2:06:25Dax Shepard?

  Is there a threshold, like minimum amount of black folks that to count?

• 2:06:29Speaker 01

  Well, hold on. This is broken down into median household income among black residents,

• 2:06:36Speaker 01

  percentage of black households that make $100,000 or more a year, percent of black residents with a bachelor's degree or higher, homeownership rate among black residents, unemployment rate among black residents. So that's the factor. Yeah, it doesn't give population.

• 2:06:56Dax Shepard?

  Those are good metrics.

• 2:06:56Speaker 02

  Right. In 2020, there were 40,000 in Utah.

• 2:07:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh, come on, guys. There's that many.

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  That's not the lowest, though. What's the lowest?

• 2:07:06Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. Well, hold on, hold on. I want to re-guess. Wyoming?

• 2:07:10Speaker 01

  It's so shaky.

• 2:07:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh, sorry. I was kicking the table at my computer.

• 2:07:16Dax Shepard?

  May I? I'm gonna go back. May- maybe North Dakota and and Montana.

• 2:07:23Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 2:07:24Speaker 02

  You got two that are lower. So the lowest is Wyoming.

• 2:07:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:07:29Speaker 02

  And then Montana, Vermont, Idaho, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, North Dakota, Utah.

• 2:07:37Dax Shepard?

  It's 11. Okay. So I'm kind of wrong on that. But 40,000 in the whole state? That's not.

• 2:07:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's not a lot.

• 2:07:43Speaker 02

  Wyoming is 5,200.

• 2:07:45Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 2:07:46Speaker 01

  Well, it also this this Atlanta Journal Constitution is really a newspaper because there's also this really cool map.

• 2:07:56Speaker 01

  I'm I'm impressed and I'm proud of my home. Okay, now, what's the Chitlin Circuit rebrand name? You were like, it's rebranded to something. And you're right, Urban Theater Circuit.

• 2:08:09Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 2:08:10Speaker 01

  He didn't like that.

• 2:08:12Dax Shepard?

  Good for him. He's a I'm not allowed to have that opinion, but I agree with him.

• 2:08:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, sure. We'll agree with whatever he will do whatever he wants.

• 2:08:20Dax Shepard?

  Oh, can I bring up a scary one? Because I actually had to discuss this with um Delta on this trip.

• 2:08:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:28Dax Shepard?

  I accidentally, she was sitting on this um swinging net chair in a park. And she and Dalia were both trying to get on it at the same time. And it was clear to me that the only way they are going to be able to do that is if they both sat crisscross applesauce. And I accidentally said Indian style. And then Del T said, what's Indian style? And I go, oh, you know what? I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. That's what we used to call crisscross applesauce. And then she said, oh, okay, why is it bad? And I said, you know, Delta, this is one of the few that I'm not quite sure because obviously, people saw Indians meditating, sitting that way, and they called sitting that way Indian style. And it's not derogatory in any way.

• 2:09:15Dax Shepard?

  If you invent a way of sitting, I get I think, why is that negative? So I just want your two cents on that. Is that?

• 2:09:22Speaker 01

  We've talked about this with Bobby Lee. So go back in the archives and you, Dax, you go back in the archives and listen to that episode.

• 2:09:30Dax Shepard?

  Even if it's just for a minute?

• 2:09:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I well, actually, I probably I think I actually cut a lot of the crisscross applesauce talk out. Which I'll probably have to do again right now. No, I won't. I I understand the conundrum because it I agree with you. There's nothing inherently negative about sitting that way.

• 2:09:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and you're not saying it to like marginalize anyone or even. Yeah, I'm just like it's if there's a lot of things different cultures have invented, or at least that's the first time people writing about history saw it. Obviously, people probably sat that way from the beginning.

• 2:10:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, they did. Yeah.

• 2:10:03Dax Shepard?

  For like French, let's say this, let's say that the French were marginalized in the country, and you could no longer say French kissing. Well, it's like, well, there's nothing really bad about French kissing. It just means you use your tongue. And I apparently English people, that was the first time they saw that.

• 2:10:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:10:16Dax Shepard?

  I don't know. But like, yeah, French kissing, that's a fine thing to say. They can own kissing for the rest of time.

• 2:10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. I I guess it's just a way to make a group that already feels different even feel more different.

• 2:10:31Dax Shepard?

  You would be proud of me because I said my point. And she said, Yeah, that doesn't make much sense. And I said, But you know what Monica would say is that would be fine if half the country were Indian. But because there's there were so few Indians and they're already marginalized, it's just another way to make them feel different. So I think that's what Monica would say. And that's a good point.

• 2:10:52Speaker 01

  Oh, look at that.

• 2:10:55Dax Shepard?

  That all happened. You can ask her to confirm that.

• 2:10:58Speaker 02

  The Internet says it's usually because of lack of cultural knowledge that the phrases are offensive.

• 2:11:05Speaker 01

  But that one specifically or just in general?

• 2:11:07Speaker 02

  It's under this one. Yeah.

• 2:11:08Speaker 01

  Oh, well, also because I actually do think if you were really meditating correctly, I'm not sure if that's how you sit. I think you're supposed to sit like not crossed like that necessarily, like your legs are doing something.

• 2:11:23Dax Shepard?

  Cross, but not applesauce.

• 2:11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're they're cross, but they're not Chris.

• 2:11:28Dax Shepard?

  I guess I just I'm I'm gently asking if that might be an overcorrection, just that one.

• 2:11:34Speaker 01

  Sure. I mean, I think there are overcorrections all over the place. For me, it's just why would you do anything that might make someone feel a little bit awkward or like they are standing out in a way they don't really want to when there's another option?

• 2:11:54Dax Shepard?

  That's really relevant, but yeah, if American Indians feel bad when they hear that, then yeah, of course, forget it.

• 2:12:02Speaker 01

  And they might also not like I, I don't, well, look, I don't now, but I bet, I bet when I was like seven and we were in class and the teacher said, everyone sit down Indian style. I'm sure I wasn't like, oh, that's really rude and doesn't, they don't understand.

• 2:12:20Dax Shepard?

  What if they all just looked at you to see how you were sitting and they thought you were supposed to copy how you were sitting?

• 2:12:26Speaker 01

  That's the actual thing underneath.

• 2:12:29Dax Shepard?

  Feeling.

• 2:12:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the feeling is, oh, they're talking about my thing that I, I somehow have to own, but I don't even know what this is either.

• 2:12:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:38Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:12:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:39Speaker 01

  Now, House of Pain episodes. So there was 254, but then they revamped it in 2020 and now there's 362 episodes.

• 2:12:50Dax Shepard?

  Which is just wild. That's about twice as many as Cheers.

• 2:12:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely wild. And that's it.

• 2:12:56Dax Shepard?

  That's everything.

• 2:12:57Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:12:58Dax Shepard?

  Oh, well, I'm telling you, this has made me so excited to come home and resume working.

• 2:13:05Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 2:13:05Dax Shepard?

  My favorite job I've ever had.

• 2:13:06Speaker 01

  I know. We're so lucky and we're so appreciative to all the arm cherries who've stuck with us and are going to continue to stick with us this year. We hope we're going to bring a lot of fun to the table this year. We didn't tell people, which I, you know, I regret, but we did a bingo. We have another day of bingo. It's tomorrow, but by this time it'll pass. But we did a fun game on Instagram that was a scavenger hunt bingo and we're going to do more fun things like that this year and more like community building.

• 2:13:36Dax Shepard?

  How did it, how does it work? The bingo scavenger hunt?

• 2:13:40Speaker 01

  You have to find the timestamp of, of three, like a bingo card, basically like, hold on.

• 2:13:49Speaker 01

  I'll pull one up.

• 2:13:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, there's a three by three bingo card and you've got to make a row.

• 2:13:55Speaker 01

  But it's like for experts, which guest did Dax appoint himself as part of the guest's personal security team? So you like have the answer and the timestamp.

• 2:14:05Dax Shepard?

  Oh, so you go back to Bill Gates and figure out when that was said?

• 2:14:09Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:14:11Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I like it. That's a fun game.

• 2:14:13Speaker 01

  So fun. Um.

• 2:14:14Dax Shepard?

  We have, we have a new member of our team that put this together, right?

• 2:14:18Speaker 01

  Yes, she designed it. Her name is Sophia. She is interning for us and she was recommended.

• 2:14:24Dax Shepard?

  She's a prodigy.

• 2:14:25Speaker 01

  She is. She was recommended to us by Adam Grant and she's at Wharton and we don't really deserve her, but we're going to take her.

• 2:14:32Dax Shepard?

  That's right. We both read the letter she sent us and we were intimidated by her intelligence and her over qualification. And we thought, well, there's no way she should be an intern for us. We should be an intern for her, but here we are.

• 2:14:44Speaker 01

  Here we are. And I've, I've put her on some fun tasks and I think we're gonna have a lot of fun this year.

• 2:14:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So welcome to her.

• 2:14:54Dax Shepard?

  All right. Well, I love you and I'll see you in 36 hours.

• 2:14:58Speaker 01

  Yay.

• 2:14:59Dax Shepard?

  Yay.

• 2:15:00Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 2:15:00Dax Shepard?

  Bye.