Best of Wednesday 2024

On this special episode, we revisit some of our favorite moments from Wednesday episodes in 2024. Molly McNearney remembers joining Jimmy Kimmel Live, Bill Gates wishes he were smarter, Finneas discusses the dynamics of a duo, Patric Gagne navigates romance as a sociopath, Vanessa Marin walks the walk of Sex Talks, Alegra Kastens explains the spectrum of OCD, Malcolm Gladwell delves into the science of the opioid crisis, Cat Bohannon talks about the medical discrepancies between men and women, Yuval Harari analyzes information networks through the lens of history, Orna Guralnik relates why we depersonalize, and Avett Brothers harmonize on We Are Loved. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. This is our best of Experts on Experts for year 2024.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  We had an incredible amount of great experts this year. It was really hard to pick.

• 0:15Dax Shepard?

  An embarrassment of riches.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  It was.

• 0:17Dax Shepard?

  So please enjoy the best of experts. This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  What?

• 0:31Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:15Dax Shepard?

  Every bite is accounted for. Someone engineered this thing with love. I love a Quarter Pounder.

• 1:21Speaker 01

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

• 1:34Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37Dax Shepard?

  One sitting.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  I'm not surprised.

• 1:39Dax 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.

• 2:11Dax Shepard?

  From episode 697, our sweet love Molly McNearney.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  A friend of a friend said, "There's a job opening at Jimmy Kimmel Live to be an assistant to the executive producer." I'd never seen Jimmy Kimmel Live. I had no idea what an assistant to an executive producer did, but I knew it was in the industry and could maybe get me closer to comedy. In the meantime, I'm doing improv classes out in LA and making great friends who are all really funny people. And I interviewed at Jimmy Kimmel Live. This is pre-DVR. I tried to stay up to watch the show the night before and I fell asleep.

• 2:44Dax Shepard?

  Oopsies.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  I remember like, "I gotta watch the show, I gotta know what I'm doing." And I woke up to the credits. I was like, "Oh, no." Went in for the job interview, got it. Naomi Scott, Adam Scott's wife, she interviewed me.

• 2:54Dax Shepard?

  Nah.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, she was the existing executive producer's assistant.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Who was finding a replacement for herself. Yeah, so I got the job as the assistant to the executive producer, and I loved it.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  This was just a huge, quote, "step down."

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was making about a third of the money I was making. I was working about five times the hours. This is when Jimmy Kimmel Live was actually live. So we would shoot the show from 9:00 to 10:00 PM, Monday through Friday. It was the longest work day ever. I lived in Hermosa Beach. I would drive to Hollywood. I had an hour commute. I had to be at my desk at 9:00 AM, and I would leave at 11:00 PM.

• 3:29Dax Shepard?

  Ay, ay, ay.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  It was terrible, but I loved it. I was so happy to be a part of this live show. I loved watching people, like, come up with ideas and they were on the air that night. It was incredible. In terms of the way the process works, do you want to hear, like, how it goes?

• 3:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Okay, so around 5:00 o'clock in the morning, one guy wakes up, a writer's assistant, and he combs the internet for what the stories of the day are. Those are in our inbox. They go to head writer, and we then edit them. So by 7:00 AM every day, all of our 19 writers have an email that says, "Here are the top stories of the day that we're going to focus our monologue on." You're not limited to those. Please don't be. Like, we prefer if someone goes, "I've got this interesting observation about something that's not in the Daily News." But primarily, our monologue is based on what has happened today, what people are talking About at home. We have an 8:50 a.m. deadline, so you read all these headlines and stories. And then you write a couple pages of jokes and bit ideas.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  So bit ideas are the things that are like fake commercials or a man on the street bit, a pre-tape with a celebrity. Jimmy gets about 50 pages by 9:30 a.m.

• 4:34Dax Shepard?

  How many staff writers are doing this?

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Nineteen.

• 4:37Dax Shepard?

  The 5 a.m. person?

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Shout out to Nick.

• 4:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, big shout out. Big props. How many stories does he give before it gets whittled down?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  He'll give about 11 to 12 stories. We narrow it down to about six to eight stories, I would say.

• 4:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. So the 19 writers get six to eight stories. Then they write two pages on that.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  And now Jimmy gets a thick 50-page document. He whittles it down to about five pages. That's sent to us by 10 a.m. So now we have a pretty clear understanding about our monologue's going to be. Then we all start writing more jokes. So we'll say like, here are the topics. Here are the ones we still need better jokes on. This bit could use some work. This is what I love about late night television. You can be in your bed in your pajamas, writing a bit. And then you get an email and by 10 a.m. you've got a director, a producer, a graphics guy. You're making wardrobe choices. You're piecing this thing together.

• 5:25Dax Shepard?

  Oh, the pace is so awesome.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  You're writing it. You're rewriting it. You're having the head writers punch up on it. Then Jimmy always does a punch up and then you shoot it, you edit it. You are oftentimes racing it to air. Our show's at 4:30. By the time you've been assigned to you're going to do this bit, it's 10 a.m. And hopefully it gets approved and it's ready for air by 4 p.m.

• 5:46Dax Shepard?

  So it's been filmed, edited, everything scored.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Yes. It is a rush. It's incredible. It's insane. It's interesting though, because the victory of getting that is so great. But if it tanks, ooh, it hurts.

• 6:00Dax Shepard?

  Because you work so fucking hard.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  You sit your whole day. You haven't eaten. You're like, did I even drink water today? But the other side of it is that those failures are very short-lived because time to go tomorrow. Got to do it again.

• 6:14Dax Shepard?

  From 7-Eleven with Bill Gates.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  So there's a spectrum of when I'm testing my own thinking and I see some flaw, I'm like, "Oh, you're so dumb. I've got to think better." So I'm very tough on myself. If it's a group of engineers at Microsoft that I've worked with for 10 years and who know I think they're smart and we're in it together, we're going to win or lose together, and there's no doubt of that, I can say that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

• 6:46Dax Shepard?

  I think there's footage of you saying that.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  I don't say it much anymore.

• 6:49Dax Shepard?

  From the 80s and 90s, there's some good footage.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  But we have very limited time. The stuff I agree with, there's no need to mention. So when I moved from Microsoft, where it's really top engineers, and some of the people sitting in the meeting would be people who work in the field, their genius is often a softer set of skills than thinking all the numbers through, that this could be 10%.

• 7:14Dax Shepard?

  Community building and relationships.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  And the idea of using a little bit of sarcasm, it can come across as, "I'm not even sure you belong here." And so at the end of the meeting, you want feedback on, was it motivating the people in this meeting to find a solution? Or did it motivate them to not work on this problem? Or refresh their resume when I wanted to keep them? So I did have to learn a lot about new domains. When people can say five smart things at Microsoft and one dumb thing, and I'm not wasting any time on the five smart things. I won't bring them up. That means, "Good job."

• 7:51Speaker 03

  Even inside the foundation, it's not that hardcore. And as soon as you're meeting with partners, you better say, "Oh, thing one, two, three, four, five are so smart." You adapted to that way. Well, I am in many contexts where I'm meeting with politicians and

• 8:07Dax Shepard?

  Prime Ministers.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Potential partners. Early in my press days, somebody would ask a question that had some assumption built into the question that was really wrong. And I'd be like, "Hey, your thinking's not very good here." And then I remember it was one I did in France when I was like 23 years old. And the guy ran France said, did you want that guy to feel bad at the end of the interview? And I was like, no, but he feels bad. And but I was like, but he was wrong. And it's like, yeah, but was it important to correct him? Well, I had been behaving like I was in a meeting with very top people. So yes, it does take a while to understand all the different situations you're in.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Well, one of the most interesting things I've ever seen happen.

• 8:56Dax Shepard?

  We both wrote it down at the same time.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was like, oh, my God. She asked you in a quick fire, if you had a superpower, what would it be? And you said, I wish I was smarter.

• 9:07Dax Shepard?

  I would want to be smarter.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, the whole room could not handle that answer, including us. I mean, I don't know, you tell me, it didn't feel like that was faux humility. That's truth to you.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  No, I'd like to be smarter.

• 9:19Dax Shepard?

  More than you'd like to fly. Like, in my mind, I'm like, you've already got smart covered. Let's fly, let's get invisible and take a walk through the showers or do something that you can't already do.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  I'll double down on.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  The thing I'm semi decent at, I'd like to be truly decent at.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Zero ego. We should tell people we didn't get to play spades, but we will in this lifetime play spades.

• 9:42Dax Shepard?

  As soon as your schedule gets freed up more by AI, we're gonna shellac you at spades.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  When malaria is eradicated or when the machine takes it over, I will write a book about optimal spades.

• 9:54Dax Shepard?

  Well, Bill, from the bottom of my heart, this has been such an incredible experience. I wouldn't have learned any of this without your invitation. I really don't know how we're here. Monica and I, the whole week have been like, he's gotta be wondering why the fuck these two.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Why did they let them come here?

• 10:09Speaker 03

  India, to share together the beauty and mystery and the challenges of India. It's wonderful and it's so human. It does make you remember, okay, the great things that we have. You know, as much as the US is in this deeply polarized, troubled state, we are the gold standard.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  So much learning and aspiration. So I think to come here, you know, always takes you out of your normal life. And it gives you distance, it gets you to appreciate some things. And in a way, things are so. Simpler here because they're still dealing with the basics and they're kind of focused on some great things and so much talent and energy in the country. Anyway, it's fantastic. You could come.

• 10:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's palpable. It's like we've almost got to time travel to a period where America was in this stage, that sense that they're going to do it.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  Fascinating, yeah.

• 11:00Dax Shepard?

  But even today, we were driving by something and there was a little girl with her grandma and she was just like pulling on her grandma. Annoying her grandma. Being so annoying. And I was like, man, everyone has to go to another country and just see this so they recognize we really are all the same. Everyone is pulling on their grandma's shirt.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  And even in the very poorest country, taking care of your children and doing unbelievable things to help your family.

• 11:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that you wouldn't even do for yourself. It's really cool. It's unifying. Yeah. Well, thank you so much.

• 11:36Dax Shepard?

  From 723 with Phineas.

• 11:42Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so now 12 years old, you go to a music writing class.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  My mom has always written songs. She's never made a penny off of it, but she's always done it. I don't actually fully know the origin of that in her life. I don't know what switch flipped for her that made her start writing songs. Should have asked her before this interview. That was kind of always in our house. She was sitting down at the piano and singing stuff. And I was like, what is it? And she's like, I'm writing it. So that was real. People write new stuff. And our dad doesn't write at all, but he's a pretty good pianist and he would sit around and plunk out Beatles songs or play pieces he liked. When I was 12, I started singing in this choir and I immediately was very smitten with this girl in the choir who was 13. I might have even been 11. It was never going to happen, but I was hopeful. And I had this fantasy

• 12:29Speaker 04

  that I would be in the choir rehearsal room before anyone else got there, playing a tune wistfully. And that she'd come in and it would win her over. This was really concocted.

• 12:40Dax Shepard?

  I know it well.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  I do too.

• 12:41Speaker 04

  And the only thing in my way was I had to learn how to sing and play.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Easy hurdle.

• 12:47Dax Shepard?

  Small.

• 12:47Speaker 04

  And so I set about doing that and I asked my dad, like, I want to learn how to play this song. And he said, okay, there's like four chords in it. And he taught me the four chords and that took like a week to learn just sort of shapes on piano. And then I said, oh, thanks for teaching me that. I want to learn this other song. And he was like, this other song is the same four chords. And that completely turned my world upside down. Like the idea that I'd learned all this stuff without trying to learn all this stuff was so thrilling. And pop music is absolutely like that. I don't know if either of you play anything, but there is such commonality in the sort of music underneath a song. That if you want to play some song by this artist, you're also learning 600,000 other songs.

• 13:24Dax Shepard?

  But you have a very strange order of events, which is you have written Ocean Eyes for your own band.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, a couple of things happened. I get Logic Pro, the DAW, which is same as Pro Tools or Ableton or something, a software on my computer to record. Start teaching myself how to do it. Go on YouTube to learn. I have one friend, Frank Dana, who's popular at his school, huge currency at 17. And it's like, hey, you produce, right? And you're like, well, not really. And he's like, that's fine. Let's do some stuff. What a huge vote of confidence. And the real truth is like, neither of us were good at making music at all. But I suddenly was making stuff with him and we're putting it on SoundCloud and his friends are listening to it and telling me I did a good job at producing it. And I'm feeling so cool, I sort of say to Billy at some point in the summer of 2015, I'm like, do you want to sing on some stuff?

• 14:14Speaker 04

  I'll write some stuff for you and you can sing on it.

• 14:16Dax Shepard?

  Had she been singing around the house?

• 14:17Speaker 04

  She's got a great voice. She sang in a choir. She loves to sing.

• 14:20Dax Shepard?

  Can I just add really quick? What's really funny is when you're young, just necessity drives so much shit. It's like this dude's got to take what he can get. He finds out you kind of produce that good enough.

• 14:29Speaker 04

  It's not like he's paying.

• 14:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And then you live with someone who sings. So it's like, let's get you on this, right? It's just all kind of necessity.

• 14:35Speaker 04

  Hundred percent. So she starts singing, she's 13, so she's just now at the age where she can maybe even tolerate me saying, do another take of that verse a little more angry or whatever.

• 14:45Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 14:45Speaker 04

  And so we start recording and it's fun and I'm still got this band and the band is in sort of first stage of crisis. The other guys had finished high school. I was homeschooled and I was like, I'm gonna die for this. Like just at seventeen. And our drummer, my friend David, who now is also a successful, great music producer, which is awesome, is in the same boat I am. He's like, I'm gonna not go to college. Like, I'm gonna make music. And the other two guys are like, okay, we're gonna go to college.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  College seems pretty cool.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  Our band sucks.

• 15:14Dax Shepard?

  I got into Florida State.

• 15:16Speaker 04

  Green Day. We were not making dookie at eighteen. We were making like terrible music. And I write the song Ocean Eyes that I think is like, I appreciate myself sitting there, but it doesn't feel like something for my band. There's a kind of a femininity to it, to me. I hear it and I think I'd rather hear a girl's voice sing this.

• 15:33Dax Shepard?

  Was the band, is the adjective melancholy?

• 15:36Speaker 04

  No, the band was like a stupid pop band. I write this kind of sad ballad song.

• 15:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 04

  There's not even a place for guitar on this. How am I gonna break the news to our guitarist? And so I say to Billy, do you have any interest in singing the song I wrote? And she sang it and I thought it sounded beautiful and we recorded it and we put it on SoundCloud. The thing that I'd heard about happening that always seemed like bullshit, which was you put it online and it gets plays, straight up happened. Like, we put it on SoundCloud and the next day it was on a blog and then the next day it was on more blog and it just started to percolate. We were not on Ellen the next day. It was not viral, but it was happening.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  When people comment on the two of you.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  Me and Billy.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Yes. And as people comment on us a lot.

• 16:15Speaker 04

  We had an argument.

• 16:16Dax Shepard?

  You're a duo.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Whenever you're a duo, the comments are often, they can be at the expense of the other person or in relation to. Dax really hates that, even though you did just do it and the thing we're cutting out.

• 16:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. But I feel solid about that one.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  But everyone feels solid.

• 16:32Dax Shepard?

  Yes. It happens a lot when they write an article about Monica. The inclination is to go like.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  I mean, you hear it as they're saying it's despite you or something that I'm good, but.

• 16:43Dax Shepard?

  It's tricky.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  It's tricky, but they're also trying to elevate me because I'm not the main focus.

• 16:50Dax Shepard?

  Instead of just saying she's great, it tends to be like, if she weren't there or she keeps him from blank, or the way they wanna compliment her is somehow always at least feels disparaging to me, whether it is or not.

• 17:02Speaker 04

  Does it bother you?

• 17:02Dax Shepard?

  It only bothered me when one of our friends, they were asked to quote, and we're friends, and I was like, well, that was a weird way to phrase it. I wish I could remember the details.

• 17:10Speaker 04

  Was he like, Dax sucks and Monica's great? What'd he say?

• 17:13Dax Shepard?

  Thank God Monica's there, because that guy's fucking sucks. That's what he said.

• 17:17Speaker 04

  So brutal.

• 17:17Dax Shepard?

  First academic to say that. It was an argument. We got in a debate.

• 17:21Speaker 04

  This was a, was this the end of the Wyatt Kurt Russell episode?

• 17:25Dax Shepard?

  Probably. It was that Monica had been watching.

• 17:27Speaker 04

  The Globes, right?

• 17:28Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 17:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. I heard this because I woke up to text from my friends in New York that were like, I didn't know you were gonna be on Armchair. And I was like, oh, and I listened to it.

• 17:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, because we kind of, we never do that, but we did it.

• 17:37Speaker 04

  Exciting.

• 17:38Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so then you're familiar with the debate.

• 17:40Speaker 04

  I remember it. Should we talk about it?

• 17:41Dax Shepard?

  Yes, let's talk about it.

• 17:42Speaker 04

  I remember both of your points. This is the day after the Globes or something. Monica's point, which was very kind, was Phineas stands there like a potted plant as they ask Billy a bunch of questions and then they go, bye, guys. Wouldn't it be nice if they asked him a question?

• 17:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 17:56Speaker 04

  Dax's point was, who cares? It's a little interview before the Golden Globes and she's wearing a cool outfit and he's wearing a suit and he's the millionth person that night in the suit. And it's not a representation of who's more important. It's a representation of the audience and the interview.

• 18:11Dax Shepard?

  A red carpet, like the conceit of a red carpet, which is let's get the most popular person here to talk about their outfit.

• 18:17Speaker 04

  Also, I'm gonna throw this in there. Red carpets fucking suck.

• 18:21Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 18:21Speaker 04

  The interviews are awful.

• 18:23Dax Shepard?

  They're so uncomfortable.

• 18:25Speaker 04

  The idea that I get to stand there and not have to say anything is a thrill.

• 18:29Dax Shepard?

  You like it.

• 18:30Speaker 04

  Well, yeah. And there are great interviews. I don't want to be disparaging of all interviews. I just mean the format and the environment. If you watch an interview, you can see they shift the mic over to me and Billy relaxes and gets to not suddenly be nervous and have to come up with an answer to the question we've been asked 450 times in the last two months.

• 18:47Dax Shepard?

  It's brutal. The closest analogy I can imagine is, you know, when the prisoners escape from jail and they shine that enormous light on the person's face? Because Kristin and I do a ton of interviews together too, right? When you get the sense that they're actually going and then the interviewer goes like, you guys haven't been out in public and all of a sudden you just feel like, oh, fuck, that big old light is shining on me. I hope it's shining on her. I need a minute to think about this question.

• 19:08Speaker 04

  The best case scenario is that you're boring and the worst case scenario is you say something and they never invite you to anything ever again. It's like very high stakes.

• 19:15Dax Shepard?

  That's true. And then the point I'll add too, and you're here to answer this, which I appreciate, is I was also making the point that there has to be some. Expectations on your end, like who you're trying to be. And my guess is that you're trying to be Quincy Jones. You said it, Timbaland, Pharrell. I'm imagining that the space you want to occupy, you also recognize Quincy Jones was behind the Michael Jackson, but Quincy Jones is the genius that is in all these other things. I can't imagine as you endeavor into the job you have, that you're expecting to be all that popular. Does that make any sense?

• 19:48Speaker 04

  I think that everybody in every avenue of their life is hoping to be seen for their work. Right? If you do something, if you build your kids a playhouse and they go in and they go, well, whoever built this did a great job and you go, I built it.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:03Dax Shepard?

  Whoever's right here.

• 20:05Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? Like you want.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Recognition.

• 20:07Speaker 04

  You want recognition. I feel very seen. I feel very lucky about how much recognition I already have. Most producers and songwriters have less than I do. I'm aware of that and I don't take that for granted. And being as famous as Billie is a nightmare. I would never want that. She wears it really well and she is actually a rock star. I say that like as a person, like she is a charismatic enigma. The air gets crackly in the room when she walks in and it's cool to see that. I don't feel that way when we're in my basement making a song, but like I see it at a function and I don't want to have that and I don't pretend to have it. And the consequence of that is she can't do anything.

• 20:43Dax Shepard?

  It's a heavy price to pay, but I guess back to the thing about.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  So who's right?

• 20:47Speaker 04

  Well, I think that both of you are basically practicing empathy and you're both talking about the same thing, which is you're recognizing the Robin Andy Richter of the armchair expert with Dax Shepard.

• 20:57Dax Shepard?

  When we got to that.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  And you probably know implicitly how it feels to be the person always there, always participating in the thing who's not the masthead.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 21:06Speaker 04

  I put out some music under my own name and I don't feel any better or worse about that in terms of like, if somebody goes, I love your thing. I go, thanks. I don't have, oh, that means so much more to me than saying you like Billie's thing. Cause I feel like we worked on it.

• 21:19Dax Shepard?

  This really ties exactly into the red carpet thing. It's truly just the ultimate message for every human being is like, if you feel it for yourself, none of the other stuff matters. You have to give yourself validation and self-esteem. And what is obvious to me is you've given it to yourself. So whether or not the interviewer from E Entertainment, if that's even still an outlet, really it doesn't matter.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  We also give it to each other. I mean, like that's the other thing. Billie is so generous and effusive about me, to me privately or publicly to me. And I for sure feel the same way.

• 21:49Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more.

• 21:51Dax Shepard?

  Expert if you dare. We get support from Quince.

• 21:58Speaker 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.

• 22:17Dax Shepard?

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

• 22:33Speaker 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.

• 22:44Dax Shepard?

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

• 22:51Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 22:52Dax Shepard?

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

• 22:56Speaker 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.

• 23:19Dax Shepard?

  Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from 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 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.

• 24:03Speaker 01

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

• 24:20Dax 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 quilts, coverlets and duvet inserts make any bed and any gift feel complete.

• 24:35Speaker 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.

• 24:46Dax 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.

• 24:52Speaker 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.

• 25:06Dax 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 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 no bull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 25:37Dax Shepard?

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

• 26:13Speaker 01

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

• 26:18Dax 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.

• 26:26Speaker 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.

• 26:35Dax Shepard?

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

• 26:46Speaker 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.

• 26:57Dax 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.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  That was me before Helix. I took their sleep quiz, which is so fast. It's 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 recently.

• 27:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 27:26Speaker 01

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

• 27:31Dax Shepard?

  Temperature was all over the map.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  It was a mess. I need a new one.

• 27:34Dax 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.

• 27:48Speaker 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.

• 27:55Dax 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.

• 28:16Dax Shepard?

  From 726 with Patrick Gagne.

• 28:24Speaker 05

  I couldn't make myself feel better the way that other people made themselves feel better. I just remember being a kid, sitting behind a little girl in school and I looked up and she had barrettes in her hair and I felt this, "Take that, Barrette, and you're gonna feel better." It didn't make any sense, and yet I knew it was accurate.

• 28:41Dax Shepard?

  I should have started there. It didn't start with a stabbing, but yes, that's the first time you feel the relief.

• 28:45Speaker 05

  And little transgressions like that usually did the trick. But on this day, when I assaulted this child, I had been doing a lot of little transgressions and they weren't working. And I could feel it. As a kid, you're like, "What's gonna happen, what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen?" But as a kid, I had a harder time talking myself through it. And there was a little girl standing next to me and she had just been getting on my nerves, as they do. And I bent down and she kicked my backpack and when she did, she knocked out my pencil box that was full of pencils. And then I just remember picking up a pencil and stabbing her in the head with it.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 29:18Speaker 05

  And I remember what was problematic, other than the obvious, was it wasn't just the pressure that disappeared. It was replaced by this euphoria.

• 29:28Dax Shepard?

  Isolation.

• 29:29Speaker 05

  Yes. And I knew enough to know, "That ain't great."

• 29:33Dax Shepard?

  This is untenable. We're gonna run out of heads of stab and I'll be kicked out of here quickly.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  So you did know that, though. So that's interesting. You knew this isn't good, that I like it?

• 29:42Speaker 05

  I always knew right from wrong. Cognitive, it wasn't internal. That's the difference.

• 29:47Dax Shepard?

  That's part of one of the erroneous stereotypes is, "Oh, sociopaths don't know the difference between right and wrong."

• 29:51Speaker 05

  Oh, yes, they do.

• 29:52Dax Shepard?

  Also, you hear sociopaths track, highly empathetic, actually, if you go by the Paul Bloom definition, that actually they're quite good at knowing what you are thinking and needing to hear from them.

• 30:04Speaker 05

  Because they've spent a lifetime mirroring.

• 30:06Dax Shepard?

  Weird paradox. Yeah. Okay, so David, how do you come to experience something that you would label your version of love? Or how did that grow?

• 30:15Speaker 05

  Well, we met when I was 14, so really young. And I'm grateful for that because I don't think that we would have been a match later. But I remember, at that time, I felt very isolated. I was looking for a buddy to Kind of bounce stuff off of. And in that moment, he just happened to come into my life and he was that buddy. I could tell him anything and he didn't judge me for it. He just took it in and rolled with it. And he looked at my actions objectively and he would let me know if he didn't think something was a good idea, but it was not met with any type of negativity. So we dated for a summer, you know, I'm 14 years old, but it was so matter of fact, my feelings about him when I met him. I remember thinking,

• 31:00Speaker 05

  my name is Patrick. I am attending this summer camp. I just met the guy I'm gonna marry. I'm gonna have pizza for dinner later. I remember writing it in my journal, but it didn't feel like what all of the girls that I knew, oh, you know, this romantic love. And I know I'm just gonna marry him. It wasn't that. It was very matter of fact.

• 31:17Dax Shepard?

  You'd sit around wondering if he was thinking about you or talking about you.

• 31:21Speaker 05

  No. And so when we broke up, it was more like a, that's weird. I really thought I was gonna marry that guy. So strange. I never had a feeling like that before and it was so pronounced. I wonder what that was, because that was so true in the way it came through. But we never really lost touch and he went one way, I went the other. And I lived an entire lifetime before we got back together. And when we did, we had this wonderful honeymoon period and then reality set in, which is I have this personality disorder and I'm really struggling with some things. And David really had a hard time not taking it personally. So for him, it was, I don't emote the same way he does. Therefore, I don't care about him as much as he cares about me.

• 32:03Speaker 05

  And everything was seen sort of through a very egocentric lens. Not in the sense that he was in the wrong, but I think it's a very relatable feeling. If you go in for a big hug and the person doesn't want a big hug, your instant reaction is, oh, I guess she doesn't like me very much. Of course. But I'm just not that person, but I've never been that person. So that was a struggle. It's you have to take yourself out of this equation. In order for you and I to work, you have to see that you are one type of person. I am one type of a person. We love and demonstrate that love very differently. Neither way is right or wrong. It's just different. And if you were expecting that. One day you are going to fix me, we should just stop.

• 32:44Dax Shepard?

  It's not in the car.

• 32:45Speaker 05

  No, it's just not.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  The irony is that's all relationships.

• 32:49Speaker 05

  And that's what I've heard, yeah.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  It's just that it's so clear here and there's no arguing like, okay, you have this personality disorder.

• 32:55Dax Shepard?

  It's almost helpful.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 32:56Dax Shepard?

  You're never gonna get what you want. You either accept that and we move forward. But I think when you have this neurotypical relationship, there is this fantasy belief that no, you will end up manipulating them.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we have limitations too. In the exact same way that also cannot be transcended.

• 33:11Speaker 05

  That's why I wrote this book, because there are so many relatable elements to this. And I think that if the sociopathic camp and the non-sociopathic camp could just drop it for a second and get together and sort of talk, you would see how much we could learn from one another. But with David, he did have an argument, but you're doing illegal shit and it's my job to protect you. It always came from a place of morality. The things you're doing are immoral and I need to help you stop doing those things. So he had that really effective, logical argument that was tough to push back on.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 33:43Speaker 05

  But ultimately, I need to want to stop doing these things for myself.

• 33:46Dax Shepard?

  I would have just said, the things you're doing are illegal and are gonna end up getting you incarcerated.

• 33:50Speaker 05

  I would not argue with that.

• 33:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's leave morals out of it for you.

• 33:55Dax Shepard?

  From 687 with Vanessa Marin.

• 34:03Dax Shepard?

  I would only ask you this because I know on your podcast and in your book, you're pretty open. What is your own sexual life at this time? Because you do see people go into psychology because they have a lot of unanswered questions about themselves. They hope to get some tools maybe that they can address. How would you evaluate your own sex life at that point? I was still very curious about sex and interested in it. But the biggest thing that I was really struggling with was orgasming with a partner. I had learned how to orgasm on my own pretty easily. It felt pretty straightforward. It felt like this very fun, exciting.

• 34:35Speaker 06

  Dating cool thing that I could do with my body and I could not replicate that experience with any partners and it was not only the orgasm itself, but sex with a partner was very performative for me. It was all about my male partner's pleasure, what he wanted to do, he was taking the lead. And so there was an internal struggle that I had for many years of this interest in sex and this fascination by it and wanting to pursue it for my career, to spend my life on it, but also this huge imposter syndrome of I have so many things within myself, I cannot find it within myself to initiate sex, to give feedback in the moment, to show a partner what my body likes and responds to.

• 35:19Dax Shepard?

  Say I might like to bring my toy with me to the next session.

• 35:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, and anything like that. I really struggled with feeling like sex was something that I gave to a partner, did for a partner, rather than something that was for me that I got to participate in.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  That is so common for people.

• 35:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I think especially for women.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:36Dax Shepard?

  I was just gonna say, did you feel this frustration of going, this shouldn't be happening to me because I have the knowledge?

• 35:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, I felt like a horrible imposter. You know, I'm studying this, I want to help people with this and I'm not really walking the walk myself. But a lot of that was because, you know, I was doing all this research and learning and exploration, but I wasn't learning any practical tools. I'm learning about Kinsey and Masters and Johnson, then that's great. But like, what do I do in the moment with my partner when he's doing something that I don't like, rather than just faking it and saying, that's so great, keep going?

• 36:07Dax Shepard?

  Yes, because there's the awkwardness.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  It's so vulnerable and you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

• 36:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, big thing that came up was I really wanted to make it seem like we were clicking when I was having sex with somebody that I really liked. Like, I want it to feel like the chemistry is there. It's so easy and effortless between the two of us. And so I had this idea in my head that my pleasure and my body were more complicated or needier than my partner's. And I felt very much alone in that, which I think most people have had the experience of feeling alone with some sort of sexual struggle that they've had.

• 36:41Dax Shepard?

  Were you talking to your girlfriends about it at all?

• 36:43Speaker 06

  A little bit, but talk- Some of my girlfriends were more kind of braggy, like, oh yeah, we had sex last night. Oh, it was so great. We didn't really get into the nitty gritty of, I'm really struggling to orgasm with anybody else. It was sort of this feeling of, we're talking about it openly and look at us, evolved, college girls, but at the same time, like not being willing to be truly honest and vulnerable with each other about what was actually going on. The imposter syndrome that I felt made that so much harder for me. I was like, I can't admit to anybody that I, here I am, this little sex therapist in training and I'm not orgasming with my partners. I'm not enjoying the sex that I'm having. Like, I can't admit that to anybody.

• 37:20Dax Shepard?

  Had a guy said to you, how can I help you orgasm? Would you have even been able to answer that or been confident enough to express what would have helped?

• 37:32Speaker 06

  I was never asked that.

• 37:34Dax Shepard?

  You weren't?

• 37:35Speaker 06

  I'm not sure, honestly, how I would have responded to it. I probably would not have been honest. I probably would have said like, oh, what you're doing is great. Or like, you're always making me orgasm. But the final straw for me, when I decided to stop faking orgasms and finally figure this all out, was actually a partner who did the exact opposite. So, we had been hooking up and I had faked an orgasm. I had gotten really good at a great convincing performance by that time. And he'd been using his hands on me and he said, I can play you like a fiddle.

• 38:07Dax Shepard?

  Oh, boy.

• 38:08Speaker 06

  And I just, my stomach just turned in that moment, like just huge pit in my stomach. And I thought, this is so gross. This guy is so proud of himself and this sleazy, like, I can, what a weird thing to say to someone, right? I can play you like a fiddle. And so that was the moment for me of like, I'm not doing this anymore.

• 38:28Dax Shepard?

  Let's start with the fact that the male orgasm is almost a given. The female is much more elusive. So a guy's pride and esteem, okay, tell me the pride that's...

• 38:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, I want to hear it. So, there's nothing inherently more complicated about female orgasm than about male orgasm. What the problem is, is the way that we're all having sex. You know, male, female, cisgender relationships, the type of sex that we're having heavily prioritizes male pleasure. Penetration.

• 38:56Dax Shepard?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 38:57Speaker 06

  Most male female couples, we use sex and intercourse interchangeably. Like when we have sex, we're having intercourse.

• 39:03Dax Shepard?

  To the degree that in the eighties, people would ask like, how are two lesbians having sex?

• 39:07Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 39:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 06

  I mean, even think of the bases metaphor. Exactly. You know, the home run.

• 39:12Dax Shepard?

  And it's the test of virginity.

• 39:14Speaker 06

  It's the thing, right? So if we look at intercourse, though, a man is getting stimulation of the most sensitive part of his body.

• 39:22Dax Shepard?

  His clitoris.

• 39:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, okay, so you know about this, which is great.

• 39:25Dax Shepard?

  We'll tell everyone.

• 39:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, most people don't know. Fetuses in the womb, we all start off like as the same little blob. And when we're differentiating into we're going to be born a man or born a woman, the tissues start to differentiate around eight to 11 weeks. And the exact same tissues that make a penis make a clitoris. So it's like having a ball of clay. I can mold it into a mug or I can mold it into a bowl. It's a different shape, but it's the same ball of clay that I'm starting with. So the clitoris and the penis are biological equivalents. They're called homologous structures and they both are the pleasure centers of their respective genders. So if we go to intercourse, like a man's getting stimulation of his penis and a woman is getting stimulation in her vagina. So the clitoris has anywhere from eight to 10,000 nerve endings in it. The penis has two to 3,000.

• 40:10Speaker 06

  The vagina, there's not really even an accurate scientific tally of how many nerve endings are there, but it's not a particularly sensitive part of our bodies.

• 40:19Dax Shepard?

  You're gonna pass a baby through there.

• 40:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, the funny comparison that I always like to make is that intercourse for a woman is like playing with a man's balls. Sure, it might feel good. It can feel pleasurable. It can feel fun to do with a partner, but for the vast majority of men, it's nowhere near enough stimulation to lead to orgasm. Right. And we don't make men feel bad about that, right? There's not some alternate universe where we're like, you know, God, the penis, it's so complicated. Why do I have to touch that? Why can't you get the orgasm from the balls instead?

• 40:53Dax Shepard?

  From 764 with Allegra Castance.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  With OCPD, so number one, it's egosyntonic a lot of the time. And what that means is if someone has a preoccupation with control, perfectionism, organization, orderliness, they tend to think that that is the right way to be.

• 41:16Dax Shepard?

  That's so key. We gotta triple down on that point. It's very in keeping with their overall value system.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  That's exactly it. It could impair other people. I also want to say that. I'm not saying that OCPD is a likable condition. And actually, someone was upset about my video about you because they thought I was saying OCPD is likable. That's not what I'm saying.

• 41:37Dax Shepard?

  What does this stand for? Sorry.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Obsessive compulsive personality disorder.

• 41:41Dax Shepard?

  This is what you have. Okay. When we're talking and we use these terms and you'll go, I'll be a little OCD in this thing. Got it.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Yes, where you might see excessive list making, excessive attention to detail, people who say, I really need my spreadsheets to be in this way. They get mad at others often who don't align with the way that they view things. There might be excessive devotion to work. So much perfectionism that can interfere with the person's ability to get a task done. But they think it's kind of like my way or the highway. This is how things should be done. There's a lot of inflexibility and a lot of rigidity. I think people often also don't talk about OCPD accurately. But when people are saying, I'm so OCD, I think what they're saying is, I'm detail oriented. I like to organize. Well, that is not OCD. OCD is an ego dystonic condition.

• 42:29Dax Shepard?

  Well, now I will say this, and this is a time I misuse it. I am so uncomfortable when things that are hanging are not level. And I'll go, oh, this is my OCD. But that's my OCPD if I was gonna say it.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:40Dax Shepard?

  Even, because it should be level.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  In your head.

• 42:43Dax Shepard?

  I don't disagree. You know, like, I don't think I want it level, but it should be crooked. I think I want it level and it should be level.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  Totally. And that might not be distressing to you at that time. Where if someone had, let's say, just right OCD or perfectionism OCD, that would distress them and they would feel the urge to do that over and over and over again until an internal sense of rightness is achieved. So there is that aspect to OCD, but it's also a very small sliver. Of how OCD can manifest.

• 43:10Dax Shepard?

  And is it fair to say as well, it's also spectrmy. So it's like, even as you're describing it like, yeah, I want it level. It should be level. Also, it's deeply unsettling in a bad luck way. So it's like, maybe it's just like inching towards. Is it a spectrum, I guess?

• 43:26Speaker 01

  That's a really great question. To be diagnosed with OCD, obsessions and compulsions have to take up at least an hour of your day, or cause clinically significant distress or impairment in functioning. So yes, technically speaking, now there are more severe levels of OCD. Some people require residential treatment, whereas others can be treated in an outpatient setting once a week. But if you meet criteria for having OCD, there has to be some kind of impairment in functioning or distress.

• 43:53Dax Shepard?

  That's a great metric too, an hour a day.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:55Dax Shepard?

  Now, okay, I want to go through the five taboos because yeah, this must be so distressing to be trying to evaluate what you are in spite of all these intrusive thoughts. And I also think just really quick, because I found myself figuring out the difference as I was reading, obsessive and compulsive, these are kind of two pieces of something. It's an order.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Yes. So obsession is repetitive, unwanted thoughts, images, or urges that are intrusive and often distressing for the person. So it's recurrent. It's not just one thought that pops in. Like, I think I heard you say, well, I have intrusive thoughts from time to time. We all do. People without OCD can let them go. It's like, that was an odd thought and you move on with your day. For the person with OCD, it sticks, it multiplies, and it replays all day long. That is the obsession. It could be a what if, so what if I'm a pedophile? It could be a sexual phrase. I used to have so many of those. And then that causes a lot of discomfort, whether that's anxiety, panic, guilt, shame, and the person feels compelled to perform the compulsion.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  The physical or mental act that the person is performing to neutralize the obsession, to prevent that bad thing from happening, to solve the obsession, to alleviate the discomfort.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  And that just reinforces the obsession and you're stuck in that.

• 45:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so that's great. So I guess when I was thinking about it is like the compulsivity is what you're observing, but that might not even be reflective of the obsession.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  They might not be connected, you're saying, right?

• 45:22Dax Shepard?

  Well, just like, yeah, if you were observing someone from the outside and you notice that they had some of these compulsivities, it's not so intuitive. It's like how they're choosing to regulate and address and fix and nullify the obsession isn't so direct. It can be, but also it might not be.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Right. Some people with sexual obsessions will wash, let's say, their vagina or penis after having an unwanted thought because they think that that's the thing that neutralizes it. To the outsider, it would be like, why are you washing that during the middle of your workday 18 times?

• 45:53Dax Shepard?

  You'd even think they were a germaphobe.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  There we go. So you can't always tell. Or it could be if I don't tap this wood, then I'm going to snap in my sleep and kill my child, right? And people wouldn't think that the tapping of the wood has something to do with that. And you also don't always see people's compulsions. Mine are all mental. Nobody would have ever known that I was performing compulsions because they all happened in the mind.

• 46:18Dax Shepard?

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We get support from ZipRecruiter. Oh, get recruiting. So I went down this rabbit hole the other day on real holiday jobs that exist and I couldn't stop. Somebody out there is hiring a ham glazer, a professional ham glazer. Another place is hiring a lead elf, implying a whole hierarchy of elves I had never even considered. Here's the thing, these jobs need real skills. People like that are hard to find. Whether you're hiring for one of these roles or any other role, the best way to find qualified people who are genuinely excited about your role is on ZipRecruiter. And right now, you can try

• 47:01Dax Shepard?

  it for free at ziprecruiter.com/dax. Plus, ZipRecruiter has a new feature that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first, so you meet the right people faster. No wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. Let ZipRecruiter Recruiter find the right people for your roles, seasonal or otherwise. Try it for free today at ziprecruiter.com/dax. That's ziprecruiter.com/dax. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.

• 47:32Dax Shepard?

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

• 47:46Speaker 01

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

• 48:07Dax Shepard?

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

• 48:17Speaker 01

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

• 48:24Dax Shepard?

  Okay, tell me more.

• 48:25Speaker 01

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

• 48:37Dax Shepard?

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

• 48:46Speaker 01

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

• 49:05Dax Shepard?

  We are supported by Squarespace. 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.

• 49:50Dax Shepard?

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

• 50:34Speaker 01

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

• 50:51Dax Shepard?

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

• 51:10Speaker 01

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

• 51:18Dax Shepard?

  You start feeling it.

• 51:19Speaker 01

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

• 51:24Dax Shepard?

  Relief.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  God for her. Yeah.

• 51:26Dax Shepard?

  BetterHelp is now in network with more than 125 health plans with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members. And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 20% off your first month. Sign up and get 20% off at betterhelp.com slash DAX. That's betterhelp, H E L P, dot com slash DAX.

• 51:53Dax Shepard?

  From 799 with old Malcolm Gladwell.

• 52:01Speaker 07

  There's a couple of times in this book, like the them, the story that frames the book is the story of how Purdue, a different version of the story of how Purdue used, takes oxycontin from an unknown drug into a, the most damaging prescription drug in American history. And there, I think it's very useful for us to know how, if you're super evil and very smart, how you can hijack a system for your own purposes. They hijack the system. They realized that if you want to corrupt the medical system, you don't have to corrupt every doctor. You don't even have to corrupt 99% of doctors. They did that whole thing on the backs of a tiny, tiny fraction of doctors living, you know, in very specific parts of the country.

• 52:45Speaker 07

  That's a kind of chilling, really important, if chilling thing you need to learn about the world.

• 52:51Dax Shepard?

  That part of it is really mind blowing. So, yes. So, and then they had help and it's really interesting because we don't really talk, we talk about the guilt of them, which is warranted. But you have like McKinsey, right? They're the ones that discover this. And you're framing it, the whole thing through the lens of COVID a little bit where you introduce the, this, this one event at a, a meeting, one person early on in COVID, who's a super spreader. And we learn why people are super spreaders. You know, their vocal cords emit some of the saliva when they're dehydrated and all this stuff. And it turns out that one person ultimately was probably responsible for like a million cases or 300,000 originally.

• 53:31Dax Shepard?

  But really, a one human being resulted in 3 million infections, which is kind of mind blowing. And then these doctors, they broke up at the time Purdue was spending a fortune having sales representatives all over the country, talking to virtually 100,000 doctors. And this bright company, McKinsey, was like, well, let's really put this in a diagram and see what's happening. Well, in Desil 10, the doctors are only prescribing it once or not at all. And there's 99,000 doctors in that vessel. And if we go all the way up to the top, those doctors, of which there's only 384 of them, they're prescribing 300 plus. So fuck all the money that's being spent on four through 10,

• 54:16Dax Shepard?

  and let's just put all the money in three, two, and one. And through that, they end up prescribing millions and millions and millions of tablets.

• 54:26Speaker 04

  This is this really important principle. I had talked about it in the first tipping point. I called it the law of the few. The idea that when you have an epidemic, the work of the epidemic is done by a very small group of people. But I don't think I took it far enough. So I returned to that idea in this book. And you're right, I start with the COVID example and I say, our assumption in the middle of COVID was that every person who was infected had a roughly equal risk of infecting someone else. Turns out that's just not true, not even remotely true. The overwhelming majority of people who were infected with COVID did not spread the virus very far at all.

• 55:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 55:01Speaker 04

  The spread comes from a small number of people who, for some reason that we don't entirely understand, but probably just genetic reason, produce a huge amount more virus. Or they're, when they talk, there's way more

• 55:14Dax Shepard?

  Ew.

• 55:14Speaker 04

  particles coming out of their mouth than anybody else.

• 55:17Dax Shepard?

  And even that, we thought it was coughing and sneezing. But then these aerosolists who study aerosol and particle dispersment, they look at it and they go, oh, no, no, no, no. It's from talking.

• 55:27Speaker 04

  Just talking.

• 55:28Dax Shepard?

  And what happened at this conference? This person's got up and fucking lectured to everybody.

• 55:34Speaker 04

  Stands up.

• 55:34Dax Shepard?

  Hose down the whole room with this. This is so gross. For an hour, and everyone was infected, the one person.

• 55:42Speaker 04

  One person. So the logic of that says, if you want to understand how to stop COVID, we should really have been trying to figure out who these super spreaders are. There's not a lot of them. And just, and, and address that, make sure they're not out and about when they're infected.

• 55:57Dax Shepard?

  Give them a week long, you know, a trip somewhere. It would be cheaper.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  They just quarantined all those people for like

• 56:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  three weeks, it would have been done.

• 56:05Dax Shepard?

  We didn't have to. So what we we treated everyone the same because we didn't really understand how epidemics work. When you understand how epidemics work, you realize, no, no, no, no, you need to be worried about the one person in a thousand. So that same logic is used by Purdue in creating the opioid crisis. They understand that, wait a minute, all along, we've been spending, taking our sales budget, and we've been trying to reach every doctor in America who prescribes painkillers. Wrong. Why? We're wasting our time. Turns out, there's a handful of doctors, a couple of hundred doctors throughout the country, who are prescribing way more OxyContin than anybody else.

• 56:47Dax Shepard?

  And more than that, who are really, really receptive to when we send a sales rep to go and see them, and that sales rep, you know, takes them to a ballgame and buys them a fancy dinner. They just respond to that and write even more prescriptions. It's so scientific, I gotta add. They have the data in these companies, McKinsey and, you know, other people. They're so scientific about it. They basically figure out, okay, you have these doctors. If you see them 25 times a year, they're gonna write less and less prescriptions. Above 25, they're gonna go up and up. Some of these doctors had 300 inside rep contacts within a couple of years. Like, they're nonstop with these people. Like, every day, some drug company rep is showing up at your door, bringing gifts.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:31Dax Shepard?

  And they're attractive. Probably. I'm gonna guess. In the book, it says. Yes, yes, yes. It's in print, yeah. It's reasonable to assume that they're attractive. Yeah. And they're going to see, you know, these are like, some guy running a drug mill somewhere on rural Tennessee is getting visited hundreds of times a year by some sales rep from, and is just writing prescriptions by the boatload. It's a little bit of an acquittal and a nice way of doctors in general, because even I, who I think I followed it more closely, I am an opiate addict, I was part of this whole thing, I get it. I was under the assumption that most doctors took the marching orders. You know, there was this huge campaign that, you know, they convinced people that everyone was under prescribing for pain.

• 58:13Dax Shepard?

  And they had all these, you know, pretty complex campaigns, but, so I was kind of led to believe, oh, I think all the doctors loosened up their.

• 58:20Speaker 04

  No.

• 58:21Dax Shepard?

  And that's not true. Forty nine percent of all the opioids prescribed in that period were by one percent of doctors.

• 58:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, it's, it is, you're right. It does redeem your faith a little bit. And I think this is another useful thing that comes out of thinking about these as epidemics and realizing that epidemics are are propelled by a tiny fraction of the population. You realize that we're much too quick to condemn groups of people and professions and and that's not that I, you know, I was doing a podcast in parallel to the book. I was talking to a guy who studies homicides on the west side of Chicago, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country. There are 50,000 people on the west side of Chicago. And this guy said, if you want to understand homicide, who's at risk? Who's doing the dirty work? You're really talking about 400 people. Wow.

• 59:13Speaker 04

  So he's like, our assumption would be if you walk around the west side of Chicago, you think, oh, we're going to need a massive police presence on every corner and be stopping everyone we can be. This guy's saying, no, no, no, no, no, you're misunderstanding. It's an epidemic. I'm really interested in this question of how many people does it take to change the character of a group? I talk a lot about women on corporate boards.

• 59:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 59:36Speaker 04

  For years and years and years, there were no women on corporate boards in America. Then they would, under pressure, corporations would put, you'd have, you know, nine men on the board. They'd have an opening, they'd put a woman on, right? So you have one woman, eight men. What happens when you only have one woman? Is she heard? Does she make a difference? Does she? Do they listen to her when she says stuff? Do they treat her like a person? The answer is they don't. Yeah. It looks like they've changed the composition and created diversity. They haven't. There aren't enough.

• 1:00:05Dax Shepard?

  Really quick, the woman who's you're interviewing, who's saying is very heartbreaking. She's in a room with nine men and someone will enter and the person shakes the hands of eight of the men and literally walks by her as if she's not there.

• 1:00:16Speaker 04

  Well, they think that she's the secretary. Yeah.

• 1:00:18Dax Shepard?

  Or she'll have a point. No one will respond. Fifteen minutes later, a guy makes the exact same point and everyone's high fiving the guy.

• 1:00:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Speaker 04

  So the question is, say, I found all these women who had been on corporate boards and were the first one in. This is one of those great moments in when you're reporting something, when everyone starts to say the same thing.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Independently and you realize, oh, this is real.

• 1:00:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  So I call up and I say, okay, so you were the first person on, you know, Fortune, named the Fortune of a company. So they go, yes. What was that like? Terrible. You know, no one was. Were you there when they appointed a second woman to the board? Yes. What was that like? Terrible. I mean, I had someone, I had one other person like me, but they still, nobody cared. No one listened to us. No one treated us properly. Were you there when they named a third woman to the board? Yes. What happened? Night and day.

• 1:01:06Speaker 06

  Really?

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  It's like, really? Like at three? So when you get three out of nine, boom.

• 1:01:11Dax Shepard?

  Well, she said, when you're there by yourself, you're the tokenless issue. When there's another person there, you have a friend.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  A friend.

• 1:01:17Dax Shepard?

  And when there's three of you, you're a block. Like you're now start acting the way you really want to act.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they can't ignore you and they suddenly wake up to the fact that you're a human being. And they have to take you seriously. It's this weird phenomenon. And it turns out this phenomenon shows up in tons and tons and tons of different situations where when outsiders reach a certain crucial tipping point in a group, the group changes.

• 1:01:44Dax Shepard?

  From 790 with Kat Bohannon.

• 1:01:51Speaker 05

  It's very hard to enroll human women in phase one clinical trials. So that's that moment where you actually start trying to test out a drug. You're not in rats anymore. You're in a human body. Okay. And you try and see what are the side effects? What's up? Just enrolling enough women is presently a problem.

• 1:02:07Dax Shepard?

  What's causing that discrepancy? They're not reaching out or women are not participating?

• 1:02:11Speaker 05

  I think it's both. I think it's bidirectional. I think there's a lack of trust among women who might want to participate.

• 1:02:18Dax Shepard?

  It might even be an interesting risk taker variable here, too.

• 1:02:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:22Dax Shepard?

  I think some guys are like, well, I got a well from both of you.

• 1:02:24Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, well, my well, my well is new as in the last couple of hours because I was at the cardiologist this morning. Yeah, I'm fine. Everything's fine, but I am probably going to go on a statin.

• 1:02:35Speaker 05

  Oh, wow. Yeah.

• 1:02:36Speaker 06

  And she was like, so, you know, great. It's fine. You'll be fine. But also if you. You are gonna get pregnant, we're gonna come, we'll come off of it for a little bit before, for about a month. And as soon as I hear that, I'm like, oh, my God, well, and I have no current plans to get pregnant, but I was like, well, then maybe I should just wait to start because what if I randomly decide to want to get pregnant the next week and then there won't be enough time. You know, your brain does start like running with you and a lot of it is for protection for your reproductive organs and such. Also, there was a huge diagram on the wall of how heart attacks show up in women. And it's very specific. It's not everything we've been told about how heart attacks show up.

• 1:03:20Dax Shepard?

  Right. In the book, yeah, Kat says, women die of heart attack more frequently, yet they show the signs of them less frequently or have less of them.

• 1:03:29Speaker 05

  The thing about heart disease that's so interesting is that we did have that really male model for a long time, which is that crushing pain on the chest and the

• 1:03:37Speaker 06

  Tingle down the arm.

• 1:03:39Speaker 05

  And these like classic typically male symptoms. And we're finally getting campaigns out to be like, yeah, actually, do you feel like you have indigestion?

• 1:03:48Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:03:49Speaker 05

  And the thing is, which definitely doesn't trigger our slightly more likely to have anxiety disorders at all, which women also get more because it's like, so is it heartburn or am I dying? Right? So it's complicated, but it is starting to save lives.

• 1:04:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:04:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, that like, just take your body seriously, that thing.

• 1:04:08Dax Shepard?

  The results of this asymmetrical testing, women versus men, kind of pops up in culture. I remember watching a 60 Minutes segment on, women had been prescribed Ambien at the same dose men were in for years and years and years. And women were having all these adverse effects to it, getting up and eating, driving a car. And people are like, what's going on? Come to find out when they studied it, it's almost twice as effective in females.

• 1:04:36Speaker 05

  Women are 40% more likely to be diagnosed with sleep disorders. We still don't entirely

• 1:04:43Speaker 05

  Why I'm gonna take a drug like Ambien to try and like get some sleep.

• 1:04:46Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:04:47Speaker 05

  But then we find out when the car crash data comes filtering back in that female patients are getting in car crashes on their damn morning commutes more than male patients who'd taken it the night before because the drug is being metabolized differently in our bodies. It's it's exiting our bodies in different ways, its effects on the tissues, and we're only just figuring it out because of what? Car crash data? Yeah, so the FDA.

• 1:05:11Dax Shepard?

  Wait till that comes in and we'll make a decision.

• 1:05:13Speaker 05

  We're just gonna, so, yeah, so at the moment, they were like, okay, this is a while back. They said, okay, Ambien, you should take half the dose if you've got ovaries. But at that point, it had been on the market for 21 years.

• 1:05:25Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:05:26Speaker 05

  So.

• 1:05:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, a little, little late.

• 1:05:27Speaker 05

  I feel like we can do better. The weird thing about ears is that primate hearing changed dramatically. Well, ancestral primate hearing, when our mammalian ancestors moved into the trees, most primates still up there. Right, then our hearing had to change. We needed to be able to hear one another through this weird new environment, and we couldn't bounce sound off the ground. It was just this like, and there's leaves and shit in between us, we could be far away. So we needed to be able to produce and hear lower pitches than most other mammals.

• 1:06:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:00Speaker 05

  But the females needed to retain those higher pitches because our babies make very high pitched sounds.

• 1:06:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:09Speaker 05

  And it's absolutely true that human women still have a little of that legacy of retaining those higher pitches over our lifespan.

• 1:06:17Dax Shepard?

  It's twofold, right? You have a larger aptitude to start with, and then your decline isn't as dramatic.

• 1:06:24Speaker 05

  Yeah. Now, remember, this doesn't mean just because you are a female person that it is your destiny to have babies. We're talking about evolutionary influences. Let me just go ahead and say that. Right? The reason you can hear the way you do is for many reasons and communicating with people. Okay. However, it is true that female hearing is especially attuned to a range of pitches that tends to be associated with human babies cries. That is true. Most people who are biologically male, around age 25 or so, will start cutting off the top range of the pitches that they can hear. It's just a predictable slope. It's not like you need a hearing aid when you're 30, but it's just that predictable slope of that high end of human hearing, you start losing it. It's just like an aging thing.

• 1:07:08Dax Shepard?

  And the comedic punchline headline, yes, your husband can't hear you.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  No, I was literally, I was just about to say that. Like, oh, I think this is proving something I've been thinking for a long time. When I'll talk with all these men in a room and they aren't responding, and I have thought, can they not hear me?

• 1:07:24Speaker 05

  They legit cannot hear you. They cannot hear you. It doesn't explain why they don't care.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Sure, that's a different-

• 1:07:29Speaker 05

  That's just sexism, and we've talked about how that's real.

• 1:07:34Dax Shepard?

  From 808 with Yuval Harari.

• 1:07:41Dax Shepard?

  I think when you read this book, you'll come away kind of understanding what an information network is and how powerful it is. So when do we see the first, what's the first example we would look at historically, like an information network and its power?

• 1:07:56Speaker 06

  What information really does, information doesn't necessarily tell us the truth about the world. Information connects a lot of individuals into a network that can do many, many things that isolated people can't. And to give you an example, if you think, for instance, about, again, different types of information, if you think about visual information, if you think in terms of images and photographs and paintings. So what is the most common portrait in the world? Who is the most famous face in human history? The answer is Jesus.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Oh, I was gonna say Mona Lisa.

• 1:08:35Dax Shepard?

  Me too. We're so Western.

• 1:08:39Speaker 06

  Bears. I mean, billions and billions of portraits of Jesus have been produced over the last 2,000 years. And they've been like everywhere in so many churches and cathedrals and monasteries and private houses and schools and government offices, like everywhere. And the amazing thing about it, not a single one of them is true. Not a single one is authentic, a hundred percent, not 99%.

• 1:09:06Dax Shepard?

  He never sat for a portrait that we know of.

• 1:09:08Speaker 06

  We don't know if anybody painted him during or sculpted him during his lifetime. Definitely, we have no image from his own lifetime. And also, if you think about, you know, textual descriptions, the Bible doesn't contain a single word, not a sentence, not a single word about how Jesus looked like.

• 1:09:31Dax Shepard?

  Really?

• 1:09:31Speaker 06

  There is a description of his clothes one time, what he wore. Not a single description of how he looked like, whether he was tall or short or fat or thin. The color of his skin. Color of his skin, color of his hair, color of his eyes, nothing.

• 1:09:47Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 1:09:48Speaker 06

  All the portraits, like the billions of portraits, they came out of human imagination. And nevertheless, they have been extremely successful and important in connecting billions of people into a network which shares certain values and norms which can work together to build cathedrals and build hospitals and also go to wars and establish the Inquisition and things like that.

• 1:10:18Dax Shepard?

  Voting blocks.

• 1:10:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, so whether for good or bad, this has been one of the most powerful networks in human history.

• 1:10:26Dax Shepard?

  Catholicism.

• 1:10:28Speaker 06

  Christianity, even more generally. Again, like every network, it can break up into several sub-networks. So there is always this tension between uniting more people together and breaking up into smaller parts. But this is what information does. A subset of the information in the world may also tell us the truth about the world. Some information is true. But truth is a very rare and relatively costly kind of information. Most information is not truth. Again, it's fiction, it's fantasy. It's sometimes lies, it's sometimes illusions, delusions. You know, a key point is that the truth is costly because it requires a special effort to produce truthful information.

• 1:11:12Speaker 06

  You need to research. You need to spend time gathering evidence and analyzing it and so forth. Fiction is cheap. You just draw or write the first thing that comes in your mind. So going back to networks, the key is that if you manage to connect a lot of individuals into a network, like a church, or an army, or a corporation, or a state, or anything like that, they can accomplish far, far more than either individuals or a small number of people. And again, this of course goes back to sapiens. This is the key to our success as a species, that we can build these huge networks.

• 1:11:51Dax Shepard?

  We can build a network around money, this idea that this has some value, or a deity, or national identity.

• 1:11:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, and so sapiens began to explore this idea. Now, Nexus now goes over history and also the future, and looks at it from the viewpoint of these networks. So, okay, if we establish that stories create networks and networks are important, let's look at history as the process, not of human actions, but of networks, spreading, sometimes collapsing, changing their nature. So for instance, a chapter about democracy and dictatorship, which looks at them not as different ethical or ideological systems.

• 1:12:38Speaker 06

  But as different types of information networks.

• 1:12:42Dax Shepard?

  How they flow.

• 1:12:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, how information flows. Information flows differently in democracy and dictatorship. And this is what makes them so, so different. In dictatorships, they are centralized information networks. All the information or most of the information flows to just one place where all the decisions are being made.

• 1:13:01Dax Shepard?

  Putin's desk.

• 1:13:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, Putin's desk or Xi's desk or whatever. And also, they lack strong self-correcting mechanisms. The network doesn't contain a mechanism for identifying and correcting the network's own mistakes.

• 1:13:16Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:13:17Speaker 06

  Democracy, in contrast, is a different kind of network. What characterizes it is that information doesn't flow just through a central hub. There is usually a central hub. So in the United States, a lot of information flows to Washington, but most of it doesn't.

• 1:13:33Dax Shepard?

  Probably more to New York.

• 1:13:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, most of the economic decisions, social decisions, cultural decisions are being taken in New York, in, in, in Los Angeles, in lots of other places. A lot of the information never passes through any government office. And you have strong self-correcting mechanisms. If the network makes a mistake, you don't need somebody from outside to intervene. The whole point about democracy, that you have these built-in mechanisms to identify and correct its own mistakes. So in democracy, you have this mechanism that every couple of years, people can say, we made a mistake. Let's try something else. Of course, the problem, if you have only this, is that it can easily be rigged.

• 1:14:18Speaker 06

  I mean, the weakness of democracy since ancient times is that you basically give enormous power to one person or one party on condition that they give it back. Right, exactly. After four years. And what happens if they don't? Yeah. I mean, they have all this power in their hands.

• 1:14:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:35Speaker 06

  What happens if they use all this power to stay in power, to rig the elections? And we've seen it many times in, in Russia, they have elections every four years. And presumably in the 1990s, when Putin first rose to power, the elections. Were relatively fair and free. Then he used his power to dismantle and to rig the elections. And you saw the same thing in Venezuela.

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:14:55Speaker 06

  Chavez originally came to power, as far as we know, in free and fair elections. But then Chavez and his successor Maduro, they used the power to destroy the democratic system and then stay in power.

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, they just had an "election" in quotes, and it's a disaster.

• 1:15:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean Maduro lost big time.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:15:14Speaker 06

  But because he appoints all the election officials and all the judges and everything. So he says, no, I won.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:21Dax Shepard?

  This just in, I won.

• 1:15:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:24Speaker 06

  So if you only have elections, this is not enough.

• 1:15:27Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:15:28Speaker 06

  You need an entire system. This is the famous checks and balances. And these checks and balances, like independent courts and free media.

• 1:15:36Dax Shepard?

  The fourth estate.

• 1:15:37Speaker 06

  And constitution and federal system. These are all basically self, if you think about it in terms of information, these are the self-correcting mechanisms.

• 1:15:48Dax Shepard?

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We get support from Superhuman. Look, I love what I do. The conversations, the ideas, the creative stuff. But there's this whole other layer of work that eats my day alive. The inbox that never ends. Docs I need to get through, threads I'm behind on. And by the time I've dealt with all that, the stuff I actually want to focus on gets whatever's left. What I needed was something that just works where I'm already working. Not another tab to open, not another thing to set up. Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly, is different. It's already right there, inside your email, your docs, your browser. You don't go to it. It's already working alongside you.

• 1:16:32Dax Shepard?

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• 1:17:02Dax Shepard?

  From 7:43 with Orna Grolnick.

• 1:17:10Dax Shepard?

  Systems thinking is super important when you work with couples and when you work with

• 1:17:14Speaker 06

  The idea with systems thinking is that we each bring into the world a set of inclinations and traits and characteristics. But then, when you're joining some kind of group or system, it could be a group of two, it could be a team, it could be a family. The system needs all sorts of things from its members, like it needs someone to volunteer leadership capabilities, it needs someone to be the caretaker, it needs someone to be the critic. We need all these functions. When you join a system, the system calls upon its members to volunteer certain functions. And we're each more and less inclined to volunteer certain things, but it will change depending on what team we join. Like with some teams, you'll find yourself, oh, I'm kind of a

• 1:17:56Speaker 06

  leader here. And with some teams, you're like, actually, I'm a follower because there's someone else that's doing it differently and better than me now. So when you work with a couple, you try to understand how they're each drawn into certain roles based on what the couple as a system needs. So it's a very different way of thinking about, let's say, a crisis that a couple goes through. You're trying to understand what's going on with the system, with a unit as a whole, that leads them to this crisis. How did they each take this role? When you're raising kids, there are certain things that need to happen, and not everyone can do everything.

• 1:18:29Dax Shepard?

  What I was going to suggest as an example that people, I think, experience most strongly is they go out into their adult life and they kind of gravitate toward a system that they wanted, and then they return home for the holidays and you can feel yourself click into the role you were ascribed in that situation. And you're like, no, no, no, no, I don't want this role anymore. I feel like that's when people are really aware of it.

• 1:18:51Speaker 06

  Yes, that's why around the holidays, I cannot go on vacation.

• 1:18:58Dax Shepard?

  You have done a lot of work on disassociation. Maybe we could dig in a little bit of what that means for people. I think it's very common.

• 1:19:05Speaker 06

  It's a spectrum.

• 1:19:06Dax Shepard?

  The one I'm not familiar with that seems like a sister state is depersonalization. I don't know what that is.

• 1:19:13Speaker 06

  Generally, disassociation, going back to Freud, you really introduced the concept of repression, that if there's something you don't want to know about yourself, or something happened to you, you repress it, meaning. It happened, you registered it, and then you push it out of mind. You forget.

• 1:19:29Dax Shepard?

  That was in quotes.

• 1:19:29Speaker 06

  That was in quotes. Dissociation is a different model of mind. It's when things happen that are either traumatic or to some degree, something you can't tolerate. You either don't process it, you kind of leave it hanging and not fully comprehend what it means, or you shunt it towards a part of the psyche that is not your main part of your personality. You kind of keep it to the side to a part that's kind of not me. That not me over there just registered all those bad things that were happening over there, but I'm not going to pay attention to it because the me that needs to keep functioning is moving ahead in the world.

• 1:20:05Dax Shepard?

  That almost happened to someone else because to take that on would be too much.

• 1:20:08Speaker 06

  Exactly. So there are many ways to dissociate. Some extreme ways would be multiple personality, what we call dissociative identity disorder. You really shunt parts of the psyche to the side and they develop like a whole world of their own.

• 1:20:21Dax Shepard?

  And this one is so extreme that there's almost a lack of awareness that the other states exist, right?

• 1:20:27Speaker 06

  Right. One of the ways that we think about multiple personality is that one part of the psyche doesn't even know about these other personalities, or there's amnesia for what the other personalities are going through. You treat people with multiple or DID. You've seen it. Yeah.

• 1:20:41Dax Shepard?

  Well, this season, we have someone that's approaching that.

• 1:20:43Speaker 06

  Right. Yes, Alexis. He has a dissociative disorder.

• 1:20:46Dax Shepard?

  And to the degree where he doesn't remember the arguments he's having with his partner.

• 1:20:50Speaker 06

  Yes. Alexis, what happens to him is he's very afraid of his own rage, and there are all sorts of reasons why. And when he gets triggered and gets enraged or triggered into like a trauma zone, he really switches and becomes a very different kind of person.

• 1:21:08Dax Shepard?

  Who can defend himself.

• 1:21:09Speaker 06

  Who can sort of defend himself more. He's trying. He's trying.

• 1:21:13Dax Shepard?

  Globally, he's actually making much more pain for himself.

• 1:21:16Speaker 06

  Right. That one is hard to watch. And going back to depersonalization, when people depersonalize, what happens to them is in a way, they sort of remove themselves from what's happening. Being in a relationship with someone like that, like in this season. Like Cosimo and Alexis. Yes, feels so heavy. Like, I hate to.

• 1:21:36Speaker 02

  Impossible. He doesn't have memories that the other person has that are painful and aggressive and hurt them, but they don't even know that they did it. It just feels so epic.

• 1:21:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, it is epic. I mean, you saw the two of them, what they had going for them is their deep psychological insight into all of this. And first of all, their profound love for each other. They were in process of working on this stuff. Alexis knew and wanted to get better at it. They were incredible couple to work with.

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I bet.

• 1:22:08Dax Shepard?

  I want to earmark that case because it actually got kind of personal to you. And we saw maybe one of your bad word for it, but Achilles.

• 1:22:16Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:22:17Dax Shepard?

  Because of course, as a show, you're the hero of our story. So it's interesting to have a pretty insatiable desire to know about you. And there's not a lot of info for us.

• 1:22:26Speaker 06

  Well, there is.

• 1:22:28Dax Shepard?

  There isn't, there isn't. I don't know your history. I don't know about your children. I learned you're from Israel or spent time, you know, little nuggets here and there. But a lead character normally would have had kind of an introduction where we get the backstory. And then we take a journey with them. So it's part of the fun of watching it is you yourself as the lead character of a story we watch is a mystery to us, which is very, go ahead.

• 1:22:51Speaker 06

  I have to respond to that.

• 1:22:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:53Speaker 06

  First of all, it's uncomfortable.

• 1:22:55Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:22:55Speaker 06

  Just characterologically, but the therapist in a way is to some degree, the lead character in a therapy, but also not at all. I'm doing the work. I'm the theory.

• 1:23:08Dax Shepard?

  I was really unspecific in what I was talking about. There's the reality of what's happening that happens to get captured. And there, you're right, you're not the hero of that.

• 1:23:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:23:17Dax Shepard?

  Then there's a documentary series. That's another thing.

• 1:23:21Speaker 06

  I guess I'm less connected to that.

• 1:23:23Dax Shepard?

  As you should be. I'm almost letting you into the perspective.

• 1:23:27Speaker 06

  Of the viewer.

• 1:23:28Dax Shepard?

  Hard for you to probably touch, which is I turn on my television. There's a program presented to me. The couples change. One person stays consistent. The blueprint of my brain for story is that's my lead character. That's my hero. Now, that's not the reality of what's happening in the room at all. I'm not suggesting that.

• 1:23:49Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:23:51Dax Shepard?

  This is great. This is uncomfortable, right?

• 1:23:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:23:54Speaker 02

  What about it is uncomfortable?

• 1:23:56Dax Shepard?

  I could guess.

• 1:23:56Speaker 06

  First of all, I'm not, look, people go into the profession of being a therapist or an analyst because they're actually quite private.

• 1:24:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:04Speaker 06

  I like being private. I like the story being someone else. I don't like the idea of me being the main character. But I also have a theoretical belief. I understand what you're saying, but you're joining me not in being myself. You're joining me as the viewer. You're coming with me on this journey to understand how to think, how to listen, not me personally. We're together. We're thinking about what is this human thing, this human journey we're on.

• 1:24:34Dax Shepard?

  If I had used the word guide instead of hero, would that be less?

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  Triggering.

• 1:24:42Speaker 06

  I don't know.

• 1:24:43Dax Shepard?

  It probably feels like you're dishonoring, really dishonoring what's happening.

• 1:24:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:24:49Dax Shepard?

  By claiming to be the hero of it.

• 1:24:51Speaker 06

  Yeah. I'm channeling what I've learned to do.

• 1:24:54Dax Shepard?

  And you are. And I would feel that exact same way.

• 1:24:56Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:24:59Dax Shepard?

  From 758 with the Avett Brothers.

• 1:25:06Dax Shepard?

  All right, we are loved.

• 1:25:18Speaker 07

  Whether we speak up

• 1:25:23Speaker 07

  or we are silent.

• 1:25:29Speaker 07

  If we are willing

• 1:25:35Speaker 07

  or we are done.

• 1:25:40Speaker 07

  If we're courageous or we are cowards.

• 1:25:51Speaker 07

  We may be burdened.

• 1:25:57Speaker 07

  But we are loved.

• 1:26:02Speaker 07

  Whether we stay true

• 1:26:08Speaker 07

  And do for another If we are hidden

• 1:26:19Speaker 07

  Or we're discovered

• 1:26:25Speaker 07

  If we're forgiven Or we're forgotten We may be lonely

• 1:26:42Speaker 07

  But we are loved

• 1:26:47Speaker 07

  Every stitch and seam Every wish and dream Even in tragedy There lies divinity Even as hope seems lost It may be found again I have felt alone But I have never been

• 1:27:41Speaker 07

  If you are standing

• 1:27:46Speaker 07

  Or cannot stop moving

• 1:27:52Speaker 07

  If you are haunted Or cannot remember

• 1:28:03Speaker 07

  Over the gravestone

• 1:28:09Speaker 07

  Under the Rainbow Pain comes and pain goes

• 1:28:20Speaker 07

  And we are loved

• 1:28:26Speaker 06

  Every stitch and seam Every wish and dream Even in tragedy

• 1:28:43Speaker 07

  There lies divinity Even as hope seems lost It may be found again I have felt alone But I have never been

• 1:29:20Speaker 07

  If we are spirit

• 1:29:26Speaker 07

  Or we are human

• 1:29:32Speaker 07

  Crossing the river Or harboring change

• 1:29:43Speaker 07

  If we deny it Or if we face it May we embrace it

• 1:30:01Speaker 07

  We are loved