Rerelease: Monica Lewinsky

On today's episode, we revisit Monica Lewinsky's episode from October 17th, 2019. Monica Lewinsky is an American anti-bullying ambassador to the Diana Award’s Anti-Bullying Programme, on the advisory board of Project rockit, founding board member of The Childhood Resilience Foundation and contributing editor to Vanity Fair. She sits down with the armchair expert to discuss overcoming trauma, cyber bullying and her experience being publicly labeled as a negative archetype. Monica talks about being an upstander and Dax is impressed by Monica’s resilience. The two discuss chasing and breaking patterns, public shame and the ways in which they both seek safety. 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?

  Maybe you should, maybe you should do hello, hello, hello.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Hi, everyone.

• 0:09Dax Shepard?

  Hello.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  I'm here, this is Monica, Monica Padman.

• 0:14Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  And I'm here with Dax Shepard and Wabi Wab Hollis. I had to say our last names because this is about to get quite confusing.

• 0:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  We're doing-

• 0:24Dax Shepard?

  It wasn't confusing enough this year, so we thought, let's at the very end get even.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Let's get really confusing.

• 0:29Dax Shepard?

  Let's add another layer of confusion.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Yes. We wanted to do a little of our favorites this week. You just heard, a couple of days ago, you heard Laura Labeau.

• 0:39Dax Shepard?

  Mom.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Triple L, Dax's mom, that episode. And my pick for the week is Monica Lewinsky. That's why that's confusing.

• 0:48Dax Shepard?

  Okay, because of Monica and Monica?

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:50Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  That's why I had to say last names.

• 0:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay, and that makes sense. And why did you pick Monica?

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Well, I was looking through all our old episodes. I forgot, we've done a few.

• 1:03Dax Shepard?

  Eight hundred and fifty.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, we've done a few. And most of them, I was looking, I was like, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. And when I saw Monica Lewinsky's name come up, I thought, oh my gosh, I totally forgot we got to do that.

• 1:18Dax Shepard?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  How amazing of an opportunity. And then she was just so special and so sweet and so strong and wonderful. And the way she looks back on everything, I think is really profound and probably applicable to the way a lot of people are moving through the world right now. And she's just really the best.

• 1:45Dax Shepard?

  Did you have any anxiety? So my anxiety was, because this just happened. So we had a guest on, and I went and listened to their first episode, and they were, or he was on right out of the gates.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57Dax Shepard?

  And so I was like, I wanted to listen to it so I didn't repeat all the same questions.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:03Dax Shepard?

  And I was like, oh, boy, I was much worse at this.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did think, oh, that was really early. I don't know how it's gonna hold up, but she, I just think she's worth a listen if you haven't heard it or re-listen if, if you have.

• 2:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but these have

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Go easy on us if we, if it's bad.

• 2:23Dax Shepard?

  These have become a little bit like past movies I've been in where it's just like, I'm terrified to listen. I'm not sure if I suck and it brings all that up.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  I get it. But she's a special lady. So, uh, please enjoy Monica Lewinsky.

• 2:36Dax Shepard?

  We get support from Quince.

• 2:39Speaker 01

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

• 2:58Dax Shepard?

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

• 3:14Speaker 01

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

• 3:25Dax Shepard?

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

• 3:32Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 3:33Dax Shepard?

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

• 3:37Speaker 01

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

• 4:00Dax Shepard?

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

• 4:44Dax Shepard?

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

• 5:22Speaker 01

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

• 5:33Dax Shepard?

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

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not surprised.

• 5:40Dax Shepard?

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

• 6:13Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome, Monica. Don't be threatened. We have another Monica today.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Two Monies.

• 6:19Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it's gonna get really complicated. This is now the third, well, second Monica guest, but third Monica in the AE. I don't even know her call order. Sphere. Yes.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:28Dax Shepard?

  Monica Lewinsky is an American activist. She's a television personality and she is also a anti-bowling ambassador to the Diana Ward Anti-Bowling Program and on the Advisory Board of Project Rocket. And of course, she is here specifically because October is National Bowling Prevention Month. And so she is making the rounds to spread the word on that, which is a wonderful thing to bring attention to. And this is just an incredibly wonderful interview.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  It is.

• 6:59Dax Shepard?

  With tons of honesty and vulnerability.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, emotional openness. And I admire her a ton.

• 7:06Dax Shepard?

  Me, too.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  For sharing her experience and her story and hopes that other people can

• 7:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Feel good.

• 7:13Dax Shepard?

  It's incredibly brave.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  It is.

• 7:15Dax Shepard?

  But this is just really one of the more beautiful conversations we've had and we thank her a ton for coming in. So please enjoy Monica Lewinsky. When you're like, just asked benign questions, I feel like I would, at this point, if I were you, would be just always looking for the little bit of leadingness of it. Like, do you feel generally, like, do you have your guard up on some level when you're just conversing, like someone's probably going to try to lead you somewhere?

• 7:43Speaker 02

  I think it totally depends. So if I feel comfortable in a situation, like right now, I feel comfortable. So I came in, I felt comfortable with Monica. And, and by the way, am I like the first Monica Monica?

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:58Dax Shepard?

  No, Monica Potter.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Potter. We've had Monica Potter.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  I was thinking, I was.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Not in the attic, though. We did a live show with her. So in the attic, first of

• 8:05Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 8:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  I've become good at reading people, which I think most people who end up, as public people, end up having to be.

• 8:13Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Also add, like, trauma survivors.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:16Dax Shepard?

  Get good spidey senses so that they're not wounded again.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Although, you know, this is sort of. Non sequitur, but someone said to me, I saw this shaman in New York who was amazing a few weeks ago, and she said something to me about how people who have survived trauma, they can't be okay unless everyone else is okay in the room.

• 8:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  And feel safe. Like, that's how they feel safe, is that everyone else feels okay. And I was like, oh, that's 100% me, you know?

• 8:41Dax Shepard?

  Meaning like, if they're uncomfortable with your trauma, you feel the need to put them at ease about it before you can be at ease at it?

• 8:50Speaker 02

  No, I think it's just a layer, it's just kind of a layer of how people operate in the world. So not even necessarily people being comfortable with my trauma, but I don't feel safe unless everyone else feels comfortable.

• 9:03Dax Shepard?

  I got you.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Right? So rather, so some people might come into a situation and, and think, okay, how do I need to feel safe in this? Like, here's what I need, do, do, do, do, do. For me, it would be, I need everyone else to, to feel okay.

• 9:16Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  In order for me to feel safe in a situation.

• 9:18Dax Shepard?

  Cause for you, is fear really contagious? Like, let's say there's four of us right now, you know, we're talking, and you notice Rob is over there like, and he's shaking, and he's like, he's got me.

• 9:30Dax Shepard?

  Are, are you going to take that on? Or are you gonna go, oh, just, he's going through something, God knows what?

• 9:36Speaker 02

  I totally take it on. Like, I, I went on a job interview once where the person was, who was interviewing me, was more nervous than I was. And so all their nervous tics started coming out. And initially, I was reading it, it's sort of, this person kept scowling, and I was like, oh, fuck, I'm saying the wrong thing. I'm never gonna get this job, do, do, do. And then eventually I realized, oh, it's nervous tics. You know, so I thought, okay, so now I've gotta make this person feel comfortable.

• 10:03Dax Shepard?

  Yes, which is exhausting now.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Trauma in general is exhausting.

• 10:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  So.

• 10:09Dax Shepard?

  I keep rediscovering all the time. Like, I'm never assuming that, that the person's thing is their issue, right? It's gotta be all about me, cause the whole world is about me, and I'm at the center of the universe.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Yes. You're in the solipsistic club?

• 10:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Got a jacket.

• 10:25Dax Shepard?

  So 90% plus of us walking around are solely thinking of ourselves, and we're responding to our own thoughts and fears. And the other person isn't really even in the equation, other than that they've set off this, you know, dominoes of fears in that person. Right? Like, it takes a very healthy, confident person to feel that way. I just aspire to have that feeling all the time.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:47Dax Shepard?

  We can just take people's behavior for what it is, their behavior.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  But I think we, you know, I don't know if this all makes sense, but so I had to do a lot of work over the years around my relationship to material things.

• 10:59Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Like hoarding, I'm not real hoarder, capital H, but sort of, I like to joke, I had clutter from my decluttering books. I mean, so it's just, you know, and I worked over the years with somebody who has actually has a background in psychology and it's been an amazing process to sort of see as things have changed for me, things I'm ready to let go of. But I had this one experience where I was helping friends of mine move because they were remodeling and it was like, why do you have this case of unopened, you know, ball jars for jam that you're going to pay more money storing than you could just buy it again? You know, but I'm like, no, no, no, no, we have to keep those and broken things and all those things. And so I had this experience where I was able to, I could see because I

• 11:43Speaker 02

  had no attachment, I had no energy towards these things, how easy it was for me to think about letting go of them or categorizing them.

• 11:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, for lack of a better word, be objective about the whole thing.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  And so, and I think as opposed to my own shit, which I had, I had a story about everything and had to tell that story. And I think that kind of reflects in a way what you're saying about just those two very different positions.

• 12:05Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Your material stuff, both Monicas could maybe bond on this. Monica has shared with me that when life is feeling particularly chaotic or out of her control, a very simple act she can take control of is finding something she likes, paying for it, taking it home. Am I explaining it correctly?

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can, I can in that moment have the thing I want when there are other things in the world that I want that I can't have.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  So it's just a quick way to get some control, lasts for like an hour and then goes away. But, you know.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Then you get the, do you do the return thing? Cause then you get a whole different set of like chemicals of the return of like, oh, it's like. Losing weight.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Money back.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  I actually don't do that because I'm like too lazy to go back to the stores.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  I'll return them for you.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Okay, great, great. This is a good solution.

• 12:52Dax Shepard?

  You have to wonder if some brilliant economists could actually put a number on what part of the economy is just servicing this cycle for people.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  No, it's true.

• 13:01Dax Shepard?

  Returning and all that.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, so an example would be I had every single article that I read for my master's thesis. Like I kept everything, even if I didn't cite it in my paper, I still had it.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  And that was really connected to sort of all the anxiety I had around people thinking I was stupid. You know, and so it was the safety or all these books that I bought when I was in graduate school that I never fucking read.

• 13:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  You know, and it was like uncreased on the thing, but look, look, I'm smart, I'm smart. I'm not a dumb bimbo.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  And eventually in the last few years, eventually I was sort of in a place where I was like, oh, I actually don't really need these anymore.

• 13:37Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Which is fascinating. So I think I had read in one of those decluttering books about that we keep things because we're afraid we're not going to be provided for in the future.

• 13:46Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  And so that was really interesting to me too. But I agree that the shopping high or the

• 13:52Speaker 01

  The control aspect of it.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think I've thought of it that way, but that would 100% be me.

• 13:57Dax Shepard?

  I feel like a twin to you after telling that part of your story because I have somewhere in our garage, huge milk crates of every single story I wrote in college, like every essay I wrote and all the research and everything is similarly because I have a big hang up about I'm not dumb and everyone thinks I'm dumb.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Okay, you're not dumb. I'm just gonna tell you.

• 14:17Dax Shepard?

  The other day though, I said, it's not rational. So Einstein could come out of the ground, he could ascend and tap me on the shoulder and go, you're the only person that's ever been as smart as me on planet earth. I'd still need everyone's approval.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:30Dax Shepard?

  I still, you know, you can't bring logic to bear on a fear of being dumb or any of our fears really. I mean, I guess there is some cognitive behavioral therapy steps you could take, but just in general, your fears aren't rational to begin with.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  I think there's an element of healing and shifting that kind of happens and then maybe you're ready to have somebody help you try to Alleviate that fear.

• 14:52Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  I agree that I don't think just because you have a fear and somebody sits down and says to you, oh, you really shouldn't have that fear anymore that that's going to now.

• 15:01Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Abate. But I also think too that, you know, that there are a lot of fears that come from, how I describe it, I don't know that, you know, my trauma psychiatrist would agree. But I mean, I sort of think with trauma, it's like we kind of each create our own file folders. We make our decision on how we store like traumas, right? So you and I could have the same traumatic experiences, but we might file them in different folders.

• 15:24Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Ways, right?

• 15:25Dax Shepard?

  You see this with siblings a ton.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And so I think sometimes what happens too is that we'll sort of see that top fear. We may not even recognize in ourselves that actually it's connected to all these other fears that have happened. And so it may seem illogical to someone else, but it's really not to us because it's based on.

• 15:43Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  These other experiences we've had too, so.

• 15:46Dax Shepard?

  But it's like geology. It's just another layer on top of another layer on top of, you know, before you get down to the foul ingredient, you know, there's so many other things in between there.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:56Dax Shepard?

  So you grew up here roughly, right? Brentwood-ish.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  I was born in San Francisco.

• 16:02Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  And then I was raised here in, actually Beverly Hills.

• 16:07Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  So and then my parents divorced and my dad moved to Brentwood and.

• 16:11Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. What age were you when they divorced?

• 16:13Speaker 02

  I was 14.

• 16:15Dax Shepard?

  I don't know that there's an ideal time. I would say though, that I am grateful to have gone through it at three because I didn't like, I didn't long for my dad or pine for him. I was like, I don't know. He wasn't here. Still not here. You know, like it didn't really bother me. But I would imagine at 14, when your life is the most turbulent, you have new hormones, your people are dating, there are people are getting attention for things. Maybe not an ideal time for disruption.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. It was more painful in some ways for me because I think I lived with an illusion of how I wanted my family to be. I mean, I was, I mean, by all kind of markers, I had a great upbringing and wonderful parents and I have an amazing younger brother and never worried about a roof over my head or. Food on the table, so very privileged that way. But I also think that my parents are two wonderful people who were not a great match.

• 17:09Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  And that was pretty. Pretty hard to be around, but I think also pretty self evident. Even now, when people meet them, they're kind of like, how were your parents married?

• 17:20Speaker 02

  They both bring great things.

• 17:21Dax Shepard?

  Your mother was an author or is an author and your father was or is an oncologist?

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so actually she was an urban planner before she had kids and then she became kind of lead parent. And my dad is still a practicing radiation oncologist.

• 17:34Dax Shepard?

  In his story, there's a lot of talk lately about inheriting trauma, which is starting to get more and more compelling. The first time I was here, I was like, oh, what are you talking about? But now, and it's getting more compelling, but.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:45Dax Shepard?

  I don't think it's irrelevant that your father is first generation of a family that fled Nazi Germany as Jews. And then went to where El Salvador, somewhere in South America.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Well done.

• 17:55Dax Shepard?

  Okay, and then, and then came here, so.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  At 14, so he came here at 14.

• 18:00Dax Shepard?

  Right, so he, he had to have inherited from his parents, a very realistic fear, to your point of not having enough in the future, that you might not have enough in the future, and even worse, you might be having to escape someplace in the future. Once that's a part of your worldview, I don't know how you shake that.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  I think too, probably the, the way it also really shaped me was the kind of Germanic background. And I think the kind of German Jew identity, it's like you're German before you're Jewish.

• 18:28Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  You know, so where other cultures, your Jewish identity, you may lead with that. There's this, I'm probably going to botch it out, which you can fact check. I will.

• 18:37Dax Shepard?

  You're allowed to make mistakes here, just to let you know.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll do them. I was like really authoritatively saying something, you'd be like, she's wrong.

• 18:43Dax Shepard?

  Mistakes are encouraged.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a saying of the tallest poppy gets cut off first, some version of that. And so that was, I was kind of raised with one parent who that was their, you know, don't make waves. You know, sort of blend in, hide, don't try to be special. And then I had another parent who came from Russian background, but my grandmother was Russian, but raised in China. And then my mom was actually raised in Tokyo. My aunt was born there, so I have this very eclectic family background. And I think from my mom's side, it was very much about trying to find your specialness.

• 19:20Dax Shepard?

  Adventure and discovery.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Yes. And so, and she lost her dad at a very early age. So she was 15. So both my parents had these big life changes at 14 and 15. My dad moving from his home country of El Salvador, where he was born, to German parents. And my mom, losing her dad when they were living in Tokyo. It was kind of always these conflicting messages, which really played into my self-worth and self-esteem. It was low.

• 19:46Dax Shepard?

  Have you, from a young age, been what we would just label generically as a romantic? Are you good at whipping up fantasies and living in a fantasy?

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Yes. In the last few years, it's just started to become really clear to me around a lot more brokenness that I had from much younger years. Which makes sense as to why I sort of already liked a boy in kindergarten.

• 20:10Dax Shepard?

  Right, right. Yes. Yes. That's something I feel like we have in common is that I was very early on, very active in my pretend, my imagination, the roles I was playing. And obviously to escape things that I was not enjoying. And prematurely very interested in girls. Lost my virginity at 12 in seventh grade, you know, like always very sexual, always into falling in love. Like for a seventh grade, I was listening to psychedelic furs over and over again and all the new wave music. And I just wanted to be like, run over by a steamroller with love.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I think very much for me, it's been, especially the last few years, has felt a bit like memento, where I'd just gone, well, why would I have made those choices at that point? Like, that makes no sense for a 14-year-old to do that. So there must have been something before that. And then it's kind of like, okay, but I was also doing that at this age, and this age, and this age. And why, why when I was 13, did I have a boyfriend that I broke up with? Because I thought it wasn't real because we didn't fight.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  But it's also, I think, I don't know if this is your experience at all. And I don't know if you have trauma in your background, Monica, but.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  No.

• 21:19Dax Shepard?

  We have some schedule.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Okay. We'll lend you some of ours.

• 21:24Dax Shepard?

  Monica has trauma. Monica was someone trying to hide her identity desperately in a mostly white community of Duluth, Georgia, and.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, hard, I mean, there was hard stuff. I don't, I guess I don't.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  I don't know. I've never thought of it in the terms of trauma before, but there's always hard stuff. Everyone has hard stuff, I think, you know.

• 21:43Dax Shepard?

  But I think having that actively tried to downplay who you are from the get go is very stressful and traumatic, I do, personally, but I'll let you decide.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll get back to you.

• 21:58Dax Shepard?

  So this notion like, oh, this isn't real. We're not even fighting. Is that either modeled on your parents' relationship, which you were observing? Or are you watching movies by which that's the high watermark of being in love? Like, where does the notion even come from?

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Good question. Probably both. I think both. There are a lot of behaviors that I engage in which drive me crazy. And even when I think they like, oh, I've therapies this out. I'm not going to do this again. I'm more mature. And then you catch yourself and you're like, wow, here we are again. I'm doing this thing that I thought I would never fucking do. And I'm doing it. Yay me. But I think the other part of it that comes with that, which is interesting, and I don't know if you've experienced this, which is there's sort of that side of you, which is sort of stays with it, or is tenacious, or doesn't give up, which can drive you crazy in certain situations. It's also the thing that saves you. It's also the thing that's part of your resilience. And so that, you know, you keep

• 22:54Speaker 02

  showing up, you get out of bed, all of those things. And so I think that's where it's one of the things in this last stint with the therapist I've been with for the last five years, that she's really gotten me to see of sort of trying to recognize, you know, all these things that I would beat myself up with, that there can be this side which has helped me survive. And so I need to hold both of them. And as much as I may disdain some aspect of one thing, I have to respect the other too.

• 23:20Dax Shepard?

  I totally agree. I think all your character defects are the opposite side of a coin of some virtue you have. And I'm just always trying to minimize the downside of these attributes and kind of, you know, bolster the good sides of it. Fantasizing and creating fantasies, I think, for me, it's a way to regulate your emotions, because you're not comfortable in whatever emotion you're having currently. And so when you engage that gear Go into Peter Pan land. You know, it's a way to correct your own biochemistry in your brain.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:53Dax Shepard?

  And so it's like a very useful survival thing to do, I think.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  I think underneath everything with some sort of fantasy is actually hope. There's this strange alchemical combination of emotions one has when you have to survive something painful. Whether that's just a breakup or world public humiliation, which is, you know, sort of the, you need a little bit of denial. You've got to have a little bit of resilience, but then there's also the pain that you're feeling. So I do think that sometimes what can happen is that it is a self preservation mode. That you're, some part of you recognizes, I actually can't contain this much pain in this moment. I have to chop it up into little pieces.

• 24:36Dax Shepard?

  Or disassociate or do something.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 24:39Dax Shepard?

  And I also, I want to make one statement because often I'll say this way too late. So generally this would have been a great preamble, which is you and I will talk about things today. And we will talk about our shortcomings and our failures and we will attempt to explain how they came about. Which is in no way to excuse anything that you and I have done that's regrettable. So I just want to be very clear to anyone that's listening, that we're on a path of this is how we got from A to C.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:07Dax Shepard?

  This is in my no means saying we have no culpability in arriving at C.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 25:13Dax Shepard?

  But I just wanted to say that.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  No, no, no, I'm glad you did. I think that's, that's really important. I think what becomes challenging for us in sort of public conversations is that you'll have people using the same language for two different reasons.

• 25:28Dax Shepard?

  A hundred percent.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  And so I think you could have somebody who might come out and say whatever they're admitting to. And they're really trying to help people understand and it's a part of a process of owning their culpability. But you can also have other people.

• 25:42Dax Shepard?

  Bullshit excuse.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 25:44Dax Shepard?

  A hundred percent.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Sort of like PR people.

• 25:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  And I think we're living in times where whether they realize it or not, people feel that they sense that. They don't quite know how to identify it, but. I do think we see that a lot.

• 25:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And in fact, did you happen to catch this episode of This American Life entitled Spine?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Oh, I have the name of it right here. I know the show, but I haven't heard this.

• 26:07Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so the creator.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  It's called Get a Spine.

• 26:10Dax Shepard?

  Get a Spine.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Oh, I thought you said spy.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  I love a good spy book.

• 26:16Dax Shepard?

  We thoroughly recommend everyone listen to it. It's called Get a Spine and the show creator and runner of Community.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Dan Harmon.

• 26:23Dax Shepard?

  Dan Harmon, who was later fired from his position, not for these allegations, but he was fired. He gives an apology to a woman he sexually harassed for like three years. On his podcast, it's like nine minutes long and it's it's seven minutes long. It's incredible in a myriad of ways and it is one to be distinguished as the right way to own your stuff. You know, so anyways, when we think about times where it seems like bullshit and sometimes where it's like a true amends and a true inventory of your behavior, I think we can tell. I like to think we can tell.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  I think so too. I've had this interesting journey and I think, no shit, right? But, but I think also too, as a woman, it's been very interesting to kind of observe. I think that there have been times where I felt, gosh, I still feel regret, right? I mean, I will feel regret every day for the rest of my life. I engage in behavior which hurt a lot of people. So not only my family, other people's families, like chaos for the country. So there's so much there. And then there's also, there are times where I've also felt, do I have to keep saying I'm sorry because I'm a woman?

• 27:36Speaker 02

  You know, that it's sort of that men are kind of left to sort of, they say sorry once, they're like, oh no, I said sorry. I'm done. I don't need to process that. I don't need to think about that more. So.

• 27:46Dax Shepard?

  I have made many apologies in my day. And by the way, I'm making those amends because you're saying like you still feel regret. I, the aim for me has been to not walk around with regret. When I'm giving you my amends, I want to offer you an opportunity to tell me what I can do to make it better. And if I can, I will do that. And if I can't, I just couldn't do it. Just not to say that I'll not continue for the rest of my life to acknowledge that that was bad, but I am putting regret and shame away from my life. Cause I can't live with it. It's too cancerous in me to walk around always feeling shame and regret. So I think we need a path towards absolution or whatever you, you actually get in church when they make, you know, like not just, you know, I admitted it and you're absolved, like it's over now.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:31Dax Shepard?

  So part of me thinks you should not be walking around feeling shame and regret over something that you've apologized for, processed and did all this stuff 20 odd years ago or 30, almost 30 years ago.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  No, no, 20.

• 28:44Dax Shepard?

  20.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  It was 20 last year.

• 28:45Dax Shepard?

  Okay, 20 last year. I get real confused because I always think that the eighties were 20 years ago and they were not. They were 40 years.

• 28:55Dax Shepard?

  But I do, I do want, you know, what I think is helpful is I think people came to know you at a certain age and a certain situation. And I would imagine people never stopped to go, oh, I wonder who the person was before that. So I do want to quickly just say who the person you were before that. So you grew up in Beverly Hills and dad did relocate to Brentwood. And you went to a couple of different high schools? You went to like a prep school?

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I bounced around a lot. I went to a rodeo for kindergarten. Then I went to John Thomas Dye in Bel Air for a few years, then to Hawthorne, then to Beverly, then to Bel Air Prep, which, you know, I always laugh as quintessential LA because it was in West Hollywood, like only in LA. You know, pinky up. And then it became some other name and now it's closed. And

• 29:42Dax Shepard?

  I have to admit, when I read Bel Air Prep, I thought you were up in Bel Air next to the hotel.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  That's the whole point. It's like, oh, look, I went to Bel Air Prep. Take me fancy college.

• 29:54Dax Shepard?

  But you also went to Beverly Hills High, right?

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 29:56Dax Shepard?

  For how many years? Three years?

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Three years. Yeah.

• 29:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay. And this is basically at the time of Beverly Hills, 9021.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  Exactly. I mean, it was a very, I always joke that I kind of never fit in, in LA because like I'm a brunette and my boobs are real. So it's like, I just sort of, yeah.

• 30:12Dax Shepard?

  There was an aesthetic that was prized in this school.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Oh, sure. And I, yeah, let's, let's not forget I was chubby. So like I always struggled with my weight. And so particularly, you know, it's so interesting. I had thought for a really long time that I had gained all this weight. So I struggled with my weight when I was in grade school. But then I sort of got a handle on it. And my freshman year, when my parents separated, I put on 50 pounds. And I'd always for years thought it was connected to my parents getting divorced. But one of the things that I sort of came to understand in the last several years, we didn't have language for it, but I had actually had an unwanted sexual experience when I was 14. So which was right, the summer, right before my parents had separated.

• 30:52Dax Shepard?

  And were you taking the approach, I've heard this, where people who have been sexually assaulted, want to never be sexually assaulted again. So they try to make themselves invisible to men who would want to do that. Could you even be conscious of that?

• 31:08Speaker 02

  I think the psyche is so complex and so fucking clever, right?

• 31:12Dax Shepard?

  It is so clever.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  So I think that there's this element that may have been possible, but on some very deep level. But I was still interested in boys.

• 31:20Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  It could be true.

• 31:21Dax Shepard?

  You can have goals, you can have wants, and you can be taking actions that are in complete opposition to that. And there's no logic. There are moments in the day you feel strong, and there are moments in the day you feel weak, and you're making different plans in those different times. And it can all add up to making zero sense, but all be happening at once.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  And I think it was hard to unpack too, because it was, the person stopped when I said stop. And, you know, it was just like, the consent wasn't a thing then. And I had liked this person. But there were all sorts of things that were inappropriate about it, including like a really big age difference. And, and so for, for many years, I sort of, I was like, well, I was 19 when I lost my virginity and did it, but technically I wasn't.

• 31:59Dax Shepard?

  Right, right.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  And so I had always chalked up my, you know, a lot of the struggles I had in high school to my parents divorce being contentious. But I think it, it probably had a lot more to do with this incident that happened, that I, I didn't even know how to classify it.

• 32:15Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  And I think I made it all okay, because that was the easiest thing to do.

• 32:19Dax Shepard?

  And again, there's, there's really no benefit to Been isolating it. So one thing could have caused it to reach critical mass. Either situation could have

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:28Dax Shepard?

  caused critical mass.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Right. And I had, and I had struggled with my weight before.

• 32:32Dax Shepard?

  Can I ask you this? Cause as a parent of two daughters, I question this a lot because parents in LA are hyper aware of not triggering eating disorders, right?

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Now.

• 32:42Dax Shepard?

  Now, today.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Now. Yeah.

• 32:44Dax Shepard?

  And I do ask myself, it's very well intentioned. And I think they're in general doing the right thing. But at the same time, I'm wondering how much of that was self imposed by what you were seeing around you in your social circle, in your peer group and in school. And how much of it do you believe was maybe imprinted on you from mom and dad?

• 33:03Speaker 02

  I think it was 50 50.

• 33:05Dax Shepard?

  50 50. Okay.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  There were a number of different factors. So one was I developed early. So I don't know why we don't have tests now for young girls and boys to sort of know chemically when they're going into puberty. Why we wait? Because it's like, it starts before, but we sort of don't consider it until they're physical. You can totally fact check this because I have no idea if what I'm saying is right or I'm talking out of my ass. This is my own theory, like that the chemical, you know, the chemical change must start earlier than necessarily the physical change, but we don't deem it puberty until we see the physical change. I had whatever the predisposition for my weight issues, you know, genetically. But then there was also I hit puberty earlier. So I was constantly comparing my body to other girls' bodies

• 33:48Speaker 02

  who had this incredible metabolism or who didn't have boobs yet, or whatever that was. And so I think there were kind of those issues, but I also, I read, you know, teen 17 magazine. You know, I was sort of always reading. Exactly. Always, you know, reading. I think I went on my first diet at maybe 11 or 12.

• 34:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, this is, uh, this is so brutal.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's so hard. It's heartbreaking.

• 34:14Dax Shepard?

  It is.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  It's heartbreaking because it's like, why can't we just have that message of we're okay? Like, we're okay, however we are.

• 34:25Dax Shepard?

  Share expert if you dare. 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.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 34:42Dax 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 to, I like the drive to because it's a hybrid. And I lift, of course, but I also like to do what's called box jumps. Right? I do a lot of jumping onto a little platform and I want a little more flexibility. And boy, do they deliver.

• 35:19Speaker 01

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

• 35:23Dax 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.

• 35:31Speaker 01

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

• 35:40Dax Shepard?

  Stay stronger than the season. Head to no bull project.com all holiday season to shop new deals every week. This episode is supported by Helix.

• 35:51Speaker 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.

• 36:02Dax 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.

• 36:13Speaker 01

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

• 36:30Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Recently.

• 36:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 36:31Speaker 01

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

• 36:35Dax Shepard?

  Temperature was all over the map.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  It was a mess. I need a new one.

• 36:39Dax Shepard?

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

• 36:53Speaker 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.

• 37:00Dax Shepard?

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

• 37:41Dax Shepard?

  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 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 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.

• 38:26Dax Shepard?

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

• 38:48Speaker 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. 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.

• 39:04Dax 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.

• 39:24Speaker 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.

• 39:32Dax Shepard?

  You start feeling it.

• 39:32Speaker 01

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

• 39:40Dax Shepard?

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

• 40:10Speaker 02

  I don't know if you guys saw Anderson Cooper did this documentary a few years ago called Being 13. And he had access to all these 13-year-olds' phones or social behavior. And the one thing that stuck with me was that kids were taking on average 150 pictures for one that they would post.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  And that just broke my fucking heart in terms of like, what's the negative self-talk in the 149 that they didn't choose? And that's like, you know, so I mean, I think we see this kind of, it's a strange thing now where we've got parents who are so much more aware, right? Aware of kind of not body shaming their kids, aware of trying to teach them nutrition and. That are healthier. And at the same time, we have all sorts of other social aspects, which are creating those problems that are making them even worse.

• 41:04Dax Shepard?

  It's multifaceted at the very least. Now, you and I share something that's very rare. I don't know that I've interviewed anyone that we both have associate degrees from Santa Monica College.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 41:17Dax Shepard?

  So, but you ended up transferring or after you graduated, you went to Lewis and Clark in Portland.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Right, in Portland. What I loved about Portland was I think that was where I feel like I found myself as a person. So I don't know if it was a combination of kind of now I, you know, not living at home. I'm in another city slash state and it's a very different environment there. I got a lot from nature in Portland. People are real. There were sort of galleries being open late.

• 41:43Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  So I felt like I found a lot more of myself there.

• 41:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And you majored in psychology.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 41:49Dax Shepard?

  And can I give you my anecdotal stereotype and you can correct me if I'm wrong?

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 41:53Dax Shepard?

  I found most of the folks in psychology were people who like just desperately needed some

• 41:59Speaker 02

  therapy.

• 41:59Dax Shepard?

  Some therapy. They were like really needed to figure out what was going on in their mind.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:04Dax Shepard?

  Like I think I just observed that it seemed like many people that were drawn to that major were like, you know, probably needed.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Fucked up.

• 42:12Dax Shepard?

  I can say in a non pejorative way.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 42:14Dax Shepard?

  Just very interested in their internal life.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  I want to speak for all my friends, you know. Actually, it was probably more in graduate school. So my graduate degree was in social psych and I think I saw, maybe because I was older and now had had all these crazy life experiences, but I saw more experiences in graduate school where I was both learning and self analyzing, you know, of just understanding. It's like, oh, a threatened identity. Oh, okay. I experienced that. Or, you know, power differentials and, you know, so many different kinds of biases and understanding things. I'm sure there was some part of me that was interested in psychology because I was fucked up.

• 42:54Dax Shepard?

  You needed some healing and hopefully you would figure out some method. It sounds interestingly to me, just from what you've told me about your childhood and whatnot, that you are both confident and insecure. Is that?

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Thousand percent.

• 43:06Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  I was always lucky. I mean, I think I went through some periods when I was much younger that I like didn't have friends or I was bullied a little bit, but by and large, I've always been good at friendship.

• 43:17Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  I've had friends, but I think particularly where men were concerned, I was very insecure. Yeah.

• 43:23Dax Shepard?

  Was there a mental trick you did where it was like you were insecure, yet you were somehow outgoing towards men? Or were you afraid to even approach men?

• 43:32Speaker 02

  I think it was probably a strange combination of moments where I would feel old, but then my insecurities would regulate how I responded to reactions or to things that happened.

• 43:46Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh. Did you, you had boyfriends in college, I assume?

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, but yes, but.

• 43:52Dax Shepard?

  You can also just go, I don't understand why you want to know about my boyfriends.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  No, no. No, it's just complicated. I think, I think part of me, the self-conscious part of me is like, wow, I kind of sound like a big loser in this podcast.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  No, my God, no.

• 44:05Dax Shepard?

  Not at all.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Dating is already hard, but.

• 44:07Dax Shepard?

  Well, I can just say personally, I have this body dysmorphic view of my whole being. And yet I was so outwardly confident and I would talk to any girl and I would get them laughing. You know, I did all these things that are really counterintuitive to how I felt.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 44:25Dax Shepard?

  But then my trick was like, oh no, you're not going to ever get anyone with this. So you got to lead with this personality. Like you're going to snag somebody, you got to get out there. And you got to have a bullhorn of charisma or you're not. Now, mind you, I wasn't accurate on either assessment of my personality, how attractive my personality was, or how unattractive my physical was. But it was a weird paradox of feelings versus my behavior.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:47Dax Shepard?

  You know?

• 44:47Speaker 02

  That was how I was and kind of goes back to that, you know, don't stand out, be special. So I think there was, that was kind of always.

• 44:55Dax Shepard?

  The dichotomy of your parents.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Exactly. Always impacting my behavior that way. But I had experiences where the popular boy would like me in high school, but then I also had experiences where somebody basically worse than standing me up kind of left me standing outside a theater because he saw his friend and walked away with his friend and didn't come back. And I was in a heavier phase and, and his mom had later said, oh, well, he was embarrassed to be seen with you, which is just like this.

• 45:26Dax Shepard?

  And just really just later.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm like, I'm a teenager. So I mean, it's it just so that's, you know, but that's kind of that fertile ground for when several years later, I think when I was in DC and getting this kind of attention from somebody who I'm not that girl, that I'm not the home coming queen, I'm not the girl that the guy likes, I'm the friend of the girl that the guy likes. Like, that's me.

• 45:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Yeah, he's the ultimate prom king.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:51Dax Shepard?

  Of the world.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  And, and so I think it was, there were a lot of reactions, behaviors I engaged in because there was a part of me that was like, oh, this is what that girl is supposed to do. Because a lot of times, when you're not that person, especially when you're younger and your brain's not fully developed and haven't had life experiences, you want to be that person.

• 46:10Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm. Sure, sure. Well, again, you have like, you have, you have a broader romantic narrative you're spinning. And then there, for that narrative to work, the characters within the narrative have to act a certain way to hold up the story.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  Right. If you do have self esteem issues, it's not like people walk around with self esteem issues and think, oh, I'm so happy I have these deficiencies, right? Like, you basically, on some level, you're kind of always looking for something to plug that feeling to assuage it.

• 46:42Dax Shepard?

  So when you got this internship, did you have any interest in politics? Or were you like, oh, this is just an amazing adventure? Who wouldn't go take this?

• 46:50Speaker 02

  Well, I was a psychology major. And it was a combination of a number of things that I ended up in the internship. One was, we had a family friend whose grandson had done it the year before. I'd never even heard about it.

• 47:01Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  So he was said, oh, I'll be happy to give you a recommendation. I worked a whole bunch when I was in high school and college. And one of the jobs I had was selling men's neckties. And I had a customer who had worked on the Clinton campaign, who then was now hired. And so he also was somebody who recommended me. And then I wrote an essay about how, as a psychology major, you study the mind of the individual, and the White House is the mind of the country. And so I think that that also had an element. So I really wasn't interested in politics, aside from the kind of cursory level, like, oh, an election is happening.

• 47:38Dax Shepard?

  But there's a monkey thing that happens, right? Like a primate thing, which is that we are aware of status at all times. And that is the pinnacle of status. Like that building is the most status laden

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:51Dax Shepard?

  piece of real estate in America.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  It is. I'm very affected by like the aesthetics of my environment. And so one of the things that I didn't expect to happen was to fall in love with the environment there. It's beautiful. There's just this, it's like smells of eucalyptus.

• 48:07Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 48:07Speaker 02

  And there's just, I'm very woo woo and spiritual. And there's, I didn't know how to identify it at the time, but there's a very special energy there. I mean,

• 48:17Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  it makes sense.

• 48:18Dax Shepard?

  Sure. Some of the finest people to ever live have passed through there.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  Right. And decisions have been made that have affected, you know, millions and millions of people over hundreds of years.

• 48:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  So.

• 48:29Dax Shepard?

  But I'm always looking at it from the outside. Here's what I, the cynical side of my brain is always like this. I, all growing up, I looked at Playboy. I love my grandpa's Playboys. I hid them in my luggage. My mom would find them. She never shamed me, thank God. Playboy Mansion was it. That's Shangri-La. And I desperately wanted to be there. I got invited at some point. And as I was pulling up, I'm like, wow, look at this place. It's amazing. The yard's incredible. And then I was walking up and I was like, I don't think that that doorknob seems to be broken. And then I went inside and I was like, oh, these phones are from 79 and they don't work and no one's washed them. And oh, and half the switches don't work.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  You know? Right.

• 49:04Dax Shepard?

  It was this big like shattering of my illusion. Like the place was just in general disrepair. It was kind of grody in there. And I was like, oh, damn it. And so I, the cynical part of my brain is like, if I get in the White House, am I going to start noticing like, oh, they're not really? But I'm relieved to hear that, no, it is a bit of an Eden.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Right. Yes.

• 49:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I mean, even the fact that it smells like eucalyptus, I can promise you that the mansion did not smell like eucalyptus.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Not gonna, but it smelled like that. Yeah.

• 49:32Dax Shepard?

  No, it smelled like just despair if I could give a emotional.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  I mean, I think there were, you know, there were a lot of dynamics that were going on there that surprised me. It was very interesting for me once I then chipped off to the Pentagon. And one of the things I came to realize was how. The commodity of information was so different between these two parts of the government. And at the White House, it was if I knew something and you didn't, that was that was sort of made me more.

• 49:59Dax Shepard?

  Powerful.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  Exactly. But at the Pentagon, if I know something and you don't, our boss might be up Schitt's Creek.

• 50:05Dax Shepard?

  Oh, so it's a completely different culture.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, very, very different culture and information was valued in different ways.

• 50:12Dax Shepard?

  Was it hard to register that you were there at the White House? I mean, you basically like teleported into someone else's life in a weird way.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  It was, I mean, and really it was supposed to be a pit stop on the way to graduate school. So I wanted to get a PhD in forensic psychology and work for the FBI.

• 50:30Dax Shepard?

  Sure. But I have to imagine there had to be a period that was totally Alice in Wonderland or something.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  I think what was interesting for me, too, is that my first trip to DC had been with my aunt. And I remember we had passed by the old executive office building. And I remember thinking, oh, my gosh, it's so beautiful. Can you imagine going to work every day there?

• 50:52Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  And then Shazam.

• 50:53Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that's a great logistical question. So I imagine it's a pain in the ass to get in and out of the White House. Is it cumbersome to go to work there? Do you have to like allot an extra 45 minutes to get in?

• 51:03Speaker 02

  So as an intern, it's a pain because you have a temporary pass. So every time you come in and out, like you have to show your ID and you get the temporary pink eye intern pass. Once I became an employee and I had, I had a permanent pass. So I had a blue pass, which was.

• 51:18Dax Shepard?

  Coveted.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  That's like, exactly. That's the sort of the all access backstage pass. So I think that's kind of the, that talk about status, that's the ultimate.

• 51:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Symbol in DC.

• 51:28Dax Shepard?

  And if you have that, then you just literally, you park somewhere on the grounds of the White House and then.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  Oh, I didn't have a parking spot. Now either, either my mom dropped me off.

• 51:36Dax Shepard?

  Okay, that's so cute.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  I looked at home.

• 51:39Dax Shepard?

  So your mom relocated to DC because you were going there?

• 51:42Speaker 02

  No, so my mom's side of the family, my grandma was the matriarch and we sort of everybody has to live in the same place.

• 51:49Dax Shepard?

  Okay, right.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  That's just sort of how it is. And so my aunt and her family moved to the East Coast. So then my mom and my brother moved and of course then my grandma moved and then we all had, my grandma lived in the Watergate, my mom lived in the Watergate, my aunt was living in the country, but she had a pied-à-terre there. So it was sort of, we just, and that's happened in New York, it just happens everywhere.

• 52:10Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  That's how we are.

• 52:11Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you were with mom?

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:14Dax Shepard?

  Okay. That's a layer I had not comprehended any of this.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's.

• 52:18Dax Shepard?

  So I read A Vast Conspiracy, is that what it's called?

• 52:21Speaker 02

  Was that Jeffrey Toobin's book?

• 52:23Dax Shepard?

  Yes, it was a book all about the scandal.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:27Dax Shepard?

  Prior to that, I think I just had a very cursory understanding of what all happened, other than having been alive and lived it real time. I'm a big lefty Democrat. I loved Clinton. I was one of those people going like, this is insane. You can impeach someone over sexual stuff like what? So I was so entrenched in that camp. I think that's probably where my thinking stopped on all of it. I also very much real time thought that what was happening to you was horrendous.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 52:55Dax Shepard?

  Yes. And so, you know, I was, I was probably predisposed because I was a liberal Democrat to be on the side of you guys, right? Yet I am, I like to think objective enough, if I put myself in the mindset of being on the right and already hating this guy and think he's done all this other shady shit. So I can recognize why people were mad about it. I can recognize why they feel betrayed by that and that a leader shouldn't do that and all those things. I can totally recognize that. But I guess what I was unaware of and what at least this book suggests is there was a conspiracy. There was a conspiracy to get him guilty of perjury. You have this woman, Linda Tripp. It's almost crazy to me that you actually know her

• 53:38Dax Shepard?

  and that all really happened to you. Like, I have heard those tapes, but sitting here with you as a human being, I, it's hard for me to even comprehend that.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, talk about sort of like being exposed to your home tours. Have your phone calls recorded without your permission.

• 53:54Dax Shepard?

  My God.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  It's just like, oh, no, I couldn't have said that. See a transcript. It's like, then you hear yourself, wow, I fucking said that about somebody I would get in front of a bus for and I'm a catty bitch. And it just, it is seriously, I mean.

• 54:08Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 54:10Dax Shepard?

  I, at that time, even, I don't know, how old were you at the time?

• 54:14Speaker 02

  So I was 22 when the relationship started and 24 when the investigation started.

• 54:20Dax Shepard?

  Who among us can identify with having a friend that you confide in?

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:25Dax Shepard?

  Everyone needs that. It is essential for our wellbeing. You have your public life and what we'll talk about on this podcast, and then you have your very personal stuff where you need to air out all the embarrassing stuff, the shameful stuff.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  Frontstage, backstage.

• 54:35Dax Shepard?

  Yes. So we all have had best friends, and anyone can imagine that our best friend, in fact, wasn't a best friend, and that our best friend was intending to write a book about us, and that our best friend was recording us and leading us, and by all definitions, entrapping us. I like to think everyone could identify that as just a really horrendous act from one person. That, again, I bet if I was benevolent enough, I bet she has her own host of things she's overcoming. I mean, it's interesting that in these investigations, you will, basically, it's cool to commit a crime in order to expose another crime. And in fact, there's no crime really with what you guys did, but if we can get you to

• 55:17Dax Shepard?

  lie about it, now we have an actual crime. So you're taking one thing that starts as not illegal, having an affair, sure, shameful, all those things are true, maybe there's moral imperatives, but legally, not an issue. No one's going to jail for an affair, extramarital affair. Now, recording someone in Maryland without their permission is a crime. Entrapment is a crime. There are all these crimes that basically got committed, and I still don't understand legally why she could commit a crime, and then the Justice Department goes to her and says, "Well, we're not going to prosecute you for doing this illegal thing, as long as we can now get all those transcripts." And now we can use those transcripts to...

• 55:53Speaker 02

  But that's the whole justice system in general. I mean, there's, I think that's a real issue I have, the hypocrisy of the system. So I mean, stepping outside of whatever happened to me.

• 56:02Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  It's just, how can we say, "This behavior is wrong and should be punished, but that same behavior should not be punished if you're going to help us get someone else?"

• 56:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. The fact that the interrogator is allowed to blatantly lie. I just talked to your friend Mike. He said, "You stand there." Like, how the fuck is that legal?

• 56:18Speaker 02

  Exactly. Or plea bargains. I mean, it's just a whole...

• 56:21Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Now you're like, "Okay, well, this person's saying, 'I committed the murder,' so now I have to do something to get out of this. I've now got to choose a bad option to get out of this." So, yeah, it's crazy to me that things can work that way.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  I participated in this docu-series that came out last year.

• 56:37Dax Shepard?

  On the ENI?

• 56:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I watched an episode of it today and it was really, really good.

• 56:41Speaker 02

  Thanks. It was really hard to do, so.

• 56:43Dax Shepard?

  I can imagine.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  I'm just kind of referencing that because they think that there was a very broad scope of people from that timeframe who were interviewed and that the goal of the series was to really map out all of these different perspectives and narratives that were unfolding real time for us there that we didn't have the perspective to see back, to see kind of all the places where stories were, people's narratives were being braided together that we didn't realize or, you know, those things, so.

• 57:10Dax Shepard?

  But I don't, I don't know that everyone is aware of the fact, contextually, that there was a Paula Jones case going.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  Right, right. Starts with a sexual harassment case and.

• 57:21Dax Shepard?

  Paula Jones against Bill Clinton.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:24Dax Shepard?

  And the goal was to get, to subpoena people, to get them in there so that they could then ask questions that would potentially put him in a position to lie about other stuff.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  I believe so. And I think that there were a number of different motives that were going on for various people, I think, who were operating on that side. Some, exactly as you just said, some who were kind of looking at a bigger picture of how do we basically set a perjury trap? And for almost everybody, I mean, many of us think, I would never lie under oath, but we also live in this country where we have these puritanical views about sex and almost, you know, asking someone about their sex life under oath is almost always a perjury trap, you know what I mean?

• 58:02Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  It's like Jerry Seinfeld made this great joke about during that time where he said, you know, everybody lies about sex. If people didn't lie about sex, no one would have sex.

• 58:13Dax Shepard?

  A hundred percent.

• 58:14Speaker 02

  I think, I think sometimes people don't remember, I didn't choose to step forward to talk about this. So I, in fact, got into trouble because I signed a false affidavit.

• 58:24Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 58:24Speaker 02

  So trying to deny that. There was a layer where people didn't understand the level of detail that came out. That was also not my choice to share that. I had to share that legally. I was legally asked and in fact, had to give even more detail because of certain ways that other people chose to testify.

• 58:46Dax Shepard?

  Because everyone's trying to nail down what sexual relations means. So they then feel justified in hearing every single detail of every single thing that ever happened? Is that my understanding right?

• 58:58Speaker 02

  The reality is, is that there was not truth told, no matter what the definition of sexual relations was.

• 59:04Dax Shepard?

  Right, right.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  So that whole thing of like, oh, does this count as a, you know, does it or doesn't it? It doesn't matter, given everything else that happened?

• 59:12Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  I've said before, I never understood why or how this became about oral sex because that wasn't just what happened. I don't want to get into a lot of the details. I think that was a big part of shame that I ended up having to carry for a long time as a young woman, being labeled as somebody who was engaged in this servicing relationship.

• 59:31Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  That wasn't mutual.

• 59:34Dax Shepard?

  There's so many things happening to you at once. One of them is like the legal issues. One of them is an impeachment trial. And then one of them, I would imagine on an emotional level is you, to your point, you didn't meet someone in an alley, hook up and bail. You were in a emotional relationship with someone for a while that is now being reduced to this.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  Right, is now being examined through a lens that, and nobody, I mean, like, you know, maybe when you're first start dating someone, you're like, oh, we've done it this many times. Or, you know, it's such a strange way to, not only is oneself to try to analyze something or unpack it, but even more bizarre to have other people talking about something which is normally so private.

• 1:00:13Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God. I just can't, no, no. Even as someone who is very vocally out loud about my sexuality and stuff, and I would say kind of hypersexual, I still don't want someone to account for everything, every move I made.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Or to take it from you. That's your agency.

• 1:00:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, and that's part of consent in a, in a, in a very different way is sort of, you know, what we choose to share about ourselves and what we choose to keep private and with whom we share those aspects of ourselves.

• 1:00:42Dax Shepard?

  Now, the one thing that I'm deeply interested in about the ride you were on, I just can't imagine the highs and lows, just hourly and daily, and the stress on your body, and the cortisol, and the adrenaline, and all those things. As much as like you were trying to prevent the worst thing from happening, was there any relief in it finally just being like, fuck it, great, it's all over, I'm the devil, it's over, I don't have to... Like, when you have a secret, and you're trying to keep a secret.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Dax Shepard?

  It's very stressful.

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  No, this was not a secret that I ever, you know, yes, I may have confided in some of my friends, but this was not something I ever would have talked about publicly.

• 1:01:25Dax Shepard?

  Of course not. I don't think anyone in the world thinks... The many accusations that have been leveled at you, I don't think I've ever at least heard someone suggest that you were trying to become famous or get attention. Oh, they have?

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:41Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  Trying to get attention, want to make money.

• 1:01:44Dax Shepard?

  I think what's interesting is, I think that entire situation triggered something that no one's really going to talk about, which is, you know, I don't know what the data was that year, but let's say it was probably 50% of all people in marriages are being cheated on one way or another. So you become the face for anyone

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:02:01Dax Shepard?

  who has had a spouse stray.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:02:04Dax Shepard?

  And you now become an embodiment of that hurt and pain and betrayal and all that stuff.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I call myself a social canvas. I think the thing is, is that this story triggered so many archetypes for us. I think it was not just one narrative. I think there were a lot. So there was privileged upbringing, my weight, I was, you know, torn apart from my looks. So, I mean, the slut shaming, so whether, you know, the affair, the fallen woman. So, I mean, they're just, we were kind of living in times, I think, where objectivity was just not really present. I mean, just, I think along the lines, it's interesting to me, people will point out to me now, well, how could people have thought you were dumb? You had an internship in the White House.

• 1:02:48Dax Shepard?

  Right, right.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  Well, they did. I was called a stupid bimbo. I mean, I have like serious trauma from when I was in grad school, I couldn't get up and present in front of a class. You know, you were asking me initially about how I judge people when people ask me a question. When I was in grad school, I was so, it's such imposter syndrome that anytime somebody asked me a question, I thought that they were actually trying to trick me or to see, did I know the answer?

• 1:03:12Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  You know, I was afraid to get help writing an essay because I thought it would expose me that I should have known something.

• 1:03:19Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  You know, so.

• 1:03:20Dax Shepard?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  You know, this was also, it was a really challenging situation, which I don't think we'd even be able to have nowadays. First of all, the cycle's so much shorter, right? So this idea of there kind of being a year-long story, but also because of legal reasons, I couldn't speak publicly.

• 1:03:36Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  So I was very one-dimensional for people. There was, I was so young, there was nothing else to hang an identity for me on. What had I been before I worked in the White House? A student, a college student. You know what I mean? Kid, yeah. Again, not to excuse my poor choices, but there were also a lot of people who were invested in making sure that the president didn't lose his job. And that meant that there were narratives that had to be spun.

• 1:04:03Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  You know, that there were stories and a lot of those people didn't know me. And then there were a lot of people who knew me well, who had no problem engaging in that kind of behavior.

• 1:04:13Dax Shepard?

  So you lived the scarlet letter, you know, a prophetical book about how we need to deal with issues of judgment and shaming and all that stuff. And it was a heightened book to make a point. And then what your real life experience was way beyond what that book did. So overnight, obviously, you're on TV all the time. You're, as I've heard you say before, maybe on John Oliver, even if you want to escape and watch a Tonight Show, you're gonna then see jokes about yourself endlessly. There was really no escape at all from that. I wonder during that period, is your family the core, the only place you can go and feel remotely like yourself?

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, my family was all I had, so I couldn't talk to most of my friends until after they had testified. So, I mean, I don't think I would have survived without my family, although we weren't, I wasn't allowed to talk to my brother.

• 1:05:13Dax Shepard?

  You weren't?

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  No, for a long time, so.

• 1:05:15Dax Shepard?

  What was the reasoning behind that?

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  To protect him legally.

• 1:05:18Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so that he wouldn't be called into.

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:21Speaker 02

  And he was a sophomore in college.

• 1:05:23Dax Shepard?

  He was.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and that was rough for him, I assume?

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Well, we talked earlier, when you just got in here, it was like, there's your own guilt, and then there's the guilt of having affected the other people in your life who you love so much and kind of gotten them sucked into the whole thing.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  Right, I mean, it's, it's one of the reasons I'm so unbelievably grateful for all the changes that have happened the last few years is that it's, people stop my, doctors stop my dad in the hall and say something positive, or someone will have said something positive to Mike at work, and, you know, that alongside kind of whatever history might be told in a class, teachers show my TED Talk. So, I mean, it's pretty, you know, it's just unbelievably meaningful for me.

• 1:06:09Dax Shepard?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  And, you know, and I've got a niece and nephew whom I adore, and they also have my last name.

• 1:06:15Dax Shepard?

  Right, one of the most profound things I heard you say was, I think it was on John Oliver, he said, you know, at any point did you decide to change your name?

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:25Dax Shepard?

  And your response was, did Bill Clinton have to change his name?

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:28Dax Shepard?

  That, because when he asked that question, I was like, yeah.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Dax Shepard?

  Go by whatever fucking Schlongschlonger.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's exactly the name I would have chosen.

• 1:06:38Dax Shepard?

  Monica Schlongschlonger?

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Monica Schlongschlong, yeah.

• 1:06:42Dax Shepard?

  But I was, I was on that train of thought.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:44Dax Shepard?

  Your answer exposed to me how my first line of thinking will be one that was pretty much raised in a patriarchy, that that's what I, I don't even consider that, like, of course, Bill Clinton didn't have to change his name.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  But also too, I think there's, you know, there were other layers of it, like more logistical complications, like particularly at the time, if I had gone to the courthouse and tried to sign legal papers, changing my name, that would have ended up in the press. So then I would have been like Prince, you know, you know, Sally Smith, formerly known as Monica Lewinsky, you know, or so then what, where would I go? And, and people would, I didn't even understand how would that work? So, so I run into somebody I went to grade school with, and I say, well, I don't go by that name anymore.

• 1:07:30Dax Shepard?

  But it shows a ton of resolve. I really think the easier way out would have been to attempt that.

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think I, the story was so big and it was such a huge change of my life and my new normal was, there was such a massive chasm between what my old normal and my new normal were, that I think that there, there just wasn't room for that. I just had to kind of keep trying to move forward and keep trying to get back onto a developmental path that my therapist at the time, that was always her goal was sort of, how do we get you back on a developmental path of a 25 year old?

• 1:08:07Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  You know, so what does that look like? And, you know, how am I going to support myself and, you know, and find purpose and meaning in the world and try to find a relationship, which I think was, you know, also something that I tried at the time. And I now look back on that period, I'm like, of course I couldn't have been in a serious relationship. Like I dated people, I was involved, I fell in love, I cared about people. But, and I, and I actually think it was hard for some people who got to know me and cared about me to sort of reconcile the person they got to know with how the rest of the world saw me. You know, so that was also hard. And, and at younger ages and maybe careers not fully developed to step into all that. It's just, I, I wouldn't have.

• 1:08:53Dax Shepard?

  If you dare.

• 1:08:57Dax 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.

• 1:09:42Dax 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/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.

• 1:10:04Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:10:49Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:11:08Dax 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.

• 1:11:22Speaker 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.

• 1:11:43Dax 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.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

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

• 1:12:00Dax Shepard?

  Okay, tell me more.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

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

• 1:12:13Dax 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.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

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

• 1:12:41Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:13:24Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:13:48Dax Shepard?

  It's not as if what you were being shamed for in public was having had an extramarital affair. You were being called a slut.

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Dax Shepard?

  Which you were not.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:13:59Dax Shepard?

  Uh, which, yeah. And by the way, what is a slut?

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  And also, yeah, right.

• 1:14:03Dax Shepard?

  Totally agree. It's fine to have tons of sex with people. No one should be called a slut.

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:14:08Dax Shepard?

  But you were being called a slut, which no one should be called.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  Well, because, I mean, it was pejorative. So whatever, you know, slut and tart and bimbo and horror.

• 1:14:16Dax Shepard?

  And stupid. You're being called stupid.

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:14:18Dax Shepard?

  And you're being body shamed.

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:14:20Dax Shepard?

  They deployed all of the weaponry that is against women. It's really just horrendously misogynist.

• 1:14:26Speaker 02

  Dehumanized.

• 1:14:27Dax Shepard?

  Yes. No one is talking about a man's weight. In general, they're not doing that. They're not calling men sluts.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  You know, I think, correct. All of the women in the story experienced that in different ways. I think that we, as a society, we look at women in the public eye in a very different way than we do.

• 1:14:47Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  Men.

• 1:14:48Dax Shepard?

  Now, when you go through all of that, I think the odds of you coming through on the other sides and being someone who could be in an interview or someone that has continued to be pursue business, get a graduate degree, almost impossible to really imagine. I can't imagine, like, the fact that you have survived all this is just incredibly admirable. I think it's so rare. I doubt many of us have the strength to go through what you did.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  I know it sounds kind of cliched, but I really do think none of us knows how strong we are until we're tested.

• 1:15:17Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:15:17Speaker 02

  I do think that. I mean, I'm grateful I've been able to survive. There have been many, many moments where I didn't think I could make it through.

• 1:15:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:25Speaker 02

  And it could be the strangest, you know, I think of it as that it's a small moment of grace.

• 1:15:31Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  That, you know, makes you go right instead of left. The phone rings, somebody who doesn't even know you're in pain and you don't, not even, wouldn't even necessarily say, but that connection.

• 1:15:41Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:15:42Dax Shepard?

  What were, what were you doing at that time to comfort yourself?

• 1:15:47Speaker 02

  Oh, during the investigation, eating for sure.

• 1:15:50Dax Shepard?

  And then all the, all the like press that followed, because it was, it didn't go away in two seconds either.

• 1:15:56Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:15:56Dax Shepard?

  Right. It was, it stayed for years, right? It was years of jokes.

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  Well, I think the, you know, it wasn't officially over, it started January of 98. It wasn't kind of quote unquote officially over until he was acquitted, he was impeached by the House, but then acquitted by the Senate. And that was, I think, February of 1999. So it was a little over a year there, but was something that stayed in kind of part of the, would you say political zeitgeist?

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  Kind of the, well, kind of the zeitgeist in general.

• 1:16:27Dax Shepard?

  Just broad zeitgeist.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  The cultural zeitgeist. Yes. And so, you know, and then when I went to graduate school, I had really mistakenly and naively thought, oh, I'm, I'm going to move to England and I'm going to LSE and I'm now going to be a graduate student and I'm leaving, you know, political Monica Lewinsky back in the States.

• 1:16:41Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  And I actually was having to take on another identity. I wasn't getting rid of an identity. And, and ultimately, I think for me, you know, it was like I came out of graduate school and then, and then was actually almost the darkest period, even darker. There was an adrenaline that coursed through the entire year of 98. But it was when I came out of graduate school and I couldn't get a job and I, and I couldn't in purpose and support myself, that's really when it was a darker time for me.

• 1:17:11Dax Shepard?

  Right. Like you're going to have no future.

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  Right. And that was, and I, I can't, that was when I came into my anger, but at the same time, you know, I see now, I'm not sure I would choose it again, but I see now what that period did benefit me was I ended up having the time to do the deep self-healing, you know, the kind of evolution.

• 1:17:32Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  And, you know, there was a lot of spiritual work.

• 1:17:35Dax Shepard?

  You could have maybe just kept on running if, had you found employment immediately.

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  Right. I think ultimately, you know, the really big lesson for me, many lessons, but one of them was around, you know, not running away from my past, that it was about integrating my past. Like I'm very fond of saying, I don't believe in sort of moving on, I believe in moving forward. And that there, to me, there's a real distinction between those two, that there's like an element of moving on feels like, oh, you're supposed to, you know, put whatever happened to you in the past and, and almost with a layer of shame, cut off, kind of from whatever that behavior was, you know, and it's one of the things I really admire about you and how you've talked about your life experiences, Dax, is like, is that you, you are so comfortable, or seemingly so comfortable with all of the decisions you made based on the pain you were

• 1:18:25Speaker 02

  in, and your ability to transcend that shame, I think has helped a lot of people.

• 1:18:31Dax Shepard?

  Well, thank you so much. And I only got that from the 12-step program I work. Without that, I don't know what I would do because, yeah, it's, uh, living with shame, and this is ultimately what I, what I want to talk to you about. This is what I want to finish with. You've worked a bunch with cyberbullying. There couldn't be someone who, I don't know how you'd quantify it, but if you're not at number one, you're tied for number one for the biggest public shaming of all time. I mean, it's really-

• 1:18:54Speaker 02

  I think on the internet too, like in the nascent days of the internet, just that experience of, you know, a lot of people have experienced that now. I think there's, you know, the statistics are like one in 10 or something.

• 1:19:06Dax Shepard?

  I think as a culture, a society, a country, we've got to evolve past the way we voraciously devour other people, that we get so much pleasure out of exposing people's, quote, unacceptable behavior, of course, by their own definition of what's acceptable and not acceptable. But this feeding frenzy that we all enjoy, the pretending as if, I mean, I suppose there's some, and you have a master's in psychology, maybe you could help me, I assume there's some kind of catharsis in watching someone else go up in flames for something that you, you know, you yourself have done.

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  I think there, you know, there's so many different things that are at play in our online world. You know, there's the online disinhibition effect. So where people, because they're hiding behind a screen or behind anonymity, find it easier to take on different personas. We saw that, the beginning of that with Remember Second Life, you know?

• 1:20:02Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, so I mean, that was really, that was kind of the beginning, I think. Of this idea of, you know, and avatars of sort of, okay, let me both be this person, but also be someone else, be some different curated version of who I want to be.

• 1:20:18Dax Shepard?

  For sure.

• 1:20:18Speaker 02

  Right? Some projected.

• 1:20:20Dax Shepard?

  The advertisement for me.

• 1:20:22Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. And which in and of itself has a layer of shame connected to it, right? Because there's that idea of whoever I am really am is not good enough.

• 1:20:32Dax Shepard?

  For sure.

• 1:20:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I think, you know, that's at play. I think we have people constantly, I mean, just the chasm between our real lives and curated selves online is very challenging. And I think that's where there's so much mental health issues coming in. I had this young boy say to me last week, which was, he'd written in an essay, and I've just been turning it over in my mind ever since I read it, where he was talking about actually with physical violence, that when you don't have an adult to say to you, everything's going to be okay, you're alone in your pain and your experience. And you may lash out at someone else doing the exact same thing for the very reason so that you're not alone.

• 1:21:14Dax Shepard?

  Oh, sure, sure.

• 1:21:15Speaker 02

  Which was amazing to me. Like, I had never really thought about it from that way. I mean, I believe, okay, hurt people hurt people, you know, then all those things.

• 1:21:22Dax Shepard?

  And misery loves company. It truly does.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  I certainly don't want to excuse any kind of online harassment or bullying behavior, but that in some ways, it's a coping mechanism for some people.

• 1:21:31Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:21:31Speaker 02

  You know, and that's where we kind of have to step back. There is no three-pronged, easy solution. This is like the human condition.

• 1:21:37Dax Shepard?

  But what has really happened in your and my lifetime is that what happened to you, there were only four news outlets that people watched. There was X amount of newspapers in the country. So you took up so much space that the person who made a weird comment on their trip to Africa, they would have never been put in the paper to get shamed. So for a long period, most people weren't getting the kind of firsthand public shaming, right? There wasn't really an outlet for it.

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:22:07Dax Shepard?

  But now there is an outlet for almost anyone to get publicly shamed. Because there's infinite number of web addresses, basically, and there's so. Social media and there's a trillion news networks. So now many, many people can be publicly shamed.

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  And I think the business model is different with so many more outlets. There are more people in this industry who are looking to make an income.

• 1:22:32Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  Make money. I mean, that's clickbait, right? So I mean, that's the whole thing is, you know, is around the idea of the, the model of money that gets made from these things. And that shame and public humiliation are these currencies in our society.

• 1:22:44Dax Shepard?

  Yes, they're very tasty for people.

• 1:22:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And it's, and I do think there's, I have, I have a friend who has this really interesting theory around because we now don't stay in the same village, you know, from where we were born and know the same people for our entire lives. That well-known people have kind of become the local, that was sort of the local gossip that we would. So these are the familiar people that we now, instead of staying in our village, that we take them with us wherever we go.

• 1:23:11Dax Shepard?

  Yes, the purpose gossip provided was when we lived in hundred-member groups, they were very egalitarian. Because one man getting power, if he started abusing that power as the chief, three other men could overthrow him at any time. In our early days, that chief didn't have a police force. It didn't, it didn't have a military.

• 1:23:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:23:35Dax Shepard?

  So at all times, that person could be overthrown pretty easily. And the mechanism by which everyone would evaluate whether that person should be overthrown was gossip. That's exactly how you build an alliance to make sure someone's not being tyrannical. But then you get apparatuses like military, state police. And now we're not going to just gossip our way into a new president. It doesn't really work that way anymore, you know? But, but, but it is hardwired into us. No one should feel guilty that they enjoy gossip. We're designed to gossip so we can regulate these little groups. I think it's helpful to first recognize like, oh yeah, I'm inclined to gossip the same way I'm inclined to eat 44 Snickers bars. I'm hardwired to load up on sugar when that fruit's in season.

• 1:24:18Dax Shepard?

  And I just have to know that about my body so that I can take some, some actions.

• 1:24:23Speaker 02

  Like, I understand what you're saying. I just do think that we can evolve away from gossip.

• 1:24:29Dax Shepard?

  Oh, me too. I think the goal should be a hundred percent

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:32Dax Shepard?

  to evolve away from it.

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:24:34Dax Shepard?

  Because I think we can see in many, many ways that it's ultimately destructive. And it's no longer servicing the purpose that it was.

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  And if you, if you step back and you like, take a completely different view and think about it energetically. It's like, words have a consequence. You know, they have a consequence whether you are hearing them or not. That sense of, I mean, we have energy fields where we're affected by what people think about us, what they say about us. I mean, that for me, I think a big part of my healing was I spent many years having to heal my field. You know, so to sort of, having gone overnight from being known by a very small group of people relative to the rest of the world. And then all of a sudden have all this negative intention and energy coming at me.

• 1:25:17Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  You know, that, that's an effect, but.

• 1:25:19Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Someone who has a deep desire to eat cake.

• 1:25:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:25:23Dax Shepard?

  should not feel like a failure and shame themselves. They were designed to eat cake.

• 1:25:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:25:29Dax Shepard?

  That's the point I'm making. I'm not even judgmental of someone, the desire to gossip. I think it's ingrained in us, but I think we should have as an objective and a goal to transcend that.

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  There's probably a technical term for this, which I can't remember or don't know. But I think that what, probably one of the most important ways forward is around trying to, rather than trying to penalize a lot of the negative behavior, which I think can be helpful, is also at the same time trying to bring in more of the positive. Right? So trying to drown that out in some ways. So educating people on how to be an upstander online, like how important that is.

• 1:26:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So talk about upstanders because they do this at my daughter's school and I think it's the coolest thing.

• 1:26:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. No, it's amazing. To be an upstander means to sort of intervene in a situation. And you can intervene while you're seeing something, like while you're seeing a bullying situation unfold or an online harassment unfurl. You can intervene that way, but you can also intervene after the fact, too. That's a really important part of being an upstander, which is just recognizing, reaching out to the person who's been the target. Of that behavior, basically allowing somebody to know that someone witnessed what happened.

• 1:26:38Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:26:39Speaker 02

  To whether that is a supportive emoji, or it's saying to someone, I saw what happened, or saying, do you want to come sit with me, or want to go to the movies? Some way of, if it's somebody you know, if it's a stranger, just a positive comment. You know, that there are all these ways that we can actually interrupt the cycles.

• 1:26:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:58Speaker 02

  That are happening in the bullying cycle.

• 1:27:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:00Speaker 02

  That are important for people to remember. Also, reporting, so with online situations, reporting any bullying or online harassment that you see. Is also, these are all ways of kind of being a good digital citizen. And they have a huge impact, particularly, I think, you know, from the work that I do, the worst kinds of things that happen are when people are suffering in silence alone. And the faster somebody knows that they're not invisible, right? There's this irony of this kind of behavior, that you are a target of something, and yet you actually feel really invisible.

• 1:27:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:34Speaker 02

  So the more I think that you can encourage people to sort of step up and engage in these sorts of behaviors, we're starting to shift the balance of the other kind of behavior that's happening, which, which we should address in how we're dealing with these issues, too.

• 1:27:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I also wish, like, when I was younger, it had been explained to me that the power of this group is much, much greater than the power of the bully. Because when I was a kid, now, mind you, I have been a bully. I would, I would never have thought that about myself, but as I've gotten older and I play back the frequency with which I was in fights and stuff, there has to be several kids that think I'm a bully. And I'm very regretful of that and sorry for that. Also recognize, I was in a household where someone was kicking my mom's ass, and my brother was five years older than me, and he was kicking my ass. And then I went to this playground where I could have power. And I enjoyed that.

• 1:28:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:28:24Dax Shepard?

  I liked that.

• 1:28:25Speaker 02

  And there are some who talk about people who engage, especially younger people who engage in bullying behavior. Some people look at models that are saying it actually is their kids trying different power structures on.

• 1:28:37Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:28:38Speaker 02

  There are so many different things. I think, I think one of the things that we have trouble with around this topic is That like usual, we're always trying to simplify things.

• 1:28:45Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes, good and evil.

• 1:28:47Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. And people engage in bullying behavior for myriad reasons.

• 1:28:51Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:28:51Speaker 02

  And people become targets for myriad reasons. And there are myriad ways to handle different situations. There's no one correct way for every single person who's either a bully or a target. I have witnessed and I have experienced the enormous shifts that can happen when people step into compassion.

• 1:29:10Dax Shepard?

  Yes, and it's it's most hard when it's with someone whose behavior you just personally hate to begin with.

• 1:29:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:29:17Dax Shepard?

  But when I was a kid, and there were certainly many times I was bullied, and I and more than that, I observed lots of bullying.

• 1:29:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:29:23Dax Shepard?

  And for us in the herd watching it, it was like if I said something, I'd be the next target of that bully. I'm assuming I feel alone in the fact that I don't like what's happening to this kid. I'm assuming the rest of the people in this crowd are enjoying this and they like this. So if I stand up, I'm now going to be the victim of the bully. I'll be the next victim. If I feel like if I had been educated that, no, no, 99% of you don't want this.

• 1:29:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:29:44Dax Shepard?

  You don't want a tyrannical leader on the playground. And collectively, the power of a group is so powerful.

• 1:29:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:29:51Dax Shepard?

  To all of us humans. If we get excluded from our group, we change our behavior in general, I think.

• 1:29:57Speaker 02

  I I agree. I think it's really important to point out that intervening directly is not always right for every person in every situation, just like it's not always right, maybe right in some circumstances, but to say to somebody, you have to stand up to a bully. Like it's just, again, it's sort of that nuanced scenario.

• 1:30:15Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:30:15Speaker 02

  Because there are people who are equipped to do that socially and emotionally, and there are people who aren't. And some people can be endangered by doing those sorts of things, which is why I think with upstanding behavior, it's really important for people to recognize you don't have to be the person who stands up to the bully. You can still be effective. I mean, that's for me. For me, my focus is the target's experience. You know, how do we get that person from feeling shame and alone and sadness to feeling more okay fastest?

• 1:30:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:49Speaker 02

  And that doesn't matter if you're by 15, 50, you know. Social media is it's I mean, it's really come to kind of map our underlying cultural beliefs.

• 1:30:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:59Speaker 02

  You know, so I mean, it's a lot of people. Um, I think there was like this thing I read recently. Sixty or seventy percent of people think the internet is and online harassment is kind of responsible for this corrosion of civility. It's hard because the truth is, we have to look at ourselves. I mean, I look at social media a lot and a lot of behavior, just kind of like road rage, which I have. So I mean, it's just sort of that I behave in the car in ways that I would not behave outside the car.

• 1:31:26Dax Shepard?

  Right, totally.

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  And but I think that that happens online. We see that sort of not regulated behavior. You know, and so much of it is because we have lost sight of the fact we don't have those. You know, I'm sitting in a room with both of you. I can read your facial expressions. I can feel your emotions. You know, and there, there are always, I believe there are always so many different languages going on, and many which we don't even know we're using.

• 1:31:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  And communicating ways that we're communicating. And so when it's online, you don't have those same cues.

• 1:31:59Dax Shepard?

  Right, right. You can't see the hurt that you've just caused.

• 1:32:03Speaker 02

  And so people tend to devolve into the worst versions of themselves, but there are ways to not do that.

• 1:32:09Dax Shepard?

  You know, I'm always most interested in tackling problems where the river starts, not, not, not as it feeds into the ocean. So, you know, I think there is a much bigger global question, which why are there so many people sitting in their rooms on a computer that have no control in their life and feel like they need to overpower someone else to get a sense of control? Like, you know, what is the societal bigger problem that we're not addressing in children that they would even, you know, land them there?

• 1:32:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:32:39Dax Shepard?

  And that's a pretty hard one to tackle.

• 1:32:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think it, I think a big thread of that is connection. There's kind of this vicious cycle that's happened with online behavior around. You know, we sort of do that thing of we compare our insides to other people's outsides. I'm on Instagram privately, Twitter publicly, and constantly, constantly feeling like everyone else is happier, thinner, wealthier.

• 1:33:03Speaker 02

  More in love, all of those things.

• 1:33:05Dax Shepard?

  Eating better meals.

• 1:33:06Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. Doing better Instagram.

• 1:33:08Dax Shepard?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:33:09Speaker 02

  Not forget that, right? Like, you know, the meta. We also find connection there. Young people, I think it's over 40%, find connection, more connection from social media, but then they also feel disconnected in ways.

• 1:33:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, lonelier than ever.

• 1:33:23Speaker 02

  I think what happens is it's kind of this, it's this weird thing where at the same time that we're thirsty for more connection, the ways we're finding connection are also trying to tell us that we're less than. So it becomes, it's a very complicated back and forth struggle.

• 1:33:39Dax Shepard?

  Well, and we've had experts on here that have explained that oxytocin is not released unless you're looking at the person's face. Like, all these chemical things that are associated with connection.

• 1:33:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:33:49Dax Shepard?

  Actually can't exist on a virtual connection. They're just, they're not happening. And so they're ultimately feeling lonely, even though they're distracted enough to not feel lonely.

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  But they're also getting dopamine hits when the, like, tweets come in and things, likes come in and stuff. So it is a weird balance of.

• 1:34:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's great that we're seeing some of the social media companies start, finally start to address some of these issues. I have a big fear that social media is going to end up like the cable networks. That if we don't find a way to actually coexist in these social spaces with, you know, very different polarized viewpoints, we will splinter off. And then we'll end up siloed in the same way of Fox News and all the other stations. And so, you know, I think we're being given an opportunity. I'm not saying it is great, and I know how challenging it is for people who are targets of these things, but we are being given an opportunity online to try to find ways

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  to bridge the divide of perspective.

• 1:34:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. The thing I most admire about you, and I'm so impressed by, is that you have taken, one of, again, the most horrific scarlet letterings of all time. And I have to imagine part of you has felt very fearful of ever even talking about it, in fear of breathing oxygen into something that you just want to be over with in your life. But I think you're willing. This to do it in your bravery isn't for me and it's not for any of those people that was arguing, but it's for all these people who have gone through this and are seeing that it didn't break somebody. I can't imagine a stronger example of someone persevering than you. It's it's incredible

• 1:35:32Dax Shepard?

  the fact that you still pursued your education and that you started a business and that you started a philanthropic endeavor. I mean, all these things, it's rare to see someone not be broken by that. And I think it's

• 1:35:45Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm broken.

• 1:35:45Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:35:47Speaker 02

  Let's be really clear. I'm still very broken.

• 1:35:49Dax Shepard?

  Okay, well, functionally broken.

• 1:35:52Speaker 02

  Right, exactly.

• 1:35:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:53Speaker 02

  Not shattered to pieces.

• 1:35:55Dax Shepard?

  Not shattered to pieces. And I just think the power of you being honest about your story is so valuable. I hope you can take on some of the the credit you deserve. I hope I hope you're proud of yourself.

• 1:36:07Speaker 02

  I think I feel gratitude more than pride. Maybe maybe that's down the road, but it's I was just talking to my mom this morning, just about, I think, every once in a while, I kind of shocked into remembering what my life was like before things started to change a few years ago. And I never could have imagined giving a purpose to my past in in the way that I have, or using that pain in service of hoping that other people feel less alone.

• 1:36:34Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:36:35Speaker 02

  You know, I think that's really what it's about. You probably know this. It's a privilege. It's a privilege to have a life where you're able to help other people feel less alone because of the experiences you're sharing.

• 1:36:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you must have people reach out to you all the time and share with you how you've helped them, I hope.

• 1:36:54Speaker 02

  I mean, that's that's kind of, you know, that's, look, we'd like to shit all over social media, but that's also kind of one of the beauties of social media, too, is that we do get to hear from people. We do get to connect in ways that we wouldn't otherwise.

• 1:37:08Dax Shepard?

  You can find your tribe in a way you never could.

• 1:37:10Speaker 02

  Absolutely, sure. I mean, there's so, I mean, and think about there are a lot of political movements. The Women's March wouldn't wouldn't have been able to happen that fast.

• 1:37:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:18Speaker 02

  You know, hashtag me to 2.0, you know, I mean, Tarana Burke started it 10 years ago, but it, you know, social media and changed that into something different.

• 1:37:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:28Speaker 02

  It became something became a louder voice and coalesced faster because of it. So.

• 1:37:34Dax Shepard?

  Well, like all things, it's not binary. It's not good or bad.

• 1:37:37Speaker 02

  It's like everything, right? But of course, that's the world we live in.

• 1:37:40Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:37:41Speaker 02

  Lacks nuance and context and...

• 1:37:44Dax Shepard?

  And the inclination is to like, get rid of something or embrace it and shut the fuck up about it. But really, no, there's like a whole process where we can refine things.

• 1:37:52Speaker 02

  And I also think that there are, you know, hopefully, the platforms will come to places where they'll be instituting mechanisms to help sort of alleviate those kinds of scenarios, too.

• 1:38:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's really hard to imagine, but all of this, as you pointed out earlier, is driven by economic models. So everyone feels insignificant. We live in a country of 300 million people. You feel like you're insignificant, but if you click on the shitty article and if you watch the video...

• 1:38:22Speaker 02

  We control the algorithm. We need in charge of that algorithm.

• 1:38:25Dax Shepard?

  It's hard to imagine, but we will steer the ship.

• 1:38:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Did you see Jaren, I always get his last name wrong, Jaren Lanier, Lanier? Lanier. He gave a really interesting TED Talk last year. And he's been involved in the internet and he made this argument. We sort of went right when we should have gone left at the point of, should the internet have been subscription-based or ad-based? And so, you know, I mean, you can also see that there, of course, in there, the financial hierarchy issues if it were to have been subscription-based. But I think that, you know, a lot of where we are is because we have, without realizing it, made these agreements of our clicking, our data, that these are the new commodities.

• 1:39:11Speaker 02

  He argues that it's not too late to turn back. And I think we should really be looking and exercising all options.

• 1:39:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, there's a lot of different people right now in the different political races that are suggesting or pointing out that, no, no, this is kind of a public utility and we probably should be treating it as such and it should be available to everyone. It should be democratized and we shouldn't rely on Nabisco to bring it to us. We should just pony up as a society probably and have the version we want.

• 1:39:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:39:41Dax Shepard?

  And kind of see the validity of that argument. So what's next for you?

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  So October is Bullying Prevention Month. So every year for the last two years, and we will be doing this year, BBDO New York and I have done a campaign for Bullying Prevention Month, which we launch usually in the first few days of October.

• 1:39:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:39:59Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:40:00Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm really delighted that we became Twitter friends, I think, is for how it started.

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:04Dax Shepard?

  And again, I've been a longtime admirer of you and happy to see you still thriving in the way you are.

• 1:40:10Speaker 01

  And it's incredibly impressive and I'm in awe of it. So I'm glad I got to talk to you. Yeah.

• 1:40:15Dax Shepard?

  All right.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 1:40:17Dax Shepard?

  And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate, Monica Padman.

• 1:40:26Dax Shepard?

  Monica, Monica, I think I want your number. Monica. La la da di do da da, Monica.

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  Oh my God. You had a lot of energy for that one.

• 1:40:40Dax Shepard?

  I exploded because we're coming hot off of some taco order.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  You know what I'm realizing?

• 1:40:45Dax Shepard?

  What?

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  That song was not about me, was it?

• 1:40:49Dax Shepard?

  No, it was about you guys.

• 1:40:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:50Dax Shepard?

  Because this is the Monica's episode.

• 1:40:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. This was a great episode.

• 1:40:55Dax Shepard?

  You loved it?

• 1:40:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:56Dax Shepard?

  Me too.

• 1:40:57Speaker 01

  I feel very grateful that she trusted us to share her story.

• 1:41:02Dax Shepard?

  Me too, me too. I've always, always liked her.

• 1:41:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we've gotten to know her.

• 1:41:07Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:41:08Speaker 01

  We've gotten to know her through this process and she's so lovely.

• 1:41:11Dax Shepard?

  She really is a sweet, sweet human being.

• 1:41:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I like her a lot.

• 1:41:15Speaker 01

  Me too, me too. And strong.

• 1:41:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, fucking resilient. Never in my wildest dreams as a child, watching that whole thing unfold, did I think, oh, maybe one day she'll sit on a couch across from me and we can really connect about this.

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  Talk about it, I know.

• 1:41:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:41:32Dax Shepard?

  It's a wild, wild world.

• 1:41:34Speaker 01

  I wonder what the percentages of people who then felt a lot of judgment, if they still do.

• 1:41:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  So much has changed since then.

• 1:41:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Well, I think so much of the reaction was embroiled in whatever people's fears are.

• 1:41:55Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:41:55Dax Shepard?

  So like if you were a partner and you had a big fear that your husband would run around on you.

• 1:42:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:04Dax Shepard?

  It's so interesting too about cheating, right? People always get mad at the other person. I mean, they probably get mad at both people.

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:11Dax Shepard?

  But it's interesting, like, I've never understood, get, you know, well, no, I do understand. In high school, my girlfriend cheated on me and I went to the guy's house and tried to fight him.

• 1:42:18Speaker 01

  You did?

• 1:42:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And I lost my vision as I was trying to punch him through the car window and I missed completely. And his dad intervened. It was a whole circus.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:42:27Dax Shepard?

  Anywho, I do, I do remember blaming the person, but it is ironic because, you know, you're not in a relationship with the other person.

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  I know. It's so complicated.

• 1:42:37Dax Shepard?

  But anyways, I do think that she may have, for some percentage of the population, represented their biggest fear.

• 1:42:46Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 1:42:46Dax Shepard?

  Some young, attractive woman would

• 1:42:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:49Dax Shepard?

  lead their husband astray.

• 1:42:51Speaker 01

  It is true. It's, it's often, not always, of course, but it's often the man who cheats on his wife. And yeah, the woman, the woman who had an affair with him is the one that generally gets the blame.

• 1:43:05Dax Shepard?

  The other woman.

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  The other woman. I try not to say that because it's so cliche.

• 1:43:08Dax Shepard?

  Connotations.

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. And like, that person gets ostracized and that person, and, and often the husband and wife end up reconciling.

• 1:43:21Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  So the husband ends up really not feeling the weight of anything and that other person ends up feeling everything. And that to me is extremely unfair.

• 1:43:32Dax Shepard?

  The husband or, or the wife, in whatever case, whoever, everyone cheats.

• 1:43:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that's true.

• 1:43:38Dax Shepard?

  I think it's pretty, um, I think the numbers are even.

• 1:43:41Speaker 01

  You think?

• 1:43:41Dax Shepard?

  Esther Perel suggests that, yeah.

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  That they're even?

• 1:43:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Because who the, who are they fucking?

• 1:43:46Speaker 01

  Single people.

• 1:43:47Dax Shepard?

  Well, no, you've got a stagnant, same percentage of women are married as men. Cause they're marrying each other. The, the statistics are the same.

• 1:43:55Speaker 01

  Well, no, that men are cheating more than women, I would say. Probably.

• 1:44:00Dax Shepard?

  I don't think so.

• 1:44:01Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:44:02Dax Shepard?

  No, I think just as many married women are having affairs as married men.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  Rob, add it to the list.

• 1:44:07Dax Shepard?

  Add it to the list. I think that's true.

• 1:44:13Dax Shepard?

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• 1:44:43Speaker 03

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• 1:45:22Speaker 03

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• 1:45:46Dax Shepard?

  You know, as you says, it's something that's been universally reviled and universally practiced.

• 1:45:50Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:45:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think, I don't think it's a male female thing. I think historically, there's, men were in the vast majority of positions of power were men, so you're aware of all of the men's famous indiscretions. But maybe if the, there were way more famous, powerful women, you'd be aware of those indiscretions.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  Maybe. I.

• 1:46:15Dax Shepard?

  Maybe you're right, though, because there are, I'm sure there are, like, what is cheating? So sure, I bet men are going to massage parlors a lot more than women to get relieved. I don't think women maybe are shopping for orgasms as readily as married men.

• 1:46:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, I'm just look at stereotypical married couples. I would say stereotypically, don't get mad at me, everyone.

• 1:46:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  Um, the man wants more sex than the woman often, not always.

• 1:46:45Dax Shepard?

  But I think, uh,

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  But often.

• 1:46:47Dax Shepard?

  Well, here's what I think it is. I think both people, well, I think the woman wants the same amount of sex, but with a different person. We all want novelty. That's what it is.

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:46:57Dax Shepard?

  Everyone's desiring novelty. And I don't think it's male or female. Like, we want novelty. Now, are men acting on it more? Conventionally, traditionally, were they out in the world where they could, they had unobserved time that they could probably cheat? Like, was the system, did it cater more to that? Probably. If you're a woman at home raising kids.

• 1:47:17Speaker 01

  Of course. Yes.

• 1:47:18Dax Shepard?

  I don't know who you're meeting, but, but I do think, I just think, I think people have affairs.

• 1:47:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, they do.

• 1:47:23Dax Shepard?

  I think men and women both have affairs.

• 1:47:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, they do.

• 1:47:27Dax Shepard?

  But anyway, you're right. The, whoever cheated can be forgiven and reincorporated in their life. And the other person, the other woman, the other man is always occupies that. There's no redemption for them.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:47:40Dax Shepard?

  Doesn't feel equal.

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  It doesn't feel fair, no.

• 1:47:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was, it was enormously unfair. That's obvious. Like, he was, um, you know, kept his job, kept

• 1:47:53Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:47:54Dax Shepard?

  His position in the world. But by the way, I want to be clear. I don't think that he should have, now, he's done, he's alleged to have done other things that I have no defense of. But let's just say this was an extramarital affair. I don't think the solution would be, he should have been shamed the way she was.

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  No, I don't either.

• 1:48:13Dax Shepard?

  I think she should have gotten the treatment heated. Like, I don't think either party needs to be sent to Siberia.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  I agree. And, but what, I think the part of this conversation that doesn't get talked about very much, which She touched on a little bit, which is, you know, she was like, part of what was so awful is this public presentation that it was a servicing relationship. And she was like, it was a mutual relationship.

• 1:48:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  And I don't think that part gets talked about where it's like, she's in a relationship with the person. She, on top of this public thing, there's, I'm sure, a private

• 1:48:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  heartbreak.

• 1:48:52Dax Shepard?

  Of course. Yeah.

• 1:48:53Speaker 01

  She's not allowed to feel.

• 1:48:55Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  And that is not fair.

• 1:48:57Dax Shepard?

  Right. Yeah. I agree.

• 1:48:59Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 1:49:00Dax Shepard?

  Whole thing is a bummer.

• 1:49:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:49:03Dax Shepard?

  And a lot of people go like, oh, you, you guys feel so bad for two people who cheated. But I do.

• 1:49:09Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:49:09Dax Shepard?

  I feel bad when people make mistakes.

• 1:49:11Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:49:11Dax Shepard?

  And I've, I've made a ton of mistakes. I continue to make mistakes. I'll make more.

• 1:49:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:16Dax Shepard?

  And I, I don't think I've met anyone that's not making mistakes. I've just met people who are better at hiding their mistakes.

• 1:49:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:25Speaker 01

  Okay, yes. So she was trying to find the verbiage for this quote. She said, the tallest poppy gets cut off first. But it's called tall poppy syndrome.

• 1:49:36Dax Shepard?

  Oh, tall poppy syndrome.

• 1:49:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:49:38Dax Shepard?

  I'm a tall poppy.

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  You are a tall poppy.

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  It describes aspects of a culture where people of high status are resented, attacked, cut down, strung up, or criticized because they've been classified as superior to their peers.

• 1:49:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. We have the weirdest, I think about it all the time. You know, I saw someone's Twitter handle was like, abolish billionaires or something. And I was like, it is the weirdest thing that we all want this thing. We want, in this country, we want to become wealthy and successful. And yet, we, and I did, resent people who have done that. And for many justified reasons and many unjustified reasons. It's just this very weird thing. It's like, we defend this system so, you know, passionately.

• 1:50:28Dax Shepard?

  And yet we're resentful of the people that have done that. It's all complicated.

• 1:50:33Speaker 01

  Yes, I think we love, I mean, a lot of people have said this, but like, yeah, we'd love to see people rise.

• 1:50:39Dax Shepard?

  We like the rise.

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  And fall too.

• 1:50:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:42Speaker 01

  I think, because again, like you just said, everyone makes mistakes and so it feels relatable. But also I think if you're not at that level, you feel like, oh, it's actually not that good up there. Like, there's something about it that feels comforting to you that you're not there. Because maybe when you get to that level, it's like all shady and bad.

• 1:51:05Dax Shepard?

  Requires some kind of amoralness.

• 1:51:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:08Dax Shepard?

  I think it's more, why is that person there and not me? I deserve that. They don't. So when they are found guilty of some indiscretion, it confirms that they didn't deserve it.

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  I know. I think that's a negative outlook on it, which it could very well be true. But I think it's a deeper psychological thing happening.

• 1:51:28Dax Shepard?

  Which is very interesting. We have an entire system and then no one really likes the outcome of the system.

• 1:51:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:34Dax Shepard?

  But I went down, of course, because now I'm on the other side of it and I got really defensive when I saw this person. I'm not a billionaire. On Twitter, attacking that. Here, I'm someone who has given millions of dollars to the government, millions of dollars to education, to all these services, to building bridges. So my contribution to the whole system that we're fighting for, be it Medicare or any other thing, requires people to generate a bunch of money so that they can give a bunch of it to the government. So it's a weird proposition to be resentful at the people who are giving a tremendous amount of money to this system that you want to see more services of. So when I see like abolish billionaires, it's like, well, how about abolish some things you don't like about billionaires?

• 1:52:16Dax Shepard?

  But if someone is, is some human being figures out how to make a mousetrap, Apple. And it generates a trillion dollars and half of that goes to the system that's Why is that antithetical to what you want?

• 1:52:29Speaker 01

  Currently, our system, some of the richest people pay no taxes.

• 1:52:33Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's a big issue. Right. So let's just, I'm just saying, let's be specific about it. But I'm saying when someone creates the iPhone and it sells several hundred million.

• 1:52:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:43Dax Shepard?

  And then that puts a half, you know, trillion dollars into the fund that builds roads and educates kids. You know, be careful that that's what you want to get rid of. Is some source of profound wealth that does get redistributed. Now, you could say, I want to see the distribution of billionaires be at 70%. That's fine.

• 1:53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:03Dax Shepard?

  But just the very notion of abolish billionaires is just a little weird when what we need is money for all these services.

• 1:53:11Speaker 01

  Right. But I wonder if this is like, is this like lunch four times a week with your boss? Like, have you seen just abolish billionaires, period, and then nothing more?

• 1:53:20Dax Shepard?

  This is one woman who was mad at me that I said, preached to Ellen for saying, be kind to everyone.

• 1:53:26Speaker 01

  Okay, right. Again, so one person is saying that.

• 1:53:30Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm only talking to that person, but I think there's a good amount of people.

• 1:53:34Speaker 01

  I mean, the side of the argument I have heard has not been abolish billionaires. It's been, they need to pay for.

• 1:53:42Dax Shepard?

  They need to pay a high percentage.

• 1:53:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:44Dax Shepard?

  Cause they don't need that much money.

• 1:53:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:48Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, you said you don't know what the number is, but probably 50% of people were getting cheated on that year. That year being 1998, but there's no staff for that.

• 1:53:57Dax Shepard?

  There's not. No.

• 1:53:58Speaker 01

  I mean, there can't be.

• 1:53:59Dax Shepard?

  It's a wild guess.

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. There just can't be.

• 1:54:02Dax Shepard?

  There can't be.

• 1:54:02Speaker 01

  No. Cyberbullying, she said, one in 10. According to cyberbullying statistics from the I-Save Foundation, over half of adolescents and teens have been bullied online and about the same number have engaged in cyberbullying. More than one in three young people have experienced cyber threats online. Over 25% of adolescents and teens have been bullied repeatedly through cell phones or the internet. Well, over half of young people do not tell their parents when cyberbullying occurs.

• 1:54:30Dax Shepard?

  Hmm. Well, I had a weird feeling watching Joker. I really want you to watch it.

• 1:54:34Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:54:35Dax Shepard?

  So we can really unpack it.

• 1:54:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:38Dax Shepard?

  But one weird, I always have these weird thoughts that are like super contrary to what I traditionally think.

• 1:54:43Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:54:44Dax Shepard?

  And one of them was, so this is set in the seventies in New York. And he is, you know, he's like any one of these shooters or any number of people we now know, we have a ton of in this society.

• 1:54:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:57Dax Shepard?

  And I was looking at life in the seventies on that bus, you know, he's riding a bus around and stuff and he just, there's nothing to distract him from his kind of mania. And I was thinking like, conventionally, I think, I hate video games. What a waste of time.

• 1:55:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:13Dax Shepard?

  Well, let's just get rid of video games, right? But I was like, oh, there are a bunch of people who are angst ridden about this system that excludes them. And I was like, are these things maybe make our world safer? Like, if you can give some angst ridden, somebody a joystick and then blow people away for four hours on a video game, does that keep them from acting? Or does that satiate? Or is that an outlet for their frustration? Is this device that constantly keeps you engaged, which I think of as negative sometimes? Is this positive? Is, do most terrible things stem from boredom? Is maybe?

• 1:55:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:55:50Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 1:55:51Speaker 01

  I totally don't think so.

• 1:55:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:55:54Speaker 01

  Well, one, because there's been only a rise in these types of behaviors and especially these mass shootings and stuff since.

• 1:56:03Dax Shepard?

  Well, definitely mass shootings.

• 1:56:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:04Dax Shepard?

  But the murder rate is precipitously down. It's been falling since the seventies.

• 1:56:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I'm talking like gang related. That's what that stuff is.

• 1:56:14Dax Shepard?

  And it's guy, a guy finds out his girlfriend fucked another dude and he good drives over and shoots him and her. I don't, I mean, just murder overall is down.

• 1:56:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. All these types of unconventional shootings and depression rates are up. I mean, all these things are, everything's gotten worse since the invention of the phones and video games and all of those things. So, no, I don't think it distracts.

• 1:56:40Dax Shepard?

  It's an outlet for people? Cause there was a very conventional argument against pornography that it would lead to more rape and stuff. And then there were many people who had studies that said, no, porn is an outlet and they actually will jerk off watching the porn. And then it kind of, their likelihood of going out and being a predator goes down because they have an outlet for it. So I'm not, I'm not planning to flag on either side of that debate. But I guess what occurred to me is you, you could make an argument that this stuff. satiates people's angst.

• 1:57:08Speaker 01

  But I don't think you can make the argument.

• 1:57:10Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you can't.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  Because all this stuff has gotten worse angst wise. If you're talking about people who feel entitled and act out because of it. All that stuff's gotten way worse.

• 1:57:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:57:24Speaker 01

  And depression just has gotten way worse.

• 1:57:26Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:57:27Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:57:29Dax Shepard?

  Isolation.

• 1:57:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, okay, so we talked about gossip a little bit. There's an interesting NPR article about gossip. So gossip can help solidify personal relationships and encourage cooperation. Children engage in this form of gossip by age five. One provocative view comes from anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who argues that gossip is the human analog of social grooming, which is widely practiced by our primate cousins. Through gossip, we can create and maintain social bonds more efficiently, allowing us to form groups of larger sizes. These suggestions about the benefits of gossip for cooperation correspond to a special subset of gossip, what's recently been called pro-social gossip.

• 1:58:15Speaker 01

  Pro-social gossip involves sharing negative judgments about a third party, but where the shared information could protect the recipient from antisocial behavior or exploitation. Thus, gossiping about who cheats at cards or who's likely to shirk at a responsibility would qualify as pro-social gossip. Researchers Jan Engelmann, Esther Herman, and Michael Tomasello of the Max Planck Planck. Max.

• 1:58:41Dax Shepard?

  That word requires a different voice.

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  Planck. I can't, is it plank? It wouldn't be plank. P L A N C K. Plank.

• 1:58:54Dax Shepard?

  Plank.

• 1:58:55Speaker 01

  Plank.

• 1:58:55Dax Shepard?

  I don't know. That's the wrong guy, but yeah, that's.

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  Institute. Plank.

• 1:59:00Dax Shepard?

  Plank.

• 1:59:00Speaker 01

  Institute. For evolutionary anthropology, studied pro-social gossip in both three and five-year-olds. To create an opportunity for such gossip, they had the children play a game. Children who participated in the study first played with two puppets, one of which was more generous than the other. A second child then came in to play the game with just one of the two puppets, and the researchers observed whether the first child gossiped about the puppets, offering a social evaluation that could help the second child decide which puppet to choose. For example, if a child said, "You should play with the green puppet because the yellow puppet is stingy and doesn't share enough tokens", that would be classified as pro-social gossip. The researchers found that most children in both age groups offered some sort of guidance about which puppet to choose,

• 1:59:45Speaker 01

  but the three-year-olds very rarely offered an evaluation to go along with it. For instance, they might recommend one puppet over the other, but they wouldn't go on to explain that it was because that puppet was generous or because the other puppet cheated. The five-year-olds, by contrast, offered such evaluations about half the time. They went beyond a mere recommendation to a social judgment to the kind of claim that might make or break an individual's reputation. So that's why they got the three to five number.

• 2:00:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:13Dax Shepard?

  And the one I think I brought up, right, was the explanation I heard was like, keep it a meritocracy.

• 2:00:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:00:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, which seems beneficial too.

• 2:00:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's some positives.

• 2:00:22Dax Shepard?

  Look, I think, for me, it's very easy to answer. There's some gossip I feel hung over from, and there's some I don't.

• 2:00:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:00:29Dax Shepard?

  It's really that. Like, yeah, if I'm warning somebody, like, don't tell so-and-so a secret, they're not good at keeping secrets. I feel totally fine about that. I'm saying something negative about the person, but whatever. But if I'm just like pointing out someone's shirt was stupid.

• 2:00:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:44Dax Shepard?

  I feel shitty.

• 2:00:45Speaker 01

  Why? Yeah, I think for me, it's about purpose. Like, what is the purpose of talking about this? Is the purpose of talking about it to dissect it, to understand more, to...

• 2:00:56Dax Shepard?

  Well, it is to connect a lot too, right? Because if you and I meet a, whatever, some stranger and we're interacting, and then afterwards I go, "Did you realize that guy said herpes a lot?" And you go, "Yes, I noticed it." There's like some bonding between us that we both observe this thing. And we're not crazy in our thoughts, or isolated in our thoughts. We're like confirmed that we're on the right path.

• 2:01:18Speaker 01

  I think that's what a lot of gossip is, but generally that kind of gossip is the kind I don't love. I mean, that example is so benign, but like, the shirt is bad, is that?

• 2:01:30Dax Shepard?

  Yes, it's

• 2:01:31Speaker 01

  It's the same

• 2:01:32Dax Shepard?

  Totally to make someone lower.

• 2:01:34Speaker 01

  It is, or it's the connection thing. Like, did you notice, like, his shirt was all wrinkled up? Like, why is his shirt so wrinkly?

• 2:01:41Dax Shepard?

  Is he not on an iron?

• 2:01:43Speaker 01

  God, do you think he doesn't have any money?

• 2:01:45Dax Shepard?

  Cause guys.

• 2:01:46Speaker 01

  Even iron is

• 2:01:48Dax Shepard?

  He's a dirtbag.

• 2:01:49Speaker 01

  He smells bad, too. They are seeking connection, but I

• 2:01:54Dax Shepard?

  Don't want to connect on that level. But by the way, a lot of times when people initiate some gossip with me about one of those things, I think for the most part, I generally don't think about those things. I don't care about those.

• 2:02:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:02:07Dax Shepard?

  So when they try to connect with me, they don't get a connection out of it.

• 2:02:10Speaker 01

  I agree with that now in my adult life, but I think I probably spent many, many, many conversations just pretending like I noticed that so I could feel inside.

• 2:02:21Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:02:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so

• 2:02:23Dax Shepard?

  Well, I do it to you all the time.

• 2:02:24Speaker 01

  No, you don't.

• 2:02:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we're watching TV and I'm like, God, have you noticed how big this guy's tongue is?

• 2:02:28Speaker 01

  I know, but I, I don't think you do that. I mean, you do do that about tongues. I don't think you talk poorly about people for like, no reason.

• 2:02:38Dax Shepard?

  For sport.

• 2:02:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:39Dax Shepard?

  For entertainment.

• 2:02:40Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:02:40Dax Shepard?

  No. Well, I love you.

• 2:02:43Speaker 01

  That's all I love.

• 2:02:44Dax Shepard?

  That's all. I'll gossip with you about things that could save you, okay? And if we notice someone says herpes indiscriminately.

• 2:02:52Speaker 01

  You can talk about it.

• 2:02:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. You know how many times he said herpes?

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  But then we'd be like, sure, he said herpes a lot. And then there's

• 2:02:59Dax Shepard?

  Should we offer him a screening?

• 2:03:00Speaker 01

  A follow up conversation of like, oh my God, he's so confident to be doing that. And why is he so like, wondering why is that to me is fine. That's just exploring, but like, just being like, ew.

• 2:03:14Dax Shepard?

  He had flakes in his eyebrows.

• 2:03:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, ew.

• 2:03:17Dax Shepard?

  That's what people say about me sometimes.

• 2:03:18Speaker 01

  No one says that. No one says that.

• 2:03:21Dax Shepard?

  All right, I love you. And I loved Monica Lewinsky.

• 2:03:24Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 2:03:25Dax Shepard?

  I don't know that I've met a Monica that I didn't, I didn't like a lot.

• 2:03:28Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 2:03:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:29Speaker 01

  Even though we found out you hate this, but the name the name means alone and also advice giver. Both of those things I think apply to myself. You disagree.

• 2:03:40Dax Shepard?

  I disagree.

• 2:03:41Speaker 01

  Talk about it on the next fact.

• 2:03:42Dax Shepard?

  Okay, love you.