Rerelease: Dax's Mom (Laura Labo)

On today's episode, we revisit Dax's mom's episode from July 2nd, 2018. Laura Labo (Dax's Mom) is an American entrepreneur, businesswoman and Dax's #1 love of his life. In this special episode, Laura sits down with the Armchair Expert to discuss her life story, the mistakes that made her and the struggle of raising a family as a single mother. Dax describes the many reasons he loves her and Laura talks about the recent death of her husband. The two of them travel down memory lane in a delightful and endearing lovefest in which they talk about Laura's bouts with depression, the impetus for Dax's love addiction and the exact degree of ugliness to which Dax was as a baby. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Mrs. Moose? Brown Mouse.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Brown Mouse.

• 0:07Dax Shepard?

  Brown Mouse. You probably caught that in the fact check Pantone color.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 0:12Dax Shepard?

  Okay. And Wabi Wop.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 0:14Dax Shepard?

  The one and only Wabi Wop. So what we're doing in these, in our one week off is we thought we would, we all got to pick our favorite, two of our favorite episodes. And so the episode you're gonna hear today is my sweet, sweet mom, Laura LeBeau. Laura Louise LeBeau, L L L.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Triple L.

• 0:32Dax Shepard?

  Triple L, L cubed. Um, yeah, I think this is, um,

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Why'd you pick it?

• 0:39Dax Shepard?

  Well, because I love my mom so much. And beyond that, um, this is probably number one episode I hear about from people when I bump into them on the streets. I think it's, um, it was uniquely powerful for a lot of women who've been through a lot. Yeah. So please enjoy my sweet mom Laura LeBeau. We get support from Quince.

• 1:02Speaker 01

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

• 1:21Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:37Speaker 01

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

• 1:48Dax 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.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 1:56Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:00Speaker 01

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

• 2:22Dax 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.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  What?

• 2:54Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I need to talk about something that doesn't get enough respect. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese. This is not a casual burger. This is a crafted burger. We're talking 100% fresh beef, cooked right when you order it. No artificial flavors, no fillers, no preservatives, just beef doing what beef is supposed to do. And here's a detail I love. There's a cowbell sound in the kitchen. When somebody orders a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a cowbell goes off and the grill master throws a fresh patty down. That's like having your own entrance music at McDonald's. I want a cowbell for everything in life. The onions are hand topped by someone who just knows the right amount. Two slices of cheese laid out in a star pattern, so every single bite gets

• 3:33Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 3:45Speaker 01

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

• 3:56Dax Shepard?

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

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not surprised.

• 4:02Dax 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.

• 4:37Dax Shepard?

  Welcome to the Armchair Expert. I am your resident expert, Dax Shepard. My beautiful sidekick is across from me.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 4:44Dax Shepard?

  Hi, Monica Padman. Today is, um,

• 4:49Speaker 01

  special day.

• 4:50Dax Shepard?

  It's very, very special. A lot of people have asked for this and it makes me happy that they wanted to hear this because my number one love of my life is on today.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:58Dax Shepard?

  My mom, Laura LeBeau. Oh my God, I just welled up even saying,

• 5:02Speaker 01

  You love her so much.

• 5:03Dax Shepard?

  I love her so much, it hurts. And, um, I just want to say, you're gonna, you're gonna hear all the reasons I love her. She's so honest and open and brave, you know, 100% of that I get from her. Uh, she talks about some really gnarly stuff that she's gone through and, um, she does it without shame. She does it with compassion towards herself. And I don't know that I've ever really heard someone tell their story as honestly as she does here today.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:33Dax Shepard?

  And it was, um, very emotional and wonderful for me and I hope all of you guys get as much out of it.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and just disclaimer, there's a portion, a very small portion with that, um, Dax has to go potty.

• 5:46Dax Shepard?

  Peep, peep.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, uh, but we kept rolling and, and, and I was talking to your mom and we, I decided to leave it in because she says a couple of pretty profound things during that.

• 5:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So don't think when I, like you hear me get, I haven't had a heart attack or anything. I haven't left on a stretcher.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Because if you stop talking, people are gonna get concerned because

• 6:05Dax Shepard?

  That's all I do.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  They're used to hearing your voice.

• 6:07Dax Shepard?

  Ever-present, droning, non-stop voice. So yeah, my sweet, lovely mother. Enjoy. My mom, the love of my life, Laura Louise LeBeau, who's here. Uh, upon popular demand, I think a lot of folks have, uh, well, not I think, I've, I've gotten a million tweets asking, uh, for me to talk to you, which I would have done anyways, but I just want you to know that you're highly desired by Armcherry's.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Because he talks about you so much.

• 6:37Dax Shepard?

  Well, she listens. You listen, Mom, right?

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 6:39Dax Shepard?

  Just recently, you kind of.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Binged.

• 6:43Dax Shepard?

  You binge, right?

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Yes. But I had been listening here and there, but I had a real good binge on the drive up.

• 6:49Dax Shepard?

  You're busy. I'm not expecting you to listen to it. But yeah, you had a, you had a 16 hour drive from Oregon to LA two weeks ago.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  I think to say that I'm not your number one fan would be an outright lie.

• 6:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay. But how many did you plow through in that ride?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Oh, quite a few. I listened for two days straight and I drove.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 7:11Dax Shepard?

  That's a lot.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got through a lot of them and I really, really enjoy. The thing I like most about your podcast is that I learned about these people in a much different way than their public persona. Like, I get to hear their vulnerabilities and the things they've overcome and their fears. And I don't know, it just seems like so much more interesting, like they're real people.

• 7:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, because when I, when I watch TV, I'm like, oh, that guy's a millionaire. He's got it made. He's, he wakes up and starts cheering, right? Must feel awesome.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Exactly. All his problems are solved.

• 7:45Dax Shepard?

  In what, what, knowing that I was going to record with you, I did have a little bit of, um, sense memory of the last time I thought one of the love of my lives would be a really easy interview, which was Kristen. So I have prepared for 50% shot of this going up in smoke.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Well, I would have thought you would have hired someone to take me to Michael's yesterday to head that off at the pass.

• 8:07Dax Shepard?

  Okay, yeah. Is there any grievances you have? Am I keeping you from doing anything in LA that you?

• 8:12Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 8:13Dax Shepard?

  You were born in 1951. You have, you have five brothers.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 8:18Dax Shepard?

  And you're, you are the third eldest, right?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:21Dax Shepard?

  Uncle Larry, Uncle Tom.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  And then.

• 8:25Dax Shepard?

  Then you, then Uncle Alger, then Uncle Joel, then Uncle Robbie.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And as a little sister to two boys.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Infatuated with them.

• 8:40Dax Shepard?

  You were.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, they were so, who wouldn't have been, they were so good to me.

• 8:43Dax Shepard?

  They were.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I could tell you a thousand stories, not just the ones where they used me as a goalie in the basement when they played hockey, and I had a zillion pads on and stuff, and they just kept shooting pucks at me. But the better stories are, you know, my brothers both had paper routes, which was common for boys in the 50s.

• 9:03Dax Shepard?

  In Michigan, by the way, this is all in Michigan.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, this is all in.

• 9:06Dax Shepard?

  Livonia, Michigan.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Livonia, Michigan, 29583 McIntyre. And in the wintertime, my brother Larry would put me on the sled with all his papers, and he would pull me, the whole neighborhood, I'm talking this neighborhood was probably, I'm gonna guess, a thousand little after the war three-bedroom brick houses.

• 9:26Dax Shepard?

  Bungalows.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, little bungalows. And he would pull me on the sled and deliver all his papers. And then there was a guy, rain or shine, even in the winter, would come around with his truck that sold cotton candy and caramel corn and stuff. And he would always say to me, when the truck would be approaching, "Do you want some caramel corn?" And he would reach in his pocket and buy me a caramel corn, and I would sit on the sled, and he would pull me. And then my brother Tom also had a paper route, and he would put me on the, think about this, my brother Tom, even though he's four years older than me, people in the neighborhood thought we were twins because I was the same size as him.

• 10:02Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 10:03Speaker 02

  So he had little.

• 10:04Dax Shepard?

  Because you were a big girl, or he was a small boy?

• 10:06Speaker 02

  He was a very small boy, he had a lot of health issues when he was a little kid.

• 10:09Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  And so, anyway, I would sit on the front handlebars of his bicycle, which he also had the paper bag with all the papers on this handlebars, and he would pedal me all over his route. And when he would take me to the paper station, he would stop at this little, I don't know, like a beer and wine store, and he would buy me a. RC Cola in a moon pie and I would sit there and watch him fold papers and load his paper bag and I never asked for anything. My brothers just always, they just.

• 10:41Dax Shepard?

  Were they being coached to do that nice stuff by Midgee or Joel LeBeau, the patriarch of the family?

• 10:48Speaker 02

  I don't think so. I think they genuinely, I mean, maybe I'm delusional, but I honestly think they just really liked me. Like they were just.

• 10:57Dax Shepard?

  Out of the goodness of their heart.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were real close. We often did things together. Like we had a shopping center that was two blocks from our house and it was 57 stores, all under one roof, Wonderland Shopping Center, which was really a big deal in the 50s. And they would walk up there with me and we'd just, you know, look in all the stores together and stuff and come, I mean, we did things regularly.

• 11:21Dax Shepard?

  Right. Did you think that made you a tomboy? Cause I sometimes look at Carly, my little sister, your third offspring, and I think, you know, in some way, I'm sure I irreversibly damaged her by being like the, who she was trying to be like, as I was trying to be like David, she was probably sometimes trying to be like me. So consequently, she fist fought on the bus, right? She sometimes got in trouble for.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  She kicked that boy in the face.

• 11:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, she kicked the boy in the face, you know.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  With her little Vans tennis shoes.

• 11:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, really cute little pink Vans shoes. And I just wonder, you know, if that was for the best or not. But you, you played, you played field hockey and shit, right?

• 12:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did. But I wasn't like a tomboy. Like I really liked doing everything with the boys. However, I loved dolls. I was very much a girl in that respect. How, but yeah, I guess I was.

• 12:18Dax Shepard?

  Did you always want to have kids?

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Always. I always knew I was going to be a mom, always.

• 12:22Dax Shepard?

  Even though you are, you were saddled with a ton of child rearing yourself, right? Because you had three younger brothers and you had to do a ton of mom stuff, which you didn't always appreciate, did you?

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Well, that's a tricky question. No, I did not always appreciate it. I mean, I, I loved my brothers and I. Genuinely did things on my own that I loved and enjoyed with them. But when I started to get into like junior high and high school and my friends were doing things after school and I wanted to do it with them, I did not have the option of going with them. I was to report back home because my mom needed help and that I was a little resentful of that.

• 13:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  And then the last baby she had, Rob, my mom, I'm, I'm gonna guess, I think my mom was 38 or 40 when she had Rob.

• 13:13Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  And she did not recover as quickly. I don't think she wanted to recover. I think she was, I think she was really enjoying the hired hand.

• 13:24Dax Shepard?

  Also, if she were to recover, there might be a fucking seventh child on the way, right? This, Pippi just would not stop.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. They, they were, they had a good romance.

• 13:33Dax Shepard?

  They had a high frequency rate like, like rabbits.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I, when I was in, um, gotta think if I was eighth grade or ninth grade, you know, Rob was in my room in his crib and we shared a room. And so when he came home from the hospital, he was born in August and he was a preemie. So in September, when school started, he was still on a real every three or four hour bottle schedule.

• 13:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  And my mother will tell you to this day, she thinks she was very clever, which I suppose she was, that when she would hear him cry, she would pretend to be sleeping and wait for me because I'm not going to let him cry. So I would go downstairs and back those days, there was not a microwave. So you heated a bottle on the stove and then you.

• 14:16Dax Shepard?

  It was a glass bottle, I assume?

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Glass bottle. You put it in a pan of water and you heat it up.

• 14:20Dax Shepard?

  And you were also changing diapers with cloth and baby pins, right?

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Yes. And my brother Rob was, um, he had quite a few bouts with a thing they called Rosie Ola, I think Rose.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Have you heard of that? Delta had that.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Did she?

• 14:35Dax Shepard?

  She did?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Rose Aoli. Remember we kept calling it Aoli? Yes. In New York last summer.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  High fevers?

• 14:43Speaker 01

  She didn't, well, we, we did some, it was self diagnosed rosie olly.

• 14:49Dax Shepard?

  As, as our most medical condition in our house.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  But we think it was, she did have a fever one day or she was sick and then she just had this cra- remember her face looked crazy?

• 14:58Dax Shepard?

  She got that crazy rash.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Crazy rash.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, real rosy cheeks, like, yeah.

• 15:03Dax Shepard?

  And Robbie had that?

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Rob used to get it frequently. Well, I look back on it, maybe he had it a couple of times, but in my memory, it's frequently. And he would run these ridiculously high fevers. And back in those days, the theory was that you give them ice baths. So you would take a pan with water and ice in it and put bath towels in it. And you'd lay one bath towel on the floor and put the baby on top and another ice towel on top of him while he screamed his lungs out.

• 15:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh geez.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  And so.

• 15:30Dax Shepard?

  This was medieval.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  It was medieval and it was the cruelest thing. And he would just scream. He's just a little baby. And so my mom and I would do that during the night and then I'd go to school the next morning, you know?

• 15:41Dax Shepard?

  After torturing the little baby.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Or giving him bottles during the night. So again,

• 15:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  I feel like.

• 15:47Dax Shepard?

  Well, I similarly changed many of Carly's diapers. Not similarly. I never had to torture her with icy towels, but, but I did have to use those cloth diapers because that's what we used when Carly was born in 1981 or whatever. And boy, with my, I was very nervous about putting that big safety pin through the cloth. And I thought I was going to stab the little baby and she was so cute. And she had a temper too.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Well, and I, you know, looking back on that, I mean, I really didn't have any options at the time, as you remember. You and David were my support system. However, looking back on it and knowing what I know now, I feel really sad for you guys because I feel like I put you in the same position that I hated being in.

• 16:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, well, I have all kinds of things that I look back on and think could have been better. That's not one of them. And I definitely, you know, when, when Kristen and I brought Lincoln home from the hospital, I think generally new parents have a moment of panic. When you leave the hospital and you glance in the backseat and you go, Jesus Christ, they let us leave that hospital with a little human that's dependent on us. Or at least I've heard that from a lot of friends of mine who are dads. I did not have that at all. I was like, oh, I know how to do this. I was doing this at six and a half years old. I can totally, yeah, you change their diapers and you give them food and you're good.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Do you remember how great you guys were? I, I worked midnights at the GM proving grounds and I would come home, I'd get off at eight and I would fly home. I'd be home by like eight 15 and I would come in and little Carly would always be. Dressed in a dress with patent leather shoes and tights with ruffles on the butt. And I'm talking to her very little. And I would say, um, why didn't you put her in her little jammies? And it was like, she's a girl, mom. But if she would wake up, you know, before I got home, they would take her and they inevitably, babies always fill their drawers during the night. And so in order not to deal with it, like I'd walk in the bedroom and there would be the changing table with her jammies from the night before and a poopy diaper.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  And there would be like 6,000 wipes all just packed on top of it like they just touched it once. And they would take her in the bathtub and just dunk her lower half of her body in the water to get her clean and then dress her. I mean, that, come on, how loving is that?

• 17:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I remember enjoying caring for her. So you were a little bit of a troublemaker, even though you were a nice girl.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:07Dax Shepard?

  We like you and you're a nice person, a nice girl, but you also had a rebellious streak and you were, you were a little, um, you were a vandal at times, yeah?

• 18:15Speaker 02

  There's that.

• 18:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. So you, you, um, you, well, what we would label now as a terrorist attack you performed in your high school because you, go ahead, tell us, you didn't like that you were expected to take typing, right?

• 18:29Speaker 02

  So when you say, are you a tomboy? Here's the things that I was a tomboy about.

• 18:34Dax Shepard?

  Explosives.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Explosives. By the way, we'll get to that. But, um, my, I, I thought it was just so boring and awful and nasty that they expected girls to take shorthand and typing. It was like, I don't like this. I'm never going to be a secretary. And, and please, for anybody out there listening, I've had administrative assistants that worked for me that were far, far better at spelling, typing and everything. And I depended on them and they are awesome people. But for me, it sounded like going to the guillotine and I just was not going to do that. So I had gone to my counselors, this is at Whitman Junior High, and I had gone to my counselor several times and said, I gotta get out of this typing class. I hate this typing class. I hate it. I don't want

• 19:20Speaker 02

  to type. And they would say, you know, well, you know, it's middle semester or whatever. They give me some excuse. So finally, I had this boyfriend, Steve Stanley, who, by the way, had a 61 Chevy Biscan.

• 19:33Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that's a great drag race car.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  Oh, and he had

• 19:36Dax Shepard?

  409.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  painted the wheel wells white and put little lights in and put little spacers so it was raised a little and stuff.

• 19:41Dax Shepard?

  Oh, sure.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Oh, this is a great car. But anyway, that's neither here nor there, except for the fact that that was the vehicle we used to go down to Toledo when I skipped school the day before. And we had bought a bunch of cherry bombs.

• 19:51Dax Shepard?

  Ohio in those days, I don't know what their stance is now, but very liberal fireworks policy compared to Michigan. If you wanted to get the good stuff, you had to go south.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Right, right. So here I am 14 years old and I have a boyfriend with a car. And so we go down.

• 20:04Dax Shepard?

  Already a great recipe, but.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we, we skipped school and we go down and get these cherry bombs. So the next day, of course, I have a few in my purse who, who wouldn't carry them. And I went in, it was in between classes and I went and Mr. Stoner was the typing teacher. And I went in and I was alone in the classroom and I took out a cherry bomb and I lit it, I put it in between the keys. And it actually bent, this is an old fashioned typewriter, it actually bent the keys and blew the for Mike off the desk. And as you know, cherry bombs are great for sound effect. They really give a lot of boom for the.

• 20:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yep.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  So everybody in the school heard it and everybody came running down. And I could have pretended that I just ran into the room and I was the first one there. Mr. Stoner came in and said, you know, he was crazy, you know, who did it? Who did it? And I said, well, I did, of course.

• 20:52Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Oh, because I wanted to get out of that car.

• 20:55Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  It was deliberate.

• 20:58Dax Shepard?

  Oh, interesting.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  I wanted to be thrown out.

• 20:59Dax Shepard?

  You were like the person in a relationship who cheats just to get out of the relationship. You want to get caught so you don't have to deal with. Wow. So you just go, yeah, that I did this.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Did it work? Did you get kicked out?

• 21:13Speaker 02

  I did get kicked out and I actually got kicked out of school that day, which this is hilarious because I came home from school and I walked home and it's like noon and I come in the back door of our house, my mother's in the kitchen and my mother turns and gives me that hated look and she, and of course, because I was nervous about it, I got kicked out of school, I started laughing.

• 21:35Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  That didn't go over well and she looked at me and she said, if anybody asks you your name, it is not Laura LeBeau.

• 21:43Dax Shepard?

  Oh, she disowned you.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  And she said, go sit on the couch and wait till your father gets home. So I went into the living room, sat on the couch.

• 21:51Dax Shepard?

  By the way, that's gonna be a long wait. If you got home at noon.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Heck, yeah.

• 21:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  I couldn't even go to the bathroom. I mean, it was, I was stapled, I was stapled to the couch. So when my dad came in, and this is, I know, we all have different memories of my dad and him and I were co-conspirators on many things. He had a great sense of humor and he.

• 22:12Dax Shepard?

  I was gonna mention that. You were head over heels in love with your dad, right?

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely.

• 22:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  And he came in and he sat in the chair opposite me and he put his hand on his knee and his hand on his chin, like his elbow on his knee. And he looked at me and he said, you blew up a typewriter? And I said, yeah. And he just started to laugh and I laughed with him.

• 22:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh, boy. Oh, what, your midgie must have been.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Oh, my, I could feel it. I could feel her from the dining room staring at us with the daggers.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  And he just laughed hysterically and ever after that, he would come home from work and we had a thing at our, in our family, like he'd sit at the dinner table and my dad would say, you know, Tom, what'd you do today? Larry, what'd you do today? You know, did you make the world a better place? And he said, he would always say to me, Laura, did you blow up anything today?

• 23:04Speaker 02

  So it was great.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 23:14Dax Shepard?

  We get support from Gusto. So here's the thing about running a small business that nobody romanticizes. It's not the big idea that wears you down. It's the payroll, the tax filings, the wait, do I need workers comp for this stuff? That's the part that quietly eats away your whole afternoon, which is where Gusto comes in. Gusto is online payroll and benefit software built for small businesses. It's all in one, remote friendly and incredibly easy to use so you can pay onboard and support your team from anywhere. They handle automatic tax filing, direct deposits, health benefits, 401k, all of it. And you get unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price. No hidden fees, no surprises. If something tricky comes up,

• 23:57Dax Shepard?

  you've got direct access to certified HR experts who actually know what they're talking about. And they're ranked number one on G2's highest satisfaction products list for 2026 and trusted by over 500,000 small businesses. That's not nothing. Try Gusto today at gusto.com/dax and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/dax. Again, that's gusto.com/dax. We get support from no bull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 24:39Dax Shepard?

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

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Cardio person and you're running and you also need to be lifting.

• 25:20Dax 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.

• 25:28Speaker 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.

• 25:37Dax Shepard?

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

• 25:48Speaker 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.

• 25:59Dax 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.

• 26:10Speaker 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 recently. That doesn't have a Helix mattress on it and I really could tell a big difference in my sleep.

• 26:33Dax Shepard?

  Temperature was all over the map.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  It was a mess. I need a new one.

• 26:36Dax 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.

• 26:51Speaker 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.

• 26:57Dax 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.

• 27:15Dax Shepard?

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

• 27:38Speaker 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.

• 27:54Dax 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.

• 28:13Speaker 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'm gonna cancel, cancel, cancel, but then I-

• 28:21Dax Shepard?

  You start feeling it.

• 28:22Speaker 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.

• 28:29Dax 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.

• 29:00Dax Shepard?

  So you may get to high school, shockingly, because you should be in a juvenile home probably from that pyrotechnics. But you go to high school and you meet a guy who's not conventionally handsome, is he? He's not, is he, it's not that he's like, uh, the most dashing guy there. He's a little heavier than your average Gene Kelly type.

• 29:22Dax Shepard?

  But boy, he has a sweet car, right? What's the first that attracts you to Dave Shepard, my father?

• 29:27Speaker 02

  Well, he was, had a great personality. I first noticed him on the bus. I don't know if you know all these stories, but I first noticed him on the bus. We rode the same bus. He was around the block from me.

• 29:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you guys-

• 29:38Speaker 03

  Lived one street over.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  He was, like you say, he was a large guy. He was a six, one or six, two, and he was a big guy. And he would, he was very, very friendly to everybody, always. And so he would always sit up front and talk to Barb, the bus driver.

• 29:52Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  And so whenever Barb needed, the door didn't close well on the bus, she would say, Dave, and Dave would get up and he would, close.

• 30:02Speaker 03

  Put some weight behind it.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Yep, fix the door for her. Anyway, so I knew him from the bus. And so one day, um, this girl, Cindy, I can't think of her last name, but anyway, she sits next to me and she says, uh, Dave Shepherd has a, a little crush on you. And I said, who's Dave Shepherd? And she says, you know, the big guy on the bus that always helps Barb. And I said.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  Barb's best friend, Dave Shepherd.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  And, um, and I, like I said, I knew him from school. He was on the football team and stuff, you know, I knew who he was. And I said, really? He's got, and I was new. We had just moved in. And I said, really? And she says, yeah, he wants.

• 30:37Speaker 03

  What grade is his? 10th?

• 30:38Speaker 02

  10th grade. His, her name was Cindy Mitchell. And he says, she said, um, he wants to ask you out. And I said, oh, really? So a couple of days go by and I'm sitting on the bus and he sits down next to me on the bus on the way home. And he says to me, would you like to go to a grasser? And a grasser in those days, you went to Edward Hines Park and you laid on the grass and you drank. And it was usually happened on curriculum day where you got out early. And I'd never been to one, but I'd heard about them. And he said, would you like to go to a grasser? And I said, oh, I don't know. I've never been to one. And he said, oh, I'm not asking you. I'm just telling you where there is one.

• 31:16Speaker 03

  Oh, he pulled the rug out.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I was kinda, all right. So then you think, okay, I got hit on the nose with the newspaper. I'd learned, but no. So, um, spring comes and, um, he, the prom, we didn't have a senior class that year. We had a junior class and he was part of it. And so he comes and sits down next to me and he says, do you have a date for the prom? And I said, no, thinking, this is the setup question.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  Uh huh, sure.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  And he says, oh, I do.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  Oh, he's just sharing.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  Anybody in their right.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Playing a real game.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Anybody in their right mind would have said, this guy's a jerk.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  So a little more time goes by and I had was serving detention for skipping a semester of gym. Again, Cindy Mitchell comes up to me and peeks her, she peeks her head into the principal's office.

• 32:03Dax Shepard?

  She was a real cupid. She really wanted to see you paired up.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Oh, I think your dad was leaning on her.

• 32:09Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  So anyways, um, he, uh, he, she sticks her head in the principal's office and says, you know, hey, do you need a ride home? Well, I did need a ride home. I lived far and, and this was not in the days where moms picked you up. So I said, sure. She said, there's a blue sixty-one, uh, or a sixty-two Chevy Impala. Meet me out there. She says, meet me out there in the Impala. And I said, okay. So I go out there and the windows are rolled down and nobody's in the car, but I get in the passenger seat and I think it's Cindy Mitchell's car. Well, a couple of minutes later, your dad walks out and gets in the driver's seat and starts the car. And I said, where's Cindy? And he says, oh, she doesn't need a ride. I, I just had her go in there to ask you. So I got a ride home from him.

• 32:55Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  And then to follow up that, he had asked Cindy for my phone number, but he forgot my name. So he called my house and my dad answered the phone and he said, is your daughter home?

• 33:06Dax Shepard?

  Oh, geez.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Like some of the parts are romantic and then some of the parts are not romantic at all.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  I'm gonna say they're real fifteen, sixteen year old courtship.

• 33:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. Thank God he wasn't courting one of your brothers, because if he had called and said, let me talk to your son, he'd say, well, I have five to choose from. He would need, needed to know a name.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Just FYI, at that time, he was driving that, your grandma Yoles's car.

• 33:30Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  But shortly after that, he bought a three ninety-six Chevelle nineteen sixty-eight and it was with the fastback. It was just, it had.

• 33:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, white with a black roof, right?

• 33:41Speaker 02

  No, no, no. White on white on white.

• 33:43Dax Shepard?

  Oh, white on white.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Because Bill Grumpy Jenkins, that was the drag racer then that always drove white Chevys. So it had, um, it had Cragger mags and it had, you know, dual exhaust.

• 33:51Dax Shepard?

  Walker chamber exhaust.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, yes, yes.

• 33:54Dax Shepard?

  And you were wild for that car, right?

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. It was like a love machine. He put in a little Sergio Mendes, you know?

• 34:03Dax Shepard?

  What, what, what, let's just say, what, what a guy. Who's, what, what 1968 high school kids listening to Sergio Mendes in a Chevelle? This is all very weird, right?

• 34:15Speaker 02

  It was very unconventional. I mean, most people were listening to The Who and I would get in and it was eight track tape decks. And he would literally like stick in a tape deck and it's like

• 34:25Dax Shepard?

  Girl from Ipanema or something?

• 34:26Speaker 02

  The Fool on the Hill. And it's like, what the heck is he playing? But I liked it.

• 34:31Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh. Yeah. Were you attracted to that? He was so confident?

• 34:36Speaker 02

  I was attracted to many things about him. He was

• 34:42Speaker 02

  was extremely kind to me. And he was, if I even like hinted that there was something I liked or so and so had this. I mean, he always worked. He, he would go out and buy it for me. And I don't mean it like, oh, he bought me things. I don't mean like that. No, it was more tender. It was more like he wanted to please me, wanted to make me happy.

• 35:05Dax Shepard?

  And he was listening to you?

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Hmm. Very much so.

• 35:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  But your father was very, very in touch with his feminine side. This is a man that could have a conversation on the phone for hours and hours.

• 35:16Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh. Yeah. Me too. He passed that on to me.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Both you, both you and your brother.

• 35:22Dax Shepard?

  So things are going great. You guys are having a blast. Uh, but this, this, this all takes a turn. As much as you wanted babies, you unintentionally, yeah, became pregnant in 12th grade?

• 35:34Speaker 02

  Uh, well, kinda, kinda not. Okay. I would say that I eventually wanted to marry your dad. But your dad was, when I was in 12th grade, he was in the Navy and I had applied to Western and I'd gotten accepted. And I had big dreams of being a flight attendant.

• 35:51Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  And so I

• 35:53Dax Shepard?

  Cause you wanted to travel. You love traveling.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  Love to travel. I, yeah.

• 35:58Dax Shepard?

  Not stopped.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  That's not stopped.

• 35:59Dax Shepard?

  You have wanderlust.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Yes, I think in part gypsy. But um, so I had intentions of going to college and being a flight attendant and doing all these things and then getting married and having kids while he came home from boot camp. And to say that it was unintentional is sort of true and sort of not because, oh, I was also supposed to go to Europe that summer. I had worked at Sears, saving money to go to Europe on this student exchange program.

• 36:26Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  And so I definitely did not want to get pregnant, but at the same time, at the moment, you know, I knew I would get pregnant.

• 36:34Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  And I made the conscious decision of, well, so then we'll get married, you know, like, so can't say it was unintentional, but it was unplanned, unthought out.

• 36:44Dax Shepard?

  Cognitive dissonance. You were juggling two different uh, goals that were contradictory in pursuing both at the same time.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  I think this is what you would call seventeen year old experience and logic, making a good decision.

• 36:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  I, when I graduated, I was four months and no one knew I was pregnant.

• 37:02Dax Shepard?

  No. But give me just a context. How many girls, because that was Vietnam, how many girls were getting pregnant in high school back then? Was it like ten percent? Is it less? Is it more?

• 37:12Speaker 02

  I don't know what the percentage was, but in my.

• 37:15Dax Shepard?

  It was common though?

• 37:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it was common for both males and females. I mean, I, there were probably six or seven of us in my senior class that were married at graduation.

• 37:24Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:25Dax Shepard?

  That's pretty wild.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a different time. It was, you know, like, I can remember in my senior year, maybe in the fall or not positive, but in my senior year, I can remember there was a girl in school that um, what was his name? Dan? Anyway, it doesn't matter his name, but um, he was killed in action and she was engaged to him. And so here she is engaged in senior year, which is not uncommon. A lot of girls in my class were engaged to guys from the upper class that had gone to Vietnam. And I just remember being so sad for her that she had lost him and.

• 38:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's brutal.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:03Dax Shepard?

  At seventeen or eighteen?

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:06Dax Shepard?

  So dad somehow he gets out of the Navy, right? You guys write some kind of letter and say, no one's going to support this kid. Isn't that how it kind of worked?

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Kinda. He went to his regular Thursday night meeting and your dad was quite a salesman. And he went up and bold faced lied, told the commanding officer that he loved the Navy, wanted to be a lifer. And he just really, just was really concerned about me that I might lose the baby and stuff. I was never sick a day the whole time I was pregnant.

• 38:34Dax Shepard?

  Jesus.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  And, and the guy said, well, listen, Dave, I'll tell you what. And he gave him the paperwork. And he said, have everybody in your family over 21 sign the papers that they will not support her and the baby. If something happens to you, we'll get you an honorable hardship discharge. When she has the baby, come on back. I'll make sure you get all your time.

• 38:53Dax Shepard?

  Oh, boy.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he was like, you know, are you sure? You know, he really, you know, played it up really good. And he had a deferment and within days of getting that deferment, they stopped giving hardship deferments.

• 39:05Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 39:06Speaker 02

  So he just got in under the wire.

• 39:09Dax Shepard?

  So you have David, my elder brother.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And you guys moved to a little apartment.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  Well, actually we had a little house.

• 39:15Dax Shepard?

  I thought you moved to Deer Creek first.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  Oh, that was a few years later, but yes.

• 39:20Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, we lived in a-

• 39:21Dax Shepard?

  You started in a house?

• 39:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a little two bedroom house in, at Ford Road in Middlebelt in Garden City. It was-

• 39:28Dax Shepard?

  And you were happy?

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Oh, so happy.

• 39:31Dax Shepard?

  You were. You loved being a mom?

• 39:32Speaker 02

  I loved being a mom. I loved being a good wife to your dad. Like, I mean, I remember like, you know, I got, would get up in the morning while he was getting dressed and I would pack him a lunch and make him breakfast and I would walk him out to the car and he would back the car up and I'd close the gate behind him. And when he would come home, I would have bath water waiting for him and I would have dinner ready. And it was, I don't know, it was like playing house, I guess.

• 39:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And how long of playing house before you go like, oh, okay. Well, that was fun, but I got a whole lot of life ahead of me and maybe I want to do more stuff.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Kind of happened in increments. As years went by, he became very successful selling cars. He was really, really good at it. And he made very good money and we bought a bigger house and all that thing. And we had friends that traveled and went places and did things. And-

• 40:27Speaker 02

  How do I say this? It, we got distracted. We got distracted by, uh, running fast, you know?

• 40:34Dax Shepard?

  Uh-huh, having things and going places.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:36Dax Shepard?

  Posting parties.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it was just-

• 40:39Dax Shepard?

  Cause we have lots of pictures of my childhood and we lived on a couple acres and there were these gigantic outdoor parties and right at Halloween, there would be hay rides and there were a lot of drunks around and there were dune buggies and motorcycles.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:52Dax Shepard?

  Sounds so fucking fun. By the way, I hope my retirement is exactly like the, those backyard parties.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  It was very fun, but we lost track of things and, um, um, alcohol became a more ever-present thing. Cause in the early years, I mean, we were 17 and 18 when we got married, we weren't legally able to drink. And so we didn't do anything like that. And, um, you know, pot became a bigger thing and we even grew our own pot out there and, um-

• 41:22Dax Shepard?

  And you weren't a big drinker, but you loved smoking pot and growing pot, right?

• 41:25Speaker 02

  I did, but I was, um, a social pot smoker. And so, um, it, it went from being like, oh, we would have people over, you pass a joint around to then it was a good escape. It was real easy if he was high that I could get on the other couch and zone out and listen to music. And then I feel like, you know, in between I had started going to college, you know, your grandma had really encouraged me to go to college and it was like, wow, there's more out there. There's more out there. And I, I feel like I was lonely for him. I was lonely for the communication that we used to have. I was lonely for-

• 42:04Dax Shepard?

  And he was gone, he worked pretty far away.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  He worked far away and he worked a zillion hours. I mean, and it, there came a point where I remember, you know, saying to him, you know, I don't, I don't care about the money. I, you know, I just want you to be home with me. I just wanna have that. And, you know, it's, it's hard, you know, once you've-

• 42:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, well, you get on the treadmill. He got a cool truck. Then he got an LTD. Then he jacked up the truck. Then he got a great tractor. Then he got dirt bikes. Then, you know, right?

• 42:33Speaker 02

  All the things that you would think are-

• 42:35Dax Shepard?

  He loved things.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Symbol of success.

• 42:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  And again, providing for me, he was still-

• 42:40Dax Shepard?

  And his parents were very modest. So this was kind of like the way he had wanted to live, probably.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 42:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 42:47Dax Shepard?

  And so you, I come along.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 42:51Dax Shepard?

  Yes. And I'm a hard baby, yeah?

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Oh, the first, the first four or five months with you was treacherous because there was a-

• 43:01Dax Shepard?

  You almost killed me, right? There were times where you were nervous you were gonna, I was gonna die of shaken baby.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna say, let's just say shaken baby hadn't been identified yet, but I may have invented it.

• 43:13Dax Shepard?

  But you brought me home to a single wide mobile home?

• 43:15Speaker 02

  Yes, well, let's back up here.

• 43:17Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  We had been living in Deer Creek, that apartment, and I got pregnant with you. And your dad came home from work one day and he had sold a car to a guy named Kenny. And he managed a mobile home park out in Highland and he said, hey, I've got-

• 43:30Dax Shepard?

  Which, by the way, is the country compared to where you guys were living. Highland was the country.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Very much the country.

• 43:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  And he came home and said, you know, Kenny says he's got this repossessed mobile home that we can get into for dirt cheap and I really wanted a house. And he said, you know, we can get into this really dirt cheap. And at that time, there was a lot of stuff on the news about mobile homes burning down really quickly.

• 43:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, or they were always blowing away in a tornado.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  You name it.

• 43:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  I mean, they've come a long way, but anyway, so at that time, I was very terrified of that. So he said, you know, on this Sunday afternoon, he says, come on, let's go out there and take a look at this mobile home. And so we get out of the car and I walk in the front door, I walk through the mobile home, I walk out the back door and I go sit in the car. And he says, he gets back in the car and he says, I don't think you're being very open minded about this. I said, I'm not living in a tin can. That's gonna catch fire. You know, that's just not gonna do that. And he said, well, if you can afford the rent on the apartment, you're welcome to stay because I'm moving here.

• 44:28Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  He bought it without me.

• 44:29Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. Which was his, kind of his move, right? He wanted motorcycles. You said, no, we can't afford them. We need a house. And then you came out Christmas morning and there was two motorcycles in the house, right?

• 44:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were out in the parking lot. He said, look out the window, your present's out there. And I looked out there, it's two motorcycles. I said, I didn't want motorcycles. And he said, oh, it's gonna be great fun. And he was right. It was great fun.

• 44:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you really took to it once you got over.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Oh, God, I loved it.

• 44:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  But anyways.

• 44:55Dax Shepard?

  But you brought me home to a mobile home and you're out in the fucking country and you don't have a car, right?

• 44:59Speaker 02

  Well, there was a recession that, that, the guessing, that was the Christmas where you weren't allowed to have Christmas lights and stuff. And because.

• 45:05Dax Shepard?

  The oil embargo and then.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yes. So here.

• 45:07Dax Shepard?

  The pump.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. So your dad's not selling any cars. So we only have his company car. So I'm literally in a mobile home with a kid that's got colic. Colic that you screamed night and day. It never ended and you could just, and I didn't know the tricks that you have. Put the babies on reset, you know?

• 45:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, right, right. The five S's and all that.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  I didn't, I wasn't aware of that stuff and I would just walk with you and I would pat your back and I would rock you and I would.

• 45:36Dax Shepard?

  Also, you were strongly, strongly urged by my grandma Yolas, my dad's mother, who you worshipped, right? Cause she was a double master's degree holder in history and science. And she said, you do not breastfeed these kids.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  She said, you're, you're too high strung, you're too active, you're, you won't have enough milk for them.

• 45:53Dax Shepard?

  And you'll be just be tethered to these babies.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  And I, so I believed her and I didn't breastfeed, which maybe had I breastfed, you wouldn't have had all the stomach issues, but you were in dire straits. And so they tried you soy milk. They tried, you know, this, this, this, all these different kinds of formulas. And finally, what we ended up settling on, the first few months you were alive was caro syrup and water.

• 46:15Dax Shepard?

  I mean, that just can't be enough for a baby to live on, right?

• 46:18Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 46:18Dax Shepard?

  Isn't that wild?

• 46:19Speaker 02

  That's all his stomach could tolerate. I mean, he just was in misery.

• 46:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. But can you imagine? I mean, what's in caro syrup? Just sugar?

• 46:28Speaker 02

  Sugar, yeah. You're getting calories.

• 46:29Dax Shepard?

  Right. But I can't, I mean, yeah. And just that.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  Oh, God. And you were just.

• 46:33Dax Shepard?

  Miracle. I should have been six, five, maybe.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Oh, you were a screamer. And so there were times that I would get so frustrated that I just couldn't, that I would, it's January. I would put on my coat and sit on the step of the motor home, a mobile home outside because I was afraid I would hurt you. The crying was just more than I could deal with.

• 46:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  I finally went to.

• 46:55Dax Shepard?

  And you weren't really smoking pot yet. So you couldn't have.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  No.

• 46:59Dax Shepard?

  Fired up a doobie.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  I had smoked pot at that point, but I was not, obviously.

• 47:03Dax Shepard?

  You weren't caring.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I wasn't self medicating to get away from it, which maybe might have been a good idea, but. Anyway, but I remember going to the doctor, to the pediatrician and saying, cause I took you a thousand times, like something is wrong with him. He's screaming bloody murder, you know? And I finally said to the doctor, I said, I need you to give him something to make him stop crying. If you can't give him something, I need you to give me something. I'm afraid I'm gonna hurt him. And I was dead serious. I mean, I was just at the end of my rope. And so he finally begrudgingly gave me, I think it was called paragoric.

• 47:37Dax Shepard?

  Paragoric?

• 47:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it was these little blue drops and I would put one or two, he said, use this very sparingly. He said.

• 47:45Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it was for me?

• 47:46Speaker 02

  And he said, yeah, and he said, um, um, if you, cause I couldn't even get a babysitter. I told him, I can't even get a babysitter. Nobody will sit with him. Nobody. I mean, it was, oh, it was, and if I would like go to the grocery store, I would say to his dad, I, I need to go to the grocery store. I need to get out of the house and I need to get groceries. He would say, well, take that kid with you. Don't leave that kid with me. So I take you to the grocery store, up and down the aisles, screaming bloody murder.

• 48:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I couldn't do it.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Can I just throw in the part about you not being a really pretty baby?

• 48:15Dax Shepard?

  Right, yeah, yeah, right. I was breach, so my head was very deformed when I came out.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, you, you were.

• 48:21Dax Shepard?

  I think carried with me. I have, I have a lot of incongruity in my face.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  You are a beautiful person, but you were, um, you had a caro molded nose and you looked like somebody, you look like a tomato that somebody had thrown down on the ground. One side was small.

• 48:33Dax Shepard?

  It's not an exaggeration to say one side of my head and face was, um, at least 60% bigger than the other side, right?

• 48:39Speaker 02

  You were, you were a little rough looking. Um, as your dad said when you were born, he's ugly, but he's ours. But, um, I would take you to the grocery store, places, I'm not exaggerating, Monica. People would like lift up the blanket and take a peek at his head and they would go.

• 48:55Speaker 02

  He's a big one. Or, and I, and it got to be where it was funny to me because I knew they were not gonna say, oh, what a cutie. They would say, is it a boy? I mean, they would.

• 49:05Dax Shepard?

  What is this thing?

• 49:06Speaker 01

  They would search for words that weren't.

• 49:09Dax Shepard?

  Is it a plantain? Is it a rhubarb? What is?

• 49:12Speaker 02

  But then by the time he was like four months, he was the cutest little, oh, he was so adorable.

• 49:18Dax Shepard?

  Well, my cheeks really came in powerfully, right?

• 49:21Speaker 02

  And your head straightened out.

• 49:24Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 49:31Dax 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.

• 50:16Dax 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. 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.

• 50:50Speaker 01

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

• 51:11Dax 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.

• 51:20Speaker 01

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

• 51:27Dax Shepard?

  Okay, tell me more.

• 51:29Speaker 01

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

• 51:40Dax 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.

• 51:49Speaker 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.

• 52:09Dax Shepard?

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

• 52:53Dax Shepard?

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

• 53:23Speaker 04

  Foundo should not be used with other GLP- Receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Foundao is safe and effective for use in children. Don't take Foundao if you're allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had majorary thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Stop and call your doctor right away if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, or severe stomach pain. Serious side effects may include inflamed pancreas and gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes, if you're nursing, pregnant, plant to be, or taking birth control pills, and before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. Taking Foundao with an insulin or sulfonylurea may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and may cause kidney problems. Once Daily Foundao is available by prescription only

• 54:05Speaker 04

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

• 54:26Dax Shepard?

  But then we moved about a mile down the road on Middle Road.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  To our house.

• 54:30Dax Shepard?

  To the house, which this is David, my older brother's utopia. This was the greatest period of his life from five years old to eight years old in Middle Road, on property, right?

• 54:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 54:43Dax Shepard?

  Dirt bikes.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 54:44Dax Shepard?

  A day at a mom, everything was great.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  Well, in fact, even now, in my current home, when I ride my tractor to cut my grass, I often say a secret prayer to myself and say, "Don't be an idiot. Don't, don't blow this this time. This is your happiest."

• 54:59Dax Shepard?

  Ah.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  Because I remember on Middle Road being so happy, riding the tractor, cutting the grass. And two little boys, I, we had a dump cart on the tractor, and I'd put the boys in the dump cart, and I would take them out in the woods, and we would find wild pear trees and pick pears. And it was just like heaven. It was like everything I ever wanted. It was just, I was so incredibly happy. It was perfect.

• 55:22Dax Shepard?

  And then things go sideways and we don't need to get into that.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:25Dax Shepard?

  Just 23 year olds being married with two kids, pressure, he's not home. You guys, God knows what kind of hanky panky you're both up to, but suffice to say you leave dad.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 55:34Dax Shepard?

  In 1978.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 55:36Dax Shepard?

  I'm three, right?

• 55:37Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 55:39Dax Shepard?

  This is a very bold decision. How much fear did you have going into it?

• 55:43Speaker 02

  Lots.

• 55:44Dax Shepard?

  You did.

• 55:44Speaker 02

  I would have left sooner had I not been afraid. I was very afraid of how I was going to support you and David. I was well aware that it costs money to rent an apartment, to buy groceries, to do things. And I had been a housewife and although I had two years of college, I did not have a degree. I did not have a skill set other than waitressing. And I really didn't know how I would support you. And I started sending resumes once a month to the GM proving grounds. And every 30 days I'd send a new one in. And I got this call and it was in July and they said, we have a position, a per diem position as a janitor. And I thought, oh Jesus, I got two years of college. Don't want to be a janitor.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  And I said, how much does it pay? And they said 50, 75 a day.

• 56:33Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that sounds pretty good for 1978.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  $50 and 75 cents a day. That was gigantic. It was like winning the Lotto. Well, in my world. Anyway, I said, yeah, I'll come down for the interview. And I got the job. Your dad called me. He called that afternoon. He said, how'd your interview go? And I go, really, really good. I got the job. And he said, so you're leaving, aren't you?

• 56:54Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. Just like that. Yeah.

• 56:56Speaker 02

  He knew.

• 56:56Dax Shepard?

  It was in the tea leaves.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I said, yes, I am. And he said, okay.

• 57:02Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  And.

• 57:03Dax Shepard?

  Here's the part that confuses me and of course is Exhibit A, when I used to build my case against dad and why I hated him. How on earth is the decision, you're getting divorced, he'll, he'll keep the house. He'll stay there. He'll stay in the three bedroom house on the property and you'll move to a little apartment.

• 57:22Speaker 02

  An ADC special?

• 57:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I don't.

• 57:25Dax Shepard?

  Do you even remember?

• 57:26Speaker 02

  I don't remember.

• 57:27Dax Shepard?

  Did you just feel like you felt guilty about leaving and taking the kids and you thought then?

• 57:31Speaker 02

  I didn't want to take anything.

• 57:32Dax Shepard?

  You just keep that house.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  He had worked hard. He deserved everything. I walked away.

• 57:36Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  I took you.

• 57:37Dax Shepard?

  But maybe guilt motivated?

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Maybe, maybe guilt. I mean, yeah, possibly it could have been guilt.

• 57:42Dax Shepard?

  Cause you deserved, first of all, you deserved half of everything.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  Oh, I didn't feel that. I felt like he had worked really, really hard. I knew how hard he worked.

• 57:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but the part of the deal was you were a, a house slave who cooked all the meals, cleaned the house, raised the two kids. So he got to have everything he wanted, cut the grass. His life was turnkey because he went and worked. So it was a partnership, but yeah.

• 58:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:04Dax Shepard?

  At any rate, you didn't ask for anything.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  I didn't ask for anything.

• 58:06Dax Shepard?

  But that just, that's always been hard for me to swallow. Cause let, let, let's just say if, if for whatever reason Kristin and I got divorced and she left with the two kids and my two little beautiful daughters were gonna go live in a welfare apartment and I was gonna stay in our house. I just, I really will never wrap my head around that.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. Maybe it was different times. I don't know. Maybe I raised you better.

• 58:29Speaker 02

  Not that his parents didn't raise him better.

• 58:30Dax Shepard?

  They were the greatest, yeah. They could not have been proud of that decision.

• 58:34Speaker 02

  They were, your, your Papa Baba was very angry with him.

• 58:37Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh. Cause they loved you.

• 58:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So you start out on your own. You have a job as a janitor. We moved to this, um, you know, it was, it was the, I don't think I'm exaggerating. So it was the worst apartment building in our area.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  It was pretty bad.

• 58:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it was pretty rough. That one of the, one of the tenants who was crazy wanted to murder my brother.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, drove, drove a car up on the grass chasing him with a car.

• 58:59Dax Shepard?

  Tried to kill him. Yeah. Uh, real crazy stuff happening right out of the gates when we got to this place.

• 59:06Speaker 02

  If you've seen that movie about a boy, it's, it's a.

• 59:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's similar to that, right?

• 59:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a rough go.

• 59:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So it's a.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Boyhood, boyhood. Is that what it is?

• 59:15Dax Shepard?

  Boyhood, yeah, yeah. That Richard Linklater.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Ethan Hawke.

• 59:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. Such a great movie.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. When I saw that movie, I cried my eyes out. I thought, oh my God, I'm not the only one that lived this life. And she wasn't bad. She just kept making bad decisions.

• 59:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I've never ever related to a movie more. The, the scene in that movie where they're at the table and that stepdad is drunk and they're all waiting to see how bad this is gonna get. I was just like, oh my God, I've sat in that chair a hundred times and I know, oh man, did it bring me back.

• 59:46Speaker 02

  God, that movie just. To me, watching the professor come up to her, then professor, but later husband, come up to her and just be so kind to her and tell her how he thinks the boy is just a wonderful person and, oh, all boys do this and stuff like that, and just baiting her and then seeing her out in the garage and him just talking so horrible about her children and just being slapping her and stuff. It's like, oh, my God, this is my life. This is my life and I fell for it every time.

• 1:00:19Dax Shepard?

  I've always been dying since seeing that movie to talk to him and ask if that was his life. I don't know how he could do that authentically without having had that experience.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  It was a great movie.

• 1:00:29Dax Shepard?

  So you, now, when you start as a janitor, you don't start on night shift, do you?

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  No, I started on day shift and I worked six weeks as a janitor and there was a posting for an opportunity to go into material control. So I applied for that and they had never had women in material control. And what material control is, is not only do you unload trucks and you put parts away, but they send you to school and you learn how to build a car top to bottom. And so when you're in an environment that they're using current model cars and that are a mix of future model cars, you're always trying to figure out parts when they're

• 1:01:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they're using old parts to create prototypes.

• 1:01:13Speaker 02

  Right. So you have to realize, yeah. And so, anyway, so I went through that training. So I went from day shift to afternoon shift to midnight shift. And then after the training was done, then I was on afternoon shift for a couple of years and then I was on midnight shift. And in midnight shift, then I went to fleet operations and I started working with computers and...

• 1:01:34Dax Shepard?

  And how are you juggling, because you didn't have babysitters when we lived in Middle Road, but now you have to like have pretty full-time assistants, right? Because we're... Cause I'm three, so you're dropping me at the My Little Cottage or whatever.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, when you were three, you went to My Little Cottage in Milford.

• 1:01:50Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh. And David went to school.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  And David went to school. So that was day shift. And when I went to afternoon shift, that's when I ended up with the babysitter cycle. And that was.

• 1:01:59Dax Shepard?

  It must've been so stressful.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  I, when I think of moms today that work, it's, your job is not the hard part. You keeping the house up is not your hard part. The hard part is solving daycare.

• 1:02:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  It's a constant solving.

• 1:02:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, cause these are young hourly employees. So they're calling in all the time, right? Or they're just not in the mood.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  They don't show up, you know?

• 1:02:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  It's just, and you know, you're constantly, at first you start out with these, I'm not leaving my kids with anybody that's not, you know, I interview them and make sure they're really.

• 1:02:30Dax Shepard?

  And by the end, you're like, oh, their eyes were open.

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  If you find a stranger on the street that'll sit there with them, you're, cause you've got to be at work because you, now you're on probation because you've missed days because of babysitters.

• 1:02:43Dax Shepard?

  Oh man, sounds so stressful.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  It's horrible.

• 1:02:45Dax Shepard?

  So you're also, you're at work on, I assume afternoon shift one time and you get a call from one of our babysitters and what, what happens?

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  I hear this, for the babysitter was Robin Wakeford and she says, I need to put Dax on the phone. And I said, what's happened? And she says, I'm going to let him tell you. And she was clearly upset. And I hear this little voice come on and you're like three and a half, four years old and I.

• 1:03:12Dax Shepard?

  Delta's age, yeah.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  And I hear this little voice, I said, Dax, did you do something bad? I threw a fucking rock through the auto parts window and I.

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  Now, I want you to know, I did not condone him using this language and I did not encourage this language. And so I said, wait a minute. And I pressed speaker and I let my coworkers hear this. It was so hilarious.

• 1:03:42Dax Shepard?

  And I was presumably, um, first of all, my older brother urged me to throw the rock through the auto parts window. And then I have to imagine he also gave me the line to tell you. I mean, he must've suggested, I say, he threw a fucking rock through the, uh, yeah, he and I got, we were really, um.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  You were terrorists.

• 1:04:01Dax Shepard?

  I was starting to feel the first part of being unsupervised, which by the way, are some of the highlights of my childhood is that we were also, we would just stand on the side of the road, we'd throw shit at cars. And I threw a mat, my David told me to throw this car mat and it hit a guy's windshield and the guy swerved off the road. Then he chases, my brother left me in the dust. The man caught me. There was just, you know, it was the beginning of a lot of mischief, I think.

• 1:04:24Speaker 02

  Suffice to say that I just was in Florida the other day and my brother Tom was telling me stories about you. And when I wasn't around, when you would visit grandma for the in the summer. And suffice to say, everybody that knows you and David would say things behind my back that I'm now learning about how awful you guys were.

• 1:04:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  They were terrorists. They were a tag team.

• 1:04:49Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm. And this isn't in defense of my bad behavior, but um, because I started saying when you were on day shift, you came home, I'm sorry, afternoon shift, we were asleep and you shook us awake and you said, come on, let's go, let's get in the car. And it's like two in the morning.

• 1:05:06Speaker 02

  I know where you're going.

• 1:05:07Dax Shepard?

  You have cans of spray paint and we go to a apple orchard that is down the road from our house. And this apple orchard, what did the sign say?

• 1:05:16Speaker 02

  It said, pick your own apples. And so I encouraged the kids, we sprayed over the word apples and we wrote the word no.

• 1:05:26Dax Shepard?

  So that the billboard said, pick your own nose for five cents or something.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  And we.

• 1:05:33Dax Shepard?

  But it was like a middle of the night operation.

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  Well, and how about when we took the sign and put it on Ray Barn's store that said hard salami? Because I knew he was courting that girl and we brought that and I painted the water tower, happy birthday, David and.

• 1:05:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, scaled the fence to paint the water tower spray paint.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  So it was in your, it was in your blood.

• 1:05:51Dax Shepard?

  Came by it, honestly.

• 1:05:53Speaker 02

  Oh, there were many, many Scotch taping the placemats and the napkins.

• 1:05:58Dax Shepard?

  That's one of the funniest. My mother always carried Scotch tape in her purse for, I don't know why. But one of the things was we were at an ice cream shop in Greertown in downtown Detroit and there were two workers, one of them was behind the counter, the other one was dead asleep, clearly hungover at a table.

• 1:06:17Dax Shepard?

  And the guy that was alert kept nudging him going, hey, man, my shift's over in five minutes. You gotta wake up and run the place. And the guy's like, oh, yeah, no problem. I'm on it. So that the responsible one leaves his shifts over. The other guy goes right back to sleep. So we're just in this ice cream parlor.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  Unattended.

• 1:06:31Dax Shepard?

  Unattended. And so my mom goes, oh, I have tape in my purse. Let's make signs that say, build your own, all you can eat Sundays, 25 cents, which at the time was, they were, that was free. That was a hell of a bargain. So we sat there, we must've took 30 minutes. We made big signs with crayons and then we taped it to the window. And then we went across the street and we just sat there and watched.

• 1:06:55Speaker 02

  We sat on the curb and watched.

• 1:06:57Dax Shepard?

  And more and more people start going in there. Right now, the place is getting very full of people who want this incredible deal. And of course, the guy sleeping is now up, but he didn't, he can't put two together. And there, there's a lot of folks in there before you finally see him go to the window and tear the signs down where he figures out why.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 1:07:17Dax Shepard?

  That's a good prank, Monica.

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  You guys are good pranksters.

• 1:07:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So, um, we are, you know, again, in my memory, we're there for a while, but probably we're not like by my now timeline. We're not in those apartments long, huh? We're in there for one year. Okay. Oh, and I just want to add one thing that was so great about my mom. My brother was obsessed with Kiss. And, um, she knew he was bummed that we were leaving Middle Road and everything, his motorcycle. So she hand painted murals of every member of Kiss on her wall and she did a phenomenal job. It was really sweet.

• 1:07:47Speaker 02

  And I used metallic paint and I painted it on the wall opposite of the street light outside. So at night, the light would come in and it had silver.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  Pretty darn good.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 1:07:59Dax Shepard?

  Uh, you probably didn't get your deposit back because of that.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:08:02Dax Shepard?

  So we then moved, we moved to, um, at the end of Main Street, which was a step up. This is, I told the story the other day that we had Jewish neighbors and that was the first Jewish people I met. And I couldn't figure out what was different about them, other than that they drove a beetle bug. And I assumed all Jewish people drove beetle bugs. I was like, oh, I guess that's what's different about that. I don't really know what's different about them.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  You were a human scab in that place because you were learning to ride a two wheeler.

• 1:08:25Dax Shepard?

  Yes, crashing regularly. Um, but you, at this point now, you meet, we can say his name because he's passed away. Uh, you meet Greg, who's a friend of my dad's and you guys fall in love quite quickly. Yeah.

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Quick courtship. And then you get married. And when you guys are dating, he has two jobs, very productive.

• 1:08:46Dax Shepard?

  And then you guys get married.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  And he has zero jobs.

• 1:08:49Dax Shepard?

  And then he goes down to zero jobs, right? And we're not there too long either, right? How long are we at the end of Main Street?

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  A year.

• 1:08:59Dax Shepard?

  A year. And so this, this marriage goes south quickly. And I think you could be very illuminating to a lot of us because when I have been on the outside, listening to women who are caught in a cycle of an abusive relationship, it's so hard for me to comprehend how you could stay in that. And you are a very, very strong woman. And so I think it would be enlightening to know what, what is happening mentally? When you're going through that, because you don't take shit from anybody, yet you ended up taking shit from somebody, right?

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, boy. I, I think what goes through is, um, I had kids. Again, I'm thinking about, one of the things that was an issue with him was, he was unable to tell the truth and he was a drug addict. And so I had gone from being self-supporting with you and David to marrying him and taking on a ton of debt because he was constantly charging things at a gas station that the guy would give him cash so he could put it up his nose and things like that. So by the time I was aware that this was not a good situation, I need to leave. I need to get my kids out of this. I need to get me out of this.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  It was like, I was so in debt. What am I going to do? How am I going to support this? How am I going to move on? That was one issue and that was a big issue because again, you know, I'm pretty logical about.

• 1:10:30Dax Shepard?

  That's a pragmatic issue, yeah.

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  Right, but the emotional issue is I was brought up super duper Catholic and I.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  Being divorced from your dad was to say sinful and a disappointment to my parents would be an extreme understatement. And I felt a lot of shame about that. And so now here I am, married less than a year. It's a very bad situation. I've been kicked around the kitchen, bounced off the floor. Humans do bounce. And I need to get away. And yet I cannot admit defeat. I cannot.

• 1:11:08Dax Shepard?

  The second failure.

• 1:11:09Speaker 02

  The failure thing was so, I was so ashamed. So, so ashamed. And it was just beyond me to, you know, like, I'll just try harder. I'll just try harder. I'll figure this out.

• 1:11:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  And it was just a very bad situation.

• 1:11:24Dax Shepard?

  Did you guys go to counseling or anything?

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  The first time I was physically abused, I kicked him out and I stayed in the house this time. I was getting smarter. I kicked him out and his mom called me and really pleaded his case and how sorry he was. And he would go to counseling. So, okay, I took him back and we went to counseling. I'm gonna say maximum two times. And that was the end of the counseling. He was not up for that. And so then the behavior was repeated again.

• 1:12:00Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:12:03Speaker 02

  Counseling didn't work. Talking about it didn't work. And then it happened again. And when it happened again, I didn't know it, but I was pregnant with Carly. And I, right away, the next day, a friend of mine came over, Nels.

• 1:12:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  And he, yup, he changed all the locks on my door and he bandaged me up. He was so nice. And I went to the lawyer and I was sitting in the lawyer's office and they said, are there any children from this marriage? And I said, no. And then I started thinking, oh, my God.

• 1:12:35Dax Shepard?

  Like, it started occurring to you at that moment? I'm pregnant?

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  It occurred to me. When was my last period? Oh, my God. Oh, my God, if I'm late, I'm pregnant. I'm never not pregnant. Oh, my God. And I just had this real, like, oh, and I didn't say anything to the lawyer. I went down in the lobby. I called your dad from a payphone. And I said, oh, my God, I think I'm pregnant. I just, you know, I just filed for divorce and I think I'm pregnant. And your dad said to me. Tell them it's mine. I won't deny it and I'll take care of it. Just go ahead and divorce him. And, um, and he said, unless you want to have an abortion and if you do, I'll drive you and you know, I'll be supportive. So I said, I, I can't afford three kids. I just can't, I, there's just no way I can do this alone.

• 1:13:20Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  So I scheduled, I went to the doctor, scheduled, um, an abortion.

• 1:13:25Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  And, um, when I went for the abortion, my doctor, um, said, let's just see if we can get a heartbeat, see how far you are. And he put it on speaker. And I heard the heartbeat and I believe very much in abortion. I think it's a necessary option for people that need an option.

• 1:13:42Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:13:42Speaker 02

  But for me, I could not do it.

• 1:13:44Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  And so I decided to have her. So then I was single and pregnant.

• 1:13:48Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  With two kids and it was just like, I would, I remember riding my bike in Oxford Acres and I would ride past people's houses and I would see their lights on. And think that they were all having dinner together as a family and I would cry on my bike and say, why can't I have this? Why, why am I? I'm so not good at this. I just can't figure this out.

• 1:14:09Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  It was awful.

• 1:14:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  It was a bad time in my life.

• 1:14:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  And financially I was just so, cause I had to provide him a car. I had to pay him half the house.

• 1:14:19Dax Shepard?

  But, but, but, but that's, that's down the road. Cause he then joins us in Terra and he lives there when Carly's born.

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  He came back for a short period of time again.

• 1:14:30Dax Shepard?

  That's my memories of him being violent is in that house.

• 1:14:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  Um. Yep.

• 1:14:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And he was a very physically imposing guy. He was like a athlete, he had played in the minor leagues for the Red Sox or something.

• 1:14:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Um, and he was, uh,

• 1:14:52Dax Shepard?

  you'd come home from work and Carly would be crying and he, Carly had pooped her diaper, right?

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  The worst one was, um, I, well, he, he kept the car. So he had a car. So he would drop me off at work. I work afternoons and he's supposed to pick me up at midnight. And on several occasions, he would get hammered and not show up.

• 1:15:10Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  And there was a time I walked. From the proving grounds at midnight back to expert acres.

• 1:15:15Dax Shepard?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 1:15:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. And there were times that Nels would be suspicious and Nels would come back and give me a ride. And Nels was my gay friend. He was just the most wonderful buddy. Anyway, um, this one particular time he did not show up, did not show up. And, um, Nels and this other girl, my little buddies, they were suspicious and they came back to the proving grounds like at one o'clock in the morning. And I'm still sitting there waiting for Greg to pick me up and, uh, they came and got me and they drove me home and they said, you know, we'll come in the house with you. Cause again, Nels was very suspicious of what would be the situation. We opened the front door.

• 1:15:53Dax Shepard?

  Again, what a brave, sweet guy. Cause he was not physically imposing.

• 1:15:56Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:15:57Dax Shepard?

  Throw himself in that situation.

• 1:15:58Speaker 02

  You're such a good friend. And, um, we opened the door and smoke is billowing out the front door. The smoke alarms are going off. The stove is on fire. Flames shooting out of the fire and my children are asleep. All three of them are asleep in the house. And he is passed out drunk on the family room floor and there's.

• 1:16:22Dax Shepard?

  And the house is on fire.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  This, the stakes are on fire in the stove.

• 1:16:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  And it was like, okay. So, you know, Nels was putting out the fire. Diane's helping me get the kids out of bed and out on the front lawn to breathe, you know?

• 1:16:37Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  I just, it was like.

• 1:16:41Dax Shepard?

  That's, that's very chaotic.

• 1:16:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was very chaotic. So shortly after that, there was the, the breakfast departure, which we all know the story of the breakfast departure.

• 1:16:50Dax Shepard?

  Well, but there was another, there was another moment in that, that I, I think, uh, you considered killing him at one point. Yeah?

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:16:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  One time I had been beat up pretty bad badly and, um, I, I was really in bad shape. And I was up in the bedroom, locked in the bedroom and he eventually passed out on the couch in the family room. And I got up because it was quiet and I came down into the kitchen and I had a cast iron skillet that Grandma Yoles had given me and I.

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  Took the skillet and I went to the couch and I stood over him. And I was so black and blue all over. I mean, my logic was I'm going to take the cast iron skillet and I'm going to hit him on the head and I'm going to smash his brains out. And when the police get here, they will see how physically beat up I am and it will be self-defense. And it'll be okay. And I stood for a very long time. And then two thoughts ran through. The first one, which was not the most overpowering, which was if I don't kill him in the first swing, he'll get up and use the pan on me.

• 1:17:59Dax Shepard?

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  The second thought, which is the one that won, was if you kill him and if you don't get off on self-defense, the kids will be alone.

• 1:18:10Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:11Speaker 02

  I cannot lose my kids. I went back upstairs and locked the door and I did not do it. But that's how desperate I was. I was very.

• 1:18:19Dax Shepard?

  And we saved you a couple of times throughout your life, right? That same rationale where you were contemplating hurting yourself and that kind of was the life raft.

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it because I knew, because at that time, your dad was using very heavily. And my family lived far away.

• 1:18:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  And it was like, I was literally all that you guys had.

• 1:18:42Dax Shepard?

  Right. Yeah. And I knew that. Carly, dad couldn't raise the three of us. Yeah.

• 1:18:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  I knew that this was, yeah, I could not.

• 1:18:53Dax Shepard?

  If you're wondering why would I just drag my mom down this terribly traumatic memory lane? I think what's really powerful and amazing about your story is if you are 28 years old right now and you're getting beat up and your life is miserable and you think that's it and that's the rest of your life. Ah. What's coming is so beautiful and there's so much ahead. There was so much ahead for you. I can't imagine in those moments, you felt like there was so much ahead for you.

• 1:19:19Speaker 02

  There was so much, I was so far in debt and it was such, my self-esteem was so smashed. It was so, it was such a horrible, horrible time that looking back on it, I'm amazed. That was my life. I'm amazed, you know, because.

• 1:19:37Dax Shepard?

  It feels like someone else's or a movie or something.

• 1:19:40Speaker 02

  It really does.

• 1:19:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:41Speaker 02

  It really, because, you know, well, even, I would say even at 17, you know.

• 1:19:48Speaker 02

  Being pregnant and my father was very disappointed in me and made some very hurtful remarks to me. And I would say to anybody that is in that situation, any bad decisions that you've made that you got yourself there, that was that decision. And tomorrow is another day and you can choose again.

• 1:20:08Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  Dust your knees off. You can, you can choose again.

• 1:20:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you keep picking.

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  Yep. You're saying to yourself, Monica, that, oh, my God, I've met this lady a lot of times. I would never think she'd be that stupid to be in a situation like that.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  That's, that's the opposite of what I was thinking. I was thinking that how easy it is to get there.

• 1:20:28Speaker 02

  So easy.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  It's so easy.

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  And I think it's easy to say like, I would never, it would never be me. I would be stronger.

• 1:20:36Speaker 02

  People that are like that, in my opinion, are such top drawer bamboozlers.

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:43Speaker 02

  I mean, there's been books that have been written called Smart Women, Foolish Choices. And it's like, I know really smart women that are incredible. I worked with a lady that she was like my role model and she was really a great person. And sent herself to school to become an engineer, then got a master's in business and just did all sorts of things. And I know two different times that she was in relationships that she just like would come home from a business trip and her husband was in bed with another woman. Or met this guy and he promised her the moon and all he did was ring up her charge cards and stuff and not work and left her in complete debt. Like, it happens because we want to believe. We want to believe.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  Exactly. I think that people underestimate that power. But also that I'm sure, which is maybe hard to admit after the fact, that he was also giving you something. He was in, or at some point did.

• 1:21:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  So there's also that, that maybe that'll come back or that was.

• 1:21:46Speaker 02

  Well, I think that there's, there's something else involved here that maybe, I don't know if anybody else can relate to this, but.

• 1:21:56Speaker 02

  Maybe it's only the time or the era that I grew up in, but being prom queen or being the head cheerleader are all those things that we, when we're very young and impressionable and, you know, we haven't got things figured out. Those things kind of cement, like, I don't want to say maybe values or criteria to judge yourself by.

• 1:22:15Speaker 01

  Goals, yeah.

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so I think that we become, for me, somebody telling you you're pretty and that they want you to be desired, and those butterflies that you feel in a relationship become very addictive.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  I mean, it's a, it's a high for sure. It's a drug.

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:32Speaker 02

  And so, like any other drug, it's like, I feel like when I would get in that situation and what would happen was, the cycle was that I would get out of a very bad relationship, and so then I would be alone because I'm not going to be bamboozled again, and I just need to protect my kids and be with my kids. And you get so lonely that the first person that comes along that suspects that feeds into that and supplies you that drug again.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:22:56Speaker 02

  And so there you are, down that path again.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that validation, I think, is the most powerful.

• 1:23:03Speaker 02

  And I, and I, and while I take responsibility for my own actions, I, I would think that a lot of our society really sets females up for that. I mean, every advertisement is, you look hot, and then a guy, you, do you know what I mean?

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  That's how you get.

• 1:23:21Speaker 02

  You get that validation.

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's how you find love.

• 1:23:23Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's right.

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  So when I finally met Dave Barton, by then, I was so jaded.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:33Speaker 02

  That when a nice guy came along, I mean, like, I remember, we went a couple of years where he had an engagement ring for me that I just would not accept because every time he would say, I would say, "I'm not good at this."

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:46Speaker 02

  "I'm not good at this."

• 1:23:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, the pattern shows one thing, so how could...

• 1:23:49Speaker 02

  "Yeah, I'm a failure at this. I'm, I, I can't, I can't, I don't know how to be married."

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, but then you did it.

• 1:23:55Speaker 02

  I finally did it, and it's surprising that I did do it because even, Dec can tell you, the day of my wedding, David begged me not to do it. He said, "I can't pick you up again, Mom."

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:24:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  I'm sure we'll talk about it, but I want to know how you met him.

• 1:24:12Speaker 02

  Blind date.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  Oh. Oh.

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  I'd never figured it out on my own.

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what it took. Somebody, yeah.

• 1:24:20Speaker 02

  Honestly, if I had to figure it out on my own, I, I, I still believe that. Like, if I should ever date again, which right at this moment, I have no intention of, I would not date without like Dex picking up the person or something, you know, like somebody I trust.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's smart.

• 1:24:35Speaker 02

  That's how I feel.

• 1:24:37Dax Shepard?

  Okay. The one little thing I want to go over before we move off of Greg and Tara and all that is, uh, to me, I feel like this is where my first introduction to being a love addict kind of starts because, and by the way, these are my fondest memories alive. So I'm not being critical of this. I'm just aware of it. You worked so much. You had so much going on.

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  I know where you're going.

• 1:25:00Dax Shepard?

  You were so fucking tired. You were cleaning the house. You were making all of our meals. I sincerely don't know how you do it. Chris and I can barely do it with, uh, Carly helping and Monica helping and everyone helping and having money. Uh, I don't know how it was done. I don't think you do either, but the way we dealt with that is Saturdays, we would often just get in the bed. We'd get, we'd be allowed to come to your room and we would lay in bed virtually all day long and snuggle. Is that your memory of it?

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  Oh my, it's my favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite memory in my whole, if, you know how, if you could time travel?

• 1:25:38Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  The moment I would go back to would be those weekends where we would start in the morning, we would have breakfast in my bed and Carly was little and she would crawl around on us and David was reading David Copperfield in school required reading and I would read chapters of David Copperfield and we would all be snuggled under the covers and we would spend the whole day. It would be like lunchtime. Oh, I'd go down to the kitchen and bring more food back up and we would just, it was just so, so happy. It was the best.

• 1:26:11Dax Shepard?

  It was, and it was euphoric and it was drug like and it was so.

• 1:26:18Dax Shepard?

  Opposite of the rest of the week, I got this association with like, I don't even know how to describe it, but just like, real highs, lows, highs, lows, highs, lows. And not even like, I, when I think back in that time, there is a period of my childhood where I do remember being lonely, which is coming up. But at that time, I don't feel that. I remember like, being friends with Trevor, and I had all these friends, and I felt like you were around enough. And then I remember those Saturdays. But clearly, now that I have kids, and I'm aware of how much time my job affords me with them, and I recognize, well, there's no way yours could have afforded that much time, you know? I was probably on my own more than, say, my kids are, or whatever is even.

• 1:27:02Speaker 02

  I just remember like, when I was on midnights, that I would try to stay awake during the day with Carly. And that was why I took midnight, so I could still be with Carly. And then I would leave at, you know, 11:45 to get to work. But after dinner, and Carly was in bed, I would lay on the floor with you and David, because I wanted to have time with you and be with you. So we'd put the pillows on the floor by the TV, and you guys would watch your TV show, and I'd have one of you on each side of me with my arm around you. They were such terrorists. I would be so tired, and I'd be asleep, and I would hear them, they would like, clap their hands really louder, they'd say, or I'd hear them say, Mom, Mom, and I'm half asleep, I'm so tired. And they would say, we're taking the car,

• 1:27:46Speaker 02

  we're going up to Kroger, can we have money? All right. And I'd say, see my purse.

• 1:27:53Dax Shepard?

  Let me also add on top of all the, the jobs and the divorce and everything that was going on, David and I were also fucking terrible kids. I mean, we fought nonstop. We were constantly in a fight that you were separating us.

• 1:28:07Speaker 02

  You wanted my attention.

• 1:28:08Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Boy, we, we fought nonstop. I can only imagine what it was like dealing with that. So anyways, you and Greg, you get divorced, and then you meet another man, we'll keep him anonymous, because he's still alive. And you've now been through this twice. What was it that this time around, you're like, fuck it, I think this, I'm gonna go for it again? Did you have to talk yourself into that, or?

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  I, very candidly, I will tell you that.

• 1:28:36Speaker 02

  We had a visit from my in-laws and they were sitting in the family room and they started openly talking about how good my two stepchildren were and how awful my three biological children were because we had custody of all five. And they started talking about it and I said to them, "I'm very uncomfortable with you speaking badly about my children and I need to ask you to stop." And they kept going and I asked them again. And when they kept going a third time, which I actually think it was choreographed by my ex-husband. And I just stood up and yelled down to your

• 1:29:19Speaker 02

  bedroom, "Dax, pack your shit, we're out of here." And I went in the kitchen and got a garbage bag and I went to Carly's bedroom and started throwing her shit in and my shit in. And we, Dax came running up from the lower level with his bag and David ran out of his bedroom with his bag and we got in the car and we were on the move. But what had happened just prior to this happening was all in one weekend. While they were visiting and I was so miserable.

• 1:29:46Dax Shepard?

  Just really quick, because we skipped over, you met a man at work and you married him and he had two kids. So now there were five of us kids and this man had to travel during the winter time. And so you were often throughout the winter left with five kids now and also a full-time job.

• 1:30:02Speaker 02

  And I was going to school at night.

• 1:30:03Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:30:04Speaker 02

  And I, I did not have a problem with his kids. I actually loved his kids very much and I felt very much like in that movie, I felt bad when we separated that I, I had to cut off that relationship.

• 1:30:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And did you get a different awareness about how hard it is to be a stepparent? Like prior, right? Because before it's just you're seeing through the lens of you would probably want Greg to be a better stepdad or whatever.

• 1:30:30Dax Shepard?

  And until you're in a situation like that, right? It's, it's hard to imagine what a hard fucking role that is.

• 1:30:34Speaker 02

  It's hard. I, I don't know how people do it. Honestly, I, I admire anybody that can do it successfully. And I, I, I gave it my all. I, in fact, I remember seeing a therapist at the time and saying, I, I just can't bake enough cupcakes to make this right. It just was the hardest. You're, you're dealing with kids that have a lot of baggage because they've been a battleground for their parents to fight, you know, their, their property in a divorce and, and they're damaged. And you're trying to blend them with your kids and you have a partner that has his baggage and your kids that have their baggage. And it's everybody living in one house and it's just.

• 1:31:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:11Speaker 02

  It was horrid.

• 1:31:12Dax Shepard?

  And wow, it's just striking me as you were talking about this because I have this terrible chip on my shoulder about rich people that I wish I could get rid of. I, I aim to get rid of it, but I do wonder if it was, that's where it maybe started is that they were perceived as higher class than us. He had been raised, the stepdad had been raised in a, in a family with money and they were kind of upper class and we were shitty.

• 1:31:35Speaker 02

  And we were even reminded, no, she, she even made comments about how bad our English was and.

• 1:31:42Dax Shepard?

  And our manners at the table.

• 1:31:43Speaker 02

  Our manners and our grammar and mine as well. And what she even said when we got engaged, she said to me, she said, well, of course, congratulations. I want Rick to be happy. And she said, um, uh, of course we would be happy for Rick to remarry if he, if he should find a nice girl. And I heard that pretty loud and clear.

• 1:32:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then his father actually told me one time that it was the worst thing that ever happened to their family. So.

• 1:32:11Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 1:32:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then the fact that we went at Christmas and we watched them open presents and everybody got presents except my children. And Carly was like three years old and Carly kept waiting very patiently for her turn to open a present.

• 1:32:24Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:32:25Speaker 02

  It just ripped my heart out. It was just.

• 1:32:28Dax Shepard?

  So yeah, that, that, that go around was

• 1:32:31Speaker 02

  Very hard on my self-esteem.

• 1:32:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, hard on your self-esteem because this was a much different version now. And again, we'll edit out his name. This was, whereas Greg was physically abusive. This was very mentally abusive, right? This person was incredibly intelligent, very, very type A.

• 1:32:48Speaker 02

  I looked up to him.

• 1:32:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. He was very. Patents and, and he jogged marathons and he raced motorcycles. He was like.

• 1:32:55Speaker 02

  He was incredible.

• 1:32:56Dax Shepard?

  He was crushing at life.

• 1:32:57Speaker 02

  And he was, he looked like the Marlboro man. He was, he was everything a girl would want in a husband. I mean, when you were shopping, you would think, oh my God, this guy is a deal.

• 1:33:08Dax Shepard?

  He's like one step away from a surgeon.

• 1:33:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was, he was excellent. And then it became very apparent to me very quickly in the relationship that he was very, very

• 1:33:19Speaker 02

  to, to, to dump out the silverware drawer on the floor and say that I was a pig because I didn't stack the forks in the drawer.

• 1:33:27Dax Shepard?

  Correct.

• 1:33:27Speaker 02

  Or the meat wasn't filed in the freezer as in beef, all goes with beef and pork, all goes with pork and chicken, all goes with chicken. And I'm a very neat person.

• 1:33:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'd say so.

• 1:33:38Speaker 02

  Very clean house.

• 1:33:39Dax Shepard?

  Tidy.

• 1:33:40Speaker 02

  Um, I was often told I was a pig and.

• 1:33:44Speaker 01

  Controlling, he was super.

• 1:33:45Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah. And also.

• 1:33:47Speaker 02

  Me up because I started really believing it. I started really.

• 1:33:50Dax Shepard?

  You were trash.

• 1:33:51Speaker 02

  I did believe I was really trash and low rent and that.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  How long were you married to him?

• 1:33:57Speaker 02

  Two years.

• 1:33:58Dax Shepard?

  Again, now this is something that in my mind occupies.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  That's what I was about to ask.

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  Twenty years.

• 1:34:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's like a chapter, but it's not. It's like a few pages.

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:09Dax Shepard?

  And I'll also say this, tons of great stuff came out of that.

• 1:34:11Speaker 02

  Oh, heck, yeah.

• 1:34:13Dax Shepard?

  That guy who, uh, you know, I disagree with all the ways he treated my mom and us. Taught me how to be very present and mindful of what I was doing and thinking about how I was moving through the world. And he was so smart, he could answer any question. Um, he, uh, he was a crazy good example of like, just the intellectual life and in, in pursuing things passionately. And he, he's probably why I race motorcycles and race cars.

• 1:34:40Speaker 02

  Very physically fit. He believed in exercise, you know, the running marathons and.

• 1:34:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, there were like, it was such a mixed bag of things. Oh, this was going to say, the number one thing he gave me is that I am like him in, in a lot of ways. And I will be on the verge of saying, who didn't squish the sponge out before they put it back? That's how it gets mold, right? I'm like, the sentence is on the tip of my tongue. And I go, oh, I know what it's like to live with someone like that. And it's fucking miserable. Deal with the fucking mold on the sponge, or whatever thing I want to say, it's not being done to my standards. I'm grateful I had an example of what, what it feels like to be on the business end of that. It's, it's grueling. It's exhausting. And you just can't do it right. And you're never going to do it right. And it's, so I, I thank him for giving me somewhat of an awareness for that.

• 1:35:27Speaker 02

  I got to the point, living with him, and we were in therapy, you know, almost our whole marriage. And I just got to the point where I just realized, this is not going to get better. And there's nothing I can do to make it better. And then subsequently, the next thought in my head was, and I cannot go home to my parents and tell them I'm getting divorced again. I cannot tell people at work, I'm going to get divorced again. I cannot drag my kids through another divorce. I cannot do that. The only option is to die. And so I had a friend at work that had given me a key to her house. And I, and told me, she, I'd never confided in her,

• 1:36:11Speaker 02

  never told her anything that was going on in my house. But she had an antenna, and we were not close girlfriends. We were just work friends. And she walked into my office one day and said, Here's the key to my house. She was single. Here's the key to my house. If you ever need a place for you and your kids to come, you are always welcome and your children are welcome as well.

• 1:36:34Dax Shepard?

  That's Anne? Oh, that's so cool.

• 1:36:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, she ended up being a therapist, a alcohol substance abuse therapist.

• 1:36:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:42Speaker 02

  But anyway, she walked out and I thought, why would she do that? I, nobody knows what's going on. She knew. I mean, it was so obvious.

• 1:36:49Dax Shepard?

  She was an angel.

• 1:36:50Speaker 02

  She was an angel. And I'm so forever grateful for her. I mean, there's so much she gave me.

• 1:36:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:56Speaker 02

  And so anyway, I was having just a horrific day one day and I went to her house. She wasn't home. I opened her garage and I pulled my car in to, I was gonna run the exhaust and kill myself. And I went in and I knelt down on the floor to, I forget what I was doing now, kneeling down on the floor to get something or, oh, to suck the tailpipe.

• 1:37:23Dax Shepard?

  Or you wanted to get close to the tailpipe?

• 1:37:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:25Dax Shepard?

  This is brutal.

• 1:37:27Speaker 02

  It is brutal. And I had on white pants. And all of a sudden, I realized, Jesus, her garage floor is dirty. My pants are getting dirty. And the absurdity of that, that I was gonna kill myself, but I was concerned about my pants getting dirty. I went into a hysterical laughing thing, opened the garage drawer, drove the car out and said, no, I gotta fix this. You, you can't just run away from everything. You have to fix this.

• 1:37:52Dax Shepard?

  Hmm. Now, while all that's happening, which is, um, uh, you know, the personal life is not, is not thriving. You are climbing the ladder at General Motors very successfully for someone without a college degree and a woman.

• 1:38:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:38:06Dax Shepard?

  Uh, against many odds.

• 1:38:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:38:09Dax Shepard?

  You end up, at this point, you're the, you're a fleet manager, right? Which is a good title.

• 1:38:13Speaker 02

  Supervisor over three departments.

• 1:38:15Dax Shepard?

  Right. So you're a baller now at GM. You've, you've done very well. And they start, they, they have this wonderful thing for the employees at the GM proving grounds. They have a family day and they invite everyone to bring their family. And the proving grounds, if you have no awareness of it, is this. You know, dozens of square miles of racetrack. It's Disney World for cars. There's hill climbs. There's tracks that you don't have such steering wheel if you're going 70 miles an hour. It's just a blast. And so you started volunteering because you wanted overtime, if I remember it correctly, to start organizing this huge event that they would have at the proving grounds. So you're doing that, you do that a few years in a row, I guess?

• 1:38:54Speaker 02

  And, and the Longley Press Show, yeah, that they had out there. Yeah.

• 1:38:58Dax Shepard?

  Right. So you're dabbling in this side thing just for overtime, which is basically event planning and execution. So you get an offer to go work at an ad agency in Detroit, which is Cambly Wald, which at the time had the General Motors account. I don't know if they still do or not, but.

• 1:39:15Speaker 02

  Chevrolet account.

• 1:39:16Dax Shepard?

  Chevrolet account. Okay. And then you were now working in advertising, which again, pretty miraculous because

• 1:39:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:23Dax Shepard?

  there's no reason they should have hired you for that, right?

• 1:39:25Speaker 02

  I started as an account executive in, what do they call that? Product information. And by the time I left, two years later, I was vice president in motorsports, merchandising and marketing.

• 1:39:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And you loved that job, right?

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  Loved it. Loved it. But the only drawback was that to be in that job, you really should be a single person. You really needed to put in a lot of hours. And it was very, very hard for me with three kids.

• 1:39:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Yeah. And just having left a husband and trying to, so let me also fluff your pillows. So with all that going on, a divorce, a new job, my mom says, I'm going to build my own house.

• 1:40:06Speaker 02

  Always wanted to.

• 1:40:07Dax Shepard?

  This is something I can do myself.

• 1:40:10Speaker 02

  Since I read Henry David Thoreau, when he in high school, and he said that it's as fitting and proper to build your own house as a bird builds a nest. And I said to myself, I'm going to do that someday.

• 1:40:21Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh. And you decided to do it right in the eye of a hurricane.

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  I actually paid cash for the property because your brother David had given me a stock tip. He was in high school and he was taking a class in school and was watching stocks and he told me to buy consumers power. And I did and it, it went. It like, I forget, he'll tell you, but it tripled or quadrupled or something.

• 1:40:43Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no kidding.

• 1:40:43Speaker 02

  So I had the cash and I paid cash for the lot off of Herb and Margaret Hoover. And then I went out and thought, because I didn't think there was going to be any issue with building my own house.

• 1:40:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:52Speaker 02

  Being my own contractor. And I went to the banks and as a single.

• 1:40:57Dax Shepard?

  With zero building experience.

• 1:40:58Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna say they laughed at me outright. I'm just gonna say there was some snickering. But um, so I went, when I had bought the property, Herb said, if you need a building loan, I would be happy to loan it to you, but I thought I'll go to a bank.

• 1:41:10Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:41:10Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna do that. So I went back to Herb and said, are you still interested in giving me a building loan? And he said, absolutely. And the guy had met me just two times.

• 1:41:20Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 1:41:21Speaker 02

  And, but he just believed in me. And so I took that loan and.

• 1:41:25Dax Shepard?

  So while you were doing that job, which was very um, uh, labor intensive.

• 1:41:30Speaker 02

  It was fabulous.

• 1:41:32Dax Shepard?

  You then started building a house and we did stuff like run the wire, us kids. And my favorite part is there was a painter who you had employed that we regularly had to go, we knew what bar he hung out at and he, in the most, the loveliest man ever. But we would have to go as a family and urge him to leave the bar and continue working on the house. Right?

• 1:41:52Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. He didn't just paint. He roughed it in. He did a lot of things in his ways.

• 1:41:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. But you built a house, which was our first really nice house.

• 1:42:01Speaker 02

  It was a turning point in my life because um, I found out that when you build a house, like anything in life, that you dig the hole one day. You don't build the whole house. You just dig the hole. And then, you know, you can get a book on it, which now you would go online, but I had bought a book. And the next thing after building the house, you need to, you know, pour the basement walls. And then you have to, you know, put the cap on the floor and then you build the walls and then you do the rough plum and you do the rough. And I learned that everything was just one step at a time and that you didn't have to conquer the whole thing. And then pretty soon you actually have a house and. It was like this huge victory to me. It was this, look, I could do it. If I could do

• 1:42:46Speaker 02

  this, I could do anything.

• 1:42:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's the climbing a mountain one footstep at a time metaphor.

• 1:42:51Speaker 02

  But I'd never internalized that concept prior to this. It was really a big, big moment.

• 1:42:59Dax Shepard?

  And if you focus on the little steps and not the overall project, you can kind of do things.

• 1:43:04Speaker 02

  And I want to give credit where credit is due. I want you to know that while I was doing this, I worked for Brent Morgan and Brent Morgan, I probably could have done it without him. However, thank God for Brent Morgan because Brent Morgan would give me so many little tips like.

• 1:43:18Dax Shepard?

  And he knew guys and stuff, right?

• 1:43:20Speaker 02

  Oh, he would recommend people and he would tell me, you know, like, did you, did you go prop those basement walls? You know, you got to walk out basement. You really need to brace those walls before they do this because you know, you could have trouble with it. And it was like, how do I brace the walls? And he would tell me and I'd say, okay, and I'd go out there and do it, you know, but like, what a great person to be in my, I've had so many really awesome people in my life.

• 1:43:39Dax Shepard?

  A lot of mentors along the way.

• 1:43:40Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm so grateful.

• 1:43:44Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:43:51Dax 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. And

• 1:44:36Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 1:45:04Dax Shepard?

  So while you were working at Campbell Ewald, you've now built this house that we now live in. And to me, weirdly, when I think of my childhood, even though time wise, it's not the bulk of where we lived, my childhood is those three years in Milford, Michigan, before I moved.

• 1:45:17Speaker 02

  It's your middle road.

• 1:45:17Dax Shepard?

  It's my middle road, totally. We had a big yard and a nice house. I was so proud of it. And

• 1:45:23Speaker 02

  You had a half pipe in the

• 1:45:24Dax Shepard?

  I met Aaron Weekly, the love of my life.

• 1:45:26Speaker 02

  When I hired in at Campbell Ewald, one of the things I said in the interview was that I was starting a business and that I would need time off for that business from time to time. And they agreed to it. And I was on salary with them.

• 1:45:40Dax Shepard?

  That's great.

• 1:45:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I had a great interview and a great, it was a real good thing. But what it was, was Brent Morgan called me and said, hey, listen, there's a new person at Chevy PR doing long lead. And I bet if you called her, she could really use some help putting it together. And so I called Janet Echoff and I said, hey, you know, I understand you're doing long lead. I've done it before and I would be happy to contract. And she went in to talk to Ralph Kramer, who knew me. And that afternoon, they called me back and that afternoon, I went in and I had a purchase order. And that was the start of the business.

• 1:46:10Dax Shepard?

  Right. So that was your first bit of business, your first job. And this starts, you of course do a great job because you're so competent, it's crazy. You do a great job on that. And that starts leading to more and more shows. And how long are you working at Campbell Ewald? And before you decide, I'm going to quit Campbell Ewald and do this full time. And how scary is that?

• 1:46:31Speaker 02

  Two years. And it was very scary. I, when I finally did make the release, it was, it was tough financially. The first year of shows and shoots, I think I made 31,000 gross.

• 1:46:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:46:49Speaker 02

  And so I had to pay payroll out of that and expenses and feed you guys. It was, it was a little sketchy.

• 1:46:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:57Speaker 02

  But we did it.

• 1:46:58Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:46:59Speaker 02

  But we did it. And then we doubled the next year, and we doubled the year after that. And pretty soon, it was a real full fledged business.

• 1:47:05Dax Shepard?

  But you did not heed your father's best advice, which was the tube steak steak story, which he told all members of the family. And he very much urged people that when you can afford a steak, just go ahead and eat steak and stay in your position. Don't, don't climb up and then eat tube steak again. Right? Just at some point, eat steak and be where you're at. But you didn't follow that, right? Anytime we had an opportunity to live somewhere nice, I guess what I'm saying is we were never like on super solid ground when we would make these leaps, like out of the main street to Terra. That was by the skin of our teeth. And then obviously this house was by the skin of our teeth.

• 1:47:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, my theory has always been, I think because I was a waitress when I was young, is if I have to bet on me, if it's a 50 50 chance of I'm going to make it or I'm not going to make it, if I'm the, if I'm the variable, I'll bet on me any day of the week.

• 1:47:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:57Speaker 02

  And that's how I felt like, okay, I'm going to start this business. And yeah, I read a lot of businesses fail. But if I've got a 50 50 chance, I'm going to, I'm going to tip the scale. I'm going to, I'm going to do that.

• 1:48:08Dax Shepard?

  And so one show leads to another, and then you quit, and then you're now doing, I don't know, six or seven shows a year at some point when I'm in 10, our ninth grade or something. And then you take on David, my brother, as a partner, and you guys start growing this business. Spoiler alert. So where it ends up is that this turns into many, many shows throughout the year.

• 1:48:28Speaker 02

  25 years.

• 1:48:29Dax Shepard?

  For 25 years, you had this business and the shows where the events turned into a fleet management business where we would house all these General Motors cars that would get lent to journalists around the country. So then we were delivering cars, managing fleets, receiving cars.

• 1:48:46Dax Shepard?

  And then you get asked, because you do a great job at this, to service other zones in the General Motors world. And then at its height, there was a shop in Chicago. You had a partner shop down in Atlanta. You had some set up down in, no, not New Jersey, but down in Texas, down in Dallas, you had a shop. And at one point, you had, how many employees?

• 1:49:10Speaker 02

  Forty two.

• 1:49:11Dax Shepard?

  Forty two employees and you're managing hundreds of cars. And it was a big, big company. It's so impressive.

• 1:49:19Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:49:19Dax Shepard?

  It's really, really mind blowing.

• 1:49:21Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:49:22Dax Shepard?

  And I was in the catbird seat because I was 14 years old and I went to work for you. And I obviously got way more leeway than anyone would give me other than you. And I got to drive all these cool cars, which is all I cared about my whole life is cars. And I'd go on these, we'd go to racetracks and I'd get to do photography with the journalists. And I was encouraged to get sideways in cars and act like an idiot and do donuts. And it was all, everyone was happy when you did that. You got paid at the end of the week. But also suffice to say, the hardest job I've ever had, where you would regularly, you'd turn in your hours at the end of a week on Long Leaden, Wisconsin. And I was regularly working 105 to 120 hours in one week. It's almost impossible. You'd have like three hours off a night.

• 1:50:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. When I tell people in Hood River that know me now as a retired 66 year old woman that, well, I own my own business and I worked 100 hours a week. You know, they're telling someone for more than 100, they'd look at me and I think they think.

• 1:50:19Dax Shepard?

  That's not possible.

• 1:50:20Speaker 02

  You're not working 100 hours.

• 1:50:21Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:50:22Speaker 02

  That's an exaggeration.

• 1:50:23Dax Shepard?

  Well, you did, you worked seven days a week. So we had a car show in New York, the central launch, and we did three weeks, seven days a week, at least 20 hours a day. And it was just, but the culture and the environment at Shows and Shoots was such a party. It was so fun. It was all young people. It was many of my best friends.

• 1:50:42Speaker 02

  I loved every one of them.

• 1:50:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And do you think that that was, um, being around that many young people for that period of time was like energizing? Or did it change your life?

• 1:50:52Speaker 02

  It was lifeblood. When I would be with my Shows and Shoots crew, I just would be so happy. It was just so fun. It was hard work, but we, we always joked and we always had stories and it was just, they were all so beautiful. Every one of them were so beautiful and they were so invested to do a good job. And I don't know, it was just, it was like magic.

• 1:51:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And you're the best boss I've ever had, any boss that, and I've tried to model you when I've directed movies. Like I try to work the hardest so that you're encouraging other people.

• 1:51:22Speaker 02

  I never asked anybody to do something I wouldn't do.

• 1:51:24Dax Shepard?

  No, you were always, if you had to do, we would go on these shows and every single night we'd have to prep 120 cars. And you would do wheels, which was the shittiest job, you know, whatever it was. Always did the shittiest job with all of us and you never went home early and you were always up with all of us. It was great leadership training for me. But as the business is growing, we're in this house, you meet Dave Barton. Dave Barton comes along and he is thus far the opposite of what you've generally been attracted to because you're attracted to kind of people who are bucking the system, who are living out loud, who are attention getters, right? And here comes this sweet man, an electrical engineer who dresses terribly,

• 1:52:07Dax Shepard?

  drives a minivan and is just soft spoken and not looking for attention.

• 1:52:13Speaker 02

  He's just the most wonderful human being.

• 1:52:15Dax Shepard?

  Yes. And you-

• 1:52:17Speaker 02

  But I didn't know it at the start.

• 1:52:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you didn't.

• 1:52:20Speaker 02

  He didn't, he didn't have a fast come online. He didn't, he wasn't the fast dancer with the hottest moves and, you know, clothes that he couldn't afford and charge. He just wasn't that person.

• 1:52:32Dax Shepard?

  Right. And but slowly he wooed you and you guys got married when I think I was 16, 15 or 16.

• 1:52:41Speaker 02

  90. Yeah, in 90.

• 1:52:43Dax Shepard?

  In 90.

• 1:52:44Speaker 02

  I think that's right because it would be 28 years this November. So 90.

• 1:52:48Dax Shepard?

  Right. And now let me just ask you because you know, in AA, there's this concept of contrary action, which is if you've seen the results of your instincts enough times, at a certain point, you have to go, whoo, let's try doing the opposite of what feels right as an experiment. Or at least that's been my experience. I go, oh, yeah, this feels really right. I'm going to turn away from that because when I do the thing that always feels right, I know where it ends up. So Barton was very much contrary action, whether you were aware of it or not.

• 1:53:20Speaker 02

  Very much.

• 1:53:21Dax Shepard?

  You were aware of it?

• 1:53:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:23Dax Shepard?

  And you thought, maybe this might just work because he's the opposite of-

• 1:53:27Speaker 02

  No, I never thought it would work. I totally went into it feeling that I'm not good at this, I'm never going to be good at this and just enjoy this moment and I'm not even looking to where it's going to go.

• 1:53:39Dax Shepard?

  And then you ended up marrying him?

• 1:53:41Speaker 02

  I did, but he asked many times. And I resisted because I was sure I would end up in divorce.

• 1:53:48Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:53:48Speaker 02

  And I just, you know, it was a whole different thing and he, he taught me so much.

• 1:53:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, me too. He had a, um, an internal confidence, not an external confidence, not a look how great I am, but he, he really was confident. And on the surface, you wouldn't have guessed that.

• 1:54:08Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:54:08Dax Shepard?

  But he had an internal belief in himself and he knew what is, he was very, very intelligent. And he knew that and he did, but yet he had zero impulse to, he's the opposite of the Dunning, Dunning Kruger effect. He would, he would know the most about a topic and just let everyone else talk about it and not have to.

• 1:54:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:54:25Dax Shepard?

  Be the show off and tell everyone. And it took me a long time. I don't know how long it took you, but it took me a long time to recognize what was going on that, oh my God, he's the smartest guy in the room. That's interesting.

• 1:54:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I liked about him, and when you say this quiet confidence, one of the things was no matter how busy I was with my business, no matter how many things I did, he was never that person like previous partners I had had. He would always say, oh my God, that sounds so perfect for you. Go do it. Go do it. You know, he was always encouraging and.

• 1:54:59Dax Shepard?

  He wasn't threatened by.

• 1:55:00Speaker 02

  He wasn't threatened at all. And all the times I was in the road and anybody who's worked for GM or probably any industry, when you're on the road a lot with a lot of the same people all the time, there is much.

• 1:55:11Dax Shepard?

  Everyone's fucking.

• 1:55:12Speaker 02

  That's right. It's much fooling around.

• 1:55:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:15Speaker 02

  And I never, ever did.

• 1:55:16Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:55:17Speaker 02

  Because I would never want to have seen his face had he found out something like that. But the thing is, he never, ever, ever even remarked like, do people fool around? Or would you ever consider?

• 1:55:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:32Speaker 02

  He was so confident with himself.

• 1:55:34Dax Shepard?

  Which is attractive, right?

• 1:55:35Speaker 02

  Oh my God. So it made me even more so. I would never think of.

• 1:55:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Then a super fucking patient guy, because you were gone a ton.

• 1:55:43Speaker 02

  Oh, I regret that.

• 1:55:44Dax Shepard?

  You were gone so much, right?

• 1:55:45Speaker 02

  I regret that now. I, I feel like I'm lucky I didn't lose him. I mean, he was a married man that didn't have a wife often.

• 1:55:52Dax Shepard?

  Right. Yeah. And you were kind of, we were watching a John McCain documentary last night, which we both loved. And I was saying, man, the dudes in the 50s, they had a different program. Like they just pursued that career and they saw their kids 10 minutes a week. And that's what it was. And, um, but you got to try on an unconventional hat, which is you were building a fucking business. And I knew we all understood that. Like we knew our roles. We knew that you were doing this thing and we were going to have to be patient about that. And that was going to happen.

• 1:56:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:23Dax Shepard?

  As if you were a 50s dad.

• 1:56:25Speaker 02

  And, and by contrast, Barton was the one, and he never, ever balked about it. He stayed with Carly.

• 1:56:34Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:56:34Speaker 02

  And he didn't just babysit her or, you know, cohabitate with her. He taught her things and he was gentle with her and he was patient with her. I mean, she tested him. I mean, you think about a stepchild.

• 1:56:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:50Speaker 02

  She throw a pencil at his eyeball and tell him she couldn't do the math. And he would just very calmly, that's not gonna be, you know, that's not gonna work and you need to take a breath.

• 1:57:00Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:57:01Speaker 02

  We're gonna try this again.

• 1:57:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he was an amazing stepdad to Carly.

• 1:57:04Speaker 02

  Oh God, he was fantastic. Carly was in Outward Bound at Cranbrook and in her 10th grade year.

• 1:57:11Dax Shepard?

  Which is a thing where you go hiking out in the woods and you kind of learn self dependency.

• 1:57:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like you go for a couple of weeks out in the woods with a compass and a sleeping bag.

• 1:57:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:20Speaker 02

  And it's a real deal. And they do it in March and the previous year, there had been an incident with the Cranbrook crew and

• 1:57:26Dax Shepard?

  They got stranded.

• 1:57:27Speaker 02

  They got stranded and somebody got frostbite.

• 1:57:30Dax Shepard?

  It was bad.

• 1:57:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was real bad. So when Carly went, here we are watching the news back in Michigan and we see that there's snowstorms in the mountains and I think about my little five foot two Carly and she's so little. And I say to Dave, you know, Dave, they're having snowstorms. I'm so worried about her. She's gonna get hypothermia. And Dave says, she's not gonna get hypothermia. She's gonna be fine. And I said, Dave, you know, I'm not like that. I need to know why she's gonna be okay. Give me something logical. And he says very calmly, she's not going to get hypothermia because her clothes are going to be dry. And I know her clothes are dry because I unpacked her bag before she left.

• 1:58:11Speaker 02

  And I put everything in individual Ziploc bags so that everything is dry in her backpack.

• 1:58:19Speaker 02

  And I thought.

• 1:58:19Dax Shepard?

  And again, didn't tell anyone he did it, didn't want the credit. I would have been bragging all day about having done that.

• 1:58:24Speaker 02

  Got into me, it was like, that's what.

• 1:58:27Dax Shepard?

  You guys hear I put Carly's clothes in Ziploc? Guy delivering the mail. Hey, man, what's your name? I just did a good thing. I need to tell you about it.

• 1:58:34Speaker 02

  Exactly. But to me, it was like, this is what real dads do.

• 1:58:38Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:58:39Speaker 02

  Real dads that really love their children do.

• 1:58:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Mm hmm. And I also want to applaud because I found myself in the same situation in life and it is hard. In fact, I wish I would have been able to talk to him about it more, but for a man to have a wife who makes more money than him and is basically driving the ship, you gotta go in her direction because ultimately it's worth more to, you know, if someone's going to sacrifice something, it's going to be me, not Belle. It just doesn't make sense for the family. And that has, that took me years to get comfortable with. And Barton seemed to just never bothered him that his wife was paying for things or taking us on vacations or buying stuff, all that stuff. Didn't, didn't bother him.

• 1:59:20Speaker 02

  No. Yeah. He just totally, or even when your brother.

• 1:59:23Dax Shepard?

  He was smart enough to go, oh, this is fucking nice. She's going to buy a house in Bloomfield Hills.

• 1:59:27Speaker 02

  But even the day that your brother got married, that day, your father called and on the phone and said, hey, when they do the dance where the bride and groom dance and then the parents dance also, I want to dance with you. I don't want you to dance with Dave. I want you to dance with me because he's our son and he's our baby that we're giving up. And I said to, he said, I said, well, let me talk to Dave about it. And I said to Dave, how do you feel about this? And he said, I don't have a problem with, go right ahead. He was so secure. He was so.

• 1:59:59Dax Shepard?

  Gangster.

• 1:59:59Speaker 02

  Never ever got in that testosterone.

• 2:00:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And I just want to, I want to add that layer is that one thing I'm, I'm so happy that you did was that you, my dad, you always kept him in the fold. He was allowed to be at the house on Christmas night if he wanted to spend the night and wake up with us.

• 2:00:15Speaker 02

  Went on all our family vacations.

• 2:00:17Dax Shepard?

  Went on our.

• 2:00:18Speaker 02

  I even bought us tickets.

• 2:00:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. You always kept him. You never bad mouthed him. You always kept him around. And I can't imagine that was always the most pleasant thing, but um, that was just a really nice of all thing that you did. And I would pray I had that kind of.

• 2:00:33Speaker 02

  Thank you. I, to me, it was like you kids didn't get divorced. We did.

• 2:00:37Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:00:38Speaker 02

  I didn't ever want you to have to choose.

• 2:00:39Dax Shepard?

  Right. And that was nice. Um, okay.

• 2:00:44Dax Shepard?

  So you marry Barton, you have this thriving business. You guys have a pretty storybook life by my estimation from 91 to 2000, whatever your left Bloomfield Hills, right? You really found your stride. You made good money. Carly went to Cranbrook. She then went to Michigan State. I was in college. Things were great. You and Barton were happy. Life's damn good. You guys decide to retire. What year do you retire?

• 2:01:12Speaker 02

  I retired twice.

• 2:01:14Dax Shepard?

  Right, the first time.

• 2:01:15Speaker 02

  The first time I think was in 2002, maybe?

• 2:01:19Dax Shepard?

  For a bunch of reasons that don't really matter. The business ended up crumbling after you retired and then you had to come out of retirement. And now is a phase of kind of just a really long period of pretty darn good happiness. Yeah? Instability.

• 2:01:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:01:36Dax Shepard?

  Is your depression at through those years, can you remember it being intolerable at any point?

• 2:01:43Speaker 02

  I definitely had depression.

• 2:01:45Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:01:46Speaker 02

  During that time.

• 2:01:47Dax Shepard?

  But did you realize you had depression? Cause?

• 2:01:48Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:01:49Dax Shepard?

  Right. Cause in retrospect, we could all go, oh yeah, you wouldn't get out of bed sometimes. Yeah.

• 2:01:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was so apparent. Yeah.

• 2:01:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, there's all these things you would do. We just same with dad. Like all of a sudden when dad goes, oh, I'm going to treatment. I'm an alcoholic. I'm like, oh, yes, of course. You're a flaming alcoholic, but I don't know why it's until that moment. Like, yeah, you took us in the morning to the bar and we hung out there all day. That's not what most dads do with their kids. So yeah, so I'm just going to jump ahead. When you had to come back out of retirement, you had been some really bad bouts with depression.

• 2:02:22Speaker 02

  Really, really bad.

• 2:02:23Dax Shepard?

  Enough to force you to finally confront it, right?

• 2:02:26Speaker 02

  Yes. And, and it just like you're saying about your dad. It's like, I never really thought of it that I had depression until I had a really, really serious episode. I, the long and short of it is, is I had someone say something to me that really triggered from my past being sexually abused as a child. And I went into a real severe, severe depression. I honestly went to work in my pajamas for a couple of weeks and did not bathe. When you own your own business, you can get away with that.

• 2:02:55Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:02:57Speaker 02

  And then I, and Dave was taking care of his mother at the time in Florida. I was alone at the house and I just got to, I mean, I don't know how explicit you want me to be on that.

• 2:03:09Dax Shepard?

  Well, you tried to kill yourself again.

• 2:03:10Speaker 02

  I tried, but a real serious attempt. This was not. I mean, other times I thought at the time it was serious. This one was, I did the double whammy. I mean, I heat duct taped all the vacuum cleaner hoses to the car to make sure I would get asphyxiated. And I took every single pill in the medicine cabinet to make sure that I would die.

• 2:03:29Dax Shepard?

  And by the way, what I just want you to think of is, this is someone who's now, both kids are in college. I'm a working actor. I have a great life. You've built an incredible business. You have a successful marriage.

• 2:03:42Speaker 02

  David has children.

• 2:03:43Dax Shepard?

  So just, I just want to point out that you can have all the indicators that you've told yourself will make you feel great. And that you'll love yourself and have self-esteem and all those things. And those outside things, all of a sudden will be absolutely powerless.

• 2:03:57Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. It's.

• 2:03:59Dax Shepard?

  Cause even, are you even building a case in your head like, oh, you shouldn't do this. Your life's good. You, your kids are doing great and you're, you're happily married.

• 2:04:07Speaker 02

  Oh, so many. Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:04:09Dax Shepard?

  And they just have no weight, right? You list those things and they don't mean shit in that moment.

• 2:04:13Speaker 02

  In that moment, honestly, the only way I can describe it is, it's like if someone took you and put you in a black garbage bag and cinched the top and you are in a garbage bag suffocating and you're so hot and so miserable and it's so black. And so that the only thing you can think of is, I have to die because I can't keep going like this.

• 2:04:37Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:04:38Speaker 02

  And, and, and again, like you say, I had all the indicators that my life was successful, but I wasn't able to feel it. I was only able to feel that I was suffocating and that I just could not take another step. I was so tired. I just could not take another step.

• 2:04:55Dax Shepard?

  And you, luckily, you did not die. I remember getting a call. I was in New York at the time and David called me like, uh, this is for real. You need to. Need to get involved. We need to circle the wagons. And you went to an outpatient treatment.

• 2:05:10Speaker 02

  I did. They wanted to put me inpatient and I did not want to. I did not want to be away from Barton. And so I did an outpatient program, which

• 2:05:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that would make sense then.

• 2:05:19Speaker 02

  But for me, it was like, here's when the lights really went on is, first of all, as soon as Dave Barton came home, and he was this wonderful self, he wrapped his arms around me and I asked him to take, I surrendered for the first time in my life. I surrendered. And I said, I need you to take care of me. And he said, I've been waiting for you to ask. And so he immediately drove me right from there to our family doctor. We had no appointment. Went to the nurse, explained it. The doctor came out, told us of a psychiatrist that he wanted us to go to. We left there and went to this office and we sat down and the guy's first words were, you've had a suicide attempt. I assume you were sexually abused as a child.

• 2:06:04Dax Shepard?

  Really?

• 2:06:05Speaker 02

  And to me, that was, I was so pissed off at him. Like, that's to me like, oh, and you hate your, oh, and you hate your mother. I mean, it was like, are you kidding me? What a cheap shot. And I was sitting there just steaming. And I answered his questions very curtly and short. And he wanted to put me in treatment. And I agreed to go to the outpatient. We walked out the door. I got in the car and I said, I'm never seeing that guy again. And Dave said, what, what's the matter? And I go, are you kidding me? Asked me if I was sexually abused? What a crappy thing. That is crappy.

• 2:06:43Dax Shepard?

  It feels lazy, right? Or like a cheap shot or something?

• 2:06:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. It was like, you can't take the easy road. And like, you're not paying attention of what's going on in my life.

• 2:06:51Dax Shepard?

  Right. Because you're pretty convinced in those moments that it's all the things around you right now.

• 2:06:55Speaker 02

  Right now. Yeah. And then the lights went on and I connected in the car in that same moment. All of a sudden, the light went on and it occurred to me that the comment, that the me too moment I'd had with a GM executive, and that sexual abuse as a kid, the powerlessness. Of being a kid and it was my dad's boss and I could not tell anyone because I didn't want my dad to lose his job.

• 2:07:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:22Speaker 02

  And so here I am with a GM executive and he did it and it's like, I can't tell

• 2:07:26Dax Shepard?

  Same exact situation.

• 2:07:27Speaker 02

  I can't lose my, my purchase order. I can't tell anyone.

• 2:07:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:32Speaker 02

  And it was so, the dots connected and it was like, oh my God.

• 2:07:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:36Speaker 02

  And so then I went very open mindedly.

• 2:07:39Dax Shepard?

  We share that and sadly, many members of our family share this experience. For me, what it tells you is, oh wow, the world's not a safe place and people will take advantage of me if I don't have my guard up. And the whole world changes in a moment. Like you, you are still an impala on the plains of the Serengeti. Like,

• 2:08:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:08:04Dax Shepard?

  It's just very, it changes your worldview really quickly. That I can be, I can be outsmarted, I can be overpowered, I can be outmaneuvered, I can be all these things and that I'm vulnerable in this world.

• 2:08:15Speaker 02

  And it doesn't matter how smart and how cunning you are.

• 2:08:17Dax Shepard?

  No, that's for me, the biggest chunk of the shame is the embarrassment that I could be outsmarted or outmaneuvered or outwitted.

• 2:08:24Speaker 02

  That you can't see it.

• 2:08:26Dax Shepard?

  That I couldn't see it, that I didn't realize what was happening. All those things are so shameful to me because I hang all my self-confidence on my competence.

• 2:08:37Speaker 02

  To me, it's a real confusing squirrel cage. What I, when I said that to Barton, that I need you to take care of me, what in that, the longer version of that is, is when I said that to him, I said, whatever everybody else has learned in life, I was absent that day, I can't tell the difference of who to trust and who not to trust. I need you to be that person that tells me who's untrustworthy. Because I, I don't have

• 2:09:03Dax Shepard?

  Your spidey senses are broken.

• 2:09:05Speaker 02

  I don't have that skillset.

• 2:09:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:07Speaker 02

  And that's how I've gotten myself in the jam of all these marriages and everything else, because I don't have that skillset.

• 2:09:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:12Speaker 02

  And, and so when you say like, that feeling is like, so not only is it vulnerable, it's like, you just want to keep looking in the backpack for the tool and everyone else has got the tool, why don't I have the tool? And maybe it's down here somewhere. No, it's not down here. I don't have it.

• 2:09:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:28Speaker 02

  And it's so, it's confusing to me and it's baffling and it's vulnerable and it's horrible.

• 2:09:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:35Speaker 02

  It's frightening, terribly frightening.

• 2:09:37Dax Shepard?

  And one of your worst qualities, and I, we share it, is just a complete inability to ask for help.

• 2:09:42Speaker 02

  Oh God.

• 2:09:44Dax Shepard?

  Right? It's just you'd rather fucking bleed to death than pick up the phone and admit you cut yourself. And I always thought it was, I didn't really want to be helped because I didn't want to owe someone to help them in return. But I realized, I don't think that's it. I think it's just my ego and being able to be vulnerable and be flawed and to admit I'm flawed.

• 2:10:03Speaker 02

  Flawed, yet you're not capable.

• 2:10:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:05Speaker 02

  Why can't you take care of yourself?

• 2:10:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's really embarrassing.

• 2:10:08Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:10:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10:10Dax Shepard?

  We all need it. So you went to this treatment center and I'm gonna Reader's Digest this for you, but you, one thing they asked you right away is how do you, how do you sleep? Right? And you didn't sleep, right?

• 2:10:20Speaker 02

  No, I have very hard time sleeping.

• 2:10:22Dax Shepard?

  And you started learning a lot of the warning signs of depression. You learned how it worked. You learned about medication. You got on medication. You learned how to make a game plan, right?

• 2:10:33Speaker 02

  In a program, it's not just medication is that, you know, you do need to get outside and get vitamin D. You do need to be walking or exercising so that you can get rid of the lousy chemicals you're producing.

• 2:10:46Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 2:10:46Speaker 02

  And bring in good ones, you know?

• 2:10:48Dax Shepard?

  Right. It's imperative. And also what I've noticed you've gotten great at over the years is, and this is a mistake a lot of people make in AA. I made it my first few times of trying to get sober is, failure to plan is planning to fail. So if you're gonna go to a party, you're newly sober, you can't wait till you get to the party and the guy you really want his approval hands you a drink. And in that moment, you're gonna figure out your game plan? You're done. That's too late. You gotta go, Friday, I'm going to a party. As I pull into the driveway of that party, I should probably call someone in AA and just check in and remember why I'm in AA and blah, blah, blah.

• 2:11:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:11:23Dax Shepard?

  And then one, and then just expect that that thing's gonna happen. And when it happens, I'm gonna, I have this plan. You, you can't, you cannot expect a different outcome unless you have a completely strategized game plan going into these situations, right?

• 2:11:37Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:11:38Dax Shepard?

  So you just dealt with the most heartbreaking thing ever, which is Barton died a few weeks ago. And we shared that together.

• 2:11:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:11:46Dax Shepard?

  And going into that, I think all of us, which is great, because you've opened yourself up to be checked in with, which is wonderful. So all of us are like, What's your game plan to work out? You know, what's your game plan for this? What like what? We know what's coming. That's not, that's unavoidable. We can kind of be prepared for it. So.

• 2:12:06Speaker 02

  And I think I did make plans. I think I was really looking ahead and it wasn't like I was planning Barton's death or looking forward to his death. It was when he dies, what is my game plan? You know, how am I going to get through this? And I know that it's going to require a lot of faking it until I make it. And so how am I going to do that?

• 2:12:33Dax Shepard?

  It's going to require you acting your way into feeling different, right?

• 2:12:36Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:12:36Dax Shepard?

  You're not going to sit in your house and just wait for, to feel different because that's not going to, for us, work.

• 2:12:42Speaker 02

  I have rules and rules that I didn't have before he died. Like when he was actively dying, we had a lot of sleepless nights because of the pain he was in and stuff. So it was, it was not uncommon for us to take a nap during the day together because we had been up all night.

• 2:12:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:59Speaker 02

  And right now it's napping and sleeping are.

• 2:13:04Dax Shepard?

  They're no-nos.

• 2:13:05Speaker 02

  I'm not allowed.

• 2:13:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:06Speaker 02

  I can't allow myself because that's the sliding.

• 2:13:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:09Speaker 02

  I'm not allowed to stay under the covers.

• 2:13:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's like putting one foot in the trash bag.

• 2:13:14Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:13:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And so, and what's great is you got a dog. You smartly got a dog.

• 2:13:19Speaker 02

  I did that ahead of time.

• 2:13:20Dax Shepard?

  Something was going to be reliant on you.

• 2:13:23Speaker 02

  If I won't get myself out of bed to exercise, that's one thing, but I will never, I mean, you know, with you kids, no matter how depressed I was when we were going through all that when you were growing up, I would get up and go to work to feed you guys. I would get up for you guys. I might not have gotten up for me, but I would get up for you guys.

• 2:13:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:40Speaker 02

  So I have the dog now.

• 2:13:41Dax Shepard?

  Good codependent.

• 2:13:42Speaker 02

  Absolutely. It's my specialty.

• 2:13:46Dax Shepard?

  Well, what's really funny too, and I haven't pointed out yet, but you, you never met an addict you didn't love, right? You just fucking love addicts.

• 2:13:52Speaker 02

  I could find, if you buried one addict in Cobble Hall with a couple million men that were all healthy, I will find the guy and I will take him home and try to fix him.

• 2:14:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And do you think, well, A, it's a little more exciting because there's like an element of the unknown. You really don't know what's coming day to day with an addict. But do you think there's some, there's some relief or there's some peace in having to focus on someone else's issue? That gets you out of having to think about any of your own issues. Is that part of the appeal, subconsciously?

• 2:14:24Speaker 02

  Maybe, but usually if you're with an addict, they have the same, they like the same drugs you do. Most addicts love the butterfly feeling, that drug that you get in a relationship. They love a good codependent relationship.

• 2:14:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do.

• 2:14:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's singing a lot of my song.

• 2:14:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but, but I do applaud, and again, it's worth its own whole podcast, but you, you were very present during the whole thing. You were checking in with a lot of people. You read books. You, you felt like you owed this experience a lot of attention and you didn't want to just wake up and it be over and have not.

• 2:15:06Speaker 02

  Experienced it.

• 2:15:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:07Speaker 02

  One of the things I'm very, very grateful to Barton for is we made a pact. We consciously talked about it and we repeated it. Often, we would talk about it and reiterate what our pact was, and that was that we would be 100% honest, even if we didn't want to during the process, and that we would experience it together. Cause I, I said to him, I can be by your side and I can be supportive and I will, you make all the calls to all the shot, you know, you call all the shots on this, on what your treatments are and how you do this, and I will be there and be with you, but I need you to be honest all the way with me and I need you to share it with me. And this is a man who's an engineer, you know?

• 2:15:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:49Speaker 02

  He not necessarily foaming at the mouth with, with discussion.

• 2:15:53Dax Shepard?

  He's not overshare as like you and I.

• 2:15:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:15:55Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:15:56Speaker 02

  And so it was probably the very best, other than that first few months when the butterflies are crazy in the beginning, but probably the best part of our marriage because we talked regularly, openly, and really shared the experience. And just like sharing an experience like a pregnancy and a birthing of a child.

• 2:16:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:18Speaker 02

  The bond that we were able to, you know, forge from that experience is extremely intimate.

• 2:16:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:26Speaker 02

  Very, very close and very intimate. And I'm actually grateful, I feel really grateful for that experience with him, even though it was living hell.

• 2:16:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:34Speaker 02

  I'm grateful for it.

• 2:16:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And it was a long, it was a three-year process.

• 2:16:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:16:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So it was a big, it was a big chunk.

• 2:16:42Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:16:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, of your life. Before we go, I want, I just want to pass on some of the things I feel like you gave me that I'm most grateful for. And one of them is, I realized, really set me up to be interested in anthropology, because anthropology, at least when I went, it's probably changed, but they were very into cultural relativism, where your goal was not to judge or label a group of people as primitive, evil, backwards. You could look at something like infanticide, which on the surface seems absolutely unimaginable. Who could kill a child that's just been born? They must be evil. But they didn't have that interest. They had the interest of

• 2:17:24Dax Shepard?

  understanding, why would that have happened? And you can't understand things if you're only there to label them. And you, with this crazy example of that, we'd read about a murderer, like, there'd be a, there'd be a murder and a murderer, and it'd be in the paper. And your first line of thought was always, wow, that guy was a little baby one day. Right? What are you always saying?

• 2:17:49Speaker 02

  That somebody passed out cigars for that baby.

• 2:17:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:53Speaker 02

  You know, that was somebody's little boy, that was somebody's son, and he was loved and celebrated. What happened? What went wrong?

• 2:17:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. The tragedy on both sides, the tragedy that a victim was killed, and then the tragedy that a life with a lot of potential went down that road. That's, that's equally worth mourning. And you kind of always had that perspective. There'd be like, you know, kids would kill other kids in drunk driving accidents in our town. And, and the town is going, oh, that motherfucker drove drunk about, and you would go straight to like, holy cow, he woke up in jail cell this morning. Yesterday, he was going to college.

• 2:18:29Speaker 02

  How awful for his parents.

• 2:18:30Dax Shepard?

  What his parents who saw that potential and put all this time and energy into it, and just...

• 2:18:37Dax Shepard?

  You never seem very interested in just labeling something good or bad or black and white, evil, good.

• 2:18:43Speaker 02

  Thank you. That's wonderful.

• 2:18:44Dax Shepard?

  Sinful, heavenly, whatever the things were, you didn't live in this binary thing and you were very interested in the nuance and the details and the context and all this stuff. And it's such an awesome way to process the world and just very empathetic and it was such a great example for you to have given me. It's very interesting. It's weird and you and I went through this. I start sharing my story publicly and it overlaps with your story and it's a little, and one time I offended you, I remember, and I felt really bad about it. And then you called me a week later and you said, you know what? I'm wrong. That's your story. You're allowed to tell it.

• 2:19:20Speaker 02

  You've earned it.

• 2:19:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So do you even remember what it was?

• 2:19:23Speaker 02

  I forget. It was something that you said something, oh, my mom's been married a lot of times. And because I'm so ashamed of that, you know, I, you know, it was, it was hard for me that, oh geez, that's the dirty laundry, you know, do we have to air that?

• 2:19:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:38Speaker 02

  You know?

• 2:19:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. It's weird, right?

• 2:19:41Speaker 02

  It is. But then again, at the same time, it's like, you know what? You went through that too. I didn't go through it on my own. You kids, I, I drug you through it and I, it's one of my regrets, but it is what it is and we got where we got because of it.

• 2:19:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:56Speaker 02

  It's yesterday.

• 2:19:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And, uh, yeah. So I just, I thank you for, for, for giving me, uh, you know, the, uh, the permission to drag you into this. And I bet it's a weird scenario. I'm sure if Lincoln or Delta gets famous, I'll, I'll start hearing all these things about myself.

• 2:20:20Speaker 02

  Do you know what though? Um, just, you know, not to keep beating it to death, but, and I haven't talked about that movie in years, but that movie that we were referring to.

• 2:20:27Dax Shepard?

  Boyhood.

• 2:20:29Speaker 02

  When people do art and when people do come out and talk about things like that, since that movie, yeah, I'm still ashamed of how many times I've been married and all the things I went through. However, That made me realize that I'm not an idiot. I just made some bad choices and a lot of other people made those bad choices too. And guess what? They're not idiots. They're nice people. And so I feel like if you have your story and you share your story and something comes of it that someone else hears it, it's like, gosh, that would be great.

• 2:21:03Dax Shepard?

  You know, I think everything that's good about me is something that you taught me. I think I'm genetically was destined to be my father. We have the same broken shoulder, the same missing knuckle, the same everything, the same crazy stupid alpha male, get out of the car at a stoplight.

• 2:21:17Speaker 02

  And so much wonder and so much wonderful from him.

• 2:21:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm sure. But I, I, I credit you with taking all that and adding your perspective and your empathy and your, and how endlessly loving you are. And you're the greatest thing that's ever happened to me in my whole life.

• 2:21:34Speaker 02

  Thank you, buddy.

• 2:21:35Dax Shepard?

  You're the number one love of my life.

• 2:21:37Speaker 02

  That's so nice.

• 2:21:39Dax Shepard?

  Through all that stuff that I complained about here on the show.

• 2:21:43Speaker 02

  I didn't hear any complaining.

• 2:21:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I would not. I can't imagine being luckier than having been born with you as my mom.

• 2:21:51Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:21:52Dax Shepard?

  I hope to God I can do half the job with four times the amount of resources that you have. So I love you. Thank you for coming on the Armchair Expert.

• 2:22:00Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:22:00Dax Shepard?

  All right. It now begins my favorite part of the show, Fact Check with Monica Padman. This is my mommy's fact check?

• 2:22:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 2:22:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, boy. Shall I bring you in with a song?

• 2:22:12Speaker 01

  Yes, please.

• 2:22:13Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm scared because I don't really have, usually generally speaking, I have a song circulating through my mind all day. And then I just plug your name into that, not to give away the recipe or tell you how the sausage is made.

• 2:22:26Speaker 01

  Okay. You don't have no songs in your brain?

• 2:22:29Dax Shepard?

  Well, I guess Delta was singing one this morning and it's still kind of in there a little bit.

• 2:22:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:22:33Dax Shepard?

  Here she comes to tell us all of the facts singing do I did it, did it, um, did it do? She's holding some papers with some corrections singing do I did it? Okay.

• 2:22:46Speaker 01

  That was good.

• 2:22:47Dax Shepard?

  That was enough.

• 2:22:48Speaker 01

  That was good.

• 2:22:49Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Thank you.

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  All right, let's begin this very special fact check.

• 2:22:56Dax Shepard?

  Most special.

• 2:22:56Speaker 01

  Very special episode. I'm so glad we did that.

• 2:23:01Dax Shepard?

  And you really instigated, I mean, I had always wanted, we always knew we were going to interview her, but you really seized the moment when she was visiting to set it all up.

• 2:23:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I think it's, well, for one, she's super inspirational and interesting, and she is so eloquent and is good at telling her life story. And I already knew that, so I knew that would be fun and interesting and good. But it's also, it's also so endearing and nice to have a little peek into your relationship with her.

• 2:23:35Dax Shepard?

  But I did have some anxiety in that, like, I certainly know how she talks at a dinner table, like, quite successfully. She can hold court, but she's never been interviewed. I was like, is she gonna, like, once the microphone's in her face, is she gonna start feeling self-conscious or weird?

• 2:23:49Speaker 01

  No, she did not.

• 2:23:50Dax Shepard?

  No, she crushed.

• 2:23:51Speaker 01

  She did great. And it was lovely to be sitting here through that. I enjoyed it.

• 2:24:00Speaker 01

  So your mom mentioned RC Cola. RC Cola is short for Royal Crown Cola. It's a cola-flavored soft drink developed in 1905 by Claude A. Hatcher, a pharmacist in Columbus, Georgia.

• 2:24:16Dax Shepard?

  Oh, all the way home for you.

• 2:24:18Speaker 01

  Yes, Columbus is where I won two state championships.

• 2:24:22Dax Shepard?

  In your cheerleading career.

• 2:24:25Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 2:24:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And you said you balled after both of those, right? Or was it that you balled when you lost?

• 2:24:31Speaker 01

  No, we won both times.

• 2:24:33Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. You got hurt, though.

• 2:24:35Speaker 01

  I got hurt before the second, my senior year, I got, I pulled my hamstring before the state championship, but I did it anyway.

• 2:24:44Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you just pulled muscle through it. You had to, because you were the high flyer?

• 2:24:48Speaker 01

  I was a flyer, yeah. And then, yeah, and then, well, we knew it was going to be very close between us and Peachtree Ridge, our rival. We knew it was going to be so close. It came down to one point.

• 2:25:02Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my goodness, out of how many? What if he's out of, out of 10,000 points?

• 2:25:06Speaker 01

  No, it's not how, wait, I don't, I don't know what the perfect score was you could get.

• 2:25:11Dax Shepard?

  Is it in the hundreds or?

• 2:25:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, like maybe it's like 300 or something, or 200.

• 2:25:15Dax Shepard?

  That is significant. And that's like 99.8%.

• 2:25:18Speaker 01

  Yes. And I, it was, you know, they were like, fourth place, third place. And so then waiting to hear who's second place was.

• 2:25:29Dax Shepard?

  Have you ever been more alive in your life?

• 2:25:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:25:32Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 2:25:32Speaker 01

  Never. Like truly never. And I never will. Even if I give birth, I won't.

• 2:25:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 2:25:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I just like, lost control over my whole body.

• 2:25:41Dax Shepard?

  Did you go wee wee in your slack?

• 2:25:42Speaker 01

  Maybe. In my, in my bloomers.

• 2:25:44Dax Shepard?

  In your bloomies?

• 2:25:45Speaker 01

  Hmm. In my grundles.

• 2:25:46Dax Shepard?

  In your grundles? Your grinders?

• 2:25:49Speaker 01

  Uh, anyway.

• 2:25:51Dax Shepard?

  They should call them grinders.

• 2:25:52Speaker 01

  No. That's not, that's not what they should. Well, I guess, yeah, you're right. Nevermind. Nevermind. I was gonna say, it's not what they should be encouraging these young girls to be doing, but they, I, we should be, I guess.

• 2:26:06Dax Shepard?

  Absolutely.

• 2:26:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right.

• 2:26:08Dax Shepard?

  Let's have some fun.

• 2:26:09Speaker 01

  But they're not very careful, those young girls. That's why.

• 2:26:14Dax Shepard?

  Well.

• 2:26:15Speaker 01

  It is why. Like, I wouldn't encourage.

• 2:26:19Dax Shepard?

  Why can't you just encourage them to be careful?

• 2:26:21Speaker 01

  Yes, that, yes.

• 2:26:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:23Speaker 01

  Most of my friends were really careful who were having sex at that time.

• 2:26:26Dax Shepard?

  Just pop on birth control.

• 2:26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:29Dax Shepard?

  Get on it.

• 2:26:29Speaker 01

  But you have to be able to, you have to feel comfortable to tell your parents or a planned parenthood.

• 2:26:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you can just go.

• 2:26:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that, that require, I'm saying that requires a lot of a 15 year old. A 15 year old brain is gonna think, oh, someone, someone has to drive me to Planned Parenthood. Like, it's a lot more. You gotta hide it. It's a whole secret. It's easier to just fuck.

• 2:26:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. It is easier to fuck. I think it's one of the easier things to do. You, you remind me though of this, this invention I, I created at 24 years old and I, I just was positive. It was a hundred million dollar idea.

• 2:27:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:27:04Dax Shepard?

  And here's my, here's my thought a lot. In my twenties, I, I was regularly coming across, uh, women who are like, ah shit, I forgot my birth control today. Or they would be like, they'd spend the night at my house and be like, oh, I forgot my birth control. People never forget their toothbrush. No one ever forgets to brush their teeth. I'm never running into women like, ah, fuck, I forgot to brush my teeth this morning. Everyone brushes their teeth. So I thought, how about the birth control toothbrush? They also, let me tell you why it works on a couple of different levels. Toothbrush manufacturers also want you to replace your toothbrush every month or something, some, some, at some rate that no one's doing.

• 2:27:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:27:40Dax Shepard?

  So this would be a perfect tie in with like an Oral B because you, you get your toothbrush from the pharmacist. It has 30 pills in it and every morning you just pop one out and then you brush your teeth. And then when you travel, you like, you go to your boyfriend's house, you throw your toothbrush in your purse. It's all great. Isn't that a trillion dollar idea?

• 2:27:59Dax Shepard?

  Why would you be hating on my birth control?

• 2:28:02Speaker 01

  I'm not hating on it. I, I think it's good.

• 2:28:06Dax Shepard?

  You're trying to poke holes in it.

• 2:28:07Speaker 01

  I am, because I know that there are some, but for some reason, none are popping out.

• 2:28:11Dax Shepard?

  It's a solid idea.

• 2:28:12Speaker 01

  Also, why, why not just in?

• 2:28:15Dax Shepard?

  Some inventor in Columbus, Georgia is going to hear this and he or she is going to make this.

• 2:28:20Speaker 01

  Claude Hatcher.

• 2:28:21Dax Shepard?

  And they're, the next time we see them will be on a 400 foot yacht in St. Barth's.

• 2:28:30Dax Shepard?

  Someone's going to take my idea and run straight to the bank, to Deutsche Schweiz Bank.

• 2:28:35Speaker 01

  They might, but look, also if you, if you get in a routine that in the morning I take my birth control before I brush my teeth. Like it's the same, you can train your brain. It's a good part of your routine.

• 2:28:47Dax Shepard?

  But let's just, I say, let's build on what's already working as opposed to reprogramming. People just go like, well, everyone's holding their toothbrush in the morning. Why not put your, the thing you need in that thing you're going to hold?

• 2:28:56Speaker 01

  The girls that are coming over who are forgetting their birth control are remembering their toothbrush, but they're forgetting their birth control. See that to me, for me, that would not happen.

• 2:29:07Dax Shepard?

  Well, but you're a uber responsible person. You recognize people have different levels of responsibility.

• 2:29:12Speaker 01

  They're responsible if they're bringing their toothbrush. They're very responsible.

• 2:29:16Dax Shepard?

  For their teeth. Yeah.

• 2:29:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's incredibly responsible.

• 2:29:21Dax Shepard?

  I'm reminded of one of my father's favorite thing to always say to young people. He would always say, be true to your teeth. Or they will be false to you.

• 2:29:29Speaker 01

  That's cute. Yeah. Okay. So you said Ohio, when you were a little kid, had a very liberal fireworks policy. And you say you don't know about today. So I don't know if they do. I think they kind, I think they do. But the top five states that are most, that are easiest to get fireworks are, do you want to guess?

• 2:29:53Dax Shepard?

  I do.

• 2:29:53Speaker 01

  I know you did. Go.

• 2:29:55Dax Shepard?

  Idaho is one of them.

• 2:29:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:29:58Dax Shepard?

  Bullshit. I've bought like quarter sticks and dynamite in Idaho on my way to Wyoming.

• 2:30:03Speaker 01

  Well, it's probably, I'm sure many have, are easy, but these are the

• 2:30:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay, yeah.

• 2:30:08Speaker 01

  Indiana.

• 2:30:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, sure, sure. Also a border state of Michigan.

• 2:30:12Speaker 01

  Missouri.

• 2:30:13Dax Shepard?

  Missouri.

• 2:30:14Speaker 01

  Missouri.

• 2:30:15Dax Shepard?

  If you're from Missouri, you say Missouri.

• 2:30:17Speaker 01

  I know. I don't like that.

• 2:30:18Dax Shepard?

  You don't want to do that?

• 2:30:19Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:30:19Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:30:22Speaker 01

  Pennsylvania.

• 2:30:23Dax Shepard?

  Pennsylvania.

• 2:30:24Speaker 01

  Texas, Texas.

• 2:30:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Texas.

• 2:30:28Speaker 01

  And most importantly, South Carolina.

• 2:30:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that makes those all kind of the, pretty much what you'd expect, I feel like.

• 2:30:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that this, um, according to this website, it said home to more fireworks outlets than McDonald's, we think.

• 2:30:45Dax Shepard?

  That's great.

• 2:30:45Speaker 01

  There's a lot.

• 2:30:46Dax Shepard?

  That's great. They're probably, they're gonna have a great Fourth of July there. Yeah, I always stop in Idaho on my way to Wyoming, and I get these mortar tubes. And I spend so much money, you know, I'm typically cheap, but so one of the things I, I will just blow so much money on is pyrotechnics.

• 2:31:03Speaker 01

  Hmm, I'm not surprised by that.

• 2:31:05Dax Shepard?

  These mortar tubes are awesome. And you're dropping this like pool ball sized explosive in the mortar and then it's just like you're at the Detroit River. I mean, it is a, it is a civic level pyrotechnic. It's great. And I get way too many and then I have them the whole year and then they sit in my trailer and then I worry about the fact that I have all this gas in my trailer. And I'm just waiting for the whole thing to blow up.

• 2:31:25Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't like that at all.

• 2:31:27Dax Shepard?

  Living on the edge.

• 2:31:30Dax Shepard?

  As Bon Jovi said, living on the edge. Jon Jovi.

• 2:31:33Speaker 01

  Living on the edge, he said?

• 2:31:34Dax Shepard?

  Isn't that a Jon Jovi song?

• 2:31:35Speaker 01

  He said, living on a prayer.

• 2:31:36Dax Shepard?

  He also said that, I think.

• 2:31:40Speaker 01

  I used to love Bon Jovi.

• 2:31:41Dax Shepard?

  You did?

• 2:31:42Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, yeah.

• 2:31:43Dax Shepard?

  You're so American. It's amazing. You couldn't be more American. You love Friends and Jon Jovi.

• 2:31:51Speaker 01

  I went to a couple of his concerts.

• 2:31:53Dax Shepard?

  You did?

• 2:31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, my friend Gina really turned me on to him and we were also in love with them.

• 2:31:58Dax Shepard?

  Right. And is what I've, what I've gathered from hardcore Jon Jovi fans is the thing they are particularly attracted to is doesn't he have infamously great buns?

• 2:32:09Speaker 01

  I think he does, yeah.

• 2:32:11Dax Shepard?

  Shows him off, like he really always has his denim.

• 2:32:14Speaker 01

  He wears tight pants.

• 2:32:15Dax Shepard?

  His denim is like tailored to accentuate.

• 2:32:17Speaker 01

  He also has lovely hair.

• 2:32:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:18Speaker 01

  And a beautiful face.

• 2:32:19Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, he's a very good looking dude. I don't know how tall he is. He might, he might underwhelm you if you, I'm speaking out of my ass. I actually don't know, but something tells me he might be.

• 2:32:31Speaker 01

  Most people don't underwhelm me in their height because I'm so short.

• 2:32:34Dax Shepard?

  Yes, because you're a sub five foot.

• 2:32:36Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. No.

• 2:32:37Dax Shepard?

  I know you claim you're not, but I claim you are. It'll be revealed in one episode. We'll get a tape measure in here.

• 2:32:43Speaker 01

  Hashtag how tall is mine?

• 2:32:46Speaker 01

  Okay. Oh, the story about your dad helping the bus driver was so sweet. The story your mom told in high school, he would help the bus driver. He would sit up front and help the bus driver.

• 2:33:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:01Speaker 01

  That's so nice. No wonder.

• 2:33:04Dax Shepard?

  Doesn't that make you think of Delta?

• 2:33:05Speaker 01

  He got all these ladies.

• 2:33:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:07Speaker 01

  No, Delta would never help the bus driver.

• 2:33:10Dax Shepard?

  She's so social and nice to people. She like notices when people get new jackets and haircut and stuff like, I actually disagree. I think she'll sit right next to that.

• 2:33:19Speaker 01

  You do?

• 2:33:19Dax Shepard?

  I do, yeah.

• 2:33:20Speaker 01

  I hope she does, but I don't think so. I think she's going to be too popular to sit up by the bus driver. Like she's going to be in the back and everyone's gonna want to talk to her about her day and trade erasers with her.

• 2:33:32Dax Shepard?

  My mom said that Delta reminds her so much of my dad.

• 2:33:36Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:33:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, she thinks it's my dad reincarnated.

• 2:33:39Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:33:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, which is kind of sweet.

• 2:33:42Speaker 01

  That's really sweet.

• 2:33:43Dax Shepard?

  I mean, I hope she doesn't develop a drinking problem.

• 2:33:45Speaker 01

  I never got to meet him. He could have been one of my teammates, too.

• 2:33:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you would have found a way to, you would have found all of his, his idiosyncrasies endearing, I think.

• 2:33:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he had a big heart.

• 2:33:56Speaker 01

  Um, okay. And also another one more side note, your mom's recall of names.

• 2:34:02Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:34:03Speaker 01

  Is as good as tulips.

• 2:34:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, especially for like people she went to elementary school.

• 2:34:07Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:34:09Dax Shepard?

  It's boggling.

• 2:34:10Speaker 01

  First and last name she could remember. I was shocked. At first I was like, are she just making up names? I guess we wouldn't know, but no, she's not.

• 2:34:18Dax Shepard?

  I hear, I almost know her names more than I know mine. I mean, I have best friends from junior high. Can't remember their names.

• 2:34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:24Dax Shepard?

  It's crazy. Like I've been wanting to apologize to this kid in elementary school. Like I want to find him, be it on Facebook or something, to put it out in the universe that I want to make an amends for, you know, fighting him in like third grade and I can't, there's no way I'm going to remember his name.

• 2:34:39Speaker 01

  What about a yearbook?

• 2:34:40Dax Shepard?

  But I went back, the, the photos I have, remember they were just like one sheet of glossy paper with 30 kids faces on them? There weren't names.

• 2:34:47Speaker 01

  Oh my God. There are no names in the yearbook?

• 2:34:50Dax Shepard?

  Well, no, no, in elementary. It wasn't from junior high. It was from elementary school. I could maybe, you know, maybe my sixth grade yearbook, I think he went to the same junior high. Maybe I could locate his name there, but it does plague me. I think about it all the time and I need to.

• 2:35:03Speaker 01

  Well, you're saying it now.

• 2:35:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but he won't even know.

• 2:35:06Speaker 01

  Might know.

• 2:35:07Dax Shepard?

  We fought, you know, what happened is we were, we were in the spring mills. Occasionally they let us play in the parking lot and I can't remember why, maybe when the field was too muddy or something. But we was one, on one of these days where we were playing in the parking lot for recess. And I got into it with this kid and I punched him in the stomach. And when I punched him, it knocked the wind out of him and he fell down on the ground and he was, I don't think he'd ever had the wind knocked out of him and he was really scared. Like he was crying and he was laying and I'll never forget it. I have the picture in my head is he was right on a manhole cover in the, in the parking lot and it was so sad and I felt so bad as soon as it happened.

• 2:35:46Dax Shepard?

  Um, and I just think I got to imagine for him, he remembers that and that was terrible. And, um, although at the time I did not think that, I'm sure he feels like I, I was a bully. He was really scared.

• 2:36:00Speaker 01

  We'll find him.

• 2:36:01Dax Shepard?

  Those fights were fine. Both kid brushed it off, but this is, he got, he got very scared.

• 2:36:07Speaker 01

  That is, uh, well, we can, we'll find him.

• 2:36:10Dax Shepard?

  And his name is, you know, anyone's guess.

• 2:36:14Speaker 01

  Jake.

• 2:36:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's him.

• 2:36:15Speaker 01

  Okay, your mom brought up Sergio Mendes, another thing your dad, I guess, listened to in the car. I didn't know who he was.

• 2:36:23Dax Shepard?

  Did you listen to any of his music?

• 2:36:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then I realized I did know that one song.

• 2:36:28Dax Shepard?

  He did a famous version of Girl from Ipanema, I think.

• 2:36:31Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't find that. No, there's a song called Never Gonna Let You Go, and I can't think of how it goes right now.

• 2:36:38Dax Shepard?

  Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you go, never gonna run around and hurt you. That's Rick Ashley.

• 2:36:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's not him. Sergio Mendes is Brazilian.

• 2:36:52Dax Shepard?

  Brazilian.

• 2:36:53Speaker 01

  And he has over fifty-five releases. He plays bossa nova heavily, crossed with jazz and funk.

• 2:36:58Dax Shepard?

  It's awesome. I have some Sergio Mendes CDs.

• 2:37:02Speaker 01

  All right, so you talk about shaking baby.

• 2:37:06Dax Shepard?

  Syndrome.

• 2:37:07Speaker 01

  You just call it shaking baby, but yeah, shaking baby syndrome, also known as abusive head trauma, shaking impact syndrome, inflicted head injury or whiplash shake syndrome. All these are terrible. Yeah, and it's kind of, it's itself explanatory of what it is. You shake a baby and...

• 2:37:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and before having kids, that always seemed like the most insane thing that could occur, but when you have a baby and they won't stop crying and you really are like in a weird panic, I, although I never shook my kids.

• 2:37:40Speaker 01

  You could see how people end up there.

• 2:37:43Dax Shepard?

  Absolutely. I was like, man, if I was twenty years old and I was drunk or whatever, I could see where it happens.

• 2:37:48Speaker 01

  Yikes, yeah.

• 2:37:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:51Speaker 01

  Oh, one thing I wanted to clarify because of, because of the structure, just the way you guys were talking, because you have such a familiar knowledge base, you can like hop around and you both know what you're talking about. So I just wanted to clarify the timeline of your houses.

• 2:38:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:38:09Speaker 01

  Cause it's so when your mom and dad had David.

• 2:38:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:15Speaker 01

  They lived in a small house, she said, and then they moved into an apartment. And then I think they moved into an apartment in Deer Creek.

• 2:38:24Dax Shepard?

  Creek was the apartment.

• 2:38:25Speaker 01

  Yes. And then they moved into the mobile home where you were born.

• 2:38:32Dax Shepard?

  Brought home. Yeah.

• 2:38:33Speaker 01

  Yes. And then you moved into, they moved into the nice house.

• 2:38:36Dax Shepard?

  Middle Road.

• 2:38:37Speaker 01

  Yes. So it kind of seemed at first like the nice house was there and then you were born, but it seemed like it was confusing. So that's the, that's the timeline.

• 2:38:47Dax Shepard?

  Yep. And then we left the middle roadhouse when I was three, we went to those welfare apartments for a year. Then we went to Main Street for a year, then we went to Highland and we lived in a house for three years. And then we moved into unnamed stepdad's house for a year. And we moved into our friend Ann's house for about six months. We stopped at my dad's there for a few months until they fought too bad and we left. And then we lived in Highland, I'm sorry, Milford and the house she built herself for three years. Then I moved back in with my dad, then I moved back to, so I, yeah, we had like.

• 2:39:14Speaker 01

  You moved back in with your dad after the nice house that she built?

• 2:39:18Dax Shepard?

  Yes, because my dad had gotten in a head on collision and he needed assistance. And I was afraid that everyone at Milford High School was going to murder me because so many guys hated me. And so it was a dual motivation. I, I went to Wald Lake Central and took care of him while he was recovering. But then he and I got in such a bad fight and then I moved back in with my mom in 11th grade, but continued to go to Wald Lake Central. But anyways, because of that, I lived in my apartment in Santa Monica for 10 years. And I've lived in this current house for 12 years. I do never want to move. It gives me so much anxiety because we moved so much as kids.

• 2:39:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39:57Speaker 01

  Okay, I think your mom mentioned a Christmas where like couldn't turn on Christmas lights. And I think she's talking about the 1979 energy crisis.

• 2:40:06Dax Shepard?

  Hmm, that makes sense.

• 2:40:08Speaker 01

  Time wise, that makes sense, right?

• 2:40:10Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:40:10Speaker 01

  1979 oil crisis or oil shock occurred in the world due to decreased oil output in the wake of the Iranian revolution.

• 2:40:19Dax Shepard?

  Hmm, they call that the oil embargo, is that?

• 2:40:22Speaker 01

  You called it that, but it's called the energy crisis.

• 2:40:26Dax Shepard?

  You continue to call it that?

• 2:40:29Speaker 01

  Oh, uh, you talk about colic, I think people know what colic is, but it's just like incessant crying from babies and it just, they won't stop.

• 2:40:37Dax Shepard?

  Which I got, I, I, I outgrew.

• 2:40:40Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, not, not if we show some videos of.

• 2:40:44Dax Shepard?

  Them singing.

• 2:40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, flash mobs.

• 2:40:49Speaker 01

  Dax cries at flash mobs.

• 2:40:50Dax Shepard?

  Well, not flash mobs, when those Olympians choreographed a routine to text me.

• 2:40:56Speaker 01

  No, to.

• 2:40:57Dax Shepard?

  Call me maybe.

• 2:40:58Speaker 01

  Call me maybe, yeah.

• 2:40:59Dax Shepard?

  I cried when we watched it, cause yeah, so embarrassing.

• 2:41:04Speaker 01

  Why? It's not embarrassing, it's so sweet and endearing. Okay, um, you mentioned the five S's for resetting babies and we talked about that on Ashton's fact check, so you guys can go listen to Ashton Kutcher's episode if you want to learn about the five S's. So you had to, you had to persist on a diet of caro syrup.

• 2:41:23Dax Shepard?

  I mean, when she was telling that, did you not just, I was thinking, how am I even here?

• 2:41:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:41:28Dax Shepard?

  You cannot feed a baby fucking sugar water.

• 2:41:31Speaker 01

  I know, I was shocked to my core that you spent so many, so much of your little tiny baby life.

• 2:41:39Dax Shepard?

  I would truly be, I would be six, five, there's no way that didn't shave off a couple inches.

• 2:41:44Speaker 01

  You could have been the next Einstein or something.

• 2:41:47Dax Shepard?

  I could have been so smart and I could have played basketball for the Pistons, for sure.

• 2:41:52Speaker 01

  For sure, 100% no question.

• 2:41:55Dax Shepard?

  Thanks, caro syrup.

• 2:41:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, caro syrup has corn syrup, salt and vanilla.

• 2:42:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh my God, I mean, it's poison.

• 2:42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42:05Speaker 01

  I'm so proud of you for outliving that.

• 2:42:07Dax Shepard?

  I guess a little, this is a little bit of feather in my cap that I could have persevered on that diet.

• 2:42:14Speaker 01

  I know. Well, and then

• 2:42:15Dax Shepard?

  What a constitution that little baby had.

• 2:42:17Speaker 01

  I know, because also your mom gave you paragoric because of your colic.

• 2:42:23Dax Shepard?

  Okay, and what was that?

• 2:42:24Speaker 01

  And that

• 2:42:25Dax Shepard?

  Was an opiate?

• 2:42:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:42:26Dax Shepard?

  It was. Well, Jesus Christ, no wonder I'm a fucking recovering addict.

• 2:42:31Speaker 01

  I did. I literally thought that when I read this. I was like, of course. It's a, it's a, um, it's a camphorated tincture of opium.

• 2:42:41Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my Christ.

• 2:42:44Speaker 01

  It does say, it does say here that it's a traditional parent remedy known for its anti-diarrheal.

• 2:42:51Dax Shepard?

  Diure- yeah, I don't know. Diureal.

• 2:42:55Speaker 01

  And some other things, but it's, it's, they do give it to babies, I guess, but.

• 2:42:59Dax Shepard?

  I was on heroin and syrup.

• 2:43:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:02Dax Shepard?

  Wow. Wow.

• 2:43:06Dax Shepard?

  I really, really should be smarter, I think.

• 2:43:08Speaker 01

  Which, you're pretty smart.

• 2:43:11Dax Shepard?

  I was like, uh, Burrows.

• 2:43:14Speaker 01

  Who?

• 2:43:15Dax Shepard?

  Burrows, William Bur- William Burrows.

• 2:43:18Speaker 01

  Bill Burrows?

• 2:43:19Dax Shepard?

  He was a famous writer and, and, and heroin addict.

• 2:43:23Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:43:24Dax Shepard?

  He's part of the Beat movement. They all kind of worshipped him.

• 2:43:27Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:43:28Dax Shepard?

  Naked lunch.

• 2:43:30Dax Shepard?

  He shot his girlfriend. There's a great, I believe, Radiolab

• 2:43:35Dax Shepard?

  on him shooting his girlfriend at a party down in Mexico, and he just didn't deal, have to deal with that.

• 2:43:41Speaker 01

  Killed her?

• 2:43:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, dead. Doing like a trick with a gun. Some people say it was, he, he was an accident, and some people say it was not an accident.

• 2:43:50Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:43:51Dax Shepard?

  But there's all this great tape and interview, and yeah, it's a wild story.

• 2:43:56Speaker 01

  I hope you don't, um, kill me by accident.

• 2:44:00Dax Shepard?

  It's not inconceivable, right?

• 2:44:02Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:44:03Dax Shepard?

  Because we do, like, you go to the sand dunes with me, uh, you've ridden on a motorcycle with me. There's not been any gunplay, but I would just say yet.

• 2:44:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:13Dax Shepard?

  You know?

• 2:44:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm nervous. I don't want to die by your hand, okay?

• 2:44:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:21Speaker 01

  Okay, does Cambly Wald, also when you were, when you were saying it, I pictured it. C A M B E L, wait.

• 2:44:32Dax Shepard?

  L L, like the soup?

• 2:44:33Speaker 01

  L L Y A L D, like one big word, Cambly Wald.

• 2:44:39Dax Shepard?

  Two people's names, right?

• 2:44:41Speaker 01

  And it's Campbell Ewald.

• 2:44:44Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:44:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:44:46Dax Shepard?

  Great. Cleared up that lawsuit for us.

• 2:44:49Speaker 01

  Campbell Ewald, um, and they don't have the Chevrolet account anymore.

• 2:44:54Dax Shepard?

  It's Campbell Ewok.

• 2:44:58Speaker 01

  Two thousand and ten, General Motors moved all its important Chevrolet business to another agency after ninety years.

• 2:45:07Dax Shepard?

  Ninety?

• 2:45:08Speaker 01

  More than.

• 2:45:09Dax Shepard?

  That's a big hit. I think they're up there as the biggest spenders, advertisement spenders.

• 2:45:15Speaker 01

  You brought up Aaron Weekly, but you didn't call him by his full name.

• 2:45:19Dax Shepard?

  My best friend, Aaron Weekly.

• 2:45:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:45:22Speaker 01

  Cause Dax brings up Aaron Weekly all the time.

• 2:45:25Dax Shepard?

  Few times a day.

• 2:45:26Speaker 01

  Old friend, his oldest friend, but he always says, my best friend, Aaron Weekly. I was, I was visiting Michigan. I went to my best friend, Aaron Weekly's house. At first I was offended.

• 2:45:37Dax Shepard?

  Well, cause you thought, I thought you didn't remember.

• 2:45:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, of course I know who that is. You talk about him all the time. Like what? And then it became sweet.

• 2:45:47Dax Shepard?

  Well, but what's funny is, um, while I was in Michigan, you would like ask what Delta's up to, your soulmate, cause I was with her.

• 2:45:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, send me pictures.

• 2:45:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I sent you pictures and, um, and every time I had done something with my best friend, Aaron Weekly, I would say to you, oh, I met my best friend, Aaron Weekly at Highland House. And we had, and now I met my best friend, Aaron Weekly. And even in a text, I would take the time to type out my best friend.

• 2:46:08Speaker 01

  But you did, I don't think you knew you were doing it until I called it out. I, you weren't, it was not a bit until I said.

• 2:46:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, now it's become a bit, but.

• 2:46:17Speaker 01

  Now it's a bit, but.

• 2:46:18Dax Shepard?

  That was very sincere.

• 2:46:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is sweet.

• 2:46:22Dax Shepard?

  And you know, and, and I, I talk a lot on this podcast about people I love and how much I love people, but just tru- truthfully, Aaron Weekly, my best friend, Aaron Weekly.

• 2:46:34Dax Shepard?

  I just don't know that I've ever felt about a human being the way I feel about him. I just, I just, I feel like we have the same cells in our body. When I see him, even it'll be like a year and a half and I see him and I just, my whole body is electric. And we can't talk for more than four seconds without laughing so hard, we're gonna cry.

• 2:46:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:46:57Dax Shepard?

  What a feeling. I hope everyone has a best friend like that.

• 2:47:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. You mentioned tube steak. Tube steak is a hot dog.

• 2:47:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:06Speaker 01

  I didn't know that.

• 2:47:07Dax Shepard?

  You didn't?

• 2:47:07Speaker 01

  I've also never heard that.

• 2:47:09Dax Shepard?

  That was my Pippi. My mom's dad always called it a tube steak.

• 2:47:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've never heard it. It's a hot dog.

• 2:47:16Dax Shepard?

  I mean, clearly a euphemism. We all know it's not a fucking steak. It's like the hooves, assholes and snouts of a pig.

• 2:47:22Speaker 01

  And also, I don't think hot dogs are claiming to be steak.

• 2:47:26Dax Shepard?

  That's what I'm saying. It's probably the worst meat product out there. I love them. Don't get me wrong.

• 2:47:31Speaker 01

  You can get a hundred percent beef.

• 2:47:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, beef asshole, beef intestines, beef eyeballs. It's not, just because it's beef doesn't mean it's, it ain't fucking filet mignon in there.

• 2:47:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

• 2:47:44Dax Shepard?

  It's whatever shit that they couldn't sell to somebody.

• 2:47:48Speaker 01

  I'll still eat them. Yeah. Um, the John McCain documentary is John McCain, For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's on HBO. You can find it now. It's phenomenal. It'll make you love him so much and appreciate him.

• 2:48:04Dax Shepard?

  Well, I tweeted about that documentary and then I of course got a bunch of my fellow liberals, you know, tweeting all these fucking insane things about what a terrible person he is and everything. And the whole reason I tweeted is, is, you know, fucking watch it before you, you jump in your party line. It's like, the reason I like the documentary so much is that I am not ideologically aligned with him.

• 2:48:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:48:29Dax Shepard?

  Politically, but I am so aligned with him as a human being. I, he had so much integrity. There's so many admirable qualities. And I think it's a great thing for all of us to watch, to remember what little percentage of our existence as humans is our fucking political views. There's so much more to us than that, and it's a great reminder of that.

• 2:48:50Speaker 01

  But also he's that, like he often, you know, he, he, he has a lot of conviction for the things he cares about.

• 2:49:00Speaker 01

  That I may not agree with politically.

• 2:49:03Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:49:03Speaker 01

  But he also votes against his party and he does, he really does do the thing that he feels is the right thing.

• 2:49:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:13Speaker 01

  And doesn't feel like it's for political gain. It's just what he thinks is right.

• 2:49:18Dax Shepard?

  And even more impressive is that when he has been wrong, which he's been wrong, he owns it.

• 2:49:24Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:49:24Dax Shepard?

  Which is so attractive. Every single politician, I feel like the, I mean, I literally shit the bed in front of you and then explain why they didn't do it. You know, it's just, there was a level of ownership over his mistakes that is, that was very admirable.

• 2:49:38Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah. Um, that's it. I mean, I, I also wanted to say that the, her story was full with cheerleaders and angels and people who helped her and could, and saw her. And, you know, she did so much, but she had people and it's good to know that and recognize like those people in your life and that you, it's good to be that for other people.

• 2:50:10Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:50:10Speaker 01

  If you have the chance and opportunity to do it. I just thought that was, for me, that was sort of a takeaway of you gotta help people.

• 2:50:18Dax Shepard?

  Well, especially in times where you've lost your perspective, as she has, to have a network of people that, you know, you're connected to who will sense, oh, this is okay. This person needs help now.

• 2:50:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:32Dax Shepard?

  Like circle the wagons.

• 2:50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:34Dax Shepard?

  We all, we all need that.

• 2:50:36Speaker 01

  Be aware of, yeah.

• 2:50:37Dax Shepard?

  You can't be an island. I think that's the message.

• 2:50:40Speaker 01

  You guys are that for me. You and Kristen are.

• 2:50:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I hope to be for life.

• 2:50:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too.

• 2:50:45Dax Shepard?

  Until I kill you.

• 2:50:46Speaker 01

  Until you come with your shotgun.

• 2:50:48Dax Shepard?

  With a handgun in the back of my motorcycle, jumping a dune buggy in the sand dunes. I love you.

• 2:50:52Speaker 01

  I love you too.

• 2:51:08Dax Shepard?

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