Charlie Puth

Charlie Puth (Whatever’s Clever, Voicenotes, Nine Track Mind) is a Grammy and Golden Globe Award-winning songwriter, recording artist, and producer. Charlie joins the Armchair Expert to discuss his opinion that standup is the scariest job, how everyone in New Jersey is their own local celebrity, and that what’s most important about recording is capturing the air in the room. Charlie and Dax talk about the photographic memory-like way he approaches sound, learning he wanted to write his own music after discovering 70s pop and R&B, and making a Christmas album that he sold door-to-door at age 11. Charlie explains why his history with his wife is like a country song, the realization that he had to remove fraudulence from his life, and embracing the beauty of imperfection in being human. 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 Dax Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:05Dax Shepard?

  You may have seen our guest, uh, but a mere two Sundays ago.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Charlie Puth. Charlie Puth is a Grammy nominated singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. His albums are Nine Track Mind, Voice Notes, Charlie, and he has a new album out March 27th, very special birthday, called Whatever's Clever.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  This was so funny. You get to hear the way his brain works musically and it is shocking. It's so fascinating.

• 0:38Dax Shepard?

  Beautiful mind desk.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Please enjoy Charlie Puth. We get support from Quince.

• 0:45Speaker 01

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• 0:54Dax Shepard?

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• 1:16Speaker 01

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• 1:34Dax Shepard?

  The 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters for me are it. When I look at Steve McQueen, this man owned a couple of sweaters he wore all the time and he looks iconic.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  It's a uniform.

• 1:45Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:45Speaker 01

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• 2:03Dax Shepard?

  Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from AG1. Fall is that time when your body and mind are getting ready for the winter. You're settling in, bracing for the cold. Your body's already running a deficit from the shorter days and broken sleep patterns. You don't want a nutrient deficit stacked on top of that, too.

• 2:39Speaker 01

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• 2:51Dax Shepard?

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• 3:05Speaker 01

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• 3:09Dax Shepard?

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• 3:20Speaker 01

  Well, that's also the thing. When you do it first thing in the morning, you already feel kind of self-esteem because you're like, I already did something good for myself.

• 3:27Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Go to drinkag1.com/dax and for a limited time, get a free immunity bundle, including a bottle of omega-3 fish oil and a bottle of vitamin D3 K2 with your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/dax. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Armchair Experts sent you.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Hi there.

• 4:09Dax Shepard?

  Nice to meet you.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Nice to meet you, Dax.

• 4:12Dax Shepard?

  Hey, this is the greatest fucking setup I've ever seen.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Oh, that is kind.

• 4:16Dax Shepard?

  What part of town do you live in?

• 4:18Speaker 02

  I live in Santa Barbara.

• 4:19Dax Shepard?

  Oh my goodness. I lived there for one year as a college student. Are you a Montecito?

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. I say Santa Barbara because it sounds a little cooler.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:27Dax Shepard?

  You're afraid it sounds bougie to live in?

• 4:29Speaker 02

  It is bougie. Although yesterday was a very un-Montecito day for me.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  What happened?

• 4:35Dax Shepard?

  Tell me.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  I saw this dog running down San Ysidro. It's a little fluffy, hypoallergenic little pup.

• 4:40Dax Shepard?

  Okay, maybe like a doodle mix?

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Like a little doodle mix, running like cars. There's no police in the fucking town.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  The dog's running. He's gonna get hit by a car. I throw the hazards on. My pregnant wife, we were going to pick up her car and I'm like, we're not doing it right now. I run out in the street and pick this dog up, put him in the backseat, and then two hours of really intense looking for the owner.

• 4:59Dax Shepard?

  Did it have a little tag on it?

• 5:02Speaker 02

  It did, but this is the most California shit ever. It led to...

• 5:06Dax Shepard?

  A business manager?

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Basically. I swear, to the dog's business manager.

• 5:11Dax Shepard?

  The dog's business manager.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  At Humane Society, the guy picked up yawning. Hello? I'm like, I found this dog, but there's no owner attached to the tag. Do you know whose dog is this? And I'm like, and may I ask who's calling? I'm like, okay, some...

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, some urgency would be nice.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Some urgency here.

• 5:26Dax Shepard?

  My wife's car is ready for pickup.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Don't you have any idea how important this is? But anyway.

• 5:32Dax Shepard?

  You just kind of answered one of my questions, which is you were brutally attacked by a dog as a child, and I did wonder if it led to a permanent fear of dogs. Because I have one.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  I have one.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Did you get bit by a dog?

• 5:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, these two Dobermans ran off a porch when I was a kid and I was across the street and they jumped on top of me and the owner came. I didn't suffer any permanent, but fuck, did it scare the shit out of me.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:54Dax Shepard?

  Well, who was your attacker?

• 5:55Speaker 02

  It was a black lab and it was when I was two years old, so I don't really remember a whole lot of it.

• 6:00Dax Shepard?

  Okay, but your parents must have shit bricks.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  I almost died.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Really?

• 6:04Speaker 02

  If you look really closely, well, why would you look super close up to my face? We just met, but it's a...

• 6:10Dax Shepard?

  Feel free to exit your chair and really get in there.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  In 1992, 400 stitches. This area was really tough at the time.

• 6:16Dax Shepard?

  Four hundred?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  You got your eye.

• 6:18Dax Shepard?

  You take your whole.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  No, it didn't. It's got one centimeter away. So I got really lucky. But what's really funny is I love dogs. In 2019, I adopted a black lab.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Good for you.

• 6:27Dax Shepard?

  You have Stockholm syndrome, where you fall in love with your oppressor.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  A little nervous.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  Woof-presser.

• 6:33Dax Shepard?

  I am imagining your face probably for a minute, your parents must have thought, oh, my God, he's never gonna look the same. Were you pretty deformed up top for a minute?

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, for a while I was. I was pretty bandaged up for a while, up until.

• 6:47Dax Shepard?

  Couple of weeks ago?

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Just in time for the pod.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Just in time for the pod. We needed a story. Till like four years old.

• 6:56Dax Shepard?

  And did you have more than one surgery?

• 6:57Speaker 02

  I think multiple surgeries. I very vaguely remember going to the hospital.

• 7:02Dax Shepard?

  She has a huge dog phobia, so.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't like dogs at all, and I'm fine saying it.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  That's fine. My wife does not like dogs either. That dog I mentioned lives with my parents now.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Okay. Are you self-conscious about your eyes still? Like, do you still sometimes feel?

• 7:16Speaker 02

  I like it. If I didn't have it, I'm just like a white guy with brown hair. But I'm more self-conscious about, and I was just talking to somebody about this, my voice. I'm really self-conscious about singing.

• 7:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you're singing for?

• 7:27Speaker 02

  And it's my job.

• 7:28Dax Shepard?

  What version of self-conscious? You personally don't like the sound of it, or you think other people don't?

• 7:33Speaker 02

  You ever hear people say, I don't like the way that my voice sounds? Well, your voice sounds different, recorded, than it does to you, because 70% of your voice is actually the vibration that's happening all around your head. So when I listen back to this, I'm always gonna sound, I'm now used to it. But people who aren't used to it are just hearing the remaining 30% of just audible.

• 7:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so I've always heard this, and I guess I don't have a memory of hearing my voice and going like, what? But my voice to me in my head sounds exactly as it does if I listen to this show. You probably hear your speaking voice recorded.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  A lot.

• 8:07Dax Shepard?

  A lot.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:07Dax Shepard?

  In many forms of media.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  More than most.

• 8:10Dax Shepard?

  More than most. So you're probably used to it in a way, but you think I would be.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Jeff Goldblum asked me to come sing at his show at the Troubadour the other night, because I just happened to be in town.

• 8:18Dax Shepard?

  He plays clarinet. What's he play?

• 8:20Speaker 02

  He plays piano.

• 8:21Dax Shepard?

  He, okay, close. That's what he, Alan, who plays the clarinet. Let's just not confuse them.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  But I went up there. I sing pop music for a living. I'm not used to singing jazz standards. And I felt very naked up there and I didn't have my piano behind me. And for the first 30 seconds, and I've been doing this for not a whole long time, but like 10 years, my voice is shaking a little bit because I'm nervous, but I guess it's good that I still

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Care.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Care.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:46Dax Shepard?

  And how long does it take to settle in?

• 8:49Speaker 02

  It took up until like the first chorus because the audience is really great too. They were very excited.

• 8:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they're not haters at a Jeff Goldblum jazz concert.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  I've experienced a couple haters, but when I first started touring too.

• 9:01Dax Shepard?

  Sure. But I'm saying, if you're the type of person that loves Jeff Goldblum's jazz band, I think you've already weeded out the haters. Does that make sense?

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, that does make sense. Actually, you're reaching a very niche audience. They care about him a lot, though.

• 9:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  But I don't think the fear goes away, even if the circumstance is perfect.

• 9:20Dax Shepard?

  That is true. I just know from doing stand up, it is impossible, the difference between different rooms. Like people who go to Largo, they love comedy. They're gonna love whatever they see. They're into it, like being into punk rock. So they love it. They're junkies. Whereas you perform in Vegas and it's like, I'm not even sure why they went to this show. They have lost money. They're from different parts of the country. You know, it's a disaster. Same material.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Stand up, I think, is the hardest job.

• 9:47Dax Shepard?

  It's the most scary, I would say, for sure.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Because you have, other than maybe some intro music, walking on stage, I have music behind me the entire time.

• 9:57Dax Shepard?

  Exactly. If you're doing just okay, presumably the music will be so enjoyable, it could get you through it.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:03Dax Shepard?

  But if you're shitting the bed in comedy, there's nothing else going on.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Especially if, like, remember Brian Regan?

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  He doesn't curse in his act at all, and he still makes me belly laugh. I remember seeing videos of Sam Kinison and just the like dice and the almost borderline awkward silence that would happen. But it was all part of the art of it all. It's like the silence was just as important as the words that were being said.

• 10:29Dax Shepard?

  Yes, breaking that tension.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  To do that without music. If I had a keyboard here, I have like a bed of white noise I can play. Over and then the words come out easier. You have nothing. You have the sound of laughter. Lot of respect.

• 10:42Dax Shepard?

  Have you ever done an a cappella thing live?

• 10:46Speaker 02

  I made a cappella music with Boys to Men.

• 10:49Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. They're good at it.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  They're pretty good at it. They're a little better than me. We did that on my second album. That was 144 vocal tracks.

• 10:58Dax Shepard?

  And you're having to fine tune levels on 140 tracks?

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Every detail matters. They know how to sing, but in order to get like a full sound, we'll record one vocal. And then put the microphone back a little bit.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Say it again, like same piece of music, say it again. Put the microphone back because the most important thing while recording is capturing the air of the room. Even if that air conditioner was on, you know how when they're like, oh, 10 seconds for room?

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  The tone is just important as whoever's singing, whoever is playing an instrument, because the tone kind of sets the stage for the record. You know a record called What's Going On by Marvin Gaye? Marvin Gaye always had a lot of question marks in his music.

• 11:43Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Marvin Gaye, What's Going On, in the very beginning of that record, it sounds like a party. If you can kind of play it in your head, people are talking, hey, what's happening, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 11:53Dax Shepard?

  It's the one that famously was ripped off, right? That's the track?

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Not that song. I'm talking about the original.

• 11:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Mother, mother.

• 12:01Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  You can just hear in the very beginning, hear a bed of noise. It's just a bunch of people having a party and that plays throughout the song when the music comes in. That's the bed of noise.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  It's very, I want to lose anybody here.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  No, this is fascinating. We like expertise here. So that was perfect.

• 12:20Dax Shepard?

  Do you know the famous story about Led Zeppelin? I want to say Led Zeppelin two, that album. They rented this crazy English estate. And Bonham set up his kit in this huge vacuous stairwell. And all the drum tracks on that album are so wild sounding because they're in this weird echoey chamber and he played so hard.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Well, that's what reverb, I didn't know that, by the way, but that makes sense.

• 12:45Dax Shepard?

  It's like nature's reverb.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Nature's reverb is reverb. You go to Blackbird Studio in Nashville, they have a room. It's like the size of this, but the ceiling is like 40 feet. And they record guitars in there. You can of course capture that synthetically with computer plugins.

• 13:03Dax Shepard?

  Well, even pedals, right? I mean, there's so many guitar pedals that do reverb.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  But those are all replicated from the real thing, which is reverb. I mean, this is a pretty tight sounding room because we're recording here.

• 13:15Dax Shepard?

  The show would sound better with a ton of reverb.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  I got scared. I was like, you put it to the test. What if we heard all this echo?

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Can you imagine if your show did have a ton of reverb?

• 13:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it'd be kinda cool, I guess. I can see Jack White doing a podcast where it had a ton of reverb.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. Radio shows in New Jersey where I'm from always had, there was this morning show that had a ton of reverb on it. New Jersey 101.1 WCB SFM. They had a radio show in the 90s. I can't remember the name of the host, but they always sounded like they were in one of those tunnels.

• 13:44Dax Shepard?

  Okay, yes, you're from New Jersey.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:46Dax Shepard?

  And I'm imagining you're semi-close to Manhattan as you commuted at one point in high school.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Like an hour away.

• 13:52Dax Shepard?

  And what kind of town is it?

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Brumson. It's like a business town. It kinda would remind somebody of Connecticut. Something like 7,000 people can take a boat into South Street, Wall Street. Not a very musical town, but a very nice town.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Fancy?

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Fancy.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Little Connecticut fancy.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, but interesting because it's on a peninsula, so I grew up on the beach.

• 14:15Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Another headline.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  But I like it there. I haven't been back in a long time, but close to Asbury Park, which is where Bruce, I believe Bruce is from there.

• 14:25Dax Shepard?

  Okay. And do people commute by boat into the city?

• 14:28Speaker 02

  They do.

• 14:29Dax Shepard?

  Oh my gosh, that would be so fun.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  It's not a nice boat. It's like a ferry. It's like a big catamaran ferry where they serve vodka at 5 o'clock in the morning.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  That's good for those Wall Street guys.

• 14:39Dax Shepard?

  That's when you know the market is down. Like it's a real bear market. Everyone's pounding vodka.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  A very unmusical town, but everyone in New Jersey is their own local celebrity. So I had the guy who played the beach clubs with his acoustic guitar would teach me music. And I had a guitar teacher that was the best guitar teacher in town. He was known as being the best guitar teacher in town.

• 15:00Dax Shepard?

  You know, the thing in Detroit was is everyone you met had an uncle who had played in Bob Seger's band. In the Silver Bowl band. And everyone you met's uncle was in the Silver Bowl band, which obviously numerically couldn't be possible.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Right, but your town had a thing.

• 15:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Bob Seger was the king or Ted Nugent, but no one ever claimed to have played in Ted Nugent's band for whatever reason.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Oh, that's sad.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Every small town has a thing. It's interesting. And the thing in my town was like so and so knows Bruce, which means I know Bruce.

• 15:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, sure. Bruce Springsteen's gotta be god there. So mom was a music teacher. What's her music background?

• 15:35Speaker 02

  She just always loved music and she was my first piano teacher.

• 15:38Dax Shepard?

  Four years old?

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, four. Wow. Yeah.

• 15:43Dax Shepard?

  There's more coming.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  She taught me when I was four years old. Then I went to other teachers who would make you read music. That's how you learn to play. You read the music and you play what's on the page.

• 15:54Dax Shepard?

  Why didn't mom want to tackle that part of it?

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Cause she knew that I had this special ability to hear a song back then with tapes and CDs. This is a CD in my mind. And I would listen to it and I'd memorize it and then I'd be able to play it back.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  You could just play it?

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Was just from listening to it.

• 16:12Dax Shepard?

  Did she think she had like a fucking prodigy on her hands?

• 16:15Speaker 02

  I think so. I definitely won't call myself that, but kinda like how you're spitting out facts about me right now. Cause you read a sheet or you went online and you memorized them. That's the same way I always approached sound. From a young age, I thought that was just part of being human. Like you study for a vocabulary test. You're gonna memorize a definition of whatever.

• 16:35Dax Shepard?

  Plethora.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  Plethora.

• 16:37Dax Shepard?

  Most hated word.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Classic vocab word. It means many.

• 16:41Dax Shepard?

  Cornucopia.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  I'm gonna memorize the definition of that.

• 16:44Dax Shepard?

  Horn of plenty. That's the definition.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely. You passed the vocabulary test, but I always equated sound as something physical that you could hold or see.

• 16:53Dax Shepard?

  You've had synesthesia or whatever.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  It's kinda like.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  It's a little like that.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  I don't see any colors though. Like I don't look at this nice forest green wall and think, well, that sounds like a Frank Ocean song. I just look at music very literally. Like I would listen to Bye Bye Bye by NSYNC and be like, okay, that's an A flat minor. And I'm doing this tonight.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  And then it goes to the

• 17:21Speaker 02

  And then the pre chorus goes to E major.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  F sharp major. On and on and on. If I had a piano, I'd play it.

• 17:27Dax Shepard?

  And is that pleasurable for you or is it a maddening? Yeah, it's pleasurable, right?

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Pleasurable.

• 17:32Dax Shepard?

  I bet you're cracking the code a bit.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  I think music can move any room. This is why I write music. I've always wanted to be responsible for changing the vibe in any room. If there needed to be a vibe change or make something sadder if it was that time of the show. Now I play shows. You know how musicians always an hour and a half into the show? That's when acoustic guitar comes on. Like, all right, we're going to slow things down a little bit. Now we're going to give everyone a little break.

• 17:55Dax Shepard?

  So that we can go fucking hard for that encore, right? We need to recharge.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Hit the snare, boom, dun, dun, dun. And you're right back into it. Phil Collins, Genesis.

• 18:04Dax Shepard?

  So, so, so, studio.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Exactly. Can you imagine like four slow songs and then you hear so, so, studio just out of nowhere? It just makes you want to get up out of your chair. How did you make people get up out of their chair? You hit the first.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  That kind of sounds like 1999.

• 18:23Dax Shepard?

  It does.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  It does sound.

• 18:25Dax Shepard?

  I wonder who was first.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  I think Prince was first.

• 18:28Dax Shepard?

  He's first.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's always first.

• 18:30Dax Shepard?

  I just saw this. This is crazy. So I guess Prince had had some success, but middling success. And of all things, he went to a Bob Seger show. Have you seen this?

• 18:40Speaker 02

  No, I haven't, but I remember one controversy, that album. People didn't get it right away.

• 18:45Dax Shepard?

  He could play clubs and he was making a living, but he went to this Bob Seger concert and he was with a friend of his or a producer. And he said, I want to play to an arena like this. Like, what is this guy doing that I'm not doing? And he said, he's writing ballads and you're not writing any ballads. And he came home after watching Bob Seger and he wrote Purple Rain.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 19:06Dax Shepard?

  Wrote some of it. Then he went to a club and he played it and he improvised this like 25 minute session of that song and kept the pieces that ended up in that song, which is a very long song. I want to say it's like an eight or nine minute song, but weirdly inspired by seeing the success of Bob Seger and then cracking that he needed to do ballads.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  What's that thing called that people, do they write it down? Manifestation. I think a lot of musicians' manifestation is just through sound.

• 19:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. What I like about it too, is I think we have these really fantastical notions. of genius and it's just like, oh, Prince knew how to be Prince. No, Prince knew how to do something, then he saw Bob Seger and then he incorporated that. And then probably 80 other things he incorporated.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  The genius of Prince was that he knew what to subtract. And sometimes I have trouble doing, I have to remind myself that. Because without getting too museo musical, because I know that everybody that listens and watches isn't listening to music 24/7.

• 19:56Dax Shepard?

  Charlie, you're way too concerned with what people are.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  I am.

• 19:59Dax Shepard?

  Going to be interested in. You let me worry about that.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 20:01Dax Shepard?

  You be passionate about what you're passionate about.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  This is the place to get a little geeky.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, I love it. Remember Kiss by Prince?

• 20:08Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  There used to be.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  There used to be an acoustic guitar in that song. There's no, there might be one buried in the track at the very end, but right now it's just.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  It's just drums and the little background vocals like overdubbed. But there was an acoustic guitar layered in there and Prince was like, uh-uh, there's too much going on. He sidechain compressed keyed the acoustic guitar to a hi-hat. And then the rhythm that the hi-hat was playing. You know, the sound of a drum.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Every time the drummer hit the hi-hat, the acoustic guitar sound would trigger, which is how you got the.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  It's the hi-hat.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  So I made.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  That's the hi-hat, but the acoustic guitar is like opening up every time the hi-hat gets hit.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 21:14Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so mom got you onto the piano. It's funny though that she turned you over to somebody because I keep hearing from people. A good advice for parents is do not try to teach your kids shit. Just turn them over to a pro because kids don't want to learn from their parents.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  Really?

• 21:27Dax Shepard?

  Did you like learning from mom?

• 21:28Speaker 02

  I loved learning from my parents and my dad, he's a builder and appreciates music, but isn't in it every day like I am. And I would just love asking him questions like, what's a foundation to a house? How do you know when it's ready to be painted? I have such a sophomoric understanding of how a house, to this day, I still really don't understand.

• 21:46Dax Shepard?

  Did he not make you get out there and fucking clean up the site and run cable?

• 21:50Speaker 02

  One time he made me do it because I cheated on a math test.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Punishment.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  And I had to clean all day and I was so miserable. I was just kicking the dirt, making little rhythms out of my feet. He came back to the house, it was completely dirty instead.

• 22:05Dax Shepard?

  It's like this kid's fucking.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  I think if you know, if you know your kid is gonna do something.

• 22:10Dax Shepard?

  Is artsy?

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're not gonna be like, build this house, please.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Well, I think my parents knew I was artsy and musical when I went to Catholic school, which meant I went to Catholic church. That was kind of the deal. And I would hear the same music, holy, holy, holy Lord. I would hear the same music over and over every Sunday, sometimes three times a week. And back to the thing where I could hear a song and just memorize it, the thing that I thought everybody could do. I remember one day, the church organist didn't show up. And I looked at everybody and like, don't put the tape on. I've memorized it because I heard it so many times and everyone looked at me like an alien. This was 11.

• 22:51Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  11 or 12.

• 22:53Dax Shepard?

  What could make a service better than a cute little 11 year old popping up and filling in on the organ?

• 22:58Speaker 01

  But also everyone's like, what do you mean you memorized it?

• 23:00Dax Shepard?

  Get out of here freak. He's been touched by the devil.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  Yes, I played the whole mass from memory. It wasn't like a cocky thing. I was just like, I've heard enough times. I know how to do it. Right? Everybody? And my parents are like, okay, we're gonna go get your brain tested. See what's going on up there. And then I went to school in New York City.

• 23:20Dax Shepard?

  Well, jazz enters the equation at seven or 10?

• 23:23Speaker 02

  10 years old. Good.

• 23:25Dax Shepard?

  Thank you. 10. And then you go to jazz camp, right? You go to Count Basie?

• 23:29Speaker 02

  Went to Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, home of Count Basie. That's why I say New Jersey is low key musical.

• 23:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. What does jazz do as a medium for you? Because I guess what I'm curious about right now, it sounds like your musical journey is like, I can hear this. I can replicate it. It's pleasurable to be able to execute that. But when does passion enter it? Or when does curiosity enter it?

• 23:53Speaker 02

  The moment pop music was introduced into my life. When I say pop music, I meant pop music of the 70s, like when my parents were kids, listening to James Taylor. I remember hearing Caroline in My Mind by James Taylor. And then hearing a Luther Vandross record. It was on the R and B side of things, but I just called it pop music. And then in the early 2000s, I'd hear Lucky by Britney Spears. Just hearing those Max Martin drums and the very Swedish type songwriting and kind of combining everything together, it was the pop music that made me realize, oh, I want to make the music that moves people because my parents put on this James Taylor record and it made the car ride so much better to North Jersey.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  In my mind, I'm going to Carolina.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Okay, so pop is what gets you kind of on fire. I'm listening to jazz and thinking, I'm gonna learn as much jazz as I can and marry it into pop music. And then I found out that I was not the first to have that idea. That was all of Quincy Jones's music.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  When you were in class, not with your mom, when you went to another teacher, and I know this is gonna be hard for you because you don't want to brag, but was the teacher like, dude, you got a real gift?

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, they did say that. How did you know that I have like such a fear of bragging?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Oh, I can tell. You're so sweet. I think you're very cognizant of what people think of you.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Sometimes to a fault. I'm getting better at it. I think a lot of people take my, like, if someone sings off key, I just don't know how to not wince. I'm like, mm. It's involuntary. At 34, I'm getting a lot better at it. It's almost like a nervous tick a little bit, but I think people obviously would get offended by that. That's different then.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Well, that's different, but I understand you're like, I'm hurting people's feelings and I don't mean to be hurting people's feelings. I don't want people to think I'm a bad person or something. Have people like read you the wrong way and then you feel bad about it?

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a whole different thing to go down. I definitely think people have read me the wrong way, but I don't know. Didn't people find Mozart annoying? Not that I'm comparing myself to Mozart.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  No, probably.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  I think most musical geniuses have been rough hangs, with the exception of a few.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Or just misunderstood. I'm not gonna say rough hangs. I think people think like, oh, these pop stars, they put you in a box. They think you're gonna be whatever they think. And then if you're not that, they're either disappointed or they're like, oh, he's an asshole, or everyone has to come up with their idea of you.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  2014, when I signed my record contract, I had all intentions of coming to Los Angeles to produce music for other artists. I didn't think that I was gonna be the artist. So then overnight, I became the artist after the song See You Again being in the Fast and Furious movie. And having a couple of my own singles, suddenly I'm the artist. But I just became an artist overnight and I had a lot of not great people advising me incorrectly. Say this to garner up this fake controversy and that way people will like your music. So every classic music industry faux pas, I think I fell into.

• 26:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  Having a bad business manager.

• 26:46Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you know, we're gonna get there. We're gonna get there. I wanna earmark that. But my defense of it, what makes an incredible musician is that they see and hear something new that no one else saw and heard. And to think that that person gets to have that experience à la carte, like only when it serves them. You have to recognize they're operating at a little bit outside of the thing, which allows them to tap into something we wouldn't have thought of. That's what it's about. And I think you've seen a lot of musicians over the years, treat the angst that comes with that with booze and drugs. Like most of our great geniuses, they're medicating. So it's a lot to ask someone to be a visionary and then for the rest of the day, just be normal. It's not how it works.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Wow. I feel like a lot of artists would appreciate you saying that too, because you get all this success. No one really wants to hear about your problems. But imagine hearing everything at 200% volume.

• 27:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  That's what I hear every single day. I get really startled. Like my poor wife, she came in and I was working on something. I was working on it really, really loud and she said, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. And I got turned around. She really startled me and I just really silenced. She was like, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you. And I started crying. I don't know why.

• 27:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're sensitive dude.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  But like, I get down on myself because I'm about to have a kid and I don't want to freak the kid out.

• 28:02Dax Shepard?

  No, your kid will probably be sensitive. And if you're someone who embraces it and is not ashamed of it and can be an example, that you can totally be a sensitive person and live in this world. It's a beautiful thing.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:15Dax Shepard?

  Let the kids see it's okay to be exactly how you are.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  You almost took a tree out.

• 28:21Dax Shepard?

  I'm sensitive too.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Into your eucalyptus tree over here.

• 28:24Dax Shepard?

  Prince is like freaky all the time. Of course he is. And he's on opiates. Yeah, of course he is. You're not getting that whole volume of work.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  I think I maybe in the beginning of tour dabbled in like. Having a drink after a show, but thank God I never got into any of that because my brain already feels like it's on drugs.

• 28:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Without anything. It's a lot to be on stage. It's kind of depressing sometimes, having just got off stage where 50,000 people are cheering you on. And then you just maybe have like two days off and you're jet lagged. You might be in a different country, different state, and you're searching for that dopamine hit.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  It's literally chemical though. It's not even like, oh, it's like an emotional, it's chemical. The adrenaline is high and then it wipes out very quickly. And your body's trying to figure out a way to get some homeostasis. It's like, I'll drink a little bit to get back up to even.

• 29:16Dax Shepard?

  Even a few weeks ago, post Golden Globes, we had like a decompress. It's like, okay, that was a lot of attention and that's a very heightened arousal setting. And now what?

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Maybe that's why people stay kind of sensual in LA where it's always something to get a hit from.

• 29:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Oh, boy, that's dark. Okay, so back to school. Now, I'm imagining, I'm imagining you're living two different worlds. Anytime you're pursuing music, you're probably loved and appreciated. And then the transition to school, no one gives a fuck at school that you have this gift, right?

• 29:50Speaker 02

  There were a lot of teachers that didn't like me. There were people who were supportive. There was one band teacher named Clem DeRosa. I believe he's passed on 10 years ago and he used to work with Nelson Riddle and Count Basie and lead the big band. And my mom and my dad were always my biggest supporters. They were like, you need to do this audition and play all the things you are. You are the one in this string time.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Those chord changes, like all nice and how David Foster plays the piano, how Bill Evans plays the piano, he needs to do this for this guy in New Jersey on a Tuesday afternoon. And I got into the jazz camp and it was like my biggest accomplishment ever. So he was very supportive. I've met a couple of teachers who weren't so supportive.

• 30:33Dax Shepard?

  But I'm imagining your peers there, they like your talent because they're other musical kids. But then you're going to a New Jersey elementary school and junior high and I can't imagine they're.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Right. That's what I'm saying. Like, are you plopping back and forth into a place you're appreciated and then a place where you're suffering? I'm plopping back and forth. I never suffered. Just no one really understood me in high school. I heard you were a bit bullied. A teensy bit. Never shoved in lockers or anything like that. Just a lot of emotional distress that I might still carry with me. The needing to please people constantly and having a fear of talking too much. That might have started in high school. But I also enjoyed high school. It wasn't the worst thing in the world for me. I just preferred being in the music world. Yeah.

• 31:19Dax Shepard?

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. That's smart. Not checking which platform you watch that new show on. So frustrating. 15 minutes later, you've logged into seven apps, reset two passwords, and still haven't found it. Yeah, checking first is smart. So check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary, subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Allstate North American Insurance Co. and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. We are supported by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses, Monica, only use 20% of their data?

• 32:01Speaker 01

  That's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out.

• 32:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, or paying for a coffee that's one-fifth full.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Yuck.

• 32:08Dax Shepard?

  Point is, you miss a lot unless you use HubSpot. Their customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business. The insights trapped in emails, call logs, and transcripts, all that unstructured data that makes all the difference. Because when you know more, you grow more. And when you get a full cup of coffee, you can do more too. But I digress. Visit hubspot.com today.

• 32:33Dax Shepard?

  This episode is supported by Helix.

• 32:36Speaker 01

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• 32:47Dax Shepard?

  That's the dream. You just described one of my ideal fall nights.

• 32:51Speaker 01

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• 33:07Dax Shepard?

  Increasingly so.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  I need it. I have to have it. And I heard that you're supposed to sleep at a cold temp. For optimal sleep. It's very, very helpful.

• 33:18Dax Shepard?

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• 33:38Speaker 01

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• 33:45Dax Shepard?

  Go to helixsleep.com/armchair for 20% off site wide. That's helixsleep.com/armchair for 20% off site wide. helixsleep.com/armchair. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. We've talked before about Rob building our website on Squarespace, and I bring it up again because it's a perfect example of what they do well. Rob had all the pieces, the content, the vision, the ideas, but he needed something to actually take all that and make it public facing. And Squarespace was that bridge. Maybe you're in the same spot. You've been developing something, a business, a skill set, a body of work, and it's been private. It's been yours. But at some point, you're ready to put it out there.

• 34:27Dax Shepard?

  And that transition from private to public can feel like a huge leap. Squarespace makes it feel like a step. Beautiful templates, built-in SEO, email campaigns, scheduling, analytics, everything you need to go from, I've been working on this, to here. It is come find me all in one place. No code, no stitching together a bunch of different tools. So if you've been sitting on something and waiting for the right moment, this might be it. Head to squarespace.com slash DAX for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

• 35:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay. So you're also incredibly ambitious. So there's a lot of different things going on because you make your own Christmas tape at 11 years old and you go door to door and sell it.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  In Microsoft Word 97, print out all the little CD labels.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  Go door to door, but I just always wanted to make an album. I was always obsessed with making an album, seeing the celebrity NSYNC CD, seeing the Millennium Backstreet Boys CD. I wanted to make an album, not for myself, but for other artists.

• 35:38Dax Shepard?

  And at 17, this is also kind of ambitious. So at 17, you start a YouTube.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Charlie's Vlogs. This was the day and age of Tumblr and vlogging.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  That was a whole era.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  That was a whole era and going to VidCon, meeting up with creators who I still am in contact with today. I fell in love with the internet and I noticed in the early days of YouTube, there was a lack of musicianship. It was all sketch comedy, Smosh, and those guys are still around today too, killing it. But there was a lack of musicians. So I thought, why not make some homemade music videos? It sounds stupid because everybody does that now on TikTok, but nobody was doing it back then.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:16Dax Shepard?

  But the ambition part is you're not only doing your own vlog with your own comedy sketches and your own, you're doing a lot of acoustic covers.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:24Dax Shepard?

  But then you start creating jingles and music for other people's YouTube shows, right?

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Most of the time not because I wanted a pair of Ray Bans and I didn't want to ask my parents for money. Sometimes if the YouTube channel had a lot of subscribers. When subscribers meant something, I would just ask for them to shout me out on their channel and then I would get subscribers. So I was writing a lot of music for a lot of random people at the time.

• 36:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And then you get into Berklee School of Music and if everyone else is as dumb as me, that is not Berklee out here. That's

• 36:57Speaker 02

  No, you'd be surprised. A lot of people get confused.

• 36:59Dax Shepard?

  I thought, oh, he went to Berklee. And I was like, why is it spelled with two Es and not a Y? And then I realized, oh,

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Very prestigious music

• 37:06Dax Shepard?

  Boston Music School.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a music school in the Back Bay in Boston, Massachusetts. I had so much fun there.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Did you feel seen there?

• 37:14Speaker 02

  I did.

• 37:15Dax Shepard?

  Like you found your crew?

• 37:16Speaker 02

  I found my crew. What's funny is I always kind of danced around the classes. I'm sure they would hate to hear that, but I wasn't learning how to rap cables. I have a music production and engineering degree, which is great, but I never went to the beginnings of that class. A good example is I knew I didn't have to book studio time at three o'clock in the morning to record a drummer. I could just go on YouTube and with this program called Isotope, isolate the drums out of this one song, put them on the grid in Pro Tools,

• 37:48Speaker 02

  and then take someone else's assignment and layer it on top of it. And now it sounds like I went to the studio at three o'clock in the morning, but I don't have bags under my eyes.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 37:59Dax Shepard?

  What cover gets Ellen's attention?

• 38:02Speaker 02

  September of 2011, that was the Someone Like You, the Adele song, the cover of that. And it's so funny, I ran into the producer a couple hours ago, who actually called me and said that I was going on that program at the time.

• 38:15Dax Shepard?

  Not Andy?

• 38:16Speaker 02

  No, not Andy. Her name's Ellen Rockamora.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  She's so sweet.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  She is the sweetest.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  She called me at 19 years old and was like, we want to fly you out on JetBlue. I was like, woo, I still love JetBlue. To Los Angeles and I stayed at the Sheridan Universal.

• 38:36Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Off Lankersham, I think.

• 38:38Dax Shepard?

  Classic.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  And I was like, I've never been in such a nice hotel. It was September. It was getting cold in New England, but it was warm here.

• 38:47Dax Shepard?

  It's our hottest month.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  I couldn't believe it. And I remember Jimmy Iovine, Larry Jackson, Ellen. This is again, 2011, officially a long time ago, saying, would you like to be signed to a record contract?

• 39:00Dax Shepard?

  To 1111?

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:01Dax Shepard?

  Did you know that was the name?

• 39:02Speaker 02

  God, you know everything.

• 39:03Dax Shepard?

  Well, she loves 1111.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  So does my wife. She loves 1111.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  It's the number.

• 39:08Dax Shepard?

  Jen Aniston, too.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Jen Aniston also likes it. Good club to be in, the 1111 club.

• 39:12Dax Shepard?

  We're missing the train, I think. We gotta get on the 1111.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  I got dropped from 1111.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Whoops.

• 39:18Dax Shepard?

  And then Emily?

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Luther.

• 39:20Dax Shepard?

  Luther. She was singing it with you, right?

• 39:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. She was a student at the time at Berklee. She sang the song with me. She's from Rhode Island. I haven't thought about that in a long time.

• 39:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And so you get signed based on having come on the show and sang with Emily?

• 39:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, as like a duet. I was like, okay, cool. But this is the part of my life where I was still lying to myself, like I didn't want to be an artist. I was like, I'll just be the producer and she'll be the artist. So then in 2012, I went to Malibu and made a not so great sounding album that I don't think anyone will hear. And she would sing it and sounded good. But I remember the producer was like, why don't you stay an extra week and work on the tracks with me? And I was like, oh, my God. I was salivating because it was this beautiful, and Ramirez Canyon, and it was wonderful. It made me fall in love with California.

• 40:09Dax Shepard?

  You had all the toys at your disposal.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. I've never been in such a nice studio. It overlooked the ocean. Went to Nobu Malibu.

• 40:16Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  To Bowie sushi. Is that still a thing anymore?

• 40:20Dax Shepard?

  I don't know about Bowie sushi, but yeah, Nobu Malibu.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  That's still a thing.

• 40:23Dax Shepard?

  That's the first hits free kind of drug.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Absolutely. My mind was blown. So that didn't end up happening. I went back to college and ended up graduating.

• 40:33Dax Shepard?

  Were you crestfallen with the result of that?

• 40:35Speaker 02

  I was not devastated because I was so excited to experience junior year of college.

• 40:41Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  And I was kind of like a cocky little shit. I was like, I'm on TV.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  I was feeling myself a little bit.

• 40:48Dax Shepard?

  Did it convert to anything on campus where like, girls more interested in?

• 40:51Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 40:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, sure, it works.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  It normally does work.

• 40:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's pretty effective.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Every classic, you know, male singer, everything ever. Everyone was like, wow, Charlie has 100,000 YouTube subscribers. I kind of had, for a brief amount of time, a very inflated ego, I would say. Because I didn't have that in high school. I was always odd man out a little bit, the man on the side. And I was stoked. I sold a show, 200 people showed up, like, real fans and all from Massachusetts showed up at this little cafe. And I was like, wow, I just sold out a show. It was a good time.

• 41:24Dax Shepard?

  If you deny yourself that, what's the fucking point? I mean, you should go through all the, you gotta feel it. Post getting booted from 1111, you had a bit of doldrums between the Ellen excitement, the selling out the show, graduating, and then Pitbull. Because that's 2015.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  You know, the thing about going to a music college, a lot of people's cloths with it are that you get your degree and then it's kind of like, now what? I don't really believe you necessarily need a piece of paper to say that you're a musician. You didn't just come to Nashville or here. But I had my piece of paper and I moved back home and I was like, okay, I should just do what I was doing before when I got dropped from the Interscope label. I will just go to every publisher on Broadway in New York City and I will pitch my music. And I waited outside of record labels' doors, even the record label that I'm signed to now, Atlantic Records. I would wait out maybe five hours. I would meet people at this random studio in Brooklyn.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  I would just go anywhere where I could make music and then go back to my parents' house at like midnight, take that boat and I was talking about before.

• 42:32Dax Shepard?

  Have a couple of vodka stolies.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, a couple of whiskey sours and just get back to editing and just hope that someone would cut my song, meaning sing my song. And one day I got an email from an artist in repertoire director on Kwanga Boulevard. And they invited me out to that studio and I just wrote, see you again. It's kind of an anticlimactic end to that story.

• 42:55Dax Shepard?

  Well, no, Pitbull's in there.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  He wasn't physically there.

• 42:57Dax Shepard?

  Right, right.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  That happened like a couple of days after.

• 43:01Dax Shepard?

  Oh, after?

• 43:02Speaker 02

  Now, the funny thing about that song, if I'm remembering, it was called Celebrate.

• 43:06Dax Shepard?

  Yes, it is.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  And I only wrote one line. I wrote, tonight we're making history, because history didn't rhyme with celebrate. I was like, oh, just say like history, now it rhymes with celebrate. That was my contribution to the song.

• 43:21Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay, so maybe, okay.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  Damn, I haven't heard people bring that one up in a long time. I'd go down memory lane.

• 43:27Dax Shepard?

  Not to be confused with celebrate.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:29Dax Shepard?

  It would feel so fine if we took a holiday.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  That's such an amazing song. What if she had said incorporated history and celebrate? History, that was genius, you speak of, level of songwriting there, but I'd say my biggest first contribution to someone's career artistically was for artist named Trey Songz. It was called Slow Motion, and it was made for the club. I had just written See You Again, which is a piano ballad.

• 43:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  And then Slow Motion, I had just gotten out of the studio with DJ Mustard, he was going on his run. I had gotten this snap from him and I put this club record together. My discography is all over the place.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's so cool.

• 44:08Dax Shepard?

  So when you did See You Again, again, your aim at that point was to be a songwriter and a producer. So how do you end up, you had sang a demo, I guess, for that?

• 44:16Speaker 02

  I sung the demo, and what was described to me is that nobody could capture the original feeling of the demo.

• 44:25Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  I believe the person who came closest to it was Chris Brown. I remember hearing that and really liking it. But at the end, I swear, I think it was Vin Diesel's call.

• 44:35Dax Shepard?

  Really?

• 44:35Speaker 02

  That he wanted me on the song. Such a weird story.

• 44:38Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  I think he vouched for me. I don't know if that's a hundred percent.

• 44:41Dax Shepard?

  Is he from New Jersey?

• 44:42Speaker 02

  I don't think he.

• 44:43Dax Shepard?

  He feels like he's from New Jersey.

• 44:45Speaker 02

  I think his manager's from New Jersey. I'm just like going into the corners of my brain of useless information. That's how I ended up on the song. And it was so last minute, we were filming a music video a week before the movie was set to come out. And I wasn't even originally in the video. They had to do a second shoot day because that's the day the movie company was like, oh, he's in it now. He needs to be in the music video.

• 45:09Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so now that you're singing on it, do you quickly readjust your game plan?

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm like, now I'm an artist.

• 45:16Dax Shepard?

  Great. Now that song is enormous, three Grammy nominations, a Golden Globe nomination, and now you're really off to the races. You're signed to Atlantic at this point.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  I'm signed to Atlantic at this point. Everybody wants to write with me. When they say overnight, I felt it overnight. It was actually kind of overwhelming.

• 45:36Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's what I'm so curious about is that's a lot to readjust to.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  And you're young.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was 23. I suddenly had money to go get an apartment on 7950 West Sunset Boulevard, the corner of Sunset and Style.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Oh, and Style.

• 45:51Dax Shepard?

  That feels serendipitous.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  That feels like a song, a lyric.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  I had a apartment with like carpet. It was wonderful. And I would just go to the studio every day. And I found myself at the Golden Globes the next year. It was all the things I would see on Extra, Extra. I was suddenly part of. My mom would fill me in on everything as if I weren't there.

• 46:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, moms like to do that.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:13Dax Shepard?

  They do it for a while and then luckily they tire of it and then they stop entirely.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  Do people even watch TV anymore?

• 46:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 46:22Dax Shepard?

  What's next?

• 46:24Speaker 02

  After that year?

• 46:25Dax Shepard?

  You're starting to collaborate with like a ton of people I'm sure you could have never have imagined even seen at a cafe. And yet now you're working with them.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Who were you like, oh my God?

• 46:34Speaker 02

  I was excited just to get in with everybody, big or small. I remember Mike Will, producer, came, told me he wanted to work with me. I remember Fergie. It was like, told me she wanted to work with me. I remember Shawn Mendes wanted to write a song with me. It's all over the place, but I had to realign my thinking. I had to be an artist now. And the thing that lacked in the very beginning of my career was consistency. I had a song called Marvin Gaye, which is a fine song.

• 46:59Dax Shepard?

  With Meghan Trainor.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  With Meghan Trainor.

• 47:01Dax Shepard?

  That was also big.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  And I had no album. And all of a sudden I had two big songs, See You Again and Marvin Gaye, both working on the other side of the spectrum with no album. So I had to scramble and get every A-list writer to like help me craft this album. And my first album for that reason is kind of inconsistent and all over the place. And then in the ninth hour, I heard this little loop in my

• 47:29Speaker 02

  And it's weird to like to write a song, you have to like not write a song. You have the whole song in your head and you just like reverse engineer it. So I had

• 47:39Speaker 02

  And suddenly just

• 47:42Speaker 02

  We don't talk anymore. I was like, we don't talk anymore. Am I describing it right? It sounded like the song was out already. It was on the radio. But it was playing in my head.

• 47:51Dax Shepard?

  And you're trying to hear the lyrics.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. But I had to go to Japan the next day. So I'm making the song on the airplane and the trains. And I'd say like an hour before we had to turn the album and I turned that song in. How about that? All these other songs that they got, all these other people to write for me. Didn't resonate, but the one that came from here resonated. Yeah.

• 48:12Dax Shepard?

  And how were you at collaborating? That's such a specific.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  It used to be very bad.

• 48:17Dax Shepard?

  What things got in your way?

• 48:19Speaker 02

  Well, again, post Ellen junior year of college, I feel like I know everything. I don't need to collaborate with anybody, just the frontal lobe, not developed, young man mentality.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Literally not. Literally not. Yeah. And I think I know everything. And I remember, you know Cara Di Aguardi? Yeah. She was a judge on American Idol for a while, prolific songwriter. She actually taught at Berkeley. Now we're going back to 2013. And I remember showing her a song and she was like, this melody is great. These lyrics are ass. You need to get together with someone who knows how to write lyrics. I wrote this email like, how dare you? Someone who has so much more success than me still. Yeah. I'm writing this scathing email like, you have no idea. I'm gonna show you.

• 49:03Dax Shepard?

  Well, and around this time, she famously said, his songs are bigger than him in a nutshell. Like he has these enormous songs, but he himself's not big enough for these songs. I'm paraphrasing, but I did read that line. And that's fair, right? You're not, you gotta take some minutes to learn how to become a pop star.

• 49:20Speaker 02

  I feel like people are just starting to get to know me personally now, but I don't think I let them in. Again, I'm a people pleaser. It's coming up again. I really cared about the music first and maybe stemming from the high school stuff. I never thought that people would actually like care about me. It weren't interested in what I had to say unless it had a catchy little bop to it. But now I find that the tables have turned a little bit. People wanna know me. Maybe that's where we are in society. I don't know. Yeah.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so.

• 49:47Dax Shepard?

  I'm gonna disappoint you now and I'm gonna go to my notes.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  That's fine.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Good for you.

• 49:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fuck, we missed the whole part about Perez Hilton and winning Can You Sing? That's interesting.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Perez Hilton.

• 49:58Dax Shepard?

  Perez Hilton.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  No, I mean, that's kind of an anticlimactic thing. That's what got the attention. Can you believe that? A hundred thousand views and that's what went viral at the time.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Wait, it was a video?

• 50:08Speaker 02

  It was a video that got a hundred thousand views and that's what went viral.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Oh, right. That counted as viral.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  It counted as viral back then.

• 50:15Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Now it's like you're a failure if you got a hundred thousand. A hundred thousand people is still a lot of people.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Crazy.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  It's so true.

• 50:24Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so attention happens. I'm curious, now we're to the part where we earmark. Cause now you're having to grow into like pop stardom. Cause attention's enormous. It's still, I was looking up stuff on Spotify and this is like.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  It's streaming very well.

• 50:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh, billions, astronomical amount of streams from that song.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  Song reached a lot of people.

• 50:45Dax Shepard?

  And you put out voice notes and then you go on tour and I already know if we fast forward ahead, you said at one point, I don't like anything I put out in 2019 because I was trying to be kind of a cool guy.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:00Dax Shepard?

  And if I can project, it's like things that were already impossible are happening. So you really start opening up your mind to the notion that maybe anything's possible. It's very easy to go off the rails because already things are happening that were way outside of what you were expecting. So why can't I be Justin Timberlake?

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:19Dax Shepard?

  I mean, thus far, yeah, I've got the songs, so.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're involved in cool things.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  I don't even know if I was trying to be another artist. I think it was the crew of people I was hanging around, like I am impervious to anything bad. Everything I touch is great and therefore that extends musically as well. But that kind of faded away in 2019. Maybe my frontal lobe started developing. It wasn't fully there yet. But I'm always exploring and that was the wrong thing to explore. I should have explored something else musically rather than tried to talk differently in interviews and make up stories.

• 51:55Dax Shepard?

  Yes, and how are you adapting to, I know you're getting attention from the proverbial cheerleaders. So pop stars like you and you're now with them. And you have this panic of like, do they know I'm not really supposed to be here? Like, how are you security wise in these relationships at that period?

• 52:16Speaker 02

  I just think that's why those relationships never worked out because deep down, the New Jersey boy getting advice from his mom and dad and wanting to make Christmas CDs was still at the nucleus of it all.

• 52:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the kid from high school.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  It was affecting the epidermis, but it wasn't reaching down past the dermis. So I was showing up to every restaurant like Craig's, which is a very good restaurant, by the way. It is a good restaurant. Monica loves it. Going back to the relationship stuff, they never came into fruition because I couldn't get past a certain point. I think maybe I wasn't honest with a lot of people. I wasn't honest with myself.

• 52:53Dax Shepard?

  I think of Camila Cabello.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  She's so talented.

• 52:56Dax Shepard?

  She's so wonderful, but as I'm talking to her, I'm realizing like, oh yeah, she's also a kid from Miami. And this persona is the most confident thing in the world. We all look at that and think like, oh, well, they've been popular their whole life and they not. Sean's wasn't.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  I toured with Sean when he just got started, although he did project into superstardom from a early age.

• 53:17Dax Shepard?

  He made the transition.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:19Dax Shepard?

  It's not like what you trained for in high school, perhaps.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  No, what we experienced is like 0.1%. It's not normal to get off stage and then just be alone. It's not normal to like be looking left and right and wondering who's going to be running at you. It's not a normal feeling, but the young immature part of me back then was kind of feeding into that because I just totally didn't believe that anyone was going to listen to my music as an artist just based on the music alone. I swear I'm not fishing for compliments in this green room. I just truly didn't believe that people were just gonna buy my music because they liked it. There needed to be some sort of catch. I better say this stupid thing in this interview because that's what's going to make people, you know, holler and, oh, he put out a song, I guess I'll listen to it. Like that's. That's how my brain used to think.

• 54:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, how do you know what the fuck? You know, how would you know? At the height of all this massive success, what was happening emotionally? Very, very depressed. Doesn't matter how much success I had. It's almost like the more success that I had, the sadder I got. Were you feeling fraudulent? Yeah, I was. I stopped feeling fraudulent two years ago. It takes a minute. I would be at these Grammys, these Golden Globes, and I would be raising my voice and, you know, putting the game show voice on and then going back home alone and just being by myself and then being real with myself and just being so physically exhausted from lying. And what did you use to soothe? The occasional Xanax, which I had to completely get rid of and the- Attention of girls? Yeah, I'm sure.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  That's a nice salve. That wasn't making me happy either. Right. More fraudulence. More fraudulence. And these were amazing girls too, who I had an amazing time with and I just was lying to myself. Cause I knew the person for me who was always there and seeing all of my antics play out in the world is my wife now. She's stuck by me and was there the entire time. Cause she's a family friend? She grew up one town over from me. My history is like a country song. It's like a small town, small town. Imagine her turning on the TV or going on Snapchat and seeing me participate in all this tomfoolery. And she still saw through it and saw the real me. I keep pointing here like it's like in my gut, but I guess it is in my gut.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  But one day I saw her with somebody and I knew they were serious and I was like, oh my God, I'm officially going to lose her because of all my antics. Yes. Me being reckless. And I found myself because of Brooke, my wife. That's so sweet. Yeah, I was gonna ask. So how do you claw your way out of this bizarre gilded cage you've put yourself in, in this fancy apartment? It just happened one day. It's the worst answer ever. I think on my 30th birthday, I started to catch a glimpse of everyone at Delilah right now. I met last month. Right. There's four family members here. What's going on?

• 56:11Dax Shepard?

  Yes, the birthday party.

• 56:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a bunch of Irish exits. Chicken fingers are good, but there's no warmth.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:18Dax Shepard?

  At the birthday party. You know, it's interesting. I went to a birthday party of someone I will not mention, but I did look around and I was like, yeah, man, this is a stunning guest list. I even remember when we were invited, Chris, and I was like, it's kind of weird to be at this person's birthday party. We don't know them that well, but we're gonna go. It's like also a professional relationship. And then when I went, it was just like, yeah, everyone was a star. And I thought, not one of these people is a friend. No one has time in this room to be friends' friends.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  But those parties are fun. I'm not gonna lie and say that I've never had fun.

• 56:49Dax Shepard?

  But I was depressed for the person's birthday.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And at 30 years old, it was at the Peppermint Club, not Delilah, but been there too. I lived in Truesdale.

• 56:59Dax Shepard?

  You did it all.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  Did it all.

• 57:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  And I look around and like, no one cares about me here. And the person who does care about me won't speak to me right now because she's finally had enough. Then was a year of, I'm not going near any of that. I can't do it. Everyone's amazing. I've met some amazing people, but this no longer works for me. If I want to graduate to this next important level in my life, and I think my music was suffering too.

• 57:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  It didn't sound as good.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Well, nothing was coming from really truth.

• 57:29Dax Shepard?

  You would have had to figure out how to write a song that relayed fraudulence.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:33Dax Shepard?

  Which is not what I'm sure you thought was gonna hit the top 40.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  It never works. Every song that's ever resonated with millions and millions of people has come from here. And I wasn't fake, but everything around me was fake. And you are a product of your environment. So of course I wasn't making great songs.

• 57:52Dax Shepard?

  So how did you begin wooing her back to your side?

• 57:57Speaker 02

  When I said that I was gonna show up to her apartment in New York, I actually got on that JetBlue, second JetBlue mention today.

• 58:05Dax Shepard?

  Love JetBlue.

• 58:06Speaker 02

  Love JetBlue. I said I was going to New York. You know how people around here were like, oh yeah, let's get together next week? I could be down for that. I don't judge people for still saying that, but I took that out of my vocabulary. I made sure that I was punctual. And if I said I was gonna do something, I was really gonna do it. And I showed up with flowers and we went on a date. We had never been on a date before. We've known each other for our entire life. We went to this restaurant, Lilia in Brooklyn.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  That's supposed to be so good.

• 58:30Speaker 02

  So good. Consistently wonderful. I mean, all the food in Brooklyn is so good. Shout out Mark Lou Colly.

• 58:36Dax Shepard?

  I have to say quickly, y'all's generation, like, no one in my age group growing up knew about a restaurant.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 58:43Dax Shepard?

  I'm also from like a blue collar thing, but I do think generationally, well, there's been articles about the avocado toast generation.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Food hit a new level. It's like a scene or it's art.

• 58:55Dax Shepard?

  Well, the healthy thing is your generation seems to recognize that joy comes from experiences and not possessions.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:03Dax Shepard?

  For the older people are like, they're so reckless with their money, but it's like, great, because you've got a snow blower you bought.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 59:09Dax Shepard?

  So I do think it's healthy.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:11Dax Shepard?

  But it's so foreign to me. Like, no one

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:13Dax Shepard?

  my age knows 12 great restaurants, you know? But I do think your average is your baseline interest in a great restaurant has just really gone up.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  Well, that's very nice. Keeps a compliment on your generation.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you for the compliment.

• 59:27Dax Shepard?

  You'll do a lot of great shit. You drink less, you save money better.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  Some people do.

• 59:30Dax Shepard?

  Well, not you.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  I'm an exception.

• 59:32Dax Shepard?

  You're a black mark on your generation.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Okay, you took her to the restaurant.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Took her to the restaurant and then I was just consistent. And then a week later, she said she was having a birthday party for her brother. And I'm here, living in Beverly Hills. I'm like, I'll take a night flight. She was like, no, you won't. I'm like, yeah, I will. And I did. Just to prove to myself that I could actually commit. It took like a year.

• 59:56Dax Shepard?

  Was it hard to resist wowing her? Like, if I was in your situation, I'm trying to win over my hometown girl. I would have been really tempted to like, oh, your birthday? Yeah, I'll be there. And then I would have planned something like way too spectacular.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  We're going to Paris!

• 1:00:08Dax Shepard?

  You know, like, I would have brought in an elephant or some shit.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  The last thing she wanted.

• 1:00:12Dax Shepard?

  To go like, let me show you what life I can provide us.

• 1:00:14Speaker 02

  That's what I did with all the other relationships. And that's why they didn't work out, because that's not who I am. Where I thrive is showing that I'm a normal person. And that's how she always knew me. I was presenting this extravagant, larger-than-life, I'm going to Paris in five hours. Get on this plane with me. And it's just us on the plane. It sounds made up and it really didn't do anything.

• 1:00:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I know someone was telling me a story about their first date with their future husband was flying on the Concorde to Paris as a first date. And I was like, I mean, I don't know. Where do you go from there? How can you possibly evaluate? I could fucking hang with anybody on a Concorde flight to Paris. I mean, I can't evaluate whether they're-

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Tight in that.

• 1:00:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but boy, you're moving.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  That's what they would say about The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. No wonder those can't work. All their dates are that.

• 1:01:03Dax Shepard?

  Heightened, yeah.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Too heightened. That's not normal life.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  That's kind of why I like to work in LA. I'll always love LA. LA changed my life. But that's why my wife and I live in Santa Barbara now because we wake up, we go for walks.

• 1:01:15Dax Shepard?

  But you're not seeing billboards of all your peers doing all the things.

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  Streetlights.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just normalcy. That's nice.

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  It's quite nice. And then if we need to go to X, Y, and Z, we just drive the sometimes three hours to get here.

• 1:01:28Dax Shepard?

  And sometimes 80 minutes.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  Sometimes 80 minutes.

• 1:01:31Dax Shepard?

  It can be like, oh, this isn't bad at all. Okay, so then 2021, you co-write and produce Stay with Bieber. How does that come about?

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  Originally, originally, it started out with Kid Leroy and my friend Blake Slackin and Omar Fedi, two very talented songwriters. And the song kind of sat for a year because classic thing, no one believed it was a hit. And then Leroy had Bieber do a verse on it and it lit the whole song up.

• 1:02:00Dax Shepard?

  Tell me about Bieber as someone who knows music. I am just on the outside and I don't technically know what's happening, but I know something very magical is happening.

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's one of my favorite artists.

• 1:02:10Dax Shepard?

  He's incredible.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  I can't tell if he gets annoyed when I say that my favorite Christmas album is his Christmas album, but Journals, Purpose, because it's such an adjacent timeline to me experiencing everything for the first time. The Purpose album, getting my first car in Thousand Oaks and listening to it. It means so much to me. I just think his voice is so wonderful.

• 1:02:30Dax Shepard?

  He's got a Michael Jackson quality.

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, he has a deep appreciation for R&B and always has in his melody writing, in his songwriting, you can always hear it. I think it's one of the best voices in pop.

• 1:02:41Dax Shepard?

  So as a producer, clearly you're in that session where he's working on it.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  I wasn't present when he was recording his vocals. They were sent back to us, but it was a perfect vocal.

• 1:02:51Dax Shepard?

  We're learning this. We just talked to Anderson Paak, who's like my number one.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  So talented.

• 1:02:55Dax Shepard?

  Fucking worship that dude.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's amazing.

• 1:02:57Dax Shepard?

  And to find out how much of his music, like his song with Mac Miller, dang, they didn't meet in person until they made the music video. And they already had a hit that they had written together.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  I didn't know that.

• 1:03:09Dax Shepard?

  That's such a modern day phenomenon. That couldn't have happened in the seventies or eighties.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  No, it couldn't have. I mean, they were mailing DAT tapes to each other, even in the early 2000s.

• 1:03:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  I didn't know that. Anderson is so, he came into my studio at Conway one time accidentally and he was so funny.

• 1:03:25Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  It's like he walked into the wrong room. He just lights up.

• 1:03:28Dax Shepard?

  What a light bulb. I was gonna say, you can't describe him and not use the adjective light.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  One of my favorite songs I ever wrote was Stay. I love the little I love that kick snare combination. It's fun.

• 1:03:39Dax Shepard?

  It's got a grit to it, too.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  It has distortion to it. Distortion, a heavily underused thing while producing music.

• 1:03:46Dax Shepard?

  And pop.

• 1:03:46Speaker 02

  To make the drums hit, you layer in like a really crunchy kick snare combination. So it sounds like

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  That sounds messy, but thin it out and then turn the volume down and place it on top of the super clean drums. You have the imperfect drums and the perfect drums.

• 1:04:06Dax Shepard?

  You have the garnish.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:04:08Dax Shepard?

  It's a garnish of grit.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  That's why vocals can't be all perfect pitch because I like that. He has the garnish of grit.

• 1:04:14Dax Shepard?

  I just stared at her like I wanted some validation for my wordsmithery. I know you're withholding. That's why we've been friends for so long. You know when to withhold.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  I'm here to be honest. I don't think garnish of grit is necessarily the best thing you've come up with.

• 1:04:26Dax Shepard?

  Mixed messages. Garnish and grit are like diametrically opposed, kind of.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  We'll circle back and think about it for a little bit.

• 1:04:32Speaker 02

  You'll think about if you're gonna keep that in or not.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:04:35Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I'd be remiss if we didn't talk about then the most recent chapter, which is interesting, which is, and of course you found your way there, but 2021, you start going hard on TikTok.

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  I sure do.

• 1:04:44Dax Shepard?

  Was that a reclaiming of yourself?

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  It was. It was to show people that I don't make music just because it's my job. Affects me so viscerally. And one small change made into a song like if you re-record one little vocal, it could change the trajectory of the entire song. And I always thought that my job here was to teach that because my mom was a teacher. And maybe that's where I get it from. I was thinking to myself one day, why don't I show everybody what it's like to put some layers in songs? You start with the kick drum, start there, that's the foundation of your house. And then you add the bass, which is like the other, again, I still don't know how to build a house, but like you put the wood on top of the foundation.

• 1:05:24Dax Shepard?

  The framing.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  There you go. Thank you.

• 1:05:25Dax Shepard?

  Yep.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  The framing and then the windows and the nice paint, the nice lacquered paint is like sprinkles on top. That's the reverb that you put at the very end of the record. How do I teach that in a very entertaining way? And that video went viral, got a lot more than a hundred thousand views.

• 1:05:41Dax Shepard?

  Was it light switch?

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, kind of a silly song, but I always loved it when my teachers made the lesson entertaining. And I thought that was, in my opinion, an entertaining lesson where people kind of understood where their favorite songs come from.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  That's so cool.

• 1:05:54Dax Shepard?

  You were the young kid in your room and to find out, it's as simple as the order. Would I start out with reverb? No, no, let's keep that for that is the glaze. Even the order of things could be so helpful and breakthroughy for a kid who's trying to figure all this shit out in their bedroom. I think that's a very cool thing.

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  I just want people to know that they can come to Los Angeles and be inspired. But if you really wanted to make a record, all you have to do is pull up your phone and open GarageBand. If you have a good idea, you don't have to book studio time. It's almost better if it sounds a little crummy because people will relate to it more because they have the same software on their phone.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  Not to bring up, we don't talk anymore again, but that guitar was recorded on an iPhone. We recorded it in a studio and it sounded not great because it was too perfect, too clean. Everything needs to have a little distortion.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:42Dax Shepard?

  What's the Japanese word, Monica?

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Oh, not.

• 1:06:45Dax Shepard?

  Wabi-sabi.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  Not wabi-sabi. The other one, we always think it's wabi-sabi and it's not.

• 1:06:50Dax Shepard?

  Imperfection, the art and beauty of imperfection.

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, because we are imperfect beings and we can maybe relate to art that is thus imperfect. Not to sound like a philosopher.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  Well, you want it to sound human.

• 1:07:03Dax Shepard?

  Why AI doesn't work on a lot of levels. It's too clean.

• 1:07:08Dax Shepard?

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:07:15Dax Shepard?

  We get support from Scottsdale, Arizona. Monica, with summer ending or heading into fall, I've been researching a nice, quick getaway location and I keep coming back to Scottsdale, Arizona.

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  Ooh, Scottsdale's good. What's drawing you to it?

• 1:07:28Dax Shepard?

  Well, first of all, I have this wonderful memory of going there as a kid when I would go see my stepdad when he was working out there. The weather is perfect in fall, warm, sunny, no humidity, and you can really do whatever you want with your time there. I want to do a sunrise hike through the Sonoran Desert, be surrounded by Sowaro, and then at the same afternoon, just completely melt into a spa treatment at one of their luxury resorts.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Oh, that sounds amazing. I want to do that. Also, I was there visiting my brother once and I loved Old Town Scottsdale. It's so walkable. They have galleries and cute little restaurants and shops. The food scene alone is worth the trip.

• 1:08:07Dax Shepard?

  What I keep reading is that it's luxurious, but not stuffy. There's no pressure to do it a certain way. You can explore public art, check out the architecture, go off-roading in the desert, or just sit and watch a sunset.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  It really is the perfect fall reset.

• 1:08:21Dax Shepard?

  Learn more about all Scottsdale has to offer at unwindinscottsdale.com. This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I have my dream job. I get to talk to folks I admire like crazy and ask them virtually any question that I want to. I can't imagine a better way to spend my time. But even dream jobs have some not so dreamy parts, the stuff that gets in the way of the actual work. Now, that's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work. They actually do it, start to finish. Cases closed, requests handled, no extra work for you.

• 1:09:02Dax Shepard?

  So you and your team can focus on what matters most, which for me is, are they obsessed with male bodies on the same level as I am?

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  They never are.

• 1:09:10Dax Shepard?

  To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.

• 1:09:16Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:09:59Dax Shepard?

  From your first class to career coaching and beyond, Walden is your partner the whole way. Take the first step and learn at a pace that works for you. Visit waldenu.edu. Walden University. Set a course for change. Certified to operate by CHEV. 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 Gleepran. Foundo is a once-daily prescription GLP-1 medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off.

• 1:10:42Speaker 04

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• 1:11:24Speaker 04

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

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  This is the time for all artists, filmmakers, music makers, anything that involves art. This is the most important time to be as human as possible because pretty soon, if you want an answer to something, I don't know if I'm right, but I feel like you're just gonna be able to ask yourself the question. You're just gonna know it right away.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  I know, I know.

• 1:12:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, like a Neuralink setup.

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, but there's still gonna be antiquated ways of making stuff, but it's gonna be appreciated. People will appreciate human-made. It's gonna be of high value because I think for a while there it wasn't.

• 1:12:17Dax Shepard?

  Well, it's very interesting at first. My own arc with it, it's like when I'm first seeing these crazy videos, they're awesome. I'm like, oh my God, there's a raccoon driving a race car. It very quickly became just like white noise.

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:12:30Dax Shepard?

  I'm like, it's not very interesting, even though it was exciting at first.

• 1:12:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is our opportunity to be as human as possible.

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  The whole point of art and conversation is the human exchange.

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  So when you know it's not, you know it's all manufactured. I don't think us as humans can connect to it in the same way at all. Even if it's word for word the same, we know it's not genuine.

• 1:12:54Speaker 02

  It's about fumbling over words and maybe we speak at the same time, oh oops, so we'll edit that out. This album that I just finished, that's gonna be my fourth album, is a direct response to all the perfect music that you hear out nowadays. My sister was telling me, she has two young kids, a boy and a girl, and they go to the cutest school ever and they were having a bubble party. They put a playlist together, an AI playlist of bubble music.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  I'm like, just play Popcorn by New Edition, play Britney Spears, put some effort into like making a playlist. I mean, sure, fine, but it's lacking heart. We need to put the heart back into art. That's why I made this album.

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  Can't spell heart without art.

• 1:13:40Dax Shepard?

  Really good.

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  That's the worst headline. Out of all of this.

• 1:13:44Dax Shepard?

  We're almost to whatever's clever. In 2024, I'm servicing my friend Monica right now.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  I know it's coming.

• 1:13:50Dax Shepard?

  Well, then you go ahead.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  Taylor?

• 1:13:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  Okay, so she wrote the lyric, right?

• 1:13:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. The lyric on The Tortured Poet's Department was, we declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  That was very nice.

• 1:14:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so tell me how you take that, because my brain is so good at turning everything terrible. Like, I could turn that terrible. Like, what are you saying? I should have been bigger?

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  And that is a huge compliment.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  I think it's a huge compliment. I did actually think that was AI at first, but then I listened to it. And I listened to it a couple of times. Someone sent it to me right before it was supposed to come out. And I knew it was real because of her diction and the way that she sang it. Musically, it felt human enough for it to pass as human.

• 1:14:34Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  And I thought to myself, what does that mean? Do I need to open up more in my music? I feel like I do need to open up because that's why She's Beloved has 100,000 people coming to every show is because everybody can relate to her very human lyrics. Maybe I need to not worry so much about, oh, I hope this song is a hit. Versus really put focus on, let's be real here and sing about things that I haven't sung about before. I have a song called I Used to Be Cringe, which I don't believe anybody's heard yet. But it's kind of like disarming. It's like a nice acoustic guitar, but with a nice vocal melody and a choir. And the lyric is, I used to be cringe. And it's like, why would you put that in a song? I kind of resisted it for a while, but then I kept hearing the Taylor lyric and thought, I might need to.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  Oh, that's.

• 1:15:21Dax Shepard?

  That's lovely that it was inspiration.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  Personally, I think she meant what I think most people are going to think if they know you very surface and they listen to this, they're going to think that same thing. Like, wait a minute, this is a musical genius. And we've categorized him as this like pop star. And that's not correct. And I think that is what she's saying here.

• 1:15:42Dax Shepard?

  How do you not resist calling her and going, well, clearly you like me. So let's party like, how do we not do something together? That would be my first selfish thought.

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  I just wrote her a thank you note, like a handwritten thank you note, because I really did think it was such a nice thing. Took time to record that vocal. That was very, very nice.

• 1:15:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, whatever's clever. We're already touching on it. So I imagine you're now, as opposed to I'm a hit seeker. I am now going to attempt to self examine and find these things that I actually care about and explore those.

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. And hits might come out from that. They might not. I don't know.

• 1:16:15Dax Shepard?

  We say in a, or in the show up and work business, not the results business. And I think that's a good model for everyone to live by, which is like, you do the thing you do, and you just don't know the results. And that's that.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  I like that.

• 1:16:26Dax Shepard?

  So how does one start this mining process?

• 1:16:29Speaker 02

  I remember my collaborator, Blood Pop, came in and said, we need to make you feel a little uncomfortable to make something beautiful. He said, have you ever written a song about your dad? And I got very defensive. You don't know my dad. Like, why would I ever write a song about my family? What are you getting at? And he was like, your dad might want it one day. I was like, what does that mean? And that was so weird. And then I spent all week thinking about it. And then my dad's mom lives to 94 years old. And she had passed and I have this song suddenly for my dad. And I was like, wow, now I have something to play him. It's called Cry. It features Kenny G. It's awesome.

• 1:17:04Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yes. Playing?

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, playing the solo at about the two minute mark in the song. And lyrically, it's about just telling somebody, you don't have to be an emotional brick wall. You don't always have to be the hero. You can show emotion to me. Not that he doesn't know that, but it's nice to have a reminder, especially a musical reminder. But I wrote that before that incident even happened. So once Blood told me to write that, I was very open minded.

• 1:17:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I said that Blood Pop is very, very involved in this. I'm totally ignorant on Blood Pop. Tell me about Blood Pop.

• 1:17:35Speaker 02

  Works a lot with Gaga. Also is a video game designer, very smart person. He's obviously very talented and has made countless hits and really important bodies of work for a lot of other artists. I'm always trying to musically explore, so I thought it'd be a good idea.

• 1:17:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I would imagine from just this limited interaction. Of the last hour and a half. This is something that I have assigned to Phineas, whether it's real or not. It's like I watched that beautiful doc with he and his sister. And what I saw is a big brother who's so loving and can handle all of her little imperfections and keep picking her up and pushing her forward. And it's so beautiful. It blows my mind and I'm so moved by him. And so, yeah, when I was asking like, what's your collaborations experience at the beginning? It's like, I don't see you as having that skill set at that time. And I also could see that you would really benefit from someone that would be like, no, no, no, we're gonna definitely get more emotional here.

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, sometimes I need to be led into the right direction, which is probably why I'm a better artist than I am at an executive producer for another artist. I would always love to have a hand in another brilliant artist's work, but I don't know if I'm ever going to be the one that.

• 1:18:45Dax Shepard?

  Mines it out of them.

• 1:18:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I feel like I have such a long way to go. And I feel like I'm just starting my career in some way.

• 1:18:52Dax Shepard?

  Also, I don't know that you get that technical aptitude. You don't get the whole fucking pie, right? So it's like, you know, maybe Phineas can't hear the thing and memorize a thing like you in here. That's A flat and this and that. And then he has this other thing. So it's like, we try all the time to be everything. It's a waste of everyone's time. It's fine to have strengths and then, yeah, to collaborate and bring in people that can help with that.

• 1:19:12Speaker 02

  Like a thumbprint, no mind is alike. And I worked with Phineas one time and he brought all these string samples. I didn't even think about including string samples in a song that we could write. There's singers that will suggest a different melody, like Ryan Tedder out of OneRepublic, really talented producer. I'll sing him a melody and he'll suggest something else that most of the time ends up being better because I was so stuck on like one thing, but he suggested one little change. You know, it was really good that is Max Martin. Max Martin, really wonderful producer, just did the Taylor album. I always want suggestions. I will never know everything.

• 1:19:49Dax Shepard?

  Okay, last thing is, you're singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl this year.

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  Sure am. Oh, cool.

• 1:19:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Now, I gotta say, we just interviewed Chris Stapleton. No one has a right to be more confident than Chris Stapleton. And he said for sure the most nerve wracking experience of his professional career was singing the National Anthem.

• 1:20:05Speaker 02

  Don't say that right now. I had no idea.

• 1:20:07Dax Shepard?

  No, that should be comforting if he's feeling fear.

• 1:20:09Speaker 02

  No, no, no, I'm so confident. I have the whole arrangement in my head. Oh, fun.

• 1:20:13Dax Shepard?

  Good, good.

• 1:20:14Speaker 02

  My local newspaper, the Star Ledger, told me that I am the second New Jersey native to sing the National Anthem. The first being, no, Whitney Houston. Oh, wow. Without giving too much away, I just musically know where I'm going with it.

• 1:20:28Dax Shepard?

  And you're excited?

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  I'm excited. I picture an orchestra on the field. I picture a choir on the field. And just a tiny little keyboard that I'm not gonna hide behind, but like erodes, like a really warm road sound. Like a Rhodes from the 1970s. Everything that's non-football related I'm having at the 20-yard line. And I just can't wait. I wanna do it in D major. And I have it all in my head and we can play this back after I do it and see if it was all right. But I think it's gonna be in D major. There's gonna be choirs. There's gonna be an orchestra. And it's gonna end like

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  All the string players are gonna go, "Wum!", and that's how I imagine it.

• 1:21:14Dax Shepard?

  And then the fucking F6 teaser.

• 1:21:16Speaker 02

  Can you imagine? Oh, man. I got goosebumps just thinking of it now because it feels like I already did it. It's a similar thing with writing a song. Again, to write a song, you have to reverse engineer. I feel like I already did the performance and now I'm going to just do it for real and hopefully. I think I'm correct. I think that's what it is.

• 1:21:33Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good. I'm glad.

• 1:21:34Speaker 02

  I'm so excited to watch it.

• 1:21:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. These things as arbitrary or as manufactured as they seem, no, they're like really special, cool things.

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  I always get lost in the music. I opened up for Billy Joel once. I was like, "What's it like on stage? They're playing for a stadium every night." He's like, "I don't know what I'm doing. I get lost in the music." I didn't know what he meant at the time and I now do the same thing. I get lost in the music. Isn't music so amazing?

• 1:21:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:57Speaker 02

  I just love it so much.

• 1:21:58Dax Shepard?

  Now, you're gonna go out on tour in April with whatever's clever.

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:03Dax Shepard?

  And you got a new baby coming, so is that that stressful?

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  It keeps me up at night, if I'm gonna be completely honest. I have to Go on tour right after the baby's born.

• 1:22:14Dax Shepard?

  But they will come.

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  Baby gonna travel?

• 1:22:15Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, they'll come.

• 1:22:16Dax Shepard?

  Yes, cuz I'm gonna tell you something. That feeling you have in the hotel will not be that. You will come off this energy thing and then you will look at your little submarine sandwich that's in this stupid little swaddle.

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 1:22:30Dax Shepard?

  And you'll go, oh, fuck me, this is actually way better than that arena.

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  I always wanna find a perfect balance for baby. I never wanted to be the Charlie show constantly because now there's another version of me and he or she will grow up to be whoever they want to be. And I don't wanna be selfish and have it always be about me.

• 1:22:52Dax Shepard?

  Our little kids, Kristen was doing movies all over and we just all went as a little fucking caravan and there's playgrounds everywhere. It's not until, and that is the time where you need to be on yourself, is like, hey, once they have friends at a school, it's not cool to pull them out and fucking make them miss everything so they can be with you. That's the time, but you are five, six years out from that.

• 1:23:11Speaker 02

  I never even thought about that. I appreciate the advice.

• 1:23:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, let it rip. They love going everywhere. The more you travel with them, the better travels they are. Our kids could sleep on airplanes, they didn't cry.

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  It's good for them. They get exposed to all kinds of things that they wouldn't be able to.

• 1:23:24Dax Shepard?

  There's smells and sounds and different colored people and different accents and different languages.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  That's important, the different colored people, for sure, as early as they can get it.

• 1:23:34Speaker 02

  Wanna get the big headphones for the baby?

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 1:23:38Dax Shepard?

  Well, Charlie, this was delightful.

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  This was downright therapeutic.

• 1:23:41Dax Shepard?

  Oh, this is like super fun.

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  That's what we like to hear.

• 1:23:43Dax Shepard?

  I do gotta add, Whatever's Clever comes out on Lincoln's birthday, ding ding ding, March 27th.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  It's his birthday.

• 1:23:50Dax Shepard?

  Right before flu season ends.

• 1:23:54Speaker 02

  How do I know this? I go to the OBGYN every day.

• 1:23:58Dax Shepard?

  Well, thanks for coming. This is a blast. Everyone check out Whatever's Clever, watch you on the Super Bowl and go see you on tour.

• 1:24:04Speaker 02

  Thank you very much for having me.

• 1:24:06Dax Shepard?

  You're welcome.

• 1:24:08Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:24:17Dax Shepard?

  How was your first walk to work?

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  It was my first walk.

• 1:24:21Dax Shepard?

  I mean, you used to walk to work.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  First two-minute walk.

• 1:24:24Dax Shepard?

  First two-minute commute to work. How about that?

• 1:24:26Speaker 01

  Thank you. And I even got to bring my tea.

• 1:24:30Dax Shepard?

  Why not? And look at this mug. What was the price tag on it?

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  I don't know, but it's, it's, um, it's good for today. It's, it's gloomy out.

• 1:24:39Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:24:39Speaker 01

  So this mug has a rainbow coming out and the sun's popping out of the clouds.

• 1:24:46Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh, peeking out.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  Underneath?

• 1:24:49Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh, careful.

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:24:51Dax Shepard?

  Careful.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  There's a cloud, there's rain, there's a.

• 1:24:54Dax Shepard?

  Don't lose your equilibrium.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:24:57Dax Shepard?

  What if just looking up at that you fell over?

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  I might.

• 1:25:01Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so this is great. I have my first question about your new house, which is, is the gloom the same? It's raining, for folks who don't know, and Los Angeles.

• 1:25:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:25:10Dax Shepard?

  And I open my French door and I can smell the rain and I meditate and I journal. And I'm just looking out at all the wet trees and it's so beautiful.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:20Dax Shepard?

  And you can now too. Do you, did it change anything?

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  I can, but my alarm is on. I've, I've set my alarm off a few times by accidentally opening the window. Well, purposely opening the window, but forgetting that I have set the alarm.

• 1:25:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  It's really loud. So anyone who wants to rob me, it's not gonna work. It's not gonna work out for you.

• 1:25:43Dax Shepard?

  Do you have it on an app, though?

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  My alarm?

• 1:25:45Dax Shepard?

  You should. Instead of you having to find a keypad and all that.

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:25:49Dax Shepard?

  To open your fucking window.

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:51Dax Shepard?

  You just pull your phone out of your pocket.

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  Okay, well.

• 1:25:54Dax Shepard?

  Tap, tap, tap.

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  Another hurdle is.

• 1:25:57Speaker 01

  We know and you don't like this about me. This is one of the things you hate the most about me.

• 1:26:02Dax Shepard?

  One of a million things I hate about you.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. 10 Things I Hate About You. Great movie. Great movie. Um, is I lose track of my phone a lot.

• 1:26:12Dax Shepard?

  Great point, great point.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  Okay, a lot.

• 1:26:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  And that's in my, in my small apartment, I would lose track. Now, the house has proven to be trickier with where I leave my phone.

• 1:26:26Speaker 05

  You should get an iPad you keep by your bedside table that you can turn it off for them.

• 1:26:30Dax Shepard?

  She'll figure out how to lose that too. Cause I, this is the kind of solution I'm always suggesting, Rob, is like you have designated places you set the thing down.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  I know, but.

• 1:26:39Dax Shepard?

  But you, you're not gonna do that. And that's why, and I've, I've accepted that.

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  I know. It's been years. You've had to accept it.

• 1:26:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:45Speaker 01

  I remember one of our first fights about that.

• 1:26:48Dax Shepard?

  You do?

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh, how did it go?

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Um, we were in your old house in the living room.

• 1:26:54Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  And I couldn't find my phone.

• 1:26:56Dax Shepard?

  Misplace your phone.

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you suggested, uh, having spot, having designated, your, your, your motto, designated spots.

• 1:27:07Dax Shepard?

  That'll be on my tombstone. Use a designated spots.

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  And, um, Kristen was there too.

• 1:27:12Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:12Speaker 01

  And she was like, well, not everyone, you know, she was really trying to bridge the gap.

• 1:27:17Dax Shepard?

  Defend you probably.

• 1:27:18Speaker 01

  Defend me. Yeah.

• 1:27:19Dax Shepard?

  Cause she too needs to use it designated. It was really two against one.

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, but she, I think she uses designated spots more than me because she's been living with you for a long time.

• 1:27:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Uh, there's, no one has adopted designated spots except for me.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. One time we found her phone. It was so wild in like a box. We were returning something and it was in the box. Thank God we found it.

• 1:27:43Dax Shepard?

  That almost got returned?

• 1:27:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:45Dax Shepard?

  Oh my lord. Yeah, that's not a designated spot.

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  That's an interesting designated spot.

• 1:27:50Dax Shepard?

  Antithetical to the point of a designated spot. If the designated spot's about to travel via the US Postal Service.

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:57Dax Shepard?

  I want you to have a tether actually, like a 40 foot coily, just the thin thing like that they put little kids on, uh, uh, leashes on at the mall.

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:07Dax Shepard?

  But even thinner.

• 1:28:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:28:08Dax Shepard?

  And that's anchored to your nightstand and you can travel around your house and use your phone and you're just dragging this everywhere.

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  That sounds horrible.

• 1:28:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's another great solution.

• 1:28:17Speaker 01

  Just so you know, my house is way too cute for, for that, for a little string all over the place.

• 1:28:23Dax Shepard?

  Right, but maybe. After two weeks of it and hating the eyesore of it, you'd be like, fuck, I'll do designated spots.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe. You're right.

• 1:28:32Dax Shepard?

  This episode was brought to you by Designated Spots.

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  If I get a dog, then I'll train that dog to do it.

• 1:28:39Dax Shepard?

  Use a phone? No, you get a second phone that goes around the dog's collar.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:28:44Dax Shepard?

  Or maybe get an Apple Watch that goes on its collar and the only app on it is Find My Phone. And you're like.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  No, my dog is gonna be like really smart. My dog's name is Ross.

• 1:28:53Dax Shepard?

  Ross?

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz Monica and Ross. I already named him.

• 1:28:56Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:28:57Speaker 01

  And I'm just gonna have him smell the phone a lot, so he just knows where the phone is at all times.

• 1:29:02Dax Shepard?

  You'll reward him with treats every time he gets the phone. But he's gonna bite the screen.

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  But he has a soft touch.

• 1:29:09Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  My dog does. Anywho, um, yes, I've been there for about a week, less than a week.

• 1:29:18Dax Shepard?

  Five days.

• 1:29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, five days.

• 1:29:20Dax Shepard?

  Friday to Wednesday.

• 1:29:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. At first, Anna came over. She slept over the first two nights.

• 1:29:25Dax Shepard?

  And how did that go?

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  That was fun. That was a sleepover. Yeah, that was really fun.

• 1:29:30Dax Shepard?

  Did you guys drink wine?

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:29:31Dax Shepard?

  Have you convinced her to get into hairplay yet?

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  No, she's not a hairplay person.

• 1:29:36Dax Shepard?

  So you had the two sleepovers and then she left. And then your first night on your own, were you scared or do you feel great?

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  I was a little scared, but not nearly as scared as I thought. And, um.

• 1:29:47Dax Shepard?

  What's it like to wake up and go downstairs and have like breakfast or make your tea?

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  It's so weird. So far, it just feels like I'm in somebody else's like really nice house. Like I, it has not sunk in that all these things are mine, that I can poop on the floor if I want.

• 1:30:08Dax Shepard?

  Sure, there's no law against it.

• 1:30:09Speaker 01

  And I told you this, the first night I was by myself, I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night. And, you know, I had to walk, I had to walk far to get there. Um, and I was like, oh, wow. I feel pretty like confident and I know my value for the most part in the world-ish. I don't have a lot of imposter syndrome is what I'm trying to say. I have like, in my general life. Um, and when I was peeing, I was peeing in the night, I was just like. Oh my, how? I do not deserve this. I was very much like the others, something bad's gonna happen.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, why? I'm not, this isn't for me. Like, I don't deserve it. So, and that was weird. I never feel like that. Like, I buy shit all the time, nice stuff, I know. But I think the apartment, weirdly, now I can see in retrospect, all these apartments that are very reasonably priced.

• 1:31:21Dax Shepard?

  Modest. You've been living in a modest apartment.

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. The irony, though, in the stupidity of all this, is I've been paying a mortgage. I just haven't been seeing it or paying attention to it.

• 1:31:33Dax Shepard?

  That's true.

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  And I've been paying rent.

• 1:31:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  So I've actually been spending more money than I am right now.

• 1:31:39Dax Shepard?

  Yep, that's true.

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  It's just weird to be in there and, and feel, yeah, it's just a, it's just a weird mental game.

• 1:31:49Dax Shepard?

  It's hard to.

• 1:31:50Speaker 01

  It's hard to wrap your head around.

• 1:31:51Dax Shepard?

  And then, yeah, you're like, well, someone's gonna come take it, clearly.

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, the amount of times I've thought about the LA fires since I moved it, I think about it every 14 minutes. I'm just like, oh my god.

• 1:32:03Dax Shepard?

  It's gonna burn down.

• 1:32:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, like this, I spent six years, this could burn down any minute.

• 1:32:09Dax Shepard?

  In six minutes. I think it's worth sharing because it's like, it's all so much trickier than you're guessing it's gonna be.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:17Dax Shepard?

  Which is not to say it's not fantastic.

• 1:32:19Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:32:20Dax Shepard?

  It's so fucking lucky, but also.

• 1:32:21Speaker 01

  So lucky.

• 1:32:22Dax Shepard?

  There's just a lot of mental.

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  They're tied together. The feelings of gratitude and the feelings of.

• 1:32:28Dax Shepard?

  Of worthiness.

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, are like, are all the same. Like, you don't really feel like you're unworthy of bad things. You know, it's like, it's the good things that you're like, oh my god, I don't, I don't deserve this. But also, because I was talking to Anthony last night, and I was like, what's funny, though, because I was like, oh my god, how much like, do I talk about the house? Is that gonna sound so braggy? But what is also funny and something I don't think about a lot is not, of course, not everyone, but a lot of the people listening have houses.

• 1:33:01Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  It's a city like LA, New York, San Francisco. It's very specific cities where you.

• 1:33:11Speaker 01

  Can't afford a house at all.

• 1:33:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. Homeownership is, is, is limited to a very few.

• 1:33:18Speaker 01

  Here.

• 1:33:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, percentage wise of the population. Yeah, in Michigan, most of my friends own house.

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think most people listening who aren't in those parts of the country, probably a lot of them have houses and this is like that. It's just new to me.

• 1:33:33Dax Shepard?

  I had it with the first house I got.

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:36Dax Shepard?

  I remember Bree and I sleeping on the floor in front of the fireplace because the heat wasn't on yet.

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:41Dax Shepard?

  And just was going like, well, this is what you get when you're 50.

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's so interesting. I don't have that age thing. I think maybe because all my friends growing up, they all have houses.

• 1:33:52Dax Shepard?

  Well, it's specifically a nice house. The majority of the houses in Milford in 1980, they were lower income, small little houses. So for people who got that like 3,000 square foot house on an acre, that was always a dude in his peak earning 55, he had been at the company for 35 years, you know?

• 1:34:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, so my parents have a, oh, I should say I'm on meth right now.

• 1:34:20Dax Shepard?

  Okay, on D?

• 1:34:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm on D.

• 1:34:23Dax Shepard?

  Nice. It's a good ride.

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  I have a cold and it's fine because I'm on meth. Remember when you took a drug test and it showed up a little bit of meth? Because you had, you were on D?

• 1:34:33Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Yeah. And right after all the chaos.

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:38Dax Shepard?

  And I'm like, I am not on meth. You guys, I just ate. You'll never see me eat on meth. Also, I just, I slept last night.

• 1:34:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:50Dax Shepard?

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. We get support from Skims. So Monica just informed me that she's a girl's girl and I nodded like I knew exactly what that meant.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the girls who get it, they get it.

• 1:35:07Dax Shepard?

  Okay, but for those of us who are clearly not girls, walk me through it.

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  Well, you know how much I love my Skims fleece joggers because the plush fleece is so soft, it's cozy, it's really comfortable without feeling too heavy. Well, I went to friend them and she would not stop talking about how comfy they were. She almost didn't give them back to me, which was upsetting, but I'm a girl's girl, so I let her have it.

• 1:35:28Dax Shepard?

  Great, great, great.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  So the sleep sets are awesome because they are very soft and comfortable, but they're cute. If I'm in my sleep set, I feel fine about going down the street to pick up my food. I'm still looking cute, but I'm comfy and I'm cozy.

• 1:35:43Dax Shepard?

  Roger.

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  A really fun thing to do is if you're going on vacation with your girlfriends, to get matching Skims pajamas. I've done this with Callie and it is so fun. First of all, the pics are so cute, but also it's just fun and friendship.

• 1:35:56Dax Shepard?

  So a girl's girl is looking out for your friends with better loungewear. I get it. Am I one of your girls now?

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  You are. You and the other girlies can 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 our show in the dropdown menu that follows.

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  So my parents, they have this shocking, this big superstition.

• 1:36:26Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  That when you move in, and they've been talking about this for years, like when you move in, there's a ritual that has, that I have to do where I pour milk in a pot and you boil it until it boils over.

• 1:36:43Dax Shepard?

  It's gotta come out the sides?

• 1:36:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:45Dax Shepard?

  I mean, how did these things start?

• 1:36:46Speaker 01

  It's like your cup runneth over. It's like a way to like start, like you're bringing in like abundance and, and I, and you know, I was like, oh boy, okay.

• 1:36:56Dax Shepard?

  But you have a nice new range. You don't want to get hot milk all over everything.

• 1:37:00Speaker 01

  I was like, oh, I'm gonna like, you know, have this like boiled milk everywhere. Yeah.

• 1:37:06Dax Shepard?

  Cheese in your-

• 1:37:06Speaker 01

  But it was, it's so important to them. Like they've brought it up so many times. And then, you know, on Friday, they're like, don't forget the milk.

• 1:37:13Dax Shepard?

  When do you have to do it? Night one, I imagine?

• 1:37:15Speaker 01

  So that, I got nervous about that. I was getting in my head because like I don't have a small enough pot right now to do it.

• 1:37:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:23Speaker 01

  Um, and, and so I was like, can I do it tomorrow? My mom was like, uh, like I could tell she kinda didn't like that, but what could she do?

• 1:37:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:33Speaker 01

  Um, so I did do it.

• 1:37:35Dax Shepard?

  Good. I mean, my, my point to her would have been like, if you're gonna do it, do it right. Do it right now.

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  No, no, I didn't do it that day.

• 1:37:41Dax Shepard?

  Oh, Jesus, Margaret. Now I'm superstitious.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  No, no, I didn't have, I didn't have the pot.

• 1:37:49Dax Shepard?

  You should have borrowed your neighbors.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  I asked, no, I know, but it needed to be really small because like then I'm pouring so much.

• 1:37:56Dax Shepard?

  Well, you want to run it over, flood your kitchen with hot milk. That's the goal.

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  I didn't want to put like two gallons of milk in there and waste it.

• 1:38:04Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  So I ordered from a, from a big conglomerate. Something, something I'm trying to do less. I did do because 24 hour shipping.

• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  I ordered this very small pot.

• 1:38:19Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  And, um.

• 1:38:21Dax Shepard?

  Feels like a little bit of a workaround, but continue.

• 1:38:24Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:38:25Dax Shepard?

  Well, cause if your cup runneth over, the whole point is abundance.

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:29Dax Shepard?

  And you're going to heat up a thimble with a drop of milk in it.

• 1:38:32Speaker 01

  No, it's, it's the, it's the, it's the spilling over. It's not the amount of milk. It's just that it boils to the top and spills over. Okay?

• 1:38:41Dax Shepard?

  God, I wish they could explain to me.

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  It makes sense to me actually logically. Like, yeah, you're, you know, you know, the idiom, your cup runneth over.

• 1:38:49Dax Shepard?

  I do, but that's when you fill a cup, you have so much bounty that the cup filled and you overfilled it because there's excess. Putting some marginal amount of milk in a pan and then making it boil over is very interesting. And I'd like to know a little more about the, the logic behind it. Yeah.

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  Okay. And well, in my head, maybe it's like you work for it. You work, you work hard and then your cup runneth over.

• 1:39:12Dax Shepard?

  But they might tell me this, which would be satisfying.

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:17Dax Shepard?

  Generally when people boiled milk and rice, there wasn't ever enough that it would have come out the pot. But occasionally you had so much that you were making such a big batch that would happen. And I'd be like, oh, great. So there has to be something behind it.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Might be fun if I call my mom.

• 1:39:35Dax Shepard?

  Okay, call her. Yeah. Cause she's not going to know. That's what'll be fun about it.

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  I know. She won't know.

• 1:39:40Dax Shepard?

  We'll see if it lines up with what Rob.

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  My dad's there too.

• 1:39:43Dax Shepard?

  No, he's at work because he's retired.

• 1:39:47Speaker 03

  Hi Monica.

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  Hi Mom, you're on the fact check, okay?

• 1:39:51Dax Shepard?

  Hi Nirmey.

• 1:39:52Speaker 03

  Hey.

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  Mom, we have a question about the milk superstition. Is there a backstory to it?

• 1:40:00Dax Shepard?

  I need a little bit more of the origin, what it symbolizes, what happened historically.

• 1:40:05Speaker 03

  I don't really know.

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what we thought.

• 1:40:08Speaker 03

  We just always done it. I mean, I think it has to do with some sort of Hindu

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  Tradition.

• 1:40:15Speaker 03

  Some kind of spiritual meaning. I don't really know exactly.

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:40:20Speaker 03

  Honestly, I don't know.

• 1:40:21Speaker 01

  That's what we thought. We'll look it up, but I didn't know if you happened to know. We figured you probably didn't.

• 1:40:25Dax Shepard?

  Monica was kind of free form guessing and I wasn't sure that it was the right thing, so.

• 1:40:31Speaker 01

  I mean, I figured it's like your

• 1:40:33Speaker 03

  It has to be milk. I mean, and I don't know the thing about spilling over. I don't understand.

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  I think that's like your cup runneth over.

• 1:40:41Dax Shepard?

  I think you're conflating different.

• 1:40:43Speaker 03

  Maybe that's what it is.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  My mom said that's right.

• 1:40:45Dax Shepard?

  Well, of course, it makes sense to her. You guys are the same.

• 1:40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it makes sense to me too.

• 1:40:50Dax Shepard?

  Logical sense.

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  All right, well, we're gonna look it up then.

• 1:40:53Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:40:54Speaker 01

  Okay, bye, love you.

• 1:40:56Speaker 03

  I love you.

• 1:40:58Speaker 05

  The overflowing milk represents an abundance of food, love, and warmth in the new home. It's often believed to purify the space and usher in positive energy.

• 1:41:07Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 1:41:08Speaker 05

  It's milk because that's often offered to deities or shared with family members. And it should ideally overflow towards the north or east directions.

• 1:41:19Speaker 01

  They didn't tell me that.

• 1:41:21Dax Shepard?

  You're gonna have to put your whole oven on a slant. You're gonna put a shim under there.

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  I didn't know that. I don't know which way. I'm not gonna think about which way it went.

• 1:41:28Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you did do it. You got your little pot.

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  I did do it. I got my pot. I boiled the milk. I sent a video to them.

• 1:41:34Dax Shepard?

  Okay, good.

• 1:41:35Speaker 01

  So then it was like that. I did it the first day I was by myself. So that feels like that's count. The other days were fakes because they were sleepovers.

• 1:41:43Dax Shepard?

  I'm just grateful it didn't get away from you and like you're sending a video of you with like bad milk burns.

• 1:41:49Speaker 01

  I know. Oh yeah, she told me I could put aluminum foil.

• 1:41:52Dax Shepard?

  Under the

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I did that.

• 1:41:54Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. That's what the Hindus did. They put aluminum foil under their burner.

• 1:41:58Speaker 01

  They did because they also respect cleanliness. Anyway, so that was a bit, that was a big superstition. Checked off the list. Thank God.

• 1:42:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:07Speaker 01

  Uh, literally, thank God. Thanks to the gods.

• 1:42:09Dax Shepard?

  Thanks the gods, the many gods.

• 1:42:11Speaker 01

  Um, and that is true in the times that also my dad went to the temple that day. I think he like, felt like he had to go to protect my house and cause also because I wasn't doing the milk in time.

• 1:42:21Dax Shepard?

  That might be where he puts more coins in the sim, by the way.

• 1:42:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, he checks in there. Yeah.

• 1:42:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  He goes to the quote temple. But you do give off, like you give fruit, you give like offerings to the gods.

• 1:42:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. As you should.

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:38Dax Shepard?

  You got to appease them.

• 1:42:40Speaker 01

  Well, you gotta say thank you.

• 1:42:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Well, I did so much.

• 1:42:44Speaker 01

  It did feel like you were gone a really long time.

• 1:42:46Dax Shepard?

  For me, I've never had this. I've had a week that felt like two weeks.

• 1:42:51Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:42:52Dax Shepard?

  This week felt like three weeks.

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  I thought you were gonna say like three months or something.

• 1:42:59Dax Shepard?

  No, that'd be nuts. This literally, if you had to ask me, like, as I got to the airport, when did you fly here?

• 1:43:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:43:06Dax Shepard?

  What it really felt like was three weeks. Now I've had it where it felt like two weeks, but this really, I'm like,

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  I had it a week.

• 1:43:13Dax Shepard?

  I know I've been gone for three weeks.

• 1:43:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:43:16Dax Shepard?

  And I, I know why, which was I left at the crack gas of dawn on a Wednesday. I flew to Miami and I had been told by production, if I wanted to check a bag, I could not take the connecting flight to Key West, that that bag would not get there.

• 1:43:30Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:43:30Dax Shepard?

  So I heeded them. I'm like, well, I gotta bring a bag. It's a week. And so I rented a car. So I flew to Miami, then I rented a car, then I drove at rush hour.

• 1:43:40Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:43:41Dax Shepard?

  To Key West.

• 1:43:42Speaker 01

  Okay. Cause that's where you were shooting.

• 1:43:44Dax Shepard?

  That's where I was gonna shoot.

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:45Dax Shepard?

  Well, flag on the play, interesting turn of events. So I'm driving there. That says it's gonna be four hours. I'm three and a half hours into the trip and then I get a text that says, your pickup is at 5:00 AM. And I'm like, Jesus Christ, 5:00 AM, cause I'm on LA time. That's 2:00 AM for me.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:01Dax Shepard?

  And you know, my pledge on this, this is my pledge for this, this journey, acting again is like, I am not gonna question anything.

• 1:44:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, which I respect.

• 1:44:10Dax Shepard?

  I'm just not, I'm, and then, but then they say luckily, the pickup's so early, cause we're shooting on Marathon, which is a different key. Which I just drove through 20 minutes before. So I flipped a bitch. I headed up to Marathon, got my own hotel. And I fucking got to wake up. I got to go in at seven instead of five.

• 1:44:33Speaker 01

  That worked out.

• 1:44:34Dax Shepard?

  And then I shot from 7 a.m. till noon. And then I drove back to Miami. Right when I got off work.

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:44:46Dax Shepard?

  So again.

• 1:44:46Speaker 01

  Go to a Getty?

• 1:44:48Dax Shepard?

  To go hang with Aaron.

• 1:44:49Speaker 01

  Right. And why was Aaron there? He just to meet you for fun?

• 1:44:52Dax Shepard?

  So I had three days off. I shot on a Thursday and then I was shooting again on Monday.

• 1:44:57Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 1:44:58Dax Shepard?

  And again, it's an entire day to get back to LA. So if I wanted to go back to LA, I would have gone an entire day to get there. And then I would have been there for one day and then I would have gone an entire day.

• 1:45:08Speaker 01

  Wouldn't made sense.

• 1:45:08Dax Shepard?

  Right. I, I, I did feel like, I think my family members like, well, you're gonna have three days off and not come home. But I was like, well, two of those would be traveling, whatever. So I leave at noon.

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  Here's some guilt.

• 1:45:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I was just like, Kristen might probably would have flown home in that little gap.

• 1:45:24Speaker 01

  Well, she, yeah, notoriously, she'll do anything to be home.

• 1:45:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Aaron gets there. First night we go out and we get this outrageous dinner. Beautiful dinner. This restaurant had a pig we could have ordered. We would have had to order it an hour and a half ahead of time. So whole pig for the table and it's like served six to eight people.

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:45:44Dax Shepard?

  And we were like, should we come back and try to take that?

• 1:45:45Speaker 01

  Is the head on it?

• 1:45:47Dax Shepard?

  I hope not, but probably they like to leave the head on. Yeah. I don't need that part. They like to put an apple on it to dress it up.

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  Why do they do that?

• 1:45:54Dax Shepard?

  Dress it up.

• 1:45:55Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:45:55Dax Shepard?

  Or maybe their teeth look so gross. They're like shove something in there. I don't know what's going on.

• 1:45:59Speaker 01

  Or is it seasoning?

• 1:46:00Dax Shepard?

  Well, you're not eating the face.

• 1:46:02Speaker 01

  But maybe it like sinks into the body. Okay.

• 1:46:06Dax Shepard?

  I'm gonna bug down next. We didn't even get it. Now, we know the only reason we can really justify, like, we gotta shoot some Ted Segers content. We can't be together and.

• 1:46:15Speaker 01

  Smart.

• 1:46:16Dax Shepard?

  So I book an airboat tour through the Everglades. I get this idea when I'm flying in because you're flying in over the Everglades and I just start hearing the Jerry Reed song, Here Comes Amos.

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:46:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, Amos Moses.

• 1:46:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, we just talked about that recently.

• 1:46:30Dax Shepard?

  Living by himself in the swamp. Hunting alligator for a living. I'll just knock him in the head with a stump. Son, Louisiana, they're all gonna get you, Amos. So I hear that song.

• 1:46:39Speaker 01

  This is the grocery song.

• 1:46:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, horse rass.

• 1:46:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, which is all about a guy who hunts alligators. So I'm like, oh, I want to do a Ted Seeger's Amos.

• 1:46:48Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:46:48Dax Shepard?

  Here Come Amos commercial.

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:46:50Dax Shepard?

  So on the drive out to this airboat tour, we're like, okay, in order of like what we hope can happen, like hopefully we see some alligators and we can get the beer can next close to it.

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:47:02Dax Shepard?

  And then we go, I wonder if there's any way this guy will let us drive the airboat.

• 1:47:06Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 1:47:07Dax Shepard?

  While drinking some Seeger's.

• 1:47:08Speaker 01

  Of course he let you.

• 1:47:10Dax Shepard?

  Well, hold on.

• 1:47:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:47:12Dax Shepard?

  We're like, that's the pie in the sky fantasy, right? So we meet the dude at the gas station, we follow him to this little fucking pallet that's sitting on the shoreline and there's the, the big fan boat, you know, it's got the huge, huge propeller in back and then this big 454 big block motor in it. And the dude's awesome right away. He says pretty quickly, you're, um, you're in recovery, right? And he's from there, he's, uh, he was Nicaraguan.

• 1:47:41Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 1:47:42Dax Shepard?

  But grew up in Miami and, um, he said, you're in recovery. And I said, oh, yeah, yeah, we're, but we both are. Um, in fact, we're wanting to shoot a bunch of stuff for this NA beer. And he's like, oh yeah, man, I'm in recovery too.

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:47:52Dax Shepard?

  I was like, oh, fuck yeah. So this dude had been sober for, I think, two or three years.

• 1:47:58Speaker 01

  Ah, good for him.

• 1:47:59Dax Shepard?

  We're whipping through the fucking Everglades. The, the, the amount of birds overhead, it's so otherworldly. I'm shooting all this great stuff. We get up, we're one inch from a crocodile. We're already, as you can imagine, we're tickled pink. We are drinking beer next to the alligator. And then I say to the guy, go, listen, tell me to fuck off, but if, is there any chance if we get in a straightaway that we could like sit in the chair and act like we're driving and he's like, yeah, let's go. Okay, now go ahead and look at the other videos.

• 1:48:34Dax Shepard?

  Cause we had to fucking learn to.

• 1:48:37Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Oh, my God.

• 1:48:40Dax Shepard?

  Look at Aaron.

• 1:48:41Speaker 01

  That's how you drive it?

• 1:48:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So you have this stick in your left hand that controls the fins behind the fan.

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:48:51Dax Shepard?

  So you're just directing the air left or right. And then there's a gas pedal. It was kinda easy to drive. Once you got your, the hang of the stick.

• 1:48:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:00Dax Shepard?

  You're not turning left or right. You're going backward or forward to go left or right.

• 1:49:03Speaker 01

  Interesting. Okay, I'm gonna air him.

• 1:49:20Dax Shepard?

  This is alright.

• 1:49:24Speaker 01

  Hi, you, you guys are such boys. It is so funny. This, like, I, I don't, I don't. I mean this as a compliment.

• 1:49:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:36Speaker 01

  This looks so boring. Like, like, like.

• 1:49:40Dax Shepard?

  This looks so boring.

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  Not the video, but just like to be excited about driving. Like, I just, I can't relate at all.

• 1:49:48Dax Shepard?

  But when you look at that thing, aren't you like, how on earth do you drive that?

• 1:49:51Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:49:52Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:49:52Speaker 01

  That's the difference. I'm really not at all interested.

• 1:49:56Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah. I, I think for me, I know for Aaron, I'm not gonna speak for Robbie, never agrees with me. You look at that thing, you're like, how are they driving that? Where's the steering wheel?

• 1:50:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:50:05Dax Shepard?

  So then there's a little bit of like, could I drive it if I had to?

• 1:50:09Speaker 01

  Sure. I know. See, that's the difference.

• 1:50:12Dax Shepard?

  Yes, and then. I get that. You get it, right? Yeah, I get that. Like, what if we were flying an airplane? Like, the guy was like, yeah, go give it a shot. And then Aaron and I flew an airplane and landed. Wouldn't you just be like, oh, my God, I can't believe you did that. So it's a lot of, oh, my God, I can't believe we did that. We got to fly.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  No, but I guess what I'm saying is I don't ever go into an airplane and think like. I wonder how I fly this like it that doesn't go in that I'm just like, how do I escape?

• 1:50:39Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:50:39Speaker 01

  Something bad is happening. That's the thing that happens.

• 1:50:42Dax Shepard?

  Yes, and I have an immediate challenge in front of me. We were saying like, would we try to drive a cruise ship?

• 1:50:48Speaker 01

  Oh, is there a video like of the boat not from inside?

• 1:50:54Dax Shepard?

  No, because we would be standing.

• 1:50:55Speaker 01

  I know, but I didn't know if you got any. Oh, right.

• 1:50:59Dax Shepard?

  I have video of another fan boat that went by.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:51:02Dax Shepard?

  Because you're curious what it looks like.

• 1:51:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, because you're just seeing you guys in a chair.

• 1:51:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, with an enormous propeller behind us.

• 1:51:09Speaker 01

  But you can't see the extent.

• 1:51:11Dax Shepard?

  You don't even know what an airboat slash fan boat is, right?

• 1:51:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:51:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's like all the swamp boats. They're crazy. They don't have a propeller or anything. You're just right there.

• 1:51:20Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:51:21Dax Shepard?

  Look at that contraption.

• 1:51:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is wild.

• 1:51:23Dax Shepard?

  And you're driving it by by steering the wind coming off that huge fan.

• 1:51:29Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 1:51:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:33Dax Shepard?

  And you can drive it over land. That's what's cool about it. You can go over grass, land. You can get yourself in and out of everywhere with those things.

• 1:51:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:51:41Dax Shepard?

  Anywho, we were ecstatic.

• 1:51:44Speaker 01

  That's fun. I'm glad you guys did that. Speaking of driving, I forgot to say this earlier when you were talking about the driving portion.

• 1:51:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  I got pulled over.

• 1:51:55Dax Shepard?

  For speeding?

• 1:51:56Speaker 01

  No, and it was by Chips.

• 1:51:59Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh, California Highway Patrol.

• 1:52:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, your bread and butter.

• 1:52:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, did you tell them you were in Chips?

• 1:52:04Speaker 01

  No, but I would have.

• 1:52:06Dax Shepard?

  You should have.

• 1:52:06Speaker 01

  If things if things had gotten progressively bad, then I would have said it. Okay. I'm very close. The house is very close to my apartment, obviously. I lived five minutes away. But because of the way the highways are, now I'm using a different highway.

• 1:52:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you used to take the five a lot?

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  Always.

• 1:52:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm never on the five.

• 1:52:25Speaker 01

  I know. And so I was using a different highway to get to a place that I go a lot. And all of a sudden, my GPS told me to take the exit, but.

• 1:52:39Speaker 01

  Right before that was like a side was like a bus or something lane. I don't know what it was, but I took that.

• 1:52:47Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  And then there was a chips and they pulled me over.

• 1:52:52Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:52:52Speaker 01

  And I was like, was I not supposed to do it was like the first I was like, was I not supposed to do that?

• 1:52:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:57Speaker 01

  And she said, no, that's a something lane. There's a little sign. I was like, well, I don't have good eyes. I didn't say that.

• 1:53:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, smart.

• 1:53:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:53:06Dax Shepard?

  I can't see. That's their, that's their fault.

• 1:53:08Speaker 01

  That makes sense. I just, I don't know how to see. So, um, yeah, but I got away with it. Thank God.

• 1:53:16Dax Shepard?

  Got a warning.

• 1:53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I was really scared and she said, uh, she was like, do you live around here? And I was just trying to answer so on. I was like, no, I do. And she was like, she like looked at me weird like, well, why wouldn't you know this? And I didn't want to explain, well, I just moved and I normally use the other highway.

• 1:53:33Dax Shepard?

  Right. I'm only good at one highway.

• 1:53:36Speaker 01

  So I just was like, uh, sorry. I'm really sorry. And um, she let me off with a warning.

• 1:53:43Dax Shepard?

  Good, good, good, good, good.

• 1:53:45Speaker 01

  So that was scary. I hate getting, I don't like getting pulled. You get pulled over a lot. So you.

• 1:53:50Dax Shepard?

  I haven't pulled over in a while. Let's, let's knock on one of them. That's about the first time I've ever wanted to knock on one.

• 1:53:54Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:53:55Dax Shepard?

  Okay. So that was that.

• 1:53:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:53:57Dax Shepard?

  Then we went out, the restaurant, Monica, half of it's underwater.

• 1:54:01Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:54:02Dax Shepard?

  All this water and there are performers, contortionists, people hanging from the ceiling by their hair.

• 1:54:10Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:54:10Dax Shepard?

  Doing acrobatics.

• 1:54:11Speaker 01

  Oh, I love acrobatics.

• 1:54:14Dax Shepard?

  Everyone's dressed. It's kind of like what Marcelo was talking about. It's just like.

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  Gettys.

• 1:54:18Dax Shepard?

  The vibe, the, the way the men are dressed.

• 1:54:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's so upscale. It's so cool.

• 1:54:23Dax Shepard?

  And in, in, it's, but there's upscale. That's like fucking, there's no rhythm to it. Like you go upscale Connecticut, upscale New York.

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:54:31Dax Shepard?

  This is like.

• 1:54:32Speaker 01

  This is vibrant.

• 1:54:33Dax Shepard?

  I can't tell you how happy we were. Oh, so grateful.

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:36Dax Shepard?

  And then the next day I drove four hours back to Key West.

• 1:54:42Dax Shepard?

  Shot all day Monday, had a great shoot day, like really so happy I ended up doing this whole thing. This was my last day on the show. Yeah.

• 1:54:53Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't realize that.

• 1:54:55Dax Shepard?

  Anyways, by the time I landed last night at 10 o'clock at night, I was like, I've been home for three weeks. I had four different life experiences.

• 1:55:02Speaker 01

  You did a lot. Oh, spilled.

• 1:55:06Dax Shepard?

  Good fortune. Your cop run is over and it happened naturally.

• 1:55:10Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. We're gonna, we'll leave it there for some good luck.

• 1:55:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's north too. What? That's north too.

• 1:55:17Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really good. And east, it's northeast.

• 1:55:21Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. It really meant to be.

• 1:55:24Dax Shepard?

  Did you do that on purpose?

• 1:55:25Speaker 01

  I didn't. I didn't.

• 1:55:27Dax Shepard?

  And it is milk, right? What is it?

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  There is milk in it. It's tea with milk in it. Wow. My dad, my dad did that. That's a nice framing. It's like when you spill, it's like, ah, it's good luck.

• 1:55:45Dax Shepard?

  It's very good framing. Charlie?

• 1:55:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, we should get into Charlie because Charlie has a lot of facts, weirdly. Okay. Charlie facts. Now, first off, first and foremost, he performed at the Super Bowl.

• 1:56:01Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:56:02Speaker 01

  As he told us he was going to do.

• 1:56:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:04Speaker 01

  He was incredible.

• 1:56:06Dax Shepard?

  Yes. And it seemed like he did exactly what he was aiming to do.

• 1:56:11Speaker 01

  He said, like, you know, we can look back and see. And I think he did it.

• 1:56:17Dax Shepard?

  He's like, then the thing will come in here and then the horns.

• 1:56:20Speaker 01

  He said a choir, I think that was there. Multiple people, musicians were like, that's the best. I think that's the best you can do.

• 1:56:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good. Okay.

• 1:56:29Speaker 01

  It was really good. You know, I've, I've sang at. Sporting events.

• 1:56:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you have?

• 1:56:35Speaker 01

  I've seen the National Anthem twice at sporting events.

• 1:56:38Dax Shepard?

  By yourself?

• 1:56:39Speaker 01

  No, in my chorus.

• 1:56:40Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I was gonna say.

• 1:56:42Speaker 01

  Still counts?

• 1:56:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:43Speaker 01

  Still counts.

• 1:56:44Dax Shepard?

  But I couldn't see you standing up by yourself and singing the National Anthem. Cause you won't sing in here.

• 1:56:50Speaker 01

  No, I won't.

• 1:56:50Dax Shepard?

  So it seemed really out of keeping with what I know about you.

• 1:56:53Speaker 01

  That's right. I was in a chorus and I think sometimes I would just mouth it.

• 1:56:57Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:56:58Speaker 01

  Cause I was too scared.

• 1:56:59Dax Shepard?

  It's a good technique.

• 1:57:01Speaker 01

  Now, what song were you referencing that Marv, that was ripped off Marvin Gaye's song?

• 1:57:08Dax Shepard?

  Right, by?

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  Robin Thicke and Pharrell.

• 1:57:12Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:57:12Speaker 01

  Gotta Give It Up. Oh, I'm sorry. The Marvin Gaye's song is Gotta Give It Up. Blurred Lines is the song.

• 1:57:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:19Speaker 01

  Um, and the Gaye Estate was awarded $7.3 million after successfully arguing that the songs' groove and feel were lifted, despite arguments that the sheet music was different. Now, this is a tricky, I think this is tricky because can't they just say they were sampling it?

• 1:57:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's what's interesting. I think if you, there's a lot of rules. There's something about like you can do two or three bars, but not four.

• 1:57:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:57:48Dax Shepard?

  I think in sampling, that's what they're working around.

• 1:57:51Speaker 05

  Well, I think you have to pay for sampling too.

• 1:57:52Speaker 01

  Oh, you do?

• 1:57:53Dax Shepard?

  You pay for sampling?

• 1:57:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:57:54Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  Well, I won't out this person, but there was an album out recently that had so many, what I thought was samples, but I don't think they were samples, but they were, they were the same music as other music. So I, I think this is, yeah, this is tricks.

• 1:58:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And also when you start learning to play guitar, when you learn these three chords on guitar, you can play 80% of the rock music that's ever, it's just like the, the tempo's a little different, the pace is a little different, but it's really just going back and forth between these three chords. So.

• 1:58:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:32Dax Shepard?

  You know, it's, yeah, it's hard to.

• 1:58:34Speaker 01

  It's hard. I'm sure it has to be very obvious.

• 1:58:36Dax Shepard?

  Well, Blurred Lines is that song. If you listen to them back to back, there's really no.

• 1:58:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:58:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I worship Pharrell.

• 1:58:42Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 1:58:43Dax Shepard?

  So, no.

• 1:58:43Speaker 01

  And we had, um.

• 1:58:44Dax Shepard?

  No shade to him.

• 1:58:45Speaker 01

  Robin Thicke on the pod.

• 1:58:46Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  In that same vein, when Charlie was here and was like, doing his amazing thing he can do with his voice and with all the songs, and he can just sing them all, but he can sing the sound.

• 1:59:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  It's so wild. Um, he was doing that and we were like, oh, Su Su Studio sounds like Prince, sounds like 1989, we were talking about that. Um, Prince was first, we, we didn't, we weren't sure, but it was 1984, and then Phil Collins was 1985.

• 1:59:21Dax Shepard?

  Eighty-six.

• 1:59:21Speaker 01

  So very quickly. And then Purple Rain is eight minutes and forty-one seconds. There's a shorter seven inch, seven inch.

• 1:59:32Dax Shepard?

  You know what that means?

• 1:59:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:59:33Dax Shepard?

  That's a forty-five. So your thirty-three's are twelve inches wide, and your forty-fives are seven inches. So seven inch or twelve inch.

• 1:59:40Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, yeah. A shorter seven inch edit, often used for radio, is four minutes and five seconds.

• 1:59:46Dax Shepard?

  I think that's what we all grew up listening to.

• 1:59:48Speaker 01

  Okay, and then live, the song frequently exceeded twelve minutes, with some performances lasting over nineteen minutes.

• 1:59:56Dax Shepard?

  That's a long time for a song.

• 1:59:58Speaker 01

  That's cool to see in person.

• 1:59:59Dax Shepard?

  Maybe too long for me.

• 2:00:01Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:00:01Dax Shepard?

  You know, I start getting like, when will this end feelings?

• 2:00:04Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, limited edition, though.

• 2:00:07Dax Shepard?

  I guess that's a good framing of it.

• 2:00:09Speaker 01

  I'm all about framing today. Um, he asked, is, is Buie Sushi still a thing in Malibu? I looked it up. It is. It was open yesterday.

• 2:00:20Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:00:20Speaker 01

  It's spelled B U I, okay? Oh, the name of the host of the New Jersey radio show, one oh one point one WCBS FM in the nineties, the morning hosts were Ron Lundee and Harry Harrison.

• 2:00:37Dax Shepard?

  Harry Harrison.

• 2:00:38Speaker 01

  Do you think that was his real name?

• 2:00:42Speaker 01

  Probably not.

• 2:00:42Dax Shepard?

  I don't know. It sounds a little bit like Dallas Rains.

• 2:00:46Speaker 01

  It does.

• 2:00:47Dax Shepard?

  Also, Harry and the Hendersons.

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  Maybe it was a nod.

• 2:00:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Maybe he's a Sasquatch.

• 2:00:54Speaker 01

  What's that mean? Why?

• 2:00:55Dax Shepard?

  Harry was a Sasquatch in Harry and the Hendersons.

• 2:00:57Speaker 01

  Oh, I never saw it.

• 2:00:58Dax Shepard?

  They hit it. They hit a Sasquatch. They bring him home.

• 2:01:01Speaker 01

  They hit him with the car?

• 2:01:03Dax Shepard?

  I believe that's how they came. Yeah. I think that's how he came to live in the house.

• 2:01:07Speaker 01

  They hit him with the car and then they kidnapped him?

• 2:01:10Dax Shepard?

  No, they wanted to resuscitate him and bring him back to the house and help him. And they became friends.

• 2:01:15Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:01:16Dax Shepard?

  You know, it's a very uplifting. It's not a horror movie. It's a positive kids movie. Where they befriend a Bigfoot.

• 2:01:22Speaker 01

  I thought it was maybe a show.

• 2:01:23Dax Shepard?

  It might be a show.

• 2:01:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:01:27Dax Shepard?

  It's a film. It's a what? It's a film. It's a film.

• 2:01:34Speaker 01

  Um, okay. So you just blew your nose. I cut it, but you blew your nose.

• 2:01:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:39Speaker 01

  And since I've um, had a little cold today, earlier before my, my D kicked in.

• 2:01:45Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 2:01:46Speaker 01

  I was sneezing and blowing my nose so much. And I thought of you so much because I was like, this

• 2:01:51Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:01:52Speaker 01

  is one, so annoying.

• 2:01:54Dax Shepard?

  Isn't it the worst?

• 2:01:55Speaker 01

  Two, embarrassing.

• 2:01:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:58Speaker 01

  Um, and Dax is all the time.

• 2:02:02Dax Shepard?

  And Aaron does it even worse.

• 2:02:03Speaker 01

  Oh, my.

• 2:02:04Dax Shepard?

  And Aaron's been doing it since I met him. He's never had relief from this. I have periods of relief, but in general, yeah, it's, I hate it.

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  I never have to blow my nose unless I've like showered or something. So water's in there.

• 2:02:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:18Speaker 01

  Or I'm sneezing. Like you have to blow your nose all the time.

• 2:02:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, all the time.

• 2:02:23Speaker 01

  Okay. Now, Rumson Town, Rumson, the town he's from, he said it's 7,000 people. He was right. Um, about 7,200 to 7,300 residents.

• 2:02:36Dax Shepard?

  You really nailed that.

• 2:02:37Speaker 01

  He really did nail it. Um, is Vin Diesel from New Jersey? Uh, no. He's not.

• 2:02:44Dax Shepard?

  Where's he from?

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  He's from Alameda County, California, but then later moved to New York.

• 2:02:51Speaker 01

  With his fraternal twin brother, Paul.

• 2:02:53Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:02:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, my God. His mom was an astrologer. We should have him on. His life sounds interesting. Now, Ja- the Japanese word that's not wabi sabi, Jesus, we that we brought it up again in an episode I'm editing currently.

• 2:03:06Dax Shepard?

  And it's in a TV show I just watched.

• 2:03:08Speaker 01

  Wabi sabi or this other one?

• 2:03:10Dax Shepard?

  The Broken Pots.

• 2:03:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay. Kintsukori or kintsugi?

• 2:03:16Dax Shepard?

  Kintsugi is a thing I think of a lot.

• 2:03:19Speaker 01

  Kintsugi translates to golden joinery.

• 2:03:22Dax Shepard?

  That's a thing I left out. Aaron and I watched the Smashing Machine. We're also watching movies every night.

• 2:03:27Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 2:03:27Dax Shepard?

  And that's a big part of the Smashing Machine.

• 2:03:29Speaker 01

  Oh, it is?

• 2:03:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, ding ding ding. He brought up Smosh. That's similar to the word smash.

• 2:03:39Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 2:03:40Speaker 01

  And Smosh is a, because we was talking about his YouTube stuff. Um, Smosh was big in that world. American YouTube sketch comedy improv collective. And I worked for Smosh.

• 2:03:54Dax Shepard?

  You did?

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. When I had all those millions of jobs.

• 2:03:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:00Speaker 01

  One of them was for Smosh. Someone I did improv with worked for Smosh and I, you know, needed a job. And so he got, so I wrote little articles for Smosh for a long time.

• 2:04:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you did?

• 2:04:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, like 10 funniest moments from SpongeBob, 10, like those types of things.

• 2:04:17Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:04:19Speaker 01

  So I did that for a while and I forgot all about it.

• 2:04:21Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:04:22Speaker 01

  Former employer. Okay. Is Bruce Springsteen from Ann's Berry Park? So born in Long Branch and raised in Freehold. Oh, Asbury. Asbury Park. Okay. Yeah.

• 2:04:38Dax Shepard?

  Assberries.

• 2:04:39Speaker 01

  No, as.

• 2:04:40Dax Shepard?

  Asbury.

• 2:04:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's not two S's.

• 2:04:43Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:04:44Speaker 01

  But there's also no Z, so it's hard.

• 2:04:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:48Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 2:04:49Dax Shepard?

  He is?

• 2:04:50Speaker 01

  I mean, okay, it's, it says that he was born in Long Branch and raised in Freehold. So that's not saying anything about it, but then it also says that

• 2:05:01Dax Shepard?

  He was born and raised in Asbury?

• 2:05:03Speaker 01

  Specifically Springsteen is Asbury Park, New Jersey, so it must be in Freehold or something.

• 2:05:07Dax Shepard?

  Sure. That makes sense.

• 2:05:10Speaker 01

  Okay, so I only have one more fact, which is, uh, I wanted to go through some classic vocab words because we talked about some vocab words.

• 2:05:19Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:05:20Speaker 01

  I have a list. A thousand most common SAT words.

• 2:05:24Dax Shepard?

  Oh, a thousand?

• 2:05:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's see how fast I can do it. I'm just kidding, I won't do that. Um, but do you want to pick a letter and I'll pick, I'll pick a couple?

• 2:05:36Dax Shepard?

  Sure, J.

• 2:05:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:05:38Dax Shepard?

  Rare letter to start a word with.

• 2:05:39Speaker 01

  Oh, J is really small, only has three.

• 2:05:43Dax Shepard?

  Wow, I had a hunch.

• 2:05:45Speaker 01

  Wow. Okay, do you want to guess?

• 2:05:48Dax Shepard?

  Juxtaposition.

• 2:05:49Speaker 01

  Yes, that's one. Oh my God, if you get these.

• 2:05:52Dax Shepard?

  Um, jurisprudence.

• 2:05:54Speaker 01

  No, but in that vein, in that category.

• 2:06:01Dax Shepard?

  Whoa, judicial, uh...

• 2:06:04Speaker 01

  Yes, but it's a version of that word.

• 2:06:06Dax Shepard?

  Adjudicate? No, that's anyway. All right, what is it?

• 2:06:09Speaker 01

  Judicious.

• 2:06:10Dax Shepard?

  Judicious!

• 2:06:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, wow!

• 2:06:11Dax Shepard?

  Okay, we're kind of, I'm gonna say we're 1.5 for two.

• 2:06:15Speaker 01

  No, I'm gonna give 1.8.

• 2:06:17Dax Shepard?

  Okay, wow, that's generous, 1.8.

• 2:06:19Speaker 01

  And then the last one.

• 2:06:21Dax Shepard?

  I'll never get.

• 2:06:22Speaker 01

  No, you'll get. Should I give you a hint?

• 2:06:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, give me a, some kind of a hint.

• 2:06:26Speaker 01

  It's, um, it's a state of being, a positive state of being.

• 2:06:30Dax Shepard?

  Ooh, jubil- jubilant?

• 2:06:32Speaker 01

  Yes!

• 2:06:35Speaker 01

  Really, good job! I'm very impressed.

• 2:06:39Dax Shepard?

  That was so fun. It's jubilant?

• 2:06:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, jubilant.

• 2:06:42Dax Shepard?

  Jubilant, yeah, I don't say it right.

• 2:06:44Speaker 01

  Um, wow, that was really good.

• 2:06:47Dax Shepard?

  Fun!

• 2:06:47Speaker 01

  I'm impressed.

• 2:06:48Dax Shepard?

  Oh, thank you. I love when I impress you.

• 2:06:53Speaker 01

  Um, and that's it for Charlie.

• 2:06:55Dax Shepard?

  Juxtaposition, uh, judicious and jubilant.

• 2:07:02Speaker 01

  That's right. Really good. Really good. Okay. Well, that's it for Charlie. I thought that was a lovely episode. I put him in the category of people like I put Charlie Sheen in where I had a really strong idea of what they were gonna be and then they were very much not that.

• 2:07:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I wasn't saddled with any expectation of him. I'm kind of in the dark a lot about, you know, like I don't know about the Taylor Swift song about him and stuff. Like I'm kind of a dumb dumb.

• 2:07:32Speaker 01

  He's a genius. He's a musical genius. Really wild. I didn't know that.

• 2:07:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:38Speaker 01

  Um, all right.

• 2:07:39Dax Shepard?

  All right. Love you.