Bridget Read (on multilevel marketing)

Bridget Read (Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America) is a features writer, journalist, and author. Bridget joins the Armchair Expert to discuss working as a young writer at Vogue during the blog boom, how door-to-door salesmen evolved into multi-level marketing, and the winners, losers, and buy-in rules that designate a Ponzi scheme. Bridget and Dax talk about vitamins being the original pyramid scheme product, the staggering fact that 99% of folks involved in MLMs will lose money, and the pseudo-feminist origin story of Mary Kay. Bridget explains the mystical and religious appeal of multi-level marketing language, how pyramid schemes are really a microcosm of our entire system of income inequality, and why refusing to buy from loved ones involved in MLMs actually helps them in the long run. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Lily Padman.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:06Dax Shepard?

  Hi. Today, we have Bridget Reed on. Bridget is a reporter and features writer at New York Magazine, and she has a new book out now called Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America. This is all about multi-level marketing.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  MLMs, baby.

• 0:26Dax Shepard?

  This was fascinating.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  We learned so much.

• 0:29Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  I've been talking about this one a lot.

• 0:31Dax Shepard?

  Yep, and great advice, too, for people within this episode. Please enjoy Bridget Reed. We are supported by Audible. Thanks to Audible for being the presenting sponsor of today's episode. We could all use an escape these days, and the best way to do it, Audible. With over 1 million titles in their selection, there's more to imagine with Audible. We get support from Quince.

• 0:56Speaker 01

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

• 1:15Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:31Speaker 01

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

• 1:42Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:49Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 1:51Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:55Speaker 01

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

• 2:17Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Okay, can we talk about how November is basically survival mode? Between the holidays, the travel, the hosting, the cooking, the everything. Sleep is the one thing keeping me from completely unraveling.

• 2:52Dax Shepard?

  It really is the foundation. And I think people underestimate how much a bad mattress is quietly ruining their day. You wake up stiff, your back's angry, you're already behind before your feet hit the floor.

• 3:03Speaker 01

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

• 3:21Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Recently.

• 3:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 3:22Speaker 01

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

• 3:26Dax Shepard?

  Temperature was all over the map.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  It was a mess.

• 3:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  I need a new one.

• 3:29Dax Shepard?

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

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Helix has been named the most awarded mattress by Forbes, Wired, and more. So it's not just us being enthusiastic. The experts agree.

• 3:51Dax Shepard?

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

• 4:26Speaker 02

  I'm having allergies.

• 4:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wonderful.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Claritin D. Oh, we love. You have to give your ID.

• 4:32Dax Shepard?

  We love D.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Cause there's speed in it. Yeah. I'm really loving speed, turns out. Just a little bit of that. I'm super into speed. I know.

• 4:40Dax Shepard?

  I know, I'm allowed to use them when I'm allowed to use them. I'd like to use them more.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  I never have.

• 4:45Dax Shepard?

  This is your first time on a D?

• 4:47Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 4:48Dax Shepard?

  Where do you live?

• 4:48Speaker 02

  I live in Brooklyn, I live in New York.

• 4:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Well, a leave D or Zyrtec D? I heard about Zyrtec, I got a lot of recommendations for different.

• 4:57Dax Shepard?

  Ds?

• 4:58Speaker 02

  All the Ds are really good.

• 5:00Dax Shepard?

  I got a lot of D recommendations for you while you're in LA.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. One time Dax took a drug test and he was on it. It showed up.

• 5:08Dax Shepard?

  It showed for methamphetamine.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  So now I know why I like. Speed, speed's real. It's real.

• 5:13Dax Shepard?

  Where are you from originally?

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Here, I'm from Pasadena.

• 5:15Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, my parents live in Santa Barbara.

• 5:18Dax Shepard?

  They do?

• 5:18Speaker 02

  My sister lives in San Francisco where I just was last night. So, my California girl, but I've been in New York for a long time.

• 5:24Dax Shepard?

  So what was Pasadena like in the 1990s?

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Did you go to the Houston's a lot?

• 5:28Dax Shepard?

  Did you ever go to Houston's?

• 5:29Speaker 02

  I definitely went to Houston's. It was much more boring and suburban. The west side felt so much further away. My cousins in Santa Monica, that was a journey.

• 5:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Versus now with the gold line and young people live in Pasadena and families. It was much more like Westchester or Long Island or something compared to New York. That was the vibe.

• 5:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the history of it's really interesting. I only learned it in that Strange Angel book about the guy who started JPL or was one of the founding members. But yeah, that it was originally a playground in the winter for super rich people from Chicago. The Wrigley's had a mansion, all these empire families had homes. And then if you moved all the way to California from Chicago, you'd stop in Pasadena. You wouldn't go to the ocean.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Right, well, and that's why it's kind of conservative, because it has these roots that are midwestern. Oh, that's interesting. Christian people who move from Midwest. Yeah. And so it's very different than some of the east side. And then you get into the Scientology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

• 6:23Dax Shepard?

  Yes, and Aleister Crowley, yeah, the sexual orgies, the cult stuff. That's what was in Strange Angels.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  I haven't read it, but I've heard of it, I should read it.

• 6:33Dax Shepard?

  You should, and you know, he met his end by blowing up his garage, testing a new rocket fuel.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Well, I guess we know the results of the test. He was on a little too much D.

• 6:43Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so what school do you go to? How do you end up leaving California?

• 6:46Speaker 02

  We then lived part in DC when I was a teenager. But always came back to California. So very sort of bi-coastal. And then I went to college in Connecticut. And so I've been in New York ever since.

• 6:55Dax Shepard?

  Is that code for something?

• 6:57Speaker 02

  No, not at Wesleyan. I shouldn't say it that way. That's always a problem.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  College in Boston, college in Connecticut.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  No, college in Cambridge. I went to Wesleyan.

• 7:05Dax Shepard?

  You graduate from there and then you move immediately to New York?

• 7:08Speaker 02

  I did a master's in the UK because it was free. I did a creative nonfiction program. And over there, it's a little less traditional. They don't really have a strong tradition like we do. Like Jonathan Safran Foer. I guess he's more novels. Like Dave Eggers, creative nonfiction as a genre is sort of still being figured out over there. So they were like, come on, Americans, come here for free.

• 7:31Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  I did a degree at the University of East Anglia, which is in Norwich, a medieval city in the east of England.

• 7:37Dax Shepard?

  Oh, fun.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  I drank a lot of cider.

• 7:40Dax Shepard?

  Did you take on an English lover? No, right?

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Redacted.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 7:44Dax Shepard?

  Redacted.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Everyone was college age and we were running around.

• 7:48Dax Shepard?

  Fun was had.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Fun was had. But it was just a year. And then I came back to New York and I've been there ever since.

• 7:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay, and you worked at Vogue for a while as the culture?

• 7:57Speaker 02

  I was writing and blogging there during this sort of boom in blogs, where you would write one headline about Melania Trump's jacket or whatever. You would get a million views. It was just nonstop all the time, 2015 to 2020. And then traffic really changed and Google and Facebook messed with their algorithms. And it's really different. But especially for women's blogs, women's political writing, it was a boom era.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Did you have to report to Anna?

• 8:24Speaker 02

  I guess technically I did.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  I got to do really cool stuff because culture was anything that wasn't fashion or beauty. And so I was doing politics, I was doing books, I was doing kind of whatever. I covered AOC really early in 2018 before she won her primary. And so then I was sort of in touch with her people. And they had me do a profile of her after she'd been in office for a year. And I went down and spent three days with her in Congress. And that was her first big profile. So it was really fun. I never would have connected with her if I hadn't been able to just do my own thing and do whatever I wanted.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  So cool.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Within reason.

• 8:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, tactically, I didn't even anticipate and I should have.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Vogue?

• 9:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that I was gonna mention Vogue just as like moving on and then I didn't anticipate and I should have that you would have been like, well, stop everything.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  We gotta stop here for a second, yeah. Well, and then when I went to New York Magazine next at The Cut, that was the transition because The Cut is New York Mag's women's vertical and so it made a lot of sense there.

• 9:18Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so in 2021, you wrote an article about MLMs. And I'm presuming that you thought that would be it, you would just kind of write an article, but what happened?

• 9:29Speaker 02

  I was aware of MLMs because in sort of the cultural amoeba, there have been a few things that have bubbled up and MLMs are in the culture and kind of have been.

• 9:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, what was the yoga pants one?

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Lula Row, that company, that documentary Lula Rich, which is great. So that had come out, a fantastic podcast called The Dream had come out. And there was a documentary in 2016 called Betting on Zero, which is about when Bill Ackman tried to short Herbalife, which was a long saga that actually started in 2012 and lasted through 2016. So there've been like a few moments where it bubbles and I was aware of it. And being a writer who was covering women at the time, and during 2020, I was covering labor and women because so many women were laid off and the COVID front lines were predominantly women. Because women make up the majority of the service sector of retail. Women are nurses, women are teachers.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  So these were the jobs that were really being discussed heavily. Right, they were essential workers. And so MLM was interesting to me in that respect. And these companies were really pitching themselves as a different type of job for people who were laid off. So that was the impetus for the article and I certainly wasn't the only one. There were a flurry of articles about this phenomenon. But when you are a journalist and you write an article, even a short one, you always do the background graph. More recently, I've been covering real estate. And so whenever I'm writing about something, I go back and you do the little quick and dirty of what's the deal with this?

• 10:59Dax Shepard?

  How'd we get here?

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Exactly, the how'd we get here paragraph. And in this article for MLM, I couldn't write the paragraph in the way I normally did because there are just so many contradictions right away about how it worked. And I couldn't understand why. There was this aura around MLM that was so scammy. And you literally look it up, the American government website says, "This is legal, but maybe don't do this." What is this? And how it was both so informal, it seemed like the Wild West, like the guy squeeging your car. Literally an informal economy. But then also you look up, "These companies are traded on stock exchanges and they're some of the richest people in America." And that dichotomy was also weird.

• 11:43Dax Shepard?

  Did you know going in at that stage that 7.7% of the country has at some point

• 11:50Speaker 02

  I did not.

• 11:51Dax Shepard?

  Over 17 million people have worked.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  And I bet that's an undercount.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:54Dax Shepard?

  Right. So when you think of any domain that would employ 17 million people, you'd think there'd be like a really rich history.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  There would be a definitive history. Because that's what we always go to, right, as journalists? And even if you're doing an update and rewriting a narrative, which happens every so often, you do have something to work with. Whether it's an academic book, or whether it's another journalist, or whether it's a film, you have something to go to. And that didn't really exist in a mainstream way about MLM. And that was just so bizarre to me.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Is it because you don't have to like register it? MLM is something we've placed on it. Those companies aren't acknowledging that they're MLMs, or are they?

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Now they're not.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Because it's almost a bad word.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  But multi-level marketing, the word was invented because pyramid scheme became a bad word. When they were invented, they used the word pyramid. For a long time MLM was the correct term. And then I would say maybe in the 2000s, they started using network marketing because it sounded more internet-y, more digital.

• 12:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it could be tech.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 12:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  More innovative, even though it's all the same shit. Multi-level marketing is definitely the official name. And if you Google the FTC, what they say about multi-level marketing, that is the official name for this type of business where you're recruiting people and you can make money off your team and stuff.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  On the Mary Kay website, would it say it?

• 13:16Speaker 02

  It says direct selling. So they've gone all the way back to the very beginning to try to seem like it's just like Avon, Dora. Door selling, just like in the colonial times. Yeah. Guy that would sell soap made out of whale blubber or whatever.

• 13:29Dax Shepard?

  So there is a tiny distinction we should make, I heard you say in an interview, between a pyramid scheme and MLM.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Should we?

• 13:37Dax Shepard?

  Or not, you tell me. If 17 million people have been employed in this racket, there will be many people listening that are either currently involved, will be approached soon, or have already been through it. And so what I want to attempt to do is not give them the defenses that have been set up on a silver platter by their employer. So it's not a pyramid scheme, right? They probably know why it's not a pyramid scheme. So I think it behooves us to acknowledge what their counters would already be. Does that make sense?

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great way to think about it because MLM, multi-level marketing has been able to tell its own story for 80 years, which is part of why, when I looked into it, there wasn't an outsider like a journalist or like somebody else telling that story because they've been able to do it for so long. So what multi-level marketing is supposed to be? These guys that invented it, they took that old direct selling model. As long as the United States has been around, since we were an agrarian republic before the Civil War, when everyone was basically a farmer, there weren't cities. Door-to-door selling has been around. We didn't have shipping lines and train lines and manufacturing centers and all the things that we have now. You know, there is a more rich history about these guys because they were very significant in bringing new products,

• 14:54Speaker 02

  new innovations, and also just connecting these rural households.

• 14:58Dax Shepard?

  I have an image of a man in like a 1940s Buick rolling up into the rural driveway and pulling his wares out.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  But it's always been a menial type of labor. It's always been filling in the gaps. It's not a job you want because there's not security. You're buying stuff for a wholesale price and you're selling it and you are subject to the weather. You're subject to the whims of like, if you encounter someone that day, it's had a bad day, who says, get off my doorstep. Stealing. Right, you don't get benefits, you don't have minimum wage. So that exists. And the men who invented MLM, who were salesmen in the 1940s, they invented.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  A scheme to avoid all the worst things that we just talked about. Which is that instead of being compensated on what you could actually sell, you would be compensated on what you buy. And then you could bring other people in under you, which was again, normal in sales, where if you were maybe a branch manager of a fuller brush outfit, you would recruit good salesmen and if they were great salesmen and selling a lot, you would get a chunk of their commission. Right. But it was always on what they sold. And so what these guys did was they said, what if it was just on what people bought? And whatever the people you brought in also bought, you would get rewarded based on that all the way down.

• 16:19Dax Shepard?

  Downline.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  And create your downline. And so what that does is instead of bringing in a bunch of salesmen and your cut from the company is dependent on what they sell and the weather and the mood of the housewives they encounter, what they're selling is that opportunity to bring in other people behind them and everyone is buying, buying, buying.

• 16:42Dax Shepard?

  The salesmen are the customers, not the customers.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Exactly. And at the time when it was invented, ostensibly that stuff was getting sold. So if this is really working, I'm Bridget, I'm joining, and Dax is my sponsor, or Upline. And so he sells me a thousand dollars worth of vitamins. And if I bring in you, Monica, and I get you to also buy a thousand dollars worth of vitamins, Dax gets a bigger cut. Uh huh. And on down the chain. In theory, if we're selling all those vitamins, we're sitting pretty, right? Right.

• 17:15Dax Shepard?

  That's right.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  Already, selling vitamins was not a way people were making a lot of money. And if in this system, all you have to do is show that you're buying and you're rewarded based on what you're buying, why would you sell them? You would just recruit. And so that's what happens. Interesting. Immediately, in the way they set up these companies from the very first one, you get more based on the bigger group buying.

• 17:37Dax Shepard?

  You're not incentivized to move product as much as you are incentivized to have more and more employees that are buying the product.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  To openly recruit.

• 17:44Dax Shepard?

  So a pyramid scheme actually doesn't have a product. There isn't a best case scenario where all the vitamins got sold. There's never been a product.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  There is a product, but it's just a cover for what is essentially a Ponzi scheme. So in the scenario we just discussed where everybody is just buying in. If I'm at the top and I get in early and I get a bunch of people under me and you get a bunch of people under you. So all of that group in my downline are buying a big amount of vitamins every month. I'm getting a big check from the company every month. But all of those people also have to recruit. And so what inevitably ends up happening is the people who get in later have a harder time. Because once everybody's buying, you're saturating your market. Maybe I had an easy time doing it. But now that this scheme has been bubbling, it started in Long Beach.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  And this is according to the company's own records, Nutrillite, which was the first multiple marketing company. Already the couples that start doing this within a year, they have to move. West because they don't have enough. People have already bought in. Interesting. And so it becomes a Ponzi scheme when the expansion is what is required to make money. And inevitably, not everybody has the equal chance of expanding. And so that's a Ponzi scheme and that's a classic, whether you're Charles Ponzi, who it's named after, who was just doing this banking scheme in the 1920s, or whether you're Bernie Madoff. What's actually expanding in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme is the group of people paying in. And so he's just making money off of more and more people paying in.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  And what inevitably happens is, once that stops, it collapses. And the people who got in early make out with the most money and the people who got in later lose. So that's a Ponzi. The problem, though, to answer your question, is that MLM.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Eventually, by the 70s, when a bunch of multi-level marketing companies turned out to be pyramid schemes, there was this problem of what is this and how does it work? And multi-level marketing ostensibly created these rules that keep it from being a Ponzi scheme or a pyramid scheme, a pyramid scheme being just a Ponzi with a fake product. You're moving product, but really you're not. You're just bringing people in. And so in the 70s, we get this distinction between a pyramid scheme, which is a system where people are rewarded by buying in. It has nothing to do with the retail product. That's the definition of a pyramid scheme.

• 20:11Dax Shepard?

  That's what delineates the two.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Exactly. And then we have multi-level marketing, which is something that operates the exact same way. And yet, through these rules, which are not enforced, it's not a Ponzi scheme. It is a gray area, and these were trade regulations based on an FTC case. So it's not like we have legislation that did this. This wasn't a Supreme Court case, right? We don't have a pyramid scheme law. So this is the only thing.

• 20:36Dax Shepard?

  Is there any task? Well, I mean, we'll get to that, I guess.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. So your question is the perfect one to ask because this is the problem. How do we deal with this thing that's been legalized in the United States? And yet, there's overwhelming evidence that there isn't a difference. My book really argues that there isn't a difference functionally.

• 20:53Dax Shepard?

  And I agree, functionally, for sure. And if you just model out it unimpeded, you would have to get to the conclusion, okay, well, then everyone's been converted.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Right. Every single person on earth would be selling.

• 21:05Dax Shepard?

  It has to collapse at that point. That's not the model of if everyone uses Netflix, Netflix crumbles. No, Netflix is the most valuable company in the world.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Right, because they're selling a product and the customers are paying for a product. This is people investing.

• 21:19Dax Shepard?

  So it starts with Nutrileight. So in your research, were you able to determine whether? The original two dudes, was it two guys?

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Always two guys.

• 21:30Dax Shepard?

  Did they foresee it in the nefarious way? Or did they believe in it?

• 21:34Speaker 02

  I love that question. When MLM was invented in 1945, and then it grows exponentially, this company. By 1955, they're celebrating their 10-year anniversary. They have this big celebration in Long Beach and they're millionaires.

• 21:47Dax Shepard?

  And roughly how many people are selling?

• 21:48Speaker 02

  At that point, there were between 30 and 50,000 people across the country, which is the lot.

• 21:52Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  At that point, in the United States, we've won World War II. The American era has begun and Eisenhower becomes president. And we really become American consumers for the first time in the way that we had a booming product, retail, manufacturing economy. And this is why housewives become kind of the canonical figures of the 50s because not only are they doing Leave It To Beaver-style domestic labor, they have all these products to help them. And that's why Tupperware, which was a door-to-door selling operation and was not multiple marketing for many years. Tupperware is a great emblem of that because it's all about homemaking, but it's a scientific product. It's made with plastics, which were new.

• 22:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  And so you have this booming economy based on products and selling. And the idea that we were all going to be good citizens by buying stuff.

• 22:43Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  That's how you could be a good citizen, was being a real consumer. There's a scholar who's named this the Consumer Republic. That's the idea. That was a political act to be a good buyer. And then, of course, salesmen then become these patriotic figures because we're all building this amazing economy. And the idea that that's how we would get abundance. So at that time, the idea that you could have a system based on everyone constantly buying and that there would always be more people to buy, maybe that was more believable, that there would always be more people and more markets and more expansion.

• 23:18Dax Shepard?

  I can minimally imagine them saying, well, all we've really done is flipped the order of events. Normally, we would give you the product. You would sell it. You'd pay back what you owed of it. We'd then give you your commission. And this is just you buy it. You right away are the holder of that. Whether or not that- Could have been their intentions or not. I could see where their argument would be like, I don't know what you're upset about. We just changed the order of this.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they really used the actual like exploding population of the US as their justification. There's a quote that one of them gave a newspaper that we really don't ever see people running out of people and markets because at that time it really was, you know.

• 23:57Dax Shepard?

  The baby boom.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  And California was exploding. It was just growing, growing, growing. And this idea that you could have a product that was brand new and that it would set you up for life.

• 24:07Dax Shepard?

  And what was their product?

• 24:08Speaker 02

  So neutrally, it was supplements, those vitamins.

• 24:10Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it's the original racket.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I kind of do weirdly lend them some credulity in that way. However, at least one of them, so Mittinger, who's one of the guys, he was a salesman selling funeral plots. I have to give a shout out to Bob Fitzpatrick, who's this guy who makes a lot of appearances in my book, and he's kind of the original Cassandra of this. He was roped into appearance scheme in the eighties and became obsessed and never dropped it. And he's really the first one to even have started to put these strands together. He's self-published. He's written two books on MLM. Without him, I would have never been able to draw the conclusions I did and go a little deeper than he did.

• 24:50Dax Shepard?

  And he remained a fan?

• 24:51Speaker 02

  He's a number one skeptic.

• 24:53Dax Shepard?

  Whistleblower, yee.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Yes. But anyway, he's the first person to put these two figures back on the map because they've been written out of that narrative we talked about. Because, like I said earlier, when these guys invented multi-marketing, they called it a pyramid plan because that's what it is.

• 25:08Dax Shepard?

  That's the structure if you look at it.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Anyway, Mittinger, funeral plot salesman, funeral plot selling. And this is like a slight detour, but one of the industries that at this time, in the thirties and forties, was booming in a very exploitative way. Before the sort of modern funeral industry, and the biggest one that everyone thinks of is Forest Lawn, which is here in Los Angeles. Before that, a funeral and funeral plot and burial was really not something that made a lot of money or that cost a lot of money. You did it through your church, did it through your union. It was a municipal thing. And in the twenties and thirties, it became this big business where guys would come to your house and say, oh, you You gotta buy a funeral plot now.

• 25:47Dax Shepard?

  You need to be buried next to your wife.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Exactly, and if you want a good afterlife, it got so scammy, they would sell you shoes to wear on your dead body.

• 25:54Dax Shepard?

  Ensure your safe passage.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  And of course, it's like, oh, can we upsell you next to the river, next to the stream or whatever, exactly. And some of them were land investment schemes, where it would be like, you could sell this plot. Incredibly exploitative and scammy industry. There were funeral plot rackets all around the country where the guys would like swarm in, sell all these plots and take the money and leave, and they wouldn't even build, exactly.

• 26:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's a great product to sell when you're not gonna find out about it for 30 years.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  And it's weirdly similar, I think, to vitamins, in that you're selling your future, and it's so unknowable. The way to sell it is to press on anxiety about your future and your health and your family. And no one can really say, actually, you don't need this. No one knows, right?

• 26:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We interview a lot of doctors, and they're all pretty split on supplements.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  Well, it's just like you said, we don't know about the afterlife. What if being by the stream made you happier?

• 26:45Dax Shepard?

  You better get those shoes, Bonnie.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Right, yeah. One of them, Lee Mittinger, we know, was a salesman in this industry. And actually, right before he starts Nutrileight, he is employed by a funeral plot company that's actually driven out of the state of Maine, because they're so exploitative and so scammy. These guys would go into towns around Christmas time, set up a nativity, and watch to see who's religious, to come visit it and take down the license plate numbers, to then go to those houses to sell funeral plots. We know this because this one Maine state senator got on the floor of the state senate and listed all of these things that this company had done. It was called Brook Lawn. And so, that's his last job before he comes to start.

• 27:29Dax Shepard?

  So he already has a ton of integrity.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Yes, William Costner, who's the other guy.

• 27:33Dax Shepard?

  These are great names.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Very old black and white movie. He was a Stanford-educated psychologist who trained under Louis Terman, who's one of America's foremost eugenicists. So at the time, in the 30s, when this guy's at Stanford, eugenics, the idea that certain characteristics are undesirable, largely black and brown people, and that we can weed out un- Productive inefficient characteristics and we should do that and we can create a better and more efficient society.

• 28:01Dax Shepard?

  Selective breeding like crops.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly, which of course in the 30s becomes really related to Nazism and that's why as a fad. It has academic departments and it's totally accepted and then very quickly in the lead up to World War II and after it becomes debunked as a pseudoscience and racist. Yeah. But this guy was steeped in that stuff. And then he starts this almost like eugenicsy Dr. Ruth.

• 28:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  Where he opens a psychological practice and does family counselling. Oh. And teams up with this other guy Paul Popeno who's a sort of more well-known figure in this space who's doing family counselling. For specifically white families and basically discouraging divorce, discouraging women living alone. So it's all very preserving the nuclear family. Yeah, white race. Exactly, and a patriarchal household and he's going on radio shows and doing occupational therapy. And it's very familiar now, he's doing lessons on how to do a job interview or how not to feel lost, self-help.

• 28:58Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  And doing it on the radio, so he's very good at manipulating people, that's his field. And he writes a self-help book that doesn't do very well. So when all of that context is in it, then.

• 29:08Dax Shepard?

  It's harder to extend generous assessment.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  That's why within 20 years, all of these companies are extremely problematic. Because we've now had them around long enough to see how they work. When they invented it, all people saw in MLM was people doing well. And that's because right away, the other number one invention of multi-marketing in addition to rewarding people based on what they buy. Is turning that around and calling them sales. So instead of Dax saying, oh, I sold Bridget. A thousand dollars worth of wholesale vitamins for doing a 50% discount, he says, I have $2,000 in retail sales, right away.

• 29:47Dax Shepard?

  Because I know it's gonna go down line.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  The hypothetical sale, they just report it as reality. And this is in their documents, in the documents we have on how it worked. It's just very open that they reported retail sales as a just estimate. Based on whatever discounts people were getting of what they bought. So that's why on that 10 year anniversary, Nutrileight says it's a X million dollar business, which at the time was huge. I can't remember the exact figure, because they're just counting everything that everyone's buying and assuming that it's all being sold. And that, to this day, is how the industry estimates its value.

• 30:20Dax Shepard?

  That was Enron as well, counting future projected profits.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's called speculation and it's responsible for many of our recessions over the last 100 years.

• 30:31Dax Shepard?

  Now, I have to imagine there are varying levels of success in these. I can imagine there are companies where a good percentage of it did get sold or not. And I'm curious, so the first one, Nutrileight, were they or it was bad right out of the gate?

• 30:46Speaker 02

  So Nutrileight ends up getting government attention, but not first from the FTC, which is the agency of the Federal Trade Commission that now goes after bad MLMs. But it was the FDA, because vitamins were the product and regulation was catching up to vitamins. They're making crazy claims. Alfalfa pills was his chosen product. The hero product. They could cure cancer. They can make you skinny. They could make you fatter if you were too skinny. They could cure of worry of small things. So the FDA comes in and says, no, no, no, this is violating all the rules that we do have. And they try to get them to pulp these booklets. They don't. It goes all the way to the state Supreme

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Court. And Nutrileight actually enlists this very famous lawyer named Charles Rhine, who was Richard Nixon's roommate at Duke. Oh, wow. And he becomes a quite prominent Republican. But anyway, they allow a bunch of claims through, and as long as they just make those claims, they don't shut down the company. So that's in the 50s. But what we do have from that court case are statistics on success in the company. And right away, under 2% of people enrolled in the company were even making the minimum to be considered like a leader.

• 31:59Dax Shepard?

  The current figure in your book is 99% of everyone that gets involved with an MLM will lose money.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. So this is the first one, and those statistics are like that.

• 32:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you just have to imagine walking into, I can't even think of a place that employs 100 people, but you go onto the floor of an assembly line and there is 100 workers in there, and you're thinking about applying, and the person says, oh, just so you know, only one guy here of these 100 is getting paid. You would never put in your fucking application.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  And that's why they

• 32:34Dax Shepard?

  That's staggering statistics.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  They don't recruit with those income disclosures. And at various times when the FTC has tried to regulate MLM, they do it often in that way. There will be an earnings claim rule that they'll try to pass where an MLM would have to give you all of those true earnings statements when they recruit you and make sure that you read it. And you'd have to take seven days to review it. So yeah, of course they don't recruit openly. But right away, the first company, the statistics are dismal.

• 33:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  For success.

• 33:02Dax Shepard?

  And then such an obvious parallel with the MLM, just the American ethos in general, which is as long as we can prop up the one person that did crush, it perpetuates the whole dream. Like, all you need is the 1% being very vocal that are making money to make you ignore all the people around you that are not.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  It's like when people are like, yeah, black people can succeed just as easily. Look at Obama.

• 33:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we got one guy.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:31Dax Shepard?

  And we're like, problem solved.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  And the idea is that if you're not doing well, it's your own fault. Right? Because everybody has an equal chance to buy in. When of course, it's not equal. Because if you're early in it, of course you have a better chance. But also, everybody's not a good salesman. It's hard.

• 33:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  And so it's just never been on equal footing. But when you're recruited, they're gonna say, oh, we do everything for you. You're gonna have amazing sales training and nowadays, podcasts, YouTube, audio, books. There's so much that they'll give you that will make you think you have an equal chance. But it's just never been that way. And of course, also now the problem is, we live in a world where you can buy everything. At big box retailers for cheap prices, every MLM is expensive. And it's always been that way. Nutrileight was very expensive.

• 34:19Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  Because all you care about is what they're buying. You don't care about what they're selling. So you need it upfront to be expensive. And of course, that means that even if people only do it for a few months, you're getting a lot of money, more than you would if you made it cheap.

• 34:34Dax Shepard?

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. Let's take a minute to thank our presenting sponsor, Audible. With Audible, the leading audio entertainment app, it's easy to discover new stories and ideas while going about your day.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and with over a million audiobooks, Audible Originals and more, it's basically impossible to run out of things to listen to. Plus, there's just something about audio storytelling that hits a little different.

• 35:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it really does, especially Audible Originals that feature performances from celebrities and top voices. It's like watching a movie in your head. Uh, one on my list is Treasure Island.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 35:13Dax Shepard?

  Uh, which is an Audible Original drama. It's A Timeless Tale of Pirates, Lost Treasure, Maps and Mutiny. What more could you need?

• 35:21Speaker 01

  That sounds really fun. I'm more of a psychological thriller girl.

• 35:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're dark.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm, I'm dark and I'm broody. And I've been hearing all about the author, Freedom McFadden. And I love that I can listen to her audiobooks on the Audible app when I'm commuting, taking my wogs, as you know, or just like doing laundry and chores.

• 35:40Dax Shepard?

  Well, with Audible, you can find the genres you love and discover new ones. There's more to imagine when you listen. And to make it even better, Audible has a special offer for Armcharries. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.com/dax. That's audible.com/dax. 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.

• 36:25Speaker 03

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• 37:07Speaker 03

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

• 37:22Dax Shepard?

  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. 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?

• 38:05Speaker 01

  They never are.

• 38:06Dax Shepard?

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

• 38:34Speaker 01

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

• 38:50Dax Shepard?

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

• 39:09Speaker 01

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

• 39:17Dax Shepard?

  You start feeling it.

• 39:18Speaker 01

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

• 39:25Dax Shepard?

  BetterHelp is now in-network with more than 125 health plans with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members. And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 20% off your first month. Sign up and get 20% off at betterhelp.com/dax. That's betterhelp, H E L P, dot com slash DAX. We get support from Instagram teen accounts. So we talk a lot on this show about how the world is different now than when we were growing up. And one of the biggest differences is obviously social media. And I think a lot of people wonder, okay, what's actually being done to make it safer for teenagers?

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Which is a fair question.

• 40:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so Instagram has got something called teen accounts and they come with automatic protections built in by default. So anyone between 13 and 17 is automatically placed into this experience. They get age-appropriate content settings, contact limits, so that by default, only people they're already connected to can message them. And time management tools, daily time limit reminders, and also sleep mode that mutes notifications from 10 PM to 7 AM.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Sleep mode is genius.

• 40:34Dax Shepard?

  Right? And here's the thing, for anyone under 16, a parent has to give permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. The guardrails are on, and Instagram keeps building new safety features to create age-appropriate experiences for teens.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  I am really glad Instagram's helping to give parents peace of mind with teen accounts.

• 40:54Dax Shepard?

  Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.

• 41:08Dax Shepard?

  There's also this deep irony, which is the appeal of it is totally understandable, which is be your own boss, which of course isn't really even true, because you were recruited and you pay up line. But you probably are disenfranchised with the broader options, jobs available, and you think that there's a kind of hierarchical cabal happening, and you've been excluded, and this is a license to not have to play by all those rules. And then you enter into the most structured hierarchical cannot move up scenario. It's just so ironic that the appeal of it, what it promises versus what it is, it's the exact opposite.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  You're locked into the downline, which is the most important thing, because it determines what you're gonna get. And that's why people these days, like the Amway downlines, for example, and the two guys who start Amway come from Nutrileight, they end up buying Nutrileight in the 70s. So Amway is functionally the oldest MLM in the world. Those families that did well in Amway and got in early in the 60s, they still are at the top of the downline. The Amway founders actually have a position in the downline, in addition to owning the company.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  And they still have it. And so it really is like a little dynasty. And this is why, in the past, the SEC tried to regulate MLM as a security, because it is like a position. If you bought stock in Apple in X year, the value is worth this. If you joined at this time, and your position is here in the downline, so all the downlines under you, even if you stopped recruiting long ago, but you have a recruiter that then built their own big downline. You're sitting pretty on your empire and they give those positions to their families.

• 42:53Dax Shepard?

  They're transferable.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  What?

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you can inherit an Amway business.

• 42:58Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, which of course is like the idea that you're selling products. That's a joke. You know, it just is even more evidence that it's not based on product sales because the idea that the Amway founders are selling products door to door.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  What is the technical product of Amway?

• 43:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so tell us the history of Amway.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  So Rich DeVos, as in Betsy DeVos, is her father-in-law. And Jay Van Andel, these are two high school buddies from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

• 43:26Dax Shepard?

  Uh-oh.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  That's where Dex is from.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  And they are from this very devout Calvinist Christian sect of the Christian Reform Church in Grand Rapids. DeVos and Van Andel, they joined Nutrileight around, I think, 1949, and they are very successful. They build a huge organization of bringing people in. And they then do what becomes a pattern in MLM, which is, as we've discussed, the statistics are as bad as, say, gambling. It's always better to be the house than to be a gambler.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Even the most successful gambler. So people start their own MLMs almost immediately. And they're really funny because some of the early ones are just literal copies. And these are in the book. The guy who starts one of the first ones, he calls it a Bunda Vita. And if Nutrileight was a little alfalfa pill, he's like, well, my alfalfa pill is from this special farm in Colorado, and you can only harvest it between midnight and 3 a.m. because of the moon.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  You know, it's like such bullshit, but it's exactly the same.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Now, if you're starting your own, do you still get the Nutrileight earnings as well?

• 44:34Speaker 02

  No. What they do is they take a lot of their team with them. So they start Amway with a built-in downline.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  And they name the company before they even have a product, which ding ding ding. Another piece of evidence that the product is the people.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Irrelevant, yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  They bring their downline over and they start Amway, which stands for American Way, shortened to Amway eventually. And they start with a product that's a liquid cleaner. And they were really prescient. It was a sort of natural cleaner. In the seventies, they're sort of ahead of the curve when people are starting to talk about chemicals. And that's one of their first products, but then it expands. And now you can buy anything from Amway. And when you join Amway, they encourage you to get rid of what you're buying from Costco or Walgreens. Buy Glistor as their toothpaste. They have the money to manufacture all of this? It's wild.

• 45:20Dax Shepard?

  They're just private label products.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  They're white label products. Amway does have a factory in Michigan, but they're marked up. You've never heard of Glistor, right? Right. Why would you?

• 45:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  But the idea that this is one of the top 100 private companies in the US? And you've never heard of the products? Yeah. That's weird, right?

• 45:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  So they start their company, Amway. They're incredibly good at recruiting and at the business opportunity. And they're just really good. And so they start doing that in Michigan. At the same time, another branch splits off. I described it, the alfalfa in the middle of the night. That's this company called Abundavita. Those guys are like, well, we don't like this. We're going to start a new one. And it's literally like a virus spreading. And there's a company called Nutribio. And that company really is probably the first pyramid scheme. Because it spreads across the country like wildfire. They're really good recruiters. They go into Canada. They spread, spread, spread. The authorities take notice and they are shut down within a few years.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  Again, by the FDA rather than the FTC because it's about the products and the claims of the products. And those guys then spread even more companies out here in California.

• 46:34Dax Shepard?

  Sorry, the parallels between religion are so amazing as well. It would be so logical for anyone in the mid-rung of this pyramid to recognize, all I got to do is take my downline over here and now I'm the top of the pyramid. So like what a natural thought.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  You just have to be a guru and you got to be selling a good story.

• 46:51Dax Shepard?

  And there's the proselytizing and the spreading. It just has all these parallels of American Christianity, which is, well, this is a new spin on it. Well, why don't I have a spin on it?

• 47:00Speaker 02

  De Vosse and Inno were raised in this Calvinist church, which has a really strong tradition of proselytizing and sermons. And in that tradition, the prosperity gospel is very strong. And the Protestant work ethic, that term by Max Weber, the sociologist, is coined when he comes to America and observes this group of people.

• 47:20Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 47:20Speaker 02

  The Calvinist Christians.

• 47:22Dax Shepard?

  That's who they were referring to.

• 47:22Speaker 02

  Not Puritans, not the like Massachusetts pilgrims, but these guys, because their work ethic is extremely strong. And they're doing it all to be more godly.

• 47:32Dax Shepard?

  Like Mormons.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Exactly. And this idea that accumulating wealth is actually gonna get you closer to God. It's not bad and it's not greed. Where you're gonna get into heaven is based on how industrious you are on earth. So they're doing it in Michigan, the Amway guys, these much flashier companies. There's one called Holiday Magic, which is amazing. They're selling makeup. So in the 60s, makeup becomes the product as women stream into MLM. At first, it was these Christian couples. And the Amway did the same thing, so NutriAmway, it's Christian couples. And then in the 60s, more women are entering the labor market and they wanna go to work, but they still have to do childcare. It's much harder to enter the sort of traditional wage labor market where you're working a nine to five or you're checking in in a factory.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  So they're doing work and they also need to supplement it. And so they want this flexible pitch, so that becomes the pitch. And then in the 60s, you get Mary Kay, which is probably the most well-known company for women. She starts her company in Dallas and she's this old grandma. And her story is that she was in traditional door-to-door selling when she just came upon this business model with her husband. They're about to start the company in 1963. She became the best salesman at her old company and they promoted a guy above her. There's this like pseudo-feminist thing, exactly. And her husband, well, he drops dead at the breakfast table the day before they're starting the company. So she's all by herself, so she murdered him.

• 48:59Dax Shepard?

  She was like, this is gonna be huge. I gotta get him out of the equation.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  I don't think that happened, but that origin story persisted for so long. And that was a niggling thing for me when I was doing my research, because I was like, well, wait. The other companies I described to you that nest, you can document it. How these guys took the company idea and then just copied the plan, which is what they called multi-marketing, like dun dun dun, truly. They just copied the plan with different products. And this lady in Texas, I'm like, but how did she figure it out? And I'm trying to have an open mind, so I'm like, maybe it does make sense from direct selling. And it isn't this specific fraud that's being copied all over the country.

• 49:37Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  But what I discovered was that her husband worked for one of these other companies, Nutribio, and it just was never, she always said her husband was a businessman and she never said what. Kind, and I was able to find his death record and newspaper records that showed he worked for this company, Nutribio, the one I said was the country's first pyramid scheme.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  So they're all like a nest and you can trace them all the way to Herbalife, which starts in the 90s. The guys who started Herbalife, they trained in these early companies in the 60s. And so it's all the same thing. And then what happens in the 70s is the government finally tries to crack down.

• 50:11Dax Shepard?

  What prompts that?

• 50:12Speaker 02

  At one point in the 70s, one in eight Americans had tried multi-marketing. Which is just crazy.

• 50:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, today that would be 40 million, 45 million people.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Tried as in they participated, they were selling or had enrolled to join. Because I've been to some Mary Kay parties.

• 50:31Dax Shepard?

  You have?

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, in Georgia?

• 50:34Speaker 02

  I'm from the south.

• 50:36Dax Shepard?

  And did you enjoy them?

• 50:37Speaker 01

  I would just be brought by my aunt or my mom. They give you all these samples, but they're like tiny things of lipstick and it's pretty wild.

• 50:47Dax Shepard?

  But it's fun, right?

• 50:48Speaker 01

  The parties are fun.

• 50:50Dax Shepard?

  It's interesting what's being sold. And then it gets really hard to evaluate what the people are really after and is it beneficial or not? It's multifaceted. I bet there are people who, yeah, they didn't make money, but they'll look back on that Mary Kay period of their life as maybe they loved it.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  100%, and I've spoken to them and they've lost thousands of dollars and they don't care.

• 51:09Dax Shepard?

  That's right, because it's a nice social network and they get together and the purpose is to get pretty that day and to feel special and all that. It's a tenuous business model in that I have to imagine the burnout, as you said, like one in eight people tried it. My assumption is... It's easy to try and you exploit your immediate circle of friends and family. And then, once that's over, you recognize it's gonna be impossible to sell to strangers.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  You make your A-list, which is your family and friends. Your B-list, which is your coworkers, maybe your acquaintances. And then your C-list, which is the girls you DM on Facebook or Instagram. And so, once you burn through those, very quickly, you will learn. And there's a woman who I document in the book.

• 51:51Dax Shepard?

  Monique?

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Yes, because I wanted to show the granularity of, uh-oh, you've spent this money. You've bought all these products. You've gone through these people. And immediately, your upline tells you, well, recruit. Build a team.

• 52:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  So even when you're struggling, now you're going out and saying, oh, join me. This is great. So immediately, you're lying to somebody else. And then, you're also lying to yourself, because you're telling yourself, okay, well, I am gonna sell it eventually. Because I'll build this team. That's what already is happening in the 70s, when this many Americans have tried it. And the guys, not Amway, they're smart and they kinda keep the buy-in amount small. The scamier companies like Holiday Magic I mentioned, which is San Francisco-based. And they're selling makeup. This other company that's amazing called Dare to be Great. And they're just selling self-help. Oh, wow. They're doing tapes. And he's this incredibly charismatic salesman with hair lip from the South, who is just an incredible speaker.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  And he starts in Holiday Magic. And he's so scammy, they run him out and he just starts his own thing. Anyway, these guys allowed people to buy in for $15,000, $10,000, just straight up. Which is very much red flag investment fraud.

• 52:59Dax Shepard?

  That's the gift circle model.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  Exactly. You're just buying into this position where you've bought the ability to access these greater cuts without even having to build the team under you. You buy in at this level and they'll assign people to you. Or, once you recruit a certain amount, then you can basically cash out. And so, they do that and very quickly attract the authorities. And that's when the Attorney Generals of all kinds of states, California passes its own chain selling, which is a Ponzi. That's one of the terms that comes up in the 70s. They passed very early legislation on that in 1968, one of the first states. But spreads like wildfire all around the country. And by 1971, the state's Attorney Generals, when they meet... Oh, you're supposed to say attorneys general.

• 53:43Dax Shepard?

  It's so stupid.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh, that's dumb.

• 53:45Dax Shepard?

  I just heard someone say that the other day and I was like, it sounds so wrong even though it's correct.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  At their annual meeting, they're like, this is the number one consumer problem in the country. Wow. The FTC as the federal, they're all kind of like, we have patchwork laws, we are trying to do chain selling. Is it consumer law? Is it an investment scheme? They don't even really know what it is. And that's when this term pyramid scheme starts being used to identify these companies. And you start getting the Better Business Bureau and local consumer orgs who are saying, this is a thing and this is bad and don't do it. And the FTC finally starts to crack down and they take down Holiday Magic, that one from San Francisco. And they take down, the Dare to be Great guy had a makeup company called Coscot. It's a play on Epcot. Oh, boy. Okay.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  Because Disney is a big thing in Florida at this time and this guy's from Florida.

• 54:36Dax Shepard?

  I love Epcot.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  Experimental prototype community of tomorrow. I never knew that. Epcot stands for something like that. But so Coscot is just that, but for makeup and he calls it Coscot interplanetary because he's going to eventually expand. Oh, this guy's great. So anyway, Coscot finally, when they take down that company for being a pyramid scheme, that legal precedent in 1975 is where we get the definition of a pyramid scheme.

• 55:03Dax Shepard?

  The Coscot test.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Exactly. So they decide how we're going to define a pyramid scheme.

• 55:08Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Then do they go into regulating and do they do a good job?

• 55:13Speaker 02

  So Walter Mondale, the senator from Minnesota.

• 55:17Dax Shepard?

  Mondale Farrar.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  Exactly. Who eventually ran for president and lost. He writes a bill, the Pyramid Sales Act, introduces it in 1972. It doesn't pass, doesn't make it out of, I believe, the Senate. On that front, legislation kind of fails. And then. The FTC with these two big cases has sort of set legal precedent, which enables them to go after other companies. And they finally set their sights on Amway in 1975. By this time, the Amway founders, DeVos and Van Andel, have become incredibly prominent members of the Republican Party. And they're donors from the right flank of the Republican Party. So what we now call the Reagan Revolution or the New Right.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  So during the 70s, when a lot of backlash because of how bad the economy was, that backlash helped fuel this more rightward revolution, where we were gonna fix the economy, not by doing more progressive stuff, but the opposite deregulation, we're gonna lower the tax rate, supply-side economics. All those ideas are being built and funded in part by these guys who are helping to start the Heritage Foundation. They're funneling their money into the US Chamber of Commerce, which is a main incubator of this. And of course, they're giving a ton of money to politicians. And Gerald Ford, who becomes president by accident in 1974, because Nixon steps down and then Spiro Agnew, who's his replacement,

• 56:44Speaker 02

  he's gotta go. And so Gerald Ford, this mild-mannered former football player from Grand Rapids, becomes president. Rich DeVos and Van Andel are close enough to him that they call him Jerry. Right? Uh huh. And so he is president when the FTC finally files its case against Amway. He eventually runs for president and loses to Carter. And so he's not president during the investigation. But then by the time the FTC is ready to make its decision, it's actually not the FTC making the decision, it's a law judge. That's how an FTC case works. An administrative law judge makes a decision, and the FTC then votes to uphold the decision. So it doesn't go to a jury or a trial or anything like that. And I guess I knew that, but I didn't really think about it, that it was just this one guy.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  Like, looking at the FTC's case, they make the case that Amway is a chain-selling operation, that people are buying in and they're making money off recruiting, and they're not making money on retail products, which is the cost-cut test. And by the time that guy's making the decision, that New Right Revolution has reached a fever pitch, and it's all about the FTC. The FTC is trying at this point to regulate basically big private companies. And they're going after advertising, like they try to make a children's advertising rule, where companies would actually be forbidden to advertise to kids under a certain age. We would not have sugary cereal ads, we would not have toy ads. Because there's all these consumer groups coming out and saying, you know, this is actually really harmfully affecting children. People flip out.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  Those big companies, also the advertisers, flip out. And they start running ads calling the FTC the national nanny. And they're blaming the FTC. And it feels very resonant today, right? Because it's like the FTC and the government, just a hotbed of cronyism. It's waste, it's fraud.

• 58:29Dax Shepard?

  The swamp.

• 58:29Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's all bureaucratic swamp, and we're going to drain it. And very much of it is focused on the FTC. So all of that's in the background when this guy is ruling on Amway. And those guys are in the press, in the vocal chorus against the government. They're very much backing Ronald Reagan, who's running for president. And so when he makes this decision, he basically puts his hands up and is like, "Okay, Amway, we accept your version of things." Which is that Amway has these rules, they're now known as the Amway rules, that keep it from being a pyramid scheme because they're all about retailing. So Amway tells the FTC, "Well, you have to have 10 customers a month." That's the 10 customer rule. Okay.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  You have to resell 70% of the items you buy before you can buy more.

• 59:17Dax Shepard?

  Is it self-reported? Yeah, it's not like anyone goes through their house.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. And then the third one is the buy-back rule. So they enable people to sell their products back if they don't sell them, which of course would deter a company from being a pyramid scheme because you're saddling people with all these products. And if they can just give them back to you and you have to give their money back, then that would be hard. Of course, nobody cracks Amway's books to see if this is actually happening, right? And in these other cases, they had opened the books of holiday magic in Cosco and seen how in Cosco... They didn't even have makeup for the first year, but they were in business, right? They had no products. So there was just all these ways that you could see people were really being rewarded, but based on recruiting. And Amway, they really just took the company's word for it. They accepted that the company said, "We don't keep records."

• 1:00:03Dax Shepard?

  Okay. We're the only company in the world that doesn't keep records.

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  Exactly. They don't keep the records that the FTC asked for, which would be like, what are people making? What are people buying? That's basically the only federal regulation that exists to this day. And because Reagan is so in bed with these people, and then they really backed Bush one, and by now the Amway founders are billionaires. They have a yacht. They're building new space for the RNC, the Republican National Committee. They're big, big donors. And so there's not a single prosecution against a pyramid scheme company through those two terms. So 15 years. We just have MLM exploding. And then we start going after certain pyramid companies in the 90s, but just one by one, one-offs. No one is taking on the business model itself. These hypothetical rules, do they actually exist?

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Has anyone ever tested them?

• 1:00:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Have you ever talked to anyone that worked for Amway that was able to get a buyback?

• 1:00:58Speaker 02

  Buyback rules have so many loopholes. You have to resell them after a certain time. You have to sell them back exactly in the same condition. You still are paying tax and shipping on the retail amount to send it back. So you're still losing money. So there's just so many different ways that the buyback doesn't work.

• 1:01:16Dax Shepard?

  It's also, I think, really important to imagine what state of mind someone would be in before they would initiate this buyback, which is it kind of parallels people who have been conned, and that being the most under-reported crime there is, is confidence schemes, because the person's embarrassed that they got conned, so they don't report it. Likewise, you would be at the point where you were saying, "I failed at this. I have all this shit in my closet." You're not at your most robust. You're feeling like a failure, and you probably want to forget this whole thing happened.

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  And in the olden days, when we hadn't gone online yet, you really were buying from... A person, your sponsor, you were actually going to pick up the products from their house. And so the buyback would go through them. And so the idea that you're going to go to your sponsor. Like your friend, really? Exactly, and most likely berating you to do better. Yeah. For weeks. Or like your mom. Exactly, that you're gonna go show up to her and be like, Mom, I failed, give me my money back. And it's her paying you. Now it's all done online, and so you're buying just from the company, they ship it to you directly. And the downline is all digital. So it's like if I buy from Monica in the system, that's what's important is that Monica brought me in. And so you're still getting paid based on my purchases, but you don't have to do the admin like that.

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  You could see why in the seventies and eighties. And there's a great, short-lived Showtime show that is basically a company that looks like Amway, called On Becoming a God in Central Florida. It starred Kirsten Dunst and Alexander Skarsgård. Ooh. So good, it was right before the pandemic, it was supposed to have a second season. Kirsten Dunst takes on the business and she really is the salesman and people are coming to buy from her. It's a great depiction of why it doesn't work in practice. And the FTC didn't go observe it in practice, they just accepted it. And so we're just downstream from that decision being the only thing that mattered.

• 1:03:05Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so after Mary Kay, I want to talk about Monique, because I think that's a really compelling story. And I want to save time for her. But where does Herbalife fit into this? And how big are these companies?

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  We don't really, there's so little oversight and they're private. And so even Herbalife, which is publicly traded, all their data is just on their distributors. And what the distributors buy. And they buy. So if you're investing in the sock, you're like, okay, they have data on that.

• 1:03:31Dax Shepard?

  I guess it would be inevitable, there's so many companies that have tried this, they're making so many different products. What's really comical almost is when one of them actually could be a business.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:03:41Dax Shepard?

  Like Herbalife.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  Could be AG.

• 1:03:43Dax Shepard?

  We have a friend who sells Herbalife.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  Uses it. I don't know if sells.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  We're getting a little ahead of ourselves, but Herbalife was fined by the FTC for being effectively a pyramid scheme. They didn't use those words, but in the FTC complaint, every function of pyramid scheme they were accused of and they were fined $200 million.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  And they had to restructure their business. And so now it is a little easier to be what's called a preferred customer in Herbalife and buy the products on a subscription model. But there's a lot of ways they get around that. And I've been watching them and I'm like, you guys, this is not good.

• 1:04:15Dax Shepard?

  But it is funny to think of someone starting it with the full intention of just having a business that makes money off of its employees. And then going like, oh God, we kind of have a hit product here. Should we also try to just treat it as a?

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  Be legitimate?

• 1:04:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  I do want to call out the fact that they're not employees, right? Which is really important because they're independent contractors. So that's another way. We don't have oversight here because these are not employees.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  They're like 1099.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  Exactly. And so that already just gives you so much leeway because these are not your full-time employees. You don't pay benefits on them. Herbalife is started in 1980 by this guy, Mark Hughes, who actually as a child is in one of these schools related to Synanon.

• 1:04:56Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I love Synanon.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  What's Synanon?

• 1:04:59Dax Shepard?

  Remember I was talking all about it? It was this guy that was from AA and he started a program to help junkies. They played the game, which is this group therapy where you scream at each other.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:09Dax Shepard?

  And it was so effective. People that weren't junkies wanted to join and yeah, great documentary.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  And there's just a huge overlap between MLM because to stay in MLM really does rely on a lot of coercion, which is why MLMs have been accused of being cults because there really is a lot of behavior that's similar to cults. And Keith Raniere, who started Nixium, learned Amway and Nixium was multi-marketing. Tony Robbins was basically taken in by this guy, Jim Rohn, who was an evangelical preacher from the Midwest. He was one of the original executives of that very first pyramid company, Nutribio, that I talked about.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  He was banned from operating a chain selling scheme in the state of California. So that was the seventies. He just takes a break and then comes back to Herbalife. They call him the international business philosopher. Or something and you can still see clips of his sales, basically sermons going viral on TikTok. Because he's very good at speaking about being persistent. But anyway, so him and a bunch of other guys who were involved in NutriBio and Holiday Magic helped Mark Hughes start Herbalife in the 1980s. He worked for a company called Golden Youth, which was run by this guy Larry Huff, who if you just Google him and Attorney General California, he's been banned from a million pyramid companies. I don't think he's living anymore, but Mark Hughes just learned the plan.

• 1:06:27Dax Shepard?

  They're just grifters, moved to a different market.

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  Exactly. And Mark being a kid in Sinanon who then basically pimped out. There's a little anecdote people love telling about him that he visited Ronald Reagan when Reagan was the governor of California and like got him to donate to this school. He was very charismatic, but it's all to make money. And clearly this is a very vulnerable guy. And Mark Hughes' whole thing was that his mom was an addict and died of basically being obese. That was the story they told at the time. I remember this at the eighties. So the way this is being talked about is really gross in a way. We wouldn't talk about it now. He's like, now I run this supplement company and it's all about lose weight now. Ask me how. In 2000, he dies himself of an overdose. So while he's telling this story of being like a health nut,

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  and Herbalife just explodes and everyone's doing it and celebrities and all this stuff. He has this mansion in Malibu and he dies of an overdose. And so Herbalife is just directly related to all these old companies.

• 1:07:26Dax Shepard?

  I want to talk about the Christian element of it. And in my own anecdotal experience, a lot of the people that have approached me with different MLM products, learned about it in church.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:07:39Dax Shepard?

  I want to cover that and I also want to cover this maybe MLM in disguise now with remote working. It's been rebranded a bit. So hit me with the Christian aspect.

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  From the very beginning, the NutriLife guys definitely considered themselves Christian. And interestingly, one of them was a Christian scientist.

• 1:07:55Dax Shepard?

  We just learned a lot about that the other day.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  And this idea that you can impact your physical world with your mind, that is like a huge part of MLM from the very beginning. associate themselves with this guy who writes a book called Thinking Real Rich. That book is all about literally meditating on money. It's like the secret. Absolutely. And this guy Norman Vincent Peale, who writes The Power of Positive Thinking in the 50s. He goes on to become Donald Trump's pastor in Manhattan. At Marble Clegia Church.

• 1:08:25Dax Shepard?

  I guess I'm just delighted he had a pastor. I didn't even really think there was ever a pastor.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  Loved this guy.

• 1:08:31Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  And this book was the secret of the 50s. Like it was a huge popular book and bestseller. And so they loved coming. And this guy is saying, do not think negative. It doesn't matter what's happening around you. You can literally just create your own reality. God, well, he's done it. There you go. From the very beginning, this is in MLM, like meditate on the car. Literally put a picture of the car on your fridge, put it in your drawer, think about the Cadillac. Vision board. Yes, it's very much a part of it. So that's the mystical side. And then on the actual Christian side, more of a traditional Christianity rather than Christian Science, which is only a 200 something years old. And American version of Christianity, the Calvinists in Amway hugely they're using churches.

• 1:09:11Dax Shepard?

  Well, it's a great place to network, right?

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  Exactly. And one FTC economist who I spoke to, who was raised in Grand Rapids. He actually met Davos and Van Nandal in church. So these communities are ripe for the picking.

• 1:09:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, prosperity, whatever they call it.

• 1:09:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:26Dax Shepard?

  Prosperity gospel. Plus community, plus person in front of you that has attained it.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's an Amway sect that I know that is operating out of a church in Brooklyn, in Long Island. And people are brought in thinking that it's something else. Because also these companies don't have to say it's Amway or say it's Herbalife or say it's whatever, because they're independent contractors. So you can use your own name. Oh, my God. You can call it like, I'm in Freedom Legends, or I'm in Sales Stars, or I'm in a group called Rise Legends. They're all really corny.

• 1:09:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  And so maybe you're in church and you're like, stay after for Rise Legends, where we talk about self-development. Then they'll start saying, well, you should buy mentoring and the mentoring is buying in.

• 1:10:11Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:10:18Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:11:03Dax Shepard?

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• 1:11:22Speaker 05

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• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  Well, it's also a group that is by definition not skeptical. Religious people. They are there to like buy in and take things at face value.

• 1:12:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, or maybe even if you are skeptical, you're taught not to voice that. Because I think a lot of people are way more skeptical than you think. But they're keeping quiet. And I actually spoke to so many people who just were afraid to be rude. And that's why church is such an insidious environment because people are supposed to be being kind to each other. When someone approaches you, your instinct is not to be like, whoa, this is scammy and weird. It's to be like, oh, we have this fellowship and to respond in fellowship and stay for the meeting.

• 1:12:37Dax Shepard?

  The whole thing's driven on being nice because the people who have pitched me, I've had a cut code knife demonstration done for me. I've had the acai berry pitch or whatever. Mona V.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  Mona V. Those are just Amway guys.

• 1:12:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I've sat through those and it's like, here's someone I love.

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  $90 acai juice.

• 1:12:55Dax Shepard?

  So another sad, unavoidable pattern you see is these tend to explode when the economy's bad.

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  From the very beginning, and that's why they exploded in the 70s because inflation was so bad. And unemployment rose so much in the 70s. So you just had people like pouring into these companies. They did it in the dot com boom in the 2000s where they said, oh, these are home-based digital businesses or network marketing. That's when they started using these different terms. And then, of course, during the Great Recession, same thing. That's when Trump lent his name to this supplement company, which was called Ideal Health. And they rebranded as the Trump Network. And he's literally saying, this is how you're going to survive the recession. If you've been laid off, do this. And then, of course, the pandemic being the most recent moment where they always get this little boom of participation because people are falling for this pitch of you don't have to have a degree.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  You don't have to have $10,000 to invest in some business. All you need is $1.99 to start your starter kit and then they'll immediately ask you for $1,000. You have more control. And that's the thing that I think is really what it's getting into is the desire for control. People are feeling buffeted by these forces that are way bigger than them. And they have this sense of feeling wronged and injustice. And that's what's so really scary and I think just so dark about it is that instead of channeling that to change something and to find others who are in a similar places you and maybe do something about it and organize. It's all inward and it teaches you to channel that inward and say, I can fix myself. I know, it's sad. And I can take myself out of this.

• 1:14:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the fuel source for it is really a sad one that I have great sympathy for. And you explicitly say it in the book, which is there's a significant portion of the country that has just great distrust.

• 1:14:46Dax Shepard?

  And I think it's largely driven by income inequality. It's like you're looking at all these people that have all this stuff constantly. And now it's only exacerbated by Instagram and other ways to monitor people's life. And there's just this collective sense of something's unfair here. And this seems like a way to right the scales.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  Hack the system. And what's so crazy about that and why the subtitle of the book is literally how the pyramid scheme shaped America is because those dynamics that we talked about where there's only a fraction of people succeeding and more and more people are participating, but more and more people are losing. That is actually what's happening to the economy in terms of income and how a fraction of just a few people in this country are making so much more and keeping so much more than everyone paying in. Yeah, it's a microcosm for our entire system. And what MLM does is instead of looking at that and thinking, hey, why is this the way that it is? And maybe we could do something about that.

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  It's keep going and maybe you'll get in that club one day. And we're all just trying to get into that fractional club instead of looking at the whole shape and saying, well, does it have to be this way? And is there a way that the distribution could be fairer? And what's so crazy and makes you kind of put your tinfoil hat on is the Amway founders and other people in multiple marketing have politically pushed and contributed to the policies that have made that inequality more stark, like bringing down the marginal tax rate, fighting any kind of wealth tax, which would take some of those profits and put them back in. And then tearing apart those social welfare systems that do give you something to fall

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  back on then and that are equal, that everyone has access to, whether that's, you know, they want to get rid of social security, pulling apart public education. All of that is to get rid of those collective safety nets that we all share and push this Wild West where you can make a lot of money if you're willing to exploit a lot of people.

• 1:16:53Dax Shepard?

  I hate to add this to the fire, but I was just at a conference, a lot of AI people and in that space. And I was saying to someone, all these products are making all these companies so much more efficient. People are wholesale cutting like 30% of their workforce already replacing with AI. And I was like, wow, if you model this out. The only human in the whole scenario that will benefit from this is whoever owned the company when we started making it efficient. And then it's over. Yeah, there's not even a way to enter and climb. It was already up here, but now it's gonna be a fucking straight line. There'll be one person with this enormous company that's being run by all this AI. It's gonna accelerate.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  I think that that isn't farfetched at all. And if we go all the way back to the beginning, to the people that invented this and this idea that one of them had about eugenics and about the idea that people are expendable and that some people are cogs in an efficient machine. That's not that far off from how MLM operates when it's successful. And that's why Monique's story is so important because you see how she is the most successful in that company when she is not caring about herself at all, just paying into the system and is functionally a cog. That's why MLM is so corrosive in that if you're not at the top, functionally, mathematically, you have to be losing.

• 1:18:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so Monique was in the Air Force for 17 years. She gets out, she's on her retirement. It's like a stipend. It's 1,200 bucks a month is her retirement from the Air Force, which is her rent. And she's wildly depressed. She's directionless. She's sleeping 15 hours a day. That career has ended and she's kind of at a loss of what to do. And someone, was it a church friend?

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  No, she was in Florida and she tried to join this business networking group where she would meet people and maybe get a job. And so this woman in Mary Kay meets her there.

• 1:18:46Dax Shepard?

  This woman asked her repeatedly, would you like a facial?

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, a facial, which is so weird because Mary Kay, women aren't facialists. Yeah, there's training. Yeah, there's training and like a certification. They just teach you how to put makeup on. She joins in 2013. In 2013, we already had Sephora and Alta. The idea that you're gonna buy makeup from this lady in a pink, it's just so antiquated.

• 1:19:05Dax Shepard?

  And she's super lucky, a pink Cadillac.

• 1:19:07Speaker 02

  She meets this woman and she gets the facial. And what I wanted to really make sure was out there was, it was a weird thing. She didn't love it, right? It was awkward. She thought this was weird. But then she invites her to this party and she doesn't know anyone in Florida. And so she goes and there's Food at the party and she's hungry. And they pray and she is looking to find her way back to religion because she was raised Baptist. And wants to feel closer to God again and Mary Kay is very explicitly Christian. And they pray and she just feels so much love and community and she signs on for that starter kit, which is a hundred ninety nine dollars. And then from there, we just chart her journey and right away.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  They get her to buy an eighteen hundred dollar wholesale order because they say that's what star consultants do. And they have all these phrases like you can't sell from an empty basket and all this stuff. And she is basically spending four hundred, two thousand dollars a month for a decade.

• 1:20:03Dax Shepard?

  And she's living on twelve hundred and she has rent.

• 1:20:05Speaker 02

  They encourage her to talk about how successful she's being. Meanwhile, they know that the VA retirement benefits are what's sustaining her barely. She's taken on a huge amount of debt and she has bought a house, but she's done it with a VA loan. So not with Mary Kay, but her uplines are convincing her. You tell your why in MLM, what are you getting out of it? Whether it's I get to be with my kids or I bought a house or I pay for school. Hers is I bought this house, even though they know that it's a lie. She's just spending, spending, spending and they tell her, keep your eye on the horizon. It's an investment. And nowadays, the whole entrepreneur self-help world really helps these MLM people.

• 1:20:45Speaker 02

  Because they'll just show you a video where some entrepreneur is talking about how he lost a million dollars in his first year of business. And so they're just telling you, don't think of it as a loss, it's an investment. Or an entrepreneur is saying how he never went to college because MLM is telling you, don't go to college, invest here. Small business. And so that's what they're doing with her the whole time.

• 1:21:04Dax Shepard?

  Does she build a downline?

• 1:21:05Speaker 02

  She really only recruits a handful of people and then those people recruit. And at a certain point, she reaches a rank where you have to have a group of twenty four. And Mary Kay has this crazy qualification where eventually to sort of get to the next rung, you have to all be buying several thousands worth a month. And you push, push, push, recruit, recruit. And it's all to then walk across the stage and get this sash and a recognition at this convention, which I went to in twenty twenty three. But everyone is just buying. Everyone knows it and Monique still to this day has all this stuff.

• 1:21:38Dax Shepard?

  She's supposed to have thousands of items?

• 1:21:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I would love to x-ray the whole country and to see like, how much of this product is sitting in the salespeople's homes? I bet all these people are just storing all this fucking product.

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  Well, that's why, especially if you know somebody that sells it, they're using it all the time because they have to, because they have so much around.

• 1:21:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, putting on the makeup three times a day.

• 1:21:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, and she really gets out of it, though, feeling love, feeling self-worth, feeling like she has a purpose and a place in this country. And so much of being American, right, is the idea that we can transform our circumstances. That's the American dream and that's the American story is we live in a democracy. We don't have royalty. We don't have these fixed hierarchies. We don't have nobility. Where you're born is not where you're gonna die. And so that's really what she's trying to do. And she's a black woman, raised in poverty. It's really incredibly noble. What she's trying to do is build something for herself. She's taking care of family members. She served her country. Exactly. She served her damn country.

• 1:22:41Speaker 02

  And instead, she's being funneled into this horrifying dystopia, just like you said earlier, where they're feeding off of her every month. And I do think there are some people, I know there are, some people that would come on and say, "I have a really successful business. I have all these recruits. They're really happy." But I really would challenge them, and I know they wouldn't, because they never do, but if you really open your books as a successful multi marketer and you see all your recruits and how much they're buying and how much they're actually making in an income, maybe you have a few on your downline who are also really successful recruiters and they're making money. But if you really open your books, you're just gonna have masses churning in and out, just like her, who are buying, buying, buying.

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  And your success is reliant on that.

• 1:23:28Dax Shepard?

  Their failures.

• 1:23:29Speaker 02

  And I would just challenge those people to really look at, what is your success actually built on? If it requires people to fail. Again, I think those people would say, "Well, they weren't good at it."

• 1:23:39Dax Shepard?

  Where at, I think this inflection where it's like being a country of just go get yours. Is kinda untenable and heartbreaking and has tons and tons of wreckage surrounding it. But there are still a lot of us, even where I came from in my very blue collar town, is survival. You just had to fucking get ahead. Yeah, if someone was failing below you, I don't think there was an ethical dilemma in that. Everyone's on the bottom, we must crawl out of this barrel and you gotta get yours. And it's a defendable point of view if you're

• 1:24:10Speaker 02

  Well, if everyone's at the bottom.

• 1:24:12Dax Shepard?

  If you're a desperate person. So I think a good chunk of the country still feels like, yeah, get yours and that's it.

• 1:24:20Speaker 02

  Absolutely. This is why MLM is such a useful story to be telling. And first of all, it's not just right wing. MLM has been bipartisan for a long time. The FTC finding of Herbalife that allowed the company and the business model to stay around was under Obama. This is not just like a Reagan thing or a right wing thing or Bush. And the reason I think it persists is because that story that this American-style capitalism and the thing that we do in the free market that sort of meets out everyone's fate is ultimately fair and just. And we are in a democracy and we are living out that dream. The meritocracy is still working. The people that have so much more than everyone else, they got there fairly and that it's

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  not something that should be possibly changed, right? We shouldn't have a class war. We shouldn't even have a class discussion of whether this is fair. That's a really useful story for all kinds of elites on both sides of the aisle and always has been because the booms and busts that you asked about, like why does MLM flourish in a dark economic time? We have these moments where capitalism is not working for all of us in the way that it's being practiced here. It is creating that sense of unrest and that things are not fair and things are rigged. And MLM just, again, seeds on the ground among individuals in their living rooms, in their churches, that it's still fair. You just keep grinding, just keep going. It's gonna work out for you.

• 1:25:44Dax Shepard?

  It'd be interesting to see because mostly in the book at least, this has historically really preyed on women. Uniquely, but it's interesting to imagine the flip that is ahead for us when you have 20 some percent of 20 year old boys unemployed.

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  And you could say that crypto is the MLM for men when they're not just straight up gambling and being addicted to gambling sites and just doing lotteries, which is why just bypass the whole thing altogether. And you know, what you were talking about, basically the Gilded Age where get yours was a matter of policy.

• 1:26:22Dax Shepard?

  It was your moral, actually.

• 1:26:24Speaker 02

  Right. We were in the Wild West of those robber barons. The reason they're called the robber barons is they were robbing. They were fighting. They were calling police on horses and shooting into crowds of workers when they were doing strikes, right? This is before the New Deal, before the sort of modern era of worker employer relations where we had some boundaries on what private companies and capitalists could do. And that's why we have child labor laws. That's why we have the right to organize a union. That's why we have all of these things. And for a while after the New Deal, in this American era where MLM was conceived, that stuff was something to be prideful about. Ronald Reagan was a spokesperson for GM when the union at GM was really important. And of course, there

• 1:27:08Speaker 02

  were all kinds of ways that GM was always trying to undercut the workers because of course their interests are different. But like, the idea that there were wage laborers who had rights was a point of pride and was something that we then built the welfare state on those rights too. If you were GI, you could go to college on the GI bill or you could go to a public school. These are things that everyone has access to. It's the opposite of get yours. And of course, again, lots of flaws in all of these systems, lots of flaws in social security, but the idea of it is that we all have access. It's not Darwinian. It's not you only get it if you can get it. And so, these guys who built MLM, already in the 40s, they're trying to reverse that. They're trying to then seed

• 1:27:49Speaker 02

  this idea that actually, no, no, no, let's go back to the get yours. Let's go back to the Wild West. They're very honest that they want to rebrand. This free, free, free market deregulation that Wild West rebranded as it's not a place where everyone's being hurt, it's not a violent place, the ferry boats aren't crashing. But actually, it's like, that's how we're gonna be freer. That's how we're gonna get democracy.

• 1:28:12Dax Shepard?

  Independence.

• 1:28:13Speaker 02

  Exactly. We will all benefit. And of course trickle down, literally, that's the idea, right? That if we let these people accumulate as much wealth as possible.

• 1:28:20Dax Shepard?

  You all be rich.

• 1:28:21Speaker 02

  We will all get it.

• 1:28:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:23Speaker 02

  And that's what's happening. And again, not to put the tinfoil hat on, but so many people seem ready to accept that story. Yeah, where is it? So many people. It's only in America where you have people paying into Amway $400 a month. I talked to one woman who, by the end, she and her husband, he worked in an oil field. They had a little baby. They're budgeting $20 a week for their groceries because of how much they're spending on Amway. And they are looking at the fact that the Amway families have a yacht. They have their own family office because they have so much money. Their kids will never work. Their kids' kids will never work. This is an American dynasty. These are royals. And they're just thinking, I'll get there one day. They're like, I'm so proud of this yacht. And of course, this woman has since left and she's basically done cult deprogramming.

• 1:29:06Speaker 02

  But like, only in America, I think, are you not getting in the streets being like, excuse me? Yeah. This will not stand. We're just all getting back to posting, being like, hey, guys, I have an amazing offer for you. This incredible opportunity.

• 1:29:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:20Speaker 02

  Like, that's where we're at.

• 1:29:22Dax Shepard?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:29:23Speaker 02

  This is a wild topic.

• 1:29:24Dax Shepard?

  It is a wild topic. I'm delighted you wrote this book and it is crazy how little existed on this topic as you endeavored it.

• 1:29:32Speaker 02

  I feel like it's five books because there's so many little rabbit holes to go down. And I hope people write more books on this because I feel like I have scratched the surface.

• 1:29:39Dax Shepard?

  We give a very thorough history of MLMs, but your book is just full of personal stories that are really, really compelling and heartbreaking.

• 1:29:48Speaker 02

  And of course, I went to the convention, saw this in person and spoke to a corporate employee. This was the Mary Kay Convention. And she said, we don't track what people are selling. We only track what they're buying. It's very clear that this is the way that this is set up. And I just think more people should know that. Yeah.

• 1:30:05Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I want to leave everyone on this. In a different interview, the interviewer asked you, what would you recommend people do when they're getting pitched these? And it may be a little bit counterintuitive, but your advice is you're doing them the best favor by not buying it now. You're accelerating. Please elaborate. I'm not gonna botch.

• 1:30:26Speaker 02

  When people humor their sister or friend and buy one of these products, they think they're helping them out, but you're just prolonging their involvement. Because if you're in the A-list, once they get through you and then the B-list and the C, they're gonna just run out and they're gonna recruit and maybe stay longer or buy more. Because of course, what's documented in the book is also people just buy. So even if you can't recruit, you'll buy for somebody and just put it on your credit card if they can't afford it, just to get the reward.

• 1:30:53Dax Shepard?

  Keep your sheet looking good.

• 1:30:54Speaker 02

  Exactly. Keep your place in the downline. And so contributing at all is keeping that hope alive. I think the faster somebody sees the reality, the faster they will get out.

• 1:31:02Dax Shepard?

  Direct and obvious parallels. You shouldn't loan someone 30 bucks to get high again. You wanna try to accelerate them having to confront that.

• 1:31:10Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's all gamified. And I think that that impulse has been increased in all of us to respond to a gamified environment. So we're all even more vulnerable to this idea that we're gonna get ahead. And so stop it at the pass and just don't buy it.

• 1:31:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Well, Bridget, this has been incredibly interesting. Everyone should check out Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America. It's kinda like a glimpse of an aspect of our country that is very much fractal of our whole setup. It's got larger implications than even MLMs. So, thank you so much. This has been a blast.

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:31:43Dax Shepard?

  Always take a leave D or whatever one you took before interviews. You were on fire.

• 1:31:47Speaker 02

  Claritin D.

• 1:31:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:49Speaker 02

  Speed works for me, I guess.

• 1:31:50Dax Shepard?

  Always be on Claritin D. All right, be well.

• 1:31:56Speaker 04

  Hi there. This is Hermium Hermium. If you like that, you're gonna love the fact check with Miss Monica.

• 1:32:03Dax Shepard?

  Is there places you wouldn't wear that shirt? Be honest.

• 1:32:07Speaker 01

  There's nowhere I wouldn't wear. There's nowhere I wouldn't wear this shirt.

• 1:32:10Dax Shepard?

  A funeral? A wedding? A christening?

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  No, I'd wear it to a christening. I would wear it to a wedding with a big ball gown skirt.

• 1:32:24Dax Shepard?

  Oh, and a Rolling Stones t-shirt?

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, and in a funeral, I'd wear it under a black.

• 1:32:32Dax Shepard?

  Blazer?

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  Blazer and black pants.

• 1:32:34Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  But this person who's passed um really appreciates the Stones.

• 1:32:42Dax Shepard?

  That was their favorite band. That's a high percentage chance to take. Um, I have bad news to share with you.

• 1:32:49Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:32:50Dax Shepard?

  I don't know what the solution is. I don't know if I have to move and put the house up for sale or order another engine, but I had made a promise to my family that they would not be out on the lake and come across anyone with a faster pontoon boat.

• 1:33:06Speaker 01

  Uh oh.

• 1:33:07Dax Shepard?

  And that, I can't say that anymore uh in good conscience. You know, was exploring, saw someone with a huge yard, right? I'm like, oh my God, that person has thirty acres on the lake. The house was astronomical, so we're just snooping around the shore and looking at this impossible piece of property and how do they mow it? You know, those are the kind of questions you ask on a boat. Like, how are they mowing that? That looks steep on the side. I'd like to somehow be out here when they're mowing it next time. All that to say, we come around the around this huge peninsula and we come around the side to where we see where their boats are at. And oh my God, there it was. Twenty-five foot pontoon boat.

• 1:33:52Dax Shepard?

  I have one four hundred horsepower V-ten. This had two four hundred and fifty horsepower outboards. Nine hundred horsepower compared to my four hundred. So I don't, I don't know what my move is. I don't know if I should sabotage his boat, ask him to move, sell our house, order. I told Aaron I was gonna order a five hundred and one horsepower engine for one side.

• 1:34:21Dax Shepard?

  So that I have one horsepower more than that. Man or woman, I shouldn't assume it's a man.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  You gotta get off the treadmill, man.

• 1:34:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it can't be number one.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  We can't all be number one. We can't all be the best. He's the best. And that's that.

• 1:34:35Dax Shepard?

  Well, okay, minimally, I'd like to put a small tracker on the boat so that I know if he or she is out on the lake, because I would like to avoid being out there. At any point that they're out there.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:34:49Dax Shepard?

  Okay?

• 1:34:50Speaker 01

  I don't understand, but I, I hear you and I, I, I respect your words. Okay, when I come visit, can we watch What Lies Beneath? And really get in the lake mood?

• 1:35:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh, for sure. We could do. We should really think about all the lake movies. We could do On Golden Pond. I guess that's what's supposed to be good.

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  That feels boring.

• 1:35:14Dax Shepard?

  It sounds like a homework, doesn't it?

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  On the waterfront. Yeah, I don't want to do that.

• 1:35:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, on the waterfront, not like Marsh, Longshoreman.

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  You know I'm against that movie.

• 1:35:24Dax Shepard?

  So just What Lies Beneath, I guess?

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah. Or isn't in, um, I, I don't think I've seen Sleeping With The Enemy, but doesn't she like

• 1:35:35Speaker 01

  learn how to swim?

• 1:35:37Dax Shepard?

  Oh, to escape him?

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's secretly like learning how to swim.

• 1:35:43Dax Shepard?

  Is that Julia Roberts?

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:45Dax Shepard?

  And she moves to like a southern town, right?

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  I don't know, but I think we need to watch that.

• 1:35:50Dax Shepard?

  I'll watch it.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  Have you heard about the dock on, um, the poop boat, like a cruise where everyone pooped everywhere?

• 1:35:59Dax Shepard?

  Shitwreck or something? I keep seeing it, um, pop up on new releases on Netflix. You haven't watched it?

• 1:36:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have not watched it because it feels like how dare I spend my time? My precious time watching

• 1:36:16Dax Shepard?

  A disastrous.

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  Some people pooping everywhere.

• 1:36:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I watched the trailer and they're in a very functional cruise ship pulls up alongside of them to like, I guess ferry on some supplies. And the other cruise ship is like blasting music and partying. They're having fun. They're on a cruise. And the other cruise is there's no toilets and they're all staring at the partying boat. And they're not happy that they're partying. And then I thought, well, what should they do? Be miserable because you're miserable? They should party.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  Right. Also, what happened? Were they stuck out there? Like, why were they stuck?

• 1:36:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think there was just like a lot of mechanical failures all at once. Yeah.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  I guess I should watch it.

• 1:36:56Dax Shepard?

  Uh, let's, let's both aim to watch it or you could watch it when you come.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Okay, let's add that to the, oh, that's a water.

• 1:37:02Dax Shepard?

  The kids are intrigued because of the poop. That's got their interest peaked. Yeah.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, obviously. Um, I have a question.

• 1:37:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  For you.

• 1:37:13Dax Shepard?

  About my neighbors?

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:37:14Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:37:15Speaker 01

  Two questions. In the similar category. Do you say, when you, when you hear the phrase, it's all downhill from here?

• 1:37:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:25Speaker 01

  What does it mean to you?

• 1:37:26Dax Shepard?

  Well, it's interesting. I think we have talked about it. It sounds good.

• 1:37:32Dax Shepard?

  And also bad. It's a very confusing saying.

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  So how would you use it?

• 1:37:37Dax Shepard?

  Well, it's all downhill from here is positive. It's all downhill is bad.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  Oh, I see. Okay.

• 1:37:45Dax Shepard?

  Isn't that interesting? Like from here means we've peaked. We're at the peak and we're gonna get to coast down.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:37:51Dax Shepard?

  But it's gonna be all downhill. Sounds like things are gonna get worse.

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  Right. And in some ways, even if you say it's all downhill from here. It still could be worse because it's like you're at the top of the ma, you're at the top.

• 1:38:05Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:38:06Speaker 01

  And so it's all downhill from here.

• 1:38:09Dax Shepard?

  Everyone wants to be at the top, but I like a valley. I like a valley a lot. I think I'm in the Ohio River Valley or the Tennessee Valley. I like it.

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, but then you have, you're in the valley, but you have to get, then you have to climb to the top to get to the next.

• 1:38:26Dax Shepard?

  No, I'm all done. I don't have to climb to the top anymore.

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  Oh, you just live in the valley.

• 1:38:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's what's like, that's the transition in life I'm at. There's no more peaks, just valley living.

• 1:38:37Speaker 01

  I think I use it negatively. I definitely, I know I do. I've never said it's all downhill from here in a positive way.

• 1:38:46Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  Like, ugh, it was all downhill from there.

• 1:38:49Dax Shepard?

  It was all downhill from there.

• 1:38:51Speaker 01

  And it was bad. And I say it like, ugh.

• 1:38:53Dax Shepard?

  Ugh. Okay, back to my neighbors who you wanted to know about. They're so friendly. We have been delivered two pies, just like you would expect from the south. They delivered two completely delicious, warm peach pies.

• 1:39:14Speaker 01

  Wow, that's a ding ding ding. I made a peach galette yesterday.

• 1:39:18Dax Shepard?

  What's a galette?

• 1:39:19Speaker 01

  Free form pie. We've already discussed this. You refuse to commit it to memory.

• 1:39:22Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  Um, the inside is a little open, but there's crusts on the sides.

• 1:39:27Dax Shepard?

  That sounds nice. You made another one of those yesterday?

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  I did. I'm gonna serve it tonight for mahjong.

• 1:39:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you're, are you hosting or attending?

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Hosting. And actually, when we were on the trip, I got a real BMI bonnet for mahjong. I forgot it.

• 1:39:40Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:39:40Speaker 01

  Forgot my set. And I was really looking forward to playing it on the trip with people.

• 1:39:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  And so I got really upset and I was like, we gotta, we have to find mahjong. You can't find it. Like, if you,

• 1:39:54Dax Shepard?

  It's not just for sale, yeah.

• 1:39:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I, so I was calling all these antique stores to see if they had any mahjong sets.

• 1:40:03Dax Shepard?

  Did you look on Amazon?

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  Stuff there. I did, but it wouldn't deliver by then.

• 1:40:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:40:07Speaker 01

  By the time we left. It wasn't like next day delivery. So I, we, I call all these antique stores, no one has it, but they're all so friendly. They're like, sorry babe.

• 1:40:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  And, and then we go on Facebook Marketplace, never been on it before, okay?

• 1:40:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  But we go on, there's somebody there in Palm Springs with a mahjong set that we could get.

• 1:40:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:31Speaker 01

  But we didn't wanna go drive to get it, right? So we were gonna send an Uber.

• 1:40:37Dax Shepard?

  Oh wow.

• 1:40:37Speaker 01

  To get it.

• 1:40:38Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  And bring it to us.

• 1:40:39Dax Shepard?

  I would've been most excited about going to the person's house and seeing who's selling the mahjong.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  Well, we were just having too much.

• 1:40:46Dax Shepard?

  You're having too much, okay.

• 1:40:48Speaker 01

  So this created a dilemma, another dilemma like downhill from here. Where the lady who was selling it was like, okay, you need to sell me before I put it in the Uber.

• 1:41:02Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:41:02Speaker 01

  And we were like, no, we're not selling until we have it.

• 1:41:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh wow.

• 1:41:08Speaker 01

  And I, and I understand both points of view.

• 1:41:11Dax Shepard?

  Sure, yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:13Speaker 01

  Because I get, she's like, I can't just put it in an Uber and not have money.

• 1:41:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, but then for us, same situation.

• 1:41:20Dax Shepard?

  Right. So what'd you do?

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  We didn't follow up.

• 1:41:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay, okay. And at that point, they must've thought, well, yeah, they were trying to scam us out of our mahjong.

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:32Dax Shepard?

  But that's pretty funny to assume someone would send an Uber to steal a mahjong. How much was the mahjong set? Are they more than I think?

• 1:41:40Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, my current one is like $400.

• 1:41:43Dax Shepard?

  Whoa, really?

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's expensive.

• 1:41:47Dax Shepard?

  How would they want on Marketplace?

• 1:41:49Speaker 01

  Wasn't, I, I think it was cheaper, I think it was in the like, between one and $200 range.

• 1:41:56Dax Shepard?

  Okay. I'm just killing a fly or attempting to. I don't have enough rag. You see what little bit, bit of rag I'm working with? That's not really enough to kill.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that looks like Hermes.

• 1:42:07Dax Shepard?

  It's to clean my glasses, not to kill flies.

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  Anyway, so that was a big dilemma, which led to no mahjong. And so I'm playing tonight and there'll be a peach galette.

• 1:42:16Dax Shepard?

  Oh lovely. And does it get better or worse in the fridge over the night?

• 1:42:20Speaker 01

  This is the big question. I'm scared it's gonna be bad, so I also have another pie crust in the wings, waiting in case I need to make that tonight. Did you eat the pie that the neighbors brought?

• 1:42:34Dax Shepard?

  Yes, it was delicious. The pies were so fresh. I mean, the peaches were so fresh.

• 1:42:40Speaker 01

  Listen, you are shaking your head no, and we are on video.

• 1:42:44Dax Shepard?

  Well, I ate around it, like Jess. I ate the peaches. I couldn't have the other stuff, but I ate around it. And the peach, and she seemed fine with that.

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  Oh, she came over and watched you eat it?

• 1:42:57Dax Shepard?

  No, the pie.

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, the pie lady watched you eat it?

• 1:43:00Dax Shepard?

  No, no, no, just the pie felt fine with how I ate around it.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. Listen, just so you know, I probably shouldn't break this to you, although maybe you're allowed to have it. Those peaches probably had cornstarch.

• 1:43:14Dax Shepard?

  Not these ones. These were so fresh.

• 1:43:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, they did. No, no, that's how you make it. Trust me, I've made two in the past like two weeks.

• 1:43:22Dax Shepard?

  Okay, do you remember we just had a chef on?

• 1:43:25Speaker 01

  Yes, Curtis Duffy.

• 1:43:26Dax Shepard?

  Yes, Curtis Duffy, the brilliant chef, and he talked about that he would have his staff make him Chocno bakes.

• 1:43:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:43:33Dax Shepard?

  So I have been talking about that out loud and saying how bad I wanted Chocno bakes with almond butter.

• 1:43:38Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:43:39Dax Shepard?

  And Kristen made them.

• 1:43:41Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:43:41Dax Shepard?

  And here's a shocker, they're better even with almond butter. I was expecting to not have the thing from my childhood that I craved so much. No, it's even better with almond butter. You should really look into making some Chocno bakes with almond butter. You wouldn't believe what a hit they are.

• 1:43:57Speaker 01

  I don't think I've had a Chocno bake.

• 1:43:59Dax Shepard?

  Oh, well, I bet you'll have someone you visit here, because I got a hunch these are gonna be on high rotation. My diet has gone in the toilet now that I'm in the South. That's, I think a lot of people would have predicted, could have predicted that.

• 1:44:11Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:44:13Dax Shepard?

  But yes, I've been on a real sweets train. We got the peach pie I ate around, then I got the Chocno bakes.

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  You barely ate, okay.

• 1:44:20Dax Shepard?

  The whole thing, ate the ass of, and then.

• 1:44:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:44:24Dax Shepard?

  And then I've had Dairy Queen. There's a Dairy Queen in town.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  Mmm.

• 1:44:28Dax Shepard?

  And then there's a really cute new custard shop. Frozen custard.

• 1:44:33Speaker 01

  Called?

• 1:44:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it's got a name like Jimmy's or something. I don't know. It's very popular.

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  It's not with a G?

• 1:44:40Dax Shepard?

  Maybe.

• 1:44:40Speaker 01

  Oh, it's new.

• 1:44:41Dax Shepard?

  It's brand new.

• 1:44:42Speaker 01

  There's a frozen custard place that starts with a G in the south that's good.

• 1:44:46Dax Shepard?

  Well, this could be it. This appears to be a chain, but it's brand spanking new. And there is, that's another fun thing, Monica. Line around the, out the door, you know, I don't know how long the line was, maybe fifty feet, sixty feet. There's a good forty-five people in it. And I pulled up, normally in LA, that would drive me nuts, right? I'd be like, oh, I'm not going. I'm not gonna wait in line for an hour. And I was like, oh, I'm excited to wait in line. And, and it was so fun. And I just, people watched and everyone was out to have an ice cream. So everyone was in a good mood. It's kind of like being at Disneyland. Remember when we took David to Disneyland? I'm like, where else can you go where people decided they're gonna have a great day? Well, that's what was happening at this place. And I realized I loved hanging in line and Delta did too. We both had a really good time.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Okay, well, this is the opposite of what we were talking about with In-N-Out where I said, yeah, part of it is the line. That's part of it.

• 1:45:39Dax Shepard?

  You're right.

• 1:45:39Speaker 01

  And you said, no, and now here we are.

• 1:45:41Dax Shepard?

  I know. And now we have a different circumstance and I'm seemingly having the opposite of opinion.

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  Very similar circumstance, but opposite opinion.

• 1:45:51Dax Shepard?

  You're right.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  Just saying.

• 1:45:52Dax Shepard?

  There's no difference, other than people that go to In-N-Out are often in a great mood, but they're off, they're often also just there because they're hungry. Maybe they're even cranky because they're hungry. This is

• 1:46:06Speaker 01

  I'm gonna get In-N-Out today.

• 1:46:07Dax Shepard?

  We've already eaten and now we're going to get dessert. And it's like what we're doing tonight and we're outside.

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  I understand.

• 1:46:15Dax Shepard?

  I love it.

• 1:46:16Speaker 01

  I do. I love, I love a ice cream, a summer ice cream moment. I love a summer ice cream moment. Do you guys have Brewster's there?

• 1:46:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I haven't seen one, but I saw Zaxby's, your mom's restaurant. Doesn't your mom love Zaxby's?

• 1:46:31Speaker 01

  No, that's mine. I love Zaxby's.

• 1:46:33Dax Shepard?

  Oh, we have one.

• 1:46:34Speaker 01

  I love Zaxby's. Yes, it is southern. Fried chicken.

• 1:46:38Dax Shepard?

  But what's your mom love, loves? What's your mom's cafeteria? I was talking about it yesterday. I was looking at Zaxby's. Delta said, is that a such and such? And I said, no, I think it's a cafeteria. And then I think my father-in-law said, I think it's chicken. And there's a big, big picture of a chicken on it.

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  Chicken on it. Yeah, and it's not a cafeteria.

• 1:46:57Dax Shepard?

  It's not a cafeteria. I'm thinking that because of Nirmi. And that's why.

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  It is a drive, it's a fast food, Zach's pieces, but the cafeteria, you bring up lubbies or something, but that's not what she, we don't have that there.

• 1:47:14Dax Shepard?

  We don't have lubbies.

• 1:47:15Speaker 01

  She just likes all the cafeteria.

• 1:47:16Dax Shepard?

  She just would love lubbies or lubies.

• 1:47:18Speaker 01

  She would love it, yes.

• 1:47:19Dax Shepard?

  Maybe lubies even more than lubbies.

• 1:47:21Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:47:22Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:47:25Dax Shepard?

  You don't know a wild, I mean.

• 1:47:27Speaker 01

  She's post-menopausal.

• 1:47:27Dax Shepard?

  Didn't you read on for all fours?

• 1:47:30Speaker 01

  I did.

• 1:47:31Dax Shepard?

  She was having no problem, right? Getting creative.

• 1:47:35Speaker 01

  She was perimenopause.

• 1:47:36Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:47:39Dax Shepard?

  Okay. That's the horny section.

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  I don't want to think about any of that.

• 1:47:46Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:47:59Speaker 01

  Anywho, uh, okay, I have one more word riddle for you.

• 1:48:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh, great.

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  Do you say, I'm gonna turn the air down or I'm gonna turn the air up?

• 1:48:09Dax Shepard?

  Wow, I could definitely see where that's ripe for confusion.

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:48:14Dax Shepard?

  Um, I'm gonna, I would say, I'm gonna turn the air down a bit. Oof.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:20Dax Shepard?

  Turn the air on. Turn the air up. I would say both, and they shouldn't work. What would you say?

• 1:48:26Speaker 01

  I think I, I, I think I say turn it down.

• 1:48:29Dax Shepard?

  Meaning you want it colder?

• 1:48:30Speaker 01

  Turn the air down?

• 1:48:31Dax Shepard?

  Or you want it warmer?

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  I want it colder. Oh, no, no, if I'm in the car, it's like, oh, turn the air up.

• 1:48:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, turn it up.

• 1:48:37Speaker 01

  But in the car, huh, that's tricky though, because in the car, often the knob, you're, you are turning it up.

• 1:48:45Dax Shepard?

  The, the fan speed, yeah.

• 1:48:48Speaker 01

  The fan speed, yeah.

• 1:48:50Dax Shepard?

  But the temperature's going down. That's why it's inherently conflicting.

• 1:48:55Speaker 01

  That's why this is a great riddle.

• 1:48:57Dax Shepard?

  So maybe just we could clean it up by going make the air colder, make the air hotter.

• 1:49:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that doesn't have the same ring to it.

• 1:49:05Dax Shepard?

  That's true. We also like nuance and trying to guess. It's fun to not really know what anyone's talking about.

• 1:49:10Speaker 01

  We love riddles.

• 1:49:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:12Speaker 01

  Reading through the lines, mixed messages.

• 1:49:14Dax Shepard?

  Reading between the lines, a lot of that.

• 1:49:16Speaker 01

  I said, reading through the lines.

• 1:49:18Dax Shepard?

  I know. I don't think that's the same.

• 1:49:19Speaker 01

  Same thing.

• 1:49:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, same thing, though.

• 1:49:21Speaker 01

  No, this is another riddle. What do you say? Between or through?

• 1:49:26Dax Shepard?

  Betwixt. Do you think if we were in England, we'd say, reading betwixt the lines?

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:49:31Dax Shepard?

  Again, just to remind you, I've wanted to start using waltz, but I just can't figure it out.

• 1:49:38Dax Shepard?

  I love waltz.

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  You mean whilst?

• 1:49:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the English always say whilst.

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  I was reading whilst at the pool.

• 1:49:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I love it. But I, when I try to say it, it doesn't work.

• 1:49:48Speaker 01

  Okay, I want you to try to say it before the end of this episode, just.

• 1:49:52Dax Shepard?

  I'll do it whilst we're conversing.

• 1:49:55Speaker 01

  Not right now, not.

• 1:49:56Dax Shepard?

  That worked out pretty good, though.

• 1:49:59Speaker 01

  It was too fast.

• 1:50:00Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:50:01Speaker 01

  It's supposed to be a pop out.

• 1:50:02Dax Shepard?

  What are you watching? What's your summer watch?

• 1:50:04Speaker 01

  I'm struggling.

• 1:50:05Dax Shepard?

  You are?

• 1:50:06Speaker 01

  I'm struggling. Oh, you know what's fun, though? So the New York Times had a list that they created of the hundred best movies. Hundred best. See, I don't love it, but okay. Hundred best movies.

• 1:50:21Dax Shepard?

  There you go, hundred, hundred best.

• 1:50:23Speaker 01

  No, I do. I know, but I do love it because it's ranked. So there is a number one. Hundred best movies of the 21st century, so since 2000.

• 1:50:33Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  And then it was also like you submitted yours. And your, your top 10, which was a fun game. Do you want to hear what mine were?

• 1:50:45Dax Shepard?

  Yes, I would love to.

• 1:50:46Speaker 01

  Mine are Eternal Sunshine.

• 1:50:49Dax Shepard?

  Love it. Oh, you just thumbs go?

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  Get Out.

• 1:50:51Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:50:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:55Speaker 01

  Eternal Sunshine. Get Out, The Social Network, Amelie, Ocean's Eleven, Interstellar, Moneyball, Royal Tenenbaums, The Worst Person in the World, Past Lives.

• 1:51:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so I saw your list and I thought you were reposting the list. Because that list to me is what I thought the recently published best of list is. But that was your list.

• 1:51:21Speaker 01

  That's my list.

• 1:51:22Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. I was like, this is a good list and it's eclectic. It's not what I would expect from a poll of a magazine. So now I'm curious what the real list is. Because I thought that was the real.

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:51:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you tricked me.

• 1:51:33Speaker 01

  Do you want me to read it?

• 1:51:35Dax Shepard?

  The real list?

• 1:51:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:36Dax Shepard?

  Just top 10. I don't want to hear 100 titles.

• 1:51:41Speaker 01

  Dang, this happened at dinner for, in Palm Springs. I was excited to read the whole list and they made me, they didn't want that.

• 1:51:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, no one wants to hear 100 items out loud. I don't think.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:51:53Dax Shepard?

  No one wants to go even past 30. Like 20 would be the limit, I think.

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, you guys, I love lists. They let me start at 50 and everyone was really into it once I started.

• 1:52:05Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:52:08Dax Shepard?

  At 50.

• 1:52:09Speaker 01

  Number 100 is super bad, just gonna tell you that. Now, remember this is only from 2000. That's why Good Will Hunting wasn't on mine.

• 1:52:16Dax Shepard?

  25 years. Was Bottle Rocket 2000 or newer? I'll look that up on my own. I don't want you to leave that page. 96, okay, so I'm, I excuse that that wasn't on your list then.

• 1:52:31Speaker 01

  I do love that movie. But I would still pick Royal Tenenbaums.

• 1:52:37Dax Shepard?

  And you'd pick both, you'd pick that over Rushmore as well?

• 1:52:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, Royal Tenenbaums is my favorite.

• 1:52:44Dax Shepard?

  Ah.

• 1:52:45Speaker 01

  Wes Anderson movie.

• 1:52:46Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:52:47Speaker 01

  And very core to me, like one that I watched so many times that I was like so moved by.

• 1:52:54Dax Shepard?

  I gotta rewatch it. I love it, but I definitely like Rushmore and Bottle Rocket more.

• 1:52:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:00Dax Shepard?

  I love Rushmore.

• 1:53:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I could rewatch Rushmore. Is there a lake in it? Can we watch it during our lake movies?

• 1:53:07Dax Shepard?

  No, there's no lake. There's swimming, just in the swimming pool.

• 1:53:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, the pool.

• 1:53:11Dax Shepard?

  That's where Bill Murray's watching his kids and he hates them, his boys, yeah.

• 1:53:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay, ready. Number 10, The Social Network.

• 1:53:21Speaker 01

  Number nine, Spirited Away.

• 1:53:23Dax Shepard?

  That's a horse movie?

• 1:53:24Speaker 01

  Number, no, no, no, no, you're thinking of-

• 1:53:27Dax Shepard?

  Spirit of Cameroon?

• 1:53:29Speaker 01

  No, you're thinking of that TV show that the kids used to watch.

• 1:53:32Dax Shepard?

  Spirit of Cameroon, yeah, Cimarron.

• 1:53:34Speaker 01

  No, it's just called like Spirit.

• 1:53:36Dax Shepard?

  I think Spirit of Cimarron, yeah.

• 1:53:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:53:39Dax Shepard?

  Let's see.

• 1:53:40Speaker 01

  Now, this is a, this is an animated-

• 1:53:43Dax Shepard?

  Is there a cartoon called Spirit of Cimarron?

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  It's just called Spirit.

• 1:53:47Dax Shepard?

  And it's animated? What's the one on your list?

• 1:53:51Speaker 01

  Okay, Spirited Away is an animated movie. It's a hand drawn fairy tale of adolescence. Alice in Wonderland of our age. Unforgettable characters keep spilling out of abandoned magical bathhouse. I have heard of this, it's like on a lot of people's lists.

• 1:54:08Dax Shepard?

  Um, the answer to my question is yes, there is a well-known animated feature called Spirit. Stallion of the Cimarron. C-I-M-A-R-R-O-N.

• 1:54:18Speaker 01

  But is that, remember the show they used to watch? And there was a really catchy theme song?

• 1:54:22Dax Shepard?

  That was it. That was Spirit.

• 1:54:24Speaker 01

  I thought this says feature.

• 1:54:26Dax Shepard?

  Um, yes, so that was in 2002 and then they made a TV show.

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  Okay, that makes sense.

• 1:54:32Dax Shepard?

  Follow-ups in the franchise. Spirit Riding Free, 2017 to 2020. Spirit Untamed, 2021.

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  I remember when we were in Turks and Caicos, the kids were watching Spirit. And that theme song was really in my head.

• 1:54:50Dax Shepard?

  Running wild, I'm running free.

• 1:54:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, something like that. Okay, number eight is Get Out.

• 1:54:56Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:54:57Speaker 01

  Number seven, Eternal Sunshine.

• 1:54:59Dax Shepard?

  So it's similar list.

• 1:55:02Speaker 01

  Number six, No Country For Old Men.

• 1:55:05Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:55:05Speaker 01

  Number five, Moonlight. Number four, In The Mood For Love. I have not seen it, but I really wanna see it.

• 1:55:12Dax Shepard?

  What is that?

• 1:55:13Speaker 01

  It's set in Hong Kong and it's like a love story. It's, it was in 2001. It's on, it's supposed to be great. I really wanna see it. Um, number three, There Will Be Blood.

• 1:55:26Dax Shepard?

  Great, love it.

• 1:55:28Speaker 01

  Number, number two, oh my god.

• 1:55:30Dax Shepard?

  Sorry. I got it. I'm under control now.

• 1:55:36Speaker 01

  Number two, Mulholland Drive. Another one I have not seen but would love to see.

• 1:55:40Dax Shepard?

  Great.

• 1:55:41Speaker 01

  Did you hear me?

• 1:55:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Mulholland Drive, another one you haven't seen but you'd love to see. I could re-watch that. I love that.

• 1:55:47Speaker 01

  Oh, great. Is there a lake?

• 1:55:49Dax Shepard?

  Um, can't remember.

• 1:55:51Speaker 01

  Okay. Number one, Parasite.

• 1:55:53Dax Shepard?

  Love it.

• 1:55:54Speaker 01

  Parasite is an incredible movie. I like that at number one.

• 1:55:59Dax Shepard?

  It's strong, number one. Alright, I'm trying to find you your song. Here we go.

• 1:56:17Speaker 01

  Is this it?

• 1:56:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:28Dax Shepard?

  Here we go, Monica.

• 1:56:52Dax Shepard?

  I'm not gonna lie, I just got full body goosebumps.

• 1:57:01Speaker 01

  It is a good song.

• 1:57:03Dax Shepard?

  It's really good. I'm riding free.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:57:07Dax Shepard?

  Boy, Turks and Caicos, what a fun trip that was.

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  What a fun trip. We got in a huge fight, but it was still so fun.

• 1:57:13Dax Shepard?

  I didn't remember that part, but you did.

• 1:57:15Speaker 01

  You didn't? Wow.

• 1:57:17Dax Shepard?

  I do, I do.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  It's really seared. Let's not unpack it. Because of this list, I have decided I want to go through a bunch of these and watch ones that I haven't seen that are intriguing to me. So I did watch Zodiac. I had never seen that.

• 1:57:35Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, that's Fincher. His lessest known, least known movie. And Downey, Robert Downey.

• 1:57:41Speaker 01

  Downey, Jake G.

• 1:57:43Dax Shepard?

  J. G.'s.

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  J. G. Um, yeah, it was great. Oh, Mark Ruffalo.

• 1:57:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:57:50Speaker 01

  Anthony Edwards, E.R., Ding Ding Ding, AIDS.

• 1:57:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, AIDS.

• 1:57:55Speaker 01

  I know. I was confused because for some reason in my head, when I started the movie, I... Thought J G was the villain like in I was like, oh, that's that movie where Jake Gyllenhaal is the killer.

• 1:58:09Dax Shepard?

  Jagers.

• 1:58:09Speaker 01

  So I'm watching it. Yeah, Jagers. And I'm watching it for so long. I'm like, wow, he. He ends up being the killer. That's so wild. And then, of course, I was wrong.

• 1:58:19Dax Shepard?

  He wasn't, no. He was just that wasn't. He was a journalist, right?

• 1:58:23Speaker 01

  He was a cartoonist, actually, and then he got obsessed with the case.

• 1:58:28Dax Shepard?

  That can happen to people. They get bit by a case. It's probably gonna happen to me before I'm dead. I'm gonna get obsessed with a case and solve it.

• 1:58:36Speaker 01

  What case are you gonna try to solve? A murder or?

• 1:58:41Dax Shepard?

  Probably like a missing motorcycle.

• 1:58:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that sounds right.

• 1:58:45Dax Shepard?

  The Lord's work.

• 1:58:46Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, so.

• 1:58:49Dax Shepard?

  I wanted to talk to you about shopping before we parted today.

• 1:58:53Speaker 01

  All right, let's hear it.

• 1:58:54Dax Shepard?

  Cause I normally, obviously, I can't relate at all to you with the shopping. But because I have a garage here and I don't have anything I had in L A, I've been going to Lowe's and Home Depot. And I went with Aaron. Well, I went on that great trip with the girls, I think I told you, and I gave them half the list and they were on fire. I couldn't believe how good they were. Um, then I went back with Aaron day one when he was here and I had to get a lot of stuff. Monica trash cans, brooms, power washer, you know, all this stuff.

• 1:59:27Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:59:28Dax Shepard?

  And I gotta tell you, it was so fun. You're right. It was so fun. When it's a place like Home Depot and I like every aisle has something I know I need, but I just need to go look because I've forgotten. I get it. And Aaron and I, when we left, I was like, that's among the most fun times I've ever had with you. And he's like, I completely agree. I would love to come back and just do three more hours of shopping. And we decided we should have a business where people just give us their list at Home Depot or Lowe's and we go get it because we like so much shopping there.

• 2:00:04Speaker 01

  That's called Instacart.

• 2:00:05Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm. We did figure that out as well afterwards. But ours will be different.

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  Or DoorDash.

• 2:00:11Dax Shepard?

  Ours will be, we don't charge you, but it'll probably be less convenient.

• 2:00:15Speaker 01

  Why will it be less convenient?

• 2:00:16Dax Shepard?

  Cause we don't have an app and all the sophisticated stuff. So you'll have to write your list out and then probably take a picture of it.

• 2:00:22Speaker 01

  Oh, I think you can just sign up for Instacart like you did for the other ride.

• 2:00:28Dax Shepard?

  Not personalized.

• 2:00:29Speaker 01

  Food delivery.

• 2:00:30Dax Shepard?

  Not personalized enough for me. I want to have a relationship with the people I shop for.

• 2:00:34Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 2:00:34Dax Shepard?

  And I play at this game with the cashier each time I say, what's the over under on this order? Cause they're good at it. They should be good at it. They ring up all day long. And then they guess and then I make Erin guess and the girls guess and I guess, and we all play by Price is Right rules, which is even if someone's a dollar over, they lost.

• 2:00:59Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:00:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:00Speaker 01

  Those rules are tricky.

• 2:01:01Dax Shepard?

  The bill could be 1500, someone could have guessed it's 600 and someone guessed 1501 and 600 wins. Those are the rules.

• 2:01:09Speaker 01

  That's so ridiculous.

• 2:01:11Dax Shepard?

  It's pretty good rules though for.

• 2:01:13Speaker 01

  It's horrible rules. This happened during cornhole too. Cornhole's the same thing. If you get, if, if you get over 21.

• 2:01:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:23Speaker 01

  You're back, you go back to 11.

• 2:01:25Dax Shepard?

  Ooh, that's harsh.

• 2:01:28Speaker 01

  That happened a lot during Palm Springs. Not to me, cause I never really got over 21, but

• 2:01:34Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 2:01:34Speaker 01

  To a lot of other people and I was so upset on their behalf. Yeah, and Jess and Matt.

• 2:01:40Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:01:40Speaker 01

  And Anna. Anna's really good at it.

• 2:01:42Dax Shepard?

  Everyone but you.

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  I was most improved.

• 2:01:48Dax Shepard?

  Do you have a hangover? Like, are you gonna wanna play in Nashville? Like, do you crave it now?

• 2:01:52Speaker 01

  I love cornhole. I love cornhole. I've always loved it. Oh my God, this is just like when, did I already tell this story? I was shopping, ding ding ding, uh, with Jess and we were at a vintage store and I got a sweatshirt that says Bud Light on it.

• 2:02:09Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:02:10Speaker 01

  And, um, it's so cute and I was checking out and Jess said in front of the lady who was ringing me up, he said, "You've never even drank a Bud Light in your life."

• 2:02:23Dax Shepard?

  Mmm, he outed you.

• 2:02:25Speaker 01

  It's not an out, that's a lie. I got so mad, he made me look like an idiot in front of this lady.

• 2:02:31Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:02:32Speaker 01

  And I was like, "You don't, you didn't know me in college? How dare you."

• 2:02:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, where do you get off? Where do you get the nerve?

• 2:02:40Speaker 01

  Uh, where exactly? And I used to drink a ton of Bud Light.

• 2:02:45Dax Shepard?

  How much? Six at a time?

• 2:02:47Speaker 01

  Well, we used to play all kinds of games, waterfall, king's pin or something, I forget what that's called, you know, and also that thing where you drink a sh-

• 2:02:55Dax Shepard?

  Beer pong?

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  Oh, beer pong, a ton, flip cup, uh, all the games, you know?

• 2:03:01Dax Shepard?

  I never played these drinking games. I never got them. It's like, I didn't need someone to tell me to drink more.

• 2:03:06Speaker 01

  No, it was just, it's just fun. Games are fun, Dax.

• 2:03:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I should play more drinking games.

• 2:03:12Speaker 01

  Games are so fun. But anyway, so cornhole is like that, like, I know, I just sensed from you that you were like, "Oh, you're just, you're just learning how to play, interesting." And I, I used to play. I was a different girl in college. Oh, yeah.

• 2:03:30Dax Shepard?

  That would have liked to meet that version. That'd be fun.

• 2:03:34Speaker 01

  You still can. Charlie wants to go to a Georgia game and I'm gonna arrange it. I want us all to go.

• 2:03:39Dax Shepard?

  I would love that. That would be so fun.

• 2:03:41Speaker 01

  You know.

• 2:03:42Dax Shepard?

  But also I'd like to time travel and meet you in Athens and see this version.

• 2:03:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:47Dax Shepard?

  The carefree college kid who was planning her next booty bump.

• 2:03:50Speaker 01

  Oh, God, carefree is interesting.

• 2:03:53Dax Shepard?

  In the mix, carefree.

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  I wasn't carefree. I actually had-

• 2:03:59Speaker 01

  I I had I like, you know.

• 2:04:01Dax Shepard?

  More cares.

• 2:04:01Speaker 01

  Really bad anxiety, but I had fun.

• 2:04:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you drank through it.

• 2:04:06Speaker 01

  I sure did.

• 2:04:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, what a gift.

• 2:04:09Speaker 01

  Um, so when are you gonna go shopping again today?

• 2:04:11Dax Shepard?

  Um, it's possible. You know, I did have a day here. Did I already bore you with it where I did the most amount of things I ever done in a day?

• 2:04:18Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:04:19Dax Shepard?

  I couldn't believe this day. I woke up, I was uh meditating at five thirty. Did I tell you I put up thirty two pallets on the marshy ground leading to the boat deck? Cause it was mud. By the time you got to the boat, you were covered in mud and then coming back, you'd get covered in mud. So I I took thirty two pallets from the behind Lowe's at Home Depot.

• 2:04:43Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:04:44Dax Shepard?

  And I laid them all out and I've made a boardwalk and then I

• 2:04:47Speaker 01

  Oh, nice.

• 2:04:47Dax Shepard?

  I didn't want that to stick out so much. So then I ordered grass paint that you pump up in a in a big plastic jug and spray.

• 2:04:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:04:56Dax Shepard?

  So I spray painted thirty two pallets green to match the grass. Um, I took the trash to the dumpster. I went to Home Depot. I dropped my car off to get tires. I mopped my entire barn. Which I don't think you can imagine what a big project that is mopping that entire barn, but I mopped the whole thing in the gym. Then I got salt licks in feeders for the deer. I dropped my roadmaster off to get new mufflers at Midas. And this is the craziest one. At three forty P M. I'd already had this day where I'd done all this stuff since five thirty. At three forty P M. I'm I said to Kristen.

• 2:05:42Dax Shepard?

  I'm thirty five minutes away from the trailer place. They close at five and then another twenty five minutes past there is the golf cart place. And I'm leaving my house at three forty in Mount Juliet. I left thinking I give this a forty percent chance I succeed at this. I walked into the trailer place and I said, hi, do you want to set a world record for fastest trailer sold? And she goes, yeah, let's do it. I was driving out of the parking lot with a new flatbed trailer within ten minutes. With the title, signed. Made it to the golf cart place, bought a golf cart, had it loaded on the trailer, was pulling out of the golf cart place 12 minutes to 5pm.

• 2:06:21Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:06:22Dax Shepard?

  I'm telling you, I felt like a frickin' hero, Monica. What a day.

• 2:06:26Speaker 01

  That's a lot. That's a lot.

• 2:06:28Dax Shepard?

  I think just mopping the, mopping the barn would have been enough for a victorious day for me. But then I add in all that other stuff I just bored you with. I mean, spray painting 32 pallets. I do. I love a to-do list. I had all these things written. And I just kept going shit. It's time to pull out that to-do list and tackle something else.

• 2:06:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, you love a list.

• 2:06:52Dax Shepard?

  I do. And I feel as accomplished as if I work, you know?

• 2:06:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:06:58Dax Shepard?

  That kind of list feels like filming all day or something. I feel very accomplished.

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Nice.

• 2:07:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Do you think I'll run out of stuff to do?

• 2:07:08Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:07:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, because I have these dumb cars.

• 2:07:10Speaker 01

  You can add like swam for 10 minutes. Like you, you can always add stuff that's actually just regs.

• 2:07:17Dax Shepard?

  And how do you feel about that? So I ethically have a dilemma. So some of those items were added after I did them to my list. Do you do that? You have a list and then you pick up some stray things and then you add it to the list to feel proud of yourself? You do do it. Okay. It feels a little grimy when I do it, but I, but I do it.

• 2:07:35Speaker 01

  I actually don't do lists like that unless it's truly like I need to keep track of what I'm gonna have to do tomorrow. When I did make lists, I would add stuff like that. And then I did, yeah, I was like, I don't, I don't like any of this. All I'm doing is trying to prove to myself that I've like done stuff.

• 2:07:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:53Speaker 01

  Yes. And that started to feel silly. So I, I don't really list anymore. But yes, if you, if you're a list, if you're a list guy or a list girl, you're adding stuff last minute. You're adding stuff post, post accomplishment.

• 2:08:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you want to look at that list at the end of the day and go, my God, you really did it.

• 2:08:14Speaker 01

  And then you want to read it on a podcast.

• 2:08:16Dax Shepard?

  And then you want to read it out loud to as many people as who will listen.

• 2:08:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:08:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So I want you to be impressed with my industriousness.

• 2:08:24Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 2:08:24Dax Shepard?

  So you'll like me.

• 2:08:25Speaker 01

  Cause that's what I care about.

• 2:08:27Dax Shepard?

  That's right. And how good of a driver I am.

• 2:08:31Speaker 01

  Yep. Um, all right. Should we do some facts?

• 2:08:34Dax Shepard?

  Let's.

• 2:08:35Speaker 01

  This is for Bridget. Bridget and MLMs.

• 2:08:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God. I love this one.

• 2:08:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too. So informative, so interesting.

• 2:08:47Dax Shepard?

  I mean, the fact that some of those stats that we learned, like that 99% of people lose money. The notion, I mean, I think I said it in the interview, but anything where 99% of the time you're gonna lose, no one does.

• 2:09:05Speaker 01

  I know. Okay, the strange angel JPL guy is Jack Parsons.

• 2:09:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Jack Parsons. He's a maniac.

• 2:09:17Speaker 01

  Yep. He co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was deeply involved in cult practices.

• 2:09:25Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 2:09:26Speaker 01

  Okay, also Bridget worked at Vogue and there was big news. I asked her if she reported to Anna. Anna Wintour is stepping down as editor in chief of Vogue. It's a huge deal in the fashion world.

• 2:09:45Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah. How do you feel about it? How are you taking that news? Can't be great.

• 2:09:50Speaker 01

  It's hard to take in. I'm just, it's just the end of an era.

• 2:09:55Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 2:09:58Speaker 01

  Now, I looked up spending by gender. I just confirmed that women spend more than men, which they do tend to.

• 2:10:05Dax Shepard?

  I think they say that they are responsible for like 80% of the domestic purchasing. Like they're who advertisers are advertising to.

• 2:10:16Speaker 01

  Women tend to spend more than men, particularly in terms of total consumer spending and influencing purchasing decisions. While men may spend more per transaction, women's overall spending and influence on purchases are higher. Women are estimated to control or influence 85% of consumer spending.

• 2:10:33Dax Shepard?

  Oh, even higher than I just guessed. That so holds true because I just...

• 2:10:40Dax Shepard?

  You know, I don't have anything in Nashville that I need, i.e. a workbench, paws, powered screw guns, trash bags, mops. So I went to Home Depot in

• 2:10:55Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 2:10:56Dax Shepard?

  Hermitage with the girls and I had the craziest list and I deployed them each with their own shopping cart to go grab stuff as I was grabbing stuff. And yeah, so I never go to a store, but when I go to a store, buckle the fuck up, you know?

• 2:11:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're, you're really going for it.

• 2:11:18Dax Shepard?

  I really spent a couple bucks over at Home Depot.

• 2:11:21Speaker 01

  Well, also because you don't like shopping, so you kind of have to get it all out of the way.

• 2:11:27Dax Shepard?

  I want to go one time to Home Depot for the, yeah, for the rest of my life, which I already am home now and I, I have, I forgot things.

• 2:11:37Speaker 01

  Whereas I like to just go, I'll just, not Home Depot, but um, I like to just pop in, not even get anything.

• 2:11:45Dax Shepard?

  My dad was like you, and in fact, when I was at Home Depot with the girls, I said, is this so annoying? And they're like, no, this is super fun. And I'm like, oh my God, my dad would want to go to Ace Hardware on Sundays and I'd walk with him as he stared at every fucking product. I'm like, why are we in paint aisle? You're not intending on painting anything. He just wanted to see every product in the store, even if he's just going to get screws or something. And it was maddening.

• 2:12:15Speaker 01

  Of course. What if he sees something he might want or get an inspiration?

• 2:12:21Dax Shepard?

  He did. This does remind me of one, I don't know why, this is one of the most like distinct memories I have of my father. I know I've told you this before, but we went to AMP grocery store and I had to be fucked. We had a dog, so we only had a dog for a couple of years when I was maybe nine or something. And um, we go into AMP, AMP, we get all the groceries and then we're on our way out and they've stacked all the dog food in like the breezeway. You know, in Michigan, there's always these buffers. You walk in one door because of the cold and then there's another. And then this breezeway, my dad like threw a bag of dog food on the cart. I don't even know if I clocked it so much, but we get all

• 2:13:04Dax Shepard?

  the way to the car and my dad goes, You know what? When you steal things, things get stolen from you. It goes around, comes around. And he walked all the way back in the store. And he paid for the dog food, but he was, he was stealing a bag of dog food with me. There for about two minutes till we got to the car. But I guess more than I was disappointed that he stole, I was impressed that he stole and then pivoted. And was like honest about it.

• 2:13:35Speaker 01

  He couldn't really steal.

• 2:13:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was like, it was a very like. It's a weird mix of he like, he's demonstrated a lot of integrity, even though he had just stolen a bag of dog food in front of me. It's so memorable.

• 2:13:47Speaker 01

  I, yeah.

• 2:13:47Dax Shepard?

  Did Ashok ever steal shit and then rethink it?

• 2:13:51Speaker 01

  No, God, no.

• 2:13:54Speaker 01

  Listen to me. Immigrants don't have the luxury of stealing.

• 2:14:00Dax Shepard?

  You're right.

• 2:14:00Speaker 01

  They're too scared.

• 2:14:01Dax Shepard?

  You're right. You're right. Everyone already thinks they're stealing.

• 2:14:05Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:14:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:07Speaker 01

  Everyone's already looking, looking at them with like, you know, hawk eyes.

• 2:14:12Dax Shepard?

  Do you pay for that? I think that every time I see a non-white with a grocery store, with a grocery cart, I go, did you pay for that?

• 2:14:20Speaker 01

  Did you even pay for that? Or like, they think, if they're like Indian, they think like, oh, they don't speak, they don't even know that they're supposed to pay. Like, they think like they live in a like third world country and they don't understand paying in America.

• 2:14:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, because America is so much bounty. They just think it's all for free. By the way, do you think non-white sounds implicitly racist? I do.

• 2:14:46Speaker 01

  Non-white?

• 2:14:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, like when you go like, there's some non-whites. Does that sound very scary?

• 2:14:52Speaker 01

  To me, yes. Okay, you know my stance on this. I don't like, and I, a lot of people have no issue with this. But I don't like, you know, taking the color, pluralizing it.

• 2:15:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:05Speaker 01

  And then making it the group of people.

• 2:15:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:07Speaker 01

  I'm not for that.

• 2:15:08Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure.

• 2:15:09Speaker 01

  Like the browns, the whites, the blacks. I'm not for that. So, yeah, non-whites would apply.

• 2:15:20Dax Shepard?

  Oh, boy.

• 2:15:22Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 2:15:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God. I'm so sorry, Bambi literally just sprinted through the backyard with Brombus following her.

• 2:15:30Speaker 01

  Oh. Oh.

• 2:15:32Dax Shepard?

  You can't imagine anything cuter than two little tiny, tiny, tiny deer sprinting.

• 2:15:36Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Be careful with your cars.

• 2:15:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I know. I was out for a ride on my electric motorcycle and I came into the driveway kind of hot and they were there and they got so spooked and I got, I felt so terrible. I'm like, I gotta go so slow in my driveway.

• 2:15:50Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, that's it. I mean, she was very factual, obviously.

• 2:15:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:55Speaker 01

  So MLMs, wild.

• 2:15:57Dax Shepard?

  Don't participate.

• 2:15:59Speaker 01

  Oh, one thing, and I'm sad that we didn't plan ahead, but I wanted to have a friend on this fact check who has lived a big portion of her life sort of involved in an MLM. Well, not sort of, definitely involved.

• 2:16:17Dax Shepard?

  I do want to say that this episode makes me nervous because I would hate for anyone involved, the one to think that I'm saying they're stupid or anyone involved is stupid because I'm not at all.

• 2:16:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:16:32Dax Shepard?

  I, I, I see anyone involved as someone who is industrious and wants to make a living and better their lives. And I admire the gumption and the sense of industriousness. And I just hope, I want them to find one that'll work for them, but I don't think anyone is stupid for having been involved with one.

• 2:16:51Speaker 01

  I a hundred percent agree. I just do think the system is quite predatory, especially based on all these facts we heard. And so.

• 2:17:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:01Speaker 01

  Um, but that's, yeah, that has nothing to do with the type of person.

• 2:17:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:07Speaker 01

  But I wanted her on, but we didn't plan it well. So maybe another time.

• 2:17:11Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:17:12Speaker 01

  Well, that's it.

• 2:17:17Dax Shepard?

  I love you.

• 2:17:18Speaker 01

  Love you.

• 2:17:19Dax Shepard?

  All right. Bye.