Pod Insights Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard Best of Monday 2024 About this episode On this special episode, we revisit some of our favorite moments from Monday episodes in 2024. Bradley Cooper reframes his story, Goldie Hawn champions the freedom to choose, Maya Rudolph laments comedy dong, Bobby Lee revisits relapse, Amy Poehler grows in group therapy, Ke Huy Quan delights in serendipity, Halle Berry sets the record straight, Jack Black remembers spirituality as a heavy metal maniac, Vince Vaughn envisions empathy, and Heidi Klum is the queen of Halloween.
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Transcript 20,795 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dax Shepard? Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Mrs. Mouse. This is the end of the year Best of Mondays episode.
0:09 Speaker 01 Exciting. We pulled together 10 of our favorites.
0:14 Dax Shepard? It's hard.
0:14 Speaker 01 It's really hard.
0:15 Dax Shepard? I don't love best because you know, there's, there were so many we loved.
0:19 Speaker 01 Yes.
0:20 Dax Shepard? And it's more just like, these are the ones that happen to make it of the many we loved.
0:24 Speaker 01 Here's some highlights.
0:25 Dax Shepard? Here's some highlights. So please enjoy Best of Mondays. We get support from Quince.
0:32 Speaker 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.
0:51 Dax 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.
1:07 Speaker 01 It's the dream. The cashmere sweater is starting at $60, down jackets, wool outerwear, cashmere accessories. You and everyone on your list are staying cozy and looking incredible all season long.
1:18 Dax Shepard? Well, I'm going to tell you this, it just got chilly for the first time this year in California, and I'm so excited. And I'm wearing my Quince cashmere right now.
1:25 Speaker 01 It's great.
1:26 Dax Shepard? Yeah. And I am going to gift this to some of my friends. I hope they're not listening.
1:30 Speaker 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.
1:53 Dax Shepard? Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8. Okay, I need to talk about something that doesn't get enough respect. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese. This is not a casual burger. This is a crafted burger. We're talking 100% fresh beef cooked right when you order it.
2:36 Dax Shepard? No artificial flavors, no fillers, no preservatives, just beef doing what beef is supposed to do. And here's a detail I love. There's a cowbell sound in the kitchen. When somebody orders a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a cowbell goes off and the Grill Master throws a fresh patty down. That's like having your own entrance music at McDonald's. I want a cowbell for everything in life. The onions are hand topped by someone who just knows the right amount. Two slices of cheese laid out in a star pattern. So every single bite gets cheese and two pickles side by side. So you're never in a pickle desert. Every bite is accounted for. Someone engineered this thing with love. I love a Quarter Pounder.
3:15 Speaker 01 Me too. That's my order. It's a Quarter Pounder with cheese. I love it. I didn't know they put so much effort that they did a star formation. I should have known because you can taste it.
3:26 Dax Shepard? You can taste it. Yeah, the love. Don't tell anyone this, but I'll put two of them back.
3:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm not surprised.
3:32 Dax Shepard? The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Fries and a Drink now $8 for a limited time only, only at McDonald's. For a limited time only, prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California and for delivery. Fresh beef not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Offer not valid for delivery.
4:06 Dax Shepard? From 705 with Bradley Cooper.
4:09 Speaker 02 Our birthdays are a month apart.
4:10 Dax Shepard? Oh, our sobriety birthdays.
4:12 Speaker 02 Sorry. I always mix that up. Yeah, yeah, our birthdays, our birthdays are three days apart. Yeah.
4:17 Dax Shepard? Both born deaf, just to remind everyone.
4:18 Speaker 01 What are the ways in that?
4:19 Dax Shepard? Both think we're ugly.
4:20 Speaker 01 I know, I can't.
4:21 Dax Shepard? We're trying to get all the approval in the world. If everyone could line up neatly and just walk up to us and say, you're good, and then turn to the left.
4:29 Speaker 02 But then don't forget, you gotta come back and say it again in 10 minutes.
4:31 Dax Shepard? I probably won't believe it. 30 seconds after you left, it will feel obligatory. In fact, if you could write it out, it'd be easier for me to.
4:41 Speaker 01 You have that. You're an approval junkie.
4:43 Speaker 02 Honestly, I think I've grown a lot in the last three years.
4:46 Speaker 01 That's great. Was there an impetus for that?
4:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, getting older and realizing there are certain parts of me that have really needed the serious work about intimacy with people, women specifically, like being in a like real healthy relationship. And also because I'm a father and I'm like, I just want to, the least amount of damage that I could do to my daughter, please let me work on myself. And it's also just getting older and people dying and mortality.
5:11 Dax Shepard? Time's accelerating.
5:12 Speaker 02 That's the currency. That's it.
5:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:13 Speaker 02 Nothing but time. And I think being at a place where I felt like I was willing to go to those places. And a dear friend turned me on to this incredible therapist that like changed my life. And really realizing the problem was I had no self-esteem. I think that when I came on before we talked about this, which was years ago now, I think it was not recent.
5:30 Speaker 01 It wasn't. It was at least two years ago.
5:32 Dax Shepard? You would have been promoting.
5:33 Speaker 02 I don't think it was.
5:34 Speaker 01 The Guillermo movie.
5:35 Speaker 02 Oh, so it wasn't that long ago.
5:37 Dax Shepard? Yeah, when was that?
5:38 Speaker 03 2021.
5:39 Dax Shepard? 2021?
5:40 Speaker 03 November 2021.
5:41 Speaker 02 I thought it was.
5:41 Dax Shepard? So two years, two years, two months.
5:43 Speaker 02 I thought it was more than that. Okay.
5:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we're okay.
5:45 Speaker 01 A lot happened.
5:47 Dax Shepard? Everything's okay. We can.
5:49 Speaker 01 It does feel like a long time ago.
5:50 Speaker 02 I was maybe like a year into it at that point. Self-esteem, and it all stemmed from, I don't know if you feel this, but creating a narrative about my upbringing that wasn't really my upbringing. So I was starting it all on a false premise.
6:03 Speaker 01 Interesting.
6:04 Speaker 02 Of like, I'm from Philly. I thought I was like a beautiful kid and they thought I was a girl and a chip on my shoulder and a loving parents. That's actually not exactly the situation.
6:13 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
6:14 Speaker 02 If you're starting it out, and also Dax and I connected earlier on about our childhoods to a huge degree and our relationships to our fathers and all this stuff.
6:22 Dax Shepard? Our mothers.
6:23 Speaker 02 Of course.
6:23 Dax Shepard? We're like our mothers husbands.
6:25 Speaker 02 Yes.
6:26 Dax Shepard? And we are the golden child.
6:27 Speaker 02 That's right.
6:28 Dax Shepard? Going to be minimally president.
6:30 Speaker 02 But I guess that was part of my false narrative to a degree too. Was that all it was or was there more?
6:35 Dax Shepard? I'm writing this memoir, doesn't need to be published.
6:38 Speaker 02 Right.
6:38 Dax Shepard? I'm writing it so I can get that version that I'm so afraid to lose out of my head. It'll be there. If I ever want to revisit it, it'll exist. That's my action of letting it go.
6:51 Speaker 02 Wow.
6:51 Dax Shepard? There's the story I've been telling for my whole life. And now we're gonna just set that over there.
6:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:56 Dax Shepard? And maybe my dad was a beautiful guy and maybe he was a loving.
6:59 Speaker 02 Human.
7:00 Dax Shepard? Well, and also like physically nurturing, a hugger and a kisser. Who got that in the eighties? All this new information's coming in that's like, nah, and my mom, I love her to death. She's also not the angel she was in my story.
7:13 Speaker 02 That's right.
7:14 Dax Shepard? Nor should she be. And that's my fault. It's not fair to her. It's not a responsibility. Yeah, I have no resentment over it. It's just like, wow, I had a really clean story.
7:22 Speaker 02 I used to, not even knowing it, because that's how the behavior, I just found myself adrift. And starting with the real foundation.
7:29 Dax Shepard? Which again, let's be honest, is just another one.
7:32 Speaker 02 Yes.
7:33 Dax Shepard? I might reject the notion that there's a real one. It's just, there's all this data. It's just infinite data of your childhood.
7:39 Speaker 02 Well, it's all a story we're telling ourselves.
7:40 Dax Shepard? Exactly.
7:41 Speaker 02 That's for sure.
7:41 Dax Shepard? What one serves you.
7:42 Speaker 02 In a feeling state at least, I can tell when I'm more present, when I'm not, as a human being in my life. When I started to do this work of reevaluating the foundation of my life and trying to look at it with a more critical eye on honesty and reflecting on true memory, I found that the benefit is I'm much more present in my life. I don't need the things I thought I needed to fill up whatever hole I had. And all of a sudden, I'm willing to be more expressive, creative, present, giving, boundried.
8:13 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
8:14 Speaker 02 So to me, yes, it's another story, but it felt like, boy, it's way closer to something honest because the benefits are practical. Does that make sense?
8:23 Dax Shepard? It totally makes sense. For me, I guess, the thing I try to be critical of is the story is immaterial. Is the story serving to either excuse my character defects, justify me getting the things I want, or somehow setting up a situation where you'll be even more impressed by me because you know the story? So if the story has these kind of like self-serving gross motives, which most of my story does, I'm trying to self-aggrandize myself and seem like a victim and a victor at the same time. When I recognize that that's actually the purpose of the story, I think that's more what I'm currently honed in on. I could also tell that I had the luckiest childhood that anyone's ever had. There's enough data points for me to point to these.
9:05 Speaker 02 Well, relatively speaking, we're already in the stratosphere on that benchmark. But what's the goal? Why are we doing this? And the goal for me was I want to be able to be more of service to people in my life and then me also. And I wanted to stop living in my head so much, really, so that I could be present. And I wanted to love myself, like in a real way.
9:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
9:26 Speaker 02 And then through that, all of a sudden, boundaries just came up that I could never create in relationships.
9:31 Dax Shepard? What do those look like?
9:32 Speaker 02 My relationship with my mother completely changed.
9:35 Dax Shepard? Boundaryless, yeah.
9:36 Speaker 02 Like completely, my relationship to friendships, my daughter.
9:39 Dax Shepard? Bed, your shitter, your mother.
9:44 Speaker 02 Three dogs.
9:46 Speaker 01 Does she respect the bound, like, does she like that they're up?
9:49 Speaker 02 Here's the thing that occurs, and I don't know if you have felt this with your mother, but it all just effortlessly falls into place because the bottom line is I'm finally an adult.
9:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:58 Speaker 02 Do I fall back into adolescent and childlike feelings and behaviors? Absolutely. But my baseline is an adult. Whereas before, my baseline was adolescence. When I was in a good space, I could live in the adult world for a little bit, but that wasn't my norm.
10:14 Dax Shepard? Well, and Bradley, that's why work is so appealing to us is that you have all the evidence of adulthood through work.
10:20 Speaker 01 Because grownups work.
10:21 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and grownups execute.
10:23 Speaker 02 And talk about there's boundaries. You're walking into a systematic, very clear.
10:28 Dax Shepard? There's a start time and a wrap time.
10:29 Speaker 02 And everything. I definitely have escaped in work before.
10:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah, because it feels like a very adult thing.
10:35 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, and being a parent is a very adult thing, too.
10:40 Dax Shepard? From 707 with Goldie Hawn.
10:48 Dax Shepard? Do you know Esther Perel? Do you know that therapist?
10:50 Speaker 04 Yeah.
10:50 Dax Shepard? She has this really cool, maybe it's not proprietary to her, but she deals a lot with people who have had infidelity. And a point she makes, which I think is so profound is quite often you think your partner cheated on you with another person because they liked that person. But in truth, they missed a version of themself that that person allows them to access. And I find that so much more compassionate and relatable. That's actually more about, I miss a version of me. This person gives me that version of me. It's not really about this person.
11:23 Speaker 04 It's true. I mean, it takes two. You really do figure out where your identity is. What I didn't like at that point was marriage because people fuse. And fusion is very bad because once you start losing yourself and engage in someone else's everything and become too dependent.
11:39 Dax Shepard? When you have a single identity between the two of you.
11:41 Speaker 04 Exactly. Then there's a loss of respect. There's expectation. And then a lot of people actually shift mentally when they feel tied up.
11:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
11:49 Speaker 04 I always said, if I'm in a cage and I'm a bird and you leave the door open, I'll probably never fly out.
11:57 Dax Shepard? Right. Or if I take a little zip around, I'll probably return to the cage.
12:01 Speaker 04 No, does that mean? I'll come back.
12:03 Dax Shepard? Yes, yes.
12:04 Speaker 04 If you close the door to the cage, my feathers will be gone and I won't look like a bird anymore. And I wouldn't survive. So we have to find out who we are and fly with it.
12:15 Dax Shepard? Well, I did think one thing I was listening to, A, and I love this about you. And now we're to the point where I think the yin and yang is really fascinating. And again, I am in a yin and yang. I am very much the Kurt and she's very much like you. I identify deeply with this companion. Yes. I think every dude I meet is gonna try to rob my wallet and I'm about to strike. And she thinks every dude we meet is gonna cure cancer. That's the difference between us. And it materializes everywhere. But you talk so openly about how many things you end up going through over the course, on Valentine's Day, 41 years.
12:47 Speaker 04 Forty-one. That was our first date. And it could have been our first kiss. I don't know.
12:53 Dax Shepard? Who knows what all happened on that Valentine's Day in 1981, 83.
12:58 Speaker 04 Or 80s.
13:00 Dax Shepard? I was thinking, and A, I just like that you're so honest about that. There's phases and there's twists and turns and you both are in stages. I was thinking when I was hearing you talk about it, I almost would guess if you guys had gotten married, you actually wouldn't be together now.
13:15 Speaker 04 Probably don't.
13:16 Dax Shepard? That in some of the phases, you would have had to sever that thing and then coming back together or finding peace would have been a whole other weird thing because it's all been framed differently. Like, I almost can imagine that you wouldn't have made it 41 years if you had gotten married.
13:31 Speaker 04 Ultimately, when you look back on it, and I've never asked that question to myself, because what I like is waking up in the morning, and I've said this many times, and actually making a choice to be with someone. But, you know, as we go in partnerships, there's time when you don't want to be with them. It's normal. And people that say, "Oh, we are in love with him, it was loving relationship, and everything he does is the greatest thing."
13:51 Dax Shepard? I feel blessed to be with him.
13:52 Speaker 04 Yes, I'm so blessed, every day. And I'm thinking, no, I love you. I know that you're living in a fantasy world now. That's not fair. I mean, certainly people have good relationships, but it's the friction also that makes it interesting. Otherwise, it could be quite boring. So, the idea is to be able to establish what you want in your life. I got a wild guy here.
14:10 Dax Shepard? Let's be honest about who you picked and who he picked.
14:13 Speaker 04 Yes, I picked him.
14:14 Dax Shepard? Yeah, he's a wild dude.
14:15 Speaker 04 I like that guy. We don't agree on certain things. He was tougher than me as a parent, and, you know, I got, "Why did you do that?" But we have a very, very strong family because of him. That was one of the things that gave us things to talk about. But I think that if we were married, there probably could have been times when you go, "Oh, come on, I'm done."
14:33 Dax Shepard? Yes.
14:34 Speaker 04 How many times?
14:34 Dax Shepard? Yes. Because you're married and you go like, "Can I live this way for the rest of my life, which I've already signed up for?" No, I don't want to live this way for the rest of my life. That's why I think it could have potentially ended.
14:44 Speaker 04 It is absolutely possible. The only thing I could say is, is that I met, meet still, a lot of men. Nobody came up to who he is.
14:53 Dax Shepard? This is an outside guess, and we interview a lot of powerful women. And there seems to be a pretty common pattern where men are very attractive. Did the powerful woman, they're dazzled by the powerful woman. And then, once they're a partner with the powerful woman, they then want her to now end that.
15:09 Speaker 04 That's true.
15:09 Dax Shepard? And so, a lot of women who are successful, I have such great sympathy for because they either have to get a fucking golden retriever who's not challenging, isn't rewarding, isn't going to really be a partner building shit, that's just going along for the ride. Or an equal that's gonna get jealous of the attention they receive and the money they make. And so, unfortunately, I think for women as successful as you, it's such a narrow field of men that's an equal, yet is confident enough to let you shine. That's my guess of why Kurt has been in the picture for 41 years. This motherfucker somehow has a confidence that he is not threatened by your shine.
15:48 Speaker 04 Right, he's not.
15:51 Dax Shepard? From 728 with Maya Rudolph.
15:58 Dax Shepard? Probably so many of these men that you've been comedically involved with, were in love with you. How did you manage all that?
16:04 Speaker 05 First of all, thank you for this question because no one has ever asked me this. And you're making me feel really good.
16:10 Speaker 06 It definitely happened.
16:11 Dax Shepard? But Maya, you're so beautiful and you're so talented, it's crazy.
16:15 Speaker 05 I should have come here a long time ago.
16:19 Speaker 05 No one's ever said this to me in my entire life. I don't know what to answer. In Groundlings, I had a boyfriend.
16:26 Dax Shepard? Okay, for how long?
16:28 Speaker 05 Most of it, and then he dumped me. I had passed up so much comedy dong for this guy. I feel like between Groundlings and Saturday Night Live, having a boyfriend, I missed out on so much comedy dong.
16:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah, which isn't legendarily great dong.
16:46 Speaker 05 No, it's not.
16:47 Dax Shepard? It's actually kinda known to be a pretty bad dong.
16:50 Speaker 06 Dark, twisted.
16:54 Speaker 06 And we're not talking about aesthetics, like emotional, emotional.
16:57 Speaker 05 Emotionally twisted dongs.
16:59 Dax Shepard? Heavy use of substances, sloppy.
17:03 Speaker 05 I dodged so many bullets in that respect. But the other thing is comedians, and most thespians, have such a fun flirtation.
17:12 Speaker 06 Right.
17:12 Speaker 05 So, you get to have that, especially with these dudes that feel like your brother. But yeah, I wish I'd gotten a lot more pussy.
17:20 Dax Shepard? That mediocre.
17:21 Speaker 05 It would have been fun to reflect.
17:23 Dax Shepard? On that flaccid dong.
17:24 Speaker 06 But that's why you had boyfriends. That answers that.
17:26 Speaker 05 I had moved back to LA with my college boyfriend.
17:29 Dax Shepard? I also think you might not know that guys like you is my hunch too.
17:32 Speaker 05 That is something I know about myself.
17:34 Dax Shepard? Right. Little bit of Monica isms.
17:36 Speaker 06 Oh, you're like oblivious to that.
17:38 Speaker 05 I do have that because I've noticed in life, I'll say something, I'll say, yeah, he likes you. And you're like, huh? I didn't know that.
17:44 Dax Shepard? Right. Same over here.
17:46 Speaker 05 Why do you think that is? Cause I find that fascinating about myself. My own personal theory is that I'm also a little bit of a boy because of my upbringing. I grew up with my brother and my dad. After my mom passed, you know, I was seven. So the majority of my childhood home was my dad and my brother. And my brother's older and he was super funny. So I just wanted to be like my brother.
18:06 Dax Shepard? Right, of course.
18:07 Speaker 05 And so I'm a little bit of a dude, DNA wise, you know?
18:10 Dax Shepard? So that's, yeah, your story, I think. Monica has a story too.
18:14 Speaker 06 I do, but mine's reality. So it's like not cool to call it a story.
18:20 Speaker 05 That was great.
18:21 Speaker 06 Well, yeah, I grew up in, you know, God, how many times?
18:23 Dax Shepard? She's never heard it. You can cut it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
18:25 Speaker 06 Grew up in Georgia, all white. The boys didn't like me.
18:29 Speaker 05 Same experience, by the way.
18:30 Speaker 06 Yeah.
18:31 Dax Shepard? I had a hunch. And by the way, all of it's built on a single, well, I don't want to diminish it. It is built largely on one very profound experience.
18:39 Speaker 06 Well, that was the culmination. Okay, it wasn't. There were lots of things that were telling me, uh oh, being brown isn't so great.
18:47 Speaker 05 Correct.
18:48 Speaker 06 In this environment. And then it culminated in sixth grade and this boy said he couldn't date me because my parents worked at Dairy Queen, which they don't. But Indians worked at the Dairy Queen or ran the Dairy Queen, I guess.
19:00 Dax Shepard? Owned.
19:00 Speaker 06 Owned, probably. Franchise.
19:02 Speaker 05 Oh, we owned this Dairy Queen.
19:04 Dax Shepard? Okay, Dairy Queen.
19:05 Speaker 06 In retrospect, they were very successful.
19:08 Dax Shepard? But he liked her.
19:09 Speaker 06 He said, I want to, but I can't because her parents work at Dairy Queen. And then, you know, that got back to me and then I was like, oh, I see. So. So they can't. It's not that they don't want to. It's just, okay, this thing about me has made it actually impossible.
19:24 Speaker 05 Ooh, yeah.
19:25 Speaker 06 For love. And then that really, really detoured the rest of my life.
19:30 Speaker 05 Wow, I think that we have a very similar experience. I grew up here in Los Angeles. I was the only mixed kid, let alone only brown girl in my class. And we're talking eighties. So at the birthday parties, girls would French braid each other's hair. And I was like, check please. No one's getting their fingers through this. And then there were those cute little barrettes in the eighties that people would put little lanyard, pretty like strings in. Those didn't fit in my hair. Or like when I went to Mary Wigmore's boy-girl swim party, I had short hair and it was very curly. And Xander was like, go under the water. And so I'd go under the water and he'd be like, do it again. And I'd do it again. He goes, your hair looks like a sponge.
20:08 Speaker 06 Aww.
20:08 Speaker 05 And I'm 51 years old and it still hurts.
20:11 Speaker 06 Yes.
20:12 Speaker 05 You know? And then he was also the kid that was like, hey, will you talk to Mary for me? It was always about my friend Mary.
20:19 Speaker 06 A hundred percent.
20:19 Speaker 05 Who's like beautiful, wonderful, funny.
20:22 Dax Shepard? Great with kids, good dancer.
20:25 Speaker 05 All true.
20:26 Speaker 04 Great with kids.
20:28 Speaker 05 Great. When you said detour, what I heard was the choice to detour for ourselves. We made that choice. We were like, ah, I'm going over here to protect myself.
20:40 Dax Shepard? Yes. And I only mean story because that was sixth grade.
20:44 Speaker 05 I know.
20:44 Dax Shepard? You know?
20:45 Speaker 05 I know.
20:45 Dax Shepard? And so there was a lot of time after that. I can only assume this and backdate it because I've been around her all the time for eight years. And I see a lot of guys like her and guys come to the show and hold up signs and people hit on her in front of me and I can see and she can't. I'm just saying that once that changes your point of view, it does become really hard to come back from that.
21:04 Speaker 05 One hundred percent.
21:04 Dax Shepard? I think the quintessential ingredient in that story, which makes it heartbreaking is he liked you and you liked him.
21:09 Speaker 05 Yeah.
21:10 Dax Shepard? And the friend was like, why don't you ask her out? You guys like each other.
21:12 Speaker 05 That's really gnarly that you were told that.
21:14 Dax Shepard? Yes. So then, yes, the story makes a ton of sense, which is, well, even if they like me, they're not going to. So I'm just turning off the whole thing because it's just going to be painful and hurtful and I'm going to protect myself. Anyways, I just think, I know you miss it a lot and I have. Had a hunch, maybe you missed it a lot.
21:28 Speaker 05 You are very astute. And I also didn't realize, because now that I've had four children and my body has become something I don't recognize, I look back at my young self in those grounding states and I was like, wow, I was so cute.
21:41 Dax Shepard? Oh, my God, you were so hot.
21:42 Speaker 05 My boobs were so cute.
21:44 Speaker 06 So perky.
21:45 Speaker 05 So perky, I had the best boobs. I had the best little body and I didn't know it.
21:50 Dax Shepard? You would have blown her right off this hill at Barton Springs if you would have unleashed those suckers.
21:54 Speaker 05 If those suckers came out to play at Barton Springs.
21:57 Dax Shepard? It would have shut down the whole park. Everyone out of the water, out of the water.
22:02 Speaker 06 Oh, my God.
22:02 Speaker 05 Oh, what's it called? This is also what happens. I'm not going to remember words. What's it called when the sun is blocked and you have to look through some?
22:08 Speaker 06 A clip.
22:08 Speaker 05 Thanks.
22:10 Speaker 06 We're coming up on one, by the way.
22:11 Speaker 05 Really?
22:12 Dax Shepard? It's right around the corner.
22:12 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's about to happen.
22:16 Dax Shepard? Somehow you are getting even by doing that now.
22:20 Speaker 05 I was just going to smear her name through the whole thing. The other thing is, I don't know if I know how to recognize people hitting on me.
22:27 Speaker 06 Yeah.
22:28 Speaker 05 I genuinely don't think I'm that aware. I don't know what it looks like. When you said you saw it happening for Monica, did she not see it?
22:36 Dax Shepard? No, we fight about it. I'll go, that guy was hitting on you. And she'll go, no, he wasn't. He was saying blank. And then it's a fight.
22:41 Speaker 05 I don't know what it looks like.
22:43 Speaker 06 Yeah, I also think you're wrong a lot.
22:47 Dax Shepard? Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
22:54 Dax Shepard? We get support from No Bull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post-summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.
23:04 Speaker 01 That's when you really need to ground yourself.
23:06 Dax Shepard? Exactly. And that's why I keep my training routine through the holidays. It's the whole No Bull idea. There's a no bullshit training brand built around consistency, honesty, and just putting in the work. It's not about adding more pressure to an already packed schedule. It's about having the gear and the habits to move through the season your way. My personal favorite, all three of the shoes are fantastic. The Outwork, the Outwork Flex, and the Drive Two. I like the Drive Two because it's a hybrid. And I lift, of course, but I also like to do what's called box jumps. Right. I do a lot of jumping onto a little platform and I want a little more flexibility. And boy, do they deliver.
23:43 Speaker 01 And if you're a cardio person and you're running and you also need to be lifting.
23:47 Dax Shepard? And the style is banging. I don't know what to say. Beautiful style, very breathable, very, very comfortable, lots of support. They were built for lifting.
23:55 Speaker 01 They also make a great holiday gift. You know, I love gifting, a purposeful one that actually supports someone's goals and routines. And it's not a gift that just ends up in the back of the closet.
24:04 Dax Shepard? Stay stronger than the season. Head to nobolproject.com all holiday season to shop new deals every week. This episode is supported by Helix.
24:16 Speaker 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.
24:26 Dax 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.
24:37 Speaker 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.
24:54 Dax Shepard? Okay.
24:55 Speaker 01 Recently.
24:55 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
24:56 Speaker 01 That doesn't have a Helix mattress on it and I really could tell a big difference in my sleep.
25:00 Dax Shepard? Temperature was all over the map.
25:01 Speaker 01 It was a mess. I need a new one.
25:03 Dax 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.
25:18 Speaker 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.
25:24 Dax 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.
25:42 Dax Shepard? We get support from Skims. Okay, I have a confession. I genuinely love matching pajamas. It's the best part of Christmas morning, really. Everyone in the same matching set, looking ridiculously cute in front of the tree.
25:57 Speaker 01 I love matching pajamas. I'm literally going to be in coordinating sets with all my friends this holiday season. Because I got them, spoiler to my friends who are listening. The same Skims pajama set I've been living in. They are so soft and cozy and they look cute. So you can leave the house and go get a late night hot chocolate. Be cozy.
26:18 Dax Shepard? It's so great how Skims has sets for everyone, too. Women's, men's, kids, even your pets. So nobody in your life has to be left out this year.
26:27 Speaker 01 I have a bunch of different pajama sets. One of my favorite is the organic cotton sleep long sleeve set.
26:34 Dax Shepard? Okay, tell me more.
26:36 Speaker 01 It is so comfortable, very chic, too. The top is a button down, but very, very soft, easy to sleep in. But as I said before, you can multi-purpose this and look super cute.
26:47 Dax Shepard? Hot chocolate runs. It's like the pajamas we grew up in, except without the scratchy polyester that made opening presents feel more like a hot yoga class that nobody signed up for.
26:57 Speaker 01 All the nostalgia, none of the discomfort. Shop my favorite loungewear and pajamas at skims.com. After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you. Select podcasts in the survey and be sure to select Armchair Expert in the dropdown menu that follows. If you're looking for the perfect gifts for everyone on your list, the Skims Holiday Shop is now open at skims.com.
27:16 Dax Shepard? We are supported by Squarespace. So here's something I think about a lot. Most people I talk to on this show, the ones doing really interesting things, they all had a version of their work that existed before anyone else saw it. It was just theirs, notes, ideas, projects they were tinkering with. And then at some point, they made the decision to share it. That's the part that's scary, right? Going from I'm working on something to here's what I made. Rob went through the exact same thing, building our site on Squarespace. And what made it doable was that he didn't have to become a web developer overnight. He just had to show up with the idea. Squarespace handles the rest. Beautiful templates that actually look like you hired. Someone built an SEO so people can find you email campaigns, scheduling analytics, all under one roof. No code, no patchwork of random tools.
28:01 Dax Shepard? And honestly, the thing I keep coming back to is how low the barrier is. If you've got something you've been building quietly and you're ready for people to see it, Squarespace makes that leap feel a lot less traumatic. Head to Squarespace.com slash DAX for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
28:28 Speaker 01 Or you think something, okay.
28:30 Dax Shepard? I know the ways of love.
28:31 Speaker 01 I don't know how much I can keep in of the story I'm about to say. We had someone on this show who was flirting with me. I was like, yeah, he's flirting, but I know he's not so interested. Like, I know. And we left and Dax was like, he's gonna ask you out. And I was like, I mean, maybe, whatever.
28:49 Speaker 05 And did Letterman call you?
28:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, actually, yeah.
28:52 Dax Shepard? But at two in the morning.
28:54 Speaker 01 It's fine. He can get away with it.
28:56 Dax Shepard? He's probably just waking up. Actually, it's super flattering. It's the first thing you want to do.
29:00 Speaker 01 He was kind of flirty.
29:02 Speaker 05 He's the best.
29:02 Speaker 01 He was amazing.
29:04 Speaker 05 He's the fucking greatest of all time.
29:06 Dax Shepard? He really is.
29:07 Speaker 05 Continue.
29:08 Speaker 01 Okay, so he didn't, right? Like, this went nowhere. And I actually was kind of mad at you when it went nowhere.
29:14 Dax Shepard? Hold on a second. He asked for her number.
29:16 Speaker 05 Okay, that's so.
29:17 Dax Shepard? When we were taking pictures outside. He asked for her number.
29:19 Speaker 01 And Dax's.
29:20 Dax Shepard? Both of ours. And then I walked him out and he said, Monica's so cool.
29:24 Speaker 05 That means.
29:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah, he's like telling me like, Monica's so cool. How long have you guys known each other? Like, he wants to know more about Monica.
29:30 Speaker 05 So questions equal.
29:31 Dax Shepard? Interest.
29:32 Speaker 05 Okay, I agree. I'm not there yet.
29:34 Dax Shepard? My, then he text her after the episode came out. Now, he has ghosted her. He has ghosted her.
29:40 Speaker 05 What did he say on the text? Was he like, you up?
29:44 Dax Shepard? Me and Letterman are just hanging.
29:47 Speaker 01 That would have been more clear. I would have liked that.
29:49 Speaker 05 It wasn't clear.
29:50 Speaker 01 No, and that's also not what happened. He texted right after we recorded.
29:53 Speaker 06 And so like, hey, I got you or something.
29:56 Speaker 05 I'm sorry?
29:56 Speaker 06 I know. That's like new slang. I'm learning it too.
29:59 Speaker 05 What does it mean?
30:00 Speaker 06 Like, I got your number.
30:02 Speaker 05 That's flirty to me.
30:03 Dax Shepard? He has ghosted her for sure, but there's another thing going on, which is there's also a reality of the world. This guy is very popular right now. He's traveling all around and a lot of girls like him. And he probably likes several girls. And so, yeah, he probably has his hands full and he ghosted Monica. But I still maintain he liked her and he did reach out to her and he did ask for her number. And to say that this young dude with every option in the world is like a great pursuer of things? I'm not making that argument. And he probably is distracted by all kinds of hot comedy dong right now.
30:30 Speaker 05 So much comedy dong.
30:31 Speaker 06 Well, I know, but like.
30:33 Dax Shepard? Listen, I've never been anywhere in my life and then randomly met someone and then decided to get their number and then text them because I want to be friends with a stranger. He liked you.
30:42 Speaker 05 I also don't think I've ever pursued anyone myself. So I don't know how it works. I can only imagine it can be painful when you pursue people and they don't reciprocate. So maybe his move is not so cool, but he tried.
31:00 Speaker 06 Then I texted him and then I was flirting and then there was.
31:04 Speaker 05 Did you say you up?
31:05 Speaker 06 That's what everyone says.
31:06 Dax Shepard? That's the only text, actually. There's one button now on younger people's phone and it just one button says you up.
31:12 Speaker 05 Ooh, great idea.
31:14 Speaker 06 I texted him and I was flirty and then there was no response.
31:19 Speaker 05 Gross.
31:19 Speaker 06 I was mad at you first because I was an easy target. And then I really was honest with myself and I was like, man, this is why I don't do this.
31:28 Dax Shepard? No, Monica, that's not the right lesson.
31:31 Speaker 06 Yeah, because I know it's, listen, stop. So he, so you know, it's like, he likes you. Ah, that was me protecting myself. And then I was like, you know what? No, I am gonna text him. I am gonna flirt. And then full ghosting was like, oh yeah, this is why you don't do this.
31:47 Speaker 05 I totally get it. I've been ghosted in that way as well and it makes you feel like, oh, no good deed goes unpunished. Why did I fucking open like a sliver of my heart?
31:56 Speaker 06 And I wasn't going to. I was being smart.
31:59 Speaker 05 Yeah, you went against what you thought was right.
32:01 Dax Shepard? But again, there is a reality that this. Person has been out of town virtually since we met him and he's been nominated for everything. And there are a lot of girls, I'm sure in his sphere.
32:11 Speaker 06 Whatever you say.
32:12 Dax Shepard? All that's not good, but it does not say that he didn't actually like her.
32:15 Speaker 05 Oh, he liked you.
32:16 Dax Shepard? Yes.
32:16 Speaker 05 It's clear to me, but I will say I don't think it's the last text you'll ever get from him.
32:21 Speaker 06 Well, it might be the last text he ever gets from me.
32:23 Dax Shepard? Brought to you by Loudie Mio.
32:25 Speaker 05 Loudie Mio.
32:26 Dax Shepard? My mother's so mio.
32:29 Speaker 06 Anyway.
32:30 Dax Shepard? That was fun.
32:30 Speaker 06 We really got derailed.
32:31 Speaker 05 I disagree. That was good rail. I think you're right and I love that you've thought about it. That makes me love you more because I know as my friend you see me. So that makes me feel really good. And I'm also in good company because it's such a similar experience. I was, you know, in a small group of kids growing up and felt so ugly duckling vibes.
32:50 Dax Shepard? I'm gonna also say it was compounded by you're in LA at Crossroads. Some of the white people that are relative to you are like princesses on planet earth. It's not even just like you're rummaging around my hometown in Michigan. It's pretty extreme.
33:04 Speaker 05 And I had a similar thing of like the boy I loved my whole childhood. The elementary school that I went to, we were a small group of kids, it was 25 kids and I was in love with Dax. He was, you know him?
33:15 Speaker 06 I never, yeah.
33:16 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I just, my breath went away because I heard you were in love with Dax.
33:19 Speaker 05 I know.
33:20 Dax Shepard? First came out.
33:20 Speaker 05 Well, I told you, you're the only other Dax I've ever known.
33:23 Speaker 06 That's the only Dax other than him I've ever heard.
33:25 Speaker 05 Dax was the love of my life and he did not love me back. All my friends do. I loved him. I loved him. I loved him.
33:32 Dax Shepard? So much.
33:33 Speaker 05 He was fucking huge and he had this big blonde bowl cut. He's super hot now. He's grown out of his bowl cut. But he's a very handsome, married man. In the old days, he was the love of my life. I just knew that that was my person. And we were really good friends and then junior high, great friends. And I was like, it's about to happen.
33:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
33:53 Speaker 05 This is about to go down. Nothing happened.
33:56 Dax Shepard? Oh.
33:56 Speaker 05 And then he left school, but then he came back as a senior and I think he had the nerve to tell me at our 30th high school reunion, like, oh, I was in love with you. I was like, you know what, bitch? First of all, that doesn't count.
34:07 Speaker 01 Exactly.
34:07 Speaker 05 Now.
34:08 Speaker 01 And do you even believe him?
34:09 Speaker 05 I don't.
34:10 Dax Shepard? I do.
34:11 Speaker 05 I don't believe him. Like, why didn't he tell me then?
34:13 Dax Shepard? You guys, both of you.
34:14 Speaker 01 It's easy for him to say now.
34:16 Speaker 05 Thank you.
34:17 Dax Shepard? You guys are the smartest and dumbest fucking people I've ever met. Monica, can you look at Maya and go, of course, anyone would be in love with her? Duh.
34:24 Speaker 01 A hundred percent.
34:25 Dax Shepard? And then Maya, can you look at Monica and go like, of course?
34:28 Speaker 05 But it doesn't penetrate.
34:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's true. Did you have a thing that I've figured out I have in therapy? Which is I seek specifically white male approval so much because that was who was rejecting me all the time.
34:44 Speaker 05 Oh, God. I have to think about that one.
34:46 Dax Shepard? Maya just threw her hands in the air like, is that a gospel?
34:49 Speaker 05 It just like, set a shiver down my spine. I'm trying to think. I mean, yes and no, because I feel like I've also worked out some things. I also have, well, my dad's Jewish. I guess he looks white. My dad is superhuman, great guy. He's like the best guy in the world, so I don't have bad dad stuff. It's really interesting. There's a type of white guy that I know I'm invisible to.
35:14 Speaker 01 Interesting.
35:15 Speaker 05 And it's kind of like a fratty guy. They can't see me. I don't register for them. They don't know what to make of me.
35:23 Dax Shepard? There's just some opaqueness in the air.
35:25 Speaker 05 They don't get it, and they don't want to get it. It doesn't compute, and I do find that very fascinating.
35:30 Dax Shepard? Yeah. God, again, I'm not sure I believe you entirely, but I think probably 80%.
35:35 Speaker 01 There's no way to know.
35:36 Dax Shepard? There isn't. I'd have to be around you and some blowhard jocks to see.
35:39 Speaker 05 You're triggering a slight memory of being single. By the way, I've only had like three boyfriends.
35:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you've not really been single much in your life.
35:46 Speaker 05 No, but that's the thing. They're just long relationships. I haven't been like dong to dong or anything like that.
35:52 Dax Shepard? Don't know where this dong ends and that one begins.
35:54 Speaker 05 I mean, it's endless dong.
35:56 Dax Shepard? Same time.
35:57 Speaker 05 But I do remember being in a bar once, like on the West Side. Maybe I was in Venice, and my hair was, I started relaxing it when I was at SNL, but before, it was my natural curls. It's very thick, natural curly hair.
36:06 Dax Shepard? It's quite beautiful. I've seen many photos, and you used to be at the Groundlings with them.
36:09 Speaker 05 At the Groundlings, yeah. Once I got to SNL and couldn't get under the wigs, we had to like reroute. And then I just never got out of the route. I'm gonna get there one day.
36:16 Dax Shepard? I look forward to it.
36:17 Speaker 05 Thank you.
36:18 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
36:18 Speaker 01 Me too.
36:18 Speaker 05 But I was gonna say, I met a guy at a bar, and he was like, hey, wild woman.
36:22 Speaker 06 Oh my.
36:22 Speaker 05 And I remember being like, oh, that's what you see.
36:26 Speaker 06 Yeah.
36:27 Dax Shepard? You're so right to be upset. And also, you've got to consider the source sometimes. It's like, you're like giving these dumb 20 year old people that are drunk some kind of wisdom they don't have.
36:37 Speaker 06 I know, but they're running the world at the time.
36:40 Speaker 05 Thank you. I agree with that.
36:41 Speaker 06 Yeah.
36:42 Dax Shepard? Let me just say, like, you're assuming he really thinks that. And then I'm going like, on the walk up to you, he's like, he's running through ideas. I'm gonna say, hey, sexy mama. No, hey, chickie mama. Oh, wild woman.
36:52 Speaker 05 Again, butthole is tight.
36:54 Dax Shepard? It's like.
36:55 Speaker 05 Totally tight.
36:56 Dax Shepard? You just don't even know what he was cycling through before he landed.
37:01 Dax Shepard? That's a zero.
37:02 Speaker 05 You lose.
37:04 Dax Shepard? Yes, yes, yes.
37:07 Dax Shepard? From 736 with Bobby Lee.
37:15 Speaker 07 Now, Tax, why four years ago, I've always wanted to ask you, did you go out?
37:19 Dax Shepard? There's a long version and a short version. I'll try to do a medium version. I had broken my arm. I had a prescription for Vicodin and Kristen handed them out to me. And I decided I would not take those when I traveled back to Detroit because I was going to see my dad, who was dying of cancer. And she wouldn't be there to administer the Vicodin. So while I was with my dad and he had all these Percocets, I said, you know what? I have a prescription for Vicodin at home. I'm gonna take some of these Percocets.
37:44 Speaker 07 Makes sense.
37:44 Dax Shepard? That was eight years into being sober. I had a total meltdown. Kristen ended up coming to Detroit and surprising me.
37:50 Speaker 07 Did he pass?
37:51 Dax Shepard? Two months later, he did. But again, here's the thing where like, when I read about you and your dad and your recent relapse, it's like, I would have told you I'm handling that whole experience fine. I'm flying home once a week to deal with his thing. The room's full of AA people. I would tell you that it wasn't really having an impact on me, but I did that thing. And no one will like this, my dad and I did sit in his living room, looking out over the lake. And we were both on Percocet and we're both sober. I don't hate that I had that moment with my dad. I'd never partied with my dad, but we were both just kind of sitting there enjoying the thing. Next day, I'm overwhelmed with guilt and fear. Oh my God, I've relapsed. I'm gonna have to reset my day. Kristen comes in, I confess to her what I did. I took this and I wasn't prescribed that and blah, blah, blah. And she's like, look, it's fine. You're here. I have that prescription. You're not gonna do it again and you keep it moving.
38:35 Dax Shepard? And I was like, okay, and I kept it moving. But that was almost like when those owls that the falconer flies, they're only supposed to eat the food from the trainer. If they catch a mouse one time, danger, they're gonna wanna hunt again. Yeah. Because I had that experience and really it was fine and opiates were never really my thing. Over the years, I break a lot of stuff. And when I would use opiates, I was tricky. So she would administer them, but I also would maybe not take them at night so I could save up. And in the morning I could take three times the dosage. So we're in a very gray area sporadically for several years. I certainly don't think I need to come in and say I need a new date, but I'm also being a little tricky when I have them prescribed. Okay.
39:17 Dax Shepard? Then in rapid order, I break my hand, all the bones across it. I get all these pins in it. Wait, why are you breaking your arms and your hands and everything? What the fuck is going on? I'm in a motorcycle racing off-road stuff. Stop doing that! No. Okay. We're going Monday. All right. So I get all these pins and then I get a pretty healthy dose of real good opiates for a while. Almost immediately after I shattered my shoulder, my ribs, my thing on a motorcycle. Now I have multiple surgeries. Now I'm on a lot of opiates. What was very misleading about the opiates compared to the other stuff is like, if I drink, you will know in one second. Because the second I'm drunk, I'm gonna get coke. And when I get coke, I do it for three days. There's no version where I don't do it for three days. There'd be no hiding in the most conventional sense, it's unmanageable. This was very weird.
40:00 Dax Shepard? I'm on opiates, I'm still doing the podcast, I'm still very responsive and present with my family. And I'm going, this is weird. This isn't very unmanageable. This is fine, other than I know you have to keep upping your dosage because you get used to it so quickly. Like, I'm not dumb. I know that that's an issue. At this point in your mind, did you know you relapsed? I think I still had plausible deniability at that point. I wasn't ready to accept that. It was when I started buying them illegally. I was like, okay, now we're definitely doing something. Yeah. And then that lasted for a couple of months. And then I decided I have to quit and I started to try to do it on my own. And then I was visibly going through detoxes and then I copped to the whole thing.
40:44 Speaker 07 Wow, it's just a sneaky sucker, huh? So when I relapsed after 17 years, I was doing my friend Sam Tripoli's show at the main room. And his show is sponsored by a weed company. And I have 17 years sobriety.
40:58 Dax Shepard? You already fucked up on Mad TV, you got sober again, and now you have 17 years again.
41:02 Speaker 07 I did 13 and then 17. For me, it's always, I just stopped going to meetings and stopped calling my sponsor. And this is years, because you think you can do it. I have time, 15, 16 years.
41:12 Speaker 06 That's a long time.
41:13 Speaker 07 Yeah, so I'm sitting there and this guy that owns this weed company goes, hey, you know, we have a package when people do the show. And I go, I'm sober. He's like, oh, cool, but I have a CBD thing. And I go, what's a CBD thing? I don't know what it is.
41:29 Dax Shepard? What do you have stand for?
41:30 Speaker 07 And he goes, this oil has 1% THC in it.
41:33 Dax Shepard? Just to activate the CBD.
41:35 Speaker 07 Right, but if you just do the dosage, you're not gonna feel it. So I drank the whole thing.
41:38 Dax Shepard? Yes, of course.
41:39 Speaker 07 And I got buzzed. So I went back next week because my stomach hurt because you're not supposed to drink.
41:44 Speaker 06 Of course.
41:44 Speaker 07 That's all oil. So my stomach really was in pain. So I go, hey, do you have one that's like 50%? And it started getting better. And then I started getting 99% THC, 1% CBD. And obviously I had relapsed and it was just that easy.
41:57 Speaker 06 Did you know at that point when it was 99%?
41:59 Speaker 07 I think when I drank that whole bottle for that 1%, I knew. There's something really strange about this.
42:03 Dax Shepard? I think a lot of people who have relapsed will relate to this. You're distracted at first with the thought of just making sure no one knows. You forget that you didn't ever get sober for anyone else. You got sober because you were miserable. But at some point in sobriety, I started telling myself this thought. Well, if no one knows, and I'm focused on them, and then again, deciding to ignore like, well, I know. And I can't really live that way. First thought is can I get away with it? But you ignore the fact that like, you know.
42:34 Speaker 07 Problem is the eight years of real sobriety you had, that never goes away. So that's in your mind and your heart. You know now.
42:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and I was sad and missed that purity I felt. That first eight years, there was nothing on my report card that you could have said was tricky. And then I had several years of just that was in the back of my mind. I still only had them when they were prescribed to me. All these other ways I would justify it, but it never had that super clean feeling that those first eight years had.
43:03 Speaker 07 There are moments in pure sobriety that it's just the most joyous I've ever been.
43:08 Dax Shepard? I know. When you have those days, you're like, why don't I recognize I am so much happier this way?
43:13 Speaker 07 Yeah, I know. The freedom and also your belief that everything's gonna work out. You're not looking into the future and going, what if this happens and this happens? You're just really in the present moment, just like, I'm here, I'm free and I have peace. Those occasions are rare, but I never had them throughout my whole life.
43:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah, when you go like, I don't need anything to feel okay is the most miraculous feeling you can have.
43:37 Speaker 07 It's amazing.
43:38 Dax Shepard? Cause you really, for so much of your life, are convinced you can't feel okay without something.
43:41 Speaker 07 Especially growing up, going through all the experiences. I was never taught these tools and this way of living. There was no internet. I'm just in this violent house of chaos, surviving.
43:54 Dax Shepard? From 748 with Babers, AKA Amy Poehler.
44:01 Dax Shepard? This was gonna be one of my questions and much later, but I feel like every time I do bump into you, you and I are on a similar self-exploration path. Or maybe you'll bring up something you've been mulling around and I'll think, oh yeah, that's really fun to think about. I'm gonna try that. I was wondering, we have our story and our story explains why we are the way we are. It's so comforting, right? It's like a blanket. Rolling around and frolicking in the story. And then this kind of disruptive thing happens where you have children. And one of my two children's, Lincoln, she has all the shit I have without any of the reasons I gave myself for being this way. And I'm more and more having to maybe consider like, oh no, man, it was all genetics. The story is just something you've put on top of it.
44:43 Dax Shepard? And I'm just curious if you've had that experience with kids and if it's like poked holes at all in your story.
44:48 Speaker 06 Big time. Some of it is watching codependency, what it looks like for them and realizing, "Right, I did that, I still do that." Seeing that, and then having a kid that is really different than you. That's also a big one. Like, if they're an island, you're a wave, kind of thing. But deeper than the kid thing, if you're getting older and you're doing any work on yourself, there just becomes like an end of act two moment.
45:15 Dax Shepard? And an embarrassment, right?
45:16 Speaker 06 It's so embarrassing. Like, all these, "I always, I never, I'm this kind of person."
45:22 Speaker 06 It's so gross because it's not really true, or even really true anymore.
45:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
45:29 Speaker 06 Maybe it's just an old story, and then you gotta start practicing your backhand, basically. What is your backhand? The thing that you can? Do you just don't do it as much or as often? Do you want to practice that in act three? But, it's so funny you say that. On my way here, I was thinking, "I wonder what version of myself will show up in this interview." Oh.
45:48 Dax Shepard? Oh, that's fun.
45:49 Speaker 06 I want it to be the authentic version, but I was nervous because I could bring a different version if I wanted to.
45:56 Dax Shepard? Well, you have one that produces great results. This was another one of my highlighted words I just wanted to talk about, was performative.
46:04 Speaker 06 Yes, dude.
46:05 Dax Shepard? As a concept. Let me back up. You're in therapy, I imagine?
46:08 Speaker 06 Yes, I'm in group therapy and individual.
46:11 Dax Shepard? Oh my goodness!
46:12 Speaker 06 And guess what's coming back? Couples therapy.
46:15 Dax Shepard? Guess what, motherfucker?
46:16 Speaker 06 What?
46:17 Dax Shepard? She was sitting right where you're sitting five days ago.
46:21 Speaker 06 So, you know, I'm so obsessed with couples therapy that I do a fake podcast where I play a couples therapist named Dr. Sheila.
46:28 Dax Shepard? Question mark.
46:28 Speaker 06 Question mark. Thank you, Dex, due to legal reasons. And I'm obsessed, and you are too. Why do you think we are? Why are we obsessed with couples therapy? Well, I'm obsessed with all of it. I love Orna. I love anyone that does a good job at anything, so she's good. Her hair and her ability to just look and not talk is crazy.
46:51 Speaker 01 And it just pulls out the thing in the other person that they don't even know. It's so under the surface and all of a sudden this like recluse is crying and opening. It's unbelievable.
47:02 Speaker 06 And then also I'm obsessed with why is she doing it?
47:05 Speaker 01 Oh, we get into that one.
47:06 Speaker 06 Okay, can't wait to hear. Then the couples. I'm like, thank you for your service.
47:11 Dax Shepard? Truly.
47:12 Speaker 06 And not in a million years, Babers.
47:16 Speaker 06 No way.
47:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
47:18 Speaker 06 That's too much.
47:19 Dax Shepard? Yes, and you and I, this is where we diverge a little bit. We do have different comfort levels with that aspect. And I guess probably my explanation, my story is AA for 20 years. I think I'm so used to fucking strangers are there and I'm talking about shitting the bed in an orgy and we move on and I live.
47:35 Speaker 06 I'm working on, this is gonna sound so cheesy, this connection, but this is why I'm like, I'm gonna do TikTok this year because I know this is cheesy.
47:43 Dax Shepard? You referenced TikTok in an interview.
47:44 Speaker 06 I love TikTok, but the connection really, it's bigger than that, which is how do you allow yourself to be seen? You have to allow yourself to be seen or known. Sometimes as I get older, I realize, am I, am I truly known? It's like a deep ache. You wanna be known? So it's kind of like, how much do you give away? How much, who can you do it with and to? You wanna be known, you don't wanna feel lonely.
48:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:13 Dax Shepard? Babers, you're emotional about being known.
48:16 Speaker 06 I can relate.
48:16 Dax Shepard? Is part of it to be known, but also to know yourself? Or do you feel like you 100% know yourself?
48:22 Speaker 06 It's more that I feel sad for the parts of me that didn't allow myself to be out there and be known, which is why couples therapy is so fascinating to me. It's like this combination of, and therapy in general, being tender and being known and then also setting good boundaries and taking care of yourself. It's deep stuff. I just love it.
48:44 Speaker 07 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.
48:51 Dax Shepard? This episode is brought to you by Dell. Gifts mean more when they have the power to give more. They can inspire more discovery, give more confidence and unwrap more of who you are. This Black Friday, give a gift that goes beyond the box. The Dell XPS 13 laptop with a beautiful design and cutting edge performance. It helps you unlock more possibilities. It's the thinnest, lightest XPS laptop yet with touchscreen, a backlit keyboard and long lasting battery life to power you through your day. Built with a durable aluminum chassis weighing just 2.2 pounds and Intel Core processors. It's fast, reliable and portable enough to keep up wherever you go. Visit dell.com to explore the possibilities of XPS.
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50:02 Dax Shepard? We get support from ZipRecruiter. Oh, get recruiting. So I went down this rabbit hole the other day on real holiday jobs that exist and I couldn't stop. Somebody out there is hiring a ham glazer, a professional ham glazer. Another place is hiring a lead elf, implying a whole hierarchy of elves I had never even considered. Here's the thing, these jobs need real skills. People like that are hard to find. And whether you're hiring for one of these roles or any other role, the best way to find qualified people who are genuinely excited about your role is on ZipRecruiter. And right now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/dax. Plus ZipRecruiter has a new feature that shows you the most interested qualified candidates
50:47 Dax Shepard? first, so you meet the right people faster. No wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based On G2. Let ZipRecruiter find the right people for your roles, seasonal or otherwise. Try it for free today at ziprecruiter.com/dax. At ziprecruiter.com/dax, meet your match on ZipRecruiter.
51:10 Dax Shepard? This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Every family has that one holiday tradition nobody actually enjoys, but everyone keeps doing because stopping it would feel like a federal offense. For me, it was a specific meal situation that I will not name because my family listens. But at some point, you have to ask yourself, am I doing this because I love it? Or because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't?
51:32 Speaker 01 Yes, and that question applies to so much more than the holidays. I think a lot of us carry these invisible rules about how we're supposed to spend the holidays, who we're supposed to see, what it's supposed to look like. And when you start unpacking that with a therapist, you realize half of your stress is coming from rules you didn't even write.
51:49 Dax 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.
52:08 Speaker 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-
52:16 Dax Shepard? You start feeling it.
52:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, because then I had it this past weekend and I was like, oh my God, I'm just, thank God.
52:22 Dax Shepard? Relief.
52:23 Speaker 01 Thank God for her. Yeah.
52:24 Dax 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.
52:48 Dax 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.
53:33 Dax Shepard? It knows your style, your workflows, and it just backs you up without getting in the way. A thought partner that's already up to speed at your service, not after your job. So do yourself a favor and try Superhuman Go from the makers of Grammarly. Find out more at superhuman.com.
53:55 Dax Shepard? From 763 Ki Hui Kwan.
54:02 Dax Shepard? This is an impossible gap because really within four years, you go from a refugee camp to starring in the biggest movie of the year with the biggest movie star by the biggest director of all time. This is really not a possible experience. How do we get from newly into the States to getting in that movie?
54:22 Speaker 07 It's pretty insane. I was just being a kid going to school. And one day this group of people came to my elementary school and they had an open call.
54:32 Dax Shepard? What? This is a dream. If I were you, I would actually think this can't be reality. You're definitely in a simulation. So you didn't, were you like a glass clowny a little bit?
54:41 Speaker 07 I wasn't. In fact, I wasn't even the one that was auditioning. It was my little brother. His teacher thought he was perfect. Sometimes even to this day, I wonder why I was chosen and not him, because I think he's so much more talented than me and he's funny. He makes me laugh all the time. So he was more of a ham than I was. And so he was auditioning. For the casting director and I was just behind the camera coaching him what to do was tell him like David do this, do that. And telling him what kind of expression he should be doing and I was just like shouting out directions.
55:14 Dax Shepard? You're directing him. They should have hired you to direct.
55:17 Speaker 07 And the casting director saw me and I was speaking to my brother in Chinese and Cantonese.
55:22 Dax Shepard? Okay.
55:23 Speaker 07 He saw something in me and many years later I reunited with our casting director. And he told me that they had a hard time finding the perfect kid to play short round. In fact, they went to London, to Hong Kong, Singapore, everywhere where there was a bigger Chinese community. Because back then Chinatown, Los Angeles was really small and they didn't think they would find who they were looking for there. So they went everywhere except Chinatown, Los Angeles.
55:50 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow.
55:51 Speaker 07 And they were about to give up and they said, why don't we just give it one last try?
55:56 Dax Shepard? It's obvious how desperate they were that they were going to random elementary schools.
56:01 Speaker 07 Yeah.
56:01 Dax Shepard? That's not the normal casting.
56:02 Speaker 07 Yeah, exactly.
56:04 Dax Shepard? Especially for a movie of this size.
56:06 Speaker 01 Oh, my God, this is unreal.
56:08 Dax Shepard? Okay, so you're barking orders at your brother, which is hysterical and I can see why she or he would have seen, oh, this is what we need. This is a little guy who's running the show.
56:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, dynamic.
56:18 Dax Shepard? And short round was a total survivor.
56:20 Speaker 07 I was precocious.
56:21 Dax Shepard? Yes. You then auditioned.
56:24 Speaker 07 Then I auditioned. They gave me the sides and I could barely speak English at all, just very little. And then my reading comprehension was even worse.
56:33 Dax Shepard? Of course.
56:34 Speaker 07 So I was saying the lines and really messing it up, saying like, in the, like trying to even understand what I was saying. I'm not even saying the lines. I'm reading the lines.
56:43 Speaker 01 Right.
56:43 Dax Shepard? You're just making a series of sounds.
56:45 Speaker 07 Exactly. And he saw something in that. He says, Key, why don't you put that away and let's just talk?
56:51 Dax Shepard? Who's he?
56:52 Speaker 07 Mike Fenton. He cast E.T., The Goonies.
56:55 Speaker 01 Oh, this guy's a genius.
56:56 Speaker 07 Yeah, so big casting director. In fact, he Told me years later, when we reunited again, he said that after I left that room, he called Steven Spielberg and says, we don't have to look any further. We found your kid.
57:09 Dax Shepard? Oh.
57:10 Speaker 07 And this was before.
57:10 Speaker 01 I just got chills.
57:11 Speaker 07 I auditioned for Spielberg or Lucas.
57:14 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
57:16 Dax Shepard? What are your parents thinking right now?
57:18 Speaker 07 They had no clue what was going on and they could barely speak in English when they answered that phone.
57:23 Dax Shepard? The first Indiana Jones had come out.
57:25 Speaker 07 We haven't seen it.
57:26 Dax Shepard? But you knew about it, right?
57:28 Speaker 07 No, we didn't. I mean, don't forget, we're living in Chinatown. We're very insulated
57:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:33 Speaker 07 by this small Chinese community. So we've never seen Star Wars. We've never seen Raiders of the Last Ark.
57:39 Dax Shepard? Jaws?
57:40 Speaker 07 No. Back then, we had a really small 13 inch black and white television. We couldn't afford to go to the movies. We didn't even have a car. That's why when they called and they said, we want you to come to Broback and audition, my mom said, we don't have any means to get there.
57:56 Dax Shepard? We're out.
57:56 Speaker 07 Yeah. Then we sent you a driver.
57:58 Dax Shepard? Guys, this is not.
58:01 Speaker 01 I know, I know.
58:01 Dax Shepard? I'm trying to imagine what the fuck your parents, and they're having the same grapple with reality too. It's like, what is my life? These people are calling to bring my child with a driver? I mean, they must have just been trying to compute what the fuck was going on. Maybe even also scared.
58:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, like, are we getting taken advantage of?
58:19 Speaker 07 We didn't think much of it. They didn't think I would land the role.
58:22 Dax Shepard? Of course.
58:23 Speaker 07 It was like, oh, they want to see him. Well, sure, we'll take him. We didn't know it was gonna be a sequel to one of the biggest movies of all time.
58:31 Dax Shepard? Thank god, actually.
58:32 Speaker 01 It's great you didn't know.
58:33 Dax Shepard? Because you would have maybe felt a lot of pressure if you knew who Spielberg was and all that.
58:37 Speaker 07 Yeah, that's why when I walked into the room, it was this bunch of guys with a mustache and a beard.
58:41 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
58:42 Speaker 07 I didn't know their names. I didn't know any of the work at that time. I didn't know that I was meeting and talking to three of the most successful people.
58:50 Dax Shepard? Ever do it.
58:51 Speaker 07 Of all time, yeah.
58:53 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. And written by Lawrence Kazin.
58:55 Speaker 07 Yeah, oh my gosh.
58:56 Dax Shepard? Impossible. One of the greatest writers of all time. Okay, so you go in there and clearly you charm them in that audition. Where was it filmed?
59:02 Speaker 07 It was filmed in Sri Lanka. So after my audition for Steve and George and Harrison, a few weeks later, I was on a flight, again, my second time being on a flight to Sri Lanka. The first time I I was on a flight was from Hong Kong to LA. I was in economy and all of a sudden I'm flying first class with my mom to Sri Lanka.
59:23 Dax Shepard? And you're 12?
59:24 Speaker 07 And I was 12, yeah.
59:25 Dax Shepard? They're serving you Coca Colas and nuts and all this. Sundays. And what's mom thinking? How's mom explaining this to you? Cause you're probably looking at her like, how is this happening? She doesn't know, but she's got to give you an answer.
59:37 Speaker 07 I think she was just really happy for me and proud. My parents gave up so much. In fact, when we got to the US, my parents were heavily in debt. Because they just didn't have enough money to get all of us out. So they were borrowing money from their friends. So when we got here, they were working really hard to try to pay off that debt. And that's why they put their 12 year old kid to work.
1:00:01 Dax Shepard? It must have been an insane amount of money relative to what they were making by working.
1:00:06 Speaker 07 Here's what's so great about Lucas and Spielberg. I was 12 years old. We didn't have an agent or a manager. We didn't have anybody to look after us, no lawyer. So whatever contract they gave us to sign at that time, we just signed it.
1:00:21 Dax Shepard? Yeah, of course.
1:00:22 Speaker 07 But little did we know, not only did they give me a really generous salary, but they also made me a profit participant.
1:00:33 Dax Shepard? No, they gave you a point of the movie?
1:00:36 Speaker 07 Yeah, I was able to share in the success of the movie. That's why when the movie came out and became one of the biggest movies in 1984, not long after that, I got a check in the mail. And that check was so nice that I was able to help my parents pay off the debt. We were renting a little house in Chinatown. And I was able to use that money to buy a house in Monterey Park, where my parents and all my siblings can live a bit more comfortable.
1:01:07 Dax Shepard? Again, the range of luck you have. You've got like the worst luck and the greatest luck all within the span of four years.
1:01:14 Speaker 07 And I think that's what makes it a great life. And not only that, when the movie came out, our world premiere. Was in London, attended by Princess Diana.
1:01:24 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
1:01:25 Speaker 07 And Prince Charles at that time, who is King Charles now. But going from a refugee camp and I'm standing in line with Spielberg and Lucas and shaking hands with Princess Diana.
1:01:36 Dax Shepard? They should make a movie about your life. I want to watch this movie. I want to see a little boy experience all this.
1:01:42 Speaker 01 I love this. That makes me love Steven Spielberg.
1:01:46 Speaker 07 They were so generous.
1:01:47 Dax Shepard? Lucas had done that too with the Star Wars cast. He gave them percentage of their...
1:01:51 Speaker 01 But this like 12 year old boy, like they could have easily been like, eh.
1:01:54 Dax Shepard? But everyone in Star Wars was also a no name actor and he gave them some of the toy rights.
1:02:00 Speaker 07 That is so rare. You have to fight for it.
1:02:02 Speaker 01 Oh my god, for anything.
1:02:03 Speaker 07 To be a profit participant.
1:02:04 Dax Shepard? No, you gotta say no and walk away five or six times.
1:02:07 Speaker 07 It was like on their own accord. It was out of their generosity.
1:02:11 Dax Shepard? Okay, so again, you have no awareness of who Harrison Ford is either at this point. So you arrive in Sri Lanka and you start working with him immediately?
1:02:18 Speaker 07 Yes.
1:02:19 Dax Shepard? And is he intimidating? He is a very big man with a husky voice.
1:02:23 Speaker 07 No, he was not. He was so friendly.
1:02:25 Dax Shepard? And playful?
1:02:26 Speaker 07 And playful and humble and kind. I would always play with him.
1:02:30 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:02:31 Speaker 07 And he would make me laugh. All of us were staying in a hotel in Sri Lanka. Every day after we wrapped, I would see Harrison swim in the hotel swimming pool. And I would always be on the side watching him go back and forth doing laps. And one day he asked me, he says, Key, come on in and join me. And I go, I can't. I don't know how to swim. And he says, what? Come here. And he taught me.
1:02:55 Dax Shepard? Get the...
1:02:55 Speaker 07 He taught me how to swim.
1:02:57 Speaker 01 I gotta swim!
1:02:58 Dax Shepard? Key, this is bonkers.
1:02:59 Speaker 01 This is the best story I've ever heard. This is so special. I mean, I know you know it because you reflect on it a lot and you give a lot of gratitude vocally, but how wonderful.
1:03:09 Dax Shepard? I guess I have such distrust of anything good that I would have had a hard time that whole experience, accepting it was real. I would keep waiting to almost wake up.
1:03:21 Speaker 07 As a kid, you don't really know how special that is.
1:03:25 Speaker 01 Of course.
1:03:26 Speaker 07 And so to me, I thought, this is how movie making is.
1:03:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:03:29 Speaker 07 You know, like from now on, every movie that I make is going to be like this.
1:03:33 Dax Shepard? The star will teach me how to swim.
1:03:35 Speaker 07 Yeah. And you would walk on these big scale, beautiful sets. You get treated really well.
1:03:41 Dax Shepard? You'd have 200 days to shoot.
1:03:42 Speaker 07 Yeah. So I thought every movie was like, and then very... Quickly, I realized, oh, wow, it doesn't always work like that.
1:03:48 Dax Shepard? It's crazy how good you are in the movie, having never done it.
1:03:52 Speaker 07 I really think it's because of Steven's direction. He's so good with kids. He would tell me specifically how to say my lines. And he would give me directions where if I just follow that, then I can do what he wants. He was just the kind of, there was never any screaming on set. There was always laughter. We can always goof around, even though we were shooting on film. It's expensive to shoot on film. You have to process all of that. We were constantly making jokes, doing take after take after take. And I would hear his laughter behind the monitor. And that's what it was like.
1:04:26 Dax Shepard? So it was fun. You liked acting.
1:04:28 Speaker 07 Because of that experience, that's the reason why I fell in love with acting. I remember we were shooting in London, L Street Studios, and that's where we built all those stages. I didn't even know this, because I hadn't seen Star Wars. But I knew later on, one day Carrie Fisher came to visit. I remember goofing around with her on set, Mark Hamill.
1:04:49 Dax Shepard? Oh, they must have all loved you.
1:04:51 Speaker 07 I think they were all there for Harrison Ford.
1:04:57 Dax Shepard? From 798 with Halle Berry.
1:05:04 Dax Shepard? I do want to clear up something. This has plagued Billy Bob and I since we did that movie. We had this very explicit love scene. There's an urban legend that we really were fucking. I've heard it. And it's just not true. I believe you. I've perpetuated that. Can I tell you that? Dax! I know, I'm so sorry. Oh, you motherfucker. Do you know the other one? What's the other one? Angel Heart, Mickey Rourke, and Lisa Bonet. I've heard that too. OK, great. Now, if we take you out of it, can we take you out of it for one second? No, because I'm in it. You cannot take me out of it. We're going to take you out of it for one second. Against the rules. Here's why those things are so sticky and enjoyable. Because the love of my life was Lisa Bonet.
1:05:45 Dax Shepard? She is the number one most beautiful human to ever walk on planet Earth. Mickey Rourke was the stud of all studs. If you were a white dude, that's about as good as it got. You looked at him in nine and a half weeks and diner. He was so fucking cool. So I'm seeing this dude I would love to be. He's with this woman that's the most beautiful of all time. And you're like, they really fucked? You're like, yes, I'm so happy for both of them. The two hottest people did it.
1:06:10 Speaker 06 But how are you gonna do that with people?
1:06:12 Dax Shepard? I have no idea.
1:06:13 Speaker 06 Cameras rolling.
1:06:14 Dax Shepard? I don't know. That's even heightens the craziness.
1:06:18 Speaker 06 I know.
1:06:18 Dax Shepard? But you've heard it too.
1:06:19 Speaker 06 I've heard it too, and it's secretly driven me mad all these years.
1:06:22 Dax Shepard? Okay, well, I'm glad we cleared it up.
1:06:24 Speaker 06 Yes.
1:06:24 Dax Shepard? Have you heard that I've said it? When it comes up, I'll tell the alleged one. Well, I've said the alleged one, just like I said the alleged Angel Heart, which you heard.
1:06:32 Speaker 06 Okay, well, now you can say.
1:06:33 Dax Shepard? I'll say, you know what, guys? That one unfortunately is not true. The guy with the sexiest eyes in the world and the other most beautiful person in the world didn't actually have sex.
1:06:43 Speaker 06 That didn't happen. I didn't date Spike Lee or Eddie Murphy. Can I just clear that up?
1:06:47 Dax Shepard? Oh, those are rumors too?
1:06:48 Speaker 06 Those are rumors too.
1:06:49 Dax Shepard? I don't know those ones.
1:06:50 Speaker 01 That must be so annoying.
1:06:51 Speaker 06 It is.
1:06:52 Speaker 01 That every time you do a project and you're doing these incredible roles and incredible work and the rumors that come out are always about.
1:07:00 Speaker 06 They gotta lead you to somebody.
1:07:01 Speaker 01 Or who you're dating.
1:07:03 Speaker 06 You can't just be a good actor and you can't just make that shit look real. You had to really be doing it.
1:07:07 Dax Shepard? Well, interesting, okay.
1:07:11 Speaker 01 Let's hear it.
1:07:12 Speaker 06 Come on.
1:07:13 Dax Shepard? I don't even know that I was basing it on it looked so real it had to be real. I just want to be clear.
1:07:19 Speaker 06 Okay, so what were you basing it on? Just rumor?
1:07:21 Dax Shepard? Just that would be awesome. I'd be happy for both of you. That's it.
1:07:25 Speaker 06 That's what you wanted to have.
1:07:27 Dax Shepard? Yes, I would be so happy for Lisa Bonet and Mickey Rourke if that really happened.
1:07:31 Speaker 06 But would you have been happy for me and Billy Bob?
1:07:33 Dax Shepard? Yes.
1:07:34 Speaker 06 Really? You had a wife, so you know.
1:07:36 Speaker 01 She would have had to have signed off.
1:07:38 Speaker 06 I know Angie, and she ain't signing off on that shit.
1:07:40 Speaker 01 Yep, yeah, you're right.
1:07:41 Dax Shepard? She's pretty cool, but yeah, that's.
1:07:43 Speaker 06 She ain't signing off on that, and I'm a girl's girl. I'll do a lot of.
1:07:45 Dax Shepard? Things, but I'm not gonna sleep with your man.
1:07:48 Speaker 01 Although in her blood era, she was a little more white.
1:07:51 Dax Shepard? Things were wild. Yeah, but they were wearing blood. That didn't mean, okay, go have sex with someone. With your co-star on camera.
1:07:57 Speaker 01 You're right. In fact, it's the opposite.
1:07:59 Dax Shepard? I have not been objectified, so I really can't probably. But I'm trying to imagine if there was a rumor about me and one of my co-stars that had actual sex in a scene, how I would feel about it. As a woman, you would feel so violated. Yeah. You know, there was some wrestler dude, I can't even remember his name right now. Never met the guy and he's talking about he had sex with me. And people really believed this.
1:08:21 Speaker 01 Very fucked up.
1:08:22 Dax Shepard? It is. You feel violated when people dare to just.
1:08:25 Speaker 01 It's an ownership.
1:08:27 Dax Shepard? Yeah. I don't like that at all, for the record. And I very much apologize for any time I did bring up allegedly, this is part of the lore. Sorry. I've been married enough times, like you don't need to add on. Words, the list is good enough. Things to me that have not happened. Just pick from the ones that are there. Well, I stopped doing print entirely, interviews, because I did an interview in Playboy magazine. And you have to know, I was so excited about that. I had read all the Playboy magazine interviews. They were my favorite. Like anytime you really wanted to get to know somebody, it was in there, right? And they asked me and I was so excited. And in real life, the interviewer said, you've been linked to several famous ladies. What's the magic something? Let's just say that. I can't even remember the particulars.
1:09:09 Dax Shepard? I go on to try to give an answer that doesn't make me seem like a fucking douchebag. It comes out in the question in print says, you've been linked to a lot of famous ladies. List three people that he did not list in his question. I had not even met these three people. But if you go to this website, who's dated who, it says I dated these people. I've never met the people. So now I'm like, these fucking women think I was asked that and didn't immediately correct him and go, no, no, I've never even met those people. Oh, they hate you. Of course they should. Where's your integrity? Like you can't add names. That was so shady. I'm never doing that again. I didn't do interviews for 10 years for this reason.
1:09:54 Dax Shepard? I was so tired of the same star-crossed beauty articles. Wanting to always make me seem like I'm playing the victim or talking about my bad marriages. Like I was not, but that's what everybody wanted to talk to me about, which is why when I came.
1:10:10 Speaker 05 And I thought, oh, two hours, because you sit down with people, you talk about so many things, but they extrapolate the story they want to tell about you. And they have the power as the editor in chief of their magazine.
1:10:21 Dax Shepard? Well, go through the filter of their own person.
1:10:23 Speaker 05 And what they want to spin about you.
1:10:25 Dax Shepard? The story they already had in their head about you, whether you fit into it or not.
1:10:28 Speaker 01 And what they think is sellable.
1:10:30 Speaker 05 Is sellable. And I got hip to that. And I just said, no more. This doesn't service me, it services them.
1:10:35 Dax Shepard? I think that's why this is the antidote to that. It's you. And I'll go anywhere and speak in my own voice. I'm happy to.
1:10:42 Speaker 05 Me too. So you can hear my inflection, you hear if I'm joking, you hear if it's in jest. You hear if I'm mad.
1:10:48 Dax Shepard? Yes.
1:10:48 Speaker 05 And then ask me anything.
1:10:50 Dax Shepard? Yeah, like I'm saying, it's great that Steven Seagal has a reggae album, but my voice is telling you, I don't really think it's great. They did a print on the call.
1:10:59 Speaker 01 Thanks for clarifying.
1:11:00 Dax Shepard? I hope it was clear. I don't think that's a great move.
1:11:03 Speaker 05 These podcasts have revolutionized everything and it's given us back our power.
1:11:06 Dax Shepard? I agree. In the same way, social media, for all of its isms and owls, it has killed paparazzi. And you and I were unified on that. Oh, I'm gonna throw one thing in the mix right now. You and I were almost in a movie together.
1:11:20 Speaker 05 Really?
1:11:23 Dax Shepard? Well, you were almost in Wanted.
1:11:25 Speaker 05 I was.
1:11:26 Dax Shepard? And I was almost in Wanted.
1:11:27 Speaker 05 Really?
1:11:28 Dax Shepard? I almost got the James McAvoy role. He had fallen out and they started meeting people. And I met Tim Moore, that interesting Russian dude, which I assume you met him too. And Angie had fallen out, or maybe you were, whatever order. There could have been a version of Wanted with you and I.
1:11:45 Speaker 05 That would have been amazing.
1:11:47 Dax Shepard? Yes. I think James McAvoy is much better than I am, just for the record.
1:11:52 Dax Shepard? But can you imagine? That would be freaky if we had been in Wanted. That was a very successful film.
1:11:56 Speaker 05 I know. My friend Mark Platt produced that. I was like, Mark, you should have given me that.
1:12:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah, just give me that.
1:12:02 Speaker 05 Give me that.
1:12:03 Dax Shepard? Give me stuff.
1:12:03 Speaker 05 Yes, Ben.
1:12:04 Speaker 01 We love Ben.
1:12:05 Speaker 05 I do too. Oh, my God, I grew up with them. Just in Wicked. So that's how far back I go.
1:12:09 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:12:10 Dax Shepard? No way.
1:12:11 Speaker 05 Good for you.
1:12:11 Dax Shepard? Congratulations.
1:12:12 Speaker 05 One of the smartest things I ever freaking did.
1:12:15 Dax Shepard? Well, you already know it. You fucking won the Academy Award for it, but boy, I love Monsters Ball. You're so impossibly great in it. I'm gonna bring up Catwomen, women, woman, only for a single reason, which is, I think this is the most gangster move ever. You Catwomen. Why can't I say women?
1:12:35 Speaker 05 That's right, because there are many of us.
1:12:36 Speaker 01 That's right.
1:12:37 Dax Shepard? There's Catwomen.
1:12:38 Speaker 05 It's a Freudian slip.
1:12:39 Dax Shepard? You do Catwoman. You win a razzie and you go accept it and you bring with you in your hand your Oscar.
1:12:47 Speaker 01 Oh, hell yeah. I did not know this.
1:12:49 Dax Shepard? And you hold the razzie in one hand and the Oscar in the other. And I'm like, that's cooler than you having fucked Billy Bob Thornton as a legend. I was like, oh my God, that is fucking so cool.
1:12:59 Speaker 01 That's life, right?
1:13:00 Dax Shepard? Do you have to work your way up to that decision? Or you immediately know, fuck it, I'm gonna go do this?
1:13:04 Speaker 05 Oh, I immediately knew that.
1:13:05 Dax Shepard? It's so cool.
1:13:07 Speaker 05 I also had a fundamental knowing that when I won that Oscar, it didn't mean I was the best. It meant I won. Because what is the best performance? Again, it's subjective. So it just meant I won. And I knew when they tried to give me the razzie, it didn't mean I was the worst. It just meant I won that fucking thing.
1:13:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:13:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:13:23 Speaker 05 Because I
1:13:23 Speaker 01 It's very healthy.
1:13:24 Speaker 05 I know that. I thought if you can go and accept an accolade, then you must be of the same character and substance to go accept something when they're telling you, okay, it sucked balls.
1:13:34 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
1:13:34 Speaker 05 You must be able to be the same person.
1:13:37 Dax Shepard? It's just so confident and attractive. It's so cool.
1:13:39 Speaker 01 So classy.
1:13:40 Speaker 05 It was so fun to get up there and make jokes. And I wrote my whole speech and I was like, ready to rock.
1:13:46 Dax Shepard? Well, the speech was better, the Oscar speech with the razzie speech. You laugh, you're like, fuck, I kinda.
1:13:51 Speaker 05 I put way more energy in my razzie speech. The Oscar speech, I didn't write a speech. I didn't think I was gonna win. I thought Sissy Spacek was gonna win. Because back in those days, whoever won the Golden Globe, pretty much always won the Oscar. And she won the Golden Globe. So I pretty much knew after that, okay, this was a fun ride. I got nominated. Sorry, Dee Dee. I didn't do it for you.
1:14:09 Dax Shepard? But now I'm sisters with you in this.
1:14:11 Speaker 05 Right. Either way, there would have been a connection.
1:14:12 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Were you the first black actor to win a Razzie?
1:14:18 Dax Shepard? You don't write that.
1:14:19 Speaker 05 Probably.
1:14:20 Dax Shepard? What have you got?
1:14:21 Speaker 05 I was the first one to bring their Oscar, that's for sure. Somewhere there was a first event.
1:14:28 Dax Shepard? Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
1:14:35 Dax Shepard? 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.
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1:15:40 Speaker 07 Once Daily Foundo is available by prescription only in 0.8 mg, 2.5 mg, 5.5 mg, 9 mg, 14.5 mg, and 17.2 mg tablets. Learn more at foundo.lilly.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX. Now is perfect to talk to your doctor about Foundo.
1:16:01 Dax Shepard? From 771 with Jack Black.
1:16:08 Dax Shepard? Okay, so who breaks out the blotter or the devil's dander first? I was introduced to LSD. Guess I was.
1:16:19 Speaker 07 Maybe fourteen or maybe thirteen. It was a friend of mine.
1:16:23 Dax Shepard? I'm not looking for a name. I'm just curious. Were you hanging with a twenty six year old dude that was a tradesman?
1:16:28 Speaker 07 He was older. I did look up to him like a big brother figure. I had a thing where I wanted a father figure, even though I had a great dad, but I wanted the dark dad. I wanted the one that was gonna show me the ways of the dark side. And this guy filled in that role. We did acid and I remember that night laughing as hard as I'd ever laughed and having the strange feeling of being whole for the first time. And suddenly this big, dark, mysterious universe that I didn't know how I fit into, it all felt right. Laughing till I cried and having kind of a weird spiritual experience. But then it led to the darkest day or night of my life where it wouldn't stop and it stopped being fun.
1:17:13 Speaker 07 And it was so bad that I was locked in this insane brain prison where all I could see was chess pieces going off into infinity, playing a game with myself. And I had this terror that I was never gonna break free of it. And it was like, as good as that first hour and a half was, it wasn't worth it. And thank God I made it through the night. I don't think I slept a minute.
1:17:37 Dax Shepard? Once the thought enters your mind, this may be permanent. The second you have that, you're fucking cooked for hours.
1:17:45 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:17:45 Dax Shepard? You're like, oh shit. You're remembering stories you heard growing up of like, you know, Mike Benner. I saw him at the gas station. He's been tripping for four years. You have this one story. And you're like, oh wow, this is happening to me. I'm gonna be him.
1:17:59 Speaker 01 So you stopped doing it after that?
1:18:01 Speaker 07 I might have done it again after that.
1:18:03 Speaker 01 Sure, sure. Why, of course.
1:18:04 Speaker 07 I think I got some bad acid. That's what I heard. Sometimes you get the bad one. There was a few hallucinogenic experiences, mushrooms and acid.
1:18:13 Dax Shepard? But coke, now that's a sexy dance partner.
1:18:15 Speaker 07 Well, I was just down to clown with anything that my big bro or my crew of heavy metal maniacs were into at the time. It wasn't a gang, but it was like a brotherhood. There was some coke. You know, when you first take it, there's an initial rush and a feeling. It's similar in that a doorway opens in your brain and you're like, I fucking get it now. And I have a lot of brilliant things to say really fast. And you go for hours. And hours and you say some things where you're talking about love and you're talking about connections and you're talking about things in the future that you're gonna do. And it's in retrospect, so embarrassing.
1:18:51 Dax Shepard? It is.
1:18:51 Speaker 07 Thank God there was no recording, but it actually would have been nice if someone had recorded it just to play back as a cautionary tale of how ridiculous you can sound.
1:19:01 Dax Shepard? I witnessed myself a single time I had been recorded by my girlfriend and it's a bummer. I mean, I think that might be the lowest feeling I've had is looking at my face and going, how I thought I was coming across versus what I'm seeing now, what a gap. But I would say the thing I liked about it most is I'm not optimistic. I'm very pessimistic, couple toots of that stuff and I'm like, you know what? Everything is gonna work out.
1:19:29 Speaker 07 I got spiritual. I like talking about God and stuff that I don't usually talk about and I don't really feel a connection to. I'm definitely leaning atheist, but for some reason, once I get all coked up or whatever the drug may be.
1:19:42 Dax Shepard? There's a version that brings on a nice side of yourself, which is like, I'm so interested in whoever I'm talking to. Someone will be telling me that their father was a firefighter and I'm like, wait a minute. And this is sincere. I'll be, oh my God, so your dad was like, like a firefighter?
1:19:57 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:19:57 Dax Shepard? And I'm in it. This guy's dad was a hero. Tell me more. And I wanna know about the movie of their life where their hero dad was.
1:20:05 Speaker 01 You already want that. You don't need.
1:20:06 Dax Shepard? Imagine it squared.
1:20:10 Speaker 07 It gives you a brief energy that lets you delve deeper than you normally would with other people. Maybe that's why Freud supposedly used it a lot in sessions. So that they could go deeper than they usually would about themselves and about the nooks and crannies of their personality.
1:20:27 Dax Shepard? Was the move to crosswords crossroads? Crosswords. We should open a competing school across the street called Crosswords. But were your parents sensing we need to put him somewhere else and get him out of this crew?
1:20:39 Speaker 07 Yeah, but in the midst of all of that turmoil and darkness, there was someone from the crew. This dude was into this person who we had all met when we got on a bus and went to the arcade in Westwood. It was called Westworld back when arcades were a thing. Play your favorite tabletop video games. And we met these girls and we both fell for the same girl and he kind of called dibs or whatever. And I was like, dibs schmibs. And then I started a romance on the side and he didn't. No, and then when he found out, he wanted to kill me. And then he did beat the shit out of me. It wasn't over yet. There was gonna be some more ass kicking.
1:21:18 Dax Shepard? Ooh.
1:21:18 Speaker 07 My parents just noticed that shit was going sideways. And they're like, we gotta get you the fuck out of there. And I was like, yeah, I agree. I don't wanna be here anymore.
1:21:27 Dax Shepard? Were you so relieved? Because you maybe wouldn't have sent up the white flag.
1:21:30 Speaker 07 I don't know what would have happened there. So I went to this little tiny school called Poseidon. That was on Pico between Bundy and Barrington. It's not there anymore. And it was a school with a lot of kids that had been kicked out of their schools from all over the city. And it was kind of a last chance kinda school.
1:21:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it was an island of broken toys.
1:21:51 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:21:52 Dax Shepard? Misfit Island.
1:21:53 Speaker 07 But it had some great teachers in it. There was a theater teacher named Deb Devine, who I latched on to. And she taught us all improvisation games and viola spilling games. And got us all thinking about telling stories. And it was kinda like theater therapy. You could work out some of your demons by playing roles. And just coming off the top of your head with shit you're gonna say to the other person in the scene. It was kind of amazing. And she is still a great theater force in Los Angeles. She's got a theater called Twenty First Street Theater here in downtown L.A. She has outreach programs to kids all over the city who come and learn theater. She's an awesome lady. Yeah. There was also like a therapist in the school. There's only like twenty kids in the school, but the therapist was a bodybuilder also.
1:22:37 Dax Shepard? Oh, wonderful.
1:22:39 Speaker 07 Because sometimes he would have to defend himself. There's some rough characters in this school.
1:22:42 Speaker 01 Mixed messages.
1:22:43 Speaker 07 Yeah.
1:22:44 Dax Shepard? Were there smoking breaks built in? I'm being sincere.
1:22:46 Speaker 07 There was smoking. And there was kids going in to see him and talk to him. And I was like, what's going on there? Cause there were some kids that it was compulsory. They had to go talk to the therapist a certain amount of times a week. And I was not in that group. And I was jealous. I was like, I wanna talk to the muscle building therapist.
1:23:04 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Talked to him just on the side. I was like, how do you get into there? It's like, you can come in if you want. You want to set an appointment? I was like, yeah. And I went in there. I just wanted to see what was going on in here. And we got to talking and then it only took me about a minute before I started spilling my guts about how I had stolen money from my mom and all this shit that I was carrying around, how guilty I was. Doing drugs. The drugs, but mainly the betrayal of my mom, who just was unconditional love for me. And she didn't know that I had stolen money to get the drugs. And I just bawled my eyes out. I cried so hard and it felt so good. Cause I grew up with a Jewish upbringing and I learned a lot of my value system there, but I didn't have confessional. And there was something about just sitting there with this therapist and just confessing my sins
1:23:48 Dax Shepard? or whatever you want to call it, my guilt, that felt so cleansing.
1:23:51 Speaker 01 Your shame.
1:23:52 Dax Shepard? Yes. I saw him for the next year, once a week, and it was like a major turning point for me. Yeah, that's really lucky.
1:24:01 Dax Shepard? From 786 with Vince Vaughn.
1:24:09 Dax Shepard? You guys did Couples Retreat and I was there just hanging for like the whole six weeks. We were friendly to each other, but in my mind, we took a flight during the press tour and you and I were the only people that didn't fall asleep. We were flying to like Australia. I remember it. And we're chatting, chatting, chatting. And it's fine. We're both awake. And then at some point I talk about being in the learning disabled room. And I feel like I saw a whole new version of you come online. And you and I just really got into what it was like to get called out of the classroom and go down to that room. My favorite movie as I saw as a kid, cause I thought that was me, was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Oh, sure, sure, sure. Did you love that movie? Yeah, loved. I was funny. I got along with people. Kids really followed me. I wasn't going in the most popular crowd, although I got along really well with them too.
1:24:54 Dax Shepard? But I'm going to play Dungeons and Dragons. I'm going to wrestle and I got along with people. But when I went to that class, I had a, well, they label this stuff. It's a longer conversation. I'm not in agreeance with the journey that the government and everyone's taking with how we handle.
1:25:09 Speaker 05 I think everyone just learns differently and no one's gonna line up right next to each other. You could probably label and distinct how we learn so differently. I had an interesting journey later in life with that, but as it pertained to my childhood experience, when you're younger, they wanna have you tested. So you go to a psychiatrist when you're five. And I remember thinking, they're gonna take me from my family. That's what I think is at stake. I'm like, oh, I get it. If I get these questions wrong.
1:25:33 Dax Shepard? You're going to juvie.
1:25:34 Speaker 05 I don't know where I'm going, but maybe I was in first grade, so I was six at the oldest. But I remember thinking like, this is really some high stakes. Cause if I don't know the answers or I mess this up, I'm going away. Like I'm leaving my parents behind. And my parents never explained, they said, now everything's fine. The school wants to run some tests for how you act in class. I'm like, alright. So I remember, maybe this pertains to what we're talking about. So I'm a fucking six year old answering questions as if it was the law, as if I wrote the book on it. Where does paper come from? And my point of view would be, well, we all know trees. The trees is where paper comes from and that's what they do with that. So I wasn't just answering it, I was answering it like I was fooling them that that was the right answer. And they go, is that it? This is the trees. I go, in the machines, then they do the machines.
1:26:19 Speaker 05 And the guy had polio who was interviewing me. His hand was like this, well, when I was four, I put my hand in an electric can opener. I was watching my mom, I put my finger in, I pull it down and it's just blood everywhere. And so I have a split in my nail on my right hand that I still have, which is just dead skin. It didn't grow back, right?
1:26:38 Dax Shepard? Hold on a second.
1:26:40 Speaker 01 Are you guys doing a matchy?
1:26:43 Speaker 07 You see how that's splitting right there?
1:26:45 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:26:45 Speaker 07 That varies in how split it goes down.
1:26:47 Speaker 05 And see, mine's a beautiful, like.
1:26:49 Speaker 07 Yeah, yours is hardcore.
1:26:50 Speaker 05 Yeah, mine's hardcore, right? So when you're young, kids will go, oh, now that's gonna be a problem with me, cause that's not happening to me. Right? So anyway, that was a gift for me as my life went on. At the time, I hated it, but it really gave me a lot of empathy for that feeling of being attacked or persecuted for having something different that's not a choice.
1:27:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:27:10 Speaker 05 So I remember connecting with this guy where I'm staring at his hand and I go to him, don't feel bad about your hand, I have this too. And I reached out.
1:27:22 Speaker 01 That's so sweet.
1:27:24 Speaker 05 Showed him my finger and he looked at me.
1:27:26 Speaker 01 And you were six?
1:27:27 Speaker 05 I was like six, cause they were driving me from the suburbs, Buffalo Grove, to the city to see this guy. And at the time, they were just saying like, is he hyperactive? I guess I was borderline hyperactive for whatever that meant for a six year old in class. Ass who was fucking living on sugar.
1:27:39 Dax Shepard? Pop Tarts.
1:27:40 Speaker 05 Pop Tarts, frosted freckles for breakfast. I guess I had a hard time resisting a joke and sitting still. But anyway.
1:27:48 Dax Shepard? Were you also way too big?
1:27:49 Speaker 05 No, I was kind of tall younger and then I evened out and then I got bigger. But I just remember at that point, that was what launched it. Where at first they said, maybe he would be good to take a Ritalin. My parents thankfully, I think I did one and I didn't react well. But my dad and I think my mom said it too. They're like, my kid's not going through life doped up, which is a great thing because you have to learn how to process stuff. And so the answer became, I would go to a class, but not like these other kids. I didn't live in the class. I was in general pop.
1:28:17 Dax Shepard? Right, right, right, right.
1:28:18 Speaker 05 Regular school.
1:28:18 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:28:19 Speaker 05 But I would get one period a week to go. I had a speech therapist and then I'd have to go to this class. So when I go to this class, I figured it out. It was really good for me because as I got older than I would be like in fourth grade. And there's a bunch of kids playing Candy Land. Like, what the fuck is everyone playing Candy Land for? Like, that's the game you play at five.
1:28:38 Dax Shepard? Seems a joke.
1:28:39 Speaker 05 And I first was kind of harsh on these kids because I was distancing myself. I'm like, I'm not one of these fucking kids. But there was a girl that was super tall. She didn't talk, but it reminded me of like Chief.
1:28:50 Dax Shepard? Yes.
1:28:51 Speaker 05 And Lucas asked, I figured out as a kid, I was like, well, no wonder she's not talking. She stands out so much.
1:28:56 Dax Shepard? Yes, she was invisible.
1:28:58 Speaker 05 She's got bad posture that she just didn't want to stick out anymore. There was nothing wrong with her. She just wasn't comfortable. And then there was the kid who was more rural than all of us. But his family was like agriculture. So he had flannels and work boots and shit. So I started to figure out, a lot of these kids could have been emotional or just social cues weren't there. But they were great kids. If you had a friendship with those kids, like it meant something. So I became super protective and I started including them like in recess games. And I was so confident and so, okay, getting in a fight or verbally getting in stuff. I was like, no, fucking Meghan's playing kickball. She's on my team. Here we go.
1:29:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:29:37 Speaker 05 And so I started to have that. So it was a gift because I knew that feeling. The difference was if you have some level of confidence or self belief, despite the obvious information, you really can go super far and really accomplish a lot because you.
1:29:55 Speaker 03 Have to be really resilient and work really hard. But the poor kids that don't have support from a parent or don't have any belief can get absolutely devastated.
1:30:05 Dax Shepard? Oh, ruined. I would imagine through different interviews and even the notion that you had loved the Stephen King book you loved as a kid.
1:30:14 Speaker 03 Rage.
1:30:14 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I saw kids get literally destroyed. There's no going past what happened to them in junior high and high school. Through bullying and the horror that can be, I just saw kids get fucking ground up and destroyed. And had so much sympathy for them. It broke my heart. It was all around.
1:30:32 Speaker 03 We also had someone who spoke faith over us where some of these kids like they'll go to the parents and say, well, I think we all know Larry has a hard time focusing. If they're wearing a name tag that says expert and you're dealing with parents, especially back then where there's not a lot of information.
1:30:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and they're scared.
1:30:48 Speaker 03 Then they're gonna go along with these recommendations. I still see it today where there's parents who go along with recommendations that are terrible recommendations. Just because they're the popular idea of the time. And that kid then is sort of believed to have not skills. But it's always that way. That could be athletics, that could be music. Usually what you find is the person that has some sort of obstacle. That's gonna for whatever reason be resilient and come up with a psychotic program is the one that kind of can break through and have better mastery and self-awareness because you have to earn that, I think, by overcoming that. Sometimes when it's real easy, they're not forced to do that. And so when that finally happens in life, they don't necessarily have those resources because they just haven't been in that position.
1:31:32 Speaker 01 But that's a tremendous amount of empathy for a six-year-old. Most kids looked around and they were like, yikes, that's bad, but I have to protect myself. At that age, we're all just trying to survive elementary school and middle school, trying to get through it. And so to bring people in is very rare.
1:31:51 Speaker 03 I was raised with that. My mom would be like, hey, someone's new in school. It would be pretty neat if you brought him to the lunch table. It was just in the water in my house that way. I just was part of who I was.
1:32:01 Dax Shepard? But I also think you hit it on the head earlier, which is you were giving people. What you wanted. Was there an inciting incident other than that experience, which is profound? I kind of belonged there. I couldn't read. I didn't learn to read till fifth grade, right? I have dyslexia and those hieroglyphics, it's really nuts what that looks like to me. I got over it. It's fine. And I agree. I'm glad I had the whole journey and then figuring out I was good at some things was like, what a gust of wind in the sails. Oh my God, I'm good at math. Oh my God, I'm not fucking stupid. I thought I wasn't stupid. When I'm talking to dudes on the playground, I'm verbally advanced. Why is it I'm so stupid here?
1:32:35 Speaker 03 That's a terrible feeling.
1:32:36 Dax Shepard? On the playground, I'm so confused.
1:32:38 Speaker 03 Did you feel stupid or you knew you were bright?
1:32:39 Dax Shepard? Well, I felt like soon as you sat in that desk and they started writing on the chalkboard, I'm like, I'm out to sea and it's compounding daily. And now we're another step down the path and at some point I threw in the towel. I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to get this. I just have to act like I'm paying attention.
1:32:54 Speaker 03 That's similar to how I was answering those questions.
1:32:56 Dax Shepard? Yes.
1:32:57 Speaker 03 You took on a survival mode. You were acting like you were overly on top of what the teacher wanted.
1:33:03 Dax Shepard? Right.
1:33:04 Speaker 03 Isn't that crazy? And then at the same time, you really needed to say, I'm confused here.
1:33:08 Dax Shepard? Yeah. And then Dax and there was someone holding a slip and then I'd leave the classroom and then I'd go to that room with everyone.
1:33:13 Speaker 03 Did you ever have the experience where you knew there was a progress report coming home? You could hear the moment when a parent received it. You could hear their reaction of how angry they were that there was a progress report. Do you remember the sound of your parents' feet when they came in from work walking? And you knew there was an issue that was about to be addressed?
1:33:31 Dax Shepard? I got blessed in that my mom, luckily for me, thought I was a genius. She's like, yeah, I don't know what to say about this report card, but I know this kid's a genius. So she didn't sweat me.
1:33:41 Speaker 03 We were fortunate to have belief in us.
1:33:44 Dax Shepard? Yes, yes, yes, yes.
1:33:45 Speaker 03 And the kids that didn't, they're dead.
1:33:46 Dax Shepard? Started to believe the worst of themselves.
1:33:48 Speaker 03 Yeah, and they get destroyed.
1:33:51 Dax Shepard? From 696 with Heidi Klum.
1:33:59 Dax Shepard? Okay, you've talked too much about it, but I just have a specific question about it. And that is Halloween. So do you already know this about Heidi, that she goes so hard for Halloween? Probably harder than anyone in the world.
1:34:10 Speaker 06 What rock have you been on?
1:34:11 Speaker 07 I know, it's so embarrassing. God. We can still hang out, right?
1:34:17 Dax Shepard? It'll be part of the fun of the reality show.
1:34:19 Speaker 06 No, not before you have a little look at me when I was a rainworm, okay?
1:34:22 Dax Shepard? Okay, great.
1:34:23 Speaker 06 Yes.
1:34:24 Dax Shepard? Listen.
1:34:24 Speaker 06 Please look at my rainworm.
1:34:26 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:34:26 Speaker 06 Look at me when I was 95 years old. That's also one of my favorites. I turned 40 and people were like, wow, so you were like 40, really old now. You should stop modeling. And then I was like, dang, I guess they're right. And then that got me thinking about, I'm gonna make myself really old. And that was amazing. It took like 13, 14 hours to make me that old. Because every part of my skin that was exposed, they had to age.
1:34:49 Dax Shepard? I hate to say this, there will be some listeners that, like Monica, haven't seen the Halloween costumes.
1:34:54 Speaker 06 Please have a look at it.
1:34:55 Dax Shepard? I learned of it today. Monica, whatever you're imagining, you have to times it by 10. So she went as whatever she called it, a rainworm. It looks like a fucking intestine.
1:35:06 Speaker 07 No, a ringworm!
1:35:07 Speaker 06 No, it looked like a rainworm.
1:35:09 Dax Shepard? A rainworm, okay.
1:35:11 Speaker 06 Like a real proper rainworm that you see when it's raining and they come out of the ground and they're out there.
1:35:16 Dax Shepard? Or like the lower GI. That is also what a worm looks like. She is in this like nine foot long fucking...
1:35:23 Speaker 06 Yeah, you have to see it, please.
1:35:25 Dax Shepard? Her face is gone. There's no face. She's got, her eyes are poking through.
1:35:29 Speaker 06 My face was glued onto the walls of it. My hands were tied down to the side of my body. When I would fall over, I couldn't get up. So I said to my husband, please, when I fall over and I'm landing on my face, don't leave me on my face. Because it's loud. People are like, like Heidi over here, Heidi, photo over here, look to over here. So when I'm like down, when I'm down, like and I'm on my face.
1:35:50 Dax Shepard? But by the way, they wouldn't even know if you were looking over there. She's gone in this costume, Monica. You can't see her.
1:35:55 Speaker 06 Do you see it?
1:35:56 Dax Shepard? When I tell you that this costume is as complicated as the Jabba the Hutt costume in Star Wars, it's that level of prosthetic and insanity. Look at her face, try to find her face.
1:36:07 Speaker 01 Incredible.
1:36:08 Dax Shepard? Now that we know what you're doing. So we know that the one costume is going is ninety five. And you looked like you're saying a rainworm. I think it happens to look like intestines. Do you think that looks like intestines?
1:36:18 Speaker 01 I do, because I thought you were saying ringworm. That's like an intestinal disease and it could be that, too.
1:36:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah, so.
1:36:25 Speaker 01 But it's a rainworm.
1:36:27 Speaker 07 No, it's great. Clearly a rainworm.
1:36:30 Dax Shepard? No one says rainworm. You would just say worm, right? You're talking about the worm that is just in the grass.
1:36:35 Speaker 07 Many different worms.
1:36:36 Dax Shepard? There certainly are.
1:36:37 Speaker 07 No, there are worms that come out when it rains.
1:36:39 Dax Shepard? Yes.
1:36:39 Speaker 07 I think in America, we don't have that.
1:36:41 Dax Shepard? No, normal worms.
1:36:43 Speaker 07 Yeah, normal worms, they come off.
1:36:45 Dax Shepard? And if we want to talk about a different worm.
1:36:46 Speaker 07 Not a maggot.
1:36:47 Dax Shepard? Right, but we would say maggot.
1:36:48 Speaker 07 No, a maggot is not coming out of the ground. A maggot is in food.
1:36:52 Dax Shepard? I know that. What I'm telling you is no one would call a maggot a worm. You don't need to differentiate.
1:36:57 Speaker 07 Right, then you don't say maggot worm. Ah, okay.
1:37:00 Dax Shepard? That's what I'm trying to.
1:37:00 Speaker 07 Oh, my God, the light bulb. Did you see it? It went on. It took me a minute.
1:37:04 Dax Shepard? Here it's just worm. That's standard, what you were.
1:37:06 Speaker 01 But I kind of like that she called. You can call it a rainworm.
1:37:08 Dax Shepard? It's very cute that you're doing it.
1:37:10 Speaker 07 I thought you always had to specify, like with pastas, linguine.
1:37:13 Speaker 01 This old version of you is crazy.
1:37:17 Dax Shepard? Now that we've been brought up to speed about these Halloween costumes, my question is, many, many women on Halloween like to.
1:37:27 Speaker 07 Dress as a nurse.
1:37:28 Dax Shepard? Well, they like to express a sexiness that they don't otherwise get to do in real life. And I think it's very telling that you went as a forgive me, an intestine and a ninety five year old woman. And my question is, do you think it's because you've had your fill of being sexy? And that now it's like, let's go be a rainworm.
1:37:48 Speaker 07 For me, it's more creative. I'm a creative person. So I also don't want to do costumes that I have seen. So I try to really think outside of the box.
1:37:58 Dax Shepard? You did. Success.
1:37:59 Speaker 07 Last year, I was like, okay, this worm, I know was so epic that I was like, how am I going to top this worm? So then I thought I have to do something with multiple people. I became a peacock where I'm just the face in the front body of the peacock and I have like ten people who were the eyes of the feather in the rest of the body and I'm climbing on this. And we did this whole. Beautiful dance until I then become this peacock to just give people something else again. Where they're like, oh, my God, that's cool. Or I want people to have an emotion when they see that. And I love also when girls want to be a sexy nurse and they feel like they can't do this in their normal life.
1:38:37 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:38:38 Speaker 07 And then that gives them the freedom, the okay, to try something that they normally don't feel comfortable in. I feel like I'm kind of always doing the sexy nurse without being the nurse. If I go to a party or walking down the catwalk somewhere.
1:38:51 Dax Shepard? Kristen does the same thing. Kristen's so celebrated for being beautiful that she does things that are so gross that only she would really be comfortable doing. Like she'll wear a bald cap and she looks insane. Or she has a bathing suit that looks like a man's hairy chest and it's so gross.
1:39:08 Speaker 01 It is.
1:39:08 Speaker 07 Yeah, I like that.
1:39:09 Speaker 01 Also said that about her wedding because they got married at the courthouse and she wore just like a cute outfit. And people ask like, oh, you didn't want to get dressed up? And she was like, I get to do that a lot for my job. So this got to be a different thing.
1:39:22 Speaker 07 Yeah, but it's more like art for me. I feel like I'm like a live sculpture. One year, for example, I wanted people to see what it entails. I know I always do like little videos and that I put up there. But one year I was putting myself in a window in Manhattan. And I started at like eight o'clock in the morning and I had all the artists around me gluing all the stuff on. And I'm sitting right by the window and people could walk by this window all day long.
1:39:47 Speaker 01 It's like performance.
1:39:48 Speaker 07 All day, all day they could come by and they could see what happens. Like five, six hours later, I was still sitting there. They were gluing stuff on me because I wanted people to see how this all happens. You know, it's like a sculpture at the end. Then they just rip it all off. It's just for one night and then it's gone.
1:40:03 Dax Shepard? Well, what I like is this reinforces the point you made a few minutes ago, which is like you just pursue stuff because you pursue them. Sometimes they generate money, sometimes they don't. This is obviously a humongous expense for you to do this. And you're not going to get any money back from doing that.
1:40:15 Speaker 07 I never have.
1:40:16 Speaker 01 But you get joy out of it.
1:40:17 Speaker 07 I do.
1:40:18 Dax Shepard? And you always have something to talk about on a talk show in a pinch. All you gotta do is flash that fucking picture and you got like six minutes right there.
1:40:24 Speaker 01 But I never knew in the beginning how it would grow.
1:40:27 Speaker 07 To that over 20 years now I've been doing this maybe 23 years.
1:40:31 Dax Shepard? When do you start planning?
1:40:32 Speaker 07 Now.
1:40:32 Dax Shepard? Now.
1:40:33 Speaker 01 And do you go to a specific party every year?
1:40:36 Speaker 07 I make it every year.
1:40:37 Speaker 01 It's your party.
1:40:37 Speaker 07 It's my party.
1:40:38 Speaker 01 How fun.
1:40:39 Dax Shepard? And she has Questlove.
1:40:40 Speaker 07 Questlove is there every year. I love Quest.
1:40:43 Speaker 01 Amazing. This is so fun.
1:40:44 Dax Shepard? It is.
1:40:45 Speaker 07 But when I first came to New York, I didn't feel like there was a party where people are dressing up. You would go to a party and they put a little red clown nose on their nose and then it's like, oh, I'm a clown. And I'm like, no, you're not. It just was like so boring, you know? I was always like, where is the magic? Why is no one giving it some? So then I was like, I'm gonna take that over. I'm gonna do this. And as the host, I thought I have to really show people how far you can push your imagination. And I feel like literally every year, people who are coming, their costumes also are getting better and better. People are also planning months in advance already.
1:41:22 Dax Shepard? You're inspiring them.
1:41:23 Speaker 07 People are DMing me and they're like, oh, my God, I'm coming to the party. And I'm already like, you just wait when you see what I'm doing.
1:41:29 Dax Shepard? I can't miss this party. No one can move. No one's arms works. People are falling down staircases.
1:41:34 Speaker 07 No, my husband.
1:41:35 Dax Shepard? This is a shit show.
1:41:35 Speaker 07 My husband was a gigantic egg because.
1:41:38 Dax Shepard? This is like a Black Mirror episode in a way.
1:41:40 Speaker 07 No, my husband was like, what am I gonna be if you're a peacock? And I was like, well, we're literally sitting at the dinner table and I have this chandelier that has all these eggs hanging off of it. They're real eggs all from Easter. Like, we always blow eggs out. You know, you poke holes in either side and you blow all the stuff through. And then you paint them and then we put them on strings. And so we have like 50 eggs probably on this thing. And I'm looking at these eggs. I'm like, I think it should be an egg. It should be the peacock's egg. And I know that a peacock is a male and shouldn't have eggs, but.
1:42:10 Speaker 01 But that's fine. We can break the rules.
1:42:12 Dax Shepard? No one there is gonna be a ornithologist and call you out on this.
1:42:17 Speaker 07 So he ran around like a gigantic egg.
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