Pod Insights Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard Best of Wednesday 2024 About this episode On this special episode, we revisit some of our favorite moments from Wednesday episodes in 2024. Molly McNearney remembers joining Jimmy Kimmel Live, Bill Gates wishes he were smarter, Finneas discusses the dynamics of a duo, Patric Gagne navigates romance as a sociopath, Vanessa Marin walks the walk of Sex Talks, Alegra Kastens explains the spectrum of OCD, Malcolm Gladwell delves into the science of the opioid crisis, Cat Bohannon talks about the medical discrepancies between men and women, Yuval Harari analyzes information networks through the lens of history, Orna Guralnik relates why we depersonalize, and Avett Brothers harmonize on We Are Loved.
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Transcript 16,511 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, Experts on Expert. This is our best of Experts on Experts for year 2024.
0:09 Speaker 01 We had an incredible amount of great experts this year. It was really hard to pick.
0:15 Dax Shepard? An embarrassment of riches.
0:17 Speaker 01 It was.
0:17 Dax Shepard? So please enjoy the best of experts. This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8.
0:30 Speaker 01 What?
0:31 Dax Shepard? Okay, I need to talk about something that doesn't get enough respect. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese. This is not a casual burger. This is a crafted burger. We're talking 100% fresh beef cooked right when you order it. No artificial flavors, no fillers, no preservatives, just beef doing what beef is supposed to do. And here's a detail I love. There's a cowbell sound in the kitchen. When somebody orders a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a cowbell goes off and the grill master throws a fresh patty down. That's like having your own entrance music at McDonald's. I want a cowbell for everything in life. The onions are hand-topped by someone who just knows the right amount. Two slices of cheese laid out in a star pattern, so every single bite gets cheese. And two pickles, side by side, so you're never in a pickle desert.
1:15 Dax Shepard? Every bite is accounted for. Someone engineered this thing with love. I love a Quarter Pounder.
1:21 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 when there's effort.
1:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah, the love. Don't tell anyone this, but I'll put two of them back.
1:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:37 Dax Shepard? One sitting.
1:38 Speaker 01 I'm not surprised.
1:39 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.
2:11 Dax Shepard? From episode 697, our sweet love Molly McNearney.
2:15 Speaker 02 A friend of a friend said, "There's a job opening at Jimmy Kimmel Live to be an assistant to the executive producer." I'd never seen Jimmy Kimmel Live. I had no idea what an assistant to an executive producer did, but I knew it was in the industry and could maybe get me closer to comedy. In the meantime, I'm doing improv classes out in LA and making great friends who are all really funny people. And I interviewed at Jimmy Kimmel Live. This is pre-DVR. I tried to stay up to watch the show the night before and I fell asleep.
2:44 Dax Shepard? Oopsies.
2:45 Speaker 02 I remember like, "I gotta watch the show, I gotta know what I'm doing." And I woke up to the credits. I was like, "Oh, no." Went in for the job interview, got it. Naomi Scott, Adam Scott's wife, she interviewed me.
2:54 Dax Shepard? Nah.
2:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, she was the existing executive producer's assistant.
2:58 Speaker 01 Oh, my god.
2:58 Speaker 02 Who was finding a replacement for herself. Yeah, so I got the job as the assistant to the executive producer, and I loved it.
3:04 Speaker 01 This was just a huge, quote, "step down."
3:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, I was making about a third of the money I was making. I was working about five times the hours. This is when Jimmy Kimmel Live was actually live. So we would shoot the show from 9:00 to 10:00 PM, Monday through Friday. It was the longest work day ever. I lived in Hermosa Beach. I would drive to Hollywood. I had an hour commute. I had to be at my desk at 9:00 AM, and I would leave at 11:00 PM.
3:29 Dax Shepard? Ay, ay, ay.
3:29 Speaker 02 It was terrible, but I loved it. I was so happy to be a part of this live show. I loved watching people, like, come up with ideas and they were on the air that night. It was incredible. In terms of the way the process works, do you want to hear, like, how it goes?
3:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
3:43 Speaker 02 Okay, so around 5:00 o'clock in the morning, one guy wakes up, a writer's assistant, and he combs the internet for what the stories of the day are. Those are in our inbox. They go to head writer, and we then edit them. So by 7:00 AM every day, all of our 19 writers have an email that says, "Here are the top stories of the day that we're going to focus our monologue on." You're not limited to those. Please don't be. Like, we prefer if someone goes, "I've got this interesting observation about something that's not in the Daily News." But primarily, our monologue is based on what has happened today, what people are talking About at home. We have an 8:50 a.m. deadline, so you read all these headlines and stories. And then you write a couple pages of jokes and bit ideas.
4:25 Speaker 02 So bit ideas are the things that are like fake commercials or a man on the street bit, a pre-tape with a celebrity. Jimmy gets about 50 pages by 9:30 a.m.
4:34 Dax Shepard? How many staff writers are doing this?
4:36 Speaker 02 Nineteen.
4:37 Dax Shepard? The 5 a.m. person?
4:38 Speaker 02 Shout out to Nick.
4:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah, big shout out. Big props. How many stories does he give before it gets whittled down?
4:45 Speaker 02 He'll give about 11 to 12 stories. We narrow it down to about six to eight stories, I would say.
4:50 Dax Shepard? Okay, great. So the 19 writers get six to eight stories. Then they write two pages on that.
4:54 Speaker 02 And now Jimmy gets a thick 50-page document. He whittles it down to about five pages. That's sent to us by 10 a.m. So now we have a pretty clear understanding about our monologue's going to be. Then we all start writing more jokes. So we'll say like, here are the topics. Here are the ones we still need better jokes on. This bit could use some work. This is what I love about late night television. You can be in your bed in your pajamas, writing a bit. And then you get an email and by 10 a.m. you've got a director, a producer, a graphics guy. You're making wardrobe choices. You're piecing this thing together.
5:25 Dax Shepard? Oh, the pace is so awesome.
5:27 Speaker 02 You're writing it. You're rewriting it. You're having the head writers punch up on it. Then Jimmy always does a punch up and then you shoot it, you edit it. You are oftentimes racing it to air. Our show's at 4:30. By the time you've been assigned to you're going to do this bit, it's 10 a.m. And hopefully it gets approved and it's ready for air by 4 p.m.
5:46 Dax Shepard? So it's been filmed, edited, everything scored.
5:49 Speaker 02 Yes. It is a rush. It's incredible. It's insane. It's interesting though, because the victory of getting that is so great. But if it tanks, ooh, it hurts.
6:00 Dax Shepard? Because you work so fucking hard.
6:02 Speaker 02 You sit your whole day. You haven't eaten. You're like, did I even drink water today? But the other side of it is that those failures are very short-lived because time to go tomorrow. Got to do it again.
6:14 Dax Shepard? From 7-Eleven with Bill Gates.
6:22 Speaker 03 So there's a spectrum of when I'm testing my own thinking and I see some flaw, I'm like, "Oh, you're so dumb. I've got to think better." So I'm very tough on myself. If it's a group of engineers at Microsoft that I've worked with for 10 years and who know I think they're smart and we're in it together, we're going to win or lose together, and there's no doubt of that, I can say that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
6:46 Dax Shepard? I think there's footage of you saying that.
6:47 Speaker 03 I don't say it much anymore.
6:49 Dax Shepard? From the 80s and 90s, there's some good footage.
6:53 Speaker 03 But we have very limited time. The stuff I agree with, there's no need to mention. So when I moved from Microsoft, where it's really top engineers, and some of the people sitting in the meeting would be people who work in the field, their genius is often a softer set of skills than thinking all the numbers through, that this could be 10%.
7:14 Dax Shepard? Community building and relationships.
7:16 Speaker 03 And the idea of using a little bit of sarcasm, it can come across as, "I'm not even sure you belong here." And so at the end of the meeting, you want feedback on, was it motivating the people in this meeting to find a solution? Or did it motivate them to not work on this problem? Or refresh their resume when I wanted to keep them? So I did have to learn a lot about new domains. When people can say five smart things at Microsoft and one dumb thing, and I'm not wasting any time on the five smart things. I won't bring them up. That means, "Good job."
7:51 Speaker 03 Even inside the foundation, it's not that hardcore. And as soon as you're meeting with partners, you better say, "Oh, thing one, two, three, four, five are so smart." You adapted to that way. Well, I am in many contexts where I'm meeting with politicians and
8:07 Dax Shepard? Prime Ministers.
8:08 Speaker 03 Potential partners. Early in my press days, somebody would ask a question that had some assumption built into the question that was really wrong. And I'd be like, "Hey, your thinking's not very good here." And then I remember it was one I did in France when I was like 23 years old. And the guy ran France said, did you want that guy to feel bad at the end of the interview? And I was like, no, but he feels bad. And but I was like, but he was wrong. And it's like, yeah, but was it important to correct him? Well, I had been behaving like I was in a meeting with very top people. So yes, it does take a while to understand all the different situations you're in.
8:52 Speaker 01 Well, one of the most interesting things I've ever seen happen.
8:56 Dax Shepard? We both wrote it down at the same time.
8:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, I was like, oh, my God. She asked you in a quick fire, if you had a superpower, what would it be? And you said, I wish I was smarter.
9:07 Dax Shepard? I would want to be smarter.
9:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, the whole room could not handle that answer, including us. I mean, I don't know, you tell me, it didn't feel like that was faux humility. That's truth to you.
9:17 Speaker 03 No, I'd like to be smarter.
9:19 Dax Shepard? More than you'd like to fly. Like, in my mind, I'm like, you've already got smart covered. Let's fly, let's get invisible and take a walk through the showers or do something that you can't already do.
9:29 Speaker 03 I'll double down on.
9:32 Speaker 03 The thing I'm semi decent at, I'd like to be truly decent at.
9:36 Speaker 01 Zero ego. We should tell people we didn't get to play spades, but we will in this lifetime play spades.
9:42 Dax Shepard? As soon as your schedule gets freed up more by AI, we're gonna shellac you at spades.
9:46 Speaker 03 When malaria is eradicated or when the machine takes it over, I will write a book about optimal spades.
9:54 Dax Shepard? Well, Bill, from the bottom of my heart, this has been such an incredible experience. I wouldn't have learned any of this without your invitation. I really don't know how we're here. Monica and I, the whole week have been like, he's gotta be wondering why the fuck these two.
10:06 Speaker 01 Why did they let them come here?
10:09 Speaker 03 India, to share together the beauty and mystery and the challenges of India. It's wonderful and it's so human. It does make you remember, okay, the great things that we have. You know, as much as the US is in this deeply polarized, troubled state, we are the gold standard.
10:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:28 Speaker 03 So much learning and aspiration. So I think to come here, you know, always takes you out of your normal life. And it gives you distance, it gets you to appreciate some things. And in a way, things are so. Simpler here because they're still dealing with the basics and they're kind of focused on some great things and so much talent and energy in the country. Anyway, it's fantastic. You could come.
10:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's palpable. It's like we've almost got to time travel to a period where America was in this stage, that sense that they're going to do it.
10:59 Speaker 03 Fascinating, yeah.
11:00 Dax Shepard? But even today, we were driving by something and there was a little girl with her grandma and she was just like pulling on her grandma. Annoying her grandma. Being so annoying. And I was like, man, everyone has to go to another country and just see this so they recognize we really are all the same. Everyone is pulling on their grandma's shirt.
11:20 Speaker 03 And even in the very poorest country, taking care of your children and doing unbelievable things to help your family.
11:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that you wouldn't even do for yourself. It's really cool. It's unifying. Yeah. Well, thank you so much.
11:36 Dax Shepard? From 723 with Phineas.
11:42 Dax Shepard? Okay, so now 12 years old, you go to a music writing class.
11:46 Speaker 04 My mom has always written songs. She's never made a penny off of it, but she's always done it. I don't actually fully know the origin of that in her life. I don't know what switch flipped for her that made her start writing songs. Should have asked her before this interview. That was kind of always in our house. She was sitting down at the piano and singing stuff. And I was like, what is it? And she's like, I'm writing it. So that was real. People write new stuff. And our dad doesn't write at all, but he's a pretty good pianist and he would sit around and plunk out Beatles songs or play pieces he liked. When I was 12, I started singing in this choir and I immediately was very smitten with this girl in the choir who was 13. I might have even been 11. It was never going to happen, but I was hopeful. And I had this fantasy
12:29 Speaker 04 that I would be in the choir rehearsal room before anyone else got there, playing a tune wistfully. And that she'd come in and it would win her over. This was really concocted.
12:40 Dax Shepard? I know it well.
12:40 Speaker 01 I do too.
12:41 Speaker 04 And the only thing in my way was I had to learn how to sing and play.
12:46 Speaker 01 Easy hurdle.
12:47 Dax Shepard? Small.
12:47 Speaker 04 And so I set about doing that and I asked my dad, like, I want to learn how to play this song. And he said, okay, there's like four chords in it. And he taught me the four chords and that took like a week to learn just sort of shapes on piano. And then I said, oh, thanks for teaching me that. I want to learn this other song. And he was like, this other song is the same four chords. And that completely turned my world upside down. Like the idea that I'd learned all this stuff without trying to learn all this stuff was so thrilling. And pop music is absolutely like that. I don't know if either of you play anything, but there is such commonality in the sort of music underneath a song. That if you want to play some song by this artist, you're also learning 600,000 other songs.
13:24 Dax Shepard? But you have a very strange order of events, which is you have written Ocean Eyes for your own band.
13:29 Speaker 04 Yeah, a couple of things happened. I get Logic Pro, the DAW, which is same as Pro Tools or Ableton or something, a software on my computer to record. Start teaching myself how to do it. Go on YouTube to learn. I have one friend, Frank Dana, who's popular at his school, huge currency at 17. And it's like, hey, you produce, right? And you're like, well, not really. And he's like, that's fine. Let's do some stuff. What a huge vote of confidence. And the real truth is like, neither of us were good at making music at all. But I suddenly was making stuff with him and we're putting it on SoundCloud and his friends are listening to it and telling me I did a good job at producing it. And I'm feeling so cool, I sort of say to Billy at some point in the summer of 2015, I'm like, do you want to sing on some stuff?
14:14 Speaker 04 I'll write some stuff for you and you can sing on it.
14:16 Dax Shepard? Had she been singing around the house?
14:17 Speaker 04 She's got a great voice. She sang in a choir. She loves to sing.
14:20 Dax Shepard? Can I just add really quick? What's really funny is when you're young, just necessity drives so much shit. It's like this dude's got to take what he can get. He finds out you kind of produce that good enough.
14:29 Speaker 04 It's not like he's paying.
14:29 Dax Shepard? Yeah. And then you live with someone who sings. So it's like, let's get you on this, right? It's just all kind of necessity.
14:35 Speaker 04 Hundred percent. So she starts singing, she's 13, so she's just now at the age where she can maybe even tolerate me saying, do another take of that verse a little more angry or whatever.
14:45 Dax Shepard? Right.
14:45 Speaker 04 And so we start recording and it's fun and I'm still got this band and the band is in sort of first stage of crisis. The other guys had finished high school. I was homeschooled and I was like, I'm gonna die for this. Like just at seventeen. And our drummer, my friend David, who now is also a successful, great music producer, which is awesome, is in the same boat I am. He's like, I'm gonna not go to college. Like, I'm gonna make music. And the other two guys are like, okay, we're gonna go to college.
15:12 Speaker 01 College seems pretty cool.
15:13 Speaker 04 Our band sucks.
15:14 Dax Shepard? I got into Florida State.
15:16 Speaker 04 Green Day. We were not making dookie at eighteen. We were making like terrible music. And I write the song Ocean Eyes that I think is like, I appreciate myself sitting there, but it doesn't feel like something for my band. There's a kind of a femininity to it, to me. I hear it and I think I'd rather hear a girl's voice sing this.
15:33 Dax Shepard? Was the band, is the adjective melancholy?
15:36 Speaker 04 No, the band was like a stupid pop band. I write this kind of sad ballad song.
15:40 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
15:40 Speaker 04 There's not even a place for guitar on this. How am I gonna break the news to our guitarist? And so I say to Billy, do you have any interest in singing the song I wrote? And she sang it and I thought it sounded beautiful and we recorded it and we put it on SoundCloud. The thing that I'd heard about happening that always seemed like bullshit, which was you put it online and it gets plays, straight up happened. Like, we put it on SoundCloud and the next day it was on a blog and then the next day it was on more blog and it just started to percolate. We were not on Ellen the next day. It was not viral, but it was happening.
16:09 Speaker 01 When people comment on the two of you.
16:12 Speaker 04 Me and Billy.
16:12 Speaker 01 Yes. And as people comment on us a lot.
16:15 Speaker 04 We had an argument.
16:16 Dax Shepard? You're a duo.
16:17 Speaker 01 Whenever you're a duo, the comments are often, they can be at the expense of the other person or in relation to. Dax really hates that, even though you did just do it and the thing we're cutting out.
16:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. But I feel solid about that one.
16:31 Speaker 01 But everyone feels solid.
16:32 Dax Shepard? Yes. It happens a lot when they write an article about Monica. The inclination is to go like.
16:37 Speaker 01 I mean, you hear it as they're saying it's despite you or something that I'm good, but.
16:43 Dax Shepard? It's tricky.
16:44 Speaker 01 It's tricky, but they're also trying to elevate me because I'm not the main focus.
16:50 Dax Shepard? Instead of just saying she's great, it tends to be like, if she weren't there or she keeps him from blank, or the way they wanna compliment her is somehow always at least feels disparaging to me, whether it is or not.
17:02 Speaker 04 Does it bother you?
17:02 Dax Shepard? It only bothered me when one of our friends, they were asked to quote, and we're friends, and I was like, well, that was a weird way to phrase it. I wish I could remember the details.
17:10 Speaker 04 Was he like, Dax sucks and Monica's great? What'd he say?
17:13 Dax Shepard? Thank God Monica's there, because that guy's fucking sucks. That's what he said.
17:17 Speaker 04 So brutal.
17:17 Dax Shepard? First academic to say that. It was an argument. We got in a debate.
17:21 Speaker 04 This was a, was this the end of the Wyatt Kurt Russell episode?
17:25 Dax Shepard? Probably. It was that Monica had been watching.
17:27 Speaker 04 The Globes, right?
17:28 Dax Shepard? Yes.
17:28 Speaker 04 Yeah. I heard this because I woke up to text from my friends in New York that were like, I didn't know you were gonna be on Armchair. And I was like, oh, and I listened to it.
17:34 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, because we kind of, we never do that, but we did it.
17:37 Speaker 04 Exciting.
17:38 Dax Shepard? Okay, so then you're familiar with the debate.
17:40 Speaker 04 I remember it. Should we talk about it?
17:41 Dax Shepard? Yes, let's talk about it.
17:42 Speaker 04 I remember both of your points. This is the day after the Globes or something. Monica's point, which was very kind, was Phineas stands there like a potted plant as they ask Billy a bunch of questions and then they go, bye, guys. Wouldn't it be nice if they asked him a question?
17:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
17:56 Speaker 04 Dax's point was, who cares? It's a little interview before the Golden Globes and she's wearing a cool outfit and he's wearing a suit and he's the millionth person that night in the suit. And it's not a representation of who's more important. It's a representation of the audience and the interview.
18:11 Dax Shepard? A red carpet, like the conceit of a red carpet, which is let's get the most popular person here to talk about their outfit.
18:17 Speaker 04 Also, I'm gonna throw this in there. Red carpets fucking suck.
18:21 Dax Shepard? Yes.
18:21 Speaker 04 The interviews are awful.
18:23 Dax Shepard? They're so uncomfortable.
18:25 Speaker 04 The idea that I get to stand there and not have to say anything is a thrill.
18:29 Dax Shepard? You like it.
18:30 Speaker 04 Well, yeah. And there are great interviews. I don't want to be disparaging of all interviews. I just mean the format and the environment. If you watch an interview, you can see they shift the mic over to me and Billy relaxes and gets to not suddenly be nervous and have to come up with an answer to the question we've been asked 450 times in the last two months.
18:47 Dax Shepard? It's brutal. The closest analogy I can imagine is, you know, when the prisoners escape from jail and they shine that enormous light on the person's face? Because Kristin and I do a ton of interviews together too, right? When you get the sense that they're actually going and then the interviewer goes like, you guys haven't been out in public and all of a sudden you just feel like, oh, fuck, that big old light is shining on me. I hope it's shining on her. I need a minute to think about this question.
19:08 Speaker 04 The best case scenario is that you're boring and the worst case scenario is you say something and they never invite you to anything ever again. It's like very high stakes.
19:15 Dax Shepard? That's true. And then the point I'll add too, and you're here to answer this, which I appreciate, is I was also making the point that there has to be some. Expectations on your end, like who you're trying to be. And my guess is that you're trying to be Quincy Jones. You said it, Timbaland, Pharrell. I'm imagining that the space you want to occupy, you also recognize Quincy Jones was behind the Michael Jackson, but Quincy Jones is the genius that is in all these other things. I can't imagine as you endeavor into the job you have, that you're expecting to be all that popular. Does that make any sense?
19:48 Speaker 04 I think that everybody in every avenue of their life is hoping to be seen for their work. Right? If you do something, if you build your kids a playhouse and they go in and they go, well, whoever built this did a great job and you go, I built it.
20:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:03 Dax Shepard? Whoever's right here.
20:05 Speaker 04 You know what I mean? Like you want.
20:06 Speaker 01 Recognition.
20:07 Speaker 04 You want recognition. I feel very seen. I feel very lucky about how much recognition I already have. Most producers and songwriters have less than I do. I'm aware of that and I don't take that for granted. And being as famous as Billie is a nightmare. I would never want that. She wears it really well and she is actually a rock star. I say that like as a person, like she is a charismatic enigma. The air gets crackly in the room when she walks in and it's cool to see that. I don't feel that way when we're in my basement making a song, but like I see it at a function and I don't want to have that and I don't pretend to have it. And the consequence of that is she can't do anything.
20:43 Dax Shepard? It's a heavy price to pay, but I guess back to the thing about.
20:46 Speaker 01 So who's right?
20:47 Speaker 04 Well, I think that both of you are basically practicing empathy and you're both talking about the same thing, which is you're recognizing the Robin Andy Richter of the armchair expert with Dax Shepard.
20:57 Dax Shepard? When we got to that.
20:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:58 Speaker 04 And you probably know implicitly how it feels to be the person always there, always participating in the thing who's not the masthead.
21:06 Speaker 01 Yes, exactly.
21:06 Speaker 04 I put out some music under my own name and I don't feel any better or worse about that in terms of like, if somebody goes, I love your thing. I go, thanks. I don't have, oh, that means so much more to me than saying you like Billie's thing. Cause I feel like we worked on it.
21:19 Dax Shepard? This really ties exactly into the red carpet thing. It's truly just the ultimate message for every human being is like, if you feel it for yourself, none of the other stuff matters. You have to give yourself validation and self-esteem. And what is obvious to me is you've given it to yourself. So whether or not the interviewer from E Entertainment, if that's even still an outlet, really it doesn't matter.
21:37 Speaker 04 We also give it to each other. I mean, like that's the other thing. Billie is so generous and effusive about me, to me privately or publicly to me. And I for sure feel the same way.
21:49 Speaker 04 Stay tuned for more.
21:51 Dax Shepard? Expert if you dare. We get support from Quince.
21:58 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.
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22:33 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.
22:44 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.
22:51 Speaker 01 It's great.
22:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and I am going to gift this to some of my friends. I hope they're not listening.
22:56 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.
23:19 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. We get support from Quince. Okay, so I have a confession. I'm the worst holiday shopper on the planet. I wait until the last possible second, I panic, and then I end up buying something nobody wants. But this year I've cracked the code and the code is cozy. And Quince's bedding makes it so easy because the quality is exceptional. It's the kind of gift people actually use. And love long after the holidays.
24:03 Speaker 01 Yes. Okay. Can we talk about their European linens? Because Quince's 100% European linen gets softer with every wash. Most bedding peaks the day you buy it and then it's all downhill. This is the opposite and their organic cotton bedding is breathable and incredibly soft. It's hotel quality comfort for your own bed.
24:20 Dax Shepard? You crawl into bed and you're like, wait, did I accidentally check into a Four Seasons? Quince just makes it easy to create a bed you'll actually look forward to getting into. And their quilts, coverlets and duvet inserts make any bed and any gift feel complete.
24:35 Speaker 01 Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you can get and give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag.
24:46 Dax Shepard? I mean, guys, I put these on the bed of my children. They are wrapping my little babies and I feel great about it.
24:52 Speaker 01 Mine are striped. They're so cute. They're very fashionable and very comfortable. And it's not just bedding. Quince has everyone on your list covered with Mongolian cashmere sweaters, fine jewelry, leather bags, chef grade cookware, five star luggage and more.
25:06 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 you where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from no bull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.
25:34 Speaker 01 That's when you really need to ground yourself.
25:37 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 2. I like the Drive 2 because it's a hybrid and I lift, of course, but I also like to do what's called box jumps. Right? I do a lot of jumping onto a little platform and I want to. A little more flexibility and boy do they deliver.
26:13 Speaker 01 And if you're a cardio person and you're running and you also need to be lifting.
26:18 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.
26:26 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.
26:35 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.
26:46 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.
26:57 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.
27:08 Speaker 01 That was me before Helix. I took their sleep quiz, which is so fast. It's took me like two minutes and they matched me to a mattress that actually fits how I sleep. Not a guess, not a firm or soft coin flip. It's a real match. I have a midnight mattress and I really like it. I was noticing it because I actually had to sleep in one of my other beds recently.
27:26 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
27:26 Speaker 01 That doesn't have a Helix mattress on it and I really could tell a big difference in my sleep.
27:31 Dax Shepard? Temperature was all over the map.
27:32 Speaker 01 It was a mess. I need a new one.
27:34 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.
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28:16 Dax Shepard? From 726 with Patrick Gagne.
28:24 Speaker 05 I couldn't make myself feel better the way that other people made themselves feel better. I just remember being a kid, sitting behind a little girl in school and I looked up and she had barrettes in her hair and I felt this, "Take that, Barrette, and you're gonna feel better." It didn't make any sense, and yet I knew it was accurate.
28:41 Dax Shepard? I should have started there. It didn't start with a stabbing, but yes, that's the first time you feel the relief.
28:45 Speaker 05 And little transgressions like that usually did the trick. But on this day, when I assaulted this child, I had been doing a lot of little transgressions and they weren't working. And I could feel it. As a kid, you're like, "What's gonna happen, what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen?" But as a kid, I had a harder time talking myself through it. And there was a little girl standing next to me and she had just been getting on my nerves, as they do. And I bent down and she kicked my backpack and when she did, she knocked out my pencil box that was full of pencils. And then I just remember picking up a pencil and stabbing her in the head with it.
29:17 Speaker 01 Wow.
29:18 Speaker 05 And I remember what was problematic, other than the obvious, was it wasn't just the pressure that disappeared. It was replaced by this euphoria.
29:28 Dax Shepard? Isolation.
29:29 Speaker 05 Yes. And I knew enough to know, "That ain't great."
29:33 Dax Shepard? This is untenable. We're gonna run out of heads of stab and I'll be kicked out of here quickly.
29:38 Speaker 01 So you did know that, though. So that's interesting. You knew this isn't good, that I like it?
29:42 Speaker 05 I always knew right from wrong. Cognitive, it wasn't internal. That's the difference.
29:47 Dax Shepard? That's part of one of the erroneous stereotypes is, "Oh, sociopaths don't know the difference between right and wrong."
29:51 Speaker 05 Oh, yes, they do.
29:52 Dax Shepard? Also, you hear sociopaths track, highly empathetic, actually, if you go by the Paul Bloom definition, that actually they're quite good at knowing what you are thinking and needing to hear from them.
30:04 Speaker 05 Because they've spent a lifetime mirroring.
30:06 Dax Shepard? Weird paradox. Yeah. Okay, so David, how do you come to experience something that you would label your version of love? Or how did that grow?
30:15 Speaker 05 Well, we met when I was 14, so really young. And I'm grateful for that because I don't think that we would have been a match later. But I remember, at that time, I felt very isolated. I was looking for a buddy to Kind of bounce stuff off of. And in that moment, he just happened to come into my life and he was that buddy. I could tell him anything and he didn't judge me for it. He just took it in and rolled with it. And he looked at my actions objectively and he would let me know if he didn't think something was a good idea, but it was not met with any type of negativity. So we dated for a summer, you know, I'm 14 years old, but it was so matter of fact, my feelings about him when I met him. I remember thinking,
31:00 Speaker 05 my name is Patrick. I am attending this summer camp. I just met the guy I'm gonna marry. I'm gonna have pizza for dinner later. I remember writing it in my journal, but it didn't feel like what all of the girls that I knew, oh, you know, this romantic love. And I know I'm just gonna marry him. It wasn't that. It was very matter of fact.
31:17 Dax Shepard? You'd sit around wondering if he was thinking about you or talking about you.
31:21 Speaker 05 No. And so when we broke up, it was more like a, that's weird. I really thought I was gonna marry that guy. So strange. I never had a feeling like that before and it was so pronounced. I wonder what that was, because that was so true in the way it came through. But we never really lost touch and he went one way, I went the other. And I lived an entire lifetime before we got back together. And when we did, we had this wonderful honeymoon period and then reality set in, which is I have this personality disorder and I'm really struggling with some things. And David really had a hard time not taking it personally. So for him, it was, I don't emote the same way he does. Therefore, I don't care about him as much as he cares about me.
32:03 Speaker 05 And everything was seen sort of through a very egocentric lens. Not in the sense that he was in the wrong, but I think it's a very relatable feeling. If you go in for a big hug and the person doesn't want a big hug, your instant reaction is, oh, I guess she doesn't like me very much. Of course. But I'm just not that person, but I've never been that person. So that was a struggle. It's you have to take yourself out of this equation. In order for you and I to work, you have to see that you are one type of person. I am one type of a person. We love and demonstrate that love very differently. Neither way is right or wrong. It's just different. And if you were expecting that. One day you are going to fix me, we should just stop.
32:44 Dax Shepard? It's not in the car.
32:45 Speaker 05 No, it's just not.
32:46 Speaker 02 The irony is that's all relationships.
32:49 Speaker 05 And that's what I've heard, yeah.
32:50 Speaker 02 It's just that it's so clear here and there's no arguing like, okay, you have this personality disorder.
32:55 Dax Shepard? It's almost helpful.
32:55 Speaker 02 Exactly.
32:56 Dax Shepard? You're never gonna get what you want. You either accept that and we move forward. But I think when you have this neurotypical relationship, there is this fantasy belief that no, you will end up manipulating them.
33:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, and we have limitations too. In the exact same way that also cannot be transcended.
33:11 Speaker 05 That's why I wrote this book, because there are so many relatable elements to this. And I think that if the sociopathic camp and the non-sociopathic camp could just drop it for a second and get together and sort of talk, you would see how much we could learn from one another. But with David, he did have an argument, but you're doing illegal shit and it's my job to protect you. It always came from a place of morality. The things you're doing are immoral and I need to help you stop doing those things. So he had that really effective, logical argument that was tough to push back on.
33:42 Speaker 02 Right.
33:43 Speaker 05 But ultimately, I need to want to stop doing these things for myself.
33:46 Dax Shepard? I would have just said, the things you're doing are illegal and are gonna end up getting you incarcerated.
33:50 Speaker 05 I would not argue with that.
33:50 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's leave morals out of it for you.
33:55 Dax Shepard? From 687 with Vanessa Marin.
34:03 Dax Shepard? I would only ask you this because I know on your podcast and in your book, you're pretty open. What is your own sexual life at this time? Because you do see people go into psychology because they have a lot of unanswered questions about themselves. They hope to get some tools maybe that they can address. How would you evaluate your own sex life at that point? I was still very curious about sex and interested in it. But the biggest thing that I was really struggling with was orgasming with a partner. I had learned how to orgasm on my own pretty easily. It felt pretty straightforward. It felt like this very fun, exciting.
34:35 Speaker 06 Dating cool thing that I could do with my body and I could not replicate that experience with any partners and it was not only the orgasm itself, but sex with a partner was very performative for me. It was all about my male partner's pleasure, what he wanted to do, he was taking the lead. And so there was an internal struggle that I had for many years of this interest in sex and this fascination by it and wanting to pursue it for my career, to spend my life on it, but also this huge imposter syndrome of I have so many things within myself, I cannot find it within myself to initiate sex, to give feedback in the moment, to show a partner what my body likes and responds to.
35:19 Dax Shepard? Say I might like to bring my toy with me to the next session.
35:21 Speaker 06 Yeah, and anything like that. I really struggled with feeling like sex was something that I gave to a partner, did for a partner, rather than something that was for me that I got to participate in.
35:32 Speaker 01 That is so common for people.
35:33 Speaker 06 Yeah, and I think especially for women.
35:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:36 Dax Shepard? I was just gonna say, did you feel this frustration of going, this shouldn't be happening to me because I have the knowledge?
35:41 Speaker 06 Yeah, I felt like a horrible imposter. You know, I'm studying this, I want to help people with this and I'm not really walking the walk myself. But a lot of that was because, you know, I was doing all this research and learning and exploration, but I wasn't learning any practical tools. I'm learning about Kinsey and Masters and Johnson, then that's great. But like, what do I do in the moment with my partner when he's doing something that I don't like, rather than just faking it and saying, that's so great, keep going?
36:07 Dax Shepard? Yes, because there's the awkwardness.
36:10 Speaker 01 It's so vulnerable and you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.
36:14 Speaker 06 Yeah, big thing that came up was I really wanted to make it seem like we were clicking when I was having sex with somebody that I really liked. Like, I want it to feel like the chemistry is there. It's so easy and effortless between the two of us. And so I had this idea in my head that my pleasure and my body were more complicated or needier than my partner's. And I felt very much alone in that, which I think most people have had the experience of feeling alone with some sort of sexual struggle that they've had.
36:41 Dax Shepard? Were you talking to your girlfriends about it at all?
36:43 Speaker 06 A little bit, but talk- Some of my girlfriends were more kind of braggy, like, oh yeah, we had sex last night. Oh, it was so great. We didn't really get into the nitty gritty of, I'm really struggling to orgasm with anybody else. It was sort of this feeling of, we're talking about it openly and look at us, evolved, college girls, but at the same time, like not being willing to be truly honest and vulnerable with each other about what was actually going on. The imposter syndrome that I felt made that so much harder for me. I was like, I can't admit to anybody that I, here I am, this little sex therapist in training and I'm not orgasming with my partners. I'm not enjoying the sex that I'm having. Like, I can't admit that to anybody.
37:20 Dax Shepard? Had a guy said to you, how can I help you orgasm? Would you have even been able to answer that or been confident enough to express what would have helped?
37:32 Speaker 06 I was never asked that.
37:34 Dax Shepard? You weren't?
37:35 Speaker 06 I'm not sure, honestly, how I would have responded to it. I probably would not have been honest. I probably would have said like, oh, what you're doing is great. Or like, you're always making me orgasm. But the final straw for me, when I decided to stop faking orgasms and finally figure this all out, was actually a partner who did the exact opposite. So, we had been hooking up and I had faked an orgasm. I had gotten really good at a great convincing performance by that time. And he'd been using his hands on me and he said, I can play you like a fiddle.
38:07 Dax Shepard? Oh, boy.
38:08 Speaker 06 And I just, my stomach just turned in that moment, like just huge pit in my stomach. And I thought, this is so gross. This guy is so proud of himself and this sleazy, like, I can, what a weird thing to say to someone, right? I can play you like a fiddle. And so that was the moment for me of like, I'm not doing this anymore.
38:28 Dax Shepard? Let's start with the fact that the male orgasm is almost a given. The female is much more elusive. So a guy's pride and esteem, okay, tell me the pride that's...
38:36 Speaker 06 Yeah, I want to hear it. So, there's nothing inherently more complicated about female orgasm than about male orgasm. What the problem is, is the way that we're all having sex. You know, male, female, cisgender relationships, the type of sex that we're having heavily prioritizes male pleasure. Penetration.
38:56 Dax Shepard? Right, right, right, right.
38:57 Speaker 06 Most male female couples, we use sex and intercourse interchangeably. Like when we have sex, we're having intercourse.
39:03 Dax Shepard? To the degree that in the eighties, people would ask like, how are two lesbians having sex?
39:07 Speaker 06 Exactly.
39:08 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
39:08 Speaker 06 I mean, even think of the bases metaphor. Exactly. You know, the home run.
39:12 Dax Shepard? And it's the test of virginity.
39:14 Speaker 06 It's the thing, right? So if we look at intercourse, though, a man is getting stimulation of the most sensitive part of his body.
39:22 Dax Shepard? His clitoris.
39:23 Speaker 06 Yeah, okay, so you know about this, which is great.
39:25 Dax Shepard? We'll tell everyone.
39:25 Speaker 06 Yeah, most people don't know. Fetuses in the womb, we all start off like as the same little blob. And when we're differentiating into we're going to be born a man or born a woman, the tissues start to differentiate around eight to 11 weeks. And the exact same tissues that make a penis make a clitoris. So it's like having a ball of clay. I can mold it into a mug or I can mold it into a bowl. It's a different shape, but it's the same ball of clay that I'm starting with. So the clitoris and the penis are biological equivalents. They're called homologous structures and they both are the pleasure centers of their respective genders. So if we go to intercourse, like a man's getting stimulation of his penis and a woman is getting stimulation in her vagina. So the clitoris has anywhere from eight to 10,000 nerve endings in it. The penis has two to 3,000.
40:10 Speaker 06 The vagina, there's not really even an accurate scientific tally of how many nerve endings are there, but it's not a particularly sensitive part of our bodies.
40:19 Dax Shepard? You're gonna pass a baby through there.
40:20 Speaker 06 Yeah, I mean, the funny comparison that I always like to make is that intercourse for a woman is like playing with a man's balls. Sure, it might feel good. It can feel pleasurable. It can feel fun to do with a partner, but for the vast majority of men, it's nowhere near enough stimulation to lead to orgasm. Right. And we don't make men feel bad about that, right? There's not some alternate universe where we're like, you know, God, the penis, it's so complicated. Why do I have to touch that? Why can't you get the orgasm from the balls instead?
40:53 Dax Shepard? From 764 with Allegra Castance.
41:00 Speaker 01 With OCPD, so number one, it's egosyntonic a lot of the time. And what that means is if someone has a preoccupation with control, perfectionism, organization, orderliness, they tend to think that that is the right way to be.
41:16 Dax Shepard? That's so key. We gotta triple down on that point. It's very in keeping with their overall value system.
41:22 Speaker 01 That's exactly it. It could impair other people. I also want to say that. I'm not saying that OCPD is a likable condition. And actually, someone was upset about my video about you because they thought I was saying OCPD is likable. That's not what I'm saying.
41:37 Dax Shepard? What does this stand for? Sorry.
41:38 Speaker 01 Obsessive compulsive personality disorder.
41:41 Dax Shepard? This is what you have. Okay. When we're talking and we use these terms and you'll go, I'll be a little OCD in this thing. Got it.
41:47 Speaker 01 Yes, where you might see excessive list making, excessive attention to detail, people who say, I really need my spreadsheets to be in this way. They get mad at others often who don't align with the way that they view things. There might be excessive devotion to work. So much perfectionism that can interfere with the person's ability to get a task done. But they think it's kind of like my way or the highway. This is how things should be done. There's a lot of inflexibility and a lot of rigidity. I think people often also don't talk about OCPD accurately. But when people are saying, I'm so OCD, I think what they're saying is, I'm detail oriented. I like to organize. Well, that is not OCD. OCD is an ego dystonic condition.
42:29 Dax Shepard? Well, now I will say this, and this is a time I misuse it. I am so uncomfortable when things that are hanging are not level. And I'll go, oh, this is my OCD. But that's my OCPD if I was gonna say it.
42:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:40 Dax Shepard? Even, because it should be level.
42:43 Speaker 01 In your head.
42:43 Dax Shepard? I don't disagree. You know, like, I don't think I want it level, but it should be crooked. I think I want it level and it should be level.
42:50 Speaker 01 Totally. And that might not be distressing to you at that time. Where if someone had, let's say, just right OCD or perfectionism OCD, that would distress them and they would feel the urge to do that over and over and over again until an internal sense of rightness is achieved. So there is that aspect to OCD, but it's also a very small sliver. Of how OCD can manifest.
43:10 Dax Shepard? And is it fair to say as well, it's also spectrmy. So it's like, even as you're describing it like, yeah, I want it level. It should be level. Also, it's deeply unsettling in a bad luck way. So it's like, maybe it's just like inching towards. Is it a spectrum, I guess?
43:26 Speaker 01 That's a really great question. To be diagnosed with OCD, obsessions and compulsions have to take up at least an hour of your day, or cause clinically significant distress or impairment in functioning. So yes, technically speaking, now there are more severe levels of OCD. Some people require residential treatment, whereas others can be treated in an outpatient setting once a week. But if you meet criteria for having OCD, there has to be some kind of impairment in functioning or distress.
43:53 Dax Shepard? That's a great metric too, an hour a day.
43:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:55 Dax Shepard? Now, okay, I want to go through the five taboos because yeah, this must be so distressing to be trying to evaluate what you are in spite of all these intrusive thoughts. And I also think just really quick, because I found myself figuring out the difference as I was reading, obsessive and compulsive, these are kind of two pieces of something. It's an order.
44:15 Speaker 01 Yes. So obsession is repetitive, unwanted thoughts, images, or urges that are intrusive and often distressing for the person. So it's recurrent. It's not just one thought that pops in. Like, I think I heard you say, well, I have intrusive thoughts from time to time. We all do. People without OCD can let them go. It's like, that was an odd thought and you move on with your day. For the person with OCD, it sticks, it multiplies, and it replays all day long. That is the obsession. It could be a what if, so what if I'm a pedophile? It could be a sexual phrase. I used to have so many of those. And then that causes a lot of discomfort, whether that's anxiety, panic, guilt, shame, and the person feels compelled to perform the compulsion.
44:56 Speaker 01 The physical or mental act that the person is performing to neutralize the obsession, to prevent that bad thing from happening, to solve the obsession, to alleviate the discomfort.
45:07 Speaker 01 And that just reinforces the obsession and you're stuck in that.
45:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah, so that's great. So I guess when I was thinking about it is like the compulsivity is what you're observing, but that might not even be reflective of the obsession.
45:20 Speaker 01 They might not be connected, you're saying, right?
45:22 Dax Shepard? Well, just like, yeah, if you were observing someone from the outside and you notice that they had some of these compulsivities, it's not so intuitive. It's like how they're choosing to regulate and address and fix and nullify the obsession isn't so direct. It can be, but also it might not be.
45:39 Speaker 01 Right. Some people with sexual obsessions will wash, let's say, their vagina or penis after having an unwanted thought because they think that that's the thing that neutralizes it. To the outsider, it would be like, why are you washing that during the middle of your workday 18 times?
45:53 Dax Shepard? You'd even think they were a germaphobe.
45:54 Speaker 01 There we go. So you can't always tell. Or it could be if I don't tap this wood, then I'm going to snap in my sleep and kill my child, right? And people wouldn't think that the tapping of the wood has something to do with that. And you also don't always see people's compulsions. Mine are all mental. Nobody would have ever known that I was performing compulsions because they all happened in the mind.
46:18 Dax Shepard? Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. 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. 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
47:01 Dax Shepard? it for free at ziprecruiter.com/dax. Plus, ZipRecruiter has a new feature that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first, so you meet the right people faster. No wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. Let ZipRecruiter Recruiter find the right people for your roles, seasonal or otherwise. Try it for free today at ziprecruiter.com/dax. That's ziprecruiter.com/dax. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.
47:32 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.
47:46 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.
48:07 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.
48:17 Speaker 01 I have a bunch of different pajama sets. One of my favorite is the organic cotton sleep long sleeve set.
48:24 Dax Shepard? Okay, tell me more.
48:25 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.
48:37 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.
48:46 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 Armature 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.
49:05 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 in SEO. So people can find you email campaigns, scheduling analytics, all under one roof. No code, no patchwork of random tools.
49:50 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. 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?
50:34 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.
50:51 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.
51:10 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
51:18 Dax Shepard? You start feeling it.
51:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, because then I had it this past weekend and I was like, oh my God, I'm just, thank God.
51:24 Dax Shepard? Relief.
51:25 Speaker 01 God for her. Yeah.
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51:53 Dax Shepard? From 799 with old Malcolm Gladwell.
52:01 Speaker 07 There's a couple of times in this book, like the them, the story that frames the book is the story of how Purdue, a different version of the story of how Purdue used, takes oxycontin from an unknown drug into a, the most damaging prescription drug in American history. And there, I think it's very useful for us to know how, if you're super evil and very smart, how you can hijack a system for your own purposes. They hijack the system. They realized that if you want to corrupt the medical system, you don't have to corrupt every doctor. You don't even have to corrupt 99% of doctors. They did that whole thing on the backs of a tiny, tiny fraction of doctors living, you know, in very specific parts of the country.
52:45 Speaker 07 That's a kind of chilling, really important, if chilling thing you need to learn about the world.
52:51 Dax Shepard? That part of it is really mind blowing. So, yes. So, and then they had help and it's really interesting because we don't really talk, we talk about the guilt of them, which is warranted. But you have like McKinsey, right? They're the ones that discover this. And you're framing it, the whole thing through the lens of COVID a little bit where you introduce the, this, this one event at a, a meeting, one person early on in COVID, who's a super spreader. And we learn why people are super spreaders. You know, their vocal cords emit some of the saliva when they're dehydrated and all this stuff. And it turns out that one person ultimately was probably responsible for like a million cases or 300,000 originally.
53:31 Dax Shepard? But really, a one human being resulted in 3 million infections, which is kind of mind blowing. And then these doctors, they broke up at the time Purdue was spending a fortune having sales representatives all over the country, talking to virtually 100,000 doctors. And this bright company, McKinsey, was like, well, let's really put this in a diagram and see what's happening. Well, in Desil 10, the doctors are only prescribing it once or not at all. And there's 99,000 doctors in that vessel. And if we go all the way up to the top, those doctors, of which there's only 384 of them, they're prescribing 300 plus. So fuck all the money that's being spent on four through 10,
54:16 Dax Shepard? and let's just put all the money in three, two, and one. And through that, they end up prescribing millions and millions and millions of tablets.
54:26 Speaker 04 This is this really important principle. I had talked about it in the first tipping point. I called it the law of the few. The idea that when you have an epidemic, the work of the epidemic is done by a very small group of people. But I don't think I took it far enough. So I returned to that idea in this book. And you're right, I start with the COVID example and I say, our assumption in the middle of COVID was that every person who was infected had a roughly equal risk of infecting someone else. Turns out that's just not true, not even remotely true. The overwhelming majority of people who were infected with COVID did not spread the virus very far at all.
55:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
55:01 Speaker 04 The spread comes from a small number of people who, for some reason that we don't entirely understand, but probably just genetic reason, produce a huge amount more virus. Or they're, when they talk, there's way more
55:14 Dax Shepard? Ew.
55:14 Speaker 04 particles coming out of their mouth than anybody else.
55:17 Dax Shepard? And even that, we thought it was coughing and sneezing. But then these aerosolists who study aerosol and particle dispersment, they look at it and they go, oh, no, no, no, no. It's from talking.
55:27 Speaker 04 Just talking.
55:28 Dax Shepard? And what happened at this conference? This person's got up and fucking lectured to everybody.
55:34 Speaker 04 Stands up.
55:34 Dax Shepard? Hose down the whole room with this. This is so gross. For an hour, and everyone was infected, the one person.
55:42 Speaker 04 One person. So the logic of that says, if you want to understand how to stop COVID, we should really have been trying to figure out who these super spreaders are. There's not a lot of them. And just, and, and address that, make sure they're not out and about when they're infected.
55:57 Dax Shepard? Give them a week long, you know, a trip somewhere. It would be cheaper.
56:01 Speaker 01 They just quarantined all those people for like
56:04 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
56:04 Speaker 01 three weeks, it would have been done.
56:05 Dax Shepard? We didn't have to. So what we we treated everyone the same because we didn't really understand how epidemics work. When you understand how epidemics work, you realize, no, no, no, no, you need to be worried about the one person in a thousand. So that same logic is used by Purdue in creating the opioid crisis. They understand that, wait a minute, all along, we've been spending, taking our sales budget, and we've been trying to reach every doctor in America who prescribes painkillers. Wrong. Why? We're wasting our time. Turns out, there's a handful of doctors, a couple of hundred doctors throughout the country, who are prescribing way more OxyContin than anybody else.
56:47 Dax Shepard? And more than that, who are really, really receptive to when we send a sales rep to go and see them, and that sales rep, you know, takes them to a ballgame and buys them a fancy dinner. They just respond to that and write even more prescriptions. It's so scientific, I gotta add. They have the data in these companies, McKinsey and, you know, other people. They're so scientific about it. They basically figure out, okay, you have these doctors. If you see them 25 times a year, they're gonna write less and less prescriptions. Above 25, they're gonna go up and up. Some of these doctors had 300 inside rep contacts within a couple of years. Like, they're nonstop with these people. Like, every day, some drug company rep is showing up at your door, bringing gifts.
57:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:31 Dax Shepard? And they're attractive. Probably. I'm gonna guess. In the book, it says. Yes, yes, yes. It's in print, yeah. It's reasonable to assume that they're attractive. Yeah. And they're going to see, you know, these are like, some guy running a drug mill somewhere on rural Tennessee is getting visited hundreds of times a year by some sales rep from, and is just writing prescriptions by the boatload. It's a little bit of an acquittal and a nice way of doctors in general, because even I, who I think I followed it more closely, I am an opiate addict, I was part of this whole thing, I get it. I was under the assumption that most doctors took the marching orders. You know, there was this huge campaign that, you know, they convinced people that everyone was under prescribing for pain.
58:13 Dax Shepard? And they had all these, you know, pretty complex campaigns, but, so I was kind of led to believe, oh, I think all the doctors loosened up their.
58:20 Speaker 04 No.
58:21 Dax Shepard? And that's not true. Forty nine percent of all the opioids prescribed in that period were by one percent of doctors.
58:28 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, it's, it is, you're right. It does redeem your faith a little bit. And I think this is another useful thing that comes out of thinking about these as epidemics and realizing that epidemics are are propelled by a tiny fraction of the population. You realize that we're much too quick to condemn groups of people and professions and and that's not that I, you know, I was doing a podcast in parallel to the book. I was talking to a guy who studies homicides on the west side of Chicago, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country. There are 50,000 people on the west side of Chicago. And this guy said, if you want to understand homicide, who's at risk? Who's doing the dirty work? You're really talking about 400 people. Wow.
59:13 Speaker 04 So he's like, our assumption would be if you walk around the west side of Chicago, you think, oh, we're going to need a massive police presence on every corner and be stopping everyone we can be. This guy's saying, no, no, no, no, no, you're misunderstanding. It's an epidemic. I'm really interested in this question of how many people does it take to change the character of a group? I talk a lot about women on corporate boards.
59:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
59:36 Speaker 04 For years and years and years, there were no women on corporate boards in America. Then they would, under pressure, corporations would put, you'd have, you know, nine men on the board. They'd have an opening, they'd put a woman on, right? So you have one woman, eight men. What happens when you only have one woman? Is she heard? Does she make a difference? Does she? Do they listen to her when she says stuff? Do they treat her like a person? The answer is they don't. Yeah. It looks like they've changed the composition and created diversity. They haven't. There aren't enough.
1:00:05 Dax Shepard? Really quick, the woman who's you're interviewing, who's saying is very heartbreaking. She's in a room with nine men and someone will enter and the person shakes the hands of eight of the men and literally walks by her as if she's not there.
1:00:16 Speaker 04 Well, they think that she's the secretary. Yeah.
1:00:18 Dax Shepard? Or she'll have a point. No one will respond. Fifteen minutes later, a guy makes the exact same point and everyone's high fiving the guy.
1:00:25 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:00:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:00:26 Speaker 04 So the question is, say, I found all these women who had been on corporate boards and were the first one in. This is one of those great moments in when you're reporting something, when everyone starts to say the same thing.
1:00:36 Speaker 01 Independently and you realize, oh, this is real.
1:00:38 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:00:38 Speaker 01 So I call up and I say, okay, so you were the first person on, you know, Fortune, named the Fortune of a company. So they go, yes. What was that like? Terrible. You know, no one was. Were you there when they appointed a second woman to the board? Yes. What was that like? Terrible. I mean, I had someone, I had one other person like me, but they still, nobody cared. No one listened to us. No one treated us properly. Were you there when they named a third woman to the board? Yes. What happened? Night and day.
1:01:06 Speaker 06 Really?
1:01:07 Speaker 01 It's like, really? Like at three? So when you get three out of nine, boom.
1:01:11 Dax Shepard? Well, she said, when you're there by yourself, you're the tokenless issue. When there's another person there, you have a friend.
1:01:16 Speaker 01 A friend.
1:01:17 Dax Shepard? And when there's three of you, you're a block. Like you're now start acting the way you really want to act.
1:01:23 Speaker 01 Yeah. And they can't ignore you and they suddenly wake up to the fact that you're a human being. And they have to take you seriously. It's this weird phenomenon. And it turns out this phenomenon shows up in tons and tons and tons of different situations where when outsiders reach a certain crucial tipping point in a group, the group changes.
1:01:44 Dax Shepard? From 790 with Kat Bohannon.
1:01:51 Speaker 05 It's very hard to enroll human women in phase one clinical trials. So that's that moment where you actually start trying to test out a drug. You're not in rats anymore. You're in a human body. Okay. And you try and see what are the side effects? What's up? Just enrolling enough women is presently a problem.
1:02:07 Dax Shepard? What's causing that discrepancy? They're not reaching out or women are not participating?
1:02:11 Speaker 05 I think it's both. I think it's bidirectional. I think there's a lack of trust among women who might want to participate.
1:02:18 Dax Shepard? It might even be an interesting risk taker variable here, too.
1:02:21 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:02:22 Dax Shepard? I think some guys are like, well, I got a well from both of you.
1:02:24 Speaker 06 Well, yeah, well, my well, my well is new as in the last couple of hours because I was at the cardiologist this morning. Yeah, I'm fine. Everything's fine, but I am probably going to go on a statin.
1:02:35 Speaker 05 Oh, wow. Yeah.
1:02:36 Speaker 06 And she was like, so, you know, great. It's fine. You'll be fine. But also if you. You are gonna get pregnant, we're gonna come, we'll come off of it for a little bit before, for about a month. And as soon as I hear that, I'm like, oh, my God, well, and I have no current plans to get pregnant, but I was like, well, then maybe I should just wait to start because what if I randomly decide to want to get pregnant the next week and then there won't be enough time. You know, your brain does start like running with you and a lot of it is for protection for your reproductive organs and such. Also, there was a huge diagram on the wall of how heart attacks show up in women. And it's very specific. It's not everything we've been told about how heart attacks show up.
1:03:20 Dax Shepard? Right. In the book, yeah, Kat says, women die of heart attack more frequently, yet they show the signs of them less frequently or have less of them.
1:03:29 Speaker 05 The thing about heart disease that's so interesting is that we did have that really male model for a long time, which is that crushing pain on the chest and the
1:03:37 Speaker 06 Tingle down the arm.
1:03:39 Speaker 05 And these like classic typically male symptoms. And we're finally getting campaigns out to be like, yeah, actually, do you feel like you have indigestion?
1:03:48 Speaker 06 Right.
1:03:49 Speaker 05 And the thing is, which definitely doesn't trigger our slightly more likely to have anxiety disorders at all, which women also get more because it's like, so is it heartburn or am I dying? Right? So it's complicated, but it is starting to save lives.
1:04:05 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:04:05 Speaker 05 Yeah, that like, just take your body seriously, that thing.
1:04:08 Dax Shepard? The results of this asymmetrical testing, women versus men, kind of pops up in culture. I remember watching a 60 Minutes segment on, women had been prescribed Ambien at the same dose men were in for years and years and years. And women were having all these adverse effects to it, getting up and eating, driving a car. And people are like, what's going on? Come to find out when they studied it, it's almost twice as effective in females.
1:04:36 Speaker 05 Women are 40% more likely to be diagnosed with sleep disorders. We still don't entirely
1:04:43 Speaker 05 Why I'm gonna take a drug like Ambien to try and like get some sleep.
1:04:46 Dax Shepard? Right.
1:04:47 Speaker 05 But then we find out when the car crash data comes filtering back in that female patients are getting in car crashes on their damn morning commutes more than male patients who'd taken it the night before because the drug is being metabolized differently in our bodies. It's it's exiting our bodies in different ways, its effects on the tissues, and we're only just figuring it out because of what? Car crash data? Yeah, so the FDA.
1:05:11 Dax Shepard? Wait till that comes in and we'll make a decision.
1:05:13 Speaker 05 We're just gonna, so, yeah, so at the moment, they were like, okay, this is a while back. They said, okay, Ambien, you should take half the dose if you've got ovaries. But at that point, it had been on the market for 21 years.
1:05:25 Dax Shepard? Oh, my God.
1:05:26 Speaker 05 So.
1:05:26 Dax Shepard? Yeah, a little, little late.
1:05:27 Speaker 05 I feel like we can do better. The weird thing about ears is that primate hearing changed dramatically. Well, ancestral primate hearing, when our mammalian ancestors moved into the trees, most primates still up there. Right, then our hearing had to change. We needed to be able to hear one another through this weird new environment, and we couldn't bounce sound off the ground. It was just this like, and there's leaves and shit in between us, we could be far away. So we needed to be able to produce and hear lower pitches than most other mammals.
1:06:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:06:00 Speaker 05 But the females needed to retain those higher pitches because our babies make very high pitched sounds.
1:06:08 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:06:09 Speaker 05 And it's absolutely true that human women still have a little of that legacy of retaining those higher pitches over our lifespan.
1:06:17 Dax Shepard? It's twofold, right? You have a larger aptitude to start with, and then your decline isn't as dramatic.
1:06:24 Speaker 05 Yeah. Now, remember, this doesn't mean just because you are a female person that it is your destiny to have babies. We're talking about evolutionary influences. Let me just go ahead and say that. Right? The reason you can hear the way you do is for many reasons and communicating with people. Okay. However, it is true that female hearing is especially attuned to a range of pitches that tends to be associated with human babies cries. That is true. Most people who are biologically male, around age 25 or so, will start cutting off the top range of the pitches that they can hear. It's just a predictable slope. It's not like you need a hearing aid when you're 30, but it's just that predictable slope of that high end of human hearing, you start losing it. It's just like an aging thing.
1:07:08 Dax Shepard? And the comedic punchline headline, yes, your husband can't hear you.
1:07:11 Speaker 01 No, I was literally, I was just about to say that. Like, oh, I think this is proving something I've been thinking for a long time. When I'll talk with all these men in a room and they aren't responding, and I have thought, can they not hear me?
1:07:24 Speaker 05 They legit cannot hear you. They cannot hear you. It doesn't explain why they don't care.
1:07:28 Speaker 01 Sure, that's a different-
1:07:29 Speaker 05 That's just sexism, and we've talked about how that's real.
1:07:34 Dax Shepard? From 808 with Yuval Harari.
1:07:41 Dax Shepard? I think when you read this book, you'll come away kind of understanding what an information network is and how powerful it is. So when do we see the first, what's the first example we would look at historically, like an information network and its power?
1:07:56 Speaker 06 What information really does, information doesn't necessarily tell us the truth about the world. Information connects a lot of individuals into a network that can do many, many things that isolated people can't. And to give you an example, if you think, for instance, about, again, different types of information, if you think about visual information, if you think in terms of images and photographs and paintings. So what is the most common portrait in the world? Who is the most famous face in human history? The answer is Jesus.
1:08:34 Speaker 01 Oh, I was gonna say Mona Lisa.
1:08:35 Dax Shepard? Me too. We're so Western.
1:08:39 Speaker 06 Bears. I mean, billions and billions of portraits of Jesus have been produced over the last 2,000 years. And they've been like everywhere in so many churches and cathedrals and monasteries and private houses and schools and government offices, like everywhere. And the amazing thing about it, not a single one of them is true. Not a single one is authentic, a hundred percent, not 99%.
1:09:06 Dax Shepard? He never sat for a portrait that we know of.
1:09:08 Speaker 06 We don't know if anybody painted him during or sculpted him during his lifetime. Definitely, we have no image from his own lifetime. And also, if you think about, you know, textual descriptions, the Bible doesn't contain a single word, not a sentence, not a single word about how Jesus looked like.
1:09:31 Dax Shepard? Really?
1:09:31 Speaker 06 There is a description of his clothes one time, what he wore. Not a single description of how he looked like, whether he was tall or short or fat or thin. The color of his skin. Color of his skin, color of his hair, color of his eyes, nothing.
1:09:47 Dax Shepard? Wow.
1:09:48 Speaker 06 All the portraits, like the billions of portraits, they came out of human imagination. And nevertheless, they have been extremely successful and important in connecting billions of people into a network which shares certain values and norms which can work together to build cathedrals and build hospitals and also go to wars and establish the Inquisition and things like that.
1:10:18 Dax Shepard? Voting blocks.
1:10:19 Speaker 06 Yeah, so whether for good or bad, this has been one of the most powerful networks in human history.
1:10:26 Dax Shepard? Catholicism.
1:10:28 Speaker 06 Christianity, even more generally. Again, like every network, it can break up into several sub-networks. So there is always this tension between uniting more people together and breaking up into smaller parts. But this is what information does. A subset of the information in the world may also tell us the truth about the world. Some information is true. But truth is a very rare and relatively costly kind of information. Most information is not truth. Again, it's fiction, it's fantasy. It's sometimes lies, it's sometimes illusions, delusions. You know, a key point is that the truth is costly because it requires a special effort to produce truthful information.
1:11:12 Speaker 06 You need to research. You need to spend time gathering evidence and analyzing it and so forth. Fiction is cheap. You just draw or write the first thing that comes in your mind. So going back to networks, the key is that if you manage to connect a lot of individuals into a network, like a church, or an army, or a corporation, or a state, or anything like that, they can accomplish far, far more than either individuals or a small number of people. And again, this of course goes back to sapiens. This is the key to our success as a species, that we can build these huge networks.
1:11:51 Dax Shepard? We can build a network around money, this idea that this has some value, or a deity, or national identity.
1:11:58 Speaker 06 Yeah, and so sapiens began to explore this idea. Now, Nexus now goes over history and also the future, and looks at it from the viewpoint of these networks. So, okay, if we establish that stories create networks and networks are important, let's look at history as the process, not of human actions, but of networks, spreading, sometimes collapsing, changing their nature. So for instance, a chapter about democracy and dictatorship, which looks at them not as different ethical or ideological systems.
1:12:38 Speaker 06 But as different types of information networks.
1:12:42 Dax Shepard? How they flow.
1:12:43 Speaker 06 Yeah, how information flows. Information flows differently in democracy and dictatorship. And this is what makes them so, so different. In dictatorships, they are centralized information networks. All the information or most of the information flows to just one place where all the decisions are being made.
1:13:01 Dax Shepard? Putin's desk.
1:13:02 Speaker 06 Yeah, Putin's desk or Xi's desk or whatever. And also, they lack strong self-correcting mechanisms. The network doesn't contain a mechanism for identifying and correcting the network's own mistakes.
1:13:16 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
1:13:17 Speaker 06 Democracy, in contrast, is a different kind of network. What characterizes it is that information doesn't flow just through a central hub. There is usually a central hub. So in the United States, a lot of information flows to Washington, but most of it doesn't.
1:13:33 Dax Shepard? Probably more to New York.
1:13:34 Speaker 06 Yeah, most of the economic decisions, social decisions, cultural decisions are being taken in New York, in, in, in Los Angeles, in lots of other places. A lot of the information never passes through any government office. And you have strong self-correcting mechanisms. If the network makes a mistake, you don't need somebody from outside to intervene. The whole point about democracy, that you have these built-in mechanisms to identify and correct its own mistakes. So in democracy, you have this mechanism that every couple of years, people can say, we made a mistake. Let's try something else. Of course, the problem, if you have only this, is that it can easily be rigged.
1:14:18 Speaker 06 I mean, the weakness of democracy since ancient times is that you basically give enormous power to one person or one party on condition that they give it back. Right, exactly. After four years. And what happens if they don't? Yeah. I mean, they have all this power in their hands.
1:14:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:14:35 Speaker 06 What happens if they use all this power to stay in power, to rig the elections? And we've seen it many times in, in Russia, they have elections every four years. And presumably in the 1990s, when Putin first rose to power, the elections. Were relatively fair and free. Then he used his power to dismantle and to rig the elections. And you saw the same thing in Venezuela.
1:14:54 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:14:55 Speaker 06 Chavez originally came to power, as far as we know, in free and fair elections. But then Chavez and his successor Maduro, they used the power to destroy the democratic system and then stay in power.
1:15:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, they just had an "election" in quotes, and it's a disaster.
1:15:12 Speaker 06 Yeah, I mean Maduro lost big time.
1:15:14 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:15:14 Speaker 06 But because he appoints all the election officials and all the judges and everything. So he says, no, I won.
1:15:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:15:21 Dax Shepard? This just in, I won.
1:15:22 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:15:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:15:24 Speaker 06 So if you only have elections, this is not enough.
1:15:27 Dax Shepard? Right.
1:15:28 Speaker 06 You need an entire system. This is the famous checks and balances. And these checks and balances, like independent courts and free media.
1:15:36 Dax Shepard? The fourth estate.
1:15:37 Speaker 06 And constitution and federal system. These are all basically self, if you think about it in terms of information, these are the self-correcting mechanisms.
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1:17:02 Dax Shepard? From 7:43 with Orna Grolnick.
1:17:10 Dax Shepard? Systems thinking is super important when you work with couples and when you work with
1:17:14 Speaker 06 The idea with systems thinking is that we each bring into the world a set of inclinations and traits and characteristics. But then, when you're joining some kind of group or system, it could be a group of two, it could be a team, it could be a family. The system needs all sorts of things from its members, like it needs someone to volunteer leadership capabilities, it needs someone to be the caretaker, it needs someone to be the critic. We need all these functions. When you join a system, the system calls upon its members to volunteer certain functions. And we're each more and less inclined to volunteer certain things, but it will change depending on what team we join. Like with some teams, you'll find yourself, oh, I'm kind of a
1:17:56 Speaker 06 leader here. And with some teams, you're like, actually, I'm a follower because there's someone else that's doing it differently and better than me now. So when you work with a couple, you try to understand how they're each drawn into certain roles based on what the couple as a system needs. So it's a very different way of thinking about, let's say, a crisis that a couple goes through. You're trying to understand what's going on with the system, with a unit as a whole, that leads them to this crisis. How did they each take this role? When you're raising kids, there are certain things that need to happen, and not everyone can do everything.
1:18:29 Dax Shepard? What I was going to suggest as an example that people, I think, experience most strongly is they go out into their adult life and they kind of gravitate toward a system that they wanted, and then they return home for the holidays and you can feel yourself click into the role you were ascribed in that situation. And you're like, no, no, no, no, I don't want this role anymore. I feel like that's when people are really aware of it.
1:18:51 Speaker 06 Yes, that's why around the holidays, I cannot go on vacation.
1:18:58 Dax Shepard? You have done a lot of work on disassociation. Maybe we could dig in a little bit of what that means for people. I think it's very common.
1:19:05 Speaker 06 It's a spectrum.
1:19:06 Dax Shepard? The one I'm not familiar with that seems like a sister state is depersonalization. I don't know what that is.
1:19:13 Speaker 06 Generally, disassociation, going back to Freud, you really introduced the concept of repression, that if there's something you don't want to know about yourself, or something happened to you, you repress it, meaning. It happened, you registered it, and then you push it out of mind. You forget.
1:19:29 Dax Shepard? That was in quotes.
1:19:29 Speaker 06 That was in quotes. Dissociation is a different model of mind. It's when things happen that are either traumatic or to some degree, something you can't tolerate. You either don't process it, you kind of leave it hanging and not fully comprehend what it means, or you shunt it towards a part of the psyche that is not your main part of your personality. You kind of keep it to the side to a part that's kind of not me. That not me over there just registered all those bad things that were happening over there, but I'm not going to pay attention to it because the me that needs to keep functioning is moving ahead in the world.
1:20:05 Dax Shepard? That almost happened to someone else because to take that on would be too much.
1:20:08 Speaker 06 Exactly. So there are many ways to dissociate. Some extreme ways would be multiple personality, what we call dissociative identity disorder. You really shunt parts of the psyche to the side and they develop like a whole world of their own.
1:20:21 Dax Shepard? And this one is so extreme that there's almost a lack of awareness that the other states exist, right?
1:20:27 Speaker 06 Right. One of the ways that we think about multiple personality is that one part of the psyche doesn't even know about these other personalities, or there's amnesia for what the other personalities are going through. You treat people with multiple or DID. You've seen it. Yeah.
1:20:41 Dax Shepard? Well, this season, we have someone that's approaching that.
1:20:43 Speaker 06 Right. Yes, Alexis. He has a dissociative disorder.
1:20:46 Dax Shepard? And to the degree where he doesn't remember the arguments he's having with his partner.
1:20:50 Speaker 06 Yes. Alexis, what happens to him is he's very afraid of his own rage, and there are all sorts of reasons why. And when he gets triggered and gets enraged or triggered into like a trauma zone, he really switches and becomes a very different kind of person.
1:21:08 Dax Shepard? Who can defend himself.
1:21:09 Speaker 06 Who can sort of defend himself more. He's trying. He's trying.
1:21:13 Dax Shepard? Globally, he's actually making much more pain for himself.
1:21:16 Speaker 06 Right. That one is hard to watch. And going back to depersonalization, when people depersonalize, what happens to them is in a way, they sort of remove themselves from what's happening. Being in a relationship with someone like that, like in this season. Like Cosimo and Alexis. Yes, feels so heavy. Like, I hate to.
1:21:36 Speaker 02 Impossible. He doesn't have memories that the other person has that are painful and aggressive and hurt them, but they don't even know that they did it. It just feels so epic.
1:21:48 Speaker 06 Yeah, it is epic. I mean, you saw the two of them, what they had going for them is their deep psychological insight into all of this. And first of all, their profound love for each other. They were in process of working on this stuff. Alexis knew and wanted to get better at it. They were incredible couple to work with.
1:22:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, I bet.
1:22:08 Dax Shepard? I want to earmark that case because it actually got kind of personal to you. And we saw maybe one of your bad word for it, but Achilles.
1:22:16 Speaker 06 Yes.
1:22:17 Dax Shepard? Because of course, as a show, you're the hero of our story. So it's interesting to have a pretty insatiable desire to know about you. And there's not a lot of info for us.
1:22:26 Speaker 06 Well, there is.
1:22:28 Dax Shepard? There isn't, there isn't. I don't know your history. I don't know about your children. I learned you're from Israel or spent time, you know, little nuggets here and there. But a lead character normally would have had kind of an introduction where we get the backstory. And then we take a journey with them. So it's part of the fun of watching it is you yourself as the lead character of a story we watch is a mystery to us, which is very, go ahead.
1:22:51 Speaker 06 I have to respond to that.
1:22:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:22:53 Speaker 06 First of all, it's uncomfortable.
1:22:55 Dax Shepard? Sure.
1:22:55 Speaker 06 Just characterologically, but the therapist in a way is to some degree, the lead character in a therapy, but also not at all. I'm doing the work. I'm the theory.
1:23:08 Dax Shepard? I was really unspecific in what I was talking about. There's the reality of what's happening that happens to get captured. And there, you're right, you're not the hero of that.
1:23:17 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:23:17 Dax Shepard? Then there's a documentary series. That's another thing.
1:23:21 Speaker 06 I guess I'm less connected to that.
1:23:23 Dax Shepard? As you should be. I'm almost letting you into the perspective.
1:23:27 Speaker 06 Of the viewer.
1:23:28 Dax Shepard? Hard for you to probably touch, which is I turn on my television. There's a program presented to me. The couples change. One person stays consistent. The blueprint of my brain for story is that's my lead character. That's my hero. Now, that's not the reality of what's happening in the room at all. I'm not suggesting that.
1:23:49 Speaker 06 Right.
1:23:51 Dax Shepard? This is great. This is uncomfortable, right?
1:23:53 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:23:54 Speaker 02 What about it is uncomfortable?
1:23:56 Dax Shepard? I could guess.
1:23:56 Speaker 06 First of all, I'm not, look, people go into the profession of being a therapist or an analyst because they're actually quite private.
1:24:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
1:24:04 Speaker 06 I like being private. I like the story being someone else. I don't like the idea of me being the main character. But I also have a theoretical belief. I understand what you're saying, but you're joining me not in being myself. You're joining me as the viewer. You're coming with me on this journey to understand how to think, how to listen, not me personally. We're together. We're thinking about what is this human thing, this human journey we're on.
1:24:34 Dax Shepard? If I had used the word guide instead of hero, would that be less?
1:24:38 Speaker 02 Triggering.
1:24:42 Speaker 06 I don't know.
1:24:43 Dax Shepard? It probably feels like you're dishonoring, really dishonoring what's happening.
1:24:49 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:24:49 Dax Shepard? By claiming to be the hero of it.
1:24:51 Speaker 06 Yeah. I'm channeling what I've learned to do.
1:24:54 Dax Shepard? And you are. And I would feel that exact same way.
1:24:56 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:24:59 Dax Shepard? From 758 with the Avett Brothers.
1:25:06 Dax Shepard? All right, we are loved.
1:25:18 Speaker 07 Whether we speak up
1:25:23 Speaker 07 or we are silent.
1:25:29 Speaker 07 If we are willing
1:25:35 Speaker 07 or we are done.
1:25:40 Speaker 07 If we're courageous or we are cowards.
1:25:51 Speaker 07 We may be burdened.
1:25:57 Speaker 07 But we are loved.
1:26:02 Speaker 07 Whether we stay true
1:26:08 Speaker 07 And do for another If we are hidden
1:26:19 Speaker 07 Or we're discovered
1:26:25 Speaker 07 If we're forgiven Or we're forgotten We may be lonely
1:26:42 Speaker 07 But we are loved
1:26:47 Speaker 07 Every stitch and seam Every wish and dream Even in tragedy There lies divinity Even as hope seems lost It may be found again I have felt alone But I have never been
1:27:41 Speaker 07 If you are standing
1:27:46 Speaker 07 Or cannot stop moving
1:27:52 Speaker 07 If you are haunted Or cannot remember
1:28:03 Speaker 07 Over the gravestone
1:28:09 Speaker 07 Under the Rainbow Pain comes and pain goes
1:28:20 Speaker 07 And we are loved
1:28:26 Speaker 06 Every stitch and seam Every wish and dream Even in tragedy
1:28:43 Speaker 07 There lies divinity Even as hope seems lost It may be found again I have felt alone But I have never been
1:29:20 Speaker 07 If we are spirit
1:29:26 Speaker 07 Or we are human
1:29:32 Speaker 07 Crossing the river Or harboring change
1:29:43 Speaker 07 If we deny it Or if we face it May we embrace it
1:30:01 Speaker 07 We are loved
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