Pod Insights Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard Alvin E. Roth (on moral economics) About this episode Alvin E. Roth (Moral Economics) is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, Stanford professor, and author. Alvin joins Armchair Expert to discuss growing up in Queens with two schoolteacher parents, skipping a traditional high school path to attend college at 16, and how early academic exposure shaped his curiosity about markets and human behavior. Alvin and Dax talk about pioneering kidney exchange programs that have saved thousands of lives, the surprising ways incentives influence behavior in everyday systems, and how market design applies to everything from matching students to schools to allocating scarce resources. Alvin explains the difference between repugnance and disgust in economics, why some markets are morally contested yet necessary, and why solving complex social issues requires designing better systems rather than relying on good intentions alone.
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Transcript 27,158 words · 5 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. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman.
0:05 Speaker 01 Hi.
0:06 Dax Shepard? Um, today we have Alvin E. Roth. Uh, he is a Nobel Prize winning economist and a Stanford professor. Ding ding ding ding ding.
0:15 Speaker 01 My goodness.
0:16 Dax Shepard? His previous book is Who Gets What and Why? And his new book is called, This Is Tasty.
0:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
0:24 Dax Shepard? Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales. What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work.
0:33 Speaker 01 Really interesting.
0:34 Dax Shepard? Super, super interesting. We learn about the difference between repugnancy and disgust. He himself pioneered this kidney market that has saved tens of thousands of lives. Yeah, uh, really, really great topic. Uh, please enjoy Alvin E. Roth. We get support from AG1. Fall is that time when your body and mind are getting ready for the winter. You're settling in, bracing for the cold. Your body's already running a deficit from the shorter days and broken sleep patterns. You don't want a nutrient deficit stacked on top of that, too.
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4:00 Dax Shepard? You're visiting, I presume, from the Stanford area, yeah? Okay. You're originally from Queens. Both parents were schoolteachers?
4:08 Speaker 02 Yes.
4:09 Dax Shepard? And what was their specialty? Were they just generalists?
4:11 Speaker 02 They taught in high school and they taught a discipline that no longer exists. It was called secretarial studies. And they taught mostly young women who weren't planning to go to college and were going to become secretaries. And they taught them typing and stenography.
4:25 Dax Shepard? Okay.
4:25 Speaker 02 So one of the skills that a secretary needed to have in those days was to be able to take by hand dictation.
4:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:33 Dax Shepard? Right, and then your words per minute was your currency, I imagine?
4:36 Speaker 02 Then accuracy.
4:37 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Both parents specialized in that?
4:40 Speaker 02 They did.
4:41 Dax Shepard? Did they meet in pursuit of that knowledge?
4:43 Speaker 02 They probably did. And they were both New York City schoolteachers. And part of the implicit contract was you were supposed to go back and get a master's degree. And I think they met then.
4:52 Dax Shepard? Okay, they met in graduate school?
4:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:54 Dax Shepard? How much older is your older brother than you?
4:56 Speaker 02 Four years.
4:57 Dax Shepard? Four years, and did you look up to him?
4:58 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
4:59 Dax Shepard? So he started this. He started taking classes at Columbia on the weekend? And that encouraged you to do the same?
5:05 Speaker 02 He did.
5:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah, what grade?
5:07 Speaker 02 The entrance exam was in ninth grade. I don't think I started classes till 10th grade, but I'm not positive about that.
5:15 Dax Shepard? All to say, you end up beginning college full-time at Columbia before you've gotten a degree, yeah?
5:22 Speaker 02 So if we're talking about a high school degree, I don't have a high school.
5:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you don't have a high school degree, which I like a lot. And you started full-time at 16 at Columbia?
5:30 Speaker 02 Yes.
5:31 Dax Shepard? So you were a wonder, Ken. Do you reject that term or do you embrace it?
5:34 Speaker 02 I don't think I embrace it. I was not a great high school student.
5:38 Speaker 01 But they let you into college without it?
5:40 Speaker 02 They did. It's a private college. And the thing about having some acquaintance with Columbia professors was they let me in.
5:46 Speaker 01 Wow.
5:47 Dax Shepard? And you got your first degree quickly, yeah, in three years? And it was in operations research. What was operations?
5:54 Speaker 02 Well, operations research was and is a collection of applied mathematical tools. Mostly they're tools that had their origin in World War II. So various kinds of optimization and some kinds of statistics, things like that.
6:07 Dax Shepard? And then you went to graduate school quickly thereafter, which you went to Stanford. And you get your masters and PhD there in three years. Again, this is accelerated now.
6:17 Speaker 02 I did, yeah.
6:18 Dax Shepard? What was the hurry? Was it just happening?
6:20 Speaker 02 It was mostly just happening. I wasn't in a hurry. But again, I wasn't a talented student. I liked being a student, but I was ready to also. Think about things on my own.
6:28 Dax Shepard? Okay, how do we transition from operations to economics?
6:33 Speaker 02 It's a good question. I'm often asked that. My story, which I'm sticking to, is that I didn't change what I did, but the disciplinary boundaries moved around me. So I studied game theory was the topic of my dissertation. And in the 1970s, it looked like operations research might be the natural home of game theory. But then economics adopted game theory, and doing game theory made you an economist, and there I was.
6:58 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay. Did you love Janus von Neumann?
7:01 Speaker 02 He's a father of game theory. It would be delightful to have met him.
7:04 Dax Shepard? Okay.
7:05 Speaker 02 He was a polymath and an unusual man. Most of the game theory we do today isn't very directly related to what he did.
7:13 Dax Shepard? I'm fascinated with him. I read a great biography about him last year. He is the one who basically comes up with the concept of mutually assured nuclear annihilation, right? This is what he models out.
7:22 Speaker 02 So he didn't ever talk about things like that. He may have thought about it or talked about it, but not written in his game theory book. But you might be thinking of Thomas Schelling, who was a game theorist who also shared a Nobel Prize in economics with Bob Alvin. And he worked in the Rand Corporation and thought a lot about nuclear disarmament and armament and mutually assured destruction.
7:42 Dax Shepard? But that is based on the shoulders of game theory, no?
7:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:45 Dax Shepard? You have a lot of long stints. You do University of Illinois for seven years?
7:50 Speaker 02 Eight years.
7:51 Dax Shepard? Eight years?
7:51 Speaker 02 Seventy-four to eighty-two.
7:52 Dax Shepard? And then you do University of Pittsburgh for a long time as well.
7:58 Speaker 02 Eighty-two to ninety-eight.
8:00 Dax Shepard? Are you astounded when you look back that you've had kind of full careers at all these different places? Because you then also went to Harvard for 14 years. Like, these are really long tenures at any one place.
8:11 Speaker 02 Well, you know, I'm old.
8:14 Speaker 02 We did different things at each place. I met my wife at Illinois. We had our children in Pittsburgh. We saw them off to college in Boston. And then we moved to Stanford in 2012.
8:24 Dax Shepard? Does academia inoculate you from this? Or do you feel like you were able to pick up the worldview of all these places you spent all this time in? I always think of myself as being from Detroit, and then I've been here for 30 years. And I definitely Downloaded a different worldview through being here. And I want more of those worldviews. And I just wonder if you could feel that you absorb the culture and the points of view.
8:47 Speaker 02 I think I can absorb the culture of the different places. Partly, there's a lot in common about fancy economics departments, wherever they are. People sometimes ask me, what's the difference between Harvard and Stanford? And in many ways, they're pretty similar. If you're in the economics department, you're reading the same journals. You're seeing many of the same people. So 70, 80% of it is pretty similar. The difference is, at Harvard, when you look away from campus, what you see in the foreground is Wall Street and Washington. And at Stanford, when you look away from campus, you see Silicon Valley. You know, I think they change a little bit what students study. Not completely. I have Harvard students who are working in the Valley. And I have Stanford students who go to Wall Street and Washington.
9:31 Speaker 02 But it's a little more close to you. It's more likely that those are the data you think about, those are the people you meet.
9:37 Dax Shepard? Right. Okay, so in 2012, I guess your last year at Harvard?
9:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:42 Dax Shepard? You win the Nobel Peace Prize with Lloyd Shapley?
9:45 Speaker 02 Not a peace prize, that's a prize for peace.
9:47 Dax Shepard? Oh, oh, so sorry.
9:48 Speaker 02 We won an economics prize.
9:50 Dax Shepard? Still by the Nobel Committee? Is it not the same?
9:52 Speaker 02 It is, it's different. There's a Nobel Prize in Economics, there's one in Physics, and one in Chemistry, and
9:57 Dax Shepard? Okay.
9:58 Speaker 02 One in Physiology and Medicine, and one in Literature.
10:01 Dax Shepard? So you win that for the theory of stable allocations and practice of market design? So it is in your designing of markets. And one in particular, which we'll talk about. But I think as we get into your book, Moral Economics, I think we need some base, shared vocabulary and understanding so we can march through them. And I think the best place to start is, how do you define a market? What is a market for the labor person?
10:29 Speaker 02 That's a good question. So I have a very expansive view of markets. Because a lot of the markets I study aren't primarily monetary exchanges. So that surprises even some economists that I speak of markets that way. But I think of markets as tools that Human beings build so that we can cooperate and compete and coordinate with each other. And so there are lots of markets. There are commodity markets where you don't care who you're dealing with. You can get 5,000 bushels of hard red winter wheat from any farm. They're all the same. Or they can be marriage markets where you care precisely about who you're dealing with. That's the whole point. It's a matching market that gets you married. And there's lots of things in between, like employment labor markets.
11:08 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I think we're all most familiar with thinking of markets in terms of the commodities markets. Or what is the supply and the demand? And how is that going to affect the price of things? And that's certainly one specific kind of market.
11:22 Speaker 02 Yep, that's a giant kind of market.
11:24 Dax Shepard? But ultimately, we could think of markets as just being a broad tool that matches anybody with something that they want or need with someone else that has it. Now, whether that's going to be done through paying for that with money or if two people are just going to agree, I want you and you want me. That's more of the matching model. That's ultimately what your Nobel Prize was for, was matching markets that you designed.
11:50 Speaker 02 Or helped design or redesigned, yes.
11:53 Dax Shepard? Yes. So let's talk about matching markets because there's a bunch of different ones that maybe people wouldn't realize are markets.
11:59 Speaker 02 That's a good question because, in fact, I wrote a book in 2015 called Who Gets What and Why? And that has some things in common, one market in particular in common with my new book, Moral Economics. But that's a sort of optimistic book about how sometimes markets are broken and don't work well. And if we think hard about them and learn about their details, we can sometimes fix them. And so there were matching markets of that sort that I helped intervene in. And one of them is the market for first jobs for new doctors, new American doctors. And that's a market that if you know someone who's graduating from medical school this year, right around now, they'll already have interviewed at residency programs. Then they'll have submitted a rank order list of how much they like places, first choice, second choice, third choice.
12:43 Speaker 02 And the residency programs, the employers will do the same thing. And then an algorithm that the algorithm used now is one that I helped design. An algorithm will match them to each other.
12:51 Dax Shepard? Why was it inefficient before? You got involved, what were the baked in challenges?
12:55 Speaker 02 There were longstanding kind of inefficiencies that had to some extent been resolved before I got on the scene by creating a centralized clearinghouse. And those are, when you think what marketplaces have to do, they have to make the market thick. They have to bring people together who want to transact with each other. Then they have to deal with congestion. If there are lots of jobs, it's hard to consider the offers in a timely way and not be pressed to answer more quickly than you'd like because you'd like to see what else is coming along.
13:20 Dax Shepard? Yeah, the congestion, right, is everyone's gonna pick the top three tier hospitals in a very populated area. That place is gonna be inundated with requests. And then as we try to move on to someone's second choice, now another new moment of congestion.
13:35 Speaker 02 It also is that people are gonna make lots of applications and therefore employers are gonna get lots of applications. And that's something we've seen in a modern way, that the cost of applying to things has dropped faster than the cost of evaluating applications. So colleges get lots of applications, residency programs get lots of applications. On dating sites, people with nice pictures get lots of pings.
13:58 Dax Shepard? Yeah, if you're the hospital and you get all these applications and you go, great, I want these 20 graduates. You have no clue if you're their ninth choice or their seventh. So you've wasted all this time on an applicant who really doesn't intend to go there but might have sent it as a backup plan.
14:13 Speaker 02 So a centralized clearinghouse helps coordinate that. But one of the particular things that hadn't kept up to date with the way medical education and the labor market of doctors work was the first centralized clearinghouse dates back to the 1950s. But in the 1950s, almost all graduates of American medical schools were men. And by 1970, about 10% were women, and today it's 50%. And so more and more, there are couples graduating from medical school who need two jobs, not one job. And if they need two jobs, you can't do a good job of getting them two jobs unless you ask them, which two jobs do you want? What's your first choice of two jobs? Because that's what they want. What's your second choice?
14:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that sounds very complicated.
14:54 Speaker 02 It's a little complicated to build an algorithm that can handle that. But it makes it simpler for couples who are looking for two jobs to look for them in a sensible way. Instead of getting one job in Alaska and one job in Florida.
15:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I was gonna say there probably is some ranked priority of they'd like to be at the same hospital. Then second to that, they'd like to be at two hospitals in the same city.
15:13 Speaker 02 And they have opinions about which hospitals and they may be in different medical specialties. So they have a lot of things to think about. But one of the reasons it's important is when the clearinghouses didn't take care of that, the married couples didn't go where they were matched. Because I like to say that the iron law of marriage is that you can't be happier than your spouse. So if me and my spouse get matched to a pair of jobs that doesn't suit us, we can keep looking for jobs. And that disrupts the match for everyone. So that's something that's been fixed.
15:40 Dax Shepard? Okay, so now, what's interesting about markets is that globally, there is very little consensus about what markets should and shouldn't be allowed, right? We have much different laws in the US as we do in Europe, as we have in Asia and so on. Here are some of the markets that exist somewhere and don't exist other places. Selling plasma, kidneys, surrogacy, sex, work. And the concern generally does ultimately find its way to fear that the rich will coerce the poor or underprivileged. In most of those cases, I just said, that's the primary fear. But you have some countries that allow one thing and not the other. So it's not like it's even consistent against like, oh, there's no part of the body that can be sold.
16:25 Dax Shepard? Well, no, that's not really how it works. And you attempt to explain this through repugnance. And so I would love for you to explain repugnance in a repugnant market.
16:36 Speaker 02 In the book, I say that what I call a repugnant transaction is a transaction that some people want to participate in and other people think they shouldn't be allowed to participate in, largely for moral or religious reasons. And furthermore, that these are transactions that the people who object to them might not even know that they have happened if they haven't been told. And by that last thing, I'm trying to rule out things that do obvious harms to people. I can easily object to markets if they harm me. But that's not what my book is about. My book is about these other markets where moral considerations come into play.
17:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah, gay marriage is a great example of it. If the two people that are married don't inform you that they're married or they don't wear a ring, you have no sense of whether or not this. Market transaction happened.
17:20 Speaker 02 That's right. So same-sex marriage is sort of a prototypical repugnant transaction. There are two people who want to marry each other. There are other people who think they shouldn't be allowed to. But it's not clear what the harm is that's done to the people who object. But this has been a giant political issue in the United States and in many other places. So it's clear that some people have strong objections to same-sex marriage.
17:39 Dax Shepard? And implicit in him as well, like disgust, you use the example like, we don't serve saliva in glasses at restaurants because universally everyone thinks that's gross. That's disgust. Whereas repugnant transactions have to have fans and foes.
17:55 Speaker 02 That's exactly right. So there aren't any laws, I don't think, about you can't serve beverages made of spit. But there are laws in California, you can't sell horse meat for human consumption. You know, you can go up and down Los Angeles to restaurants and you'll never find horse meat on the menus. And that's because it's not an ancient cowboy law. It's the result of a 1998 referendum that passed by a big majority in California.
18:17 Speaker 01 Wow.
18:17 Dax Shepard? It was that recent.
18:19 Speaker 02 Yeah. What that means is that there are people who think you shouldn't eat horse meat. But the reason there's a law against it and not against drinking saliva or eating worms is that you don't need a law against eating worms. No one particularly wants to eat worms. But people do want to eat horse meat. There's lots of places in the world where horses are delicious.
18:35 Dax Shepard? And we'd all agree that I don't think you could establish a hierarchy of horse, cow, sheep.
18:40 Speaker 02 I think the same referendum that made it illegal to sell horse meat for human consumption made it illegal to sell dogs for human consumption. So I think it's pets is the idea.
18:49 Speaker 01 But it's such a fine line.
18:50 Dax Shepard? Yeah, pigs are pets.
18:52 Speaker 02 Well, no, not in California.
18:54 Dax Shepard? People have.
18:55 Speaker 01 They're mom.
18:55 Speaker 02 No, no, of course they're not included legally. Right. We have a law in California that you can't sell horse meat for human consumption. It's a felony.
19:03 Dax Shepard? There's another concept that's relevant to bring into the repugnant transaction, which is it does seem to overlap with this concept of paternalism. So what do we mean when we talk about paternalism?
19:15 Speaker 02 So I don't think the ban on horse meat has much to do with paternalism. We don't think that eating horse meat is bad for you. But we think that drinking too much alcohol is bad for you. We think that taking addictive drugs is bad for you. We might think that being served sugary soft drinks in giant. Glasses is bad for you. I mean, there've been attempts to ban that.
19:34 Dax Shepard? Some sense you know better than the person knows for themselves.
19:37 Speaker 02 Right. And paternalism is a very interesting word because, of course, often we apply it to children. And, you know, if you don't properly supervise your children, you might be neglecting them. Sometimes you have small children, you have to say they can't do things that they really want to do, but that will harm them in some way, and you have to stop them because you, their parents, know better than they do. So there's a whole field now of experimental and behavioral economics, which says that all of us former children, just because we had enough birthdays, doesn't necessarily mean that we know what's good for us. And we might also like some laws that limit things you can do. So one that comes to mind that isn't that controversial is prescription drugs. There are lots of drugs that might be good for you, but we think you need advice before taking them.
20:20 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we're evaluating whether getting what you want is going to be ultimately destructive to you. So for the kid, the kid wants to stay up late, but we know we got to prioritize tomorrow at school. Or the child wants to eat a bunch of sugar before he goes to bed.
20:34 Speaker 02 Play on the freeway.
20:35 Dax Shepard? Play on the freeway. I think that would have appealed to me. When morally contested issues are criminalized, they often can give rise to black markets. So let's talk about that a little bit.
20:48 Speaker 02 Okay, well, a famous example in American history is prohibition. In the 1920s, we passed a constitutional amendment against most forms of selling alcohol. And not many years later, in the early 1930s, we again amended the Constitution to repeal prohibition. And part of the reason was, in the meantime, there hadn't been that much reduction in sales of alcohol. It's just it had been handed over to criminals to administer that market. And the criminals were sometimes violent. They sometimes made things to drink that weren't good for you in ways that alcohol itself isn't bad for you. You know, there weren't quality controls. You know, methyl instead of ethyl alcohol. And the country got tired of feeling like they were accomplices in a crime that many Americans didn't really think should be a crime.
21:31 Speaker 02 And it's a great example of the difficulty of banning things that people want to do, but also of the fact that regulations don't magically make the problems of alcohol go away. We don't let children buy alcohol, although there are children who get access to alcohol. But even us adults, you know, those of us with enough birthdays not to be children anymore, can drink too much and then maybe get in the car and drive. There are laws against that, but alcohol causes a lot of premature deaths, still, as it continued to do during prohibition. One thing that has really changed, though, is you can no longer buy moonshine whiskey from gangsters. They've been outcompeted by the fancy liquor stores that'll sell you aged-in-the-barrel Scotch and things like that.
22:10 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Okay, so the other thing I think we need to understand, again, because your book is trying to evaluate the economic morals, not the moral imperatives. We're not trying to levy a verdict whether something is right or wrong.
22:25 Speaker 02 Well, I think about that, and I end the book by saying that one of the things about morals is you can't be morally obliged to do something that you're not able to do. But the nature of moral obligation has to do with something that you can do and can choose to do. So we weren't able to ban alcohol, and that makes it less of a moral issue. Some of us might still like not to have alcohol sold. And even those of us who enjoy fine wine and aged whiskey might be prepared to give that up if the problems that alcohol causes would go away. But that turns out to be something we don't know how to do. And that makes it, it seems to me, less of a moral obligation to try to put people in jail for selling alcohol.
23:04 Dax Shepard? Right, but the concept of trade-offs is really, really important because that's how we're going to attempt to evaluate these different situations as we go through a list of very exciting and provocative, repugnant transactions. So talk about trade-offs.
23:19 Speaker 02 Economics is about trade-offs because economics is about how to allocate scarce resources efficiently and how to make them less scarce. But if there were no scarcity, if everyone could do whatever they wanted, then we wouldn't have to deal with trade-offs. But if we live in a universe where things are scarce... Attention is scarce, resources of other sorts are scarce. Then we have to decide how to allocate those scarce resources. And that involves trade offs, whether or not we want to make them or are willing to make them. We have to think about the consequences of our actions, even if we're not pure consequentialists, even if we don't necessarily think that all moral judgments should be made only in terms of consequences. I think it's very hard to make moral judgments without paying any attention to consequences.
24:02 Dax Shepard? Now, this becomes one of my primary axes I like to grind, which is I feel like there is currently, we're in an era of rejection of trade offs in that there's some notion.
24:14 Speaker 01 What is it?
24:15 Speaker 02 That's my one.
24:15 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay, okay.
24:18 Speaker 01 No, you're fine. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't mine.
24:21 Speaker 02 Last year, I was scheduled to go to Israel and didn't go because there was a war in Iran on the days I was supposed to be there. But I downloaded an app that gives me an air raid alert whenever there's one in Israel. And that's what we're hearing.
24:34 Speaker 01 Whoa, we're getting intel.
24:36 Dax Shepard? Okay. I feel like our modern era, and I don't know what's driving it, whether it's the internet or social media, but there seems to be a willing naive rejection of trade offs, as if there's going to be a perfect solution to something. And anytime there's any downside, we must reject it wholesale. I can think of the war on vaccines, which is certainly you can produce for me some people who have experienced side effects. If you graph that number of side effects versus lives saved from that polio vaccine or name the vaccine, it's preposterous. They're not comparable. One is on a magnitude bigger, but because there's a trade off, the whole thing must be thrown out.
25:18 Dax Shepard? And I wonder, do you think that's always been how people felt about trade offs? Or do you think that's kind of new and accelerating?
25:25 Speaker 02 Well, I think it's a very bad way to talk about trade offs. You know, if you don't think about consequences, then you can be led far astray. And one of the examples I talk about at some length is addictive drugs, right? We all would like there to be no heroin addicts, but simply throwing them in jail turns out not to solve the problem. We still have heroin addicts, even though our jails are full of drug dealers and drug addicts. So if we don't like heroin addiction, I think we're morally obligated to think about how to abolish it, having tried one way. And so I'm a big fan of experiments. I don't know what to do about drug addiction, but I would like to see.
25:57 Dax Shepard? An effort to figure that out. Yeah, I think people choose to not acknowledge that. This country fundamentally in the Constitution is trying to service two goals, liberty and equality, that cannot exist at 100%, both. So just implicit in our whole system is the notion of trade offs. We're gonna constantly be measuring, have we lost too much liberty for this equality? Or have we lost too much equality for this liberty? And so, admitting we're setting out on a journey that's going to involve compromise and trade offs. And we're gonna try to figure out what balance is suitable for us. I think needs to be applied everywhere. You can't really compute the world without acknowledging we're not gonna get perfection
26:41 Dax Shepard? in any one of these without some cause.
26:43 Speaker 02 I agree, and also I think we have to learn from experience. It makes a lot of sense to say, let's make heroin illegal. But what makes less sense is to say, let's make that our only tool for fighting drug addiction, given that it yields a lot of drug addiction.
26:59 Dax Shepard? And then the last thing I think, and then we'll jump into some of the topics is just, we have to somehow evaluate what we can and can't get. We have to be able to determine whether or not these goals are achievable. And how do we do that?
27:13 Speaker 02 You mentioned already that there are different laws in different places. Some years ago, before COVID, I gave a talk in Berlin about controversial markets. And the three I chose to talk about in Berlin were prostitution, surrogacy, and kidney exchange. And the reason those made sense for an American to talk about in Germany is the German laws are just the opposite of the American laws. So in Germany, the only one of those three that's legal is prostitution. Surrogacy and kidney exchange are not yet legal. So let's take surrogacy to answer your question about how can we tell when things aren't working? The places that don't like surrogacy see themselves as protecting the vulnerable, the places that ban surrogacy. And the vulnerable who they identify are women who might be surrogates and bear children for someone else.
27:57 Speaker 02 But of course, if you're a German couple in need of surrogacy to start your family, you can come to California and have a surrogate baby and have your names on the birth certificate in California where it's perfectly legal. So then the German courts had to deal with How do we make this baby a German citizen so that she can go home with her parents?
28:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
28:17 Speaker 02 And so the family courts started to have to create procedures where German surrogate parents could adopt their own child in order to have the child because no one's more vulnerable than a newborn baby. So one way you can tell the law isn't working is you're trying to protect the vulnerable and you're in danger of creating stateless babies who can't go home with their parents.
28:37 Dax Shepard? Right, right. Now, you were working in theory and then admirably started working and like, okay, I think I understand how this works. Can I actually fix something? And you were called to help with the kidney exchange. That's a matching market, right? And I may love you and want to donate my kidney to you, but you and I might not be a match, unfortunately. And now there's another couple, and that couple wants to donate the kidney to their loved one, and they're not a match. But lo and behold, I might be a match. So there is some way to make everyone happy, and this is the system that you helped design. So what was happening and where did we get to?
29:18 Speaker 02 Okay, so that has a long story. My personal part of that story may not be so interesting, but the big market part of that story is there's a terrible, terrible shortage of organs for transplant. So right now in the United States, we have about 500,000 people on dialysis, and we have about 100,000 of them on a waiting list to receive a kidney transplant, but we only do fewer than 30,000 kidney transplants a year. So the wait on dialysis is long and dangerous, and people die while waiting.
29:45 Dax Shepard? And you said it's a top 10 killer in the US.
29:47 Speaker 02 Kidney transplantation is the treatment of choice, but most people who need a kidney transplant will die without getting one. So there's a real shortage of kidneys, not just in the US but around the world. And part of that is related to the fact that it's against the law almost everywhere in the world to pay someone for a kidney. I should take a step back and say, we get kidneys from deceased donors, from dead people, but also from living donors because healthy people have two kidneys and can remain healthy with one. So as you were saying, if you loved me and I needed a kidney, you might be able to save my life by giving me one.
30:18 Dax Shepard? What's the breakdown of that? How many are coming from cadavers versus living folks?
30:23 Speaker 02 1,000 are coming from cadavers and about 7,000 are coming from living donors. Okay, so still the majority is from cadavers? The large majority is from cadavers. Only a small majority of the donors are deceased because deceased donors give two kidneys and living donors only give one. Right, right. So we need more donors of all sorts, but it's flatly against the law to pay a donor for a kidney. We've just recently, in very recent years, started to make progress on reimbursing the costs that donors pay in becoming donors. That is, if you wanted to give me a kidney, if I had kidney failure, I'd probably be in a hospital up in the Bay Area and you would have to come and get a hotel room and you'd have costs. And it would have been illegal for you to reimburse me for those?
31:06 Speaker 02 It wasn't clear whether it was illegal, but it certainly was impractical. So mostly there was little or no reimbursement.
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32:39 Dax Shepard? You know, I was just talking to a friend who has just started it. And I said, one of the most powerful elements of it is just hearing yourself say out loud, the thing that's been ruminating in your head and how different it sounds. Once it's out into the world, you gain perspective immediately just by hearing yourself say it.
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33:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, your insurance is not going to pay for you to donate a kidney. Well, my insurance would pay for the surgeries, yours and mine, needed for you to donate a kidney to me. Okay, okay. But they wouldn't pay for the childcare that you needed while you were in Palo Alto.
34:12 Speaker 01 Travel, all of that.
34:13 Speaker 02 So there were lots of things that they wouldn't pay for. I was on the board for a number of years of a federally funded organization called NALDAC, the National Living Donor Assistance Center, which had permission to pay certain expenses of means-tested donors, donors who were poor enough. And That's been liberalized, what can be paid for, over the years. But it's still the case that it's flatly against the law to pay for a kidney. And that's one of the reasons why there's a terrible shortage of kidneys.
34:41 Dax Shepard? What was the number before you came up with this algorithm that could match two different couples wanting to, or maybe it was even, I don't know how big it can fan out?
34:48 Speaker 02 So there was hardly any kidney exchange. We came in at the beginning of kidney exchange. And the thing about kidney exchange that's so relevant to this discussion of what's allowed and what's not, is in kidney exchange, each patient gets a compatible kidney from another patient's intended donor with no money changing hands. But it's the no money changing hands that makes it legal. It wasn't completely clear that this would be legal because the American law, the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, doesn't speak about money. It speaks about valuable consideration. It says you can't give valuable consideration for a kidney. And so the question was, was a kidney exchange valuable consideration? Congress passed unanimously, without any dissent, an amendment saying that that isn't what the law meant.
35:32 Speaker 02 Kidney exchange is legal under the National Organ Transplant Act.
35:34 Dax Shepard? Right. So once you were able to start pairing up compatible people who had already agreed to donate, what did the number go from?
35:42 Speaker 02 So it went from a handful a year when we started doing it, to it's about 1,500, more than 1,000 a year now. There's a little carefulness you need to do in counting because somewhat more than 1,000 people receive kidney transplants through kidney exchange. But some of the donors are non-directed donors. There are a couple of hundred donors each year in the US who want to give a kidney to someone and don't have a particular someone in mind.
36:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I've heard about these people.
36:08 Speaker 01 I've considered it.
36:09 Dax Shepard? So admirable, you have.
36:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, because I...
36:12 Dax Shepard? Who needs it?
36:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, if I already have one.
36:14 Dax Shepard? Yeah. I'm suspicious I'm gonna damage one of mine and need the second to back up.
36:18 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, yeah, that's fair.
36:20 Dax Shepard? You've gone further, at least I've heard you in conversation with other people, open up the idea. The obvious threat of buying kidneys is, of course, rich people will go to poor countries and take advantage of people who...
36:36 Speaker 02 Are very, very desperate and need the money. And so you have some solutions to that, though. So let me take a step back and let's talk about blood and blood plasma. Because there are also laws in many places in the world against paying for blood or blood plasma. These laws date from the 1970s, from many of them right around 1970. Before there was a test for hepatitis in the blood supply. And so part of the concern was that poor people, even when they weren't feeling well, but because they were being paid, would donate blood and it would had infection to the blood supply. And there was this worry, just as you enunciated, that the rich countries of the world, the global north, would suck the blood out of the poor countries. And there'd be this flow of blood from poor countries to rich countries.
37:17 Speaker 02 In most countries in the world, it's illegal to pay for blood and also for blood plasma, which is a blood product that's actually very important. And in the United States, those things aren't illegal. But there's a regulation that says that whole blood has to be labeled with whether it's been donated voluntarily or for pay. And so the equilibrium we're in is that whole blood in the United States is donated without payment. When I donate blood, they offer me an orange juice and a cookie afterward, but that's so I don't fall down. Yeah. But plasma is a product of blood, doesn't have to be labeled. In the United States, not only is it legal to pay for plasma, but we export tens of billions of dollars of plasma products every year.
38:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, you call this the Saudi Arabia of blood plasma. Right. So it turns out that only in a handful of countries is it legal to pay plasma donors. And those are the only countries that are self-sufficient in plasma. Everyone else who can afford it buys plasma mostly from the US. It's fascinating, isn't it, these little arbitrary lines we draw? Nevertheless, there's still a lot of concern that if you allowed blood plasma to be sold internationally, which we do, that somehow the rich countries would be sucking blood out of the poor countries. But of course, that's not the situation we're in. The United States supplies 70% of the world's plasma, and we're not a poor country. And we're the richest. So we should worry. It's a real thing to worry about that somehow rich countries would suck the blood out of poor countries. But that's not the present danger that we're in.
38:46 Speaker 02 The present danger that we're in is there are countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where there isn't enough blood, and people are dying in large numbers because of shortages of blood and blood plasma. And in Western Europe, there aren't those deaths because they can buy it from the US. And in Australia, they can buy it from the US. So it's worth worrying about that we shouldn't have, you know, rich countries sucking the blood out of poor countries. But that's not what's happening. So it's important to think about the consequences. And one reason it's not happening is it turns out you need a sort of sophisticated medical industry to safely process and store and fractionate the plasma into useful pharmaceutical components.
39:23 Dax Shepard? Right. OK, so then that brings us back to kidneys, because I was impressed with your solution to this.
39:29 Speaker 02 So there have been lots of proposed solutions. Regularly, there's some legislation being proposed that would try to relieve the shortage of kidneys. And right now, there is an act that's being sponsored by quite a number of congressmen called the End Kidney Deaths Act, which is a vicious title. It'll get a headline. It's suggesting a very modest change in the National Organ Transplant Act, which is that it would allow non-directed donors, so just a very special class of donors, to get a tax credit over a period of, I think, five years for being a non-directed donor. One reason they're saying a tax credit and one reason they're spreading it over five years is to get away from this idea that somehow people would have some desperate need for sudden cash, and that would cause them to quickly donate a kidney.
40:13 Speaker 02 Right? This is meant to be a considered decision. We owe a lot to the non-directed donors. A pretty high fraction, in the neighborhood of half of the kidney exchange transplants that happen are in chains initiated by non-directed donors.
40:26 Dax Shepard? But I heard you say you can imagine a scenario where we set a standard price for a kidney. Let's say it's $100,000. That was the example you gave. And an individual is not allowed to buy the kidney. The US government has to buy the kidney. Kidney, and then the US government administers those kidneys with the same system we already have in place to prioritize people. None of those factors are their wealth. When a donor kidney from a cadaver becomes available, it doesn't go to the richest person. There's some criteria.
40:57 Speaker 02 So that's right. The legislation that I just mentioned, of course, only the government can give you a tax credit. So the advantage of having the government do it is we're getting away from the idea that rich people would buy kidneys from poor people.
41:09 Dax Shepard? Which is our primary concern.
41:10 Speaker 02 No one would be able to pay for kidney except the federal government. And then, as you say, we would avoid all the moral problems associated with having rich people buying kidneys from poor people and potentially exploiting them.
41:21 Dax Shepard? Then I guess you get into a debate about whether it's significantly more risky to donate a kidney than it is plasma, like how do we gradate that difference?
41:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's a good question. It's not unreasonably risky to donate a kidney. You know, the deaths are one in 10,000, so that's a pretty modest risk. There are streets that you can cross in Los Angeles that give you a bigger risk than that, especially if you cross against the light. So I think that's something to seriously think about, and I talk about that. And again, that's a part of the market design issue, is as we're talking about these things, we should think about what are the objections? What is it that we're trying to avoid when we ban paying for kidneys? And part of it is that, you know, the rich are exploiting the poor. But, you know, we're also making it difficult for people to donate kidneys when they have to pay the costs associated with that. So that's something we have made some progress on, although it's still costly. I think that if you wanted to donate a kidney to me, you would probably have some out-of-pocket
42:13 Speaker 02 costs that wouldn't be reimbursed, just because it's time-consuming, it's time away from work.
42:18 Dax Shepard? And we have to keep the alternative in mind, which is some 80,000 people a year are dying because they didn't get a kidney.
42:23 Speaker 02 Absolutely. That's exactly the alternative.
42:25 Dax Shepard? Okay, so let's get into intimate affairs. You start with what brought us here, which is sex. How do we apply this lens to sex?
42:33 Speaker 02 Well, there have been lots of laws against sex, homosexual sex, for instance. And some of those laws were declared unconstitutional in Supreme Court decisions of various sorts, laws against sodomy, for example. But just incidentally, when Roe v. Wade was not so long ago reversed by the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas, in his concurring opinion, suggested that we should also revisit the laws that make banning sodomy unconstitutional and contraception, and of course, same-sex marriage. So these controversies are not over and done with. So historically, marriage, how has it evolved? Where did it start? So marriage is even older than I am. But of course, society has a lot of interests in marriages. And one of them, not the only one, but one of them is the care of children.
43:18 Speaker 02 So for a long time, sex with high likelihood led to pregnancy, which with high likelihood led to children. We, as a society, developed all these rules that said, man and a woman who have sex with each other had better be prepared for raising the child that might result. And a good way to be prepared is to be married and have formed a household and so that the child will have a mother and a father and someone will take care of the child. I mean, that's been true for the very largest part of human history. But good contraception changed that a little bit. That starts to make it possible to have sex without having children. The trade-offs have changed. Yeah, the trade-offs have changed. And so maybe it's okay to have sex without being married. And therefore, maybe it's okay to have sex without the intention of having children.
44:03 Speaker 02 And therefore, maybe it's okay for people of the same sex to have sex with each other, even though children don't result. And therefore, maybe marriages don't have to just be about children. So I think social norms and technology. I mean, I mentioned contraception there, but there's also in vitro fertilization. Maybe a lesbian couple can still have children. Maybe a gay male couple can still have children.
44:23 Speaker 01 A single person.
44:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, a single person, right. So maybe our idea of who can be a parent should be different. And then maybe our idea of who can adopt a child should be different. There was a lot of reason for society to think that people who can have sex with each other should be married to each other to be ready to catch the baby. But many of those things are no longer so urgent. And we have come to recognize that marriage has other advantages to the people who are married to each other than just their ability to help each other raise children. And so we came to feel in the United States, not everyone, and not quickly and not easily, but we came to feel that maybe people should be able to marry each other, even if they couldn't have children.
45:00 Dax Shepard? You bring up Alan Turing, you talk about him a bit in this chapter.
45:04 Speaker 02 Okay, so Alan Turing is a great man. I mean, people should know his name, every computer scientist does. He sort of invented computer science. I mean, that's a too broad a statement. But computer science, you mentioned von Neumann and game theory. There's a sense in which you could mention Turing in computer science. During World War II, he was also a codebreaker and helped shorten the war by breaking the German Enigma code, by helping break the German Enigma code. He was British. But he was homosexual and after the war, he was convicted of being homosexual. I forget the criminal phrase. He was sentenced to be chemically castrated and he committed suicide. So today, it's legal to be homosexual in Britain and in the United States. You know, and this is sort of an ancient horror, but it's not that ancient.
45:45 Dax Shepard? Wow, so he didn't get the chemical castration?
45:48 Speaker 02 No, he got it.
45:49 Dax Shepard? He got it and then killed himself?
45:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, he wasn't happy.
45:53 Dax Shepard? Oh my goodness. How does this pair up in marriage and adoption?
45:57 Speaker 02 So the question is, do we allow people of the same sex to marry each other? That was a repugnant transaction. You know, remember, I use the word repugnant not to mean that I don't like something or that you shouldn't like it, but that some people don't like it. That was a big fight. The first legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States came in the early 2000s in Massachusetts through a court decision, the Massachusetts Supreme Court. And then what happened wasn't that lots of other states fell into law. And what happened was lots of other states amended their constitutions to make same-sex marriage the only kind of marriage allowed in their constitution. And the reason was, the way the Massachusetts court ruled is it said, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a constitution that requires equality before the law and we're not treating gay people equally.
46:40 Dax Shepard? Yeah, there's a legal right, marriage.
46:42 Speaker 02 Right. The first thing wasn't that everybody legalized same-sex marriage. It was that they made constitutional amendments so that their courts couldn't find a right in their constitution. But eventually, in Obergefell, is the name of the Supreme Court decision. Eventually, the Supreme Court decided that equal protection of the law, especially once many states recognized same-sex marriage and others didn't, equal protection of the law required everyone to recognize it. And that's where we are now.
47:08 Dax Shepard? This is another Nobel Prize winner, the IVF doctor. So what's the repugnant nature?
47:14 Speaker 02 Jonathan Edward. So he invented, he and colleagues, Nobel prizes always are, you know, leave out colleagues. He and colleagues invented in vitro fertilization in the 1970s. And by the time he got the Nobel Prize in... The late 20th century, maybe later than that. I think his Nobel Prize was just a little earlier than mine. So in the 2000s, millions of people had been born through IVF over, you know, the last 40 years. So he won a Nobel Prize for it. But at the same time, there were people objecting that he was a murderer. And the objection specifically about murder for IVF is that more embryos are created than are fertilized into fetuses and become people. And if you think that the embryo is a person.
47:57 Dax Shepard? It's personhood.
47:58 Speaker 02 The ones that are not used are perhaps murderers, especially when they're discarded. The nature of repugnant transactions is you can be vastly celebrated. You know, the Nobel Prize is a giant week-long party in Stockholm. And at the same time, have people picketing and calling you a murderer. So these are fundamental disagreements we have when we talk about repugnant transactions and morally contested markets. But of course, IVF, some people think it's murder. But millions of people are alive because of it. They think of it as life-giving. And of course, millions more, you know, it allowed them to have children. But the children, the people born of IVF, they don't think of it as murder.
48:32 Dax Shepard? How can we come to some conclusion through an economic model on that issue?
48:37 Speaker 02 So it turns out to be hard to prevent IVF. When you look at Western Europe, there are countries that prevent. These laws are always subject to change. But I believe in Germany, unmarried women are not allowed to have IVF.
48:51 Dax Shepard? That's a shocker.
48:51 Speaker 02 Yep. But in Spain, there's not an obstacle. So if you are an unmarried woman who needs to become pregnant and doesn't have another way of doing it, you can go to Spain and become pregnant. Then you come back to Germany and you're a pregnant German woman. You're undifferentiable from other pregnant German women. And you go into the healthcare system and you have a baby. And the baby is a German citizen. So it turns out making a law that says we don't recognize IVF can stop people who can't afford to travel to Spain. But they don't stop everyone. And so maybe it's an unequal law in that respect, too, right? It allows the rich to do things that we don't think should be the preserve of the rich.
49:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's almost reverse engineered eugenics in some bizarre way. It's like, OK, we're going to select for who can do this.
49:34 Speaker 02 One of the things I talk about in the book, Moral Economics, is often you ban something and you hand it over to criminals, which is very often not a satisfactory solution. But it's also hard to ban things that are legal in some nearby jurisdiction.
49:47 Dax Shepard? Hence the abortion issue.
49:49 Speaker 02 Abortion and surrogacy and IVF. Surrogacy is more complicated because you have to bring a baby home with you. But IVF, you know, you're a pregnant German woman.
49:58 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it could happen on vacation.
49:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely. Perfectly legal on vacation.
50:02 Speaker 01 You're allowed to be a single woman. You just have to have gotten pregnant naturally.
50:06 Speaker 02 Sure.
50:06 Speaker 01 That's so strange.
50:08 Dax Shepard? Interesting distinction.
50:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly.
50:10 Dax Shepard? OK, in section two of the book, we look at protection from harm. And these ones are great and probably the ones I'm personally most interested in. So step one is alcohol and drugs. And you do this fun thing where you list a lot of different drugs. You say caffeine, tobacco, heroin, marijuana, opioids, alcohol. And if you were asked to put those in order of threat, based on your community, where you live, the order would be what?
50:38 Speaker 02 The order of acceptability.
50:39 Dax Shepard? Yes.
50:40 Speaker 02 So coffee is most acceptable in my community. You know, it's a great performance enhancing drug. We regard it as food. I don't think we limit children.
50:49 Dax Shepard? No.
50:50 Speaker 02 It's great. So everyone likes coffee. Then we start to get to tougher drugs.
50:53 Dax Shepard? Wine.
50:54 Speaker 02 Wine in California is pretty popular.
50:56 Dax Shepard? Not in Utah.
50:57 Speaker 02 But, you know, it's a big industry in California, which is in trouble now. You know, as wine consumption goes down, our friends in Napa Valley, some of them are going to grow condominium instead of grapes.
51:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:08 Speaker 02 Which might make California less nice in some ways. But marijuana is also popular in some circles. I think I had trouble ordering those in what I guess is acceptable. You know, hard drugs are definitely not acceptable in my community. But some people have troubles with them, and some of them have gotten into trouble with them sort of inadvertently. That is, for medical reasons, they've been prescribed opioids. And then become addicted.
51:31 Dax Shepard? I think you're right. Your assertion is that most places are going to end on opioids. Of that list of things, drugs I just gave you, most people are going to put opioids as the worst.
51:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
51:40 Dax Shepard? And they're significantly troubling. There's been years in the last decade where we've had 100,000 people die.
51:46 Speaker 02 Overdose death.
51:47 Dax Shepard? Yes, it's a very real threat, but let's talk about the numbers for tobacco.
51:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, so tobacco kills more people than opioids and alcohol kills more people than tobacco.
51:57 Dax Shepard? In your book, of 3 million people that die from the CDC, 500,000 are cigarette related a year. And then for alcohol, it's 175,000.
52:08 Speaker 02 I think you're right. As I recall now, what I say is just conjecturing. Maybe the tobacco deaths are less repugnant because they're not sudden.
52:16 Dax Shepard? Yeah, the suddenness is really fascinating, isn't it? Why that elevates it so much in our mind.
52:22 Speaker 02 But of course, alcohol includes some sudden deaths, right? Both behind the wheel and just alcohol poisoning.
52:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah, like 60,000 people a year do die of a sudden version of alcohol death.
52:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, so I think some of this just has to do with what you're used to. We allowed tobacco, there were small attempts around the time of prohibition to make alcohol illegal. When I started writing the book, one of the things I thought might be true was that was that tobacco had never been illegal. That turns out not to be true. There have been laws against tobacco in various times and places.
52:49 Dax Shepard? Oh, really?
52:50 Speaker 02 But, you know, you say, oh, really, right? We're now restricting tobacco and marijuana are sort of on opposite trajectories, right? Marijuana used to be illegal, schedule one, you know, like heroin. And tobacco, we'd give agricultural subsidies to tobacco farmers. And now more and more, we're saying you can't smoke inside buildings and on airplanes. And we're making it tougher to smoke tobacco and we're making it easier to smoke or otherwise ingest marijuana.
53:16 Dax Shepard? Anecdotally, I've seen people confront people for smoking cigarettes in public outside multiple times. My children will do it. When I see people smoking marijuana, no one says anything. I think that's really interesting and telling. You walk around New York City now and people are smoking joints everywhere. No one's like. Making a big thing of it.
53:33 Speaker 01 Part of it's societal, what we just have decided is in vogue and not, I mean, smoking's coming back.
53:40 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that's crazy.
53:41 Speaker 01 A lot of younger people are smoking again.
53:44 Speaker 02 There's vaping and things like that.
53:45 Speaker 01 And vaping too, but even cigarettes, it's weird. I don't know what, I mean, I think maybe because people stopped talking about how bad it was for you, that people are kind of back on it, which is not good.
53:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I think it's suffering from the same reality that the polio vaccine did, which is like, no one alive today saw someone walking with a walker at 19 years old from polio, so they're not afraid to not vaccinate their kid.
54:08 Speaker 02 I remember seeing people.
54:09 Dax Shepard? Sure, sure. My grandfather's throat was permanently paralyzed from polio. But, young parents who are deciding whether or not to get a polio vaccine, they didn't see it, so it's out of mind. And there's a big upswell of younger influencers are smoking in public, and I think it's because they've stopped seeing the lung cancer patients that we grew up seeing plastered everywhere as cautionary tales and people missing their mandible from dipping. Like, those went away. It was on the downward decline, and I think they took their foot off the gas, and now it's on the incline. But let's talk about prohibition. So what happens in 19?
54:42 Speaker 02 20s and 30s.
54:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
54:44 Speaker 02 We prohibited most sales of alcohol, not sales for religious purposes, not sales for certain kinds of medicinal purposes. But, by and large, we prohibited the sale of alcohol.
54:54 Dax Shepard? In the Volstead Act, you could brew in your home.
54:56 Speaker 02 So there was a big upsurge in the sale of wine grapes.
54:59 Dax Shepard? Synagogue membership.
55:01 Speaker 02 Membership in synagogues.
55:02 Speaker 01 Oh, wow. Oh, that's really funny.
55:03 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
55:05 Speaker 02 I taught for many years at the University of Pittsburgh, and the state of Pennsylvania had, and I think still has, a liquor monopoly. It's only sold in state stores, and state stores are closed on Sunday. But the store that sold Judaica, Jewish things, and they could sell kosher wine even on Sundays.
55:21 Dax Shepard? Oh, really? They went from no business?
55:24 Speaker 02 And you had to scribble something that was supposed to be what shul you went to, what synagogue you belonged to. But you could have gone in and scribbled something. They weren't interested in your scribbles.
55:32 Speaker 01 Wow.
55:33 Dax Shepard? Kind of like the medical marijuana card. Yeah, remember how. Yeah, there was a great comedian that said he went to get his medical marijuana card and they said, are you having troubles sleeping 12 hours a night? Yeah, exactly. They're just handing it.
55:45 Dax Shepard? He said, yes, I can only sleep for about eight hours. Well, here you go, you need this.
55:50 Speaker 02 Exactly. So that's right, but that wasn't the main way that alcohol came into the US. Some was production, there were stills. Incidentally, NASCAR, you know, the stock car racing in their national museum, they have a still. And one of the reasons is some of the heroes of NASCAR racing were people who they were modeled on. You were coming into town from the still and you had to be able to outrace the police.
56:14 Dax Shepard? And particularly you wanted a plain looking car that was super modified to be really fast. So you wouldn't draw attention.
56:20 Speaker 02 To be really fast and to have a lot of product in the back.
56:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Yeah. And so stock cars, these big gangly cars are what they decided to race, not coupes, not Corvettes or anything, sedans.
56:30 Speaker 02 You can tell right away that a ban is going to have trouble when it starts generating folk heroes. You know, when the people who violated are Robin Hood, not Al Capone. Now, they were also Al Capone.
56:39 Dax Shepard? And the Kennedys famously got a lot of their wealth through this?
56:43 Speaker 02 There was a lot of importation from Canada. Canada went through various forms of prohibition and trying it without ever stopping the production and sale of alcohol. And so you could legally buy whiskey Seagram's in Canada and then illegally bring it into the United States. There's a big border, there's a big Atlantic seaboard. I think the St. Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago was gangs fighting over importation, not just production. How is all the Canadian liquor going to get into the United States and be sold?
57:13 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
57:14 Speaker 02 So it was very hard to stop, you know, much as it's hard to stop surrogacy by making it illegal in Germany if people can come to the United States. It was hard to stop drinking alcohol if it could be legally sold in Canada.
57:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's funny, we've only had success in the war on drugs one time really. And that was during the Quaalude epidemic of the 70s and 80s. Because it turned out there was only a single. Chemical factory in Switzerland that was capable of producing this. So if they could shut that one down, they could succeed and they did succeed. But that's about the only victory. When they've tried to do math, it's like you've got several hundred chemists in India that are making the precursor compound. So it can go elsewhere. It's like unless there's a single source to these things, they're nearly impossible to ever shut down. But we got to evaluate what the efficacy of trying to pinch it as much as we can.
58:05 Dax Shepard? So let's talk about drugs because I grew up saying, I had a very libertarian view on it. I thought that should be decriminalized. I thought it should be taxed and regulated and get rid of the black market. And then the experiment was run in front of my eyes in San Francisco and in Portland and a few other places on the West Coast. And I gotta say, I have completely reversed my position on it. And there's a lot of these trade offs that are maybe not obvious when you're first evaluating it like, okay, let's even say that addiction went down and the deaths went down. Well, the city itself now, it's an open air market. We were in San Francisco doing a live show and there's people, TV trays just selling it, people shooting dope in the stairwells of these nice brownstones. It's like, well, the whole city's now paid a price for this.
58:49 Dax Shepard? So there's so many variables we need to evaluate. Tell me about drugs and how you make a case for both sides and what you think it leans towards.
58:56 Speaker 02 I think drugs are a case where we don't know what to do. We're losing the war on drugs, but it's not accepting our surrender. Our federal prisons have forty some odd percent of the prisoners have drug convictions. So we're imprisoning people like mad.
59:10 Dax Shepard? By the millions.
59:11 Speaker 02 But we're not making drugs so scarce or even so expensive that poor people can't buy them. So we're losing the war on drugs. But as you say, when we just say, so we're making it non criminal, that doesn't drive down the number of addicts.
59:24 Dax Shepard? Or overdoses, they uptake in Oregon.
59:27 Speaker 02 Absolutely. And having people with Narcan available doesn't exactly solve the problem either. So we need to think of better things to do and we need to. Experiment to find better things to do. So I don't know what the solution is. The solution may well involve incarceration as part of the solution. But incarcerating people and then letting them out still drug addicts, or soon to again be drug addicts, isn't helpful. So incarceration is going to continue to be part of the solution. It seems to me we have a responsibility to make treatment part of incarceration.
59:58 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and really quick, talk about the paradox between contracting a killer and selling drugs.
1:00:03 Speaker 02 Right, right. So I have a sentence in the book that says something like, why is it so easy to buy drugs and so hard to hire a hitman? And that has to do with the social norms about drugs and commercial killing.
1:00:16 Dax Shepard? There's almost zero convictions a year of hired hitmen.
1:00:18 Speaker 02 It's not even in the FBI crime statistics.
1:00:20 Dax Shepard? And they carry a virtually similar penalty.
1:00:23 Speaker 02 That's right. In both cases, if we catch you selling narcotics or killing for hire, we will lock you up as long as we can. And we're pretty effective at both of those. But again, the prisons are full of drug dealers and there are hardly any hitmen. So the way I thought about that in the book is the following. Supposing at the end of our chat, I say to you, you know, you're a guy from Los Angeles. You probably know where I can buy heroin on my way home. Well, you'd be really surprised. Probably most of your podcasts don't end with that kind of request for information.
1:00:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:00:52 Speaker 02 And you'd think, whoa, you know, this guy Al is crazy. That's really too bad.
1:00:57 Dax Shepard? Or confident.
1:00:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, that's really too bad. You know, he seemed so coherent when we were talking to him, but he must be getting senile. And that would sort of be the end of it. Maybe you'd decide not to publish the podcast because you wouldn't want to have guys like me on your show. But supposing I said to you, you know, I'm an academic and every time I write a paper, there are referees. You know, the joke in academia is referee number two. You know, he's always the one who hates your paper. And I just can't take it anymore. I've identified one of my academic enemies at UCLA. And you look to me like the kind of guy who would know where I could hire a hitman. What do you say? Well, probably you don't know where I could hire a hitman. But even if you did, you wouldn't tell me because that wouldn't be a good thing to do. But afterward, you wouldn't just say, oh, that sure took a strange turn, that conversation. You'd say, maybe we should call the police. Yes, exactly. Here's someone who wants a murder.
1:01:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:01:43 Speaker 02 You know, we should call the police. And if you called the police, first of all, if you'd called the police when I said, where can I buy heroin? They'd say to you, so you met a professor who asked you where he could buy heroin? And you're calling the police? You know, we're very busy. There's lots of real crime in Los Angeles. Leave us alone. But if you called him and said, I talked to this professor from the Bay Area and he wants to hire a hitman to kill someone in Los Angeles. They'd say, "Is it too late? Call him back and tell him, you know, before he gets on the plane, he should come to this bar in Burbank. Ask for Joe and Joe will take care of him." And Joe would take care of me. A lot of the convictions for attempted hiring of killers is when the person doing the hiring talks to an undercover policeman.
1:02:24 Speaker 02 There are so many drug deals, it doesn't make sense to try to preempt them one by one. But there are so few murders that it makes a lot of sense to try to preempt them one by one. And the police would be glad to send some tough-looking guy in plain clothes to talk to me and have me explain who I wanted murdered and then arrest me.
1:02:42 Dax Shepard? What fresh perspective do we need to apply to this drug?
1:02:45 Speaker 02 First of all, I think we're doing great on hitmen. We should keep it up.
1:02:48 Dax Shepard? Uh huh, yeah, yeah. Well done.
1:02:49 Speaker 02 We have this really tough law against commercial killing and it seems to be largely working. Most murders, people are killed by people who love them or who they know or who live in their neighborhood. And commercial killing is very little. Let's keep it that way. So I like the laws that say if we catch you, we throw you in jail as long as we can. The same laws are not doing the same good job for addictive drugs. So I think we ought to be experimenting with what to do. And I applauded the experiment of decriminalizing.
1:03:18 Speaker 01 We had to try it.
1:03:19 Speaker 02 And I agree with you that they didn't work. Even the plans, you know, the thing about decriminalizing is that's cheap. Whereas the other part of the plan, which is make treatment readily available and easy to get when you need it, which is like right now, before I go take another dose of drugs, that turns out to be expensive. So we let people buy and sell on the street and we didn't do anything to help them or didn't do very much to help them kick the habit.
1:03:40 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we kept citing these different experiments that were run in Portugal and Spain, but we just applied one side of it, which is none of the resources, none of the help. We're just like, okay, let's decriminalize.
1:03:51 Speaker 02 I think in Portugal, they're also having recognition that they weren't giving enough help and they were getting open-air markets and things like that. And that's a real cost, right? Cities have to be good to live in. I mean, most of us live in cities.
1:04:02 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and you're evaluating their rights against mine.
1:04:04 Speaker 02 Absolutely. So you don't want to find hypodermic needles in the school playground.
1:04:08 Dax Shepard? No, no, no. No one wants to live in that city or play on that playground.
1:04:11 Speaker 02 Right.
1:04:26 Dax Shepard? So what kind of experiments do you think would need to be run?
1:04:28 Speaker 02 Well, one of the things we don't like is deaths with overdose. So one thing that people have been talking about is safe injection spaces. So that wouldn't cut down on addiction, but it might cut down on overdose deaths. So that you're in a place where there's someone keeping an eye, that you stay conscious. Now, that's pretty controversial because a place like that would need some police protection. Not everyone who comes is a nice person. Whereas the police think, you know, do you want us to protect these guys? Our job is to arrest them. Right. So we'd have to think hard about how to organize the laws and the rules and what would happen. Again, what you'd really like is treatment. So we need to understand more about how to treat addiction. There have been some technological progress in that, you know, things like methadone.
1:05:10 Dax Shepard? Well, GLP-1s are now starting to show a lot of...
1:05:13 Speaker 02 Absolutely. So that would be great if there could be drugs and maybe you could have them prescribed so they'd be available to you. Maybe you could be mandated to take them, sort of in the manner of methadone. So I think we need to be on the lookout and we have to be thinking about how we can combine police services and criminology and housing for the homeless. You know, a lot of addiction is to painkillers and people who are homeless are, in a certain sense, in a lot of pain. Some of that process, if we made it easier to get decent housing. These things all probably touch each other in various ways that I don't claim to understand, but I think we have to be thinking about them that way, not just as a criminal problem that we have to solve.
1:05:49 Dax Shepard? I think we have a really interesting example in our laps right now that we don't fully understand yet, which is we all recognize alcoholism's an issue. No one disagrees with that. We tried through prohibition and it only decreased alcohol consumption for the first three years and then it rebounded beautifully. We're weirdly in a phase right now where alcohol consumption is in a nosedive.
1:06:15 Dax Shepard? And I don't know that we have a great explanation of what's driving that nosedive. But I think we had better find out what it is because I think it's very interesting that we're getting the thing we wanted, but we didn't do anything.
1:06:30 Speaker 02 Right. Now, there are surveys that suggest that the number of daily users of marijuana now exceed the number of daily drinkers.
1:06:38 Dax Shepard? So my current theory, but again, I haven't seen any of the work on this. But yeah, my assumption is that where you're seeing weed consumption available, you're seeing alcohol go down. And for me, objectively, I'd rather see people consume marijuana than alcohol. I think it's far less dangerous.
1:06:53 Speaker 01 Jonathan Haidt would say, and does, I think, that the reason alcohol is down, and also probably why the reason marijuana is up, marijuana, you can do that in isolation. People smoke at their house by themselves. They do gummies. Alcohol is a social drug.
1:07:08 Speaker 02 Not for alcoholics.
1:07:09 Speaker 01 Well, for alcoholics, but I mean generally, alcohol is a social drug and as younger people are being more isolated on their phones, social media, they're staying in. They're not going out and hanging out with friends and getting a drink. They're on their phone. So I think he would say, yeah, that looks good, but actually it's not good because everyone's so isolated. And I think there's something to that potentially.
1:07:34 Dax Shepard? It's probably dynamic and multifaceted.
1:07:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:36 Dax Shepard? But, um.
1:07:37 Speaker 01 Everything is.
1:07:38 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I was pointing out to him because his worldview is everything about the internet and social media is bad. And I said, what about this uptick in healthy eating and reduction in drinking and better savings? You can't ignore all these other things that are upticking hugely as the suicide rate goes up 9%. But yes, that's his explanation. But regardless, I think we need to know what the explanation is, right?
1:08:00 Speaker 02 There might be multiple explanations, but there's no question that, that a lot of things are affected by social norms. But social norms aren't things that we know very much about how to change. You can't legislate them. They seem to change slowly. You said that there's an upsurge in tobacco smoking. It's not just health concerns that drive down alcohol. One thing that's driving it down is there used to be some thought that maybe alcohol had some protective properties. That drinking red wine was good.
1:08:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:08:25 Dax Shepard? Good for your heart.
1:08:25 Speaker 01 I'm still sticking with that a little bit.
1:08:27 Speaker 02 Those were the days.
1:08:27 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:08:29 Speaker 02 I miss those days.
1:08:30 Dax Shepard? Doing my heart a favor with this glass of wine tonight.
1:08:32 Speaker 02 Exactly. So that cuts it down a little.
1:08:35 Dax Shepard? Yeah, there's probably different causality within each socioeconomic rung. I'm meeting a lot of people in my circle that are limiting their drinking because of the new studies that have come out, that are concluding it's terrible for you, right? But that's not why an 18-year-old, their longevity is not at the forefront. That's not why they're doing it.
1:08:50 Speaker 02 But I think there are these cycles that are generational too. In other words, if your grandparents drank cocktails, then your parents drank wine.
1:08:58 Speaker 01 Right.
1:08:58 Speaker 02 And now you're smoking weed.
1:09:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you don't want to do what your parents did in some way. There's some rejection. Okay, can we talk about vaccines for a bit? And then I just want to talk about what emerging controversies you see coming our way and how we can apply this market view to them. So vaccines, we kind of brought it up a minute ago.
1:09:14 Speaker 02 Okay, so vaccines turn out to be controversial. Who would have thought? And they're controversial at the highest levels of government right now. So we're seeing measles again. We'd sort of had measles beat, but it used to be a really dangerous disease. And of course, it has negative externalities. If your kid goes to kindergarten and there's somebody with measles in the kindergarten, then your kid is going to have to bring measles home, especially if your kid isn't vaccinated. So it's a dangerous disease. So we just went through COVID where miraculously, technologically, vaccines were developed with uncanny speed. I remember the long trek to polio when I was a small child and eventually getting first Sot and then Sabin in elementary school. They lined us up and walked us through the gym and we all took a sugar cube with a purple liquid in it.
1:09:56 Dax Shepard? It was oral?
1:09:57 Speaker 02 Sot was a shot and Sabin was oral.
1:09:59 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay.
1:10:00 Speaker 02 That was a big deal because I had contemporaries who were in leg braces and parents wouldn't let you go to public swimming pools in the summer. Polio was a real vivid threat, but it took years to get a vaccine. So we very quickly got COVID vaccines. Now, of course, after you got COVID vaccines, you have to test them. And testing vaccines is a little complicated because you have to test them in places where there's lots of COVID. You have to find hotspots because testing them in a place that COVID has already swept through isn't a good way to test them. So the way you test vaccines is you have to predict it a little bit. You find a hotspot. You enroll 40,000 people in your trial. 20,000 of them you give the vaccine to and 20,000 you don't. You have to wait a couple of months because even in a hotspot, people can go through their daily life without getting exposed.
1:10:45 Speaker 02 So you have to wait till enough people have gotten exposed in the two groups so that you can see the big difference, hopefully, between the vaccinated group and the unvaccinated group. And that tells you that the vaccine is working.
1:10:55 Dax Shepard? What are the ethics of giving half that group the placebo, though?
1:10:58 Speaker 02 People don't seem to object to that because you don't yet have an authorized vaccine. So the whole population is not getting the vaccine.
1:11:05 Dax Shepard? Okay, okay.
1:11:05 Speaker 02 But there was a movement for what are called human challenge trials or human infection trials. So there were a lot of people who signed up with an organization called One Day Sooner. Their argument was, we, mostly we, young, healthy.
1:11:20 Dax Shepard? Males.
1:11:21 Speaker 02 Males.
1:11:23 Speaker 02 Are willing to test vaccines. So we're willing to be exposed to the disease to be part of a vaccine trial, some of whom would get the vaccine and some wouldn't. But we also don't know if the vaccine is going to be effective. And their argument was, young, healthy males, you know, people in their 20s who have no comorbidities. It's mostly not a dangerous disease. And if we could even get a vaccine available one day sooner, hence the name of the organization, think of the trillions of dollars that would save, given that the world is shut down for COVID. Well, we didn't do those because by and large, people thought it would be immoral to give people COVID when you didn't have a vaccine for it.
1:11:59 Speaker 01 Even if they're signing up themselves?
1:12:01 Speaker 02 Even if they're signing up. And thousands of people signed up because we were all locked down. People signed up and they were passionate about it. They'd say, you know, this gives me a chance to make a difference instead of just passively hiding in my house from this dread disease. But we didn't do it. And there was a lot of discussion. I got involved in some of it about, maybe we should. I mean, we let people fight fires, even though running into a burning building that everyone else is running out of is dangerous. And we don't have a vaccine for fires. But we honor firefighters who protect us. And so these people had that kind of feeling. They wanted to be firefighters. They wanted to help you beat the pandemic. But we didn't allow them to. And possibly that was a mistake in the sense that. It really was costly
1:12:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:12:39 Speaker 02 to the world to have all those lockdowns, just as the disease itself was costly. But of course, that's now a minor story now that we have government officials who are against measles vaccines. We already know that measles vaccines work.
1:12:50 Dax Shepard? Here's where I think the moral conundrum comes with vaccines. So I'm a very outspoken vaccine advocate. There are people that protest, my wife and I, when we go places, the anti-vaxxers, right? So I'm very declared on, but I also totally, in a libertarian way, think if you don't want to get you, Alvin, don't want to get the measles vax, I believe that's your right. I don't think you should have to put anything in your body you don't want to. So I'm fine with that, and if you can track measles, that's on you.
1:13:20 Speaker 02 Should I be able to send my child to a public kindergarten?
1:13:22 Dax Shepard? Where I'm gonna go, where the moral conundrum for me lies is the children of someone making that decision, they're minors, should they have to inherit your decision on it? And are you putting a minor at risk? That's where it's most juicy in a moral debate. So how do you feel about that zone?
1:13:40 Speaker 02 I think it depends on what the morality argument is. What comes to mind is there are small groups of Christian believers who don't like blood transfusions. Jehovah's Witnesses are among them. And they don't like blood transfusions because their reading of scriptures says that God is omnipotent. And if God wants to save you, he saves you. And if he doesn't want to save you, he doesn't save you. And you shouldn't mess with that decision. But of course, they also have children, and sometimes their children need blood transfusions. So Witnesses have a population center in Boston. And there are some hospitals in Boston that are used to treating witnesses and the children of witnesses. And if you're a Jehovah's Witness and an adult, and you say, no transfusion,
1:14:22 Speaker 02 they won't give you a transfusion, and you might die of whatever your disease is. Or you might have to forego certain kinds of surgery that would require a transfusion to make them safe. But there are now hospitals that treat witness children. And there is sort of a well-grooved pathway where the parents say, no transfusions, we're witnesses. And everyone understands that. And if the child needs a transfusion, there are judges who you can go to for an injunction that say, this child needs a transfusion right now and you can get it. And everyone understands that. And from the point of view of the witnesses is we said, no, God works in mysterious ways.
1:14:55 Dax Shepard? Our hands are kind of clean.
1:14:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, and God wanted him to live.
1:14:58 Speaker 01 God did this.
1:14:59 Speaker 02 God could have stopped the injunction, so we're good.
1:15:01 Speaker 01 There's some workarounds.
1:15:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:15:03 Dax Shepard? It's like the Amish can be driven to the hospital in a car, but they can't operate the car themselves. My mother's boyfriend, Dan, his mother died, she's a Jehovah's Witness, because they refused a blood transfusion.
1:15:14 Speaker 02 As you say, an adult can refuse, but the question for children. And the fact that I know about these hospitals means that Jehovah's Witnesses know about these hospitals. You send your kid to this hospital because they have a good record of treating the children of witnesses. And God works in mysterious ways. I think that we have more difficulty seeing the merits of opposing views when we're talking about something that we think is a matter of morality than when we're talking about other things.
1:15:37 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Can economics help us through that?
1:15:40 Speaker 02 Well, there are ways of arguing that might help us. In other words, there aren't enough kidneys for transplant. But we were able to get kidney exchange going, even though there are people who are pretty opposed to most ways of increasing the number of transplants. But that was a way of increasing the transplants that didn't arouse so much opposition. That's not true everywhere. Kidney exchange still isn't legal in Brazil and in Germany.
1:16:02 Dax Shepard? Even if you're a donor?
1:16:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, the rule in both places is you couldn't give me a kidney. My brother could give me a kidney, but you can't. Yes, it has to be a first order member of the family.
1:16:10 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:16:11 Speaker 02 And the German prosecutors have no sense of humor about this. So if my brother wants to give me a kidney and you want to give a kidney to your brother, but we're incompatible, the fact that everything has been satisfied except the medical compatibility issue, they wouldn't allow you to give me a kidney and my brother to give your brother a kidney. But those laws are subject to change. The German Health Ministry has a draft that they're trying to put through the Bundestag.
1:16:33 Dax Shepard? And they'll have us as an example, we're running the trial.
1:16:35 Speaker 02 Exactly. Oh, so we have permission to do clinical trials in Brazil, right? So it's against the law to do kidney exchange in Brazil, but just as unapproved drugs, you can do clinical trials. There are now a few, a small number of kidney exchanges going on in Brazil as a clinical trial to see if it works in Brazil. And we're confident it will work in Brazil because it works everywhere else. The hope is, once we have 20 or 30 people who got transplants that way, can go to the Brazilian legislature and say, this works, let's make it legal.
1:17:02 Dax Shepard? Yeah, okay, so what about the road ahead? What are some emerging controversies?
1:17:05 Speaker 02 So one is betting on sports, or on other things for that matter. Sports betting on apps and prediction markets. And for a long time, we didn't allow betting on sports, or we'd limited it. I think you could always Pretty much bet on horse racing in the United States. Because after all, how can you not bet on horse racing?
1:17:22 Dax Shepard? Don't eat them.
1:17:23 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:17:24 Speaker 02 Exactly. That's part of the fun. That's why you don't eat them.
1:17:26 Dax Shepard? They're for betting, not for eating.
1:17:28 Speaker 02 Exactly, exactly. But still, you would go to a racetrack to do it. So one problem with sports betting on your phone is it's potentially addictive.
1:17:37 Dax Shepard? Yeah, not potentially.
1:17:38 Speaker 02 You could bet throughout the game on specific things. Will the next free throw go in? So it's addictive. Another thing is you can try to influence the athletes so that your bets will come in more.
1:17:49 Dax Shepard? Those are coming out more and more and more. Almost daily, we get another scandal.
1:17:53 Speaker 02 And it used to be that there was always this climb associated with gambling in sports about influencing the game. And it used to be that the typical kind of involvement of criminals in sports was in point shaving. So you're a basketball player and I'm asking you to not win by so much.
1:18:10 Dax Shepard? Cover the spread.
1:18:11 Speaker 02 Your team will still win.
1:18:12 Dax Shepard? Could even be losing. As long as you lose by six, I'll still win.
1:18:16 Speaker 02 So there were some famous scandals of that sort in the 1950s. One of them that I get to follow occasionally on the internet because one of the protagonists was named Alvin Roth.
1:18:25 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
1:18:26 Speaker 02 So in the book, I had to proofread the index and they had one entry for Alvin Roth and I made them change it, I hope they've changed it, to Alvin, quote, "Fats," end quote, Roth, which is how he's talked about in Wikipedia.
1:18:39 Speaker 02 But he was banned for life from the NBA and would have gone to jail, but was allowed to join the army instead.
1:18:44 Dax Shepard? Yes. And this is where we get back into paternalism a little bit because we had, of course, Michael Lewis on and he had a great 10-part podcast about the impact on young males of this online betting. And it's stark. The rate of bankruptcy, the rate of suicide, all these metrics are skyrocketing.
1:19:03 Speaker 02 No, it's a real addiction. Not everyone is subject to it, of course.
1:19:05 Dax Shepard? But it's significant. And again, we have this little bit of a crossroads, which is like, you should be allowed to destroy your life in some sense. You know, we believe that in this country. You should be allowed to drink alcohol if it's on you. But we know better, right? We know better for these young men. It's very paternalistic for us to say you shouldn't have the right to become insolvent.
1:19:22 Speaker 02 You should be allowed to drink alcohol, but we don't serve it in elementary school caf- We try to regulate a little bit. Bartenders have a certain responsibility. They can cut you off and they may have to. You know, they may be liable.
1:19:34 Speaker 01 There's a warning label on the bottle.
1:19:36 Dax Shepard? Also, we stop serving alcohol in public at certain times.
1:19:39 Speaker 02 Yes, so gambling, maybe it'll benefit from being re-regulated that way. It's a pretty recent thing that we've allowed this sports betting. A Supreme Court decision again. So there's two things we've talked about. One is the addictive feature of betting on the game. The other is the effect on sports. If you're asking athletes, if you're pressuring athletes not to make the last free throw because you've got to bet. And of course, we're seeing this now with prediction markets. If you know someone who knows that the president of Venezuela is about to be abducted, you could make a lot of money on a prediction market by betting on that. You know, that's a little worrisome if you worry about corruption in high office and what's for sale and what isn't.
1:20:16 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I think prior to this, you just had the credit default swap market, which heavily incentivizes these people for businesses to go bankrupt and heavily incentivizes them to start rumors. Like Bear Stearns was a rumor.
1:20:28 Speaker 02 We've learned a lot. We have to keep up with it because it's always changing. We've learned a lot about regulating financial markets. We don't believe that insider trading is OK on securities markets.
1:20:39 Dax Shepard? Unless you're in Congress, but yes.
1:20:40 Speaker 02 Unless you're in Congress. Yeah, what can you do?
1:20:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah, what can you do?
1:20:44 Speaker 02 So I'm a big fan of regulation. Regulation is part of market design. We shouldn't be just thinking about banning things or allowing them unrestrictedly.
1:20:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:20:54 Speaker 02 We should be thinking about managing them, especially when there are things that we can't ban, even if we would like to, like alcohol. So decriminalizing drugs, we probably need to treat addicts more like patients than like criminals compared to what we're doing now. But maybe not, completely not like criminals because it's very compelling to be addicted to something. You know, I think there's a quote I found that's attributed to Mark Twain, which probably means he never really said it, which says, quitting smoking is easy. I've done it a thousand times.
1:21:22 Speaker 02 We can regulate the amount of nicotine in cigarettes. You know, we've had all sorts of. Financial settlements with tobacco companies having to do with what they knew about the addictive qualities of nicotine. And similarly, we've started to restrict and think about how to regulate vaping, which might have something to be said for it if you're a two-pack-a-day cigarette smoker. Maybe switching to non-combustible is good for you. But if you're a middle school student, it's a terrible idea to get addicted to nicotine, which is apparently, you know, a very powerful addict.
1:21:50 Dax Shepard? I'm the product of this law. It happened, and I was furious. They outlawed in California flavored tobacco, and I liked wintergreen. So I was having, like, my father-in-law bring some from Nevada, right? I'm like smuggling it in. Every time someone would come to visit, they'd have to bring me a sleeve. And then I finally quit, like, two years ago on New Year's. But I'll say it was largely helped by when I walk into 7-Eleven, it's not even there. There was a hurdle for me that I would be lying if I said didn't help dramatically.
1:22:20 Speaker 02 Sure.
1:22:21 Dax Shepard? And it's all but gone now because everyone liked all the flavors. And I'm like, God, I hate to admit that that kind of worked because the aging libertarian in me was like, I hate that it helps, and it's true.
1:22:31 Speaker 02 No, that's right. So the morally contested markets, behavioral problems with things like addiction are not going to be zero-one solutions. It's not that you pass a law, and we're done. We passed the law. Everything's good.
1:22:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we're going to inch towards a better and better percentage is all we're going to do.
1:22:46 Speaker 02 And we're going to have to think about trade-offs and do experiments and learn what works. And that's really what I'm concluding in this book.
1:22:54 Dax Shepard? Yes. Well, Alvin Roth, it's been a blast getting to talk to you. The book is Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales: What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work. I love your book. I hope everyone checks it out, and it was a delight to meet you. Thank you so much.
1:23:11 Speaker 02 Nice to meet you guys, too.
1:23:14 Dax Shepard? Hi there, this is Hermium Hermium. If you like that, you're going to love the fact check with Miss Monica. I have my glasses on, not to cover up my sty.
1:23:25 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:23:25 Dax Shepard? My journal entry this morning started as such. My sty's the captain now.
1:23:33 Dax Shepard? Okay, so I just want to read you, I got a couple of screen grabs I want to share with you.
1:23:41 Speaker 01 Wait, we're not done talking about your sty.
1:23:44 Dax Shepard? Well, I just hate it. I wanted to say I have my glasses on to read this, not to cover my sty. Okay, go ahead and ask me about my sty.
1:23:50 Speaker 01 Um, how does it feel?
1:23:51 Dax Shepard? The same.
1:23:54 Speaker 01 But you're on antibiotics, right?
1:23:56 Dax Shepard? Drops.
1:23:57 Speaker 01 Drops.
1:23:58 Dax Shepard? Not oral, not oral. And I've been hot compressing like a very good boy. I know, but I've been hot compressing.
1:24:06 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:24:06 Dax Shepard? But what I'm gonna read is in reference to our foot fetish debate.
1:24:10 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
1:24:11 Dax Shepard? Or us trying to figure it out.
1:24:13 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:24:13 Dax Shepard? So this was interesting. This is from, um, MissMissa13. Watching the fact check, Rachel mentioned the homunculus and brain mapping. Your foot fetish combo is explained in big part by this. If you look at a diagram of what your brain thinks your body looks like, WRT nerve sensation, e.g. sensitivity, the genitals and feet are right next to each other and huge. Hence, the arousal stimulation is very subjective and nuanced based on the topography of someone's nugget.
1:24:46 Speaker 01 Interesting.
1:24:47 Dax Shepard? That's pretty fascinating.
1:24:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:24:49 Dax Shepard? I have no way to fact check that. I'm not gonna consult a neurologist. I thought he was green grabbing another one. Another one was just really walking us through why she loves feet. Her thing is like, bare feet represent...
1:25:03 Speaker 01 It was a woman.
1:25:03 Dax Shepard? It was a woman.
1:25:04 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:25:05 Dax Shepard? And she's like, bare feet to her represent a level of comfort and safety that you can take your shoes off and be vulnerable. Like, the whole thing to her reads as this like intimacy kind of
1:25:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, I could see that.
1:25:18 Dax Shepard? Offering of vulnerability.
1:25:20 Speaker 01 I could definitely see that. It's like my sick thing.
1:25:23 Dax Shepard? Ding ding ding, I took the Dremel to my toenail last night. I didn't even, I wouldn't even know I was gonna talk about feet so much. Nah.
1:25:32 Dax Shepard? So mostly because I'm wearing lace up shoes today.
1:25:34 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:25:35 Dax Shepard? It's just too much. I'm so lazy with my footwear. I love a slip on nowadays. And when I decide to wear these shoes, these high top Converse, I literally go, well, I'm gonna lace them up now and I'm not taking them off till I go to bed. I don't wanna be, I don't wanna be.
1:25:50 Speaker 01 I know. You even put your shoes on the bed.
1:25:53 Dax Shepard? Don't say that.
1:25:55 Speaker 01 I've seen it. I've seen it.
1:25:58 Dax Shepard? Or maybe in the top comforter.
1:26:00 Speaker 01 Those, cuz like probably you just don't feel like taking your shoes off.
1:26:03 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I would kick off normal shoes. But if I gotta bend over and.
1:26:06 Speaker 01 But you don't wear enough loafers for someone who likes to slip on.
1:26:10 Dax Shepard? Well, but I have slip on vans and I have my low top Converse loose enough that I can slide in and out of them.
1:26:16 Speaker 01 But you've never tried out a loafer?
1:26:17 Dax Shepard? I hate loafers. I've tried many times.
1:26:19 Speaker 01 Why?
1:26:20 Dax Shepard? I, they look great on you. And everyone should wear loafers. They look great on everyone. On me, they look preposterous.
1:26:27 Speaker 01 Huh.
1:26:28 Dax Shepard? If anything is like outside of my vibe, I really think a loafers where the rubber meets the road.
1:26:33 Speaker 01 No, I could see you in a loafer with like a sweater.
1:26:37 Dax Shepard? That's a different person, but yeah.
1:26:38 Speaker 01 No, you, you wear sweaters. I've got you multiple sweaters.
1:26:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's true.
1:26:43 Speaker 01 I've got you sweaters. You wear them all the time.
1:26:45 Dax Shepard? That's true. You have a, you have a knack for choosing sweaters I, I love.
1:26:50 Speaker 01 And you wear a cardigan sometimes?
1:26:52 Dax Shepard? My great Burberry one.
1:26:54 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:26:55 Dax Shepard? That's in massive rotation.
1:26:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's a great one.
1:26:57 Dax Shepard? Just wore the green row one recently.
1:26:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, great one. You could wear, definitely wear that with a loaf.
1:27:03 Dax Shepard? Monica, I know you, like you're picturing it seems organic, but I promise if you saw me in a loafer, you'd be like, hold, hold on, what's going on? Cuz then I gotta wear a dress pant.
1:27:13 Speaker 01 No.
1:27:13 Dax Shepard? Loafers and jeans is a very specific dude and I'm not that dude. That's a Connecticut, went to Harvard.
1:27:19 Speaker 01 No, no, you have, see, you have an old school, like you have an old school mentality.
1:27:23 Dax Shepard? Old school flair.
1:27:25 Speaker 01 You know, you have an old school mentality about what you can wear loafers with and who's wearing loafers and that kinda thing.
1:27:33 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:27:34 Speaker 01 You have an old school mentality.
1:27:35 Dax Shepard? Not a lot of blue collar tradesmen wearing loafers. I'll just say that. And that's, that's kinda where I anchor my.
1:27:40 Speaker 01 I know, but like.
1:27:41 Dax Shepard? Go ahead. Blue collar tradesmen aren't wearing Burberry sweaters either.
1:27:45 Speaker 01 Oh, I was just gonna say, you're just not him anymore.
1:27:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I know. But I, I, I. Yeah, whatever. I intend to stay that way.
1:27:52 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:27:53 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:27:54 Speaker 01 Um, okay, I have something so sim.
1:27:58 Dax Shepard? Okay, tell me.
1:27:59 Speaker 01 So I was at a restaurant with Jess that I frequent a lot.
1:28:04 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:28:05 Speaker 01 And that we frequent a lot, him and I. And the server said, you know, I just want to flag for you guys that on our system, and I think a lot of systems, on our system, it just shows the last three digits of the credit card.
1:28:25 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
1:28:26 Speaker 01 And him and I have the exact same last three digits of our credit card.
1:28:30 Dax Shepard? Serendipity.
1:28:31 Speaker 01 Isn't that crazy?
1:28:32 Dax Shepard? Kismet.
1:28:33 Speaker 01 Which is like, I was like, oh my god, like, I thought that was so cool.
1:28:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:28:37 Speaker 01 And then it's immediately scared Jess.
1:28:40 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:28:40 Speaker 01 Which, the reason the guy was flagging it is like, so when you guys like, if you split, there's a chance that it's gonna go to the wrong card. It's gonna be like attributed to the wrong card.
1:28:54 Dax Shepard? Why do either of you have credit cards on file at restaurants?
1:28:57 Speaker 01 We don't. You say, why don't we?
1:28:59 Dax Shepard? Well, how are they gonna, how are they gonna mix up a split if you've handed the person your credit card?
1:29:03 Speaker 01 Well, no, we put it on the table.
1:29:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Still not understanding. What sounded like to me is that it's in the computer system and that they might click the wrong thing.
1:29:13 Speaker 01 No, it's not that.
1:29:16 Dax Shepard? Then what is it?
1:29:17 Speaker 01 I don't know, but Jess, of course, went back there. He wanted to see on the computer.
1:29:21 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow.
1:29:22 Speaker 01 And he did. He said, yeah, it is like...
1:29:25 Dax Shepard? The last three.
1:29:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:29:26 Dax Shepard? I still don't understand what the issue is, because you're gonna hand them the credit card every single time, right? You don't have a long, you don't have an account or a tab at these places.
1:29:34 Speaker 01 No, we don't, but maybe they swipe-
1:29:36 Dax Shepard? Throw it on 682. That would be a problem.
1:29:38 Speaker 01 Okay, maybe they swipe it and type in the amount? Because with tip, it's like with tip and stuff, like if I'm tipping- Fifty dollars, maybe they typed that in to the back of the credit, or like, they're like, oh, this is the credit card that gets fifty dollars tip. This credit card gets a hundred dollars. It was obviously enough of a thing in their system for him to have brought it up.
1:30:05 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I just wish I understood how it could go on.
1:30:07 Speaker 01 He says it shows up F and then the last three digits. And ours are the same. Isn't that crazy? Of all the numbers in the world?
1:30:17 Dax Shepard? Yes, that part's very exciting that you guys have the last three numbers. And isn't it the last four? Everywhere my credit card is.
1:30:23 Speaker 01 That's why, the last four is not.
1:30:25 Dax Shepard? They don't match.
1:30:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, but the last three.
1:30:28 Dax Shepard? Do you want to tell us what they are to help people? Um, hack your credit card and his? Mine is too.
1:30:35 Speaker 01 No, it's not.
1:30:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it is.
1:30:37 Speaker 01 So are all?
1:30:41 Dax Shepard? Mine is?
1:30:42 Speaker 01 No, okay, hold on. No, American Express cards do not all end in?
1:30:47 Dax Shepard? Well, I know that.
1:30:48 Speaker 01 Well, I just looked.
1:30:49 Dax Shepard? Cause I've had different cards. I have multiple MX cards and only one of them ends in, we're not gonna say the number, but the same now as it turns out as you and Jess. That's nuts.
1:30:59 Speaker 01 But maybe like, maybe there's only a few endings. Okay, well MX cards often end in similar digits. Like a hundred X or two hundred X. Due to how they are issued and replaced.
1:31:11 Dax Shepard? Right.
1:31:12 Speaker 01 It says many users report last four digits ending in one zero zero one, one zero zero three, one zero zero seven, one zero zero eight, one zero one three, et cetera. Well, don't say et cetera. Huh. Anyway, wow.
1:31:27 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:31:27 Speaker 01 So the three of us split at this restaurant. Hooey. Anyway, that was just very sad.
1:31:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. The thing I had wanted to remember to talk about, continuing with my grossness. So we got the pink eye, which is not pink eye, it's a sty.
1:31:42 Speaker 01 Yep. It's a pig sty.
1:31:46 Dax Shepard? It's a, it's a big sty. Uh, the toenail? Hmm. Just ground it, gross. So.
1:31:53 Speaker 01 Cause why, it was getting fluffy on top.
1:31:55 Dax Shepard? You know, it won't grow out. It'll just only grow up. I don't want to talk about it. So.
1:32:00 Speaker 01 Oh, you brought it up.
1:32:01 Dax Shepard? I know, but I'm in detail. I don't need you to be able to like picture exactly what's going on.
1:32:05 Speaker 01 You love talking about gross stuff.
1:32:07 Dax Shepard? Well, I'm already hitting you with a third thing. So I have this stye, I have the toenails. So I'm trying to just limit those two things.
1:32:12 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:32:13 Dax Shepard? So I can tell you that.
1:32:15 Speaker 01 Your stye is making me very thirsty.
1:32:16 Dax Shepard? I love a certain T-shirt. You know, I wear the same brand T-shirt mostly all the time. Velvet.
1:32:21 Speaker 01 Uh huh. Velvet by Graham and something.
1:32:24 Dax Shepard? Graham and crackers.
1:32:25 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:32:26 Dax Shepard? I've been noticing lately that there's a lot of, um, right out of the wash, directly from the washer and dryer. There's antiperspirant buildup in the armpit, in the fabric.
1:32:38 Speaker 01 Really?
1:32:39 Dax Shepard? Yes, because I am caking on my antiperspirant, then I'm wearing the shirt, and then somehow, so much is transferring that it's not coming out in the wash.
1:32:45 Speaker 01 Huh.
1:32:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and it affects the armpit. It makes the armpits of the shirt not fully clean and.
1:32:52 Speaker 01 Weird.
1:32:52 Dax Shepard? Exciting. It's like, got a film of antiperspirant over, uh, post-wash.
1:32:57 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:32:59 Dax Shepard? And so my response to that is like, to order more shirts.
1:33:04 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:33:04 Dax Shepard? Because it can't have this like gooey, cakey armpit.
1:33:08 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:33:09 Dax Shepard? And so I guess two weeks ago, week and a half ago, I'm like, well, stop wearing deodorant. Stop wearing antiperspirant.
1:33:16 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:33:17 Dax Shepard? Stop wearing deodorant.
1:33:18 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:33:18 Dax Shepard? My expectation was like, that's not gonna be a thing. I might have more sweat, but.
1:33:24 Speaker 01 You're not gonna smell.
1:33:24 Dax Shepard? I don't smell.
1:33:25 Speaker 01 Uh huh. Oh, no.
1:33:28 Dax Shepard? Monica, I'm hoping this is a detox period where it's like my body's still expelling all of this. Clearly, I'm putting a lot on because it's like ruining my shirts.
1:33:36 Speaker 01 Right.
1:33:37 Dax Shepard? But I'm, I'm like, okay, it's just gotta get all out. It's probably, it's, it's trying to find homeostasis. It's, I've been caking it on there for a decade, yeah, however long. I have been pretty regularly been like, oh my God, my armpit smell.
1:33:52 Speaker 01 You smell it.
1:33:53 Dax Shepard? Oh, within a day. And I'm like, what is going on? I don't, I don't smell. I'm having a real crisis of consciousness.
1:33:59 Speaker 01 I understand. That would really stress me.
1:34:01 Dax Shepard? Identity crisis.
1:34:02 Speaker 01 But what, you said one time, you smelled one time.
1:34:06 Dax Shepard? No, every day.
1:34:08 Speaker 01 No, no, no, sorry. I'm talking about like, years ago, you were like, you said, you're like, ah, he's like, my armpits smell weird today.
1:34:15 Dax Shepard? You have a memory of this?
1:34:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:34:16 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:34:17 Speaker 01 Um, and you said it smelled like bacon.
1:34:21 Dax Shepard? Oh, I wish it smelled like bacon currently.
1:34:25 Speaker 01 Is it classic B.O.?
1:34:26 Dax Shepard? Classic B.O. Classic. And I'm like, no, I don't have, I don't smell like that.
1:34:31 Speaker 01 I've never smelled B.O. on you.
1:34:33 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I got this whole story about myself. My breath doesn't smell.
1:34:36 Speaker 01 Your breath doesn't smell?
1:34:38 Dax Shepard? What I'm having to do, thank you. And you would agree, I don't smell.
1:34:41 Speaker 01 I have never smelled you smelling bad.
1:34:43 Dax Shepard? Well, guess what? I smell.
1:34:44 Speaker 01 Fuck!
1:34:45 Dax Shepard? I know. So now I'm having to, unless I want to shower every single day, which I don't love doing, so now I've been showering every day.
1:34:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:34:56 Dax Shepard? But I'm also washing my armpits out, like after I work out in the sink upstairs.
1:35:02 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:35:02 Dax Shepard? I'm constantly like washing with a bar of soap in a sink.
1:35:05 Speaker 01 You're using soap?
1:35:07 Dax Shepard? Well, what else can you use to get rid of that?
1:35:08 Speaker 01 Splash water.
1:35:09 Dax Shepard? I don't know if that's gonna deal with it.
1:35:11 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:35:13 Dax Shepard? Anyways, this is all like I've started a journey and I, I hope to report in like a month, everything's leveled out. And my body's back to like a natural state, but I'm not, I've not liked this at all. I'm like, what's going on?
1:35:26 Speaker 01 Well, I haven't smelt it.
1:35:27 Dax Shepard? I have another theory though.
1:35:28 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:35:29 Dax Shepard? Because there have been periods where I didn't, and I don't remember smelling, didn't wear any purse around.
1:35:32 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:35:33 Dax Shepard? Eh, or deodorant. And, um, and it would be fine for days. And, um, my one fear is that I take this creatin. Okay, it's a powder in a scooper. And it's mixed with some other good thing I'm supposed to have.
1:35:51 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:35:51 Dax Shepard? And so what I noticed, I don't know, I, I, at some point I noticed every time I opened up a thing, I finally said out loud, cause Kristen takes it too. I go, hey, do you think the creatin, I didn't even get the full sentence out. And she said, B.O.?
1:36:06 Speaker 01 Oh no.
1:36:07 Dax Shepard? And I'm like, yes. So I use this powder that has a light smell of B.O. in it. And then her father-
1:36:14 Speaker 01 It smells like it even when you open it?
1:36:16 Dax Shepard? We'll go inside after this and I'll let you huff it.
1:36:17 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:36:20 Dax Shepard? We haven't helped it yet. You don't need to get rid of it.
1:36:23 Speaker 01 I'm nervous I'll be able to smell. Maybe, maybe that's why I haven't smelled you because my nose is all clogged.
1:36:28 Dax Shepard? That could be it. So Kristen's father, and shout out to Tom Bell. I've never met a man who researches things more than my father-in-law. Cause he's in the news.
1:36:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:36:41 Dax Shepard? I think that's why.
1:36:42 Speaker 01 It's a profession.
1:36:43 Dax Shepard? But like if this guy's gonna buy a TV set, he's gonna read about every single TV set. And every review.
1:36:49 Speaker 01 Andy likes to do this too, Andy Rosen.
1:36:51 Dax Shepard? Okay, yeah, it's a personality type.
1:36:52 Speaker 01 It is.
1:36:53 Dax Shepard? So her father's been getting into weight training, which I love and is adorable. We have more stuff to talk about.
1:36:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:36:59 Dax Shepard? And so he wanted to start using creatine. He found out that that's good if you're lifting weights.
1:37:03 Speaker 01 It's good for you guys. I'm on it.
1:37:05 Dax Shepard? So he, he, before he buys it.
1:37:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:37:09 Dax Shepard? He's like, what kind do you use? And we're like, we use this brand. And then like a couple of days later, he said, I'm thinking about buying your brand. Like he hasn't pulled the trigger on it. Like, but I'm reading a lot that it smells like BO.
1:37:20 Speaker 01 Stop.
1:37:21 Dax Shepard? I'm like.
1:37:22 Speaker 01 Oh, it's definitely that.
1:37:23 Dax Shepard? How did you, how did you, you went and researched this thing that far that you went on a message boards where people were starting to talk about that it smells like BO? So he already knew.
1:37:32 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:37:33 Dax Shepard? And we were like, at the time, we were like, yeah, it does have a little smell like that, but, but it has not made us smell.
1:37:39 Speaker 01 But it has.
1:37:40 Dax Shepard? So I guess the move would be for me to stop taking that, replace it with a different one for a while. I gotta be on it.
1:37:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:37:47 Dax Shepard? And see if that's it.
1:37:48 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:37:49 Dax Shepard? Cause maybe that's what's going on is I'm taking this thing that's already smells like BO.
1:37:53 Speaker 01 Ew, I can't believe, oh.
1:37:55 Dax Shepard? That's how much I want premium health.
1:37:57 Speaker 01 No, you can take another brand. Mine doesn't smell like BO.
1:38:02 Dax Shepard? Well, it's not just pure creatine. It's this other thing I need, MBM. It's got some acronym.
1:38:07 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:38:08 Dax Shepard? But I think maybe that's the culprit because I've had a lot of different creatines and none of them ever smelled like anything.
1:38:12 Speaker 01 Exactly. Literally. And it tastes like nothing too.
1:38:15 Dax Shepard? It's not even a thing, I don't think.
1:38:16 Speaker 01 It's placebo, but it works.
1:38:18 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
1:38:19 Speaker 01 I'm on it and I don't smell like BO.
1:38:24 Dax Shepard? Great.
1:38:24 Speaker 01 And I don't use deodorant.
1:38:27 Dax Shepard? You do not?
1:38:27 Speaker 01 I have not used deodorant in like 10 years or like 15, maybe 12.
1:38:33 Dax Shepard? Now, I know a lot of people quit antiperspirant out of the fear of the aluminum, which I do think was just recently debunked. Doesn't matter, but you're not, you're not even deodorant for you.
1:38:40 Speaker 01 I don't use anything.
1:38:41 Dax Shepard? You didn't put anything in there? No perfume, eau de toilette?
1:38:46 Speaker 01 Nope.
1:38:46 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow.
1:38:48 Speaker 01 And I don't, I do not.
1:38:50 Dax Shepard? I've never smelled.
1:38:50 Speaker 01 I don't smell.
1:38:51 Dax Shepard? No, no, never smelled you either.
1:38:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:38:53 Dax Shepard? And Rob doesn't smell. We all got lucky.
1:38:55 Speaker 01 But Rob, do you use deodorant?
1:38:56 Speaker 04 I do.
1:38:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah. I think you put three coworkers together in a small room. We've hit the lottery.
1:39:02 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
1:39:03 Dax Shepard? One person's gonna smell.
1:39:04 Speaker 01 For sure, for sure. I agree. Um, no one smells here.
1:39:09 Dax Shepard? We're so lucky, cuz it's impossible to address. We've gone over this.
1:39:13 Speaker 01 I know.
1:39:14 Dax Shepard? Hey, Rob, I gotta talk to you. Um, you gotta, you gotta wash your armpits better or something. I like, how do you bring it up?
1:39:22 Speaker 01 No, you can't.
1:39:23 Speaker 04 We had, we had a nanny. She, it was perfume, though, was too strong.
1:39:27 Dax Shepard? That's easier.
1:39:28 Speaker 04 Yeah. Natalie, talk to her.
1:39:30 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:39:30 Dax Shepard? Oh, great. Natalie's tough, right? Does she handle all that stuff for you, Rob, all the confrontations?
1:39:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. She likes it.
1:39:37 Dax Shepard? I'm surprised I've never had to negotiate with, with Natalie for your wage.
1:39:46 Dax Shepard? Oh, you're, you're, you're, you're dropping, you're dropping out.
1:39:52 Dax Shepard? How was your event last night?
1:39:53 Speaker 01 It was good. I was invited to an event, um, that was.
1:39:57 Dax Shepard? Dream event for you.
1:39:58 Speaker 01 It was exciting. I got, I got to go to a preview of some clothing that was very exciting.
1:40:04 Dax Shepard? They all know what one it is.
1:40:05 Speaker 01 I don't wanna know about it.
1:40:06 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, I know you're not gonna say it. You signed an NDA.
1:40:11 Speaker 01 I, I can't talk about it.
1:40:12 Dax Shepard? How was the event? What was the thing? It was, it was a fashion-y show, it was a winner preview.
1:40:16 Speaker 01 Well, it wasn't a fashion, it was just like.
1:40:18 Dax Shepard? Fall preview.
1:40:18 Speaker 01 I was, oh, from winter. I was invited to see a winter preview. This is what I know, this is how fashion works. Um, um, I was invited to see a winter preview of clothing, uh, that is not available yet, obviously, uh, off the runway, if you will.
1:40:38 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
1:40:39 Speaker 01 And it was, it was very exciting to get eyes and to get to decide if I wanted any of the items.
1:40:45 Dax Shepard? Ah, did anything tickle your fancy?
1:40:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, of course.
1:40:49 Dax Shepard? Of course.
1:40:50 Speaker 01 Of course, there were some items that tickled.
1:40:52 Dax Shepard? Did you make any purchases?
1:40:54 Speaker 01 Um, no, because, so they're not available yet.
1:40:57 Dax Shepard? Oh, I thought you said you were gonna maybe have acts.
1:40:59 Speaker 01 Well, yeah, so it is, it's like, so I, I can say like, I want that.
1:41:03 Dax Shepard? Okay, you're flying it.
1:41:04 Speaker 01 I want that, so like, put one, you know, they're gonna like, put one aside, make sure they have my size, you know, make me one.
1:41:12 Dax Shepard? It's a pre-order, kind of.
1:41:14 Speaker 01 Kind of, yes, yes, uh, but, uh.
1:41:17 Dax Shepard? Were there any celebrities there?
1:41:18 Speaker 01 No, not while I was there.
1:41:20 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:41:20 Speaker 01 Not while I was there. It's like, you know, you come in.
1:41:22 Dax Shepard? There were different slots.
1:41:23 Speaker 01 No, they're not slots. There's, it was two days, yesterday and today, and it's a chunk of time.
1:41:28 Dax Shepard? Are you going back today?
1:41:30 Speaker 01 No, I already saw it, I already saw, I already did it. And then I did make a purchase of just the clothes that are available while I was there.
1:41:39 Dax Shepard? Okay, yeah, they're gonna get you on the front end or the back end.
1:41:42 Speaker 01 Something to walk out with, you know, they got me. I almost bought something for way too much money.
1:41:47 Dax Shepard? Ooh.
1:41:48 Speaker 01 Teeny tiny clutch, clutch purse, it was teeny, it holds like, it's like a card case, basically.
1:41:57 Dax Shepard? For one credit card?
1:41:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, gold, had diamonds on it, it was vintage, it was, and it was engraved like, from way back when.
1:42:06 Dax Shepard? Meredith was the name?
1:42:06 Speaker 01 Someone wore it, you know, on, on the runway, they wore it with their, with this dress, he pointed out the dress and they wore it, and I was like, fuck, I want, I wanted it.
1:42:15 Dax Shepard? What was the price tag on that?
1:42:16 Speaker 01 I didn't get it.
1:42:17 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:42:17 Speaker 01 How much do you think?
1:42:20 Dax Shepard? Golds and diamonds?
1:42:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, and a one ruby.
1:42:23 Dax Shepard? Thirteen thousand dollars.
1:42:27 Dax Shepard? More.
1:42:30 Speaker 01 I didn't get it.
1:42:31 Dax Shepard? I know, congratulations.
1:42:33 Speaker 01 I'm doing so good not getting.
1:42:35 Dax Shepard? Good.
1:42:36 Speaker 01 But it's not, but I'm not, see, this is the problem, it's like, I should just get that instead of, ultimately, I buy a bunch of things.
1:42:46 Dax Shepard? I totally disagree, you're doing it right, because you have the illusion that that's gonna satiate you, and it's not.
1:42:52 Speaker 01 I know, you're right.
1:42:53 Dax Shepard? So in fact, if anything, you should just buy even cheaper stuff and more often and just.
1:42:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, cheaper in big quotes.
1:42:59 Dax Shepard? And just, um. Fill yourself with items in your house until you're like the kid in a Shel Silverstein poem. The Garble.
1:43:09 Speaker 01 No, so far my house is like, it's, it's.
1:43:11 Dax Shepard? Still clean.
1:43:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:43:14 Dax Shepard? And clutter free.
1:43:15 Speaker 01 It's clutter free.
1:43:15 Dax Shepard? But you're gonna do your best to change that.
1:43:17 Speaker 01 I'm not.
1:43:18 Dax Shepard? You're gonna have seven or nine armoires still. Even in that big house, you're gonna find out how to.
1:43:23 Speaker 01 I'm not.
1:43:24 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:43:25 Speaker 01 The whole point of my house is I only have one armoire.
1:43:30 Dax Shepard? Well, you have a huge closet now.
1:43:31 Speaker 01 Exactly. The armoire is in, it doesn't hold clothes anymore.
1:43:35 Dax Shepard? Okay, weed.
1:43:36 Speaker 01 Weed?
1:43:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah, so you keep all your edibles and your faves.
1:43:39 Speaker 01 No, it's in my, it's in my water closet, actually.
1:43:42 Dax Shepard? Oh, your toilet.
1:43:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, so I keep towels in there. I keep toilet paper in there.
1:43:49 Dax Shepard? Feminine products? Your Spanxies, are they folded up in there?
1:43:51 Speaker 01 No, they're in my closet.
1:43:52 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:43:53 Speaker 01 And they're not Spanxies. You were trying to say Nyxies.
1:43:58 Dax Shepard? Nyxies.
1:43:58 Speaker 01 You forgot it was Nyxies.
1:43:59 Dax Shepard? Oi, Nyxies.
1:44:01 Speaker 01 But mine are, um, mine are.
1:44:03 Dax Shepard? Good eye, Nyxies.
1:44:04 Speaker 01 Thinks.
1:44:05 Dax Shepard? Thinks?
1:44:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:44:06 Dax Shepard? For the thinking lady?
1:44:08 Speaker 01 They, yeah, but it's with an X, you know?
1:44:10 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:44:11 Speaker 01 Um.
1:44:12 Dax Shepard? You gotta have an X in women's underwear.
1:44:14 Speaker 01 I know, it's weird.
1:44:15 Dax Shepard? It is interesting.
1:44:16 Speaker 01 It is really weird. Okay, speaking of shopping, so I had a West Side day last week.
1:44:24 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:44:25 Speaker 01 I feel hot all of a sudden.
1:44:26 Dax Shepard? Oh, great. Well, let's get it, you know, I always like to get it cold in here.
1:44:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, I had a West Side day, went to Venice.
1:44:32 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:44:33 Speaker 01 Whew. I know.
1:44:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:44:35 Speaker 01 Very far away from where we live.
1:44:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah, hour and a half.
1:44:37 Speaker 01 So it was like a real adventure I decided to do.
1:44:40 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
1:44:41 Speaker 01 And, you know, I went to Appicini, very famous, popular street in Venice where there's a lot of, um, stores.
1:44:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:44:50 Speaker 01 And, and, and foodies and things like that. And, um, I did not enjoy myself.
1:44:58 Dax Shepard? A little punchline. In what way?
1:45:00 Speaker 01 I, I.
1:45:01 Dax Shepard? Like, what am I doing out here?
1:45:02 Speaker 01 The West Side is not for me. It's really just like what I took from it. I felt grateful that I lived on the East Side of Los Angeles.
1:45:09 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
1:45:12 Speaker 02 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.
1:45:23 Dax Shepard? What things were irking you or not to your liking?
1:45:26 Speaker 01 So many people walking. But I like that. Like, I like in New York, so many people walking, so it can't be that. It was hard for me to put my finger on what was going on with me. I think also so many people walking with their dogs. Nobody having any like awareness of other people.
1:45:49 Dax Shepard? The dog thing.
1:45:49 Speaker 01 No. Well, it was part of it. I saw a dog eat somebody's pizza.
1:45:53 Dax Shepard? Okay, well. Out of their hand, or they discarded it on the ground?
1:45:58 Speaker 01 No, like, they were sitting outside eating their pizza at a restaurant. Yes.
1:46:04 Dax Shepard? Oh, my goodness.
1:46:05 Speaker 01 And ate a stranger's pizza, and again, I'm not blaming the dog. I blame the owner who was like, "Oh, oh, sorry." It's like, "Oh, sorry?" is your reaction? That dog ate somebody's pizza? And he was like, "Oh, uh, it's okay." Like, you could tell he hated it, the guy with the pizza, obviously. Then he's like, he's stuck with, "Okay, now do I eat the rest of this pizza that has dog slobber on it?"
1:46:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:46:32 Speaker 01 This is hard.
1:46:33 Dax Shepard? No, there's that, you're not eating the rest of the pizza. The guy, the dog owner has to go get you a new piece of pizza.
1:46:37 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:46:38 Dax Shepard? That wasn't offered? If you stick around longer, would you have seen it?
1:46:41 Speaker 01 No, I walked away, but I, but he was walking away. Like, he was like, "Oh, sorry."
1:46:46 Dax Shepard? Oh, he was just on a walk? He wasn't a fellow diner?
1:46:49 Speaker 01 No.
1:46:50 Dax Shepard? Oh, that's insane. Unless the guy was penniless. Was he penniless?
1:46:53 Speaker 01 No. He's walking his dog on the street. His dog jumps up, eats somebody's pizza, and he's like, "Sorry."
1:47:00 Dax Shepard? This is one of these examples of how I constantly was seeing men yell at women in public, and I'd have to defend them.
1:47:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:47:07 Dax Shepard? Because my worldview is that, and I somehow saw that all the time. Like, I would never see a dog leap up and eat a piece of pizza.
1:47:13 Speaker 01 You would, if you were in Venice.
1:47:14 Dax Shepard? No, but you're gonna, of course, of course you saw that, is my point.
1:47:18 Speaker 01 I didn't manifest it. It just happened in front of me.
1:47:21 Dax Shepard? But it confirmed what you think about dogs. Is there unruly?
1:47:23 Speaker 01 Not what I think about dogs. Well, first of all, yeah, dogs love pizza, of course, you know?
1:47:28 Dax Shepard? Well, everyone does.
1:47:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, I want, I want pizza right now. I'm having an issue.
1:47:32 Dax Shepard? What's your issue?
1:47:33 Speaker 01 I don't know. I'm like so, I'm like all of a sudden sweating.
1:47:37 Dax Shepard? Let's turn the air out. Let's make it colder here.
1:47:39 Speaker 01 But I don't know if it's internal. Okay. Oh, my God. Are we catching my first hot flash?
1:47:47 Speaker 01 And I'm sick.
1:47:49 Dax Shepard? You wanna give it yourself a second? Let's let it cool down for a second.
1:47:53 Speaker 01 Remember when you were addicted to Halls?
1:47:55 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you didn't know me then.
1:47:56 Speaker 01 I know, but you just talk about it.
1:47:58 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:47:58 Speaker 01 Um, I'm currently addicted to Halls.
1:48:01 Dax Shepard? They're addictive.
1:48:02 Speaker 01 I had four while we were.
1:48:04 Dax Shepard? I want one now that you say. You know, at my height, I was getting the family pack every day.
1:48:09 Speaker 01 I know.
1:48:10 Dax Shepard? Every day, like going to get a pack of cigarettes.
1:48:12 Speaker 01 I know, I'm eating too many Halls. I want one now. I wonder if I have one.
1:48:18 Dax Shepard? You have any in your satchel?
1:48:19 Speaker 01 I have one. Now, is it bad for you, Halls?
1:48:23 Dax Shepard? It gave me farts, cuz I had so many of them, and I think the binding agent. I always think it's a binding agent, even though I don't even know what that means. I believe all those mint type things have binding agent.
1:48:34 Speaker 01 Menthol, don't they?
1:48:35 Dax Shepard? Well, the menthol's the thing I'm addicted to.
1:48:37 Speaker 01 I know.
1:48:37 Dax Shepard? But the, to keep all the ingredients together.
1:48:40 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:48:41 Dax Shepard? They need a binding agent.
1:48:42 Speaker 01 Is menthol bad for you?
1:48:44 Dax Shepard? No.
1:48:44 Speaker 01 Okay, great.
1:48:45 Dax Shepard? No, yeah.
1:48:46 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:48:46 Dax Shepard? Smoking menthol cigarettes is bad for you.
1:48:48 Speaker 01 It's the, that's the cigarette that's bad, though, right?
1:48:50 Dax Shepard? That's right, yeah, yeah.
1:48:51 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:48:51 Dax Shepard? And inhaling menthol on fire is probably not great. But no, menthol's great for you.
1:48:56 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:48:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah, Halls Mentholipus.
1:48:58 Speaker 01 Um, Vicks Vapor Rub.
1:49:01 Dax Shepard? Vapor Rub, Baby Rub.
1:49:03 Speaker 01 Okay. Well, I love them.
1:49:05 Dax Shepard? I gotta recommend a show, and I know you're not gonna try it cuz it's a reality TV show, but we like it so much.
1:49:12 Speaker 01 Well, I'm not, I'm so sorry. I'm not done talking about the West Side.
1:49:16 Dax Shepard? Okay, great.
1:49:17 Speaker 01 I'm so sorry.
1:49:17 Dax Shepard? You took a long break, and I thought you were out of contact.
1:49:20 Speaker 01 Something's going on with my body. It's like, I, I feel really strange. Um.
1:49:24 Dax Shepard? Are you, um, how's your equilibrium?
1:49:27 Speaker 01 Fever's breaking or something. Maybe, maybe I've had a fever and it's breaking. Let's hope that's what it is.
1:49:31 Dax Shepard? Fun.
1:49:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:49:32 Dax Shepard? You're sweating.
1:49:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm sweating.
1:49:34 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:49:35 Speaker 01 I feel really weird. Now I'm worried I smell.
1:49:37 Dax Shepard? I might have given it to you.
1:49:39 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
1:49:39 Dax Shepard? Just by power of, uh, suggestion.
1:49:42 Speaker 01 I mean, I do feel like I kinda smell all of a sudden, but I think it's the sweat mixing with this cashmere.
1:49:47 Dax Shepard? Okay, so you think the cashmere smell is not you?
1:49:49 Speaker 01 Sometimes certain, um, sweaters, if, if there's sweat on them.
1:49:54 Dax Shepard? It activates something in the wool.
1:49:55 Speaker 01 It does, it does.
1:49:57 Dax Shepard? It wakes up some dormant thing in the sheep wool.
1:50:00 Speaker 01 I hate it, I hate it.
1:50:01 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:50:01 Speaker 01 Okay, so I'm in Venice.
1:50:03 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:50:03 Speaker 01 A dog ate someone's pizza, and I'm like, ew, this place is wild, you know? And then I go into the store. I won't say what it is, because I'm gonna be nice.
1:50:14 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:50:14 Speaker 01 Went in, I guess they're known for having like vintage Levi's.
1:50:20 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:50:20 Speaker 01 When I walk in, I'm the only one in the store. There's vintage Levi's on the left, and then there's other clothes. So I like, I kinda go and I like, look at the vin- like, for a second, I'm like, kinda looking at the jeans, but then I meandered, and the woman working at the store ignored me at first. But then she was like, let me know if you need anything. And I was like, okay, great. And then I was looking at some vintage shirts. Then some more people start coming in. She starts addressing these other people, great. I'm still looking around. One lady goes up to her and is like, do you have like,
1:50:57 Speaker 01 dark, a darker wash than the one she's wearing? So they go over to the vintage jeans, they're looking. I then go over to the vintage jeans, and I'm looking. And she goes, honey, if you, if you wanna look at these, I'm gonna need to help you.
1:51:13 Dax Shepard? That's the worker there?
1:51:14 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:51:15 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:51:15 Speaker 01 And I was like.
1:51:17 Dax Shepard? That's crazy.
1:51:18 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:51:19 Dax Shepard? Yeah. You're not allowed to look at the jeans without supervision?
1:51:22 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:51:23 Dax Shepard? That would've been my exact sentence.
1:51:25 Speaker 01 I know.
1:51:25 Dax Shepard? Hold on, you can't look at the jeans without supervision is the policy here?
1:51:28 Speaker 01 I know, that would've been great.
1:51:29 Dax Shepard? It's always great to start with a question. Questions are the-
1:51:31 Speaker 01 Meet a question with a question.
1:51:33 Dax Shepard? Yeah, they're, they're, they're, they're a judo move.
1:51:35 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:51:36 Dax Shepard? Make them explain what they just said. What did you just say?
1:51:38 Speaker 01 She said, because, and then she made, like, she said something about sizes, but she just kinda threw it out. Like, she just was like, because like, sizes.
1:51:48 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:51:48 Speaker 01 Or something. When really, she just didn't want me messing with the jeans when she was over there. It was this tights, or she was over there-
1:51:55 Dax Shepard? I mean, she's afraid you're gonna get them out of order.
1:51:57 Speaker 01 Maybe. But like, sorry bitch, do you want your clothes? I don't mean to, I just didn't mean to say that.
1:52:03 Dax Shepard? Okay, you're gonna take that back? Let's rewind.
1:52:05 Speaker 01 Sorry lady. Like, you know, it was just pretty woman, it was like, big mistake, huge. Like, I would've bu-
1:52:14 Speaker 01 Don't mistake me for someone who's not gonna buy these items.
1:52:19 Dax Shepard? But, okay, here's where I'm gonna-
1:52:20 Speaker 01 I know, now you wanna push back, cuz you think I'm-
1:52:22 Dax Shepard? What am I gonna say?
1:52:24 Speaker 01 You think it's, I'm like, projecting onto her that I'm not worth the money, or I know what you're saying. I'm sweating so much.
1:52:32 Dax Shepard? I know, I do think you have that story. Like, I do think you're on high alert for that.
1:52:36 Speaker 01 I wasn't.
1:52:37 Dax Shepard? But, if you had asked her, "Can I go look at a pair of jeans like this in darker before anyone got in there?"
1:52:43 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:52:44 Dax Shepard? I don't think in any world she wouldn't have taken you over there and helped you.
1:52:47 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
1:52:48 Dax Shepard? The one woman said, "I'd like to see this in darker." So you didn't initiate that. The other woman didn't. And then I do think it's quite possible that if she was helping you and the other woman came up and started rifling through, that she might've said, "Honey, hey, you gotta be with me." I think all that's quite probable. Well, I'm not arguing she doesn't have a shitty bedside manner, but I- But your conclusion that it was unique to you because of who you are, I'm- that's the part I wanna push back on.
1:53:12 Speaker 01 No, no, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. But I am saying, she missed out on a sale.
1:53:17 Dax Shepard? Great, but you also didn't initiate the jeans thing with her.
1:53:20 Speaker 01 It doesn't matter. She didn't- when I was over there alone-
1:53:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:53:24 Speaker 01 She didn't say, "Hey, if you're gonna look at the vintage jeans, I gotta come help."
1:53:31 Dax Shepard? Great, and I understand that point of view. But what's really funny is what keeps me from shopping. I just, I told you, I had to kill an hour and a half at the Maricón when my phone was being fixed.
1:53:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:53:41 Dax Shepard? And what I fucking hate is like, I wanna be able to walk around the store and not talk to someone every 30 seconds. So it's like every- I was wondering, like, cruise from the button-ups to the sweaters, but every five feet, "Excuse me, sir, can I help you find something?" "Oh, no, I'm just browsing." And then you're like, "Well, why aren't you in here? You're not shopping," you know? So I have the opposite thing as you, and that woman that works there's gotta try to assess, "Are you the me type or Monica type?" Cuz you want them to come over and go, "How can I help you?"
1:54:08 Speaker 01 No! This is- I think you're misunderstanding.
1:54:12 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:54:13 Speaker 01 I did not want her help.
1:54:14 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:54:15 Speaker 01 I did not think I needed her help.
1:54:20 Dax Shepard? Mm hmm.
1:54:20 Speaker 01 So for her to say, if you're gonna look at this, I have to help you, I was like, then I'm leaving.
1:54:27 Dax Shepard? Kind of a very bizarre policy of the store or her own personal laziness about having to restock or reorganize.
1:54:34 Speaker 01 It was, it was just a mix of weird things. It was like, if that's really the policy, why didn't you tell me that earlier when I was kind of looking at them?
1:54:43 Dax Shepard? Oh, I don't know.
1:54:45 Speaker 01 So are you making this policy up right now because you, because you feel?
1:54:49 Dax Shepard? Pretty woman thing's ever gonna happen to you. You are very well put together and you have expensive clothes on all the time.
1:54:54 Speaker 01 I know, that's how I felt. I was like.
1:54:56 Dax Shepard? But, but, so that part, I think, I don't think that happens.
1:55:00 Speaker 01 I don't know, but I, um, I left, you know?
1:55:04 Dax Shepard? Okay, sure.
1:55:05 Speaker 01 I left, I, I just said, oh, okay. And then I left.
1:55:09 Dax Shepard? Ah.
1:55:10 Speaker 01 Because also I'm like, well, how are you gonna help?
1:55:13 Dax Shepard? Sunglasses in a disguise, because you're like, fuck, I do need those pants.
1:55:16 Speaker 01 I know.
1:55:16 Dax Shepard? I wanted to make a point. I wanted to punish her, but now I do need to get those pants.
1:55:21 Speaker 01 I know.
1:55:21 Dax Shepard? And you came back in sunglasses and a scarf. And you're like, pardon me, uh, uh, how do you say, um, uh, hmm, pantalones?
1:55:30 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
1:55:31 Dax Shepard? Azules, um, huh?
1:55:34 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, I could have done that. Um, also, though, I was like, wait a minute. If this is the system where if you have to like get help for the jeans, you want me to just stand here and wait until you're done doing this whole thing with this other lady?
1:55:50 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that's the problem with these boutique, that's why you gotta go into Target, they gotta dial.
1:55:54 Speaker 01 No, no, no real good store is doing this. Like, this is not, uh, this is not normal.
1:56:01 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
1:56:02 Speaker 01 So, uh, but mainly I was very, and I don't, I didn't expect this from myself.
1:56:07 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:56:08 Speaker 01 I did not like being called honey.
1:56:11 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay.
1:56:12 Speaker 01 And I.
1:56:14 Dax Shepard? You're from the south, I mean, you should, that's, that's pretty standard down there.
1:56:17 Speaker 01 Maybe that's why.
1:56:18 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:56:19 Speaker 01 Because it often, it is a very condescending thing to say to someone in the south a little bit. It could go either way, obviously, it can be used in a sweet way.
1:56:29 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:56:29 Speaker 01 But it is often used in a condescending way.
1:56:32 Dax Shepard? Especially if it's like, honey, that honey is pretty clear.
1:56:36 Speaker 01 Honey, also, I'm like, I'm thirty eight.
1:56:39 Dax Shepard? Honey.
1:56:40 Speaker 01 I'm not your honey.
1:56:42 Dax Shepard? This is a huge off topic, but it just occurred to me if you were trying to speak French. I was thinking, if I saw you, I met you and you were speaking French. And I hope this doesn't offend Indians.
1:56:53 Speaker 01 Oh, boy.
1:56:54 Dax Shepard? Or Moroccans.
1:56:56 Speaker 01 What?
1:56:56 Dax Shepard? But I think if you were speaking French, you could really pass for Moroccan.
1:57:01 Speaker 01 Oh, alright.
1:57:02 Dax Shepard? Yeah, or Algerian, French Algiers.
1:57:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:57:07 Dax Shepard? Yeah, just think about playing one in a movie.
1:57:09 Speaker 01 Hire me, I guess. No, no, I don't do accents, so no.
1:57:13 Dax Shepard? What if they're French?
1:57:15 Speaker 01 I can't do a French accent.
1:57:16 Dax Shepard? You could with some work.
1:57:17 Speaker 01 No, that would stress me out so much.
1:57:19 Dax Shepard? You're incapable of learning a French accent?
1:57:21 Speaker 01 I'm very bad at accents.
1:57:23 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:57:25 Dax Shepard? I'm good at them, but I can't do most of them anymore.
1:57:27 Speaker 01 You can do French.
1:57:28 Dax Shepard? I know, but that's.
1:57:29 Speaker 01 You're not interested.
1:57:30 Dax Shepard? Maybe I will.
1:57:31 Speaker 01 Okay, nice. So, anyway, I didn't realize that I find that now that I'm thirty eight, if you call me honey, and not, you're not my like lover.
1:57:46 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:57:46 Speaker 01 Or my partner or something, or.
1:57:49 Dax Shepard? Welcome, honey. I hear it all the time now when I'm in Tennessee. And often it's so sweet, I love it.
1:57:55 Speaker 01 You can tell when it's sweet.
1:57:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, so I'm just saying, it's not the word. So I do think you'd be fine being called honey even at thirty eight if it was the fifty five year old woman that greets me at the gas station by my house.
1:58:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:58:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:58:09 Speaker 01 That's not what it was.
1:58:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:58:11 Speaker 01 And then I remember there's a Taylor Swift song called Honey on the new album, so I listened to it after.
1:58:16 Dax Shepard? Oh, God.
1:58:17 Speaker 01 I felt seen.
1:58:17 Dax Shepard? Okay, great. She doesn't like it either?
1:58:19 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:58:20 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:58:20 Speaker 01 Well, she says, like, he can.
1:58:24 Speaker 01 Travis.
1:58:25 Dax Shepard? Okay, let's call it what it is.
1:58:26 Speaker 01 Can call her honey.
1:58:27 Dax Shepard? And that's it?
1:58:28 Speaker 01 Well, like, normally honey in the song, like, she's saying this, what I'm saying, but hers is translating better. Um, normally when people call her honey or baby or some other things, like, it's condescending and it's when this is happening and it's when someone's like belittling her. But he can call her honey if he wants.
1:58:50 Dax Shepard? Okay, good. I bet he does. Frequently.
1:58:53 Speaker 01 I think he does. Honey's cute. You use honey a lot with Kristen. We use hun, honey. I think it's a nice pet name.
1:59:01 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:59:02 Speaker 01 I would like to be called that.
1:59:04 Dax Shepard? Okay, but be careful.
1:59:06 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. Not if you're trying to condescend me.
1:59:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah, just be careful. It's a triggering word for you, so.
1:59:13 Speaker 01 Well, if you love me, you can do it.
1:59:16 Dax Shepard? Yeah, what?
1:59:18 Speaker 01 Um. What? Tell me.
1:59:19 Dax Shepard? Oh, nothing. I just think, I, I, we all have these things.
1:59:22 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:59:23 Dax Shepard? That like, we don't want to be called. I have my list. You have your list.
1:59:29 Dax Shepard? And I'm just struck when it's not me who's experiencing the emotions of it. How much agency you're giving away by being affected by it. It's just like, you validate this person by caring what they called you. And you give away a power, you give them a power over you that they don't deserve.
1:59:47 Speaker 01 I guess.
1:59:48 Dax Shepard? You know, like, the most self-actualized version of oneself is just like, yeah, I can hear it and you and I can just think like, Monica, how could you care if this person called you anything? You're so above that kind of insult.
2:00:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, but like, this is where me and you. Me and you argue about this a lot.
2:00:12 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm. Making you feel a certain way versus I feel a certain way.
2:00:15 Speaker 01 No, that's not what I was gonna say.
2:00:16 Dax Shepard? Oh, I thought that was gonna be the one.
2:00:17 Speaker 01 Um, no, like, I feel very, I'm like, we do not live in, on islands. People affect one another. And I am not like, trying to deny that reality. And you, and yes, you can be self-actualized, you can, you can understand.
2:00:34 Dax Shepard? You have agency, so you can be affected if you allow yourself to be affected. That's what I'm saying.
2:00:39 Speaker 01 I know, but I disagree. I, I, I think we live in a.
2:00:42 Dax Shepard? For you, it feels impossible currently.
2:00:44 Speaker 01 Well, no, and not just for me.
2:00:46 Dax Shepard? Well, because you're saying it can't be done.
2:00:47 Speaker 01 For everyone in life, humans. Humans affect other humans. Like, I don't think you can, I not, by the way, I don't think you should walk through life without feeling things from other people, good and bad.
2:01:04 Dax Shepard? Well, I do because, again, let's, let's assume the worst about this person. Let's go all the way with this.
2:01:09 Speaker 01 Well, no, she's not bad.
2:01:10 Dax Shepard? But let's just do it. Let's say that she is racist and she knows you have money and she's jealous and she thinks you're a piece of shit that's inferior because you're brown.
2:01:19 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:01:20 Dax Shepard? And she's a terrible person.
2:01:21 Speaker 01 Okay, we get it.
2:01:22 Dax Shepard? And she was trying to hurt you.
2:01:24 Speaker 01 Hmm.
2:01:25 Dax Shepard? Think about where that's coming from. That's such an obvious bag of insecurity that that person has, that they're gonna now try to infect you with.
2:01:36 Speaker 01 Right.
2:01:36 Dax Shepard? And you're gonna let them? That's my pride. Like, you're gonna let that person with their insecurities change your day? You're gonna, you're gonna get infected by it and let it be contagious? I think a strong, actualized version of you is like, what that girl's experience is that's making her behave that way has nothing to do with me. Her opinion of me means nothing and it has no effect on me. Someone else can behave like a knucklehead, but you can't internalize those feelings of I'm less than and I'm not worthy of being here. That's like, that's your department.
2:02:11 Speaker 01 Sure, that's fine, but that doesn't mean, even if you're able to say like, well, that's that person's shit.
2:02:17 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
2:02:18 Speaker 01 It doesn't mean, it doesn't have to have an impact on you. It doesn't mean it won't hurt your feelings to be around someone who has just insulted you. Like, that is a normal reaction.
2:02:31 Dax Shepard? But we agree.
2:02:32 Speaker 01 You, you don't have to, it shouldn't ruin your life, ruin your whole day. It, you know, it doesn't, you don't need to go that far, but I, I definitely think it's okay to be affected by the way people treat you. It, again, do I think it needs to affect you to the extreme where it's starting to change your behavior or the way you look at the world? No, that's bad. But to be like, ow.
2:02:56 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
2:02:57 Speaker 01 That's okay.
2:02:58 Dax Shepard? I just think you're giving that person way more power than they deserve. Because they already act, they already demonstrated that they're a knucklehead.
2:03:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:03:06 Dax Shepard? It's like the, you know, again. Guy with a parrot on his shoulder at 7-Eleven, he says something to you, you just immediately write it off. It means nothing. What's that, what does this guy know about anything?
2:03:15 Speaker 01 No, but it's not.
2:03:16 Dax Shepard? Standing in front of 7-Eleven with a parrot on his shoulder.
2:03:17 Speaker 01 It's so intellectual, though, which I like, I understand, that's where you're coming from.
2:03:21 Dax Shepard? You're saying it's unrealistic, not impossible.
2:03:24 Speaker 01 Exactly.
2:03:24 Dax Shepard? Because I'm only debating you if you're saying it's impossible.
2:03:26 Speaker 01 No.
2:03:27 Dax Shepard? I agree with you that it's hard.
2:03:28 Speaker 01 I don't think it's impossible, and I think it's circumstantial, but it is. I mean, yeah, I just live in reality where like, look, if I'm walking down the street and someone yells something at me, and they have a parrot on their shoulder, no, I'm not gonna think what they, like, they're a valid, I should be thinking about how to change my life.
2:03:48 Dax Shepard? Or what they said about you's relevant.
2:03:49 Speaker 01 But it would still probably hurt, all of, like, I would just be like, oh, ah, like.
2:03:54 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
2:03:55 Speaker 01 Being, being yelled at or told something bad doesn't feel good, even if it's like, crazy. It, again, that doesn't mean I keep walking and I'm like, oh, man, what if he's right? Like, what if I am a stupid bitch? Like, it's just like, ah, like, that doesn't feel good to receive bad energy from people.
2:04:18 Dax Shepard? As a thought experiment, just imagine he yells, "You're too tall."
2:04:21 Speaker 01 Right.
2:04:21 Dax Shepard? Truly, does it, does that statement, "You're too tall."
2:04:25 Speaker 01 I know, but there, but that's objective.
2:04:27 Dax Shepard? But can we walk through that? This as an experiment? What do you think your actual reaction would be if a guy yelled at you, "You're too tall."
2:04:35 Speaker 01 I, I'd just be like, he's not talking to me. I would be confused.
2:04:38 Dax Shepard? Or, who cares what that guy said?
2:04:41 Speaker 01 No, I would laugh. Yeah, I would just be like, oh, this guy's on drugs.
2:04:45 Dax Shepard? It's nonsense, what the guy said.
2:04:47 Speaker 01 I know, but like, that is objective.
2:04:51 Dax Shepard? But.
2:04:52 Speaker 01 Other things aren't. You being ugly, you being, like, these aren't, these are subjective things.
2:05:00 Dax Shepard? They are, and what determines whether or not you're vulnerable to them is what your own self-esteem is. That's exactly what defines your susceptibility and vulnerability.
2:05:11 Speaker 01 I don't think that's always right. I, I don't. Like, I. I know I have enough money to buy stuff in that store.
2:05:21 Dax Shepard? But you have some fear that people don't think you have money.
2:05:23 Speaker 01 No, I don't care about that.
2:05:25 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:05:25 Speaker 01 People don't need to think I have money. That's like not important to me at all. Uh, people need to not think like
2:05:35 Dax Shepard? You don't belong there.
2:05:36 Speaker 01 or exactly, or I don't belong.
2:05:39 Dax Shepard? Alright, great.
2:05:39 Speaker 01 Well, not belong.
2:05:40 Dax Shepard? But you're using the pretty woman analogy for a reason.
2:05:43 Speaker 01 Well, that was just like easy to say.
2:05:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah, no, but it makes total sense. And we all know what that means.
2:05:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, big mistake here.
2:05:49 Dax Shepard? And that's what it was. It was a pretty woman experience.
2:05:52 Speaker 01 Well, it wasn't a pretty woman experience so much as I was, look, I really, I was like, I mean, we went off on such a tangent. All I was, I wrote down, a lady working at a store called me honey.
2:06:04 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
2:06:05 Speaker 01 And I didn't like it.
2:06:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah. I hear you.
2:06:07 Speaker 01 And that doesn't mean I think I'm a little girl. Like, I know I'm not.
2:06:13 Dax Shepard? I'm aspiring in life to not let anyone have that control over my emotions because I don't enjoy the emotion of being triggered.
2:06:21 Speaker 01 Right. I don't have that.
2:06:23 Dax Shepard? Aspiration.
2:06:23 Speaker 01 I don't have that aspiration to like not feel things from other people. I definitely have an aspiration to like not let something like take me down or like, you know, have a major impact on my mood. But, um, yeah, like I'm fine having interactions in the world that are not always pleasant.
2:06:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I don't like feeling annoyed. And I feel annoyed often with people.
2:06:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:06:49 Dax Shepard? And I'm happier when I'm not feeling annoyed.
2:06:51 Speaker 01 Yeah. Okay, let's do some facts. Okay.
2:06:55 Dax Shepard? Okay, Alvin.
2:06:56 Speaker 01 What are all the Nobel Prizes?
2:06:59 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:06:59 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:07:00 Dax Shepard? Well, I was so embarrassed when you pointed out I used that wrong.
2:07:02 Speaker 01 I think a lot of people think that.
2:07:04 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:07:05 Speaker 01 Um, physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, peace, economic sciences. So five of them are presented in Stockholm, Sweden, and the Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway.
2:07:21 Dax Shepard? Interesting.
2:07:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:07:22 Dax Shepard? Peace gets the most heat, right? That's the one we hear about the most.
2:07:26 Speaker 01 So, okay, I was gonna ask you, like, which one would you?
2:07:28 Dax Shepard? Physics.
2:07:29 Speaker 01 That's what you think is the best or what you would want?
2:07:32 Dax Shepard? Well, I just think it's like the most maybe substantive in, in
2:07:38 Speaker 01 Medicine?
2:07:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that's pretty good.
2:07:42 Dax Shepard? I don't know. I just think like had someone not cracked the DNA code versus Obama. I think one is is more perpetuates mankind more. And I love Obama.
2:07:56 Speaker 01 I know, but that's actually, I don't mean him specifically, but that's that's an interesting debate, like what progresses.
2:08:03 Dax Shepard? Like Obama was a great president and I don't know how we would quantify how many lives he saved, but I don't, he did not save as many lives as vaccines or
2:08:13 Speaker 01 Right.
2:08:13 Dax Shepard? antibiotics. Like those things are like quantifiably hundreds of millions of lives have been saved. Or this invention allows us to travel into space versus like you are a really good guy that encouraged people to be good and better.
2:08:28 Speaker 01 But that's huge.
2:08:30 Dax Shepard? It's powerful.
2:08:31 Speaker 01 It's it.
2:08:31 Dax Shepard? I'd put Martin Luther, I'd put Martin Luther in the in the camp of of the physicists.
2:08:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, there are people who revolutionize the way the the rest of the world is gonna think about things for the rest of time.
2:08:48 Dax Shepard? Mm hmm.
2:08:48 Speaker 01 And that is very powerful. Um.
2:08:52 Dax Shepard? I guess if I was just picking between I have to live with like on planet Earth, either there was new, no Louis Pasteur or no Obama.
2:09:01 Speaker 01 Wow.
2:09:02 Dax Shepard? I know, we gotta ask the hard questions out here or we're not doing our job.
2:09:05 Speaker 01 I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna do that at all. I do not wanna do that. Um, I mean, look. I'm more, I'm most likely to get a piece or a literature prize of this. I, those are my actually only even remote options.
2:09:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that you could even be a contestant.
2:09:27 Speaker 01 Exactly. So.
2:09:28 Dax Shepard? So you're you're weighting those higher?
2:09:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:09:31 Dax Shepard? Okay, yeah. It's funny, I go the opposite way in general.
2:09:35 Speaker 01 I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
2:09:35 Dax Shepard? I generally respect things a lot more that I can't do.
2:09:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:09:38 Dax Shepard? Which maybe is some kind of arrogance, I don't know, but.
2:09:42 Speaker 01 No, it would be arrogant.
2:09:43 Dax Shepard? If I can't do it, it must be really impressive. Like, you can see where that's kind of arrogant.
2:09:47 Speaker 01 I see, I see. Well, both ways, I guess.
2:09:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I can't do this abstract calculus to figure out how fast Alpha Centauri is moving towards us. So that's really, that person must be so special.
2:09:57 Speaker 01 I guess I'm glad we have all.
2:09:58 Dax Shepard? Me too.
2:09:59 Speaker 01 Because they're all extremely important. Did you hear about Crater Carol, speaking of space?
2:10:05 Dax Shepard? The moon?
2:10:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, and, and...
2:10:07 Dax Shepard? What's going on with Crater Carol? I just saw, there was a rock moving through the moon that was fascinating, the footage of that.
2:10:13 Speaker 01 Well, there was like a mark on the moon.
2:10:15 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:10:16 Speaker 01 You know, they got the Earth.
2:10:17 Dax Shepard? Skidmark?
2:10:19 Speaker 01 You're gonna be upset you said that after you hear about this, okay? Because they go, you know, they go on that, what is it?
2:10:25 Dax Shepard? Artemis?
2:10:26 Speaker 01 Artemis, thank you. Okay, yes, and then they see this, and the astronaut asked if they could name it Carol after his, um, deceased wife.
2:10:36 Dax Shepard? Oh, no, yeah, I'm really upset I said that, yeah. That's great. What is it? Do we know what it is?
2:10:41 Speaker 01 It's a crater, I think.
2:10:42 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:10:43 Speaker 01 I've been calling it Crater Carol, so I hope it's correct.
2:10:45 Dax Shepard? They've named, I see, uh, Einstein?
2:10:48 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm. Einstein, Dalton, and Carol.
2:10:51 Dax Shepard? I wonder what Dalton that is.
2:10:52 Speaker 01 And the video's like going around of him, like, he's up there, and he said, "We want to name it Carol." It's really sweet.
2:10:59 Dax Shepard? The one thing from this Artemis thing that I believe so certainly, one of the astronauts, you know, they went around the dark side of the moon.
2:11:06 Speaker 01 Oh!
2:11:06 Dax Shepard? Which is crazy, so there's no...
2:11:07 Speaker 01 Do you think they listened?
2:11:09 Dax Shepard? They should have.
2:11:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:11:10 Dax Shepard? That would have been cool. Um, they couldn't communicate, there's no radio communication or anything, so they're just kind of like, who knows what's happening on the other side, right? But I think when they came around it, or, I don't know, I don't know the timing of it, but the point is, one of the astronauts looked at Earth, and he was hit by this reality that we should all feel, I wish we could all feel, it's like, "You little, you little monkeys are on this fucking rock in the middle of an abyss."
2:11:38 Dax Shepard? And it's, "You guys are all you have."
2:11:40 Speaker 01 No.
2:11:41 Dax Shepard? And the fact that you're on this floating thing, fighting each other is such a tragedy. I mean, I'm paraphrasing, I'm not even sure what exactly how he said it. But I know that was the thrust of what he was saying, which I think about often. It's just like, if you're an alien hovering above Earth.
2:11:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:11:55 Dax Shepard? Like, what's going on? There's a bunch of people down there.
2:11:57 Speaker 01 I know.
2:11:58 Dax Shepard? They're lucky enough to be this perfect distance, ninety-three million miles from the sun, where they can have water and oxygen and they live.
2:12:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:12:05 Dax Shepard? And they're spending that.
2:12:06 Speaker 01 I know.
2:12:07 Dax Shepard? Coming up all these fake differences between each other. You know what we all have in common? We're on a fucking rock floating through.
2:12:13 Speaker 01 Exactly. I'm with you.
2:12:15 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's heartbreaking.
2:12:16 Speaker 01 But you also, you would say, well, evolution, we're animals and animals' status and everyone hates them in fights.
2:12:22 Dax Shepard? Well, I was thinking that. I did, I actually, I forced myself to counter his point of view. And I was saying, what's interesting is you don't look, he's not looking at the Earth, seeing that a lion is fighting another lion in order to get access to the female. And going like, what a tragedy. The lion is spending his time on this floating, you know?
2:12:42 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
2:12:43 Dax Shepard? So then I did, I was like, well, that's relevant too.
2:12:45 Speaker 01 Sure. But also, it's not. It's like, we have brains that can.
2:12:48 Dax Shepard? We should be able to. Oh, do you figure? We will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.
2:12:54 Speaker 01 That's sweet.
2:12:55 Dax Shepard? They're hugging up there.
2:12:56 Speaker 01 Oh, these astronauts are so sweet, naming the crater Carol and doing this. Oh, my God.
2:13:03 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow. Can you see? Is that the northern lights over the upper right tip of the?
2:13:07 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
2:13:08 Dax Shepard? Oh, that's cool.
2:13:10 Speaker 01 Earth is so like, I don't.
2:13:12 Dax Shepard? It's a miracle.
2:13:12 Speaker 01 I like, don't believe in it.
2:13:14 Dax Shepard? I don't either. I don't either.
2:13:16 Speaker 01 Um.
2:13:17 Dax Shepard? Alvin.
2:13:21 Speaker 01 Oh, he was making a point about, um, rules and laws and how sometimes you don't have to make laws because like, people just automatically don't do a thing because it's so repugnant.
2:13:31 Dax Shepard? Oh, uh-huh.
2:13:32 Speaker 01 Like.
2:13:33 Dax Shepard? Carry feces in their hand on the street?
2:13:35 Speaker 01 Eh, no, he didn't say that. But, uh, worm, he said eating worms, but then I was like, I didn't want to say, but like, people eat worms.
2:13:41 Dax Shepard? Sure. And he was probably talking about here, but yeah.
2:13:43 Speaker 01 I know, but like, a lot of cultures eat worms.
2:13:47 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:13:49 Speaker 01 They do.
2:13:51 Speaker 01 They really do.
2:13:52 Dax Shepard? But he was talking about here, horse meat's illegal.
2:13:54 Speaker 01 Right.
2:13:55 Dax Shepard? Cause here, we think it's crazy, but a lot of places, they eat horse meat. And then there are some things that are just, we don't need a law against it. Cause here, no, no one's eating worms. And so, the expectation is they won't be in your food.
2:14:08 Speaker 01 Right, I guess.
2:14:09 Dax Shepard? And you don't have to, you don't have to legislate against that.
2:14:11 Speaker 01 That's true, but uh, people eat worms all over.
2:14:14 Dax Shepard? People eat poop, probably.
2:14:15 Speaker 01 No!
2:14:16 Dax Shepard? Yes, and there's cannibals, Monica, we, we have.
2:14:19 Speaker 01 That's different than eating worms, like.
2:14:20 Dax Shepard? Well, okay, great, let's use cannibalism.
2:14:23 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:14:24 Dax Shepard? There are, we have evidence of certain groups being cannibals.
2:14:29 Speaker 01 It is illegal.
2:14:31 Dax Shepard? Here.
2:14:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:14:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah, um, but not there.
2:14:34 Speaker 01 Right.
2:14:36 Dax Shepard? But we don't have a law that says you, I don't think there's a law anywhere on any books that says you can't serve humans in a restaurant. I don't think that law exists.
2:14:46 Speaker 01 Huh, well, not in a restaurant, but cannibalism is a law. There's a law against cannibalism. Remember that guy had to go to jail?
2:14:53 Dax Shepard? In France. I don't know if, I mean, why would there be a law? Cause it would imply already murder, so it's like you've already crossed.
2:15:00 Speaker 01 Well, not necessarily, okay, what if?
2:15:01 Dax Shepard? You're eating, you're at the morgue. Yeah, that's what he was, he was working at a lab.
2:15:05 Speaker 01 Or what if you just cut off a bunch, like, cut off some of your arm? And I ate it?
2:15:11 Dax Shepard? There's been these cases, there's been consensual where people eat each other, like they, someone wants to get their part of their body eaten, someone on the internet wants to eat someone's body.
2:15:19 Speaker 04 So, in the US, there are no laws that explicitly prohibit cannibalism per se.
2:15:24 Speaker 01 Wow.
2:15:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah, cause again, you don't, you don't need it.
2:15:27 Speaker 01 But it is happening.
2:15:28 Dax Shepard? But in Papua New Guinea, where it had been a thing for certain tribes, they might need to put that.
2:15:33 Speaker 01 Right.
2:15:34 Dax Shepard? They would have to decide to legislate against that.
2:15:36 Speaker 04 It says, most states have enacted laws that make it effectively impossible to legally obtain and consume human body matter, though.
2:15:43 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:15:44 Dax Shepard? Well.
2:15:45 Speaker 01 I'm so glad that's not my kink.
2:15:48 Dax Shepard? Eating humans?
2:15:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, being attracted to.
2:15:50 Dax Shepard? You would never be satiated. It's like if your thing, your kink is this thing you can't do, you would never be satiated in life.
2:15:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, but also just.
2:15:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:15:59 Speaker 01 Can you own pigs in California as pets? Yes, you can own pet pigs in California. But it's highly regulated at the local level rather than state level. It is often considered livestock, not pets. Generally, only miniature breeds like pot-bellied pigs are allowed, often subject to weight limits under hundred and twenty pounds in strict city-specific zoning ordinances.
2:16:22 Dax Shepard? Thank God Clooney's not a fugitive from law. Because I think he had a pot-bellied pig, famously, yeah.
2:16:28 Speaker 01 Oh, wow. Well, Kaylee
2:16:31 Dax Shepard? We can't afford to have him as a criminal. But she has a farm.
2:16:34 Speaker 01 Exactly, it's her livestock.
2:16:35 Dax Shepard? She could own anything, probably.
2:16:37 Speaker 01 You mentioned Alan Turing. That was sad.
2:16:40 Dax Shepard? That was very sad.
2:16:41 Speaker 01 So sad. But that's a great movie, Imitation Game.
2:16:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I should re-watch it.
2:16:46 Speaker 01 Great movie with Benedict Cumberbatch.
2:16:48 Dax Shepard? I think that was his breakout, right? He was already like simmering, but then it was like, then it was like, sayonara, suck ass.
2:16:55 Speaker 01 I love him. Um, oh, when did Robert Ed- oh, I think he, okay, I may, may have misheard this. I, I thought he said Jonathan Edwards um, is the doctor who got his Nobel Prize in um, in vitro. It's Robert Edwards, which he may have said and maybe I misheard.
2:17:14 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:17:15 Speaker 01 But he won it in two thousand ten.
2:17:17 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:17:19 Speaker 01 Physiology or Medicine. Okay, so is IVF illegal in Germany? This is for single women. It's legal and available in Germany, but it's strictly regulated by the Embryo Protection Act. It is primarily accessible to married heterosexual couples with egg donation and surrogacy strictly prohibited.
2:17:40 Dax Shepard? Strictly prohibited.
2:17:41 Speaker 01 Could you always bet on horses in the United States? No, it is
2:17:44 Dax Shepard? Only if you ate them afterwards.
2:17:45 Speaker 01 Exactly. No, it has not always been possible or legal to bet on horses throughout the entire United States. Um, has a long history. Faced significant legal, social, and regional restrictions over time. There's all kinds of restrictions.
2:17:59 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:17:59 Speaker 01 In the early twentieth century, anti-gambling sentiment led almost all states to ban bookmaking, which nearly eliminated horse racing. So I guess that's not specific to horse racing.
2:18:09 Dax Shepard? Right.
2:18:09 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:18:10 Dax Shepard? All right, then.
2:18:11 Speaker 01 Yes, Mark Twain is credited with saying giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it a thousand times. He's credited.
2:18:18 Dax Shepard? Okay, go ahead.
2:18:18 Speaker 01 That's it.
2:18:19 Dax Shepard? That's everything. Well, I do applaud Alvin's work with these, uh, kidney donations.
2:18:24 Speaker 01 I know. That was wild, actually. Should I give my kidney to someone?
2:18:29 Dax Shepard? That's up to you.
2:18:30 Speaker 01 You don't want to advise? You love to advise, um, Rick Glass?
2:18:33 Dax Shepard? This is just where I'm like, I'm shamefully selfish.
2:18:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, because what if I need it?
2:18:38 Dax Shepard? I want both, you know? I like a backup.
2:18:42 Speaker 01 Yeah. I probably need a backup since I had kidney stones.
2:18:46 Dax Shepard? Oh, boy.
2:18:47 Speaker 01 They probably wouldn't even, maybe they wouldn't let me. Damn.
2:18:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Well, that would be the best case scenario. You tried and you couldn't. Yeah, get screened. It was like, I tried to give. What did I try to give?
2:18:57 Speaker 01 Plasma?
2:18:59 Dax Shepard? I tried to give sperm in college.
2:19:00 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, and you weren't allowed. But that's not, you'd be fine doing that.
2:19:03 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:19:05 Speaker 01 And you were getting paid. You would be paid.
2:19:07 Dax Shepard? Well, that was the goal. Yeah, I was in college and I needed some money, but they wouldn't accept it. This is terrible sperm.
2:19:15 Speaker 01 What? Because it had low mobility?
2:19:17 Dax Shepard? No, you need to have, or at least they told me, you need to have an inordinately high sperm count.
2:19:22 Speaker 01 Oh.
2:19:22 Dax Shepard? And I did not have a high sperm count.
2:19:24 Speaker 01 Interesting.
2:19:25 Dax Shepard? I like to think I had an average sperm count. They didn't specifically say you have a low sperm. It is, it wasn't high enough.
2:19:31 Speaker 01 You didn't have any problems getting pregnant.
2:19:33 Dax Shepard? I've only tried twice and I have two kids.
2:19:35 Speaker 01 So it worked out.
2:19:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. All right.
2:19:38 Speaker 01 Bye!
2:19:38 Dax Shepard? Love you.
2:19:39 Speaker 01 Love you.
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