Pod Insights Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard Brandi Carlile About this episode Brandi Carlile (Returning to Myself, By the Way, I Forgive You, and The Story) is a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, producer, activist, and author. Brandi joins Armchair Expert to discuss being a feral kid in rural Washington, navigating her father’s alcoholism, and being denied baptism by her church as a teenager. Brandi and Dax talk about building a career through relentless hustle, working with Rick Rubin and T Bone Burnett, and bringing Joni Mitchell and Tanya Tucker back to the stage and studio. Brandi explains how marriage equality changed her life, why she holds special respect for elders in the LGBTQ community, and how faith, family, and service continue to shape her worldview.
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Transcript 29,695 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dax Shepard? Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Lily Padman.
0:05 Speaker 01 Hi.
0:05 Dax Shepard? My voice broke there.
0:07 Speaker 01 Let's leave it. It's very, cause it's a ding ding ding. Oh my gosh, it's a ding ding ding to the episode.
0:12 Dax Shepard? It is.
0:12 Speaker 01 Her voice breaks in one of her most famous songs.
0:16 Dax Shepard? Really good job. Brandy Carlisle. Brandy Carlisle is an 11 time Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter and producer. Her albums are, by the way, I forgive you, In These Silent Days, The Story, Returning to Myself, currently on the Human Tour. For dates and tickets, go to brandycarlisle.com. Guys, I loved her.
0:39 Speaker 01 She was, this was such a fun.
0:40 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I really, really loved her.
0:41 Speaker 01 And she sings for us.
0:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah, she sings for us. Please enjoy Brandy Carlisle. We get support from Quince.
0:49 Speaker 01 I have to say, I am so ready for fall. I want sweaters. I've been craving a true crisp morning where I actually need a jacket. I can't wait.
0:58 Dax Shepard? I'm fully there. The second it dips below 70, I'm like, this is my season. Give me the layers. Give me the boots. Give me a reason to wear something other than a t-shirt. And honestly, that's why I love Quince because fall is when your wardrobe actually has to show up. And everything at Quince is 50 to 80% less than similar brands. We're talking 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at $60.
1:20 Speaker 01 $60. $60 for cashmere that you'd expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag. It's amazing. Gets me every time. It really shouldn't be real, but it is because they go straight to the factories. They skip the middlemen and they just hand you the savings. The stuff isn't trendy. It's the kind of pieces you grab over and over because they work every time.
1:38 Dax Shepard? The 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters for me are it. When I look at Steve McQueen, this man owned a couple of sweaters he wore all the time and he looks iconic.
1:47 Speaker 01 It's a uniform.
1:48 Dax Shepard? Mm hmm.
1:49 Speaker 01 And Quince isn't just about the clothes. They have hotel quality bedding, cookware, bath essentials, thoughtfully designed furniture. You can really go there and outfit your entire apartment or house. So if you're in need of any kind of fall refresh at home too, same quality, same attention to detail for every corner of your life.
2:06 Dax Shepard? Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince. App for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from AG1. Fall is that time when your body and mind are getting ready for the winter. You're settling in, bracing for the cold. Your body's already running a deficit from the shorter days and broken sleep patterns. You don't want a nutrient deficit stacked on top of that, too.
2:42 Speaker 01 That's where your AG1 routine earns its spot. It's not fixing your sleep or your alarm time. It's giving your body what it needs so the dark mornings don't tank you before you even start. One scoop cold water every morning before anything else.
2:55 Dax Shepard? AG1 Next Gen has 75 plus ingredients, vitamins, minerals, pre and probiotics, superfoods, backed by four separate gold standard clinical trials. Key nutrient levels improved with three months of consistent use.
3:09 Speaker 01 That's the part people miss. It's not a one day fix. It's what happens when you stay consistent.
3:13 Dax Shepard? It's an easy, everyday thing. I've added it to my morning routine and I'm going to tell you, I actually love the taste of it. It's like Pavlovian. I drink it and I know I'm going to get that little vitamin buzz.
3:23 Speaker 01 Well, that's also the thing. When you do it first thing in the morning, you already feel kind of self-esteem because you're like, I already did something good for myself.
3:31 Dax Shepard? Yes. Go to drinkag1.com/dax and for a limited time, get a free immunity bundle, including a bottle of omega-3 fish oil and a bottle of vitamin D3 K2 with your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/dax. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Armchair Expert sent you.
4:12 Speaker 01 So happy to have you.
4:14 Speaker 02 And I'm really excited to talk to you guys. This is awesome.
4:16 Dax Shepard? I purposely was not around because I knew the stakes were really high. You just met Anna?
4:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, she was great.
4:21 Speaker 01 Okay, she was so nervous to meet you.
4:23 Dax Shepard? She's never asked in eight years to meet anybody.
4:26 Speaker 01 She was like, I have to. She's a huge fan.
4:28 Speaker 02 Oh, man. Well, I have this thing called Girls Just Want a Weekend every year.
4:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:31 Dax Shepard? Mexico?
4:32 Speaker 02 Yeah. It's like life-changing for a lot of people.
4:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:35 Speaker 02 Because you get lured into it thinking it's a festival, but really it's like a whole experience. You gotta come.
4:39 Speaker 01 Okay.
4:40 Speaker 02 You gotta have the girls come.
4:41 Dax Shepard? It's all female performers, right?
4:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:43 Dax Shepard? Are men welcome?
4:44 Speaker 02 Men are treated like absolute celebrities.
4:48 Speaker 01 Oh.
4:49 Speaker 02 Oh, my God, the way that we basically hoist you onto our shoulders and carry you like a trophy.
4:54 Dax Shepard? Wow.
4:55 Speaker 02 If you come to our festival.
4:56 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow. Okay, now I wanna go. I love the idea being-
4:59 Speaker 02 We have merch for just men that says like, I Survived Girls Just Want a Weekend.
5:02 Dax Shepard? Oh, that's great.
5:04 Speaker 02 We sing, "Let's sing it for the boys."
5:06 Speaker 01 Oh, hell, yeah.
5:08 Dax Shepard? Give these boys a hand.
5:09 Speaker 02 That's right.
5:10 Speaker 01 Okay, I think you'd do great there, Dax.
5:12 Speaker 02 Well, I just think when men will leave the country to attend a festival with all women or non-binary headliners, it's like, yeah.
5:18 Speaker 01 That's awesome.
5:19 Speaker 02 Those men are rad.
5:20 Dax Shepard? Okay, good, good, good, good. I was reading about it, and you must know that we heard the most sincere and authentic review of this festival from Anna.
5:29 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, she had so much fun.
5:31 Dax Shepard? And I had a million questions. I'm like, is it a lesbian festival? And she's like, yes and no. Not overtly, but yes.
5:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, a lot of gay men are starting to come too.
5:42 Dax Shepard? Okay, great.
5:43 Speaker 02 There's this like whole contingency of really sapphically focused gay men that are really enjoying it.
5:50 Dax Shepard? Okay. This sounds like the happiest group imaginable, to be honest.
5:54 Speaker 01 I think that's why it's life-changing.
5:55 Speaker 02 It's pretty good.
5:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's awesome.
5:58 Dax Shepard? Kristen has described it, she's not Ben, but just given all the feedback from Anna, she said, you know, it's the polar opposite of Woodstock 99, if you're trying to think of a vibe.
6:07 Speaker 02 It couldn't be anymore. In one way or another, it's a response to that.
6:10 Dax Shepard? Yeah, but you saw Lilith Fair when you were a kid. Yeah, you went to the Lilith Fair Festival?
6:15 Speaker 02 Yep, that's actually what I think got me wanting to do this was that.
6:18 Dax Shepard? Yeah. What age were you when you went to that?
6:20 Speaker 02 Seventeen. So, so formative. Yeah. I had this one experience in particular where I was just this little scallywag kid, all sunburned and drinking Mountain Dews, like these big refillable Mountain Dews all day. And I like took my bucket of Mountain Dew to have it refilled to the Mountain Dew stand. And there was this lesbian standing in line behind me and she goes, honey, what are you getting to drink? And I was like, a Mountain Dew. And she goes, you need some water and you're sunburned. And she put sunscreen on my shoulders.
6:48 Dax Shepard? And you're gonna die in a couple hours.
6:50 Speaker 02 On one hand, I was like, hmm. But then I got older and I was like, I need a festival like that, you know?
6:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:55 Speaker 02 That's like, we're taking care of each other.
6:58 Dax Shepard? Looking out for each other.
7:00 Speaker 01 That is the opposite of Woodstock.
7:01 Speaker 02 Exactly.
7:02 Dax Shepard? It does make me think what you tell your children when you have children, which is like, okay, if you're alone, you find a police officer.
7:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:09 Dax Shepard? You cannot find a police officer, which you likely will not. Find a woman with kids.
7:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's what I say. We say, find a mom.
7:14 Speaker 01 Yep, exactly.
7:16 Dax Shepard? And go to a woman.
7:17 Speaker 01 A single woman.
7:18 Dax Shepard? Keep going down the list.
7:19 Speaker 02 Find a lesbian. If you can't find a woman with kids, go to a lesbian.
7:21 Dax Shepard? And last is like, find a dude in a Corvette with his shirt off.
7:25 Speaker 01 You might as well just run into the street.
7:28 Dax Shepard? Where was the Lilith? Was it in Gasworks Park?
7:31 Speaker 02 Oh, good question. You know, Seattle.
7:32 Dax Shepard? I've drank in a lot of forties at Gasworks.
7:34 Speaker 02 Okay.
7:35 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. I dated a girl for nine years that was from Marysville, Everett.
7:38 Speaker 02 No, it's at the gorge.
7:40 Dax Shepard? Oh, perfect.
7:40 Speaker 02 In fact, that's where it started, 1997.
7:42 Dax Shepard? Perfect home for that.
7:43 Speaker 02 And that was the year Tracy Chapman was on that lineup. Sarah and the Indigo Girl. I mean, it was amazing. Erykah Badu was on the year. Sinead O'Connor was there the year I was there.
7:54 Dax Shepard? I love Erykah Badu.
7:55 Speaker 02 Oh, so do I.
7:56 Dax Shepard? Ravens?
7:57 Speaker 02 Dale.
7:58 Dax Shepard? Ravensdale. A lot of Dales in that area.
8:00 Speaker 02 There might be a Dale or two.
8:01 Dax Shepard? Yeah, there's a Dale or two out there.
8:02 Speaker 01 Couple Dales.
8:03 Dax Shepard? Now Ravensdale, it seems almost impossible because it's 28 miles from Seattle, yet it has a population of 500 people.
8:10 Speaker 02 Well, Seattle's like that. It's a bit like Anchorage in a way where you can land in Seattle, get yourself like the most delicious silky cappuccino you've ever drank and then- A half an hour later, see a bear.
8:21 Speaker 01 Ah, yeah.
8:22 Dax Shepard? And be potentially lost.
8:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's what I love about it.
8:25 Dax Shepard? That is cool. The history of the town fascinated me because it's a coal mining town. You don't associate Washington with coal mining.
8:33 Speaker 02 You kind of can. I mean, it was one of the first in terms of that Ravensdale is a bit of a subsidiary of another town called Black Diamond.
8:40 Dax Shepard? Okay.
8:40 Speaker 02 Which is a neighboring town and actually Loretta Lynn lived there.
8:43 Speaker 01 Oh.
8:44 Dax Shepard? Wow.
8:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, for a time. And yeah, when I was a kid, we were running around, there's coal mines everywhere. You got to watch out for mine shafts and everything.
8:50 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
8:51 Speaker 02 I got my last spanking for playing in a mine shaft.
8:54 Speaker 01 Oh, gosh.
8:56 Dax Shepard? I'm so jealous. I would have loved a mine shaft when I was a kid. We liked rock quarries because there was water in them.
9:02 Speaker 02 And mine shafts, they got water in them too.
9:04 Dax Shepard? I bet.
9:05 Speaker 02 But they're bottomless.
9:06 Speaker 01 Okay. So you like to flirt with danger. If you're playing over there, you're a rascal a little bit. I would stand far away.
9:13 Dax Shepard? I think feral is the right word, right?
9:15 Speaker 01 That tracks. Okay.
9:16 Dax Shepard? So I grew up in a rural area too, and I will say, it's not necessarily what I wanted for my kids, but boy, do I cherish the amount of, we were just lighting stuff on fire. I mean, you're allowed to do whatever came across your mind because there's no supervision and there's no one around to catch you.
9:32 Speaker 02 What parts of it don't you want for your kids?
9:34 Dax Shepard? I, again, this is probably rooted in all my own personal stuff, but it's like too much privacy out there. Too many places to hide and just like I couldn't get caught lighting shit on fire. Adults weren't getting caught for stuff and there's a general, that part of it I don't love.
9:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, no, you're exactly right.
9:53 Dax Shepard? Look, and again, I would love to see dad on this, but where I was from, we had to have over indexed. We had a serial killer, a small town. Every single person was molested. I know. I just feel like it's safer here.
10:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, we don't do sleepovers.
10:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, a lot of people don't anymore.
10:08 Speaker 02 It's amazing. That is something about our generation, having realized that maybe we all had too much freedom, whether we lived in a rural area or not.
10:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:16 Speaker 02 I was trying to explain that to my kids. I would be like, we would get on our bikes. We'll be eight o'clock in the morning. And we would maybe come home at some point after dark and no one knew where we were, how we were getting money or candy.
10:28 Dax Shepard? We're even curious. Didn't even ask you what your day was like.
10:30 Speaker 02 No.
10:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's crazy.
10:33 Dax Shepard? And back to what's dangerous about it is like, I know you know, because I had it a million times. If my kids run into somebody dicey on the street, which they do, it's LA, there's a bunch of homeless people. They always have someone in sight they could yell to. How many times when you're a kid and you're out in the woods or you're somewhere and you come across an adult, like a sold adult? And it's freaky. You know, there's nobody around and this weird adult's in the woods for some reason too. You have a lot of those moments when you grow, I think, rural.
11:00 Speaker 02 I do, and I didn't experience any significant traumas, but I can see the near misses now. How many times I got close to my battleship? It's crazy. Like, I remember getting in this guy's truck that was like the town scary guy, but he told me that there were trout biting in this quarry. And I was like, no, that's an empty pond, this is full of water. And he's like, no, there's a stream that's dumping kokany into it. I'll show you right where they're biting. And I was like, I shouldn't get into your truck, but I want those kokany.
11:28 Dax Shepard? I can't imagine loving fishing now. Like, that's what you people do to go get drugs. Like, I don't trust this guy, but fuck, I do want coke.
11:35 Speaker 02 Kokany, kokany.
11:37 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
11:38 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
11:39 Speaker 02 No, I did, and it was fine, but I mean, near miss, right? Or even that the guy would put a 13-year-old girl in his truck-
11:45 Speaker 01 Holy crap, that is horrifying.
11:46 Speaker 02 -without our parents' permission and then totally innocuously take her to shore where to catch trout. It's kind of unbelievable.
11:51 Dax Shepard? You got lucky-ish.
11:52 Speaker 02 I got lucky every time, but a lot of folks don't. So I actually know what you mean about that.
11:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's just that element. And again, I love it because I got through it and I feel like I got all my confidence from that because I was navigating these weird situations and dangerous ones and kids were getting hurt. And all that, I think, you enter the real world and you're like, I gotta get a job and pay for bills? That's fine.
12:10 Speaker 02 The question is, how do you recreate those kinds of experiences for your kids without exposing them to the possibility of real trauma? You want them to have the street smarts we have. You want them to understand that not everybody is upper-middle-class or privileged in a way, but you can't falsify or recreate.
12:28 Dax Shepard? I know, I'm coming across as the kind of parent, we're actually quite free-range.
12:32 Speaker 02 Really?
12:32 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, like, we were in Denmark and we're like, cool, this is Travolli's Gardens. It's huge, but it's all encapsulated. We're like- Have fun. We will see you in six hours. Here is a credit card. You know, like, go.
12:44 Speaker 02 And they're 11 and 13, am I right?
12:46 Dax Shepard? At the time, they were nine and 11. Yeah.
12:49 Speaker 01 With other kids too, though, right?
12:52 Dax Shepard? Well, they were split up. So, yes, Lily went with maybe Lincoln, but Dolly and Delta got it in their mind. They were going to set a record on a roller coaster and they rode it, you know, 60 times in a row or something. So they did split up. They were in another country and it's just like, yeah, it'll work out. They're smart. So I do have that side of me too.
13:07 Speaker 02 Wow. Yeah. And that's how you do it. You set up those situations of kind of controlled chaos.
13:12 Dax Shepard? It's within reason. Yeah. Okay. What were mom and dad like? What were they up to? I think we share an addict father.
13:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:22 Speaker 02 We may share the actual one. We don't know. We don't know.
13:27 Dax Shepard? I think that'd be cuter, but yeah, I got the bum end of that stick.
13:31 Speaker 01 That would be huge. What a revelation.
13:35 Speaker 02 This would go so viral.
13:36 Dax Shepard? Well, he was a car salesman.
13:38 Speaker 01 Biggest episode of all time.
13:40 Speaker 02 Yeah. So I grew up in that kind of house.
13:42 Dax Shepard? How old were they when they had, you're the middle?
13:44 Speaker 02 I'm the oldest daughter and I'm the oldest grandchild on both sides. So I have all that superiority complex going for me. And this enormous sense of responsibility to balance it out. So they were young. They were like 19 and 20, or 20 and 21, like right around there. And they got married while they were pregnant with me. And I'm not sure how long it took for my dad to sort of succumb to pretty severe alcoholism, or if he kind of was already always drinking. I may actually know this, but I'm not recalling it off the top of my head. But yeah, he had a really, really bad drinking problem most of my childhood.
14:19 Dax Shepard? Was he employed?
14:20 Speaker 02 He was employed initially at the Boeing.
14:23 Dax Shepard? In Tacoma?
14:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, but you gotta build airplanes. You gotta stay sober.
14:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, you do.
14:27 Dax Shepard? Of all the jobs we want people to be sober on.
14:31 Speaker 02 You know, he would go and recover and he would go to rehab and he would get to the point where he would even be somebody else's sponsor. Like he'd be clean that long. It made it that much more heartbreaking when he would fall.
14:41 Dax Shepard? And would you see the signs percolating up? Did you ever feel like you had a sense of when those times were coming?
14:47 Speaker 02 No, it always surprised me. And I actually think maybe now that I'm an adult, that's why I never let anything surprise me ever. I don't even like getting a birthday present. I'm like, tell me what it is and we'll talk about it.
14:59 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
15:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:00 Dax Shepard? When he was drunk, what version of a drunk was he?
15:03 Speaker 02 Just unpredictable. He's really smart, hyper articulate, kind of a victim of a overactive mind. And alcohol is obviously something that he used to sort of quell that. But because he's so naturally, he would not like this, but quite dogmatic and marinating and rhetoric all the time. His sobriety would become a family religion. So we would be in Al-Anon, Al-Teen. We would be learning that we'd have the slogans, we had the one liners. And then he would fall off the wagon and it would feel like we fell off a skyscraper.
15:35 Speaker 01 Well, yeah, your identity, all of your identities.
15:38 Dax Shepard? And the whole friendship group is all members of AA, I'm sure.
15:42 Speaker 02 I wish. I think that's part of the problem.
15:44 Dax Shepard? Okay.
15:45 Speaker 02 Is that, you know, you kind of described that small town situation. No, they were not. And my dad, he doesn't have like an ego, but he's kind of self-important in a way. And just if what is needed in theory for an addict to stay clean is a positive friend group, he doesn't believe that applies to him. He's the one guy.
16:05 Speaker 01 He can do it on his own.
16:06 Dax Shepard? I'm always like, when I entered recovery, they're like, you know, here's six things that work for people. And I'm like, let's see if I can do it with one. Get three months, relapse, and then come back. I'm open to doing two of the things. I mean, literally, I had to get worn down over years before I was finally like, okay, I'll do all the fucking things. What, I have to believe in God? Okay. I need a sponsor.
16:26 Speaker 01 Well, it's still all about acceptance, acceptance that you have a real issue. Obviously, that cliche where that acknowledgement is the hardest hurdle or problem is real. All of that is just to get to, yeah, I have a real problem. Because until then, you're like, I have a little problem. I could probably just do with one of these things.
16:45 Dax Shepard? There's an arrogance, like the normal people need all this. But I'm exceptional. So what will I need? Maybe three of these things?
16:51 Speaker 02 Yeah. If any of them. And then there's to your point, like, have you seen that Leonardo DiCaprio meme? I love it so much. Much where he's got that kind of face and he's holding a martini or whatever. The meme is like how wine drunks look at regular drunks.
17:05 Speaker 02 It's like, oh, we drink wine.
17:07 Speaker 01 There's always someone worse.
17:09 Speaker 02 There's always someone worse. And then there's that cliche of the rock bottom thing. It feels like, only time I've seen people get sober and like stay sober. This is just a theory from a person who's not an addict, by the way, but is that the shit has to really hit the fan.
17:24 Dax Shepard? Oh, the saying in AA is like, you won't change until your hair is on fire.
17:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:28 Dax Shepard? And then the other great sayings, which describes your father and myself is like, you can have terminal uniqueness. Which is, I'm so unique and I'm gonna die because of it. Like, I'm so special and different and unique. And I'm gonna die of that uniqueness, but I don't care. I'd rather be that unique.
17:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's almost romantic.
17:45 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:46 Dax Shepard? And it feels like it has autonomy. You're in control and it's not. Yeah, you're just unwilling.
17:52 Speaker 02 He's sober now, though.
17:53 Dax Shepard? He is.
17:53 Speaker 01 Awesome.
17:54 Dax Shepard? For how long?
17:55 Speaker 02 A long time.
17:56 Dax Shepard? That's awesome. Oh, that's awesome. I imagine we inherited the same thing, which I was just like, you know, it's kind of dorky because it's this thing my dad's super into. And then the spirituality that would accompany it, right? It'd be like Course of Miracles and all these other things that tie in with it. What kind of feelings were you having about that whole element?
18:14 Speaker 02 About the spiritual element?
18:15 Dax Shepard? The AA and the slogans and all that stuff. Was it like, oh my God, this is embarrassing or?
18:20 Speaker 02 I was already more religious than AA when we entered into AA. I was already really into Jesus.
18:27 Speaker 01 Oh.
18:28 Dax Shepard? And were your parents or just you? You found it on your own?
18:31 Speaker 02 It's very weird. My parents were and my dad really was at a time, you know, he's like extremist. So he had extremist moments and is still an extremist. But I had my own path with it. Like I have terminal uniqueness. So I almost died when I was five from meningitis. I just got told so many times that I had like a purpose and that I was like saved for something. And we were all intense and we were all going to church. And so I was like talking to Jesus all the time. I had a whole relationship with this Jesus thing that was kind of independent. I would elect to go to vacation Bible school and Iwana's and youth group and stuff like that. I didn't have groups of. Friends based on it either.
19:08 Dax Shepard? You weren't like idolizing some older kid that was super into it or anything?
19:12 Speaker 02 No.
19:12 Dax Shepard? It was just that maybe that near death experience. Your heart stopped a few times during that?
19:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, I was in a coma and everything, yeah. I was just like riding shotgun with his Jesus character.
19:21 Speaker 01 Wow.
19:21 Speaker 02 And kind of always have been through a lot of turmoil, ups and downs in my life and even things about me that would push me away from it and pull me back and recognize with a lot of gratitude that I have a very unique God perspective.
19:35 Speaker 01 And you still do?
19:36 Speaker 02 I still do, yeah.
19:37 Speaker 01 Wow.
19:37 Dax Shepard? What age were you when baptism was supposed to happen?
19:40 Speaker 02 I think like 16.
19:42 Dax Shepard? Okay, so 16 you were supposed to get baptized?
19:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:45 Dax Shepard? And what happened?
19:46 Speaker 02 There was this kind of troubling church, actually, in our town, a big surprise, in the neighboring town, Black Diamond. They kind of looked for troubled kids that were in troubled home situations and stressed out, you know. And at this point, me and my brother already dropped out of high school. And we were in trouble cleaning buses at the bus barn and this church bus pulled up and told us to get in, picked up my brother, and I didn't go.
20:13 Dax Shepard? They should have told you Steelhead were running.
20:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, all they had to tell me, all they had to tell me was Steelhead were running in the green.
20:19 Dax Shepard? There's a car at the church? Okay.
20:21 Speaker 02 I'm like, it didn't look that bad. I got in the quarry guys' truck. No, but I didn't go. Eventually, I started going to the church, found it compelling, went to one of those camps, you know, they go to these camps. I don't think, you guys have ever experienced these church camp things?
20:34 Dax Shepard? I've not been to one, but kids went to them where I grew up.
20:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, a lot of friends.
20:37 Speaker 02 Okay, deeply emotional and transformative for young kids, these camps, these pastors, they're cool. They know how to talk to young people. They know how to play on our guilt and our sense of rebelliousness. And so it compelled me to want to get baptized. I felt that there was just too much in the world that I couldn't handle without making my faith official.
21:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
21:01 Speaker 02 So I did the thing that you do in the evangelical church where the pastor like prays for everybody to close their eyes and then somebody comes forward and I came forward. So I was gonna get baptized and everybody's crying and clapping and it's all very charismatic. And you spend like a week taking classes and doing Bible study and spending time with the pastor and everything. And I had done it. I did all those things. And when the day came around for my baptism at the church, The whole town, which is like not many people and my parents, troubling as it all was, we were a unit. We were together. We were all a big dysfunctional family. I was out of the closet. I had a girlfriend, a short little haircut.
21:39 Dax Shepard? Can we do one second on that? Being openly gay where I'm from, in a rural area in the 80s, it would have been really hard. Was it different in Washington?
21:48 Speaker 02 No, I was the only one I knew.
21:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Where did you get the confidence to own that and not run from that at all?
21:54 Speaker 02 It's a really good question. It's just for me, it's just always been such an obvious part of who I am. When I saw other gay people on TV, you know, like Ellen DeGeneres coming out in the 90s, when I saw gay artists like the Indigo Girls, and I was a huge Elton Jean fan, and I read all of these biographies, and then there were movies that kind of touched on it, Boys on the Side in Philadelphia. I recognized there was a community or a culture outside of my life.
22:21 Dax Shepard? That makes sense. Your heroes were often gay.
22:24 Speaker 02 Yeah. And all my friends were going through puberty and they wanted to make out with boys and I wanted to make out with girls. I just did. I wanted to make out with them. I couldn't deny that.
22:32 Speaker 01 But people do.
22:33 Speaker 02 But they do.
22:33 Speaker 01 All the time. So it's amazing.
22:35 Dax Shepard? I think when they're not in cities as well, they tend to even more.
22:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:39 Speaker 02 I just have always been pretty oblivious to just not being cool. You know, my favorite pants growing up were like cow print jeans. I didn't know that people were laughing at my obsessions or my eccentricities. And so I was like, yeah, I'm gay. Everybody knows I'm gay. They're not that into it. It's not a popular thing. I'm not taking a whole lot of shit for it, but I'm not being accepted either. And again, kind of oblivious to that. Just listening to the Indigo Girls, loving my life.
23:04 Dax Shepard? They probably don't mind that you're gay. They're nervous, is every girl gonna turn gay now in the school?
23:10 Speaker 02 I don't think I had that kind of influence.
23:11 Dax Shepard? I think that's what happened.
23:13 Speaker 02 If I could have turned to one girl gay in my school, that would have been awesome.
23:16 Speaker 01 You're like, I was trying.
23:17 Dax Shepard? Like when I talk to friends of mine who I adore that live in the South, the way they'll tell me that like Disney's goal is to convince all kids to be trans. I'm like, I think you think that. Like I do think you think that. Yeah, I think that's a real thought.
23:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:31 Dax Shepard? And I think similarly, like I think a lot of people back then were just like, yeah, I don't care. What she does, but is she gonna influence my daughter?
23:38 Speaker 01 Yes, this idea of a bad influence and quotes.
23:41 Speaker 02 There may have been some of that. I mean, I remember hearing a lot of words like that thrown around town or in my family or in the 90s, like, oh, she's militant, or she's hard, or are you gonna put it in our faces?
23:50 Speaker 01 Ah.
23:51 Speaker 02 These kind of, or like, love the sinner, hate the sinner. We love you, but we don't accept your lifestyle kind of thing.
23:57 Dax Shepard? Right, right, right.
23:58 Speaker 02 And that unfortunately just had to be good enough for me back then.
24:01 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah.
24:01 Speaker 02 And I was absolutely fine with that.
24:03 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you weren't sweating that too much.
24:05 Speaker 02 I mean, I wasn't. I knew it was a countercultural thing.
24:08 Dax Shepard? And your parents, they were cool, obviously?
24:10 Speaker 02 No.
24:11 Dax Shepard? Okay.
24:12 Speaker 02 Not really.
24:12 Speaker 01 Same, same situation.
24:14 Speaker 02 They weren't cool, but they weren't not cool. It was something everybody found kind of quite annoying about me, if I'm right.
24:19 Speaker 01 Right.
24:20 Speaker 02 But I have an inner world and I also knew, I can't explain why, but I knew I had this life ahead of me that I was about to be a part of and that I was gonna be okay. But I get to this church for this baptism after spending this time with the pastor. Having this kind of position in my community that was complicated. I was loved but not accepted and just, everything was like, okay, but not great. So I get to this church and the pastor takes me aside with this other kid that was gonna get, like, a much younger kid, and asks us both, as a formality, do you practice witchcraft or homosexuality? And I just laughed. I just burst out laughing because I didn't understand why that question was pertinent, and I still don't.
25:04 Speaker 02 But that question seemed so ridiculous to me. And then it didn't take me long to realize that I had to answer yes to one of those things.
25:12 Dax Shepard? Do you think he threw witchcraft in to make it seem less pointed? Or you think that's standard?
25:18 Speaker 01 They think that's equal. Those are the same.
25:20 Dax Shepard? I'm just curious if he was, because he spent a week with you, he probably liked you.
25:24 Speaker 02 Well, he liked me. And he knew me, he knew my family.
25:26 Dax Shepard? And he's about to put you in a situation where he's gonna deny you a baptism. I mean, imagine he's human. So did he just throw witchcraft in to try to make it say, hey, I gotta ask these standard questions?
25:38 Speaker 02 I think so. And I think until this very moment, I just accepted it as such.
25:43 Dax Shepard? It just seems like insane. How would you find yourself all the way to this point believing in witchcraft? But whatever.
25:48 Speaker 02 I have a great idea. I'm gonna ask her about witchcraft and then the homosexuality thing won't feel as.
25:51 Dax Shepard? That's a throwaway. Yeah.
25:52 Speaker 01 Maybe the other kid was a warlock, right?
25:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah, maybe the kid, the boy was a warlock.
25:58 Speaker 01 He's getting you both with one question.
26:00 Speaker 02 So he very well could have been. He's standing there with his staff.
26:04 Speaker 01 Exactly.
26:04 Speaker 02 But I stopped laughing. I looked at him. I go, you know me. I go, you know, I'm gay. Everyone knows I'm gay. I'm the gay person in town. I'm like the town gay. You know, that didn't seem like that was a disqualifying factor. And I'm in a swimsuit and my parents are right there. What are you talking about?
26:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:20 Speaker 02 And he was like, you can't be baptized today. And I had to leave the church in front of all those people sitting there. Run back to my house.
26:28 Dax Shepard? How did you take that? Were you heartbroken by that? Or were you angered by it?
26:32 Speaker 02 At that point, just humiliated. So embarrassed, which is my nightmare. I cannot be embarrassed. It was about the most embarrassed I've ever been in my life to this day. And my parents came home and a couple of their close friends, like Ron and Diane, like they all came to the house and it was suddenly, I was loved and accepted. It was this weird thing that happened where then pastor dude was the problem. And the whole town got mad on my behalf.
27:03 Speaker 01 Oh, that's beautiful.
27:04 Dax Shepard? That might be scarier for me, though. I don't know if I want the whole town to hate me or love me. I'm afraid of both.
27:09 Speaker 02 I could see why, because they might know what you're doing.
27:13 Dax Shepard? I'd just be like, oh, I can't live up to love. I can live up to disappointing you, but living up to love, that's the whole trajectory of this experience of even getting famous. That's still an issue. I'm afraid for you to love me because I'm going to disappoint you.
27:27 Speaker 02 I think more than ever, that is a valid stressor. I can see why you feel that way, even without the issues.
27:33 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I already had those. And then there's some proof now.
27:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
27:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
27:37 Speaker 02 Absolutely. That turned that around for me in a really interesting way.
27:41 Dax Shepard? So did they can the pastor? They said like, you gotta go to the program and baptize?
27:45 Speaker 02 No, that pastor called me every day for a long time, trying to apologize. I just, I think it was just upsetting for everyone. You know, religion and dogma, it's so. Oppressive.
27:55 Dax Shepard? So did you just lose your desire to even get baptized at that point? Like, fuck that. I have my relationship with Jesus and I'm good.
28:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, until much, much later in life. It set me free in a way, I think, made a lot of people that thought that gay people were militant and insisting on these rights that they're gonna take from them, realize we really are kind of in trouble out here. We really are vulnerable in a lot of different ways. And I don't think they're realized.
28:20 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you were just like excommunicated from your church?
28:23 Speaker 02 In front of them all.
28:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
28:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:25 Dax Shepard? Well, that's a lovely end, though, to that terrible story.
28:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think so. That's why I look at it.
28:30 Dax Shepard? Something about it is the best part of us as humans, which is like, we don't enjoy seeing someone get shit on or excluded.
28:38 Speaker 02 Almost no matter what.
28:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and it can change us on a dime in a profound way, more than had you bitched out the guy in front of everyone.
28:46 Speaker 02 And one.
28:47 Dax Shepard? And one.
28:47 Speaker 02 Something, yes. I know exactly what you mean. Did I read correctly that you wouldn't get married until LGBTQ?
28:54 Dax Shepard? The gays good?
28:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:55 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've had a lot of gay friends and my analogy was, and this is a crazy analogy, but it feels very appropriate. If half my friends were black and I lived in the 30s, I wouldn't host a party in the front of the bus.
29:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
29:09 Dax Shepard? It would feel insane. And I was like, well, we're gonna invite like eight of our gay friends to watch us have this right they don't have and celebrate us. Feels bonkers.
29:18 Speaker 02 Wow.
29:18 Dax Shepard? Just on that alone, not like a big global, just like, this is wrong for me to do this and invite friends that can't do it to enjoy it for me. It feels crazy.
29:29 Speaker 01 It's pretty good.
29:30 Speaker 02 It's pretty great.
29:30 Dax Shepard? But then we were stuck in engagement.
29:35 Dax Shepard? Purgatory for like, I want to say three years, to the point where people would be like, you're still engaged? Like, they're getting nervous for us, right? Like, you can only be engaged for so long.
29:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, this is a bad sign.
29:45 Dax Shepard? Nervous. And it's like, oh, this is convenient. You have a cause now?
29:52 Speaker 02 Always the guy's idea.
29:57 Speaker 01 You should go to the festival. You definitely.
29:59 Speaker 02 You should go to the festival. I really do think it's right for you. But also, that's actually amazing. That's gonna always be a part of your legacy. And being able to get married changed my life. And when I couldn't get married, it was a major drain on my life.
30:11 Speaker 01 Yeah. Can we talk about that a little bit? Because I do think we have a friend group and there's something adjacent happening where there's some religious people who are like, well, no, you can be together, but like marriage is a different thing. What can you share about why that's not okay?
30:28 Speaker 02 About why it's not okay to deny that basic
30:31 Speaker 01 Yes.
30:31 Speaker 02 civil right? Well, I just don't think that any one religion has the monopoly on two people choosing to spend the rest of their lives together under equal protection of the law. And guess what? Some of us are quite religious. It was kind of wild, actually, because my weddings, we had a lot of weddings. My wife is from London. So we got married in a little church called the Church of the Good Shepherd in Wareham, Massachusetts.
30:54 Dax Shepard? Her last name is Shepherd, yeah.
30:55 Speaker 02 Shepherd. Yeah, isn't that wild?
30:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's great.
30:58 Speaker 02 And then we had a civil partnership in England because they didn't have marriage there yet. It was just a civil partnership. So it was kind of weird because we never had a civil partnership here. We had marriage first. And then England for years had civil partnerships and then marriage quite a lot later. So we had a civil partnership there and the deal was you couldn't have any mention of faith, religious music. I don't even think you could wear like a cross, like you had to have a totally secular
31:24 Speaker 01 Interesting.
31:25 Speaker 02 union, which was an interesting thing because it gave me this perspective of understanding how it can really be viewed through a religious lens. But really, that's all in the eye of the beholder. That's all in how you feel about it.
31:37 Dax Shepard? Also, it just really speaks to like little groups of humans do little weird things and they have little weird rules that are separate from this group. So it's like, this one has to be secular, doesn't make much sense. This one can't have that, doesn't make much sense.
31:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:50 Dax Shepard? They overlap in these little segments of life and you're going to deal with a civil union and that thing at the same time.
31:56 Speaker 02 I think just normal people out like living their lives and stuff just didn't realize how many things it excluded us from. We had all kinds of issues.
32:03 Dax Shepard? You couldn't visit her in the hospital, right? Like that would be one in a lot of cases.
32:07 Speaker 02 That was a really heartbreaking one and happened to a lot of older couples or just homeownership, like going back to somebody's family instead of their long-term spouse.
32:17 Dax Shepard? Yes.
32:18 Speaker 02 Things like that. But then immigration as well, we couldn't get a green card. Or vouch for cat citizenship or anything like that.
32:23 Dax Shepard? Right.
32:24 Speaker 02 There was no spousal allocation for me to be able to do that. So we had to renew our visa every couple of years and panic every time we traveled internationally. Get detained at the airport. We were always detained at the airport.
32:34 Dax Shepard? Oh.
32:35 Speaker 02 And when that changed, it was just immediate. And I was like, oh, my gosh, this is what everybody else. You just get to walk up to the counter and say, we're married everywhere.
32:42 Dax Shepard? You don't even think about it. I don't think I've gotten some right, which I have.
32:46 Speaker 01 That's the problem when people are against it. They don't recognize the benefits of it that they're just inherently getting.
32:53 Speaker 02 That's a good point.
32:53 Dax Shepard? Do you like Sedaris? David Sedaris, the writer?
32:57 Speaker 02 I don't know him. Help me. He's so good.
32:59 Dax Shepard? Congratulations. You just got introduced to the greatest living writer.
33:03 Speaker 02 Okay.
33:04 Speaker 01 He is incredible.
33:04 Dax Shepard? He's hysterical. But anyways, I was just reading a short story two nights ago and it was about when it got passed. He has a very interest. He's older. He's 60, probably four now. And he has opinions that are of his era in a fun way. And he's very open about them. He was in England and he collects trash in the morning at their house in England. That's like his routine. And he brought with him his iPad because he knew that the Supreme Court announcement wasn't going to happen. And then he lost signal for three hours. Then he got to a cafe and he opened it up and he saw it. And he said, I don't think any gay human being in America could have not read that and just felt emotion.
33:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:44 Dax Shepard? But then his whole process is like him going home to his partner of 20 years and telling Hugh that they got to get married because there's a great tax benefit. And he was like, I'm not getting married. That's for fucking straight people. I don't give a fuck about the tax benefit.
33:57 Speaker 02 That's a whole thing too.
33:58 Dax Shepard? And he pestered him for like a month to finally get him to concede. And he said, the actual proposal was like him rolling out the tax benefits, bludgeoning him. And then Hugh's saying, fine, if it'll make you shut up, I'll do it.
34:11 Speaker 01 That's marriage.
34:11 Speaker 02 That's hot.
34:14 Dax Shepard? Walking to his room going like, well, that's not the wedding proposal I imagined, but here we are.
34:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:19 Dax Shepard? And like, doesn't want to be called husband, you know, like there's a whole rejection.
34:22 Speaker 02 That's a whole thing. How old are they?
34:24 Dax Shepard? Like 64, five.
34:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, I get it. I respect that. I really respect that.
34:28 Dax Shepard? He hates the word queer. You know, like he's got a lot of things. Yeah, and he's fun to talk to and he's earned every single opinion he has.
34:34 Speaker 01 Interesting.
34:34 Speaker 02 Oh, I love those folks.
34:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:36 Speaker 02 Those are my, well, ancestors in a way, like those are my elders, man. I've got so much respect for the older gays.
34:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. He grew up in a time where he had to leave North Carolina and move to New York City. This is his only shot.
34:47 Speaker 02 Had to.
34:48 Speaker 01 Front lines.
34:49 Dax Shepard? And he's almost unsympathetic when he has people ask him questions like, what should I do? I'm in this town. He's like, fucking move.
34:55 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. He's like, just get out of there.
34:57 Speaker 02 They're gritty, those older gays. They're so gritty. It's brutal.
35:00 Speaker 01 And they're like, you guys don't even know what AIDS is.
35:03 Speaker 02 Oh, my gosh. Exactly. Yeah, they're pissed. And yeah, in some ways, like they have a right.
35:09 Dax Shepard? He's like, what's the problem?
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39:30 Dax Shepard? Okay, so mom, was she the breadwinner? I imagine you guys were probably scraping by if they were super young. Dad had his problem and mom, what did she do?
39:39 Speaker 02 Mom was a stay at home mom.
39:40 Dax Shepard? How did this work?
39:41 Speaker 02 There wasn't a lot of bread.
39:44 Speaker 02 My dad, when he couldn't be at Boeing anymore, he learned how to do some construction and a guy helped out. Our family helped my dad get some tools. My dad's actually really good at construction. He still comes out and does stuff at my house all the time and stuff. And just within that gig, you just, you get jobs and you can get them. And when you don't have them, you don't have money. And that's just how you roll. So we moved a lot.
40:03 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I noticed maybe seven places I read or something in some period of time.
40:07 Speaker 02 Me and my brother's gotten in an argument about this last night. He didn't believe me, but it's 14 places in 17 years.
40:13 Dax Shepard? There we go.
40:15 Speaker 02 But it didn't seem that strange at all at the time. There were consistent things, you know, like I had the same cat that we took to every place that we moved to. I shared room with my little sister. I'm really tight with my brother and sister. And I'm really tight with my parents. We're just a chaotic unit of dysfunction that just deeply loves each other. We sometimes disagree about history and how it played out and what we're allowed to talk about what we aren't. But I do believe that my life is my story and we'll just talk it through. We'll continue to talk it through like we always have.
40:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Did you covet money? Or was the town so small that even though you were broke, was everyone broke? Or did you covet money and think, how the fuck am I gonna get, I gotta get money?
40:56 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, I thought about money a lot. I still do.
40:59 Dax Shepard? Me too.
40:59 Speaker 02 I'm a coyote. Yeah, coyote people.
41:02 Dax Shepard? Yeah. What are you, old coyote people is what we're called?
41:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:05 Dax Shepard? Oh, tell me more.
41:06 Speaker 02 Like a coyote, it cannot help but exist for meat.
41:09 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
41:10 Speaker 02 You know what I mean? And like, I'm a coyote for achievement. I'm a coyote for success. I'm a coyote for stability and money. And I do my best, I've got all kinds of philosophies around not hoarding money and things like that, because I know where the addiction lies.
41:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
41:25 Speaker 02 But I used to lay in my bed and dream about all the things I could buy everybody if I got money. And they were dumb things, like four wheelers.
41:35 Dax Shepard? Sure, no, those are great things.
41:37 Speaker 02 You know, like downriggers and crap like that. Once I very first started making money, I did crazy stuff with it. I took out loans, like I would finance four wheelers and get like my dad and brother a four wheeler. Just new money stuff.
41:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah. I wish I were one of your family members. I love four wheelers.
41:52 Speaker 02 I have a lot.
41:53 Dax Shepard? Especially free ones.
41:54 Speaker 02 I have a four wheeler problem.
41:56 Dax Shepard? But you started singing with mom at eight years old?
41:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:59 Dax Shepard? So mom was a singer, I presume?
42:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, my mom's a really good country singer. To this day, she can still sing really good, like Tammy Wynette. Her dad died of ALS really young. He died at like 50. And that was tough for my mom because she was really young.
42:11 Dax Shepard? Needed a dad.
42:12 Speaker 02 Yep, and he was special. So he was gonna be a pretty important patriarchal figure in our family that we all could have really used. And so he left us and one thing he did was sing country music and play the spoons and sing in a country band with his family.
42:28 Dax Shepard? Was he from Washington?
42:30 Speaker 02 He was from Minnesota.
42:31 Dax Shepard? Doesn't make much more sense. I was hoping from the south.
42:33 Speaker 02 You know, but you can't count out the north.
42:35 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
42:36 Speaker 02 Or the west, that's what we call it, country and western, where I come from.
42:39 Dax Shepard? Oh, you're right.
42:40 Speaker 02 We do not belong to the south.
42:41 Dax Shepard? That's true.
42:42 Speaker 02 And so she, in a way, was able to continue that legacy, pass that on to me and my brother and my sister. We all do music now.
42:50 Dax Shepard? And who was she singing with that she got to get you up on stage to sing with her?
42:53 Speaker 02 There was like a little community theater in town called the Northwest Grand Ole Opry that I dream about all the time, actually. We were acting out the Grand Ole Opry. They had like an announcer, there was like a little Jimmy Dickens mini pearl thing happening.
43:05 Dax Shepard? Oh, that's great.
43:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, and so she would mostly sing with us, but even though she's a good singer, I always got the idea that. It was really more about us than her at a certain point. And she thought it was really cool that her kids could sing.
43:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. You have kids.
43:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, I got kids.
43:21 Dax Shepard? Yeah, they do shit and you're like, oh, my God.
43:22 Speaker 02 They do shit and you're like, oh, my God. I've picked a song to play for you later.
43:25 Dax Shepard? Oh, I can't wait.
43:26 Speaker 02 Based on this because of the ages. Tell me now, how old?
43:29 Dax Shepard? Eleven and thirteen. And you're eight and twelve?
43:33 Speaker 02 Eight and eleven, almost twelve.
43:35 Dax Shepard? OK, so similar, both girls. Yeah, yeah.
43:37 Speaker 02 Both girls, yeah.
43:38 Speaker 01 Yours are both girls also?
43:39 Speaker 02 Mine are both girls.
43:40 Speaker 01 Wow.
43:41 Dax Shepard? And do they ride four wheelers?
43:43 Speaker 02 They do. They both have Polaris's.
43:45 Dax Shepard? Yeah, OK, good.
43:45 Speaker 02 Putting them on four wheelers is something I'm really happy I did and in a Ranger. Because when they get to driving.
43:50 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
43:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, right.
43:51 Speaker 02 She's that coordination and under spatial awareness.
43:53 Speaker 01 They should really be hanging out.
43:54 Dax Shepard? I know, my girls ride dirt bikes and they drive razors and golf carts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, you start singing now without mom by what age? Fifteen-ish?
44:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, me and my best friend Amber, we started singing background vocals for her dad, who was an Elvis impersonator. And then we would do a song or two and the set by ourselves. And then we learned a couple of Indigo Girls songs and started trying to teach her harmony, which my brother had taught me. And I was singing in another band with my brother. And things just kind of turned into me being in multiple bands and having a lot going on.
44:29 Dax Shepard? You got obsessed with Elton John, taught yourself piano, taught yourself guitar?
44:32 Speaker 02 Guitar when I was around seventeen, sixteen, seventeen.
44:35 Dax Shepard? OK, and when do you move into Seattle and meet Tim and Phil?
44:40 Speaker 02 I never moved to Seattle.
44:41 Dax Shepard? You didn't?
44:41 Speaker 02 Back to this day, I live where I grew up. But I did meet them in a studio when I was about eighteen, nineteen. I got some money together from neighbors, Coyote, out there doing the Coyote things.
44:54 Dax Shepard? Sure, sure.
44:55 Speaker 02 Got some money together to go make a CD. And ended up in a, there's a recording studio there called London Bridge and a guy called Rick Perashar. And this recording studio is very special. This is where Pearl Jam Ten was done, Temple of the Dog, all the Alice in Chains stuff with Kelly Gray. And Rick Perashar was involved in all that. And he was the producer of those things. So this felt to me like the center of Seattle grunge. But I couldn't afford like the big studio or the big. Producers, so like an assistant engineer, let me record with him upstairs in like a little kind of
45:27 Dax Shepard? Satellite room.
45:28 Speaker 02 And it wasn't even really, it was just a room. But Pro Tools was just coming out so you could do that without a big console. And Tim and Phil were downstairs working with the big producer in the big room in their own band called The Fighting Machinists. They were like legends in Seattle. They had just gotten the biggest record deal anybody in Seattle had ever gotten and they were going to be huge. And I just waltzed down there and again, totally oblivious to what I looked like and where I came from and just was like.
45:53 Dax Shepard? You guys like cow pants?
45:55 Speaker 02 Yeah. What do you think?
45:57 Dax Shepard? Enjoy.
45:57 Speaker 02 Leave this all behind.
46:00 Dax Shepard? Put on your bib and pull up a plate.
46:02 Speaker 01 I guess this is the beauty of moving a lot. You just have to like put yourself out there. You have to talk to people. You can't really be shy. You don't have time.
46:10 Dax Shepard? Yeah. If you're sitting at home, no one's ever going to knock at your door and go, hey, do you want this spectacular life?
46:14 Speaker 02 No one ever is. And you realize you've got to make opportunities every chance you get. And I was working as a barista at a coffee stand, so I got a lot of social skills that way. I was working at a grocery store as a sample lady.
46:26 Speaker 01 Oh, a sample lady. What was your sample?
46:29 Speaker 02 Oh, every day it was different. It was awesome job, actually. And then I was working part-time as a roofing laborer.
46:35 Dax Shepard? Oh, I also was a roofer.
46:38 Speaker 02 Really?
46:38 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
46:39 Speaker 02 Why are we the same person?
46:40 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
46:41 Speaker 02 I think my back is still messed up.
46:42 Dax Shepard? Were you doing tear off or?
46:44 Speaker 02 Tear off and clean up. And sometimes I would throw down the tar paper if it was not a slatted roof.
46:48 Dax Shepard? Never got to throw any bundles up.
46:49 Speaker 02 You didn't get promoted there.
46:53 Dax Shepard? I will say though, I was just talking about this with a neighbor in Nashville because he's a builder and we were kind of going through the strata of people in the trades. And I was like, look, you've been doing this for 35 years. Am I not crazy? We are the worst, right? Roofers are just like worst prison records, least likely to show up. And he goes, oh, by far roofers are the most fucked up in the trades.
47:13 Speaker 02 You think?
47:13 Dax Shepard? Oh, you got to shit on a roof. In Detroit, we would do rubber roof. You'd be five, six stories up. There's no, even if you went down the ladder, there's nowhere in Detroit to go use the bathroom. So the guys are shitting in buckets on the roof. Everyone's hammered. People aren't showing up. I mean, yeah, it was a mess.
47:27 Speaker 02 Yeah. So imagine me like the lowest rung on that ladder where you're literally. You're just cleaning up the mess. It was like that. And when you're on a roof and you're cleaning up roofing material, you're never lifting anything properly because you're always trying to keep from falling down.
47:41 Dax Shepard? You're on a crazy angle.
47:43 Speaker 02 So I think my back is permanently jacked from it.
47:46 Dax Shepard? Your whole day is spent figuring out how to do this ergonomically so you don't get hurt. Because yeah, you're on an angle that's different from the angle you mastered yesterday. And you're prying these nails out with this fucking weird shovel.
47:57 Speaker 02 This has gotten so niche. Like, no one can relate to this.
48:01 Dax Shepard? Who cares? You and I can. We know. Six other roofers out there. As our audience. The six roofers who are sober enough to comprehend this right now are enjoying it.
48:10 Speaker 02 They're like, ah, ah, ah, to our paper.
48:16 Dax Shepard? How do you woo Tim and Phil? Like, how do you go from, they're the hot shit in town. You're upstairs in the attic recording on Pro Tools. How do you convince them we should work together?
48:25 Speaker 02 Honestly, I don't know, because every show they had was sold out. I saw them play. Like, they were unbelievable. They were very nice. I almost couldn't believe how nice they were to me. Because they were so popular and they were so good looking. I had nothing to offer these two beautiful boys in their twenties. And I was just like, you want to play on my record, you know?
48:46 Dax Shepard? How's this sound?
48:47 Speaker 02 And they just did it for no reason. The way I had things going was I would busk whenever I could in the daytime at Pike Place Market. And I had these residencies at night in clubs and restaurants all over Seattle. I'm talking about Duke's Clem Chowder House, Bill Medine's Ravioli Station in Ballard, the Dubliner Bar, and the Ballard Firehouse.
49:06 Dax Shepard? People are coming for the entree first, and then there's music.
49:09 Speaker 02 They have no idea they're going to get music.
49:11 Dax Shepard? Right.
49:11 Speaker 02 But I did have this little P A. system that I would go and I would go, hey, listen, I got two speakers. I know you don't have music here, but if you let me come in on Tuesday nights, give me like four Tuesday nights. If on the fifth Tuesday night, it's like twice as busy in here, then you got to start paying me.
49:25 Dax Shepard? Nice.
49:25 Speaker 02 And then I would get my Tuesday night at Salty's on Alki. So I basically had all these residencies going. And then I would get down on my breaks and sit with all these people at their tables and have a beer and say, give me your phone number, give me your phone number. And then once a month I would call them and I'd go, hey, I got a Big show at the Tractor Tavern. Might be some record labels there. Will you pack it out for me?
49:45 Speaker 01 Oh.
49:46 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
49:46 Speaker 02 And all these people would come and then I'd have packed shows. And so everybody was like, what's going on with this girl?
49:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
49:53 Dax Shepard? Wow, you really networked your way into that.
49:54 Speaker 01 Good.
49:55 Speaker 02 That's how we ended up getting a record deal and that's how I ended up getting the twins to join the band.
49:59 Speaker 01 Wow.
50:00 Dax Shepard? Don't you marvel, I'll be just reflecting on the odds against everyone to make it in any of these chosen show business careers? And the thing I constantly come back to is like, yeah, it'd be great if talent got you there. The amount of hustle it takes, I think, is a little misleading when you're on the outside. You think like, oh, if I'm Bieber and I'm a genius at 13, I'll become famous. And really, it's like, I mean, you gotta fucking call random people you played in front of at a restaurant?
50:26 Speaker 02 Yeah. And it's really the stuff we've been talking about this whole time that gives you that acumen, like the skills to do that. You can't fake being a coyote. You can't fake coming from nothing. You can't fake the charisma that it takes to rise like a phoenix out of really difficult situations.
50:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah. So it does start happening pretty darn quick for you, I would say, right? Cause you've dropped out of high school. That ship sailed.
50:52 Speaker 02 That was a bummer.
50:54 Speaker 01 I do wanna pause there for two seconds.
50:56 Dax Shepard? Pursue anything academically.
50:58 Speaker 01 Or you're just like, I'm done?
51:00 Dax Shepard? You had ADHD, right? You were diagnosed as ADHD?
51:03 Speaker 02 I don't think so. You know, something, my folks, the whole thing is a bit inaccurate in terms of like, we're inaccurate historians. I mean, I'm sure there was a doctor or two that was like, you have ADHD. And now that everybody understands it so well, I'm sure there's some truth to that, but I just didn't do well.
51:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:18 Speaker 02 In school and I just couldn't keep myself there.
51:21 Dax Shepard? You were restless there?
51:22 Speaker 02 And I felt too grown up to be there, I guess, because I had all these jobs and all these goals and these plans and I was working it. And I would be working and getting myself places and then I would go to school and have to raise my hand to use the bathroom.
51:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:37 Speaker 02 And I was like, I don't belong here. I'm an adult. I just felt like I can't be here. I'm failing. At everything. I need to go somewhere. I'm not gonna fail. That's what it was.
51:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
51:48 Speaker 01 And your parents were like, alright, I guess that's what's gonna happen. They didn't really have a choice.
51:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, me and my brother, we're just a year apart. We just stopped going and just started working.
51:58 Speaker 01 Wow, I just wonder, Dax, if the girls were like, we're not going to school anymore.
52:02 Dax Shepard? Of all the people I know who are successful in working, I don't think any of them went to Harvard. None of them did the right thing. I barely graduated high school. I don't think it's that big of a deal. I think if you, if you want it, you're gonna get it. And if you don't want it, you're not gonna get it anyways. I can send you any school that'll take you. It's not gonna give you that. I hate to say that I feel that way, but I kinda do.
52:23 Speaker 01 I mean, it worked out.
52:24 Speaker 02 If my girls came to me and said, we don't wanna go to a conventional high school, I have the time and the means to help them with an alternative path. My parents, they both dropped out of high school. No one in our family graduated. Not my brother, not my sister, not me, not my folks.
52:39 Dax Shepard? Wow, your kids could be the first.
52:40 Speaker 02 So my kids could be the first. They will do it maybe a different way, though. I don't see my kids going to a conventional high school and doing that. I don't understand how to speak that language. So I think there'll be alternative forms of their exit from their education.
52:53 Dax Shepard? But suffice to say, by 2005, you record Brandy Carlisle. That's the first album. So you would have been 24?
53:03 Speaker 02 When it came out, yeah. I think I recorded it in maybe 2002, 2003.
53:07 Dax Shepard? So pretty young, 24. And that works. Like Rolling Stone reviews it beautifully. They put you on the top 10 artists to watch in 2005. After all that grind, did you have a hard time trusting the positive things that were coming?
53:23 Speaker 02 No, I just loved it. I was so happy. Honestly, I was happy before. I've always felt like a famous singer.
53:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
53:33 Speaker 02 I've always felt like that. So no.
53:35 Dax Shepard? You're like, oh, the world caught up.
53:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm more gun shy now than I was back then.
53:40 Dax Shepard? Tell me, what do you think has caused that?
53:42 Speaker 02 I don't know, maybe just getting older, being middle aged, wondering about relevance, the internet, the way people talk about each other, how easy it is to surmise that someone is something that they're not. And those kinds of things just make me question whether this is the gig for me.
53:59 Dax Shepard? It's weird though, isn't it? It's like counter to what you would think. If you would ask me at like 15, let's say you did all this stuff, what would you feel like at the end of it? Be like, oh, I'd feel so confident. But yeah, I was in this movie that people give me a lot of compliments for Idiocracy. And I played a role that I know I wouldn't do today. Like, it would be too big of a swing. I would be afraid to go try to do what I did in that movie.
54:22 Speaker 02 You're saying that you wouldn't do it?
54:23 Dax Shepard? Today, if you offered me that role today, I would be like, I can't do it.
54:26 Speaker 02 You'd be too scared.
54:27 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I'd be too scared. But isn't that what we're saying? There's like, that's what's so weird.
54:30 Speaker 02 Well, that's the thing about Idiocracy too, that, yeah, I could see why. Yeah, I could see why.
54:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah, just it was a huge swing and I didn't mind at all taking it at 30. And I didn't give a fuck if anyone thought it was embarrassing or not.
54:41 Speaker 02 Right, right, right.
54:42 Dax Shepard? And now I would. And it would be harder for me to do it now. And that's opposite of what I would have expected.
54:48 Speaker 02 Is it because we don't want to be embarrassed in front of our kids? Is it because we're like becoming legacy conscious as we get older?
54:55 Dax Shepard? I mean, I think those are really good guesses. And for probably a lot of people, that stuff is going on. I don't think I'm concerned about legacy. I think what it is is, in some weird way, I was inoculated by ignorance and naivete. And didn't even consider, what if I look ridiculous doing it? What if this is embarrassing? Those thoughts never crossed my mind. And now they would.
55:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, that sucks. We only get that, I think, for...
55:19 Dax Shepard? I'm not as good as I thought I was. That's part of it, right? Like, I used to think I was so good. Now I think I'm fine. In some weird ways, I'm more confident. But also, it's like I tapped on the bottom and the top.
55:29 Speaker 02 What has changed that? Do you think you've let some of the outside in a little bit?
55:33 Dax Shepard? Yeah, or I've seen stuff I did that I thought was one thing. And then upon reflection or years away, I'm like, oh, it wasn't as good as I thought it was. I wasn't as good in it. I more come to the feeling like, yeah, I'm fine. I can do this job, not I'm going to be Will Ferrell. At that point, I was like, I'm going to be Will Ferrell.
55:49 Speaker 01 No, you have stuff to lose now. That's really what it is. You get to an age where you have stuff to lose. When you're starting out, there's nothing to lose. You're able to put yourself out there because it's like, well, what's the worst that can happen?
56:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I didn't have a mortgage when I did that.
56:02 Speaker 01 Exactly. And you have a reputation, you have children. There's a ton to lose, actually.
56:07 Speaker 02 Exactly. And you're a little bit dumb.
56:09 Speaker 01 The beauty of not having a fully developed frontal lobe, actually, it helps you.
56:13 Speaker 02 I put out album after album after album without ever even knowing when the Grammys were. And now I'm thinking about the Grammys before I write the song. I don't want it to be that way. And I push it out. I do it. I get rid of it and I do the thing and I go in. But to not know the things I know, I made an album with Elton John. Elton's incredibly encyclopedic about numbers and the charts and how things do. And he knows everything. And I knew nothing. He would call me and say, hey, the record is coming out at this, or it got this, or this thing is going to happen. And I'd be like, oh, my God, tell me about that. Like, what is that?
56:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
56:49 Speaker 02 Once you learn too much about how you're being received, it can definitely go in. But I think there's ways we can erase it. I don't know how, but I think there are ways we can get rid of the knowledge.
57:01 Dax Shepard? Well, because we have examples of people who have avoided that. So minimally, there are mentors that exist that seem to have never succumbed to that pressure. But yes, if you've never been nominated for a Grammy, who cares? Once you get nominated for one, now we know you can do it. It's yours to not do.
57:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
57:19 Dax Shepard? That's what fucks you up, I think, is like, okay.
57:21 Speaker 02 Yours to not do.
57:22 Speaker 01 In the climb, we talk about this all the time. It's counterintuitive, but it's so much scarier once you're at the top of the mountain. Climbing the mountain is hard. And when you're in it, you're like, oh, I want to do is be up there. But then when you're up there, there's one way to go.
57:35 Speaker 02 There's one way to go.
57:36 Speaker 01 It's scary up there.
57:38 Dax Shepard? Nowhere to go.
57:38 Speaker 01 And you're more self-conscious because of it.
57:41 Speaker 02 You're right. Yeah. And they Say, what's that Miley lyric? There's always gonna be another mountain.
57:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:46 Dax Shepard? There's always gonna be enough.
57:48 Speaker 02 I need another mountain. I need another mountain all the time. That's my addiction.
57:51 Speaker 01 They're there.
57:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
57:52 Dax Shepard? OK, in 07, the story comes out. How did you end up working with T-Bone Burnett? And is he as magical as I'm led to believe from film and television? He seems very special.
58:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, he is very special. When I started recording our songs, me and the twins' songs, we had like forty something songs, forty-two songs maybe, over the course of doing these residencies together and working together and practicing. And who we met first was Rick Rubin.
58:17 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
58:18 Dax Shepard? OK.
58:19 Speaker 02 And Rick Rubin tried to sign us to American Recordings, but there was a lot going on, like the Johnny Cash stuff had just come out and he was moving and a bunch of record label stuff. Didn't work out. But what he told me was, these are your good songs and these are your not-so-good songs. He divided them in half and he goes, this is a really great record. This is something you can record if you need to make money and find a way to get yourself through the next couple of years until I get settled in at my new record label.
58:45 Dax Shepard? Did you agree with that assessment?
58:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, then I was really open to suggestion at that point from him. So I divided those things in half and I went in and recorded what became Brandy Carlisle as my own collection, basically, of demos for me to sell at my shows. And then later on, I got the record deal in 2005. And they said, well, OK, we know your good record is the story, this album you have set aside.
59:07 Dax Shepard? Mythical, yet to come out.
59:08 Speaker 02 Let's put this other one out in the meantime, while you kind of get your chops and get out on the road and get good. So we did, and that became Brandy Carlisle. That was my not-good songs. That was my album of rejects.
59:19 Dax Shepard? And you toured for two years on that, right?
59:21 Speaker 02 Toured for like several years on that. And then it never really worked out with Rick Rubin. And I met T-Bone Burnett in a hotel bar in New York City. And we got to talking about country music. We hit it off and we agreed that we were gonna leave the country and make a record together in some other country. That record was the story. And the whole thing is recorded live in one room with one band to tape.
59:43 Dax Shepard? Eleven days or something, something really quick.
59:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, you can't get T-Bone Burnett to stay longer than that.
59:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah, he moves quick.
59:50 Speaker 02 He moves quick.
59:51 Dax Shepard? What was going on with T- On the live was a departure from what was being done normally, right?
59:56 Speaker 02 It was, but it was a recent departure because like I was saying, Pro Tools was only kinda new. And there were certain editing techniques that are second nature today that you hear all the time without realizing you're hearing them, that we didn't really have refined or have a lot of access to back in that exact moment. You couldn't have used autotune or Melodyne and not heard it. You'd hear it. It wasn't as finessed as it is now. Compression too, everything was in a time when you're hearing like really unaltered human voice and not a lot of isolation.
1:00:27 Dax Shepard? Your voice cracks on one of the tracks, right?
1:00:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, on the story in a significant way. And a lot of times I'm playing guitar and singing at the same time and those things can't be separated in those recordings. And so we recorded to tape, which is another, whole other cumbersome but beautiful sounding way to record.
1:00:42 Dax Shepard? And to edit on it is so much more time consuming.
1:00:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, they actually splice it and cut it. So you have to make big decisions about accepting imperfection.
1:00:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah. So how about that moment with the voice? When you first started, were you like, we can't have that? Or were you like, oh, fuck, this somehow has a magic to it?
1:00:58 Speaker 02 It felt and sounded so wild to me when I made that sound that I almost laughed and just ended the take.
1:01:03 Speaker 01 Right.
1:01:04 Speaker 02 For everyone.
1:01:05 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:01:05 Speaker 02 But I knew that everybody was playing so good and I didn't want to throw it for the drummer. And so I just sang through it thinking, well, if they love the first half, they can splice a second half on from another one. When I ended the song, T-Mob Burnett comes running through and, you know, he doesn't run. But he comes up and he throws the door open on my ISO pod and he goes, that was the moment of the record. That was the moment of the record.
1:01:29 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow.
1:01:30 Speaker 02 And I go, what are you talking about? He goes, wait till you hear it.
1:01:32 Speaker 01 Wow. Powerful.
1:01:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:01:35 Dax Shepard? That's cool.
1:01:35 Speaker 01 That is so cool.
1:01:37 Dax Shepard? So that album, The Story, really changes kinda everything, yeah?
1:01:42 Speaker 02 No, at the time it really didn't. I think it didn't break the top anything.
1:01:47 Dax Shepard? Well, you get songs on Grey's Anatomy, they.
1:01:50 Speaker 02 That started happening. So Grey's Anatomy started showing up really early, like during the Brandy Carlisle thing. And this sort of relationship happened with them where they found that my music was going well with their programming. I even recorded a couple of songs just for them.
1:02:05 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:02:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah. In one season, they had three of your songs. And then their musical episode, they sang one of your songs.
1:02:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, the story. It helped everything. It helped pay the bills. It helped our band. And what an iconic show.
1:02:16 Speaker 01 Oh, my God. I was obsessed with it and specifically the muse, just picking out every song.
1:02:21 Dax Shepard? They were like, "Morning Becomes Eclectic." They were like a gateway to great music.
1:02:25 Speaker 02 Exactly like "Morning Becomes Eclectic." Exactly like "Garden State."
1:02:28 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:02:28 Speaker 02 There was this kind of really cool thing that happened around sync licensing at that time. And I just happened to be a part of it. I still feel the ripple effect of that. And I love that show.
1:02:39 Speaker 01 It's a great show.
1:02:40 Dax Shepard? What size venues were you playing in on that two years of touring with Brandi Carlile? Theaters or bars?
1:02:46 Speaker 02 Well, if I got to open for somebody, theaters. But a lot of bars and clubs and just kind of standing rooms and stuff like that. Loved it.
1:02:53 Dax Shepard? Saw all kinds of fun stuff, I bet.
1:02:55 Speaker 02 Saw all kinds of fun stuff. I never got on a plane until I was 17 years old. So I saw the whole country with these two twins in my own van.
1:03:02 Speaker 01 We should take our kids to more bars. Right. That actually teaches how to get by in a bar.
1:03:08 Dax Shepard? Oh, if you can survive there.
1:03:10 Speaker 02 Litmus test for the whole world.
1:03:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah, every weekend with my father, I spent the entire day at the Dirty Doug Saloon from like 8 a.m. till 2 in the morning.
1:03:18 Speaker 02 Dirty Doug.
1:03:18 Dax Shepard? That was his spot.
1:03:20 Speaker 01 Tell me you met Doug.
1:03:21 Dax Shepard? The Dirty Duck.
1:03:24 Speaker 02 I gotta know who Doug is.
1:03:26 Speaker 01 Dirty Doug.
1:03:27 Speaker 02 Hook me up with this dude.
1:03:27 Dax Shepard? Probably was owned by a Dirty Doug, for sure. Okay, so when you finally got to work with Rick Rubin, how was that? That could go either way. If he met you years before and saved this and these are great, this could go either way.
1:03:39 Speaker 02 I found it tense.
1:03:40 Dax Shepard? I'm intimidated by him a bit. We interviewed him and I was like, he's got some mojo, but the mojo for me is intimidating.
1:03:46 Speaker 02 I think I found it like that. If I had to really unpack it on the spot, I would say that him being the deciding force between whether something was great or not great really rubbed me the wrong way.
1:03:58 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:03:59 Speaker 02 He actually used the word great all the time. And I felt that that word was subjective. I was young enough to where the punk rock artist in me needed that word to be subjective. And I needed to be the determining factor between what I was. Making whether it was great or not great.
1:04:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:04:15 Speaker 02 And I think if he were sitting here today, he would probably giggle and tell you that that's probably what he doesn't like about working with young artists is that they have to be determining factor of great or not great. At the same time, I wouldn't take that from myself for anything. So we butted heads.
1:04:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:04:31 Speaker 02 Really bad. And then later on in life, came back together and now are very good friends.
1:04:36 Dax Shepard? Oh, that's lovely.
1:04:36 Speaker 02 But I still think he's a complicated man and tough to work with on that level.
1:04:41 Dax Shepard? Yeah. I only hung around there for a minute when the Avits were recording there because I'm friends with Seth.
1:04:48 Speaker 02 Oh, cool. I'm really good friends with those guys, too.
1:04:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I noticed you guys have played together. But if I had to really isolate, like, what insecurity in me is triggered by him?
1:04:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, tell me.
1:04:57 Dax Shepard? There's something almost religious about him and I'm like, oh, I'll never grasp his thing that he's got and therefore he doesn't value me, you know, whatever. He's got some toehold on something I don't even believe in. And so there's a chasm between us and he'll never think I'm special and I'll never think he understands me. I don't know.
1:05:16 Speaker 02 Well, that's the same thing. His like serenity and his knowledge of what's great and not great is almost religious.
1:05:23 Dax Shepard? It's like an aggressive serenity.
1:05:25 Speaker 02 Dude, dude, that's it.
1:05:29 Speaker 01 Well, it's serious.
1:05:31 Speaker 02 Is it. It's an aggressive serenity.
1:05:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:05:35 Speaker 01 He just also, he knows himself.
1:05:37 Dax Shepard? And I think the dude's a genius. Let me be clear as day. I think the dude's a genius.
1:05:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, he knows himself very well. In the middle of our interview, he was like, it's cold in here. We need to turn down the, he didn't say, can we?
1:05:47 Dax Shepard? No, no, no.
1:05:48 Speaker 01 Very, we were like, oh, okay.
1:05:50 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
1:05:50 Speaker 01 And then it like really rattled us for the next like however many minutes.
1:05:54 Dax Shepard? That's all I could talk about.
1:05:55 Speaker 01 Happened. It had never happened. He like really just knows what he wants. He says it. He's not scared of you.
1:06:02 Dax Shepard? Not a people pleaser.
1:06:02 Speaker 02 No, like what we would say is, hey, are you guys cold?
1:06:05 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:06:06 Speaker 02 You know what I mean? We would like, we would ask for the peanut gallery to like chime in and make a group decision.
1:06:12 Dax Shepard? But there's merits and faults. I find myself a little envious of him.
1:06:15 Speaker 02 I have to admit that the first thing I said when I walked in here today was, can we turn the air conditioner down?
1:06:19 Speaker 01 No, yes.
1:06:19 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:06:20 Speaker 01 It's totally a fair thing. It's totally fair.
1:06:23 Speaker 02 I guess he passed some of it on to me.
1:06:25 Dax Shepard? You know, it's a legit thing to say. It's just the manner in which he rolled it out was unlike any version I had ever heard someone advocate for themselves.
1:06:34 Speaker 02 One time I went up to, again, this is the other thing is when we were making that second record, he didn't come to the studio, not one time. And I live in Seattle and I had to live in LA to make this record so I could be near him. But then I would have to take the record, which we recorded on to tape, up to his house once a week, sit there and play for him all the work I would done. And then he would make suggestions. And so at one point, he asked for me to double a guitar solo in length.
1:07:00 Dax Shepard? That sounds challenging.
1:07:01 Speaker 02 In this song, "Impossible."
1:07:03 Dax Shepard? Now I say "Impossible."
1:07:04 Speaker 02 Yeah. So I said, oh, well, we were cutting the tape. We can't do that. And he goes, "I'm sure you'll find a way to make it happen."
1:07:10 Speaker 01 Yeah. Did you?
1:07:12 Speaker 02 No.
1:07:12 Speaker 01 Okay, okay, okay.
1:07:14 Dax Shepard? It couldn't be done.
1:07:15 Speaker 02 But it was like that. Aggressive serenity was such a descriptive factor. Anyway, I don't think it's that way anymore. In fact, I worked with him recently on something and yeah, he was very direct, but I enjoyed it.
1:07:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's cool. Something about him triggers some insecurity in me. The dude's fine and he's a genius.
1:07:33 Speaker 02 And he knows it.
1:07:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:07:34 Speaker 02 Quietly, silently knows it.
1:07:36 Dax Shepard? And I may be jealous of that, too.
1:07:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, maybe. If you ask him, because he doesn't play an instrument or know how to run any of the equipment, what qualifies him as being
1:07:45 Dax Shepard? The guru.
1:07:46 Speaker 02 That he is. And he just says very confidently, "My taste. I gotta respect it."
1:07:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, I know. I do. And the results. He has them.
1:07:54 Speaker 02 Hence, none of that.
1:07:55 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:07:58 Speaker 03 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
1:08:04 Dax Shepard? We get support from Instagram teen accounts. So we talk a lot on this show about how the world is different now than when we were growing up. And one of the biggest differences is obviously social media. And I think a lot of people wonder, okay, what's actually being done to make it safer for teenagers?
1:08:20 Speaker 02 Which is a fair
1:08:21 Speaker 01 Question.
1:08:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah, so Instagram has got something called teen accounts and they come with automatic protections built in by default. So anyone between 13 and 17 is automatically placed into this experience. They get age appropriate content settings, contact limits, so that by default, only people they're already connected to can message them. And time management tools, daily time limit reminders, and also sleep mode that mutes notifications from 10pm to 7am.
1:08:48 Speaker 01 Sleep mode is genius.
1:08:49 Dax Shepard? Right? And here's the thing, for anyone under 16, a parent has to give permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. The guardrails are on and Instagram keeps building new safety features to create age appropriate experiences for teens.
1:09:05 Speaker 01 I am really glad Instagram is helping to give parents peace of mind with teen accounts.
1:09:09 Dax Shepard? Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.
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1:09:40 Dax Shepard? 2014, you sing the National Anthem at a Seahawks game. You've performed at this point a thousand times in front of people?
1:09:47 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. In my mind, I'm like already Celine Dion.
1:09:50 Dax Shepard? Right, right, right. But do you get nervous when you go perform there?
1:09:54 Speaker 02 For some reason, though.
1:09:55 Dax Shepard? Good, I like that.
1:09:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I actually sang the National Anthem a lot in the early part of my career for different sporting things in Seattle. I sort of had like a program, I knew a key, like I had a key that I do it in, and I knew a way to keep the key in my head, so I didn't lose it when I got out there. I knew how to manage delay in the stadium. I knew how to use that song as like a wrestling move.
1:10:16 Dax Shepard? It's a complicated song, no? Like, there's something about, it can get away from you, that song, really easy, right? People start too high and they got nowhere to go, is that what it is?
1:10:23 Speaker 02 The fear in their eyes, like just like, look at their eyes.
1:10:25 Dax Shepard? They're out of octaves.
1:10:26 Speaker 02 Don't even listen to where they started, just look at their eyes.
1:10:29 Speaker 01 Oh, God. Oh, my God.
1:10:33 Dax Shepard? Okay, so let's go to The Firewatcher's Daughter 2015. This is the first Grammy nomination you get.
1:10:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:10:40 Dax Shepard? So you've been at it now for 10 years. What do you think you picked up between Brandy Carlisle, the first album and The Firewatcher's Daughter? Do you think it's all the same? They just slept on you before? Or do you think you learned something at some point that made that a logical conclusion?
1:10:58 Speaker 02 Lots and lots of live experience, lots and lots of road time and people's skills, understanding how to interact with people, but hold on to myself. A lot of production know-how because I had worked with T-Bone Burnett and Rick Rubin on two separate things. And then also all these ancillary producers, like I had gone in with John Goodmanson and Tony Berg. And I'd done a lot of projects with other really big producers. And me and the twins, we came from a big producer, Rick Prosser. So I had like a lot of production ideas and a lot of beliefs about leadership. And when we went in and made Firewatcher's Daughter, it was for better or worse, self-produced with a really powerful and amazing engineer called Trina Shoemaker, who was really co-producing when I look back on it now. And so I felt that we were like almost an indie band.
1:11:43 Speaker 02 We were living like an indie band and operating like an indie band and just fine with it. Doing really, really well and believing we were doing really well.
1:11:51 Dax Shepard? So when you got that nomination, were you shocked or did you feel that coming?
1:11:55 Speaker 02 I was shocked. Nobody had ever even talked to me about the Grammys. I thought it was like a TV show that my mom would let me stay up late for because Whitney is gonna hit that note live. Oh, yeah. And so basically, I was on an airplane and I got a text message from ATO, the like indie label we were on at the time. This guy, John, he texted me and he said, "Congratulations on your Grammy nomination." I was on the label with Brittany Howard and I knew she was always getting this stuff. So I thought, "Oh, this is Brandy," I said to him.
1:12:22 Dax Shepard? It's been a mix-up.
1:12:23 Speaker 02 Wow. Speechless. I had no idea even when they were, when the nominations are coming out.
1:12:28 Dax Shepard? Did you cry?
1:12:29 Speaker 02 No.
1:12:29 Dax Shepard? Didn't mean to insinuate you were a...
1:12:31 Speaker 02 No.
1:12:32 Speaker 01 A little baby.
1:12:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
1:12:34 Speaker 02 No, I'm just thinking about it because the Grammys have made me cry a couple of times, but at this point I didn't cry yet. But I was just like, oh, that's a level of making it that I hadn't even considered.
1:12:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:12:45 Speaker 02 So.
1:12:45 Dax Shepard? You ended up somewhere bigger than you dreamed.
1:12:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, so I went. It was awesome.
1:12:49 Dax Shepard? Well, you've been back a bazillion times. Just wondering, after you've already had them, does the reaction turn to more like relief?
1:12:57 Speaker 02 I think it does.
1:12:58 Dax Shepard? Isn't that weird?
1:12:59 Speaker 02 It does because the team works so hard for it. You so want to be able to bring that home for everybody else. And then there becomes an expectation. And, you know, if you don't get it, does that mean that something's over? Like when Elton was involved in this last one for Elton, I've never wanted acknowledgement more in my life than I did for Elton. Like, he hasn't had enough acknowledgement.
1:13:22 Dax Shepard? Right, right, right. But on his behalf, you very much wanted that.
1:13:24 Speaker 02 I couldn't sleep for like two days.
1:13:26 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:13:27 Speaker 02 Yeah. And then we woke up and we had it. And it was like, oh, we didn't win.
1:13:30 Dax Shepard? And you got nominated for an Academy Award from that song, too.
1:13:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:13:33 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:13:34 Speaker 01 That's exciting.
1:13:35 Dax Shepard? And you've won two Emmys.
1:13:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, two Emmys.
1:13:37 Speaker 01 You're on your way to an EGOT. I see this coming.
1:13:41 Speaker 02 Do you?
1:13:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:13:42 Dax Shepard? What's the other one she's not involved with?
1:13:44 Speaker 01 A Tony. Well.
1:13:45 Dax Shepard? You need to get figure out Tony.
1:13:46 Speaker 01 We can figure that out.
1:13:47 Speaker 02 I have an idea for it.
1:13:48 Dax Shepard? Oh, God, that's a good idea. All right. The other fun thing you've done other than create nine albums that are all great and won 11 Grammys and two Emmys and Academy Award nomination. You've also got this side career as someone who has been obsessed with people and you get to work with these people. I think this is the zone of your life I'd be most envious of, more than the other stuff. To have people you love for an eternity and then to get to enter their orbit and then even get to work together. So is Tanya the first person or is Joni? Where does this start? Where you become this collaborator of people who have been humongous.
1:14:27 Speaker 02 Where did it start?
1:14:28 Dax Shepard? Because you have Tanya Tucker, you have Joni Mitchell, and you have Elton John. You've spent years with these people.
1:14:35 Speaker 02 It started in some of the places that you don't read about and that you can't imagine. Because I am a fan, like I am a way outside your tour bus for an autograph fan. I'm that kind of girl. And so a lot of these folks that I followed around when I was young and went to all of their shows and bought every single thing they did and worked to get closer to before I had this job, I got to work with them early on, like the Indigo Girls and Lyson Williams and Mary Chapin Carpenter and Kim Ritchie and some of my, like my favorite, most iconic, Bonnie Raitt. And then it starts to get bigger and the artists are like getting bigger. And it's like, I'm getting a call returned from Dolly and then we're singing together. And then me and Elton, we're going on vacation together and we're writing songs. And then Joni Mitchell, that turned into a whole other world.
1:15:18 Dax Shepard? I mean, I'm just guessing, but I feel like of the other two, I feel like Joni, you needed to pull her into performing again, yeah?
1:15:26 Speaker 02 I may have thought of that at the time, but I remember, you know who Russ Kunkel is? He's like this iconic drummer. He played on Blue and he played on all this James Taylor, like all the early, I think he's even on Tapestry. He's the dude and he's still killer in doing it all the time. But I did this concert where I covered Blue and I wasn't even that close with Joni yet, but she came. And I had just had my first Joni jam with her at her house. For anybody that doesn't know what the Joni jams are, it's something that we started at Joni's behest, six, seven years ago, recovering from an aneurysm, doesn't play music anymore. And we wound up in a situation where we had dinner and she was talking about her house
1:16:11 Speaker 02 and her instruments and her living room and saying, I don't do music anymore. I don't want to hear it. It's not a problem. I don't want you to think that that's sad. I'm a painter, I'm a this, I'm a that, but my house misses it. And these instruments should be played. What do you think about bringing a few people over every now and then and doing these nights?
1:16:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:16:31 Speaker 02 So I just had my first jam. And at the very first jam, I won't walk you through the whole process, but Joni decided out of nowhere to open her mouth and sing.
1:16:41 Dax Shepard? Wow.
1:16:42 Speaker 02 With nobody expecting it.
1:16:43 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:16:44 Speaker 02 It was, Herbie Hancock was sitting at the piano.
1:16:46 Dax Shepard? Oh, get out of here. Herbie Hancock was tickling the ivory?
1:16:49 Speaker 02 Exactly that.
1:16:50 Dax Shepard? Oh, my God.
1:16:50 Speaker 02 And he was hovering over this diminished chord that I didn't know what it was. Nobody knew what it was. She did, though, and she just goes, "Summertime and the livin' is easy." And people burst into tears. Herbie burst into tears. All the people that had been taking care of her. And as she recovered from her aneurysm, she wouldn't do music, but then suddenly just decided to sing that line. So I'm telling Russ Kunkel this, and he goes, "She sang?" I go, "Yeah, she fully sang." I go, "Yeah, maybe, you know, maybe it's this, or maybe it was because of that, or it was just this." And he goes, "One thing I want you to remember, if you ever think that you're spearheading this, Joni Mitchell always has a plan."
1:17:29 Speaker 02 Joni's always got a plan.
1:17:30 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:17:31 Speaker 02 And so I am convinced that she actually was the architect of everything from that first line to the Hollywood Bowl.
1:17:39 Dax Shepard? She's Kaiser Soze.
1:17:40 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:17:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:17:41 Dax Shepard? She let you believe this was all your idea. This is genius.
1:17:44 Speaker 02 I mean, you don't have to let me believe something's all my idea for me to just go ahead and believe it. She didn't say it wasn't, but I do feel like she orchestrated an incredible recovery for herself. I got to be the one in the passenger seat watching it happen.
1:17:58 Speaker 01 So cool.
1:17:59 Dax Shepard? That did escalate into you guys playing at the Bowl. How many shows did you guys do?
1:18:04 Speaker 02 We did two nights at the Bowl.
1:18:06 Dax Shepard? Two nights at the Bowl. Surreal experience for you. Are you able to, in moments like that, be super there in taking it all in? Or are you like, yeah?
1:18:16 Speaker 02 I mean, you want to talk about welling up. I let a few of the Joni things take me by surprise, but that one I was like ready for. And I remember just sitting next to her on the second night while she sang "Both Sides Now" and just openly weeping.
1:18:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:18:29 Speaker 02 Kind of knowing it was the last time I was going to get to do it.
1:18:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:18:32 Speaker 02 And also thinking, these are some of the most powerful moments in music history, listening to this woman sing this song. Especially from a perspective of recovering from this aneurysm, being 82 years old, and really having looked at life from both sides now.
1:18:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:18:47 Speaker 02 It's like, how did I get this seat?
1:18:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. You must believe, oh, I guess you believe in God, but I was going to say, you must believe in the simulation.
1:18:55 Speaker 02 The simulation? Explain.
1:18:57 Dax Shepard? We're in a computer model being run.
1:18:59 Speaker 01 Oh, like there's no way this is real.
1:19:01 Dax Shepard? Cause our lives are too good.
1:19:02 Speaker 02 Literally too good to be true.
1:19:03 Dax Shepard? It's suspicious. That night with you, with Joni Mitchell is highly suspicious.
1:19:08 Speaker 02 That's highly suspicious.
1:19:09 Speaker 01 Right?
1:19:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
1:19:10 Dax Shepard? That doesn't happen for people.
1:19:11 Speaker 02 No, it doesn't.
1:19:12 Speaker 01 You're in a computer game.
1:19:13 Dax Shepard? When it does, you gotta go like, wow, God's really smiling on me. Or we're in a simulation.
1:19:17 Speaker 02 Or what's gonna happen?
1:19:18 Speaker 01 Exactly, exactly. Or what shoe's gonna drop, yeah.
1:19:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:19:21 Dax Shepard? How long had it been since Tanya had recorded an album when you guys worked together?
1:19:26 Speaker 02 I think a long time, something like 17 years.
1:19:29 Dax Shepard? That album gets nominated for a Grammy?
1:19:32 Speaker 02 One.
1:19:32 Dax Shepard? One, sorry.
1:19:33 Speaker 02 One country album of the year and country song of the year.
1:19:36 Dax Shepard? Yes, after a 17 year.
1:19:38 Speaker 02 And she'd never won a Grammy in her life. And she is a country music way paper icon.
1:19:44 Dax Shepard? Yes, yes, yes. When you were imagining your own success and visualizing it and you thought it was gonna feel like blank? I wanna know how much that delivered or didn't. And then I wanna know the difference between being a part of something that when you can help someone else do something, contrast those two experiences.
1:20:03 Speaker 02 Well, it overdelivered, way beyond overdelivered. There's just things like, you know, headlining Madison Square Garden or winning a Grammy or anything that happened with Joni or Dolly or Elton or Tanya or Annie Lennox. It's unbelievable. And then if you take that part of my job and you actually backtrack it, it's why I'm married to my wife, it's why I have my daughters, it's why I have my brothers, the twins, and why we live together. It's why our family is okay. It's given me everything. And so to say it overdelivered is such an understatement because it has woven the fabric of my life. Now, in terms of when you get something from it, like success or you learn how to do something, when you share that, for me, it's always as soon as I figure out how to do it.
1:20:46 Speaker 02 So when I figure something out, whether it's how to throw a festival, or run a successful tour, or maybe make an album that is good enough to where it garners the respect of winning a Grammy, I immediately want to do that for or with someone else, immediately. I'm already bored with the me part of it.
1:21:05 Dax Shepard? Right.
1:21:05 Speaker 02 And so when, by the way, I forgive you did what it did, somebody mentioned Tanya Tucker, and I was like, that's next. Let's get Tanya Tucker here now. And then we get Tanya Tucker here now, and then you hear about the next guy, and you're like, yeah, yeah, let's get the door open for them, too. And that is just sort of how I've seen it. As soon as I figure out how to get in the door, I'm trying to find a way to prop it open.
1:21:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's really nice.
1:21:27 Speaker 02 That's the next mountain we were talking about. That's what it is. It's, yeah, once you do get what you want, before you sit there and marinate in it long enough to let it change you, get right on to doing that for somebody else.
1:21:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah, because that's where the elation, I mean, I think selfishly, you can pursue that. It's so exciting.
1:21:44 Speaker 01 It is so exciting.
1:21:45 Dax Shepard? It is, right? It's like the number one. Like, I'll pull up to this house, and I'm like, God, we are so lucky. We have a great house. But I look at Monica's house, and I'm like, oh, yeah, look at Monica's house. That's what I'm going on.
1:21:55 Speaker 02 That's so funny. I remember when me and the twins, even early on, around maybe the story or give up the ghost, anytime they would like move into a nice house, or get something, like I would go to their house, and I'd be like, hell, yeah.
1:22:07 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:22:08 Speaker 02 That's because of this job. That's because of this music we're making, like, we're winning.
1:22:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:22:13 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I don't know if I'm like superstitious, and I'm afraid if I let myself experience that, I'll lose everything. And then I can just enjoy it for them without any of those fears. I don't know what's going on, but something so much more joyous about that.
1:22:24 Speaker 01 You can see it objectively when it's not yours.
1:22:27 Dax Shepard? True, yeah, it's quite stark when it's not happening to you. So Phil, one of the twins, married her little sister.
1:22:35 Speaker 01 That's fun. Is it fun?
1:22:37 Dax Shepard? Isn't that fun?
1:22:38 Speaker 02 It's really fun.
1:22:38 Speaker 01 Okay, I was gonna say, it could also get complicated in making family.
1:22:41 Dax Shepard? Were they trying to hide it from you at first?
1:22:44 Speaker 02 Maybe a little bit.
1:22:45 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:22:46 Speaker 02 It was really awkward at first, actually.
1:22:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, I can imagine that.
1:22:49 Speaker 02 Because she was so young. And he was like, not young.
1:22:52 Dax Shepard? He was already older than you as you.
1:22:53 Speaker 02 He was already older than me. She's my baby sister.
1:22:56 Speaker 01 Yes, you're protected.
1:22:57 Speaker 02 I want to say she was like eighteen.
1:23:00 Speaker 01 Oh shit.
1:23:00 Speaker 02 And he was twenty-eight, twenty-nine. And we were already in a band. We'd been on the road together. We were kind of bros in a way.
1:23:07 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:23:07 Speaker 02 And I was like, are you serious right now? And I mean, I thought to myself, it could definitely be the end of anything with me and the twins, because you do not cross my brothers and sisters on my watch.
1:23:17 Speaker 01 He has that too.
1:23:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:23:18 Speaker 01 I mean, everyone has it, because some of you guys have it more than others.
1:23:21 Dax Shepard? I'll kill you if you hurt my sister's feelings.
1:23:23 Speaker 02 Oh, my God. My brother and sister, like, no.
1:23:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, but if they're in a relationship, there're gonna be some stuff.
1:23:30 Speaker 02 But he's been quite gallant. And honestly, she has really, I don't want to say something demeaning, like, well, she's really grown up, because she's like forty. But like, she has grown up.
1:23:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:23:41 Speaker 02 Married to that man.
1:23:43 Speaker 01 That's lovely.
1:23:44 Speaker 02 And in this band, that is how she has lived the second half of her life.
1:23:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
1:23:49 Speaker 02 And it's been incredible.
1:23:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I'm so delighted it worked out.
1:23:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's awesome.
1:23:54 Dax Shepard? Because they've been together for a long time now. Twenty-two years of.
1:23:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:23:57 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:23:57 Speaker 02 It's a long time.
1:23:58 Dax Shepard? You've been with your wife for thirteen years?
1:24:01 Speaker 02 We've been married for fifteen.
1:24:03 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:24:04 Speaker 02 And we've been together for like sixteen, seventeen.
1:24:06 Dax Shepard? And so how'd you meet her if she's from England?
1:24:08 Speaker 02 We met, actually, she was working for Paul McCartney.
1:24:11 Dax Shepard? Oh, right, she was doing his philanthropic work.
1:24:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I had like a campaign running in Seattle called the Fight the Fear Campaign. We were teaching self-defense courses to women and people in at-risk communities.
1:24:24 Speaker 01 Amazing.
1:24:24 Speaker 02 For free, because there was like a terrible string of like violent crime that had happened in the city that year. And when it kind of culminated in this really awful thing. And so it traveled across to England, and she was reading about this in the newspaper, and basically called up and was like, hey, what can Paul do? What can I do to help with the Paul thing? And I thought to myself, well, I just started this foundation, I need some mentorship.
1:24:46 Dax Shepard? Looking out foundation?
1:24:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, I had a lot of principles that maybe I was getting in my own way a little bit. So I wanted to have this mentorship thing with her, and we got to talking. And so for like a while, I thought I was talking to somebody Paul McCartney's age.
1:25:00 Dax Shepard? Oh wow.
1:25:00 Speaker 02 I thought I was talking to a 70 year old woman.
1:25:02 Dax Shepard? Okay, wow, that's an interesting, that's almost like a reality show, like you can't see the person.
1:25:07 Speaker 01 There is a.
1:25:07 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:25:08 Speaker 02 It didn't occur to me that she wasn't 70.
1:25:10 Dax Shepard? Right.
1:25:10 Speaker 02 It did not even occur to me. And she was saying 70 year old shit, too.
1:25:15 Dax Shepard? Because she's English, it sounded.
1:25:16 Speaker 01 Wise stuff.
1:25:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:25:17 Dax Shepard? At least she took the lift or something.
1:25:19 Speaker 02 I don't know, she was doing 70 year old stuff, she was listening to 70 year old music, her and her girlfriend were traveling like 70 year old people. It just had this vibe.
1:25:26 Dax Shepard? Did you have any moment where you're like, I feel like I'm becoming attracted to a 70 year old woman?
1:25:30 Speaker 02 No, I just called her the charity lady, I'm like the charity lady. And then, one time I was playing in New York City, and I was like getting ready to go out with all the baby dykes, we were all gonna get on our Vespas and drive to the gay bar and drink tequila. And I couldn't wait, and she came to the show, and I remember the tour manager being like, oh, you're gonna have to say hi to the charity lady, but I was like.
1:25:49 Speaker 02 Really grateful to her, but.
1:25:50 Dax Shepard? She's in a wheelchair?
1:25:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly.
1:25:52 Dax Shepard? She got a walker, how'd you get her backstage?
1:25:55 Speaker 02 And now 70 is like, that's my age, I love, like that was barely old enough for me to date, but I walked backstage, it's this 27 year old, 28 year old.
1:26:02 Dax Shepard? She's hot, I imagine.
1:26:03 Speaker 02 Absolute knockout. Yeah.
1:26:06 Dax Shepard? She ain't no granny.
1:26:08 Speaker 02 I mean, and, oh my god, she was so charming, and I loved her accent, and she had black hair and bright blue eyes, and she was wearing this blazer, and she just was like hip, and I was like, cancel my plans, order me a pizza, I've gotta stay with this woman.
1:26:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:26:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:26:22 Speaker 01 Forever.
1:26:23 Speaker 02 Forever.
1:26:23 Dax Shepard? As it turns out. Did she already have a crush on you, she came to the show? She knew you weren't 70, she had that advantage over you.
1:26:29 Speaker 02 I don't know if she had a crush on me, she will say no. She will say no.
1:26:32 Dax Shepard? Good for her.
1:26:33 Speaker 02 But I think, yeah, she probably thought I was pretty cute.
1:26:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you come to the show.
1:26:37 Speaker 02 You come to the show.
1:26:39 Dax Shepard? Okay, now here's another little bit of overlap, what are you smiling at?
1:26:42 Speaker 01 Well, she's there.
1:26:43 Dax Shepard? Oh, that's my god, I did not put that together.
1:26:46 Speaker 01 I didn't know if you, I was like, should we ask her?
1:26:48 Dax Shepard? I thought you were like the publicist or something.
1:26:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:26:51 Dax Shepard? Let me look at these blue eyes.
1:26:53 Speaker 01 Look how beautiful she is.
1:26:55 Dax Shepard? And now I can say, it was theoretical, you are a fucking smoke show.
1:26:58 Speaker 02 She is a smoke.
1:27:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:27:00 Speaker 02 Show.
1:27:01 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:27:02 Speaker 02 She's absolutely.
1:27:02 Speaker 01 I didn't know what you were doing.
1:27:04 Dax Shepard? You, because you knew.
1:27:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:27:05 Dax Shepard? I thought it was your publicist.
1:27:07 Speaker 02 No, that's my wife, and she manages me now.
1:27:09 Dax Shepard? Okay, so I wasn't terribly all face.
1:27:11 Speaker 02 You were.
1:27:12 Dax Shepard? She's got an official capacity and a romantic capacity.
1:27:14 Speaker 01 Well, we can ask then, did you have a crush? She's gonna say no.
1:27:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah, when you came to that show, did you have plans?
1:27:21 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:27:23 Dax Shepard? I understand.
1:27:24 Speaker 02 Listen to her talk.
1:27:26 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I think we're all intrigued by your voice.
1:27:28 Speaker 02 Listen to that voice. Do you see what I was going through?
1:27:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's order pizza time.
1:27:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, let's not go all the way into this.
1:27:35 Dax Shepard? Get this girlfriend on here. Doesn't she have some errands to run? We ordered pizza. You can't eat pizza, right? I heard you're gluten intolerant. You don't eat cheese?
1:27:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, the cauliflower crust is in the twins stressing room.
1:27:46 Dax Shepard? Down the block.
1:27:50 Dax Shepard? Okay, our other overlap is we're both boat owners.
1:27:53 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:27:53 Dax Shepard? You have the Captain Fantastic. Gorgeous vessel. I saw some video of you out piloting it.
1:27:59 Speaker 02 And you have a pontoon.
1:28:01 Dax Shepard? I have a tri-tune. Yeah, yeah.
1:28:02 Speaker 02 So is a tri-tune less redneck than a pontoon?
1:28:06 Dax Shepard? It is. It's the newest iteration. They're more stable.
1:28:10 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:28:11 Dax Shepard? I have a 400 horsepower V10 on a pontoon, so it moves.
1:28:15 Speaker 02 Oh, wow, that really moves.
1:28:16 Dax Shepard? It really moves. I was just on it this weekend.
1:28:18 Speaker 02 Mercury or Yamaha?
1:28:20 Dax Shepard? A Mercury.
1:28:20 Speaker 01 Wow, this language you guys are speaking.
1:28:23 Dax Shepard? You got dual 350s out back?
1:28:25 Speaker 02 Dual 400s.
1:28:26 Dax Shepard? Dual 400s, girl. Get it. Okay.
1:28:29 Speaker 02 And a big ass kicker.
1:28:30 Dax Shepard? Second engine.
1:28:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
1:28:31 Dax Shepard? You've got me doubled in horsepower.
1:28:33 Speaker 01 Do you just check out? Yeah, me too.
1:28:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we could get into it.
1:28:37 Speaker 02 She really checks out.
1:28:38 Dax Shepard? Captain Fantastic named the boat after Elton John.
1:28:40 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:28:41 Dax Shepard? And just congratulations. Looking out foundations giving away nine million bucks. I think that's incredible that you've raised that amount of money.
1:28:46 Speaker 02 Doing a lot of different things, too.
1:28:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, what's?
1:28:49 Speaker 02 The thing about the foundation is I started the foundation in 2007 when GM wanted to use the story in a television commercial.
1:28:57 Dax Shepard? Right.
1:28:57 Speaker 02 And I was really young and idealistic. They offered me like a hundred thousand dollars, you know? And you know how old I was. That's a very big deal.
1:29:04 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:29:05 Speaker 02 And I made all these calls to all my friends and I called the Indigo Girls, which if you want to do a television commercial, never call the Indigo Girls. And all my friends were like, you can't do that. GM is one of the biggest contributors to pollution and they've caused all these problems. It is rumored that they've squashed patents and that they're really restricting the progression of the electric car and the hydrogen engine and the things that could help the environment. You can't work with GM. So who knows how much of that was true, but I said no. And so like the VP of Advertising at GM was like, a 20 something year old kid can't say no to $100,000 unless we're getting a really bad reputation. And they called me and they said, what can we do to convince you to let us put your song in the Olympics and give you $100,000?
1:29:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I'm going to make this even better for you.
1:29:49 Speaker 02 Yeah. And so I thought about it and I made some demands and they acquiesced to all of them. And it was really cool, empowering moment for me as a young girl.
1:29:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:29:57 Speaker 02 And then I took that money and started the foundation and that's what we used it for. But since then, the foundation has done the things like Fight the Fear campaign that I was telling you about. We've done a lot to end hunger. We've done a lot of LGBTQ focused stuff. And in recent years, the plight of displaced people and outreach to refugees and asylum seekers, you know, children whose lives have been torn apart by war, immigrants, economic migrants, and the way that we navigate the southern border have become focuses of the Looking Out Foundation.
1:30:24 Dax Shepard? And you did COVID relief stuff.
1:30:26 Speaker 02 We are really campaign based, you know, maybe it's ADHD part of me, if that's a real thing for me.
1:30:31 Dax Shepard? I like you're the only person that's actually been diagnosed and you don't want it.
1:30:33 Speaker 01 I know.
1:30:34 Dax Shepard? Everyone else hasn't been diagnosed and they want it. You're like flipping the script on this.
1:30:37 Speaker 02 Terminal uniqueness.
1:30:38 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I feel you.
1:30:39 Speaker 01 Too many people have it.
1:30:41 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's not punk rock anymore to be ADHD.
1:30:45 Speaker 02 No, so that's the foundation.
1:30:46 Speaker 01 That's awesome.
1:30:47 Dax Shepard? Okay, so Returning to Myself is currently out and you are on tour. You have tour dates that people could go look at, at brandycarlyle.com. And one other things I want to say before I get to be serenaded, which I'm so excited about.
1:31:02 Speaker 02 I'm excited.
1:31:03 Dax Shepard? I think that's it. Everyone, listen immediately to Returning to Myself if you're not already obsessed with it and go see Brandy live. This woman is like the Beatles. She's played as many live shows, you're guaranteed for a good show. I mean, you've been playing, it's kind of crazy, right? At 44, you've been playing for 30 plus years.
1:31:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's probably like, it's second nature to me by now, but it never gets old. Just like you were saying, it's the best job in the world.
1:31:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:31:28 Dax Shepard? All right, I would love to hear this song that's going to make me think of my children.
1:31:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, my buddy Marcus on and he did this, right? With this drop?
1:31:36 Speaker 01 Yes, he did.
1:31:38 Dax Shepard? Oh, you don't even need the bottle? Oh my God, this is post bottle.
1:31:42 Speaker 01 We've never even seen it without the bottle.
1:31:43 Speaker 02 I hipged Marcus to this.
1:31:45 Dax Shepard? Oh, I think he said that. By the way, we loved him.
1:31:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, I know.
1:31:50 Dax Shepard? You must love him, right?
1:31:51 Speaker 02 Oh my God. We are like sibs, man.
1:31:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, he brought you up a lot. He's like loves you.
1:31:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah, special dude.
1:31:58 Speaker 02 I love his solo album.
1:32:00 Speaker 01 Oh my God.
1:32:00 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah.
1:32:02 Speaker 02 Self-titled, it's such a good, he's such a good piece of music and really important.
1:32:09 Speaker 02 I love Mumford and Sons too, oh my God. Always have.
1:32:14 Speaker 02 Keep on with the levels, you want me to sing?
1:32:38 Dax Shepard? You know what's great is we're sitting here talking. You're just so charismatic and special. Before you do this.
1:32:44 Speaker 01 I know.
1:32:44 Dax Shepard? And then you do this and I'm like, well, hold on a sec. You can't have all.
1:32:47 Speaker 01 Now you're upset.
1:32:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah, now I'm a little upset. I'm like, you don't get a superpower on top of having a great personality. You get kind of one or the other.
1:32:54 Speaker 02 You guys have plenty of superpowers too.
1:32:57 Speaker 01 Not that one though. That's a hard one.
1:32:59 Dax Shepard? And you haven't even seen me drive that pontoon. That's gotta be what you're referencing.
1:33:04 Speaker 02 I can just see the wake though.
1:33:07 Speaker 02 So this song, it's about kids that are our kids' age. And it's about these little moments, these little like micro separations where you see them do something that you didn't expect. They're trying something out that they're gonna need later on in life, like when they're not with you. It's called like a you without me moment. And I'm wondering what yours was because my friend Ben, when he first heard this song, he had this moment where it was like, they were at this big party weekend thing and Mark Ronson was DJing and he was gonna let his oldest daughter stay up late and like dance with him on the dance floor. And they're out on the dance floor and they're silly dancing and they're being goofy and they're doing the thing, but she started to like her own music.
1:33:51 Speaker 02 So she sees a group of older girls, you know, she's maybe 10. And they're like 14 or 15. And he gets distracted and she leaves him and she goes over to them and she starts trying to dance with them, like the way they're dancing and like relate to them. And he said that he looked over there and he saw her and he didn't recognize her. That she was...
1:34:10 Dax Shepard? An independent, autonomous person.
1:34:12 Speaker 02 And she was taking a risk and she was using her body and voice in a way that he had never seen.
1:34:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:34:17 Speaker 02 And these are the little like moments where it occurs to you that they're gonna leave.
1:34:22 Dax Shepard? They're their own people.
1:34:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, and they're tiny things at first. And that's what I wrote this song about.
1:34:29 Speaker 02 It's called "You Without Me."
1:34:37 Speaker 02 Was your smile always crooked? Was the freedom ever free? Do you kick the rocks between your feet? After all this time with me? You can listen to your own records now. Decide what you believe you can pray on stars and skip the gods like stones across the sea. But I would know you anywhere I lost myself in you.
1:35:09 Speaker 02 And heavier than this, that you are free to slip right through. Do what you have to do.
1:35:24 Speaker 02 And there you are, my morning star. I wondered when you'd show.
1:35:35 Speaker 02 Give me just a quick thumbs up. A wink before you go. I never heard that voice before today. I remind myself to breathe. And there you are. It's just you. Without me.
1:36:07 Speaker 02 I'm late to another game, I guess I've never learned the rules. I showed up with a broken name and handed it to you. I'm not sure if you can fix it now, but if you wanted to, I would follow you around and carry all your tools.
1:36:31 Speaker 02 Cause I would know you anywhere, I found myself in you.
1:36:41 Speaker 02 And heavy are the hands that hold the changes you go through. Do what you have to do.
1:36:56 Speaker 02 And there you are, my morning star. I wondered when you'd show. Give me a just a quick thumbs up, a wink before you go.
1:37:16 Speaker 02 I never heard that voice before today, I remind myself to breathe. And there you are, it's just you, without me.
1:37:33 Speaker 02 Without me.
1:37:39 Speaker 02 It's as predictable as time and age, but comforting in some strange way. The time makes every one of us an absolute cliché. And when I met you face to face, none of it was true, so who am I if I'm not you?
1:38:08 Speaker 02 There you are, my morning star. I wondered when you'd show.
1:38:18 Speaker 02 Give me a just a quick thumbs up. A wink before you go.
1:38:28 Speaker 02 I never heard that voice before today. I remind myself to breathe. I'll never just have thought away. If ever you need me. You're gonna live a lot of life. You're gonna see a lot of years. God willing.
1:38:46 Speaker 02 Just you.
1:38:49 Speaker 02 Without me. There you are. It's just you.
1:39:02 Speaker 02 Without me.
1:39:13 Dax Shepard? Oh, it's so sad.
1:39:14 Speaker 01 That was beautiful. It's so beautiful.
1:39:17 Dax Shepard? It's the without me part that's so sad. Every time you say without me. They go, oh, yeah, you're gonna have a whole life without me.
1:39:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:39:27 Speaker 01 Gorgeous, gorgeous.
1:39:28 Dax Shepard? It's bittersweet, isn't it?
1:39:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, it is.
1:39:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah. You gotta go like, oh, yeah, and that's a sign I did a good job. That's all you get.
1:39:38 Dax Shepard? They're just like, see ya.
1:39:39 Speaker 01 I know. They're not. Think about how you think about your parents.
1:39:42 Speaker 02 Well, I know, but there was a moment.
1:39:44 Speaker 01 I know, there is.
1:39:45 Dax Shepard? I got my twenties to do, girl. I'll talk to you later. My twenties is coming, you know? You gotta do your twenties.
1:39:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:39:51 Dax Shepard? And then involve mom and dad.
1:39:53 Speaker 02 No.
1:39:53 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:39:54 Speaker 02 No, and then hopefully it comes back around.
1:39:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:39:56 Dax Shepard? But I want it for them.
1:39:58 Speaker 02 They go and they just do like one little thing. It's one little interaction you see them do. Point they make. One thing they disagree about where they win the argument.
1:40:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:40:07 Speaker 02 And you're like, there you are.
1:40:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:40:09 Speaker 02 That's who you're gonna be for the rest of your life. Without me.
1:40:12 Dax Shepard? Oh, no, take me. I'll carry your tools, like you said.
1:40:17 Speaker 01 I know.
1:40:18 Dax Shepard? I'll run and get coffee.
1:40:19 Speaker 01 Well, that was beautiful. Thank you so much.
1:40:22 Dax Shepard? Your tiny desk, by the way, is so good.
1:40:24 Speaker 02 Thank you.
1:40:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I fucking love tiny desk. And you nailed yours.
1:40:28 Speaker 02 I like tiny desk too.
1:40:29 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it'll show you who's what.
1:40:31 Speaker 02 Separates the wheat from the chaff.
1:40:32 Dax Shepard? That's right.
1:40:33 Speaker 02 Have you seen Dochi's Tiny Desk?
1:40:34 Dax Shepard? No, it's great. It's incredible.
1:40:37 Speaker 02 Or the Silk Sonic drummer.
1:40:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah, Anderson Paak.
1:40:40 Speaker 02 Oh, my God.
1:40:40 Dax Shepard? We had him on and we were like...
1:40:42 Speaker 02 That is just insane.
1:40:43 Dax Shepard? What a dude.
1:40:44 Speaker 02 What a vibe, too.
1:40:45 Dax Shepard? Did you watch that, um, I could talk to you for seven hours, just side note. I'm gonna wrap this up, but did you watch the Super Bowl halftime show with Dr. Dre? Obviously, he's the most memorable one ever.
1:40:54 Speaker 02 Yep. They were all wearing Rich Fresh tracksuits, baby blue, powder blue. It was so cool.
1:40:59 Dax Shepard? But when they pan over and I'm like, Anderson Paak's playing the drums this whole time?
1:41:04 Speaker 02 Of course he is. Yeah, I know.
1:41:06 Dax Shepard? Incredible.
1:41:08 Speaker 02 That is how stacked that lineup was. You didn't even see Anderson Paak playing the drums.
1:41:12 Dax Shepard? Exactly. Eleven minutes in, you're like, oh, damn, Anderson's been playing the drums this whole time.
1:41:17 Speaker 02 Why doesn't everybody call that halftime out? Like, everybody says, I mean, Prince, and I mean, Prince was amazing.
1:41:22 Dax Shepard? Right.
1:41:22 Speaker 02 But it's like...
1:41:23 Dax Shepard? No, that's number one.
1:41:24 Speaker 02 Pretty epic.
1:41:24 Dax Shepard? It was epic. I think, too, if you're a poor kid.
1:41:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:41:27 Dax Shepard? I was crying during that whole thing. I'm like, these kids are from down the block. And Tipper Gore was saying they were gonna destroy America.
1:41:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:41:34 Dax Shepard? And everyone hated them. And they were the poor kids. And look at them. And they are the show.
1:41:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:41:39 Dax Shepard? Oh, I loved it.
1:41:41 Speaker 02 See, you have the vibe that the old gays have now about the young gays.
1:41:44 Dax Shepard? That's right.
1:41:45 Speaker 02 That's like, that's poor, you're like, you got old, poor kid thing going on like that.
1:41:49 Dax Shepard? Exactly.
1:41:50 Speaker 02 That's the thing.
1:41:50 Dax Shepard? That's my gateway into understanding.
1:41:52 Speaker 02 Yeah. We're like, let's talk about coming from nothing right now.
1:41:55 Dax Shepard? Yeah. And then owning the world. These motherfuckers own the world. Nothing could be better. Well, Brandy, this has been a delight. Yes, thank you for joining us. Yeah, so nice. I'm really glad. Anna's got good taste. She sure does. When she picks a mentor, boy, it's few and far between. That's true. Yeah, thank you so much for coming. This has been so lovely.
1:42:12 Speaker 02 Thanks for having me.
1:42:13 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:42:13 Speaker 02 I've always wanted to talk to you guys.
1:42:15 Dax Shepard? Oh, my God, please come back.
1:42:17 Speaker 02 Have me back.
1:42:18 Dax Shepard? Oh, we'd love to. Anytime.
1:42:29 Speaker 01 Okay, we just ordered drinks.
1:42:31 Dax Shepard? Oh, uh huh.
1:42:32 Speaker 01 From Arowan.
1:42:33 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:42:33 Speaker 01 And I'm putting in, I'm trying to order it and it's saying, you, you have to meet at the door. This can't be left. It's like, that's weird. Okay, sure.
1:42:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:42:42 Speaker 01 Then it says you have to show your ID and we ordered you something new.
1:42:47 Dax Shepard? Do you think that's just a standard disclaimer in case you've ordered alcohol?
1:42:50 Speaker 01 No, because I order Arowan like every day, or not every day.
1:42:54 Dax Shepard? I mean.
1:42:54 Speaker 01 But I order a lot.
1:42:55 Dax Shepard? I bet you can predict my reaction to this. Which is like, fine, fuck you. We won't order from you.
1:43:00 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:43:01 Dax Shepard? You don't leave it. You gotta show ID. It's like, this is my, my beef with the place that required a signature no matter what. It's like our policy. It's like, great. Well, then I won't, I won't be using you.
1:43:09 Speaker 01 Okay. Well, I already ordered it.
1:43:11 Dax Shepard? You didn't predict that?
1:43:12 Speaker 01 No, I didn't. Because I, what I of course think is, so you got a new drink.
1:43:17 Dax Shepard? Oh, uh huh.
1:43:18 Speaker 01 We don't know about. It's like new and strange. It has colostrum in it.
1:43:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I think that's the only strange part. Everything else is not new or strange.
1:43:25 Speaker 01 Maybe that is what's requiring it.
1:43:28 Dax Shepard? Hey, you gotta be an adult to drink. Or maybe you gotta be a baby to drink colostrum.
1:43:31 Speaker 01 To show you're under 21?
1:43:34 Dax Shepard? You gotta show you're under two years old.
1:43:36 Speaker 01 Oh my God. Well, anyway.
1:43:38 Dax Shepard? We didn't anticipate that being the s-.
1:43:40 Speaker 01 We didn't, but I think this is interesting that.
1:43:43 Dax Shepard? I do too.
1:43:44 Speaker 04 Yeah, you got breast milk in your coffee?
1:43:46 Dax Shepard? There was no.
1:43:46 Speaker 01 I know. I want to make, yeah, it has, it has colostrum in it.
1:43:50 Dax Shepard? There's no alcohol in it. So why would you need an ID?
1:43:52 Speaker 01 Exactly. That's why I'm not, but now I have to check.
1:43:54 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:43:55 Speaker 01 Just.
1:43:57 Dax Shepard? I mean, I would detect alcohol immediately. Uh, that's interesting. That was in last night's meeting I was at.
1:44:04 Speaker 01 Tell me.
1:44:05 Dax Shepard? Well, just people are kind of, one person told a story about ordering a, you know, a Coke and it came. There's always these moments for alcoholics where inevitably you're gonna bump into some real alcohol.
1:44:16 Speaker 01 Oh my God. Yeah. Tell me how that goes.
1:44:18 Dax Shepard? Um, my, um, you know, my second dad and I were one time in, in Wyoming and, um, and I ordered a Diet Coke and he ordered a ginger ale. And our drinks came and, and we both took a sip of them almost at the same time. And I mean, it was like, oh, this is Jack and Diet. And then he's putting his drink down and he goes. This is what was really funny is he goes, try this. Is there jet like,
1:44:49 Speaker 01 Oh God.
1:44:49 Dax Shepard? He wasn't really thinking, he was just doing what you would normally do if you say something funny.
1:44:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:44:54 Dax Shepard? And I was like, I'll take your word for it. He's like, oh yeah, yeah, you shouldn't try it. But it was just kind of instinctual. Like, does this smell funny?
1:45:01 Speaker 01 Right, totally.
1:45:02 Dax Shepard? Does this taste like, anyways, they were both laced with Jack Daniels.
1:45:05 Speaker 01 That?
1:45:06 Dax Shepard? A Jack ginger and a Jack and diet.
1:45:07 Speaker 01 I have a lot, like, look, I have a lot of respect for servers and food staff and chefs and kitchen workers. But that makes me so angry.
1:45:20 Dax Shepard? It does?
1:45:21 Speaker 01 Yes. That kind of mistake, only that one.
1:45:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:45:24 Speaker 01 Is so bad. That is so dangerous. People don't understand what can happen.
1:45:31 Dax Shepard? Sure, sure, sure. I mean, look, we could, we could look at this from a lot of different angles. Um, I would just say right out of the gates, what percentage of people in the restaurant at any given time are recovering addicts? It's like a lot to-
1:45:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, but you have to protect the most vulnerable.
1:45:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. I just, I imagine he's got tickets and he, you know, or she, the bartender got, um, you know, six different cokes and Jack and I got mistakes happen.
1:45:58 Speaker 01 I see how it happened. I'm not like, but I do think it is incumbent is your responsibility. If you're a bartender or what, yeah, I guess it was bartender, right?
1:46:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah. It's the kind of restaurant they gotta put in the drink order with the bartender.
1:46:14 Speaker 01 To be aware if there shouldn't be alcohol in the drink.
1:46:18 Dax Shepard? But what you-
1:46:19 Speaker 01 It could be for a kid.
1:46:20 Dax Shepard? Well, thank you. I was just, I just had gotten to that place in my head where I was like, if it's happened to me and it's happened to Tom and it's happened to, well, almost every dude in the meeting had had this. Yeah, surely kids are getting, and do they think like, oh, this just tastes funny, but I still like soda? No, it's too gross.
1:46:37 Speaker 01 Something's wrong with it.
1:46:38 Dax Shepard? I like to think that some kid just powered through it.
1:46:41 Speaker 01 And became an alcoholic.
1:46:44 Dax Shepard? Well, again, most people who drink don't become alcoholic.
1:46:46 Speaker 01 A lot of us do.
1:46:48 Dax Shepard? This is a fun like philosophical conversation, which is like, I don't think it's the responsibility of the masses to be changing their whole life because some small percentage of the population has a thing. I just don't think that's-
1:47:04 Speaker 01 Generally don't either, but this isn't changing anything. This is just being careful.
1:47:09 Dax Shepard? Well, no, I mean, even the notion that like, well, you can't have a, if a kid drank, he'd be an alcoholic. Well, it's like, well, that's not true. Most people that drink aren't alcoholics.
1:47:18 Speaker 01 So that's fine.
1:47:19 Dax Shepard? Yeah, but I think that would be a common kind of reaction.
1:47:22 Speaker 01 Well, no, I think they're just like, don't give my kid alcohol. Like, that's very, that's bad.
1:47:28 Dax Shepard? You want to decide when your kid has alcohol.
1:47:30 Speaker 01 Yeah. And, and it is illegal.
1:47:34 Dax Shepard? I'm so sorry. I have it on do not disturb, but for some reason it's still, yeah, do not disturb. Why would you be buzzing?
1:47:39 Speaker 01 See, it's like my, my doorbell.
1:47:42 Dax Shepard? You're not supposed to buzz. Oh, it's because it's Kristen.
1:47:45 Speaker 01 Oh, she has an override?
1:47:47 Dax Shepard? She has an override if she calls. And now I'm realizing she has an override if she texts too.
1:47:53 Speaker 01 Does she have to call twice or text twice or just immediately is an override?
1:47:57 Dax Shepard? Anytime she calls, it'll actually ring.
1:47:59 Speaker 01 Oh, that's nice.
1:48:01 Dax Shepard? I learned that from Toto Wolf. Remember he was in the interview and his phone rang twice? Once was his wife and once was one of his children.
1:48:08 Speaker 01 Oh yeah, that's right.
1:48:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah. And he said, oh, and I was like, I didn't even know you could do that.
1:48:11 Speaker 01 That's cool. Um, okay. I did look it up and cold brew coffee with cowboy colostrum. Though like, what does it mean cowboy colostrum? But okay. Heavy cream and maple syrup. That's all it's saying. Oh, enhanced with lucama, maca and sea salt.
1:48:29 Dax Shepard? Maybe they don't want kids to have maca because it's a lot of caffeine or some shit.
1:48:32 Speaker 01 Maybe.
1:48:33 Dax Shepard? I'm just thinking that like, it's a policy gone awry. It's like they flagged some certain thing and now this got ensnared in it.
1:48:40 Speaker 01 I bet it's colostrum, but we need to figure out why, like-
1:48:45 Dax Shepard? Need it further.
1:48:46 Speaker 01 Oh my God. What if you get addicted? To colostrum now.
1:48:48 Dax Shepard? Okay, I'm gonna get in trouble for this. But it's in keeping with this conversation we already have. I just had read that they're like sentencing someone who is in between. I don't know what chain of events they were involved with the Matthew Perry overdose.
1:49:04 Speaker 01 Oh, I've heard about this.
1:49:05 Dax Shepard? And they just got sentenced and I think someone else got sentenced.
1:49:07 Speaker 01 Like a doctor, I think, right?
1:49:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and my kids and I were talking about it. And I was like, no, that's not how it should work. My analogy was Yamaha Kawasaki, all these motorcycle companies. They all sell motorcycles that go 200 miles an hour. They're for sale at the dealership. A 16 year old can walk in and buy it. They don't have to prove at all that they've ever ridden a thing. And quite often those kids go out and they die on motorcycles. It's way too much motorcycle.
1:49:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:49:36 Dax Shepard? That's, that is living in a country with liberty. Like you do have the right to be a mountain climber, to do dangerous activities.
1:49:45 Speaker 01 That's not the same.
1:49:47 Dax Shepard? Well, no, it's identical if you, if you remove the word legal or illegal. And you just say that there are many products that are sold that are just inherently dangerous. Motorcycles, drugs, guns.
1:49:59 Speaker 01 Alcohol.
1:50:00 Dax Shepard? Alcohol.
1:50:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:50:01 Dax Shepard? Cigarettes.
1:50:02 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:50:03 Dax Shepard? Cars.
1:50:05 Dax Shepard? There are products that are dangerous.
1:50:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:50:07 Dax Shepard? And I really believe unless it's a situation like Big Tobacco where they know it causes cancer and they're stifling that information. Like I think you should have full awareness as a consumer of what the, I think it should be like, yeah, you're gonna buy this motorcycle. It goes 200 miles an hour, you kill yourself really easily. Okay, now if you want to do that, that's like, it's your life. So no, I don't think someone that sells a dangerous product should go to jail because someone else used the dangerous product and killed themselves. I think it's the person who used it has to have the responsibility.
1:50:39 Speaker 01 Well, not if it's a doctor. It's a doctor, I think, that got in trouble. I think, maybe I'm wrong about that.
1:50:46 Dax Shepard? Yeah, but again.
1:50:48 Speaker 01 If it's not a doctor, I'm more aligned with you, but.
1:50:51 Dax Shepard? But let's just say that what I guarantee is that the doctor hadn't.
1:50:57 Dax Shepard? Given him a dosage that killed him. What I guarantee is that he had multiple sources or stockpiled or whatever. And he took on his own a dose that no doctor would ever recommend.
1:51:10 Speaker 01 Well, we don't know that.
1:51:11 Dax Shepard? We, I do.
1:51:12 Speaker 01 How? Like, Michael Jackson's doctor also gave him way too much. Like, they're giving what the people are asking for, and that's the whole issue. It's they have a do not do no harm obligation. And if it's just like, well, this person's paying me and just wanting more than really I should give, but I'm giving it, that's a problem.
1:51:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we would, we would need more, but I can tell you.
1:51:34 Speaker 01 We wouldn't.
1:51:34 Dax Shepard? From everyone I've known who's overdosed in the last 30 years of sobriety. No one was taking it as prescribed.
1:51:43 Speaker 01 Right, but this was ketamine.
1:51:45 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:51:45 Speaker 01 It's a little more.
1:51:46 Dax Shepard? So there is a safe dosage of ketamine. A lot of people in this country have ketamine prescriptions.
1:51:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:51:52 Dax Shepard? But like, if I got a prescription for Percocet, right? The 1.0s, the big boys. And it says, take one every four hours. And I take that jar and I take eight right away.
1:52:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:52:06 Dax Shepard? That's on me.
1:52:07 Speaker 01 No, that is on you, though.
1:52:08 Dax Shepard? And what he did, what our boy did was he OD'd. He took way more than was prescribed to him, for sure.
1:52:15 Speaker 01 Well, I don't know if it's for sure, because then every doctor who had an OD, had someone OD'd would be in trouble, and that's not the case.
1:52:24 Dax Shepard? Right, the only thing that makes the, I think this reason this person's going to jail is because A, the person that died was famous. I think a bunch of people have OD'd on ketamine and other drugs, and there was not even an investigation. Like, yeah, someone OD'd. That's what happens on drugs when they're abused. But because it's him, they're like, well, we gotta figure out who killed Matthew Perry. That's not what, no one killed him.
1:52:48 Speaker 01 Well, again, I don't know that this is. Don't know enough about this doctor or what was being prescribed.
1:52:55 Dax Shepard? I do know that I read what he was on when he died and it was an insane amount of ketamine and it was not what his prescription was.
1:53:03 Speaker 05 He was a drug counselor that connected Perry to the ketamine queen who delivered him the ketamine.
1:53:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:53:12 Speaker 01 Ketamine queen is tricky.
1:53:14 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I don't know enough about her.
1:53:15 Speaker 01 That's like.
1:53:16 Dax Shepard? At the end of the day, he did it. No one else did it. He did it.
1:53:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, but if you're a doctor, you you can't.
1:53:22 Dax Shepard? You think ketamine queen was a doctor?
1:53:24 Speaker 01 I assume. Let me look it up.
1:53:27 Speaker 01 Yes, this person, British American convicted felon and drug dealer known as the Ketamine Queen. She gained international attention following her indictment and subsequent guilty plea in connection with the overdose of actor Maitreya. Let me see if she's a doctor. She looks kind of Indian.
1:53:42 Dax Shepard? Kind of Indian?
1:53:43 Speaker 01 Prosecutors allege that she operated a drug distribution network from her North Hollywood home for several years. Sentenced to 15 years in prison for her role in supplying the ketamine that would cause Perry's death.
1:53:56 Dax Shepard? Just think how many people drink to a fatal level. It happens a ton.
1:54:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, but you can get in trouble for over serving.
1:54:04 Dax Shepard? I can go into the store and I can buy 10 fifths.
1:54:06 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. Yeah.
1:54:07 Dax Shepard? So we would agree, the Jack Daniels company should not be held responsible because someone went and bought.
1:54:14 Speaker 01 But how did she even get the ketamine, this lady? She's probably, I mean, it's clearly illegal. What she's doing is illegal. So that's why she's going to jail.
1:54:21 Speaker 05 Yeah, she's a drug dealer.
1:54:23 Speaker 01 Drug dealers, you know, but I agree that if you, I think drug dealers in certain cases should go to jail.
1:54:32 Dax Shepard? Oh, you do?
1:54:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, you're getting illegal drugs off the black market. I mean, yes, you're engaging in a lot of illegal activity.
1:54:38 Dax Shepard? I think the time that I'd be fine with a drug dealer going to jail would be when the drug dealer knowingly sold someone. Fentanyl, under the guise of it being heroin knowingly.
1:54:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, obviously that. Then they're a murderer.
1:54:55 Dax Shepard? Yeah, exactly. Then the person that got it can't really dose it correctly. And they have deceitfully misled this person, which may have caused their death. But if I'm selling you crack cocaine, I go, hey, bro, this is crack. You know, do what it with you. I really don't think it's on the person who sold it.
1:55:16 Speaker 01 They got it illegally. No one gets crack legally.
1:55:19 Dax Shepard? That's kind of what I'm trying to have the conversation about is because we labeled alcohol legal in this other thing illegal, yet we clearly think because alcohol is legal, that no one's responsible if someone drinks themselves to death. And so you're saying that because one is classified by the government as illegal and one is legal, that that should make the person who sells it go to prison?
1:55:38 Speaker 01 Yes, because there are regulations on actual alcohol, like you, it's labeled 12% and blah, but like crack is not like it's if crack was legal, then it would probably be under some sort of system where you'd see the amount, it would be like supervised in a way.
1:55:55 Dax Shepard? And no one would be held responsible.
1:55:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:55:58 Dax Shepard? Right.
1:55:59 Speaker 01 But that's fine then. I am fine. If we lived in a world where it was legal and it was regulated, I mean, this was a whole, this is the whole debate about marijuana for years and years and years, which now.
1:56:09 Dax Shepard? And all these people went to prison and were held responsible for other people's abuse of something.
1:56:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:56:15 Dax Shepard? And I think we all now agree that was a bad, that was wrong.
1:56:18 Speaker 01 Right. But also because now just because like marijuana isn't a problem.
1:56:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:56:22 Speaker 01 But crack is a problem. You agree.
1:56:24 Dax Shepard? Well, let's keep it to ketamine because you can get a prescription for ketamine. There is ketamine therapy. People do use ketamine therapeutically. I personally don't think it's a great idea to use ketamine.
1:56:36 Speaker 01 Because why?
1:56:39 Dax Shepard? Because I've seen it go wrong, more than I've seen it go right. And not even in death. I've seen a very temporary patch for something that long term wasn't a good solution.
1:56:51 Speaker 01 Right. And you think it has a risk of addiction?
1:56:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah, just like cigarettes, alcohol, caffeine. Most things that-
1:57:02 Speaker 01 Do you think it's more or less? I'm actually asking because I don't know a lot about ketamine.
1:57:08 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I don't. I've never taken ketamine, so I don't know how sticky it is.
1:57:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:57:12 Dax Shepard? I know how sticky opiates are.
1:57:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly.
1:57:14 Dax Shepard? Um, I know how sticky cocaine is. I know how sticky alcohol is. I know cigarettes like-
1:57:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:57:20 Dax Shepard? Of all of them, cigarettes are the stickiest. There's a bunch of junkies that'll tell you quitting smoking was harder than quitting heroin.
1:57:26 Speaker 01 But again, that's why like, because it's legal, it says like, basically it says on the box, like this is gonna kill you.
1:57:34 Dax Shepard? But my only issue with cigarette manufacturers were when they knew it was causing something.
1:57:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, horrible.
1:57:40 Dax Shepard? And, and they silenced that.
1:57:41 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
1:57:42 Dax Shepard? And, and so to me, if you have total transparency, um, I do think we, I want to live in a country where people get to evaluate the risks they want to take. And then also we, I don't think it's fair to the 90% of people or even the 94% of people who try cocaine and don't become addicted. I don't think it's fair to those people that because us 8% have a problem, you guys can't do it. I don't think that's fair.
1:58:04 Speaker 01 Well, we can't do it because it's not regulated and there is fentanyl in it. And there is like, there's so many, it's not, are you saying you think cocaine should be legalized?
1:58:14 Dax Shepard? No, I, I don't think that. Um, I, I, I think that, um, we've seen the experiment run and doesn't work. That's my opinion on, on many classifications of drugs.
1:58:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, me too.
1:58:24 Dax Shepard? I do think they're too addictive and I think the barriers that exist are what help it going from 94% of people never getting addicted to, you know, the eight. I think if it were-
1:58:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, I agree.
1:58:36 Dax Shepard? Five dollars for an eight ball and it was at 7-Eleven, I think you would see a massive uptick.
1:58:40 Speaker 01 You would.
1:58:41 Dax Shepard? Yes.
1:58:41 Speaker 01 And it would affect every single person, whether you're an addict or you're not.
1:58:44 Dax Shepard? So that's one topic. Do I think it should be legalized? And then another topic is, do I think people are responsible for distributing a product that's dangerous? And someone abuses it? And dies. I don't. I don't think the kid who breaks the speed limit on his new Yamaha R1 and is going 180 on the five and kills himself, I don't think the dealer is responsible.
1:59:07 Speaker 01 I don't either.
1:59:08 Dax Shepard? I don't think Yamaha is responsible.
1:59:09 Speaker 01 But again, the difference is, I just, we're, I do think the difference is legality.
1:59:15 Dax Shepard? I know, but that's just really, we would agree that's arbitrary. Like weed wasn't legal two years ago and, and now it is.
1:59:24 Speaker 01 Right.
1:59:24 Dax Shepard? And so now we, now we think that it's like, well, that should have been consistent.
1:59:29 Speaker 01 Cause like it, it, it, it doesn't do that much harm. There's been, we have enough, we have enough evidence of all of these drugs at this point to, to rank.
1:59:42 Dax Shepard? How lethal they are.
1:59:43 Speaker 01 Exactly. And, and lethal to yourself and like, you know, to society, like what it's gonna cause.
1:59:50 Dax Shepard? Then we get even more fun debate, which is sometimes the ones that aren't lethal are weirdly more dangerous. So like weed and alcohol.
1:59:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:00:00 Dax Shepard? I think bizarrely, they can take more of a toll on your overall life because they're not so extreme that you can habitually do them forever and lose big chunks of your existence.
2:00:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:00:15 Dax Shepard? Weed's gonna be, I think at some, there's gonna be, one, there'll be some study at some point when we have 20 years of data on what happened with this experiment. And although I'm in favor of it, we're gonna see it's just a more innocuous, it has more innocuous and subtle consequences that are currently being completely ignored.
2:00:38 Speaker 01 Sure. Like in a way that maybe, maybe if someone is addicted to caffeine and then they can't sleep and then they have a bad, you know, like, yes, there are consequences for anything you do, anything. You could eat sugar.
2:00:53 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:00:53 Speaker 01 You know, like, where do we draw the line?
2:00:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:00:56 Speaker 01 And I think you have to draw it at, you have to draw it somewhere. Obviously. I think we both agree. We can't just have a free for all situation.
2:01:06 Dax Shepard? We have the data for it. Back in the early 1900s, when these cure-alls, when people went town to town with cure-alls, and 30% of the cure-all was opium. You saw, there was a moment in America where like 30% of the country was addicted to opiates. So you, we have data that when you make it wildly available and it's not illegal.
2:01:26 Speaker 01 It's bad.
2:01:26 Dax Shepard? You're gonna have a third of the population. So back to the weed. What makes me think we will at some point reevaluate it a little bit? Not to say we're ever gonna make it illegal again, or that we should.
2:01:39 Dax Shepard? But my anecdotal experience is I drive Delta to school every morning on my motorcycle. And when I, well, both directions, but certainly I'm more aware of it when I'm driving home by myself. I smell weed the whole way home in LA.
2:01:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:01:53 Dax Shepard? And I have to go like, oh yeah, so now that it's legal, a lot of people have transferred to, many, many people are getting stoned the second they wake up. And on their way to work and walking around in the morning.
2:02:06 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:02:06 Dax Shepard? I'm not judgmental of it, but I am suggesting that's gonna show a little burble. We're gonna see some, some down river consequences of people waking up and immediately getting stoned.
2:02:17 Speaker 01 I mean, my guess is yes, but I also don't know. We have Seth Rogen, you know, he's extremely not affected negatively at all.
2:02:25 Dax Shepard? For sure.
2:02:26 Speaker 01 This is a hard one for me because I don't like weed. Like personally, I don't take it. I don't enjoy it. So I don't feel like I have a dog in this fight, really.
2:02:37 Dax Shepard? Here's what you don't see. I saw it one time. Well, I've seen it a couple of times. I saw it in Russia when I was there in 1996, I guess. And it had, you know, the wall had only fallen at that point for what, seven years or something? And driving in the morning from the boat to Catherine's Palace. I saw hundreds, if not thousands of men drinking vodka at 8 a.m. on the sidewalk.
2:03:04 Speaker 01 It's cultural. Yep.
2:03:05 Dax Shepard? And you go, hmm, that town has a drinking problem. And then we went to Sweden right after. And then we learned of Sweden's taxation of vodka. Because Sweden went, we got a drinking problem. And so they wanted to start addressing it somehow. And what I'm saying is if you were driving home from anywhere at 8 a.m. in the morning and you saw one in three people chugging alcohol. Vodka or beer? You go, huh, this isn't great.
2:03:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:03:39 Dax Shepard? But weed, this is what I'm talking about. It's innocuous quality, which is like, yeah, I do believe you can smoke weed and drive your car and smoke weed and probably go to work and do a fine job. I don't think you're gonna do a hundred percent. I don't think.
2:03:54 Speaker 01 I don't either, but I don't also know. Like, I don't know, because I, I just don't.
2:04:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I just think any other, it's just interesting how it's already like folded into our culture. And it's kind of like you, you observe people smoking weed all morning in LA and you.
2:04:08 Speaker 01 It might be because it's still, I mean, not in a, not really new, but kind of, it's still kind of newly legal.
2:04:15 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:04:16 Speaker 01 And as you said, like, we could be seeing one in three people drinking all day and we don't. And I think that probably has to do with just the fact that it's been around for so long and.
2:04:26 Dax Shepard? And you can't function as well. And you can't, if you show up to where you smell like it and socially, we're like, no, no, you can't drink in the morning.
2:04:34 Speaker 01 Right.
2:04:34 Dax Shepard? I think it's interesting, you can smoke weed in the morning, it's fine. No one really gives a shit.
2:04:37 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, I think most people do. I think most people, if they hear that are like, what? That's crazy. I think some people maybe don't, but I think the majority of people who, who hear that somebody woke up in the morning and started smoking weed immediately are probably a little concerned about that person. I am.
2:04:56 Dax Shepard? Well, I just saw this, this, I saw these two ladies, they have a podcast about ADHD. They're both ADHD and they were talking about why many ADHD people love weed because it's a dopamine dysregulation condition and that you can get dopamine from the weed. So initially they're talking about, it's almost like heavily in support of ADHD people using it, or at least maybe not feeling guilty that they're using it because it is like a good medicine for them. But then they were also very quite honest to say, and 36% of ADHD cannabis users have cannabis use disorder.
2:05:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:05:35 Dax Shepard? So it's like, it's over a third. And I also think weed, it has benefited from the fact that we've been saying forever it's not addictive. It is not physically addictive. You're not going to go through withdrawals of the physical variety when you stop doing it, but you're going to go through a lot and you
2:05:55 Speaker 01 Mental withdrawal for sure.
2:05:56 Dax Shepard? And your brain chemistry is going to adjust for a while. And so I also don't think we're being totally honest about like, oh, it's not addictive. No, no. Many, many people are fully addicted to weed and their tolerance has gone up and up and their dosage has gone up and up and up.
2:06:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:06:11 Dax Shepard? And they're smoking, you know.
2:06:13 Speaker 01 A lot of addictions are also mental, like so many are that will kill you. Like not, not, not just, it's not just like a silly thing to say. It's very, you know, my brother used to smoke so much weed. It was like, it's not addictive. It's not addictive. And I'm like, you are addicted. I can tell because, because you, you keep getting in trouble for this. It's having a consequence and you can't or won't stop.
2:06:38 Dax Shepard? Right.
2:06:39 Speaker 01 So maybe yes, it's not physically addictive, but mentally you are addicted.
2:06:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:06:44 Speaker 01 So.
2:06:45 Dax Shepard? And you probably won't suck a dick for weed. You probably won't break into a house for weed. And there's like, there is a, even when you're jonesing for it, it doesn't reach the level of jonesing for opiates or jonesing for, yeah.
2:06:57 Speaker 03 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.
2:07:10 Dax Shepard? It's fascinating.
2:07:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, it is interesting.
2:07:12 Dax Shepard? I think, I think though, we'll have a bit of a reckoning. I think it should stay legal. Again, I don't think that the many, the millions of people that are doing it like on the weekends or relax or taking a gummy to go to sleep. I don't want those people to lose that.
2:07:25 Speaker 01 No.
2:07:26 Dax Shepard? They should have that. And also dickheads like me are going to fuck it up and abuse it. And then there's also going to probably be some questions about when you start doing it, at what age and what kind of effects it has on your brain development. If you're a heavy weed user.
2:07:42 Speaker 01 Well, maybe they will start, maybe eventually they'll be, is it right now? Now, is there an age thing?
2:07:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah, eighteen.
2:07:48 Speaker 01 Eighteen.
2:07:49 Dax Shepard? Well, I don't know if it's eighteen or twenty one. It would make sense that it was twenty one, but I have no clue.
2:07:53 Speaker 01 I would assume it would be twenty one and it and it.
2:07:56 Dax Shepard? I probably won't get carded. I know that.
2:07:57 Speaker 05 It's twenty one.
2:07:58 Dax Shepard? It's twenty one?
2:07:59 Speaker 05 Yeah.
2:08:00 Speaker 01 Wow, that's a really big ding ding ding because I want to.
2:08:02 Dax Shepard? Getting carded?
2:08:03 Speaker 01 Yep, I was at Chili's this past weekend.
2:08:06 Dax Shepard? Oh, with your mom?
2:08:07 Speaker 01 With my mom and dad in Duluth.
2:08:09 Dax Shepard? You guys went over to Chili's?
2:08:09 Speaker 01 We did.
2:08:10 Dax Shepard? Yeah, great.
2:08:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was my idea.
2:08:12 Dax Shepard? Oh, good. Did you get the potato skins?
2:08:15 Speaker 01 I didn't. I got the quesadilla, which is my thing there.
2:08:18 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:08:19 Speaker 01 And the problem is, my mom had made quesadillas the day before, homemade, homemade tortillas, homemade everything, and they were so good.
2:08:30 Dax Shepard? Mmm, gourmet.
2:08:31 Speaker 01 They were really gourmet.
2:08:33 Dax Shepard? Mm hmm.
2:08:33 Speaker 01 And then I had this idea about the Chili's quesadillas because it's so nostalgic.
2:08:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:08:40 Speaker 01 And it was, it was, it was good. It was fine.
2:08:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:08:43 Speaker 01 I just probably shouldn't have had it the next day after these like really one of a kind quesadillas.
2:08:49 Dax Shepard? Yes.
2:08:50 Speaker 01 We were, we were at, obviously TJ, my mom and I went to TJ Maxx, obviously.
2:08:54 Dax Shepard? I thought you were about to say TGIF. I was like, wow, you guys hit Fridays and Chili's in one weekend.
2:08:58 Speaker 01 We went to TJ Maxx, which we always do. We went to Kohl's. We went to Nordstrom Rack. They're all in the same area.
2:09:03 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:09:03 Speaker 01 We're, we're shopping and then there's the Chili's right there, our Chili's, where like I grew up going. And I asked, oh, my mom had asked earlier, what do you want to do for dinner? And I was like, I don't know. And then I said, have you guys been to the Chili's? Do you guys still go there? And she was like, yeah, we go. And she was like, do you want to do that for dinner? And I was like, yeah.
2:09:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:09:24 Speaker 01 I do want to. So then my dad met us.
2:09:26 Dax Shepard? Okay, where was he?
2:09:28 Speaker 01 He was at home. He wasn't going to TJ.
2:09:30 Dax Shepard? In his retirement?
2:09:31 Speaker 01 Yeah. No, he was, he's not going to TJ Maxx and Nordstrom Rack and stuff. No.
2:09:36 Dax Shepard? No, I would rather die.
2:09:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, he was home, but then he came to meet us and, and we ate there and I got carded.
2:09:44 Dax Shepard? Oh, lovely. That's cute.
2:09:46 Speaker 01 It was cute.
2:09:47 Dax Shepard? Flattering.
2:09:48 Speaker 01 It was cute. And then the.
2:09:49 Dax Shepard? What was your cocktail at Chili's?
2:09:51 Speaker 01 It was a margarita.
2:09:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:09:52 Speaker 01 I didn't finish. It was bad.
2:09:54 Dax Shepard? Super. Sugary.
2:09:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I I said, can I get a Casamigos one, but skinny? And those were, you know, two separate things, basically. And he was like, oh, I don't know. I have to ask. And I was like, charge me for the expensive Casamigos one, but just make it skinny.
2:10:10 Dax Shepard? Yeah, no way. That's gonna happen back there.
2:10:12 Speaker 01 It didn't happen. Yeah, I don't know what happened, but it tasted very, very bad.
2:10:16 Dax Shepard? That cocktail.
2:10:17 Speaker 01 I know.
2:10:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:10:18 Speaker 01 So.
2:10:19 Dax Shepard? Was it so beautiful in Georgia? Is it green as hell right now? Spring?
2:10:22 Speaker 01 It's pretty green. Yeah, it's nice.
2:10:25 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:10:25 Speaker 01 It's nice.
2:10:26 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:10:26 Speaker 01 It's nice. Yeah.
2:10:28 Dax Shepard? Any thoughts of moving back while you're there?
2:10:30 Speaker 01 No, I never have that.
2:10:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you never have that.
2:10:33 Speaker 01 I have. I have like, oh, like, I'm glad I touched down here a couple of times a year.
2:10:38 Dax Shepard? Have you had the thought I had in Michigan, which is like, oh, my gosh, I could live in the super nice neighborhood now?
2:10:44 Speaker 01 Oh.
2:10:45 Dax Shepard? Because that's what really fucked me up. That's what had me almost getting a house on a certain lake in Michigan.
2:10:50 Speaker 01 Really?
2:10:50 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it was just like, oh, I used to drive by the house, you know? I mean, every time I went to West Bloomfield, anywhere, which is regular, is one stretch Pontiac Trail. And look at these mansions with these huge yards and they're on Long Lake, I think, Lower Straits, Upper Straits. And yeah, the notion that I could live there became very intoxicating.
2:11:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:11:12 Dax Shepard? And like, I could almost not resist. I thought better of it at the end.
2:11:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:11:18 Dax Shepard? But I had found a house and I was flying there to get it. So I was just like,
2:11:21 Speaker 01 Wow.
2:11:22 Dax Shepard? I can't believe I can live where the basketball players lived.
2:11:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, so that's interesting. I don't have that. I mean, I definitely drive around there and I think like.
2:11:33 Dax Shepard? You know, one difference, I think, between you and I was kids, I coveted wealth.
2:11:37 Speaker 01 I, okay, I didn't covet we- wealth in the same way you did.
2:11:43 Dax Shepard? Right.
2:11:44 Speaker 01 But I still did have like aspirations to have a lot of money. Like, and we didn't, we lived in a nice house. That, well, that is the difference. We lived in a nice house. A, but a modest, nice house. Like it, um, my parents would get mad because they would say like, it's really nice, like.
2:12:04 Dax Shepard? It is. I've seen it. It's a big, big house by American standards. It's like a 4,000 square foot house.
2:12:11 Speaker 01 Less than that, but
2:12:12 Dax Shepard? It is?
2:12:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, it is. But it's, yes, it is, it's a
2:12:16 Dax Shepard? In like an upscale neighborhood?
2:12:17 Speaker 01 It's in a subdivision. Okay, this I was trying to teach Jess about subdivisions. He didn't understand them.
2:12:22 Dax Shepard? Right, being from LA.
2:12:23 Speaker 01 Cause he was fighting with me about suburbs, cause I was like, you don't really understand suburbs.
2:12:28 Dax Shepard? Right.
2:12:28 Speaker 01 And he was like-
2:12:29 Dax Shepard? Talk about what sub you live in.
2:12:30 Speaker 01 Well, exactly.
2:12:31 Dax Shepard? And you don't even say subdivision, you say sub. Did you say sub?
2:12:33 Speaker 01 Well, no, cause we didn't say, we said neighborhood.
2:12:36 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:12:37 Speaker 01 So what neighborhood do you live in? But I don't even say that to people who don't understand it, cause they don't even understand what that means.
2:12:43 Dax Shepard? Right.
2:12:44 Speaker 01 So I said, you know, cause sometimes I like to do suburban Fridays here, which is us going to a movie on Friday afternoon and then going to dinner at the Americana.
2:12:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:12:57 Speaker 01 It feels so suburban to me.
2:12:59 Dax Shepard? Yes.
2:12:59 Speaker 01 And, um, and I was, we did that. We watched Devil's Pride and then we went to the Italian restaurant at the Americana. And you know, they bring out the bread. It's just all so suburban.
2:13:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:13:10 Speaker 01 And I was feeling very nostalgic and I was talking about the suburbs and he was like, well, yeah, I mean, yeah, Burbank is a suburb. He grew up in Burbank.
2:13:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:13:17 Speaker 01 And I was like, no. And then he of course had to look up on ChatGPT where of course it says it is and, and sure.
2:13:24 Dax Shepard? Burbank is a suburb of LA.
2:13:26 Speaker 01 Exactly.
2:13:26 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:13:27 Speaker 01 Technically, it is a suburb.
2:13:29 Dax Shepard? But a subdivision is a very specific thing.
2:13:32 Speaker 01 Well, that's what I said, but you don't have subdivisions, like a real, like a suburb to me.
2:13:38 Dax Shepard? Someone who lives, grew up in New York, there are three or four streets you enter the subdivision on. And, and through those three or four streets, a web of streets are connected to it and it's its own little world.
2:13:48 Speaker 01 And it's house after house after-
2:13:50 Dax Shepard? It's on a main road.
2:13:50 Speaker 01 Yes.
2:13:51 Dax Shepard? And yeah, yeah. And that's how everything was built where I grew up in Michigan.
2:13:54 Speaker 01 Yes.
2:13:54 Dax Shepard? In my elementary, you'd go, what sub do you live in? And it was either Heritage Farms, Axford Acres, LaSalle Gardens.
2:14:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:14:02 Dax Shepard? There were only four options.
2:14:03 Speaker 01 Okay, so for us, yeah, what neighborhood do you live in?
2:14:06 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:14:06 Speaker 01 It's a huge neighborhood, like eight hundred houses.
2:14:09 Dax Shepard? Houses.
2:14:10 Speaker 01 Yes.
2:14:10 Dax Shepard? Big development.
2:14:10 Speaker 01 So it was really exciting for Halloween. You wanted to go in Riverbrook, you know?
2:14:14 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:14:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was really exciting.
2:14:15 Dax Shepard? It was Riverbrook the nicest sub in?
2:14:17 Speaker 01 No, so that's what I'm saying.
2:14:18 Dax Shepard? Okay, there was a nicer sub.
2:14:19 Speaker 01 So many.
2:14:20 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:14:21 Speaker 01 So many. So, um, there were St. Ives. That was really, really fancy.
2:14:28 Dax Shepard? It's also funny.
2:14:30 Speaker 01 It is so funny. So that's, and like I had friends who lived in these, you know, and, um, sugar.
2:14:36 Dax Shepard? Sugar tits?
2:14:39 Speaker 01 I can't believe I'm forgetting this is that's just because coffee. But um, anyway, yes, there were some areas. It's like, oh, my God, if you live there, like you've really made it.
2:14:49 Dax Shepard? Can I tell you the coveted wealth part?
2:14:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:14:51 Dax Shepard? So on the weekends, very, very regular activity for us, maybe even every other weekend. We would leave our shitty welfare apartment and we would get mom's pinto and we would drive to Bloomfield Hills.
2:15:07 Speaker 01 That was a neighborhood?
2:15:08 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it was, you know, it's 25 miles away, not a subdivision. It is a suburb. It's an area.
2:15:14 Speaker 01 Okay, got it.
2:15:15 Dax Shepard? And we would pull up to the end of driveways and stare at the house. And my mom would say, these people went to college. Like, if you want to live here, these people went to college. And she'd drive to another nice house. This person's probably a doctor or they're a lawyer, you know, like, if you like that.
2:15:31 Speaker 01 Yep.
2:15:32 Dax Shepard? This is how you get it. And we did that all the time.
2:15:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:15:35 Dax Shepard? I do think that compounded my obsession with like wealth in like, oh, my God, that's so out of reach. And we want that thing. So yeah, the lake with the basketball players' houses, I was very primed.
2:15:49 Speaker 01 That used to be a thing. Like, yeah, when we would go on vacations, we'd just drive around and look at houses.
2:15:54 Dax Shepard? It's so fun. I love it. I still love it.
2:15:57 Speaker 01 It's weird now that I'm thinking about that. Like, I would never go on a vacation and do that. But we did it all the time. Anytime we went somewhere in a car, it was, yeah, we would go to neighborhoods and drive around and look at houses.
2:16:08 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:16:09 Speaker 01 Strange.
2:16:09 Dax Shepard? See how the other folks live.
2:16:11 Speaker 01 I guess, but like, I don't know. It's so funny. It's all so funny.
2:16:16 Dax Shepard? We're watching Zillow Gone Wild. We're now addicted to it. We have a guest coming up.
2:16:21 Speaker 01 We do.
2:16:21 Dax Shepard? Don't have to deduce how, who that would be.
2:16:24 Speaker 01 That's right.
2:16:25 Dax Shepard? But if you ever want to see Zillow Gone Wild, it's from the Instagram account Zillow Gone Wild. So it's these crazy listings on Zillow.
2:16:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:16:31 Dax Shepard? And the show goes and visits these houses. And there was the cutest Indian couple last night.
2:16:37 Speaker 01 Oh.
2:16:38 Dax Shepard? In Orlando, Florida.
2:16:40 Speaker 01 Oh, a lot of them there.
2:16:41 Dax Shepard? And they lived in a castle.
2:16:42 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
2:16:43 Dax Shepard? It looked like Excalibur Hotel in Vegas.
2:16:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:16:46 Dax Shepard? And inside were like swords and all this stuff. And they were.
2:16:51 Speaker 01 Indian stuff in there? There or like
2:16:53 Dax Shepard? No, it was all like knights and stuff.
2:16:54 Speaker 01 Okay, interesting.
2:16:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and it's just it's the whole the whole tableau is so cute because they're from India, right? And the dad is like, clearly, he's been successful here.
2:17:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:17:04 Dax Shepard? I'm like, look at this. This guy lives in a castle in America.
2:17:08 Speaker 01 I know.
2:17:08 Dax Shepard? So happy like you would not want to live in this castle.
2:17:12 Speaker 01 I know.
2:17:12 Dax Shepard? I wanted, but there was something so sweet and
2:17:15 Speaker 01 Because it's the idea of America.
2:17:17 Dax Shepard? Guys in America, like five acres in a castle.
2:17:20 Speaker 01 In Camelot.
2:17:21 Dax Shepard? Yes. And then they show the children, I guess the children talked them into buying the house. And the child, it was on eBay, which I didn't even know they sold homes on eBay. Yeah, it was just really cute because the mom did all the talking. A lot of it was very followed a lot of my stereotypes.
2:17:40 Dax Shepard? But in the adorable way, the things I love about like she handled all the talking. He just kind of sat there.
2:17:45 Speaker 01 He nodded.
2:17:46 Dax Shepard? And then he got to show his sword, you know, like when it was time to do like this sort of stuff. And then the key thing was eventually we saw the kids.
2:17:55 Speaker 01 How old are they?
2:17:56 Dax Shepard? In their twenties.
2:17:57 Speaker 01 Okay, taking advantage of their parents.
2:17:59 Dax Shepard? And the son had like a fucking long ponytail, fucking tattoos everywhere. And I was like, these second generation.
2:18:11 Speaker 01 It's so sad, actually.
2:18:13 Dax Shepard? You talking about your brother just made me think of the whole, the whole scenario. And I was like, oh yeah, man. You got like, if you're, if you're emigrating here from India, like you have a lot coming your way. There's so many challenges for you. There's racism. There's this and that. You got to find your footing. And then the reward is you'll give your, your kids this
2:18:34 Dax Shepard? everything and they will likely go berserk American style.
2:18:37 Speaker 01 Well, it's all connected. It's you're gonna go berserk America tell because you have to be American.
2:18:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:18:44 Speaker 01 You have to very quickly assimilate into this culture and be whatever it needs you to be. And you don't really know how.
2:18:50 Dax Shepard? It's just a hard row. They, they, they, they travel and I want to honor them. It's like, what an experience, you know, you, you, you, you go through hell and back.
2:18:58 Speaker 01 I know.
2:18:59 Dax Shepard? To, to make it here and to provide this opportunity. And then they're like, I think, Dad, I'm gonna blow joints and get
2:19:08 Speaker 01 That's why I'm such a good daughter.
2:19:10 Dax Shepard? Yes, yes. Well, you turned out to be.
2:19:14 Speaker 01 I'm always been a good daughter. Oh, you mean, you mean because I did do a crazy thing.
2:19:19 Dax Shepard? You did a crazy thing and you could be, it worked out.
2:19:22 Speaker 01 It worked out for my brother too.
2:19:24 Dax Shepard? You could have been moving back at 36 years old and you could have been in this doc about Zillow.
2:19:28 Speaker 01 No.
2:19:29 Dax Shepard? No.
2:19:29 Speaker 01 No.
2:19:29 Dax Shepard? No, don't be silly.
2:19:30 Speaker 01 That's not in, that was not in my cards. Maybe I wouldn't have had all this, but I would have figured out something.
2:19:35 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Um, we have much different assessments of ourselves. Had this not worked out for me, I would be penniless.
2:19:44 Speaker 01 That's so crazy that you think that.
2:19:46 Dax Shepard? I know so. I was just talking about it with Kristen when we were talking about somebody. And it was like, just get a fucking job, right? Like just get a job. You didn't get the management position. Like at some point, get a job.
2:19:59 Speaker 01 Just do it. Yeah.
2:20:00 Dax Shepard? And I was, I was like enjoying that, being a little judgmental. And then I was like, you know, hon, if I'm being dead honest, like I could not, I couldn't have a job. I could be an Uber driver. Um, I could be at 7-Eleven if there's no manager, but I could not, at this point, have a 30 year old boss who I thought was dumb and was making me do stupid things. I couldn't do it. I'd rather be penniless. I just don't have it in me.
2:20:28 Speaker 01 What if you have a family? You can't just choose to be penniless. You have to support your family.
2:20:33 Dax Shepard? If I have a family, well, luckily there are, I would be an Uber driver. I would be something where I could be an independent contractor. What I'm saying, I really have always been terrible at.
2:20:42 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:20:43 Dax Shepard? And I'm admitting it. I've not been great when I have idiot bosses and most people have idiot bosses. I'm not talking about good bosses, but your odds of getting a good boss are low.
2:20:54 Speaker 01 Even if you have a good boss, you're not going to see eye to eye on everything at all and you're not going to be quiet about that.
2:21:02 Dax Shepard? Yes.
2:21:02 Speaker 01 But listen, can you? Work on it?
2:21:06 Dax Shepard? No, no, no, no, I know who I am. I'm 51.
2:21:09 Speaker 01 No, now, I don't mean now, I mean like if this was, well, it would have happened much earlier. It would have happened earlier in life. You, I think, we can't tell people they can't change these behaviors because like, you can, you can't.
2:21:24 Dax Shepard? I'm telling those people, you probably gotta be an Uber driver. You need to be, you need to be something where you don't have a boss.
2:21:28 Speaker 01 Okay, yeah, sure, you can be something where you don't have a boss, or you can work on yourself and, and decide like, okay, this boss is fucking annoying. Like, I hate him and I hate that he's telling me what to do. And guess what? I need a job and I need to support my family and I can go home and forget about this part. Like, you can.
2:21:48 Dax Shepard? You're 100% right. That's how people should be. I completely agree with you.
2:21:51 Speaker 01 People can.
2:21:51 Dax Shepard? That's how people should be.
2:21:53 Speaker 01 And they can be.
2:21:54 Dax Shepard? I am not that way.
2:21:56 Speaker 01 I disagree. You, you don't give yourself enough credit for change. You've changed a lot. And it's, again, as you say, like, it's when push comes to shove, but that's what would, this would require. You would be.
2:22:09 Dax Shepard? I'm just telling on myself. You know, I've got some bad characteristics.
2:22:12 Speaker 01 I know.
2:22:13 Dax Shepard? This is one of them. I don't do well with authoritarian presences.
2:22:17 Speaker 01 But I think, you don't. But I think you, you could, in, in a specific cir-, given your life had gone a different way.
2:22:28 Dax Shepard? That's why I couldn't direct commercials. I did a few. I got through them.
2:22:33 Speaker 01 I know. You, yeah, yeah.
2:22:35 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you were in one.
2:22:36 Speaker 01 Yes.
2:22:36 Dax Shepard? And I was fine that day. I didn't piss off the client.
2:22:39 Speaker 01 You were great.
2:22:39 Dax Shepard? But I didn't like it so much that I'm like, I would rather not direct.
2:22:43 Speaker 01 I know, but you were already rich. So this is my point. If you, if you weren't.
2:22:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:22:49 Speaker 01 And you needed the job. You didn't need those jobs.
2:22:55 Dax Shepard? So I was broke when I worked for CPK.
2:22:58 Speaker 01 I know, but.
2:22:59 Dax Shepard? And I couldn't do it. I couldn't have him tell me I got a six.
2:23:03 Speaker 01 I know.
2:23:03 Dax Shepard? Or a seven on my punctuality when I had been early every day. I couldn't resist.
2:23:10 Dax Shepard? I just couldn't, I couldn't handle the injustice.
2:23:13 Speaker 01 I know.
2:23:14 Dax Shepard? And I lost that job or I quit it.
2:23:16 Speaker 01 That's okay, though. You lost a job. To me, that's okay. He, that was weird. He told you.
2:23:22 Dax Shepard? I bet corporate told him to do that.
2:23:24 Speaker 01 Yes, of course. Not his fault necessarily, but whatever. You quit because you're like, I can't work for this corporation that is, is gaslighting me.
2:23:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah, lying to me.
2:23:34 Speaker 01 And I won't do it. So I'm quitting. That's fine. I in fact, think in some ways that's noble.
2:23:41 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:23:41 Speaker 01 That doesn't mean that you couldn't have gone to a different job.
2:23:45 Dax Shepard? Hmm.
2:23:46 Speaker 01 And worked for someone.
2:23:49 Dax Shepard? I was so lucky that I had a job for 14 years.
2:23:53 Speaker 01 Exactly.
2:23:54 Dax Shepard? But my bosses were my mom and my brother.
2:23:56 Speaker 01 Yeah. But and sometimes that's the worst. That can be.
2:24:00 Dax Shepard? Cause we already knew how to deal with each other. You're right. A lot of family businesses, it does, that, that part gets tricky. It worked great for us because my mom knew.
2:24:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:24:12 Dax Shepard? The more I stay out of his business and the more responsibility I give him, the better he'll be.
2:24:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
2:24:17 Dax Shepard? And so she just stayed the fuck out of the way. And almost every year I got more and more responsibilities where I was, oh.
2:24:24 Speaker 01 Oh, my gosh, the breast, the colostrum has arrived.
2:24:27 Dax Shepard? Show an ID? They did.
2:24:29 Speaker 01 Well, if you take a sip and you taste alcohol, let me know.
2:24:32 Dax Shepard? Okay. You'll know if there's alcohol in it. How will you know if there's alcohol in it?
2:24:36 Speaker 01 Cause you'll drink the whole thing in one sip.
2:24:38 Dax Shepard? I'll ask Rob if he can run up and get a pack of Camel Lights.
2:24:41 Speaker 01 Oh, you mean after you're done with it?
2:24:43 Dax Shepard? And then I'll, and then I'll figure out where to get cocaine.
2:24:45 Speaker 01 I know. I know. If you did, if there was alcohol and you drank it and you relapsed and then you did cocaine and like, um, we could sue Aramone.
2:24:57 Dax Shepard? I don't think.
2:24:58 Speaker 01 And that would, oh, a hundred percent we would.
2:25:01 Dax Shepard? After the point I just made, I would never.
2:25:03 Speaker 01 Well, I'm cutting that obviously so that we can sue. And then, um, that will be so exciting.
2:25:11 Speaker 01 Talk about buying a house in Bloomington Hills or whatever with the sewage money.
2:25:16 Dax Shepard? Bloomfield Hills.
2:25:17 Speaker 01 Bloomfield. Sugarloaf. My God, that was gonna kill me. Sugarloaf had really big houses. How's the colostrum?
2:25:25 Dax Shepard? This thing is fucking delicious.
2:25:27 Speaker 01 Oh, good.
2:25:27 Dax Shepard? I'm willing to show my ID to get it.
2:25:29 Speaker 01 Oh, see? Look at that.
2:25:32 Dax Shepard? I don't know if that's true, but, okay, wanna do some facts?
2:25:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, let's do some facts. So this is like all connected, cuz this is for Brandy Carlisle.
2:25:41 Dax Shepard? And she grew up modestly and she could now buy a house.
2:25:43 Speaker 01 She said.
2:25:45 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and she could definitely buy a house on Upper Straits, Middle Straits, or Lower Straits.
2:25:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:25:50 Dax Shepard? Or Long Lake. Those are the big boys. I really liked her.
2:25:54 Speaker 01 I know, she was fantastic.
2:25:55 Dax Shepard? Really, really, really liked her.
2:25:57 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
2:25:57 Dax Shepard? What I liked the most, I was talking to Phineas about her. What I love is how unapologetically ambitious she is. And she doesn't pretend she's not. And I love that. And I, I think it's weirdly a good message to put out there because I think a lot of people think one need only be a genius artist. And that's not. You gotta call all the clubs and get on open mic night and like, you know, there's just a ton of ambition.
2:26:25 Speaker 01 Yes.
2:26:25 Dax Shepard? In the mix, too.
2:26:26 Speaker 01 I agree, yeah. Okay, our civil partnerships. Okay, I was looking up the civil partnership and, and gay marriage timeline in England. Okay, so same-sex marriage in England and Wales became legal on March 13th, 2014.
2:26:45 Speaker 01 Civil partnerships were 2005.
2:26:49 Speaker 01 And I looked up, cuz she said those had to be like very secular. And that's correct. They must remain legally secular, meaning the registration process cannot include religious words, music, or hymns.
2:27:02 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow. Will they send a monitor there to make sure that didn't happen in your ceremony?
2:27:07 Speaker 01 I don't know.
2:27:07 Dax Shepard? It's just the
2:27:08 Speaker 01 Maybe.
2:27:08 Dax Shepard? Honor Agreement or whatever they call it.
2:27:10 Speaker 01 Honor System, maybe. I don't know, but yeah. Oh, was Ross Kunkel, the drummer, did he play on Tapestry, the album Tapestry?
2:27:21 Speaker 01 Carol King. Yes.
2:27:23 Dax Shepard? He did.
2:27:23 Speaker 01 He did do that. He did do that.
2:27:26 Dax Shepard? Does that?
2:27:26 Speaker 01 He did it and he does it. Oh, you said you like invented a reality or like a show or something where you don't know the person's age, but you hear their voice and because she was on the phone with her wife, her now wife and thought she was a 70 year old lady.
2:27:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:27:46 Speaker 01 That is a current, that's currently a reality show.
2:27:48 Dax Shepard? Oh, it is?
2:27:49 Speaker 01 Uh huh. It's called Age of Attraction. It's on Netflix.
2:27:52 Dax Shepard? Oh, my goodness.
2:27:53 Speaker 01 Yeah. And do you want to hear the trailer?
2:27:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah, because we might have to watch this with the kids when Zillow runs out.
2:28:00 Speaker 06 I have dated guys who are my age because it was the right thing to do. And it didn't work out, obviously.
2:28:10 Speaker 06 Here, you'll be dating and even committing without ever knowing how old your partner is.
2:28:15 Dax Shepard? Are you ready?
2:28:16 Speaker 06 Yeah. I don't know if these guys are my grandpa's age.
2:28:20 Speaker 05 But you don't know who the Spice Girls are? I couldn't be one. Best three minute date I've ever had.
2:28:25 Dax Shepard? I'm not gonna lie, I like the mom part. You have mommy issues? If you're not as hot as my mom, I'm not gonna marry you. Huh.
2:28:33 Speaker 06 If you feel as if you've found that special connection, all that's left is revealing
2:28:39 Speaker 06 your age. I am.
2:28:42 Dax Shepard? Got your seatbelt on?
2:28:45 Dax Shepard? I didn't even know there were 60 year olds here.
2:28:48 Dax Shepard? Well, okay, I was gonna say my only issue with this, the show, as I'm seeing it is they get to see each other. So it's like, but.
2:28:55 Speaker 06 Or leave this experience the same way you entered it alone.
2:29:02 Speaker 06 I'm definitely worried. What would my family think? Children? Yeah.
2:29:06 Dax Shepard? And you hated babysitting? All right, we got it. Yeah, I guess that shows really more about how well can you hide your age? Because we're seeing the people.
2:29:15 Speaker 01 We are seeing them, but maybe.
2:29:17 Dax Shepard? So there's a lot of shockers. Like clearly what's going to be the shocker is a lot of people are much older than they look. And a lot of people are much younger than they look.
2:29:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, but maybe, yes, but I think it is saying like, that is what they look, that these are the people. So, so who cares what their age is?
2:29:33 Dax Shepard? It's just a number, Monica.
2:29:34 Speaker 01 It's just a number.
2:29:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:29:37 Speaker 01 That's what, that's what they're trying to do.
2:29:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:29:41 Speaker 01 Anyway, people are watching that.
2:29:42 Dax Shepard? I'm gonna watch that.
2:29:43 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:29:44 Dax Shepard? I bet the kids would like that.
2:29:45 Speaker 01 Report back. And that's it.
2:29:47 Dax Shepard? Really not a lot of facts. Well, I really enjoyed her immensely. Me too. Yeah, I really like her. I love her. I love her. All right. Love you.
Previous Armchair Anonymous: Waterparks Next Dr. Elizabeth Letourneau & Luke Malone (on child sexual abuse prevention) Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated