Hunter Biden

Hunter Biden (Beautiful Things) is a former attorney, artist, and recovery advocate. Hunter joins Armchair Expert to discuss growing up in Delaware political royalty, surviving the car accident that killed his mother and sister, and the unconditional love of his more extraverted brother Beau. Hunter and Dax talk about the comfort and danger of self-destruction, the mythology of “functional” addiction, and the people who loved him when he could not love himself. Hunter explains how addiction narrows the world to a single need, why being publicly humiliated didn’t make him irredeemable, and what it means to rebuild a life without hiding. Check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds: https://www.allstate.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Lily Padman.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:05Dax Shepard?

  Today we have Hunter Biden on.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:07Dax Shepard?

  Who is an author. He was a lawyer. He was a lobbyist. He is an artist and he's a recovery advocate. Obviously, he's the son of Joe Biden, the 46th president, and he has a book out now called Beautiful Things, detailing his heroin journey through fucking hardcore addiction.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:31Dax Shepard?

  And so this is a very addiction-heavy episode. It's, we try to minimize any political nature. I think this is the kind of story I love to hear about addiction. That's primarily what it is.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:41Dax Shepard?

  So I hope everyone goes into it with an open mind because it's incredibly honest, invulnerable and powerful.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 0:48Dax Shepard?

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• 0:52Speaker 01

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• 1:01Dax Shepard?

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• 1:42Dax 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.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  It's a uniform.

• 1:52Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53Speaker 01

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• 2:10Dax Shepard?

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• 3:53Dax Shepard?

  You can say, Cida, how are you, brother?

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Good. I'm really, really sorry I'm late. You're bringing sugar?

• 3:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  All right. Hey, Monica. Nice to meet you.

• 4:02Dax Shepard?

  Luckily, we had sugar in the raw. Otherwise I was bringing out a, yeah, a bag of white powder. I was like, what a start for these two.

• 4:12Dax Shepard?

  Sugar in your coffee? I'm a little shocked. I'm going to be honest. We'll start with stereotypes.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:17Dax Shepard?

  I thought you were tougher than this.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  I got my few things. I got my nicotine a little bit. I quit smoking. When I got clean, Melissa, my wife, she convinced me to go to this guy. Uh, what's his name?

• 4:32Dax Shepard?

  The hypnotist?

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:34Dax Shepard?

  I don't know his name, but I know of him.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 4:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  And I was like, bullshit.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  And I went and it worked.

• 4:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  And then like six months later, I don't know, was it like my first indictment or my second? I was like, I need some nicotine.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  He said he could get anybody off of anything. I was shocked. Have you seen this guy? Like, he's like out of a movie. He's got the worst toupee you've ever seen.

• 4:55Dax Shepard?

  Oh, great.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  He brings you into his garage that has all this bric-a-brac everywhere.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  You sit like in a bar calounger and he has a bottle of water, this is I remember. And he's just talking to you about nicotine and cigarettes. And when you start and things like that, and all I remember is just doing this. There's never a moment where you're like, you're under. At the very end, he comes and it's just three sessions. And at the last session, he said, that's it. You're done.

• 5:21Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  And I was done.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  That's pretty crazy.

• 5:24Dax Shepard?

  Physical withdrawal.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Not done.

• 5:27Dax Shepard?

  You didn't feel?

• 5:28Speaker 02

  No.

• 5:28Dax Shepard?

  The craziness?

• 5:29Speaker 02

  No. Now, he does it over three sessions and like the first session, you're gonna smoke half of what you smoke.

• 5:34Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay, okay.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Second session, you're only gonna have two cigarettes a day. And then the third, you're done. And I was done. I mean, I was smoking since I was 17. I mean, like a pack of Marlboros a day.

• 5:45Dax Shepard?

  When you were sober, probably, a bit.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and when I wasn't.

• 5:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Well, when I look back, I remember my epic hangovers. And at this point, it's hard to really know, because I also would smoke like three packs of Camel Whites on nights that I partied. If you're blowing line, the cigarette never goes out. It's just one after another and you wake up feeling horrendous. You're like, I don't, I don't know how to unravel. Was it the alcohol? Was it the cocaine? Was it the insane amount of cigarettes?

• 6:08Speaker 03

  Isn't that the whole problem? It's one leads to all.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  This is a big glob. Alcohol is worse. Well, you can talk about it.

• 6:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's kind of your position. I've heard you speak on this a bit. I think statistically, we would agree, right? I think the shocking number I heard you say is like. Like you add up every single other known drug and the amount of deaths caused by alcohol is five X some total of every other drug.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:31Dax Shepard?

  Which I guess then you could try to parse out like, what is the quantity aspect of the drug? And then what's the qualitative aspect that's causing that destruction?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:41Dax Shepard?

  What do you think?

• 6:41Speaker 02

  I think it's both. Alcohol, number one, is so ubiquitous, but beyond it being ubiquitous, it's the only drug that impacts every organ of your body. And every pleasure center of your brain. If you're into stimulants, it's like the dopamine reactor. If you're into opiates, it's the.

• 6:59Dax Shepard?

  Opioid receptors.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Exactly. Alcohol does all of them. And then you become truly physically dependent upon it, meaning that your body will shut down if you deny it the amount of alcohol that you've been putting in it and you'll go into seizures and die. And the only other drug is basically freeze dried alcohol is the benzos. And so from that perspective, and then you just look at the societal effect of it. And that part is the quantitative part. And the quantitative part being that it is so ubiquitous, the amount of deaths and destruction that alcohol causes in, you know, everything from car accidents to literally just people falling down the steps to people beating the hell out of their partners or their kids or things like that.

• 7:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, man, you remind me of how insanely hard alcohol was to quit. In that you're never more than a couple hundred feet from alcohol. If you're in LA or generally anywhere I went.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Anywhere.

• 7:57Dax Shepard?

  You're always within a couple hundred feet of this thing you're trying your hardest to never consume again.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Your own home.

• 8:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. If you have a partner who does it normally. Yeah, I kind of almost forget how insurmountable that first section was of just like, how will I ever begin to ignore the amount of alcohol I just see all the time everywhere I go? Gracefully, I've not walked in in 23, 22 years. I haven't walked into a lot of rooms and saw bowls of cocaine.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  No, exactly.

• 8:28Dax Shepard?

  And if I saw bowls of cocaine every hundred feet.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Crack either.

• 8:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Or heroin, or opiates for that matter, or other synthetic opiates.

• 8:38Dax Shepard?

  Weed now, it'll be interesting to see what the kind of long term result of it'll all be. I'm generally in favor of it being legalized or fully in favor, but it is becoming ubiquitous now.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Oh, me too. By the way, I'm not for provision. It is what it is.

• 8:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  I would rather see legalization of everything before it's just a much more honest approach. And I don't know about everything, but I haven't fully thought it through.

• 9:03Dax Shepard?

  I used to think that when I was younger.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Crack at your.

• 9:06Dax Shepard?

  7-Eleven.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  Well, if you drive through San Francisco, you can see it.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  But that's the thing. By the way, the reason I talk about crack the way that I talk about crack is because it comes with such a stigma and it's so shocking to people. And I don't say it to shock people. Joe Rogan did this whole thing where, oh my God, you should hear him talk about crack. It's like a lost lover. Well, it's just honest and I don't mean to talk about it that way. And I want to always make it clear, it is actually that dangerous. And the other thing about crack for me is this idea that there's this process and it's a whole different thing. And it's kind of like this secret. It's not.

• 9:39Dax Shepard?

  It had bad branding. I mean, crack sounds like ass crack. Yeah, it's like you're already, it sounds fucking gross. Crack.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 9:47Dax Shepard?

  If it were called taint cocaine, it's one, it's adjacent to taint cocaine.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  Well, it's because there's also some racism in the mix for sure.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Huge amount of racism.

• 9:56Dax Shepard?

  Not some, yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, the whole thing.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  When I was in law school, my senior political writing, it's like your thesis that you write at Yale. That's what I wrote about.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  I wrote about the disparity in sentencing as relates to crack, which Obama administration changed. And then the Biden administration kind of rid of altogether.

• 10:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, this arbitrary distinction legally.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  The response to it was understandable in retrospect in that it kind of came and it just tore apart communities at record speed and the level of violence. But the level of violence always is never necessarily associated with use. The level of violence is all around the trade. And I would say to people, just go watch the fucking wire. It had an astounding effect on so many communities. And the reason that I am so open about it, number one, is just because you've had probably the same experience. I don't know of anybody who hasn't been impacted by addiction. In their lives.

• 10:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  One way or another. The thing is, as much as we talk about it, people don't talk about it. And it's really hard for non-addict to understand.

• 11:02Dax Shepard?

  I want to express an overarching goal I have for talking to you, which is I try my hardest to keep the show apolitical. I want Republicans to feel as welcome listening to this show as I do Democrats. I think the things I'm interested in talking about, I'd hope everyone would get to hear about addiction, about trauma, about all these things. So my goal is to keep it as apolitical as possible, but I'm going to break it right now to just say, there's only been a single moment that I thought Trump potentially lost his momentum with his base. And it was the one moment he tried to come after your dad about your addiction. You could just feel in that audience, everyone's like, oh no, you're talking about my son, you're talking about my brother-in-law, you're talking about my mom.

• 11:44Dax Shepard?

  That one didn't work. I just think it's so pervasive and everyone's had the heartbreak of it. I so few people are fully insulated from it that I just thought, wow, weirdly of all these things. That's the thing I think cut through the sharpest.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Well, your intuition or insight into that is actually really spot on, which is interesting. Because that's what the whole attack on me initially was all about. Was all of the salacious pictures that they stole and cobbled together from, I don't know how many different devices. Idea that there was like one laptop that somebody had. It's just bullshit.

• 12:20Dax Shepard?

  Your whole life was a fucking train wreck, right? There was evidence all over of the train wreckage.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  But like you, not my whole life, three years of extreme addiction.

• 12:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, you look at those pictures and 90% of them are somebody taking a picture of me. But regardless, then what they did is they conflated two things. One that was completely untrue with one that was completely true. I was a crackhead. The thing that wasn't true was that I was taking bribes from like Ukrainians and Chinese and was involved. But if you can get somebody, you know, there's this thing called eliminationist rhetoric. Rachel Maddow has talked about it and originally was perfected by the Nazis, but then Putin picked it up in the early 2000s. In which if they can get just 5% of the people to believe that you're a pedophile or a crackhead, attached like the worst thing that you can say to somebody, the ability to get 30% of the people

• 13:11Speaker 02

  to believe that you'd taken bribes is that much easier.

• 13:16Dax Shepard?

  Well, and then we're circling back to the far reaching. Tentacles of labeling crack, crack, the kind of racial connotations, the now new heights of shame reached by the addict. If you're a cocaine addict, you're in great company. You're with Sigmund Freud for Pete's sake. You're with Lumen Harris and Nobel Peace Prize. When you're a crack addict, your group is totally different. And so you're already juggling the shame of an addiction. And then you add on this other factor, which is like, oh, no, it's known. I'm full exclusion of my community. This is the one thing that, no, I am the bottom of the barrel, even among addicts. I am the shittiest of the shitty. So yes, if we establish you as a crackhead, then really,

• 13:59Dax Shepard?

  your reputation is gone. So all things are conceivable at that point because we've already designated crackheads as being zombies who are the worst of the worst. So it all works in concert beautifully, actually.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  To be clear, I handed it all to them on a silver platter because I was a crackhead. And so my thing now is, yeah, yeah. So what? What are you going to say about me? What are you going to ask me? Like, I just did Candace Owens. And she was vicious to me for six years. The line that she used over and over again was degenerate crackhead, or crackhead for her son. You know, I've been sober for seven years on June 1st.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  Congratulations.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  And clean sober on seven, not that I find any distinction between the two, but she didn't know that.

• 14:43Dax Shepard?

  She did not know that.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  No, she just assumed that I was doing coke or doing crack because what about the bag of cocaine that was found in the White House? And you realize that for six years, the New York Post ran a picture of me. I mean, I was on the cover of the New York Post more than anybody in the history of the newspaper.

• 15:01Dax Shepard?

  No kidding?

• 15:02Speaker 02

  In a one year period of time, going back to like Alexander Hamilton. And I was their number one story. They were writing one and a half stories about me on average a day for like a year. And then it went to one story every two days for the next five. And each one of those stories was awful to begin with, but it always included a picture of me with a pipe in my mouth or in a motel room with a woman, like a degenerate crack addict. And so why wouldn't people think?

• 15:32Dax Shepard?

  Still using.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  Still, yeah.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  I'm shocked by how many people are shocked when I say seven years.

• 15:37Dax Shepard?

  Well, it depends on those people. You can count me in that category. Of course, you're permeating. I don't even follow a lot of that stuff. I don't. Oh, the New York Post, but you're permeating all this during the election. I'm aware of the fact that you're an addict. There's not a press release that you got sober. There's no big headline that you got sober. I don't know till I think I see you on Channel 5. That was the first time I had seen you post all of that. Where I was like, oh, wow, this dude's talking about it. This is rad. He's sober and what a fucking story. And my kind of story.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  It's a story.

• 16:07Dax Shepard?

  Exactly. So let's go through it. I guess let's start in Wilmington, Delaware in 1970. You arrive.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  I arrive.

• 16:14Dax Shepard?

  One year old brother on the scene. Yeah.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:16Dax Shepard?

  Beau, how much older is he then?

• 16:17Speaker 02

  A year and a day.

• 16:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. You guys really nailed the Irish twins.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I guess technically we missed it by a day.

• 16:25Dax Shepard?

  Joe was not waiting.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:30Speaker 03

  Wanted a family.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Now, my sister was born. We're 16 months apart.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Really soon after.

• 16:36Dax Shepard?

  Oh, your mother, man. Three children under two and a half or something. That's bonkers.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:43Dax Shepard?

  I would imagine for you, it's really hard to know what to assume people know about you and what people don't because you're caught in the center of you. I think people vaguely know there was a tragedy.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  I think a lot of people don't know.

• 16:55Dax Shepard?

  I agree. I vaguely just like, oh, yeah, Joe Biden went through hell when he first became a senator. I know he lost some family members, basically, right? But yeah, December 18th, 1972, what's happening?

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Go back. My dad was 29 and he decided that he was going to run for Senate against this guy named Caleb Boggs, two-term governor. And I think at the time he was three-term senator and this incredibly liked incumbent. And my dad ran this campaign in Delaware, what you could do at the time, in which he was able to reach almost every single voter by literally just he, my aunt, my uncles, my grandparents and my mom more than anybody.

• 17:35Dax Shepard?

  Envis the whole state.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, feet on the ground.

• 17:37Dax Shepard?

  How many people lived in Delaware at that point?

• 17:39Speaker 02

  I bet you like 600,000 or something like that.

• 17:42Dax Shepard?

  You could conceivably go meet everyone.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  They put a piece of literature on everyone's doorstep.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Every home in the state of Delaware.

• 17:50Dax Shepard?

  And what was his novel offering that people were like, yeah?

• 17:53Speaker 02

  Remember 1970, you had a Nixon landslide also. And so he talked about civil rights and he talked about the environment. And he talked about just new leadership and he won by a razor thin margin. But he won and it was a shock to everyone. I don't think it was a shock to my mom.

• 18:12Dax Shepard?

  Where did that put him historically as age?

• 18:14Speaker 02

  The youngest ever to win an election. So he couldn't take the oath of office until he turned 30. You can win, but you can't take the oath of office until you turn 30.

• 18:25Dax Shepard?

  President's 35?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  President's 35 and the House of Representatives 25. So anyway, he wins and he goes to DC for the day to interview potential staffers. And my mom was supposed to go down because they just bought a house with us. And she decided to delay it a day because she wanted to buy a Christmas tree. It was December 18th because we were celebrating Christmas in Delaware, I guess. And she was pulling out from an intersection of stop signs. This is a big hill and a tractor trailer slammed in the side. It was me, my brother and our dog and my sister and my mother. And Bo and I survived, but just barely. We were trapped in the car, but my sister and my mom were killed.

• 19:07Dax Shepard?

  Pretty instantly, you imagine?

• 19:09Speaker 02

  I believe so.

• 19:10Dax Shepard?

  About to turn three, three months away from three.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Exactly. I was almost three, but I was almost four.

• 19:14Dax Shepard?

  Do you have any, I mean, I can imagine you have any memory of the exact?

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Of the accident itself? No, I have memories. You probably know this, it's very rare. They say like 10 or 15% of people have memories before the age of seven or five or something like that. I believe I do.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  But I don't know if it's because so many people have told me.

• 19:35Dax Shepard?

  And photographs.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  But trauma might add a different element to it.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  And so I choose to believe that I actually have the memory.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  The memory of my mom carrying me around. They used to carry us around like picnic baskets.

• 19:45Dax Shepard?

  It's also irrelevant whether you remember or not, like we had Gabor Maté on, right? It's like Gabor Maté was abandoned by his mother for a couple of months.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  I love him.

• 19:54Dax Shepard?

  He's the greatest. He doesn't remember that, but all of his circuitry remembers that. It set his arousal setting at that moment.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Exactly. And by the way, I used to deny myself the idea that the accident and the trauma of it and the loss of my mother and my sister, being in the car, all of that had any impact on anything in my life. I was so surrounded by love in the immediate aftermath of that and then going forward. Like my dad, I don't give a shit what anybody thinks about him politically. My dad is literally the best dad in the entire world. He's even better grandfather, which pisses me off. But he is the best dad in the world.

• 20:31Dax Shepard?

  Also, your aunts and uncles moved into the house.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  My aunt moved into the house, my Aunt Valerie and my Uncle Jimmy converted the garage into an apartment. And my Uncle Frankie was in and out and my grandparents on both sides. We spent every summer up in the Finger Lakes, up in Lake Wasco with the hunters who I'm named after. I probably spent at least two nights a week at my grandparents, what we called mom and dad, Bidens, every week until I graduated high school.

• 20:58Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  And on top of that, because of the notoriety of the thing, an entire state, which is a small state.

• 21:05Dax Shepard?

  Was polling for all of you guys.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  And so everywhere we went, we had more aunts and uncles than anybody deserves and still do. And so I kind of always denied the idea.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  You're like, I'm fine.

• 21:16Dax Shepard?

  Well, we probably would have felt ungrateful.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  That's exactly right.

• 21:18Dax Shepard?

  The amount of love.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  And then my mom came along. My mom now.

• 21:22Dax Shepard?

  How old were you when Jill?

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Seven.

• 21:24Dax Shepard?

  Seven.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think seven, seven, eight.

• 21:26Dax Shepard?

  It's also relevant. So Bo received a ton of broken bones, right?

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was in a basically like an extraction and a body cast for a long time.

• 21:34Dax Shepard?

  But you had a fractured skull and brain damage.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. No, like, how could it not impact?

• 21:41Speaker 02

  I could test in that brain.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  But you nailed it. I felt guilty. Thinking that my life was anything but this bundle of love.

• 21:51Dax Shepard?

  Did you guys do a lot of debriefing about it or processing it?

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Not the accident itself, but we talked about my mother and still do incessantly.

• 22:01Dax Shepard?

  She didn't pretend that.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Did not pretend in any way that she did not exist, including my mom, but my mom became, she honored the memory of my mother in a very real way. I mean, I talked to my aunts and uncles about it to this day about how, by all accounts, and obviously I'm biased, my mother was a extraordinary human being. Everyone will tell you that my dad got elected at the age of 29 for one reason. It was because of my mother.

• 22:25Dax Shepard?

  So your ride up until Georgetown, you're at a private school, Catholic, maybe a Jesuit school?

• 22:31Speaker 02

  No, it's not Jesuit, it was Norbertine, but I started off, my Aunt Val was a teacher at the Wilmington Friend School, so a little Quaker school in Delaware. It was great. And I went there until ninth grade. And my dad had gone to Archmere, which is a little Catholic school on the border of PA and Delaware. And I played football and I decided to go because my brother had gone there, which was probably a mistake.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Why?

• 22:58Speaker 02

  But I, well, it's just, I'm much more suited for the Quaker ethic than I am to the Norbertine Catholic school ethic, but I have great friends there.

• 23:06Dax Shepard?

  How were you and Bo different?

• 23:08Speaker 02

  We were inseparable and we fought like brothers fight, but no one else could fight my brother without me or somebody do something to me without my brother standing in the way.

• 23:19Dax Shepard?

  My brother would kick my ass, then go beat up the bully a minute later.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, but by the way, Bo and I were more evenly matched. I know that I was much more pugnacious than he was, but the difference between us is that Bo is a extrovert. And also, he had a confidence that was just immediate. You can ask anybody. Bo was an extraordinary human being. And, I mean, everybody called him the sheriff. He never drank. He was always the guy that drove the car. He was always the one that is, you know, cutting people off when they're about to do something stupid. And he was like that from the time he was eight years old. And I loved drawing and I loved poetry and I loved sports, but I also loved playing with my army men by myself in my room.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  You were sensitive?

• 24:02Dax Shepard?

  You were sensitive.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  I was much, much, much more sensitive.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Addicts generally are.

• 24:08Dax Shepard?

  That's part of our. Yeah.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  They are, they are. Because we're not stupid. Too aware, almost. Exactly. That's what I always say. But that was the difference between us. He was a constant presence in my life in only the most beautiful way that I can articulate.

• 24:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. You go to Georgetown, you get a history degree. Were you always set on going to law school?

• 24:31Speaker 02

  Uh-uh.

• 24:31Dax Shepard?

  How did you decide that?

• 24:32Speaker 02

  So when I was at Georgetown, the best part about Georgetown was is that I got to meet these really incredibly fascinating young Jesuit priests that were very much a part of campus life, at least back then. And I met a guy named Ted Dziek, who had started a thing called the Jesuit International Volunteer Corps. It's basically like a Peace Corps, but it is done under the auspices of the Jesuit community. But it's non-ecumenical. You don't go out and proselytize or anything.

• 24:58Dax Shepard?

  They're trying to convert people.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  No, you can go out if you're Methodist. It's just public service. And they had a beachhead in Belize, in Nepal, in Micronesia at the time. And we started a thing called the Jesuit International Volunteer Summer Program in Belize. And because of that, I was really involved also in a thing called the Center for Immigration Policy and Refugee Assistance. And there was another Jesuit there that ran that. He was one of like the OG refugee and immigrant advocates in the country. And I was involved in that. And I decided that I was going to do the Peace Corps. And another guy, a guy named, I'm naming all these people that nobody does. No, it's fine. Father Watson, Bill Watson, he said, why are you going abroad? Join JBC, which is a domestic version of the Peace Corps.

• 25:41Dax Shepard?

  What about Portland?

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Exactly. Because he was from Portland, which by the way, was the greatest thing ever. Because this was 1992. It is just the coolest place in the world.

• 25:52Dax Shepard?

  Coffee, cigarettes, grunge.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, like I sat in Powell's bookstore and read all the Beat poets. You have an endless cup of coffee and three packs of cigarettes. And you live with other volunteers. You make 80 bucks a month. That's all you get. And you pull your money together for groceries, but you're riding the bus and you're working in the community and you're living in the community that you work in, which was me in the basement of a church, figuring out how to get people food or get their lights turned back on or, you know, get the heat turned back on in winter. It was the greatest thing ever.

• 26:23Dax Shepard?

  And you met your first wife there?

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. And she was a volunteer also. And then we shortly after that had Naomi. We got married. I went to law school. I did my first year at Georgetown.

• 26:34Dax Shepard?

  You were married with a kid at 23, right?

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Exactly. And I had Naomi on my last exam of my first semester of law school. And the professor let me out of the exam. So I took it after Christmas and he gave me an A. And I did really well. And I'd always wanted to go to Yale. I got rejected. And I didn't think I was necessarily going to get in, but I did really well. And got into Yale as a transfer. They like accept like five to seven people a year.

• 27:01Dax Shepard?

  Sidebar, was it interesting to leave the bubble for the first time and go to Portland? In that you grew up in Delaware, dad's a senator. It's politics, politics, politics. And you go to Georgetown, which is in DC. Again, you must at that time think the entire country thinks about politics all the time and cares.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:21Dax Shepard?

  And then you go to Portland and was it nice to get an outside perspective? And did you feel that happening?

• 27:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, not as much because I needed an outside perspective from the politics thing. But the difference with Bo and I was that we never grew up in that. We grew up in Delaware. My dad took the train back and forth every day. And so in a state of 600, which is like now, I think a million people or just under a million people. Everybody knows my dad and you guys kind of get this idea of Uncle Joe. They knew him as Joe. Like when I get pulled over by the cops, it wasn't, sorry, sir. It was like, I can't wait till I see your dad. He's going to kick your ass. You know what I mean? Like that was our existence. When I went to Georgetown, that was a little bit different, but still not overwhelming. It's not like anybody knew who I was by the way that people on the street know who I am now. So when I went to Portland though, you're absolutely right.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  I don't know what you think about the addiction thing. But for me now in retrospect, particularly this time, this last seven years, in which I had to kind of make a choice, the ultimate choice, to live or die. So many of the decisions that I made in my life that had really Horrible consequences are all based in fear. Fear of judgment, fear of sticking out, fear of being found out, fear of showing truly who you are. But when I was in Portland, I could be the guy that was sitting and reading Ginsberg and the Paris Review.

• 28:45Dax Shepard?

  Naked lunch and Bukowski.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  Exactly. While I was making 80 bucks a month and not giving a shit.

• 28:51Dax Shepard?

  Can you think at this age, so if I do it, it's like, there's some really memorable moments with using. One is the very first time I decided to drink some beers out of the fridge. My dad was a recovering addict, so I was never gonna do it. Then one day I was like, no, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna find out on my own. And I do remember having like three beers out of the fridge and literally thinking, oh, fuck. This is the feeling I've been craving and couldn't articulate. I don't know, I can't compare it to non-addicts, but just immediately I was like, this is a magic.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. I know exactly where I was. I know exactly what happened. I was at a adult party with my brother. I picked up a champagne glass, went underneath a table with a tablecloth over it, dragged the glass and thought to myself, oh, my God, this is the answer to everything.

• 29:38Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, truly.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Because then I left underneath the table and I danced with everybody and I was happy. And I didn't continue to drink. All the trolls clip this stuff. I wasn't drinking at the age of eight, but I remember that experience. You know, when people say, why did you do it? Because it worked.

• 29:54Dax Shepard?

  Well, yeah, it's a medicine that works for a period of time.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  It works like that. And then you find something that works even better. I played football, so you know, during the football season, none of us would drink, kinda.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  And it's what we did. It's what we did on the weekends.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. What are you gonna do? Be the one person not doing it? It's a hard thing to ask people, you know, it's social.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  The next time I really drank after I was eight, I remember what it was. Exactly. And talk about regulating emotions. Is a friend of mine had taken his parents' car with another friend of mine. They had a couple beers or whatever. It was speeding down one of these back roads in Delaware and ran into a tree and she died instantly. Talk about the wrong response to that. The wrong response to that was, he was my best friend at the time, is that we stole beers in the back of his house. And I remember the enormous guilt. I don't think I've ever told this story. I remember my dad picking me up from his house the morning after we, between us, drank a 12-pack, I guess, or whatever. But, you know, you're 15 years old and going to mass.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  We'd go to mass every Sunday, that St. Joe's on the Brandywine, little Catholic church. And having to leave and tell my dad, I think I had the flu and thrown up outside. And I think it was less a response to the alcohol than it was to the enormity of the guilt that I had just, like, our friend, the consequences for him for what happened were enormous. Yeah. And the guilt of that, and as you know, guilt is appropriate, but the thing that is not is the shame. So then what's the only thing that you know, your brain is telling you, works so that you don't have to feel that shame and anxiety over that shame of the thing that you're not telling somebody? Oh, I know, have another drink. Yeah. So that was like at 15, and then it's a cycle.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  So when I get to Portland, I've made it through college. I actually did pretty well. Not without Oktoberfest in Burlington, Vermont, got in a street fight and somebody curved me and broke every tooth out of my. Oh, my God. Stomped on my leg on the curb and broke my leg in three places. I was in a cast for six months. Oh, my God. I mean, oh, it was awful, but that didn't stop me. Yeah. That didn't stop me.

• 32:06Dax Shepard?

  It was all speed bump.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  So when I get to Portland, there's this whole new me. No expectations, nobody that knows all of the small town or the small college kind of group. And it's filled with purpose. Yeah, it was incredibly promising. And so I drank, and obviously to excess, I don't know what your drinking was like, but I wasn't a blackout drunk, unfortunately. I really wish I blacked out because I could go and go and go.

• 32:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the bill never came due at that age.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  No, and the truth of the matter was is because I wasn't engaging in anything in which the bill came due. We were going to Nickel Beers at Nob Hill in Portland and playing pool. We didn't have any money. No consequences. Yeah.

• 32:46Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 32:51Dax Shepard?

  We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking that your keys are actually in your hand before you close the car door. Have you ever stood in a parking lot full of sun staring at your keys sitting right there on the seat, four inches away and completely useless to you? It's a very specific kind of humbling. Yeah, checking first is a good idea. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds. And for fast, reliable help when you need it, add an Allstate roadside plan today. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary. Insurance and roadside assistance plans are subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Insurance provided by Allstate North American Insurance Company, Northbrook, Illinois.

• 33:35Dax Shepard?

  Roadside assistance plans provided by Allstate Motor Club, Incorporated, an Allstate affiliate. This episode is supported by Helix.

• 33:44Speaker 01

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• 33:54Dax Shepard?

  That's the dream. You just described one of my ideal fall nights.

• 33:58Speaker 01

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• 34:14Dax Shepard?

  Increasingly so.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  I need it. I have to have it. And I heard that you're supposed to sleep at a cold temp for optimal sleep. It's very, very helpful.

• 34:25Dax Shepard?

  She is not wrong. I have one too, and it's been such a game changer for sleep. And I love that they make it so easy. Free shipping right to your door. And with their happy with Helix guarantee, you'll get a full 365 nights to try it. A whole year to live in that cozy. They've got over 20 mattress models, so no matter how you sleep, they've got one for you.

• 34:45Speaker 01

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• 34:53Dax Shepard?

  Go to helixsleep.com/armchair for 20% off site wide. That's helixsleep.com/armchair for 20% off site wide. Helixsleep.com/armchair.

• 35:06Dax Shepard?

  We get support by Peloton. You know that feeling when you're spiraling over a problem and you just can't figure it out? When that happens to me, I need a change of pace and I've found that running is the best way. It takes my brain out of the driver's seat and I come back with a fresh perspective. Running can be freeing and cathartic and Peloton helps you feel all of that. And now that feeling fits wherever you need it with the new Peloton Tread Flex. It's movable and foldable, designed to fit your life. So next time you feel stuck, you can go for a run literally anywhere. Whether that's in your office, living room, or even the attic. Plus, they have classes with expert instructors and programs to meet you at any level and keep you moving. Let yourself run.

• 35:50Dax Shepard?

  Explore the new Peloton Tread Flex at onepeloton.com. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've thought about trying therapy with our long-term partner, BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. October 10th is World Mental Health Day, but you don't need a day on the calendar to give yourself permission to talk to someone. I've been in therapy for a long time and the stuff rattling around in my head always just quiets down the second I say it out loud. And it doesn't have to be some big life crisis. Maybe it's a work thing that's taking up too much space or hard relationship moment, or just a feeling that something's off. That's enough. That's worth talking about.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  You know, I love therapy more than anything gets me through. Often I'll want to cancel because I'm like, I don't really have anything to talk about. And then I'll go and I have some major revelation.

• 36:44Dax Shepard?

  You know, I was just talking to a friend who has just started it. And I said, one of the most powerful elements of it is just hearing yourself say out loud, the thing that's been ruminating in your head and how different it sounds once it's out into the world. You gain perspective immediately just by hearing yourself say it.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, you do.

• 36:59Dax Shepard?

  If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks and eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. Don't have insurance or live outside the U.S.? You can still get 10% off your first month. Do yourself a favor and just try it. Future you will be grateful. Visit betterhelp.com/dax to explore your payment options. That's better H E L P dot com slash DAX.

• 37:33Dax Shepard?

  When's the first time it occurs to you? I think this is like, for the layperson, there's these kind of stereotypes that are true and not true, which is, first of all, this notion of like a bottom, which is like, well, there's not a bottom. I had like thirty.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  I always say a bottom's you're dead.

• 37:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Maybe in jail if you're lucky.

• 37:51Dax Shepard?

  But just that moment, you go, oh, I should have died last night, or I should have died over the last four days. This is life or death. That's a bottom.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:59Dax Shepard?

  And you go, are we gonna keep going? And often you keep going, even though you recognize.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  You find a new bottom.

• 38:04Dax Shepard?

  When do you start recognizing, I do this differently than people, and probably I'll have to quit at some point?

• 38:10Speaker 02

  When I was twenty-nine, I start to realize my pattern of drinking was unlike anyone, not anyone, because you find your group, you know what I mean? But even among those heavy drinkers, I would still be going at six in the morning.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  While everyone's asleep.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  They're like, what are you guys doing? And then, when I was thirty-three, my wife at the time said, like, you need to slow it down.

• 38:30Dax Shepard?

  Were you accumulating any wreckage? Had you gotten DUIs?

• 38:33Speaker 02

  No.

• 38:33Dax Shepard?

  No?

• 38:34Speaker 02

  No.

• 38:34Dax Shepard?

  You were keeping it pretty.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I, you know, I built my own law firm. I graduated from Yale. I did really well from law school. And I was a senior executive vice president at a major bank when I got out of law school. And then I went to work for the Clinton administration.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Your resume.

• 38:51Dax Shepard?

  You had a lot to lean on.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  You're doing well. You're getting gigs that other people aren't getting.

• 38:56Dax Shepard?

  You're able to shore up the plummeting self-esteem from the addiction with these external things.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  And I had three kids by that time.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Right. But were you also thinking that maybe it's a part of your success? Like, I could see you kind of, anyone, being sort of like, well, this is part of the whole recipe. I do this, and I'm successful, and it's the whole.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  It becomes a part of your identity.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Identity, yeah.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  Definitely. And what I always say when people come to me, and I love it, because I say to them, I don't have any answer for you, other than getting clean sober is easy. All you have to do is change everything.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  But it becomes a part of your identity, and you think, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do on a Thursday?

• 39:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  What am I gonna do on a Friday?

• 39:36Dax Shepard?

  A vacation?

• 39:37Speaker 02

  What am I gonna do on Tuesdays? Everything revolves around drinking. What am I gonna do on vacation?

• 39:42Dax Shepard?

  When I celebrate.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  What am I gonna do at five o'clock?

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Five o'clock.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Eleven AM.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, try eleven AM. Yeah, exactly.

• 39:50Dax Shepard?

  Can I sprinkle in another, I think, facet? Of this very complex system of addiction, I think for men, at least for me, there's a big chunk of masculinity involved in this whole journey for me, which is again, I was the dude who went harder than anyone and I showed up and did my shit and I had great pride in that. That was a real indicator of my alpha masculinity.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 40:13Dax Shepard?

  It validated me. Just scratching inclined for this validation of being appropriately masculine was also some facet of it. I don't know what percentage, but it was in the mix. Was that happening for you to?

• 40:25Speaker 02

  All of that fear of really being seen, you build up this persona of being tougher than anybody, more capable than anybody.

• 40:32Dax Shepard?

  Cause really I'm just a sensitive dude who wants to entertain people. I love my daughters.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  It becomes a shield for everything and it becomes this identity. It is literally the polar opposite of your true self. Cause I'm not that guy. I don't want to be that guy. And so doing a speech, doing anything public, I needed a drink to do it. I thought I needed a drink to do it. In the past life, if this was seven years ago for me, the idea that I wouldn't literally be a puddle on this couch, just if you put a microphone in front of my face.

• 41:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  And knowing that there's a camera in the room or that I had to get on a stage and do something. I was so afraid of that. Now, unfortunately for everyone, I don't. Exactly. So I do, I need to do a lot more. Yeah. But you're exactly right. So it becomes your persona. And what happened with me is what I did was like, okay, I'm going to prove to everybody that this is not a problem. I'm not going to drink for January. Dry January. I'm going to do 30 days and I'd get six and I'd break it. I'd say, oh, that was just one break. It was for the weekend. And then what ends up happening is, is then you start hiding it. It becomes binge even more. And then I'd be like, hey, I got a trip that I got to do for business. And that business trip would be two days that would stretch into four, that would

• 41:46Speaker 02

  stretch into five, and then it would be come home.

• 41:48Dax Shepard?

  You're dead on arrival. I just laughing at how many times the game plan evolved so quickly. It's like, yeah, 30 days and then just weekends. No, just Wednesdays and weekends.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Just beer, not Jack Daniels. Well, not.

• 42:01Dax Shepard?

  And it just erodes so fucking. Quickly. From the abstinence to the like one day we go full on is like it's comical.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Dependence. There is physical dependence that people take out of consideration. Yeah, it's like you can't actually just stop at any moment. You kind of have to like titrate. And if you're an addict, you can't titrate. Like it's this crazy.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, nobody talks about it. Nobody talks about all of that in terms of the wellness piece of it and ways to be able to mitigate that. And how you should do it with somebody who really do it, understanding what you're doing. But regardless is that for me, it became so many promises made, so many promises broken around alcohol. That Bo's just like, hey, let's do something about this for real. Let's start to look. And I found Crossroads in Antigua, Eric Clapton's place.

• 42:45Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I sent my best friend Aaron there.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  It's great. By the way, it was for me at that time, and this is, what is it, 2003? So 22, 23 years ago. It's in Antigua, but it's not a resort.

• 42:57Dax Shepard?

  And you earn swimming privileges. Like Aaron would call me and be like, oh yeah, I did all blah blah. I'm gonna get to swim in the ocean today for two hours.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Exactly. You get to go on the bus to go to the ocean to go swimming. And it has a real community aspect, at least when I was there. They were really wonderful. And I get there with all of those preconceived notions of how my life is gonna be so empty. Because I don't have alcohol in it anymore. And I was introduced to the program. All of a sudden I was like, wait a second, this may work. And I got out. My brother picked me up from the airport and immediately drove to a meeting over at Dupont Circle Club.

• 43:30Dax Shepard?

  Oh, what a good big brother.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  I know. So I was just thinking too.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  It was an open meeting. He went to the meeting with me.

• 43:36Dax Shepard?

  That makes me fucking emotional. Yeah, yeah.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  He goes up to this guy and says, hey, do you sponsor people? Because he had spoken in the thing. And he goes, yeah, of course. He goes, I'm gonna introduce you to my brother. And I got my sponsor. I stayed clean and sober. And again, I hate the distinction.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  What is the distinction?

• 43:52Speaker 02

  Well, you say you're sober if you're not drinking. And you say you're clean in the other program if you're not using drugs.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Oh, I see.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  It's all drugs. But anyway, I was not on any mind altering substances whatsoever for about seven year period of time.

• 44:05Dax Shepard?

  And did you love the program?

• 44:07Speaker 02

  I loved the program. I still, I still love the program. Those people that I met are still clean and sober. And when I say people, like a handful that threw everything. I've always been a lifeline for me. If I had my phone in front of me, you'd find like four texts every day from those same people that gave me a lifeline back.

• 44:27Dax Shepard?

  When you're looking at the landscape in front of you, yes, all you see is all the things you're not gonna have, like the camaraderie with friends, the intimacy with men, the thing to do on vacation, the celebration, the salve for disappointment. You're very aware of all the things you're gonna lose. But what you don't consider is you're also gonna lose this impossible weight that has been on your shoulders, which is the shame and guilt and regret.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  And you hope.

• 44:52Dax Shepard?

  But you don't even know that yet. You can't conceive of a moment where you won't be walking around feeling like the biggest piece of shit that ever lived. That's not even in your imagination yet. And I think the gift of it, that's kind of hard to sell kids on or sell people that are new to it, is like, you can't really even imagine what it's like to walk through life with maybe regrets, but not shame. And you've made amends and you're walking free of all that. Cause for most of us, it's been decades since we knew what that feeling was like.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  It's impossible to tell somebody. The only thing that we can do is show them and hope that they get the chance to experience it.

• 45:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  And by the way, that seven years, it wasn't like I was hanging on by the skin of my teeth in any way. But what I now know is that I had not fully done the work because there was that armor that still existed in which that shame still lived. And not even about specific things, just about truly being me. And so, anyway, I relapsed.

• 45:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  I'm on a plane and it was 2010, I think. And I'm coming back from a business trip in Europe, clean, sober. I had been upgraded to like this business class, but I was the only one in there. She comes by with a cart and it's a Bloody Mary cart, like a full Bloody Mary cart. And I swear to God, you know what went through my head? One of my counselors at Crossroads had told me a story about how he'd been sober for seven years and he had a drink on a plane on his way to Washington DC from the West Coast. And he woke up in Indianapolis, Indiana.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  In a motel. Why that would be a, in any way, like.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Oh, I should do that.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Maybe I should try this.

• 46:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  But I did. I had a drink.

• 46:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  And of course, I didn't have one Bloody Mary on that plane, in which I think I probably came and told people that in my group, I had six. And I got off the plane and I went to a corner store on the way home and picked up, you know, a fifth of Smirnoff in that plastic bottle and put it in my bag. So then, about a year later, Beau comes and says, "Back to Antigua, pal."

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Are you like, "Oh, my God, my brother has to keep..." Do you have guilt about that?

• 47:12Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  You don't.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  I don't have any guilt about how much my brother adored me. He wasn't like, "Oh, God, I gotta go get Hunter." He was like, "What the fuck? You've been trying so hard. Let's get you back, man. You're doing great. When we get back, I'll go to me..." I think the meanings are great. I love it. I could use it, too. I probably had a trigger, it's like, never any, like, talk about unconditional love that he had between each other. But anyway, thanks, Monica. Now, I think I maybe should have been guilty about some of that. I'm joking, I'm joking.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  I just mean, letting people down is part of the shame that builds.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  I had guilt with my wife at the time. I had guilt with my kids, who I adored and adore me. But then I cycled. Then it was like, I came back from Antigua that time. I got shingles three months later. Somebody prescribed me oxycodone. I started down that path, and which led to a bottle of Smirnoff. And I was in that cycle, and then Beau got diagnosed with glioblastoma in 2014. It's a death sentence.

• 48:10Dax Shepard?

  If I were you, carrying around, "I'm a piece of shit and I'm a scumbag."

• 48:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:14Dax Shepard?

  And my sweet brother gets this diagnosis, I would think, the amount of shame it would exponentially trigger in me that I should be the one dying. Why on earth would it be him?

• 48:25Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. You already have this latent survivor's guilt that exists. And this is why I opened up to the idea that I can... Talk about that trauma now because of course it had something to do with everything. And just forget about the drinking or addiction, just in terms of my fear. You already have that latent survivor's guilt. The worst dream that I ever had in my life as a kid was my brother dying. I remember vividly, the only nightmares that I ever remembered was that, was losing Bo. And that became true, but playing in slow motion. Like you know, the end is near coming and it's gonna be awful. And it was awful.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  And I did things like I decided to join the Navy and I relapsed the day before I went into the Navy reserves at the age of 42.

• 49:16Dax Shepard?

  Pissed hot.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  I get, yeah, pissed hot.

• 49:18Dax Shepard?

  Discharged from the Navy Reserve.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  I now am sober, I'm going through all of the treatments with Bo and all of the things that we're trying. And you get down to the end, they're doing experimental stuff. But anyway, he passed away, it was the 30th of May, 11 years ago. And from there on out, just everything, not because of him, regardless of that, I just as easily could have completely screwed everything up.

• 49:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, even if he had stayed healthy.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, even if he stayed healthy. It accelerated, it accelerated the process. And the biggest thing that accelerated is, immediately after Bo died, my marriage fell apart. I mean, immediately after. We attempted to do things, I attempted to go back to rehab, I stayed in, I had a sober coach, everybody was afraid that I was gonna kill myself. And that all fell apart within a year.

• 50:06Dax Shepard?

  Do you remember, you must, it's a rhetorical question, but the first time you smoked crack?

• 50:10Speaker 02

  From June of 2015 to the end of June of 2016, I had been in and out. I did like 45 days in an inpatient, then I came out and I did this thing where I had this guy that three times a day I'd have to blow into a breathalyzer and it takes a picture of you and so. I was doing that and then I had a relapse over Christmas, spicy on its own.

• 50:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  I relapsed. I admit that I relapsed. I go back into a outpatient program, which is like six hours a day in DC, but I'm living by myself for the first time in 46 years. And by the way, nobody's fault but my own, just to be clear, I'm not blaming my.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  It doesn't sound like you are.

• 50:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  I think it's even more important for me to say that over and over again. And I relapsed, I used cocaine and I drink and I come back into the program on the Monday and I say, hey, I relapsed, I drank and I used cocaine. And they said, you gotta go take the drug test. And I said, I'm not gonna take the drug test. It's not protected by HIPAA. You're in a rehab facility, not in a categorized medical facility. It's discoverable and I don't want to do that. I'm telling you what I did.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Doesn't that be enough?

• 51:22Speaker 02

  I'm not keeping anything out. They said, well, unless you take the drug test, you're not coming back in. And so it was on K Street in DC and I walk out and I know the Lincoln Park, which is literally two blocks away. And I knew the worst possible thing that I could do was go smoke crack. And that's what I decided was the answer.

• 51:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  And I did and it was a revelation. And again, Joe Rogan, I don't mean this as a love letter. What I mean it is, is it adds the ultimate warning from someone whose life was torn apart by it. It was staggeringly effective and immediate. And that began a cycle.

• 52:07Dax Shepard?

  For people who don't know, so when you snort cocaine, it goes into your sinuses. It slowly dissolves, it slowly enters your bloodstream. When you smoke it, your lungs convert it immediately. They dump it all in your blood. The only thing's faster is shooting it in there venously. It's a different experience because you're getting all of it right away.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  And there's a piece about crack that also has this idea that crack is dirty. What really the truth of the matter is, the way that you manufacture crack. I figured out how to do that pretty quickly. It got much better and better and better at it. Most of the impurities that you could find in it, when things were mixed, get burned out. And so it's a very, very pure form of the drug, which has an immediate effect. There's a really crazy study that I heard out of University of Pennsylvania, in which crack addicts, they did these brain libraries.

• 52:56Dax Shepard?

  M R I images.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, but live with smoking. The highest that you get as a crack addict is the millisecond before

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:06Speaker 02

  you ever ingest a drug.

• 53:07Dax Shepard?

  That's the dopamine dump.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  And that's the power of the drug. It's not even the drug. It's literally.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Power of the brain.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  The power of the brain. It's crazy. And so it worked really effectively.

• 53:17Dax Shepard?

  What you're looking for is like the micron before obliteration is the goal, which is so fucked up.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  So fucked up.

• 53:26Dax Shepard?

  Oh, God, it's so fucked up.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  It's sad. I mean, that's why when, when you tell the stories about people saying degenerate crack addict and stuff, it's like, who can hear these things and not think, one, thank God I don't have that. Two, this is sad. We need to help people to like shame, to add to the shame. I do not understand.

• 53:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, as if the person's like thriving in life and you should be upset that they're winning.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  It's literally kicking someone out.

• 53:56Dax Shepard?

  We're pieces of shit in cars, smoking pipes.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  As you can see from the thousands of pictures, I was not thriving.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  Right. It's like, you want to trade places with that person?

• 54:05Speaker 02

  Pretty good, though.

• 54:06Dax Shepard?

  You went to depths I didn't. I became aware of your story because a woman that spent some time with you wrote some piece that I happened to read. And I quite enjoyed it for a few reasons. A, she like liked you, this woman who wrote this thing. I don't even know specifically what it was like. Well, that says something. If you can hang out with an addict who's fucking smoking rock all day long and you come out of that, you still kind of like the person. There's, it's really kind of revealing because you're at your darkest, shittiest, monstrous. You're just a bottomless pit, right? Of give me more. Everything. So the fact that that person still had kind of a kind opinion of you, I found fascinating. But also it was an interesting perspective to see the person orbiting someone in that zone. And then just imagining people that orbited me when I was in that zone.

• 54:51Dax Shepard?

  I never really get to hear what that person's experience is like.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  You gotta heard from a lot of them. I overcompensated knowing what I was doing to myself with being as compassionate, empathetic and generous to a fault, you know, basically come beat me up.

• 55:09Dax Shepard?

  Well, you're getting robbed all the time.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  All the time. I mean, I don't know how many laptops and phones that were stolen from me. And I don't say this like, oh, I was such a victim. The way that I assuaged my guilt was I just would give it all away. Or know that it was going to be taken all away. And it didn't matter who it was. It didn't matter if it was bicycles who lived with me in my apartment, knowing that she was robbing me blind every day, or whether it was a prostitute. By the way, which was all about drugs. That's the fastest way to be able to figure out if you want to figure, I'm not going to tell people. To figure out how to get drugs is that that's the easiest entryway, particularly for someone like me into that world. I mean, eventually I had to go down to like the flower district at four o'clock in the morning and score. And nowhere to go, you have guns, you know, my face.

• 55:56Dax Shepard?

  You're not naive. You're a smart dude. You went to Yellot. You also recognize like I am desperate for this thing. The people around me are even more desperate because they don't have any means. And so I'm not naive. Yeah, I'm going to get taken for a ride. And I'm willing to get taken for a ride because I want access to the thing. It's all a terrible symbiosis of destruction.

• 56:18Speaker 02

  I consciously knew that I was killing myself. 100% knew it. And it would go up. And even during that period of time, like I went for treatment and did Abogaine and 5MEO DMT therapy.

• 56:30Dax Shepard?

  Were any of those effective? I hear about people claiming.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  I think that they can be very, very effective. My experience with 5MEO DMT was one of the most spiritually enlightening things that I've ever done. But that's because I did the Abogaine before it, which was not as effective for me. What is? Because I was smoking crack up. Until the three hours before I went and did it. Ibogain is, I think, one of the strongest, if not strongest psychoactive hallucinogen on the planet. It's a plant from the iboga plant in Africa that they've used for thousands and thousands of years. Studies have shown that it has a great impact, particularly with people with PTSD and opiate addictions. It's a very, very long lasting 12, or at least my experience was like over 12 hours. You know, and then I went and tried to do ayahuasca and I did that frog toad venom where they cut your arms and purge you.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  You know, I went to this charlatan in Massachusetts and did ketamine infusion therapy. But all the time I'm still using, and I believe in those things and I believe in those alternative things, not as an answer, but as additive to something. If you approach it with the respect that the plant medicine actually requires from you. I don't want to ever do any of them again.

• 57:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  I'm afraid to do anything again.

• 57:40Dax Shepard?

  But also, yeah, the notion that you're gonna take one thing to break your

• 57:45Speaker 02

  To break your desire.

• 57:46Dax Shepard?

  To take another thing.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  But it can be when you're really healthy, is it can be a mind expanding experience.

• 57:53Dax Shepard?

  It can break up neural networks that have existed since the first trauma and it can rewire new pathways.

• 58:00Speaker 02

  You see literally that if anyone ever really, really stops to think about it is kind of the perennial philosophy of the connection of all things. That everything is love. And I don't mean love in terms of the more sense of it, but in terms of there is no distinction between me, you, this table, this earth, the universe and anything else. At least that's the experience I have.

• 58:18Dax Shepard?

  These are arbitrary boundaries.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  Impossible to articulate, which is a beautiful thing to experience, but it's not the answer. The one thing is you still come back from that. And if you're filled with shame and fear, it's still there.

• 58:30Dax Shepard?

  The wreckage is just piling up. You've lost your family.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:36Dax Shepard?

  You have a relationship with your brother's widow.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  I mean awful, what grief and addiction, loneliness and every other thing that you can come up with to think why something like that would have been a good idea for anyone. While you know that you're tearing your family apart. I mean, talk about the shame.

• 58:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:53Speaker 02

  And the only thing that has, you know, is being able to talk about it, knowing that like, I'm going to talk about this now. And there's going to be 400 people. That are gonna come into your comments and say, what a scumbag, you know what I mean? And by the way, and me say like, yeah. I don't know. By the way, I don't know, and I don't care. Maybe put it this way, is that when I was in the depths of my addiction, I did some really, really shameful things that I have no excuse for. And I don't think that drugs and alcohol and addiction are ever an excuse. But I do know this, certainly part of an explanation.

• 59:34Dax Shepard?

  No, I can observe you off of it and I can observe you on it. And they're pretty distinct creatures. I think people have some fantasy of what the crack scene's like. But again, when I've been with friends, it's like full vulnerability, full lack of any fear that you'd be judged, full expression of yourself. That's the joy of the thing is like, I'm

• 59:57Speaker 02

  You got it.

• 59:57Dax Shepard?

  telling you how much I love you. And that's so scary for me to do. Sober as a dude.

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's just hard to find many.

• 1:00:05Dax Shepard?

  Compatriots.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  That group becomes smaller and smaller and smaller until you're in a super A motel off of 95 in West Haven.

• 1:00:15Dax Shepard?

  And the end of all of our stories is ultimately is isolation. So even if there's 20 people in the other room, you're in a closet smoking crack and you really don't want to be interrupted. And you just need that there to know you're not completely alone, even though you are.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  I think it's maybe worth, we maybe should have done this earlier, but to remind people of the difference between shame and guilt. Cause those are very different. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like shame is I'm bad. And guilt is I did something bad.

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Exactly. So guilt to me, as a good Catholic boy, who doesn't really practice much anymore, but I learned some good things is that, yeah, guilt's an appropriate thing.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, we should have.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  You should feel bad about this, that, and the other thing. You know, go read my book. I feel bad for it all.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  And what you should do about that is that you should tone and make amends. And I don't mean tone like go, you know, whip yourself with thistles on your back until you bleed. I mean, go and say, I'm fucking sorry.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  I apologize. Not expect the other person to say, oh, I forgive you.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  It's okay.

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  But. You make it clear that you know that you did wrong. Shame is, I will never, ever be good enough.

• 1:01:24Dax Shepard?

  I'm unworthy of love.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  I'm unworthy.

• 1:01:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  I'm unworthy of love.

• 1:01:28Dax Shepard?

  I'm so implicitly flawed.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  I'm worthy of my own self-love. I mean, that's the thing about the honesty. The biggest thing to get honest about, like, I always talk about this thing, radical honesty. You gotta get honest with yourself. That's what, like, you really, really, really do. And I never really knew what that mean, though. You hear all of these things in the room, even like the Serenity Pair. Well, what the fuck does it mean? Know the difference between, you know, like, I don't, I don't know. But there was a moment when I finally put it down almost seven years ago. It wasn't by any virtue of my own. I had that experience of like, it wasn't a white light, but it was like, have a choice.

• 1:02:06Dax Shepard?

  There's a tiny window open right now.

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:02:08Dax Shepard?

  And if you don't step through it, you're gonna be dead.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  As clear as you two sitting across from me.

• 1:02:15Dax Shepard?

  I want to do two seconds on this because it just kinda came up. And again, I can forget. Now, look, I relapsed on opiates, but I haven't drank in 22 years, right? I'm pretty removed from, because each of these addictions has their own specific personality. I talked to opiate addicts and I had that experience. And that's one experience. It's much different from the hardcore alcoholic experience for me. But I was reminded of this because my best friend, who I sent to treatment, and I were talking about a third friend who is hardcore going through it right now. And I was reminded, we were just talking about, I called him to say how grateful I am. He's sober, seeing this other friend, I'm just so grateful.

• 1:02:55Dax Shepard?

  And we were talking and what we both agreed about, that I think might be, again, enlightening to people, is like, there's a point where there's a third rail in your mind. It's not necessarily you want to die. You want to die for a period of time, long enough that when you wake up, all of the wreckage will magically be gone. Like, there's this third desire. It is obliteration and death, but it's not, I remember not wanting permanent death, but I definitely. We wanted to die for like three or four years and then wake up with a clean slate. That was like a bit of a fantasy.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  Disappear. It was a literal fantasy with me. Think about it. I came out to California, told everybody I was going to rehab because I was going to disappear. That was in my head is I'm going to disappear for three years. And then either I'm dead, but more realistically, I'll come back a new man.

• 1:03:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  But I was disappearing for all intents and purposes, if any rational person would.

• 1:03:56Dax Shepard?

  It's the little boy in you. That's like, maybe if I run away long enough, they'll remember that they loved me and that they miss me. And they'll forget about all this.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  First time I ran away, what I did is I wrote a note and then I went hid under my bed so that I could hear everybody tell me how much they miss me.

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 1:04:12Speaker 02

  That's what it was.

• 1:04:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And it doesn't go away. You just, you're still acting like that. It's like a full grown adult male.

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:04:19Speaker 03

  We're all just kids.

• 1:04:21Dax Shepard?

  Like if I disappear for three years, they'll be so glad when I walk back up the driveway. We could put all this behind us.

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, it'll go away.

• 1:04:31Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:04:37Dax Shepard?

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• 1:05:25Dax Shepard?

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• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  Not only did my fantasy not come true, the whole world, right when I got clean in June of 2019, it just fell on top of my head, outside my doorstep, in every single crevice and nook and cranny of my life.

• 1:05:59Dax Shepard?

  You were being accused of

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  Everything.

• 1:06:03Dax Shepard?

  brokering deals with the Ukrainian oligarch to win favor.

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:08Dax Shepard?

  On this, let me ask you. Certainly, your behavior couldn't have been above board for 15 years while your own desperation was raging, right?

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  Here's what I own.

• 1:06:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, is there any validity to some of the?

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  Here's the validity. The validity is, I should never have taken the board seat with Burisma. That's the validity of it.

• 1:06:31Dax Shepard?

  That's the Ukrainian?

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  Yes, the Ukrainian oil and gas company. It was not with Ukraine, was not with a foreign government. It was not with an oligarch. It was public about going on the board. I had served on 14 other boards before that. I was chairman of the board of the U.S. World Food Program, the largest humanitarian organization in the world. I was vice chairman of the board of the largest railroad company in the world, which is the National Passage Rail System, which is Amtrak. I was chairman of the board of the Truman National Security Project, chairman of the board of the Center for National Policy. I was a professor at Georgetown's master's program in the School of Foreign Service for four years. I had my own business in consulting and I had been in more places in the world than 99.9% of people.

• 1:07:15Dax Shepard?

  Very high functioning addict.

• 1:07:17Speaker 02

  Extremely, that makes it harder. And by the way, and I was up counsel to, at the time, the most prestigious law firm doing corporate governance at Boy, Schiller and Flexner and had my own business. And so when they came to ask me to be on the board, I said, no, I would represent them as a lawyer. And I represented the lawyer and the former president of Poland, the first democratically elected president of Poland, President Krasnitsky, asked me, after representing them for two or three months, because they were under an extreme and ordinate amount of pressure from the invasion in Donbass, where their wells were, from the Russians. And the entire purpose of that incursion into eastern Ukraine was to extract and take

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  over what they could not take over, the single greatest resource in Ukraine, which is natural gas. And so he convinces me that we'll be public about it, you'll be transparent about it, and you come on the board. It obviously turns out to be a mistake, but not because of anything that I did, and not because of anything that my dad did. And the reason that we know this is this, is because you have 25 years of my entire digital footprint. You have every single email. I think I literally am probably the only person in the world. If this happened to anybody else, every photo that you ever took, every selfie, every voicemail, every single text message, every email that you've took in 25 years were dumped in the

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  internet and to this day remain there, whether it is your selfies, nudes, or whatever, we're out there.

• 1:08:50Dax Shepard?

  Ninety percent of us are getting canceled.

• 1:08:51Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  By the way, 100% of people would get canceled. There's not one single email, text message, they have all of my voicemails, they have voicemails from my dad saying, sweetheart, please, where are you? You need to get help. I mean, they have everything. There's not a single thing in that in which I say, hey, dad, or hey, dad's chief of staff, or hey, dad's secretary, or hey, anybody, I'm getting paid by these guys, we need to do this. Not a single one. There's a text message in what the board secretary of Burisma says, it was nice meeting your dad. And I know, we were at a restaurant together and he sat down and there were 10 other people at the table. He was in from Ukraine, I introduced him to my dad, and that's it. Now, they had an impeachment hearing over that.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  And so I take responsibility for doing something that could ever cause the perception of that. Now, not to get political, but what these guys are doing now, and I hate even putting the comparison between the two, because that was the standard by which we, as a family, had lived. And here's the point. I really don't care about rehashing that, but I'm more than willing to and welcome it. But what they did was, in 2018, there was a Ukrainian Russian oligarch who was offering for sale my laptop. This before a laptop repair shop guy ever existed.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  He was offering it for sale and Rudy Giuliani, along with Lev Parnas and a guy Igor Fruman that he deputized, went to Ukraine and then to Austria eventually, or on their way to Austria, to buy this hard drive. And they never made it because Lev Parnas gets arrested. Lev Parnas, he's the one that got arrested. He was working for Rudy and he gets thrown to the wolves and so he tells the whole story in truth. Rachel Maddow made a whole documentary about it called From Russia With Lev. And Lev points out that what they did was, and what they eventually found, was a record of my addiction. And that was going to be the October surprise.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  But the problem was, is that in between that time, I had sat down with Adam Entos of The New Yorker and I had told my whole story. Nobody told me to. You went rogue for that one. A hundred percent rogue. But intuitively, I knew, and this was the difference between any other time that I'd gotten clean or sober, ever, was is, I get a call from this guy, he wants to talk about Ukraine. I say, where are you from? He's from The New Yorker. I had an obsession as a kid with The New Yorker, thought it was the greatest publication ever, to the point where I had the cover cut out, taped up to my wall. Yeah. And then I read some of his work and he's an incredible journalist and I said, I'll talk to him. He just was really honest and I told him my whole story as it related to addiction.

• 1:11:44Speaker 02

  And so I had outed myself. I think Adam said, one of the first calls that he got after he did that story was from Steve Bannon and said, you MF'er, you scooped us.

• 1:11:54Speaker 02

  And so they had it. They had the hard drive. They had the phones. They had the laptop and two phones that were stolen in Las Vegas. They had a laptop that I left in my psychologist's office in Massachusetts that was there for a year and passed around.

• 1:12:10Dax Shepard?

  What a hunt for all this.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, exactly. And then a laptop repair shop owner who happens to be blind, literally legally blind, turns over not to anybody except, surprise, surprise, my arch nemesis Rudy Giuliani and his lawyer, who cobble it together and cobble all of these sources together. And they presented to the world two weeks before the election. And remember, what Rudy did is he went to the courthouse steps in Newcastle County, Delaware with a laptop, which was no such thing, with Bernie Kerik, of all people, who's now, God rest his soul, dead, but he was the former police chief who was indicted for bribery and fraud. And they go to the steps and they say, this is a record of degenerate, there are inappropriate pictures

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  of minors, and they do exactly what is elimination rhetoric, which is an old Russian trick. Accuse them literally of the worst thing. What am I supposed to say in that two weeks when the world is coming down? And so 40 NSA former security officials come out and they say, this has all the earmarks. We're not saying that it is, but it's all the earmarks of Russian propaganda. And then Twitter, which was Twitter, suppresses the story for a 24 hour period of time, not because of the content of the story, but the content of the photographs, which were nude photographs of me, which violates their terms of service.

• 1:13:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  That's the only reason is the New York Post put on their front page, me with my private parts blurred out, naked, which by the way is against the law because of the bill Maloney had just passed, the Take It Down Act. But then that becomes a suppression story. And they would have won the election if anybody just had known what was in the laptop. Okay. Well, now you've had seven years, everybody, all of you, and I include the two of you and me and everybody else. You've had my entire digital footprint, unlike anyone that I know of in human history, available to you for a 25 year period of time. What do you find? Literally, nothing other than I was a degenerate crack addict.

• 1:14:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  And I was in rooms I should not have been. And I was with people and prostitutes and dancers and drug dealers, smoking crack and doing other drugs and 90% of the text messages. But you do not find anything about foreign corruption or bribery, anything like that. Finally, after two years, they come back and they offer me a plea agreement because I failed to pay my taxes on time in that period of time, which I had subsequently paid with penalties and interest of over $800,000 after I got sober and found out that I had not filed my taxes. So I paid them with penalties and interest and that during that period of time, I'd

• 1:14:55Speaker 02

  bought a gun and I checked a box to say that I was not currently an addict. And at the time, this is honest. And when I walked into that store, I didn't think I was an addict. I was at least three days clean.

• 1:15:05Dax Shepard?

  Well, yeah, you're not gonna say you're an addict. Well, even if you bought it fucked up. Yeah, they're just not doing that.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  Here's the thing. Every single person today in the United States of America, based upon the law that I was prosecuted for, if you have ever smoked pot or you smoke pot even remotely on a regular basis, which means more than once a month, basically, and you own a gun, you're in violation of that same law, which means about 85 million Americans are pregnant. But they prosecuted me for it. We can't find a single other case. Whoa, is me, oh, no, I, you know, I'm being held to a higher standard. Like, yeah.

• 1:15:40Dax Shepard?

  Well, let me ask you this, though. This would be like if I sponsored you, right?

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:44Dax Shepard?

  Which I don't, and I don't claim to have any more knowledge than you do, but let's just say for one second, we're role playing.

• 1:15:48Speaker 02

  We'll see how the question goes, whether I ask you to be my sponsor.

• 1:15:51Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Do you foresee a future where you could actually let all that go?

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've let it all go.

• 1:16:01Dax Shepard?

  You think you have?

• 1:16:02Speaker 02

  No, 100%.

• 1:16:03Dax Shepard?

  I get it. If I had been accused of a lot of stuff I didn't do, it would be nearly impossible for me not to defend myself.

• 1:16:08Speaker 02

  So here's the thing. That is a completely fair question, and I hope that this is as honest an answer as I think it is, which is, I have let it go. Other people have not let it go. And so, for instance, the only time I spend a lot of time thinking about it is when I come and I sit down with you guys.

• 1:16:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, cuz you're nervous it's gonna spark up the whole.

• 1:16:34Speaker 02

  No, it's because I'm answering the question. And so when I leave here, I'm able to put it down. And I guess when you say let it go, am I angry? No. I think that the most dangerous emotion that any addict can have is uncontrolled anger.

• 1:16:50Dax Shepard?

  Let me comment it from a different way.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  God damn it, Dex.

• 1:16:54Dax Shepard?

  Is it possible, is it possible?

• 1:16:57Speaker 02

  I'm never angry.

• 1:16:58Dax Shepard?

  That the most of all version of yourself, the most peaceful, the most serene version of yourself, might come around to having gratitude. As crazy as that sounds.

• 1:17:11Speaker 02

  No, 100%.

• 1:17:11Dax Shepard?

  For Giuliani, although you didn't do all those things, if you're dead sober, none of those things happened.

• 1:17:18Speaker 02

  100%.

• 1:17:19Dax Shepard?

  So I'm not victim shaming, but we also agree like, had it been even a little bit lighter on you, maybe you're dead.

• 1:17:25Speaker 02

  Well, it really sucks to be with another addict.

• 1:17:27Dax Shepard?

  Maybe you don't have a wife.

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  He's not gonna let you off the hook.

• 1:17:30Dax Shepard?

  Maybe you don't have a wife, maybe you don't have a new son. So maybe all those guys, almost everything.

• 1:17:36Speaker 02

  Everything. The greatest lesson I learned in this go around is exactly that. Is that when they tell you to make your gratitude list, I always thought, and it is an appropriate thing. And you doesn't have to be an addict to get up in the morning and benefit from making a gratitude list. Which is like every day in Southern California, seven out of 10, you're like, I'm grateful for the weather.

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  Yes, literally, yes.

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  You know, I'm grateful for my wife. I'm grateful for my son and the relationship that I've rebuilt with my daughters. And for my painting and the coffee that tasted so good and like all the good things that are going on. That's well and good.

• 1:18:20Speaker 02

  What it really is, is being grateful for every awful thing that ever happened to you that brought you to right there. Have you ever read the Gnostic Gospels that they found in Naj Hamani? I'm not a scripture guy, but there's a great thing. I would listen to the audio book of a famous book called the Gnostic Gospel. He says, basically, I'm paraphrasing, is, "Learn to suffer as I do, and you will be able not to suffer." And it was like, yeah, that's it. Be grateful for all of that suffering, because there is no way that you are here, sitting in this chair, right now.

• 1:18:56Dax Shepard?

  Without all that?

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  Without all of that. I would have never ended up here in Southern California. I would have never met Melissa. I would have never had Bo. I would never have the depth of my relationship with people that I love now, and particularly the depth of the relationship that I have with my daughters now. I would never have had the wherewithal to understand that this was, for me, a question of life or death. And each one of them, I was a little bit perceptibly, by self-perception, able to get a little bit better about the gratitude in the moment. And when it really hit me was when the verdict came in in Delaware. So I decided not to testify, because what they'd done is they'd put my family on the stand.

• 1:19:41Speaker 02

  They were gonna, if I testified, that they were gonna bring as count of witnesses and ask, and like, it was just awful. And the jury came back, and when you, they pulled the jury, they were like, ugh, I hated that we had to come to that, because it's bullshit. But technically, we believed that he violated the law. And I remember, and everybody was like, ugh. I looked around, and there were literally the entire prosecution, it was like a wedding. Prosecution's people sat on that side, my people sat on this side. And I looked back, and I literally saw every single person, almost every single person that I cared about. My mom and my sister and my uncle and my aunts, Mouse, the guy that grew up with my dad, you know, Reverend Bullock and all of these people from the community that had known me, all those people that I said that were my aunts and uncles.

• 1:20:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  They were still there for me. All the people that I thought that I had lost, that I was ashamed because I had been the embarrassment, they were all standing there.

• 1:20:32Dax Shepard?

  Proving to you despite what you're telling yourself that you're worthy of love. And the closet's open and here's all the skeletons.

• 1:20:38Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:20:38Dax Shepard?

  And now I'm convicted and yet you're still here. I didn't even think you'd be here if I was perfect. And yet you're here and I'm at my worst.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:45Dax Shepard?

  It's powerful.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  Really, really powerful. There's some players in this that don't have much social redeeming value, but they gave me an incredible gift. They gave me the gift of being able to be honest with myself. If they'd never released that this stuff, I wouldn't have admitted it to anybody. I'm not sitting here talking to you out of some insane courage that I got because I went to Rishi Kesh for five years and meditated. I'm sitting here because you know what?

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  It's already out there.

• 1:21:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is a gift. There's nothing to lose.

• 1:21:16Speaker 02

  Huge gift.

• 1:21:17Dax Shepard?

  You named one of your companies Seneca, yeah?

• 1:21:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:20Dax Shepard?

  So you're into the Stoics or?

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:22Dax Shepard?

  There's a Stoic road forward.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:21:25Dax Shepard?

  Those people, you're powerless over them, right? I mean, you are as powerless over those people.

• 1:21:31Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 1:21:32Dax Shepard?

  As you are over crack. It's none of your fucking business. I would have an impossible time executing what I'm suggesting. Let me own that.

• 1:21:41Speaker 02

  No, you wouldn't.

• 1:21:41Dax Shepard?

  No, I, I have a thing where.

• 1:21:43Speaker 02

  Oh, he would.

• 1:21:44Dax Shepard?

  I had, listen, I had violent step dads and I decided when I'm 18, no one will ever get one over on me. There will be no me being subjugated. So I have an overly activated sense of like, you're fucking with me, I will go to the ends.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  I'll die.

• 1:22:00Dax Shepard?

  I'll die over it. I know this would be like the hardest challenge for me, but also it's not happening to me. So I can kind of see from the outside that any piece of your heart taken by those people is a wasted piece.

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  I think potentially you actually could get there if it was just you. But his family is a thing.

• 1:22:19Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, forget it.

• 1:22:21Speaker 01

  You would kill everyone.

• 1:22:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  So I understand you can look at it and tell him that.

• 1:22:27Dax Shepard?

  I'm owning that it would be nearly impossible. For me, but I also know that's the truth.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  If your mom was getting dragged into some of this, you'd just literally kill everybody. And people are talking shit about her.

• 1:22:38Dax Shepard?

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  And people have all these opinions about her that are wrong. You'd go nuts.

• 1:22:43Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh, I would.

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

  And so I have to give you some credit. He can be your sponsor, but I can be like your friend. I give you credit.

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  It isn't out of any, and I really mean this, I'm not just being like humble. It was not out of any courage on my part. It was so ubiquitous.

• 1:23:02Speaker 02

  That I didn't have any other choice unless I wanted to die. That's what I'm trying to point out.

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  But some people die.

• 1:23:07Speaker 02

  Some people do. Oh, I'm proud. Number one, I'm most proud of anything. I'm proud of my sobriety over the last seven years in the heat of all of that. 100%. I have an enormous amount of pride. I have an enormous amount of pride that I've gotten to where I am. But I really mean it. It's more than just like a few people saying bad things about you or your dad or your kids. It was at one point, it felt like, because it kind of was, like half the world.

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:33Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure, sure. And the machinery of the government.

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  Exactly. And politics right now.

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  Government, which no one can, unless they've been subject to it, it is staggering. I mean, like, people say, well, you know what? You got a pardon and you've never faced any consequences. Probation officers coming into my bedroom and my wife was still in the bath naked because they could over the course of a three-year period of time.

• 1:23:56Dax Shepard?

  Well, I would even say they've got it wrong, which is I would sit in a jail for six months in a heartbeat over deal with the emotional damage I caused. You didn't get out of the consequences of your behavior. That's your father hugging you at the end of his driveway crying, saying to you, I just don't know what to do.

• 1:24:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's exactly.

• 1:24:15Dax Shepard?

  I would sit in jail before I'd have my dad say that to me.

• 1:24:18Speaker 02

  I know, God.

• 1:24:19Dax Shepard?

  Like, that's not even the harshest punishment. Yeah, you don't really get out of any of that.

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  And here's the other thing. Melissa is still ready to kneecap a lot of people. I go, honey, you can't say that. We're gonna get a visit from somebody. Like, you gotta, you know what I mean? And you then really become to realize is that when it's all directed to you, it's so. So much, so much more overwhelming and hurtful to the people that truly love you. I love you, yes. My kids, dad, and that's what nobody understood with my dad, too. Now, my dad and I talk literally almost every day. So long, it's like, honey, I'm so sorry. I'm like, Dad, what are you sorry about? Jesus, you know, like. Yeah.

• 1:24:58Dax Shepard?

  Well, yeah, it's going both directions. He's thinking if I weren't running, this wouldn't have happened, you wouldn't have been a tool. Yeah, it's all sadness. That's my last question for you. And again, in the most apolitical way possible, I can't even really imagine what it was like to be by your dad's side and watching him in public coming up short. How protective you must have felt during that time? How stressful that must have been? What was the experience of watching your dad not at his best have to be at the height of the struggle?

• 1:25:32Speaker 02

  Well, the first thing that you do is you get incredibly defensive. But you're right. What happened culminating in an incredibly obvious instance of the debate in which my dad didn't rise to the challenge? That's just objectively true. Is that my dad did lose a step. He didn't lose his marbles. Not one single person on the record in this entire time has ever said that Joe Biden was not available, present, and capable of executing on every single decision that this administration had to execute on. Not one. Now, did he trip over a sandbag and fall and look like an 83 year old

• 1:26:17Speaker 02

  trying to get up at the Air Force Academy speech? Did he freeze on the debate stage and look like he was 83 years old? A hundred percent. Did he lose a step, literally, where his gait got shorter? A hundred percent. All of those things are true, which, by the way, it's a whole nother discussion about how we are as a society. Going to start to treat and deal with people as they physically become more infirm, but still are all mentally there. Is everybody that's eighty-three years old that shuffles a little bit have dementia? I don't think that that's true. By the way, and I don't, I don't hold any animosity, and that's not a hard question for me.

• 1:26:55Dax Shepard?

  But I'm more interested in the emotional, again, the powerlessness and somebody who just endlessly had your back in the most beautiful way. You have such an enviable father. I mean, truly, from everything I've read about you guys.

• 1:27:09Speaker 02

  Totally true.

• 1:27:10Dax Shepard?

  What a beautiful father. It would kill me to have America talking about my dad.

• 1:27:15Speaker 02

  Again, not because I've figured out some meditative process by virtue of who I am. You better figure out how to be able to stay in this country when, no matter what president you are, at any given point in time, anywhere between forty and sixty percent of the public thinks you're akin to the devil. It is like a constant barometer of favorability, unfavorability. He's the worst president, he's the best president, he's the greatest person, he's a demented clone that did all of these things. All I have to say is that my dad has his record. He will have his legacy. I think that he was unique as a president of the United States

• 1:27:55Speaker 02

  in that I think that the job by definition requires a level of narcissism that almost any other job in the world does not require, and that he came to that office without that narcissism. I think that he had more empathy and compassion for normal people because he was the most normal person to ever occupy the office.

• 1:28:16Dax Shepard?

  You know, my favorite moment of his, I know you've seen this, they did an incredible two-hour front line on Putin.

• 1:28:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:23Dax Shepard?

  And there's a moment where they're sitting across the table from one another. It's before he's president, I think he's vice president at the time, and he looks directly at Putin and says, I think you're soulless, basically. I'm paraphrasing. And then Putin says, this is the first guy who's ever, he's like liked him. Exactly.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  He respected him probably.

• 1:28:44Dax Shepard?

  He sees me.

• 1:28:44Speaker 02

  George Bush had gone and said, he goes, you know, I looked into his eyes and his solid soul. And so my dad's sitting across from Putin and he looks at his eyes, he goes, I look into your eyes and I don't think you have a soul.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:56Dax Shepard?

  There you go. And Putin likes it.

• 1:28:58Speaker 02

  Whether he liked it or whether he's smart enough to have pretended to like it in the moment because he thought it was tough. I mean, there's a whole nother cat.

• 1:29:05Dax Shepard?

  But he's the only dude we've had thus far, who's looked Putin in the eye and said, you're soulless.

• 1:29:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  He has a lot of integrity.

• 1:29:13Dax Shepard?

  Everyone's had an opportunity and he's literally the one human being on our side who did that.

• 1:29:19Speaker 02

  And that's what I mean about my dad.

• 1:29:21Dax Shepard?

  I love McCain for the single moment.

• 1:29:23Speaker 02

  And that's why they were best friends.

• 1:29:25Dax Shepard?

  On the presidential campaign, when his supporter calls Obama Muslim and he goes, well, hold on, hold on, that's not true. These little moments of integrity.

• 1:29:33Speaker 02

  Well, even worse is like the idea that that was a deal breaker. But regardless, my God, in a four year period of time, coming out of a pandemic, my dad created more jobs than any other president with two terms by double in the history of the United States. He cut child poverty in half. He passed more legislation than any president since Lyndon Baines Johnson. He had a better midterm, even though we lost the House, than any president since FDR in 1932. He expanded NATO. He stood up to Putin. He added two countries for the first time in NATO's history to NATO, Finland and Sweden. He reestablished our connection and alliance with the Pacific Rim countries and Japan and

• 1:30:16Speaker 02

  Australia. I mean, I could go on and on. And all of those things are lost in the mix of the insanity of what's now, the chaos, the fire hose of falsehood and insanity. A UFC fight on the lawn of the White House and we're painting it reflecting Paul Blue. And he made 3,700 stock trades in the month of February. And the first president in history that's made one, let alone 3,700. And we're building a tower in Abu Dhabi and we're putting Trump Tower in Saudi Arabia and we're going to turn Gaza. Into a golf court. I mean, it's just like, you gotta stop. You can't take it all in. But if we get back, which I pray to God we do, because I love this country. And I'm not just saying that like rah rah, I love this country.

• 1:30:59Speaker 02

  I'm fully aware of what this country is capable of and the horrible things that it has done in the name of our democracy. I am fully aware of my history. But at the same time, I truly still do believe that we are the greatest single hope for, I'd like to put it, it's a Star Trek future and not a Star Wars future. I don't know of any president that just as a human being is as good a man as my dad.

• 1:31:27Dax Shepard?

  I love that. Well, look, I admire anyone who's gone to hell and back and shares it deeply. You and I will have a connection that's deeper than all these extraneous other things that are spectacular. Cause we know what it's like to be completely humbled and destroyed by something that's a unique ride. I think it's a kind of a bonding.

• 1:31:51Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 1:31:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you could have any political leaning, you could have anything.

• 1:31:55Speaker 02

  I feel bonded to you too.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  You should.

• 1:31:58Dax Shepard?

  What are you talking about? I feel a much deeper connection.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  I love that. No, it's really helpful what you're doing.

• 1:32:06Dax Shepard?

  Much more gentle with me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My hope is, I've had this experience a bunch of times in the meetings I go to where often people arrive and their big headlines kind of arrive, people who need a lot of privacy comes to some of the meetings I go to. And I've had a couple of moments where the people that walked in, I hated publicly. This one dude was like, all this anti-gay legislation then got caught in the bathroom. I was like, this fucking hypocrite, you know, I just hated him. And this person started sharing, I was like, this person was completely devastated and destroyed by this thing. And they know the depths of hell and I have compassion for this person. What a unique experience to have on earth. If not for this condition I have, I wouldn't have had that.

• 1:32:51Dax Shepard?

  So again, I'm so grateful that I could value something about somebody, their honesty, can cut through all the shit and I love it. It's so fucking powerful. It's almost magic.

• 1:33:01Speaker 02

  It's incredible. The self-control, do the next right thing and show compassion. Pass it down.

• 1:33:08Speaker 02

  And that's what I learned from it. And I often fail at the self-control, but I don't fail in the way that I used to. And I sometimes don't have the compassion for the people that I find so offensive, but can't. And I don't always do the right thing. But I know at least that's what I think about every day.

• 1:33:25Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm. Well, this has been a delight meeting you.

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks for coming.

• 1:33:29Dax Shepard?

  I hope you had fun.

• 1:33:30Speaker 02

  I had a great time. I watch you guys all the time.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Oh, that's so nice.

• 1:33:34Speaker 02

  When you guys said that you'd like to have me on, I was like, all right.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:38Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good.

• 1:33:39Speaker 02

  I love what you guys do.

• 1:33:40Dax Shepard?

  And if you want to hear the very harrowing tale of all this, I encourage everyone to pick up Beautiful Things, your memoir about this whole life of yours, which is worthy of a book.

• 1:33:53Dax Shepard?

  If nothing else.

• 1:33:54Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 1:33:55Dax Shepard?

  So great meeting you. And thanks so much for coming.

• 1:33:57Speaker 02

  He's an arm care expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here.

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  She's gonna let him have the facts. Both wearing vintage shirts.

• 1:34:09Dax Shepard?

  I wish.

• 1:34:11Speaker 01

  Looks like it.

• 1:34:12Dax Shepard?

  I would have to call mine unfortunately a retro. I mean, it's from an old, old Pink Floyd thing, but it is a new shirt.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:34:19Dax Shepard?

  Yours is really from the eighties?

• 1:34:21Speaker 01

  Well, that's what I'm told. See, I could, it could be a lie.

• 1:34:25Dax Shepard?

  How would one know?

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  I wouldn't. Well, the sweatshirt's definitely old. I can tell by like the tag and the stuff, but they could have plopped that right on.

• 1:34:33Dax Shepard?

  But yeah, they can fake Rembrandts and stuff and have real experts sign off on them.

• 1:34:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:34:39Dax Shepard?

  I bet they could get a.

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  They could get one over on me for sure.

• 1:34:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  For sure. I'm not that good.

• 1:34:46Dax Shepard?

  We're recovering, I guess.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Do you want to talk about it?

• 1:34:49Dax Shepard?

  I mean, yeah, we were just recording.

• 1:34:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:53Dax Shepard?

  Armchair Anonymous.

• 1:34:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:34:54Dax Shepard?

  And not only we're recording Armchair Anonymous, it's a prompt that elicits some.

• 1:35:01Dax Shepard?

  Emotions.

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:35:03Dax Shepard?

  So the person we were speaking to was at the apex of their emotional journey of the story. I felt very, very inclined to be present for that.

• 1:35:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:35:18Dax Shepard?

  And I hear Rob's door open.

• 1:35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:21Dax Shepard?

  My first thought is like, why is Rob thinking he is time to go outside?

• 1:35:25Speaker 01

  I thought he was getting the food.

• 1:35:27Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay, that's good.

• 1:35:29Speaker 05

  I know better than all those things. I know better than to do all those things.

• 1:35:34Dax Shepard?

  I know you know better. So I'm just like, this is a strange move.

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  Right. And it was a little, it wasn't, wasn't like, if Rob was going to get the food, he would have done that quietly.

• 1:35:42Dax Shepard?

  It was loud.

• 1:35:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:44Dax Shepard?

  And then I went to, oh man, my, I gotta get my kids to understand they cannot interrupt me at work. And then it was Kristen.

• 1:35:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:52Dax Shepard?

  And immediately when I saw her face, she was crying.

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was like very panicked.

• 1:35:57Dax Shepard?

  Panicked and crying.

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:00Dax Shepard?

  And now I literally have my real life wife panic and crying. And then we have a guest who of course I care about who's also crying. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm gonna have to fucking tell this lady, I gotta go. But I had to go.

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:13Dax Shepard?

  But I mean, we didn't end the call, but I had to get up.

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was fine, because I just got in there.

• 1:36:19Dax Shepard?

  Come, come, come, you gotta go right now. You gotta put this bird out of its misery.

• 1:36:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:36:24Dax Shepard?

  What happened? So backstory, and I think I've been reporting on this. We've been having the sweetest two or three month affair with these crows that have really come and taken to walking around our yard.

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, they walk around.

• 1:36:40Dax Shepard?

  And we've named one of them.

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was maybe ill advised.

• 1:36:44Dax Shepard?

  We've been feeding, putting out food and they've been taking it. I was just last night, I was in the sauna. And because the screen was down, I can see out of it, but obviously the crows, they were just directly in front of the sauna for 20 minutes. I'm watching them just like interact. And I'm like, I just, I feel so lucky that there's these beautiful crows in the backyard, my favorite animal.

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:04Dax Shepard?

  And I'm just watching them, they're getting more and more comfortable. I go outside and what has happened is a friend's dog has attacked one of the crows.

• 1:37:15Dax Shepard?

  The all the other crows are in a tree directly above the fallen crow and they are yelling.

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  Worse.

• 1:37:22Dax Shepard?

  As they should.

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:25Dax Shepard?

  I'm so bummed for them.

• 1:37:26Speaker 01

  Course.

• 1:37:27Dax Shepard?

  They just watch their.

• 1:37:29Speaker 01

  Bum for you.

• 1:37:30Dax Shepard?

  And my families, every Lincoln's bawling. She watched the whole thing. And then I gotta find something. Yeah.

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  You didn't use your hands. We'll just say that.

• 1:37:42Dax Shepard?

  I did not use, I mean.

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  I'm glad.

• 1:37:44Dax Shepard?

  It was terrible. I hated it. It was terrible.

• 1:37:47Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:37:48Dax Shepard?

  The little crow I've been watching who I like. And then I know that that's his mom up in the tree and his sibling.

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:56Dax Shepard?

  Fuck.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  I bet the mom obviously feels guilty.

• 1:38:00Dax Shepard?

  And then I'm like, okay, that's done. I get the crow wrapped up and then I gotta quickly try to nurture my family. Check in as everyone's stable. And then come back here and then drop back into that.

• 1:38:11Speaker 01

  Back in.

• 1:38:11Dax Shepard?

  That. Yeah.

• 1:38:12Speaker 01

  At least it was a kind of dark story we were hearing. So wasn't like you had to just like be happy again.

• 1:38:20Dax Shepard?

  I'm so sorry. I gotta go blow out birthday candles.

• 1:38:22Speaker 01

  Right. Exactly.

• 1:38:23Dax Shepard?

  It wasn't frivolous, although we didn't tell her what the emergency was.

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  No, we didn't. No, I'm saying, I'm saying, sorry, I'm saying this armchair anonymous story was pretty dark.

• 1:38:34Dax Shepard?

  So my dark energy.

• 1:38:36Speaker 01

  It wasn't like you had to come in and put on this like very happy. It was like a funny. Yeah.

• 1:38:41Dax Shepard?

  You pooped where?

• 1:38:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. This is the one. Okay. Silver lining. The one time you didn't want an unauthorized evac.

• 1:38:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:38:51Speaker 01

  So, um.

• 1:38:52Dax Shepard?

  Anywho.

• 1:38:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was terrible.

• 1:38:55Dax Shepard?

  That was a terrible event.

• 1:38:56Speaker 01

  I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry.

• 1:38:59Dax Shepard?

  I feel like that was the universe making me pay for the pigeons somehow.

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  You are, you already paid for that. That was a long time.

• 1:39:06Dax Shepard?

  It was a long time ago.

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:39:08Dax Shepard?

  Hopefully atoned for that.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  I think, well, I'm really sorry that all of that happened. I'm very sorry you had to. Be the one to handle it. I get very anxious in those situations.

• 1:39:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, what was going on for you?

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  Like everyone's, in my head, I'm just like, oh, my God, like, everyone's so sad and so destroyed. And like, they're not going to come back for this for a couple, from this.

• 1:39:36Dax Shepard?

  And you know how I feel about emotions. So, yeah.

• 1:39:38Speaker 01

  But I even mean you. I'm like, oh, no, like, this isn't good. Like, he's killed, he's murdered today.

• 1:39:45Dax Shepard?

  My favorite.

• 1:39:46Speaker 01

  He murdered his favorite. Oh, my God. And also, like, murder of crows. You know, there's something in there.

• 1:39:52Dax Shepard?

  Okay, we'll save the wordplay for another day. Let's just hold off on the wordplay for today.

• 1:40:00Speaker 01

  It was just right there. So, you know.

• 1:40:02Dax Shepard?

  I just went back inside, check in.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  This is what you guys get for calling yourselves a murderer.

• 1:40:07Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no.

• 1:40:09Speaker 01

  Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

• 1:40:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it was a very cheap shot. So I went inside and now people are going up to the store to get materials for a grave.

• 1:40:21Speaker 01

  Oh, that's good.

• 1:40:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I guess that's.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  That's nice.

• 1:40:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, no one knows what to do. You don't know what to do.

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  No one knows what to do, but I, um, yeah, I was like, I don't think I should. We had ordered food. The food I thought Rob was running out desperately to get.

• 1:40:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  And so, and, um, we finished our armchair nomads. We had a little break before the next one. And so I was like, I'm going to go the long way to go get the food.

• 1:40:43Dax Shepard?

  Right. You didn't even want to deal with.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  I don't want to cry. It wasn't dealing. I was like, they might be like, how insensitive is she?

• 1:40:51Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  To go get her food.

• 1:40:53Dax Shepard?

  Anyone hungry?

• 1:40:55Dax Shepard?

  I got extra chips. I don't think I'm going to eat this third one.

• 1:41:00Speaker 01

  I mean, that is something I would do in a nice way. Like, can I help with the things I have here?

• 1:41:06Dax Shepard?

  Anyone starving right now? Anyone feeling really hungry? Or is anyone distracted by other emotions?

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  Or should I just eat crow? Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. I'm sorry, they're everywhere. Sorry.

• 1:41:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's too soon.

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  Okay, I really am sorry.

• 1:41:22Dax Shepard?

  It's just a bit too soon.

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  But this is how, this is how it is being friends with you. This is how it is being friends with you.

• 1:41:29Dax Shepard?

  I bet. Okay, so maybe I am now getting.

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  But I don't want you to have, I don't want you to have repercussions.

• 1:41:34Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:41:34Speaker 01

  So I take it back, okay?

• 1:41:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  Um, anyhow, I still feel like, like, um, fight or flighty.

• 1:41:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:41Speaker 01

  From that experience of running in and running out. And I was like, thank God. I've, obviously, of course, when Kristen runs in, I think it's something with the children.

• 1:41:50Dax Shepard?

  Same. So there is a level of relief.

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:54Dax Shepard?

  But it's very partial.

• 1:41:55Speaker 01

  I know. But yeah, but I heard something about Bert Crowe and I thought she said Lola, another dog. So I was like, oh, like, but still the panic of everything.

• 1:42:07Dax Shepard?

  You have the dynamic of that it's someone else's dog.

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:42:10Dax Shepard?

  So all of their stress.

• 1:42:13Speaker 01

  I know, I felt a lot of secondhand.

• 1:42:14Dax Shepard?

  Over and they killed our favorite members of our family.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:42:18Dax Shepard?

  I mean, sincerely.

• 1:42:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:42:20Dax Shepard?

  They shouldn't feel bad. They didn't do anything.

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  Favorite members.

• 1:42:24Dax Shepard?

  Of our animal family.

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  Oh, your animal.

• 1:42:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, for me.

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  For you, yeah. But if the dog killed Frank, you might be happy, but that would be like, really.

• 1:42:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it feels weird to speculate, but I, I, I definitely think whiskey would have been a push for the family.

• 1:42:45Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:42:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:46Speaker 01

  You think they'd be out there right now, just laughing and doing work if whiskey was dead right now? No, I really don't.

• 1:42:53Dax Shepard?

  You're probably right.

• 1:42:54Speaker 01

  But it's okay. Your favorite member, your favorite animal members for sure, yeah.

• 1:42:59Dax Shepard?

  In the beginning of something that was quite fun and beautiful happening.

• 1:43:02Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:43:03Dax Shepard?

  They're not coming back. There's no way. But crows have incredibly good memories. See, the other thing, this is, and this is where it's probably selfish of me. I'm like, this dog did this, but I, these crows are watching me right now. They're staring and they're gonna watch me do that.

• 1:43:18Speaker 01

  Why is that selfish?

• 1:43:19Dax Shepard?

  Cause they're gonna remember, they remember, there's all these instances where crows remember for like thirty years.

• 1:43:24Speaker 01

  No, I'm saying that's not selfish of you.

• 1:43:27Dax Shepard?

  I'm like, I'm trying to be friends with these guys so hard and now they're gonna hate me for sure.

• 1:43:31Speaker 01

  Well, did you tell them?

• 1:43:33Dax Shepard?

  No, I don't know that they understand English.

• 1:43:35Speaker 01

  Well, they're smart.

• 1:43:36Dax Shepard?

  Although they could.

• 1:43:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Also, by the way, they saw what happened, so they know it wasn't you.

• 1:43:41Dax Shepard?

  I hope, but maybe they thought I was going over to resuscitate this crow.

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  I think they knew it couldn't be resuscitated, or they would have come down and grabbed it.

• 1:43:49Dax Shepard?

  I'm glad that wasn't happening. Well, that would have been fucking brutal if they're trying to like.

• 1:43:55Speaker 01

  Better if they like go down and grab it, bring it back up to their area.

• 1:43:58Dax Shepard?

  No, cause they would have succeeded at that and then I would have been having to shoo them away. So that I, you can't have this thing suffering in the yard. That's off the table.

• 1:44:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, hmm. Real life will find you.

• 1:44:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:14Dax Shepard?

  You know, you, we've, we've created this little cocoon that we like, virtually nothing can happen, right? We're just sitting here chalk, talking.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:22Dax Shepard?

  We can get in a fight, but whatever, we'll get through that.

• 1:44:27Dax Shepard?

  And then life just, you know, find you.

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:30Speaker 01

  But I feel bad, cause like, because you're so tough. And you had to be the one to do it. And it's like, oh yeah, he'll, he's like, he's like.

• 1:44:39Dax Shepard?

  That's why, see, that's why we have him, is basically.

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:42Dax Shepard?

  We deal with everything for this moment. You better do the thing.

• 1:44:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:46Dax Shepard?

  That you bring to the table.

• 1:44:47Speaker 01

  But I do think I want them to know that it hurt your feelings pretty bad.

• 1:44:55Dax Shepard?

  I think they know. You don't think so?

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  I think it's my job to tell them, remind them. You know, that was really hard on Dax, okay?

• 1:45:06Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yay, you're gonna be a justice for me. Wow, that's nice.

• 1:45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. I did feel it was hard on you.

• 1:45:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  I didn't like that.

• 1:45:16Dax Shepard?

  Well, thank you. Anywho.

• 1:45:19Speaker 01

  See, and I, and then I tried to make jokes like you do to make it better. It didn't work. Some, I get it.

• 1:45:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it was very soon. And puns already.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  I just.

• 1:45:31Dax Shepard?

  You know, on a good day, puns are questionable.

• 1:45:34Speaker 01

  I know, but they were both pretty good.

• 1:45:36Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I'm probably not in a good.

• 1:45:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, later.

• 1:45:38Dax Shepard?

  Position to judge.

• 1:45:39Speaker 01

  Maybe later.

• 1:45:40Dax Shepard?

  In a few years, I'll hear this.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:45:42Dax Shepard?

  You know what? That was a really good joke.

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Well, really, that was a lot. I'm really sorry that happened. Um.

• 1:45:52Dax Shepard?

  Shake it off. What's up? Summer's here. Kids are getting out of school. I'm gonna go to a graduation tomorrow.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, we are. We're going to a little baby's graduation.

• 1:46:04Dax Shepard?

  You know what's so funny?

• 1:46:05Speaker 01

  Makes me sad.

• 1:46:06Dax Shepard?

  So the, the fifth grade dance was Friday night.

• 1:46:10Speaker 01

  Oh, and she wanted to go with her girlfriends. Remember?

• 1:46:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think I told the whole story. Yeah, yeah. So, um, that was Friday night and what was rad was, this just makes me so happy. Um, she said, can we drive the Lincoln? Like, she wanted to show off at the dance.

• 1:46:29Speaker 01

  Looking rad.

• 1:46:30Dax Shepard?

  And we delivered.

• 1:46:31Speaker 01

  Did you bring her friends or you just, you dropped her off?

• 1:46:33Dax Shepard?

  Mom and Delta and I.

• 1:46:35Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:46:36Dax Shepard?

  And you're on a big grass field where everyone parks. And, yeah, we pulled up in the Lincoln. It's already low, but in the grass, it's just like, right? And all the boys ran up to the fence. They're asking what kind of car that is. So that was primo. She's in a dress.

• 1:46:51Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:46:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it was great.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  Did she do her hair and stuff?

• 1:46:54Dax Shepard?

  Oh, of course. She had ringlets.

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 1:46:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, she looked incredible. What's interesting is when Lincoln had her fifth grade dance, because it is the end of elementary. It's the last thing they're really gonna do together. So when I picked up Lincoln, the entire class, well, all the girls. They were balling. They were hugging each other. It was so sweet. And then maybe people will remember the overall demeanor of Lincoln's class versus Delta has been night and day. As you know, like they were, Delta's class is so naughty. They had to rearrange the recess structure because they couldn't be trusted around the pre K kids or whatever. This is naughty class, naughty group. Cops coming. No, those were for her classmates last year.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 1:47:41Dax Shepard?

  So roll back up to pick her up and they're still raging and Delta's like, I danced the whole three hours. And I'm like, yes, that was, because I, you know, I loved to school dance. One of my favorite memories of junior high are those dances. So she did it. She danced so hard. So anyway, there's a photographer that would do these like 360 shots of, yeah. So she would get in a group with her friends and then the camera goes around them. And this is embarrassing to admit, but I'm looking at this, first all I see, of course, because I'm the dad.

• 1:48:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:15Dax Shepard?

  It's like, oh, she's the cutest girl that was ever born.

• 1:48:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:18Dax Shepard?

  You know, when I'm looking at her and all her friends, I'm like, oh, she's the cutest one.

• 1:48:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:22Dax Shepard?

  But then all of a sudden I go, well, she's really quite short.

• 1:48:28Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 1:48:30Dax Shepard?

  I'm going to show you the video and see if you have the same reaction. I was like, I don't think of her as short and she's such like a little leader in her class and everything.

• 1:48:41Dax Shepard?

  But I just had this moment was like, oh, she really has had the Kristen experience where Kristen was like a tiny, tiny person.

• 1:48:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too.

• 1:48:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you know. And I just didn't really realize Delta that.

• 1:48:53Speaker 01

  I didn't realize that either, that she was necessarily, let's see. That's so cute. Oh, oh, wow. Oh.

• 1:49:01Dax Shepard?

  I mean, she's a head shorter than all of her friends.

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  Cute. It's crazy. There's another shorty.

• 1:49:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, there's one other shorty. But I won't say her name. But, but Delta is.

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:14Dax Shepard?

  I was like, oh, she's the little girl in class.

• 1:49:17Speaker 01

  She's even shorter than the Indian girl.

• 1:49:19Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:49:19Speaker 01

  I don't know if I'm allowed to say that.

• 1:49:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think she's Lebanese, but.

• 1:49:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:49:30Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. So she's on the shore.

• 1:49:32Dax Shepard?

  She's a tiny.

• 1:49:34Speaker 01

  I didn't know either.

• 1:49:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it was really, it was like I, um, I might, I finally came out of the water and saw clearly for the first time. And then I said to her, I said, you know, I just, I noticed from these photos, you're a shorty, aren't you? And she goes, oh, yeah, dad, I'm like the shortest girl in class other than so and so.

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah. I mean, once, so she was just like, yeah, I'm the short girl. Like, once you are the short girl, you just are her, you know, like, you don't even think about it.

• 1:50:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And, um, it does a little bit explain, like, you know, she's in such a hurry to lose her teeth. You know, there's like an ongoing thing. And then she got her x-ray that said they were still not coming out for a while. She was devastated in the, and I never really, I'm like, why are you in a hurry to lose your teeth? But I think if you're the tiny one, she's like, let's get the fucking show on the road. Let's get rid of these teeth. Let's give me some puberty. Let's get a few inches.

• 1:50:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:24Dax Shepard?

  It might be informed by the height.

• 1:50:25Speaker 01

  It might be.

• 1:50:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. What's great is I've never heard her complain about it. That's why it was not even on my radar. Like her best friend, who I thought was really tall.

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:50:35Dax Shepard?

  I now think is probably average. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:39Speaker 01

  Whoa, that is weird.

• 1:50:40Dax Shepard?

  Oh, she's really tall.

• 1:50:42Speaker 01

  Because one of her other friends is also not that tall, a little taller than her maybe, but like, yeah, interesting. Yeah. I mean, I didn't, um, I mean, I wanted to look completely different, but the short thing never bothered me.

• 1:50:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:58Speaker 01

  I don't know why, for whatever. I had so many other things that were higher.

• 1:51:01Dax Shepard?

  It is a lot easier for the, for a girl to be the little girl in the club than the big bird.

• 1:51:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:51:07Dax Shepard?

  That's a much harder road to.

• 1:51:09Speaker 01

  Of course. Well, maybe she should be a cheerleader. She could be a flyer.

• 1:51:13Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:51:13Speaker 01

  You know, short, short people have a lot of advantages in that way.

• 1:51:17Dax Shepard?

  They don't have cheer where she, well, I don't know that for sure, but I don't think they have cheer where she's going. Cause it's an all-girls school.

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  I know. They should still do competition. No, they should still do competition cheerleading.

• 1:51:30Dax Shepard?

  Feminist.

• 1:51:30Speaker 01

  No, cause competition has nothing to do with it.

• 1:51:33Dax Shepard?

  It's not cheering for the boys?

• 1:51:34Speaker 01

  No, it's not.

• 1:51:35Dax Shepard?

  I knew feminism was gonna ruin this country and here it is.

• 1:51:38Speaker 01

  God.

• 1:51:54Speaker 01

  All right. Well,

• 1:51:55Dax Shepard?

  Want to do some facts on Hunter Biden?

• 1:51:56Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:51:57Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:51:57Speaker 01

  Let's do a few facts.

• 1:51:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I found this to be.

• 1:52:00Speaker 01

  Wow. Um, yeah, this was

• 1:52:03Dax Shepard?

  This was a

• 1:52:03Speaker 01

  a good one.

• 1:52:04Dax Shepard?

  It was. It was.

• 1:52:06Speaker 01

  Again.

• 1:52:06Dax Shepard?

  Did you have feelings about him before?

• 1:52:10Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. I didn't know much about him.

• 1:52:12Dax Shepard?

  Same. I really just knew his name.

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:52:14Dax Shepard?

  And I knew of all the crazy allegations.

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:52:17Dax Shepard?

  I knew about the computer.

• 1:52:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:52:19Dax Shepard?

  And I hadn't seen his face until that interview I watched, which made me interested in him.

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I knew the same thing everybody else knew very, but very surface even.

• 1:52:31Dax Shepard?

  And I didn't even really know he had such a legitimate career before all the dust up.

• 1:52:35Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:52:36Dax Shepard?

  I didn't know he was a lawyer and he'd gone to the great schools and

• 1:52:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:52:39Dax Shepard?

  all that shit.

• 1:52:40Speaker 01

  Well, and then obviously the, what we talked about, the, um, the debate where Joe Biden is, where Trump references him and then Joe Biden is defending him and it's like very

• 1:52:51Dax Shepard?

  I remember that moment. Yeah.

• 1:52:52Speaker 01

  upsetting that he has to defend his son.

• 1:52:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he's like, he's working so hard. It's heartbreaking, honestly. But, um, I also

• 1:53:02Dax Shepard?

  I don't want to suggest that there's, these are comparable levels of culpability. They're not. But it felt like he was making fun of him that his son had cancer. I mean, that's what it felt like. Like your kid has this life threatening

• 1:53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:53:17Dax Shepard?

  illness and I'm gonna shame you over this. It was just like, fuck.

• 1:53:23Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:53:23Dax Shepard?

  There's no

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  And then he really got himself into crazy because he said it and then Biden was like, said something about him dying and he was like, no, your other son. And it's like, yeah, he's working really and it was like, yeah, you're making him talk about like the absolute worst things a parent could possibly imagine.

• 1:53:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:42Speaker 01

  It's horrible. But I also like, I don't think I knew the extent of the tragedy they had all dealt with.

• 1:53:48Dax Shepard?

  I didn't either. I kind of knew, right? I knew that Joe Biden had a real big tragedy and I think I knew he lost his first wife, right? Like, I didn't know

• 1:53:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:58Dax Shepard?

  the extent of that. I didn't know he's sworn into the Senate in the hospital. Oh, he's 29. All this stuff. Like, you imagine dealing with that at 29.

• 1:54:09Speaker 01

  Baby.

• 1:54:11Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 1:54:11Speaker 01

  I mean, no.

• 1:54:12Dax Shepard?

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:54:13Speaker 01

  Like, absolutely not. It makes me, it makes me have so much respect for him, honestly.

• 1:54:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, I've told three or four different people post interview. I'll go like, do you know the whole story? And no, no one does.

• 1:54:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:28Dax Shepard?

  That I've talked to.

• 1:54:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:29Dax Shepard?

  And the two different times that kids were present.

• 1:54:33Dax Shepard?

  What do you think their follow up question was?

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  When you said like, what happened?

• 1:54:37Dax Shepard?

  Station wagon.

• 1:54:39Dax Shepard?

  Did the dog die? And I'm like, I didn't ask.

• 1:54:43Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:54:44Dax Shepard?

  But it goes to show, you know, this rule in movies, you cannot kill a dog in a movie.

• 1:54:49Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:54:51Speaker 01

  Brains are crazy.

• 1:54:53Dax Shepard?

  They are. I think it's because.

• 1:54:55Speaker 01

  The innocence.

• 1:54:56Dax Shepard?

  Almost the opposite. It's like, we know humans come in every shade of good and bad. And, and so like, there's bad people, you know? You can imagine easily someone dying that wouldn't bother you at all. Like if Putin gets shot tomorrow, I won't care. In fact, I'll be happy.

• 1:55:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:55:15Dax Shepard?

  There's no dog I'm going to be happy that was killed unless he ate people, I guess. But, oh shit, this just came full circle. Like, I wouldn't be happy if the dog that killed the crow got hurt.

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  Killed.

• 1:55:29Dax Shepard?

  No, because I don't think the dog's capable of malice.

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 1:55:35Dax Shepard?

  Anyways, there's something intrinsically more innocent about these animals.

• 1:55:39Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:55:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but it is a funny prior, sliding scale of priority.

• 1:55:45Speaker 01

  And I obviously, as a bad person, like, don't get it. I mean, I get it. I do get it intellectually in that way. Like, oh yeah, there's an innocence, there's a, but I don't feel that ever. So I don't, I'm, of course, my question is like, the children. Like, I would never think about the animal.

• 1:56:08Dax Shepard?

  Right, right, right, right. It's really telling and interesting and fascinating that we, because we're social primates, like we're built to think some people deserve certain things and punishment is built into the system and like,

• 1:56:25Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:56:25Dax Shepard?

  It's just interesting how we view each other versus how we view almost everything else.

• 1:56:30Speaker 01

  I know. But again, I think there's anomalies. I don't know that you, I don't know. I mean, obviously you can speak for yourself, but I don't think you really believe that people should be punished. And I think I believe it less and less and less.

• 1:56:47Dax Shepard?

  Right. I think people should be removed to keep other people safe.

• 1:56:51Speaker 01

  Yes, me too, but that, not in a punitive way necessarily.

• 1:56:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, why, why, what are we doing it for?

• 1:56:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:57Dax Shepard?

  You're not gonna make anything better.

• 1:56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, my level of wanting someone to

• 1:57:04Dax Shepard?

  Suffer?

• 1:57:05Speaker 01

  Suffer, like feel bad because they did something wrong is, is pretty much gone.

• 1:57:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, like there's still a stepdad alive to my knowledge that, you know, I didn't like.

• 1:57:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:22Dax Shepard?

  I don't want him to be suffering.

• 1:57:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:25Dax Shepard?

  I don't, I don't really.

• 1:57:25Speaker 01

  Well, it does nothing.

• 1:57:26Dax Shepard?

  No, that's the thing.

• 1:57:27Speaker 01

  Issue or that's, although I mean, I, again, to be fair, like I've never had a

• 1:57:32Dax Shepard?

  Love one murder.

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. And in that case, maybe I would fully just be like, yep, want them to suffer for the rest of their life. Cause I have to suffer for the rest of my life.

• 1:57:42Dax Shepard?

  Someone in my family.

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:44Dax Shepard?

  Yep.

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:57:45Dax Shepard?

  That is the paradox.

• 1:57:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:57:47Dax Shepard?

  We just have a lot of very fascinating hardware.

• 1:57:51Speaker 01

  I know we do.

• 1:57:52Dax Shepard?

  That controls how we, it's this whole thing where it's like, if these one million people died for this reason and these one million people died for this reason, we can put such different values on that. You know, like if we think someone deceived someone in the pursuit of that, or if we think it was a natural cause or we think, it's like the death, the death, you don't, you don't have the person anymore, but it makes such a big difference to us how that happened. Which is a bit all in our mind, you know, it's like the objective tragedy is that someone you loved is gone.

• 1:58:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, but prematurely feels or by the hand by unnatural unnatural causes.

• 1:58:34Dax Shepard?

  Cancer at 25 years old is as unnatural as getting murdered by somebody, right? It's unexpected.

• 1:58:40Speaker 01

  It's unexpected, but I do think it's like that's the way their body it's that's that was their body, their body couldn't handle this life or whatever. There's like a lot of things you can say to yourself, but when it was really avoidable.

• 1:58:56Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:58:57Speaker 01

  Um, that feels.

• 1:59:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it's too maddening. Like it's it's very upsetting. I mean, just don't murder, you know?

• 1:59:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:09Speaker 01

  Like, let's just not do that.

• 1:59:11Dax Shepard?

  But it's just like, we have all these

• 1:59:14Dax Shepard?

  sliding scales.

• 1:59:16Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:59:16Dax Shepard?

  It's like, if there's a a just a legitimate accident at an intersection, if a light's out, that's one thing.

• 1:59:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:59:24Dax Shepard?

  There's not a light out and someone blew his stoplight. Now we ratchet up. That person's drunk.

• 1:59:28Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, I know.

• 1:59:31Dax Shepard?

  The objective thing's all the same. Someone was killed operating a vehicle, you know? And then we've got like a huge range of how we feel about that.

• 1:59:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think again, on on the the scale is about the level of which it could have been avoided.

• 1:59:45Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:59:45Speaker 01

  And if it's just someone making a decision in their mind, I hate this one, I'm gonna kill them or like, I'm just gonna shoot all these people like that. That is so far on one end of the spectrum of avoidability.

• 1:59:59Dax Shepard?

  It's harder to accept.

• 2:00:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, but because it didn't have to happen.

• 2:00:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:04Speaker 01

  It didn't have to happen.

• 2:00:04Dax Shepard?

  I mean, I guess what I'm saying is the aliens might go like, oh, this person had a partner. Now they don't have a partner.

• 2:00:12Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:00:12Dax Shepard?

  Therein lies the heartbreak and the anguish. And then if you told the monkeys, well, no, there's a there's a big sliding scale of heartbreak and anguish within that, that's where they they would get fascinated. Like, oh, please tell us about why there's different versions of losing a partner.

• 2:00:30Speaker 01

  I know. I bet even the aliens would get it.

• 2:00:35Dax Shepard?

  You think so?

• 2:00:36Speaker 01

  I kind of do.

• 2:00:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:37Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know what they're like, you know, I haven't met any.

• 2:00:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:41Speaker 01

  But.

• 2:00:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um.

• 2:00:46Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:00:46Speaker 01

  Just for that whole thing.

• 2:00:47Dax Shepard?

  No, you don't want to knock on wood because you want to meet aliens.

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  Oh, no, that was just for all the death and murder.

• 2:00:52Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay.

• 2:00:54Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, I have no problem meeting aliens as long as they're nice.

• 2:00:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:58Speaker 01

  You know.

• 2:00:58Dax Shepard?

  They're gonna probe you. But you might enjoy it.

• 2:01:01Speaker 01

  They have to.

• 2:01:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. That's standard.

• 2:01:04Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:01:04Dax Shepard?

  That's the only consistent thing across all alien.

• 2:01:06Speaker 01

  What are they trying to see?

• 2:01:08Dax Shepard?

  They gotta figure out like what makes you tick.

• 2:01:11Speaker 01

  That's not the way.

• 2:01:12Dax Shepard?

  For them it is. They put that anal probe in, they get all the answers.

• 2:01:17Speaker 01

  Oh, God. Um, yeah, we had a guest we recorded yesterday that was so fascinating about some murders. And we also just want answers so badly.

• 2:01:32Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 2:01:33Speaker 01

  When something horrible happens, when a horrible tragedy happens, we want answers so badly that we're really willing to overlook a lot of things.

• 2:01:39Dax Shepard?

  We feel better with the wrong answer.

• 2:01:42Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:01:43Dax Shepard?

  That's what I'm, that's what I'm trying to approach.

• 2:01:45Speaker 01

  That I, I'm like, no, no, no, no.

• 2:01:48Dax Shepard?

  That's what I'm trying to approach is like, we have just all these weird built in biases that don't actually make sense.

• 2:01:53Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:01:54Dax Shepard?

  Like, if you gave someone that option, would you rather think the wrong thing?

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:01Dax Shepard?

  Versus not know, they would go, well, not, they would say not know, but then in the situation, they want it.

• 2:02:08Speaker 01

  They want to think they're, they want peace. Like, I get it. You want peace, but.

• 2:02:15Dax Shepard?

  That's why we're getting somewhere because that's why like Buddhism is a compelling thing.

• 2:02:19Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:02:20Dax Shepard?

  It's like, that shouldn't be what gives you peace.

• 2:02:24Speaker 01

  I know. But it also in these cases where it's like murders and stuff, it is, it is like, well, are they gonna murder other people? Are the, you know, there's, there's that element too, like if they're outstanding, outstanding, literally.

• 2:02:38Dax Shepard?

  That would even heighten the reason to not think it's the wrong person.

• 2:02:41Speaker 01

  Well, I agree. I agree.

• 2:02:42Dax Shepard?

  But we all would be susceptible to that.

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. I think that is right. Okay. Who's the hypnotist who makes people stop smoking? Carrie Gayner. There are a few listed online, but this is the only one with a crazy, oh, with, with a toupee.

• 2:02:57Dax Shepard?

  Oh, because he had said there was.

• 2:02:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Okay, Dax quotes.

• 2:03:01Dax Shepard?

  Can you tell this is a toupee? It's looking more and more like one, right?

• 2:03:07Speaker 01

  Well, no.

• 2:03:08Dax Shepard?

  I'm having like a, I'm having a wild Wolverine phase.

• 2:03:11Speaker 01

  It is, it is. It doesn't look like a toupee, though.

• 2:03:17Dax Shepard?

  Just a mop?

• 2:03:18Speaker 01

  No, it's just growing.

• 2:03:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:21Speaker 01

  Dax quotes Hunter saying, you add up all other drug deaths and the number of alcohol deaths is five times. Drinking deaths versus other drug deaths in the USA. Alcohol related deaths, one hundred and seventy eight thousand. All other drug deaths, seventy thousand.

• 2:03:38Dax Shepard?

  Not good. And we have a inordinately high amount of drug deaths in the US.

• 2:03:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:44Dax Shepard?

  And his was worldwide. Everyone's drinking.

• 2:03:48Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:03:48Dax Shepard?

  Except for the Middle East.

• 2:03:50Speaker 01

  True. Hunter says he was on the cover of the New York Post more than anyone else in a one year period.

• 2:03:57Speaker 01

  Couldn't really find that.

• 2:03:59Dax Shepard?

  You didn't go through every single?

• 2:04:01Speaker 01

  To be fair, Emma did this.

• 2:04:03Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:04:03Speaker 01

  And she couldn't find it.

• 2:04:04Dax Shepard?

  Well, then I trust that it can't be found.

• 2:04:06Speaker 01

  Me too. President Donald Trump holds a record for the most appearances on the New York Post covers. While Hunter Biden was prominently featured in the late twenty twenty and twenty twenty three regarding his laptop and legal issues, figures like Trump, sitting presidents and prominent New York politicians such as Anthony Weiner or Mick Eric Adams have accumulated vastly more covers over the decades. So that's over a longer period of time.

• 2:04:29Dax Shepard?

  Remember Weiner?

• 2:04:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:31Speaker 01

  Ding ding ding. Joe Biden had one of the funniest things with Anthony Weiner.

• 2:04:38Dax Shepard?

  What did he say?

• 2:04:39Speaker 01

  He like, I wonder if I can find it.

• 2:04:41Dax Shepard?

  What worries me, Mr. Vice President, is that folks are going to go to the polls or have already gone to the polls and they don't know what to make of this. They're in the dark. What should happen now?

• 2:04:50Speaker 02

  I think it's unfortunate. I think Hillary, if she said what I'm told she said is correct, that she released the emails for the whole world to see. The whole world to see. They, they can continue their investigation. It won't, to the best of my knowledge, it won't prejudice the investigation. And but that's, that's sort of the distilled language the agency always uses. And it doesn't mean anything. And so it's unfortunate.

• 2:05:15Dax Shepard?

  I'd be remiss if I didn't note that if she had released all the emails from the get go, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

• 2:05:23Speaker 02

  Well, that's true. Um, but I, I don't know where this email, where these emails came from, what apparently Anthony Weiner. Well, oh God. Anthony Weiner. Um, oh God. I should not come in at Anthony Weiner. I'm not a big fan. And I wasn't before he got in trouble. So I shouldn't come in at Anthony Weiner.

• 2:05:43Speaker 01

  So, oh God.

• 2:05:49Dax Shepard?

  Just exasperated.

• 2:05:51Speaker 01

  This is so real. It's such a real moment. Oh, really? Um, how old was Hunter when Jill came into the picture? Hunter was seven. Um, when Joe and Jill married.

• 2:06:04Dax Shepard?

  When they married?

• 2:06:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So before that.

• 2:06:08Dax Shepard?

  She might have been in the picture, yeah, for her.

• 2:06:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I assume. Hunter claims ibogaine or ibogaine.

• 2:06:14Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, the drug?

• 2:06:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:16Speaker 01

  Is the strongest or one of the strongest hallucinogens on the planet. That drug is not necessarily the strongest hallucinogen in terms of potency, but it is classified as one of the most uniquely powerful and intense psychoactive substances. It is highly potent with a deep, long lasting dreamlike experience that fundamentally differs from classically, from classical psychedelics like LSD or psilocybin. And that's it.

• 2:06:39Dax Shepard?

  That's it. Well, dude, I'm amazed he made it out of that hole. I mean, that is many years. This is the second person this year we've had that spent years smoking crack. I don't know how you come back from that. Uh, Charlie.

• 2:06:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 2:06:58Dax Shepard?

  I mean, it, it, that amazes me.

• 2:07:00Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:07:01Dax Shepard?

  As someone that smoked it sporadically, and I found it to be pretty devastating for the next week. Um, yeah, I just don't know.

• 2:07:11Speaker 01

  How you ever come.

• 2:07:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:07:13Speaker 01

  God. Um, all right. Love you.