Kelly McGonigal (on joy)

Kelly McGonigal (Joy Is a Risk Worth Taking, The Joy of Movement, The Upside of Stress) is a psychologist, bestselling author, and dance instructor. Kelly joins Armchair Expert to discuss growing up with a mirror twin in New Jersey, navigating childhood with unexplained chronic pain, and finding freedom at Boston University. Kelly and Dax talk about studying psychopaths recruited through newspaper ads, sneaking compassion into her viral TED Talk, and spreading joy in dance class despite her own pessimism. Kelly explains why joy doesn’t require a happy life, how connecting with strangers challenges our cynicism, and why singing with a concert crowd can restore our faith in humanity. Check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds: https://www.allstate.com/ This holiday season, NOBULL encourages people stay “Stronger Than the Season.” Head to https://www. NOBULLProject.com all holiday season to shop new deals every week and checkout products like the Drive 2, a versatile hybrid training shoe built for mixed workouts, helping listeners move through the season their way. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese Meal now $8 for a limited time. Only at McDonald’s. 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, experts on expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:06Dax Shepard?

  Today, we have Dr. Kelly McGonigal on, and she is a Stanford psychologist and bestselling author. Her books include The Willpower Instinct, The Upside of Stress, The Joy of Movement, and now her new book, out now, Joy is a Risk Worth Taking. This is a delicious episode.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  It is. And it's a good reminder that we can find joy in all kinds of places, and we really need to, and just do it.

• 0:32Dax Shepard?

  And the most interesting part to me was how many of us fight it.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:38Dax Shepard?

  Don't trust it.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:39Dax Shepard?

  It requires vulnerability, earnestness, some belief in oneself, and we fight it. And that's so fascinating.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  It is. Also, in the fact check, we discussed you can see everything. So if you've seen it, you'll probably want to listen to that. If you haven't seen it, don't listen to it.

• 0:54Dax Shepard?

  I don't want to listen to it. Please enjoy Dr. Kelly McGonigal. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking whether the turkey was fully thawed before Thanksgiving morning? You were told days ago to thaw it, days. And now you're standing in the kitchen, holding a 20-pound ice block, wondering if a hairdryer counts as cooking? Yeah, checking first is always a great idea. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary, subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Allstate, North American Insurance Company and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. We get support from Quince.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Okay, can we talk about the fact that the holidays are already here? It's crazy. I feel like I blinked and now we're in gifting season, which I'm not really mad about because I do love giving gifts. And Quince is making it so easy to find something great for everyone on my list, including myself, because let's be honest, self-gifting is a love language.

• 1:54Dax Shepard?

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• 2:10Speaker 01

  It's the dream. The cashmere sweater, starting at $60, down jackets, wool outerwear, cashmere accessories. You and everyone on your list are staying cozy and looking incredible all season long.

• 2:21Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm gonna tell you this, it just got chilly for the first time this year in California, and I'm so excited, and I'm wearing my Quince cashmere right now.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 2:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I am going to gift this to some of my friends. I hope they're not listening.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Quince is also more than clothing. They've got fine jewelry for your significant other, leather bags for your bestie, hotel-quality bedding to set up your guest rooms, chef-grade cookware. That's an amazing thing they offer here, and it's such a good gift because people don't like buying cookware for themselves, but it's very important. And they also have five-star luggage, another good gift that people don't like buying for themselves.

• 2:56Dax Shepard?

  Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We are supported by Squarespace. So here's something I think about a lot. Most people I talk to on this show, the ones doing really interesting things, they all had a version of their work that existed before anyone else saw it. It was just theirs, notes, ideas, projects they were tinkering with. And then, at some point, they made the decision to share it. That's the part that's scary, right? Going from, I'm working on something, to, here's what I made.

• 3:40Dax Shepard?

  Rob went through the exact same thing, building our site on Squarespace. And what made it doable was that he didn't have to become a web developer overnight. He just had to show up with the idea. Squarespace handles the rest. Beautiful templates that actually look like you hired someone, built an SEO so people can find you, email campaigns, scheduling, analytics, all under one roof. No code, no patchwork of random tools. And honestly, the thing I keep coming back to is how low the barrier is. If you've got something you've been building quietly and you're ready for people to see it, Squarespace makes that leap feel a lot less traumatic. Head to Squarespace.com/dax for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

• 4:41Dax Shepard?

  You feel frazzled?

• 4:42Speaker 02

  A little. Did you hear that we went to the wrong property?

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 4:46Dax Shepard?

  Exciting. What property did you go to?

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Well, it was just over there somewhere, and I was about to get out. And as you know, I should confirm I'm in the right place.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Wow, you could sense it.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  I've had much worse incorrect drop-offs.

• 4:58Dax Shepard?

  One time, we had Dr. Phil on.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Dr. Phil Phil?

• 5:03Dax Shepard?

  That's right, the Dr. Phil. And he went, like, I don't know, seven houses away and just knocked on some door, and then an old lady answered, which if you're an old lady, what could be better than you open your door and Dr. Phil?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, she probably thought she was dying or something.

• 5:18Dax Shepard?

  Or one, like, the

• 5:19Speaker 01

  He came out of the TV.

• 5:20Dax Shepard?

  Sweepstakes, the publisher.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  That was actually what I was thinking would be better.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Oh, well, you know. I'm more of a hypochondriac.

• 5:28Dax Shepard?

  It's a shame Dr. Phil didn't take over for Ed McMahon. He would have been a really seamless transition.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 5:35Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  I'll take the check.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:37Dax Shepard?

  Are you old enough, Monty, to remember all the Ed McMahon commercials?

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know if I remember it, or I just know it from the zeitgeist.

• 5:44Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  I used to dream about that. I used to get those fake, the scams you'd get in the mail that would be like, congratulations, you are the winner of a million dollars. And you just have to send this back. And I remember trying to convince my parents, like, no, but this is real. And we just need to, like, send this back. And they cut it straight and narrow.

• 6:02Dax Shepard?

  It's hard when you're a parent and your children have, like, just naive belief in goodness, and you kind of have to break the news to them, like, no, well.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  The world is bad.

• 6:11Dax Shepard?

  The world is scheming to get you, or some percentage of the world.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  It's true. That is sad.

• 6:17Dax Shepard?

  You're from New Jersey, huh?

• 6:19Speaker 02

  I am.

• 6:19Dax Shepard?

  There's a good deal of scheming happening over in New Jersey. Similar to Detroit, I'd say, where I'm from.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Is there?

• 6:25Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  You mean historically, or like, right now, in current events that I'm unaware of?

• 6:29Dax Shepard?

  Historically.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I guess. I usually feel like I can tell when someone's from Jersey.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 6:34Speaker 02

  You just catch that vibe.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  What do you catch? What are you smelling?

• 6:37Speaker 02

  I feel like, well, when I moved to California, one of the first things people said to me was that I complained too much. So I feel like there's definitely, and then also that I walk too fast, and that you're very intense. And I feel like there's a Jersey-Philly intensity.

• 6:50Dax Shepard?

  I would only get rid of one of those three. Complaining too much is a drag.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:54Dax Shepard?

  But New Jersey, we must acknowledge, you've got Newark, you've got organized crime, you've got a lot of fun history. By the way, all stuff I love.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  This is great.

• 7:02Dax Shepard?

  What city were you in?

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Moorestown, which is right across the bridge from Philly.

• 7:06Dax Shepard?

  Oh, oh, okay.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Not Moore-istown, which is the bigger one up by New York City.

• 7:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you might have more of a Philly vibe.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, Philly.

• 7:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and that, boy, we don't have time to go into Philly.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Not little brother energy, I don't know.

• 7:18Dax Shepard?

  Original brother.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, big brother. They're big brothers.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Without the city of brothers.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Elders' brother, yeah, literally, literally.

• 7:27Dax Shepard?

  You have an identical twin sister?

• 7:28Speaker 02

  I do.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Are you her?

• 7:30Speaker 02

  No, I know. We can't, we can't do that anymore. I mean, she also has kids. She likes to say that has aged progressed her a little bit more than me.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Which is fair.

• 7:39Dax Shepard?

  Yes. She's a game designer?

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:42Dax Shepard?

  Meaning video games?

• 7:43Speaker 02

  No, so she creates, so some of the games she's designed were things like World Without Oil, where people all over the world were living as if there was an oil shortage. So they were, like, growing their own food and doing things like that.

• 7:55Dax Shepard?

  As a board game, or like a natural experiment?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Like alternate reality games.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's one of the inventors of games where you enter into, like, a simulation. She actually had people simulating respiratory pandemic. I remember doing this with her, and maybe it was like 2008 or something. She uses games to help predict the future and help people adapt to the future.

• 8:18Dax Shepard?

  Did you feel like you guys had a head start when the 2020 pandemic happened?

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, it was interesting because when they had mapped out, what are people going to do that is going to get them in trouble in terms of contagion?

• 8:31Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  And they already knew from the way they were role-playing it that it was going to be, like, church, weddings, exactly like the things that people wanted to gather for.

• 8:39Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh, that were gonna be challenging.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, so she's a futurist, and it's funny because I always think, like, her mind, even though we're identical twins, somehow her mind works so differently from mine. I am very present moment focused. I'm like, what's happening now, and can we make now a little bit better? And she's like, we're gonna fix the world, we're gonna change the world, we're gonna imagine alternate realities.

• 9:01Dax Shepard?

  30 years out.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:03Dax Shepard?

  Do you explain that by your, I don't know her history with meditation, but do you explain this divergence in thinking by, no?

• 9:10Speaker 02

  We're mirror twins, so that means I'm left-handed, she's right-handed. We even have, like, moles where it's as if we were pressed together in the womb.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  No.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  So sometimes I wonder if it's something to do with how our brains develop differently based on that.

• 9:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  But no, I think I got interested in meditation because I was always trying to make the present moment better. If I'm suffering right now, how can I be okay in this moment? Meditation is really good for.

• 9:36Dax Shepard?

  And parents were educators.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:38Dax Shepard?

  And you described some of it feeling like lockdown a bit? Does that mean?

• 9:43Speaker 02

  So it's interesting. So my parents were very, very strict in certain ways, and then also leaving us to our own devices in other ways. So we were often completely by ourselves, but we weren't allowed to cross the street. So we were at home. We could watch anything we wanted to on TV, watch any movies we wanted to, read any books. So we were very engaged in highly inappropriate content, but we were the only two people who weren't allowed to go on our high school senior trip.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Really? They kept you contained?

• 10:12Dax Shepard?

  What was their fear?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Part of it was that we would be corrupted. My parents thought I was highly corruptible.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  They definitely thought I would be a bit of a bad girl if I were allowed out of the house.

• 10:23Dax Shepard?

  Do you think they were right at all?

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Well, I mean.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  I mean, you're just living, right?

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. I probably would have definitely been more.

• 10:33Dax Shepard?

  Adventurous.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  I would have had more fun.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Well, you know, the best way to get someone to be adventurous is keep them contained for 18 years. That's tough.

• 10:40Dax Shepard?

  They can backfire.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:41Dax Shepard?

  Obviously, they had great academic aspirations for both of you, right?

• 10:44Speaker 02

  They did. And another way they were unstrict is, you know, I often think about how I know that my parents weren't super enthusiastic about the things that I loved, like pop culture and dancing, and they wanted us, I think, to be more serious.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Like, be a doctor, be a lawyer, be a teacher. And I was like, you know, I want to dance on stage. I want to learn about fashion. But they never discouraged us. So me and my sister both had, you know, pretty unusual interests, and they always found a way to encourage that.

• 11:14Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that's lovely.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  I guess that was a way of not being strict.

• 11:16Dax Shepard?

  But would I be right in guessing, like, they're totally monitoring what your grades are, if you're doing your homework? Have you met with the guidance counselor?

• 11:22Speaker 02

  They didn't monitor us. There was just the demand. Absolutely, top of your class. Nothing except an A is acceptable. Always get the highest score on any achievement exam.

• 11:32Dax Shepard?

  Oof, I would.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  But there was no oversight.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  It was just, that's the requirement. But they were the opposite of helicopter. They didn't know what we were doing in school, when we had exams, what assignments were due.

• 11:42Dax Shepard?

  You just delivered.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:44Dax Shepard?

  Wow, wow, wow.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  So I guess in a way, that was good.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:46Dax Shepard?

  I'm taking their approach. I'm like, you know, let's hope they do their homework.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  That's how, yeah. My parents knew zero about what was going on in school.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  I kind of liked that.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. But then when my brother came around, they had to pay attention. I think it was just because they liked what they were seeing. It was like, okay, she's doing well.

• 12:02Dax Shepard?

  That's really important. Like, yes, I have this laissez-faire attitude, but because they're delivering. Like, I don't really, you know.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  If they're coming back failing everything, you might be like, okay, we need to step in a little.

• 12:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we need a schedule.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  They got involved when I got in trouble. I would get in trouble for what I wore to school. And then we'd have a serious conversation about it. Or I'd get in trouble because I had a bad attitude sometimes.

• 12:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  And that was the, yeah.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  I remember my mom got me the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  When teachers kept putting me into tension. She was like, Kelly, you're gonna have to learn how to make authority like you.

• 12:38Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you end up going to Boston College?

• 12:42Speaker 02

  University.

• 12:42Dax Shepard?

  So sorry. What?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  They're different.

• 12:44Dax Shepard?

  I don't even know that there's a difference.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're different.

• 12:46Dax Shepard?

  We're not, we're not addressing the elephant in the room.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 12:49Dax Shepard?

  I had to just confirm this with, you are Professor McGonigal, no?

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Well, my last name is McGonigal, but I'm not a professor.

• 12:56Dax Shepard?

  You're not a professor?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  I have a PhD.

• 12:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I said to my daughter, my 13-year-old today, I said, hon, I'm interviewing someone named Dr. Kelly McGonigal. Isn't that a great name? And she said, like Professor McGonigal?

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:08Dax Shepard?

  And then I thought, oh, Monica's gonna be so happy.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  I actually did not put two and two together. I think because, you're right, I'm always associating professor with that.

• 13:16Dax Shepard?

  You lecture at Stanford, which is confusing. That's not to say you're a professor, but you do lecture there.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  I know. I've had so many different affiliations at Stanford over the years. I tried to leave, and they kept pulling me back. So I just sort of stayed and do these things.

• 13:27Dax Shepard?

  Could you be a professor, just so we could call you that?

• 13:29Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  I think Stanford would have an opinion about that.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  I think they should just give it to you. People get honorary doctorates, you can get honorary professor.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  I mean, well, you know, then they'd have to give me benefits and stuff.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 13:41Dax Shepard?

  They don't want to do that. Maybe you could sign away that, just so you get that professor. Uh, anyways, very exciting, very exciting for everyone in the house today. Okay, so you go to University of Boston?

• 13:49Speaker 02

  Boston University.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  I got to rap. Oh, no.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  I loved BU, so we gotta make sure we get it right.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Yep. BU is where Rooney Mara's character went at the beginning of Social Network.

• 14:01Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. We just had an expert on last week that was Boston College.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Very different experience. I wanted to go to places like BU, not Boston College.

• 14:12Dax Shepard?

  What's the diff?

• 14:13Speaker 02

  You are right in the middle of the city. So my first dorm was across from Fenway Park and a methadone clinic.

• 14:18Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  And nightclubs. It is a huge school, so you're kind of anonymous. You know, I could go to class, and the professor would have no idea who I was. I just loved it. I felt like I started my life. I had real jobs all through college. You could feel like you were living life, engaged in the world, and that's absolutely what I wanted. I didn't want to feel like I was at school still.

• 14:39Dax Shepard?

  And where is Boston College? On the Cape?

• 14:42Speaker 02

  It's up there.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  She has a horrible face.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  I mean, I never actually went there, but I, you get on the T and you go up there. My understanding is that it's like a traditional campus.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  So it's like smaller, maybe?

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Smaller. You wanted to be in the city.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  I wanted to be in the city.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  And where is Harvard in connection to BU? Is it?

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Across the river.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Okay. But close-ish, right?

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I never went there.

• 15:07Dax Shepard?

  You didn't even go there?

• 15:07Speaker 02

  I have been on campus once or twice in my life, but not while I was there.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:11Dax Shepard?

  I was shooting a movie there. I think our daughter was like two at the time, and I was like, I'm gonna take her on a little walk. We end up on the campus. Oh, cool, let's look at the campus. And it happened to be the drop-off day.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 15:21Dax Shepard?

  And it was, I don't know that I've ever witnessed anything as sweet, is just sitting in the grass with my little girl, watching all these parents drop their kids. You know how fucking hard they all worked to get there.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  I know. I love that you love that. I think that kind of thing all the time.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Yes. I love a campus. We love college. It's like all, everything about it. Yeah, we really miss it.

• 15:40Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so, but you didn't find your way to Stanford ultimately, and get your PhD there? In psychology?

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Psychology, yes.

• 15:47Dax Shepard?

  Why were you drawn to it?

• 15:48Speaker 02

  I have always been so curious about what it's like to be another person. I just think all the time, what's it like to be in somebody else's head?

• 15:58Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  What are people feeling? What are people thinking? What would it be like to have that life? I remember when I went to college, it wasn't for psychology, even though I'd been reading, you know, pop psych books all my life. I thought I was going to go into some communication field. But then I was taking these psychology classes, and I kept getting amazing grades with no effort, because all it was, was thinking about how other people think.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  And I was like, I can't believe this. This is so fascinating. It was so intuitive.

• 16:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Until I had to do statistics. That was less intuitive, but it was okay. We got through that. And I ended up going to Stanford. I was split between clinical psych and, like, regular psychology. I didn't want to analyze people and do therapy, but I was really interested. So the work I did as an undergraduate was with psychopathy. So we had a lot of psychopaths come into the laboratory.

• 16:49Dax Shepard?

  Nice.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  And I was the research assistant. It was me and a graduate student, and we did all of the psych tests on them. I was really interested.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  What were the tests? I'm so curious.

• 16:59Dax Shepard?

  You give them a baby and a hammer and see what happens.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  No.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  The test to get them in, we published an ad on the back page of these magazines, like these newspapers that don't exist anymore. So the advertisement were things like, are you smarter than everyone you know? Do people have a hard time keeping up with you? Didn't say, are you a psychopath? Or have you murdered someone? What would you do if we gave you a baby?

• 17:22Dax Shepard?

  Also, it feels like a narcissist study as well.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  It was a little bit. This was like 30 years ago, so I don't remember exactly what the questions were. And then when they got there, we would have to give them the test to see, are they really a psychopath? But then, you know, things like, there was a memory task where you would show people a picture, and they'd have to trace it while looking at it. And then you distract them, and then they have to replicate it again to see how well they held it in their memory. We did, uh, electrodermal activity while showing them emotional words. And that was one of the ways that we confirmed that they were psychopaths. So they might see the word like murder and have absolutely no physiological reaction to it. And we did a gambling task, too.

• 17:59Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  To see how well you learn from your mistakes. They don't learn as well from their mistakes.

• 18:04Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  This is fascinating.

• 18:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay, anyways, somehow all of this leads to, I guess, let's jump to, you have this enormously popular TED Talk you gave.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Oh, right. That actually started out as a lecture for Introduction to Psychology at Stanford.

• 18:19Dax Shepard?

  I don't know, it's had like 30 million views or something astronomical. And it was maybe an attempt to reframe stress?

• 18:25Speaker 02

  It was. Did you want to know the story behind that?

• 18:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  For a couple of years, they'd been like, we're interested in having you give a TED Talk. What would you give a TED Talk on? And I was like, well, I do research on compassion. I would love to give a talk about my research on compassion. And they were like, mm, I think we had a talk on compassion. It was pretty good. We're covered on that. We'll check in with you again in a year. And so, I don't know if it was like the third year, and they were like, we're still interested in having you give a TED Talk. The theme of the conference is think again. Is there anything that you would like people to think again? And I was like, well, you know, I do give this lecture in Psych One about stress and how there's this growing research that stress is not all bad for you. And if you allow yourself

• 19:13Speaker 02

  to embrace stress rather than try to avoid or suppress it, that it has a lot of positive outcomes. And so I started to give that lecture in Psych One, because previously, have you had Robert Sapolsky on the show?

• 19:23Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Okay. So he used to give the lecture on stress in Psych One.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  He's an amazing lecturer.

• 19:29Dax Shepard?

  He's like the top five smartest people on the planet.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  He's amazing. But his research has focused mostly on how stress is horrible, and there's very little you can do about it. So he would give this lecture right before final exams week to mostly freshmen, and being like, are you stressed? Well, stress does this. It will kill you. It damages your brain cells. It makes you impotent. And then we haven't found anything yet that helps. And that was like the last thing they heard before going to exam week. So at one point, the people who ran the program were like, would you be interested in giving a lecture on stress? And I was like, what message would be really good for them to hear right before exam week? And I'm thinking, you know, there is this research about how if you're really anxious or stressed before an exam, and you

• 20:14Speaker 02

  tell yourself it's normal to be stressed, and that your anxiety could actually be helping you, which is true.

• 20:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  People who are anxious tend to do better than people who are totally calm. They might be a little dissociated or underperforming. And so I put that research into the talk. And that was how that TED Talk began. I said, well, I believe this message is probably good. There could be some benefit to people hearing this message. And then I thought, how can I get compassion in there? Like, oh, I have to get the thing that I care about most into this talk. So if you actually watch the talk, I try to sneak in that hole. You have an instinct to also be compassionate, and that also is something that you can do.

• 20:54Dax Shepard?

  To modulate stress.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:57Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I want to do a thing that we do occasionally. Do you have an actor?

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Are you gonna ask me to do an impression?

• 21:03Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Don't worry.

• 21:04Dax Shepard?

  Sometimes we like to see if someone reminds us of the same person. And I'm getting the most incredible vibes for a very specific person.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Okay, I'll say one. I don't think it's what you're gonna say.

• 21:14Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  But let's try.

• 21:15Dax Shepard?

  Will you count us down? You say three, two, one. Yeah.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Three, two, one.

• 21:19Dax Shepard?

  Lizzie Kaplan.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. Hold on.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Wait, I heard Lizzie Kaplan. What did you say?

• 21:25Speaker 01

  I started to say Rachel McAdams.

• 21:27Dax Shepard?

  Both compliments.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Both compliments. But right when we were starting, I thought, no, I think it is. And then I couldn't call her name fast enough.

• 21:35Dax Shepard?

  It was Lizzie Kaplan.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  I mean, I used to get one person all the time when I was much younger. But you know, you probably wouldn't even recognize it. When I was a teenager, early twenties, I got Madonna.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Oh, I could totally see that.

• 21:48Dax Shepard?

  Lucky you.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Young Madonna.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Younger Madonna.

• 21:52Dax Shepard?

  I can see it.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  I loved it.

• 21:54Dax Shepard?

  What a flattering thing to be told.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  I went into a store once. The person working the register called someone and was like, I think Madonna just came into my store. I have a Madonna tattoo.

• 22:03Dax Shepard?

  You do? Oh, wonderful, wonderful.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Very happy for this phenomenon in her career.

• 22:09Dax Shepard?

  Man, we almost would have got it. I think we would have got it. Yeah, yeah, it would have been fun. Okay, so now, I think now we need to talk a little bit about your meditation history. Because I think that has to somehow feed into compassion, right? There are many specific meditations geared just at specifically compassion, no?

• 22:28Speaker 02

  That's what I've done research on. So at the Stanford Center for Compassion, we developed this program that taught compassion meditations to help people develop their empathy and self-compassion. But how I got my start was more with Zen meditation. How still can you sit? And can you count your breath? And when your mind wanders, can you start again?

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  You know, what I really loved about Zen meditation is, I've never actually heard Zen teachers talk about this. But my experience is you develop a different relationship with your breath. You know, I'd always experienced my body and my mind as a really unfriendly place to be. It's just not safe to be in this body or this mind. When you just sit and breathe and pay attention to your breath, over the years, something happened where my breath started to become like a secure attachment in the way that you might have to a parent or to a pet, like a comfort blanket. I would turn my attention to my breath. And I felt, you know, what people say they feel when they're in that secure place.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  My breath became something I could turn to that made me feel grounded and okay in this moment. Nobody in Zen talks about that. It's more about the ability to turn off the habits of your mind that create suffering, which it does help with that. But it gave me an embodied experience. And I think that bringing the body into it, I don't think meditation would have stuck with me if it felt like I was dissociating from my body. My favorite breathing exercise is to imagine breathing through your heart. That's one of the ones that we taught in the compassion training. This is one of the things I'm really geeky interested in. You know, your brain monitors the signals from your heart area, from the skin of your chest and the muscles in your chest and the actual rhythms of your heart and blood pressure in this area.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  And your brain monitors it, but not all the time.

• 24:14Dax Shepard?

  Not all the time.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  Not all the time. It's like information that's coming. I mean, even like if I just ask you to notice your breath, the signals were coming into your brain. But your brain doesn't always pay attention to it.

• 24:23Dax Shepard?

  I just want to be clear, because obviously autonomically, it is always paying attention.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  It is to make sure that your heart doesn't stop.

• 24:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's just sometimes you're conscious of it, sometimes you're not.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the part of your brain that processes sensory information so that you feel it.

• 24:36Dax Shepard?

  Right, right.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  That also then interprets what that means. So there's interesting research that when you have more information coming from that sensory system, your sense of self feels like it's here rather than here. And that's something I'm really interested in. Like, most people experience the world like they're behind their forehead and the eyes. And like, the whole world revolves around them. But when your sense of self, and this is like a real thing people describe, the sense of self drops to here. There's a sense of being more open, like a 360 awareness of the world.

• 25:09Dax Shepard?

  More connected.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  And more connected. The boundaries between you and the world are also a little bit softer. And so heart breathing puts your awareness there and can drop you into that space. And then when you're in that state, then our bodies and brains start synchronizing. So if we were in that state, like if as we're having this conversation, we're feeling more connected, my heart's gonna start beating in a rhythm similar to yours.

• 25:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  And our brains will start to talk to each other. This idea that like somehow my brain is communicating to your brain and affecting your brain activity, and yours is doing the same. When you look at the scientific papers for researchers who do this, they have these images that they draw of like head number one and head number two, and all of these nodes that crisscross. Like, if I could turn this into an illustration, your head in your head, I would put all of these crisscross lines that bind your brains together.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  So you're functioning now not as separate individuals, but as a connected system. If you were, you know, even a little bit aware, you would feel that as kind of like bonding, rapport, closeness.

• 26:10Dax Shepard?

  It's almost like you create a shared neural network sitting between the two of you somehow.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's so fascinating. Okay, so how does that lead us to joy? And I'm gonna start by saying why I wanted to have you on when I read the description.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was very curious.

• 26:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I myself suffer from this, and then so many of our guests suffer from this. We just had this great singer, Ash, on. And she's at a moment right now where she has a kind of a breakout hit happening. In the amount of impending doom she feels, and the amount of impending doom I always feel, it's so ubiquitous among the guests we have. So I'm just fascinated on how hard it is for us to embrace joy ultimately. And then I see you've written a book on joy, and then you're acknowledging that that's hard. And then that's what I want to know about.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  For me, the place that I come to it from is I'm one of the most pessimistic people in the world. So I also have that impending sense of, I think dread is my default nervous system state, which is an interesting emotion. People who don't experience dread don't understand that the feeling, it's not anxiety. People think it's anxiety, like what if something goes wrong? Dread is you know something bad is going to happen and there's nothing you can do to prevent it.

• 27:23Dax Shepard?

  There's almost no anxiety about it. It's a fact.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  It is. And then there's this feeling that you're being pulled forward towards a future you don't want to actually experience. That's my default state.

• 27:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, I have a very similar.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Do you know what I'm talking about? It was a little different.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  I have had it. I've had it in moments. And I actually cannot imagine living my whole life. That is the worst possible feeling, in my opinion.

• 27:43Dax Shepard?

  By the way, I only meditate and journal because in the morning it's at its apex. It's almost like as I'm recharging.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  And I'm like, oh, no.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Oh, no, you got it.

• 27:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's how I start.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  That's how I start. I always think someday I'm gonna wake up and be like, glad to be alive.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  So I say that because for me, joy is the antidote to that. Having that as your orientation to life is not the barrier or the obstacle. It's not a complete barrier or obstacle. Like, the reason I'm interested in joy is because I can't imagine a reality where I'm happy all the time. I can't imagine a reality where I think about the future and I think everything is gonna work out for myself and everyone else I care about. The aspiration for happiness that a lot of people have, that I'm gonna get everything I want in life, everything's gonna turn out okay. I think a lot of people are aspiring to that, whereas I don't have that aspiration. That doesn't seem like a reasonable prediction or goal.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Joy is really the ability to find those moments that make life worth living, independent of the context of your life, that you can still laugh or smile, that you can still do things that matter, that you can still admire beauty in the world, that you can still feel close to someone. And so I'm really interested in the moments that when you're in them, there's a feeling like one thing is good, or I'm okay, or in this moment, there's a fit between who I am and what's happening, or what I'm able to do. It's like, you know, I was talking about the difference between thinking about the future and thinking about the present moment. Joy is such a present moment experience.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  I think of joy as a way to orient yourself to life that gives you that experience of being glad to be alive. And it doesn't depend on being able to hold on to success, or being able to reach specific goals, or being able to cure an illness that you have. Part of this I came to because I grew up with chronic pain. That was underexplored, I guess would be a good way to put it. Like, my parents weren't into the medical system. So I learned early on, well, you're gonna be in pain all the time, and there's nothing you can do about it, so what else is there? When we talk about joy, I'm not talking about the person who is experiencing success.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  And then that person has to find a way to actually feel like that success will be permanent and last forever. And then nothing will go wrong. It's like, who knows?

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, things will go.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  But what can we appreciate in this moment? That is, it could be about the success, or it could be about, you know, a stranger that you had some small connection with, and that they could be equally valuable in present moment. Your life doesn't require the biggest success that you can imagine, or the biggest relief you can imagine.

• 30:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, let's go through some of the reasons joy is hard for us. I mean, the book starts with you talking with your father, telling him you're about to write a book on joy, asking him what his most joyous memories are.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  And he was like, oh, I've only experienced joy a couple of times in my entire life. And he was 80 at the time, maybe?

• 30:49Dax Shepard?

  Here's where we get into a little bit of the sociological aspect of it. Because again, I think where you're from and where I'm from is a bit similar. So it's like, it's also very cultural.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:58Dax Shepard?

  Like, it's not a good look.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Not to be too sincere and enthusiastic?

• 31:02Dax Shepard?

  Yes, earnestness. I was just talking about like the kind of the societal pressures. Perhaps it mirrors tall poppy. You'll be embarrassed. You'll be caught believing in yourself or trusting a moment.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  There's so many stories we have that makes feeling good in the moment wrong. So one is the idea that if you're happy, it means you're full of yourself.

• 31:23Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  I mean, also, this is because people think the only thing you could be happy about are, like you said, status, being better than other people.

• 31:30Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  But you can also be happy that, you know, a bird is singing.

• 31:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:34Dax Shepard?

  Your little kid takes his first steps. Yeah.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  So it's almost a misunderstanding also of what actually brings people joy.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  But so there's the idea that joy or being happy is prideful. For a lot of people, there is this sense that the world is cynical. And if you're too enthusiastic, too genuine, too heartfelt, you'll be ridiculed.

• 31:53Dax Shepard?

  And or victimized.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Or victimized.

• 31:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  People will exploit you if they know what you really care about or that you actually care. Better not to look like you care so much or that you can be so easily moved by helping a stranger. Right? Then there's the fear all the strangers will show up. For a lot of people, people confuse pleasure that can get them into trouble with the pleasure that's built into the experience of joy. Joy activates the pleasure circuitry of your brain and you feel it in your body as pleasure. And a lot of people have beliefs about pleasure being sinful or wrong or immoral or shameful.

• 32:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, or puritanical.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and not just pleasure, but sometimes also just good emotions. You know, you may have found that when you felt really good, that was when your heart got broken or that's when you ended up being taken advantage of or when you got disappointed. So having a good emotion, like feeling grateful or hopeful or good about yourself can start a kind of immune response.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like I put my guard down.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can't put your guard down. You have to protect yourself.

• 32:52Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 32:57Dax Shepard?

  We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking if the movie is sold out before you show up. You drove across town, found parking, got in line, and now the person behind the counter is giving you that look. Sold out. Guess you're watching whatever starts in 10 minutes. Yeah, checking first is an excellent idea. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary, subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Allstate North American Insurance Company and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. We get support from Superhuman. Look, I love what I do. The conversations, the ideas, the creative stuff. But there's this whole other layer of work that eats my day alive. The inbox that never ends.

• 33:42Dax Shepard?

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• 34:25Dax Shepard?

  So do yourself a favor and try Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly. Find out more at superhuman.com. We get support from NoBull. The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post-summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 34:46Dax Shepard?

  Exactly. And that's why I keep my training routine through the holidays. It's the whole NoBull idea. There's a no bullshit training brand built around consistency, honesty, and just putting in the work. It's not about adding more pressure to an already packed schedule. It's about having the gear and the habits to move through the season your way. My personal favorite, all three of the shoes are fantastic. The Outwork, the Outwork Flex, and the Drive Two. I like the Drive Two because it's a hybrid. And I lift, of course, but I also like to do what's called box jumps.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 35:18Dax Shepard?

  Right? I do a lot of jumping onto a little platform and I want a little more flexibility. And boy, do they deliver.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  And if you're a cardio person and you're running and you also need to be lifting.

• 35:28Dax Shepard?

  And the style is banging. I don't know what to say. Beautiful style, very breathable, very, very comfortable, lots of support. They were built for lifting.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  They also make a great holiday gift. You know, I love gifting, a purposeful one that actually supports someone's goals and routines, and it's not a gift that just ends up in the back of a closet.

• 35:45Dax Shepard?

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• 37:03Speaker 04

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• 37:21Speaker 02

  Lots of people believe that if they let themselves admit that they're happy, the universe will punish them.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that part's big.

• 37:28Dax Shepard?

  We have historic allegory about this. This is like flying too close to the sun. This is like Midas. There's so many parables about warning us about this.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Part of the book is about how this idea, it's not that the universe is going to actively punish you for being grateful that you have love in your life or success or that your body is healthy. The universe isn't like, gotcha, now we're taking that away. But of course, you know, impermanence is a real thing. And one of the things that really stood out to me over the course of writing this book is there was a human being, my father, and there was an animal, one of my pets, that sort of plays special roles in the book, is my favorite memories and the things I love most. And they both died over the course of writing the book. And I was thinking, you know, someone's going to be like, you just let yourself admit too much about how much you care.

• 38:16Dax Shepard?

  There's all the shadow talking.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. I would say that being willing to talk about joy required getting to know some of those shadow voices too.

• 38:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Like another one is, who are you to talk about joy when there's so much chaos, conflict, crisis in the world?

• 38:32Speaker 01

  That's exactly why you should be talking about it.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I think it is.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  But I thought it intellectually, it took me a little while to feel it. Like, I didn't tell people what I was working on. You know, you see these messages where people are like, why aren't you constantly talking about? And then fill in whatever is the biggest atrocity of the day.

• 38:51Dax Shepard?

  Which, by the way.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  How dare you?

• 38:53Dax Shepard?

  There'll be one tomorrow and the next day. Our whole life will be full of global atrocities. So if we're waiting for all atrocities to end before we experience joy, I'm here to tell you, we're never going to experience joy.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  And one of the things that really, you know, I was in the middle of doing this research and I was teaching a class on joy. One year, it was when the war between Russia and Ukraine had just started. And I always send out surveys before class. You know, what are you thinking? What would be a good outcome for you in this class? What brings you to this class? And I had a number of people living in the United States who said they felt a little reluctant to take a class about joy while this war was going on. There was so much suffering. And then I had people from Ukraine who had suffered severely because of the war, who were taking the class and who were sending messages to the people in my class that joy was the thing that felt most urgent.

• 39:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  And that is what they craved in this moment and that it was possible. That helped me sort of get my head straight and not buy into that shadow thinking.

• 39:52Dax Shepard?

  You have an example in your book of a father who like lost a son. And his thought was if I'm ever experiencing joy, it means I've forgotten him.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's common.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:05Dax Shepard?

  Which is so heartbreaking. And of course, you'd want to say to the guy, do you think your son's

• 40:10Speaker 01

  That's exactly what brought him out of this.

• 40:13Dax Shepard?

  Desire for you is to suffer.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  He would ask himself what his son would want. And that was one of the things he told me that allowed him to allow for those mixed emotions and to choose to be grateful, to feel love, to plan things to look forward to, even though the son that he lost couldn't experience that with him. Yeah.

• 40:31Dax Shepard?

  I've told my wife, like, if I die, bring a date to the funeral. Like, get going. Fucking, you know, I don't want you to spend one day miserable on planet Earth. Don't do it for me.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  One of my cats died a couple of weeks ago, and we were at the shelter in days, thinking, I mean, a similar thing. When they're suffering and you have so much energy that wants to go somewhere, you should allow yourself to find that thing.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  I mean, I think so much of this has to do with our, like, it's this or it's that. It's either you miss them or you're totally moved on. It's like, no, both things can be true. You can be missing someone every day for the rest of your life. And the thing is, we do it when it's tragedy, but like, if it's your old grandparent or something, no one's like, well, I should just be very upset about this every day, because that's like the natural course of things. But that should always be the case.

• 41:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, anything premature feels like it's now somehow in a different category.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  I think it's also, you know, grief can attack you in different ways, based on your relationship to the person you lost, or to whatever it was that you lost. And I think there's some forms of grief where your brain is really torturing you over it. And I think like, that was certainly the case with losing a child. Your brain is just insistent on maintaining that bond, that this bond was so important. This was your reason for living, and your brain does all of these things that are, like, essentially forms of torture, like, the memories that come up when you were doing something else and flooded with emotions. The way that that desire persists, that longing, that longing, and then your brain is like, where is he? Where is she?

• 42:07Speaker 02

  So I think that grief is such a beautiful horrific thing. It's like a side effect of the attachment system. Because I'm trained as an emotion researcher who thinks about the function of emotions. I really think grief is one of the emotions that doesn't have a function moving forward, that it is like the accidental side effect of one of the most important capacities humans have, that caregiving instinct and attachment. But I'm not sure anyone has ever demonstrated an actual function of grief.

• 42:37Dax Shepard?

  Adaptive quality to it.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Moving forward, yeah.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  I guess the goal would be in a collective grief way, in war or something. It's like when we're all feeling like, oh, my God, this is so horrible, that we wouldn't do this again.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  But we do.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Guilt and shame can work in that way, too, the anticipatory. But the interesting thing, like, what would anticipatory grief, because grief is at its most powerful with relationships, anticipatory grief would tell you not to get into a relationship. Don't have kids, don't love too much.

• 43:05Dax Shepard?

  This could be fun to think about this in what often is a fun debate, which is like, yes, you're thinking about it on a very singular, adaptive, or evolutionary way, when you could think of this as a group evolutionary facet, right? Which is, I observe other people suffer. When one of us dies, we have value. Like, what it could provide on a group level is kind of interesting, even if it might be not productive for the person suffering.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  If people could imagine also that they would be grieved in a meaningful way, what that might mean to people.

• 43:37Dax Shepard?

  It's somehow comforting, right? And we need examples of that. If no one grieved, then yeah, you certainly couldn't convince yourself of that.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm not saying I would get rid of it.

• 43:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you're saying.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  I've been able to find, like, really clear functions for other emotions, the emotions we don't want.

• 43:52Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes. First, let's quickly delineate the difference between happiness and joy.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  One way that I think about it is, if you ask someone, how happy are you? They usually think about the totality of their life. They're like, how's things going at home, at work, my health? How do I think about politics? How's my financial situation? And they're like, yeah, I'm pretty happy because I don't have a ton of things I'm worried about. I haven't recently suffered a major disaster or crisis or change. And like, happiness is often described as things going well in my life. It's a global assessment. You don't have to define it that way. I'm just, I'm defining it that way because that's how a lot of people talk about happiness. And also, when they say they want to be happy, a lot of times what they mean is they want life to be easier. Whereas joy, it is in the moment. It is something good.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Someone thanks you, and you feel better. And sometimes you feel it in your body. Sometimes it just feels like relief and you feel your forehead relax. Sometimes you just feel for an instant this intensification of closeness between you and others, or like a sense that who I am is good. It persists for seconds to minutes. It's always about something, and it really functions like a signal. I think of it as very similar to pain. If pain is meant to alert you to a threat, something wrong, joy is a signal that is meant to tell you something good.

• 45:13Dax Shepard?

  Pursue this?

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Well, a couple of different ways. One is sort of a baseline. Your brain also monitors really basic human needs, like, are you alone or are you connected? Do you matter, or does what you do not matter? Is there anything you can do that is meaningful or pleasurable, or do you have no options, no choices? Is there beauty in the world, or is the world a hideous, horrible place? It's like, there's just questions that the brain is always trying to get a readout on. And joy is this, like, reset that affirms something good that you need to know. So every moment of joy is like, you're not alone. What you do matters. There is beauty in this world. There's something to look forward to. And it's like a reset in your brain

• 45:55Speaker 02

  that affirms the value of life itself and the value of your life specifically. And I think of that as like the primary function of joy, that we have the ability to feel joy in order to have that reset, to almost like prevent despair, to prevent total demoralization. Now, it also is a good signal about where to put your energy and attention. Where you find joy is going to be closely connected probably to meaning, to contribution, to good fit. Like, you know, there's something about who you are and in this environment, that that's a good match. And maybe you should spend time there. So it can become a useful signal in that way.

• 46:35Dax Shepard?

  So what was interesting with your father's own journey with this is he starts by saying he's only had two moments of joy. But over the course of a year before he's diagnosed, this list expands, right? And there's a power in just trying to be aware of it, right? It has kind of a cumulative rising effect.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, it was an act of generosity, because he was really skeptical. It's funny, he was the same way with compassion, too. He'd be like, oh, compassion, bleh. But he said that. He said that, but, you know, one of his few moments of joy, when he started excavating it, was helping a stranger at a bus station. I was like, that? That's going to be one of your great moments of joy? And yet, you're so skeptical of compassion. So I think, like you said, there's some cultural elements to it.

• 47:24Dax Shepard?

  I think there's very strong cultural elements.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  You know, it was an act of generosity, because I was writing a book about joy. And I think he was willing to have conversations with me about it because I got so happy when he told me his first memory or two.

• 47:39Dax Shepard?

  Because they're about you.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, the first one was about the first time I smiled at him when he was bottle-feeding us.

• 47:44Dax Shepard?

  Because mom was sick.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  She was, yeah, complications from birth, so she was still in the hospital. So first time father, twins.

• 47:50Dax Shepard?

  One too many.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that was great. But then the other memories, he told me the story about dancing when he was in the seminary, which was so surprising to me. So I teach dance. That's like this other side of my life. I love dance.

• 48:04Dax Shepard?

  What kind?

• 48:04Speaker 02

  I teach, like, dance fitness classes, but different types.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Dance is very joyful.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  It is.

• 48:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, oh, yeah. Nothing tops it.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  In the same way that I describe myself as super pessimistic and also not particularly happy, but from teaching dance, I kept getting these cards from people saying, your joy is contagious. Thank you for bringing me so much joy. It's one of the reasons I got interested in joy, because I was like, why do people keep using this word joy to describe what's happening in class or to describe me? When I'm like not a optimistic or happy person, I started to realize there really is a difference, this kind of sense of vitality and belonging and aliveness. But so he came up with all these other memories of joy. When we started talking about joy as being a moment when you're glad to be alive, or it feels like a really good fit between who you are and what's happening in that moment.

• 48:51Dax Shepard?

  It's really funny. It's such a stupid statement, but in so many ways, it's really hard to actually feel alive.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:00Dax Shepard?

  For whatever reason, the stranger interactions always for me are like apex feelings of like, oh, right, I'm alive on planet Earth and that person's alive and here we are.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  And I'm doing something that's affecting them, they're affecting me.

• 49:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Monica took a ride home from a tow truck driver once and it was like she had gone away to like a two-week fucking meditation seminar or something.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  It was incredible. It was incredible.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Because you connected?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I, of course, would never. I was like, the idea of having to take this car called AAA, this day is a disaster.

• 49:32Dax Shepard?

  An hour-long ride in a tow truck in traffic.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  And then we start talking, we talked the whole time and he's this older man and he's telling me about his life. And I was like, I don't want to get out of this car. I love this person.

• 49:44Dax Shepard?

  It challenges your fear about the world.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  This is a type of joy people really need because there's so many messages we're getting right now through all sorts of media and culture and the people in our lives that are telling us that other people can't be trusted. When I first started teaching a class about joy and I'm asking people to give me their joy reports, I was shocked by how many peak moments of joy were these moments of connection with strangers. I didn't even believe some of the stories that people would tell me, like that they even happened, but also that people felt, they would literally say, this moment made me glad to be alive, it gave me hope, it filled me with joy. And I really think it's because in those moments, it challenges our cynicism and it allows us to sense the good in ourselves. It's a form of elevation,

• 50:31Speaker 02

  which is one of my favorite forms of joy, where something good in the world resonates with the good in you and you allow yourself to feel good about it. We don't have to suppress that part of ourselves that normally would feel like we have to guard it.

• 50:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I think people don't even necessarily know why certain things are magic. Like, they actually would miss what the catalyst or active property in the experience was. So it's like, anyone who's backpacked through Europe, I've yet to meet the person that's not one of their top experiences of their life. But what is it? Is it seeing Europe? Yeah, that's kind of fun, that's novel. But I think it's like, you're in hostels with all these other kids who also are doing the same thing. And the true joy of it is like, yeah, these connections with people from around the world that you thought were other and it turns out, oh, no, we're all the same. That's the element that's so intoxicating.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  Getting to experience yourself as a human being in different places, too. I think like travel can do a lot in terms of creating that broader sense of self, too. So many kids grow up feeling like there's one way to be. And then, you know, as a young person, you go to different parts of the world and there's a sense of freedom that comes from being able to be you, but in a different setting, that pulls all sorts of different things out of you.

• 51:40Dax Shepard?

  What is joy dampening?

• 51:41Speaker 02

  So in a moment when you start to feel joy, you do something to feel less. So you might find something to complain about. And a lot of this is subconscious. Or you tell yourself you don't deserve it. It's not real. Like, if the joy comes because somebody did something nice for you, you're like, oh, you know, they had to do it, or they don't really mean it.

• 52:02Dax Shepard?

  They just want this.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  You start worrying about how it's going to go wrong. You distract yourself out of it. Sometimes it's the intensity of it is too much and so you find a way to pay attention to something that's not good. And people don't know they're joy dampening, but they're just suddenly distracted and then they feel less moved, or less open, or less hopeful. And it's a form of emotion regulation that's really meant to prevent the expected bad feeling that follows a good feeling. You know, people who dampen joy, often they do it because they assume, if I allow myself to feel this or show this, I'm gonna fall off a cliff. The rug's gonna get pulled out from under me. And I don't want to experience the fall,

• 52:45Speaker 02

  the emotional fall. So if I dampen it myself, there's less distance to fall. I'm steadier. I'd rather be steady than experience ups and downs. But people also will dampen for all the reasons we talked about, for why people think joy is wrong or impossible, too. They'll dampen it to not make other people uncomfortable, to not be judged.

• 53:05Dax Shepard?

  I have a lot of survivor's guilt from where I moved from. I have survivor's guilt from the people I was in the growlings with that didn't make it like I did. I have so much survivor's guilt that anything great that happens to me, which is a lot of great things that happen to me. The example I always think of is I got this car. I grew up in Detroit. All I cared about is cars. I had posters all over my room of fucking supercars. I got this really crazy, hard-to-get car that Ford made very limited amount of. I got it. The few people that found out I had it, they go, oh, my God, you got this car? And I go, yeah. I mean, you gotta put this crazy wrap on it. That's like, I just start bagging on the whole experience. And I spent two years of having that car where I never said one positive thing about it because I was so ashamed that I had it. And I do that with a lot of stuff.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  I think you do this a lot.

• 53:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  But I also think sometimes it's like, not for you, but in general, you do. Sometimes I think your brain is telling you it's kind of for the benefit of the other person. If you're like, I got this bag or something that I've been wanting for a long time, but actually, like, it kind of sucks. Like, don't worry. You don't want it. Kind of like this thing that you probably do want, you shouldn't want it, don't worry about it, don't put your energy there because it's actually like not as great as you think.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Because you know that human beings do social comparison.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:18Speaker 02

  And so when something good happens to you, other people might feel envy.

• 54:22Dax Shepard?

  You get a list and envy, yeah.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  They might feel bad about themselves, resentful of you.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  You're trying to like right-size that.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  Actually, you know, that backfires a lot because what people actually think is, I can't believe this person doesn't appreciate.

• 54:34Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they don't even like this car. So A, it doesn't work. And then my therapist helped me through this, which is like, look, you're powerless over envy. They'll be envy. That's gonna happen. Now, you can also ruin your experience and still experience the envy, or you can just enjoy yourself and not be responsible for how people feel about it.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  I mean, the other thing that I often think about, too, is because I've been lucky enough to ask so many people what brings them joy, I also am pretty convinced that it's not the car or the bag.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  And so you don't have to be, in certain circumstances in your life, to experience the things that people say bring them joy. And there's almost a way, it can be a little dehumanizing to think that somebody in a difficult situation is incapable of joy because they don't have luxury in their life.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  But that's a societal issue we have, where there is this idea that when you have all the things and the toys, then you're happy, which again is why that is different than joy, because happiness does have a level of security to it, and that's real.

• 55:35Speaker 02

  You know, we have all of these aspirations for comfort, for security, for status. It makes a lot of sense to have all of that.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  But joy is such a great resource because it doesn't actually require those things.

• 55:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I had as much joy broke as I've had with money.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  If not more.

• 55:52Dax Shepard?

  In some ways, a little more.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  I call that meeting joy with joy, too. When somebody else is happy or enthusiastic, when they love something.

• 55:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  Like, the biggest act of support you can do is to be happy with them and for them. We were talking about empathy and a lot of people understand that there's value in having empathy for pain and negative emotions and suffering. But people don't want to be alone in their happiness or their joy, or their enthusiasm, or their excitement. People want others to share it with them, to be glad for them, and to amplify it rather than dampen it.

• 56:25Dax Shepard?

  But you even say in the book, it is easier for us to comfort someone going through something terrible than it is for us to join that elation. Why do you suppose that is? Maybe all the same hurdles we have for our own joy were then projecting onto their joy.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  It can be that. It's also if we aren't used to celebrating our own joy, it can be harder to catch the joy. I mean, part of what allows us to meet joy with joy is this like contagion effect, where your happiness actually makes me happy. Like, it actually gets in here. And if I'm really in touch, like, I have great empathy for physical pain because I really know that well. I don't have to do anything for your pain to get into my experience and have great empathy and want to relieve your suffering. But if you aren't as familiar with your own comfort, being excited, being enthusiastic, expressing love and letting someone express their love to you, all these different dimensions of joy, it can be harder to have that contagious response where I'm just jumping into it with you.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  I'm just thinking about when like Olympians win.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  I know, don't you love it?

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. It's just...

• 57:29Speaker 02

  One of my favorite videos is best Olympic celebrations. And then you just see, and they group them by types of celebrations, like the fist pumpers and the dancers.

• 57:38Dax Shepard?

  This became the root of your eight-minute joy workout, or the foundation.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it is the case that when you express joy through your body, even when it's, you're doing it before you feel joyful, there's a lot of research that you do these movements and you can start to connect to the feeling of it.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  Oh, that's great.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  So, yeah, so I did that workout where it's literally like you're throwing your hands in the air. You're bouncing, you know, with joy.

• 58:00Dax Shepard?

  Think about clapping. Clapping's the most hilarious activity and it like elicits so many different things.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:06Speaker 02

  I feel like half of the events I go to, it's not because I want to see the event, but I want the moment where we're all cheering and applauding.

• 58:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  Like, I'll see any show if there's gonna be a standing ovation.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:16Dax Shepard?

  So let's bolster this call to find, identify, enjoy, joy. What are the neurological benefits? Like, why is this a good endeavor for us physically?

• 58:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, brain and body, right?

• 58:32Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  So I talk about joys being one of the most biologically consequential emotions you can have. It's in the same category as stress. In a moment of joy, there's so much changing in your brain activity, brain chemistry, in your blood chemistry, in your immune system. It's as potent a stress, but it's often working in the opposite direction. So in a moment of joy, what's happening in your brain is this coactivation of the reward system, which makes you feel good. And then also the meaning system, which is giving a sense of significance or value to this moment. That's the I'm glad to be alive kind of aspect of it. So you're getting this existential boost in your brain. Your brain is literally shoring up your sense that life is worth living.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  And then in your body, it really depends on what type of joy you're feeling. Like if it's excited joy, you're gonna get endorphins and adrenaline, and your heart rate increases. And it's this amazing sense of energy and vitality that is a really great antidote to feeling anxious, withdrawn, overwhelmed. But if it's a moment of connection with somebody else, physiologically, often you shift into the state of increased heart rate variability, boosted immune system, your blood pressure lowers, and you feel really safe and at home in the world. Again, which is a nice antidote to feeling unsafe or feeling isolated or feeling hopeless. So I think of like every moment of joy when you're appreciating any of the kinds of things we've been talking about.

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  Again, it's this biological reset. And we know from the research that it adds up over time. Someone is like, how many hours a day do you need to be joyful? I don't know, 10 seconds?

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  It's not how many hours a day do you need to be joyful? It's more like, at the end of the day, did you have any moments of joy? And if you missed them, could you go back in your mind and pick a few moments you want to appreciate now? And you can get that benefit.

• 1:00:25Dax Shepard?

  Perfect timing. So tell us about this incredible device that JPL invented, the Finder.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  Oh, the Finder.

• 1:00:32Dax Shepard?

  And then we'll talk about uplifts and microlifts, because that's virtually what we're saying.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, it's so funny because the way that I found out about this technology, I was telling people they need to train their joy radar. Because a lot of times, people are kind of blind. They're not paying attention to uplifts.

• 1:00:48Dax Shepard?

  You give a great example. We can test your sensitivity to sugar by filling a glass of water and putting in one eye drop of sugar. Can you detect it?

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, versus, do we need to put tablespoons in? And it's not just your ability to detect it, but also what you're willing to call sweet.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  So maybe like if I paid you a million dollars, you could detect that little bit of sugar.

• 1:01:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  But if I ask you, is this sweet? Maybe your threshold for sweet is so high that you're not willing to call it sweet.

• 1:01:16Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  Until it's, you know, 50% sugar.

• 1:01:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you have a joy threshold.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  Sort of like my father. The idea of joy is the one moment where everything is right in the world.

• 1:01:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  It's like pure euphoria. But joy often emerges in these really small ways, these micro uplifts. Its function is to help you find the small moments, not the great milestones in your life.

• 1:01:35Dax Shepard?

  And if you fail to see them, you will not get the cumulative benefits we're talking about it.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  You can have this kind of joy amnesia or joy blindness. I was telling people you have to train your joy radar. And I was like, how does a radar work? And I was just trying to figure it out so I could like have an analogy. And I found out about this technology. It's like a rolling suitcase that NASA developed, where it's used to find people who are trapped under like earthquakes or, you know, buildings that have fallen, where they're trapped under rubble. People can't see them. People can't hear them. But there's a heartbeat.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  And there's breathing that's happening, like under 30 feet of rubble. So they developed this little radar, and it sends out this little pulse of energy. And because every heartbeat is a tiny movement. Okay, I don't know how they actually calibrated this, but the radar is calibrated so that it knows when through 30 feet of rubble, that little energy it's sending out has found a heartbeat.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  And it recognizes the signs of life.

• 1:02:28Dax Shepard?

  And there was one in Nepal, and they put this briefcase on the top of a mountain. And 48 hours later, they have found three dudes that are under burial.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  People have been buried for days and were still alive.

• 1:02:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and it's just detecting this nearly imperceptible specific wavelength of a heartbeat.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  And so why I love this example is nobody is going to argue that it is stupid to look for that sign of life, that life-affirming signal. What could be more important than rescuing that person who's under the rubble? And you need to be very sensitive. And I feel like that's what joy is. That's what these micro uplifts are. You have to tune yourself so that if there is something beautiful in the space or if somebody did something in the space to make life easier for you, you can recognize it. You're not blind to... When somebody thanks you, you can believe it and let yourself be uplifted by it.

• 1:03:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, like what's the starting protocol for that? What is, I guess, some kind of mindfulness around that?

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Well, I just ask people to keep track of something good every day.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, like your rose, the rose thorn.

• 1:03:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, rose bud and thorn.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:32Dax Shepard?

  Exercise.

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  You don't have to call it joy. You can call it anything good.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, something good that happens.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  Anything, and I say like, take a picture of it. If it's something that made you smile or laugh. Or, you know, you can write it down or tell someone about it. But you're looking for the moment where when it happens, you just feel a little bit better or you're glad to be alive. And when people start tracking that, they start to learn what brings them joy. People are always surprised. It's like a great shock that it's not the milestone they thought it had to be.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  But some small pleasure that just synchronizes with who they are and what they love. Or it's the one moment where they're able to help someone. Or it's often laughter. Laughing with somebody else is such a boost. And that's why people laugh in situations that are awful. They will find something to laugh about because it's one of the clearest signals that we're still here and we're not alone.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:27Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you should see me around tragedy. I mean, the jokes. I'll be delivering the bad news, and I already have one in the fucking chamber.

• 1:04:36Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:04:42Speaker 05

  Confidence. It's listening to your gut. It's moving forward even when the path ahead is unclear. For nearly 160 years, Pacific Life has helped people keep their promises, building confidence for generations. Whether you're confident in your financial future or just beginning to envision it, we're here to help. Ask a financial professional how. Pacific Life, the power of a promise. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska. And in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 1:05:18Dax Shepard?

  So this Megagon Labs crowdsourced 100,000 uplifting moments.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  And I read almost all of them.

• 1:05:26Dax Shepard?

  You did.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:05:27Dax Shepard?

  And they're categorized by theme. And I just want to go through the categories and the amount that were logged because I think there's interesting...

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 1:05:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so the number one thing that people logged was affection as an uplifting moment.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:42Dax Shepard?

  At 34,200.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  And that was defined specifically as a moment of connection with people you are already close to.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  So like family, close friends, pets.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  And doesn't have to be physical.

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  No, but it's a moment where you feel close

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  to someone you care about.

• 1:05:58Dax Shepard?

  Number two, very, very close, just 160 less, achievement.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, people will say things like, I ran a marathon. And people will also say things like, I got out of bed. Achievement is really about doing something that you value, doing something that mattered or doing something that was hard and you're glad you did it.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  It's really about an action. When you actually look at what people said, they are not achievement in the way that people often think about happiness.

• 1:06:23Dax Shepard?

  Not a promotion.

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  It's not, I got the promotion.

• 1:06:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Third place, at about a third as many, is enjoying the moment.

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  We'll call this appreciation. You're doing something and you just realize, this is good. I love this song. I'm enjoying this meal. I noticed the beautiful sunset. And I'm happy to be here.

• 1:06:44Dax Shepard?

  You can have that at your job too, obviously, right? Like Monica and I have that often, right? It'll be like every fifth fact check. We'll be having such a good time. And we can look at each other and we're like, oh yeah, this is bonkers.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think my propensity for appreciation has gone up since doing this job. I'm like highly aware of, oh, this is rare. This is special.

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  Work is an interesting category. Also, when I survey people, it doesn't show up as often as you might hope.

• 1:07:11Dax Shepard?

  Well, so few people love their job, I would say.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  So you have to look a little harder.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  There are the moments where you feel like what you're doing matters. Or there's moments where you're laughing with your coworkers. Or there's moments where you're surprised or you fixed a problem. But it is interesting to me that, you know, there's a lot going on with people's jobs where the primary feeling is stress or pressure.

• 1:07:32Dax Shepard?

  Well, your primary focus is the primary allocation of your resources and time is that. And it's not yielding the results should be a little bit of a warning.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Dax Shepard?

  Okay, after enjoying the moment, bonding.

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  And that is feeling close or connected to people you're not already super close to. So it was often more casual friends or coworkers or strangers.

• 1:07:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  So I think, actually, I would lump those categories together. And you would basically blow away all the other categories.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Uh-huh.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  That feeling close or connected to someone

• 1:08:00Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  is the number one.

• 1:08:01Dax Shepard?

  This one's important, I think. This is the one that I most want to talk about. So leisure is on the list, but it's at 7,500 logins versus 34,000 for affection.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:12Dax Shepard?

  Nature's 1,800, so it's kind of low. That tells me people aren't getting out in nature. Or is it telling you that nature is not as powerful? What do you think?

• 1:08:20Speaker 02

  No, no, no. So I've also looked at surveys that have been done all over the world. This is an absolutely universal source of joy for people. In this particular study, it was, you know, English speakers anywhere in the world. But I think it's pretty impressive that that showed up.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  That even made the list.

• 1:08:34Dax Shepard?

  Well, I would just say it is telling us something, though.

• 1:08:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's telling us something.

• 1:08:37Dax Shepard?

  So if we believe that it is a powerful source of joy, which I agree. It tells me very few people are getting moments in nature.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  So the way that the survey worked is people were asked to pick one moment a day. So they were picking like their favorite moment. So it's not the same as asking, did you enjoy anything in nature today? Yes or no? So I think it's also telling that in a way, people are asked about their best moment of the day. Anything that gets on this list, it's pretty impressive that it made it to its own category.

• 1:09:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the one I would want to have been number two would be exercise.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  I know. I mean, if you know anything about. And that one always surprises people. I always keep that on the list, even though numerically, it's not anywhere close to like feeling connected to someone. But people are often shocked by it.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  But that's also in achievement, I bet.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  It's not just the joy of achievement. It's when you use your body, when you are physically active, it seems to unlock all of these joys. So you might be out in nature, you might be playing or competing.

• 1:09:35Dax Shepard?

  You might be on a hike with a friend, so you're bonding affection.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  You feel good about yourself, you feel alive. You may be doing it to music, you may be celebrating something. All these things that we know are sources of joy. When people are moving their bodies in a way that they choose to on purpose, they're almost always doing it because it puts them in touch with some type of joy that they value.

• 1:09:55Dax Shepard?

  I guess the reason I even printed out this whole list is I think it's important. I don't know, maybe this is self-serving probably. I think leisure is deceptive. I think like leisure has the allure. Yeah, you would think the number one source of joy would be leisure time or leisure. But I don't know that it's the best ROI.

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  Here's one of the reasons why, I think. I think, you know, joy is this interesting combination of pleasure and meaning. So the things that really stand out to people are the ones where the meaning is more clear. Now, leisure can be very meaningful. People will experience meaning in activities that other people would deride as being pointless. Like, how could you be a fan of that? Why are you wasting your time? But people can experience them as quite meaningful. But I think that the reason that these other things show up so much more, these like taking action that you're proud of or feeling connected, is because they're such core sources of meaning for human beings.

• 1:10:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think that's why it always falls a little short. Unless I'm doing leisure with my friends and family, then that other thing's on the table. But if I'm just, every time I'm like, oh, I'm burnt out, I'm gonna do nothing for two days. Halfway through the second day of doing nothing, I'm like, I can't.

• 1:11:06Speaker 02

  There's such a lore of it too. You know, people ask if you could have a superpower? I wanna be able to stop time. I wanna be able to stop time and just rest, like make it slow down. There's such a desire to do less or do something easy. Or that particular type of leisure is the one that's least likely to produce joy. Forms of leisure that are really making the list are things like playing games with other people or doing things with your hands, being creative. Or watching something that you just love and talking about it with people who also love it.

• 1:11:38Dax Shepard?

  What is positive empathy? And maybe you tell me the story of Hernan Diaz.

• 1:11:44Speaker 02

  Hernan Diaz is an author who found out that he won the Pulitzer Prize while he was at a diner. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He was so overwhelmed, this has never happened to me, but I assume this is like a life-changing moment, that he had to leave the diner and he went out to the side of the road and like collapsed and started crying. And these women walked by and they saw a man by the side of the road on his knees crying. And they were so concerned, they stopped to take care of him. Are you okay? What's wrong? And then he told them what had happened and suddenly they start hugging him and celebrating with him.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  That's so sweet.

• 1:12:18Speaker 02

  The way he tells it is he's very like, so it was a good moment. I love that story because it shows how the ability to join in someone's happiness, it comes from that same instinct as our ability to see someone who's hurt and want to help them. And positive empathy is when you are experiencing or showing a positive emotion. I'm happy for you. I think your happiness is a good thing. It brings me joy. I want you to cherish it and enjoy it and I am gonna show that to you. I'm gonna listen to you if you wanna talk about it. I'm going to hug you if you will accept a hug. I am going to let your happiness be something that matters.

• 1:13:00Dax Shepard?

  This is a two-part question. Do you think, A, that's weirdly easier to do with strangers?

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:13:06Dax Shepard?

  And then B, what is the psychological pathology behind? Because I guess we're kind of getting in envy a little bit. But I do think this thing gets triggered in us, that it's a finite resource. That is opposed to like, I'll be brought along. We feel like it's a finite resource, they just got it all, I have none.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  Exactly right. So I think there are a couple of things happening. One thing with strangers is too, we're less self-conscious. We don't have stories about their happiness as much and we can just get swept away in it. And we're also less likely to think other people are judging. Like, if you're crying tears of joy, I'm gonna start crying too. And I think it's why people love watching these celebrations on TV or these video clips of good things happening. Because you just feel less self-conscious and you can feel happy for them. But you're right, when it's someone you know, you're more likely to go into social comparison. You're more likely to have that zero-sum mindset where it's like, oh no, if they got what they want, does that mean I'm falling behind? I think also there's the worry aspect where when someone you care about is happy, in the same way that you can predict your own future disappointment when you're happy.

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  People are often like, what if they get their heart broken? What if this doesn't work out? Are they just getting their hopes up? So many people I talk to, they say they wish the people who love them would join them when something good happens, instead of immediately trying to protect them.

• 1:14:23Dax Shepard?

  Protect them. Yeah, I think there's also some element too, and this one I'm quite compassionate towards is like, I think people have an immediate fear like, am I necessary anymore? If this person is fulfilled and happy, like, will I be invited along for the ride? Or does this signal that they're going in one direction and I won't be included?

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  All of these fears make sense. You know, I think you just have to have some compassion for yourself when those thoughts and feelings emerge and set a priority on experiencing a moment of closeness with this other person, to really view it as an opportunity. This person will love you so much if you are happy for them and with them. It's such a choice you can make to prioritize the relationship.

• 1:15:07Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:15:08Speaker 02

  You know, I love that there are people who have done research on this, where they actually tell people something good happened to someone you know and they didn't tell you, how do you feel? And people are hurt.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  And they say, I can't count on this person because they're like, why? Why would this person not want to share it with me? And so in the same way that if we experience envy, we may think that we are protecting other people by not letting them know when we're happy or good things happen. But we're complex, even people who might experience that jealousy or that fear, they don't want to be left in the dark about it.

• 1:15:40Dax Shepard?

  I think that one's tricky. I don't think it's binary. So it's like, I think it's all right to assess. There are people in your life that are not good with certain information and some are.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  I always say, treat it like a hypothesis, test it. And when you choose to be that person, when you start modeling it yourself, you're more likely to find the people who are going to also reciprocate.

• 1:16:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:16:02Dax Shepard?

  The last thing I want you to tell me about is kind of the collectiveness of joy.

• 1:16:06Speaker 02

  Collective joy is when people are experiencing something positive together and they're showing their enjoyment, their positive emotions in a way that pulls everybody into a sense of being bigger than self. And my favorite version of it is at concerts. I love the moments when people are holding up the phone lights now or the confetti drop.

• 1:16:28Dax Shepard?

  Sports.

• 1:16:29Speaker 02

  Happens in sports.

• 1:16:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they didn't win the game, they're sitting in the stands, but somehow they won the game.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  I often compare collective joy to those moments of connection that we're in the happy database. When you feel closer, connected to someone, it's like we're in a little bubble. There's a bubble around us, I feel safe, I trust you, and it draws us closer together. When you experience joy with a lot of people at once, what it does is it makes you feel like you belong to a society that is good and that you are accepted for who you are, just because you're human. It's a different kind of connection. And when you look at the effects of feeling collective joy, whether it's at a concert or a sporting event or at any place where people are laughing or smiling or applauding or singing, people say they are more hopeful about life, they're more confident that they can meet the challenges in their own life,

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  but also that the biggest problems in the world are solvable. It's this kind of uplift that makes you feel good about humanity. It's a particular form of joy that when we lost it during the pandemic, I felt it so deeply. It's one that a lot of people still have a lot of resistance to. It's one that I'm often nudging people, like if there's a place you can go where there are gonna be a lot of people enjoying something that you enjoy, to put yourself in that environment, even if someone's going to spill their drink on you and it's gonna be too many people, you'll feel crowded. It's a type of a feeling of belonging and hopefulness that really makes people want to be alive. It's that that way of connection that we talked about where, you know, bodies and brains are syncing up.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  You literally are having access to a joy that is big. The joy itself is bigger than your container. You sense that as a peak experience.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  That's why for big sporting, like this is what happened during the Knicks.

• 1:18:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, everyone was sending me videos of that. Yeah. Wish you were here.

• 1:18:19Speaker 01

  It was so fun. And then of course, there's some people that are like, you don't even like them. It's like, I don't, I don't care, but I like this feeling. I like that everyone is talking about it and excited and wanting the same thing. But like the Eras Tour concert also is the same situation where you're just like, I am, I'm part of something, I'm alive.

• 1:18:40Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, and I got to just see it from the outside, which is a unique beauty to it. It's just like, I'm taking my daughter to another country to see this concert. And I'm seeing all these Swifties from all over the world. And I'm like, looking at all these little girls, and I'm like, oh, my God, this is so sweet. How united they all are over this.

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  I recently went to Benton Boone concert, not really knowing his music too much. But I kept hearing that parents were taking their kids to their first concert because the kids really wanted to see him.

• 1:19:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:10Speaker 02

  I want to be in that space. And it was amazing. There was, right in front of me was a dad with his kid who was young. And the kid was so excited and the dad was excited because the kid was excited. And that energy was everywhere at the concert.

• 1:19:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's about as pure as it get when you go to any kind of concert that's skewed towards younger people.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  Okay, this is interesting. This is a good explanation for me. I feel kind of guilty about this, but I always want to like go out as opposed to doing a home hang. Not always girls' nights, but sometimes we'll do like friends dinners or planning. And I'm like, I think we should go out instead of doing it at home. And I think it's because there's something about being in an environment where everyone's doing the same thing. Strangers are doing the same thing that you're doing. I don't know. I'm just realizing.

• 1:19:55Dax Shepard?

  The apex experience of that is Disneyland. There's no other place you can go on planet Earth.

• 1:20:01Speaker 02

  I've heard so many people say this to me recently. I've never been.

• 1:20:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh, listen, you have to go because, yes, because there's something so much bigger going on than the amusement park, which itself is spectacular. I mean, you'll go and you'll just have to admire how clean they keep it, how well it's run. There's a reason it is what it is. That's one element. But where else on earth are you gonna go where all 30,000 people there have decided they're gonna have a great day today? The palpable energy of that is so infectious.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  You can't study joy and not go to Disney.

• 1:20:34Speaker 02

  I guess. I just don't have any connection to like the Disney properties.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  It won't matter.

• 1:20:38Speaker 02

  Being childlike is not like my.

• 1:20:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  I really don't think it'll matter.

• 1:20:42Dax Shepard?

  It won't matter.

• 1:20:43Speaker 02

  It won't matter.

• 1:20:43Dax Shepard?

  It won't matter.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  I'll, I'll report back.

• 1:20:45Dax Shepard?

  The rest of the world does not exist inside of there by design. The way they've arranged the park, you can't see any highways. You can't see any outside. Like if there was a building, they planted a tree that like you are encapsulated in a fake world.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  I would be the person who would just sit in the middle and just watch.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh, best people watching on planet Earth. Okay, so your book is called Joy is a Risk Worth Taking. I hope everyone reads it. It's fantastic. This has been a blast. Thank you so much, Kelly.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  Thank you for coming. He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here. She's gonna let him have the facts. Time for my toothpicks.

• 1:21:24Dax Shepard?

  Uh, boy, your toothpicks.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  So I have these, um, I have hard gel on my nails.

• 1:21:34Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  And I feel currently claustrophobic with them. I need it off.

• 1:21:41Dax Shepard?

  And they're a little challenging to get off, right?

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I have to like go somewhere.

• 1:21:46Dax Shepard?

  No, I think.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  It's not regular gels.

• 1:21:48Dax Shepard?

  My house know how to remove them.

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  They do?

• 1:21:50Dax Shepard?

  Cause the girls have wanted them and they may have gotten claustrophobic. Now, I get them off. Or one falls off and then they want them all off.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  This is like on so deep, like it's not.

• 1:22:00Dax Shepard?

  Will you ever get them again?

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  I got them twice because the first time was for a birthday present, which was very nice. But then I paid and then it was like, no, that was supposed to be a birthday present.

• 1:22:16Dax Shepard?

  Interesting.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  So then I got it again as the, as the birthday present.

• 1:22:20Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:22:21Speaker 01

  But then, so the lady who did it just then removed it and did the new one.

• 1:22:26Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  Now we're in a situation because they're awesome. I would do them again, but I don't want them on always. I want them to be off now for a bit.

• 1:22:34Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:22:34Speaker 01

  And I don't know what to do.

• 1:22:36Dax Shepard?

  Been on.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  Okay, the first time was my birthday.

• 1:22:38Dax Shepard?

  August 24th.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  Yep. A month later was the second round.

• 1:22:44Dax Shepard?

  So September 24th?

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:46Dax Shepard?

  So they've been on for a month and a week.

• 1:22:49Speaker 01

  Too long.

• 1:22:50Dax Shepard?

  How long are they supposed to be on?

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  Like a month.

• 1:22:52Dax Shepard?

  A year?

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  No, like a month and then.

• 1:22:55Dax Shepard?

  Cause they start growing out, right? And then there's a gap between your real nails. Okay, and that's what's driving you? And what, what part, what aspect is the one that drives you nuts?

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  There's something weirdly claustrophobic about it. And then I, earlier this week, like shaved them all down a ton because they were too long.

• 1:23:11Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  And even now they're feeling still too long.

• 1:23:15Dax Shepard?

  And are they getting in the way of some of your, yeah.

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  Typing is not as easy. Um, I was, I was using my little Zoom recorder this morning to record and I couldn't open the flap. And I was getting very worked up.

• 1:23:31Dax Shepard?

  Overly panicked about it.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  I was getting really, really, really worked up.

• 1:23:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  And then I'd use a knife to, I mean, a scissors to open that thing.

• 1:23:38Dax Shepard?

  Hmm, sure.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  God, saying a scissors is so, something my dad says.

• 1:23:43Dax Shepard?

  It is it?

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you had to get scissors to open it, not a scissors.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  Exactly. Anyway, so I just feel stuck and I wanted to tell you.

• 1:23:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so if you're a little bit irritable or cagey, that's why.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:23:58Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  Um, I had another question for you that I wrote down.

• 1:24:01Dax Shepard?

  Another one? Was that last thing a question for me?

• 1:24:03Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. No, you have a real way of when you find out that I might be a little on the edge.

• 1:24:10Dax Shepard?

  To poke the bear.

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  Just push it.

• 1:24:13Dax Shepard?

  You're kind of a badger. You're not a bear. You're kind of like a badger.

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:24:17Dax Shepard?

  Well, what? They're cute and small, but they're absolutely fearless and they fight every animal they come across.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  Are they cute?

• 1:24:24Dax Shepard?

  I think so.

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you used to think chinchillas were cute.

• 1:24:28Dax Shepard?

  I still think chinchilla. I think all of the world thinks chinchillas are cute.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  They don't even have a rib cage.

• 1:24:34Dax Shepard?

  Someone told me in response to the Frank story that their chinchilla, they thought was gone, but then they found it somewhere crazy. It's, it's the craziest word to see spelled as well. Chinchilla. There's like six or seven H's in it, a ton of Cs.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  Chinchillas have a recurring place in my life because in college, my roommates, Callie and Christina, were joking about getting a chinchilla. And I really, for some reason, was like, ew, no. And then they, like you, wanted to poke the badger, I guess. And really could not stop teasing and threatening and I hated it.

• 1:25:11Dax Shepard?

  But they never went so far as to get one just, uh, by the way, you would have loved it. They're, they're, they're so stupid. They're like, uh, they're like made for a pet store. I don't even know how they live in the wild.

• 1:25:21Speaker 01

  It looks, they're fake. They're like seahorses.

• 1:25:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, just like seahorses.

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:25:27Dax Shepard?

  All right, so the second question you're gonna ask me.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  Um, I want to talk about bidets.

• 1:25:33Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  Because you have, your toilets are bidet, have bidets built in.

• 1:25:40Dax Shepard?

  Bronchos, or a toilet seat that goes on top of the normal bowl and it sprays warm water.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:25:47Dax Shepard?

  In your heiny or your vagina?

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  And air if you want to dry it.

• 1:25:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I, I don't use that option, but yeah.

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  Okay. And yeah, you guys have it. You've had it at your old house too. They are nice. I've used it.

• 1:26:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I told you, I didn't have it in Europe and I think that's why I got a hemorrhoid.

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah. So, okay, so then, and Toto also.

• 1:26:08Dax Shepard?

  Beautiful Japanese version.

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we've talked about this before and I think you said, you don't have, why don't you have a Toto or a Bronco or something?

• 1:26:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's kind of crazy to me.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  And I was like, no, I don't need that. I don't, whatever. I don't want it. But then I started thinking, I was like, why don't I, like, why wouldn't I have just put that in? Or why, what, didn't anyone like bring that up to me to maybe put in or?

• 1:26:33Dax Shepard?

  Well, my suspicion was always like, man, you will definitely put fashion over function. Like it's not attractive. So that's probably why no one wanted you to have it.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  And that turns out to be correct and I'll tell you how I know. So at first I was like, uh, but I don't, I've never had it. So I don't.

• 1:26:48Dax Shepard?

  You don't miss it.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  Miss it or need it.

• 1:26:50Dax Shepard?

  When you're here, do you not use it? Do you ever clean up?

• 1:26:52Speaker 01

  Every now and then, but not really.

• 1:26:54Dax Shepard?

  No, okay.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  Uh uh. But when I was in Palm Springs for Jess's birthday, they had one in the hotel.

• 1:27:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  And I use it and I was like, oh, it's, I like it.

• 1:27:05Dax Shepard?

  For the morning business. It's nice to clean.

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  I just don't think twice about.

• 1:27:09Dax Shepard?

  I don't know that you need to use one when you pee. That's not a huge deal, but when you.

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  Go number two.

• 1:27:16Dax Shepard?

  Escalate, yeah, to a number two.

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:27:19Dax Shepard?

  Then I think it's.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  You upgrade.

• 1:27:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  So I just never been like, that's kind of, that's like extra. I don't really need to spend money on that. Okay. So then my parents were here. I hope this doesn't get back to them.

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  My parents were here. My parents were here. And, um, like a day or two in, my dad was like, I'm gonna order a add-on bidet. Like a hose.

• 1:27:48Dax Shepard?

  Like a tushy.

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  But it's a hose.

• 1:27:50Dax Shepard?

  Now this is.

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  Because I don't have, and I said, oh, yeah, because I don't have.

• 1:27:55Dax Shepard?

  But dude, using a hose versus.

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  No, it's a thing. Yes, and it's called.

• 1:28:00Dax Shepard?

  It always grosses me out when I'm at like an old fashioned hotel and they have that.

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  I do too.

• 1:28:04Dax Shepard?

  Like, what am I gonna fucking?

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  Well, it's what you're doing.

• 1:28:08Dax Shepard?

  But I'm not holding a fucking, uh, a nozzle like I'm in the garden and spraying everywhere.

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. Well, for him, it was, he at this point needed it. He was like, they have at their house, they're, they're all set.

• 1:28:22Dax Shepard?

  He has.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  No, I think they have regular ones.

• 1:28:25Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:28:25Speaker 01

  But I don't. And then at this point, they're like, they're, they can't go to the bathroom without this.

• 1:28:32Dax Shepard?

  Same, yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so it did make me think like, wow, first of all, I need to now get these.

• 1:28:39Dax Shepard?

  For your father, minimally.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  I guess so. And also like, wow, if they're this good and you can't go back, like I should get it. But also if you can't go back, this is sort of like my, I have this issue with the squatty potty. Cause I use the squatty potty and I love it. And now when I'm at hotels, I notice the difference.

• 1:28:57Dax Shepard?

  Trash can.

• 1:28:58Speaker 01

  I've done it. I've done that. Mm hmm.

• 1:29:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  You gotta get those knees up.

• 1:29:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Again, my height, you on a squatty potty is where my knees are naturally on the commode. Your feet very, barely touch the ground when you're on the toilet, right? Or do they?

• 1:29:11Speaker 01

  Sometimes, depends.

• 1:29:13Dax Shepard?

  If you're leaning forward.

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  Depends on how far back, depends on which toilet.

• 1:29:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  It just depends. But, um, he took it out, by the way. He put it in and then he took it out. He was like.

• 1:29:23Dax Shepard?

  Well, he just put it in for himself?

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, he asked, he was like, do you want me to leave it? I said, no.

• 1:29:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:28Speaker 01

  So he took it out.

• 1:29:28Dax Shepard?

  It looks too medical, that version. It looks like a hospital.

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  I know my mom was like, you're gonna get water everywhere.

• 1:29:33Dax Shepard?

  Sure he did. Um, yeah. What sucks about the fact that you didn't build your house knowing you were gonna have them is that you have an outlet put behind your toilet.

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  This is what my dad said.

• 1:29:45Dax Shepard?

  And you probably don't have outlets behind your toilet, right?

• 1:29:47Speaker 01

  So then I of course had to text Bill in the night on a weekend, bothering him about poop toilets, you know? And I was like.

• 1:29:56Dax Shepard?

  You started with, um, Bill, I just don't feel clean. I could feel cleaner, I think, Bill.

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  I've been thinking about it.

• 1:30:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I'm not as clean as I could be, Bill. Let's start there.

• 1:30:09Speaker 01

  So I said, I hate to bring this up at this stage in the process, which is basically we're done.

• 1:30:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:16Speaker 01

  But is it possible to do this? And he was like, yes, he was like, anything's possible. Yes. Um, but then he said aesthetically, they're not optimal.

• 1:30:29Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  Um, which is probably why.

• 1:30:32Dax Shepard?

  Most certainly.

• 1:30:33Speaker 01

  It did not come up.

• 1:30:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. If ever there was a thing where you would say, I'm prioritizing the, it's like, you're not showing off your toilet to guests anyways.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:30:44Dax Shepard?

  It's not like.

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  Upstairs. I mean, I'm just gonna put one in my room and one in the upstairs. I'm not putting them all over.

• 1:30:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:30:50Speaker 06

  The Totos look nice, though. We have Totos in all our.

• 1:30:53Speaker 01

  Some do look.

• 1:30:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, we have nice, like, they're nice looking toilets and they're not as like bulky on the seat.

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  God, all y'all are so defensive of your bidets. Listen, they look like crap. They look like crap.

• 1:31:07Dax Shepard?

  It looks like there's a microwave sitting on top of your toilet. Yeah, but fucking get like if ever there was a thing where who cares how it looks. It's such, a toilet is all about function. Like, what if you thought the hole was, was grotesque? There was the hole in the toilet was just too big. And so you had toilets with a tiny hole because it looked more elegant. And then it never, you're constantly plunging it. I mean, that's to me similar.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  I have a toilet in the front, like the powder room when you walk in, that's, it could never, ever be a Toto or a Brondel. It's green. It is like mint green. The, the tank is in the wall.

• 1:31:46Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:47Speaker 01

  So you, you just had, that could never be into it. It's so elegant. I never use it because I am afraid.

• 1:31:53Dax Shepard?

  To make it look dirty.

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or like sometimes I'm like, well, what if it gets clogged? I can't get to the tank or not clogged.

• 1:31:59Dax Shepard?

  I love that the tank's behind the wall.

• 1:32:00Speaker 01

  But it's really cool.

• 1:32:01Dax Shepard?

  I'm constantly monkeying with.

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  The other ones, I'm, maybe this one for some, I don't know. Just, anyway, okay. So I probably am gonna get some bidets going.

• 1:32:11Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. That will make me feel certainly more invited if I'm at your house.

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  You'll have to go upstairs to the Jack and Jill.

• 1:32:19Dax Shepard?

  I would go anyways. I'm not gonna go number two in your powder room at the front door when I could go upstairs.

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  But there's also one in the basement.

• 1:32:27Dax Shepard?

  I would go there.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the best place to go if you have to.

• 1:32:31Dax Shepard?

  You might want to pop one in there too.

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:32:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that way if your guests have to shit, you don't want them to go up into the bedrooms.

• 1:32:37Speaker 06

  You gotta watch for the automatic seats too, because we put one in the, the boys bathroom and Vinnie's so small that it just tries to shut on him all the time.

• 1:32:44Dax Shepard?

  Hmm. Yeah, I don't like automatic seat.

• 1:32:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, we had to unplug it.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:32:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:32:51Dax Shepard?

  Cause I've been urinating in one and it decides to close itself.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 1:32:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, you gotta get used to it.

• 1:32:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I don't need, I can lift a fucking seat up.

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  These seem like a liability.

• 1:33:01Dax Shepard?

  That's not a Brondel.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, anyway.

• 1:33:04Dax Shepard?

  You know, the name of our home in Nashville is Brondel Springs.

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  That's right. And then my dad sent me an article about somebody else having bidets. Oh, Mumdani.

• 1:33:16Dax Shepard?

  Of course. I'm like, what celebrity would he be reading about?

• 1:33:18Speaker 01

  No, apparently they're all over the place.

• 1:33:20Dax Shepard?

  But it makes way more sense. He sent you Mumdani has it.

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, he read it somewhere. He probably looked up who has bidets.

• 1:33:26Speaker 06

  Well, the White Sox used to have this thing where, uh, they hit a double, they would do this weird tickling motion because they got a Japanese player that had to have a bidet installed in the clubhouse. And it was all the first time any of them had used it.

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:33:41Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  And they loved it.

• 1:33:43Speaker 06

  It's like a weird, yeah.

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  Like the water tickling.

• 1:33:47Dax Shepard?

  When he was on it.

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  No, the water tickling the ass.

• 1:33:49Speaker 06

  That's the hand motion they would make after they would hit a double.

• 1:33:52Dax Shepard?

  Oh my God, guys.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  It's so scandalous. Oh, a double because it's number two. That's funny.

• 1:33:57Dax Shepard?

  Ah, okay. All right. I thought they were tickling the poor Japanese player while he was on the toilet.

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:34:05Dax Shepard?

  I've never, ever heard a complaint.

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:34:07Dax Shepard?

  Uh, what I hear nonstop is people come out of bathroom going like, fuck, what's, how do I get one of those?

• 1:34:11Speaker 01

  I wish I had one. Yeah.

• 1:34:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  Well, anyway, that's an update, big update on my life. I'm gonna probably be getting a bidet, two or three bidets in January.

• 1:34:21Dax Shepard?

  Oh, great. In January. Okay. Well, we've, we've put a pin in for a long time now. You can see everything. And Rob, you've seen it?

• 1:34:29Speaker 06

  Yes, I did.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  Phew. Okay.

• 1:34:31Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:34:31Speaker 01

  You can see everything. The documentary we talked about recently, um, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about Elizabeth Holmes. People really were freaked out by our connection. Yes, our connection to Billy Evans, the husband.

• 1:34:48Dax Shepard?

  The husband.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  Um, okay. So you've since seen it.

• 1:34:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I want to start globally with a couple of things.

• 1:34:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:34:54Dax Shepard?

  Like I had already, I had watched the documentary. I knew a lot about her. Did you?

• 1:34:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:34:59Dax Shepard?

  You did too.

• 1:34:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I didn't read Bad Blood.

• 1:35:01Dax Shepard?

  I am so confused by the mass confusion about whether or not people are debating whether she, she knows she did anything wrong. That is, what are you talking about? She knows, she knows. We know. She knew.

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:35:15Dax Shepard?

  In her company, she separated her accounting team from, like, she did so many things.

• 1:35:20Speaker 01

  She did.

• 1:35:20Dax Shepard?

  To hide this.

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:35:23Dax Shepard?

  She couldn't possibly not know.

• 1:35:25Speaker 01

  But don't you think that the brain is powerful enough? You don't believe she thinks at this stage.

• 1:35:32Dax Shepard?

  No. That it works? No, it doesn't work. It's never worked.

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  Not that it works. Not that it works. I think, you know, in the, in the scene, even though that wasn't even the machine, did you know that? The machine they show in the movie is not the machine.

• 1:35:46Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  That was not working, but whatever. I believe that a human brain is capable of compartmentalizing in a very, very, very scary way. That if you're not in it, you are like, what? Like you truly can't wrap your head around it and it makes zero sense. I don't know if she has convinced herself, but I think it's possible to.

• 1:36:10Dax Shepard?

  By the way, what does that matter? Like, first of all, like the bottom line is like, I, I almost feel like the discourse is like, they believe her. This machine has always been a scam.

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:36:21Dax Shepard?

  It has always been a hoax.

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't think that's the, I don't think the confusion is whether the machine works. The confusion is whether she believes in it.

• 1:36:31Dax Shepard?

  Well, but she told investors that they had a hundred million dollars in revenue on the year that they had 100,000.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:36:39Dax Shepard?

  She is a pathological liar.

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  I know, but that's a deeper question about pathological liars.

• 1:36:44Dax Shepard?

  I don't believe they don't know at all.

• 1:36:46Speaker 06

  Isn't part of it too, that maybe Sonny was manipulating her the same way Billy was?

• 1:36:50Speaker 01

  Some people, that people wonder that, but she didn't have to know.

• 1:36:53Dax Shepard?

  Weird thing. These two, two things are happening in the gender space about this, which is fascinating. Like, there's like, both are working in concert, even though they both nullify each other, which is like, I'm seeing posts like, oh, she just did what every male did. And if she was male, she wouldn't be going to prison.

• 1:37:11Speaker 01

  Well, Sonny went to prison.

• 1:37:13Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:37:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So forget that. Yeah. And whatever. But there's that argument, right? It's just like, she was just being male. Now, because she's female, she's in trouble. No, she defrauded people out of a billion dollars.

• 1:37:25Speaker 01

  She did.

• 1:37:26Dax Shepard?

  And then secondly, the other one is just like, she's some defenseless, um, vessel that Billy's controlling.

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  Well, he is insanely controlled.

• 1:37:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he's a piece of shit. Let's just be clear. He's a vile piece of shit, but those two are a match made in heaven.

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  They are. I agree with you.

• 1:37:45Dax Shepard?

  They are a deception team. This desire to like diminish her agency and say she's, she's just the victim of these two men. Like, the guy can be a piece of shit without her being, she can also be a piece of shit.

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:37:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  But I think, I mean, like the dad, her dad is in it, you know, and her dad is convinced.

• 1:38:06Dax Shepard?

  This is to me, the great clue of why she is the way she is. Soon as you see that the dad is willingly going along with this complete fairy tale. As opposed to confronting his daughter that, no, hon, your thing doesn't work. Tells me that this guy has, that's her childhood. She was obviously, no one ever told her, no, hon, timeout. What you're saying is not true. I know it's, there's no way the dad adopted this style later in life. It tells me that they've always been afraid to tell her the truth and confront her delusions.

• 1:38:42Speaker 01

  Okay, that might be true.

• 1:38:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:44Speaker 01

  But even more to me then, even more evidence that she believes it. Because I do think if you are never told that what you're saying is wrong or crazy or makes no sense. Or you're believing your own bullshit or something's wrong with you.

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  Um, no, I think if you've been told your whole life that you've never been pushed back on, then you believe it. Like, you really believe crazy shit.

• 1:39:15Dax Shepard?

  We should be granular, because one thing I will agree or concede to is, do I think she might believe it's possible?

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:39:23Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Do I think she might be convinced that it could still work?

• 1:39:30Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:39:31Dax Shepard?

  Sure. Does she know for sure it does not work? Yes.

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  I think she, she thinks it works, like, in theory. Like, this is, this is, there's a whole conversation.

• 1:39:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  There's a whole conversation between Nathan and her about the word can.

• 1:39:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  Which is ironic, because you can see everything, you know, it's clearly, that's a sort of a play on that.

• 1:39:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:55Speaker 01

  And it is weird, because, you know, I guess I sort of see what she's saying. And I was like that, I was like, I mean, I am able to do, I see what she is saying, and what she is saying.

• 1:40:08Dax Shepard?

  That's her best lie she's come up with currently.

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  But I guess.

• 1:40:12Dax Shepard?

  She's trying to pretend like she was saying it could.

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  Okay, and then this is also one of the scenes, right, where he says, what's your definition of a lie? And first of all, she says she's never lied.

• 1:40:22Dax Shepard?

  I mean, right away, I don't know, anyone's making any arguments in defense of her. Also, Billy is a piece of shit.

• 1:40:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I fucking hate him.

• 1:40:30Dax Shepard?

  Smart enough to have a bad guy. He's doing all of her bidding. He's launching her company again with her. He's sitting there in lines of camera. He's, she wants money for the film, and he's taking it on the chin.

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  We don't know that, though.

• 1:40:47Dax Shepard?

  Let me ask you this.

• 1:40:48Speaker 01

  I am soon.

• 1:40:49Dax Shepard?

  We do know.

• 1:40:50Speaker 01

  You have to be, the word no.

• 1:40:52Dax Shepard?

  I'll tell you why.

• 1:40:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:40:53Dax Shepard?

  We know. It's a really simple deduction.

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:40:56Dax Shepard?

  She said they did talk about.

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  Some stuff.

• 1:40:59Dax Shepard?

  Right, some stuff. Monica, there's only one thing. The only thing that was talked about was that they wanted money.

• 1:41:05Speaker 01

  But, Dax, you're, you are, you are technically filling in some, like, I agree with you that likely, that this is very, very likely.

• 1:41:14Dax Shepard?

  Just try to imagine the conversation, like, what'd you, what'd you guys talk about? About it coming out in theaters? Oh, okay.

• 1:41:20Speaker 01

  I know, I know, I know, but see how, see.

• 1:41:22Dax Shepard?

  You can't really imagine the scenario where they had a conversation about what he just talked to them about, where they're not talking about money.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  He could have just said, yeah, we ran through the deal agreements and we signed it. I mean, look, I think the big question, which maybe you don't, clearly, is not what's real and what's not real, but what does reality mean? What does truth mean? Is it, is it subjective or not? And that even goes into the love out there, their relationship, right?

• 1:41:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so let's take that one at a time.

• 1:41:58Speaker 01

  Okay, but that, to me, is the most interesting part of the whole thing.

• 1:42:03Dax Shepard?

  But reality in this specific case is not subjective at all. This machine either works or doesn't.

• 1:42:08Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:42:09Dax Shepard?

  Right?

• 1:42:09Speaker 01

  But whether, to her, her invention is real or not.

• 1:42:13Dax Shepard?

  Right, is not, is not subjective.

• 1:42:15Speaker 01

  To her, not to, not to the world, or my reality, or your reality.

• 1:42:23Dax Shepard?

  I just think it's interesting, like, I just, it's just because of all the crying, like, I don't know why everyone's trying to come to her defense. Nathan was.

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  I'm not, I'm not defending her.

• 1:42:31Dax Shepard?

  But, like, it is a defense of her to go like, well, I know she's saying, but she believes it. That's a little get out of jail free.

• 1:42:37Speaker 01

  It's not. She should, she should be punished for this. I'm not saying that, oh no, she believes it, so actually it's fine. Like, no. It's like what we say often on here. It doesn't, it's still your responsibility.

• 1:42:51Dax Shepard?

  Why is it plausible to everyone that someone that got in?

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  Fucked up.

• 1:42:56Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's true.

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  People are, the brain.

• 1:42:59Dax Shepard?

  That's true, but, but someone who got into Stanford, who sees that the machine does not produce the results that she was hoping it would, and then goes and buys these Siemens machines to cover up for that. I'm confused how someone thinks she doesn't know it doesn't work, because she had to go buy the machines. She, she did everything to hide it and solve it.

• 1:43:19Speaker 01

  Sunny did that.

• 1:43:20Dax Shepard?

  If she really thought it worked, she'd go, look, it worked.

• 1:43:24Speaker 01

  She doesn't think it, it has worked. She thinks it has the capacity to work. And that's fucked up, because anything has the capacity to work.

• 1:43:33Dax Shepard?

  That's right.

• 1:43:34Speaker 01

  Later, there's a man that it says, like, oh yeah, they're all, everyone's lying about their products. They're all saying it can do something that it can't do right now, in general, like, they're all doing this. Yeah, they're all doing this.

• 1:43:45Dax Shepard?

  She is a symptom of this much broader sickness, which is venture capital and Silicon Valley, which is to bore people they already know. Venture capitalists have a very specific betting strategy. They're gonna invest in 70 companies, and they know 65 of them are gonna fail, and they know five are gonna hit so big that ultimately it'll be a net win.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:44:06Dax Shepard?

  And because that is the approach, that is not how anyone can live their life or trust people. No one can work on a margin of five to 70. But because the few founders, they're all delusional.

• 1:44:20Speaker 01

  They're all delusional, yeah.

• 1:44:21Dax Shepard?

  Because five of the 70 were less delusional, and the victory was so big, we've embraced a system that allows for this rampant lying and delusion, because it has paid off so big for Google, for Tesla, this is, she is but a symptom of this larger sickness of our.

• 1:44:40Speaker 01

  I agree with that.

• 1:44:41Dax Shepard?

  That wing of capitalism. It's rewarding a system that is delusional, and, and there's a lot of lying and bullshit involved, because this handful of people weren't full of shit.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  Well, but that's then what people are, maybe some people are saying, well, all these other people should go to jail too, which some of them do.

• 1:44:57Dax Shepard?

  Well, just like, I think we're, we're, we're a little focused on this one symptom, as opposed to this symptom versus this whole system's what created this. Like, 40 years ago, before venture capitalists, she comes in and pitches General Electric to manufacture this device. They're gonna go make it work. And then when it doesn't work, they're not gonna give her a dollar.

• 1:45:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:20Dax Shepard?

  But we're in the system now where she's like, look, and they don't even make her, make it work.

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  But that's part of the question, that's been the question from the beginning, is how did she convince everyone, all these people, to give her money, when her thing didn't even work? And yeah, no one's even asking to see this, like, how did she do that?

• 1:45:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, of course Eric and I were arguing a bunch, right, because he loves these big companies, and he loves VC, and he's like,

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:45:48Dax Shepard?

  Um, you know, but so, you know, Elon too looked crazy, and it's like, again, we can't have a system that accounts for 5% of the people being correct.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  Well, also, they can't be lying outright, which I guess a lot, I mean, a lot of them are.

• 1:46:03Dax Shepard?

  And the culture, because there have been these people that were lying, and then ultimately did pull the rabbit out of the hat, like Elon.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:12Dax Shepard?

  Several of them.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:14Dax Shepard?

  We go, well, fuck it, we can incur this much deception and lying, because when it does work, it's gonna be so big. And that's just a really fucked up system of evaluating risk, that somehow this VC thing has infected our whole landscape with.

• 1:46:29Speaker 01

  But also with this, because it was medical, and then there was some misdiagnosis of people.

• 1:46:36Dax Shepard?

  People were going to Walgreens, or whatever, CVS, whatever partnership she had, and getting wrong results.

• 1:46:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, like they had HIV and stuff, and they didn't. So like, yes, this, I mean, some VCs and startups and stuff, they're lying and quote, they're lying, or exaggerating, or whatever they're saying. It's not so far having an impact on people's day to day, or their health, or whatever. Whereas in this case, this woman came in, and I do think a lot of it is gendered. It's very gendered. It's that she came in and sort of wooed all these people.

• 1:47:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:09Speaker 01

  Men.

• 1:47:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  And it was a big lie.

• 1:47:12Dax Shepard?

  She has kind of hypnotic eyes.

• 1:47:14Speaker 01

  She, but to me, this is what, I, I'm like.

• 1:47:18Dax Shepard?

  I find them very off-putting.

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, no offense to her, but it, the fact that all these men could be wooed by.

• 1:47:27Dax Shepard?

  Bambi eyes.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  By this kind of like, I'm, I'm sorry, absurd, absurd eye contact. And she looks, to me, very absurd. And I think to a lot of women she does. And there is something kind of interesting, like, huh, all these men were just totally swindled by this kind of crazy.

• 1:47:52Dax Shepard?

  But they were, I don't even know that they were swindled, like, because again, they were VC people.

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  Not all, no, like Henry Kissinger or whatever, like, there's like random people.

• 1:48:01Dax Shepard?

  Down to swindling the, whether it was Walgreens or CVS, or whatever one it was.

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  But like politicians.

• 1:48:09Dax Shepard?

  Normal people started investing, so then, yeah, she was swindling those people.

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  Everyone.

• 1:48:13Dax Shepard?

  But I, I said her stare, and I, we have a mutual acquaintance that has this, which is like, the illusion of presence and focus with absolute vacancy behind it. It's a very eerie.

• 1:48:30Speaker 01

  It's so scary.

• 1:48:30Dax Shepard?

  It's like ultra-focused and present, but also you can see behind the eyes, there's nothing there.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  Well, I read something that was, I think a psychologist, like, really breaking down. She was basically saying how you do it. There's like a way to like lift, like lift your eyelid.

• 1:48:47Dax Shepard?

  I just invented a pinprick that'll tell you what day you die.

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. You lift your eyelid, and then you don't, you don't blink.

• 1:48:55Dax Shepard?

  Ever blink.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  But she said that really is a mood for, a mode of disassociation. She's like, you see a lot of people who are disassociated doing that. So, which to me, again, is sort of indicative of like, yeah, she's like not, the one thing I will say I believe is that her brain does not work the way a lot of other people's brains work.

• 1:49:14Dax Shepard?

  I think she's just going to, like, she's in denial, and she's gonna try to do reality force field, the way her hero, Steve Jobs did, just like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna warp reality around me.

• 1:49:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:25Dax Shepard?

  So that everyone believes this lie I'm selling.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  Again, back to our original thing, I agree. It's like, I'm, I need this reality to be so true.

• 1:49:34Dax Shepard?

  Because I can't handle the shame.

• 1:49:35Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:49:36Dax Shepard?

  And embarrassment of admitting it.

• 1:49:37Speaker 01

  But so, but then to her it is. And that doesn't, again, doesn't mean she can't be.

• 1:49:41Dax Shepard?

  I don't think she could have done all that cover up if she, if she didn't know.

• 1:49:45Speaker 01

  Again, I guess I don't know then. I'm talking about her now, her in the dock, her with time, her about to go to jail. I think her brain believes it. I really do. And again, that doesn't mean anything other than the brain, to me, the brain is so powerful. Do you think she knew who's on first or not?

• 1:50:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:08Speaker 01

  You do?

• 1:50:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:09Speaker 01

  I just think she'd have to be such a good actress.

• 1:50:12Dax Shepard?

  I almost want to read it out loud, this thing I read. It might be a little long, but let me, let me just quickly see if it's.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  Just a couple pages.

• 1:50:19Dax Shepard?

  It might be more.

• 1:50:22Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:50:35Dax Shepard?

  A licensed psychotherapist explains what Elizabeth Holmes teaches us about our own susceptibility. I do want to credit this person. It's on Hello Joe Nucci is where I found it. Okay. Is Elizabeth Holmes intentionally manipulative, potentially a psychopath? Or did she get carried away with her ambitions and get used by the powerful men around her?

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think it's as black and white as all of that. But yeah, let's hear what it says.

• 1:51:02Dax Shepard?

  Many people feel like the film's appeal is in fact that there's no clear answer here, but I disagree. As a licensed psychotherapist who spends his time in entrepreneurial circles, I actually think the answer is fairly clear. One, these things aren't mutually exclusive. Manipulators can also be used. Two, it's incredibly transparent that Holmes knows exactly what she's doing and is more than willing to lie and manipulate to get her way. The interesting part is why it's tempting to second guess ourselves. There are so many examples of Holmes' intentional manipulation in the film. The most relevant example of this is that even when she is going to prison for 11 years, she is trying to rebuild Theranos. Her partner has raised millions for a new blood testing startup and she is reportedly advising him on it from prison, which the company denies. Even though the film shows her and her partner

• 1:51:46Dax Shepard?

  planning a new version of the technology together. People want to paint this as her passion or evidence she had good intentions. But what I am noticing is the astonishing lack of shame. Even if she's innocent, you would expect an innocent person in her extraordinary situation to at least show a little shame or guilt for having misled people intentionally or not. The quote, "normal response when most of society thinks you did something wrong is to at least consider whether or not you did something wrong." When you are unable to do that, you deserve the accusations of being antisocial because you are breaking a standard norm and social contract. You don't invite a documentary filmmaker into your home and pretend you don't understand why you're going to jail. And when the documentarian,

• 1:52:28Dax Shepard?

  when documentary filmmaker asks you if you've ever told a white lie, you don't act confused about what he means. Not unless you are enjoying the emotional disorientation you are inflicting. See, I think she, a lot of the times was enjoying.

• 1:52:41Speaker 01

  That's what I've heard this take. Yep.

• 1:52:43Dax Shepard?

  There's a scene where Fielder asks Holmes the question everyone has wanted to ask for a decade. Did she lie about what Edison, the machine Holmes was building at Theranos could do? Can it run hundreds of blood tests from a single drop of blood? She insists that the machine's capabilities are real and that she never defrauded anyone. It was all dependent on the chemistries and communication with the clouds so the program could run the machine properly. Notice what she did here, because if you don't, manipulators are going to use this technique on you in your life. What Holmes gave Fielder is a conditional. The machine could do everything provided the chemistries existed, but the chemistries were the product. That's like saying a car can fly if you develop the right wings. The

• 1:53:24Dax Shepard?

  rhetoric trick is defining the hard part as a detail that sits outside the claim. Maybe she didn't understand that when she said it can run any test, people heard it runs any test. But then you have to remember how the whistleblowers who came forward actually kill this claim. The record kills her deniability. She didn't tell investors that machines, that the machines works pending other advances in chemistry. The chemistry was the product. She was selling the tests through Walgreens and real people with real health problems were getting results from them. Even further, she said, "The tests were running on her Edison device while most were run on modified Siemens machines and the jury found that intent." Fielder's charitable reading that she misunderstood how people heard her requires her to have

• 1:54:08Dax Shepard?

  been confused for a decade and only about the one thing she was selling. Horses, not zebras. In fact, there's one piece of testimony in The Inventor on HBO where employees report engineers and chemists not being able to talk to each other. That's not how an ambitious business person runs a company, not even one willing to exaggerate or lie to keep investors happy. That's not the behavior of an inventor. That's the behavior of someone keeping people trapped in silos and profiting off of it. The better meditation is not whether or not she's self-aware, even if she qualifies as a psychopath. The point is that the answers are in front of you, but it can feel so hard to accept them. In a lot of ways, I think what Elizabeth Holmes gives the public is a gift. The film does a beautiful job of demonstrating

• 1:54:51Dax Shepard?

  in a very artistic way, the regardless, that regardless of how obviously you can see everything, anybody can get emotionally twisted up in a web of fake tears and clever rhetoric. That's why the film ends with Amanda Seyfried questioning Fielder on whether or not he cares about Holmes too much to be impartial. Ironically, the only person in the movie who is officially acting is the one who finally stops the performance and asks the real question. She played Holmes for a living. She knows what the act looks like from the inside and she suspects that Nathan has been pulled into it. As an audience, we are caught on the edge of witnessing Nathan's disorientation while gleefully allowing ourselves to get pulled into it, at least for a moment of jaw dropping laughter. That's the real appeal of the film. Holmes and her husband,

• 1:55:33Dax Shepard?

  who I believe is every bit as manipulative as she is, use moments of emotional distortion, the tears included, to play with Nathan. Through Nathan, they play with us and we let them because the deal is irresistible. We get up close and personal with a modern day body and Clyde without risking anything real ourselves. We get to feel the pull of two very manipulators, two very good manipulators from a safe seat and then argue about whether she meant it on the way home from the theater.

• 1:55:57Speaker 01

  I mean, I agree with pretty much all of that. I don't think she believed it necessarily when she was doing it. Well, look, she believes they're in love and I actually believe they're in love and it's all manipulation.

• 1:56:10Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:56:11Speaker 01

  But what's the difference if you believe, I mean, this, again, it's like there's, there's, everything's being mirrored.

• 1:56:19Dax Shepard?

  But love is subjective, right? It's not objective. We can't measure it. I can't possibly tell whether she has love for him and he has love for her. I'm inclined to think they do love each other. And I think the bond created by being two people against the universe, like they're the only two people in the world besides that bozo with the laser company who's acting like he has the solution now.

• 1:56:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:40Dax Shepard?

  That's a very bonding and unifying position to be in.

• 1:56:44Speaker 01

  Which is made up. There's no you two against the world. That's a made up prison.

• 1:56:49Dax Shepard?

  Well, I mean, the whole world's telling you, you're a fraud and you and your husband are claiming you're not a fraud. So that's like, in that sense, it's you two versus everyone else agrees that you're a fraudster.

• 1:57:01Speaker 01

  Well, you're saying she knows she is.

• 1:57:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:04Speaker 01

  So then that is like, if you really believe you're not and this other person really believes you're not, and that, to me, that's, that is us two against the world. That is we, but if it's like we're together conning everyone, to me, that's a little different of a feeling.

• 1:57:20Dax Shepard?

  See, I think you see this a lot in like addict, codependent relationships.

• 1:57:24Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 1:57:24Dax Shepard?

  Where it's like they're living in a complete fairy tale. One person's an addict and everyone around them knows that it's very obvious. And I think that weird

• 1:57:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:57:36Dax Shepard?

  dimension makes them closer.

• 1:57:38Speaker 01

  Closer.

• 1:57:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, not, not in a healthy way, but, but it, but it makes you, because you only have that person now. It's like you two are perpetuating this lie. We know it's a bonding.

• 1:57:49Speaker 01

  It is, and it is not

• 1:57:54Dax Shepard?

  Healthy.

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  real. I mean, again, this is back to, this is like, this is why I find this movie so interesting. You, I, to me, it's on all the levels of this. It's like, what is real and does it matter? Because to me, obviously, watching them and like, he has power of attorney over her. He is, um,

• 1:58:16Dax Shepard?

  Oh, the Twitter part is incredible.

• 1:58:18Speaker 01

  The Twitter, I mean, running her Twitter.

• 1:58:20Dax Shepard?

  Fuck off and fuck.

• 1:58:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:58:22Dax Shepard?

  It made me want to rejoin X just to follow her.

• 1:58:25Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:58:25Dax Shepard?

  Instigate him. Well, even I love, I mean, I think one of the first questions Nathan asked him is like, why did you like her?

• 1:58:32Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:58:33Dax Shepard?

  And it's like, yeah, he doesn't have.

• 1:58:35Speaker 01

  Because he went there.

• 1:58:36Dax Shepard?

  A ticket.

• 1:58:37Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:58:38Dax Shepard?

  Also just, I mean, there's so much. Like, I also, I'm exposed to so many people that have learned the seven words from investing and or tech and they repeat them, but they don't know what the fuck they're talking about. And he kept using all these

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:53Dax Shepard?

  go to fucking Silicon Valley words.

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:56Dax Shepard?

  And like, you don't know how to run a goddamn business. You don't know how to fucking do anything. You found, your parents are rich and then you found a meal ticket.

• 1:59:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:59:05Dax Shepard?

  And you're riding it.

• 1:59:06Speaker 01

  But he found a meal ticket, but he also chose very interestingly because he found one that he knew was like going to jail. And so it's, it's, it was an interesting choice.

• 1:59:19Dax Shepard?

  I'm not a psychoanalyst. I can't say this, but he, he appears to me to have a degree of narcissism.

• 1:59:25Speaker 01

  Yes, hundred percent.

• 1:59:26Dax Shepard?

  That I do think for a narcissist, fame is good, period.

• 1:59:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:30Dax Shepard?

  Just to be famous would be good. Doesn't matter if you're famous for being a fraudster. Just the envy of the attention that this person demands, I think if you're a narcissist, is appealing. I don't think you care what it's derived from. You're just like, fuck, I wish everyone in the world was talking about me. I wish I was on magazine covers and.

• 1:59:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe. I, I don't, I don't know.

• 1:59:51Dax Shepard?

  He was ready to be in the stock. I'll tell you that.

• 1:59:53Speaker 01

  Well, they call, they made the stock happen. This was their idea. That's also something.

• 1:59:58Dax Shepard?

  Film showering, which is so great. That was the most revealing part of his character.

• 2:00:03Speaker 01

  It's also so, it was, it was so, so it's of course so funny because all the men in my life, that's the very first thing they brought up was his penis.

• 2:00:11Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:12Speaker 01

  Being shown and none of the women brought that up at all.

• 2:00:16Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 2:00:16Speaker 01

  Which I do think is telling or just interesting. And I, for me, I was like, oh my God, this person chose to not only keep it in, there's a camera crew right outside his shower with the shower open.

• 2:00:32Dax Shepard?

  That's what, Kristen initially, of course, she's such a benefit of the doubt person. She goes, well, they, he might've thought they were filming from above. He said, but honey, you have to remember, he had to have the shower door open.

• 2:00:44Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:00:44Dax Shepard?

  You can't get that shot from inside the shower above the waist. The door's open.

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And then come to find out, I think Nathan said in an interview recently that he requested.

• 2:00:55Speaker 01

  He did.

• 2:00:56Speaker 06

  It was Lance. They were driving home and he's, he said, you want to film me showering?

• 2:01:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, from the workout montage.

• 2:01:02Speaker 01

  It's not only do I believe she's like under his spell, I do think that in the love realm.

• 2:01:09Dax Shepard?

  You do?

• 2:01:10Speaker 01

  In the love realm, not in the business realm necessarily. I think he is too. Like, I do think they feel.

• 2:01:18Speaker 01

  Bonded and that they're building monuments of love and it's so grandiose and it's so, it's scary. It actually is scary because it's not anywhere close to what a real relationship is and what real, healthy, safe, secure love is. But they believe it. And like, who am I to say, you know, I guess it's like, I guess I can say I don't want that.

• 2:01:46Dax Shepard?

  The doc on a positive note, made me love Amanda Seyfried.

• 2:01:50Speaker 01

  I'm obsessed with her.

• 2:01:51Dax Shepard?

  I love her. Just calling it like she sees it. No bullshit. Not afraid to attack that dude and be like, no, no, what are you talking about? I loved her dust up with him.

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

  Same.

• 2:02:00Dax Shepard?

  And she got under his skin so quick. He lost, he totally lost control.

• 2:02:04Speaker 01

  She did.

• 2:02:05Dax Shepard?

  He knew that's not what he should do in the doc and he couldn't resist.

• 2:02:08Speaker 01

  Even what I also really liked about her is she comes off a little, there, there are some times where you're like, oh, like now, now her power trip is coming into play a little bit in this, like, I wanna, oh, I wanna play her again. And then her, like, you see everyone's personal power, wants, needs and wants sort of blip up and her, and even like when she's talking to Nathan and she's like, I can play her or whatever. And he's like, well, no, I, that's not the point. I don't want you to play her. I want her. And she's like, no, I know, but, and it's like, I love that she allowed that of herself too, to be shown. And then, yes, of course, the last,

• 2:02:51Speaker 01

  the very last line in the movie, I believe, is like, it's complicated.

• 2:02:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:55Speaker 01

  And it, it is.

• 2:02:56Dax Shepard?

  I wanna know, what is he doing right now?

• 2:02:58Speaker 01

  Billy?

• 2:02:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:59Speaker 01

  I know, I don't know.

• 2:03:00Dax Shepard?

  On Twitter right now, probably responding to people?

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

  He saw, I think someone did send me that on Twitter, there was like, he posted a picture of her and he said, she's perfect. I am not.

• 2:03:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh, oh my.

• 2:03:16Dax Shepard?

  What a mess they've gotten themselves into. What a terrible way to spend a life on planet Earth.

• 2:03:21Speaker 01

  I mean, of course, though.

• 2:03:22Dax Shepard?

  Fighting this lie, like just hunkered down in this lie.

• 2:03:25Speaker 01

  And the children piece, that I, like, that was really upsetting.

• 2:03:29Dax Shepard?

  For me, I just was best to not even consider.

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  That was hard for me.

• 2:03:32Dax Shepard?

  Having those two as parents.

• 2:03:33Speaker 01

  To see these little people, they didn't choose any of this and like.

• 2:03:37Dax Shepard?

  They came home from the hospital and this, this is the house they landed in.

• 2:03:40Speaker 01

  I know, and.

• 2:03:41Dax Shepard?

  Maybe they're great parents though. I'm not willing to say, I don't know.

• 2:03:43Speaker 01

  I'm not willing to say not either, but maybe that's even, that is why a lot of people are like, oh, God, like heartstrings are being pulled. You're seeing a baby literally nursing.

• 2:03:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  And, you know, as she's going to jail, like, the milk's in the fridge, you know, of course, like, all these people, you know, it's really hard to watch that, regardless of whether it's manipulative or not, that, that, the reality is a mom was taken away from her children.

• 2:04:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:13Speaker 01

  And it did, of course, I was like, does she really need to be unveiled for that long? Like, I mean, she did, I don't like what she did.

• 2:04:20Dax Shepard?

  I'll tell you why. When a guy goes and steals a car because he's desperate and we send him to prison, yeah, if someone steals a billion dollars from people.

• 2:04:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:30Dax Shepard?

  Then what are we talking about?

• 2:04:31Speaker 01

  But I don't really think if you steal a car, you need to be in jail that long. That's the, my, that's my thing. I in general think a lot of this is so stupid. Like murderers are come, are, you know.

• 2:04:41Dax Shepard?

  I will say, this is like back to the Malcolm episode, which is like, for the small percentage of our murderers, 18% that are premeditated for an end, that is when consequences are real. They become a part of the analysis. When it's a passionate thing, no one's evaluating the consequences.

• 2:04:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:59Dax Shepard?

  But perpetuating a fraud on that level, there has to be mega consequences because why else would people stop doing it?

• 2:05:09Speaker 01

  I know, but now it's like, oh, but then like now these, everyone's so fucked up.

• 2:05:13Dax Shepard?

  By the way, she's out, she's already getting out. She's gonna be out by, I just read that this morning.

• 2:05:16Speaker 01

  I heard she's getting out.

• 2:05:17Dax Shepard?

  She's going to like a halfway house in a second and then she'll be out by 30.

• 2:05:19Speaker 01

  You know, she's in the same jail as Ghislaine.

• 2:05:21Dax Shepard?

  Oh, she is. Boy, what a jail this is. I'd love to stroll through there.

• 2:05:26Speaker 01

  My dad said it's like a resort.

• 2:05:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, everyone. I doubt it's like a resort.

• 2:05:32Speaker 01

  He has what, yeah, no, he's like, he's like, you know, my mom's like, the food's good. I was like, no, for you maybe because she loves all this cafeteria food.

• 2:05:40Dax Shepard?

  Tortured while they're there, but I definitely think when someone is looking in the mirror, rehearsing their PowerPoint demonstration they're gonna give to investors, I think they need to know, like, by the way, you lie, you might end up in jail for a decade. I think that's important.

• 2:05:55Speaker 01

  A decade's so long.

• 2:05:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but if you're weighing a billion dollars against a year, I, so many people right now would raise their hand.

• 2:06:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:03Dax Shepard?

  To do one year, one year in jail for a billion dollars.

• 2:06:06Speaker 01

  Didn't they have to give the money back?

• 2:06:08Dax Shepard?

  Well, she never sold any shares is what their, their claim is. So I don't think she had any to give back. She never unloaded. But had, had she unloaded the money, sold shares.

• 2:06:19Speaker 01

  You'd have to pay it back.

• 2:06:20Dax Shepard?

  If they could get it. Yeah. But there's ways to, but anyways, people would go to jail for a year for a billion dollars.

• 2:06:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I don't know, it's.

• 2:06:32Dax Shepard?

  But not 10. I don't think anyone's willing to sell 10 years of their life for money.

• 2:06:36Speaker 01

  With these two little kids.

• 2:06:37Dax Shepard?

  I mean, that part is tragic, but I don't mind that she has to.

• 2:06:41Speaker 01

  I know, but that, that's the whole thing is like on face value is like, yes, of course, of course she has to go to prison. That's very bad. And then you see this family and you're like, oh no, this like.

• 2:06:49Dax Shepard?

  Again, for every black mother right now whose child is rotting in fucking jail.

• 2:06:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:55Dax Shepard?

  If I'm them, I'm like, fucking throw her.

• 2:06:57Speaker 01

  Well, of course, I'm not saying.

• 2:06:59Dax Shepard?

  Times the damage my child did.

• 2:07:01Speaker 01

  I don't think those people should be in prison. That's my whole.

• 2:07:05Dax Shepard?

  But since we do that to them, we must do it to the white collar people.

• 2:07:09Speaker 01

  Doing it, then yes, we have to do it here, but I'd rather us just be smarter about this whole thing.

• 2:07:13Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure.

• 2:07:14Speaker 01

  Oh, I forgot my facts.

• 2:07:15Dax Shepard?

  Okay, let's do some.

• 2:07:17Speaker 01

  There's on joy.

• 2:07:18Dax Shepard?

  Oh, interesting.

• 2:07:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, there's not very many. I wondered how we evolved to clap. It says it's a mix of simple physical impulse and an ancient social tradition. Hitting the palms together is an easy instinctive way to make a sharp, loud noise using compressed air, duh. Okay. While ape, great apes sometimes clap or bang objects when excited or captive, wild apes rarely do it as a standard social signal. For humans, the physical motion likely grew out of basic displays of energy, attention, getting or excitement. Infant development, babies often learn to clap naturally through playful imitation long before they understand formal etiquette.

• 2:07:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm certainly clapped as a homo erectus before we spoke.

• 2:07:59Speaker 01

  To make, to say like, I'm here.

• 2:08:01Dax Shepard?

  Or just give, it's like an easy way to give agreement, yeah, reward, positive feedback.

• 2:08:08Speaker 01

  Early human clapping function is a way to signal unity, alliance, or shared rhythm in a group without escalating into conflict. Okay. Um, the JPL life detector. Specialized electronic device used by emergency and rescue teams to locate survivors trapped under collapsed buildings, rubble, or debris.

• 2:08:27Dax Shepard?

  It's called Finder, right?

• 2:08:29Speaker 01

  It says life detector.

• 2:08:30Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:08:31Speaker 01

  But there, there's a bunch of them. Oh, Finder is the NASA spinoff.

• 2:08:35Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:08:36Speaker 01

  F I N D E R. Finding individuals for disaster and emergency response. You know, I like that it's an acronym and it explains it.

• 2:08:45Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 2:08:46Speaker 01

  It's cool.

• 2:08:47Dax Shepard?

  It's unreal.

• 2:08:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really.

• 2:08:49Dax Shepard?

  To detect a heartbeat under 50 feet of rubble from the top of a mountain.

• 2:08:54Speaker 01

  If I go missing, can you like, please borrow it?

• 2:08:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but they'll hear heartbeats all over the city. They won't be able to, you gotta be in an area, right, where, I'm just telling you, I will do it, but you have to be in the right situation. So don't do it in the middle of LA.

• 2:09:09Speaker 01

  I can't control where they steal me.

• 2:09:11Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:09:12Speaker 01

  Kind of like, I wish I could.

• 2:09:14Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I'll say yes.

• 2:09:15Speaker 01

  Thank you. God, just learn to say yes sometimes.

• 2:09:18Dax Shepard?

  I'll just participate in this lie.

• 2:09:20Speaker 01

  It, no, you could get it. And even if it's a futile thing, even if you know it's not gonna work, you could do it.

• 2:09:28Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:09:29Speaker 01

  You know?

• 2:09:29Dax Shepard?

  Well, just, they're gonna hear millions of heartbeats.

• 2:09:31Speaker 01

  I would do that. If you went missing, I would borrow this and I would just walk around and check every heartbeat I came across, just in case.

• 2:09:40Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:09:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:09:41Dax Shepard?

  That's really nice of you.

• 2:09:42Speaker 01

  That's how much I care about you.

• 2:09:43Dax Shepard?

  Okay, you're, you're not gonna find me is the only problem.

• 2:09:47Speaker 01

  That's not, you, you have no faith.

• 2:09:49Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:09:50Speaker 01

  Okay. The Hernan Diaz book is Trust, that he won the Pulitzer. That was a very big book. I did buy it.

• 2:09:59Dax Shepard?

  Pulitzer?

• 2:10:00Speaker 01

  Trust.

• 2:10:00Dax Shepard?

  Trust.

• 2:10:01Speaker 01

  The book, and I didn't get around to reading it.

• 2:10:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:04Speaker 01

  Yet, yet.

• 2:10:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:05Speaker 01

  That's my, that's my false reality.

• 2:10:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're gonna read all those books you have. But yeah, be like, I would say, have you read all these books? And you'd say, yes.

• 2:10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:14Dax Shepard?

  Cause I can read all these. No, that's not.

• 2:10:18Speaker 01

  Yes, I have the capacity to read them. I will.

• 2:10:20Dax Shepard?

  Have you read all these books?

• 2:10:22Speaker 01

  I will be reading them.

• 2:10:24Dax Shepard?

  Yes, I have.

• 2:10:25Speaker 01

  Well, is that the same? Because?

• 2:10:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, does this machine work?

• 2:10:27Speaker 01

  It turns on.

• 2:10:29Dax Shepard?

  It doesn't work. Just like you haven't read the books.

• 2:10:31Speaker 01

  Turns on and it, it will work when we have the chemistry.

• 2:10:35Dax Shepard?

  I've noticed there's a little bit of gendered reaction to her, to be honest. I feel like women are more into, does she really believe it? And I feel like men are like, no, she's a fucking liar.

• 2:10:44Speaker 01

  But it's funny to me. I, I agree. I think that might be true. But I, I think that's weird of you specifically because all we.

• 2:10:51Dax Shepard?

  I'm so feminine?

• 2:10:52Speaker 01

  Yes, you're extremely effeminate.

• 2:10:54Dax Shepard?

  But you know me, I'm like, my, my big thing is deception, right?

• 2:10:57Speaker 01

  You are. I know, but you know what?

• 2:10:58Dax Shepard?

  And so I immediately with her, I'm like, oh, guys, what are we arguing about?

• 2:11:02Speaker 01

  But you also are, when we have people in this room.

• 2:11:06Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:11:06Speaker 01

  Nonstop, all we're doing is basically saying, the brain is wild. The brain will convince you of things. There's so much more to it.

• 2:11:17Dax Shepard?

  But remember, Paul Blum is like, no, I do not believe in uncovered memories.

• 2:11:22Speaker 01

  He doesn't believe in repressed memories. Yeah.

• 2:11:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So just, he, he has that position. And I have this position that I do not believe you can lie to yourself. You can lie to other people and you can be in denial, but you know the truth.

• 2:11:35Speaker 01

  To me, denial is, is you're lying to yourself, that, that you don't know.

• 2:11:40Dax Shepard?

  You haven't surrendered to the truth. You know the truth. I mean, trust me, I've, I've, I've been there. I've been there. It's just like, you're just waiting. When am I finally going to acknowledge what I know? Like, I'm gonna keep pretending and trying to pull this off, but you can feel it coming. You can feel it approaching.

• 2:11:56Speaker 01

  I don't know, Jack.

• 2:11:58Dax Shepard?

  You surrender to the truth. But you knew the truth. Otherwise, you couldn't ever surrender to the truth. Cause where would it be?

• 2:12:04Speaker 01

  Well, they don't always. That's the whole thing. Not everyone surrenders to the truth. I think there are a ton of people who are in denial as a self-protective mode.

• 2:12:15Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 2:12:15Speaker 01

  And they are not coming out of it. And that is for, that is for survival.

• 2:12:20Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:12:21Speaker 01

  And I understand it.

• 2:12:23Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:12:23Speaker 01

  And I find it shock. I've seen it. And I'm like, whoa, this person really believes this.

• 2:12:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's, that's the only place we differ. It's just like, I go, this person still is fighting to bend reality, but they know.

• 2:12:40Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:12:41Dax Shepard?

  She knows the machine doesn't work. I mean, she knows. She does. She totally knows.

• 2:12:45Speaker 01

  We're not, we're not gonna, I don't, I'm not saying she definitely doesn't know either. I'm just saying that it's, it's questionable to me. And I think he knows. I think he knows a hundred percent.

• 2:12:57Dax Shepard?

  That doesn't work.

• 2:12:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:12:58Dax Shepard?

  Everyone knows. The whole world knows.

• 2:13:00Speaker 01

  Oh, no, yes.

• 2:13:01Dax Shepard?

  It's, nothing's been proven more conclusively.

• 2:13:02Speaker 01

  I think, yes, everyone does know. That machine doesn't work. Everyone was frauded.

• 2:13:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:07Speaker 01

  But I think at this stage, her brain might be protecting her, especially with these kids. She's also postpartum in this, like, that kid's like a month old.

• 2:13:17Dax Shepard?

  I mean, she's acting like she doesn't know the most basic things in the world.

• 2:13:22Speaker 01

  I know. Some people don't, or, or they are so disassociated.

• 2:13:28Dax Shepard?

  I think they're manipulators, yeah.

• 2:13:30Speaker 01

  No, some people are disassociated.

• 2:13:32Dax Shepard?

  That's fine.

• 2:13:33Speaker 01

  From Trump.

• 2:13:34Dax Shepard?

  I think when you're lying, that you don't know what a lie is, you don't know what a lie is. You don't know what this, I don't know what that means. What does that mean? That's just a manipulative deception that you're actively thinking, how do I get out of this? So I'll just claim I don't know what this means.

• 2:13:47Speaker 01

  Well, she did say.

• 2:13:48Dax Shepard?

  She knows, she knows what all these things mean that she keeps saying, I don't know.

• 2:13:51Speaker 01

  She gave a definition. She did give it, cause when he said, you've never done this, like at the party. She was like, oh no, yeah, I've done that.

• 2:13:58Dax Shepard?

  Well, cause she couldn't, there was no more pivot. Like he, he, you know, they do get caught dead to rights. And then they, at that point, they gotta acknowledge that one thing. But had he never brought that up, she would just keep pretending she didn't know. And then the second he points out one, she's, there's really no wiggle room. She goes, okay, well, yeah, that one I do.

• 2:14:14Speaker 01

  She wasn't saying she didn't know. She was just saying she never did it, which is worse, I guess. I mean, yeah, it's, it's a good movie. It's a good movie. Um, oh, one last thing. So, you know, she called it collective joy, which I think, which is, whoa, that's a ding ding ding, because I think this movie is bringing some of that. Where everyone's talking about it. Everyone's discussing it. It's in the zeitgeist.

• 2:14:42Dax Shepard?

  It's creating community.

• 2:14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, we need that. But another word for it is collective effervescence. I read that around the time of the Knicks.

• 2:14:50Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 2:14:51Speaker 01

  And I like that.

• 2:14:52Dax Shepard?

  Your Knicksies?

• 2:14:53Speaker 01

  My Knicksies. Yeah, anyway.

• 2:14:58Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 2:14:58Dax Shepard?

  All right, love you.

• 2:14:59Speaker 01

  Love you.