Pod Insights Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard Cas Holman (on being playful) About this episode Cas Holman (Playful: How Play Shifts Our Thinking, Inspires Connection, and Sparks Creativity) is a toy creator, play designer, and author. Cas joins the Armchair Expert to discuss creating modular ecosystems of play in her toys, studying in the rainforest as a Banana Slug, and her gender-bending appearance on Maury Povich. Cas and Dax talk about learning how to both fabricate and tell a story in design school, instilling ideals with her adventure playground, and the twelve different play types for adults and children. Cas explains why the subway is such a safe space to cry, how great innovation comes from play, and that continuing to play is also a powerful form of resistance.
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Transcript 20,611 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dax Shepard? Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on expert. I'm Dan Rather and I'm joined by Barbara Walters.
0:07 Speaker 01 Ooh.
0:08 Dax Shepard? Spent a minute. Uh, today we have, um, a very interesting guest. Uh, Kaz Holman, uh, she is a play designer and, uh, RISD was a RISD professor.
0:22 Speaker 01 Ooh, very fancy.
0:24 Dax Shepard? Which I'm embarrassed, I didn't know about RISD until we started doing this show. Remember we had a guest that was a RISD and you were like, this is shameful that you don't know what RISD is. But now I do.
0:32 Speaker 01 Now you do.
0:32 Dax Shepard? Um, she has a book out now called Playful, playful ding ding ding playful. How play shifts our thinking inspires connection and sparks creativity. You know, the second I saw playful, I was like, let's get Kaz in here.
0:46 Speaker 01 I know, it's very us.
0:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Please enjoy Kaz Holman. This episode of Armchair Expert is presented by Apple Pay. You know, holiday shopping can be a hassle, but Apple Pay makes it so much easier. Whether you're shopping online or in store, look for the Apple Pay button or contactless symbol at checkout. No more digging for your wallet or filling out long online checkout forms. It works at millions of places, including stores, websites and apps. This means you can spend less time at checkout and more time finding the perfect gifts. Pay the Apple way, terms apply. We get support from Quince.
1:24 Speaker 01 I have to say, I am so ready for fall. I want sweaters. I've been craving a true crisp morning where I actually need a jacket. I can't wait.
1:33 Dax Shepard? I'm fully there. The second it dips below 70, I'm like, this is my season. Give me the layers, give me the boots, give me a reason to wear something other than a T-shirt. And honestly, that's why I love Quince because fall is when your wardrobe actually has to show up. And everything at Quince is 50 to 80% less than similar brands. We're talking a hundred percent Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at $60.
1:56 Speaker 01 $60, $60 for cashmere that you'd expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag. It's amazing, gets me every time. It really shouldn't be real, but it is because they go straight to the factories. They skip the middlemen and they just hand you the savings. The stuff isn't Trendy, it's the kind of pieces you grab over and over because they work every time.
2:14 Dax Shepard? The 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters for me are it. When I look at Steve McQueen, this man owned a couple of sweaters he wore all the time and he looks iconic.
2:23 Speaker 01 It's a uniform.
2:24 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
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2:42 Dax Shepard? Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from AG1. Fall is that time when your body and mind are getting ready for the winter. You're settling in, bracing for the cold. Your body's already running a deficit from the shorter days and broken sleep patterns. You don't want a nutrient deficit stacked on top of that, too.
3:18 Speaker 01 That's where your AG1 routine earns its spot. It's not fixing your sleep or your alarm time. It's giving your body what it needs so the dark mornings don't tank you before you even start. One scoop cold water every morning before anything else.
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3:45 Speaker 01 That's the part people miss. It's not a one day fix. It's what happens when you stay consistent.
3:49 Dax Shepard? It's an easy, everyday thing. I've added it to my morning routine and I'm gonna tell you, I actually love the taste of it. It's like Pavlovian. I drink it and I know, mm, I'm gonna get that little vitamin buzz.
3:59 Speaker 01 Well, that's also the thing. When you do it first thing in the morning, you already feel kind of self-esteem because you're like, I already did something good for myself.
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4:49 Dax Shepard? Hi, Max.
4:49 Speaker 02 Nice to meet you.
4:50 Dax Shepard? Nice to meet you. Welcome.
4:52 Speaker 02 Thank you for the hug.
4:52 Dax Shepard? Of course.
4:53 Speaker 02 I brought you, I here have kids, so
4:56 Dax Shepard? Yes.
4:56 Speaker 02 I have a bigger toy.
4:58 Speaker 01 Toy box.
4:58 Speaker 02 I have toys for everybody and then for you, for the kids.
5:02 Dax Shepard? Thank you so much. Not only do I have kids, but they're very up your alley kids.
5:06 Speaker 02 Because they play?
5:07 Dax Shepard? They play like motherfuckers. They are playing machines.
5:11 Speaker 01 We have adult toys. I said I think we should unbox on air.
5:14 Dax Shepard? Okay, great, great, great, great.
5:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think that's hilarious.
5:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:17 Dax Shepard? Gemo?
5:18 Speaker 02 Gemo.
5:18 Speaker 01 Gemo.
5:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, like.
5:19 Dax Shepard? Gemo.
5:20 Speaker 01 Gemo. I'm gonna open it.
5:21 Speaker 02 Like it's a genetically modified organism.
5:23 Dax Shepard? I know everything about these. Do you want me to tell you as you unopen them?
5:26 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
5:26 Speaker 02 Sure.
5:26 Dax Shepard? Okay. Why have colors? They're based on bone marrow. That was the inspiration. Also, she thought about color coding the magnets so that you would always know which ones stick together. And then she thought, why not let the kids discover this?
5:38 Speaker 02 Right? Thank you very much.
5:39 Speaker 01 Wow.
5:40 Speaker 02 Ah! In life, sometimes you are confronted by things that you don't know what to do with and you kind of like can flow with it. So
5:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
5:48 Speaker 02 Why not? Unexpected.
5:49 Dax Shepard? They're mildly perverse, which I like.
5:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:52 Dax Shepard? Would you agree, Monty? Isn't there something just a little bit like, ooh?
5:57 Speaker 02 Yeah. I love it.
5:58 Dax Shepard? In a wonderful way.
6:00 Speaker 02 External organ style?
6:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly.
6:02 Dax Shepard? Yeah, they're tactile.
6:03 Speaker 02 I'm gonna grab the mic.
6:04 Speaker 01 I feel like I'm gonna break rule number one. I don't even know what it is, but I'm gonna ask, how do you win this?
6:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah, well, yeah, that's a perfect setup.
6:13 Speaker 02 I wonder if that has anything to do with your adulthoodness.
6:16 Speaker 01 I wonder.
6:18 Dax Shepard? You know what else these are? They're very Sussian.
6:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, they are.
6:21 Dax Shepard? I was just reading last night, all the places you'll go to my 10-year-old.
6:24 Speaker 02 Oh, nice.
6:25 Dax Shepard? And I was looking at the drawings. They're so imaginative and creative. They don't resemble anything you're used to seeing, nor do they even necessarily make sense structurally. There's so much liberty taken by him that's so fun.
6:38 Speaker 02 In his drawings, you can see that he's playing. You can tell when he might start a line and not know where it's going. And so I think that for him, drawing was probably kind of free play. I don't know this. I haven't done a deep dive into the process.
6:51 Dax Shepard? I have the same conclusion. It's like, I don't think he sat down to go like, I'm gonna make an elephant with a flagpole. I think he just started drawing and then there was a flag. Then there's a kid with a bugle.
7:01 Speaker 02 You can tell when someone loves what they do or when it's play for them. The line looks different and the drawing looks different.
7:07 Speaker 01 This is fun.
7:09 Dax Shepard? Now, here's where we'll bump up against. So we'll have our own isms, Monty, with this book Playful.
7:15 Speaker 01 Oh, great.
7:15 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we'll bring to the table our own isms. And one would be for me, right away, it's not OCD, it's OCDP.
7:22 Speaker 01 We learned.
7:23 Speaker 02 Oh, interesting.
7:24 Dax Shepard? Do you know what OCDP is?
7:25 Speaker 02 I know that there's different branches of internal outward facing.
7:29 Dax Shepard? I was using it wrong and it was kind of offensive, which is I would describe my preference for things being right angled as my OCD. But that's not OCD.
7:39 Speaker 02 That's just good craft.
7:41 Speaker 01 That's just being meticulous.
7:43 Speaker 02 Tidy guy.
7:44 Dax Shepard? The distinction is, is it in keeping with your morals? If it is, it's not OCD. OCD is, I'm afraid I'm gonna molest a kid. I'm afraid I'm gonna kill someone. I'm afraid I'm gonna drive myself into a concrete barrier. These compulsive thoughts that are actually in great discord with your moral values. But like, people who are just neat freaks and they go, oh, I'm OCD, but they also agree that you should be neat.
8:06 Speaker 02 And probably not disrupting their lives.
8:08 Dax Shepard? No.
8:08 Speaker 01 Exactly.
8:09 Dax Shepard? Other than maybe they have to clean more than. So anyways, but I do have a good degree of like, so right now, huh, I like even things.
8:16 Speaker 02 Right.
8:17 Dax Shepard? One's inherently left out.
8:18 Speaker 01 I know, I noticed that too.
8:20 Dax Shepard? What will I do with this errant?
8:22 Speaker 02 Well, and that's where, so GMO likes to live in its environment. The errant one may go and find something to hang out with.
8:29 Speaker 01 Oh.
8:30 Speaker 02 Right? So like, yours grabbed your microphone.
8:33 Speaker 01 Yeah. Oh, I shouldn't let him stay there. I feel bad. I pulled him off.
8:37 Speaker 02 That extra limb gets to find a place and then live there and become part of it.
8:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
8:43 Speaker 01 This is dangerous.
8:44 Dax Shepard? It is. I know. I'm afraid I'm not gonna concentrate on you at all.
8:47 Speaker 02 When I first designed it, there were a few other systems. It was part of, I called it the modular ecosystem.
8:52 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
8:52 Speaker 02 So it wasn't about each of them living independently. It was like, they were all codependent. You know, maybe it's parasitical, maybe it's.
8:58 Dax Shepard? Let's say symbiotic.
8:59 Speaker 02 Symbiotic.
9:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, we don't like codependence here in.
9:04 Speaker 02 That was a different episode.
9:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly.
9:07 Speaker 02 They need each other. Gimo needs to be part of its environment. It seeks to live in balance.
9:12 Dax Shepard? I love it.
9:13 Speaker 02 This is really cool.
9:14 Dax Shepard? You're from Northern California. We're roughly the same age.
9:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:17 Dax Shepard? It sounds like we grew up similarly in that I was completely unsupervised until 6:30 PM when my mom got home from work.
9:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:25 Dax Shepard? Also, not a great student.
9:26 Speaker 02 I did well because I was smart, but then I went to college and that's where I realized I was a terrible student. I only did well in high school because high school was kind of easy.
9:35 Dax Shepard? Okay. Where did you go to college?
9:37 Speaker 02 UC Santa Cruz.
9:38 Dax Shepard? I mean.
9:38 Speaker 02 Banana slugs.
9:39 Dax Shepard? I could have guessed that. I mean, I'm mad at myself. I didn't guess that.
9:42 Speaker 02 I really, I reek of it.
9:43 Speaker 01 What's banana slugs mean?
9:45 Speaker 02 That's our mascot.
9:46 Speaker 01 Oh.
9:46 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
9:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, so no grades.
9:48 Dax Shepard? Pass, fail.
9:49 Speaker 02 No grades.
9:50 Dax Shepard? Banana slug mascot.
9:51 Speaker 02 But there were no grades at the time, but I still did terribly.
9:54 Dax Shepard? Okay.
9:55 Speaker 02 I just was like, wait, study on command? I didn't know how to do that. I was not going to hold still and read a whole book in one night. In school, I learned how to do school.
10:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:06 Speaker 02 And then had a kind of a lack of foundational understanding of how to do rigor.
10:10 Dax Shepard? Uh huh. And what did you major in at UC Santa Cruz?
10:14 Speaker 02 I started in sciences. I dropped out after two years because I lost all my scholarships and I went and lived in the Galapagos Islands for a year and a half.
10:22 Dax Shepard? All right.
10:23 Speaker 02 Chasing iguanas and learning about biodiversity.
10:26 Dax Shepard? Okay, great.
10:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, just that.
10:28 Dax Shepard? This is where Darwin took the HMS Beagle?
10:30 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
10:31 Dax Shepard? Did you do mushrooms in the redwoods up in Santa Cruz?
10:33 Speaker 02 Absolutely. Started, but I didn't do great in undergrad. Fairy Village, did you spend time in Santa Cruz?
10:39 Dax Shepard? I went up there and bought a half pound of mushrooms and we spent a few days there. And then my best friend and I did a couple of different walks through the redwoods on lots of mushrooms. And I was just talking about mushroom journeys with somebody and I said, I think my all time favorite of all time was the redwoods in Santa Cruz.
10:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:53 Dax Shepard? Very fun.
10:54 Speaker 02 Lots of really good fairies there who really want to help you have a wonderful time on mushrooms. No interest in you going to class.
11:02 Dax Shepard? No, no, no. And those trees are very much involved as well.
11:06 Speaker 02 The redwoods are, and the campus is in the redwoods. Between classes, you walk through the redwood forest.
11:12 Speaker 01 That's incredible.
11:13 Speaker 02 Which could be really grounding or also really distracting.
11:16 Speaker 01 Sure.
11:16 Speaker 02 You would rather go hang out in the moss.
11:19 Dax Shepard? So after Galapagos, where do we go? We ultimately must get a degree because we become a professor at some point.
11:25 Speaker 02 Yeah. I've kind of adventured my way into figuring out a way to be who I am and also be gainfully employed. So from Galapagos, I went back to school and was like, I'm going to finish this. I want to figure out what my own thing is. Also, because being surrounded by scientists who are so passionate about the research they were doing and about the work, I wanted that for myself. I was pretty bad at science for the same reason I was bad at a lot of school. Doing something the same way twice was just not interesting.
11:53 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
11:53 Speaker 02 So I went back to UC Santa Cruz and eventually finished in fine art sculpture and feminist theory.
11:59 Dax Shepard? OK, and you leave there and then do you do graduate school?
12:03 Speaker 02 No, I was a chef.
12:05 Dax Shepard? OK.
12:06 Speaker 02 All 300 grad.
12:07 Dax Shepard? Oh, my God.
12:08 Speaker 02 I worked in a diner, like literally the diner in the bus station.
12:12 Dax Shepard? Whoa. Oh, wow.
12:12 Speaker 02 Flipping eggs, I was a short order cook. But then worked my way up, moved to San Francisco, was in a great kitchen, this place called Hawthorne Lane. And my three month review came and they said, we want to promote you. And I was like, I quit.
12:26 Dax Shepard? Oh, my God, wow. You're really hard to pin down. I know.
12:30 Speaker 02 I was like, no.
12:31 Dax Shepard? I was a guidance counselor. I'd be like, I give up. I don't know. Just fucking. Or your parents. I think you get the perfect mom, though, for this journey. It seems from the doc.
12:40 Speaker 02 She's nervous. She's been nervous from the start. She rolls with it and tries, but yeah, she's always worried in a very protective way.
12:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
12:49 Speaker 02 And in ways that are supportive of me as a human, but also not supportive of the fact that I was weird and queer. And the artist thing is hard for poor families.
12:59 Dax Shepard? Yes, of course.
13:01 Speaker 02 Like for a family who's like, you're smart. We want you to succeed. We want you to do better than we are.
13:07 Dax Shepard? Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
13:08 Speaker 02 It was all concern. I just want you to have an easier life. This was so many conversations we had, really, really hard conversations with my mom were about. She just wanted to be easier, even me being queer. She was like, I don't want that for you because your life is going to be hard.
13:20 Dax Shepard? Right, yeah.
13:21 Speaker 02 It would be so much harder for me to live as somebody I'm not.
13:24 Dax Shepard? Pretend, yes.
13:26 Speaker 02 Her biggest struggle for so many years, raising two kids alone, was money. So she was like, both of you are smart and you're going to go on and have jobs and not worry about money. Eventually, to answer your question five steps ago, I thought, I have a degree. At that point, I Kind of had graduated from UC Santa Cruz. I may have had like two credits missing.
13:47 Dax Shepard? Okay.
13:48 Speaker 02 Which was very disappointing.
13:49 Dax Shepard? It's not a lot of credits missing.
13:50 Speaker 02 It's not very many credits missing. I still walked. My mom did notice that in the booklet of the graduates of 1992, or whatever it was, 94 numbers, there were the graduates. And then she was like, weird, where is Cass? And then there's the people who will graduate in the winter.
14:09 Speaker 02 And then it was seniors also participating.
14:12 Dax Shepard? Oh.
14:14 Speaker 01 Interesting. Oh, my God.
14:16 Dax Shepard? Well, it's rare that you can say someone did a ceremony ceremonially.
14:20 Speaker 01 Oh, true.
14:21 Dax Shepard? Like you were just kind of, it was like pageantry. You weren't really graduating, but you were participating in the ceremony.
14:27 Speaker 02 I was participating.
14:29 Speaker 01 Oh, my God, I have a recurring dream all the time that somehow, I don't know what happened. Everyone graduated, but I forgot to like get some credits I was supposed to. It's a recurring dream.
14:39 Dax Shepard? I have the same one. I'm finding out, oh, yeah, they let you walk, but you were supposed to make up two credits.
14:45 Speaker 02 And did you both officially graduate?
14:47 Dax Shepard? We did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did. There's no foundation for this fear.
14:50 Speaker 01 It's so weird. I wonder what it means.
14:52 Speaker 02 There's the performance of it, and it often doesn't matter. What does it mean to like go to school? What does it mean to graduate? Being there is such a big part of it. So you can feel like I am just finished with this experience. But that doesn't mean that on the books, the bureaucratic end is finished.
15:08 Dax Shepard? Right, right, right.
15:09 Speaker 02 Right, so maybe this is like a dream. I'm gonna go ahead and just take a stab at some dream analysis right now.
15:14 Dax Shepard? Please do.
15:14 Speaker 02 For no reason ever, absolutely outside of my expertise. I guess not, it's play, right?
15:19 Dax Shepard? Yeah, absolutely.
15:21 Speaker 02 And say that there's a disconnect between the experience and the bureaucracy. So you're like, is there some part of what I'm doing well and how I'm succeeding? Right? Because you're graduated in the dream. It's not in line with a bureaucratic ideal that...
15:36 Dax Shepard? When you set your sights on something and it was challenging and you spent years working towards it, I think it's natural that you accumulate. Some anxiety around that topic. I have dreams where I show up on a set and I'm quickly realizing, oh, you're directing this. Oh, I haven't read the script.
15:55 Speaker 01 Wait, is that a dream?
15:56 Dax Shepard? That's a dream.
15:57 Speaker 01 Oh, good.
15:57 Dax Shepard? I have, we're currently.
15:59 Speaker 01 Friend.
15:59 Dax Shepard? But I have no anxiety as a director in real life.
16:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:03 Dax Shepard? None. I love being on a set. I'm quite confident. But in these dreams, I somehow have been directing something I haven't read the script of yet.
16:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:11 Dax Shepard? And I'm panicked.
16:12 Speaker 01 It's a similar thing.
16:13 Dax Shepard? I tell my kids when they have nightmares, your dreams and your nightmares are this beautiful way of your brain telling you what you care about. Because if you didn't care about it, you wouldn't be fearful it's gonna go away. So if you look at it, it's just like, oh, it's a reminder of what I cherish. It's kind of sweet.
16:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, I feel like it's kind of more like, I forgot something important. Oh, my God, how this happened. This was really important and I didn't do it. Yeah, it's anxiety for sure.
16:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
16:36 Speaker 01 I think.
16:37 Dax Shepard? I'm just curious, do you start work as a designer before you start teaching?
16:42 Speaker 02 When I stopped cooking, I wanted an office job. I'd never worked in an office.
16:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
16:47 Speaker 02 And I think I was 25 or 24 or something at that point. So I went to a temp agency. And at that point, I had a college degree theoretically, but I'd never worked in an office. I had to take typing in high school, but I intentionally did really poorly because I didn't want to be a secretary. That was the job.
17:06 Dax Shepard? You were rebelling.
17:06 Speaker 01 Oh, interesting.
17:07 Speaker 02 In 1990, computers were not part of my life.
17:11 Dax Shepard? Right, right.
17:12 Speaker 02 Or I never imagined typing would be about anything other than administration. So they were like, you don't have any experience with anything that relates to this.
17:21 Dax Shepard? You're kind of useless to any employer.
17:22 Speaker 02 I was like, but I have a degree, so office job, right? So I was able to get a couple of different placements through this temp agency. One was with AIDS Walk, a nonprofit. And there were a couple of other nonprofits where the work itself wasn't difficult, but the emotional attachment to what the work was about.
17:37 Dax Shepard? Sure.
17:37 Speaker 02 I was like, I am too sensitive for this. I don't need to cry after a day's work in an office about the bigger picture of the work we're doing. So I was learning a lot about what kind of work I could do. And I wound up with this company called CRI. They were a high-end furniture company. Long story short. I realized what design was and I was like, oh, I want to be a designer. And also it kind of started to make sense with what I was doing in my art in the meantime, because I'd been performing a lot.
18:06 Dax Shepard? You were doing drag. Had you already been on Maury Povich? That's coming.
18:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:09 Dax Shepard? You had already been on Maury Povich.
18:11 Speaker 01 Whoa, tell us that.
18:11 Speaker 02 Maury happened while I was working with this high end, with Herman Miller.
18:14 Dax Shepard? Because Maury had a segment, is it a guy or a girl?
18:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, is it a man or a woman?
18:19 Dax Shepard? A man or a woman. And then people would come out, be men or women or people in drag, and then the audience, they voted, who voted?
18:26 Speaker 02 The audience screamed, it's a man, it's a woman.
18:31 Speaker 02 It was a nightmare.
18:33 Speaker 01 Did you sign up for this?
18:34 Speaker 02 Because it was like a free trip to New York, yes.
18:37 Dax Shepard? And your hobby at that time was drag, right? You were performing in San Francisco.
18:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, all of the people around me that were performing at this club, they also did it the other way. So some of the drag queens would go and they wanted drag kings. So an audience screaming, it's a man, it's a woman.
18:52 Dax Shepard? Okay, and what was the verdict?
18:54 Speaker 02 I passed.
18:55 Dax Shepard? Meaning?
18:56 Speaker 02 They thought it was a man.
18:57 Dax Shepard? Okay.
18:58 Speaker 02 And also it was just a testament to how dumb gender is, or how dumb needing to know is. Because they had a bunch of kind of misfits, which is and male presenting trans people. And then I was like kind of drag king, but also gender schmender. And then they had these, I can best describe them as really sweet gay boys, who were drag performers, but their drag was as women.
19:20 Dax Shepard? Yes.
19:21 Speaker 02 So they would kind of make them look like women and then put a mustache on them.
19:26 Dax Shepard? So interesting.
19:26 Speaker 02 In order to try to trick the audience into thinking that they were.
19:30 Speaker 01 This is so layered, oh my god, oh my god.
19:32 Speaker 02 The whole thing was just like.
19:33 Dax Shepard? They had to keep ratcheting up the stakes.
19:35 Speaker 01 Did you leave and were you like, what?
19:37 Speaker 02 I mean, while we were there, we were like, what is happening? It was one of their higher grossing shows or bigger audience shows. So we spent three days getting costumes and they took us shopping to put us in gowns, because in the end we were supposed to be exposed for what we really were.
19:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's so 90s.
19:53 Speaker 01 It is, it is so 90s, oh my god.
19:56 Speaker 02 That was a whole experience.
19:58 Dax Shepard? Did you watch the Jerry Springer documentary that was on Netflix?
20:00 Speaker 02 No.
20:01 Dax Shepard? Fascinating.
20:02 Speaker 02 Okay, I'll watch that one.
20:03 Dax Shepard? It's so fun to watch because I'm regularly having to. Moments where there's such a disconnect from what I lived through and seemed completely normal. And now in this vantage point, it's like, what was going? So I'm watching and I'm remembering that I watched it. It was like, it was over the top, but also it wasn't insanity. But now when I'm watching, I'm like, oh, the show was just straight insanity. It was like one hour of insanity on TV every day.
20:23 Speaker 02 And maybe it led up to reality TV in a way, right? They're kind of instigating fights.
20:28 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, yeah.
20:29 Speaker 02 That was where we were kind of play testing reality TV.
20:32 Dax Shepard? Who's the dad? Well, I wonder how that'll go.
20:36 Dax Shepard? Get two men out there being potentially emasculated on television. I wonder what'll happen. I wonder if they'll fight each other.
20:44 Speaker 01 It's like pre-internet, knowing that outrage sells.
20:49 Dax Shepard? They stumbled upon it. I bet I would watch the Maury Povich thing and be like, what is going on? But I know when I was in the 90s watching, I was like, oh, fun. I wonder, oh.
21:02 Dax Shepard? Let's find out.
21:03 Speaker 02 Yeah. Originally, they didn't want me to break dance because they're like, that's too weird. So it'll be too obvious.
21:09 Dax Shepard? Cass is a great break dancer.
21:10 Speaker 02 Cool. I did the worm. I had this really dramatic entrance. I didn't know what music. They couldn't get my music cleared. So they're like, we'll just play some music. I was like, okay.
21:22 Dax Shepard? Okay, sorry. That was just a very fun story I learned about you. So you're at CRI?
21:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, they were very supportive of me going on Maury Povich. They shut the office down to watch. I had never felt so seen. I was like, you want to what? How's this going to go? Because I also felt like I was having to pass as an office person or as a business person in ways.
21:41 Dax Shepard? Corporate America person.
21:42 Speaker 02 Yeah. And my friend, Lady Sergio and I, who was my drag girlfriend, we both worked there. So they loved us for who we were, but we were still kind of like, what kind of code switching do we have to do?
21:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, of course.
21:53 Dax Shepard? How far can we actually live out loud here?
21:56 Speaker 02 Yeah. And that was proof, in fact, that I could be exactly all of it. It was really, really nice. And so when I went back to school, that was for design. So I went to Cranbrook, also no grades, very open ended.
22:08 Dax Shepard? Where's Cranbrook?
22:08 Speaker 02 Outside of Detroit. It's in Bloomfield Hills.
22:11 Dax Shepard? My sister went to the high school there.
22:13 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
22:13 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow. Bloomfield Hills. The campus is gorgeous.
22:16 Speaker 02 Beautiful, yeah. And there's just a grad program there. That's really small, but very craft based. Like, everybody has a studio. No classes, no grades. You're just making art and having critique.
22:26 Dax Shepard? Wow, how cool.
22:28 Speaker 02 And like, reading groups and things like that.
22:30 Dax Shepard? Are you learning the history of industrial design and all these different things? Is there any history being taught or technique?
22:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, and the technique, it was all peer to peers. For example, I had a project that I needed a welded part. So I went to a friend that I'd met at lounge. There was a lounge where everybody, once a week, would hang out. And I approached my friend Vivian and was like, hey, will you help me weld these chair legs? And I'll teach you how to make a mold for that weird silicone thing you're trying to do. And she was like, yes. And so it was all very collaborative in that way. Yeah, it was great.
23:01 Dax Shepard? So you got out of there. At some point, you find yourself employed at a design place. And they're using you as like, let's pull Castin and get an off the wall take on this, yeah?
23:11 Speaker 02 Similar to in the other office job. And this was at Rockwell Group, very high end, really successful architect in New York. With all kinds of projects. I was working on a playground and they do hotels and lots of restaurants. Nice. All kinds of projects, all over the world. So that was really fun and tons of people.
23:27 Dax Shepard? Inspiring people, I'm sure you were working with?
23:29 Speaker 02 Yes, yeah, really inspiring. There were like 250 people up until 2008. So it was also kind of how I got to learn how design works as an industry. Not as much industrial design.
23:41 Dax Shepard? But like workflow of it, right? From idea to production to installation.
23:44 Speaker 02 And from my studio leader, kind of learning how to pitch an idea and tell a story and work with clients and things. So that was all really fun. And the playground that ultimately I got to work on was kind of it. It's in the South Seaport area, kind of down near Battery Park City.
24:01 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay.
24:02 Speaker 02 For that, we wound up inventing the big blue blocks. Yeah. Have you played with those or are you a kid?
24:07 Dax Shepard? I've seen them, I haven't played with them.
24:09 Speaker 02 I'm sure there are places in LA that have them. A lot of children's museums have them.
24:13 Dax Shepard? So you know your standard block set? The wooden block sets with the triangle and the square and the circle, right? They were just very exaggerated size versions.
24:22 Speaker 02 What we wanted was that the kids could design the playground.
24:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:26 Speaker 01 Because you could move them and stuff.
24:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:28 Speaker 02 And I was kind of like, kids are gonna love a playground because A, it's for them.
24:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:32 Speaker 02 B, there's other kids there and mostly they can run and slide and do all things. So we were thinking about why do they all kind of look alike, like these pipe and platform. I think they look like scaffoldings and also sometimes a little bit like jails. And so we were trying to think about how it can look different. And then I realized, who cares if it looks different? What's the play experience of the kid? And also, why are we designing it? What if the kids could design it? And so not just as a process for this one playground, I was like, what if the playground itself is a thing that kids are designing by playing there?
25:01 Dax Shepard? Yeah, altering it, moving it, shaping it.
25:03 Speaker 02 Yeah. Really inspired by adventure playgrounds, which are junk playgrounds.
25:07 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
25:08 Dax Shepard? Yeah, big in the UK.
25:09 Speaker 02 Yeah. And so part of what we were trying to balance is this was a neighborhood that we had a certain aesthetic expectation.
25:16 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
25:17 Speaker 02 So giving them a junk playground was not an option. However, we wanted to figure out what's less visually messy and also kind of easier to maintain version of a adventure playground. So these big blue blocks are like a high-density foam. They feel like a yoga block or something. So theoretically, there's hundreds of them. And every day that the kids show up at the playground, it's a different playground. They do what they need to do. So they have so much more agency.
25:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:41 Speaker 02 In their play, they feel really powerful because they're like, I made this giant thing that's bigger than me. Those were kind of ideals that also were part of GMO, not the scale. But so I was starting to kind of figure out, oh, here are all of these different ways to instill some of these ideals where there's room in the object for children to invent what it is and imagine what it is. Because increasingly, toys are being licensed characters. There's these beloved characters and you can figure out what Spider-Man is gonna do today, but it's still Spider-Man.
26:09 Speaker 01 Right.
26:09 Dax Shepard? Right, right, right.
26:09 Speaker 02 And while you're developing your own identity, what if you could be like exploring identity through the toys you're playing with and not have it already have one based on the story that you were given.
26:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:20 Speaker 02 Which, again, adults wrote.
26:21 Dax Shepard? Well, I think this would be a good time to explain. This is, in my mind, where you're starting to form a more cohesive theory on play in general, which is you start thinking, I'm not designing a toy, I'm trying to design something that will Facilitate play.
26:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's not really about the toys necessarily. Just as a designer, I think I like to be kind of formally agnostic. If the goal, and this is also kind of named by function. So there's this candle right here and I could say, let's design a new candle. I'm like, well, all right, what's the goal of the candle? Is it to light a room? Is it to make it not smell bad?
26:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
26:57 Speaker 02 Is it decor? So we know that you're really fancy and cool because it's a black candle and it probably smells something like cedar.
27:04 Speaker 01 Right.
27:04 Dax Shepard? Right, right, right.
27:05 Speaker 02 Maybe some musk in there.
27:06 Dax Shepard? Sure.
27:06 Speaker 02 Pinocchio.
27:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, wow, yeah.
27:08 Speaker 02 So is it a status symbol? So you can think of like, what's the actual function of that candle right now? And so, starting from that, instead of starting with the archetypical way that we do that, which would be candle, right? So if we were to redesign a way to light the room, that might be like, let's put a hole in the ceiling or let's get a bunch of fireflies in here.
27:27 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you give a great example. You'll say to kids that I wrote down that I like, which is if you tell kids, build a car, we know what they're going to build versus build a way to get to school, which is really fun.
27:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, imagine a way to get to school. Then you're going to have dragons and unicorns.
27:43 Dax Shepard? Poly systems and zip lines.
27:46 Speaker 02 And a river.
27:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:48 Dax Shepard? Well, I want to take a lazy river to school.
27:50 Speaker 02 Oh, my God.
27:51 Dax Shepard? Ah, if you could get in there too. You know, they do these design communities and they're mostly kind of vomitous, the concept. Maybe just because no one's done one right. But if the entire way you got through this community was a web of interconnecting lazy rivers and you traveled solely by lazy river.
28:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:08 Dax Shepard? I would buy a home in that design community.
28:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:11 Speaker 01 I understand that.
28:13 Speaker 02 Everything would change if we wanted to get coffee on the way.
28:15 Dax Shepard? It'd be docks everywhere, yeah.
28:17 Speaker 01 I'm such a boring adult because I'm like, oh, STDs.
28:21 Speaker 02 Well. From a river?
28:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, it happens. They get transported through these lazy rivers in colleges.
28:27 Dax Shepard? I think men tell, I think men tell their wives they got an STD from the lazy river, but I don't think that's how they got it.
28:35 Speaker 02 Can that be? I love that as you're like, yeah, but STDs. Like at every turn, you'll be like, where should we go on vacation? Well, you know who doesn't have STDs?
28:45 Dax Shepard? Galapagos Island. Zero incident rate of STDs.
28:48 Speaker 01 No, but I do think like that very adult-y. But what about the risk and what about whatever? It's so stupid.
28:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, and maybe it's like the hierarchy of risk. There's a risk every time you leave the house, of course. There's risk if you don't leave the house.
29:02 Speaker 01 Yes.
29:02 Speaker 02 Are you risking physical harm versus mental harm?
29:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:05 Speaker 02 Right? If you don't leave, you're safe. But are you safe? Then you're gonna be maybe kinda sad, and that's not safe.
29:10 Speaker 01 Exactly, yes.
29:11 Dax Shepard? Okay, so here's where we get to our first little area where I do wanna challenge a little bit.
29:16 Speaker 02 Okay.
29:17 Dax Shepard? So what I totally love about your approach, and what I think is so consistent with all of us as humans, is in the best-case scenario, we adopt theories and we adopt work strategies to kind of address the needs that weren't not met for us as kids, or issues we had personally. And I think our work ends up reflecting a bit of just who we are. So what you scream and what I like is, I'm not a right angle. And your work is very much like, don't give kids instructions on how to build this Lego set. And I think that's very valid. And what I would want is for there to be, that is an option.
30:01 Dax Shepard? But also, there are future engineers, there are autistic kids, there are all these other kids that are like, no, they're fucking right angles. So the only thing I worry about is like, when anyone shows up with any, and this goes into parenting strategies, classroom strategies, all of it, I fear attempts to unify us, and we're un-unifiable. And we're so different. So then the challenge to me becomes in a classroom, on a playground. So Monica loves following directions, and she loves, she said, how do I win this thing, right? It was like a joke, and it wasn't a joke.
30:30 Speaker 02 It wasn't a joke.
30:31 Dax Shepard? And that's what satiates her, and that's what really makes her feel safe. And then I'm more like you. I'm like, fuck that boring way. Someone else already did it that way, so I don't wanna do it that way. So do you have an appreciation for the other versions? Or just a complete distaste for them all?
30:46 Speaker 02 No, absolutely, and thank you. That's kind of the point that I get into in the book, is that there's a misconception that free play means no rules at all. Part of- What happens when we are encouraged or allowed to free play as children means that we are in touch with what do I need right now? What do I want to do right now? And then we're skilled in going to find it. And one of the things, and I do this a lot as a design professor, is help people find their own constraints. I love constraints. Again, the idea with open-ended is like, no constraints. It's like, well, you start with no constraints and then you find your own based on what you need. Or if anything's an option, then everything's an option, which is totally overwhelming and absolutely paralyzing, right? So the thing about unstructured play for kids and open-ended play for kids
31:30 Speaker 02 is they learn how to find and make their own structure. And also with Rigamajig, I talk about it as being open-ended and unstructured, but it's not really. The wood, the materials, nuts and bolts, those are constraints.
31:41 Speaker 01 Yes.
31:42 Dax Shepard? Right.
31:42 Speaker 02 Those create structure. You don't need instructions. I mean, they could be the constraints, but with the case of Rigamajig or G-Mo, the materiality of it as an object has constraints and structure built in. And especially when there's a system, Rigamajig is a building system. So in figuring out what the system is, you kind of start building something. And then before you know it, you have the beginning of a cart or a monster or like a whirly gig.
32:04 Dax Shepard? Rigamajig, can you see that in your mind? Have you ever seen Rigamajig?
32:08 Speaker 01 No, should we open it?
32:09 Dax Shepard? Well, no, it's huge.
32:10 Speaker 02 No, you have a small one.
32:12 Dax Shepard? Oh, I have a small one.
32:12 Speaker 02 That's Rigamajig Jr.
32:14 Dax Shepard? But you can tell from this hieroglyphic on the side. So unlike conventional erector sets or these other things, there is no obvious thing that these should be assembled.
32:26 Speaker 02 It's not a puzzle.
32:27 Dax Shepard? It's not a puzzle. It seems like a very random grouping of shapes and sizes, but there's infinite ways to assemble these. This is what's in the high line in New York.
32:39 Dax Shepard? Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. This message is brought to you by Apple Pay. Dax, can you believe it's already falling?
32:49 Speaker 01 All this year's flown by.
32:51 Dax Shepard? I know, right? But fall is my jam. Remember that farmer's market we hit up last weekend?
32:56 Speaker 01 Yes, all those vendors with their yummy apple ciders and the big pumpkins. I love big pumpkins.
33:02 Dax Shepard? Artisanal apple cider, don't forget. And the smell of fresh baked goods, heaven. But here's what blew my mind. So many vendors accepted Apple Pay.
33:10 Speaker 01 It was so convenient. I love Apple Pay. Everywhere I saw the contactless symbol, I just double click the side button on my phone to bring up my card and then just a quick little face ID scan, tap, boom. So easy.
33:23 Dax Shepard? Apple Pay's been my MVP this season to buy festive fall treats and drinks.
33:27 Speaker 01 And you know, I'm on a mission to find the best fall themed latte in town. You know this.
33:32 Dax Shepard? I do know that. How's it going? That maple one you were telling me about sounded pretty insane.
33:36 Speaker 01 It was so good. And get this, you can also use Apple Pay at lots of cafes, no fumbling for your wallet, just double click, tap and sip.
33:45 Dax Shepard? It works at millions of places, anywhere you see the contactless symbol in stores or see the Apple Pay button online and in apps.
33:52 Speaker 01 Exactly. Making it easier to enjoy all the fall goodness.
33:56 Dax Shepard? Speaking of which, I'm totally set for Halloween. Apple Pay made it a breeze to purchase the perfect decorations online, right from my iPhone. I just tap the Apple Pay button at checkout, double click to authenticate and boom, payment complete. No long checkout forms, no fuss.
34:11 Speaker 01 Fall festivities have never been more fun or easy.
34:14 Dax Shepard? Pay the Apple way. Terms apply. This episode is supported by Helix.
34:21 Speaker 01 Dax, is there anything better than crawling into a perfect bed on a cold fall night? Candlelit, hoodie on, maybe even some rain outside. The dream.
34:31 Dax Shepard? That's the dream. You just described one of my ideal fall nights.
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34:52 Dax Shepard? Increasingly so.
34:53 Speaker 01 I need it. I have to have it. And I heard that you're supposed to sleep at a cold temp. Or optimal sleep. It's very, very helpful.
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35:30 Dax Shepard? Go to helixsleep.com/armchair for 20% off site wide. That's helixsleep.com/armchair for 20% off site wide. helixsleep.com/armchair. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. We've talked before about Rob building our website on Squarespace and I bring it up again because it's a perfect example of what they do well. Rob had all the pieces, the content, the vision, the ideas, but he needed something to actually take all that and make it public facing and Squarespace was that bridge. Maybe you're in the same spot. You've been developing something, a business, a skillset, a body of work and it's been private. It's been yours, but at some point you're ready to put it out there and
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36:49 Dax Shepard? We are supported by Walden University. You know that feeling when you've been thinking about making a move, going after the degree, the promotion, the thing you keep telling yourself you'll get to someday? Walden University is built for that moment. For over 50 years, Walden has helped working professionals get the W, the knowledge, Skills and the confidence to create real change in their careers and communities. Their programs are designed around your life, not the other way around. With Tempo Learning, available in select programs, there are no rigid schedules or set weekly deadlines. You move at your own pace. And Walden's faculty aren't just academics. They're practitioners who bring real world experience into everything they teach.
37:32 Dax Shepard? From your first class to career coaching and beyond, Walden is your partner the whole way. Take the first step and learn at a pace that works for you. Visit walden.edu. Walden University. Set a course for change. Certified to operate by CHEV. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've thought about trying therapy with our long-term partner, BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. October 10th is World Mental Health Day, but you don't need a day on the calendar to give yourself permission to talk to someone. I've been in therapy for a long time and the stuff rattling around in my head always just quiets down the second I say it out loud.
38:16 Dax Shepard? And it doesn't have to be some big life crisis. Maybe it's a work thing that's taking up too much space or hard relationship moment, or just a feeling that something's off. That's enough. That's worth talking about.
38:27 Speaker 01 You know, I love therapy more than anything. Gets me through. Often I'll want to cancel because I'm like, I don't really have anything to talk about. And then I'll go and I have some major revelation.
38:38 Dax Shepard? You know, I was just talking to a friend who has just started it. And I said, one of the most powerful elements of it is just hearing yourself say out loud the thing that's been ruminating in your head and how different it sounds once it's out into the world. You gain perspective immediately just by hearing yourself say it.
38:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, you do.
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39:28 Speaker 02 When we initially launched it, it was a big pop-up playground. This was such nerdery and it made the project so much harder in a way that I'm like, "Well, that probably wasn't necessary." But we used beams, we recycled industrial pieces from some of the industry that was near the High Line in order to make these toys. So they had, I call them industrial scars, like you could see the remnants of where a bolt was.
39:50 Dax Shepard? Oh, cool.
39:51 Speaker 02 Which again is like the imagination.
39:53 Dax Shepard? Industrial artifacts.
39:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:56 Dax Shepard? That's very cool. Those are very successful during classrooms and stuff.
40:00 Speaker 02 And then Rigamajig Jr. is kind of the home version of that. And the thing, again, similar to with the big blue blocks, it's too big for one child to use alone, so they need each other in a way.
40:11 Speaker 01 Oh, I like that. It becomes social.
40:12 Speaker 02 When we learn to need each other in play, it's a positive association with help and with collaboration and cooperation.
40:20 Dax Shepard? And sharing, credit, learning to share. We made this as opposed to I made this.
40:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's two pulleys. So if you're not using that pulley, can I use the pulley? I gotta go ask. We gotta share resources.
40:30 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Okay, I want to get into the book, but I just want to tell you a personal anecdote you didn't ask for. So I work on cars a lot and I also build a lot of things with wood. And for sure, my favorite part of any project is I get to a point where I do not have the part I need. And then I start going like, "What do I have in my garage?" And I start going through drawers and I'm like, "Oh, if I put that bolt through there." That, to me, is the euphoria of building. So I'm doing two things, right? It's like, one is a carburetor has to go together in a certain way. And a gasket goes there, but could a Cracker Jack's box be a gasket? The gasket's just cardboard. And that's when I just love it to no end, is when I have to improvise and solve it,
41:13 Dax Shepard? even within the framework of the thing has to be structurally sound. So I just very much relate to your agenda.
41:19 Speaker 02 My experience of that moment exactly is easy as boring. I could just go and get that gasket, but I'm drawn to, compelled by, and intuitively, I want to make this other thing work.
41:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
41:32 Speaker 02 I want to see how many rubber bands I can Wrap around it instead of go and get the right gasket for this.
41:38 Dax Shepard? Well, there's like a steam building in that for me, which is like, oh, AI can't be stopped. Even if I don't have the right thing.
41:45 Speaker 02 And flow, right? When you're in the flow of something to leave to go get that part.
41:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
41:49 Speaker 02 Takes you out of the flow of that you're in it and you've lost track of time.
41:53 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
41:53 Speaker 02 That's also part of what play is. When you lose track of time, you're so immersed in the thing, you're doing it because you love it. It's pleasurable.
42:01 Dax Shepard? OK, so your book is playful. How play shifts our thinking, inspires connection and sparks creativity. So when this came through, we get an email of the different experts that are potentially guests. And the thing we say most on here is playful.
42:15 Speaker 01 We're very attracted to playful.
42:17 Speaker 02 Oh, nice.
42:18 Dax Shepard? I say it all the time, like, I'm here on this planet to play. I'll have to do some stuff I don't want to, but my primary mission is to play.
42:24 Speaker 02 Amazing.
42:25 Dax Shepard? So you define right out of the gates 12 types of play. And we don't have to go through all 12, but I'm wondering if you could tell us about a few of them. And then I will tell you the ones I like so much.
42:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, the ones I define early in the book are play types that I've used. And I think are not universally, there's different versions of them, but that are used to understand and observe children's play. But they aren't called children's play types, they're just kind of play types. Because play most often is associated with children and the people who work with play are usually working with children. And so I had been using these play types, so things like rough and tumble play, locomotor play, creative play, which is kind of building things, pretend play, which is kind of performing or going into other worlds.
43:09 Dax Shepard? We like communication play.
43:11 Speaker 02 And yeah, obviously you all take part in children's play types, that was probably like social play.
43:16 Dax Shepard? Uh huh. And one that's listed that I was grateful for is deep play.
43:20 Speaker 02 Deep play is one that I think really challenges the definition and the idea of play for a lot of people.
43:26 Dax Shepard? Right.
43:26 Speaker 02 Because play doesn't always look like big gestures of joy and celebration. Because in order to play, we kind of have to trust either our environment, ourselves, or the world around us and the people we're with, we become really vulnerable. And so children, if they're in. Play are touching on things that are something they have to work out. Maybe it's something difficult in their household that's going on and they're trying to, through play, understand it, or maybe even heal from it.
43:57 Dax Shepard? Or even, we walk around with all this fear, so it's like, I might climb that rock. I'm afraid of that rock. I'm afraid of falling. I'm gonna somehow play my way into interacting with this fear.
44:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, and how can you understand or get through your fears if you don't confront them? And it's safest and fun and enjoyable to confront them in play.
44:20 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and play in general, we could just broadly agree with like, it's something that has zero purpose. You're in one of the episodes of Abstract on Netflix. You reference crows finding the lid of a yogurt container, and then putting it on top of a snowy roof, and then sliding down, snowboarding down, then flying back up. And it's like, yeah, crows play. There's no point to that.
44:41 Speaker 02 Crows can fly. Yeah, exactly. So that's just a novel experience for them. There's been so much science around this, often unfortunately, that used rats. Some of this science makes me a little bit sad when I think about, half of the rats were kind of tortured by being denied anything to play with, or having to be alone, while in the other cages, rats had an enriched environment, which was things to play with. They had each other, they had friends. They're fulfilled. The rats that are alone and don't have toys.
45:11 Dax Shepard? They love drugs.
45:12 Speaker 02 They love drugs. Of course they do. They're in trauma. They probably neither, they don't have a drive to survive. They don't solve problems well. Eventually, they stop caring. They just don't eat. They don't want to solve the puzzle in order to get the cracker, because they don't care. They have no drive to thrive. There's a lot of rat studies around this, which makes sense. And then there've been studies that used college students instead of rats.
45:34 Dax Shepard? Right.
45:35 Speaker 02 Basically the same thing. A little bit less extreme, and not studying the neocortex development in these cases, thankfully. But similarly, college students, there was one study by Alice Eisen, who put students in a room for five minutes with nothing. You're just gonna sit in the desk for five minutes. And then, in the meantime, another group of students had music. And another group of students had music and puzzles. And so those three groups went in and they all did the exact same test in the same way. And the group with nothing did 15% less well than the group that had music. The group with music universally did 15% more problem solving. And then the group that had music and toys did like 40% better than all of the groups. These numbers are gonna be absolutely wrong. But it's something close. And it's in the book.
46:20 Speaker 02 Once I write it down, I'm like, good, now it's there. I can forget it forever.
46:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
46:25 Speaker 02 But this is just to say universally, just playing with a toy before you go in to solve a problem made you a better problem solver.
46:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, interesting.
46:33 Speaker 02 So there's just, time and time again, we learn ways that play not just helps us have the will to live, but it helps us be more resilient and healthier. And there's all these other physical benefits to even doing play that wasn't necessarily physically engaged.
46:47 Speaker 01 Not to make it so adult, but I guess that's also sexual role play. There is a lot of figuring out your fears with a safe partner.
46:56 Speaker 02 Right. And that's a really good example of, that's a learned taboo. So I start with talking about the children's play types. And then I realized while writing the book that they didn't apply to adults. What's risky for a child isn't risky for an adult.
47:10 Dax Shepard? Right.
47:11 Speaker 02 And adults, developmentally, we just need something so much different from play. For that, with as an example, we learn to feel bad about our bodies or feel like we can't be looked at, or this is bad and that's good. So with sexual things especially, we can play through something we need extra because it's been so ingrained in us, what it's supposed to be or what it's not supposed to be.
47:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
47:34 Speaker 02 In the adult play types, there's kind of misbehavior play.
47:37 Speaker 01 Oh, interesting.
47:38 Speaker 02 Or behavior play in general.
47:40 Speaker 01 Yes.
47:40 Speaker 02 Which you could say all adult play is misbehavior.
47:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
47:44 Speaker 02 To some extent, because we're kind of not supposed to play.
47:46 Dax Shepard? It's like intrinsically rejecting adulthood to play.
47:49 Speaker 02 Exactly, which is in itself kind of misbehavior. But with sex, which is, I think, one of the primary places that adults play, we need the trust of ourselves and each other in releasing judgment in order to kind of then get back in touch with who we might be. Before we were taught that it's weird and gross and shameful. And forget about if there's religion involved.
48:09 Speaker 01 Right.
48:10 Dax Shepard? Also, you don't make a meal of this, but I was just thinking about the correlation between when we transition out of children who are expected to play to adults who have responsibilities and perfectionism and all these other obstacles that prevent play. It also is right at the arrival of drinking, drugs, you know, these other offerings that resemble play initially, and I think they become the replacement for play. I think it's a big part of why that thing is so needed for us. It's a break from the adulthood. Yeah, you're making decisions you wouldn't normally make. You're hooking up with folks, you probably, you know, there's a lot happening.
48:52 Dax Shepard? And I just think, while you do wonder if everyone just stayed playing. When someone's newly getting sober, I'm trying to put a positive spin on it. I'll say, the only thing I can tell you that was the reward of it is I did return to 12 years old, where I was excited just to walk outside, leave my house and go fuck around in this world. Cause I had really just turned that all over to show up with a six pack, that does the rest.
49:16 Speaker 02 Right. In the book, I tried to talk about how can we, cause booze is also a huge part of adult split, not just that it lubricates play for us, but I looked at and we studied and we tried to figure out, this is my co-writer and I, Lydia Dinworth, she's been on your show, she wrote Friendship.
49:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
49:32 Speaker 02 And she's a science writer, so she's really good at researching and finding and taking scientific studies and, you know, relating them. She and I talked a lot about how do we acknowledge this is an important part of how adults play? And also, how can we take the advantages or what is it about being intoxicated that lets us access play and how can we get there without it?
49:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I'm actually in favor of it as one of the options of play. But I think it very easily becomes the primary option of play and the singular option of play.
50:03 Speaker 02 Play itself, use that to then you see like conversational play, social play. But what my hope is, and part of what I kind of the story I tell in the book is that we didn't forget how to play. We all still know how to play. We have just learned to not play. And that's from coming up in school. Growing up means growing out of playing, right? So if you think about in school, we're told like, hold still.
50:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
50:25 Speaker 02 Act serious.
50:26 Speaker 01 Pay attention.
50:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, and then when you're an adult, I talk about a play voice and an adult voice. And your play voice is like, go do that thing, be silly, dance because you love this song. And your adult voice is like protecting you, right? And it's like, no, you'll look silly, social rejection. And teenagers especially, when we're really attached to and learn that we need to be socially accepted to some extent. And the way that that happens is just so intense. Plague becomes really shameful for a lot of people. So we have to unlearn all of that in order to get back there. And I think that what alcohol often does is gets us there. It's like a shortcut to cutting inhibitions. And so there's exercises in the book, let's just get there without it.
51:08 Dax Shepard? I'd love to go through some of them as they're kind of laid out in the book, if you're open for that. So what are the conditions for play?
51:15 Speaker 02 Well, for free play, I am a proponent of free play. And here's just to be clear, I think adults do play a lot. Sports, pickleball, I think conversationally we play. When people are writing, if you're a writer, language or poetry, I think is a really great example.
51:30 Dax Shepard? Debate for some people is play. For other people it's miserable, but for some people it's how they play.
51:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, right now, attention play is really interesting and important for adults because our attention is often kind of by default in our phones or given to other things in a way that we're not as good at hanging out in the moment that you might usually pick up your phone. What is boredom anymore?
51:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:52 Dax Shepard? Play is so often the antidote to boredom, but if we don't force ourselves to be bored for minimally five minutes, then we have no reason to require play.
52:00 Speaker 02 And our go to in order to avoid boredom is to scroll.
52:04 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
52:05 Speaker 02 And that's just a bottomless pit of, are you ever gonna find what you're looking for there?
52:09 Dax Shepard? Oh, Cass, I had such a wake up call this weekend. I had decided on Friday morning, because I don't have to post, I don't have anything for the show. I'm not gonna open Instagram until I have to on Monday. And. I was shamefully embarrassed with how often, I'm not even thinking about it. It's like, I sit on the toilet. It's like, my thumb already knows how to go to that page and click it. And I was like, I'd be halfway through the steps before I go like, oh, we're not looking at that. It was like a full day before I broke just the habitual physicality of it. And then by Sunday, I returned to writing in my memoir. I like had a great day of creativity and I felt way, way better.
52:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:50 Dax Shepard? I felt so good not knowing what everyone's fighting about.
52:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, and imagine if you had the muscle memory of play instead of phone.
52:58 Dax Shepard? Yes.
52:58 Speaker 02 I think of my phone as potentially a toy, but I'm like, am I using it as a toy or a tool? Right? I like to use it as a tool. And when it becomes a toy, that's when I'm like, what's in the world around me that I could be playing with instead? For example, my dog.
53:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
53:12 Speaker 02 It's like, hey, he's really good at knocking it out of my phone, knocking it out of my hands. Attention play is really for adults right now. Great. And so, look around, daydream, watch the birds, look at this thing and imagine how it was made. I love the subway. Subway is my primary form of transport. I don't go on my phone on the subway. Increasingly, I am the only one.
53:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, sure.
53:35 Speaker 02 I'm imagining where are they coming from and going to? Or how was that thing made? Or what was that person thinking with those shoes? And I'll do a deep dive and try to figure out what's going on.
53:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you have to create a little story that makes them make sense to you visually, which is very fun.
53:49 Speaker 02 In the bigger picture, if I were to name by function, that attention play for me in the subway, it's about reconnecting and feeling connected to the people around me, which for me is absolutely essential for my feeling okay. If I were to go and scroll instead, I would be confronted by stories about that it is all the worst and everything is terrible, which things are not great. I think we can all agree. So, I can go in there and lose all faith in humanity. Or I could just look up and be like, here are some people that are having the best days of their lives and the worst days of it. I cry on the subway. I love crying on the subway. Cause actually, I think subway is maybe the only safe place.
54:30 Speaker 02 To cry because eventually someone will make eye contact like we see each other.
54:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
54:36 Speaker 02 I'm reminded that I'm not alone in it.
54:38 Speaker 01 Everyone's there and they're stuck there.
54:40 Dax Shepard? It's also very good to right size your self obsession in egomaniacal nature. I do remember we traveled everywhere by car when I was a kid. My mom, God bless her, she showed us the country on like 200 bucks. And I'd be sitting in the back of the car and I'd just be watching all the windows that go by as you're driving through Cincinnati. And as a kid, I would just get obsessed with like, well, every one of those windows has someone inside. And every one of those people inside has some dream. And there's so many of us, there's something scary about it. And then there's also something that just right sizes your own importance. It's like, oh yeah, look at all these windows. These are all these people have dreams just like you, or they all have these things just like you. I do think there's something helpful about that.
55:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:25 Dax Shepard? How do adults stay playful?
55:27 Speaker 02 Okay, so for adults, in particular with free play, embracing possibility, which means be open to what you might find at any point. For example, not looking at your phone, look around and be curious, releasing judgment.
55:40 Dax Shepard? Walk us through that one in detail.
55:41 Speaker 02 Releasing judgment, so we are our own worst critics. We came up through school and we were extrinsically motivated. Someone told us what to do, they told us how to be good at them. And they told us we needed to be good at them, so our self value got attached to success. So of course, as adults, we're going to be still obsessed with being really productive, which probably means like efficient, you don't waste time, no dilly dallying.
56:05 Dax Shepard? Yeah, look at all these efficiency gurus that exist.
56:07 Speaker 02 Oh my God.
56:08 Dax Shepard? And people like worship these people.
56:09 Speaker 02 What are we prioritizing, like to what end? And even like as a problem solving, I'm like, but is that a problem? These problems we're solving, first of all, today's solution is tomorrow's problem. Plastic cars, everything that we thought was gonna be, we're solving problems that maybe aren't problems. And we don't know, I try to keep an awareness of what we don't know, but we then have these systems that we're a little bit stuck with. So being playful and approaching things as play will make us more able to kind of shift and be agile when they aren't what we expect or when they don't work out the way that we want.
56:40 Dax Shepard? Because we didn't create a singular definition of what succeeding would be.
56:43 Speaker 02 Of what succeeding is, or it has to be this outcome, or it's failures.
56:47 Speaker 01 But I could hear some people listening who have these jobs and they have to turn in their thing to their boss on time because if not, they'll get fired. And they're like, I can't dilly-dally. There's no room for that in this life. What is the response to that?
57:02 Dax Shepard? Fuck you.
57:04 Speaker 01 No, because even I get it. It's like, we have a show we have to put out at a certain time.
57:09 Speaker 02 There's no time. And actually, I think those are the people who often need play the most. Because play is not the antithesis. It can be a mindset. So you can be doing your job playfully and A, lead to different outcomes if that's desired, right? Innovation comes from play.
57:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah, talk about JPL. I think that's interesting.
57:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, so Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They, at some point, were realizing that their engineers that they were hiring were not great problem solvers. And they interviewed them and kind of realized that a lot of them had not been tinkerers. They hadn't played with stuff.
57:41 Dax Shepard? Model airplanes or rockets.
57:43 Speaker 02 Or even just like take apart the lawnmower.
57:45 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
57:45 Speaker 02 And then try to put it back together, or maybe not, or turn it into something else. So they weren't tinkerers. They hadn't used their hands specifically. So they started, in their interview process, starting to filter out based on, did you tinker? But really, what that meant was, are you a playful person? Not only did you play as a child, but do you play now? And it's made a huge difference in the success of how innovative they are, how good they are at problem solving. So there are ways that if somebody is really like, there's no room for this.
58:15 Dax Shepard? They make spreadsheets or an accountant.
58:16 Speaker 02 I kind of think spreadsheets can be playful.
58:19 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow. I'd love to hear this.
58:21 Speaker 02 I had a friend who I worked with for a long time, and she would make really sexy spreadsheets. So we started calling them sex cell spreadsheets because they were like so beautiful. And we were like, yes, oh my God, it feels so good to me. So she loved making, you know, that was kind of her play.
58:34 Speaker 01 You just also need an environment where that's okay.
58:38 Speaker 02 Right, and there can be ways that the work life doesn't change at all, but outside of it, she can kind of let herself play. A lot of it is like, give yourself permission to play.
58:48 Speaker 01 Totally.
58:49 Speaker 02 And realize that play might look like when you're taking a hike, if it's hot or your friend is slow and kind of annoying you, don't get so hung up on, we're doing this hike, we have to get to the top. I'm so annoyed, oh my God, we only have an hour and I really want to do this. I really want that selfie from the top. So maybe if you were to release judgment and say, we're out here. And also, the third element is reframing success. Is success getting to the top? Or is success that we're hanging out together? So maybe we can just take our time or hang out on that one cliff and throw pebbles at the people coming up the hill.
59:23 Speaker 01 Shift the goal.
59:24 Speaker 02 Yeah. Shift the goal.
59:25 Dax Shepard? Maybe it's starting with like, we can't fail at this. We got together and we're here.
59:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
59:30 Dax Shepard? Failure isn't really even a possibility. This is already a big success. We are being social. It's essential for our health.
59:37 Speaker 02 It's so natural for adults to be hung up on success. Because 12 years of really intense time and then also college, if you did that, we're told what success looks like. And our self-worth and our value and our own understanding of our intelligence and competence is wrapped up in a success that someone else defined for us. Kids, early on at the playground, that social hierarchy is really different. Because it's going to be the kids who are good at play. They are the coolest ones.
1:00:03 Dax Shepard? Yeah, but if you jumps off the top of the monkey bars, you're like, what the?
1:00:06 Speaker 02 Exactly. That person is a champion. Or the kid who can paint a weird blotch on the corner with the chalk, figured out that if you add water to chalk, it's like rainbow paste.
1:00:16 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:00:17 Speaker 02 That is the hero.
1:00:18 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:00:19 Speaker 01 It changes so fast, I feel like, into the bully becomes the stat. Like, the person who figures out they can be the loudest and meanest.
1:00:27 Speaker 02 Which is such an interesting segue to where we are right now. Because I think we're seeing play get shut down by a bully. Comedy and satire is play. And we have a bully who is shutting down play. And that, first of all, shows the power of play, that play is so threatening that a bully who has the power to do so is gonna shut it down. And it's also a way to kind of remind us that play isn't a thing we do to then be able to be resilient. Yes, play makes us resilient, but play actually is the resistance. By playing, we are continuing to push back on anything that tells us that we need to not be human. Continuing to play is, in fact, also resistance.
1:01:11 Dax Shepard? Well, this is where you get into Man's Search for Meaning, Victor's book. Esther Perel saying eroticism was the quintessential ingredient that allowed these Holocaust survivors to have lives after it. There's a lot of well-documented social science about it's not frivolous, it's not extraneous. It's actually what will allow you to carry on or not. Or to be subjugated or not, or be defeated or not, or to be oppressed or not. These are really core anecdotes to those things.
1:01:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think marginalized communities know this well. It was interesting, writing the book, people will say, well, why are you so good at play? You know, I'm kind of like, ah, deep dive into like, why am I gonna play? Well, as a child, you mentioned latchkey kid or just not having adults around? So play was all I did, but also I had a tricky childhood. I didn't know it at the time, but that was how I got through. I'm really grateful that I had a really strong drive to play because I think I would be a really different person if I hadn't played the whole time while all of these tricky things were happening in my childhood.
1:02:10 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:02:11 Speaker 02 And I see in my adulthood, times that are hard. And I think also in protest and as a queer person, we play. Queers are very good at playing.
1:02:19 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, yeah.
1:02:20 Speaker 02 Because we have to, and it's how we resist.
1:02:22 Dax Shepard? You'll never go to a better Halloween party than West Hollywood. They throw the best one on the planet.
1:02:26 Speaker 02 It's like how we resist. I, two nights ago, was at a unprofessional variety show with chaotic drag performers and comedians and all of us laughing and crying every once in a while because also it was grounded and we're all terrified. It was, I think, reminding us all who we are and that we're gonna be okay.
1:02:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I have a personal explanation for it. So I have a best friend I've had since I was 11. We both had dicey childhoods. His was off the charts dicey. And it occurred to me when he and I Have fun. We can have fun in a way that's so elevated. Aaron and I can get to a buffet bar and we can be like, we just found a chest of gold. And my explanation of it is particularly when things are grueling and tough. When these rays of sunshine poke through, they're so powerful relative to the other thing that we learn to just dance in it, fucking grab onto it as hard as we can and just squeeze it for every drop that'll come out of it. We just have a commitment for where like, when
1:03:25 Dax Shepard? it's good, man, let's go. And I think that's part of the recipe.
1:03:29 Speaker 01 Recognizing it.
1:03:30 Dax Shepard? Yeah. And if it's essential, you'll do it. That's my explanation of being playful. It was kind of essential. And then I think the pitch would be for someone who doesn't necessarily need relief to still encourage them to be extremely playful, even if they're not necessarily in deep need of relief. Like, it sounds to me like, given your childhood, you needed some relief and the play was the relief.
1:03:54 Speaker 02 Yeah. And I think I needed big gesture. I needed to be moving around in my body outside of buildings, exploring, connecting, not knowing what I was around to balance out that school, the actual physical structure that I spent eight hours a day in was really just killing me.
1:04:11 Dax Shepard? Soul killing.
1:04:12 Speaker 02 Still to this day, when it's a beautiful day out and we watch kids file into a school, I'm just like, and I have kids in my life now, so I'm sometimes the adult who's dropping them off and watching them go inside. And I'm like, trying to feel like this is right, but I'm like, this is wrong. Like, what are we doing?
1:04:27 Speaker 01 They might like it.
1:04:29 Dax Shepard? Yes, for some people.
1:04:30 Speaker 02 Absolutely. In part because that's where their friends are.
1:04:32 Speaker 01 Exactly. That's the most social place. I loved school.
1:04:35 Dax Shepard? Also, again, some people are built for that. That's what they desire. They want the list of things they can accomplish and that's lovely.
1:04:41 Speaker 02 It's a matter of scale. It works for everybody. And like what you brought up, some people want instructions and not everybody wants big loudness. Some kids want to be in a fort.
1:04:52 Speaker 03 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.
1:04:58 Dax Shepard? This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I have my dream job. I get to talk to folks I admire like crazy and ask them virtually any question that I want to. I can't imagine a better way to spend my time. But even dream jobs have some not so dreamy parts, the stuff that gets in the way of the actual work. Now that's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work. They actually do it, start to finish, cases closed, requests handled, no extra work for you. So you and your team can focus on what matters most, which for me is, are they obsessed with male bodies on the same level as I am?
1:05:40 Speaker 01 They never are.
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1:07:59 Dax Shepard? We get support from Skims. So Monica just informed me that she's a girl's girl, and I nodded like I knew exactly what that meant.
1:08:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, but the girls who get it, they get it.
1:08:10 Dax Shepard? OK, but for those of us who are clearly not girls, walk me through it.
1:08:14 Speaker 01 Well, you know how much I love my Skims fleece joggers? Because the plush fleece is so soft, it's cozy, it's really comfortable without feeling too heavy. Well, I went to friend them, and she would not stop talking about how comfy they were. She almost didn't give them back to me, which was upsetting, but I'm a girl's girl, so I let her have it.
1:08:31 Dax Shepard? Great, great, great.
1:08:32 Speaker 01 So the sleep sets are awesome because they are very soft and comfortable, but they're cute. If I'm in my sleep set, I feel fine about going down the street to pick up my food. I'm still looking cute, but I'm comfy and I'm cozy.
1:08:46 Dax Shepard? Roger.
1:08:47 Speaker 01 A really fun thing to do is if you're going on vacation with your girlfriends, to get matching Skims pajamas. I've done this with Callie, and it is so fun. First of all, the pics are so cute. But also, it's just fun and friendship.
1:08:59 Dax Shepard? So a girl's girl is looking out for your friends with better loungewear. I get it. Am I one of your girls now?
1:09:04 Speaker 01 You are. You and the other girlies can shop my favorite loungewear and pajamas at skims.com. After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you. Select podcasts in the survey, and be sure to select our show in the drop-down menu that follows.
1:09:24 Speaker 02 The playgrounds that I design and the way that also I think about my own adult summer camp, which I have.
1:09:30 Dax Shepard? You have an adult summer camp?
1:09:32 Speaker 02 We're playtesting it with friends and a few groups. We've had a few a year for a while. We're getting there. My play last weekend was to dig up the cesspool that had fallen in, and I don't mean a septic tank. It was a cesspool. So we're like getting there. Let's just say. I am aware of what kind of accommodations adults need in order to create the conditions for free play to arise. One of the stories I tell in my book is about my friend Colleen and I, who I think maybe is more like you in her play. And she's also very engineer minded, but we were doing a Lego set together and I was just grabbing pieces and making stuff. We're chatting, catching up, and at some point I realized I can feel her getting more and more annoyed with me. Then there's this kind of deep sigh and I was like, okay, what? What's going on? What?
1:10:16 Speaker 02 And she was like, you're taking the pieces I need. And I was like, oh, wait, are you following the instructions?
1:10:22 Speaker 01 Right.
1:10:23 Speaker 02 And she was like, yes, dude, this is what we're doing. And I was like, huh, are you having fun?
1:10:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:10:29 Speaker 02 Yes, I'm having fun. But it was just like, what?
1:10:32 Dax Shepard? Cass, we're painfully similar. One of our huge debates is we are interviewing this person who is taking on woodworking and they were telling us that they were watching these YouTube tutorials. And I said, why are you doing that? You have a saw, you have the wood.
1:10:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:10:46 Dax Shepard? What reward would there be in having someone tell you how to do it? And Monica was like, what's wrong with you? Of course, that's what he wants to do. He wants to get good at woodworking.
1:10:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:10:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, like, how's he gonna get good if he doesn't? Also, by the way, we had another person who chopped his hand off doing that. So like, you know, just saying.
1:11:01 Dax Shepard? I don't think a YouTube tutorial would have saved his hand.
1:11:03 Speaker 02 I do. And this is the beauty of being a really curious human. You're like, oh, fascinating, wonderful. Now I understand a little bit more about how you work and we're friends. So this is great. We took a time out and I was like, okay, here, I'll put my pieces back. And we did it together. We followed the instructions. And I was like, okay, that was the thing that we did together. Totally different than my play.
1:11:23 Dax Shepard? Resetting your expectations, redefining success.
1:11:26 Speaker 02 Yeah. And I got to learn what her play was. This is how we understand each other, right? We learn about each other through play. You two know each other because you're both conversationally so playful.
1:11:37 Dax Shepard? Do you know what Monica likes? Fair play.
1:11:39 Speaker 01 Oh, it's my favorite kind of play. We're seething.
1:11:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, of course. I was gonna say, like, I don't know if you get to like necessarily.
1:11:49 Speaker 01 It's so nice. No, but I'm with you. I feel like Legos I don't like because, because I actually am not very good at following those instructions.
1:12:00 Speaker 02 Ah, yeah.
1:12:01 Speaker 01 And then I'm like, oh, I can't do this. As opposed to just being like, well, I can just make something random and that's fine. I'm just like, oh, I can't achieve the thing that this is meant to achieve.
1:12:10 Dax Shepard? You can click those blocks together.
1:12:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:12:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, and it's so funny because then you have a toy that's telling you that you're wrong, right? And you're like, wait, I am a competent human and this thing that's meant to make me feel good and enjoy myself is making me feel bad.
1:12:24 Speaker 01 When you do do it correctly, it's a pretty big high. It's a pretty big accomplishment.
1:12:31 Dax Shepard? You know, it's fun though, is if you could think of play as being this safe area to experiment and challenge the broader issues that we all have. You're such a great achiever and straight A's and all that, but if you had a zone that you could safely dabble in fucking up family, you know, like it might be therapeutic or cathartic.
1:12:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:12:54 Dax Shepard? And probably I should follow a YouTube tutorial on how to make a desk. Like, that would be my growth. You know, like, that's how I could grow.
1:13:03 Speaker 02 Do the thing that's hard and stay unattached to the outcome.
1:13:07 Speaker 01 Definitely.
1:13:08 Dax Shepard? I just wanted to say one thing that's a personal pet peeve. So back to the play at work. You're the accountant and how do you actually play? So this is my grievance with the culture generally in the workplace, which is I used to prep cars for a living. For 14 years, I washed cars. Thank God I worked for my mom and she valued play. But I had coworkers who were annoyed because I'm laughing nonstop. I'm doing it. Okay, how much to punch your uncle in the nose? You know, like playing these dumb games. But yo, I'm washing cars faster than anybody. And what annoys me is there is some assumption in the workplace that having fun and playing while you are productive is not the right vibe. And that drives me bonkers. And I think a lot of Managers are just threatened by the notion that you could be playing and having fun.
1:13:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:13:53 Dax Shepard? That they're losing complete control as opposed to like, well, what is the output of this happy playful person?
1:13:58 Speaker 02 Exactly, but it's also that we undervalue the benefit. That whole workplace was better off because of you. So say that you actually, we're gonna shift it slightly.
1:14:07 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:14:08 Speaker 02 Say that you washed one tenth fewer cars every day. And we valued efficiency and productivity over joy and cohesion of team. And probably the clients would like to come there because you all don't look miserable doing a service.
1:14:22 Dax Shepard? Turnover, that's a cost.
1:14:24 Speaker 02 If we understand that playfulness and social skills are in fact a value that could be prioritized and compensated for, right? Because I mean, we see this also in all kinds of offices where the jobs that are like, oh, you just make everybody feel good. But I actually crunch the numbers. It's like, so why do you get paid more than I do? Because we're both critical to this working. So there's an undervalued of kind of social. Forget about it if it's somebody who deals with emotions, then we're really.
1:14:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah, just give them minimum wage.
1:14:53 Speaker 02 Right, yeah. Or teachers.
1:14:55 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
1:14:56 Speaker 02 So, but there's an undervaluing of those as skills that people are often built for and also that they learn. And it's a muscle that we exercise as well. So I think in that case, like, it's a really great example of that the playfulness made everything better. It just wasn't a priority.
1:15:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:15:11 Speaker 02 So for people reading the book or people saying that I want to be more playful, just prioritizing play and letting yourself play. And then, of course, if you're so far removed from it, you may need to do some work to find your play. What is your play?
1:15:23 Dax Shepard? Well, Cass, I'm so delighted you wrote such a thoughtful and well researched book on being playful. And to remind everyone, it's called Playful: How Play Shifts Our Thinking Inspires Connection and Sparks Creativity. I hope everyone checks it out. Sincerely, I hope people could more increasingly prioritize it. It feels frivolous and I just don't think it's frivolous.
1:15:45 Speaker 01 Well, especially not right now. Everything's so serious. We need some of this back in our brains.
1:15:50 Dax Shepard? I promise you, not a single human being will be on their deathbed and they'll go like, fuck, I shouldn't have played so much while I was here. That sentence will never come out of a dying person's mouth.
1:16:00 Speaker 02 No.
1:16:00 Dax Shepard? I think I worked too much? Pretty likely that might come out.
1:16:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, or I didn't prioritize my family, which is often the thing.
1:16:07 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:16:08 Speaker 02 Or my people in general.
1:16:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:16:10 Dax Shepard? Yeah, your chosen family. Well, Cass, thank you so much.
1:16:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, thank you.
1:16:13 Dax Shepard? This was delightful.
1:16:14 Speaker 01 Thank you for him. I love him.
1:16:16 Dax Shepard? Yes. Here's to him. It's very vaginal, would you agree?
1:16:20 Speaker 01 Right now, just right this very second. I don't know about later.
1:16:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, thank you for playing.
1:16:25 Dax Shepard? Yes.
1:16:25 Speaker 01 Thank you.
1:16:26 Dax Shepard? All right, be well.
1:16:30 Dax Shepard? Hi there, this is Hermium Hermium. If you like that, you're gonna love the fact check with Miss Monica.
1:16:37 Dax Shepard? Doesn't that sound good?
1:16:39 Speaker 01 It does sound good.
1:16:40 Dax Shepard? Did you hear any of that?
1:16:41 Speaker 01 It sounds like Foley.
1:16:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:16:43 Speaker 01 But it was real.
1:16:47 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:16:48 Speaker 01 Oh my God.
1:16:48 Dax Shepard? I feel very elegant right now.
1:16:52 Dax Shepard? I mean, really elegant. I have poured myself a glass of sparkling mineral water, maybe?
1:16:59 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:17:00 Dax Shepard? Artesian water?
1:17:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:17:02 Dax Shepard? Artesian.
1:17:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, why do you have that fancy water?
1:17:05 Dax Shepard? Because Ethan Suppley, one of my favorite people on the planet.
1:17:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:17:10 Dax Shepard? He's a connoisseur of water. If you'll recall, he's the one who figured out I didn't have IBS, that I was just allergic to.
1:17:18 Speaker 01 Pellegrino.
1:17:19 Dax Shepard? Pellegrino. And he didn't even figure it out. He just told me he shits his pants when he drinks Pellegrino. I was like, oh my God, that's what's been happening. I don't have IBS.
1:17:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, it was a big reveal.
1:17:28 Dax Shepard? So I guess he's a wa- he's a water connoisseur.
1:17:32 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:17:32 Dax Shepard? And he texts me the other night and it was like, the way he's just, he's like, you must try this water.
1:17:37 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:17:38 Dax Shepard? And he was so like descriptive about it.
1:17:40 Speaker 01 What did he say?
1:17:41 Dax Shepard? Do you want me to read it? I'll read it to you.
1:17:45 Dax Shepard? It's classic Suppley. I love people who are super into stuff.
1:17:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:17:50 Dax Shepard? It makes, it just makes for so much more fun.
1:17:53 Speaker 01 It does.
1:17:54 Dax Shepard? Yeah, he said, um, "very fine discovery" with a photograph of the water. I said, "it's exceptional." He said, "it sits in the glass, appearing for all intents and purposes to be a still, and yet when it hits your tongue, the effervescence is quite magical, quite delightful." I would definitely go so far as to say, "exceptional."
1:18:14 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:18:17 Dax Shepard? So based on that, I ordered a case.
1:18:18 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:18:20 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:18:20 Speaker 01 And it came that fast?
1:18:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I guess that was maybe Sunday he sent me that. God knows where he was at, where he.
1:18:27 Speaker 01 Well, what's the brand?
1:18:28 Dax Shepard? Well, I don't wanna like just be promoting a brand of water.
1:18:32 Speaker 01 Well, it's too late.
1:18:35 Dax Shepard? Well, no, now it's just, okay, yeah, it's called Tahoe.
1:18:38 Speaker 01 Okay, great.
1:18:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah, well, I don't like it. I don't want anyone to think that this is like some kind of in-episode ad.
1:18:43 Speaker 01 Well, it's not.
1:18:44 Dax Shepard? It's not. Yeah, but it's, you know.
1:18:46 Speaker 01 We talk about things we like. It's okay.
1:18:48 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:18:50 Speaker 01 Is he right? Is it exceptional?
1:18:52 Dax Shepard? You want to take a sip?
1:18:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:18:53 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I think it's actually quite exceptional. It has like the nicest balance of like the mineral and the sparkle taste, but also very flat taste.
1:19:02 Speaker 01 Whoa, mhm.
1:19:03 Dax Shepard? Right?
1:19:03 Speaker 01 I'm gonna take one more sip.
1:19:04 Dax Shepard? Yeah, like I would, I think they nailed it with the label because there's something about it that makes me just think silver.
1:19:09 Speaker 01 It's really nice. Yeah.
1:19:11 Dax Shepard? You guys want to read the coupon code?
1:19:14 Speaker 01 That is tasty. It feels like the bubbles are teeny tiny.
1:19:19 Dax Shepard? Minuscule bubbles.
1:19:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:19:21 Dax Shepard? How do they do it? I don't know. That's why it's called artisanal.
1:19:24 Speaker 01 Yeah. Have you ever been to like a fancy restaurant where there's a water menu?
1:19:29 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's triggering. That's why I'm like conflicted by this whole thing, but because it came from Ethan, who's so not snobby. I'm in. And also he's an ex-addict as well. So it's like, we can't get super into wine. So here, what we got? We got water.
1:19:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:19:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:19:44 Speaker 01 I love it.
1:19:45 Dax Shepard? You gotta geek out about something, I guess.
1:19:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely.
1:19:48 Dax Shepard? Okay, so you, what started off as a very nice gesture, you, well, I don't know how this happened, but what happened between you and Delta and La Bear shit tea?
1:19:56 Speaker 01 Okay, we were outside yesterday chit-chatting.
1:20:00 Dax Shepard? Uh huh, catching up.
1:20:00 Speaker 01 Catching up and um, we got on the subject of, gosh, she must have been talking about some sort of stuffy or something.
1:20:11 Dax Shepard? Of course.
1:20:12 Speaker 01 Of course.
1:20:12 Dax Shepard? Maybe Groot, maybe I saw where Groot was or something.
1:20:14 Speaker 01 I, I didn't. I haven't checked in a minute on Groot, actually. But I, I don't remember, but then TT, your sister, said something about Beanie Babies and we got on the subject of Beanie Babies. Oh, I know exactly how.
1:20:27 Dax Shepard? There we go. Bingo.
1:20:29 Speaker 01 Someone brought up Pez. We're going way far back.
1:20:33 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:20:33 Speaker 01 Someone brought up Pez. I don't remember yet how we got to Pez, but Pez came up and I said, you know, speaking of, speaking of being very into things, I said, I'm, I never got into Pez and I'm, I'm kind of surprised.
1:20:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:20:48 Speaker 01 Because it seems like something I ride up my alley.
1:20:50 Dax Shepard? Oh, it's more of this, yeah, shocking.
1:20:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:20:53 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:20:53 Speaker 01 It's collectible.
1:20:55 Dax Shepard? Colorful.
1:20:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, candies.
1:20:57 Dax Shepard? Limited edition candy.
1:20:58 Speaker 01 Limited edition. But actually, the candy is the part that's, that I didn't like that candy.
1:21:04 Dax Shepard? Well, I don't want to get sued, but yeah.
1:21:07 Speaker 01 Can't sue me for my opinion. I, I personally don't like that candy, but I think Pez did great.
1:21:14 Dax Shepard? Pez is there alright.
1:21:15 Speaker 01 Whether or not I liked the candy.
1:21:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:21:17 Speaker 01 I think they did great and.
1:21:19 Dax Shepard? But I do think you're right in that the appeal of it was way more the delivery device than the.
1:21:24 Speaker 01 The candy itself.
1:21:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:21:25 Speaker 01 I don't think I realized that at the time.
1:21:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:21:28 Speaker 01 Which is a big mistake on my part. I thought it was about the candy, which I wasn't into, instead of realizing it's a, it's a collectible.
1:21:35 Dax Shepard? And it's about the experience of administering the candy.
1:21:38 Speaker 01 And like the people on top and stuff.
1:21:43 Dax Shepard? Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.
1:21:50 Dax Shepard? 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. Docs I need to get through, threads I'm behind on. And by the time I've dealt with all that, the stuff I actually want to focus on gets whatever's left. What I needed was something that just works where I'm already working. Not another tab to open, not another thing to set up. Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly, is different. It's already right there. Inside your email, your docs, your browser. You don't go to it. It's already working alongside you. You're deep in a long thread, highlight it, and it pulls the key points. About to send something important?
1:22:32 Dax Shepard? It flags what doesn't add up before it leaves your hands. It knows your style, your workflows, and it just backs you up without getting in the way. A thought partner that's already up to speed, at your service, not after your job. So, do yourself a favor and try Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly. Find out more at superhuman.com.
1:23:00 Speaker 01 Anyway, so a big regret of mine that I never got into Pez. We were talking about that. And so then we were talking about collectibles. And then TT brought up Beanie Babies.
1:23:09 Dax Shepard? Cause someone sent me a Pez dispenser for nicotine pouches. That's how this all started.
1:23:14 Speaker 01 That's right. And Armcherry did.
1:23:16 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. Some two cute kids started up.
1:23:18 Speaker 01 How this started.
1:23:19 Dax Shepard? Yep.
1:23:19 Speaker 01 And she, uh, yeah. So then she started talking about Beanie Babies. And then I naturally brought up La Bear T. And I said, he's in, he's in the garage. And she said, can I see him? I said, of course. So we walked on over. And as soon as I, you know, put him in her little hands.
1:23:38 Dax Shepard? Came alive.
1:23:38 Speaker 01 Yeah. She was like, oh, he's so cute.
1:23:42 Dax Shepard? And to remind people in the audience, he's covered in shit. It's like someone had put a shit can in and spattered it all over his face. So the fact that she looked at him, oh, he's so cute is so Delta, you know?
1:23:53 Speaker 01 It is. I know.
1:23:54 Dax Shepard? She see right past the shit on someone's face.
1:23:56 Speaker 01 I know. And she, um, she asked if she could ta- she called it something.
1:24:03 Dax Shepard? Vacation?
1:24:04 Speaker 01 Something like that. She asked if she could take him for a day for something. And I said, of course. And I said, you can take him anytime you want. You know, he's in your, he's by your house. Like you can take him. Um, and so she, she took him on an adventure and then she ran back out. She said, Monica, what's his name again? I said, La Bear T. It's Liberty, but with bear in the center. And she loved that.
1:24:27 Dax Shepard? Yeah. So then you leave, da, da, da, busy day again. Wife's out of town. Uh, she's got her first volleyball game.
1:24:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:24:38 Dax Shepard? Which is hysterical. She had her first practice of her life on Monday and then her first game was on Wednesday. So we practiced in the yard and then we ordered food. Now it's crunch time. We're, we're, we're cutting it close. And then for some weird reason, the place we order, always order pizza from, which is so fast, is like taking forever and ever and ever.
1:24:57 Speaker 01 Hey.
1:24:58 Dax Shepard? I'm like, I call the place, like, hey, dude, cause I'm friendly over there.
1:25:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:25:02 Dax Shepard? No, it's in the oven. Okay, blah, blah. And so it arrives. I mean, there's a side thing where I got into it. With Lincoln in what will be the first of many big fights we'll have throughout our, our relationship as you, you know, you have a teenager, you guys are gonna, there's gonna be dust ups. So just the heat is on. We're in a huge rush to get out. Like we, we are, we are, the pizza comes, we were cramming it down. We get in the car and she's like, oh, I forgot something. And I'm like, we don't, we don't have time for you to forget something. Also, everything's in that bag. I know everything you need is in the bag. Also, all you need is yourself. Right. She runs back inside and she comes outside with fucking LaBertie and a Polaroid
1:25:45 Dax Shepard? camera. And I'm like, this is what? Well, he's on vacation and you have to photograph him because he went to a volleyball game on vacation. I'm like, okay. And we get to, we get to the volleyball game. And every parent, like, we are about 30 seconds late. Okay. So I'm already kind of embarrassed about that. Also, I don't know anyone on the team's name. Like, you don't want to be the parent that didn't get their kid to the volleyball game on time. So I'm embarrassed about that. Sitting next to the only two parents I know. And everyone seems to know every kid on the player on the team's name. I don't know anyone. I just was at that one thing, right?
1:26:29 Dax Shepard? All these things. Yeah. And then like, big stuff's happening and I'm fucking having a photo session with LaBertie, which I can show you. Oh, my God, we have to put it up. Oh, yeah. Let me send it to Rob. This is really a Monica story. There's so much to this story. Oh, my God. What? My heart is so. Big plays are happening and I'm missing it because I'm trying to get, I'm trying to get a shot of LaBertie on vacation at the volleyball game without my hands in it. Oh, and lighting and shadows or whatever, you know. Now, here's the impossible thing. And this is just, this is really Delta and really her mom. Okay. These two with these horseshoes. All right. Go ahead and show
1:27:14 Dax Shepard? Monty this. This is.
1:27:20 Dax Shepard? Of course, she had a whole outfit for him. He's got a skirt, a bib, a cardigan, a hat.
1:27:28 Dax Shepard? Shit all over his face.
1:27:31 Speaker 01 Oh, my God, I want to cry.
1:27:33 Dax Shepard? And I can only imagine what the other parents think of me who showed up late. I'm on TV and I spent the whole time doing a photo shoot with La Bearte. I'm missing huge place. People are cheering. I'm like, what? What happened?
1:27:49 Speaker 01 Wait, he looks so happy.
1:27:52 Dax Shepard? He's kind of pointing to Delta. That's actually Delta just above.
1:27:56 Speaker 01 Right there?
1:27:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, that's her at the front of the net. Okay, now here's the part where it's like, you know, some people just have charmed lives. So it's, it's little, it's 10 year olds playing volleyball.
1:28:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:28:08 Dax Shepard? Nobody's getting their serve over.
1:28:09 Speaker 01 Oh, sure.
1:28:10 Dax Shepard? I would say realistically 90% of the serves don't make it over.
1:28:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:28:17 Dax Shepard? Delta steps up for her very first serve and I'm like, you know, no way she's getting it over. She started playing on Monday.
1:28:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:28:24 Dax Shepard? She gets it over perfectly.
1:28:28 Dax Shepard? They get it back. The other team returns it and then it falls flat. But I'm like, oh, my God. I'm like, I'm so excited. Her next time up, four in a row over, scores three points.
1:28:41 Speaker 01 I, I'm not, I'm not surprised. She's a natural at everything. Oh, my God.
1:28:51 Dax Shepard? And like, it's, there's a lot in there. There's like Eckhart Tolle, power now. I don't know what it is, but it's like, I would have gone in there like it had been so important to me that I was good.
1:29:00 Speaker 01 Right.
1:29:01 Dax Shepard? And she didn't really go in there with that. I think she went in there to have fun with her new friends. And then she was great. And then she like.
1:29:07 Speaker 01 Her focus was her friend's vacation.
1:29:12 Speaker 01 Oh my God.
1:29:13 Dax Shepard? I couldn't believe it. There were three other girls out of 25 or
1:29:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:29:19 Dax Shepard? 26, each have four alternates, whatever, a lot of girls.
1:29:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:29:22 Dax Shepard? There were really only four girls the entire night that served it over more than two times in a row.
1:29:27 Speaker 01 Wow, that's so exciting.
1:29:31 Dax Shepard? Yes, I couldn't believe, and then when a ball came her way and she got it like, and then they, they won 2-0. It was best two out of three and they won their first game, they won 2-0.
1:29:40 Speaker 01 I'm so proud of her. I'm so proud Liberty got to watch that.
1:29:43 Dax Shepard? It's incredible. She can be athletic with that horseshoe so far up her ass.
1:29:47 Speaker 01 No, it's not luck, it's skill and it's passion.
1:29:51 Dax Shepard? Kristin went to her first baseball game and hit a homerun.
1:29:54 Speaker 01 But maybe that's also skill. Why can't?
1:29:56 Dax Shepard? Well, clearly they have skill.
1:29:58 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:29:59 Dax Shepard? Obviously.
1:29:59 Speaker 01 I think it's just hidden talents.
1:30:02 Dax Shepard? I think there's something kind of cool and metaphysical happening.
1:30:05 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:30:06 Dax Shepard? I think there's like karmic rewards for being, her priority is probably for everyone else to shine and the other girls on the team. I don't know, there's something suspicious. You just don't go to your first time ever trying something and you're like, third or fourth best person.
1:30:21 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
1:30:23 Dax Shepard? Oh, and it's so cute watching girls play. I love it because every time someone messes up, which is almost all the time. Everyone's like, good job, Carol, right? And even when it's like they did, they would get a volley going and now you're really, you're invested. It's like, oh my, and there's all, oh my God, they got it, they got it. And then someone shits the bed.
1:30:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, of course, yeah.
1:30:42 Dax Shepard? Boys, a hundred percent of boys are like, Michael, please.
1:30:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:30:47 Dax Shepard? Wake up.
1:30:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, upset.
1:30:50 Dax Shepard? That's just like how boys are. But these girls are so supportive and kind to each other and everyone left in a great mood and no one felt bad if they didn't do good. And it was, it was delightful. I had a blast at this volleyball. I cannot wait. First I was like, oh boy, we got volleyball across town.
1:31:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:31:06 Dax Shepard? Twice a week now. No, I can't wait to go.
1:31:09 Speaker 01 Oh, exciting. I want to go to a game.
1:31:11 Dax Shepard? Oh, you should.
1:31:12 Speaker 01 I'll bring Liberty. I bet Liberty's not going to want to miss it. You're, I'm sorry, but you're.
1:31:17 Dax Shepard? Back to, so now that's not even my complaint yet.
1:31:19 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:31:20 Dax Shepard? So that was the game. Right. And then I drive her to school this morning and Liberty's with her on the seat. And then we get out of the car and she's like, okay, um, you'll keep Liberty with you all day today. And I was like, uh, yeah. And she's like, yeah, he doesn't, he's on vacation. It's you that you like, you can't just leave him. So I'm like, okay.
1:31:40 Speaker 01 She has a lot of ideas about vacation.
1:31:42 Dax Shepard? I'm like, I'm gonna put him on the bed.
1:31:43 Speaker 01 Of course.
1:31:44 Dax Shepard? It's a great vacation if you ask me, if you could lay in bed all day.
1:31:46 Speaker 01 But he does sit a lot.
1:31:48 Dax Shepard? She was very specific that I needed to like incorporate him into my day. So here I am with Liberty. Like you and I were coming to the, uh, to the studio.
1:31:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:31:58 Dax Shepard? I was like, oh, fuck, I gotta, I forgot Liberty. And I had to run in the house now and be late.
1:32:03 Speaker 01 I thought you ran in to get him to return him, but I was like, no, no, he should still hang out with Delta for some time.
1:32:09 Dax Shepard? Oh, no, he's gonna go see, uh, another one battle after another.
1:32:13 Speaker 01 Sing it again.
1:32:14 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, with Larry Traline.
1:32:16 Speaker 01 Oh, are you going to the best.
1:32:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. First time at the Vista.
1:32:19 Speaker 01 Oh, you'll love it. Um, okay. Can you take a picture of him in the seat?
1:32:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you must. Oh, we were having fun with that. You know, there's that, um, I think you should leave sketch where he says there's shit on the receipt.
1:32:33 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:32:34 Dax Shepard? And then he's like, let's, someone goes, let's, let's get out of here. This place is covered in shit. So we were walking into class on the sidewalk and we were saying, Liberty is covered in shit.
1:32:49 Speaker 01 I can't believe the outfit she put him in.
1:32:52 Dax Shepard? I'm sure he'll be in four or five others before he comes back.
1:32:55 Speaker 01 I was really not expecting to see an outfit on him and she made it so quick. I mean, I left at like two o'clock and.
1:33:03 Dax Shepard? And she's even explaining to me like, um, yeah, so this is Ken's cardigan, but I put it on backwards. It looks more chic backwards. Like, so that was actually in reverse.
1:33:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, it looked so good.
1:33:14 Dax Shepard? Yeah, he looked great in a sequined dress.
1:33:17 Speaker 01 I feel unethical at this point. Um, bringing him back. Like I, I think she needs to adopt him.
1:33:25 Speaker 01 I think I have to give, I think it's time for me to put him up for adoption to her only.
1:33:32 Dax Shepard? Well, as the parent who lives in a house with too much stuff, if you want to keep him in here as well, that's also.
1:33:38 Speaker 01 I, I, I know, I know. I understand where you're coming from as the grandparent.
1:33:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we, I mean, the, we just, I don't know if we can be tending to yet another.
1:33:49 Speaker 01 I just.
1:33:49 Dax Shepard? With this, well, attention to detail.
1:33:52 Speaker 01 I just though, like, I'll never be able to unsee him in that outfit, really living like his best life.
1:33:59 Dax Shepard? Can you see if I did get back in the show business and I'm walking into pitch projects at like Warner Brothers and I'm entering with three or four stuffies? Like I grew with me and La Shit T and the whole gang.
1:34:10 Speaker 01 Say his name proper. Okay? I did, it is kind of funny though, cause last night I was thinking, I also was thinking like, oh, like that was so sweet that Delta wanted to like, play with him and, and I already had the thought. I was like, she's, she, she should just keep him like, it's, you know, I should give her that.
1:34:31 Dax Shepard? And now you see what kind of steward she is of it.
1:34:33 Speaker 01 Well, and then this, yeah, it's just like fully irresponsible for me to be like, that's mine and just leave it sitting on this shelf when it's living a big life with her.
1:34:42 Dax Shepard? That's kind of what happened with how Bree got Bilby.
1:34:46 Speaker 01 Who's Bilby?
1:34:48 Dax Shepard? Bilbo, um, Mac.
1:34:49 Speaker 01 Oh, oh.
1:34:51 Dax Shepard? It was someone else's dog that she would babysit.
1:34:54 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:34:54 Dax Shepard? And she'd be out in a sweater at the beach with Bilby, you know, and the person was finally like, this, this is.
1:35:02 Speaker 01 It's not fair.
1:35:03 Dax Shepard? She's doing a.
1:35:04 Speaker 01 Better job.
1:35:05 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:35:06 Speaker 01 Yeah. As, as a parent, you gotta know when you're not doing a good job.
1:35:11 Dax Shepard? I hope no one does a better job with Delta. I can, I do not want to give her back.
1:35:15 Speaker 01 I don't know. I mean, I guess you gotta keep that in mind.
1:35:17 Dax Shepard? I'm not, I, I'm not open to it yet. Talk to me in some time, maybe when she's. Fully hormonal.
1:35:23 Speaker 01 Hitting the teens.
1:35:25 Dax Shepard? Yes.
1:35:25 Speaker 01 Oh my God. Well, I am. Can you send me that picture, please?
1:35:29 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, of course.
1:35:30 Speaker 01 What a great day. What a great day. Yeah.
1:35:34 Dax Shepard? He's done more in the last 14 hours than he did his previous 20 years on this planet.
1:35:40 Speaker 01 Well, I don't know. He spent a lot of time in my parents' basement doing God knows what. Obviously, that's why he looks like that.
1:35:46 Dax Shepard? That's why he's covered.
1:35:47 Speaker 01 That was his like naughty era, obviously.
1:35:50 Dax Shepard? His Rumspringa?
1:35:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:35:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah. But even when you got him, would I be right to assume you got him as a valuable, collectible item? You weren't playing.
1:35:59 Speaker 01 I was not playing with him. No.
1:36:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
1:36:00 Speaker 01 No, I was not.
1:36:01 Dax Shepard? So he probably honestly did get more playing in.
1:36:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:36:04 Dax Shepard? Yesterday.
1:36:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:36:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:36:06 Speaker 01 He did.
1:36:07 Dax Shepard? That's a hopeful story. Like, don't rule off that you might have like the most playful.
1:36:11 Speaker 01 In your older years.
1:36:13 Dax Shepard? Yeah, in the twilight of your life.
1:36:15 Speaker 01 Yeah. I mean, he lost his ta- I kind of feel like when he was in my parents' basement, it was like the height of his addiction.
1:36:22 Dax Shepard? Mm hmm.
1:36:23 Speaker 01 You know, he lost his tag. He got covered and shit.
1:36:26 Dax Shepard? Yeah, he was doing, he was.
1:36:28 Speaker 01 Naughty.
1:36:29 Dax Shepard? He was doing sexual acts.
1:36:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:36:32 Dax Shepard? For drugs.
1:36:32 Speaker 01 Probably with the like, um, I mean, there were some other Beanie Babies down there. And then there was like some, like a cabbage patch.
1:36:39 Dax Shepard? Oh, they're nasty.
1:36:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, they're.
1:36:41 Dax Shepard? They still poop in their diapers.
1:36:44 Speaker 01 Oh, maybe that explains it. So, you know, but I feel like now he's.
1:36:49 Dax Shepard? Someone said in the comments that you and I are just, we've gotten too gross. They were like, you guys are just disgusting now. I think something about maybe my, getting my prostate examined.
1:36:59 Speaker 01 Whatever. That's real.
1:37:01 Dax Shepard? That's medical, man.
1:37:02 Speaker 01 People have to get their prostate.
1:37:03 Dax Shepard? You don't like medicine?
1:37:04 Speaker 01 Exactly. You don't like science?
1:37:06 Dax Shepard? You don't be saying that when it saves your life.
1:37:08 Speaker 01 Exactly. That's right. Um, all right. Well.
1:37:11 Dax Shepard? Oh, that was an accident for the listener. I just knocked the liberty off of the armrest. Oh, boy. Okay.
1:37:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, you gotta remember, he's smaller than Groove.
1:37:23 Dax Shepard? I'm gonna let him play with my phone, because you know how kids love it.
1:37:25 Speaker 01 Screen time.
1:37:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that'll distract him.
1:37:27 Speaker 01 I wonder what he's gonna watch. I hope he doesn't watch porn. I hope he doesn't slip into that, you know? I mean, he's allowed, but like, I just don't wanna, you know?
1:37:35 Dax Shepard? I understand.
1:37:36 Speaker 01 He's sober now, and he's...
1:37:39 Dax Shepard? Could be a trigger. Yeah, it could bring back some of the shame.
1:37:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, like, if you look at your phone and it's like, cabbage patch, diaper, search.
1:37:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:37:49 Speaker 01 You know it's bad.
1:37:51 Dax Shepard? And then he'd get into all Jennifer Aniston's liquor in front of us.
1:37:56 Speaker 01 Reminder that tomorrow Beth's Dead is out everywhere.
1:38:00 Dax Shepard? Guys, go to Patreon. How do people even do this?
1:38:03 Speaker 01 Well, no, they don't have to. Tomorrow it's out, like, anywhere you get your podcasts. It's regs, it's out.
1:38:10 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:38:11 Speaker 01 But, it'll, it's out week to week, and if you start listening... Yeah, if you're like, "Ooh, I want more, I wanna binge," you can go to patreon.com/bethstead and you get the whole thing.
1:38:22 Dax Shepard? Ah, can't wait to hear the results of this. This is exciting.
1:38:24 Speaker 01 Yeah. Cass.
1:38:27 Dax Shepard? Cass.
1:38:28 Speaker 01 Cass, okay. Where can you find playgrounds with the big blue box, boxes, you know? Um, you can just search Imagination Playground.
1:38:37 Dax Shepard? Okay, that's...
1:38:38 Speaker 01 And then you can search your area.
1:38:39 Dax Shepard? You pop in your zip code, maybe?
1:38:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, you can see where you can go, play with those. Um, Junk Playgrounds, we said were big in the UK. Um, they're not as big in the UK as they once were, sadly. Many are struggling to stay open due to funding cuts. While the concept originated in the UK after World War II and was popular for a time, austerity measures, lack of funding for youth services, and a move toward risk-averse traditional playgrounds have led to the closure or reduction of many. However, they still exist in some areas and have experienced a small resurgence in some places with a growing number of adventure playgrounds popping up in the US as well.
1:39:20 Dax Shepard? Okay, great.
1:39:21 Speaker 01 That's good. Okay, well, according to the internet, you cannot get an STD from a lazy river.
1:39:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
1:39:30 Speaker 01 I would like to do some further research.
1:39:32 Dax Shepard? Okay. You want that to be true for some reason. You feel safer in a world where you could get an STD.
1:39:42 Speaker 01 In a lazy river.
1:39:43 Dax Shepard? Did I already tell you that? You go ahead.
1:39:45 Speaker 01 No, that's.
1:39:46 Dax Shepard? This is now, I don't want to get back into the.
1:39:48 Speaker 01 Oh, boy.
1:39:49 Dax Shepard? But I tell you about when I was in the hospital and the doctor said, we were in there by ourselves.
1:39:56 Speaker 01 Wait, what?
1:39:56 Dax Shepard? Oh, no one will like this. No.
1:39:57 Speaker 01 Why?
1:39:58 Dax Shepard? Okay, they're not, we're in there with this doctor. I don't know him.
1:40:00 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:40:01 Dax Shepard? And he's trying to figure out what's going on with me and my prostate and everything. And he says, you know, anything we say in here is between you and I, doesn't leave this room. And I immediately know where he's going when he says that.
1:40:15 Speaker 01 Why?
1:40:15 Dax Shepard? And he says, is there any chance you have an STD?
1:40:20 Dax Shepard? And I said, oh, I wish.
1:40:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:40:27 Speaker 01 Sure.
1:40:27 Dax Shepard? I wish, I wish, but no, it's not an STD.
1:40:32 Speaker 01 I mean, if you had, you have been in a, in rivers.
1:40:38 Dax Shepard? Lazy river, but as we now know, even if I had been in a lazy river, I wouldn't be.
1:40:42 Speaker 01 You've been in regular lake.
1:40:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah, no problem.
1:40:47 Speaker 01 I'm gonna do some research.
1:40:48 Dax Shepard? Okay, so you'd feel more comfortable because I think I even said, I think there's a lot of people that blame STDs on a lot of things that are not realistic, like a toilet seat and this and that. And really, they've just been hanky panky.
1:41:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's transmitted through intimate sexual contact.
1:41:05 Dax Shepard? Not sitting on a toilet.
1:41:06 Speaker 01 Not through water.
1:41:07 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:41:08 Speaker 01 I mean, on a toilet seat, though.
1:41:10 Dax Shepard? No, you don't, if you had a big, open gash on your butt cheek.
1:41:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:41:14 Dax Shepard? And then a big dump of the STD was sitting on the seat, wet.
1:41:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:41:20 Dax Shepard? But get real.
1:41:22 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:41:22 Dax Shepard? That's not gonna happen.
1:41:23 Speaker 01 What if a woman put her vagina straight on the seat?
1:41:27 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:41:28 Speaker 01 And secreted some stuff?
1:41:30 Dax Shepard? Mm hmm.
1:41:31 Speaker 01 Okay?
1:41:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:41:32 Speaker 01 And, and, and got the goo on there.
1:41:37 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:41:37 Speaker 01 And then the next person did the same thing. And then the first person had an STD that you'd get it.
1:41:43 Dax Shepard? If it was woman to woman, and the second woman also rubbed her vagina all over the seat.
1:41:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:41:48 Dax Shepard? Maybe. But a lot of these STDs, when they get airborne, they die.
1:41:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's fat. It has to be really fat.
1:41:55 Dax Shepard? Yeah, so, I mean, you're talking about two women grinding on the outside of the toilet.
1:42:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:42:03 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:42:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, ew.
1:42:07 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:42:08 Speaker 01 I mean, I'm just saying it could.
1:42:10 Dax Shepard? And I don't want to generalize, but I don't think it's a ton of women claiming they got an STD from a toilet seat again. I think it's more men and I don't think they have a vagina to rub on there.
1:42:19 Speaker 01 Oh, they're saying it because they cheated.
1:42:21 Dax Shepard? Exactly.
1:42:24 Speaker 01 Oh, my god.
1:42:25 Dax Shepard? I don't know, hon. I must have got it at the urinal.
1:42:28 Speaker 01 Oh, that's, yeah.
1:42:30 Dax Shepard? Well, you didn't even know where I was at from the whole beginning of this conversation?
1:42:32 Speaker 01 No, I did.
1:42:33 Dax Shepard? Oh, you did?
1:42:33 Speaker 01 I did then, but, yeah.
1:42:35 Dax Shepard? Now you're really, yeah.
1:42:39 Dax Shepard? I don't know, hon. I went in a lazy river. First of all, when did you go in a lazy river? On my golf trip.
1:42:46 Speaker 01 I mean.
1:42:49 Speaker 01 Maybe. Okay, so TBD on that.
1:42:54 Dax Shepard? Well, okay.
1:42:55 Speaker 01 No, no, I have to deliver the correct facts and you can't get it.
1:42:59 Dax Shepard? You don't want to get sued by a lazy river manufacturer.
1:43:02 Speaker 01 But I also don't want to get sued by someone who did get one in a lazy river.
1:43:06 Dax Shepard? They didn't. There's chlorine in there. They got a swimsuit on.
1:43:08 Speaker 01 It does say chlorine.
1:43:10 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:43:10 Speaker 01 Yeah. Okay.
1:43:13 Speaker 01 Oh, fuck.
1:43:14 Dax Shepard? There was, I remember when I was younger and herpes was all the rage.
1:43:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:43:17 Dax Shepard? Because herpes really hit the scene in the 80s. That's what was like all over the news. This new thing, herpes, herpes.
1:43:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:43:24 Dax Shepard? And I remember they would say you could get herpes from a hot tub.
1:43:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:43:28 Dax Shepard? But I don't know if that's true.
1:43:31 Speaker 01 They would say that. They, maybe that's where all this is coming from.
1:43:35 Dax Shepard? Herpes from a hot tub?
1:43:38 Dax Shepard? That'd be a good band name.
1:43:39 Speaker 01 It would be.
1:43:39 Dax Shepard? Herpes from a hot tub.
1:43:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:43:41 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Herpes is cute. It's a cute name. A lot of these are bad.
1:43:45 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:43:46 Dax Shepard? You know?
1:43:46 Speaker 01 Gonorrhea.
1:43:47 Dax Shepard? Gonorrhea.
1:43:48 Speaker 01 Chlamydia is not great.
1:43:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Yeah. It's gonorrhea. Plug your ears, people who are sensitive. There's something about the word gonorrhea where I think I can smell it.
1:43:57 Speaker 01 Ew!
1:43:57 Dax Shepard? Right?
1:43:58 Speaker 01 That's disgusting.
1:43:59 Dax Shepard? But do you agree?
1:43:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, I agree.
1:44:01 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:44:03 Speaker 01 Chlamydia.
1:44:05 Dax Shepard? That's kind of cute. Koala bears get it.
1:44:07 Speaker 01 It sounds like a flower. Like, it could have been a flower.
1:44:10 Dax Shepard? Yeah, she got me. I got her a dozen chlamydis.
1:44:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, syphilis.
1:44:17 Dax Shepard? That one sounds rough. Syphilis.
1:44:20 Speaker 01 Syphilis almost is an automotopia.
1:44:22 Dax Shepard? Uh huh. And have you seen what happens to the, like, have you seen the skulls from the people who died of syphilis in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds? It eats away all the frontal, uh...
1:44:36 Speaker 01 Brain?
1:44:36 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:44:37 Speaker 01 White matter?
1:44:39 Dax Shepard? The bone, the bone. It eats, it's all like, it looks like, um, not even Swiss cheese, like, termites.
1:44:44 Speaker 01 Ew!
1:44:45 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, it's rough, rough, rough, rough.
1:44:48 Speaker 01 I mean, people do need to be careful. Like, I don't want people to go in lazy river, river.
1:44:54 Dax Shepard? No, go in lazy rivers, they're really fun and they're safe.
1:44:56 Speaker 01 Get syphilis. I have an unfortunate thing that happened. I was supposed to check a fact and I didn't.
1:45:01 Dax Shepard? Oh, what was it?
1:45:02 Speaker 01 But I, I tried to check it online and I couldn't find it. And so I needed to look in her book. And I meant to go find the book and I didn't. Okay, but it was, it was the stat for the experiment she talked about where people, like, students took a, some students took a test in silence, some went, I mean, there was music, some did a puzzle, and then there were percentages about outcomes. And she said the one she was saying was definitely wrong, but that they're in the book. And yet I did not.
1:45:34 Dax Shepard? That's okay.
1:45:35 Speaker 01 Retrieve them.
1:45:36 Dax Shepard? That's all right.
1:45:36 Speaker 01 Sophia would have done it.
1:45:37 Dax Shepard? I still like you.
1:45:38 Speaker 01 Okay, thank you.
1:45:39 Dax Shepard? You've paid no reputational price for that.
1:45:42 Speaker 01 Thank you. Um, and that's it.
1:45:45 Dax Shepard? That's everything.
1:45:46 Speaker 01 I've been playing with my Gemo, the cute toy she gave us.
1:45:50 Dax Shepard? I've been playing with my gonorrhea.
1:45:52 Speaker 01 No.
1:45:52 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:45:57 Dax Shepard? Can you play with your gonorrhea? I've never had gonorrhea, shockingly.
1:46:02 Speaker 01 What have you had?
1:46:04 Dax Shepard? I mean, I guess I could have had it and then I had antibiotics or something else and didn't ever...
1:46:09 Speaker 01 No, I said, what have you had?
1:46:11 Dax Shepard? Oh. I'm not gonna talk about it.
1:46:19 Dax Shepard? I only tell you stuff I haven't had.
1:46:23 Speaker 01 Okay, that's it.
1:46:24 Dax Shepard? All right, love you.
1:46:25 Speaker 01 Love you.
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