Pod Insights Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard Armchair Anonymous: Wild Card X About this episode Dax and Monica talk to Armcherries! In today's episode, Armcherries tell us a crazy story.
Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript 11,995 words · 10 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 Anonymous, our favorite prompt. Wild card.
0:07 Speaker 01 We say our favorite prompt pretty much every time, but we do really like wildcard.
0:12 Dax Shepard? I think I say it about three.
0:15 Speaker 01 I know, but we have to be.
0:16 Dax Shepard? I have three favorite prompts.
0:18 Speaker 01 Okay.
0:18 Dax Shepard? What are they? Go.
0:20 Speaker 01 Uh, masturb- I mean.
0:22 Dax Shepard? Clean it up.
0:23 Speaker 01 Unexpected.
0:24 Dax Shepard? Well, it was just masturbation stories.
0:25 Speaker 01 I know.
0:25 Dax Shepard? Do we do that?
0:26 Speaker 01 This is basically that.
0:27 Dax Shepard? So yeah, then I was like.
0:28 Speaker 01 Ew, okay.
0:29 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
0:30 Speaker 01 Okay, this kid's show.
0:32 Dax Shepard? Oh, that's right, it is a kid's show.
0:33 Speaker 01 Unexpected orgasm.
0:35 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
0:35 Speaker 01 Shit yourself.
0:36 Dax Shepard? Unauthorized evacuation and wildcard.
0:38 Speaker 01 And wildcard.
0:39 Dax Shepard? And mostly wildcard, just because they often include.
0:41 Speaker 01 One of those.
0:42 Dax Shepard? The aforementioned prompts. Does this one have any duty? No, I don't think we have any duty.
0:47 Speaker 01 Oh, then don't listen.
0:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah, don't listen. But this one has maggots.
0:50 Speaker 01 Oh.
0:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah, maggots are always good.
0:52 Speaker 01 Oh.
0:53 Dax Shepard? Okay, please enjoy wildcard. We get support from Quince.
0:58 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.
1:07 Dax Shepard? I'm fully there. The second it dips below seventy, 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 fifty to eighty percent less than similar brands. We're talking a hundred percent Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at sixty dollars.
1:30 Speaker 01 Sixty dollars. Sixty dollars for cashmere that you'd expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag. It's amazing. Gets me every time. It really shouldn't be real, but it is because they go straight to the factories, they skip the middlemen, and they just hand you the savings. The stuff isn't trendy. It's the kind of pieces you grab over and over because they work every time.
1:48 Dax Shepard? The hundred percent Mongolian cashmere sweaters for me are it. When I look at Steve McQueen, this man owned a couple of sweaters he wore all the time, and he looks iconic.
1:57 Speaker 01 It's a uniform. And Quince isn't just about the clothes. They have hotel quality bedding, cookware, bath essentials, thoughtfully designed furniture. You can really go there and outfit your entire apartment or house. So if you're in need of any kind of fall refresh at home, too, same quality, same attention to detail for every corner of your life.
2:16 Dax Shepard? Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from AG1. Fall is that time when your body and mind are getting ready for the winter. You're settling in, bracing for the cold. Your body's already running a deficit from the shorter days and broken sleep patterns. You don't want a nutrient deficit stacked on top of that, too.
2:52 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.
3:05 Dax Shepard? AG1 Next Gen has 75 plus ingredients, vitamins, minerals, pre and probiotics, superfoods, backed by four separate gold standard clinical trials. Key nutrient levels improved with three months of consistent use.
3:19 Speaker 01 That's the part people miss. It's not a one day fix. It's what happens when you stay consistent.
3:23 Dax Shepard? It's an easy, everyday thing. I've added it to my morning routine and I'm going to tell you, I actually love the taste of it. It's like Pavlovian. I drink it and I know I'm going to get that little vitamin buzz.
3:33 Speaker 01 Well, that's also the thing. When you do it first thing in the morning, you already feel kind of self-esteem because you're like, I already did something good for myself.
3:40 Dax Shepard? Yes. Go to drinkag1.com/dax and for a limited time, get a free immunity bundle, including a bottle of omega three fish oil and a bottle of vitamin D3K2 with your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/dax. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Armchair Expert sent you.
4:25 Speaker 02 Hello. Hello.
4:27 Dax Shepard? Lydia, how are you doing today?
4:29 Speaker 02 I'm doing great. How are you guys?
4:31 Dax Shepard? Good. Where are you?
4:32 Speaker 02 I'm in Portland, Maine.
4:33 Dax Shepard? Okay, continuing our Northeast tour. These things are really suspicious.
4:38 Speaker 02 Eerie.
4:39 Dax Shepard? It's been a day of the Northeast.
4:41 Speaker 02 Have you had anyone in Maine? No.
4:43 Dax Shepard? Not Maine, but we just got off with a New Hampshirean.
4:46 Speaker 02 And I'm dying to go to Maine. It kind of popped off on social media this summer. Like, everyone's in Maine. Oh, it looks so beautiful.
4:54 Dax Shepard? I think it's the next Hudson Valley. It's that vibe.
4:56 Speaker 02 I want to go to both places.
4:57 Dax Shepard? Okay, great. Lydia, can Monty stay at your spot while she visits?
5:02 Speaker 02 Oh, my God, of course. I'll give you all the recs. There are so many good restaurants and places to go. Amazing.
5:09 Dax Shepard? And do you serve wine in the home?
5:10 Speaker 02 Oh, yes. There are so many cute wine bars. But you will be taking care of here.
5:18 Dax Shepard? Oh, sign her up. Okay, Lydia, you have a wild card story, which means we know nothing about anything.
5:24 Speaker 02 This story actually happens in New England. It's not Maine, but actually Cape Cod. Growing up, my family and I would go to Cape Cod to visit my grandparents. They lived on a lake, grew up going there. It's really gorgeous. So, the story is in 2010. I'm about nine at the time. So, on the lake, there's a lot of different guided tours you can go on. So, you can go kayaking, paddle boarding. And we had tried basically all of them up until that point, except for learning how to sail a boat. Oh, boy.
5:52 Dax Shepard? Okay.
5:53 Speaker 02 There was a kids' sailing camp that I really wanted to go on. I'd grown up watching all the kids learn how to sail in the lake. So, as soon as I was old enough, I asked my parents for an early birthday present, and they signed me up. So, my sister and I, ready to go.
6:07 Dax Shepard? At nine.
6:08 Speaker 02 Which seems way too young to be put on a sailboat.
6:10 Dax Shepard? How old's the sister, older or younger?
6:12 Speaker 02 She's two and a half years older than me. So, she was like 11 at the time.
6:15 Dax Shepard? Neither of you equipped for a sea voyage, but let's go.
6:18 Speaker 02 We start the camp. It's a week-long day camp, and the winds are only high in the afternoon. So, it was after lunch to dinnertime. That's when we were out in the water. So, the first half of camp, the counselor was in the boat with us. It was like a small 10 to 15-foot sailboat, nothing crazy.
6:33 Dax Shepard? Did they call it a sunfit?
6:34 Speaker 02 There were sunfishes. This was like a little bit bigger than that.
6:37 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay.
6:38 Speaker 02 So about six of us kids could fit in one comfortably. The ages ranged anywhere from, I think I was the youngest at nine to thirteen, maybe. And the whole camp was run by a bunch of sixteen year olds. So really starting off not great. We started the week, had the counselor on the boat, learned the ropes, learned how to do everything, felt pretty comfortable. And then the second half of the week, all of the counselors left and they were in a skiff, puttering around, following us. So we were left to our own devices. And I was excited for the freedom. I was nine. I hadn't experienced much of that before. The last day of camp was what they called Pirate Day. It sounds exactly like what it was. We were able to go around to the other boats on the lake and try to capsize their boat and like take them over.
7:21 Dax Shepard? Oh, fun.
7:22 Speaker 02 Really jazzed. I was a really competitive kid and our group had gotten pretty close during that week that we were at camp. And by Thursday, we decided we needed to practice. The way that we thought it was best to practice was to intentionally capsize, so like flip over our own boat, practice getting it back up.
7:38 Dax Shepard? Little dress rehearsal for the big war.
7:41 Speaker 02 Exactly. So we spent the entire time flipping over the boat. We had been doing it all afternoon. It went really smoothly mostly. And then the last twenty minutes of camp, we decided to do one more before we were called back in.
7:52 Dax Shepard? Here's my public service announcement. Never last one. If someone says, all right, last trip down the hill when you're snowboarding, call it last session on the track, call it.
8:01 Speaker 02 Last stunt.
8:02 Dax Shepard? Anything last.
8:04 Speaker 02 We don't need to do it again.
8:05 Dax Shepard? It's a jinx.
8:06 Speaker 02 We should definitely have called it about twenty minutes prior to this moment. We were all tired. We were all cranky. We had decided to do it one more time. And the way that you capsize a smaller sailboat is you pull in all the lines. So there's no loops of rope hanging in the water.
8:19 Dax Shepard? Okay.
8:19 Speaker 02 And you all shove to one side. So we wait for the boat to kind of catch and start flipping on its own. Think of the boat at this point, kind of horizontal in the water, the sails like lying flat on the top.
8:29 Dax Shepard? Yep.
8:30 Speaker 02 At this point, typically, we would push off and swim away and let it do its thing. But I had seen a lot of the older girls doing like this thing where they'd climb over the top and end on the bottom of the boat. So they were completely dry. This was not condoned by the counselors. This is not what they taught us to do, but I thought they were really cool. So I really wanted to do it. Oh, cool.
8:48 Dax Shepard? I thought you were gonna say that the trick was gonna be to like, hold on to the mast at the last minute and get flung back up with the boat.
8:54 Speaker 02 That would be insane. We were told very sternly not to touch the mast. So we all steered pretty clear of the sail and the mast. Those were the fancy parts of the boats and we didn't want to break them. All the rest of the girls, including my sister, so four of them swam away and I'm kind of just hanging on like you would to like a monkey bar with my hands on the top edge of the boat with the other girl that decided to stay with me.
9:15 Dax Shepard? And is your abdomen laying on the bottom side of the boat or on the top side of the boat?
9:20 Speaker 02 We're on the hollow end. So like where we would sit, I was kind of dangling with my feet in the water, but everything else was above the water. I was gonna follow this girl's lead and as soon as she started climbing over, I started climbing over. I realized pretty quickly, this was a lot harder than it looked like and I did not have the upper body strength at nine years old to do this. Yeah.
9:38 Dax Shepard? Uh oh.
9:39 Speaker 02 I decided to bail. I'm like, I'm gonna cut my losses. I'll try it again tomorrow. Pretty rational for a nine-year-old. I was a little bit embarrassed. I let go, but I hadn't realized that at this moment, the girl that was in charge of the main sail line had not brought in the line all the way. So there was kind of a mess of ropes underneath.
9:57 Dax Shepard? Uh oh. Are you gonna leave? Monica just made such an abrupt movement that it looked like she might depart.
10:02 Speaker 02 So I let go and I fall into this loop of rope and I didn't realize this at the time because it was pretty slack. It wasn't fully capsized yet. It was just laying in the water and it was kind of up above on my like upper body. So my life jacket was not letting it touch my skin. So I couldn't feel it. So I start trying to swim away and I realized I'm not getting very far. And as I kind of leaned forward to start swimming, the rope slips up and now it's stuck around my neck. Oh. It wasn't super tight at this moment. So I was like, oh, I can just probably take it up over my head like you would the sweatshirt or shirt. I would be fine. But what I didn't realize is the last little bit of it fully turning like a 180, the boat goes pretty
10:43 Speaker 02 quickly. So as soon as I realized where it was on my body, I couldn't get it over my head. Oh. So I was kind of stuck. I'm need help. So I look at my sister who's not paying attention at the time. And I like call over to her. I'm like, uh, help. I can still talk at this point. I'm all fine. And she realizes we might need the counselors. Let's call them over. So all the girls kind of motioned for them to come over in their little boat. They're about 200 yards away. And this boat motor is really old and really small, so they don't move very fast. At this point, instead of staying in one place, I'm being dragged back by my neck towards the side of the boat. And I'm panicked a little bit, but I'm kind of in shock. I don't know what's going on.
11:25 Speaker 02 And pretty soon, the back of my head is kind of flush with the side of the boat. That's almost fully a 180. And the rope starts tightening and tightening and is not getting looser.
11:35 Dax Shepard? Oh my god.
11:37 Speaker 02 So I had my fingers like in between the rope, but at a certain point it got so tight that they kind of popped out. And I couldn't breathe at this point.
11:44 Dax Shepard? Oh, Jesus.
11:44 Speaker 02 And the water is maybe up to my chin. And I'm not fully panicked at this point. I'm just kind of like, keep your head above water. Keep breathing as much as you can. My sister, though, is fully in hysterics.
11:56 Dax Shepard? Yes. So helpful, isn't it?
11:58 Speaker 02 But also, how could she not? I don't blame her. And I talked to her before this and she was like, you looked like you were dying. Yes. I mean, you kind of were. I was like getting there.
12:07 Dax Shepard? You were on the road to death, for sure.
12:09 Speaker 02 Instead of saying, it's okay, we called for help. It's gonna be okay. She starts just screaming, don't die. Are you gonna die? Don't die.
12:17 Dax Shepard? Okay, now round the questioning.
12:19 Speaker 02 Do not die. That made me get way more scared than I ever was. I didn't realize at nine years old I could die.
12:25 Dax Shepard? Right, right.
12:26 Speaker 02 The boat was still about 100 yards away with all the counselors in it. And my sister's fully freaking out. The other girls are like, what the hell is going on?
12:33 Dax Shepard? And no one's attempting to loosen the tension on this rope.
12:36 Speaker 02 No, they're all kind of just staring in shock. But at this point, the rope starts dragging me underneath the water, rather than just keeping me above. So it was trying to bring me down to where the mast was, which was about 10 to 20 feet under the water, which was how tall it was. And at this point, only my nose and my eyes were above the water. And I was starting to swallow a lot of water. I was trying to cough it up. I didn't have enough air to cough it up. I start fully panicking. I'm kind of gasping in a lot of air and I can hear now that my ears are under the water, like the vibration of the boat coming towards me. So I know that help is on the way. I am turning blue at this point, my sister told me, and I was almost fully submerged.
13:18 Speaker 02 When the boat with the counselors pulls up and the lead counselor jumps in the water to try to cut the ropes underneath the boat.
13:26 Dax Shepard? Good. So someone has a knife.
13:27 Speaker 02 Very small pocket knives. These ropes are kind of thick and big. It was taking a while. I am now kind of starting to pass out a little bit. My vision's going. I'm getting kind of drowsy. I knew I would probably be okay, but in the back of my head, I just heard my sister's voice just screaming over and over again, like, don't die. And like, are you gonna die?
13:46 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
13:47 Speaker 02 So not helpful. But after it felt like another six hours, I felt the rope like slightly loosen around my neck. I start coughing up all the water. I get hoisted into the boat by all the counselors and I get brought back to the dock with my sister. Since we lived on the lake, they knew where we were at and my parents had heard all the commotion and come down to see if we're having a good time. They thought all the screaming was just kids having fun. My sister and myself are dropped off completely hysterical. I was crying at this point, coughing up a lot of water. And I had this massive rope burn from underneath one side of my ear all the way across to the other. And it was bruised. My whole body kind of hurt because I was just like straining against the water and like the rope.
14:30 Speaker 02 They tell my parents what happened. My parents were just so thankful that they could get there in time and I was fine and everything was okay. My parents thought I would be afraid of the water for the rest of my life. I wasn't. I asked to go back to camp the next day after I had calmed down.
14:45 Dax Shepard? You wanted to participate in Pirate Day?
14:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, I was so excited. It was like the big day. And they were like, okay, we'll walk with you and see how this goes. So they walked me over. The counselor was like, we don't want the risk on the water. You can come in our boat. We don't want you in a sailboat. And I was like, so fair. I totally get it. And come to find out, they thought my parents were gonna sue them. So that's why they were like so nice to me and my sister after that. They didn't know my parents weren't very litigious.
15:15 Dax Shepard? Was best that they didn't know.
15:17 Speaker 02 They were not gonna sue them. They realized it was just me being dumb and I was okay and everything worked out. But yeah, that's a story about how I almost died.
15:24 Speaker 01 Wow.
15:26 Dax Shepard? I hate those stories. Everyone's having fun and then we're not having fun.
15:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:29 Dax Shepard? Yeah, scary.
15:31 Speaker 01 I'm glad you made it.
15:33 Dax Shepard? Have you stuck with sailing? Are you still a sailor?
15:35 Speaker 02 I have never sailed since.
15:37 Dax Shepard? I find it scary, that whole like getting out on a boat for days. That's where you'll find my confidence and fearlessness ends.
15:45 Speaker 01 That's good. I'm glad it has an end.
15:47 Dax Shepard? Well, Lydia, I'm glad you made it. I'm glad the counselor had a knife.
15:51 Speaker 01 Yes, me too.
15:52 Dax Shepard? Telling all them going forward.
15:53 Speaker 01 I hope they start adding those into the boats at this point.
15:56 Dax Shepard? Me too.
15:57 Speaker 02 I honestly haven't seen the camp since, so I think I might have been the last year that this
16:01 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
16:02 Speaker 02 was put on. I think I might have scarred them all a little too much.
16:05 Speaker 01 Thank you for sharing that.
16:07 Dax Shepard? It's lovely to meet you.
16:08 Speaker 02 Thanks, guys.
16:09 Dax Shepard? Take care.
16:09 Speaker 01 Bye.
16:11 Speaker 03 Hello.
16:12 Dax Shepard? Hello. What fake name are we gonna go with?
16:15 Speaker 03 We are gonna go with Stacy, a shout out to my best friend, who I'm hoping will become a devoted listener once she hears this.
16:23 Speaker 01 We love this tactic.
16:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's a good tactic. It's flattery and light manipulation, but we like it.
16:30 Speaker 03 For sure. I'm surprised she doesn't already. I talk about it all the time.
16:33 Dax Shepard? So you have kind of a Tina Fey vibe. Have you heard that before?
16:37 Speaker 03 I have not, but I will take that because one of my coworkers loves Tina Fey.
16:43 Dax Shepard? Well, she's the queen on earth.
16:45 Speaker 01 She is.
16:45 Speaker 03 I love her. I actually did wanna say to Monica in particular that I am a PT.
16:51 Speaker 01 So we're already friends.
16:52 Speaker 03 Yes, exactly. I work exclusively with kids and I have a special interest in concussion.
16:58 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow. God, you guys should really go out for drinks.
17:01 Speaker 01 CTE plus PT, so many letters.
17:06 Speaker 03 I thought I have to share this because the number of times I hear you mention CTE on a podcast, I'm like, oh, this is right in my wheelhouse. I love talking about concussion.
17:14 Dax Shepard? What's the very most common way kids get concussions?
17:19 Speaker 03 It's typically sport related. I would say in the last few years, 90% of the kids that I've worked with have had concussions from sports injuries. A lot of hockey. We see a lot of that where it's from.
17:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Okay. You're in Canada.
17:33 Speaker 03 Yes.
17:36 Dax Shepard? As a Michigander, I know.
17:47 Dax Shepard? This episode is supported by Helix.
17:50 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.
18:00 Dax Shepard? That's the dream. You just described one of my ideal fall nights.
18:05 Speaker 01 I know. And thanks to Helix, my bed actually lives up to the vibe. All I had to do was take the Helix sleep quiz and within two minutes, they matched me to a mattress built for exactly how I sleep. I have a midnight mattress. It also has cooling technology, which I really.
18:21 Dax Shepard? Increasingly so.
18:22 Speaker 01 I need it. I have to have it. And I heard that you're supposed to sleep at a cold temp for optimal sleep. It's very, very helpful.
18:32 Dax Shepard? She is not wrong. I have one too, and it's been such a game changer for sleep. And I love that they make it so easy. Free shipping right to your door. And with their happy with Helix guarantee, you'll get a full 365 nights to try it. A whole year to live in that cozy. They've got over 20 mattress models. So no matter how you sleep, they've got one for you.
18:52 Speaker 01 And it's not just us saying it. Helix has been named the most awarded mattress brand by Forbes, Wired and more. You gotta try it for yourself.
18:59 Dax Shepard? Go to helixsleep.com/armchair for 20% off sitewide. That's helixsleep.com/armchair for 20% off sitewide. Helixsleep.com/armchair. We get support from our sponsor, Lilly. For adults with obesity or with excess weight and weight-related medical problems, it's time to find out about Foundo or for Gleepran. Foundo is a once-daily prescription GLP-1 medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off.
19:38 Speaker 04 Foundo should not be used with other GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Foundo is safe and effective for use in children. Don't take Foundo if you're allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had major area thyroid cancer or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Stop and call your doctor right away if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, or severe stomach pain. Serious side effects may include inflamed pancreas and gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes, if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills, and before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. Taking Foundo with an insulin or sulfonylurea may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and may cause kidney problems.
20:17 Speaker 04 Once-daily Foundo is available by prescription only in 0.8 mg, 2.5 mg, 5.5 mg, 9 mg, 14.5 mg, and 17.2 mg tablets. Learn more at foundo.lilly.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX. Now is perfect to talk to your doctor about Foundo.
20:35 Dax Shepard? We get support from Instagram teen accounts. So, we talk a lot on this show about how the world is different now than when we were growing up, and one of the biggest differences is obviously social media. And I think a lot of people wonder, okay, what's actually being done to make it safer for teenagers?
20:51 Speaker 01 Which is a fair question.
20:53 Dax Shepard? Yeah, so Instagram has got something called teen accounts, and they come with automatic protections built in by default. So, anyone between 13 and 17 is automatically placed into this experience. They get age-appropriate content settings, contact limits, so that by default, only people they're already connected to can message them. And time management tools, daily time limit reminders, and also sleep mode that mutes notifications from 10:00 PM to 7:00 AM.
21:19 Speaker 01 Sleep mode is genius.
21:20 Dax Shepard? Right? And here's the thing, for anyone under 16, a parent has to give permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. The guardrails are on, and Instagram keeps building new safety features to create age-appropriate experiences for teens.
21:35 Speaker 01 I am really glad Instagram's helping to give parents peace of mind with teen accounts.
21:39 Dax Shepard? Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.
21:48 Speaker 05 Confidence. It's listening to your gut. It's moving forward even when the path ahead is unclear. For nearly 160 years, Pacific Life has helped people keep their promises, building confidence for generations. Whether you're confident in your financial future, or just beginning to envision it, we're here to help. Ask a financial professional how. Pacific Life, the power of a promise. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.
22:26 Dax Shepard? Okay, so what is your wild card story?
22:29 Speaker 03 My story occurs over the course of about 18 months, from October 2009, when my son was seven months old, to about March of 2011. The timeline's fairly important. Key players, including my husband, we'll call him Logan, neighbors Jenny and her husband Johnny, and their next-door neighbors, we'll call them Candace and Neil.
22:54 Dax Shepard? Listen, Stacy, I'm applauding you. It's very hard to remember fake names. I find this one, whenever you were using someone's fake name, it's hard. So the fact that you have about seven to juggle is gonna be impressive.
23:04 Speaker 03 Hopefully I can land it. Candace knows Logan because Logan's family owns a very well-known restaurant in our city. Candace introduces Logan to Jenny, because Jenny's running an event where she needs some prizes. So Logan generously has his family donate some gift cards for this event that Jenny's running. Within a short period of time, Jenny Happens to be walking in the neighborhood and sees us on our front porch, stops by, introduces herself to me. So now I know who Jenny is. I'm seven months postpartum. I'm not super comfortable in my postpartum body. But Jenny is ultimately very friendly, neighborly, but she's not terribly threatening.
23:48 Speaker 03 Fast forward a few months to about May of two thousand and ten and I start seeing Jenny around the park. I'm now taking my over one year old son to the park. Jenny and I start hanging out. We spend a lot of time together. We text, we email. We confide in each other about our respective marriages and things that are going on in our lives. She's a primary school teacher with two kids of her own. It gets to the point where she generously offers to babysit my son so that Logan and I can go to Sunday baseball, which is a few hours every Sunday. This is great, right? I'm terrified. I'm a new mom. I don't like sending anyone in to look after my kid. This is costing me nothing. Jenny and I continue our friendship and then she kind of falls off the face of the earth.
24:33 Speaker 03 So around August two thousand and ten, I stopped hearing from her. I reach out a handful of times and figure, okay, she's confided in me that she's struggling in her marriage. Maybe she's focusing on her marriage and she doesn't really have time for this relatively new friendship. So I think nothing of it. In November two thousand and ten, I go to the fertility clinic for an embryo transfer. Both of my kids are the product of in vitro, yay, science. Yes. So I have my transfer a couple of weeks later, get confirmation that I am in fact pregnant with my second child.
25:05 Dax Shepard? And you've got a fourteen month old at this point or something?
25:09 Speaker 03 They're about two years and four months apart. He's like nineteen months, I guess. Get halfway through my pregnancy, so about nineteen and a half weeks. I go to jump on the elliptical because this time I'm going to be super fit for my pregnancy, but I take a detour and I check my email instead. Sure. I open the email and I see this email from Johnny. Johnny's married to Jenny. Johnny and I have met, but we've never had a conversation. In fact, I thought he was a little bit creepy. So I actually assume that it's Jenny sending this email because I had sent her a couple of emails. Emails over the last little while, haven't heard back. Maybe she got rid of her email and she's now using his. I start reading and it's super cryptic. They're going on about the year from hell.
25:50 Speaker 03 Knowing information and how it's had an impact on their life and. I'm reading and I'm not really getting it. I don't understand what's going on until I see one line. Your husband had an affair with my wife.
26:03 Dax Shepard? Okay, okey doke.
26:06 Speaker 03 I must have read it like three or four times, thinking, wait, what? So you're saying that Logan and Jenny had an affair? Clearly it's Johnny. I figured that out at this point. Yeah.
26:17 Speaker 01 Right.
26:17 Speaker 03 And I'm like, wait a minute. Johnny has just alluded to the fact that he has had this knowledge for a year. That means the affair ended, or he found out in March of two thousand ten.
26:29 Dax Shepard? Well, maybe he could have found out last week and he said, how long was that going on? And she said, a year.
26:35 Speaker 03 I didn't actually think of that, but I surmised that the affair would have happened around October two thousand nine. Till it effectively ended March two thousand ten when Johnny found out. But then I'm like, well, wait a minute. If it's March two thousand ten that Johnny finds out. Jenny became my friend in May of two thousand and ten after the affair would have ended. She came into my house and babysat my son and looked us dead in the face. Me, obviously not knowing, but my husband totally letting her come in and babysit our child.
27:10 Dax Shepard? You've got to almost recompute every interaction you've ever had with her.
27:14 Speaker 03 Absolutely. So it's basically like from a movie where everything is in reverse.
27:18 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and you start playing through every.
27:20 Speaker 01 Also, how would she have known him before you guys even met?
27:25 Speaker 03 The timeline comes in. So Logan and Jenny meet in two thousand nine in October. I meet Jenny at the same time. They have an affair that ends 2010. She becomes my friend two months after it ends.
27:41 Dax Shepard? Now we've got some clues that I can build a little theory on, which is the husband shut it down, but she wants another way back in. She wants to be around the husband. I don't know. That's where my head would go.
27:51 Speaker 03 This is strange. It really is. So the first call I make is to my mom. Incidentally, my parents just returned at that point from Savannah, Georgia. Oh, ding ding ding. My mom thinks someone has died. I'm on the phone sobbing. I'm halfway through my second pregnancy and I've just disclosed that my, my husband has had an affair.
28:10 Dax Shepard? Yes.
28:11 Speaker 03 I hang up with my mom. My next call is to Logan. I gotta say something. I actually blurted out to his sister who answers the phone. She just quietly passes.
28:21 Dax Shepard? I'm sure she handed him the phone with quite a specific look on it. She's like, you're fucked. Enjoy.
28:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, pretty much. It should come as no surprise that he denies it, tells me I'm acting crazy and I hang up on him. Now I'm like, well, how do I get confirmation? Because I'm reeling at this point. I'm like, wait a minute. Candace introduced Logan and Jenny. She'll know.
28:40 Dax Shepard? And real quick, are you considering calling the husband to just say like, okay, I got your email. I need a little more proof.
28:47 Speaker 03 Not at that point. I call Candace. She confirms, yes, Jenny and Logan had an affair.
28:52 Dax Shepard? Whoa.
28:53 Speaker 03 She said I had told Logan that if I had ever asked him, she said that she would tell me the truth. At this point, my son has now woken from his nap. I plop him in the car and I drive to Jenny's house.
29:04 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow. Okay, here we go. Here we go. Face to face.
29:10 Speaker 03 So I drive to Jenny's house. I'm sitting in the driveway. Obviously Candace has alerted her as to what has happened. Jenny considers waiting me out, but this is never gonna happen. I'm pretty persistent. And her personal trainer actually shows up. So they have a standing session that she's supposed to make. So she finally shows up. She pulls into the driveway. She's got her five and nine year old in tow. And we each get out of the car and I said, look, I am not about to cause a scene. I'm not gonna scream at you. I just want some answers.
29:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
29:39 Speaker 03 She invites me into her house and our kids go into the play area. She doesn't want her older kids in earshot. They clearly know something is off. So they give us about 30 minutes, maybe not even. And I ask all of my questions, like, how long? When did it start? Hash out those details. But then I say to her, what on earth possessed you to become my friend? After this whole thing ended, because it did actually end in March of 2010, when Johnny found out. She said, I wanted confirmation that you were a really terrible person so that I wouldn't feel badly about what I did. But it turns out I'm not a terrible person.
30:19 Dax Shepard? Right.
30:20 Speaker 03 Was the husband?
30:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, you're a Tina Fey person.
30:23 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
30:23 Speaker 01 Was your husband telling her that you were a bad person? I mean, obviously, I guess.
30:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, that was basically the long and the short of it is that nothing good was said about me at the time that they were having this affair. And unfortunately for Jenny, she came to find out that I'm a pretty likeable, good person. And I didn't deserve that. And she actually really enjoyed our friendship, but clearly had to cut it off. I mean, you don't carry on a friendship like that.
30:50 Dax Shepard? This is all interesting. I'm just gonna say, I believe her. I believe your husband said those things. I don't believe she needed to go find out if that was true. That's immaterial. What the fuck? It's not on you to like, go become an investigator now. That's her own obsession with Logan, I think.
31:06 Speaker 01 I could see it because if that ended, she's probably mad at him.
31:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
31:11 Speaker 01 So she's like, he told me all these things and now I have to sit with this guilt. I want to know if that's warranted or not. I think that's just adding more cruelty onto you. It's not nice or wise, but I can see how that happened.
31:27 Dax Shepard? I think she wanted to go answer if he has been lying across the board. I think she probably, when they broke up, felt like, I wonder if anything he said was true about how he felt about me. And now one way I can go find out if he's full of shit is I'm gonna find out if the wife was really a terrible woman.
31:43 Speaker 01 Right.
31:43 Dax Shepard? I think she more wanted to find out if she had been lied to about everything and used our friend Stacy here to confirm whether he was a liar across the board. Which I don't think is your right to do.
31:53 Speaker 03 Interestingly enough, obviously my suspicions at this point are raised, but I'm halfway through a pregnancy with my second kid and I have an almost two year old.
32:00 Dax Shepard? Right.
32:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:01 Speaker 03 I just. Well, I should try to see if this is a marriage that we can work to repair. I'm able to get access to his phone, however, and it is very clear by text messages to numerous people that his behavior is not going to change. Like, he would say things to other women like, "I was a nag," and "he wasn't getting any sex," and having those kinds of complaints. So I was like, "Okay, well, our marriage is effectively over." So about nine days before my daughter was born, Oh, wow. We sat down, two days after my birthday, actually, too. Oh, boy, this is a horrible, horrible, oh my god.
32:37 Dax Shepard? What a time to be alive.
32:39 Speaker 03 It just keeps going. Oh, boy. So, anyway, our marriage effectively ends. And what I will say is that we have a fine relationship now. He has remarried, not Jenny, and I love his wife. His wife is one of my most favorite humans on the face of the earth.
32:54 Dax Shepard? Oh, god.
32:54 Speaker 03 That's nice. Everything is good. My kids are now fourteen and sixteen. And it was actually my sixteen-year-old who told me to write in the story. Yeah, I owe him a debt of gratitude for this whole thing happening. The other really interesting piece for me personally is that were I to have found out any time between March of 2010 and November 2010, my daughter wouldn't be here. And she was meant to be on this earth. Yeah.
33:21 Dax Shepard? Great things can come out of not great unions.
33:24 Speaker 03 That's a beautiful way of looking at it, yeah. The last piece of this story, because there's more, is a few years after this whole thing happened, I find out that Jenny is now married to Neil. Oh, Jesus Christ.
33:42 Dax Shepard? The other neighbor.
33:44 Speaker 03 My god.
33:45 Dax Shepard? This is a sexy subdivision here.
33:47 Speaker 03 This is very Desperate Housewives vibes. And I've told this story so many times because it's a great party story. And it's not until I actually start telling that, I'm like, "This is crazy. You can't make this up." That's why my son was like, "You should write in," because we listen to Armchair Anonymous Friday mornings on the way to school.
34:05 Dax Shepard? Lovely. We love that. We do. We love it. I don't know if it's good content for kids, but they love it.
34:11 Speaker 03 There's just something kind of wholesome about the whole family listening.
34:14 Dax Shepard? Hearing how messy it gets out there.
34:15 Speaker 03 This is so weird, but the new wife that you really like,
34:19 Speaker 01 Do you ever feel defensive of her? Are you like, well, he's kind of a bad dude. Why are you nice lady who I like married to him? That's another complication on top.
34:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, my hope is always that he turned a new leaf and is a stand up guy. I said, you know, if he fucks this up, I'm gonna murder him because she's just phenomenal.
34:41 Dax Shepard? Well, if he did fuck it up, minimally, I'd point out that this is his problem. There's no perfect mate for him. Oh, wow.
34:49 Speaker 01 That's a wild story.
34:50 Dax Shepard? Yeah, what's a fake name we can give your six year old? Cause when you guys listen to it together, I want to say hi to them.
34:54 Speaker 01 What is a good fake name?
34:56 Dax Shepard? You've used all of the names.
34:57 Speaker 03 Let's call him Liam.
34:59 Dax Shepard? Liam, nice, nice Liam, strong. Liam, we love having you in the audience.
35:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:05 Dax Shepard? Infect your high school peers.
35:07 Speaker 01 Exactly.
35:08 Dax Shepard? Tell them they're missing the boat. All right, well, lovely meeting you. Take care.
35:11 Speaker 03 Bye.
35:13 Speaker 01 People really can accumulate some stories over a life.
35:16 Dax Shepard? It sounds like that whole neighborhood should have just done like musical chairs. Everyone has stood up, moved into the house next door and let's just keep this thing going.
35:23 Speaker 06 Hi.
35:24 Dax Shepard? Hi, how are you?
35:25 Speaker 06 I'm good. How are you guys?
35:27 Dax Shepard? Good. You have such a warm and inviting smile.
35:29 Speaker 06 Oh, thank you very much.
35:30 Dax Shepard? Where are you at in the country?
35:32 Speaker 06 I am in Athens, Georgia.
35:34 Speaker 01 What in the whole world?
35:37 Speaker 06 And I went to UGA.
35:38 Speaker 01 Go dogs.
35:40 Dax Shepard? When's the last time you ate her favorite cake? What's it called?
35:42 Speaker 01 Yes, good memory, at Last Resort, my strawberry cake.
35:46 Speaker 06 I went to the Last Resort for brunch a few months back, but it was too early for me to have the cake.
35:52 Speaker 01 You can always have the cake.
35:55 Speaker 06 I should have just had the cake.
35:57 Speaker 01 Exactly. That's the move.
35:58 Speaker 06 I think the actual store closed that she used to have.
36:01 Speaker 01 Well, she also passed.
36:03 Dax Shepard? Oh.
36:04 Speaker 06 Okay, I didn't know that part. Well, I'm glad her cakes live on.
36:07 Dax Shepard? That's her legacy.
36:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, you're making me very nostalgic knowing you're there. I hope you're enjoying it.
36:11 Speaker 06 I love Athens.
36:12 Dax Shepard? You have light fantasies of just moving there, right?
36:14 Speaker 01 It's the best and the vibes are so good.
36:17 Dax Shepard? That could be your second place.
36:18 Speaker 01 We'll think about it.
36:19 Dax Shepard? Okay.
36:20 Speaker 06 Yeah. I lived in Austin for a while and then I came back because I was like, I want to be back close. I grew up in Athens as well. Love it.
36:27 Dax Shepard? Okay, so you have a wild card story, which we love because we have no clue what the topic is even.
36:33 Speaker 06 The story is about the time my babysitter threw me my 12th birthday.
36:39 Dax Shepard? Oh, great. Unconventional already. The babysitter generally doesn't handle that.
36:43 Speaker 06 Right. My babysitter was very special. She handled a lot of things in my life. Her name's Allison. It set the stage for this 12th birthday. I switched from going to public school to a smaller private school for middle school in sixth grade. And this private middle school was K through 12. So people had been there kindergarten all the way on. So everyone knew each other and had kind of been together their whole lives. And then I just popped on in there. So I was really nervous as most 12 year olds probably are starting a new school. My babysitter Allison, who was also kind of a nanny, she traveled with us. She was with us a lot. She had this great idea. It was like, let's just throw this epic birthday party. We're going to get all these girls to be your new best friends.
37:27 Dax Shepard? This is like a common trope.
37:28 Speaker 06 It definitely is. It kind of is like movie-esque where it's like, let's just do this one thing. I was totally down for it though. So I'm approaching my parents, like, can I have this huge sleepover? It's going to be a few of my old friends so that I feel more comfortable. And then basically all the new girls in my class and then my little sister and her friend because she always has to be included.
37:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
37:50 Speaker 06 About 20 kids. So my parents are not thrilled with the idea.
37:53 Dax Shepard? As a parent of a 12 year old, no thank you.
37:55 Speaker 06 Worst nightmare. So then Allison steps in and is like, don't worry, I will handle it all. We're going to do this for Sophie. It's going to be great. You guys can even just go to a hotel for the night. I really got this. She was actually a fabulous babysitter. How old was she? I think she was about 25. She was an adult, but with a very childlike, chaotic, creative spirit. I had a lot of fun with her. All my friends were obsessed with her. They always wanted her to be there when they were hanging out with me. So she convinces my parents. They go to the hotel. Everyone gets there and the first thing she does is round us all up and she's like, guys, there's one. Rule. It's that there are no rules. Oh, boy. She has like a whiteboard. Like she presents it like we're about to go through all the rules. And then that's the only thing she writes.
38:40 Speaker 06 Look, 20 12 year olds. Oh, my God. And then she goes through some stuff that will happen. We're gonna have a fake wedding. We're gonna have a talent show. Fake wedding?
38:50 Dax Shepard? That's ambitious.
38:51 Speaker 06 The first thing that happens is there's a tornado drill.
38:53 Dax Shepard? Wait, a planned or a real life tornado drill?
38:56 Speaker 06 We're practicing for a real tornado.
38:59 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay, okay.
39:00 Speaker 06 But she's put this on. We know that there's no tornado. We're practicing because she's like, there might be thunderstorms tonight.
39:14 Speaker 07 They're running a cover two defense. But you're running to get game day deals on Uber Eats. Keep everyone at tonight's watch party fed with deals from your go to restaurants. Or stock up with deals on your favorite snacks and groceries. Whatever the occasion, get game day deals on Uber Eats all season long. It's not football without food. Uber Eats. Order now. Terms apply. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.
39:51 Speaker 06 So we all have to squeeze into this tiny little bathroom in the middle of my house, the safest spot. All 20 of us in this bathroom. She's like, let's put someone on someone's shoulders. So that's how the party started. Then we're gonna order pizza. She's like, this is gonna be great. I think you guys should put on a show for the pizza guy. I was always dancing to Britney, Spice Girls and sing like it was my constant thing was, will you please sit down and let me show you this? I was very into it and I picked the song. I decided we would do the intro to Bring It On. Nice. So each girl could have her own part, sort of like each of the cheerleaders. And when you walk into my house, you open the front door and there's a staircase right in front of you. So I'm like, we can each walk down the staircase. We'll line up.
40:32 Speaker 06 We'll each do our bit. We're all dressing in feather boas, glittery things. We have like tons of makeup. We really raid my costume drawer. And then Allison's like, wow, this is the best performance I've ever seen in my life. You know what I think we need to do? I think we need to order from not just Domino's. I think we need to order from Papa John's and Pizza Hut. So you guys can really put this performance on. What is happening?
40:56 Dax Shepard? She's losing control of it, but she's instigating all the loss of control.
41:00 Speaker 06 Yes, that is her in a nutshell. Perfect. Oh my God, Allison. Is she okay?
41:06 Dax Shepard? Also, if I'm like a 22 year old pizza delivery man, I don't want to see 12 year olds going on a show for me. I'm gonna feel very uncomfortable.
41:14 Speaker 06 Right? As a 12 year old, I thought it was gonna be the most amazing thing.
41:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
41:17 Speaker 06 Also, why didn't you guys order from Gumby's?
41:20 Dax Shepard? They're not good audience members, the employees at Gumby's.
41:23 Speaker 06 Oh, wow.
41:23 Dax Shepard? They're like, we make good pizza and that's it. We're not offering audience services.
41:27 Speaker 06 They made such good pizza. All right, Allison, she made some mistakes, but okay. So the first pizza guy arrives and the music is like blaring. And so we do our performance and we didn't really plan for what would happen if the second pizza guy arrived when the first pizza guy was there.
41:43 Dax Shepard? They're stacking up. Okay. You do reset or just say join mid show? It is mid show, but you're invited to watch?
41:50 Speaker 06 Yeah, things got a little hectic. And so we finish and we start over. She's like, up the stairs. Again, again, music starts over. We're back down the stairs midway through. I am noticing that the two pizza guys are like talking very animated. And then all of a sudden, they start fighting, physically fighting.
42:10 Dax Shepard? They got in a fistfight.
42:12 Speaker 06 They're down my front steps and they're literally rolling around.
42:15 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's a fight.
42:16 Speaker 06 God, because like, whose pizza's better?
42:19 Dax Shepard? What did instigate it?
42:20 Speaker 06 Some of this is hard for me to remember, but the rumor was that they dated the same girl. Oh.
42:25 Dax Shepard? That's why, yeah, that'll happen.
42:27 Speaker 06 So then the third pizza guy, which is pizza, arrives. He jumps out, puts his pizza boxes down, just jumps in and starts trying to break this fight up.
42:36 Dax Shepard? Oh, Good Samaritan pizza man.
42:38 Speaker 06 Yeah. So then the one pizza guy, I think it was Papa John's, gets up and runs and gets in a car. And then the Domino's guy is like, that's my car. He's stealing my.
42:47 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
42:49 Dax Shepard? This is pandemonium. This is like a slapstick comedy.
42:51 Speaker 01 I hate to blame Allison, but I do. I do think it's her fault.
42:55 Dax Shepard? We got a guy in the wrong car now.
42:57 Speaker 01 Oh, yai yai.
42:59 Speaker 06 Then all of a sudden, the cops are there. Some of the girls are scared. They're upstairs. Other girls are more adventurous. They're kind of like peeking out, walking onto the front porch.
43:07 Dax Shepard? I always say, these are the moments you find out what everyone's child and home life is like. If you're out there in front, you're like, okay, they see some action. They're used to this.
43:14 Speaker 06 I was downstairs. I was very polite, people pleaser. I'm like, this is my party. I need to make sure everything's okay. So I was very anxious. So this party had fog machines, strobe lights, disco balls. Each room was themed and I looked down and there is dry ice because there were dry ice little stations in the sinks up to my knees. Like I can't even see the floor of my house and it's just basically billowing out into the yard. Allison turns around and she's like, fire drill.
43:42 Dax Shepard? Oh, my God.
43:43 Speaker 06 At this point, things had calmed down outside.
43:45 Dax Shepard? We love Allison.
43:46 Speaker 01 She's a great babysitter.
43:47 Dax Shepard? And I was a little wondering if she's in some kind of a swing.
43:50 Speaker 01 Is something going on?
43:52 Dax Shepard? She had kind of like a manic swing that was so ambitious.
43:55 Speaker 01 What kind of 12 year old party has a tornado drill and a fire drill and three pizza deliveries?
44:01 Dax Shepard? It's a lot. It's a lot.
44:02 Speaker 01 Wow, Allison. Okay.
44:04 Speaker 06 So the last part of the story is that we go inside after this fire drill. Police are gone. And she's like, let's just try and regroup here. Let's do the talent show. Then the phone rings because it's back in early 2000s. So my landline ominously rings. And I distinctly remember this part of being like, Allison, will you get the phone? She's like, no, it's your house. Get the phone. And it's the county calling me to inform me that some prisoners or fugitives or something that were cleaning up around the area did not make it back onto the bus. And they were missing three people. So we had to stay inside, keep the doors locked for the night. It's dark by this time. Like it's pitch black out. So I hang up the phone and something came over me.
44:48 Speaker 06 And instead of my normal shy polite, I'm like, There's fugitives on the list.
44:53 Dax Shepard? Oh my, I wish I had been at this birthday party. She did throw a fucking banger.
44:57 Speaker 06 She did. This is one where like, I am gonna be friends. She's like, everyone to the basement immediately.
45:02 Dax Shepard? Well, she handed out guns.
45:04 Speaker 06 She handed out blankets instead of guns and she was like, everyone cover the windows. And we have to do this talent show in the pitch black with this tiny little spotlight. The talent show must go on.
45:15 Dax Shepard? Kat, I'm starting to wonder if she bribed the drivers to fist fight.
45:18 Speaker 06 That's what I'm saying. Is all this planned? I think we watched The Neverending Story and we finally fell asleep. The next morning, she walked each kid out to their car. After everyone was gone, she was like, I didn't give anyone goodie bags, but I gave them this note. Why don't you read it out loud? I didn't have the note, but I texted her yesterday and she's just amazing. She texted me the note from like 22 years ago. And yes, it was all a prank and I can read the little section of the note if you want me to.
45:47 Dax Shepard? Please, I want to hear.
45:48 Speaker 06 Oh.
45:49 Dax Shepard? And I want her number so she'll plan my next birthday party.
45:53 Speaker 06 So it says, thank you for coming to Sophie's party. There are no party bags, but there is this note. When you think about it, getting a note is actually better than a party bag. Because you can fold it up, carry it around with you everywhere. It doesn't rot or become too sticky or spoil or leak all over the bottom of your purse. It's just a cool piece of paper that can last forever. You guys were really all fun to hang out with, very entertaining and so talented. Who knew that so many people could fit in a tiny bathroom? And then she lists other things that happened at the party. And who knew that Allison's friends, Eddie, Chris and Brad, were such good actors that they were able to come over, dressed as pizza guys and pull the biggest prank on you.
46:34 Dax Shepard? Oh, the fire was fire.
46:36 Speaker 06 The car that was stolen was actually not from Pizza Hut. And who knew that the police officer was actually a neighbor? And the person that called about the escaped prisoner was just another friend of Allison's. I mean, seriously, what a great talented bunch of people we are. You just really fell for it. Don't forget to adhere to the rules. Thanks for coming. Oh.
46:54 Dax Shepard? I love her.
46:55 Speaker 01 Wow.
46:56 Speaker 06 Yes. The calls that my parents got from these private school girls. I mean, it lasted years.
47:02 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
47:04 Speaker 06 That's my story.
47:05 Speaker 01 That's fantastic.
47:08 Dax Shepard? It is.
47:08 Speaker 01 Wow, Allison, what is she doing now?
47:11 Dax Shepard? Did you ever see the movie The Game? It's David Fincher's maybe second movie with Sean Penn and Michael Douglas. She should be playing in real life, The Games, where it leads you all the way to ending your life, but then reinventing your life.
47:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
47:24 Speaker 06 Yes, I love that movie. She was a screenwriter for a while, so it all tracks.
47:27 Speaker 01 Yes, that does track.
47:29 Speaker 06 She works for TCM in Atlanta, editor and stuff.
47:32 Speaker 01 That's so fun.
47:33 Dax Shepard? Oh, the Turner Classic Movie Network?
47:35 Speaker 06 Turner Classic Movies, yeah.
47:36 Dax Shepard? Oh, good. I'm glad she's in a creative capacity.
47:39 Speaker 01 That's awesome.
47:40 Speaker 06 She actually worked at UGA for a while. I don't know if you, so she was the coordinator on the Cannes Study Abroad.
47:47 Speaker 01 Wait, Allison, does she have red hair?
47:49 Speaker 06 Yeah, that's her.
47:50 Speaker 01 No.
47:51 Dax Shepard? Oh, my dingos.
47:53 Speaker 01 No.
47:54 Speaker 06 That was her job before TCM, and then she did screenwriting on the side. That's my nanny.
47:59 Dax Shepard? Did she ever run you through drills?
48:02 Speaker 01 No, but Allison was so cool.
48:06 Speaker 06 I used to go to that because my dad is Nate Cohn.
48:10 Speaker 01 Stop.
48:11 Dax Shepard? What's happening?
48:13 Speaker 01 I actually was gonna say, are your parents professors? And who are they? No, her dad was a professor who took the Kids to the Cannes Film Festival, and we were in his class. We had to do movie reviews.
48:26 Speaker 06 She became the coordinator because she was my nanny. And then she was like, this is not enough work for me. What else can I do?
48:32 Dax Shepard? Those are kind of similar stories here.
48:33 Speaker 01 I am shook. Also, Allison was so cool. She like looked so cool. And everyone in the program was like, oh, my God, Allison. And like, she told us we should go buy like French makeup products.
48:44 Speaker 06 That's very funny, and I feel like she is really gonna get a kick out of this one I'm about to call.
48:49 Speaker 01 Oh my God, what a small world.
48:53 Speaker 06 But maybe it redeems her a little bit.
48:55 Speaker 01 You know what it does? Cause even though you loved Alison, I was like,
48:58 Dax Shepard? Well, I had a moment where I was afraid she was in the middle of a ramp up.
49:01 Speaker 01 Right.
49:02 Dax Shepard? But now I realize she's just a party animal.
49:04 Speaker 01 She's just a really cool girl.
49:05 Dax Shepard? She's a good time.
49:06 Speaker 01 Oh, I'm so happy that she's doing well. I love that. What a fun thing that just happened.
49:11 Dax Shepard? But it's not a small world. Athens is a small city.
49:14 Speaker 01 No, it's a small world.
49:15 Dax Shepard? Okay, okay, okay.
49:17 Speaker 06 It's both. That is really crazy.
49:18 Speaker 01 That's so sad.
49:20 Speaker 06 I can't wait to tell my sister too. She is a avid listener. But my sister is going to be like, how did I not make this connection already?
49:27 Speaker 01 That is so wild. So nice to meet you.
49:31 Speaker 06 You too.
49:32 Dax Shepard? You guys are both so George, I love it.
49:34 Speaker 01 I love all this. I can't wait to tell Anthony.
49:37 Dax Shepard? All right. Well, lovely meeting you, Sophie.
49:39 Speaker 06 You as well.
49:40 Dax Shepard? And if you run into the old babysitter, tell her I think she's a gangster.
49:43 Speaker 01 Please tell Alison I said hi and that she's the coolest. And please eat some cake soon.
49:48 Speaker 06 I'll do all of those things.
49:49 Speaker 01 Okay.
49:50 Dax Shepard? Okay, bye.
49:52 Speaker 01 Wow.
49:53 Dax Shepard? That was wild.
49:54 Speaker 01 In the middle of her story, I was gonna, I was like, oh, I should ask her for parents or professors. Like maybe they're in the theater department because of all of this and they weren't, but I still knew.
50:02 Dax Shepard? You still knew them and you went to France with one of them.
50:05 Speaker 01 Alison, I went to France with the main character.
50:08 Dax Shepard? Incredible. Oh, do you have soundboarding behind you?
50:12 Speaker 08 Yeah, I do.
50:13 Dax Shepard? Yes, we have the same soundboarding at the Nashville studio.
50:17 Speaker 08 I would say it's more for aesthetics than anything.
50:20 Dax Shepard? It's gorgeous.
50:21 Speaker 01 Well, it sounds nice.
50:22 Speaker 08 Thank you very much.
50:23 Dax Shepard? Andrew, where are you?
50:24 Speaker 08 I've been in Denver for the last four years, me and my wife.
50:27 Dax Shepard? Now you're our first Denver caller to use your real name. We've had two others today, but they wanted code names. And I'm trying to make a big stereotype that people in Colorado want to stay anonymous more than other people. But you've broken that a bit.
50:41 Speaker 08 I have. Maybe it's my Canadian connections.
50:43 Speaker 01 Well, no, the other Canadian we had wanted a fake name.
50:47 Speaker 08 Oh no.
50:47 Dax Shepard? Stacy.
50:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, Stacy.
50:49 Dax Shepard? But to make no meal of that, it was clean slate. It's gonna be great regardless.
50:55 Speaker 08 Let's hope so. How's Wild Carpet going so far?
50:57 Dax Shepard? So fun, always. What part of Canada are you from?
51:00 Speaker 08 Calgary.
51:01 Dax Shepard? The cold part?
51:01 Speaker 08 One could say. I love Denbryts. They think that they get cold winters, but pales in comparison to what we get up north.
51:07 Dax Shepard? You're cut from a different cloth, we might say.
51:09 Speaker 08 Yes.
51:10 Speaker 01 Freezing cold cloth.
51:12 Dax Shepard? The coldest of the cloths. Okay, so you have a wild card story and we're dying to hear.
51:17 Speaker 08 So let's move back 15 years, 2011, fresh grad out of university. I graduated with a degree in geology. I was still a solid decade from my prefrontal cortex fusing, which served me really well in terms of what I was about to experience. I was looking for a really good, fun, new job coming out of school, and I took one down in Suriname, South America. So I took a gold exploration geology job where I would be hiking out in the middle of the Amazon, doing field mapping, running field crews, doing stream sediment sampling. Part of the job description said, "Must be comfortable sleeping in hammocks, under tarps, in 100% humidity."
51:59 Speaker 08 It was rotational type of work, 30 days on, 26 days off. So it just scratched every itch I had.
52:05 Dax Shepard? Did they downplay the bugs, though, in the first warning?
52:08 Speaker 08 Okay, you're getting ahead of this.
52:10 Dax Shepard? Okay, sorry, sorry. But I think in that list should have been extreme bug contact.
52:15 Speaker 08 Yeah. If you look at my day to days, they were hiking out in the bush where my white collar friends and friends that had more traditional type of jobs, people were phoning in sick with like a head cold or their kids were sick or whatever. In my case, we'd have field crews go down with dengue fever or leishmaniasis, which is a fancy way of saying flesh-eating disease.
52:37 Dax Shepard? Yeah. I mean, I'm basing all this on the path between two seas when they tried to build Panama Canal. The amount of disease that was just riddling through all those crews.
52:48 Speaker 08 A lot of snakes as well.
52:49 Speaker 01 I hate everything you're saying.
52:51 Speaker 08 And you know what? I loved it, Monica.
52:56 Speaker 08 I couldn't have asked for anything better. Trust me, right now I look back at this, I have no idea how I survived. So I'm about a year in, I've gone through a few rotations here, I've gotten the lay of the land. So I wake up one morning out of my hammock and my eye's bugging. I mean, it's just like a little bit of a infection. I'm like, oh, it's a sty in my eye or something like that. And what any 20 something year old male would say is it's probably just going to clear up on its own. I'm just gonna give it a few days and I'll be fine. Three days go in, it just keeps getting worse to the point where every hour, basically on the hour, it's almost like clockwork. It felt like a wasp was stinging me in the eye. I kept on looking at my eye, I'm like, what is happening? I couldn't see anything. There's like a little bump, but nothing major. Again, thinking like, this is a really weird sty.
53:40 Speaker 08 So eventually I break and I go to my coworker Fiji, who actually reappears several times in the story. She was a godsend. Hey, my eye's been really bugging me for a few days. I think it's more than just a sty. Can you just have a look and get to the bottom of this? So all five foot flat of Fiji's up on her tiptoes, I'm crouched back in my chair and she's peering in. And then her face drops and she says the words I would never want to hear. There's something alive in your eye.
54:05 Dax Shepard? Okay, okay, okay, okay. Is it in your lower eyelid?
54:10 Speaker 08 Upper.
54:11 Dax Shepard? Upper eyelid, oh, trying to get to your brain.
54:14 Speaker 01 Something alive. No, don't say that.
54:16 Dax Shepard? Sorry, that's what it wants. Yummy, something.
54:18 Speaker 01 No, don't say eatings about brains. I'm scared.
54:25 Speaker 08 Rightfully so, we both race off to the medic. The diagnosis is a botfly had bit me and laid eggs in my eyelid, which had hatched. And I had an unwelling host of essentially maggots in my eye.
54:40 Dax Shepard? Mama, the timing of this, we just had a maggot take over of a trash can. I've been fighting them all week. Oh my god, yes, yes, I have video.
54:49 Speaker 01 No, I don't like maggots.
54:52 Dax Shepard? Andrew, maggots in the eyes, woo.
54:56 Dax Shepard? Okay, what's the treatment schedule for this?
54:59 Speaker 01 And now I feel like you have maggots.
55:01 Dax Shepard? I probably do, I probably do, yeah. This place is fucking crawling in maggots.
55:07 Speaker 08 Plan A. Is traditionally you can pop out butterfly larvae, kind of like a pimple or something.
55:13 Dax Shepard? Sure, sure.
55:14 Speaker 08 For some reason, one medic sits on my chest. They put a stick in my teeth that I can bite down on because they figure they're gonna have to really reef on this thing to get it out. But as you know, if you pop a sit, you kind of need some foundation, something structural behind it to get the leverage, like a bone or a muscle. But we're dealing with an eyeball at this point.
55:32 Speaker 01 Ah.
55:32 Speaker 08 So they have a go for a solid three, four minutes, medics out of breath. I'm getting a little woozy from them just kind of hammering away at my eye. And it's quickly determined we can't pop this thing out. So we are moving on to plan B. And plan B is we're just gonna wait this thing out.
55:50 Speaker 01 Nope.
55:50 Speaker 08 Let them get a little bit bigger. Then if they get bigger, maybe we can get that leverage, pop them out, or they'll just crawl out on their own.
55:57 Dax Shepard? They don't have any desire to live in your body. They want to leave anyways.
56:01 Speaker 08 They just want to feast and grow and get big enough. And then eventually they'll fly away at a certain point.
56:06 Speaker 01 How? They just pierce through?
56:08 Speaker 08 Yeah. So there's a small hole. And this is actually where plan C comes in. So I don't love plan B. As I'm leaving the medics, I'm like, I can't stick this up for another few days. And I run into some of the local field workers and I go, no, no, no, don't listen to the medics. What we would do is we just suffocate these guys, kill them, they'll just fall out. We break apart a cigarette, mix it with some Vaseline, smear it over the hole over my eyelid, and patch it all up. And I think I sent in a photo.
56:36 Speaker 01 Oh, no.
56:37 Dax Shepard? Okay.
56:38 Speaker 08 This is before I went to bed.
56:40 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you look great.
56:41 Speaker 01 Okay, it's covered. It's covered. Thank God. Okay.
56:44 Dax Shepard? No, but it looks like you were out hunting with friends and someone shot you in the eye.
56:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
56:47 Dax Shepard? Now we've put that amount of appropriate dressing over it.
56:50 Speaker 01 Well, it's suffocation.
56:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah. I'm glad you said the Vaseline because I was like, what are we gonna put a suction cup over there and suck all the air out? How are we gonna do this?
56:57 Speaker 01 Oh, I'm so itchy.
56:59 Speaker 08 I made the poor decision of posting that to Facebook. I thought this was like the coolest thing ever. And my mom's on Facebook. The first response was a what, all exclamation marks, followed by my sister commenting, saying, you need to talk to mom immediately.
57:12 Dax Shepard? And this is while you were still down there?
57:14 Speaker 08 Oh, yes.
57:14 Speaker 01 That's not nice, what you did to your mom.
57:16 Speaker 08 Poor decision as a son. So I wake up the next morning and the pain's gone. I'm feeling great. I think, hey, I'm in the clear, off to the races, can get back to my regular day to day. Unfortunately, again, not quite the case because I never saw the butterfly larvae after that point. So again, a few days go by. Eye keeps getting a little bit bigger, not a cherry size, but to the point that it's starting to obstruct my vision. So I go back to Fiji and say, hey, I need to go and see a real doctor at this point. We hop into a truck, we drive the hour and a half to Paramaribo, the capital, and this is where we get a little bit of some chaos at the hospital. We have a Cuban doctor who only speaks Spanish, speaking to their translator into Dutch, speaking to Fiji
58:01 Speaker 08 into English, and we're playing this game of medical telephone where the gist of it is they need to open up my eye, do a surgery, and clean it all out, and then stitch back up.
58:12 Speaker 01 I feel like that should have been plan A.
58:14 Dax Shepard? Sure, sure.
58:15 Speaker 01 But okay.
58:15 Speaker 08 Funnily enough, this is actually where I put my foot down. And I said, I can't rely on this medical game of charades to feel super comfortable. I was in a foreign country. I figured, hey, I'm flying home in a week. I'm gonna be back into a situation I'm more familiar with, can see the family dog. And we again leave, take hour and a half back to our camp. But fortunately, I didn't have to wait the full week. The next day, I'm chatting with some coworkers, Fiji included. I kind of forget the whole thing. For some reason, I scratched my eye because it was a little bit itchy.
58:45 Dax Shepard? Oh, boy.
58:46 Speaker 08 And I could tell by the gush of warm liquid across the side of my face, coupled with the absolute horrified look of my coworkers, that it had just erupted. And we had butterfly remnants and unknown liquid and pus all came out. And honestly, by the time I made it home, it had fully cleared up and you couldn't even tell.
59:06 Speaker 01 They didn't see anything fly out?
59:08 Speaker 08 No, no, no. We managed to suffocate them before they became the full blown butterfly.
59:12 Dax Shepard? You were just expelling carcasses at this point. I'm sorry, but that's what happened. And then it just felt great. And then you went home and you needed to see the doctor.
59:20 Speaker 08 Still have 2015 vision in both eyes. That was post laser eye surgery, but I always like to brag, it's better than 2020.
59:26 Speaker 01 Whoa, that.
59:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that would be hard for you.
59:31 Speaker 01 I'll choose death.
59:32 Dax Shepard? And I embarrassingly would have probably gone through all these steps you did in the exact same way like, well, let's just see. I have no optimism in my life, except for my health. I'm like, oh yeah, that'll probably fix itself.
59:43 Speaker 01 Man, I guess it kind of did.
59:46 Dax Shepard? It kinda did.
59:47 Speaker 08 I did end up getting a few more larva in my shoulder a few rotations later. I tried to bring them home because I wanted to freak out all my friends, but the pain does get pretty bad.
59:56 Dax Shepard? I wanted to bring them home.
59:58 Speaker 01 Don't bring back to America larva.
1:00:01 Speaker 08 They freeze so fast, they couldn't handle it. Maybe in Atlanta, they'd be alright.
1:00:06 Speaker 01 Oh no.
1:00:08 Dax Shepard? Oh gross. And I love it.
1:00:10 Speaker 01 That was really quite a story. I hated that and it was great.
1:00:13 Speaker 08 Well, it's so great to be here. You're both huge fan. Been listening to you guys forever.
1:00:16 Speaker 01 Thank you. Have a great day. Bye.
1:00:19 Dax Shepard? Bye. Take care. You'd have no idea looking at his eye that he had, uh, was a host.
1:00:26 Speaker 01 I can't believe you wanted to bring those guys back to America. That's on a the
1:00:31 Dax Shepard? Look at this.
1:00:32 Speaker 01 Oh, boy. Alright.
1:00:34 Dax Shepard? Alright, love you.
1:00:37 Speaker 09 Do you want to sing a tune or something? I'm going to have a theme song.
1:00:39 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay, great.
1:00:42 Speaker 09 We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're gonna ask some random questions and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions. On the fly, a rhyme dish. On the fly, a rhyme dish. Enjoy.
Previous James L. Brooks (director and producer) Next Jake Johnson Returns Again Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated