Eva Benefield (on surviving the Black Swan Murder)

Eva Benefield (Ghost Girl: Surviving the Black Swan Murder) is a writer, entrepreneur, and founder of Ghost Cowboy. Eva joins Armchair Expert to discuss growing up in the Charleston Lowcountry, finding her mother dead at 14, and losing her father in the notorious Black Swan case. Eva and Dax talk about reclaiming her story through darkly funny TikToks, building an apparel company one drawing at a time, and writing a memoir while still living through its aftermath. Eva explains why humor can be a survival mechanism, how creation became her answer to destruction, and why she couldn’t depend on a verdict to give her closure. Check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds: https://www.allstate.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

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

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:06Dax Shepard?

  Today, we have Eva Benefield on, and she is a true crime survivor, author, influencer, and founder of Ghost Cowboy Apparel. She has a new memoir out called Ghost Girl Surviving the Black Swan Murder. So Eva is the daughter of the victim of the Black Swan Murder.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  This is a wild story.

• 0:29Dax Shepard?

  A wild. The wildness had begun long before the official wildness.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Yes, and you get to hear all about it.

• 0:35Dax Shepard?

  She's been through everything. Please enjoy Eva Benefield. We get support from Quince.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  I have to say, I am so ready for fall. I want sweaters. I've been craving a true crisp morning where I actually need a jacket. I can't wait.

• 0:51Dax 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.

• 1:14Speaker 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.

• 1:31Dax 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.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  It's a uniform.

• 1:42Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  And Quince isn't just about the clothes. They have hotel-quality bedding, cookware, bath essentials, thoughtfully-designed furniture. You can really go there and outfit your entire apartment or house. So if you're in need of any kind of fall refresh at home, too, same quality, same attention to detail for every corner of your life.

• 2:00Dax 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 three hundred and sixty-five 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. This episode is presented by YouTube Premium. YouTube was already great, but Premium supercharges it. If you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com/premium. Trial eligibility varies. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. Now let's get into today's episode.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:58Dax Shepard?

  I'm Dax.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 2:59Dax Shepard?

  How are you?

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Good. How are you?

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Nice to meet you.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Nice to meet you.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Welcome.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Sorry, I know you were early. Sorry we made you wait.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  I was. Well, I was like, early once today. I was late to the airport this morning.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  My layover was ten minutes.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  I don't know how it happened. It said fifty-three minutes. I was like, okay, I have time.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Oh, that's so stressful.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  I wasn't stressed out until I realized that we were boarding when I got there. And then I was like, well, I don't need to be stressed anymore.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Oh, geez.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I woke up late this morning, and New York wasn't bad. LaGuardia wasn't bad. And then I think I flew into LAX maybe once before.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I used to go to San Diego a lot, but I haven't really spent a lot of time here.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Are you gonna be here for a little bit?

• 3:46Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  I'll go back to Charleston tomorrow.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Oh, you don't get to play around?

• 3:50Dax Shepard?

  Did I miss? Did you fly in today?

• 3:52Speaker 02

  I flew in today from New York. I flew into New York yesterday.

• 3:55Dax Shepard?

  Okay, you flew Charleston, New York yesterday.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Here, Charleston.

• 4:00Dax Shepard?

  What time did you take off?

• 4:01Speaker 02

  I took off at five. No, we boarded at five fifty.

• 4:05Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  New York at two fifty.

• 4:08Dax Shepard?

  This is miserable. Do you feel terrible?

• 4:10Speaker 02

  So I woke up at four fifteen yesterday to get to the airport to go to New York.

• 4:14Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  I got to bed at like ten thirty last night, but I woke up at four fifteen, and I was like, I have twenty more minutes. I'm just gonna sleep until, you know, the driver texts me. Did not. It was five fifteen, because I was waking up all night like, oh, my God, I have to go. Oh, my God, I have to go.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hate that feeling. Ugh.

• 4:29Dax Shepard?

  And you recently slept in past jury duty, too.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  That was a couple of years ago, so you did your research.

• 4:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you kind of have a pattern of, yeah, yeah.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Actually, no, I don't. I wake up at five or six every day.

• 4:42Dax Shepard?

  You do?

• 4:43Speaker 02

  My Hatch Alarm Clock, yeah.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Oh, and it like rises slightly, you know?

• 4:48Dax Shepard?

  What's a Hatch Alarm Clock?

• 4:50Speaker 02

  Oh, it's life-changing.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:51Dax Shepard?

  Tell me about it. Let's do an ad for them, right?

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Yes, I would love that. It's just an alarm clock, and it's a sound machine, too, because I love my rainstorm.

• 4:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  And then it lights up over the course of like ten or fifteen minutes, and it gets brighter and brighter, and the music gets louder and louder, and then you wake up.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Gently, a gentle wake up.

• 5:09Dax Shepard?

  Well, my fear would be, it would be the proverbial frog in hot water being brought to a boil. You know that old adage?

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:16Dax Shepard?

  That if you slowly and incrementally raised the loudness, I might just get used to it as I was sleeping. Does that make sense?

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:22Dax Shepard?

  As opposed to being like hit and shaken out of...

• 5:24Speaker 01

  I know, but it's bad for your system to get like woke up like that.

• 5:28Dax Shepard?

  You know, wake up with some cortisol.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Sometimes now I wake up before it starts really going off.

• 5:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you do?

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Oh, you're used to it.

• 5:34Dax Shepard?

  Do you pick a song, or is it a sound you wake up to?

• 5:36Speaker 02

  It's a sound. I have retro alarm clock.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Oh, nice.

• 5:40Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay, so it is a little...

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it'll get your attention.

• 5:45Dax Shepard?

  Eva, right?

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Yes, Eva.

• 5:48Dax Shepard?

  I'm dyslexic, so I'm like, yeah, that's definitely Eva, but then I'm like, also, who knows?

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Eva?

• 5:53Dax Shepard?

  I just don't know.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  I get all variations.

• 5:55Dax Shepard?

  And when I see Eva, I hear Eva. Did you like that?

• 6:00Speaker 02

  That was a big elementary school thing.

• 6:04Dax Shepard?

  Did people play you on the playground with saying Eva like that?

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:07Dax Shepard?

  They did, yeah. This is like Monica was trying to hide her Indian-ness, and then Bennett, like Beckham came out, which you're too young to know about, but it was a huge movie about a young Indian girl in England learning to play soccer.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  And it really exposed me, because it was like, oh, she looks like that girl, so she must be Indian.

• 6:25Dax Shepard?

  She must be a great soccer player.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, duh. Obviously.

• 6:29Dax Shepard?

  So you grew up in Charleston. You were born in two thousand and one?

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:33Dax Shepard?

  The book, one of the characters is kind of the Low Country, is what we call it?

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:37Dax Shepard?

  Explain the Low Country to us.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Have you all ever been there, or anywhere in the Low Country?

• 6:42Dax Shepard?

  I've been to Charleston so, so long ago, but yes, I've been there once. And it feels like you're time-traveling. It's like the most charming.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  It does. It's kind of like the beach, but we have the beach there, too, but it's marsh, it's not rocks, and the only rocks we have are the jetties, and that's for sediment moving and stuff. And then you smell plough mud. At low tide, you can hear little fiddler crabs rolling around everywhere, and you'll see mud minnows, and it's just serene and quiet and peaceful and hot and humid, and it's beautiful.

• 7:15Dax Shepard?

  And historic as hell. It's probably like among the oldest cities still thriving, right?

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Is it Isle of Palm?

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Isle of Palms, yeah.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Is that near it?

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's where I live.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Oh, that's where you live?

• 7:26Dax Shepard?

  You live there, yeah. Where does Danny McBride live?

• 7:30Speaker 02

  So he lives on Sullivan's. My favorite restaurant's on Sullivan's. He also frequents there, so I'm seeing him all the time.

• 7:36Dax Shepard?

  Is it exciting?

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Kind of. I mean, everybody that's local is like, oh, it's Danny.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Do you know Bev and Bob Miller?

• 7:43Speaker 02

  No, I don't think I do.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  That'd be so cool. I mean, they live in Isle of Palm. I feel like I'm saying it wrong.

• 7:49Dax Shepard?

  Welcome to my world. That's how I feel every time I say something.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Every time you say a word.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  You can say IOP, and I'll know the reference.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  IOP, okay, perfect. Yes, that's one of my best friends growing up, parents, and they moved there ten years ago. They love it so much.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  I'm sure if I was running around, if you showed me a picture, I would see them.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it's small, right?

• 8:09Speaker 02

  It's small, and I'm an avid runner, so I will run into people in like Mount Pleasant or downtown. And if I talk to them, I'm like, oh, yeah, I live on Isle of Palms. They're like, oh, my God, I've seen you running out there. I'm like, yeah, that's me, probably.

• 8:22Dax Shepard?

  You're like the local forest gum.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah.

• 8:24Dax Shepard?

  So you have a pretty idyllic childhood at the start, yeah?

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:29Dax Shepard?

  Tell me about your relationship with mom and dad. I know they differ, but yeah, just tell me about that a little bit.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Brought up like any other southern household. It was loving. It was, my mom was just a sweetheart and gentle and kind, wouldn't hurt a fly. And she talked a lot. My dad was very quiet, very chill. So she was talking all the time, and he would just let Renee talk. Church every Sunday, and just, you can't complain.

• 8:55Speaker 03

  Sisters?

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Two half brothers.

• 8:56Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  So they're fourteen and eleven years older than me on my mom's side.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 9:00Dax Shepard?

  So she had already had a marriage?

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:04Dax Shepard?

  Again, I didn't grow up in the South. I grew up in the heathenest North. Divorce was like, who wasn't? Was that an issue?

• 9:10Speaker 02

  I think so. My mom's side of the family didn't really like the idea of it because divorce is just not, especially when you're a very avid churchgoer. It's kind of frowned upon. And I also still to this day don't really know all of the things about that marriage, about what they thought of my dad. I also don't get to see them very often. They're upstate South Carolina. But I also, I think it's just been kind of hush, hush. Nobody wants to talk about it. So it's just the elephant in the room sometimes.

• 9:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:39Dax Shepard?

  And you were so young when she died that I'd imagine too, there would have been many, many conversations about her previous life, in her opinion, when you were old enough to like, understand all those details.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  But also in the South, you don't really talk about your dirty laundry. I'm from Georgia. There's just a lot of like, we're sweeping that under the rug and not really, back then, anyway.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  It's still now. When I was young, my mom, she was very picky about the moms that she would hang out with. And I would always ask, why? Cause I would have friends and she really wouldn't hang out with their moms. She was like, you'll get to an age where you'll understand. And one day I got to the age where I understand. It's like, once everything happened with my dad, I could hear the parents talking. I could understand and pick up on, especially in Charleston, South Carolina, it's a little pretentious sometimes.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, totally.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  We can sweep things under the rug very easily if we have to.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:28Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so tell me about the morning when you're fourteen, you're fixing to go to school and you and mom have a little disagreement. Tell me about that morning.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  So I was a brat.

• 10:40Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  As we all.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I was fourteen, I was moody, my dad was out of town, my mom was taking me to school. She was a talker and I always did not want to talk. So we were in the car and I just was kind of being a brat. And she dropped me off and I got out of the car and she was like, love you. And I slammed the door and I walked inside. And I also now realize I had very bad anxiety going to school. I didn't know that it was anxiety until later, but every morning it was like a stomach ache and kind of shaky. And I didn't realize until now, I'm like, oh, I was freaking out a little bit every day before school. So I was just kind of in my own little world, slammed the door, went to school. That was that.

• 11:17Dax Shepard?

  What was happening at school, do you suppose that was giving you anxiety?

• 11:20Speaker 02

  So I just switched from a smaller school to, it's the second largest school in South Carolina.

• 11:25Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  So it was a big culture shock. I was private up until middle school. I went into a smaller public school for middle school, but it was still just a huge change seeing all of that. So I think it was that a little bit that just kind of threw me for a loop every day.

• 11:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, a humongous high school.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:44Dax Shepard?

  That is scary. So after school, you're expecting mom to pick you up. That was the routine?

• 11:49Speaker 02

  And she did not answer her phone. I was waiting at the carpool line and she's a tendency to be late. She could have been late to her own funeral and it would have been normal. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna give her some grace. But then thirty minutes went by and still nothing. I tried calling her, I tried texting her and just nothing.

• 12:06Dax Shepard?

  At no moment where you're like, oh, I slammed the door, she's teaching me a lesson? Was there any part of your brain that was like, oh, maybe she didn't pick me up on purpose?

• 12:13Speaker 02

  No, my mom was never one to hold a grudge. I probably had texted her earlier that day. I know I was texting in the group chat with her and my dad first period that day. So I didn't think she was holding anything against me for that moment.

• 12:26Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 12:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:27Dax Shepard?

  So how did you get yourself home?

• 12:28Speaker 02

  A friend from the private school, she switched to that school too. I was like, hey, can you give me a ride home? Cause my mom's nowhere to be found. So her and her mom took me home.

• 12:37Dax Shepard?

  And when do you start getting nervous when you get home?

• 12:41Speaker 02

  I show up to the front door, cause I didn't have my key, knocked on the door, she didn't answer. And every spring and every fall, she loved fashion. She had so many clothes. She had two of the same item in almost every single thing. Some with tags on it still, like a problem.

• 12:57Dax Shepard?

  Was her name Monica Padman by chance?

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Switch her closet out. She had a huge walk-in closet and then she put everything in tubs and, and she would be up until two, three in the morning.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Switching her closet out. Yeah, it's, it's almost winter time. We gotta get the fur out, you know?

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  So I was like, okay, maybe she's just sleeping, cause she's not answering. And I went, knocked on the door, didn't hear anything back. And at that point, my friend's mom was like, hey, let's just go get some dinner and then come back. So we went to Chick-fil-A, sat down, got some dinner.

• 13:25Dax Shepard?

  Wow, you left.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Went back, still nothing. And the house, their room was to the left of the front door, behind some bushes. So I went and I crawled into the bushes and their lights were off, but also still not that unnormal. Because my mom hated overhead lights. She liked natural lights. So I was like, maybe it's getting darker out. So she just wants to circadian rhythm. And I saw kind of a silhouette. And I didn't really want to make anything out of that, but I went to my friend's mom and I was like, hey, something's wrong. I think we need to get in the house. I mean, it was just us three girls. So we went across the street to the neighbor and the neighbor, he and his wife came out and he's huge, tall dude. And went and just busted the door down.

• 14:10Dax Shepard?

  Are you first to go in, I'd imagine, at your house?

• 14:15Speaker 02

  I went in briefly and I kind of looked and I went back out and my neighbor went back in. My dog Sully, he was the sweetest golden retriever you'll ever meet in your entire life. Was mean. He was being mean to my neighbor. So he came out and said, hey Eva, you need to come get Sully. He'll bite me.

• 14:33Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  And so I went and I got Sully and that's when I saw my mom. So I took Sully out and my neighbor, I waited a few minutes. My neighbor came back out and just shook his head at my friend's mom and his wife. And so that's when I kind of knew, okay.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  Something happened.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Thing's not good.

• 14:48Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 14:50Dax Shepard?

  How sweet of Sully though, that he was like, she can't protect herself right now. I gotta keep everyone away from her.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  I have never seen him like that. And to this day, he's never, never been like that again. Yeah.

• 15:02Dax Shepard?

  So what is it like to find mom? That is terrifying. Is your first hope like, we just need to get her to a hospital?

• 15:09Speaker 03

  Did you like run in when they were shaking their head?

• 15:12Speaker 02

  No, I didn't want to see that. I just knew, you know, at that point, she hadn't answered anything. If she was even mildly unconscious, she probably would have came to eventually.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  I had a gut feeling and I knew. So I just kind of got up because instinctually, I think everybody started calling my sister-in-law and nine one one and everything. I was like, I know what's about to happen. I don't want to see the gurney. I'm gonna go to the other house.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  So went across the street, sat down.

• 15:38Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 15:39Dax Shepard?

  Had she had any health scares prior to that?

• 15:44Speaker 02

  No. You know how greens powders are a big thing now?

• 15:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  She was on that in the nineties.

• 15:48Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 15:49Speaker 02

  She was healthy, always working out, always going on runs and walks, drinking her protein shakes. You know, like the Quest chips. She was having to special order those from the old brand that used to own it.

• 16:01Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 16:02Dax Shepard?

  She was into Quest chips back then?

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember I was like five or six. She was going on advacare.com and getting Quest chips from Advacare.

• 16:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow, wow.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, always very, very healthy.

• 16:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, crazy unexpected.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  So that was just the furthest thing from what I thought would happen.

• 16:15Dax Shepard?

  And she had seventy-five percent blockage in an artery? Is that the conclusion?

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:20Dax Shepard?

  So she had a heart attack and died?

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 16:24Dax Shepard?

  And you're fourteen and you're out of new school and your dad's out of town. How long does it take for him to get home?

• 16:29Speaker 02

  He got home, it was middle of the night that night.

• 16:33Dax Shepard?

  It was the same day?

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, my sister-in-law and my mom's ex-husband came to pick me up. And so we went over to my brother's house and I did my homework and went to bed. And then my dad woke me up probably two or three in the morning.

• 16:45Dax Shepard?

  Were you in a state of shock at that moment?

• 16:47Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  I don't think I really ever had like a full grief moment. I think that I was just so shocked. And I was out of school for three days. That was a Wednesday. I was out Thursday, Friday, went back Monday. Just tried to get back to normal.

• 17:03Dax Shepard?

  And were people urging you not to do that?

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Not really. My dad and my brother and my sister-in-law were just kind of like, do what you want to do.

• 17:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, right.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:12Dax Shepard?

  And how was your dad taking it?

• 17:15Speaker 02

  He, I think, held it together for me. I didn't see him really break down until her funeral, which was a couple of days later, but that was the only time I saw him break down. And he would console me when I came to him about it and just say, I miss her too. I don't think that he wanted to show me that he was mourning. Cause I think he wanted to stay strong.

• 17:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. How did you and dad's relationship evolve after?

• 17:39Speaker 02

  So we were already pretty close. I was always kind of tagging along the lows and helping with house projects and doing whatever. And we just got even closer. That was like nine months of pure fun. He kind of did whatever I wanted to do.

• 17:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you kind of have leverage at that point.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  So I mean, I remember I'd been begging to go to San Diego for so long. And I think a month after that, he was like, so guess what? We're going to San Diego.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  No way.

• 18:04Dax Shepard?

  He's like, anything I can do to help cheer her up.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, or, and also just, let's live life.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:10Dax Shepard?

  Were you carrying any guilt over your last exchange?

• 18:14Speaker 02

  That weighed on me for a little bit. And I mean, the more I talked to my dad about it too, cause he knew that was something. I can't keep a secret. I can't tell a lie. So I just immediately went to him. I was like, this is the last interaction we had. And he was like, you know that that is not what your mom would remember you by, or you should remember your mom by. That meant nothing to her.

• 18:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and as a parent of teenage kids, that's standard biz.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:37Dax Shepard?

  They're just randomly like terrible to you for no reason.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  It's just the way, yeah.

• 18:42Dax Shepard?

  You quickly go like, did I, and you're like, no, I didn't do shit. This is happening.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:46Dax Shepard?

  When did the Bible verses every morning start?

• 18:49Speaker 02

  I think it was towards the end of my high school career because I could drive. I was out of the house a lot. He mentioned it a couple of times. It hurt him a little bit when I got my first car and couldn't get out of the house because I was never around anymore. That was something that he brought up in two different conversations we had about Ashley, which was like, you're never home anymore. I miss you, you know, as soon as I gave you your car, you were just gone.

• 19:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  And so I think that was kind of his way of connecting after that.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  Well, sorry, what is the Bible verse? What, I don't know, what is that? You just did it every morning together?

• 19:21Dax Shepard?

  Every morning he sent her a Bible verse. She always woke up to a Bible verse for years.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  That's lovely, okay.

• 19:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, which later comes into play.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, circle moment.

• 19:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So during that nine months after your mother died, you did specifically ask him, do you think you'll ever remarry?

• 19:39Speaker 02

  I asked him the night that he came home after my mom died.

• 19:42Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  That was like my first question, you know? He gave me the whole spiel of like, I've seen a lot of death and I'm here for you and we'll get through this together. And then I asked, are you gonna get remarried and have kids? And he said, no. I mean, it was like probably three in the morning.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  He had flown in from Texas and he was like, I don't think so, no.

• 20:00Dax Shepard?

  Do you understand what his job was? He was a consultant for defense contractors, you know, like what was? Kind of.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  I think.

• 20:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it seems like an abstract job to have your hands around as a kid.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  He had some crazy technology. He was a brain guy. Encryption was his forte. So he was doing a lot of encrypting on some crazy government projects and kind of consulting the military and just anything that needed protecting. He'd have like prototypes of stuff. I'd go to his office and I was 10. I didn't really know what I was looking at, but I remember some of it. I can't even wrap my head around it now.

• 20:33Dax Shepard?

  So nine months later, he's in Florida, right? Where he meets Ashley?

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah, they did meet.

• 20:39Dax Shepard?

  He was at a dinner or something.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, something in Palm Springs.

• 20:42Dax Shepard?

  Palm Beach?

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Palm Beach, is that it?

• 20:44Speaker 03

  Palm Springs is here.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Palm Springs is here, okay.

• 20:46Dax Shepard?

  But she was working for the Trump campaign.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:49Dax Shepard?

  So definitely she was probably in Palm, or not definitely, she was probably in Palm Beach.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  That was definitely it.

• 20:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so they met. Now, this is crazy, right? This little chunk is wild.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:00Dax Shepard?

  They met and then 13 days later, they got married.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:06Dax Shepard?

  And she's 24 and he's 54.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  And you are 15?

• 21:11Speaker 02

  15.

• 21:11Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 21:12Dax Shepard?

  Explain the first time you are made aware of Ashley.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  So we were in the car. He was picking me up from school because I couldn't drive yet. I was 15 and so he picked me up and he always had his conference calls on speaker. And he picked me up from school. We were on the way home, conference call on the speakerphone. And I hear them talking about this conference that they were gonna have the next weekend in North Carolina. And they said, Doug, are you gonna bring your girlfriend?

• 21:39Speaker 03

  Oh boy.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  And I was 15, so that week or two prior, I had seen him kind of at night in bed on his phone, like sending a heart emoji or, you know, like a kissy face.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  So I just kind of put two and together and I was real quiet at first when he got off. And he said, what's wrong, Eva? I said, what are they talking about, your girlfriend? He said, oh, they got me confused with another guy. It's not me. I said, well, I saw you texting a heart emoji to someone last night. He was like, it's not my girlfriend, we're just friends. I said, well, have y'all gone out to dinner? And he was like, yeah. And I said, well, have you kissed? And he was like, yeah. I said, so you're dating?

• 22:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're like, so that's more than a friend.

• 22:14Dax Shepard?

  So it's exactly what they said on the phone.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I was like, okay. At that point, I didn't really know what to say. I was just like, I trust you if this is making you happy.

• 22:24Dax Shepard?

  Right, because you don't have any idea she's 24. You don't have any idea, anything about her, right?

• 22:28Speaker 02

  No clue.

• 22:28Dax Shepard?

  Kids have varying opinions, right? I've talked about this with my own daughters, like, okay, so if I die, is mom allowed to remarry? Funny enough, the verdict was mom can remarry, but I can't.

• 22:41Dax Shepard?

  Okay? So I don't know why it's that way. But at any rate, also between the two of them, there's a much different reaction to that. So I'm wondering, would it have been your wish that your dad never dated again? Or were you like, he needs a date and not be lonely?

• 22:54Speaker 02

  I don't even know where I stood at that point. I feel like I was annoyed, but I didn't think that it would go any further than that. One second he's single, next second he has a girlfriend. It wasn't introduced in any sort of slow way, like, you know, start bringing her over and this is a friend. And then it was just kind of like, boom, we're dating. I think that if it had been that way, I would have been a little more pushing against it. Like, hey, no, this isn't cool.

• 23:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  But just because I had no choice but to kind of react, I mean, like, oh, okay, I didn't get a chance.

• 23:21Dax Shepard?

  Well, in none of the scenarios I modeled out with my own children, was anyone allowed to date within nine months? I think even with mom being allowed to remarry, it was like after X amount of years.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  I hadn't even registered that she was dead yet. So I was just kind of like, alright, cool.

• 23:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're dealing with such upheaval.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  This is interesting. I have a friend who has been through a similar thing. Her mother died and then her father remarried very, very quickly to also kind of like a pretty young and very fast, sort of random.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  It's more common than you would think. I've heard a lot of stories since then and people will be like, yeah, men just remarry a lot faster. They can't be lonely.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:03Dax Shepard?

  What's funny is as I'm learning this story, because by the way, I didn't follow any of this, right? Like, I wasn't aware of the Black Swan murder.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah.

• 24:10Dax Shepard?

  That missed me. Yeah, I don't watch any of those shows. I don't watch 48. Now I've seen 48 Hours researching you, but I had no clue that that had happened. So when I'm first finding out that your dad married this woman 13 days later, I'm going, I need an explanation.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:25Dax Shepard?

  My conclusion, tell me if I'm completely off base, which is like, she's sending him naked photos and stuff. She's very sexually engaged and he's very religious and he can't have sex with her if they're not married.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 24:37Dax Shepard?

  So literally this thing is like fast past.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:40Dax Shepard?

  Just have sex.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Well, so here's also something. I don't think that she was as religious as she made out to be to my dad. I think that she just was like, if that's what it's gonna take, then I'll get married right then and there. You know, like in her head, she wasn't saying, but outwardly, she was like, yeah, well, I'm a Christian too, so we have to.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  Oh geez.

• 24:57Dax Shepard?

  Well, but it only worked to her benefit to fast pass it. Which, again, I try to resist my poking at religion, but therein lies one of my issues. Like, what are we talking about? You gotta get married and you gotta make some crazy decision to appease.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  When people do it that fast, because I have friends that are getting married now, I'm like, we're 25.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:15Dax Shepard?

  Chill.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  There's time, there's time.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  You don't know these people.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  Exactly. You don't even know you yet, really, you know?

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Our brains are just starting to develop.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 25:24Dax Shepard?

  When did you meet her?

• 25:26Speaker 02

  The next day.

• 25:26Dax Shepard?

  After the wedding, uh, the secret wedding?

• 25:29Speaker 03

  Wait.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I, I wasn't even at the secret wedding. They were dating and then the next day, they were still dating, but I met her. And then the next day, to my knowledge, they were married. So it was like three days, you know, got the introduction and then the next day, yeah.

• 25:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, explain the introduction. I think you said, but you anticipated them going like, okay, so we're gonna be dating. And then your worst case scenario is like, God, did he propose to her?

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the next day, he was like, actually, she's in town. Let's go pick her up from the airport. I said, okay. So I went and got in the truck and we went and picked her up from the airport. And he was just kind of making the small talk for us. He was like, she's a ballerina and teaches children and she's done this and done that. I was like, okay, cool.

• 26:09Dax Shepard?

  Were you shocked by the fact that she was nine years older than you?

• 26:13Speaker 02

  I didn't know the exact age. It just kind of went over my head at that point. I don't really remember the rest of that day. I know it was just kind of small talk and I think they went and did their own thing and I went and hung out with my friends. The next day, I was getting ready to go to my friend's house and my dad came upstairs and he was like, you need to come downstairs and we need to have a family chat. And it struck me a little weird that he said family chat.

• 26:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, why don't you get the non-family member out of here and we'll have a little chat.

• 26:40Speaker 03

  You mean me and you? Yeah, we can do that.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Totally. And he said, no, I think like we all need to go downstairs and talk. And I said, I don't have anything to say to her. Y'all are dating, good for you.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  The only thing that I would go and sit downstairs for right now with her is if you were gonna say you want to propose. And those words came out of my mouth and then the next second he said, we're married. So I wasn't legally allowed to drive my car without an adult with a full license yet. So I got in the front seat, made them both get, it was a two-door Jeep Wrangler. So they had to like go crawl into the backseat.

• 27:12Speaker 03

  Oh my God, how cute, such a rule baller.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  And I was angrily driving over to my friend's house. They took my car and I was just at my friend's house.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  Oh my God.

• 27:21Dax Shepard?

  This is a lot to process. Had your dad displayed any previous kind of rash, impulsive decisions? Or is this completely out of character?

• 27:31Speaker 02

  That was so out of character. I mean, he was usually very slow and meticulous and thought about everything.

• 27:37Dax Shepard?

  He's into encryption for Christ's sake.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, the biggest life lesson I learned up until that point was measure twice, cut once for him. Because I was always doing home projects. So he was always very meticulous about decision making.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:51Dax Shepard?

  Simultaneous to this, this is also interesting. Your friend moves into your house.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 27:59Dax Shepard?

  Tell me about that.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  So that was in the fall, right when school started, when I found out about Ashley and my dad. She moved in that December, right after Christmas. I was at a lacrosse kind of showcase thing up in North Carolina and my dad and Ashley were there. We all went together and I was in the middle of a game, but I'd stepped out off the field and I saw that she had texted, she was like a friend that I had in school, but never out of school. That was freshman year, so we were in sophomore year now. And we were still in touch, but never really hung out. And she had called me a bunch of times and texted me. I called her back and she said, hey, this is really last minute and random, but I need somewhere to stay. Can I stay with you? And I said, yeah, sure, why not? So I asked my dad and my dad was like, I mean, we have three extra bedrooms upstairs. Y'all have at it.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  So we went and picked her up, she moved in.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 28:52Dax Shepard?

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

• 29:35Dax Shepard?

  Insurance provided by Allstate North American Insurance Company, Northbrook, Illinois. Roadside assistance plans provided by Allstate Motor Club Incorporated and Allstate affiliate. We get support from our presenting sponsor, YouTube Premium. Now you already know I'm a big YouTube person. It's incredible on its own, but premium makes the whole experience feel enhanced. Like you don't realize how much better it can get until you try it. The biggest game changer for me, background play. I love long, two hour deep dives. You name it, motorcycles, travel, cars.

• 30:09Speaker 03

  Cooking shows for me.

• 30:10Dax Shepard?

  Cooking. Listen, with premium, you don't have to keep the screen open. So I can lock my phone, slide it into my pocket and listen to a podcast while I'm folding laundry or working out. It's also completely ad free, meaning when a narrator is building up to the climax of an insane story, there's zero interruption. And for travel, offline download saves the day. I love this one. Relying on airplane wifi can be a gamble, so I just download my favorite videos before takeoff. And with smart downloads, premium will automatically download new videos from channels you actually follow without having to lift a finger. I'm covered if I forget to download a video I want to watch, or even if there's no service. And the home run for me is that YouTube premium remembers exactly where I left off and lets

• 30:53Dax Shepard?

  me continue watching on another device from right where I stopped. So I can start a video on my TV while brushing my teeth and pick it right back up on my phone on my morning walk. So yeah, YouTube was already great, but premium supercharges it. If you like YouTube, you'll love premium. Try YouTube premium for two months free at youtube.com/premium. Trial eligibility varies. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. We get support from Superhuman. I'm someone who wants to do big, meaningful work, but the small stuff eats up my day before I even get to it. The endless emails, docs, scheduling, follow ups that pile up. By the time all that's cleared, there's no energy left for the ambitious stuff. Most AI tools promise to fix that, but they require opening a new tab, re-explaining

• 31:37Dax Shepard?

  everything from scratch every single time. A week later, it's just another thing collecting dust in the browser. Superhuman, from the makers of Grammarly, is different. It's already embedded inside the tools people are using, email, docs, browser. It's not waiting to be found. It's already there, working alongside, clearing what's in the way. So the focus stays on what's actually worth doing. A thought partner that's already up to speed, no catching it up. It knows the style, the workflows, and it backs people up without getting in the way. At your service, not after your job. That's the difference. Give it a try for yourself. Start streamlining your workflows with Superhuman. Try today at superhuman.com.

• 32:19Dax 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?

• 32:35Speaker 03

  Which is a fair question.

• 32:36Dax 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.

• 33:02Speaker 03

  Sleep mode is genius.

• 33:04Dax 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.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  I am really glad Instagram's helping to give parents peace of mind with teen accounts.

• 33:23Dax Shepard?

  Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.

• 33:37Dax Shepard?

  After the kind of shell shockness wore off, what was your assessment of Ashley, your new stepmother? What were your first impressions of her?

• 33:47Speaker 02

  I could tell she was kind of fake nice and not smart. It was kind of like talking to an airhead all the time. I picked up on it as time went on and I got older as well, that she was just kind of acting super smart, but you could tell she just didn't know anything about anything.

• 34:05Dax Shepard?

  And you were feeling the manipulativeness?

• 34:07Speaker 02

  Yes, that was pretty quick, I would say, that I started realizing I didn't have her way. So she would go to my dad and my dad would be like, well, you've got to do this because Ashley, you know?

• 34:17Dax Shepard?

  And your dad wanted her to step in and be a motherly figure because she didn't have one anymore.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:23Dax Shepard?

  But she wasn't a good match for that role, right? I mean, again, she's nine years older than you.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Exactly. She was eight years older. Both of my brothers are married and I'm very close with my sister in law, my oldest brother's wife. She had moved in right after my mom passed to kind of help with the house stuff. And my dad was out of town a lot, still traveling. So it was me and Bev and you know, she taught me everything that I needed to know at that point in my life. And I was like, no, I'm good. I don't need another 20 something year old. I have Beverly. So I was nice to Ashley, but as soon as she started to put her foot down about certain things and say, well, no, I'm gonna tell your dad or you have to do this, or I'm gonna take your car away. The first time she threatened the car, that pissed me off.

• 35:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  I was like, no, we're not doing that.

• 35:07Dax Shepard?

  And were you afraid of confrontation or no?

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Not really.

• 35:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you would fight back in those moments?

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Kind of. I'm not a confrontational person, but I will get my punches in when I can, you know? So.

• 35:21Speaker 03

  You're not a pushover.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so if she said something, I'd try to be polite about it at least until if she kept pushing, that's when I'd just kind of be like, no, I'm not doing that.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:30Dax Shepard?

  And as this wild experiment is running its course, what are you noticing in the nature of their relationship?

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Super all over each other, lovey dovey at first, very much PDA all the time. It was disgusting.

• 35:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  As time went on, it was Ashley just bitching about something constantly and my dad just kind of sitting there and taking it and listening. Eva said this, or somebody said this. And my dad was quiet and chill, so he'd just kind of take it and not say anything.

• 36:04Dax Shepard?

  He's like, get me back to my encryption.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Get me back to my office. That's why he's out of town all the time. And then she started going with him.

• 36:11Dax Shepard?

  What was the event that led to him firing the gun in the house?

• 36:15Speaker 02

  I wasn't home, neither was my friend that moved in with us. I think what had happened was she was upset about something. And I mean, when she got upset about something, she was in his ear just nonstop. And I think at that point, from my understanding, it was out on the counter or he was cleaning it or something. And she just would not stop and he got frustrated and just shot it up into the roof. And that shut her up.

• 36:39Dax Shepard?

  Part of the thing they bonded over Monica when they first met is they both love guns. She had like multiple guns on her the night they met.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Publix one time, just me and her, and she made a comment about a gun. And I was like, are you packing? And she pulled up her shirt and showed me, I said, we are in Publix.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  In Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, there's nothing here that's gonna harm us. It was just kind of a weird flex. I think she thought it was cool.

• 37:03Speaker 03

  Like tough or something?

• 37:05Dax Shepard?

  Also, she's campaigning for Trump. She's really kind of the prototypical.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:09Dax Shepard?

  She's sitting, checking all the boxes.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Trump girl.

• 37:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Yeah, loves guns, has multiple guns on her at 24.

• 37:16Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 37:18Dax Shepard?

  Oh God, I would of course love to know her entire childhood, how we end up as her.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  I know.

• 37:24Dax Shepard?

  It's so tempting, the whole time I'm learning about her, to really assign her a lot of different personality disorders I know about. She feels very, very borderline personality.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  I think it was either that or history on it.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  It was whatever Amber Heard has. It was the same, is what we discovered.

• 37:40Dax Shepard?

  Because she either thought your dad was a savior or that he was evil.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  Like evil killer out to get us all.

• 37:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, those were the two options on the table. He's everything or he's nothing. Okay, so in 17, so at this point, they would have been together for, I guess, a year and a half or something?

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, something like that.

• 37:58Dax Shepard?

  She.

• 38:00Dax Shepard?

  Has to have a ballet studio.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:03Dax Shepard?

  Which again, this feels very transparent. I hate to sound so judgmental, but it's like, she wanted to open an international ballet company. That would be really inclusive, meaning it would have all these people that normally wouldn't have gotten taken to a ballet company. I.e. she never got to, you know, it sounds like she's trying to figure out a way where, I'm gonna create a version where I would have been there.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was exactly it. She wanted that. I think she didn't make the cut for ballet.

• 38:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  And so she wanted this ballet company and my dad wanted to give her the entire world on a silver platter. Was like, okay, let's make it happen. And he was smart and he knew how to pull together investors and make things happen fast. So that's what he did.

• 38:43Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:44Dax Shepard?

  So they start this ballet company and lots of ballerinas fly from all over the world to come audition and become members of this.

• 38:53Speaker 03

  And she's like running it.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:55Dax Shepard?

  But she mostly doesn't even show up.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  She was very there the first few months. It was towards the end when she wasn't showing up as much anymore after they announced the pregnancy. So that's when she was starting to have a bad pregnancy and so she wasn't showing up to the ballet things anymore. Another thing that I think happened is some of the investors and my dad probably, and I also, you have to take this with a grain of salt because I tried to stay out of it as much as possible.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  I'm sure.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  But from my understanding, my dad and the investors realized, hey, she kind of acted like she could run this entire thing, but she can't. Let's pull somebody down from New York that actually knows what the hell she's doing.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  So they pulled down this woman who started running things appropriately and trying to get things pulled together more properly than she was. And I think that she did not like the power being taken away from her. So she started acting out. And that's when she disvalued herself.

• 39:49Dax Shepard?

  At this moment, and you're getting older and wiser and more savvy, right? Are you assessing this as like, oh yeah, this is just a gold digger using my dad to execute all of her dreams?

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, kinda. I mean, there was a day that my dad came home with a duffel bag of cash. And I just kinda looked at it and I asked him, I was like, what's that? Where'd you get that? And he was like, he didn't say much about it. It's for the ballet. I said, okay. And then he said, just don't take Snapchats of it and show your friends. We don't want people knowing this is in the house right now.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  Oh geez.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I said, okay.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  You're like, what?

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:21Speaker 03

  Were you like, get me out of here. It's time for me to be out of here.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  I was just so enthralled in my own things.

• 40:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  I just was kinda letting them do whatever they wanted to do. And then I was trying to make it through high school.

• 40:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:35Dax Shepard?

  And do you think you were running as fast as you could a little bit? To stay focused on things that wouldn't have you thinking about the fact that your mom died?

• 40:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was always out hanging out with friends or at lacrosse practice or just doing anything that I could to get away. I started going to the gym every morning before school and then had lacrosse practice after school and it was always something.

• 40:57Dax Shepard?

  It's funny and sad that your dad would accuse you of kinda deserting him when in fact he brought a force into your house that would make you leave. No one's gonna hang around and sit around a table and act like this is the dream family scenario.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I was holding a grudge against my dad for so long about that. And he would always deny, deny, deny. I'd be like, well, you left me or you're resenting my wife. So he used that line a couple of times. Well, you're resenting my life. So you know, why should we do this or be nice to you, whatever? Not that my dad was ever mean, but why should she be nice to you if you're resenting her? Until it was after she left that I think he had a come to moment and was like, oh, Eva, that must have really hurt. Cause he eventually came to apologize and that's all I was looking for.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  With some sort of apology.

• 41:44Speaker 03

  He got sucked into this vortex at a very vulnerable time for him as well. So like, ugh.

• 41:50Dax Shepard?

  It's another high horse I'm tempted to sit on, which is like, I watched the Anthony Bourdain documentary and it's so heartbreaking.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:58Dax Shepard?

  And yeah, he falls in love with this really young woman. He gets really insecure. It's a very bizarre relationship. I've seen so many men, older men who get with young women and they can't handle it.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:09Dax Shepard?

  It's not good for them.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  It's just like a distraction, the honeymoon stage. And you know, he was like, this is great. Nothing's wrong.

• 42:15Dax Shepard?

  She's hot.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  And then he's in too deep and he takes it.

• 42:18Dax Shepard?

  He owns a fucking ballerina company all of a sudden.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  Right, yeah. Like, what the hell?

• 42:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:24Dax Shepard?

  So the pregnancy, did they wait a while to tell you about that? Or how do you learn that she's pregnant? And I can't imagine you were excited about that. Cause that means she's around permanently in some sense.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. So me and my friend that had moved in were sitting in my bed and they came up into my room and they were like, hey, we have an announcement. And my dad framed it like, you are gonna have a baby sister and y'all are gonna share birthdays. Cause her due date was right around my birthday. That was the worst way to tell a teenage girl.

• 42:55Dax Shepard?

  That was so male of him. He didn't realize like, no, I already feel less important because now my birthday is not my birthday.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 43:03Dax Shepard?

  This is great news.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  This is the worst thing.

• 43:05Dax Shepard?

  And we're naming her Eva.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:07Dax Shepard?

  And you're going away.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  And actually, you're being sent off.

• 43:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you don't exist anymore.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  You don't need this anymore.

• 43:13Dax Shepard?

  So after she got pregnant, this kinda escalates the craziness. Yeah, getting pregnant?

• 43:19Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 43:19Dax Shepard?

  I guess in order, I think what seems most relevant plot wise is she moves back to Florida with her mom at some point. How do we go from getting pregnant, we have an announcement to her moving down?

• 43:30Speaker 02

  She was going back and forth a little bit more just because she was having a bad pregnancy. And then eventually one day I asked, where's Ashley? And my dad said, oh, she's having a really bad pregnancy. We decided that it's best for her to be taken care of by her mom. Cause my dad was traveling so much still. She was just down there in Florida and that was that. And then I came home one day from school and her car was gone and all of her weird little hot glue, seashell pictures off the walls were gone and a note was on the bed.

• 44:00Dax Shepard?

  And what did the note say?

• 44:01Speaker 02

  I have no idea. I just remember my dad reading it and looking crushed and just going silent. I actually left the house when I found all of that and I was going over to my sister in law's house because I was like, I don't wanna be around that. And, and she said, no, turn around, go be with your dad.

• 44:16Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  So I went and I turned around and he just, he went very quiet.

• 44:21Speaker 03

  Were you like, what happened?

• 44:23Speaker 02

  I don't even remember if words were exchanged other than she's gone or she left me.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  Oh, Jesus.

• 44:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So at this point, I'll add that the ballet company's now gets shut down. It costs Doug like a hundred grand.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, something crazy.

• 44:38Dax Shepard?

  She now lives with mom.

• 44:39Speaker 03

  And she's pregnant still.

• 44:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, she's pregnant. And now she starts this narrative that she's pretty convinced Doug killed Eva's mom.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:50Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, she did that along with, he's out to kill me and her and he's beating me and he's beating her and poisoning me. Yeah.

• 45:01Dax Shepard?

  He's like figured out in her mind that he had poisoned Eva's mom. And so, oh, now he's poisoning me.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  She was pulling medical records for my mom. She was trying to get the grave dug up.

• 45:12Speaker 03

  No.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. I didn't know that again until after, but I knew about the poison stuff. It was like a really weird thing while she lived with me was they were obsessed with teas. We had a tea drawer and I was an avid coffee drinker with my dad for so long, which was another weird thing that I picked up on. Cause it was always coffee with my mom, every morning coffee. And then all of a sudden the coffee's gone, the tea's there and every kind of eclectic weird tea you can get. And he would send her boxes of tea down to Florida or take them to her. And so she eventually came to the conclusion, oh, these teas must be what's poisoning me. That's why I'm having such a bad pregnancy.

• 45:48Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 45:49Speaker 02

  So she started going to the doctors in Florida and they would run all these tests and they couldn't find anything. So she would go from doctor to doctor to doctor and try and get them to run more tests and do more labs because she was convinced until one of the doctors fired her as a patient and they said, get out of my office. Nobody was fitting her narrative and her agenda. So she was getting mad.

• 46:08Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 46:09Dax Shepard?

  Would you agree that she's now significantly less stable than she was when she arrived?

• 46:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 46:15Dax Shepard?

  So did you have any kind of theory on what was the catalyst for that? Do we think it was like being pregnant and hormones?

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, I think that she just stopped getting her way as much. And you can only play that part for so long before you start to get frustrated with the outcome.

• 46:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  And so, I mean, it just happened to her in prison. She got put into, um, what's the word?

• 46:38Speaker 03

  Solitary confinement.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  Solitary confinement, yeah. Because she assaulted a cop in prison and then they moved her to a new prison in January. So I think she was probably playing like pretty nice girl and then wasn't getting her way still and got frustrated and assaulted a cop. Same thing.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 46:54Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so now it's getting really, really dicey for your father because she's starting to accuse him and call people.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:01Dax Shepard?

  And Child Protective Services now getting involved. And your father's under the weight of these accusations. She has the baby and Monica immediately starts hyperbaric chamber treatments to rid her and the baby of the poison that her dad.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  Twenty-five treatments or something. They let her do that?

• 47:21Dax Shepard?

  Consecutive days, forty hours of treatment.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  With the baby.

• 47:25Dax Shepard?

  There's video of, or pictures of the baby in this hyperbaric chamber.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 47:30Dax Shepard?

  So that she can get the poison out.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  It almost sounds like psychosis, like Cohen. We had someone on who, he has like a schizophrenic adjacent disorder.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 47:40Speaker 03

  And led to all the psychosis. It kind of sounds like that.

• 47:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Well, that's what these situations leave all of us with is how much did she herself believe? How much was just evil calculation?

• 47:54Speaker 02

  I think it was both. I think it was evil calculation to start and then she just got to a point where she started to believe it because she said it so much.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:02Dax Shepard?

  Did you think her ultimate goal was, oh, I'm gonna get a divorce and I'm gonna take his money?

• 48:08Speaker 02

  I don't know. I think at that point he did not have a lot of money and it was becoming very apparent.

• 48:13Dax Shepard?

  He had just dumped a ton on this ballet.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, at this point, he was still paying the medical bills for the kid. He was paying for her. He was paying for her mother and for me. And then for himself. He was just spread so thin.

• 48:28Dax Shepard?

  I'm trying to think of the different things that happened during this time, but he wants to see the baby. She will not allow that. And then there's a hearing and in this hearing, he has to basically prove he has not been poisoning her and that none of these allegations are true. And in fact, that is the outcome. Thank goodness.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:49Dax Shepard?

  What grade were you in at that point? Are you like a senior, maybe?

• 48:53Speaker 02

  I was around junior or senior year.

• 48:55Dax Shepard?

  As your senior father go through this stuff, how is it landing on you? Are you urging him like, just let this go?

• 49:02Speaker 02

  It was back and forth for a while. He kept me out of a lot of it because I didn't find out that there was over 10 allegations made against him in this time. There was a period where CPS did get involved and I moved out into my brother's house for six months. And then I moved back. That was right at the end of my senior year and I moved back in with him and he was just keeping me kinda out of it. Cause I had asked him to at that point. I said, I don't wanna know what's going on. They were trying to reconcile. And they'd be together at one point and then she would do something again and cops would show up at the door and you know, another allegation. He called me at one point and he was like, hey, I just need you to kind of, I had to speak to someone on the phone just to give a character reference.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  You know, this is my dad and he's a great guy and he would never hurt anyone. He did that one hearing. I don't know if that was senior year, I think it was. And the judge said, there's not a scintilla of evidence that proves that Doug is guilty of any of this. This is ridiculous.

• 50:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:02Dax Shepard?

  He was probably pretty embarrassed by all this too. I can't imagine he wanted you to know. He knew he married a girl after 13 days and he knows what a disaster this has been. He didn't necessarily want you to know she's now accusing him of trying to kill her.

• 50:16Speaker 03

  He knows you've been right this whole time, basically.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  So I went and visited. At this point, he had met the baby. They were back together. He was living in Florida. This was second semester of my senior year because he got me an apartment in Charleston and he moved to Florida. So there was Christmas where he asked me to go meet my half sister for the first time. And I went down there and I stayed with him in his apartment and I met the baby. So this happened twice. We went to church and she was wearing a body con sparkly sequin dress that went up to her butt cheeks and stilettos into the late night service in Sarasota, Florida. And her mom and the baby and my dad and I walked in. The baby started crying. I was overwhelmed.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  I had to go step out in the hallway and her mom and her followed me out there and cornered me and they basically were saying, why are you crying? Did your dad do something? You know, he's out to kill us.

• 51:11Speaker 03

  Oh my.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  The mom was said, here's my number. I'm writing it on a piece of paper. Don't put it in your phone because he can hack our phones and he can get my number and he'll kill me. And I literally looked at her and I said, fuck off. At that point, I had had enough. I said, my dad is not a killer. He didn't kill me. He didn't kill my mom. Went back into the service, finished the service, went to bed and I told my dad at that point, but I don't think they had really registered what exactly. Cause I was kinda just like, they just were being really weird and annoying. Fast forward to Easter of the next year. He asked me to go back to Florida again, so I did. And we were all shopping before dinner and Ashley and her mom pulled me into a corner of the store

• 51:52Speaker 02

  that had a huge speaker. So like, I guess nobody could hear them. But again, same thing. Your dad tried to kill me. He tried to kill your mom. He's gonna kill us all. And again, I just said, leave me alone. Like, I don't know. So the next morning, I told my dad, I said, hey, I can't do this anymore. This is the second time they've tried to convince me of that. I don't wanna be around them anymore. And he said, he's like, that's it. I'm done. I have tried again and again and again to show this woman that I love her and there's nothing wrong with me. I'm gonna pack up my car and I'm leaving too. And I said, no dad, the baby is about to be here to open her Easter basket. I don't think you should leave. You need to have that experience with her. She's old enough to remember that. So I told him to stay. I said, I'm gonna go to Charleston. You can come back tomorrow.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  And he stayed and he didn't come back. So that was like a moment that I could have been like, good for you, leave. And I didn't.

• 52:43Speaker 03

  But your reasoning was so kind and generous.

• 52:46Dax Shepard?

  Also, even if he had come back with you that weekend, he would have been back.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. There was no breaking this cycle without something radical. Yeah. Were you feeling abandoned? I mean, you're in high school and you're living in an apartment and your mom's gone.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  Not really. I thought it was cool.

• 53:05Dax Shepard?

  That you had an apartment?

• 53:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. I was a senior in high school. I had a triple early out, which meant I only had one class. So I actually almost didn't graduate because my attendance record was so bad that year or that semester. But at the time it was in Mount Pleasant. It was in the neighborhood that my best friend and my boyfriend at the time lived in. And so, I mean, everybody would just come over after school. My dad passed through a lot. So I would see him once or twice a week going to North Carolina and home from North Carolina. So I didn't feel too abandoned. And I also, I mean, I texted him all day, every day. I called him all the time. He was still my best friend. So we were always talking and hanging out. You know, I was still super close with them.

• 53:48Dax Shepard?

  God, to have your own apartment and a boyfriend.

• 53:51Speaker 03

  That is exciting. It was fun.

• 53:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. At some point during this, I guess, post Easter, she decides, okay, we're gonna be together. We all need a fresh start. Let's all move to Maryland.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  Yes. So that was my freshman year of college, actually.

• 54:11Dax Shepard?

  You have the worst first year of college of anyone I've ever heard. Cause it's 2020.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  So that was going into my sophomore year. I graduated high school 2019. I didn't continue college after that because I told my dad, hey, I'm not letting you pay tuition for me to cheat online school. Like, that's not gonna happen. I didn't know what I wanted to major in yet. So it was gonna be a gap year. COVID hit right at the end of my freshman year.

• 54:33Dax Shepard?

  So they have this plan that they're going to move to Maryland and your father goes over to the house to help pack.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:42Speaker 03

  The Florida house?

• 54:43Speaker 02

  The Florida house. Yeah. So he had his apartment. He packed it up. She was living with her mom. He went and packed up their house and had a big U-Haul in the driveway. She had three guns loaded, one in the pantry, one in a laundry basket down on the floor, and then one in a closet in different rooms.

• 55:02Speaker 03

  And there's a baby.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  There's a baby walking around that is a toddler now and can reach into a hamper.

• 55:08Dax Shepard?

  The stupidity of that is fucking ghastly.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  He was in the room and she just shot him and killed him. She shot him, didn't hit him enough to kill him immediately. I think he hung on for about two hours before he fully passed, but she waited 15 minutes. She went over to the neighbor's house. There was like 15 minutes in between him getting shot and the cops getting called. So before the cops even arrived, the detective arrived on scene, her lawyer was already there. And she just kinda left him to bleed out. I think she was hoping that he was going to bleed out so he couldn't say anything.

• 55:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So he was shot through the leg and the arm, but the one through the arm had entered his body and went into his chest. Yeah. And then she went over to the neighbor's house and basically tells the neighbor, oh my God, he was assaulting me. I had to kill him. It was self-defense. Now this feels very calculated. I don't think she wanted to be evaluated with her delivery on 911. So she delegated it basically. So now the, the neighbors got to report what happened.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  Right. And 10 minutes before it happened, the mom and the baby went down to the little park nearby, right before it happened.

• 56:21Speaker 03

  Oh wow.

• 56:22Dax Shepard?

  I mean, all these guns around and I mean, the fact that it wasn't premeditated is hard to believe.

• 56:26Speaker 02

  Everybody knows you keep your guns in your safe. The safe probably should be the first thing to go in the U-Haul. So it's like, why was there one in a backpack in the closet?

• 56:35Speaker 03

  That is so crazy.

• 56:36Dax Shepard?

  I will add this. We left one detail out, which is your dad at one point, at the height of this, did write a letter to the sheriff's department accusing Ashley of having a split personality. So it seems like there was a moment where he kind of accepted what he was dealing with, but then of course they reconciled.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he always had the most positive attitude too. Whenever I was dealing with anything, he was almost projecting his false positivity onto me. So I think he just wanted to believe this isn't happening.

• 57:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. Denial.

• 57:06Dax Shepard?

  So you start getting concerned, obviously, the following morning. Cause normally you would have woken up to text of some scripture.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  So the night before I texted him around five and I had said, hey, like we're out at the sandbar. I sent him pictures of what we were doing. We were all in the boat. And the next morning I went to go text him or check his texts and talk to him and he hadn't sent me a Bible verse. So I thought that was kinda weird, but I also knew some mornings he woke up at like four and started his day at four o'clock and had a meeting at five or six. So I knew that happened sometimes and he would always get back to me and say, I'm sorry, I had a meeting. There was a couple of times like, I did a double workout today. So it was a couple of hours. So I didn't let it get to me at first. And then another hour went by and still nothing. I still have all the texts on my phone. If you kinda pull it to the side, you can see 30 minutes, 30 minutes, 30 minutes, 30 minutes.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  And then the texts start turning green. So I knew something was wrong. I started Googling car accident. I texted Ashley. I said, hey, have you heard from him recently? I haven't heard from him. Starting to get worried.

• 58:10Speaker 03

  God, the trauma.

• 58:11Dax Shepard?

  Did she respond?

• 58:12Speaker 03

  Again.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, she didn't. I don't even know if it went through or not. Cause I remember feeling so stupid for even reaching out. Tried to delete it. But I called my friends and all of my friends are like, Eva, you have anxiety. You do this when we don't answer fast enough. You know, it's probably just your mom. I called my sister-in-law and she lived five minutes down the road from the job that I was supposed to start that day. And so I went over to her house to hang out and I was telling her and she was like, Eva, you have nothing to worry about. Everything's fine. He'll get back to you. And we were sitting in there in the living room and I got the call from my uncle. And it was both my uncles on the phone. I don't know if they were together or they had just patched each other in at the same time. Yeah, he said there'd been an accident. And I said, what happened? And he said, your dad's been shot.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  And my initial reaction was he's dead and she killed him. And so that's what I said. I said, I was like, is he alive? He said, no. And I said, she did it, didn't she? And he said, yeah.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  So that was that.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  Oh, my.

• 59:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay, now, well, that's simply not enough for you to go through. So now we've got to have a media circus.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:17Dax Shepard?

  What do you do with that? Is it this same kind of kind of shutdown? I really can't even process what this is.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  In that moment?

• 59:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  My uncles were talking and talking and talking. And I said, hold on. And I set my phone down and I looked at my sister in law. They had their newborn and she put the baby down on the couch and I crawled up into her lap. And I just looked at her. I said, I don't have parents. And she said, I know. She was crying. I wasn't crying. I was in shock. But I had friends down the street because it was in the same neighborhood that my apartment was in too. And we were all going to hang out after my shift. So I called my friends and I said, hey, are y'all still there? I drove over there. I couldn't even get my foot to fully step down on the pedal because my foot was shaking so much. I sat down on the porch and my friend, he was like my best friend and he said, what happened? And I said, she killed him. And everybody just kind of looked at me. They said, all right, what are we doing tonight? You know, what are we going to do?

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  We had plans tonight. Are we going to continue the plans? And I said, I would like to continue the plans. I think that it's about to get pretty hairy with the media.

• 1:00:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  Boy.

• 1:00:20Dax Shepard?

  I mean, by the way, at 19, this would be my solution. Like, I don't even know what your solution would be. I would have been drunk very quickly.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was drunk shortly.

• 1:00:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just too much. And I'm like, okay, let's add.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  Way too much.

• 1:00:31Dax Shepard?

  Let's add that to the mix and see if that helps. Okay, so how soon after does the first bit of media attention start?

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  I mean, within a couple of hours, there was the local news doing the estranged wife shoots husband in Sarasota, Florida. And then a few weeks later, maybe we got some calls from some bigger media. Then it just kind of snowballed from there.

• 1:00:54Dax Shepard?

  Some part of me, that would be exciting in some way, like, oh my God, news are calling me? That would be an exciting element for me. Having had nothing spectacular happen to me, I might have initially been like.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  I don't think that I ever felt excited about it. I just kind of said yes to everything. I didn't ever feel nervous. So I just kind of kept doing it. And, you know, I think that my family, my dad's brothers and my family were just kept saying, you're doing such a great job. You know, you're so well spoken. You can really hold your own for your dad. And that's when I was like, you know what? Yeah, people need to know that he was a good guy and he needs to have some justice. And this doesn't make me nervous, so I'm just going to keep doing it.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:35Dax Shepard?

  You're representing your family well.

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:37Dax Shepard?

  So this turns quickly into, yeah, media attention, TV specials, tabloids, social media scrutiny.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:46Dax Shepard?

  Like, the full storm takes off. And I think you can sense people, they want an emotional performance from you.

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it was very tabloidy. It was very.

• 1:01:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, young woman, older man.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the daughter that's left alone, there's always these tearjerker questions. I could sense that they wanted some sort of emotional reaction online for the clickbait.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Oh, and did you feel like stubborn, like I'm not giving them that?

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  Not really. I just can't cry in front of people.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  I'm so, I wouldn't say numb to it, but it doesn't really faze me. I can talk about the most gruesome things I've dealt with this entire time. And I think the other side, the media likes that because everybody wants to know. I wasn't intentionally feeding into it. I'm just like, well, I'm an open book and I don't have an issue talking about it.

• 1:02:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but it's also a very heightened experience to turn on the TV and see yourself on it.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it wasn't weird. I remember the first, it was a CBS 48 Hours that I did and it came on the TV and I was like, the camera does add 20 pounds. That's all I could think about. So honestly, it wasn't really exciting for me to see myself on TV. I was more annoyed that some of the, the media was still trying to paint my dad in this terrible light. So I was like, okay, I have to keep going. I have to fight.

• 1:03:01Dax Shepard?

  Entertaining the notion that it was self-defense, maybe.

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  So was she in jail? Was she that, did she get?

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  She was on house arrest.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, she was in jail for like 10 days or something afterwards. She got put on house arrest.

• 1:03:12Dax Shepard?

  When do you start making TikToks? Before the trial or during the trial?

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  That was 2020 when it happened. I started, my first TikTok that I made about it was December or January of 2020, 2021-ish. I woke up with millions of likes, thousands of comments, millions of views.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  And then within a week or two, I had 200,000 followers.

• 1:03:36Dax Shepard?

  And explain the TikToks you were making.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  At that point, I wasn't really doing a whole lot of talking on TikTok, but I had used a sound or two that just was fitting of like, mom died, dad remarried, boom, dad murdered. So it wasn't a lot of context. And I think that was just enough for people to comment, what the fuck?

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  What did I just watch? And then replay it and then the algorithm picks up on it. So it just got very widespread very quickly.

• 1:04:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and you are mostly exploring some dark humor throughout all this.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  Oh, it was all jokes. The only time I didn't joke about it was explaining it, but even then I just joked about it. So what else am I going to do?

• 1:04:14Dax Shepard?

  I feel like I'm watching a playbook of exactly how I would have handled it, to be honest.

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  Thank you, yeah.

• 1:04:19Dax Shepard?

  My immediate reaction to heartbreak, sorrow, everything is a joke almost immediately. I'm almost in the middle of watching something horrendous and I'm already, this is my defense mechanism.

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I crack jokes all the time about things I probably shouldn't, which is not great. But my friends and I, I stayed over at my friend's house for probably a week after all of that happened. The night we got drunk and then we just kind of continued the party for a week under that. And at that point, the, the orphan jokes started rolling around because it was like, well, Yves is at like our orphan. She's just hanging out on her couch and. They didn't care. They wanted me to, but the orphan jokes came on within days.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Whatever you need to do to survive something like that, like no one can judge it.

• 1:05:07Dax Shepard?

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. This episode is supported by Helix.

• 1:05:17Speaker 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.

• 1:05:27Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:05:32Speaker 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.

• 1:05:48Dax Shepard?

  Increasingly so.

• 1:05:49Speaker 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.

• 1:05:59Dax 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.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

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• 1:06:26Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the girls who get it, they get it.

• 1:06:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay, but for those of us who are clearly not girls, walk me through it.

• 1:06:54Speaker 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.

• 1:07:11Dax Shepard?

  Great, great, great.

• 1:07:12Speaker 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.

• 1:07:26Dax Shepard?

  Roger.

• 1:07:27Speaker 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.

• 1:07:39Dax 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?

• 1:07:45Speaker 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.

• 1:07:59Dax Shepard?

  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 skill set, 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 that transition from private to public can feel like a huge leap. Squarespace makes it feel like a step. Beautiful templates, built in SEO, email campaigns, scheduling, analytics, everything you need to go from, I've been working on this, to here it is, come find me.

• 1:08:44Dax Shepard?

  All in one place, no code, no stitching together a bunch of different tools. So if you've been sitting on something and waiting for the right moment, this might be it. Head to squarespace.com/dax for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. 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

• 1:09:29Dax Shepard?

  off.

• 1:09:30Speaker 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 medullary 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, plant 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.

• 1:10:09Speaker 04

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• 1:10:33Dax Shepard?

  We had the most horrific event happen, and our respect for the people involved, I won't even detail, but suffice to say, we had roommates, and I was with three of them, and we got this completely tragic bit of information. I received it first, and I had to go tell my other two roommates who were with me out of town. And at the end of explaining it to them, I already had...

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  The punchline.

• 1:10:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I had a joke.

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Dax Shepard?

  And then they're all so fucked up, too, because we're all from fucked up houses. They were right on. It's just like, that's just how we did it.

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  It's funny. I mean, you have to laugh sometimes.

• 1:11:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that was my approach. But I also would be juggling with that, often feeling guilty that I wasn't having the reaction everyone thought I should.

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  I did. That happened with my mom, too, is I never really had this breakdown. And I think after the murder happened, I was kind of waiting to see, am I gonna crack? Because I immediately, my first reaction was, oh, my God, my parents are dead. Second reaction was, oh, my God, rent's due in three days. So I immediately had to start thinking, how am I gonna pay my bills? How am I gonna do this? The house mortgage fell on me. There were so many pieces to pick up that I was just left to deal with that. I didn't have a second to sit down and think, oh, my God, what just happened?

• 1:11:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and you're 20 years old.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  I was like joking, and then somebody was trying to serve me for the mortgage on the house. So it was like, I couldn't, you know?

• 1:11:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, you didn't have the luxury of really...

• 1:11:57Dax Shepard?

  Wallowing in it while another parent nurtured you and let you...

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  I couldn't afford therapy, so I just kind of did what I had to do.

• 1:12:04Dax Shepard?

  I think I always had a suspicion that if I were to let it break through, I would never recover.

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  That's why I haven't, to this day, gone to any sort of therapy. I went to a psychiatrist for like, two weeks after the pre-trial, because I think that messed me up. I couldn't sleep for days after the pre-trial. But I was almost scared. Everyone kept saying, well, maybe if talk therapy isn't for you, EMDR might, because that's what, if you just can't get it out, it's subconscious. And that is, I had a lot of like nervous system issues after that. It was coming out in different ways. So I thought, maybe it is just a nervous system thing. But I didn't want to tap into that, because that's a can of worms. I don't know if I open it, what's gonna come out.

• 1:12:42Dax Shepard?

  Did you have any autoimmune stuff?

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I had some autoimmune stuff. I had blood sugar dysregulation. I had just like the most random things, a lot of hormonal issues.

• 1:12:50Dax Shepard?

  The body knows. It doesn't give a fuck. The body doesn't get what the plan, like, oh, we're just gonna ignore this and focus on something else and run faster forward.

• 1:12:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:58Dax Shepard?

  The body's like, no, you're not.

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  No, so that's what really got me into like, the health and wellness scene and exercise and just nutrition, because I had to figure out how to fix all of that, too.

• 1:13:09Dax Shepard?

  So what was it about the pre-trial that was so disturbing?

• 1:13:13Speaker 02

  So it was only one day, and it was basically whether or not it was gonna go to trial for murder, if it was out of self-defense or not. But it was one day, and they had all these, it was mostly evidence just thrown up on the screen. And so all day, they were going, this is evidence, picture, number, this, you're about to see this. And they would put it up on the screen. And then halfway through the day or so, or towards the end of the day, Suzanne O'Donnell came up to me, and she said, hey, what we're about to put up on the screen, some of it might be graphic. If you don't want to see it, we don't have to show it up there, but if you want media to see it, we have to show it. I said, well, I want media to see what she did to my dad. And there was like, a couple times that I had seen a few more graphic pictures, but it wasn't anything with my dad in it.

• 1:13:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  But I think something glitched, or they didn't announce it, because I thought, well, if they announce it, then I can just look down before I see it. They didn't announce it, and just, boom, dad's autopsy pictures, like chest up, eyes open, blood on the face, like literally out of a horror movie on the screen, big screen. And so I looked at it, and it was almost like I couldn't look away. And then I looked down, and then I sat there for a second, and then I just looked at my best friend, and I said, I have to go outside. I thought I was doing such a good job keeping it in, but there was kind of a door, and then a little space, and then another door out into the hallway, and I like, wailed out before I could get outside. I told her like, a day or two later, I was like, you know, I think I really held it together. She said, no, everybody heard that.

• 1:14:41Speaker 03

  It's okay that they heard that. That's the reaction of someone seeing their dad in that state.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  I did go to a psychiatrist for a couple weeks after that, because every time I closed my eyes for weeks after that, I couldn't fall asleep.

• 1:14:54Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah. You should never, ever have to see somebody well-injured like that and hurt. How soon after that is the trial?

• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  One year, exactly. So it was July 2023, and then July 2024.

• 1:15:07Dax Shepard?

  And in the book, that's kind of more agonizing than anything else, yeah, the whole waiting for justice.

• 1:15:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, the trials, it was also around the time, I don't know if y'all are familiar with the Murdolls, and yeah. So that happened around the same time as my dad's stuff. And so, but that was going to trial a lot quicker. So I kept thinking, maybe this is gonna go to trial pretty quick, and I can get justice. And it just kept getting pushed and pushed, and they would file something else. And she switched lawyers, so they have to refile this. The pre-trial finally happened in 2023, and then it was a year, which is typical, I think, for the justice system to have a year later after the pre-trial. So it wasn't too far, but yeah, it was four years of waiting for this, which was gruesome.

• 1:15:51Dax Shepard?

  You just were like, I've got to know she's going away. Was the anxiety of that, like, I must know she's gonna pay for this?

• 1:15:56Speaker 02

  Kind of, at that point. I don't want to say I didn't care, but it had taken so long, and I had finally gotten my feet back on the ground, and my life set up, and I was heading in a good direction. And I was just like, you know, if she goes to prison, she goes to prison. If she doesn't, I think that's what I told myself also, subconsciously, I was kind of hoping it would kind of just be over with. There was also this weight on my shoulders of knowing it was gonna happen.

• 1:16:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:21Speaker 02

  And anticipating the outcome.

• 1:16:23Speaker 03

  Talking about anxiety.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was just like a mental, every day I would wake up and think, oh, it still hasn't happened yet, you know, what's gonna happen when it does?

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  There's no closure.

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:16:31Dax Shepard?

  Do you start between the pre-trial and the trial? Is that when you start your company?

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I actually started Ghost Cowboy in 2021. It kind of just took off very fast.

• 1:16:46Dax Shepard?

  Tell me, how'd you get the idea for it?

• 1:16:48Speaker 02

  It started randomly. I was working, doing social media for a company based out of Charleston. They had all in-house productions. They had the t-shirt printing machines, the embroidery machines, the shipping. I had a couple of funny, there was like memes. It was back when Kanye and Pete Davidson had their rivalry.

• 1:17:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh, uh-huh.

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  So I hadn't, yeah, I hadn't had the website set up yet, but I had this idea for myself, too. I just, I wasn't gonna make a t-shirt and sell it, but I was like, I'd wear a funny t-shirt with, it was like Kanye holding up stick figure drawings, and he had crossed out Pete on it or something. And I put that on the t-shirt, and I wore it in a TikTok, and it went crazy. I mean, it was like 120,000 views within the first couple hours. So I told my boss, I said, hey, should I put it up on the website? They had like, an old website that they weren't using. He said, yeah, why not? And it did great. And I said, okay, if I do that again. He had thrown me like, a grand or something, and I saw the sales. I was like, and I know what kind of brand t-shirt we were using, like, that blink was cheap, you know? He threw me chump change.

• 1:17:50Speaker 02

  So I said, if I do this again, I want 50% of the profit.

• 1:17:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  He said, okay, if you do it again. And then I did it again. And then the third meme t-shirt went super crazy viral, and at that point, I said, okay, I kind of want to just have a stab at this t-shirt thing. And so I set up my own website. Ghost Cowboy has no meaning behind the name. I actually don't love the name of it, but you know, it was just so random, and people liked it.

• 1:18:15Dax Shepard?

  We have a catchphrase in our description that we can't stand anymore as well.

• 1:18:18Speaker 03

  Messiness of being human.

• 1:18:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we don't like it.

• 1:18:21Speaker 03

  Sticks with the words.

• 1:18:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but you just got a little of it.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  It's too cute.

• 1:18:24Dax Shepard?

  Something about it.

• 1:18:25Speaker 02

  Everybody knows it. So I was an artist, and I didn't want to get known for the pictures taken off of the internet and memes and stuff. So I just started using my TikTok. Every day for 60 days, I drew something, and I think that people really liked the fact that I could draw it, and then immediately go put it on the printer and print the shirt, and then put it up on the website. So people would comment, you know, you should draw this, or you should do this kind of shirt, and this kind of color, you should do this on a hoodie or a crew neck. And so for two months straight, a new shirt every single day. And that series started picking up some heat, and that's just what took the company off.

• 1:19:02Dax Shepard?

  Wow. And now you do all kinds of... Of goods, yeah. What other things do you guys?

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  I do sweatshirts, T-shirts, crewnecks. I do hats occasionally. It's kind of whatever I'm feeling. I do a new design every week. And yeah, it's just me back there in the warehouse. Cause I split from that guy. We become business partners over a handshake. I was young. I was 21. I didn't really know what I was doing. And eventually I just was like, you know, this is all my art. I'm doing all of the work for this. I was giving him overhead to pay his employees to do the production for me. So I was just like, I'm gonna step away and do this all by myself. Yeah. And there was a little bit of a backfire on that. He said, no, and you're an employee. I said, no, I'm not. Yeah. So I had to take some legal action, which took about a year.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  So I wasn't ever able to really get into the lawsuit details. But I came home from the murder trial and immediately had to get on call with my two attorneys because I was still dealing with this lawsuit. I was paying myself nothing because I had to afford this lawsuit. Yeah. And eventually it settled and that was kind of that. It's back. But I lost all of the employees. I had to start fresh with the production. So I got things back to like the volume that I was doing, sale wise. But it's just me back there. So now customers still think that it's like a full blown production team. No, it's just me doing the back of a warehouse, printing out the orders. Wow.

• 1:20:29Dax Shepard?

  Well, you have this theme recurrent in your book, which is creation is the best response to destruction.

• 1:20:35Speaker 02

  Yes. My dad taught me how to paint and to draw. As soon as I could hold a pencil, I was drawing stuff. And I was always upstairs in my room, painting something or doing a craft. Or that was just kind of how I liked to spend my time as a really young kid. And then I got into middle school and I realized, you know, I actually am kind of pretty good at the portraits thing. So I started doing more portraits and my dad was a phenomenal artist. I mean, could paint anything you asked him to. Just, it was insane how good of an artist he was. And he taught me how to do all of that. And then it was an outlet for me. I would either go on a run or I'd go paint something that kind of just got myself out of my head.

• 1:21:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So the trial, A, in the trial, when that finally happened, did you guys ever have moments? Did you guys lock eyes ever?

• 1:21:27Speaker 02

  No, she didn't look at me once. I think the first time I saw her was in the hallway. And I lost it because at that point I hadn't seen her in so many years. And I had to run into the bathroom. I cried. I came back out. I was like, all right, let's do this. Ever since then, that entire trial, I was trying to stand right there and make her look at me. Her eyes were glued to the floor or glued to her little notepad in front of her. And she was just scribbling away, even during the victim's impact statement. And she wouldn't even look up.

• 1:21:56Dax Shepard?

  There's demonstrations going on outside the courthouse?

• 1:22:00Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. The purple people. They were all in purple. Because purple is the women's survivor, like domestic violence survivor color. That's a funny story. The last day of the trial, which obviously I support women and I want to get women on domestic violence situations. But we were against those people that were wearing purple and protesting the entire two weeks, blaring Christian music. They had her child, my dad's child, out there with a picture of her on a T-shirt screaming, free my mom, or something like that. This kid is six years old. She doesn't know what she's doing. And some reporter shoving a camera in the kid's face. It was ridiculous. But yeah, the last day of the trial, my uncle wore purple to the courthouse. We're like, are you joking? Like, really?

• 1:22:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, just on accident.

• 1:22:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:45Dax Shepard?

  Is he colorblind? Did you learn on that day, Amy?

• 1:22:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess that might have been his excuse that day, but no.

• 1:22:51Dax Shepard?

  What are you talking about? This is red, no?

• 1:22:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. Isn't that so frustrating when you're like, I'm on your side technically? It was so hard to navigate that because at that point, like I had my own platform. I didn't want people to think that I didn't. And Reddit was not a nice place for me.

• 1:23:06Dax Shepard?

  It's not a nice place.

• 1:23:08Speaker 02

  Instagram and TikTok were great. All the comments had been so kind. But Reddit and Twitter, I could not look.

• 1:23:15Dax Shepard?

  No, those are more toxic.

• 1:23:17Speaker 02

  People were saying, I have my dad's eyes, but there was one that was like, she's gonna turn out to be an abuser, just like her father. Cause they have the same eyes or something. I was like, really? You're really gonna say that? What is wrong with people? I don't know.

• 1:23:28Dax Shepard?

  Also, a lot of church supporters.

• 1:23:30Speaker 02

  I don't want to say that they had faked being friends with those people to kind of gain support in the community. But I kind of feel like that's something they would do. Yeah, I didn't want to look like a bad person, bashing.

• 1:23:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're going up against like a women's defense fund league coalition in the church. And then you're the victim. It's really upside down.

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:49Dax Shepard?

  Did you learn anything in the trial that was upsetting or you wish you just never learned about your dad? Cause part of the defense is gonna be them trying to paint your father as this terrible person. And then you're gonna inadvertently learn all kinds of stuff about your dad that maybe no one needs to ever learn.

• 1:24:05Speaker 02

  I didn't really not know anything, you know? Everything was kind of already made aware to me before. There were text messages between them, some interesting sexy text messages. That you'd rather not see. She's like, ugh, gross.

• 1:24:20Dax Shepard?

  Come on, Dad.

• 1:24:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, like there was a couple of reports where they talked about like choking and all the sexual stuff they want to do. I'm just gross. But there was one thing he texted Ashley at one point that he had said, Renee doesn't exist to me or something. Because she kept bringing my mom up. And he had said that, like, she doesn't exist to me anymore.

• 1:24:39Dax Shepard?

  Cause he's gotta pacify her.

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was a little gut wrenching. Cause I mean, I'd always known my dad to just love my mom to pieces.

• 1:24:48Dax Shepard?

  And it wasn't true.

• 1:24:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know it wasn't true, but that's. Of course, it's hard to see that. Yeah.

• 1:24:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. What did you learn about the power of charisma during that trial?

• 1:24:57Speaker 02

  I mean, everything. She just had her agenda set. And she just would do anything to try and force the agenda, like the alligator tears on stand. That's what everybody said when she was crying. And she looked worse on certain days. And she was dressing, just the whole thing. She was playing a role.

• 1:25:16Dax Shepard?

  She's kind of built to play that.

• 1:25:18Speaker 02

  Well, she's been doing it. She's been playing a role for years, her whole life. And that's what I put in my impact statement. I said, you know, this is a role that you finally thought you were gonna get and keep or something. Or the best performance of your life. That's what I said. And, you know, she tried.

• 1:25:33Dax Shepard?

  Now, post-trial, you have some like reckoning to do. You've got to kind of figure out what's ahead. And I'm curious.

• 1:25:42Speaker 02

  She's convicted.

• 1:25:43Dax Shepard?

  She got found guilty of manslaughter. So she got 20 years plus 10 years of probation, but obviously that could be shorter.

• 1:25:50Speaker 02

  It was five to one at first with the jury. She was gonna get murder two. But then all five came down to meet the one at manslaughter. I don't know the reasoning, but that was really annoying to hear. I thought it was murder one. Yeah, it should be first degree murder. There was also reports that came out during the end of that, that two different people had said that she had reached out about hiring a hitman. But it wasn't enough evidence to back it up.

• 1:26:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, to submit that. So were you expecting some closure or sense of relief once she was convicted and found guilty that did not come? Or did you not even expect it? Or tell me all the wave of emotions post-trial.

• 1:26:34Speaker 02

  I was relieved post-trial for sure, ready to get out of Sarasota and never have to go back. I kind of had done a really good job of giving myself the closure. So I wasn't looking to the verdict for validation, you know? Cause it was like, well, whatever she gets, my dad's dead. There's no bringing him back. And I already have everything that I need at this point. So I just need to figure it out on my own. But it did feel good to have that behind me. And even the next summer, cause I had two summers in a row of anticipating some sort of trial. I was anxious for a little bit and I couldn't figure out why until I realized, oh, this is the first summer that I'm not dealing with my business in a lawsuit. I'm not dealing with a murder trial. It's just quiet.

• 1:27:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I don't have to deal with anything anymore.

• 1:27:22Dax Shepard?

  But that can also be scary.

• 1:27:24Speaker 02

  Oh, I was freaking out. My roommate at the time was like, well, maybe it's because like you just are not used to being comfortable.

• 1:27:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, just your arousal setting and the nervous system, the cortisol, like you had been living at a very, very heightened for years now.

• 1:27:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:36Dax Shepard?

  You've got to like figure out how we're moving forward. And I know many of the reasons, but tell me some of the things that you focused on and became your path out of this whole chapter.

• 1:27:50Speaker 02

  I knew that I had built my platform up to this point. And when I had started posting, the reason I kept posting was I wanted to help people because I'd get so many comments and DMs and people coming up to me in grocery stores saying, hey, I'm dealing with this and you helped me laugh about it, or you helped me look at it in a different light, or I got a comment the other day that said, I'm dealing with something and I'm going to start referencing your videos anytime I start to feel alone.

• 1:28:20Speaker 01

  Oh, that's lovely.

• 1:28:21Speaker 02

  And that just made me feel so good because I had felt so alone. Sometimes I still do. None of my friends are doing the things that I'm doing right now, or I was doing. And it's kind of scary being like, I don't have a fallback plan. I'm doing this on my own. I don't really have a reference for this.

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  You're still very young.

• 1:28:36Dax Shepard?

  Can you talk about how isolating the experience is? Because yeah, who on earth can relate to you, really?

• 1:28:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:28:40Dax Shepard?

  Your boyfriend of three and a half years was urging you to like, get over yourself.

• 1:28:45Speaker 02

  Get over it, yeah.

• 1:28:46Speaker 01

  Get over it.

• 1:28:47Dax Shepard?

  Which ended that relationship.

• 1:28:48Speaker 02

  After my dad passed, I realized that, yes, it was very isolating. And first of all, I mean, it was like a high school into college relationship. But he's told me one time, he's like, get over it. And I realized we're just on different paths right now. You have your parents, you have your fallback plan. This is my plan B.

• 1:29:04Dax Shepard?

  This is my safety net is plan B, unfortunately. We're down to that.

• 1:29:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I was just like, I just need to figure out what I'm doing. And it really just made me think, okay, we're just not meant to be together right now, you know? And I just need to figure out my life. Also, I didn't handle it with grace. I think I was like, blacked out, not drunk, but just in a daze of what is going on with my life right now.

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:26Speaker 02

  I started posting on social media and just realizing I can help people feel less alone because I needed a me in that moment. And I didn't have a me. So I just kept doing that. And I built this community that made me feel less alone. I helped other people. And I wanted to finish the book and get that out there.

• 1:29:39Dax Shepard?

  Well, you have really good habits. You have art, you're creating nonstop, you have your business, which is great. Sully's still with us.

• 1:29:47Speaker 02

  Oh, Sully? Yeah.

• 1:29:49Dax Shepard?

  The dog is still with us.

• 1:29:51Speaker 02

  He's 13, but he acts like a puppy. So.

• 1:29:55Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. He's been through a lot with you.

• 1:29:58Speaker 02

  I say that if he could write a book, his book would be coming out. He would do a lot better than mine.

• 1:30:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Tell me how the ocean and Charleston and all those elements you've come to lean on and how helpful they've been.

• 1:30:09Speaker 02

  So right when I started writing Ghost Girl, I had just moved into my house on Alpam's. I started going down a really dark path. I mean, I was going out every single night. Started my business. I was making money. I was doing on my own. I was drinking. I was partying. And then I had one terrible, terrible, terrible hangover and realized that I need to stop doing this because it is not the correct. I'm blowing money. I'm waking up at 10:00 AM or 11:00 AM every day or 1:00 PM. Like, it's not good habits. And I found this house and I moved out. And I had always, my parents saying, growing up, you know, we're going to move to the beach one day. Or we were always at the beach. We were always in the marsh. We were always doing something outside. And so I saw this

• 1:30:54Speaker 02

  house. I had bought a 1978 F-100 that I was rebuilding. And I sold that.

• 1:31:00Dax Shepard?

  Great choice.

• 1:31:01Speaker 02

  And thank you.

• 1:31:02Dax Shepard?

  I just wanted to tip my hat to you.

• 1:31:03Speaker 02

  Thank you. I loved that truck. But I sold it so I could afford two rents because I had my apartment in Mount Pleasant. And I found this house and I had to have it. I'd sold it so I could afford the two rents to get rid of my old lease and move into this beach house. And I went dark. I got back to my old self of waking up early. I was getting back into shape. I was running all the time. I had Sully, I had my business. And I just kind of had a few friends and my roommate. And I just was out at the beach every single day. And I had the luxury of my own business. So if the UV was high, I was going to go tan.

• 1:31:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:31:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, your Instagram is beach, beach, beach, beach, beach, beach, beach.

• 1:31:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:31:41Dax Shepard?

  I can tell that's like a huge source for you.

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, tomorrow the UV is in 11 and I'm not there. I'm flying home.

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:31:47Dax Shepard?

  I love that you're chasing you.

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  But here, it's hot here. It's nice out here.

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  Oh, it's so nice. Well, I'll be on an airplane tomorrow. So I wish I got to experience the outside today. It was great. But yeah, no, I saw a post on Instagram today and it said the UV is my stock market. I'm checking it every single day. I tie my mornings if I don't have to go to the warehouse. I'll be like, okay, wake up at five. I was up until recently training for a marathon. So it was, you know, an hour, an hour and a half every morning of running and then lifting and then doing this. So I'd be like, all right, if I can finish all my things by 11, I can be on the beach by 11:30 and then can go to the warehouse at three. That was like my summer schedule is in.

• 1:32:22Dax Shepard?

  This is a good existence.

• 1:32:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:24Dax Shepard?

  Did you run in the marathon?

• 1:32:25Speaker 02

  No. So this happened to me last fall, too. I had a different race. And I was actually supposed to be in Ventura last weekend to run it. But I tore something in my glute and it caused IT band syndrome.

• 1:32:37Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:32:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I got to a point where I could run on it, but not well. And at that point, I think I was so emotionally, work is busy, the book is coming out, I have too many things going on. And my PT said, I can expect you to run it, but come home injured even more. And I said, why would I do that?

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:32:55Speaker 02

  So I have a fall race that I'm planning on now.

• 1:32:58Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 1:32:59Dax Shepard?

  I love the voice of your book. It's very young. And I say that as a compliment.

• 1:33:03Speaker 02

  That's kind of the biggest thing I get.

• 1:33:05Dax Shepard?

  I really, really dig it, though. I'm really glad you aren't trying to purport to be some 50-year-old looking back on your life with all the answers. Like, there's something about all the current vernacular you're using and just the way you're talking is very, very youthful book. I think like, young people would love reading this book.

• 1:33:20Speaker 02

  I also started writing it in 2021. So I moved into the beach house and then I started writing it. I mean, I was younger. And so I've kind of grown into it. And it's interesting because I'll go back and read some of it and be like, I wouldn't say that now.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  But it's good. It's of that moment.

• 1:33:35Speaker 02

  It really captures four years of my life and into now.

• 1:33:39Dax Shepard?

  It's almost impossible to believe that you're doing as well as you are. I mean, it's like, I feel like a 1 in 10,000 people all these things could happen to and you would still be functional and building and creating. It's crazy.

• 1:33:52Speaker 02

  Well, so my mom and my dad always said, everything happens for a reason. And I had so many weird instances where that just kind of came to fruition after the fact. But that was the biggest thing I just, I told myself for so long of like, everything happens for a reason. It sucks, but it's supposed to happen. My brother, ex-military, I had him kind of in my ear, almost like David Goggins in your ear, just like, suck it up, get through it. And so I did have this kind of war path of, you know, I'm just going to have relentless positivity.

• 1:34:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  And that's just what's going to get me through. And then, I mean, obviously, eventually I did start getting into the neuroscience of it all and just how you can really train your brain to get through and stay positive.

• 1:34:31Dax Shepard?

  We're insanely resilient and you're a premium example. That is fucking crazy.

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  The highest example.

• 1:34:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I really hope everyone checks this book out. And I hope if you have a young girl in your life, you buy the book for her. It's called Ghost Girl: Surviving the Black Swan Murder. Eva, it's a real pleasure to meet you.

• 1:34:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for coming.

• 1:34:50Dax Shepard?

  Thanks so much for being willing to tell us the story.

• 1:34:53Speaker 02

  This is great.

• 1:34:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. All right, let's get you some UV. Let's try to get a 12. What's the apex? Just a quick reminder that as part of our summer break, here's a rerun of one of our favorite fact checks. Two peas in an hour, Monica. I'm actually concerned.

• 1:35:12Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:35:13Dax Shepard?

  A little scary.

• 1:35:14Speaker 05

  That's a lot of peas.

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  I only pee once a day.

• 1:35:16Dax Shepard?

  Once a day.

• 1:35:17Speaker 05

  I know. I mean.

• 1:35:18Dax Shepard?

  And two in an hour, you're like.

• 1:35:19Speaker 05

  Some would think that's scary, but.

• 1:35:21Dax Shepard?

  Initially, that part's scary, but then you get used to that.

• 1:35:25Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:35:26Dax Shepard?

  And then it's scarier if she goes twice in an hour.

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I did think for a minute that I was getting a UTI, but I'm not.

• 1:35:36Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  It's my mom's fault.

• 1:35:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  Because she, um.

• 1:35:41Dax Shepard?

  She gave you dirty underwear?

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. She does my laundry. No, she takes cranberry pills. She's been taking them for a long, long, long time. And she like swears by the cranberry pills. And so I started taking them for a while. And then I stopped. And so when I was home for Christmas, she was taking hers. And she said, are you still taking your cranberry pills? And I said, no, I'm not taking them anymore. And she was like, why?

• 1:36:05Dax Shepard?

  I don't fuck with those anymore.

• 1:36:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. She's like, why? You should take them. Whatever. And I was like, I'm not taking them. And then on New Year's Day, I called and we were talking about our resolutions. And she said, what are your resolutions? Cranberry pills?

• 1:36:19Dax Shepard?

  She was so annoying.

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  I was like, no, I'm not doing it.

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  Three or four days later, I was like, I think I'm getting.

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

  And I had to go pick up some good old cranberry pills.

• 1:36:36Dax Shepard?

  She'd be so happy, right? How could she not?

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  I just told her, I'm back taking the cranberry pills. I didn't tell her that.

• 1:36:42Dax Shepard?

  You didn't admit.

• 1:36:43Speaker 01

  No, I didn't.

• 1:36:43Dax Shepard?

  It was under duress.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  I did not.

• 1:36:45Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'll just say in a forthcoming episode soon, next week.

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:48Dax Shepard?

  We have a guest on who's talking about throwing a birthday party and I went on and on about how I don't want a birthday party. The episode is about how I don't want a birthday party. And we walked out of the garage from that interview and I was like, that's weird. Kristen's got a man over in the swimming pool.

• 1:37:06Speaker 01

  A big man.

• 1:37:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I did. I did not notice it was Aaron at first. I was just like, oh, she's got a man over. I saw a little bit of, there was a woman in the mix and I'm like, oh, these are her singing friends.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  Friends over, yeah.

• 1:37:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So then I come around the, the hedges and I see my son's here, Sharon Beasley.

• 1:37:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:26Dax Shepard?

  And I go.

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  He's in the hot tub.

• 1:37:28Dax Shepard?

  My very first thought, not to get too dark for the cherries, but this is our past. I'm like, the only time Aaron has ever shown up in California without letting me know he was coming, was the day I opened my apartment door in San Monica and Aaron was standing there. It looked like he had been drugged behind a car for a week and he had been smoking crack for five days.

• 1:37:52Dax Shepard?

  Tiny moment of I think I'm gonna die or go get on an airplane and fly to my dad. He got on an airplane.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  So you thought, you thought something bad was happening?

• 1:38:00Dax Shepard?

  I was already sober for a year maybe at that point.

• 1:38:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:38:03Dax Shepard?

  I just got a bit of a PTSD, like, why would Aaron just be here without telling me he's coming?

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  But did it make you feel better that he was in the hot tub and laughing?

• 1:38:12Speaker 05

  Well, I said, surprise. And he goes, are you coming off of crack again? And I said, I'm here and I'm healthy.

• 1:38:25Dax Shepard?

  I mean, I didn't really think that.

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  And Ruthie was there too.

• 1:38:29Dax Shepard?

  But you never know. She might've been like, we gotta get Aaron to.

• 1:38:35Dax Shepard?

  It wasn't that really deep, as I'm saying. I just had this really weird moment where this has only happened one other time. So Kristen, at that point, had to acknowledge, you're having a surprise party. I've planned a party and I brought Aaron and Ruthie here for the party. And then, then I was really excited.

• 1:38:53Speaker 01

  Good.

• 1:38:54Dax Shepard?

  Cause I didn't have to ask anyone to come. I didn't have to get scared about that. There wasn't a bunch of time for me to worry about who's not gonna show up.

• 1:39:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:39:00Dax Shepard?

  Cause it was just gonna be the next day, which was last night.

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  It was perfect timing. She planned, she knew she was gonna tell you, which I thought was a good plan. That there wasn't gonna be a real jump out moment. And also Rob and I did great acting because during that interview, we all knew.

• 1:39:20Dax Shepard?

  You already knew.

• 1:39:21Speaker 01

  Of course, we knew.

• 1:39:22Dax Shepard?

  Did you feel so bad for me? Like, what a dumb dumb. He knows he's digging himself deeper and deeper.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  No, I was just like, oh, this is gonna be a funny moment. But then I also was like, if he is then up mad that this is happening or anxious, we had an interview scheduled the day of your party, which was yesterday.

• 1:39:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  And it was scheduled for two o'clock. The party started at five o'clock.

• 1:39:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:46Speaker 01

  And I was like, oh no, okay, I think we should probably move up the recording. When is she gonna tell him? Because he needs to have enough time to do his research. He's gonna be mad if he doesn't have enough time to do his research and if he already doesn't want the party.

• 1:40:00Dax Shepard?

  How I'm gonna react to everything. I'm learning terrible stuff about myself right now.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  He's gonna be even more mad about it.

• 1:40:06Dax Shepard?

  People, he's gonna hit the children.

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  But you were very happy.

• 1:40:09Dax Shepard?

  Hey, my son's there, so I am happy right away. Aaron's here. This is unexpected. I had just seen him a couple of days before in Detroit.

• 1:40:16Speaker 05

  I mean, which was a surprise. Or it was.

• 1:40:19Dax Shepard?

  Last minute.

• 1:40:20Speaker 05

  Last minute and so exciting. I was like, oh, I get to see dad.

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  Twice.

• 1:40:25Speaker 05

  Before my trip and get to pretend that it's our last night together. Yeah.

• 1:40:31Dax Shepard?

  But yeah, Aaron's only been here for 10 minutes, but boy, we've already had a very eventful trip.

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:40:36Dax Shepard?

  So yesterday, before the interview and the fact check that was moved up, I said, you wanna go for a ride in the new station wagon? To which Aaron was like, absolutely. So we went for a little rip around town. It was so fun. And then I was like, um, let's quickly, I think we can, before the fact check, we'll get some eggs. So we stop at Cafe 101. We parallel parked the wagon on the street. We go inside, we sit down, we're there for, I don't know, a minute and a half. And a stranger walks in and he looks at me and goes, white car? And I go, yeah. And he goes, it's on fire.

• 1:41:10Speaker 01

  Horrible.

• 1:41:11Dax Shepard?

  And I just.

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  PTSD.

• 1:41:13Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:41:13Speaker 01

  Too many fires in this city.

• 1:41:15Dax Shepard?

  I sprint out of the restaurant. I'm, I'm fully expecting it to be engulfed in flames. So we sprint outside, get to the wagon. Sure enough, there is smoke coming out of the hood. Pulled hood pins, opened it up. A wiring harness is on fire. There's flames. I don't know how this worked. Did you see this happen?

• 1:41:36Speaker 05

  The spit?

• 1:41:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:41:37Dax Shepard?

  I just went, I spit as hard as I could at the wagon.

• 1:41:42Speaker 05

  The fire and it went out.

• 1:41:43Dax Shepard?

  It went out. I might have a superpower I didn't know about.

• 1:41:46Speaker 05

  Just grabbing a fire extinguisher. I couldn't figure out how to pull the plastic pin up. By the time I got the pin, I was watching him and he went. And the fire was gone. It's just smoldering.

• 1:42:00Dax Shepard?

  I, I don't know how that worked.

• 1:42:03Speaker 01

  I do worry about that with fires, about using the fire extinguisher, cause it's not something you can practice.

• 1:42:09Speaker 05

  Well, you should, I guess.

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  I guess.

• 1:42:11Speaker 05

  I realize that.

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:12Speaker 05

  Oh, I should know how to do this.

• 1:42:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. I have one by my bed and I look at it a lot and I think, I don't really know how.

• 1:42:19Speaker 05

  You should get the safety off and everything ready to go.

• 1:42:23Dax Shepard?

  It seems really simple and then also when you think about it, it seems really hard.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  There's a video of Taylor Swift trying to use one in her kitchen and she's also like, what the fuck?

• 1:42:31Dax Shepard?

  She didn't do a good job.

• 1:42:32Speaker 01

  She did end up doing a good job, as she always does.

• 1:42:34Dax Shepard?

  Good job.

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:35Dax Shepard?

  Was something on fire in front of her?

• 1:42:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, in her kitchen.

• 1:42:38Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:39Dax Shepard?

  It's almost running video.

• 1:42:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:40Dax Shepard?

  And then I'm piecing together, because there's now a woman behind the car, who I guess was either parking or got in her car. And then what became obvious is she must've got the hotel guy. But I do wonder, had we not just had the fires, if like, she would have been so incredibly, she might've saw smoke coming out of her car and like, it's not my problem.

• 1:43:00Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:43:01Dax Shepard?

  But yeah, everyone's on such high alert that I think she immediately.

• 1:43:04Speaker 01

  I think that's right. She's like, this whole area is about to.

• 1:43:08Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  Like ignite.

• 1:43:09Dax Shepard?

  I was then thinking like, oh my God, what if I had set another round of fires in Hollywood?

• 1:43:16Speaker 01

  You finally got Los Feliz.

• 1:43:19Dax Shepard?

  People would have been like, that entitled bastard. Why's he gotta have these cars that catch on fire?

• 1:43:25Speaker 01

  New cars that keep catching on fire.

• 1:43:28Speaker 05

  He can afford a new one, but he bought an old one.

• 1:43:32Dax Shepard?

  He should be driving electric. That wouldn't caught on fire.

• 1:43:35Speaker 05

  You went near the end of it.

• 1:43:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you can drown in them, I should say.

• 1:43:40Dax Shepard?

  Well, when they catch on fire, you can't go breathe anywhere near them, as we're now finding out. That's the crazy part.

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  But also, you know that horrible story? And I don't know all the details, so I don't, and it's very sad, but Mitch McConnell's sister-in-law.

• 1:43:56Dax Shepard?

  Drove into a pond?

• 1:43:57Speaker 01

  Yes, in, in a Tesla and like, couldn't get out and died.

• 1:44:01Dax Shepard?

  Ooh.

• 1:44:02Speaker 01

  And I think it might have to do with that Tesla. It probably shuts down and water.

• 1:44:07Dax Shepard?

  Opens electrically, not mechanically. Or I think, I don't wanna be sued.

• 1:44:13Speaker 05

  I think there's a release on there as well.

• 1:44:16Dax Shepard?

  If you had read the manual and practiced like a fire extinguisher.

• 1:44:21Speaker 05

  It's in the door though. It's right there.

• 1:44:23Dax Shepard?

  It's what?

• 1:44:23Speaker 05

  It's right there in the door, though.

• 1:44:25Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  Well, apparently people like came and tried and they, and they were there and they couldn't.

• 1:44:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm vaguely aware of that.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I probably talked about it before.

• 1:44:33Dax Shepard?

  I think you did. It was when you were wanting everyone to have a window smasher.

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  Aaron, I have an update for you.

• 1:44:43Speaker 05

  Oh, please.

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  I think one of the last times you were here, uh, we were talking about my running.

• 1:44:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, I remember this.

• 1:44:49Speaker 01

  Yes, and I want you to know, since then, a sign has been put on the yard, not by me, that says, no, it says, no dogs allowed slash no trespassing. I forget exactly what it says. It says something explicit, like, no more of this.

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  So it was solved for me.

• 1:45:11Dax Shepard?

  I thought you were gonna bring up his chest hair. That's where I thought this was going.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:45:15Dax Shepard?

  The last time is you talked about having shaved his chest hair, how sexy he felt.

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  Okay, so what's the update on that?

• 1:45:20Speaker 05

  Well, I just had my back shaved again.

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  Are you making cashmere?

• 1:45:27Speaker 05

  I should, because it's an enormous amount of fur that comes off.

• 1:45:33Dax Shepard?

  Really quick, Aaron, I've, I've never let you feel this.

• 1:45:36Speaker 05

  No, but I've seen it.

• 1:45:38Dax Shepard?

  Very select group. Go ahead and touch that.

• 1:45:40Speaker 01

  Be really careful.

• 1:45:41Dax Shepard?

  Give an honest, um, what you think about that.

• 1:45:44Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:45:46Speaker 05

  Oh, my God.

• 1:45:48Dax Shepard?

  Is that not the softest thing you've ever felt?

• 1:45:50Speaker 05

  Can I sleep with it tonight?

• 1:45:55Dax Shepard?

  Did you have a blanket made of that?

• 1:45:57Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  I know, you gotta be careful.

• 1:46:02Speaker 05

  That is, it is cashmere, isn't it?

• 1:46:05Dax Shepard?

  It sure is, there's no denying it. And you know, now Delta's leg hairs are in here too.

• 1:46:09Speaker 05

  Oh, nice.

• 1:46:10Dax Shepard?

  So we're getting it, we're harvesting from my back and her legs.

• 1:46:14Speaker 05

  It's my whole family.

• 1:46:15Speaker 01

  Maybe it can be a joint, Aaron's hair, because then we can really get some movement on it.

• 1:46:19Dax Shepard?

  At the risk of hurting Aaron's feelings, Aaron has had dense body hair his whole life. He's a man, he's always been a man. I'm not, I've always not been a man. I've always felt like a

• 1:46:30Speaker 01

  Little boy.

• 1:46:31Dax Shepard?

  preteen or a woman next to him. And he's always had a gorgeous Burt Reynolds chest hair since we were seventeen.

• 1:46:37Speaker 01

  So you think it's coarser?

• 1:46:39Dax Shepard?

  I think it's coarser. Would you?

• 1:46:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I, um, yeah, all I'm saying is the amount.

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  Okay, well, you don't have to have cashmere, we can do mohair for you.

• 1:46:50Speaker 05

  So Ruthie just shaved me again with a dog. Um, you know, it's got a vacuum, I may have said this before, but um, it has a hose and you watch it accumulate in a chamber. And this is so fun, because that's why I realized, I'm like, oh my God, I have so much hair, like this much.

• 1:47:15Speaker 05

  Ruthie's super grossed off by it.

• 1:47:21Speaker 01

  Well, she can't touch the cashmere then.

• 1:47:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:47:24Dax Shepard?

  I know we're both getting hair now everywhere, it's maddening, but have you noticed, where did you talk to her? Our armpit hair? Have you noticed your armpit hair is like, will be two feet long sometimes?

• 1:47:34Speaker 05

  If we haven't talked about it, yeah, I've been chopping mine.

• 1:47:39Dax Shepard?

  With scissors?

• 1:47:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:47:40Dax Shepard?

  Same, I now give myself like a haircut in my armpit.

• 1:47:44Speaker 05

  Me too.

• 1:47:44Dax Shepard?

  And then I have this very weird, I wonder, do you have this where it's like, I have it in my mind it's supposed to be some length? Or else why would it be that long?

• 1:47:53Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:47:53Dax Shepard?

  Because what I, I'm tempted to just like cut it as close to the skin as possible, so I have to do it less. But then I think, aren't you supposed, shouldn't it be some length?

• 1:48:01Speaker 05

  I wonder that too.

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  Can you just keep, like, grow it out just so we can see how long it gets?

• 1:48:06Speaker 05

  You're right, there should be video evidence of some of this.

• 1:48:09Dax Shepard?

  You know why I had to finally confront it? Other than like, maybe my kids pointed it out and I was embarrassed, but also you can't even get your deodorant to the skin anymore. Because it just clumps up in your hair. And then you have dingleberries in your armpit. And you're like, what the fuck is going on? Why am I a mess like this?

• 1:48:29Speaker 05

  Threadlock.

• 1:48:30Speaker 01

  Well, fifty, you know, not Aaron's.

• 1:48:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, not yet.

• 1:48:33Speaker 05

  Hmm, not even close.

• 1:48:34Dax Shepard?

  Six months.

• 1:48:37Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great, how about you guys talk about my party?

• 1:48:39Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  It was a yacht rock theme.

• 1:48:41Dax Shepard?

  It was a yacht rock theme. It was at my favorite roller skate rink, Moonlight Rollerway.

• 1:48:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:48:46Dax Shepard?

  To name drop, Kimmel made the playlists, as he's made me many playlists in the past that I love.

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:52Dax Shepard?

  And Kristen enlisted him to do that. Tons of blast from the past, a lot of my Groundlings friends, just an incredible, perfect group of people. My dad came all the way out from across town, Tom Hanson.

• 1:49:06Speaker 01

  Um, Adam Perry Lang made barbecue.

• 1:49:09Dax Shepard?

  Cooked.

• 1:49:10Speaker 01

  It was incredible.

• 1:49:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, did you get on both of the meats?

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  I just had the pork.

• 1:49:15Dax Shepard?

  You just, the pork ribs?

• 1:49:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:16Dax Shepard?

  Are you?

• 1:49:17Speaker 01

  So insane.

• 1:49:18Dax Shepard?

  How good were those?

• 1:49:19Speaker 01

  They were so good, and the cornbread was so good.

• 1:49:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it was damp as a motherfucker, it was like a, it was like a, um, uh, what do you call it, cake?

• 1:49:27Speaker 01

  Pound cake.

• 1:49:28Dax Shepard?

  Pound cake.

• 1:49:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was delicious.

• 1:49:30Dax Shepard?

  I was really excited about the Adam Perry Lang of it all, because most of my friends that were there didn't know about him. And I don't know what their expectations were at a roller skating rink, how good the barbecue was gonna be, but he is a, one of the best barbecue. He does these pop-ups around LA and there's fucking lines around the block. Yeah, and he's just there cutting ribs.

• 1:49:52Speaker 01

  At a roller skating rink?

• 1:49:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:55Speaker 01

  It was really sweet of him to do that. He's a very nice man.

• 1:49:58Dax Shepard?

  He is incredibly nice.

• 1:49:58Speaker 01

  I've also enlisted him to teach Kristen how to make crepes.

• 1:50:03Dax Shepard?

  Oh, right.

• 1:50:03Speaker 01

  For Christmas one year, her birthday, I forget, and like got her all the machinery and stuff, and now she knows how to make crepes.

• 1:50:09Dax Shepard?

  She stuck with it, she goes through little phases, you know, there's no crepes for months and months and months, and then there's crepes ten days in a row, she could cook some compulsively.

• 1:50:16Speaker 01

  Well, I guess we gotta talk about it. Well, exactly.

• 1:50:18Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you should bring that up, she would love to.

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  I thought, I had a craving for crepes like three days ago. And it was nine PM, so I didn't think it was possible for me to get it, but I wanted it so bad. And then the next day I told her I was craving them, she said, I'll make them for you. And then guess what the word was on Wordle today?

• 1:50:38Dax Shepard?

  Crepes.

• 1:50:41Dax Shepard?

  Plural or singular?

• 1:50:42Speaker 01

  Singular.

• 1:50:42Dax Shepard?

  Singular.

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  Isn't that weird?

• 1:50:44Dax Shepard?

  That's suspicious. So normally, this is Delta's birthday party is here every December, and we always get the rink for two hours. And it's always my commitment to skate as long as possible, because it's such a unique opportunity. But the window of this party was five PM till ten PM. And I was like, I don't, oh, I gotta back up. One other thing that happened, because I didn't know I was having a party, is that day before, I rode the furthest I've ever ridden on my new road bike.

• 1:51:13Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:51:14Dax Shepard?

  I told you, I passed your house a couple different times, I'm sure he sent me, I was even paparazzi'd, I didn't know it.

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:51:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I went everywhere, I was down the LA River, down past Spoke, then out in Glendale, then back into Silver Lake. So the, that whole day, when I came out and, and he saw him in the pool, I was like, I went too hard, I can barely walk.

• 1:51:36Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:51:37Dax Shepard?

  And then she said five to ten were skating, I was like.

• 1:51:39Speaker 05

  Five hours of skating.

• 1:51:41Dax Shepard?

  And we're gonna skate, we're gonna skate hard. And oh, one thing I gotta add is people really went for it with the yacht rock theme, Aaron had an incredible outfit.

• 1:51:50Speaker 01

  He really did.

• 1:51:51Dax Shepard?

  Turnkey bought off of Amazon.

• 1:51:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:51:54Speaker 01

  It was perfect.

• 1:51:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was white.

• 1:51:56Speaker 01

  It was white.

• 1:51:57Speaker 05

  All white, done white.

• 1:51:59Dax Shepard?

  Hat, pipe.

• 1:52:01Speaker 05

  Pipe.

• 1:52:02Dax Shepard?

  The pipe really pushed it over.

• 1:52:04Speaker 05

  Great.

• 1:52:04Dax Shepard?

  I don't even know why it makes sense, but it does. I don't know, you know, I can't like, I'm wracking my brain of where I've, there's some famous image of a captain with a pipe.

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  Love Boat or whatever.

• 1:52:16Dax Shepard?

  But again, I don't even think on Love Boat that was happening.

• 1:52:18Speaker 01

  What's the other one, where they're all shipwrecked?

• 1:52:21Dax Shepard?

  Gilligan's Island.

• 1:52:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, Gilligan's Island.

• 1:52:23Dax Shepard?

  The skipper didn't smoke a pipe.

• 1:52:24Speaker 05

  Did like, Gorton's Fisherman have a pipe or something?

• 1:52:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but again, that's a yellow rain slicker.

• 1:52:30Speaker 01

  This is like Mandela effect, we all just think we know these captains have pipes, but none of them do.

• 1:52:37Dax Shepard?

  I don't think any of them do. And how long had it been since you skated, Aaron?

• 1:52:40Speaker 05

  Probably seven years.

• 1:52:43Dax Shepard?

  Seven years.

• 1:52:44Speaker 05

  I was a lot heavier and I, and um,

• 1:52:46Dax Shepard?

  You were at three twenty at that point.

• 1:52:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I remember really, because I was like, I'm gonna do this, and um, and I was real wobbly. And then after a few laps, I was expecting everyone to be watching me, because I thought I was, that, God, so fucking stupid.

• 1:53:07Speaker 05

  I'm like, oh, really, I'm just a fat guy roller skating, and I'm old.

• 1:53:14Dax Shepard?

  But you're waiting for them to notice how fucking cool you look.

• 1:53:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:53:19Dax Shepard?

  Shit, I didn't know your old man ripped.

• 1:53:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, everyone's gonna high five my fucking kids.

• 1:53:24Dax Shepard?

  Hoist you up on their shoulders.

• 1:53:26Speaker 05

  They probably got beat up the next day.

• 1:53:29Dax Shepard?

  Well, despite that, you did quite well. And Monica, let me thank you in public, you have sat out the last two skatings.

• 1:53:37Speaker 01

  I have, but then it was your birthday, and so I thought, I gotta do it for your birthday.

• 1:53:43Speaker 05

  That was so sweet of you.

• 1:53:45Dax Shepard?

  And did it, you did.

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  I did it, I did like,

• 1:53:47Dax Shepard?

  You did quite a bit of skating.

• 1:53:48Speaker 01

  I did like twelve laps or something, maybe more.

• 1:53:51Dax Shepard?

  I think more.

• 1:53:52Speaker 05

  I'd say, yeah.

• 1:53:54Dax Shepard?

  I want to say you were out, you had three different sessions, didn't you?

• 1:53:57Speaker 01

  I had multiple sessions, I, even after eating, I put them back on.

• 1:54:00Dax Shepard?

  And I learned today, earlier today, that you actually had gone out by yourself to do a little trial run like the garage in Tennessee.

• 1:54:08Speaker 01

  I did, where I learned to ride my bike.

• 1:54:09Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:54:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got a little nervous not having been on them for a couple years, and I was first to arrive at the party. Um, and so I just went out on my own and did a little practice.

• 1:54:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:22Speaker 01

  Found my sea legs. I'm not good on them, and I don't, Ryan tried to help me, um, he was like, you know, you go more side, side to side. I go more front to back, I guess.

• 1:54:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:36Speaker 01

  Um, it's sort of my proprietary move.

• 1:54:40Speaker 01

  So I'm just not very good at it, but that's fine.

• 1:54:41Dax Shepard?

  You, Dex.

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  It's hard for me to not be good at it, but yes, you, you kill it.

• 1:54:45Dax Shepard?

  I ate shit though, let me say that, so. And then by the way, on the way there, I said to Aaron, okay, if you haven't gone in a long time, a prediction for you is, you think you're gonna be bad, and then you're gonna get out there and go, oh my God, I'm actually quite good. And then you're gonna get overconfident about fifteen minutes, and then that's when the big wreck comes. And I had been skating for a good hour and a half, two hours at this point, I was very loose, I was feeling very confident, and I decided, you know what, as I skate by Joy, um, because she was high fiving people on the sidelines, I'm like, you know, it's gonna be radicals, I'm gonna blow by shooting the duck.

• 1:55:16Speaker 01

  Oh, is that what you were trying to do?

• 1:55:18Dax Shepard?

  Oh, did you think I just fell out of nowhere?

• 1:55:20Speaker 01

  No, I knew you were doing something with Joy, but I didn't know that was.

• 1:55:23Dax Shepard?

  So for people who don't know, shooting the duck, you like, you get on one skate and you bend down, I can't even bend down on one leg if I wasn't wearing a skate. Especially with the biking from the day before and the two hours of skating. And I got halfway into this commitment and realized I'm going down, and I went down pretty hard on my hip.

• 1:55:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's scary.

• 1:55:41Dax Shepard?

  Luckily, you were on the rink at that moment.

• 1:55:43Speaker 01

  I was.

• 1:55:43Dax Shepard?

  And you were right behind me, so you saw the whole thing.

• 1:55:45Speaker 01

  I did.

• 1:55:46Dax Shepard?

  Made a loud enough noise that I think most, everyone looked.

• 1:55:49Speaker 05

  I missed it.

• 1:55:49Speaker 01

  I don't think so, actually.

• 1:55:50Speaker 05

  I was, I was skating, but I missed it.

• 1:55:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think so.

• 1:55:53Dax Shepard?

  I'm not sure if I want, I wish you had, or I.

• 1:55:56Speaker 05

  Well, I wish I had, but you,

• 1:55:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:55:59Speaker 05

  You've skated up to me and you go, the fucking duck bit back?

• 1:56:04Dax Shepard?

  The duck shot me.

• 1:56:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was like, what? And I didn't even know that happened.

• 1:56:09Speaker 01

  You got up really fast, and you didn't look, you didn't look hurt.

• 1:56:13Dax Shepard?

  That's the goal.

• 1:56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I knew you were.

• 1:56:14Dax Shepard?

  And then you didn't, you hadn't seen, I knew you were, you hadn't seen Fall Guy.

• 1:56:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:56:20Dax Shepard?

  And so, have you seen Fall Guy?

• 1:56:22Speaker 05

  I did, yeah.

• 1:56:22Dax Shepard?

  Oh, what a movie, right?

• 1:56:23Speaker 05

  So good.

• 1:56:24Dax Shepard?

  Every time the stunt's over, they give the thumbs up, like I'm good. They're not good, their back's broken, they're like, right? So then I was like, I gave the thumbs up, and for the people who had seen it, but you hadn't seen it. And then I felt compelled to try to explain to you my jokes.

• 1:56:37Speaker 01

  You came back around to explain.

• 1:56:38Dax Shepard?

  Yes, I was in a good deal of pain, and I had given you the thumbs up, and I needed you to know, that was a no, I was making a joke.

• 1:56:43Speaker 01

  I said, are you okay? And then he gave the thumbs up, and I was like, no.

• 1:56:47Speaker 01

  And then you had to come back and tell me you, in fact, wasn't okay.

• 1:56:50Dax Shepard?

  I was not okay, um, but I kept going, uh.

• 1:56:55Dax Shepard?

  I was like, is it fr- is my hip fractured? Maybe it's fractured. Let's just keep going. There's nothing they can do for that. So you can put a castor on your hip.

• 1:57:02Speaker 01

  This is why it's really, roller skating is so tricky because you have to commit if you're gonna have fun and if you're gonna be good. But then you will fall. So you're choosing.

• 1:57:14Dax Shepard?

  Especially if you try to show off like me.

• 1:57:15Speaker 01

  Well, once you're feeling it, like everyone's gonna try and that's what I don't do. I just do half because I don't wanna fall. And I don't fall, so that's great.

• 1:57:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:28Speaker 01

  But then it's half.

• 1:57:29Dax Shepard?

  There were very few falls last night.

• 1:57:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:57:31Dax Shepard?

  In fact, kind of a shocking few falls. Cause at Delta's party, the first few years, people were going down really bad. People had wrist injuries. It was like 20% of the dads were fucked up the next week.

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  Anna fell last time.

• 1:57:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, she went down pretty hard. I saw that. Kinda great though.

• 1:57:50Speaker 01

  And everyone also, you see it and then you just like, you catalog away. Let people recover on their own.

• 1:57:58Dax Shepard?

  Well, no, so that's a great, as you know, I like getting embarrassed. And when I fell down at the movies, you know, I was laughing hysterically. But the pain was so sharp, like I wanted to laugh because it's just embarrassing. I tried to shoot the duck. Joy watched the whole thing. Her friend's watching. She doesn't know me. So there's a new person. At least Joy is my like sister.

• 1:58:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:16Dax Shepard?

  I've known her for 12 years. It was painful enough that I couldn't actually get to the laughing part. I just got.

• 1:58:21Speaker 01

  You were smiling pretty big though.

• 1:58:23Dax Shepard?

  Well, I was performing, yeah.

• 1:58:26Dax Shepard?

  I came on a retirement from acting and put on a real good thing. Then I gave a thumbs up and only two people got it because I thought everyone saw Fall Guy and they had it.

• 1:58:38Speaker 06

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:58:44Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:59:27Dax Shepard?

  Let yourself run. Explore the new Peloton Tread Flex at onepeloton.com.

• 1:59:39Dax Shepard?

  And then Kristin somehow, I'm not, I haven't even asked her the logistics, but our favorite treat in the world from Michigan is Saunders' bumpy cake. For people who've never had Saunders' bumpy cake, it is a chocolate, damp devil's food cake base. And then these huge ribbons of Twinkie filling, all covered in a fudge icing.

• 2:00:07Dax Shepard?

  You did, did you try it?

• 2:00:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did. I hadn't had it before. I loved it.

• 2:00:10Dax Shepard?

  Did you like it?

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I loved it.

• 2:00:11Dax Shepard?

  You're not, that's not your thing?

• 2:00:13Speaker 05

  Oh, fuck it.

• 2:00:13Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:00:16Speaker 01

  It was really good.

• 2:00:16Dax Shepard?

  When we were kids, you didn't love chocolate?

• 2:00:18Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:00:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:19Speaker 05

  Right, right. I do know. I had some for breakfast this morning.

• 2:00:24Dax Shepard?

  And I fucking went nuts. I had my immune suppressant before the party because I knew we were gonna have bumpy cake and I ate so way too much. So I coupled the hip pain with like, I made myself sick. But then I was like, you must get out and push through all of this. Did another couple hours of skating. It was a great, great party.

• 2:00:41Speaker 01

  It was a lovely party.

• 2:00:42Dax Shepard?

  And as I told you, what was really kind of novel about this party, because I've had them in the past. I'm always, I get feeling really guilty, like Tom Hanson, he drove 50 miles across town through rush hour traffic to get to the party. And he's older. And then I'm out skating the whole time. And the whole time I'm like, I gotta go sit and talk to Tommy. He drove all the way here. And then virtually everyone that's showing up, I feel like I should be talking to them for a half hour. And then I had this lightbulb moment. I was like, everyone here is a blast to talk to. When I look around, everyone's quite happy talking to whoever. I'm not needed here. I can stop feeling guilty about that.

• 2:01:17Speaker 01

  Did you have the moment where you were like, oh, all these people I've collected?

• 2:01:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I tried to have that moment. I did. I was in the bathroom and I actually even did my mantra for like two minutes. I was like, I really, I really want to, yeah, have that moment and see that. And then Tom Hanson, who knows me so well, he hugged me and he said, are you able to let any of this love in? And I said, I'm trying real hard. But also I'm pretty sure everyone's here just because Kristin invited them.

• 2:01:50Dax Shepard?

  If I'm being honest.

• 2:01:51Speaker 05

  So silly.

• 2:01:53Speaker 01

  That's so unfair. That's so unfair to all of us.

• 2:01:58Dax Shepard?

  To you, yeah.

• 2:01:59Speaker 01

  To anyone who went.

• 2:02:01Dax Shepard?

  He's still, I don't know, still my residual low self-esteem or something. I don't know.

• 2:02:05Speaker 05

  It was the funnest party I've ever been through.

• 2:02:10Dax Shepard?

  And there's no fucking booze there. That's saying something.

• 2:02:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I'm still riding on it today.

• 2:02:15Dax Shepard?

  I gotta push back a little bit. I guess you're not counting your birthday parties. Cause Aaron's birthday is July 2nd, which becomes a 4th of July Aaron's birthday spectacular. It was often at his dad's farm and it would be like a three day party with 50 people camping. Those were fucking awesome. Those were damn good.

• 2:02:37Speaker 05

  Those were good, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:39Dax Shepard?

  But I'm happy you had a great time.

• 2:02:41Speaker 05

  I fucking have fun, man. I had so much fun.

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  It was really fun.

• 2:02:45Dax Shepard?

  So much fun. And I don't want you to get the wrong impression. I, I, I did, I felt very loved.

• 2:02:50Speaker 01

  Good.

• 2:02:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:50Speaker 01

  I mean, when you were blowing out your candle, I looked around and I was like, oh, this is so lovely.

• 2:02:56Dax Shepard?

  Well, what I thought of many times is like, this is, you'd be hard pressed to find a better group of 40 human beings.

• 2:03:03Speaker 01

  So it was a really good group. I felt lucky that I was in, I had been collected.

• 2:03:07Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:03:08Speaker 01

  Over the 50 years. I was happy to be there.

• 2:03:11Dax Shepard?

  Did you have a favorite conversation with anyone?

• 2:03:13Speaker 01

  I had so many. I had one I can't repeat.

• 2:03:15Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:03:16Speaker 01

  That was the most memorable. It was with Eric. Yeah, it was naughty.

• 2:03:20Dax Shepard?

  He's so open though.

• 2:03:23Speaker 01

  I can't because it's not about him.

• 2:03:25Dax Shepard?

  Okay. I can't wait to hear that.

• 2:03:28Speaker 01

  Jesus.

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  He never fails.

• 2:03:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:33Speaker 01

  Like I think I know every, I think there's not one thing he can say that will get me. And man, man does he. I got to talk to Joy. I ate with her and that was so nice. I hadn't talked to her in a long time.

• 2:03:45Dax Shepard?

  That one was excited about that. I was more looking around, seeing people I love, talking to each other. And watching you guys chat, I was like, oh yeah, my sisters are chatting. Like, yeah. And she was wearing all day glow yellow, like.

• 2:03:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:58Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Like a neon.

• 2:04:00Dax Shepard?

  Neon fishnets.

• 2:04:03Speaker 01

  So awesome.

• 2:04:04Dax Shepard?

  We came up with my superhero name because we were of course talking about spades.

• 2:04:08Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 2:04:09Dax Shepard?

  And her friend she was with was black as well. And she's like, this is the upside down world. They play spades. We don't play spades. And then her and I came up with that. My superhero name is the appropriator. And my catchphrase is, I'll take it. I see something from your culture. I like, I'll take it.

• 2:04:25Dax Shepard?

  The appropriator.

• 2:04:26Speaker 01

  Oh, that's funny.

• 2:04:30Speaker 01

  Really fun to talk to Nate and talk to, see Nate in such a long time.

• 2:04:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, again, if Nate tucks at a party, what am I worried about? Anyone finding someone to talk to? How about you? Did you, did you chat with anyone new that you were like, oh?

• 2:04:42Speaker 05

  I loved catching up with all the, yeah, like the old Groundlings, your crew from back then. Like I hadn't seen Ben, Tim Loves The Nap.

• 2:04:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:55Speaker 05

  So that was all very fun and super comfortable. Like we all just dove into conversations that were fucking great.

• 2:05:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, Ben sent me a text like, I talked a lot with Aaron Weekly. It was so fun.

• 2:05:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was great.

• 2:05:08Dax Shepard?

  And that accent of course probably stole the show. He was the same white outfit Aaron had, but his was short shorts.

• 2:05:13Speaker 05

  Oh my God, yeah. And he was very sexy on those roller blades.

• 2:05:16Dax Shepard?

  He's so athletic.

• 2:05:17Speaker 01

  He was so good on those.

• 2:05:20Speaker 05

  Like I said, best party I've ever been through.

• 2:05:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, man.

• 2:05:24Speaker 01

  It's kind of your birthday too. You get to take, you guys get to share birthdays.

• 2:05:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, I felt like it.

• 2:05:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:30Speaker 05

  Kristin did a damn good job there.

• 2:05:33Dax Shepard?

  She really did.

• 2:05:33Speaker 05

  And she was very worried. She said, um, I, boy, he's really been talking a lot and that he's very grateful he didn't have a party. And, um, what a load off.

• 2:05:46Dax Shepard?

  I think she had heard me say like four times between my birthday and yesterday, I'm so glad I would hate a surprise party. And the poor girl had planned a surprise party.

• 2:05:56Speaker 01

  But what do you think now? And now that it's happened?

• 2:05:59Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I'm so happy. And that just goes to show, I'm known better than I know myself in a lot of domains. Like, yeah, I was delighted. As long as I didn't have to go through any of the.

• 2:06:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:10Dax Shepard?

  Anxiety of it all. It was absolutely delightful.

• 2:06:13Speaker 01

  Would you have been upset if it was a real surprise? I guess there's no way to know.

• 2:06:18Dax Shepard?

  So, but I just, I don't know how you get me to the roller rink.

• 2:06:21Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:06:22Dax Shepard?

  I think she would have had to. I'm just so annoyingly curious about why would we be doing it?

• 2:06:27Speaker 05

  Penae wasn't gonna take you to the roller rink.

• 2:06:30Dax Shepard?

  The only thing that had been planned and I had been tricked on is that Penae and Nate and I were supposed to have dinner that night. That was the big plan.

• 2:06:38Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:06:39Dax Shepard?

  And even like on Monday, I asked Kristin, can I go to dinner with Nate and Penae? And she's like, yeah. I'm thinking she must've been laughing her buns off. The plan was coming together perfectly. And then so I was both really excited about the party and then I was like, oh man, I was really looking forward to dinner with Nate and Nate. So we just decided we will also go to dinner next week.

• 2:06:58Speaker 05

  Were you guys going to Martin's?

• 2:07:00Dax Shepard?

  I hope.

• 2:07:02Dax Shepard?

  Hope we bring George Kittle with us. Aaron and I decided the best compliment you could give any guy is to say like, oh, I'd love to go to Martin's with that dude. Like if you don't know him, but you've seen him from afar and you go, fuck, I'd love to go to Martin's with that guy.

• 2:07:17Speaker 05

  I mean, he is a great guy.

• 2:07:21Dax Shepard?

  I like Dan Campbell. Can you imagine going to fucking Martin's?

• 2:07:23Speaker 05

  He goes directly to Martin's.

• 2:07:25Dax Shepard?

  Don't stop.

• 2:07:26Speaker 05

  You guys wouldn't even have to say it.

• 2:07:28Dax Shepard?

  We'd get there and the food would be on the table.

• 2:07:32Dax Shepard?

  Was the equivalent, is there equivalent of that for the gals?

• 2:07:35Speaker 01

  Oh, like the spa? No, that's a solo. Yeah. Also the mall, I guess.

• 2:07:43Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 2:07:45Speaker 05

  Go right to the mall with her.

• 2:07:46Speaker 01

  I think I'd go shopping with her.

• 2:07:48Dax Shepard?

  Like what do you want to do with Ashley and Mary Kate the first time you hang out? Besides tour.

• 2:07:53Speaker 01

  All my pants just fell off. My underwear fell off.

• 2:07:59Speaker 01

  I don't know if I can go shop. Helping with them, that's confusing.

• 2:08:03Dax Shepard?

  I imagine I would be self-conscious if I were you. Cause I'd be afraid everything I said I liked, you'd worry they didn't think it was good style.

• 2:08:10Speaker 01

  I guess we would go to their store.

• 2:08:13Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:08:13Speaker 01

  And I'm thinking, what do you guys think I should get? I'll pay. And they'll be like, I know you'll pay. We don't give discounts.

• 2:08:21Dax Shepard?

  We don't fuck around like that.

• 2:08:22Speaker 01

  And then they'd pick out some stuff for me and then we'd all go have martinis. They would smoke cigarettes. I wouldn't.

• 2:08:28Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 2:08:29Dax Shepard?

  You wouldn't smoke for them?

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  No, I've never done it. And even for them, I won't.

• 2:08:33Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 2:08:34Speaker 01

  I'll roller skate for you, but I won't smoke a cigarette for you.

• 2:08:39Speaker 01

  So we go to bed early.

• 2:08:42Dax Shepard?

  Super early.

• 2:08:44Speaker 05

  Right away.

• 2:08:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:47Speaker 01

  Anyway, well, it was lovely. And I hope you feel a little happy today.

• 2:08:52Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I do. Just, I took my immune suppressant. I think I have a cold that came back and I might, I think I have a fractured hip. But that, but also just beaming with gratitude.

• 2:09:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:04Dax Shepard?

  I did, I felt hung over this morning. In fact, so many times, I don't know if you remember this. Do you remember I got like a really cool sweatsuit for Christmas? And a watch and I was at your house. We were in the backyard and I somehow fell and fucking split my lip like wide open.

• 2:09:22Speaker 01

  When you were little?

• 2:09:22Dax Shepard?

  No, when I was like home for Christmas. And our Christmas started at a certain time and then we had stayed up till nine in the morning the day before. And then, so I didn't wake up till five. So I got to Christmas Eve, our big family tradition, quite late. And I just had this enormous bloody scab on my mouth from the night before. So we had a lot of those. So anyways, when I woke up, I was like, I have a headache from eating all the cake. I'm sick and my hip hurts. I feel like I was in Arizona, ninety-nine or something.

• 2:09:56Speaker 01

  Okay. Should we do a little, just quick facts?

• 2:09:58Dax Shepard?

  Some facties?

• 2:09:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is for Reid Hoffman.

• 2:10:01Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:10:02Speaker 01

  You said that Martin Luther raised literacy rates from three percent to ninety-five percent. According to AI, do you mean? While there isn't a precise percentage readily available to quantify how much Martin Luther raised literacy rates. Historical research indicates that the Protestant Reformation, largely driven by Luther's teachings, significantly increased literacy levels across Europe, with some studies showing a difference of nearly twenty percentage points between predominantly Protestant and Catholic regions. Essentially, areas with a larger Protestant population had substantially higher literacy rates, but there's no percentage.

• 2:10:35Dax Shepard?

  I'm clearly way off, given that percentage.

• 2:10:38Speaker 01

  But you got it from weirdest people on earth. Joseph Henrick.

• 2:10:43Dax Shepard?

  Joe, Joey Hendrick.

• 2:10:45Speaker 01

  Go back and listen to that one. Is our unemployment rate as low as it's ever been? The unemployment rate was three point four percent in January and April twenty twenty-three, the lowest in fifty-five years.

• 2:10:56Dax Shepard?

  Fifty-five years?

• 2:10:57Speaker 01

  The last time the unemployment rate in the US was this low was in the first five months of nineteen sixty-nine. The average unemployment rate during the Biden administration was four point one percent. Really low.

• 2:11:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, very low. A lot of countries have ten percent and above.

• 2:11:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Nineteen eighty-four did come out in nineteen forty-nine, but we think he wrote it in nineteen forty-eight.

• 2:11:19Dax Shepard?

  Yes. But he had said, Reid, our guest, now it was, it was forty-eight, which was clever. Cause nineteen eighty-four was a flip of forty-eight.

• 2:11:29Speaker 01

  And we still think that's true, but it did not come out until forty-nine. The price of Bitcoin today is a hundred and four thousand, six hundred and twenty-seven dollars and seventy cents.

• 2:11:41Dax Shepard?

  Wow, wow, wow. Aaron, did you watch that greatest heist doc on Netflix?

• 2:11:46Speaker 05

  Not yet.

• 2:11:47Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Well, in a nutshell, these two incredibly weird people, I don't feel bad saying that.

• 2:11:54Speaker 01

  Their names are Ilya Dutch Lichtenstein and Heather Razal Khan Morgan.

• 2:12:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So a bit of a clue in their names. And they stole, stole, I always say stole. That's one of my things. They stole seventy, yeah, there they are.

• 2:12:13Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 2:12:14Dax Shepard?

  Boy, that photo of him on the left.

• 2:12:18Dax Shepard?

  He might have Stockholm.

• 2:12:20Speaker 01

  This, yeah, this makes me feel sad, actually.

• 2:12:22Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it's not, yeah, you are not happy for either of them, but they stole seventy-two million dollars in Bitcoin. That they really couldn't unload, so they just, they just held it. By the time they were arrested, it was worth four point five billion dollars. So it's the greatest theft in the history of the world.

• 2:12:41Speaker 05

  Oh, my God. No, I have not seen this.

• 2:12:43Speaker 01

  Now worth ten point eight billion.

• 2:12:44Dax Shepard?

  Now worth ten point eight billion if you had seventy-two million.

• 2:12:48Speaker 01

  It was stolen from Bitfinex or Bitfinex, I don't know. And it's a Hong Kong-based virtual cryptocurrency exchange. So that's yikes.

• 2:13:00Speaker 05

  We've had friends that were involved in some thefts of that, right?

• 2:13:05Speaker 01

  Yes, we did. Well, that was of.

• 2:13:08Dax Shepard?

  We have a friend that's a victim of.

• 2:13:09Speaker 05

  A victim, that's what I mean.

• 2:13:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:12Speaker 05

  Yikes.

• 2:13:12Speaker 01

  A lot of money.

• 2:13:14Dax Shepard?

  Which I can only imagine what it's worth now, because that was what, five years ago?

• 2:13:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, yeah. Oh, I have a thing marked here. So you made a car? You designed a car using AI and you decided you wanted to show it?

• 2:13:26Dax Shepard?

  I would love to. Well, do you want to put on the TV? Cause you're so good at that now?

• 2:13:29Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 2:13:31Dax Shepard?

  Email me it. Oh, and I'm gonna send you one picture after that of a Ted Seeger's poster that I, oh, there's two, there's three actually that I really like. Let's see. Oh, I'm gonna send four things.

• 2:13:42Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 2:13:44Dax Shepard?

  Cause then I did something for our show.

• 2:13:46Speaker 01

  Exciting. All on AI?

• 2:13:48Dax Shepard?

  All on AI.

• 2:13:49Speaker 01

  I played around with some merch stuff on AI. That was fun. Ooh, okay, so.

• 2:13:54Dax Shepard?

  Right, so.

• 2:13:54Speaker 01

  For the listener.

• 2:13:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so I want a fifteen-passenger van for Nashville. Cause I assume we're always gonna have so many people staying with us that anytime we go to dinner, we're gonna need like tons of seats. So then I was like, well, I want a fifteen-passenger G van, a Chevy. But I want it to be John Player paint scheme. I want it wide body. I just said like, not a ton of things. And it spit this one out. It spit three amazing ones out. Look at that. Yeah, that's the John Player livery famous paint scheme. Isn't it interesting how they fuck certain things up? Like, look at the grill. It's kinda gonna say Chevrolet, but it doesn't.

• 2:14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:14:33Dax Shepard?

  It's weird. And then like, there's normal letters on the tires and then weird abstract. And that's the third one. Look at that motherfucker. Can you imagine?

• 2:14:42Speaker 05

  Can you send it this one immediately?

• 2:14:45Dax Shepard?

  Look, and I'm only noticing now that it's blown up that big. It's got two gas.

• 2:14:49Speaker 05

  Oh, it does. Two fuel doors there.

• 2:14:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, two fuel doors. That's weird, right? You see that, Monty?

• 2:14:55Speaker 05

  You need a lot of gas for that sucker.

• 2:14:58Dax Shepard?

  Knows I'm gonna be, have my foot in the kitchen the whole time. Okay, now go, Rob, to the other.

• 2:15:04Speaker 01

  What is John Player?

• 2:15:05Dax Shepard?

  Was a cigarette brand that sponsored Formula One and racing, and they have this signature black and gold. So then, okay, so I said, make an app, make a poster for a beer brand named Ted Seeger's in the style of Miami Vice.

• 2:15:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, I have loved this one.

• 2:15:21Dax Shepard?

  Isn't that great?

• 2:15:22Speaker 01

  That's really cool.

• 2:15:23Dax Shepard?

  And again, what does it say? It doesn't say Miami beer, but it says like.

• 2:15:26Speaker 05

  Namio beer.

• 2:15:28Dax Shepard?

  Almost makes you think it's like a Thai beer or something.

• 2:15:30Speaker 01

  Underneath, it's just squiggles, kind of like.

• 2:15:32Dax Shepard?

  Hieroglyphics?

• 2:15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:34Dax Shepard?

  Get that Egyptian. Okay, now, then I said, give me a beer brand, you know, Ted Seeger's. I want a muscle car, a motorcycle and a muscular horse.

• 2:15:46Speaker 01

  This one is a little.

• 2:15:48Speaker 05

  The fucking horse.

• 2:15:50Dax Shepard?

  That thing is ripped.

• 2:15:52Speaker 01

  Oh, this is so funny.

• 2:15:54Dax Shepard?

  All right. And then I was like, what if a beer brand named Ted Seeger's sponsored a hydroplane race boat? And it made that. This is incredible.

• 2:16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, but what's on the side? Did you?

• 2:16:06Speaker 05

  I think it's a.

• 2:16:07Dax Shepard?

  I think it's barley or hops.

• 2:16:09Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:16:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:16:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:16:12Dax Shepard?

  All right, and then, look at this beautiful.

• 2:16:15Speaker 01

  It's really pretty. What'd you say? A crow with a cherry?

• 2:16:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, a crow with a cherry in its beak.

• 2:16:22Speaker 01

  Okay, but.

• 2:16:23Dax Shepard?

  I had to do many to come up with this one. This one took a while. Did you see this? What's this?

• 2:16:28Speaker 05

  That's your, oh, that was your invite for the party.

• 2:16:31Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I didn't see that. It says, you're rock rock, right? That's not an H, it's an R. It's Y R A C H. And Captain's questionable. There's, oh, he's got sneakers on. Yeah, he's a jacked crow. This, no, I hadn't seen that. That's great. Look at that vascularity.

• 2:16:50Speaker 05

  Oh, my God, that crow is a fucking animal.

• 2:16:52Dax Shepard?

  How scared is that other crow that's flying in the background? He's probably flying to get the fuck out of there.

• 2:16:58Speaker 01

  I didn't realize she used AI for it. She must have. Well, that's that.

• 2:17:03Dax Shepard?

  That was it. Those are all the facts. Those are fun AI detour.

• 2:17:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:08Dax Shepard?

  Unless you're listening, I guess that'll all get cut out if you're, I was just thinking if you were listening and you couldn't see any of this.

• 2:17:14Speaker 01

  Go to YouTube and watch it.

• 2:17:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:17:17Dax Shepard?

  All right. Love you.

• 2:17:18Speaker 01

  Love you. Love you.