Ezra Klein Returns (on political polarization)

Ezra Klein (Abundance, The Ezra Klein Show, Why We’re Polarized) is a political commentator, journalist, podcast host and New York Times columnist. Ezra joins Armchair Expert to discuss becoming a father, getting serious about longevity and strength training, and why self-improvement became politically coded. Ezra and Dax talk about how attention became the most valuable currency in politics, why there’s no liberal Joe Rogan, and how cancellation can backfire into shadow influence. Ezra explains why democracy requires moral imagination, how telling people you hate them pushes them away, and why the desire to become a better person shouldn’t belong to one political side. Sign up now in the app or at grubhub.com/plus/golddays to unlock exclusive Gold Days deals. 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?

  And today we have a returning guest. He was last year, weeks before shutdown.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, lots changed.

• 0:12Dax Shepard?

  Six years ago. Ezra Klein, he is a political commentator and a journalist. He co-founded Vox and is currently a New York Times podcast host and op ed columnist. Ding ding ding, that's why he's here. I read an op ed he wrote that I really, really liked that we're going to discuss at length. His books include Abundance, which is gaining a lot of political traction.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Also been on so many big lists. Phil Gates's list, Obama's list, just man, oh, man.

• 0:39Dax Shepard?

  And then Why We're Polarized, which was how we met him the first time. And of course, listen to his podcasts. It is extremely well informed and beautifully executed. The Ezra Klein Show, please enjoy Ezra Klein. We get support from Quince.

• 0:55Speaker 01

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

• 1:04Dax Shepard?

  I'm fully there. The second it dips below 70, I'm like, this is my season. Give me the layers, give me the boots, give me a reason to wear something other than a T-shirt. And honestly, that's why I love Quince because fall is when your wardrobe actually has to show up. And everything at Quince is 50 to 80% less than similar brands. We're talking 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at $60.

• 1:26Speaker 01

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• 1:44Dax Shepard?

  The 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters for me are it. When I look at Steve McQueen, this man owned a couple of sweaters he wore all the time and he looks iconic.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  It's a uniform.

• 1:54Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:55Speaker 01

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• 2:12Dax Shepard?

  Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from AG1. Fall is that time when your body and mind are getting ready for the winter. You're settling in, bracing for the cold. Your body's already running a deficit from the shorter days and broken sleep patterns. You don't want a nutrient deficit stacked on top of that too.

• 2:48Speaker 01

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• 3:01Dax Shepard?

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• 3:15Speaker 01

  That's the part people miss. It's not a one day fix. It's what happens when you stay consistent.

• 3:19Dax Shepard?

  It's an easy everyday thing. I've added it to my morning routine and I'm going to tell you, I actually love the taste of it. It's like Pavlovian. I drink it and I know, mm, I'm going to get that little vitamin buzz.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Well, that's also the thing. When you do it first thing in the morning, you already feel kind of self-esteem because you're like, I already did something good for myself.

• 3:36Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Go to drinkag1.com/dax. And for a limited time, get a free immunity bundle, including a bottle of omega-3 fish oil and a bottle of vitamin D3K2 with your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/dax. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Armchair Expert sent you.

• 4:18Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I do believe you're stronger than you were six years ago. Have you been exercising? Are you doing a weight training program?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  So this has been coming up a lot. I'm probably stronger than six years ago when I had a one-year-old.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:30Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Than 10 years ago? I mean, I've not gone through a Dax-like Hulk out here.

• 4:34Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm much older than you. This phase could still be in your future.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, fair enough. I was in pretty good shape in my early 30s.

• 4:41Dax Shepard?

  You're 42 right now?

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm 42. And then I had kids.

• 4:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  It brought the curb down for a while. And then I turned 40. I read Peter Attia's Outlive.

• 4:49Dax Shepard?

  Yep, yep. Very persuasive.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  And he really persuaded me that having muscle mass in the long term is important for health. And so I started trying to turn things around. Thank you for noticing.

• 4:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah!

• 4:58Speaker 02

  I've consumed a psychotic amount of protein powder, as far as I can tell.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  So I'm glad people feel like it's doing something. I know SF culture. I don't live there anymore, but I know that world. Is the peptide thing here? Are you all on peptides?

• 5:11Dax Shepard?

  I'm on peptides, yeah.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Which peptides are you on? We're having the most podcast conversation ever here.

• 5:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  I'm just fascinated by people doing that.

• 5:17Dax Shepard?

  By the way, this is going to dovetail beautifully into the piece you wrote that I loved. Yeah, why can't a centrist liberal talk about peptides and lifting weights?

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Listen, if you can't talk about peptides as a liberal, we're not gonna win.

• 5:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we got it. We're not going forward.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  I'll make a real political point here. I feel like a couple of years ago, eight-ish, 10-ish years ago, there was a big move on the kind of, I never know how to describe this, the left, progressive, something, against what I would call like male self-improvement. Brene Brown and worlds like that were fine, but the way you see this operating in terms of young men, both bodily and emotionally, that became a little bit of a no-go zone. And I was saying to people then, I was like, aspiration, like self-improvement is such a fundamental human drive. If you make your politics hostile to that, you will lose. You cannot make aspiration something that you code as right wing.

• 6:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Do you think they're against self-improvement?

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Improvement physically, is that what you mean? I think there are two things that happened here. One was that there's a tendency to associate the idea that you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps and everything is personal responsibility and how hard you're working at it with the right. Yeah. And the sense that that is a way of avoiding a confrontation with societal conditions that need to be changed in order for people to thrive. And I am sympathetic to that as far as it goes. We do have a lot of societal conditions that need to be changed in order for people to thrive.

• 6:43Dax Shepard?

  And it'd be great if someone pulls them up by their bootstraps. And it does happen. And yes, not on the level that we've been sold, but also it doesn't make it bad.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Yes, I always think that as a society, you want society to be skeptical of how much falls on the individual and individuals to be optimistic about how much they can do for themselves. So I'm actually largely a believer that things are pretty socially determined for us in terms of who we're born to and where we're born and the luck we come into contact with in life. I believe that the people who are richest in our society have not done nearly as much as they think to deserve that. And a lot of people who have fallen through the cracks have just gotten a bad run of luck. And social policy, taxation, universal healthcare, universal childcare, all these things should really reflect that. And also it is good for individuals to believe because it is also true. Right, these things are true at the same time. Absolutely. That you can make changes for yourself. Yeah.

• 7:37Dax Shepard?

  That you would be a better version of yourself in the future than you are today. That's a great modus operandi for a human, right? Is I want to be able to look back and go, yeah, I'm a better version of myself today. Okay, where were we though? We were talking about peptides. I take, I have to go back and forth on these, right? So your body doesn't get used to them, but they do virtually the same thing, which is I'm on one version of the morelins. There's ipamoralin or some morelin. They tell your pituitary gland to make more of its own HGH. So you're not taking exogenous HGH, which is problematic for many reasons, but it tells your body to make more of it. So that one I'm on, I've been on testosterone for eight years, but I'm on a really conservative dose.

• 8:21Dax Shepard?

  Can you feel my, my muscles? I'm rutting right now. So that might be part of it. But I'm on a very, very small kind of conservative dose of that. And then there's another one I'm on. I feel ashamed to admit this one because it's very expensive, but SS31 and it repairs your mitochondria. And that one, I gotta say, is the one I think is most impactful.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Do you do this?

• 8:39Speaker 01

  No, I'm scared. Well, I am on a GLP-1.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  So it's, we'll count that as a peptide. And all of the friends are on all of these different ones and I'm very scared of it. So I don't do it.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  This is on my mind because I just did an episode about this at all. I don't know when this will come out and when that will come out. I am a little surprised by how confident people are with these things that we don't really understand.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's scary.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  The GLP-1s are very well studied, not all of them, right? Some of them are new, but Ozempic at least is a diabetes drug for a long time. My, my wife is a type 1 diabetic, right? These things are known.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  These other things where like, we think it does this. I read a interview with some doctor in the Bay Area and he was talking to people who are into peptides. And he was saying, look, I'm also a startup founder and I feel like people are reversing the value proposition. The thing about doing a startup is your downside is quite limited and your upside is unlimited. Worst case, your startup fails. Best case, you're, you know, a billionaire and you've changed the world. And these, he was saying, he worries that it's the reverse. Like best case, you feel a little bit better, right? The upside is somewhat limited and downside, it's a little, who knows?

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:42Dax Shepard?

  Well, let me be really clear for anyone in the audience, especially if you're a young dude. I have a doctor. I have a hormone doctor.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 9:48Dax Shepard?

  And I get my peptides legally from a pharmacy. I'm not buying them on the black market from China. There's a million things you could point at. So the efficacy of tesamorlin, very well studied. It was developed for HIV patients in the eighties. It's been around for 40 years. Yes, and they, they noticed as a side effect of it was like, wow, they lost a lot of abdominal fat. In addition to doing what they wanted it to do. So this off-label use for it is just very well documented, very well studied. It's been being prescribed to people for 40 years. So it's not crazy. But yes, if you're buying it from Joe's Pep Shack on the internet. Now we're not discussing peptides. We're discussing quality control issues and anything you would shove into your body.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Which by the way, that is how most people are getting them because. Most people.

• 10:35Dax Shepard?

  Can't afford to have a peptide.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  And we live in LA, there are hormone doctors.

• 10:39Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  That's not that common other places. And if you go to your GP, they're probably gonna say like, no, just don't do it.

• 10:45Dax Shepard?

  So it's tricky. These things all get mired in a lot of different issues. Atiya, he's been vocal against peptides, which is interesting because I definitely think he does prescribe some to certain patients he has.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  I think he's probably getting a lot of emails from the Joe's Peptide Shack cohort.

• 10:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I mean, he doesn't want young dudes who have no knowledge of it firing all this shit into their body without a dosage by a doctor and a supply that's trusted and vetted. I think that's more the concern than what this peptide that's been studied for a long time, actually.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  What about NADs? Are you on an NAD? People are really on NADs.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  I don't know what this is.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  I guess it's like good for your brain, but then that scares me because like anything that has an impact on your brain feels scary. Are you on that?

• 11:26Dax Shepard?

  I'm not. I have tried that and I didn't notice any cognitive advantage from it, so I just skipped it. I'm already on too much stuff and it's all done with a shot.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Lots of needles.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  I feel like it's easier, actually.

• 11:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I've gotten over it, but I'm not looking to add more needles to my life. That's not like I'm like.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  That was your ambition, you didn't get into the needles?

• 11:47Dax Shepard?

  When I made my resolutions for 2026.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  It feels very substance-y, even when I'm taking the GLP one, I'm like, oh my God, I'm in that movie where you're just injecting yourself with this thing to make yourself look better, feel better.

• 12:00Dax Shepard?

  Also, it's a turnkey for addicts. So all the dudes I know in recovery, it's like, oh, great. We have something we can obsess about like this, but actually the outcome is beneficial. So it scratches that.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, plays a certain kind of energy.

• 12:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and you're talking about which one you're in and then you're doing how much? Like, I miss that part of drug abuse.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Look, I think so much of life is figuring out whether you can harness your most intense internal energies to something constructive or destructive.

• 12:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  There's a line I love. I read it in an Oliver Berkman book, but I don't think it's his line. I think he quotes somebody, but it's that behind most successful people is anxiety harnessed to productivity.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  I think so much of life, it's like so many people who are addicted. Go into recovery and then become ultra marathoners.

• 12:46Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  I always feel inside of me, there is a constant thrumming energy. And if it doesn't have somewhere to go, it will go into just ruminating, worrying, hypochondria. And then I found political blogging.

• 12:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And thank God for you, it's just an endless river. It will never dry up.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  River of things that are pro-social to be worried about.

• 13:08Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you were here six years ago and it was right before you were one of the last interviews in person.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 13:14Dax Shepard?

  Everywhere.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  Tour was bisected on that first book by the pandemic.

• 13:17Dax Shepard?

  And you were promoting at the time why we're polarized.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:21Dax Shepard?

  Which again, and I may have said it in our first interview, but it's like, I've had a very interesting parasocial observation of you over the years and it's evolved, which is there was moments, I think I was probably introduced to you in your wonderful arguments with Sam Harris. And I think maybe at that time, I had diagnosed you as left of me. And I do consider myself liberal. And then I was like, he might be too liberal for me. But then you made some points against Sam that I was like, oh, he's incredibly empathetic. You were in a debate about who Sam would come to the rescue of and how obvious it was to you that these people, he seemed to think that they had been persecuted unfairly, which makes so much sense because he himself felt like he was persecuted unfairly. And just how transparent the motivation was.

• 14:06Dax Shepard?

  And I was like, that's such an intuitive and empathic thing to bring into this debate that could just be about policies or this or that. So then I was like, I really appreciate this guy. And then I think I'm right to think that over the years, we seem to have some similar concerns, which is it's kind of a non-functional two camps that ruin everything and a lack of maybe pragmatism and a lack of results from both sides. And just for me, kind of a little bit of disgust with the whole proposition. Not one side or the other, more than the other, just my goodness, this can't be the way forward.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  I would probably describe myself a little differently than that.

• 14:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, please do.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Say, I take more seriously than that, that the two sides have. Different value-based views about how the world should be. And I'm probably more comfortable saying I'm on one of those sides than you are. But precisely because of that, I think it's very important to be self-critical of my side.

• 14:58Dax Shepard?

  That's where we totally agree. Like, Monica, now often, and she's right, she'll be like, you have a lot of shit to say about the left. I don't hear you saying much about the right. And to me, I'm like, A, it's kind of self-evident what I hate about the right. B, the right's not listening to me. So I have no chance at changing them, but I have a chance to better our side.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  People won't listen unless they believe you're really on their side. I do think Ezra is very, maybe I'm wrong, clearly left of center.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  I think that's true. I'll cop to that.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Yes, and you are consistently saying, I'm centrist.

• 15:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  You don't like the idea of being put in a camp.

• 15:30Dax Shepard?

  But I would argue, though, that it has evolved to a degree where my liberal leanings, which would have been very left 10 years ago or 12 years ago, have actually got shoved into the center. Like, I don't think I've wavered as much as the polls have gotten so dramatic.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  There's no doubt the Democratic Party's moved left in that period of time.

• 15:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, as the right has moved right.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  I think a lot more people feel politically homeless and cynical right now than did. And not even always because they don't have a political home, but I think there's another thing layered on to what you're talking about, which is, one, the institutions of American life and government have become corroded, corrupted, sclerotic, in a way that they're just not delivering well. And then, two, the layer of social and algorithmic media means that who you hear from and what comes to define the debates on both sides and what comes to define both sides is a more extreme part of them than would have been before. I mean, you both work in attention, right, on some fundamental level? And so I'd be curious if this resonates for you. I think a lot about attention in politics.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  I think you have to, we're here in LA. I don't think it's a crazy thing to imagine Spencer Pratt winning the election. I don't think he will, the mayoral election. But getting attention, right, we saw it in New York, where Zohar Maldani went from 1% to the mayor. We're seeing it in Maine, where a guy nobody had heard of a year ago just pushed the sitting governor out of the Democratic primary for Senate, Graham Plathner. If you can dominate attention. Donald Trump did this to the entire Republican Party all at once. Yeah. If you can win attention, you can kind of win everything. So the ability to cohere and dominate attentionally is, I think, one of the fundamental political skills of the age. And I was trying to think about, OK, what is the theory of attention beneath that? Like, how would I describe how attention works? And so I want to see if this resonates for you, because I literally just think about it this morning.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  The way I describe attention is that it is feeling plus curiosity equals attention, at least online.

• 17:23Dax Shepard?

  Give me like a hard example.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so if you have something that people are really curious about, it's the day after America bombs Iran. Then the New York Times can put up a very dry, straightforward news story about bombing Iran, and it's going to get a ton of readers. But if we did that same story about, I don't know, high food prices in Chile right now, unless that story was extremely emotionally laden for some reason, nobody would read it.

• 17:48Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  And algorithmically, I think you really see this. For things to create a pop on social media where everything is so crowded and algorithmic media, you know, on TikTok and Instagram now, either people have to really want to hear about it, peptides, right? There's a reason we started talking about that right at the beginning. It's a magnetic topic for people. Or it has to give you a punch of inspiration, anger, outrage, humor, interest, something. And the way that's different than what that was before, because it's not like we never had people who worked on attention in this way before, is that it used to be gatekeepers plus feelings plus curiosity. It used to be that the New York Times or ABC News or the LA Times or whoever had a lot of power over what got coverage.

• 18:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  And that was being decided by editors and programmers and so forth. And so you could be a politician who's maybe not that interesting, but the people in the political community think you're good at your job, and the LA Times editorial board endorses you.

• 18:43Dax Shepard?

  John Kerry.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Really big deal. John Kerry is a good example of this kind of thing.

• 18:47Dax Shepard?

  Like, John Kerry couldn't have even made a primary at this point.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  I think that is totally right. And so I think there is a real shift. And that means, well, what kind of person is good at eliciting curiosity and feeling? Well, it's usually people are more controversial, who say more outrageous things. And so it is like a subtle, but I think quite important shift in.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  The individuals through whom we see politics. Way, way, way more people know Marjorie Taylor Greene's name than can tell me who the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee is, even though the latter is like, in theory, much more politically powerful than the former.

• 19:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I guess I left out probably my primary concern or passion about politics is just in general, the average person thinks way too much about it. Like, you should. This is your beat. You are dedicated to politics. You have a poli sci degree. You're a journalist. You're never going to take your foot off the gas, and you shouldn't. But the fact that it has infiltrated every aspect of life, where protein is now conservative, plant bases, like diet is politicized, where you buy a car is politicized, where you shop, that, to me, is a big, big problem. I don't think the average American needs to be spending that much of their free thought concerned with ultimately something they'll do every four years, or maybe if they're

• 20:09Dax Shepard?

  very civilly minded, they will do it every two years. And yet, they're occupying so much of their time and thought about it. That, I think, is problematic in general. I think everyone's way too into politics.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  I would go further than that. I think, one, being really into, what's the line people use on social media? I'm monitoring the situation. Right? Isn't that the joke? Like, I work in the news. We are bringing you the thing that is going to unnerve you most from anywhere in the world at any time of day.

• 20:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  I'm not sure human beings were built for this kind of information.

• 20:41Dax Shepard?

  You're not sure. We were not.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  We were not.

• 20:42Dax Shepard?

  We were designed to live with 100 people.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  But then the other thing that I think you're getting at, which I feel very strongly, is we've become more and more sensitized at picking up signals for, are you my kind of person?

• 20:55Speaker 01

  I know.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  And that's really bad.

• 20:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Because, one, it flattens people to things that they're not. I've got Trump voters in my family. I've got people I love whose politics are really, really, really distant from mine, and they're good, complex, highly textured people. And, two, it's just bad, small-D democratic habits. I think we have lost the sense, when people talk about what the American experiment is, of what that ever meant. There were not a lot of democracies when we started.

• 21:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  And we, when we started, I think it's fair to say, were not a particularly...

• 21:32Dax Shepard?

  Democratic democracy.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Democracy, as we had like a tremendous amount of the country that could not vote and some of which was in bondage.

• 21:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, more than half the people here couldn't vote.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  And there was like, what a remarkable experiment we're trying here. The idea that you would live in a society of more than 300 million people with as many differences as we have, under rules that are largely democratic, doing that is actually a tremendously complex moral project that early in our country, we talked a lot about what were the habits of thought and practice and generosity that we needed to bring to being citizens to make this work. We understood it was hard.

• 22:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, if you're just born into it, and we're at 250 years this year, you know, yeah, it just is, it's a given.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  It's a given, and we take it for granted.

• 22:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  And we take the habits beneath it for granted, and I think that's something that worries me a lot about the current moment. And I mean, yeah, we're at the year 250, and not to get too political on this, but we've got the President of the United States putting his signature on the currency for the first time and putting out passports with his face on them. And I think a lot of people who started this country would find that a little bit ironic.

• 22:34Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  And like a bad sign.

• 22:36Dax Shepard?

  Well, he didn't even campaign, so yeah.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not a great sign.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  And so this idea that we are at this tremendous landmark of this country, at the same time when some of the habits of both leaders and citizenry that sustained it even through very hard times seem to me to be in deterioration, it's something that has begun to occupy more and more of my mind.

• 22:56Dax Shepard?

  Okay, but now let's go back to what you just said, which I totally agree with, which is no one can really rise to any kind of prominence without attention, massive amounts of attention. And the other thing I get critical of is just, so reverse engineer that, you hate this guy so much, it's all you talk about and think about. For 10 years now, this person has occupied people's brains. And so the reward is to give them a lot of attention to secure the fact that you'll have him. So it's also just a terrible game plan. I mean, I think you could really make a persuasive argument that if everyone fucking ignored him from the jump, we wouldn't even be in this situation. You think you're combating it, but I would argue you're fueling it.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  What Trump understood, his most fundamental political insight.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Was that it does not matter if the attention you are getting is positive or negative. That attention is a volume game, at least in the modern scenario. And you could, as long as you are unlocking the energy of attention, you are winning. And so he is comfortable in a way that a lot of politicians aren't with negative attention.

• 23:58Dax Shepard?

  Also, like, I remember those first debates with him for the primaries. The right hated him too, but the right gave him all the attention. You know, it's like, there wasn't anybody who wasn't dying to talk about him.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  He was driving that, again, as you say, on purpose. He knew that. It wasn't like it just happened to him. He was a mastermind at that.

• 24:16Dax Shepard?

  We cooperated, though. I mean, you have to take some kind of personal responsibility. And that game plan worked and we cooperated.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  I think for a while, though, we didn't. I think for a long time, I was like, oh, this is funny. This is happening. And then at some point, it was like, oh, my God, I think this is happening. I think we need to start paying attention to it. I don't know what the right.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  It's a very hard.

• 24:36Dax Shepard?

  I know what the outcome is. So whatever game plan everyone thought was working, this is the outcome.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  I think there's like a new generation of politicians are beginning to see emerge. And they understand this moment of attention much more natively. Trump had a very specific, early taste of it from reality TV and his own kind of relationship to marketing. And his own quite unusual use of Twitter, when most people in politics use Twitter in a very careful way.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:01Dax Shepard?

  Or we're even too good for it.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. Barack Obama's Twitter account is not an interesting Twitter account. Like, I'm a big, big Obama fan.

• 25:08Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  But Twitter X now is not a space for deliberate, highly nuanced, on the one side, on the other side.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:17Dax Shepard?

  A 61% opinion.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Exactly. So Trump got that. And now, one, you're seeing another shift into vertical video, algorithmic video. And you're seeing a different group of politicians, Zohar Mhamdani, James Talarico in Texas, Graham Plathner, others who have a touch for it. And they're touching it in different ways. I'm interested to see where that goes because I think we are in another generational. I'm not sure it'll be this election cycle that the generational turnover happens. Like, I think we're going to go to Gen X in the next election. But I am a lot more confident in like the younger. Group right now than in the kind of middle.

• 25:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, my hope comes from the well documented pattern of young people hating whatever the people before them did. And what we did was so loud and obvious that I can only hope they're just going to reject that. That's where my hope lies. Okay, so I read, this is why there's no liberal Joe Rogan in the New York Times. You did an op ed on this. And I just loved it. And I want to go through the points you made in it a bit. So, let's just talk about Joe Rogan for a minute. Because I'll just tell you historically where we come from. Like, A, I don't agree with him on much stuff. Right? It's not my brand of masculinity. I respect the work ethic. I respect the thing he's built. I respect that he doesn't seem

• 26:32Dax Shepard?

  beholden to binary options. His politics seem to be all over the map. I respect his authenticity. I think he's very fucking true to who he is. Pretty unwavering. So I've never joined on the bandwagon of hating him or loving him. So that's just where I stand on him.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  I was keying off of this debate that happened among Democrats like right after the 2024 election, where they felt like they had like lost the podcasters. Trump was going on Rogan and Rogan endorsed him. Yeah, he was going on Theo Von, flagrant with Andrew Schultz. Was he on with Lex Friedman? I don't remember. But whatever it was, there was a real sense that the right had figured out podcasting and the left was now hopelessly behind.

• 27:11Dax Shepard?

  And the left is really giving that a lot of credit. I mean, I was hearing people saying that's why he won.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  And I don't think it's totally off, by the way. I think there was something very real that was significant there, though I don't think, as we will talk about, the left is taking the right lesson. So, right after the election, there was this big thing about the left needs a Joe Rogan. There needs to be a liberal Joe Rogan.

• 27:28Dax Shepard?

  As you might guess, people called me personally. And like, you need to be the opposite of Joe Rogan.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  I think every, in any way, left of center, male podcaster with any kind of audience, this happened to me, like, everybody I know of was like, Are you the Joe Rogan?

• 27:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Are you gonna be Joe Rogan? A couple of things worth saying about Rogan. One is he has a first mover advantage that nobody can now replicate. Part of what makes Rogan Rogan is that he's been Rogan for so long. He's an institution. He's the Walter Cronkite of American podcasts.

• 28:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's the king by such a margin, it's laughable.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  And you can't get that kind of baseline audience and algorithmic power just like starting up right now. The second is that he's not fundamentally political.

• 28:14Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  I think at this point, over the last couple of years, Rogan's politics have become more personally right than he quite lets on in terms of who he has on. I think he was very offended by fights he had with the left. But for most of his career, I don't think that was true. But what makes him interesting in politics, and this is true for Theo Von, it's true for you guys, is that the great problem for politicians, the great problem for political movements, is that they know how to reach the people who are interested. And in fact, they know how to reach the people who like them and the people who hate them. What they do not know how to reach is people who don't care. And the people who, to what you were saying earlier about the news, are actually checked out of the news, do not want to hear about the worst thing in the world every morning when they pick up their phone. And these are the people who swing elections.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  Right? These are the people who can turn out, and in many cases here, turn up for Trump in 2024 because they were mad about prices, not because they were hardcore MAGA. And what makes someone like Rogan, or in a different way, a Theo Von or others, politically important is precisely that they are not mainly political. And so there are all these people who trust them or love them or like them or tune into them because they find what they do interesting and appealing. And so then, if a politician comes on, which only happens once in a blue moon, they get access to an audience they could never otherwise touch.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  You can't make a liberal Joe Rogan because the whole point is that he's not a liberal, a conservative, a MAGA, an anything.

• 29:35Dax Shepard?

  And he wouldn't have had an audience had he been political from the jump. He has an audience because MMA's got a huge audience. You know, he's very well versed in that. Like, he has a lot of interests that was the bulk of conspiracy.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Like Dallas, bow hunting.

• 29:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yes, hunting, conspiracy theories, you know, all kinds of stuff. The politics was like a tiny sliver.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:54Dax Shepard?

  But he was open to having anyone on.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  But now, he is considered that, whether he is or he isn't.

• 30:01Dax Shepard?

  Well, here's a line in the article that's so good. He says, "The simplest way to tell people which side they're on is to tell them how much your side hates them."

• 30:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, so years ago, Bernie Sanders went on Joe Rogan. And Rogan in the 2020 election, he later said he was high and just screwing around, but you know, whatever. It's the only endorsement he made in that election, to my knowledge, said he would probably vote for Bernie Sanders. There was in this big backlash to Bernie Sanders on the left online because in their view Rogan is transphobic and is problematic. And I came in, I was like, what's wrong with you? Like, the whole case for Bernie Sanders is that somebody like Joe Rogan would like him. Like, the whole case for the Bernie Sanders electability theory is that there is something about his-

• 30:40Dax Shepard?

  Schultz loved him, too.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Schultz, like a lot of people love Bernie Sanders.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  And it's that the way Bernie Sanders talks about politics and cuts through a certain level of bullshit and voices a certain deep cynicism that I think you all share to some degree, makes him someone that someone like Rogan would like. So, of course, you want Bernie Sanders going into the places where he would reach people who don't normally vote for, or like Democrats, who aren't going to a DSA meeting. And I became a Twitter trending topic because people were yelling at me so much for defending Bernie Sanders for that. And I remember thinking at that time that if you do this, you are going to push these people away from you. Not Bernie, who's a professional politician, but people like Rogan. And look, I'm sympathetic to some of this. Covid hits, there is a huge fight around Rogan and vaccine misinformation.

• 31:26Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  There's a lot I disagreed with in both directions on that. My critique of Joe Rogan, by the way, who I've liked many episodes he's done, is that for the amount of power he has, I don't think he takes his job seriously enough.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  That's Malcolm Gladwell's take, too.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  I think that he wants to pretend he's a guy who can still just fuck around and spout off and nod. And you can, but when you have that kind of an audience, I do think there's a burden of responsibility-

• 31:51Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  -on knowing what you're talking about, on knowing what they're talking about. I have this job, too, and I'm not as big as Rogan, but the bigger I've gotten, the more seriously I take the preparation I do for every single episode because people are listening.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 32:11Dax Shepard?

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• 32:55Dax Shepard?

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

• 33:04Speaker 01

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• 33:14Dax Shepard?

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

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• 33:34Dax Shepard?

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• 33:45Dax Shepard?

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• 34:12Dax Shepard?

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• 34:26Dax Shepard?

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• 35:09Dax Shepard?

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• 36:55Speaker 01

  We just had someone who we were supposed to have on and once Dax did research, it was like, we can't. It would be irresponsible.

• 37:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we can't do this.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  And you do have to think about that.

• 37:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but I do think it's worth saying, just for people who probably don't know and hadn't read the article, like, so Rogan's pro-choice. He was a Bernie Sanders supporter.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  Pro universal healthcare.

• 37:14Dax Shepard?

  You can't really put him in this box left or right prior to COVID in a very concerted effort to cancel him. So then Brene Brown quit her show on Spotify in protest.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  I didn't remember that. So there is then a very organized effort. Spotify has done this huge deal with Rogan. He has people on who are questioning vaccines and their efficacy.

• 37:35Dax Shepard?

  Well, let's just be fair. Questioning a lot of stuff. Masking, distancing. Unfortunately for everyone, both sides were wrong and right about a lot of stuff.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  So that's what I was saying earlier, too, that I kind of have sympathy in both directions here. I think a lot of Rogan's stuff on vaccines did not hold up that well. The vaccines were really safe and very effective. And there was a lot of going too far in terms of distancing measures, in terms of school closures. And I would say, and this maybe gets to one of the larger points I'm trying to make in this piece and in some other things I've been doing, I think there was a bad political practice happening, which is even if you are very, very, very pro-vaccine, you have to be very careful with, one, tools of compulsion and coercion. And I was somebody who believed in vaccine mandates, at least in some cases. But more than that, I think you have to be really, really, really careful

• 38:23Speaker 02

  with considering certain ideas out of bounds. Because you don't get to tell people what they're allowed to believe, to have questions about, to feel uncertain about.

• 38:33Dax Shepard?

  Because as I recall, the thing that set the firestorm off, he didn't say, I don't believe in the vaccine. He said, if I was a young man, I probably wouldn't take the vaccine.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  I remember it as having to do with guests, but the truth is, it's been a long time.

• 38:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but just that, just that thought.

• 38:47Dax Shepard?

  Could not be heard, tolerated, debated, pressure tested.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  But then he was having RFK Junior on and then not really questioning him about any of the things he was saying.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  I think it went more like that, but I think the broad thing that happened is that there was a sense that Rogan was on the other side. He was a very, very powerful voice and a powerful platforming voice on the other side, and he had to be stopped. There was a huge kind of mobilization around that. It didn't end up working, but you could imagine it have gone a different way. That, I think, is a very, very high-profile example of a thing that was happening in a broader way back then, during that sort of period in American life, which is an effort to win political arguments by sharply drawing the boundaries of allowable debate. And I think that is a very, very dangerous thing to do, particularly when you have not

• 39:42Speaker 02

  done the work of actually persuading people of your side of the debate. There's a tendency to move into deciding who is allowable, who should be platformed, et cetera, as opposed to actually doing the work of not just persuasion, but listening. And to the line you just quoted in the piece, what that often does, for some people, they get cowed, and they're willing to not speak the opinion that you're kind of pushing out of the public sphere. And to some people, they really, really, really turn against you, and they come to see you as a threat to them. One of my most deeply-held views in politics, and I always say this to politicians, is that the most fundamental question in politics that people ask about a politician or movement is not whether they like the movement, not whether they like the politician, it's whether

• 40:27Speaker 02

  the politician likes them. The first thing people intuit is not if they like you, it's if you like them. And when you're talking about entrusting people with power, governmental power, institutional power, the question of whether you are safe and you will be seen by these people who want to wield power over you is a very, very, very fundamental question. And so part of, I think, a healthy politics is... Making people feel that if you win, even if you all don't agree on everything, you're not enemies.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Taken care of.

• 41:01Dax Shepard?

  And if a political candidate declares, I will not go on that show because I disagree with him. What that person is saying is that whole audience, I don't like you. Exactly the point you're making. It's a bizarre way to declare to that listener. Oh, that person doesn't like me. They won't even come talk to the person.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  I've not been on Rogan. I have pitched my books to him a few times, but he's not had me on. But I've been on some of these other shows, right? And one of the things I actually mentioned in this piece is that I was surprised when I go on shows like Andrew Schultz's Flagrant or Lex Friedman's show. This is on my abundance book tour. So this was a year ago, basically March of 2025, April of 2025, maybe. And they would spend time on air on the show, talking to me and complaining about how they were being called like this right wing broosphere, but they had tried to get Kamala Harris. They had tried to get major Democrats on and none of them would come on.

• 41:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  The thing was not that this collection of podcasts or this part of the culture had decided like they wouldn't talk to Democrats. It is that to a first approximation, the Democrats had decided they wouldn't talk to them.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Anyway, I'll be fair. We almost had Kamala on and then we were talking to her people. And I was like, well, if she comes on, we have to talk about this and we have to talk about this and we have to talk about that. We have to talk about her life. And people who are running the show are afraid and they weren't on the right. They were like, yeah, you say whatever you want to say. No one cares. Like it's just get out there. But they're so hyper vigilant on the left about protecting persona.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  This goes back to what I was saying a little bit earlier, when I was saying that what the right came to understand under Trump is that attention is a volume game.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  And just being in front of people is the single most valuable thing you can do. Whereas on the left, at least up till now, you see someone like Gavin Newsom beginning to shift their positioning on this. But Kamala Harris very much, she would much rather not get attention than get damn good attention. She did not want to take risks.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  But you're right. Part of that is because the left will be like, oh, she said this bad thing. Now we hate her.

• 42:56Dax Shepard?

  Can't wait to eat themselves.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  But that happens on the right, too.

• 43:00Dax Shepard?

  To who?

• 43:00Speaker 02

  How much do they care? All the time, like, look at this stuff going on with Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson and JD Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy, right? I mean, there was a mob of people at the Capitol who were chanting, "Hang Mike Pence" at a certain point. The idea that the right will not come for you. Marjorie Taylor Greene broke with Donald Trump, the death threats she got for that. The right will come for you. But the right has begun selecting for a personality type. I mean, on the one hand, it offers a lot of fealty to Donald Trump himself, or at least until recently, when some people began breaking. But beyond that, it's sort of like, yeah, come on. And JD Vance and Ted Cruz and these other people who weren't always like this, but they've created these political personas that are much more edgelord oriented and want controversy because they want to be in front of you.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  You know, the left was much more institutional. And people who rise up through institutions, they don't want to be talked to by HR.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  The left had like a kind of personality type of, I don't want to be called in the principal's office. And the right was like cutting school.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 43:58Dax Shepard?

  Doing donuts in the parking lot.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah.

• 43:59Dax Shepard?

  Tell me about Hassan Piker. I was unaware of him until I read this article.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  This is what this piece was actually about. And I'm just going to say this for the record because it annoys me so much that this keeps happening. So there were two headlines on this piece that people saw. One was Hassan Piker is not the enemy. The other is there is no liberal Joe Rogan. And by the end of the day, it was there is no liberal Joe Rogan, or this is why there's no liberal Joe Rogan, or whatever. He changed it because, you know, the backlash. No, we write a bunch of headlines. There's an automatic popularity testing tool, and the winner wins out. And Joe Rogan is a better known name than Hassan Piker.

• 44:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  Okay, Hassan Piker is a streamer. He is kind of like a leftist, more kind of Marxist politics, very sort of anti-colonialist, very anti-Zionist. And as he's gotten somewhat bigger, a fight had emerged in the Democratic Party about talking to Hassan Piker. The particular fight I got involved in here was at Third Way, which is a centrist Democratic group. They want the Democratic Party to be more moderate. They had written a piece about Hassan Piker as an anti-Semite, and we need to draw a line against the anti-Semites. And that had sort of not gone anywhere. Then there was a Michigan Senate race where the more progressive candidates Did it in the race Abdul El Sayed did a rally with Hassan Piker. And then he got denounced by the other candidates in the race for doing that.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  And there was this big blow up about Piker and whether people like him should be platformed. And this is sort of why I wrote this piece. Look, I got a lot of disagreements with Piker politically. I think he's wrong on a bunch of things. There are other things I think he's right on.

• 45:26Dax Shepard?

  He made a crazy statement that the Nazis and the current Israeli administration are the same thing. To some effect.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  He once said being a liberal Zionist is like being a liberal Nazi, which as I write in the piece, I think is a pretty repugnant thing to say. He's defended that statement as saying he's just against ethno nationalism. But what made the Nazis, the Nazis was not that they were an ethno national state. There are a lot of ethno national states. It's the industrialized extermination of the Jews across Europe. So I don't love that comment, but I don't think we should focus on the worst or most crude things people say. Piker is a streamer. He sits on air for six to 10 hours a day. You're going to find things that people shouldn't have said in that. And he's also somebody who's called out antisemitism in a lot of different formats. He's a Bernie Sanders supporter. You know, he's talked about John Osif as a good presidential candidate for 2028. So I think somebody who's repeatedly promoting Jewish Americans for the presidency.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  That's going to be a weird kind of Jew hatred. Yeah. And there are two points I wanted to make about this. One was simply that I think that there is an organized effort and I'm Jewish and I have a lot of very now conflicted feelings about Israel, but deep feelings about Israel. I wanted to be on a different path and it's on very, very deeply. But so long as Israel is on this path, anti Zionism is going to be a very, very, very potent political force. And the effort among some Jewish groups to conflate it with antisemitism is going to be very dangerous. Because if you keep telling people that if they oppose the Jewish state, they oppose Jewish people, eventually they're going to believe you. And you're making the antisemites' job a lot easier. So that's one dimension.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  And by the way, I know a lot of Jewish anti Zionists, particularly young ones. Like this has been a big thing in New York, President Mhamdani has been running and a lot of conflicts in the Jewish community have emerged. And I've done a lot of writing about this, so it's not my first time coming to this issue. I've done a lot of reporting about Israel and Palestine and particularly since October 7th, and I've gone there. The other thing that I want to say about this is that. Talking to people is not a reward for their agreement. I'm not saying you cannot draw lines, but in the way attention actually works now, when people have earned it, Piker has attention. That is not like up to third way to grant him or not grant him. The decision of whether or not you will talk to him, I mean, you can decide who you think you'll have a productive conversation with.

• 47:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  But the idea that people should be off limits for conversation.

• 47:44Dax Shepard?

  Because I get criticized of this, like, you're platforming.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're platforming.

• 47:46Dax Shepard?

  This is the great cuts through all other arguments.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  I don't think it is a good way to think about politics in a diverse society. And I think you should be very, very careful with it. You can come up with a list of shitty things a lot of people have said. And you also need to open up space in your own mind that them being in conversation with you and with others is how they will change. And also maybe how you will change and how you will understand them better. And I do believe, like, going back to the moral imagination of what it means to live in a democracy, that part of it is being open to these complex and difficult conversations with each other. I talk to a lot of people on the right, and it's an ongoing theme I should, I really try to have people on the right on, who I truly disagree with, right? Not like never Trumpers, but people who are foundational theorists of Trumpism.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  And they do want an ethno-nationalist state, and they want things that I find genuinely appalling.

• 48:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  And I still want to understand them. Yeah. And I want to make myself more understood to them, or at least try, when I think we can have a productive conversation. I think that there is a genuine challenge we are all going to face if we want the country to work, which is, how do we live here with each other? You know, I've been thinking a lot about Obama recently, and Obama 2008, and Obama before that in 04, when he rises up with his famous speech about there not being a red and blue America, and all of the... Hope that he pulled forward in people to be in this country and to be in politics in this country could feel profoundly different than it did then. And now it all

• 49:23Speaker 02

  looks quaint, right? You know, the divisions of 2004 versus the divisions of 2026 are gentle, but it didn't feel that way then. And I think one of the difficult things is that Obama won and his win had a lot of dimensions to it. But two things that I think many people felt it promised was, one, a kind of political reconciliation, and, two, a kind of racial reconciliation. And instead, both things got worse. And I don't think it's his fault. I think he tried very, very, very hard. But the politics became more divided. The Republican Party under Mitch McConnell opposed him relentlessly and eventually went to Donald Trump as their answer to him and a much more kind of ethno-nationalist form of politics. And in terms of racial reconciliation,

• 50:07Speaker 02

  people got very, very frustrated on the left at the lack of progress and went further into a much more aggressive posture and that kind of became wokeness. And on the right, you had a sort of counter response of birtherism and more white identity politics. And the reason I bring all this up is that I think a genuinely unsolved question after Obama that nobody has really taken up in a serious way is if we have stopped believing in that, then we have walled ourselves off from, one, something a lot of people really want. You look at polling even now, there was a New York Times poll, political division is people's second biggest problem in the country. People don't like this. But nobody really believes they have an answer to it. Politics can become very choked up when there is something people

• 50:51Speaker 02

  want, but they no longer believe it is possible to get. It turns into apathy, cynicism, radicalism. When I've been talking on here about the moral imagination and the habits of what it takes to live in a complex, multi-ethnic, highly polarized, highly disagreeable democracy with each other, a democracy where not even everybody really agrees on the fundamentals of democracy, agrees on like the legitimacy of elections, we are facing a challenge that is really, really hard. We have come up with answers to it, or even a willingness to entertain answers to it. Because I actually think that the experience of watching the hope of Obamaism turn into the kind of exhaustion of the Democratic Party by 2016 and the rise of Trump after that,

• 51:35Speaker 02

  it created, for anybody to talk like that, it sounds almost naive now. And yet, we actually still do need to figure that out. I mean, we need to figure out issues of material plenty and the economy and the cost of living and economic power and a million other things that we all do know how to talk about and that, you know, Bernie Sanders or an AOC or an Elise Slot can talk about all the time in their own different ways. But we actually do have to have some vision for how you make this country work at a time when people can feel that it is at the risk of rupture.

• 52:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. How effective is cancellation as a tactic?

• 52:13Speaker 02

  That's a complicated question. It is effective if you can do it and you can hold to it. But for a lot of people, particularly people who wield attention to their own political bases, it can actually be the opposite. I mean, I would say Tucker Carlson is more influential today than when he was pushed off of Fox News. Donald Trump was banned from every social media platform and in tremendous legal jeopardy. And now he's president again. Nick Fuentes was pushed off of everything and remains blocked from any things, but has risen in influence in the shadows. I think that one thing that happened, and this was, I think, a stronger reality on the left, although the right has its versions of it too, is that the left had more power

• 52:54Speaker 02

  prior to Trump winning a second term over a lot of the institutions of American life. And so it wanted to wield power inside those institutions to push people out of them. We get you out of here, we get you banned on X or Instagram, whatever, you're gone. And it turned out you weren't gone. It turned out you created a shadow network. Naomi Klein, the leftist writer and theorist, has a great book on this called Doppelganger. It created a sort of shadow world of Steve Bannon's and Fuentes and things happening outside the sightline of mainstream politics. And now that shadow politics has become mainstream politics.

• 53:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  I think just recognizing that you can agree or disagree with particular instances of it, and I have different feelings on different efforts here and on different people here, but as a politics, it failed. Like, Donald Trump is president.

• 53:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. The results are in.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Tucker Carlson is, I think, the number one podcast on Spotify like many weeks. They get failed.

• 53:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, and I want to talk about, you give an example of this in the article, which is- William F Buckley and Eldridge Cleaver. Tell us about William F Buckley.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  Oh, it's so great. So William F Buckley is the founder of a conservative magazine called National Review. And Buckley is, I think, considered the most important conservative coalition builder, intellectual of the back half of the 20th century.

• 54:06Dax Shepard?

  He's also highly entertaining.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  Highly entertaining.

• 54:08Dax Shepard?

  Watching him debate, somebody is thrilling, yes.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  He's got this very patrician and unusual accent.

• 54:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  And he had a show that I believe was on PBS called Firing Line. And you might think that on Firing Line, like William F Buckley just had on other conservatives or mainstream liberals. But no, you can go and it's on YouTube and it is amazing to watch. He has on Eldridge Cleaver, among others, from the Black Panthers. And I learned about this reading his biography of Buckley, that is great by Sam Tannenhaus. It's such a wonderful episode of Firing Line to watch because basically Buckley sits down, introduces Cleaver, and is like, so, under the way you see the world, would you support somebody assassinating Richard Nixon? And Cleaver, a Black Panther, basically says, well, you kill Nixon, they just have another pig behind him. So I'm not sure it would accomplish anything.

• 54:55Dax Shepard?

  That you would also have to assassinate, he says.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  But I wouldn't try to stop him. Then, you know, I know from the biography that Cleaver came over to William F Buckley's home a couple of times for drinks. And Buckley is not endorsing Cleaver, who could not possibly be further from Buckley's arch-conservative politics. But there is this willingness to have the engagement.

• 55:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  And without the engagement being some kind of stamp of approval. And I think we have gotten into a position where we almost like don't believe that's true. You were talking earlier, Dax, about platforming and the concept of platforming. And I'm not saying it's not a real concept. I actually do believe the question of who I choose to have on my show, who you choose to have on your show is meaningful. But I think we have taken the logic of that, which is one insight about programming a show among many, and made it into something bigger than it should be. Because, one, we don't decide, we have any political movement, who is in the public discourse. And, two, there can be tremendous things learned by moving outside of that. I mean, that Buckley-Cleaver show has hundreds of thousands of views and gets watched today because it is kind of an amazing document.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  The logic of platforming. Which is a very social media logic. It's the logic of blocking, of muting, right? I think a lot of our politics is now formed by our experience on social and algorithmic media and the way people treat each other there and what it means to win or lose there. And it has overwhelmed other logics of communication, of conversation. One thing I like about that Buckley Cleaver thing is that sometimes people can treat conversation as purely instrumental, right? How am I going to change X's politics if I won't talk to X? As if everybody is simply an object of intellectual charity upon which you should act.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  But one thing I like about that is that the Buckley Cleaver thing is not about persuasion at all.

• 56:50Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 56:50Speaker 02

  It is literally just a conversation to see what will happen when two very, very different perspectives come into a room together.

• 56:56Dax Shepard?

  You're writing here, "To write those people out of acceptable political discourse is to back yourself into a shrinking sanitized corner of the public sphere." We had Adam Mosier on recently, who's CEO of Instagram.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  Instagram, yeah.

• 57:08Dax Shepard?

  You know, he was just saying that what the internet did 1.0 was it made everyone a publisher. So there's no gatekeepers. Everyone has the ability to be a publisher. And that's one huge crazy revolution that we're feeling the effects of. And that AI will be a new paradigm where everyone can be a producer. So like right now, to make a movie, to make a show, to make everything, you know, there's a lot of capital required for that, but that soon will be gone as well. So it's like, we've had these really fascinating moments that on the surface are very democratizing and maybe good in some ways. And then what you were seeing now, and yeah, you call it the algorithmic media, is it's a marketplace now.

• 57:52Dax Shepard?

  There's no gatekeepers. There's no one deciding. It is a full-blown market and anyone can rise to the top.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  But let me complicate that in one way. And I know Adam and I, I like Adam, although I have my issues with Instagram. But one thing it isn't is a pure marketplace, a flat marketplace. Because the decisions that the people who run these marketplaces make really matter. And I'll give an example. We're in this moment, and you guys do a great job of this, where the view is that every podcast has to be video, and every video podcast has to be cut up into all of these clips. And there's a clips economy where the atomic unit of algorithmic media is vertical video clips, horizontal in some places. And Instagram has an internal structure that they will not recommend a reel of over three minutes to a new audience. So what they have done is create a marketplace for things that are short. If you have a thought, or a conversation, or an exchange,

• 58:44Speaker 02

  and I'm not the world's most concise speaker, so I have a lot of those, that takes more than three minutes to play itself out, you are algorithmically punished for that.

• 58:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but you just slide over to YouTube, or you slide over to the shadow thing. We can't say that Instagram is a gatekeeper, because we just pointed out all these people that got kicked off.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I'm making a different point. I'm not quite making a point about gatekeepers. I am making a point about that different periods of attention, different platforms, they reward different things, and they still do have power operating in certain ways. And I think one thing that genuinely worries me about the direction I see us going is towards less and less and less and less context.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure.

• 59:26Dax Shepard?

  Or complexity or nuance.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, we started this as sort of an antidote to the late night talk show. Not that there's any problems with that, but it's a five minute thing. You go, you do your thing, you leave. This was supposed to be the opposite of that, and we're sort of circling back around to that being what it is. Two minute clips, five minute clips, and I hate it.

• 59:45Dax Shepard?

  She hates it. I have a different point of view.

• 59:48Speaker 02

  Tell me about your point of view. I mean, I'm struggling with it myself, because I have this show, The Ezra Klein Show, which hopefully you all listen to.

• 59:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, it's doing fantastic.

• 59:54Speaker 02

  I'm grateful people are tuning in. But it is such a project of context. What I think is so beautiful about these conversations is the unfolding and the slight and nuanced energetic movements between people.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  And first you're making kind of one point about gatekeepers, and then you're kind of like, well, no, that's a good point. Then you're back a little bit. And I'm not saying that the clips we put up, as we're doing more of these, and other people do many more than we do, are bad. They're not. We just had a clip from that abundance one with my co-author Derek Thompson talking about what Texas gets right about building housing that California and other places don't. And it's gone viral on Instagram, and it's doing great. But it always feels to me like doing a kind of violence to this project, where it's a project built on the belief that listening to people in complex conversation over an extended period of time gives you this sense of them, this sort of energetic experience of them, an intellectual experience of them, an emotional experience of them.

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  And now we're gonna like chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop into the things that give you like an instant sensation.

• 1:00:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you have enough time to establish character and intention and motive in the long form, and that's great. But here's the way I look at it, is I feel like it weirdly parallels the whole point of your article, which is reverse engineer. So I was on a panel this year for the Golden Globes about podcasts, and the person kinda asked the why is there no Rogan? Everyone's like, oh yeah, I don't know why they're so big. And I'm like, guys, it's so obvious. We're not addressing the reality of this, which is you have a huge group of men who in 2020, when we talked, the first third of our conversation was about me too, when we interviewed you six years ago. And so you have a whole legion

• 1:01:37Dax Shepard?

  of young men that at that moment in time were being told by some pundits and some shows that somehow young boys were like inherently defective. We have a boy problem. These are headlines. We have a boy problem. We have a male problem. So you have this whole group of kids who have just assumed the sins of the boss who was a pig and the powerful man who exploited people. They haven't entered the workplace. They haven't even been on a date. They haven't sexually assaulted anyone. And they're hearing from a lot of the popular media outlets that there's something defective about them. And then lo and behold, some guys show up and they're like, we're not terrible. We're not ashamed of who we are. And you're shocked that they migrated over? This is not a huge mystery.

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  You tell people you don't like them and they will believe you.

• 1:02:23Dax Shepard?

  Yes. So there's no fucking big question about why they're huge. It's quite obvious. So I go, let me just say, I didn't want to do video, but I would love for young men to hear me. I think I'm a good example for young men. Where are young men at? They're on YouTube. I can't. Pretend they're on audio only. That's not a reality. So if I want to reach young men, I gotta go where they listen. So I have to be on YouTube if I care about talking to young men. And guess what? A lot of people are only going to consume clips. We have not lost our audio only listeners. It's the exact same since we went to video. It's like, we already had our audio. They like it that way. They're getting it that way. And then now hopefully we'll have a whole group of people that I gotta go to where they're gonna consume it.

• 1:03:06Dax Shepard?

  And guess what? Yes, if you see a clip of our show on Instagram, it's not as good as the whole show. But it is better than nothing if that gets to the young boys scrolling. So I just think people are being completely unrealistic, naive, and not pragmatic about this whole approach. It's like another version of, well, we want it our way. No. How are they doing it?

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  No one's saying you don't have to. It's just annoying. It changes the fundamental point of what this was originally, which is, we used to say, you can't talk to someone for an hour and a half, two hours, and leave and not respect them in some way, understand them in some way, like them.

• 1:03:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's hard not to like someone.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  You like people when you talk, going back to the conversation you were just talking about with the black pants. It's like, the reason they hung out is because they spend time together and you start liking each other. And that is what we need. We need people to start liking people who don't agree with us. And clips do not do that. They do not give you that. You have one or two minutes, you're not gonna start liking someone because of it, especially because we pick clips that are supposed to get people emotional in some way.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  There's like four things in all this. Though I feel like we could do an hour.

• 1:04:11Dax Shepard?

  Weave them together.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm sort of where both of you are on this. I've been in media a long time. I started a political blog when I was a freshman at UC Santa Cruz in 2002? Was it 2003? 2003, I think. So I've like seen many iterations of this now. And you don't get to choose where the media goes. Look, I think the movement towards short, algorithmically pushed, vertical video is bad for people's minds. I think that we are fracturing.

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  And weakening our capacities for attention in a way that is bad for us. I worry about my kids. I worry about myself. I worry about my friends. I'm like a big believer in more of the John Height kinds of ways of thinking about all this.

• 1:04:54Dax Shepard?

  Are you guys personal friends? Because I always say Jonathan Height, but you went John Height.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  Jay Height. JJ? My man Jay. I wouldn't tell you what I really call him.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  I've known John a long time.

• 1:05:06Dax Shepard?

  Road Dogg 68? I mean, that's his email.

• 1:05:08Speaker 02

  You wouldn't believe what his name on Fortnite does. Look, I don't like where it's going, and I think that the literal experience of being on these platforms and flicking, flicking, flicking, having your mind trained to want to be hit with an attentional shock so fast. Like, I genuinely believe it's bad for us. And I don't get to fucking decide if TikTok is a thing.

• 1:05:28Dax Shepard?

  I agree. I agree. I mean, we're doing it.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  Nobody came and asked my permission. And so I'm a little bit on that where you are. But the other thing that I do want to say, like, I really, really agree that the way the toxic masculinity discussion went ended up being itself quite toxic and pushing people away. And one of the things that I always thought was really interesting in some of the figures on the right, or who later got coded as right, who rose in that period, your sort of Jordan Petersons and some of them, before you got to the real noxious stuff of Andrew Tate, was that there was a lot of talk about virtue and a lot of talk about myth and religion. And what brought people to at least some of these figures, and I mean, Peterson got big on Rogan in part,

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  was, again, going back to this thing we were talking about at the very beginning, the human desire for self-improvement and self-cultivation is a very, very, very powerful drive. And I think people feel, of all genders and types right now,

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  Relatively adrift in a society that is, aside from wanting you to make money, pretty neutral about how you live your life. And by the way, this is not how politics used to be, not how liberalism used to be. Liberalism used to be very much built on ideas about self-cultivation and freedom, not as the ability to do whatever you want, but as an output of self-mastery. Freedom came, you look at how the founders talked about it. Freedom was something you had as you began to master the self and its drives and its passions. So you have all these young men, and just men in general, who are looking for some guidance on how to live. Even before we get into the question of feeling rejected by some part, the people who are offering that guidance, and were doing so enthusiastically and in a way that

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  was more yoked to the drives and culture of young men, I'm a middle-aged man now, but I was a young man once. Yeah, it's very bro-y, because that's just a word you're using to describe men.

• 1:07:28Dax Shepard?

  Boys.

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  And boys. I think that one thing that I want to see come back into the politics I am nearer to and more associated with and believe in more, but is actually just like a dialogue about virtue, a belief that the way we cultivate ourselves, particularly in this moment of AI and social adriftness, is really, really, really important, that the question of what it means to be a human being is more fundamental than what it means to have good politics, even. And I think if you are talking to people's desire to be a good, not just a good, but be a kind of like a great human being, they are going to listen to you more when you begin to connect into other things like politics. But if you sort of push that away, or if they feel pushed away by you, they will never

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  listen to you on anything else, in part because you are not listening to them.

• 1:08:26Dax Shepard?

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• 1:09:51Dax Shepard?

  Well, look, there's hard and fast data on this. If there's any segment of our society that has declined the worst in the last 15 years, it's young men, educationally, employment wise. And I think if it were any other group, there'd be an all hands on deck situation. And so you have a guy like Jordan Peterson, who I personally can't stand. I mean, he is very entertaining to watch argue. He's incredible debater, but what he really was offering was young men. He had a program for what it meant to be a man and to have virtue. He was wowing them with his debate, but he had something to offer, not one I agreed with, but that was a big component of his popularity because he was addressing young men. This is, you should be a provider, all these calls to action to better yourself.

• 1:10:35Dax Shepard?

  He was there to do it and no one else was.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so I think it's not just about, I mean, YouTube and all that is very, very important. And being in the places people actually are is very, very important. But seeing people as full people is very important and being fundamentally oriented, being compassionate towards like their desires is very, very important. And I think that was just something that a different part of the political sphere, or what eventually became a different part of the political sphere was offering more often to young men. And that's a political failure. It's a failure on a lot of levels, but it's a political failure too. I don't think people should be surprised by the results they got from that. And I always like, want to say this to my friends on my side. Donald Trump is a genuinely remarkable historic figure.

• 1:11:18Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  He is a figure who is himself a rupture in history. And also he is a very, very, very vulnerable political figure and always has been. We won again in 2024 because inflation had been really high the year before and because Joe Biden was in his 80s and not in his 60s.

• 1:11:33Dax Shepard?

  And letting 250,000 immigrants in a month.

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  And by the way, that reflected some of this like not being willing to listen to people who you thought had bad politics. But part of Trump's weakness is that he is a virtueless person.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, he has no real ideas about anything.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  I think he has ideas, but people know he's kind of a jerk. They know he says things that are untrue all the time. He's got a lot of personal force to him, but he's not at any level a good man. He's not been good to his wives. He's not been kind to the people he disagrees with.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  I mean, do you think he has real beliefs?

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  I think Trump has actually held a couple of real beliefs, particularly on trade and immigration for a very, very, very long time.

• 1:12:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  Since the 80s, he has felt the way he feels about trade since it was Japan, not China. Like, one of my critiques of Trump, he doesn't update what he thinks about anything. He's got like the same views he had in 1987 today.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, so true.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Which is a weird thing about him, but you can go back to a Playboy interview where he's talking about what he wants to do to Carg Island in the 80s or 90s. I mean, I talked about it on my show. A lot of, I think, underselling him in Iran has to do with the fact that he has views formed about Iran during the hostage crisis.

• 1:12:40Dax Shepard?

  In 79.

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. But the thing that it's interesting because on the right, if you look at its culture. There's a lot of talk about virtues. There's J D Vance converting to Catholicism and now writing a book on it. But at the very top of it, the people are very corrupt. They're often very cruel. Trump doesn't read. There's not a deep push for personal cultivation or a high standard behavior. And to me, both that is a shame because you want more character in your leaders. But it's also a kind of political opportunity because I think we know this hunger exists out there. And people are looking for leaders and media figures and other places that help them think through it and answer it. One of the things that helped the right was that it had found this language and it found this audience.

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  And one of the things that is hurting the right right now is that its actual leader does not embody this way of living. Trump is a successful man, but not a good one. And that creates a lot of opportunity for people who are willing to take some of what the left has done well and then integrate some of what it has not.

• 1:13:41Dax Shepard?

  But again, what you or a lot of people would see as an Achilles for him, weirdly, if you're among a group that has been told you're a piece of shit, or at least you perceive that you're being told you're toxic and a piece of shit, and you see a man who is actually toxic and a piece of shit, win and dominate despite that and get rich and have his family and have all that. Guess what? That's pretty fucking appealing because you're being told you're a piece of shit. Well, okay, this guy represents I could have a lot despite how you feel about me. Of course, that's appealing.

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm not arguing, but I think that's why you really want to create an answer, not a mirror. One of my biggest worries is that when I look at the democratic field right now, I think there's a lot of desire for somebody who is able to mirror parts of Trump. Democrats want a fighter. I don't see many people offering an answer to the question Trump has posed, the question you're asking, which is like, if he can get this far doing this, this rich being that way, this powerful being that way, why shouldn't I be that way too? And calling people to their higher selves is tough work.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  But I think work worth doing.

• 1:14:47Dax Shepard?

  Again, that's also framing it as it provokes an entitlement, and I'm maybe arguing it's a salve. It's like, I'm a toxic piece of shit. No one wants me in this world. Well, this guy's going, fuck you. I don't give a shit if you think that way about me. I'm still gonna win. It's a comforting. It's not even necessarily that he induces some entitlement.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  I think, and you really saw this, I think, after the assassination attempt in 2024. I think there's a sense that Trump, for a moment at least, embodied a form of aggressive, ambitious, hyper masculinity.

• 1:15:19Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  And that watching him rise from the ashes of his own career, and then in that moment of danger, put up his bloodied fist. It was a moment when I saw a lot of people think, oh, there's something different about this figure. And what I'm saying is that the weakness of him is that he can't actually fulfill that promise. I mean, Trump is a very unpopular president. They're probably gonna lose in midterms quite badly. He's got us in a very unpopular war with Iran. There's a lot going wrong.

• 1:15:43Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  You see his shortcomings. The answer to, I think, what is being looked for there, and by the way, not just for for men, we've been talking about young men here, but I think it's a more societal thing. We could talk about this. I think AI is gonna supercharge this question of what it means to be human. I think the desire for a politics that will answer this, not by mirroring it on the other side, but by offering some different vision of like how it might feel to be in this country and what it might mean to be a human being worthy of respect and esteem. I just think that's on the table.

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  A new role model, a new version of masculinity. It can still be someone masculine.

• 1:16:23Dax Shepard?

  I'll do it. I'll do it.

• 1:16:26Dax Shepard?

  Okay, this is a unique opportunity for me to pressure test this kind of theory I've been mulling over on hikes. I'm embarrassed that I can't remember the author of the book. You're so good at that. Everyone you talk about, you reference, they deserve the credit. I can't think of his name, but I read a book about kind of a different framing of the political parties. You'll know it, I bet. And it was basically saying, instead of thinking about Democrats and Republicans and Libertarians as issues-driven parties, it's better to think of them as their worldview, which is the conservative worldview is life is a battle between law and order and barbarism. And on the left, the worldview is life is a battle between the oppressed and the oppressors. And the libertarians, I can't even sum up right now, I've forgotten. But I love that framing.

• 1:17:09Dax Shepard?

  Every time I see one of these dust ups, it seems quite evident to me that that's what's going on. You even look at the fissure on the left right now over Israel and Palestine, which you cover in this piece. The left's like, what the fuck do we do? Which oppressed person do we decide is the oppressors? There's this huge tension on the left. Here's my current thought on this. I accept that. I think that's a really good breakdown of the political parties. What I think is they formed those identities when those worldviews were very, very pertinent. I think they're vestigial at this point. I think that in the seventies, law and order was a big fucking issue. I mean, the homicide rate, what was happening in New York, every newspaper, like you had a huge crime epidemic.

• 1:17:53Dax Shepard?

  That has just steadily fallen and fallen and fallen. This place has gotten safer and safer and safer. And the logic behind the worldview is kind of eroding. And I would argue on the left as well. In 1960, there were a ton of oppressed people. Gay people could not get married. There was redlining. There were real issues. And we've made great progress. It's not done. I understand there's still racism, but you'd be insane to pretend it hasn't improved dramatically. So I'm wondering, as I see the driving force erode from the identity of both of these parties that were formed in different times, that don't feel as relevant anymore. I'm noticing more and more, our battles are becoming more and more hypothetical. When I see what the fights that are raging right now, it's not even something that's happened. It's something that could happen.

• 1:18:38Dax Shepard?

  Because we don't really even have those issues in the same way we did when these parties were formed and the ideology was cemented. What do you think of that as a theory?

• 1:18:47Speaker 02

  I think it probably explains more about social media than it does about politics. So when I think about the fights that are live in politics right now, which is more the world I'm in. Trump's immigration policy, which is a very real policy, which is affecting real people's lives, the deportations, ICE and Customs and Borders Patrol in the streets, that has led people to risk their lives. I mean, it's led to American citizens being shot. There's a real fight over something that is not just kind of oppressed, an oppressor that has more to do with national character. Actually, I think to something you're saying about law and order, I think the thing that is very salient about that on both sides around us, feelings of disorder. And people begin to associate Democrats, even though crime was not that high, with a feeling of disorder. Disorder in LA with like tent

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  encampments and SF with like people in the streets. And then Trump beginning to create domestic disturbances by sending in armed troops and people in masks created a new kind of disorder and that became unpopular.

• 1:19:42Dax Shepard?

  Quickly, he's cracking down with this hypothetical notion that these illegal immigrants are creating lots of crimes. There's no data for that. In fact, there's data in the opposite direction. So it's a hypothetical fear of what these people are gonna do.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that might be fair. I'd take that as an explanation.

• 1:19:59Dax Shepard?

  And my frustration with that whole thing is like, and I could be Ryan and poll everyone, but what feels very obvious was everyone kind of wanted them to stop letting 250,000 people a month in, and everyone didn't want them to kick everyone out that's already here. And there's no option for us.

• 1:20:14Speaker 02

  Trump could have stopped at sealing the border and he would have been a hero. He's got a lot of things where he could have just not gone as far as he did and his issues at least would be at 60% in the polls. I think the big thing I was gonna say, although I actually think you're corrective on the immigration side of that is right, is that if you look at a lot of the leaders, I just don't think the left and the right break down so much on those lines. So, you know, you just think about George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden. I mean, these people are in our lifetime. It's not a million years ago. And their politics are just more complicated. And one of the things that I believe about good politicians is that they are able to contain a thing and then a certain amount of the things opposite at the same time. So Obama is a particular master of this.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  It's almost like a verbal tic where he would start telling you the right wing position of a thing and what its good points were before he would then tell you his version of the thing. Like, go read The Adassity of Hope. It all has that structure. Or you think about his famous speech on race. Obama, in his own background, in his own person, is somebody who has the racial contradictions of America inside of himself and is holding both of them and both narratives at the same time. And the left is not just about oppressed and oppressor. One of the good critiques of, maybe not the left, but the Democratic Party, is that it sure has a lot of people who are the winners in this society. The Democratic Party is now the party of college-educated Americans. It overwhelmingly wins people post-grad degrees. So saying you're the party of the oppressed when you don't win working-class Americans.

• 1:21:39Dax Shepard?

  I don't think it's a party of the oppressed. I think it's a party dedicated to protecting the oppressed.

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  But see, I think that the contradiction of it is that oftentimes it's not.

• 1:21:47Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  And one of the critiques of it is that it perpetuates itself. I mean, Abundance, the book I wrote last year, one of the big arguments of that book is that one reason liberal governance often fails is that it has become so wrapped around its own dominance of institutions and it listens so much to its own procedures and its own lawyers that it can't get anything done.

• 1:22:06Dax Shepard?

  It's ineffective.

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  Because it is the party of the institutions and the institutions don't work. So it then has to explain away all the institutional failures. And it is very hard to have both moral imagination and be the party who is like, well, you know, we just can't get any of this done. And so that's a dynamic on the left. And on the right, the question of is the right conservative or revolutionary or counter-revolutionary? The right is in a lot of flux. Donald Trump himself was such a disruptive figure in it. Now there's this Trump-Tucker Carlson break that is happening. You know, Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson are very different figures now. I think that the parties are very, very, very unsettled.

• 1:22:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. There's no cohesion. That's why I don't think you can look at issues because they keep flopping.

• 1:22:46Speaker 02

  I had Ben Shapiro on my show and I was wondering if his book Lions and Scavengers is part of what's in your mind there, though I don't know if that's the one you're thinking

• 1:22:52Dax Shepard?

  of. No, I haven't read that.

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  One of the arguments he's making in that book, I remember having him on the show, and I found that book really weird because I was reading it and thinking, he's not naming who he's talking about. Who are the lions? Who are the scavengers? I remember at some point in our interview, reading him these J.D. Vance quotes. He's like, yeah, Vance is a scavenger. And it became clear as I was talking to Shapiro that at least a big part of why he was writing that book was this feeling that the right that was emerging was not his right. It wasn't the right that was trying to conserve Reaganism, that it was something else and it was a white identity politics and that Tucker Carlson, in a way, was his like mental foil. So there is just like a very... Unsettled dimension.

• 1:23:33Speaker 02

  What great politicians do, and I think that we don't always credit them for this, is they are able to balance forces inside of themselves that don't seem reconcilable. Not by necessarily even compromising, but just by kind of absorbing parts of both points. You know, Bill Clinton and welfare reform. I'm not a fan of welfare reform the way it was actually done, but Clinton's recognition that people were angry at the Democratic Party because they felt that it was not asking for enough responsibility from the people that it wanted to help. That was a very potent part of his politics and is part of why he won voters that Democrats no longer win. And I think selected against on a lot of social and algorithmic media to be able to do what some of these people are able to do, which is to have a view.

• 1:24:16Speaker 02

  And at the same time, there is space in that view for the vision of the other side and particularly the moral structure of the other side. So I recognize that sounds abstract, but I think if you go through a lot of different issues that have been a lot of the big fights of our era, the people who do it well are the people who are able to kind of hold both things at the same time.

• 1:24:34Dax Shepard?

  Okay, on abundance, which has been out for a year now, I loved, I was reading something out of there. This was a year ago, probably when it came out. You made this really kind of elegant and efficient argument that, in my opinion, is really necessary, which is this kind of move to just clinch down, scale back and consumerism. And just, again, the lack of reality of that position and why we need to, and I'm probably, I can see by your

• 1:25:01Speaker 02

  I'm trying to, I'm thinking through the

• 1:25:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're trying to remember, maybe I've fucked it all up. But I just thought you were very frank about how we need to get ourselves out of these issues. And I think abundance is weirdly a bad word for some group inside of certain leanings. That's why I loved Bill Gates's book on the environment. He's like, look, we have to develop. It's the fastest way to education and low infant mortality rate. Like, we just have to do that and we got to figure out how to do it. You took kind of a radical view of how to help us handle housing, a lot of different issues, and it's kind of gotten some steam. So just what's the kind of main theme?

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  You can't have curiosity without some conflict.

• 1:25:41Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:25:41Speaker 02

  Abundance, among the reasons that it has both done well and been controversial is that it is fundamentally a critique of why liberals often fail when they govern. And I'm a Californian, I was in California for much of the writing of the book. You know, the fundamental problem with California is that it doesn't build. It is too hard to build things here, it is too hard to build homes. One of the reasons I'm in California right now and talking to you all is I'm hosting a governor's forum in a couple of days and it'll probably be out by the time this comes out. But, you know, it's about housing and I have the top five Democrats in the race talking about, look, Governor Newsom and the California Legislature passed dozens of housing bills over the past couple of years and the rate of housing production hasn't gone up. And as a result, in LA, in San Francisco, in San Jose, in many places in this state,

• 1:26:23Speaker 02

  it is extremely hard to say be a firefighter and be able to afford a home in a city that you protect from burning down.

• 1:26:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:32Speaker 02

  There is a simple reason that is true and is that we don't build enough homes. And when you look into why, it is that within the innards of liberal governance, we have made it too hard to do things and too easy to stop things. And this affects clean energy. It is very, very hard to site and build enough clean energy to meet either the decarbonization goals we have on the left.

• 1:26:50Dax Shepard?

  We can't build public transportation in this state.

• 1:26:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, can you ride the high-speed rail in California yet? Like, no.

• 1:26:55Dax Shepard?

  It's laughable.

• 1:26:56Speaker 02

  And so how do you create a liberalism that actually builds? A liberalism that delivers what it promises, it is able to solve problems, not just through redistribution, the redistribution is important, but also through the creation of more things in the real world. It's really important. Now, there is, as you say, steam and heat around that. And one of the places where it has attracted a lot of internal argument in the Democratic Coalition is this argument that, well, the real problem is corporations and corporate power. And corporations and corporate power often are a huge problem. PAC money, the AI PACs that are now trying to nuke any candidate who wants to regulate AI in any serious way. Corporate money is a real problem in politics, it was a big part of my first book, actually.

• 1:27:37Speaker 02

  And also, the reality is if you're building things, things get built by corporations.

• 1:27:42Dax Shepard?

  And the money gets lent by corporations.

• 1:27:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so you need a way to be aligning. All these different institutions in society, from the government to the corporations, to the unions, to the interest groups, to all these different things, the question is like, what are you trying to create more of and how do you get there? As opposed to sort of categorizing yourself as I'm pro corporation or anti corporation, or pro-union or anti-union. I've been a member of unions, I want to make it much easier to unionize, I want there to be higher union density in this country. I am pretty far on the position of we need more union power. And that doesn't mean unions never make decisions I disagree with. And also, unions often have very different views. The building trades in California have been really bad actors on housing. The carpenters' unions have been really good actors on housing.

• 1:28:25Speaker 02

  So the unions are not one thing, the corporations are not one thing, but I do think there can be a tendency in politics to want to say like, these are my allies and I'm on their side, and these are my enemies and I'm against them. But probably when you're talking about giant groups of institutions or people, you know, what we talk about is NIMBYs, not in my backyard. I don't want to see us build mixed-use apartment buildings in Big Sur.

• 1:28:46Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:28:47Speaker 02

  There are places we should not build over. Yeah. And also, near mass transit in LA and San Francisco, it should be easy as shit to put up a tall building that people can live in.

• 1:28:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:57Speaker 02

  And so even there, there are times when it is a very valuable thing to try to block things, but we need to be able to act. And the fact of the matter is that the reality that Texas is more able to build clean energy, even though its politics are pretty anti-clean energy.

• 1:29:11Dax Shepard?

  Or that they've got the best housing story in America.

• 1:29:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:14Dax Shepard?

  Dallas, that's problematic for our story.

• 1:29:15Speaker 02

  That should be a thing we worry about, right? And try to learn some lessons from.

• 1:29:19Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so the last thing I want to ask you about is something that's bubbling up right now, and this will be my complaint of this state. They have gotten enough votes, it seems that they're going to put this billionaire net worth tax on the ballot. So this will tax all billionaires 5% of all their assets. We just ran this experiment. This, to me, is so short-sighted and so lacks pragmatism, which is, we did a millionaire's tax on housing, right? We defined a certain echelon of houses that you'd pay an extra amount of tax on in hopes of getting more tax revenue. And all it succeeded in doing was killing velocity of those home sales. We're never resetting the tax base. We've lost way more money by trying to get that

• 1:30:01Dax Shepard?

  extra bit of money. And I just cannot foresee how on earth you're going to tell everyone that owns a company here. Because again, if you're not thinking it through, you're like, oh, yeah, that guy has $1 billion of cash. Give me 5% of it. That billionaire owns stock in a company. So are you saying sell 5% of your holdings of your company? Do you think that's what's going to happen? That's not going to happen. That person's going to bounce. Everyone's going to fucking bounce. The amount of money that's going to get lost by this extra grab, to me, is a little emblematic of the lack of pragmatism or reverse engineer reality that we are virtuous and we have great thoughts, but it doesn't feel realistic.

• 1:30:42Speaker 02

  So I've done some reporting on this. I've talked to the union that has put this on the ballot. I've talked to some of the tax experts about it. I have complicated feelings about it for some of the reasons that you described. So let me frame the issue in a slightly broader way. Trump and the Republicans passed a bill that across the country, but in California also, completely guts Medicaid. So there is, I believe it's a multi-billion dollar hole in the Medicaid budget coming up in California. This is true for a lot of states. You're going to see millions of people kicked off of the roles of health insurance, and nobody really has an answer to it. So one of the big healthcare unions in California has pushed this one-time 5% wealth tax on the richest Californians as a kind of way of plugging this hole. You tax them this money, and you plug the hole. Wealth taxes have some big problems. I'm a believer, and I want to say this super

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  clear, I just had an episode on my show that was great with this tax expert Ray Madoff, on how do you bring more of the assets of the rich into the taxable world? Uh huh. Because basically, you're Elon Musk, you're Jeff Bezos, your wealth is tied up in unrealized company stock.

• 1:31:43Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:31:43Speaker 02

  Yes. And what you can do is borrow against it to fund your life, which is not that expensive compared to how much money you have. And then one day you die, and the rules under which it gets passed down are incredibly advantageous. And so it actually really never gets taxed in the way that like, my income or a normal person's income gets taxed because it's never really treated as income. This is insanely unfair. Yeah. Like, the very, very rare Not the surgeons, but the startup founders are just evading taxes. We had this leak of tax documents a couple of years ago. The guy went to jail for it. But we saw that Jeff Bezos takes the child tax credit because his taxable income was like $80,000 or under $80,000. A lot of these people are making like a couple of dollars a year.

• 1:32:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:24Speaker 02

  Because all of this compensation is not being treated as as income. Okay.

• 1:32:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:28Speaker 02

  So we really, really, really need to fix that.

• 1:32:30Dax Shepard?

  I want to say publicly, I agree with that.

• 1:32:32Speaker 02

  The question of the wealth tax in California is, I think, two big things. One is, can you administer it effectively?

• 1:32:37Dax Shepard?

  No way.

• 1:32:39Speaker 02

  People disagree, but it's hard. And how much are the paintings worth? And to what degree do you then drive people who start things out of California? Now, the the union is doing this will say, hey, it's a one time tax to do a one time thing. It's not that much of their money. The thing is, and I think this is legitimate, these billionaires are like, if people begin to realize you could just put a ballot measure on to tax our wealth. And by the way, the way the thing is constructed, it would be a tax on anybody who's living here now. So moving after the thing passes would not hide your assets from the tax.

• 1:33:11Dax Shepard?

  That would end up in court.

• 1:33:12Speaker 02

  I looked into this a bit, and we have done taxation this way before, and it has held up. I don't know what would happen this time. I'm not a tax law expert. You could have Ray Mada or somebody like that on to do that.

• 1:33:22Dax Shepard?

  I don't think you can retroactively tax somebody.

• 1:33:24Speaker 02

  We have done it before, and it's worked. I was surprised to find that we had done that before.

• 1:33:27Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:33:28Speaker 02

  But I will say that the answer they will give you is that is a tried and tested approach to doing this. I can't adjudicate that particular question.

• 1:33:34Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:33:35Speaker 02

  But even if you could, the question of would you push those people now to Texas, to New York, to Colorado, to Miami, to somewhere else where they are not under this threat of ballot based taxation every time there's a budget hole to plug is a very real one. The thing I would like to see is national level tax reform that does this in a much fairer and more coherent way.

• 1:33:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:59Speaker 02

  And then does not have the issue of like pushing billionaires around to different states.

• 1:34:03Dax Shepard?

  Does anyone think it's gonna be a net gain?

• 1:34:05Speaker 02

  I mean, the people pushing it think that. And they have tax experts on that. I mean, you could have somebody like Emmanuel Saez or Gabe Zuckman on here, and they would give you the case for it. I have also, however, talked to very progressive tax experts who think it won't work. And it's It's a bad idea. And so what I will say is even among people who are values aligned with this tax and spend all of their time thinking about how to tax rich people more, there is a lot of debate over whether or not this tax is well structured and doing it in one state is a good idea.

• 1:34:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I guess time will tell if it passes, but I think there'll be a lot less tax revenue if that passes.

• 1:34:38Speaker 02

  If you begin to push, if you really do push billionaires out of the state, then you will over time get like a Laffer curve phenomena where you have reduced the total taxable revenue. So the question of whether or not people will leave because of the tax, and again, there's disagreement on this question, it's not that much of their money. It's over five years. You could do 1% of your wealth over five years. I mean, if these people are doing investments in any reasonable way, they're making more of that on interest or on returns. But if you feel that in California, you're going to get a very specific bad deal you will not get in Florida, or even that you will not get in New York, we're not doing this in New York.

• 1:35:12Dax Shepard?

  Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:13Speaker 02

  Or that you will not get in Connecticut or whatever.

• 1:35:15Dax Shepard?

  Anywhere but California.

• 1:35:16Speaker 02

  Anywhere but California. And that's why you don't see Gavin Newsom behind this. I've had Gavin Newsom on my show. We talked about wealth taxes. He is pro them nationally, but does not want this one in California because as a guy responsible for making sure California has enough revenue, he does not feel in the long run, this would be good for California.

• 1:35:32Dax Shepard?

  I mean, it's the fourth biggest economy in the world.

• 1:35:35Speaker 02

  It's hard to leave the country. It is not hard to move to Austin.

• 1:35:40Dax Shepard?

  No, I have a house in Tennessee. I choose to be a resident here and I'm happy to pay the taxes. To a point, if you tell me that after I've already paid half of it, which I was happy to give away, that I now need to give the shit I saved another half of that, I like Tennessee. I'll be there. I think everyone has a limit.

• 1:35:57Speaker 02

  I think there are limits. The thing the union behind this will say is like, hey, it's a one time thing. It's a one time thing. The thing is, people don't believe it's a one time thing. Once you show that the move works, the feeling is the move will be repeated.

• 1:36:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and it probably

• 1:36:08Speaker 01

  Will.

• 1:36:08Speaker 02

  And so like if their tax theory is right and you could do it in this retroactive way, well, that actually increases the incentive to move before somebody does that to you again. I don't know how many would move. On some level, I think the point of being rich is to not have to live in places you don't want to live as much as a place you do want to live.

• 1:36:23Dax Shepard?

  But money is a sickness. You don't think rationally.

• 1:36:26Speaker 02

  I've met people who have a counter on their phone to make sure they are spending enough days in Florida.

• 1:36:31Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:36:31Speaker 02

  So they're taxed in Florida as opposed to in New York.

• 1:36:34Dax Shepard?

  That's right.

• 1:36:34Speaker 02

  And so.

• 1:36:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I wouldn't do that. Oh, and then I just want to say out loud as well, I don't mind that this place already has the highest taxes across the board because you have to acknowledge that you cannot start Google elsewhere. I can't ever make the amount of money I ended up making in Michigan and I should have to pay for that. If I could have stayed in Michigan and made that amount of money, I can't and all of these companies cannot. So you do have to pay for that. You have to pay for what is creating.

• 1:37:04Speaker 01

  Ethically give back to the place that gave you all this.

• 1:37:07Dax Shepard?

  It's a place that creates great wealth and that should come with a price tag. So I am in favor of that, but this to me just seems insanely short sighted. And I do think you'll see a massive migration out of here. I mean, there's already been a pretty significant migration and it wasn't even that bad.

• 1:37:23Speaker 02

  I have met people with the kinds of wealth that would be targeted under this tax. And one of the things that I think even many of them understand is that the tax code as it exists is really, really, really unfair in their favor.

• 1:37:39Dax Shepard?

  This is the Warren Buffett speeches.

• 1:37:40Speaker 02

  Warren Buffett kind of thing. The key thing I think to understand is that income is taxed at a very high level and assets are not. And by the way, what's even more unfair about it is that the wealth most people have, which is a home, does get taxed, right? There is a straightforward tax on a home that is paid year on year. I mean, California's.

• 1:37:59Dax Shepard?

  Property tax.

• 1:37:59Speaker 02

  Property tax, yeah.

• 1:38:00Dax Shepard?

  But if you sell it, your capital gains 20%.

• 1:38:03Speaker 02

  There's cap gains. What you can do with shares of a company, you are able to do so many weird tricks and then eventually pass things on that it just kind of forever can protect too much from being seen as what it is, which is income. And so it creates this push for people to move all their compensation out of salary and into stock. And even many of the people who benefited from it said to me, like, this isn't fair. The estate tax, it's not even a thing anymore. We've gone from having a couple hundred thousand filings on it every year to in the low thousands because we have just made it so full of holes. And we really, really, really need like a comprehensive national restructuring of the tax code, not because billionaires are bad. Yeah.

• 1:38:47Speaker 02

  Not because rich people are immoral, but just because we should have fundamental fairness across society in the way different forms of income are treated. And this, to me, is part of where I think like being able to balance a couple of things, you know, in politics at once are important. There is a tremendous engine that benefits America in the amount of corporate ingenuity we have. It is good for America that we are as innovative as we are and want to keep that going. You know, if you want to imagine universal childcare in New York, it is only possible because so many people have made so much money in New York. Those two things are actually quite linked. But the fact that it is not bad to have enterprise does not mean that it is good

• 1:39:28Speaker 02

  to have the kinds of dynastic wealth we're now seeing does not mean that any way you hide your money from the government is actually a moral thing to do. I think the right way to think about the politics here is both to be certainly on the left. I wish there was more appreciation for how much benefit can come from corporate ingenuity. There's also corporate malfeasance, but there is real benefit from corporations doing great work. Like, if we're gonna layer this whole country in solar panels, it's gonna be corporations doing that. But at the same time, not to have let the fucking tax code become blind to the primary ways wealth, particularly mass wealth, is now being made and how rich the very richest people have gotten. Again, not the Beverly Hills surgeon, but the Bezos Musk who's closing in on a trillion dollars.

• 1:40:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:13Speaker 02

  I don't even think we know how to conceive of that kind of wealth.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:40:17Speaker 02

  Right? And now they're using that money very aggressively politically to buy things like Twitter and then use it more politically to move into elections because Citizens United created these huge loopholes for money. We really, really need to do a rebalancing where we're just trying to make a more stable and fair playing field for everybody, not to punish people, but just to create a fundamental sense that society works in a transparent and fair fashion. I think the side that can crack that code will actually have cracked something pretty big.

• 1:40:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Well, Ezra, you're so smart. I love that you were a terrible student.

• 1:40:49Speaker 01

  What does that mean? What?

• 1:40:51Dax Shepard?

  2.2 grade point graduating high school.

• 1:40:53Speaker 01

  Just didn't care?

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  I cared. I was not good. It's a long story, but I really had a lot of trouble in school. If I could have made it better by caring, I would have made it better. I did not enjoy it.

• 1:41:02Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, that's helpful for people who...

• 1:41:05Dax Shepard?

  And then his fucking dad's a math professor.

• 1:41:08Speaker 02

  It was not a thrilling period in the household for me.

• 1:41:12Dax Shepard?

  So I love when poor students... That was the David Letterman Scholarship. I don't know if you know that about him. Yeah, I think he had a scholarship standing in like Muncie, Indiana. And it was for average students because he was a shitty student. It was not for...

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great. It's like, let's let this person, let's help this person.

• 1:41:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So as a fellow 2.2 grade point average high school graduate, I see you. I appreciate you. I love when you're on. I can't wait for you to come back.

• 1:41:36Speaker 02

  It's great to see you both.

• 1:41:37Dax Shepard?

  Oh, and by abundance.

• 1:41:40Speaker 06

  Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at.

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  It feels like it's Friday.

• 1:41:49Dax Shepard?

  It does. I have Friday.

• 1:41:52Speaker 01

  Energy?

• 1:41:52Dax Shepard?

  Yes, ringing my stuff.

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too. We had a busy work week.

• 1:41:56Dax Shepard?

  We did.

• 1:41:57Speaker 01

  And we're ending it now with this fact check.

• 1:42:01Dax Shepard?

  We had a busy week.

• 1:42:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:03Dax Shepard?

  And what I am reminded of is we used to do much harder weeks. I'm feeling my age. We did eight in a week at times.

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, we've done eight, plus some Armchair Anonymous.

• 1:42:15Dax Shepard?

  We might have even gotten to 10 in a week.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sure we have. But it was still, this was a pretty hefty week.

• 1:42:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but do you think you're getting weaker? I'm getting a little weaker.

• 1:42:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably, but...

• 1:42:27Dax Shepard?

  You're also much younger than me. 20 years. Thank you, Robby.

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  Well, age is just a number, as we know.

• 1:42:32Dax Shepard?

  To some extent.

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  Speaking of aging, you had a cough attack in the middle of an episode we just recorded. And then I started to have a cough attack. I don't know if you noticed.

• 1:42:43Dax Shepard?

  I heard you do like a sneeze.

• 1:42:45Speaker 01

  No, there was two sneezes and coughing and cough attack. And then I really got in my head. Well, I did cough earlier this morning. But I did get in my head that, oh, this is so psychosomatic.

• 1:42:59Dax Shepard?

  Oh, sure. Contagious, like yawns.

• 1:43:02Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:43:02Dax Shepard?

  Like yawns.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  Like yawns. A yawn, Y-A-W-N.

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  The motion you make with your mouth, not.

• 1:43:12Dax Shepard?

  Yawn, not yawn.

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  Is that how it's spelled?

• 1:43:15Dax Shepard?

  Yawn.

• 1:43:17Speaker 01

  Oh, because they're saying urine.

• 1:43:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, urine is yawn.

• 1:43:20Speaker 01

  Oh, I've heard you say that.

• 1:43:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you never put together that was urine?

• 1:43:24Speaker 01

  No, I thought that was just something you said.

• 1:43:28Dax Shepard?

  We, Josh and I, Josh Nathan, my favorite person to write with when I was at the Groundlings. He and I had a sketch, we tried to get on stage for a whole year. To the point where we would have a showcase at the end of the year for like, whatever, executives would come.

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, fine, yeah.

• 1:43:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, kind of like a professional showcase. And you got to pick your own.

• 1:43:48Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 1:43:49Dax Shepard?

  So Josh and I were like, fuck it, let's do it. Because she's not going to put it in the show. And it was two old men in the South, sitting by a creek, and they were obsessed with nuts.

• 1:44:02Speaker 01

  Oh, sure, like peanuts?

• 1:44:03Dax Shepard?

  Cashews, walnuts, you know, that is a jacketed nut. And then it somehow evolved to they were opening up and one guy had to admit to the other guy that he was using your bathroom and I don't know what came over me, but I saw your wife's pantyhose.

• 1:44:21Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:44:22Dax Shepard?

  I decided in that moment to filter my yawn.

• 1:44:25Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:44:27Dax Shepard?

  It was this whole coming clean about having filtered his yawn.

• 1:44:31Speaker 01

  It's about secrets being revealed.

• 1:44:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, through a pantyhose that he found in his friend's house. But they were also eating a tremendous amount of different nuts and they got going. That is a jacketed nut.

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:44:42Dax Shepard?

  And we had dumb hats on and a bunch of mustaches and stuff. And guess what? It worked.

• 1:44:47Speaker 01

  It worked? You got an agent?

• 1:44:48Dax Shepard?

  No, I mean, like, it was a.

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  People laughed.

• 1:44:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it was a very successful sketch.

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:55Dax Shepard?

  And it was fun because I did love our director. It's not like I didn't love her, but she was like.

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  She's a me.

• 1:45:01Dax Shepard?

  I hate to admit it, it kinda worked. She just gives it kinda work.

• 1:45:04Speaker 01

  Good for her.

• 1:45:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we got to do it once.

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  Well, that's really fun.

• 1:45:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so for years, I used to say that is a decadent nut out of nowhere and no one really know where that came from. And yawn is also an outgrowth of that. It's really funny how these tiny little things.

• 1:45:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:21Dax Shepard?

  And to read your personality and no one's like.

• 1:45:24Speaker 01

  Where they come from.

• 1:45:24Dax Shepard?

  What is he doing?

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  I thought it was a word for it. I am now, I'm learning all this.

• 1:45:30Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Like, you think I don't listen to you, but I do and I, then I.

• 1:45:35Dax Shepard?

  It's just upside down a little bit.

• 1:45:37Speaker 01

  Upside down. Do you ever talk to him still?

• 1:45:39Dax Shepard?

  Not enough. Not enough for the, for the amount of love and respect and admiration I have for him. Yeah, not enough. He moved away. He became a professor.

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:45:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:49Speaker 01

  Where?

• 1:45:50Dax Shepard?

  He just like regrouped, I think somewhere in Orange County.

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  Oh, cool. A professor of nuts?

• 1:45:56Dax Shepard?

  Of decadent nuts, only decadent nuts. Which you'll find that we thought most nuts were pretty decadent. They are decadent.

• 1:46:03Speaker 01

  They are, actually, they are.

• 1:46:04Dax Shepard?

  They're rich.

• 1:46:04Speaker 01

  What's your favorite nut?

• 1:46:06Dax Shepard?

  It would be a t- e- a toss up.

• 1:46:10Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:46:11Dax Shepard?

  Um, the Marcona almond.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  You do love a Marcona.

• 1:46:15Dax Shepard?

  Mostly, and we just had a chef on, ding ding ding.

• 1:46:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:18Dax Shepard?

  Previous interview where I coughed.

• 1:46:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, cough type.

• 1:46:21Dax Shepard?

  Talk about texture. What I love about a Marcona almond is you can put it between your molars and crack it perfectly in half.

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:27Dax Shepard?

  And then the inside is the most decadent.

• 1:46:32Speaker 01

  You love the smoothness.

• 1:46:33Dax Shepard?

  Felty.

• 1:46:34Speaker 01

  Oh, suede?

• 1:46:35Dax Shepard?

  Uh, just so soft.

• 1:46:37Speaker 01

  It's very smooth.

• 1:46:38Dax Shepard?

  It's almost pornographic. What the tenderness of the inside of that nut feels when you rub your tongue on it.

• 1:46:45Speaker 01

  I've done it. I, um, agree, it's very soft. It's well, it's not soft. It's smooth.

• 1:46:52Dax Shepard?

  It's so smooth and tender.

• 1:46:55Speaker 01

  But it's not really tender because you'll. A crunch into it.

• 1:46:58Dax Shepard?

  No, the inside, when it pops open in half, that freshly revealed inner nut.

• 1:47:04Speaker 01

  It's very smooth, but I don't, I still don't think I'd classify it as tender because like it's still hard.

• 1:47:11Dax Shepard?

  Of course it's hard. It's a, it's just, this, it's so soft on the inside. I do love that. I do love that nut. Uh, what's your favorite nut?

• 1:47:22Speaker 01

  Go on.

• 1:47:23Dax Shepard?

  But truly. If calories weren't a thing, which they're not on your birthday.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  See, that's another one of these things.

• 1:47:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, callback that no one knows about. A, a, a, a macadamian.

• 1:47:35Speaker 01

  Oh, that's your favorite.

• 1:47:36Dax Shepard?

  Fuck, yeah. I mean, it's like eating a stick of butter and crunch and sweet. They're so good. Do you like a macadamian?

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  I don't dislike it, but I don't think about them. They don't pop up for me.

• 1:47:49Dax Shepard?

  Right, unless you're in Hawaii.

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  That was mine.

• 1:47:51Dax Shepard?

  Macadamian?

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:53Dax Shepard?

  What a nut, right?

• 1:47:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:47:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. You ever filter your yawn through a panty?

• 1:47:59Speaker 01

  Okay, well, mine is pretty basic.

• 1:48:03Dax Shepard?

  I'll throw up if you say one. There's one nut I'll throw up if you say.

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  Is it a peanut?

• 1:48:08Dax Shepard?

  No, but I can't eat peanuts.

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  It's not a peanut.

• 1:48:12Dax Shepard?

  I know. But if you said walnut.

• 1:48:14Speaker 01

  I love walnuts. That's not what I was gonna pick, but I do love walnuts.

• 1:48:19Dax Shepard?

  They're great, but if that was your favorite nut.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  I would say I eat those the most because I cook, I have some dishes that require walnuts. So if I'm being honest with myself and you, I probably consume walnuts the most of any nut. Okay?

• 1:48:37Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:48:38Speaker 01

  Like a walnut is so good in a salad.

• 1:48:41Dax Shepard?

  It's great in a salad.

• 1:48:42Speaker 01

  It's so good.

• 1:48:43Dax Shepard?

  But it's got the opposite thing that a marcona almond has in that it's like a, it's like an atrophied testicle.

• 1:48:49Speaker 01

  No, don't do that.

• 1:48:51Dax Shepard?

  It's just so convoluted and nubby and gross. Like the texture is gnarly.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:48:57Dax Shepard?

  You'd agree. It looks like a brain. That's why they thought they were good for your brain.

• 1:49:00Speaker 01

  Well, they are good for your brain.

• 1:49:02Dax Shepard?

  Cause they look like a brain?

• 1:49:03Speaker 01

  No, cause they have good stuff in there.

• 1:49:05Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:49:06Speaker 01

  I don't think to me.

• 1:49:10Speaker 01

  It looks or feels like a testicle cuz it's still unless your testicles are like extremely hard.

• 1:49:17Dax Shepard?

  Freeze dried testicles is what I would say that they are.

• 1:49:19Speaker 01

  Stop, okay, stop.

• 1:49:20Dax Shepard?

  Right, now you understand.

• 1:49:22Speaker 01

  No, I don't wanna do this. I love onus. Okay, pistachios are probably my fave.

• 1:49:26Dax Shepard?

  You don't mind the work?

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  Exactly. I don't love that part, but I love the taste.

• 1:49:32Dax Shepard?

  You'll buy a bag of, uh, pre-shelled?

• 1:49:34Speaker 01

  I will, but they're much better shelled. They taste better shelled.

• 1:49:38Dax Shepard?

  With the shell on them, yeah.

• 1:49:40Speaker 01

  Pistachios or, um, I also like a raw cashew. I don't like it when they're like smoked or salted or the way you, it's hard to find a raw cashew.

• 1:49:52Dax Shepard?

  I do like a cashew. In fact, that was one of the nuts in the sketch that got a lot of attention.

• 1:49:57Speaker 01

  Cashew nut, yeah.

• 1:49:58Dax Shepard?

  The only thing I'll complain about a cashew is when you get going on a bunch of them. It can become a cud.

• 1:50:05Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 1:50:05Dax Shepard?

  Like, you know, like, um, cows chew a bazillion pounds of grass in their mouth and they form it into a cud. It's like a, it's like a big blob of paste.

• 1:50:15Speaker 01

  Ew, you're ruining so many nuts.

• 1:50:17Dax Shepard?

  And I think cashews in particular have that tendency to like, you've had a bunch of them and you're just like, oh, I gotta wash, I gotta brush my teeth or swallow a lot of water or something. You don't get that?

• 1:50:27Speaker 01

  Never experienced that. I've never experienced.

• 1:50:29Dax Shepard?

  You've probably not eaten them at the velocity that I.

• 1:50:31Speaker 01

  No, I don't. I eat them one by one.

• 1:50:34Dax Shepard?

  Sure, that's healthy. I'll grab a handful and just pop them.

• 1:50:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, people do that. That's very, um.

• 1:50:40Dax Shepard?

  Indulgent?

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  No, it's.

• 1:50:42Dax Shepard?

  Arrogant?

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  No, it's, it's kind of a sign of something like older men do.

• 1:50:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:47Speaker 01

  They like, you know, have like a handful of nuts. They have nuts.

• 1:50:50Dax Shepard?

  That's what the sketch was about.

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:50:52Dax Shepard?

  Yes, men, older men love their nuts. They'll carry around, you'll see older men with a little sack of nuts.

• 1:50:58Speaker 01

  They always have nuts.

• 1:50:59Dax Shepard?

  I can't wait for that phase of my life where I'm like, kids, where are my, where's my nuts?

• 1:51:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's common. So pivot.

• 1:51:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  Um, yesterday I played mahjong.

• 1:51:13Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah? With who?

• 1:51:14Speaker 01

  Neighborhood gals. Yeah, Neighborhood gals.

• 1:51:18Dax Shepard?

  And did you get neighborhood gossip?

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  I do get really good gossip, but not about the neighborhood.

• 1:51:22Dax Shepard?

  Not about the neighborhood?

• 1:51:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:51:24Dax Shepard?

  Darn it.

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  But I do get really good gossip with these things. Yeah.

• 1:51:28Dax Shepard?

  In our industry?

• 1:51:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:30Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  Well, in our industry and some other industry. It's fun, you know, it's they're new friends.

• 1:51:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:40Speaker 01

  And new friends are interesting when you're older.

• 1:51:44Dax Shepard?

  How so?

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  Well, it's also fun because so Rachel was there, one of my oldest friends. Rachel is fantastic. Okay.

• 1:51:50Dax Shepard?

  Good time Charlie to the max.

• 1:51:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And this is a shout out. If you live in LA and you want to learn Mahjong, you really should reach out to Rachel, Rachel Field.

• 1:52:01Dax Shepard?

  Oh. You really put her on blast.

• 1:52:04Speaker 01

  No, she is.

• 1:52:06Dax Shepard?

  She now teaching?

• 1:52:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and she should. She's been playing since she was seven.

• 1:52:10Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:52:10Speaker 01

  Her mom is a big Mahjong player. She her mom plays tournaments and stuff like she's very, very skilled and good and a great teacher.

• 1:52:18Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:52:19Speaker 01

  So, um, if and Mahjong's really hot right now. So if you're wanting to learn.

• 1:52:24Dax Shepard?

  We've noticed it's a bit gendered. We were just having a conversation about Mahjong. Yeah, a lot. I know a lot of women that are super into Mahjong. I don't know any dudes that are into it.

• 1:52:32Speaker 01

  I know a couple and I think you would actually really like it.

• 1:52:36Dax Shepard?

  Really?

• 1:52:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, because there's there's strategies, but there's also like, yeah, you would like it. And you feel really, really good when you win.

• 1:52:46Speaker 01

  But.

• 1:52:47Dax Shepard?

  Winning is fun.

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  Winning is so fun.

• 1:52:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:50Speaker 01

  It just is. I wonder.

• 1:52:52Dax Shepard?

  Earmark that.

• 1:52:53Speaker 01

  Okay, let's earmark that. But, um, anyway, so reach out to Rachel if you want to learn Mahjong. I highly recommend her. But she was there and she's an old friend, one of my oldest LA friends and um, then I have these new friends.

• 1:53:07Dax Shepard?

  And you're presenting the new you.

• 1:53:08Speaker 01

  Right. But then there's this old lady there.

• 1:53:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, who knows everything.

• 1:53:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, she knows everything.

• 1:53:14Dax Shepard?

  The dumb sketches and the dumb.

• 1:53:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's good. It kind of keeps you in your place. You can't like really put on a whole new personality. Because like I was telling, God, I probably shouldn't. Well, yeah, I was telling.

• 1:53:29Dax Shepard?

  Can I just point out, I love how many times you decide I shouldn't say this and then I watch. And the time gets shorter and shorter, by the way. It's just gonna be that I'm gonna, I'm gonna be able to detect it in an eyebrow raise and then you're gonna motor on. But it just, it does get shorter and shorter.

• 1:53:44Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:53:44Dax Shepard?

  No, how am I gonna, and then you just go, yeah, I'm just gonna, yeah.

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don't.

• 1:53:48Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it seems like most times you do.

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  Well, you don't know.

• 1:53:51Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:53:52Speaker 01

  And sometimes it's to protect others, sometimes it's to protect myself.

• 1:53:55Dax Shepard?

  That's right.

• 1:53:55Speaker 01

  Normally, if it's to protect others, I nix it. Well, not always.

• 1:54:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. It's really tricky.

• 1:54:03Speaker 01

  It's hard. It's hard, probably hard to be my friend.

• 1:54:06Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 1:54:06Speaker 01

  You don't.

• 1:54:07Dax Shepard?

  And exciting.

• 1:54:08Speaker 01

  You just never.

• 1:54:09Dax Shepard?

  Some friends like it, and then some friends I don't think like it.

• 1:54:12Speaker 01

  Well, you know, we spent like a whole fact check basically talking about Anna the other day.

• 1:54:16Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  And I, I almost texted her like, hey, like, we, we talked about you a lot on the fact check, uh, but I didn't tell her.

• 1:54:25Dax Shepard?

  You didn't.

• 1:54:25Speaker 01

  Uh, I know it will get back to her because she has family members listen. She doesn't herself listen. Um, rude.

• 1:54:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:32Speaker 01

  And, uh, but I'm just gonna let her find out on her own.

• 1:54:35Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:54:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, anyhow, so I was telling them about something I did that I was proud of.

• 1:54:45Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:54:46Speaker 01

  And it felt kind of weird to say in front of Rachel for some reason.

• 1:54:50Dax Shepard?

  Like you were bragging?

• 1:54:51Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I, I put myself out there.

• 1:54:54Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:54:55Speaker 01

  In a way that I don't normally do.

• 1:54:58Dax Shepard?

  Sexually? Like romantically?

• 1:55:00Speaker 01

  Romantically, yes.

• 1:55:01Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I wanna know.

• 1:55:02Speaker 01

  I'll tell you.

• 1:55:03Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:55:04Speaker 01

  I don't wanna.

• 1:55:05Dax Shepard?

  Tell everyone?

• 1:55:06Speaker 01

  I'll just leave it. I'd, I'd put myself out there sort of romantically.

• 1:55:09Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:55:09Speaker 01

  Um, and I was proud of myself, but when I was telling them, it was, it's like with a different voice than if I was just telling Rachel.

• 1:55:19Dax Shepard?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:55:20Speaker 01

  And so I felt kinda like caught in between.

• 1:55:23Dax Shepard?

  Fraudulent.

• 1:55:23Speaker 01

  Who am I? Am I the old me or the new me?

• 1:55:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the crisis of identity.

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think.

• 1:55:31Dax Shepard?

  Did she, did you then discuss it with Rachel? Like, hey, did that seem?

• 1:55:35Speaker 01

  I mean more like the new girlfriends are like. Oh my God, I love this. This is so exciting.

• 1:55:41Dax Shepard?

  I love this look for you.

• 1:55:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically. And Rachel's like, I'm so proud of you.

• 1:55:45Dax Shepard?

  Right. She understands the weight of it.

• 1:55:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:55:48Dax Shepard?

  The journey.

• 1:55:49Speaker 01

  But she also probably doesn't want to be like, Monica?

• 1:55:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:54Speaker 01

  This is great.

• 1:55:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:55Speaker 01

  You know, in front of my new friends.

• 1:55:56Dax Shepard?

  She doesn't want to, yeah, put you on blast.

• 1:55:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:00Dax Shepard?

  She's trying to be a good friend with your new friends.

• 1:56:02Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:56:03Dax Shepard?

  Is there a specific friend in the group that you most want the approval of?

• 1:56:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:56:07Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 1:56:08Speaker 01

  They're both like, they're both just cool.

• 1:56:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:56:10Speaker 01

  And, and smart and, and fun.

• 1:56:13Dax Shepard?

  Successful ladies.

• 1:56:13Speaker 01

  They're successful ladies.

• 1:56:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you guys, you guys gotta get together.

• 1:56:17Speaker 01

  And I love a successful lady.

• 1:56:20Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:56:32Dax Shepard?

  Okay, on games.

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:56:34Dax Shepard?

  So we went last night up to Mess Hall.

• 1:56:36Speaker 01

  Fun.

• 1:56:37Dax Shepard?

  And you know what's interesting about Mess Hall? First of all, I love it.

• 1:56:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:40Dax Shepard?

  Let's just start there. I love Mess Hall. Um, but it is a really hard restaurant to gauge how many people are going to be there because of, and I didn't think of this until we arrived, they get Greek theater traffic.

• 1:56:54Speaker 01

  Same with Little Doms.

• 1:56:55Dax Shepard?

  Is, okay. So people come to see a show at the Greek Theater and they're there early because parking's a nightmare and driving's something. And they just say, let's have dinner. So we pulled up and like, the parking lot was full where they were having to move 10 cars to get one car out. What is going on?

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:10Dax Shepard?

  Get in there, notice a lot of people are in cowboy gear. I'm like, oh, this is great. So I immediately, oh, there's a show at the Greek and it's a

• 1:57:16Speaker 01

  Country.

• 1:57:17Dax Shepard?

  Western.

• 1:57:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:57:18Dax Shepard?

  Country or Western. Sit down next to a group of people. So I kind of brought this on myself.

• 1:57:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:57:22Dax Shepard?

  And I say, are you guys going to the Greek? And they're like, yeah. And it's like, um, four 30-somethings, mixed gender, probably couples, and then an older lady.

• 1:57:32Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:57:32Dax Shepard?

  And I'm like, uh, You guys went to the Greek and they're like, oh, yeah, yeah. And I go, yeah, and you seem to have a bit of a country and western theme is it? And they're like, oh, yeah, it's so and so. I didn't recognize the name.

• 1:57:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:42Dax Shepard?

  You gotta listen to him. What was that?

• 1:57:44Speaker 02

  Russell Dickerson.

• 1:57:45Dax Shepard?

  Yes, Russell Dickerson. Do you know Russell Dickerson?

• 1:57:47Speaker 01

  I do not.

• 1:57:48Dax Shepard?

  Me neither. But everyone there was fun. I bet, I bet he's great. They were also playing country on the, on the hi-fi.

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  They're keeping it.

• 1:57:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I liked that. I was like, oh, the manager's paying attention.

• 1:57:58Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 1:57:58Dax Shepard?

  It was all great. We were sitting outside. So we're playing spades as a family and we've had a couple of nice interactions with this table right next to us. And Lincoln's my partner. She has gone nil and I have probably six cards left.

• 1:58:13Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:58:14Dax Shepard?

  And I have Joker low, two high, two L, queen.

• 1:58:19Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:58:20Dax Shepard?

  Nine, eight, six left. All spades.

• 1:58:23Speaker 01

  Oh, shit.

• 1:58:24Dax Shepard?

  And.

• 1:58:24Speaker 01

  Some pretty.

• 1:58:25Dax Shepard?

  Yes. And I'm in the middle of like playing and then the old lady leans over and she goes, your dad has all spades.

• 1:58:38Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:58:40Dax Shepard?

  And um.

• 1:58:40Speaker 01

  Oh, and oh, no, they don't know how you get.

• 1:58:44Dax Shepard?

  Well, no, this is great. You're already where my family is, which makes me think maybe I am worse than I know. But so I just laugh. And then the younger guy goes, oh, so and so. They make a joke about her drinking.

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:58:57Dax Shepard?

  And then I look at her in the eyes.

• 1:58:59Speaker 01

  And she's the older one, you said?

• 1:59:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the older one.

• 1:59:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:59:01Dax Shepard?

  And I look her in the eyes and I just am immediately muscle memory. I know this woman so well.

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  You've been there.

• 1:59:08Dax Shepard?

  I've been there a million times. I'm in Michigan.

• 1:59:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:12Dax Shepard?

  One of the ladies is too hammered and they can't control her. So all I literally did was just clock, oh, right, that's that person. That's who we're dealing with.

• 1:59:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:59:22Dax Shepard?

  And then we continue on and then someone says, oh, I hope that didn't ruin anything. What are you guys playing? And I go spades. And then they know what spades is.

• 1:59:33Speaker 01

  Oh, they do.

• 1:59:34Dax Shepard?

  So, well, the younger people, but two of the people that were younger knew. So they knew that she basically just completely blew the whole.

• 1:59:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was not good.

• 1:59:42Dax Shepard?

  Should just throw it in.

• 1:59:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:43Dax Shepard?

  And now they're kind. Kind of apologizing more and then and then our our older friend is like now she's kind of getting more involved, whatever.

• 1:59:50Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:59:51Dax Shepard?

  I was super, I thought it was super nice. Again, this is back to the last fact check.

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:59:55Dax Shepard?

  But we're leaving, we we were done. We were playing after the meal and we had paid the bill and that hand was over and then we packed it up and left.

• 2:00:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:00:02Dax Shepard?

  And then we got in the car and there was this little moment between the ladies and they were like, I don't know if one of the girls said it first or Kristen said it first. It was like, were you a little mad back there, Dad? And I go, no, I wasn't mad. I just, I just kind of clocked who who who I was dealing with.

• 2:00:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:21Dax Shepard?

  And then one of them said, are you sure I didn't see a nostril flare?

• 2:00:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You can't really help it. It's okay.

• 2:00:31Dax Shepard?

  And I'm like, I'm so sincere in my heart. I know when I'm mad at somebody.

• 2:00:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:36Dax Shepard?

  I know when I feel aggressive and defensive. Like, I was just really nicer. If I'm mad at someone, I let them know. I generally don't hide it, right?

• 2:00:44Speaker 01

  Well, you weren't being mean to her.

• 2:00:47Dax Shepard?

  No, I was totally nice to her.

• 2:00:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, but.

• 2:00:49Dax Shepard?

  And if I really was angry at her, I would have made a kind of cutting joke, right?

• 2:00:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:00:55Dax Shepard?

  I would have been like, oh, you might want to stop at the other table and I would have listed a high stakes thing that she could have ruined, right? Like, I would have found a way to burn her in a joking way if I was if I was angry.

• 2:01:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:01:05Dax Shepard?

  Because that's kind of what I'll do, right? If a guy is getting a little aggressive, I'll make a joke that's more aggressive. But I didn't do any of that. I didn't participate and nor did I feel. And I was like, guys, I know you saw what you saw and I don't want to gaslight anybody. But I know in my chest when I'm angry.

• 2:01:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:22Dax Shepard?

  And I wasn't. It was more just acknowledgement.

• 2:01:24Speaker 01

  But do you think there was like, maybe like three seconds before you did the right thing? That you like.

• 2:01:33Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's what they're claiming, that they saw the nostrils flare up when I, when she outed my hand.

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  I can like, I know what laugh you did. It's a specific laugh.

• 2:01:44Dax Shepard?

  So anyways.

• 2:01:46Dax Shepard?

  I don't know.

• 2:01:46Speaker 01

  That sucks. That is annoying. I'd be annoyed.

• 2:01:48Dax Shepard?

  I wasn't even, I thought it was fine. Because again, I had what I had. It wasn't going to impact anything. I was going to win the next seven anyways. It's just like, it's more like the, you were clearly playing a game. No one ever wants to know what someone has. And then on top of it, the game was spades, which is hilarious.

• 2:02:05Speaker 01

  It's also just like, mind your own business. I mean, there's there's a lot here that is annoying. Enjoying objectively.

• 2:02:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I was just more like, oh, right, this person's in the state of mind.

• 2:02:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:16Dax Shepard?

  Intoxication wise, where they thought that was gonna land really big. I get it, she saw cute little girls, she said, your dad.

• 2:02:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:24Dax Shepard?

  She thought, these girls are gonna love this. She doesn't even know who, that there's partners, she probably thinks it's me, we're all against each other.

• 2:02:31Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:02:32Dax Shepard?

  And so, good, pick on the big guy, that's what you should do. So, I wasn't, I understood it all. I just was like, what, what, come, what does this lady do next?

• 2:02:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's like, that's a lot, that's exhausting, that's, um, that's frustrating, I would be frustrated, and, and I would probably.

• 2:02:52Dax Shepard?

  I knew immediately how embarrassed the thirty year olds were.

• 2:02:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a hard thing.

• 2:02:57Dax Shepard?

  And my heart went straight to them, so I was just like, oh, it's no big deal, you know, like, I was laughing off for their benefit.

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:03Dax Shepard?

  It's so fun to play games at restaurants. This is kinda like the family hack.

• 2:03:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, you guys play a lot of games at restaurants.

• 2:03:10Dax Shepard?

  Not mahjong, we bring rummy cube.

• 2:03:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, fun.

• 2:03:13Dax Shepard?

  Or spades.

• 2:03:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:15Dax Shepard?

  And I think the best thing we've, best parenting decision we ever made in our lives was forcing them to learn how to play spades.

• 2:03:21Speaker 01

  And you need four, like, this is the issue with spades, this is always the issue, you need four people who know how.

• 2:03:26Dax Shepard?

  I know, I, god, I wish there was a two-person spades, that was just as invigorating.

• 2:03:29Speaker 01

  I know, same. There's not that many good two-person games.

• 2:03:35Dax Shepard?

  You, you haven't really been playing much, huh?

• 2:03:37Speaker 01

  Uh, I played when my parents were here, just taught my parents, remember?

• 2:03:41Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, I do.

• 2:03:41Speaker 01

  That was really fun, um, that's probably the last time I played, I don't get to play that often, again, cuz we need four. Um, two-person games, there aren't as many good ones, there just aren't. Sometimes Jess and I play solitaire together as a team.

• 2:03:59Dax Shepard?

  Two-man euchre's pretty fun.

• 2:04:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:04:03Dax Shepard?

  It's pretty fun, Erin and I have played a couple million hands of two-hand euchre, but, it's a little bit, it ends up being back and forth, right? Like, if you deal, you kinda have a bigger advantage.

• 2:04:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:04:12Dax Shepard?

  And then, there's a lot of just, once you're turn, you're gonna get points, and my turn, with exceptions, but, yeah.

• 2:04:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, um.

• 2:04:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:23Speaker 01

  I haven't played in a while. I would love to play soon.

• 2:04:26Dax Shepard?

  Summer's upon us. Are you so excited? I'm starting to think a lot about summer.

• 2:04:30Speaker 01

  Me too. It's starting to feel summery here. I went on a night walk last night with Rachel and after.

• 2:04:37Dax Shepard?

  See any coyotes?

• 2:04:38Speaker 01

  No, I did tell her though. I was like, be prepared for some coyotes. I said, this is what you have to do. You just keep walking and you act confident and you don't run away like I did.

• 2:04:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:48Speaker 01

  But we didn't see any.

• 2:04:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:04:49Speaker 01

  And, uh, and it was the, it was like, the sun was going down, but it was like eight. Oh, it was so nice. And I've grilled twice now.

• 2:05:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you did it again.

• 2:05:02Speaker 01

  I'm becoming a grill master.

• 2:05:05Dax Shepard?

  Two times it only took you.

• 2:05:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:08Dax Shepard?

  It takes some people years.

• 2:05:09Speaker 01

  It's gonna take me a long time, but I'm becoming like, I, I have a, um, an oath to myself to get really good at it. So far, I'm just doing chicken.

• 2:05:19Dax Shepard?

  You don't love steak, right?

• 2:05:20Speaker 01

  I love steak.

• 2:05:21Dax Shepard?

  You do?

• 2:05:21Speaker 01

  I do love steak.

• 2:05:22Dax Shepard?

  You haven't wanted to cook a steak yet?

• 2:05:24Speaker 01

  Do want to, but I'm not ready.

• 2:05:26Dax Shepard?

  Okay. They just smell so good when they're cooking, even if you don't even eat it. If you just get to cook it, it smells so good.

• 2:05:34Speaker 01

  But I wanna cook, I wanna make a steak salad.

• 2:05:36Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:05:37Speaker 01

  Max makes steak salads in the summer and now I wanna make steak salads.

• 2:05:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:43Speaker 01

  And, um, so I'm gonna do that, but I'm not ready yet. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do chicken a couple more times.

• 2:05:49Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:05:49Speaker 01

  Um, I don't think I have a good, do you, do you ever do chicken?

• 2:05:54Dax Shepard?

  I thought you were about to say, do you ever microwave your chicken?

• 2:05:59Speaker 01

  Hey, do you ever?

• 2:06:00Dax Shepard?

  I used to cook chicken.

• 2:06:01Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 2:06:02Dax Shepard?

  I used to cook a lot of wings.

• 2:06:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:05Dax Shepard?

  I have not.

• 2:06:05Speaker 01

  Skin.

• 2:06:06Dax Shepard?

  I haven't cooked chicken in a long time. That's poor everyone with my steak journey, but I ate at steak all growing up.

• 2:06:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, you did. It was weird.

• 2:06:13Dax Shepard?

  Remember about eight years ago, I was like, what am I missing?

• 2:06:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:16Dax Shepard?

  I went to the store and I got every cut and then I ate all of them. And then I discovered, oh, I do love steak. If it's a ribeye.

• 2:06:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, you like ribeyes.

• 2:06:24Dax Shepard?

  I'm obsessed with a ribeye.

• 2:06:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:26Dax Shepard?

  Since I've been cooking those, that's all like, I cook hamburgers or I cook, uh, smash burgers?

• 2:06:32Speaker 01

  I thought about it. I thought about it when I was grilling. I was like, what? Dax hasn't made smash burgers in a long time, or he has and he hasn't invited me over.

• 2:06:40Dax Shepard?

  I have really fallen off. I made them, uh, over Fourth of July in Nashville. Um, but yeah, I've fallen off and that's unacceptable. I should.

• 2:06:50Speaker 01

  I want some soon. I would love that. They're so good.

• 2:06:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you get any burger that you eat three or four of is a good sign.

• 2:06:58Speaker 01

  So good. Anyway. Uh, I think I I'm doing too much marinade.

• 2:07:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:07:07Speaker 01

  And I'd like to figure out a better situation.

• 2:07:09Dax Shepard?

  Back off a little bit?

• 2:07:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:11Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:07:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:07:12Dax Shepard?

  Cause it's too flavorful like the marinade?

• 2:07:14Speaker 01

  No, no, it's just like, I think it's too wet.

• 2:07:16Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:07:17Speaker 01

  On the grill.

• 2:07:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and it and it all that sugar burns.

• 2:07:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's sticking.

• 2:07:22Dax Shepard?

  It cakes it up, really. Yeah, do you have a good device to clean it off?

• 2:07:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I bought, I bought a scraper thing.

• 2:07:28Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. Make sure you use that.

• 2:07:29Speaker 01

  I don't think I have the right tools. I don't know. I have a lot to learn.

• 2:07:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:07:32Speaker 01

  I'm gonna be humble.

• 2:07:33Dax Shepard?

  Even though you're a grill master.

• 2:07:34Speaker 01

  I'm on my way to being a grill master. I've watched, I'm gonna watch YouTube videos.

• 2:07:38Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good, good, good. AI is your best friend when it comes to cooking now.

• 2:07:42Speaker 01

  That is really true.

• 2:07:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:44Speaker 01

  That is really, really true. Um, yeah, summer, it's upon us.

• 2:07:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, cause the kids are in the countdown phase of how many days left of school.

• 2:07:52Speaker 01

  I wanted to ask you that. Okay, when do they get out?

• 2:07:54Dax Shepard?

  Unfortunately, they get up two different times.

• 2:07:56Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:07:57Dax Shepard?

  Which that all ends next year, which I'm so thrilled about. Same spring break, same Christmas break.

• 2:08:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:02Dax Shepard?

  Um, but Delti's like, I wanna say the thirteenth of June.

• 2:08:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:08:08Dax Shepard?

  And and Lincoln's a full week or maybe even more before.

• 2:08:12Speaker 01

  Before, okay.

• 2:08:13Dax Shepard?

  Lincoln's down to nine days, I think.

• 2:08:16Speaker 01

  Oh, fine.

• 2:08:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:18Speaker 01

  And then they go back like second, first or second week of August.

• 2:08:23Dax Shepard?

  No, like third and fourth.

• 2:08:25Speaker 01

  Oh, is it?

• 2:08:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:27Speaker 01

  Oh, I thought it was like this.

• 2:08:28Dax Shepard?

  Calvin's August tenth.

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  I thought it was around then.

• 2:08:31Dax Shepard?

  August, for an LAUSD school?

• 2:08:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so.

• 2:08:36Speaker 01

  I also thought it was around then.

• 2:08:37Dax Shepard?

  That's criminal.

• 2:08:38Speaker 01

  But that's, I was, I was like, LA kids get, they don't get enough summer.

• 2:08:43Dax Shepard?

  No, no, no, no.

• 2:08:44Speaker 01

  My friends in Georgia, their kids are out by Memorial Day.

• 2:08:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:50Speaker 01

  And then they're not back.

• 2:08:51Dax Shepard?

  And they come back on Labor Day.

• 2:08:52Speaker 01

  Literally the right before Labor Day.

• 2:08:54Dax Shepard?

  I'm pretty sure that's how it was when I was a kid.

• 2:08:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would start school right as my birthday was starting. So still, so end of August.

• 2:09:03Dax Shepard?

  August twenty fourth, we get back to school.

• 2:09:05Speaker 01

  I wonder if Jack McBrayer will text me on August twenty fourth? Oh shit, that hasn't come out yet. Um.

• 2:09:12Speaker 02

  It'll be.

• 2:09:12Speaker 01

  It will have just come out.

• 2:09:13Speaker 02

  It'll be out by this.

• 2:09:14Speaker 01

  I wonder if he's gonna text me on August 24th?

• 2:09:17Dax Shepard?

  Let's see.

• 2:09:19Speaker 01

  You know who used to text me on August 24th?

• 2:09:21Dax Shepard?

  Dave Kechner.

• 2:09:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:09:22Dax Shepard?

  Sweet Dave Kechner.

• 2:09:23Speaker 01

  Yes, he's my birthday buddy and he used to text me.

• 2:09:27Dax Shepard?

  Then he stopped?

• 2:09:28Speaker 01

  He did stop. We've, I mean, I haven't seen him in a long time.

• 2:09:32Dax Shepard?

  It's been a long time. Bless This Mess was a while ago.

• 2:09:34Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:09:35Dax Shepard?

  Six years.

• 2:09:36Speaker 01

  But it was sweet. It was a nice pop out.

• 2:09:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. Maybe you should text him.

• 2:09:40Speaker 01

  I should.

• 2:09:40Dax Shepard?

  Again, this is back to your, you were proud of yourself, like, you know.

• 2:09:44Speaker 01

  Just do it.

• 2:09:44Dax Shepard?

  It's two-way streets. It's a good practice just to instigate.

• 2:09:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:09:48Dax Shepard?

  Instigate, instigate, instigate.

• 2:09:49Speaker 01

  Um.

• 2:09:50Dax Shepard?

  Want to do some facts?

• 2:09:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's do some facts.

• 2:09:53Dax Shepard?

  Ezra.

• 2:09:54Speaker 01

  Ezra. Smart man. Very smart man.

• 2:09:57Dax Shepard?

  I will say I have, both times we've interviewed him, I get anxious.

• 2:10:00Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:10:01Dax Shepard?

  Because I, I know we're probably gonna debate a little bit.

• 2:10:04Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:10:05Dax Shepard?

  And he's such a skilled debater.

• 2:10:07Speaker 01

  He is.

• 2:10:07Dax Shepard?

  But what, when I was doing my research of him, I don't know if, I don't think I said this in, in the episode, but I'm watching him on his own show with his own co-author.

• 2:10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:17Dax Shepard?

  In his nature, even with his good friend who's his co-author, the friend will say something and he'll go, well, not really. He, he is a highly disagreeable person.

• 2:10:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:25Dax Shepard?

  Which is part of his charm, right?

• 2:10:28Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 2:10:28Dax Shepard?

  It's like what he is.

• 2:10:30Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 2:10:30Dax Shepard?

  So I was like, I'm watching it before we're about to talk. I'm like, oh yeah. No, almost whatever I say, he'll probably go, well, no, not really, because that's just his nature. I was watching it on his own podcast with his own friend as a guest.

• 2:10:43Speaker 01

  That's what he gets joy out of.

• 2:10:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:45Speaker 01

  That's what we used to get joy out of as a duo. It started to slip away a little bit because it got fighty.

• 2:10:52Dax Shepard?

  Well, I think our context changed. Like, there became a political environment that made all these debates have a emotional weight that they previously didn't have. Like, if we're arguing about Adnan.

• 2:11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:05Dax Shepard?

  We're very removed from it. It doesn't affect us ultimately. And so we can have opinions and that's fine. But like, once it got into all the political stuff, it just got really emotionally charged.

• 2:11:18Speaker 01

  That's true. That is very true.

• 2:11:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. I can imagine a simpler time in the future where we are free to argue a lot more.

• 2:11:24Speaker 01

  I hope it comes back. It's fun to do.

• 2:11:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Ezra.

• 2:11:27Speaker 01

  Ezra. Tessa Morlin. You said, uh, has been studied on HIV patients? Yes, Tessa Morlin is an FDA-approved synthetic peptide used specifically to treat HIV-associated lipodystrophy, or lipodystrophy, maybe. It is a growth hormone-releasing factor analog prescribed to reduce excess visceral adipose tissue.

• 2:11:52Dax Shepard?

  Abdominal fat?

• 2:11:53Speaker 01

  Deep belly fat in adults with HIV.

• 2:11:56Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:11:57Speaker 01

  Um, stimulates the pituitary gland to release growth hormone. Cool.

• 2:12:02Dax Shepard?

  Really kill.

• 2:12:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I also looked up what NADs do. People are on those. Uh, they deliver a vital cellular coenzyme directly into the body, bypassing the digestive tract for maximum absorption. These are the injections. They are commonly used to naturally elevate energy levels, promote anti-aging cellular repair, enhance mental clarity, and aid in addiction recovery. That's interesting.

• 2:12:25Dax Shepard?

  Well, if your chemistry's fried from the addiction, maybe it's helping rejuvenate all of that.

• 2:12:31Speaker 01

  Maybe. Yeah.

• 2:12:33Dax Shepard?

  Cause you kind of fatigue your adrenal system and your hormonal system.

• 2:12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:38Dax Shepard?

  And so maybe it helps it repair and get back to its fighting weight.

• 2:12:42Speaker 01

  NAD plus is a coenzyme found in all living cells that plays a major role in metabolism, DNA repair, and energy production. As you age, your natural NAD levels decline, which can lead to fatigue, brain fog, and a slower metabolism. Hmm.

• 2:12:55Dax Shepard?

  I should rethink NAD.

• 2:12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:57Dax Shepard?

  I don't need another peptide.

• 2:13:00Speaker 01

  If you want to.

• 2:13:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's, it's, I'm at maximum amount of, I, I, my routine is so goddamn long.

• 2:13:05Speaker 01

  Yours is probably include, is probably already doing this.

• 2:13:08Dax Shepard?

  The other shit I'm doing. Well, I feel pretty damn good. I'll say that.

• 2:13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay. Did Trump go on Lex Friedman's? Podcast, yes, September twenty four, he did do that.

• 2:13:18Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:13:19Speaker 01

  Um, did Brene Brown quit her Spotify podcast because of Rogan? She paused her podcast in twenty twenty two, um, but she resumed a few weeks later. Oh, is the book that you cited about, um, liberals looking at the world as oppressed versus oppressor and Republicans or conservatives looking at it as barbarism versus?

• 2:13:49Dax Shepard?

  Law and order.

• 2:13:49Speaker 01

  Law and order. Is that called The Three Languages of Politics?

• 2:13:52Dax Shepard?

  I think so. It's the author.

• 2:13:54Speaker 01

  Arnold Klein.

• 2:13:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think that's it.

• 2:13:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:13:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:13:58Speaker 01

  The Three Languages of Politics. The Oppressor Versus Oppressed Axis Associated with Modern Liberals Progressives. They view political struggles through the lens of protecting the underprivileged from systemic abuse. Civilization Versus Barbarism Axis Associated with Conservatives slash Republicans. They frame their political goals around defending time-tested morals, order, and Western values against chaos, decay, and barbarism. Liberty Versus Coercion Axis Associated with Libertarians. They prioritize individual rights over government intrusion and coercion. Arnold King.

• 2:14:34Dax Shepard?

  There we go. Great book. I really loved it. It's short, too, as I recall.

• 2:14:38Speaker 01

  Oh, that's nice. Well, what is short? What is time?

• 2:14:41Dax Shepard?

  It was six pages. I think you just read the whole book out loud.

• 2:14:44Speaker 01

  Oh, great. Oh, where was Letterman's scholarship? It was at Ball Uni- Ball State University.

• 2:14:53Dax Shepard?

  There we go. Is that in Muncie, Indiana?

• 2:14:56Speaker 01

  It is.

• 2:14:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:14:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great.

• 2:15:00Speaker 01

  According to Rob.

• 2:15:03Speaker 02

  According to their website.

• 2:15:04Dax Shepard?

  Well, probably according to Rob's computer.

• 2:15:06Speaker 01

  Created a scholarship for C students in telecom.

• 2:15:10Dax Shepard?

  So good. C students.

• 2:15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great.

• 2:15:13Dax Shepard?

  What if you were tanking your GPA?

• 2:15:15Speaker 01

  Just to.

• 2:15:16Dax Shepard?

  To get the scholarship.

• 2:15:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, a self-described C student at Ball State created a scholarship for C students in telecommunications, awarding a up to ten thousand dollar base on creativity rather than grades. It's cool.

• 2:15:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I like it.

• 2:15:31Speaker 01

  Very cool. Um. All right, that's really it.

• 2:15:34Dax Shepard?

  Well, I was scared, intimidated, and then

• 2:15:39Speaker 01

  It was great.

• 2:15:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I enjoyed it. All right, love you.

• 2:15:42Speaker 01

  Love you.

• 2:15:57Dax Shepard?

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