Michael Lewis (on the gambling epidemic)

Michael Lewis (Who is Government: The Untold Story of Public Service, Against the Rules, The Big Short) is a best-selling writer, journalist, and podcast host. Michael joins the Armchair Expert to discuss his dad’s advice to not waste his education to figure out what he wanted to do for a living, incredible insider art stories from being the stock boy of the Wildensteins’ private collection, and learning that the world is a conspiracy of people who understand economics. Michael and Dax talk about diving headfirst into the bleeding edge of Wall Street in the 80s, getting in trouble (but not fired) for writing an article in the Wall Street Journal claiming that everyone in his firm was overpaid, and how Chevy Chase’s dad convinced him to write his first book. Michael explains being wired to live the life you want versus one the world wants you to, hating the feeling of not telling the reader everything that’s important regardless of the consequences, and taking on the predatory sports gambling epidemic with his podcast Against the Rules. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Oh, wow, that was the kind of cheerleading move you did.

• 0:05Dax Shepard?

  Thank you. I'm Randy Shepherd and I'm joined by Lily Padme.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 0:12Dax Shepard?

  It's an honor to announce our guest today. Oh, one of our radical thinkers.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:20Dax Shepard?

  Michael Lewis. Michael is a bestselling author and podcaster. His books, The Fifth Risk, Flash Boys, The Big Short.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 0:29Dax Shepard?

  Read it, loved it. Moneyball, The Blind Side. He has a awesome podcast out currently, you could listen immediately, called Against the Rules, and this season is all about, this pretty troubling gambling epidemic among young men.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:46Dax Shepard?

  And we talk at great length about that in addition to, you know, all of his other great work.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  I mean, this person wrote Moneyball and The Big Short, two of my favorite movies of all time.

• 0:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and we've left one out, which is this great,

• 1:02Dax Shepard?

  Wall Street book that started it all.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Uh, Liar's Poker.

• 1:05Dax Shepard?

  Liar's Poker.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06Dax Shepard?

  Good job. You're.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  I'm editing it.

• 1:09Dax Shepard?

  But also you're, you've become a real brain trust.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Thank you, but I can't take credit for that. I was editing it this morning.

• 1:16Dax Shepard?

  Okay. You're, okay. All right, please enjoy Michael Lewis. We get support from Quince.

• 1:23Speaker 01

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

• 1:43Dax Shepard?

  Quince is seriously the gift that keeps on giving. Their high-quality staples are made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather. Full-on luxury quality at prices that won't wreck your holiday budget.

• 1:58Speaker 01

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

• 2:09Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:17Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 2:18Dax Shepard?

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

• 2:22Speaker 01

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

• 2:44Dax Shepard?

  Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from Gusto. So here's the thing about running a small business that nobody romanticizes. It's not the big idea that wears you down. It's the payroll, the tax filings, the wait, do I need workers' comp for this stuff? That's the part that quietly eats away your whole afternoon, which is where Gusto comes in. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses.

• 3:29Dax Shepard?

  It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use so you can pay onboard and support your team from anywhere. They handle automatic tax filing, direct deposits, health benefits, 401K, all of it. And you get unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price. No hidden fees, no surprises. If something tricky comes up, you've got direct access to certified HR experts who actually know what they're talking about. And they're ranked number one on G2's Highest Satisfaction Products List for 2026, entrusted by over 500,000 small businesses. That's not nothing. Try Gusto today at gusto.com/dax and get three months free when you run your first payroll.

• 4:10Dax Shepard?

  That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com/dax. Again, that's gusto.com/dax.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  I just walked around the corner to your local pharmacy, Allah, Allah Bood's Pharmacy. And he said, what are you doing in our neighborhood? I said, I'm doing Dax Shepard's podcast. And he goes, I love that podcast. That guy's funny and his wife's even funnier.

• 4:46Dax Shepard?

  Ah, that's true. She's better looking, she's more talented. I'm still having a great life in her shadow. And there's still plenty of light over here.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  You get enough attention.

• 4:58Dax Shepard?

  I do. And the more she gets, the better for me.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:01Dax Shepard?

  It's lovely. I'm like, that's right. Get a picture with her. I'll hold the camera.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  But also you never walk into a dinner party and everybody just wants to talk to you. And that's good.

• 5:09Dax Shepard?

  That's really good because I was on TV and had a girlfriend for nine years. And it drove me mad that we would go places and people would be meeting her for the fifth time and introducing themselves. And I'm like, this fucking sucks for her. I don't know how she does this.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  And for you.

• 5:23Dax Shepard?

  No one's really winning. I'm like, well, this is miserable. You've just made this person I love feel very insignificant. And I don't know how she's going to deal with this because I think it's going to just get worse for a while. I just read the book. I love it.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Oh, thanks.

• 5:35Dax Shepard?

  So you have a circuitous path to writing, which is you are from New Orleans. Yeah. And you go to Princeton and you do art history. And when you started that major, had it not occurred to you, there's no employment after. Like I majored in anthro, but I knew I'll never be employed as an anthropologist.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  But you probably had the same experience I did. You went into a class and you went, oh, my God, this is interesting.

• 5:58Dax Shepard?

  Yes. And I had the freedom to do that. A lot of people don't.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  So I did too. And not only had the freedom, I had a father who said, don't you dare waste your Princeton education trying to figure out what you're going to do for a living.

• 6:08Dax Shepard?

  How to make money.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. He said, don't go to study economics because you want to work on Wall Street or that kind of stuff. He says, such a waste.

• 6:15Dax Shepard?

  And your dad was a lawyer.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  He was.

• 6:17Dax Shepard?

  Does he fit the form of most lawyers where they absolutely hate their fucking job?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  He ran a law firm. He's still alive. He's still great.

• 6:23Dax Shepard?

  Good for you.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  My parents are still living in the house I grew up in. I'm gonna go back in two weeks.

• 6:27Dax Shepard?

  You know you're gonna live to 100. What a freedom you have.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Knock on wood for you.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  I still stay in my bedroom from when I was six years old. So I had not only the freedom, but also a dad who had said, "Don't screw it up by succumbing to this pressure." I knew that it wasn't a path to fame and fortune, but I didn't know what it was.

• 6:45Dax Shepard?

  But you were on fire for it.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  I was so excited. I lived for that feeling.

• 6:47Dax Shepard?

  And you had a bit of focus on archaeology as well?

• 6:49Speaker 02

  A little bit. You did some homework.

• 6:51Dax Shepard?

  Well, I tried to.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  To get out of Princeton, you have to write a thesis, and it's not trivial.

• 6:54Dax Shepard?

  Yours was 160 pages. 190?

• 6:57Speaker 02

  It was like 60,000 words. It's like a book. It was narrow. I really cared about it. It was about the way Donatello used classical sources. And serendipitously, I had access to unpublished research about what Donatello would have seen. We know all kinds of stuff that's been dug up since then that he didn't know. So I could recreate the picture he had of what Romans and Greeks were doing and think about what he saw and how he used it in his sculpture. And it had this feeling like I'm doing something no one's done before.

• 7:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so exciting.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  When I got so immersed in something, I became a different kind of student. I was a mediocre student when I had to do lots of shallow stuff, when it was just deep dive and get it down on paper. I became excellent, and for the first time really in my academic career. And I thought, "Oh, means I want to be an art historian." And that is when the archaeologist who supervised the project said, "They know jobs."

• 7:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. This is what you're gonna do right now, pretty much.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Actually, in the thesis meeting, I must have been thinking, "Oh, I'm a good writer." Because I said to him, "What did you think about the writing?" He said, "Put it this way, never try to make a living at it." Like, "You're not that good a writer."

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 7:59Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  That's where I was in my head when I got out of college. I was like, "I don't know what I'm gonna do. The professor says I'm not a very good writer." He thought I was a thinker, which was funny, because I never thought I'd had a thought.

• 8:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  Guy wasn't aware of that. If you caught me there... Age 21, graduating Princeton. Yuda said, "Poor Michael, he has no plan." People have said, "Oh, he's charming. We like having him around." I have a lot of friends who are gonna be successful.

• 8:21Dax Shepard?

  You might get invited to fun barbecues.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Oh, definitely. That was never a problem. It was like, I captured some people's imagination, but no one saw use in me. But I got in my head, "Shit, if I'm not gonna be an artist or anything, I wanna write books. I wanna do that again."

• 8:36Dax Shepard?

  So that started that early?

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:38Dax Shepard?

  Okay, because my chronology for you, you do go get a job working for an art appraiser in New York or something, right?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Wildenstein. You know the Wildenstein Gallery?

• 8:46Dax Shepard?

  I do not.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  You know it because of, they call it the Tiger Lady or the Lion Lady, who had all the plastic surgery. She was Jocelyn Wildenstein. She was the wife of the heir to the gallery.

• 8:54Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  And I actually knew her, or had met her. I was the stock boy at Wildenstein. It was just like, get the pictures from the vaults and bring them out to show the clients. In this place, it might still be the world's most valuable private collection of art. When I was there, I mean, they had 64 fragonards. They had 10 sauzons no one had ever seen. It started as Jewish rag merchants, end of the 1800s. And on the streets of Paris, would trade rags with impressionist painters. And then they smuggle all this stuff out.

• 9:24Dax Shepard?

  Ah.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  During World War II. There's a whole story about collaboration with the Germans to get their stuff out. So that stuff was in there, and I was the stock boy.

• 9:32Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so I had a rare experience where I knew a dude through sobriety, who was an art dealer. And he drove a Carrera GT. He had like 15 incredible cars. I went to his house. He had a Magritte hanging on the wall. He subsequently was evading the law. What I found out is that that whole world is rife with con artists. There's got so many people that sell art they don't actually own. It's a very willy-nilly world, right? I feel like it needs an expose.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  I've thought that for a long time. That's more true of the contemporary art world than it is of the world of old master paintings or even the impressionists. But still, there was a whole class of person who would come in and look at what might be a Raphael, to say it was a Raphael. And they were paid by the gallery. To determine what it was. And all the incentive in the market is to say, it is, it is, it is.

• 10:22Dax Shepard?

  Of course.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  You saw with this Leonardo that sold for $400 million.

• 10:26Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Two years ago, you must have seen this, this picture. It was found by a New York dealer in a Louisiana auction house and bought for like $4,000. And it had been in a house six blocks from where I grew up for like 50 years. A New Orleans family had bought it at auction in England.

• 10:44Dax Shepard?

  Is it real?

• 10:45Speaker 02

  It ended up being bought by the bad dude in Saudi Arabia for, I think, $450 million. And instantly discredited.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  And it's sort of like, maybe Leonardo might have seen this at some point.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 10:58Dax Shepard?

  Did they get their money back?

• 10:59Speaker 02

  No, because it hasn't been so totally discredited.

• 11:03Dax Shepard?

  There's enough to be in a court case.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  There's a difference between a fake and a forgery, right? A forgery is something that is consciously pretending to be something like you and I went and painted a Leonardo and tried to pass it off.

• 11:13Dax Shepard?

  That's an actual fraud.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  That's fraud.

• 11:14Dax Shepard?

  There's intention.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  This is misattribution. It's probably like school of, but the Louvre at a Leonardo show, the guy at the Louvre is sort of like the man. Declined to include it in it and it's just vanished. Nobody knows where it is.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  So that kind of thing happens quite a bit. And of course, when the buyers are Russian oligarchs and they're sticking it in shipping containers and nobody's going to see them again. They're just marks because yes, you may get shot if they find out, but nobody's going to know what you did.

• 11:41Dax Shepard?

  I had in a movie, I wrote a plot line about a guy who he wants to travel with $30 million undetected. So he has a Mondrian on that. He just folds up and do a backpack. You know, like it's a very cool transfer of wealth. These things, it's like, how else does one hold $400 million and travel with it? But you can.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  But if you have a stonework of art, you've got something that really is invendable. You're not going to be able to sell that.

• 12:02Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  You get the pleasure out of it, but that's all you're going to get out of it.

• 12:05Dax Shepard?

  You get to tell your mobster buddies, come over and look at this.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  That you have that. Can I tell one Wilkenstein story? Because this was an amazing story. The question at the time when I was there, I was only there six months, but I had a free run of the whole place because I was a stock boy. So I spent all my time looking at paintings no one knew existed and sculptures. There was a time when Daniel Wildenstein, since deceased, the grandson, the guy who founded it, comes rolling in from Paris. And he says, bring me the Houdini. Now, Houdon was a very famous Enlightenment sculptor. He did the busts, you know, of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire. He managed to get all the leaders of the day. They're these magnificent, realistic things. And everybody thought they were all known. You open a book on Houdon, you'd see all of them. And to our knowledge, we did not own a Houdon. And so, nobody knows what he's talking about.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  And finally, he gets really upset and he marches into the elevator and motions everyone to come with him. Goes down to the basement, pulls out this massive shitty plaster bust of his father, of George Wittenstein, I think his name was. Takes a hammer and a chisel, goes boom, it opens up. And inside is a Houdon of Mirabeau, who was the triple agent in the French Revolution. And who had smallpox, his face was all scarred. And this thing was unknown to anybody. They had smuggled it out of Paris and gotten it to New York.

• 13:20Dax Shepard?

  Whoa.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  Now, it's known, it's sold, I don't know who bought it. But it was like, he put a $10 million price tag on it and eventually it sold.

• 13:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  There was that kind of stuff going on.

• 13:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're kind of watching as they pull the jade mascot of the burial site. Like, you're getting to see the artifact when it's first discovered, in a way. Watching it come out of the plaster, that's cool.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  That must've been so cool as an art person to be in it like that.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  There was nothing to do all day, because the only people who came through, every now and then, a billionaire would come through. And every now and then, the other people who would come through were the museum directors. And there was a guy named Tom Hoving, who was a very famous director of the Metropolitan Museum. And another guy named Everett Feihi, who ran the Frick Museum. They were just world-class observers of paintings. And they would come through and I'd be left alone with them. I was told, show them whatever they want to see. Feihi, I loved him, both of them have died since. But Feihi came through and I got to kind of know him, because he came through a few times. And then one time he looks at me, he goes, you have any friends who are interested in Renaissance painting? I said, yeah, actually, my dad is, he's obsessed with it. He says, this isn't very expensive, they have a couple of pictures here, I don't think they know what they have.

• 14:23Dax Shepard?

  Really?

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  My father owns them.

• 14:26Dax Shepard?

  No way.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  No way.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  My father bought them.

• 14:29Dax Shepard?

  Cause you were like, hey dad, fucking pick these up on the.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Some insider trading.

• 14:33Dax Shepard?

  Oh wow, insider trading.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, they sold it knowing.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  He said, these are gems. These are interesting pictures. They're not very expensive. One was $40,000. I mean, they cost something.

• 14:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. What do you think they're valued at today?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  He has a Saint Jerome in the wilderness, bashing himself in the chest with a rock. The idea is to ward off sexual thoughts.

• 14:53Dax Shepard?

  Age old struggle.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  Not an obvious thing to go and take a rock to yourself when you're, right? But it's by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, who was the master of Perugino, master of Raphael. And it's an amazing picture. He bought it for, I don't know, $100,000 or something, and it's a million dollar painting. Anyway.

• 15:08Dax Shepard?

  That's great.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  That's so cool. Now I want to get into art.

• 15:12Dax Shepard?

  Meanwhile, be careful as it'll warn you.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  Here's the problem. The original point, this seems like this should be a good book in the art market, and I'm sure for someone else there is. I have so much trouble caring about the people. The people who are the victims are billionaire collectors. It's just so hard to get worked up about the characters.

• 15:31Dax Shepard?

  This Saudi dude got ripped off for 450 million. I'm kind of like, cool. I'm glad the money's here or not.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's kind of rooting for the guy who ripped him off.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Did you ever want to steal one?

• 15:40Dax Shepard?

  That's all I would be thinking about. I'm like, I gotta get a replica of this, replace it.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  You say that because I swear to you, that thought never crossed my mind. No.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  First thing I thought.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  I mean, it's so funny. They must smell that and keep people like that out.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  But that thought never crossed my mind. What did cross my mind, this is a strange story, for whatever reason. My father told me two things growing up about careers. He wasn't unhappy with being a lawyer exactly. It just wasn't a passion project. What he was, was a very gifted administrator. And so he ran the law firm. He would also end up running businesses that the law firm were entangled with. He did a lot of different kind of administrative things. He ran a big hospital for a stretch, but he said, the problem with the law, unless you're a litigator, and litigators love their jobs. They're performers. They're actors in the courtroom. He said, you're dealing with other people's problems and other people's problems are just not that interesting.

• 16:29Dax Shepard?

  You're also dealing with people in the worst version of themselves. They are in trouble. They are desperate, they are scared. You're not catching any of these people on their best day.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  You're catching families that are fighting over money and it's nasty.

• 16:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's all ugly.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  So he kind of scared me off the law and things like the law. But for some reason, he said, never take a job where you have to wear a blue suit. I think what he was thinking was banking. I don't know what he was thinking. But he had something in his head about if you have to wear a blue suit. And I thought, well, that's never gonna happen. But when I got to the Wildenstein Art Gallery, the rule was the stock boy had to wear a blue suit. Oh, my God. And all I had was like Seersucker from New Orleans. And I just wore it. And they started yelling at me. Go get a blue suit. And I said, I don't own a blue suit. This was a knock down, drag out fight. And finally, they took me by the hand over to the Bloomingdale's Young Men's Department and bought me a blue suit. And so the one thing I did do that was kind of squirrely was when I quit, I went in the morning before they opened and I left the blue suit on the sidewalk in front of the place. Wow.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  As an act of like, I don't know what. Upper middle class protest. Yeah.

• 17:28Dax Shepard?

  Sure, sure, sure, sure. Very brave.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Very brave. Very brave.

• 17:32Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so after a bit of this, you do realize I'm gonna need to make a living. And you decide to go to the London School of Economics.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  That was a bank shot because I had a girlfriend at the time who was getting out of college and she really wanted to go to the London School of Economics.

• 17:44Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great, and you wanted to be with her.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I followed her. And I also had the thought, the world is a conspiracy of people who understand the language of economics. All these classmates of mine in college seemed to throw away their college lives studying something they didn't care about, but in exchange, they got a pass. Yeah. They got a pass to wander the halls of Goldman Sachs. They could talk that language. And I thought, I'm gonna go learn that language just to go learn that language. I was suspicious. And I had one class in microeconomics when I was a senior that I took pass, fail, so I didn't have to do very much work so I could focus on my thesis. And I remember thinking, why didn't I realize this was interesting? I stayed away from it because all these people I disapproved of were studying it, rather than going and seeing what it was. And actually, some of this is really an interesting way to see the world.

• 18:24Dax Shepard?

  Oh, when I... Learned of, in combination with your Vanity Fair article and this great frontline about the meltdown, when I learned about the complexities of the credit default swap and about the instruments that no one at the firm understands, except for three people. That is fascinating.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  That's finance. So that wasn't even this. This was like, what's the difference between a complement and a substitute in the marketplace? Or when prices go up, what happens to demand and supply?

• 18:51Dax Shepard?

  Like Adam Smith?

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was Adam Smith 101. I thought, wow.

• 18:54Dax Shepard?

  Markets are fascinating. They're like a living organism. They're cool.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  They are cool. And the One School of Economics gave me a chance to play catch-up. They had a program where they put you through their whole undergraduate program in a year, and you got a master's in year two. My father, in his wisdom, he called it the Lewis family deal. And this is the joy of being raised with privilege. He said, as long as you're doing something, I will cover your expenses for the first three years out of college. Oh, I love that. So I was working as the art dealer, but I didn't get paid very much. I actually became a woodworker as apprentice for six months. And then I went to the One School of Economics for two years. And that was, in a lot of ways, transformative. That's where I started publishing stuff. I started submitting things willy-nilly to magazines. And the British are much more receptive than Americans to amateurs. It's not who are you, they just read it and go, wow, I like this.

• 19:40Dax Shepard?

  That's almost counterintuitive to me. I think of Britain as being much more steeped in social hierarchies and prestige.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  That's true, but there are many fields that we treat as professions that they treat as crafts, or guilds. You don't have to go to journalism school. You're just writing.

• 19:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I have a great friend in Britain who's a journalist, and yeah, he didn't go to, and he's incredible.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  No one cares if you wrote for the school newspaper. All they care about, does the piece work?

• 20:04Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so the writing started then?

• 20:06Speaker 02

  That's where it started.

• 20:06Dax Shepard?

  So then you go and you trade bonds, or you sell bonds. I mean, there's a wild story. You have a cousin in London who's kind of aristocracy.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  She married into it. New Orleanians understand this language more than anybody on earth. She's my first cousin once removed.

• 20:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, no one knows.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  I've never understood this. Which means she's my mother's first cousin. She married Baron Patrick von Stauffenberg.

• 20:26Dax Shepard?

  Fucking A, let's go.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  He is the nephew, you know, the von Stauffenberg who put the bomb onto Hitler's table?

• 20:32Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Yes. His uncle was the one who tried to assassinate Hitler.

• 20:36Dax Shepard?

  That's a cool one.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  And he's great. They were great. I got to London and they had dinner parties and I would be the young person they would invite over to amuse the older people. One day she says, I got an extra seat at a dinner and it's in St. James's Palace. It was hundreds of people, but the Queen Mother was coming and she said, you can meet the Queen Mother. And I thought, why not, you know?

• 20:54Dax Shepard?

  Is the Queen Mother just the Queen?

• 20:55Speaker 02

  The Queen's mother.

• 20:57Dax Shepard?

  Very literal.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  She was Queen Elizabeth's mother.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:00Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  And I was sat between two women, both of whose husbands ran Solomon Brothers London office. And at the end of it, one of them said, whatever you're doing, you stop doing, you ought to come work for my husband. Come work at Solomon Brothers.

• 21:14Dax Shepard?

  Which I can read between the lines.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  You charm their pants off.

• 21:16Dax Shepard?

  You charm the fuck out of these.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  The fix was in at that point. I went over and had interviews, but it was kind of like, whatever. Everybody seemed to like me right when I walked in the door.

• 21:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  And then I got offered this job.

• 21:25Dax Shepard?

  By the way, you talk about learning the secret language of what's really going on. It's like, yeah, that's how it happens.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  If your wife says hire them, they will.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  So this is really true. It masquerades as a pure meritocracy. The first break is not pure meritocracy.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Mm-mm, no.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  I had that point in my head. I was getting out of school and at this point, the Lewis Plan was over. I had to make a living. I was publishing stuff, but I was being paid so poorly, you couldn't live on it. And I thought this when I got out of college, when I started to write stuff that didn't get published. Have lots of experiences. Writers have this problem. They just become writers and then they don't know anything but writing and that gets very boring and you write books about being a writer.

• 21:59Dax Shepard?

  Play's acting as well. You've been pretending to be other people since you're 18.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  You didn't get any real experience to pull on.

• 22:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're playing a factory worker. You never even worked.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  How do you enter into that space? Yeah, that's right.

• 22:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're just gonna have to rely heavily on imagination.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  And a bag of tricks, probably.

• 22:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  So I thought, and still think, whenever you have a chance to have meaningful life experience that isn't writing, have it. It will inform the writing. And it gets harder and harder to do that. You're typed as the writer.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, the more successful you are, it almost hinders you in that way.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  True, because you don't have to do it.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  A lot of interesting stuff happens because you have to do it. But I thought Wall Street, not only is it gonna pay me a bunch of money, but this could be interesting to write about.

• 22:36Dax Shepard?

  No, to peek behind the curtain of this culture, which is elusive, how could you not be intrigued to see what's happening back there?

• 22:44Speaker 02

  It was Wall Street in the 80s.

• 22:45Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Nobody quite understood what had just happened. Why were young people who had just come out of college being paid the equivalent of a hundred thousand dollars or something to start when they clearly didn't know anything?

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:56Speaker 02

  Like, what was that all about? It was also true that serious quantitative ability was starting to get valued. So this was the moment where they're starting to grab people out of like the physics department at MIT. And it was just happening in our place. We were the bleeding edge of that. And as chance had it, it wasn't just that I got a job on Wall Street. At that moment, the firm I joined, Solomon Brothers, was making more money than all the other Wall Street firms combined. What had happened is there'd been an explosion in indebtedness in the society. The government was borrowing lots of money. There was the invention of mortgage bonds.

• 23:27Dax Shepard?

  When did those get invented?

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Late seventies, early eighties. But the market was exploding. And Solomon Brothers had historically been, this place was kind of a sleepy backwater, but they were really shrewd traders of bonds. And bonds were always thought to be like, that's not where the money is. Stocks are where the money is.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  And all of a sudden, bonds were where the money was. And what happened in that place was the best story on Wall Street.

• 23:47Dax Shepard?

  An atomic bomb of money went off.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  And a crazy place that although when I got to it, had become a public corporation. They had sold stock in themselves. They had pretty recently been just a private partnership. And the behavior in the place was like the behavior you would have in a private men's club, where nobody was ever going to see what happened there. And it was literally every third day, some stripper would come in, take off all her clothes on the desk.

• 24:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Dudes are throwing spitballs at each other. I mean, everyone's acting like they're 13, right?

• 24:14Speaker 02

  Food fight, yes.

• 24:15Dax Shepard?

  Buying too much food just to show off.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  The material was fantastic.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:19Dax Shepard?

  Yes. What about coke? How much were you seeing coke? I need a little more coke in this story.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Is it coke or Quaaludes?

• 24:27Speaker 02

  I hesitate because

• 24:28Dax Shepard?

  That's to come off the coke.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Because I'm pretty naive about drugs.

• 24:31Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you are.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Alcohol's great. I never really needed any more.

• 24:34Dax Shepard?

  But we would agree it was all fueled by coke.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  It was fueled by almost like a gambling addiction.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 24:38Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  But that's what you saw. It's this compulsive behavior. People were betting money for the firm. And when they weren't betting money for the firm, they were betting with each other on anything they could bet on.

• 24:47Dax Shepard?

  Liars poker.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Dice, one thing after another, horses, sports. It was just constant gambling.

• 24:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  And I got my problems, but that's not one of them. I don't care about. But it was fun to watch and fun to describe. They let in all kinds of characters. It wasn't cookie cutter people. Former Navy fighter pilots and former professional athletes and people who'd just come off the street and shouted their way into a job. It was hustlers.

• 25:10Dax Shepard?

  That's an energetic vibe.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Very energetic. In some ways, I love that part of the place.

• 25:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I bet it would be intoxicating just to be involved in it.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  It was. It was also intoxicating because I was, by their standards, kind of an intellectual. I had gone to Princeton. I had a masters. I thought all the time about things.

• 25:27Dax Shepard?

  You knew about art.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, that kind of stuff.

• 25:29Dax Shepard?

  Triggering stuff.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  And so there was a training class for six months where it was not like teachers from out of the place. It was the actual traders paraded through. And you could ask them anything. And I was the guy who always had his hand in the air and was grilling them, trying to understand what they did. I got to master the subject because they let me do it.

• 25:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  It's a moment I don't have anymore. I know what goes on Wall Street a little bit, but at the time I felt like I knew more about what was going on Wall Street than anybody.

• 25:55Dax Shepard?

  And so much of the stuff is brand new. Everything's always been digitized.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  That's right. The young person is learning it and the old people don't know. It was absolutely thrilling for about a year and a half. And then I hit some cliff. All of a sudden, there wasn't that much to learn. And what I was supposed to be doing is selling people stuff they shouldn't buy.

• 26:13Dax Shepard?

  And you're surrounded by toxic human beings who are in a nosedive.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Yes. I remember just going home at night and staring at the ceiling thing. I can't believe I just did that. You did a bad, bad thing. And I was rewarded for it. I was successful. I was in the line of, and my clients were people who were managing billions of dollars. It wasn't widows and orphans. But my job was to get them to do stuff they probably shouldn't do. Or sometimes they should do it, but mostly not. And in a funny way, this is a little crude. It was to get them to take the other side of bets that our own traders were making. So these were not good bets.

• 26:43Dax Shepard?

  That's what's fucking wild is you learn about how all these banks work. They're playing every single side of it.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  They used to be.

• 26:49Dax Shepard?

  With some tiny margin.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 26:51Dax Shepard?

  It's like in your podcast, the guy who figured out on a New York Knicks versus Lakers game, the odds in New York are going to be different because they're biased by loving the Knicks. And then the Lakers betters are going to be biased. So the spread in those two places, there's something to be made there. There's like a point off.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. You bet the Knicks in Los Angeles and the Lakers in New York.

• 27:09Dax Shepard?

  And you're gonna win.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Or at least you're not gonna lose. Get different point spreads in different places.

• 27:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  I got to a point where. I was faking it. And when I started to fake it, I started to do less work at work and started to write more articles about what was going on at work. And I got in trouble.

• 27:23Dax Shepard?

  I was wondering the fallout, because it's nonfiction. You're using everyone's names.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  This is what happened. I wrote a article for the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page saying, everybody on Wall Street was overpaid. Oh. While you were there. While I was there.

• 27:38Dax Shepard?

  You could jump.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  At the bottom of it, it said my name, and I was an associate at Solomon Brothers in London. Yeah. This is how delusional a 24-year-old is, though. I remember thinking, it's so cool. Everybody's gonna think it's so cool.

• 27:49Dax Shepard?

  He has an article.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  I was thinking, I come in, the boss would go, man, you have an article in the Wall Street Journal. No. That's not what they said.

• 27:56Dax Shepard?

  You thought everyone had your same primary desire, which is to be a published writer.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  I get to work, the guy who's the husband of the woman, the guy who hired me, who ran the whole Solomon Brothers, is waiting for me at my desk. I really liked him. And he looked so sad.

• 28:10Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  And kind of gray. And he said, Michael, what have you done? He said, I've been up all night. And I said, why? I'm reading my article. Yeah. Because you love my article so much. And he said, no, we had an emergency board member meeting because of the article. And I said, oh. Very oddly, there were a bunch of reasons that they didn't want to fire me. It would have looked horrible if they fired you.

• 28:35Dax Shepard?

  You'd be like a whistleblower.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  No, it wasn't it at all.

• 28:38Dax Shepard?

  What was it?

• 28:39Speaker 02

  I had stumbled into the second or third most profitable client the firm had, who I didn't do anything useful for, they were just amused that I was there. And I would tell them the things I was gonna write. The guy said, I don't need any advice from people like you. If you just tell me what you're saying, that will be useful enough, and I'll funnel all my business through you. It was Jacob Rothschild.

• 28:57Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  The Rothschild, the guys who ran his money. And they became so big that I was just a money machine. All I was was not offensive to them. I wasn't trying to sell them things they shouldn't buy. And they were gonna buy something, they'd call or sell something. And they let us make money off them. They were really pretty funny, because I was 24. They refused to talk to anybody else in the firm.

• 29:17Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I love this move.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  So extremely important people, including the CEO, would come to London and want to meet them, because my God, they're now the second biggest client of the firm. And they would say, no, thank you, we just want to talk to Michael.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  This is awesome. So in a way, they made me possible. They protected me. So the guy wasn't gonna fire him. His name was Charlie McFay. Great guy. He says, "We gotta find a way this doesn't ever happen again. You can't write." I said, "It's what I love to do, and I'm gonna keep doing it." And he goes, "Could you find another name?" Oh. And I said, "That's not a problem." And I don't know why it popped into my head. I said, "What if I use my mother's maiden name? Diana Bleeker Monroe." So I wrote some things under the name of Diana Bleeker. Oh.

• 29:56Dax Shepard?

  Oh, interesting, because now we've changed genders. I wonder what that does to the reception.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  That's what he said. He said, "This is perfect, because none of these people around here are gonna think a girl's a guy." Yeah. Exact quote. He said, "No one will think about it. It never would say Solomon. It would just say Diana Bleeker is whatever." Now, The New Republic, then, was a pretty hot magazine. Michael Kinsley was an editor of Genius. Michael Kinsley, who published some of my first pieces, some of them under the name of Diana Bleeker. He refused to just let it sit at that. So he would put the bottom of the article, "Diana Bleeker is a pseudonym." One day, I got home, and I got a landline call. I pick up the phone, and the actor Chevy Chase, his dad was named Ned Chase, and Ned Chase was a prominent nonfiction editor at Simon & Schuster.

• 30:41Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  He said who he was. I can't remember if he told me that Chevy was his son.

• 30:45Dax Shepard?

  He did.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. Guaranteed that he did do that. He might have. And he said, "I just figured out you're Diana Bleeker." Oh. He said, "And you really need to write a book." And at that point, I thought, "You'll pay me to write a book? I'm outta here."

• 30:59Dax Shepard?

  Had to be a pay cut, though.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Oh, well, a huge pay cut. I wasn't even thinking that, as long as I can live on it. So I remember this. It would have been like September of 1987, because I realized at that point, I gotta stay till January, because my bonus will hit my bank account in January. So I gotta fake this until January. Once a month, I would fly back to New York to bring clients to the Chicago Exchange, or to go hobnob with the people on the New York trading floor. And I had with me a notepad out when the stock market crash of October 1987 happened. And I was just wandering the Solomon Brothers trading floor, writing what ended up being a chapter in the book. And I was already thinking, "I got a book in this." Yeah. Funny that nobody is like, "Michael, what are you writing?" So that happened right before that.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  And then I told them I was leaving in January of 88, and the book appears in the fall of 89. There's one other funny little footnote. They were charming in their way. They were rude, crude, socially unacceptable, misogynist. But if any one of these guys was sitting here, you would like them. Yeah, of course. You would say, Michael, you're an asshole for having sold them out. That's a real guy. You shouldn't have done that. They were not phony slick investment bankers. They were like, street hustlers. Yeah. And I was very fond of them. Not all of them were that way, but a lot of them were that way. So you've seen this chick has just written a book about Facebook called Careless People. It's just come out and Facebook has sued her and she's not even allowed to go on television to talk about her book.

• 32:20Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  And she's signed some sort of non-disparagement agreement when she was leaving Facebook. So she can never talk about it now and they have to pull the books from the shelves.

• 32:27Dax Shepard?

  Because people like you have made everyone else wise.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Something like that.

• 32:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  So I didn't sign anything. And not only had I not signed anything, I told them, I'm quitting to go write a book and I'm gonna write a book about Wall Street. Why not tell them, right?

• 32:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  And some bitch shots brought me into a room and asked me, what are they paying you? And I said, I think it's like $40,000 advance. They'd just given me like $160,000 bonus. And that was like for them chump changes, like next year it's gonna be $400,000. Oh, my God. They brought me in a room and the tone was, they were troubled. They were really worried about my mental health. They thought I was screwing up my life by leaving what they thought was a sure fortune to go write a book. Who was gonna read a book?

• 33:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  They cared about my well-being. I remember regret saying this because it'll come back to haunt me. I have said it a few times. I don't think I've ever said it publicly. One of the guys, and he was extremely senior in the firm, said, Michael, we think you could run the firm one day.

• 33:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  And I remember thinking, you're out of your fucking mind. I can hardly show up. I can't brag myself to work. Did I run the firm one day? But they thought highly enough of me in that moment. They just cared.

• 33:34Dax Shepard?

  Well, how intriguing you must have been to them, too.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. I don't know.

• 33:38Dax Shepard?

  I think so because you all seemingly have the same goal, which is like, let's make a bunch of fucking money and let's make it for our clients. And to see someone have gotten to the place they're all desiring to be and to leave is just very intriguing.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Well, it was weird.

• 33:52Dax Shepard?

  This is Bradley from your podcast. To go be a Rhodes Scholar, that's so intriguing.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Instead of going to the Knicks right away. David Robinson, instead of going right to the Spurs, goes into the Navy. Roger Staubach does the same thing for the Cowboys. Some people go on Mormon missions.

• 34:08Dax Shepard?

  Fucking Tillman.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, people do that kind of thing. It's far more noble than anything I did, to go and fight for your country.

• 34:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  But to be wired so that... You're insisting on living your life instead of the life the world wants you to live. And that sounds like, oh, of course you live your life. But actually, there are always incentives to do stuff that you really don't particularly want to do.

• 34:28Dax Shepard?

  You just get on an exit and you're on that road. And it takes a great deal of effort to exit it.

• 34:36Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 34:42Dax Shepard?

  This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  What?

• 34:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I need to talk about something that doesn't get enough respect. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese. This is not a casual burger. This is a crafted burger. We're talking 100% fresh beef cooked right when you order it. No artificial flavors, no fillers, no preservatives, just beef doing what beef is supposed to do. And here's a detail I love. There's a cowbell sound in the kitchen. When somebody orders a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a cowbell goes off and the grill master throws a fresh patty down. That's like having your own entrance music at McDonald's. I want a cowbell for everything in life. The onions are hand-topped by someone who just knows the right amount. Two slices of cheese laid out in a star pattern, so every single bite gets cheese. And two pickles, side by side, so you're never in a pickle desert.

• 35:37Dax Shepard?

  Every bite is accounted for. Someone engineered this thing with love. I love a Quarter Pounder.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Me too, that's my order. It's a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. I love it. I didn't know they put so much effort that they did a star formation. I should have known because you can taste it when there's effort.

• 35:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the love. Don't tell anyone this, but I'll put two of them back.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not surprised.

• 36:01Dax Shepard?

  The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Fries and a Drink, now $8 for a limited time only. Only at McDonald's. For a limited time only, prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California, and for delivery. Fresh beef not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Offer not valid for delivery. We get support from No Bull.

• 36:21Dax Shepard?

  The holidays can get hectic. You finally hit a post summer routine and suddenly you're on hosting duty every week.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  That's when you really need to ground yourself.

• 36:30Dax Shepard?

  Exactly. And that's why I keep my training routine through the holidays. It's the whole No Bull idea. There's a no bullshit training brand built around consistency, honesty, and just putting in the work. It's not about adding more pressure to an already packed schedule. It's about having the gear and the habits to move through the season your way. My personal favorite, all three of the shoes are fantastic. The Outwork, the Outwork Flex, and the Drive 2. I like the Drive 2 because it's a hybrid. And I lift, of course, but I also like to do what's called box jumps.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 37:01Dax Shepard?

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

• 37:07Speaker 01

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

• 37:11Dax Shepard?

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

• 37:19Speaker 01

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

• 37:28Dax Shepard?

  Stay stronger than the season. Head to nobolproject.com all holiday season to shop new deals every week. This episode is supported by Helix.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Okay, can we talk about how November is basically survival mode between the holidays, the travel, the hosting, the cooking, the everything? Sleep is the one thing keeping me from completely unraveling.

• 37:50Dax Shepard?

  It really is the foundation. And I think people underestimate how much a bad mattress is quietly ruining their day. You wake up stiff, your back's angry, you're already behind before your feet hit the floor.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  That was me before Helix. I took their sleep quiz, which is so fast. It took me like two minutes and they matched me to a mattress that actually fits how I sleep. Not a guess, not a firm or soft coin flip. It's a real match. I have a midnight mattress and I really like it. I was noticing it because I actually had to sleep in one of my other beds.

• 38:18Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Recently.

• 38:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  That doesn't have a Helix mattress on it and I really could tell a big difference in my sleep.

• 38:24Dax Shepard?

  Temperature was all over the map.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  It was a mess. I need a new one.

• 38:27Dax Shepard?

  Look, they've got over 20 mattress models. So whether you sleep hot, need extra back support, or you've got a partner who moves around all night, there's one built for you. Plus free shipping and a 365 night happy with Helix guarantee. That's a full year to decide.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Helix has been named the most awarded mattress by Forbes, Wired, and more. So it's not just us being enthusiastic. The experts agree.

• 38:48Dax Shepard?

  Right now, Helix is running their Black Friday sale with up to 30% off. Go to helixsleep.com/armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. That's helixsleep.com/armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. Helixsleep.com/armchair. We get support from Skims. Okay, I have a confession. I genuinely love matching pajamas. It's the best part of Christmas morning, really. Everyone in the same matching set, looking ridiculously cute in front of the tree.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  I love matching pajamas. I'm literally going to be in coordinating sets with all my friends this holiday season. Because I got them, spoiler to my friends who are listening, the same Skims pajama set I've been living in. They are so soft and cozy and they look cute. So you can leave the house and go get a late night hot chocolate, be cozy.

• 39:41Dax Shepard?

  It's so great how Skims has sets for everyone, too. Women's, men's, kids, even your pets. So nobody in your life has to be left out this year.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  I have a bunch of different pajama sets. One of my favorite is the Organic Cotton Sleep Long Sleeve Set.

• 39:58Dax Shepard?

  Okay, tell me more.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  It is so comfortable, very chic, too. The top is a button down, but very, very soft, easy to sleep in. But as I said before, you can multi-purpose this and look super cute.

• 40:11Dax Shepard?

  Hot chocolate runs. It's like the pajamas we grew up in, except without the scratchy polyester that made opening presents feel more like a hot yoga class that nobody signed up for.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  All the nostalgia, none of the discomfort. Shop my favorite loungewear and pajamas at skims.com. After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you. Select Podcast in the survey and be sure to select Armchair Expert in the dropdown menu that follows. If you're looking for the perfect gifts for everyone on your list, the Skims Holiday Shop is now open at skims.com.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  This is a byproduct of first being raised with incredible privilege, so I don't fear starvation. So that's a necessary condition there. But it's also a byproduct of being from New Orleans and being raised in a pretty happy, very kind of family-oriented environment where you didn't get measured by your success, except in sports. But nobody knew what anybody else's dad did for a living. Yeah.

• 41:08Dax Shepard?

  That's unique.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  The value system was a little different, but I knew what happiness felt like.

• 41:12Dax Shepard?

  I also think New Orleans, New Orleanians, whatever you call them, I think they also value personality more than other places.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  What is really rewarded is openness to other people, openness to casual social interaction. Being entertaining is highly valued, but it isn't highly valued in a very self-conscious way. It's just appreciated and encouraged.

• 41:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. To be a character is cool.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:36Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so the book comes out, it's very successful, it is one of the seminal works from that time.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  Goes right to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list. Wow. And I'm nobody, and I'm 28. All of a sudden, I have a career. People are telling me I'm a born writer, which comes as news to anybody who ever taught me. Yeah, you should send that to the professor. Or the English teachers throughout time. It was like, I always had problems. And so it is a curious situation to be in.

• 41:59Dax Shepard?

  So my one follow-up question, because now that is 30, however many years.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  That was 1989.

• 42:04Dax Shepard?

  36 years in the rearview mirror. And I imagine you have a similar dissonance that Oliver Stone has, where Wall Street, although supposed to be a cautionary tale, was very inspiring to a lot of people to actually get into Wall Street. How do you take the fact that many people read Liar's Poker as a how-to? They want more tips.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  So this was a great lesson to me about how people read books. They read the book they want to read.

• 42:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  I got a letter after I wrote The Big Short from a very intelligent, very serious, very upset Oxford Don, a philosopher, I saved it, I don't remember his name, saying, "You were responsible once for diverting all this young talent to Wall Street. I thought you might have learned your lesson, but you've now done it again with The Big Short, and you really ought to take responsibility for what your readers do with your books." Whoa. And I'm not unsympathetic to the criticism. Maybe I should take more responsibility for the consequences of the books. However, if I do that, the books are going to suck.

• 43:05Dax Shepard?

  Also, the person who wants to read The Big Short and get that message is in search of that message and will find it somewhere.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  Find it somewhere.

• 43:13Dax Shepard?

  And I just talked about this the other day, it's like JD Salinger cannot take responsibility for two assassins holding his book. I'm sorry that those people felt inclined. Which ones? John Lennon's assassin was reading the book at the scene of the crime. There's been a suspicious amount of people that have found the inspiration to assassinate people. Now, I read that book as one of my favorites, I certainly didn't get that message.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  No.

• 43:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's Bill Gates's favorite book, he started Microsoft. But it's not on JD's, he can't fucking decide how people are gonna...

• 43:38Speaker 02

  And it isn't that every young person who read the book said, "No, I want to go work on Wall Street." Because I've had plenty of people say, "I read it and I hear what you thought it might have done and did that for me. It demystified it for me and I thought, 'I don't really need to go do that, I'm gonna go do what I'm gonna go do.'" So I had plenty of people say that, but I've had more people say, "It's why I went to Wall Street." Wow. But those people would have found some other reason to go to Wall Street.

• 43:57Dax Shepard?

  Exactly. I do think there's an appeal to it, I get it, it's like if you're a young dude, it's the closest you can get to have a career that is playing a video game. You chase points, more points, you're in a constant state of dopamine and reward center being triggered and all the addiction things, I get it. People who want to live at 11, that's the spot for you.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, you get to play a video game with a stripper on your desk.

• 44:19Dax Shepard?

  Yes, while eating too much guacamole that you've ordered.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  No, that's right.

• 44:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  I think there was this other thing, books have dog whistles, and sometimes you don't realize what the dog whistle is until you say, "Oh my god, look at all these dogs running" because of the book.

• 44:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  And the dog whistle for this book was, "I persuade the reader, because it's true, that I don't know anything. Art history major, yeah, I studied economics, but that doesn't teach you how to make money on Wall Street. I get to Wall Street, yeah, I learn intellectually how these markets work, but I know nothing I say to you is gonna cause you to go get rich. And if I knew something, I'd go to our trader and tell him to do it and make money for the firm. There's almost no way that what I'm saying has actual financial value, and yet the world is paying me a fortune for it." There are lots of young men sitting at American universities who think, "I don't know anything and no one's ever gonna pay me to do anything because I don't know anything." But look, he doesn't know anything.

• 45:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  And they paid him a fortune. This is the place for me, that I'm just like him.

• 45:14Dax Shepard?

  Or Hollywood.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:16Dax Shepard?

  There's a lot of options.

• 45:17Speaker 02

  Or I'm just like him. There was, "I identify with you." And wow, it pays to be that. And so that happened, a lot.

• 45:24Dax Shepard?

  I do want to talk for a second about Big Short because I have the enormous pleasure, and I want to thank you to your face... To getting an issue of Vanity Fair where you started writing in 09 and reading the article that led to that book, or maybe that was an excerpt.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  It's Portfolio Magazine.

• 45:43Dax Shepard?

  Is that what it was?

• 45:44Speaker 02

  It was a kind of an S magazine, but The Big Short starts when an editor at Portfolio calls me and says, "You want to revisit?" And I said, "Nobody will talk to me. I am just toxic. If anybody sees me on a trading floor, anybody who brought me in is going to get fired."

• 46:00Dax Shepard?

  Who was the guy who rattled the automotive industry with the safety glass?

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Ralph Nader?

• 46:03Dax Shepard?

  Yes, like the Ralph Nader of finance.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  I just thought, "I'm toxic." But however, I sensed that the things that had gone wrong in these big Wall Street firms had their origins in my experience at Solomon Brothers and that this was kind of the end of a story that I'd written the beginning of. Yeah. And then I started just trying, calling some of the guys who had lost all the money for the Wall Street firms. And they were individual traders who had lost like $10 billion. Oh my. To me, it was unthinkable because the place I had left, the Wall Street firm had such an informational advantage in the market, they seemed to just win every time. And I thought that was going to happen forever.

• 46:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  Somehow Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns had become the dumb money at the table. I thought, "That's the story."

• 46:47Dax Shepard?

  Well, AIG the most.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  AIG too.

• 46:49Dax Shepard?

  They were selling the credit default swap.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  They were selling, all these people were selling insurance.

• 46:53Dax Shepard?

  And I just want to say to people really quick, a credit default swap, it basically is, in concept, I own a million shares of General Motors. I want to make sure I have a little insurance in case it ever goes out of business that I don't get wiped out. So that's a credit default swap. But you actually don't have to own a million dollars of stock. This is the fucking major hiccup in the premise of this product. So I can say, "I want to insure 10 million shares of Berkshire Hathaway and then launch some scandal."

• 47:18Speaker 02

  I could buy fire insurance on your house. Now, what incentive does that create?

• 47:21Dax Shepard?

  That you want my house to burn down?

• 47:23Speaker 02

  I want your house to burn down.

• 47:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's an insane product.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  There is a wonderful New Yorker writer named Casey Sep who wrote a book about Harper Lee. And in this book, she creates the book that Harper Lee was trying to create when she got blocked. And it's about a minister in the South who bought life insurance policies on other people and then murdered them. Of course.

• 47:43Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes. We see this on Dateline every week.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  And made a huge living.

• 47:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  You should not be able to buy insurance policies on things you don't own. Exactly.

• 47:55Dax Shepard?

  Or lives that aren't yours.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  That's right. However, Wall Street creates this product where you can buy insurance policies on securities you don't own.

• 48:02Dax Shepard?

  And they're astronomical, people should know. So it's like the factor of I can insure a million dollars worth of stock I don't own for a very little amount of money. The returns were astronomical.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  It's pennies on the dollar. I can buy a billion dollars insurance for a few million dollars on these bonds that are never gonna go bad.

• 48:20Dax Shepard?

  And Lehman Brothers, which people own credit default swaps on Lehman Brothers, started as a rumor that took down the firm.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  That's right. So they create all these incentives to destroy all these companies.

• 48:29Dax Shepard?

  But it dovetails nicely into the fact that you started when mortgage-backed bonds happened because now we have all these mortgage bundles that were being sold all over the place.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  And you buy shares on them even if you didn't own the things. And so I wander back into Wall Street for Portfolio Magazine and I start calling some of these traders and they wanna talk to me. That's when I thought, Christ, I might be able to do this because I can get that side of the story. And it turned out they wanted to talk to me because Liar's Poker was why they were on Wall Street. Wow. And it was like after about ten years, it was like I created the financial crisis with this book. Stories need structure. And there were two aha moments. One is, oh, they were the dumb money, who's the smart money?

• 49:05Dax Shepard?

  Michael Burry?

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:07Dax Shepard?

  That's among the most interesting stories I've ever read. It's such an amazing personal story, encased in this kind of world event. But the notion that you have a man who has a wandering eye or a lazy eye and believes that's why he's...

• 49:21Speaker 02

  A glass eye.

• 49:22Dax Shepard?

  A glass eye, even better. And that's why he's not social and that's why he explains all of his awkwardness with all of his relationships through this glass eye. And then he's a fucking surgeon?

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Training to be.

• 49:32Dax Shepard?

  A neurologist.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  And then starts trading and he's the only person willing to sit down and read the actual loan applications.

• 49:38Dax Shepard?

  And then wins and has a son who clearly is autistic. Then takes the test and as he's saying, my son does not have autism and he's getting a hundred percent. I mean, what a fucking story.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  There was this cliche on Wall Street when I was there in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. And he was actually the one eyed man who was king in the land of the blind. And there's this other thing about him. It wasn't until the movie came out that I understood it. Christian Bale plays him in the movie. Christian Bale nailed him so unbelievably exactly on the screen. And I had the thought, I could not have described to Christian Bale. What he needed to do to play that role. How did that happen? So Christian Bale finally confessed to me what he'd done. Michael Berry said, Christian Bale called me up and said he wanted to spend the day with me and it was the weirdest day I've ever had in my life. But Christian Bale came and studied him for a day.

• 50:26Dax Shepard?

  He was you on the training floor.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  That's right. And asked for his clothes at the end of the day. So Michael Berry shipped him his clothes, so he wore his clothes. But Christian Bale figured out that all the weird mannerisms, he said, it all came from him breathing in the wrong places in sentences. If you try this, if you, if you do this, all of a sudden you're herky jerky in all kinds of odd ways. And he's told Adam McKay, the director, as long as I'm breathing in the wrong place, I will reproduce this guy's physical.

• 50:54Dax Shepard?

  He is the best living actor. I'll be on record saying he's impossibly good.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  There's something about when someone is really good at what they do, there's a simplicity to it. Everything slows down for them. When he said that, I actually thought, first, I'm ashamed that I spent a year with Michael Berry. And I did not notice that.

• 51:11Dax Shepard?

  You wouldn't have been able to pinpoint that it was his breathing that was wild.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  To notice things and I never noticed that, but yes, it's true. And then I thought, when I go write about people, I'm going to try, spend a little time pretending I'm Christian Bale. And asking myself, if I'm Christian Bale, how do I play him?

• 51:27Speaker 01

  If I had to be him.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:29Dax Shepard?

  I think would be.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Physicalities.

• 51:31Dax Shepard?

  Even funnier as a protocol is you call the subject and you go, I want to do a piece on you. But first I'm going to send actor Christian Bale. Couple hours and then I'm gonna meet with Christian, then I'm gonna come talk to you. That's a very unconventional approach I have to writing, but you will be sitting with Christian.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  I have this assistant. Spend a couple of hours with you just to tell me how to describe you.

• 51:49Dax Shepard?

  The movie's so good. Were you so happy with it?

• 51:52Speaker 02

  Yes, more than happy. I was shocked he pulled it off. I thought it was undoable. I didn't see how you made it. People buy stuff all the time they're never gonna make. I thought this is one of those.

• 52:00Dax Shepard?

  It's incredible. Yeah, but he had to get really creative.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  And he nailed it. And it's got real relevance now. I think that event, the financial crisis, speaks to this moment in our politics right now. The anger it created, and it was a justifiable anger. All of a sudden, we go from a society where everybody's at least willing, at least pretend to believe that it's capitalism and we're all living by the same rules. It's fair, but it's harsh.

• 52:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 52:24Speaker 02

  Then all of a sudden, no, these rich people are not playing by the same rules. If I fail, I fail. If they fail, the government comes in and not only bails them out, but enables them to keep paying themselves huge sums of money. What they did caused enormous harm to me. They should at least be out of business.

• 52:42Dax Shepard?

  Doubt if you were on a line making SUVs for General Motors that hit you. It just really knew no boundaries, that crisis.

• 52:49Speaker 02

  It radicalized a lot of people.

• 52:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and it's funny because we can read about savings and loan scandal milking right after you wrote Liar's Poker. And you kind of think, okay, we identified this thing we must be aware of. But then it resurfaces in 2008 and you go, okay. And what you really have to admit is this impulse is never going anywhere. It'll be whack a mole for eternity. This is the nature of people.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  I think that's right.

• 53:12Dax Shepard?

  And it'll have different shapes over your lifetime, but you're gonna witness these things every 15, 20 years. And that's kind of the reality on this planet. That's my cynical takeaway.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  But if you think about what came out of that event, the Tea Party, which morphs into Trump.

• 53:26Dax Shepard?

  Tea Party even into QAnon. Yeah, exactly.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  And Bitcoin, which is a reaction to the mistrust of the institutions and the governments. I remember when I was reporting the book, one of the obstacles I faced was that the smart people who'd be on the right side, and it often tried to do the right thing. They didn't just make the bet, or in one case, before they made the bet, they went to the Wall Street Journal, they went to the FBI, they went to The SEC and nobody wanted to hear about it. They made the bet sort of more in sorrow than in greed. But they were terrified that the society is going to wake up and is going to have to turn on someone. And they're going to turn on me because I made all this money out of it. And getting the subjects comfortable, me coming in and talking to them to write about them in a way that was going to make them very prominent. Made them very nervous.

• 54:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're shining a light. Wait, somehow this guy made a billion dollars during this?

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Like the two guys.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Those two guys were the most sensitive.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I bet. They seemed like such sweethearts.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  Two young guys in the garage in Berkeley.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  Now, what wasn't in the book, it was the one time in my career, I regret allowing a subject to tell me, we'll tell you everything, but there's one thing you have to keep out. Don't have ever done it to me before, but I thought in this case I should do it. It was worth it. His father was the vice chairman of Lehman Brothers. He and his father had this argument while they were making the bet. Because the father had funded the firm, like the father would say, Lehman Brothers would never do such things. And Lehman Brothers would never be in this position. And the son saying, no, your firm's actually corrupt. It got very heated. If you were ever going to turn this into a different kind of drama, that father-son thing, it killed me. I couldn't use it.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:58Dax Shepard?

  That would be very frustrating to be telling this whole story and to be leaving out such a compelling part of it.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  I hate the feeling that I haven't told the reader everything I think is important.

• 55:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  It was the one time I felt this is kind of important. The reader should know this. But that was the only time. I have moments like that in my life. I remember I stopped blurbing books like 20 years ago. Because someone I had a social connection with asked me to blur the book. I didn't like the book. I could not do it. So I was lying on the back of the book. I said, I'm just never doing this again. So I'm never going to do this again either. If I can't include all of it, it was worth it, but uncomfortable.

• 55:29Dax Shepard?

  We cut stuff in here that any guest wants cut. And our feeling is generally more just like, oh, what a bummer. That's a really good spot and they're too nervous about this.

• 55:40Speaker 02

  How often does that happen?

• 55:41Speaker 01

  It happens a fair amount, but there are very few times, but there have been times that I've pushed back. There's a reason why this is important to keep in.

• 55:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, most often it's heartbreaking because they're worried about the reaction. And it's so clear that the reaction would be very positive and supportive. And it's just like, you don't see that this is actually great. It's never like, oh damn, we don't have a juicy thing. It's just like, oh man, you don't know that this is actually quite endearing about you.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  So this is very funny you say this because universally, when I write a book. The main characters are a little upset with me because I don't give anybody any editorial control and they read it when it comes out and they call, we have a conversation. They don't feel betrayed exactly, that's not right. They feel like I have exposed them.

• 56:27Dax Shepard?

  They feel very vulnerable.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  They feel naked and they're upset that they're naked. And then what happens is people appreciate them. Yes. And their best friend calls and says, that's you. And they realize my best friend knows that's me and still loves me and so everything's okay. And then they forget that they were ever naked.

• 56:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  And then they forget they were ever upset. I don't write books about people I don't feel some sympathy for. This is not a hostile act.

• 56:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  I know exactly what you're saying. People don't know how other people see them and they think they're managing the situation and they aren't. I know that you are seeing me right now in some way slightly different than I would see myself if I was sitting there describing myself and it would make me uncomfortable to know what you were seeing. Of course. But it's okay.

• 57:10Dax Shepard?

  As we say in AA, it's none of your business. Like what he thinks of me is actually none of your business.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:16Dax Shepard?

  Okay, would you agree that, I guess it's five seasons, not four, but this season of your podcast Against the Rules.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  So we took on sports gambling as a way to talk about the society really, but it's a really interesting situation and it's an awkward thing to take on because everybody who might take it on is being paid by the sports gambling companies. There's not a lot of honest stuff about it.

• 57:36Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  And I've had friends who gamble on sports or who are friends with the people who own DraftKings and FanDuel or whatever, whose opinion about the industry has changed because of the podcast. So that I've noticed.

• 57:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  And I was just at, this past weekend, the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. It's like the Moneyball Conference and it's 3,000 nerds in a room and a lot of GMs of sports teams and it's been overrun already by DraftKings and FanDuel. And so there are all these people from DraftKings and FanDuel and it felt like I was the stink bomb in the room. They didn't have any panels on the subject, but it's clear that this is an uncomfortable...

• 58:12Dax Shepard?

  It's kind of like exposing CTE.

• 58:14Speaker 02

  Or smoking and cancer. People get pissed off because there's a lot of money at stake already.

• 58:18Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  Those two companies are 30, 40 billion dollar companies. It is... Sinister, what we're doing to young men right now. It's not just with sports gambling. We're creating young male anger at a fantastic rate. If you were to set out to create as much young male anger as you could, we're doing a great job.

• 58:35Dax Shepard?

  Let's take away manual labor jobs. Let's take away the trades. Let's stop sending them to college. Let's get that suicide rate up.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  Let's tell them they're evil from the minute they walk in the classroom when they're in first grade. And then, let's create an industry that preys on young male overconfidence.

• 58:48Dax Shepard?

  And testosterone, and rites of passage, and acts of bravery.

• 58:52Speaker 02

  Yes, and that has, with unbelievable precision, the ability to identify people who don't know what they're doing, and get them to do as much of it as possible.

• 59:02Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  At the same time, they can, with great precision, identify the very, very, very few people who actually know what they're doing when they're betting on sports, and kick them out of the casino.

• 59:12Dax Shepard?

  Yes!

• 59:12Speaker 02

  It's diabolical.

• 59:13Dax Shepard?

  Those algorithms, they can go, oh, this guy's too good of a gambler.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  He actually is making edge bets, the bets that have positive expected value. He knows something about golfers that we don't know. We can't take the bet.

• 59:24Dax Shepard?

  And he's gone.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  So you just say, you can't do this?

• 59:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 59:27Speaker 02

  We got a pro gambler who knew what he was doing to give us his bets to place, and we participated a little bit, so it was legal. And we got booted out of everywhere in a matter of four or five bets. Even where we'd lost money, because they could identify that the bet, even though the bet lost, it was a smart bet.

• 59:42Dax Shepard?

  That's like a bar that's only letting alcoholics in. You gotta prove you're an alcoholic first.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Literally.

• 59:47Dax Shepard?

  And then, anyone who can manage their drinking, you get the fuck out of here.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. If you're just gonna drink water, we don't want you.

• 59:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we want fucking addicts in here.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  How can this be legal?

• 59:55Dax Shepard?

  Well, let's go through it. Can we start? I was really fascinated with Dan Wan. He's a great character. So Dan Wan started studying fans, which no one had really ever studied. And I think the reigning opinion of people who attended sporting events was a certain type of person. And through his studies, he found out, well, you know, you'd be surprised to find out that fans, they donate more money, they're more politically active, they have higher GPAs. They're not the group you think they are.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  No, they're socially engaged, but they are not rational.

• 1:00:21Dax Shepard?

  Right, so now we get into that kind of Danny Kahneman take on these guys, which is what happens to someone's thinking when they're a fan?

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  I mean, it's motivated reasoning. You will systematically think your team is going to do better than you should think, or your favorite players. You've got one half your brain in a really irrational space already because you are a fan.

• 1:00:40Dax Shepard?

  Well, I like when he puts it so simply, like, just the original proposition is, "Come spend two hours with us. There's a 50% chance that you're going to be very upset at the end of this." And it costs a lot of money. You see the bias right there. Any rational person would be like, "No, those are terrible odds if I'm going to spend a bunch of money."

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  When you introduce gambling into this mind, it's already a mind that thinks it knows things it doesn't know.

• 1:01:01Dax Shepard?

  He gets into the superstitions.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:03Dax Shepard?

  And I, myself, just did this. I went to a Detroit Lions game, the one they lost in the playoffs, and I hadn't been to a game all year. And I went, and it was like a big deal. And they lost, and I'm like, "It's because I hugged the coach. He didn't want to hug me." I'm like, "Why do I have to hug that fucking guy? Because he's on TV?" I had this whole story. I'm like, "All Detroit hates my guts." I'm kind of buying it.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  It's funny what gets studied by academics and what doesn't. And as he points out, the fan was just sitting there, waiting to be studied. It's such an important character in American life. But pinheads like me generally don't like sports. People were just turning a blind eye to it because they thought it was not worthy of attention. And for our podcast, it's worthy of attention just to establish the brain space in which this gambling industry is going to enter.

• 1:01:44Dax Shepard?

  Because they are targeting fans.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  They're targeting fans.

• 1:01:46Dax Shepard?

  That's why it's very important to understand, right out of the gates, that a fan is doing some irrational thinking.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  So, most people who bet are a fan of the thing? That's surprising to me already. I would assume most people who get into sports betting aren't fans, so they could be sort of objective about it.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  There are some who do that.

• 1:02:02Dax Shepard?

  Then they're kicked off.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  Overwhelmingly, they are fans.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  So, what happened in this country is that, back in 1992, Senator Bill Bradley, former New York Knick, had passed a federal law that forbid states from legalizing sports gambling that didn't have it already. And that grandfathered in Nevada, for example.

• 1:02:22Dax Shepard?

  Maybe Atlantic City?

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  No, they didn't.

• 1:02:24Dax Shepard?

  Oh, they didn't have a sports book there?

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  Then what happens is, because Atlantic City's not grandfathered, they don't have it, New Jersey gets upset they can't do it. And Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey... Launches what seems to be a quixotic and futile lawsuit to try to overturn Bradley's law. It succeeds in 2018. In 2018, the Supreme Court says this law is unconstitutional. It's up to the states. Any state that wants to legalize sports betting can. Since then, 38 states have legalized it. Which creating all kinds of weird natural experiments like Alabama doesn't, Mississippi does, and suicide rates go up in Mississippi and savings rates go down in Mississippi. You can see the effects of it.

• 1:03:00Dax Shepard?

  Bankruptcy.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  All that stuff.

• 1:03:01Dax Shepard?

  My own personal story. I got to have dinner one time with Ted Olson.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  So did I.

• 1:03:06Dax Shepard?

  And I find him to be one of the most impressive people I've ever had a dinner with. And what's so interesting to me about Ted Olson is he was the lawyer that argued in front of Supreme Court that Citizens United, is that what it was called? So he has this one thing on his record that us on the left would fucking hate, which he made corporations humans. And at the restaurant, the busboy comes over, starts crying, and says, "Thank you so much. I got to marry the love of my life because of you." And then he's on the other side and gets rid of DOMA. You're like, "Fucking, here's complicated life for you." And so brilliant.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  And he's the lawyer Chris Christie hires to argue the Supreme Court case.

• 1:03:42Dax Shepard?

  Right? I mean, this is the reality of life.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  Well, he's just a good lawyer.

• 1:03:47Dax Shepard?

  But he cared deeply about DOMA. He felt like that was a huge violation.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  But did he care about DOMA, or did he care about winning a hard case?

• 1:03:54Dax Shepard?

  No. He truly said this is an injustice and believed that. And it was a liberty issue, and he believes in liberty. And sometimes liberty falls on your side and liberty falls on the other side.

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  You make a very good point in asking that question because I had dinner with him too, and we interviewed him. I really, really liked him.

• 1:04:10Dax Shepard?

  He's damn likable. He's from the South.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  He died.

• 1:04:12Dax Shepard?

  He died?

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  He died three months ago.

• 1:04:14Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  And he died right after I had dinner with him, like two weeks after I had dinner with him. But I asked him, I was just curious, you're the most famous constitutional-

• 1:04:22Dax Shepard?

  Most successful.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  -argued the most cases before the Supreme Court. What's the strategy here? You're not just taking anything that comes in the door. And he would say that, one is, I don't want to argue something I don't myself believe. But also, if I think this is a nonstarter, it's a waste of time. So he's also picking cases. He's looking at the Supreme Court. He has the Supreme Court wired. He knows what they think about things. And he's picking the things that he thinks are going to succeed. And he had an odd premonition that sports gambling would work.

• 1:04:47Dax Shepard?

  One element of this that I heard in the podcast, which is fascinating- Is someone comparing some definition is, is this a game of luck or a game of skill? Because tournaments are not illegal.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  The reason we have two huge corporations in the middle of this business that are not Las Vegas casinos, DraftKings and FanDuel, preceding the legalization of sports gambling, there was a fight to legalize fantasy sports. And they were two fantasy sports companies. And fantasy sports looks a lot like gambling. You're entering competitions and you buy in and you win money. And they went state to state, these two companies, with very shrewd lobbyists and persuaded a lot of states that this was not gambling because it was a game of skill.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  But poker's a game of skill and it's gambling.

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  Yes, so is blackjack. It's a slippery slope and where they had success was especially where there weren't Native American tribes to oppose them.

• 1:05:37Dax Shepard?

  We'll get to California, but that has a lot to do with California, right?

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  California and Florida are both places where the tribes are very powerful. And they had the right to have gambling on the reservation. They didn't want anybody doing anything like gambling off the reservation.

• 1:05:47Dax Shepard?

  That's right. And anyone who lives in California, every time these props come up, you see these are very heavily funded. Because you have casinos on one side and you have the tribes on the other. You see more of those commercials than anything else.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:05:57Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so the Supreme Court says states can't.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  And the states are starved of revenue and they're looking for new sources of revenue. They want to believe. And FanDuel and DraftKings lead the charge and legalize sports gambling in lots of places with state regulation. But if you interview the state regulators, they basically say they're running circles around us. The state regulator in Ohio was very funny. We interviewed him. He said, "My teenage son is getting pizza boxes with free sports bets attached to it from these companies, and I'm the regulator."

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:06:26Dax Shepard?

  And now I gotta go, okay, no more on pizza boxes. They're guacamoleing it.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  With your Uber ride, you get a free sports bet. And so they're enticing young people.

• 1:06:35Dax Shepard?

  I bet it's not a lot on the salads.

• 1:06:39Dax Shepard?

  The quinoa bowl probably doesn't have free.

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  That's probably right. So I live in a state, California, where sports betting has not been legalized. Nevertheless, the vast majority of the boys in my son's high school class are betting on sports. So they are both underage and in a state where it's illegal. He was like, "Yeah, I can do this. Here's the app. You find ways to get around the restrictions and you just do it." So we actually did not. Episode where I gave him $5,000 and put a GoPro on his head, basically, or a wire on him and said, let's go see how smart you are and we're going to learn why you shouldn't be doing this. I inoculated him, just like handing him a box of cigarettes and saying, you gotta smoke the whole box. Yeah. Or a fifth of whiskey. You don't get to get up until you finish it. Yeah. And it was really interesting to see him figure out what was going on. For me, it's obvious, right? I was on Wall Street. I know a lot of people in that world.

• 1:07:24Speaker 02

  I know that if DraftKings or FanDuel are trying to get me to do something, I shouldn't do it.

• 1:07:28Dax Shepard?

  Yes, you enter life as I do, which is you're in Las Vegas and you see they've built a glass pyramid in the desert. And you must go, I guess the people gambling don't win, right? You just acknowledge the reality of there's systems at play that are much more complicated than I could ever be as an individual. And I have to acknowledge that enormous asymmetric.

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  It's true in all markets. If you're going to teach a trader, someone who's going to trade anything, one thing, you teach them the idea of adverse selection, that if someone is finding you to trade with you, it's quite likely that person knows something you don't know. Or to expand on this, if there's a market price for something, there's all this information in that market price. And a bet, like a money line or a point spread is a market price on a sporting event. Unless you know something that the market doesn't know, and you better know why you know something the market doesn't know, because the market knows a lot, you are disadvantaged, that the market knows stuff you don't know. So the person on the other side of the bet likely knows something you don't know. That's your baseline.

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  So there are, I know them, professional sports gamblers who know that golfer A is better on this kind of course than the market knows and is going to overperform at this tournament because this kind of course suits him. Or fraternity brother knows that his fraternity brother who's on the basketball team has just agreed to miss the first free throw in the basketball game this weekend. There is inside information that is useful. If you have that, go for it. I mean, it's not a chance. I'm endorsing you.

• 1:08:57Dax Shepard?

  If you have to gamble.

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  If you have to gamble, try to know something. Yeah, you should know something.

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:09:10Dax Shepard?

  We are supported by Squarespace. So here's something I think about a lot. Most people I talk to on this show, the ones doing really interesting things, they all had a version of their work that existed before anyone else saw it. It was just theirs, notes, ideas, projects they were tinkering with. And then at some point, they made the decision to share it. That's the part that's scary, right? Going from, "I'm working on something," to, "Here's what I made." Rob went through the exact same thing, building our site on Squarespace. And what made it doable was that he didn't have to become a web developer overnight. He just had to show up with the idea. Squarespace handles the rest. Beautiful templates that actually look like you hired someone, built an SEO so people can find you, email campaigns, scheduling, analytics, all under one roof. No code, no patchwork of random tools.

• 1:09:55Dax Shepard?

  And honestly, the thing I keep coming back to is how low the barrier is. If you've got something you've been building quietly and you're ready for people to see it, Squarespace makes that leap feel a lot less dramatic. Head to Squarespace.com/dax for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

• 1:10:17Dax Shepard?

  We get support from Superhuman. Look, I love what I do. The conversations, the ideas, the creative stuff. But there's this whole other layer of work that eats my day alive. The inbox that never ends. Docs I need to get through, threads I'm behind on. And by the time I've dealt with all of that, the stuff I actually want to focus on gets whatever's left. What I needed was something that just works where I'm already working. Not another tab to open, not another thing to set up. Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly, is different. It's already right there, inside your email, your docs, your browser. You don't go to it, it's already working alongside you. You're deep in a long thread, highlight it, and it pulls the key points. About to send something important? It flags what doesn't add up before it leaves your hands.

• 1:11:02Dax Shepard?

  It knows your style, your workflows, and it just backs you up without getting in the way. A thought partner that's already up to speed, at your service, not after your job. So do yourself a favor and try Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly. Find out more at superhuman.com.

• 1:11:21Dax Shepard?

  This episode is brought to you by Dell. Gifts mean more when they have the power to give more. They can inspire more discovery, give more confidence and unwrap more of who you are. This Black Friday, give a gift that goes beyond the box. The Dell XPS 13 laptop. With a beautiful design and cutting edge performance, it helps you unlock more possibilities. It's the thinnest, lightest XPS laptop yet. With touchscreen, a backlit keyboard and long lasting battery life to power you through your day. Built with a durable aluminum chassis, weighing just 2.2 pounds and Intel Core processors. It's fast, reliable and portable enough to keep up wherever you go. Visit dell.com to explore the possibilities of XPS.

• 1:12:05Dax Shepard?

  While shopping, you'll also find great perks like Dell Rewards. Fast free shipping, premium support and financing with flexible payment options. Plus, you can find great deals on monitors and accessories. That means you can score a whole new setup now for less. This Black Friday sale is one you don't want to miss. Head to dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 1:12:32Dax Shepard?

  We get support from our sponsor Lilly. For adults with obesity or with excess weight and weight related medical problems, it's time to find out about Foundo or for Gleepran. Foundo is a once daily prescription GLP-1 medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity or some adults with overweight who also have weight related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off.

• 1:12:57Speaker 04

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• 1:13:39Speaker 04

  in 0.8 milligram, 2.5 milligram, 5.5 milligram, 9 milligram, 14.5 milligram, and 17.2 milligram tablets. Learn more at foundo.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX. Now is perfect to talk to your doctor about Foundo.

• 1:14:01Dax Shepard?

  Once this happens and the Supreme Court allows this, you go to Vegas and you talk to some like veteran bookmakers. What has the impact of this been on Vegas? And what are the people in Vegas saying?

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  Vegas was not ready for the change. FanDuel and DraftKings has this huge advantage over the Las Vegas casinos who have sports books. Their business model was more like a tech company, the FanDuel and DraftKings, more like a social media company. They knew everything about the behavior of their fantasy players. They knew what their weaknesses were, what vices they could be encouraged to indulge in, who would make what kind of bet. And the fantasy sports companies knew everything. That was their business model, knowing about their customers. That's a new idea for Las Vegas. I mean, they know the high rollers. They know it in a very general way, but they don't know how to take someone who is engaged in two-legged parlays and turn them into someone who will make even worse three-legged parlay bets.

• 1:14:56Dax Shepard?

  It is nefarious.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:57Dax Shepard?

  It's just straight nefarious. It's like payday loan type shit.

• 1:15:00Speaker 02

  Imagine prohibition ends in the 1930s and there's a liquor company that actually has incredibly detailed information on how to get addicts to drink.

• 1:15:11Dax Shepard?

  They have your whole history pre-prohibition.

• 1:15:13Speaker 02

  They have every drink you ever had.

• 1:15:14Dax Shepard?

  This guy can't say no to rye.

• 1:15:16Speaker 02

  That's right. And they show up on your doorstep.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  And give it to you for free.

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  And start to get you going again.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Jesus.

• 1:15:22Dax Shepard?

  Get you off that wagon.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  That liquor company has this huge advantage. And that's the advantage that FanDuel and DraftKings have.

• 1:15:28Dax Shepard?

  What about the mules and the runners?

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  Once I found my character, the professional sports gambler, Rufus Peabody is his name. He's among the smartest sports gamblers on the planet. And he's been making a very good living out of it for 15 years.

• 1:15:41Dax Shepard?

  What is a very good living?

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  Millions of dollars a year.

• 1:15:43Dax Shepard?

  Millions of dollars.

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  Oh, I thought you said billions.

• 1:15:46Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  I was like, oh my.

• 1:15:47Speaker 02

  And he works his ass off. He really does have edges in the marketplace and it's not easy. But part of his problem is that in the old world, the Vegas casinos would take his bets. In the new world, FanDuel and DraftKings won't. They figure out he knows what he's doing and they don't want the bets. So to get his bets down, he has to hire networks of people like his mother. They're professional people.

• 1:16:08Dax Shepard?

  Well, he's got to trust them.

• 1:16:09Speaker 02

  He has to trust them and they have to be smart at disguising the bets. So that if you're actually a professional mule, you're actually placing these bets for Rufus. You do things like make stupid bets occasionally.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:21Speaker 02

  So that they don't detect.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  So you don't look so pro.

• 1:16:23Dax Shepard?

  You gotta trick the algorithm.

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  This is wild.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  You live in New York, you bet on the Knicks. You do that for a little bit so that they classify you as dumb better. And then you come in a lot of bunch of smart bets. So our producer in the podcast, Lydia Jean Cott, who one, doesn't know the difference between a basketball and football. And two, is such a nervous Nelly around money and risk, would never go into a casino. That's too scary kind of thing. Rufus gave Lydia Jean 100, 150,000, I can't remember, lots of dollars to place bets with. And she was running.

• 1:16:52Speaker 01

  This is hilarious.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  Her bank shut off her credit cards because they thought someone had stolen them because there was all this money coming through the bank account. She has been banned from, I think, every sports book in the country and has been told, you're never welcome here again. The funny moment was, there was one sports book, MGM, so one of the Vegas sports books, took her first bets, the smart bets. The bets actually lost. So she lost a bunch of money right away on golf, like tens of thousands of dollars. They thought, oh, dumb high roller. They misidentified her. They weren't good at figuring out those bets were smart. They wanted to make her VIP. They got in touch with her and they gave her free tickets to Charlie XCX. And she calls and she says, this has been the most miserable experience of my life. I don't want to be doing this. When can I stop?

• 1:17:34Dax Shepard?

  Cortisol levels are through the roof.

• 1:17:36Speaker 02

  Now I can go see Charlie at Madison Square Garden. And she was so excited, but she made the mistake of continuing to place bets. And the day of the concert, they called and said, we're taking away the tickets.

• 1:17:47Dax Shepard?

  They took away. Those bastards.

• 1:17:49Speaker 02

  Those bastards.

• 1:17:50Dax Shepard?

  Oh my god.

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  Those bastards broke her heart. I should have bought her tickets.

• 1:17:54Dax Shepard?

  Well, I was just gonna say, you should have bought her.

• 1:17:57Speaker 02

  So funny. I should have bought her tickets, but I was thinking, this is such a great end to the story. I just want to leave it at that.

• 1:18:02Dax Shepard?

  That's crazy. They can do that?

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  I want to hear her tears.

• 1:18:05Dax Shepard?

  You have your priorities straight. How does the VIP status work on these online things? And how is that turbocharging the addiction?

• 1:18:11Speaker 02

  If you get to be a VIP, you have a problem. I was talking to a bunch of people who manage large sums of money for like university endowments and pension funds and all the rest, people who are giving money to Wall Street people to invest for them. And they asked me, if you were interviewing a Wall Street investor to decide whether to trust them with your money, what question would you ask? And I said, I'd ask, have you ever been a VIP at a sportsbook? Because if you're a VIP at a sportsbook, you're exactly the kind of person who should not be investing money. They have identified you are bad with money. You are going to be a long-term cash cow for them, make a lot of stupid bets. And yeah, we'll all frame it as, I can afford to lose this. It's just fun for me. It's recreational for me to lose a million bucks. In this pool of VIPs are lots of people who can't afford to lose the money.

• 1:18:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  And they don't make the distinction. One of our sports gambling was want to see how badly the big sportsbooks would behave. He started to behave like an addict and would say things like, I just need another line of credit that my wife doesn't see. Let me in in the game. And they would say things like, you can't put this in writing. Just tell me over the phone and we'll get you the line of credit. I would say that if you manage to get yourself designated a VIP, it's an embarrassment. It's not a compliment.

• 1:19:20Dax Shepard?

  Oof. Oh, boy. I want to thank California publicly and I want to acknowledge my own stupidity as a fan. So I see this Jake Paul fight with Mike Tyson. I grew up watching Mike Tyson knock guys out. I know the one thing that doesn't decline as you get older as a boxer is your knockout punch. We watched George Foreman drop Michael Moore, very late age. And I'm like, this kid's never fought. So I see that Mike Tyson knocking him out plays three to one. I'm like, I have to make this bet. I sign on to one of these sites, I can't even remember which. Go to places bet, you can't. And I'm like, I can't. It's because I'm in California, but I didn't even know that.

• 1:19:55Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:19:55Dax Shepard?

  So I'm pissed. Then I go away to Hawaii that weekend. I can't make a bet in Hawaii. I don't know what to do.

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  They have a real problem with gambling in Hawaii. It's one of the couple of states that have moral objections.

• 1:20:06Dax Shepard?

  Good for them. So I go down there and I've got to take some side bets with human beings. I end up getting $300 on the table. And of course, he loses and he doesn't knock out Jake Paul. I was like, thank God California didn't take my bet. I was like, I think I was willing to go like 10 grand on it. And he goes, Joe, I'm a fan of Mike Tyson. I don't even think about the fact that, okay, Jake Paul's the one with the career that's building. He knows something I don't know about this fight. I just get rid of all my rational thinking. And now I just want to thank California for not taking my bet.

• 1:20:32Speaker 02

  Do you think the fight was rigged?

• 1:20:33Dax Shepard?

  What I think is that there are a couple of slow motion exchanges that are impossible for me to believe. Cause Tyson does his bob. He's done this a thousand times. This is muscle memory. Soon as he ducks and misses that, you're getting the right uppercut. And you see him start to throw it and then he doesn't throw it.

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:20:55Dax Shepard?

  Now, I'm not going to say publicly, I don't want to get sued, but I'm saying that doesn't make any fucking sense to me. This is a guy that's thrown that exact move hundreds of times with crazy outcome. And he just stops and he's in the middle of the movement and he stops. And I'm like, that doesn't look right.

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  Do you think if you said what you were maybe about to say that you would get sued?

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  It's just your opinion. I don't think you could get sued.

• 1:21:17Dax Shepard?

  I wonder if I say Jake Paul fixed that fight.

• 1:21:20Speaker 01

  In your opinion.

• 1:21:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, what's the difference? When you say your opinion is still slander, isn't it?

• 1:21:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:21:26Dax Shepard?

  I have no information.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  Let's try it. Let's give it a whirl.

• 1:21:30Speaker 02

  I don't know if that's the way to get your legal advice.

• 1:21:34Speaker 01

  I think if you say allegedly, would you say allegedly after everything?

• 1:21:37Dax Shepard?

  All I'm saying is I witnessed some of the fight that

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  Allegedly.

• 1:21:41Dax Shepard?

  that does not make sense to me. Do you have an opinion on it?

• 1:21:45Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 1:21:45Dax Shepard?

  Do you watch it?

• 1:21:46Speaker 02

  No, I'm not a huge boxing guy.

• 1:21:47Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  I don't like seeing people get hit. I remember when I was a kid, I went to a camp where you were forced to box. And I remember the first fight I got in, I wailed on some kid. I hated it. Like, I just stopped. I don't want to beat him up. And then in the second fight, someone got in and wailed on me. And I thought, I like this even less.

• 1:22:02Dax Shepard?

  Exactly.

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  So where is the fun?

• 1:22:04Speaker 01

  Like, there's a lose-lose.

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  Where is the fun here?

• 1:22:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so how is California, I guess we're six, seven years into this experiment. You already mentioned Alabama and Mississippi, but is California experiencing less of some of the fallout from this as other places?

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  I don't know. The tribes have succeeded in preventing gambling from being legalized. But as I say, my son, 17 years old, and he's on the apps and he's gambling.

• 1:22:26Dax Shepard?

  Well, just paint me a little bit of a picture of how bad it is, and then I want to go into what you taught your son and what we can maybe advise other people that are listening to it here, too.

• 1:22:34Speaker 02

  Young men who take to sports gambling become addicts at a rate of about 8%. Charlie Baker, former governor of Massachusetts, is new head of the NCAA. When he became head of the NCAA, he went and did a kind of listening tour of colleges because he wanted to see what was going on in sports on campuses. And he thought he was going to find one thing and he found another. He found an epidemic of athletes being harassed by their fellow students, gamblers. And the harassment was like death threats. You miss this free throw, or you're dead. Or just tell me now something that I know that I can bet on. It was so bad that he did a survey and found that 60% of the boys on college campuses were sports gambling.

• 1:23:14Speaker 02

  I think that is probably missing what is an even bigger story, which is, I don't think there's a high school in America where there isn't basically a sports gambling ring. It's part of being a boy. It's just become what you do. Of course, for most people, it's not going to have much effect and it'll be fine.

• 1:23:31Dax Shepard?

  92%.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's a machine for creating lots and lots of addicts.

• 1:23:35Dax Shepard?

  And it's a particularly cruel addiction. We interviewed someone with a gambling addiction.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  Roy Choi.

• 1:23:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the famous chef. And what was illuminating to me as an addict was, I've never done

• 1:23:49Dax Shepard?

  An eight ball of coke, felt like shit and thought, oh, I could do another eight ball of coke and that would get me out of this. It has the most unique trap, this addiction, which is like, there's the illusion of getting even and then exiting. So everyone has a fairy tale. Just want to fucking get even and then I'll stop. There's no getting even in coke. Thank God, because maybe I'd still be trapped there.

• 1:24:10Speaker 02

  It leads you to oblivion. It leads you to the end. It leads you to ruin. And I kind of thought one way that reform is going to happen. It's going to be some high-profile person's child.

• 1:24:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we're gonna wait till then.

• 1:24:22Speaker 02

  Because that's happened in England. I don't want to tell you who it is, but I do know a person who's very prominent there, whose son is just not commit suicide, but close, who's bankrupt himself and the dad realizing this is outrageous and is going to work politically to constrain the gambling industry.

• 1:24:37Dax Shepard?

  In the UK and Australia, there are things to learn from them.

• 1:24:39Speaker 02

  They're way ahead of us and they're much less prone to making stupid bets. It's interesting. We are uniquely stupid. We're not inoculated. It's like smallpox just hit us.

• 1:24:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:49Speaker 02

  And I might be wrong about this. Maybe this is all just going to go away and this new vice will be assimilated into the culture and we'll all be fine. But I do think it's more likely that we're going to be living with an epidemic. It's silent. You don't see it. With drug addicts, you see them. This, just someone on his phone doing stuff. You've got a casino in your pocket. So I think we're going to wake up and go, what have we done here to a half-generation of young men? The question's like, what do you do then?

• 1:25:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:16Speaker 02

  You have a child. What do you do? It's a question I think a lot of parents ask themselves about a lot of things. How do I protect my child from this thing? He's out there in a predatory environment. It's essentially a predatory business.

• 1:25:26Dax Shepard?

  As was the mortgage thing.

• 1:25:27Speaker 02

  As was the mortgage thing, but my child was not going to buy credit to false swaps.

• 1:25:30Dax Shepard?

  No, but just, I remember my initial reaction to the 08 meltdown was like, all these people that couldn't afford these houses went and bought these fucking houses because they believed it was going to go up 20% a year and I blamed them. And then I learned how they were approached to refinance, how they were encouraged by a house outside of the thing. I go, oh, no, no, this was a calculated, coordinated effort to get all these people. They abused vulnerable people, as they always do.

• 1:25:52Speaker 02

  That's right. I actually do think that if you have a boy, that you need to have not just the sex talk, you have to have the gambling talk.

• 1:26:00Dax Shepard?

  So, yeah, what did you do with your son?

• 1:26:02Speaker 02

  Walker, who is a senior in high school.

• 1:26:04Dax Shepard?

  And a Texas Ranger.

• 1:26:07Dax Shepard?

  Famously a Texas Ranger.

• 1:26:08Speaker 02

  More an Oakland A. But I said first, here are this thing, sports gambling. He goes, yeah, we're all doing it. He was not yet, but all of his friends were.

• 1:26:16Dax Shepard?

  He was circling.

• 1:26:16Speaker 02

  I went and taught his English class and there were like 30 kids there. And he asked during the class, can you raise your hand if you're gambling on sports? All but one of the boys did, none of the girls. So, but he said, you're like, yeah, I'm tempted. I think I know some things here, especially with hoops. He's a hoops player. He knows about the Golden State Warriors. So I said, here, I'm going to give you $5,000 and you're going to wear a wire and we're going to just follow you. I'm going to stay out of it. I'm not going to parent you. The producers may a little bit, but you're going to just explain why you're doing what you're doing and you can keep the winnings. What I thought was going to happen is he was going to vaporize the $5,000 and it was going to be humiliating and the humiliation would be the antidote. He would learn how little he knew and that the things he thought he knew, he didn't know and how complicated this market was and how this market was trying to get him to do stuff he shouldn't do.

• 1:27:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  That's not what happened.

• 1:27:04Dax Shepard?

  He drank the fifth whiskey. He's like, that's great. Let's do this again tomorrow.

• 1:27:07Speaker 01

  He made a million dollars.

• 1:27:08Dax Shepard?

  He didn't throw up, he didn't get hungover.

• 1:27:10Speaker 02

  I don't want to ruin the episode for the listener. The episode, it turned out so beautifully, what actually did happen. He got the lesson and he got the money. And how that happened, I would rather people just listen to the episode.

• 1:27:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:24Speaker 01

  That makes sense. I am.

• 1:27:24Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm really delighted you took this on.

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:27Dax Shepard?

  But now you do have a book coming out.

• 1:27:28Speaker 02

  I do.

• 1:27:29Dax Shepard?

  Who is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service. What is this about?

• 1:27:33Speaker 02

  I got really interested in the federal government during Trump won. I thought it was just comic material. Trump had fired his whole transition team the day after the election, 500 and something people. There were a thousand people inside the Obama administration who had spent six months preparing sort of a course on how the federal government works for whoever won. And Trump said the course is irrelevant. He literally said, I can learn everything I need to know in two hours.

• 1:27:54Dax Shepard?

  That's quite a feat.

• 1:27:54Speaker 02

  Very smart man. Beautiful mind. He's a beautiful mind. But I thought this is comic material. I'll go get the briefings, starting with how the nuclear weapons are run. The people who were going to give that briefing, they couldn't give me all the classified stuff, but they were kind of grateful. It's like, we worked so hard.

• 1:28:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we wanted someone to read this.

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  Could someone just hear this? But the reception, it's called the fifth risk, to that book was. So positive that I thought I might want to do more of this if it proves useful. Another thing happened was at the very end of the book, I did one deep dive into the life of a single civil servant. And the story was literature. The material was so good, I thought I should have done more of that. So a year and a bit ago, I was on a hiking trail with the then opinion editor of the Washington Post, David Chipley. And I said, you know what we should do? I can't do it. It's too complicated an institution. The government is huge. It's massive. There are 2.3 million employees. I said, let me go hire six writers I love, people who just I know make everything fun on the page. I, along with the six of them, will parachute into the government. Everybody can find their story and you can run it as a series running into the election

• 1:28:56Speaker 02

  just to remind everybody what these people do. And the series was called Who Is Government? The pieces were so good and things you just wouldn't expect. I'll give you one that's not mine. Yeah. Casey Sep, New Yorker writer, found a character in the Veterans Administration named Ron Walters. No one's ever heard of him. No one would have ever heard of him, who took over the national cemeteries 20 years ago. And the national cemeteries is where we bury our veterans. And when he took it over, they had a kind of mediocre customer satisfaction. The families of the people who were burying their dead had mixed feelings about how the operation was run. There's now at the University of Michigan, it measures consumer satisfaction across our society, like it's not just private companies, but also government agencies. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:41Speaker 02

  And so you could find out how the Department of Agriculture is doing, but you can also find out how Amazon and FedEx is doing. Wow. Ron Walters turned this enterprise into the enterprise with the highest customer satisfaction in the entire country. And you think about, why do we have a country? What are the things a country does? Mostly it's we're better off in a country because it helps keep us safe, but it preserves certain values. And if we don't honor our war dead, it's ugly. And that this man has come in and honored the war dead. Yeah. Quite moving and not asked for a dollar, more than like his civil service pay and not asked for anybody to write an article about him. He was very wary. It's story after story like this. And the idea of some know nothing.

• 1:30:23Speaker 02

  Rolling in with a chainsaw and saying you're all waste, fraud and abuse. When some of these people are the best among us.

• 1:30:31Dax Shepard?

  And have dedicated 20 years of their life to making this thing.

• 1:30:34Speaker 02

  It's obscene. So it turns out that the book is very timely. I wrote the last piece of it after the election, but all of it mostly was written last June. And it's Dave Eggers and Kamau Bell and John Lanchester and Casey Sepp and Sarah Vowell. You've seen The Incredibles? She was the voice of Violet in The Incredibles. She's a wonderful historian, too. And Geraldine Brooks, the Australian novelist, really gifted writers. Each piece is so different from the next. So it'll be fun. It's a way to have a conversation about this.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  Oh, I love that.

• 1:31:01Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. So listen to Against the Rules, but then also get Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service. Michael Lewis, you're very, very charming and interesting.

• 1:31:10Speaker 02

  I love being with you guys.

• 1:31:11Dax Shepard?

  I've really enjoyed having you as a guest.

• 1:31:13Speaker 02

  I really enjoyed it.

• 1:31:17Dax Shepard?

  Hi there. This is Hermia and Permia. If you like that, you're gonna love the fact check with Miss Monica. I am launching a competing religion to Quakerism.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  Oh, to Quakerism.

• 1:31:31Dax Shepard?

  And I'm using spices, too.

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  Dax. Why didn't you at least do herbs?

• 1:31:36Dax Shepard?

  I'm gonna use spices, too, to confuse people.

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  Okay, and what is, what are your spices?

• 1:31:43Dax Shepard?

  Shining, prancing, intriguing.

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  That's bad.

• 1:31:50Dax Shepard?

  Captivating, energizing, sprinkling, could also be sparkling.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:31:57Dax Shepard?

  This is like an extrovert's religion.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, this isn't, this is about, this is so outward.

• 1:32:02Dax Shepard?

  This is great.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  And it's so performative.

• 1:32:04Dax Shepard?

  Shining, prancing, intriguing, captivating. This is a way of life.

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  Intriguing is, is not good.

• 1:32:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, well, if you're using it specifically in the SLA way.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what it is.

• 1:32:15Dax Shepard?

  No, things that are intriguing aren't inherently, it's just been used in that.

• 1:32:19Speaker 01

  Things that are intriguing, but you're saying these as verbs.

• 1:32:24Dax Shepard?

  But you can be intriguing in many ways other than romantic or sexual.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:32:28Dax Shepard?

  Mine's also easier to memorize, right? Because you probably already have mine memorized and you probably don't off the top of your dome have the original spices memorized.

• 1:32:37Speaker 01

  I think I do. Stewardship, service.

• 1:32:41Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you're gonna, okay, you're just kind of.

• 1:32:44Dax Shepard?

  Making a mess of it now, okay.

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  What? That's true.

• 1:32:47Dax Shepard?

  But you gotta go S.P.I.C.E.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  Well, no, I don't.

• 1:32:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  God, you and your rules.

• 1:32:53Dax Shepard?

  Service.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  Service.

• 1:32:54Dax Shepard?

  Stewardship.

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  Community, um, peace.

• 1:33:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good job.

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:33:01Dax Shepard?

  What's E and I?

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  Integrity. Integrity was I.

• 1:33:05Dax Shepard?

  It was.

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  Yes. Um, how many have I done?

• 1:33:08Dax Shepard?

  You need one more. You need an E.

• 1:33:10Speaker 01

  Equity, equality. I did it!

• 1:33:13Dax Shepard?

  Good job.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Now yours, shining, prancing, spit takes.

• 1:33:20Dax Shepard?

  No, no, that was P. Uh, or, what?

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  Okay, shining, prancing, intriguing, celebration.

• 1:33:28Dax Shepard?

  Captivating.

• 1:33:29Speaker 01

  Captivating, um, egg on your face.

• 1:33:33Dax Shepard?

  Energizing.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  Energizing and sparkles.

• 1:33:37Dax Shepard?

  Sprinkling.

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  Oh, sprinkling.

• 1:33:38Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so mine's not easier to remember. Okay.

• 1:33:42Speaker 01

  Okay, well, that's cool. Uh, your cult, you're gonna have that.

• 1:33:45Dax Shepard?

  Okay, do you wanna talk about, cuz you were waiting patiently for me to listen to the Malcolm Gladwell episode called Rogan Intervention?

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  Joe Rogan Intervention. It's on, it's Revisionist History.

• 1:33:58Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  And the new season's great so far. There's also a couple really good episodes about George Floyd.

• 1:34:07Dax Shepard?

  Oh, and R.F.K. or whatever.

• 1:34:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's an episode before the Joe Rogan Intervention about, that called The RFK Junior Problem.

• 1:34:18Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:34:18Speaker 01

  That leads sort of into the Joe Rogan Intervention and, God, that Malcolm Gladwell.

• 1:34:25Dax Shepard?

  What a gift he has.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  He's so good.

• 1:34:28Dax Shepard?

  What an incredible episode.

• 1:34:29Speaker 01

  I thought, yes, okay, so the episode is, starts off kind of calling out Joe Rogan a little bit about his interview with RFK Junior and not really, and like the difference between an interview and a conversation. It really just deep dives into what is a good interview.

• 1:34:48Dax Shepard?

  Versus a conversation between friends, yeah.

• 1:34:50Speaker 01

  Interviewing is a real skill. It is different from conversation. And it is like, that, yeah, they play a clip where Malcolm's being interviewed by Michael Gervais.

• 1:35:03Speaker 01

  And Malcolm starts crying, talking about his dad.

• 1:35:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:08Speaker 01

  But what led there was so nothing. Like, it was, it was very simple. It was, and I was like, yeah, it's, it's complicated and it's simple. Getting like, real emotion out of someone.

• 1:35:24Dax Shepard?

  So there's this string of back and forth where RFK.

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, RFK Junior.

• 1:35:30Dax Shepard?

  He claims that the Spanish flu, he's got three whammies in a row. Spanish flu, that people didn't die from the virus, that in fact, they died from this bacterial infection.

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:35:40Dax Shepard?

  And that, um.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  Fauci signs off on it.

• 1:35:43Dax Shepard?

  That Fauci agrees with him, that, this conclusion. And then that what the Spanish flu really was, was a backfiring of a vaccine.

• 1:35:52Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:35:52Dax Shepard?

  And so, yeah, Joe's like, he is skeptical at first. He's like, you know, according to what and what's the documentation? And he finds the article from Fauci. Then there's some like, you know, at least Malcolm's conclusion is that neither of them really understood the difference between a primary and a secondary cause of death.

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:36:12Dax Shepard?

  So, you know, what's he to do if he doesn't know that?

• 1:36:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:36:15Dax Shepard?

  Right? Like, an average person could misread that conclusion. And then when he gets into the vaccine thing, now he's just, you know, now you're in this weird position where this guy's saying there are articles, but you don't have them. Um, and I just wonder, I was trying to just, I was trying to delineate how ours is different. I, I guess really the only difference is the people we have on are, are truly experts in the field they're talking about. Um, but likewise, we, we can only push back so much because it's not our field.

• 1:36:49Speaker 01

  Well, right, but I guess if we're gonna have someone controversial on, which we don't do that often, actually, but if we do, like, before we had Andrew on, there was a conversation we had, that was like, if we're gonna have him on, we're going to have to have all the conversations and push back. So, to me, it's that. It's like, you can't have someone like that on, who's extremely controversial and says all kinds of stuff, and not be prepared to really push back.

• 1:37:22Dax Shepard?

  Challenge, uh.

• 1:37:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:24Dax Shepard?

  The statement that that was a vaccine that killed 100 million people?

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:37:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, of course, I'm in bed like that's a that's one of the few issues I'm pretty vocal about. You know, I'm very pro vaccine. Although I have a little bit I've had, I understood people who didn't want the COVID vaccine more than maybe someone who's so pro vaccine that I am was. I understand it's your body and you ultimately get to decide what you put in your body. That part, that piece of it, I totally get. But I was, I got more, I want to hear your conclusions because I, and maybe this is a bad habit of mine. I keep trying to zoom out and figure out what's really going on. You know, like, that's my great curiosity. You've got like two intelligent people.

• 1:38:07Speaker 01

  Who?

• 1:38:07Dax Shepard?

  Uh, Joe and RFK. They're not dumb dums, either of them. They're both intelligent people. And then you wonder, why is it does that story appeal to them? That there's like, there's been a conspiracy, it's vaccines, that's the Spanish flu is really vaccines. Why are two intelligent people drawn to that conclusion?

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know if Joe is. I don't know if that's.

• 1:38:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I don't know either. He seems skeptical in his defense while he was hearing it.

• 1:38:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know what he thinks, but RFK Junior must believe it. I mean, I.

• 1:38:45Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, he's sincere about it.

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 1:38:48Dax Shepard?

  So then I just, I try to figure out what's going on under it. And even broader, why is it so appealing to people?

• 1:38:59Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:38:59Dax Shepard?

  Like a vast, you know, like a very large amount of people are drawn to that. And my conclusion is, I think if you feel very left out and excluded, that like, there's this group of people in the country that are living this great life. And you feel excluded by that. It's almost like you feel like they have some secret shit, like they have some secret. Why are they succeeding at this level and enjoying all of this prosperity and opportunity? And I'm not, um, they're not more valuable than me. They're not smarter than me. There must be some kind of conspiracy just in general. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:39:44Dax Shepard?

  Like there's some, there must be. Something dirty going on that all these people have all this shit and then all these other people don't.

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  But it's not those aren't the, it's not poor people who are anti-vaccine. In fact, it's mostly very, very privileged people who are anti-vaccine.

• 1:40:01Dax Shepard?

  But, well, there's two, I think there's two really big buckets. There's the, um, Whole Foods, super liberal, probably elite group. And then there was the fuck no, that's got trackers in it. That's, um, you know, Biden trying to control me. But that, that's the, that like the anti Bill Gates faction. So I think there is two really big factions.

• 1:40:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I, I, I tend to think the people who, I mean, it just in my experience, the people who are the most vocal and leading the charge are not poor people. When you have so much privilege and access to the Brazil nut that might have, that's, you know, $14 per nut, that might have the special benefit, like, they wanna go that route and then that's natural and all of these things. But I, I think most people believe doctors. They like believe the system, right? That doctors pretty much know what they're doing, that when the baby is born, it needs these things and they're just gonna go do these things.

• 1:41:08Speaker 01

  And they don't have to question every single thing that comes in, also because they don't have time or energy to question it. They're living their lives.

• 1:41:18Dax Shepard?

  Well, yeah, I think the last time I looked, like 83% of the country had gotten at least the first round of the vaccine for COVID. So despite whatever you were hearing in the pushback, the vast, vast majority of the people did. So yeah, I agree, most people just do. Most people are vaccinated, thank God, the most, you know. But I'm, I'm, um, I get just curious why that thing that sounds pretty far-fetched to me, doesn't sound far-fetched to an intelligent person. And I guess my conclusion is if you already think the system's rigged, like if you're already suspicious that there's some kind of weird unfairness happening.

• 1:42:03Dax Shepard?

  I have to imagine you're more open to that.

• 1:42:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:08Dax Shepard?

  If your kind of baseline assumption is like something crooked's going on.

• 1:42:11Speaker 01

  I know, but I, I don't, I don't think that's the majority of those people. I really don't. I mean, definitely not RFK, he's a Kennedy.

• 1:42:20Dax Shepard?

  But he's the black sheep Kennedy. Like, that's how I set him in that category. It's like, the other Kennedys had a much different trajectory than him.

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  Trajectory, but not, he was privileged.

• 1:42:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh, fo- fully.

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  And like.

• 1:42:36Dax Shepard?

  But even like a privileged person could feel like the least privileged among the, I don't know.

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that to me is like, so, kind of part of, I guess, sort of this bigger thing, right? Like, you're, it's so, you're so privileged and insular that you think you have it bad.

• 1:42:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:53Speaker 01

  Like, look, and then that, it's also, look, if he's just a random person on earth, I don't care, right?

• 1:42:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:59Speaker 01

  But he's in charge.

• 1:43:00Dax Shepard?

  Well, now, yeah.

• 1:43:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:01Dax Shepard?

  Not at the time of that conversation.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  I think when he had RFK Junior on, I think was during the election.

• 1:43:09Dax Shepard?

  I don't know, I don't know.

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  Do we know, Rob, can you check?

• 1:43:11Speaker 05

  June 2024.

• 1:43:13Speaker 01

  June 2024, yes.

• 1:43:15Speaker 05

  He was running for president at that time.

• 1:43:17Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yes, exactly, he was a nominee.

• 1:43:20Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so he's saying like, this is my platform.

• 1:43:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. And then there's a bigger, then there's a really fun, and I wonder where we both land on it.

• 1:43:28Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:43:29Dax Shepard?

  There's the bigger issue of like, this spectrum between journalists and comedians with podcasts.

• 1:43:36Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:43:37Dax Shepard?

  And then their obligations as such, right?

• 1:43:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:42Dax Shepard?

  Like, a journalist has a whole code of ethics and.

• 1:43:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:44Dax Shepard?

  Vetting sources and all this kind of stuff.

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:43:47Dax Shepard?

  And there's tons of conspiracy theory podcasts.

• 1:43:51Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:43:51Dax Shepard?

  You know, there's nuts. No one gives a shit. What people are really worried about is that he has a huge audience.

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  Yes, of course.

• 1:43:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so it's just interesting. It's like, that's a very relevant variable in how upset someone is, that there's just a comedian talking about conspiracy theories.

• 1:44:08Speaker 01

  But he's not a, he's, his podcast isn't a comedy podcast. He's a comedian.

• 1:44:14Dax Shepard?

  No, yeah, I'm just saying he's a comedian. He's not a journalist, he's not a politician or a doctor.

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  But his show is a show where ideas are explored.

• 1:44:24Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:44:24Speaker 01

  It's not, you know, a laugh riot. I mean, I'm sure there are funny episodes or whatever, but it is there to explore ideas. Maybe he thinks he is being responsible with it.

• 1:44:33Dax Shepard?

  Well, I assume he does, because I think he's a principled, um, guy with integrity, and he just happens those, so I believe the experts we have on, and he believes the experts he has on.

• 1:44:45Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know, though.

• 1:44:48Dax Shepard?

  And then, you don't know.

• 1:44:50Speaker 01

  We wouldn't have him on to come talk about anti-germ theory.

• 1:44:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, because I don't believe in him.

• 1:44:56Speaker 01

  Exactly. But I don't think, I don't know that Joe Rogan does. I think he is like, "Come talk about your thing. Let's, let's talk about it." But then he himself isn't equipped to really have that conversation with this person who's powerful. You know, in the episode before, when they're talking about RFK, you know, he, he doesn't believe in Louis Pasteur's germ theory. He doesn't believe that. He believes in the opposite thing. And, um, so does Woody Harrelson. Like, there, and, and so, yes, it's not, to me, it's, it's like...

• 1:45:34Dax Shepard?

  See, I think it'd be easy and convenient if you could write the people off as dumb, but I don't think you can do that. So then the question is, how do smart people?

• 1:45:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:42Dax Shepard?

  Have the courage to go against 99.9% of, uh,

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  I don't...

• 1:45:47Dax Shepard?

  biologists who think a certain way?

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  I think it's courage. I think it is a, a long time of not having your feet on the ground. That you're able to explore all these different options for life and the world, and the way it works, and who's in charge and who's not in charge. I do think it's like checking yourself on how, quote, "normal" your life is in comparison. I think most of these peoples aren't.

• 1:46:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I just think there's a baseline distrust of systems.

• 1:46:24Dax Shepard?

  The government, healthcare, doctors, universities, like all of these institutions.

• 1:46:31Speaker 01

  It's becoming more and more.

• 1:46:33Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's hard to know chicken or the egg where there are that many people and now there's just an outlet. I don't know, you know, I don't know.

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  Well, we do know because measles is back now. It wasn't. You know, people are now, these things are coming back that were gone.

• 1:46:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:51Speaker 01

  There's that whole episode about the rotavirus and the vaccine for that, which they've like, you know, RFK and them have said is bad. And it is like, single-handedly saved millions.

• 1:47:06Dax Shepard?

  Of more children. Infants from diarrhea, dying of diarrhea.

• 1:47:11Speaker 01

  Than any other vaccine.

• 1:47:12Dax Shepard?

  It's so reckless.

• 1:47:13Speaker 01

  It is, it's just reckless.

• 1:47:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. But anyways, I remain really curious, like what is, why?

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:19Dax Shepard?

  As a smart person, how do they look at that? Look at like the tens of millions of kids, just in India that have been saved from the rotovax.

• 1:47:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:27Dax Shepard?

  I wanna like, understand how that gets shoved aside in your 13 cases of maybe not even verifiable.

• 1:47:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:47:37Dax Shepard?

  You know, side effects takes charge over tens of millions of people.

• 1:47:41Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:47:42Dax Shepard?

  And uh,

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  I mean, I also.

• 1:47:45Dax Shepard?

  There's gotta be something interesting there.

• 1:47:46Speaker 01

  There also might be a part of a lot of humans that want, that, that want to be the except, you know, it's almost like the opposite side of the coin to like, exceptionalism. Like I'm different.

• 1:48:03Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  From everyone else.

• 1:48:05Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's what I'm saying. It is, it is a kind of a display of courage.

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:48:10Dax Shepard?

  You know, it is, um, I am not afraid to go against the grain and to march to the beat of my own drum. All these other, you know, uh, individual tropes that we love.

• 1:48:21Dax Shepard?

  Great episode. Most importantly, no matter how you fall on it, I think. Like, my headline of that episode to you, my original feedback was Malcolm's genius for the way he unravels a story is so proprietary and unique and stimulating.

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:40Dax Shepard?

  It's just so.

• 1:48:42Speaker 01

  He's such a good storyteller.

• 1:48:43Dax Shepard?

  The way he flips, it's like he flips channels back and forth to different stories. And then the way he weaves them ultimately together is so impressive.

• 1:48:52Speaker 01

  Great show. Revisionist history.

• 1:48:57Dax Shepard?

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 1:49:04Dax Shepard?

  This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I have my dream job. I get to talk to folks I admire like crazy and ask them virtually any question that I want to. I can't imagine a better way to spend my time. But even dream jobs have some not so dreamy parts, the stuff that gets in the way of the actual work. Now, that's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work. They actually do it, start to finish, cases closed, requests handled, no extra work for you. So you and your team can focus on what matters most, which for me is, are they obsessed with male bodies on the same level as I am?

• 1:49:46Speaker 01

  They never are.

• 1:49:47Dax Shepard?

  To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.

• 1:49:59Speaker 01

  Okay, let's see here. We talk art, art with Michael.

• 1:50:04Dax Shepard?

  Let's talk about some art.

• 1:50:06Speaker 01

  We're gonna do from Wikipedia.

• 1:50:08Dax Shepard?

  Let's talk about art, baby.

• 1:50:10Speaker 01

  The list of most expensive paintings.

• 1:50:12Dax Shepard?

  Hmm.

• 1:50:13Speaker 01

  Okay, according to Wikipedia, the Salvador Moondi is the most expensive. 450 million, adjusted 577. But this is the one that he talks about that a lot of people say, a lot of people discredit.

• 1:50:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, really?

• 1:50:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:34Dax Shepard?

  That's a very unimpressive painting to me.

• 1:50:37Speaker 01

  It's Da Vinci.

• 1:50:38Dax Shepard?

  I mean, we love Da Vinci, but I'm not impressed. That doesn't save 570 million to me. 1500, though.

• 1:50:46Dax Shepard?

  That's when it was painted? Yeah. 1500.

• 1:50:49Speaker 01

  The, yeah, attribution is pretty disputed. Then we have interchange.

• 1:50:54Dax Shepard?

  The Mona Lisa, obviously, we just need to say it's never been sold.

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, these are paintings sold.

• 1:50:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that would be billions of dollars.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  Probably, yeah, I assume. Um, yes, interchange is a cooning.

• 1:51:07Dax Shepard?

  Ooh.

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:51:08Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I like, that's more my speed, Monica.

• 1:51:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's nice, it's nice. It was 300 million, adjusted 398.

• 1:51:16Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 1:51:17Speaker 01

  Um, that was sold by the David Geffen Foundation.

• 1:51:21Dax Shepard?

  It's, still blows my mind, there's objects that are worth a half a billion dollars.

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  I know. Well, there are cars.

• 1:51:28Dax Shepard?

  I think the most expensive car is about 75 million for a Ferrari GTO.

• 1:51:35Speaker 01

  The third is a Cezanne, the card players. That was 250, adjusted 349.

• 1:51:42Dax Shepard?

  I like it, it's like two cowboys.

• 1:51:44Speaker 01

  I like that one.

• 1:51:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they're about to shoot each other.

• 1:51:48Dax Shepard?

  That's my, that's my story.

• 1:51:49Speaker 01

  I don't think so, I think they're playing cards.

• 1:51:51Dax Shepard?

  One of them's always cheating, there's always a cheat in these cowboy card games.

• 1:51:55Speaker 01

  Why are they cowboys? That.

• 1:51:57Dax Shepard?

  Well, the guy's got a cowboy hat on the left.

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  He's wearing like an Abe Lincoln hat.

• 1:52:00Dax Shepard?

  It's kind of a mix between a stove pop, stovepipe and a cowboy hat.

• 1:52:05Speaker 01

  Stove top stuffing? Okay, then we have.

• 1:52:07Dax Shepard?

  Stove top stuffing.

• 1:52:09Speaker 01

  Paul Gauguin, Gauguin, called.

• 1:52:13Dax Shepard?

  Goguen.

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  Is it Goguen?

• 1:52:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:16Speaker 01

  Okay, Goguen. Nafe Fatiobo translates to, when will you marry?

• 1:52:23Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I like that one, I like her dress.

• 1:52:26Speaker 01

  210, adjusted 279.

• 1:52:28Dax Shepard?

  Her feet are a little mangled like mine.

• 1:52:30Speaker 01

  Right, she has a lot of toe.

• 1:52:31Dax Shepard?

  Have I told you this, that I'm now describing my foot as a comb over?

• 1:52:34Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:52:35Dax Shepard?

  Cause the long toe has now moved over to, to, to fill the gap of the baby toe.

• 1:52:39Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:52:40Dax Shepard?

  So it looks like Trump's hair now. Yeah.

• 1:52:44Speaker 01

  My god.

• 1:52:45Dax Shepard?

  I'm gonna fucking comb over on my feet.

• 1:52:49Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:52:50Dax Shepard?

  That may come up on Kimmel tonight, but it happened here first. We tend to talk about my feet a lot.

• 1:52:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, you're doing Kimmel tonight, and I'm going to Beyonce tonight.

• 1:53:01Dax Shepard?

  What a night. Star-studded night.

• 1:53:03Speaker 01

  Jackson Pollock is next. Number seventeen A.

• 1:53:07Dax Shepard?

  Jackson Pollock.

• 1:53:09Speaker 01

  Incorrect.

• 1:53:12Speaker 01

  Number seventeen A, two hundred million, adjusted two sixty-five.

• 1:53:17Dax Shepard?

  Oh, two hundred mil?

• 1:53:19Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:19Dax Shepard?

  Okay. I'm allowed to say Pollock. Did you know that?

• 1:53:23Dax Shepard?

  Because I'm twelve point five percent Pollock.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:53:25Dax Shepard?

  Because my kids are twenty-five percent Pollock. It's like the Natalie. Yeah.

• 1:53:30Speaker 01

  Then no. Then we have Gustav Klimt. Washerschlongen two.

• 1:53:36Dax Shepard?

  Mmm, yeah. What a name. Washerschlongen.

• 1:53:39Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. This is like...

• 1:53:41Dax Shepard?

  That's a fever dream.

• 1:53:42Speaker 01

  Women, naked women. Two naked women.

• 1:53:46Dax Shepard?

  I see a brass. I see butt cheeks.

• 1:53:48Speaker 01

  But they have long hair.

• 1:53:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  This is cool.

• 1:53:51Dax Shepard?

  Flowers in between them. They're like, maybe on a... Oh, there's, there's like four women in that photo, or in that painting.

• 1:53:58Speaker 01

  Where's the other two?

• 1:53:59Dax Shepard?

  You can see, if you look at the faces, top, middle, then to the right, we've got two broads. And then on the bottom, we've got a broad.

• 1:54:05Speaker 01

  Wow, yeah.

• 1:54:08Dax Shepard?

  This guy was having a hell of an afternoon.

• 1:54:09Speaker 01

  This is fun. Well, I want this one because I like, I like art of women.

• 1:54:14Dax Shepard?

  You do. That's your niche.

• 1:54:16Speaker 01

  So I wonder if I can buy it. It was sold for a hundred and eighty-three point eight million, adjusted two forty-eight. So I just got to save up.

• 1:54:25Dax Shepard?

  Quarter-bill.

• 1:54:26Speaker 01

  Mark Rothko is next. Number six. Violet, green, and red. Now, this is pretty much just squares.

• 1:54:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, good for him for being so successful with the squares. I do like it, though. It's pleasing.

• 1:54:40Speaker 01

  I do, too. I do, too.

• 1:54:41Dax Shepard?

  Beats the hell out of that Da Vinci.

• 1:54:43Speaker 01

  Salvador Mondi. Oh my god, have some respect.

• 1:54:48Dax Shepard?

  It isn't worth 500 bucks.

• 1:54:50Speaker 01

  You're mean today.

• 1:54:51Dax Shepard?

  I don't even trust the providence of that.

• 1:54:53Speaker 01

  Well, we don't. People don't.

• 1:54:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, count me in that group.

• 1:54:56Speaker 01

  Next is a Rembrandt pendant portraits of Merton Souman and Upchin Koot.

• 1:55:05Dax Shepard?

  All the people in these Rembrandt photos look like they have syphilis. Like their faces are red and we're like, look at her nose is red as hell.

• 1:55:15Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 1:55:17Dax Shepard?

  You're the least observant person I know. I love this. You can't see her red.

• 1:55:23Speaker 01

  I mean, it's not about not, I'm staring at it. I don't see it as bright red, like a clown nose.

• 1:55:29Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I do. It's like it's gonna fall off. And then the guy on the left, he's like, he's suspiciously rosy cheeked too.

• 1:55:35Speaker 01

  He's pink, but that's very like, that's very close to real life skin.

• 1:55:39Dax Shepard?

  I think all these people were like, they had all kinds of parasites and I bet people looked terrible back then. Don't you think?

• 1:55:46Speaker 01

  Next.

• 1:55:47Dax Shepard?

  Nope, you couldn't wash your face or brush your teeth.

• 1:55:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but white people's skin.

• 1:55:52Dax Shepard?

  Is disgusting.

• 1:55:52Speaker 01

  No, is pink. Your skin is pink.

• 1:55:55Dax Shepard?

  I don't have blotches of blood on my face like this.

• 1:55:58Speaker 01

  She does. What are you talking about?

• 1:56:00Dax Shepard?

  Look at her nose.

• 1:56:01Speaker 01

  Her nose is just shaded.

• 1:56:03Dax Shepard?

  No, no, she's got like a huge sore on her nose. All these people look like they have scabies or.

• 1:56:10Speaker 01

  Oh my, you're like so, is this because you're nervous about Kimmel? You're being so.

• 1:56:16Dax Shepard?

  I'm lashing out at these people from the past.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  Oh my god, you're.

• 1:56:19Dax Shepard?

  Oh geez, I'm impressed you admitted that. Yeah, she has a fucking, this woman will be dead within the month.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  No, no, you're, you're.

• 1:56:28Dax Shepard?

  She's dying of something.

• 1:56:30Speaker 01

  First off, you're overreacting.

• 1:56:32Dax Shepard?

  Is it that she was blowing her nose so much?

• 1:56:35Speaker 01

  See, this is why you shouldn't blow your nose a lot. She's not, she does have a red, this area of her nose, this nostril.

• 1:56:42Dax Shepard?

  Is diseased.

• 1:56:43Speaker 01

  Is red.

• 1:56:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:44Speaker 01

  She blew her nose. She had a cold.

• 1:56:47Dax Shepard?

  No, she has a real, like a bubonic plague.

• 1:56:51Dax Shepard?

  Black death is on her nose.

• 1:56:52Speaker 01

  You know what?

• 1:56:53Dax Shepard?

  Tell me. And this chap on the left, he's like 18, he's gonna die within the month as well.

• 1:56:58Speaker 01

  Oh my, you need to stop.

• 1:57:01Dax Shepard?

  These people are long gone, Monica.

• 1:57:03Speaker 01

  You are not being respectful of the dead or the living. No, or the painted.

• 1:57:08Dax Shepard?

  Also, don't fuck sheep.

• 1:57:11Dax Shepard?

  If you're in the audience.

• 1:57:12Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:57:13Dax Shepard?

  That's how humans got syphilis, fucking sheep.

• 1:57:15Speaker 01

  This sounds like RFK.

• 1:57:17Dax Shepard?

  No, look that up.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  Are you sure?

• 1:57:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:20Speaker 01

  Rob, can you look it up? I can't type that into my browser.

• 1:57:25Speaker 01

  I think the reason I couldn't see it at first, at first, we're looking, for people who are listening, we are looking on the big TV screen at these pictures. And I'm not wearing my glasses.

• 1:57:38Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:57:39Speaker 01

  And I think that makes me a better person.

• 1:57:42Dax Shepard?

  I know.

• 1:57:43Speaker 01

  I really do, cuz now look.

• 1:57:44Dax Shepard?

  We have a history of this.

• 1:57:46Speaker 01

  Then I zoom.

• 1:57:47Dax Shepard?

  We were watching an interview with somebody one time, and their tongue was so big. And you thought I was a bad person for observing that their tongue didn't fit in their mouth.

• 1:57:56Speaker 01

  I thought it was a little.

• 1:57:58Dax Shepard?

  I didn't say like-

• 1:57:59Speaker 01

  You guys were being mean.

• 1:58:00Dax Shepard?

  Listen, I didn't say like the person was a jerk or anything. It was just like, wow, they really have to wrestle their tongue.

• 1:58:05Speaker 01

  And you made some jokes.

• 1:58:07Dax Shepard?

  What were the jokes? I don't remember any jokes.

• 1:58:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, about this person's tongue being very big.

• 1:58:13Dax Shepard?

  I was just observing, wow, this is a whale of a-

• 1:58:15Speaker 01

  You think you could ever observe something and not make a joke about it?

• 1:58:18Dax Shepard?

  I'm not sure.

• 1:58:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:19Speaker 05

  There's no scientific evidence to support the claim that syphilis originated from sheep.

• 1:58:24Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for looking.

• 1:58:26Speaker 05

  I guess I am RFK. Likely was brought to Europe by Columbus's crew.

• 1:58:29Dax Shepard?

  Columbus, they were sheep fuckers.

• 1:58:34Speaker 05

  That does say that.

• 1:58:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that part's true.

• 1:58:39Speaker 01

  This is how conspiracies start.

• 1:58:41Dax Shepard?

  Well, no, but you're kind of, like, this could all seem like pageantry so that we could demonstrate we're above that, cuz you just pushed back, then we looked it up, then turns out I'm wrong.

• 1:58:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:49Dax Shepard?

  It's not from fucking sheep. Continue on.

• 1:58:51Speaker 01

  Okay. Anyway, I just think it's best if none of us wear glasses. Okay, I think that's all for the paintings.

• 1:58:57Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. There's a lot of money out there.

• 1:59:00Speaker 01

  Okay, first cousin once removed. Someone who's related to you as a first cousin, but is in a different generation. Specifically, they are the child of your first cousin or your parent's first cousin. Think of it as a first cousin who was a generation removed from you.

• 1:59:13Dax Shepard?

  So that's a tricky one for me because I have Mandy and Kelly who would be, they'd fall under this category.

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  I thought they were your cousins.

• 1:59:21Dax Shepard?

  They are, but they're my dad's cousin's children. But here's what makes it tricky. I'm gonna tell you why it's complicated. There's only two bloodlines. Because my grandpa's brother married my grandma's sister and had Mandy and Kelly's mom.

• 1:59:39Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:59:40Dax Shepard?

  So they're like double first cousins, I think is what they called themselves. And so because of that proximity, I'm actually not, I'm like, it's same blood level as would be if it were my brother, you know.

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  Huh. But they were your dad's cousin's kids.

• 1:59:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:59Speaker 01

  Your first cousin once removed is supposed to be your dad's cousin.

• 2:00:04Dax Shepard?

  But that's interesting, the two bloodlines thing, isn't it?

• 2:00:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is.

• 2:00:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:08Speaker 01

  Okay, who is Jacob Rothschild? Big business guy. Nathaniel Charles Jacob Rothschild, fourth Baron Rothschild, was a British hereditary peer investment banker and member of the Rothschild banking family. Rothschild is a hard one. I can see you trying to not bring it up over there.

• 2:00:27Dax Shepard?

  Rothschild? Rothschild?

• 2:00:30Speaker 01

  Rothschild.

• 2:00:31Dax Shepard?

  I was thinking, I wasn't trying to not bring it up. I was just thinking about that there, the Rothschilds are the center of many, many age-old conspiracies. And then I was thinking, oh, this is related to what I was saying earlier. Because I think when people acquire great wealth, they amass great wealth.

• 2:00:49Dax Shepard?

  All of a sudden, they're they're somehow running the world and they've they're cheating, you know, so like the Rothschilds are the center of all this that book I read, Behold, the Pal Horse. They're kind of like they're crucial players in the Illuminati theory.

• 2:01:03Speaker 01

  Huh, like they themselves believe it or people believe it about them?

• 2:01:08Dax Shepard?

  People think the Rothschilds have run the world order.

• 2:01:11Speaker 01

  Roths.

• 2:01:12Dax Shepard?

  Childs.

• 2:01:14Speaker 01

  Rothschild. See?

• 2:01:16Dax Shepard?

  Johns Hopkins.

• 2:01:17Speaker 01

  It is a Johns Hopkins situation.

• 2:01:19Dax Shepard?

  This is a regular old Johns Hopkins right here.

• 2:01:22Speaker 01

  Okay, the book Careless People is by Sarah Winn William. Are people from New Orleans called New Orleanians? Yes. Assassinations due to J.D. Salinger's book.

• 2:01:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, here we go.

• 2:01:33Speaker 01

  Many murder cases throughout its time. Mark David Chapman, who had an obsession with the book, murdered John Lennon. Also, John Hinckley, who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan.

• 2:01:42Dax Shepard?

  Gutshot.

• 2:01:43Speaker 01

  Was thought to be obsessed with the books as well. There are many other people whose murders or attempted murders are thought to be connected to The Catcher in the Rye, such as Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination of JFK and Robert John Bardo, the man who killed Rebecca Schaefer. It says Holden Caulfield might have some criminal potential as well, having similar traits of killers.

• 2:02:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I that's my favorite book.

• 2:02:07Speaker 01

  Because you're a killer.

• 2:02:09Dax Shepard?

  Because I like to kill people. And I do think it captures very well a feeling of not fitting in.

• 2:02:16Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:02:17Dax Shepard?

  Or feeling different.

• 2:02:18Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:02:18Dax Shepard?

  Different in a way that's going to prevent you from integrating the way everyone else seems to be integrating.

• 2:02:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:26Dax Shepard?

  And I think that's that's on the ladder to that.

• 2:02:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a slippery slope.

• 2:02:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:31Speaker 01

  To incel.

• 2:02:32Dax Shepard?

  Like a soft landing is punk rock music, but you could you could for you could follow it further.

• 2:02:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think a lot of these people in basements who are, what are they called?

• 2:02:43Dax Shepard?

  Incels?

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I said incels, but something else.

• 2:02:45Dax Shepard?

  Basement dwellers?

• 2:02:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:02:48Dax Shepard?

  Rap people.

• 2:02:49Speaker 01

  Chosen.

• 2:02:50Dax Shepard?

  Chodes?

• 2:02:51Speaker 01

  No, it's called. Jesus. God. Just go on Kimmel already. Get this over with.

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

  It's called something like absonate, like not chosen abstinence, but something like that.

• 2:03:09Dax Shepard?

  Salivate?

• 2:03:10Speaker 01

  No. What if I became an incel because I started doing research?

• 2:03:14Speaker 05

  Involuntary celibates?

• 2:03:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it, I think. Involuntary celibacy.

• 2:03:22Speaker 05

  To think is just where the term incel comes from. That's like the long.

• 2:03:26Speaker 01

  Oh, that's what it comes from. I never knew that.

• 2:03:29Dax Shepard?

  It's an acronym-ish.

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  It's actually a portman too.

• 2:03:33Dax Shepard?

  It's what?

• 2:03:34Speaker 01

  A portman too. That's what it means when you take two parts of two words and put them together.

• 2:03:38Dax Shepard?

  A portman too?

• 2:03:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, you never heard that?

• 2:03:40Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:03:41Speaker 01

  A portman too.

• 2:03:42Dax Shepard?

  Natalie Portman too.

• 2:03:46Dax Shepard?

  That's like if Natalie Portman had a Fu Manchu, you would call that Natalie Portman too.

• 2:03:51Speaker 01

  Heterosexual men who blame women in society for their lack of romantic success.

• 2:03:55Dax Shepard?

  That's not gonna get it done, boys.

• 2:03:58Speaker 01

  I wouldn't say it's the best route.

• 2:04:00Dax Shepard?

  No, no. Yeah, I mean, could you make yourself any less appealing?

• 2:04:06Speaker 01

  I know. That's the irony of the whole thing.

• 2:04:09Dax Shepard?

  I know. It's the double edged sword that people can come together on the internet and find each other in a great way. And then they can find each other in a terrible way. Because these dudes, there are always dudes that couldn't get laid in their basement.

• 2:04:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:24Dax Shepard?

  In their mom's basement.

• 2:04:26Speaker 01

  But they were mainly watching TV.

• 2:04:27Dax Shepard?

  Right, but they couldn't like commiserate and feel bad for themselves and become victims.

• 2:04:32Speaker 01

  Those other guys who were in the basement just watching TV, now they seem hot.

• 2:04:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, just the lazy guys.

• 2:04:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:39Dax Shepard?

  Do you think sex robots will cure this?

• 2:04:42Speaker 01

  Um, no.

• 2:04:43Dax Shepard?

  Like if all these incels get a really good sex robot.

• 2:04:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:04:47Dax Shepard?

  Will they not be so hostile anymore?

• 2:04:49Speaker 01

  Because they still want the power over women. Like, they don't want women to be more powerful than them. And so the sex robot isn't gonna fix that.

• 2:05:00Dax Shepard?

  Well, the sex robot won't be more powerful than them. They'll be in charge.

• 2:05:03Speaker 01

  I know, but they'll still be real women in the world.

• 2:05:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I just wonder if it's like. If you video game it, they'll be, they'll be distracted.

• 2:05:11Speaker 01

  I mean, they can masturbate these, it's like.

• 2:05:13Dax Shepard?

  They want to move their hips and hump.

• 2:05:15Speaker 01

  That's.

• 2:05:15Dax Shepard?

  That's a primal desire.

• 2:05:17Speaker 01

  They do on the couch.

• 2:05:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:19Speaker 01

  They just hump their couch.

• 2:05:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm watching a show where the woman just masturbated by humping a big pillow.

• 2:05:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:26Dax Shepard?

  And I just got kind of envious of female anatomy.

• 2:05:30Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:05:30Dax Shepard?

  Cause I, I, I couldn't hump a pillow to completion.

• 2:05:34Speaker 01

  I bet there is something you could put it in and.

• 2:05:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I just, pillows everywhere. Like you check into a hotel room and if you can just hump a pillow, that's great.

• 2:05:44Speaker 01

  But why do you think that's better than jacking yourself up? Cause it's somebody else.

• 2:05:50Dax Shepard?

  You're not, exactly. You're not providing the friction.

• 2:05:53Speaker 01

  I see.

• 2:05:53Dax Shepard?

  There's no like, um, dual signals going on, like you're trying to ignore your hand.

• 2:05:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm surprised they haven't invented like a mechanical hand.

• 2:06:03Dax Shepard?

  They have.

• 2:06:03Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 2:06:04Dax Shepard?

  I think it's called a fleshlight.

• 2:06:06Speaker 01

  Oh, a fleshlight. Yeah, that's a.

• 2:06:08Dax Shepard?

  I've thought about.

• 2:06:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's.

• 2:06:09Dax Shepard?

  I've thought about it and you know what has prevented me from ever trying one? The cleanup.

• 2:06:14Speaker 01

  Ew.

• 2:06:16Dax Shepard?

  I don't want to deal with the machine that I'm humping, you know?

• 2:06:19Speaker 01

  Also, don't you have to hold the flashlight?

• 2:06:21Dax Shepard?

  Presumably, yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:23Speaker 01

  I think the hand, like.

• 2:06:25Dax Shepard?

  It just said mannequin hand?

• 2:06:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, you can like connect it to the wall.

• 2:06:31Dax Shepard?

  Oh, with like a suction cup?

• 2:06:32Speaker 01

  No, like it's plug in, but it's a long cord. So if you're in bed, you don't have to touch it.

• 2:06:39Dax Shepard?

  I tried to hump numerous times the toilet paper roll, which was always a, it never worked, but it always called to me because it was a circle.

• 2:06:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:06:49Dax Shepard?

  All right.

• 2:06:49Speaker 01

  I don't think I want to know anymore.

• 2:06:50Dax Shepard?

  Okay. You've got a boundary?

• 2:06:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Casey Sepp's book on Harper Lee, Furious Hours Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee. Okay, the Tiger Lady, he mentioned this Tiger Lady, he said Tiger Lady or Lion Lady who got all that plastic surgery. Do you remember her?

• 2:07:08Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 2:07:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, she, it was Tiger Lady, Jocelyn Wildenstein.

• 2:07:13Dax Shepard?

  I wonder how much money that costs?

• 2:07:16Speaker 01

  Well, she had a high profile divorce from billionaire art dealer. Ding ding ding.

• 2:07:21Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:07:22Speaker 01

  And businessman Alec Wildenstein, cat like facial appearance. She, oh, she passed away in December.

• 2:07:32Dax Shepard?

  She went through all nine lives?

• 2:07:34Speaker 01

  She has two children.

• 2:07:35Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. Now I'm sorry.

• 2:07:42Speaker 01

  That was a pretty good one. Okay, let's see if it says here. Oh, my God. Her yearly telephone bill was $60,000 and food and wine costs $547,000.

• 2:07:53Dax Shepard?

  This is in the like settlement, divorce settlement?

• 2:07:56Speaker 01

  I guess. She received 2.5 billion in the divorce settlement.

• 2:07:58Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my Lord.

• 2:08:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:02Dax Shepard?

  That's outrageous.

• 2:08:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:05Dax Shepard?

  She could own almost all those paintings.

• 2:08:07Speaker 01

  But then she went bankrupt.

• 2:08:08Dax Shepard?

  She went bankrupt? How the fuck did she lose 2.5 bill?

• 2:08:13Speaker 01

  Well, she had a lot of.

• 2:08:14Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's not in surgery.

• 2:08:17Speaker 01

  Well, some of it is.

• 2:08:18Dax Shepard?

  Maybe a mill.

• 2:08:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:22Speaker 01

  Oh, three apartments in Trump Tower were repossessed in 2020.

• 2:08:27Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God. She ran through two and a half billion. I don't know. I'm surprised a woman who turned herself into a cat also wasn't great with money, but it still shocks me to lose that much money.

• 2:08:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was Swiss.

• 2:08:39Dax Shepard?

  I'm glad she's Swiss. They need something. You never hear anything bad about the Swiss. They've always been neutral. They've got great chocolate and skiing, great banking.

• 2:08:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:51Dax Shepard?

  We need something on them, and this is a start.

• 2:08:54Speaker 01

  It's true. Oh, okay. Did Ted Olson argue the most cases in front of the Supreme Court? So there's like a list of from lone dissent of US Supreme Court top advocates. Number one is Lawrence G. Wallace, 157 arguments.

• 2:09:13Dax Shepard?

  Whoa.

• 2:09:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Then there's, number two is an unknown advocate.

• 2:09:18Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:09:18Speaker 01

  Wants to go by unknown.

• 2:09:21Dax Shepard?

  What a match.

• 2:09:22Speaker 01

  Three is Edwin Needler, 143. Four, Michael Dreeben, 106. Five, Paul Clement, I've heard that name, 92. Six, Carter Phillips, 86. Seven, Erwin Griswold, 83. I'll just, Ted is 13 on this list.

• 2:09:41Dax Shepard?

  Okay. I, my claim wasn't that he had argued the most, but I thought he was maybe the most victorious. But I bet these, some of those names are from like people in the 1800s that were there every other day, back when it was in the basement. It was kind of a joke. Kangaroo court.

• 2:09:57Speaker 01

  I don't know. That's mean again.

• 2:10:00Dax Shepard?

  I was sad.

• 2:10:06Dax Shepard?

  Like you're Stevie Wonder playing the piano. No. He said he passed.

• 2:10:12Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:10:13Dax Shepard?

  That really bummed me out.

• 2:10:14Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:10:14Dax Shepard?

  I feel very lucky that I had a dinner with him.

• 2:10:16Speaker 01

  I felt really kind of weird in that moment.

• 2:10:18Dax Shepard?

  You did.

• 2:10:18Speaker 01

  Because I knew that was new, like you were finding out.

• 2:10:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I always had this fantasy we would interview him someday because I really, really enjoyed the dinner I had with him.

• 2:10:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I felt, felt like.

• 2:10:33Dax Shepard?

  What did you feel?

• 2:10:36Dax Shepard?

  Like I should feel stupid? Okay, we've been at this for a while.

• 2:10:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:10:42Dax Shepard?

  You don't know how you felt.

• 2:10:43Speaker 01

  I will, no, I just felt like, what if you cried? Like, what if you like got really, needed to take a break? And that would have been fine, of course, but.

• 2:10:52Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 2:10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:54Dax Shepard?

  Not if I need to take a break. We have a guest. We can't invite guests on it and then I go, I need to take a break.

• 2:10:59Speaker 01

  Well, if you find out that I die in the middle of an interview, I hope you take a break.

• 2:11:03Dax Shepard?

  That'll mean I have witnessed you get killed in the middle of the interview. You're never not in the interview.

• 2:11:09Speaker 01

  Or have a heart attack.

• 2:11:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Or. I will have to take a break, yeah, to start chest compressions.

• 2:11:15Speaker 01

  Or what if I, what if my, an email comes in with my AIDS test?

• 2:11:22Dax Shepard?

  Oh, boy. We're gonna get in hot, hot water this episode. Unairable. Cut it, dump it.

• 2:11:30Speaker 01

  Dump it.

• 2:11:31Dax Shepard?

  All right.

• 2:11:31Speaker 01

  All right, that's it.

• 2:11:31Dax Shepard?

  Love you.

• 2:11:32Speaker 01

  Love you.