Olivia Fox Cabane (on the science of charisma)

Olivia Fox Cabane (The Charisma Myth, The Net and the Butterfly) is a bestselling author, speaker, and leading authority on the science of charisma. Olivia joins Armchair Expert to discuss growing up in Paris without television or movies, receiving an autism diagnosis in her 40s, and decoding the “secret manual” of human interaction. Olivia and Dax talk about translating charisma research into a teachable system, showing founders why body language can outweigh a flawless pitch, and updating her book with cutting-edge research on digital charisma. Olivia explains why focused listening gives introverts an advantage, why genuine warmth cannot be faked, and how too much charisma can leave powerful people dangerously unaccountable. Check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds: https://www.allstate.com/ Take printer ink off your back to school list with HP Smart Tank | https://hp.com/SmartTank See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:06Dax Shepard?

  Today's guest is Olivia Fox Kabam. She is one of the world's leading authorities on the science of charisma.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  This was fascinating.

• 0:16Dax Shepard?

  Absolutely, and a bestselling author. Her book, The Charisma Myth, is like globally enormous. It's such a huge book.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  She's worked with some people, Selena Gomez, ever heard of her?

• 0:28Dax Shepard?

  I have, and seen her. Yeah, charisma, there's a science to it. Everyone can have more of it.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  You can, you can learn it.

• 0:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Please enjoy Olivia Fox Kabam. We get support from Quince.

• 0:43Speaker 01

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

• 0:52Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:15Speaker 01

  $60, $60 for cashmere that you'd expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag. It's amazing, gets me every time. It really shouldn't be real, but it is because they go straight to the factories, they skip the middlemen, and they just hand you the savings. The stuff isn't trendy, it's the kind of pieces you grab over and over because they work every time.

• 1:33Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:42Speaker 01

  It's a uniform.

• 1:43Dax Shepard?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:43Speaker 01

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

• 2:01Dax Shepard?

  Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. This episode is presented by YouTube Premium. YouTube was already great, but Premium supercharges it. If you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com/premium. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime. Now let's get into today's episode.

• 2:58Dax Shepard?

  Where do you live, Olivia?

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Amsterdam.

• 3:01Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you do? Oh, lucky you.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 3:04Dax Shepard?

  How long have you lived there?

• 3:06Speaker 02

  So we moved there about a year ago, Northern California to Amsterdam. So it was a bit of a transition. I'm autistic, so having a lot of humans around is...

• 3:14Dax Shepard?

  Not your ideal area. So you got diagnosed with autism very late in life, you have 40s?

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it turns out when I was seven, my parents took me to, so in Paris at the time, to a child psychologist, and he listed down everything that would be today considered to be the traits of autism, but girls don't have autism at that point.

• 3:33Dax Shepard?

  Right, right, right. Or ADHD.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Or anything, right?

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, they have hysteria, and that's it.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  But they can be prescribed vibrators in the 19th century, whatever, right? And so in my 40s, my mother brought this up again and listed the traits, and I was like, hang on, this sounds like autism. So I got a full, like, 12-hour evaluation, and you'll hear this from a lot of late-diagnosed women, all of a sudden, my whole life made sense.

• 3:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Right, it's like, you're not broken, you're just autistic.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:01Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness.

• 4:02Dax Shepard?

  So we have a friend, we have a close friend who also got a late-in-life diagnosis. You have all these other stories to explain all these other events, and then you kind of just have to wipe the slate, right? And go like, oh, no, that was that, and that was that.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  But what a relief, you're not a bad horse, you're a zebra.

• 4:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, right, right, right, right, right.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Now, a lot of people ask me, how could someone who was autistic write a book on charisma? And my perspective, only an autistic could have written this particular book.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Because I look at humans from the outside, I'm like, interesting, what a weird species. And so trying to fit in is how I developed all the tools that eventually became the book.

• 4:39Dax Shepard?

  Now Dad was a pretty renowned physicist?

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a mountaineer, so brown belt in judo, seventh Ascension of the Salcanti, silver medalist in this physics thing, oh, and a chemist as well.

• 4:51Dax Shepard?

  Worked with Nobel laureates.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was normal for me growing up to have Nobel laureates drop by for breakfast.

• 4:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  I grew up in Paris, but with no television, no radio, no movies, no news, except for the New Scientist. I didn't know there were other newspapers and New Scientists.

• 5:06Dax Shepard?

  And would it be fair to guess that probably there's a lot of people in Dad's circle, maybe even Dad himself, that are probably somewhere on the spectrum?

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Oh, I got it from him.

• 5:15Dax Shepard?

  Right, so, so there's like a lot of things compounding. One is like, everyone you're exposed to seems to be functioning the way you do.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  In academia, yes, but the issue is that, so my mother was LA girl, the popular, like, people actually like her. Me and my father, they moved to France, and she very much had a dream for me to become this popular Parisian girl.

• 5:38Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay, she's a psychoanalyst?

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Psychotherapist, yes.

• 5:41Dax Shepard?

  Psychotherapist, okay.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  And so she tries to engineer me to be a social climber.

• 5:44Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  And I'm, yes, right? And I'm socially awkward to the point of ineptitude, and now we understand autistic. Can you imagine the train wreck that was?

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Right, I'm half-French, half-American, half-Twitch, half-Protestant, in blue-blood aristocratic Paris.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  And autistic.

• 6:01Dax Shepard?

  And Mom probably has a fantasy about Paris.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  The Gigi Sabrina Audrey Hepburn.

• 6:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, she has a very movie-informed, probably, romanticism about that and what your life would be if you were the toast of that town.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Didn't work out that way.

• 6:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, didn't work out that way.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  It normally doesn't.

• 6:17Dax Shepard?

  Did academics come easy to you?

• 6:19Speaker 02

  That did, but you have to understand the French school system. The French school system is not designed to make happy children, it's designed to break them down, just like Nicole, to then build them back up to be proper French citizens. So athletes are dumb, this is an understood thing, and so because I was a swimmer, I was told by my head teacher, well, you're only fit to become a garbage collector, quite obviously, since you're so stupid, is to become an athlete. And this was not unusual.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  So academics were relatively easy, law was fascinating. But for me, the part that was more interesting was this secret manual that everyone else seemed to have gotten on how to interact with humans that I hadn't been given.

• 6:56Dax Shepard?

  Right. Your undergrad work was with law?

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did law in France, then law in Germany, then left for Peru, then New York. So a lot of law, and the theoretical practice of law was fascinating, but I never used it. I've always believed, and this is probably the autism, that if there's an answer, it's in the library. If you want to fix something, first you figure out if there's science behind it. Turns out there was, and I was really lucky that the turning point in charisma research was 2011.

• 7:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no kidding?

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:24Dax Shepard?

  And that's when you started?

• 7:25Speaker 02

  I had started looking at it quite seriously, but I wrote the book in 2012, just after, yeah.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  That's great timing.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was perfect timing, because there had been some studies before then that showed that charisma is just behavior, but 2011 is when they started showing it, and it's been repeated ever since, that charisma is teachable.

• 7:42Dax Shepard?

  Right, I think we all come into this conversation assuming you're born with charisma or you're not.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:47Dax Shepard?

  And also, you can be.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Yes, certain people.

• 7:50Dax Shepard?

  So it's just not either or?

• 7:52Speaker 02

  No.

• 7:52Dax Shepard?

  It's and?

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's genetic predispositions, and people always believe, for example, that extroverts are more naturally charismatic, and actually, extroverts have an easier time with certain forms of charisma.

• 8:05Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Introverts are gonna have a better time with different forms of charisma, right?

• 8:09Dax Shepard?

  There's categories of charisma.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  All sorts of flavors. A lot of people, myself included, first assumed that charisma, you have it here, you don't, you're born with it, not at all. So the only difference is that the naturals start learning it so early that by the time you're an adult, it looks as if it was natural. People who become very good at it, it's really interesting, like Steve Jobs, from 1983 to 2011, you can see him learning each of the charismatic elements, literally, step by step by step.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Well, can we start with the definition?

• 8:38Dax Shepard?

  Yes, before we get to definition, can I just ask, what were you teaching at Berkeley? You were teaching some technique that you had been designed for Harvard and MIT, and you were teaching a class at Berkeley that they had to have you security guards?

• 8:50Speaker 02

  That one, yes, it was the class on first impressions. We have science, we know how first impressions happen, thin slicing it's called, in technical terms. And so this was a class on how to kill it with your first impressions at a job interview, first date, you name it, and yes, it was quite popular.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  I bet.

• 9:04Dax Shepard?

  Is there a concise version of that? Are there like three hallmarks to that, or four, or five?

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Yes, it is true that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. They happen in under two seconds. So if you want to ace your first impression, the best work actually happens before you walk in the door.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 9:20Dax Shepard?

  Oh, tell me more.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  The vast majority of your first impression is going to be nonverbal, which means that getting your body language right is the critical thing. However, body language is un-fakeable. The reason for that is that there's so much body language emitted. Were you aware of your eyelids fluttering in front of your eyes, until I mention it just now?

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  Right, no. How about the weight of your tongue in your mouth? How about the position of your toes? Have you forgotten your eyelids again?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Right, so there's so much body language that if you try to control it consciously, it's impossible.

• 9:49Dax Shepard?

  10 other things, though.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  And then it's going to be incongruent, you're going to come across as fake, it's terrible. So instead, the best thing is before you walk in the door, one of the best techniques is to imagine that you're going to be meeting one of your best friends, because that will get you into the right body language before you walk in the door.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Then you walk through the door and just be whoever you're going to be, but just by getting this boost of positive body language, that makes the first impression go better.

• 10:12Dax Shepard?

  So that's working inside out?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:14Dax Shepard?

  And we can also work outside in on certain things?

• 10:17Speaker 02

  On certain things, yes.

• 10:17Dax Shepard?

  But the body language thing should be inside out?

• 10:20Speaker 02

  You're always going to be at your most natural, charisma really can't be faked, but you can gamify your way into it.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:28Dax Shepard?

  Okay, then definitely, sorry, now, yeah, let's get a definition of charisma.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  That's gonna be a challenge because everyone has their own. So the way I look at charisma is people are always like, is it like charm? No, charm gets people to like you. You can be incredibly charismatic and be a total asshole, right? So charisma is more what gets people to trust you, to want to follow you. What gets you to inspire people? The impact you have on others. It is a feeling of inspiration. It is a feeling of attraction and almost of magnetism.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 11:02Dax Shepard?

  Would we include confidence? Can you have charisma without at least the veil of confidence?

• 11:06Speaker 02

  Thank you for asking that. No, you can't. Confidence is one of the key components. But here's the really important thing, and I hope we get the chance to talk about this. Self-compassion turns out to be more important than self-confidence.

• 11:17Dax Shepard?

  Elaborate. Just quickly.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:20Dax Shepard?

  If we're talking about leadership positions, or follow my vision, or trust my vision, we have to have confidence. If that person is not confident about their own vision, there's no way we're getting on board.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, you need to project confidence, but how do you get to confidence? Because telling someone, just be more confident, that's not gonna help.

• 11:36Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  For me, it's always the now what? How? And for so many people in our current environment, it turns out that the one thing that is the most reductive of confidence is actually self-criticism. So ironically, self-compassion, learning how to forgive yourself, learning how to accept, embrace, and eventually celebrate yourself, that is the path to self-confidence. Which becomes really hilarious when I end up working with this big alpha dudes who wanna project power.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  And the path for them is gonna be through the tenderness of self-compassion.

• 12:04Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's gotta be a tough sell for them. If they've been like bootstraps, paradigm, ignore pain.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Science helps, because logic and science, I can show. Have you ever been in a conversation and you say something and all of a sudden your brain goes, ooh, that was stupid?

• 12:16Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Right?

• 12:17Speaker 03

  All the time.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  What happens to your face when you're thinking that? It tenses up, it cringes. Keep in mind, the other person was looking at you and it was self-directed judgment, but they don't know that. All they know is that while you were looking at them, listening to them, presumably thinking about them, they accurately read coldness, criticism, and judgment on your face. So naturally, they're gonna assume that that was about them. So two conclusions from that. One, when you see someone have that facial expression, I spend my time in other people's heads. Eighty percent of the time, it's about them, not you.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  And two, this is why self-compassion and self-forgiveness are so bloody important, is because self-criticism fucks up your body language.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. Interesting.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  So the logic is, if you wanna stop messing up your body language, learn how to forgive yourself. And that is how that will unblock the self-confidence, that will then give you the power, that will then give you the charisma. Then you can rule the world and blah, blah, blah.

• 13:09Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so for starters, we should talk about what the downriver effects of having charisma are. It's a very powerful tool.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Too much so in a sense. I wasn't when I first wrote the book. At this point, I am genuinely concerned that these days in this attention economy, charisma matters more than intelligence, integrity, competence. It's a problem.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  Yes, I agree.

• 13:34Dax Shepard?

  In an attention economy, charisma gets attention.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  It does.

• 13:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, more than boring, well-thought-out game plans.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  One of the reasons I'm so desperate to democratize charisma is precisely to level the playing field.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  I like that.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Right, so that it stops having this outsized impact. So in terms of what it does, so charismatic people have better quality of life, have less stress, they get paid more, like all things. But even like physicians who are charismatic, their patients like them better, follow the treatment plan better.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 13:59Dax Shepard?

  You're more effective.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  It's stunning charismatic teachers. Like you see the downstream effect everywhere.

• 14:04Dax Shepard?

  More romantic options?

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Obviously.

• 14:06Dax Shepard?

  The less stress thing is like, who wouldn't want that aspect? Yeah.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  But that's because a topic that you have both explored, charisma is tied to status.

• 14:14Speaker 03

  Definitely.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  And high status equals less stress.

• 14:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, more resources.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:19Dax Shepard?

  Okay, what are the pitfalls of charisma?

• 14:22Speaker 02

  So the obvious ones are with charisma, you can do bad things, right? There's been books and books written about this. Hitler, incredibly charismatic. Need I give a worse example?

• 14:31Dax Shepard?

  Dynamic speaker.

• 14:33Speaker 03

  I mean, Trump is charismatic, we gotta, he is.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Yes, incredibly charismatic. So those pitfalls are obvious. The less obvious ones are the pitfalls of being charismatic to the charismatic person. Such as, you can convince people even when you're wrong, which can have some seriously bad effects. You can shut down brainstorming. Now this is gonna start sounding a bit unbelievable, but I'm always like, no, please believe me, this really happens. If you forget to turn the charisma off, people can get addicted to it. You see it in Silicon Valley all the time, that the VCs fund the most charismatic founders.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh, I'm sure. Can you tell immediately when someone walks in if they're charismatic or not?

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Yes, but so can you.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know when someone walks in, you're in Hollywood, both of you, right?

• 15:20Speaker 03

  Right, that's true.

• 15:21Dax Shepard?

  Nearly everyone we talk to is pretty charismatic. We're spoiled.

• 15:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 15:25Dax Shepard?

  Because they're professors, they're authors, they're leaders of some kind in some way, I think. Back to the liability of it. It's a unique test for people who are super duper charismatic, who genuinely everyone likes and a lot of people are attracted to. That's just a different way to go through life.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Are you gonna have the ethics to not give in to the temptation?

• 15:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you kinda mean outsized ethics.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  It's a problem.

• 15:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  Because a lot of people are not using their powers for good.

• 15:50Dax Shepard?

  Is there anything, when presented with abundance, that people generally don't indulge in? It's like if you're at an all-you-can-eat bar, you eat more than you normally do. We're kinda context creatures.

• 15:58Speaker 03

  Not everyone does, but some people do. I think some people do monitor that, even if they have the ability.

• 16:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I just think like if you check into a hotel and they go like, hey, by the way, unlimited massages versus you have to pay for a massage. My guess is you're gonna get one massage that week that you're at the hotel if you pay for it. And then if it's unlimited, you're probably gonna get 10.

• 16:16Speaker 03

  But that's not a bad thing.

• 16:17Dax Shepard?

  Right, I'm trying to point out that when you give people abundance, they generally indulge in the abundance, most humans.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  It comes with risks. Let me put it this way.

• 16:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it comes with risks. Okay, so let's demystify charisma. Like a myth of attractiveness versus extroversion. There's like all these myths, right?

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yes, thank you, thank you. So the halo effect of beauty, right? Are physically attractive people at an advantage in terms of being charismatic? Sure. However, you can be incredibly charismatic and profoundly ugly. Hello, Winston Churchill. And in fact, being more charismatic will make you appear more attractive, and for men, taller.

• 16:54Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  I can't remember if it was one or two inches, but it's a couple of inches taller that you are rated as if you are charismatic. And since charisma is purely behavioral, and when I say purely behavioral, researchers in controlled laboratory experiments were able to raise and lower people's level of charisma as if they were turning a dial, literally.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  It's that behavior.

• 17:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, we'll find out. We gotta know exactly what that behavior is that they were able to get results that quick and acute.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  First one is, is it attractiveness? Attractiveness helps, but is not necessary. Second, is it extroversion? Extroversion helps for certain forms of charisma, but is absolutely not necessary. And in fact, because one of the components of charisma is presence, the ability to be entirely focused on the other person. Introverts are at a huge advantage, especially for certain forms of charisma, because they are genuinely able to focus on the other person, don't need to be in the spotlight all the time.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Now, this goes back to, so obviously, too, charisma's gotta be cultural. It's gotta be fluid, right? Because even when you say like the VC people are betting on the founders who are most charismatic. Well, what I immediately go is like, I've met a lot of these founders. They are not your and I's traditional definition of charismatic.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Yes, thank you, thank you, thank you. So is charisma cultural? Yes. What you've just defined perfectly, thank you, is cultural is not just, is charisma different in the US, in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia? Yes, but also subcultural.

• 18:17Dax Shepard?

  The South.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Or the Silicon Valley charisma has a certain amount of cocky arrogance to it that VCs love. For example, there's some fascinating stuff like glasses. How do glasses impact the perception of someone? And so we know that you get an intelligence rating bump in Europe, in the US, in Japan, but not in India. Why? We don't know.

• 18:40Dax Shepard?

  Wow, Monica, tell us.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Wild, right? The shape of your glasses, if they're rounder, you will be rated as friendlier, warmer. If they're more square, it'll be more competent, intelligent. So there's fascinating things. And I do a fair amount of work in the Middle East and handshakes, which I spend a lot of time on, especially with students, because no one teaches kids these days how to shake hands properly. But when I'm in Dubai, I have to say, everything I say is North American specific, so please take this with not just a grain of salt, but the whole shaker. There are certain circumstances where you just won't shake hands. Eye contact, completely different in Asia and in the US. So charisma, absolutely, completely cultural and subcultural. This is where adaptability is so important. There's very few tools that are always good and always bad, per se.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  It's always what is best for you, your personality, your neurotype, the situation you're in, and the goal.

• 19:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you have to, I imagine, fortify your strengths. You're not gonna ask an introvert to become an extrovert.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  Play to your strengths, manage around your weaknesses. Yes.

• 19:38Dax Shepard?

  Okay, what are the characteristics of charisma? Presence, power, and warmth. Walk me through those.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the charisma equation, if you think about it, it's called different things in different studies. But the components of power, which is sometimes called dominance, or assertiveness, or status, or competence, but essentially, it's the ability to affect the world around you. And if you think of it, it's can you move mountains for me? If you think of it from an evolutionary perspective, what we're asking when we're meeting someone for the first time is essentially, fight or flight, friend or foe?

• 20:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  And fight or flight is the power question. Friend or foe is the warmth question. Can you move mountains for me? Do you want to move mountains for me? Because from an evolutionary perspective, if you meet someone who can move the mountains, but has no interest in doing so, doesn't change your life.

• 20:25Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  If you meet someone who would love to move the mountains for you, but doesn't have the power, doesn't change your life. You need both. If you meet someone who has both of those, but is completely distracted and unaware of which mountains you need moved, same thing. So the way I like to look at it, this is purely a personal metaphor, is, you know the way that we overreact to sugar, fat, and salt? I'd like you to think of power, presence, and warmth the same way. Each one of these is attractive on its own, but you put all three together, you get Jung Fu.

• 20:54Dax Shepard?

  Can we drill in on the status thing a little bit? Because that's my great fascination. As someone who's obsessed with Anthro and just status as the most, you know, adaptive, functional thing of a multi-member group. Who decides what? Who gets what resources? All this stuff. I happen to think we're so, so aware of it at all times in a way that we don't realize. So your hunch about charisma is I can benefit from this, right? You have to assess that. This is beneficial to me. They're friendly. They have some powers and I'm going to benefit somehow. And I just wonder how much of it is simply like, there is some bizarre comfort in knowing what the hierarchy is, just for the sake of knowing.

• 21:37Dax Shepard?

  Because when you don't know the hierarchy and you piss off an alpha or a high-status person, there's hell to pay in a tribe.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Which is a problem for autistics often because they don't see the hierarchy, yes.

• 21:47Dax Shepard?

  Right. And so I'm just curious, like, what percentage we think is just also just this, like, desire for, okay, where is everyone at? Okay, it's comforting to know that person is clearly the leader.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  The high-status. It's a big part, but without the warmth, it can read just as threatening. If it doesn't have the other two elements, what you get is someone impressive, but not necessarily charismatic. So here's a fun piece on status. So these days I mask very little in autistic terms, especially since the diagnostic, I've been like, fuck it, I'm just going to be me. Which means that I have a lot of autistic tics that I would otherwise have suppressed when I was trying to be just pure charisma. And a lot of the behaviors that are autistic stimming are also forms of low-status signaling.

• 22:30Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  So self-soothing behaviors. What people who feel they are low-status do when they are faced with someone who's a higher-status is going to be a lot of self-soothing, touching their clothing, their hair, and this is, am I okay? Am I right? And that is some pretty self-soothing behavior, which guess what? Is autism 101.

• 22:49Dax Shepard?

  Right, but might read to others as low-status.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Correct. It does read to others as low-status. And so if you're optimizing purely for charisma and you're willing to pay the price of masking if you're autistic, then yeah, you should optimize for stillness and poise. But masking comes at a cost.

• 23:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  Horrors.

• 23:11Dax Shepard?

  Let's get into this.

• 23:12Speaker 03

  That sounds miserable.

• 23:13Dax Shepard?

  I think you handle it perfectly in the book, which is like, here is an option for you. You don't have to pursue it, but if you desire this, yes, a masking is going to require. Now we got to get into the nuance of what is destructive masking, what is harmful, what is fine.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:28Dax Shepard?

  So for people who don't have any experience with that, yeah, just talk a little bit about masking and how it can be destructive and how sometimes it's fine.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  So with the caveat that I'm not an autism expert, I only know the lived experience, masking is the autistic code-switching to pass as normal. And so one of the challenges I had to the book is that a lot of people are saying, isn't the book just masking 101 for autistics? And the answer is yes, absolutely. For neurotypicals, it'll make you charismatic. For autistics, if you do everything in there, it may lead you to appear as neurotypical. Should we have to mask? Ideally, not, of course.

• 24:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, in a dream world, no.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  In a dream world, no, but this is the world we have. And so if you have to mask, which you do in certain cases, here are the least harmful ways I know, the most healthy ways I know, all things considered, to mask. And that's why we flag them in the book. And I had an autistic psychiatrist review the book to flag anything that could be constituting as masking. So what are the risks of masking? It can be pretty heavy. If you mask for too long without any breaks and with certain kinds of unhealthy masking, especially for autistic women, it can lead to burnout, depression, suicidal ideation. The stats are dire.

• 24:42Dax Shepard?

  Because it's energy consumptive.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  It's energy consumptive, but it's also, and this is where I don't know the science very well, but masking is doing violence to the autistic nervous system. The autistic nervous system is wired differently than the neurotypical nervous system. That's one of the key definitions. And so masking is suppressing all the self-regulation tools that you'd be using otherwise.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  Exactly. You're building up, instead of soothing, you're actively not soothing. And then what happens if you don't soothe? It builds up.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Meltdown. During the evaluation, I confidently told the doctor, no, no, but I don't stim at all. It's just not me. And then I see a video of me in front of a class and I'm rocking, but it wasn't back and forth, which is why it was side to side. Totally different.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  You're like, that's not it.

• 25:21Dax Shepard?

  That's not stimming. That's a sea city.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  That's my own fun way of sitting.

• 25:25Dax Shepard?

  We one time interviewed a clinical sociopath and she was explaining her mask, which was fascinating. We encouraged her, like, go fucking mask off. Like, what would this conversation be like? Mask off. And she's like, okay, what'd you get arrested for? Like, she just went directly into how she would prefer to communicate in real life, which is like, let's get to it. I want to ask the gnarliest question about you and I want to really dig in on that. And I thought, oh yeah, that's exhaustive to be living a version of yourself that really isn't you.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, one of the reasons that I'm more comfortable here than I would be in a corporate interview is because I've listened to a few of your podcasts. You guys do real. And so I knew that it would be okay if I didn't mask.

• 26:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  Whereas I'm going on some other interviews later in the week and they've given me the guidelines and I've been like, this is going to be...

• 26:14Dax Shepard?

  You're going to be buttoned up.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 26:17Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I'm so much more interested in someone stimming or doing whatever thing they're doing.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, someone's real behavior.

• 26:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I kind of love it.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  See, that's what's so funny because I'm like, that is charismatic to me. Like, I think that's confident, being very real.

• 26:31Dax Shepard?

  What you are, unapologetically.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  So you'll see me in literally two different modes of charisma. You can see me on stage in recordings when I was in my twenties and I was like code-switched 100%. So I am fully polished, onstage, perfect New Yorker. And these days, it's a different kind of charisma where I'm like, fuck it, I don't have anything to prove anymore. So I'm going to walk around in my pink fleece onesie. But it's a different kind of charisma. And what's really interesting for me is if you look at generationally, the charisma that boomers respond to versus the charisma that millennials and Gen Z. So Gen Z wants it raw. They want authentic charisma, warts and all.

• 27:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  And if you're too polished, actually for them, that's a problem. Cultural charisma, generational charisma, it's been fascinating.

• 27:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Okay, what are the obstacles to presence, power, and warmth? And maybe we could go through some, like, hard examples of how someone presents power, how they present warmth.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so let me start with presence because that's always the one that people overlook. And in essence, it's kind of the foundation. The way I see it, the reason I always work from the inside out is that I could give you all the surface tools for charisma, but that's like building pretty balconies and turrets on a house with faulty foundations, right? At the first earthquake, everything falls apart. So presence is really the ground of charisma. And it is simply the ability to be present moment by moment. Certain studies call it attentiveness, but others receptivity, but essentially it is the ability to give the other person your full attention. In today's world, that is increasingly difficult. Here's the good news, even a tiny increase in your ability to be present is going to

• 28:09Speaker 02

  have outsized effects because everyone else is so distracted.

• 28:12Dax Shepard?

  That makes me think of, people thought George Washington was so smart because he was the only person in the Continental Congress that didn't talk. Everyone else was constantly monologuing to try to jockey for who was the smartest in this room of very smart people. And people were just enamored with his ability to be quiet and they projected onto him, oh, he's so confident and self-assured. He doesn't even need to get in the fray.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Two things about that. A professional negotiator told me he could predict the outcome of any negotiation just by looking at the relative level of comfort of the participants with silence. Whoever is the least comfortable with silence loses. That's one thing. Second thing, have you ever been in a conversation when only half your brain is present? The other half is busy doing something else.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 28:59Dax Shepard?

  95% of my conversations, yeah.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Did you think the other person notices?

• 29:04Speaker 03

  I guess I think they don't, but they probably do.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  We assume they don't. What actually happens is that your eyes slightly glaze over a tiny bit. There's a split second delay in your facial reactions.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  I'm like so in my head right now.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  So we can read each other's faces in under 17 milliseconds.

• 29:21Speaker 03

  Oh, my.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  We are so good at detecting anything that is incongruent. And so the problem is that if you're not fully attentive in the conversation, that lag is going to give the impression of incongruence and it can make you appear inauthentic just because you were still writing emails or on Slack in your head. So yeah, the ability to be fully present is really the ground for all charisma.

• 29:43Dax Shepard?

  And what's a practice someone can get into that would help?

• 29:47Speaker 02

  There are lots of bigger tools, but if you want the two-second tool, if you're in a conversation, you feel that your brain is somewhere else, focus on your toes. The physical sensation in your toes. Because what this does is it forces your brain to scan your whole body from head to, of course, toe, and it gets you very present in the moment. You only do that for a moment, then you get back to the conversation, obviously.

• 30:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  But yeah, your toes is one of the best tools for instant presence.

• 30:10Speaker 03

  Love that.

• 30:11Dax Shepard?

  How about before you enter the situation where you're liable to have a wandering mind is like breathing helpful?

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Breathing is really good if you're in a situation where you feel safe doing this. And if you're in a headspace where you feel safe doing this, a whole check-in with your emotions, where's my head at? Where's my heart at? That can be a very grounding experience if it's appropriate for you. I mean, it's bloody uncomfortable, but meditation is one of the best training grounds for charisma. It's a gym for the mind.

• 30:42Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 30:47Dax Shepard?

  We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking what the warning light means before pulling out of your driveway, you absolutely convince yourself it was probably just a sensor thing, right up until you were standing on the side of the road waiting for a tow. Yeah, checking first is the right move. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds. And for fast, reliable help when you need it, add an Allstate roadside plan today. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary, subject to terms and availability. Insurance by Allstate North American Insurance Company, Northbrook, Illinois. Roadside assistance by Allstate Motor Club, Incorporated, an Allstate affiliate. We get support from our presenting sponsor,

• 31:32Dax Shepard?

  YouTube Premium. Now, you already know I'm a big YouTube person. It's incredible on its own, but Premium makes the whole experience feel enhanced. Like, you don't realize how much better it can get until you try it. The biggest game changer for me, background play. I love long, two-hour deep dives. You name it. Motorcycles, travel, cars.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  Cooking shows for me.

• 31:56Dax Shepard?

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

• 32:40Dax Shepard?

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

• 33:22Dax Shepard?

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

• 34:07Dax Shepard?

  teen accounts. So, we talk a lot on this show about how the world is different now than when we were growing up. And one of the biggest differences is obviously social media. And I think a lot of people wonder, okay, what's actually being done to make it safer for teenagers?

• 34:21Speaker 03

  Which is a fair question.

• 34:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so Instagram has got something called teen accounts, and they come with automatic protections built in by default. So anyone between 13 and 17 is automatically placed into this experience. They get age-appropriate content settings, contact limits, so that by default, only people they're already connected to can message them. And time management tools, daily time limit reminders, and also sleep mode that mutes notifications from 10:00 PM to 7:00 AM.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  Sleep mode is genius.

• 34:50Dax Shepard?

  Right? And here's the thing, for anyone under 16, a parent has to give permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. The guardrails are on, and Instagram keeps building new safety features to create age-appropriate experiences for teens.

• 35:05Speaker 03

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

• 35:09Dax Shepard?

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

• 35:23Dax Shepard?

  What about power?

• 35:25Speaker 02

  People think of power as the ability to command people. It's not. It is simply giving the impression that you have the ability to affect the world around you. Power is read almost entirely through body language. And what happens really is that what they're looking for, because they don't have the time, as in anything else in first impressions, they don't have the time to figure out how much power you genuinely have. This is the rule. In general, people will accept whatever you project. So if you seem confident, people will assume that you have something to be confident about. And this is where we get into the questions of, do you understand the difference between self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-compassion?

• 36:09Speaker 03

  You should tell us.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  Okay, so self-confidence is your belief in your ability to do something, or to learn how to do it. Self-esteem is how much you like yourself. Interesting, both of these are positively correlated with narcissism, which is not a good thing.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  Makes sense, yeah.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Self-compassion, on the other hand, that's how you handle yourself when shit goes wrong. And that is the one that is the biggest predictor of health. So if you ever want to have an expert on self-compassion, Kristin Neff is the grande dame in that field.

• 36:40Dax Shepard?

  What word did you just use?

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Grande dame?

• 36:42Dax Shepard?

  Oh, the grande dame.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  Fran, I love it, I love it.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  With French, like, when they're so, it's like, can't say the American way, it's just wrong. So the big person in this field. The science is fascinating on the impact of self-compassion on, people have higher self-compassion, tolerate mistakes better, they can admit them better, they have fewer sick days. It's just a predictor of so many things that, honestly, corporations should be testing for self-compassion when they hire people.

• 37:07Dax Shepard?

  I would imagine it makes you less judgmental towards others as well.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Yes, it does.

• 37:11Dax Shepard?

  If you turn on the dial on yourself, it's easier to extend that to others.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  It's incredible. So if you look at self-compassion, if you look at what really lowers confidence, you've got really two big beasts. You've got the imposter syndrome, which a lot of people hear about, and the inner critic. And I see them kind of differently, because the imposter syndrome attacks what you're doing. You know, you don't know what you're doing, and it's only a matter of time before you're found out and exposed as a fraud. The inner critic is worse, in a way, because it attacks who you are. The way I look at it is that the imposter syndrome, you've got a good chance of learning how to dismantle it. The inner critic will be with you for life. It's like your shadow. You'll never get rid of your shadow.

• 37:50Dax Shepard?

  I think we have a lot of people that think they're suffering from imposter syndrome, but it's really the self-critic.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  And they're different. And they have different remedies.

• 37:58Dax Shepard?

  The imposter syndrome is so common with people we interview, because they're in extraordinary situations, which no one's really certain if they're really ready to be in, or capable of handling. But I think sometimes you see that window has closed for when you should feel that way. And I think there's another force at play that's more, because you actually can do it, and you know you can do it now. So what else is going on?

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. So on the inner critic, the best book I've ever found is called Embracing the Inner Critic. It's a pretty old book, small book, really useful. The framework I love is that, just like you'll never get rid of your shadow, but you can learn to handle your inner critic with compassion. You can learn to handle it even with humor, and realize that it actually comes from a place of love. The inner critic is desperately trying to keep you safe.

• 38:40Dax Shepard?

  And keep you lovable.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  And keep you lovable. But so if you learn how to handle the inner critic, the imposter syndrome, if you learn self-compassion, those are some of the best ways to increase your self-confidence. Now, if your question is, what's the quick fix? That's different. There's two ways I look at it. First, for a lot of people, and almost all women, I would beg you to learn martial arts, specifically Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

• 39:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Because there's a kind of grounded confidence that comes from knowing you could take the other guy down, whoever it is, that nothing else I've found ever gives you. We are all hairless monkeys barely descended from the trees, in terms of how much time. So knowing that you could take care of yourself in a fight, that really changes things.

• 39:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's reducing a sense of vulnerability.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  It does, but it also means that you move differently.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  And so the full-contact grappling sports are wonderful, especially because women are taught to be small. We're taught to not take up too much space. And what we're communicating is, please like me, I'm harmless.

• 39:40Speaker 03

  Exactly. Don't worry about me.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  And I'd like you to communicate the opposite, to learn how to take up space.

• 39:47Dax Shepard?

  My daughter and wife train with Cecily Gracie from the Gracie family.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  Lovely.

• 39:52Dax Shepard?

  And what's so rad about that, and she teaches four girls, and the stuff that is taught is so intuitive. It's how do you shake a man's hand? If you don't want someone to put their arm around you in a picture, how are you holding your body? There's all these subtle ways to present your body to the world. That's not a fight, but is incredibly empowering and effective for making sure your body is moving through the world as you'd like it to. It's not just fighting.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's learning how to own the space around you.

• 40:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  It's moving like you're the predator. That's one. Two is improv. Improv is a fabulous training for confidence. It's wonderful. But in the moment, if you need a, I need confidence in the next two seconds. So if you can close your eyes for a second, just a second right now.

• 40:37Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Don't steal my wallet. I'm trusting you.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  So imagine cutting the lemon in half and feeling the lemon juice on your tongue. And now imagine dragging your fingernails across chalkboard. Right, open your eyes.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was horrible.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  There was no lemon, there was no chalkboard, but your body produced very real physical reactions.

• 40:55Dax Shepard?

  I got a shiver.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  To a completely imaginary event, right? And so what this is, this is the placebo effect. It's the reason why you get scared watching a scary movie, even though you know those are just well-paid actors up there who are delighted to look that they're getting their head chopped off and changed for a couple of million bucks, hopefully.

• 41:12Dax Shepard?

  And you're on a couch, you're safe.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  And you're on a couch, you're safe. But to simplify it, our brain doesn't know the difference between imagination and reality. The placebo effect is free, has no calories, has lots of beneficial effects, why it's called the placebo effect. We don't use it half enough. So using visualization, there's a reason why more than 80% of Olympic athletes use it. Imagining a previous triumph, a time when you felt incredibly confident, on top of the world, and getting all five senses involved, that's one of the ways to get an instant confidence boost.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:40Dax Shepard?

  When I read this, I was like, what would be my thing? What moment can I point to? I'm dying to know what yours would be. Does something come, is it state champion?

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:49Dax Shepard?

  Isn't it crazy, these little things you do in your life, they might be trivial, but it's like, no.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  No, they are lasting.

• 41:55Dax Shepard?

  They make you.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Either that, but all of it would have been cheerleading, like landing my first back tuck. Those things where it's like, you don't forget the feeling.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Like, oh my God, I actually did that.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Yes. I couldn't believe it. I didn't think I could. I tried so hard and I did.

• 42:09Dax Shepard?

  I think that's the key. I didn't think I could and I did.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Yes. Or like, I did this thing that a lot of people can't do. Those feelings, they do, they make you feel confident.

• 42:18Dax Shepard?

  What do you think of?

• 42:19Speaker 02

  Because I started martial arts fairly early, that was just always a part of my life. It wasn't like a pivotal moment. No, I think it was probably the first time I realized I was good at public speaking, so I was about 18. So yeah, it would have been same kind of early memories.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's huge.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  It makes sense, because it's like the first case, you remember your firsts, right?

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Probably that. And confidence for me is easier to get into than warmth. I live in my head. The confidence piece for me is rarely the struggle.

• 42:45Dax Shepard?

  And would I be wrong to guess that the autism is one of the added challenges with the warmth aspect?

• 42:50Speaker 02

  So one of the misunderstandings that people have is that when I disclosed my diagnosis, some friends were like, you didn't know? Especially the friends in the valley. They were like, oh, I thought you knew, I just didn't talk about it. I was like, well, thanks. But other friends, especially those with whom I'd been masking, said, but you can't be autistic, you have emotions.

• 43:07Dax Shepard?

  Right, right, right.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  The misconception, and in fact, autistic people feel emotions very, very, very deeply. It's just not on the same triggers, it's not necessarily at the same time, it's not necessarily with humans. The conversation that the two of you were having over, when you have a conversation with your wife and she just wants you to listen to her and you're like, let me give you a solution. I'm you. And so my poor husband, who just wants me to listen to him, and I'm like, but I've got three solutions.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  We can fix it.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Yes, I can fix this for you. Now ironically, the opposite issue that we have is then when I go to my husband and he thinks I want to hear, oh, I'm so sorry for you. And I'm like, no, but I'm craving for a solution.

• 43:45Dax Shepard?

  What am I missing here?

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Yes, it's very kind of you to say you're sorry, but what does that fix?

• 43:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, give me the lever I pulled to get a different outcome.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  I don't need you to listen to me, just help me fix this thing.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  But that's good. That means you're not hypocritical.

• 43:55Dax Shepard?

  I'm a bit hypocritical.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  You are a little. You don't want to hear, thank you for acknowledging that. You don't like to hear other people give you solutions.

• 44:03Dax Shepard?

  No, I hate other people's solutions.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Interesting. That's where it's like, okay, well, you can't really give me any if you won't take any.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Well, appreciate the self-awareness.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Yes, oh yes. Yes, we do appreciate.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  So yeah, the warmth piece is particularly challenging because warmth, even more than confidence, cannot be faked. So warmth really gets read in the eyes and the voice. And have you ever heard about a duken smile? A real smile versus a social smile?

• 44:28Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  So in a duken smile, it actually affects the inner corners of your eyes. For example, they go down a little bit. Paul Ekman, who's the great grandmaster of, was the great grandmaster of facial expressions.

• 44:37Dax Shepard?

  We know this. He had a partner and they were documenting every single facial.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Across the world.

• 44:42Dax Shepard?

  And they were realizing the emotions were hitting them, it was working inside and out and outside.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Mirror neurons, right? It's fascinating. But one of the things that was fascinating, for example, was realizing that unilateral expressions are learned, symmetrical ones are the ones that are instinctive. In any event, you can learn as an actor to get yourself into the mindset that will emote the warmth. But if you try to just control your eyes deliberately, it will not work. The same way that, and this is important for people to know, if you are feeling angry or stressed and you try to just suppress that, not only will it not work, but you will create an increased stress activation in the other person's brain. Here's my favorite piece of data on this, was when the MIT Media Lab in 2008, they were able to model with more than 80% accuracy

• 45:27Speaker 02

  the outcome of sales calls, negotiations and business plan pitches without listening to a single word of content.

• 45:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh baby. What were they looking at? It was like John Gottman's shit.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Kind of. The ratio is speaking to listening and most importantly, the excitement and the confidence, which were the two key pieces. But what's fascinating is then when I was working with startup founders, I had to explain to them, you're spending three hours on your PowerPoint. That's great. It's a lovely PowerPoint. It's beautiful. But your body language is more than 80% of the outcome and you're spending zero time on that.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  So this is one of the cases where you really are going to have to get into a genuine state of warmth. But the placebo effect can be your friend too. And especially when you're dealing with difficult people. I don't care what you have to imagine. Go nuclear if you have to. But imagine that their dog just got killed in a hit and run accident, their spouse asked them for a divorce, they lost both of their parents that morning, whatever you have to imagine. To get in that moment, you're not going to sustain it through the whole conversation. But just get yourself into a mental space. And also, difficult people are usually difficult for a reason. Usually they didn't have a life filled with happiness and love. So try to imagine them in their awkward teenage years and what horrible life they have now. If you can get yourself in a place of genuine empathy, that will pour forth in all your body language, your energy signature,

• 46:43Speaker 02

  and that will get you charisma. People think that charisma is how you make people feel about you. It's actually a lot more how you make them feel about themselves.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  Don't try to impress people. Let them impress you and they will love you for it.

• 46:58Dax Shepard?

  There's another one of these counterintuitive things. It's like, I remember in my twenties, I talk about them all the time. I had a friend, Scott Johnson. Everywhere we went, every girl was in love with him, every guy liked him. I was like, oh my God, Scotty asked people so many questions.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Make them feel interesting.

• 47:15Dax Shepard?

  Yes. And it's like so easy and it's genuine. There's nothing wrong with it. And just the outcome, I could not not observe. Like, oh my God, people love him because he's interested in them.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  There's this famous story about two men who were running for the post of Prime Minister at the time, British Empire. And one young lady went to dinner with both men on consecutive evenings. It is alleged that that young woman would go on to, by the way, become the mother of Winston Churchill. But the press asked her the next day, what impressions the two men had made upon her? And she said, after dining with Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. After dining with Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest woman in England.

• 47:55Dax Shepard?

  And this latter won.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Disraeli won the election, yeah.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  It makes sense, though.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  If the other person starts saying, am I talking too much? You know, you've got the ratio right.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think of, so when we edit this show, not anymore because it's video, but it used to just be like these audio files, right? And I like always have this image, because you see the two. And I'm like, how much is their audio file going before our audio files go? It needs to be, ours is this much and theirs is this much. Like, I'm always aware of that. And that's how I think conversation, like you should attempt conversation to be.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Ideally.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  More the other person's audio file than yours.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  And one of the key pieces there is. As much as possible, realizing that charisma does not depend on how much time you have available, but on how present you are during that time. So the ability to be fully present during the interaction, rather than worrying about the next thing you're gonna say or the thing you've just said, you want a fast pass to charisma, that's it.

• 48:58Dax Shepard?

  How do we overcome these obstacles? We're getting into it, but these are some techniques. The one for warmth, what's the technique to lock you into that?

• 49:05Speaker 02

  The warmth is find a way to really like the other person. A lot of the book, honestly, is just using the brain's deficiencies to your advantage. So the placebo effect, you can use that in many ways. Here's another one. Have you ever had the experience of a day where all the little things go wrong is harder to handle than a day when one big thing goes wrong? And that's because our brain is crap at understanding scale. You can use that to your advantage. If you can find three small things in the other person that you like, I don't care if it's like their shoes are shined, nice belt, they were on time, or at least they showed up.

• 49:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 49:38Dax Shepard?

  No crust in their eyes.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  Whatever it is, if you can pile up the little things, that sends your brain down a certain path, and that's often enough to get enough of the liking in your brain and in your body language. It always has to be genuine. You can't try to convince yourself of something you profoundly don't believe.

• 49:56Dax Shepard?

  It just points out how hackable the brain is, right?

• 49:58Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 49:59Dax Shepard?

  And I think it should help to depersonalize our failings, which is like, brains work a certain way. We have this guy on about violence being motivated out of a sense of justice, and he made us do this practice, which is like, a forgiveness practice, whether you really genuinely want to forgive the person or not, physically transfers where your brain is thinking currently into another region. It has to. It's the only part of your brain that can formulate the forgiveness thing. And just the act of doing it pulls your brain into the right place you want it to be. And it's just nuts that it's that hackable.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  Our brain is not designed for this environment. You know, it's amazing that we're getting this much done, considering how ill-adapted we are to an environment. But on the positive side, all of these deficiencies or hacks can be used to your advantage, you might as well.

• 50:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. It's dumb enough to go astray, and then it's dumb enough to be set back on the right path. What are some different charismatic styles?

• 50:56Speaker 02

  There's an infinity of flavors of charisma. So I just pulled out a few of those that I thought might be the most useful, the most easy to get into, but understand that there's an infinity of variations and some can't really be taught. But the understanding that no one form of charisma is always good or always bad, per se. So authority charisma, for example, which is the one that is of the three components, you always need power, presence, and warmth. You need a certain amount to get to charisma, like in chemistry, you need a certain amount of each element to get to activation energy. But above that, what changes is the kind of charisma you get, depending on which of each component, how much of them is present. So authority charisma is highest on power, second on presence, third on warmth.

• 51:39Dax Shepard?

  This is Putin?

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Unfortunately.

• 51:41Speaker 03

  But isn't charismatic?

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Incredibly so. Tragically so.

• 51:46Dax Shepard?

  He exudes strange.

• 51:46Speaker 03

  That's true, yeah.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  Hitler, incredibly charismatic, Mussolini, a lot of the dictators.

• 51:51Dax Shepard?

  Putin exudes a stoicism.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  He does.

• 51:53Dax Shepard?

  That is a track.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 51:54Dax Shepard?

  Like, he's just completely unwavering at all times.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  And here's the thing to remember, is that the warmth doesn't have to be towards your audience. Steve Jobs didn't love his audience. The warmth came from his love of the product. But the warmth was there. Authority charisma, really good if you need to get people out of a burning building.

• 52:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Right? If you need someone to follow orders, authority charisma, fabulous. Not so good at a funeral, or if you're firing someone. There you want more like the kindness charisma that like the Dalai Lama has, which is highest on warmth, second on presence, and lowest on power.

• 52:27Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  You can switch between them. So you were talking about Bill Gates, typical focused charisma guy. Leads with presence. Elon Musk, interestingly enough, originally was more of a focused charisma guy. He would drink in your words. You could see him like a sponge absorbing every word. You lead with presence, second is on power, lowest is on warmth. So you really get different kinds of charisma. And I know the book is used in seduction circles, that is not what I wrote it for. It is not a field I understand.

• 52:56Dax Shepard?

  Everything will be weaponized, just rest assured.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Right. So there's certain kinds of sexual charisma, which I can't tell you about because I didn't study them at all. But there's an infinity of flavors. The important thing, if there's one thing I want you to remember is this, you don't have to change your personality to be charismatic.

• 53:11Dax Shepard?

  You're not betraying.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  You are not. All it is, is finding the different kinds of charisma that work best for you in this situation or that situation. I see it as kind of getting credit for what you already are. And one of the reasons why spending time at MIT, for example, is important to me, because I really deeply care about helping science survive. And I feel that we are in a moment, a crisis of legitimacy for science. And so the reason why I think it would be really important, is really important, to be teaching charisma to scientists, is because it doesn't matter how brilliant you are and how good your science is, if you can't present it in a way that people can find it interesting.

• 53:52Dax Shepard?

  Look, I mean, we have a lot of political examples of this. Of course, John Kerry's a very famous example for us, like, qualified to the nth degree, not charismatic.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  And there's a difference between one-on-one charisma, in-person charisma, and onstage, on-screen, and especially now, online charisma.

• 54:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Right? It's a different beast.

• 54:11Dax Shepard?

  Yes. Well, which we're gonna get to. I think that's my question. Yeah, 10 for you.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  I just realized that, you may or may not have picked it up, but there was a moment when, ironically, when I wanted to make the point that you have to be really fully present in the moment and not thinking about the next thing you're about to say, I didn't let you finish the last word. Sorry.

• 54:31Speaker 03

  Oh, you're fine, and I don't even remember.

• 54:33Dax Shepard?

  She lives with me. I mean, she's so used to being interrupted.

• 54:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, no worries, and I don't even remember, and it was probably not important.

• 54:40Dax Shepard?

  I have beat her into compliance.

• 54:43Speaker 03

  There's no such thing as finishing a sentence here.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  Okay. Go ahead, you were saying.

• 54:48Speaker 03

  I'm just kidding.

• 54:49Dax Shepard?

  I'm trying to get better, I don't know if I'm getting better.

• 54:51Speaker 03

  You're getting better.

• 54:51Dax Shepard?

  I don't know.

• 54:52Speaker 02

  A work in progress.

• 54:53Speaker 03

  Yes, that's right. Aren't we all?

• 54:55Dax Shepard?

  What's a charismatic style of listening?

• 54:58Speaker 02

  So that's in the focused charisma. If you're an introvert, being able to be really fully present and deeply listening is the fastest way to focus charisma. The fascinating thing is that of all the styles of charisma, that's the one that I see as, in a sense, the most valuable these days, especially for the younger generations, when we live in a state of continuous partial attention, when being fully present for 10 seconds is a miracle for a lot of people these days.

• 55:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  And so the ability to truly deeply listen is one of the most powerful tools of charisma you have at your disposal. There are a lot of personality traits that people first assume to be a detriment to charisma that are actually an advantage, but I was just thinking, the honest answer, if you want a one surefire path to charisma, is find a cause you are passionate about. Because that will get you the presence, because you are fully focused on this one thing. It'll get you the power, because you are confident that this one thing is the right thing to do, and it'll get you the warmth, because you care about this one thing. That's one of the reasons why you so often get the charismatic activists, the charismatic movement leaders, because it hits power, presence, and warmth in one.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Do you want charisma? Find your cause, you'll get laid.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  That's great advice.

• 56:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Body language, we kind of talked about that.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Yes, only to reiterate that you can't fake your body language.

• 56:21Dax Shepard?

  Do the pre-step stuff.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you can train it. So what you're getting from me right now is a lot of things that I would have normally suppressed. I'm nodding a lot. I am doing a lot of autistic stimming, but that is something that I would have trained myself out of 10 or 20 years ago. So if you absolutely must train yourself into specific body language, you can, but it will come at a cost, so make bloody sure it's worth it.

• 56:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, save your moments for that.

• 56:48Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so increasingly, younger people's lives are online.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:52Dax Shepard?

  I don't know how one is charismatic online or digitally.

• 56:56Speaker 02

  It's totally different. So for this, I actually got, the guy who was the scientific editor on the new edition is the guy on vocal and digital charisma. The chap on online charisma is him. He wrote it.

• 57:09Dax Shepard?

  Because this is 14 years old. When you first wrote it, there's no way you could have anticipated.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  No idea.

• 57:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  And by the way, post-replication crisis in psychology, one of the reasons I was so keen to get the science of the book redone is because all the science had to be reevaluated, power posing, for example.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  One of the biggest replication crises in psychology was when Amy Cuddy originally came out with these power poses, and she said it's gonna change the way you feel, and it's gonna change the neurotransmitters, the chemicals in your body. And then replication crisis happens, and hers was one of the studies that couldn't be replicated. Fast forward 2018, her and her team come back and say, yes, we can replicate part of it. Not the chemicals, but yes, the change in the internal state. So this is the autistic piece, I guess. It was physically painful for me, knowing people were out there, reading a book with outdated science.

• 57:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  So I was like, please let me fix this. With online charisma, I'm gonna put a lot of caveats, because the science is so new that some of the studies that are in the book were just published or even pre-publication.

• 58:10Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is new, new, new, new, new stuff. But Oliver's research showed that one of the fascinating things is vocal fluctuation, which was one of the things that the MIT study had found was critical. So there's two things. The end of your sentences, so it's the difference, so I'd like you to... Pay attention to just your emotions when I say the following sentence. The real problem with a lot of people's lives is absolutely the color of their toilet paper. And if only they changed from pink to blue, everything would change. Now, of course, your brain eventually cuts in and says, hang on, this is absolute bullshit.

• 58:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, sounded very convincing.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  Not for a while. Now imagine if I say, the problem in this country is immigrants. And if only we got rid of the immigrants, right? So I can say anything with this tone of voice.

• 58:57Dax Shepard?

  That was very Hitler-esque.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  The blue-eyed people are the issue. And you, Dax, I can see, are the source of all the problems in my country. So what you're looking at here is the speed and the depth at which the end of my sentences and even sentence breaks descends. So it's the difference between the sky is blue, that uptalk that unfortunately so many American teenagers have, like, you know, when they're saying things like a question, even when it's not a question, the opposite being, and pink elephants took over from the blue rhinoceros, and that ended the war. And that can make pretty much anything sound credible.

• 59:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the conviction in your voice.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  But what sounds as conviction competence, that comes from that dip.

• 59:42Dax Shepard?

  That rhythmic.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Yes. And what's interesting is, one of the myths that was dispelled that I believed in, is that I thought that lower voices were more charismatic. And Oliver Niobr's research shows that, no, no, no, if you look at Steve Jobs' voice, his voice was actually so high, it occasionally went into the female register, but he had that fluctuation. So it's more fluctuation, better, to simplify it. So like you say, eat your carrots for grandma. So it's that, right? The opposite of what they call the engineer voice trap, which is the monotone, and then we have this really exciting thing that is happening, and you can't believe how exciting it is, right?

• 1:00:17Dax Shepard?

  It's the pattern more than the tone.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  It is. So high fluctuation, and fast and deep drops at sentence breaks and at the end of the sentences, is what will make you sound the most impressive, confident, competent, trustworthy, et cetera, et cetera.

• 1:00:30Dax Shepard?

  It's as if you're saying full stop after every sentence you say.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  Pretty much, but even in the middle of sentence breaks. Because if you listen to Obama, so one of the other things that's really interesting that alpha humans tend to do is that, you know, they tend to take up space, like they'll put their arm on one chair, their feet on another chair, and in a sense, they do the same with their sentences, taking up space. You're communicating that you are so damn confident in either who you are or what you're saying, that you know the other person will not dare interrupt.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:58Dax Shepard?

  He has a calm, slow, confident delivery of everything.

• 1:01:03Speaker 03

  But you also don't get the sense he's searching for words. That's why you don't want to interrupt him, because it's not like you're doing him any favors by interrupting. You're like, yeah, what is the rest of this? What is he going to say? He knows what it is. Like, you don't feel worried. That's a lot of why other people interrupt, I think. It's like, to finish, to help.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  It could, it could also be excitement. Excitement can be a real double-edged sword, where, like, the autistic love language is info dumping. If you like someone, you want to tell them all the things you know about this thing, right? And the more excited I get about a topic, the faster I speak, which is a real problem. The ability to have a alternating tempo, so there's so many fascinating things, but back to online charisma, a change of one semitone will get you, if you're an established influencer, 50,000 more subscribers on average. It's fascinating.

• 1:01:50Speaker 03

  Wait, what does that mean? Sorry.

• 1:01:52Dax Shepard?

  Because isn't it text, or no? When they're talking to camera?

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  When you're on camera, a change of even one semitone in range and pitch will get you on average 50,000. It's fascinating. So there's that. There's also the fascinating stuff, like, audio compression can lead to emotional confusion, where especially for women, emotions like excitement will be read as anger and impatience. And so one of the quick fixes is, if ever you know that you've got a bandwidth problem, turn off your camera. Because the emotions are so important, that it's more important to get your voice across well than to get your face across. The other things that were really interesting was the placement of the camera. Sure, we all know that you should have it slightly above, never below, but just by taping the image of someone you really like above the camera, that can really help you

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  get into the emotion of speaking to someone you like, and your voice is going to change. Online charisma is fascinating.

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  Wow. That is so interesting.

• 1:02:45Dax Shepard?

  It is.

• 1:02:48Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:02:54Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:03:38Dax Shepard?

  Explore the new Peloton Tread Flex at onepeloton.com. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. We've talked before about Rob building our website on Squarespace, and I bring it up again because it's a perfect example of what they do well. Rob had all the pieces, the content, the vision, the ideas, but he needed something to actually take all that and make it public-facing. And Squarespace was that bridge. Maybe you're in the same spot. You've been developing something, a business, a skill set, a body of work, and it's been private. It's been yours, but at some point, you're ready to put it out there, and that transition from private to public can feel like a huge leap. Squarespace makes it feel like a step.

• 1:04:19Dax Shepard?

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• 1:05:04Dax Shepard?

  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.

• 1:05:15Speaker 05

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• 1:05:54Speaker 05

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• 1:06:12Dax 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?

• 1:06:54Speaker 03

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• 1:06:55Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:07:06Dax Shepard?

  I'm glad that Chapter 15 exists because everything in life is trade-offs. I think if you're on the outside of charisma, you're like, yeah, who wouldn't want it?

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  Sounds great.

• 1:07:15Dax Shepard?

  And no big deal. So let's talk about the downsides of charisma.

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  So the downsides that we talked about, you can convince people even when you're wrong. There starts being a certain amount of expectation that people can really become addicted to your presence, addicted to the high of being around the charisma, and that can be exhausting. So there's a lot of the double edges where you can start drinking your own Kool-Aid faster if you're charismatic, and you can run straight into a brick wall with that. I've known founders who were too charismatic for their own good. They were so good at raising money with bad ideas because no one felt confident enough to tell them they were wrong because the charisma was overpowering.

• 1:07:56Dax Shepard?

  This is so anecdotal, there's no studies on this, but I have noticed for guys trying to get sober, the more charisma you have, the harder it's gonna be.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  Interesting. Being too charismatic means that fewer people will hold you accountable. And one of the best things you can have in your life is someone who doesn't fall for your charisma.

• 1:08:14Dax Shepard?

  Who's not charmed by you?

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  That's me!

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  If she and your wife don't fall for your charisma, they're blessings.

• 1:08:22Dax Shepard?

  But envy, I want to talk about envy. That's the thing that I was like, how did one bring this up? It sounds so indulgent.

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  It's a real, real, real problem. So the higher up you go in the ladder of status, success, whatever it is, money, beauty, you name it, and charisma is a compounding factor, you will have to deal with an increasing amount of envy. How do you deal with that? So the very, very best tool here, the story comes from Ben Franklin, the science comes from Robert Cialdini. Robert Cialdini on influence, if you can ever get the guy, he's the master on influence. I think I heard you talk on a previous podcast about the four waltz technique with Adam Grant. That was from Cialdini. Cialdini is the man. So Benjamin Franklin had this adversary that he was trying to get on board for a certain thing. And so he went and he asked the guy to lend him a book. He told him that he had heard this guy had the book, could he please borrow it?

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  The guy said yes, and a week later, he returns the book with many thanks. It changed their relationship completely. The guy started talking to him better, they became good friends, he was on board for the thing, like, everything changed. Here's the reason. Humans have an internal drive for consistency. So the guy who lends Franklin the book has two ways of thinking about this. A, I agreed to lend a book to a guy I hate. What an idiot am I? Or, I lent a book to someone, it must be because I like him. Now, you had a saying, Dax, which was, it's easier to change the way you...

• 1:09:46Dax Shepard?

  Act your way into thinking different than think your way into acting different.

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  Thank you. We don't realize how much we are constantly constructing our self-image. So now you're gonna hack other people's brains. So asking someone for a favor is the hardest, advice is less hard, but an opinion is the easiest of all. Because with advice, they still have to tailor it to your situation's responsibility. With an opinion, it's just something that they can give. Ask someone for an opinion and then come back to them, show them how the opinion has to be genuine, impacted the way you think, changed what you did, this is how well it resulted. Give people responsibility for your success. It's saying, you had an impact on me.

• 1:10:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  And the criterion of impact is change. So it is your job to show how they have changed you. Because then if they feel that they had a hand in making you, then you must succeed.

• 1:10:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they're now connected to the charisma and they're linked.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  And to the success, and then your success becomes their success. This is the reason why expressing appreciation and gratitude has so many good reasons for it, but one of them is, you wanna diffuse envy. Expressing appreciation and gratitude is a way to show people the good things they have already done for you. It's a real trade-off. It's not the only one, right? There's the envy, you're held to higher standards. The Superman effect means that people start expecting you to be able to fix anything, to be magic, and that is a real problem, especially at work. If you stumble then, you fall much further. When they discover you have feet of clay. One of the ways that you can diffuse that, the Superman problem, is by expressing vulnerability. It is one of the most humanizing things you can do.

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  It is not something that will necessarily lower your charisma, but it is a really good way to remind people that you are human and fallible.

• 1:11:31Dax Shepard?

  So someone, as they're taking on this goal of becoming more charismatic and more influential and more effective in life, they need to also probably be thinking about, also downsides are coming your way.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  Minigating the downsides.

• 1:11:43Dax Shepard?

  And having a game plan for that.

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  And it can get pretty surreal. I only had one experience of this. Back when I was writing the book, everything that's in the book, I was practicing at that time. So I was probably code-switched 100% to neurotypical, but I was doing all the charisma things. And I come out of the gym, go order a sandwich at the bar place, and the girl says, I want to know how you became as wonderful as you are. And all I had said was, hello, can I have this sandwich? And this, for me, is not a normal experience. So this was one of the experiences where I was like, holy shit, this fucking works. Like, it really works. But then, learning that you really have to turn the switch off after that, because otherwise, you'll have the glowy radiance thingy, which can be great, but then everything else that comes with it.

• 1:12:24Dax Shepard?

  And it's hard to get addicted to the glowy radiance, too.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  That's a big question.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  It really is hard not to get addicted. In my case, it's easier because when I do the full-on normal charisma, it's exhausting.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, you wanna turn it off.

• 1:12:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Whereas for others who are perhaps more neurotypical, I understand why it's really hard. You know what? It is chemicals. You can get addicted to that like to any other chemicals. And that high is real for you as well. Oh, here's the other one that's really important. Both of you may have had this experience. If you've got it on full blast, people start spilling their guts. And then the backlash comes the next morning as their ego wakes up and said, oh my God, what have you said? And then they hate you for the rest of their lives, right?

• 1:13:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you said, it can be a very intoxicating experience to be with someone with a ton of charisma, and you can end up sharing in a way that you'll have a hangover for.

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  You absolutely can. In a sense, it's like you're both drunk on it, and it's a bit like you're putting them under a hypnosis spell.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  They feel a little betrayed, like, you can, you just like put a spell on them or something.

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really can. Create this cocoon of safety around you in which time and space stop, and they just spill everything. So that is a real risk.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, this happens on dates. Where I do often feel sort of guilty after a first date because they've said a lot of very personal, intimate, revealing things, and I don't, I mean, I do back, but it doesn't faze me the same way because I'm used to doing it. And so then they feel a lot closer than I feel, and then it feels like, oh, fuck, I have done something wrong.

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  So that is exactly what you get to, which is the asymmetry.

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  Of how important the moment was for them and for you. Because for them, it's say, I've never had this experience of self-revealing with anyone before, and for you, it's Tuesday.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:14:05Dax Shepard?

  I love this. We had a guest that was talking about a co-star who she was very charmed by and fell in love with. And then she noticed he had that effect on everyone, and she felt very betrayed by that. And I remember bringing this up, and I said, I'm gonna attempt to offer from his point of view, which is like, he's just him, and you're upset that he has that effect on everybody, but if he had it on you, yeah, that's what effect he has on people. You can't really get that mad about it. It's not just you that's gonna experience that.

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  True, but at the same time, you, you have to learn the good strategies for giving them an off-ramp.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:38Speaker 02

  So that they realize in the moment how much they're sharing, and give them a way out of it in case they want to. It is really, in a sense, your responsibility, if you're gonna put them under this charismatic spell, it's your responsibility not to take them too close to their own demons if they're not equipped to handle them, because not everyone is, and not to reveal too much of themselves that they may not be ready to reveal, they just feel incredibly safe in that moment.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do think it's a responsibility of the person to know what you're doing to the other person, and if you think it's fair or right or not.

• 1:15:09Dax Shepard?

  Which takes a while, I think, to come to the realization.

• 1:15:12Speaker 02

  It does, but it's superpower responsibility. When I first started having these conversations with people, everyone says, that's a good problem to have, I want to have that problem if people become addicted and all that. And I'm like, you, right? It sounds great. I actually once fired a client whom I will not name, but I fired him because of the swath of destruction that he was leading through his personal life. He was not using his powers responsibly.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  That's tricky because... They're filling their own voids as well. And if it's approval, that's hard to turn off. Can charisma, though, does it have a like end point? Where if it goes too far, people are like, oh, yeah, yuck. I don't like that anymore.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  That's a really good question. I've personally never seen it. I'm sure it exists. What I've seen is only when people try to fake it. Then there absolutely can be a yuck.

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  People feel it.

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's not because there was too much charisma. It's because the charisma, in fact, wasn't there because people tried to fake it.

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, inauthentic.

• 1:16:06Speaker 02

  No, I've seen people self-destruct because of too much charisma, which lead them to all sorts of bad decisions and lack of accountability for so long until it becomes really terrible.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  So fascinating.

• 1:16:17Dax Shepard?

  It's fascinating. I love that it's been studied and that there's great science behind what you now understand about it.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  An increasing amount, especially now with the online work. But most of it is US, EU, and a little bit in Asia. We don't have enough on Middle East, Africa. It's a very Western-centric mainly science at the moment.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Do you think maybe these other places don't put up as much of a premium on it?

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:16:47Dax Shepard?

  I think more like in a collectivist society as opposed to an individualistic society.

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  That's what I was gonna say.

• 1:16:52Dax Shepard?

  I don't think charisma is a good signal.

• 1:16:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, possible.

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  Status, of course, exists in all humans, but it's not as important in some societies. Or it's measured differently.

• 1:17:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's not like possessions and achievement.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  And power necessarily.

• 1:17:06Dax Shepard?

  How good of a son you are.

• 1:17:07Speaker 02

  The West, the relationships, the yuck.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah, so I'd be curious.

• 1:17:11Speaker 02

  Good question, don't know.

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:13Dax Shepard?

  Well, it's all very fascinating. Olivia, you're wonderful. I'm so glad that you didn't mask it all.

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:17:19Dax Shepard?

  I enjoyed every second of it. The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism. And it's been reissued and we have some updated science. And you have a really fun component, which is people who have read the book years ago have written in over the years. And you often are putting in some of the readers' own experience and anecdotes with the chapters.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 1:17:41Dax Shepard?

  Was there a part that gave you great pride? And was there a part that you went, oh, uh-oh?

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, both. So the first thing was that no one expected this book to go this big, right?

• 1:17:51Dax Shepard?

  It's in like 23 languages or something or crazy?

• 1:17:53Speaker 02

  We were about to sell a million copies. Like, who thought, right?

• 1:17:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:56Speaker 02

  It's in Mongolian, for example. So especially because it is mainly Western science, I really didn't expect it to go that international. But hearing from all over the place, and there are some areas that were totally normal. Like, hey, I use this, it worked great in my dental practice, job interview, fill in the blank, right? And then I get emails like, I didn't share his name in the book, but this one medical student who used it in Turkey during the earthquake to keep the population calm, get everyone working together, get different crews. How do you answer an email like that?

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:29Speaker 02

  So there were really some really humbling moments. It's hard for me to take them in, so that says something about my own psyche. But there were some times when I'd get these emails and I could only read one sentence at a time because it was too much for me to take in.

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  And I'd literally have to read one sentence, go walk around, and then come back and read another sentence. The life it's had has been stunning. The variety of applications. We've heard from people in like Nigeria, all over the place. And then I didn't expect the high schoolers to really take this to heart because I really wrote it for adults. But it makes sense for job interviews, for everything online.

• 1:19:01Dax Shepard?

  I think most adults by late twenties, they've accepted whatever charisma level they think they have. Whereas in high school, you're still hopeful.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  You are. In a sense, for me, that's the tragic part. Because the reason I got into this is because I couldn't figure out. I mean, I was like, I'm smart. I should be able to interact with these other humans, and I can't. So clearly.

• 1:19:25Dax Shepard?

  What are they doing?

• 1:19:26Speaker 02

  What's the thing that I'm missing, right? And so I went and turned out their science about it. One of the tragedies for me is the reason I desperately want this to be taught alongside reading, writing, and arithmetic is, one, democratize charisma, so it has less an impact. But, two, so much of these are just ways to get people to more easily to connect with one another. That's it.

• 1:19:46Dax Shepard?

  All right, well, thank you so much. Everybody, check out The Charisma Myth. This was wonderful.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:19:53Speaker 06

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

• 1:20:01Dax Shepard?

  Okay, let's, I want to tell the listener that I'm fresh off of falling in love.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  Oh, we had a great guest just now.

• 1:20:08Dax Shepard?

  We had a male guest on. I just want to specify that I didn't fall in love with a woman.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  That's fair, yeah.

• 1:20:13Dax Shepard?

  I fell in love with a male guest.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  He was awesome.

• 1:20:16Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God. I'm, oh, boy, can't wait for people to hear it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really wonderful.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  I saw something.

• 1:20:23Dax Shepard?

  What did you see?

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  I want to talk about it. I saw the movie One Night Only. It's a rom-com.

• 1:20:28Dax Shepard?

  I don't know who's in it or anything about it.

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  Okay, Callan Turner, Monica Barbaro or Barbaro. I don't know how to pronounce it. Okay. It's a rom-com, and I love rom-coms. You know I do.

• 1:20:41Dax Shepard?

  You and Mindy.

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, Mindy and I love them. I saw the movie theater. We had, it was fun.

• 1:20:48Dax Shepard?

  You and Jess, I presume?

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Yes, Jess and I saw it. Totally fun. You know, it's a rom-com. There are things that can be better, there are things that could be worse, but it was enjoyable. But it did make me laugh because the very, very end, the two characters are doing, I won't give it away, but they're like, and

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  it's a rom-com.

• 1:21:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  Okay. And they're like up on this tower thing. And you hear someone from the bottom, you know, someone on the ground say like, hey, you're in the shot. And there's, they're filming a commercial and these guys are in the shot. And he said, you're established. And everyone in the theater.

• 1:21:39Dax Shepard?

  Oh, in LA.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  Or in an LA theater. And everyone laughs out loud at that. Obviously, it's a hilarious joke. But I did think, I was like, oh, no one is gonna laugh at that in Atlanta.

• 1:21:52Dax Shepard?

  Anywhere but LA.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And I was listening to this other podcast, pop culture podcast, that was talking about this movie. And they were in New York, New York, watching it. And they had a very similar observation about, I forget the joke.

• 1:22:07Dax Shepard?

  A different joke that you didn't get?

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  Or that, yeah, it didn't resonate with me at all, that like the whole theater laughed at. And I was like, oh, my God, yeah. Movies are tricky. They're dependent on.

• 1:22:17Dax Shepard?

  On your shared vernacular.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  Exactly. So hopefully you just like get them all throughout.

• 1:22:22Dax Shepard?

  Well, let's tell people in case they see it. So in a wide shot, every time you're watching, well, generally, when you're watching something, it starts with a very wide shot. So you're gonna see the whole ballroom everyone's in and then everyone in the ballroom. So now, if someone was in that ballroom and we go to a close-up three hours later, we need the person we saw in the background.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  For continuity.

• 1:22:42Dax Shepard?

  And if you're a clever actor like I am, you really make sure that you're always in a far corner in an establishing shot so you can get out of all those other shots.

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that just shows your, that shows your privilege as a very good, very, very like hype.

• 1:22:58Dax Shepard?

  Thanks for saying good. You could've just said lucky, you know?

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  No, you're very good and you're in a lot of really good projects and you worked a lot as an actor. But the opposite happens when you're trying to be an actor.

• 1:23:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  You are dying to get in an establishing shot.

• 1:23:13Dax Shepard?

  If you're an extra, you are really trying to get yourself as close to the action as possible

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  Yes, so that you will be in all the scenes.

• 1:23:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. Because you don't have a trailer to go back to.

• 1:23:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, but also, no, you just want your face out there.

• 1:23:27Dax Shepard?

  I know, but also, if you're not in the scene, you're sitting in a fucking lawn chair outside of the, uh,

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you just want to be in it and you want someone.

• 1:23:36Dax Shepard?

  You want to see your face on screen.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  You want to see your face. You want, mainly you want somebody else to see your face and be like, who is that?

• 1:23:42Dax Shepard?

  And ideally, someone that wouldn't date you.

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  No, God, no. How did you become this? No. Someone sees, hopefully it's David Fincher, right? And then he's like, oh my, who is that person? I'm gonna call the casting director for this, this commercial and find out who it is. I'm gonna track them down and they're gonna lead my next film.

• 1:24:08Dax Shepard?

  Remember when Brad Pitt gave himself a line, he said? Yeah, it's like, did you enjoy your meal or something after he poured the wine?

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  Yes. God, it's so.

• 1:24:17Dax Shepard?

  It's sweet. And it can only happen at the beginning. It's very sweet.

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  It's very sweet.

• 1:24:23Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  It's cringy and it's sweet. I can only say that because I did it.

• 1:24:27Dax Shepard?

  You know, we did, we did a good job, the first two fact checks back of going chronologically.

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  Oh, mhm.

• 1:24:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you want to move on?

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  No. I mean, I just want to have, I just don't, we doesn't even, you know. But yeah, tell whatever you want to tell.

• 1:24:42Dax Shepard?

  Well, just a lot of, a lot of exciting things happened this summer. And I feel like some of them are worth mentioning.

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:24:48Dax Shepard?

  One of them, well, so everyone heard about my poison ivy debacle. But what I didn't get to, and, and, oh, I know why I want to say this. It's because our very first fact check back, I was saying it was a bit different this summer, right? And, and one of the elements on the table was there were many, many house issues.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 1:25:08Dax Shepard?

  Which we did not have last year because it was brand spanking new.

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:12Dax Shepard?

  I also became very, very aware of how hard that environment is on houses versus LA.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:25:18Dax Shepard?

  And same with Michigan, where I grew up.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:20Dax Shepard?

  Everywhere, really. LA doesn't have any weather and there's no humidity and there's no insects.

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  We have fires, my dad pointed. It out when I told him this.

• 1:25:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so either your house gets completely fucking evaporated. Or it pretty much doesn't need much.

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:36Dax Shepard?

  You know, um. There, it's like after just one year, it's like the amount of stuff coming off the lake stuck to the house and the amount of insects and cobwebs and fucking, I'm finding mice. Everywhere I open up anything, I'm finding dead mice, you know, they get into every place. I'm not, that's not an LA sit.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  Oh, well, famously, I did have that rat.

• 1:25:54Dax Shepard?

  You did, but I'm in the, I'm in a dozen now, maybe in just.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:25:59Dax Shepard?

  Seven weeks there. So we go out to dinner one night. Oh, shout out. And if we're, if you're in Nashville. When you're in Nashville next time, we must take you to this restaurant called Rose Cafe.

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 1:26:10Dax Shepard?

  It was on a Michelin list this year. I don't think I got a star, but it's like, it's a very, it's a fucking incredibly good restaurant in East Nashville.

• 1:26:17Speaker 07

  Cafe Rose.

• 1:26:19Dax Shepard?

  Cafe Rose, R O Z E.

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:26:22Dax Shepard?

  And, um, so we go out one night and then Lincoln wasn't in the mood to go, so she stayed back at the house. While we're out, there's a pretty tremendous lightning storm. And so we get back to the house and Lincoln is like, um, I think the lightning hit the house.

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:26:37Dax Shepard?

  And you know, you're trying to imagine like, okay, she was all by herself. It was a very intense lightning storm. Did it really hit the house? You know, or did it get close? Or, you know, you're just not sure. She's not totally sure. Next night, I go, uh, let's, uh. Let's watch a movie in bed. It doesn't work. And I'm like, what's going on? I, I like really start investigating. I'm like, mm, this is really weird. Not the power light's not even coming on, right? Which is very rare and that's weird. But I go, oh, I shipped this, this is an old one. I shipped it from the. LA house, maybe it just ran its course. Great. Next night, I'm like, we all want to watch a movie, go on to the movie room. That projector's cooked. Fuck. Okay, let's go into the living room and watch on the normal TV. Go to turn that on. It's cooked.

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:27:22Dax Shepard?

  Go, now I'm like, what? Oh my God, this has to be the lightning. So this in totality took out. My irrigation system, my pool equipment, every audio video thing in the house. And it's still emerging. It's like I go to try something and I've never really experienced anything like this. We're just, it's smoked everything.

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  Lightning's scary.

• 1:27:47Dax Shepard?

  Now, on a plus side, did you see a picture of my orange boat?

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, on Instagram. Or you showed me, but is it also on Instagram?

• 1:27:53Dax Shepard?

  It's on Instagram. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I showed you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, um. I gotta tell you that I really, really enjoyed.

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  I'm so glad.

• 1:28:04Dax Shepard?

  And I want you to know that, um, your brother and I.

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  My brother Neil?

• 1:28:08Dax Shepard?

  Aaron Weekly.

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 1:28:10Dax Shepard?

  Um, we did a hit a hundred and eight.

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:28:13Dax Shepard?

  On the boat.

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  You told me you weren't gonna do that.

• 1:28:15Dax Shepard?

  No, I told you I want to go one twenty-five. That's what it's capable of. That's what it's capable of. And I must say, and I am a daredevil.

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:28:23Dax Shepard?

  Um, I don't know that I'll go above one oh eight.

• 1:28:25Speaker 01

  Please, can we like, make us some sort of declaration? Like you won't, I know you won't make the declaration because then you will feel bad if you do it and then just don't.

• 1:28:39Dax Shepard?

  Um, it was a dream. I mean, the boat is like, at that point, it's like an eagle. It's just hovering on a little bed of. Air. It's as smooth as the boat rides is at one oh eight. It's an incredible piece of machinery.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  Too.

• 1:28:54Dax Shepard?

  But you know, the lake I'm on is a river. And at that speed, you're running out of river quickly. You're like, oh, turns are coming up. And you gotta stay inside the channel and you know, it's, you run out of real estate very quickly.

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:07Dax Shepard?

  But we did have our little thriller, Aaron and I, and it was very, very exciting. And, um, yeah, I just want to tell you about that.

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 1:29:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that's it.

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  So happy for you. On a, on a, the opposite end of flying, soaring like an eagle.

• 1:29:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:23Speaker 01

  I had, I, we put a pin in this last time.

• 1:29:27Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  Um, the lettuce parasite, we think I had. We.

• 1:29:32Dax Shepard?

  So cyclospora.

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  Cyclospora.

• 1:29:34Dax Shepard?

  Cyclospora.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  Um, I have good reason to believe because I had it for ten days.

• 1:29:42Dax Shepard?

  Hanus?

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:45Dax Shepard?

  You were saying water balloons.

• 1:29:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, water balloons because it's not right. It's, it's like, it was different, you know, I'm not. A stranger to Hanus. It's not like I never get it. I get it. But this was different. It felt different. It came with a lot of cramping. It was, I think I had a fever. Yeah, I think I had a fever one night. Um, so it was bad. Um, and then I, I ended up taking the anti-parasite medication and it went away. So yes, I either had that or something.

• 1:30:19Dax Shepard?

  A different parasite that this parasite thing killed.

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. But what was always sort of.

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  You know, a good thing about being ill is you don't, you can't really do anything but like lay in bed and watch TV and go to the poo poo potty.

• 1:30:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's kind of a nice excuse to guilt free.

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  Yes, so.

• 1:30:40Dax Shepard?

  Like a sick day when it's, when you're a little kid and you could stay home, watch Green Acres.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:44Dax Shepard?

  Can I just pause that for one second? What age do you think you start feeling guilty about TV? Cause when I just said that, I was like, that actually isn't a good analogy. Because I never felt guilty watching TV. I was like, oh my God, thank God I get to, if I was at my dad's, he had cable. I'd watch, I would watch the entire weekend when we were at his house. I never stopped watching TV. I never felt guilty.

• 1:31:01Speaker 01

  I still don't feel guilty unless I have something I'm supposed to be doing.

• 1:31:08Dax Shepard?

  Okay, but if you have three days off and you spend it all watch staring at your TV, you don't feel guilty?

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  Um, I don't feel guilty, no. I feel, sometimes I'm like, oh.

• 1:31:20Dax Shepard?

  You feel like shit.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm like, I gotta like get out. I gotta see the sun.

• 1:31:24Dax Shepard?

  Do that, they are different human beings.

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  But it's also part of life. Like, part of life is just watching a whole show in one day, you know? So I did that for two shows. I watched, I, I watched one show in a day and then the next day I watched another show in a day. And it was great. It was great. I loved it. Now, the first show, ding ding ding, was Blackbird. With.

• 1:31:52Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you're on a tear.

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  This is before, a tear.

• 1:31:55Dax Shepard?

  It was, it wasn't before. It was after. We did him before summer.

• 1:32:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it was before we just talked about it.

• 1:32:02Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but it.

• 1:32:05Dax Shepard?

  I don't know what that has to do with it.

• 1:32:06Speaker 01

  I thought you were saying.

• 1:32:07Dax Shepard?

  What I'm saying is you Google searched him and now you watch his show.

• 1:32:10Speaker 01

  Anyway, so he, so yeah, okay, yeah.

• 1:32:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  I wanted to consume, because that's what this show does, right? You learn about people and you're like, I like them. Like, I want, I like them. I want to support their work. I'm gonna go back in time. I'm gonna find it.

• 1:32:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  Plus, I was really in the mood for a thriller.

• 1:32:31Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  So I, I looked online at what are the best thrillers? I had seen so many already. And I saw, uh, Blackbird was on there and I was like, oh, that's. Taran's show. I'm gonna watch it. Watch the whole thing in a day.

• 1:32:44Dax Shepard?

  Ooh.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  And the show is so good. It's based on a true story. Do you know about this show?

• 1:32:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:52Speaker 01

  Did you watch it?

• 1:32:52Dax Shepard?

  Uh, I haven't, but, uh, yeah, it's a guy that starts working inside of a prison to.

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  To get.

• 1:33:00Dax Shepard?

  Reveal some other crime, right?

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a guy in prison who's a serial killer and he has these bodies buried places. And it is up to this guy to find out where the bodies are.

• 1:33:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  And it's based on a true story. And, um, it's so good and he is great. But the serial killer is, what's his name?

• 1:33:25Dax Shepard?

  Chuck Neff.

• 1:33:25Speaker 07

  Walter Hauser.

• 1:33:27Speaker 01

  Paul Walter Hauser.

• 1:33:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, I know him. Yeah, he's great in everything.

• 1:33:29Speaker 01

  He is so good in everything, but.

• 1:33:32Dax Shepard?

  Chris was in a movie with him though.

• 1:33:33Speaker 01

  Uh huh, Queen Pins. Um, he is so good in this and so scary. And so creepy, but you also kind of feel bad. I mean, it's such a good performance and I just don't think that Blackbird got. It's due cred.

• 1:33:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. You know what I realize when I'm traveling, when I'm not in either New York or LA?

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:33:56Dax Shepard?

  It occurs to me that not a lot of people watch Apple TV shows outside of here. Cause like people, of course, I'm in Nashville or wherever I've been. Are you, are you acting? And I'm like, I haven't for a long time, but actually I did just do this thing, Bad Monkey. Never heard of it.

• 1:34:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:12Dax Shepard?

  That's something someone had never seen Ted Lasso. And I'm like.

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  What? That's crazy.

• 1:34:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I think a lot of people don't have Apple TV.

• 1:34:18Speaker 01

  Hmm, maybe. But I would recommend getting it and I'd recommend watching Blackbird. And then the next day. I watched Paradise Season Two. I had been holding off for no reason whatsoever. I loved Paradise Season One.

• 1:34:34Dax Shepard?

  Are you sure you didn't start that before we wrapped for the summer?

• 1:34:38Speaker 01

  I promise.

• 1:34:39Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  I've never seen it.

• 1:34:41Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  I want, I was like, oh, I should, I should. Why, why am I not?

• 1:34:45Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  I had a weird mental block.

• 1:34:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, this happens.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  Thank God for Cyclospora, because I watched that entire season in one day.

• 1:34:56Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  I, I, I can't believe how good that show is.

• 1:35:03Dax Shepard?

  It was great.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  Is such a good show on, for so many reasons. Acting, plot is, it's hooky.

• 1:35:12Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:35:13Speaker 01

  The dialogue is great.

• 1:35:15Dax Shepard?

  Where you're meeting.

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  Shailene Woodley's character. She's unreal in this show.

• 1:35:22Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, she's really great.

• 1:35:23Speaker 01

  Like she needs to win the Emmy and I think she's nominated. Okay, I'm just saying that.

• 1:35:27Dax Shepard?

  Okay, good. You're casting your vote.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so good and it's poignant and, and then on Instagram, I tried to play one of the scenes, but it didn't let me. Um, cause there's a really good monologue from our friend, friend of the pod, James Marsden.

• 1:35:43Dax Shepard?

  I'm so glad he was in season two. I was so afraid he wouldn't because he's dead in season one. That's the premise.

• 1:35:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:35:49Dax Shepard?

  And I love his character in it. And then you forget, yeah, that showrunner's big thing is flashbacks. This is Us was all flashbacks, right?

• 1:35:58Speaker 01

  Well, I've never watched it and guess what?

• 1:36:00Dax Shepard?

  You, did you start it?

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  I'm gonna.

• 1:36:01Dax Shepard?

  You should.

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm gonna.

• 1:36:03Dax Shepard?

  I still can't because of parenthood, but tell me if it's good. Well, it's gotta be great. It was an enormous hit by a great showrunner, so.

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  I know, and Sterling's so good. The acting's so good.

• 1:36:15Dax Shepard?

  It is top notch. Now, I'll say one thing that got in the way of our, our full enjoyment of it was. We would have never known this, but you know, the guy, okay, Shailene Woodley's baby daddy.

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:28Dax Shepard?

  He's so hot, right? Yeah, he's hot as fuck. Well, Lincoln is like, it took her an episode. She's like, he was in Descendants. He's this in Descendants.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:36:38Dax Shepard?

  He, he, I can't remember what she's saying. He, he sang and he.

• 1:36:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:43Dax Shepard?

  And I don't, I don't to this day really know what was going on, but she couldn't get over that. We watched it as a family.

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  And you were.

• 1:36:52Dax Shepard?

  Anytime that guy was on, it was never satiated, like conveying. So then it became a bit in our family.

• 1:36:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:36:59Dax Shepard?

  It's like soon as he'd have a scene, I'd be like, where, where, where do I know him from? And then with the same initial enthusiasm. No, no, he was a bad, he's bad, you know, this Descendants thing.

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:11Dax Shepard?

  So almost.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  So you were kind of taken out of it.

• 1:37:14Dax Shepard?

  A little bit taken out by this. And I would go, yes, I understand he is, he is in Descendants. And you never know what, how in on bits are they? And I, you know, you don't know, because they're, they're very clever. I'm like, is she fucking with me? Or she's really just can't get over the fact that this guy was in Descendants? I don't know.

• 1:37:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:32Dax Shepard?

  She's old enough now that I don't know.

• 1:37:33Speaker 01

  She probably.

• 1:37:34Dax Shepard?

  Cause I loved fucking with my parents.

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't.

• 1:37:38Dax Shepard?

  You didn't?

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  No, but I just think she probably was really excited about it.

• 1:37:42Dax Shepard?

  It never really, it never abated.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  You do that?

• 1:37:45Dax Shepard?

  I don't know that every scene. I think once I connect the dots.

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  I'm not copy pasting, but I'm saying when you are excited about something, you're so excited and then you are excited for like a week. Yeah.

• 1:37:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. She and I share that.

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you share that.

• 1:38:00Dax Shepard?

  We're two peas in a pod, man.

• 1:38:04Dax Shepard?

  Oh, ding, ding, ding. I've been starting to get curious, even though I said I don't care. I started getting really curious, like, when will Bad Monkey come out? Right? Like I was in the last episode in February.

• 1:38:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:16Dax Shepard?

  Just yesterday I'm cruising through Instagram and I see an announcement that it's coming back. And then there's a, there's a still of Vince and I.

• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  Oh, fine.

• 1:38:24Dax Shepard?

  Mono we mono. And I got really excited. So I look like such a shithead in that. And so it turned out Ryan had auditioned for that role, right? And we were on a hike and I, and I learned this.

• 1:38:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:38Dax Shepard?

  And I said, oh, what's, what was the, like, what's the guy like? What's the audition? He's like, um, well, yeah, it's like he, he uses nunchucks. And I was like, oh, fuck, this guy uses nunchucks. I gotta get nunchucks.

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:38:50Dax Shepard?

  So I bought practice nunchucks. You know, they're padded instead of like hardwood. In case you bonk yourself. And when I was a kid, I was obsessed with nunchucks. Of course, no one would buy them for me. So I went to the, I went to the hardware store and I bought a thick dowel. And I cut it.

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  A dowel?

• 1:39:07Dax Shepard?

  Dowel. That's what you call a long, round piece of lumber.

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  A dowel?

• 1:39:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:39:13Dax Shepard?

  You can think of little dowels that you stick in to fill the holes, but they come in different diameters and gauges. So I would, I got a thick dowel. I cut it in half and then I bought, you know, the screws you put in your ceiling to hang a plant from.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:27Dax Shepard?

  Like an eye hook. I screwed those into the ends and then I got chain and then I made my own nunchucks. So when I was a kid, I had my own nunchucks.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:39:35Dax Shepard?

  And I would spin them around and practice.

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:39:37Dax Shepard?

  And then occasionally the threads would come loose and the piece of, the dowel would shoot off and go through the, a, a piece of drywall. Like, you know, because I didn't have the real one. And then I'd go get a bigger eyelet, re-screw it in there. Anyways.

• 1:39:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:39:49Dax Shepard?

  So I bought these nunchucks, practice ones, um, to, to practice in case my character used them. It turns out my char, I don't know where Ryan got that. The, it was never brought up to me, anything about nunchucks. But all to say, I have these nunchucks laying around and Lincoln saw those and it was like a moth to a flame.

• 1:40:09Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:40:09Dax Shepard?

  She couldn't wait to start swinging those things around and I, she did exactly what I did to my mom endlessly, which was like, mom, mom, look at this. I can do the figure eight and the thing. And I go through my, I needed my mom to be watching how good I was at nunchucks. And so I have watched Lincoln do nunchucks. I don't know cumulatively, several hours now I've watched. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, look at me.

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, look at me. Look at me go.

• 1:40:36Dax Shepard?

  Version of me.

• 1:40:37Speaker 01

  Well, I'm glad you, I'm glad that's the end of the story because I, I was about to interrupt and say, God, boys, boys and their nunchucks. They're obsessed with nunchucks.

• 1:40:50Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:40:50Speaker 01

  It's like a universal boy thing.

• 1:40:53Dax Shepard?

  We want throwing stars. We want a switchblade and we want nunchucks.

• 1:40:56Speaker 01

  Oh, it's so irritating, but, but I love that, that this was a twist and your sweet daughter is also obsessed with nunchucks.

• 1:41:05Dax Shepard?

  And then the one time that it really did benefit me is she, you know, occasionally she's certain someone's under her bed. And like I'm brushing my teeth on the other side of the house and she comes, she's like, Dad, you gotta come into my bedroom. I'm pretty sure someone's under my bed. I'm like, I go, I'm, I'm not, I'm not stopping my brushing my teeth. There's nobody under your bed. The doors are locked. I would have heard something. You know, I go through logically how that would be impossible. And she's like, no, you need to come. And I go, and then I go, just fuck, grab your nunchucks. And she goes, yeah, okay. Went and grabbed her nunchucks and she was willing to go see if anyone was under her bed because she had her nunchucks.

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:41:43Dax Shepard?

  I was like, well, this is great. Now she's, now she thinks she can take on anyone with her nunchucks.

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  Nunchucks is also.

• 1:41:49Dax Shepard?

  I thought I could do too.

• 1:41:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, you still do.

• 1:41:51Dax Shepard?

  She also wants a switchblade.

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  Okay. Listen, I always thought it was nunchucks for the longest time.

• 1:41:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. And I think locally, that's what they're referred to, but they are nunchucks.

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  I know. I just looked it up.

• 1:42:04Dax Shepard?

  Kind of like yin and yang is really yin and yang. It's yin. Most people say yin yang.

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  Oh, that's wrong. Yeah.

• 1:42:11Dax Shepard?

  It's wrong, but locally, that's what they say.

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't, I'm not on board with saying it wrong.

• 1:42:17Dax Shepard?

  But you're familiar with people saying, yeah, it's the yin and yang, you know?

• 1:42:20Speaker 01

  I think I always thought they were saying yin. It's just when you say it fast, yin and yang.

• 1:42:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yin and yang. I always say it.

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  Wow. I haven't heard yin and yang in a long time.

• 1:42:30Dax Shepard?

  It's gone by the wayside.

• 1:42:32Speaker 01

  Let's bring it back.

• 1:42:33Dax Shepard?

  What do you think it's been replaced with? Because it means both, right? It means both. So what are people saying now? Or it's like that tension between.

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yin and yang to me is more like opposites.

• 1:42:44Dax Shepard?

  Intention, but they're together.

• 1:42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:42:46Dax Shepard?

  They're, they're, they're stuck together.

• 1:42:47Speaker 01

  Like they're us.

• 1:42:48Dax Shepard?

  Opposites attract. Opposites attract, you know?

• 1:42:52Speaker 01

  I guess you'd say like they're, they're opposites attract. We circle back to opposites.

• 1:42:58Dax Shepard?

  I don't like, I don't like cigarettes. And I like to smoke.

• 1:43:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:43:03Dax Shepard?

  Favorite line of the song. Only in the eighties would you have someone screaming from the bottom of their heart, how much they like to smoke. And it's like a good lyric. If you heard that today, you'd be like, what did that person? Well, actually now.

• 1:43:13Speaker 01

  No, now.

• 1:43:14Dax Shepard?

  But like five years ago, if you heard someone singing a ballad about how much they love to smoke, you'd be like, what is this song?

• 1:43:22Dax Shepard?

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:43:29Dax Shepard?

  This episode is supported by Helix.

• 1:43:32Speaker 01

  Dax, is there anything better than crawling into a perfect bed on a cold fall night? Candlelit hoodie on, maybe even some rain outside. The dream.

• 1:43:43Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  I know. And thanks to Helix, my bed actually lives up to the vibe. All I had to do was take the Helix Sleep Quiz. And within two minutes, they matched me to a mattress built for exactly how I sleep. I have a midnight mattress. It also has cooling technology, which I really.

• 1:44:03Dax Shepard?

  Increasingly so.

• 1:44:04Speaker 01

  I need it. I have to have it. And I heard that you're supposed to sleep at a cold temp for optimal sleep. It's very, very helpful.

• 1:44:14Dax Shepard?

  She is not wrong. I have one too. And it's been such a game changer for sleep. And I love that they make it so easy. Free shipping right to your door. And what they're happy with Helix guarantee, you'll get a full 365 nights to try it. A whole year to live in that cozy. They've got over 20 mattress models. So no matter how you sleep, they've got one for you.

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  And it's not just us saying it. Helix has been named the most awarded mattress brand by Forbes, Wired and more. You gotta try it for yourself.

• 1:44:41Dax Shepard?

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

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  I have another dinner party tonight.

• 1:45:04Dax Shepard?

  You do?

• 1:45:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:05Dax Shepard?

  Second of the week.

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:45:07Dax Shepard?

  Ambitious.

• 1:45:08Speaker 01

  And I don't know what I'm making and it's coming up, you know, so I'm a little, I'm a little stressed about that. I have, I am in a, I mean, I feel good right now. I feel good right now, but I, I have been in a little bit of a funk.

• 1:45:23Dax Shepard?

  You used a new adjective this week. I can't remember what you said.

• 1:45:26Speaker 01

  I'm.

• 1:45:26Dax Shepard?

  Gloomy?

• 1:45:27Speaker 01

  Gloomy. Yeah. I think I say that a lot.

• 1:45:30Dax Shepard?

  I liked gloomy. It feels more playful. You know, it feels like, feels like there's some hope.

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. Yeah, because gloomy.

• 1:45:38Dax Shepard?

  If you're really devastated, you're like, I feel like fucking shit or whatever you say, right? But gloomy is a little bit like Halloween's also gloomy. Chance of meatballs. Chance of meatballs.

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  There's always a chance.

• 1:45:49Dax Shepard?

  The weather is gloomy.

• 1:45:50Speaker 01

  Well, I hate that.

• 1:45:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I love it.

• 1:45:52Speaker 01

  I know, but like gloomy means there will be sun again.

• 1:45:57Dax Shepard?

  Yes, it's temporary. You acknowledge the temporariness of it.

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  I knew this was temporary, but I was like, what is going on? Cause it felt hormonal, which is not the right timing for that.

• 1:46:11Dax Shepard?

  Right. Cause last weekend you concluded your flies, as you told me.

• 1:46:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I finished my flies. So actually this week should have been really, really not gloomy.

• 1:46:19Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:46:20Speaker 01

  It's like the only week you get and, and unfortunately it was gloomy. Um, and.

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  And also like my stomach is hurt all week like physically I don't feel like all that good. And and I and my birthday is coming up and I'm like ew is it like my birthday am I feeling like upset that I'm aging?

• 1:46:45Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:46:46Dax Shepard?

  Well, are you?

• 1:46:47Speaker 01

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

• 1:46:49Dax Shepard?

  One at a time.

• 1:46:50Speaker 01

  See, I do think there's a a a confluence of things that are causing the gloom. Um.

• 1:46:57Dax Shepard?

  Speaking of birthdays, happy birthday Carly, I love you so much. She hates her birthday, but I love it.

• 1:47:04Speaker 01

  We love it. Yeah, so I have this birthday coming up. I've done zero planning and I don't really like wanna do any planning. Um, but I also don't wanna be gloomy, so I do wanna have things to do. Uh, so maybe I just feel a little overwhelmed by that, but also I don't normally feel anxious about age, but I think I am feeling a little anxious about this age.

• 1:47:31Dax Shepard?

  Is it fertility related?

• 1:47:33Speaker 01

  Well, okay, so that's another element at play.

• 1:47:36Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  Um, because, you know, I was home and my my brother's sweet baby.

• 1:47:44Dax Shepard?

  Fizzy's here.

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  Fizzy's so cute. Oh my god, is he cute? They sent me the sweetest picture yesterday of him in a little Dodgers outfit. Oh, my god.

• 1:47:57Dax Shepard?

  Why isn't he in a Braves outfit?

• 1:47:58Speaker 01

  I know, but but they came to visit, when they came to visit, we went to a Dodgers game.

• 1:48:02Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you did?

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  Little one.

• 1:48:04Dax Shepard?

  Oh, fun.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he, um, oh, also just quick side note, my parents are, well, it's actually not a side note, it's related, but my parents are, um, you know, just so, who are they? You know, it's like, who are these people? I don't know them anymore.

• 1:48:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:21Speaker 01

  In a great way. They're so thrilled and happy and.

• 1:48:24Dax Shepard?

  They have new life in their world.

• 1:48:26Speaker 01

  I know, new love.

• 1:48:28Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they did their their bucket just got wider.

• 1:48:31Speaker 01

  Yes, and this this baby, um, there's a video, my brother sent us a video of Emily, his wife, holding Fizzy. And my brother is like pushing a little ball towards him and then Emily is like, you know, maneuvering his feet, moving his feet to like.

• 1:48:49Dax Shepard?

  For him.

• 1:48:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, holding his foot and moving it to like kick the ball back, you know? And, um, he sends us this and my brother said, a star in the making, you know, cute. And my mom was like, oh my god, he's handling the ball so well. That's what she said, he's handling the ball so well. I was laughing so hard cuz she means it.

• 1:49:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, mhm, yeah.

• 1:49:20Speaker 01

  She really means it. And then my dad was like, save this video for when he becomes a star and then we can show. And I'm like, wha- who? They're just like, they have this new baby star and we all do, I do too, I'm obsessed with him. I'm gonna, I was like, we need to FaceTime this weekend, I need to see him, which this is, I think, all part of the gloom, right? Okay, so I'm home and I'm seeing my parents so, so, so happy.

• 1:49:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  And I do think it instigated a little bit of like, I didn't give them that. I didn't give them that. Um.

• 1:50:02Dax Shepard?

  Quickly, just to remind you, they also weren't retired then, they just retired.

• 1:50:07Speaker 01

  I know, but it's still, I don't know, it just is like, oh god, like, yeah, that's this phrase is not the right phrase, it's like there's no competing with that, but there is like, not that my brother and I are in any competition, but it is just like, oh yeah, there's no.

• 1:50:23Dax Shepard?

  That's the ultimate gift.

• 1:50:24Speaker 01

  Bringing someone new into the world.

• 1:50:26Dax Shepard?

  That is them, that's an extension of them, yeah.

• 1:50:29Speaker 01

  And so I think I did feel like.

• 1:50:33Dax Shepard?

  It's the only hedge you have against this tragedy that you die. It's literally the only thing that could possibly comfort this tragedy we're all gonna experience, which is we die. And the only thing that can comfort that is like, oh, but I'm still alive, you know, like, I'm still alive.

• 1:50:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:54Dax Shepard?

  We are still alive.

• 1:50:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:57Dax Shepard?

  You don't like that?

• 1:50:58Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:50:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I could see on your face you didn't like.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know, I don't like it cuz I don't have it. So obviously, like, I I don't anytime it's like it's the only thing, that's hard, you know, like that's anyway, so I think it started there a little bit and it was a great trip home, actually, like, it was such a fun trip. I had so much fun with, um, my parents, like, we had a bunch of just us dinners, everything was great. But I think I did leave feeling like, ugh, like, I wish I had given them that, not instead, but like to also, um,

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  and it feels kinda weird to be so far away when all this is happening and even for me, I'm like, oh my god, I'm not gonna see him again till December and he's gonna look different and I'm missing out on like.

• 1:51:52Dax Shepard?

  Well, you can go on Thanksgiving.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  Grow. I've, I I cuz I also have a life, I mean, this is all part of, this is part of the tension, like, I like my life too. And it's not, yeah, I don't know, anyway, anyway, so there's just like things to think about, not really to think about, there's just things for the gloom.

• 1:52:14Dax Shepard?

  There's emotions.

• 1:52:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:16Dax Shepard?

  And maybe they're not perfectly identified yet.

• 1:52:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably not. I don't know if they'll ever be identified.

• 1:52:24Dax Shepard?

  No, you can identify them.

• 1:52:26Speaker 01

  No, I don't, but I I don't know, I mean, yes.

• 1:52:30Dax Shepard?

  I'm not saying that you can by knowing everything avoid these unavoidable things.

• 1:52:35Speaker 01

  I'm gonna feel it.

• 1:52:36Dax Shepard?

  But understanding specifically what's going on helps, I think, helps you process it all. And put it in the right boxes.

• 1:52:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:46Dax Shepard?

  For me, it does, I go like, oh, right, that's that thing. I know that and I've had this experience, you know, in that box where I'm putting that thing, there's a bunch of other things from my past. And I go, yeah, like, I don't know, I find that comforting, it's like, yeah, that's, that's that old thing, I know that thing and that's this thing and like, yeah.

• 1:53:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is like, I have lived this life, obviously for me, but also for them. Like, to make them proud, to have the things that, to relieve them, to create safety, like, these things that I did do.

• 1:53:24Dax Shepard?

  Mhm.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  And I'm happy about that, I'm proud of that, but I think there might be a peace now that I'm like, that doesn't matter. Like, maybe that didn't matter or that doesn't matter anymore.

• 1:53:38Dax Shepard?

  Mhm.

• 1:53:39Speaker 01

  Some, a- and so.

• 1:53:41Dax Shepard?

  I think.

• 1:53:42Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:53:43Dax Shepard?

  I think sometimes when we have the, hmm, I think sometimes when we have these conversations, it's easy for me to sound like everyone should have a baby, right? Because I've had such a great time, like, I can only share my experience with it and it is what it is and I'm, I like to be honest about what it is.

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:00Dax Shepard?

  Um, but I also think it's quite okay to to, for both things to be true, to go like, yeah, that's not for me, I don't want it. That's not what I wanna do. Also, I'm honest about the fact that there will be some complex processing of that decision. It's not just cuz you go, I don't want it, then end of story.

• 1:54:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:54:20Dax Shepard?

  You'll have these moments where it's like, oh yeah, I'm gonna die and I won't, no, that's a real moment and and it's okay to work through that and process that. And it doesn't mean your decision's wrong, it just means like, it is the reality of it.

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:31Dax Shepard?

  And I think it's fine to feel those ways and it doesn't mean you should regret anything, it just means like, yeah, that's part of this kind. And then on the flip side, you shoot off to London and you do whatever and you float around and it's like, I can't do that, right?

• 1:54:47Speaker 01

  No, I know, I know.

• 1:54:48Dax Shepard?

  There are times where I'm like, oh, I could really be letting it rip if I wasn't all day long responsible for people. So then that's the thing that I then deal with.

• 1:54:56Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:54:57Dax Shepard?

  You know?

• 1:54:57Speaker 01

  There are plenty of things, there are plenty of moments.

• 1:55:00Dax Shepard?

  These decisions come with a lot of predictable, you know, outcomes.

• 1:55:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:04Dax Shepard?

  Either in either direction.

• 1:55:06Speaker 01

  Yes, I think I have plenty of moments that I'm so.

• 1:55:11Speaker 01

  Grateful that I don't have children and and then yes, there are these times, but also, but it's interesting to well, two things. One, I I don't know that I don't want it. That's it. That's like it's if I was very steadfast in that.

• 1:55:30Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:55:31Speaker 01

  Maybe it would be easier, maybe it wouldn't. I don't know, but I think it's this like weird limboey.

• 1:55:37Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:55:37Speaker 01

  Thing that is hard, very hard.

• 1:55:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, if it if I were female and I was in your exact shoes, I think my fear would be like, I don't know if I'm gonna regret this. That's the anxiety. It's like currently, I don't think I'm going to, but also I'm smart enough to go like, I might. And that's a very scary feeling.

• 1:56:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:00Dax Shepard?

  Right?

• 1:56:01Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:56:02Dax Shepard?

  I think that's um where the action is, is like, am I just fearful that I'm gonna go, fuck, why didn't I do that?

• 1:56:11Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:56:12Dax Shepard?

  That which doesn't even speak to whether or not you actually want to do that or not.

• 1:56:15Speaker 01

  I know. Well, none of it does.

• 1:56:17Dax Shepard?

  And you don't even know if you you you might not regret it at all.

• 1:56:20Speaker 01

  And none of it does, because even these feelings are not really about me.

• 1:56:25Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:56:25Speaker 01

  They're, I mean, like with the feelings around my family are not really about me. They're about my parents. They're about that. So it's still not answering anything for me. It's not like, oh, oh, like, I want this. Yeah. That's not happening. It is like, oh, my god.

• 1:56:43Dax Shepard?

  When you're with other babies, you like them, you think they're cute, you like to play with them. You don't leave and go like, oh, my ovaries hurt.

• 1:56:49Speaker 01

  I mean, so a little.

• 1:56:51Dax Shepard?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:56:52Speaker 01

  I mean, that's what I'm saying. Like, no, I there's no like, oh, I'm I'm doing this.

• 1:56:58Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:56:58Speaker 01

  There's no like.

• 1:56:59Dax Shepard?

  You don't leave going, fuck, I'll just be like Mindy and I'm gonna handle this.

• 1:57:02Speaker 01

  Exactly. There's not that.

• 1:57:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:03Speaker 01

  And then there's not like, oh, but I'm happy to give them back.

• 1:57:06Dax Shepard?

  Right, right, right, right, right.

• 1:57:08Speaker 01

  So it really is this very nebulous area for me.

• 1:57:13Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:13Speaker 01

  If I had a husband that I was in love with.

• 1:57:16Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:16Speaker 01

  I would want a kid.

• 1:57:18Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  That I do know.

• 1:57:19Dax Shepard?

  Gotcha.

• 1:57:19Speaker 01

  So then there is this like.

• 1:57:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but you don't really want a husband.

• 1:57:24Speaker 01

  I do. I do want a husband that I'm in love with.

• 1:57:28Dax Shepard?

  I'm sorry, I'm not saying, I I'm I feel like I'm going off of what you've been saying a lot lately, which is like, I'm very happy, single. I'm not trying to.

• 1:57:36Speaker 01

  I am.

• 1:57:37Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:57:37Speaker 01

  I am. I have a very happy, full life that I'm grateful for.

• 1:57:42Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:57:43Speaker 01

  And I I don't really, quote, want for anything.

• 1:57:46Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:57:47Speaker 01

  But it would be my preference.

• 1:57:51Dax Shepard?

  To be madly in love with a husband.

• 1:57:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:57:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  That would be my preference.

• 1:57:55Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:57:56Speaker 01

  It feels impossible. It feels like, well, what I definitely know is I'd much rather be single and happy as I am than with a husband I'm not in love with.

• 1:58:13Dax Shepard?

  And let's even, by the way, you could be madly in love with a husband.

• 1:58:19Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:58:19Dax Shepard?

  And then the shit'll hit the fan.

• 1:58:21Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:58:22Dax Shepard?

  Right? Like, it it it also, not unlike parenthood, it's like, it's.

• 1:58:29Speaker 01

  No, I'm not living in a fantasy land that marriage is like, I mean, I mean, real partnership. And I don't mean madly in love in a fantasy way. I mean, like, really in love.

• 1:58:41Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 1:58:41Speaker 01

  In in a partnership where you're a team.

• 1:58:44Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:44Speaker 01

  And you have each other's backs and you you'd fight and you recover, like, the whole thing. Yes, and you're in therapy and you do the thing, but you're committed. I that's my preference.

• 1:58:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  But I will only do that for some, no, I'm not just doing that for any old person. So, yeah, anyway.

• 1:59:06Dax Shepard?

  Ah, so you think that might be part of the gloom? Because the weather's nice.

• 1:59:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:59:10Dax Shepard?

  All the other things you would know to to look at the uh the usual suspects are not present. So you're led to believe perhaps it's about that.

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  I think it's, I think that's in the stew. I think weirdly, like, me just like not feeling very well. Like, I've been like sick all year. And that is unsettling.

• 1:59:32Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:59:33Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:59:33Dax Shepard?

  Makes you feel vulnerable.

• 1:59:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I just, I'm in a little bit of a gloom and my birthday's coming up and maybe it will lift.

• 1:59:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:41Speaker 01

  When my birthday comes.

• 1:59:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, they say thirty nine is a magic year, because it's three times three equals nine.

• 1:59:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:59:47Dax Shepard?

  You know?

• 1:59:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:48Dax Shepard?

  There's some magic there.

• 1:59:50Speaker 01

  I like that. Well, we can find the magic.

• 1:59:53Dax Shepard?

  There's nothing to do with three and eight. That adds up to forty one.

• 1:59:58Speaker 01

  No, because.

• 1:59:59Dax Shepard?

  No, it doesn't. It adds up to.

• 2:00:00Speaker 01

  Eleven, and eleven's lucky.

• 2:00:02Dax Shepard?

  Why did I just say forty one? Why did that make sense in my head? Anyhow.

• 2:00:05Speaker 01

  Eleven's lucky.

• 2:00:06Dax Shepard?

  Thirty eight plus four, three is forty one.

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:12Dax Shepard?

  What's lucky?

• 2:00:13Speaker 01

  Eleven.

• 2:00:14Dax Shepard?

  Eleven, yeah. Here's your favorite.

• 2:00:16Speaker 01

  Everything's lucky. You know, you can find it. You can find it if you look for it.

• 2:00:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, the vulnerability thing is funny, uh because for me, it's not objective. So like, yeah, last year I was sick from November to January eighth.

• 2:00:33Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:00:34Dax Shepard?

  And I was starting to go like, do I have a terminal disease, right? Like, I started, and because I can't see it, I don't know what's going on, it starts to eat at me.

• 2:00:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:44Dax Shepard?

  But then, cut to, I'm covered head to toe this summer in in poison ivy. And everywhere I go, people are like, I can't believe you're at the beach, or I can't believe you're doing this, or on the boat, or doing whatever.

• 2:00:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:55Dax Shepard?

  And I'm like, oh, this doesn't even regi- like, in my mind, for whatever reason, it's like, I don't even register that, like, that doesn't make me feel vulnerable at all. I mean, I'm clearly vulnerable, I'm vulnerable to this oil that got all over my body.

• 2:01:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:01:07Dax Shepard?

  But but I know, it doesn't trigger the thing for me.

• 2:01:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think, don't you isn't, don't you think part of it is because you know what it is? You're like, oh, yeah, this sucks, but it's poison.

• 2:01:15Dax Shepard?

  In worst case, it's four weeks.

• 2:01:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's part of it.

• 2:01:19Dax Shepard?

  That's part of it. I think also just seeing versus not seeing.

• 2:01:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:23Dax Shepard?

  And then also like feeling um rundown, like, what is that?

• 2:01:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just a bad, it's just, it kind of makes you sad.

• 2:01:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:31Speaker 01

  Gloomy.

• 2:01:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I am of the age where I have, you know, I have more than one friend that are in trouble, health-wise.

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:01:39Dax Shepard?

  And so.

• 2:01:40Speaker 01

  Are you going to the doctor enough?

• 2:01:42Dax Shepard?

  Um, I'm not sure. Oh, I'm gonna do this. I'll tell you what hit the fan this year, uh this summer. We got a bed big enough for all of us to sleep in.

• 2:01:51Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 2:01:51Dax Shepard?

  In Nashville. We're the Who's, right? We all s- last summer, we all slept in the same bed all summer.

• 2:01:56Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:01:57Dax Shepard?

  This summer, that was not happening. Lincoln's older, she's not, she's in her room. That makes total sense. And then slowly, over the course of the summer, I'm getting kicked, like, Delta sleeps next to me, and I'm just getting kicked in the middle of the night. I'm like, what is going on? Dad, shut up!

• 2:02:17Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, because you're snoring.

• 2:02:19Dax Shepard?

  So apparently I've begun snoring.

• 2:02:21Speaker 01

  This happens, fuck.

• 2:02:22Dax Shepard?

  I know, man. Some of this aging stuff as a man, it's like, two things. How can I be simultaneously losing my hair and growing hair everywhere? I did, what is, what kind of fucked up trajectory is that? Like, I'm working out the other day and I happen to have my shirt off and I look in the mirror and the sun, which, you know, went across.

• 2:02:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:42Dax Shepard?

  And I look at my back, I'm like, Jesus Christ, I gotta shave my back. Like, what's going on with my back, right? There's hair everywhere. I look now, there's hair. I think it's going up to my eyes. I now gotta shave like above my beard. And I'm like, why am I fight, I am putting drops on my head all day long to keep this hair, but why? Right, so that's one thing. And then this snoring thing, I don't, nothing happened to me.

• 2:03:01Speaker 01

  No, this is age. It does happen to everyone. Women too.

• 2:03:04Dax Shepard?

  So now I'm complete, no one will sleep with me, right? By the end of summer, no one's sleeping. Everyone's sleeping now. No one will sleep with me.

• 2:03:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:03:12Dax Shepard?

  And no one's sleeping with me anymore at all, right? And so also, funny enough, I almost posted this, like, I come in, this is like midsummer before I unveiled. I I look at my pillow and there's like um two boxes of those Breathe Right strips you put on your nose at night so you don't snore. So I I start putting those on.

• 2:03:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:03:29Dax Shepard?

  Didn't do shit for me. I think it helps other people, but no. So anyways, am I going to the doctor? I'm going to an ENT.

• 2:03:36Speaker 01

  Oh!

• 2:03:37Dax Shepard?

  Uh, yeah, mid-September.

• 2:03:39Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:03:40Dax Shepard?

  To see if they can't bore out, get in there and drill out whatever's going on in there, you know? Make it wider or something.

• 2:03:46Speaker 01

  They're gonna, you're gonna get a nose job?

• 2:03:48Dax Shepard?

  No, I mean, might be the time. No, you know, I probably, I have a deviated septum. I've had my nose broken in a fight and I did cocaine for years. So I'm sure it's a mess up there.

• 2:03:57Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:03:58Dax Shepard?

  And so I'm gonna have.

• 2:04:00Speaker 01

  Why don't you use that thing you used to use?

• 2:04:02Dax Shepard?

  That's what those Breathe Strips do.

• 2:04:04Speaker 01

  I know, but you used to have an actual like.

• 2:04:06Dax Shepard?

  I know, yeah, yeah. It's called Intake Breathe. They're really cool. My friend Dave Castro's company, yeah.

• 2:04:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:12Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I just stopped, you know?

• 2:04:13Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 2:04:13Dax Shepard?

  Kind of like um our guest this week. I asked her about her nighttime routine, which was extensive the last time we interviewed her. She's like, oh, no, no, I don't do anything. I'm kind of like that. It's like, oh, yeah, I don't know why.

• 2:04:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:24Dax Shepard?

  But anyways, I'm going. Now, that's a tricky thing. If they gotta really get in there and do some procedure.

• 2:04:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, are you gonna do that?

• 2:04:31Dax Shepard?

  And they go like, do you want to make this a little less bulbous?

• 2:04:34Speaker 01

  Oh, my god. After everything, okay.

• 2:04:38Dax Shepard?

  I I'm just being honest.

• 2:04:39Speaker 01

  I know, but I'm just.

• 2:04:40Dax Shepard?

  I'm not gonna.

• 2:04:40Speaker 01

  I'm just telling you.

• 2:04:42Dax Shepard?

  You know, I'll tell you what, I'm not gonna do it, because I think it would be embarrassing for me to have clearly a new nose. I would just be embarrassed. I don't think that's embarrassing for other people. For me, I would feel embarrassed. Um, I love nose jobs. They're beautiful.

• 2:04:54Speaker 01

  We're very pro.

• 2:04:55Dax Shepard?

  Now, all truth be told, Jesus materializes in the operating room and he goes, I can reduce the size of your nose by eleven point one percent. You won't be able to tell, and you'll be able to tell.

• 2:05:08Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:05:09Dax Shepard?

  I think so.

• 2:05:10Speaker 01

  Then you're a hypocrite, because you're always telling everyone else, like, having character is what's like attractive.

• 2:05:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I would say to myself.

• 2:05:18Speaker 01

  So I just don't believe you anymore.

• 2:05:19Dax Shepard?

  I would say to myself, I would say, if I knew me, I would go, what are you doing? Look at your ex-girlfriends. They're all beautiful. They're all intelligent and had great personalities. They all liked you. What's to fix?

• 2:05:34Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:05:35Dax Shepard?

  You're on television, people don't complain. I know the argument.

• 2:05:39Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:05:40Dax Shepard?

  But if I could have it eleven percent smaller for me when I look in the mirror and no one ever said anything, I would like that.

• 2:05:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what everyone wants when they do these things.

• 2:05:52Dax Shepard?

  Do they? Because sometimes I'm like, well, there's no way you thought anyone's not gonna notice.

• 2:05:56Speaker 01

  No, yes, everyone thinks that. Everyone thinks like, yeah, we're just gonna do a little bit here and then like, I'll like it and.

• 2:06:03Dax Shepard?

  You'll have a button nose and no one will notice.

• 2:06:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, not a button, but like, yeah, I'm getting one.

• 2:06:10Dax Shepard?

  Well, like, let's put it this way.

• 2:06:11Speaker 01

  I'm getting one.

• 2:06:12Dax Shepard?

  My nose is crooked. It in a fight, it got broken to the left, I believe, right? So it it it is crooked. If when I go see the person, he's like, part of the big reason is that your fucking nose is crooked, I'd need to break it and set it straight. What's that? What is that? What is that? Is that a nose job?

• 2:06:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:06:32Dax Shepard?

  Okay. And, but it's literally returning it to how it was before the guy hit me?

• 2:06:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause now this is your nose.

• 2:06:41Dax Shepard?

  Your nose knows.

• 2:06:41Speaker 01

  Your nose is your nose.

• 2:06:43Dax Shepard?

  Your nose knows.

• 2:06:44Speaker 01

  And who knows why any of our noses are big and small and whatever. So.

• 2:06:50Dax Shepard?

  My voice could change, right? I've got this huge echo chamber on the on the front of my face. It might have something to do with how my voice. Like, what if I came on here and I was like, people are saying I had a new nose job and that? I did not.

• 2:07:01Speaker 01

  I didn't.

• 2:07:02Dax Shepard?

  I had a deviated septum.

• 2:07:03Speaker 01

  It's not helping with the gloom for some reason. The nose.

• 2:07:06Dax Shepard?

  You didn't like me talking about my deviated septum?

• 2:07:10Speaker 01

  I want a nose job.

• 2:07:12Dax Shepard?

  You do? Have you considered it?

• 2:07:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, we've talked about this.

• 2:07:15Dax Shepard?

  No, I don't. I think we've all, I think you and I have both said we would prefer different noses on ourselves. But I've not heard you say, I've been thinking about getting a nose job.

• 2:07:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've been wanted one. I wanted one my whole life.

• 2:07:27Dax Shepard?

  I wanted one my whole life.

• 2:07:28Speaker 01

  I have. And I, but I have told you this because I told you the reason I won't do it is because my dad is very against it in case I die.

• 2:07:38Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:07:39Speaker 01

  He thinks if you go under the knife, like for him, it's like.

• 2:07:43Dax Shepard?

  For elective surgeries.

• 2:07:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and something happens to me.

• 2:07:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:47Speaker 01

  Then he'll

• 2:07:49Dax Shepard?

  He'll be mad at you.

• 2:07:50Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, he'll, he said, he said very sweetly, cause he doesn't say nice. He doesn't, he's not very

• 2:07:56Dax Shepard?

  Tactful.

• 2:07:57Speaker 01

  No, he's tactful. He's just not very vulnerable. So one time I said like, I'm getting a nose job. High school, probably.

• 2:08:05Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:08:06Speaker 01

  Maybe college. And, and he was like, no. You're not doing that again for like, don't choosing to go under the knife, blah, blah, blah. And then I said, well, if I don't do it, then I'm gonna hate myself. The rest. No, no, no, I said, if I don't do this, I'm gonna be miserable for the rest of my life.

• 2:08:27Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 2:08:28Speaker 01

  And he said.

• 2:08:28Dax Shepard?

  Turned out to not be true, but continue.

• 2:08:31Speaker 01

  He said, if you do it and something happens, I'll be miserable for the rest of my life.

• 2:08:36Dax Shepard?

  Well, that's true.

• 2:08:37Speaker 01

  And it was true and fair, and I am not willing to put him at risk for that.

• 2:08:42Dax Shepard?

  Rob, can you look up how many people die from rhinoplasty a year in the US?

• 2:08:46Speaker 01

  People get infections from plastic surgery. Don't do rhinoplasty.

• 2:08:50Dax Shepard?

  Just do nose, do nose job. That's what we're talking about, nose job, right?

• 2:08:54Speaker 03

  The mortality rate for elective plastic surgery is about one death per 100,000 procedures.

• 2:09:01Dax Shepard?

  Okay. And we're writing nose jobs specifically?

• 2:09:03Speaker 03

  I did, it doesn't like that. It doesn't track that.

• 2:09:07Dax Shepard?

  So plastic surgery, by the way, that includes like people who have their face taken off and then reassembled. You know, there's like, there's very extensive plastic surgery.

• 2:09:15Speaker 01

  I'm not saying it's common.

• 2:09:16Dax Shepard?

  People that get these butt injections in a fucking questionable country and they get an infection, you know?

• 2:09:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not saying it's common, but he's right, it could happen.

• 2:09:26Dax Shepard?

  Ask what the death rate is per.

• 2:09:28Speaker 01

  It's not the point.

• 2:09:29Dax Shepard?

  Don't be mad at me, I just wanna know this. What's the death rate per 100,000 for the common cold?

• 2:09:34Speaker 03

  Virtually zero.

• 2:09:36Dax Shepard?

  Hmm, okay, that's better. So if you're choosing between a nose job and a common cold.

• 2:09:39Speaker 01

  Also, you aren't choosing a common cold. That's the whole point. That is literally the whole point. Anyway, I just, so I decided I wasn't doing it because of him. But yes, I want one, I hate my face. What do you mean? We all know this. This is not like new information. And it totally discounts the veneers.

• 2:10:01Dax Shepard?

  It kind of, um, is new information, cause I know that you hate your face. Welcome to the club. Um, but I, I did not know that you were a value, you know, considering a nose job.

• 2:10:14Speaker 01

  Since I was two.

• 2:10:15Dax Shepard?

  Okay, two.

• 2:10:16Speaker 01

  Since I came out the womb.

• 2:10:17Dax Shepard?

  Okay, let's do some facts.

• 2:10:19Speaker 01

  Okay. Okay, so Olivia, this is for, um, magnet charisma. Very cool. Very cool episode. I think people are gonna wanna read it and implement.

• 2:10:32Dax Shepard?

  Of course.

• 2:10:32Speaker 01

  And I hope if you do, you use your power for good.

• 2:10:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:35Speaker 01

  There really are like very few facts. She was incredibly knowledgeable.

• 2:10:39Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 2:10:40Speaker 01

  Um, she said in chemistry, you need a certain amount of each element to get to activation energy. And so then I looked up how much. And it said, there's no set number for activation energy. It changes for every chemical reaction.

• 2:10:52Dax Shepard?

  Uh huh.

• 2:10:53Speaker 01

  Some reactions need very little energy and happen fast. Other reactions need a lot of energy and happen very slow.

• 2:10:58Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:10:59Speaker 01

  I was not very good at chemistry. I, I mean, I did okay, but I struggled.

• 2:11:04Dax Shepard?

  It's hard.

• 2:11:05Speaker 01

  Phew.

• 2:11:06Dax Shepard?

  It's hard.

• 2:11:07Speaker 01

  It is hard.

• 2:11:08Dax Shepard?

  I can't remember, was it Neil Theis? But he was saying virtually, we learn in the wrong order.

• 2:11:15Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:11:15Dax Shepard?

  As children here, you, you really start with animals and biology. And then you work your way to, um.

• 2:11:23Speaker 01

  Physics.

• 2:11:24Dax Shepard?

  Is it physics then chemistry?

• 2:11:25Speaker 01

  No, no, it's, it's biology, chemistry, physics.

• 2:11:29Dax Shepard?

  Right. And he said it's more intuitive to learn physics, which create chemistry, which creates biology.

• 2:11:36Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting.

• 2:11:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, one is leading to the other, but we start, we go top, top down, I guess.

• 2:11:43Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it makes sense.

• 2:11:44Dax Shepard?

  But it would be so hard to start with physics. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 2:11:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but it does make more sense if you've got all those rules and you go, right, now that you understand that's how these elements come together, this is why they, yeah.

• 2:11:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:58Dax Shepard?

  It's why they come to be living.

• 2:12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it makes sense, but I, I don't think a ninth grader's brain.

• 2:12:05Dax Shepard?

  Or second grader, cause you're learning about animals and biology and like elementary school.

• 2:12:09Speaker 01

  That's true, but I, I mean, in high school, that's the order in high school.

• 2:12:14Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:14Speaker 01

  Ninth, 10th, 11th, for me, for my school. Um, and I was so, oh, physics was so hard for me. Still is. I'm reading When We Cease to Understand the World, a book about physics. And, um, man, is it just.

• 2:12:33Dax Shepard?

  Did you ask chat yet what parts are fictional? Cause I had no idea some of that book is fictional.

• 2:12:38Speaker 01

  I haven't asked which parts.

• 2:12:39Dax Shepard?

  That really scares me.

• 2:12:41Speaker 01

  It does.

• 2:12:41Dax Shepard?

  I took it all as.

• 2:12:42Speaker 01

  As real.

• 2:12:43Dax Shepard?

  Nonfiction. I didn't even know that part. How did you learn that? People talking? It wasn't in the cover?

• 2:12:49Speaker 01

  I think, I think it's on the back.

• 2:12:53Dax Shepard?

  Really? I'm audiobook, so I don't.

• 2:12:55Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:12:56Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:56Speaker 01

  I mean, maybe I'm wrong, let's double check.

• 2:12:58Dax Shepard?

  I hope you're wrong.

• 2:13:00Speaker 01

  Blends fact and fiction to explore how major scientific and mathematical breakthroughs such as quantum mechanics and chemical synthesis border on madness and bring destructive moral consequences.

• 2:13:10Dax Shepard?

  Well, jeez, I hope that the Heisenberg thing isn't completely.

• 2:13:14Speaker 03

  The historical baseline is real, but the inner turmoil and epiphanies are fictionalized. That he just invents dramatic, dreamlike internal states such as Heisenberg feeling his brain split into two.

• 2:13:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that.

• 2:13:29Speaker 03

  While discovering matrix mechanics to capture the psychological toll of grasping complex science.

• 2:13:35Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. That's the one I like the most.

• 2:13:38Speaker 01

  We even still like it.

• 2:13:39Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's like the idea of like touching madness and you come out of it with these matrix that makes sense, but you don't know why.

• 2:13:46Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:13:46Dax Shepard?

  That's, that's like, it makes me believe in God.

• 2:13:49Speaker 01

  Right, I know. But anyway, physics is wild.

• 2:13:52Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it is.

• 2:13:53Speaker 01

  And I can't wrap my head around it. And I'm okay with that. That's other thing.

• 2:13:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, this, I just read an article yesterday, it was like, the Hubble has exposed that our understanding of the universe is completely wrong in a lot of areas. There's, there's a bunch of different stars that were supposed to have a uh, expanded slower towards us that we've now observed through Hubble. So there's, right now, there's this kind of crisis, I think, in physics where it's like, wait, how are we explaining all this shit that Hubble just observed? Because that's not our current understanding of what's happening.

• 2:14:23Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:14:23Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:14:24Speaker 01

  Um, her book has been translated into 36 languages. The charisma myth has how anyone can master the art and science of personal magnet.

• 2:14:34Dax Shepard?

  And what's crazy is there's only 32 languages.

• 2:14:39Speaker 01

  Should I ask?

• 2:14:39Dax Shepard?

  Isn't there like a thousand dialects in India or something crazy?

• 2:14:42Speaker 01

  How many languages are there in the world?

• 2:14:44Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:14:45Speaker 01

  Approximately 7,170 known living languages.

• 2:14:49Dax Shepard?

  90% of which are in India.

• 2:14:51Speaker 01

  I mean, definitely at least a thousand of, they have. I was talking about that when I was with my parents. It was weird because we were discussing how Indian last names, you can tell you where they're from.

• 2:15:06Dax Shepard?

  Mm hmm, they're geographical.

• 2:15:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's just interesting that we don't have that.

• 2:15:11Dax Shepard?

  No, we had a lot of occupational names.

• 2:15:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:15Dax Shepard?

  Shepherd, Smith.

• 2:15:16Speaker 01

  Right, but that's outdated. Yeah, I guess it's all outdated sort of.

• 2:15:21Dax Shepard?

  But you're stuck with them.

• 2:15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, stuck with them. But yeah.

• 2:15:24Dax Shepard?

  Like my last name is a declaration of our, at one point, our livelihood.

• 2:15:28Speaker 01

  I just think that's interesting. Like if you hear someone's Indian last name, you know if they're from the north or the south, like it's wild.

• 2:15:37Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, but that's getting all fucked up here for sure, right? Because you have the, um, the Patel's.

• 2:15:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:44Dax Shepard?

  They've taken over America.

• 2:15:46Speaker 01

  No, no, it's not like, no, you don't, sorry. You don't know whether they're from the north or the south in America.

• 2:15:51Dax Shepard?

  No, no, I know.

• 2:15:52Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 2:15:53Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I'm just saying it's here.

• 2:15:55Speaker 01

  Here's different, but that's what I'm saying. Here in general, you can't know anything about that. But if, if you know someone's last name is Patel, you know where the region that Patel's are from, yeah.

• 2:16:07Dax Shepard?

  Rob, ask what the most common last name in India is.

• 2:16:10Speaker 01

  In India.

• 2:16:11Dax Shepard?

  Proper, not outside of India.

• 2:16:15Speaker 01

  Well, it's gonna be hard, they're so.

• 2:16:17Speaker 03

  Devi.

• 2:16:19Speaker 01

  What'd he say?

• 2:16:20Speaker 03

  Devi, D E V I.

• 2:16:22Speaker 01

  Devi.

• 2:16:23Dax Shepard?

  I thought he said Devi. I was like, not ladies. There's no way that's the most popular.

• 2:16:28Speaker 01

  That's a first name, though, isn't it?

• 2:16:30Speaker 03

  Uh, most frequent surname.

• 2:16:32Speaker 01

  Oh, listen, also names in India are very confusing. Like, people take the last name that's someone's first name, like it gets very complicated.

• 2:16:42Dax Shepard?

  Skattywampus.

• 2:16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's different. And then sometimes they're passed maternally and sometimes the wife takes the husband's first name as the last name. So there's a lot going on.

• 2:16:53Dax Shepard?

  Nirmi Ashok.

• 2:16:54Speaker 01

  It would, it would be Nirmala Ashok.

• 2:16:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:16:57Speaker 01

  But she didn't do that.

• 2:16:58Dax Shepard?

  Okay, I like that, though.

• 2:16:59Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:17:00Speaker 03

  They got Singh, Kumar, Devi, Sharma, Patel, and Gupta.

• 2:17:05Dax Shepard?

  Gupta, we know some Guptas. Sanjay.

• 2:17:08Speaker 01

  Um.

• 2:17:09Dax Shepard?

  That's it, we know.

• 2:17:10Speaker 01

  Nambyar is popular, that's, uh, my mom's maiden name.

• 2:17:15Dax Shepard?

  What is it?

• 2:17:16Speaker 01

  Nambyar.

• 2:17:17Dax Shepard?

  Nambyar, that's beautiful.

• 2:17:18Speaker 01

  N A M B I A R. Anyhow, um, so I just thought that was interesting. We can't do that here. You can't hear someone's name and know a thing about them. Regions in India change a lot of things. It changes the language, it changes often, not always, but like skin coloring, background, like there's, it's, it's interesting. You know a lot immediately.

• 2:17:42Dax Shepard?

  Do you think in year 30, 86, people will be like Debbie Uber and Glenn Uber? Cause that was a popular occupation?

• 2:17:52Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:17:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:17:53Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 2:17:54Dax Shepard?

  Okay, yeah, they're not inventing new last names. I was just trying to think of very modern occupations that might.

• 2:18:00Speaker 01

  No, be a Monica podcaster.

• 2:18:03Dax Shepard?

  Doug computer programmer.

• 2:18:05Speaker 01

  Podcast isn't that different from Padman.

• 2:18:07Dax Shepard?

  No, it's really close, yeah. We're from the south.

• 2:18:12Speaker 01

  You wanna hear something embarrassing?

• 2:18:14Dax Shepard?

  Always, always.

• 2:18:17Speaker 01

  You know when I had fantasies?

• 2:18:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, it used to. Yeah, uh huh.

• 2:18:22Speaker 01

  Um, no, I have a lot less. It's a more boring life, I'll say.

• 2:18:25Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:18:26Speaker 01

  Um, anyway, so I used to, when I was trying to be other people and stuff, and when I was young and like writing stories a lot, uh, and giving people names, I really liked Shepherd as a last name.

• 2:18:38Dax Shepard?

  You did?

• 2:18:39Speaker 01

  I did, and I wanted that as a last name.

• 2:18:42Dax Shepard?

  Was there a Shepherd at school?

• 2:18:44Speaker 01

  That's, I don't know how I, I must have known someone or heard it. Then when Derek Shepherd on Grey's Anatomy reiterated that.

• 2:18:51Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:18:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:52Dax Shepard?

  That was a character's name, not the actor's name.

• 2:18:54Speaker 01

  Patrick Dempsey's character.

• 2:18:55Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:18:56Speaker 01

  So, just letting you know.

• 2:18:59Dax Shepard?

  Okay, that seems, uh, serendipitous.

• 2:19:02Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:19:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:19:04Speaker 01

  God, Sam.

• 2:19:06Dax Shepard?

  Sam, it's lazy.

• 2:19:07Speaker 01

  So lazy.

• 2:19:08Dax Shepard?

  All right.

• 2:19:09Speaker 01

  All right.

• 2:19:09Dax Shepard?

  Love you.