Pod Insights Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard Olivia Wilde About this episode Olivia Wilde (The Invite, Booksmart, and Don’t Worry Darling) is a director, actor, and filmmaker. Olivia joins Armchair Expert to discuss being raised by war-correspondent parents, growing up too fast on the Georgetown campus, and finding her footing at boarding school. Olivia and Dax talk about learning the wrong lessons in LA audition rooms, leaving The OC to chase movies, and making the jump from directing music videos to Booksmart. Olivia explains why the most personal work is usually the best work, how parenting teaches patience and humility, and why we need to relearn the art of disagreement.
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Transcript 29,836 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dax Shepard? Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Lily Padman.
0:04 Speaker 01 Hello.
0:05 Dax Shepard? And today we have Olivia Wilde. Olivia Wilde. I'm such a fan.
0:12 Speaker 01 Yes, me too.
0:13 Dax Shepard? I've, I've talked about her a lot on here. I think she's such a gangster director. She directed Don't Worry Darling, the name.
0:21 Speaker 01 The name eludes you a few times in this episode.
0:24 Dax Shepard? Right in the interview. Booksmart, she also directed, it was incredible. And then as an actor, Tron, Cowboys and Aliens, House. And she has a new movie out, her third movie that she's directed, called The Invite, which you and I saw.
0:39 Speaker 01 Loved.
0:39 Dax Shepard? And we fucking love it so much. And we're doing a little The Invite Week.
0:45 Speaker 01 Yes.
0:45 Dax Shepard? So this is guest one of The Invite Week. Please enjoy Olivia Wilde. We get support from Quince.
0:52 Speaker 01 I have to say, I am so ready for fall. I want sweaters. I've been craving a true crisp morning where I actually need a jacket. I can't wait.
1:01 Dax 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.
1:24 Speaker 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.
1:42 Dax 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.
1:51 Speaker 01 It's a uniform.
1:52 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
1:53 Speaker 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.
2:10 Dax Shepard? Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from AG1. Fall is that time when your body and mind are getting ready for the winter. You're settling in, bracing for the cold. Your body's already running a deficit from the shorter days and broken sleep patterns. You don't want a nutrient deficit stacked on top of that too.
2:46 Speaker 01 That's where your AG1 routine earns its spot. It's not fixing your sleep or your alarm time. It's giving your body what it needs so the dark mornings don't tank you before you even start. One scoop cold water every morning before anything else.
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3:13 Speaker 01 That's the part people miss. It's not a one day fix. It's what happens when you stay consistent.
3:17 Dax Shepard? It's an easy, everyday thing. I've added it to my morning routine and I'm going to tell you, I actually love the taste of it. It's like Pavlovian. I drink it and I know I'm going to get that little vitamin buzz.
3:27 Speaker 01 Well, that's also the thing. When you do it first thing in the morning, you already feel kind of self-esteem because you're like, I already did something good for myself.
3:34 Dax Shepard? Yes. Go to drinkag1.com/dax and for a limited time, get a free immunity bundle, including a bottle of omega three fish oil and a bottle of vitamin D3 K2 with your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/dax. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Armchair Expert sent you.
4:16 Dax Shepard? How are you?
4:17 Speaker 02 Oh, this is so great. I'm so grateful.
4:20 Dax Shepard? Oh, come on now.
4:22 Speaker 01 Hi, so nice to meet you.
4:24 Speaker 02 Nice to meet you.
4:25 Speaker 01 We have so many friends in common.
4:26 Speaker 02 I know.
4:27 Dax Shepard? Start the list.
4:28 Speaker 01 Barb.
4:30 Speaker 02 Barb.
4:30 Dax Shepard? Who's Barb?
4:31 Speaker 01 Barb is incredible hair.
4:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:34 Speaker 01 No.
4:35 Dax Shepard? A terrible dog we have.
4:37 Speaker 01 I hate that dog.
4:37 Speaker 02 Barb's the fucking best.
4:39 Speaker 01 Barb.
4:39 Speaker 02 She was so adorable. She had never done the Met Gala. And then she came with me and I was like, this is the whole reason I'm here.
4:46 Speaker 01 And you looked incredible, by the way.
4:47 Speaker 02 It was all Barb and she was like really giddy and...
4:50 Speaker 01 I bet. It's a huge deal.
4:52 Speaker 02 She's a hairstylist.
4:53 Dax Shepard? Hairstylist.
4:54 Speaker 01 She's very good.
4:55 Dax Shepard? She got into your mermaid hair?
4:56 Speaker 01 She has. She's gotten in there many a time.
4:59 Dax Shepard? Do you know Monica was the Herbal Essence mermaid in a commercial?
5:03 Speaker 02 With the orgasmic, did you have to have like an orgasm?
5:06 Speaker 01 I did not have to have an orgasm. I was a mermaid in the commercial.
5:10 Speaker 02 Oh, you were actually a mermaid?
5:12 Speaker 01 I did have to swim and I don't really know how to swim, so that was bad. We don't know if I can swim.
5:17 Speaker 02 You don't love it or you don't know how?
5:19 Speaker 01 It's somewhere in between.
5:20 Dax Shepard? Olivia, I've observed her swimming, not to...
5:22 Speaker 02 I'm gonna fix this.
5:24 Dax Shepard? Not to not believe women, but she has... She has swam in front of me several times.
5:30 Speaker 01 Okay.
5:30 Dax Shepard? You're not confident swimming?
5:31 Speaker 01 I'm not confident and I do think if I jumped in, I would drown.
5:36 Speaker 02 Right. You need to be prepared.
5:39 Speaker 01 I can like get across the pool.
5:41 Speaker 02 Right, right.
5:42 Speaker 01 But the jumping in, I don't want to do that.
5:45 Speaker 02 So you never swim for fun? It's not like, I'm gonna go swimming?
5:47 Speaker 01 Never.
5:49 Speaker 02 Wow.
5:49 Speaker 01 But I do like a pool. I like to like be by the pool.
5:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pool culture.
5:54 Speaker 01 Feet in, pool culture. You got it.
5:56 Speaker 02 This is like how I like skiing. I don't like to ski. I like to appre ski. You like appre pool?
6:01 Speaker 01 That's right.
6:02 Dax Shepard? Wait, what's appre ski?
6:03 Speaker 02 Appre ski is like drinking culture, basically.
6:05 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
6:06 Speaker 02 You just like get to...
6:06 Dax Shepard? Go to the lodge?
6:07 Speaker 02 Yes. It's the lodge life.
6:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
6:09 Speaker 02 And it's all the stuff except the actual sport.
6:13 Speaker 01 Yep, I love it.
6:13 Dax Shepard? You know, now that you're saying it, you're reminding me of my father, who was a drunk, but did get sober when I was in ninth grade. He got into skiing for a minute because he had a wife who was into skiing.
6:22 Speaker 01 Oh, really?
6:23 Dax Shepard? Yeah, he just... Loved it, yeah, cuz he would get all of his gear and then go straight to the bar.
6:28 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
6:28 Dax Shepard? And sit there and we'd just visit him coming off the slopes.
6:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's like golf. I think people golf so they can drink.
6:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah, the 19th hole.
6:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah, alright.
6:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:38 Speaker 01 That's what they call it.
6:39 Speaker 02 That's the golf culture, I understand.
6:40 Dax Shepard? I need to start by saying I'm like beyond thrilled that you responded to my Instagram message. I was so flattered that you responded.
6:49 Speaker 02 Right into those DMs.
6:50 Dax Shepard? I sent Monica a screen grab immediately and I was like, you are not gonna believe it.
6:55 Speaker 02 You know what's so funny is I took a screenshot of it too, which I showed Kristen. Cuz I thought it was so authentic. It was so sweet. People assume that someone in your position doesn't do any of that, that someone, there's a whole team.
7:05 Speaker 01 No, he doesn't. That's why it is flattering.
7:08 Speaker 02 Very flattering.
7:09 Dax Shepard? Oh, oh, me. I thought you were referring to yourself, like you might assume.
7:13 Speaker 02 No, no.
7:14 Dax Shepard? But yeah, I'm making assumptions. I'm like, you're like a bona fide auteur now and you don't need to do press and there's no reason you're gonna say yes, but I'm just gonna tell you that I have been, for whatever reason, really cheering from afar.
7:28 Speaker 02 I appreciate that.
7:29 Dax Shepard? From Booksmart.
7:30 Speaker 01 Speaking of our other mutual friend, Katie.
7:32 Speaker 02 Katie.
7:33 Speaker 01 Katie wrote Booksmart and Don't Worry Darling and is very, very good friends with me.
7:40 Speaker 02 And she's now basically running Netflix.
7:42 Speaker 01 I know.
7:42 Dax Shepard? Well, she is.
7:43 Speaker 02 She's like the in-house writer, producer extraordinaire and she's a genius.
7:50 Speaker 01 She is a genius.
7:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah, so I saw that, Don't Worry Darling, and Monica and I both, we had a field day with that movie, right?
7:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:58 Dax Shepard? We were so into that movie and there was so much accomplished in it visually, story-wise, acting, all of it, the swing, the execution. I was like, this bitch can fucking direct.
8:12 Speaker 01 She can direct.
8:14 Dax Shepard? And then we saw the invite.
8:17 Speaker 01 We got to see it.
8:18 Dax Shepard? And then I went ballistic. I don't know if Edward shared with you my feedback from it.
8:23 Speaker 02 He just said that you enjoyed it, which made me so happy.
8:26 Dax Shepard? I immediately was like, this is a Mike Nichols movie. This, this woman made a Mike Nichols movie? Wow.
8:32 Speaker 02 That's so kind of you. That's my actual dream review. And it's definitely the best thing I've ever made.
8:39 Dax Shepard? It's so good.
8:40 Speaker 02 I'm so proud of it. It proves everything we've all been taught from the beginning, which is like, the more personal something is, the better. Specificity, making something personal, authenticity, taking risk, all those things. And doing something for the process rather than the result.
8:56 Speaker 01 Yes.
8:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
8:57 Speaker 02 All of the ingredients to a great experience that I had known, but only now do I fully understand why that's so valuable.
9:07 Dax Shepard? This is a challenge. This is a play. And how will this play be riveting on screen? And why aren't I watching it in theater?
9:14 Speaker 02 Exactly. That's always the question, I think. When something is an adaptation, which this was originally a play, I think the question is always, why adapt? Why make it a movie? Or if it's a book, like, why not just leave this as a great book? And I think it has to be that the medium you are adapting it into has to be taken advantage of. So like, what can you show in a film that you can't show on stage? And then you better take advantage of that. Or else we'd all just like to sit and watch a great play. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Was the kind of north star for me in terms of inspiration. Because Mike Nichols took this play, written by Edward Albee, that had been done to great success on Broadway. Everyone loved this play.
9:55 Dax Shepard? Probably isn't the one to fuck with.
9:56 Speaker 02 No.
9:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:57 Dax Shepard? It's high risk, right out of the gates.
9:59 Speaker 02 Exactly. And he decided to shoot it in a way that made it so visceral, so kind of emotionally vivid and really bold choices, really making you feel like you were getting, in their case, like drunker with the characters. The cinematography really kind of took you on this journey, which, you know, sounds so hokey, but it is a real challenge when you're never leaving one set, which of course, that movie's also in one house. And we were so inspired by that. So the whole crew, we took a lot of cues from Mike Nichols, in every way. It was a reminder that we could be just as ambitious with a single set, single location film as you would with an action movie. So we had this extraordinary cinematography.
10:42 Speaker 02 Adam New Borbera, who also shoots The Studio. And that's where I met him. And he's crushing it there. Incredible. And shot Club Kid, which is Jordan Firstman's movie that just got bought at Cannes. Oh, right. Adam is just incredible. And then we had this extraordinary production designer, Jade Healy. She's just one of the best. She had done Marriage Story. She had done lots of films that showed that she could turn a space into a character. And so Adam, Jade and I put our heads together and we were like, okay, how the fuck do we make a movie that takes place in one room, not boring? And it became about using architecture to become a barrier in between people, using mirrors a lot, using glass, and creating a very designed approach.
11:24 Speaker 02 So that then, when I brought the cast in there, I could say like, go nuts, just have fun.
11:29 Dax Shepard? Right. We have figured out how to do all this.
11:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:31 Dax Shepard? You be free.
11:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:33 Dax Shepard? Oh, it's so good. But we'll get into even more detail.
11:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
11:36 Dax Shepard? But let's start in New York City. You're a little tiny baby. You're brought home from a hospital to New York City. But you're quickly with the way to DC to Georgetown?
11:45 Speaker 02 Pretty quickly. When I was five, we moved to DC, yeah.
11:48 Dax Shepard? Where did you live in Manhattan up till five?
11:50 Speaker 02 Upper West Side.
11:51 Dax Shepard? Okay.
11:52 Speaker 02 Ninety-third and Central Park West.
11:54 Dax Shepard? Do you have any memories?
11:56 Speaker 02 I can't tell if I've made them up. I like to pretend that I remember one thing just to traumatize my mom. Because when I was three, we were walking around Central Park and a flasher.
12:07 Dax Shepard? Oh, wonderful, yeah.
12:09 Speaker 02 And I definitely don't remember it, but I like to just say to her like, I don't know, I guess ever since that day, I haven't really gotten over it.
12:16 Dax Shepard? Set you on a trajectory, really.
12:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:18 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Still kind of deal.
12:19 Speaker 02 Only you had protected me. But no, my memories are probably all informed by photographs and stories. My sister and I like to also like steal each other's memories. You know, you do that with siblings?
12:29 Speaker 01 Yes.
12:29 Dax Shepard? Yep, yep, yep, yep.
12:30 Speaker 02 I'm so curious about how our kids who have photos of every moment of their lives.
12:35 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
12:36 Speaker 02 Will react to that. Will they have clearer memories or worse memories of their childhoods?
12:42 Dax Shepard? Well, I think objectively, there'll be more proof one way or another.
12:46 Speaker 02 More proof, but does that stop us from having to remember anything?
12:49 Dax Shepard? Or still creating the story that you want to have.
12:52 Speaker 02 Right, but you will be able to like, check the tapes.
12:54 Dax Shepard? Exactly. I think about this with my kids. I'm like, okay, well, let's just start with the fact that they're going to resent something I did.
13:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:00 Dax Shepard? They have to. They can't be on planet Earth and not reflect on something I could have done better.
13:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:05 Dax Shepard? And I'm always like, what's the thing they're gonna pick?
13:07 Speaker 02 Oh, I know.
13:07 Dax Shepard? Cause I'm calling bullshit already in my head. I'm already defensive. Like, whatever thing they think they're gonna launch on me.
13:12 Speaker 02 Pretty defensive.
13:13 Dax Shepard? But I will say, the thing that's been sweet, if you had this with your kids where you're looking at old videos, you go to find one picture. And then all of a sudden, you're in the wormhole of watching Delta say insane stuff. Our littlest one always was saying the craziest stuff. And what is nice, I've benefited from this. The girls will watch it and like, it's hard to find a video of us where I'm not dancing with them when they're little babies. Like, I just held them and danced with them. You can't find a photo where they're not strapped to my chest. So I do think that's helped me in that they do go like, oh, wow, yeah, you were clearly always doing the thing. Which I like, cause that would be my hole.
13:49 Speaker 02 That's amazing.
13:49 Dax Shepard? That they think.
13:50 Speaker 02 And they will feel like they remember that, even if they don't really have memories of being like, one strapped to your chest. They will think they do, which is so nice.
13:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah, they see that they were laughing and giggling as a little baby and I'm dancing around.
14:02 Speaker 02 My parents took pictures as though it was like, the 18th century. Every photo looks like it was taken underwater, with like, a tin type, like, I don't know why.
14:11 Dax Shepard? Deguero type.
14:11 Speaker 02 They really did not document enough. And so we have a few pictures and that all my memories are really based around those photos. And then I feel like I started remembering things, I guess around like, four or five. But, oh, my kids love looking at old videos of themselves. And it's funny, cause Otis, who's 12, his sister is nine and everything she does annoys him now. But he has this interesting, like, love for the baby videos of her.
14:37 Dax Shepard? Oh, interesting.
14:38 Speaker 02 He just will sit and watch videos of her and smile. And I'm like, ah, so you do love her.
14:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
14:46 Speaker 02 File ready. So when he's like, Mom, I hate her. I hate, I can be like, look, look, look, look. Look, first steps, you remember? Like, oh, she's so cute.
14:55 Dax Shepard? Pronounced ketchup.
14:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's like, I love her so much.
14:58 Speaker 01 There should be some sort of experiment where there's a kid and the mom takes videos of all the good moments and the dad takes videos of all the bad moments. Maybe it's two kids. Okay, I have to work this.
15:09 Dax Shepard? Identical twins.
15:10 Speaker 01 It's always gotta be identical twins. And if the person that's always getting the bad moments, if they remember their childhood worse than the person who's always getting the good moments. Cause when we were little, it was only just like happy pictures of.
15:25 Dax Shepard? Birthdays.
15:26 Speaker 01 Birthday, yeah.
15:27 Dax Shepard? Vacations.
15:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, random happy moments.
15:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
15:31 Speaker 01 Where now you could definitely get someone like falling down.
15:33 Dax Shepard? And we have proof of them being shitty. So another great thing is like, Delta watches and she's like, oh, wow, I was a handful.
15:40 Speaker 01 Right.
15:40 Dax Shepard? And we're like, oh yeah, we loved it, but my God, you were a handful.
15:43 Speaker 02 That's good. It's good that they can do that. Otis likes to do something where he frowns, even if he's having like a great time. The second he senses the camera, he'll do a sad face because he thinks it's really funny that the record of his childhood will look like he was like horribly.
15:57 Dax Shepard? Story artist.
15:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, he can snap into a frown so quickly. And I'm like, Otis, come on.
16:01 Dax Shepard? The pictures thing, okay, could be a little telling because I have both envy and perhaps not envy. Cause mom and dad, Andrew and Leslie.
16:09 Speaker 02 Yes.
16:10 Dax Shepard? Are gangsters, the Cockburns.
16:12 Speaker 02 They are.
16:12 Dax Shepard? Both journalists, right?
16:13 Speaker 02 I'll tell you something, and there's no way you would know this, it's pronounced Coburn. Which I want you to imagine being a kid.
16:22 Dax Shepard? Well, that, of course, I'm curious what it's like to be a young girl with the last name spelled Cockburn.
16:28 Speaker 02 It's spelled Cockburn.
16:29 Dax Shepard? You're claiming it's Coburn?
16:30 Speaker 02 It's a Scottish name.
16:32 Dax Shepard? Okay.
16:32 Speaker 02 And it is very much like Boy Named Sue, you know what I mean? Like it's a character building. I think it's important. We should all give our kids devastating middle names.
16:41 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
16:41 Speaker 02 Just so that you can grow up with like something to be totally bullied for.
16:46 Dax Shepard? Were people burning you for that last name?
16:48 Speaker 02 But I think it was an early important lesson in laughing along, not in a way that was like giving in to the bully. In a way, I don't know. I thought it was funny, too. I was like, oh, I get it.
16:59 Dax Shepard? Funny name.
17:00 Speaker 02 That's funny.
17:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not just cock. I mean, there's a burn.
17:04 Speaker 02 There's a verb. It's a painful verb.
17:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah. You're hoping it's from rug burn, but it could be a pan.
17:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, it really could. It was never.
17:13 Speaker 01 Or a diss.
17:13 Speaker 02 Exactly.
17:15 Dax Shepard? Oh.
17:15 Speaker 01 I hear it as like a diss, a burn.
17:17 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay. Yeah, there's that, too.
17:19 Speaker 02 And it's up for grabs on who. Is it worse if you're a girl or a boy? Like, did my brother get it worse?
17:25 Dax Shepard? He's nine years younger than you.
17:26 Speaker 02 Nine years younger.
17:27 Dax Shepard? And so life was nicer nine years later, a little bit, right? We've gotten
17:31 Speaker 02 I think so.
17:31 Dax Shepard? Marginally better every.
17:33 Speaker 02 I don't know. Have we? Have we?
17:35 Dax Shepard? I'm basing it on I see kids living out loud, every version of themselves in the elementary school my kids go to, and they're not getting destroyed over it.
17:44 Speaker 02 That's true.
17:45 Dax Shepard? It couldn't have happened in Detroit in the late seventies, I promise.
17:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:49 Dax Shepard? So that seems better to me. But then again, I don't know, just because we're in LA and I'm not in Detroit anymore. But no, my buddy's kids, they're nicer boys.
17:57 Speaker 02 I think having the last name that looks like Cockburn in any city in any decade.
18:01 Dax Shepard? It's too easy. Yeah.
18:03 Speaker 01 It's right there.
18:03 Dax Shepard? In fact, it's kind of comforting, too.
18:05 Speaker 02 It is.
18:06 Dax Shepard? It's like, no matter how evolved we get, if your last name's Cockburn, you're gonna take it on the.
18:11 Speaker 02 Early.
18:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
18:12 Speaker 02 But no, I was so proud to be a part of my family because I come from multiple generations of journalists. And so I grew up with my grandmother, my grandfather, my uncles, my dad, my cousins. Everybody was a journalist on my dad's side. And my mom has this really interesting family, too.
18:31 Dax Shepard? They're shipping people?
18:32 Speaker 02 Yes.
18:33 Dax Shepard? From Hillsborough?
18:34 Speaker 02 Yes, very impressive.
18:36 Dax Shepard? So she grew up with money, yeah?
18:38 Speaker 02 She did, yes. My mom grew up and couldn't be more different from my dad's childhood, who my dad grew up in Ireland, had polio as a kid, along with his two brothers. They lived a completely, I mean, the two childhoods of my parents. When I have done like deep therapy on this, it's been so interesting to think like, what did they find in common?
18:59 Dax Shepard? Well, it seems like this ferocious appetite for the world and documenting and investigating.
19:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
19:06 Speaker 02 Speaking truth to power. I think they both have a very strong sense of questioning authority and telling stories and.
19:14 Speaker 01 Justice.
19:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, justice and going to places nobody else wants to go.
19:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:19 Speaker 02 And just living outside the box and they both do it. I mean, my parents, when I was little, were were correspondents, working in the most dangerous places in the world. And they'd both go to Baghdad on either the same job or on separate jobs and they'd go in separate planes and then like stay in separate hotels and meet in the middle of the night. Oh. Rendezvous.
19:40 Dax Shepard? Oh, fine. Whole plane number.
19:42 Speaker 02 Sexy stuff.
19:43 Speaker 01 That is sexy.
19:44 Speaker 02 And then like put on their bulletproof vests and go out to work. They lived a very cool life, which now I sometimes think about. You know, when you come back from shooting a movie and at first you get home and it's a little bit of like shell shock because you're like, whoa, you come from a set environment and then you come home and there's always a day of adjustment of like remembering this world. And I think about how crazy it must have been for my parents. I come back from like Afghanistan.
20:11 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
20:12 Speaker 02 To me being like, where are my ballet shoes? They must have been like, wow, this is a big change.
20:16 Dax Shepard? I've seen a lot of your mom's work because she's both a producer on 60 Minutes and Frontline. I've seen many of her frontlines.
20:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:24 Dax Shepard? I love Frontline.
20:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, me too. She did extraordinary things and my mom was the first Western journalist to interview Saddam Hussein's sons. Basically, her thing was that she could get an interview with people who would not talk to Western journalists.
20:39 Dax Shepard? And do you think because they were underestimating her?
20:41 Speaker 02 Yes, absolutely.
20:42 Dax Shepard? Like leveraging that.
20:43 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. She would also go to places that were more dangerous than other people and she would sneak a camera under a burka to go into a place. She was incredibly bold and she had a lot of respect for the people she was interviewing. I mean, there were some questionable people she was interviewing that she wouldn't agree with, but she had respect for the process and was incredibly well researched and just very, very curious and smart. And I think that kind of curiosity, they both have. And we grew up in this household where it was all about asking questions.
21:18 Dax Shepard? Mm hmm.
21:18 Speaker 02 And I think that had a really great effect on us.
21:23 Dax Shepard? She probably had on a platter, she could have had a kind of comfortable life in San Francisco with rich parents.
21:28 Speaker 02 I think so, though, you know.
21:30 Dax Shepard? So I kind of admire that.
21:32 Speaker 02 We live in a patriarchal society, and I think as a woman born in the 50s, she felt that, yeah, there's probably a life she could have chosen that was way different and maybe comfortable, but not at all taking advantage of her intelligence.
21:46 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
21:47 Speaker 02 And her skills. And so she left. She was one of the first women at Yale.
21:52 Dax Shepard? Second class ever.
21:53 Speaker 02 Exactly.
21:54 Dax Shepard? Women as ever.
21:55 Speaker 01 Wow, that's amazing.
21:56 Speaker 02 And she went and then she studied anthropology and she graduated early, went and lived in Kenya for a year.
22:02 Speaker 01 Wow.
22:02 Speaker 02 Then went to grad school in London.
22:04 Dax Shepard? Psychoanalyze her. What was going on with her?
22:06 Speaker 02 I think it was proving herself. Yeah, she was the youngest of three kids and my grandfather was a wonderful guy, but very old fashioned. And it wasn't like she was going to take over the company. That wasn't something that a woman was going to be given the opportunity to do. So I think she was proving that she could forge her own path and that she was capable of much more than just being a wife.
22:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:34 Speaker 02 Yeah. She then ironically got married really young, which is funny because I think she was like, I'm not going to be a wife. And then like married my dad at like 24. But in a way that was really rebellious because he was not the guy my grandparents had envisioned at all. I mean, he was basically the opposite. He was Irish. He came from no money. Came from this socialist family of journalists who were just very, very, very bold. And yet the families came together beautifully and ended up really blending and loving each other.
23:03 Dax Shepard? How was it decided whether they would live in Ireland or live in the US?
23:07 Speaker 02 I don't know if they ever thought they'd live there.
23:10 Dax Shepard? Because you spent summers in Ireland, right?
23:11 Speaker 02 We spent like every time we weren't in school, we were there, which was great. And I actually, as a kid, felt just as Irish as American.
23:18 Speaker 01 Wow.
23:18 Dax Shepard? And you have dual citizenship.
23:19 Speaker 02 I have dual, yeah. I actually have triple. I have British, Irish.
23:22 Dax Shepard? Well, don't brag.
23:24 Dax Shepard? Let's just cap it at Ireland. Were you in Northern or Southern Ireland?
23:28 Speaker 02 Southern Ireland. So it's a Republic of Ireland, very, very different.
23:31 Dax Shepard? Yes, yes, yes, especially then.
23:33 Speaker 01 Did you come back home with accents?
23:34 Speaker 02 I'd come back with an accent. I mean, how insufferable.
23:36 Speaker 01 It's embarrassing.
23:37 Speaker 02 Just the worst. It must have been so annoying. And I feel like my sister still does it. I mean, she'll kill me. She comes back. She lives in London now, but anytime she comes back from Ireland, I'm like, oh, no, don't. We're not, we're not doing this. But my parents did a great job of making us feel culturally very connected to our Irish roots. Also, when you're a kid, I think your personality is forged in the summer.
24:02 Speaker 01 Yes, absolutely.
24:03 Speaker 02 Like, that's who you are.
24:04 Dax Shepard? There is an Irish rascally-ness.
24:06 Speaker 02 Yes.
24:07 Dax Shepard? I just don't know what else to call it, but where I'm from would be white trashness, but in a prideful, wonderful way.
24:11 Speaker 02 Oh, absolutely. I mean, when you are a country who were the victims of such unbelievable oppression for hundreds of years, and really, they tried to wipe out the Irish. They were treated horrifically. And I think that will never leave the Irish spirit. There is a survivor. You see it in like the Australians, too. That's why they're such badasses. They have this.
24:37 Dax Shepard? A little chip on their shoulder.
24:38 Speaker 02 Chip on their shoulder. They're like, you can't really mess with us. Like, we will survive anything. And I think the Irish have that. And it's a great attitude you see in all Irish artists, too. Like, I ended up going to acting school there in Dublin when I was older. And I loved that the attitude towards acting in Dublin was so humble. Like, you go see a play in Dublin and then you'd go have a drink with whoever's at the play afterwards.
25:02 Dax Shepard? You're like a tradesman.
25:04 Speaker 02 It's a tradesman. You're a crafts tradesman.
25:06 Dax Shepard? You're not a star.
25:06 Speaker 02 No. And it's like humiliating to even think about it that way. And I think there's a respect for things much bigger than yourself. For instance, like, we come from this little fishing village. And for a long time in that village, the fishermen didn't learn to swim. You'd love it.
25:20 Speaker 01 Oh, my God. I could totally be so out there.
25:23 Speaker 02 And the idea behind it was that if the ocean wanted you, it would take you. And now, you know, it's different times. People learn to swim. And luckily, far fewer people are drowning from this. But I always thought. There's this respect for things more powerful than yourself. Yeah. This understanding that like the ocean and nature. And then there's just a humility to people there that I really deeply respect.
25:46 Dax Shepard? Okay, now, so the upside of your parents is like, oh, I'd love to have parents that interesting, that engaged, always bringing home topics. But also, these are very involved in their own lives, parents.
25:58 Speaker 02 Yes.
25:58 Dax Shepard? So like, when you said the picture is like, I'm not shocked there's not a ton of pictures.
26:02 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
26:03 Dax Shepard? What's the trade off? They're pretty self consumed, I'd imagine, to have those careers.
26:07 Speaker 02 You know, they were, but they did something that I try to learn from where they were very social people and they brought a lot of that to our house. So it felt like this kind of salon all the time. You know, there were all these interesting people around and they brought us into that. Sit down and have a conversation or listen to this conversation or be a part of this. So we felt connected to their work and their lives because they took us seriously as little people that bridged the gap between these very full careers that did take them away a lot and being at home that they incorporated their lives into the home life in a way that I, I have to remember to do all the time. Sometimes I think people think you have kids and so that means that when you're with your kids, like you don't go out, you just hang out with your kids.
26:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
26:52 Speaker 02 But I read this interesting thing about how your kids learn to socialize from you. So observing your social life is an important thing. And so you have to like bring them to things and kind of like bring the party home.
27:04 Dax Shepard? We just had an expert last week who was talking about, yeah, that this phenomenon of the last 40 years where it's like, most kids had to go with their parents to the hardware store. They had to go with their parents to work on a day and sit there bored.
27:15 Speaker 02 Yes.
27:16 Dax Shepard? Like the amount of times you had, and then just comparing that with gathering societies who are almost always, you're not joining the kids world, the kids joining your world.
27:24 Speaker 02 Yes.
27:25 Dax Shepard? And they're learning so much. I see my 13 year old all the time, just eavesdropping. On me and my friends and I love it and I don't care, but I can see how interested she is.
27:36 Speaker 02 And it's so great and she's learning so much from the way you interact. I used to crawl under the dining room table and like lay down under the dining room table during their dinner parties. And just listen to the hum and like listen to their conversations and think that they didn't know I was there, although of course they did. I wasn't very good at like crawling quietly, but I think it's true. Every time I see how close my kids are to their friends, I feel so proud that we have modeled for them. This idea of your tribe, your friendship community is being super important.
28:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:09 Dax Shepard? Now with all that said, did you ever long for, did you have a friend whose mom was always at home when you got home from school and she had made shit?
28:18 Speaker 02 Oh, totally. I also used to watch like sitcoms and almost fetishize the suburban environment. Cause we lived in the city, the whole idea of what felt like the nuclear family at home and parents home every night, eating dinner with your parents. It was so foreign to us.
28:34 Dax Shepard? Right.
28:35 Speaker 02 And so I used to just watch hours of sitcoms and just think like, why want that? And I did have a friend whose house I spent a ton of time at, whose family was really sweet to me. And it was the opposite dynamic as mine, but of course all my friends wanted my parents.
28:49 Speaker 01 Yes, exactly.
28:50 Speaker 02 My girlfriends would just sit with my mom and she would take them seriously and take their dreams seriously. And that was kind of the superpower she had. For me, when I was young and I was like, I want to be an actress. It wasn't like, okay, sweetie, every little girl wants to be an actress. It was like, okay, where do you want to study? What career do you admire? You need to then watch these great movies with these great actors. Like took us seriously.
29:15 Dax Shepard? What's the game plan?
29:16 Speaker 02 Yeah. And just in a way that just reflected a kind of respect and a different way of thinking that I think a lot of my friends weren't finding in their homes. So they'd come over just to feel that vibe.
29:26 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
29:27 Speaker 01 Do you think maybe though you could have been adult too young? Were you like precocious and do you think you maybe missed out on some?
29:36 Speaker 02 Oh, I thought at like 12, I was like, why am I still hanging out with all these like children?
29:41 Speaker 01 Right.
29:41 Speaker 02 I need my own apartment.
29:42 Dax Shepard? Do you like older dudes?
29:44 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
29:44 Dax Shepard? Like, how bad?
29:46 Speaker 02 Oh, I mean, I grew up basically on the Georgetown campus, which is a terrible.
29:50 Dax Shepard? What a smorgasbord.
29:52 Speaker 02 And I would just walk around and try to make up different majors that I could say. And I don't even think I looked older. I just, in my head, I was like, obviously very mature. But I, I remember when I had braces when I was 13, I told the orthodontist he had to take them off because it made me look young.
30:08 Speaker 01 And he's like, you're 13.
30:10 Speaker 02 Honey, you're young.
30:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
30:11 Speaker 02 But I know I was like getting tattoos at 13. I was a terror. They sent me to boarding school because I was a terror.
30:16 Dax Shepard? Okay, I was gonna ask about boarding school because, again, it's hard not to get judgmental here. I have a friend who just told, no, no, I just, I have a friend who just told me he sent his kid to boarding school. And I'm like, I can't comprehend it.
30:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, I can't either.
30:29 Dax Shepard? Like, I'm already panicked that they're leaving in five years.
30:31 Speaker 02 I know.
30:32 Dax Shepard? What are you talking about sending them out now? So I just can't relate. And I recognize it was a totally different time. But anyways, how'd you end up in boarding school?
30:39 Speaker 02 It's just so funny because like, I went to boarding school and I would never send my kids to boarding school.
30:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah, there you go.
30:43 Speaker 02 Which is no disrespect to the people doing it. And like, my sister's sending her kids. I think they love it. I mean, her one son is there. The daughter will probably go. And they love it. I had a hard time. My sister went, my brother went after me. My brother went to my.
30:57 Dax Shepard? She's five years older than you?
30:58 Speaker 02 She's five years older.
30:59 Dax Shepard? And he's nine years younger.
31:00 Speaker 02 Yeah. My mom had kids in her twenties, thirties, and forties.
31:03 Speaker 01 Wow.
31:04 Speaker 02 So funny to run the whole gamut of like, experiences with motherhood in different decades.
31:09 Dax Shepard? You guys all had such different childhoods, probably.
31:11 Speaker 02 Completely different.
31:12 Dax Shepard? Yeah, because I'm sure your mom, after 14 years of experience.
31:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, totally different. But I think, okay, boarding school, here's my take on it.
31:19 Dax Shepard? What did you do that had landed you there? What kind of naughtiness were you up to?
31:23 Speaker 02 The way my mom describes it, I think she said I would have like torn the wallpaper from the walls. I was just so completely uncontroll, I mean, I don't want to say uncontrollable because I wasn't, there are far worse cases than mine.
31:38 Speaker 03 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.
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35:34 Dax Shepard? Olivia, did you kill anyone?
35:35 Speaker 02 I didn't kill anyone. I...
35:37 Speaker 04 You can tell us.
35:38 Dax Shepard? But you were cagey.
35:38 Speaker 02 I was cagey, and I couldn't... I mean, there was no curfew that I would take seriously.
35:43 Dax Shepard? Were you partying? Was it boys? Was it shoplifting?
35:46 Speaker 02 It was partying, but not in a, like, drugs and alcohol way. It was like, I couldn't understand that if there was a concert... Like, so DC was a big music town at the time. And so there was the 930 Club, which was an iconic music venue. And the idea that I wouldn't be allowed to, like, go see any show I wanted... And stay out and go and hang out. I couldn't fathom that kind of boundary.
36:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
36:10 Speaker 02 And I like to think that it was me just like wanting to plug into everything a little too early. But really, as a parent, they must have just been like, she's gonna get herself in trouble.
36:20 Dax Shepard? Yeah, she's gonna end up pregnant or in jail.
36:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm really happy that I went away because I think I just would have grown up way, way, way, way, way too fast. Also, DC, it was a fun town, but for a 12, 13 year old who thought she was 24, probably not the safest place.
36:36 Dax Shepard? I will say too, I remember Krista and I went to like the correspondence dinner. I don't know what it was, eight years ago, 10 years ago, whatever it was, but I had not been there since I was in high school and went to the 930 Club. And then on an earlier trip with my mom where we stayed at this like fucking gunshot motel across the street from a greasy. Like it was a shithole.
36:55 Speaker 02 Marion Barry was smoking crack.
36:56 Dax Shepard? Smoking crack on TV and he's the mayor.
36:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, we had the highest crime rate in the country.
37:01 Dax Shepard? Yeah. So I think when people go there now, it's that same chasm between New York when I was a kid and now. So you go to New York and it's like, it's Disneyland and you feel like you're in Europe. It's so clean and beautiful. Every storefront's nice. But yeah, DC used to be a shithole. Now it's so nice. When we were there for that correspondence thing, I'm like, this place is Eden.
37:18 Speaker 02 It's so nice despite what Trump likes to say. It is incredibly nice now. And I think that it was also a time where it was impossible to like track your kids. It was like checking in from the payphone, which by the way, now when I think about how much we used payphones, like the idea, for me, it's just like the bacteria.
37:35 Speaker 01 Ew.
37:36 Speaker 02 That's what I think about. It's like how often we were just like snuggling up against the phone.
37:41 Dax Shepard? You could smell it too. Like you first got on it, the receiver smelled, you know, this is gross. And then 10 minutes later.
37:46 Speaker 02 You're like holding it up against your cheek.
37:48 Dax Shepard? You've forgotten everything.
37:49 Speaker 02 Checking your pager.
37:49 Dax Shepard? Smoking a cigarette, it's touching the thing.
37:51 Speaker 02 Exactly.
37:52 Dax Shepard? Pager, bravo too.
37:53 Speaker 02 Oh, the pager.
37:54 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I loved it.
37:54 Speaker 02 But I went to a boarding school that was very nice. So I didn't get sent to like reform school. I went to a boarding school that had this unbelievable theater department, which to me was extremely exciting. In DC, I went to GDS Georgetown Day School. It's a great school. The theater was like in a gym. They did their best, but handover where I went to high school. Had a main stage theater, several black box theaters, studio theaters. They had a student theater producer program so you could learn to produce plays. I produced like 12 plays in a year.
38:25 Speaker 01 Oh, my God. It's like college.
38:27 Speaker 02 Like college. I was so lucky.
38:29 Dax Shepard? And this is in Massachusetts? Is it like beautiful?
38:32 Speaker 02 It's beautiful, like Jeffersonian architecture in the suburbs. You can imagine it.
38:36 Speaker 01 This attracts, this is like global, right?
38:38 Speaker 02 Yes.
38:38 Speaker 01 It's like a very fancy private.
38:40 Speaker 02 It's very fancy.
38:42 Dax Shepard? Did you have crazy classmates?
38:44 Speaker 02 I did have crazy classmates. I mean, it was a lot of people who've all gone on to do very impressive things. And I would say most of the people there, they were very focused on like going to Ivy's and becoming like titans of industry. I found my home kind of with the theater kids.
39:03 Dax Shepard? Did you covet any of that wealth? Clearly, people are taking like private jets to Aspen for spring break and shit.
39:08 Speaker 02 Well, the cool thing about boarding school is it does equalize that. So even though you'd hear someone, they had crazy, opulent lifestyles. But in boarding school, we were all in shitty dorm rooms.
39:18 Dax Shepard? And the same clothes.
39:19 Speaker 02 This really puts us all in the same.
39:21 Dax Shepard? And it was coed?
39:23 Speaker 02 It was coed.
39:23 Dax Shepard? So you could have lovers?
39:25 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. It was all about like. Making out in the stacks, which now I'm like, do they even have libraries anymore? What do you do? Where do you make out?
39:33 Dax Shepard? They're also designing all these places to be safer against sexual abuse, which is a good thing, but it really hampers how much.
39:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, where do you make out?
39:40 Speaker 01 Trying to get more of that.
39:41 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we just had an expert on about.
39:43 Speaker 02 Oh, interesting.
39:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, like book stacks that are low.
39:46 Speaker 02 Oh, my God.
39:47 Dax Shepard? All doors have a window so you can be caught and be observed from a hallway. It's all great stuff.
39:52 Speaker 02 Wow.
39:52 Dax Shepard? But again, where on earth is one? Go up there and go find a shirt for the first time.
39:56 Speaker 02 Exactly.
39:57 Dax Shepard? You can't do it at home.
39:58 Speaker 02 But it's amazing how kids will find a way.
40:00 Speaker 01 Of course.
40:01 Speaker 02 Isn't that nuts? Like, we're all just animals. Like, you'll find a way. And it was like, you know, you had to leave your door open and sign people in. But everyone was escaping in the middle of the night and running across campus.
40:12 Dax Shepard? I love it.
40:13 Speaker 02 It was all that.
40:14 Dax Shepard? So you liked it. Then you got accepted to Bard.
40:17 Speaker 02 Yes.
40:17 Dax Shepard? But you delayed, delayed, delayed.
40:19 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. I deferred for like three years. I met someone later in life who had been. There when I was there, who said that I was the most requested roommate? Because they knew that I was never gonna show up.
40:30 Speaker 01 Oh my god, that's funny.
40:31 Speaker 02 So it was like, oh, you're gonna get a two-room single.
40:33 Dax Shepard? Yeah. So you were kind of a legend and you didn't even go.
40:37 Speaker 02 Yeah. Of course, now I'd love to go. What sounds better than college now? Read books and then talk about them in groups?
40:43 Dax Shepard? Debate in class, so it's so good.
40:45 Speaker 02 I would pay a lot of money.
40:47 Dax Shepard? I have a fantasy of going in retirement back.
40:50 Speaker 02 What would you study?
40:51 Dax Shepard? College physics.
40:52 Speaker 02 Oh, cool. What did you study when you were there?
40:54 Dax Shepard? Anthropology.
40:55 Speaker 02 Oh, very cool.
40:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that was really fun. I have a fantasy of just picking up degrees as I'm an old man.
41:01 Speaker 02 I tell myself I would study neuroscience, but I think that would involve such a foundation of like mathematics and science that would take maybe like 18 years of college to get me a degree.
41:12 Dax Shepard? Well, that'd be the beauty of it. Like, you could just take classes, you could skip organic chemistry. You'd be like, fuck that, I don't care. I'm not gonna practice.
41:19 Speaker 02 You can take like everything online. All those classes are online now, which is amazing.
41:23 Dax Shepard? Yeah, but yeah, it's all about being in that classroom.
41:27 Speaker 02 I love any opportunity to sit with people and debate things and talk, like any kind of book club, movie club. I have this fantasy about starting a debate club, like debate club dinners. Because I think we've lost the skill of disagreement.
41:43 Speaker 01 Yes.
41:44 Speaker 02 And like discourse and, and my favorite thing was debate in school because you had to learn to argue.
41:49 Speaker 01 That's right. Other person's side.
41:51 Dax Shepard? You're assigned the position you take.
41:53 Speaker 02 Which is such a great skill. So don't you think it'd be fun if you came to debate club dinner? And under your plate was your position that you had to argue. And it is probably something that you don't believe at all, but you now have to argue that.
42:05 Dax Shepard? I love it.
42:06 Speaker 01 Oh my god, I love it. Will you invite us?
42:07 Speaker 02 Let's do it, yes.
42:08 Dax Shepard? I am committing fully to this dinner party.
42:11 Speaker 01 Me too.
42:11 Dax Shepard? Because my hobby is forcing myself to mount a really solid argument for something I don't agree with. I love it. I go, okay, I feel this way. Now, I have to sincerely imagine I feel the other way.
42:25 Speaker 02 Yes.
42:25 Dax Shepard? And most of the time, if I take the time to
42:29 Speaker 02 To consider the other opinion.
42:31 Dax Shepard? I recognize everyone has a pretty cohesive opinion and they're pretty well intentioned. And I just disagree on the best route there. I do think that's how we have to respect each other. It's like this notion that we're not friends because we don't agree on something or that we can't talk or that I can't have you as a guest. All that stuff is so corrosive and wrong.
42:51 Speaker 02 It's only becoming worse with social media and everything because I think now there's this curated socializing that's happening across generations. We don't gather if we don't know who we're going to be with and what their opinions are and what will be discussed. And we can have be reassured, we will all have the same opinion.
43:10 Dax Shepard? Yes, we're safe.
43:12 Speaker 02 There's no real kind of randomness that allows for the opportunity for you to be in a conversation with someone who disagrees. And for that to be kind of great.
43:21 Dax Shepard? Yeah. And also, I also think just as an ethos, people think their goal is to end our conversation and convince the other person to think like them. And I would just urge and beg people, it's like, actually, it's so much more rewarding to leave a conversation with a totally different. We just had someone on, we had a schizophrenic on who tried to kill his father.
43:39 Speaker 02 Wow.
43:40 Dax Shepard? And prior to that conversation, I had such a hard and fast opinion. I'm like, all these people who are schizophrenic or any of these bipolar, like, take your fucking medicine. Why does everyone go off their medicine and then go on these big, you know? And it's just frustration with that. And then through talking to this person for two hours, I was like, oh, I totally get it. And I definitely acknowledge there are a lot of people that maybe the medicine's not the solution for them. Or it's yet one of eight things. I don't know, I love going, whoa, I want 80 on that.
44:08 Speaker 02 Yes, yes, yes. I think that curiosity is such an incredible trait that you have and that it is something that if we can just get people to see the value in it. Like you said, it's not about convincing, but it is about learning. And it can be super frustrating when it comes to many things, but like when it comes to politics these days, it's frustrating because you feel the stakes are so high.
44:31 Dax Shepard? Yes, you're convinced.
44:32 Speaker 01 Very emotional.
44:32 Dax Shepard? If you lose this, someone's dying. And that's just not the context for a good conversation. Everyone's arousal setting is just like fucking pinned and cortisolled out.
44:42 Speaker 01 Debate dinner is good because if you're handed your topic or your stance, then you can really do it without emotion.
44:49 Speaker 02 Exactly. And like go hard on it. So if I handed you like the moon landing was faked.
44:53 Speaker 01 Right.
44:53 Speaker 02 And you had to be like, listen, the flag was waving.
44:57 Speaker 01 Exactly.
44:58 Speaker 02 Or like you just think of like all the things you've heard, but then really have to dig in.
45:02 Speaker 01 Yes.
45:02 Speaker 02 It allows for it to become an exercise that I think just works a muscle that we've lost.
45:07 Speaker 01 Hundred percent. I love that.
45:09 Speaker 02 I think it would be.
45:10 Dax Shepard? I'm in.
45:11 Speaker 01 Me too. That's how we started our friendship, debating.
45:14 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we love to debate.
45:15 Speaker 01 We did kind of put a pause on some of the debates.
45:17 Dax Shepard? It got too everything, got too political, everything. Yeah, we had to.
45:20 Speaker 01 Well, again, things get emotional. The closer you are with someone, the more stakes, as you said, and like the more emotions come into play where it's like, you don't even trust me or you don't hear me or.
45:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
45:31 Dax Shepard? That's the sweet part of the motivation, underpinning it is we don't think if someone thinks differently than us, that we can coexist or love each other or be there for each other, be friends. So it starts getting scary like, wait, you think that about that? Can we even be friends is what you're thinking, which is preposterous. But I think that's where we've gotten.
45:51 Speaker 01 That's what's underneath. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
45:52 Speaker 02 This is why I think like when my kids argue with me over something, as opposed to, I think we were raised, or at least I was with like a don't talk back rule. And for me, it's like, oh, they're learning on us how to debate, how to argue with people out in the world. So, so if they say like, well, I don't want to brush my teeth or I don't want to do my homework or whatever it is, as opposed to like do as you're told.
46:14 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
46:15 Speaker 02 It's like, let's train them to be better. So sometimes I'll be like, you gotta make a better argument than that.
46:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
46:20 Dax Shepard? So we're the same. I'm constantly like, I'll lay something out. I know they're not gonna like it.
46:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:25 Dax Shepard? And I go, okay, counterpoints. I always go counterpoints.
46:27 Speaker 02 Love that. I really think that even the hormonal spikes that cause them to be more volatile, that that is the training ground for later conflict. So that it's like, okay, I'm glad it's. Me you're arguing with because.
46:43 Dax Shepard? You know, I love you.
46:44 Speaker 02 Exactly. And I think about that particularly, I think it happens to boys too, but for girls being around like thirteen. And then there's this idea that you become enemies with your mom. Now, my mom and I definitely had some battles. But I'm kind of relishing the opportunity to have this. And Daisy's only nine and she's like the nicest person in the world and. For her to have this, but I think of it as like, yes, let me train you in this. I'm not going to tell you not to argue, but I'm going to make you better at it.
47:12 Speaker 01 Good.
47:12 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I reject that they have to do a certain, I loved my mom the whole goddamn ride.
47:17 Speaker 02 That's good.
47:18 Dax Shepard? I was delightful to her.
47:19 Speaker 02 My father, my poor father.
47:21 Speaker 01 Well, that's what she's saying, white girls and mothers.
47:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, but boys definitely, I just took Otis to Japan, just us for a week for spring break. And it was like the best week of my life.
47:31 Speaker 01 Oh.
47:32 Speaker 02 I was like, I didn't know a couples trip could be so delightful. It was really sweet because I realized he was giving me, like some activities were definitely for me. We went like meditated at a temple with a monk, which is not something he would have suggested.
47:46 Dax Shepard? God bless him. He got through that at twelve.
47:48 Speaker 02 He did. And he came and like meditated and learned afterwards. I was like, did you love it? He's like, I mean, no, but I. I can tell you loved it.
47:55 Dax Shepard? You could never get a dude to do that.
47:57 Speaker 02 No.
47:57 Dax Shepard? On a trip with a dude on a vacation, if he didn't want to meditate, if he went, you'd hear about it the whole fucking.
48:02 Speaker 02 Exactly. Yeah. I'd be like, I did this for you.
48:04 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you owe me.
48:05 Speaker 02 We also just laughed so hard. He's really into manga and we went and took a class, like drawing class, manga class.
48:12 Dax Shepard? What's manga tell me?
48:13 Speaker 02 Oh, like Japanese anime, drawing. The class was entirely Japanese and we were pissing ourselves laughing.
48:19 Dax Shepard? Sure.
48:20 Speaker 02 Like trying, like crying, like hiding our faces and look, every time we caught eyes, we just laughed so hard.
48:25 Speaker 01 Oh.
48:26 Speaker 02 And at one point we had to draw each other, which was the funniest thing in the world because he drew me in a way that was so hilariously weird and I drew, I thought like a perfect depiction of him. But I'm not at all good at drawing and we were laughing so hard. He knew that that was me doing an activity that he loved. He felt so, I think, that just really seen and respected. But then at the end of the day, every day I. Be like, okay, Rosenthal, like, what was your favorite part of the day? And he would surprise me by saying like, I liked walking through the cherry blossoms with you. That was really fun. And I was like, what? Like in LA, he would never be like, oh, mom, I'd love to go for a stroll in the park. But it was like a whole different, on the other side of the world, when it's just us.
49:10 Speaker 02 The rules were all different. And he also just kept spontaneously grabbing me and hugging me. He'd be like, I love you so much. And I was so happy. I was just like flying high the entire time.
49:22 Speaker 01 Did you always know you wanted them?
49:25 Speaker 02 Yes.
49:25 Speaker 01 You did.
49:26 Speaker 02 I didn't like fantasize about motherhood in the way that a lot of my friends did. But I did always know I wanted kids. I didn't realize how fun it was gonna be, though. It's way better than I could have possibly imagined. And I think every stage of it, I love more than the last stage. Now, of course, when we look at those old videos of them as babies. And I was working a lot when they were really little and I'm like just destroyed with guilt about that. It's like so many of us are. But I didn't realize that it was a friendship that was so deep. It's so profound and so fun. That is different than what I imagined it would be.
50:03 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I think for me, it just exposes a lot of the limits I have given relationships. Really, because they're just a product of my undying commitment and devotion in unconditional love. And I do wonder how many of my relationships could have been, and not just even romantically, just if you treated people the way you treat kids, I do wonder what the sky is.
50:27 Speaker 02 That's so interesting.
50:29 Dax Shepard? For relationships.
50:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, I just don't think you can. It's biological.
50:33 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I don't know that you can.
50:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, but it does introduces you to your own capacity for love, patience, empathy, forgiveness, all of these things.
50:42 Dax Shepard? Selflessness, I didn't think I possessed.
50:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
50:43 Dax Shepard? I think I was pretty honest about my selfishness. And so I was like, I don't really know I saw this level of it coming.
50:49 Speaker 02 Also, it humbles you so completely, like brings you to your knees in such a real way that I think that is something that just makes you definitely a better person. But in relationships, being humbled is a very important thing to have been humbled.
51:02 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
51:03 Speaker 02 And I think to understand your own frailty, we all need to, but parenting does it different.
51:08 Dax Shepard? Okay, we have to get back to the overarching story of your career. I'm gonna ask you the questions Leslie asked you, which is after you do the acting school in Ireland and you come back and you get yourself on the OC.
51:23 Speaker 02 Well.
51:23 Dax Shepard? Which is really quick.
51:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, and before then, I was a casting intern. And it's so funny, I wonder if you ever came into our office? It's highly possible. So many of my friends now, I like served coffee to.
51:39 Dax Shepard? Would you also read or no?
51:40 Speaker 02 Oh, I would read. I mean, that was a little bit higher than my pay grade. If I was really lucky, if other people weren't in the office, maybe I'd get to read. But I was really low. I would bring you coffee and water and I would kind of keep the sign in sheet and like just be behind my boss at all times. And she was Mally Finn. She was one of the best casting directors in the business hardcore. She did everything from like Titanic to David Gordon Green movies to like Eight Mile to The Matrix to Elephant. And I got to just observe and learn everything in that office.
52:13 Dax Shepard? That was in LA?
52:14 Speaker 02 That was in LA. First, when I was 16, I came out for a summer and I worked for her for like four weeks as an intern. And then I came back when I graduated high school and worked again. I was like, can I do another summer working for you? And most casting directors will not let actors be interns. Yeah. Because you're like a spy. You could easily like steal material, I don't know.
52:33 Dax Shepard? Yeah. And you can just feel that you wanna be auditioning.
52:37 Speaker 02 She was like, you should go and audition. And I went and got this pilot, which was for the show called Skin. It was a very short-lived show on Fox, but it was like a ridiculous experience because it was like my first audition for a pilot. Then I got it, then it got picked up.
52:53 Dax Shepard? Was this when you were wearing the wool turtleneck? And she was like, you gotta get realistic about your fucking outfit?
52:58 Speaker 02 Yes. I came from like a Northeast boarding school, so I was dressed like a professor. There was like a lot of corduroy and wool. It sounds cute. And she was like, what? First, it was 95 degrees and I took two city buses to work. So I was like really sweating.
53:12 Dax Shepard? I have to ask it and I know it's gonna be so hard to answer, but you're so beautiful.
53:17 Speaker 02 Oh, thanks.
53:18 Dax Shepard? You're so beautiful that. Were you trying to downplay that you were fucking beautiful?
53:24 Speaker 02 Oh, no, because I did not feel beautiful at all. And in fact, coming to LA, I don't know, does anyone get to this town and feel beautiful? I was like, this is crazy. The first waiting room I sat in as an actress, I was like, ah, I gotta go. This is a different species. I think that it took me a while to understand that what made me, I guess we all kind of go on this journey, but like what made me different was good. And I didn't need to try to make myself look like the other girls. But I really felt unattractive.
53:53 Dax Shepard? You did.
53:53 Speaker 02 I was like, they all really knew how to dress. And again, the aforementioned turtleneck is indicative of what my vibe was. I dressed like Johnny Lee Hooker. I wore a lot of vintage. I look back, I'm like, you were cool, girl, but at the time.
54:05 Speaker 01 I know, it sounds cool.
54:07 Dax Shepard? But it's hard to get on the OC show when you're dressed in like.
54:10 Speaker 02 And my boss, Mally, was like, what are you doing? Go change before you go to your audition.
54:15 Speaker 01 Wow.
54:15 Speaker 02 But I also saw the bad side of that where we had girls come into the office to audition, where she would turn them around and be like, no. She'd say, did you think I was a male casting director? Actresses would show up in outfits clearly designed for male directors.
54:31 Speaker 01 Some casting couches.
54:32 Dax Shepard? Two of them said boners.
54:33 Speaker 02 And we had directors who would be really unspecific about what they were looking for, just so they could meet every hot actress in LA. And we were like having to read hundreds of girls. And then none of them were right for it because he didn't know what he wanted. So I learned the bad side of that really quick. I definitely just felt such imposter syndrome. And I remember a casting director early on, when I went to an audition, told me I had a pie face.
54:56 Dax Shepard? Oh, tell me what that means.
54:57 Speaker 01 What does that mean?
54:58 Dax Shepard? Is that a compliment?
54:59 Speaker 02 But she kind of said it in a way that sounded like she was trying to be nice.
55:01 Dax Shepard? Oh, you got a pie face?
55:03 Speaker 02 She said something like, you'll be fine. You've got, I think she might have said apple pie, pumpkin. There was maybe a flavor attached to the pie. But I think she was trying to say something nice. I took it as like a hideous.
55:13 Dax Shepard? Flat face.
55:14 Speaker 02 Flat, big head.
55:15 Speaker 01 Maybe it was apple pie and it meant all American.
55:17 Speaker 02 Yes, maybe that's what she was saying.
55:19 Speaker 01 That seems.
55:19 Speaker 02 But I just felt, oh my God, when I think about the drawer of push up bras that I had for auditions, because I thought maybe that will help. And it doesn't, and it's so sad. Being a 19 year old going to auditions is rough. And you're just like. Driving to the deep valley to go to this like reading with like a thousand other girls.
55:39 Dax Shepard? I was inclined to think you might be like Lake Bell, who I worked with on the show forever. And we're friends.
55:45 Speaker 02 I love Lake.
55:46 Dax Shepard? And what I realized is that Lake is so hot her whole life that she liked to date ugly guys. Like, you know, you're so hot.
55:54 Speaker 01 She did not say it like that.
55:55 Dax Shepard? No, I called her out on it. I'm like, I think you like, you know, it's cool that you'll date ugly guys. And she's like, eh, she kinda knows. And I'm like, that's how you know you're so hot that you don't even need the validation of the hot guy. Would you date the hot guy or the ugly guys?
56:09 Speaker 02 Uh, it's been a real range. It's been a real smorgasbord. Really hard to figure out the common denominator. I felt like such an outsider always because as a kid I would go between the States and Ireland. And Ireland, obviously super weird outsider, American kid showing up in the summers, weirdo outsider. Then back in the States, I felt like an outsider because I just felt like we were different. Family was different, coming back and forth, different. Then boarding school, total fucking weirdo. I felt, again, even just with clothes, I like, I'd never seen such preppy clothes. I felt like an outsider there. Then LA. So I never had the thing of like, I'm so attractive that I.
56:46 Dax Shepard? I'll date a three because it looks punk rock.
56:48 Speaker 02 Just to even it out. Yeah.
56:50 Speaker 01 That's not why she did it.
56:52 Speaker 02 That's really funny.
56:53 Dax Shepard? We'll call her in the fact check.
56:55 Speaker 01 Their personalities were good. And so, yeah, she's not just gonna date someone hot just so that she feels hotter. Cause she doesn't need to feel hot.
57:02 Speaker 02 She wasn't trying to compensate for something through.
57:04 Dax Shepard? She was not susceptible to a higher status person validating her, which is a real unique.
57:09 Speaker 01 So she got to date people she really liked.
57:12 Speaker 02 Yes.
57:12 Dax Shepard? Who often you're like, wow, that's cool. She's with that too.
57:15 Speaker 02 Right.
57:16 Dax Shepard? I just call it like it is.
57:17 Speaker 01 Don't look into her. This is so mean.
57:23 Speaker 02 But does anyone, is it impossible? Wow. I mean, talk about humbling. I think about all of our friends who went through that cattle call experience. And I'm like, it's actually great because being rejected that much does something very good to your character.
57:38 Dax Shepard? If you live.
57:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
57:39 Dax Shepard? For all of us who live. Yeah, yeah.
57:41 Speaker 02 You live, you are not unscathed.
57:43 Dax Shepard? And what's great is we all have our unique version of why it was terrible. And it can't be all true, right? So my issue was I would go to the commercial audition. And it's like, that dude's bald, that guy's overweight. I'm not goofy enough, yet I'm a comedian, so this is what I'm supposed to get. But I don't look goofy enough to play the guy at the muffler shop. It's crazy. Then I might go to the attractive shit. I'm like, I am not nearly good looking like these guys are.
58:10 Speaker 02 I felt like that too, caught in between categories.
58:13 Dax Shepard? I wasn't character looking enough and I wasn't handsome enough. I'm like, what are we gonna do with this?
58:17 Speaker 02 Yeah. And then you realize that that is exactly what makes you so special. Takes a long time.
58:24 Dax Shepard? If you're lucky.
58:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
58:25 Dax Shepard? Okay, so who though were you at that time wanting to be career wise? Did you have a north star?
58:33 Speaker 02 I wanted to be Catherine Keener, which is why I
58:36 Dax Shepard? Great pick.
58:37 Speaker 02 Got the job as a casting intern because I read that she had been a casting intern. So I was like, I will emulate that experience.
58:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
58:44 Speaker 02 And I still want to be Catherine Keener.
58:46 Dax Shepard? She's a good role model.
58:48 Speaker 02 That's as cool as it gets.
58:49 Dax Shepard? Have you become friends with her?
58:50 Speaker 02 No.
58:51 Dax Shepard? Have you ever met her?
58:52 Speaker 02 I met her once and I think I said something like, oh, I've modeled my life.
58:58 Dax Shepard? Here's a compliment you'll never be able to accept.
59:00 Speaker 02 Exactly. You don't have what he's supposed to say in return. And she was very sweet to me.
59:04 Dax Shepard? So you want to be like in indie movies and do cool things?
59:07 Speaker 02 Yes, completely.
59:08 Dax Shepard? Okay, so then when you get on the OC, were you like
59:10 Speaker 02 Oh, my God.
59:11 Dax Shepard? grateful, but this is the opposite of what I'm trying to do?
59:14 Speaker 02 It was funny because this is very classic me to not understand what I'm getting into and then be in it. I had no idea how big that show was when I joined because I think I joined the second season.
59:23 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
59:23 Speaker 02 Josh Schwartz was like, do you want to come and do the show? Well, first he said, do you want to come play a bartender? Because we had a lot of musical taste overlapped, like we knew each other through that kind of world. And I remember I was talking about music a lot. And then he said, come play a bartender because we'll have real musicians are going to come on the show and perform in the bar, the bait shop. And
59:43 Dax Shepard? That was the sales pitch.
59:44 Speaker 02 Yeah. And I was like, absolutely. And as a joke, I was like, only if I get to make out with Misha Barton. And he went, who told you? Oh, my God. And I was like, oh, for real? I was like, Josh, I'm in. But it was so fun. Everyone was so great. We had all these amazing musicians around and it was so fun, but I did not. Know how big the show was.
1:00:05 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:00:06 Speaker 02 And after the first episode aired, I was like, wait, what is this? And I remember Adam describing at the time, anytime he could like sense teenagers in any place he was and crossing the street to get around to walk around anybody who might be young. And I quickly understood what that meant.
1:00:23 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you interface with Ben McKenzie at all?
1:00:26 Speaker 02 Yes, I loved, he was so sweet to me.
1:00:28 Dax Shepard? We met him for the first time a couple of weeks ago. He is a crypto expert. He was on our experts.
1:00:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, he's.
1:00:34 Dax Shepard? And I left that going, I think that's the smartest actor I've ever met.
1:00:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, he always was. He was always very un-actor-y.
1:00:40 Dax Shepard? Yes.
1:00:41 Speaker 02 It just felt like he, in the best way, was doing it for fun.
1:00:45 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:00:46 Speaker 02 Which is great.
1:00:46 Dax Shepard? He belongs in the Austin State Assembly. That's his heritage. Like, he's supposed to be doing that.
1:00:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:00:52 Dax Shepard? Okay, so then you quickly get on, or by my estimation, pretty quickly, you get on House.
1:00:58 Speaker 02 Right.
1:00:58 Dax Shepard? Were you replacing Jen Morrison?
1:01:00 Speaker 02 Not really replacing, also joining a show late.
1:01:03 Dax Shepard? Season four, maybe?
1:01:04 Speaker 02 Season three.
1:01:05 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:01:06 Speaker 02 It was like expanding the cast. And then we were all on it together. That show had such wide reach in a way that I had no idea. And even now, anywhere I am on the planet, there's a House fan.
1:01:19 Dax Shepard? So I've never liked one of those medical shows, and I loved House.
1:01:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:01:24 Dax Shepard? Because I love Hugh Laurie.
1:01:26 Speaker 02 The whole thing was just that.
1:01:28 Dax Shepard? Were you fucking smitten with him? Is he smitten worthy in real life?
1:01:31 Speaker 02 He is so smitten worthy, smitten worthy. Oh, no, he's so smart.
1:01:37 Dax Shepard? He's like a crime novelist.
1:01:38 Speaker 02 And a jazz musician?
1:01:40 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and a motorcyclist.
1:01:41 Speaker 02 I loved him on Jeeves and Worcester. And he had done all sorts of interesting comedy in the English comedy theater world that I was obsessed with. Meeting him, oh, I mean, the dreamiest dreamboat and so gracious. And had all these kids around him, really, that he was so sweet and encouraging. And we spent a lot of time together.
1:02:01 Dax Shepard? That was a hard show, right?
1:02:02 Speaker 02 We did like 19-hour days. I think the show went eight years. I did, I think, four years.
1:02:06 Dax Shepard? Four years.
1:02:07 Speaker 02 And then I started doing movies in the off-season. I had a deal with them. Where I would get paid less, but it meant I could go do movies.
1:02:16 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:02:17 Speaker 02 It was really nice of them to let me do that, but I knew I couldn't stay. And it was because the hours were, I mean, poor Hugh.
1:02:24 Dax Shepard? The dialogue he had to fucking memorize.
1:02:26 Speaker 02 He had my favorite quote about acting with an accent. Someone said, what is it like acting with an accent on that show? And he said, it's like everyone else is playing with a tennis racket and I have a salmon.
1:02:36 Speaker 02 It's so perfectly. Like evocative. I thought he's so good. I learned a lot from him and yeah, we were good, but we're buddies. He's the coolest.
1:02:48 Dax Shepard? You gotta get him to the debate dinner.
1:02:49 Speaker 02 Oh, my God.
1:02:50 Dax Shepard? That we've committed to.
1:02:51 Speaker 02 Crush us all.
1:02:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it'd be fun.
1:02:53 Speaker 02 Amazing.
1:02:53 Speaker 01 Now, OK, so you booked a pilot, then you booked the OC, then you booked this. You are.
1:02:57 Speaker 02 Well, there's like stuff in between, you know? I went back to New York, I did like an off Broadway play and I did indie movies. While I was doing the OC, I did this Nick Cassavetti's movie called Alpha Dog. Which kind of had a lot of the people from our generation in it. That movie was crazy because it was about a murder that had happened in LA only a few years before.
1:03:17 Dax Shepard? It was a real story.
1:03:18 Speaker 02 And the real guy was on the run. And the movie initially ended with like, he is the youngest person on the FBI most wanted list. And by the time the movie came out, I think they had found him in Brazil. And then they reshoot the ending to incorporate his capture. Wild experience.
1:03:37 Dax Shepard? Well, also Nick Cassavetti, so this dream you had of being like Catherine Keener. This is the right vehicle, but did it deliver to your romantic notion of it?
1:03:46 Speaker 02 Yes, I loved it. I felt the experience of being on the OC and being on the set of Alpha Dog. And I was like, I want to do movies.
1:03:51 Dax Shepard? You want that.
1:03:52 Speaker 02 And so they very kindly offered me a chance to stay on the OC or to leave. And I left to go make zero money.
1:03:58 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:04:00 Speaker 01 So you're booking stuff.
1:04:01 Speaker 02 I was super lucky.
1:04:02 Speaker 01 Imposter syndrome?
1:04:02 Speaker 02 No, I mean, I think I still have imposter syndrome. Maybe it's starting to wear off.
1:04:07 Speaker 01 Well, yeah, I would hope.
1:04:08 Speaker 02 I think that I was gaining confidence though by that point. I think I felt like I was earning my stripes. But at that point, House really changed things.
1:04:17 Dax Shepard? She did Tron on the offseason, then she did Cowboys and Aliens.
1:04:20 Speaker 01 That's what I mean. This is like moving and chugging.
1:04:22 Dax Shepard? Once you were in Cowboys and Aliens, I was like, okay, I'm now aware, making space in my mind. There's a new movie star.
1:04:29 Speaker 02 That's nice. In a way, if Cowboys and Aliens had done what they thought it was gonna do.
1:04:33 Dax Shepard? By the way, you and I have had a very shared experience, which is rare, which is I did his movies a thorough.
1:04:38 Speaker 02 Oh, yes.
1:04:39 Dax Shepard? Favreau.
1:04:39 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:04:40 Dax Shepard? It's the best movie I'm in. It's a phenomenal movie.
1:04:42 Speaker 02 So good.
1:04:42 Dax Shepard? Everyone's like, well, everyone just wait for the $500 million to arrive. It just never came. So you and I are probably in the only two underperforming Favreau movies.
1:04:52 Speaker 02 Totally, totally. And also like Tron, they thought it was gonna be like the biggest thing that had ever been. I think it's very healthy to have these experiences. Because it just showed me that nobody knows anything, you don't know what's gonna work, and you better love the experience of doing it.
1:05:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:05:06 Speaker 02 Cowboys and Aliens had every brilliant person in it. And Favreau is so good, and we were produced by Spielberg and Ron Howard. And it didn't work, and yet the experience was the most fun I've ever had.
1:05:16 Dax Shepard? Was it? Oh, good.
1:05:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, it was like riding horses with Han Solo. Yeah, it was literally Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig and me and Sam Rockwell, who became one of my best friends.
1:05:26 Dax Shepard? What a champ, huh?
1:05:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, truly the best human being we have. And Paul Dano, another amazing guy, who, when I was a casting intern, he was the only really nice actor who would come in and not bitch at me for the fact that they were waiting too long for their audition. Everyone else treated me like low-level staff, except Paul Dano, the nicest person in the world. Then being able to work with him on Cowboys and Aliens, we just had the best time. Walt Goggins.
1:05:52 Dax Shepard? Oh, fucking Goggins.
1:05:54 Speaker 02 Walt Goggins saved my life on that movie.
1:05:56 Speaker 01 Oh, what happened?
1:05:57 Speaker 02 He did. I had a very bad horse accident, and he saved me. Basically, we were galloping across. I've ridden horses my whole life. I have a lot of confidence with riding, English style, but this was Western, different. And we were, at that point, like two months in, and we'd gotten real cocky with it. And we were pretty competitive.
1:06:15 Speaker 01 Oh, boy.
1:06:16 Speaker 02 And it was me and Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford. Galloping like full sprint across the desert.
1:06:22 Dax Shepard? Oh, boy.
1:06:22 Speaker 02 With like forty horses behind us.
1:06:24 Speaker 01 Oh, my god.
1:06:25 Speaker 02 And it was like, we were like, leading the charge to fight the aliens or whatever. And, you know.
1:06:29 Dax Shepard? Whatever we were doing in that movie.
1:06:30 Speaker 02 We got to a part where I could see ahead of us that there was a large ditch, like a six-foot ditch. And I was like, this horse is gonna jump that ditch. And I'm on this western saddle, no helmet, because I'm playing like, an old-timey lady.
1:06:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:06:45 Speaker 02 Spoiler, I was actually an alien.
1:06:47 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:06:47 Speaker 02 You find out? I know everyone's seen it, but still. So, sure enough, this horse jumps and bucks me off in the craziest way. I felt if I hit my head in my back and I was laying, but unfortunately, I was on the other side of this kind of lip of dirt. So, meaning that the forty horses behind me couldn't see me.
1:07:05 Speaker 01 No.
1:07:06 Speaker 02 And there was also a lot of dust.
1:07:07 Dax Shepard? No.
1:07:08 Speaker 02 And I remember having my ear to the ground and I could hear it and it sounded like thunder. Like, they were coming towards me. And I had the thought, it sounds so dramatic, but I thought, it'll be quick.
1:07:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:07:18 Speaker 02 It'll be like pulverized applesauce, out.
1:07:20 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:07:21 Speaker 02 And I was waiting for it to happen, and then Walt Goggins had seen it ahead of him. And in a split-second thought, to turn his horse sideways, right in front of me, and let everyone kind of bash into him.
1:07:35 Speaker 01 No.
1:07:36 Speaker 02 And he's a great rider, so he was able to handle that. And people split the two sides around us, thinking he had just like, gone insane. But he was protecting my body on the ground.
1:07:47 Dax Shepard? Oh, my.
1:07:48 Speaker 02 And so, I owe him my life. It's crazy.
1:07:51 Speaker 01 Wow.
1:07:52 Dax Shepard? He's a real-life hero.
1:07:53 Speaker 02 He is.
1:07:54 Speaker 01 He didn't even bring that up when he was on the show.
1:07:56 Speaker 02 He's probably done it to so many people.
1:07:59 Dax Shepard? He's saved so many hot women.
1:08:00 Speaker 02 He probably saved three women on his way here.
1:08:03 Dax Shepard? He does not save men, that's what people don't know about him.
1:08:06 Speaker 02 No, no, no, he lets them go.
1:08:14 Dax Shepard? Dare.
1:08:22 Dax Shepard? Okay, so I guess I want to fast forward now to Booksmart because we've had you for a while already, even though it feels like five minutes. I know things lead up to it, right? You direct a music video for a band, I don't know, but then you do Chili Peppers.
1:08:34 Speaker 02 Yes. So yeah, I did Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zero.
1:08:37 Dax Shepard? There we go.
1:08:37 Speaker 02 And then The Chili Peppers was my first big gig, which I only got because a brilliant director named Mark Ramanick, who is all time music video director king. He also directs movies and television shows, but he famously directed many Nine Inch Nails videos, Michael Jackson. He's the top. The Scream video, which is still, I think, the most expensive music video ever made, Michael and Janet. But he was supposed to do The Chili Peppers video and then he was directing me in a show we did in New York called Vinyl, an HBO show, also short-lived, also one that everyone was like, this is gonna be big.
1:09:09 Dax Shepard? Also, the second thing you did with Juno Temple?
1:09:13 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:09:13 Dax Shepard? I'm obsessed with her.
1:09:14 Speaker 02 Love Juno.
1:09:15 Dax Shepard? What a fucking powerhouse.
1:09:16 Speaker 02 Oh, has always been. Since she was like 16 and I met her on year one and knew that she was gonna be a superstar. Then we did Vinyl. Mark Ramanick directing an episode of Vinyl. Here's me talking about how I just want to direct, decides to throw me his gig on The Chili Peppers video. He's like, you should do it. I'm gonna tell them they should hire you instead. He gets me that job. I go direct that, time of my life. And then I took myself seriously. I was like, okay, I want to do more. And directed a short film.
1:09:45 Dax Shepard? You did the glamour thing, right?
1:09:46 Speaker 02 Exactly. Through a grant, which is the only way people can really get going is through some sort of grant program. Then Booksmart came about and I was so lucky.
1:09:58 Dax Shepard? You have a real point of view. I mean, I guess it's as simple as that. How did you get to that point that quickly?
1:10:04 Speaker 02 Probably the most valuable acting lesson I learned from working for Malifin, my casting director boss, was that the person who got the role was the one who made the choice. Someone who came in and with a choice, a choice that risked being the wrong choice, but a perspective on the scene. And people who came in and just tried to be sort of vague.
1:10:21 Dax Shepard? Give you what you want.
1:10:22 Speaker 02 They never. So I had learned this lesson that made a lot of sense to me. And I think with directing, it felt the same. Tarantino says, make the movie only you can make. And I think it's really true. It's like, don't even try to please everyone. Make it really specific because it's going to be your obsession for several years. You're going to be married to this process, and you have to really, really love it and have something to say. And I think with Booksmart, I felt so passionate about telling a story about shame and judgment in high school and female friendships and the intensity of that platonic love. I felt like I had so much to say that it felt effortless in a way because it just felt like a place to put all these stories and opinions and ideas. And I think that all the high school movies that I grew
1:11:06 Speaker 02 up loving, I mean, really, Booksmart was really heavily influenced by both Dazed and Confused and The Breakfast Club, which those two movies really raised me. What's nice about it is there is a, and this kind of came up with the invite, too. There is a shared language of when it comes to high school and adolescence that people are very fluent in. So you only have to reference certain things. For instance, a high school bathroom and like stalls. All you have to do is like, show that. And people are like, I got it. I know why that's scary. I get everything involved. And there's that shorthand with the audience. And I think that's why something like a high school movie happens with anything that's like, okay, buddy cop movie, hospital show, relationship movie. There is a sense of like, got it.
1:11:51 Dax Shepard? There's a shorthand.
1:11:52 Speaker 02 Shorthand. It was like an opportunity to lovingly poke on everyone's trauma from adolescence. And it was, ugh.
1:12:00 Dax Shepard? Did you have a soulmate in the boarding school that got you through?
1:12:04 Speaker 02 I've always had very close friendships and really always had like a group of girls that were my sisters. And certainly in boarding school, I had a tight group. Also, we lived together. I mean, you couldn't have gotten closer. And before then, I had my ride or die. And I still have those relationships. So I think. I was pulling a lot from that. I also formed this incredible friendship with Katie Silverman, who wrote the film. And we really felt like the two characters. So much of those characters is modeled after our dynamic. And Beanie and Caitlin were starring in the film, and they would often just say that they would look over at us and sort of be...
1:12:42 Dax Shepard? Check in with what they're playing.
1:12:44 Speaker 02 It was like a film about friendship being made by people in this intense friendship, and it was wonderful.
1:12:50 Dax Shepard? It's so good. It's in the 90s. I covet this. I've never been in a movie that had 90-some-plus Rotten Tomatoes.
1:12:56 Speaker 02 Oh, I mean, I also made one that has like a 35, so.
1:12:59 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that's all I made. If they're about 40, I did something wrong. Alas, you made it for 6 million bucks and made 25 million bucks. This is fucking premium start. Thank you, darling.
1:13:11 Speaker 02 Don't worry, darling. That would have been a better title.
1:13:13 Dax Shepard? It's always been a hard, "Don't Worry, Darling." That one, it's a major departure from...
1:13:20 Speaker 02 Totally.
1:13:20 Dax Shepard? That. And so what inspires that?
1:13:22 Speaker 02 I love psychological thrillers.
1:13:24 Dax Shepard? Name a few of your favorites.
1:13:25 Speaker 02 I mean, Hitchcock as the master of all psychological thrillers. I love Vertigo. It's always my top. But then I grew up loving The Sixth Sense. I also love like Stephen King novels.
1:13:37 Speaker 01 Seven?
1:13:38 Speaker 02 I loved Seven.
1:13:39 Dax Shepard? Oh, that's our movie.
1:13:41 Speaker 01 Best of all time.
1:13:42 Speaker 02 Silence of the Lambs. I had a library in my room when I was a kid of all like horror fiction. Like, I loved scary stories, ghost stories. I, as a kid, loved like Tales from the Crypt. Do you remember Tales from the Crypt for that creepy little guy? I loved Goosebumps, like those kind of books. I always had a fascination with that genre. And I was fascinated by the kind of like early rumblings of the manosphere.
1:14:08 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, it was kind of incel-inspired, right?
1:14:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:14:10 Dax Shepard? It's like the beginning of the incel culture.
1:14:12 Speaker 02 I was very disturbed by incel culture meeting technology in a way that I was like, ooh, somebody could take advantage of that and put us back into this time. And obviously as a metaphor for what's happening, which is like putting ourselves back into an era where women are stripped of all rights. And I think it preceded... I wasn't really thinking about trad wife culture yet, because that wasn't happening.
1:14:36 Dax Shepard? It kind of popped during late COVID.
1:14:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly.
1:14:39 Dax Shepard? And this was smack in the middle, November of 2020 or September or something?
1:14:43 Speaker 02 Yes, exactly.
1:14:44 Dax Shepard? Okay, so the fun things about this, well, I just loved it.
1:14:47 Speaker 02 We had this extraordinary crew, like Matty Le Batteque, who shot that movie. Is such a gangster. We made that movie for $30 million. It looks like a $100 million movie because of him.
1:14:58 Speaker 01 It really does.
1:14:58 Speaker 02 And because of Katie Byron, our production designer. We were also shooting in Palm Springs and in LA onstage, but during lockdown. It was crazy that we were even outside. And this crew worked so hard on this movie together. And it was this Herculean effort to build this world and this time. And for me, getting to do car chases in a 60s Porsche. And it was just like a catnip, catnip. I mean, I really just want to shoot car chases. I really just want to get hired to do like Fast and the Furious 27. Most exciting thing for me on Don't Worry Darling was that the stunt team, who were our stunt drivers, I realized at one point that I wanted them to be in the movie because we were about to go hire actors.
1:15:43 Speaker 02 The stunt guys were going to double the actors to drive. And I was like, why don't you guys just be in the movie?
1:15:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:15:50 Speaker 02 And they were all so excited and they gave it everything. I had to keep reminding them that they didn't have to hide their faces. You know stunt guys hide famously. That's what they do. And they were all so brilliant and they gave these great performances. And I was so happy when the stunts category was added for the Academy. Because the whole business is built on their backs.
1:16:09 Dax Shepard? That's a fucking movie, by the way. Fall Guy?
1:16:11 Speaker 02 Oh, I love it.
1:16:12 Dax Shepard? Dude, my kids have watched it 25 times. I think it's a perfect film.
1:16:15 Speaker 02 And then the director of that film was our stunt coordinator on Tron, David Leitch, and taught me many things, including what to do if you ever fall off a high bridge or building. I'm going to tell you guys right now because it's important. You have to make yourself into like a tilted line. Put yourself at an angle because if you go straight down, your spine will shoot up through your brain. So you have to... Because we were shooting on a really high bridge and he's like, okay, if you fall off. And I was like, what? And he's like, if you fall off, just try to land at an angle. And I always think about it. I'm like...
1:16:45 Speaker 01 That feels impossible.
1:16:47 Dax Shepard? Collect yourself.
1:16:48 Speaker 02 Take a minute.
1:16:49 Dax Shepard? Learn a lot about aerodynamics in a hurry.
1:16:53 Speaker 01 Yeah. Pull your toes.
1:16:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, pull your toes at an angle. But I love stunts. I loved shooting those stunt sequences.
1:16:59 Dax Shepard? Oh, blowing stuff up. Anytime I... I was at work and I was like, are you kidding me? My job day is to blow up the Sixth Street Bridge?
1:17:05 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:17:06 Speaker 01 You think you're an adrenaline junkie?
1:17:07 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:17:08 Speaker 01 Okay, maybe from your parents.
1:17:10 Speaker 02 Yes, totally. The idea of like, are you really alive if you're not experiencing something at like full tilt?
1:17:17 Dax Shepard? Okay, now, I went back and some of the stuff I read was you doing press around the time of Thank You Darling.
1:17:23 Speaker 01 Don't worry darling.
1:17:24 Dax Shepard? Don't worry darling.
1:17:25 Speaker 02 Retitled.
1:17:26 Speaker 01 No.
1:17:26 Dax Shepard? Why is it Thank You Darling?
1:17:29 Speaker 02 Thank you darling.
1:17:30 Dax Shepard? Don't worry darling.
1:17:30 Speaker 02 It's much more gracious.
1:17:32 Dax Shepard? I've been doing a good job until now. Don't worry darling.
1:17:35 Speaker 01 And you impress everyone so much.
1:17:36 Dax Shepard? And then it all falls apart.
1:17:38 Speaker 01 It does fall apart.
1:17:39 Dax Shepard? Isn't that the fun part for you though? It's like, when will I fall off the balance beam? And now I'm off. Yeah, yeah, I'm off.
1:17:45 Speaker 02 At an angle.
1:17:46 Speaker 01 Okay, don't worry darling.
1:17:47 Dax Shepard? Don't worry darling.
1:17:48 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:17:48 Dax Shepard? At the time, I could tell you were sick of talking about, like, people are making a big deal of the sex stuff.
1:17:54 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:17:55 Dax Shepard? But I'm here to tell you, that was great stuff. It was worthy of talking about, like Monica and I, we both saw it. We were like, oh, do you like, yeah, I loved it. Almost on cue, the dining room table scene?
1:18:07 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, we loved it.
1:18:08 Speaker 02 I had wanted to shoot, that was like a scene in my head for so long, the idea of basically turning the idea of like a feast into like,
1:18:15 Dax Shepard? Yes.
1:18:16 Speaker 02 Like, I love food so much, it's really just me bringing food into every possible scene.
1:18:19 Dax Shepard? I like the notion of like showing up to the table. Like, you're gonna devour.
1:18:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:18:24 Dax Shepard? Yes, it's wonderful.
1:18:25 Speaker 02 And I also was really passionate about like showing you like female pleasure. I wanted it to be about that. But obviously, yes, it overtook the conversation in a way that was a bummer because there was so much else to talk about.
1:18:34 Dax Shepard? But here's a fascinating conversation. There is some tricky obscurity with feminism and sexuality in film. Because clearly, women were objectified for a long, long time. And then clearly, that's a cause to confront. And then also, like, feminists are fucking sexual. You want to see sexual fantasies.
1:18:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:18:55 Dax Shepard? There can be this weird balancing act, I feel like, if you're feminist. Like, are you betraying feminism by having nudity? Which I don't, I reject.
1:19:03 Speaker 02 Right, of course.
1:19:04 Dax Shepard? But there's some weird tension there about how you do the female-driven sexy fucking movie, which I want you to do.
1:19:12 Speaker 02 Totally.
1:19:13 Dax Shepard? Without any stress.
1:19:14 Speaker 02 Well, I know we both love Esther Perel.
1:19:16 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:19:17 Speaker 02 And I love how she writes about how there's nothing very politically correct about eroticism. She talks about women's sexual fantasies and allowing for them to veer into a territory that is not something that you would necessarily ever experience in real life. Or that you feel is like politically correct and how you think things should be. But your curiosity, your imagination is allowed to veer into that territory.
1:19:42 Dax Shepard? You might want a power dynamic in your life.
1:19:43 Speaker 02 Exactly.
1:19:44 Dax Shepard? They want a different power dynamic when it's time to fuck.
1:19:46 Speaker 02 And I love that she writes about how like, it's so important to let your mind go to these places. And Gillian Anderson compiled an incredible book of female fantasies called Want, which is a book of anonymous fantasies from women around the world. And all you learn about the woman at the end of each fantasy is like, what they do, where they live in, if they have kids or not. And it's a lot of like, powerful women who have fantasies about being objectified.
1:20:10 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:20:10 Dax Shepard? As there are these powerful men.
1:20:12 Speaker 02 Yes. I made a movie about BDSM culture last year, and I learned so much about that. And it is all like, super powerful men who, on their lunch break, go to the dungeon. It is true that when it comes to sexuality in film, this question of like, are you making the problem worse by showing women in any way? Is nudity and female nudity a part of the problem or solution? And this has been written about for many decades. And Gloria Steinem wrote about like, self-objectification. There's so much to think about with it, and I think it's the way it's done is always what makes the difference. But I think for a long time, we weren't even seeing female orgasms in movies. It wasn't a part of it. It was all about the man.
1:20:57 Speaker 02 So I think even that feels roughly fair.
1:20:59 Dax Shepard? Completely unrealistic female orgasm, which is Michael Douglas plowing you from behind without any warm-up in two minutes. Later, you're screaming in
1:21:06 Speaker 02 Yes, it's really training men unfairly.
1:21:10 Dax Shepard? Slam a girl against the wall, fuck her from behind and just buckle up for the orgasm.
1:21:14 Speaker 02 She's like, thank you. This is all I need. But at the same time, movies are allowed to be a fantasy and they kind of the idea of it.
1:21:21 Dax Shepard? They should be your fantasy, by the way.
1:21:23 Speaker 02 It should be the fantasy.
1:21:23 Dax Shepard? We just need both parties making their fantasies.
1:21:26 Speaker 01 The female fantasy.
1:21:27 Speaker 02 So it's equal, yeah.
1:21:27 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I don't want to see males get rid of their fantasy or females get rid of their fantasy.
1:21:31 Speaker 02 I want everyone to like explore a little bit more. And I think for that movie, I was like, I just really want to focus on it being about female pleasure and that that was actually part of this male kink. This world was about men who have created a utopian society for themselves. And I was like, well, what happens to female pleasure within that? These were topics that were very interesting to explore.
1:21:58 Dax Shepard? They had to be explored, yeah.
1:21:59 Speaker 01 That's fascinating.
1:22:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:22:00 Dax Shepard? Okay, now I have directed Kristen in scenes with a male lover.
1:22:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:22:06 Dax Shepard? And I'm fine with it. I think for the male lover, Josh Duhamel, in this case.
1:22:10 Speaker 02 Oh, I love Josh Duhamel.
1:22:11 Dax Shepard? He's the sweetest guy. He's perfect to have your wife hook up with in something.
1:22:16 Speaker 02 Yes, he is.
1:22:16 Dax Shepard? But I remember just being like, I felt like I needed to be extra smart about that dynamic.
1:22:23 Speaker 02 Like to make her feel.
1:22:24 Dax Shepard? An actor has been brought in to make out with my wife and I'm directing the thing.
1:22:28 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:22:29 Dax Shepard? Did you feel any of that weirdness?
1:22:32 Speaker 02 Oh, on Don't Worry Darling? No, no.
1:22:34 Dax Shepard? That wasn't tricky.
1:22:35 Speaker 02 That wasn't tricky.
1:22:36 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:22:36 Speaker 02 My thing is, and maybe this comes from being such a theater nerd as a kid, is like, once you're kind of in that dynamic of making something, making a play or a movie, like, everybody becomes part of the same effort to just like make it as good as it can be. And I feel like that eliminates a lot of the anxiety that exists in a regular sort of dynamic. I do think that, particularly when you're directing it, I remember we had to have the camera spun around very slowly during the scene where she's on the table. And Maddie, the DP, and I are just standing there, and we're like, is that glass in the way? Fuck, the glass is in the way. Move the glass. No, okay, get away from the glass. Like, we're just looking at what can be seen. I think that any sort of weirdness and nerves around what's actually happening are eliminated
1:23:20 Speaker 02 by the obsessive focus on the shot.
1:23:23 Dax Shepard? Obsessive tells.
1:23:24 Speaker 02 And like making it work. And I was so happy with how it was all looking and feeling. I felt so proud. I was just like, we fucking nailed that. We're not in like the 1940s anymore. Our kissing, I do appreciate when people really go for it.
1:23:38 Dax Shepard? Well, you can feel, think about, we can remember these incredible, like the fucking Tom Cruise, Kelly, Top Gun make out senior, like, let's go.
1:23:46 Speaker 02 I mean, Nine and a Half Weeks was a huge influence. You can feel real passion, just like you can feel any emotion. And like you said, like the stunts, we tried to make them as real as possible. Why wouldn't we go for it? I think as long as everyone feels great, then it's awesome.
1:24:01 Dax Shepard? That's the nuance of the whole thing.
1:24:03 Speaker 02 That's the nuance of the whole thing. Cause I know when you're friends, it can be so funny. Like Sam Rockwell and I, we did this movie called Better Living Through Chemistry, where we had to have the craziest sex scenes. It was like a montage and it was so funny. Like we would just cry laughing because we were two good buddies.
1:24:18 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:24:19 Speaker 02 The idea of thinking of each other in a sexual way was just so ludicrous. So I think sometimes it's harder when you're best friends.
1:24:26 Dax Shepard? You were talking about, when you got to direct, one of the incredible things was recognizing, oh, you can design these situations differently.
1:24:34 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:24:35 Dax Shepard? And in particular, you were talking about a closed set. So there's an illusion of a closed set.
1:24:39 Speaker 02 Right.
1:24:40 Dax Shepard? Historically, which means they're going to clear out everyone that doesn't have to be in the scene. And then you're going to rehearse in private and then you're going to have a minimal crew to film the whole thing. But in your experience.
1:24:50 Speaker 02 So often it was not really a closed set. And there's all these little sneaky monitors that are around. Like there's a monitor on the sound cart that just always mysteriously stays on. And it was when we were shooting Booksmart, we're shooting a scene with Caitlin Dever and Diana Silvers. And they were in a bathroom together and it's like a sexy scene. And I was so fiercely protective of them. Of course, I shut down every monitor and we had an amazing crew, but people don't realize that a closed set can be even more closed and can really be closed.
1:25:22 Dax Shepard? And in the defense of the crew, let's also be honest, all of it's White noise, like they gotta run cable, then they gotta throw the dolly down. It's not even like, they're not paying attention to any of the scenes. So they don't even know that they've wandered into one that's sensitive.
1:25:33 Speaker 02 Exactly.
1:25:33 Dax Shepard? Yeah, they're like, I don't know what's going on.
1:25:35 Speaker 02 It depends on the comfort of the actor too, because I did this movie last year with Cooper Hoffman, this Gregor Rocky movie, that basically I play a dominatrix in that one. It's called I Want Your Sex. And that movie, I would like get up in the middle of the scene, basically naked and walk around in the monitor, be like, hey, guys, do you have sex? Like, should I? Like, because I just felt comfortable with it and I, at that point, had no nerves about it. So some actors are like, eh, it's fine, I don't care. And they can feel like it's weirder if everyone gets weird, which is a thing for some people. So it's like based on what they want. But I do believe that the value of being an actor who has turned into a director is that you can empathize with every part of the experience from when it's cold and they're the only freezing ones and everyone else has thick winter coats on,
1:26:15 Speaker 02 to the sex scenes, to bringing them in too early, to not giving them enough time to prepare. So I like to think that that's like the value of having been in their shoes, is that I can make particularly sex scenes a little less weird.
1:26:28 Speaker 01 I have a quick question about that movie. Well, it was funny, I had drinks with Katie recently and she was talking about, I guess maybe we were talking about Fame Sick, Lena's book or something. And we were talking about how things get very blown out of proportion.
1:26:43 Speaker 02 Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:26:44 Speaker 01 She specifically referenced that movie. She was like, it was so crazy because there was all this stuff around it and all this crazy quote drama that was not real.
1:26:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:26:54 Speaker 01 And she, as the writer, was like, I don't understand how to tell people that it's not real.
1:26:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:27:00 Speaker 01 And you're at the center of a lot of that. How did you handle, were you like, I hate everyone?
1:27:06 Speaker 02 You come to realize that it is so far from reality because it's about clickbait. It's about selling tabloids. And, okay, a long, long time ago, I remember Jen Garner giving me advice when I was just a baby actor. And she said, the thing about this business is that you get unwillingly sort of cast in the soap opera of the media. Once they cast you as your character, that is your character and that is the narrative. And it really has nothing to do with you, but it exists and they will keep it on the way that, you know, One Life to Live will stay on for 150 years. And that was such a great advice because it allowed me to understand the separation between
1:27:47 Speaker 02 reality and what the media presents. And I think we all have lacked like critical thinking when observing tabloid stuff because you're like, oh snap, it's also, by the way, the world is so overwhelmingly difficult and grim. And when you can sink into a juicy tabloid soap opera, it's a lot more fun than thinking about how difficult the world is. And so I was aware that we had been kind of turned into this tornado of drama that had so little to do with reality and that nothing was gonna change that. Like at one point, our crew wrote this letter, like this beautiful letter, basically saying like, signed by the entire crew, being like, none of this shit that you're saying in the press is real. Like there was no fighting,
1:28:31 Speaker 02 there was no drama. And we all had this great time and the crew did that on their own and like, nobody cared. Because it doesn't fit the narrative that's being set. It's not as fun.
1:28:42 Speaker 01 I know, but it drives me nuts.
1:28:44 Speaker 02 It's maddening. And I think that having a healthy understanding of, of what that is and that it's a machine and just understanding that is, is essential, I think, to surviving in this business. But for that movie, the heartbreak for me was that the crew had worked so hard on this movie and we were so proud of it. And we like never got to talk about the movie.
1:29:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:29:02 Speaker 02 Because it was always this like other stuff that was just fictional drama that titillated people. And I mean, I get it. Like shit's rough. It was COVID. People wanted juicy stuff. It was hard. Life is hard and tabloids feel like junk food. And you're like, don't tell me that it's not good for me. Like, let me eat it. Don't tell me that the flavor isn't real flavor.
1:29:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's artificial flavor.
1:29:27 Speaker 02 It's so good.
1:29:28 Speaker 01 It's red dye.
1:29:29 Speaker 02 It's red. Don't tell me the red dye. Just let me enjoy my Twizzlers.
1:29:31 Dax Shepard? I've had the moment where I'm at an airport and I look at the cover of a magazine and it says Ashton and Mila are getting divorced.
1:29:40 Dax Shepard? And then I literally go, man, I was with them three weeks ago. They seemed really good. Could this be true? It's on the cover of a magazine.
1:29:49 Speaker 02 Right. If it's on the cover, it must have some.
1:29:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah, like, did I miss something?
1:29:53 Speaker 02 Right.
1:29:54 Dax Shepard? They're fine. They've always been fine.
1:29:56 Speaker 02 I know.
1:29:56 Dax Shepard? This is not gonna get to more.
1:29:58 Speaker 02 It's also, it's impossible for them to keep up with the need for so many more stories. I mean, these tablet people have to come up with something every five minutes.
1:30:06 Dax Shepard? They're in the same content inferno that we all are.
1:30:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:30:08 Dax Shepard? You gotta shovel it in there.
1:30:10 Speaker 02 Exactly.
1:30:10 Dax Shepard? Okay, so the premise of the invite, it just got tastier and tastier. Cause thank God I didn't know anything about it, which is lovely.
1:30:19 Speaker 02 That's good.
1:30:19 Dax Shepard? So at first I'm just like, okay, I'm meeting this couple. It's you and Seth.
1:30:24 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:30:24 Speaker 01 Seth Rogen.
1:30:25 Speaker 02 Seth Rogen.
1:30:26 Dax Shepard? Seth Rogen.
1:30:26 Speaker 02 We love Seth.
1:30:27 Dax Shepard? But it starts with a quote. What is the, it's an Oscar Wilde quote about being married?
1:30:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, one should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry. Which is very cynical. I put that quote in there because it, I think, represents the perspective. We were talking about earlier, like a director having a perspective that you feel. I like quotes that contextualize the kind of director's perspective. It's like the same thing when you read a book that starts with a quote. I'm like, all right, I see your kind of.
1:30:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah, your vibe.
1:30:52 Speaker 02 I see your vibe. And the movie is both romantic and cynical, I would argue.
1:30:57 Dax Shepard? It's both romantic and cynical. And then also, because it's Oscar Wilde, it's like an astute observation that's also clever and funny. So you go like, oh, I can kind of say this rough thing, but I'm also putting it in a package that it's still fun. Yeah, so we meet you guys, and although I'm not in one of those relationships, I'm so aware of how easily all relationships fall into this.
1:31:22 Speaker 02 Yes. And that relationship being one that has, I would argue, slid into a kind of rhythm of resentment and a complete inability to hear or see one another.
1:31:31 Dax Shepard? Yes.
1:31:32 Speaker 02 And you are just sort of coasting along on like inertia and obligation.
1:31:36 Dax Shepard? And your partner now somehow is the cause of every malady you have.
1:31:40 Speaker 02 Oh, yes.
1:31:41 Dax Shepard? You're not responsible anymore for any of your suffering.
1:31:43 Speaker 02 Completely.
1:31:44 Dax Shepard? It's fully on your partner.
1:31:45 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:31:46 Dax Shepard? That's where we start. And Seth's so fucking funny and you're immediately great. You guys are so good together. Did you know him?
1:31:53 Speaker 02 I knew him only a little bit. When he asked me to come and do the studio and I came and did an episode and we had so much fun together. He reminded me that I had actually screen tested for Knocked Up.
1:32:06 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:32:06 Speaker 02 A hundred and seventy thousand years earlier.
1:32:09 Speaker 01 Great movie.
1:32:09 Speaker 02 And I was like, oh my God, that was our first time acting together and I'd been a fan of his forever, but we'd never really gotten to play. And so the studio was immediately so fun and we recognized something in each other right away. We were like, wait a minute, we have a real fun time finding a rhythm with each other.
1:32:27 Dax Shepard? After a similar thing, maybe?
1:32:28 Speaker 02 Maybe.
1:32:29 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:32:29 Speaker 02 There's a similar goal to the way we approach it and he's a genius for so many reasons. He's so sensitive to the audience's experience. He can feel what the audience is feeling at any moment. So putting this movie together with him, he was so helpful in reminding us at all times as we kind of workshop the script together of how the audience would be feeling. And within a scene that you're improvising with him, he can feel where it needs to go. And it was so fun. But like, the thing that I'm so proud of is that everyone knows Seth's a genius. Everyone knows he's one of the funniest people, smartest people, so stylish. This movie, I feel very proud of him in the way that he, I think, has shown an additional dimension, which I call
1:33:14 Speaker 02 sad dad.
1:33:16 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:33:17 Speaker 02 And he's so good at playing someone who's kind of hit midlife and it didn't work out for him. He plays a guy who was in a band.
1:33:27 Dax Shepard? He had a little pop at the beginning of his life.
1:33:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:33:29 Dax Shepard? And now he's living off of his parents' legacy.
1:33:32 Speaker 02 Fucking loser. He feels incredible imposter syndrome within his relationship, within his life. He lives in the apartment that he grew up in, his parents' house. He's bottomed out and he's reached this kind of like numb space that he has decided to settle into and he may settle into and live in forever. His wife, who I play, has hit a similar place of dissatisfaction with life, but is way more. Anxious about it.
1:33:58 Dax Shepard? Well, I was gonna say, it is the yin and yang you often see play out. Which is like, the dude just bows out.
1:34:04 Speaker 02 Yes, surrender.
1:34:05 Dax Shepard? And then the, the woman gets so much anxiety.
1:34:08 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:34:09 Dax Shepard? And is trying to control every fucking thing. No one's prospering in this dynamic. And then we meet The Neighbors, which are played by Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz.
1:34:19 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:34:20 Dax Shepard? I mean, Penelope Cruz.
1:34:22 Speaker 02 Penelope Cruz. She's so powerful and she's so beautiful.
1:34:27 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:34:27 Speaker 02 And so wonderful.
1:34:30 Speaker 01 Why does she look like that?
1:34:31 Speaker 02 I know.
1:34:31 Speaker 01 It's unfair.
1:34:32 Speaker 02 Do you know she has a twin sister?
1:34:33 Dax Shepard? No. Identical or fraternal?
1:34:36 Speaker 01 There's two of them?
1:34:38 Speaker 02 Fraternal? I don't want to get that wrong, we'll check. But she just has this incredible warmth to her and this power. But I've never felt anything like it. I mean, I knew that I was in love with her, but it really was taken to, to new heights. All of us. And the chemistry that she's able to create with a houseplant, like she can do anything. But she and Seth genuinely had amazing chemistry.
1:35:01 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah.
1:35:02 Speaker 02 Like, it was so fun, everybody on set. Because one cool thing about this movie is we shot it in order. The crew was more invested than they typically are because they were watching it play out.
1:35:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:35:13 Speaker 02 So they were like, oh, oh, oh, what's gonna hap- oh, no. Like, they would watch the rehearsals and like clap at the end of rehearsals, like kids watching a theater production done in several different bits. Like, they were so invested. Everyone was feeling like, wait a minute, Seth and Penelope are in love.
1:35:27 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And maybe they were.
1:35:30 Speaker 02 They were in love and we heard it here first.
1:35:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:35:33 Speaker 02 It was so extraordinary to see the pairing of two very different actors. Just like, boom, clicking. And man, I mean, she just is unlike anyone else. The fact that she wanted to do the movie, I felt like I was being punked.
1:35:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Tell me, how'd you get her and how intimidated were you to guide her?
1:35:53 Speaker 02 First of all, on our Zoom that we had, she read the script written by Rashida Jones Wilde Cormick, and she loved the script.
1:36:00 Dax Shepard? It's also based on a Spanish movie?
1:36:01 Speaker 02 Yes. It was based on a Spanish movie called The People Upstairs, which in Spanish was called Sentimental. And that was based on a play. And this play turned into a movie in Spain. It was also made into a movie in South Korea, in Germany, in Italy, in France.
1:36:18 Speaker 01 It's so universal.
1:36:19 Speaker 02 It's a very universal premise.
1:36:21 Dax Shepard? We got sexy neighbors upstairs.
1:36:23 Speaker 02 Sexy neighbors upstairs.
1:36:23 Dax Shepard? They're coming over for dinner.
1:36:25 Speaker 02 What will happen? How will you handle that if your marriage is falling apart? I love the idea that every culture has this basic question. And every movie is very different. And so Rashida and Will wrote the English version. And then we approached it in this really fun way, which I'd never done before. It was always my dream to shoot it in order, shoot it on film, workshop the script together as a unit, the writers and the cast, for two weeks before we shot the film. And then to continue workshopping it as we were filming. That sort of like high intensity adrenaline that I love. The risk involved was that we would, I suppose,
1:37:08 Speaker 02 go off the rails and lose the tether of the story. And yet with these people, I knew we were safe because we had some of the best storytellers in the business putting their heads together. And I loved that we were taking big leaps and we were making it more and more specific. So like, we would approach every scene and think, how can we make that more personal and more specific and more unexpected?
1:37:33 Dax Shepard? I mean, the example I think about a lot is that Big Little Lies show.
1:37:37 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
1:37:37 Dax Shepard? When we got into that twisted relationship with Alexander Skarsgård and Nicole Kidman, I've never been in that dynamic. But what I could sense was, oh, this is the real dynamic. There was a level of specificity. And the way the pattern and the cycle went was like, oh, I get the trap of it.
1:37:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:37:56 Dax Shepard? And I can see how people are trapped in this.
1:37:58 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:37:59 Dax Shepard? And it's just through how specific it really was.
1:38:01 Speaker 02 Yes, I think that's when the actors are allowed to infuse real experience into the performance, into the characters. And that takes. Writers who are really open to a process that is not traditional. Because we were taking the script far from its original structure. And making it more and more specific to these actors and their choices. We were thinking about it as we went. We were very careful to make sure that everything's set up in an authentic way. What was coming next? And that everything that happened would only happen based on what had happened before. So like, we would finish a scene and then say, okay, well, then tomorrow's scene, we have to rewrite it because it would never happen that way anymore.
1:38:45 Dax Shepard? Right.
1:38:46 Speaker 02 Because we've already crossed that boundary. We played that beat, so now we have to do something different. So it was like constantly engaging in the process of workshopping the script as we went along. We didn't know how it ended a week before we shot it.
1:38:57 Speaker 01 Whoa.
1:38:58 Speaker 02 We had an idea of the intention of how we wanted to end. But the way we wanted to do it, Seth and I felt really strongly that we would actually not say very much in the end. And anyone who's ever been through and experienced that sort of creates an eruption, a conflict in a relationship, knows that sometimes the speechlessness is the most devastating feeling. Which we were so passionate about the idea, like people who are very quick to be snarky, you know, things have shifted when they actually can't say anything.
1:39:25 Dax Shepard? If you give me speechless, like some shit's hitting the fan.
1:39:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:39:28 Speaker 01 Because fighting, you're still engaged.
1:39:30 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:39:31 Speaker 01 Fighting is you're fighting. You're at least fighting for it in some way. But when you're done talking, you've resigned. You're done now.
1:39:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. This pause on the battlefield and it's like, oh no, this is different. So we were able to do that because we had this group of unbelievable. I mean, I've never felt anything like this dynamic. And I can't believe that I got to act with them, which was not the original plan. I was not supposed to be in the movie. I was putting all these ideas in front of the cast of like actresses who could play this part and all incredible people. And they kept like not getting back or like not answering, not coming up with a decision together. And I was like, well, guys, we gotta figure it out. And then they got together and then they came to me and they're like, we want you to do it.
1:40:12 Dax Shepard? The three other actors.
1:40:13 Speaker 02 And I was like, yeah, right. Weirdly, I had. The confidence to direct Edward Norton, but the idea of like acting with Edward and Penelope. I was like, are you kidding me? I can't, not me. And Edward was the one who was like, you obviously are telling the story for a reason.
1:40:30 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:40:31 Speaker 02 And maybe you need to play this character.
1:40:33 Dax Shepard? But who do you think you were in that quartet?
1:40:36 Speaker 02 Like, who am I?
1:40:37 Dax Shepard? Who are you really?
1:40:38 Speaker 02 I am a combination of all four of them, for sure. I have the kind of like resistance to social situations, like Seth's character. The idea of a surprise dinner party in my house is my personal hell.
1:40:49 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:40:49 Speaker 02 But I have some of the like people pleasing anxiety of Angela. In my dreams, I want to be like Penelope's character. So I think I have the aspiration to have the kind of wisdom of Penelope's character. And then Edward's character has this incredible ability to have reinvented himself and this kind of almost infant-like openness, this sweet kind of openness to change, which is something that as I've gotten older, I've learned. I'm a combo of all four.
1:41:13 Dax Shepard? Now, there's a very fine line between mutiny and collaboration.
1:41:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:41:19 Dax Shepard? Because Edward was telling me how much of you guys all did together, basically. And so I'm imagining myself directing that. Boy, I want just the right amount of them helping. And then it has to be a singular vision. I do believe a director has to bring to bear.
1:41:36 Speaker 02 And I think actors want that. They want to feel there's someone driving the ship.
1:41:40 Dax Shepard? So how are you navigating the line? It's like, okay, that's enough ideas for the day. I know what I want. You guys might not think this is the thing, but I know that this is what I want.
1:41:49 Speaker 02 They were all incredibly respectful of that exact thing, of the need for it to all.
1:41:55 Dax Shepard? You to be deferred to ultimately.
1:41:56 Speaker 02 So they would give me many ideas and then allow me to kind of say, that one feels right, that not so good.
1:42:03 Dax Shepard? Is that hard for you to say that one's not the best?
1:42:07 Speaker 02 Hmm, it's interesting. I think initially I just wanted everyone to feel really comfortable giving me every idea. It was like, give me everything, opening it up. But then I knew by the time we shot, I was like, at this point, I'm going to start kind of pruning the multiple ideas and say like, we're going there. But they also. Really respected that and would say like, what do you think? What do you want? I mean, it was so surreal for me. The first day Edward was like, what do you think? How do you think I should approach this moment? I was like, oh, my God. All I could see was like primal fear and be like, you're so good. They're all such professionals that they just understood that I had a very, very clear vision. It was not specific to how things would play out in scenes at all. I knew that was going to be a full discovery, but I did have like the intentions always in my head. And so they would check in to be like, is that fitting? The intention that you have for it? Does that feel right?
1:42:51 Speaker 02 And that was so, so professional of them to always kind of know that. They're all filmmakers too. I mean, they're all directors.
1:42:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:42:57 Speaker 02 So that helps. It was so far from a mutiny. It was a complete collaboration. I've never felt anything like it. It was like we were all in rhythm with each other. I hope Edward tells you the story, but he'll probably be overly humble about it. So I actually want to tell it was there's a scene where his character tells a story.
1:43:14 Dax Shepard? His backstory.
1:43:15 Speaker 02 His backstory.
1:43:16 Speaker 01 It's so good.
1:43:16 Speaker 02 And he came up with that entirely on his own. And I didn't hear that until we were rolling cameras because there was nothing there before. And we needed a ramp, an emotional ramp to take us from one place to another in the movie and to shift the weather in the room. Edward said, I have an idea. I want to tell a story. And he said, do you want to know what it is? And I said, don't tell me because I want to hear it on camera, which he couldn't believe, especially because we were rolling film, didn't have a lot of money. And I said, just tell me like roughly how long so I know what kind of mag I need on the cameras. He was like, do you think maybe you could have two cameras that day? Put them on you and set so we can film your real reactions? And I had no idea where he was going to go with it. And he started telling the story that was so different than anything I could have imagined.
1:43:59 Speaker 02 And I just burst out crying thinking about this. He was telling this story so powerful and he's so good.
1:44:06 Dax Shepard? Oh, he's so good.
1:44:06 Speaker 02 So convincing. You're like, this is a real story. This happened to you.
1:44:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:44:10 Speaker 02 I believe it. And Seth is having his completely different reaction, which is perfect for his character. It was such a gift. And now that's one of my favorite scenes in the movie.
1:44:19 Dax Shepard? Oh, it's incredible.
1:44:20 Speaker 02 And everyone was doing that.
1:44:21 Dax Shepard? Esther Perel is very present in this movie.
1:44:23 Speaker 02 Esther was our consultant on the film.
1:44:25 Dax Shepard? Okay. I mean, there's even direct quotes that Penelope is saying.
1:44:29 Speaker 02 Oh, yes.
1:44:29 Speaker 01 Esther's whole perspective is like her.
1:44:32 Speaker 02 Yes. And Penelope basically plays Esther.
1:44:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Had they had a friendship prior to this?
1:44:37 Speaker 02 No, I introduced them.
1:44:38 Dax Shepard? They feel perfectly matched.
1:44:39 Speaker 02 Oh, my gosh, I know. That's the podcast that I need. I need them to link up forever and ever. Penelope had heard of Esther, but she had never met her. And then I introduced them on Zoom and it was fireworks. And Penelope and Esther then had long conversations about the character. And every time they had a conversation, Penelope's character would get more specific. And I could feel her like slowly like morphing.
1:45:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:45:06 Speaker 02 And because Penelope in the movie is not at all Penelope in real life. She's just such a good actress that you'd believe that's exactly her. She is the sweetest, most kind of adorable, giggly, hilarious. But she's not Esther. And that is a huge testament to her talent. And those direct quotes you're talking about, really, they became like goalposts in the film that we were kind of working around these philosophies that we cared so deeply about that we wanted to be able to hit. So it was like making sure we could justify getting to that place in the conversation. So the whole idea of, yeah, you can have a new relationship with the same person. When I first heard her say that in a TED Talk, whatever it was, almost 20 years ago, that blew my mind. I had never even considered that concept. It's so beautiful.
1:45:51 Dax Shepard? It is, yeah. This relationship is over. You may have another one, or you may go your own separate ways.
1:45:57 Speaker 02 Right.
1:45:57 Dax Shepard? But a new one or no one is what's next.
1:46:00 Speaker 02 And allowing for that, that maybe that's something that can allow people to change within a relationship and let go of resentment for maybe things that have happened or the person you just don't want to be anymore. And that you're allowed to reintroduce yourself to each other and decide, are you in love with who your person is today?
1:46:18 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:46:18 Speaker 02 Would you like to meet them where they are now and have a relationship with them now?
1:46:21 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it's so hard for people.
1:46:23 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:46:24 Speaker 01 Of course, it's hard.
1:46:25 Speaker 02 It's hard because I think it takes a lot of courage to get rid of that resentment that is in some ways convenient because it takes away the agency to have responsibility in your own life. It's much easier to be like, ugh, this old ball and chain.
1:46:37 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone's in a relationship that the only flaw is the other person.
1:46:42 Speaker 02 Exactly.
1:46:42 Dax Shepard? We were just talking about this last night. So many people have this notion. That there are not two people doing the exact same thing.
1:46:47 Speaker 02 I mean, Esther talks about people come to couples therapy like they're doing drop off.
1:46:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:46:52 Speaker 02 Fix this person, please. Thank you. This is a 50 50 thing.
1:46:57 Dax Shepard? This is a system.
1:46:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:46:59 Dax Shepard? That you guys are both in.
1:47:00 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:47:00 Dax Shepard? And you're both playing roles in this system.
1:47:02 Speaker 02 I mean, Made in Captivity, that book, when Esther released it 20 years ago, because now it's a 20 year anniversary. And she's reissued it with a new foreword and it's fascinating. And I think it's required reading for anybody in relationships.
1:47:13 Dax Shepard? Or just listen to her podcast too, which is so mind blowing, the way she can just drop in to these most horrific scenarios that couples deal with and like navigate it perfectly.
1:47:24 Speaker 02 Did you hear the one she did about the guy who's in love with his AI?
1:47:28 Dax Shepard? Oh yeah. So I started listening to that one. It was recommended to me and I was having a hard time understanding the guy. Rough connection anyways, but yeah.
1:47:35 Speaker 02 It's wild and it's, it's so crazy that Spike Jonze made her, whatever was 15 years ago.
1:47:41 Dax Shepard? Which you were in.
1:47:41 Speaker 02 I play the like nightmare date with a human that really makes him think it'd be better to be with an AI.
1:47:47 Dax Shepard? Might just be easier.
1:47:49 Speaker 02 Yeah. He's like, nah, choose my phone. But I think that the way Esther takes that relationship apart, and by the end of the podcast episode, you actually think you're listening to a couple on a couch because she keeps inviting the AI to share.
1:48:01 Speaker 01 Stop.
1:48:02 Speaker 02 She's like.
1:48:03 Dax Shepard? She's so fucking open minded, the way she approaches this whole thing.
1:48:06 Speaker 02 Thing. It's open minded.
1:48:07 Dax Shepard? I know. Like my answer is to be like, dude, as convenient as this is, you gotta have a human partner.
1:48:12 Speaker 02 But she's curious about, is he getting what he needs? But when I asked her about it, she said, people can live without sex. They can't live without touch. And that that guy, when she asked him, what do you miss about having Astrid be human? And he said, I just want to like cuddle on the couch and watch Netflix.
1:48:27 Speaker 01 Yeah. I mean, this is so relatable.
1:48:30 Speaker 02 So relatable.
1:48:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:48:31 Speaker 02 And that's the thing. And the universal experience of like, how do we survive in relationships? That's what's been so interesting about taking this movie out now to audiences is people connect with it that I didn't expect to connect with it, like young people. We're all middle aged people.
1:48:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we've been through it.
1:48:49 Speaker 02 There's like 17 year olds watching the movie and they're like, oh, that's me. That is me. And I'm like, what?
1:48:54 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:48:55 Speaker 02 I was talking to these college kids and they were like, yeah, I felt really relevant. I'm like, really? That's fascinating.
1:48:59 Dax Shepard? Now, were you nervous at all that this is gonna open up so many questions about your stance on marriage? Are you open to that?
1:49:06 Speaker 02 I'm nervous at all. I'm interested in all those questions. And what was really fun is that everyone making the movie has completely different kind of relationship histories. And Seth and I, as the main couple in the film, you know, Seth has been with Lauren for 20 years. They are doing it their own way, in a way that I just so respect. They respect each other as individuals. They admire the hell out of each other. They are best friends, but they still have this really sexy dynamic. They're nailing it. It was really interesting to put him in a relationship that only made him more clear on why he was so in love with his wife and why.
1:49:43 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
1:49:43 Speaker 02 And he was like, oh my God, people live like this? Bickering and not having sex, which he couldn't believe that people don't have sex. It was so cute. He was like, what do you mean? This is science fiction. I think all of us were like pouring our own experiences into the pot in a way that was like therapy.
1:50:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah. I think the most romantic movie I've ever seen, or I cried the hardest of. And it was because I had broken up with the girls with for nine years and then I saw the movie. But Eternal Sunshine of the Spot was mine. It's really just the one exchange where they're deciding whether or not they're gonna be together again. She's like, I'm gonna do this and you're gonna get annoyed and I'm gonna do this and you're gonna do this. And he goes, okay.
1:50:22 Speaker 02 I know.
1:50:22 Dax Shepard? And I'm like, oh, fuck. I could have just said, okay? I could have like loved that and honored and appreciated that. I went into this whole zone where it's like, oh yeah, I met Bree when I was broke and we were in the tent with the light. Like, we had that relationship. Now I have money and I'm famous. Like, will I ever have anything that's that genuine? So in a weird way, that movie made me deeply sad.
1:50:47 Speaker 02 Oh, devastating.
1:50:47 Dax Shepard? I could relate to that, like, yeah, okay, I'll take all that, you know?
1:50:51 Speaker 02 Right, right.
1:50:52 Dax Shepard? So did yours give you any sadness at the end? Because you're a couple, well, we can't give away the end, but you know, there's hope in your story.
1:50:59 Speaker 02 Well, it's actually interesting you see it that way because it's sort of ambiguous by design.
1:51:03 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:51:04 Speaker 02 And, and the- Audiences we've taken it to so far, I do a little poll at the end in the Q and A, and it's been fifty fifty every time.
1:51:10 Speaker 01 I had an argument with someone about the end.
1:51:12 Speaker 02 That's great.
1:51:12 Speaker 01 I was like, no, I disagree with you.
1:51:15 Dax Shepard? That it's hopeful?
1:51:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:51:17 Speaker 02 Yes, and Seth and I disagreed when we were filming it. He was like, ride or die, felt like these people are together forever. He was so sure of it.
1:51:26 Dax Shepard? But isn't this, it's so obviously reflective of all of us in the room.
1:51:30 Speaker 02 Totally.
1:51:31 Dax Shepard? I believe, fuck, I've been doing this for nineteen years. There have been periods where it's like, I wouldn't have bet on us.
1:51:36 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:51:37 Dax Shepard? And then here we are.
1:51:38 Speaker 01 But you've also had breakups that you're like, yeah, that ran its course.
1:51:43 Speaker 02 That should have been the end, exactly.
1:51:45 Speaker 01 That was the end. And that, for me, is how I was like, that's done.
1:51:50 Speaker 02 Often when we see breakups in movies, it's devastating in a way that makes us afraid in life of ever seeing an ending as maybe a healthy result.
1:51:59 Speaker 01 Right.
1:52:00 Speaker 02 And we don't have a lot of movies about a divorce that should happen. I remember being amazed that Mrs. Doubtfire was made in the nineties, and it ends with them not getting back together.
1:52:11 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:52:12 Speaker 02 You think the whole movie like, okay, it's Hollywood.
1:52:14 Dax Shepard? This is gonna work.
1:52:15 Speaker 02 And the ending is just like, no, but they actually find a way to live separately really happily. And I think that was very bold for that time, but it's still something people are uncomfortable with, particularly when there's kids involved. There's still this idea that like, no, no, no, you make it work no matter what.
1:52:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:52:32 Speaker 02 And fifty percent of marriages end, so clearly there's a lot of people coming to a different conclusion. But can we kind of change the conversation around it? But what's interesting is that now, I've watched the movie so many times that I, at the end, sometimes I've started to feel like maybe I have hope. I'm like, oh, am I changing my opinion? Based on how I feel today? But offering the opportunity to end a relationship allows for you to make the choice to be in the relationship.
1:53:00 Dax Shepard? Uh huh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:53:01 Speaker 02 And I think that is very Astaire. This is a choice.
1:53:05 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:53:05 Speaker 02 And if people take away the obligation to be there and the resentment and the paperwork, and it's like, get rid of all that, that's all easily undone. You can get rid of that. You're allowed to leave, so if you're here. Make the choice to be here and actually be here or don't. And maybe that's okay.
1:53:18 Speaker 01 That's also okay.
1:53:19 Dax Shepard? But also, we have a good time pressure testing this relationship they're observing from upstairs.
1:53:25 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:53:25 Dax Shepard? That seems like a blast.
1:53:28 Speaker 02 Seems great.
1:53:29 Dax Shepard? But then, which I like, is you're truthful enough to go like, oh yeah, and then that has problems. All of this shit has problems.
1:53:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, conflict isn't the problem. It's the inability to be honest about it and resolve it. So we wanted to show an example of like rupture and repair.
1:53:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:53:45 Speaker 02 Because we're not saying like, you're only happy if you never fight. It's how you fight, how you recover from the fight. And fighting is actually really healthy if it's honest. And you're not letting this resentment build up over time and secrets and all those things that come if you don't communicate.
1:53:59 Dax Shepard? There's also this delightful thing, and I think a lot of people thought this about Bree and I, by the way, because we were in an open relationship all nine years. And I also think there's this thing, when you meet the couple that seems to be totally fine with everything. They're so intelligent. They have thought through everything and they're unaffected by all this. When you get to see those people affected.
1:54:17 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:54:17 Dax Shepard? It's really rewarding. It kind of confirms this hunch we have that no, no one can transcend those feelings. Now, I'm on the other side of that debate, right? Which is like, no, we really did and it was really fine. And I know everyone thought we were full of shit.
1:54:29 Speaker 02 Well, it's also very threatening to people to present the idea that it's possible.
1:54:34 Dax Shepard? That you could just love each other.
1:54:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, they don't even want to let that in to the room.
1:54:39 Dax Shepard? Well, because they know they've experienced jealousy before and it's just such a dark feeling.
1:54:44 Speaker 02 The best thing I ever heard about jealousy is that if you take, I'm ruining a Buddhist adage, but it's that if you take the ego out of jealousy, you're left with admiration. I think about it all the time. The other one is if you take the ego out of anger, you're left with determination. So it's not about like eliminating the feeling, it's transforming it by removing the ego from it. Which is so hard to do. But it's like, if you're jealous of somebody, it's usually because you actually admire them.
1:55:12 Dax Shepard? You recognize that they have an offering people would like.
1:55:16 Speaker 02 Also, another thing that's really from Meeting in Captivity, from Esther's book, is the recognition of the third. She calls it the shadow of the third, which is that when you're in a relationship with someone, it's important to recognize the opportunity they have to be with someone else. And that's not a bad thing. It actually keeps the erotic charge alive. If you remove that.
1:55:38 Speaker 02 Then you lose this kind of separateness that is important.
1:55:42 Dax Shepard? You've traded safety, what you think is safety, for death.
1:55:46 Speaker 02 Exactly. The idea of like acknowledging maybe if jealousy is just a useful way to be like, you are desirable.
1:55:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:55:54 Speaker 02 And you desire others and that's actually a charge I don't want you to lose. I don't want you to not have that. Polyamory is a whole other step in that direction.
1:56:02 Dax Shepard? I'm critical. I'm just like, I want to see this work out.
1:56:06 Speaker 02 Right.
1:56:06 Dax Shepard? I know how hard one relationship is. I don't know.
1:56:09 Speaker 02 That's the thing.
1:56:09 Dax Shepard? Multiple people.
1:56:10 Speaker 02 For me, it sounds exhausting.
1:56:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah, our thing was like, if I never know about something, I don't care.
1:56:15 Speaker 02 That's amazing.
1:56:16 Dax Shepard? And that worked great for us.
1:56:17 Speaker 01 Until it didn't. I always have to say that.
1:56:19 Speaker 02 But nine years is a long time.
1:56:21 Dax Shepard? Well, we broke up. I don't think that is, the reason I feel guilt free framing it that way is that just wasn't.
1:56:27 Speaker 02 It wasn't the thing that ended.
1:56:27 Dax Shepard? It wasn't the thing that ended us.
1:56:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, which people would probably assume.
1:56:30 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:56:31 Speaker 02 Think of how many couples were so happy when you guys broke up.
1:56:33 Dax Shepard? Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure.
1:56:35 Speaker 02 They're like, yes, I knew it'd see.
1:56:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:56:38 Speaker 02 We talk about also the concept of compersion in the movie, which is also an hysterical thing.
1:56:42 Dax Shepard? What's compersion?
1:56:43 Speaker 02 Compersion is experiencing joy within your partner's joy. And we're using specifically in terms of like sexuality. So they say they transferred jealousy into compersion. The idea of if you are being sexually pleased and that I'm experiencing it because you are. Seth and my characters, we were like, what on earth? We can't imagine. But I think that this whole point of this is we stop recognizing our partners as whole people. And we stop recognizing ourselves as whole people.
1:57:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:57:11 Speaker 02 And I want people to leave the movie feeling like, am I blaming my partner for all my unhappiness? Am I fully realized whole person? Have I really thought about myself in that way? Not just someone who completes someone else or someone who needs to be completed. Do I recognize my person as a separate person? And I think that would be a healthy thing to put out there.
1:57:30 Dax Shepard? A good line of thinking that's useful.
1:57:33 Speaker 02 I feel like with comedy, my favorite kind of laugh is the laugh of someone recognizing themselves. And the sense of like, oh my God, I thought I was the only one. And you can hear it in the theater when they're like, ah. And it's like, that's the best because. It takes the shame out of an experience and you get the sense that people are less alone and they're just like, we're getting to laugh at how ridiculous we all are. And the movie is really just having fun with that. It's like, look, we're all just awkward humans attempting to relate to each other.
1:58:04 Speaker 01 Coincidence.
1:58:05 Speaker 02 It's impossible.
1:58:07 Dax Shepard? Olivia, I have had you for so long.
1:58:10 Speaker 02 And this is your second, this is your second of the day.
1:58:13 Dax Shepard? Oh, that's okay.
1:58:13 Speaker 01 Thank you so much.
1:58:15 Speaker 02 Oh, such a joy.
1:58:16 Dax Shepard? I think you're so good. I'm so excited to watch all the movies you'll make.
1:58:20 Speaker 02 Thanks.
1:58:21 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I'm really a huge fan.
1:58:23 Speaker 02 I'm so grateful and I feel like when I heard that you guys liked it, it was very exciting because I think there's this feeling of like very, very funny, talented people can be very critical of comedies.
1:58:35 Dax Shepard? Sure.
1:58:36 Speaker 02 So it meant a lot to me when I heard you liked it.
1:58:38 Dax Shepard? It's so good. It comes out June 26th.
1:58:42 Speaker 02 June 26th in New York and LA.
1:58:43 Dax Shepard? Six two, six two.
1:58:44 Speaker 02 Kind of cool, right?
1:58:45 Dax Shepard? Six two, six two, six.
1:58:47 Speaker 02 I wish that was like a hidden clue, like it was, it was like a Taylor Swift thing where like.
1:58:51 Dax Shepard? You could unlock front row seats or something.
1:58:53 Speaker 02 Will lead you to a show. No, it's New York and LA, June 26th. And then it goes wider from there. So it's fully wide July 10th.
1:59:01 Dax Shepard? Okay, July 10th. Great. Get your 4th of July blackouts done.
1:59:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:59:05 Dax Shepard? And then when you're just thinking like, I gotta tighten it up this summer. Maybe I'll go to a movie instead of blacking out tonight.
1:59:11 Speaker 02 It's a great date night movie and I think it's a great double date movie. And my fantasy is that people such as yourselves will go and swing. But people will think like, who's the other fun couple you know to go see it with? And then have dinner and talk and argue.
1:59:28 Speaker 01 It'll spark so much conversation.
1:59:30 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah.
1:59:31 Speaker 01 It really will. It's great.
1:59:32 Dax Shepard? I think that's assured. Olivia, this has been a blast. I'm so grateful you said yes.
1:59:35 Speaker 01 Thanks for coming.
1:59:36 Speaker 02 Thank you.
1:59:36 Dax Shepard? And the next movie you direct, we'll do it again.
1:59:39 Speaker 02 Sweet deal. Thank you.
1:59:42 Speaker 02 Stay tuned for the fact check so you can hear all the facts.
1:59:46 Dax Shepard? We're wrong.
1:59:51 Speaker 01 Oh, thank you, Rob. Moved my coffee over.
1:59:54 Dax Shepard? Oh, he's a very thoughtful boy.
1:59:56 Speaker 01 Very, very nice. We did something earlier. We tested a theory.
2:00:02 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah. We were between, we were between recordings and um, I hate to admit to this, but I was very, very tired. And then I just, soon as the episode was over, I just laid down on the carpet, face down in the studio. And then I said, if I were on railroad tracks and I was unconscious, non-responsive, could you move me off the railroad tracks?
2:00:27 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I said, of course.
2:00:29 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you were like, no problem. And then I said, okay, give it a shot. I want to tread lightly here. I want to be honest, but I also don't want to hurt your feelings.
2:00:37 Speaker 01 Go ahead.
2:00:38 Dax Shepard? I was like, is she even trying to lift me up?
2:00:42 Speaker 01 Fuck.
2:00:43 Dax Shepard? I was, I knew I wasn't going anywhere. Like from when you first gave it your first thrust, you're, you get, you went for it. And I didn't move at all. And I didn't come off the ground at all.
2:00:52 Speaker 01 You didn't even, it was weird how little you moved.
2:00:54 Dax Shepard? She's not even gonna be able to give me an inch off these tracks. Like, you know, I gave up immediately.
2:01:00 Speaker 01 It was really pretty bad.
2:01:02 Dax Shepard? It was pretty bad.
2:01:03 Speaker 01 Really like could not get you to move at all.
2:01:06 Dax Shepard? And I wasn't doing anything sneaky. I was just laying there.
2:01:09 Speaker 01 I know.
2:01:10 Dax Shepard? And then.
2:01:11 Speaker 01 You're so heavy.
2:01:12 Dax Shepard? Yes. And then we went up to see Lincoln in the gym.
2:01:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:01:15 Dax Shepard? And um, you said.
2:01:17 Speaker 01 She tried it.
2:01:18 Dax Shepard? But you kept saying, which I think is hilarious is you're like, it's fine though, because you get super strength.
2:01:22 Speaker 01 I do. I'm like, when we're really in this position, I'm gonna get super strength.
2:01:26 Dax Shepard? I know. You're certain of it. And I, I'm nervous. A lot of people think, they hear about the one story from the 50s where a mom lifted a car off a baby or whatever.
2:01:34 Speaker 01 So often, the moms always can lift the car off the kids.
2:01:38 Dax Shepard? But yeah, you're so confident. You're not even worried.
2:01:40 Speaker 01 I'm not.
2:01:41 Dax Shepard? Which is, that scares me.
2:01:44 Speaker 01 Well, I mean.
2:01:46 Dax Shepard? Lincoln did better.
2:01:47 Speaker 01 She'd, no, but I wanted, I also want to say something.
2:01:50 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:01:50 Speaker 01 I was like, well, if we're really doing this like for real role play, I can't do for real what I would do because I would just be yanking your arm like out of its socket.
2:01:59 Dax Shepard? Yeah, great.
2:01:59 Speaker 01 And I knew I couldn't, so I couldn't give it my full. I also didn't want to scrape up your whole face.
2:02:04 Dax Shepard? I was on carpet, but okay.
2:02:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, but ow, rug burn.
2:02:07 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:02:07 Speaker 01 Um, and I know that and I know you'd be upset if I scraped.
2:02:10 Dax Shepard? Oh my God, you don't know anything.
2:02:11 Speaker 01 I do know.
2:02:12 Dax Shepard? I wouldn't be upset. I wouldn't even acknowledge my face was scraped. I almost, I couldn't admit I was tired. What are you talking about? I'm not, I wouldn't have been like, ow, Monica, would you, you think you'd ever hear me do that?
2:02:24 Speaker 01 Of course. I mean, it happened five minutes later. We were up.
2:02:27 Dax Shepard? Oh shit, it did. You make a great point, but that's my child.
2:02:32 Speaker 01 Either it hurt you. So then we asked her to do it. She really got in the most. She didn't do what I did, which was half strength.
2:02:38 Dax Shepard? She thought about it a little. Maybe it's from her 18 months of jujitsu training.
2:02:42 Speaker 01 Jujitsu, yeah.
2:02:43 Dax Shepard? But she immediately thought to just grab one arm and get me rolling. Like, don't, don't try to lift me, but roll me.
2:02:48 Speaker 01 I did say before we went up there, I said, it was hard because you were on your stomach and I would want you on your back.
2:02:54 Dax Shepard? But you gotta get me on my back, that's part of the challenge. And then, um, yeah, Lincoln was so keen to impress you that she was running into me, like not looking where her feet were going. And she got, um, my side of my, um, side skin, which is very tender, in between the rubber mat and her fucking tennis shoe sole.
2:03:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:03:14 Dax Shepard? And it felt like she ripped all the skin off my sides. And I did say ow, the second time.
2:03:21 Speaker 01 No, you said ow the first time and then you said, ow, that's the second and you, you, you did have.
2:03:26 Dax Shepard? I was like, stop that. That's two for two.
2:03:28 Speaker 01 Yeah. And I was like, this is why I only went half strength.
2:03:31 Dax Shepard? I lost that one, but it did, really did hurt.
2:03:33 Speaker 01 I know, I'm sure it did. But listen, if you're on the railroad tracks, um, I'm gonna, you won't feel it because you'll be non-responsive as you said, but you're gonna be very injured after that.
2:03:45 Dax Shepard? What have you said? You're gonna be very happy with where you wake up. You're not gonna be on the tracks. After Monica tried for a few times, I was like, that's it. You're gonna, I'm in three pieces. Like.
2:03:59 Speaker 01 Well, you know what?
2:03:59 Dax Shepard? I was also making the stakes hikes. I was going.
2:04:02 Speaker 01 I know. That was really scary. I hated that. You know what, though? You know, do I would die too, cuz I wouldn't give up.
2:04:12 Dax Shepard? You'd have to give up.
2:04:13 Speaker 01 No, I wouldn't. I would just keep.
2:04:14 Dax Shepard? You'd stay there.
2:04:15 Speaker 01 I wouldn't know by superhuman strength would happen at the last minute. In the movies, it always happens at the last minute.
2:04:20 Dax Shepard? It does, yeah.
2:04:20 Speaker 01 So I would be like, it's okay, it's gonna happen at the last minute. And then we both get dead.
2:04:26 Dax Shepard? This does remind me of, and I know you've heard it, but Aaron and I's death pact, which is if I die first, he's obligated as the funeral. The funeral will be held at a railroad crossing.
2:04:38 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
2:04:39 Dax Shepard? And he's going to put me in a full Superman outfit. And then put me in a chair and tie me with rope to the chair. And then when the train's coming, you're, you're like, it's no problem. It's Superman. He'll, he'll get out of those ropes. But, but, and then I just get smashed. It would be such a good joke.
2:04:56 Speaker 01 No, it's a bad.
2:04:56 Dax Shepard? It's so funny visually.
2:04:58 Speaker 01 In this case, you've already been hit by, I think you need a plan B in case you, you do die by railroad track.
2:05:04 Dax Shepard? Oh, I would then need a different, yeah, we'd have to go to.
2:05:06 Speaker 01 You need a different.
2:05:07 Dax Shepard? We have backup plans for that, actually. You know, there's, there's three different scenarios.
2:05:13 Speaker 01 Oh, my God, I hate this.
2:05:15 Dax Shepard? You know, the, the dream is we die at the same time.
2:05:18 Speaker 01 I don't like this.
2:05:19 Dax Shepard? And then our, in our funeral, we, we have opposing cannons that are a hundred yards apart.
2:05:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:05:25 Dax Shepard? Again, we're in superhero outfits.
2:05:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:05:27 Dax Shepard? And they explode the cannons and we're flying through the air. You're like, it's a bird, it's a bird. Look at, we would look like superheroes in our capes and everything, flying. But then we would collide midair.
2:05:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:05:39 Dax Shepard? And then we would just fall like wet sacks of cement. It's what a joke that would be. So funny.
2:05:46 Speaker 01 So funny.
2:05:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah, really funny stuff.
2:05:48 Speaker 01 Oh, my God, so funny.
2:05:49 Dax Shepard? The whole family would be laughing, I think.
2:05:50 Speaker 01 They'd be laughing so hard. See, fly across, your dead body fly across the air and collide.
2:05:56 Dax Shepard? Into the air and smack into Aaron's.
2:05:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, hilarious.
2:06:00 Dax Shepard? To the ground.
2:06:00 Speaker 01 Hilarious.
2:06:01 Dax Shepard? And then everyone just turns and gets back in their car and leaves.
2:06:03 Speaker 01 I hope.
2:06:04 Dax Shepard? That's in a field, yeah.
2:06:04 Speaker 01 But then, no, somebody has to like clean that up.
2:06:07 Dax Shepard? No, leave it out for the scavengers, for the jackals and the coyotes. Just had a brainstorm.
2:06:12 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:06:13 Dax Shepard? You get, you can on your license elect to donate your body to science and to organ donation.
2:06:21 Dax Shepard? Would you donate your corpse to get eaten by a polar bear?
2:06:26 Speaker 01 Well, have they taken my organs out and given them to people?
2:06:28 Dax Shepard? Sure.
2:06:29 Speaker 01 Then yeah.
2:06:30 Dax Shepard? Yeah, wouldn't that be great?
2:06:31 Speaker 01 Well, I don't know if it'd be great, but I just don't care.
2:06:34 Dax Shepard? Think I'll stoke the polar bear. It's like you want to at the zoo. And then they just throw this, they throw your corpse in there.
2:06:40 Speaker 01 Oh.
2:06:41 Dax Shepard? That's such a sweet gift to that polar bear.
2:06:43 Speaker 01 I mean, yeah, I don't really care about the vessel, you know, afterwards. But I do want to give my organs to people.
2:06:51 Dax Shepard? This is a fun topic because we just watched that crazy documentary about the woman.
2:06:59 Speaker 01 I haven't seen it yet, but my parents have seen it.
2:07:01 Dax Shepard? Moon Chauvin.
2:07:02 Speaker 01 I know. Do we want to spoil it for people?
2:07:05 Dax Shepard? No, just, I guess, this is inadvertently. Anyways, at the end of the thing, which we watched with the family, the kids were asking me about like, how do they kill people when you get sentenced to death? And I was like, well, you've got electric chair. I think is still functional, maybe in a state or two. Lethal injection, most common, and then firing squad still.
2:07:28 Speaker 01 This comes up in an episode too soon.
2:07:31 Dax Shepard? Oh, right. I probably made the same point in that episode, which is that's my pick by far.
2:07:36 Speaker 01 I think that's crazy.
2:07:37 Dax Shepard? Well, I'll tell you why.
2:07:40 Dax Shepard? The bullets moving faster than the speed of sound. Did you know that's actually the bang you're hearing in a gun? You're hearing some bang from the gunpowder, but the big bang is when it breaks the sound barrier.
2:07:53 Speaker 01 Oh.
2:07:53 Dax Shepard? Isn't that cool?
2:07:54 Speaker 01 That is cool.
2:07:55 Dax Shepard? So you're standing there, the bullets traveling faster than the speed of sound. You would never even hear the gun go off. You'd be standing there like, thinking like, oh, this sucks. This is how I'm gonna go. And then that's that. There's, you're not watching someone hit a syringe to initiate the lethal injection. You're not watching a guy go over to that fucking archaic switch on the wall for their electric chair.
2:08:17 Speaker 01 I just hate it all. I hate it.
2:08:20 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:08:20 Speaker 01 I hate it.
2:08:21 Dax Shepard? It was fun for me because the kids are now, I mean, you you'll remember, right? High school is probably the first place they have you debate the death penalty, as as I recall.
2:08:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, I don't remember the first.
2:08:31 Dax Shepard? It's a very like, it's a perfect philosophical debate to launch onto young minds.
2:08:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:08:37 Dax Shepard? And I had a very specific opinion in high school.
2:08:40 Speaker 01 Me too.
2:08:41 Dax Shepard? That I don't now have.
2:08:42 Speaker 01 Me too.
2:08:42 Dax Shepard? Oh, interesting. So were you pro death penalty in high school?
2:08:45 Speaker 01 I was.
2:08:46 Dax Shepard? Yeah. So what changed your mind?
2:08:47 Speaker 01 I just learned about the world. I mean, one is I've learned, well, too many people could be innocent.
2:08:57 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
2:08:57 Speaker 01 And I'm too afraid of that.
2:08:59 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:08:59 Speaker 01 I recognize that there is less choice in the matter than I used to think. Like, I used to just think, like, everyone was making these bad decisions and bad choices.
2:09:10 Dax Shepard? Everyone had the same childhood as you did, and then they made the decision with your brain.
2:09:13 Speaker 01 Exactly. And it's like, oh, no, like, all of this is is a crap shoot, and sometimes things happen.
2:09:20 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:09:21 Speaker 01 And, yeah, if I do it, I've made a choice.
2:09:24 Dax Shepard? Right, right, right, right.
2:09:25 Speaker 01 And a bad one, and maybe I should be killed for that.
2:09:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:09:28 Speaker 01 But I can't, I can't.
2:09:32 Dax Shepard? People don't have that same faculty, yeah.
2:09:34 Speaker 01 So I'm just against it.
2:09:35 Dax Shepard? Mine was fiscal. So my whole point, and when I was a senior, I remember debating people often about it, was, okay, we're spending thirty thousand dollars a year to keep someone incarcerated. So this man has just butchered this family, and we're gonna go spend thirty thousand a year to keep this piece of shit alive, when we could be giving that thirty thousand to, like, the fucking inner-city kid who's got no leg up. I was just like, why, why, of of our limited resources, why on earth do we honor this fucking person?
2:10:09 Dax Shepard? But what changed my mind is I learned that almost all death row inmates will exhaust all of the legal moves they can make. So they're entitled to X amount of appeals. They can do clemency declarations, all this stuff, all told. I forget the number exactly, but all told, the average legal expense incurred from someone on death row by the time they put them to death is like over a million dollars. And the second I heard that I was like, okay, well then my normal objection doesn't even make sense. That's even more money we're spending on the monster who murdered everyone. And I did always object to the notion of killing someone to show that killing is wrong.
2:10:54 Dax Shepard? It just always felt like a flawed premise. Yeah, it just felt like, how can that be a premise?
2:10:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:11:00 Dax Shepard? But if I were right, like if you got sentenced to death, they knew it was the person.
2:11:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:11:04 Dax Shepard? And they killed them the next day. I think I would be in favor of not spending $450,000 on a person who butchered someone's family over the other people that could benefit from it.
2:11:19 Speaker 01 It's hard.
2:11:20 Dax Shepard? It is.
2:11:20 Speaker 01 I just.
2:11:21 Dax Shepard? Also, there's some cases where, I forget what case we were just watching, and they weren't getting the death penalty. And I was like, what's weird is this person is in so much discomfort with their psychosis and their mental health issues. It feels almost more torturous to keep this person alive for another 35 years to suffer in prison.
2:11:42 Speaker 01 I used to also say that. I used to say like, I think it's worse for them to be in prison. Like if they, if they, if you really want punishment, death isn't really a punishment for them.
2:11:51 Dax Shepard? If you want them to suffer.
2:11:52 Speaker 01 Yeah. But, so I used to also say that. I now no longer really feel like that. Like, I don't think suffer.
2:11:59 Dax Shepard? Yeah, punitive.
2:11:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. I don't really want anyone to suffer on this earth.
2:12:02 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I don't want to hurt the people that hurt people.
2:12:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:12:05 Dax Shepard? I just want to keep them away from.
2:12:07 Speaker 01 Everyone.
2:12:07 Dax Shepard? Everyone, yeah.
2:12:09 Speaker 01 Which I guess some people would say then, yeah, remove the, I just, I can't, like, I can't get on board with.
2:12:16 Dax Shepard? It's messy. The bottom line is it's so fucking messy because I'm of the same opinion as you are. And then I just, we just interviewed someone who it's like the fucking person was out for five days on parole after raping a bunch of other people and fucking breaks into it. It's like.
2:12:28 Speaker 01 I know.
2:12:28 Dax Shepard? Then there's that. So it's like, ah. It's so inconvenient.
2:12:32 Speaker 01 I know, it is.
2:12:33 Dax Shepard? And that's why the people who want them thrown away forever, they have, you know,
2:12:37 Speaker 01 I understand.
2:12:39 Dax Shepard? We've got a bunch of innocent people that didn't belong there, or their circumstances, we're gonna land them there no matter what. So we have a, we have a healthy dose of people we can point to for that. And then the people on the other side, they're gonna have a really healthy dose of the people that were let out and then immediately killed more people.
2:12:53 Speaker 01 I know. It's just, if, unfortunately, you have to choose the lesser of, what do you want this country to be? Against people who are innocent in jail, or people who are guilty out? And like-
2:13:07 Dax Shepard? Killing innocent people sometimes.
2:13:09 Speaker 01 Sometimes, which is-
2:13:12 Dax Shepard? It's just, I think that's more, to me, the solution is more about that. Each side admitting that, than one side or the other getting their way. It's just like, let's, let's just all acknowledge, this is fucking really messy. And it's not great when the person that could have been better, uh, doesn't get to be. You can see that. If you're on the, you know, throw the, throw away the key side of the argument, even they would be able to acknowledge for the person who got out and turned their life around and never hurt anyone again. It would be a shame to keep that person. You know, like, everyone could admit what's going on on both sides. And start with the notion, like, whatever solution we agree upon, it's gonna be very far from perfect. And we have to accept that to some degree.
2:13:57 Speaker 01 Yes, I think we do. But you know, I am not, like, I'm a, I'm a pretty fearful person. And I also think that's where people who, well, there's two, there's a lot of variables. But I think fearful people are often for it.
2:14:15 Dax Shepard? Uh huh, yeah.
2:14:16 Speaker 01 Because it's like, just get rid of them.
2:14:18 Dax Shepard? Scary people, the better, yeah. Flush them down the toilet.
2:14:20 Speaker 01 Doesn't matter. The tiny chance that they could come out and do something, like, no, not worth it. Um, so I think that's also part of why I used to want it. Of just like, no, that's like a bad guy. They got, why wouldn't you just kill them?
2:14:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah, let's just get rid of them.
2:14:35 Speaker 01 Um, and now I'm like, I don't know, maybe I'm just less scared.
2:14:39 Dax Shepard? Hmm.
2:14:41 Speaker 01 I'm not scared at all anymore.
2:14:43 Dax Shepard? Oh, congratulations. That was quick.
2:14:46 Speaker 01 It's really quick.
2:14:47 Dax Shepard? I didn't even see all the baby steps. It just like went from fearful to not fearful at all.
2:14:54 Speaker 01 No, I just-
2:14:55 Dax Shepard? You should write a book on how to overcome fear.
2:14:59 Speaker 03 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.
2:15:12 Speaker 01 I have overcome a lot of fear, I think.
2:15:15 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:15:15 Speaker 01 Not, I'm not cured.
2:15:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:15:18 Speaker 01 But I think a healthy dose of fear is okay. But.
2:15:21 Dax Shepard? Whatever you're doing is great.
2:15:22 Speaker 01 I think it's great. But anyhow, I just don't, well, what did they, what did the kids say? Did you ask them about this?
2:15:29 Dax Shepard? That's why it became a conversation because I was interested and fascinated with the notion that Lincoln was very much like, yeah, that person should probably get.
2:15:40 Speaker 01 He did.
2:15:40 Dax Shepard? Yeah. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Tell me more about that, you know?
2:15:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:15:44 Dax Shepard? And then I got to say my whole journey with my opinion on it, you know? But I did think, I left it thinking like, I wonder if that's just a more natural conclusion for kids or when you're young.
2:15:55 Speaker 01 Exactly. Exactly. But again, because life is a little more black and white when you're young.
2:16:01 Dax Shepard? Yeah, they're good and bad and.
2:16:03 Speaker 01 And you see such, you can't have the nuance and the exposure to like other people's experiences and how people got where they got and all.
2:16:13 Dax Shepard? And they're tiny and scared.
2:16:15 Speaker 01 Of course. Yeah, it's scary. But my, my parents watched it. I haven't watched it yet, but they, we were chatting on the phone last week and they're like, have you seen this thing? You shouldn't watch it. This is what happens. I was like, oh, my God. Okay.
2:16:29 Dax Shepard? You shouldn't watch it. This is what.
2:16:31 Speaker 01 You know, she was like, she's being sentenced to death. And I was like, oof, like I, that was my reaction. I was like, ooh. And she said, as she should.
2:16:41 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
2:16:42 Speaker 01 And I was like, look, I, I get it. I get it.
2:16:46 Dax Shepard? It's, it's about as.
2:16:48 Speaker 01 It's as dark as you can get.
2:16:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:16:50 Speaker 01 It is. I mean, it's.
2:16:51 Dax Shepard? Dear Zachary, still much worse, but it's on the, it's on the far end of the spectrum.
2:16:56 Speaker 01 Should the mom did it?
2:16:58 Dax Shepard? The woman had like killed her husband and then the friend came to make like a video to pass on to their child.
2:17:08 Dax Shepard? And while he's making this like video trying to, he's a documentarian, his friend.
2:17:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:17:12 Dax Shepard? And as he's trying to build this whole story of his life so that the kid will know who his dad is.
2:17:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:17:18 Dax Shepard? He starts kind of realizing that the wife killed him.
2:17:21 Speaker 01 Right.
2:17:22 Dax Shepard? And then this custody battle ensues and then the end, she herself. And yeah, it's, it's so brutal and I, and it's like, yeah, it's.
2:17:36 Speaker 01 Also the guy who put his kids in the water tower, killed them, put them in the water tower. Do you know that story?
2:17:44 Dax Shepard? I don't know about that guy.
2:17:45 Speaker 01 Oh my God. Just like.
2:17:48 Dax Shepard? What is happening out there?
2:17:49 Speaker 01 It is, it's, it's horrific. Anyway, um, so they told me and then she was, you know, happy that she was.
2:17:58 Dax Shepard? Gonna be killed.
2:17:59 Speaker 01 That was her sentence. Yeah. And I was like, um, and you know what? Yeah. Different opinions and I respect, I get it.
2:18:07 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
2:18:08 Speaker 01 Um, but then.
2:18:09 Dax Shepard? And I always want to say this, cause I think a common response is like, what if you're, let me be clear. If someone fucks with my family, I want them dead.
2:18:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:18:18 Dax Shepard? I'm not claiming that I wouldn't personally want them and be happy if they were killed.
2:18:23 Speaker 01 I agree.
2:18:24 Dax Shepard? Anyone who hurt my family.
2:18:25 Speaker 01 I agree.
2:18:25 Dax Shepard? But I think societally, we can do better than what we individually would want.
2:18:29 Speaker 01 I also am for like, obviously I'm not like, this woman should never get out of prison. I'm like, she should never have the ability to get out. Like it's not, I don't. But I don't feel unsafe knowing she's in there for life. Like I'm not.
2:18:47 Dax Shepard? Right.
2:18:48 Speaker 01 You know?
2:18:48 Dax Shepard? She weirdly was the person that I was like, is it more torturous?
2:18:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:18:52 Dax Shepard? Like this person is in such a fucking, totally different reality than everyone else is. That I just don't, I don't know. I don't know how this person recovers in any way.
2:19:08 Speaker 01 I mean, you also have to look at the like, that woman has children, right?
2:19:13 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that she didn't raise or have anything to do with.
2:19:16 Speaker 01 Sure. But I just mean, that person has children and that regardless of how fucking horrific their parent is, you are passing down trauma by murdering them.
2:19:32 Speaker 01 And they're already so fucked up, I'm sure.
2:19:35 Dax Shepard? They're already the kids in town whose mom did this thing.
2:19:38 Speaker 01 Exactly. They're already had like the biggest uphill battle.
2:19:42 Dax Shepard? Scarlet rotters. Yeah.
2:19:42 Speaker 01 And then you add this, and it's just like, it's just, they're, it's not just the one person. Like, there are repercussions. And I just wish we could just, like, get ahead of all of this mental illness.
2:19:56 Dax Shepard? Yes, that would be great. But back to, I don't know, I don't really know how to say it. I know what I feel about it, and I know, I can feel it very strongly, that part of our problem is people have not admitted what's possible to themselves. They want perfection. They want a policy. They want a law. They want some government action that's just gonna be perfect. That their people won't get accidentally shot and people won't, you know? And I think the more you have that view of the world, the less you can compromise or be flexible because you believe in a fairy tale. You believe there's a version that's gonna be, there's not gonna be a version where we police citizens, which has to be done.
2:20:40 Dax Shepard? That shit's not gonna go sideways.
2:20:42 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:20:42 Dax Shepard? It's just, that's the reality of it.
2:20:45 Speaker 01 That is the reality.
2:20:45 Dax Shepard? So let's work backwards on our solution with us all admitting this first.
2:20:50 Speaker 01 It can still be worked, and it should, to minimize
2:20:54 Dax Shepard? Of course.
2:20:55 Speaker 01 the wreckage and the accidents and the things like that. And there are things, I think when people are, well, a lot of people are upset for a million reasons. But when people are upset, it's because they feel there isn't enough being done prevention-wise for things. Yes, things go wrong and things will always.
2:21:14 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:21:14 Speaker 01 But when it's like, repeated, or it's the same thing happening over and over again, or there's ish, you know?
2:21:20 Dax Shepard? Yeah, when it is the results of a system that's flawed and it's producing those results, then yeah, you gotta tinker with the system.
2:21:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:21:27 Dax Shepard? But I'm saying, even when we, when AI designs the system, right? Where it is the most efficient, best, in that event, you know, these Waymos are still gonna crash.
2:21:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:21:38 Dax Shepard? Right?
2:21:39 Speaker 01 They are, no.
2:21:40 Dax Shepard? There's like, no, there's no world in which vehicles aren't gonna crash, even when robots are driving them.
2:21:44 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:21:45 Dax Shepard? So, I don't know. I don't know what I'm trying to say, other than, I just think it, it, It creates a situation where you could never meet in the middle because you think something's possible that's not possible on both sides.
2:22:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
2:22:03 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:22:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:22:05 Dax Shepard? Want to do some facts? Want a fact about it?
2:22:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, let's do some facts. Sorry, Olivia, that this was so death heavy.
2:22:14 Dax Shepard? Real downer, huh?
2:22:17 Speaker 01 I mean, look, this, we just, we interviewed someone yesterday with a fucking crazy.
2:22:24 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah.
2:22:24 Speaker 01 Story. I really hope everyone listens to that one. It is so inspiring and it is so, I guess that it's like, how can you hear that story? I mean, he wasn't on death row, but like.
2:22:35 Dax Shepard? He could, he could have been.
2:22:36 Speaker 01 He could have been. And how can you hear that and also hear this person like speaking, being brilliant?
2:22:43 Dax Shepard? Yep.
2:22:44 Speaker 01 And think like, that's someone to throw away. Like, it's very.
2:22:49 Dax Shepard? It's a great counterfactual to all the.
2:22:51 Speaker 01 It's, yeah. There were a few in there. There were, he, I mean, I guess we'll save it for, oh, will it come out? We're not doing a fact check? Probably. Damn. Well, we should say that. So we're doing a little fun thing this summer.
2:23:08 Dax Shepard? Yes, yes, yes.
2:23:09 Speaker 01 We are going to, we asked you guys what your, some of your favorite old fact checks were, some classics.
2:23:16 Dax Shepard? Some blast from the past, perhaps some origins of lexicon that.
2:23:21 Speaker 01 Exactly.
2:23:21 Dax Shepard? Who knows how you catch up at this.
2:23:23 Speaker 01 P baby.
2:23:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:23:24 Speaker 01 Um, so, so we're going to rerun some old fact checks this summer.
2:23:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:23:29 Speaker 01 Um, and.
2:23:30 Dax Shepard? Curated by the Armcherry's favorite fact checks.
2:23:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, that'll be fun.
2:23:33 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:23:34 Speaker 01 Um, so sorry, you won't get facts for the next little bit.
2:23:38 Dax Shepard? Yep.
2:23:39 Speaker 01 And that's, when we get back, though, we'll have so many stories.
2:23:43 Dax Shepard? Well, too many stories.
2:23:44 Speaker 01 Way too many stories. All right, Olivia. Origin of Cockburn Last Name.
2:23:50 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
2:23:51 Speaker 01 The last name has Scottish origin, but it pulls from the British word cock, meaning, C O C C, meaning wild bird and Burna, meaning brook or stream.
2:24:04 Dax Shepard? Oh, wild bird on a wild stream.
2:24:06 Speaker 01 Hmm. Peaceful.
2:24:08 Dax Shepard? Hmm.
2:24:08 Speaker 01 Where did Olivia's mom, Lesley Cockburn, sneak a camera under her clothes? What other high profile interviews has she done? She smuggled contraband video cassettes after Afghanistan passed the Taliban by strapping it under national traditional Afghan robes in 96.
2:24:24 Dax Shepard? Whoa.
2:24:25 Speaker 01 The video cassettes contain interviews and footage of the regime that were strictly forbidden by the government and the UN. Wow. Other notable research projects or interviews include Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein's son, and deep investigative work on Escobar.
2:24:39 Dax Shepard? Whoa, I could have a dinner with her.
2:24:42 Speaker 01 Definitely. Um, what number female student at Yale was her mom? She was in the first class that included women at Yale. She was one of the first 570 female graduates of the class of 1974. What season did Olivia join the OC2? How many years did she do on House 5? Wow, that's long.
2:25:03 Dax Shepard? Five years, speaking medical jargon.
2:25:05 Speaker 01 Woo.
2:25:06 Dax Shepard? That'll burn you up.
2:25:07 Speaker 01 Yeah. Does Penelope Cruz have an identical twin? Online, it says that she has a younger sister of three years who looks very similar. They're often mistaken for twins but are not.
2:25:16 Dax Shepard? Who is this?
2:25:18 Speaker 01 Penelope Cruz.
2:25:19 Dax Shepard? Oh.
2:25:20 Speaker 01 But...
2:25:21 Dax Shepard? Maybe they fooled Olivia.
2:25:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, that would be weird if...
2:25:26 Dax Shepard? Is she younger?
2:25:27 Speaker 01 She does not have a... Oh my God, her name's Monica.
2:25:30 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow. Monica Cruz?
2:25:32 Speaker 01 Wow, then Olivia got duped. We should tell her. They do look extremely alike, but she does look older.
2:25:41 Dax Shepard? She looks different.
2:25:42 Speaker 01 (laughs)
2:25:44 Dax Shepard? And old. I don't know, older or younger, but I do know different.
2:25:47 Speaker 01 But, I mean, look at their...
2:25:48 Dax Shepard? I would not think they were twins.
2:25:49 Speaker 01 I will say their features do look ve... Look, if you, I, if you...
2:25:53 Dax Shepard? Isolate the tip of their nose and stuff.
2:25:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, and their mouth and their eyes.
2:25:58 Dax Shepard? Which is funny, because they do objectively have the same features, and yet...
2:26:02 Speaker 01 Oh, shit.
2:26:03 Dax Shepard? Wait, wait, wait, Rob, that's a different submission. Are you sure that's not...
2:26:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, those are different people.
2:26:08 Dax Shepard? Still her on the right?
2:26:09 Speaker 01 No, that's not her. But they could definitely be twins. Here they are again. Okay, I mean, that's them younger.
2:26:17 Dax Shepard? You go back to the first one, Rob. I, I, they're far more distinct.
2:26:21 Speaker 01 Well, the first one's from now, clearly.
2:26:22 Dax Shepard? Right. But what I was gonna say, Monica, is despite the fact that they do have very similar features, they have come together in a completely different way.
2:26:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, but that's how twins do it.
2:26:34 Dax Shepard? Okay.
2:26:35 Speaker 01 To differentiate.
2:26:36 Dax Shepard? Same piece is different.
2:26:36 Speaker 01 Like, they've done their hair differently and it's a different, one of them's dyed their hair.
2:26:40 Dax Shepard? Side part, middle part.
2:26:41 Speaker 01 And different color hair.
2:26:42 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm. I have a special feeling about Penelope that I've had for 30 years.
2:26:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, join the rest of the world. We all do. She's, imagine being her twin. That would suck.
2:26:55 Dax Shepard? I'd rather imagine being Javier Bardem than her twin. Who's also a fucking stone cold fox.
2:27:02 Speaker 01 I wanna be her.
2:27:03 Dax Shepard? That's the three-way of all three ways right there. That's the dream three-way. Ding ding ding. That's so on point.
2:27:09 Speaker 01 She is the most beautiful person alive.
2:27:11 Dax Shepard? Oh, she's something else.
2:27:13 Speaker 01 I mean, it is crazy.
2:27:14 Dax Shepard? If I got to be her, all I would do is look in the mirror. Like, if I got to spend a week in her body, I would be in front of the mirror the entire time.
2:27:23 Speaker 01 If you got to temporarily be her.
2:27:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah, one week in Penelope Cruz.
2:27:26 Speaker 01 What would I do? Oh, Jess and I have played this game a lot.
2:27:29 Dax Shepard? It's a fun game.
2:27:29 Speaker 01 If we could switch bodies, what would we do? And he, and you know, he's pretty nasty, so he has some ideas. No, he wants to just take my body out on the town, you know?
2:27:41 Dax Shepard? Yeah, really, to get it, get it going.
2:27:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I was like, oh my god, once, once I get back in my body, oh.
2:27:48 Dax Shepard? You're gonna be sore.
2:27:49 Speaker 01 I'll be so sore and have so many diseases. I'll have so many diseases. It'll be, I'll be.
2:27:56 Dax Shepard? And what are you gonna do when you're in his body? Go play basketball?
2:27:59 Speaker 01 I'm gonna reach tall things, yeah.
2:28:01 Dax Shepard? Go play pickup basketball.
2:28:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly.
2:28:03 Dax Shepard? You're not gonna masturbate with his penis?
2:28:05 Speaker 01 No, I will. I am curious what that feels like.
2:28:09 Dax Shepard? Yes, of course.
2:28:10 Speaker 01 Um, but I don't.
2:28:11 Dax Shepard? I think step one for anyone that switches bodies into the other gender, step one should be immediately that.
2:28:16 Speaker 01 I ju, but I only wanna do that. I don't wanna have sex with a man or a woman in his body.
2:28:21 Dax Shepard? Right, right.
2:28:22 Speaker 01 I just wanna masturbate and see what it feels like to have a penis.
2:28:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:28:25 Speaker 01 And mainly reach tall things and play some basketball, um.
2:28:30 Dax Shepard? Complain about your back.
2:28:31 Speaker 01 Or, yeah, I mean, it'll give me a lot of gratitude, probably, for the things short people have that I, you know, take for granted.
2:28:38 Dax Shepard? Right.
2:28:38 Speaker 01 Okay. What is the Esther Perel AI therapy episode? The episode title is "My AI Loves Me Better Than Anyone Ever Could." Ooh.
2:28:47 Dax Shepard? Dangerous sentence for you to read.
2:28:49 Speaker 01 Dangerous.
2:28:52 Speaker 01 Just looking at her again.
2:28:54 Dax Shepard? Yeah, how can you, how can you stop?
2:28:56 Speaker 01 I can't, clearly. What a couple.
2:28:58 Dax Shepard? I, I was gonna say, I don't.
2:29:00 Speaker 01 They're perfect.
2:29:00 Dax Shepard? I reject what I'm about to say, because I don't like when people do any otas.
2:29:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:29:05 Dax Shepard? But I don't know how they don't just stare at each other like, hon, let's go in the living room, there's good light in there, and let's just look at each other.
2:29:12 Speaker 01 People do that, they say that about you and Kristen?
2:29:15 Dax Shepard? No, but they have some fantasy of what the relationship is.
2:29:19 Speaker 01 Oh, what your life is like.
2:29:19 Dax Shepard? Yeah, so I'm not trying to perpetuate that, but at the same time, I feel like that couple, they could just stand in the living room nude and be so entertained.
2:29:29 Speaker 01 And also, apparently, he's so nice.
2:29:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
2:29:33 Speaker 01 Remember, someone told us a really good story about him? Who was it?
2:29:38 Dax Shepard? Was it a chef or something?
2:29:39 Speaker 01 No, and they were at a pub, and he was there, and they were all hanging out, and then some girl was getting kinda...
2:29:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and he walked someone back to their apartment.
2:29:50 Speaker 01 I love him, and I love her.
2:29:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we love them. Great couple alert.
2:29:55 Speaker 01 Couple goals.
2:29:57 Dax Shepard? All right.
2:29:58 Speaker 01 All right, love you.
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