Best of 2022

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to the best of the armchair expert, 2022 edition.

[1] 2022.

[2] Powerful list.

[3] Wait, by now, hold on, can I announce something really exciting?

[4] Oh, please.

[5] Okay.

[6] This is real time.

[7] Oh, my God.

[8] This is really.

[9] I'm on the seat of my pants.

[10] I'm on the edge of my seat by the seat of my pants.

[11] Wow.

[12] Okay.

[13] What happened?

[14] What happened?

[15] They announced the pantone.

[16] Oh, right.

[17] 2023.

[18] Fuck.

[19] Color of the year.

[20] Do they keep moving it up in the year when they tell you?

[21] This feels early.

[22] No. No?

[23] I don't know.

[24] Wow.

[25] I have feelings.

[26] I wanted it to be green.

[27] Oh.

[28] And it's not.

[29] It's called Viva Magenta.

[30] Viva magenta.

[31] Wow.

[32] Pantone revealed its highly anticipated color of the year for 2023.

[33] A bold shade of pink christened Viva Magenta.

[34] The color is all about optimistic celebration, experimentation, and unrestrained self -expression, according to the Pantone color consultancy.

[35] They have a strong opinion of color, and it's...

[36] They do.

[37] That's why I love it so much.

[38] It's always accurate.

[39] It's a red, it's almost...

[40] It's red, yeah, it's definitely red.

[41] But pink, Viva Magenta.

[42] Okay, this is exciting.

[43] Everyone knows in the whole world Everybody knows that I make the background of my phone The color of the year So we only have a few more days left Of that purple But you won't start till Jan 1, right?

[44] That's right Okay, how long has Pantone been doing this Because I just got a clever idea Ooh, what?

[45] Well, how long have they been doing it?

[46] Do you know?

[47] No. Like, does this go back to the 70s?

[48] I hope.

[49] I collect cars Yeah.

[50] And they're of every different era And often I paint them And in fact, I'm about to paint my 1980 Mercury Zephyr station wagon.

[51] Wouldn't be cool if I did, like, the pantone color of that year every time I painted a car?

[52] Pantone color.

[53] And like a real nerd could, they would know the year of the car by seeing the color of the car.

[54] I would.

[55] What year is it?

[56] 18.

[57] Yeah, it's 1826.

[58] Sounds like we started this in 2000.

[59] Chrysler brothers.

[60] Unfortunately, that's just coming up with Viva Magenta again.

[61] All right.

[62] Let's let it rip with that red, quote, pink.

[63] It started in 2000 Okay, that's going to be a problem I don't collect anything post 2000 Y2K, fuck Oh, let's talk about all the color Oh my God, you're in a rabbit hole There's no way, no one can see any of this Just a reminder we are an auditory only experience I was really hoping for a green because I want a grounding year Okay, great But it looks like I'm just gonna have a fiery year Yeah, fun That's also fun Yeah, you're gonna let it rip this year.

[64] Well, you know, also, there's that did you, have you been looking at my stories or no?

[65] Yeah, yeah.

[66] Okay.

[67] There's a story.

[68] I mean, I get scared when you say that because, like, maybe I've missed one, but yes, I see a lot of your content, but now I'm really scared that I missed this one thing.

[69] You've got admit, you've 10xed your posting since the beginning of the year.

[70] Yeah.

[71] Which I enjoy.

[72] I love seeing whatever thing you read.

[73] If you read something you like now, it goes into stories.

[74] Yeah, Stutz.

[75] Yeah, Stutz.

[76] Phil Stutz.

[77] Yeah, I posted about that.

[78] Oh, okay, great.

[79] And then, listen, yesterday.

[80] I posted this like box of words, like letters.

[81] Yeah, so the first three that you see describes your year.

[82] Your year.

[83] What did you see?

[84] First of all, not a great thing for dyslexic.

[85] I saw chaos.

[86] What is chaos?

[87] I was looking into the asshole of Satan when I looked at that.

[88] I get to how that was scary.

[89] Yeah, I tried.

[90] Yeah.

[91] And I was like, uh -oh.

[92] Well, I think you could definitely have done it, but you just got panicked.

[93] That's the point is that it's all a mess until you like, like magic eye.

[94] They start appearing.

[95] They start appearing.

[96] and I'm sure they do.

[97] But you have to imagine, if it already starts as a challenge, it actually might not be possible for me to grab that.

[98] But at any rate, I gave it a shot.

[99] I gave it the college try and I saw nothing.

[100] So maybe I'm not going to do one thing this year, maybe.

[101] That itself could be revealing, right?

[102] Wow.

[103] My year's going to be blank.

[104] Wow, that's scary.

[105] Well, my words were great.

[106] So one was breakthrough.

[107] It was four.

[108] Care, strength, breakthrough.

[109] I forget the first one.

[110] Wow.

[111] Yeah.

[112] You saw those words.

[113] I saw a ton of K's, some X's, a G. Like a bunch of letters you can't make words out of.

[114] Wait, Dax, that's not you doing some.

[115] That's what it is.

[116] That's a high value scrabble cue.

[117] Anyway, what are we talking about?

[118] The new year.

[119] The new year.

[120] Best of.

[121] Yeah.

[122] That's right.

[123] It's the very best of.

[124] This is a fun exercise for us.

[125] I just start scrolling through and I get these little blips of nostalgia.

[126] Yeah.

[127] It's funny because I don't necessarily, how do you feel?

[128] Like I don't immediately remember chunks.

[129] right right you kind of i was like listen to do it at 2 .5 i'm jumping around whatever but and i think there's something here which is the permanence of an emotion right yes like that's clear to me i look at the picture and the guest and i have a very clear feeling of the experience emotionally yes this is what happens rob sent the list the full list of the year including i mean so many because flightless bird was on there too so many and i didn't include anything other than regular monday thursday armature expert.

[130] I'm just like reading through the people and then I just erase.

[131] Wait, really quick.

[132] Do you agree as well?

[133] It's this fun shock because you also forget, as crazy as that may sound.

[134] A hundred percent.

[135] You're like, oh my God, that's right.

[136] Dwayne Wade came by.

[137] Yep.

[138] There's all these little pop out, especially the ones that are year old.

[139] Exactly.

[140] Okay.

[141] For me, it's also this like gratitude experience.

[142] It is.

[143] And it's confusing because sometimes I'm like, that was this year or wait, where is blah, blah, blah.

[144] And then that was a, yeah.

[145] year or two years ago.

[146] Right.

[147] I was looking for Kermit for like an hour.

[148] Not this year.

[149] Yes, he was.

[150] Kermit the Frog?

[151] Yeah.

[152] So yeah, it's fun because I get to go through and then I just, I keep the ones that give me that feeling.

[153] And I don't really necessarily know yet what clip.

[154] And I'm like, that was a good episode or I know there's something there.

[155] And then then I'm left with the list.

[156] And some I know immediately like, oh, it's going to be this clip, this clip.

[157] And then I write that down.

[158] Then I have to go through and then I hit the moment.

[159] Okay.

[160] Now I got to own like a dark side of it for me. What also happens to me, which is disheartening, is I also have an emotional feeling about some of the episodes that weirdly it's not there.

[161] So I have a couple episodes that are so special and important to me. But as I go through them to look for a good clip, there isn't a good clip.

[162] But overall it's good.

[163] But just my, you know, so I can give me an example, Machine on Kelly.

[164] Yeah.

[165] So that one's so dear to me, But when I listen to it, A, I'm talking so much.

[166] So I'm mad about that because, and it's why I also love it so much, I'm having the experience that I get to have once in a while where someone wants to join A. And I get to lay it out for them.

[167] Yeah.

[168] Right?

[169] And there's some buy -in and I see some buy -in.

[170] So it's really a great feeling.

[171] And that interview kind of resembled that experience for me where I felt like, okay, he's now seen there's another one.

[172] He's not alone.

[173] He's seen.

[174] Yeah.

[175] That doesn't mean there's a good audio clip from that experience.

[176] I pulled a clip that's in here.

[177] But I agree that that episode, the whole episode is very good.

[178] In totality.

[179] I love that episode.

[180] But pulling just a chunk out is hard to do.

[181] I did do it, and I think it's still a great clip.

[182] It's kind of like the difference between a single and an album.

[183] Yeah.

[184] And I felt like that also about Drodd.

[185] Oh, I had a hunch.

[186] That episode is incredible.

[187] That is definitely my top three favorite of the year.

[188] And I was scrolling through, this was kind of the opposite, but I was like, oh, it could be this, it could be this, it could be this, it could be this, like everything he said was really great.

[189] But no mountain peaks.

[190] Exactly.

[191] But I still pulled one.

[192] That was great, I think.

[193] Anyhow, it's fun for us.

[194] Yeah, it is really fun.

[195] And so I hope it's fun for you.

[196] Yeah.

[197] A lot of Monica's work went into it and robs.

[198] Well, all of ours, all year.

[199] All year.

[200] Been a fucking great year.

[201] Every year I think it can't.

[202] Well, first I think it can't be as good as the previous year.

[203] I certainly am not crazy enough to think it would be better than the previous year.

[204] I know.

[205] But it just keeps getting more and more wonderful.

[206] It's exciting.

[207] I love you.

[208] Thank you guys.

[209] Thanks, armcherrys.

[210] Please enjoy the best of 2022.

[211] Viva Magenta.

[212] Viva Magenta.

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[215] Or you can listen for.

[216] For free, wherever you get your podcasts.

[217] From episode 396, Dwayne Wade.

[218] I think often as a parent, it's really easy to personalize anything and take it on as some personal embarrassment.

[219] Yeah.

[220] And so I guess in some way I could expect that to happen to somebody who's going to have to be public about this.

[221] Like the first thought that might crush your mind and you would correct it would be like, oh, people are going to think I did something wrong.

[222] Yeah.

[223] People close to you.

[224] Yeah.

[225] And then you've got to step over that, I guess, to get to the right.

[226] I've been called all the things.

[227] But you have.

[228] All the things.

[229] And I've been pointed fingers at for making my daughter trans.

[230] I've had it all.

[231] And at the end of all the days, I don't let that lead me down the wrong path in my responsibility as a father.

[232] right and it's easier for me because my kids live with me let me let me go on the record to say that because everyone responsible is are different depending on their setup and and i also go on the record to say that it's easier for me as well because i've been afforded a lot through my hard work the way that we're able to live that i don't need my kids to to help with anything right my parents it was different my parents needed me to get to the money yeah and so when you had time to worry about you finding yourself we need you to go play basketball football yeah it's a different it's different so I understand it, it's still that out there.

[233] And so when I come out and speak on my child, maybe it's not time for you to hear what I'm saying.

[234] Maybe you're not ready.

[235] Yeah.

[236] If you're not ready, that's on you.

[237] But it's people that's ready.

[238] Yeah.

[239] So don't be so loud that the people that's ready to hear it and need someone that is going through this and know that someone else is going through it, don't be too loud where they can hear.

[240] And that's my problem with people when it comes to their criticism of not just me and my family, but anyone.

[241] It's like, this ain't for you then.

[242] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[243] Not for you.

[244] I ain't saying it's okay because, like, it's a lot of things that can hurt and harm people, but I'm not out there saying you're a bad parent because you're thinking different than I. You're not prosely.

[245] You're not telling anyone to do it.

[246] You're being an example of how you're doing it.

[247] And people can take that as they want.

[248] I'll also add people idolize you.

[249] Millions of people idolize you.

[250] And for you to walk through this thing without any detectable shame is so fucking power.

[251] Because of the millions of people that idolize you, a significant percentage of them will deal with something, if not this exact same thing, something very similar.

[252] Yes.

[253] So to see a dude that they idolize is masculine and tough and indomitable to walk through this without any hint of shame is incredibly powerful.

[254] I just want to add one thing.

[255] If your life goes perfect, the dream end to your life is that you'll be laying in a bed someday and you'll be staring at that daughter.

[256] And that's the last thing you'll see.

[257] you're not going to see anyone else that's got the voices.

[258] Yeah.

[259] Your perfect ending is looking in her eyes as you go on.

[260] 1 ,000%.

[261] And that's the only one.

[262] You've got to protect who's standing at the bed at the end of the day.

[263] 1 ,000%, man. Like I said, for some reason, when you have kids, people have this notion that you own, that it's ownership over those kids.

[264] But, you know, your kids are people.

[265] From episode 398, Jeremy Renner.

[266] And then me and my buddy, Shannon, we both did this frankling modeling thing.

[267] much as we could on the weekends, mostly, and worked their butts off doing that.

[268] So after that was done and made some good money, also made friends within the department because we're pretty much the only guys in that sort of cosmetic department.

[269] And it sounds like you're floating around a lot, so you can, like, duck in and say hi to people.

[270] Exactly.

[271] Your job is really just kind of like, hey, how you doing, try this fragrance?

[272] Did you get paid extra if you sold, if people bought it?

[273] I don't remember that part of it.

[274] I don't think I was ever a good salesman.

[275] I don't think I'm a good salesman.

[276] No, I'm not a good salesman.

[277] But I got a good smile, I can bring people in somehow, some way.

[278] So at the end of that gig, come January, there's an opening at the Longcombe Cosmetics counter.

[279] I'm like, oh, let me go over to the gals.

[280] I already know them.

[281] Maybe what's going on.

[282] Let's talk about this.

[283] And they already love me in a way, right?

[284] But they do nothing about cosmetics.

[285] So they sit down and have a meeting with them.

[286] Tell us about your experience in makeup.

[287] I'm like, well, I do my own makeup.

[288] He's like, what do you mean?

[289] In theater, I have to, like, apply my own.

[290] makeup.

[291] Now, it's not street makeup, but I have to do it more like clown -like.

[292] Right.

[293] It's going to be theatrical.

[294] Exactly.

[295] You've got to be able to see it from the 28th row.

[296] But I sat with them and I said, look, and the two gals were there, Kari and.

[297] Oh, wow.

[298] That was the boss.

[299] And anyway, I sit down and I'm like, well, ladies, why do you have this makeup on?

[300] You're wearing makeup right now.

[301] Why do you put it on?

[302] Uh -huh.

[303] Uh -huh.

[304] You know, let me mention this.

[305] They might mention that.

[306] It's like, oh, the job or I just want to look beautiful.

[307] I'm like, who do you want to look beautiful for yourself?

[308] Or maybe do you want to attract them?

[309] other man. It just wouldn't be interesting to get a man's opinion on how a woman looks like with makeup on.

[310] Oh.

[311] Wow.

[312] So that was my gangster psychological way.

[313] You really got in there.

[314] So I got the job.

[315] Okay.

[316] And so there's a big part of like the skincare part of it, which I really wasn't interested in.

[317] I was interested in more in like the makeup part of it, only because of that statement.

[318] It's how I ended up applying makeup because I wouldn't touch a woman's face unless she felt comfortable and realized I asked the right four or five questions first.

[319] Right.

[320] And it's not me trying to do anything else besides witness her and understand her.

[321] Yeah.

[322] How do I make this woman feel beautiful?

[323] Because beauty comes within right here in your heart.

[324] Right.

[325] This is only going to express that.

[326] Uh -huh.

[327] And that was my job as a makeup artist in my eyes.

[328] Are you fucking PQing out of your mind right now?

[329] I'm just amazed.

[330] I've never.

[331] But how many PQs?

[332] I mean, this is very sensual.

[333] Yeah.

[334] Well, but it is kind of like that.

[335] It was like a therapy session in the sense.

[336] They're in a very vulnerable position.

[337] Exactly.

[338] They're basically saying, like, I would like to look prettier.

[339] Yeah.

[340] Which is.

[341] Which is so very.

[342] And also just, like, sweet and endearing, like, that we all want to look a little prettier.

[343] Yeah, yeah.

[344] So they're being very kind of open.

[345] So really quick, what I know is that you did really well with ladies.

[346] That's what I know about you.

[347] Between the fucking fragrance thing.

[348] Well, I grew up with women.

[349] Right.

[350] I'm a badass dude because I was raised by badass women.

[351] Right.

[352] And are you the oldest of seven?

[353] I'm the oldest of seven.

[354] Yeah, yeah.

[355] How many gales in that?

[356] The first two younger than me are women.

[357] Okay.

[358] And I helped birth my sister, or my mom taught me LaMaz to help birth my sister.

[359] And then my other first sister had her first child and I was around for that.

[360] Being good with women is like understanding women.

[361] Yeah, like I taught girls how to put tampons in, right?

[362] Yeah.

[363] I just thought that was normal.

[364] Right.

[365] But apparently it's not, right, unless you're a gyno.

[366] Right.

[367] But I didn't know any better.

[368] I was just raised around women.

[369] And then more importantly, my psychological take on, because I took psychology in college.

[370] And that was a big thing for, to theater and psychology.

[371] Right.

[372] And that understanding of empowering a woman especially is an important thing to me. Episode 399 with Stacey Abrams.

[373] One of the challenges was I was, so I was in first grade.

[374] I learned to read when I was really, really young.

[375] I was a very aggressive reader, loved words.

[376] So when I got to first grade, I was actually fairly advanced.

[377] They recommended that I moved to second grade, but they held me back because they were waiting for two young white girls.

[378] to catch up with me because they didn't want me to be the only one who got advanced.

[379] And the only black teacher at the school called my parents and said they were supposed to move Stacey to second grade and they haven't.

[380] You need to find out what's going on.

[381] And so it was my parents' intercession that led me to being moved to second grade.

[382] And, you know, I didn't know that when I was there.

[383] I just knew one day the principal came and pulled me out of class and I'm like, I know I said something inappropriate about Ms. Kimberg, my first grade teacher because I didn't like her.

[384] God rest her soul, she's probably a perfectly lovely person, but that was a bad day for me in class.

[385] She had her own trauma, I'm sure.

[386] Exactly.

[387] And so I just remember I did something that was impolite.

[388] And the next thing I know, Ms. Holquist, the principal is coming to get me. And I'm like, oh, God.

[389] And then she takes me outside.

[390] And probably where you grew up in Duluth, Monica, you guys had trailers at your school.

[391] Many.

[392] So second graders were in trailers.

[393] She takes me out of the school building, out back.

[394] Now, I have no idea what's happening.

[395] And I am following this woman out back.

[396] And I'm like, I am going to die.

[397] I don't know what, or I'm going to be beaten with an inch of my life.

[398] I will apologize.

[399] Please let me, let me go back.

[400] And then she takes me to this trailer, and I've never seen these trailers before.

[401] So I'm like, oh, they're going to bury my body out here or something.

[402] She knocks on the door and the door opens and outsteps this woman who in the stapled sunlight of Gulfport, Mississippi, looks like an angel because I'm not in trouble.

[403] And she welcomes me, and that's Ms. Blakesley, my second grade teacher.

[404] And she's the one who got me into spelling bees and really let me sort of integrate myself.

[405] into the class because I was different, because I was quiet because I was a little black girl who had been moved and other kids hadn't.

[406] And she knew that words made me happy.

[407] So she would let me read when all the kids would go out to recess and I didn't want to go and play.

[408] She would let me sit in the classroom and let me stay in the trailer and read.

[409] And that to me just, it gave me comfort again.

[410] And as for you, when words are your comfort, anytime you can spend time with them is a great thing.

[411] Episode 404 with David Arquette.

[412] So sorry, back to clowns.

[413] Yeah, so really 2 % of the population has chlorophobia, which is fear of clowns.

[414] Like, that's a very small portion.

[415] But the focus has been on these scary clowns for this portion of our existence.

[416] But clowns are also kind of a reflection of society.

[417] They're supposed to, like, reflect the silly parts and the sad parts and the whatever parts.

[418] But right now, it's like we're just reflecting the really creepy parts.

[419] So I think that's kind of what's going on right now.

[420] now.

[421] So I really want to help with Bozo because I purchased the rights to Bozo.

[422] It took me 15 years to get the rights to Bozo the Clown.

[423] Oh, my good.

[424] Wait, so you own the rights to Bozo the Clown.

[425] I do.

[426] I do.

[427] And what are your, what are your plans?

[428] Oh, we have lots of plans.

[429] It's almost overwhelming, I bet.

[430] It is so overwhelming.

[431] I can't even tell you.

[432] It's so...

[433] You've got like a Marvel IP now.

[434] I never knew how stressful something like this could be.

[435] There's They're trying to, like, steal the IP in Brazil right now.

[436] And we're having to, like, lawyers.

[437] Like, yeah, so it's just, it's a lot.

[438] That's kind of like the wrestling quandary.

[439] You're anti -violence and you love wrestling.

[440] And then you go by Bozo.

[441] Now you're in a lawsuit.

[442] And people don't get it.

[443] Like, I'm trying to explain to them.

[444] Like, so Bozo's realized that it's not about me, Bozo.

[445] It's about all of us, bozos.

[446] It's about the Bozo in our hearts.

[447] So we want everyone to let their clown out and embrace their silly side.

[448] and really, like, enjoy life and, like, laugh at themselves and don't beat themselves up.

[449] Bozo believes that we don't look up and praise people.

[450] We don't look down on anybody.

[451] We look everyone right in the eye because we're all equal.

[452] We're all wonderful.

[453] You know, and you're all special.

[454] And we want everyone to really, like, love themselves.

[455] That's really the new goal of Bozo or what he wants to bring to the world.

[456] From episode 407 with Brunea Brown.

[457] Here's another one.

[458] I'll just, I'll ask you, you're getting a massage.

[459] The pressure's nice.

[460] You really want more.

[461] They ask, how's the pressure?

[462] You know more pressure means harder work for that person.

[463] What do you do and how easy is it for you to say?

[464] Talk about a first world problem, by the way.

[465] So you're getting a massage.

[466] I say, no, I'd like it much harder, and I don't like chatting if that's okay.

[467] Oh, my God.

[468] I'm so jealous.

[469] I'm so jealous.

[470] What an assassin.

[471] Can I hire you to be like my codependent bodyguard and you're just with me?

[472] And you're like, no, no, he likes it much harder.

[473] And he doesn't want to talk to you.

[474] And he hates talking to people because he just tries to impress them.

[475] All right.

[476] So pre -evolution, what would you give that number?

[477] It was a 10, but it was a total threat to my program.

[478] Right.

[479] Because your only other option, at least in your mind, was just to lie about it or set your boundaries through lying.

[480] That's not in my mind.

[481] the only other option besides lying.

[482] I mean, not saying anything is lying.

[483] Wow.

[484] Oh, not saying anything is lying.

[485] Hold on.

[486] I want to really digest that.

[487] It's lying to yourself.

[488] No, it's lying to them.

[489] Oh, okay.

[490] I'm taking baby steps there.

[491] No, but because if I say, hey, Dax, how's the pressure?

[492] And you say, it's fine.

[493] That's a lie.

[494] And if I'm chatting to you and you're not enjoying it, and I say, how are you enjoying it and you say it's great, that's a lie.

[495] But what if they don't ask?

[496] Is it a lie?

[497] Then you're shitting on yourself.

[498] And then you're shitting on yourself during what's supposed to be a moment of self -care.

[499] So, Bray, you work in all these different companies, right?

[500] Because you do these talks and you have great advice for organizations.

[501] We've been introduced to a couple fun concepts this year, like Halo Effect.

[502] I think we learned this year, which is fascinating.

[503] Fuck, you might have even taught it to me when I was a guest on your podcast.

[504] I don't know.

[505] I think we did.

[506] Yeah, because I actually don't know what you're talking about.

[507] So I don't think we did learn it.

[508] I think you learned it from Brunay.

[509] Tell us.

[510] Again, I want to tell you so you know what a good student I am of yours, but please tell Monica what Halo effect is.

[511] No, it's one of those things where when we're doing big decision making and we say, okay, we're going to roll this out.

[512] Do you think we should start it in January of next year or June of next year?

[513] And then what we usually have people do is everyone writes the answer on a post -it note and flips it at the same time.

[514] Because if I go first, I've got the most power and influence in the room because it's my company.

[515] And that's the halo effect.

[516] I'm always in scarcity about time.

[517] I'm like, January, we should have started last week.

[518] And then everybody will go, yeah, yeah, January, January.

[519] So that's the halo effect.

[520] And then the bandwagon effect is, even if influence and powers evenly distributed in a room, which is rarely the case, if I'm going last, I don't want to say something that's wholly different than what everybody else is saying.

[521] Like a contrarian will sit and listen and hear like, January, January, January.

[522] And then in their mind, they're like, fuck that.

[523] I'm to say July just because everyone's saying January.

[524] But then some people will say, well, I hear January from everyone, but are we thinking about the resource pool to get this thing launched in January?

[525] Like, I've got questions.

[526] I'm not going to weigh in until I understand why y 'all think we can do this in January.

[527] That's a valid thing.

[528] From episode 409 with Nicholas Holt.

[529] Yeah, so when you first got here, we were talking about Bradley Cooper.

[530] And you told me this really funny story.

[531] Yeah, yeah, yeah, because he was the guest just before us.

[532] And I was like, it goes downhill, but I do have kind of a funny.

[533] It's not a completely.

[534] related to Bradley Cooper, this story, but it was when I was dating Jen, and we'd gone on holiday.

[535] Like, a great day would gone spearfishing, caught these fish, and then, like, the people would have gone with had, like, cooked them up, and then I was, like, I was eating mine, and I was like, yum.

[536] And then she's like, I don't like mine.

[537] Can you eat mine?

[538] And I'm like, I don't want us to appear to be rude.

[539] So I, like, doubled down.

[540] I was like, ate all that as well, like, and then proceeded for the, like, the next three days to just have the worst food poisoning.

[541] Anyway, it relates back to Bradley, because that was around the time that they were about to do silver linings together.

[542] And so on the way to this holiday, I remember, like, walking through the airport, he'd just been voted, People Magazine's Sexiest Man of the Year.

[543] He was like, his face was on the cover.

[544] And already, you're like, oh, they're about to do a movie together.

[545] He's the sexist man on life.

[546] That's great.

[547] Bodes well.

[548] Super comforting.

[549] Whilst I had, like, proceeded to be literally on the toilet, losing my soul, whilst this was happening, they had their first, like, prep chat.

[550] And literally, how you two are giggling now?

[551] It was, like, that funny.

[552] Their conversation, and at one point I hear, like, the sliding door open of the hotel.

[553] And then, like, more laughter and then muffled laugh.

[554] It was honestly one of the lowest points in my life.

[555] All I could see was his face from the front of that magazine and hear her laughter from their work talk.

[556] Well, you considered whether or not you were going to die on this toilet.

[557] She would come in occasionally be like, you're like, I don't know.

[558] She's like, I'm going to ask Bradley if he has any tips on this.

[559] Episode 478 with U -Hung -on.

[560] Okay, so the first one you decide to tackle is the allure of fluency.

[561] And what is the allure of fluency?

[562] I have to plead ignorance on this one.

[563] It's pretty simple.

[564] If it sounds easy, then they think it's easy.

[565] He suffers from this.

[566] He thinks he can do surgery because he watches surgery on YouTube.

[567] It's literally that.

[568] Exactly.

[569] I feel like I can cut my dog's hair after watching it for 40 minutes.

[570] None of my family members could recognize our dog after I did that.

[571] Some idea that if you've witnessed something and you understand it, your next logical assumption is, well, then I could do it because I witnessed it.

[572] Yes.

[573] And a book that's so easy to read, they think it was so easy to write as well.

[574] Maybe the person must have just written it from the beginning to the end without any stumbling.

[575] It's an illusion.

[576] Another reason why I decided to write this book was My daughter was a student at Yale, and she was not allowed to take my course, although she could have benefited so much, and I could do all the nagging to her through the class that I couldn't do at home.

[577] They call that sub -tweeting, by the way, like when you're not actually tagging the person, but we know who you're talking to.

[578] Yale does not prohibit professors' children taking their own courses, but they strongly discourage it, of course.

[579] So I said, okay, I'll just write the whole book for my daughter.

[580] So this illusion of fluency was because she was going through job interviews.

[581] And I did not want her to feel like she can't just say things eloquently without having actually practice exactly what she was going to say.

[582] Because that's the common mistake we make.

[583] We feel like, okay, I'm going to do this.

[584] I'm going to do that.

[585] I'm going to do this.

[586] That sounds fine.

[587] I can probably just win.

[588] No, as you know, as an actor, that's not how it works.

[589] I mean, you can't play violin just by watching people playing violin for hundreds of hours.

[590] Right, right.

[591] You have to actually do it and practice it, get the muscle memory, do all those things.

[592] There's a good example of the dancing in your book at the beginning of your class.

[593] Yes, so that's how I demonstrated.

[594] The actual experiment was done with the Michael Jackson's moonwalk, but, you know, Michael Jackson has some issues.

[595] Some students might be sensitive to that.

[596] So I changed to BTS to be also more current, and I showed just like a six seconds clip of the song.

[597] And that choreograph is supposed to be an easier one, relatively speaking.

[598] And they watched it over and over and again, and I take the volunteer, come out if you think you can do it.

[599] And then they come out and do it, and then nobody can do it.

[600] They all fall apart.

[601] It's a complete illusion.

[602] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[603] What's up, guys?

[604] This your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[605] And let me tell you, it's too good.

[606] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[607] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[608] And I don't mean just friends.

[609] I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[610] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[611] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app.

[612] you get your podcast.

[613] We've all been there.

[614] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[615] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[616] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[617] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[618] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[619] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[620] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[621] Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music.

[622] Episode 411 with Zoe DeChanel.

[623] My mom has a teaching, Mary Jo, has a teaching credential, MJ.

[624] And we went with my dad, Caleb, on location.

[625] We lived in the Seychelles Islands.

[626] We lived in Belgrade, Serbia.

[627] And then we lived in London.

[628] And when I came back, I was in third grade.

[629] And it was like, I was the weirdest person.

[630] I said things weird because I'd been living abroad.

[631] And I tried really hard to maintain my Americanness, because I knew people were going to call me out.

[632] I didn't remember how to be a Californian.

[633] Like, I lived in places where there were, like, no stores.

[634] You've come face to face with a thousand pounds sea turtle in your life.

[635] We would ride tortoises.

[636] There you go.

[637] Because I was, let's see, seven.

[638] My sister was 10.

[639] And we would ride tortoises around with other kids who lived on the island.

[640] Wow.

[641] They showed us out to, like, ride the tortoises.

[642] We would hang out with tortoises.

[643] That was, like, our deal.

[644] And I came back, and it was a type of culture shock just coming back.

[645] Because all anybody talked about were toys and the mall and, like, TV shows.

[646] Yeah, WWF wrestling.

[647] We didn't have TV shows.

[648] In the Seychelles, there were only two videos there, half of Gandhi, which, of course, I wasn't going to watch one of seven.

[649] And this is Spinal Tap, which was...

[650] Oh, great, great thing to have.

[651] The best movie, I watched it a million times.

[652] Great foundation.

[653] I still basically have it memorized.

[654] But so when I came back to L .A., I was so weird for, like, third, fourth, fifth, sixth grade.

[655] It was not great.

[656] Then seventh grade was worst year in my life.

[657] Everyone was so mean and it was like And I was actually losing weight that year I was a little chubby It was in London that I kind of gained a little weight You know at 3pm it's dark In the winter So I would just be like let's have some crisps You know Salt and Vinegar Yeah yeah Have a little spaghetti for dinner Maybe some digestive biscuits Some digestive, yeah That's just a snack Like for dessert You're gonna have the chocolate hobnobbs That's what you gotta have What's that?

[658] The best cookies They're like these cookies that are divine.

[659] They have milk chocolate and dark chocolate flavor.

[660] You could choose your best life.

[661] Shit, we were just there and I didn't get any hobna.

[662] I'll bet you some.

[663] Do like a whole basket.

[664] I'm going to.

[665] Make an Instacarp for us.

[666] I'm not kidding.

[667] So yeah, I got a little chubby in England and then it got worse because I was a little bit sad because everyone was mean to me. Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

[668] You know, it's fine.

[669] It was good character building stuff.

[670] And then middle school, I was like, I was on the swim team.

[671] And I grew six inches and I lost 30 pounds.

[672] So in eighth grade, I came back and I was skinny.

[673] Sure.

[674] People didn't recognize me. One of the teachers thought I was anorexic, which I was not.

[675] I just grew a lot and I was like working out and stuff.

[676] And all of a sudden, everyone treated me differently.

[677] And then I was like, I need to have a look.

[678] Yeah.

[679] And that's why I went vintage shopping.

[680] And then I wear fairy wings to school.

[681] Oh, sure.

[682] And people were like, she's the one that wears the fairy wing.

[683] She's a fairy.

[684] I volunteered to be Tinkerbell on the school pageant thing for the fucking home.

[685] coming thing.

[686] Exactly.

[687] So that whole look thing, I really associated with my self -esteem.

[688] Yes.

[689] We miss the most obvious thing that we have in common is like, Dax now is cool.

[690] Like that's a great name to have Dax.

[691] Oh, yeah.

[692] In 1983 on the playground, the older kids, that was this invitation to fuck with me. And your name is now cool, but you're the first.

[693] Yeah.

[694] Not cool at all.

[695] Not a lot of kids are reading Salinger in elementary school.

[696] No, nobody had read Salinger.

[697] Every once in a while you hear of a cat names of.

[698] or something, but it was Z -O -E.

[699] So my parents had friends that were Greek who named their daughter Zoe.

[700] And then they were like, Zoe, but then it's going to be Salinger Zoe.

[701] So that's how they name me, which now I'm like, yeah, I'm super happy that's my name, but back then it was weird.

[702] But the control, like you probably felt so out of control for all those years.

[703] And then the clothes are a way to be like, this is me, I control the narrative about me. Exactly.

[704] Like the first thing you see is the black eyeliner, the sticker on my face, the flower in my hair.

[705] Yeah, things you've chosen.

[706] There's a lot to look through before you get to us.

[707] And then you also have something like, I noticed a couple years ago, this is like a new thing.

[708] I was like, I found this hat that had cat ears that was like a beret with cat ears.

[709] And I bought like five of them because I noticed I went to one of these Hollywood parties where it was not a press party, but it was a lot of fancy people.

[710] And I was kind of nervous to go.

[711] So I was like, I wore this cat beret.

[712] First thing everyone sees is, this cat, hooray, and they're like, oh, my God.

[713] Like, they're put -a -ease because you, like, have gone out of your way to wear this very silly accessory.

[714] That's, like, cute, but it's like, come talk to me about this hat.

[715] And then you can just talk about the hat.

[716] You don't have to talk about, like, other stuff first.

[717] The irony of it is it's actually an invisibility cloak.

[718] Yes.

[719] But it's the loudest invisibility cloak you could have.

[720] Episode 417 with Roy Choi.

[721] Did you have the obsession I read Dotsievsky's The Gambler?

[722] Now, I have had every addiction, but that one, for whatever reason, blew over me. You're lucky.

[723] I'm so fucking lucky.

[724] Because it actually not only destroys you, but it's a forest fire.

[725] It will destroy everything around you.

[726] In the gambler, the component I was missing that I couldn't latch on to was, at least the book claimed, this obsession with getting even.

[727] Yeah.

[728] Did you have that?

[729] I have it every day still.

[730] You don't even think about the money.

[731] There is no value in the currency at all.

[732] And all you do every single day when you look in the mirror is just promise yourself when you get even that you'll quit.

[733] They've done all these adrenal studies too that gamblers are getting their biggest high when they're losing the most.

[734] Yes.

[735] Which is fucking so abstract for an addict.

[736] It's so crazy.

[737] Yeah.

[738] What happens is because it's all delting chips, the amount of money that you go through, $10 ,000 feels like $10.

[739] So that's where the adrenaline from losing comes into play because you're desensitized.

[740] The other thing that I think that addiction has over all others, is the financial pull.

[741] It's like there's no way in which I can construct some fantasy where I'm going to go get the money back I spend on Coke.

[742] I agree with that, but also just the magnitude of what you're spending on it will never equal gambling.

[743] Right.

[744] I can't do 10 grand of Coke in a day.

[745] In a day.

[746] Right.

[747] In an hour.

[748] I think what's also tricky about gambling specifically is if you're a successful person or you have the brain of someone who pushes themselves and is motivated and wants to be a successful person, you are gambling.

[749] Like, we've all gambled with our lives.

[750] We moved to L .A. with no money to try to be an actor.

[751] Like, that's a gamble.

[752] That's a straight flush for sure.

[753] Yeah.

[754] And I mean, so it's that balance, right, of knowing when to gamble and when you can't.

[755] Also, you're in the judgment business.

[756] So you sit down at these tables.

[757] You have this added ego going like, well, five of these guys are much dumber than I am.

[758] Yeah.

[759] You always sit down and say, I could take them.

[760] Everyone around you is a loser.

[761] That's a big part, too.

[762] And everyone has their 15 seconds, somewhere or another.

[763] And so what happens is you're swimming in this kind of lagoon of losers and then all of a sudden you pop up and then you're the hero.

[764] You confirm the story.

[765] Everyone flocks to you and you're in this room and it's the best fucking feeling in the world.

[766] I'm not going to not admit it.

[767] It's the best feeling.

[768] All of a sudden all these dreams that we have in the real world get condensed and clarified into that moment for you.

[769] So it becomes more than just the gambling.

[770] It's like there's something.

[771] poetic about it.

[772] And so for four years I was on that roller coaster.

[773] Oh my god, that's an eternity.

[774] Episode 422 with Daniel Pink.

[775] And what we know is that Future Monica is, okay, future Monica is not going to regret buying a blue car over a gray car.

[776] She's not going to give a shit one way or the other.

[777] Yeah.

[778] All right?

[779] Truly, you don't have any regrets like that.

[780] You're not going to regret, oh my God, you know, on Tuesday night I had macaroni and cheese and I really sort of had a hamburger.

[781] You're not going to regret that.

[782] But what you are going to regret is not building your foundation.

[783] What you are going to regret is not taking a smart risk what you are going to regret on these more regrets is doing the right thing and what you are going to regret is reaching out to somebody you care about and everything else is commentary so don't stress about anything else except for those four future monica i can almost guarantee is going to care about those things and everything else forget about it yeah that's great and that's a great thing to put into the thinking equation which is like what value am i assigning to all these and let's deprioritize the things that aren't going to have value in 10 years.

[784] See, here's the thing.

[785] To my surprise, I got led to a place that I didn't expect to go.

[786] I'm taking this emotion of regret.

[787] It's a negative emotion, all right?

[788] I'm trying to make sense of it.

[789] And what it's doing is, is that in a weird way, it's telling me what people value the most in their life.

[790] What do they value?

[791] Stability.

[792] You can't have a good life without stability.

[793] Two, boldness, a good life is psychologically rich.

[794] A good life, you do stuff.

[795] Moral regrets, if only had done the right thing.

[796] I had huge numbers of regrets from people bullying kids and school, huge numbers of regrets about marital infidelity, huge numbers of regrets about other kinds of cheating.

[797] Now, what's interesting about these moral regrets, I'm kind of glad that people are still bugged by these things.

[798] Because it suggests that people want to be good.

[799] So what's a good life?

[800] A good life is you're good.

[801] And then finally are these connection regrets, which are the biggest category, and they're absolutely fascinating, is you have these relationships that should have been intact or were intact, and these relationships drift apart.

[802] They come apart, in most cases, profoundly undramatic ways.

[803] It's not like an Edward Alby play where people like offering like piercing quips and throwing plates and things like that.

[804] It's like they just kind of drift apart like that.

[805] And what happens is that nobody wants to reach out because they think it's going to be awkward and they think the other side is not going to care.

[806] So it drifts apart and then sometimes it gets too late.

[807] So what do we want out of life?

[808] We want some stability.

[809] We want some richness and growth.

[810] We want to do the right thing and we want love.

[811] Okay, but Dan, how do we know which of these relationships deserve to peter out or lose momentum?

[812] If you have a relationship that drifts apart and you don't regret it, you've answered the question.

[813] Okay.

[814] You know?

[815] What I have instead is this story of a woman named Cheryl who had this friend in college.

[816] They drifted apart.

[817] And she fills out the World Regret survey and says, you know, I had this friend in college and we've drifted apart and I want to reach out and I think she's going to find it creepy and da -da -da.

[818] And I was completely bothering her.

[819] And the answer to the question, though, there's a very easy remedy for these connection regrets.

[820] If you feel like it's going to be awkward to reach out, every piece of evidence tells us it's going to be way less awkward than you think.

[821] Second, you think the other side's not going to care?

[822] You're totally wrong on that.

[823] Yeah, well, yeah.

[824] You're totally wrong at that.

[825] And even with Cheryl, when I was having these conversations with her via Zoom and doing these interviews, oh, I don't know, Jen's going to think it's creepy if I reach out and did it, da, da.

[826] And I'm like, what if Jen reached out to you?

[827] What if, after you got off this Zoom call with me, you went into your email and you got an email from Jen wanting to reconnect.

[828] How would you feel about that?

[829] Would you find that creepy?

[830] And she said, oh, Dan, no, that would be the greatest thing.

[831] And I'm like, hello!

[832] Episode 423 with Jimmy Fallon.

[833] I'm from upstate New York, Socrates, New York, which is beautiful little town, kind of like Little House in the Prairie, just awesome Catholic school, the altar boy, Irish Catholic.

[834] But there were fights and all that stuff.

[835] growing up.

[836] Was it all boys' school?

[837] No, co -ed Catholic school.

[838] And I was really into being an ultra boy.

[839] I was, like, going to be a priest at one point.

[840] I loved it.

[841] I was, like, into it.

[842] What aspect did you love?

[843] I love the incense.

[844] I love the smell of incense.

[845] I love the smell of the church.

[846] And I love getting dressed up and the costumes.

[847] I'm trying to remember what they're called, like, a Hasick or something.

[848] And I knew all the terms and everything.

[849] I was friends with the nuns and everybody.

[850] I was good at ringing the bells.

[851] I was the best kid.

[852] Great timing.

[853] And then I think I was talking to Bill Maher, about this.

[854] And he said, dude, that was your first experience on stage.

[855] Oh, for sure.

[856] And I didn't even think about it, but you're up on the altar.

[857] And you're looking down and all these people and your parents are in the pews and they're watching you.

[858] I think that did have a lot to do with me getting on stage and liking that feeling.

[859] Did you also like approval from like older male figures?

[860] That's not loaded.

[861] I'm being sincere.

[862] No, I'm being sincere.

[863] Yeah, I did actually.

[864] I really did.

[865] I was friends with a lot of people, you know, in my school and all that stuff.

[866] But I actually did have a lot of older friends.

[867] I was friends with old men and stuff.

[868] Also, my grandfather used to bring me to the VFW and he'd just go and get a couple drinks at the bar and I would sit there and I'd play the jukebox and just kind of, I'd have to hang out with either of my sister.

[869] If she came, if she didn't come, I'd hang out with old men.

[870] They would talk about foreign wars.

[871] Sure.

[872] Vets of foreign wars.

[873] That's what they talk about.

[874] Exactly.

[875] And they'd tell me all these war stories and I'd sit there and listen and now that's probably 12 or something.

[876] You said that your parents were pretty protective of you and your sister?

[877] Overprotective.

[878] They didn't let me cross the street.

[879] I'd have to ask their permission.

[880] What do you think drove that kind of fear about you getting hurt?

[881] Was it having been in Brooklyn with a one -year -old?

[882] What was it?

[883] I think the city was pretty rough where they grew up in Brooklyn and it was tough neighborhoods and my dad was in gangs and stuff.

[884] And to go from that extreme to beautiful, quiet, upstate New York, where honestly quiet scares city people.

[885] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[886] City people need sirens.

[887] They don't want to hear.

[888] nothing.

[889] That freaks you out.

[890] When it's quiet, it's like, okay, there's a raccoon out there, there's a bear.

[891] My mom would make up all this stuff.

[892] She wouldn't even let me camp in my backyard.

[893] I remember I had a subscription to Boys Life or one of those magazines just because she wouldn't let me join the Boy Scouts or do anything like that.

[894] So I had to use a magazine and live vicariously through other boys and see how to tie knots and do stuff.

[895] And so I remember I got a tent at a garage sale.

[896] I go, I'm going to stay out in the yard.

[897] She was like, all right, you'd be careful, you know, could be animals and stuff.

[898] I go.

[899] All right.

[900] And I went and I camped.

[901] And in the middle of the night, she couldn't take it.

[902] She came and woke me up and said, get inside.

[903] I can't take it.

[904] I can't sleep.

[905] I can't sleep.

[906] I think you're going to get attacked by a raccoon or something.

[907] Right.

[908] One of the many raccoon attacks in your county.

[909] That never happened once.

[910] Episode 424 with Brian Cox.

[911] The general activity, 1915, I was published.

[912] You know at school we learn it's a force between things.

[913] There's two massive things and there's a force between them and there is.

[914] The moon and the earth.

[915] The Earth.

[916] Moon and the Earth.

[917] But actually Einstein proposed that it's not.

[918] What it is is the response of things like you and me and the moon and stars and planets to the distortion of the fabric of the universe.

[919] So stuff, anything, matter, energy, stars, planets, distort the fabric of the universe and curve it and bend it.

[920] If you say why is the moon orbit in the earth, Einstein will say it's going in a straight line over a curved and distorted fabric.

[921] Oh my God, I didn't know that until just now.

[922] This is so thrilling.

[923] I was curious how the fuck gravity was not Newtonian.

[924] Episode 426 with Mandy Moore.

[925] My parents got divorced when I was 21, 22.

[926] My mom fell in love with a woman.

[927] Boom!

[928] We love this.

[929] I knew it.

[930] And left to my father.

[931] Okay.

[932] And it was obviously a very tumultuous time in our family.

[933] Sure.

[934] Everybody was very surprised, but my mother and her partner are still together.

[935] Wonderful.

[936] My father met my now stepmom like maybe two years later, and they've been together ever since.

[937] So it's like everyone ended up where they were supposed to.

[938] Oh, that's wonderful.

[939] Yeah.

[940] I just had this conversation with someone, and I think I also brought it up to you.

[941] Because I heard a similar story.

[942] Well, first, Rob McElhenney.

[943] Oh, yeah.

[944] You know Rob McElheny?

[945] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[946] That's his story from childhood.

[947] His mother fell in love with a woman.

[948] Oh, wow.

[949] She says she's not lesbian, but her partner's gay as hell.

[950] My mom says the same thing.

[951] Really.

[952] I hate to out my mom in that sense, but she's like, I don't subscribe to labels, but she's been in love with this woman for, yeah, 15 years.

[953] So I was thinking about this whole paradigm of like leaving your partner, right?

[954] And when it's for someone of the same sex, it feels like less of a blow, right?

[955] It doesn't feel like, oh, they cheated or, oh, my God.

[956] When you hear that story, you're like, oh, my God, good for them.

[957] Like, they figure themselves out.

[958] they found their best life.

[959] If it was your mom leaving your dad for a man, for the same reasons, let's say.

[960] I'm sure that would be a much more difficult pill to swallow for everybody.

[961] Yes.

[962] And it's just fascinating.

[963] It is because it could all still be for the same reasons.

[964] Like authentically, like she's in love with this other person.

[965] Okay.

[966] So that's a big ripple.

[967] That's a big ripple.

[968] Huge ripple.

[969] And you're so right.

[970] I'm like, great.

[971] I'm so glad for her.

[972] Me too.

[973] Yeah.

[974] And you like her.

[975] Love.

[976] Yeah.

[977] I love who both of my parents are with.

[978] Yeah, it's like they get to live out this, like, next chapter of their lives.

[979] Authentically, they're happier, they're lighter.

[980] Like, my dad especially feels like this fully realized version of himself.

[981] Like, my parents were high school sweethearts.

[982] They were together when they were, like, 15 and married at 21.

[983] So it shouldn't be for everybody, you know?

[984] Well, also, a lot of people will evaluate a marriage as having failed or succeeded based on do they die married.

[985] Yeah.

[986] But to me, two people who get together for 30 years and raise three children, that's a goddamn success.

[987] Two humans with different desires and points of view?

[988] That's a major success.

[989] Yes.

[990] I wholeheartedly agree.

[991] What was it like when she told you?

[992] Or did she sit everyone down?

[993] No, here's the devastating thing.

[994] We were all together on a family vacation.

[995] It was over Christmas.

[996] I had bought my mom and dad each a laptop for Christmas as a Christmas gift.

[997] And my mom was like, could you set my laptop up for?

[998] for me?

[999] Uh -oh.

[1000] Uh -oh.

[1001] Yes.

[1002] I will never forget my parents were sitting across for me on a couch watching television.

[1003] We're in some like rental house in Georgia.

[1004] I'm setting up her computer and I'm going through the email like and just sort of like inbox, outbox drafts or whatever.

[1005] Not even like spying.

[1006] I wasn't remotely interested, but just sort of like clicking through everything.

[1007] And I saw a glimpse of a draft of an email to myself and my brothers.

[1008] And I quickly eyeballed it.

[1009] I can imagine words jumping out.

[1010] Jumping out.

[1011] Of course.

[1012] Of course.

[1013] Beautiful mind.

[1014] Exactly.

[1015] This is not the way I wanted to tell you, but I feel like this is an appropriate exercise of just like sharing what I've been going through for the past year.

[1016] And I don't remember everything, but the bullet points of like, I fell in love and we were friends and I love your father very much.

[1017] And I quickly closed the laptop once I got like the gist of what the email was about.

[1018] and I ran upstairs and my younger brother was up there and I told him everything.

[1019] Oh, wow.

[1020] You ratted her out the second.

[1021] Completely.

[1022] You had to get it out.

[1023] I needed someone on my side to sort of know what was going on and he was like, don't say anything because dad is clearly like really soaking in this last family vacation.

[1024] Don't ruin it for him.

[1025] Like let's figure out like a plan of attack once this vacation is over.

[1026] My younger brother obviously had a cooler head because I was ready to like you were going to probably can imagine confront her confront her and in front of my dad like I just I was vibrating with anxiety and adrenaline and was the immediate reaction I'm guessing panic for dad panicked for dad okay a little angry uh mom quite angry betrayed I was 22 23 so I didn't even have like the emotional vocabulary to really understand what I was feeling and I think like most people whose parents are still together at that age like I really took a certain amount of pride in them still being together.

[1027] This just, like, shattered my illusions of my identity of what my family was and who I was in my family.

[1028] And so, yeah, I did take a step back and listen to my brother Kyle and didn't end up saying anything to her for a good week.

[1029] Like, once vacation was over and everyone had sort of gone their separate ways and my mom was going to spend, like, New Year's Eve with some friends.

[1030] Well, things start making sense immediately, right?

[1031] Of course.

[1032] Like, oh, right, she went to Sedona twice this year.

[1033] By the way, they lived in Sedona.

[1034] Are you kidding me?

[1035] Are you kidding me?

[1036] They lived in Sedona for like a decade.

[1037] Oh, my God.

[1038] It's a great place.

[1039] It's the best.

[1040] Especially for lovers.

[1041] Yeah.

[1042] Episode 427 with Anna Lemke.

[1043] Okay, so you're just now hinting at the thing about your book that made my ears most open, which is the fact that you start with admission of your own.

[1044] I literally click in my head, okay, I trust this person.

[1045] As flawed as that might be, I'm not.

[1046] like, this isn't someone preaching to me. This is someone who's experienced what I've experienced, and now I trust you.

[1047] And again, talk about stigma.

[1048] The last person we're expecting this from, in my opinion.

[1049] So please tell Monica and the listeners what road you ended up on.

[1050] Somewhere around age 40, I discovered romance novels.

[1051] And for whatever reason, they were just not books I had ever read before.

[1052] And Twilight was my gateway drug.

[1053] And it just absolutely transported me. And so when I was done with the whole series, I read it again.

[1054] And then I read it again.

[1055] And each time I read it, it was similar, but not quite the same experience.

[1056] So I went from there to reading all different kinds of romance novels.

[1057] And I got a Kindle.

[1058] And that meant that as soon as I was done reading one, I could start reading another.

[1059] And I was staying up later and later at night.

[1060] And I was showing up at work exhausted.

[1061] And I was reading more and more potent forms of romance novels.

[1062] That is to say, erotica, combined with a behavior that we don't need to mention, but that you can, infer from this.

[1063] And basically, I got addicted to that.

[1064] And it took hours every day, got to the point where I remember we went on a vacation with another family, and I spent most of the vacation, like off by myself, reading.

[1065] I at one point took romance novels to work and was reading between patients.

[1066] And I would kind of joke about it.

[1067] This was about, let's say, 18 or so months into it.

[1068] I was sort of like vaguely aware that it was a problem, but not really recognizing.

[1069] it as a problem, which is so common with these behaviors until I sort of had this experience, actually with a student that made me recognize it.

[1070] But basically, yeah, I mean, I got addicted to culturally sanctioned pornography for women.

[1071] There's so much in there that I relate to because they're all the same, right?

[1072] So I have to imagine you had barriers, right?

[1073] So it was like, you were going to read this at night.

[1074] Yes.

[1075] Right.

[1076] And it just escalates.

[1077] Virtually you're going to read it whenever the fuck you want because you've stepped over every single obstacle.

[1078] You're absolutely right.

[1079] and the Kindle was really the tipping point.

[1080] I didn't have to go to the library.

[1081] I could be totally anonymous.

[1082] I could be reading in the waiting room of a doctor's office and nobody could see what I was reading.

[1083] It was all that aspect, the way it got accelerated, that I could be more and more hidden about what were really not very good behaviors.

[1084] It's interesting because I think it would be so easy, and I'm sure you did this, to justify why it's fine, because it is fine.

[1085] it's nothing's illegal.

[1086] It's all for you.

[1087] I guess you could also say, like, I'm more sexually evolved than other people who might not understand it.

[1088] Like, there's all these ways that you can make this okay.

[1089] So to decide it's not, I feel like it's actually hard to do.

[1090] Yeah.

[1091] And I think you're bringing up a very important point about the culture wars, right?

[1092] And maybe for some people, they would say it was okay.

[1093] But for me, I was now consuming written words that were really not consistent with my values.

[1094] It was interfering with my goal to be a good parent and a good mother and a good doctor.

[1095] And I was experiencing what I talk about in the book are the very subtle signs of a dopamine deficit state, which is to say that I was experiencing irritability, anxiety, depression, and lack of joy in other areas of my life, which I attribute to the hijacking of my motivational reward system, which is a very subtle but very important point, which I think pervades our lives today, which is that we are so surrounded by so many easy pleasures, so many reinforcing drugs and behaviors that as a result, we are bombarding our reward pathways with too much dopamine and to compensate, our brains have to downregulate production of dopamine and dopamine transmission so that we get in this dopamine deficit state where life is no longer enjoyable, not because life is hard, but because it is too easy.

[1096] Episode 432, armchaired and dangerous with special guests, Cold War Kids.

[1097] We are going to let it shine.

[1098] Episode 433 with Josh Brolin.

[1099] The other thing is that you cultivate a look that you carry with you all the time, that has worked very well for my career.

[1100] and then personally, I've had to slowly let that look go.

[1101] It's kind of like having tattoos, like I have this one now.

[1102] It's my son's drawing, but I used to be covered, and I had them all taken off.

[1103] No way.

[1104] And somebody asked me, why'd you have them taken off?

[1105] And I said, I don't need them anymore.

[1106] And plus this, along with this, and that's what it's meant to be.

[1107] It's like, stay away from me, be afraid of me because something bad will happen.

[1108] But the truth of the matter, obviously, is I'm scared shitless.

[1109] I don't want to be in a position, even though I look like I always want to be in a position.

[1110] And that's how to avoid that is to project something that is a performance art. We talk about this all the time because my image is so cultivated.

[1111] It's crazy.

[1112] And when I look at my kids, I think, oh, could I have been that happy, go lucky little fellow?

[1113] And you were at some point.

[1114] Yeah, yeah, it was at some point.

[1115] But then you weren't.

[1116] I was sending a message to everybody.

[1117] It's not even I'm dominating you.

[1118] It's just you will have your hands full.

[1119] So just move to the next.

[1120] next person.

[1121] Bro, I've said that out loud.

[1122] I was like, let's stop for a second because I know what you're doing.

[1123] Are you sure you want to do this?

[1124] Like, you can do it.

[1125] Yeah, yeah.

[1126] I'll be right here for you.

[1127] For you.

[1128] By the way, that's all like verbal juggling and all that.

[1129] There was one time, and this was a good thing.

[1130] This was the right thing to do, but in the way that I did it was self -absorbed.

[1131] And we were on the set of gangster squad.

[1132] I can't remember what they were protesting and we were downtown.

[1133] I think we were MacArthur Park.

[1134] or something.

[1135] Sean was there and somebody was protesting and he was drinking during this protest and it was a righteous protest and he came out of it and he walked on our set.

[1136] The PA says, hey, you can't walk here.

[1137] He was in that mode already.

[1138] Sure, sure.

[1139] Silverback gorilla mode.

[1140] So then he started talking down to the PA and the PA doesn't want to lose her, his job.

[1141] So then that thing started and he's loud because he's drinking, you know, and I heard it and I turned around.

[1142] It sounds so arrogant and it was.

[1143] I turn around and I zeroed in, I cross -haired on him.

[1144] And I was like, my job is to humiliate you.

[1145] Right.

[1146] That's why I'm good.

[1147] I need to teach you the great lesson.

[1148] I'm the sheriff of everywhere I am.

[1149] I am the sheriff of everywhere I'm at.

[1150] And literally, everybody afterwards, if my vocabulary choices are right on, if I can be present enough, then there's going to be.

[1151] Yes.

[1152] Yes.

[1153] Yes.

[1154] No. No, that was for all of us.

[1155] Oh my God.

[1156] I would do it differently now, but I don't know how much.

[1157] I think it would be a little less self -absorred, but it would still be there.

[1158] Yeah, the sheriff is alive in all of us.

[1159] Everybody has it.

[1160] You know, I mean, Tom Cruise, like, pulled over and helped somebody, which is so great.

[1161] It's so wonderfully he did it, but it's Tom Cruise.

[1162] It's like, you can't help it.

[1163] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1164] There's some bizarre kind of ego crossover.

[1165] I can do it because I've saved the world twice.

[1166] in two different films.

[1167] It's a sword, though.

[1168] There's a really good side to it.

[1169] It's an obsession with justice, I think.

[1170] I've been accused of being a sheriff as well.

[1171] In your own way.

[1172] Yeah, but it's the same thing.

[1173] No, this is for everyone.

[1174] For people who can't or won't, it'll be me. Like, it makes me super righteous.

[1175] Exactly.

[1176] And it's a problem.

[1177] And if it works, there is a power that you inherit that is poisoning.

[1178] Yeah.

[1179] Very few people can hand.

[1180] handle real power or perceived power without it poisoning them.

[1181] I mean, sadly, you're my brother's age.

[1182] So I have a lot of experience with this exact age dynamic.

[1183] And I was emulating him like crazy as you'd imagine.

[1184] And when you leave, I'm going to find out where I can buy that hat.

[1185] I'll send you one.

[1186] So I'm going to guess that this is stemming from the same place, which is I didn't have a dad around.

[1187] I don't know your whole story with your dad.

[1188] But because I didn't have a dad to go, that a boy, son, you're becoming a man. I turned it over to all of my friends.

[1189] Did you have a group?

[1190] Yes, the tightest group, one guy in particular, in the irony of it all is, you know, it comes from the exact same place.

[1191] He's watching his fucking shithead, stepdad, beat up mom all the time, tons of alcoholism, sexual abuse.

[1192] And we were, we'll fight this whole place.

[1193] Right.

[1194] That's what the bond was.

[1195] But the true appeal of the friendship was the only person I could be vulnerable around.

[1196] I could say I'm terrified to fight Charles.

[1197] I'm going to.

[1198] But just having one person that I could let the whole thing down with One outlet of vulnerability is what saved me. Yeah, which was with this one guy.

[1199] Yeah, Aaron Weekly, still my best friend.

[1200] Aaron Weekly, still your best friend.

[1201] I love hearing that.

[1202] Got sober two years ago, finally.

[1203] He did?

[1204] Yeah, so now we're back in business.

[1205] It was hard for us for a minute.

[1206] And you're sober?

[1207] How long?

[1208] So I quit drinking 17 years ago.

[1209] I have not drank or done Coke.

[1210] Those were my primary drugs of choice.

[1211] And then I relapsed on opiates, smoked weed during that time, got a little into those things.

[1212] I've tried a couple things that I thought I could have power.

[1213] over and I've come to find out I don't have power over any single thing.

[1214] Suffice to say that 17 years I didn't drink and Aaron goes as hard as you can go, there would be a period we could see each other, but then we've got to go our separate ways.

[1215] Yeah.

[1216] But now we're back in.

[1217] And you?

[1218] I got sober.

[1219] I'm not sober.

[1220] No, I'm just kidding.

[1221] Big reveal.

[1222] I'm on Molly right now and this toothpick is fucking delicious.

[1223] Where do you get these?

[1224] I'm fucking rolling hard right now, dude.

[1225] I got sober at 19.

[1226] I was looking at 14 years in prison.

[1227] You punch a cop or something?

[1228] Six.

[1229] Six cops?

[1230] Yeah.

[1231] I fought on the corner of Hollywood and La Brea.

[1232] Wow.

[1233] And my buddy, who I'm still buddies with, who has 26 years sober at this point.

[1234] Dude, this is literally the lamest story I could tell.

[1235] As he was closing the store, he saw me turn around toward the cops, and he heard this.

[1236] And that's the God's honest truth.

[1237] And if you're too young to have seen Enter the Dragon, watch it.

[1238] That's exactly what it is.

[1239] I was in my mind, Bruce Lee.

[1240] And they kicked my ass so bad.

[1241] And they hog tied me. So I got sober for three and a half years and then I went back out.

[1242] And then I got sober at 29 for five years.

[1243] Yeah, and I should have kept that going.

[1244] But then I met a girl and then I knew immediately.

[1245] In your head, you're like, maybe you start questioning it.

[1246] Like maybe if I just stay away from that and I do that and you start kind of like positioning things.

[1247] Coupled with I'm older.

[1248] Yeah, man. Again, if you want to get there, you'll find a way there.

[1249] Our best creativity has been spent convincing ourselves to do what we want to do.

[1250] If you do an acting job and if you spend the kind of creative specificity that we do doing that, we'd have 12 Oscars.

[1251] Literally.

[1252] Yeah, yeah.

[1253] It feels life and death.

[1254] Yes.

[1255] It's like, I have to figure this out.

[1256] Yes, and there's a way.

[1257] There is a way.

[1258] Yes, all that shit's bad, but I'm smarter than your average bear.

[1259] So ultimately, I got sober at 45.

[1260] My grandma was kind of on her deathbed, even though she didn't die for a couple more months.

[1261] But we thought she was dying at that point.

[1262] And I'm the guy, like you, who's like, okay, everybody's going to show up here and you're going to be here.

[1263] And then this, and then this part of the family will show up, and everybody relies on Josh.

[1264] And then that night they couldn't because I was kind of dry.

[1265] And it was Halloween night.

[1266] I went out for a beer that turned into, like, 16 something.

[1267] I ended up at O 'Brien's on Main Street in Santa Monica.

[1268] I had been 86 out of every bar on Main Street except O 'Brien's because they love me. Good Irish stock in there.

[1269] That's why.

[1270] That's the deal.

[1271] And I woke up on the sidewalk in front of my house.

[1272] Couldn't find my car.

[1273] Finally found the car.

[1274] Finally found a way to get in.

[1275] Picked up my brother.

[1276] I was late.

[1277] Showed up stinking.

[1278] And I walked in and my grandmother, 99 years old, lifted her head.

[1279] Never a drinker, never a drugger.

[1280] Just life on life's terms and looked at me and this huge smile just and I went that's it I'm done and I haven't had anything literally it was like how dare me with everything in the palm of my hands need all this idea of assistance just to get through the day yeah or to get through this life with all the things you want it's so embarrassing and this lady went through literally a century without any help.

[1281] We're cowards, really, dude.

[1282] Every time I'm in an AA meeting, they keep trying to figure out the quintessential ingredient for all of us.

[1283] And I'm like, you know the quintessential ingredient is like, we are incapable of being uncomfortable for five minutes.

[1284] Literally.

[1285] That's the truth about us.

[1286] Unfair, unjust.

[1287] I don't deserve to feel uncomfortable for five minutes.

[1288] Yeah.

[1289] I have got to fix this immediately.

[1290] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[1291] Episode 434 with AJ Jacobs Maybe you like this type of puzzle I talk about It's called Dittloids And it's not very popular But I think it should be more popular It's where you have a phrase that starts with a number But then you're only given letters So for instance, 5 ,280 F in M 5 ,280 F in a M 5 ,280 feet in a mile exactly so that's an example oh oh i like this i like this oh cool so this might be up your alley well it obviously is because you got it immediately and didn't even know the instructions oh my god it was exciting all right you ready can i give you just a handful 20 000 l under the s 20 000 leads under the c nice nice nice nice nice nice i don't know if that really got it you got it 52 c in a d plus two jays They're also two J's in there.

[1292] 52 cards in a deck plus two Jokers.

[1293] Exactly.

[1294] Nicely done.

[1295] Oh, my God.

[1296] Wow.

[1297] These are great.

[1298] You are good.

[1299] That's great.

[1300] You are good.

[1301] These are a little harder.

[1302] These, I don't know if I got 31F at BR.

[1303] 31F at B .R. At B .R. At is the at sign?

[1304] No, no, just regular A .T. 31 flavors at Baskin -Robbins.

[1305] Wow.

[1306] That was impressive.

[1307] Oh my God, good job.

[1308] Wow.

[1309] Wow, that feels good.

[1310] Fuck hit me one more time.

[1311] I'm almost there.

[1312] I'm almost not going to be able to shake anyone's hand tomorrow.

[1313] I literally don't remember what this one is.

[1314] Good one.

[1315] I missed that for a second.

[1316] How about this one?

[1317] 14D in an F. 14D in an F. 14 days in a fortnight?

[1318] Oh, my God.

[1319] Monica, nicely done.

[1320] Is that it?

[1321] Yeah, girl.

[1322] Double, double high five for that.

[1323] That is wonderful.

[1324] Hot and smart, bachelors.

[1325] So there's Dittloids for you.

[1326] Those are fun.

[1327] How do I spell D -L -L -O -I -D -S?

[1328] I got to look this up.

[1329] D -I -D -I -D -S.

[1330] There are other names for it, but I am a fan.

[1331] That's what I love, finding all these weird genres that I didn't know about.

[1332] 14 days in a Fortnite, girl.

[1333] Nicely done.

[1334] Episode 436 with Joseph, of Henrik.

[1335] One of my absolute favorite aspects is, first evolution is like everyone did everything, probably sex separated, so you were gathering if you were female and you're hunting and whatnot if you're a male.

[1336] But as we become agrarian or we start growing stuff, now we have some stockpiles.

[1337] People can specialize in different things.

[1338] They can be woodworkers.

[1339] They can be this and that.

[1340] And that just keeps growing and evolving and evolving to the point where you get to an hourly employee.

[1341] Tell us when that was new and what impact that had on how we think.

[1342] That seems to becoming kind of, well, at least in Europe, it's high middle ages, late high middle ages in early modern period.

[1343] So think 13th, 14th century.

[1344] People are becoming obsessed with time.

[1345] So you get the spreading of clocks towards the end of that period.

[1346] But before that, people are using hourglasses and candles and other kind of techniques to measure time.

[1347] And there begins to be this equation between time and money.

[1348] And first it's used for overtime only, but then people begin paying hourly rates or peace rates or things like that.

[1349] And one of the things I point out is that we have this, not only do we have time thrift, so we tend to think about us being short on time, got to save time, need more time, but we also think time is money.

[1350] So that, of course, traces to Ben Franklin.

[1351] But it seemed like before Ben, you know, he had a way of crystallizing things.

[1352] It was in the zeitgeist and people were thinking about time and money together in a way that you don't see in other societies or in the past.

[1353] Episode 437 with Molly Shannon.

[1354] If you went to a Catholic school, what was your dynamic with boys?

[1355] Like, your first crush was a priest.

[1356] Oh, yeah, he was an Irish guy.

[1357] I think a lot of people were like, oh, don't talk about the accident.

[1358] That'll make them cry.

[1359] Don't bring that up.

[1360] You know, but Father Murray was a priest at St. Dominic.

[1361] So after we left my aunt's house, we went back to my original childhood house.

[1362] and I think I thought my mom would be there or something.

[1363] I was in some fantasy, but she wasn't there.

[1364] But anyhow, Father Murray, when we went to church, knelt down when I was probably five.

[1365] He just directly addressed the loss.

[1366] And he said, now, Molly, I know you lost your mother, you lost your sister.

[1367] This is just heartbreaking for you.

[1368] And he held my hands and looked deep in my eyes.

[1369] And I so wanted someone to see and understand the deep, sad, well.

[1370] Stop ignoring this thing that happened.

[1371] Yeah, yeah, it was wonderful.

[1372] Yes, I did have a crush.

[1373] on him.

[1374] I mean, like an innocent little girl crush.

[1375] But I thought, I love him.

[1376] He understands me in a deep way.

[1377] So I just appreciated it.

[1378] But you were doing fun role playing shit and stuff.

[1379] That was in the book.

[1380] Masturbation.

[1381] Yes.

[1382] Yes.

[1383] To the pre.

[1384] I make it yourself polite.

[1385] But I love it.

[1386] But it's young.

[1387] And I wondered, too, like anything you could soothe with, I would imagine at that point had to be incredibly appealing.

[1388] Yes.

[1389] Well, masturbation, it's an interesting thing because I think that it's natural and positive and there's nothing wrong with that.

[1390] I'm actually reading a really good book where this woman talks about it.

[1391] It's called Come As You Are.

[1392] And she speaks about masturbation, how healthy it is and people's different reactions.

[1393] A shame -based reaction to a young girl masturbating could stay with a woman forever.

[1394] And then they might associate that guilt and shame or like you're bad or dirty with sex for life or something.

[1395] So anyhow, it's a great book.

[1396] I think it's an interesting thing because I think some people could see that and be like, oh, disgusted.

[1397] And then the person is associating desire or kind of thing with shame.

[1398] Oh, totally.

[1399] And being Catholics, I could certainly relate to that.

[1400] Or you could be like, okay, put on your shoes.

[1401] We're getting ready to go out because I know some people like that.

[1402] And not every girl does that or boy, I did.

[1403] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1404] And it felt fun and natural.

[1405] So right after the accident, yes, I was downstairs in her basement masturbating.

[1406] And I would make up scenarios like I would have in my head like there was a really mean gym teacher who was like, get down on the floor, you fuck piece of that shit.

[1407] You fat hog, no wonder your mother died.

[1408] Get down in the fourth, fatty, and do push -ups.

[1409] Oh, no. What a mean guy.

[1410] I was dumbed clothes in my pants because I didn't want to be too close to my actual.

[1411] And I would tie myself up to a chair, too, so that I couldn't get out of a chair and I would grind.

[1412] We need a visual.

[1413] We do, we do.

[1414] And I'd run, and she'd be like, you fat piece of shit.

[1415] You know?

[1416] This is so wild.

[1417] Yeah, it's like BDSM.

[1418] It is.

[1419] My aunt saw this and she was horrified.

[1420] She must have thought you needed an exorcism.

[1421] She saw me tied up and she just pretended you never see it.

[1422] She opened the door, had a horrified look, and then closed the door.

[1423] Oh, my God.

[1424] Were you like?

[1425] No, I continued to joyfully.

[1426] But you were you like?

[1427] By the roleplay part?

[1428] No. Oh, wonderful.

[1429] Yeah.

[1430] I'm so impressed that your brain could even, like, do that.

[1431] My friend Allison and I talked about it, because she was the first girl I talked about it with at Catholic grade school.

[1432] She was like, I do that, and I was like, I do it too.

[1433] And then she used to call it Mr. Meaney.

[1434] Oh.

[1435] She had the same role play.

[1436] Mr. Meenie.

[1437] Oh, my God.

[1438] This must be a Catholic.

[1439] This is a Catholic.

[1440] It's bad.

[1441] Episode 439 with Machine Gun Kelly, aka Colson Baker.

[1442] Okay, can I tell you something I heard recently in a meeting?

[1443] I did the things they say I did.

[1444] I'm not who they say I am.

[1445] I think that would sum up what you're saying.

[1446] Absolutely, exactly what it is.

[1447] Yeah, it's nice, right?

[1448] Yes.

[1449] Crazy childhood, or at least on paper it is.

[1450] Yeah, it's pretty wild.

[1451] Your parents were missionaries.

[1452] One of them was, yeah.

[1453] Your father.

[1454] And you guys went all.

[1455] all over the world.

[1456] Yeah, he would be in and I. I kind of learned a lot of this stuff after his death.

[1457] Oh, he died?

[1458] Yes.

[1459] When did he die?

[1460] Can I ask?

[1461] Two years ago.

[1462] And I learned a lot of this stuff after.

[1463] I knew that he was really traumatized from something that I haven't really even acknowledged to myself what it was, but I learned what happened as a kid.

[1464] And it's actually not what anyone would think.

[1465] It's the most unique, odd kid story I've ever heard because it's not like, oh, someone touched him.

[1466] It's nothing like what you would...

[1467] It's probably the most insane...

[1468] Perpetrated by his parents?

[1469] No. Oh, okay.

[1470] His father died in front of him.

[1471] Okay.

[1472] But I haven't stopped to ever acknowledge what he went through.

[1473] He didn't talk about it until he was on his deathbed.

[1474] Oh, no kidding.

[1475] And he was like, this is what that was.

[1476] Yeah.

[1477] And I was mind -blown, and it made me understand so much of who and why he was dealing with what he was.

[1478] Because I couldn't understand.

[1479] He slept for a lot of years.

[1480] when my mom had left to do her life.

[1481] Major depression, yeah?

[1482] For sure, and alcohol.

[1483] I mean, he died of liver cirrhosis.

[1484] And he probably wasn't that old.

[1485] No. Yeah, he, it was escapism, which is classic with me as well.

[1486] So it was just like, okay, I can't keep this job.

[1487] So like, go to God.

[1488] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1489] Go to missionary.

[1490] Oh, no, oh, then, okay, get a job, but then can keep just, okay, go to God.

[1491] Yeah.

[1492] So there would be moments like I remember in high school, like he went to Kuwait for a year.

[1493] I was a freshman and I stayed with a friend of mine down the street in Cleveland right before I moved to Cleveland so I moved to Cleveland at the end of freshman year okay nine to 13 four to something I was in Denver did you see me smirk just now yeah why because I got excited but I want you to know why I smirked yeah yeah because if you asked me like where I grew up I'll tell you I grew up in my mind in this area of my life that was really only three years long same so when you said that I got little goosebumps because I had crazy trauma up until we moved to this one town Milford and I started sixth grade there all the stepdad's were gone fucking sexual abuse was gone all this shit was gone and I got there and I met my best friend who I'm still best friends with I became popular I was punk I skated this whole thing and so it was only three years but that's my home when you just said Cleveland I was like oh yeah that's the same thing I bet that was my segment where I was like this is who I am and you just caught my smirk which no one would have caught Your spidey senses are fucking 12 because of your fucking childhood.

[1494] And I would have caught if your eye moved this much while I was talking.

[1495] I'm like, what's up?

[1496] Did I lose him?

[1497] Now he's out to get him.

[1498] What's what happened?

[1499] Right.

[1500] That was awesome.

[1501] Episode 441 with Gerard Carmichael.

[1502] I've been saying to friends, like, everybody's in the closet about something.

[1503] Yes.

[1504] There is something in your life that causes you deep shame that you just don't want people to know.

[1505] And saying it, like in context of your online, like coming out means something different in Hollywood now than when Ellen did it.

[1506] I'm aware of that, right?

[1507] It means something different in my household than it meant in other people's household.

[1508] Like, it's just the context of your life that matters that builds that secret, that builds that fear.

[1509] But you have this great moment and I loved it because I could feel the authenticity of it, which is like you're looking at a dude in the audience who's not loving this.

[1510] And you're like, dude, I know.

[1511] I know, man, I know.

[1512] I'm from the hood in the south.

[1513] I know what you're saying.

[1514] Sometimes I'm in the shower.

[1515] I'm like, fuck.

[1516] I'm fucking gay.

[1517] You can't give me any homophobia that I haven't given myself.

[1518] I've internalized so much of it.

[1519] I'm trying to work so far out of it.

[1520] But I've said it.

[1521] I've already said it.

[1522] I've been on both sides of that.

[1523] It's so real.

[1524] And that's what I'm saying about like even just going back to comedy, like being able to articulate the full breadth of your experience.

[1525] being able to say like oh i was on both sides of that oh my god i'm realizing something right now as you say it that comedy hasn't changed right so what happened was someone said out loud something we had all felt on an airplane which is oh this food's terrible whatever it is right yeah the decade of airplane jokes and then Seinfeld's like he points out something we've all been feeling and there's this look that's the joy of the comedy and so it's the same thing right now which is like you're just pointing out something we've all felt or it wouldn't work Yes, that's where we're connecting.

[1526] That's what I'm saying when your audience applauds you.

[1527] They felt that.

[1528] They've been there.

[1529] Episode 443 with Ike Barronholz live in Los Angeles.

[1530] Okay, last time through a sheet.

[1531] But this is Barack and Michelle.

[1532] Barack and Michelle?

[1533] Yeah.

[1534] The most respected people in America.

[1535] Make it classy.

[1536] This is very sacrilegious.

[1537] This is not good.

[1538] What's going to happen?

[1539] Let's say they're forced into it.

[1540] They might make it worse.

[1541] No, no, no, no. Let's empower everyone.

[1542] Michelle was at a goop retreat.

[1543] Okay.

[1544] Esther Perel was around a campfire.

[1545] God, I hope I was invited.

[1546] And she said, have either of you ever had the sex through the sheet?

[1547] It's a very intimate.

[1548] It's a way to play a role reversal and really mess with identity.

[1549] And Michelle came back to Barack, and she's like, this is going to be kinky.

[1550] That's a good angle.

[1551] because maybe he's a little scared.

[1552] I like that.

[1553] All right.

[1554] Hold on, I want to do something.

[1555] It was so good.

[1556] You're going to do it one more time.

[1557] You don't even need anything else, although I do want more.

[1558] All right.

[1559] Thank you.

[1560] It was too good not to have one of those.

[1561] Now, let me be clear.

[1562] What's going to happen here?

[1563] I'm going to stick it in between the sheet and absolutely destroy that pussy.

[1564] I just, I don't know.

[1565] I don't know.

[1566] would imagine if in this scenario.

[1567] No, Barag is a good leg.

[1568] Oh, for sure.

[1569] He's so sexy.

[1570] Oh, my God.

[1571] Oh, my God.

[1572] We were fully transported.

[1573] I have to have more.

[1574] I have to have more.

[1575] Uh -oh.

[1576] He hears the noise.

[1577] Sasha and Malia were supposed to be out.

[1578] Oh, no. They're not in the room.

[1579] They're not there.

[1580] But they were supposed to be out late.

[1581] They were going to do a concert.

[1582] They thought they had the house to themselves.

[1583] They're saying, seeing Duolupa.

[1584] Duolupa.

[1585] But she had a measles scare and canceled the show.

[1586] All right, so you're mid tearing it up.

[1587] All right.

[1588] And they're coming home?

[1589] Here's what you hear.

[1590] You ready?

[1591] Oh shit.

[1592] Oh, fuck.

[1593] Hold on.

[1594] Hold on.

[1595] Who is it?

[1596] I'm going to be very clear and finish very quickly.

[1597] Do I ever feel like the Secret Service is going to investigate me?

[1598] Yes.

[1599] Episode 448 with Ed Yong.

[1600] Okay, the birds and the magnetic field of Earth.

[1601] Oh, yes.

[1602] Can you please explain what happens?

[1603] Do they have a different organ?

[1604] Yes.

[1605] It is hard to explain what exactly happens because scientists are themselves not completely sure.

[1606] The magnetic sense exists in a large number of animals.

[1607] Songbirds have it.

[1608] Sea turtles have it.

[1609] A bunch of other things have it.

[1610] But it is by far the hardest.

[1611] sense to study.

[1612] It is the only one where we don't know what the sense organ is or even what the receptors are.

[1613] And by receptors, so vision works for my eyes.

[1614] Pretty obvious.

[1615] In my eyes, there's a retina.

[1616] In the retina, there are special cells to detect light.

[1617] So that's the receptors.

[1618] We know what they are.

[1619] Don't know that for the magnetic sense.

[1620] And the reason for that is the magnetic field penetrates through flesh.

[1621] So it goes through our bodies.

[1622] So unlike light or sound or most of the other things we sense.

[1623] You don't need a hole in your body to let it in, and you don't need the sense organ to be on the surface.

[1624] The sense organ could be anywhere, could be in my butt, could be in the back of my head, could be distributed throughout my entire body, as like one scientist told me, it could be like finding a needle in a haystack made of needles.

[1625] I'm sure they would have already thought of this, but how about like just the normal levels of iron in your blood being pulled in some direction that is somehow sensed in your cardiovascular?

[1626] system?

[1627] Like, could it even be in its totality?

[1628] The iron in your blood is not magnetic like that.

[1629] So, you know, in the X -Men comics, when Magneto paralyzes people by manipulating the iron in their blood, does not work.

[1630] Oh, bummer.

[1631] Okay.

[1632] It would not actually work in real life.

[1633] But there are at least three different possibilities for how Animal Sense Magnetic feels.

[1634] And two are ridiculously complicated, but you've kind of hit on the third, which is the easiest to explain, which is that there is a mineral called magnetite, which is magnetic.

[1635] It's an iron mineral.

[1636] And it exists in the cells of living things, like some bacteria, some animals.

[1637] And you can imagine that it basically acts like a little compass needle.

[1638] There's a little needle inside your cells as you turn, the needle turns, and it tugs on something, something that then generates an electric signal in your nervous system.

[1639] That is one possible way that a magnetic sense could work, but actually trying to identify these cells has been super hard.

[1640] People have tried, people have said that they found them in pigeons and other animals.

[1641] It's often turned out to be not true.

[1642] There's a huge amount of controversy in this because if I asked you, explain how magnets work.

[1643] It's really hard, right?

[1644] Like, I'm a professional science writer and I would struggle to explain to you how magnets work.

[1645] So magnetism is so counterintuitive that it's very hard for us to explain.

[1646] It's very hard for us to imagine what that would feel like to another animal.

[1647] One of the theories is that there's some weird chemical reaction that goes on in its eyes that's magnetically sensitive, and it means that maybe the bird sees the magnetic field.

[1648] Like maybe there's an overlay over its vision, and maybe north is like a bit darker or a bit brighter.

[1649] Or like the impulse for things to go towards the light.

[1650] Maybe it's yet a different version of light through the eyes that are being compelled to fly towards.

[1651] Right, right.

[1652] It's like a heads -up display, something on the windshield of your car.

[1653] Maybe it's something like that.

[1654] But maybe not.

[1655] Maybe it's just a feeling.

[1656] An intuition.

[1657] An intuition, right.

[1658] So that's why it's so difficult.

[1659] But earlier, you know, you said that one of the cool things about this area is that scientists often discover stuff in a completely unexpected ways.

[1660] And one of the ways in which we learned that animals have this magnetic sense is when it comes time to migrate, small songbirds exhibit to this thing called Zugenruhe, a German word for migration anxiety.

[1661] They get super wrestled.

[1662] They're really, like, itching to go.

[1663] They have somewhere to be, and they want to get there.

[1664] Like two days before spring break for a teenager.

[1665] Right, yeah, yeah.

[1666] Like, oh, fuck, let's go Thursday.

[1667] Pacing around your roof, like, come on.

[1668] But it turns out, they know the way, because if you put them in a cage, even if they can't see any landmarks or anything, they'll start hopping in the same direction.

[1669] And so you see a bird doing them and go, huh, that's weird.

[1670] And then you start doing experiments that show exactly how it works.

[1671] A lot of senses were discovered because people saw animals doing things that just didn't seem possible.

[1672] You know, a bat flying through a completely dark room without bumping into anything.

[1673] An electric fish swimming backwards along its tank and then up the wall of its tank without hitting that wall.

[1674] How is it doing that?

[1675] Those are the first clues that cue people into these other sensory worlds that are all around us.

[1676] Episode 454 with Steve Broussotti.

[1677] There's a lot about all these different biological systems working together.

[1678] And we're learning more and more about developmental biology, how these mutations work, like in any field of science.

[1679] It's just progressing so rapidly.

[1680] The only mammal I know a lot about is primates.

[1681] So lemurs present themselves 65 million years ago, our first primates, which we are descended.

[1682] from and our primates.

[1683] Can you walk me through our growth?

[1684] So there's this extinction, it opens up this huge world to us, and how quickly do we start getting big?

[1685] This is, to me, a remarkable story.

[1686] This is one of the great stories of evolution.

[1687] And we can circle back a bit to what we were talking about when the asteroid hit.

[1688] About 75 % of species died.

[1689] Three out of every four species could not endure.

[1690] And most of them probably died pretty quickly.

[1691] We can tell from the fossil record that within about 20 ,000 years, The dinosaurs are gone, except for birds.

[1692] And it seems like a lot of dinosaurs were just too big, and they couldn't hide very easily.

[1693] They had very particular diets, and it took them a long time to grow from a baby into an adult.

[1694] These are all handicaps when suddenly just the earth becomes this fickle casino, basically.

[1695] It's like a hand -of -cards scenario.

[1696] Dinosaurus just were holding a bad hand of cards, and some mammals were holding a good hand of cards.

[1697] They were small.

[1698] That means they could reproduce really quickly.

[1699] They could grow from a baby to an adult, really quickly.

[1700] They could hide really easily.

[1701] They could burrow, just escape in a burrow, weighed out the glass bullet rain, you know?

[1702] And they had very omnivorous diet some of these mammals.

[1703] They could eat all kinds of food because of the teeth, because those teeth were so adaptable.

[1704] Now, with that said, it does look like about 90 % of mammals died on the asteroid hits.

[1705] So we almost went the way of the dinosaurs.

[1706] And thankfully, we had some ancestor that stared down the asteroid and somehow made it through because it was small and adapted.

[1707] and could eat lots of food.

[1708] So in the rise and rain of the mammals, I do the analogy of, like, imagine a game of asteroid roulette.

[1709] You have a gun with 10 chambers, nine of them have a bullet, and the mammals had to survive that.

[1710] But when they did, the asteroid was a one -off.

[1711] It caused a lot of destruction.

[1712] But those tsunamis, they stopped.

[1713] The earthquakes, they stopped.

[1714] The glass rain, it stopped.

[1715] So the Earth started to heal itself pretty quickly.

[1716] But all of a sudden, there's no T -Rexes anymore.

[1717] There's no Triceratopses anymore.

[1718] You have all of these open jobs in the ecosystem.

[1719] And it was the bigger animals that really died out more than the smaller ones.

[1720] So those mammals that made it through, they really were looking at a new world, a world of abundant opportunity.

[1721] And they responded by becoming big.

[1722] Within 200 ,000 years, you have mammals the size of pigs.

[1723] Oh, wow.

[1724] Very fast.

[1725] And then within a million, maybe two million years, you have mammals the size of cows.

[1726] And the two drivers of that are that the animal gets bigger so it's less prone to be attacked and mate selection?

[1727] There's probably lots of reasons why you want to get bigger.

[1728] I mean, it's easier to defend yourself.

[1729] The bigger you are, fewer predators can attack you.

[1730] And the other reason really is those roles in the ecosystem, those ecological niches, they were open.

[1731] And when there's open jobs, open roles, open opportunities, something is going to grab those.

[1732] And mammals did.

[1733] And that's where our ancestry, the primates, come from.

[1734] There's some very famous fossil sites, very well dated, using these geological techniques to about 100 ,000 or so years after the asteroid.

[1735] These are in Montana, mostly, and they are just full of teeth of primates.

[1736] Episode 456 with Brian Cranston.

[1737] When I read the pilot for Breaking Bad, I was already being asked to meet with Vince Gilligan because he hired me for a role on X -Files many years earlier, almost 10 years before.

[1738] Is that where he comes?

[1739] Yeah, he was a writer and a producer on X -Files.

[1740] And that was his big break and his big entree into the business.

[1741] And he wrote this thing where there was a character in the back of a car and Mulder got into the car.

[1742] And I had this something kind of bug in my head that if we didn't drive 80 miles an hour in a westerly direction, that my head would explode.

[1743] Like speed a little bit.

[1744] Like speed.

[1745] Sure, sure.

[1746] Post or pre -speed?

[1747] Who stole from who?

[1748] All ideas are recycled.

[1749] anyway.

[1750] So this character that he wrote really gave me insight to Vince Gilligan how he thinks.

[1751] Many writers would have written my character in the back seat to be a good guy and empathetic.

[1752] And so the audience would root for Mulder to save him because he's a nice guy.

[1753] We don't want him to die.

[1754] But he wrote my character as a despicable human being.

[1755] Oh.

[1756] An anti -Semite.

[1757] Oh, wow.

[1758] A motherfucker.

[1759] Yeah.

[1760] You know, just spewing bullshit.

[1761] and venom all the time.

[1762] And as I'm reading this, I'm going, oh, where's this going?

[1763] So he challenged the audience to have the moral dilemma in the center of his main character.

[1764] Do I save this person because he's a human being?

[1765] Yeah.

[1766] Despite being a piece of shit.

[1767] I will love nothing more than to pull over and watch his brains get blocked.

[1768] Yes, yes.

[1769] Yeah.

[1770] How big is this explosion going to be?

[1771] They tell you?

[1772] I want to see it, but I don't want to get snared in it.

[1773] Exactly.

[1774] Wow, that is a really tasty piece of writing.

[1775] It's a twist on it.

[1776] It activated your main character, and it really activated the curiosity of the audience.

[1777] That's brilliant.

[1778] That's the juiciness of Vince Gilligan.

[1779] Episode 461 with my dream guy, David Sedaris.

[1780] With my dad, everything had to be a reflection of him, right?

[1781] So he started telling people that he, of one who encouraged me to write, you know, which is just simply not true at all, but everything had to be a reflection of him.

[1782] Everything was.

[1783] I mean, my father cut me out of his will, but he wanted me to learn after he died.

[1784] And I found out beforehand that I confronted him about it.

[1785] And he said, I'll cut you back in, but you have to promise that Hugh can never get his hands on any of the money.

[1786] And I knew my father was going to change his will, but he just wanted me to betray Hugh.

[1787] You know, right, which...

[1788] Oh, for money, actually.

[1789] Yeah.

[1790] But, you know, when I graduated from college, he didn't pay for me to go to college.

[1791] I paid for myself to go to college.

[1792] And then when I graduated, he gave me an IRA.

[1793] That's a big thing.

[1794] I'm giving you an IRA.

[1795] And I said, well, can't I just have the money?

[1796] Yeah.

[1797] Because I'm in debt.

[1798] No, you're going to thank me one day.

[1799] He never set it up.

[1800] You know, after he died, he never set that thing up.

[1801] Yeah.

[1802] It was a lot of little things.

[1803] Yeah.

[1804] You know, he left me $5 ,000.

[1805] It was a minimum amount that you leave somebody said they're not able to contest your will.

[1806] Oh.

[1807] So everything, he just had all these little things in place.

[1808] And when the will came, it said, with the exclusion of David Arsiderus, and there's something about my middle initial being included in there that really was like, you know, just, I mean, it's funny how that works.

[1809] You know, a lot of people in my family had really, really difficult relationships for my father.

[1810] But then when they wind up with millions of dollars, They're like, you know, he wasn't so bad.

[1811] Sure, sure, sure.

[1812] You know, why are you being so hard on him?

[1813] And it's like, well, how would you feel?

[1814] Yeah.

[1815] There's no prize at the end of it.

[1816] Yeah.

[1817] Yeah.

[1818] At one point, though, on his deathbed, he said to you, you won.

[1819] He was kind of in this neither here nor their state.

[1820] And this was a couple of years before he died.

[1821] We thought he was dying, so we all went down there.

[1822] And he was hooked up to a machine.

[1823] And he would come and, you know, like, he would say things that didn't make any sense.

[1824] sense and then he would come to and he said, David, you've done so many spectacular things in your life.

[1825] I need to tell you, you, you won.

[1826] Episode 470 with Sean White.

[1827] And I guess my curiosity, when you look at the gap between your first win and silver, what What percentages would you assign to crazy and which would you assign to technique and practice?

[1828] The sport, at least in my eyes, is probably at least 70 % mental.

[1829] Yes, because the half pipe they're in, Monica, is 22 feet tall.

[1830] Before he's at the lip, he's above this house.

[1831] And then he launches 23 feet in the air.

[1832] So he's 45 feet from the ground.

[1833] He's five stories up, if you've ever been on a five -story roof.

[1834] You know if you step off, you're dead.

[1835] You're not surviving a five -story fall.

[1836] So I think the buy -in is so different in that sport than most sports.

[1837] I mean, only comparable to freestyle motocross and stuff.

[1838] I literally was about to say that, the commitment level of, I'm going to hit this jump.

[1839] You can't jump halfway through and like, I'm not going to do it.

[1840] And that decision happens before you go.

[1841] Yeah, because you're deciding to scrub speed or go as fast as you can, right?

[1842] Exactly.

[1843] So you're deciding what happens.

[1844] And as a kid, I learned, I think my mom pointed it out because there's these.

[1845] kids trying to learn backflips.

[1846] She's like, watch.

[1847] A couple of them made it, and one of them decided halfway through he didn't want to do a backflip anymore.

[1848] He comes around, lands on his head, you know, knocked out.

[1849] The whole dude, she's like, if you're going to do something, you've got to commit.

[1850] That stuck with me for a long time.

[1851] Episode 480 with Zoe Deutsch.

[1852] Do you still ride motors?

[1853] Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's still my life.

[1854] How does, how does, I, I would, I can't, I. She doesn't give a fuck.

[1855] It would scare you?

[1856] Yes, of course.

[1857] You're scared.

[1858] I'm.

[1859] Way too codependent, Alon to do that.

[1860] I would freak out.

[1861] I don't even know you and I'm going to now try to convince you that you should stop.

[1862] Because I think I can do that.

[1863] I think I can stop you.

[1864] I literally am like about to do a whole thing.

[1865] Do a whole thing?

[1866] No, like as if, no, I'm not gonna.

[1867] Okay.

[1868] I mean, I might.

[1869] But is there part of you, the Al -Anon part?

[1870] Does it become this weird challenge to whether or not I love you?

[1871] For sure.

[1872] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1873] Oh, of course.

[1874] Yeah.

[1875] If you cared about me, then you would stop.

[1876] Yes, I would keep myself alive for you.

[1877] Yeah, even as a full stranger, I think you should stop for me. I know, Monica.

[1878] That's our whole relationship.

[1879] Which, by the way, your day seven episode was so unbelievable.

[1880] I had so much love and empathy for you, too.

[1881] But when you were saying, you know, you were counting the pills and doing all that.

[1882] And one of the things that's so special about this podcast and you guys is that there is not a lot.

[1883] of awareness or discussion about addiction, about sobriety, about the program, about what it's like to love someone.

[1884] And you guys are doing a real service.

[1885] It inspires me and it makes me so happy.

[1886] Have you loved an addict?

[1887] Well, I asked if it was okay to mention this.

[1888] I have a parent that's 15 years sober.

[1889] Oh, wonderful.

[1890] My grandmother was 50 years.

[1891] Wow.

[1892] Step -grandfather was 50.

[1893] And then my great -grandfather died of sources of liver at 59, I believe.

[1894] So three generations of addicts.

[1895] And then I, of course, dated an addict.

[1896] We're kind of fun, right, for a minute?

[1897] Way too fun.

[1898] And I have, of course, a lot of people in my life and in my orbit.

[1899] But I've witnessed such miracles around me. And a lot of success stories, I just feel very grateful that that was my experience.

[1900] It's such a taboo or stigmatized conversation.

[1901] I've never shied away from it.

[1902] And the fact that you guys don't and have such a huge platform is really cool.

[1903] Well, thank you.

[1904] It's a weird.

[1905] It's always weird for me to get a compliment about that episode, obviously, because I've relapsed.

[1906] So this is a very abstract thing for me to receive, but I really appreciate that.

[1907] I think we always hear about the addict, right?

[1908] You don't really hear the other person's story in addiction as much.

[1909] Do you think that's what was novel about that?

[1910] Do we able to hear what Monica goes through?

[1911] Yes.

[1912] Loving an addict is a whole other type of addiction, too, by the way.

[1913] Oh, sure, sure, sure.

[1914] So I was in the middle of a huge addiction with him.

[1915] A thousand percent.

[1916] Like huge.

[1917] And I didn't know that.

[1918] All I was doing was monitoring him and being so hyper aware and living in that state of I can fix you.

[1919] I can be the one.

[1920] I'll call it out.

[1921] I'll do this.

[1922] Only now with a lot of work and continued work, do I know that's my issue.

[1923] If you're not in it, you don't love an addict or you don't have someone in your life.

[1924] Everybody loves an addict.

[1925] I don't know.

[1926] But they might not know.

[1927] That's what I'm saying.

[1928] Yes, exactly.

[1929] It just takes so much introspection that most people don't have to do.

[1930] So I'm grateful, too, because it really forces you to look at yourself in a way that I didn't have to before.

[1931] Episode 481 with George Mambiot.

[1932] The relationship between plants, bacteria, and fungi is phenomenally complex, far more complex than we ever imagined it was.

[1933] To give you an example, of all the sugars plants made through.

[1934] through photosynthesis.

[1935] Between 11 and 40 % of those sugars are dumped into the soil.

[1936] It just pours them into the soil.

[1937] And before doing so, it turns some of those into compounds of tremendous complexity.

[1938] There are massive chemical names, you know, which cover a whole line of text.

[1939] And it just looks like pouring money down the drain.

[1940] You know, why do you go to all this effort to produce all these sugars and all these incredibly complex compounds only to tip them into the soil?

[1941] Yeah, not an efficient machine.

[1942] It's worse than the internal combustion.

[1943] engine.

[1944] Yeah, well, so you would think.

[1945] But it turns out that what plants are doing is talking in a chemical language, and they're talking to the bacteria and fungi in the soil, or rather only to a very few of them, particularly to the bacteria, and particularly to one or two species amongst the huge number of species in the soil.

[1946] And it's sending them a very precise chemical signal and saying, wake up, because the bacteria exists in a state of dormancy until this root hair breaks into a crumb of soil and then starts transmitting these complex chemicals which are precisely tuned to particular bacterial, sometimes even to a particular genotype of a bacterial species.

[1947] When the bacteria has woken up, they flood it with sugar.

[1948] The sugar is a food which the bacteria needs.

[1949] And so the bacteria then multiply exceedingly, very, very fast, within this very narrow zone around the root, which is called the rhizosphere, right?

[1950] And the rhizosphere has some of the densest bacterial communities on earth.

[1951] And those bacteria then in exchange for the sugars provide the plants with minerals, but they do more than that.

[1952] They also create a defensive ring around the root, excluding the pathogens which might attack the plant.

[1953] They produce growth hormones which help to boost the growth of the plant, but they also help fire up the plant's immune system.

[1954] So even if the plant is being attacked above ground by aphids or caterpillars, it'll send a signal down into the rhizosphere and the bacteria will bounce that signal back with a different chemical and that stimulates the plant's immune system which can then fight off the aphids or the caterpillars.

[1955] It sounds like a really cumbersome way of doing it, but that's the path dependency of evolution.

[1956] Well, it also sounds magical.

[1957] Like, that's way too complicated for something without a neocortex to do.

[1958] It's quite mind -blowing, but it also sounds familiar.

[1959] And you think, hang on a moment, I've heard this story before, this sort of intense concentration of bacteria, supplying nutrients, fighting off pathogens, firing up immune systems.

[1960] Oh, wait, hang on a moment, it's a human gut.

[1961] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1962] And basically, the rhizosphere is the plant's external gut.

[1963] Oh, wow.

[1964] Check this, right?

[1965] There are roughly 1 ,000 phyla major groups of bacteria in the world.

[1966] Almost all the bacteria in the human gut are in four phyla, right?

[1967] and almost all the bacteria in the risosphere belong to four phylo.

[1968] They're the same four phyla.

[1969] Wow.

[1970] That's crazy.

[1971] Episode 483 with Neil Patrick Harris, NPH.

[1972] I have embosses and I'm sitting with you two right now.

[1973] Tell me how.

[1974] Because as a listener of your show, you often have people on who you have brought on to be experts in things, who have singular perspectives that you guys go, oh, that's fantastic.

[1975] How do you think I feel talking to all these people?

[1976] So this morning, before I came here, I'm literally in our garage, which I've turned into a workshop with power tools, and I'm trying to finally build something out of wood.

[1977] One piece of sheet, what is it called?

[1978] plywood.

[1979] And then two by fours, no, one by four.

[1980] I have never felt dumber in my life.

[1981] Watching this video, it's for beginners.

[1982] He says, you might want to use a jigsaw for this.

[1983] And I say, great, I have a jigsaw.

[1984] And I go and get it, there's no blades.

[1985] Right.

[1986] You got to pull the little tab up to slide it in.

[1987] You're like, that can't be in, can't that?

[1988] That can't be it.

[1989] It's still moving around inside the thing.

[1990] I might as well try it.

[1991] It's been a disaster for three days.

[1992] So expert of little.

[1993] Please don't watch a video.

[1994] If there's anything you can figure out, it's building something with wood.

[1995] It's right angles.

[1996] You got the saws.

[1997] You'll use the wrong one.

[1998] You use the right.

[1999] Because if you get something that's even remotely level standing on four legs, you're going to feel like, fuck those Emmys.

[2000] Fuck the Tony.

[2001] I'm telling you, there's a pride a man or a woman can get by assembling something out of their mind without any instruction that literally lasts four or five hours, which is huge for me. Anything that can last that long, that's an eternity.

[2002] In the world of Instagram and TikTok and YouTube videos, there are so many hacks and tutorials that make things that should be challenging simple.

[2003] And so I feel it's in my nature to know.

[2004] not want to fail consistently at something only to find out that all I had to do was pull the little lever in order to get the thing to happen.

[2005] And it took me so long.

[2006] I would rather watch the video and go, oh, okay, I buy these things, these tools.

[2007] Here's a trick.

[2008] Oh, I need that trick.

[2009] And then I can begin with a modicum of knowledge.

[2010] I don't want to just caveman myself around.

[2011] We just fast forwarded to year four of therapy.

[2012] We're there.

[2013] I know right now from that story.

[2014] For Neil.

[2015] All about me. I'm going to ask you a couple of questions.

[2016] questions.

[2017] Would you advise your daughter to watch a YouTube tutorial on how to draw a cloud?

[2018] I wouldn't singularly say that, no. Would you ask her to watch a tutorial to do any coloring?

[2019] Well, I'm going to object to your line of questions.

[2020] You think you know where I'm going, so you're trying to head me off at the past.

[2021] But let's just answer these questions.

[2022] Will you ever want your kids to be instructed on how to be creative?

[2023] No, that question would be absolutely not.

[2024] But if they came to me to say, how do I draw a cloud?

[2025] I wouldn't say you must watch a video.

[2026] if they were watching videos of cloud drawing and it inspired them to try it themselves, then I find that super valid and valuable.

[2027] It's a nuanced answer to your question.

[2028] But yes, we raised our kids with this Rye technique so that we didn't say, this is a ball.

[2029] The ball goes in the hoop so that they could decide what the ball was to them.

[2030] I appreciate the creativity on its own.

[2031] But I feel like with a pneumatic staple gun, Dax, Jacks, you need to know where the fucking thing goes into this thing.

[2032] Why would you not try?

[2033] Treat yourself with the same love, desire, and support that you'd give to your kids.

[2034] You already said it in your sentence.

[2035] You said, I don't want to get it wrong 45 times.

[2036] I don't want to fail 45 times.

[2037] Neil, let's fail.

[2038] Let's fucking get into it.

[2039] Let's blow it.

[2040] Let's fail.

[2041] I feel you.

[2042] There could be some real freedom on the other side of this.

[2043] That's why you built a goddamn shop.

[2044] But now you're short -cutting what the point of the shop was.

[2045] Right.

[2046] But if you're going to build a workshop, tax, then you want to be aware of the fact that dust collection is a thing that exists.

[2047] You don't want to only find out the dust collecting exists because for months you've been sitting in all this dust.

[2048] So as I'm building the workshop, I'm trying to make it all happen at the same time.

[2049] But I totally hear you.

[2050] And it's my flop sweaty, nervous place that I try to avoid.

[2051] And yet, it's the thing that I seem to continue to do a lot in my life is put myself in positions that are unknown to me that make me feel flop sweaty and learn.

[2052] Because I do believe that we should all fail.

[2053] I really sincerely believe that if we try to fail, we will then learn more than if we keep trying to succeed.

[2054] Okay, Monica, I've kept you at bay.

[2055] One, you're obviously a perfectionist.

[2056] That's part of this, right?

[2057] I am too, so I can relate.

[2058] Two, Dax, it's not up to you to tell Neil that that's a creative endeavor he wants to pursue.

[2059] Maybe that's not creative to him.

[2060] Maybe he just wants the result of that and the best way to do that is to watch a video and figure it out.

[2061] I think it's more about your therapy.

[2062] Always.

[2063] And that you don't like asking for help.

[2064] And it doesn't seem like you, Neil, have a problem asking for help.

[2065] I agree with you.

[2066] But in this case, which I think you've assessed us both correctly, the medicine, if you're our therapist, would be to make me take help and watch the video and for Neil to do it on his own.

[2067] That would be the submersion therapy here.

[2068] But when it's building something like you could get hurt.

[2069] Oh, he's not going to get hurt.

[2070] He's not a dumbass.

[2071] He's not going to fucking put your, hey, here's the video.

[2072] Don't put your fingers in front of anything moving.

[2073] The crayons don't have a saw at the end of it, that they could chop their hands.

[2074] He's not cutting down an oak tree in his backyard.

[2075] It's very interesting because I agree with both of you 100 % in different ways.

[2076] Episode 443 with Ike Berenholtz and musical guests, local natives.

[2077] One, two.

[2078] Wait, when am I going to lose?

[2079] How will I lay slip through careless or unkind?

[2080] Curving on the coastline To Santa Lucia cliffside I stay here for the night Remember you said Everything has its place Now we're lying our bed Wondering how to explain A shadow blade out Being down by my side Slipping through and was painting through in your body I remember the tree something down like an archangel quad I could see and I knew episode 485 with Tom Hanks So Pinocchio interestingly It's funny how it's kind of full circle and that now we have all this present day thought of like AI and machines and well they want to be people and consciousness and isn't it funny to see that recycled?

[2081] I was reading a book I want to say it was Dostoevsky talking about that mathematicians have come so far with their formulas that soon all of the future will be known.

[2082] You lost me at Dostoevsky.

[2083] I'm even fucking it up.

[2084] I don't know that it was him that was writing about.

[2085] The point is a very smart 18th century man is basically wrestling with the identical thing we are right now, which is oh, AI is going to become so sophisticated and so computing that free will be questionable and all will be known.

[2086] And what's going to matter anymore?

[2087] Yes.

[2088] So I go, oh, it's just a theme humans think of.

[2089] Like, we think it's novel.

[2090] because the technology's actually taking us there.

[2091] But no, these are very old fears, very old concepts, getting recycled.

[2092] I think you're landing on something that literally the audience is wrestling with, and I'll go back again to that contract we have with the movies that we've seen.

[2093] The things we pay to be entertained by.

[2094] There's no contract unless money is exchanged, right?

[2095] Because we can see everything for free.

[2096] We don't put the same demands on that.

[2097] The truth is that technology now allows us to drain Lake Michigan and fill it with cuckoo, clocks.

[2098] There's not a moment you would think, wow, that looks real.

[2099] That looks like they drained Lake Michigan and filled it up with cuckoo clocks and all those clocks work amazing and this is fantastic.

[2100] And I know it didn't happen, but it sure looks like it happened.

[2101] Anything can happen in motion picture stories now.

[2102] I'm going to say the Dolce Bita.

[2103] There's an amazing image that Frederico Fellini got of that and it is the shadow of the Christ Jesus passing over the city And then you realize it's coming from a helicopter that has lifted up this huge sculpture of Jesus, and it's flying it off somewhere.

[2104] And the shadow plays over the buildings of Rome.

[2105] In order to get that shot, you needed a helicopter and a pilot and a heavy statue, and you had to line up the sun.

[2106] This was a monstrous shot to get that also fraught with danger because helicopter could crash, the thing could fall down.

[2107] But in order to get that shot, Fellini had to work and work and work.

[2108] That shot now could be done so easily.

[2109] no time at all, and it would mean absolutely nothing.

[2110] So we're getting into the thing, what matters, what holds, what is really the thing that makes being human worthwhile?

[2111] If we can have a computer -generated pal on screen, or a lady named Siri who answers all of our questions.

[2112] What has substance?

[2113] What has value?

[2114] What has meaning?

[2115] What makes waking up in the morning worthwhile?

[2116] When you can hear only the stuff that you want to hear.

[2117] You will not be challenged in any way outside.

[2118] of your own individual comfort zone, and if you can imagine it, you can see it.

[2119] Here's a ridiculous thing.

[2120] At the time of Mont -Golfier's first hot -air balloon that went up in Paris, a site that was gathered to be seen by as many as 400 ,000 Parisians that included Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, and John Adams.

[2121] 400 ,000 people would gather on the banks of the same and in the public squares of Paris in order to see something they had never seen before, which is men up in the sky suspended only by this big design gaseous thing.

[2122] An impossible event had occurred.

[2123] At that same time, what was even more impressive to thousands of Parisians would pay admission to see little tiny clockwork human beings and birds flap their wings and tweet and walk and perform and do these little dances.

[2124] Some of them were life size.

[2125] Some of us were the size of a champagne glass.

[2126] They were willing to pay livres, seven livres, in order to take a tour of somebody's workshop and little figurines looked like they were actually alive.

[2127] And that was in 1779.

[2128] Now, that is how desirous we are in order to see life recreated in a way that delights us.

[2129] And now we're literally at the top of the game.

[2130] It comes down to that contract.

[2131] What are we willing to be?

[2132] pay for in order to feel more alive than we do.

[2133] Episode 486 with Jamie Fiori Higgins.

[2134] I think so many of us think that our identity and our morals and our ethics are poured in concrete, but they're so malleable by who we're around.

[2135] So malleable and so motivated by money.

[2136] I always joke that Goldman put the cult in culture, because in a lot of ways, it's that cult mentality.

[2137] The fact that this guy who choked you, you might be able to say, well, he's just a violent misogynist.

[2138] But no, it's when you go to your boss and then they say, don't contact HR.

[2139] That's where now you expose that the system itself might be contaminated.

[2140] A lot of the things I did wrong was either by action or just by silence.

[2141] Yes.

[2142] Right.

[2143] You're the watching officer.

[2144] That's right.

[2145] Yeah.

[2146] In some ways I wasn't, some ways I outright lied when they called me. But in other ways, there were women who complained and I didn't get involved.

[2147] Yeah, yeah.

[2148] I didn't speak up.

[2149] And I'm sure in your own motivation of the people under you, you were employing all the tactics that had worked on you.

[2150] Years later, I was in charge of the intern class.

[2151] So the guy who locked the door.

[2152] Yeah.

[2153] I locked the door.

[2154] Sure, sure, sure.

[2155] I'd make people cry.

[2156] Mm -hmm.

[2157] Yeah.

[2158] And there was a sick part of me that felt like I was on the right side.

[2159] I had made it.

[2160] Episode 488 with Lily Reinhart.

[2161] Have you made any headway with it?

[2162] Oh, man. The last six months have been actually the worst of it.

[2163] Oh, it has.

[2164] Yeah, it took a very large turn for the worst to where I was started to be a disordered eating thing.

[2165] Okay.

[2166] Do you know what kicked it off?

[2167] Are you clear on what kicked it out?

[2168] I started to gain weight just because you were pregnant.

[2169] Because I was pregnant.

[2170] No, I just.

[2171] That's the head.

[2172] I just started to gain weight naturally.

[2173] I was eating like shit.

[2174] Like it just naturally started to happen.

[2175] I was reaching an age where your body was like, you can't do that anymore.

[2176] So normal.

[2177] We're not burning at 3X anymore.

[2178] And so it felt like I couldn't get a handle on it.

[2179] I was also simultaneously filming my show.

[2180] So I couldn't take a pause and go figure this out and then come back to it.

[2181] So it felt like I was going through this deeply purported.

[2182] personal thing with my body in a very public way.

[2183] And that was what was so hard to navigate.

[2184] I was going through these obsessive thoughts about my body, about what I was eating, about all these things.

[2185] And I couldn't do it in the privacy of my own home.

[2186] I had people staring at me. I would just feel awful about myself after a fitting.

[2187] I would text my mom immediately.

[2188] I was seeing a trainer.

[2189] I was trying to eat better.

[2190] I was doing everything I could.

[2191] It was obsessive.

[2192] But it also just just felt really sad that I couldn't just step away and take care of myself.

[2193] I had to keep showing up on camera.

[2194] And it felt like a big betrayal to my body almost to be like, I'm so sorry, we can't go through this journey in private.

[2195] And as an actor, no one should ever have to look at yourself as much as we do.

[2196] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2197] There comes a point where people come in to do less looks, touches, whatever.

[2198] I'm like, I don't want to look at myself again.

[2199] Thank you.

[2200] You tell me if there's some shit on my face, wipe it off.

[2201] I don't need to stare at my face 30 times a day.

[2202] No one should have to do that.

[2203] And then same with your body.

[2204] Yeah.

[2205] So is it for you more your body or your face?

[2206] It's my body.

[2207] I don't have a perfect C .W. girl body.

[2208] I grew up in the time of Gossip Girl where Layton Meester and Blake Lively have these beautiful, perfect bodies.

[2209] I've just never had that, not built that way.

[2210] And was trying to craft myself and fit myself into a box that genetically I wasn't inclined to be in.

[2211] Uh -huh.

[2212] So it's been hard, but that's why I talk about it and I'm vocal about it because I think it's so weird that not as many celebrities talk about it.

[2213] It's such an issue because everyone is insecure.

[2214] How is there not a more collective conversation, especially within the industry and industry that's so obsessed with being thin, having this ass, having whatever it is?

[2215] So I just try to chuck my opinion out there if people want to listen to it, whatever.

[2216] Sometimes it gets me in hot water a lot of times.

[2217] When has it gotten you in hot water?

[2218] Recently made some comments about how it's ridiculous to say that you should lose 16 pounds to fit into a dress for the Met Gala.

[2219] And I thought that that was absolutely ridiculous.

[2220] I thought that absolutely promotes disordered eating.

[2221] Exactly.

[2222] And the conversation was, how can you say that when Christian Bale loses 30 pounds for a film?

[2223] I'm like, did I say that that was okay?

[2224] either.

[2225] Right.

[2226] The flip side is you can do whatever you want with your body, but you have to be aware of the amount of people you're affecting when you open your mouth.

[2227] Okay, great.

[2228] Or somewhere juicy, because I think this is where you and I differ a little bit.

[2229] So I have all these same things.

[2230] Yeah.

[2231] And I'm going to parallel with alcoholism.

[2232] I'm an addict.

[2233] Dak Shepard can't take three hits of ecstasy and go to the Gallagall.

[2234] Because then I'll do 18 and then I'll find Coke and then I'll do blah, blah, blah.

[2235] But I would read these interviews with Colin Farrell, who I idolize as an actor.

[2236] He's so gorgeous.

[2237] just two on top of it.

[2238] Let's say that.

[2239] If I had his face, I'm certain I would like what I saw in the mirror.

[2240] And he would talk all the time about how many drugs he did in interviews.

[2241] And so my takeaway was this.

[2242] I like that this dude's honest.

[2243] A. B, he's not telling me to do that.

[2244] Sure.

[2245] I'm the one who can't do that.

[2246] And I don't know if that person who said they're going to lose 16 pounds to fit in a dress can do that in a healthy way.

[2247] I don't know because I don't know that person.

[2248] I couldn't or you couldn't.

[2249] And I do understand that aspect.

[2250] Again, they're allowed to do whatever like good for them for being honest about what they're doing they're not ashamed of what they're doing here's what i think is important to draw a distinction between someone who has a problem and who doesn't now if i saw an admitted addict say in a press line like no i'm drinking three tonight and it's going to be fine i would go i doubt it yeah yeah yeah like as someone who said they're an addict and i'm an addict too i will call bullshit on that all day long to me it's more so the influence that you have on other people but again how do i articulate this it's such a touchy it is so hard yeah and we're all figuring it out which is great which is why we're having this conversation and there should be more conversations about it yeah here's my issue I don't think it's incumbent upon a dude who twice a month do opiates at a party who actually does it moderately I don't think it's his responsibility to pretend he doesn't do that at any point in an interview with his friends because someone else like me can't do opiates once a month at a party because if I do opiates once a month month at a party.

[2251] I'll do them for months at a time until I'm detoxing.

[2252] I don't think it's that guy's problem or his responsibility to take on my disease.

[2253] So in that way, because there's so much criticism, if people even say they were on a diet on this show, some people go, you're fat shaming.

[2254] Yeah.

[2255] And I'm like, I don't know, man. Some people do diets and they work for them and they don't get obsessive.

[2256] I'm totally obsessive about stuff.

[2257] Yeah.

[2258] But they're not.

[2259] And I don't know it's their responsibility to protect me from my is.

[2260] I think it's my responsibility.

[2261] protect me. You're absolutely right.

[2262] I was currently dealing with disordered eating.

[2263] And I was, I saw red.

[2264] Like, I genuinely thought, this is so triggering.

[2265] It felt like it was normalizing disordered eating to say that I'm starving.

[2266] Genuinely, these words were said, I'm starving.

[2267] For what?

[2268] You know, that was where, but again, the argument can be made both ways.

[2269] It was genuinely driven.

[2270] I posted and made my comments out of a moment where I was purely triggered.

[2271] Yeah, totally.

[2272] By the way, me even trying to delineate our differences, the big headline of what I'm saying is I love that you talk about it.

[2273] I'm so happy you talk about it.

[2274] I have two daughters.

[2275] I'm grateful to you that you talk about it.

[2276] Episode 492 with Jared Diamond.

[2277] Let's take the diseases that kill the most Americans and Europeans, so -called lifestyle diseases, diabetes and hypertension.

[2278] Diabetes has a genetic component, And yet natural selection is supposed to favor genes that are good for you, not genes that are bad for you.

[2279] Why on earth has natural selection resulted in the genes that lead to type 2 diabetes and type 1 diabetes?

[2280] And why are they now causing epidemics of diabetes, not in Europe, but in the developing world, in Arabia, in Africa, in Latin America.

[2281] There's an interesting story of natural selection.

[2282] In traditional times, if you were hunter -gatherer, there's not much.

[2283] food.

[2284] You're working hard to get your food, and then maybe once a month you kill an elephant.

[2285] The people who can mobilize their insulin most quickly to store fat when they eat the elephant, those are the people who will build up the most fat, and they are then capable of surviving subsequent periods of starvation.

[2286] Traditionally, it was good to have here triggered release of insulin, but nowadays, when we in the West have our three meals a day, and when we eat lots of food, and we're having hair -triggered release of insulin, that leads to diabetes.

[2287] Historically, abundant food came in Europe, only beginning the 1500s and 1600s with the arrival of New World crops.

[2288] So probably what happened is that in Europe, there was a silent epidemic of diabetes in the 1500s that killed off Europeans carrying the genes for diabetes, were the result that Europeans today have a low frequency of genes for diabetes.

[2289] The people with a high frequency of genes for diabetes are everybody other than Europeans.

[2290] The highest frequency of diabetes in the world today is in China and India.

[2291] Oh, wow.

[2292] Because they've had a Spartan diet, and suddenly they're getting on the Western diet, which is now killing them.

[2293] Episode 494 with Jeanette McCurdy.

[2294] So, two -year -mother gets breast cancer.

[2295] You guys start going to church a lot.

[2296] And she gets chemo, she gets surgery, she gets bone marrow, she gets everything.

[2297] Yeah.

[2298] Right?

[2299] It's a harrowing experience.

[2300] A mastectomy, yeah, all of it.

[2301] A mastectomy?

[2302] Oh, I thought you said a vasectomy.

[2303] Wow, this is a term I was expecting.

[2304] Okay, and to me, I guess chronologically, this is where it starts getting weird.

[2305] She has a videotape of the experience, bald in the hospital, you guys there.

[2306] And then she plays it pretty often growing up, yeah?

[2307] For you guys?

[2308] For us, she went into remission.

[2309] The doctors said to her face, or so I'm told, this is miraculous.

[2310] It defies her medical understanding was the phrase that she returned to often.

[2311] But she would play this video for us.

[2312] We would have like a weekly viewing of it, usually after church.

[2313] And it was her singing as songs with the intention of this is going to be kind of the memory that my kids will have of me. I'm going to sing each of their favorite songs to them, their bedtime songs.

[2314] And she would replay this video every week for us to watch and really want.

[2315] wanted us to be kind of sad when we were watching it and really live in the tragedy and the trauma of what that was like.

[2316] And she would single out and praise your one brother because it was too much for him to even handle and he'd have to go and sit in the hallway.

[2317] And she liked that.

[2318] Yeah, she, yeah, exactly.

[2319] My brother Marcus would have to go off in the hallway because he couldn't handle it.

[2320] He was the oldest.

[2321] And she would always say like, wow, Marcus, look at him.

[2322] He just couldn't handle it.

[2323] But in this very, like, romanticized, belitary way.

[2324] Like he was proving his love for her by showing pain.

[2325] Yeah.

[2326] And she'd get quite mad at me because I was saying.

[2327] singing jingle bells.

[2328] I was two.

[2329] And I was just like, jing, oh, bat!

[2330] Like, screaming.

[2331] Yeah.

[2332] I don't know why I was doing that.

[2333] Maybe I sensed that it was too heavy and I was trying to make it lighter.

[2334] You would probably disassociating or something.

[2335] Yeah.

[2336] Right.

[2337] Okay, you have like a sledgehammer of a sentence in there that says she needed us to be nothing without her.

[2338] Oof.

[2339] I think that's one of the more devastating pieces to me is that I think she had the capacity to be really bright and helpful what she could have been and how influential I think she could have been if she'd only channeled that thing in her for good instead of letting it be that toxic strangleholds you yeah destructive thing i wish i could have seen it you know i'm sure everybody in my family does we all saw there was something there yeah and we're not there yet to compassion but it's almost like she was putting everything into you she somehow couldn't put into herself she didn't show up for herself why yeah but she showed up for you and albeit a fucking weird toxic way, she gave it her all with you.

[2340] Episode 495 with Saul Kaysen.

[2341] Oh my God, the internalized false confessions.

[2342] The first time I discovered this, I did not have psychology to turn to.

[2343] It was 1978.

[2344] I had just gotten my Ph .D. I was doing jury research with Larry Ritesman, starting to get interested in confessions, in part because I saw the juries thought confessions were near perfect, and in part because I read an interrogation manual, which scared the hell out of me. And at that point, I went back to the library and found a book about a case of a kid named Peter Riley from 1973 in Canaan, Connecticut.

[2345] Riley was 18 years old.

[2346] Now, I was in graduate school in Connecticut, so we're about the same age.

[2347] And while I was applying a graduate school, he was being induced into confessing to killing his mother.

[2348] He comes home at the end of a day, and there's his mother having been mutilated, stabbed.

[2349] There was blood everywhere.

[2350] He calls 911.

[2351] one.

[2352] They interrogate him for hours.

[2353] He was a good kid.

[2354] He had no problem or conflict with his mother.

[2355] Everybody who knew him said, this is inconceivable.

[2356] And yet, after the course of several hours of interrogation, and he continued to tell the same story about coming home and finding his mother the way he did, detective said, are you willing to take a lie detector test?

[2357] And he said, yes.

[2358] And they administered it, or so they said.

[2359] They came back with the result.

[2360] Peter, the test shows that you're being deceptive, that you lied.

[2361] He said, that's not possible.

[2362] There is an audio of this session that resulted in the transcript, and when you read the transcript, it's horrifying.

[2363] He transitions from adamant denial to, is it possible somebody could do this and not know it?

[2364] And the conversation turns to memory, consciousness, the possibility of having a blackout because of the unpleasantness of what you did.

[2365] He caves a bit, and he says, I guess I did it.

[2366] He uses not the language of memory, but the language of inference.

[2367] He is deducing that he must have done it because, after all, you have this scientific evidence through the polygraph.

[2368] And then he finally says, it looks like I did it, I can't believe I did it.

[2369] I must have slashed her with my razor knife that I used for my model airplane.

[2370] He was exonerated a year later.

[2371] I wasn't a memory psychologist, but I scoured the memory literature.

[2372] Is it possible to alter somebody's memory with false evidence?

[2373] Now, at the time, Elizabeth Loftus, who became the false memory guru, had just started to publish some basic lab experiments, but showing that you can affect people's memory for a slideshow, not showing you can affect their memory of whether they kill their mother.

[2374] So there wasn't anything I could turn to.

[2375] But what I saw in that script, I started seeing it over and over and over again.

[2376] The process of internalization is you get a vulnerable suspect, You lie about the evidence.

[2377] You tell them it's possible to do this and have no memory.

[2378] Gary Gagger was told maybe you had an alcoholic blackout.

[2379] Peter Riley was told that he probably blacked it out.

[2380] Marty Tankliff was told he must have been sleepwalking.

[2381] Michael Crowe was told that there's a good Michael and a bad Michael, and the good Michael remained asleep while the bad Michael killed his sister.

[2382] This is what is uniquely diabolical about these situations, is they are both causing the trauma and the accusation, and they're also comforting.

[2383] Yes.

[2384] Episode 497 with Kevin Bacon.

[2385] I thought I knew everything for most of my life and career.

[2386] And when you get old, you go, I didn't know anything.

[2387] Yeah.

[2388] I was an expert, and I never was a child.

[2389] And those combinations of things make for, on the upside, a tremendous amount of confidence.

[2390] But on the downside, tons of mistakes and a lack of humility and the inability to take any kind of advice or look at things for me too i'm guessing avail myself to advice to let someone mentor me let someone take me under their wing you have dad shit not that i have dad shit my desire for fame is a direct result of the fact that my father was well known in philadelphia oh you're the baby of six the youngest of six yeah yeah so attention's not widely available definitely was not but i never felt like oh geez my parents still paying to touch me. I didn't want the attention.

[2391] I wanted to just do my own thing and get out of the house and build it myself.

[2392] Yeah.

[2393] But when the footloose thing happened, if there had been a mentor to say, Schmuck, this is great, do the cover of all of these magazines, don't push back on this shit, have some fun with it.

[2394] And there was a certain level of self -sabotage that happened because it just didn't feel like being the, as you said, kind of actor that I wanted to be a serious actor, whatever the fuck that is.

[2395] I mean, a serious actor is someone that takes their work seriously.

[2396] Episode 500, ding, ding, ding with Scarlett Johansson.

[2397] Okay.

[2398] I'll take it.

[2399] I need to ask you two more questions, maybe four.

[2400] Marcel's checking your watch.

[2401] It's back to the ex -fect.

[2402] Marcel, take your watch off and flush it down the fucking toilet.

[2403] Take your crappy watch.

[2404] I want to go back.

[2405] Stick it up your crap.

[2406] Grappy ass.

[2407] See?

[2408] He says stuff like that.

[2409] I want to come back to the 15 and 30 thing.

[2410] So we didn't really wrap it up.

[2411] And I'm just curious because I loved when people said I was older than my age.

[2412] Yeah, all kids like that.

[2413] I don't know.

[2414] I think some people specifically want to be seen as older.

[2415] I happen to be one of those people.

[2416] I wanted you to think you could trust me with your car to drive you when I was 12.

[2417] That's something I sought after.

[2418] You valued that.

[2419] Hugely.

[2420] Well, because I had an older brother.

[2421] My brother was five years older.

[2422] So I guess all I wanted to be is perceived as maybe his age.

[2423] That's maybe the kernel of it.

[2424] Similarly, did you love that compliment?

[2425] Yeah, I think that would be something I would have found flattering.

[2426] I got married when I was 23.

[2427] So I got married really young.

[2428] And by that point, I felt like I was 33.

[2429] I'd had a really full life at that point.

[2430] And I was having a really hard time.

[2431] I was kind of became objectified and pigeonholed in this way where I felt like I wasn't getting offers for work for things that I wanted to do.

[2432] But I remember thinking to myself, I was like, I think people think I'm like 40 years old.

[2433] It somehow stopped being something that was desirable and something that I was fighting against.

[2434] Yeah, yeah.

[2435] Now it's like I see younger actors that are in their 20s.

[2436] It feels like they're allowed to be all these different things.

[2437] Like they can play all different things.

[2438] And, you know, it's another time, too.

[2439] We're not even allowed to really pigeonal actors anymore, thankfully, right?

[2440] Like, people are much more dynamic.

[2441] Who's an example?

[2442] Like, Zendaya?

[2443] Yeah, that's a great example.

[2444] Or, like, I worked with Florence Pugh, and she has an incredible career, and she works in all different genres.

[2445] You see all these different colors in her paintbox.

[2446] Because I think everybody thought I was older, and then I'd been doing it for a long time, and then I got kind of pigeonholed into this weird, hypersexualized thing.

[2447] I felt like it was over, kind of.

[2448] It was like, that's the kind of career you have.

[2449] These are the roles you've played.

[2450] And I was like, this is it.

[2451] And you'll age out of that one.

[2452] The runway is not long on that.

[2453] And so it was scary at that time.

[2454] In a weird way, I was like, is this it?

[2455] And I attributed a lot of that to the fact that people thought I was much, much older than I was.

[2456] Episode 501 with Reza Aslan.

[2457] The other thing that you start to notice is there's a very fancy term for it, which is patterns of religious phenomena.

[2458] but it's essentially you start to realize, oh, holy shit, it's all the same thing.

[2459] Oftentimes they're saying it in the same way.

[2460] They're using the same myths.

[2461] There's like 14 versions of a flood narrative.

[2462] And so the big kind of aha moment that I had when studying religion was the best way to think about what religion actually is.

[2463] It's a language made up of symbols and metaphors that allow you to communicate what is fundamentally inexpressible.

[2464] that feeling that you can call it whatever you want to faith transcendence ultimate reality being there's like a million words for it but that thing about being human it's hard to talk about that stuff religion says here's a language use it and what i decided that i was going to be was the universal translator i'm going to learn all these languages and then i'll be able to say to people you're saying the same thing.

[2465] But you have anchored into Islam.

[2466] So how did you decide?

[2467] I'm both an expert on religion, but I'm also a person of faith.

[2468] I do believe in God, though my definition of God is probably different than a lot of other people's definitions.

[2469] I do believe that there is a transcendent reality.

[2470] And when I talk about faith, I make sure that I'm always talking about it as a form of emotion, because that's what faith is.

[2471] Faith is an emotion, like love.

[2472] If someone tells you, like, describe love.

[2473] It's the experience that you've had.

[2474] Like, You can't really describe it.

[2475] Well, I'd take a run at it, but yeah.

[2476] I have had certain experiences in my life that have made me realize that there is more to reality than this material world.

[2477] And I wanted a language so that I could talk about it.

[2478] But the language that is most comfortable to me is the language of Islam.

[2479] But I'm not a Muslim because I think Islam is more right.

[2480] There's no such thing is more right.

[2481] I just like the metaphors.

[2482] You prefer speaking that language.

[2483] Yeah.

[2484] This thing that the Buddha once said, which I think is.

[2485] really profound, which is that if you want to strike water, you don't dig six one -foot wells.

[2486] You dig one six -foot well.

[2487] Islam is my six -foot well.

[2488] But what the Buddha meant was, okay, that's your well.

[2489] But the water is the water that everybody's drinking from.

[2490] Like, just pick a fucking well.

[2491] The well is not important.

[2492] It's the water that's important.

[2493] Episode 504 with Sid Mukherjee.

[2494] It's wild that all the cells are on their own, surviving on their own and self -regulating, and yet they are a web that creates this greater thing.

[2495] And I think that's what's very profound about organisms or bodies, that you have a whole system whose job is to make sure that you don't get invaded by pathogens.

[2496] You have a whole system to make sure that the salt in your body doesn't exceed some limit.

[2497] you have a brain that is allowing us to have this conversation.

[2498] Now, if everything were put into the same unit and made to be the same, if everything was atomistic, everything looked like each other and was like each other, functioned like each other, then you wouldn't have all this things that we can do, like walk and talk and defend ourselves against invaders and predators and also make pasta and watch a film make a film, write a book, all of these things.

[2499] Now, what's amazing about it is that these things, when they work well, they work as a cooperative assembly, like a parliament.

[2500] And another thing that the book talks about is that over and over again, in laboratory experiments, in genetic experiments, etc., scientists have found that this kind of assembly of various parts, cells, carries an evolutionary advantage because evolution over and over again selected for multicellular organisms, even though single -celled organisms like bacteria are extraordinarily successful.

[2501] They live in all sorts of places.

[2502] They're living in our bodies.

[2503] They're living between our teeth.

[2504] But somehow, in terms of natural selection, this kind of cooperative assembly with functional specialization, your immune cell defending our body against predators, your brain acting as a master a coordinator of your actions and your thoughts, your muscles moving dynamically in space so that you can move yourself in space, all of this cooperative assembly was of great evolutionary advantage, so much so that people believe that these assemblies evolved separately and independently multiple times.

[2505] In other words, multiple times during evolution, there was a leap from single -celled existence to multicellular existence, because somehow or the other, and we have theories about these now, but they're theories, you can't wind the clock back, but somehow this assembly, this idea of the song of the cell, the fact that these things are singing together, and there is not just sort of one note coming out and another note coming out, but they're singing together like an assembly, somehow or the other creates an incredible evolutionary advantage.

[2506] And you could say that is what human beings are.

[2507] We lie on top of a certain chain of evolution because these assemblies work.

[2508] Episode 506 with Sheesh, Bussin Monage, aka Hussin Monage.

[2509] We had you on some years ago.

[2510] I adored you.

[2511] I think I made that very clear.

[2512] Past tense.

[2513] No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Thinks you're his brother.

[2514] You left and I adored you.

[2515] I even thought in my head, somehow he and I can be friends at some point.

[2516] I'm going to say a year later, I get a email from my publicist that says, wow, this, you and Husson thing's really blowing up online.

[2517] And I'm like, what me and Husson think?

[2518] And then he sends me like 10 articles.

[2519] Now, here's my recollection.

[2520] I'm open to you correcting that.

[2521] You were involved with some kind of interview.

[2522] Vanity Fair lie detector test.

[2523] Okay.

[2524] Yeah, no, no, we got it.

[2525] Let's pantop patient.

[2526] Because we can't go to archival.

[2527] Continue.

[2528] See, it's happening right now.

[2529] I love you so much.

[2530] Okay.

[2531] So then it's brought to my attention that you are.

[2532] talking about the struggle of being a performer in Hollywood and that there was a movement to give white slubs their own show.

[2533] And they were handing out shows to white slubs.

[2534] And then you mentioned me, you rate me at being a six.

[2535] You're getting the order wrong.

[2536] I hope it is a testimonial to how much I've moved beyond it.

[2537] By the time I'm catching up with this, it's basically like you said I was a slub who got his own show and I'm a six.

[2538] That's kind of what I heard.

[2539] Uh -huh.

[2540] Okay, so you tell me the order and what was really set.

[2541] All right.

[2542] First things first.

[2543] It's very important to hear what is actually in the audio.

[2544] I think what you're saying is what you interpreted, not what you heard.

[2545] Possibly.

[2546] The lie detector test is like, have you ever not gone outside because you've had a bad hair day?

[2547] No. And it's like, eh, like, you're lying, right?

[2548] It's like, oh, fuck.

[2549] Like, it's a photo of like Nick Kroll and John Malini.

[2550] Like, are you jealous of their friendship?

[2551] And I'm like, no. And it's like, okay, I am.

[2552] Sometimes I really want them to text me back in value.

[2553] Then they're like, do you think?

[2554] this person, it's a photo, Dax.

[2555] It's just like, how attractive do you think this person is?

[2556] Do you think this person's a 10?

[2557] Okay.

[2558] So when I complain about how I look on hearing people are like, get over it, you're handsome.

[2559] I'm a part of so many articles of a hot girl with an ugly guy.

[2560] There is a whole movement on the internet that I have seen.

[2561] And then the notion that Vanity Fair would ask you to evaluate me, again, confirms what I'm saying.

[2562] I hate that.

[2563] There is a movement that thinks I'm very unattractive.

[2564] I'm sorry for that movement.

[2565] And then I'll apologize to you for what I've done.

[2566] Okay, go ahead.

[2567] So basically they were just trying to be like, hey, are you hotter than him?

[2568] Yes.

[2569] Now look, I'm going to tell this to your face.

[2570] You are hotter than me. The same way if we were playing pickup basketball.

[2571] You're going to get this work, decks.

[2572] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2573] First of all, not in pickup basketball, but you are much better looking than me. We could play horrors, 21, whatever you want it.

[2574] Yeah.

[2575] And that kind of belief in myself, which is honorable, is what goes back to this little convo that me and Monica were having in the bedroom during the birthday party downstairs.

[2576] Yes.

[2577] It's a little bit of, oh, you want me to go head to head?

[2578] And this has nothing to do with you.

[2579] it's on us, it's on me. The way I was raised of there is something culturally of being humble, not thinking too high of yourself in conflating at times confidence with arrogance.

[2580] That's our biggest problem that my parents kind of instilled in me. If you exhibit any level of confidence, my dad would be like, yes, I'm not caro, don't do that.

[2581] You shouldn't talk like that.

[2582] That's not right.

[2583] And that can be to your detriment.

[2584] You can hold yourself small in order to accomplish anything.

[2585] You have to believe and dream big and you have to start with that.

[2586] That's why you're drawing to hip -hop.

[2587] It's revolutionary.

[2588] Exactly.

[2589] These dudes owning their shit.

[2590] To me, hip hop is just the H -1B visa story.

[2591] You don't want me in, and I'm coming.

[2592] Yeah.

[2593] Great, right?

[2594] Okay, that's what I connect to.

[2595] So part of that statement, and Dax, it wasn't even about you.

[2596] It was just about me being like, man, put anybody next.

[2597] I don't care.

[2598] And I'll be honest.

[2599] Here's the trauma I'm caring.

[2600] Trauma.

[2601] Why am I said?

[2602] There's no trauma.

[2603] I'm a fucking performer.

[2604] Performer, whatever.

[2605] We shouldn't take ourselves this seriously.

[2606] The chip on my shoulder was this.

[2607] Is that sometimes when I was coming up, when I first moved to L .A. in 2009, and I'm auditioning for the untitled Adam Sezekiel pilot when I'm auditioning for Ben Fox is my manny and I'm like killing myself for these fucking garbage pilots.

[2608] My agent would tell me, well, you did good in the read, but they just don't see you as the lead.

[2609] And then I'm hanging out with the monicas and other girls and blah, blah, blah, blah.

[2610] And they go, isn't Ryan Gostling so hot?

[2611] I go, this motherfucker who always looks like he hasn't taken his claritin.

[2612] He always looks like he's halfway fallen asleep.

[2613] He's taking his claritin.

[2614] Wait, what?

[2615] This guy, who's always quasi -sleepy, let's splash a lounge in a little bit.

[2616] You think he can hold, he can hold Rithic Roshin one -on -one.

[2617] Are you kidding me?

[2618] I go, can he sing?

[2619] Can he dance?

[2620] Does he have green eyes like a fucking leopard?

[2621] Like, this guy can't hold any Bollywood Stars jock.

[2622] Runvier -Sing can dance, and he's ripped, and he's yoked.

[2623] He does nine things.

[2624] And don't tell me Lala Land is dancing.

[2625] We've been dancing.

[2626] We've been dancing.

[2627] Really dancing.

[2628] Get the fuck out of here.

[2629] Oh, I love it.

[2630] Am I lying?

[2631] No, no, no. You were an avatar.

[2632] this macro thing.

[2633] We're still not to my issue.

[2634] Okay.

[2635] So then they said, we'll give them a number.

[2636] And you went with six, which ironically, if you were to go back and listen to this podcast or watch me on Conan O 'Brien, that is the number I get myself all the time.

[2637] I've always called myself a six.

[2638] So I'm on full record agreeing with you that I'm a six.

[2639] Wasn't my issue.

[2640] Go ahead.

[2641] Yes.

[2642] So what ends up happening is there is a series of movies that come out where it's just called relatable leading guy.

[2643] It's an every man guy at the pub.

[2644] crawl, right?

[2645] Yeah, yeah.

[2646] However, the requirement for the studio to then back that same lead and have that person be black, they got to be Idriselba, they got to be Daniel Kaluah, they got to be...

[2647] It's the Chris Rock joke.

[2648] He lives next to an average dentist.

[2649] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2650] Average where my neighbor is, a fucking dentist.

[2651] You know what I would have to do to have the same house and be a dentist?

[2652] I'd have to invent teeth.

[2653] Perfect joke.

[2654] Yes, yes, yes.

[2655] I'm encapsulating that.

[2656] For the Daniel Day Kim's, you got to have a jaw line that can fucking cut bread and be diced and 3 % body fat and be erudite and smart and sensitive and have women like you.

[2657] You have to have 15 things.

[2658] You have to be the best.

[2659] The best.

[2660] Yeah.

[2661] We're in agreement.

[2662] Yeah, yeah.

[2663] Okay.

[2664] Just to enter the conversation.

[2665] You don't.

[2666] Now you're on Big Bang Theory.

[2667] There is no Paul Rudd area for you.

[2668] No B plus strata for you.

[2669] No, no, no, no. The suit's got to be perfect.

[2670] The abs got to be perfect.

[2671] Every type of girl has to like you.

[2672] You have to be just fucking banging.

[2673] You're going to cut through it all.

[2674] So that was my point.

[2675] Episode 510 with Wynne Stefani.

[2676] Listen, you say this a lot.

[2677] I wrote down something, in fact, that you said.

[2678] I don't know how I feel about it, okay?

[2679] This is a quote from the New York Times.

[2680] You just said it, and then I had written down something different, but in the same vein that you had said in 2016 in New York Times.

[2681] Extraordinary things have happened to a not extraordinary person, like a regular person.

[2682] and it keeps blowing my mind.

[2683] I want to know, and this is a true question.

[2684] I don't have a judgment on it.

[2685] The insecurity, the belief that you're not extraordinary, despite all the evidence that you are, is it vital for what you've created, or was it in your way?

[2686] Like, I can tell you, the aliens come down, they look at your life, whatever you think is the answer.

[2687] They go, oh, extraordinary person.

[2688] Extraordinary, this person went into singing, they had this, and they went solo, and they go on TV.

[2689] Extraordinary life.

[2690] I just know that everything that ever happened, it just appeared.

[2691] And it was like, it really truly was like a mind -blowing thing for myself.

[2692] Now, not until later when I got further into my spirituality in actually reading the Bible or actually listening to podcasts of preachers that were explaining the Bible because I don't read very good.

[2693] And it's confusing.

[2694] It's very hard.

[2695] But like Jesus was on to something.

[2696] I mean, he had some really good stuff.

[2697] So what I'm saying is I felt like I. I could not only admit that I was gifted, but also know that if I didn't admit it, that was kind of disrespectful too.

[2698] So kind of that whole thing when I said, I went to the teleprompter and I was like, okay, listen, get over it.

[2699] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2700] You got a D in speech and call it, but you're not a D. Like, you got to move forward.

[2701] You're here.

[2702] You've been here for three decades.

[2703] But I think that the naive part of me, the way that I wrote, because I was dyslexic, because there was no rules in songs that it didn't matter how I spelled.

[2704] I didn't have to follow grammar rules.

[2705] I just was following my truth, my heart, my story.

[2706] And every time that I kept being me, which was like, okay, I'm just going to wear this because I don't like my legs or whatever it was, ended up being the reason why I am the success that I am.

[2707] Episode 513 with Constance Wu.

[2708] I then knew about your tweet.

[2709] Of course, that got to me. Do you know about the tweet?

[2710] Because it leads us to this book.

[2711] Yeah.

[2712] I did crazy.

[2713] Asians, and they had told me that my show, fresh off the boat, probably wasn't going to be renewed.

[2714] And so they had said, you have our blessing to go seek other work.

[2715] But then with the success of crazy rich Asians, it suddenly looked really bad to cancel the only Asian American sitcom and television.

[2716] So then, even though they hadn't made any promises, they renewed it.

[2717] And I was sort of having a, what I think of as a drunk in a bar kind of moment, but I had it on Twitter, which is not a bar.

[2718] Which is also like your mom writing your dad, the thing let's get married?

[2719] Kind of, yeah, it was impulsive and it was a moment of heat where I was like, fucking hell.

[2720] And I basically got canceled for being ungrateful.

[2721] So can I read the tweet?

[2722] Because I think Monica should be.

[2723] The tweet was, it was right when they announced that it was coming back for a sixth season.

[2724] And Constance tweeted, so upset right now that I'm literally crying.

[2725] Ugh, fuck.

[2726] Yeah.

[2727] So look, I'm going to be dead honest with you.

[2728] I'm talking to you now and I totally like you and I would have liked you back then.

[2729] But knowing very little about you, this made it to me, right?

[2730] this tweet that this actor upon hearing their show got picked up and I had the reaction I think a lot of people had which was like oh fucking get over yourself it rang to me of total entitlement I think I can say I would have thought that about a man I would have thought that about a white boy I would have thought that about anyone who had gone through what we've gone through to get on a TV show and that's the last I knew about any of it so I actually was quite interested to read what happened everything happened after that I guess I assumed there was backlash I didn't know that there was backlash from your peers.

[2731] It was mostly from my peers.

[2732] It was.

[2733] And Asian peers, which is really important.

[2734] Yeah, that's what I mean.

[2735] Not my peers like the people who actually knew me. It was people who didn't know me. You say you think that you would have felt that way about a male who tweeted the same thing.

[2736] I don't think you would have felt that way about a personal friend who you knew their experience.

[2737] You just would have thought the tweet was like, whoops, don't do that.

[2738] Whoops, but you wouldn't have thought, oh, get over it.

[2739] Because in my book, I talk about, this makes you upset to talk about, but I talk about the beginning of that show, how on set I experienced a lot of sexual harassment and intimidation and how I kept my mouth shut about it for so many years because I was trying to sort of preserve the reputation of the show for Asian American representation, for everybody whose jobs were on the show.

[2740] Because if I'd come out that first season and said, the Asian American male producer of this show sexually harassed me, threatened me, intimidated me. I have all these fucking receipts.

[2741] The show would have been canceled and it would have solely to the one shining beacon of hope for Asian Americans.

[2742] But you know what?

[2743] After my show became a success, I quote unquote dealt with it.

[2744] I swallowed all the harassment and I stopped it.

[2745] It stopped after a couple years after I had the power and I wasn't afraid of being fired anymore.

[2746] But the thing is, with pain or feelings, they don't go away just because you will them.

[2747] to go away.

[2748] Or even if you've removed the initial, quote, threat, it doesn't mean that you're healed from that.

[2749] It was really hard for me to be on that set, even though I loved everybody on that set, but whenever I saw somebody being buddy, buddy with this producer, it felt like a betrayal every single time.

[2750] And so I was never able to be myself on set.

[2751] I was never able to just relax and be constants on set because I was always on edge because of that.

[2752] And it was also doubly painful because he treated other women with the utmost respect.

[2753] He saved his misogyny and power plays for Asian women, which was interesting because I have since heard stories from other Asian women because this was pre -Me too movement who have had the same experience with him, but then you would see him revere our white and black female directors with such respect.

[2754] Do you have an explanation for that?

[2755] I think it has a lot to do with a lot of East Asian cultures are very patriarchal.

[2756] And I think America really emasculates a lot of Asian men.

[2757] And so when you're emasculated and you want to feel masculine, you want to exercise your power.

[2758] And the one place that you might feel comfortable exercising your power is amongst, I guess, your own women.

[2759] This is why people get so up in arms about my dating history.

[2760] There's a whole movement of Asian men who criticize me for dating one white guy.

[2761] And they assume that I only date white men and that I'm a traitor to my race.

[2762] And this is a reflection of a much bigger system that's causing these strange irrational emotions.

[2763] But regardless of where it came from, I was the recipient of this abuse and I was the sole recipient of it and I swallowed it and held it in for six years.

[2764] And so when I had these tweets and everything, it was very uncharacteristic of me. But I think it was, I had held my breath for so long.

[2765] Yeah, yeah.

[2766] I actually didn't even want to write that essay because I still didn't want to sully the reputation.

[2767] My publisher encouraged me to write it and I said, okay, I'm just going to do it as an exercise, but I don't want to publish it.

[2768] But then after I wrote it, I realized, you know, it's pretty important that we talk about this, so this doesn't happen to other women, even if it's scary for me to talk about.

[2769] Episode 517 with Yuval Ferrari.

[2770] The next big thing is fire.

[2771] The power of every other animal depends on its body, how big you are, how fast you can run, your wings, whatever.

[2772] And fire, is the first time that an animal, a human being, managed to gain control of a source of power outside its body.

[2773] Uh -huh.

[2774] You know, if I'm a human being and I know how to control fire, even though I'm not as big as a lion, I can't run like a cheetah, I don't have clothes, I don't have poison like a snake, whatever.

[2775] I have this friend, fire, and a single human with a fire stick can burn down an entire forest.

[2776] Yes.

[2777] With all the lions and hyenas and giraffes in it.

[2778] And you point out all animals are terrified of fire.

[2779] Such a powerful thought.

[2780] And again, humans, what was amazing about them, they learned how to befriend fire.

[2781] So how did it happen?

[2782] We don't know for sure.

[2783] But again, something that still happens today, lots of people, lots of kids, they like watching fire.

[2784] Yeah.

[2785] I love it.

[2786] We love it.

[2787] He is a firepaniac.

[2788] Yeah, I mean, you sit like you go outside, you light a fire with some wood and whatever, and you just sit there and you watch the fire.

[2789] Talk about magic you can observe.

[2790] I understand the chemical reaction.

[2791] It doesn't fucking matter.

[2792] I'm looking at flames.

[2793] They're like, what are those things?

[2794] Why are they dancing?

[2795] Who's controlling?

[2796] What is that thing?

[2797] But the thing is you're not afraid of it.

[2798] You're fascinated by it.

[2799] No, you don't want to interact.

[2800] And this, again, this is a memory from like hundreds of thousands of years ago.

[2801] Then you have, I don't know, a lightning strikes a tree and there is a fire.

[2802] All the other animals run away except humans.

[2803] The hillbillies.

[2804] We come in.

[2805] We come in.

[2806] Wake in.

[2807] And we sit and watch this thing.

[2808] And this is how we learn to befriend it.

[2809] For instance, we learn, hey, you can take a stick, place it inside the kind of flaming tree.

[2810] One side of the stick is burning, but you can hold on to the other side and you take it away and you now have fire on the stick.

[2811] And you can now use this stick fire to drive away the lions and the ainas or to burn down forests.

[2812] Think about it.

[2813] It's a lightsaber.

[2814] Like we take it for granted.

[2815] It is like the ultimate weapon if you're defenseless.

[2816] And then a couple steps later we have AK -47s.

[2817] Yes.

[2818] That's where that comes from.

[2819] And there is another connection there because one thing that fire did was transform our brain, actually.

[2820] So we could invent things like AKA.

[2821] 47s.

[2822] Because before fire, much of the energy of the human body, it went to digesting food.

[2823] Like you eat raw food and you have to spend the...

[2824] The marrow.

[2825] and the fruits and whatever, and you have to spend a lot of time chewing it and then a lot of time digesting it.

[2826] The great thing he points out to the children reading the book is next time someone in your house is cutting up a potato to prepare in the oven, ask for a little bite of it or a lick first.

[2827] It opened up an entirely different world of things we could even consume.

[2828] There's so many things we can't actually eat unless they're cooked.

[2829] Absolutely.

[2830] And also, again, it takes much less time, much less effort because it's like outsourcing.

[2831] Like we today outsource, I don't know, production to another country.

[2832] So fire is like outsourcing the difficult job of digesting food from our stomach to an outside fireplace.

[2833] And then this saves so much energy and where does this energy go to the brain?

[2834] Boom.

[2835] You said, so in writing this book, you're basically saying to children, do I want them to carry my ideas, my religions, my wars, my memories?

[2836] Here, kid, I carried these up to here.

[2837] Now you carry them.

[2838] Or do I want to help liberate them from their fears?

[2839] illusions, their misery.

[2840] See these kids?

[2841] I got stuck with them for years.

[2842] Be careful.

[2843] You don't have to pick them up.

[2844] Ooh.

[2845] It's good.

[2846] Biam!

[2847] Episode 522 with Jordan Biel.

[2848] When you start making a little bit of money, they tell you to incorporate.

[2849] You get to make your company.

[2850] It's just this cool feeling of like, ooh, I've got a company now.

[2851] Yeah.

[2852] It feels great.

[2853] LLC.

[2854] Type of industry.

[2855] And they're basically like, look, it's a thing that goes.

[2856] on your credit card, buddy.

[2857] Like, don't get ahead of yourself.

[2858] But to me, I just bought into the sauce and sort of, you thought you did the same thing.

[2859] Guess what mine's named?

[2860] What is it?

[2861] You want to talk parallels?

[2862] Okay.

[2863] Primate.

[2864] Oh, shit.

[2865] See?

[2866] Oh, yeah, that's right.

[2867] There is something happening there, in there.

[2868] I didn't even put that one together to just this moment.

[2869] My corp is primate.

[2870] Well, there is something happening, right?

[2871] There's like suspicious.

[2872] It's very sense.

[2873] To come up with our corporation, we're trying to pick up with something that we feel like represents us.

[2874] Why monkey pulp?

[2875] Yeah.

[2876] This thing about luck that you.

[2877] started with.

[2878] It's the terms of magic that I think are cool to me. Horror magic is the magic of chance.

[2879] Because what is the historical, like, what does Monkey Paul represent?

[2880] There's a short story by a guy named W .W. Burroughs.

[2881] It's written 1918 or something.

[2882] It's this Faustian story, okay?

[2883] So there's a trinket that's a monkey paw.

[2884] And every time you make a wish, it grants you your wish, you wish for a million dollars, get a knock on the door.

[2885] Someone tells you, your son by a trolley accident.

[2886] Here's a million dollars.

[2887] Oh, my.

[2888] Right?

[2889] So it's that notion that once I got what I thought I wanted in Mad TV, it birthed this whole other world of nightmares.

[2890] I didn't know it was possible.

[2891] This idea of like being up on television telling a joke you didn't believe in.

[2892] Yeah, yeah.

[2893] So it was just this kind of primal chord that story struck with me. A notion that helps me understand that sometimes it is about how you look at things.

[2894] You can find fortune and you can find good fortune where there is bad things as well.

[2895] Can I suggest it's a declaration that I'm going to play this game, but I'm in on it.

[2896] Yeah, which could be a little bit of ego preservation.

[2897] I personally do a lot of stuff like this.

[2898] Yeah, I'm playing this game, but I know why I'm playing.

[2899] That sounds right.

[2900] That sounds right.

[2901] Like, I'm not being taken advantage of.

[2902] That thing you're saying in the beginning about allowing yourself to have your power, allowing yourself to feel in control.

[2903] Play hooky.

[2904] Mm -hmm.

[2905] Well, the downside.

[2906] a bit for me, because I do this pathologically destructively, I guess I'm afraid of embarrassment.

[2907] I guess maybe that's the ultimate fear is like, I'm going to be humiliated.

[2908] And for me, the deepest humiliation would be, you caught me believing in myself.

[2909] Dax, that's, it hurts.

[2910] Episode 510 with Gwen Stefani.

[2911] Happy Halloween to you and your friends.

[2912] Robots are welcome at this party.

[2913] But please don't.

[2914] go in the bathtub because you'll rust.

[2915] Oh, that's a warning.

[2916] So cute.

[2917] It's a hit new song by Devo.

[2918] Robots are welcome at this party.

[2919] We only ask that you do not go in the bathtub.

[2920] Because.

[2921] Because you will become rusty, rusty nails.

[2922] Rusty, rusty.

[2923] We need a chorus.

[2924] I just liked it because you were looking out for the robot.

[2925] Yeah, of course.

[2926] It was sweet.

[2927] I know the water looks inviting, but you are made of metal and you will seize up.

[2928] Like me. It's like the snowman and frozen.

[2929] He wants to go in the sunshine.

[2930] He doesn't know better.

[2931] You're right.

[2932] We've just as old.

[2933] This is a time as a wild.

[2934] It's a tale as old as time.

[2935] It's a tale as old as time.

[2936] It also reminds you conjures up the tin man wanting a heart.

[2937] He wants to get in the tub like human, boy.

[2938] do.

[2939] Does he?

[2940] I mean, that's what the, didn't the, the, the tin man wanted to be human.

[2941] He wanted a heart.

[2942] But he didn't want to get in the tub.

[2943] But that's what boys do.

[2944] If I had a heart, I could get, if I only had a brain, that's not him.

[2945] That's the lion.

[2946] No, he wanted to be.

[2947] Wow.

[2948] He wanted to encourage.

[2949] It is Halloween.

[2950] It is Halloween.

[2951] Scarecrow.

[2952] He's who wanted a brain.

[2953] Oh, ding, ding, ding.

[2954] This is a robot party.

[2955] Come on in.

[2956] Wipe your metal feet on the door.

[2957] You may see a bethub bowl of water Do not get inside It's not for you You're not a boy But you're welcome to party here anyways Wait you forgot the rust part My favorite part Is it mighty as the pent of looks You will become very rusty If you submerge yourself like a little boy Which you are not But again you're welcome to party all night wipe your metal feet at the door it took you getting delirious before you could enjoy one of my songs I'm gonna mark this I'm gonna my game plan strategy notes I'm gonna be like okay there is a moment I can slide these in wait the idea of a little wait you're doing it again can I come to your party good you I already let you do so much and then you had to keep going For some reason, that's how the robot knocks on the door.

[2958] Meep, me, I heard the sounds of a party.

[2959] Meep, you're right, we're hosting a party.

[2960] Beep, our robots welcome.

[2961] Why is he knocking up?

[2962] Is this a party that welcomes robots?

[2963] You better believe we always invite robots.

[2964] Okay.

[2965] That song is called Wipe Your Metal Feet at the Door.

[2966] Wipe your metal feet at the door.

[2967] You will notice there's Brillo Pants to get the stuff off the battle.

[2968] Okay, let's wipe your metal feet at the door.

[2969] By the Jack Shep.

[2970] Stop.

[2971] I just love the idea of a little robot wiping his feet at the door.

[2972] And you've got to put a little bit of steel wool to get the rust off of his little metal feet.

[2973] And that's there so they don't have not tempted to dip their feet in the tub to wash them off.

[2974] Oh, I see.

[2975] Yes.

[2976] All right.

[2977] Follow armchair expert on the Wondry app, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[2978] You can listen to every episode of Armchair expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[2979] Before you go, tell us about yourself.

[2980] by completing a short survey at Wondry .com slash survey.