Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard XX
[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to Not Our Show to David Ferrier's news show.
[1] Flightless Bird, David.
[2] Hello.
[3] How are you?
[4] I'm good.
[5] I'm excited about this.
[6] It's so good.
[7] So first and foremost, we do a conspiracy show.
[8] We meet David Ferrier.
[9] He's a genius.
[10] He is Ira Glass sitting in New Zealand.
[11] That's right.
[12] We see a genius.
[13] We see a diamond.
[14] And we say we must work with this guy.
[15] So we do armchared and dangerous.
[16] I love how this is randomly sort of developed out of doing an episode with you guys.
[17] and then, oh, do this monthly thing, which has been a joy, by the way.
[18] I love that.
[19] Oh, good.
[20] It's so fun, and people love it.
[21] And we got to tour with it, which was so fun.
[22] And we will probably continue to do more of that.
[23] We love you so much.
[24] And Monica and I both were like, what do you want to do, David?
[25] What show would make your dinger hard?
[26] Which is an amazing question to get.
[27] Sure, especially the dinger part.
[28] Amazing.
[29] So we got through that, answer all of those.
[30] And then got on to the podcast.
[31] So the idea was to make a podcast that was me being a New Zealander in America when he didn't mean to be here.
[32] Because I came over here meaning to go back to New Zealand last April.
[33] And then when it went time to go back, they shut the border because we were keeping COVID out.
[34] And so I kind of got stranded here.
[35] And so the idea is like to make the show where I'm trying to understand different elements of what makes America America to try and be more American.
[36] Yes.
[37] It's irresistible.
[38] I watched it in real time.
[39] You've become greedy, you've become materialistic, you eat McDonald's every day.
[40] So much McDonald's.
[41] You drive everywhere you go.
[42] It's been beautiful to watch.
[43] There are so many things here, though, that are so puzzling and so different.
[44] Like, even just dealing with the U .S. tax system for the first time ever, horrible.
[45] It's like a true nightmare.
[46] Everything about America is so different to New Zealand in big ways and really subtle ways.
[47] But what's great is you ask a bunch of questions that we probably should know the answer to.
[48] which is the delight of the show for me. You just start with something that's pretty unique about us.
[49] We're 76 % Christian or whatever that number is.
[50] Why is it?
[51] Well, there's a fascinating history behind it that I had no idea about.
[52] And you stumble upon it and you teach us as you're learning.
[53] Yeah, and when you're immersed in a culture, it's hard to also observe it.
[54] It's really hard to be like, yeah, it's a little weird that they're all these adults at Disneyland looking happy.
[55] Like, you don't think about it because you're in it and you are able to be this outside perspective, who also loves America.
[56] So I think it's worth saying this isn't a I hate America show at all.
[57] No, I love America.
[58] I mean, growing up, all my pop culture was from America.
[59] I called my cat channelbing.
[60] So there's a cat episode.
[61] I go along to some American cat shows.
[62] Yeah, cat shows, guys, cat shows.
[63] It's so fun.
[64] I'm so happy for the world that they get to experience this, because we've got to experience it over the past couple months.
[65] And it's a true joy.
[66] We're calling it flightless bird because our national bird in New Zealand is a Kiwi bird, and you may not know this, it can't fly.
[67] It's the most useless bird on the planet.
[68] It's like this big, giant thing.
[69] It's involved no predators in New Zealand, so it didn't need wings, no wings.
[70] So flightless bird, it's a little wink to being a Kiwi, being a New Zealander, and also the fact that I'm in America and I can't fly back home.
[71] Yeah, so I'm a figurative metaphorical Kiwi.
[72] I wouldn't be me if I didn't get annoying and give people too much info they didn't ask for.
[73] But that thing, the flightlessness of that bird, is succumbing to the amazing principle in biology called Foster's Island Principle.
[74] Foster's Island Principle predicts that all birds over time will become flightless on islands because there are no predators to them.
[75] Similarly, all mammals will become pygmy.
[76] They'll get smaller and smaller and smaller because the food resources aren't as much.
[77] So on Madagascar, there are fossils of pygmy hippos.
[78] On the Catalina islands, or the Channel Islands here in California, there were pygmy woolly mammoths.
[79] So cute.
[80] What could be better than a pygmy woolly mammoth, like the size of a St. Bernard with the little cute tusks?
[81] That is the best.
[82] I had no idea.
[83] I love this so much.
[84] Good.
[85] Okay.
[86] I'm grateful that it was received that way.
[87] So we get like tiny little animals and flightless birds.
[88] That's right.
[89] And the show is called Foster's Island Principles.
[90] please listen to it David so excited for everyone to hear this show and guess what we're a part of it Moni's on every episode I'm on some you'll get a kick out of it I couldn't do this alone that'd be awful well you could have absolutely done it alone but it's always more fun with Monica and I also feel like I can teach some weird things to an American you Monica you decks about your country that you might not have noticed or seen or just taken for granted yeah exactly and I can also learn from you because I often you know as part of the episode I still don't understand what I'm talking about.
[91] And you guys are here to kind of clear things up.
[92] Well, Easter egg, you did an episode.
[93] It ended.
[94] And I said, you're fucking stoned.
[95] We're going to this place.
[96] And by God, we did.
[97] And that'll be a two -parter, hopefully.
[98] So everybody, buckle the fuck up.
[99] Flightless Bird's coming your way.
[100] Our resident genius, David Ferrier, blows our minds.
[101] So check out Flightless Bird next week every Tuesdays.
[102] I'm a fly list Lispur Touchdown in America I'm a fly this bird touchdown in America