Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Best of Wednesday 2025

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

On this special episode, we revisit some of our favorite moments from Wednesday episodes in 2025. Scott Payne gets stripped for a wire while undercover, Mark Ronson recalls his rockstar-studded childhood, Blaise Aguirre defines the difficulties of BPD, Mary Claire Haver assembles a toolkit for menopause, Malala Yousafzai struggles to make friends in high school, Michael Lewis laments male anger generated by the gambling industry, Seth Harp tracks stolen cash and corruption in the military, James Kimmel, Jr. advises on a landlord conflict, Dave Mitchell & Chris Feistl infiltrate a Colombian drug cartel, and Andy Roddick mythologizes his serve.Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. And today is Best of Wednesday's 2025 edition.

The Weight is over. Dive into Audible's most anticipated collection. The Best of 2025, featuring top audiobooks, podcasts, and originals across all genres. Our editors have carefully curated this year's must-listens, from brilliant hidden gems to the busiest new releases. Every title in this collection has earned its spot. This is your go-to for the absolute best in 2025 audio entertainment. Whether you love thrillers, romance, or non-fiction, your next favorite listen awaits.

Discover why there's more to imagine when you listen at audible.com slash best of the year. From episode 900 with Scott Payne. They carried me down. close line who's supposed to be my second closest friend says yo text you got a minute and I said yeah and then he walks me through this door that I'd never been in even though I've been in that clubhouse I don't know how many times it's the only door I hadn't been through and it leads into a very tight stairwell down into a if I call it a basement that's being generous because I couldn't stand up straight it's more of a crawl space yeah and I could I could touch the wall probably on both sides I see rope

oh no I see that they have both brandished their pistols one out like follows me and he stands on the steps with his pistol and he's watching and clothesline proceeds to tell me I need you to because he says there's a lot of shit going on and it's my job to take care of my brothers I need you to take off because I want you to write down your full name date of birth social security all everything and I need you to take all you clothes off I need to check you for a wire so now I hate this yeah yeah me too and there's no one in a van across the street We'll get to that. Okay.

But really quick, also, you have to be playing the game in your head where you're like, okay, so I'm not wired. I am the guy. What's my reaction? Yeah. Right? You're trying to. I would love to say yes to that answer, but I was shit and go back.

Yeah. I was having an adrenaline dump. Yeah. I had that panic. And it's a fight or flight or freaks. Yeah, midbrain is in charge. And then you are hopefully doing what you've trained or rehearsed in your head, and that's what I did.

If I had not seen me do these things on the video, I would have never known I did them. But just like I can show you cops and military first responders and shootouts, they have no idea how many rounds they shot. They have no idea that they did a magazine exchange behind effective covered. They just do it because they've trained it so much and it's instinctive. So in the undercover world, okay, now I'm down there. I'm trying to write my name down. I'm having that adrenaline dump. In other words, if you've ever been through a traumatic incident, whether it's a car wreck or whatever, everything just slows down.

and your auditory exclusion, everything's going, whoosh, wish, what I'm hearing is like, Scott, I need you. I've even had sight get minimal. That starts closing in. That's tunnel vision. So that happens. You're getting the tunnel vision, and everything's time dilation. It's in clicks.

It's like in frames, right? You go click, click, click, click. You can hear and fill your heart beating through your entire body. Palms are sweaty. I'm starting an M&M song here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm trying to talk, and I'm trying to write my name, and I forgot my mental name.

I've been this dude forever. I know. Oh, my God. I know I'm Scott Cowell. Yeah. But because of the stress, I don't even know. And it was, I was blessed enough to put this training on to some Navy Seals. And it was this guy that one of the Seals caught it.

And he said, man, if you look, your hand's not even shaking the entire time you're trying to read, trying to remember your name. And I'm like, well, my insides were shaking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I yell back. I'm like, and what else do you need? I don't even know I do it. And he's like, what?

I get my name and what else? It didn't sound that clear, though. Because I'm crapping myself, it sounds like, what else do you need? My name, what else? You know, I'm not even enunciating. He yells up and I hear, what do you need for that website? So I'm like, okay, they're going to Google search me. There was a who's a rat.com.

There's things like that. And I go, okay, I'm a cool with that. Then I remember my initials were SAC because, as I said before, is the head of an FBI office, and I thought that was funny because I know I'd never be one. You know, so I made my initials, that's a little humor for myself. Sure, sure. I'm not very humorous at the moment, but I remember Scott Andrew Calloway. So I write that down.

I take all my upper clothing off. I probably was layered because it was cold. I take my boots off. I pull my underwear and jeans down to my ankles. So for my ankle up, I'm naked. And it was cold. Sure. And you were scared.

Wasn't your best showing is my guess. I'm not attracted to you. I feel like I'm getting ready. possibly getting ready to die. In the terms of a Seinfeld episode, that was a whole different level of shrinkage. Oh, my God, we're dealing with a woman. My body is an FBI agent, it's a woman.

I know. I don't care what I look like right now. I just want to get out of here. So I take all my clothes off and he checks everything. And I, again, adrenaline dump. I'm trying to talk. And if you, like, I know clothesline for a year and a half, this point. Yeah. So if you saw what my face was saying to you, even though my words aren't

saying it, my face is saying, tell me I'm okay. Yes. And his face back to me is kind of like, look, it's just business. However, he doesn't know that I'm an FBI. He's undercover who's wired to the hill. Yeah. He's probably like, why are you that? He's like, don't be that word. We're going to get through this. He said, man, he goes, trust me. And these are his words exactly. I think they even quoted in the news and the press release after the takedown. He said, trust me, if somebody accused me of being a fed, I'd probably smash them in the effing mouth. And I said, I'm not happy. And he said, I wouldn't be either.

And I tell them, I'm like, look, you guys asked for this. I did not come to you. You came to me. Nobody has to do anything. If nobody wants to do shit, nobody has to do shit. Those are my exact words. Not as clear as that, because I'm crapping my pants. But I think I'm done.

And all the gears in your clothes somehow. Some, yes, some, no. Tradecraft, I won't say, where or how. You can't say, but you aren't exposed currently. Like, they didn't find, they're not seeing it. They're not seeing it. Yeah. Correct.

I think I'm done. And then I'm pulling my pants back up. I'm putting my boots back on. And then he grabs a particular piece of clothing. And when he grabs it, I'm like, oh. And he says, when he grabs it, he goes, hey, I'm not going to find anything here. I don't want to, right? Like some naked pictures of my old lady.

And he goes, ha, ha, ha. And my laugh. It's like, you know. Yeah, yeah. So, and I even say, I hope not. Now I'm sitting here up against the wall. My head tilted, and I'm watching him take this piece of clothing and go through it. We call this kneading.

He's kneading it with his hands. And he's feeling it. And I'll just say this. Technology-wise, in 2007, had he grabbed that part of that clothing, he would have felt something. Yeah. And he gets close. And he even looks directly at a camera. Oh, my God.

and misses it. So while he's doing that, you think my adrenaline's here, and then it dumps, and then it's here, and then it dump. It's heaven-influent. When he's doing that, I have no idea I'd do it,

but you can hear clear on the recording, me watch him, and I go, ugh. Because I don't even know I'm doing it. It's a verbal sight. Yeah. Because my insides are saying, it's over.

It's over. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then he says he misses it. and he hands it back to me and I go right into business but it's just nervous chatter joking is it's even though I'm a jokester anyway it's definitely a self-defense mechanism yeah yeah yeah I feel like I can't breathe I try to crack a joke things like that PTSD's kicking in whatever so I go right back to business and and people ask all the time

hey man what would you have said if you had found it and I remember it like it was yesterday I had my first response, probably would have been something funny. If he would have said, what is this? I might have said, I don't know, some naked pictures of you old lady to try to buy me some time or to laugh it off. The only other response I had is the gig is up. I'm an undercover FBI agent, and I can walk out of here and we can see each other in court or all hell's going to break loose.

And here's the kicker. That would have been a bluff on my part. Sure. Because up until that point, to my knowledge, cover team could never hear for whatever reason thick walls bad equipment whatever they could never hear me in that clubhouse what but you didn't know that yeah i did you did that's why that's it would have been a bluff yeah oh my so you would just have to be betting on the notion that they're they're gonna assume they're watching and if you don't come out now they've got a fed murder

that's what you're got to be hoping yeah because it's the best case scenario is they and they've done the mouth. And you've got, you always try to plan contingencies. Contingency plan A, B, C, D, four or five moves ahead, right? But, um, he didn't find it. He hands it back to me. And that night, my adrenaline dump just turns into anger. I end up going out with Joe dogs in Scott Town. And luckily, they didn't take it personally or anything, but I, I took it personal. And I shouldn't have, because I'm just undercover, but I was pissed. Now that adrenaline's coming down. I'm like, who in the, if I go, you know what? tomorrow if y'all do show up i'm stripping you naked in the parking lot how's that yeah yeah come

prepared yeah it's gonna be chilly yeah you know that's good because that's what you would have done if you weren't undercover well it's also hard to know you're just modeling these scenarios you know it's kind of like what i'm mirroring what's annoying about some of these docs you watch where the cops come and they're like he wasn't acting like someone who's wife just dies like how the fuck do you know how someone acts when their wife like that's bullshit that's what you saw on tv that's what you thought of in your head. Nobody knows what anybody does until it's happening. Yeah. And again, I took it personal. I'm like, you took, that's the same thing I would have done as Scott Payne. Right. Who do you think you are taking me into a damn basement, even though they were right?

I wasn't in the cover. Right. Yeah, you didn't have the moral high ground. But that's what we all do. We justify things to ourselves, even if we know we're wrong, we can find a way to be right. From episode 941 with Mark Ronson. I'm always most interested in people's youth when I interview them. I'll even get comments like, why do you bring up this movie? I'm like, I don't care about them. I care about like how people ended up being capable of making that movie. So I love it because this book is just, you're just taking it to the end of the 90s, basically.

And even the beginning, you have a very fantastical, is that the word? I mean, you have a really, you have a really strange and unique childhood. Yeah. Did you understand how unique it was? Can you have a sense of that? Yes, I think I had a sense of both things. I think what's, my parents were this young partying couple in London. They had money.

My dad, my dad came from some money. So they had this house there, all these rock stars always hang out back there. And I'd wake up in the middle of the night. He started a publishing company. Yeah, a music publishing company. And like, that was like their world. And I remember waking up in the middle of the night and Robin Williams, the time Mark and Mindy was the biggest thing

and I loved Mark came in and woke me up. I had this vague, hazy memory. I'll say it for you. He's definitely gacked out of his mind. Gacked out of his mind. My mom is definitely having a good time too. And he keeps running to the window to look out stuff. But I was also like my parents, I was used to the fact that I kind of say in the book that adults were more fun at that.

night. Adults in the day were a little scary and bad tempered and irritable and maybe you had to avoid them. But at night everything was all good. Interesting. So I remember thinking this is strange and unusual but I'm sure it perverted my sensibility of what

was normal from an early age. But he's leaving the room and you say... Yeah, I'm like, you forgot their thing and he turns back and he knows right away and he's like, nanoo, nanoo, you know? And I was just like... He gave him his catch for you. He knew what I wanted.

And would he go like, did he do this? I think he did the thing. I might not have the dexterity at that moment. Oh, you can do it. He had the thing. You know, towards the end of the book, I was out at a restaurant and I saw him at the table. And I just wanted to go up to him, but I kind of like punked out. And just to ask him if you remember my parents in the house.

And the universe gave me a second opportunity. He walks towards our table going in the toilet. And I'm like, Mr. Williams. I know this is so crazy, and there's no way that you'll remember this, but I remember one of my earliest childhood memories of you coming into my room, like, as a kid, and he, like, stops for a second. He's like, wait, your parents had the house on Circus Road. And I was like, yeah.

He goes, man, they threw some fucking crazy parties and just kept walking, like exactly what you want from Robin West from that thing. And he even remembered it. I bet he remembered it because it was at the beginning for him. Yeah, yeah. Like, I bet if that had happened for him. 18 years later, you know, it gets in that murk of too many neat things happening at some point. Yeah.

Then you and your two sisters moved to New York. Yeah. To the Upper West Side or Central Park West? Yeah. In your what age? Sorry, at this point. I'm eight or nine. Okay.

And move into this pretty outrageous huge apartment. Yeah. And I'm guessing if you're a couple blocks from, as you later met Sean Lennon. Yeah. Were you in the San Remo building? Yeah. Yes, we were. Lived in the Sam Rimo building when we first moved there.

Well, first when we moved there, my stepdad had like a little bachelor pad on Riverside Drive, and suddenly it's like he's living with three kids and he's like a champ that he took on us. He really was. Three kids, man. He was. And then Farner were just hitting this amazing peak, you know, like all these smashes and they bought this really fancy apartment. For reference, the next tower, or maybe it was your tower, but the Studio 54 guy had the top of one of those towers. Yeah, Tony Randall from the odd couple.

Oh, sure. That's a deep cut. But he was on the set, Dustin Hoffman. See, this is one I'm talking about it was a very unique childhood. Yeah. Extremely, yeah. But there were, like, crazy shit that happened with this dichotomy of knowing that all this stuff was crazy going on. Like, there was this one time that I stayed at Sean Lennon, who was one of my closest friends at his house when Michael Jackson came over for a sleepover.

And I know. On the bad tour. On the bad tour. Also a sleepover. There's a lot here. Yeah, there's a lot. It is different now to say some of these things for sure. Wow, this is wild.

But even with that, I knew not to say anything in school the next day because I don't want to be teased mercilessly or be made to be like, oh, you fucking dick or other or look like braggie. So like there was this thing of like I knew it was crazy. I also knew to keep as much of it to myself. Wow. That was a really, yeah, that was a very specific part for me. Yeah, they're throwing wet toilet paper balls off the side. Yeah, which I also did. Sogis.

Yeah. Please get the Nolminclair right. I got kicked out of the Milford Plaza Hotel as a kid for throwing soggies. He just wanted to, Michael Jackson was just really intent on packing wet mounds of toilet paper and just pelting them nowhere near people, but just hearing them splat on the sidewalk. It's very rewarding because you start with the ball, and I don't want to encourage anyone to do this because it's dangerous. But I will say, okay. You start with the water toy paper this big. When that fucking thing hits the ground,

if you're 30 plus up, it's eight foot wide. It's very instantly rewarding if you're a little. Wow, I made that huge thing. It's like if you drop a penny off the Empire State Building or something. They say it would crush a cab. I don't know if that's true. I think they told us that as kids to tell us not to throw pennies. I don't want to, I have, didn't put this in the book, but fuck it.

We did hit the hood of a car, and there was this just like fucking sound. It's kind of like a tank blast. Oh, sure. We're on the 10th floor. It's so telling because that is something you do as a kid. Yeah. That's what kids do. They make little balls of toilet paper and throw it at things.

It's so reflective of him. Well, he was playing laser tang. You said he was like more kid-like. He's just a child. Like, do you remember the first time like you won't because you're wonderful and young? And the sharper image, that first laser pen light that kind of shone that long infrared pen. They just decided that nobody ever needs that thing. So it was discontinued.

I think it was also dangerous for your eyes. I'm sure. Everything about it was wrong. Michael Jackson had made the guy who he obviously had incredible lasers and shit on tour. The guy who built those lasers for him built him his own little box that you could plug in the wall. It was about this big a metal. And it's shown a single green laser that probably shown like hundreds of feet, you know, because he was playing in fucking arenas and stadiums.

So we were running around and holding it up to the window and shining it eight floors down, but nobody had ever seen. The only thing you could compare it to would be like the thing on an Ouzi, like the site thing or whatever, right? So like we're shining it on the street and like there's a guy walking the dog. The guy can't see this thing and the dog just like, oh, like freaking out thing. It's terrible. Everything about it. I would hate it.

I would never do that now. But yeah, that was. what he wanted to do and in an absurd foreshadowing of who has to become. I was just like, this funny games is great. Michael, give us a baseline. I want to go back and, like, make a demo. Like, I was just, like, remember being really concerned with my stepdad had a studio where I made demos. And I remember Michael, I actually was just like, okay.

So he, like, he did this thing where it was like, of course I'll never forget. It was so Michael. He like did like an arm out, like snapping. He started to sing this baseline that went, do, do, do do do do do. do do do do do do and i was like okay it's a little ripped off from smooth criminal but we'll take it and made a whole fucking song from this baseline that michael jackson gave us this is shocking stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare mom and dad uh mom and mom dad and dad whatever parents are you about to spend five hours in the

car with your beloved kids this holiday season drive an old granny's house I'm setting the scene, I'm picturing, screaming, fighting, back-to-back hours of the K-pop Demon Hunter's soundtrack on repeat. Well, when your ears start to bleed, I have the perfect thing to keep you from rolling out of that moving vehicle. Something for the whole family! He's filled with laughs, he's filled with rage. The OG Green Grump, give it up for me, James Austin Johnson as The Grinch!

And like any insufferable influencer these days, I'm bringing my crew of lesser talented friends along for the ride with A-list guests like Gromk, Mark Hamill, and the Jonas Brothers, whoever they are. There's a little bit of something for everyone. Listen to Tis the Grinch holiday podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, basketball fans, Steve Nash here. Ready to elevate your basketball IQ? I'm teaming up with Bron James to bring you the latest season of Mind the Game.

And we're about to take you deeper into basketball than you've ever gone before. We're breaking down the real game, the X's and O's that actually matter. In every episode, we'll share elite-level strategy, dive into career-defining moments, and explain the why behind plays that changed a game, a team, or a championship. LeBron and I have lived this game at the highest level for decades. We've been in those pressure moments and made those game-changing decisions and learn from the greatest basketball minds in history. Now we're pulling back the curtain and sharing that knowledge with you.

Time to go beyond the highlights and get into the real heart of basketball. Watch Mind the Game Now on You! YouTube, prime video, or listen wherever you get your podcasts. From episode 862 with Blaze Aguire. Okay, so let's start, if you're willing. First of all, what is the difference between a mood disorder and a personality disorder? Yeah. So mood disorder, you know, as we sort of think a little bit about it,

is that you have discrete episodes of mood states, typically either depressed or manic, that last for a certain period of time, 10 days, two weeks, and respond typically to treatment, such as medication and cognitive behavioral therapy. And that there's really, when you're in that state, there's very little reactivity to that state.

So when somebody's depressed, they stay in that state for this period of time. Some given period of time. With personality disorders, there are traits about who you are, you know, that the way that you experience yourself in relationship to other people. And that those traits, so maybe it's, maybe you're emotionally very intense, maybe you tend to be reactive to what people say and do. That those personality traits,

when activated, interfere with your ability to function. So what's confusing is that say somebody has, you know, Orline personality disorder and everything's going fine. To the outside observer, they're just like doing fine. But then somebody says, so they're on Instagram and they didn't get invited to a party and they see all their friends at a party and now there's incredible rage, incredible anger, incredible jealousy, envy, and it spikes their emotional state. And in that state, they cannot function.

Their relationships begin to be impacted. Maybe their work does. So that's already revelatory to me because I thought of it as like a status quo. You're in a state of this disorder, period. Exactly. And this is what's interesting. Let's just say that somebody was drunk and they walked into the studio. Yeah.

And we all walk in independently that we could see that the person is drunk. You know, that that state is permanent in that moment. But let's just say it's somebody with Borland Personality Disorder and you guys have a good relationship with that person, but I've really pissed them off. So then you come and you're chitchhating and everything and I walk in and suddenly you see this spike of rage. From your perspective, that person seems to be doing fine.

But from my perspective, all of a sudden this person's angry and maybe they're devaluing me or very, very upset. And you guys are saying, like, wait, what's going on? So that state only manifests when there's something either interpersonal or intrapersonal inside their own head. Right. That gets triggered. Now, is narcissism in a state of flux as well? It's interesting that I don't know narcissism as well.

And the reason why is because people with narcissism don't tend to come in for therapy. Yeah, we had a narcissist expert. And she said exactly that. There's one of the rarest cases to come seek treatment. Yeah, you can't diagnose it really because who's coming in. Understand it correctly from the expert we had on. It's like you don't suffer from narcissism the way you suffer from some other personality. It's the scariest one because they're in it in such a way that you can't even, they don't want to feel better.

Maybe I could teach you a thing or two. Okay, give us some tips. No, no, what I'm saying is that's what the narcissist will say to me. But the most common comorbidity with a personality disorder is another personality disorder. So you can have Orline personality disorder with some narcissistic traits. And one of the ways in which I have been able to work with a few cases of people with a narcissistic personality disorder is to say, here's the thing is no one actually likes you. And you also have to just call it out as the truth, you know, sort of like I know that you feel that people adore you and you're surrounded by, you know, people who. who you believe are supportive, they don't actually.

And the thing about it is you can't even see it. So what I'm going to say is I'm going to teach you how to see the world differently, even if you don't feel that what I'm telling you is true, because what's happening is that you're kind of lonely for a narcissist, like what's going on? You know, is it actually about everybody else, or maybe it's about you? So, you know, so mostly it's hard for me to answer that question, only because I see so many, few people with NPD.

Yeah, so what are the symptoms of borderline personality? Yeah. And I talk a lot about it in the book, because that's the group that I found with most self-hatred and self-loathing was the group of people with borderline personality. Okay, so if we go through the criteria, the first criteria is frantic efforts to avoid, real, or imagined abandonment.

So what do I mean by that? Nobody wants to be abandoned, you know, and say, like, okay, I'm going to go home. My kids and wife have disappeared or whatever. I know I'm already scared. Every time we have someone on who's speaking about, like, psychology, I think I have it. That's your OCD. We're so beautiful about this is that is, I mean, we're all on the spectrum.

I mean, we all have, like, who wants to be abandoned? But it's not so much that we fear, like anybody would say, I'm saying, okay, like, you guys are going to go home, the people who love you aren't going to be there. because they don't want to be there with you anymore. Well, that would be terrifying. Yeah. But the person with born on personality, this sort of fears it, whether it's real or whether it's not real.

So, you know, and sometimes it's like, boy, this relationship is so painful for me that I can't be with you anymore. And so then that's real abandonment. But then the other one is like, no one's ever liked me, no one's ever cared about me. I just worry that people are going to abandon me. And so then what they start to do is these are, this is the first part of the criteria, frantic efforts to avoid the abandonment. What does that mean? It's constant text, constant phone calls, constant seeking of reassurance.

Then to the other person, it's like, how many more times do I need to tell you, I love you? And it becomes actually the kind of behavior that then creates the self-fulfilling prophecies. Exactly. I can't do this anymore. Yes. What I like about, there's lots of excerpts of dialogue between you and patience. And I'm, I don't know why, but I'm blown away with how intelligent some of the patients are and how articulate. And some of them are downright confrontational with you, which I think is so brave and cool.

I think there's something about the dynamic that makes that hard. Yeah. And one of your patients, a young woman, is like, you're not listening to me. Exactly. Yeah. I'm not like upset with myself in this moment. I hate myself across the board. Right.

Like, you need to fucking listen to me. And I'm like impressed and grateful that someone would have that conviction to push back against you like that. I tell patients, I said, like, if I've gotten it wrong, you've got to just tell me I've gotten it wrong. Because otherwise, I'm going to continue down this path, believing what I believe to be true. Well, you too are also limited by your own experience. So yes, you've learned from the DSM, all these other things, and you know how to look for them. Because you yourself can't necessarily relate immediately to a constant state of self-hatred. Right.

it's a little inconceivable until it's detailed for you. Yeah. What does it mean? Yeah. Because I think a lot of people go like, well, I hate myself often. Yeah. Or I feel like a failure sometimes or whatever. Lazy.

So let's just imagine a binary world. Do you identify as male? Yes. Female? Yes. Okay. Now, how certain are you of that, those states? 100%.

Okay. What if I told you that you were wrong? What if I told you that, you know what? I actually quickly snuck a DNA test and you're actually, you're actually X, Y and you're actually X, X. Now, how easy would it be for me to convince you that you're female? It'd be impossible. Impossible.

Male? I mean, I guess if you had proof. No, but not only that. This couldn't be proven to you. It couldn't. No, but even if I had like, okay, here's your DNA. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But exactly.

And so even if I said, okay, here. here's some proof. Now you need to be convinced. I would pull my dick out and go, great, you're holding that. I'm showing you this. Right. Okay. No, but here's what I want you to do is you're actually wrong about yourself. You are actually female. What would the relationship between me and you be if I kept insisting that you had to see yourself as female? Well, you would be an adversary. You would be a threat. You would be someone that's living in certainly a different reality than I am. Exactly. Because there's nothing that I could do that would convince you to, that's the level of belief.

Right. So I'm saying like, I'm worthless and I am toxic. They use often this term toxic. Right. Doesn't matter what proof you present to them. Right. It doesn't matter. There is no separation from the isness of self-hatred.

Meaning there is convicted about that as they would be about their biological sex. Biological identity. And then if I say, okay, you know what? I want to start talking about self-hatred. It's as alienating as if it would be. I want you to start thinking of yourself as this other gender. I know, I've got kids. I know who I am.

You're not going to convince me out of this. We're wasting time in therapy because I don't want to talk about this. Yeah, so it's very hard to tackle, it sounds like. Well, that was the problem is that. So I thought, okay, so now what I need to do is tackle self-hatred. Why aren't any therapies tackling self-hatred? From episode 871 with Mary Claire Haver. For decades, when you look at why menopause hormone therapy was developed, it was to treat a hot flash.

And forever, the pathonomonic, the poster child symptom was hot flashes, or what we call medicine, vasomotor symptoms. What was never taught to me ever, and I learned like three years ago, was we have estrogen receptors in every single organ system in this body. And what I also was taught is in perimenopause, it's a slow, gentle decline. That's all I learned, one sentence. Right. applying until full menopause when you lose function. It is a rocking roller coaster and your worst symptoms tend to be the ones like the mental challenges, the brain fog, the cognitive disorders, the frozen shoulder.

All of it is Perry and late Perry and early menopause. That's when you're accelerating your loss of bone and muscle. Yeah. And the eggs, right? We were born with all of our eggs. A million though. That was a shocker to me. So one to two million at birth.

One to two million eggs. But isn't this a weird? It's like that thing where you're born with all your eggs and what's the thing? And then like, so really your grandma's eggs are your eggs? Yeah. So like when your grandmother was pregnant with your mother, the egg that made you was inside of your mother. Exactly. So in some ways women have always existed always.

So there's all this like knowledge, wisdom, and trauma. Well, those are the mitochondrial Eve. That they think that this imprinting that goes on through a traumatic pregnancy. Okay, so there are 6,000 women reach menopause every single day in the United States. And there are only 2,300 providers certified in menopause medicine. So once this occurs you and you're going through it and you start getting serious about your own reluctance to go through this, which is a great motivator. How do you approach it? What do you start looking at?

How do you even begin assembling what becomes the toolkit? Yeah. So I wish that I could tell you you could confidently walk into your OBG. way in, your family medicine, your internal medicine doctor, and have a reasonable logical conversation about your plan of care in perimenopause and menopause. That is not possible right now. It is not the fault of the individual doctor. They may have been excellent in your birth and your pregnancy plant, you know, in every aspect. But because of the six hours, so right now they surveyed residents coming out like three years ago. Only 30% felt barely adequately trained to treat

menopause like yeah it's it's awful so at least they're honest right call ahead you know look on the menopause society website which is menopause.org and see who has passed the test and is certified there it's not perfect not every you know there's always people out there who aren't great doctors but who took the test but it's somewhere to start we crowdsourced with my followers and I've got thousands of testimonials and we organize them by country city and state to help people find they don't pay me you know just to go find a provider who might be able to help you you. And right now, it's pretty slick. There's some great telemedicine companies that have been developed, mostly female founded, who saw a gap in care and they saw a need, and they developed

these telemedicine companies to serve them in a problem. Yes, so you don't have to live in Los Angeles or wherever. I have women calling me from New York, L.A., London, you know, the most well-connected, you would think. Exactly. Who have the same basic questions and the same worries and the same fears and cannot find help as the woman sitting on the couch in Iowa. Yeah. Okay, so as you start focusing on it and kind of pledging to get competent in it and start helping and treating women, are you yourself even shocked with the amount of symptoms? Because I wrote down symptoms, and it's about the longest lift of symptoms I've ever written.

I was shocked, and most of that was driven by questions I got on social. You know, as my little social media platform was exploding. Women are, you know, when 10,000 women ask you about frozen shoulder or palpitations or vertigo, you're like, they can't all be lying. Right. An anecdotally, you're just starting to see these huge patterns emerge. Let me look into this. And so then I'm like digging and I'm like, yeah, there's a, they're somebody who did the study. There's data.

We've got clear data here. So I go online and I make a little video talking about the correlation between menopause and vertigo or menopause and frozen shoulder, menopause and palpitions. And the world goes crazy. Wow. I get 10,000 comments. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. why didn't my doctor know? Again, we're doing a terrible job of teaching. But I was literally

learning alongside my followers. As I learned, I'd make a video and teach. And that's what inspired me to write the book. And they were like, please write a book. I don't want to chase you all over social media. It's too complicated. Just put it all in one place. Frozen Shoulder is, that is scaring me. Like, my mom had it. My grandmother had it. One of my mother-in-laws has been dealing with it for the last six months. So this is a great. This is a great story. And I hope it would get the lore right. if I don't exactly, you know, but the story goes,

the first study on frozen shoulder in menopause, it came out of Duke University, I read the paper, and it was the head of OBJN and the head of orthopedics who both happened to be women, and it was something like they were sitting in the doctor's lounge

or in the cafeteria and just shooting the breeze over, can you believe all these women with frozen shoulder? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You think there's a correlation? I don't know. Let's look into it.

Yeah. They started pulling charts, and they were like, fuck me, look at this. Women who were on HRT, have a lower incidence of frozen shoulder, and they have it, they do better. Yeah.

They have it, you know. If they get it. They're getting it, but they're getting it less than women who aren't, and they're having a better course, right? Uh-huh. So they go to get it published, and then they go to orthopedic journals first.

Nobody would touch it. Nope, this can't be right. Nope, this is an artifact. Nope, nope, no, no. So one of the menopause journals published it. And so then I have a friend, Vonda Wright, if you follow her, she's an orthopedic surgeon.

She does a ton of teaching, and she wrote the paper on the musculoskeletal syndrome, of menopause. How's that all work? What's the mechanisms there? So estrogen receptors and probably progesterone here as well are all over the musculoskeletal system. We know, but we know bones. We got bones down, right?

We've known about osteoporosis since I was resident. I know that one really well. But what wasn't understood was tendons, muscles, and where the, you know, the connections between bones and muscles and how that all works together. And frozen shoulder is adhesive capsulitis. There's a capsule around the ball joint and the shoulder that gets absolutely. adhesed and frozen, and it's an inflammatory condition. And so you can't put your arm behind.

Like, you go to take a picture. Yeah, and it's very, very painful. And you need early intervention. You need a physical therapy. There's needling. They have to break it up, right? And that we can delay the onset and the duration and probably prevent several cases for women on HRT.

And as you said, because there are estrogen receptors. Protective. So it's an anti-inflammatory. But my mom didn't even know that this. This was kind of, I've never heard her once say she had that because of menopause. Well, no, most women don't know. Most orthopedic surgeons don't know. You know, we're working to change that.

All of this is, that paper was written a year and a half ago. Oh, wow. Okay, so ringing in the ears? Yeah. Tonitis, tinnitus, I still don't know how to say it correctly. Yeah, I had it for a minute and I didn't know what to tell people. I've had it once in man, you know. People kill themselves from it.

It's a maddening. Maddening. Yeah. So, again, this is an estrogen receptor problem. So there's, you know, and the vertigo is that the crystals break off quicker from, like, is basically osteoporosis in the ear. Oh, wow. And the crystals break off and then float around and you're dizzy. But the tenetist, you know, it's the inflammation around the nerve and around some of the auricular bones.

Yeah. That is, they feel like is leading to it, and that women on, you know, all these studies say age match women, premenapausal women definitely have it less than post. And women on HRT are less likely to get it. Yeah, wow. What are some other? Dry skin. Yeah. So in the skin and tegumentary, you know, skin and the hair follicles.

I like tegumentary, I've been heard that word. That's a fancy. Tegamatory. So, and all the like follicles and oil and sweat glands, it's the whole system, right? Right. So the largest organ in the body. That is. Most absorbent.

So we see that we lose 30% of our collagen. You don't have to tell a woman that. She knows. In the first five years of menopause, we can attenuate that with topical or systemic hormone therapy. Topical works better. actually, which is why I'm on my vanity cream. Is it a retin, like retinol?

No, it's estrogen for the face. Wow. So it's compounded, but some people take the vaginal product and we'll mix it in their moisturizer and put some on their face. But you should talk to a doctor before you do. You shouldn't do that. Right.

Don't do any compounding at home. So, yeah. Mix it up, a little mortar and pestle. So you lose oil production in the skin, you lose thinness, and the transepidormal water loss is much greater. so you're just losing all of your barrier, your protection. So the skin is less healthy.

Right. Besides looking worse. Right. Yeah. Dry mouth. That's the same. Dry mouth, same thing. So mucus production, the salivary glands dry up.

You know, and we have tremendous dry mouth. And dry eyes, dry mouth. It's the same kind of, you know. Guys, I don't want menopause. This is fucking miserable. Decrase protection. From episode 967 with Malala Yusufzai. Now, I find this to be the most interesting part because it's so human.

So, yeah, now you start, you start this school in England, and it's a disaster, right? It doesn't, high school's not. I loved that school, by the way, but what was really challenging for me was making friends. Yeah. I was a completely different person when I was in Pakistan. I was funny and mischievous. I was in every competition, debate, singing. Playing cricket.

Being a kid. Everything. I mean, and I had friends. I had so many friends. Now at this new school, I felt like a stranger. I just thought nobody could ever know me. I could not be that old self of mine. And, you know, I would try to like, I would try to have a conversation with people.

And it just like, you start and it dies quickly. Yeah. It's such a, like, stressful moment. You know, you're like, I hope, like, somebody picks up this topic and it could be a funny thing. And it just, it just fell flat. Yeah. Look, I mean, you had so much working against you. You're from another country.

I can't imagine your English was bulletproof at that point. I mean, it was more like textbook English. Textbook English is very different than what people actually speak. Yes. Yeah. You have the cultural thing. You have the fact that you're famous, which is an awkward thing. You've also just been shot in the face, so you're not, like, feeling...

A hundred percent. I became very, like, self-conscious. Of course. Even if... Like, somebody's, like, looking at you, you know, we all look at each other and we all just think sometimes, like, you know, what is that person actually looking at right now? Yes, of course. And usually, they're not, but we just think that way.

Yeah. But I think at school, yes, I was very self-conscious, and I was thinking about the facial nerve damage on the left side because of the bullet and I just thought like maybe you know I I just was hesitating even to smile because I now had like a crooked smile and yes I was yeah mala when I had acne I didn't want to go to school exactly pimples I would not interact with anyone those days like it's it's hard enough yeah this is impossible and you you have to sort of carry the weight now your people are looking to you to be like the voice of of activism and you're 15 and you're in a new place and people are expecting wisdom from you.

Like, that's too much. Well, thank God you were kind of delivering on that front because you're just, it's a mess at high school. Yeah. But luckily you are, you're rising to the occasion of the political stuff. You have to be an adult so fast. Like, you're crushing that part of your life. Yeah, I mean, I just thought maybe at 15, this is where I'm supposed to be at these UN. conferences, bilateral meetings with world leaders advocating for girls education, running a

foundation. I just thought maybe this is how my life is supposed to look like. That's all I'll have. I won't get this other thing. And to be honest, yes, I wanted all of it. Yes. I wanted to be a normal student at the same time to be, to have friends. To go to McDonald's. And to see loved and to be able to express myself and to try new things.

But somehow I thought that maybe because. I'm supposed to live this activist life. It means sacrificing. It's one or the other. It's one or the other. Yeah. And I was like, okay, you know, of course, like I'm sad and I don't feel like myself. You were lonely, right?

And lonely. But I thought, okay, this is how it's supposed to be. You did the cutest things to you. Like you enlisted on field day to run the 200 meter dash and came in last. I know. I tried everything. This is horrible. I know.

It makes me love you so much. When this is going on and you're like struggling at school and, you know, I think a lot of American kids, they would come home and, like, tell their parents. And I feel like, and did you feel like you could do that? Because I don't know how emotions were. No, I think when you are supposed to be this strong, brave, courageous girl, you feel you cannot complain about not having friends or, like, you know, crying alone in the bathroom to get over this or feel like, oh, I wish more people could talk to me in the school dining hall. No, I never really shared it with my parents. I would just go home and talk to my best friend in Pakistan.

I would ask her about everything that was happening in our neighborhood with our friends and how her studies were going and just try to like reconnect with my old life. And I knew like that's just not a reality. I'm not there. But I used to just imagine myself being there and imagine what life would have been like if I were there. So, like, deep inside, I just, I wanted, I wanted to make friends and just know, like, who is that true Malala, you know, that. Yeah. And what would my life have looked like if none of these things had happened?

So the day when I saw most of the students at my school talk to me was the day when I heard the news about the Nobel Peace Prize. Oh. So I had gone to school and I was not expected to, like, then I was. I was 17. I was 17, yes. I was in my chemistry class. The school's deputy head teacher walks in and calls me outside and tells me that I have won the Nobel Peace Prize. Oh, my God.

And I'm like, wait, what? Yes. And I'm like, oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. As if it's like she did. But I actually went back to my class. I finished my whole school day.

In hopes that people might engage with you and show interest. More faces were looking at me that day. You know, when you feel noticed? Yes, it's huge. Yeah. But the day after, it was just back to normal. Everybody's looking the other way. They were all going to McDonald's and you weren't.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. What a bizarre. You're winning the Nobel Peace Prize and you're not getting invited to McDonald's. Like, none of this makes, this is too much. Stay tuned for more armchair expert. If you dare.

From episode 891 with Michael Lewis. People get pissed off because there's a lot of money at stake already. Oh, yeah. Those two companies are $30, $40 billion companies. It is sinister. Yeah. What we're doing to young men right now. Yes.

It's not just with sports gambling. But we're creating young male angeles. at a fantastic rate. If you were going to set out to create as much young male anger as you could, you do a lot of things. We're doing a great job. We're doing a great job. Let's take away manual labor jobs.

Let's take away the trades. Let's stop sending them to college. Let's get that suicide rate up. Let's tell them they're evil and when they're from the minute they walk in the classroom when they're in the first grade. And then let's create an industry that preys on young male over confidence. In testosterone and rights of passage and all of that. Acts of bravery.

Yes. And that has, with unbelievable precision, the ability to identify people who don't know what they're doing and get them to do as much of it as possible. Yes. At the same time, they can, with great precision, identify people who, the very, very, very few people who actually know what they're doing when they're betting on sports

and kick them out of the casino. Yes. It's diabolical. Those algorithms, they can go, oh, this guy's too good of a gambler. He actually is making edge bets, the beds that have positive experience. he knows something about golfers that we don't know we can't take the bet and he's gone so they just say

you can't do this yeah they only want fucking they're allowed to just say oh yeah they'll say they'll say we'll either ban you this we gave so we got a pro gambler who knew what he was doing to give us his bets to place and we participated a little bit so it was illegal and we got booted out everywhere in a matter of four or five bets and it was even even where we'd lost money because they could identify that the bet, even though the bet lost, it was a smart bet. That's like a bar that's only letting alcoholics in. You've got to prove you're an alcoholic first.

Literally. And then anyone who can manage their drinking, you get the fuck out of here. That's exactly that sinister. If you're just going to drink water, we don't want you. Yeah, we want fucking addicts in here. How can this be legal? Well, let's go through it.

Can we start? I was really fascinated with Dan Wan. It's a great, he's a great character. Yeah. So Dan Juan started studying fans. Okay. Which no one had really ever studied. Right.

And I think the, the reigning opinion of people who attended sporting events was a certain type of person. And through his studies, he found out, well, you know, you'd be surprised to find out that fans are, they donate more money, they're more politically active,

they have higher GPAs. They're not the group you think they are. No, they're socially engaged. They're socially engaged. Yeah, and, you know, so they are, but they are not rational. Right. So now we get into that kind of conaman,

Danny Connman, take on these guys, which is what happens to someone's thinking when they're a fan? I mean, it's motivated reasoning, right? it's like you you will systematically think your team is going to do better

than you should think or your favorite players. You got half your brain in a really irrational space already because you are a fan. Well, I like when he puts it so simply, like just the original proposition is come spend two hours with us.

There's a 50% chance that you're going to be very upset at the end of this. And it costs a lot of money. You see the bias right there. Like any rational person, person would be like, no, those are terrible odds if I'm going to spend a bunch of money. You say half the time I'm going to leave here, you're totally upset.

Yeah. Yeah. And so that you're, when you, when you introduce gambling into this mind, you're, it's, it's already a mind that is, it thinks it knows things it doesn't know. He gets into the superstitions. Yeah. Like, you know, and I myself just did this. I went to a Detroit Lions game, the one they lost in the playoffs. And I hadn't been to a game all year. And I went and it was like a big deal. And they lost. And I'm like, it's because I fucking, I hug, I hug the coach. He didn't want to hug me. Why don't I have to hug that fucking guy? Because he's on TV.

I had this whole story. I'm like, all Detroit hates my guts. And I'm kind of buying it. It's funny what gets studied by academics and what doesn't. And as he points out, he's just like, the fan was just sitting there waiting to be studied. It's such an important character in American life. And he said, but pinheads like me generally don't like sports. Like, it's like people were just turning a blind eye to it because they thought it was not worthy of attention.

Right. And for our podcast, it's worthy of attention just to establish that the brain space in which this gambling industry is going to enter. Because they are targeting fans. That's why it's very important to understand right out of the gates that a fan is doing some irrational thinking. So most people who bet are a fan of the thing. That's surprising to me already. I would assume most people who get into sports betting aren't fans. So they could be sort of objective about it.

There are some who do that. Yeah. But it's... And they're kicked off. Overwhelmingly, they are fans. Wow. Yes. So what happened in this country is that back in 1992,

Senator Bill Bradley, former New York Nick, had passed a federal law that forbid states from legalizing sports gambling that didn't have it already. And that grandfathered in Nevada, for example, and a couple of other little exceptions. Maybe Atlantic City? No, they didn't. Not Atlantic City.

Oh, they didn't have a sports. Sports book there. Then what happens is that because Atlantic City is not Granite, they don't have it. New Jersey gets upset. They can't do it. And Chris Christie, Governor New Jersey, launches what seems to be a quixotic and futile lawsuit to try to get overturned Bradley's law. It succeeds in 2018.

And in 2018, the Supreme Court says this law is unconstitutional. It's up to the states. Any state that wants to legalize sports betting can. And since then, 38 states have legalized it. Wow. Which is creating all kinds of weird natural experiments. Like, you know, Alabama doesn't, Mississippi does, and suicide rates go up in Mississippi,

and savings rates go down in Mississippi. You can see the effects of it. Bankruptcy. All that stuff. From episode 944, Seth Hart. There's a lot of crime in these secretive units. And one of the big types of crime that you see, frequently is theft from military supplies because there's an enormous amount of money and

material weapons, ammunition, things like gasoline, and just straight up cash. Yeah, talk about the cash because I doubt people would know how much cash is entrusted to these people. When they get in these countries to train these soldiers, they have to buy equipment. They have to pay people off. They do got to throw a lot of money around. That's the main thing that they do, just like the CIA, the main thing that they do is throw money around. And there's just, there's hundreds of millions of dollars. that get thrown around. I don't think people understand the scale of it.

There's billions of dollars. A lot of it, we know, was stolen directly by the soldiers who are entrusted with these stacks of cash. You know, I interview military wives in Fayetteville who talk about how this is kind of a thing. You know, your husband comes back from a deployment and, you know, he's got several thousand dollars taped to his body when he gets off the plane. Yeah. Just skimmed off the top of the op fund is what they call it, the operations fund.

By the way, I would do it. I'm like, I'm going to give this bozo $60,000. This guy's a bozo. I'm going to take four. I mean, it's not hard to imagine how one finds himself skimming. When you're giving it to shitheads a lot of the time. It's not hard to imagine, especially when you know, hey, there's almost no accountability over this. This is just a handwritten receipt that I'm signing off of.

Nobody cares. I have a friend who's an FBI agent. He too has to pay informants and stuff. And he said, you know, every time we come back, there's a lot of time. They have to polygraph after every single time they've. bring back the money and i don't think that's happening here no i don't think so no you know the there's so much less oversight over the military than an agency like fbi right it's so huge i'm also sympathetic to it's like when you're over there it's like what a fucking machine that's right that's trying to

run and keep up yeah and they spent a trillion dollars in afghanistan and so the the cash is just a tiny fraction of that yeah yeah hard to detect i'm sure but we do know of um you know cases where there were several cases, quite a few cases of special forces soldiers, being caught, arrested, prosecuted, and convicted for stealing six-figure sums of cash. So this is not just an inference or a

suspicion. What's the, do you know them with the most? Yeah, I saw one, this guy, 210,000, you know, I think, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Actually, no, you know what, there's significantly more, because there's all different kinds of diversion from the supply lines. There was one Fort Ragged soldier who got caught smuggling $1 million

in cash. A female soldier named Tanya Long. Go get it, girl. One million. A million dollars that she was smuggling back in in like VCRs or some kind of electronic equipment. Really? But she had taken that money, she and her likely with conspirators,

co-conspirators, had taken that money not from the op fund but through a kickback scheme. A whole different type of corruption that also exists. The war in Afghanistan was an incredibly corrupt enterprise. The Afghan client state was staggeringly corrupt and it's no surprise that some of that blew back and rubbed off on our own people who were the ones pumping all the money into there and one small part of it but which

ends up being important for the culture of the green berets is the theft of cash i was going to point to a study done um that showed or not a study so much as a count of all the cases that had been adjudicated and they total 52 million dollars and thefts that u.s soldiers were convicted of stealing Oh, my God. But that's just a drop in the, just a drop in the bucket. The conviction rate, I'm sure, versus incident rate is probably single-digit percentage. A final fact I can tell you about this is that the largest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve was, I think, 343 tons of cash. That's how much it weighed.

Yeah. A hundred dollar bills, they were put on planes and flown into Iraq. Oh. And all of it went missing. Billions of dollars. No. Whole pallets of shrink-drapped cash went missing. Went missing.

What's that mean? Here's what I know is accurate. It was the largest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve. And you wonder where it all went. All these, you know, shadowy fortunes that were made out of the war. And a lot of people that make a bunch of money and decamp for Dubai and never come back. Well, they came up through Special Forces or J-Soc or the CIA. From episode 903, James Kimmel Jr.

I have one. Great. I have one. Okay. So my apartment building currently is so disgusting. Like, this is so annoying. Randomly, nothing of mine is turned on, right? Like, I'm not running any water or anything.

But randomly, they'll be like water. soapy like water weird stuff coming up out of the tub into into my tub also it happened in the laundry room and it flooded the laundry room it's been an ongoing thing and I've had to say over and over again this is unacceptable this needs to stop now fix it they keep sending in a plumber the plumber's like it's not clogged I'm like I know clearly that's not what's going on here what are you going to do Like, what are we going to do? So that's my grievance. Okay.

And they're not reacting. They're not fixing this situation at all. Right. Okay. So let's just do it. Let's just do it. I'm going to add, they're placating you. That's a trigger for me.

To keep it short, shortish, we'll just say that you've just begun testifying as the victim. Okay. So imagine now that you're in a courtroom. Okay. You could close your eyes for a second and just sort of picture the judge's bench and the lawyer's tables and the jury box and maybe the defense. like is the landlord and they're over at their table and you're over in your thing you're at your table and there's a judge up there and you're now on the witness stand

and you're testifying to what they've done to you and what's what has happened to you and this could be something really significant so I've done this with people with serious sexual violence murder people who family members have been killed so it can be as big or as small as your life but let's just stick with your so you testify that that has happened and tell us how that has made you feel um totally unrest respect disrespected i pay money to live here and i feel that this is the basic level of care and um hygiene that should be handled by the landlord quickly okay so it's very annoying yeah yeah All right. So let's stop with the victim testimony for a minute. And let's switch over to, so now you're going to play the role of the landlord. Okay. So the landlord was over at that table. And now the landlord's walking up to the stand and sitting down. You're just sitting and watching. That's you as the victim. But now you are the landlord. So it's actually you in the witness stand. Okay. Okay. All right. So you've got to switch that role.

Okay. And now your lawyer, very well-paid, good lawyer, is going to ask you. Jimmy Kimmel, Jr. And his name's, right, Jimmy Kimmel Jr. Thank you. Thanks for that advertiser. And he's going to ask you. So what's your side of the story?

Monica has complained about some water leaking into her building. She showed me pictures. It looks bad. I've sent the plumber in multiple times. The plumber doesn't know what's wrong. He's snaked the drain. And it's still happening. She's still complaining about it.

But there's not much more I can do. You would probably add that you're looking over like 18 units. There's one of you. you don't have access to everyone else as the plumber thinks maybe if he chased down this problem and all these other people's units i can't get them to agree to let the plumber in because they don't have an issue there might be a lot she might feel like you know i'm doing really everything one person can do with these 18 units and i keep saying the plumber and i'm as frustrated with the plumber as monica is and she somehow's only me responsible as if i'm putting the suds in her tub and

I don't either have anything to do with it. We're on the same team here. Right. So you've just, now, Monica, in your own role, you've just sat and listened to the defendant testify, both versions. Uh-huh. How did it make you feel to, you know, hear the defendant's story? What was that like for you?

I understand that there's a lot on her plate. She's just a person. She's not, you know, a machine. She can't just make sure something gets done because I want to. done fast. And I still think, unfortunately, I do think it is her job to make sure that the building is run up to code. So though I have compassion for her, I would still like the thing to be done properly. So how do you find, as the jury, is the landlord guilty or innocent? I think she's guilty. Okay. I do think that objectively. That's fair. You're the jury and you get to say what you

want. You don't have to apologize. Well, I feel bad for her. And I do, which is why I think I can really do this objectively to some extent. Like, I don't think she's a bad person. So what should your sentence be? Since you found the landlord guilty, you're going to have to hand down a sentence. And in the non-justice system, which is what this is called, or the miracle. court because there's a free app that you can use that on audio-driven app where it takes you through all the steps more methodically than I'm doing right now. But in that, you do need to have a sentence. This is hard. This part's hard. I definitely don't want her to get fired. Okay. So I'm not sentencing her with that. Can I suggest a sentence that I bet you would love? Sure. She has to have

the same foam coming out of her tub and her laundry room. Whoa. Because now she'll be heavily incentivized to deal with the core problem. Unless foam doesn't bother her. Well, we'll find out. That's funny. That doesn't even cross my mind. Interesting.

Because that's a very, and what you did, Dax, is a very, you know, that's a very reciprocal type of view. And research shows that males are much more caught up in that. Oh. than women who their empathy centers are more readily available, males, it goes quiet. When somebody does something wrong, males just go towards revenge seeking. That's interesting. That's right.

So I have to deal with this, and you should have to deal with it too. My hunch is once you have to deal with it, you'll be motivated to fix it. Oh, I don't have that. And I wouldn't want to sentence her with that. Oh, okay. I think I just say, oh, well. Which is basically what you've already done. Yeah.

which is actually something that does happen from time to time in these trials, as in some people will stop at right after the defendant has testified. They'll get some new insight by adopting the other view that was completely unexpected to them. And it'll be shocking to the person. They may find that they themselves were at fault or that, you know, they understand at a very deep level why. And they might have done the same thing in the same circumstances. It is a workaround to force you out. of attribution error, because no one's going to get on the stand and go, I did it because I'm a

piece of shit. I did it because I'm a selfish monster. You have enough integrity even in your own court trial to know that no one would do that. So in the absence of that, you really have to fill in what they could possibly have been motivated by or what their explanation is. And it will kind of inoculate you from attribution error. Right. And it also, I mean, what we find from the research is it will also reactivate if it wasn't your empathy. So a different part of your brain. It's a different part of your brain that was silent, like I was saying for males in particular.

So it reactivates that and you gain some new insight. But not for everyone. And most of the trials go the whole way to the end. Yeah. But some people will stop at the defendant's testimony or where you're at here right now. It's sort of almost like it wants to be stopped because you really don't have a sense.

You don't have a punishment. But you did want to be heard. I did. And you got to be heard, didn't you? Yeah, it's true. And you're holding them to account in the sense that they had to come and be put on trial. Right. And I guess the sentence part is interesting because even though I still, at the end, I'm like, yes, I think she is guilty of negligence as a landlord.

But when it comes to sentencing, do I think that's worth a sentence? It makes you start doing that. Like, is that really worth a punishment? Right. No. And in your case, because the case wasn't a super serious case, I mean, part of it's driven by the type of case that you just did. Yeah.

If this was something, a romantic betrayal. Like, I'm going to be doing this next week on Dr. Phil with somebody who's lived through a romantic betrayal, like really bad. And there won't be an easy go through that. Yeah. You know, that's going to be a seriously difficult thing because the pain of that betrayal, Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. From episode 932 with Chris Feisel and Dave Mitchell.

Here's the head of security for the Cali cartel. First, he tells me, let's meet at Siop, but come alone. I'm like, I'm not coming along. Are you crazy? I have to come with my partner. And then he finally says, okay, all right, come with your, you can come with your partner and then he says uh no columbians right because he was one of the guys that was paying off a lot of the columbians so he knew about the corruption because if i see

anybody who's even looks columbian the deal is off oh wow even if they brought you monica he might yeah you might too close too brown yeah so we're sitting there thinking like it's the head of security the callie could tell you want to meet us an hour outside of cali telling us to come alone telling me to come alone and not to bring any columbians and we're thinking like dude this could be a trap this could be an ambush we weren't sure what to expect we're not even supposed to leave the base and then here we are going to go meet this counterintelligence officer in the middle of a cane field an hour outside of collie so it was it was pretty pretty hairy i think we outlined that pretty well in the book how we felt because honestly we were we were scared we were pretty scared yeah it's

funny when we're there everything's funny now at the time it wasn't yeah i looked at chris i said chris you ever seen that movie onion fields this could be our onion field why what's the onion Oh, that actually happened in California? Yeah. Oh, what happened? It's where some police officers were killed in the onion field. And they made a movie about it. Okay, so you meet with him, and do you...

Like him? He's not at all what we thought, right? And just to backtrack a little bit, when he says, meet us at the Canfield at 3 o'clock, right? We get out there at 12, before 12, right? Because we're terrified. It's going to be an ambush or they're going to set us up and try to kill us or kidnap us or whatever. So we're out there in this blistering heat, like sitting around for three hours waiting. But we had a good vantage point, so at least we can see everything coming for a while.

So if anybody came in, we were prepared. And we were pretty heavily armed. They say we looked like Neo and Trinity when they went into the government control building to get Morpheus. We were loaded. But as we were there, we noticed we didn't see anybody. Nobody came. Maybe this guy's for real. Yeah.

And I think we all have preconceived notions, right? So we're thinking, head of security for the Cali cartel. It's going to be like a really bad guy. Something out of the movies. He's going to, exactly. He's going to look a certain way. He's going to talk a certain way. And when we saw him, he was the exact opposite of what we thought, right?

Came alone. He wasn't armed. You know, we made sure Dave, you know, patting him down. We checked the car. We were still wary for a trap. And he said our names first. We went to introduce herself. Yeah, he knew who we were.

That was a part of play for him. They knew. They knew everything about us. They had nicknames for us. We were called Los Monos. What is Los Monos? Los Monos is a monkey. A monkey.

But what they would use it for is if somebody is bare-complexed, like the Gringos. Where are the Gringos. Yeah, yeah. The gringos that's born. They'll call them Los Monos. Oh, that's interesting.

It's almost a universal racial slur. Yeah, for real. There's something comforting about that. That was with the Clark. call this they refer to us as the monos but but he talked real softly like with a very low voice and very like the cadence was he even an imposing man or was he just a normal man no he was just very normal looking the clothes that he wore the way he walked like not trying to make a sound or an impression so i look at they like and this guy is like the exact opposite of everything that we

that we thought and then of course and the first thing he says to us is like hey this is going to be a one-time meeting and it's going to be real quick because i got to get back to callie because I'm on standby for Miguel, the head of the cartel. But as we started to talk and go over things, we ended up being out there three hours that first meeting until it got dark. Was your mind being blown? Were you learning things that were unimaginable? It's like you open up the book.

We learned more in those three hours than the whole year on the ground. Wow. Absolutely. Can you remember one of the most shocking things you heard during that? Well, there's one thing I looked at him. I said, hey, I just need to know, it's DEA a threat. he looked at me just like a father would and says you and chris you work very hard oh so patronizing no you guys are hard workers but no the is not a threat and this is why he goes you and chris

can go out talk to anybody you want to gather information intelligence but at the end of the day you don't have arrest powers you have to deal with the columbians and that's where we got you yeah that's It's not a, yeah, it all unravels a second. You've got to get official. And by that point, we were very well aware of the systemic corruption that existed within not only the security forces but in the government, but just talking to him and how plainly and how simply he would just put out there. Oh, yeah, well, you can't deal with this person because he's corrupt and the cartels paying that guy and we paid this guy and this and that. And it was, it was staggering. It was overwhelming the amount of corruption that we were dealing with.

ask, why should we trust you? Well, we did. We talked all about that. But then when we started to hear his story, right? And we talked about that. How he got involved into the cartel and that he couldn't get out. I'd have such a hard time believing it. Really, you don't have a choice.

I guess you're right. You don't have a choice. And then also, I think you'd be reasonable to conclude it's not worth them fucking with us. As he said, you're not, they're not a threat. They don't have to be appeased. They could be ignored. So why do this? They already know where you're at.

Unless I want to kill, yeah. I would trust it because there's almost no incentive for them to be keeping an eye on you. They're already doing that. And plus when we started to talk to him, and at that point, we were pretty well versed on the cartel and what they were doing. But talking to him, we just took us to a whole other level. But we would ask a lot of questions that we knew the answers to, just trying to bet him. And he was basically doing the same thing to us. Like, hey, you guys are kids.

You know, we were 30 years old at the time. You know, he's like, you guys are here trying to bring down the head of the Cali Cartel. So he was like, how can I trust you? How do I know that you guys are going to be able to handle it, right? Yeah. And then he asked us, he goes, listen, it's not only my life, but my family's life. So it's my family's life is in your hands. Can I trust you?

It's like you see in these old movies where you push the wall and it opens, highly sophisticated. So he tells us, look, there's supposedly, is there a big red desk in the apartment? because there's these really sensitive documents. So we're looking around for latches, we're pushing, we can't find shit. And then one of our partners who's there, Jerry Salomey, he comes and he picks the desk up and he just turns it over and it smashes on the marble floor and it breaks open. And in the back of the desk is a hidden compartment in a desk.

How do you do that with three briefcases? And in these briefcases, check this out, this is staggering, are all these super sensitive files, corruption-related information, letters from the president's office, you know, about money that they had donated. And there was a list of, check this out, 2,800 corrupt officials, just in those briefcases. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

2,800. Yeah, good luck finding the street phone. So we find that that buys us a little more time. Then he tells us, look, he's in this secret compartment in the bathroom. He's hiding. He's in the bathroom. He's there. So he's been there for the last 12 hours.

How was he telling you this? On the phone? Well, we were going outside, you know, making phone calls. He was at a pay phone. Oh, my God. And we were at another phone about 100 yards away. We didn't even know. We didn't know we were that close.

Oh, my God. And then he would go back in and get more information to come out. As the head of security, he was able to get out and to relay, hey, I got to go check on my guys are telling me this. So it didn't cause a lot of attention. So finally, there were like four bathrooms in the apartment. And we're not going to. on walls, everything, how the hell can there be a hidden compartment in the bathroom?

Yeah. So, finally, you know, we take measurements of the apartments below and above. We get the thing. We were in the bathroom. We go, this is smaller. This is the only one that doesn't make sense. And we open the sink cabinet and it hits the toilet. We're going days and days with hardly limited sleep.

Oh, yeah, we're exhausted. Yeah. Okay, yeah. We're beyond exhaustion at your best. We're not at our best. We're exhausted. Chris and I, we're in the restroom. And we just, you know, you had the sink right here with the door right under it.

And it doesn't open all the way. It hits the toilet. And we are so exhausted. We go, look at this. Who would make something like this? You just used, man, of the construction. This is the cabata. And then we saw a little yellow hose over it.

This is it. And that's when we started getting drills. So you start drilling into the walls and you break. Three drill bits. Right. You run out of drill bits. Corrupt captain that was supposed to be in her liaison, who was the main source for him.

He grabbed me by the arm. This guy was literally in a panic. And he goes, who's your source? Who's your source? How do you know this? How do you know this? Who's your source? I said, no, there's a space not accounted for.

And then once we started drilling through the walls, he looked at, you know, they're lawyers for the government and said, The Americans are doing. Yeah, prosecutors are doing unilateral action. So that's when they detained us. Some say maybe arrested us, but. They got everyone out of there.

And he escaped. They had drilled holes right next to him. Imagine his experience in the wall. He's just standing me on the wall. Listening to you guys, bitch about the construction quality. Just wondering like, fuck are they going to get it? I mean, I can't imagine what his body was feeling like. dodging.

In there. And now drills are coming through. That's what I'm saying. Yep. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. The prosecutor is getting this information that the Americans are conducting a unilateral operation. He comes in, shuts the entire operation down.

We're within a minute. Oh. accessing this compartment this is no lie i'm you couldn't have drawn it up any better in a movie script if you try we were literally a minute away from grabbing this guy and the prosecutor came in he shut it down he brought us out to the living room took the keys locked the keys the door put him in his pocket typed up a formal complaint against us and then escorted us and made us leave the apartment just full corruption wow and we said can we leave no i said so we're arrested no no you're not arrested so we're you just can't leave

All right, same? Yeah, yeah, yeah. From episode 958 with Andy Roddock. Okay, so, but with your height, that has to be a part of your serve, right? Because the crazy part about your game was you had this insane serve. Yeah. I like this detail of it. You had numerous different coaches over the years, and I do want to talk about that.

I want to know how one, you're like you've got to break up with someone and hire someone. That's got to be a very stressful part of the experience. experience. But as you hired coaches, your whole game was on the table except for the serve. The serve was to not be talked about. Is that right? It was to not be talked about. It was, yeah, it was proprietary. Were you afraid? Were you superstitious about the serve? No, I just knew it backwards. You knew it back. I knew the cadence when it started. I knew this little three count that I had. There was, I knew the feelings of it. I knew more than they did. Uh-huh. And I don't say that lightly because you will get to the coaches and I

was obviously always in pursuit of something new, something different, something additive. And also, don't talk about my serve. Yeah. Is the origin of it true that you got really frustrated at like 16 and you served in a weird way out of anger and it worked? Is that true? That's true. I was playing my friend Marty Fish, who ended up being a really good player. He was six in the world.

And so we used to play at this basically all the kids who didn't get picked by the, the federation, right? So the people, not funded by U.S. tennis anymore. Okay. Kind of the throwaways. Yeah. We played at Crystal Palms apartment complex in Florida.

Okay. And there were like six of us. And out of that group, a couple, you know, a couple of us made top, top five, top six in the world. But I was playing against Marty, who was really, really good.

And at that point, better. And just got pissed off and I have like this little half motion of boarded tears, but it's not conventional. Right. Hit one irresponsibly out of anger. Yeah.

And it went in. Which, by the way, is the thing they tell you to never do in anything, right? Don't try to kill it, don't try to crush it, don't try it. And you did, you're like, I'm gonna fucking murder this box, I hate it. And that was it. Had I won that day, had I been playing,

had I been doing well with Marty that day, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be here having this conversation. That's so crazy. And how do you, like, when you recognize it clicked, do you then think like, okay, how do I commit this whole thing to muscle memory? Like I gotta replicate. You just over and over again, you do it?

Just started doing it and it was. And you didn't have to overthink it. It was immediately, well, a lot of the muscles build it. Like, your shoulder still goes over. It's just your feet was different, but it was like, it was no time. And it literally took you, it went from, and there were some other things that needed to be adjusted. But yeah, I mean, you literally figured it out. And then the year before, you're 40 or 50 in the world in juniors, which sounds good, but that means they're going to college.

Yeah. And then four months later, it was your number one in Florida. One signed a rebuke deal. Okay, so this, one thing I just want to end on with your serve, which I find is just so incredible. So you had the record for the fastest serve in history at 155 miles an hour. It has been beaten, but it's still only at 156. Wow. That's so massive.

Like the service described in many of the things I was reading as unreturnable. Well, to most, except for the Avengers that came on the way through career. But, yeah, I mean, I wasn't a natural tennis player. I was like a work guy, but I could throw it. That was it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I could make your life uncomfortable for a little bit. Okay, so you win the 2003 U.S. Open.

You are. I'm dying to go to the U.S. Open. No one will invite me. Let's do it. Okay. Whenever. Can you take that? You just have to be a guest on his podcast.

Oh, great. Invite me and then let's. You have to pay, you have to, you know, earn your way. You don't even, you don't even have to do that. Oh, I want to go. I know why you want to go. I want to try the, that honey coonce. That's a cocktail?

Yeah. They basically invented a signature cocktail like that everyone pretends like has been around for 100 years. They fucking put it in like eight years ago. It's not. Have you had a hundred years to the U.S. opens?

Like, no, because they didn't fucking have them when I was playing. It's a made-up thing. But it's a real... It's genius, though. I don't know. Oh, you got to buy it to find out. No, a little shamboard, lemonade,

gray goose, and Sprite. Yeah, I want that. I'll make you one and serve it on the fact check. No, I wanted it at the U.S. open. And then also... She wants to overpay for it. That's right. You can't imagine how well you know her.

You literally know everything you need to know a lot of ago. It doesn't taste as good if you don't pay $28 for it. And if it doesn't have those little melon balls on there. Yeah, that's really cool. My favorite thing about that is they have these cups with like, you know, they have the honey deuce cups that have all the winners on them. It's like, oh my God, I know, but I know I paid $30, but I got this. Svanyer cup.

I got a free cup. It's worth $0.75. So I won. Yeah, I want that. Yeah. I want that. I'm going to do that. I save thousands by getting this.

But also, the U.S. Open's gotten so cool. Like, everyone goes. It's definitely a social event. It's the Metball. It's the Metball. It's the Metball of sports. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's really, I do really, really want to go. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.