Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Chris Pine

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Chris Pine (Poolman, Star Trek, Wonder Woman) is an actor, producer, and director. Chris joins the Armchair Expert to discuss the thrills of a catastrophe, falling in love with nicotine toothpicks, and what growing up in old Hollywood was like. Chris and Dax talk about how hard it is to expose your emotions, how much they love saunas, and the experience of feeling fraudulent. Chris admits to his preconceptions of Dax, the juxtaposition of how he sees himself vs how others see him, and his love for the city of Los Angeles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Rather and I'm joined by Monica Monsoon. Hi. Handsome actor alert. Big time. Trigger warning. You get horny too easy at work. Don't listen to this one.

You might need to wait. This was a great one. It was really, really fun. It really, really was. He's so interesting. He is insanely interesting. You'll hear about it. I thought he hated me.

Maybe he was, I love that he admitted he was judgmental of me. It was such music to my ears to hear. You hear that in a little bit of a way that. It wasn't there. Is a little bit of a stretch. Okay, that's fine. Well, I'll let the listener decide.

Yes, exactly. But these are my favorite kind of interviews. They happen occasionally where it's like, I got a story about somebody, maybe they have a story about me, and then we chat and we like each other so much. He's so smart, Chris Pine. Very smart.

Right out of the gates, I'm like, Berkeley, okay. Okay, Berkeley. And then a story I would have never guessed and unraveled every story I had made. You really went nuts over a piece of this, which you'll hear. Yes, I unraveled every story I had made. You really went nuts over a piece of this, which you'll hear. Yes, I unraveled. In the best way.

Oh, I love it. What you think about people is not always the truth. I'm so wrong, it's insane. You would think I would learn to stop guessing, but no. No, you never stop. I get it right one in five times and I'm like. And that's enough for you. That's enough.

I'll stick with those. Of course, Chris Pine was in Star Trek, Wish, Wonder Woman, Dungeons and Dragons, as my kids now are very acutely aware, the Princess Tyreese. He has a new movie out that he wrote and directed called Pool Man, out May 10th. You'll hear all about that.

Again, very impressive writing and directing job, very, very smart, very quirky, very interesting, very stylized, very good. Please check it out and enjoy my new friend who I might start saunying with, Chris Pine. He's an armchair expert. He's an armchair expert. He's an on-chair expert He's an on-chair expert

Hi! You're talking to the sod expert? Yes, how are you? Welcome! I have a few sod experts here Hi! I'm Monica! Chris! Nice to meet you! You son of a bitch!

Look what you just arrived in Is that a 69-ish? What is this? It is indeed. That is gorgeous. 30,000 original miles. Oh, in the green. I love the green. I've had it for like probably seven years and then right before COVID hit, I got nearly T-bone. I was working on this film and this woman came through a red and at 45 almost basically killed me. But she clipped the back and they had to take it all apart. COVID hit the company went out of business so that I didn't have it for two years.

Oh my God. So I just got it back. And are you so happy? What is it a four speed? No, it's a five speed. I don't have any old cool Porsches. I had a 911 for a while and my buddy wanted it in Michigan. I collect station wagons.

Well, I have one. You do? Another one Jeep Wagoneer. Oh, okay, great. Blue on wood panel. Wait, this has to be on air. You guys are talking too much. Mine was favorite topic.

We're attracting a lot of car guys these days. You know, have you ever met Jonah Nolan? Very briefly, he and his wife. Is he a car guy too? Yeah, we just interviewed him and he rolled up in an Ariel Adam one of those crazy Oh my god. Yeah, no roof Yes, I'm a pretty basic dude when it comes to it I have a 57 speedster that I wanted ever since I saw it on to an oh, yes Of course Dylan drove it Dylan drove it. I was like I have to have it

I have a 280 SL the little convertible that was on a show too. Yeah drove it, I was like, I have to have it. I have a 280 SL. The little convertible, that was on a show too. Yeah, yeah, that's LA law, but that's like. He had a 560. That could actually be a Porsche, I was thinking shampoo. Oh, sure, sure, sure. Can I tell you right now looking at you in the car you've arrived in, which is so gorgeous.

And you're very stylish, I've been watching a lot of interviews with you. Thanks man. You have a lot of style and I say it sincerely. Fashion guy. If you don't already own a BMW 3.0 CSI 3.0 CSI look ever screams you forever. I'm a huge fan my first car So everybody in my high school I went to very

Shishi high school here called Oakwood and so everybody was getting their big fancy at that point It was the escalates maxima. Oh, okay Prelude was big but my grandmother left me a little cash. It was like $750 and I bought a 1972-2002 which is a beautiful car. What's that? Are you not so many numbers? Okay, so the BMW 2002 is other than the 3.0 probably the coolest BMW I think the 3.0 CS is shaker and kind of has that elegant line to it. More James Bond-y.

100%. The 2002 is like the precursor to the 3 Series. But it had so much personality. And the reason why I got into it is because a guy on my street had an Alpina version of it. Oh! Drop. Skirts.

Oh! I mean, just so cherry. Burgundy on black with a tint. It was fire. I fell in love with it. So I went out to Sunland and found this guy who's a former mathematician that fell out of love with teaching and then opened up this 2002 junkyard,

basically. He was one of these real characters and went out to his place in Sunland near the cement factory out there off of deep, deep lankersham, you know, off near the cement factory out there off of deep deep Lancashire you know off near the fire all my car works done I think he ended up selling it, but I fucking dream of that car and you got it for 750 all told it was probably $1,500 I had it all the way through college. I drove it up to Berkeley

I had my first two or three years in LA no air conditioning hot summer stick shift of course Yeah, come on slow so slow. Yeah, but girls like that car right? Yeah, it's got five. You know I mean, I'm a little embarrassed. I had a flip phone for many years, which I was very proud of right I just saw dune and you know Sarsgaard is that giant man with tubes coming out of him and he sits in a pile of oil Does he need to stay damp? We need to get into that but I'm trying to be like, does he have a moisture in his suit? How does it work? I think myself this march of technology is essentially getting us to a place either consciously or not where that is what we become

Just people on a couch where everything's done for us Wally! Goes back to Wally. Goes back to Idiocracy Frito. I've got everything I need. I'm sitting on a toilet, the flattrin' tube in my mouth. So my point being, I like things that have a little bit of difficulty, even the simple difficulty of it's a little hard to start the car in the morning. And if it's a little hard,

you gotta kinda spend some time with it. And you gotta warm it up, and if it's not moving, you gotta check the choke. Is my choke busted? You wanna be involved. Yeah, I wanna have the tactility of life, of like a bit more. Friction.

Yeah, a little bit of inertia. I agree, I want to have some ownership over the experience. If it just is delivered to my eyes and my ears, I don't have the pride in having participated in it. So what phone do you have? When I say this, I'm talking about the iPhone. You don't have a flip phone, but that also doesn't. No, it's just a little baby iPhone.

Oh, it's a baby iPhone, okay. Even something as simple as Google Maps, which I use all the time. But think about all of the magic, faded experiences that it's maybe denying us by just giving us the directions. So we're just looking at this whole thing rather than, you know what, I think I'm gonna cut down Spalding.

You'll like this. I just pitched to my 11 year old, we're gonna go to Europe, and I was telling her, you know, what I used to love is I would go places and you'd leave your hotel and you would just get lost because you didn't really know. And then you might consult a map at some point, but that was so fun.

And she goes, oh, that does sound really fun. And I said, okay, well, let's commit. The next time we go somewhere, let's leave the hotel and just turn left, right, oh, that does sound really fun. And I said, okay, well, let's commit. The next time we go somewhere, let's leave the hotel and just turn left, right, left, right, and see if we can find our way back. Look, I have nothing against maps. Yeah, we don't hate maps. But an actual map is also kind of fun.

And then trying to fold it back up in the way originally. If you're an anxious person, you love maps. I am completely an anxious person. You are? Oh my God, yeah. Getting lost sounds rough to me That's part of the cognitive behavioral life Discipline work of being an angsty person is like working through it be like we're gonna go get lost and it's totally okay And if we don't get to dinner at 715, that's fine, too

If we even lose the reservation, that's fine. We're gonna live. Yes. It took me six months to get the reservation Sorry, so maybe we just do take yeah, that's right. You're right. I don't have a lot of anxiety and I'm quick to go like yeah, and then I'll be somewhere else. You've never had anxiety I have it at night when I'm sleeping I wake up and I obsess on things have you ever had performance anxiety getting on stage as a comedian? Doing stand up, yes, not sketch comedy. That was fine, because I had friends and if we ate shit. Kind of a structure.

Well, we would share in the embarrassment and someone's there to help maybe, I guess, if things go sideways. But when I did start doing stand up very late into this. So you didn't start out doing that. No, I moved here to do stand-up and I was just too afraid. And I discovered the groundlings, oh, you can do it with other people,

that's not as scary. And then I fell in love with that. But then at a certain age, I was like, you came here to do this thing and you're gonna die having not done it. And so it was a New Year's resolution. And then I did do it for two years. But the notion of walking up there,

can I bore you for one second? This is taking up too much of your interview. I'm curious because I think it comes back around to having made this film, it's a version of the naked vulnerability, I would imagine comedians much more so, and I've only done it once years ago when I was at the Williamstown Theater Festival,

I did a class with Lou Black, a standup comedy class, we prepped this thing when I went on stage. But you also did the Atheist as a one man show. To stand up on stage, and you are looking at everybody, and you're registering energy, there is a level of courage there, and I also think a building up of thick skin that I admire so much, you just have to bowl through.

I'm sure we admire the same thing. It's specifically comedians that are on stage, their pace is so calm and slow. That's the ones where I'm like, oh my God, you're not nervous at all. And you're like, I know that this goes at this speed and eventually everyone will be happy. It went at this speed is amazing.

But my stupid anecdote was there was a scene in this movie I directed hit and run and Kristin and I are in my off road car and we have to drive through a barn door. This is all practical. On the other side of the barn door is two ramps and then we're gonna jump two cars. And it's really Kristen and I. And the big challenge is it's very dark in the barn.

They let you do that. Well, I directed it and got the money for it. So yeah, I let me do it. The challenge was inside the barn it was dark. And then the moment we break through the barn door, it's super bright out. And so my eyes are gonna have to adjust. I'm gonna see these two ramps. And so my stunt coordinator, have to adjust. I'm gonna have to see these two ramps.

And so my stunt coordinator, Steve Castro, a great friend of mine, he leans into the car just before we're about to go. And he said, how are you doing? And I said, I'm good. And he said, okay, how nervous are you? And this is my most sincere evaluation of standup. I said, if standup is a 10, I'm at like a five and a half.

That's the comp for me. Driving a race car through barn doors and jumping to other cars is half as scary as walking up onto a stage and you've told them, yeah, I'm gonna entertain everyone for 15 minutes, just me. And then if it's not working out, I'll just have to stay that whole 15 minutes. I'm assuming you've been on stage when it hasn't worked.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What is that experience like? Oh my God, what an experience. What happens is you're like, well, this is terrible. I will continue. You're above yourself listening to yourself go through the rest of it as you're just staring at the audience somehow

in your third eye. Some people like it though, they like to bomb. We've had a few people on who've said that there's something about the bombing that gets them revved up. I almost think they're the real comedians. Like I think that's what they have that I don't. Unpack that a bit more, I don't totally understand that.

I don't really get it except I experienced it when I read a mean comment once on Instagram where I was like, I think this is what they mean. You get so uncomfortable by people being mad that it almost makes you lean into them hating you and just being like, okay, you hate me, I'm gonna double down on this. They just don't retreat.

I think that's a tricky, because I've had a year to think about it after I finished my film, which has brought up a lot of stuff. I have this vision of this samurai emotional ninja in my mind. There is no good, there is no bad, there just is. And that leaning into the negativity,

there is still a validating of the other saying, well, fuck you, I'm gonna show you, which disempowers yourself, but that fuel is so sexy. Because it's righteous, and it's like vengeful. It's nitrous. It's like addiction. It's that serotonin hit of like, woo, but there's that ninja samurai other thing of like,

that's cool, man. I don't know how effective impractical that is for the comedian on stage, but I think there's like a life lesson anyway. Yeah, it's best case. I'm going off into the weeds here. It's best case. This happened to me Vegas Grand Prix, so six months ago.

I did a live show with my Formula One podcast and it was in front of this crazy, rowdy bar audience that had no idea who we were, had never heard the show, didn't like Formula One, and it was a disaster. People were actively coming up on stage and just grabbing pictures with me in the middle of the whole thing. It was the biggest disaster of my professional.

Were you there? No, I'm not on the F1 podcast. She was spared. Our shows go great. We haven't experienced that. Lazy Boys in Los Feliz. When we went to do live shows, yeah, they go a lot better. But this was a humongous disaster.

I don't know if I know the real kink of those comedians, but what did happen to me is I was like, this is unsalvageable and we have committed to an hour. That's what we were hired to do. It's gonna be the longest next 55 minutes of my life. But I did have the presence of mind to go, you're gonna remember this for life. For the memoir.

Us four will be talking about this experience for the next five days. And like if it had gone easy, you'd forget it. 100%. So I did have that where I was like, oh man, we've got a story to tell for the next five days. And like if it had gone easy, you'd forget it. 100%. So I did have that where I was like, oh man, we've got a story to tell for the next couple of weeks. There's definitely a cache there.

Yeah, I don't know if that's the ninja place to be, but there was some kind of like, looking at the bigger picture maybe in the moment. Well, there's a version of my emotional ninja samurai, which is you just spin it a different way. The Viktor Frankl of it all. Who's Viktor Frankl when I was 15 My mom gave me this book Viktor Frankl's man search for meaning. He was a Holocaust survivor

This is obviously the extreme version of a bad situation, but it's all about reframing perspective It's like how can you be immersed and enmeshed in the absolute worst thing and do you have the power to reframe it? To experience it differently. Yeah, okay mom and meshed in the absolute worst thing, and do you have the power to reframe it to experience it differently? Yeah. Okay, mom was an actress and then became a psychotherapist. Yeah, my grandmother was an actress in the 30s and 40s, and she was from Corpus Christi, Texas.

She was a beauty queen redhead. Came out to Los Angeles in 32, maybe. Ended up becoming a scream queen in B movies at Republic Pictures, which is now CBS Radford. She did movies with Abbot and Costello, Lon Chaney Jr. She did a lot of horror movies. She ended up a Universal. Huge pinup girl during World War II, married a lawyer, Max Gilford, named Goldfarb, who came over with his parents from the Ukraine and ended up on Mott Street and Lower East Side and ended up in Boyle Heights out here when Boyle Heights was the

largest Jewish community in Los Angeles. In fact, it has the oldest Jewish cemetery in Los Angeles. Which is now almost entirely Latino. Exactly right. Nicotine toothpicks? 100%. I already clocked your lozenges. We got to put a button on all this, which is like I've come across you a couple of times

and I really thought, I don't think this guy likes me. And now with the Porsche and the nicotine, I'm feeling like what a missed opportunity. You're trying to get friendship in it? Why do you get the sense that I don't like you? We'll get into that later. Oh, like, hell, wait. Never seen those toothpicks other than in your pocket.

The story about this is, I was making a movie and I'm on hour 19 or whatever and you're overdoing fucking Wirtle. When I have my 19 cigarette, I'm like, toothpicks, man. Nicotine fucking toothpicks. And I hopped right on the phone. I called my business manager. I was like, let's do this now.

Let me just take a quick beat, check Google if anything's after. Of course. There's 12 products in the market. Nicotine, toothpicks. It was my tequila. And I got fuckin' shot down. I do that too, I invent shit, and then I look,

and it's like, it's everything. Anyway, they have my mom, and my mom grew up in Beverly Hills. Max was successful as a lawyer? He was kinda on and off successful. I guess he produced a couple things with my grandma. He ended up becoming the president of the Beverly Hills Bar, and he died very young,

so I don't really have any stories of him. But my mom grew up in this really interesting community in Beverly Hills in the 50s. She went to school with everyone. It was Hollywood glamour years when all the movie stars lived in LA. And they were all concentrated. Yeah, it was the studio system.

And then, yeah, she became an actress and worked at the Mark Taper Forum when they had a repertory company in the late 60s, early 70s. Did a ton of television and met my father in 64. And my father come out from Scarsdale, New York. My father's full name is Granville Whitelaw Pine. Wow. Oh, my goodness. Granny. Granny. That's cute.

No one ever calls it. They call him Robert or Buzz. Does he have grandkids and do they call him Grandy? Grandpa Granny. That would be good.. Granny. Granny, that's cute. No one ever calls it, they call him Robert or Buzz. Does he have grandkids and do they call him grandee? Grandpa Granny. That would be good, Grandpa Granny. Grandpa Granny, no, Luca calls him Pops. Is your sister's child? Yeah, and then both my parents were actors and my mom, I think the last thing she did was Masters of the Universe

in 1984, she played Courtney Cox's mom. Oh, okay. Why did she choose to end that experience and go into psychotherapy? She quit acting kind of ostensibly in 1980 when I was born. My father was doing very well. He was on a TV show called Chips, and it was number one on NBC.

It was a big deal. You know Dex did a remake of Chips. Oh, that's right! Oh my God, that is fucking amazing! Oh my God! Oh wow. No, but fucking amazing. Oh my God. Wow. No, but I learned something very painfully, what you just had to say, a very popular show named Chips.

I found that out the hard way, that people currently today don't know about chips. Oh, well, I mean, it's like now 40 years ago. When we were recruiting people to go to the screens, they were like, it was so literal. It's about potato chips? Like no, man. Come on, California Highway for Chips.

Larry Wilcox. Sheriff of Stroud. How old are you? I'm five years older than you. So we're around the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well certainly if your father's on the show too, you're uniquely aware of it. Yeah.

How long did that run? Less than I thought when I got into remaking it. Five or six years I think. 76 or 77 to 81. Okay. One. So for me that was half of my whole childhood. So it seems like that show was on for 10 years.

But times were good, I imagine, when Dad was on that show. Yeah, I mean, I was like a guppy. I don't really remember anything of those years other than we had a nice house, and we lived, as my mom called it, south of the Boulevard, which is a big deal in Los Angeles, south of Ventura Boulevard. Had the Gelson's card, had the Neiman's card.

It was the golden years of network television too. So it's like when you went to up fronts back east, they fly you first and they give you per diem and the limos and all that. These are just tales that my family have told each other. So my mom was a very happy housewife, I think. My father got his SAG card in 64. He was under contract at Universal

before the contract system ended. The last studio that did it, he got paid a weekly stipend to learn how to sing, to learn how to dance, to learn how to ride horses, to take elocution lessons. It's like a finishing school for actors. Yeah, and that's what the studio system was. Like, you got paid to be under contract at Universal,

and you were just kind of on call for their casting directors to call you up to say, go out for the Virginian, go out for Gunsmoke. And they did really well through the 70s and actually did a pilot with Michael Douglas called Streets of San Francisco. My mother saw them filming it while on a trip to San Francisco while I was in her belly.

Whoa. She tells this story all the time. Oh my God. And she saw Michael Douglas on a sidewalk and it's like the highlight of her life. Oh my God, dude. We have a lot of gray. I know.

This missed opportunity. Entanglement. It's not, there's time. There's our 50s. Yeah, exactly. We're plenty of time. We waited till we were both gray, let's go. Both gray, you have all your.

Well listen, the sides are completely gray and when this grows out it just gets grayer and grayer. I'll grant you that you're ahead of me. I don't know, buy it. Okay. And then going into the 80s, it got rougher and rougher. My dad, the work got sparser and sparser, and then the real estate crash in 87 or 88

pretty much wiped my family out. Then it was some really rough years, and then my mom went back to school. I have so much respect for what she did. She went back to UCLA and got her BA. She went back and got her master's at Antioch. All the while she worked four jobs. She worked in an antique store.

She did after school creative arts and taught kids animation, even though she had no idea about animation. She taught acting at UCLA Extension. She taught acting to me and my friends. My dad was doing other jobs to try to make ends meet. So there was a period of time when it was really rough. Really quick, in a way your dad lives out

this fear I walk around with, which would be I would return to civilian life, but people would remember me. That's terrifying. You can't do it anonymously. You can't just go, hey, I'm gonna take care of my family and go do this thing. People are gonna be like,

hey, you were the sergeant on CHiPs. The kind of deep respect I have for my father now becoming a man, because I think I'm still becoming a man, to know what he had to do for his family, it requires a strength and a humility. I don't know if I would have that similar strength. I think the majority of folks that found themselves in that situation just self-destruct.

They can't do it. They would crawl into a bottle. And my family, despite certain emotional fissures that 25 years of therapy, I still probably deal with, they stuck together. They put two kids through college and private school, put my mother through school, paid off their debts. It's deeply admirable. It's beyond. in private school, put my mother through school, paid off their debts. It's deeply admirable.

It's beyond. I think I admire that version of humility almost more than anything else. That would be so hard for me. That would be painful for me. What I'm really thankful for in terms of the gift that it gave me is that I have a deep respect for the fickleness of the business.

I have a deep understanding of how very quickly it can go, how very good it can be, and how very quickly people are not returning your phone calls. The idea of what's authentic and what's not and what's business and what's true friendship. My radar is keenly set to that. And also, I hope, a deep appreciation for... I have a Porsche because I remember my father in the good years had this beautiful 65, 365 SC.

It was this black-topped bucket Porsche. And I remember the day that he good years had this beautiful 65, 365 SC. It was this black topped bucket Porsche. And I remember the day that he had to give it up. But obviously I understand these are Cadillac problems, but there's a sense of it's almost like for my father. Oh my God, I get it so much. I'm in many ways living out my father's dream right now. And I think of him. I remember he and I were watching blow.

There's a moment where Johnny Depp invites his dad over to look at the house and the cars. And I was watching it with my dad. And my dad goes, there's about a million and a half dollars worth of cars right there. That AC Cobra's worth this, this bubble. Oh, so you shared the car thing with your dad.

Yeah, all this bullshit I have gives me X amount of pleasure. I thought it would give me more. But I let my dad come in the gates and look around. And I go, no, we're gonna keep all this shit. Because I want him to come in the gates and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You want him to be proud.

Yes, and I want to live out his fantasy and mine. But I think it's maybe something more than pride. There's a deep sharing. There's like, you did good. This is for us. Boys and their dads, it doesn't get a little primal than. This is for us. Boys and their dads, it doesn't get more primal than that. Boys and their moms too, but it's all primal.

And girls and their dads and girls and their moms, it's all complex. It's all a complex for sure. As your mother picked up these skills in psychotherapy and she mastered that, did you A, witness an evolution in her and how she dealt with things? And did it impact how your family operated?

Like she went out and got a pretty awesome skillset. I have to imagine the Annette Bening character in this movie is some, whether conscious or unconscious, nod to mom. It's very interesting thinking about coming on this podcast and thinking about doing these long form things. I promise you this is a roundabout way of answering your question. We have all the time.

I listened to your story about your addiction, specifically the moment day seven, and I thought that is a fucking courageous thing to do. It's a really tough thing to do. And as you said on the podcast, which I find very moving and very specifically to my point, it's one thing just you two and Kristen. It's another thing to offer this as some sort of communal world social offering of watch me try to do the difficult thing that maybe you can follow my path and do the same thing. I couldn't do what you do. This kind of self revealing in such a huge way is really brave. I also find it terrifying is the too much I think as an

actor myself, someone who's not on social media, someone who tries very keenly to create a separation and a boundary. So I think coming on these pockets, these long forms that remind me very much of my favorite interviewer of all time, DeKavit, but even more so than Kavit. Especially talking about very complex things is obviously you're keenly aware of family units. We just talked about the complexes and all that. Also everyone's alive. Yeah, everyone's alive. So what's fair, what's respectful, what's right to do that. How can you be authentic and have a true conversation? I've said I'd come on this show and bring my full self to bear in a way that I can live with, but also... No, to do that, how can you be authentic and have a true conversation? I've said I'd come on this show

and bring my full self to bear in a way that I can live with, but also. No, it's very tricky. It's very tricky. It is, I acknowledge it. But my question for you, because I really am so curious, is like how did you make the decision to do that?

Not specifically only day seven, but to be that open, essentially from what I can gather, and I don't know you well, but 24 seven with many different facets of your life. but to be that open, essentially from what I can gather, and I don't know you well, but 24-7 with many different facets of your life. I would say first, just AA. So I've been going AA for 20 fucking years coming up in September.

And so I've gotten used to saying out loud these terrible things I did, thought, or perpetrated on other people, expecting everyone there to shun me and exclude me and ostracize me and actually seeing through practice, looks of recognition, comfort, a calming, I guess like immersion therapy. I had to do it over and over again.

And then lo and behold, opposite of my expectation, it's always been met with understanding, even if someone didn't do that thing, it's always been met with understanding. Even if someone didn't do that thing, it's very related to another failing they had. And so there's no way I could do this show had I not been in AA for 20 years and practice just letting it all hang out and realizing people don't ultimately judge you that much.

People judge when they smell deception. But I was gonna say, AA is one thing, a community built on precisely what you've just described. The interweb and the noxious soup that that is, is definitely not that. No. Or is it? I will say, the day seven thing,

and I wanna again give credit to Bradley Cooper, because I of course called him and said, hey, I relapsed, I have a new date. And he said, what are you going to do about your show? Because you talk so much about being sober for, at that time, 17 years, or 16 years. 16. 16, yeah. I've already inflated it, how embarrassing.

I think I was 23 years sober at the time of that relapse. No, but Bradley just said something that was undeniably true. He goes, if you're telling people that you're sober because you hope that it will be helpful and encouraging for someone else to try it, and that is your true goal is to help people, you being sober for 16 years

and being married to Kristen Bell is not very helpful to people. You eating shit after 16 years of doing this is really helpful to people. Right. And so in conjunction with just knowing I had been honest enough up to that point that it would have felt like a real betrayal of the agreement between the listeners and I, the arm-sharers.

And then, but Cooper really articulating it in that way, which is you're basically full of shit if you don't share this. Wow. Which was true But even with those marching orders and maybe some conviction about that when we put I was like But then it'll go into the dark chasm of the web and people will say I always knew he was this but that didn't happen And also who fucking cares it's also it's one of my favorite words the solipsistic all of a sudden like Everybody's fucking talking about this.

Yes, fuck man. Yeah, when your movie doesn't open, like you walk down the street and you're convinced everyone read the fucking Hollywood Reporter this morning. I remember going on the set at Parenthood just thinking every crew member feels so bad for me right now. And half of them didn't even know I had a movie that came out. That's pretty helpful, I appreciate that.

That makes a lot of sense. I wanna let you off the hook. A, this is what I do. So like whatever cost it may create on an acting front is no longer of concern of mine. You don't act anymore at all. I haven't for a couple of years and I don't intend to. I do this, we do three episodes a week.

I love it. I'm doing my favorite part of acting, which is shooting the shit with you at Video Village. Truly, I just don't have to go through makeup or have a wardrobe fitting. I've got just the thing I love the most about it. That sounds pretty great. So by no means do I expect anyone that comes on here

to have the same level. No, but I read your mission statement. Oh God, it's very old. The messiness of being human. We've cut that. We're a little embarrassed about it now. But I wouldn't be. You know how it is.

Doing press for shit frankly sucks most of the time. If I read another GQ embarrassed about it now. No, but I wouldn't be. You know how it is, doing press for shit frankly sucks most of the time. If I read another GQ article about it, they tried to put him in a box, but then they showed him all the different... And Chris Pine is saying, not anymore. I was just like, fucking shoot me. But I also don't want to be that asshole that doesn't show up. Yeah, you can't be above it. You gotta sell your stuff. It's not that. You just wanna show up and be like, yeah, I'm gonna have a real, legit conversation with you

and not bar myself. Anyway, I've been in a whole meditative cycle about these podcasts. I've never done them before. It's such a different art form, as you know, than doing bits on a talk show at night. What scares you? Is it the actor's thing about if people know too much,

then it's hard to transcend that in a role, or is it just people will come for me? No, I mean, obviously, I think that's proven, obviously, to be not an issue in today's age where the oversharing of everything is owned by everybody on the planet. So it's like, we're all in the soup together. It's a good question.

I wanna probe it a little bit. Someone asked me, like, why did you become an actor? I never really had any desire to become an actor. I played sports, I wanted to play baseball. That was very clear at 15, not gonna happen. Went to college, was very insecure, low self-esteem, very kind of introverted, found acting. I was good at acting.

People were like, you're handsome and talented. I was like, that feels good to hear. I'm gonna do more of that, give me more. So baseline fundamentals like validation, right? Yeah. So our art form can be, at least from my initial entry into it, built on that very toxic and not necessarily healthy thing.

Lot of work to kind of unpack that and figure it out and move through it. You add on top of that then, a whole other art form or thing, which is this divulgence of everything into the world and this intimacy in quotes with millions upon millions of people that then can interact with you in this way, for someone whose natural tendency is to seek that validation, I think the overwhelming

cascade of that stimuli, it'd be too difficult to try to run away from. So then the relationship, another of my favorite words, the enmeshment in that becomes like, I already have enough to unpack. I love this. So this is the thing I still struggle with and police myself about and check in with all the time. That's why like day seven is something I don't like talking about weirdly,

even though I put it out because I know me, it sounds like we're similar. I don't want it to become a story I tell and I've figured the beats out to and I can deliver and entertain you and get approval. I don't want to dishonor it by making it that. And I don't want to make my life and my real fears and concerns and thoughts

and the things I care about, I also don't want to commodify those and monetize those and exploit those. That I relate to greatly. I'm already a gross pig in seeking the validation when I play and then I'm trying to be funny and make you laugh. And it would feel like a deep betrayal of myself

to then do that with my own real life, that it would just be a sick path to go down. It's interesting too, I find, for someone as myself who came into it so insecure, who didn't really want to be interesting too, I find, for someone as myself who came into it so insecure, who didn't really want to be looked at, I hold both introvert and extrovert. Can I ask really quick, just so I understand

that part a little bit more? You were super handsome in high school, weren't you? I was not, I had awful cystic acne at 15, which for anyone out there that's ever experienced it, I think you know is. Horrific. Time to pop up. Yeah.

And that's my time, cystic acne. Yeah, I also fully. You get it. I still have big hormonal bouts. I froze my eggs a couple times, and after that there was a big hormonal flux, and I was like, I'm back to being that teenager, and it sucks.

I mean, it is crippling. Emotionally crippling. Mm-hmm. Stay tuned for more of our chair expert, if you dare. I find it odd that there's obviously talk about many things, people with problems with obesity or struggling with their sexuality. It seems like we're maybe turning a page in that, but no one ever talks about, I feel like it's considered a banal or a part of childhood or adolescence, but if you've dealt with a severe case of it or even a mild case of it, there's no hiding at all.

It's certainly crafted in great part, the human I am. For me, it was like an emotional armoring. I had this great moment with this actor once and I met him, hi, how are you? God, man, I'm a big fan of your work. I think you're a great actor. He's like, I'm not a great actor, I'm a great mimic. It blew my fucking hair back

because what he said pointed to this very specific thing, which is that moment before school, you emotionally arm yourself as like, I have got to get through the day. Yeah, like you're marching through a battlefield or something. Every social interaction is going to be brutal, and I'm gonna be watching it the whole time,

and I will mimic what it's like to be just another kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the level of exhaustion then that you have, I can only talk about my experience, but doubly so, triply so, you feel like you've been flattened by an 18-wheeler at the end of the day. So to answer your question, I was not.

I think it's like comforting and shocking how many people feel that, like when I look back on high school, I'm like, is a miracle anyone ever even showed up? Because everyone had some weird thing It seems like maybe these jocks seem to have it made. I don't know from my perspective They look like they're having a good time, but what a cauldron that high school I wouldn't you couldn't fucking pay me

Anything yeah a billion dollars pure like you have a great time in high school No college no if you were this handsome in high school, you have a great time in high school? No. College? No. If you were this handsome in high school, you might not have gone to Berkeley. I was geared from a very young age to do well. I was a really good boy. I behaved and then I had my delayed adolescence at like 30 for a good 10 years. Sure, sure. Which nearly took me down.

But I've studied, I love to read. Because again, I was part introvert part extrovert I carried that introvert long before the act and the acting just basically Exploded its steroid ally to a degree where it was a matter of going out to lunch or finding the darkest Corner to go to to like study a sonnet or something. That's what I would do. But don't you think okay? So this is just time back into the validation thing because someone told you you're handsome and talented to me like a physical compliment is So this is just tying back into the validation thing because someone told you you're handsome and talented. To me, like a physical compliment is unfortunately,

I know logically wrong, the highest compliment. No, you're probably right. So that was 15 on and off until I was about 22. But when I went to college and started acting, I was probably 19. So yeah, that's for you. Because again, the PTSD that I had was very real. So yeah, that compliment was like,

that's exactly what I needed. I've been needing, I've been dying for this. I feel fraudulent because I didn't have the cystic, but I'm telling you, you know, hold on. There's still time. You know we relate on this. I hate to say it, but like if someone was gonna say either Dex is a genius, he's a great father, or he's hot,

I would wanna hear hot. It's just terrible. Ah! What about cars? You gotta throw that in there. Great drivers. But yeah, man, it's so real. It's crazy.

What's fascinating though is I don't know any of that about you. I see you for the first time in Star Trek, and I'm like, this asshole. Yeah, he's so handsome. How dare this fucking guy?'m like, this asshole. Yeah, he's so handsome. How dare this fucking guy. I'm like immediately I'm angry. God damn it, if I look like that I feel like

I could maybe be the lead of Star Trek. So my relationship with you. Oh my God, painful. So then I'm curious with that background, did you ever feel like you were playing the character of the handsome guy? Of course. Oh my God.

Of course. Oh my God, this is crazy. No one's winning. I'm watching Star Trek, I'm like, this asshole, he knows when he walks down the street, everyone's turning their head, like, I'd kill for five minutes of that. Oh my God, that's so fucking-

And you're up there and you're like, this is a fraud, when are they gonna call and go like, we know about your act. Yeah, I know, so that's funny. For my experience, my first job in a film was as a prince. Prince's Diaries. Which is like, we're only less than 10 years

from what was so traumatic. And people are like, you're the handsome guy. And I'm like, are you high? Right. You're the prince someone would dream of. There's no way I can live up to that. Cause I haven't lived up to that in my own sense of self. You know the truth in quotes.

So then when you're then introduced to the bombardment of them people commenting and criticizing and people are commenting on your acne, scars or whatever, I conflate everything to being not good enough, which I'm already feeling inside anyway. So it's like, fuck all y'all. I didn't ask for this fucking thing. I was pretty convinced I was going to be doing these character parts. So that cognitive dissonance was something I really had to wrestle with for a while. And then by virtue of time and just the hard edges wearing off, you're like, okay, fine. This is the trip I'm on, fucking let's do this.

And then you do it and you get more inured to what people say, you get more inured to watching yourself on screen and being like, that's awful. You get to sit in the joke of it a bit more. So now I'm thankfully 20 years into it and I can be like, it is such a trip that this happened to the kid

that had to go through what I went through. And what a great gift to that kid to be like, look man, is that fucking crazy? Well, that's the, did you watch the Phil Stutz, Jonah Hill doc? No, I am curious about it though. Sounds like you've already done this work. The part that just made me cry

is he's bringing out a picture of Jonah as a young boy, very overweight. And they're discussing that the shadows born there. And Phil says basically, he wants you to invite him to where you guys have gone. That's why he's still battling you because you haven't invited a man. In the madness of four years of your life

defining who you are, I was dyslexic, right? So I'm a dummy. So it doesn't matter how smart I am, what I do at UCLA, I just can't shake this fucking thing. And at some point I wanna go like, hey, look where we're at, come along. That's like the dream, right? Is to bring along the shy boy.

Bring along the shy boy and just be like, isn't it a gas man? Ultimately, isn't it so fun because the fight has a lot to do with the boy and the shame and the self-flagellation, the not enough and all of that stuff that we know. What happens in that circumstance, at least for me at 15, is the armoring is rigid and it was super helpful. It saved my life, I'm sure.

But at some point you gotta dissolve the armor a bit. It's nice to loosen up, it's nice to smile a bit more. It's nice to invite joy in and not fight it so much. And trust the good stuff a little bit more? I don't know if I'm quite there yet because that's its own separate form of childhood complexes which really was born from just seeing lack and the fear of lack and the disappearance of enough so that's its own bag. Yeah waiting for the other shoe

to drop all the time. I would say 15, 27, 30 and then 40 through 44 have been deep moments and I think this one right now is just a real reevaluation. And it's certainly Maslow's hierarchy. And I realize it's Cadillac problems. I feel like I need to preface it always with that, but like, is this what it is? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The opening of the matrix.

And I was trying to explain to someone, and I think it's a pretty good metaphor, whereas before life felt like you're in a huge ocean, but there are buoys everywhere. First job, first house, working with so and so. And they're focalizing and they are flow state and they are driven by a lot of righteous anger and shame and all these things that feel really good.

Well, you burn through that and all of a sudden you wake up one day and you're just in a giant fucking ocean. Right. Yeah. And that's it. So I love that we're talking because I was in the exact same spot at the exact same age virtually. And I relate so deeply.

It's like we need a whole new reason to do anything. And that's terrifying. But I think in a bizarre way of all the gifts that seems like we've been given, the ultimate gift of excessive good luck is you ultimately do have to figure out, well, what really is this all about? Because the Porsche is awesome.

And on the ride over, it was great. But it's gonna do nothing for you tonight at nine o'clock when you're at home by yourself. It it's gonna do nothing for you tonight at nine o'clock when you're at home by yourself. It will just have no power over you. But weirdly, what a fucking gift. As I said, it's like Cadillac problems. But I think it's even deeper.

My needs are met. Yeah, yeah. Your needs and wants. My needs and wants are met. So it is a gift to be able to be like, I have an opportunity as a self artist now to shape things as I want. But that kind of breadth of choice is almost paralyzing because it's so much nicer to be like,

I really want this film to do well. I could probably have said the same thing 10 years ago and been probably as articulate about these things as I am now. But experientially, I think I could have deluded myself to say, no, I took the job because of X, Y, and Z. I really had themes that resonated with me. And that's true, but deep fucking bass note is like,

I think it's gonna do well. I think people are gonna like it. And like me. Yes, yes. So to really get to a place where you're like, separating the threads. Yes, and you also wanna hold on to them. I can get myself in a place where you're like separating the threads Yes, and you also want to hold on to them I can get myself in a situation where it's like I'm gonna transcend everything and then I go and then why am I here?

That's the thing is we got to transcend the ego. It's like I don't fucking think you actually want to transcend the ego Bunch of well, there's all bunch of reasons why it's there Yeah, of course We're gonna want to be liked by people we're social creatures and if you're on the fucking Serengeti and you're not like guess who they're fucking leaving behind to starve You're dead. It's not frivolous status. It's a balance. I have to pee but that oh, yeah great Oh my god, I get to pee in front of all of you. No, no, we'll step back Yeah, are you interested in these? Have you gotten into these at all? Oh, I love those after

Crocheting shakes The gas I just stopped because I stopped lifting but no they're saying that yeah, did you read out live? Yeah He says don't do it. No put on on muscle. Because you're going to decline at a predictable rate. They say to eat the same amount of grams of protein as you weigh poundage. It's ridiculous. It's hard. Do you do it? I want to say yes because that is my goal and I say probably four days a week I do and then certainly three days a week.

Like today we're recording you and then we're going to record for three hours with armchairs. I can't meet my protein needs if you're taking a four hour chunk out without eating. So then you gotta eat like 85 grams of protein on setting or something. One egg is eight grams of protein. I know. You know what's a hack though?

Do you do the good culture cottage cheese? That has 48 grams of protein in one tub. And I can definitely pound one of those effortlessly, and I love it. And then the other hack is chia seed overnight pudding. Oh wow. And then put the scoop of 30 grams of protein chocolate in there.

Oh on top of that. And it's delicious. Interesting. Yeah, so there's some ways I've figured out. It's just a lot of work. But it is, yeah. It is a lot of work. It is.

And then you end up, like me, you figure out what works and you just can't deviate. So I eat the exact same thing every single day seven days a week virtually. I don't know if I have that kind of discipline This dog picture is driving me. Oh This way? Thank you. Oh my god and your OCD You're the only person who's fixed it besides you But people complain in the pictures fellow OCD people people. And if I sit over there, yeah, it drives me nuts.

Okay. I can also take it completely off the wall. No, I like, I'm like, gosh. I bump it with my lazy boy is what happens and then it gets a skew. I just wanna tell you how much I'm enjoying this. Yeah, it's a good talk. I really, really like it.

That's why I love hearing people's stories because it's like, there's no way I would have imagined that when I'm watching Star Trek. And I'm like, yeah, of course this guy has this movie. Most people think that way. That's wild, isn't it? Self-perception versus witnessing and being witnessed, right, it's like a primary need.

So it starts with kid at the breast with mom, you're looking and being witnessed. But if you're not being witnessed the way that you perceive yourself, and there is that cognitive dissonance, it's very difficult. Yeah. I hate to ask this question because again, I don't want to get you into too much self-exposing, but I was wrestling with similar feelings as you.

Talk about the armor you put on in the character I was playing, and then the first time I drank beer, I was like, like okay I get it now this is what we've been trying to feel like the amount of relief and I think as I've known so many addicts and feel like I understand it I'll give you one second story that really sums it up my best friend Aaron weekly his fucking childhood was so gnarly it made mine look great his was the gnarliest I've ever seen and he got addicted to huffing gas. I don't know if you've ever huffed gas.

It's the worst high on planet Earth. And since he's gotten sober and we've talked so much about it all. That was his primary thing? Well, just at a point in ninth grade, that's what he had access to all the time. He kept a fucking gas can in his locker in ninth grade and got thrown out of school.

But the key thing about that, as I'm now older and I look at that, that high was preferable to status quo. And that's saying something. Which says a lot. If you've ever huffed gas, it's miserable. The notion that that would be preferable is so heartbreaking. Cool, because you're just basically

cutting oxygen off to your brain to stop thinking. And giving yourself a headache, but even the headaches a better distraction than the other stuff. To me really frames addiction, the relief aspect of it. And you can almost see how gnarly someone's life was by what they were even willing to get addicted to. The greatest thing I wrote about it,

this woman wrote something, I forget the name of it, but she's like, the hardest thing about addiction is 5 p.m. Because at 5 p.m. there is no cocktail hour. Nothing is going to happen but 501 and 502 and just sitting in the boredom of riding the wave of your neurotransmitters, of your brain just is like more serotonin and less for no fucking reason.

Whereas that drink right there is guaranteed to give me a boost in seconds. And I know for a fact. It works every time. It's the most dependable friend I have. But I'm just curious when you were young and you were dealing with all that, did you have that experience where you drank

or you smoked weed or you did something and you were just like, oh, relief. I'm not like thinking of this. I was such a good boy. It was when I was 30, looking back now, I was having a drink every night, Love Scotch, and then 30 was really go time in Exploreville. That hit a wall when I was about 39,

and 39 to 44 had been a different time. Thank God. It's a good run, nine years. You can get a lot in in nine years. This is very common though too. I got sober at 29, like three months before I turned 30. And it sounds like for you 39, like there's something about approaching you're like, okay, we're about to enter another decade.

It was 39, it was also COVID and the party was so long in the past. Yeah. And then it was just me with a shovel. And when you admit to yourself, I'm also romantic and I'm telling a great story about myself and my life. And when you finally admit,

there's nothing new gonna happen in this direction. I'm gonna repeat. I'm gonna wake up next to somebody. I'm gonna do this, but I've already done it. It has the appearance of new, but it's not. Also the shiny, blissful first hour of doing whatever you're doing, even that blossom has fucking worn off.

So really the majority of the time is just the shame cycle of the next however long. Self-hatred. There's a version of that that I think is akin to what we're talking about in terms of the validation aspect. Getting back to that emotional samurai I was talking about is using it that way.

The day begins, you're like, fuck, hard day at work, but you know what, I'm gonna meet the guys at the 4100. Okay, so yeah, all right, great. What's going on, what's going on? And then it hits, and then you're having a great time. You're like, fuck it, man, it's only 10. And then it's like one, and then you're like, something should happen at one, and then you wake up

at six for work, and you're super hungry. You're like, never again, never, ever again. Take all the American spirits and throw them away and you're like fuck it. And then maybe that night, no. But then Wednesday and you're like, okay I'm gonna meet the guys. You're 100 right?

But so essentially you're constantly on a dive of expectation, expectation, meeting, high, high, high, drop. Shame, shame, shame, expectation. Constantly the roller coaster Which is all about this validation shame cycle. It's a similar experience of it and you learn to work I went to UCLA and I was going through the groundlings It became a part of how I knew how to do stuff course like oh my god Monday through Thursday

We've got a lot to make up for and so turbocharged Axis here I don't even know how to function either I'm absent or I'm turbocharged. There's no like moderate version of me plodding along. Bringing back my metaphor which I'm really into right now. What's it like just to be in the ocean? And what's it like to just sit at five? And the amount of then presence you get to all of it

because there's nothing left but to be deeply now, because what are you gonna do? The thing that I've, in the past seven years, is saunaying. Did you read Dopamine Nation, by chance? It sounds like you really have knowledge of that. No, why? Anna Lemke, great book, Stanford. Everything you're talking about, the body will find homeostasis, period.

You can't outsmart it, so you can dump all this shit at. But guess what you gotta return to? And it's like a four to one investment. So if you smoke a cigarette, it's great for four minutes. You're gonna feel like shit for 20 minutes. If you cold plunge for 10 minutes, guess what? You get good chemicals for three hours. Well that for me during that COVID moment,

I think it was the body shock. I don't have the discipline like you, so I'm not gonna go to the gym or jump rope. I'm gonna go burn myself in this fuckin' sauna. Passively hurt myself. Fuckin' get through it. And then after an hour and a half of that, I'm like, 5 p.m. has passed.

That's funny, that's my drug currently, is sauna. So we record in here, and if it's a very long day, I step out feeling like, well, I deserve a reward. Every day for me. Yeah, so then I go in there, and I'm like angsty and itchy, and I deserve something. And then I go in there and I'm like angsty and itchy and I deserve something. And then when I leave there, I'm like, okay, I'm out of everything and this is tenable.

I'll do that or I'll have some sugar. At that COVID moment, it was like the drinker, Jenny's the drinker. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Face fucking up, pint of whatever. Okay, well that was a party. Let's talk really quick, and then we're gonna talk about the movie, I promise you.

So the two times that I know we've met, this is always a game of roulette to play, because sometimes people have met me too. I just learned from a guest that I shoved somebody, and I did not know I did that. But I had been on set with you for maybe a night shoot on Wet Hot. I was in a scene, and you were there,

and that was really my first time meeting you and I'm friends with Banks and I saw that you and Banks have a great relationship. Really fun. And I remember trying to get a little something moving with you like just chatting you up a little bit. I left that night and I was like, I don't think he was terribly interested.

Because I was so nervous, dude. You think? I don't think, I fucking know. You're talking about when I sang on the roof? Yeah, I guess you did sing on the roof. But I thought you were brilliant. I was terrified to learn the song in my trailer, and I was desperately trying to learn the song.

And I had to perform in front of all of you. Yeah, I was nervous out of my mind. Life is a comedy, man. I'm never right on what anyone's going on. I mean, I'm just using this as an example. I'm not calling you out on this, but we do all think everything's about us. Of course. And nothing's about us, ever.

Even though I know that. Because everything's about the other person. Yeah, it is. Everyone's in their own head dealing with their own stuff. Talk about one of those things that you know intellectually and then when it's happening, you can't see it that way. There's no way I'm considering that you are dealing with something.

Other than evaluating me as a person. You got up that day to figure out whether you liked me or not. Have we met other times? No, it was just that it was wet hot. Then I bumped into you coming in or out of the bathroom just a few months ago. And then I think I brought up wet hot.

But I probably caught you off guard. I don't think you said anything about wet hot. You don't think so? I think I did. I think, hey, we met on. Then I was like, he doesn't remember me. You know, I'm wet hot. He's dying to get out of this bathroom. This guy just, I'm not did. I think, hey, we met on, then I was like, hey, he doesn't remember me, you know, I'm wet hot. He's dying to get out of this bathroom.

This guy just, I'm not for him, that's fine. Not everyone loves Diet Coke. Oh. Oh my God. Are you Diet Coke free? Oh God, can't drink enough of it. He loves it. Love it.

You love it too? No. Oh, can we fathom? It's the grossest thing on, how are you giving Diet Coke when you can have a fucking Coke? We need some friction. I'm with you on that. I like Coke. It's because it's what I grew up on. My mom only drank like Tab. Oh, Tab. Yeah.

Is this still around? I wish. Once Coke got, the big boys got into the scene, they were like, let me show you how to do a sugar-free soda. Sorry, Tab. This string cheese is so good. Does anybody want some? I'm okay. Thank you though. I do like a string cheese. So yeah, I tallied both of those experiences up to like, this gentleman has zero interest in me and I understand. I wouldn't have much interest in you. I okay, thank you though. I do like a string cheese. So yeah, I tallied both of those experiences up to like,

this gentleman has zero interest in me and I understand. I wouldn't have much interest in myself either. And then when you rolled up today, I was like, I'm thinking I might be wrong. I'll be honest with you. I maybe have some preconceptions and judgments about people that willingly offer themselves a lot to the world.

I definitely think I have judged you before. What a jag off doing this, he's just talking about himself to the world. I definitely think, I have judged you before, what a jag off doing this, that he's just talking about himself all the time. And again, the world could use a bit of this, and then you actually sit across from someone, and like, this guy's a very self-reflective, curious, you're looking at me like you're interested in what I'm talking about.

I'm terribly interested, yeah. I've gained a lot of respect just sitting across from you and talking to you. Now, do you find this? I'm glad you said that by the way. Me too. That's awesome. Cause that's that my shadow says that same thing

all the time. Like if I were on the outside, I would hate this guy. Shut up about yourself, great, you're sober, you do therapy. There's the voice in the playground from Michigan that is saying that to me as well all the time. But do you also find that you tend to hate people that are like yourself the most?

Yeah, I can own that maybe there's a potential resentment of someone that can offer themselves so freely in their vulnerability and own it that I would have a great fear of doing. I definitely see that, but speak more to what you were suggesting. Well, two things, because now you just reminded me of another reason I'll hate people.

But in that same call with Cooper, where he told me I had to come out, he also said, oh, duh, this is why you're so judgmental of so-and-so, because you had a big secret and you knew they had a secret, and you fucking hated that you had this secret, and so you hate seeing it in them. But it was just a throwaway.

He's like, oh, that's why you're mad at so-and-so, a mutual friend. And I was like, oh, fuck, he's completely right. I had been looking at this other friend going, this motherfucker's such a fraud. He tells these people he's this and he's that, and I know he's really fucking around. You know, I had all these judgments.

And then in reality, I was currently living with this enormous lie. And so I can see it in everyone else who's living with it, and I fucking hate it about myself, so then I hate it about them. But then there's another thing too, Monica and I were just talking about this, Timothy Chalamagne.

Chalamagne. Chalamagne. I'm proud of myself that I like him so much. You feel like it's a marker of growth. I really do. Because conventionally I'm like, I can't compete. Women love that species, and I'm not that species. So I hate this person.

It's one of those two ways, either I really relate to them or I think that somehow I won't be able to compete with them. What resonates with me there is in this, my year of reflection since I finished my film and whatever I'm going through, what is life. Man, the times that my insecure ego pops out,

I'm like, that motherfucker's film did so well. Fuck him. Or like, can't even watch the film because it's like, I can't deal with it. I can't deal with it. That part of me is still so alive. And I guess the only way that I can meet that is with a certain amount of levity.

The other thing that I resonate with there is it brings up a lot of what I've gone through with my film because when the film came out at Toronto it was fucking obliterated. I didn't read any of the reviews but I heard that they were pretty mean. Been there. But just thinking about when I can do the same fucking thing. That I can be the gossipy part of the gaggle in high school. What an ugly, I don't want to be that person. I don't want to be talking shit about a person I don't even know.

Even people that I have worked with, if there's one person in particular I have major reservations about, and I love any opportunity. Sure. But how really gross in high school it is that I get caught up in doing that. We all do that. No, I know, but it's just the quality that's not cool.

Hate to make this whole episode about Cooper, but the other big pearl of wisdom he gave me is he goes, you know, when someone says something terrible about someone else, my first thought isn't about the other big pearl of wisdom he gave me is he goes, you know, when someone says something terrible about someone else, my first thought isn't about the other person that they're talking about, it's about them. And once he pointed that out, my own vanity was like,

I gotta stop doing that, because it's true. It says way more about me than this person I'm shitting on. But yeah, I did it recently, I saw a movie that everyone loved, how it was directed, and I was like, yeah, their music budget was six million dollars. They had a needle drop every 30 seconds when their scene didn't work.

I did find myself, but again, I don't have that insecurity much as an actor or comedian anymore, but as a director, then a whole new avenue opened up to me of, well, that only worked because of this. Yeah, it's something I have to shed. It's just a fucking. I'm so disappointed in myself when that's something I have to shed. It's just a fucking. Please, yeah.

I'm so disappointed in myself when I do. So am I. It's such a hangover. And the dichotomy of hating myself yet being righteously above these other people I'm shitting on is hysterical. We've gotten into some, every time you bring up somebody else.

Yep, Monica flags it. Yeah, I'm like, I don't think that's a good move. Truthfully, it's when I'm insecure. It's like when we're at a live show and it's just going, okay, and then I'll drop something I shouldn't have dropped out loud because I want to lift it up a bit. I'll just go to it. Using someone or something.

I'll shit on someone. I know people will like it. We love hearing that someone was an asshole. And occasionally I'll tell people who was an asshole. I never do it on here. But you're also speaking of people's capacity and desire. Yeah, I'm giving them what they want. We love us stoning. Yeah. I know.

We love a stoning. We do, but it's our worst part. It's the worst part of humans. Of course. So if we can transcend that, we should. It's like, maybe don't go there. Also for me, it's out of fear. It's like, what if that person is best friends with them?

That's always my thing. You don't know it's out of fear. It's like, what if that person is best friends with them? That's always my thing. Is you don't know who knows who, especially in this industry, everyone needs to be very careful. Even I was listening to this podcast and one of the hosts was talking about his favorite podcast and there was another host there.

And he said, you know, I also really like armchair expert. As soon as I heard it, I was like, oh boy, where's this going? And he said it can be problematic But I do think Dax is a good interviewer And then the other person said I tried that and I couldn't stand it and I'm listening to this And if that person knew I was listening they would never say that and they would probably like your shows great That's a great point and it's classic mom aphorism.

It's like, if you're not willing to say it to the person's face, don't say it at all. That's something I can live by. It's like a good thing to remember. That actually kinda reframes, maybe I don't hold so much shame about some of the shit I've talked about. Because frankly, for certain situations,

individuals, I think I would. You would say it to them. No, I know I would say it. That's often my defense too. So I'll go like, yeah, I'd say this right to their face. Yeah I think frankly the lesson is just if you don't have anything nice to say Stay tuned for more If you dare. How long had you been wanting to direct?

One thing I admire about your career, I just want to add before, because I was going through it and I'm sure you have your own assessment of your career, but from my perspective, the notion that you're in multiple franchises, it's just nonstop. You've been in so much fucking shit that's worked. It's really a very low percentage career to have had that much success.

I don't know what it feels like inside of it, but when I have to make this list today, I'm like, oh my god That's another franchisee's in and he stops all the time and does plays crazy to me Well, I mean the last time I did a play was ten years ago I think okay, but you were doing plays post Star Trek where I'm a greedy little pig about what's next? I had this opportunity. I gotta go. I you little pig about it. What's next?

I have this opportunity, I gotta go. I loved doing theater, and I had a great time the last time I did it, and then I got offered something at Williamstown Theater Festival. It was a Sam Shepard play, and I was memorizing as a two-hander, and I was like three pages in, I was like, I don't really like this play. I love even that process of looking at a 70-page play

and memorizing the whole thing, there's something really satisfying about it. Anyway, and that was the last time to do something eight shows a week I think you have to have a real hard on to explore something in there because it's a grind you did fat pig I wish I would have seen that because I saw it in New York Kristen took me to yeah What a rad play though dark nasty love you love labue people politics stuff shows you stuff You don't want to look at I I like his stuff a lot too. Yeah, I almost feel guilty that I like it so much.

Was the movie Friends and Neighbors, Jason Patrick's in there, he's all of a sudden saying that he raped this kid, and you're like whoa, fuck! But it felt so real, like I think that's some dude's story. How good is Jason Patrick? Oh, what a beast. Rush?

Oh, baby. Wow, I haven't revisited that a lot. Jennifer Jason Lee, Ding Ding Ding. That's where I kind of fell in love with her. For me, Hudsucker Proxy. Oh yeah. She is a joy. Like a real artist just marching

to the beat of her own drum in a beautiful way. She's radical. Yeah, did you see season five Fargo? Have not yet. Oh. She's so awesome. Really? Oh my gosh, she's so awesome. That is the best season of television I've ever seen I can't wait. Okay, so how long through the process before you started going like I want to direct

I never wanted to direct at all I really had no desire to do it much like acting and then I had this idea for this film and It started with the title and the name of the character and it made me giggle and I couldn't stop. Then a year passed and I was still thinking about it and then I tried to hire a writer and met with a writer a couple of times and that never worked out.

And then COVID just hit, we were in quarantine and I was losing my mind and some personal stuff was happening. And then I just was like, fuck it, man, let's do it. And sat down and wrote it with a pal and ended up rewriting it 25 times. Yeah is the co-author a friend? I've known him for 25 years he's my producing partner and he also so we're producing now

I never wanted to produce either and he was making a career switch and he's like why don't we produce together? I was like not a chance he's like give me two years to shadow and bring you some stuff and he started bringing me stuff and he'd always had a really good eye and was always someone I'd send scripts to for the reel. And all the stuff he was giving me were written by this group of friends we've all had since we were 21. From Berkeley? I didn't really leave Berkeley with many friends, but I came back here and ended up in this

crew of kids that had gone to USC and this large group of friends from the theater department there and now they've been my closest friends for 20-some odd years. So he was bringing me all this stuff from my friends and I was like, you know what, this is kind of fun. If we do a production company, I get to work with my best friend and try to get work for all of my friends, that's a cool modus operandi.

By the way, that's the buoy that's left in the ocean. That's fun. And now to look back, we've gotten jobs for tons of people and sold shows and really learned. We're a little baby production company that had to start from zero. I felt like to learn the ropes of what it's like to get shit done in this town,

which is a miracle anything gets done. So he's the guy that I co-wrote it with. I didn't recognize right away, Matthew Jensen. I probably should. So Matt did both Wonder Woman's, he did I Am The Knight, this limited series that I did. Every time I've worked with him, he's shot on film and I wanted to shoot on film.

He's a brilliant cinematographer. It's outrageously beautiful. It's Matt, man. It's shockingly beautiful for a small movie. We shot in 21 days on film. Five locations. It makes you fall in love with LA. Some of them I'm like, where the fuck is that?

How did they find it? I would imagine your location scouting process was so stressful. Brutal. The places you want come so much. We have no money to, yeah, there you go. You know all about it. Knowing how the sausage is made,

I'm like, hey, this looks way too good. It's like overachieving from frame one of you coming out of your trailer. And then the locations, I was like, how did they get these, where are they? And then you got the location, but then you gotta dress it. And you got no money. The production design was off the charts.

Talk about Hudsucker Proxy, it has very Art Deco vibes. Erin McGill that did it, I'd seen a movie that she did. Erin's a genius, no money, no time. And it's stunning. Even the hallway you're eating nuts in. Talk about OCD, you were looking at this picture. I'm like, okay, I understand getting the miracle of that location, but you're looking at a door

and stuff's gonna happen at the door, but then we have a stucco wall behind there. And I'm like, what were the odds that stucco wall wasn't all fucking piss stained and shitty? I like found myself so distracted with how impressed I was with the stucco wall. We had to move into that hallway 16 hours before we shot there because we lost the other location. Oh my lord.

All sorts of fun independent stuff. Let's get a premise for the listener. Yes. The short is that it's a screwball comedy about a pool man that uncovers corruption in the city of Los Angeles. Only to go on this incredibly absurd detective hunt, which reveals more about himself than it does the actual crime. It's kind of film. No worry.

A smidge. Yeah. It's very Lebowski us. Definite shades. I didn't know if that would trigger you or not. It is what it is. But then there's also all this Chinatown stuff. Water in LA.

Sure. You're referencing Chinatown. There's this deep love for LA. When I was watching it, I'm thinking like, why does he land on this story, what is it? And then I'm trying to backfill what I think you're all about. And then I'm like, he grew up here in the 80s.

And let me add too, I had a LA geography class at UCLA, wasn't my major, but maybe my favorite class I ever took. We learned about all the booms and busts. So you read City of Quartz? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like annexing these big swaths of land and the orchoms and busts. So you read City of Quartz? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like annexing these big swaths of land and the orchards and all that. It's one of the more fascinating cities in America.

Oh my God, self-created out of absolutely nothing. And so I'm like, okay, this is cool. You have like a deep love. Your character, he's maybe crazy in the simplest terms. He's a little delusional. He writes a letter to Aaron Brockovich every single day. He sees himself as this warrior defending the city for my guest gentrification and other things.

And then I was thinking, how much of this knowledge did Chris have? And then how much of it did you have to go and study? Because it's so dense. The film is totally dense. They say right about what you know. I grew up in Los Angeles. And so there was a lot of conversation about making it more accessible to non-Angelinos,

and I was like, look, man, if I make one fucking film in my life, I'm just gonna go balls out with just everything I wanna do. The obsession of the characters with what food places have been shut down is so LA. I love and hate this city so much. I mean, I don't hate this city so much.

I mean, I don't even know where to start. How close are you to here? I am a minute and a half. And you grow grapes in your yard? I grow grapes in my yard. How many grapes do you yield? I know you make a wine. Sauvignon Blanc for six years.

There were Cabernet Sauvignon on my property before and that was the whole reason why I decided to replant because I was like, oh my God, they're're so pretty we get about 12 cases. That's cool Yeah, and when people come over you're like, would you like a glass of wine out of my yard? I sent it as Christmas gifts and have honey on my property. I'm really lucky I've about an acre and a half up in the hills. I have a very small house, which I love so most of its land I'm surprised. I've never bumped into you in the. Monica, have you ever seen Chris strolling around? I haven't.

Do you eat at All Time or any of that stuff? I love All Time. At Water, there's a new restaurant called Spina that I love that's opened up by a guy that used to be a waiter at Angelini Austria, which is one of my favorites. It's this little hole in the wall. He's from Sardinia.

He's cooking great stuff over there. Your life's like in art form. I kind of, I feel like unartistic. What are you talking about? Well the portion you know these restaurants Oh well and your appreciation for the Joyce in the ceiling I'm just feeling like I need to up my game a little bit. I would like you to have some wine here I would like I should have brought one. Oh that would have been amazing. Monica's a wine. No, we need a rebrand for that word The connoisseur. Yeah, I'm a wine connoisseur. A sommelier. I'm a sommelier.

A sommelier. A sommelier. Yeah. Okay, other compliments I wanna give you. Let's geek out for a second on Annette Benning for me. If I had to do a top 10 list of all time. I think her and American. Beauty, of course.

When she's slapping herself in front of that door wall. She's a force in nature and then she marries. That's part of it for me. The royalty of Hollywood. She is magical. I nature and then she marries that's part of it. Royalty of Hollywood. She is magical. I had no time and I'm working with combined, I don't know how many Oscar nominations and wins between her and DeVito and Jennifer.

You have to come and play and I'm directing too and I'm in every scene and you know it's dense and there's a lot of words. You just kind of have to flow and what I'd say about Annette it's like working with a Ferrari. You give her one little adjustment and all of a sudden, you just watch her go off. It's so much fun to work with someone like that.

Her and DeVito are great parents. And then you have DeVito, and DeVito comes from comedy. So DeVito can do whatever you want. You just have to corral the Danny, you know? Yeah. I was trying to get him to learn this fucking modeling. He just wouldn't learn the modeling. Yeah. He's like, I got some learn this fucking monologue. He just wouldn't learn the monologue. Yeah.

He's like, I got some stories I wanna tell you. So he's telling me these stories. I'm like, this is great, Danny, say that. He's like, oh, I can't say that. Then he sends me four different monologues, just stories. And so on the day we just had him fucking talk, do his four different monologues. And the one that we chose was this story

about doing Children's Theater of Massachusetts then ending up at Cape Cod and smoking a bit of hash. Yeah. But that's the end. So he's a completely different type of actor than Annette. And then you have Jennifer, and Jennifer's very quiet and has so much going on, but her comedic sensibility is so on point,

and she's just this beautiful animal. I didn't do much directing. The movie's kind of like a tonal smorgasbord of there's big acting, there's small acting, there's all sorts of stuff. So it was just me kind of doing volume control more than anything else. I loved my script supervisor.

She's the saving grace between her and my editor, the saving grace of my life on this film. And I loved her and I trusted her. Julia Schachter, she'd just done everywhere all at once. In my film, there's a lot happening and so talk about being able to handle a lot all at once. No, that's probably the most masterful edit I've ever seen of any movie in my life.

I don't know how they juggled that. You're outrageously good. Thanks. I mean, you're so, let's back to the comedian thing. You have a pace that is so frenetic yet very relaxed. I've seen you in a lot of things. I feel like this is really up there for you. It's the best thing you've ever done.

You're so funny. It's been a hard thing trying to describe the film. Like I wouldn't even describe it as a comedy. I call it a giggle or it's hopefully a delight. I think it's a vibe. It's like a state of mind. First of all, you're either gonna lean into this filming or not.

If you're on the wavelength and you go for the ride and just wanna chill with these people being absolute fucking lunatics, I think you're gonna have a great time. And if not, it's not gonna be your cup of tea and it's all good. But the best moments I've seen from people coming out of it, experiencing it the way

that I want them to is it's just like a lightness. Yeah, it's very playful. I think there's also a bottle rocket quality to it. There's a bottle rocket and I think Darren, the character that I play, did you pick that up? Is that all right? Yeah, it's very playful. I think there's also a bottle rocket quality to it. There's a bottle rocket, and I think Darren, the character that I play, did you pick that up? Is that all right? That was totally fine.

We've never not been in construction since we started. So have I. Yeah. 15 years. 14 years. I have a guy at my house that's basically the guy from Murphy Brown. Yeah.

So his spirit is like Peter Sellers and Peter O'Toole. It's like the bombacity of Peter O'Toole where if you watch Peter O'Toole, there's no normal acting happening there It's just giant Impassioned acting and then you have Peter Sellers whether it's Pink Panther Which I think is maybe for me one of the best comedies of all time or being there Which is really my North Star for this. There's a centeredness I'm happy you say that because I was trying to capture an acting style, so to speak, that was large and very grounded at the same time. It was like really expansive and pushing the limits and going into like screwball kind

of slapstick and very centered. The film is for me a laugh and hopefully a cathartic moment at the end for people that resonate it and feel it. But for me, it's a lot about listening. This is a movie really about people not oftentimes really listening to one another. And it reminded me a lot of growing up, quite honestly. I was trying to capture a spirit of what it was like to live in a particular kind of household sometimes where the dropping in of being actually relational is what you're searching for,

but there's all of this other plate spinning. So it is a state of mind really. Another influence was certainly David O'Russell and how he captures the neuroses of being alive where people, I mean, in this case, we're talking about steaks and lobsters and it's like, what are we talking about? That's the frustration really of this character

who ultimately is looking to be loved and to love, is looking to find connection in a very kaleidoscopic sort of way. That's truly the story about a kid trying to become a man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll tell you this, my wife was coming in and out of the room and I was watching it in bed, and she came in and she goes,

okay, great, now he's gonna try to be funny too. He's coming for us. And then she sat down and then she was laughing out loud and I go, I know it sucks, he's kinda great at it, huh? And she's like, yeah, he's fuckin' really, really funny. He's great. I appreciate that. Yeah, there were tons and tons of laughing out loud.

I mean, it's so interesting now to have it out. 100 people have seen it, so to talk to a newbie to feel the energy and what you took away from it is very nice. And we could do three hours on the experience, which is like, I know exactly where you're at. I've been through the whole experience. Here's what I'll say about the experience.

So joyful amongst all of the insane getting the financing billionaires that didn't exist, people wanting to pull the plug, all this stuff for my memoir, which I can't wait to write never Joyful flow state for probably a year never not thinking about it people all told me that shooting it was gonna be terrifying I fucking had an absolute ball Could not have had more fun saying stressful, but think whatever we don't have the orange stick

Then get our fucking red stick so much fun making all the choices Solving problems as they come up so problem people are like people are gonna want to lead her on set And then I was all nervous that I was gonna be able to make decision all of a sudden you get into this great Thing of being like I don't know if it's red, but my mind said red, so we're gonna fucking go red stick Yeah, yeah, yeah trusting the gut trusting the instinct and fucking rocking and rolling. I called following the giggle It's like if it tickled my brain. We're going with it. It's like, yes, and. And I knew on an analytical level in my brain, not my heart, that I was like, I'm setting myself up here for,

am I truly ready to put this thing out in the world and let it potentially be beaten with a heavy bat? And I would think about it and then just immediately have a red stick, orange stick problem to think about. So it was great. I had a lot to free myself from the burden of thinking of that. And then once we picture locked in, it was done, and that wave hit me of like, oh my God.

And then settling in for the weight of that experience, of putting it out, I never really understood how hard that would be, the vulnerability of that experience. And it's not one dinner you had, it's a year or three of your life. I always say if I could live in production as a director, sign me up, I would never look back. 100%. It's the only thing

in the world I've found that's identical to cocaine that's not cocaine. Yeah. Like I am on fire when I'm there and I wanna do it for 20 hours a day. Are you gonna do more? I think also the grief that I've been feeling this past year is,

because as you know, writing is the lonely job. I mean, I have an idea and it couldn't be any different from this, which I'm excited about, but totally bitten. Going back and having watched a lot of the silence to prep for it and watching Buster and watching Charlie and watching Harold Lloyd, watching all these guys that did all of it.

There's a magic to knowing that it's his art. Also to watch Buster do it. Buster's my hero. He's my hero. I'm obsessed with him. Unbelievable the kind of physical comedy he was doing. That's Jackie Chan times three. And you know about his process.

So he had his own studio. They'd shoot bits until they ran out ideas and they broke and either played baseball He had a baseball diamond on his lot I didn't know that or they broke and played pinnacle and they just played baseball or Pinnacle and shot the shit until they thought of another bit to film or how to add to the bit So his life was just being on that lot. With gag guys. Filming until they ran out of ideas, fucking around, coming up with more ideas, and then going and filming them.

I'm like, that would be the existence. You have to read the oral history of Hollywood. Oh, I haven't. It's all of these AFI interviews that they did, I don't know, starting in maybe the 70s to now. It's a compilation book starting with the birth of cinema with all of the players talking first-person accounts All the way through Spielberg to Nolan

but you get a sense of precisely what it was like in the early baby days of it and how they rolled and How these guys were coming up with gags all of the time and how the gagmen then turned into guys that were being brought Into the talkies and it's very, very cool. It is. Well, Chris, this was delightful. Pool Man is out May 10th. Theaters or streaming? In theaters, yes indeed. In theaters. We got the premiere at the Vista,

which I was at Eastside. Oh, that's awesome. Fucking super stoked about. Yeah, and will you show a film print of it there? They can do that, right? My 35, yeah. Yeah, oh my God. My canister's a film.

One of the most exciting moments of my life. I love it. This has been such a delight. I was 100% wrong about you on every assumption. I was 100% wrong about you, Dan. Look at that! We love to be wrong. The bromance begins.

And do you race cars or do you race motorcycles? So I did race cars and currently I just do a lot of track days on the motorcycle I'm going to Kota in two weeks. What? Yeah, it was just at Willow Springs. No on a motorcycle Yeah, Willow Springs then I was in Vegas. I just started but yeah, what are you doing? I was gonna go GP. Are you going to MotoGP? I'm going to MotoGP And then the day after there's an Aprilia Alpine Star Day private day at Kota and I Oh so you know Heath and all.

Yeah. Oh my God. Why don't you come to that? I'm going to that. I just shipped my leathers down. How long have you been motorcyclist? 20 years. Oh, you're deep into it.

I'm so into it. Oh my God. Yeah, it's pretty much my religion. It's what replaced snorting cocaine. And I've only had one off. Do you ride motorcycles around town? No, I kind of stopped doing that. I'll do an early, early morning on a Sunday or something.

You should come to get to ride Koda. I've never ridden it. I am just starting out by the way. Yeah, it doesn't fucking matter. Just know that that's an option for you. I'm definitely thinking about that. Have you been out? No, God no. It is...there's nothing like it. Nothing? I explained it on here as like, you wanna be in a state of presence. Ah!

There's nothing on the planet that can force you. Thank God for it. You can't even, on a straightaway, think about what's coming tomorrow or yesterday. No! You have to be second by second the whole time. And then when you carve that great line, like, it's just delicious.

Oh. It's just delicious. Well, it sounds like you guys have a lot to do together. This is insane! This is very exciting. It's almost too much stuff. And next time delicious. Well, it sounds like you guys have a lot to do together. This is insane. This is very exciting. This is almost too much stuff. And next time you hang out, bring some wine for me. Absolutely.

All right, Chris, this is a party. Such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, everyone see Pullman May 10th. That's the one. Hi there, this is Hermium Permium. If you like that, you're gonna love the fact check with Miss Monica.

If you like that, you're gonna love the fact check. Miss Monica. Okay, I wanna be honest about something. Don't you think it's a very scary thing to hear as a starter for anything? Yeah, can we talk? Oof, terrified. Yeah, that one's scary, yeah. And I wanna be honest. Yeah, I know.

I'm booking an appointment. Okay. With a dermatologist, but I just don't know what's gonna happen when I go. And I just wanna be honest about that. What does that mean? I don't know. Dermatologists aren't plastic surgeons, or are they?

Well, this one does stuff. This one is, this is a hybrid? It's not a plastic surgeon, sorry, I'm gonna let you open that. Okay, sorry. This is super important, honest moment, okay. If I'm gonna get anything, I wanna do it via a dermatologist,

and one was recommended. What are we thinking we're gonna do? I don't know, and I'm probably not gonna do anything. Is this all in? Yeah. Oh, great. this all in? Yeah. Oh, great. Yeah. I applaud you. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I think I'd be too self-conscious of doing something and then not addressing it. Yeah, if I got an eye transplant and then I never addressed it and people were like, whoa, her eyes are looking purple. It's weird that they're purple. And then I was like, they've always been purple. No, I'm not on Ozempic.

Right, exactly. I'm like, just be honest, it's fine. It's all fine, people's decisions. But you also have in mind something. Is it neck related? Yeah, okay, so I hate my neck. We all know this. This is...

Age... Tale as old as time. Since I was that small, I have neck problems. Can I pause you for one second? No, I have neck problems in that oil painting. No, the baby in the photo is the most perfect little being that's ever existed. The baby has a neck issue already.

No. Okay, I just wanna pause you to say, I love our job so much. Me too. I love our job so much. But too. I love our job so much. But? There is no but. Oh!

I'm really feeling it today. Oh good, I love it too. We did back to back interviews and now we're getting to do fact check and this is my favorite thing to do and I love it and I love the job and I love you and I love you Robbie and I'm so grateful. Me too.

Are we gonna do ads after this? Oh, now I don't love you Robbie. Now I hate Robbie. Rob. But yes, I I don't love Rob. Now I hate Rob. Rob. But yes, I agree, lots of gratitude. Yeah, okay, so back to your neck. Except not for my neck. That's one place I don't, well, okay.

I guess I have gratitude that I have a neck. Certainly. I can start there. Yep. Okay. I know someone without a neck. You do? Yeah.

Okay, so standing by my gratitude that I have a neck. And my neck is knock on wood. Knock on wood. Knock, knock, knock. My neck is in good shape. It's doing what it should do as a neck. It functions, yes. But I do not like it aesthetically.

What options are out there? There are some options. Do they pull, they do like a face lift? Not doing a lift, no. But that is an option, right? I think you could do a, I don't know, yeah. Imagine they could like cut the back of your neck skin, a chunk out, then pull it tight and suture it,

and that would tighten up the front of your neck. Wouldn't that be, that's logical. They could probably, but that seems very invasive and there's less invasive ways. So there's a procedure called, I might cut that. I might cut that, because I don't want people specifically like saying this is. And they'll find like the two examples.

The problems, exactly. So there is a procedure that's a neck procedure. It's not a procedure, it's an injection. So it's non-surgical. I'm not doing anything surgical. Okay, yeah. Baby steps. No, I'm really, like, I don't even think

I'm gonna go through with any of this because I'm so scared of it. And I'm particularly scared of this procedure because I have heard, like, you hear one bad story, and I can't unhear that bad story. But I do know some people who've had this. Oh great, personally. Yeah. Oh great.

They like it, and so. What does it do? So it kinda just like melts, it's supposed to like melt the fat around here. Yeah, the extra fat in your neck. And tighten it. How can it tighten it without cutting some of the skin out? No, like the skin can, you can like,

that's what Botox like tightens everything. And it kind of lifts it. And I might get that, I don't know. In your neck or your face? Well, if they say they can put that in my neck, that's best case. I trust Botox, I've never had it. Although if you had Botox in your neck,

you probably couldn't swallow. People do get, people get Botox in their jaw a lot. And so if they say that's good enough, like that will just like make it a little more defined. Yeah. That's great. Okay. I just, I'm gonna go in for a consultation

and see what she has to say about my neck options. And then maybe I might try Botox, but I don't, I really actually don't think I need Botox. No, you have no wrinkles, but continue. I don't have any wrinkles. Yeah, zero. But then someone said, it's more than just wrinkles, that it like, someone said it was Liz.

Listen, I'm not a doctor, but. Liz said that, I had Botox. Dr. Liz. We were all talking about this, and she was like, you don't need it. She was like, but don't need it. She was like, but if you had it, you would look like a supermodel.

And now I can't unhear that. Listen, I don't think it tightens your skin. Here's my understanding of Botox, right? It is botulism. That's what it is, Botox. You put it in and it paralyzes the muscles it's been injected into. Now those muscles can't move the skin

in the way that creates the creases. So it's really just freedom of the repetition of the wrinkles. So I'm not sure how it would make your dermis tighter, but certainly the lack of moving the muscles that create the wrinkles is what happens. And then that softens up. Well for sure, that's how it started,

but now it feels like there's all kinds of new stuff and new things. But like I said, I'm just putting that out there because I want to be honest with the arm cherries. I'm gonna contradict myself. I'm gonna be both things. I support you, I'm all for it. I'm not gonna talk you out of it.

Great. The only thing that gives me pause is the notion that you went to a dentist and they convince you that you could have better teeth than you have. That's the only thing that scares me is you have such spectacular teeth and whatever picture they showed you,

you were like, yeah, that's the only thing that scares me. Does that make sense? Yes, thank you. Thank you, fuck you. No, no, no. My teeth, you're wrong though in that it wasn't like I went to the dentist, my great dentist that I love. I know, I know.

Appa dentist. Oh, I know. I do need a new dentist. They're really good, for real, they are really good. They'll give you a facelift. They'll probably try to get you to have veneers, but maybe you want that. So I have always wanted that. I don't understand.

I know, but just listen to me, okay? I've always wanted it, so it wasn't that they showed me a picture or they said, you know, it was confirming what I already thought, and then this is gonna be the same. If it's a neck, if they say, well look, I hate my nose, right, but I'm not gonna touch it.

Okay, good, your nose is great. I hate my nose, but I've learned that that's my nose. And so they might say, you know, we could put a little like tiny bit of filler here, we could do a little something here and it will, but I'm not doing that to my nose. But if they can make it so that I don't look at 90% of pictures and cringe at my nose, but if they can make it so that I don't look at 90% of pictures

and cringe at my neck, I would love that. Yeah, I want that for you. Yeah, so we're gonna see, but I am also gonna be careful and I am nervous that this procedure, I'm nervous it could go bad. Well, I'll tell you something that kind of spooked me a little bit, because I'm willy-nilly, you know me. Yeah.

I'm totally willy-nilly. But then I was watching that models documentary, which I loved so much, the supermodels one. And was it Evangeli, what's her name? Linda Evangelista. Yeah, we're not being mean, she talks about it in the documentary. Linda Evangelista had some interesting freezing.

That's what I'm talking about. That's what it is. She had the one that went bad. Yes, oh fuck man. I saw that and that really scared the shit. I almost think I thought of you when that happened. Yes, because I probably was like, I want that. It's called Kybella.

Oh my God. Is it crazy for them to test a little part on your hip to see how your body responds to this? That's not a bad idea. Let's not start with something super visible. But I don't want a hip lump either. A back of your thigh, somewhere that you think you don't mind having, like, better find out there.

Yeah, I could ask. Your butt. Or my butt, a butt lump? Butthole. Because you know, the expectations aren't gonna be high. But I have a nice butthole, so I. Okay, well then don't mess that up. Listen. Bottom of your foot.

I think maybe there's been some advancements. How long does it take? 10 minutes. It's not, they just inject, they pull it and they inject stuff. But I am scared, but I do want it. Says it is generally considered to be safe. Well. That's the word you generally considered to be safe. Well. That's the word you're looking for.

Exactly. Generally. Trust me, I've read everything on it. It damages temporary is what it says, in most cases. Oh, if the lump happens, that's what I was like, because some of the other things like filler, they can dissolve it quickly. But this, I don't think you can.

Yeah, it looks like nerve damage is really the main thing that it could cause. You don't need think you can. Yeah, it looks like nerve damage is really the main thing that it could cause. You don't need your neck nerves. I'm not gonna wood colored wood. You gotta be more specific now, you gotta say wood colored wood. Okay, I will.

Well thanks for letting us in on that. I just wanna let people know, and if I get it, I'm gonna tell people. You're gonna own it. Yeah, because also if I like it, and other people wanna, I'm not gonna endorse, I'm not gonna say like everyone should. But then when we're doing a live show

and some gal comes up to you with a huge lumps all over her neck and she's like Monica, I trusted you. I mean, I don't think you should advise it. Regardless of your outcomes. I am not ever gonna advise, but I want people to look at pictures of themselves and like it. How much is it?

$800. You think that's a lot? No, it's nothing. I know. This thing must be nothing. You don't even need to think about it. Go in and get it. You think?

Yes. If I get a lump, what are you gonna do? Cut it out. I'll use my technique, I thought. I'll cut the back of your neck and I'll take out a section and we'll cinch it up. Yeah. Especially now that the staples are on the table.

Like now people get sutured up with staples. Surely I could do some staples. Anyway, this is a slippery slope in general for people. It is. And I really am highly aware of that. Yeah, tattoos are very similar. It's like the hurdle to do it once is one thing, and then once you get it, you're like,

oh yeah, I liked that, so I would like more of that. I know. Nice thing you know you're fucking covered in tattoos. Neck tattoos, which you've threatened. Yeah. You get Kybella, I'm getting a neck tattoo. No, I'm, anywho, so that's where I'm at in my journey. Great, when do you think this'll happen, this week?

There's an appointment available on Saturday. Oh, oh my God, so maybe the next time I see you, you'll have a completely different neck. There's no downtime. Where else can you, you can only get it on your neck. Kybella, yeah, it's just a neck thing. There's other things you can get. Don't get stuff.

See. Uh-oh, this feels hypocritical. I know, but I want everyone to do what they wanna do. But even sometimes I see pictures of people, and I think it's great, if they like it, great. But it's pictures and it's presented as, it's so natural. And yet I don't think so. You know.

Well that is a curious, we will never know. But there is a version of this where you did it, didn't say anything, no one's looking for it, and probably no one ever thinks anything. Because no one is even, I hate to say this because I want you to get your Cabela. Shh. No one is looking.

Cabela Cabel. She's Monday. I know. Oh my God, just in time. It one is looking. No one is. She's Monday. I know. Oh my God, just in time. It's a sign you should do it. Oh my God, and you can say to her, I got a Cabela for you. Hers is Cabello, so she might be upset.

She won't know the difference. She'll think you pronounce it weird. Well, now I've lost my train of thought. Sorry. This is what I was gonna say, and this is not to tell you not to get it. Get it, get it. You're not gonna like, no one thinks you have a bad neck.

No one looks at your neck and has had any thoughts about it. I've never noticed it and I look at it. Yeah, I mean, truly that is the truth. I still want you to get it because it doesn't matter what other people think. It matters how you feel and I'm supportive of it. But also, no one looks at your neck, nobody.

Okay, first of all, people look at things and they notice my neck. You might not and you might not. That's crazy to me. But I've had valid, like I've mentioned this to people in my life who love me very much. And they are like, you could get, like they aren't, they're not like,

oh my God, you need it so bad. Would you start crying? Say it to me, I'm someone you've not told this to. Okay, so I'm considering getting blank. Oh, about time. Yeah. Would you start crying? Probably.

Yeah, that's rough. That's so mean. I even think I wonder what. No, what kind of, what kind of role play is this? Like Eric might, like if Eric had thought that, he would say it. I even think I wonder if like. No, what kind of role play is this? Like Eric might, like if Eric had thought that, he would say it. I know. Like you gotta be careful. I'm gonna try it around him.

No, you know what you should do? You've told, well, fuck, Eric could listen to this. Cause what would be more interesting and it would be disheartening and nice, which is you get it and don't tell anyone. No one. But how, they're not gonna say, even if they do notice, they're not gonna say, Monica, your neck looks good.

But you know what they would say? They would go, oh, you look so good. Now it's a moot point, because I'm saying it, and I'll say if I get it or not. Well, if anything, now we're gonna find out which of our friends listens to the show. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, fair weather friends.

That's that. That's that. That's that on my maybe. Cosmetic surgery, non-surgical. Non-surgical stuff. Well, I'm excited for you. Thanks. Yeah, I hope it's, I hope it is. We'll see if I go through with it, I don't mind.

But if you go through with it, I hope it turns out to be exactly what you wanted. Well, me too. I hope it's not lumps. Yeah. Oh my God. Who's this for? This is for Chris Pine. Well, me too. I hope it's not lumps. Yeah. Oh my God. Who's this for? This is for Chris Pine.

Oh, wonderful. Yeah, super fun. Super fun. Really cool guy. So smart. Really smart. Do you think you stereotype anything about actors? I don't, but when other people bring stuff up about actors,

I tend to agree. Interesting. It's not on top of mind for me. You know, a lot of people say, I would never date an actor, dating actors is bad. And I never think about that, but there are some through lines that can happen. Sure, there's some through lines that can happen.

Sure, there's some over indexing. Yeah. I don't have any stereotype or no preconceived notion that they're not gonna be smart. But I do think I assume actors aren't educated. Oh. Like that they didn't go to college and get a degree in something substantial. I imagine they studied theater, which is great.

It's still substantial. It's not. It's all a spectrum. It depends on who you're asking because a lot of people would say not to offend you. People who do like organic chemistry probably don't think anthropology is all that like. I don't think anthropology's all that. Legit.

I don't think so. Okay. Yeah, can you get a BS in anthropology? You can go to med school right from anthropology. You can go to med school from anything if you take the right prereqs. Sure, then you'd have a bachelor's of science, sure. But like there's labs and, you know.

I'm just, I'm saying, it's a liberal art. Okay. I don't agree, but I'm telling you because you are doing that to another. Well, one is learning how to express yourself and one's like learning the history and evolution of mankind. There's a lot of history in theater.

Well, if you're that, if you're like an art history major and you know like every single period of art and all the participants and it's a history, you are a historian at that point. But generally when you go to school for theater, you're not like becoming an expert on plays, are you? There's, yeah, there's playwriting classes you have to take, there's tons of history classes

you have to take, you have to read all of Shakespeare. There's a lot. Okay, I'm not trying to offend anyone. I've also interviewed a bunch of people who majored in theater, and they'll be the first to say like, yeah, I didn't take any of those classes. Like, I don't know anything about Western Civ, I don't know anything.

Tisch people, they don't have to take anything. At NYU, you don't have to, I don't think. Yeah. Most other schools require a lot of pre-reqs. Why would they study something else if that's what they wanna do? I'm actually not judgmental, but I guess I just don't think. Yeah. Most other schools require a lot of pre-reqs. Why would they study something else if that's what they wanna do? I'm actually not judgmental, but I guess I just don't think of most actors

having focused on something conventionally majored in. Yeah, I agree that when I hear that someone, I mean, this is bad, this is gross, but when I hear that like- Someone has an engineering degree that's an actor, you're like, oh wow, that's kind of unique. That's surprising, but I was gonna say even, regardless of what they majored in,

when I heard Reese Witherspoon went to Stanford, I was shocked, I was surprised. Yeah, it's kinda cool. And it's very cool, but then, really, cause why, who cares, I shouldn't care either way. But I do know almost, I think I know all of the actors who have ever gone to Ivy League schools. Yeah.

You know, we know Natalie went to Harvard. Exactly. We know Ben and Matt. Yeah. Yeah. We know, yeah. I don't know if I knew Reese went to Stanford, but maybe I did. Yeah.

A bunch of people went to Yale Drama. Yeah, Edward Norton went to Yale. Uh-huh. Yeah. A lot of people. There's some Yallies. Bradley went to Georgetown. Uh-huh. Yeah, there's some Yallies. Bradley went to Georgetown, that's a good school, great school. Paul Giamatti went to Yale.

Yeah, so, you know. And maybe it's the exact same percentage as everyone else. I don't, it's just more surprising because a lot of actors decide not to go to school because you don't have to. No, it's not beneficial at all in the acting world to know about King George or anything. Well, it can be, because you can pull,

like the more you know in general, I think the better of an actor you are. Yeah, unless you're playing Frito, then you gotta forget everything you know. Sure. But you have to know it first to know to forget it. Especially about what's in the pants. Oh, God.

Because he doesn't know if he wants to get in there so bad. What's in there? Oh, okay. Is he gone? Yeah, he's gone. Okay. It's sort of a ding ding ding because we talk about Neil LaBeute.

Oh, right. And I didn't chime in here because I didn't want to slow down the flow, but I love Neil LaBute. Oh, right. And I didn't chime in here because I didn't want to slow down the flow, but I love Neil LeBute and I did a lot of Neil LeBute reading in theater. I'm delighted to hear that. Yeah. Because a lot of it's very mean.

Well, it's. And you have a mean trigger. It didn't feel mean to me, it felt harshly real. Well that's the thing, and again, this kind of becomes a debate we won't have, but I think there's a lot of people that wanna see what should be in movies and not what is in movies, and a lot of the world

is mean as fuck and dark as fucking sadistic, and so his stuff represents what is, I think, very much the reality of a lot of life. But some of it's harsh. Yeah, but a lot of plays, when you're really reading tons of plays all the time, a lot of them are dark and twisted and not musicals. Cruel, though.

He seems to have a comfort level with airing a lot of the cruel things people say about each other and to each other. And what's interesting is like two things are, it's shocking because you don't hear that in plays or in movies. And then also- Well commercial, commercial plays.

And then second you're going like yeah, that's what I heard on my playground. People are fucking cruel and mean. Yeah, The Shape of Things was my favorite play throughout college. I don't think I've seen that or read that. What's that about? It's about this guy who ends up in this relationship,

he is ugly, like he, and he ends up in this relationship and the woman starts, oh my God, ding ding ding, starts like. Giving him plastic surgery? Not really, I think he actually maybe does end up in plastic surgery, I don't remember all the specifics, but like changing things about him

and making him more attractive, but then there's like an affair that happens, I don't know, it's like this group of four people and it's twisted and odd. They made a movie about it, but I never saw it. But it was a play. Paul Rudd. Paul Rudd.

And Rachel Weisz. Oh, maybe I saw it. Playing, he was playing ugly. Yeah, he had plastic surgery to fix his large nose. Okay, yeah. Oh my God, it all circles back. But yeah, I loved that. Some girls also, now I'm looking at his page.

There were a lot, I read a lot of them at the time. I used to love, I still have a ton of plays and I loved the feeling of just rifling through a play. There's some really, again, sorry, I'm not a musical fan. Right. I don't like musicals, but I do love plays. Yeah.

I love straight plays. What you just saw in New York, you loved it. Yeah, that was a musical. I did love it. Oh. I was invited and so I went to the opening night of S.U.F.S., which was great, but I thought to myself, I was like, is this gonna be a musical?

Oh, you didn't know going in. I didn't know and I didn't wanna know. Right, cause then you would've really not wanted to be there. Yes, and then it was a musical, but it was very good. You know what's funny is I would say I don't like musicals either, but what's really funny is I've only probably seen four, and two of them I really liked.

So it's kind of like, I don't even know if it's a really legitimate opinion. I've seen a lot of them. You've seen a lot of them. Yeah. If you only go and see Hamilton in the kind of like, I don't even know if it's a really legitimate opinion. I've seen a lot of them. I've seen a lot of them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you only go and see Hamilton in the Book of Mormon. You like musicals.

Musicals are great, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So Chris. Okay, one thing, why is the dune guy in oil? The baron. Oh, yes, what is happening? Is he drying out? No, the imagery of baron, yes, what is happening? Is he drying out? No, the imagery of barren,

how do you say the last thing? Harkinon. Harkinon, thank you. Harkinon bathing in oil is another unsettling aspect of the character and one that doesn't appear in the books. The substance is actually a healing mud bath, which was inspired by a dream in which barren Harkinon emerges from underneath oily liquid like a hippopotamus. Yeah, that's what it looked like

when he came out of that thing. Yeah, it did. Hippopotami. Yeah, I don't. Hippocampi. I do not like him. I learned something weird today while I was researching our guests, which is not only were we shook the other day

when we found out there was two, there was hippocampi. Do you know there's amygdalae? Oh, there's more than one? Yeah, there's two, they're in both. What? Yes, both hemispheres have an amygdala. We just don't know, we just keep learning. We don't know shit.

Yeah, mineral rich concoction to aid in recovery and health. Okay, yeah, he looked very unhealthy. He's not healthy, no. I don't wanna shame him, but he also doesn't look healthy. I don't mind shaming him, he's bad, yeah. I'm back, yeah, I'll shame him. He said one of his favorite words is solipistic, which means, it says someone who's solipistic

is so focused on their own wants and needs that they don't think about other people at all. We already have that word selfish. Well, right. You could also call it solipistic person selfish or self-centered. Okay. But it's a cooler word.

Yeah, hard. I'm afraid to even try to say it out loud. It's hard. Solipistic. You did it. Whoa. Don't try it, don't do it again. I'm not gonna ever try to do it again.

First and last time ever saying it. Okay, is tab still around? Yeah, you't do it again. I'm not gonna have to do it again. First and last time I've ever seen it. Okay, is Tab still around? Yeah, you can get it on Amazon. Really? Yeah, I see it. Wow. Oh, it says currently unavailable. Yeah, since 1987.

It says we don't know when or if this item will be back in stock. Oh, wow. Maybe it's not available. Discontinued in 2020. Fuck, you just missed it by four years. Now we have to find it on eBay. That would be so old.

I know. Yeah. Well it's in a blue mine, because we buy Diet Coke in such quantity that occasionally you'll grab a 12 pack and it's been in there for a few years. And it can start to taste like the aluminum can and it's terrible.

That's bad, you gotta. And there's no way this tab wouldn't be tasting like you put a mouthful of pennies in your mouth. We said that I'm a wine connoisseur. Yeah. Well, you said wine-o and I said that needs a rebranding and then we went with wine connoisseur. I just, again, circling back, I wanna be honest.

Yeah. I'm not a wine connoisseur. I don't know that much about it. Though that is a goal. It is. Before I maybe one day eventually become sober, maybe, I wanna learn about wine. I loved that show, the show I didn't really like,

but I liked a lot. There was a show I didn't like, but I- Was it Japanese? Half Japanese, half French. Japanese, French, and American. Okay. Okay, I guess I'll just say it. Drops of God.

Yeah, there we go. It's a show I really enjoyed, and yet I didn't like it, so it's weird. Yeah, I kinda like those shows. I have a few of those too. Yeah. It's more novel, it's interesting. Yeah, I blew through it, I watched the whole thing,

and it was really good at keeping your attention. The world is cool. I'm not remembering the series, but there was this series where it was like, I didn't like the episode at all ever, and the ending was always a perfect cliffhanger ending where I had to start. Was it Lupin? You didn't like that.

That's the only show I've ever made it out loud on here that I didn't like, and that was mostly. And that's like not a bad enough show. And it's not a bad show. It's not even a bad show. Yes, I love it. It's the writing was very convenient. I'm particularly allergic to very convenient.

So anyway, that world, the wine world, and she smells it, and then she can do pear and moss and frankincense. I wanna do that. And our friend, mutual friend, Audra, she's I think level two Psalm. Some-a-yay? Oh, there's levels? Yeah, I think three or four levels.

So she's halfway to the top. And it's really hard. It starts to get like the top level, there's like 100 of them. Right, like you need some kind of genetic advantage at some point. Well, that's what we need. Super smeller, super taster. Yeah, but you can train it.

So she's gonna help me. Okay. We're gonna do classes. And you start with, you just start smelling the smells themselves alone. So you can build the memory of that's cherry on its own. Yeah, and then you're able to do it and then you can say 1962, Pinot Noir, French Valley, Bordeaux, Yellow Hill on the right.

This is something I'm so judgmental of. You already know this about me. I know, and I want you to get over it. French Valley, Bordeaux, Yellow Hill on the right. You already know this about me. I know and I want you to get over it. It's one of my few really judgmental things. You need to get over that. Two things, one of them is like, just admit you're drunk. Stop trying, not you, not you, not you, not you. No, that's actually.

But these people who's like their whole life's dedicated their wine cellar in this bottle and every time they open it, they act like they're doing something super special. You're just getting drunk. You're just getting drunk. You're trying to make it really elevated. Dax. Yeah, okay.

Stop. That's not true. Okay. Real Psalms, for the most part, they spit it out. Oh, I'm not talking about Psalms. I'm talking about drunks who get super into their wine collection, and they're using it as this, like they're doing something super cultured and elevated.

They're just getting drunk, and because they've made it this very cultured, elevated experience, they don't have to recognize that they're just getting hammered every night on wine. That's one of my judgments. Two of it, of course, it's a class thing. I know, but at some point. Yeah, when you own 10 cars.

100%. You have to be a bird's eye view about this. Yeah, it's hypocritical. Because then you come off hypocritical, which is the worst thing. But what if you're acknowledging you're hypocritical? No, it's still bad. It's like if you're acknowledging it,

but you refuse to take steps to overcome that or fix that. If I dug really deep and I maybe got more honest, maybe it would be that I don't think I could ever tell the difference. So I feel excluded by it. But you don't have to, like I can't look at, like you look at, it's literally the exact same thing. You looked at Chris's car, you knew immediately,

you knew the year, you knew the thing. That's what Psalms do. And it's rare and it's cool. And I have no problem with Psalms. I know, but I'm just saying, I don't watch you do that and think like, I don't know how to do that. So that's weird.

You know the power of the brain, and do you think it is possible though that people do change their experience with it because they've learned it's the perfect vineyard, they know it's rare, they know it's from this year. Once all those details, don't you think the experience itself changes? Like here's my great suspicion,

I think you could take a pretty normal mid-level wine and present it to people as some thing and I'm pretty certain those people will be like, oh my god, it's so good. Maybe. Whereas the car thing is quantifiable. It's like it has this horsepower, it goes 0 to 60. To you, because you know.

But it does this lap time at this track. That no one's using. I'm just saying it's all real. It can't be tricked. You couldn't go like, hey, this is the fastest car from 1966, drive it, and then it goes zero to 60 in 12 seconds, you can't really trick that. Well, you can't trick someone who knows.

But you could trick me. You could tell me this goes, this does, this does, and I'd be like great I totally believe it I would think oh, that's cool That's elevated same with wine if people who really do know if things are good or bad. Yeah But I think this happens outside of widen too I think this happens with meat now meat is something I'm super into and I think people have such a fucking boner for wagyu and

and I think people have such a fucking boner for Wagyu and A13 Wagyu and all this stuff. And I've had the samplers and then I have a ribeye right next to it and I'm like, I think you guys are all smelling each other's farts. Like I don't think this isn't, do you have any thoughts on Wagyu, Rob? I'm not big on just steak alone. I like more complexities than it.

Yeah, I do think some of these things can become, you know, if you tell them, oh, here's 10 kinds of caviar. This one is the rarest in the world. There's only 10 cans of it. People are, it's gonna taste better to them. I do think there's a. Yes, I do think there's a mental aspect to it for sure.

But there is a actual process in winemaking. And it's, sorry Trader Joe's, but Charles Shaw is not processed in the same way that some nice wines are. Also, I apologize to everyone who loves wine and feels like I just shit on their hobby. I am sorry, this is all my bad. Because it's fun. It's fun.

And I don't think I could, well, hopefully I will one day, but I can't taste the difference between a $100 bottle of wine and a $70. Yellowtail. Or a a 6,000. I probably couldn't. Right. But I do think if someone told you this is a $6,000 bottle of wine, it would taste different.

Maybe, but there is a taste difference between a $15 bottle of wine and a $75 bottle of wine. I accept that. And there's a hangover difference. There's a lot. I believe that. There's just like a threshold of it that I think it gets kind of silly.

Yeah, I agree. So I'm gonna learn it. Okay. And I'm gonna get Kybella. It's all gonna happen. Okay, great. Next time I see you, you're gonna be, you're gonna pay. I have to believe that.

You're gonna pay, just believe it. You're gonna try to pair my egg and rice dish from Squirrel with something perfect. I want to be able to pair like that, that's fun. I had the same chip on my shoulder when I drank, which is like, there isn't a better whiskey than Jack Daniel's, sorry y'all. So you're like, Makers Mark and all these people,

I'm like, you guys have just convinced yourself from the packaging and the price point that this is better than Jack Daniel's and it is not. That is, you're being so objective about things that are subjective. To you, Jack Daniel's tasted the best. I disagree. I like Four Roses and that's not fancy.

Okay, great. I accept that then. Well, I also actually, I like four roses, and that's not fancy. Okay, great, I accept that then. Well, I also actually, I like Woodford or, what's the other one I like that Jess likes? Jenny Walker. I think it's El Paco. No, it's not! Okay, okay, okay.

Because you were drinking it to get drunk. No, well also, I can drink any one, so I'm drinking the one that tastes the best to me, additionally. No, you weren't at the time wanting to drink like something fancier, though. Expensive. No, I wanted to taste the very best thing.

I wanted to drink the thing that tastes the very best to me. The best at a price point, though. You weren't gonna, Blanton's, you weren't gonna spend money on Blanton's to drink all in one night. The end of my drinking, yes. I had plenty of money to buy whatever I wanted.

At 29 when I quit, I could have bought anything. But would you, yeah, that's true. And I was in Hawaii with Dean, and I'm drinking Jack Daniels. I can get anything. I know, I just think it's different. Yeah, probably different. I mean, it's different.

Also, why do I care? Now, what you could say that is the same to me, like you wanna really skewer me, I don't think cars is a great example just because there are all these numbers associated with it. There's ways to evaluate it. Clothes is preposterous and I'm all in on the clothes. Clothes is not preposterous.

Oh my God. No. Like certainly someone who's wearing like a polo sweater is like, this is made of wool and it's a very great sweater. There's no way your Gucci sweater is better. No. I think there's a lot of merit to that.

But I'm in. Like I want the Burberry sweater that you got me. And you can't argue that Jordans are better. You don't perform better playing basketball. Jordans are better. There's better craft though in some of this stuff. Like those shoes are made better than like. Some of it, but I don't know that it's not proportional

at a certain point. Sure, not at the price point. Well, depending on what we're talking about, but yes, there's fit. There's so many things that are different from a fast fashion place. Yeah, but that from a fast fashion place versus cheap fabric. That's not fast fashion.

It's like that is, polo is like, it's great quality everything. I don't know enough about their practices. I mean, they make. It's a go after them. Yeah, I don't know what's going on with them, but I know like a place I have some stuff from. The Row?

The Row. I'm not saying it, just like I'm not saying Caipella Beep. So it's like it's manufactured in Italy. The stuff's made there. It's not fast fashion. Right. Fast fashion's bad. That's what they say.

It is bad. I know, but there's, listen, there's a- This is like sunscreen. Did anyone respond to sunscreen? No, there's a proletariat, no, shockingly, no one's that pissed about sunscreen. I think I've just worn everyone down at this point. Everyone's been, basically, my wife and my family.

They're just like, oh, he's talking again, but we don't need to listen. Okay, my problem with shaming fashion is, you're gonna hate this. Well, I'll tell you why. Okay. Because you're shaming people who can't afford the other stuff.

It's like, okay, so somehow the elites have decided that their fashion, which costs a ton of money, is moral and this entry-level shitty disposable stuff, like those people wanna look cute too, just like the rich people, and they can't afford the other thing, and now we're shaming them, like they're ruining the planet, it feels unfair. I'm not shaming the people buying it,

I'm shaming the companies that are doing it that way. They don't have to, they don't have to create at that level, it's like so mass produced, it's so much shit that's unnecessary, they don't have to do that, but they're doing it for profit and commercial appeals. So it's not the people, I agree. Yeah, of course. Like everyone wants to look cute.

Of course. You buy what you can afford. It's the companies though. And then now these people have to turn on the news and it's like great where I shop is amoral. I don't want them to think that. But I do want them to start shopping at the road. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

We didn't hear about the. I'm kidding, it was a joke. The sunscreen, but we won't hear about that. Okay, because I actually think this is interesting because the right. Conservatives? Conservatives, yeah. Or a portion of this country is very eye-rolly about,

oh my God, now we can't say this, now we can't say that, now we can't. And I'm gonna say, I'm like, we can't shame fast fashion. I don't think you can because people don't have an option to buy anything but fast fashion. Well, people don't have an option, but feel hurt by racism either. I guess we're all just feeling sort of like,

what can we do? This is great. We all have our pet projects. Anyway, one thing that is a ding ding ding to my Psalm days. Yeah. He said. He grows his own wine.

Well, he grows his own wine, that's true. But he said the hardest thing about addiction, which I think he sort of meant sobriety is 5 p.m. Oh, uh-huh. Because at 5 p.m., there's nowhere to go. You just have to like get through. Till the morning. Yeah, and I've been thinking about that so much. Did that resonate?

Yeah, that time of day. When it hits five. It's time for a drink. Yeah. It's crazy. It is funny when somebody puts something on your radar and then, oh, it's kind of baiter-meinhof, I guess. It's like, then you just see it, you see it.

All of a sudden, once you're aware of it, you're like, oh my God, it was there this whole time and I'm so aware of it now. Yeah, because I think you go through the day thinking, oh, I'm not gonna drink today, there's no reason. But then five comes, and all of a sudden, there's like a reason, there's not a reason, but it's like, it's five o'clock,

and I wanna like hang out now. Yeah. Really, it's the separation between the work day and the night. See, I think it's what you really want because I have now done it, I have it really deeply with the sauna. I need to transition from that zone.

Exactly. Like if I go in my house and act like I do on this podcast, my family's gonna go bananas. I gotta transition. Yeah, for me, it's like if I just go home right now, then I'm gonna work. And I'd rather not, like I'd rather have a break between this work and that work.

And a hang sounds like a fun way to do that. Yeah, for sure. But I need something else probably. What do we do about people who don't have sonnets? I mean, I was, no, I thought that during this episode, I was like, this is gonna be eye-rolly for some people. Yeah, of course. Because, and I get it, it's like, okay,

what about the people who don't have these options? What do they do? Well, I'll tell you, and I was just about to suggest this to you, you won't do it, but if you went for a 20-minute jog after this, after each day of work, I really think it would be the exact same thing. Well, I have been back to jogging.

I've seen Phineas two out of three, actually three out of three, but he didn't see me on one of them. Did you flag him now though? Yeah, now we talk. I saw him this morning. Yeah, he's out and about. And I met Claudia.

How is she? She's very, very sweet. Yeah, it's really funny, for his episodes when I was reading the comments, it was nice to see how much people love her. So many of the comments were about Claudia. That's cool. She's great, so I know her brother very well.

Oh, you do? Yeah, I was his roommate when I was like 18. Are they from Chicago? Yeah, Chicago. Oh, that makes sense. The Chicago contingency is strong. Yeah. Definitely more guests and callers.

Lots of Chicago. But jogging. I think if you jog, I think it's just like, there's a restlessness at the end of something. And then I think if you just kind of exert yourself in some way for a half hour. I know, but it's also like that's an annoying thing to do. Yeah, unless you start really associating it

with the post-calm contentment afterwards. I like the feeling after, yeah, I know. Like for me, when I walk into the sauna, I don't even think about that it's gonna be hot. Right. Or uncomfortable. I just so associate it with like a kind of placid, calm feeling after, that that's all I really experience.

Yeah, I don't know. But I was, I didn't drink for 17 full years without a sauna. So I don't feel too bad. I know, I didn't drink for 17 full years without a sauna. So I don't feel too bad. I know, I know. Did Spina stay in the edit? Yeah, and I wanna try it. Oh, you went. So I went after this interview.

Yeah, you went that night to that restaurant that Chris mentioned. It was insane. Oh, I want that. I wanna go. But nothing's gluten free, right? No, it's all like homemade pasta. Mm.

We've gone twice since the city. I want that so bad. Oh, what are you doing tonight? Maybe getting it. Oh my God. We'll see. That's it. Oh, okay, wonderful.

That's all we learned a lot. Loved Chris, he was great. I really, really, really liked him. We do have hats from his movie. Well, he sent hats, those are cute. Oh, this is a cute hat. Poor man, corduroy hat. Yes, this is a cute hat.

It is. He's very fashionable, so I'm not surprised that this is cool. Extremely. If I didn't make too fine of a point on it, his aesthetic in life is really top notch. The whole car thing is ideal. Yeah. I'm pretty proud of myself that I got 1969

on the button on that one. I know. I feel very good. If you're proud of yourself for that, you should be proud of all the Psalms. Okay, I am. Okay. I tip my free hat to you, Psalms.

All right, love you. Love you.