Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Edward Norton Returns Again
Episode Date: July 1, 2026Edward Norton (The Invite, Fight Club, and American History X) is an Academy Award-nominated actor, filmmaker, and environmental entrepreneur. Edward joins the Armchair Expert to discuss grow...ing up with a visionary city-planner grandfather, methodically living on $11,000 a year as a young actor in New York, and building a port-emissions company that sucks poison from cargo ships. Edward and Dax talk about the actor’s narcissistic brain, why he doesn’t treat film like a volume game, and the exhilarating trust Olivia Wilde created while directing The Invite. Edward explains the difference between iconic actors and shape-shifting actors, why uncertainty can be the gateway to deeper work, and how the things we absorb from the world become what we eventually give back through art.Check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds: https://www.allstate.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert.
I'm Dan Shepard.
I'm joined by Monica Norton.
Hello.
Hello.
It's not true.
We're not married.
No, because he's married to my friend.
Shana.
Yeah, yeah.
For people who don't know the backstory, Shawna Edwards' wife.
That's right.
Producer extraordinaire.
Yes.
Introduce Kristen and I.
Yes.
And then you'll hear a funny story about when we had babies, which maybe you've already heard, but we revisit it.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, very serendipitous semi-me.
moment happened.
Because she had a dinner party.
This is not the, the, if you miss it originally, Shana had a dinner party where you two
met.
Yeah, birthday dinner party for Jonah, I think.
Oh, yeah.
There's only like eight of us.
Do you remember which restaurant?
It was on Melrose.
It's kind of a famous, fancy restaurant of Melrose, but I can't think of the name of it.
Like Jones, like Dantana.
It wasn't Jones or Danana.
More towards La Brea.
Like more in that pocket of Melrose.
Yeah.
Yeah, or Beverly could also bet on Beverly.
And that whole zone.
No, for the east, it doesn't matter, West.
The point is Edward Norton is our guest today.
He's an Academy Award nominated actor and filmmaker.
Fight Club America History X, Primal Fear, Birdman.
He has a new movie out.
We're continuing on with our invite week because we love the movie so much.
Yes, so good.
So we're pushing on strong and hard.
Let's talk more about the invite and to hear all good things from Edward Norton.
Please enjoy.
We are supported by Airbnb.
You know, Manny, I was just reminiscing recently about this trip.
I took to Musco a while back.
Canada in the summer, it's just unbelievable.
The lakes, the trees, all these gorgeous wooden boats everyone collects around there.
NHL players on the lake.
What a place.
It's just one of those places where you immediately feel your.
nervous system calm down. I do feel like every time you talk about that trip, you feel very at peace.
I really was. I think part of what makes a trip like that memorable is when you actually get to
settle into a place. You start finding your rhythm, your coffee shop, your morning walk. There's
several little restaurants on the lakes. They're all connected. There's a big chain of lakes.
And the restaurants are so good. And you park your boat out there and you get to sit on the water.
It's just heaven. That's my favorite kind of trip when it starts to feel less like visiting and more like
you live there for a little bit. And honestly,
it's even better when you can share it with family or friends.
It's those little routines and moments that end up
becoming the stuff you remember later.
That's why I love finding places on Airbnb
that help me feel like a local somewhere new.
He's an object to.
I'm going to do this after.
Because it's such a treat.
You got your tea.
It's steeping.
You have a cream top.
Did you drive from Malibu?
or from Hollywood?
I was in Santa Monica working and then I came here.
What are you working on?
I am raising a lot of money right now.
Okay.
For that.
Cargo company?
Shipping emission.
Yeah.
Have you seen this thing?
Mm-mm.
He has a barge company, right?
Mm-hmm.
And it has a 13-story crane on it.
15.
15, sorry.
Get it right.
Get it right.
I imagine in the crane game, it's all about those stories.
You know, this crane was originally?
It was a construction site concrete delivery.
Oh, right.
It was for the delivery of concrete up into high stories of construction sites.
Yeah, so they're built for a ton of weight, right?
That concrete wants, you've got 13 stories of it in a tube.
And all we're doing is bringing gas down.
Yeah, yeah.
So he has these barges, and then there's a 15-story crane on top.
And when a ship is in port, it hovers above the smokestack of the ship
and sucks up all the carbon monoxide, or I'm not sure what it's getting.
It's actually the poisons.
It's the nitrous oxide, sulfur,
dioxide and particulate matter.
All these diesel waste.
We don't even actually deal with the CO2.
Obviously, people have their opinions, and there's a lot of debate about CO2 and
atmospheric CO2 and all of it, right?
Yeah.
But there are no regulations on CO2 right now.
For the ships?
No, just society.
We don't make you be compliant with zero CO2, but we do have.
This is super interesting because even the Trump EPA regulates nitrous dioxide,
sulfur's dioxide, because it kills people.
That's what gives you lung cancer.
So you could call it the smog.
That's the stuff that creates the smog that's really, really bad for people.
I think the stat I heard is that the emissions off the ports in California
drive like six and a half billion of respiratory health costs in the state every year.
Like cancer, asthma.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, the number I heard you talking about, which is crazy is that you've only been doing this for,
what, a year or something?
How long has this been operational?
Operational since 2023.
Okay, so for three years.
But you were saying maybe it was in the full duration of its.
deployment, but maybe you were just saying a year that it was the equivalent of 65 million cars.
Just last year.
Yeah, okay, so in one year, it's sucking the equivalent of 65 million cars.
Operating for a year.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's a lot.
Those things fucking billow poison, huh?
The ships are really, really, I mean, you know a lot about cars.
Yeah.
So you actually know what a catalytic converter is.
Yes.
The catalyzer, it basically is taking things that are poisonous like nitrous dioxide and sulfur
first dioxide. If you catalyze nitrous dioxide into nitrogen and oxygen, then it's just air.
You're good. Which is wild when you think about it that bonded. It's horrible for us.
Oh, chemistry is endlessly fascinating, right? It's like, oh, this shape is good. This shape plus
this shape is your dad. You're dead. I know. It's amazing. I don't even think people totally
grasp what a good job we've done on cleaning up cars. Obviously, there's some stuff coming out
that might not as clean as an EV or something like that. But the average cars emissions are just not
even in the realm of what they were when we were kids.
Totally.
You and I probably came to L.A.
somewhere approximate to each other.
95 for me.
Yeah, 95 is the first time I came to L.A.
to shoot primal fear.
Oh, that shot here.
Yeah, here in Chicago a little bit.
Yeah, I so have it in my head as being Chicago.
95 is when you came?
Yes, ma'am.
He was shooting in Primal Fear.
You were eight years old.
I was eight years old.
I was eight years old.
I know.
She's eight years old.
Well, I was only 18 when I did that.
Sure.
We were all young.
You never saw the San Gabriel Mountains in the mid-90s.
People will even say, and it sounds hilarious, like I'll be traveling, people like,
oh, how's the smog there?
I'm like, dude, that's such an 80.
That's so 80s that you're thinking that, like, I don't ever see dirty air.
Be quiet, Tom Hanks.
That's enough.
You know, we've never talked about your grandfather.
I got super interested in your grandfather today.
What's his last name?
Rouse, Jim Rouse, yeah.
James Rouse.
I found this guy fascinating.
He's World War II, yeah.
He served in the Navy and Naval Strategic Command at Pearl Harbor.
And when did he get into city planning and all the civil engineering?
It's funny to bring him up because I was just talking about him with someone.
He's a very, very interesting person.
He was like orphaned when he was in his early teens.
And he and his brother, they lived this extremely like Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer-like existence,
kind of rootless and parentless on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay.
they had older sisters who they would bounce between
but often would just cut school and go off
and live on an island crabbing and fishing
and he became extremely well known
and they teach classes about him at Harvard now and everything
you had to live with them to know
what an extremely eccentric person he was
he really did like to go out and trap muskrat
and make a stew out of it
among the many things he did
he gave Frank Gary his first commissions
Oh really? Frank Geary's first building
that wasn't Dennis Hopper's house
house was my grandfather's.
1967.
Oh, wow, wow, wow.
I have a photo of my granddad and Frank, where Frank is so young, and he has this unbelievable.
He looks like Ron Jeremy.
Oh, perfect.
Great.
Yeah.
The hedgehog.
Frank credited my granddad with his, if you go in Gary Architects today, my granddad's office building.
Wow.
Built in 1967 is the one in the lobby.
Anyway, Frank told me something that resonated with me, which is he came to think that he was
colorblind because he had a great feeling.
feeling for space and community spaces and open spaces and all these things he was known for.
But Frank said he had the worst instincts about color.
And the funny thing was I always thought he was eccentric.
He would wear like green pants and a Majas jacket.
And you might have thought it was preppy, but he was like the furthest thing from preppy.
He parked cars and hustled pool to pay for night school, played really serious poker and
never took his Navy pay because he won so much money playing poker.
And he was one of those people who had an edgier life, I think, than the life that he became.
He became respected.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, he'd go to like a serious meeting
and you'd have lures in his hat.
And I think people thought he was sort of being
intentionally folksy or homespun.
And it really, really wasn't.
It was genuine.
Yeah, he was really, really funny person.
But he was this incredibly accomplished
kind of visionary thinker about cities.
He was on the cover of Time magazine in the 70s or early 80s
for his ideas about cities, which is wild.
Monica, he invented the very first
Are you ready for this? Food court in a mall.
Oh, wow. Wow. So he built a ton of malls, right?
Lots of malls.
And he built these like festival spaces or installations in cities that were supposed to bring people together.
This is interesting digression. Who knows if there are more than 10 people interested in people go there.
In the 50s, he was on Eisenhower's Housing Commission.
And I am told he was one of the first people to predict that the interstate highway system,
which was being built in the 50s, would encourage low-density development.
outside the cities and that the middle class would sort of leave the cities for what became the
suburbs and that this would lead to kind of an economic hollowing out of the cities.
I don't know if it's true that he coined the phrase.
He was an early user of the idea of suburban sprawl.
And we all talk about suburban sprawl now.
We grew up in it.
Yeah, yeah.
But he talked about suburban sprawl.
He kind of predicted the hollowing out of the cities.
And in the 60s and 70s, when all the cities were going bankrupt, basically, because the middle class
had kind of left for the bedroom communities.
A lot of people were like, this guy is a visionary.
Even in the 60s and 70s, he was arguing for the need for more city planning,
the revitalization of urban downtowns to bring the middle class back to the town center.
He talked a lot about the European tradition of the town center and the marketplace
and how we needed to find a way to both in our suburban planning actually build communities,
not just developments and strip malls.
But then in the urban centers, downtown Boston, he did the Fanual Hall, Quincy Market Development.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Baltimore, he completely redeveloped the Baltimore Inner Harbor.
He did the pier in New York?
South Street Seaport.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which wasn't super successful.
Well, what I liked about reading about him is he went on to admit it didn't work in some cities.
No.
Some of them, they were smash hits and they still stand.
And then the others, the city didn't take to it, which is fascinating.
Well, is that because in those cities, there wasn't as much suburban sprawl.
Like, people stayed.
I think the opposite, it was so depressed.
Yeah, and also commercial real estate's always weird.
What makes people want to return to a city center, and it's not just the commerce or the mall.
It's sports and a lot of things go into it.
Restaurants, museums, and live.
Live entertainment.
I bring him up because you have what seems to me, I don't claim to know you well enough to make this observation,
but from the outside, it seems that you have among the loosest grasps of anyone I've ever met with their career.
You hold it so loosely from my perspective.
You mean like creative life, like in films?
Like when you choose to work, how you've navigated, as we just said 95, so 30 years of doing this,
you're seeming confidence to be patient, your willingness to wait to something that you want to do,
your refusal to get more money.
When you decide to not be in The Avengers, you're not done.
You're like, okay, I'm going to wave goodbye to like $40 million, right?
Oh, there's 40 million bucks.
Probably more than that.
Look at it down.
Downey lives.
Seven or eight of them, yeah.
Buy hundreds of millions of dollars.
So there's just all these moments I've just kind of observed over the years.
It's such an enigma to me because I'm so different.
Do you know what I think is so funny about it?
Number one, I was just talking to someone we both know on the phone.
I said I was coming over here.
Yeah.
We were both admiringly talking about how good at this you are.
Because you're such an autodidact.
You're one of the people I know who I think most authentically
avidly pursues more knowledge in all forms.
You read as much as anyone I know.
Thank you.
I was saying that I thought Sean and I will be going along.
We listened to it a lot.
I said this in the car coming over here,
I was like, have you noticed one thing Dex does,
which is he seeks affinity with a lot of his guests?
Even to the point we laughed one time
because there was one person,
you kept saying that's like this.
And they were like, I don't think so.
Affinity meaning like a similarity.
Yeah, finding.
Yeah, yeah.
To a fault.
You have an instinct.
I feel like to connect
through shared...
I know we can find bedrock, right?
Like any two people...
And I come in and we actually know each other.
I come in and you're like, we are so different.
I'm like, hey, where's the affinity?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
There's so many things we're so similar to.
No, I like the word.
But of course, when there are things,
especially if I think I'm similar to somebody, right?
And then they have these behaviors that like,
I can't personally imagine being confident enough to do
or just having the peace of mind.
So when people do things that I do weirdly maybe feel similar to that are so outside of how I operate,
that's the nugget of like great curiosity to me.
Yeah.
Like now I really, because I know we're the same, right?
We're human beings.
We want to be loved and adored.
We love our children.
You know, like, we're all the same.
So when there's these like splinters, I get so fascinated with how are you somehow having this loose grip on all this?
And I'm a strangleholding it.
How we look out through the skin at other people and our inability to necessarily see our
ourselves is wild to me because I really might have said the same thing about you if I was talking
to someone else in the sense that we've known each other a pretty long time.
Yeah, yeah, 20 years.
Yeah, and in different phases, I know we've talked about both of us perceiving that the other
didn't like each other.
I was like, God, this guy really doesn't like this guy.
I'm so dumb.
But I feel like you're on a journey that to me looks from the outside, like enormously
confident carving of your own path defined entirely by.
the stuff that's so idiosyncratic and particular to you,
not only your passions and gifts and everything,
but you've succeeded in multiple lanes.
Maybe all of us in our mind are restless and self-critical
and tend to not almost like tally the wins.
We tally the dissatisfactions.
And we don't see what others see from the outside
that looks like confident, non-attachment,
or whatever you're saying.
You can say it lightly, right?
It's also complicated too, right?
Like, are we talking about what snapshot of me and you?
No, exactly.
Right?
Like, yes, today I agree with what you're saying.
And thank God it all landed nicely.
But if I take a snapshot in 2014, I'm pretty panicked.
What are we doing now?
The answer to your question is not that you need a reassurance,
but in a weird way, I don't think I have any lightness of hold on my aspirations,
my ambitions, my endeavors.
When you say from the outside,
it looks to you like I'm sort of confidently waiting,
only doing the things I want to do.
You're not motivated by money.
This is not true.
Okay.
First of all, I think we have talked about this.
No actor turns off the actor's narcissistic brain.
The joke that how many actors
is it take to screw in a light bulb,
100, one to do it in 99 to say
I could have done that so much better.
Don't think for 10 seconds
that I am capable of shutting,
off entirely the part of my brain that goes, why didn't I get sent that?
That's reassuring.
It is reassuring.
I would have liked to have read that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or I'm really excited that they're calling, but I can tell there's this urgency to it.
And what that means is someone else dropped or it couldn't show up?
Okay, fuck it, I'll make it good.
You know what I mean?
I'll show them.
Also, Edward had success quite young.
And that makes a difference when there's a lot of struggle that's going to cause a little bit more
of like a tight, tight grass.
Right.
So I can't help but come up with hypothesis for this observation that may or may not be correct.
But one is I thought, Grandpa had a lot of money, clearly.
He was like a big deal in Maryland.
Yes, he was very successful.
He was really wild.
He didn't trust money at all.
He had an Oldsmobile his entire life.
He lived in a very small house, and he gave away all of his money.
He was an extremely like man to the people kind of guy.
I would say the most significant financial thing he bequeathed to his grandchildren,
and was he paid for a solid go to college.
He made it so that none of us came out of college with debt, which is huge.
But that in his mind was, that's the leg up I'm going to give you.
That was pretty much it.
He gave away almost all of his money to the enterprise community partners,
which was his low-income housing.
And that's why you were in Japan.
You were working for that company?
Yeah.
Yeah, because I kind of went to Nick Kroll.
I've admired Nick Kroll in this similar way where it's like he seemingly has only been
motivated by what makes him laugh the hardest.
There hasn't seemed to be any dirty calculation of how he,
could get more money from the outside.
But I interviewed him as like, his dad's is a billionaire, right?
Or close to it.
But yeah, like he went to school in the limousine.
And he'll be the first of me.
He's like, yeah, money wasn't my issue.
That wasn't something I had to go out and get.
I think that liberated me in a lot of ways.
I think that's fucking stupendous if someone can take that privileged childhood and
turn it into just pursuing their creative interests.
I don't think I'm as relaxed about how things are going as you think I am.
Okay.
Also, I'm not accusing you of having grown up with Kroll money.
People did, but not me. I remember in 1992, 1993 in New York, I had an actual, like, little financial
ledger book, and I decided to go through the exercise of, like, if I want to be able to be an actor in
New York and just wait tables or do temp jobs, I have to know exactly what it actually cost to be here.
So I started this exercise. I wrote down to every subway token, every muffin that I bought.
I tallied every single thing so that I could understand how little can I live on.
Do you remember what the tally was in 93?
To live in New York in the way I was living, I needed to make about $11,000 a year.
I had found an apartment that was $400 a month.
Impossible.
A rent-stabilized apartment was $400 a month.
I mean, it was smaller than $1.000.
I worked out a system for myself.
I thought I can exist in New York City if I knew what my nut was and I knew what I had to make.
Here's what we're similar.
That was my same strategy in L.A.
Yeah.
Like made $8,000 a year for 10 years because that's what it took.
By the way, the thing when I throw back on myself at that time was if I had to have a car and gas,
in that mix, I wouldn't have pulled it off. How could you get by an $8 grand if you were buying gas?
Honda Civic and Suzuki 600, like 50 miles.
Also, gas wasn't as expensive.
It was not.
It was crazy.
The apartment would be less.
And I drove like 80 miles a week.
Do you know what's funny is on the highway the other day, on the 101, I turned to my right
and I saw a Toyota Corolla FX16 GTS, which was my used car that I had.
It's the weirdest. It's like a trapezoid.
No amount of money would I have said that any of those could still be operating on the road.
Toyota.
The memory drawer that opens, though, when you see the car you spent your late teens in,
holy crap.
I have debated getting a 91 Honda Civic DX in doing it up.
Just because, like, I lived in that car for 10 years, and I'm like, I need to honor that fucking trusty little
gal.
It was probably your car that you saw.
It was probably still.
It would have been.
So, great.
So there's not that.
And then my other thought was simply, you're not going to be able to even comment.
comment on this observation, but Monica can.
You're in the rarest situation where it's like,
your talent's fucking kind of undeniable.
And it was undeniable right out of the gates.
I do think that's got to buy you some abatement of the anxiety.
You know, you're just so validated
and you were just so obviously brilliant at this
that I don't think you were wrestling with what Monica and I were.
It's like, well, I'm not getting hired.
Am I not good?
Like, how does one know if they're good or not?
Yeah.
You're just going and you hope it's not that you're not good,
but you don't fucking know.
And I think that is a big source of the anxiety, too.
I also don't know if you're an actor like you are, which is at an elite level.
I don't even know when you can correct me if you're thinking, am I good?
Or do people think I'm good?
I think, like, am I portraying this character correctly?
Am I embodying this?
Like, you're not really, it's not very external.
It's more internal.
And that's what makes him so good.
I relate to that.
I can't remember if we've talked about this or not.
but I've always felt there's only two categories of actors.
I think some are iconic, and I'm not saying good or bad,
but I think some people have qualities that we enjoy so much.
Clinties would.
Yeah, Harrison Ford, terrific actor.
We go to them again and again for a set of qualities that we need from them.
They're almost like Greek mythology, right?
They personify something that we want, and it can be dark, it can be light,
it can be stalwart, it can be hilarious.
And then there are people who are in the Joseph Campbell sense,
they're the shapeshifter.
We need iconic performers because they represent something, they distill something for us,
and then people who are, I don't even want to say character actors, but it's not them.
They're a vessel for a thing that channels something else.
And I have never had any conviction that I could function as anything other than someone
who absorbs things, sort of that shamanistic idea of the sucking up of something
and finding the way to put it through yourself and express.
something with it, right?
Yeah, yeah.
You're like a mother bird.
You, like, go out and you eat,
and then you come and puke it all back into Arlo Baby's mouse.
That's the way of looking at it.
What I enjoy most about it is this kind of the secret key that it represents.
It's an excuse to go dive into Pete Seeger's world and learn banjo or whatever.
It's an excuse to marinate in a thing.
Soak it up, find some way with the writing or whatever, find some way to get it.
get something across and sort of inhabit a thing without the consequences of making that your whole
life. And in that sense, it's a joyride of diverse, weird, strange experiences. The other thing
that it does definitely to me is, I honest to God, it's not am I good at it. It's at a certain
point, you know, I've worked within this magic trick, not just the magic trick of acting,
but the magic trick of how that interfaces with the larger magic trick of making. You know, the larger magic trick
of making a film that works
or that has something to say or anything.
But the way I like working on it
tends to also translate into something that I actually enjoy,
which is I don't feel that having done anything well
earns me a sense of certainty
that I'm going to do it well on the next one
because I'm always like,
this one might be the one that I fuck up.
Would I be right to,
Imagine Pete Seeger, right?
Like, you're just dumping stuff in there.
And I don't know what those things are, whether you're reading a biography or you're watching
video of him or you're learning to play the banjo.
And while you're dumping it in there, are you just kind of waiting for the magic click?
Like, oh, there it is.
I often feel something close to a mounting sense of maybe not panic because I've learned to trust myself.
but I will often feel a mounting feeling that I have not cracked it.
Uh-huh.
And that we are getting awfully close to the beginning of the thing.
The blast off.
Yeah.
And I do love if and when the moment happens that something slides over into this feeling of the suit fits.
I've got it, right?
Sometimes I find it's a different mechanism with each thing.
Pete, for sure, one of the things was just his voice.
His vocal intonations and the rhythm.
And for me, the way he spoke and the way he sung, being thin and Pete's teeth, his hair, his things, the clothes he wore, in a weird way, that's like...
That's the easiest.
We don't even have to invent it because we got copious photographs and that's like mechanical almost.
Yeah.
For me, there's something about the way the man used language and the rhythm of the way he spoke was a part of what made him seem like a druid to other people.
because he wasn't like their peer.
He was this other thing.
He was like their druid.
Impersonation is always a challenge or a tricky thing.
So one of your gifts is you're kind of a mimic.
I am a good mimic.
Yeah, you're like a mimic.
So there's that aspect, but I watch a lot of mimics do things.
And there's also now three other layers beyond the mimicry.
But yeah, clearly that's just like one of the components.
And Kristen can do this very well too from her musical training.
She hears voices, music, all of it in very compartmentalized pieces.
She can see each component of it.
She can hone in on one little tiny aspect.
That's actually defining the whole thing, but that I would miss.
It's almost like the key to the mimicry, right?
I'll go even a little more technical.
I think someone who's got a good ear like Kristen does can pretty much sing anyone.
I have noticed that people who are good at that,
and I've noticed that when I hear someone and I'm going to try to slide into it,
I kind of intuitively know what is happening.
in their mouth.
I know where Owen's voice is,
is it back here or is it up here?
I know where Woody's is.
I know where Bill Hertz is.
And it is actually like a physical locating
of what part of your face
a lot of the way a person sounds has to do
with how rooted they are in their breath or not,
whether they're speaking from the forward part, the back.
And I kind of think people who are good at it
may just have, who knows why.
It's not just the ear.
because you hear the same thing.
It's like an instinct for how to shape the cavern of your mouth.
Yeah, that's a great piece.
And it makes so much sense because, right, Kristen, like, learned how to sing through her chest,
through her head, locating her voice in all these different areas to get a different outcome
and being very aware of that, everything you're talking about, like the machinery of making noise.
Yeah, they try to teach it, too, like in theater school.
Like, I have voice class.
I couldn't.
I was like, what do you mean?
What do you mean put it up here?
I was like, I can't do that.
Maybe it's genetic or something.
I will say, too, though, when I was a kid,
I didn't feel particularly interesting,
but other people seemed really interesting to me.
And if someone was interesting to me or an actor or something,
I used to just spend a lot of time imitating people
that I thought were interesting.
Yeah, because then you would be interesting, right?
In front of a mirror sometimes.
And I still, when I'm working on Pete,
I have certain actor friends who I just trust,
who I go all the way back with,
who I know I can sit in a room
and be really goofy
and not feel self-conscious.
Yeah, yeah.
And I will work and work and work on a thing.
I read Pete, my friend, Peter Lewis,
is a terrific actor.
I'll work scenes with someone
and someone who'll go, oh, I heard it,
and get it wrong and whatever.
But I will do a lot of work in front of a mirror.
Yeah, yeah.
I was doing Death to Smoochie with Danny DeVito.
And I had decided in my own mind
who my source was for this character,
who wears a cowrie shell and a flannel shirt
and won't give sugar to kids
and is all these things.
And I was doing it.
We're on the first couple days of the movie.
And I think I said,
my voice is horse right now,
but I think I looked at Catherine Keener
and I said something like,
hang on a second there, Nora,
because, you know, you're,
have you heard a halt,
hungry, angry, lonely, tired?
That's you and I'm not getting sucked
into your negative energy.
And Danny pops up behind the monitor
and goes,
what is that?
And I was like,
It's going to come to you.
And he was like, what is that?
What are you doing?
He goes, I love it, but, you know, it was just Woody, Harold.
Yeah.
And I just decided that Sheldon Mopes was Woody.
It took Danny a couple days too, where he was like, oh, my God, oh, my God.
Sometimes you do things without thinking about them, but when you talk about what is mimicry,
and you realize it is the interface between ear and actual location of a thing in your body, right?
It's like how does Steph Curry hit the shots he hits?
There's a lot of muscle training, muscle memory.
And also, he just perceives the distance to a degree of perfection that we can't really even imagine in our minds.
You know, to him, there's a clarity about how far he is from that.
And it translates into motion, yeah.
It's just unreal.
Well, and if he told you how it had happened, neurologist would say that probably can't happen.
I remember that great chapter in Malcolm Gladwell book where it's talking about the great hitters.
How do they hit?
They know the time frame between it leaving the hand.
hand before it's crossing the plate, right? They know that duration. And the guy's like, oh, I can
always tell if they drop their shoulder and they do blank, it's going to be a fastball. Because they have
to start swinging the second it's leaving their hand, virtually. Beyond believe. Hitting the majorly
fastball is the most astonishing. I don't care what anybody says. That's the single most incredible
interface between the brain and the body in sport. There's a million things that are hard. Like
Nordic skiing, everything's hard. Even the F1 guys, I'm not sure anybody's processing information and
making a physical decision to do something virtually impossible.
Yeah, oh, it was in blink, that makes sense.
So what they found was if all the things the batter said were true, they can add that up.
They know the duration of the cognition, right?
They've measured it in an fMRI.
And what they can conclude is none of that stuff's happening.
There is not time for him to see the shoulder, compute it to here, move it to the frontal lobe, move it to the mortar control, make this decision.
They know that that's impossible.
So it's what?
The emotional center of their brain fires.
that doesn't do any of that computation
that the batter thinks is happening.
They get an emotional intuition about that pitch.
And the great hitters have a really good emotional intuition.
And I bet Steph Curry would explain what's happening,
but I bet there's something completely emotional
that's happening that allows them to do that in some weird way.
That's what we're talking about too,
because at a certain point,
anyone who uses their body and their voice as an instrument,
whether it's mimicking someone or singing.
I agree it's emotional.
I mean, if I'm imitating someone, honestly, the feeling I have is it's not really analytical.
It's joyful.
Yeah.
Right?
It's like an affinity or an empathy.
We both know.
We have to stop ourselves.
Oh.
Like, if I start talking like McConaughey, everyone will eventually leave the room if I don't stop.
Yeah, I could do it for six hours.
Except me because I'm so jealous of yours.
You're in the top three on that one.
Like, Damon is pretty great.
But the joy to sound like somebody you know, I don't know why that's so amusing to me.
Stay tuned for more armchair expert.
If you dare.
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On SNL, I did the Wes Anderson horror film.
We made a horror film called The Midnight Cotery of Sinister Intruders.
I do Owen.
Do you know, by the way, Seth Myers came up with that title?
I did text Wes and say, if you did a horror film, what would it be called?
And in less than two seconds, he wrote, the cruellers in the wispin.
Okay, now, back to what is inarguable, despite what
it feels like on the inside.
You have taken these pretty big breaks between projects.
You mean films in terms of doing?
Yeah, the chronological record.
The archaeological record would demonstrate that you've had these breaks.
And so when I see you in something, and I'll cut right to the invite, which we saw
together.
Loved it.
We loved it so much.
I immediately sent you a text.
You sent me a voice message.
There is a moment in the movie we won't say what, that we just looked at each other right
after and we're like.
Yeah, what are you going to do?
He's so good.
Yeah, we're like.
Yeah, was that the thing that made you...
When you said it was like watching Valentino ride a motorcycle.
Yeah.
I mean, there isn't a compliment higher than that.
No, no.
You.
No, yeah.
It should be universal.
I guess I would say it's like Mary Kaye Nashley's...
No, you'd have to do any of Olympic gymnast.
No, I want to make a fashion.
Oh, okay, okay, okay.
I'm going to work on it.
But every time I see it, the last time you're here, you were promoting the glass onion.
And every time you work, I have this exact same thoughts.
I go like, God, why doesn't he do this more?
Secondly, why this?
How does one guess what you're going to do?
I've never looked at making films or acting as a volume game.
For me, it's not selling widgets, and some of my great friends are huge honking movie stars,
and they work all the time.
It's just the people who maybe inspired me to be an actor or I model myself on.
I never looked at them as the ones who were in the volume game.
I want to do it when something that gets under my skin,
interests me a lot and that I think gives me a little bit of a tickle of a feeling of I'm not exactly
sure how one crushes that or just how I'm going to unlock that or if I'm even the right one for it.
But I want to say there's plenty of times I wish more such things showed up.
You're not trying not to work.
No, I'm not a resistor of a great thing when it comes.
But if you're like the layperson, you're looking on the,
outside. Birdman, I'm like, yeah, of course, that director calls with that crazy concept.
Clearly you're doing that. That makes sense. But then there's some other ones where I'm like,
I'm not sure. Was it script motivated? Was it director motivated? Was it cast motivated? Was it conceptually,
like you're saying, like I just got fucking obsessed with this notion and I just had to explore it.
If you had to rank those motivations, are they all equal? It can be very different, I guess.
Like a complete unknown is probably director motivated. Yeah, I love Jim Mangoldy. I got on with him.
But actually on that one, that was super interesting because I know Timothy.
You knew him before the movie?
Yeah, I knew him before the movie.
And I knew he was considering doing that.
And I had this feeling in my head that, like, this might be a bad idea.
It's high risk.
But it's also a huge personal overinvestment in Dylan.
Yeah, you moved to New York and he was the soundtrack.
I thought, you know, it was this kind of snotty.
Not snotty.
It's sacred.
It's untouchable.
You shouldn't try to, like, do that.
And when Jim brought it up to me, I went through a thing of thinking, this whole thing could be inadvisable.
It's great people.
Uh-huh.
But why would we attempt to be these particular people who are so iconic and everything and what he get out of it?
Happily, Jim, who is an incredibly unpretentious guy and was the right person to not treat it like a sacred cow.
But he also said to me, he was like, you know, I think you got to sometimes you got to really step back and get away from the mythology and look and realize there's a shit ton of people who don't know a thing about Bob Dylan and don't listen to his music.
And he said, and we're in a time when there's not a lot of artists leaning in the way those young people leaned in to what they saw going on around them that they were not happy about, that they didn't think was right.
They took what they had and they leaned in with everything they had.
And he said, just an examination of that makes it worth.
And I thought, I'm in.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's super true for your character.
Do we think that's true about Dylan?
My layperson's take on Bob Dylan is he's fucking cool.
And when you try to make him more than just that,
I think you're on a fool's errand.
I don't think he's as smart as everyone thinks
or had his overarching political agenda.
I think he's a very canny creator of mythology.
Yeah, yeah.
But by the way, unapologetically.
And admittedly.
And Joan Baez is famous for saying
he was the most apolitical person that I've ever known.
The fact that he channeled what he saw to me,
Jim was right that the collision
of a certain group of artists with the times they were living in
was a really interesting thing to look at.
Absolutely.
And then I went, okay, great.
You have the right North Star.
For me, then it flipped all the way over into joy
because I got to marinate in things that I love.
And that meant a lot to me.
And I kind of almost like had to give myself permission.
He had to geek out.
The invite, which I don't want to be hyperbolic,
but I will say it was one of the most pleasurable
and creatively invigorating experiences.
That you've ever had.
I put it right with working with Miloche Foreman,
working with Spike Lee,
who I revered and works in a very unique way,
working with Inuriduon Birdman.
The way that Olivia Wilde ran the process on this film,
I'm always hesitant to unpack a thing before people see it.
We should give full credit.
There's a Spanish film.
called Sentimental.
The people upstairs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fentimental in Spanish and then the people upstairs.
It was written by this guy named Seske, who was a playwright and directed this film.
And I saw it a number of years ago.
Sean and I watched it.
It put me on the floor.
Like, I thought it was absolutely brilliant.
Same premise.
A couple from upstairs comes down to have cocktails with the couple downstairs and all kinds of things ensue, right?
Yeah.
The actors were hysterical and brilliant.
And I immediately thought to myself, I would love to remake this.
Yeah.
And I thought to myself, I'm going to call Seth or Karel, and I'm going to be the guy upstairs, and I'm going to direct it, and I'm not even going to change much.
And I thought to myself, we could shoot this in 15 days.
And I went and tried to get the rights, and they had been picked up by someone already.
Oh, wow.
And I called that producer, and I said, here's to your point.
Like, hey, I would throw my hat in the ring to direct it and be in it.
And he said, I think I'm going to go another way.
Oh, wow.
Like, literally, like, went off to some other directors who worked on it for a bit, tried to put it together with a cast.
and this one did not go by me.
For a couple years, I went,
I was like the girl that got away.
I really wanted to do that one.
So then how did Olivia become attached to direct it?
Through whatever weird flow of things,
I ended up getting a text from Seth.
My wife produced a lot of Seth's movies,
and I've known Seth forever.
You're in Sausage Party?
I've done Sausage Party with him,
and he said, do you know about the invite?
I didn't know the title.
I was like, no.
And he said, Olivia Wilde.
is going to do it. Should we do this?
And I was like, wait, we're not talking about
the same. The people upstairs.
Wow. And I talked to Olivia and she goes,
would you really do this? And I was like,
I've been wanting to do this for a couple years.
Serendipity.
I did get this feeling of like, I'll be damned.
The currents of the stream brought it back around.
And I got to do it. I loved Olivia's two films.
Yeah.
I love Book Smart. I love Don't worry, darling.
Just great science fiction.
Thank you, darling.
That's what Dax kept.
calling it thank you darling to olivia oh sorry i kept fucking up the title i'm bona fide cheerleader for her i
saw books martin i was like this is a fucking great movie sharp but also this is a genre of movies
that i don't want to say it's easy to make good but there's something inherently enjoyable about
a coming of age movie but then i saw um don't worry don't worry darling and i was like this is a big
undertaking. The production design
on that movie? It's insane.
And the story they're telling how abstract is and will that
work, they just disappear. Like, there's just a lot of shit.
But then it turns out it's real science fiction.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, which way I love.
I just was like, wow, she's
fucking awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really, really, really good.
Now, what's interesting is
none of the three are the same.
They're also uniquely
their own thing. I will say
I watched it with Seth,
it's on dance, and he turned to me and goes,
I don't know if I'm going to be in a better movie than
that really I had this feeling I watched it.
I knew Mike Nichols, one of our greatest film directors.
He was one of those people who was a mentor to many young people in New York, if you were a
New Yorker.
And so funny, so dry, so brilliant, such a great storyteller, but also great with advice.
And for people don't know, he directed, well, first he was in his comedy duo that was
impossible and groundbreaking.
Yeah.
And then he became a director of theater.
And everything he touched turned to goal.
And then he went into cinema and he did Virginia Wolf first out of the gates.
And that was fucking brilliant.
Virginia Woolf.
Second movie, The Graduate.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Third movie, Carnal Knowledge.
Is impossibly talented.
Also, smoking crack during lots of it.
Addicted to calcium and fucking up his finances.
Yeah, that was later.
Married a Dian, sorry.
I mean, this dude was juggling a lot of shit.
Fucking LOP shit came over on a ship at eight years old with his little brother.
There's a biography on him.
Yeah, incredible biography.
Have you read it?
Yes.
Mark Harris is right?
I wouldn't know.
Yeah, I think so.
Anyways, this dude's a legend.
So the fact that you knew him is kind of wild.
I watched the film and thought either Mike Nichols came back from the grave and channeled himself through Olivia or he's just smiling somewhere because I really thought she's done something with this film that was what I loved about, which is like hit the high and the low.
It's as funny as you could want a movie to be, but then it really gets down into the real shit.
I'm going to add an element.
There's like a good deal of sexuality in the film with a lot of confidence and not shying away from some things.
So, like, the moment, Monica will tell you, I embarrassed her so much.
Oh, it was so embarrassing.
Yeah, we're in a screening at the Soho House with, like, a bunch of journalists.
Some people probably know who we are.
When Penelope invites him into the room, I, without my permission, let out this crazy noise.
Like, guttural.
I go like, oh, yeah.
Like, I was like, yes, let's fucking go to that room forever.
That moment's not necessarily easy to go get on.
film.
No.
That's a moment, dude, where like, I can't help but go yes out loud, please.
Well, Penelope, I mean, it might be easy anytime she invites anyone.
I mean, she makes it easy.
Yes, yes.
But it's constructed in a way and it's the right shot.
And Seth's reaction.
I mean, all of it.
You're just like, oh, fuck.
Like, like, it works.
You know, it's just like a powerful moment.
So that's in the mix, too.
Oh, yeah.
When we made Birdman, I had moments where I was watching Alejandro and.
and Chivo Lubetsky, the great cinematographer,
who had known each other since college.
They went to college together.
And there was times that they were working out
those long shots,
and sometimes Alejandro would have his hands on Chivo's shoulders
and his face by his ear.
They would move together with him whispering,
and they would say funny things to each other
and be laughing.
And I thought, these guys are in the zone.
There's soulmates, they're having fun,
but they're in a flow state.
And sometimes you're watching someone else in a flow state.
Yeah.
I remember you telling me.
They would link arms and walk with each other around the set sometimes for our work.
Yeah, it was beautiful.
I felt Olivia Wilde was in a kind of a flow state making this because it brought together for her,
not only everything she loves and is most interested in,
but that played to a lot of what I even think she is an actress and as a human being
hasn't even necessarily gotten to fully express.
It's hard to overstate.
You know well, I do too.
the mind you're in directing
and the state you have to be enacting
are in direct opposition to each other.
And she gives this performance in the film
that's worthy of Jenna Rollins or Diane Keaton
at their very, very best,
full of anxiety and longing
and physical comedy and anger.
There's so much going on in it.
And yet she directed us,
she directed this compositionally beautiful film
that's all in one apartment
in and never gets dull.
She's guiding us collectively on how to find this thing on the fly and even saying things
to us like, we're going to stitch the parachute on the way down, but it's going to open.
And by that, I mean, she not only encouraged, but actually kind of asked of us that we
create our own characters.
In many dimensions, Penelope's character wasn't Spanish.
Penelope brought in her interest in menopause and hormones and the Esther Perel of it all.
Yeah.
Brings that all in and creates this character, Pina, that is so striking and so dynamic and forceful and aspirational.
And Olivia said to me, like my character's name is literally specific to a friend of mine, his story.
There's a lot of things that my friend Julian Sands, the actor who died a few years ago, the stuff about the rugs and the carpets.
Those were things he said to me when he walked into my apartment one time.
And it wasn't just that Olivia didn't tighten up.
It was that she did something I've never done,
which is she shot the film in page order, right?
And basically said,
I don't think we're going to end up in the same place that's on the page.
I think we're going to end up in a deeper place.
But we're not going to know what it is or even how we're going to get there
until we march through these beats.
But if we do them in order, each one will feed into the next.
and we will keep discovering
how much this can bear as we go.
Now, that all sounds super creatively sexy,
but when you're making a film
and hundreds of people are standing around
and you're saying as a director,
we're going to kind of make this up as we go,
and I mean really make it up as we go,
to stay in a state of not just equanimity,
but one in which you're relishing it so much
that you're giving that performance
while allowing for that much uncertainty,
it is like right up there with the most impressive things
that I've seen a director do.
I will throw down and say,
in 30 years making films,
I haven't experienced a director investing trust in the cast
at this level ever.
Yes, to me, the ultimate signal of her competence
is that takes so much confidence
to let everyone,
be so collaborative.
As beautiful as that sounds on the outside,
like, yeah, be great if every,
no, it's not great if every actor has an opinion.
They don't have an understanding
of the global story that's being told.
It's not just good to let actor,
that's why we have writers and why we have directors.
So to trust and to encourage that
and not have any fear that I'm going to lose complete control,
because ultimately it does have to be the director's vision.
The fact that she was able to stay confident
and not rattled and that encouraging to me is like,
It's almost impossible.
No, almost impossible.
I agree.
And she won for it.
It all works.
You can only imagine the freak out that was going on in the margin.
I can't imagine if I was paying for the movie.
Yeah, exactly.
Especially when Seth and Olivia, in particular,
they became convinced that the end of the film should drop into a frequency that was not entirely light.
The decision to actually let it go there on Olivia's part,
but then on the fly to figure out the man.
mechanisms of how do you get out of a lot of hijinks and a lot of laughter and a lot of everything
and over into a place where this film goes is mechanistically actually tricky.
And one of the more amazing things the directors ever asked of me, but trusted me in.
She basically said, I sort of think that maybe something between you and Seth has to uncork.
I kind of think, we need a hinge.
Let me brag for you.
So the movie is great beginning to 10.
It's so entertaining.
It's so funny.
And it is touching on anyone who's been in a long-term relationship,
you're going to recognize everything, right?
It's just like your partner becomes the explanation for everything you don't like about living virtually.
If there's a single scene that makes the whole movie work, it is your turn.
You've presented as this guy.
We don't really know you.
You just seem really confident and open-minded.
And then to find out where that really came from,
was a real moment that had the ability to anchor the entire movie.
You're waiting for a big turn or, as you say, on corking or something,
and it's definitely that monologue.
That thing ends and you're like, whoa, I'm kind of fucked up over that.
And she told us that you did not share it with her beforehand to get a real reaction.
And very generously had them film their side first.
Or multiple cameras or something?
Well, Seth and her.
Oh, Seth movie.
Yeah.
Yeah. She was puzzling over how do we get through this gateway. I can't remember exactly what the conversations were that led to it, but I'll always do what we all learned to do in acting classes. And I'll always write out for myself something that I think is the secret, whether it's in the movie or not. I'll always write out my own deeper idea of someone's backstory. Most of the times that doesn't make it into anything.
Interestingly, like when you talk about Complete Unknown,
I had found this thing that Pete Seeger wrote
about believing that the world is like a teaspoon brigade.
And when we got to this final scene with him and Dylan in the end,
and Jim wasn't happy with it.
I said, Jim, I found this thing.
I've been carrying this thing like my mantra,
and he goes, that's the scene.
So that's in the film.
Sometimes that happens.
In this case, I said to Olivia, you know,
I have this idea about what happened with him.
She goes, is it good?
Will it get us there?
and I said, I think it is.
And I remember I think I said to her at one point,
I was like, I can say this that if I say it to myself,
I'm going to lose it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I can't get through it myself without being moved by it, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And she was like, don't tell me what it is.
And she set up on her and Seth
so that she could film them hearing it for the first time.
In the movie, her reaction is her hearing it for the first time,
which is the boss.
The lawseous thing that I've ever had a director do emotionally on a film.
She literally said, I want to film myself hearing it for the first time.
I'll be the test strip.
I can't really come up with a way in which a director could give me more trust, respect, ever.
But she was so smart to do it.
She cast you, Seth, people who aren't only great actors, but great story tell directors.
People who do know that you need a payoff at the end, that it's not just like, let's just take care of fun.
You know you're at the end of the second act.
I don't know that a lot of actors know they're at the end of this.
And they're like, something happened.
I want to say it's too, like, I don't want to ruin it or get in people's heads.
They're watching it.
But so much then uncorked, Seth's reaction, Seth, who had not heard it either,
Seth, I think very much respects me and we've done many things together and he loves me and everything.
I know for sure that when I first did it, Seth thought it's too long and too serious.
By the way, that's exactly what his character was.
His reaction, that unbelievably rude thing that he says to me,
he made up on the spot.
I think it was one of the funniest improvisation.
Well, it's so real.
When you're a dude and another dude just got attention from the ladies from being vulnerable,
you're like, fuck this dude.
But it's so magnificently rude that I had to turn around because it put me on the floor.
It's a special moment.
but I think there is a shot of me bursting out laughing
because you just can't believe anybody would be that big a tool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it was so good that it pinballed into Penelope.
Her reaction to his reaction
became a thing that leads to a fight between us.
And none of this was anything we had planned.
None of it.
And I think that the fact that Olivia just sat there
letting these things cascade off of each other
was so unprecedented to me.
It's theater rehearsal.
And we had all sat, the four of us,
plus with Will McCormick and Rashida Jones,
who were great writers and great interpolators of,
we have the Spanish film, they have the four of us,
and we're quezonarting this all together.
And I honestly think everybody else was more anxious
about the uncertainties than Olivia,
which is a bizarre inversion.
Not really, you want to look at your leader and go,
oh, they know exactly what they want,
that feels safer.
But if they're like,
I'm open to be surprised.
Yes, but when you've been doing it as long as you've been doing it,
and you know that there's consequence to something you're supposed to get done
in a certain number of days,
and there's people standing around with a certain measure of,
do these guys know what they're doing?
To operate as a director,
to say to everybody involved,
this parachute is going to open.
It's powerful.
It's amazing.
All my respect to her.
And then in the end,
she just edited and put together this.
That's so good.
It's so fucking.
So good.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Tell me about your friends with Esther Perel, yeah.
You and Sean, I know Sean has been, like, on vacation with her.
I was talking at a conference that Esther was talking at as well, and there was, like, social time.
And do you know what's the funniest thing is, I'm sure, like, all of us, even as I was sort of starstruck and thrilled and turned on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She's so sexy.
She is such a force.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so vibrant and alive.
and everything she says about, you know, what is erotic.
That's Esther, you know.
But it's the funniest thing to both be thrilled to be meeting and talking to someone
and to have this voice in your head that goes,
if we proceed down this path, she can't be my therapist.
Like I was like, I'm sacrificing the chance to have her as a therapist.
Well, no, you can do one of your characters and you could call into mating and captivity.
Yeah, as one of your characters.
You've had her on here.
Oh, I adore her.
She's just so provocative.
Yes.
Because she's honest.
I was at a thing where she was speaking and it was some tech thing and too many people
were talking about AI and all these things.
And Astaire gets up and goes, all this talk about AI and no one's talking about the AI that
matters in tech, which is artificial intimacy.
And she just goes on this tear.
I'm a super fan of hers.
And honestly, you know what's funny is like there comes a point.
I think Penelope said this and I really agree with her.
It's kind of what you were getting at.
It's not that you're not trying to prove anything anymore,
but at a certain point in this kind of work,
I find a lot of satisfaction not only in watching other people,
like watching Olivia be in flow state, is so great.
You're like, I'm here to serve, whatever you need.
But this other thing happens too, which Penelope, I think, affected,
which is you get to take the world and what you've taken out of it,
and you get to pull it into the work and kind of communicate it in another way.
There are people who don't know who Mary Claire Haver is.
There are people who don't know who Esther is.
Like, if you see The Invite and you look at Penelope's performance,
she pulled a bunch of shit together and put it out.
Oh, it's very...
In this way, and I think that's really cool.
It's just occurring to me now.
I didn't have this feeling when I left,
but I'm now having this thought,
which is the only thing the movie maybe didn't do,
and I want to know what the conversations were like
among the four of you.
So your neighbors from upstairs, Penelope,
and you, sorry, you're the neighbor.
They're in this very progressive sexual arrangement.
They go to orgies.
They're out there.
They're communicating about it.
What kind of conversations were going on about that?
About open relationships.
Yeah, open relationships.
Like, I guess I was curious if the position at all or if it's even talked about was like,
do the neighbors upstairs have a viable thing?
Do we buy that it's going to work out?
What do we think about, though?
Was this being discussed?
You also have forecast members with different, like,
assessment with the same girl his entire life.
I think it was Olivia told us something about it.
He was like, what do you mean?
Someone doesn't have sex every week or something that was revealing that they are
fucking.
No, I think at the time either Olivia or Rashida turned in was like, you're the only
person here without children.
Well, there's that.
Yeah, yeah.
And then there's just nature.
Well, what they were fighting too, I think he said something like, who would be.
Who would ever speak this way?
Exactly.
Who would ever be in a relationship like this?
I think people are like, yeah, a lot of us.
A 90% of relationship.
Yeah.
But did you guys discuss that much or no?
You just take it at face value.
I think one of the things that was discussed and then, and I think especially by Penelope,
very successfully laced very subtly through is how new it is that they've only been together
for a year.
And you can see how thrilled he is about it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You can see in her very subtle commentary that, like, she knows that it's, you know,
easy because it's early. She's not naive. And I think it's funny when you do this kind of stuff
because the rehearsal such as it was was just six people sitting around a table. The four of us
and Will and Rashida. And probably going, how much am I going to reveal about my own relationship
by the way, Olivia, again, you know, like the general who says, I'll never ask of anyone
something I won't do myself. She just like plowed in. She was just in the bubble with the six of us.
Let's be real.
Because if we can be real here and all of us throw it against the board together,
let's look at what ends up on the board and we go, ooh, that should be in there.
But then when you go home that night to Shana, she's like, I need you to be done with this movie.
Like, all you're doing is thinking about.
You're talking about Esther.
Honestly, Shana was the one who said when we saw the first Spanish film, she was like,
you have to do that and you're going to do that.
She's just the coolest.
She was going to happen.
She cast Seth in his first film.
film. Literally, and I think I love doing a film with Seth. He's so good. There's such a reputation
around Seth because of Houseplant and he smokes weed and ha-ha. Seth probably has the most incredible
work ethic of anybody I know. He works so hard. Well, it's the writing. I mean, he does the
guy. I mean, if something's not working, the computer comes up and he sits down and he's quiet.
He's written thousands of things. He works and works and works. Yes, he's the best improviser imaginable
and he'll make up a line like,
next time you're in there,
check the rings on the older partner.
It's just stuff that puts you on the floor.
But you also realize that actually
there's a white piece of paper
sitting over on the side
that's full of his brainstorming
and his lines and what feels like improvisation
often is, but is often the mind of a pro at work.
Are you writing in this moment,
are you writing 30 seconds before?
Or you writing eight seconds before?
Yeah.
But that guy is an absolute machine.
Well, no, the studio just for, he's also like a xenophile.
He's like an encyclopedic film nerd on top of everything else.
In this, for me, and I think Shawna watching it, it was like the studio wasn't enough if you ever needed more proof.
He is such a mature, real, deep, wounded human being in this film.
There's pain, there's sourness, there's anger not inflected by comedy.
I think of things like Kramer v. Kramer or Richard Dreyfuss and the Goodbye Girl.
I loved watching him work in his gear.
I loved.
Oh, my boys all grown up?
Yeah, yeah, I loved it.
He's a mogul.
He's a fucking literal mogul.
I do think there's some colors and some depth.
Olivia got him to go some places.
Don't you think that you should see this movie with another couple?
Like, if you're in a relationship, I feel like this is a double date.
You should go with another couple.
And then you should go after one.
Go straight to the red roof.
have a real discussion,
a light dinner.
Stay tuned for more
armchair expert
if you dare.
Do you see the Swedish film
Force Majure?
Oh yeah, but the guy doesn't go up.
I mean, one of the most provocative
I've never had better conversations
with other couples than after that film.
Yeah, for people don't know,
an avalanche is coming and he gets up
and pushes his own family out of the way and runs.
He grabs his cell phone.
He doesn't run.
And then everyone's fine.
The avalanches fine.
And she just can't see him the same afterwards.
Yeah, everyone survives.
Then he has to just be with his family.
Yeah, he now thinks he's a coward.
I remember a lunch of a couple of couples after we saw that film.
And we went around the table.
And literally, one lady said, I thought the whole thing was a little bit like,
what's the big deal?
Like, would it really pinwheel like this?
And we were all like, wait, so if this happened, she'd be like, I'd roll my eyes.
It came around to me and I was like, if I did that,
I would just keep running.
I would never return to the table.
Because there would be no recovery.
There would be no recovery.
Yeah.
And it strikes our deepest fear that maybe we will be that way in the situation.
Because you don't know until the avalanche comes.
You think you know.
It's like Mike Tyson.
You have a game plan.
You wouldn't.
I don't know.
You grab your phone.
I can stop the avalanche.
I've been in a few avalanche situations.
So I've found out.
But yes, we all think will be one way.
Dax is just lucky that all three of the girls in his family can fit inside him.
They would survive in the frozen concave shell of his enormity.
Now, this goes back to my original thing.
The thing I left out about my overarching theories on you,
I was thinking maybe meeting Richard Gere on that first movie
and having him, and I don't know if he was or not,
I know you have his apartment, so I'm imagining you guys were close.
But if he was a mentor at all, he too was a guy who had a real healthy grasp on the career.
Was he a mentorie guy to you or no?
Richard was great to me.
He was kind.
He was supportive.
He levitated me.
I still see him and we have enormous affection for each other just because of that experience.
Yeah.
And I ended up living in a place that he built.
And kept it the same.
Yeah, there's some weird.
We have something.
Connection.
We have commonalities and connections and we have this often distant,
but some spool of thread, a memory I love with him was that I was so totally unsure
whether that was a fluke and was going to be the last gig I ever did while we were doing it,
that back in those days, I think you got either $50 or $75 a day per diem,
and I was taking that and putting it in an envelope
and literally keeping it under the mattress at my crappy little efficiency apartment that I had
near the sunset marquee.
And at some point, Richard's this phenomenal guitar player,
And every day in his trailer, he had a different amazing guitar,
and I love guitars, and I was playing.
He had a ridiculous guitar collection, I think.
It was later sold at Sotheby's for millions and millions of dollars.
Wow.
Probably one of the biggest private guitar collections in the world at the time.
And he said, what do you got?
I said, I don't have anything, you know.
And he was like, what?
We're going guitar shopping.
He took me this place called Voltage guitars off sunset,
and I found this 1969 Martin D-35 from the year I was born,
and it worked.
And I looked at it, and I always remember it was 1,300.
$195.
And that was even considerable to me.
At the time, and Richard, he was like, I like that.
He goes, that's the one.
And I was like, oh, man, I can't do that.
And he goes, are you taking your per diem and keeping it in an envelope?
And I said, yeah.
And he goes, I'm going to buy this.
You're going to bring me that envelope of cash tomorrow and give it to me because you only live
once.
And he was like, and you're going to get this guitar.
And it sounds silly.
It sounds materialistic and everything.
It was a nice thing.
It was like him saying like, A,
You're going to be fine.
Trust yourself.
He said something to me like, this won't be your last gig.
Also, he was like, what are you saving it for?
Rent money?
Get this thing.
There's going to be a lot of joy in it.
It's my favorite guitar I've ever bought still.
And I look at it and I'm like, he like launched me into something.
Yeah.
I can't.
No, I can.
He said that phase of your life is over.
Yeah.
Walk into your new phase and walk with your shoulders back.
Yeah, I love that.
Me too.
This new phase has abundance.
Okay, my last question.
This started with interviewing.
in Gabor Mante. I was walking him out. He's an expert on ADHD. I'm walking to Numa's car.
And he said, have you ever been tested for ADHD? And I just was like, well, that's a
interesting question for an ADHD expert to ask. Did he say what qualities in you?
He didn't. He just asked, have you been diagnosed with ADHD? And I said, no, I never happened.
You weren't like a Ritalin kid. You didn't. I wasn't on Ritalin. No. But then I have since been
inundated with the ADHD algorithm on Instagram.
And we've now had a couple ADHD experts on.
And I have not been formally diagnosed, but I am certain he was dead right to ask that question.
And so I have really kind of embraced it.
I kind of dig it.
I like thinking about the deficits, things I need to work on that are standard for ADHD.
And then like these super gifts I get from it, like improvving quickly and all that kind of stuff.
And so, yeah, the dyslexia of the ADHD.
It occurred to me, do you think you're neurodivergent at all?
Not in a claimable, nameable way.
This is a pet peeve.
I may not be right about this,
but I feel like Silicon Valley has done a lot of cool things
and a lot of really negative things to our society.
One of the ones that I find kind of aggravating
is what I would call the romanticization of the idea of being on the spectrum.
You get all these people who are just basically assholes
wanting to credit that to them being on the spectrum.
It's like you're not on the spectrum.
shut up, stop it.
Don't casually try to claim as a superpower, a thing that for a lot of people is a real thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm on your side about this.
I expressed that opinion a lot.
You did, yeah, yeah.
Also, I think there's a problem with just pathologizing.
I'll get to the end road, which is like, to me, they're not actually pathologies.
They are words we invented like 25 years ago, and we added them to the DSA.
I mean, we're acting like it means bipedal.
Like, it's a real thing we could measure and observe.
I don't think it's that.
I think we're getting more and more good at recognizing patterns of behavior in humans.
Yeah.
And it doesn't have to be a pathology or an ism or some kind of disease,
but I do think it's true that there are a lot of different patterns of human behavior.
And when people express these certain patterns,
we can kind of predict some of the pitfalls ahead for them
and predict probably some of the things that will come easier than.
And it's like, that's all okay to just go like, I trend towards this.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And it's not, I don't need treatment.
I'm not making an excuse for anything.
It's just like, oh, I think I'm in this pattern of people.
I tend to agree.
That's how I would describe myself.
I wouldn't even go near calling myself neurodivergent at all,
watching something like Love on the Spectrum,
the most beautiful, wonderful show.
Yeah.
I love it.
I love the celebration of it.
I love it while both observing people with real divergence,
real conditions, whatever, just saying the universality of love, of relationships.
Yeah.
It's just so great.
When I hear someone like the one guy named Dylan,
who he'll say things and he just says per se a lot at the end.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
For the next week, my family was like, shut up.
Stop saying per se.
It was funny the first five times.
You have the mimic thing, but you also have some savant-like qualities.
I watched you recite the Walt Whitman poem on Kobe.
Yes.
Which was incredible.
Oh, thanks.
Very low percentage of the population can do something like that.
That's a funny observation.
I'll depersonalize it really quick.
I'm friends with Phineas now.
Do you know Phineas?
Billy Ish's brother.
Yeah.
He's one of the most special guys in the world.
You would fall in love with him.
He's 28.
And I'm like, how is this guy not 51?
He's definitely 51, maybe 58.
He's definitely wiser than me.
He's smarter.
I'll bring up a thing and he'll just go like, oh yeah, that was October 20th.
And I go, uh-huh.
And you know people can't do that, right?
People don't know what date you did mundane things on.
We just had Jack McBrayer on.
Oh, my God.
He can name the dates of anything that happened.
He's like, oh, yeah, March 12th.
Again, not to pathologize it, but I saw on 60 minutes that people with super memory are also really high trending for OCD, and they all had really organized closets.
So I say to Jack McBrillard, he's displaying this impossible memory.
And I said, what's your closet look like?
And he goes, oh, my God, you would love it.
It's a dream.
Everything's color-coordinated, right?
It's just like, yeah, that's a pattern of human behavior.
That's fascinating.
You had someone talking about obsessive-compulsive disorder and how poorly people understand what it really even means.
I thought that was great because I think OCD is another thing.
lots of people just like to say it.
I'm a neat freak, yeah.
I'm a neat freak, yeah, et cetera.
I think there is an interesting connection
between hyper retentive memory,
which I definitely have.
But by the way, so does my dad.
I don't want to credit it as something.
I have a very strong and precise memory
to the point where I can say most of the lines
of the movies I've been in.
Wow.
And if I watch a film with a lot of folks,
If there's a film I loved and I've watched it with focus, I have a lot of it locked in.
The thing I've been interested in, to your point, never tested for in any way is I know for sure with me.
A photographic memory is idetic.
I think it's called being idetic.
With me, it's completely auditory.
If I hear something with focus, music or words, I have it or I pretty close to have it.
When I learn lines, I learn them by saying them out loud.
Once I've said them out loud, I've pretty much got it.
There's an interesting connection for me between the auditory and the memory retention.
Now, I would imagine that could create tension in relationships.
I have it to a lesser degree than you, but I have...
Because my memory of things is right.
Exactly.
I don't have it to the degree to which you have it, but I also have a very high degree as well.
You're arguing with your wife and you're like, yeah, we weren't at the grocery.
It's kind of maddening.
And then you have to really zoom back and go like, oh, right, we're not arguing about whether
or not it was at the grocery store or what was this sentence.
We're talking about an emotion she has that I have the ability to potentially alleviate
or help.
But I have to step over a lot of, no, we weren't even in Michigan when that, you know.
Well, she has no memory.
Kristen has zero.
Here's the spectrum.
It's like she's on the far left.
I'm like two thirds and you're at the far right.
Shawna, if you're listening, you know what's great about that is that Kristen acknowledges
that she has.
She does.
She does. She does. She does.
No, I'm kidding.
But if you had to learn, I've had to learn, oh, right, that's not what's important right now when we're talking.
The impulse to correct because your brain says that's asynchronous with what I know to be my memory of the truth.
But in the invite, the thing that Penelope says that was provoked by Seth's improvisation, right?
Uh-huh.
That just thing, which is Penelope and I have known each other a long time, and Penelope and Samaheik, and we all go way back.
And the thing where I correct her English, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Penelope and I had talked about in her life and relationships, and when she did, I was like, what if we put that in?
Like, you know what I mean?
We put that in.
I love the moment where I correct her and step into such deep.
A minefield, yeah.
The look on her face didn't your whole body go, oh, he's, you know.
done it now.
But back to the question you don't want to answer.
Have you had to learn to go, oh, that's not what's important right now?
I think that takes some practice.
Sure.
Oh, my God, yeah.
I mean, my father was a litigator.
My father was a U.S. attorney.
I grew up sitting in the back of courtrooms listening to my dad cross-examine and dissect people,
and I'm really good at it.
So someone who doesn't just think but does remember things perfectly?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Combined with the litigators thing is awful.
Yeah, Estera has definitely given me some tips.
How to function more peacefully in your life.
I think kids help teach you that really well.
For sure.
Yours and mine are moving into teen.
I do need to say this out a lot of we probably already have,
but it's probably one of the cutest things that's ever happened to us
is we either you invited us to lunch or we invite you to lunch at this vegan restaurant.
And we've both hidden our ultrasound photos in our menu.
Yeah.
That's impossible.
I know.
It's such a good story.
to each other.
They were the same due date.
Yeah, same due date.
That was an out-of-body experience.
And let's remind people that Shauna introduced you and Kristen.
Yes, right.
Set you guys up.
Yep.
So we felt invested in you guys.
Yeah.
You put the ultrasound in the menu and you said, you know, we really like this place.
And I think we're going to have this.
And you turned it around.
And we went, oh, that's funny.
We're ordering the same thing.
And we turned ours around.
I mean, this is an impossible moment.
I'm not even sure to happen.
You screamed.
I remember you going.
No, you were like, fucking getting me.
Yeah, it feels like the sim bro.
But then remember we looked at the do date,
and the due dates were the same?
Yeah.
That is so crazy.
We don't give that enough credit.
That was an otherworldly occurrence that happened.
I think so much so that you and I just wanted to go out and get a burger.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, we were like, let's get a burger out of this vegan restaurant.
We were like, let's get a burger in an ice cream.
We got children on the way.
Exactly.
When I think about things that like, I know you've talked about this a lot,
like your dad down to you, and I don't know if the cultural shift or psychological shift
or whatever, but I do feel this thing that's really been landing for me lately is the thing
you can do for a kid is actually just model for them what it looks like to be an adult who listens,
who asks a lot of questions, and has control of their own emotions.
It's not that there's no boundaries, it's not there anything, but that whole idea of just
modeling more than telling is a thousand.
Revolatory to me.
We grew up in a generation where it's like the parents were saying one thing, and you
observing them actively doing the opposite as they were telling you, and it just didn't mean
anything. Yeah, it's really wild, but it all circles back to some of what we're talking about,
about creativity, about a great process with Olivia. Penelope and Seth and me and Olivia have all
been doing this a pretty long time. And one of the things I think maybe allowed that to work
like that was getting to this place where you go, I'm going to make myself available.
I'm not going to come in with a predisposition, and I'm not.
not going to try to over control or direct with my determinations or my instincts or my
certainties the way this is going to go and that the lighter I hold it and the more available
I make myself to something someone else says or to okay that's not what I thought was coming
but what do I do with what came in a weird way the happier you are this is like aging right
I'm young and I read the fountainhead and I'm like, yeah, I want to be like Howard Rourke.
Just whatever opinion I have, I want to believe in it.
I don't care what anyone says and I'm going to execute.
And that was so appealing as a young man.
And now as an older man, I think I used to get horny for conviction.
And now I'm like so horny for humility.
Humility is like the most powerful, crazy thing.
It's not appealing when you're a young man.
But I think as you get older, it gets more and more appealing.
And like all you're saying about that process is you like you walk in with the humility.
that maybe someone else has a better grasp of this,
or maybe someone else has a different angle
that's also valid that might be more interesting.
Or even that none of you know
and that the collision is going to reveal
that the uncertainty is a state in which something interesting
and true might happen.
And that if it does and you make yourself available to it,
all these other things will rise up
that are better than your predispositions toward something.
It's all sounds corny, but what you're describing is youthful creativity is often a flex.
When you're trying to define yourself.
And maybe if you're lucky and you get to keep being creative,
you get to the place where it's more discovery than it is flex.
Yeah, you said something that's really beautiful and profound,
and it is that you were kind of asked about happiness.
I can't remember the specifics of the question,
but you're basically like,
I try not to actually think about or pursue happiness and more interested in just expansion.
I would replace happiness with expansion and I would replace sadness or unhappiness with constriction.
And I think those are great things to swap out.
When you're younger too, it's in some weird way you feel like if someone has a different idea,
it feels like you're not getting an A on your homework.
And you end up probably with more people who you leave each other feeling a little bruised instead of.
leaving each other feeling like you lifted each other higher.
Yeah, you both went somewhere you'd not been before.
It's nice to arrive in that place for sure.
Yeah, you don't have much of an ego.
I've noticed that over all the times we've had you,
especially for someone as talented and could walk around with like,
I have all the answers because you've proven to in a lot of spaces.
And you're doing all these other cool things like the barge.
You could, but you don't walk in with that air,
which is very impressive.
I will say. It doesn't appear you have much of an ego anyway.
It's hard not to have, and not just humility, but I mean, I just think the scale of what's taking
place in the world right now, the scale of the challenges, the scale of the assault of, you know,
the awareness and information about cataclysm and violence and brutality.
In every corner of...
I think we're in a very brutal age right now.
We're overwhelmed.
Sure, I can put you in your place.
Yeah, in me, it sounds really trite, but it's like, how can you have Gaza being live-streamed
and then get off on your achievements.
Yeah, self-important.
You know what I mean?
But also, you see the Gaza thing, and then you swipe up,
and then it's a guy jumping an old car over a river,
and then you're laughing, and then you go to the next page,
and it's like some heartfelt reunion with a soul.
Oh, my God.
I mean, the ride you're on is insane for your nervous system.
It's so schizophrenic.
I often rely on the things you send me about someone in a powerboat doing something stupid.
I'm curating that for you.
So that I can go to bed on that versus the rest of.
But keep them coming.
Well, Edward, this has been lovely.
The invite is fucking phenomenal.
I hope it takes the world by storm.
You guys are also good.
Again, I'll just repeat it.
It's Valentino on a motorcycle,
watching Edward do this monologue.
Date movie of the summer.
Yeah.
Could end in a lot of different ways.
So June 26th, everyone check out the invite.
I adore you.
Thank you.
I can't wait to do it again.
Love it.
Stay tuned for the fact check.
It's where the parties at.
Last banter for the summer.
Last banter. Uh-oh.
Careful, little girl.
I know you think you're out for school.
Listen, my arms, I woke up this morning and I was like, why am I sore?
Oh, yeah.
Did something happen in the night?
What happened?
I tried to lift you up yesterday.
Oh, my God, your arms were sore from that?
Yes.
Oh, no, that's not a great sign.
I know.
I know.
Wow.
I know.
What if that is your new workout routine?
You had to try to lift me up three times.
I mean, that's easy.
That only...
Three sets.
It only took a couple minutes.
Yeah, it was a quick workout to get the burn the next day.
It was.
I do not say this in a boo-hoo way.
No, we're not going to complain.
I'm not complaining.
I'm just going to say that we have been trucking through, but yesterday we finished.
And I was getting out of the hot tub, and I kept, like, my eye was getting blurry on
the right side. And I kept going like, why is my eye blurry on the right side? And I would wipe it.
I would wipe it. And then it would get like kind of better. And I'm like, I'm going to go upstairs
and look in the magnifying mirror. And so I went and looked in the magnifying mirror. And when I
pulled my eyelid down, Monica, there was a dye in there the size of like, what's the biggest kind of
pee? Is it a snow pee? Snap pea? Like an edamame pee? Yeah, edamame. P. Yeah. It was edamame.
I don't know how I wasn't feeling it, and it was just hemorrhaging.
Ooh.
It was nasty.
It was just.
Oosing?
Yeah, I know it's terrible to say.
Yeah, no one wants to hear about that in the summer.
No, it's terrible.
But I was like, oh, this is, well, that's a sign.
It's a Stein.
That's a Stein.
I'm just so curious why Sties are such a direct stress-related.
Not for me.
I've never had one.
You never have gotten on.
Do you get them Wobb?
No, not really.
you guys.
We don't get Styes.
My mom used to say, I remember when she's a kid, when I was a kid, she would have to get
her as Lance.
It would be like a big ordeal.
And she is famous for saying, if she just sees somebody with a stye, she'll get one.
Oh, that seems.
Curious.
Seems a little.
We don't call Laura a liar, but.
I'm not going to call anything.
But we must acknowledge.
She is much as.
She exaggerates.
Listen, speaking of Munchausen.
Okay.
I watched.
We weren't speaking to Munch Housins, but continue.
We were. I just said it.
You just go Munch Housins.
Speaking to Munch Housins.
No, I didn't.
I said she has it.
I was kidding.
Yeah.
Don't hurt me.
I watched that doc last night.
Oh, you did?
Yeah.
Okay.
What's it called Mother?
It's called maternal instinct or something.
That's a horrible title.
It's like a good name and a horrible name.
Guys, like, I hate to say watch it, but I think like watch it.
Even though it's disturbing.
It's so disturbing.
It's so disturbing.
It is.
You know what I liked about it?
It was short.
Of course.
I loved that about it.
Yeah, you know, that's the first criteria.
Yeah, yeah, the shorter, the better.
Are you excited?
Like, the moment I normally feel screwed, are you excited?
Like, you'll be watching a show.
It's a comedy.
So generally, the episodes are going to be like 30 minutes-ish.
And then you turn on the episode and you see it's like 19 or 20 minutes.
And you're like, I'm like, fuck you.
you can't give me an 18-minute episode.
Are you like, ooh, this is going to be a good one?
It's like three minutes too long.
Okay, 15 is ideal.
No, I...
Well, you must love short content on...
Maybe that's what's happening in Instagram.
No, no, it's not.
I like a full-size show or movie.
But if it's a 20-something-minute show, like nobody wants this has short episodes.
And I like that because then I can just keep going.
Okay, just a little speed-ball.
I can watch it all in one sitting, which I enjoy doing.
Yeah, which is...
I've been meaning to bring something.
thing up for a while all year.
Okay.
Not all year.
A couple months.
Okay.
Have you noticed I've been wearing this necklace a lot?
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
For the listener, it is a gold necklace.
It has like, they look like rice shapes.
They do.
They're diamond in an oval diamond.
Oh, diamond in a diamond shape.
Rice shape.
There's 11 of them.
This necklace was sent to me.
It is called an 1111 necklace.
Oh.
Oh, and someone gifted that to you because you love 11-11-11?
Yes, because I'm obsessed with 11-11, and it stands for 11-wishes.
So I don't really have to look out for 11-11 anymore because I already have it at all time.
So did you model out how many years left you have on planet Earth and try to figure out what your schedule for wishes will be?
If you have 11, let's say you have 60 years left, that would be one every six years.
No, I didn't do that.
Or if you had 66 years left.
I always have wishes.
Okay, so you're just not using them.
You're kind of stockpiling them, waiting for emergency.
No, it's like this whole thing represents abundant wishes.
Not 11?
Like, it's just, it's just like good luck.
Okay, okay, great.
You know, it's just good luck.
And the jeweler is called Devon Woodhill Jewelry.
Okay.
And I really love it.
It's very dainty, which I like dainty jewelry.
Uh-huh.
And you're just walking around with good luck.
Yeah, and have you felt like your luck is improved?
since you started wearing it?
Yeah.
Yeah, big time.
Yeah.
Yeah, a lot of great luck.
I still look at, I still just see 11-11 all the time.
It's so cool.
But now how do you feel since you don't need it anymore?
I still love it.
You still love it.
Okay, good.
And I feel like.
Because I wouldn't want this necklace to end an arrow.
It doesn't.
It just adds.
It didn't end.
It adds.
Okay, now if you had 11 wishes, what would be your approach?
My strategy?
Yeah.
Because I might think, okay, I have 50 years.
left.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
So I get to use one every nine years or whatever it would be.
Yeah.
But I'm a hoarder by nature.
Right.
Like, you know, you get points when you use your American Express.
Yeah.
I've never spent a single one of the points.
It drives everyone in my life crazy.
Yeah.
And I'm just like, yeah, if I have no other money ever, I'll at least have some of those
points I can cash in.
That's such a ding, ding, ding.
I, for the first time, used points.
You did for your flights?
Actually, not American Express.
I used Delta miles.
Okay.
And was it, did you get a free ticket out of it?
Yeah.
I've had underwhelming experiences.
Not Delta specifically, but when I've tried to cash in airline points.
I remember back in the day when I traveled nonstop for car shows, and I had a lot of points.
And they told you like, oh, yeah, 20,000 points, you get a flight.
Well, every single time I ever tried to book a flight was like, oh, it's blackout.
So it's really 40,000 or it's 60,000.
And a couple times I use them, it was like, it was 5X of what they tell you it's going to be.
It's a lot of points.
It's a lot of money.
Yeah.
So it saved me a lot of money.
So you got, you did points plus add pay some?
I think I did.
Okay.
I don't know.
No, Julie helped me.
Okay.
I don't know, Julie is Max's mom.
Shout out Max's mom.
Julie, she does listen to this show often.
Is she a travel agent?
She is.
Oh, wow, and you're using a travel agent?
Well, she helps me sometimes, and it's really nice because, like, I don't know how to do any of this.
I don't know how to use points.
That's part of why I don't use them, right?
Yeah, I think that's what they're counting on.
Yeah, exactly.
And I'm like, nope, I mean, Julie knows.
Do you imagine those first, so they bring in an expert certainly, and then they pitch the board or whatever the higher-ups are, and they go, okay, here's what we're here to pitch.
We'd like to start this points program.
Yeah.
And every 20,000 points, people get a free plane ticket.
And then the people there go like, well, shit, if you divide that up, we're going to be given around.
And they go, well, here's the good news.
21% of these people will hoard them and die with the points.
That's right.
The Dach Shepherd types.
I think it's more than 21.
Probably.
I'm just, this is the number.
Sure.
And then they go, and then 36% of people will never be able to figure out how to use the points.
Oh, the Monica.
So now we're down to, like, you know this was a part of their initial pitch.
So, like, what we've modeled out is really only about 11% of people will be actually cashing these in.
Yes.
So that's why it's this.
But, yeah, but they need to watch out for, like, the, so we've discussed the Dax Shepherd types, the Monica Padman types.
But then there's also the Elizabeth Lame types.
She's totally hacked points.
She's like, she knows how to do it.
It's wild.
She is like, she pays zero dollars.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
Kristen, too.
It's like you convert these points into those points.
And then on this month, you convert those points of these points.
And there's a, yeah.
So, yeah, there's some people have mastered it.
I mean, I don't even know.
I cancel flights sometimes.
And they don't refund the money.
They give me a credit.
And I don't know how to ever read.
They don't give you like, here's a number to type in that will activate your credit.
It's just like you have a credit.
Good luck figuring out how to cash it.
No, if you go to your app, it's there.
My app.
You have an app for all your airlines?
Just Delta.
Delta is my main.
Yeah, because of Delta one.
But those expire too.
Because of Delta, your daughter.
They expire one?
Credits usually expire within like a year or two.
Yeah, it's like a year or two years or something.
Your airline points expire are now?
No, no, no.
Your credits from a canceled flight.
Oh, yeah, which I don't know how to use.
That's why you need to go get your Delta app.
Put your thingy in, your number.
And it'll, it's actually very easy to use on that.
You can just like say like pay with credit.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, it's cool.
I have done that.
Great.
I mean, your daughter's named after the dang airline.
And every time she flies in, I'm waiting to see because 100% of the times we fly when we check in and they read the things, they always comment on that it's the same name as the airline.
Yeah.
And she has liked that a lot as a kid. It's exciting. It's more attention.
Of course.
But she's getting older. And I know it won't be fun.
Like when she's 24 and they're like, oh, you're flying.
And then she'll be like, yeah, man, I've heard this every time I've flown since I was.
So.
Do you think she's going to start going by D.D.?
Or what if she just refused to fly Delta so they can't?
But then what if she was checking in at American Airlines?
They're like, wouldn't you be more comfortable on Delta?
And she's like, fuck, man, okay, I'm going to go back to Delta.
Oh, shit.
There's a lot.
There's a lot to think about.
But I am waiting.
It hasn't happened, thank God.
But I know it's coming where it'll change from excitement for the attention to annoyed.
Yeah.
And I'm just clocking that.
And who knows?
We have some flights coming up.
This could be the time.
Let me know.
Okay.
But you won't be able to let me know.
We got to, you have to write it down and save it for later.
Because as a reminder, we don't have back checks for the next little bit, guys.
Get excited.
It's rerun time.
It's block party summer.
Do you remember block party summer?
No, tell me about it.
It was on Nickelodeon.
Okay.
I used to, when I stayed with my grandparents in Savannah, there was block party summer on Nickelodeon.
So Mondays was bewitched.
And then it would be all night.
The Witch Marathon.
Then it was I Dream of Jeannie and it was Mary Tyler Moore show.
And I watched all of it and I loved it.
Do you wish you were a kid again?
You were just watching the children play in the backyard last week and you had great envy of the carefree nature of their play.
And then this story and just the way.
There's a look on your face when you talk about being a little kid.
I'm a nostalgic gal.
I know.
But would you like to be a little kid again?
I don't think so.
Because there are a lot of things I like a lot about being an adult.
I don't want to give those up.
Right.
And it's one or the other.
You don't get both.
Well, we, you just told me that someone, some human, the first human is trying the epigenome.
Anti-aging.
Anti-aging treatment.
Protocol.
Protocol.
Yeah.
And so we were discussing this, what age would we go back to?
Yeah.
And then we said maybe be fun.
if I went back to being like four.
Right, but you still have the same position and just a higher voice.
Yeah.
But your same brain.
My same brain and my same knowledge, but I was a little four-year-old looking girl.
Yeah.
It would probably, it would reduce stress between us.
Yeah, because you would never be able to get mad at me.
It would be impossible.
And I would just like, I would chalk up you, whatever you're doing.
They're like, oh, she's a kid.
The way I'm able to write off insane behavior in my house.
because I'm like, yeah, they're kids.
But that actually, okay, that's going to get complicated
because I'm going to be like, I am not, stop
treating me like a child.
Well, but you are a child.
No, I'm not.
I got to help you into this car and I can pick you up
and I'm going to grab everything for you.
I only look for, but I am 38.
All this stuff kids can't do.
You can't get your mittens on.
Yeah.
I think you.
Oh, my God.
We're going to have to go over every morning
and fucking get you ready for your job.
But I'm also going to be.
texting you, why are you late? Yeah. We need to start the day. Come get my clothes on. Now. And you can't reach,
you can't cook yourself eggs. You know, you would need a caretaker. Oh, and who, like, maybe Joshua
Connor could do it. Or just little steps and stools everywhere around your house. Okay, this would get tricky
sexually. Tell me. Yeah. Because like, anyone I want to have sex with is not a pedophile.
They have to be a pedophile. Like on your, on your dating app, you have, so.
who you're looking for, handsome, financially secure pedophile.
Funny.
Smart.
No, listen, it's not a laughing matter.
It's a laughing joke when we think about your miniature and four.
Yeah, because I'm just me, but miniature.
Yeah, you have your same mental needs.
Yeah, and I have my, and I have physical needs.
Like, I need met and I.
You need food.
No, no, I mean, like, sexually.
Yeah, yeah.
So I, I'm still attracted to the same people.
I'm attracted to, but they're not pedophiles, so this is going to get complex.
Because even if they're attracted to my brain, how will they, like, they can't have sex with a
four-year-old body?
No, now.
They just can't.
They can't.
It's a, if you thought the dating scene was challenging currently, with you being four, it's going to really be impossible.
Four-year-old body, let's not say I'm four, because I'm not four.
Yeah, I think a more, a more blurry.
hypothetical. You don't think this one's blurry? No, this is black and white. Oh, because they just can't.
You're four. What if you go to 17? Oh, no. That's even worse for some reason. Well, that's why I'm
steering our vessel into those choppy waters because that's way more complicated. No, but you know what's
interesting? So it's a 17-year-old body. Yeah. 40-year-old mind. But so what, what, unless I'm wrong,
but I don't think I'm wrong based on my life experience.
I don't look my current age.
Right.
I look younger.
Okay.
So if I just looked 17, I mean, it'd just be like if I currently looked 17 instead of whatever everyone thinks I look like, which often is young.
Yeah.
Quite young.
Yeah.
So I think that would be fine because I am 38 in this scenario, right?
Is that what happens when you do it?
It's a thousand percent fine.
because the entire spirit and intention of these laws is that a young mind that doesn't understand what they're getting into or how they're being manipulated would be taking advantage of.
Exactly.
And a non-sexual being would be asked to participate in sexuality with an older person.
Yeah, power dynamic.
But that's 100% about the brain.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Your body can handle it long before we acknowledge you can handle it mentally.
So we already know what the goal is.
So yes, there's nothing at risk.
There's no victimization on the table.
Yeah, so.
But the man who's able to be aroused by a four-year-old is sick.
It immediately takes it back to the zone.
So what's the eight?
See, this is tricky.
That's why I was trying to steer us into 17.
17 feels if I looked like I looked when I was 17, but it's me now.
Yeah.
That's fine.
to me.
I also get to decide.
What about the guy, though?
What's about how?
Because we know how we feel about the guy that was able to perform.
Well, the four-year-old, that's a non-starter.
Actually, you could trap.
You could, like, trap, pedophiles.
They would on those hard copy shows and stuff.
That's what they would do.
I'm going to do that when I get four.
Okay.
It's a weird use of your skills.
I think it's helpful.
It's like doing good.
Okay.
Okay.
Now, what do we think of the guy who's willing to be with 17,
year old body, you with 38-year-old brain.
I think that's, I think they're fine.
Yeah, I looked really good.
I looked good.
I don't look that different than I looked when I was 17.
We had a version of this hypothetical.
It was very similar to a hypothetical we had years ago, which is this thing I thought of,
which is when I was in high school, my girlfriends and I had some nude photos.
In high school.
You mean exchanging.
What do you mean?
You had nude photos.
Yeah, we had like taken photos.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Don't do that kids, just especially in this digital age.
Do not do that.
Well, they're going to do exactly what they're going to do.
No, you can say like that's, you can say, be careful.
Oh, sure, sure, sure.
Because these things get out these days.
I'm just not naive.
I think a lot of kids these days know not to do that.
I'm just saying we were doing it with really shitty technology and the risk of having to go get them developed
in fucking the town.
pharmacy.
You know, you had to go drop your film off at fucking the equivalent of Rite.
I know, but that's way, way easier to keep wrapped up than the digital age sending.
Obviously.
There's an infinite distribution of the other.
What I'm saying, though, is there was a bunch of hurdles and risky hurdles.
Yeah.
But we still did it because we wanted to do it so much.
So I'm only being, I think I'm trying to be realistic about whether or not people take that
warning.
But that doesn't matter.
The hypothetical is, so let's say I have these photos.
And let's say Kristen had taken photos with her boyfriend when she was 16.
And we're both just chatting about this.
And then we both have photos of each other when we were minors.
Is it bad a feeling?
What do we feel about each person wanting to see those?
Well, how old are you?
Let's say I'm, let's say 15 and 15 because that's below age of consent everywhere.
Yeah.
And 15 to me is we know children.
who are older than that.
Yeah, I'm just, it's so curious because, again, there can't be a victim because that person's now 50.
We can't say can't because because I can't be a victim because I'm now 51.
That boy that could have been a victim doesn't even exist.
Well, it's it still can be violating if a pedophile is using your pictures from when you were young to like get off.
That's right.
A pedophile would be concerning and we would know.
Like, there's not an ethical debate there.
Right.
But I'm saying you can still be a victim at that.
Two consenting, two consenting adults who I go, no, I don't care at all if you look at the picture of me when I was 15 naked.
So you have my consent and I'm the person in the photo.
And the person in the photo is no longer a minor and can't be victimized.
Right.
So there can't be a victim in this scenario.
Okay.
What are the, yeah, what's the morality of that?
doesn't mean that there's not going to be judgment of the person who wants to see a 15-year-old sexually.
But what makes, I think, this situation good is, like, we know each other as adults, and the two adults make a decision.
So this guy knows you're 38.
You're dating.
This guy knows that you, Monica, are 38 from your brain.
Yes.
But you've made your body 17.
Right.
But he knows he's talking to a 38-year-old with full autonomy.
But that's different because then he does get the full me.
He gets a 38-year-old conversation and interaction and brain.
If it's just a picture, that's not.
They are getting off on a child.
Well, not a child, their wife as a child or their husband as a child.
That's still a child.
Like the picture is what they're looking at and liking.
Uh-huh.
And so, yeah, that is, I would be creeped out for sure if my.
Anyone that liked.
I thought it was, that was jacking off to a picture of me.
If your husband was.
When I was a kid.
Yeah.
Yeah, I would be like, that's a, that's a kid, though.
Like, it's clearly a kid.
And I, and this is so predictably gendered, I would be flattered.
Like it would only, I'd only like it.
Yeah.
That's just, it might not be gendered because we also know men who've been, who don't, who, it's you.
You, all we can speak for is you and me.
Yeah, that's what I'm doing.
I'm thinking, but I want to be clear.
I'm saying if my partner was enjoying looking at pictures of me.
Yeah, yeah, I would be flattered by that.
I know.
I'm just saying you're speaking for you, Dax.
I'm speaking for me, Monica of what I would find creepy and what you would find creepy.
Anyway, so I think it's a fine line of age.
Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.
The only reason that this conversation isn't just shockingly indulgent.
This is actually a weird possibility.
Yeah.
This isn't totally.
So just, I'm going to explain it for one second.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, and I'm going to make some mistakes here.
I'm going to do the best I can, though.
I'm sure that some geneticists will hit me in the comments.
But in general, what's confusing about aging is your DNA stays unchanged.
Your DNA is your DNA, right?
And then your DNA, your cells replicate through mitosis, and they make an identical copy
to the strand of DNA that it originated as.
And so the question is, if it's making identical copies all the time, how on earth does
aging even happen? Why do your cells look so different at 70 than they did at 30? So what the scientists,
oh, it's called the Yakamura property, whatever, the scientists discovered that in mice,
what really is going on with aging is that although your DNA stays identical the whole time,
your epigenome on top, the layer on top that's deciding which of the genes that wants to
turn on and off of the DNA strand, they accumulate all.
kinds of damage along the way. And that that's actually what aging is. This is the epigenome
accumulating all these different errors that then start turning your DNA on and off in a different
way than they did when you're younger. So they have figured out in these mice how to cut out the
epigenome back, prune it back to before the errors occurred. And when they first did it,
they took the epigenome back so far that the mice died because they immediately got young. And
then their organs continued to grow as if they were infants.
So then they had to fine-tune just cutting off the right amount of the eponidum.
And then they've done that.
They can take a mouse and take it to whatever age they decide, which is.
It's wild.
It's mind-blowing.
And so they have just now started the first human trial.
So it is sincerely conceivable that people at some point in the not-too-distance future,
will be picking what physiological age they want to be.
Yeah.
But I just,
I also don't see how you,
if you're going back though,
how why you wouldn't also go back to,
like your brain wouldn't be as developed either though, right?
Like if you're literally going to.
But your brain doesn't go through mitosis.
That's what's unique about your gray cells that are in your brain is they are just,
you have them and then they're dying,
but they're not going through that same process.
So that's why they're not accumulating.
the same issues.
But yeah, so your brain wouldn't be affected by your cells going back.
You're not losing memories or identity or any of that stuff.
This is fucking wild.
It's wild.
You're going to see me out there as a little four-year-old.
So when you see two 18-year-olds together, they might be 71 and 73.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I know.
It's crazy.
It's crazy.
I mean, so that's the thing.
I guess the point is if you go back to 17, the dude you like is also going to go back to 17.
So now he's got two 17-year-olds with four-year-old brains that are fucking.
There's really nothing to think about.
Right.
That's true.
Or I don't think a lot of guys should go back to 17 if I'm being honest.
No, I look way worse.
17 isn't the best age for a lot of men.
But no, you have your frontal lobe.
18, 17 with a frontal loat.
I'm saying physically.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it'll be interesting.
And then it'll be tricky in some relationships
because they'll be like,
could you just go back to being,
could you like please be 18 or 20?
Just love the way you were when you were 20
and the way you looked.
And then they're like, fuck you.
Yeah.
Well, you can see people the same way
that like plastic surgery is a slippery slope.
It's a very, very slippery slope.
Everyone knows is.
could go like, I'm going to go back to 29.
You go back to 29.
You're like, oh, I don't feel as good as I thought I was going to feel, blah, blah, blah.
I got it wrong about it.
I should go to 27.
And you can see someone just getting caught into getting younger and younger.
That's how you end up as a four-year-old.
Yeah.
That's how you end up.
You know, if I, no, I would go back to being the baby in the picture.
Uh-huh.
She's how old, one?
Yeah.
Can she talk?
No.
See, this is where.
Yeah, that would be frustrating.
That's actually horrible.
Well, no, I think you would be able to because you've already created all the circuitry.
Motor skills, though?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think you would be able to talk to me.
That's what would be so freaky as if you went back to six months old.
And you were like, where's my microphone?
But lift me up and I'm telling you, you're going to want to use those things.
Like, I've already designed how you guys are going to get me over there.
Yeah, if I was the age or too bad you can't do it for just like a day, you know, because then it's like.
Be a baby for a day.
Yeah, just for a day.
you get to like, or if you want someone to feel bad for you, you'd just be a baby.
I think Aaron and I would love to take the little girl in the dress out for some ice cream.
Yeah, exactly.
But I still like sushi.
Like, I'm still going to like.
Sushi.
I'm still going to like my 38-year-old.
Oh, no, probably, though.
My taste buds will not have been developed.
You won't be able to drink.
Why?
Because how do they know if you're really 21?
I'd have to have it to have.
There'd have to be a way to put.
Well, then I'm not doing it.
Yeah, you would never go before 21.
No, no, you, in this world, you're able to prove your age, right?
You have to.
Well, that's a tricky of your old license, right?
And then you hold it up and it's like, that's what?
That's you in 35 years, I guess.
You're trying to like.
No, I think they know based on my conversation with them.
Okay.
Because I'll be speaking like this.
Ask me what happened in 1991.
Yeah, and I'm only one year old.
You're right.
They'll have to be some kind of.
really sophisticated age system where you can demonstrate your age.
Your actual age.
Yes.
Because again, we don't want a 16-year-old who can't prove she's not 40.
Exactly.
That's why things are, this is going to be hard.
But I actually wouldn't like sushi because my taste buds wouldn't have been developed yet.
Like my brain would be developed, but not my taste buds, right?
I don't know.
I just do you think, I know for me, I know it would be like taking.
a sheet off of my face.
Like I know my eyesight was so much better.
Oh, yeah.
The first thing I would notice was like, oh, damn, we can see.
And I wonder, like, how much of my hearing I would notice is back in my taste buds.
Right.
Because they definitely taste way less than I did.
Oh, wait.
Taste buds begin forming in the womb around week eight of pregnancy and are fully developed
and connected to the brain by week 16.
Mm.
Oh.
So you get your full taste buds before you're even born?
You get most everything.
Then he's got to figure how to use it all.
Oh, God.
In middle age, around 40 years old, the regeneration rate begins to slow, leading to a gradual decline in the sense of taste over time.
Yeah, I'm 11 years into that journey, Monica.
Now, do you think it would be unethical when I'm one looking?
One looking.
One looking.
That I would get an egg retrieval.
because I'm actually 38 in my brain.
Yeah, but you no longer need egg retrieval.
Oh, boy.
No, I wonder if the eggs are more in line with the brain.
Probably.
Probably.
I don't know if they would go back.
I just think it's whatever cells are reproducing, start reproducing into those.
Yeah.
Huh.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Oh, that's the weird.
Do you think it would be unethical to get to freeze a one-year-old's eggs?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, quite unethical and unnecessary.
Well, I wish I had my one-year-old eggs now.
You could have waited, well, waiting.
You could have waited until 18.
Those eggs would be just fine.
I just, the one-year-old is when you have so many.
Yep.
And like, you can spare a lot when you're one.
Yeah, yeah.
It's because they don't have the choice.
I mean, look, I'm in a tricky sit where I guess there were news articles when I said that I would get my daughter's eggs retreat.
You would pay is what you said.
You weren't saying you're making them.
But no.
I didn't say it was making them.
And also when they're an adult, the people inferred I meant as children.
And I just want to be, that's why I want to be dreadfully clear that I don't believe in harvesting eggs in minors.
I don't know if I agree.
And that's great.
You shouldn't.
You have the freedom of not.
I'm not saying that I, I'm not saying yes or no, but I think there's more to think about.
Being at the age where I like did it twice, it wasn't great.
I desperately wish I had just like 80 eggs that were young and mature.
Oh, young and mature.
That's what they're called.
That's what we're talking about, young and mature.
Oh, wow, it's true.
I would definitely go back and do it, do it at age one and get 80.
And no one would even, I wouldn't even notice.
Right.
Only in this scenario because I'm a 38-year-old giving consent.
That's the ish.
A one-year-old can't give consent.
They can't.
That's why it needs to be 18.
18 or above.
I agree.
I agree ethically.
Yeah.
But if you could time travel, you would kidnap yourself for a day, get all the eggs out.
When I was one.
And return her to her bassinet.
Yeah.
No one, none the wiser.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It just goes to illustrate how tiny the eggs are when you think all of them can be in a baby and it's not like protruding out of their stomach, you know?
You know, like how tiny are these damn eggs?
Because I'm thinking the immediate issue with your plan is the instruments, right?
Everything that's involved with egg retrieval is not going to work with a one-year-old.
But then I was thinking, but it's crazy, those eggs are the same size.
They are.
I know.
I know.
Well, they would just use a smaller speculum.
Yeah, I don't love the idea.
No, it's not a good thought.
Experiment.
Here's the thing.
The things you would do to your own body, this is also fascinating.
Like the things I would do to my own one-year-old body is, obviously I would never, like, yeah, the idea of any other one-year-old having like a tiny,
tiny speck like no yeah and i feel great about anyone looking at photos of me as a minor but that's somebody
else um but i wouldn't say that for anyone else no i'm bonding with you right now i know but i'm
so i have that opinion for me that's different though that's not my policy for everyone else well that's
different but um i just it's not though because that involved this only the whole thing is me yeah
one year old me 38 year old me it's all me no one the doctors that have to get involved
Oh, they're also one.
Oh, Jesus.
Okay.
Then no problem.
It's going to be a great procedure.
Well, look, I mean, also doctors perform stuff on babies.
I know.
And like hard stuff if they have to do it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm not saying it going to be done.
I'm just saying currently.
And I would have a little Valentino and Liberti next to me for the procedure.
Oh, Jesus.
I would get so many eggs.
Yeah.
My current 38-year-old self would feel so free.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
So free.
Yeah.
Huh.
Interesting.
Interesting.
All right.
Well, wow.
Great last fact check before summer break.
Cancelable almost.
Perhaps.
Now they'll go like, no wonder they took a break.
They were in a nosed dog.
They were going to definitely get canceled.
No, no.
We're doing great.
We just want a little break.
So we're taking a little bit.
one.
But we are a little slap happy.
Oh, yeah, of course.
Yeah, yeah.
Episodes will continue.
Oh, yeah.
Uninterrupted.
New guests.
It's just the fact checks will be reruns.
And I do hope you'll re-listen to some of these oldies but goodies.
Yeah, me too.
But they won't be on YouTube, so you'll need to listen to audio only.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
Great.
Okay.
Edward Facts.
Edward P. Norton.
What does the P stand for?
That's not his middle.
Oh.
Oh, I could see his middle name being Peter.
Because of Alex P. Keaton is why it makes sense to me.
Because Alex P. Keaton was so intelligent, if you remember.
Did you ever watch Alex P. Keaton? Do you know what that is?
It's from family ties?
There we go.
I knew it.
Yeah, Michael J. Fox.
I know.
He was a young Republican.
He wore, like, sweater vests to school and stuff.
Yeah.
And he was just very smart.
Like precocious and smart.
Yes.
Whoa.
Edwards' middle name is Harrison.
Harrison.
That's a good middle name.
I wonder after Harrison.
George Harrison or Harrison Ford's.
Probably not Harrison.
Oh, he's old enough for Harrison Ford's.
That would be...
That's how people in Michigan would pronounce his last name.
It would be, I know.
Do you see the new Harrison Ford's movie?
Oh, my God.
His birthday's around my birthday time.
Yes, is he the 21st?
Mm-mm.
Okay.
Harrison was his maternal grandmother's last name.
Oh, shit, I should know that.
Betty Kent Harrison.
Okay.
What's his birthday, Monica?
The 18th.
Oh, okay.
Six days.
Three days off, I'm like, yes.
Sure.
Do emissions off California ports drive $6.5 billion in respiratory health costs for California each year?
Believe that the stat he's referring to is a 2011 climate change study by Kim Nolton, Miriam Rottkin Elman, Linda gave a lot of people.
However, this was a national stat, not a California-specific stat.
The stat reads the total health costs associated with ozone pollution to six, six,
$6.5 billion nationwide.
I did find a California set that states the diesel death zones,
such as West Long Beach, San Pedro, and Wilmington is where residents face localized asthma
hospitalization rates up to eight times higher than the county average and life expectancy
up to eight years lower.
Fuck, dude.
That's not good at all.
Can you imagine knowing?
I remember reading that, it's not great how close we are to the 101.
I know.
Like that radiates out in a very predictable way, too, if you're like in a, you know.
Yeah.
An eighth of a mile, a tenth of a mile.
I don't really think about it.
Yeah, it's best not, too.
Yeah.
Okay, average car emissions in past few decades.
Okay, the real world fuel efficiency by manufacturer, Tesla is the highest, 120.6 MPG.
Uh-huh.
Then we got Honda.
Okay.
Okay.
28.3.
Hyundai.
This is not in order, actually.
Okay.
Okay.
41.
Hyundai 29.8.
Kia, 30.4.
Let's look at Mercedes.
27.5.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
That's good.
No American ones are on that list.
Oh, let's see.
Tesla, Honda, Hyundai, KIA, W, German, right?
But Ford GM or God?
Nissan, Toyota, Subaru, Mazda, VW, Mercedes, Ford.
What's four?
Oh, Ford.
Ford is 23.2.
Yeah, what sandbags those numbers for Ford and GM and Chrysler is their main business is trucks.
Right.
That's what they, their bread and butter is.
Nobody's buying Tesla trucks.
They're not buying.
I've seen some.
Very few Honda trucks.
Yeah, no VW trucks.
GM is 22.4.
What is Stalantis?
Stalantis is an Italian company that owns Chrysler currently.
Oh, got it.
Cressler's passed through some different ownership over the years, and currently Stalantus, who also owns Fiat and some other.
Got it.
Dodge, Mozarotti.
Dodge.
That's part of Chrysler.
Yeah, we had a Dodge Caravan.
Yeah.
We had a Pacifica, remember.
It was purple.
Fucking gorgeous black on black and black and black.
Yeah, that was great.
I love that vehicle.
Okay.
How much has Robert Downey Jr. made.
in Marvel.
Oh, wow.
According to comic book resources has reported MCU total salary ranges from three...
Joke your breath away?
386 to 421 million.
All in?
Yeah, I assume.
Alleged salary by movie.
Alleged.
Original Iron Man, 2 million.
Iron Man 2, 10 million.
Avengers, 50 million.
Iron Man 3, 50 million.
Avengers age of...
of Ultron, 50 to 80 million.
Captain America's Civil War, 64 million.
Spider-Man Homecoming, 10 to 15 million.
Avengers Infinity War, 75 million.
Avengers Endgame, 75 million.
This does not include many cameos and other Marvel movies.
God damn, son.
Go get it.
The last one that was reported was, I think, to start the new one, it's 100.
But then have you also heard this thing about Johnny Dab, which is fucking fascinating?
Uh-uh.
During the Amber herd dust up, Disney kind of went on record and took, well, I want to be careful.
I don't know.
Alleged.
What he interpreted is that they had shamed him publicly during that thing.
And then after he was kind of vindicated or at least not found liable for any of that stuff, he was asked if he would do another pirates.
And he said, I wouldn't do another pirates for $300 million because of the way they treated me.
Wow.
And I read two weeks ago that Disney just offered him $301 million to do.
Is he doing it?
I don't know.
See if you can find an update on that, right.
But I was like, 300 million to go.
For one movie.
Yeah.
And guess what?
He's worth it.
They wouldn't be offering him that if that wasn't worth it.
How much do they think they're going to make on that movie?
A billion and a half dollars.
But it costs so much to make them.
Yeah, but if it costs five, let's say they spend 400 million,
They pay him $300 million.
They make $1.5 billion.
They're going to keep of that $850 million.
That's just the release of it.
That's not any VOD, any streaming rights, any merchandising.
So if they can come out.
If they can turn a key and make $150 million by paying him $300,
any company should do that.
It's in development, and Johnny Depp's involvement will depend on if he likes the way the part's written.
Good for him.
Good for him.
We'll offer you $301.
You know, let me see how it turns out.
You imagine.
No.
Who wrote the Mike Nichols biography?
Was it Mark Harris?
Yes, Mike Nichols,
A Life was written by Mark Harris and published in 2021.
Beautiful biography.
I've read some of it as well.
I like it.
I mean, I really like it.
I just, you know, I don't finish books.
Yeah, you start books.
That's your one.
That's kind of my thing.
You're a book starter.
I hate that about myself.
But you know what?
It's better.
I decided it's better to read some of a book than none of a book.
And to be reading.
That's right.
Just to be reading.
Yep.
Another day that just can.
came out, 30,000 athletes studied by university, they look into everything, reps, sets, hours in the gym.
And what they found is that the chasm between doing nothing and doing a little bit is fucking enormous.
And the chasm between doing a moderate amount and a ton of heavy training is very small.
Yeah, that makes sense.
So your immediate gains and rewards are very soon for you to grab.
Everyone should do it.
Do it.
Just read.
Yeah, just do it.
That's the same.
Does that all the facts?
That, yeah.
Oh, wait, is it?
Hold on.
Who knows?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She does good stuff.
Yeah.
She does good stuff.
All right, I love you.
Love you.
