Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Luke Combs

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Luke Combs (Back in the Saddle, Fathers & Sons, What You See Is What You Get) is an award-winning songwriter, singer, and musician. Luke joins the Armchair Expert to discuss Garth Brooks gifting him a surprise truck, why buying a plane is akin to flushing money down the toilet, and still feeling lazy despite everything he’s achieved. Luke and Dax talk about his high school music teachers that still come to his shows, assuming that life was getting a job that you hate because he didn’t know any different, and that being thankful for what you have and helping others is the antidote to entitlement. Luke explains why we’re in international waters in terms of where the music industry is going, how he took having his first studio album at #1 for 44 weeks, and the intrusive thoughts-related form of OCD that he's dealt with all his life. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Rather, and I'm joined by Judas Prasner, our top reporter in Los Felis, California. This was really fun. This was one of two interviews we got to do in Nashville. in person in the aforementioned studio that Wobby Wob

threw together in five seconds. Luke Combs, what a delight this boy. I got to call him a boy. He's so young. Yeah, he's younger than me, so I get to call him a boy too. I know he's younger. He's younger than you and he has 600 acres. Okay.

I feel good about my life. Okay. Yeah, I know you have a great, great life. I'm just really impressed with his acreage. Luke Combs is an award-winning country singer, fathers and sons getting old growing up what you see is what you get this one's for you and he has a new single out now called Back in the Saddle tasty song tasty title please enjoy this sweet sweet sweet sweet boy Luke Combs so you're saying this airline forces the cabin crew to work for free

tell me you're at least paid for boarding and deplaning no safety checks no not even medical No, but we'll always show up with their charging flyers more than ever. And we're putting in thousands of unpaid hours. Where is that money going? Canada's airline, hey? Unpaid work is a true crime.

Visit Unfair Canada.com to hear the whole story. A message from the Air Canada component of Kupy. Think about the most disturbing government secrets you've learned from history. Now imagine discovering one that begins in a hospital room and leads straight to classified military operations that were buried

for decades. Listen to a Redacted Medical Mystery, a special episode from Redacted and Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, available now wherever you get your podcasts. Dude, the story on that thing's crazy. I want to hear about. I want to hear it. All I care about is cars. I had one of the first edition Broncos. I had a Ford deal for a couple of years. So when they came out with the Bronco, I asked me, I was like, man, I got to get one of it. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we'll get you first edition one. So I bought that. I already had it. And my manager bought one of those Bronco, like, Raptor ones, like that one when it came out. Yeah, sir. And it was that space blue or some board color. Yeah. Space blue.

So I'm like, this was last Christmas. My wife was out somewhere. I was feeding my son at the dinner table in our house. And I can, like, see our gate. And I was like, why is my manager? pulling up in his bronco it's just the same as his like it was blue the raptor package and he would like never show up at my house unannounced you know right so i was like man this is kind of weird that he would show up i figured i'm like well i guess he's giving me a christmas present whatever so he comes in

he's like throws me the keys i was like are you giving me your card in like what is this yeah he's like no man garth bought you this garth brooks yeah and i was like what what did you know him not really Oh, to be an honest. Amazing. And so I'm like, for what? What do I have to do sexually for this? Yeah. This is a $90,000 card.

Yeah. What he's talking about, you know? So I guess it had maybe a year and a half before that. He got inducted into the songwriters Hall fame. They did it at the rhyme in. All these people came. You picked your favorite song that Garth has written. So not every Garth song.

He didn't write all of them. So he had to pick one that he wrote. So his team asked me to come and be one of the people that sang a song. at this thing. Mine was actually the beaches of Cheyenne. It was a hit, but it wasn't like a super hit. And so he was like, yeah, this is for you coming and singing that one song at this thing. Really? That's so classic. But did he give everyone who sang? Well, so here's the thing. I guess he had called my manager like the following week, you know, what is Luke like? And he was like, oh, he likes cars. He has a Bronco and he likes Ford's and stuff. And he's like, well, I'm going to order him a Bronco Raptor. Well, I guess they

were on hold or something. So it took like a year to get it in. Oh my God. Oh my God. I didn't talk to him from that night until that thing showed up in my house. Obviously, I called him and then I had it painted. Unbelievable. Okay, I have so many follow-up questions. How many people came out to perform songs? It had to be at least eight to ten. I haven't heard of anyone else. I haven't asked. What is they like? I like key chains. Yeah, like be careful what you tell people you like. I like Garby's. Yeah. I just tell people you like cars.

Yeah. I like how people to get you. I like huge houses. It's weird. I'm really into them. I love planes. Yeah. Planes are cool.

Using a plane. Plains are fun. Have you seen a G5 airplane? Those are so cool. Yeah, I love those. That's so generous. It was wild. I called him and I was like, hey, man, you didn't have to do this.

I was like, man, it was Tuesday night and I was home. I drove 20 minutes and I was there for less than an hour, dude. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but you could have went out. and you could have booked your own show that night and made this much money or whatever. Wow, what a stand-up guy. I was just kind of floored by that, to be honest.

You must find out if he ended up buying like nine cars. We should definitely find out because I don't know. Okay, so Luke, there's a lot going on for you and I as I researched you today. Number one, first and foremost, and I have a long history, well documented. I have two favorite cities in America, Austin and Asheville. Okay. And so your first brought home as a little baby to Huntersville. And that's a Charlotte suburb?

Yes, just outside of Charlotte. Okay. And what did Mom and Dad do there? Dad was a maintenance man for First Union Bank, no longer around. And Mom was working HR at First Union at the time. Did they meet at First Union? I don't believe so, actually. So Mom was actually working at more of their corporate office.

So they weren't like working at branches. They were in the big skyscraper downtown. Like a headquarter of it? My dad was down in the basement workshop, maintenance man. And mom was out at their headquarters. quick question about dad what's the most insane story he ever came home with like someone put a boot in the toilet or did anyone fuck anything up in a massive way nothing much in charlotte because when we moved out was like seven so then we got to ashville he was maintenance for centura bank okay he was employed by a company called c b richard ellis which was a independent contractor so he drove to all the small communities in western north carolina that had branches of censura and he was like the one guy that would go fix everything so He'd go from Asheville and he'd drive two hours to spruce pine, fix the air conditioner, or call the guy that fixes the air conditioner, 10 or 12 different cities that he would travel to every day, pretty much.

So he can do everything, is my assumption. Yeah, for the most part, he had to subcontract out air conditioning stuff. He would come home and make keys and change in locks. It was all kind of stuff. Because my best friend from childhood, he managed like 10 or 12 different places over the course of 10, 12 years. He started as a roofer, but by the time he feels. And it's just that job. He did absolutely everything because he'd show up at these places and he'd just have to figure it out.

Yep. It's just like, oh, this is fine. So I got to drive three hours to fix this toilet. Yeah. Nobody that works at the bank knows how to unclunge the toilet. It's like, you know, it's that kind of thing. Did mom also get a job in Asheville? Yeah.

So she stayed with First Union. She's transferred to Asheville when my dad came up. So mom actually took the transfer job, I believe, and then dad found his job once we got up there. Okay. Then would she the breadwinner? I don't know that either of them really were. I would say between the two of them, they probably made $60,000 a year. Right.

But you're born in 1990. Yeah. So I do think increasingly... Oh, young buck. You're three years older, man. That's so sad. You've got to go. This has been really nice.

But getting in that souped up Raptor and get out of here. I didn't tell you, but I have a Raptor R. So it's the F150? It's the F150. Yeah. But the R has the V8 instead of the V6, supercharged. It's heaven. That sounds like.

We got to get you in one of those. I'm going to buy you one of those for doing this episode. Your manager is going to be rolling up again soon. You're just going to collect so many cars. Well, it's funny, I wouldn't really consider myself a super car guy. I was going to ask that. Really honest. That was a gift.

Like something I never would have bought myself. I mean, the most expensive car I've ever bought myself is a Bugatti Faron. No, that's like I've got a 1986, Toyota, SR5. It was before it was the Tacoma. Okay. I've got one of those. Because that was your high school truck? No, thought it looked sweet.

It was like 12 grand. Yeah. I got an 84 Chrysler, Barron. You might be the only person of a weirder taste than me. Chrysler LeBeren. All praise be to Chrysler.

That is the shittiest car that's ever been made. My father-in-law put bullhorns on the front of it. Perfect. Yeah, why not? It's a piece of shit. Do whatever you want. And it's clean.

It had like 14,000 miles on it. It did. It was a lady that lived in. Palm Springs that owned it. Stayed in the garage. It's never rained and she only drove it like to church. If you are driving, whatever the thing you just said about Bugatti. No, no.

Keith Irvin. Okay, I was going to ask. Keith Irvin's the sports car guy. He's who I look up. He's rolling up in the Pagan. Oh, we in the hall, bro. He's fucking spread here. You never know what he's.

Wow, wow. You'll be at the CMAs and it's like old Bronco, old F250, three million dollar Pagani. New 250 are all y'all like. Yeah, he's married to Hollywood. Oh, no, yeah. Was that what I was going to ask? Is it kind of like, oh, that's, that's iris. No, because Keith is the nicest guy on the plant.

Yeah. He's also Australian that kind of gets him out of anything. Yeah, dude. He's like so much cooler than anyone else, too. Like, you see him, you're like, fuck, that guy's cool, dude. He's a sweetheart. He's cool, dude. But if it wasn't him, if you're at a restaurant and you saw that parked, does it read Dushy, those types of cars?

Nashville's such a quote-unquote newer. city for people with money. I think about the old country stars and the cars they had. It was Cadillacs. Have you seen the car in the Hall of Fame? Center console is a saddle. And it's got, it's all covered in like silver dollars. The door handles on it.

I think it might have been Webb Pierce's car. The door handles are cult revolvers. Oh my God. That are like welded onto the frame, dude. A million dollar Cadillac. That's the kind of stuff that was going on here. I just don't know that in Nashville that's ever been a thing. So it's hard to say.

The flex is your bus, I think, back then. There's other ways to flex. Yeah, it was. And then, like, guys that had planes back then, I feel like it was big. To me, on the plane is the worst investment of all time. Yeah. It might as well just flush money down the toilet. Exactly.

In fact, I just read an article as, like, people who think they can be in the private flight business versus what amount of money you'd actually need. We really would make no difference. And it's in the hundreds of millions. Before it's like a non-consequential amount of money. Exactly. You have to be literally a billionaire to, like, really afford a plane. When you look at your statement at the end of the month, you have to notice no movement after buying a $55 million.

It can't be a percentage of your net worth to get a point. You're savvy. You're only 35, but you're with it. You get it. Oh, man, you know, the bus is a lease. Like, my bus is not a big lavish. I've had the same bus for five years now, probably. But you have a hot tub in it, I heard.

That's pretty lavish. You also have a card room, I heard. You have a bar. You have a full bar. I've got my bedroom in the back, bathroom, and then I got bunks. And that's really it, dude. Who's in the bunks? My assistant is my best friend from high school.

Okay. Oh, that's lovely. So he lives here with his wife and kids, and he comes on the road. That's him and my personal security guy, who only ever comes out or on the road. I would like to challenge that guy. Okay. Last Man Standing. Like M.A.

Because you're a security. Because I can't play anything, but I do want to be on tour for a while. And I feel like if I could be... Let me just come out. But I want to be in the bunk and I want to have a role. So I do want to be looking for snipers and stuff. You need a vibe guy. Vibe guy.

Yeah, we don't have a vibe guy. We just set the tone. Is that like a hype man? No, just vibe guy. Okay. Like you're around and you're like, man, this guy's chilling hard. I like this guy. Right.

He's kind of anchoring the hole. Like maybe you're the tip of the spear. If we have gas out and they're like, dude, Dak Shepard's just chilling hard, dude, this is going to be a fun time out here. If that's a role that's open. Vibe guy. I'm a thousand percent in. Yeah. Okay, let's go back to Asheville. So seven years old, do you move there? Do you have siblings?

No, only child. Okay. We don't get many. Yeah, there's not a lot. I like that. Yeah. Do you do weird only child shit? Like my wife who is tricky. Don't say she's an only child. She'll kill me. She does have sisters, but she saw them on the weekends. You know, they were from her dad's second marriage. She's very only child. And our friend, Eric, who's here right now. He's only child, too. Both of those two, they'll be like a party and they'll go upstairs and read a book. And they don't even care. Oh, no, I'm a friend's guy. I'm in the mix. I feel like you can go kind of two ways on the only child thing. So I have a ton of friends. The only child thing was not like my parents wanted one kid. They were being financially responsible and they're like, we can only afford it. And let's be honest, we can't afford you.

Yeah, they were like, literally you're putting a bit of a strain on it says it is. I had a bunch of really, really close friends, man. I still do. So you were always a social kid and you got along with everybody? For sure. So what was elementary and junior high like for you? If you came into the class, it would be like least like. to succeed guy would have probably been me because you've been like, look at this guy, he's

not going to do it. Well, you said, I heard you on 60 Minutes saying you were lazy or you're younger. Oh, big time. Big time. Yes. Massively lazy. And what do we think that's about? I don't know.

To be honest, I think there's some innateness to it. Yeah, like just genetically. But obviously you're not. My business manager is a really close friend of mine and he obviously wasn't before he's my business manager. I didn't know him. Yeah, if there's ever a role to assign to a friend from childhood, business manager's not. Business manager's not.

No, lawyer's not it. No, manager's not it. Surgeon. Yeah, it's not it. But we've gotten really close for the years and still sometimes fight feeling that way, you know? And he's like, it's insane that you still kind of feel like you're lazy given what you've achieved. I'll rephrase it. Not that I feel like I'm lazy.

And this is also going to sound insane. It's like I feel like I haven't done anything hard. Does that make sense? Sure. That's interesting. Yeah, yeah, I do. Music is not hard to me to do. Like, it is not hard to go, right?

songs and sing them and play shows. We're not busting up concrete here, dude. Like, what are we talking about? I mean, obviously, I didn't finish college. I was semester and a half away from finishing that. I was like, wow, this is hard time out. Kind of thing. I was like, yeah. But that was also getting into music. So I was like, well, this seems to be working out good. And I'm like making more money I made. I was working two jobs. It's weird because working two jobs, that sucks in being in college. I mean, obviously, that's hard, but I didn't really enjoy it. So maybe I've just always chased enjoyment to some extent. Well, it sounds like maybe nothing turned you on. You weren't really on fire for anything. And then when you found the thing you were on fire for,

you showed up and you did all the things you had to do. That's a very ADHD thing I've heard. I sang forever. When it's start? As soon as I could talk. It was just like a natural thing. I didn't know I was any good until probably high school. Because you were in choir. You did the play at school and stuff. Yep. I did all those. I did four years of that. And how big is the school in Nashville, because it's a tiny town. I have some fantasy where going to school there might have been a little more peaceful than other places. It very much was.

I remember when my wife got married and we didn't have any kids yet and we weren't expecting. I'm like, our kids go to public school. And she was like, no. And I was like, what are you talking about? She went to private Catholic school. I'm like, why not? I'm like, public school rocks, dude. Like, there's all kind of different people and stuff.

You learned to deal with every kind of person. I'm like, it's great. So the school I went to is a 4A school. My graduating class was 400. Well, that's a good size. Just a decent size. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They might be 3A now, but at the time they were 4A.

I don't know that terminology, do you? Yeah, it's a, yes, my school is 5A. Where'd you go to school? Georgia. Okay. Let's say North Carolina doesn't have any 5A schools. Oh, really? What is 5A?

It's basically like the size of the school. It's a classification. So I believe now there's some 7A schools now in, like, Texas and Florida? Whoa. Here's my question. Why do we need the A? If A is consistent throughout all these, why don't we just go a six, a five, a four, a three, or a seven? No, it probably means, I don't know what it stands for.

I might have to look it up for the fact check. I know he sounds like a real Yankee right now trying to figure this out. But that is the thing. So that's how they classify like our school was a good football school. So it's like when you go to the playoffs, you only play other teams of that size. Right. You only play other 4A teams or other 5A teams or other 3. That makes sense of why we're going to identify it.

Actually, you're right. It's kind of based on that. It's basically based off of football. The 6A team's not going to play the 1A team for the state championship because it's not fair, dude, because there's 400 kids in this school and there's 5,000 kids in the size. Yeah. One's a university. Yeah. Okay. So yours was a good size school. It was good size. And I didn't know this at the time. But we had state of the art performing arts center at my school too. Yeah. Which kind of makes sense for Asheville. For people who have not been there. It's an incredibly artistic, hippie-like little beautiful town. But our school was not in downtown. I'd say downtown is for sure that vibe. There's obviously a lot of outdoorsy. free spirit people that flock to Subaru. Subaru drivers. My mom had a Subaru. There you go. My had a Subaru. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my freshman year, man,

they opened up a whole performing arts wing of our high school. Wow. So my band teacher and my chorus teacher were married. Oh. And they met in college or something. And so they taught there forever. They're retired now. But I'm still in touch with them. They come at least a show a year. So he was

my music theory teacher, the band director. And then my course teacher, and she was like my second mom at school. They forced me out of my laziness in my pursuit of music. They weren't like, oh, you're so good. They weren't those people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were like, hey, man, what are you doing?

My senior year, I was like, I'm not going to do the musical this year. If you wanted to be a quote unquote lead in the musical, right, like there was auditions. Obviously, I had to audition to be in the musical. They had some level of talent. But to do the acting, there was like these specialized auditions. And I'm like, that sounds like a whole thing. And I was like, I'm just not going to do it this year. And they were like, okay, well, whatever.

So I just don't do it, you know? And I'm like, okay, wouldn't expect in that answer. Yeah, you wanted them to fight for. Right. So my first three years, we had a drama teacher that had been there for 25 or 30 years. And my senior year, we got a new drama teacher. Our former teacher retired. So we had this new woman who had come in, kind of like fresh out of college gal.

It was going to be her first play. And it came down to the day of auditions. And I went into my course teacher and I was like, I think I screwed up. I'm not wanting to do this, you know, and she was like, yeah, you're telling me. Too late now. I was like, what do you mean? Like, you're not going to let me try out, you know? She's like, it's not up to me, pal. Like, you're going to have to go down and talk to the drama. She's like, I didn't know her at all. Right. Yeah, yeah. So she's like, you need to go down there and have a conversation with her. And then it's up to her. I'm not going to call her and say, this guy needs to do it.

Nothing. If she wants you to do it, you can do it. And if she doesn't want you to do it, too bad, you should have signed up. thankfully she let me do it i ended up getting the lead role and people were mad how did the acting part go for you it's all right you know it's not my thing that's almost better in some weird way if you're watching a musical and he's not very good as an actor for a while and you're kind of like you've given up on him and then the song comes on then he fucking blows your hair back and you're like hold on now you might have been that fun experience i still don't feel like i have much memory of doing like the lines thing like it would still give me as much anxiety now as it did then because i'm like how am I ever going to remember all this stuff?

Obviously, I did it. There's a DVD of it somewhere at my parents' house. It's the whole thing. Rob, start the performance. Put it on. I'm glad they did that. They always pushed me to keep going with music. But it doesn't sound like during any of this period,

you haven't set your sights on this at all. No. Because you go to college and you study business for a minute and then criminal justice. You want to be a homicide detective. I did, yeah. Me and my dad always watch cops, first 48. I was always just intrigued by it. I remember asking my course teacher in my last semester,

of high school, I was in course every day of high school. So a fourth of my entire high school career was spent in chorus class. So then my last semester, first period was chorus. Last period, I was Ms. Bryant's teacher assistant. And that was her period where she didn't have a class. So I'm just like making copies, which was awesome because I didn't have to like be in class. She never really gave me preferential treatment of like, oh, well, just do whatever you want, do your homework. Right, right. It wasn't an independent study for years and assistant job. She was like, no, you're going to be my assistant, like, doing stuff. I'm going to go eat lunch, and you're going to be printing out lesson plans.

And I was like, oh, brutal, you know. I signed up because I'm like, oh, this will be cake. She'll just let me do whatever. It didn't happen. So I'm never asking her like, hey, should I do music in college? I've always hated the technical side of music. The theory part was always really confusing to me. I'm not the smartest guy in the world.

Math has never been real easy for me either. It's the same part of the brain to me. Yeah, for sure. That's doing music theory and math. That's always been my complete. worst subject. So music theory was always really difficult. And she told me, don't do music if you can see yourself doing anything else. And so I took that very literally because I'm thinking, oh, well, she means like being a music teacher, which is obviously not what I wanted to do. Right. Yeah. I was like,

I'm never going to be a choir director or like a band teacher. So that was my cue to just go, well, I'm just not going to do music. It's an interesting test she put in front of you. Yeah, I love that. For sure. You probably interpreted that, or maybe. maybe you did is, oh, I guess they shouldn't do it. For sure. Where she was like, there's only one answer this question. If you don't have that answer, you're not going to make it. Yeah.

Yeah, she's like, if you have to do it, you will do it. Oh, for sure. And I mean, now it definitely is. I guess just growing up, you know, in a decently small town with blue collar parents, you're not like, well, maybe I'll be Garth Brooks. Yeah, exactly. No, same, same. It's like saying you're going to be an astronaut.

Yeah. You're like, it's not going to happen. I just wanted to, like, pay bills. I just thought you had to kind of hate your job. Yes. And I just thought that was what life was like. It was like, oh, cool. Like, my parents work.

They hate their job. They work for the weekends. They work for the weekends. And they take care of me. And that's just what life is going to be like. And that's just how it is because I didn't know anything else. Well, no wonder you now think you aren't doing anything hard because that was your idea of hard, not liking it.

Exactly. Like not liking it was my version of like, well, I got to do something I don't like because that's just how life is. I have this same thing. When Kristen and I first walked through this house, we're just taking it in. And I said out loud a couple times, like, I just didn't work hard enough for this. It's hard for me to integrate this because I should have a lot more calluses and I should have a lot more body injuries. And I should be 68.

Yeah. And it's confusing because no one got to fast pass like I got to. It's complicated. There's a lot of guilt associated with it. You know all these great people you grew up with. Like, when I'm looking at the house and it's like, I can think of six or seven dads that killed themselves. and they couldn't get this and I'm like

those guys were better than I am you know they worked harder they were tougher and they went through more and I feel a lot of guilt about it I do too

so we have a really close group of guys from back home that we text every day pretty much you know there's like 10 of us maybe I didn't realize

how rare that was until my wife was like you have 10 friends from high school that you still talk to like every day and you guys been playing fantasy

football together for 15 years like that's weird yeah it's just not normal by the way I'm gonna be Saccharin right now, that's weirdly the biggest gift in your life. It's not even the success in the money.

Because I know a lot of rich, lonely people. That's the big win right there. Yeah, but I feel the same way. One of them's a pharmacist. One of them's a doctor. One of them's a CPA. They've all got MBAs and doctorates. They worked their ass. Oh, dude, it's like I would have been the most scum guy. They would have been buying your dinner every time you went out. A million percent. But I see those guys like, man, they went to school for a decade. I got all this stuff from doing what I like to do. You feel real guilty about it. There's no sympathy for it either.

No, no, no, no. I feel real bad for you in your big house. You're having a hard time integrating your mansion into your... Right, right. I wish you luck with that, brother. Yeah. By the way, let's talk about that because that's interesting. It's kind of a double whammy because you feel this guilt.

And then you have exactly what you just said, which is then you feel guilty for even having that problem or being guilty about it. There's just layers of madness in your head about. this thing that is what you dreamt about and what you want. If I buy into it, if I'm like, oh, man, my life's great and I have all this great stuff and I deserve all this stuff, then you feel like kind of a bad person a little bit. If I am like, I got this great house, then I'm a dick. I think for me, the fear is it'll all go away.

The second I think I deserve all this, I'll find out real quick I didn't. So it's like there's superstition, too, that the shoe will drop the second I think I deserve this. I think it's just being appreciative is the thing. that's the answer and giving back to people helping other people it's the only thing you can do man it's trying to like give stuff to people who don't have as much as you and just being thankful that you're in the position you're in I mean that's always been my answer to it yeah I mean this concept of deserving is very silly no one deserves anything no one deserves the good stuff and no one deserves the bad stuff that's without it out it's not an appropriate word I think you're

right just having gratitude for the things that have come your way and just be like oh my God What a gift and then giving back. We were just talking about this recently. The only thing that I feel actually I can feel about money is when you give it away. Having money feels good because you can help other people. Yeah, you can help other people without a doubt. You always got to train your brain, though, to recognize that. For sure.

I mean, I've always been a big. I'd rather give a gift than get one. Even when I was younger, when you're a kid, you love getting gifts because you're a kid. Man, once I got older, I was like, dude, I don't even want any gifts, dude. Like, let me give you a gift. That would be a bigger gift to me. I could rather cease might get something. Okay, we got to go through a little bit of your stellar career.

So while you're in college, you start bouncing at a bar. Wait, what college I need to? Appalachian State. Oh, nice. Where's that at? It's about an hour and a half from Asheville. They would consider it the high countries, what they call it? Higher elevation than Asheville.

Oh, real quick. Did you ever go on sliding rock or looking glass falls? Million times. What a party. I have such a sweet spot for Asheville. I used to go there to do rewrites for movies. And I brought my three-year-old there and I took her to sliding rock and we did together. So fun, dude. Sliding rock's so cool. Is it a big rock that you slide on? Yeah, it's like

in the river. It's like a quarter mile long slab. No bumps. Somehow. Yeah, that's just like. The last drop off if your three is something, but it's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Generally safe. So you're bouncing at this place. Was it the kind of place you ever had to do anything? It's really more deal with college egos. Boone's like mini Asheville. Like, it's very outdoorsy. The population of the town doubles when schools in. just all crunchy kids. Kids that want to snowboard and flyfish and kayak and hike and like it's a super outdoorsy. A lot of Subaru is probably still there. A lot of Subaru is there. Very much so. You get to perform there a little bit and then you have your first actual show shortly after that.

It was while I was there. He was the Parthenon Cafe was the name of it. Boone's finest Greek restaurant. That's your bluebird. That was my grand old opera at the time. No longer there. R.P. Oh, bummer. It's no longer there. And did it feel right? immediately? You know, it was really good. So I had been messing around with it, filming little covers in my apartment for, I don't know, maybe six months at that time. And putting them on YouTube? Putting them on your Facebook, YouTube. So I felt like I was ready. Like, man, I felt like I could do a show. I asked the bar owner, actually where I was bouncing at, which was a different

bar. I was like, hey man, can I do a show here? And he was like, oh, he's like, we don't do any live music because there's apartments upstairs. So it was a little mini strip malls, three buildings. There was the bar I worked in, a tanning salon, and a Domino's pizza. And there were seven apartments. You could have a nice day on that. Yeah, sounds nice. Yeah, get your hair done. Seven apartments on top. And he was like, it's like in our lease that we can't do live in music. I was like, I live in the apartment. Yeah. I was like, I know everyone that lives up there. We'd all be down here. And he was still kind of worried about it and didn't want to do it. And dude, me and him are still in touch to this day too. But I played rugby in college. So we hung out at a different bar,

which was Parthenon. And the owner of Parthenon, his name was Nick, and he was this wild card greed guy. He just didn't give a fuck about anything. He was just like wild guy, man. So I asked him, I was like, hey, man, can I do a show here? He's like, yeah, just put it on the calendar. There was just like a calendar on the wall.

So I just went and, like, rode it on the end. You put anything. We're doing a truck pulling here on Thursday. People could have just came and rode anything. And that's what would have been going on there. But it worked out, man. I charged dollar ticket. I made $200 bucks, man.

Two hundred people came. Oh, wow. It was not a place that could fit tuner. people. It was dependent on the day kind of place. If there was a football game, slammed. It's Friday night slammed. Saturday night slammed. It was like grimy in the best way. You just get wings and you get five dollar pitcher of whatever's left in the beer lines from the weekend before. And like that was just the vibe there. Not a lot of structure going on. But the place that I lived above and the place I worked at was a newer place. There was a local contingency, but there was also

a really big student contingency too. So the owner was a local guy. So everybody he knew would come there and support his business and then the kids loved it too. At the meantime there's something new in Boone, kids were like, love you ever love that place. That's a new place. Let's go. Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

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Miley Cyrus, welcome to reclaiming. My 2013 is your 1998. I lost everything during that time in my personal life because of the choices I was making professionally. Chelsea Handler, welcome to reclaiming. I did have a teacher who instilled in me that I was going to do something special and she was like, you're going to have an impact.

Sophia Bush, welcome to reclaiming. You went all the way, you committed, and if it wasn't for you, you had the courage to tell the truth and get out. And I had to say that to women in my life, and I had to learn how to say it in a mirror to myself. This last decade for me has really been what I consider my own reclaiming. My own journey, my own reclaiming story is in the bones of this show. Please listen to reclaiming on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. So I went back to him when I went back to work.

I was like, hey, man, I just played across the street. There's a chance you could throw a football. You could see one from the other, but that's how small boon is. And I was like, I played over there on Wednesday night and 200 people game. And he was like, really? I was like, yeah, so I'll just keep doing that or I'll do it here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was like, let's do it here.

So then I played there every Thursday. Every Thursday. Over a year. It's been one of my biggest assets. You know, by the time I moved to Nashville, I'd played literally hundreds of shows. We were booking shit as a band. It was just my name. So, I mean, I was cold calling places.

isn't getting shows. We're traveling all over North Carolina. We're starting to go at East Tennessee. We're going Northern South Carolina. And then all of a sudden, we were playing at minimum three shows a week, sometimes five shows a week. Wow.

In a town that's really small. Yeah. So then we booked a place called Gino's, and I believe that was every Wednesday. So we did Wednesday Gino's, Thursday Tavern, every other Friday at the Rock, every Sunday at Williams Barbecue.

Your full-time musician. Right. Pretty much. And I had pretty much dropped out of school at that point. So I lived in Boone for a year just doing music. Were you having any problem doing three, four shows a week with your voice? I mean, I'm smoking cigarettes then too. Yeah. Getting drunk a lot or? Not a ton. At least once a week for sure. That's not your thing. You don't struggle with that at all. No, no, no, no. Whatever that thing is, I don't have. Yeah, yeah.

That's lucky. I throw a couple of hamburgers down here where you got a whole other problem. We got a new animal. Yeah, for sure. So we start doing that and I'm realizing now Town Tower, there's lines to get in every Thursday. We're doing that every bar. man and people are coming to see us because we're the only gig in town really and you're building a whole family yeah yeah so then we you know we've got a facebook page going i'm doing cold calls we're riding around in my bass player's Chevy avalanche to gigs out of town and i'm making press kits and mailing those out to bars and other college towns in north carolina just anywhere that would book us this is the grimy good stuff that you'd miss out on if you just popped into american idol and then had this

record deal like this is the kind of groundlings host your own show obviously i had a lot of success on vine around that time too which was you know now defunct social media you guys probably remember vine yeah yeah short video clips yeah the new version of that is tick tock right and i think now a lot of that stuff's over yeah you can skip you skip all the steps and not that that's good or bad i mean i think it's really great for the artist to have a platform like that there's people that their first ever show they've done is in an arena on tour with someone the moment is too big for you, man. Not that there isn't people that rise above that. For sure, there is. Yeah. But it's like having your first football game at the Super Bowl. Without a doubt.

That's too much. Without a doubt. First car racing in the apples. And then it's like, if you screw up, then people go, oh, well, you're not any good. And it's like, well, God, I just played in the Super Bowl. What are we talking about? Of course I'm not any good. Country Radio is still really big. It was even bigger when I started and even bigger before that. But like you go and do all these events for the stations. And the thing they love to do is guitar pulls. The litany of newer artists will come in and go, hey, we're in the St. Louis, St. Jude Jam. They book a nice theater somewhere in town. The kind of usual suspects at my time be like, me and Midland and Carly Pierce, people that came up at the same time. It's usually people that are kind of in that same

class. But then every once in a while, you get thrown on. It's like, oh, well, Luke Bryan's in one. There'll be five, you're all on stage at the same time. And it's just you and a guitar. Or you and one person playing guitar. Can you imagine being in that situation and you've got 250,000 TikTok followers and you've gotten a record deal? And you come up and the guy that's played the song right before you is Chris Stapleton. And you've played two shows. And also in your shows, you sing his songs. For sure.

It's like, oh, God. But like that would be incredibly intimidating. It's nobody's fault. I mean, if anything, it's the industry's fault. Yeah, yeah. It's the tech industry's fault. The market's just driving it. You have this outlet.

And fans want stuff. They want new stuff all the time. They want to be able to see stuff all the time. And I think the most interesting conundrum for us is artists that at least has come in the recent years. Let's say you're going to put a new song out and you're a new artist. You might make 20 TikToks that are just this one sound clip of this song. You lip singing it in your car. And then it's you lip syncing it with your dog.

And it's like all these different things and you just do that over and over. Fans, they want to hear new music, but they want to hear new music that they already have heard somehow. I want to know that I like it before I've even listened to it somehow, which is in some ways an impossibility.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's like if you don't do enough of the PR or enough of the promo, your first week sales numbers are going to suffer, the fans are going to be as interested in it because they want to know, I already am going to like this. It's also unfair because I think it leads to a lot of backlash. There's an artist right now.

I won't say him. I feel like all of a sudden everyone really doesn't like him anymore. There's all this backlash and it's because he was thrust, in my opinion. It's because he's just an incredibly talented guy, though. He's unreal. He's like Freddie Mercury. Yes. Like his voice is insane.

Oh, that's awesome to hear you say that. His voice is insane. It's like ungodly. Who hates him? No, there's a whole like, the internet. Yes. What it's like. Coworker music.

Oh, that's what they call it. It's like a big thing co-worker music. It's because, in my opinion, he was everywhere all of a sudden because that's kind of who you have to be now. You do have to put your songs in all these things and be in this and be in this and be in this. And then they're like, actually too much of you, goodbye. Well, this is Ed Sharon, who you did a song with. We interviewed him in England and he's like, yeah, man, in England, they love the rise,

rise, rise. But once you're at the top, they have a pretty quick like, okay, we don't want this. There's some kind of sense of, okay, you're too big. Now we're mad about it. We just had drawed Carmichael on, and he said something that I thought was really interesting. He was like, people don't respect you if they made you. That was his explanation of like American Idol. It's like if they voted for you and they made you, they feel entitled to lead where you should be going artistically.

As opposed to you brought them along. It's interesting. We're in really international waters of what happens next in the music industry, I think. It's a very interesting time. Terrestrial radio, obviously in country, it's still huge. But streaming has been such a huge push. When I get in the car, I'm putting Spotify on. I want to hear exactly what I want to hear, and I want to hear right now.

You don't hear new stuff. You aren't exposed to as many new things because you're like, oh, I just want to hear familiar stuff. It comes back to, I want to hear stuff I already know. McDonald's. I want to know I'm getting the same burger. Right, because I'm in my car. I'm only drive 30 minutes a day.

For that 30 minutes, I don't want to have to risk listening to something I don't like. I want to listen to stuff that I already know that I like. That's right. And that's like a tough place to be as an artist. I remember when it was fun, when someone put a new record, I'm like, what's going to be on it? Yes. Is it going to be good or is it not going to be good?

When you get to Nashville, you start self-releasing some EPs. And then on your third one, I guess, Hurricanes on that. It was just a single. It wasn't even an EP. I just put that one out. And that one got $15,000 in one week. I thought that was normal, by the way. Okay.

I was like unaware that that was good at all. It's the same thing as the public school thing. This is a bubble that I know. This must be how everything goes. Yeah. So like you go, you start doing music. your shows are going really good. He just lines out the door.

People always want to come and then they buy your music and that's how it happens for everybody. So I get to town and I remember, I mentioned it to somebody and they were like, how did it sell that much? I'm like, people thought it was good, so then people bought it. It's like how that happened, you know? Which is like 10 years ago, maybe.

Hurricane went number one in 2017. I put it out in 2015. Yes, 10 years ago. It sounds like not because it sounds like you're just, as you said, yeah, I put a song out and everyone listened to it. Duh. My guess is you didn't have this, but were you at all thinking like, I don't look like

the prototypical country star? Oh, gosh. Yeah, dude, for sure. Especially at that time. Everybody was hot at that time. Keith Urban's Harris to die for. I mean, L'L guy's a fucking babe. FGL guys, Sam Hunt, Luke Bryan. Chase Rice, he went to my high school.

I mean, just six, four college football player. Like, every guy had played college football and was dieseled out, like just good-looking dudes. And when I moved to Nashville, there was a lot of, like, I don't know if the artist thing's going to work, because you're just not what works. But the guy that kicked that door open was Stapleton. He was a bigger guy.

I mean, if you lived in Nashville, the guy was already a god before he ever got discovered. He's got 200-something cuts as a songwriter. He's the best voice ever. Is he the king? You're among a few country people we've talked to. They all bring him up. I'm dying to have him on and talk to him. He's so talented.

He's like Vince Gill. or something. Vince Gill is just A1 songwriter, A1 guitar player, A1 singer, A1 producer can just literally do it all. There's not many guys that can truly do it all. Like if you're Clyde Drexler, you're great. And then Jordan shows up and you're kind of like, I'm good, but fuck, that guy's real good. And not that if he was in it right now, I'd tell you I'm a better singer than I'm not. But it's like you have to have that confidence, right? Yeah. It's like there's just some guys. Well, some people are undeniable. Yeah. I mean, the talent level is just so high. So back to knowing that at that time, people are like, look, man, you've got all the things,

but you don't have the package that's going to work that's going to sell millions of albums. How are you dealing with that information? Yeah, that sounds tough. I'm just going to keep going. Yeah. Probably now, if that teacher asks you the question, now you have the answer, which is like, I'm not going to do anything else. Whether that's the case or not. Definitely. I had so much confidence at that time in my ability. You're coming from Boone, right? So you're big fish, small, pond. I had made one or two trips to Nashville and met some people and written some songs with folks. Then when I got here, I was like, dude, and this is not a cockiness thing. This is a true gamer mentality for me. I was like, dude, these people can't hang with me, dude. Like, I would get

in rounds and I'm like, I will sing this guy out. I mean, he won't even show up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's never a competition. I think that's good. But it was just a confidence in like, I won't be denied because I feel I have the ability like, okay, I can play in the league. Yeah, yeah, yes. Like you get in the NFL all of a sudden and you're like, I don't know, it's pretty good. I played at a smaller college. Maybe I don't have the combine numbers that this other guy has. Yeah.

But put me in the A gap and he's on the other side and I'm coming out. I'm walking out. He's not kind of thing. And that was a little bit of my mindset when I got here. But also, I was already so happy with everything that was going on. I'm living in Nashville. I'm not having to work. You're making a living.

I'm making enough money with no publishing deal, no record deal, writing songs five times a week, getting better every day, making progress. And I'm paying all my bills. And to me, that was the definition of making it, man. Like, I just wanted to be happy with doing what I wanted to do. If you can support yourself doing something you love, forget it. That was it. Then I was like, well, man, this is my cheat code. I don't need anything else.

I live in a nice apartment and hermitage. What's better than this, man? Like, I get to write songs all the time, sing all the time. I got great friends. I feel like I fit in. You know, like people want to write with me. And again, that's a very intoxicating time. And so for me, I just wanted to make a living doing music.

You had probably already accomplished kind of the standard of living your parents had raised you under. Definitely. I can do this. No problem. There's no debt collectors calling me. This is all good. Her hurricane kind of blows up. And then from this, Sony does sign you.

And then they release this one's for you. They passed to me the first time. I always call it the Nashville no, which is like, well, we'll be in touch. We're not going to be in touch. We're not going to be in touch, which is the Southern thing. It's like, just tell me no. I'd rather just hear that. We'll be in touch.

And by that, I mean, we will not be in touch. By that, I mean, it's a no for us. Right. Okay, so what happens, though, is Sony does sign you, and then they release this album, and this album stays at number one for 44 weeks. Yes, nuts, man. It's a little shocking that you're not completely fucked up, Because, yeah, you release your song on your own and 15,000 people get it and we're like, yeah, of course, you do your first studio album and it's fucking number one for 44 weeks.

This is where I argue you're not lazy because a lot of people would put it in neutral at that point. Like, I don't have to try at this too hard. It comes pretty natural, comes pretty easy, and or you could have become completely panicked that your follow-up album is not going to, you could have been burdened by that. Definitely. So how did you take that kind of crazy success? First five singles are all number one on that album. Dude, it's 19 or 20 now. I haven't had one not going to roll.

Oh, my God. You haven't had one knot. You got to prep yourself. It's going to happen at some point. Yeah, I'm aware of it. But then again, there's no pressure because it's so beyond what even thinks possible. The first time I ever played Hurricane, I played at the 40 watt in Athens. That's where I went to UGA.

I think it was Labor Day weekend and 86 people came. And I remember being kind of bummed because we had been playing decent shows in that size venue. What's that place hold? Probably 500 people. Yeah, it's smallish. Yeah, it's pretty small. We had kind of been rocking those. And my manager was like, it's Labor Day weekend.

I was in school. I remember this conversation like it was yesterday because I was really bummed out. And that was the first night I'd ever played Hurricane in a show. And he said, dude, I saw Florida Georgia Line here like five years ago. And 17 people came. Oh, wow. And he was like, you got 88. And he's like, and they're doing pretty good.

You know what I mean? And I was like, oh, okay, that makes me feel a little bit better. It's been wild. But yeah, we did everything from the smallest place you could play to stadiums. My favorite thing he did is Fast Car. Your version of Fast Car is so great. That was one of my very favorite songs growing up. Interestingly, it was one of your favorites.

What a fucking beautiful song. Oh, gosh. Were you afraid to tackle it at all? It feels like such a female perspective, right? The dad's a drunk. The husband's abusive. I think maybe I was just too naive to even be aware of like. Think through all that.

Yeah. Then again, man, that's. That song's been covered like 1,300 times. Has it really? There's like 1,300 covers for sale. I didn't know with that. Incredibly prolific song in a lot of people's lives. So, again, I was not like, man, there's gonna be a lot of eyes on this thing.

We had some throwaway time at the end of the studio. Like, it was never a plan to do it. I just always played it at shows and I hadn't since I'd gotten my deal. You had to have known from the shows, though, that it was a big winner. It was just the college shows. It wasn't like we were doing it on the arenas or at the club. I would do it in college and I really always like doing it. And so we had an hour of studio time left that, you know, we had paid for,

but we had recorded everything we needed. And I was like, what if we just recorded it? We did it, ended up putting it on the record, and we didn't promote it at all. I mean, we didn't put any marketing budget behind it until it was top 10 at radio. Really? I had another single out that was climbing the charts that went number one. And by the time it went number one, fast car was like number 12. Wow.

For whatever reason, man, it just struck the right. court at the right time. Well, it's a beautiful combination of a great song and then a very wonderful interpretation of it. Yes. So when you guys sang together, first of all, answer this for me, because I'll be working out and that comes on my liked songs and I do go. What was her journey?

Did she choose to lay back? Yeah, I think she just kind of stepped away. The cool thing about her is nobody who really knows. She's kind of an enigma. Yeah, for sure. And I remember when there was whispers of that. happening. My team's like, well, I think the Grammys are thinking about maybe wanting to do this. And I was like, dude, that ain't happening. Yeah, she's never doing this. I was like,

bro, that ain't going to happen. Like, I remember just thinking like, it's not going to happen. She just doesn't do anything. She's J.D. Salinger of the country world. Yeah, so they were like, would you be interested? And I'm like, well, fucking obviously, I would be interested. I was like, it's not going to happen. Right. I would be definitely interested. So, you know, it's three, four months go by. And remember I was sitting in the tree stand at my house. and Carly called me who works with Asha and does PR and she was like, hey, Tracy's going to call you

tomorrow at 7 o'clock. I presume you've never met her at that point. Oh, no. No one's better. No one's better. Yeah. She hadn't commented in any way. Mike Lard already been number one

and it's like the run was kind of over. There's no whispers at all. Right, which is fine. I wasn't expecting to. Maybe she was expecting you to call her. I'm telling you, dude, you can't get in touch with her. Because I remember when they were trying to figure it out, they're like, there's not a team.

is no one, which is also the coolest thing in the world, by the way. It is the coolest thing in the world. So next night, I'm like doing bath time with my kids and it's chaos, whatever. But I told my wife, like, hey, seven o'clock. Your boy's off the clock, dude. Yeah. I was sitting at the kitchen table, man. It's just like sitting there with my phone on the table because I'm like, I have a feeling she's going to call like on time, man, like prompt. And she did, man. It was like on the dot. Phone goes off. It's unknown. Oh, my God. I'm nervous. I have a butterfly anxiety. Like pick it up. It's like pick it up. It's just her, man.

And I was like, fuck. I was like, this is crazy. We talked for probably 45 minutes. Oh, really? Did she say, I like your version? She did. She was like, man, I think you did a really great job. Oh, my God.

What more could you want? I'm such a big fan and I'm nerd now. I'm like, why did you do this thing when you recorded this song and this record and like, I'm just getting deep? She could tell I was a real fan. Yeah. I really cared about the records. She didn't say this, but I think that was her trying to figure out if she wanted to do it or not.

Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's like, I don't want to go. go up with this guy if this guy sucks. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Which I got respect for it. It was crazy that it happened. When the call ended, did she give you a, I'm going to do it?

Or did you hear later? No. She wasn't like, yeah, I'm definitely doing it. She was just like, it was great talking to you. Yeah. How long after that call do you find out? It was probably like a month, I would say, before I heard anything. I mean, obviously, incredibly thankful that moment happened.

It was so cool, not just for me, but I feel like for so many people to see her back out. unbelievable. That to me was the coolest part. It's just like her being out. I love seeing her sing so much. If I could have, I wouldn't even have been up there. I would have just been like, cool. Can I just watch? Of course. She's so great. I love watching that. But the moment for me is she starts the duet. She does her couple. Then we go to you or whatever we'd call, not a couple of but you do yours. And then when you throw it back to her, you look at her, whatever facade you might have had, it came down. You have this smile on your face when you look back at her, like your turn, that's so palpable. Oh my God, I have full chill.

It was so palpable. I rewound it like four times this morning. I just look at you, look at her. And I'm like, I think he's present for this, which is almost impossible to do. It was like, were you present as fuck for that? Yeah, it was just so surreal doing that song with her. You know, I've been listening to that song since I was a kid. It's like one of the first things I remember.

It could have been almost too much to compute, but it does seem like you're there in your body experiencing it. The best part about that was she was really adamant about rehearsing a lot. She hadn't played in like 10 years. She came in just so confident. It was all the players from that record, like when she recorded it. She asked me to bring my steel player, so they were steel on it. So it was all the guys that played on the original record.

We rehearsed for like three days. Oh, wow. Did you become friendly with her in those three days? And so there was this full confidence. There's no question. We're going to nail it. Yeah. You'd work through all the butterflies in this rehearsal.

It's like, dude, I didn't rehearse three days for my whole tour. Right. Like, you know what I mean? She wanted it to be perfect. And she wanted to have that confidence. It paid off. Yeah, to make sure it was great. And so that allowed us to be able to just enjoy the actual performance and not be swept up and like, oh, we're at the Grammys.

And like, what if we mess up? Like, there was none of that. So here's an interesting thing. You have anxiety. Oh, big time. It's interesting anxiety, isn't it? Because you would think someone with anxiety performing would bring that out. But my guess is that's not where your anxiety lies.

No, mine doesn't make any sense, man. It's a form of OCD. You have a very specific form of OCD. Yeah, so it's called Puro OCD, which is like there's no outward compulsions. So you're not doing any behaviors that are observable. Yeah, the behaviors are all mental. It's just rumination. Yep.

Mental rituals. So did you have ticks when you're a kid? No. I would say 99.9% of people who have it, no one would ever even know. I'm not. But in theory, I could be having it right now and having this conversation. And it's like there's almost two yes. Almost the subconscious is having the conversation, but the real focus is on.

Yes, correct. The internal compulsion, is it something specific? Yeah. There's a lot of themes that are very recurrent for people that have this. Religion is one. It essentially preys on the antithesis of who you are at your core. Yeah, yeah. But it focuses on questions that are unanswerable.

Which is like, do I really love God? Do I really believe in God? Yeah, what percentage do I? And then you spend over 90% of your day thinking about that, I'd say. And that could happen for months on end. Oh my gosh, that's maddening. Is it too private for me to know what your themes are? No, I've had a ton, man.

Like, people have violent ones. Am I some sort of serial killer guy? Yeah. We had an OCD expert on, and it was very illuminating that the kind you see in movie is the lowest percentage of OCD. It's mostly people who are like they're afraid they're a pedophile. They're afraid they're a murderer. You can touch all of them. And there's some that for whatever reason, if you weren't really religious, you wouldn't

really have the God one because that wouldn't be as important to you. It's things that there's never an answer to. There's people that are like, am I gay? Am I a pedophile? Am I a serial killer? I'm driving down the road. Am I going to swerve into this traffic? And it's like you're not ever going to do that.

I know. It's like seeing a grizzly bear come out of the woods, but it's in your mind. Yep. Yes. It identifies a threat, but that threat's not there. And then it's not real. And then it's like, but it was real because I thought that for a second. People have those kind of thoughts all the time.

And they just like, oh, that's weird. It's like a bird flying by. Yeah. You just go, oh, there's a bird. And then you're like, what was that bird? Why did that bird fly by? And then the more you wonder why the bird flew by, the more it starts flying by. Your brain's like, I need to send that thought again because you're worried about it.

And you being worried about it must mean something. Yeah, yeah. Really, it doesn't mean anything. Then the more you think about it, the more it starts showing up and it starts going by and by. And then you start wondering more and more and more. And you do things mentally, ritualistically, to alleviate the anxiety of the bird showing up. So what's one of the rituals you can do mentally? Say, for example, you think in your mind, you're like, I'm going to swerve my car into traffic.

One could be, and this would be, I guess, technically an outward one. It doesn't happen. It's like reassurance seeking is a big one. Let's say me and you were really close friends. Yeah, we will be. You'd be like, you don't think I would ever plow my car into, like, the sidewalk. And you'd be like, dude, what are you talking about? No.

And then you're like, thank God. I'm obviously would never do that. Right. But that reinforces the importance of the thought to you by me asking you that. Oh, interesting. And so the alleviation, the reassurance seeking of me wanting to, like, quill the uncomfortableness that the thought gives me makes my brain pay more attention to it. Yeah. Because then I'm caring about it.

You're giving it power. Attention and attention. So the real trick to overcoming that is going, yeah, I think I will plow my car into a bunch of people. Letting your brain go there. Or just being like, maybe I will plow my car into a bunch of people. And when that happens, we'll deal with that at that point. Whatever. Maybe I am, you know, insane.

Gay pedophile. And you know what? That's fine. Right. Because if that happens, then whatever. That is what it is. It's just being like, yeah, whatever, man. It's like it's all good.

But I would say definitely the course of my life kind of has been dictated by that at certain times. For me, when I was in my early 20s and I just moved to California, I was super lonely. I was ruminating quite a bit on. I thought I was going crazy. Mental illness is one. Like, am I schizophrenic and I don't know it? Oh. What if I'm in this podcast and you guys aren't even real?

And I'm sitting somewhere in someone's garage going, well, yeah, I'm a famous country singer and blah, blah, blah. Well, God, I've had this thought. Imagine thinking that and like the normal person might be like, man, that's a really strange thing. And they think about it for one minute. Right. But imagine that thought comes and it's like a nuclear bomb goes off in your head and you can't stop thinking about it for six months. Oh, my God. And you never, and I won't say never, but for the most part, I would think in my experience, you never have two themes at one time.

Oh, interesting. Right. There's not room for two themes. Right. Like it's almost too much bandwidth. Let's say you're worried about religion. And it's the most important thing. in the world to you and then one day you have the car driving thought instantly you think about

the religion we're like bro how dumb was that oh wow i can't believe i wasted three months of my life worrying about this thing that's now is so inconsequential but then it could come back in five it's whack-a-mole people always reach out to me about it because there's not a lot of people who've talked openly about that particular form which a lot of people have and i would say 99.9% of people suffer in silence with this thing. Yeah. Because how do you tell your parents when you're 12 years old

that you're worried about... You think you're going to stab someone with a kitchen knife. Yeah. Like, people will think you're insane. Yeah, you're very afraid that they will take the action. Yeah, they'll be like, hey man,

something's wrong with my kid. And not his mental illness. It's like, my kid is a psychopathic. Right, exactly. Some clarity, right? I'm like, I think I am slowly kind of going crazy here. But then I also have moments where I'm like, no, you're not.

Everything's kind of groovy. Right. And you're afraid if I give over this information, someone's going to assume the worst. We're going to have a DefCom 5 reaction to it. And I do at times realize I'm not. That's the thing is none of it ever makes any sense. If you told someone you were worrying about, they'd be like, what do you mean? But there's nothing about you that would make that true.

Even telling people that is counterintuitive to the healing process. If you are or not like that, it just doesn't even matter. I know right now that I could get in my car and it's an hour drive home. and I could have a spike that sends me into a three-month spiral. But also, I'm just not afraid of that at all. You just have to know, maybe at another point in my life I'll have another one of these, and that's okay, and I'll deal with it when it happens. And I think that's the freedom.

I mean, it took me five years to even figure out what it was. Yeah, I was going to say, you seem to have a lot of awareness and tools. Did you receive these from therapy? Yeah, the behavioral therapy part of it is huge. It's having the toolkit to combat it and knowing what's right and what's wrong. You can never solve it. It's like addiction. It ain't going away.

The big key is knowing that you'll never have an answer to any of these questions. You answering the question will never cure you. Or you trying to find out the answer is never going to do you. It's an illusion that you can figure it out. Right. Because if it was 2 plus 2 equals 4, you wouldn't have any anxiety about it because you would just know. Yeah. And you could know an answer and you could get a test and that's the answer.

Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. Yeah, so how did you learn all this? I'm better at that, probably and I am at country music, to be honest. I mean, just from years of experience. Experience. I mean, just 10,000 hours times a million. But no help. Or did you go to help?

I never really had a traditional CBT therapist, honestly. It was just once I found out what it was, that probably happened at like 21, which is the same year I learned guitar. Oh, this is what it is. There was a lot of relief in that. Yeah. I was like, oh, my God. Well, you're not alone.

People have this? Like, what are we talking about? Yeah, the isolation of it is sometimes the worst. Yeah, you're like, this can't be like, I must be crazy. Nobody understands. Obviously, my parents were really worried, but they're like, we don't even know. I went to therapy in high school, and it was like, oh, you've got generalized anxiety disorder. And I'm like, okay, well, that must be what it is. But it just didn't feel like

specific enough. This feels different than that. Once I found the Puro thing, it was like, oh my God, this is the thing that I have. Yeah. Do you think this could potentially be one of the reasons when you say you were lazy quotes in school? Like, this was happening in your brain. And as a kid, how could you be doing all these things at once? So many times in my life, I feel like I was on the cusp of like, figuring out or achieving something and then I would have one of these spikes and it would be like well there goes everything because I don't care about anything else now because I'm so worried about I'm crazy I hesitate even saying these things because I feel like sometimes people are going to watch this and they're going to seek reassurance from hearing me talk about it like it'll trigger

the wrong reaction yeah like they'll go oh gosh well then he said this thing and that made me feel better for 10 minutes and so I'm fine for 10 minutes but It preys on everything you're not. Right. And it makes you feel like you are that. When in reality, in some ways, your deepest fear is being something that you're not. And that's rooted in this, another big one is relationship, OCD. One of the themes of Pure O is like, do I really love my wife?

Oh. I really love my kids. Oh, yeah. And there's no answer. Obviously, you wouldn't be worried about it if you didn't. That's right. And that's the thing. But telling people that is giving them reassuring.

You don't love people aren't worried that they don't love them. Yes. Well, you look at the list of people I don't love, I'm not sitting around worried that I don't love them. Oh, gosh, do I love them or do I not? No, it's quite evident. I think this is so interesting. Explaining it's actually bad. It's a catch-22.

This is good for everyone to hear, even if you're on the opposite end of it. What we shouldn't be doing is be like, oh, but you shouldn't worry about that because you're not that. That's actually not helpful. That actually makes it worse. Yeah. Which is so confusing. It's such a confusing Hampshire wheel. Getting out of the loop is so.

confusing. Until you know how to do it, you can't do it. The research on it has come a lot farther in the last 14 years than it did even when I was 21. There was basically one doctor that even was doing anything on it at that time at 21. Yeah. Now there's a lot more people who are saying that, oh yeah, I've got this thing. And do you think it's nature or nurture or a combination? A hundred percent nature. It's like having bipolar. It's just wired that way. It's just how your neurons fire. Have you come to find an upside of it? So for me, I very much think of I'm an attic across the board, and it kind of works in most domains until I get to that one. But my obsessive nature and my ruminating on how to make the show better, how to do a better job interview, like that's all the same package that makes me meet. Sure. Do you think there's been an upside? Do you think it's part of your success as well? No.

I don't think it's part of my success at all. If I just never had it, that would be awesome. There's no good parts of it. That's a good answer. There's no good parts of it other than when you do. don't have it. Yeah. Maybe like you recognize. When you don't have it, you're like, bro. You feel good. Life is just incredible. I will tell people this, man, at least in my experience, it's been something that's gotten better for me. Do you think kids help? Well, certainly.

Yeah, I mean, there's less time to worry about that kind of stuff. But kids could also easily be a trigger. OCD people think they're going to hurt their kids. Sure. They're going to kill their kid. They're going to molest their kid. They won't change that kid's diaper. For sure. It's an unique experience in each individual, I would say. Obviously, there's patterns that are recognizable in people that have OCD, you know, especially this form. But I think knowing that you have it is a big part, anybody that has it should definitely do their research on it. But I don't even have to tell those people to do it because they have. Right. Because they're sitting on their computer all day going. Yeah. What's wrong with me? Imagine being in flight or flight mode 90% of the day. Yeah. Yes. And you're actually bizarrely now almost going to manifest some health condition. Sure, because you're going to be under stress all the time. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm glad you're talking about it. Me too.

Oh, I think it's harder if you're a country star. Yeah, actually, probably. Every actor I talk to, they've all been in therapy. We've talked to all the countries. No one's going to therapy. There's like some cultural stuff. I think for me was finding out how can I make this happen less, not from the therapy side. Obviously, that helps a ton.

But for me, it was like, man, how can I just change what I'm eating? eating, what I'm doing. My life revolves around preventing it, right? So, like, I mean, I don't eat gluten anymore. Me neither. That was for sure somehow involved in. My inflammation levels were really, really high. And obviously, your brain is really inflamed.

That's been a big one for me. It's a wild journey. Luke, you're a very sweet, talented person. I'm really delighted I got to meet you. I'm really grateful you're willing to come over today and chat with us. And I just also want to give you a big high-five for fucking raise in $24 million for Asheville, this town I love. Yeah. 24 million bucks they raise.

Congratulations on everything. I mean, you're so young. I'm excited to watch you continue to do radical stuff. Is there anything we got to promote specifically? I got a new single coming out. It's called Back in the Saddle. Okay, so Back in the Saddle is coming out. July 25th.

Oh, great. And tell me where are we going? I think we're going backwards in a good way. You know, the last record I put out was Father's Day of last year. So it's kind of more of a niche project for me. You know, it's more of a personal. Yeah, you got a selfish endeavor. You know, I got two little kids at home.

So it's been two and a half years since I put out a record that was meant to be heard by a lot of people. That's kind of where the back in the saddle thing came in. We'll see. We'll see if people are, you know. All right, Luke. Well, I hope I bump into you a bunch while we're in Nashville. Yeah, absolutely. You're delightful.

Get that Raptor R down here and we'll find some. Trale's. Bye. I sure hope there weren't any mistakes in that episode, but we'll find out when my mom, Mrs. Monica, comes in and tells us what was wrong. Smells different in here. Oh, God.

Because of me. No, it's not a human smell. It's like a musty. Yeah, a musty old air conditioning smell or something. Well, it's been musty in here. It might be me because... Are you musty? Well, I'm wearing a vintage shirt.

Oh, and it could have some mustank on it. Yeah, sometimes vintage comes with a little must. I don't think it's that. Although I came in here earlier to set this down and I didn't smell that. Should I smell? No, it is smelly. Well, we must find out now. Well, it is smelly musty, but I can't.

I don't think it could be that strong that you smelt it coming in. Let me see. It's not this piece, right? No, it's not. Yeah. No, that doesn't smell bad at all. That's not it. Are you sure?

Okay, well, I smell it. Like, you know when you put on clothes that aren't your smell? Yeah, yeah. Because I have, this isn't washed. Ugh, I'm outing myself. Way more common when you're young. Right? Like you're at a friend's house.

You didn't tend to sleep over. Yeah, I can sleep over. Can I borrow something? As an adult, I'm not swapping clothes with many people. Are you? Yeah. You're not, you're not a girl. Yeah, you're not.

Like, girls borrow each other's clothes. Still, like at inner 40s? Yeah, of course. I mean, not like on a daily basis, but if I'm, if I am. When's the last time you borrowed an item of clothing? I mean, I'm sure I've borrowed something from Kristen upstairs, like, many times. I'm sure. You don't remember the last time.

Like, probably I'm over and it's like, oh, I need to wear a bathing suit. This is a hypothetical. Do you remember the last time you? Oh, my God. Should we call her? She won't remember. Are you kidding? You're just so particular about your clothes. I am.

I'm finding it a little hard to believe that you're in your friend's clothes a lot. Okay. Do you want me to like really peek behind the hair? I do. Let's go all the way. Okay. So like sometimes we record two. Back to back.

Yeah. And then I, we, you change shirts because your closet's here. And then I'm like, oh, fuck. Like, I probably need to change shirts too. but I didn't bring any. So then I'll, like, go borrow something. I've done that recently. I'm very unsure of when this happened.

Well, I don't write it down to my copy at book. I agree that this seems hypothetically plausible. I agree. You're like, I need another shirt. Kristen's got a bunch up there. I'll grab one. Also, I do a lot of closet clean out. Yeah.

A lot. And then I'll make big heaping piles of clothes. And then people come and they take them. Yeah. And so then they're wearing my clothes. Sure. That I buy. So women are taking other people's clothes.

Okay. So you don't have an exact memory of the last time you were walking around town and one of your girlfriend's clothes. Not a precise memory, just more of a hypothetical memory. Next time I'll write it down. Okay. Keep a journal. I will. I'll keep a journal.

Okay. But vintage clothes and shopping. I don't normally wash it immediately. That's gross. People are going to probably be grossed. I don't know that I have either. But vintage is a little trickier. It is, but also what do people think they're getting from?

Like, you're moving around, you're in a Starbucks. There's 35 strangers in there. Everyone's coughing and sneezing and talking loudly. There's spittle everywhere and airborne contaminants and contagions. Legionnaires. Yeah. What do you think are getting from someone's t-shirt? There's no, or, well, we know your skin's,

largest organ. But it's not like anything's like, they're not using it as a tissue or toilet paper. But psoriasis. That is not contagious. But you wouldn't want it. Like, okay, we have to be realistic. Aren't there people in the world? We don't have to name names. I have psoriasis. So go ahead and name me. No. I'm not, I've moved on from sororice. Oh, you did. Okay. I'm still there. Yeah, I'm sorry. It's a large accusation to levy at someone. I was just thinking about the guy from Armchair Anonymous where he had his skin. across the, no, we had psoriasis, and it was across the entire apartment. Remember, the whole apartment was covered in skin? Yes. So you probably wouldn't want to borrow his shirt. And it's nothing against him. But, like, I think we could agree. I agree that it would be gnarly. And I don't want to do that. But also, you won't catch anything. No, you're not going to catch anything. But I think people have more, it's more of a, it's not like I'm going to get a disease. Yeah, it's cooties. I was just more objecting to people thinking that's like, gross like you're going to catch something.

And I just don't think you're going to catch something. Unless you're borrowing someone's old used underwear that has a current STB. Or bacteria. Because you can get a UTI. Yeah. I imagine that I think they wash it. That's hopeful. It is hopeful.

I do think that's the express policy. But you're just putting a lot of faith in whatever. These are expensive. Hourly person that day was like, you got to wash all those before you open the register. And they're like, you got it. I mean, that's a real. Oh, my God. At the end of the day, it's humans.

It's humans. I know. That's what, that's the harsh realization of the world. Our pilots are humans. My father-in-law sent me an article this morning from the godfather of AI. Now, a lot of people have this moniker, so you don't really know which one is the true one. We know the godmother of AI. Hayley. But this gentleman worked at Google. He has since left. He does have a Nobel Peace Prize.

Oh, who is it? I don't remember his name. I could look it up really easy. Why wouldn't I honor and credit this person? But what he's urging people to do is design AI with a woman's instincts, basically. Geoffrey Hinton. Okay. He says, listen to this. Well, first of all, did you hear that an AI model tried to blackmail an engineer about an affair that it had learned about from email? No. Yes. What the fuck? See, oh my God.

Okay. Hinton presented an intriguing solution, building maternal instincts into AI models so they really care about people. Even once the technology becomes more powerful and smarter than humans, AI systems will very quickly develop two sub-goals. they're smart. One is to stay alive and the other sub-goal is to get more control. There's a good reason to believe that any kind of agenic AI will try to stay alive. But there's one sentence in here that's really incredible. Oh, he noted that mothers have instincts in social pressure to care for their babies. The right model is the only model we have of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing, which is a mother being controlled by her baby. That's a fascinating framing of it, isn't it? That is. The baby is in control. In control. And they're just

stupid babies. Yeah. But you're fully committed at all times to sacrifice whatever you needed to do for them. Yeah. Wow. That's wild. Yeah. That's cool. It's like the most distinct in a mother child relationship. Yeah. But also probably a human to child relationship. Like if there's a kid around and you're alone with them and you're an adult, like an instinct does kick in that you have to help that kid or take care of that kid or, you know, you're not just going to walk away from a kid up by itself. Yeah, we're susceptible. We're hardwired to respond to things that are cute.

When the eyeballs are disproportionate to the size of the face, we get really nurturing and empathetic. That's neat. Yeah, that's what AI needs. That's why Vinnie's so. A, I need to look at humans and think, they're so cute. Look at them. They're gangly and they're walking on two feet.

No one else is. Yeah, but what are they going to do about the fact that humans, like, kill people and are really mean and bad? So do, you know, babies break things on accident and they do not do stuff. On accident, though. Or on purpose, sometimes they slap their mom in the face. We know that. Sure. You've seen that video of Delta attacking me over and over again.

You're in trouble. Yeah. She's leaping at me and lunging. though, you were in trouble. I was not in troubles. I made very clear in the video. I did nothing. You were in trouble because she decided you were in trouble,

and that means you were in trouble. You were in danger. But then she wanted to give me a necklace, and she decided I was not in trouble. You're not in trouble anymore. Yeah. Oh, it was very nice to get back to my little sweeties last night. Were you happy?

Yeah, yeah. How do you feel you're back home? I feel dicey. I feel like I'm on re-entry. Yeah, sure. You didn't feel that way. I think this is the longest I've been gone from L.A. since, without a paddle, maybe. Wow.

When in Rome, maybe we were gone for two months. A long time ago. Yeah, 56 days. That's really long. Almost two months. Yeah, time is wild. Walked Lincoln, the first day of school today. Oh, today was first day of school?

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. seventh grade. I mean, I try not to jinx her, but I'm so excited for her. Oh, that was a big year for you. Best year in my life. Oh, yeah. I don't think you have to knock if it was already the best year of your life.

No, it's for her. It's for her. Oh, okay. See, I'm taking care of the child in the situation. Because you're like AI. You're agentic. Yeah, seventh grade. We, our friends, have a child who just turned 16.

Mm-hmm. And we were at her birthday party, and I was like, and this is a kid we've known her whole life. Yeah, yeah. And like. I really held her as a tiny newborn baby. Yeah, I didn't know her that little, but since she was like five probably. Yeah. And that was so weird.

Was it? Yeah. Is she getting her license? Yeah, she's like driving. She is. Oh, my gosh. I know. How exciting.

Obviously, you know this and all parents know this, but when you get to be an adult, time is just kind of stagnant, right? Like, unless it's your birthday, I guess, but like you barely even that. You're not really, whatever, you feel the same age, and then you're kind of doing the same thing every day or whatever. You know, you're living your life. And you're not as aware of the passage of time, but kids make you so aware of the passage of time. It's like a non-stop sense of like, oh, my God, they're getting older, which means time is passing. I'm getting older. It's like, it's really intense.

And she's 16. She is going to be an adult in two years. When we're done with this contract, she will be an adult. Oh, my goodness, she can. That's wild. She can do what? She can vote. She can vote.

She'll vote. But like, that's crazy. It is crazy. She'll go to. college. I had that moment this morning. I was like looking at the school and it has the established date on Lincoln School. And I was doing the math. And I was like, oh, this school year when we hit 2026, your school will have a 120 year anniversary. Oh, cool. And then I was thinking, that sounds so old. Yeah. But it's only two of my lifetimes, which makes it feel not old.

Exactly. I get so confused when I start doing. time as multiples in my lifetime. Because I'm only six of me away from the revolution, basically. Yeah, but it's also, it is crazy, but also think about six, like you've, a lot has happened. I mean, it just goes by so fast. Exactly. This stuff is all like five minutes ago is what I'm saying. I'm feeling very nostalgic right now.

Okay. Like currently, not today, but just in the past couple weeks. You're in a nostalgic era. Yeah, because, well, my birthday is coming up, so maybe that has to do with it. Yeah. And this child turning 16. That really sent you for a loop. And I rewatched girls.

I watched the whole thing in a week. How many seasons were there? Six. Six. Ten episodes each. 60. Pretty much hour longs. Okay.

And you loved it. Oh, my God. Better this time around? For me, it's so much better because. the first time I watched it, I think I couldn't really watch it. Like, I was, I was very, I was, yeah, I was like their age. I was in my 20s. I was stressed out.

I knew what my life was going to be. I was them. Yes. And it was too much of a mirror and it made me feel flaily and anxious. So I don't even think I finished it. Okay. Watching it now. What is the big accomplishment you think of it?

Just how authentic it is? it's so funny like she's so funny the way she writes it's just she just has my number like the way she writes and storytells is is so it hits like such a chord

there are so many moments this happened in too much also the show that she created the new show where like I'm like gonna cry but I feel like if I start crying I'll never stop crying

wow Like she has that there's like this ability to like un-tap and then I'll just leak out for the rest of time. Like I won't. It's what it's just. And is it a feeling of sadness? It's such a specific feeling. It's it's nostalgia, I guess. Well, there's a layer of that.

There's a nostalgia. There's a like life is so beautiful and hard and complicated and relationships are so. complicated, but they're so, they're so beautiful that we get to, we get to engage like this in, in life. Like, it's, it's so intense. Like, it's such an intense feeling of the reality of being and how messy. Uh-huh. Sure. It is. And she's just so funny. Like, the first time I watched it, I wasn't in, I hadn't hit that stage in life where I watch everything with subtitles, which I do now. Even American shows.

I watch everything with subtitles. And so I'm not missing any jokes. Like, they're, I'm saying. But are you missing any visuals? Because that's my issue with subtitles, is I have to concentrate quite hard to read the subtitles and I'm missing a lot of the visuals. Yeah, I. And if they're there, I'll read them, even if I'm understanding it perfectly.

Yeah, I understand this dilemma. Comment on whether you watch the subtitles or not, Dax will read them. I think I'm just so used to it now. I don't think I'm missing any visuals. Okay. And I'm not missing any nuance or jokes. And I think I could have before. Okay.

So you're kind of reading the script and watching the show at the same time. Kind of, yeah. Do you wish they put the description of the scene on there too? No, they're doing a great job visually. A sparsely decorated one bedroom in New York apartment. Yeah. So anyway, that show is making me feel very. nostalgic and so I'm just in like a wispy mood and are you um what do you have feelings about

summer ending yeah are you are you ready for fall I love fall I'm really glad fall is after summer okay and not spring yeah because I don't love spring okay spring's fine but fall's cozy it's sweaters, it's... Warm drinks, football. Yeah, old fashions. I was thinking about the service that football provides for a lot of Americans. Yes. You're so sad summers over.

Yeah. But for so many people, like tens of millions of people, the excitement of like, oh, football's back. And I know what I'm doing on Sundays and Mondays. Exactly. I don't indulge. Yeah. But I get it. Yeah.

Maybe you should get into it. I think they, like, deserve. Like, they're pacifying a nation. They're really, they do provide a service to bring you out of the summer blues. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. But even just like, then Halloween is coming and that's on the horizon. And it's like, what are we going to dress up as?

Yes, there's a lot of talk about the costumes already. Okay. I'm out of the loop, but I'll do whatever. It's best that you're out of the loop because we're going through many iterations, I think, before we land on it. Okay. So it's just a lot of pitches right now. And I'm such a stick in the mud. I'm basically like, you know, when you guys decide, tell me what I am.

Okay. And just stay out of some of the pitches because they seem impractical to me. Okay. Do you mind throwing some out there? Well, what I got kind of nervous about is Lincoln's now interested in doing puns, kind of bringing back what everyone love from the 2010s, I guess. Yeah, Kristen and used to do this, right? Yes.

Yes, like I, for Bert Reynolds rap or whatever, you know, stuff like that. And so they already have like really complicated ones. Okay. Or someone's a human and they're a toothbrush. And to me, I'm just like, whoa, we better start fabricating all these if we're really doing this. Yeah. Okay. But again, this isn't my domain.

This is one of the domains I just pop in and out of. I'm on, I'm on a ride duty. Yeah. Did you drive the bus back? No. Oh, okay. So the bus is staying there. The bus is there.

So he's going to stay there? Yes, until January, if I come back, bring it back to go to the sand dunes. I wonder if he should come back home because, like, what if we want to, like, hang out in him? I know. I feel safer if Big Brown's here, but Big Brown is covered in the baking sun in L.A. for... It likes the sun. Some people like the sun. Brown people like the sun.

Nobody likes to have that much direct sunlight rotting in the front yard. You can't say nobody when I'm sitting right here. But you have rejuvative properties. You can replace your dead skins and stuff. Big Brown's just going to get duller and duller. So I think it's best for Big Brown. Okay, well. You're bummed that the bus isn't here.

Yeah, it was only a other brown thing on this property besides me. I felt seen. Okay. And now I'm back to being the token. Is there nothing brown ear? Just me. Just little old me. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

I have a confession. Oh, wow. I love a confession. So I got this necklace. Okay. For the listener, it's gold. It has, it's really pretty. It has, like, what kind of looks like a paper clip or safety pin hanging from the chain,

but with a little diamond on it and then it has a little pendant. Uh-huh. Now, the pendant has a unicorn on it. Uh-huh. And I feel weird about it because I love it. I saw it and I was like, I need this. But then I decided I was going to tell people that somebody else bought it for me. How come?

Because I think it's weird if you buy yourself a pendant that has a unicorn on it. Oh, really? I'm a little. What do you think it says about someone? I'm nervous. It's arrogant. Oh, wow. Arrogate?

Like I'm saying I'm a unicorn. Oh. I don't know if anyone would think that. I just want to get ahead of it. Okay. Yeah, I don't, I don't think anyone's going to think that. I mean, just, I imagine the comments are going to be like, oh, my God, she thinks she's a unicorn. When you wear a La Costa shirt, you don't think you're an alligator.

Speak for your shirt. Okay, I don't. And you don't think you're a horse or a pole a plate. This isn't the brand. This is the charm. Do I think I'm a hawk or a crow? Well, you do think you're a crow. I do.

I am a crow. But I'm not a hawk. hawk yeah but that's your dad you said yeah that is my dad see it's like if i had if you were a hawk charm well have you got a huge tattoo of a big american eagle on your chest american eagle's in some trouble right now but why you haven't heard this you're so out of the loop i probably am what um because they did a campaign with sidney sweeney that really got people in a tizzy about what? Is this what I saw a clip of her crying talking to camera about her feelings being hurt? Oh, maybe. I bet I bet her feelings are hurt. Okay, what happened? Um, she, the campaign was about

jeans, obviously, but it was, remember the Brooks Shields Calvin Klein commercial that they did? American Eagle. Sydney Sweeney has great gene. There's a voiceover. There's a whole thing about her genes and how your jeans are passed down and it predicts your eye color and your hair color and she says something like I have great genes my jeans are blue I only have paid attention to this I only was so I'm definitely missing pieces and I think there's longer ones and shorter ones whatever but there's a like backlash against genetics are blue genes. Genetics.

About what it's saying about her genetics being the right genetics. Because she's blonde with blue eyes. Right. And the Calvin Klein one is not like that. It's more like... Nothing gets between me and my Calvin. That's right. She's also 13 or something.

Yeah, that's problematic in a much different way. But anyway, I don't, I'm not going to levy an opinion on that. I do think people... You know, I help Kristen with some. There's so, you have so many specific looks. You're like, okay, that's the same. I saw the whole thing. You're like, okay, that's the sentence.

I want to say, oh, that's going to be, that's going to sound rough. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to start with an analogy. Do you remember when I help? Listen, this is a ding, ding, ding, to what I'm about to say. Yeah. People need to think. Okay.

They need to think before they speak and before they put things out. They need to edit what they're saying. being American Eagle or the people being critical of American Eagle or just American Eagle? American Eagle. Like I help Kristen with commercial stuff, right? And if you're working with Kristen on a commercial and I'm involved, you're probably going to be annoyed at me because I am very picky. I am like, we aren't going to use that word or not. We shouldn't use this. We got to do this. And it's like to them, they're like, this is all the same thing. But it is not. I'm very similar. And as you You know, I'm always on high alert for like condescension, triggering people feeling less than.

Yeah, like there's... You have to think about everything if you're doing a campaign. Yes. And you do. You have to think about across the board everything. There's a lot to think about and things make a, it makes a difference. Words make a difference. The delivery makes a difference.

And it requires a lot of thought. And so when I see something. like that, I'm more just like, why, who let that happen? Sydney Sweeney's person should not have allowed that and also American Eagles should not have allowed that. Someone should have said like, hey, I don't know. Let's just be careful here. Yeah, I wish I knew more about the controversy. If the controversy is just that she's saying she has good genetics, what's interesting about that. Let's just say that's what it is, that she's saying, I have good genetics.

I have the best genetics. And American Eagles saying she has great genetics or the best genetics. That would be an important word. Does she say the best? She says, I have the best genes. Right. I don't know. If she said that or not.

I don't either. Yeah. So, but what's interesting is, let's say it was just, I have the best genetics. It's funny that that's more offensive to people than what I earned how I look. Is that, would they like the counter? Which is, I looked this way. I didn't earn it. I was just born this way.

I hit the genetic lottery. People like how I look across the board. To me, it seems less arrogant to say, I'm just the recipient of great genes. But it's talking about blue eyes and blonde hair specifically. So that is the problem. Well, here's where they might have got a little murky on their analogies. They're like, oh, we're going to play the jeans, jeans. exactly um but when she says i have blue jeans we mean j e a hat j e a and and it got a little

murky no they knew what they were doing with that that's like her eyes are blue so her jeans are blue like that's that's what they're doing but it's also like then they need to probably what they should have done is ran two campaigns one with her one with someone with brown hair or skin or something and then made a brown pair of jeans Yeah, just blue jeans versus brown jeans. Or black jeans. I love black jeans. They could run a campaign with multiple people with this theme.

The problem is you have this, like, beautiful, very Aryan girl talking about her blonde hair and blue eyes and having good genes. And it's kind of like, e, let's maybe not do that. But again, I don't necessarily, I don't actually blame her. I think she needs someone in her. camp. I'm not avail right now. Maybe down the line. Okay, just putting it out there. Yeah, just putting it out there. It's kind of a consultant. Do you think you could go through like 10 or 12 a day? Yeah. Like maybe go do a volume play, like have 12 of these clients that you're overseeing. Of course. Remember I majored in PR. This is where some of this comes in. Yeah, you may have the

pleasure I've had in life of looking back and like seeming like it all makes sense now. Like I was so into driving and then I was a host of Top Gear and it's improv and driving. fast and you're like, well, how did these things intersect? So it might be that where your PR education finally is like, I knew there was a total reason. It's at play every day. It's a play all the time here. I notice it all the time.

I'm like, man, meant to be. I need to know more, but it sounds like people are overreacting in my opinion. You always think that. I do. I think people in general are looking for ways to be offended because you could, you could say I love my blue eyes and blonde hair. that's not saying, that's just saying that's one version of being beautiful. If she says I like my blonde hair and blue eyes, they're hearing, I don't like brown hair.

No, she's not saying I like. Or I like that I got these. She's not saying that. Okay. That's the problem. That's what I'm saying. Words matter. If she, if, if, if it was phrase like that, like, I like my blue jeans.

Yeah, yeah. That is different than I have good genes. My jeans are blue. Uh-huh. Like, it's so, it's so nitpicky, but it really does make a difference. And I will say as someone who doesn't have blue jeans, I mean, I have blue jeans, but I don't have blue jeans. I don't have blue jeans. No, you know, almost exclusively blue jeans.

I have, I have, I have, I don't have any brown jeans. Brogans are not popular. They're not a popular. shade of they're not a popular wash brown jeans they just aren't whether that black jeans are though i have brown corduroys and they are so cute and they're low yeah when you get into cordoroy people really embrace brown even orange whatever yeah so i i as someone who doesn't have these arian jeans that you do yeah um if you said like yeah i have great jeans i have blue eyes I'd be like, probably don't say that to me.

Right. Like, you know, even and not like because I'm trying to be offended, but just like, are you serious? Like, that's so stupid to say. Yeah, I guess for you, blue eyes is really synonymous with white. Because now what's interesting? Well, she's white. She is white. Yeah.

If she said I'm so happy I'm white, I'm with you. Right? That's, yeah. So I'm trying to understand. So I do understand. I'm trying to figure out what the stickiness is. here. And I think maybe that's it, which is blue eyes are so associated with being white. And blonde. That you're basically saying I'm happy I'm white. Yes. So. I'm happy I have this

package. Blonde hair, blue eyes, white skin. And by the way, I don't blame you. You guys get a lot of shit. You get a lot of shit in this life. So you should be happy about it. But we just don't need to. Some white people, some brown people have blue eyes. It's so rare, Dad. It's so... Anywho. Rare. I mean, wow.

It's probably more rare. Oh, this is a good segue into something, but this, it's probably more rare for a brown person to have blue eyes than green eyes in general. Like, definitely, actually. Speaking of that, when we were watching Tom Cruise's cruises, and what movie were, what movie were we watching where there was oh he had green eyes and his love interest yeah i think it was one of the mission impossibles or no was it de me more in um in few good men it was it was de me more green eyes tom had green eyes and we were shocked that they both had green eyes because they're the rarest of eyes and then we started to look into how many co-stars have had green eyes together

It couldn't give us an answer for that. Yeah. So, um, anywho. So I guess it's fine that I wear this or? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, cool. Cool. I don't think anyone, when they have an animal on their locket, the person's like, you think

you're that animal. I think they just think you like that animal. Hmm. You like unicorns. I think I'm a unicorn. I actually disagree. Like if somebody wore a fox or like had a little fox, like, had a little fox, like, they're kind of displaying that that's who they are.

Okay. So it sounds like you might be critical of someone wearing a unicorn pendant. Yeah. Thinking, yeah, which makes sense. All the things we fear and worry about others attacking us for are the things we, right? Because they make logical sense to us. I wouldn't care if someone was wearing it, but I would want someone to have given it to them. Okay.

Like their mom or their boyfriend. Or their girlfriend or their girlfriend or they're someone who thinks they're a unicorn. Yeah. I guess it's like self-love. Like I have no one's giving this to me. No one thinks I'm a unicorn. But I have to. Interestingly, my same, I'm the same pushback I had on the jeans commercial, which is anyone who's got a problem is overthinking it.

Like you saw it, you liked it, you bought it. That's really the story. All the other stuff, though this bitch thinks she's a unicorn. she gave herself a, none and I don't think any of that. And if you are engaged in that kind of thinking, you're doing too much thinking. Also, if you're engaged in that, you probably just already don't like me. Like, that's sort of how it works, right? And if you're watching that commercial, you go like, oh, yeah, Sidney's when he's hot,

we've all agreed. Yeah. And she's got good jeans on. That's it. No, that's not what that's much different. It's much, much different. Anyway, I hope she hears my defense of her and agrees to come on. This is not against her.

This is, I'm actually saying, not her. I wish she had someone who told her. American Eagle, I feel like they probably knew a little bit more about what they were doing. I don't think they could have gone that far down the line without somebody saying like, I don't know. Maybe we should change up the verbiage a little. And maybe they wanted to be controversial, which if they did. Look what we've just talked about for 10 minutes, American Eagle jeans. Look what they got.

All right. Well, let's do some facts. Yes. This is for Luke Combs. Ah, sweet Luke Combs. Very sweet boy. He hasn't text me. He asked for my number, but he hasn't text me. And then I got, then I got paranoid I put my wrong number in. But really, probably I did put my right number in.

And he just hasn't texted me. It's like a Nicholas whole situation. These young boys are hard, man. I know these older women. Okay, so the car in the country music hall of fame, he said Webb Pierce. So the country music hall of fame and museum in Nashville features several iconic vehicles, including Elvis Presley's 1960 solid gold Cadillac limousine and Webb Pierce's 1962, Pontiac Bonneville convertible.

So he was right. Oh, also it says Jerry Reid's 19. 1980 Pontiac Trans Am from Smoky and the Bandit, too. Oh, wonderful. I mean, look, the original Smoky and the Bandit was a 77 transam with a big block 400. 1980, we went to a 4.9 liter turbo. That's a bummer. Oh.

But we love Jerry Reed. Got a long way to go, a short time to get there. We're eastbound and down. Wow. Yeah. We love him. We love Jerry Reed. And I'm happy he got something from.

the movie, but I do wish you would have gotten the 77 big block, is what I'm saying. Now, if you saw Jerry Reed at East SOTI, I'd be like, well, that's wild. Yeah, I agree. Okay, we talked about 4A, 5A schools, something that was new to you. Never heard that. Yeah. And you asked what the A stood for. It doesn't stand for anything specific, but rather serves as a classifier for schools based on

factors like enrollment size. High schools are often grouped in different classes, 1A, 2, A, 3, A, 4A, 5A, et cetera, to ensure fair athletic competition. So I bet it actually stands for athletics. You'd think. I mean, otherwise, there's no reason to put that A in there. Since they don't do 1B and 1 2C,

since we're only using A, then it's completely unnecessary. You could have just said 1 through 5. They're classified 1 through 5. Yeah, but... If the A never changes as you're going up, there's no point in having it. It's not telling you anything about school. No, it's not telling you anything, but they probably just wanted to give it a little something. Make it more techy sounding, 5A.

But I'm just saying five is the operative integer in there. The A is doing nothing. So why do we have it? Well, it's probably written out with five A's. I don't think so. You think so? Yeah. I bet it says the number five and then A.

Well, you're looking at it. Are there five A's in a line? No, no. I mean like when you're like at the school and it says the school, then it has, I like, I'm my head, I've seen multiple A's. Okay. I don't know. All right. I don't know why.

Let me text my friend Kirsten. She works at my high school, okay? Okay. Okay, great. Give her a text. We're going to give her a text on air. Hi, comma. I have a weird question for a fact check.

Period. Do you know what the A stands for in 5A schools, question mark? Also, is it spelled out? Number five. Also, is it spelled 5A or two, three, five. Yeah, I've seen A's like this. Oh, I added the yeah on accident. I got to edit that.

Okay. How many people in Asheville drive Subaru's? Um, it didn't, it wouldn't tell me, but it does say nationally Subaru makes up about 1.6% of the overall automotive market. Side note, on our drive to Dollywood, we had two different single dudes in cars that were driving at a very high rate of speed, high velocity. I won't mention whether I was driving slow or fast, but they were both in Subaru foresters.

Whoa. And Aaron and I said, this is weird. That's not the car I would expect speed freaks to be drawn to. But boy, we never saw a Subaru forester that wasn't doing 20 over. So I just file that where you made. Wow. Okay, but it does say that Subaru is over 11% of this. I'm sorry, in Vermont, Subaru is over 11% of the state's overall automotive sales.

Oh, wow. So 5X, the national average. Yeah. Yeah, because 1.6. I have a confusing fact because he said that the student he said that in Boone County, North Carolina, the population doubles when schools in, which, you know, makes sense. But I am confused because the student population of Boone in 2023 was 21,253. That includes Appalachian State and some other schools. But then if you look up the population of Boone, North Carolina, it says 20,000.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So there's 20,000 permanent residents. And then another 21,000 arrived to go to school, making it during school time, 41,000, but 21,000 aren't residents. So he got that almost exactly right. It's a little more than half of their population. So you're saying these people aren't residents. I guess that makes sense. I guess. Yeah, they're not on a census.

Hmm. I guess it depends on where they register. Yeah, you don't fill out a census in college generally. That's like the homeowner. But isn't it where you're registered? Like I registered in Athens. So I like I got like jury duty summons there and stuff way past when I was supposed to. Like I was considered a resident there. I would harken the guess that 99%

of people do not switch the address on their license from their childhood home to their dormitory. Yeah, it happened because I was registering to, for the election. Like, I think if you, maybe if you want to vote and you're in college, that's the way. Okay. Let's see. Is pure O OCD nature or nurture? Purely obsessional OCD, pure OCD, is thought to have a genetic component with family

history is significantly increasing the likelihood of developing the condition. Studies have shown that Puro was five to seven times more common in individuals with relatives who have OCD suggesting a genetic link. So yeah. Oh, okay. So she's Kirsten, my friend, she responded, here's what my athletic director just said when I asked. A is class. So single A is small schools. We are Regent. Wow, Duluth. Wow, my school is now 7A. They had to invent new ones for your school. She said, biggest classification. She said, and the A means nothing, kind of like with batteries. His words, not mine, she said. But that's not a good analogy because the A's in battery do mean something. Because if it's AAA, it's very small. If it's double A, it's bigger. So as you change

the A's. Yeah, but that's what this is too. This is the more A's, the bigger the school. If you're writing it out, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 A's. But it sounds quite like all they need is the 7. The 7 tells them how big the school is, not the A. Whereas in the battery, the A actually tells you the size. Well, no, they could just... They're not called 2A. It's double A or triple A. So it could just be double, triple single. But you can't because you have C and D batteries, whatever. Oh, I see what you're saying. You're saying the A is the type of battery because C is different. The A is the operative piece of information. The A has no operative impact on one through seven A. Whatever. It is written out with A's. It is. When she has to say the size of her school, she writes seven A's in a row.

She wrote seven and then a bunch of A's. Okay. So you would like them to keep the A, it sounds like. Yeah. I'm pushing for them to just ditch the A. It's completely extraneous. Okay. I think it's stupid to say the school is seven.

I like that it has something else added to it. Okay. Okay. Well, that's it for Luke. That's all the facts for him. Okay. I really adored him. Hopefully he'll text me one day.

Hopefully. Keep us updated on that. Yeah. Maybe I'll need 20 bucks someday, something, or a motorcycle. Yeah, maybe he needs to borrow some eggs. Do you know they make a little tiny motorcycle named a Dax? Wow. See, that is a big coincidence.

Yeah, I got one today. It's a little tiny motorcycle that says Dax. It's so cute. Oh, my God, cute. How tiny? Like, you can ride it or is it for kids? I can ride it, but you wouldn't know this. But do you know my Grom, that little tiny black motorcycle?

I have in L.A. Yeah. It's just a 125. Like my Ducati, the big one, is 1,200 cc's. This is 125. So it's a little tiny motorcycle. And it's retro and it's got this steel frame and it says Dax really huge on it. Wow.

It's Honda makes it. It's super adorable. I'm going to send you a picture. That's so cute. Did you also buy the Dax chair? I need to. You need to. I got to be honest, though.

Like, I would want this Dax. mini bike, whether it said Dax or not, it's just super cute and retro looking. That chair does not look comfortable, the armchair, the Dax armchair. Yeah, but it's, it's significant. It looks torturous, but. Hmm, God, that's deep, you know. It's like, are you comfortable in your skin? Sometimes you're not.

And this armchair reflects that. And that's why I don't love the chair. It's not on brand with my personal brand, which is I am max comfort, you know? Yeah, you're comfortable in your skin, but you're also an addict, which means by nature, you're kind of uncomfortable. But I sit in a lazy boy at work. Like to me, comfort is like top, you know, it's, it's, it's top priority. Exactly.

So it's like what you're looking for. So the DAX armchair is not what you're looking for. It's who you are, just so you know. Oh, a rigid, poly-injected mold. Like, it's a mold. There's no individuality. It's in a museum. It's obviously special.

It's an accomplishment. I just think it's a terrible chair. Oh, my God. Actually, this is funny because when I was in New York, I went to this place called Superiority Burger, great restaurant. And on the menu, they had these pictures of chairs, and then the drink names, like, went with the chair. And we did play a game for a long time

where we were figuring out who was what chair. That's fun. It was fun. I'll post it. People can play the game. Okay. Okay. Post it all.

Yeah, I will. All right. I love you. Love you. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.