Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Rerelease: Walton Goggins

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

Walton Goggins (White Lotus, Fallout, Hateful Eight) is an Emmy-nominated actor. Walton joins the Armchair Expert to discuss no longer being willing to perpetuate cultural stereotypes of the south, being raised by the real Steel Magnolias, and sharing attraction to volatility on the edge of chaos. Walton and Dax talk about having wives that can walk with kings, the humiliation of poverty, and how an application for an American Express card changed the trajectory of his life. Walton explains loving lunatics, why time with his kid is worth more than any amount of money or success, and approaching his life with as much artistry and intention as he would a role.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 Leslie Stahl. Oh my gosh. She comes up occasionally back in the old days. She would pop up a lot.

That is high praise. Very high praise. I love Leslie Stahl. Yeah, she's great. He's a firecracker. Okay, long time coming. Number one current obsession as an actor going on three years now probably, Walton Goggins. Walton Goggins, goggle glasses, Uncle Baby, Billy's Bible bonkers.

This guy's an alliteration wet dream. Yes. I love Walton Goggins. I mean, he's an incredible actor, but he was also a beautiful person. Such an interesting, colorful person. There should be a word for just best across the board actor. It's not on a single project, and it's just, it's like best dramatic, gross comedy, whatever.

There's just best actor, and I think Walton would be the shoe in. I agree. Because there's nobody doing comedy better and there's nobody doing drama better. Fallout, justified, righteous gemstones, vice principles, the hateful eight. He stole the hateful eight, which is hard to do. That's a hell of a cast. Season three of the White Lotus. It wasn't enough he was in my favorite comedy show, Righteous Gemson,

or that he was in my favorite action show at Fallout. Now he had to join my favorite dromedy, White Lotus. He hits all the genres. What a dick. Also, Walton Goggins goggle glasses. Learn more at gogginsgoggles.com. You'll hear us in the goggles at the top of the show. Yeah, we'll be fully, if you're watching.

We're adorned in the Goggins goggle glasses. Yeah, we are. Okay, now, this is a big merch update. Yes, huge update. So we were unable to do our own merch. We have to do our merch through Amazon Wondry. We have asked them if we can just do it while we're getting that sorted. And we have a one-month window where we've got a bunch of really cool, well-thought-out merch.

You can go to www. armchairexpertpod.com. A bunch of cool designs. A lot of things that were on the limited edition sweatshirts are not making their way to T-shirts. With some additional designs and some. some sweats. And it's a really cool little collection. Yes. And this is not calculated into a pressure cooker, but it will be about a month long that we're allowed to do this. I mean, there's a chance we might be able to continue it. We don't know yet, but just letting you guys

know it's up. We know we have the month. So order now. There'll be a delay because we have to make it all and ship it. So if you need it overnight, that's probably not going to have. It's a pre-sale. But go there and order all the stuff you want. And then it'll get to you at some time. Go to W.W.W.R. Shared Habsford. Get your march. Please enjoy Walton Gagans. Coggle glasses. He's an object square. Whoa. Is there a guest? Go ahead. I think we have the star of the show. I'm just a guest. I'm just a guest. Star. Monty, you want to slide yours?

Sure. I put them there for you. Yes, I would. I figured we could start in them. Oh, my. He brought you specifically blue. Honey, sit on the couch for half a second. You're not even Mike, but pop your, pop your products.

This bitch can move product. Pickle ball, skydiving, wear it on the boat, scuba diving. You ever cut onions in these bad boys? Oh, I've cut onions in them. Oh, I can't. Wait to cut onions in me. That will be very comfortable. Yeah, they're comfortable.

This feels like we're having an interview on a chairlift on the way up the mountain, which kind of happens. You know, you're sitting on that chairlift for minutes and minutes, and you got them talking about some stuff. I feel like this is such a good product for you. You know how sometimes people have brands that I don't get the A to B. This is an A&A. Why does Tom Cruise have lawn care equipment? Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

But does he have long? Perfect. No, no, no. But does he? Does he wall buy it? Yeah, not yet. Top Gun Mower. Say the name out loud.

Walton Goggins' goggle glasses. I mean, that's as close as you can get to Uncle Baby Billy's Bible Bunkers. Yeah. There's some similarities there. It's a bit of a nod, is it? Just a nod, just a little thing. It worked out for Baby Billy, maybe it'll work out for me. I'm a good athlete.

I'm not a great athlete at all. But really, the thing that I got out of playing sports more than anything else was I just love the equipment, man. I just love putting on the football pads. I love the glove. I mean, I love Pep Rally. Let me ask, wearing them right now. Do you think that you would go for a pickleball shot that you might otherwise not go for since you have a strap on your head?

Hunter P. I feel very cool in these. Honey, if you walk straight out of here and get in my Z wagon and drive the stick shift like your Mario fucking Andretti, because of those, I won't be shocked at all. I've never driven a stick. That's right. We live 15 minutes from a ski resort where we are now in the Hudson Valley. This isn't like Aspen, Colorado. But it's got a vibe. It's a super cool place.

and I drop my kid off at school, and like any good dad, I'll go skiing. Like most American dad. Yeah, like 10 runs, and then I'll have a beer. Oh, what are nice. I sit outside, and there's a fire pit kind of out there, and then go home and take a nap and sober up everyone, I promise, and go pick up my kid. But one particular day, I was sitting out, and it's cold, and I got these goggles on, whatever the Oakley cool glasses are. Just sitting there having a beer, I said, I never want to take these glasses off. Sure. Where are we all when it comes to reading glasses? Do you need them? Do you not need them? And go?

A year and a half ago, my eyes died. I don't know what happened, but it was overnight. And now I'm at a one, I guess, is my prescription. I don't think they're very strong. But when my kids put them on, they make quite a bit of fun. Well, they get a headache instantly. I do have to wear them a lot. With my wife, who's older than I am, just a couple of years, baby, I'm so sorry. Shout out and apology. Two years and two days. November 8th, she's a Scorpio. I won't say the year, baby. You couldn't even see me wink, can you? Because you don't really know what's going on in my thoughts.

But she said, it's coming for you. And I said, I don't think so. And then literally she said it'll happen overnight. And it did. And then the next night, you know, blind. Layed down a reading, blind. Your representatives, your publicist, I bet in their best case scenario,

they hoped we would talk about these glasses for 30 seconds. Yeah, I'm guessing that was kind of about it. When their most optimistic state, they're like, I pray they bring them up. And I hope they do 30 seconds on them. And we've done legit a good 15. We've done 15 minutes on these things. It's time to talk about your line.

Come out of your hair. You guys have fun. It's so good to see you. I want to tell you sincerely, 850 guests. She's asked to come meet, I think, four people. Where she said, what time are you recording? I'm going to make sure I'm not doing anything. I must meet this person.

And you're 104. Well, we've worked together. Oopsie. Ready to go, Dax. Fucking. Not only did we work together. So sorry. But Dax's point stands, people are in and out of this yard all the time.

People that I know, people that I don't know, people that I respect, people that I'm fans of. And I've come in to say hi to maybe four or five people. And you are definitely one of them because how do you even say it? You're a number one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have the evidence. I have on this show numerous times that you are my number one. So far away.

Yeah. I got to put these all before. They get like emotional. They're great to mask public crime, too. We left that out. There isn't anyone I've ever seen that is Apex Drama and Apex Comedy the way you are. It seems impossible, to be honest. To go from Righteous to Fall Out in one year, it's staggering.

And the fact that you were in that disgusting mask on Fallout and every woman in America was still like, I want that sexy radiation cowboy in my bedroom once a week. You got the rhythm. We love you. I'm glad I got to see you. It's really. Yeah, you don't really have the body of a beer drinker when you said that. I was like, I don't buy it. He's one of these guys, though.

We're going to get into it. He's one of these charms. Those are yours. They're yours. And yours look great as a hair band. Yeah, I love it as a hair band. Very exciting. Names.

And then we'll just kind of move on to something else. The white ones are accumulinibus. Which is a cloud formation? Yes, they are. I think they're the coolest. It's like, fuck, he's rocking some white goggle glasses with a red, white, and blue band. It's confidence. It's very cool.

And then we have a noir pair, black pair called Mama Skillet, named after my Mama's Skilet. Okay, we're going to pin in Mama Skilet. Yeah, these are Tortuga. You got to have a tortoise shell, man. So what is the word Tortuga? Where does it come from? It means black and brown pattern. Oh, okay.

It's not like a turtle. It's a type of turtle. I think it's in Spanish. Oh, in Spanish. Yes. And then we have Limoncello. Ooh, that's nice. And then we have the color that you're wearing.

Oh. Which is, guess what? What? Blue. Wow. Decided to go real conventional for just one. Which is comical because of any color deserved adjective before it, it would be blue. There's so many kinds.

But you're like, no, there's only one blue and this is it. You're thinking differently. Oh, he just picked up some questions. Okay. Here we go. We're going to get serious now. Okay, let's get so serious. So, yeah, you get it.

I love you so much. I have been wanting this to happen for very, very long. And I was working with Rob Cordry for a period, who I adore. And then I found out you guys are closed and you would vacation together in Europe, which sounds exactly what I'd imagine you do. Hey, always. So elegant. And maybe I want to jump to one thing that then come back to where you're from because I was watching an interview with you and you were discussing having been offered justified to be in the pilot. You were going to die and justified and that was going to be it.

You read it and you turned it down twice for a very specific reason. And I want you to tell me why, because I really liked it. I'm a huge Elmore Leonard fan, for one thing. But I felt that it was so one-dimensional and because I can afford not to do this anymore. For much of your early career, all of us, we've got to play what they offer us. Absolutely. I mean, if you're Italian and you're from New York, chances are you're going to... You're going to shoot somebody.

Yeah, absolutely. You're going to be eating some fucking pasta. You're going to dig a hole in the desert. Absolutely. And you're going to smile while you're doing it. But we all look for boxes to kind of fit in when we're starting out. And it just so happened to be at that point in my life that I'd gotten out of a number of those boxes. And this was one box that I just felt like I can't perpetuate this stereotype and sell out my culture anymore. From an outsider's perspective, like a lot of different cultures in America, they're reducible to one impersonation.

And it's like, okay, well, if I can speak a little like this, you know, when I come down here and like I'm from the South, what does that even fucking mean? I mean, the South represents a third of this country, each region. And each state and each part of every state is very unique. Like the state of New York. The state of New York isn't just New Yorkers. I live in the state of New York now. Two dramatically different cultures, actually.

You live in both, right? Manhattan and Hudson Valley. That's right. But it just felt like I was at a place in my life where I just was unwilling to do that. To participate in the perpetuation of this. Yeah. And I think everybody, you know, at some point, whenever you can kind of step out, you don't need the money. Morally, you just don't think that it's right.

And you don't want to feel shame whenever you're visiting those places that you're just another part of the problem. This is where the conversation ends. And I wanted it to be where the conversation began. And so on the third conversation we had after I had turned it down twice, and I say that I'm not proud of it. There's no ego involved in that whatsoever because I'm such a huge fan of Tim Oliphant's and Michael Dinner, who was directing it and wrote a good bit of it, but Graham Yost, who wrote the pilot. On the third time, I said, okay, I'll do it. Two things. I'm the smartest person in the room, always. After I say this very long speech in the the pilot. It was kind of crazy racist rant. That's right, that you say this one line, which is,

I know you don't believe half the things that you're saying. You just need an audience. I just needed a version of that line for him to see through that, which is true. It's crazy having watched it not knowing that story and how important that weird detail was because it also built this rapport with you too, which makes it so much more compelling. You have a past. And that little line that you were wanting to not perpetuate ends up also being the other layer. What also allows the audience to kind of come into the experience, no one has tolerance for intolerance. Really, I don't. It just gave the audience the opportunity to experience this person and really to go forward. I ask for those things, not with a six-year contract. This was

just the pilot and die. We'll do this thing and just give me that and then I can sleep better at night. And you know, you're so fucking incredible after they tested it. Every single person, like, well, no, no, he can't die. Yeah, it just adds a third dimension. to a person. We had a guess that's so beautifully articulated this. You know the author Barbara Kingsolver by chance? She wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning book last year, Demon Copperhead. Oh, yeah, okay.

The most beautiful book, I read it. My whole family's from Kentucky. She said in that book, she was trying to explain how it feels to be in the South, and especially in Appalachia. She described it as, we're in the bathroom stall in high school. We hear the popular kids making fun of us. We get these TV shows. We get these songs.

We can hear you. It's so fucking offensive and hurtful. Yeah. And you don't even care. I just had a whole renewed compassion for one of the great stereotypes that kind of persists. In some ways, I hope I don't get in trouble for saying this, but it's permissible. An urban culture, certainly on both coast. It's low-hanging fruit.

It's always there. You can always go to it and you can always get a laugh from your constituents. And they're part of it. They're also in the audience. It's hurtful. So you were born. born in Birmingham, Alabama, but you grew up in Georgia, where Monica grew up as well. I'm from Georgia. Whoa.

I know you're talking about Kentucky, but I'm from Georgia. A little peach. That's right. A little peach. ATL? Yeah, Duluth. Where in Georgia? We lived in a fucking trailer in Birmingham, Alabama. First year of my life.

My mom's sisters lived. I think it was like, I don't know, five or six people. My parents got divorced pretty early. What age? Three, maybe two and a half. But my earliest memories are with my mom in Decatur, Georgia, which is right downtown. It's very cool now. There's so many great places in Atlanta now.

Like so many cities in America had this whole new generation just kind of come in and give me some third wave coffee and fucking some great sourdough bread. What's coming next? Ooh, Mediterranean food, fantastic. But Lithia, do you know Lithia? Lithia Springs. We moved out, which is West Side. My mom and I lived in Decatur three years. One of my earliest memories, I couldn't have been more than four.

I have a lot of memories from that house that we lived in, this duplex. But one is one of the scariest memories of my childhood, of my life, really. My mom's bedroom was in the front. My bedroom was in the back. She's a young woman. She was a beautiful woman. She had a super cool boyfriend, and I slept in my bed alone. You were the only child at that point?

Only child. And I went to sleep. My little twin bed was right up against the wall. My upper torso was next to the wall. From my knees down, it was in front of a window. Just as I was about to fall asleep, there was a light in the backyard, and I had I had whatever the fucking house came with, these shades that were kind of pulled down, an opaque shade. So you could see through it.

And just as I was falling asleep, I saw someone crawl in front of my window. Because it was a roof right outside of those two stories. I don't know if it was a man or a woman. I have no idea. I think we can assume it's a man if I'm betting on this. Or a woman escaping. It was a man. It was on his knees.

And he was just sitting there like perfectly outlined. and my window, his whole body, and I couldn't scream. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he had his hands on the window, and he was trying to see if it would open. And then eventually he just went past the window. And as soon as he was out of sight, I got my voice back. And I started screaming. Did Mom's boyfriend run to the scene?

I don't know if he was there that night. That's kind of the end of that memory. I remember my mom coming in or something. But it was terrifying. Yeah. And then we moved out to Lithia Springs when I was five years old. And we found an 1850s farmhouse, and it was two bedrooms. You had to walk through my room to get to the bathroom, and it was fucking cold.

In the winter, it was like, well, I'm going to go to sleep with this glass of water on the edge of my bed. And I know I'm going to wake up and it's going to be frozen. Yay. Look, there's no more water in my glass, mama. Get me out of here. What the fuck's wrong with us? Were there stepdad's in the mix? I did not have a stepdad.

My mom never got remarried, but she had some boyfriends, and I loved all of them. You did. Some of them were a little hard and a couple of them were younger than they probably should have been. Good for her. Yeah. Oh my God.

We need a picture of your mom. My mom's so fucking cool. Yeah, who do you get your swagger from? Because I have been lucky enough to see photos of your dad and Monica, I can't wait to describe his father to you, but you showed some pictures on Seth Myers of him. He is a one of a fucking kind. He texted me a photo yesterday.

Dad, if you ever see this, I can't believe you made this fucking coffee mug. But it was a picture of me in these glasses as a part of the campaign. And he made himself a coffee mode. He's a narcissist, my dad. Yeah, yeah. Clinical. Sure. He knows it, don't you, dad?

He's listening because you're talking about it. But he literally sent me this thing. When he said, congratulations, he loves me. And I love him. It has this logo fucking all over the bottom of it. And then at the top that's facing out where people would be seeing it is a picture of me in these glasses. And underneath it in big letters, there is no hymn. without me.

Oh, no, no. That's what it says on the mug. On the fucking mug, man. Yes, perfect. I could almost guess that caption. My father, and I wonder if you have this, as I got famous, he loved telling people. I wanted to take in how proud he was of me and he was deeply proud of me. But I couldn't trust that it wasn't maybe more about him getting attention.

Of course, Matt. You're an extension of him. Which makes more sense now that I have kids. You're right. There is a very tiny line between you. But can you relate to that? I had a lifetime of that. We're not the only people that had this kind of experience.

My father was married six times, but one was an annulled. Okay. Well, we'll still count it. I'm going to count that, yeah. A shotgun kind of an nullment. The running joke kind of in my household was inevitably everybody has a bumper sticker that says honk, if you've ever been married to Sandy Goggins. Fucking who hasn't he married?

But my mom never remarried. She had some wonderful men come through. And then we had a cast of characters in my life. It was kind of this way station for people. My mom was the most sane of her three sisters who were and are insane clinically, but it was really colorful and I was raised kind of about real steel magnolias. You get to meet characters, it sounds like. Not only I get to meet them, they fucking lived with us. Yeah, they raised you.

Upon reflection, though, are you grateful for it? Oh, I'm so grateful for it. Whenever you would meet someone, even someone who was relatively authentic, even someone who was just a farmer across the Street, Kermit and his wife. Everyone in my life was eccentric. I mean, except for the Hearst family. My neighbors, Holly and David were my best friends. And Ken and Carol were like my mom and dad, they actually fed me regularly. They had a bed that I could always sleep in. And they would actually take me to practice, but they would also pick me up. They were dependable. Yeah, they were about as good as Americans can get. They were just wonderful people. But God damn, I'm

glad that I wasn't raised totally by them. I just absolutely love lunatics. I love crazy people, but just enough crazy. I don't see enough people seeking out those conversations or taking the time with people like that. Am I wrong about that? You think people dismiss? I think that eccentricity, if the conversation can't be had in about three minutes, if you're only checking one of the 10 boxes required for me to have a conversation, I'm not fucking having it, right? I mean, because people are busy and there's a phone. Do you think that's true or no? Gosh, I think it's complicated because I also think because of social media, people also lean deeply into their eccentricity, almost in an inauthentic way.

In a performative way. It's performative. So authenticity has gotten very complicated and public and confusing. And you are interfacing with people that have either real or faux eccentricities, and you are engaging with them in that platform. I didn't even think about that. Well, also, you can get that itch scratch, which is you can go watch someone that's bat-shit nuts on Instagram, whereas when we were kids, Kristen will hear me say this all the time. It's like, right in an airport, and I just lock on to somebody. And I'll say out loud, got to find out what this guy's up to. And I'll go check. People catch my eye all the time.

And I'm like dying to find out what's cracking. What's going on outside at this airport? What kind of kid were you in school? I was alone a lot as a kid, single mom, babysitters, houses. I felt like I spent most of my life waiting to be picked up. At times, I felt like an inconvenience, even though that wasn't their intention. I remember seeing the bridges of Madison County and Burbank whenever that movie came out in their early 90s. And then calling my mom from a pay phone in the lobby, walking out, apologizing for being bored.

But not just like, I'm so sorry, I held you back from doing some of these things. And she still had a fucking great life. Well, sounds like it's because I'm younger suitors. Yeah, but she was like, no, son, you are the gift. you are it. But at the time, I didn't feel that. In school, I think I was popular, kind. I think I could charm people.

I always felt different. I always knew that I'm not going to be here forever. I had a lot of friends, my senior superlative, even though I didn't win it, but I was the first runner-up for most friendliest. I thought it would be best dressed. They took that out that year because poor kids, they don't have the same opportunity.

I'm poor, but I figured it out. But I figured it out. I got a job. I work in richards. Two-dollar scar with this $3 shirt. You see this shit? shit. I bought this shit. But I was a great student. Oh, no getting. I had no structure in my life. I don't think I slept in the same bed for more than seven days straight until I was like 15. So I had to

generate my own structure. It helped me. It served me my entire life because, okay, well, I got to work harder than everybody in this room. Well, it makes you a self-starter because no one's going to start it for you. That's right. I remember writing a poem that was the class assignment. And so I picked it about divorce. You know, I came to turn it in and she gave it back to me. It was like an F. Whoa. I said, I'm so sorry. I think this is pretty good. And she said, it's great, but you didn't write it.

And I said, what? So it's the ultimate problem. Yeah, yeah. It's like, yes, I did. I'm like that guy. It's from my heart. Yeah, yeah. I just showed you my heart and you just shit on it.

Yeah. Called me a fraud. And then my mom kind of came to school and said, no, no, no, it was him. It all worked out. I've never wanted to read a poem in my entire life until right now. I'm dying to read the seventh grade poem. No, I remember a couple of raps. I wrote me.

We'll give to that later. Okay, so you went to Southern Georgia University for a year and a half? Georgia Southern. Georgia Southern. Did you go to... I went to Georgia. She too was a great student. You're from Georgia, man.

I know, I am. I sure am. We got in a big fight about it because I went to the Texas game with Dax. In Austin. Are you a big Texas? No, he's not. I'm a big Austin fan. Yeah, I'm a big Austin fan.

That's a great city, man. Well, they were playing Georgia, and I refused to... And we were the guests. We were guests of some. Texas. Of McConaughey. Oh, yeah. This is fucking religion.

We got to hook them. No, we don't. Do you wear like a Georgia hat? I wore a bulldog shirt and a red sweater. Were you on the field? No, we were in the box. But surrounded by a bunch of orange and I was like, absolutely not. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because you was so mad that I wanted the Longhorn Swing. It put our friendship to the trash. It really did. We barely navigated that one. We don't have to talk about it now, but I want to know the history of this friendship. Oh, yeah. It's an odd pairing. We're best friends.

We fight nonstop. We think about the world so differently, so often. It works. Big time. Circling back a little bit, I do think we are very volatile. And I think that's somewhat of a result of his upbringing and potentially mine. And when we were talking about chaos and relationships, do you seek that out? I think we subconsciously seek it out.

You mean conflict with each other? Or do you think in your own lives? Like, if I'm being honest, I think that's part. part of the draw. There's something always that could blow up. Yeah, that's right. And part of the attraction to this. I think so. Yeah, I crave novelty. I crave a challenge. I crave being engaged. And because she's so smart and has such a strong point of view and it's so often different from mine, it's very ripe for very engaged, very heartfelt debate. And we love each other. So we would like to have the same opinion. So the stakes are high. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now, that makes for a great show. It's been going on for seven years. It's been going on a long time. We have to really navigate it quite often. But I think that's the best kind of relationship. I agree with you. I could never be with a fan. I have friends.

I know people who are very successful, and then they get a very beautiful person who's just along for the ride and they're a fan. I would be so bored out of my mind. My wife is hard as a motherfucker. Yeah, super smart, super talented. Very driven, very ambitious, going to get her way. I need that.

I have that in my life. My wife is more often than not the smartest person in any room that I walk in, for sure. She's a fucking intellectual baller. She understands the world in a very nuanced, complex way and is able to walk with kings. Yeah, and you got to have your shit straight before you enter into a fray with her. Like, she makes you, I'm presuming, the very best version of yourself. Well, I mean, I don't know. Or the worst version, too.

And the thing that I say often is comes in. 99% of the time. And she says, well, it's the 1% where you should be fucking zen, man. You know, it's the 1% when you're challenged to that place, and that's your lesson. I said, or maybe it's fucking not my lesson.

But that's kind of that thing. I mean, I think I'm cool. I'm cool to, hey man, fuck you. I'm not cool. That level of volatility is present in my work, and maybe you feel that way in your work. And that is the same with my wife and all of my friends. I look for

that and other people. I need 10% crazy in the mix. Absolutely. And Monica's 26% crazy. And I'm 35% crazy. Well, I would go up a little bit on that. Is Kristen crazy? That's a great question. Less and less and less. Less and less. Yeah. Both of us, by the way, have gotten way milder. It can exist so much easier. It's 17 years. You're 19 years. 20. We've been married for that long, but we met on a blind date 20 years ago, January 11th. The volume comes down on a lot of stuff. It hasn't. We've gone through a lot, and like every relationship, ups and downs and peaks and valleys.

But there's this thing that has alluded us for so long, and we see it coming. It's like, oh, I fucking know exactly how this is going to go down. And I don't want to, okay, let's step off this train right now. There's an off ramp right here, man. You could just turn around. Oh, she's not letting you leap. Oh, you're not letting her. Oh, oh, hey, you know what?

Now we're doing. Yeah. Fucking, I'm out. man, I'm fucking out of here. And a little burst of euphoria comes when you go, oh, I'm going to burn the house down. Yeah, that's right. And it's a little bit intoxicated. It is intoxicating.

But you know who in my family doesn't have any of that is our child. He is so calm and so wise and so measured and extremely passionate, a deep, deep, deep thinker. What could be more fun? Yeah. Okay, here's the limb I wanted to go out on. Okay, let's go out. But I was just curious, given the similar background, is it hard for you when someone's in a bad mood?

Like my things with my wife are generally, and I have this with Monica too. I have this with everyone in my life. If someone's in a really bad mood, I have this unreasonable desire to fix that for them and to regulate them. And if I can't do it, I'm very uncomfortable. Right, because you spend a lifetime doing that,

regulating kind of other people's. Well, that was my guess. I'm wondering, mom, it's like, normally dad would be in charge of that. If mom's got an emotional issue, she never fit that box, right? She never fit that stereotype. Smoked a lot of weed, had a really good time. Very passionate woman. Love to have sex. Mine too. My mom's an admitted love addict. Yeah, absolutely. And he started studying Hermanzi Yogananda and Joel Goldsmith and the Yeransha and the I Am and went on this spiritual journey. Started when I was about 10 or 11 years old and had me

reading all of those texts so much so that I just kind of missed out on the classics because I felt like it was a waste of time. If you weren't doing something that was expanding kind of your consciousness, then why would you do it? I didn't realize until I was in a car with some friends that I had made in L.A. when I first moved out here, coming back from San Diego and hearing these people talk about Hemingway and Somerset Mom and Faulkner and, you know, they had the opportunity to be in school. They had a college education and hearing them, cross-reference these authors and how it was applicable to cinema or a song that they were listening to. And I just was in the backseat. It wasn't saying anything. I was just listening to all

of this. And I just thought, I want that kind of in my life. To circle back to what you said, I had to please a lot of people. I had to please my father. I wasn't around him that much. But when I was, I desperately had to do that. That's not our problem. Early in my life, my problem was profound insecurity based on poverty and not having those things to the point where in high school or middle school a girlfriend's parents were coming to pick me up and I would give them an address that wasn't my address and right before they were supposed to get me I said okay mom I got to go my mom had no structure no boundaries right no boundaries whatsoever my mom was like I trust you and so I would just slip out of the house and I would go to Ken and Carol's house with

the nicer home and just hide in the ditch or out by their bushes and I would see the headlights kind of pulling and I would just run out in the dryway and it's like okay and then the lights would come on And so, is that your, it's like, oh, they're fine. Bye, Mom. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. Poverty is humiliating when you're young like that. You just don't fit in.

We never filled up our gas tank ever. I never remember my mom or, an aunt or one of these crazy people I was with, no one had the money to put more than like three to five bucks in your gas tank. And so I had a lot of that. It's like a chip on your shoulder, but it's not. And then you allow for judging until he gets to a certain point. And then you react to that judging.

It's like, well, wait a minute, I'm just as good as you. I had a lot of that shit early on, especially in relationships. I was left a lot, like a lot of people abandonment issues and just thinking everyone leaves. Everyone's going to leave. So please don't love me. or love me and please don't let me go. Yeah. I think that's a journey for a lot of people in my own journey and my own spiritual walk,

which is a part of this whole experience of the White Lotus, falling in love with yourself. God damn, if you can get to that point where you're okay with you, even though once you find it, it will very quickly disappear. Yeah, it's transient. Absolutely. And once you have that realization and once you have a degree of self-love, at least this is what my experience was,

that also came with real boundaries. I've gotten better about this is no man's land right now. We're okay, but this is not okay with me. And I'm not poor anymore, but I don't think that ever fully leaves you. I'd wrestle a lot with, I hated rich people. If they were a bad guy in the world, it was rich people. Because I felt less than around them. I didn't like how I felt.

It's not at their fault. I now know that. But, you know, I have this chip on my shoulder. And then trying to come to terms with the reality of, oh, I'm one of those people. That's a little discombobliating. And there's shame around that. Yeah, yeah. You feel survivor's guilt.

It's complicated. The thing that I had is something you kind of brought up earlier and experiencing it in the back of this car came up from San Diego. My envy wasn't around the acquisition of things, even though I just wish we had some fucking heat. You know what I mean? Like these are just bare minimums. The water would stay liquid. Yes, I wish we had some yogurt. Wish I didn't have to cut off half of this block of cheese to get to the good cheese.

That's exactly right. But it was time to think. I was jealous and envious of these people went to college and they were fucking in college, even though they worked or whatever, but they had an opportunity to just sit and learn or read and then go talk about things that they had just learned. I never had the space to do that. I would have been good at it. I left school after a year and a half.

We do forget, we take for granted that going to school and being able to be there and think critically is a privilege. It is a privilege. We just do it. We think we have to do it. we go, we try to get through it, and it should be rethought of. Or just like a daily reminder of this is a privilege. It's not a right. And what do you do with the time that you have at the microphone? What is it that you want to say? Well, I didn't

have that in college. I have been able to, even without money, give myself those opportunities through travel and being alone, giving myself permission to be on the road for a very long period of time, understanding culture. I've talked about this in other interviews. So this isn't revelatory. But in addition to that, I feel that way about work. I feel that way about the time I'm now afforded to give myself to live in my imagination and preparation to start a job and to stay in that world over the course of telling that story. So I feel like I have that now. Like that's my education. That's time to ask those existential questions or listen to that music. This person would listen to are watch those movies that are applicable to this experience.

To just indulge your imagination. Yeah, that's right. You have time and space. You fucking indulge this part of your brain. Yeah. That's so special. And I don't take that for granted. I'm with you. Yeah. I'm never interested in why someone wanted to become an actor, but with you, I am. How do we go from that tiny town in a year and a half in college? When do you go, oh, I'm going to be a performer? I feel like I was always a performer. I was raised around some very performative people, interesting, funny people. They were great storytellers. Yeah, if you're going to take up time at the dinner table, it better fucking land. Yeah, and even if you couldn't, because there were five stories going at once, do you know what I mean? But more than not, people would pass the

baton in my household. And it wasn't a lot of talking over each other. It was depending on the level of inebriation, how fucking short or how long the story is. These were very eccentric people. When it was my turn to talk, you know, it was like Little Walt. I was the great love. of the women and my family. I knew that that, again, was a privilege and not a right to be given the microphone around this group of really great storytellers. And I would tell my

storytelling ass off. I think that was always kind of a part of it, but I really kind of stumbled into it. Well, when you moved to L.A., did you move here specifically to try to act? I did. I wanted a great experience. I got an American Express in college.

My freshman year, as soon as I got there, God damn, I got mail? Who knows I'm going to school here? How do you guys know? It's happening. Goggies. One guy, I got a mailbox. And it was four or five pieces of mail.

And first thing that I opened was an offer to join American Express. And with this offer in 1989 were two round-trip tickets for $99 east of the Mississippi or $199 or $199. Oh, wow. Playing tickets for like $1,000 from Atlanta to fucking Los Angeles, 1989. I mean, they were not cheap. And I just saw it and I thought, this experience is over. When I do my year in the school, I'm never going to.

spend a dollar on this card. I'll just have it. And then I'm going to use both of these vouchers. And it's exactly what I did a year later. And who went with you? Nobody. Oh. I went on my own. Because you had two vouchers. Yeah. Oh, because I had two. No, no, no. I used both of them. My dad came with me when I drove across country because he wanted to get his eyes on the big. Yeah. Yeah. I wish you could have seen this photo. His dad is adorned head to toe in black leather, turquoise on every single finger. He has photos of himself. People do ask him for photos everywhere he goes. He's a very interesting person. He's visiting Walton in New York and people are asking for photos. And he's, oh, well, I have one signed.

He has signed photos of himself. He has signed photos of Walton that he has signed. Oh, my. You need to make a mug with his picture of that and it needs to say there's no this without me. Because that's all so true. And that's the end of the interview. Tip for tat. Yeah. The ride really, so I'm going to blow through a couple. Because I want to get to three things. Okay. The shield is the first from the outside seems like you're now in the big leagues. You have a steady paycheck. You're one of the season regulars. Is that the big? Yeah, I think so. I moved to when I was 19. I had $300 in my pocket. And I lived the way that I lived and worked, how I worked. And then what gave me permission not to feel like I needed to work anymore, even though I did for a little while afterwards,

was the apostle with Robert Duvall. Oh. And that was the, wow, okay, that's my hero. And so that was really, even though I was working, I think I made $21,000 over three months for the next karate kid. For me, that was a lot of money. Well, clearly, yeah, from 19 to 30 you are when you get on the shield. 29, yeah, yeah.

You make it work. You're on Beverly Hills, 90210. Yeah, I did a fair amount of films. But then I thought like Shanghai Noon was going to be the thing. Oh, yeah, yeah. I had a pretty big role in born identity. that ultimately they decided to go with Gabriel Mann instead, and they just offered me another thing.

People didn't know what the fuck to do with me. No one was paying attention, and I had some extraordinary experiences on location over that first 10 years. And then the Shield happened, yeah, when I was 29, and nobody knew that it was going to be what it became. 86 episodes or something? Yeah, 86, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so I think this is so fascinating. You had auditioned for Eastbound and Down, and you didn't get it. No. And the feedback was... David Gordon Green, who was a friend of mine from the independent film circuit. I just called and said, you know, Danny absolutely loves you,

but just it might be a little too dangerous for what we're doing. It's a little too... Chaotic? Not even chaotic. It's just a little scary. I said to Danny, look, man, I think you need somebody to go toe to toe with you. You know what I mean? Yeah.

And then we have some friends in common. Leslie Bibb, actually, had New Year's Eve party. And Danny and David were there, and I was there. She's one of my best friends with Sam. Then that was kind of the beginning of a conversation. I remember watching an interview with Todd Phillips, and I thought he said the coolest thing. He said, you know, for me, comedy that is good has to be very dangerous. Oh, interesting.

Or it's not comedy to me. If you're like, look at his work, you're like, oh, yeah, it's kind of high stakes. Everything's a little scary. You look at, you know, the hangover, any of these, they go wild. When they're going to jump a van, they're going to jump a fucking van. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're real stakes. So then you get to come in and do vice principles. They offered it.

I was doing the Hateful Eight. We were in Colorado, and I read it, and he talked about it at this party. And I read it and thought, okay, this I know what to do with. And so I just kind of did that. And it was three lines into it where I think he was like, okay. You're outrageously good in that. I couldn't believe the story of Hateful Eight. And if you would just indulge me and Monica, I think the audition for Hateful Eighth is one of my favorite audition stories I've heard.

If it's the story that I think you're talking about, that was for Django. Oh, I'm sorry, yes, duh, but you get hateful. Which led to the hateful leg. I'm sorry, that's embarrassing. Yeah, no, no, no, no, that's easy. I can't believe you know what you fucking know, honestly. But it starts with the call to Rodriguez. I get this script like everybody else in town, and I read it on the plane to New York and

staying with a friend, and it's one of the best things I've ever read in my life. He's only made nine, you know, so it's the repeat cast. It's the golden ticket. It's a very small group of people. I just feel that way about Mike White and the White Lotus. a number of filmmakers that have that stable of actors and if you can kind of get in that Christopher guest. I mean, unbelievable, but Quentin is probably by far the most in my book. But I read it and I was like, I don't have to get this. I just want to fucking read these words in front

of this man. And so I called Robert Rodriguez, who's a friend of mine and they're obviously really good friends. And I said, man, I've never asked you for anything. Could you please text Quentin for me and just say that I have this guy like to read. Ten minutes later, he texted back the text from Quentin, which was, I love Goggins. Oh, I love his work. You know, and it's like, fuck, okay, well, then that's it. Did you print it out and frame it? Unbelievable. That's enough. It's more than I wanted. Yeah, we could ever expect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always nice to live your life as if you should be surprised if anyone has seen any fucking thing you've done. But to be seen by a hero just feels really crazy. And then liked. Yeah, that's right. Not just seen. Likeed and appreciated.

And then it just happened to coincide with a really good friend of Quentin's was one of my wife's dear friends. And she called and she said, I just read this script and you got to be in this movie, man. You're in this thing. You're one of these guys. Yeah. And she said, let's have a dinner with Quentin. I'm the guy that's like, no, no, no, I don't want to do that. I don't ask anyone for anyone. I don't, I'm not that fucking guy out of his dinner. Talk about everything but the script until the very end. And I said, I think this is what you're saying and how I felt a thousand people have probably said. He said, well, I want you know, come in and just pick a few roles. And so I did, started kind of reading them, and there it was. And he was like, that's fucking great, man.

I'll be speaking to you. And I said, well, I'm not leaving. I said, well, I didn't come here just to read these three roles. I don't give a fuck if I get this job, man. I just want to read your words in front of you. I want to read all of these roles. Wow. I want to read Leo. I want to read Sam. Good for you. I was like, I just want to read this shit. He's like, really? And he said, okay, let's do it. And then he read everyone else in the scenes. And you did the whole movie, basically. We worked for like an hour, hour and a half. We did a lot. How fucking.

Big seminal scenes, just the unadulterated enthusiasm and love for what he puts out in the world. And his words, and at the end of it, it was like, fucking really good to see you, man. Can't wait for the next time. This will cross my mind on my deathbed. Thank you. Thank you, man. Oh, how cool. And then, yeah, you get the call.

A couple of months went by. It's like, okay, buddy, come down to New Orleans and play with us. What if you're like, I can't? I don't want it. I just came to just do that one thing. I don't really want to be in the movie. It was pure. You can't top what happened.

But thanks. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I imagine you deal with this. The characters are so fucking different. I may have seen vice principles, but if I don't follow show business, I don't realize that's the guy from hateful eight. They're so different. And if I fell in love with Uncle Baby Billy, I'm not putting that together with the shield.

It's almost probably a bit of an Achilles, which is I think you deserve to be the biggest star in the world. But I think the work is so unique and different. I don't know people are connecting the dots because now I'm a hyper fan. And I didn't even think, oh, right, I got to go and watch. I went and watched Justified. I had never seen it. But I'm like, I'll go out for Goggins. God damn, he's great in that again.

But I watched Hateful Eighth, a couple months ago, in a sea of the most talented people. That's the performance in the movie. It's incredible. I can't believe you went from a smaller role in Djangle and then got called to the big leagues and did what you did in that movie is fucking nuts, dude. Thank you, man. Oh, my God. It's so impressive. I'm so happy for you that you got to go into Tarantino's world

and have them trust you with that much and then to fucking score touchdown after touchdown. Well, look, maybe you feel this way. A lot of people in this business and outside of this business listen to your podcast. And I think for so many of us kind of coming up, I mean, we're from a different generation, but the barriers to entry,

the gatekeepers to this experience, it's like every day, you're not even trying to fucking get to base camp one on Mount Everest. You're just trying to get up that little fucking hill that you're going to fall down. Yeah, that's right. You're just trying to get a flight to the airport, Nepal.

At that point, it's as far as you could have gone if you feel like I do about Tarantino. It's exactly how I feel. But whenever you see someone that's been around for a long time, like Rockwell or Crude up, even Garrett Dillan, all of these fucking people that have been around for a really long time. And we've been around for a long time.

And you just see consistently good work over a long time. And it's like, oh, wow. I mean, Pedro, Pascal's been doing great work for such a long time. And it's like, wow, okay, there's one for the good guys. Yes. There is no limit on their staying power. They're inoculated by talent. And wisdom and choices.

And so the guys, I'm also a fan of, I won't name any names, but we know them. The people that if you were an envious person, which I'm really not except other people's careers, they really don't look in other lanes. But the people in my 20s for a moment was like, fuck, I wish I could, you know. But I wouldn't trade my walk for. Those three years. And I think all of you probably wouldn't either. I've been walking the road that I've been walking for a very long time.

I would argue it's preferred. I agree. When you're young, if you come out and you drop right into the World Series, it's hard to appreciate, it's hard to conceptualize. It's hard to integrate. And it's hard to stay. Yeah, it is. It's hard to stay. And to kind of just keep walking in the back door and then you leave me, you're like, who was that guy that was that?

You know, it's so preferred for your life story, your own narrative self. It's such the way to do it. Yeah, I think so. You don't remember this, but the very first time I met you, it was nothing more of like a, hey, but it was really just me across the room silently thinking like, fuck you, fuck this fucking guy. Why? What is the true story? Because it was for an audition, and it was just the two of us in this room.

And I walked in and I looked at you and you were sitting behind this desk. And it was like a room with chairs. They had us kind of waiting it. Maybe it was like a second callback or something. I don't know. But I walked in and was like, oh, this fucking guy. I just felt like it ain't my day. Oh, wow.

I don't know this. Well, it was for no employee of the month. Oh, my God. With Dane. Dane. And Dane came in. I don't know if you knew him. I don't remember, but there was some interaction that it was just like this easy.

Oh, these guys. Oh, that is so funny. Impossible to believe the story. I don't remember where it was, but I remember the room and I remember where you were sitting. No way. Yeah. And then seeing the movie kind of when it came out, it was like, wow, you know what? Yeah, it was his for sure. That's an ego boost for you. Should be.

Yeah. And yeah, if I were you, I would hate me. No. Yes. I'm like, what this motherfucker was on? I just felt like, you know, when you kind of walk into one and it's like, oh, well, you know what? I'm still going to have fun. And I did. I want to see the version of the movie with you. I don't know, man. Oh, my God. That's crazy. That just blew my mind.

Okay. Last thing before White Lotus is, of course, righteous gems. Stone's Uncle Baby Billy. Yeah. Again, I see all your shit out of order. So I first saw Righteous. And I was like, who the fuck is this guy putting Uncle Baby Billy? And Chris Leonard are just obsessed with the show. I'm writing emails to Danny, who I barely know, but I have to tell him after every episode.

The pilot of that, I'm like, did Scorsese fucking direct this pilot? This is a comedy. Look at these shots. Yeah. We fall so in love with you. Well, he was in vice principals we learned. We go back. I watch vice principals just because I'm not.

on Mike Walton Goggins train. And I'm like, oh, my God, and he's this and this? I don't really have a question. We just finished the fourth season. It's really good. I can't tell you anything that it's about. But the first episode of season four, and I'm going to go on record as saying this,

as a piece of writing, if I had read that in the Atlantic, I think the motherfucker would be nominated for a Pulitzer. Wow. You know, really what he's saying at this stage of his exploration in that world. And everybody obviously has a great arc and a great story. But Baby Billy will have the summer 2025 fucking hit.

I'm going to tell you right now, whatever you're wearing right now, come June or whatever, when you're a bathing suit, you will be singing this fucking song. I promise. Oh, my God. It's good, y'all. I can't wait. And it says a lot about a lot.

It's cool. I guess my one question about vice principals and righteous is if you have to, had to guess at a percentage, what percentage is you guys riffing and what percentage is on the page? It feels impossibly organic. 98% is on the page. No shit. No shit. He's so brilliant. That's some writing. Edie Patterson. Oh, she can let a rip. Do fucking anything. Adam can fucking do that. Michaela Watkins can do that. Cordry. That's not my thing, but I understand what the story is and

I understand, okay, these are five or six tangents that I can go down. turn yourself over to that and see kind of where that takes you. But he realized that about me very early on that it's the words on the page that is liberating to me. Right, right, right. And then we carried that into righteous gemstones. I think I'll work with him for the rest of my life. If there was a career to envy, it would be yours because you're in the Tarantino stuff. But I would say of the television shows, my favorite comedy is definitely righteous gemstones. I think my favorite big, huge action thing is fallout. I love that show. Thanks, ma'am. And then my very very favorite both of ours kind of social commentary charactery deliciousness is white lotus you're in

the three shows that are my favorite the two previous seasons are been so good i think we all had so much anxiety when season two came around because i'm like how on earth that hotel manager in season one like who's going to pick up that slack and then they delivered his social commentary and what he's able to tackle which i feel like you're not allowed to and he does perfectly. Yeah. Just the notion last season you had these two couples

and these two cheat, they're shitty and this is the good one. And then as you're playing with it, you're like, well, I'm not sure which one I'd rather be a part of. That's right. Oh, here's the perfect guy.

He says all the right things. Why isn't she horny for him? We got to deal with that. That's a real thing. It's so brave and awesome. It is. And no one writes an existential crisis the way that he does.

Wealth gives him permission, I think, to parody these people and to make them real simultaneously because these situations do happen to people outside of this very specific economic kind of section of society he explores. Yeah. This is his words,

not mine. If the first season was about money, the second season was about sex, this season is about religion. It was everything that I had hoped it would be. And there are so many things that happen over the course of this experience that I'm not at liberty to really talk about. Tough project to promote, actually.

Yeah, it is with a lot of projects. But that one in particular, I think they do actually kill you. Right. It was a body floating somewhere. But I felt like I had my own apocalypse now, that I was Willard in a boat going upstream to meet Captain Kurtz, which was also me. Because of the real life or the story? Because of the story that I was telling. Does it help that you're in Thailand for six months, living at the actual hotel you're working in?

Yeah, living at the hotel. And sometimes the hotel was completely bought out. So it was just us. And then other times, you know, they weren't able to do that. So you're literally checking in as an actor next to guests that are actually there on vacation. You're like peeking at the hotel pool going like, oh wow, that's that character. Yeah, it's a weird fourth wall being broken. Yeah, but I've seen two episodes, and it's really fucking good.

Oh, I cannot wait. And it's similar, but it's different. And I can say that my journey in this world, it's something that hasn't been seen or explored by Mike in other seasons. But everyone just kills it. Is it hard being there, though, for some? six months? No, fuck yeah, man. I mean, I've been home 11 days this year. In success, it becomes harder, you know, and that's the thing I don't think people realize. Because you're having to turn down now really great opportunities. Well, I mean, you're just away from home for a long time.

It's lonely. Yeah. I don't think people anticipate that. It's like, oh, my God, I'm getting all these opportunities. And it's incredible. But at the end of the day, you go back to a house or your hotel room and you're alone, which I'm good at. And if I'm having a problem with it, I know other people are. Everyone went through their own crisis over the course of this experience, which is maybe helpful for the project. It's a story that can induce that experience. Certainly for me, the way that I approached this way of storytelling, it was a fucking incredible experience. It had everything in it. Soup to nuts. And I can't wait for you to see it. And I can't wait to hear what you think about when you do see it. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry to say it. Maybe we'll come back on

at the end of this thing. When you get the call to join that cast. It was interesting because, Because they were doing season two, and I didn't know Mike, but we had friends in common, like we all do at this point. And I remember my agent saying, well, you should write a letter to Mike. It's like, no, man, I ain't that guy. I ain't doing that. They didn't tell me that conversations were even happening or that it was getting close. And then it was out here. We were doing early press for fallout.

And I went out to dinner with my agents, which I hadn't seen in a while. And they said, listen, congratulations. I said, for what? And then they said, Mike wants you to do White Lotus Season 3. And I just started fucking bawling, started shaking at the table. Really? Because I felt like it's a world. I could help him tell his story.

Do you know what I mean? For a white woman. You really were. I suppose I would have felt that way if any other show or movie you're excited about or filmmaker, but it's when you understand, like Quentin, I felt like I know how to tell his story. I felt that way with Mike and a few of the filmmakers that I've gotten an opportunity to work with over the course of my career.

This is one of them that I walked outside and called my wife. That's amazing. My last question to land the plane is I also follow you on Instagram. I also know Cordry goes with you to like Greece or Italy. You guys will do a proper summer in another country. It seems like you're putting as much effort into your actual life being as artistic as your work life. Absolutely. And I'd imagine some people might think that just happens, but I imagine you got to actually approach your life just like you do a role. Wow. I've never had anyone and say that. Yeah, I think that it's with intention. And so this happens to be a very long stretch. We sold our home in Los Angeles and we moved across the country and we bit off maybe a little bit more

than we could chew. And that's like, okay, I got to go to work even though I've never really done anything just for the money or that I'm not proud of or that I didn't want to do. But I got offered a movie right when the strikes were being talked about. I had this trip planned and they said, we'll offer you this amount of money. And I said, thank you, but no, thank you. And they said, okay, what about this amount of money? And I said, thank you, but no, thank you. He said, what would it take? I said, there is no amount of money.

I'm sorry, and your listeners or other actors may say, fuck that guy. You know what? I hadn't seen my kid in a long time, and I had seen my friends, and that fucking time with my kid, it means more to me than anything. We're going to do that again this year.

With intention, whatever you can afford. My mom did it in Panama City, Beach, Florida, in a fucking tent. That is time, and it's far too precious at the stage of the game, And it is something that you can never get back. And I have shame and remorse and regret about the time that I have been away. Like anyone does with their children, it's with intention.

And we're going to live the fuck out of life. Strap yourself in. Oh. Strap yourself in. Let's all. We should end on this. Strap in. Let's strap in.

Thank you so much, GoDaddy Arrow. Oh, right. You got a Super Bowl commercial. Let's just add that. Hey, man. Oh, shit. Yeah, that's exactly right. Go back and watch it on YouTube.

Goggins goggles has. This Super Bowl commercial, well-deserved. Go Daddy Arrow. And hopefully people will be watching the commercial. God, you look great. He looks so fucking sheep. You know what? If you can imagine like every day just feeling like Apre Ski.

I love it. I'm going to wear them out. What I'm thinking, Monica's our long-standing debate about whether or not I could fly an airplane if the pilot went down. Sure. You with those goggles on? You think I could do? I'm not sure who should be flying the airplane. You or me.

That is quite the compliment. You look like a professional. in any field with those guys. Hey, you know, what an honor, man. What an honor for us. Yeah. We've been trying to get you in for years. Thank you.

You're so generous of yourselves and so giving of your time and such great listeners. And thank you. What a pleasure, man. Just loving you from afar. So the fact that we're sitting together is such a blast for me. I adore you, Walton. This has been my blast. Thank you.

What a joy. What a joy. Stay tuned for more armchair expert. If you dare. He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here. She's got to let them have the facts. Oh, look at our trophy.

Look at our trophy. That's a cool trophy. Very space age. Yeah, it's meant to be hung. Okay. It has this at the bottom. I guess it looks like a quotation above, someone's head?

It does. I'm holding up a square armchair expert with X-Shepard, Spotify, 500 million streams. Plack we were awarded. Gold status, I was told. A trophy. Gold status. I need to start this fact check by saying my most deepest thank you. I've never been more grateful than last night.

I was asked to be one of Bill's 10 or 11 stops on his book, tour. Yeah, awesome. And it was at a live event, the car mirror. I know, some beautiful theater. Ooh. Where? In San Francisco. Oh, nice. Yes. Sorry if you already said that. No, I don't think I did. Okay. For the listener, I didn't say that. Okay. Okay. It's not our show, right? Yeah. It's not handheld mics. I can't go out and I had a time and warm everything up and then bring Bill out. There's like a whole thing, you know, it's their show. Right. And there'll be, video and another woman introduced us for a while and then we sit down. I'm in the wrong side.

Suffice to say, it just wasn't like one of our shows. Sure. So I guess they gave me about a ton. I'm not going to exaggerate. Maybe like 20% nerves. Of course. It's different. And it's like, I don't know if it's all people there to see Bill Gates and they're learning

who I am and they don't understand I'm going to have a sense of humor, whatever. All this to say. Uh-huh. Um, soon as we sat down, I said, are there any arm cherries here? Oh. And Monty, the whole place was arm cherries. Oh, that's so sweet. And I immediately felt so comfortable.

Yeah. And confident and relaxed. That's awesome. And I was so grateful. I couldn't believe how grateful I was. I was like, fucking armchairs show up. They really do show up. Yeah.

And you know, I had my whole family. Yes. Your original family. The O-F. Yeah. Your sister, your brother, and your mom. That's right. The original crew.

Yeah. The Fab Four. Was that lovely? It was lovely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And they got to meet Bill for a while. Yeah.

And my brother has been obsessed with Bill since you was a kid. Really? Oh, yeah. Because my brother was very into computers. I didn't know that. Yes. Oh, how special. Obsessed with Bill Gates his whole life.

Okay. Even when I was talking to him about. Before the event, I was saying like, oh, my God, you got to read the book. It's so funny. There are so many funny stories in this book about him being 13 and showing up places with a briefcase and business suits on and making products. And the whole thing is so, it sounds like a cartoon. Yeah. And he was like, oh, yeah.

My favorite thing is that his mom said, what are you doing in here in his bedroom? And he said, I'm thinking you should try it. And my brother just knew all this stuff I had just learned in the book. He somehow had already known. Anywho, they got to chat for quite a long time. It was a very special experience for my brother. That's great. And, yeah, it was sweet.

And then yesterday, we gave it to San Francisco straight up the heine. We, in four hours, we saw that whole city, Monica. Nice. We saw Alcatraz. We saw the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge. We went through Chinatown. We went through North Beach. We went to Lombard Street.

We got on the trolley and rode the full loop of the trolley. Hanging out the side, Monica. So is that something you do with your original family? Because I don't think you do that with your current family. No. My brother had never been to San Francisco, shockingly. But so, yeah, seeing Alcatraz and all that stuff, the Colding Gate Bridge. It's all very exciting.

Trolley, Rice, Rone, the San Francisco tree. Full house. Ding, dang, dang, dang, Olsons. Lombard Street. Do you know Lombard Street? I've heard, I don't know. It's the one that's really twisty. Oh, sure.

That goes down extremely steep. And when my brother and I were children, there was a show called, You Can't Do This on television? No, that's Nickelodeon. It was called That's Incredible. Doug Democcus, the Wheely King, rode a dirt bike, a wheelie, down Lombard Street. Oh. Never putting it down.

Rode over cars on a wheel. Oh, that sounds bad. It was very memorable, seminal moment on television for us. And so to be on Lombard, where our hero, Doug Democcus had done that sweet wheelie. And then some arm cherries were in a 1960s VW microbus coming down Lombard Street and started hollering out the window. Sometimes people shout out the window and their arm cherries.

This happens. Yeah, yeah. And I just want to say to anyone who does that to me, it just happened a few times. Yeah. Don't think I'm a bitch if. You get shook a little bit. Yeah. Or my first reaction is like really like.

A twist eye rolly? Not eye rolly. like don't. Don't hurt me. Yeah, don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. Don't hurt me, please. I'm small. Or I look scared and angry. That's just my reaction as a woman. You let it in. But then they say like, I'm listening or I listen or I'm going to whatever.

And then I stopped listening. I don't like it anymore. What happened? He yelled up. Should have never done video. Yeah, recently a guy did that. He honked. and then he I looked over with a mean face and then he pointed he was listening at that moment

he like raised the volume and that was exciting but I got scared when you thought you just when you just pointed it looked like he was pointing at his crotch but it was obvious it was the armchair would never do that I know he won it but I'm saying it was clear that he was pointing to his stereo

yeah okay great because when you just did it it wasn't clear okay all right Okay, anyway, so go on. Lombard Street. Lombard Street, Chinatown, little Italy, Alcatraz. That fucking trolley made us so happy. The cable card.

Oh, fun. Because that's really classic. I just said the cable card. The cable card. I didn't read. You know, I just think it's not. There's a cable running under the street that they put in in 1870. Still going.

Going in a circle. Also had some great meals. Ooh. Really great meals. San Francisco has great cuisine. Oh, my goodness. In fact, one of these places, if you're there, I insist you go called Cavalier, it's done up, it's a bar restaurant tavern, and it's done as an English hunting lodge. In the decor was, decor really works for me.

For everyone. There's a reason aesthetics are important. I guess I should admit something really gross. Okay. This tasteful? Yeah, just bad, but since we are honest here, when you, when you started your back check about wanting to say thank you, I thought you were saying thank you to me. Oh, I can think he was well. Because I thought where the story was going was that.

It's so much easier together. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's true. That's totally true. I should have said that. I'm sad. I didn't say that.

No. Yeah. I always walk out with you. Yeah. So, into two, I mean, if we eat a big turd together, it'll be together. Right. I thought maybe that's what was coming. And then I thought, oh, it's not, maybe it's a different thank you.

Also to me, because. Because what was the second reason? I'll probably agree with it, too. Because you were gone and you, as you said, you took your sweet sister. Yeah, yeah. Who runs this household. Uh-huh. Yeah.

keeps it in check. Yes. And Kristen was at a table read yesterday. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that, but... I think it came out. Yeah, it's been announced. For the show? Yeah, season two.

A bill inquired about it. Because he's a dad. He's a dad. I tried to explain that to him. He didn't understand that that's why he liked it. Yeah. It's hard to explain that to people. But anyway, so she was at a table read.

So she was at Fox. She was far away and Anna was with her. Yeah. And Lincoln had a tummy ache. Oh, no. So do you have to rescue her? So I went to pick her up. Was that your first time at that school?

Yes. And isn't it beautiful? First of all, it's beautiful. We won't say what it is. No. Even though you probably already have on here. I haven't. But it's beautiful.

But I was lost. Yep. It's like big. It's like a mini UCLA. There's a campus. Yeah, yeah. And I was lost and I kept having to ask like teens. But they're so confident.

So what my, I think the first thing is you're like, wow, there's a really pretty campus. That quickly pales in comparison to how palpable the confidences of all those gales run around. Yeah. They're on, they're living out loud. But yeah, so I kept having to ask all these teens. One teen really was like, the middle school's over there. Like she was bad at me. And I was like, I'm cool.

Like I have a podcast. Do you listen to podcasts? I must have stopped three different people and I could not figure it out. But I eventually, eventually. I never got her. She's still there. Did she get home? And then, you know, she picked me up or.

She swung by in her motorcycle and grabbed me because I was lost. But it was so cute. And she said, oh, I thought you would be in San Francisco or whatever. I thought you'd be with dad. And I said, oh, no, it's just dad. She was like, he, he kicked you out. Oh, Jesus. And I said, no.

That's not really how it works. No benefit of the doubt. Yeah. She went straight to I kicked you out. She did. I said, yeah, you should punch him. I didn't want to tell her that her appendix might explode and that's what was maybe going on. Yeah, sure.

That was your first, though. That was my instinct. So I stuck around in case it didn't explode. It didn't. She had a poop and then feel like her. Probably. I didn't ask. Yeah, I'll find out tonight.

Okay. My first question. I was too involved about the poops. Do you get that thing out? Do you get it? I have one really special moment. Before this show, they said, we want to do a viral video with them.

And I was like, of course. So we played this game. Heads up. And then what's funny is it was tests on things from the book. But they put in Catcher in the Rye, which wasn't in the book. Okay. But he said something and then I got it. I was on my head.

Yeah. And he goes, wasn't that in the book? And I don't think that was in the book. Is that one of your favorite books? And he goes, oh, yeah. And I go, oh, it's my absolute favorite book. And then we're like, we talked for two seconds. And I go, is that why you named your daughter Phoebe?

And he goes, yeah. Oh, cute. And I go, I, from the second I read that book, I was like, if I have a daughter, it's going to be Phoebe. And it felt very connected. I really liked that. I had the same exact. Wow. Kathoms and I had that bonding moment, too.

I think a handful of men have named their daughters. Feeby because they fell in love with that character. You know you didn't do that, right? Is that not my firstborn's name? I'm so sorry to tell you. I'm so sorry. Yeah. Well, that's because we thought we were having a boy, if you recall.

Sure. Now, Delta could have ended up being a Feebee. She would have been such a good Phoebe. Yes, she would. That name really would have worked for her. It would. Although Delta really works pretty good for her. Of course.

I can't imagine. Yeah. Maybe if I have. one I'll name it, Phoebe. That's a ding, ding, ding. People have been pointing out in the comments that my new over-indexing is Delta, which is 100% true. Yeah.

Not Delta, my daughter. Oh. The distance between two things. Oh. Yeah, yeah. When I talk about, I'll say Delta and people are really noticing it and I, guilty is charged. Okay. Yeah.

I love it. It's very, it's very efficient. It is. Instead of saying the difference between her. gap between? Yeah, actually, yeah, I guess you do do that. I do it a lot. Yeah. I really got it from Formula 1. They use Delta a lot in Formula 1. What did you do while I was gone? Other than get lost at Lincoln School. On campus. There's just something about being at school. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like it. Yeah, yeah. I went to In and Out this weekend. You did? Yeah. You got animal style fries and a, I know what?

And I got, no, I got, I'm going to blow my nose. Okay. Sorry. That's okay. Have you blown today? I've lost some progress. Oh, all right. It hasn't returned to the insanity, but it's also.

Okay. Did you slip up on your trip? With blowing? Yeah. Probably. Hotel rooms. Well, I bring tissues over to the bed every night to have them ready. And then when they're there,

then I kind of got to use them. But I can't risk that I will make it without blowing my nose and have to get up. It's a lot of stuff to consider. I know. Did anything else interesting happen? Oh, my God, Super Bowl. Oh, Dye. That would be crazy.

What was your favorite commercial? The Nike Women's Commercial. That was awesome. Playing Led Zeppelin. I bought the shirt. Oh, God. Yeah, that was very cool commercial. That was probably the best.

But, man, I love Willem. DeFoe. I do. I do too. I mean, he's just. I know. That was a good pairing. But he's just, what a,

friend of the pod, go check out his episode. He's so unique. What a gift he is. He is. He's a blessing. I love him. Yeah.

I loved that. He's a blessing. He is. Yeah, that was good. He's like in a West Anderson movie, even if he's in a commercial. That was great. I couldn't hear all of them.

Yeah. I didn't see most of them. I started at an hour and a half late. Oh, you did. I did. Wow. Yeah, and then fast forwarded through everything to catch up. Okay.

Not needing to catch up as it turned out because nothing changed. Yeah, but the only thing I cared about really, really delivered, which was the halftime show. Oh, the halftime show. Oh, my God. I loved it, but I definitely thought his mic was too low. I was having the hardest time hearing him, like the first four songs. Well, we couldn't hear, but it was. It was a bad mix.

It was the TV, no, because when I watched it on YouTube, I could hear everything. Oh, really? Yeah, you should watch it on YouTube. I wonder if on YouTube they cleaned that up. Oh, maybe. But on the broadcast, I was like, his vocals need to be way up. Just barely hearing the words. Yeah.

I thought it was so good and so well done and so smart as he is, all of those things. I don't know. I just thought it was so powerful. I loved it. And there's all these, like, I love hidden things. Okay. What were some of the, the Heidi's? I love clues.

What was in there? Well, did you realize you probably see? These probably aren't clues. They're probably obvious. But stage was a PlayStation because the whole thing is like the game. He's like playing this game with Drake. Also, when Samuel Jackson is out there, it's kind of. I thought he was incredible.

That's incredible. Uncle Sam. Oh, my God. He was so incredible. That's a hard lift. He's got to pop in and out. Perfect timing. I know.

Finished before he's got to start. That was complicated. Yeah. And he was great. He was perfect. But yeah. He was almost more Kendall Kumar than Kendrick Lamar. No, don't say.

Yeah. No. Oh, my God, no. Sam Jackson's like the original Kendrick Lamar. Well, he's like, I'm sure that's why he was there. Yeah. He, of course, is iconic. But.

They have a same vibe and spirit. Yeah. Yeah. But the. Just the message. No tap dancing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're not playing this game. Yeah, that was great. Serena. Yeah. I didn't, you didn't see that. You have to rewatch this. Serena. Williams.

She sang? She came out and it was crypt dancing. Oh, I didn't see that. You got, you got. I thought you were saying the female singer was Serena. No, that's Cizza. She's huge. Yeah. I was like, I don't think you got close, but I don't think it's sorry.

I know what I'm talking about. I know, you know more than I do. For sure. I didn't see Serena crib walking. You definitely need to rewatch. I had it very loud. And I got goosebumps many times, several times. When it's the American flag and he's standing in the middle of it and they're all,

all of the dancers in the arrangement are black. Uh-huh. Just so powerful. This is really powerful. It was. It really was. I love him. I want him to come on this show so badly.

Yes, me too. I had to get brought up to speed by Tim Loftsett. About the beef? About the beef. I told you a little bit about the beef. I know about the pedophile part. Yeah. I know about the lawsuits.

Yeah. I didn't know that he called Drake a colonizer. I didn't know that whole aspect. That's in the song, yeah. Yeah, and that Drake had called him, accused him of making slave music. Did you know that part? No. but I know Drake.

So I guess there was this huge, like, weekend. And Drake is rich, I heard. Drake is rich. Like grew up rich, I heard. Oh, yeah, he's from Canada. You know, Drake is. I have zero opinion on Drake. I just want to say that a lot.

Me too. I have zero feelings about Drake, except apparently, and there's a daily on this. Oh, there is. Uh-huh. Okay. Drake likes these beefs. Like, he starts them. It's part of...

They're good for a business. Sure. Yeah. But this one really got out from under a hand. Uh-huh. And Kendrick isn't really ever the type to get involved in these types of things. He's kind of like, which Drake also calls out like, oh, you think you're so... A few beefs.

Kendrick? Yeah. He's also in a beef with Andrew Schultz. Oh. Did you not see that? Interesting. Oh, yeah. Really?

And Andrew did not at all count out. He just worked out. straight to war with them. What is that crazy? You'll have to watch all the videos. He has a line about don't let a white comedian make fun of our women or something. And then so, and it's believed that he's referencing Andrew.

And Andrew then comes out and says he's just not terribly worried about Kendrick. And then he, his attack back is like, oh, here's the dude you've supported who have raped women. and who have beaten women. I don't think I'm your dude. So that was his pushback. And yeah, got saucy.

Well. And I thought, boy, Andrew, you're pissing off. That's so stupid of him. A very, very diehard fan base.

But, uh, yeah, he's got at least those two going. But back to Drake. Yeah. Okay. But in the hip hop world,

yeah. He doesn't really do this because he kind of is, Drake says it too. Like you put your, you think you're so great. You think you're this, like, poet. Yeah, yeah. Which is.

Anywho, Drake is rich and very popular and like, you know, blends. He's not straight up, straight up hip hop. Oh, right. More poppy mixed with hip-up. Exactly. Club music. Yeah. So people think he's a phony.

I found myself with that tension of loving a good fuck you song and then knowing a better part of myself doesn't like this. Yeah, me too. But in this case, I don't care. You went for it. I'm like, oh yeah, I'm getting charged up by this. Yes. And obviously that's not my aim in life. Same. Same. Same. Like, be pumped when someone else is telling another person to fuck off.

Me either. Effectively. Well, the pro. Okay. I agree. Unless there's a huge class distinction, of course, then I do enjoy. But regardless. Yeah. I am with you. I don't like enjoy a beef. A disc track or a beef. I've never I've never been into a beef before.

Right. This is your first beef. This is my first, my first foray into beefs. In the world of beefs. But now that I listen to The Daily and I know how many. So it was like this big weekend, I guess, where they were like back and forth. They kept putting out songs in retaliation to one another. At the end, in the audience, after the halftime show, it says game over.

Right. Because he won. Right. And, you know, he did win. That song, that his disc trance. won five Grammys. Right. Like, sorry, I feel bad.

I actually do feel kind of bad for Drake, but he did start it. I don't even know who started. He started it, according to the daily. Okay, all right. I'm nervous. I don't want to be on either side of a. Why? Because I don't, I don't ever want to, I don't want to join a team when half the other people

hate the team. I don't want to be on a team that's hated by half of people. It's not my desire in life. I know. If I care deeply about this feud between Drake and Kendrick. Yeah. I might, but I don't care at all. These are both very rich, talented dudes.

I don't think there's an oppressed person in this. Well, I think, yeah. I mean, they did come from very different backgrounds. Like, I don't, it'd be like you who came from a certain background, you probably feel like you have more of an entitlement to talk about that and rap about that than somebody who didn't experience it. But again, I don't even know enough about Drake. Is he rapping about the hood?

He raps about bling. Okay. Oh, since we're talking about pop culture, which we rarely do. And I tend to, for whatever reason, be allergic to. Do you know the Kanye thing? Yes. So step one was arriving at the. Grammy's uninvited with the wife who was then naked.

Okay, that was event number one. And then he had a, he paid for his own Super Bowl commercial. Yep. Yes. Which directed people to go to his website. So to go to easy.com. Yeah. And if you went to easy.com, there was a single item for sale. And it was a shirt with a swastika on it.

Yep. I mean, this is, is absolutely mad as conceivable. This is horrible. I dined to know. It's so bad. I'm dying to hear his thought process. I'm just dying to understand how he got himself to a point where he paid for a Super Bowl commercial. He hates Jewish people.

He says it. It's not. We don't have to read through the lines. The fact that that's not illegal, I don't, like, I don't, although now I guess there's talk about the NFL maybe suing him because when he did the commercial, that wasn't up. He had real items on his site until the next day he changed it. Yeah. So I guess there is some conversation about him being sued for that. But I don't.

It's what I want to know. Embarrassing. What I want to know, to be clear, is the same thing I wanted to talk to Roseanne about. He knows this is a very damaging move. I don't know what he knows. It's like passing a point of no way. return. It's been like that, though. He keeps doing stuff like this. Yeah, I mean, they're escalating in severity. He wasn't previously, to my knowledge, selling swastika shirts.

No, but he was, he was saying openly he hates Jewish people and he's like I'm, he's getting close to being a neo-Nazi. Close. He's a neo- Okay, right. He is a hundred percent. He's a black neo-nazi. Yes, he is. Now, how does a rational, at one time seemingly savvy and rational person end up here other than just the obvious bipolar yeah he is bipolar but yes as i was reading something today like that's that for people who are like well he's just he's bipolar which he is yeah 95% of bipolar people don't aren't hate filled they're not using it to hurt people and and if you found out hitler was bipolar you wouldn't go like oh that makes sense yeah i have a whole theory i'm not entitled to have about Roseanne, which is, I think, the racism aside, it was racist.

I acknowledge it. But that's just one of many historic things she has done at the height of her popularity to really alienate everyone and test whether they love her. Like the famous. Well, that's you, that's you deciding and test what, like that's you being very introspective and saying you think it's because deep down she's. testing whether. Yeah, I think like when she sang the national anthem intentionally poorly and annoyingly and she pissed everyone off and it's like the patriotism flared up and she's brilliant.

So she's too smart to not know that wasn't a good move. So then I wonder what story is she confirming by doing this thing? Like, well, how could she as smart as she was to convince herself that I'm going to do this? And I think it's this you don't believe. all these people that love you, really love you. And then your brain comes up with this bizarre test of that to find out, to confirm your right, basically, but no one really loves you. They love this fake version of view. They see on TV or hear in music.

I have to believe that's going on with Kanye. I don't think so. You don't think so. I appreciate that you really give people, and I don't think you're giving him the benefit of the doubt. but like I think I think a bunch of things have gone terribly wrong in this life that he's the author of no question yeah he's he creates chaos uh-huh and I think you and probably many people feel like there's a empathetic reason behind that well I just think there's a reason other than that Kanye West was born evil and now we're seeing it and he hit it for 40 years but do you think anything But you don't think anyone's born evil. And I don't either.

But I think people become. I do think there are people in this world who become irredeemable. They become so driven to chaos and destruction. And yeah. And I'm not making an argument that he should be redeemed. No, I would hope, yeah, no. I'm not making an argument that people who have committed crime should not go sit in prison. but I am working with an assumption that something happened to them that now resulted in this.

I think there are serial killers and I think there's narcissists and I think there's sociopaths who enjoy and there's there are sadists who like to hurt things. I know those people exist. Yeah. But I think a lot of non-mental pathology people do really weird stuff that I'm quite curious why they would ruin their lives. this in this way. Like this is a person who's ruined their life. Oh, yeah. But over and over.

Like, it's not. Keeps doing it. He keeps causing harm. Does it seem like a tragedy to you? Because it seems like a tragedy to me. It seems like a waste to me. But I don't, I don't think of it as a tragedy. I think what he's doing to people, I think causing this kind of fear and instability and

across the board, even when he like goes up and. steals a thing from Taylor. It's all, it's mean, it's bad. I'm also of the belief that a lot of that type specifically thrives off oxygen. And so I don't, like, I don't really want to give him any ever. Like, I think he's disgusting and I don't want to talk about him really. I mean, this is a fine conversation, but, you know, Everyone's, of course, like, posting about it.

And there was another shirt made in Retaliation, which I think is awesome. That is what he wants. He wants chaos. He wants a reaction. He wants people to be scared and be angry. And I don't want to play. Right. Like, bye.

Just go away. Yeah. Stay tuned for more armchair expert. If you dare. Do you think he's sold any? I don't know. Well, it's gone now. Oh, it is?

Yeah, Shopify took it down. Okay. Let's just say it's a historic public meltdown for the ages. I mean, this is one of the most bizarre things. Yeah, but it's not that bizarre because it's been such a long, He's been escalating to this for so long. I mean, there was a period where he was just writing incredible music. A long time ago.

Came up with some of the greatest Jay-Z songs with him. Like, there was some period where he was just a volcano of incredible creativity. He was. But we also don't know who he was back then. No, when I watched the doc about him before he got really crazy, what I saw as a guy who had some very deep social challenges, his whole life. I think he's been very atypical as a person. I think so, too.

You know what part of the problem is, I can admit? I so can't relate to hating Jewish people. It seems like the dumbest thing to me. Yeah. And so it's so cuckoo that I wonder, how does one get themselves there? I hear you, and that's me too. I'm like, I don't even understand this. Right.

But six million of them were killed because someone didn't like them. Yeah, yeah. One person who created such a massive revolution that like six million of them were killed. So it's, it sounds cuckoo. And then that is also a reality we're living in. I acknowledge there's a huge history of it. Even before they killed them, they weren't allowed to participate in most of the economy. Yeah.

Like, they've been very poorly treated for hundreds and hundreds of years. Yeah, there's an underestimation of making a group the scapegoat of a problem. Yeah. And how really bad that can get. When you have poor white people living in the same city with poor black people and poor Latinos, we see the lack of resources in the competition that's definitely going to file onto these in groups. It's kind of quite predictable. Like it's a bunch of people in scarcity

Blaming one another for their scarcity makes a lot of sense I'm not even sure where you're interacting in that circle Like you're not thinking Jewish people taking your jobs You're not thinking like all these other things that perpetuate That kind of inner city poor stereotyping and racism Yeah It's just like they're not going to jail a lot There's nothing I'm not even sure

They control the media. There's narratives. I mean, they're ridiculous. But there are narratives that get built about that's why I'm so allergic to any stereotype, whether it's good or bad, because you don't know. What the good ones? No, because it's a, as soon as you start doing massive generalizations, it's livery. Indians have really great hair.

No, only me. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, it's, it is. I've, I mean, I've been not really. paying on purpose too much attention to what has been going on in the world it does feel um a little your response like i'm trying to figure out the line of complete ignoring and keeping my sanity um i haven't really found it yet so i'm i'm sort of not partaking at all but yeah things make your way to you and it is scary i mean it's just that well that and then to circle back to a little bit

is oh my god it's so crazy he put this t-shirt up it's not that crazy because permission has been granted by our most elite in charge to say whatever the fuck you want to say to do whatever the fuck you want to do Elon is doing a hail Hitler that was at our United States inauguration so you know, I'm just saying, like, it's not out of nowhere that someone crazy like that is, is going to feel like, well, now is the time I can put my t-shirt up. Okay, well, speaking of stereotypes, Walton. Walton Coggins. Shout out to Georgia Southern, a school near where I grew up.

How far? 60 miles? Oh, you know, I don't know about miles. Probably further, because Atlanta's really in the middle. So if it's called Southern, I got to, it's got to be closer to Florida, no? No, no. It's in. It's in the Georgia, uh, the Atlanta area.

Well, it's in Georgia. Right. But is it in Southern Georgia? Yeah. Okay. Closer to Florida. I guess. I would imagine.

I guess I, I've never thought of it as closer to Florida, but yeah. Thanks to the south of you. Let's find out how far it is from my parents house. Great. I'm going to use maps for that. Okay. Okay. It's three hours and 28 minutes.

Okay. So, from more than 60 minutes. miles. 150, 160, 180. Yeah, it's 231 miles. Whoa, that's very far. Wow. From my parents.

From my parents. From your parents. So it must really be on that border. It's here. It's here. And that's Savannah on the coast there. Okay. So it's a bit east and south from Atlanta.

But yeah, it's pretty close to Jacksonville, yeah. Yeah, not too far. Not too bad. Not too far. You could be there for a lunch. appointment if you had to get some fresh oranges um i had a lot of friends who went there did you guys you guys would drive to disney world obviously right you're very close yeah we would eight hours okay at the speed your father drove it was eight hours let me put it in

disney world six hours 55 minutes okay 472 miles okay I'm sure you guys had to stop. I know what it's like. Yeah, we had to stop. We couldn't go more than 60 damn miles this summer in Europe. Okay, Tortuga, yes, Spanish word for turtle. Well, it's a great word. It is.

Yeah. His earliest memories are in Decatur. My mom worked at Decatur Federal Bank. That was one of her first jobs. Okay. How long did she serve? I thank her for her service, too. Me too.

I don't know. Okay. Okay, an annulment. Yes, how does an annulment work? Okay, an annulment is a legal ruling that ends a marriage by declaring it invalid. It makes the marriage null and void as if it never happened. Here are the criteria. Fraud.

If one spouse tricked the other into marriage. Yeah. Coercion. If one spouse was forced into the marriage. Okay. Mental incapacity. That's really bad. That's hard to prove.

Ding, ding, ding. Kanye's wife. Oh, okay. They could get an annulment. If one spouse was not mentally capable of marrying, physical inability. If one spouse is unable to consummate the marriage. Yes. This is interesting.

Yeah, you were against this and I was for this. I know. I'm against it. Because you can't, if someone marries you and they can't perform sex with you, you needed to say that ahead of time because you can't just surprise. someone and say guess what sex won't be a part of this marriage you can go well then that's obviously the understanding was there would be sex but what if you are married you're having sex yeah and then it's been consummated yeah it has been consummated yeah oh is consummate just the first

time yeah yeah oh so it's not like then in two months you get married in a year later you still haven't had sex well what if you have sex and and then you stop being able to. Some men have that issue. Right. So then can you annul after like a year and a half? It sounds like consummated is a very operative word. Okay.

Yeah. So that sounds like never had sex. Okay. That's fair. You need to tell someone up front about that. What if you don't know? What if you've had sex with other people? And then for some reason with this person, you just can't perform.

You should get your marriage annulled and find a partner. You can have sex with them. That's my suggestion there for both parties. What about if... Fraud, there was fraud. Fraud was listed in the divorce and the annulment with Kenny Chesney. Renee Zellinger. And Renee Zellweger.

But what happened? I know. That's the great curiosity. What was fraudulent about what he was promising? Or her? I think she cited fraud. Oh. If memory serves me.

Okay. This has been a very... Gossipy. Extra. Extra. Inside Hollywood edition. Yeah. Incest, if the marriage between people who are too closely related by blood,

I agree with that one. Cousins, though? I agree. Wait, you don't think cousins can get married? No. Oh, you don't? That one's very loosey-goosey. What?

Yeah, yeah. We had an expert on that had a whole chapter about incest and has gone through the world. And it's very rare for a call. culture to have forbid cousins to get married. It's very common everywhere. No. Cousins, you mean like second and third and fourth? I don't want to marry any of my cousins.

Right. But I can also imagine never even meeting your cousin. I haven't met some of my mind, but I don't want to marry them. What if you met them in there? You meet them for the first time at 37. Yeah. And they're gorgeous. Great.

Let's get married. Great. Meet me at the chat. Yeah. No, that's so... This is a Jonathan Hight thing. Cyclops is. No, so that's a little exaggerated.

It's not between siblings, but... It still can, when it's too close, it's not good. Yeah, but it... That's science. This was a part of the... The book you can't remember. I want to say it might have been Paul Bloom the last time I read his thing. I think it's, it's been a little exaggerated, the genetic risk of cousins.

I'm not, I don't want to be with my cousins, but I don't, I don't think I care if other cousins are together. Really? I don't think I do. I have to make myself care. I don't. I guess, I guess people can do what they want. I mean, it's very common throughout the world.

Someone's preferred. No, it's not. Yeah, a lot of places it's preferred. No, it's not. Okay, big of me, if one spouse was already married to someone else, that feels fair. Yeah. um bigamy is the only one we can come together on you and i yeah well no mental incapacity right and physical yeah we don't and coercion what one don't we is just consummation incest i well

and consummation because oh consummation is physical yeah i know i'm on the fence about that i can't believe you're on the fence about that what do you get married be friends what if you're in because is love is not just love is more than sex and friends sexual love is romantic love and you get married and then you have friendships that are loving and supportive you could be roommates that's great but entering into the romantic bond of marriage with no attraction to the person or interests in it being sexual with them i think it's a deal breaker that's a total deal breaker no hold on i want to be very clear. If you're asexual, I honor that. And you said to the person, I'm asexual. I don't want to have sex. Yeah. Great. And that person's like, cool, I don't either. Go crazy.

Right. But no. But you really need to declare that. Okay. That can't be a surprise. Okay. I want to pivot this a little bit. You put sexual love and romantic love in the same bucket. You, you call that the same bucket, right? For you, those are synonymous. Yes. That's interesting. Oh, is it? Yeah. You think that's novel? I think there are three buckets. I think there's sexual attraction. Okay.

Romantic love and then friendship love. Why would romantic love be different than the sexual bucket? Because who would you be romantically in love with that you didn't want to have sex with? You would just be in friends love with them as a friend. No. Like I think maybe this is gendered, but I think for a lot of women, not. me because I'm not married, but I could see this. I could see over time being less sexually attracted. I mean, this happens in every marriage, right? You become like less sexually attracted

to your marriage partner. But you're still romantically in love with them. You love them in a way you don't love your friends. Yes, but you had a sexual relationship that has slowed down as opposed to you were never intending to have a sexual relationship and sex was never going to be a part of this. I guess I'm just saying to me those are there are three buckets. They're not like loving someone romantically or loving a partner apart from sex is a different kind of love and care and and then a love for a friend. For me, for you know, this is kind of interesting. Yeah, I think I'm either I want a romantic love with a woman

Or I want a friendship love with them There's no third bucket for me Considering love Loss, sure, there's people I would love to have sex with That I would not want to hang out with Which is kind of gendered generally speaking But yeah, there's no one that I Would want a romantic relationship with

That I wouldn't want to have sex with Wouldn't happen right then they would just be a friend and i wouldn't marry them yeah you want to marry a friend no and have no sex no i know i did not just define annulment if they asked for it i did not say that i didn't say that i just i just think romantic love is different than sexual attraction obviously you want both in your in your husband like romantic love is wanting to kiss the person's lips yeah that's fun yeah that's the same thing as sexual attraction but those aren't different things to me but over time like there's no one i want to kiss really bad but then don't want to have sex with if i want to kiss them and

I love them. But like over time in the man, not to get too personal, but like every time you kiss Kristen, you want to have sex with her? Like, no. Like that's a, that it's a, it's an intimacy. No, but I would like to have sex with Kristen. Well, yeah. Yeah.

Right. And if I didn't want to have sex with her, that would be an issue. But if you didn't want to have set, let's say, like now, after so many years, you stopped really wanting to have sex with her. Yeah. You still love her romantically in a way that is different than how you love friends. Yeah, I just, I think comparing something 20 years out and week, week one, no one's getting a marriage annulled after 20 years. I'm talking, you marry someone as is revealed to you, they have no intention to have a sexual relationship with you.

I think you're definitely entitled to get out of that marriage. Yeah, I mean, I guess I agree. It's false advertisement. Well, also it's on you. Why haven't you asked about their sexual appetites before you married them? Well, I think you have said, I can't wait to be married. I can't wait for a first night. I can't.

I'm sure. And then the person didn't go, there's not going to be a first night just so you know. Because I don't want to have sex with you because I'm not romantically attracted to at all. What if they want to really bad, but they just can't? Meaning they can get an erection? Yeah. Again, if you are not able to ever get an erection and have sex with your wife, then I think your wife's entitled to be with someone who can.

I am sorry. It's already a bummer for you. It shouldn't also be a bummer for that person. Okay. What if a couple was waiting to have sex until they got married? Yeah. And then they both were really horny. He could get it up.

Yeah. She could get it in. Yeah, yeah. And but then on the night of the wedding, his dick gets cut off by a stranger. Someone comes, a robber comes in. and he starts attacking and the robber cuts his dick off and leaves. It's still not fraud because you didn't false advertise. Right.

You just someone cut your dick off. Yeah. That person, someone cuts my dick off. I'm still going to put a lot of energy into making sure Kristen's still having lots of sexual experiences. But not sexual intercourse. With my penis? No, because it's gone.

It's gone. That's called consummate. Okay. So it's on the actual day of the wedding. Yeah. I mean, that's quite common. And I don't know if we have a single case of that ever happening. Okay, well.

But if that happened, that would be up to the gal to decide if she wanted to never have sex the rest of her life. Yeah. Or if she decided she does want to have sex, then what arrangement could they work out where she could still have sex? Yeah. And they could still be married. Do you think most men would allow her to? No, most men are very jealous and terrified. That's the thing.

They would not allow her to go have sex. I would for sure. I would almost insist on it. I know. She'd be like, can you stop? Yeah, I know. It would probably be a thing. Yeah. You can't go your whole life. It's not your fault that. My dick got caught off at the ceremony. Right. Yeah. Little did you know, she hired that robber. Oh, my God, because she was asexual the whole time. All right. But again, someone asexual is going to be upset. I'm not judging you. I'm not talking about you. Two asexual people want to get married and have a non-sex marriage. That's great. sexual person with the sexual person. If that sexual person decides it's fine.

Yeah, good luck to them. That's up to them. Everyone gets to make their own. Yeah, but everyone's got to be honest. Unless it's incest. Then you've just got to be honest. Everyone has to be honest. Yeah, yeah.

If you're not honest, I think you're a bad person. You should be able to get out of that. Sure. I understand that. I also just think it's stupid. Like, annulment to me isn't less than a divorce. just get a divorce. Well, but it is in that there's no splitting of communal property.

There's no, it just never happened. There's no much of legal fees. There's no support. But it says the marriage records remain on file. Yeah, but you no longer have to say I was married and divorced because you weren't. Now that, to me, is fraudulent. If I married someone and then later and I found out that they had an annulment, they didn't tell me. All I'm saying is you're not a divorcee.

Who cares? it's the same thing. If I marry a divorce day or someone who got an annulment. If they had an annulment, but I definitely see why if someone coerced you into any, you shouldn't have to go get a divorce and have that be your ex-husband and all these things. No, I think it should be like it never happened. Interesting.

You're very religious now. I am very early. In his name, we pray under his eye. Under his eye. All right. That was it. Yeah, that's, okay. God.

I don't want you to get an annulment, but it's very fun. Why? Well, just because we just talked about it. And there's, I'm wondering, you know, like, what avenue? I don't want to have to go through any of these. What avenue are you going to pursue? That is so mean. Because you have a, you have a menu of options.

Like, I want this annulled, which one is. Let's hope it's not incest. Oh, so sad. All right. Love you. I love you. Love you. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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