Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Dax Shepard

Episode Date: January 31, 2021

You might call Dax Shepard an unlikely Hollywood star, and he’d probably agree with you. He grew up outside Detroit and moved to Los Angeles for college, where he spent over a decade struggling as an actor before his big break. In this week’s “Sunday Sitdown,” Willie Geist gets together with the actor to talk about that journey to stardom, his latest dream job on Top Gear America and his wildly popular podcast “Armchair Expert.”  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. Got a special one for you this week because I am getting together and sitting down with the master of the podcast, Mr. Dax Shepard. If you know anything about podcasts and I trust you do if you're listening here today, you know that Dax has one of the most popular podcast. It's called Armchair Expert, where he sits down for, gosh, two hours more sometimes. with anybody who piques his interest and his curiosity. And he is an incredibly curious guy and an incredibly smart guy. So he talks about movies and media, but also science and religion and anything that gets him going. This most recent episode of Armchair Expert, as he and I were sitting down together, was with Justin Timberlake. And so it was fun for me to sit down with Dax and have him

on my podcast. As you know, mine is not a classic podcast. We're really doing a TV interview that gets put into eight minutes about worth of content for Sunday today on NBC, but what we do here on the Sunday Sit Down podcast is give you the full uncut version of that conversation. You know that by now. So Dax and I get into his life, his career, his new gig as the host of Top Gear America, the car racing show, which is an absolute dream job for a kid from the Detroit area whose mom worked at GM and a guy who just loves cars, knows everything about cars, has a lot of cars. We talk about that.

We talk about his career. We talk about his marriage to Kristen Bell. All of it right now with Dax Shepard on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Dax, great to see you, man. Thank you for doing this. Oh, so happy to join you. I mean, we're both in our homes. It's a very rare kind of interview.

I kind of like this. I wonder if we're all going to get a little too used to everything being out of our homes and never want to leave and go do things outside of our homes. Oh, yeah. I'm about to resume shooting, Top Gear another season and I'm appalled that they're expecting me to show up somewhere. I just feel like I have cars, I have a driveway. Why all the travel? You could drag race in your driveway probably make a great episode. Have Cordry over and just do it.

Certainly I could do some donuts in the driveway. There's room to accommodate. So let's talk about Top Gear America. I mean there's never been a better fit probably for host and show as a guy who grew up in the Detroit area. building engines on cars, basically since he was a kid, loving cars his whole life. How did this opportunity come to you? I got to say, yeah, so my whole life has been cars. My dad sold cars. My mom was married to an engineer in the Corvette Group.

My mother worked at General Motors and worked her way up the ladder. Then she started a company that put on huge press events for new car releases. I had that job for 14 years. And all I wanted to do was race. And the only reason I'm compelled to make money is just. to give it to people so they'll hand me keys to things. So there was in some way I thought, why the hell haven't they called me yet?

You know, there was a decade where I thought, I don't know, I seem like a good fit for that show. Are they going to call me? Similarly, comedians and cars drinking coffee are getting coffee, Seinfeld. I'm under no illusion I'm big enough as a star to be a guest on the show, but I feel like my automotive knowledge

should somehow tip that. scale. Sure. Or it seems criminal, I haven't been on that. Anyways, those are my grievances. Back to the good part of the story. They did call. And soon as they called, even though I'd wanted them to call forever, I was immediately overwhelmed with this feeling. The only time it ever happened to me was one time I got offered to play Fletch in a remake of Fletch. And I just thought, I can't win at that. On my very best day, I might hit what Chevy did, 89% of what he did. I'm certainly not going to pass what he did that movie.

So it's just, and so similarly, I kind of revere the original top gear, the British version, you know, with Clarkson and May. And so part of me was like, yes, I want to do this more than anything. And then another part of me was like, you know, we've got to figure out how it can be something as unique as that one. And so I did go into it with just this kind of my main thrusting force when I met with them was it has to be punk rock. That's what the first show was. Like you had a legitimate fear these guys would end up in jail at the end of an episode.

And that's the thing I hope we could recapture with a new version. Or the hospital in your case. Yeah. Sure. Either is acceptable a trip to the hospital or jail. But it is punk rock in that. Within, I don't want to give too much away, but in the first three minutes of the first episode, we destroy our first vehicle, which I appreciated. I could tell there was some budget committed to the show right out of the gate.

Yes, yes. We wanted to send a message. Well, yeah, again, I mean, the thrilling parts of the show are that I get to go, drive cars that I would never get to drive. I get to drive them on closed courses at racetracks, out in the desert. And then we have other challenges where the cars are not that valuable. And not only are we allowed to, I think we're encouraged to destroy those vehicles. So if I'm not in some dream car, I'm in something I'm allowed to jump through plate glass and everyone will be happy about it. So it's hard to lose.

So do you have any restrictions on what you can do? Because it definitely doesn't seem like it. I mean, I see you get in the cars and I've heard you talk since about basically they just throw you the keys to, let's say, Shelby Gt 500 and do whatever you want to do. Yeah, yeah, safety is third. Safety's third, if even in the top five. I love it. I mean, I am not complaining. I think the thing I had mentioned was, and I showed a clip of it when I was on Kimmel, which is I took a Hellcat widebody and I went onto a dirt flat track and then, you know, just drifted it at 100 miles an hour over and over while they shot and I tried to explain the features of the car. And it

all went great. But when I was driving home, I thought, no one ever asked me if I could do it. They just said, action. And then I think I was expected to do it and I did it. And it just, I don't know, it felt to your point, it's the only job I've ever had where I thought. But somehow my whole life now has merged and my pursuit in improv and comedy and then cars somehow magically has come together. And I think it's rare that someone's life makes sense to them. But I did have about an hour. on the ride home from that shoot where I was like, my goodness, this all adds up. Every day before it was leading up to that day. Yes, it didn't feel like it at times, but here we are.

So I've got to ask you, again, I don't want to give too much away because I want people to watch closely, but the car you choose in that first episode is very you. I'm just going to say it's a Mustang. We don't have to even get into specifics. People can see it for themselves. But what is it about the Mustang and that one in particular that you love? because I know you had one way back, maybe even as your first car, an 84. Oh, my God.

Look at your research. I applaud you. Yes, I had an 84 Mustang GT that I bought used for $1,400, and I ended up rebuilding the engine on it. And that was my lab. That was where I figured out how to do all that stuff was on that car. So, yeah, I have a sweet spot for it. And where cars have gone, I don't think people really have stopped to take to look at. We're aware of the fact that you hold a phone that can go on the internet and all that

stuff. But I was driving to Laughlin, Nevada last year to go to an off-road race. And I have a beautiful AMG station wagon. And it's awesome. It's built for the Audubon. And I found myself in a group of about four or five cars. And we were flying. We were, I don't, I don't want to get legally in trouble here, but, you know, in the 105 range just for an hour and a half. And what was amazing was the other three cars were a Ford Focus, a Chrysler Pacifica minivan, and an accord. And I thought, as someone who grew up in the 80s and worked in the auto industry, the fact that these average cars you could rent at Hertz are safe to drive at 105, it's just, it's leaps and bounds.

So this Mustang, yeah, is 750 horsepower. Mine was 220. Right. It's quadrupled. And it's what. in the late 80s a full-blown NASCAR was making. You know, it is a race car. And it's almost breaks my heart because the interest in cars seems, you know, is ebbing. Younger generations don't seem to be as intoxicated with the notion as we were. And it's at the peak, the pinnacle of

automotive technology. So that car in particular, I just the whole time I drive it, I can't believe this is a Mustang. This would have won NASCAR races. Sure. in the 90s, no. Definitely. Just the sound even, too. Oh, my gosh. It's just beautiful. And the whole time, too, I'm having this ethical thought of like, so they'll give this to a 16-year-old if he's got the right amount of money, huh? They'll turn anyone loose in this car. As you thought about yourself at 16, I'm sure. So, yeah. I almost kill myself with 220 horsepower. I bet. I bet. So for people who haven't seen the original top gear, just lay out a little bit how it works because I think part you talked about the improv part of it you got a couple of your

buddies with you so that adds to the trash talk and all the other good stuff that comes with it beyond the cars yeah so you know ostensibly top gear is a car show but there was a period where top gear was the biggest show globally it had like 750 million viewers and certainly there's not 750 million and petrol heads out there, it had transcended the topic. So people were watching it because they were so entertaining. There was some magic symmetry and chemistry between those three guys. And they'd have all these challenges. So one guy, you know, they'd race to the Scotland from London.

And one guy'd be on a motorcycle. One guy'd take a train. One guy would drive some old car. And then, you know, all these natural little hurdles would present themselves. And it was just real-time drama. And then, of course, they would just razz each other and sum up the experience in a way that was just very novel. And so for this show, everything's just the cast. I mean, there's a lot of shows that have that Mustang on it.

There's a lot of shows that have every car we drive, to be honest. But Cordry, Rob Cordy is so funny and so uniquely funny. And he's so fish out of water. He loves cars, but he may have overestimated his skill. And then Jethro is a bona fide automotive journalist from England. He's raced in a million different series. He's a great driver. Unfortunately, Rob and I are discovering.

He's also funnier than both of us. He is. He really is. Good trash talker. Oh, yeah. He's like so charming in English. And then you're like, oh, yes, thank you. And then you think about what he just said.

And you're like, oh, you just took my legs out, didn't you? So, yeah, this really, it's just, I think we just kind of hit the jackpot with the symmetry of our cast. And then, so Jethro and I are insanely competitive. Every single timed event, we, our life depends on it. Our entire identity can collapse if we don't win. And so that's genuine. And then what's unique about it is we legitimately love each other and it's not the old-fashioned macho take on it. like I hug him after every race.

I'm rooting for them. And I'm dying if I don't. That all comes through even in the first episode. There's some dying. There's some dying here to get in there. Oh, yeah. It was a rough. I had a few rough days on that.

So you, we were talking about your 84 Mustang back growing up around Detroit. So was that love of cars? Was it born because your mom worked at GM? Is that where that came from? Was it because of cars in your neighborhood? or where did you first, what was your first touchstone with cars where you said, oh, man, I want to be part of this culture. I want to build engines. I want to someday own that car.

Where'd that come from? You know, I've had so many iterations of explaining why I love them. And it's totally evolved. Just initially I would say, like, yeah, my mom and dad both drag race when they were in high school. My dad was super into cars. I love them. I have posters of them. But certainly I think emotionally what I really loved about him was when I was 16, I got in it and you turn the wheel this way and you hit the gas this much and it's predictable and I have control and I can control this thing and it can do things I can't do physically.

And I can absorb its athleticism as my identity. And, you know, it's so much deeper. And then also I've always been in such a embarrassing hunt for masculine approval. So it too, in Detroit, like if you could leave your high school parking lot sideways and grab second gear and run it out to the light, you know, you were you were a God. And so there's just a lot of layers of why I love them. And but I would say ultimately the feeling I still get is I get at it and I go, oh, I can control this. This is an aspect of my life I can control. It's predictable.

So I don't relate to people who ride horses. I'm like, you know, yeah, sure, you pull the reins back. It's supposed to stop until it decides it doesn't have to on that day. Right, right. Yeah, to me, that's people who like riding horses must love chaos or have no control issues like I have. I'm exactly the same. I have no time for a horse, but put me in any car.

No time for a horse. It's funny you say that about the cool guy being the one who could peel out of the parking lot. Like two days ago, I was teaching my son who's 11. what a neutral drop is. I was like, you just floored a neutral and dropping into drop. My wife is like, what are you doing? Oh, man.

My son's like, okay, meanwhile, I can't drive for six more years, but now he knows how to do a neutral drop. So day one, he'll be that guy that you were coming out of the parking lot. You might want to preventatively get some kind of policy at AAMCO, the transmission shop, just so he's good wherever he. But if he can drop a transmission on his first day, I've done something right as his father. You've got a lot to be proud.

Yeah, I think you would win Father of the Year a second time. Don't you think? Yeah, there's a trophy waiting for me. So you've got a pretty sweet collection of cars, bikes, now a motorhome as well. Do you have a favorite in the bunch? Like it's a Sunday afternoon. You're going out for a drive. Do you have a favorite?

Or is it different every day? It evolves. It evolves. I get a hankering for a certain experience. So I'll drive. I have the 67 Lincoln Continental. which I've redone numerous times. I've had that car for 26 years now.

It's like my longest love affair. And so, yeah, when I want to feel like Darth Vader and I want to cruise through L.A. and be really loud. And that car, I don't even need to go fast. I just feel like I'm a force to be reckoned with. And then if I want, like, the height, in my opinion, of, like, engineering and flow, that AMG Station wagon, I love it doesn't look like it should be fast.

It doesn't look like it should break the way it does. And so, yeah, if I want to feel perfection, I get in that car. And then I just got this gruesome, ugly instrument known as the Hellcat Wide Body, which I fell in love with when I reviewed it. And if I just want a sledgehammer, I get in that car and I'm like, oh, yes, way too much power, won't even hook up. It's a handful. Let's party.

And then if you want to hide for the day, as you've said, you go out into the motor home and just lock it down. That's right. But my particular interest is cars that don't look fast that are fast. So I also have a 1994 Buick Roadmaster with wood panel. Oh, wow. And it has a crate motor LSA in it. So it puts out about 700 horsepower.

But it is an ugly, big wood grain boat. And so the greatest height of joy for me is like beating someone in a 9-11 in a straight line. I don't know why that's so thrilling to me, but it's, yeah, it's the proverbial wolf and sheep's clothes. And I love it. I like to be underestimated, I guess. You sneak up on him, too. He looks over at the light. He's got you easy. And then gone. Yeah, he probably didn't even go full throttle. I can get this with half throttle, save a couple gallons of gas. And then, yeah, and then you got to play catch up. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Stick around to hear more from Dax Shepherd.

the break. Welcome back to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Now more of my conversation with Dax Shepard. So the show's awesome. And I love your story about growing up in Michigan and being into cars and all that. There's a space in there where somehow you end up in Hollywood as an actor. And obviously with the college there and you did the groundlings and all that. What's the leap from Car Kid outside Detroit to, oh, I want to be a performer. And I want to be a performer. And I want to be performer so much, I'm going to L.A. Yeah, I mean, I will retrospectively try to explain why it makes sense, but I don't, you know, I don't know that it'd be so truthful. I knew that I wanted to do stand-up. I thought I was funny in high school and I thought I wanted to do stand-up and I was simply too

afraid to try it in Detroit. I might see someone I knew and then I would fail in front of them and that was unacceptable. So I moved all the way out here to do stand-up. And then I was too afraid to do stand-up once I got here still. And then I found out, oh, you can do sketch comedy. So there's a few of you out there. So if it goes sideways, you know, there's a few shoulders to help you deal with it. And so I got involved with that. And I loved improv. I love thinking quickly. And I was like, oh, well, that's what I want to do. And then through the process of doing sketch comedy, you're now acting, which wasn't even really my goal. But as I was acting, I just thought, wow, this is incredibly fun.

I really liked doing this. And then, you know, it just all unravels from there. But I certainly wasn't a kid. I interviewed people all the time. They were like, oh, when I was nine, I knew I wanted to be on Broadway. I knew I wanted to be in a medical procedural. I don't know. I didn't have that.

And I didn't have the goal being a podcast or I didn't have the goal being a director. But just as things, opportunities were there and I was able to get invited to those parties. I went and if I enjoyed it, I kept at it. One of the most amazing things about your story is you talk about not having a job for literally a decade out there, like going to auditions. So what keeps somebody at it for 10 years with that much failure again and again and again? Yeah, I want to add in there that I also went to UCLA and as my backup plan, I was going to be a primatologist, which is probably four employed primatologists in the world. It's a good fallback, though.

Yeah. I mean, Jane Goodall is retiring, so I guess there's one slot. There's an opening. Yeah. Yeah, it was rough. It was rough. It was demoralizing. I was also a full-blown addict at the time, and I'm not blaming that on that. But it's certainly, I needed relief from that experience. Because I, you know, my friends that I grew up with who stayed working with my mother or stayed in the automotive industry, they're buying ski boats. They're going, you know, snowmobiling up north. You know, they're starting to establish themselves. And I'm just getting older and older. But my kind of, my model, was, you know, I would rather fail at something I love than succeed at something I don't love. And that, you know, it started to wear thin towards the end, but luckily, you know, right at the end there, I got, I found employment. It's a good motto, but something's got to pay the rent at some point, right? You got to keep the lights on. Yeah. Well, that's, I had this, this golden kind of, how do I want to say this? Because my mom had this company, I could drive a car around trip from L.A.

to Detroit because General Motors has a fleet out here. They loan the cars to the journalists. So those cars always need to be swapped. So I could, while going to college, leave on a Thursday, go round trip, and I'll have worked 45 hours. And no, more. It's 40 hours there. Yeah, so I would end up billing like 80 hours. So 40 of its overtime. So I could live, but it was, it was meager. It was eight grand a year. I average about eight grand a year. And you lived on it. It's incredible. And a functioning alcoholic, that's hard to do. I can budget like no one's business. With that other layer in there, too.

That's a lot of expense weekly. So the break is punked, right? Fair to say, 2003 at you and Ashton get together on that show. And then that launches you to what? What was the next thing where, okay, that's a cool reality show effectively, but now what's the next step where I'm an actor now? I'm in movies and I got this. Yeah.

Now, okay, so here's what's weird about my story. is, is, is, it was overnight. It's 10 years to be overnight. But, but in that sense, once Punk was on, and, you know, largely to credit Justin Timberlake, who I just had on the podcast, because his episode was so big, the show got really big. And studio executives were told by somebody, hey, this is a, you know, some, a zeitgeisty phenomenon. You should meet with people involved. And I would go in there and 90% of the time, they thought I was on jackass.

So they would go like, oh, man. I don't know how you guys hold up after falling off all those roofs and getting shot. I mean, and I would just go along with it. Like, I'm not going to correct them. But through this process, one executive really, really liked me at Paramount, and they were casting this movie without a paddle. And then I met the director, Steve Brill, and he loved improv. And he was looking to hire someone that could do improv mainly.

And then so that's where I just, I hit the lottery. I got cast as one of the three leads of this studio movie within three months of punked airing. And then right after that, I auditioned and got a role in idiocracy. And because I was working with Mike Judge, Favro was casting a movie. And John Favro loves Mike like me, then, you know, and then that just all started happening. What's funny is, I think it was like a year ago, I interviewed Kristen for this show. When we were talking about you, that first dinner party, and she said, She said, two things.

He can really talk. And I think he's one of the jackass guys. She laughed at that, too. So those studio executives were not alone. Your wife thought you were on jackass too. People will still tell me they love jackass. And I'm assuming they're not just telling me what they like. Like, I'm assuming they think I'm on it.

People don't stop me and go, I love ER. Right. I love crazy rich Asians. Oh, great. It fits your brand. Jackass fits your brand. And so then TV comes along. You think of yourself as a movie guy, right?

And you're on this pretty good trajectory with comedies. And then parenthood comes and you're like, I don't know. TV, is this really something I'm doing? And I think it's fair to say. It turned out to be one of your favorite things you've ever done. Yeah. And that's a tiny bit incomplete only in that I had about, I had three movies in a row that failed miserably.

So my, I had a shot and I did not manage it. I don't know how one. I'm so astounded when I interviewed people who like, they just managed it perfectly. But I certainly did not. And so I got myself in three movies that didn't work financially in a row. And in full honesty, I was like, okay, I think that was my ride. But I've always written and I've always sold things as a writer. And I'm just going to do that. I'm going back to writing. That's fine. It's a great life. And I had written something that imagined was producing and I was in there in a note session for this other project and one of the executives just looked at David Nevins and said um hell he'd be a great Crosby what me and I was like

who's you guys doing like a David Crosby pick I don't think I'd be a good David Crosby but at any rate it was parenthood and they said do you want would you want to be on this TV show and I was like yeah I mean again you're right I thought oh man once you go to TV that That's it. There's like movies are are done. And I still had a very romantic notion of, of what being in movies was and going away on location and all that stuff. And I said, yeah, so I went and auditioned and they liked me, which was amazing. But yeah, I had such low expectations. It's not something I had been aiming to do. And as you say, it's without question, the best thing I was ever a part of as an actor and, and probably bought me so much more

time than any other project I've ever been in. I've heard you talk about the failures leading up to that. I've heard so many actors talk about the pain that comes with, not just of like, take like chips or something that you've invested personally so much into for two or three years. And then on one Friday, it's over. And you're like, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, I worked really hard on this. Guys, hear me out.

And the public is like, nope. And that's it. What is that? It's even worse than that. you start hearing on Wednesday from the people who track movies at the studio. Like, we're going to, they, we're lowering our projection from nine million to it. Right. So it's just, it's getting worse and worse and worse as you leave up, lead up to Friday.

And you're at the height of promoting it. So it's like, I'm getting a call like, so this thing's really going to hit the map. And then I walk straight out onto Colbert to talk about it. And then, but then there's just. some part of you that thinks miracles happen. You know, we all hold these couple stories where, well, that movie was tracking it makes six and it made 52. It's happened once, but we all think, okay, well, this miracle could happen.

And then Friday, if you're on the West Coast, which I am, you start finding out what's happening on the East Coast around 3 p.m. So from 3 p.m., you know you made a stinker. It's not going to work. And that's that. And that's your weekend. And it's brutal. It is so brutal.

It's brutal. But in the case of chips, I think it probably spun you toward podcasting, which has turned into this entire universe for you that you're so good at. And I just told you, I just listened to you in Timberlake and I listened to it whenever it comes out during the week. And you're just, again, it feels like something maybe you didn't know you were born to do, but it's the fit. It's right for you.

I couldn't agree more. Yeah, that's what's so bizarre about life is that I, what was many failures in a row in movies led to my favorite acting experience on parenthood. And then the financial failure of chips leads me to a podcast, which becomes my favorite thing I've ever done in my career. And so I guess, you know, what I have learned at 46 is like, A, I don't know what's best for me. The things I've gotten or that worked out exactly how I had scripted them never really result in the thing I fantasized beyond that. Whereas all these things I feared that were failures somehow took me. I think about it all the time. When chips came out, my daughters were one and three.

And they had already commissioned at Chips, too, because it had tested really high and they loved it. And so, yeah, I would have just been on this cycle of one movie than another. and to write them and direct them and act in them is incredibly time-consuming. And so I've probably gotten five times as much time with my daughters than I would have if I had this career I had dreamt of for a few years straight. And the podcast is the antithesis of what we were just talking about, that three-year process where you can book somebody sit in a room for two hours and get as much out of that experience as you would out of making a movie, I bet.

Oh, it's so rewarding. And you know what's funny is what led me to want to do one was I had been a guest on a few of the popular ones that were really long format. And again, as we talked about before we started recording, like the late night talk show experience, which I do love. It's the pressure is so high at six minutes. You've got to be great and funny and casual and all these things. Whereas just with all this time where you could really explore why you do the things you do, I fell in love with being a guest on those. I just thought, oh, this is, and people would stop me, and whereas they would say, like, oh, you were a great John Lashitsky and let's go to prison versus someone would stop me after being on Mark Marin, and they go, oh, man, I listened to your episode, like, once a week. I'm three months sober and it's so helpful and blah, blah, blah. And I thought, oh, that feels much different. Like, that's something I'm proud of as opposed to, you know, Mike Judge wrote an incredible character that I got to play or Jason Katham's created Cross. Cosby, which is his. And I just desired more of that. And it's a very special format. And the thing I

realized later, after doing it for about a year, is as a director, your real goal is to, you spend two years and you're hoping to let people in on your point of view. Yeah. And yet you're bound by the structure of poetics by Aristotle. It's got to have a beginning, middle, and end. It's got to have a first act, second, second, third. You know, you're pretty, you're pretty confined to getting your point of view across. And then I, I just found in the podcast like, oh, no, this is just straight point of view. The whole thing is point of view. And it feels great. We were talking about, we both love Howard Stern, about that experience of creating a space where when the guest walks into the room, they know that the rules are a little bit different. And I think you've achieved that where

people are honest and open with you in a way they might not be other places, because I think you've been so honest and open. And you're like, look, I stripped myself down here. I told you everything. And they feel like they need to give some of that back to you. Well, it weirdly answers one of my hunches, which is I've been going to AA meetings for 17 years. And it is such a unique experience relative to growing up in normal life where guys really don't share any emotions they have or any fears or any failures. it's all chest pounding, whereas in AA, it's just, I'm watching men be honest about their fears and their failures, and it's infectious. Then all of a sudden, it's my turn to talk, and what am I going to be the one guy in there that's not doing that? And I always wondered, is that unique to recovering alcoholics?

Or is that a human thing we're all dying to have? And so, armchair expert was weirdly a little, The kind of premise was, can you have an AA meeting in public? Can you have it between people that aren't addicts per se? But just, I'm going to be vulnerable. And then maybe you'll pick up the ball and you will be in return. And thus far, it has worked that way. I think it's liberating, honestly, Dax, even as a listener, to hear you who sort of projects masculinity with the Mustang and all that stuff,

to just like talk about, I think you were talking to maybe Will. Arnett and you said when I first met you, I, you know, I resented you and you were like, grew up rich and I didn't like you. And he's like, oh, really? Oh, man. Like, but for you to even say that you felt that way and you were vulnerable, that is there ever any hesitation about being that open and honest with everybody who walks in the studio? And not really. And again, it's really just from having gone to meetings for so long. Yeah.

So now, yeah, I don't really, to my detriment, thank you. God, Monica, she edits the show, and she saves me because there are, there's many things people don't need to know about me, you know? Yeah. And I will tell them to you. As my wife says, like, if you want to find Dax at a party, just listen for someone saying, were you ever sexually molested as a child? Like, that's where I want to get to.

Like, I want to get real. Like, what are we all carrying around? I know what I got. Let me tell you. That's what's fascinating to me is that we've just accumulated. all this stuff and where, and it's, it's impacting second to second, which is so fascinating to me. And it's all I really want to talk about. Yeah. And I do, don't you think that the culture is moving that way a little bit where it's okay for a guy like you or a guy like me to just let it go

and say, yeah, this is what bothers me and this is what haunts me and all that? Yeah, I got to tell you, I, this year in particular, because we moved to Zoom on the podcast, we started getting all these guests that were just available. And we got many, many, many of the legendary female solo singers. And you recognize immediately this pattern that has existed in all of them, Whitney Houston. It's so lonely. It is such a lonely experience.

And then you're fighting this cognitive dissonance of, I've dreamt of this, and I have the thing every person wants in the world. And I'm lonely, and I'm in a hotel. And just a minute ago, 80,000 people love me, but now I'm here and no, you know. And so what you're starting to hear, like I interviewed Sean Mendez and here's this 23-year-old kid who already is exploring all kinds of different mindfulness and stuff. And he's owning the fact that this is confusing. He's owning the fact that his ego wants him to check and see if his records is his number one.

And he knows that having a number one record isn't actually the foundation for self-esteem. So the fact that he's talking out loud. and I even said to him, I said, you know, if you look at the history of musicians, you see pretty across the board just addiction. I think what you see, the response of that loneliness yet being so public, other people medicated, they self-medicated. And now even Mac Miller, who we lost, unfortunately, just a genius. But if you listen to his songs, he is telling you it, you know. Mick Jagger's like, you know, he can't be a man because he didn't smoke the same cigarettes as me, which I love the Rolling Stones.

There's nothing better. But yes, it has evolved so much. And I would imagine there's older generations going, you guys all shut up, your feelings. We don't care about your feelings. Talk about getting laid and looking cool on stage. But there's a big price to pay for that. And one need only look at all the heroes we've had that have come before us

who didn't choose the route of being honest and vulnerable. And there's a huge cost. one of your most honest moments was after your motorcycle accident last, the accident, I guess, was last summer, the fall you talked about having a relapse because of the pain killers you were given. Was there any hesitation there about projecting that back out into the public after 16 years of being sober? Huge. That's the only thing I've said on the podcast. I straight did not want to say. I wanted to keep that between my family and I. and the people I'm in the program with, for a myriad of reasons, one of them being, and this is the easiest one, the case to make in my head, which is like, is there going to be a big financial cost to this? Am I going to say this? And I have dozens of sponsors. Are they

going to say, oh, we don't want the dude who's an opiate addict, you know? But beyond that, that wasn't really the important one, because at some point I just said that that can't be, you know, they'll leave or they'll stay, whatever. The real issue was I get so much self-esteem out of being someone who has encouraged other people to try sobriety. So many people tweet us and write on the comment boards, they're day 31, they're this or that. We do live shows. I meet people that show me their tokens. And I just cherish that. I love that so much. And I thought that's going to all go away. I'm going to be exposed as well. a fraud that I didn't ever do this thing correctly or I wouldn't be in this situation.

And I have a good friend who said to me, you know, if what you like is helping people, there's almost nothing you can do that be more helpful than you telling everyone. Look, even after 16 years, I decided I can control opiates. You know, I know I can't control Jack Daniels and cocaine. That's established. I have a full, full, on a cellular level, acceptance of the fact that I will never use those things like a gentleman, but I did have the illusion that I could use opiates as a gentleman. They were very misleading in that powerlessness and unmanageability.

I was able to function in my life and wake up on time and get the kids breakfast, get them on Zoom, go interview somebody. You know, I could, I could, it had the illusion of manageability until, and this is the gnarly thing about opiates that people should know is like your tolerance goes up hourly on it. I mean, it's it's the the most diminished return drug there is. And so for me to just be at this level that I thought was manageable, I was increasing just nonstop. And then I was in a position where like, oh, I'm really, I've painted myself into a corner. I'm going to have a real, real detox. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, this, this is all kind of.

coming out and it sucked. It was, it was, it was brutal. You feel like you've got your arms around it now? I do. Yeah. Good. You know, it's an awesome, I got to say, it's, it is an awesome program. The most obvious thing that's in the book, this is the number one thing we can't afford to have is resentments. We are not built to have resentments. Resentments make us want to escape. And so I had to just, I had to look at like, you know, what am I, what am I not dealing with? What am I ignoring? What am I just shoving off into the corner? And, and that became obvious to me. And then I, I, yeah, I feel wonderful. I actually feel better with this current four months than I had in maybe the previous year of somebody. So, you know. That's awesome. Good. I'm happy to hear it. Yeah, when I talked to

Kristen last year, she was talking about just how you guys live your marriage sort of out loud, you know, that you live it out in public. And she's like, we have fights and we argue and we love each other at the end. We talk it out. Are there ever moments where you wish, like, man, I wish people didn't know that much about us? You do a great job of keeping your kids private. And I applaud you for that. But the marriage that you guys have said, hey, we have things to share that might help other people.

Do you sometimes wish you could keep it in a cocoon? I think for us, we're weighing two different options. So the one option is we don't say anything. and people in America tweet hashtag relationship goals or couple goals. And they assume that we met in stars exploded out of our eyes and then we've been on easy street. So to me, that's option one. It's like we don't know anything.

I didn't know one thing about Tom Cruise and, you know, whoever he was married to. So I just assume, oh, it must be easy for him. So we feel like that's incredibly misleading. We don't want anyone to think we met, and it's been easy because that, if that's someone's expectation of a relationship and certainly a marriage, it's a bad expectation to have. So it's interesting. We don't feel like we have an option. If we desire to be honest and not have people believing that we exist in a fairy tale,

we basically got to tell you, it's a beat down for. pull the bus. It's a beat down all the time. Quarantine? Oh my God. I mean, we were a well-oiled machine at seeing each other three hours a day. Right. We nail that. 24 hours a day for 11 months. We don't have any practice at that with kids in the mix, the entire 24-7. So, yeah, there's just been this, the whole ride. I don't know a married couple in quarantine that has not. not have that. Of course. It doesn't matter how strong your relationship is. This is a test. This is a test. Yeah. Well, man, I could talk to you literally all day, but I have to let you go and deal with your children or maybe go sleep in the motorhome in the driveway. So thanks for the time,

man. I have the option to say this went another half hour longer. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. If Kristen asks, I'll say we went long. Yeah. I'll just go check on some things in the motorhome. Make sure everything's working. Just got to make sure it's working for the next trip. Check the plumbing on that second shower. Yeah. Dax, thanks. Congrats on everything, man. Great to see you. Thank you. So fun talking to you. You too. I hope we do it again. My big thanks to Dax for a great conversation, just such a fun guy to sit down and talk with. You can catch him in Top Gear America streaming now on the Motor Trend app. And thanks as always to all of you for tuning in. You want to hear more of my full-length conversations

with our guests every week, be sure to click subscribe so you never miss an episode. And of course, don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.