The Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast - Happy New Year!

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

Ben and Ashley are saying goodbye to 2025 and sharing their New Year’s Eve traditions, hopes for 2026, and a final look back on the year!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Atria Health Institute in New York City. I'll be talking to top researchers and clinicians and bringing vital information about midlife women's health directly to you. A hundred percent of women go through menopause. Even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it? Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer on the IHeart Radio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My bestselling book, The Big Short, tells the story of the build-up and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. A decade ago, the Big Short was made into an Academy Award-winning movie, and now I'm bringing it to you for the first time as an audiobook narrated by yours truly. The Big Short's story, what it means to bet against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system?

is as relevant today as it's ever been. Get the big short now at pushkin.fm slash audio books or wherever audio books are sold. You know the shade is always shady is right here. Season 6 of the podcast Reasonably Shady with Jazele Bryan and Robin Dixon is here dropping every Monday. As two of the founding members of the Real Housewives Potomac were giving you all the laughs, drama, and reality news you can handle. You know we don't hold back. So come be reasonable or shady with us each and every Monday.

Listen to Reasonably Shady from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From NBA champion Stefan Curry comes Shot Ready, a powerful never-before-seen look at the mindset that changed the game. I fell in love with the grind. You have to find joy in the work you do when no one else is around. Success is not an accident. I'm passing the ball to you. Let's go. Steph Curry redefined basketball.

Now he's rewriting what it means to succeed. Order your copy of the New York Times bestseller Shot Ready. Today at stephencurriebook.com. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro. We were in the car, like a Rolling Stone came on, and he said, there's a line in there about your mother. And I said, what? What I would do if I didn't feel like I was being accepted is choose an identity that other people can't have. I knew something had happened to me in the middle of the night, but I couldn't hold on to what had happened.

These are just a few of the moving and important stories on my 13th season of Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Ben and Ashley I, Almost Famous Podcasts with IHart Radio. Hey, guys, welcome to the Almost Famous Podcast. Today is one of those episodes where Ben and I are just doing a little chat. We want to talk to you guys about the new year. Hope that you guys have a very safe and happy new year. And now Ben and I will reveal how we are spending our new year. Ben, I don't ever make plans for New Year's Eve.

I don't remember when I ever had a plan for New Year's Eve. The best New Year's Eve I've ever had, besides ones of like my childhood teen years, which is like always fun with your friends and doing crazy things. like going into Times Square at 11.30 p.m. and getting led in by cops and seeing the Jonas Brothers and all that when I was 19. It's a great New Year's. But it as an adult New Year's, my favorite ones have you probably just been with a few close friends in sweats, playing games. What about you?

You know how I know I'm lame. You've never snuck into Times Square at 1130 p.m. Well, no, I've definitely never done that. I'm lame because in my 20s. Oh, you fell asleep. You always fall asleep. I really tried hard. There was two New Year's distinctively that I remember.

I tried hard going into and being like, I'm going to party. Like, I'm getting out there on the town. I'm going to, like, kind of get dressed up. We're going to go to a nice dinner. And then we're going to go to the clubs or the bars or whatever. We're going to, like, I'm going to put down the money. We're going to buy a table. We're going to, like, do it up, right?

Yeah. Those are two of the worst, like, night memories I have in my life. It sucks. It's awful. Everything's so expensive. It's packed. It's, like, butt to hump throughout the whole bar. You can't get a drink.

You can't get food. Everybody is, like, either, like, mad that they're there or going a thousand miles per hour forward. It's busy. And here's the part that just drives me crazy. you the party doesn't start till that ball drops really this is how much i've gotten out on new years it like it picks up i guess when the ball drops if you're not like getting like it'd be i think both those nights you're coming in at like three o'clock in the morning which is just outrageous to me and it's been outrageous to me not because i'm 36 years old when i was 21 years old

it was outrageous to me that that was a thing in this world where you would give us up a whole next day of your life for a three hours of more like whatever i don't even want to call it fun because it's not fun to me uh so here's what we're going to do which what we've done jessica and i have both very similar in this manner we're going to go or cook in or go out to a great dinner we're going to have a drink and we're going to talk about the year and this is one of the traditions that we have. We also, on New Year's, we have this thing that I've talked about before where we share our top five favorite meals from the year. Those can only be two meals that have been cooked at home. The other three have to be out, like at a dinner. And they are not

based on the best food, but they're based on not only good food, but the good vibe and memory and feeling that we had around them. But we don't share them with each other until we sit down at dinner until we sit down. Wait, wait, wait, you don't make it. You just remember the meals? No, we don't make them. We remember them and we do our top five and she makes hers and I make mine and then we share them with each other. And so sometimes the two of them align. Sometimes we have crossover. Sometimes we don't. How do you hide each other from the kitchen? No, you don't make them. These are like meals that we had previously throughout the year. Like this could be a dinner in New York City that we had in February of this year. This could be the dinner we had before.

the night before Winnie was born and we write down like, oh, this is one of my top five meals from the year. And we just talk about the meal. We don't remake it. You just talk about it. Okay. We talk about it. We share about it. This is something I could never do with Jared

because he does not care about food this much. I would love to do it. Now I'm thinking about it. And it's fun because we've done it since 2018. And so we have this list that goes back since 2018 of all of our best meals from the year. Yeah, my parents do it. It's fun.

It's enjoyable. And it gives us these memories to look back on. Like, a lot of those meals were in Italy when Jess's parents and my parents and Jess and I went to Italy. And that one year, we can look back and say, oh, my goodness, like, remember that dinner? And remember that time? And maybe one day we can go back to that restaurant when we're visiting, if we're ever visiting that certain area.

so that's what we do on new year's and then we go to bed we watch the ball drop on the east coast and we say hey happy new year i love you good night and that is the best way to do new years i like it you know what i do that this is will be my third year this is our tradition dawson and i we get burger king and we sit and we watch people do the um what's the dip you know when people are crazy like you would be they run in in the water the ocean oh the polar plunge the polar plunge the polar plunge yeah we get burger king and we watch people do the polar plunge from the car oh you don't do it on new year's day that's day no i'm not doing it i could see jared doing it uh i could see jared doing it too but this has just been

dossin in my tradition thus far okay um and then jared loves the drop the ball drop he just loves Ryan Zee Kress, Rocken Eve. Like, that is his classic, nostalgic thing. So we will probably usually do, like, dinner out to, we'll go out to dinner, but early, be home by 9, 9.30. And then last year, we stayed up with, we had both boys up at midnight. Don't know how that happened with Hayden. And Dawson, I don't know how that happened with Dawson.

But there they were in bed with us. And it was kind of adorable and I don't hate it. I don't know that we'll do that again this year. But, you know, if they happen to be up, then they have to be up. And that's totally fine. I think there's special, like, I don't want to say New Year's is, like, terrible because I think there's a really special ways to do it. And I enjoy my New Year's now because Jessica knows that if any of her friends

or any of my friends say, hey, we're throwing a New Year's party. It's just a no. Like, we're not doing it. If it was a friend's house, I would totally do it, but not like a New Year's Eve party, but more like a New Year's Eve get together where you can, you don't have to wear a skimpy sparkly dress because the thing is it's too cold for a sparkly dress it just is Ashley I'll be honest with you this time of the year is so wonderful for so many reasons there's celebrations there's gatherings there's work commitments where people get together to party all these things and

they're wonderful things I don't want to not say they're wonderful I am an advocate for getting together with people and connecting with people and sitting with people in person I think they're fantastic. However, there is a line where I become over-socialized because most of my life is being out with people at events and conferences and gatherings. So that's my whole year. All I want for a day off for me where I know nobody's working and I'm not going to get any emails and I'm not going to have to make any phone calls. All I want at some point in the year is for there to be no expectations for me to have to be around anybody other than my family because it just doesn't happen very often. So for me, New Year's is always that excuse where I'm like,

everybody's going to be hungover, everybody's going to be tired, everybody's getting together. What does that mean for me? I don't have to. I'm investigative journalist Melissa Jeltson. My new podcast, What Happened in Nashville, tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse. And the patient, who banded together in the chaos that followed. We have some breaking news to tell you about. Tennessee's attorney general is suing a Nashville doctor. In April 2024, a fertility clinic in Nashville shut down overnight

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That's give directly.org slash happiness lab to donate. On the podcast Health Stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night. Yes, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally, a double board certified physician. And I'm Hurricane Dibolu, a comedian and someone who once Googled, Do I have scurvy at 3 a.m? On Health Stuff, we're talking about health in a different way. It's not only about what we can do to improve our health. but also what our health says about us and the way we're living.

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And I screamed because even though I didn't know who I was or where I was, something in me was just like, hold on, wait. They could kill me, and I'm not going to let that happen. I'm not going to let that happen. I'm going to get through this, and I did. Listen to a really good cry on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Do you get mad Sunday scaries like I do after New Year's is over? Because you had the whole week off and really, you and I will have days off for sure,

but like a whole straight week where there's no work coming. coming up because it's all kind of closed? Yeah, it's a little different for me because I worked the weekends during the holidays because of generous. It's a big time for us. And so I don't get, yeah, my break is the break after, like the first week of January is when I can like take a break.

And yeah, I definitely will. But I look forward to it. So that's how I utilize it. It's kind of those, it's like the, it's one of those moments for me where I'm like, I'm going to treat myself and I'm going to do nothing um because that just sounds good and i know it sounds good every year uh call me lame actually no it's not lame at all like i would i would absolutely do it too it works you guys should

figure out how to have your favorite meals during your little tradition too i'd be good except some of these are like michelin star restaurants i don't know how to do that besides that i'd be smart though. It would be fun. It's been the whole day just cooking up cool, cool stuff. Yeah, it will be fun. It is a wonderful New Year's. We wish you the best in 2026. Make sure you go out there and grab your three-month gym memberships that you'll use twice. Make sure that you make all of your plans for healthy eating. I'm not a New Year's resolution guy because I just don't keep them. Nope, nope, nope. But here's something fun. Here's my only thing. this is what I do. And I don't know yet. Every year I pick a new word. This year's word was

connection. And 2026 will be a different word. And I'll kind of pray over it, think about it, look back at some of my like journaling and writing from the year and say, okay, what in 26 is one word that when I wake up in the morning, I say it. I don't know what's going to be, but that's what I do. And then every, I try to keep it, you know, on top of mind for the whole year. I think mine when you asked me last year was present or like enjoying the moment that you're living in. Yeah. I think I have been more thoughtful about it for sure. Hey, you have been because you've had a big year.

2025 has been a big year for you full of a lot of different balls tossing in the air. Yet you are still sane, Ashley. Thanks. I think so. I think I've been a good job. I've told you when I think you're not. Click in. Thanks, Ben.

You are. You're crushing it. Yeah. So I don't know. What am I going to do this year? Yeah, let me think about it. I'll get back to you in the New Year on that. And you do the same with me in your word and all that.

Hey, Ben, before we go, I do want to say, remember the one New Year's where we kind of spent it together, the New Year's Eve, or we had to wake up at like 4.30 in the morning on New Year's day to be in the Rose Bowl parade together. that was awesome oh i got to send our our producer pictures of that that is so cute such a good memory i just thought you know i was like oh my god i'm on afloat with ben higgins ben higgins is so cool and such a celebrity and i can't believe i've included with this guy yeah that's i mean that was a wildly fun day uh it is a day i'll never forget because it was so magical was that turning 20 2016 it was turning 2016 right probably 2017

No, I don't know. You're about to be the 2016 Bachelor. Oh, it was pre-batchelor? Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Oh, Ben, look at this. Oh, send it. Do you know what that means?

That'll be 10 years. This New Year's Day, it's been 10 years. Oh, my gosh. I don't like that, Ashley. Oh, my goodness, Ben. That's so crazy. You've been friends for 10 years. For real, for real.

Look at us now. We're still doing it. Anyway, keep going on and on. You know, we're going to bore the audience because they weren't there. We'll make sure to post this picture. Happy New Year to everybody. Happy 2026. And there are great things ahead.

Believe it. Until next time, I've been Ben. I've been Ashley. See you guys. Love you. Follow the Ben and Ashley I, almost famous podcasts on IHeartRadio, or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Greatness doesn't just show up. built one shot one choice one moment at a time from NBA champion stephen curry comes shot ready

a powerful never before seen look at the mindset that changed the game i fell in love with the grind you have to find joy in the work you do when no one else is around success is not an accident i'm passing the ball to you let's go step curry redefined basketball now he's rewriting what it means to succeed shot ready isn't just a memoir it's a playbook for anyone to chasing their potential. Discover stories, strategies, and over 100 never-before-seen photos. Order shot ready. Now at stephen currybook.com. Don't miss Stefan Curry's New York Times bestseller shot ready available now. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Atria Health Institute in New York City.

I'll be talking to top researchers and clinicians and bringing vital information about midlife women's health directly to you. A hundred percent of women go through menopause. Even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it? Listen to decoding women's health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My bestselling book, The Big Short, tells the story of the buildup and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. A decade ago, the Big Short was made into an Academy Award winning movie. And now I'm bringing it to you for the first time as an audiobook narrated by yours truly. The big short story, what it means to bet against the market, and who really

pays for an unchecked financial system, is as relevant today as it's ever been. Get the big short now at Pushkin.fm. slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro. We were in the car, like a Rolling Stone came on, and he said There's a line in there about your mother. And I said, what? What I would do if I didn't feel like I was being accepted is choose an identity that other people can't have. I knew something had happened to me in the middle of the night,

but I couldn't hold on to what had happened. These are just a few of the moving and important stories on my 13th season of Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know the shade is always shady as, right here. Season 6 of the podcast Reasonably Shady with Giselle Bryan and Robin Dixon is here dropping every Monday.

As two of the founding members of the Real Housewives Potomac were giving you all the laughs, drama, and reality news you can handle. And you know we don't hold back. So come be reasonable or shady with us each and every Monday. Listen to Reasonably Shady from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.