The Daily Zeitgeist - Marilyn Monroe: From Dullsville To Beverly Hills

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

In this episode, Miles and Jack are joined by comedian Blair Socci to talk about a true pioneer in the field of drone warfare and the ONLY proven cure for Frank Sinatra's ED: Marilyn Monroe! They'll explore her many name changes, her Kardashian-esque ascent, and her mysterious demise!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, it's Joel and Matt from How to Money. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high. And the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right.

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but he really tried hard not to be. Listen to Atonement, the John Polk story on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Dr. Jesse Mills, host of the Mailroom podcast. Each January, men promise to get stronger, work harder, and fix what's broken? But what if the real work isn't physical at all? I sat down with psychologist Dr. Steve Poulter to unpack shame, anxiety, and the emotional pain men were never taught how to name. Part of the way through the Valley of Despair is realizing this has happened and you have to make a choice whether you're going to stay in it or move forward.

Our two-part conversation is available now. Listen to the mailroom on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we've got some incredible guests like Kumail Nanjiani. Let's start with your cat. How is she? She is not with us.

She... Great, great, great way to start. Maybe you will cry. Ross Matthew. You know what kids always say to me? Are you a boy or a girl? Oh my God. All the time.

I know. So I try to butcher it up for kids so they're not confused. Yeah, but you're butching it up is basically like Doris Day. Right? No, I turn it to be Arthur. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello the Internet and welcome to this spin-off episode of The Daily zeitgeist called The Aconagra. On a graph.

Iconograph. Instead of looking at the zeitgeist through current events, we're looking at it through the lens of powerful pop cultural horrockses that are our icons. Hork trucks. We use these characters to create meaning, to build identity, to know what our grandfathers were jacking off to. Grandpa. To teach us that when standing on a subway grate,

you should just wear a sensible pair of slacks, much less problems. And most importantly, we learn how to, to cure Frank Sinatra's erectile dysfunction. That's right. Today, we're talking Marilyn Monroe. Nay, Norma Jean. That's the first big one. Do you know her name wasn't even actually Maryland Monroe, dude?

I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. How are you? How are you? Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, what is this? Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Norma Jean, that's like, I think, the only bit of trip. Goodbye, Norma, Gene.

Is that about her? That's about it. I think that was the first thing. That was my first introduction. But her name was dang. There was some like HBO movie where it was like something in like Norma Jean or something. And I was just like, oh, yep, yep, yep. And that's the depth of my knowledge of Marilyn Monroe.

That and she's buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, I think. No, she's buried at the Westwood Cemetery. Westwoods gone. Damn it, Miles. And it was drugs. And we're going to talk about it. Oh, shit. But in our third seat, a TDZ Hall of Fame.

We're one of the very faces on Mount Zythmore, a brilliant stand-up comedian you've seen on MTV, Comedy Central. NBC True TV. You've heard her on Bob's Burgers. You can see her in her hilarious special live from the Big Dog and on her podcast, spaced out with Blair Saki because it is Blair Saki. Motherfucking Blair. Oh, what's up, Guy. What's up?

Iconographers game? What's up Miles and Jack gang? Gang, I'm thrilled. Hello, Blair Socky. I'm so thrilled to be here. You know what? I just remembered, actually,

that I did read a gigantic Maryland Monroe biography, like years and years and years ago. I had a feeling. Yeah. I had a feeling you had. That's crazy. We're all connected psychically.

Thank you. We're all the collective shared consciousness. On the icon scale that we use on this show, I feel like Marilyn Monroe is at the tippy top. Yeah. Einstein's up there, but I got to say, Tupac. Like where their aura just keeps going for years and years and years and years after their death.

But also just like the visual. Like just once you see it, it's like it's only one person. Some people are so unwell that they're like, that's me now. Right. Yeah, there are. We talked about how. Right. There's Elvis impersonators

Santa people like... Maryland impersonators are a thing. I just the generic t-shirt store test. You walk down a boardwalk today. In our office, one of the shittiest parts of L.A. The 1980s Times Square of L.A.

Not to do not... Did you know it was recently ranked as like one of the worst tourist spots like in the in America or something? Truly. The Hollywood Walk of Fame officially. Yeah.

used, German tourists walking around being like, what the whole? So many bummed out. But I'll tell you what you will find. You might not find what you were looking for, but you will find many t-shirt stores

with pictures of Marilyn Monroe on them and cardboard cutouts of Maryland Monroe. She passes the college dorm room wall, like first apartment wall test. We're just like, you know, posters, photos. The image of her skirt being blown up by the subway grade is one of the most famous moments

in film history, though it wasn't in the movie. That was a publicity stunt. They reshot it on the thing that we've all seen was from a publicity shoot and the reshoot that was in the movie is not the same. Also, I'd say one of the most misunderstood figures that we've covered so far. Like that song, which was the first thing I knew about, Goodbye Norm Gene.

Talks about her as kind of this like helpless victim. Like it talks about how like Hollywood made her. change her name and like Hollywood created a superstar. She did that shit, man. Yeah. She wanted to be a star and she was like really smart and really good at it. She had to do twice as much to get half as far as the men of her era.

And she still became like I thought she was like famous and then died and became like even more famous. She was the most famous person on the planet when she was alive. She was wild. I feel like she also started. the whole thing where she really like pretended to be

a certain way you know this soft like sex kitten but really like the Paris Hilton thing where it's like people had no idea how calculated and intentional she was right do you have access to my notes do you have access are you looking over my damn shoulder here

the same biography though even though mine was many years ago yeah Marilyn Monroe Spark notes Because there's word, there's word, Russell's whispers on the internet that they think that she might have also a bit of fellow autistic baddie. And so I'm considering it through that lens. Okay. Yeah. But in terms of her films, I think that's a very important point that you just brought up that her, she like played the character from her films also in reality.

Right. like all of her. She had like movie lines ready to go for her real life. Like it was just like she had she had crackling comedic dialogue in like press conferences. Um, but just in terms of like her films, they gross $200 million by the time of her death. That's the equivalent of $2 billion today. I was going to say in 2024. In back then money, $200 million? Oh my God. Okay. And then her death is. mysterious. Like it's not, we, we did Elvis last week later and like Elvis's death. He is fairly straightforward. Like he was just doing so many drugs and died from doing so, so many drugs. But with and, and people were just like, he's not really dead because they just needed that to be true. With Marilyn Monroe, like there is some very real shady shit that happened surrounding her death. So we're gonna, we're gonna spend more of this episode talking about her death than maybe with past icons. I wondered if I was going to be the one to bring up that freaky shit.

No, there's a, yeah. I mean, I ultimately don't think that she was killed by Frank Sinatra, JFK, RFK, and the CIA all at the same time. But there's just some, there's some weird shit that happened. There's some weird shit went down. All right. But should we get into just the bio and, you know, when? Let me know. Maryland.

Oh, good. That part is from candle in the wind. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I thought there was a, yeah, okay. You live your life like a candle in the wind. Okay, the whole time I was like, is there a song called Goodbye Norma Jean? Or isn't that the big part of that song?

That's the beginning. That's the first line of candle in the wind. Yeah, yeah, which was about her. Every mother's favorite song from 1997. He should have just kept making songs like because he did it for your princess die. He should just do that every time someone die. Oh, my God. He can make a lot of money.

I'm just saying he can make a lot of money. you could have done a Betty white one. Yeah. Yeah. I also just saw. Goodbye golden girls. You know the people like all her husbands like they still loved her so much. So much.

Like Joe DiMaggio sent her flowers every week. Yeah. Obsessed. Oh my God. You're obsessed with me. He was super obsessed but also a complete fucking monster when they were married. but we're going to get to all of that. So she was born Norma Jean Mortensen on June 1st, 1926,

and the Charity Ward of Los Angeles General Hospital. She was born very poor. Her mother was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, and Norma Jean wound up in various foster homes and orphanages. Her mom's diagnosis, I just want to, like, this gave her, like her mom always being institutionalized, gave Marilyn a lifelong fear of mental words and like she would never lock her door, which is going to come into play in her death, but probably understandable given the state of psychiatric care

at the time. And I just want to give a quick anecdote from her mom's life that I think sets the stage for the world of psychiatry, because that's a big part of her story too, because a lot of the biographies are speculating about like what kind of mental illness she had. And it's tough to tell because it was a time when like women were not trusted at all and like just them having something to say or a complaint was pathologized. This is just a wild anecdote from her mom's life. So this is in the Donald Spotto biography, Malamoreau, the biography tells a story about how her mom learned that her most recent husband had been killed in a motorcycle accident in Ohio. And it turns out that wasn't true. It was just a guy with the same name with like a similar background and her

husband was still alive and just being a typical like shit ass absentee husband from the mid 20th century. Identity was like a real loose thing back then. Right. Like Marilyn Monroe, Norma G, like had different names on her birth certificate, on her baptismal certificate. Like your name was what you told them at the DMV and they're like, whatever you want to call yourself late. Right. But so by the the time her mom's real husband shows up from, you know, being a shit-ass, gladys Marilyn's mom is institutionalized. And she gets a call from her dead husband, which for someone who's been taught not to trust her own mental health, like she freaked the fuck out.

I would do. Yeah. She tried to like call him back. And the people in the institution are like, she's trying to call her dead husband, the dames baddie boys get the butterfly nets. and because she freaks out about that, they send her to a high security facility and like people only really know

about this like mind fuck of a thing that happened because her daughter then goes on to become the most famous person in the world. Like otherwise it's just a thing that happened to people at that time was just people diagnosed you and then stop believing anything that you had to say. Yeah, once that label's on there right.

Yeah. Especially the, uh, women. I mean, like, it's kind of analogous to, I mean, like, the witch's times. Like, if one person just said you're a witch, like, all of a sudden you're a witch. And if you were like, if they're like, oh, she has hysteria. She has the vapors. Then just they're like, your toast. Right. Right. Right. Um, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, this is the time of lobotomies where they're like, she's difficult and we're going to deal with that. Yeah. With an ice for instance. So, you know, her mom is in and out of the picture.

She goes from foster family to foster family. Most biographers agree she's assaulted at age 12 and just has a really rough upbringing. Like she doesn't really have a home ever. And to the point that like one of her maternal figures who like took her to movies and like really helped lay the foundation for this, also is like, I found this guy that I really like in West Virginia. So you're going to marry our neighbor, James Doherty, who to her was just Mr. Doherty. And she is 16 years old when they marry her off.

She's forced to drop out of high school to... Can you imagine how scary that would be? Yeah. Wait, so this one maternal figure she had was just like, you're marrying Mr. Doherty? You're marrying Mr. Doherty, our neighbor, because I don't know what else to do with you. Yeah, that she would be taking care of. Yeah, yeah, just.

And that's at 16. Okay. And straight up, like, dark ages shit where you're just like, you marry her off. That's like the best way to kind of solve this problem. So this is around the time of World War II. He joins the merchant Marines and she starts working at a factory. And weirdly enough, she is. at the forefront of drone warfare

at this time. She worked in a World War II defense plant for a company called Radio Plain, which made small remote-controlled pilotless aircrafts. And it's straight up, like, there's a direct line from people who had toy planes, like toy remote-controlled planes, to our modern drone warfare,

because there's an actor named Reginald Denny, no relation. Oh, from the Rodney King? Yeah. Just another guy in original day. Yeah. He was a famous actor who's obsessed with remote control airplanes and is like, we could start using these for target practice for the U.S. Army, like I think at 1935. And then his toy plane, he was so into toy planes, he had a factory that gets converted into this like anti-aircraft, you know, drill thing that then gets acquired by Northrop aircraft and becomes. essentially Northrop Grumman's autonomous systems that we have today. Wow. She is the very first public pictures, modeling pictures of her,

are her putting the propellers on these planes that go on to become the first drones. That's crazy. Wow. And another wild anecdote about those first pictures. So this is where she's first discovered. Reginald Denny, the actor, is at his factory. sees her, says to this military captain that he knew from Hollywood, you got to get somebody over here to look at the talent, if you know what I'm saying, brother. And that captain sends over a photographer

who takes these kind of Rosie the Riveter pictures of her that end up getting some attention and like launching her modeling career. That captain that he like reached out to who hired the photographer, Ronald Reagan. Wow. The only. a picture of them the other day together of Ronald Reagan when he was still like an actor. The only good thing in his legacy and it required no talent and could have been done by a phone operator. But he is indirectly responsible for basically passing along the message that this actor was horny for this woman who worked in his factory who ends up being Marilyn Monroe. Wow. So get fucked Ronald Reagan.

This is the only good thing you did. And it required no, no talent whatsoever. It just somehow passively happened. Well, okay. Yeah. That should have been the end. If only that had been the end of his impact on history. I do you know this is her.

I'm looking at the picture. Her hair is brown. Her hair is brown and curly. And like reddish in the beginning kind of. Yes. Yeah. Before she goes to her famous. Yeah.

This is where we get into it. So from this very first photo shoot, she is like an immediate savant. and also like student of modeling. Right. But yeah, to your point, I don't think I ever, like, associated her with, like, getting work done.

I thought the work she had done was just, like, her hair dyed blonde. She also had a bump removed from her nose, had a silicone line added to her jaw, got her overbite fixed, which was paid for by the head of William Morris, who was her boyfriend at that time. But she was, like, kind of a Kardashian before the Kardashians.

That's so crazy. I've always wondered about that. Because I didn't know that they could do that stuff. A silicon, a silicon line in your jaw? Yeah. Like a jaw, like, you know, well, people put, like, filler in their jaw now. That's, it's something. Oh, so this is just like, yeah, it's like a sharp jaw line.

Yeah. Wow. But just a couple of things from these early stages, because, like, the photographer at the time was, he said, blown away by her ability to scan as sex on fit. He also claimed they had a steamy affair, which is corroborated by him and only him. Yeah, exactly. That's another thing that just across her whole life. Everybody's like, yeah, everybody, the second she dies is like, here's my biography,

where and I have sex with Marilyn Monroe. So everyone becomes the Chris Farley bus driver character in Billy Madison. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And the biographers are like, yeah, nobody believes the shit, man. So it's kind of a pathetic look. But he talks about how she's able to like flirt with a camera in a way that like seems uncanny. But I just want to read this from there's a newer biography.

The Spotto one that I mentioned earlier is kind of the most widely read one. But there's a newer one that I think might correct some of that stuff by Jay Randy Tamborelli called The Secret Life of Maryland Monroe. this quote is about these very first pictures that she take. Besides the speed of her success, what was also fascinating about Norma Jean's first photo sessions was how quickly she seemed to understand the business of modeling. She was very inquisitive about the process and highly critical of her appearance. For instance, she asked David Kanova,

that's the guy who's taking these very first pictures, questions about lighting, about different camera lenses, about how he coaxed his models into giving their best performances. In meetings with him after the sessions, she would study the contact sheets with the kind of careful scrutiny one might expect from a professional model.

She wanted to know what she'd done wrong if an exposure didn't meet with her approval. Again, like right from the start, like in these photographs that are for a Army magazine called Yank, which... Oh my God. Double entendre fully intended, I have to assume. Yeah.

Yeah. They're like, you jack off to this one. But the point about her being highly critical of her appearance and, you know, the stuff we were talking about about her, like getting a bump in her nose fixed. And it seems like, first of all, very, like, crazy making to, like, exist in that. But also, she's really good at, like, viewing herself from outside herself, like, right from the start. She's just immediately like. Yeah, like, she's just like, I'm viewing herself as a product and being like, how do I fix this? There's another quote from the Spotto biography from one of her early modeling teachers about, again, how hard she worked, but also just the weird geometries of beauty that, like, people talk about in the modeling industries.

This woman says she was a clean cut American, wholesome girl, too plump, fuck off, but beautiful in a way. We tried to teach her how to pose, how to handle her body. She always tried to lower her smile because she smiled too high. her nose look a little long. At first she knew nothing about carriage, posture, sitting, or walking. She started out with less than any girl I ever knew, but she wanted to learn, wanted to be somebody more than anybody I ever saw

before in my life. So, again, just like a student from the start, but also the shit that she had to study is like horrifying. When you smile like that, it makes your nose look long. Yep. Yeah, and I just think

also some of these people like these icons that impact culture in the way they do it's like it does feel like this real destined thing because there's just all this certain amount of things that add up into this like completely remarkable alchemy you know like she comes from this insane childhood like absolutely nothing then she learns how to basically like conjure energy in a way that she can can seduce like an entire population for millennia. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, to know, like,

to your point of being so early to having that kind of media savvy in such an early phase of like mass media, be like, okay, I know what, I'm going to know what my angles are. I'm going to know what a well-lit thing looks like because every image that you will cast your gaze upon will be perfected for maximum effect. Yeah, you guys are absolutely. like nailing that she

had this like ability that people were like she's just got a magic power I don't know what it is. And it comes from like studying and there's a quote not to jump ahead but like this continues right into her work on film like on the set her co-stars would be like this is a

fucking disaster and then they would see the movie and be like there's a quote from her co-star in one of her early movies Richard Winmark and he said at first we thought she's not going to get anything right and we'd mutter oh this is impossible. Oh this is impossible. You can't print this. But something happened between the

lens and the film and when we looked at the rushes, which is like the dailies from the, she had the rest of us knocked off the screen. And that just like happens over and over where everyone's like, she's fucking up our movie. And then you look on film and you hear this a lot about like movie stars where like people are on the set of a movie and they're like, what the fuck was that? Like he appears to be like whispering or like they're,

you know, you don't see anything happening. And then you actually look what they're doing with the camera. And it's like, oh, they know exactly what they're doing. It's just very subtle,

you know, and so people can't appreciate it. I also think that there's this inherent thing and it still very much exists today. And it's just, um, a psychological bias that if someone's really gorgeous woman slash blonde, but just women in general that they can't. And like, I even

catch myself. It's such deep programming for so many, uh, thousands of years, actually, thousands. I don't know. Um, whether you can't be that smart. You can't know what you're doing. It's like an either or a Madonna horror situation. Right. You can't be a super intelligent person and also like a sex. Right. Yeah. And then when you are, people are just like, I don't know. know what they're doing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, no, it's like they know what they're doing. Or just, shock and surprise. Right, right, right. And it's just, it still happens. Like, if I see a super hot person on stage, I'm like, oh, they're not going to say something funny. You know, like, it's, they're guilty until proven innocent. Sure. Dumb. They're dumb, everybody. Look how hot that. Yeah. So the modeling career takes off.

And then it leads to acting jobs, including parts in John Houston's, the asphalt jungle. Uh, these are all like minor parts, but, you know, she starts getting fan mail kind of right away. This is when she changes her name from Norma Jean Doherty to Marilyn Monroe. So Monroe was her mother's maiden name, and then they were trying to come up with the right first name. And this Fox executive, Ben Lyon, was like, there used to be this stage actress, Marilyn Miller, who you kind of remind me of and he later reveals like he was engaged to her and she died at 38 and he was like they just like have a similar vibe and also felt like similarly faded to like it is kind of like this haunting confluence of like well don't give her that name man yeah oh you remember this woman who

died young tragically yeah but that was also a thing back then I mean like it sounds like she was wanting this, but like in that specific time period, like, these girls would walk into these studios and they'd get these studio deals and they'd be like, okay, we need to change your name, your voice, you need to get married so that for your image, you need to be seen with this person, you know, like they would construct these entire personas from the ground up. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, totally. And in her case, there's a lot of like studios being involved but she is like, they don't trust her. There's the head of 20th century Fox.

Darrell F. Zannick fired her months before she was in All About Eve because she was not photogenic was what he said. So she like had to bounce back and forth. And so a thing you see in a lot of biographies is people being like, I gave Marilyn Monroe this idea. And I, you know, I taught her how to pose in pictures like that one lady. And it's like, well, 20,000 people can't be responsible. At a certain point, we have to, at a certain point,

we have to look at the common denominator, which is Marilyn Monroe, knew exactly what the fuck she was doing and just kept doing it really well all along. So in 1949, she's still pretty unknown. She's like, has these bit parts in the background of movies, and she's a famous kind of pin-up model. and she poses nude for a photographer and got paid $50 for the shoot. And she's on the cusp of stardom and a Chicago publisher includes one of the nude photos in a 1951 calendar. And then that calendar sells so well that they're just like, that's actually next year's calendar too.

And they just keep selling these calendars with nude photos of Marilyn Monroe in it. And that's something I didn't realize. Like, one of the biographies was basically, like, her nude photos were more widely available than her movies. Like, everybody had kind of seen these because everyone was just, I guess that was like the equivalent of a sex tape back then. Yeah. Right.

It was like a calendar with nude women's, with nude women's. Women's. Okay. And so she had like kind of starred in this underground, successful nude calendar. And so I guess in that way, again, just more similar to like a Kim Kardashian than I expected. And so her career starts to take off in movies. And then Fox is like, oh boy, like they get word that she's in this calendar.

And she comes in for this meeting. And they're like, well, is it you? And she's like, I'm really ashamed. I'm super embarrassed because they didn't really get my best angle. She's just like immediately like get dropping like fucking lines from a movie on these studio executives who are like freaking the fuck out. Yeah. There's also like people later asked her about the photo shoot like because there's tons of press around this. Like this is the year that like and this scandal is kind of what breaks her.

Again like similar to the Kim Kardashian thing where she. She's famous-ish, and then this nudity scandal happens. And suddenly everybody's like, holy shit. Like, nobody's ever done something like this. And somebody's like, did you have anything? Marilyn, Marilyn, did you have anything on at all during the shoot? And she said, I had the radio on. Which is like, such a good line.

And, you know, I'm sure she wasn't, I'm sure she, like, whoever, whatever man didn't negotiate for her to get. percentage or royalties from those being reprinted over and over and over. Right. So that exposure landed her, thank God, in movies. Right, exactly. So she does, it does help her launch her career, which, like, very savvy. The way that she handled the quote unquote scandal was she, like, knew that there's this

journalist who was a woman who she was like, I'm going to give you an exclusive interview on this and, like, was like, okay, can we go off the record? like, look, I did this because I couldn't eat. And like now it's becoming a huge problem for my career. Like, do you have any, like, I needed that money just to be able to actually put food in my mouth? Do you have any advice on like what I could do? Like pretending it was off the record, but she knew for a fact that they were going to print that. She actually used the money to put a down payment on her car.

So she was going to lose her car. I love this bitch. I know. She's so cool. I know. She's so fucking cool. What a fucking legend. Oh my God.

But that becomes the story. That becomes the story. She becomes like the rags to riches thing kind of becomes a part of her story. And she's just like playing all these angles. She's playing the studio. You know, they're like, we got to be a shan of her.

We got to fire her. And she comes in and is like, no, it's not a big deal. And I'm going to talk to this woman and make it all right. And she does. And like that makes her this kind of unknown quantity in American culture, which is like still super reprimed.

at this time, like somebody who is not afraid of their nudity or their sexuality and is just like, yeah, fuck it. Like what? It's so interesting though because she moves like the mind of like Ari, Ari Gold. What's his name? Ari Gold. Ari Manuel. Whatever.

I don't know. I'm conflated. Is it my entourage? Yeah. Yeah. No, you said Ari Gold based on Ari Emanuel. Oh, okay. I have no idea about my recall.

but like I'm it's just so interesting because I'm like wondering did she have someone engineering this or these are just all her ideas like her see Blair so we can't question the genius right I love it she's like everybody one of the best improvisers I think we've ever seen yeah everybody at the time and speaking of improvisers like everybody's like she's really like has amazing comedic timing yeah she's like witty she has like her performances she's she's like her performances she's she's playing a dumb blonde, but her performances are, like, you know, actors are like, holy shit, she's got, like, really good. Sabrina Carpenter is, like, really channeling this, I feel like a lot. I think a lot of people have, yeah. A lot of people obviously have, definitely, like, so many people. But this does seem, yeah, I think. Like, with the humor and, like, the sexuality.

Right. And just like Sabrina Carpenter is a great reference for this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But just so much megawatt star power with, like, the. funniness and like the not taking yourself too seriously with like so much beauty also.

Yes. Also like I hadn't realized. I think I did maybe know that the first Playboy had Marilyn Monroe on the cover, but you havener, Hugh Hafner bought that calendar photo for $500. Maryland Monroe never got any more than her original $50. And that is what launched Playboy was him just putting the calendar photo. Calendar photo. That's the calendar photo is just the one that she got paid $50. He bought for $500 and this like massively powerful brand like Playboy. The more I find out about Hugh Heppner, like I hate that man.

Yeah, not cool. Not not cool. But on the other hand. Wait, what happened with Hugh Heapner? I know. I was going to say like so this ability of him for him to just like pay. $500 for this photograph that launches the entire

like this massively powerful brand is fucking crazy and again it's like this huge brand that launches careers like I don't know Miles Gray doesn't Jamie Loftus Jamie Loftus

but that brand doesn't exist if it's not right without Marilyn Monroe that she is like cultivating and like this chess game that she's playing with the public That's actually like one of the most damning, the biggest indictment against Playboy as this massive institution

is to know that it was launched off the back of him being like, dude, you know that pop-in calendar? Yeah. That's going to be the cover for my, that's like some NFT shit. Yeah. You know what I mean?

He's like, yeah, it's like my fucking art dog. No, you've literally hitched your wagon to this massive star. That's wild. I had no idea. And then like stole her whole shit.

Like all of his like bunnies kind of like drapped it off. of her. Like, look. Exactly off of her. And like he bought the plot above her in the, um, Westwood cemetery. And was like, when you bury me like, bury me above Maryland. So I can be on top of her. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, his surviving wife was like, I'm actually going to sell that and, uh, pay off my mortgage. Yeah. I'm going to put your ashes in a, I'm going to put your ashes in a wonder bread bag and throw it off the 10 freeway. Yeah.

But this is the stretch where, like, you know how we had those periods where, like, Elon Musk is just, like, constantly in the fucking news and you just, like, can't escape them or now it's like Trump. Like, she's just every day, people at the time describe it as just being like, every day there's a new Maryland-M-Ros story. Everybody's just, like, obsessed with her. There's this one year where she's, like, marrying Joe DiMaggio.

She's getting emergency surgery for, appendicitis, she's revealed to be the naked lady in the nude calendar. There's like some paparazzi are caught like selling nude pictures they took without her permission. Like that Aaron Andrews story, do you remember where that like creepy guy was like, yeah, like that happened to her. And it's like the whole world is just like obsessed with her in a way that I hadn't really.

I just thought, I thought because that song was like one of the main first things, I just thought it was like she was this tragic figure. She was this like massive media mogul who just wasn't getting paid like a mogul, but was like in terms of like the pop cultural power of what she was creating was just insane. Also during her appendix surgery, just back to like how women were treated in the medical world, she felt the need to put a post-it note on her abdomen as she was going into surgery, being like, please don't botch my surgery and make me infertile X OXO, so Marilyn Monroe.

And the doctor, the doctor got nervous and, like, brought in a gynecologist for her appendix surgery because I guess he was planning to botch her surgery up to that point. I mean, not planning to, but like, he was shook after that. She's so smart. That's what I did right before my tumor surgery, like, literally right as I was going under, I was like, please don't shave my head. I know you said you're going to shave my head. Please don't shave my head.

Banging. Wait, but is that, that was just a technique thing of being able to do the surgery without shaving or having to shave your head? Well, they had told me for six months they were going to have to shave my head to get the tumor out. Right, right, right. Because it was like a big area. And then I woke up and I just had like a little patch. My hair was still there with like a big patch gone with all the scars.

But Maryland, I have friends who do this too, like, who have said before they went under for their C section, like, pleat. And they're like, and I asked the doctor at the last minute. like please make me the smallest scar and that's why I have such a small scar, you know? And they go, you know what for you? I'm going to do something very different this time for you. I do this seven times a day.

Everything was her currency, you know. Yeah, yeah, for sure. The Post-it is, and it's also just like, hey, could you please view me as a human being? Yeah. Thank you. That would be so sick. Oh, God. Oh, boy, I got a lady in here who doesn't want me to botch her appendixer.

She can write, boy. new year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast. And every week, we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Polk.

years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement, the ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight. Once upon a time, I was on 60 Minutes, Oprah, the front cover of Newsweek. And you might have heard my story, but you've never heard the real story. So join me as I peel back the layers and expose what happened to me in the midst of the of conversion therapy, to shine a light on what the X-game movement does to people, and the pain it continues to cause. I had lost 150 pounds because if I couldn't control my sexuality, I was going to control my weight.

It sounded like, and this is the word I used, a cult. And as I look, too, at the harm I did from within it. Listen to Atonement, the John Polk story on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever You get your podcast. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health and host of the mailroom podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger.

Work harder. Fix. What's broken? But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Polter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience, helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name. In a powerful two-part conversation, we discussed why.

men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy and some compassion. If you want this to be the year, you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to the mailroom on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we've got some incredible guests like Kumail Nanjiani.

Let's start with your cat. How is she? She is not with a thing. Okay, great, great, great way to start. So this is a great beginning and hopefully you'll be able to, I don't know, maybe you will cry. Amanda Seifred. Life is so short. If you feel something like that, you have that fire in you for this experience.

It's not for a guy. It's for the experience of being in love. And like, it's bigger than a guy. Elizabeth Olson. I love swimming naked so much. And I know you love taking pictures of yourself naked. Yes. I love to be naked.

I just want to be in my brown underwear all the time. Ross Matthews. You know what kids always say to me? Are you a boy or girl? Oh my God. That's so funny. I know. So I'm always like, hi.

I try to butcher it up for kids, you know, so they're not confused. Yeah, but you're butching it up is basically like Doris Day. Right? No, I turn into Be Arthur. Listen, to these episodes of Dear. Chelsea on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So this is where we start getting like some of our most iconic film performances. There's the movie Gentleman Prefer Blondes, which has the Diamonds or a girl's best friend performance,

which is iconic. I hadn't watched it until doing the research for this. And it is essentially like if you've seen the Madonna Material Girl music video, it's kind of just a shot for shot remake of the performance. that's where her pink dress comes from. I need to watch that. I never seen it. But this is also a time, like the women's club was like a group that would come in and be like,

you can't have her on camera looking this good. Like she's too, this is what we talked about this a lot with Elvis. She was like too hot and America was too horny and they just felt like they had to protect people from her. Oh, like they're like, this is like nuclear atomic energy. you're falling around here.

There's like a part. Yeah. This is a time where women can't own property by themselves, don't have credit cards by themselves, probably have, they still can't have no fault divorce. Like, women are socialized so deeply to believe that their livelihood is being chosen by their man and then keeping their man to keep their family.

And so when, when you get this whole new sexual presence, I could see easily how those women all, and it's sad, felt so threatened all the sudden, you know? And men probably are thinking there's a whole new thing of like, oh, this is what's available. Like this could be, you know, it is like disrupting. Yeah, it's like disrupting in an entire ecosystem.

Right, right. Yeah. So, yeah, one of the things they objected to was just her singing a song too seductively in this movie Niagara that is apparently one of her one of her better movies. So to your point about just like what was happening sexually at this time,

between gentlemen prefer blondes and the seven year it, the Kinsey report on female sexuality dropped and revealed things that apparently like came as a huge shock to Americans at the time that like half of women were not virgins at marriage, a quarter are like having affairs and like many of them, this is weird. They're like, apparently women are enjoying sex.

And that like, we must end this. People were furious. And they got mad at Kinsey and they also like basically blamed Marilyn Monroe because they were like, see, she's channeling this thing that it kind of reminds, like in the Einstein episode, we talked about how he theorized this black hole at the center of the universe. And then years later, scientific instruments were able to. able to actually observe it, but like his, it was basically his math, like, decades before

the scientific observation was able to be there. And it was like the beginning of her career, she's like channeling this thing. And then the research comes out and is like, yeah, that's exactly right. Like, this is what people want. If she only could have known what was to come about just ubiquitous porn at any second everywhere at all times. Right. But the AV club about her performance in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes notes that the joke of the song is that Monroe values diamonds over the subservient men. She's clearly in on that joke and the movie is ultimately a celebration of female ingenuity and solidarity.

Monroe's dumb blonde character was clearly the creation of a very savvy intellectual performer, which I guess seems obvious, but like at the time, they're just like, she's the dumb blonde on screen. And I think she, you know, she also played that in public. She said the act of like posing for photographs and the camera would make her horny,

which like everybody just took at face value. But then, you know... That's genius. Yeah. She's just like, yeah. She's making her job that is very difficult that she scrupulously studies and is so hard on herself about like acting.

Yeah, it's like faking in orgasm, basically. Yeah, she's faking in orgasm, basically. Yeah, she's fake. an orgasm for people. She's basically like you, the film viewer and the person who's looking at these pictures, I'm actually horny for you. Essentially.

No, you're right. Like, I'm actually so horny. Like when I took that picture. You're right. Yeah. Exactly. The, like, I was constantly reminded. There's this, uh, Jorge Luis, gorgeous poem about Shakespeare called everything and nothing where his theory of like who Shakespeare was and like what drove him is that to quote the poem,

there was no one inside. him nothing but a trace of chill, a dream dreamt by no one else. And then like he becomes an actor because, quote, he had become instinctively adept at pretending to be somebody so that no one would suspect he was in fact nobody in London. He discovered the profession for which he was destined that of the actor who stands on a stage and pretends to be someone else in front of a group of people who pretend to take him for that person. And there's just like tons of, I just love that theory of like Shakespeare and like, you know, why people create art and like how interesting and different, like, the internal interiority of like different artists might be than we expect.

There are so many quotes from her throughout her biography where she's basically saying exactly that. Like she says, I always felt like I was a nobody. And the only way for me to be somebody was to be, well, somebody else, which is probably why I wanted to act. And so it's like, I don't know, people are like psychoanalyzing her and being like, well, she had this personality disorder, this psychiatric disorder. And it's like, I don't know, like when when somebody theorizes it about Shakespeare, it's just like a cool, it's just like, wow, what a cool idea about a cool artist. Right, right, right. I do feel like, I don't know, a lot of artists might be, you know, empty on the inside and creating their art to give themselves meaning.

Like, that's kind of cool. Well, also, I think artists do the work of being honest about things that hold up a mirror for everyone else to experience their own pathos or whatever. But she had so much trauma. And then, you know, she's like the equivalent. of fame of what a pop star is today, like the most famous pop star like a Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift or whatever, that type of level of fame. I find it almost impossible when you become an industry like that. That's so massive. And, you know, a very solidified idea of what people perceive you to be, which, you know, no matter what scale it is, is small or incredibly large, no, really knows the interior of you.

And I think that's just a very lonely life when it gets to be such a magnitude because there's no way that you're not misunderstood by a large amount of people at all time. So of course it's going to impact your mental health. Like I don't know how anyone with that level of fame stays like well. How do you survive that? You don't belong to yourself anymore. No, yeah, you cease to be a person and you become an infinite number. You've become an infinite number of things to millions of people.

And also you have no idea if for what reason anyone is interacting with you anymore. And multiple, like her husbands like buy into that. Like Joe DiMaggio first saw her in a photograph of her wearing like a baseball jersey. And was like that that's how the first way he interacted with her. And he was familiar with the image of this like childlike. no interest in independence woman. And then, you know, she would marry DiMaggio or Arthur Miller. And then they'd be like insulted when she would be like,

I got to put my career first because I'm like the most famous person on the planet. And this is, I'm building something here. And then I think she would be shocked and disappointed that they like actually couldn't deal with that. Right. You know? Yeah.

I think that still very, very, very much exists today. Like, people are extremely attracted to like a sparkly woman or man, but more so women. And all that comes with like the star power and energy and wattage of what makes them that person. But then the reality of what it means to sort of live in that shadow or coexist with that level of stardom is like not sustainable for a lot of people's like hearts and egos. Yeah. So this is when she marries Joe DiMaggio. They are only married for nine months. He is abusive. I do just need to read this anecdote from the Spotto biography about Joe DiMaggio and like what he was like at that time. He just, like, watched TV a lot and was just as like really boring person, like hung out at gentlemen's clubs. But from the Spotobography, before they met, he was hanging around gentlemen's clubs and best buddies with a guy named George Solitaire. George Solitaire grew up. in Brownsville and then moved to Bronxville and claims to be the guy who invented calling boring things

Dolesville and divorces Splitsville. I love that. You just called Joe DiMaggio boring. That's so funny. That was her initial response was like, holy shit, this guy's so fucking boring. I'm hanging out with George Solitaire. Yeah, that George Solitaire.

It is such a fucking Tim Robinson character. Yeah. And such a self-own of a name. like the loneliest motherfucker too because you're such a repulsive loser claim to fame I invented calling boring

things dullsville and then and then it's like I think my the story of my authorship of those phrases comes from growing up in Brownsville and Bronxville and to having Oh my God you mean dullsville and splitsville? Yeah that's how I kind of came up with it anyway

before the questions Yeah fucking George Solitaire George Solitaire, you piece of shit. George Solitaire, get over here. I fucking hate you, George Solitaire. I thought you're going to say he created, invented the game Solitaire.

Nope. That's what you're about to go. I was like, Dolsville? Yeah, that's so funny when I was like, oh, George Solitaire didn't invent. So he invented the phrase Splitsville and Doorsville. Okay. And we you, I'm going to cite him from now on,

Every time I say, hey, daddy, oh, this place is Dolesville. Let's get out of here. Shout out to my boy, George. This is when the seven-year itch came out, which is the one with the famous photograph of her skirt or her dress being blown up by a subway great, which I watched the first half of this movie. It sucks. But it, like the premise that she's great. But the entire premise is like a middle-aged man's wife and kid leave town. in the summertime, and he wrestles with the fact that he desperately wants to fuck his neighbor

who's, like, wildly out of his league. And that's the entire plot. Is that what the seven-year itches? Yeah, well, it's like when you've been married for seven years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's when a fella's eyes starts to wander, if you know what I'm saying. Oh, my God. But it's, yeah, it's wild.

Like, it's a lot of, like, him talking to himself and be like, oh, George, oh, buddy. You're a good man. What do they say? Yeah, so the photo shoot, like the one that everybody has photographs of of where her skirt is being blown up was from. They said that they were trying to film the movie scene on location in New York, but I think they basically knew that this would be an amazing publicity stunt. 5,000 people showed up and it was this like wild, crowded scene to the point that they like couldn't use any of the footage because everyone was just screeching at the top of their lungs. I talked about the movie Saturday night where they basically

cram a bunch of like SNL lore into like one night. They're like, yeah, all of this happened on the first night of the filming of Saturday Night Live going live. And there are like some weird moments in this where like a bunch of different things happen and that scene where her skirts being blown up

is also what caused her and DiMaggio's divorce because he, was so, like, Walter Winshell brought him because he knew that he was, he's like a gossip columnist at the time. And he like brought him to the set. And DiMaggio shouted, that's it, I've had it. And then what stormed off. Which is just such a funny, old timey guy thing to say.

And then they were divorced like weeks later. Splitsville. Splitsville. Because Joe DiMaggio turns out a little bit Dollsville. Yeah. Dolesville, Splitsville. What do you say, George? You're better off, Joe.

That Maryland was Dullsville to the max. Yeah. Yeah, I got that from Brownsville. You can use it. But again, incredibly iconic moment. Some people have said it's the most iconic shot in film, even though it's not in the film, the dress went for $5.6 million in 2011.

That's crazy. Yeah. And then did Kim Kardashian wear that dress? No, she wore the diamond. She wore the crystal one that she was saying to JFK's. JFCK. Which that's another kind of weird, collapsible moment or like everything kind of happening on top of each other. I didn't realize the JFK moment happened like two months before she died.

Yeah. It was like really soon before, which is I guess where some of the suspicion comes from. But yeah, she starts studying under the Strasbourg, Lee Strasbourg, who's like the founder of the actor's studio and the founder of Method acting and I think a lot of people treat her working with them as like an incongruity because it's like this woman who plays ditsy blondes is trying to be you know this method actor but again to the point about her being a really great actor there's this cool anecdote from one of her later films called I think the Duke and the showgirl or the prince in the show girl or something she's co-starring with Sir Lawrence Olivier

who is also directing her in this movie and he has this famous quote when he's working with Dustin Hoffman on Marathon Man and Dustin Hoffman is I don't know like running marathons to prepare for the role and Olivier is like, have you tried acting my dear boy instead of like doing the method thing where you like have to inhabit the life of the character

he's just like that's all stupid what are you doing and he was like a total asshole to Maryland on on set and was like, you just need to be pretty, would you stop with this shit? He's, like, widely regarded as the greatest, you know, British actor at the time. So he doesn't have time for her bullshit on the set of this. He thinks she sucks during the making of the movie.

Later puts it on for friends after the fact and is like, I thought I'd, like, have a good laugh at how shit the movie is and, like, we'd laugh at her performance. And, you know, he had directed it. So he thought he knew, like, what he was about to see. But, you know, when you're watching something with different people, you can maybe sometimes see it again with fresh eyes. And, like, by the end of the screening, he's like, oh, she's by far the best person in that movie. And, like, has, like gone on the record being like, she fucking acted me off the screen.

But, like, yeah, she gave him notes on shots and was like, you should, like, pace this up. It's supposed to be a comedy. And it's, like, very plotting. And he just, like, didn't listen to that. And was like, what, you should, you just need to be pretty. but she just she just had that thing that great film actors have where you see them on set doing a thing and you're like, what the fuck is that?

And then it's just magic on film. How many films was she in? I don't know they count. Was it a, did she have like a long run? Because I, my perception, like, was it this like all happening within a seven year span, less, more? So this, I think her early film work was like early 50. and she died in the early 60s.

So, like, the seven-year-rich is 55, and she does in the early 60s. So, you know, it's like she takes off, and then there's, like, a six, seven-year run. Right. She married DiMaggio on 52. So she's already, like, very famous. Then she starts appearing in movies

and, like, those movies do incredibly well, even though some of them are just about a riseless guy being, like, God, she's hot for, like, an hour and a half. But, yeah, she's in a bunch of movies. and like a lot of her performances towards the end of her career are really like now critically acclaimed whereas they like weren't necessarily at the time

but I do think there's something like kind of timeless that she is kind of connecting with that you know people weren't able to appreciate at the time but now you look at a fucking Lawrence Olivier performance and it's like why is he acting like that right right and you look at her and you're like oh there goes the most beautiful

beautiful person I've ever seen on camera, just completely popping off. And also, she looks like she could exist now, you know? She also married Arthur Miller, which is how she gets the attention of the FBI, because Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, which the FBI was like, they brought him before the House on American Committee, and he wouldn't name names. And that was also when he was like, and I'm marrying Marilyn Monroe. And she stuck by him during all this, even though she was, being, so there's another like kind of in line with the story about our mom and the dead husband coming back from the dead. Towards the end of her life, therapists who worked with her were like she potentially displaying signs of having like schizophrenic tendencies like her mom did.

And there are like some details that make it seem like her mom when she was committed, refused to eat thinking the hospital was trying to poison her. And Marilyn Mom wrote toward the end of her life was like refusing to eat takeout and saying she thought that like everybody was trying to poison her. And Joe DiMaggio was like, there, I just ate the food like we're good. And she was like, well, Joe, they're not trying to poison you, are they? She probably with what a scandal she was at the time, I'm sure she got like death threats and freaky shit all the time.

And also back then, it was just like the yellow pages like you like, I think that. her estate in Brentwood was like recently just sold. Like you could just walk up to someone's house. Like everyone's house was listed like where everyone lived. You know? Yeah. She couldn't get away from the cameras. Like there was just paparazzi following her everywhere.

But around this time when she's married to Arthur Miller and living in New York, there's an anecdote where she like meets up a friend and she's like, I'm being followed. And they're like, yeah, of course you are. You're like the most famous. and she's like, no, by the FBI. And they're like, okay, fuck. She's lost it. And she was being followed by the FBI.

She was like, I've learned how to like lose them. And like she was talking about what she would do to like get them off her tail. And it's true. But everybody, of course, that that's like an insidious, like I feel like a lot of our 20th century icons are followed by the FBI. And it's just like such a mind fuck. Yeah. You know? like I know this is happening, but no one believes me because they sound like a psychopath.

But then back then it was like, uh, what was it? The red scare. Yeah. Exactly. All the blacklisted people. And if you, all those people were being followed. Yeah. And she was like, uh, hung out with leftist intellectuals.

Like those were her politics. She, uh, you know, once intervened on behalf of Ella Fitzgerald who was like, yes. Not able to, uh, check into a hotel or like, get booked at a club because it was America and it was fucking racist. And she like went and she's like

all go with you and she walked in and was like you need to put her on that stage. Yeah. And I was like, go bitch, yes. Yeah. Which made her very dangerous to the FBI. They were like, no, we don't. That's a terrorist.

Probably not as dangerous as they probably underestimated her too. But they did tail her. And eventually they were like, God damn it. She hasn't met with any communist officials what is going on here. But to your question about her film career,

so towards the end, she appears in Some Like It Hot, which I did not. Have you guys seen Some Like It Hot? Nope. I've seen clips of it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a comedy where men dress up as women, and that's played for laughs, I think.

Tuong Fu? Yeah, Tuong Fu. Thanks for everything, Julie Newmar. I just remember Grumpy Old Men when it came out And my mom was like Jack Lemon is in some like it hot And I'm like I don't know what that is

I only know that this is the guy from grumpy old men I don't know if he has a career before this film But that project was built around her She was the first to be cast It was her return to movies After some health issues including a miscarriage And some barbiturate dependency So she took like a two year break

came back with some like it hot and it's been rated as like the best filmed comedy you know by old really i need to geez i need to watch these i need to watch a few movies i haven't seen her movies i mean i i love the guy from grumpy old men so yeah so do i need to watch that says it's not bad dbh just uh on the subject of like her being witty there's this one anecdote that i didn't see it red anywhere as her being witty. But, so Joan Crawford, another movie star at the time, basically, like, called her a slut in the media

as she was rising up. And, like, Marilyn Monroe would never, like, she was always complimentary about, like, all of her exes, everybody she had relationships with. And so on the Joan Crawford one, though, uh, she, like, went out of her way to pray. She was like, oh, I don't, like, that's

so crazy that she's mad at me. I've like always admired her and especially like what a good mother she is. I hear she's like the best mother. And like Joan Crawford like turns out like she's the subject of mommy dearest. So people were just like taking it at face value, but I could see it being heard like knowing some dirt about her family and just being like I just hear she's such a good mom. And like I've always wanted to aspire to be like such a cool woman. Yeah. That's what they call in rap now, sneak this.

Yeah, sneak dis. I feel like she was sneakdissing. But even like her modern, like one of her more modern biographies was still like, it's kind of a irony that she went out of her way to talk about what a good mother she was because Joan Crawford of course turned out to be a complete fucking monster. I'm like, I thought that wasn't an accident. irony at all. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Crawford's eyes are so fucking scary. Yeah. You know? Those eyes like reveal. Reveal a lot. Yeah.

There's the JFK and Sinatra stuff where I, like based on most reporting, it seems like she had like one encounter, maybe with JFK. He was like summoned to Bing Crosby's house. They hung out for like 15 minutes. Had sex. And then he spent the rest of. of the time complaining about how bad his back hurt. The men, like, over and over and over again, the men in these stories are so pathetic. To the point that, like, she called her doctor.

This is, like, one of the ways we have it confirmed that they had an affair because, like, she called her doctor who was like, oh, the vibe was very clear that they had just had sex. And she's like, here, talk to John F. Kennedy. First of all, imagine being a doctor and getting that call. But, yeah. It does feel like a lot of her energy towards men was like feeling sorry for them. And like she like chases these incredibly accomplished men in the hopes that one of them won't be pathetic. And they're all like immediately just like, oh, my back hurt.

I was with George Solitaire earlier. Jesus. You hurt my back when we were doing it. What the fuck? Wait, I didn't realize that she was only 36 when she died. I thought she was like 46. No, 36. Yeah.

Wow. And like, really. really coming not long after some Lake It Hot, which is like her biggest critical success. She was like at the apex. Yeah. She also had an affair around this time with Frank Sinatra. He gave her a Maltese puppy that she named Moth, which was short for Mafia. She was like, this guy's fucking surrounded by the mafia.

She really is funny. She's so funny. I love her. Oh, my God. What did you name the dog? Mafia. We'll call it Moth, though. so people don't really...

Tiny little mobster after my mobster boyfriend. Right. Yeah. But this quote about Frank's... Because apparently Frank was dealing with struggling with ED around this time and he credited Marilyn Monroe with curing it, but just in the same world as George Solitaire, just the way men were at the time from the Tamborelli biography.

Actually, Frank had been going through this whole impotency trip at the time. way too much sauce. The booze was completely ruining his sex like. He was getting too old to drink like that and then expected to also perform in the sack. Can you imagine your friend saying that in the press?

He was on an impotency trip. My boy, my boy can't get it off. He's been hitting it. He's been hitting the sauce. Bro, he's washed, bro. He can't hit the bottle. And the booty in one night. Yeah.

And also, I love them back then being like, oh, yeah. It's just the woman that's the issue. Right. These chicks just aren't hot enough. Yeah. It's nothing to do with his alcoholism. Yeah.

Right. But the stories from that relationship, a lot of her relationship, it does feel like she's like kind of playing the role of that she plays on screen and like also the like of a woman and a modern like porn. Like that she's just doing what she feels like these men who she feels very sorry for want and she's like good at just like reading that and like doing whatever they want. And this is around the time that she does the happy birthday to you performance for JFK, which is first of all, I only, I first found out about that from Mike Myers doing it in Wayne's

world, which is much less cool. Yeah. But yeah, this happens like a couple months before she dies. And it's also like apparently it was a surprise to everyone that she wanted. that hard. So I think that's probably like unconsciously why some people are like, that's kind of weird. She like put that out there right before she died. And like this was a person who was having like crazy affairs all the time.

Did you see this about her IQ? No. That she reportedly, I don't know how this is proven or not. So I don't know for a fact if this is true. But apparently they said. that she had an IQ of 168 when Einstein's was 160. Do you think that's true? I don't, I mean, I could definitely, I think she is like a genius in many ways.

And it wouldn't surprise me to hear that she, because like everything that I found in this research was just like she is playing chess well. These guys around her are just like marbles. Yeah, more exactly. And that they retrospectively, like, think that she had autism spectrum disorder that was... Yeah. But they just had no concept of what that could be, let alone, like, in the package of Marilyn Monroe, you know? Right. Yeah.

But the JFK Maryland affair has become a big deal over the years. The people claim that it was carried out by secret tunnels in New York's Carlisle Hotel, which I do know that he did use tunnels. underneath, like, New York hotels to have affairs. I don't know if those included her. That is so creepy to me, these ideas, this perpetual idea. Like, sneaking people in. And L.A. and tunnels. Like, there's always these stock of tunnels.

And I know they're real and it's so scary to me, I think. I don't know why. I don't know. So the ones in L.A., like there were also rumors that they dug a tunnel from the Beverly Hilton Hotel to Monroe's house so that she could get there, which people have looked back. And that would have cost $3 billion. to construct.

So it probably didn't happen. It has, like, gone down as lore. There's a scene in a White House down where Channing Tatum and Jamie Fox, they're, like, trying to escape the White House. He's like, good, there's a series of tunnels that lead out to the street. JFK used them to sneak Maryland in a day.

And he's like, I thought those were a myth. He said, actually, they're not. They're not. Let's go. Why, as people are attacking you, why would you give that backstory? Is it a movie, baby? All right.

So this is when she is found dead in her home, August 5th, 1962. The Los Angeles police concluded that it was caused by a self-administered overdose of sedative drugs and that the mode of death is probable suicide. The suicide rate in Los Angeles spikes by like 50% in the month after her death. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. And then people immediately.

kind of are like what happened. They don't want to believe it. But then there is this theory of the Kennedy's involvement. And like a lot of our conspiracy theories, like you can look to where it was started. And there was a 1964 self-published pamphlet, the strange death of Maryland Monroe,

which conspicuously came out during an election year when RFK was running for Senate. And it basically, it said Monroe, had surrounded herself with communist and communist sympathizers. And the person who wrote it is just like a, you know, psycho right-wing person, Frank A. Capelle. And then one of the books that I read was Marilyn Monroe biography by Donald Spotto. And he has this theory about her housekeeper, Eunice Murray,

and her doctor Ralph Greenson, that seems like the most likely of, the conspiracy theories. So I'm just going to go through some of the details. The official story is that she is talking to Peter Lawford on the phone. She says say goodbye to Jack, say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to yourself too, because you're a nice person. And he can tell she's like very, you know, out of it and on drugs. And those sound like the last words of someone who's planning to die or knows they're dying. Lawford got that. Was like, damn, that can't be a good sign, calls her housekeeper, who calls her doctor, who the doctor,

actually, Lawford doesn't call the housekeeper. He calls, like, his person, because Lawford is weirdly RFK's brother-in-law. The last person she's on the phone with is RFK's brother-in-law, which also is like, that's kind of weird. Not beating allegations, bro. Um, exactly. But he, instead of calling directly, uh, the police or anything, he calls like, uh, her manager because he's like, I don't, This could be bad for the Kennedys if I'm attached to this. A manager calls doctor. Doctor calls the housekeeper. Housekeeper is just like, she's fine.

And this is like when that call is made, she's in her room dying. So like there are some things. The official story is just she took too many pills, whether on purpose or by accident and died. But there's like some really, so the weird stuff that's kind of shady. is just like the behavior of that like the timeline doesn't make sense of like when she's found and not. But I just want to just going through the most famous conspiracy theories. The first one is the Kennedy angle. Joe DiMaggio later said,

I always knew who killed her, but I didn't want to start a revolution in this country. Okay, queen. Yeah. But also she's apparently called her psychiatrist. and hairdresser and both said that she was in distress about betrayal by men in high places. Right. So all of the, there's tons of shit.

So like this, that theory, there's, like, it became an entire, once that pamphlet came out, it became a huge, uh, industry to like write, tell all stories about this stuff. Right. Um, and, you can't know who's. Yeah. Like some books say, was calling the White House a lot at that time. And, like, Kennedy was just like,

could you stop? She did, like, call people late at night. So, um. But she claimed, she claimed to the doctor that RFK had visited her, and yelled at her that day, according to the vanity fair. Right. But he was in San Francisco the whole day. So that probably didn't happen.

Like, he was at a family. People, people are like, who was in California? RFK and it's like, well, he was in San Francisco at a thing with like his whole family and sorry, I don't have the spatial awareness or critical thinking. So that's 1962, you know, right. Not really good with me. You know what I can't bear like, and I know this sounds absolutely insane for two people who host a podcast largely about politics. But I cannot bear that like these men JFK and RFK presented as like these wonderful.

like moral leaders of the country and then did this stuff behind closed doors. Like my autistic brain cannot hold. Deal. Both of that both of those can be true. Yeah. Right. I really can't. It's like breaks my brain.

Yeah. There's definitely a difference between the image that they were projecting and then who they were behind closed doors, especially with regards to how they treated women. But the mysterious detail, like there's tons of like really mysterious. like people claiming that she wrote letters to Jack and threatened to reveal her secret. Everyone knew the secret. Yeah, right.

Everyone knew at the birthday and the whisper in the dress. I think I had a feeling they knew what was going on. There's like this famous red diary where she supposedly like took down sensitive information. But like none of that stuff's corroborated. The one like really weird detail is that there was no pill residue in her system, like in her stomach, which people have pointed to as like weird and would suggest

that she was like killed with an injection, but there was no injection point on her body, which would have still been there. I do think it's very weird that the last person she called was Peter Lawford, who was RFK Jr's brother-in-law. That's like who she was on the phone with when she died. And the empty pill bottles, like, and she's found face down with like the empty pill bottles. And then there's no pills in her stomach. Yeah. And then the phone is in her hand. Yeah. Yeah. The weird thing is that like her, I think lawyer is called at midnight and told she's dead. And they don't call the police until four in the

morning. And when the police show up at four in the morning, her housekeeper is doing laundry, which is fucking weird behavior. But it's tampering with the crime scene. Right. And so there's like a four-hour window there where it's like her housekeeper and this guy, Dr. Greenson, who was like this really controlling psychiatrist who was like not letting certain people see her at this time. And there's also reports that at the scene he was heard yelling like, damn it, Hyde gave her a prescription I didn't know about. So one theory, like if the scene was staged, which a lot of people thought it looked stage, one theory would be that he like had plans that night and told the housekeeper to give her like a enema of this medication that he had given her before.

And that's what gave her the fatal overdose, which is why there was no pill residue on her stomach. But then they were like, oh, should we killed Marilyn Monroe? And so they like created this whole story. Right. That it was suicide. That it was suicide. like a Michael Jackson doctor type of thing. Yeah. Medical malpractice, huh?

Yeah, exactly. Michael Jackson doctor, Elvis doctor. Like, that's a thing that just seems to happen over and over with these, like, incredibly famous people. The one thing is that, like, so that that's the theory from the Spadaobiography. And then, like, the more recent one, they, like, have a lot more evidence, a lot more anecdotes of, like, the fact that she was, like, really doing a lot of drugs of time and was also like self-administering injections and stuff. And so it could have also been that she just self-administered the dose that killed her, whether because she was trying to do that or it was accidental.

But she was very like kind of fucked up on drugs towards the end. Well, she was also in deep shit with endometriosis, which I knew nothing about then. It was growing all over her body. She had several miscarriages when she really wanted children to. so badly. And, like, not to mention that, like, all mixed with autism. Like, the, the, what endometriosis does, it's so harsh on your buddy. Like, scientists are now, like, that, now that they're just starting to do research on it, they're, like, saying it should be classified as cancer is how gnarly it is. Yeah. And, like, that really affects your hormones so intensely. It is,

like, an all-consuming disease. And especially for her, like, when she has to be, like, super For thin. Very painful. Like, it's almost impossible to be thin as well when you have endometriosis because it's, you know, whatever. And oh my God. Yeah, I think she was like so much pain. She's on, she can't sleep.

She's on like diet pills, like uppers, downers, like all this stuff. Like she's involved with like every major person. Every famous person in the world. Yeah, exactly. Like. Yeah. So it's is kind of. impossible to know.

I do my, my, if I had to guess, I think the scene was staged by the housekeeper and the doctor either because they didn't want her to look bad and like,

I guess the drug that she odied on would cause your body potentially to expel stuff. So that could be why she was like doing the laundry was just so that like they didn't find her like covered in shit or whatever. But, uh, I think it could also be that they were covering their own ass and like that

there was a Walter White breaking bad situation where she died in front of them and they were like, fuck, we're, you know, they didn't do enough and were too scared to do anything. And so they then, like, concocted this story. Like, there's a thing where the official narrative is that she went to check on her and her door was locked. And then she called the doctor to come over and he had to like break a window.

But like the door didn't have a lock on it. And also Marilyn Monroe like never locked her door because of her intense fear. Oh, right. You said that earlier. Yeah. So. Can you imagine how insane that is, though, to be Marilyn Monroe and not lock your door? I know, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. And, like, they didn't have security back then, right? Like, I don't know. It just seems like you could just knock on every, like, someone's door in Hollywood. Right. It's the premise of calendar girl.

The great, uh, Jason Priestley movie that nobody fucking remembers. That's, that's one weird thing. So, real quick, just like, in terms of her overall, like, legacy. the War Hall painting, like we talked about how much her dresses sold for. The Warhol painting, Shot Sage, Blue Maryland was auctioned for $195 million in 2022. If you just like put a dollar figure on her iconography with like Playboy, high art, like box office success, $2 billion, Madonna's iconography. Like I think this biggie's characters like build out of her.

Like all the ads that still feature her to this day, like she's probably, number one, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, they use her in ads and she was like at the forefront or her estate was at the forefront of like, you know, making money off of somebody's brand, you know? Like, what's the name of the company that did it? A CMG worldwide who just specializes in managing the estate of dead celebrities and they just cash in on this. In 1996 alone, the licensing of Marilyn Monroe's name and image has pulled in over $30 million in revenues.

That's just in 96, just like a random year. Oh, I was going to say, I was like, that seems unbelievably low, but that's one year, yeah. That's one year. Yeah. 2016, we got a Snickers commercial that she appeared in where, like, Willem Defoe plays her on the set of seven-year itch. And then, like, and imagine even all the unclaimed, like, that they don't even, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But I do think it's interesting that, like, the one place she doesn't really live on is in, like, movies about her. Like, people keep crying. There's blonde. The honor to Armist one. Yeah. There's one called My Week with Maryland

starring Michelle Williams, like, who I think is one of the best actors of, like, her generation. HBO's Norma Jean and Maryland. Of course, 1993's Calendar Girl, where Jason Priestley and Jerry O'Connell drive to L.A. and just stalk Maryland Monroe.

That's the entire. They should have just marketed it as a horror movie. but I do think that it's just because of that thing she had like the thing that the guy was like between the lens and the film like there's just this magic that she had because of her talent and like how hard she worked at it that like you can't really do her justice by having somebody else play her right so like there's just that's the one place that her star is not as bright as like anyone else trying to be her So, and I just don't think you can do it because she was so good at what she did. And that's, that's it. Love you, Marilyn. Love you, Marilyn. Love you, George Solitaire.

My favorite side character. George Solitaire is great, isn't it? This podcast was the opposite of Dulzville. I'll tell you what. Riveted start to finish. And Jack, you really did an incredible research. Oh, thank you so much. This is what he does.

I was reminded multiple. times during the researching of her life of the phrase you smoke too tough, your swag too different, your bitch is too bad, they'll kill you. I was like, this is about her. She, except she is the bitch that's too bad.

This podcast though is my shit. I can't wait to listen. Like I love, like this is my dream podcast to listen to. Well, we'll have to pick another icon. Yeah, for that. Let us know. I can't wait to listen to this. Not my episode. I lived it. I mean, the other episode,

I live too. How many of we done? We don't like, is this our sixth, seventh? Wait, are they out right now? Yeah, they're out. They're out there. All right. Blair Saki. Such a pleasure of having you. I love you guys. Thank you so much. This was so much fun. I love Maryland. Okay, I love you. Um, Zike gang, iconography gang. Um, listen to my podcast and, um, come see me on my show dates. I put them on my social media. There you go. Miles. Thank you for doing it. Thank you for having me. As usual. to take a quick break and then I'm going to come back and give you my no no no no notebook dump where I talk about the stuff the best stuff that I forgot to tell Blair and Miles. New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever.

I am Matt and I'm Joel. We are from the how to money podcast and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Polk. For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement, the ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight. Once upon a time, I was on 60 minutes, Oprah, the front cover of Newsweek. And you might have heard my story,

but you've never heard the real story. So join me as I peel back the layers and expose what happened to me in the midst of conversion therapy, to shine a light on what the X-game movement does to people, and the pain it continues to cause. I had lost 150 pounds because if I couldn't control my sexuality, I was going to control my weight. It sounded like, And this is the word I used, a cult. And as I look, too, at the harm I did from within it. Listen to Atonement, the John Polk story on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health and host of the mailroom podcast.

Each January guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical? at all. To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years' experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught the name. In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something

they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy. as in compassion. If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to the mailroom on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we've got some incredible guests like Kumail Nanjiani. Let's start with your cat. How is she?

She is not with a thing. Okay, great, great way to start. So this is a great beginning and hopefully you'll be able to I don't know, maybe you will cry. Amanda Seifred. Life is so short. If you feel something like that, you have that fire in you for this experience.

It's not for a guy. It's for the experience of being in love and like it's bigger than a guy. Elizabeth Olson. I love swimming naked so much. And I know you love taking pictures of yourself naked. Yes. I love to be naked. I just want to be in my brought underwear all the time.

Ross Matthews. You know what kids always say to me? Are you a boy or a girl? Oh, my God. All the time. I know. So I'm always like, hi. I try to butcher it up for kids, you know, so they're not confused. Yeah, but you're butching it up is basically like Doris Day. Right. No, I turn into Be Arthur. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right. That was our Marilyn Monroe episode with Blair Saki. Thanks to Blair. And thanks to Jay and McNabb for the research help on this one. here are a few interesting things we didn't get to from our research. That's right. It's time for the No, No, No, No, No, No Book. Don't, don't. A thing I've come up against in the last two episodes, I actually Elvis and this one, that's just an interesting portal into how weird history was

and just how different the world used to be. It has to do with names and identity. I mentioned that her mom's husband was presumed dead. because someone who just happened to have his same name and, like, fit his general description, died in a motorcycle accident in Ohio, like states away. And obviously we talked about her famous name change. That was just one of her name change. She was born as Norma Jean Mortensen. By the time she was baptized, her mom was going with Norma Jean Baker. And that first last name, Mortensen, the Spotto biography, points out, was specifically.

differently at different times by her and her grandparents, just like depending on how they were feeling that day, I guess. And going back to the Elvis episode, apparently a big part of the Elvis wasn't really dead, faked his own death conspiracy, was that his name was misspelled on his tombstone, his middle name was spelled Aaron, A-R-O-N in life, and then A.A. Ron, to quote the Key & Peel sketch on his tombstone or vice versa, who gives a shit.

But like, you know, according to Elvis conspiracy theorists, that was done as a clue, you know. All right, we faked my death, chosen the most embarrassing death possible, by the way, having me die on the toilet for some reason. We've swapped my body with a look alike who we presumably had to murder, then paid off the doctor. to make sure nobody will ever know just one thing left to do. That's right, the clues to steal a bit from the stand-up comedian Nick Mullen talking about 9-11 conspiracies worth going to check out that YouTube clip. But yeah, turns out that wasn't a intentionally planted clue by Elvis. There was even a song, I think, called like the name on the stone that was supposedly

a song by Elvis being like, and that's, That's why I put the name misspelled on the stone was because I wanted you guys to pick up on the fact that I faked my death and did all that stuff. But yeah, it turns out Elvis, like Marilyn Monroe and her ancestors just spelled his name differently at different times. There's examples of him and his handwriting

spelling it with two A's and with one A. And there's just all sorts of interesting historical stories that hopefully we keep intersecting with in these icon episodes about people just not having a single name and using that to their advantage, showing up in a town and claiming to be someone famous, you know, a princess who died, or people just leaving town and starting over with a new name. It's just a different world. Now everything's so particular and standardized. My name has an apostrophe in it.

and it ruins my ability to like register for anything or be found in any database because, you know, the operating systems can't deal with apostrophies sometimes and so I leave it out. And then that just becomes a completely different name when the apostrophe is not there. And I think they had it better, you know, who cares about a little mistaken identity here and there? You get to just live free. You get people coming back from the dead. what's better than that? Another thing, I didn't want to spend too much time focusing on the relationships

and all the famous people that Marilyn Monroe slept with because I feel like that was the stuff I knew coming in and I feel like most people know about. I don't feel like most people realize what a genius she was, but she did have a lot of ill-fated relationships, not just with her husbands, but depending on the biographer, she also had a lot of sex, Some suggest she worked as a sex worker for a stretch of her early career.

And a lot of biographers and podcasters tend to like psychoanalyze her and say that her solicitous relationship with men was caused by psychiatric pathologies and early abuse. And she was abused early in her life. But I will just say that a lot of how she interacted with men seemed to be. having sex with the ones she was interested in or for forwarding her career or early in her career for self-preservation. And I just feel like it's the sort of thing that if it was a man building his career by having sex with the most beautiful and impressive women in the world, we'd just be like that guy was cool. And the fact that people felt the need for her behavior to come from some deep trauma might be more specific to the era than like something wrong with her. But anyways,

we talked about how the conspiracies about RFK's involvement and her death came from a propaganda pamphlet from a right-wing ideologue who hated the Kennedys. I always just find it interesting to note how so many of the conspiracies we have today started as purposefully planted propaganda like the KGB helped create the moon landing conspiracy, helped gas some of the early JFK conspiracy theories. Here we have the other engine of misinformation in the 20th century and really speeding up in the 21st century, which is the fascist right wing in America, who would spread rumors and they also would actively sabotage and murder people or make them think they were crazy in this case, which just a recurring theme in our icons, yet another one of our icons who,

you know, died with a very thick FBI file on her. Russian state media also used her as propaganda inside the USSR at the time of her divorce from Arthur Miller saying that the most American things are apple pie, gum, baseball, and Marilyn Monroe, well, she just discarded Arthur Miller. after he wrote her a few movies, because I think he was a bit of a hero inside Russia for not being completely hostile to the idea of socialism and being targeted by the Red Scare. I would just say that he might have gotten something out of the deal

being married to the most beautiful and most famous person on Earth. And just as for the husbands, we talked about DiMaggio, who was just kind of boring, we just watch TV, fish. She was just like, God damn, this is boring.

Arthur Miller, much cooler, smarter, more impressive figure to me, but he also pulled some of the same bullshit as DiMaggio. He announced they were going to get married before he confirmed that with her publicly. And at one point, he told the press that she would start making fewer movies stating she will be my wife. That's a full-time job. Imagine marrying the most famous person on the planet and thinking that's how it was going to be, presumably she's. She was effective at making it look like an accident to everyone. And so I guess they were surprised when it required a tremendous amount of work and that she was not just willing to give that all up to be Mrs. Arthur Miller.

All right. That is going to do it for Marilyn Monroe. Probably my favorite one to research thus far. Our next icon goes a completely different direction, particularly with marriage. Marries one guy who's basically a nobody, and then he's her ride or die from day one. One week from today, we'll be dropping our episode about the icon Dolly Parton with guest Lydia Popovich. And you can check back then and many more TDZ episodes in between. All right.

We'll talk to you all done. Bye. Hey, it's Joel and Matt from How To Money. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances and check. We've got your back. Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right.

Yeah, each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How to Money on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Polk. For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement. the ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight. You might have heard my story, but you've never heard the real story.

John has never been anything that gay, but he really tried hard not to be. Listen to Atonement, the John Polk story on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Dr. Jesse Mills, host of the... The Mailroom podcast. Each January, men promise to get stronger, work harder, and fix what's broken? But what if the real work isn't physical at all? I sat down with psychologist Dr. Steve Poulter to unpack shame, anxiety, and the emotional pain men were never taught how to name. Part of the way through the Valley of Despair is realizing this has happened, and you have to make a choice whether you're going to stay in it or move forward.

Our two-part conversation is available now. Listen to the Mailroom on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we've got some incredible guests like Kumail Nangiani. Let's start with your cat. How is she? She is not with us. She. Great, great, great way to start.

Maybe you will cry. Ross Matthews. You know what kids always say to me? Are you a boy or girl? Oh my God. All the time. I know. So I try to butcher it up for kids so they're not confused.

Yeah, but you're butching it up is basically like Doris Day. Right? No, I turn into Be Arthur. Listen, to these episodes of. Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.