The Tim Ferriss Show - #480: Dax Shepard on the Craft of Podcasting, Favorite Books, and Dancing With Your Demons

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

Dax Shepard (@daxshepard) is an American actor, writer, director, and podcast host. He is known for his work in the feature films Without a Paddle, Zathura: A Space Adventure, Employee of the Month, Idiocracy, Let’s Go to Prison, Hit and Run, and CHiPs, the last pair of which he also wrote and directed, and the MTV practical joke reality series Punk’d. He is also known for portraying Crosby Braverman in the NBC comedy-drama series Parenthood.Since 2018, Dax has hosted the juggernaut podcast Armchair Expert, 2018’s most downloaded new podcast on Apple Podcasts, and winning “Breakout Podcast” at the 2019 iHeartRadio Podcast Awards. His roster of guests includes Kristen Bell, Ashton Kutcher, Alicia Keys, Chelsea Peretti, Sarah Silverman, Conan O’Brien, Seth Rogen, 50 Cent, Jimmy Kimmel, Alanis Morissette, and hundreds more. You can find Armchair Expert on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.Please enjoy!*This episode is also brought to you by Vuori clothing! Vuori is a new and fresh perspective on performance apparel. Perfect if you are sick and tired of traditional, old workout gear. Everything is designed for maximum comfort and versatility so that you look and feel as good in everyday life as you do working out.Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at VuoriClothing.com/Tim. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but you’ll also enjoy free shipping on any US orders over $75 and free returns.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, damas y caballeros, tajaja. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to interview world-class performers to deconstruct how they do what they do, influences, favorite books, habits, belief structures, you name it. My guest today is Dax Shepard, D-A-X Shepard, S-H-E-P-A-R-D, at Dax Shepard on Twitter and Instagram. Dax is an American actor, writer, director, and podcast host. He is known for his work in the feature films Without a Paddle, Zathura, A Space Adventure, Employee of the Month, Idiocracy, Let's Go to Prison, Hit and Run, and Chips, the last pair of which he also wrote and directed,

and the MTV practical joke reality series Punk'd. He portrayed Crosby Braverman in the NBC comedy drama series Parenthood. Since 2018, he has hosted the juggernaut podcast Armchair Expert. It was 2018's most downloaded new podcast on Apple Podcasts and won breakout podcast at the 2019 iHeartRadio Podcast Awards. His roster of guests includes Kristen Bell, it includes Ashton Kutcher, Bill Gates, Alicia Keys, Chelsea Peretti, Sarah Silverman, Conan O'Brien, Seth Rogen, 50 Cent, Jimmy Kimmel, Alanis Morissette, and hundreds more. You can find Armchair Expert on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find Dax, as I mentioned, on social media, Instagram, Twitter, at Dax Shepard. The website is armchairexpertpod.com. Please enjoy a wide-ranging conversation with Dax Shepard. The website is armchairexpertpod.com. Please enjoy a wide-ranging conversation with

Dax Shepard. This episode is brought to you by Aura, O-U-R-A. It is the only wearable that I wear on a daily basis. Aura is the company behind the Smart Ring that delivers personalized sleep and health insights to help you optimize just about everything. And I've tried every device out there that you can imagine. This one really makes the cut. I've been using it religiously for at least six months now, and I was introduced to it by Dr. Peter Attia, who's also vetted just about everything. With advanced sensors, AuraPack's state-of-the-art heart rate, heart rate variability, HRV, super important to me, temperature activity, and sleep monitoring technology into a convenient non-invasive ring. It's tiny. It weighs less than six grams and focuses on three key insights, sleep, readiness, and activity. So I can use it to help focus my attention on the type,

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Viore at least one item per day for the last few months, and you can use it for everything. It's performance apparel, but it can be used for working out. It can be used for going out to dinner, at least in my case. I feel very comfortable with it. Super comfortable, super stylish. And I just want to read something that one of my employees said. She is an athlete. She is quite technical, although she would never say that. I asked her if she had ever used or heard of Viore, and this was her response. I do love their stuff. Been using them for about a year. I think I found them at REI. First for my partner, t-shirts that are super soft but somehow last as he's hard on stuff. And then I got into the super soft cotton yoga pants and jogger sweatpants. I live in them and they too have lasted. They're stylish enough. I can wear

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sport. I've been using it for kettlebell swings, for runs, you name it. The Banks short, this is their go-to-land-to-sea short, is the ultimate in versatility it's made from recycled plastic bottles and what i'm wearing right now which i had to pick one to recommend to folks out there or at least to men out there is the panto performance pant and you'll find these at the link i'm going to give you guys you can check out what i'm talking about but i'm wearing them right now they're thin performance sweat pants but that doesn't do them justice. So you got to check it out. P-O-N-T-O, Ponto Performance Pant. For you ladies, the women's performance jogger is the softest jogger you'll ever own. Viore isn't just an investment in your clothing,

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Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seemed an appropriate time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. Dax, welcome to the show. Thanks for making the time. Yes, thanks for having me.

It might be fun for people to even know why we're talking. Well, let's see. It originated with a mention in my newsletter, Five Bullet Friday. A very complimentary. Very complimentary and very well-deserved related to an episode of your podcast, Armchair Expert, in which you interviewed Atul Gawande, who I've respected for a very long time, author of many books, including The Checklist Manifesto. And it was one of those episodes that I come across every once in a while where I think to myself, I should have interviewed that guy first because I don't think I'm actually going to be adding much to the conversation by having a second interview unless I just jump straight to the rapid fire questions. If you

were a breakfast cereal, what would you be kind of stuff. You did an exceptional job. Oh, so flattering thank you and so you reached out after that and that's how we connected and we've had i guess one or two conversations since and here we are in the show yeah we connected over the phone um and i'll admit to my very um i think it's human susceptibility to compliments from high status people. I mean, this is deplorable about me, but, you know, certainly people wrote on that episode on our feed that it was nice and everything. And it feels good. But then to see in you could consider, quote, a competitor on some level or a colleague. I don't know how you want to frame it, but to know that someone else who does what I do, listened and

liked it, is abundantly flattering. I'll sometimes like, you know, I'll reach out to, I think we're both friends with Sam Harris, so if there was an episode I loved of his, I'll tell him that, and then occasionally I'll go, oh, I really liked yours, and I'm like, wow, I assume you don't listen, you would never listen to my show, because you have your own show, so I don't know, it just, it gets elevated quickly for me that you had took the time to listen when you spend so much time in the podcast world and you probably want a break from it. I have decided that I want to go back to the well and try to work on the craft. And part of that is listening to people who are really good. And I polled my audience on Twitter to determine which episodes to hone in on.

And that was part of my homework. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. And I did that early, early on because I started this podcast in 2014, seems like in the Pliocene era. And I initially looked at Inside the Actors Studio and some of these others. Terry Gross also, I think, had a similar experience to yourself in the sense that went on WTF with Mark Maron and Joe Rogan and was on Nerdist and had such a great time compared to the two minutes of having someone look over your shoulder at a teleprompter morning TV edition that I decided to kind of kick the tires and try it out, at least for myself. But it seems to me like you have,

much more so than myself, skyrocketed to such a dominant place in some respects with the podcast. And there's a lot to unpack there, but I thought where we could start is your mom. And I'll place some background around that. I've had many friends of mine ask me if I would have my mom or dad on my podcast. And they've also suggested that I record episodes with them, even if I never release them. And I think there's something to be said for that. I haven't yet done it. You did have your mom on the podcast. And I would just love to hear you describe why you did that and if it was at all difficult

to pull the trigger to do it and publish it well for me it felt like i i should absolutely do it because um the kind of premise of of our show is look man it is hard to get through 80 years on this planet and not fuck up royally often and so so my mother, just as her, I don't know where she got it from, to be honest with you, but she's always had the most compassionate, empathetic point of view. Like an example would be, I lived in a small town. Occasionally, a young kid would die in a car accident, always drunk driving related. And there would be other people in the car and the whole community would be mad at the driver. And my mother's first thought would always be like, oh man, what are the parents of the boy driving thinking about?

You know, every baby comes home and cigars are handed out and everyone's excited. And this is just not where it should end for anyone. She always had this knack for kind of taking almost the antagonists in stories and having a great deal of empathy for them. And so however much I'm able to do that on our show, it's directly credited to her for sure. And this really kind of willingness to own your fuck-ups in public, like she would tell people, relative strangers, how many times she'd been divorced or this or that.

She just didn't seem to, she seemed to fight shame with that. And so I just always admired her about that. And I definitely think that's, if that's why the podcast work, it's attributable to her. So it seemed natural to have her on. But then I had the fear of, my mother's not a public personality. She's not been in interviews. It's a stressful situation. As you just said, you know, I think people underestimate how much of a, like a starter pistol goes off when you're on one of those talk shows. It's like, you're standing behind a door. It's about to raise up. You're supposed to walk out to the right and to the left and you shake the guy's hand. Then you sit down, then you let, you know,

it's so quick and like being shot out of a cannon that it's very hard to relax and be yourself out there. So I had an appropriate amount of fear that she would maybe just not be the person I know once there was a microphone in front of her. And then to my great delight, she had no problem with it. She was just very comfortable right away. And then I think the unforeseen thing for me was the person who does interviews was operating on some level. And so there are obvious things that I would have asked for follow-up questions with any other guest that I had never asked my mom. And I guess the one that was probably most profound is my mom has this incredible story. Three divorces, started as a janitor, night shift, built a company, raised three kids on her own. She's had two suicide attempts. She's

wrestled with mental health issues. My first stepdad was physically abusive and beat her up in front of us, and it was gnarly. And so she was very comfortable with that, and so she's kind of going through her story, and then it just hit me for the first time. It's something I would ask a real guest, which was, God, how could someone as tough as you and as confident as you have lived with someone that was beating you up? It's hard for me.

You don't fit the stereotype I have of someone with low self-esteem that would find themselves in that relationship. And she said, again, I've never asked her that, but she said, you know, the shame of having failed twice. I just got divorced from your dad and I didn't want to tell my parents and that didn't go easy and everyone was disappointed and I felt like a failure and now I picked this other guy and I probably did it haphazardly and here I was again. And I would have preferred to have gotten physically beat up than to own the shame of having failed twice in such a short period of time. And I think that ended up being one of the most profound things that happened in that. I know a lot of women reached out to us and

really related to that and have contacted my mom separately about that. And so, yeah, that was a neat part of it that I never thought to really ask her in real life. But then once in this context, it seemed very obvious I should ask that. And so I dug it. I could definitely see it going off the rails. And I'll also add one thing about my mom, which is I one time told a story on a talk show that embarrassed her. And she called me, and she was a little embarrassed, and I felt really bad. And I said, I'm sorry. I guess I sometimes just assume you're as open as I am or whatever it is. And then she called me back about a week and a half later

and she said, you know what? I was wrong to call you. This is your story and you have a full right to tell your story. And it involves me sometimes. And that can be sometimes I'm embarrassed by that, but you certainly, if you have any rights to tell your own story. So I already had that relationship. So I think that puts me in a much better spot than maybe, I don't know what your relationship is with your parents. Are they still married? They're still married. Wow. My parents are still together. And I mean, there are a million directions we could go with that. Uh-huh.

And maybe we do, maybe another time. But before we turn it into the Tim therapy session, which we can. Well, we will when you're on my show, for sure. Yeah, we'll do that. I'm very curious if, A, that's a level of equanimity that you've seen in your mom before, because that's a very, I want to say mature, not in the age-related sense, but in the sort of psychological sense perspective to take with your story and the divulging and telling of things that might be embarrassing to her, might even cause uncomfortable conversations with her friends. Have you seen that before? And then the second part is, did you see any downside or did she experience any downside

to being on the show as someone who is not a public figure? And as we both know, a lot of weirdos can come out of the woodwork. Oh, yeah. Although it is filtered at a certain point, as I'm sure you experience, like in general, if someone's listening to your show, they probably like you. You know, I doubt people hate listen to you the way they did to Howard Stern in the 90s. My show, my stuff's too long. Yeah, it's too much of a commitment. No, she has had nothing but incredibly positive, moving reactions to that.

And I do think she thought maybe what I have thought in the past, which is, oh, she says this is going to be embarrassing to her brothers or her other family members right and that was not the case and I guess that's what I've kind of learned almost 250 times in a row doing the show which is like every time you think it's going to be embarrassing and there's going to be backlash that's almost assuredly going to mean something real and vulnerable came out and i've just seen i've yet to see vulnerability met with shittiness thus far i mean it'll certainly happen in a and certainly some some things i've admitted have been mildly weaponized by by different political points of view. But in general, I've just been so

encouraged. And a little bit, the premise of why I wanted to do the show is that I'm in a 12-step program. I'm in AA. I've watched people for the last 17 years share things that should make you hate them. But when they do it and they're owning it as a fault or a mistake or a character defect, it's just hard not to be empathetic towards that because, man, I've yet to meet the person who's not wrestling with some shittiness. It's a unifying trait of us humans. We've got some shit we're all dealing with. It seems like you have owned and use extremely well vulnerability as a superpower of sorts on your show and quite possibly elsewhere in your life. Let's talk about one component of that, which is addiction. When did you first think of yourself as having a problem with any type of substance abuse or substance use? Throughout my using, but I had a different

point of view, which is my heroes at that time were Bukowski. They were other romantic drunks. They were Waylon Jennings. And I had this fantasy, this romantic fantasy that I could do something artistically that would be impactful enough that it would excuse all of my shittiness, right? So like Waylon's got several songs basically apologizing for cheating on his wife. And it's hard to be in love with a fun loving man and Bukowski would put these books out and it kind of excused what a horrendous piece of shit he was in his real life so I think I very much was I was looking to be a fuck up but but maybe one that was funny enough that people overlooked it or or I wrote something important enough that people would give me a pass and so so that was kind of my fantasy.

And on some level, it worked a bit. I think people were willing to be around me more than some other people that are less funny. But I had underestimated that I ultimately suffered. I ultimately was demoralized and pessimistic and defeated, and that it really wasn't about all the people around me I could keep in my orbit, that I ultimately had to be with myself all the time. And so I had an awareness that I drank too much. That was quite obvious. And I knew that I used cocaine far more frequently than the Surgeon General would recommend. an awareness that I drank too much. That was quite obvious. And I knew that I used cocaine far more frequently than the surgeon general would recommend. And I didn't care until,

you know, I had a few attempts at getting sober and I could put together two or three months. I generally did it because I knew I couldn't use the way I used and work in movies. And I cared more about that. So I would generally get sober from movies. And then in between movies, I would go out. But my most profound moment was I was about to start this movie, Zathura. I knew I had to get sober for it. I thought, oh, I'm going to go to Hawaii for a week vacation with a buddy before I start because I know I'm going to be getting sober. And I specifically went to Hawaii because I was under the impression they didn't have cocaine there. It's very hard to get cocaine there. And I didn't want to die. But they have other stuff there. And I found crystal meth and

all this stuff. And by the time I left that trip, I had a layover in San Francisco. And I was so physically sick from that week. I had been in a car accident. I had smoked meth for a few days. I was in so much physical anguish that when I got to San Francisco, I really needed to get down like three or four Jack and diets to make the flight to LA. And I had been in AA at that point. So I'm so afraid someone from AA is going to run into me at this airport. And so I'm hiding in the corner of this bar and there's the proverbial mirror. It actually was there and I'm, I'm, I'm hiding and I am, people recognized me. So that dream had come true.

I was about to make the most amount of money I ever made in my life, starting that movie and amount of money that I thought would solve all things. And I was the most scared, most depressed, most suicidal I had ever been with all the things I had wanted to get. And that was a very, very scary moment. And I realized, wow, it really isn't about those things. I had told myself, as I think a lot of people do, like, if I got some money, I'd be happy. If I got this girl, I'd be happy. If I got this job,

I'd be happy. And I was lucky enough to get all those things, and I was very unhappy. And so I really had to ask why. And I had to actually figure out how to be happy, because it wasn't those things. They help, for sure. I don't want them to be taken away, but I was at my shittiest point with all the things I had set out to get. Where did you land asking those questions in terms of what makes you happy? What were the levers that mattered? What were the ingredients that mattered? Well, I've slowly cobbled together a little checklist for me i think a shame i just had a decade of shames you know all kinds of deplorable behaviors while fucked up um so that

was a big component and then really self-esteem right i was trying to get my value from a lot of outside validation, and then I got it, and I saw the same person in the mirror. I had also dated girls that I was convinced if that girl liked me, well, clearly that would prove I was desirable and worthy of wanting. And then every time I'd look in the mirror at their house, I had the same piece of shit. And so over years of being sober, my list really became, have I exercised? I can't put too fine a point on my belief in exercise. I'm a zealot about it. I'm annoying. If I had to pick one thing in my life, it would be that I exercise. I've just never felt worse after an hour of exercise than I felt before. So exercise is huge. Have I gone to a meeting? That's huge. Have I been of service to somebody I don't want to be? And in general, when I feel terrible, if I ask myself those three things, if those three things happened today, they've never happened. I've never done those three things and been in major discontent. That, for me, is kind of my checklist. You mentioned shame. So shame, it's something I've

danced with at points, certainly after some childhood experiences. And I know you've had your own rounds with various types of shame and so on. I wasn't planning on going here this early in the conversation, but you recently admitted to a relapse and had a very public conversation about it. If we flash back to your mom's experience, not wanting to fail, not wanting to admit that this time it hadn't worked, I view what you did as tremendously that is coming out and addressing it and putting in place something proactively as a plan to try to mitigate it happening again. Walk me through your experience of deciding to tell, deciding to share, because psychologically, I can't speak to what that was like internally, but I'd like to hear it. Yeah, I had let this 16 years of sobriety become so intertwined with my identity. I mean, I would tell someone within the first half hour of meeting them that I have been sober for 16 years. So it was like, so much of my identity was that number. And, you know, we fight to protect our identity pretty hard.

And I did as well. And then additionally, I had this ego component, which is I so cherished the people who listened to the show, who would hear my story of sobriety and recovery and then maybe try going to a meeting or they got sober. I mean, I've gotten hundreds and hundreds of messages from people over the last few years of doing the podcast saying, hey, man, I'm two months sober because you thanks for this thing. And half of it was just genuinely, I think that's an esteemable act. So that gave me a ton of self-esteem. And then my ego is certainly some percentage of that, which is maybe the unhealthy part of it, which is I liked being a beacon of someone that this program worked for. And I didn't want to lose that.

I didn't want to not be someone people would look up to and want sobriety from. And as I started telling people closest to me that I had relapsed, a good friend of mine said, you know, if you're true in that your real desire is to help people, it's so much more helpful that you relapsed. Like it is you having 16 years and being married to Kristen Bell is not very helpful to anyone. Those aren't overnight goals that someone would feel like they could relate to you on. He said, so if you're honest and true about this desire to help people, this is very helpful. And so I really took that advice to heart. And I also, as you know, the level of, there's something much different for me about listeners and what I call armchairs than people maybe who saw me in idiocracy, right?

In idiocracy, you've got Mike Judge as the genius genius behind that and it's his vision that we're all executing and uh if you like the show you probably like me like i'm very connected to anyone that likes the show i think they like me not a character i played so and i couldn't have a show begging people to be honest about the shitty things that they've done and then not do that in return. But it was really, really hard. And then I had other fears. Again, this is all in the midst of being actively addicted to opiates. So a lot of the things I would tell you I know now are not the truth at all. But in those moments, I'm like, you know know i come out and say i relapse i may lose sponsors i don't know i may not get asked to sell samsung microwaves you know i make a living there's a financial component that could um backfire and i'll add into it it's so not fair for my wife that now every

fucking interview she does for the next six months they're gonna ask her about my relapse like that i that feels very unfair to me that i would put her in this situation where now she's got to explain what the hell happened um so those are just all the factors you know that were i was afraid uh to come clean about. And then, um, it was an interesting experience doing it because when we were Monica and I recorded it, I had a lot of control over that. I could, we could edit something out if we didn't like it. Uh, we could not release it. We still had control. And then there was a period where we're like, well, what do we call it? So I had control over what it was called the way to control over what day it came out and then i underestimated that once it was out it was just out and then i i had no control over it

and one of the reasons i relapse is i fucking love control i love to know what mood i will be in i love to regulate my emotions and my feelings and i i that's one thing drugs do, is you know how you will feel in 30 minutes. And I desire that. But I will say, all my fears, they've yet to come to pass. Now, I didn't lose any sponsors. We have this great relationship with Light Life, which is an alternative. It's a vegetarian meat, right? I got a huge basket of flowers from them that said like we want more than anything to still be in business with you so it it couldn't have been nicer it was you know humiliating in some ways and then um ultimately the the bottom line is i felt horrendous lying to the people in my life. I had not gaslit people in 16 years, and I was gaslighting people.

I was gaslighting people in my life. I was gaslighting a doctor. I was doing it, and I don't have the stomach for it anymore. I couldn't do it. I would look at Monica who's like, you're on something, and then I deny it, deny it, deny it, and make her feel crazy and then i'm feel horrendous about that they used to not bother me or i used to be able to do it but i i just i i wasn't able to do it and so whatever downside that there was which was so minimal um the relief

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beyond when it comes to caring for animals, the environment, and sustainability. And none of their meat is ever given antibiotics or added hormones. So how does it work? It's pretty simple. You choose your box and your delivery frequency. You can cancel at any time with no penalty. ButcherBox ships your order frozen for freshness and packed in an eco-friendly 100% recyclable box. For a limited time, new members can get six free grass-fed, grass-finished steaks when they go to butcherbox.com forward slash Tim. That's two New York strip steaks and four top sirloin steaks added to your first box for free when you go to butcherbox.com forward slash Tim. But you have to act quickly. This offer is only good through Cyber Monday, November 30th. Again, butcherbox.com forward slash Tim. So your wife has said publicly that you're also addicted to self-improvement or growth,

and that seems to be in your favor. For those people listening who perhaps have battled with addiction or relapsing, what are some of the things you're putting in place to decrease the likelihood of it happening again? What have you changed? It's a really interesting experience for me because I'm day 35 or something right now, right? So the first couple of weeks was just kind of really owning that it wasn't just this last period where I had had two back-to-back surgeries. I mean, that certainly lit a fire under it. But if I really go back, it started, as I said in that episode,

with having been in a motorcycle accident, having a legit prescription, leaving it in Detroit because I had no one to administer it, going home to take care of my dad who's dying of cancer. He has Percocet. I take Percocet with my dad. So that's shady.

I'm not really supposed to do that. But I'm justifying that as, well, I have a prescription at home and fuck it, also my dad's dying and we're sitting here looking at the lake and I can kind of justify that. And then I admit it to Kristen and Kristen doesn't think I'm a terrible piece of shit

over that and I kind of just work through that, right? And then that becomes a little bit of a misleading experience, which is like, oh yeah, I did that once and it was no big deal. I didn't go out and buy more. I didn't do anything crazy. I didn't act like an addict. Opioids were never my thing.

And then I get, you know, I've, I've a lot of stupid hobbies and I get hurt. Maybe two years later, I get hurt again and I have a prescription. And now this time I don't take them at night when they're administered to me. Cause they, they, they fuck up my sleep. So I just save them. And then in the morning, when I get the other administered ones, I now take two cause I, that feels better than the one so now we're getting more shady but again I'm not shady enough where I'm ready to go like oh I don't have 12 years of sobriety over this and it's um I willfully allow myself to be misled by all that I go this isn't something that I really don't have control over I I know what powerlessness feels like I know what unmanageability feels like. If I drink, there's no guessing where

I'll be in three days. And if we add Coke to that, there's just no guessing where I'll be for a week or so. That to me is powerlessness and unmanageability. But this thing is very misleading because I can do my job. I can wake up on time. I can be there with my kids. I can do everything I would do. And for the most part, no one has any idea. And I'm doing all the things I think I'm supposed, I need to do. I'm exercising.

I'm still doing the fucking checklist, which is ridiculous. I'm being of service. I'm exercising and I'm going to meetings. But again, now the lies are just they're just piling up they you know a lie telling the morning has to i need three more by like three to make the first one make sense and i'm like oh my god i forgot how this spirals and then that that was became very clear that that it was unmanageable i couldn't like i didn't know who i was telling what to at some point and then the the powerlessness was just, you know, opiates is a gnarly thing to get addicted

to because daily your tolerance goes up. So even if you're not even in search of getting higher, you're just going to have to take more and more and more. And that's the situation I found myself in pretty quickly into the whole thing, which is just like, I'm taking a tremendous amount now and I'm going to have a horrendous detox and I know it. And that was not part of the plan. Did I answer your question? You didn't, but the backstory is helpful. What are you doing now or what are some- I'm sorry. I told you the first, yes. Yeah. Some breakers that you put in place. Yeah. So the first part was just understanding how this thing happened. I needed to get my arms around like, how did it happen? Well, it happened with all these baby steps.

So that was important for me to acknowledge. Like, there's no wiggle for me. You know, there's no white lie for me. Because the white lie will just, it'll grow. That's what it does. It grows. white lie for me because the white lie will just it'll grow that's what it does it grows and then secondly i had to ask myself what am i trying to escape you know what do i find so uncomfortable in my life that i need to confront and that took a couple weeks for me to kind of isolate, and that's being tackled now. That's being tackled in therapy, and that's being addressed, and I know, and I'm not really ready to let everyone

in the world know what that is for me, but funny enough, the most generic thing in the book, in the AA Big Book, is resentments will make us drink. We can't have them. For whatever reason, we're the type of people that just, we can't afford to have them. And I had a couple, and they were huge, and I was ignoring them, and I was not wanting to confront them. And I'm now in the process of working through all those. So I think, A, just coming clean, being honest with everybody, and then committing to figuring out why I wanted to escape and addressing that, which I feel like is happening. And then again, the huge silver lining of this whole story is that I didn't go

drink and do coke, which I didn't think was possible. I thought if I had to say I had one day, I'd be like, fuck it. Well, then I want to drink. I miss that. So I just feel crazy lucky that that compulsion didn't come over me. Also, as you're talking about remaining honest to your listeners, it strikes me that if the only thing that came out of your podcast were the strength of that public accountability with this type of situation, that that would be a huge ROI on starting the podcast. I mean, that's an incredible point of leverage. You mentioned Monica's name a few times. For those people who don't know who Monica is, who is Monica? She is my co-host on Armchair Expert, and her story is fantastic, which is she was in our friendship circle kind of peripherally, and she let us know she could

babysit. So I think about seven years ago, maybe she babysat for our firstborn kid a little bit. And then when we had a second kid, we kind of brought her on more full time to help. And then we discovered pretty quickly that she was also a UCB person and was incredibly funny and a really good writer. So then Kristen started asking her to write things for her. And then she kind of just took over Kristen's life. She, if Kristen hosts an award show, Monica writes it. If Kristen does a commercial, she punches it up. Like she just became, funny enough, in some of the ways, some of the stuff I used to do for Kristen, now Monica did. And which, so I was just very thrilled about that.

I was like, oh good, we have two writers in the house now. So, and then, so she transitioned from watching the kids to really running Kristen's whole thing. And then she was always around. And our hobby would be to argue about political things or podcasts we had just heard or a TV show. We loved debating. And so when we when I wanted to do a podcast, I thought, oh, this would be so great to have her, both just to be a completely different point of view than my own. And I think it's also important that it would be a non-white and a non-male point of view would be helpful. And she has provided that and become

the most beloved part of the show. And she also fact checks all my interviews because I spout facts I learned in college in 1999 that are either not true anymore or i've i've misremembered them so she has this fact check component uh and and it's kind of morphed and then she had her own show on our network that was as big as our show so she's just she's amazing so you poached your wife's chief of staff i did for your we we had to have like a it was a really funny conversation because she's like you know i think you're you're stealing monica right and i was like yeah yeah i go but i you know we just we got to go with what's financially better for everyone and so had i not had the financial argument my my corner, I wouldn't have won it.

So let's double click on Monica's role a little bit. There's a piece, large piece from the LA Times, and there's a short mention or an excerpt that I'm going to pull out, which is, eventually, Padman came up with a business plan and together they hashed out rough parameters. So that refers to the planning stage of the podcast. Could you describe at that point in the very nascent stages, because you're very thoughtful and you're a very smart guy, also very agile on your feet, very funny, of course, but also very methodical and very analytical, if you want to be. And Monica, clearly very smart. What did the business plan and parameters look like in the beginning when you guys were on the back of a napkin?

Yeah, that might be overstated. I think that implies a lot more planning than we actually did. But I mean, in a nutshell, two things. I'm a terrible delegator. I have a ton of fear that someone won't execute something in the same tone that I like, right? Again, back to me being a control freak. It's why I went into directing at some point. And so to find someone like her, who I had watched take over Kristen's point of view and tone and execute it flawlessly for years, I just felt very safe. It's the first person I think I've ever really just trusted to execute this shared idea. So yeah, I didn't know anything other than I had been a guest on podcasts, right? That's all I knew about podcasts. And so,

and Rob too, our other producer, he's very instrumental in this. He was producing another podcast and I met him on there. And so Monica was like meeting with people who have successful podcasts and finding out everything that goes into it. So she really did gather up all that. I just wanted to chat. And she really figured out how to do it with Rob, who was also very instrumental in it. And then the thing evolves, right? It becomes something that you weren't necessarily, you couldn't have foreseen.

And you thought you wanted to do one show, but it kind of becomes another show. And she was just, she's incredibly helpful. And being, it's just great to have two people who are objective checking each other. Because I'm wrong a lot. She's wrong a lot. But together, there's a pilot, you know, but together there's like a, there's a pilot co-piloty thing. I'll, I'll call her the pilot for this. Uh, and I, and I'm the co-pilot, but yeah, she's just, uh, I'll tell you, we, we didn't edit when we first started the

show. And the result of that was I felt a compulsion to fill every dead second of airtime. I already talk way too much. I've steamrolled in this interview. And so I did it even times 10 because I was like, well, this person's thinking for 22 seconds. I got to say something. And Monica was like, we need to start editing the show. And then she started editing the show. And she really then becomes the editor is so in charge of the tone of the show.'s it's just it's her point of view as much as anyone's because she does do that and i've never listened to an episode and thought what the fuck was she thinking i'm always like oh god thank god she she also knows when i

go too far which i i go too far quite often and she saves me just to to give people a peek behind the curtain, how do Monica and Rob split responsibilities? Just so people have a window into the podcast operation, so to speak, because this is certainly me following my own curiosity. I mean, you've built something amazing, you and your team. How do they split responsibilities? Okay, so I'll kind of tell you pre-COVID, because it's evolved, obviously, for COVID. It's changed dramatically. But when we did every interview in person, Rob was in charge of every audio thing we needed, the hosting site, publishing it. He takes the photographs.

He's really great at graphic design. So he does our look, the yellow thing. And he also does all the merchandising like we he designs all the stuff um i mean monica and i are involved in it but he he physically makes everything i assume on photoshop or something i don't even know what he uses uh he he is also the liaison between um all the technical people that are involved in it. And then Monica is very much a producer in that she's dealing with publicists. She's booking the show quite often. She is on the calls with sponsors and advertisers trying to explain what we do and what we don't do and how everyone could be happy.

So she's like, by the time it gets to me and it's time for me to read ads, all the things have been handled by Monica, right? Whether that's just like, oh, we don't actually say that, but he's happy to do this. So she's in charge of both editing, dealing with all the advertisers, booking and dealing with getting people. Rob also will get people too. It's a lot easier for us to get experts than it is

celebrities. And our show is Monday Celebrity, Thursday Experts. So experts generally have a book to sell and that makes it a lot easier. But Monica is now very dialed in with all these different publicists. And as we've had better guests, then more people are interested in all this. And she handles all that. I research. I show up and I interview people. And I also reach out to people that maybe I have access to that no one else has access to. And on rare occasion, Kristen has to get involved because people like her a lot more than me. So the podcast landscape is kind of an elephant graveyard of

three-episode podcasts or 10-episode podcasts, right? Even very well-known people with ostensibly pre-existing audiences just tap out frequently. And there are God knows how many, what, 30,000, 50,000, 100,000 new podcasts a week launching. I have no idea. The number is enormous. And you kind of pole vaulted very quickly to a dominant position and you have stayed there. And this is probably a question you're tired of people asking you, but to what would you attribute that if you had to speculate or your best friends or people who know the show really well, if it's easier to answer that way, what do they attribute it to? Well, we launched really big, right, which was an advantage that we have over so many people. very big or at least i explained it by the fact that chris and i did it together and the episode

didn't go that well which i think people found very i don't know probably like uh mirror neurone satisfying anyone who's in a relationship you know uh so i i had an explanation for why the first episode did really well and then also some of of my more popular friends, like Kimmel, I think, was on the first batch. And so was Ashton. They were nice enough to help. So when they were a part of the launch, I really kind of attributed it to them and or the shared interest in Kristen and I as a couple. Because we found this out. It would be hard to miss if, say, she posts a picture of herself.

Let's say it gets, I don't know, 100,000 likes. She posts a picture of her and I together, it'll get like 300,000 likes. And same for me. There's like a factor of three thing, more than the sum of our parts. So I had explained it by that. And I thought for sure it would all fall off as soon as she was not on the show and my other huge friends were not on the show. And then thought for sure, uh, it would all fall off soon as she was not on the show. And my other huge friends were not on the show. Um,

and then it just kept working and, and, and I didn't know why I don't know that I fully know why. I think there's a tremendous amount of luck involved. And, and also we get incredible guests. I mean, the guest thing is its own machine,

uh, where, you know, once Bill Gates is on someone else who maybe was like, I don't know, you know, it just, it all, some of it becomes self-perpetuating, but I'll say, and when we talked on the phone, I told you this, that I learned a lot when we started doing live shows and we got to actually interact with people who listened to the show and we'd hear their questions. And as I told you then, I always notice in Sam Harris's live shows when people ask questions, it's just a diatribe thesis on some kind of molecular biology. The real goal is clearly, I want Sam to think I'm smart. And so what I glean from that is that they like that Sam's smart. That's what they like about the show. That's what I like about the show. I like that he can argue well with other people, and I'm exposed to really smart people.

So when we started taking questions, they were almost unanimously, oh my God, I'm sorry I'm wearing this sweatsuit. I wore a skirt, but my thighs were sweating too much because I'm on my period, and I had to go to Ross and buy the stupid sweatsuit for $5. Anyways, I was wondering what your shower routine is, right? And then the next person I get, I'm like, I fart farted in the thing and now my friend won't sit with me and it was just like i was overwhelmed with how vulnerable all these people were it's like they led first with something kind of embarrassing or vulnerable about themselves and it wasn't until then where i was

like well then that must be what they like about, then that must be what they like about me. And that must be what they like about the guests when they're on our show versus other shows is that they seem to be more vulnerable or something. And so I guess that's it. And then I guess from that, I would conclude it must be rare. It must be rare to hear people be that way or people wouldn't be listening. Especially with the mixture of guests that you have on the show, if that makes any sense. I mean, I think that vulnerability from real vulnerability, not rehearsed one or two story vulnerability, but like true, I haven't talked about this before, vulnerability. Yeah, real time.

Yeah, real time. Oh, oh shit i think i just backed into a corner vulnerability from both the like tier one celebrity and tier one experts is is is quite uncommon so i think well they have a safety net i'll add you know so everyone that comes on the show we tell them up front you can cut anything out you want like you go home tonight and you're like i shouldn't have told that story about my brother. Feelings will be hurt. They just tell us and we cut it out. So we're not 60 Minutes or the New York Times. I have no journalistic obligation to not give people the right to cut shit out, right?

So I think what happens is they know that if they say something regrettable, they can just get rid of it. And then upon saying it, I think they realize they feel different than they feared they would feel. Or they see from our reaction that we relate. And then they're maybe not afraid anymore that that came out in that time. It's like, I know you just published something really intimate,

but it's like, I've been molested. When I tell people I've been molested, I can just see in them, they're like, oh, wow, he just said that. And no one ran away. Okay. Fuck, I'm going to say it too. Yeah, I was too.

I mean, look, 25%, or at least if A Body Keeps the Score is an accurate book, 25% of people have had some sexual trauma in their childhood. I mean, so anytime you're with four people, one person in their head, it's not rare. 40% of kids have experienced physical abuse enough that it left a mark. I mean, these are not rare occurrences, yet we all feel so isolated in them and unique and at fault somehow. So yeah, I just think there's something about if you start, people are inclined to match you. who might feel like they're just a collection of weaknesses, that one of your, let's say, past challenges, dyslexia, is actually a superpower of sorts when it comes to podcast prep because you have such a developed memory that you don't need to rely overly so on lots and lots and lots of notes, which is part of the reason why I tend not to do video because I like to look at a lot of notes. I don't have that retention that you seem to have. Is that a fair description?

Yeah. I think what other dyslexics who I've met throughout the years, what we seem to share in common, let me back up and say, there's a great chapter in a Malcolm Gladwell book, I want to say in the Goliath book, about for years, and this is what I learned growing up, that dyslexics are twice as likely to end up in prison, which makes total sense because you're going to fail out of school and what are your options? But it's since been revealed that also – and this number is not right, so whatever the number is. You're also twice as likely to become a CEO. It's like, oh, that's kind of interesting. It's like it can break you, but also it can become this asset. And so what I've found from a lot of other dyslexics is that since you're not really getting anything off that chalkboard, that's a roadblock.

You're kind of forced to really develop a great oral memory. So when people tell me a story, I find that I just remember that. I'll run into people that I haven't seen in five years and I'll be like, oh my God, didn't you? And I may remember the story better than they do. And so when I research and I think out my thoughts and as I'm learning about them, questions pop up, and I kind of jot them down on paper. But just the act of me writing them, they're pretty much in there then. And yeah, that must be a result of that dyslexia background where I can hold on to that. Although it's getting worse.

I'll add that. I have two kids, and I'm getting older, and I was on opiates for a few months. Chipping away at the old prefrontal cortex. You give your guests final cut. That's also something I do. I'm actually frankly surprised that more shows don't make that explicit. It's kind of shocking to me. I ended up modeling that on Inside the Actor's Studio because early on, early on, I had hired, I was introduced to someone who used to do research for Inside the Actor's Studio. And I hired them to review transcripts of some of the early episodes of my show to try to identify where I was sloppy, where I could improve, et cetera, which was a really useful exercise. And so the question for you is, how have you thought about working on

interviewing or how have you most improved as an interviewer since starting the show? I'm still really bad at this. I still give myself a C, but I used to be an E. I talk way too much. It's as if I met you at a bar and I want your approval and I'm aware of that and I'm trying to get your approval. And so I've talked less and less and less over the last few years and it gets better and better the less I talk. But again, I will justify it a little bit in that i am so often trying to enact vulnerability which requires me to go first it's almost like an aa meeting where it's like i share first and then maybe you're compelled to share back and so it's kind of required and then we get into this tricky situation where i mean it's tricky for monica

is like how many fucking times can they hear me tell this story right they got to be so bored of it but at the same time the guest i have doesn't listen to the show so they've not heard it and then i also feel like it's mildly unethical to cut out the part where i say i was molested and then just cut right to them going like yeah i was not you know so it's. So it's a little dicey. It's not perfected by any stretch. And I do end up talking more than probably people would prefer. But, yeah, I've gotten more and more comfortable with it.

I think also originally when I started interviewing experts, I am intimidated by them. I mean, I'm talking to Richard Dawkins like I read Selfish Gene and just thought how could someone have thought of that you know 20 years of thinking this guy's brilliant so my own fragile ego wants him to know i get your book so i'm gonna waste so much of this interview letting you know i get your book and i just more and more i i'm i don't try to prove to the person i'm i'm, which is very hard.

Again, with the dyslexia baggage, I have a chip on my shoulder that everyone thinks I'm dumb. No matter how much proof I get to the contrary, I still have to work through that fear. So if you used to give yourself an E and now you give yourself a C, aside from, and your words, not mine, talking too much, what has improved and what do you most want to improve? Or is it just the volume of talking? Are there other aspects? You know, one thing I'll say that has evolved is I was trying too hard at the beginning to get people to be sharing something we never heard. And again i wanted it to be like and here's what happens i'm always in a meeting with other dudes and i hear some person share and i think god i'm so lucky to hear men talk about this i don't think anyone not in aa gets to experience

this and so i want everyone to have that and so then the people I have on, I wanted them to, with them having no AA experience, I want them to jump right into that. And so I think I pushed pretty hard at the beginning and I've laid off. And then sometimes I think, have I laid off too much? There's some things, but I am getting more confident with just when it's going to be that type of interview, that's great. It'll be that type of interview. I follow them more. I try really hard now to follow more than I previously tried to lead because they just get repetitive. I have all these insecurities. I think we related a little bit on this. It's just like there was a while there where I was just looking at how many listeners we have and I'm just waiting for it to drop. I'm like, well, this is going to drop.

I know the inevitable trajectory of all things. They even hit TV shows. They just slowly and precipitously lose, and there's better shows out there, and I get distracted. You know, all these things, and I just had to stop thinking about that. I just had to remember,

no, no, I did this with no expectations. I didn't think a lot of people would listen. I just love talking. Just fucking enjoy talking. And then things will happen one way or another. And so I've pretty much, I've, I've semi-successfully gotten out of the, I haven't asked Rob what the numbers are in probably a year. No, maybe the first month of COVID, I was like, curious what that had done, but, but since then I haven't asked. And that's kind of a good barometer for me of how healthy I am and, and how much I'm getting my esteem from the right place. I now just think that I love talking to that person or not. to see the podcast achieve escape velocity and become this juggernaut while not working on it as hard as you had in other things that had produced less stellar results. And my question is,

do you think that is just something inherent to the format or is there is there some aspect of you hitting your zone of genius and flow because precisely because you're not trying extremely hard i mean that could certainly be it i think there's other factors too yeah the thing i kind of um the example i gave was that i'm used to directing a movie where it's a two-year endeavor. Chips for me was at least two and a half years of my life, where that's all I did. Then the whole outcome's decided on a Friday. By 3 p.m., I know if I've completely wasted two and a half years of my life. In that respect, I enjoyed the process so much, but in that respect, yeah yeah not the outcome I wanted at all and that

that's happened to me twice on two different movies where I just I gave it two years of my life and then it just it floundered so yeah to show up and do something for three hours and for it to work felt very like something's too good to be true here I think I had a lot of that going like this isn't how it works. I'm supposed to sit in hair and makeup for an hour, which I don't want to do. Then I got to learn a bunch of lines and then I got to tediously shoot this scene and all these things. And this is like, no, sit down, shoot the shit and bail. And it works.

It's just very confusing. It's hard to understand why it would work. But yeah, I think some of it is like, I didn't even know what expectations to have. I didn't know enough about podcasting to know if I was a failure or a success. I can tell you what a successful comedy movie is that you spent 25 million on. I know you have to hit 13.5 that opening weekend for, you know, but I didn't really know that. So I wasn't even thinking about it. It's probably the thing in my life that has been purest in that it was really just about the experience and not about the results. And then, lo and behold, I ended up with good results when I didn't care, which is so confusing.

I try to tell this to, like, I have no advice for actors, but one is just you got to somehow convince yourself you don't care if you get cast in this thing. It's the only way you'll be good in the audition. So you got to somehow convince yourself you don't care if you get cast in this thing. It's the only way you'll be good in the audition. So you got to somehow trick yourself. I don't know how you're going to do it, but I found a method for me to do it. And yeah, that kind of seems to be the case here. What is your method? To fool yourself? Yeah.

Well, a couple things. I've been lucky enough that I've cast things now. And I do know now that so often it's not about how good or bad you did. People are right or wrong for stuff. Someone could have been love acting, if that's what I'm claiming I am as someone who loves to act, an audition is just an opportunity to go act. So I get to go act, and that's something I'm supposed to love. So if I don't love going and acting in front of people, then I'm probably doing the wrong thing. So to see the audition itself is an end in itself. I get to go act. And then I also have this point of view now, which is like, I'm going to show you what I would love to do in this movie or TV show, and you may or may not like that. And that may or may not be right for this TV show. And that'll be okay, because I really only want to do this thing. And so getting ownership over it,

it's like, I'd like to go be in your movie and act like this. And that may or may not work for you. I won't take it personally as I hope you won't take it personally that I don't want to go and shove a banana peel up my ass to get a laugh. That's just not what I want to do.

So maybe neither of us want to do what each other wants to do, but occasionally those things are going to overlap beautifully. And the more i've just been able to go i'm excited to go show them this interpretation i have of this writing and that'll be that uh it's just the outcome's gotten a lot better once i switched into that mindset i think that goes for a job interview too by the way i think if you go there show them who you actually are. You're better off being at the job where you being actually you is wanted

than you trying to be fucking Eddie Haskell and everyone finds out eight months later, oh, guess what? This guy does not like doing research on the weekends. That's not his bag. You have this incredible podcast with just as a lot of podcasts. I mean, I'll speak for my podcast. I mean, an incredible ROI, right? Like you said, it's not two and a half years in, and then you find out on a Friday, whether it succeeded or failed. I mean, it's three hours in and more, more likely than not, once you have a loyal audience, it's going to succeed on some level. Has that changed what you say yes and no to? And how do you decide which projects

or invitations to say yes to now? How has that changed, if at all? Yeah, it's given me this insane freedom because I also grew up quite broke for a period of time, and my family was very obsessed with climbing the financial ladder. So I'm obsessed with money, and I have great fear and financial insecurity. Irrational, completely irrational. I've had numbers throughout my whole life. I had this amount of number, I'd feel safe. If I had this amount of money, I'd feel safe. And then had this amount of money, I'd feel safe. And then I never felt safe. So first, I just want to own that it's a complete fear.

But having a source of income that has nothing to do with movies or television or commercials is so liberating for me because now really, I'm lucky enough to only do stuff that I am excited to do I don't actually have to think about the financial component I wouldn't do something uh motivated out of financial insecurity which is very new for me uh for you know it's it's three years old I I always I would always be tempted to take a movie I I liked less if the payday was twice as much. I've interviewed a couple people that grew up with wealth, and I've watched them navigate their career, and I've been envious of it. Nick Kroll comes to mind. He has so much creative integrity.

He just does what fascinates him. I think he's had opportunities to do, quote, bigger things or bigger paydays, and he's just always stayed on his path of what makes, what entertains him. And I've just envied that. And, you know, he grew up with a ton of money. He said when I interviewed him, his fucking dad drove to school in a limousine like Mr. Drummond, you know. So I'm experiencing that to a degree, which is like I really, I just get to do things I'm really excited about today. And that could totally change. The podcast could go away. You know, I could be back. But currently, yeah, I get to do things I'm super interested in or I don't do them. We all have fears.

I have fears. You have fears that you've certainly spoken about very publicly. If we look at the podcast, your podcast, and my understanding is it skews female in terms of listenership. You have clearly struck a chord with the leading with vulnerability. Do you ever fear straying outside of that or operating too far outside of a template that appeals to your core listenership? Or does that not cross your mind? Well, no, it totally does. I'm trying to be as smart about this thing as I can. I, A, don't want to lose it, and B, I would like to grow it. And so we're in this great situation where you and I have a laboratory and we can try things for very little investment, right? I'll tell you an example

that just happened is I got interested in conspiracy theories. As a result of having Bill Gates on and seeing all these crazy comments, I really had no idea what the hell they meant. Save the children. He's a pedophile. What is going on? Right. So that kind of, I got really fascinated with conspiracy theory. So I said to Rob, Hey, find us a conspiracy theory expert. And he found this guy, David Ferrara. I can't pronounce his last name. I can spell it for you. But he directed this documentary tickled that I loved. And he also has a show on Netflix called Dark Tourist, and he is a journalist who investigates conspiracy, so I'm talking to him, and I'm having the most amount of fun I've had interviewing somebody in two years. It's just candy, and so I'm loving it, and then we can kind of see from the results of that episode that people also loved it.

And I'm like, well, fuck, I'd love to talk to that guy once a month. And so I call him like, do you want to do this once a month? And like, we'll pay you like you'd be a part of the show. And he's like, yeah, I'm up for that. And then we saw the response. So it's like, oh, that's awesome. That just kind of presented itself and revealed itself. And so I can't wait to do that. And then we've had a couple different things like that, where it's just, oh, it worked for us. And then it appears it worked for the audience.

So let's do that again. And yeah, I have the 300-mile goal of, I'd love to do this show four days a week. I would love to give people what I get from Howard Stern, which is like, oh, I'm following this story. In a dream world, Monday's candy, it's some super famous person you like. And then Thursday's protein, it's the experts. But maybe Friday is we give you some weird topics we just learned about that gives you something to talk about on the weekend at your barbecue. Like, I'd love to, you know, each day have its own thing and not get stagnant and stay interesting.

And I have some faith that those things will present themselves the way this conspiracy thing did. So the podcast, and when I say the podcast, just to be clear, people, I'm talking about Dax's podcast, is so successful and so reliable and so appealing to so many sponsors. If you wanted to make the decision tomorrow to do it every day, you could. I mean, you could, right? It supports you enough that you could do that. So why wait? Why not do that sooner? I'm not saying you should or shouldn't. I'm just curious. Well, I have a kind of commitment to not do it just to do it, right? So this David thing is a perfect example. Like, oh, I loved it and I want to do it a lot now. And I don't want to just arbitrarily fill up days. I want to make sure that I'm passionate about each day and excited to switch

gears from an interview to maybe something more journalistic or whatever it is. And so I am committed to that, to making sure that I'm super crazy passionate about it. And then also I have some outstanding obligations. I'm on a show, Top Gear, that'll come out in maybe January. And I have 12 more. I got a film starting in February and I have a game show my wife and I are going to do. So there's certain things that I'll have to just be mindful of making sure they can fit within a schedule where I'm doing four a week or something. So I guess I see myself maybe not taking any more on-air shit or on-camera stuff and just doing this all the time because it is my favorite thing to do. Although Top Gear is insane. I just go there and I horse around in fast cars that someone else owns and then I leave and I don't have to deal with anything. I don't have to put new tires on the back of it. And

people are excited when I act like a jackass. And yeah, so that would be hard to walk away from as well. Howard Stern. Yeah. I know you have a lot of respect for Howard Stern. Why do you have so much respect for him? And how are you guys different or similar? Yeah, it's really interesting because I only liked him a bit when he was on terrestrial radio. You know, I wasn't someone who, A, I was never up that early, and I didn't commute anywhere. So I'd had to, like, turn it on in my house, which was a foreign concept to me. But once he became, once he was on uh satellite radio i could choose when i listened to him because it just replays and he had also evolved enough i don't think i would have been

on board for throwing baloney at girls asses and stuff that wasn't really my jam uh what i really immediately loved about him is what an amazing interviewer he is he's just such a great interviewer and i love that his like i still find this very intriguing about him is that his fan base is i would guess opposite of mine i think it's mostly dudes and so here's this guy who has this kind of dude fan base and and there's a lot of sexual stuff yet he does transcendental meditation he doesn doesn't really drink. He eats perfect. He's in love with his wife and just monogamous to the core. I love this dichotomy of him. I thought it's interesting that he's speaking to all these guys, yet is seemingly kind of different than his fan base.

And I also credit him for doing more for, say, gay rights, something I have always cared a lot about. You know, it doesn't help when, I don't know, Lena Dunham gives a speech about gay rights. Her fans already feel that way. They already are in step with her. She's not going to convert anyone. And I always just applauded him being so embracing of gay rights when his fan base, I don't think was that way. I just think that enacted way more progress than the left talking

to the left. And I think he's done that kind of bravely with supporting Hillary and having her on the show. Most of his fans don't want to hear Hillary. So I just love that he kept the ear of people open and was very, very soft and gentle with evolving real time himself. He's had so much personal evolution. And I think taking his audience along for that ride in a really unique way, I don't think too many people have done that. When you listen to a Stern interview, because you mentioned he's an excellent interviewer, I would agree with that. For you, what does that mean? What are some of the telltale signs or clues or characteristics where you're like, God damn, that's really good? Well, the thing that you're almost guaranteed to

get in every single Stern interview is the person's going to say something they've never said before. If I'm a huge fan of Bill Murray or I'm a huge fan of Letterman, I mean, what could be more fascinating than Stern talking to Letterman? He doesn't talk to anybody. And the notion that you're going to learn something about them that doesn't exist anywhere else is exciting, I think. He has a monopoly on that. And then also, his passionate interest in people is infectious, and there are many people he's had on that I think I don't like them going into it. And I got to say, with the exception of maybe three of his guests, and I've listened to several hundred interviews, I like the person more after he talks to them. There's only a few times I was like, oh, that person's kind of a dick.

I wasn't expecting that. It generally goes the other way. And what I like about that is I do believe that all these people we disagree with or they are divisive, I do believe we were stuck somewhere with them and talked to them for two hours that just the humanity takes over we're so much more similar than we are different and i just find his thing like oddly life-affirming and encouraging like oh yeah i do like that oh i thought this person was this nah they're a person who's afraid their kids are going to turn out shitty and this and that. You know, I like that experience. Yeah. He is incredibly skilled and he can do the, however you put it, throwing baloney at chicks' asses. He can do that too. He's a connoisseur of that. I remember growing up seeing him on TV and be like, you know, lesbians at 2am with Snapple commercials. That was like my memory of

whatever it was, being 12 years old and having insomnia and watching Howard Stern on television. But when he wants to turn up the dial on Jedi interviewer, I remember listening to his Sheryl Crow interview and being really impressed with just how well he navigates with so much due diligence and preparation, but you wouldn't want to invite him on the show because you wouldn't want to feel like you owed him a favor or he was doing it as a favor. If I'm getting that right, could you expand on that, please? Yes. I mean, because if Howard Stern came to me and said, I'll be on your show, but you have to be a clown at my kid's bat mitzvah, I'd be like, sure, I'm in, fine.

Yeah. No, I'd be delighted to owe him a favor don't get me wrong i i would want to owe him a favor but um i wanted to add one thing that a gift he has that you and i don't have which is he is the most skilled there's no question also he has a status that you and i don't have that actually has no matter who he's interviewing in deep desire of his approval which is incredible that's I mean there couldn't be a more powerful I think Letterman had that people go out there and they really wanted Dave I certainly was dying for Dave to like me when I was on the show it was way more about getting him to like me than whatever was

happening with the audience or what movie I was supposed to promote a singular goal I want Dave Letterman to like me and I think he benefits from that a lot Howard Stern I know I wanted him to like me when I went on I don't think when people sit down with you or I it's like it's gonna make or break their year whether we ultimately like them or not so I think we have a more of an uphill battle but I just know as a fan of the show and someone who knows him personally, he doesn't want to do anything. And I get it. I get it. You know, I want to do less and less.

And I imagine with more and more success, I'll want to do even less. And so I know he doesn't want to be on this show. I have faith that if he were on it, he'd enjoy himself and not regret it as much as he thought he was going to. But I just know he doesn't want to. So I just wouldn't would not i have his email i've never asked him to be on the show i will never ask him to be on the show hopefully i have said to baba booey once look he's promoting this book our audience fucking buys books man that's why we get experts there's a huge uptick if someone comes on the show with book sales. So I'm not even saying

I want a favor. I'm just saying if he wants to sell a lot of books, the door's open. And I just left it at that. But that was as far as I would go with inviting him. Do you have,

I know Howard Stern would be a dream guest for a lot of people. He doesn't want to be a dream guest. Yeah, yes. Do you have any dream guests you have not already reached out to all right is there anyone where you're like one day well i gotta say the most shocking event of my life it's the only

guests i've called my mom to brag about that i knew was coming was bill gates i just i saw that documentary on netflix i don't know if you've seen that inside Bill's mind. I haven't. I guarantee if you give it five minutes, you're going to plow through all four episodes. It's so good. He is one of the most fascinating people to ever live on planet Earth. There's no question. So I just am obsessed with him. And we didn't invite him on. I just talk about him a lot because i'm obsessed with him and someone from his team called and said would you guys want bill gates and monica called better than if she though she had just hit the lottery it's like you are not gonna believe he

just has to be on the show and my first thought was like obama or bill gates like who would i not believe and it was fucking bill gates and I think he was the number one guy I would have wanted to talk to. But of course, I would love to talk to Obama. I mean, that would be awesome. And then Bill Murray. I'm pretty obsessed with Bill Murray, and I know he doesn't do anything either, so the odds of that happening are very, very slim. But yeah, I would love to talk to Bill Murray. He's a North Star as far as just like I said, I brought him up at the beginning, like breathe, believe in yourself, be calm, it'll happen. Perhaps another cliched question I'm going to ask because I know people would enjoy hearing the answer, and that is for people who ask you

for advice related to podcasting, because you must get it all the time from friends. Also, I'm thinking of starting a podcast. I just started a podcast. I'm going to start a podcast. What do you say to people who let's just assume you want to spend a little bit of time and give an answer because they're close friend. Yeah. What do you say? What do you say to say to them well it's interesting because i think that yeah the friends of mine who have reached out they're a little bogged down in the idea right uh in the concept and i i don't think that's the relevant aspect to be honest i i don't think like if you give a one-line description of why howard stern's been on the radio for 40 years successfully

it's not like shock jock who's not afraid to throw baloney at people. I don't know how you sum that up. There's no, the concept's irrelevant. It's, it's him. And if you look at why he's so successful is that he's just fucking brutally honest.

He tells everyone what he's thinking, embarrassing stuff. I remember one time, this was so great he came in it was a monday morning show he was grumpy all morning and and robin's like you're grumpy huh and he's like yeah yeah i've been grumpy for two days and what was it why why did i get grumpy i was sitting oh my god i know when i got grumpy it was right after i took a dump i know what happened i was reading a fucking article that said ashton kutcher has a billion dollars and i was like how the fuck mind you he's friends

with ashton so the fact that he's acknowledging that that would piss him off i guess he has 500 million it's so wonderful like here's a guy with 500 million sitting on a very nice toilet presumably and he's agitated that this other guy has a billion dollars. It's so human and wonderful. And I think most people would hide that about themselves. They wouldn't own that they're that shitty and petty. And so I guess when people call me, I'm like, yeah, the concept's great and blah, blah, blah. You know, I may have a note or two about sustainability of a concept.

Like, I'll just go, it feels a little limited to me because won't that be done in 10 episodes or won't that be done in 40, whatever. But mostly I just say, if you're going to do it, you got to make the decision that you're going to be 100% honest or it's not worth doing. And I don't think it'll work. And so often the people that are calling me are other public people. So that's kind of a big barrier for them understandably and i i just don't know that it works unless you are maybe i mean if you have a real view of a procedural show like let's say making a murder uh or not making a murder but um those wonderful girls who have the women who have the best podcast my favorite Favorite Murder. If you're covering a case every time,

yeah, I think maybe you could have a premise-driven one, but you better have a research, you better be a radio lab or This American Life, and you got a team of journalists that are going to go out there and build this incredible show over the course of six weeks and edit it into 90 minutes. But if you're just going to

drive the show, if you're the content, then it better be like being your best friend or i just don't think it'll work yeah what are you thinking about right now well i'm thinking that like you have to like the format you choose if you don't like the format you choose you're just not going to have the endurance also to do it for a long period of time. And you're going to be, if you are competitive, and maybe that doesn't matter, maybe you're just doing it for the love of the game and you don't care if anyone listens. But if you want to break through the noise, you need a certain degree of enthusiasm and endurance, both of which will be lacking if you don't enjoy the format you choose.

It just seems so- I agree. Fundamental as a decision. You- Well, by the way, I've talked to some friends where they're like, oh, I want it to be about X, Y, and Z. And I'll go, I'm just going to point out, I've known you for 12 years.

You've never brought that topic up to me, but I can tell you the topic you bring up all the time which is like home furnishing i know you think because you're a director or an actor or this you should be talking about that but you love home furnishing that's what i know you like to talk about non-stop like why isn't that what your show is so i think first you just got to go like what am i endlessly talking about and I know I don't go eight minutes into a conversation at any party where I haven't asked, did you get molested? Or they say something and I think, oh, I'm just curious. Like, oh, is one of your parents? Like, I noticed your husband is very quiet.

Was your dad quiet? Like, that's all I'm interested in. I want to know why we've all landed in these spots. And I think the clues are in your childhood. So that's all I talk about at parties. And then that's all I talk about on the podcast. Yeah, you're not changing wardrobe too much in terms of going on the show. You appear to be a voracious reader. You read a whole lot, it seems. Are there any particular books that you gift to other people or recommend more than others?

Yeah, there's a number one. I can't stop talking about it. I've read it three times now. I will read it again soon, is Titan, the Ron Cher ron cherno book about john d rockefeller rockefeller have you read that book i haven't i've seen the cover i gotta tell you it's a very for someone i can already tell like you like i'm i'm blown away with the fact that you would have had someone go over your transcripts and point out things that you're doing wrong or that you would listen to find the errors all the this is a very you have such a specific uh commitment to betterment which is fascinating and and um and obviously uh very inspiring that's why people adore you i would have guessed rockefeller was one way. And then in this book, I learned he's almost the opposite of everything I would have guessed about him. And that his approach to all these

things was so unique and so confident. I don't know how this guy got this confidence. When he was running Standard Oil, which is a feat that'll never be accomplished again. I mean, the level of what he accomplishes is insane, but early on in the company, he set up a couch in his boardroom. He's a big believer in naps. He napped all every day, napped for a long time and he would have all the board members at the table, but he'd be laying on a couch and he does in and out and he listened to them talk and he knows. And then he just pop pop up with one idea and that was good for him. And then he'd walked home early that day.

He was not what I would have thought. And just his weird confidence, I just loved it. And then all of the things he has impacted is there's not been an American that's had a bigger impact on on life than him there there was no research medicine that didn't exist he's the he funds the first research medical facility he's the one who says man if you go get a procedure in tennessee those doctors have a totally different set of knowledge than the ones in new york no one's doing the same thing why is that oh because all these medical, they don't have a unified curriculum. Okay, who has the best curriculum in the country? Johns Hopkins. What if I take that curriculum and I pay universities to

adopt it? He unifies medicine. He gets rid of hookworm. He just tackled anything. He was so cocky and confident in the things he tackled and he succeeded. He's just an amazing person. I can't read that book enough. You've read it three times. You might read it again. What do you get? Because there's an information appeal, learning the bio and so on, but you have a great memory. You probably get that after two passes. What do you gain from reading it a third time, a fourth time? Well, funny you know, it's a big book, so I do forget a lot of stuff. Yeah, this is not a Charlie Brown strip. These are big books. Even as I'm talking to you, there was a period where he somehow took over all the shipping routes on Lake Erie. And I can't

remember right now the exact mechanics of how he did that and so that'll interest me i'm like how again did he get a monopoly of the lake erie ship you know that's interesting i gotta want to find that out um i can't explain it it's kind of just kind of like watching a favorite movie it's like i enjoy it each time around and then also i i always recommend all the john crackauer books he's my favorite writer probably i i yeah i don't i wouldn't even know which one to say is the best It's like I enjoy it each time around. And then also, I always recommend all the John Krakauer books. He's my favorite writer, probably. Yeah, I wouldn't even know which one to say is the best, but Where Men Win Glory is an incredible book.

Have you read that one? I have not. Excellent writer, though. You'll see a theme here. I love when I find out something's opposite of what I thought. It's why I like Malcolm Gladwell, right? Every single chapter is about some common sense assumption that we find out through testing is counterintuitive. I find that to be the most pleasing experience of going, oh my God, I'm dead wrong about that. I would have thought that doesn't make any sense. I love that. Pat Tillman, I remember when Pat

Tillman quit the NFL and joined the army because he wanted to go to Afghanistan. And when I heard that, I thought, what could explain that? Here are my guesses. He's either a religious zealot, and this is a crusade against Islam. Or two, this guy has done something so dark in his past that he has to atone in this insane way. Those are my only guesses. I read that book, Where Men Win Glory, and it's the Pat Tillman story. And I find out quickly it's not any of those things at all. And that this person had this level of integrity I certainly don't possess. And I don't think I've ever met anyone that has this level of integrity.

Real quick, he was like last round pick to the arizona cardinals he becomes one of the best safeties in the league he gets offered eight million dollars to go to st louis on a four-year contract arizona will only give him a one-year contract for like a million bucks and he stays in arizona he's like these people bet on me when no one would i'm gonna stay and get less money with less security because they deserve that. I wouldn't have done that. I would have fucking been shopping for a house in St. Louis or whatever team it was. And thing after thing in his life was like that.

And so just like this incredible human that I've never gotten to meet in real life that I get to meet through this book. And it's opposite of everything I assumed assumed and he wasn't a jingoistic a patriot you know he wasn't a in fact he got immediately disillusioned because he got deployed to iraq instead of afghanistan he didn't think we should be in iraq then he goes to afghanistan he's killed in friendly fire there's a cover-up his brother uncovers it in the family and they speak out about it they're like you will not use him as the poster boy for the military because he was misled and lied to and then he was killed by a friend it's wild titan by chernow also at the top of the list i i'll i'll trade a recommendation nothing more but uh genghenghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.

If you haven't read that, I can't recall the author offhand. Hold on. I got to write it down. I'm on this little piece. So I can't spell Genghis Khan, but I'll figure it out. Genghis Khan. Yeah. What's the subtitle?

Genghis Khan what? Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Oh, wow. And this is right up my alley. Yeah, yeah. This book, it sounds like, will be right up your alley. It was recommended to me. I'm not going to name his name because I don't know if he would want it to be named,

but recommended to me by one of the best-known CEOs in the United States. And it's outstanding. And if you want to talk about a portrayal of a person and their role in history that is counter to almost everything you might believe and all the preconceptions you might have, just the first 50 pages will leave you just absolutely dazzled by how much of an impact on things we take for granted now uh gangas con had so that's that's a that's a good read can i just tell you my i have almost no knowledge of him other than didn't then he invent the shock troop the the steered it stirruped rider on a horse utilizing the mass of the horse to strike other soldiers. Was that his big invention warfare wise?

Uh, there were a lot of military innovations. Uh, I don't recall using the weight of the horse. Okay. Uh, certainly he was very good at amassing and building an army by absorbing the engineers and warriors of the conquered.

He was also very tolerant, even supportive of all religions, as long as they made sure to pray for Genghis Khan at some point. Sure, that's a small request. And from a logistics standpoint, I mean, the type of warfare using these – I mean, his scouting missions would defeat some of the most capable armies in the world. These were like advanced teams that were scouting, and they would defeat armies that would be considered the US or China of its day in terms of military power. And his impact and the impact of his activities on logistics, I mean, ranging from postal services to beyond, and just the sheer magnitude of what he did, even compared to Alexander the Great, I mean, it's staggering. So it's a cool read. It's a really cool read. And don't they say some actual percentage of people on planet Earth have his genes? Yeah, there's some absurd percentage that gets cited.

Is that apocryphal or is that real? I would need Monica to fact check that. I don't. I think it might be apocryphal, but who knows? I mean, it wouldn't surprise me, and it would also not surprise me if it were exaggerated. Well, I have a salacious personal experience I'll tell you about that is probably inflammatory. But, you know, Marlon Brando had that island down in Bora Bora. And my wife shot a movie there, and we were there for six six weeks and I got to all the little islands in the atoll I had gone on diving things and I met a lot of locals and it is rumored there that he had that he had had like a dozen or so kids right and I'm telling you this is this is very anecdotal but I I personally met several people that were clearly half Brando

and half Tahitian, I guess. And I thought, wouldn't it be hilarious if all of a sudden, not unlike when the Samoans overtook the NFL, if all of a sudden there was just a sweep at the Oscars for like a decade? Stranger things have happened. So he might amount for some percentage there in Bora Bora. Well, Dax, this has been a lot of fun. I want to

ask just a few more questions and then wrap up for this round one. You've been very forthcoming with a lot of your challenges over time. You do something that I respect a great deal, which is not leading with solely the highlight reel. I think that that's real service to people who are suffering as we all are in various ways, often self-inflicted wounds. And I wanted to know if you have perhaps a favorite failure. And what I mean by that is a mistake or something at the time that you viewed as a failure that in some way set you up for success later? If there's anything that you gained from tremendously

that at the time seemed like a shortcoming or a failure or a mistake. I mean, the one that jumps out immediately and is most relevant to this conversation is, you know, I was heartbroken when chips didn't open because back to my identity crisis i had a three-year stretch where in my mind i decided i wasn't an actor anymore i was a writer director and i liked that it felt loftier well and substantively i feel a lot more pride over having written a script than

having acted i do think it's harder. So some of it's worthwhile. But I had decided I was a writer-director, and that was going to be the next 10 years of my life. Chips had tested really high at Warner Brothers, and they immediately put me on another movie that I took over from some other people, and so I was doing that. And then overnight, that ended. I did not have that identity anymore.

And they had already commissioned Chips 2. I was already beginning to write that. And I got very depressed. For three, four months, maybe more, I started doing math and thinking, okay, could I retire now? Could I be done now? If I live on this amount of money, blah, blah, blah. That's what I was spending most of my time thinking about is whether I was completely done. And that's when I wanted to do the podcast. I was ruminating on so much stuff. I was thinking about my own life and identity and trajectory and

the failure. And then I started it in the wake of that. And I think because I was so interested in failure at that time, I say often on the podcast, I have nothing to learn from someone holding an Emmy over their head. I'll never be holding an Emmy over my head, but I can relate if that person cheated on someone they loved and regretted. I can relate to the failures that led up to that. That's something I can learn from. That's how I learn from people in AA. I don't ever learn from someone telling some victory story. It's always how they fucked up and realized it. Now, in hindsight, had I had the thing I wanted, which was a being a writer director, it's so time consuming. My kids were, uh, one in three when I finished that movie,

maybe, uh, two and four. And I would have been gone. I would have taken bigger movies. I would have been way more into that. Ironically, I would have ended up making less money. So this thing that I had no desire to do and this complete collapse of this identity I had and desire turned out to be something that allows me to be with my kids a ton i'm at home all the time my wife can take work out of town if she wants i can travel and do this like this life that came out of this epic failure this 20-year pursuit turned out to be something better than i had even thought to imagine i didn't even know that this could exist so yeah that's that's a very obvious one for me now that i look back and go like fucking thank God that thing failed. I would have been writing that movie, then directing that movie, then trying to get them to give me a hundred million to do this one. And by the way, movie business is collapsing. So I would have been doing all that. And in a time it's almost impossible to do that. So yeah, I got

so lucky in that thing, not performing crazy enough. What a story story it makes me think of something a friend of mine said i can't recall who it was but you know sometimes you need life to save you from what you want oh yeah yeah i mean what a great story you go through your own life right and you think of the times you got exactly what you wanted and then the times you didn't get the thing you wanted and what i know most is that i don't know what's best for me. The things I got that I wanted did not turn out or result in anything I had forecast or dreamt of. And yet all these things I didn't want to do. I didn't want to be on TV. I had decided in my egotistical mind, I was a movie actor. I didn't want to be in TV. I reluctantly was on

this show, Parenthood, because i was at a lull in my career best experience i've ever had as an actor opened up the doors for me to act and so many other things without question the best thing that ever could have happened to me as an actor and it was the thing i didn't want to do and you know i got to do the exact thing i want to do ride wheelies on motorcycles in a movie I directed and it fucking didn't turn out. So just maybe two more questions here. This is going to be a question that sometimes turns out well and oftentimes does not. So we'll see where it goes. Flaccid or hard?

What was that? Flaccid or hard what was that flaccid or hard i'd say i'd say i'd say this is i'd say this is a clear half chub question so we're gonna go with that and it is if you had a billboard metaphorically speaking to get any message word image out to billions of people could be anything non-mercial, what might you put on that billboard? Wow, that's a big one. I feel like that would take me like a couple weeks to come up with the right answer for that. Let's see, let's see.

So I'm driving down the road and I'm going to see a billboard. And what would I most want to see? Okay, I got it. I think it's the message I most want to see? Okay, I got it. I think it's the message I most need to hear. Yeah, lay it on me. Would be, be as kind and forgiving to yourself as you are to the people you love.

I'm pretty fucking brutal to myself and I'll listen to a guy in a meeting share the exact same thing I just did. And I'm like, oh, that poor guy. It's hard. Of course that happened. But for me, I'm like, you are the piece of shit I always knew you were. Here's more proof.

You don't deserve love from anyone. That is the billboard I would also most need to see. So I appreciate that answer. And Dax, I really appreciate you as a student of life, as a presenter of personal truth, including when it is uncomfortable. And I really believe that the exploration of vulnerability and story and sort of shared difficulty on your podcast is a real service to your listeners. So I want to commend you for that and thank you for that. Thank you. You're welcome. And I really appreciate you. The people that need to hear it the most are us boys.

And yet only girls are listening. I feel like we're the ones that just, you know, it's all about weakness and strength for us. It's so stupid. Yeah. Well, you know, I am probably the mirror image of your podcast in terms of demographic. I would guess that I'm around between 60 and 70% male. So certainly a lot of men and women will have listened to this episode and you've given a lot of food for thought. Where can people find you, learn more about you? Where would you like them to check you out well they should read

my autobiography uh horsepower uh story no uh i'm on instagram i think just under my name dack shepherd and then uh yeah and then armchair expert if anyone would like to listen to the podcast it's on all of the uh so rob tells me it's on all of the many platforms people consume their podcasts on. And yeah, I think that's it for me. I hate Twitter. I'm on it, but only to promote the show. What a cancerous black hole that place is. Yeah, a lot of people peeing in the pool on Twitter.

Ruins the fun. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to have this conversation, Dex. Yeah, it was awesome. I can't wait to interview you. We'll give it like a month lull so we both get interested in each other again.

Separation makes the heart grow fonder, so we'll do that. And to everyone listening, thank you for tuning in. And you can find show notes for everything we discussed, including Armchair Expert, including Horsepower, his brand new autobiography, and all of the social handles and everything at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. And until next time, be safe. And if your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete to quote Jack Kornfield. That's good. That should be the billboard.

Yeah. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? And would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered.

It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one.

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