Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Dax Shepard's Date with McConaughey, Best Movie Bombs, & How to be a Man
Episode Date: September 25, 2024Yerrr we got Dax Shepard in the studio, we talk going on a date with Matthew McConaughey, meeting the legendary Jack Black, and breaking down what it's like to be part of a major movie flops. We also ...get real about what it truly means to be a good man in today's world. INDULGE! 00:00 Intro 1:30 Bringing up hard topics + No-one cares 4:50 Classic Films that bombed 7:35 Theaters aren’t done + Top Gun Maverick proves it 12:32 Our very different algorithms 15:38 Top Gun 1 is aight + PATRIOTISM 17:07 Bad guys from the past + Stalin too handsome 19:35 Top 3 Good People ever + Ulysses S. Grant??? 26:08 Dyslexia is Dax’s super power 27:48 Hot Mom Segment + Dax’s Mom is a GANGSTER 31:49 Being too traditional 35:00 Lack of father + Establishing manhood 36:44 Best Fight Win, Hating Bullies + Containing aggression 48:21 Matthew McConaughey is IMMENSE 1:01:04 Woody Harrelson is awesome + Walton Goggins’ underrated 1:03:26 Will Jack Black will stand me up? 1:07:32 Therapy, worthiness + Impostor syndrome 1:16:32 Approaching Superstars + Fan interactions 1:22:37 Owen Wilson joins the podcast 1:24:17 People being able to float through life 1:26:56 Being Dad 1:32:14 Growing up in privilege 1:34:16 Resolving conflict + Setting expectations 1:39:28 Creating challenge for his kids 1:42:19 Managing your own relationship 1:46:47 How to make a relationship last? 1:53:42 Most impactful podcast episode? 1:55:54 Realising the podcast was for Dax 2:00:37 Dax’s reason to do the podcast
Transcript
Discussion (0)
We met, you were with McConaughey.
Were you as excited to meet him as I was?
I don't really know him, but I was in Austin, and then you and I are DMing,
and then lo and behold, you're performing while I'm in Austin.
So then I hit you up and I'm like, I want to come see your show.
You're like, great, how many tickets? I'm like, bro, I think it's just me.
You're like, I was so embarrassed.
Then I don't know why, I was like, I'm gonna fucking ask Matthew McConaughey.
He lives in Austin, and I invite him to your show. He doesn't know what I'm inviting him to.
It was basically a blind date with McConaughey.
But then he was like, where are you staying?
You're on Four Seasons.
I'll be there at seven o'clock, pick you up.
I'll be in the White Lincoln Navigator, look for me.
So I'm like, now he's picking me up.
I come down into the lobby of the Four Seasons
and I walk out and sure enough,
there's a White Lincoln Navigator and he's outside
playing against Kyle.
He's talking about like,
who's coming through here?
Okay, we go, we got the moms here.
He's holding cars.
Totally living up to my dream of what he is.
We get in the car, we're on the way there.
He goes, I'm excited to go here, you know.
I designed this arena we're going to.
I haven't been.
And I'm like, we get there.
Now we're just watching standup.
We can't really talk. So now we're just're just watching standup. We can't really talk.
So now we're just sitting next to each other.
We don't really know each other, but he goes,
you probably want to say hi to your buddy.
Should we go backstage?
You just start interviewing him.
What are your political aspirations?
I'm like.
So we're leaving there and I'm like, that was a lot of fun.
Also, we didn't really connect.
There was no magic moment.
It's a little bittersweet. We're leaving, we're walking in the car,
and all of a sudden he goes.
You do this really well.
You're a great interviewer,
but this is something specifically
I think you do really well,
is you make the guest so comfortable
when you ask the hard questions.
And the question was,
what does it feel like when your movie bombs?
But the way you set it up.
OK.
Was there's no, he wasn't defensive.
It was like genuine curiosity.
It wasn't like, I got you.
Well, I also can come from the place of I've had a ton of stinkers.
I've had some hot bombs.
I didn't want to bring it up.
Or maybe that's what I did.
Oh, that's good.
That's good. What happened? He just dacks. Oh, that's good. That's good.
Sounds good.
What happened?
He just Daxed me.
How are we going to bring that up?
Let's start with your bombs.
Yeah, it's a very, very unique experience to travel around the country, go on talk shows,
tell everybody about this movie.
Like basically tell the world, hey, I've put my heart into this thing.
And then Friday, you know if that was a complete
waste of time, and then it's very public.
Like, the people I've interviewed that I've related
most to as people who have run for public office,
and then they lose the election,
and they gotta walk around their city,
and everyone's like, ah, hey, wish I'd gone your way.
You're just, you feel like you're wearing a sign
that says I lost everywhere you go.
And by the way, no one gives a fuck, no one knows.
They move on.
If people see, if Americans see,
I have a very specific example of how delusional I was.
I went on Conan O'Brien and I had to go on Monday
after the movie always opened.
Pro tip, don't ever schedule that
because you don't know how it's gonna go.
You know, like I'm watching the whole weekend,
I'm like, oh my God, I'm never gonna work again.
And then I'm like, and I gotta go on Monday
and act like this, everything's great.
Which film was this one?
For Chips, which I had written and directed.
It was years of my life.
And so I went on to Conan and I had a shirt printed up
that said number one comedy in America.
Which it was, because there was no other comedies out.
Yeah.
And so this was gonna be my whole bit.
And I'm like leading Conan into saying like,
so number one movie comedy in America.
But it wasn't number one, was it?
And I'm like, no, no, there was a couple,
there was four or five others before, you know,
but I'm involved in this bit and I'm,
I'm like feeling the reaction of the audience and they're not getting it.
And all of a sudden I realized like, Oh, they don't know it bombed.
They just saw posters and commercials.
And so now you just look like you're bragging.
Yes. Yes. Like, Oh, they think I'm seriously celebrating
this accomplishment.
So I had to turn at one point and I go,
gang, the movie didn't do so hot.
Okay. Okay.
Didn't perform and I had to let the audience
in on what bit I was doing.
Did you feel them stop hating you at that moment?
Well then they started to let,
it wasn't even that they ever hated me,
they were just confused, because they of, didn't know it bombed.
Yeah. And once I told them it bombed, then they loved it.
Like, why am I wearing this shirt?
It was a big hit.
But I left that going like, oh, yeah, no, no one's thinking about you.
They're not thinking about your movie.
They're not reading the trades.
They don't know when you ate shit.
And I was, you know, I have to look up very often if a movie did well,
because I'm just I'll be curious and I have no clue.
It'd be movies that were popular.
I'm like, did I actually make money?
Did you ever do that?
Yeah, well, and also there are movies
that we are all certain were huge hits
and they absolutely weren't, like Shawshank Redemption.
We all have seen Shawshank Redemption.
That movie made $8 million.
Idiocracy.
Idiocracy.
This is hundreds of thousands.
Not even millions.
What is that effect it's called where you... Dunning-Kruger. Wait is that what it is? No
that's where dumb people talk the most. Did he just get me? Did he just say you talk
too much? You're dumb? He's fired. Damn it! That was fantastic!
I don't know who he's insulting right now.
He deserves all the money!
I want to know about this effect though. What was the effect?
Strizing?
Oh! The Mandela Effect!
The point is we all remember Idiocracy and we know about it now.
To be this incredible film.
Right?
And it's predicting the future and every time anything happens in an election
they're like, ah, Idiocracy, look, they pointed it out. And then at the future, and every time anything happens in an election, they're like, ideocracy, look, they pointed out,
and then at the time, you were actually part of this.
Not to harp on movies that didn't do well.
Oh, I'm happy to.
But this Mike Judge brilliant film that you're part of,
it didn't do well, but I think we remember it
as this sensational success.
Yeah, in fact, it only came out in,
I wanna say like 600 theaters,
and that was because I think contractually Mike Judge,
he was guaranteed they had to release it
in some amount of theaters.
But even when they released it,
if you called like Fandango back then,
sometimes it was listed as Untitled Mike Judge Project,
which no one's ever tried to buy a ticket to Untitled Mike Judge Project, which no one's ever tried to buy a ticket
to Untitled Mike Judge Project.
Yeah, it wasn't even labeled correctly.
Mike Judge is Beavis and Butthead.
And even probably, similar trajectory, Office Space.
Yes.
Which that movie again, we all have seen multiple times
and it made 10 million bucks.
Shawshank Bombed?
Yeah, $8 million. One of the greatest movies
in history. That's the one that throws me off. The other ones Ibed? Yeah, one of the greatest movies in history.
That's the one that throws me off.
The other ones I remember hearing about from Word of Mouth
and being like, oh, that movie's good.
But Shawshank, I grew up, I was like eight when it came out
and I couldn't believe that wasn't a hit.
Swingers.
Swingers I knew also because you could get more than one mouth.
I'm older than you guys though, so I'm going to hit the wall on some of these.
Sharky's Machine, right? You guys remember Sharkey?
I apparently Fight Club bombed at the box office.
Wow, that blows my mind.
This is from IndieWire.com.
Yeah, see, I used to be an encyclopedia about this
because I am so obsessed with money.
It wasn't a bomb, but considering it was Pitt
and Edward Norton and Fincher,
I don't think it hit 100 million.
So I think it, like, what they thought it was gonna do.
What did it make?
It opened at 11 million,
tapping at 37 million at the US box office.
Yeah, that's a bummer.
Fox spent 65 million on the film.
Wow.
Sounds like a bum.
It happens.
Do you think movies are done?
In the theater?
I had thought.
Oh yeah, by the way, a movie out now.
Yeah, it was.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think it.
Yeah, it was out three past week. No, movie out now. Yeah, well, yeah. I think it. It's not been past week.
No, I'm quite bullish on, I would have thought that until I saw Maverick.
And then something interesting happened with Chip.
So you all saw Maverick, Top Gun 2.
I saw it three times at IMAX.
And I was like, oh, that's right, we love this.
We love having fun, we love action.
The stuff that maybe shouldn't work works so great.
Like she leaves the door open, it's open,
you're like, get in there Maverick.
That movie was reminded us so much of how fun.
She was naughty when she did that too.
Yeah.
That girl was like, leave didn't she? Yeah.
That girl was.
Leave this door open.
Yeah.
That movie was so fun and I think reminded everyone
of how fun it is to go to a movie that's fantastic
that weirdly, Chips, like a month or two after that,
my best friend was one of the producers on it,
he called me and he's like, you gotta go on Netflix.
Chips somehow is in the top 10 of movies streaming right now. I'm like, that's so weird. Why is that happening?
And then it just slowly climbed for like a month
All the way up to two
He just kept calling me like you're not gonna believe it. We're at three
No, mind you this is five years after the movie came out. Yeah, that's awesome
And my only explanation is like, you saw Maverick,
you're like, that's right, I like to fucking party.
I want some action, I want comedy.
And then all of a sudden, that's what that movie was.
It was sitting right there.
So it had a little second life,
and I think kind of driven by Maverick.
So I-
Maybe your success on the pod.
I imagine people are going back and seeing
all the things you're in as they get more invested
in your life.
I wonder, I don't know.
I don't know if that has an impact.
I don't know if you're listening to this.
You wrote that movie, directed that movie.
Yeah.
If there's a Dax movie I wanna watch that Dax drove,
that's the one.
Well, I do think if you do listen to the podcast
and you watch that movie, you'd go,
oh, it's all in there.
I made another movie called Hit and Run with my wife.
Car Chase movie. This isn't gonna work out.
Are you left handed or right?
I'm right here, are you left handed?
I'm left, yes.
We were, if we were eating dinner.
Do you want a switch?
No, but just, this is gonna be a thing.
Okay, whatever, we'll play.
Also, what a boat you have, what size is that?
Keep talking.
Is that a 13?
He's really good.
Is that a 13?
I'm so buttered up, I know he's gonna destroy me.
Oh yeah, drop the hammer.
What was it like when the mom doesn't love you?
How many inches is your penis?
Yes, that's it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, you win.
All right, go.
I can't remember what I was saying.
Oh, just, yes, I-
You did hit and run on your wife or something.
Yes, I did, and both ships in hit and run
have a lot of emotional chat in them. There's a lot of, emotional chat in them.
There's a lot of like, there's addiction,
there's like vulnerability, all this shit that I think
people that listen to the podcast like
is in these action comedies.
So I think it is fun if you started maybe in the podcast
and did find your way to those movies, but I don't know.
Because it's a different genre and medium,
I don't know if it transfers.
You could answer that as good as anyone.
I think IP works still.
Chips is IP, Maverick is IP.
But Chips was not the IP we thought it was.
That's the big mistake we-
Meaning there's still some nostalgia baked in.
There's a curiosity.
We thought so.
And no.
Well, if I learned
a single lesson from that movie, it was while we're recruiting, because before you ever
released the movie of all these test screenings, and they just hand out flyers at malls like,
come see this movie, here's the title, you don't know anything about it, and people show
up and they watch it. And you have a rate, you know how many flyers you handed out versus
how many said yes. And so for Hit and Run,
the number was we had a much higher conversion rate.
Chips we have in a very low conversion rate.
And then when they would ask people,
people were like, it's a movie about potato chips.
It was very literal to them.
It's like, I'm not going to see a movie about chips.
Your test market had no clue what the-
We had found out like 90 plus percent of the people had no idea about the TV show Chips.
At that point, we should have just changed the movie title
to, like, California Highway Patrol.
You would at least know it was a cop movie.
Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, that IP in our case probably wasn't as strong.
Yeah. Yeah.
But I think that can work now,
especially with, if you're doing, like,
the major box office thing.
I think people will go out for Batman,
they'll go out for Superman,
maybe they'll go out for Ghostbusters.
But the new movie that you don't really know anything about
but it could be an amazing story,
I think that those will probably be more successful
streaming where the barrier to entry is hot.
Exactly, barrier to entry is a term I was gonna use.
That's probably why Chips takes off on Netflix.
Somebody just texts their friend,
hey, Chips is funny, it's right there.
I don't gotta go, I don't gotta buy a ticket on Fandango.
Get a babysitter, put on clothes.
Or even if like, if you're in the motorsports world,
which my Instagram is mostly cars and motorcycles
is my algorithm.
What else?
You're in there, Theo Vaughn's in there.
I've discovered all these people
through just that algorithm.
I fully discovered you on Instagram,
seeing clips of yours.
Zuckerberg, bro.
Shout out to Instagram.
Now it's just like different recaps on World War II
that I never considered.
Is that what your feed is?
This is my Twitter feed.
It's just like, hey, I didn't see it this way.
That's a good take. Thanks, Tucker this way. That's a good take.
Thanks, Tucker Carlson.
That's a great take.
So there are lines from those movies, Chips, right?
Like, I fail everything in the police academy,
but I'm great on a motorcycle.
And she says, well, you can ride a motorcycle.
And I say, yes, ma'am, like a motherfucker.
And if you're into motorcycles, that became like a thing.
So yeah, maybe someone saw that clip
and then they went and checked out the movie.
I guess it can happen a lot of ways.
But I agree, the like $60 million drama
that you would have normally gone to see,
we have it, the TV shows are so fucking good.
That's the thing.
The competition, like, I mean, yeah.
Guys, the Life Tour is coming to Minneapolis and Milwaukee
October 11th and 12th, and we got Denver, Cincinnati,
Rama, Ontario, Salt Lake City, Reno, Nevada, San Jose,
Portland, Oregon, and then finally we are closing it out
in Honolulu, Hawaii, The Andrew Shultz.com for tickets.
Don't get ripped by the scalpers.
Go get your tickets at The Andrew Show.com.
Thank you guys so much everybody who's come out
to all the shows on this tour and who has already
got tickets to these remaining dates
and some cool announcements coming soon.
Yeah, we'll just say that, peace.
Also guys, dates, September 27th and 28th,
I'm in Greenville, South Carolina.
October 10th, I'm doing a one-nighter in Poughkeepsie,
and y'all need to buy tickets for this one
because this will sell out.
I'm coming home, and when I say home,
I don't mean a place, I grew up, I mean India,
and when I say India, I mean New Jersey.
October 17th through 19th, I'll be at the Stress Factory.
I promise you those shows will,
if I'm selling out in fucking Timonium, Maryland, Jersey,
you think you could waste time?
Hurry up and buy the tickets.
Go to AkashSingh.com for those.
Hello everybody, it's your dear friend Mark Gagnon.
Coming to you from Schultz's chair,
cause I'm going on the road.
Oh yeah baby, I'm doing a couple one-nighters coming up
in November, November 13th, Stanford, Connecticut.
I'm going to New York Comedy Club,
one of the best clubs in the city.
They got us bowed out in Stanford.
Come hang out with him, I'm gonna kick it with everybody.
We're going to Soul Joles and Pottstown, PA,
like an hour from Philly.
Just come out, come hang.
I'll be taking pictures with everyone.
We'll be talking after the show.
We'll be chopping it up.
Going through probably conspiracy theories
and just, you know, current events.
So if you wanna come hang, Soul Jolls, Pottstown, PA.
Come see him, sluts!
Yeah!
You know what you need to do!
Every time!
Love that!
Let's get back to the show.
And look what it took you to get back
into the movie theater, Maverick, where you had like,
you just got to be in the top crews in the jet.
And yeah, the remake, or not the remake,
but the, what's it called?
Sequel.
The sequel to one of the most fun movies ever.
Although, have any of you gone back
to watch the original post-Maverick?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, because my 11-year-old, I took her, we saw it twice together.
And so I was like, well, shit, now we got to go back to the original.
And we were watching the original, I was like, it's very good.
It's not as good as I remember.
Maverick is much better.
Wow.
Interesting.
I know that might be sacrilegious to people, but I think if you go back and you watch it,
you're like, yeah, it's really good.
I like that there was a real bad guy in the first one.
Who was the real bad guy?
Russia.
Oh.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like in this one, there's just this random flag.
You're not sure if it's the Middle East.
You're not sure if it's the Baltic or Azerbaijan.
Saber rattling.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's cook up some Cold War.
Saber rattling.
Saber.
I want people leaving the scene
and are motivated to go to war.
Yeah.
Exactly, that's what this country's missing.
Everyone's doing anti-war right now.
He loves patriotism.
That's bugging me.
And you need a boogeyman for patriotism.
Oh, get me excited.
But I'm down with anybody's patriotism.
Like I saw Invictus.
Oh, that's awesome.
What one's that?
This is the one about the South African rugby team,
starring Matt Damon.
Oh, right, and it's Mandela.
And Mandela, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Where he dies in prison?
Uh, you know what I'm saying?
Yeah, well, he's in a Frootaloom t-shirt,
eating some sofa, stovetop stuffing.
I'm bawling crying.
I'm bawling, me and my dad are watching this movie,
and I'm like, I'm the biggest self-deaf-frickin' rugby fan.
I'm the most rules to this fucking game, I'm so excited.
So anybody's patriotism outside of like 1940s Germany,
I'm pretty, I'm pretty about, you know?
I care about.
That's the only one.
It's tough to get behind them.
I don't know, what are the other bad ones?
Well, I know Pol Pot, like Rise to Fame, Kamaroush, you know, Cambodia.
Are these countries?
Are these countries?
Cambodia I've heard of.
Yeah, Cambodia.
Why, did they have a bad history?
Pol Pot, there was an agrarian revolution, a communist revolution, and they killed anyone
who was a professor.
The killing fields is all about that.
So they killed all professors.
Some made it out, for sure, but they were rounding up any intellectuals, any business
people.
What were they teaching?
Presumably, laissez-faire, Adam Marx capitalism.
Gotta go. Gotta go. Yeah, can't. presumably laissez-faire, Adam Marx capitalism.
Gotta go.
Gotta get to see him.
Gotta go.
Yeah, can't.
There's no room for Pol Pot and them.
Sounds like some Robert Barron bullshit to me.
Killing Stalin, you could get behind maybe to Stalin,
we wouldn't want that one.
Oh yeah.
I'm just adding some things to the Nazi Germany.
What was Joseph doing?
What was he up to?
Well, they say that he killed he that he is killed.
He killed the most amount of people of anyone to ever live on planet Earth.
No, that's Leopold.
Hit me with that data.
Congo, 25 million people.
Yeah, that was the most.
Stalin's estimates are between like 20 and 60 million.
That he personally killed or died under his watch, because I know that 25 million.
Famine. Yeah. Which he caused. He also sent an insane amount of people out to Siberia.
He created the gulag system. He is, he was. He's a bad guy. Yeah, he kind of flies under the radar.
Really? Let's you know, Hitler wasn't that bad. You know what I mean? If you think about it.
Take away. Yeah. I think Twitter is a rebrand for Hitler on Twitter right now.
I gotta stay off Twitter.
Stalin's also too handsome when he's young.
This is a problem.
Let's see it.
Oh, no, that motherfucker can get it.
He created Telegram.
I didn't know he ever looked that good.
It's unreal.
He got the Palestinian flag on.
There's no way. You created this.
He's like a Timothy Chalamagne of the 1930s. Yeah, one of the greatest murderers ever to live.
Yeah, gorgeous. Well, some of these murders are very attractive, like Ted Bundy. Yeah,
somebody who's kind of a piece. I didn't see it with Ted Bundy, to be honest with you. I see it
with Stalin. I see it with Stalin. I get it. He wasn't your type.
Ted Bundy's on my lane.
Who was good in history?
Can we go over that?
I could be Woon.
Who was good?
Dax?
Oh, we've had a lot of good folks.
Give me top three good.
Just leaders or we're going to be scientists?
No, they have to be leaders because leaders are gonna make the decisions.
Teddy Roosevelt.
Teddy, took the bullet.
Teddy, sickly boy, got strong on a ranch,
came back and reinvented himself,
finished the Panama Canal.
It was impossible to do.
Kind of few people died in that one, right?
Thousands of people died, yeah.
Not Americans. not Americans.
It doesn't seem that bad.
The Panamanians.
Everyone took a run at that and everyone quit.
And they just couldn't.
And Teddy's like, we're finishing this thing.
I don't know how many Americans have died of yellow fever.
Oh, was it Americans that died or the Panamanians?
Well, first there was, I happened to have read
The Path Between Two Seas, the McCullough book about this.
Okay. First was the guy who two seas the McCullough book about this, okay
First was the guy who had dug the Suez Canal. He everyone he was everyone's favorite He you know, he linked the East in Europe and so he's the best digger in the world
Yes, and I were in the sun over there. Don't use that term digger
What are you doing right now?
I'm getting terrified. This is
I inoculate myself to your canceling.
I wasn't a part of that conversation.
I was spraying Nicker-
What did you say?
Jack!
Calm down!
I was like,
I was like, this're giving yourself a breathalyzer?
I was like, this guy is about surprising.
That's crazy.
I think the new was French.
Anyways, there was like a corporation that was formed in Europe, tons of investors.
They send the guy over.
Everyone drops dead of yellow fever and typhoid fever and all this.
They can't do it.
The Atlantic and the Pacific are at two different heights.
They've got to go through all this land in South America.
It's a disaster. People die. They gotta go through all this land in South America. It's a disaster.
People die, they pull out.
It gets resurrected by someone else.
And then ultimately Teddy Roosevelt was like,
we're gonna finish this thing.
And accomplish that.
It's like the most harrowing project maybe we've done.
So him, I would do two more,
but I think I'm taking up too much time.
Martin Luther King Jr.?
No, who else?
Martin Luther King, we like that a lot, Junior.
Yeah, but he's not in power.
I'm talking about like, you're in positions of power.
Like actual politicians.
We're talking about Lincoln, you like Lincoln?
Of course I like Lincoln.
You know one that doesn't get a lot of credit,
and this comes from having read a book about him too,
is Ulysses S. Grant.
I heard this.
I heard his kind of did him a disservice.
Well, he was an interesting dude
because he was at the same time
an absolute idiot and a genius.
So like he had fallen for every get rich quick scheme.
He was like a terrible businessman.
He had been great in maybe the Mexican-American war
or something, and then just had come home
and lost a bunch of money and he was kind of a loser.
And then he gets called back up to do this.
And he has a great genius for military operations.
But I think that the thing we all we think of Abraham Lincoln, of course, as we should,
but really reformation was like the period that was so untenable, so few people could
have kept the country together post Civil War.
And he just did an impossible job of doing that.
And yeah, he probably doesn't get enough credit. But then he left the White House and he again did an impossible job of doing that, and yeah, he probably doesn't
get enough credit.
But then he left the White House and he again became insolvent and owed people money, and
he was supported by benefactors, and yeah.
Well, is there no system for presidents?
Like a public speaking circuit?
No, no, like, you know how they, for NFL players, they give you a little something when you're
retired?
Oh, like the opposite of a signing bonus?
A pension.
Is there no pension for presidents back then?
I don't know if there was back then, because the Civil War was the first time.
The North started printing money, we had a first central bank.
All this is new, so I doubt there was a pension.
I don't even know that they paid presidents.
I'm not sure.
They didn't have security, which is insane.
What do you mean they didn't have?
The Secret Service didn't come about until late in the game.
We had a ton of presidents were shot before we were like, we should get some bros with
guns around this person.
Interesting.
Yeah, 1958 federal law that provides lifetime benefits to former presidents.
Way past Grant.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, 58.
But he was like, people did love him though, so he was taken care of by a bunch of people.
But he was embarrassed and humiliated regularly.
Yeah, most powerful man on the land and now you're...
Yeah.
Ugh, God.
But if you want a guy to stand up on a boat while you're shooting at people and they're
shooting at you and he's not going to sit down, he's going to keep yelling orders, Grant's
your guy.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
Never done.
What are the stories about Grant?
Every time he miraculously avoided getting shot when everyone else on the boat was shot
around him, he was always at the front lines.
He was nuts and fearless.
At that time, wait a minute, at that time if you were the head military commander, it was your responsibility to be at the front lines. He was nuts and fearless. At that time, wait a minute, at that time, if you were the head military commander, it
was your responsibility to be at the front of the boat?
No, no, most of them weren't.
But his unique gift was like, he was a guy who led by example and he convinced the guys
around him.
He did not have the best strategy, but he had the kind of relentless, I'll go first,
follow me.
He was an infectious leader. He was the real dude. Okay
Yeah, and then what about Sherman? I wish I knew more about Sherman when he invaded Africa with tanks
Why I know that's a war
Oh comes to Sherman. This is war as well
Oh, yeah, okay, is that named after him? I don't know.
Ah, no idea.
Anyway.
I've exceeded my historical knowledge.
Oh, the Civil War.
Yeah.
Are you a big history guy?
Accidentally, I have, this all works backwards
from I'm an insomniac and over the many years
of trying to figure out how to fall asleep,
what I have figured out as a book on tape for me is ideal,
but the book has to be boring enough.
Like I tried Keith Richards' autobiography.
And you were up for days.
Oh my God, yeah.
I was like, oh, I will stay over the next six days
until this is done.
So for me, these like dense historical books
are perfect because I'm pretty interested in it,
but then they lose me.
The fucking path between two of these, you guys,
is a thousand pages of damn or of construction
and you know pylons and the bridge this the brooklyn bridge book same thing macula yeah you know
you're talking there's chapters and chapters about them being underwater got into that carlin history
podcast i forget what it's called oh my god um yes Hardcore history. I've heard him talk about that. That motherfucker goes deep.
He'll do nine, ten hours, anything. But your retention is pretty impressive. Well thank you.
I credit Dyslexia for that. How so? Because when I was a kid I didn't learn to read to like fifth
grade. I was in a learning disabled room with the other guy, with the other gang. And how am I going to be delicate about it?
Well, there's I was I was one of a few people not wearing a helmet.
And it was very confusing to me because I was like on the playground.
I seem kind of smart.
I'm chatting with dudes and I'm holding my own.
But I get in this classroom.
They're writing on the chalkboard and I'm like, I don't know what's going on.
And I had five years of that.
So the only thing I picked up was what I heard the teacher say.
Like if I was going to remember anything, it was going to have to come orally.
And so I think I do have a pretty high retention for things I hear.
I've noticed this quality in great interviewers
and successful podcasters.
Rogan also has incredible retention.
He does.
Read something once or hear something once
and it's locked in forever.
And I imagine if you're talking to hundreds of people
and you need to call on random pieces of information
from your life or things you've read or books,
the more that you can actually call on,
the more advantageous it's gonna be in those situations.
Did you have any learning disability growing up?
Probably.
Probably.
Yeah, I don't know.
You didn't do so hot in school?
No, I did like.
Oh my God, I learned this about you today
that you went to UCSB.
Yeah.
That seems totally out of the realm
of what I would have guessed.
Yeah, what'd you guess?
Well, I would have thought an East Coast,
you're very New York to me.
Yeah, I grew up here, born and raised here.
Yeah, parents owned a dance studio?
Dance studio.
Mom was a ballroom dancer.
Well, three time US ballroom dancer.
Was she hot?
Yeah.
Did your buddies?
She's like a Scottish 11.
Okay, so I know, we don't need to say it,
but I know what it means.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't need to offend anyone.
But I feel you.
I'm from Michigan, so I gotta do a lot of Yeah, but I feel you. Yeah, I'm from Michigan
So I we know I got to do a lot of transference to
Dudes at home what I'm looking at in, California. Yeah, I got a seed attend
I gotta go above tip the roads are paved with gold. Yes
What are we talking about? Oh your mom? She was hot
Your buddy's beautiful. Did my boys want to smash? No, she was older, my mom was like,
when I was born maybe like 35.
Nah, some of them still do actually.
Yeah. Okay.
Cause I imagine she's in crazy shape.
You still want to or?
No, he was trying to get after it 100%.
He's a milkman and my mom had the milk.
Does that mean she was endowed?
What do you mean?
Well, every mammal has milk,
but I'm wondering did she have big breasts?
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
OK.
The hog. My mom did.
My mom does still. Still.
And did you hate I hated going out with my own?
Smell of them.
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm proud to say I don't know what they smell like.
But I did hate when I was around nine, 10, and I'd go out with my mom and she'd wear
a tank top and random dudes.
I'd see some other side of random dudes.
They're super helpful and now they're chatting with my mom.
And I remember hating that.
Like, oh God, look at this fucking bozo.
Now he's going to come over and say something.
Did you have that going on with your mom? I had a lot of women flirt with my dad, I think.
Oh, really, is he a stud? He's just really charismatic and like, nice.
Very charming guy. Charming, but like-
He's a what? Charming guy.
Oh, okay, very charming. Charming guy.
Tall gentleman? Yeah.
Like, maybe six foot, six one, or something like that.
But like, you're the most interesting person that he's ever spoken to.
Yeah. Like, immediately.
That's powerful. Whatever you're doing,
he's authentically curious about it, and you are the most interesting person that he's ever spoken to. Yeah. Like immediately. That's powerful. Whatever you're doing, it is, he's authentically curious about it, and you are the most interesting. But you no doubt didn't mind that women were talking to your dad.
That's fine.
They couldn't help it.
If you're a young boy.
They just couldn't help it.
I know what they're going to do.
They're powerless.
What's his name?
Larry.
Larry.
Great name for him.
Larry Schultz.
Were your parents separated at the point you started noticing this?
And if so, do you think that's why?
Well, yeah, I was on my probably second stepdad by this point.
Well, your mom must have been hot.
Yes, she's attractive.
To get to three.
To get to three.
Oh, she didn't stop there.
I know, there's a fourth.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the fourth.
And there's a dude currently trying to marry her, which is good for her, because she's 72.
What do you think that she's still got it?
Yeah, how did?
What's her appeal?
No.
No.
What do you think she's so good,
how does she still get a many guys go?
Well, she's a very cool woman.
She's a fucking gangster.
She like left my dad, was a single mom,
had all these terrible husbands,
built a business that was successful, built
her own house. She's like attractive and she's smart and she's a phenom, especially, you
know, she was three months pregnant at her senior prom with my brother. Wow. You know,
at 18 in the seventies. And so the expectations for her versus what she went and did, she's like a very
impressive human being. So I get why guys have fallen in love with her, but I also think she
suffered from something I see endlessly with like the very famous women I interview, which is like,
fucking good luck. I feel terrible for them. There's dudes are attracted to this shiny,
incredible thing. And then the second they're with that incredible, shiny thing, they're threatened by it and they want to destroy it.
And so, like, whereas a dude gets famous and rich and his options just go like this, for women it just goes like this, like, you know, I hope you find a dude that's confident enough to let you be shiny and be the breadwinner and not be an asshole and try to destroy you.
And I think my mother on her own level suffered from that. I think guys were like, oh my God, this woman's a fucking baller. confident enough to let you be shiny and be the breadwinner and not be an asshole and try to destroy you.
And I think my mother on her own level suffered from that.
I think guys were like, oh my God,
this woman's a fucking baller.
Yeah, men's self-worth is so much in career success.
It's like, I think if a woman was with a guy
that was considered more beautiful than her,
it would really fuck with her
because her self-worth is often put in looks.
You know what I mean?
Well, I think it just kind of operates like that.
Like if my wife was making tons more money than me,
I would feel a little threatened,
because I buy into that traditional model of what Amanda spoke of.
I had that for sure.
So my wife, for many years, made a lot more money than me.
And I think I grew up with a very powerful woman.
But now, but now, everything's fine.
Everything's fine now.
I'll tell you what happened though. I do think of myself, like I was raised by a single woman.
Do you forward her the articles?
I will tell you the real on this.
I'll tell you the real on this.
He's like, nah, she sees it.
I'm totally fine with her being powerful.
I have no envy of her. She's much more famous than me.
All that stuff doesn't bother me one bit.
But yeah, knowing she made more money than me,
still I would be like, this isn't... I'm supposed to be making...
Like, I'm very stuck in that.
Like, oh my God, I'm supposed to be making more money.
This is embarrassing.
You feel embarrassed by it.
Of course.
I just couldn't shake where I...
Like, the water I grew up in.
What other people will think of you or what she will think of you.
Not her. Um, yeah, what other people will think.
What I think I'm supposed to be like that was, I,
that was still one I had. I couldn't shake.
What happened though is we had kids and at some point,
luckily I was like, oh right, this is
for all of us. Like, fuck yeah, go make as much as you can because this is for these little girls now.
It's not even about me. And I got over it before I started making a bunch of money.
All right guys, let's take a break for a second. We got some big ass games coming up this week.
Obviously we have Vikings versus Texans, Eagles versus Saints, but most
importantly we have the Cowboys and the Giants. Now I know Akash likes to pretend like he
no longer cares about the Cowboys because they've broken his heart. For so many years,
even though he got a bunch of fucking championships early in his life, how many does he need to
get? He's spoiled if you really ask me. The point is, Akash right now still cares about those cowboys.
He doesn't want to admit it, but he still deeply cares.
And when the Giants jam it down their throats,
it is gonna make him suffer, which I'm sure Alex, myself,
and any other native New Yorker that supports the Giants
is gonna be very, very, very excited about.
Ah, Andrew doesn't know I also recorded ads. Hey, Andrew, I don't give a fuck if the Cowboys lose.
I didn't even know what time they played last week, to be honest with you. They could suck my whole
dick. I still don't have a sports team. I'm going to be honest, I'll probably root for the Cowboys
if I happen to catch a game, but I ain't really looking for them. Anyway.
Regardless of who you're rooting for, I hope it's the Giants, you can bet on these games and any other upcoming NFL game on stake.
Now this segment is brought to you by Stake, the leader in global betting and U.S. social
casinos.
Bet on top sports and political events and use the promo code FLAGRANT for your welcome
bonus now back to the show.
Do you think you had stronger views of what a man is supposed to be because you, again,
you didn't have your dad in your life and that's like, Oh, this is what a man
should be. Oh, I'm the most cliche. Like here was the playbook to be a man where
I grew up is like jump shit, drink too much, do too many drugs, try to fuck a
lot. Yeah. Fight. And I was like, yes, I'll do all of them. Like somebody tell
me I'm a man. Yeah. So yes, I think I was really susceptible to like
whatever the dudes around me were doing, I was going to show them I'm doing this shit. I can do
all this. What's the next thing we do to prove we're a man? So yeah, I think, you know. Because
you didn't feel masculine or because- Well, because I didn't have a dad at home going like,
Tiger, you were great today. You're in route to me.
I'm proud of you.
And I know it's modeling.
You had validation of another man.
It's a lack of modeling.
Yeah, I got a couple of step dads in the mix
where it's like I certainly wasn't gonna try
to be what they were all about.
I had an older brother.
He was five years older than me.
He was helpful.
I did virtually anything he did.
He saved my life in sixth grade.
He's like, listen, you're getting in the fucking,
you're shaving your sides.
You're gonna get bangs.
You're wearing skater clothes.
Go.
Gave me a full makeover.
And it worked.
Then I got to junior high and I was like, okay.
I got this, this is working now.
Yeah, you got it.
So I had him.
But yeah, I was just really quick to do anything that I thought was what you were supposed
to do to be a man.
What was the dumbest one you did?
Oh my, look at my hands, I'm like missing knuckles,
I got fucking metal in my, you know.
You were fighting a lot.
I'm an addict, yeah, fighting, and a full blown addict,
you know, crashing motorcycles, you know.
What's your best win in a fight?
Was there a David and Goliath one?
There is a best.
This is the worst when guys tell fight stories,
but I'm gonna do it.
My wife's like, this is so unattractive.
I'm like, I know.
But I'll just say the one that I liked the most,
which is I, after high school,
lived in downtown Detroit with three dudes.
And then I had moved to California.
And in my absence, I kept hearing about this dude, Reggie, who was hanging around the apartment
building a lot.
And they were hanging out with Reggie and everything was cool.
And they had watched Reggie knock a few dudes out along the way.
So the legend was kind of brewing about Reggie.
Well then Reggie stole Efe's bike from upstairs.
That was like strike number one.
Then Reggie stole my friend Aaron's wallet
out of the apartment.
He started stealing a lot of shit.
So I came home for Christmas,
and so all my friends are gathered at this old apartment,
and fucking Reggie walks through the door.
He's, and I'm like, it's, I gotta tell this dude
he can't be here anymore.
And none of the other guys are gonna tell him.
And it's funny, because it was a round table,
just like this, I'm sitting on the couch,
he walks through the door.
I step over this round table and I walk up and I go,
Reggie, you can't be in here.
He goes, I can't be in here.
I go, no man, you gotta go.
And as I'm saying, no man, you gotta go,
he fucking caught me.
I've never been hit by someone faster.
I just, I was chatting and then I had gone over
this exact coffee table, landed with one arm down
and I looked over and my then girlfriend staring at me.
She just watched this guy knock me over a table.
And in my mind, I'm like, I wanna go to bed right now.
I don't wanna deal with Eddie. And I'm like, I wanna go to bed right now. I don't wanna deal with Eddie Edison.
I'm like, everyone's watching, we're going.
And I got up and went over the fucking table
and then I got him in a headlock
and it was hockey punches for 45 seconds
and then everyone had to pull me off
and I just smoked Reggie.
And it was a real moment for me
when my girlfriend was staring at me like,
why are you gonna play this and my best friend's over here?
And I think that I only like that one
because I did not want to go back at Reggie.
Did Reggie ever want some revenge?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
What is even crazier, the element of the story
that's even crazier is that all happens,
he gets thrown out.
Now my best friend since I was 11, still my best friend,
we are fucking, he's the love of my life.
We are as close as two people can of my life. Like we are as close
as two people can be. Two daughters and a wife.
He was first though. He kind of lost his shit after that. Mind you, we're all hammered.
And he was like, I can't fucking believe I let Reggie do that. And he came unglued and
then Reggie was hanging out
downstairs like an hour later and then Aaron went
downstairs and then there was a round two with Reggie
and Aaron that I had to break up and it got a little scary.
Oh really?
Yeah, yeah, because he was fighting from a broken heart
at that point.
No.
No.
You gave him the courage.
Like he had, he had somehow let me down.
It was a dangerous place to be. Yeah. On the other side of Aaron and that's itch. You know, that's one that's maybe though
You know, it's funny
He still has that thing. I heard at the end of a pot, you know, you'll do the little recap
he got into a some guy in a plane guys being a dickhead I think and then
What did you say to him?
He said tell the story cuz it was I thought it was awesome that you're kind of like Hollywood elite so for you to say this to a guy on a plane pre TRT as far as
I know was pretty crazy.
It wasn't pre if you're talking about the thing that just happened it wasn't.
This is like a couple years ago you called the guy a fucking pussy is basically.
Oh yeah.
He said you're not gonna.
He said something like you're not gonna do anything about it because you're a fucking pussy and then I think Monica your co-host
Has been in this situation a few times my wife has been in this situation a few times
It's definitely a side of myself
I really have tried to and have for the most part gotten in back in the clock and the cage the closet
My trigger is bullies.
Can't stand bullies.
If I'm witnessing someone bullying someone else,
I just gotta get in the mix.
And I don't know if I'm remembering that one,
but this just happened.
This was more potentially queer suicide,
which is Amazon who owns Wondery,
whom I do New Deal is with,
they had asked me, would you come,
well, Amazon asked me, would you come down to South By
and do the panel for Roadhouse?
Yep.
And so I was like, yes, if I can interview Connor, which he's hard to get to.
Huge.
Yep.
So I kind of brokered this whole thing.
We do the panel.
That's its own very interesting experience because Connor's pretty hammered on stage
and I'm in that position of like,
I wanna make jokes for the audience
and I don't wanna get fucking killed real time
by Connor McGregor.
Ha ha ha.
Talk about the high wire act of like kinda doing comedy
and kinda there's an assassin next to you.
I'm like, Janine, I'm gonna ask you this question.
Connor's gonna answer though, as we know.
And I'm like, oh, is that too much?
Second in.
Yeah.
Any of the management.
I had done that panel and then we're flying out.
Monica and I are in first class and the guy in front of us,
it starts with his bags in front of his feet.
Everyone fucking knows you can't have your bag
in front of your feet in the front row.
There's no seat to tie.
And I'm like, this guy's acting like, you know,
and the flight attendant is like,
sir, can you put your bag up?
And he's like, I thought I might be able
to get that past you.
And she's like, okay, could you put your bag up?
And he's like, okay, you're gonna make me put my bag up.
And I'm just one row behind.
I'm like, oh my God, I hate this guy.
So he finally puts his bag up.
Then she's, would you like lunch?
What are the options?
Makes her read him the options.
And he goes, okay, a thigh.
So the chicken is a thigh.
Is that dark meat?
And I'm like, how long have you been eating chicken
that you don't fucking know that a thigh is dark meat?
Everyone knows, he's making her now say what dark meat.
So now I'm just like, I can't stand this guy.
Not even sounds that crazy. Am I wrong?
The bag things are probably yeah
Pretty normal sure, but then
We have a chicken thigh. Yeah. Oh you have a chicken thigh. Yeah, is that white meat or dark meat? It's a little let give you your fucking or do you want chicken or pasta? Yeah. Let her do the rest of it
Yeah, you. And then I get up to go to the bathroom
and he is just at his seat and I stand up
and clearly I need to go past him to get to the bathroom
and now he's just not getting over.
Right, so now at some point I'm like,
yeah, I'm just gonna walk right through him.
So I just kinda walk right through him
and I bump him with my shoulder.
He now knows that I don't like him,
I think that's clear.
I come back from the bathroom and now when I sit down,
he is turned and he's staring at me through the little divide.
And he's looking at me smiling
and I just stare at him like just staring staring staring
and he goes, you were great in that panel last night.
And I went, oh, oh, fuck, this guy's like high up at Amazon.
Why would he have been at this screening?
Oh my god, I'm fucked.
And then Monica's like, immediately like,
oh my God, this guy's probably high up at Amazon.
And so now I'm a little panicked
because I've been a real dick to him.
And then he turns around and he opens his computer.
And by luck, when he opened his computer,
I could see his name.
Like on the lock screen, it said his full name.
I quickly wrote it on my phone.
And then I looked it up. Thank
God he was just a lawyer. He was a lawyer of one of the actors in the movie. And of
course he was a lawyer. Yeah. So I don't think that's the story, but that was the most recent
one where Monica's like, you don't have to police everyone. Acting like an asshole in
public.
When's the last fight you got to do. Oh, like real big fight was probably 15 years ago.
Someone threw a guy through a huge drink at the windshield of my car while
Kristen and I were driving somewhere and we were really dressed up.
And then that was
unacceptable.
He's famous at this point.
He's 2009.
Oh, the guy was screaming, I'm going to sue you as I went back
to the car.
Like it was very clear what had happened.
You were going to sue you?
The wipers could have took care of you.
I thought the windshield, I actually thought the windshield had shattered.
It was just all the ice.
But it was one of those situations, the guy's crossing the street in front of Chateau Marmont.
And if you've been to LA, there's no crosswalk there.
It's like a twist in sunset.
And we're coming down the road and my lane is dead empty.
And the guy starts walking across, everything's fine, he's gonna have plenty of time,
but then he senses I'm not slowing down,
which I don't need to, he's got plenty of time.
So then he kinda steps back out into the road
and is like this, like I should be stopping,
he's not in a crosswalk or whatever.
So I don't slow down, I just kinda go around,
as I go around, he chucked this huge drink at the windshield
and I thought the windshield shattered.
So then it was just emergency brake was up
and I was exiting the vehicle before it stopped
and then it was in front of a newsstand.
There was like a ton of people watching.
They missed the whole drinks.
They just look up and I'm beating this guy up
on the sidewalk out of nowhere.
And then he's screaming, I'm gonna sue you
as I go back to the car.
And basically all this behavior mostly ended because Kristen said the most
profound thing to me, which is like, let it go. No,
never worked.
That's not her song.
It's a good reference. You nailed it, that's a 10.
No, she said, she goes,
you think that people that you love feel safe
because you'll protect them.
Like that's what you think is happening, right?
And I said, yeah, like you see your mom get beat up,
you see these things and like, yeah, my job is to
whoever I love, I'm going to protect. And she said, I feel
much more scared around you than I feel safe. I feel like
anything can happen. And I don't like that. Whoa. And I was like,
ooh, that's bad. That's not what I wanted to hear. That's not
what I thought. Yeah, it's the opposite That's not what I wanted to hear. That's not what I thought.
It's the opposite of what I thought I was providing.
And I really had to go like, oh, this whole thing, this story you have that people love this about you,
that you'll stick up for them, just makes them feel scared all the time.
I was like, I gotta, I gotta end this.
So there's been like some mild dustups, but also the police were involved in that one,
and I really did think I was gonna get sued
for a bunch of money, and then luckily,
what he had done was a felony,
and what I had done was a misdemeanor, luckily.
So you're just wiped out.
Yeah, don't throw shit at moving cars in California.
That's a no-go.
If someone does throw something at your car,
then you can beat the shit out of them.
That's true.
And that'll be a misdemeanor.
It's a free test.
Don't throw shit at cars,
but definitely respond with violence.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Are you guys the only ones
who are friends that are still married?
No, no, no.
We have a bunch of friends that are still married.
Or you're, you know,
are you the most?
In front of the camera friends, put it that way.
Yeah.
I wanna know your fantasy is,
just be honest with me,
of what that is for me
Like you think I'm like Hank we're hanging out with a ton of
Celebrities and Brad Jelena and whoever willing to foes drag
That was a rare and exciting one-off for both of us
an exciting one-off. For both of us.
For all of us, I would hope.
Were you as excited to meet him as I was?
Dude, he's great.
He's the best.
Oh my God, so I had him on the show twice.
I had also met him one time at a camping event.
But briefly, I don't really know him, but I was in Austin.
I was there for work, and then I had a few days off.
And then you and I are DMing, and I decide, well,
I'm going to see where he's playing, because you just done LA, and I had misseding, and I decide, well, I'm gonna see where he's playing,
because you just done LA, and I had missed it,
and I felt bad, and then lo and behold,
you're performing in you while I'm in Austin.
So then I hit you up, and I'm like,
oh my God, I'm gonna be in Austin,
I wanna come see your show.
You're like, great, how many tickets?
I'm like, bro, I think it's just me.
Like, I was so embarrassed to go,
like, I think I'm gonna be solo at your show.
But then I don't know why, I was like, I think I'm gonna be solo at your show. But then I don't know why I was like,
I'm gonna fucking ask Matthew McConaughey.
He lives in Austin.
We got along great on the podcast.
So I kind of cold called McConaughey through emails,
through his publicist and our booker of the show.
And then we start emailing and I invite him to your show.
He doesn't know what I'm inviting him to.
And he sends me an email and it's got the green light logo.
He gave me a green light, like, let's do this, let's go to the show.
So it's basically a blind date with McConaughey, but this really funny thing happened really
quickly.
So I had invited him, which is kind of like the alpha move.
I asked him out. Yeah.
But then he was like, where are you staying?
I'm going to pick you up. What time?
I'm going to be at seven.
Good. You're on four seasons.
I'll be there. Seven o'clock.
Pick you up. I'll be in a white like a navigator look for me.
And I'm like, OK, really good impression.
Hold on. I'll get better as I get into it. So I'm like, okay, right. Really good impression. Hold on, I'll get better as I get into it. So I'm like, oh wow, now he's picking me up.
He's outplaying you now.
And then he goes, so what are these tickets?
What do you got set up?
Because we can do a suede if you want.
And I'm like, look, whatever thing you wanna do,
like if that sounds better than probably
what I'm gonna get, like let's do that, right?
So he's like, okay, great, I'll pick you up. So now he's got his own tickets for us. It started with me having tickets and so
It's it's such a dream come true
I come down into the lobby of the Four Seasons and I walk out and sure enough
There's a white Lincoln Navigator and he's outside. He's he's like he's leaning against car. he's talking about like, who's coming through here?
Okay, they saw him, we got sorority with Kona,
we got the mom's hair, he's holding the car,
fucking total McConaughey style,
totally living up to my dream of what he is.
He's just so happy, so fucking comfortable
on his own skin.
We get in the car, again, we don't know each other
all that well, we're on the way there.
And he goes, I'm excited to go here.
I designed this arena we're going to.
Built this place.
I put together some private equity money and we got the state of Texas involved and we
built this thing.
It's gorgeous.
I haven't been.
And I'm like, I had it built.
Hold on a second.
I asked you out, but now you picked me up.
Now we're going to say, also, you designed the arena we're going to.
Like, I'm excited.
I'm excited.
I'm excited. I asked you out, but now you picked me up.
Now we're going to say, also you designed the arena.
We're going to.
Like, and you kept that.
What's so cool is you kept that quiet
all the way to where we are on the way there.
Like when I first said, if it was me,
I'm a guy that you want to, I'd be like, yeah, let's go.
I designed that place.
I designed my arena.
Yeah.
Yeah, come to my arena.
Oh yeah, I set my arena, I knew that.
Cause I designed the place. Like you would have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who would come to my arena? Oh yeah, it's that my arena, I knew that, cause I designed the place.
Like you would have heard about that
long before you even met me.
So this is coming out on the car ride.
I'm like, my God, this guy fucking built this arena.
We get there, the whole staff's so excited that we're there.
He has built this place he's never been.
So, you know, and we go up to this suite and he goes,
he goes, oh, this is great, this is great.
What's number one problem when you're watching game, you watch some kind of event,
right?
Bars back hair actions up here.
So what do you want?
Look at this.
There's a fucking bar in the seats.
I'm gonna even bench it.
I'm like, this guy is so fucking cool.
He's one of the few people that guys and girls equally have a crush on for
different reasons.
Oh, he's so like, I want to just feel like he feels for a day.
I want to walk around.
I had no clue you guys weren't like besties.
Oh no.
So you're going to like the end of the story that you don't know about, which is car ride
there is fine.
It's like, it's good.
It's a good first date car ride.
But then, and this was tactically a blunder which is now we're just watching stand-up. We can't really talk
Yeah, so now we're just sitting next to each other. We don't really know each other and
We ended up having a great time. You were great. And then you were fucking what was a relief to me is like he loved you
Okay. Yeah. Yeah, he loved you. What You got into a certain thing about talking to your wife
and we were both like, oh, oh, oh.
That's exactly what it's like.
And so we had a really fun moment.
And then what was cool about him was,
I know I need to go say hi to you.
It would be rude if I don't go say hi to you.
But also I don't know his baseline,
like how much he wants to be mobbed.
And so I'm like, I'm gonna have to tell him at some point,
we gotta stick around and I gotta go say hi to Andrew.
But he goes, you probably wanna say hi to your buddy,
should we go backstage?
And I'm like, oh my God, this guy's a mensch.
He offered.
Yeah, so then we go down, we hang out with all you guys.
That's great.
You just start interviewing him.
Immediately.
Immediately.
What are your political aspirations?
I'm like, I would have never.
I'm like, I would have never.
Ah!
Ah!
Ah!
Ah!
Ah!
Ah!
Ah!
That is exactly what happened.
Yeah, right?
That is exactly.
All of a sudden, he's like got him talking
about his political aspirations.
I'm like, I would have never asked that on a first date,
but now I'm learning this,
cause Shultz went right. I'm so bad at small talk, that's so painful to get.
No, I was actually thinking, honest to God.
So I have to ask the questions I'm really curious about
because then it comes across more authentic and pure to me.
And you are super curious if he'll run for office.
I want, he mentioned it, he was talking about it.
Yeah, we would actually, I think, as a population,
love that.
I think Austin Bush would like it in the heartbeat.
Oh my God, yes, and that'll pay off here in a second.
And we thought you'd always be just the beginning.
So anyway.
So we're doing that.
You're pretty much on a date with him now.
Now you have talked to him way more
than I've talked to him.
Right? Yeah.
And then a bunch of people come in, right?
Like it's just a-
We held the room for you two,
cause I was like, I don't want them to be,
I'm thinking, I'm protecting you guys. I'm like, okay, let's just hang for a little bit, I don't want them to be, I'm thinking, I'm protecting you guys.
I'm like, okay, let's just hang for a little bit.
I don't want people to come in and then.
You don't want him to have to take 55 photographs.
How would you have to take 55 photographs?
Whether that was an issue or not, who knows?
But once a bunch of people got in there,
I thought, well, he was such, he was so cool.
He came, he hung for a while,
he was, he answered all your questions.
All of them.
I was grilling him.
Yeah, you were. Matt Howard.
He was in the hot seat.
1987.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Is this legend or is this real?
You were like Larry King all of a sudden.
I love it.
So we're leaving there, and I'm like,
that was a lot of fun.
Also, we didn't really connect,
there was no magic moment.
We didn't like get into a good groove of a conversation.
So I'm like, it's a little bittersweet.
We're leaving, we're walking in the car,
and all of a sudden he goes, you want to go to steak?
And I go, fuck yes.
Let's get all the steaks.
Let's get so many steaks.
Also, there's nothing I'd like to do more
than eat a fucking steak.
Kahn had given me a steak and I'm here.
Yeah, he said like, are you hungry?
Or it was like, we could eat if you're up for a steak.
So I was like, you want to go steak?
And I'm like, yes, let's fucking get a steak.
So we get in the car, it's like Domingo,
where should we go to get a steak?
What's the best place right now?
I forget the name of the place, it is phenomenal. And Domingo's like, well, you gotta go here. They the best place right now. I forget the name of place. It is phenomenal and Domingo's well
You got to go here. They close at 10
30 whatever it was we had five minutes. He goes. Oh my let's see if they he starts calling and I think
Probably be fine. If you show up here
sure enough we walk in the
host
Almost goes in the like anaphylactic shock.
He is, being with McConaughey and Austin's like
being with Mickey Mouse in Disneyland.
Yeah.
Is there Mickey Mouse, right?
So they're all so excited he's there.
It's fun to watch.
And he's like, can we still eat?
And she's like, oh yeah, anywhere you wanna sit.
He's like, oh, let's sit back there.
We're walking and he goes,
he tells me, you like ribeye? I go, yeah, I love ribeye. He's like, let's sit back there. We're walking. He goes, see, there's a man, you like ribeye?
I go, yeah, I love ribeye.
It's my favorite.
He goes, good, you like skirt steak?
I go, yeah, I like skirt steak.
And he goes, good, good, do you like,
what was the vegetable?
He goes, you like salad?
I'm like, yeah, I love salad.
He goes, great.
So he's just ordered for us.
He goes, okay, here's what we're gonna have.
And he threw down the whole order. And I was like, yeah, I'm really on a date with him. He just ordered for us. He goes, okay, here's we're gonna have and he threw down the whole order and I was like, yeah
I'm really on a date with him. He just ordered for me
And then we sat down
The food was incredible and we had like a full two-hour
Like fell in love really awesome.. Yeah it was so much fun and
uh yeah it was kind of a perfect night. If you get a chance go on a date with Matthew
McConnagy. Yeah. Alright guys here's the deal we are going to do a sober October challenge.
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Now let's get back to the show.
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Did you get a second date or? So, what then paralleled this perfectly was that
I also had Woody Harrelson on the show,
and I got along really well too.
And I had both their emails, so I sent the two of them
an email saying, you guys are fucked, I'm joining this.
I'm joining this.
Woody's awesome.
Whether you like it or not,
and they were both very receptive to it.
So, hopefully they'll be up to three ways. I'm related, I think Woody's awesome. Whether you like it or not, and they were both very receptive to it. So, hopefully they'll be up for three-way.
I'm relating, I think Woody's maybe the most underrated
actor in Hollywood in my entire lifetime.
He is so fucking good.
Comedy and drama.
Sort of different.
It's hard to do both at that level.
He's the original Walton Goggins.
Do you guys like Walton Goggins?
He's my new obsession.
Who's Walton Goggins?
Righteous Gemstones, he's Uncle Baby Billy.
And then Fallout, he's the Nose-less cowboy.
Oh, he's phenomenal in Fallout!
He's phenomenal. He's also even, and I say this as someone who worships Danny McBride,
he's even funnier than Danny McBride on Righteous Gemstones.
He was also in Vice Principals with Danny.
I always hear about this shot.
He's at the same time the best dramatic and best comedian
alive right now. That fallout show is phenomenal. And look at him. Yeah. He's so fucking interesting.
Yeah. The mask. The mask. Remember? I do. I do. Maybe he'll tackle that. Also I follow him on
Instagram and he's always like, he's got, I can't pull off a flowy button-up.
I don't know if you guys can where you do a button-up.
No chance.
And you got a button-up.
I'm sure you can pull it off.
I cannot do it.
I don't know what's happening with my body type.
But you're too big for that.
Like it's like you're bragging.
I look stupid if I'm in a-
Yeah, because you're jacked.
Okay, thank you.
You have so many muscles.
Your body is so sculpted and beautiful. Oh my God, tell me more about it. I'm in a... Yeah, because you're jacked. Okay. Thank you. You need to get so many muscles.
Your body is so sculpted and beautiful.
Oh my God, tell me more about it.
I'm just saying.
What's your favorite part of my body?
It's your weight.
It can contain probably chest and...
More subtle.
Yeah, but the bodies are pretty good too.
Well, listen, I was...
It's too direct when you flirt.
Oh, sorry.
Okay.
I'm going to get better at that.
What are your political aspirations?
I didn't act.
Do I open with that?
Yes.
It was pretty quick.
I wouldn't do that. It was a couple softballs then announce your candidacy here live on the ice.
You broke the ice for their date. Oh yeah, maybe I did do that.
It was great because again, I had all this anxiety about how he's going to do in this situation.
Again, I don't know what his comfort level is. Does he want to be around a lot of people? Does he not want to be?
I don't know. I don't even know the guy.
I'm on a blind date with him.
How quick, like, when you're on a blind date with a guy,
how, like, how quickly will you
share your sense of humor?
Are you like assessing them or are you just going?
This is very name droppery and I'm owning that,
but it's really perfectly related to your question,
which is, you know, I interview all these people
and I get along with a ton of them really well.
You guys must deal with this.
You're like, who of these people am I gonna maybe try
to have a friendship with?
I also have two kids and I'm busy.
Like, who's got time for this or that?
But like, you're constantly meeting people.
You're like, yeah, I would love to be friends
with this person.
So recently Jack Black was on.
He and I got along so fucking well.
We're neighbors and we're DMing and then I'm like,
I was gonna ask him if he wants to get a hamburger maybe.
So I asked him, you wanna get a hamburger?
He's like, yeah, let's get a hamburger.
So we decided where we're gonna go.
And we had scheduled it like two.
Does sound less cool than steak.
Yeah, shit is steak.
Steak and salad is that.
But he was saying hamburger-gazy a lot,
which is very Jack Black.
Got it, got it.
He's like, let's get a classic hamburgese
at Yucca's Mexican restaurant.
But it was like two weeks out we made this plan.
So I put it in my calendar and then day of,
we're supposed to have lunch at noon,
day of, probably 9 a.m., I send him a DM on Instagram
that just goes like, hey, confirming we're meeting at noon at Yucca's.
So noon comes along and I look
and I have no response from him for like three hours.
And I'm like, I'm going up to Yucca's.
He's not gonna be there.
Like I'm gonna get stood up.
So I'm at Yucca's like 10 minutes early.
I feel awkward.
So I go into a liquor store
and walk in circles for a while.
Then I come back out.
Then I'm like, okay, I can sit in front of you,
because I feel like I'm on a date with a woman,
to be honest with you.
I'm like, I gotta look cool when you walk in.
I'm like, I'm four seconds away
from grabbing a bottle of Boon's farm.
Why'd you start drinking again?
Jackpot was late for a hamburger game.
I had no choice!
What, is I gonna remain sober?
So anyways, I go back out.
Now I'm sitting in front of Yungas by myself
and I'm feeling really stupid and I'm also thinking
okay, well not only is he not coming,
he will eventually read that DM
and like three days feel really guilty
and apologize what's gonna be my move then.
I'm already planning that out, right?
And I decide in that moment, I'm gonna say,
I cried for an hour and a half.
And then I even go to like, my wife's gonna ask,
how was your lunch with Jack Black?
And I'm gonna have to admit I got stood up.
So I'm like already planning who I have to tell
I got stood up to.
And all of a sudden I feel someone grab my thing
and it's Jack Black and he's in his like military hat and he's like, let's go, we're going over here. And all of a sudden I feel someone grab my thing and it's Jack Black and he's in his like military head.
He's like, what's going on over here?
And all of a sudden we leave Yucca's
and he takes me to another restaurant
and we sit down there and I go,
I thought you weren't gonna show up.
He goes, I knew you weren't gonna show up.
I told my wife when I was leaving, he's not gonna show up.
And when he says, he sends me an apology text,
I'm gonna tell him, too bad, that was your one chance.
And I go, oh, I went even further.
I was making up excuses to people
that knew I was having lunch with you.
And so our first 10 minutes was owning the fact
that we were both certain we were gonna get stood up
and that we had crafted text messages to each other
and other people we told.
I was like, this is awesome.
You're jack-whacking, you're insecure, and I should not be insecure. was like, this is awesome. You're Jack Black and you're insecure,
and I should not be insecure,
and we're both terribly insecure,
we were gonna get stood up on this date,
and now it's heaven.
That DM that morning, as you're telling me this story,
I'm going through my emotions,
and the day of you're like, he's not gonna show up.
I know exactly what you're thinking.
He's Jack Black! He's got things to do! As if you don't. He's gonna like, he's not gonna show. I know exactly what you're thinking. He's Jack Black.
He's got things to do.
As if he don't forget.
He probably is so artistic,
he probably is probably terrible with his schedule.
He'll build up all the justifications for why he can't.
He wears tie-dye, those people are good at schedule-ing.
Of course he's not gonna meet with me.
Why didn't he think you were gonna show,
since you sent the message?
I mean, that's what's adorable,
is like even Jack Black thinks he's gonna get stood up.
We all think we're...
Yeah.
Except for probably McConaughey.
McConaughey knew I was gonna be there on time.
He knew you weren't at stake.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think that's part of what's so alluring about him is one thing that makes me feel
better about being insecure.
There's been some very powerful people here and I'll see things where I'm like, oh, they
were being insecure.
And you realize everybody feels that.
And then you see a guy like Makane
who just seems comfortable in his own skin.
And that's such a superpower that you're like, wow,
that guy's fucking awesome.
I wanna be like that guy.
Yes, yes, it's very enviable.
His comfort level in his own skin.
Unbelievable.
Yeah.
It seems like, and this is not a judgment,
like he can enjoy it.
He has figured out how to enjoy that attention.
And what it really boils down to too
is if you feel worthy of it or not.
That's the crux of it all.
Because I had this experience where I started therapy
two and a half years ago for real.
I had done couples therapy, but I had not really had a,
like I'm gonna do this once a week
and I'm gonna do this for a while.
And that therapist said to me,
because the deal with Spotify was very large
and I didn't, I wasn't really ready for that,
which sounds weird to say, but I just was like, you shouldn't
get this.
Someone's going to take this away.
You don't deserve this.
All these things.
Imposter syndrome?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Big time.
I have that, yeah.
And he said, look, in life sometimes you will make a huge choice and that'll enact change and growth.
Or one can land on your lap
and you can either grow into it or you will lose it.
And he's like, so you have to grow into this
and you have to accept that this is real
and that you deserve it or you will lose it.
And I was like, oh, that's so weird to think about.
But over the course of working with him for a year,
I would have had a whole explanation
for you as to why I don't want to take a picture with somebody at a restaurant.
And I have good points I could make about that.
And I would say like, well, they don't even really want to meet me.
They just want a picture for their thing so they can get attention.
And I'm not terribly sympathetic to that.
You know, I had all these, they're logical.
That wasn't really what was going on. Because as I started feeling more and more worthy of that attention and praise
from strangers, lo and behold, I didn't mind the interaction as much. I was like, yeah,
I'm happy to do this. I found myself offering, my wife and I were on a flight and I said
to the pilots, I was like, I don't know if you guys wanna pitch her together, like we're happy to do that.
And they were like, oh my God,
you guys are the first people to ever offer.
And I was like, oh, I loved that.
Oh, it had nothing to do with those other things.
I just, when you came up to me
and gave me attention and approval,
I didn't think I deserved it.
Yeah.
I was like, I feel-
So you retrofit all the justifications on it.
It just reminded me that I didn't deserve it
when I don't like that feeling,
so I'd rather just not do it at all.
I think there's an advantage being a standup
in these types of situations,
and I think being a podcaster.
Yes.
Because when you're a character and you're an actor,
you know that people love that character.
They like Ross from Friends.
They want a picture with Ross.
They don't want the guy who's acting as Ross.
Yes.
And with Tom Cruise, like, yeah, he's so famous,
but I'm in love with Maverick.
I don't really know anything about Tom Cruise.
And that can definitely curate this imposter syndrome,
which is like, does anybody really like,
nobody really knows me,
why do they even want a picture with me?
Yeah
When you're sharing your life as you do on the pod and people feel really connected with it and they want a picture you
Yeah, it's me
Definition the the podcast has been what has allowed me to accept it
Yeah, because even if people would come up to me and say I love idiocracy. Yeah
I go that's Mike Judge's compliment.
Like, that movie, that movie, and you love it
because of Mike Judge.
I got to be in it, and I'm lucky, but it's not my...
Parenthood, that's not my compliment.
That's Jason Kadem's compliment.
And I would always have whoever's compliment it was,
but it never was mine.
I think a lot of... I would imagine a lot of actors
go through that specifically because
they understand what it is to write and direct a movie and how different that is to act in
a movie.
And not to say that it's not, there aren't actors that are incredibly talented.
There are.
Oh yeah, yeah.
But if you follow directors that you really care about and writers you really care about,
you'll tend to find a trend where you really enjoy all the works.
If you just follow an actor, you'll be like,
oh, I didn't really like that one as much.
Yeah, in the best case scenario as an actor,
you can not suck in things that suck.
That's the high water part.
You're right, 100%.
That was Burt Reynolds' kind of defining quality.
And he ended up getting a chip on his shoulder
at the height of his career, which was a bummer, which was, and he said, I have, I have,
I'm a Burt Reynolds super fan and I have his playboy interview from like 79,
where he has been the biggest movie star for eight of the last 10 years,
almost unparalleled. And he's mad.
He's never gotten nominated for an Oscar. And he said, look,
Dustin Hoffman's in this movie with this great script
and this great director,
Smoking the Banner was a 30-page outline.
Like, what I did in that, and he's right!
On some level, he's right.
He can start with nothing and deliver you
the biggest movie of 1977, that is,
but you gotta shut the fuck up about that.
You gotta just enjoy being the biggest movie star. Actually, the Trouble Bird Burt movies and he's like he's the coolest guy on the screen but like he
kind of is that in everything. Burt or? Burt. Whatever I've seen. I've seen Longest Yard. I was,
I didn't finish it. I was rewatching Smoking the Band and Netflix literally took it off the next
day. But how old are you? I'm 40. 40? Yeah. Yeah. I'm about to turn 50.
Smoking the Man It was, I mean that was the movie.
Yeah.
If you could grow up and drive a Trans Am around for,
like even in the movie,
Sally Field asks him, what do you do?
And he goes, I show off.
That's his fucking job.
Yeah.
His job is to do donuts in a Trans Am
and embarrass the law enforcement trying to catch him.
As a kid I was like, that's what I want to do. I want to be the band.
But about getting recognized, I always say this about you. You're the best I've seen at being comfortable being yourself.
I feel there's still like a pressure to be as nice as possible and whatever.
And then I'm like, I will do that, but I don't want to be here too long because I feel like this is a lot of pressure on me.
He's from the Geico days, 2014, 2015.
I would look at him, I'd be like,
this guy's so fucking comfortable
just being himself with these people.
And I've always admired that.
I think it's the stand-up.
It's like, if you like me firm, stand-up.
That's something that I'm proud of and I work hard on.
And I at least know that you're appreciating a thing
that I've created.
You have total ownership over it.
Yeah, I do too, but I'm still like,
hey, this is a lot. It's also funny
in Zeta too because you're right.
Like you ask yourself, I remember watching comedians
in cars getting coffee in Seinfeld with Galifianakis.
People are filming them and that's annoying.
There's a lot of layers to it.
One is like, you don't have control.
Well, I'm someone who likes control.
And I also don't like if a dude's doing something
and I've made it clear to that person, especially a dude,
I don't like this and you're still doing it.
It triggers something for me that's like,
well, you think you can dominate me
or you can ignore what I'm saying.
So again, step down, so there's that baggage.
Then there's just the, you don't have control.
Like okay, five people want a pitcher, that's fine.
But if the rest of the people in the restaurant
just see someone getting their,
they don't even fucking know who you are.
But now they want in, and then there's a feeding frenzy.
Like I've seen this with my wife.
Well that's just very uncomfortable and a tad bit scary
and you've just lost control of your environment.
So that's all fine and dandy.
But Seinfeld says to Galifianakis,
he's like, you're really upset about this.
He goes, but it happened and it's over.
And it was five minutes.
Like he really frames it.
Clearly a dude who's had a lot of experience
getting comfortable with it.
And at the end of the day, I just had to ask myself like,
well, who do I admire when I see them deal with it?
And it's always the people that are that way.
That are chill about it.
I don't admire the guy that's got the boundaries
and is good at it.
Yeah, I don't wanna be that guy ever.
Cause you lose, by the way,
you feel bad when you're that way.
I have been rude to people,
particularly once we had kids, like I still, you can't take once we had kids like I still
You can't take pictures of my kids and I don't like you film on so that that still gets a little trigger
But at the end of the day, even if I tell them
You know, I'm nice. I'll be please delete the photo of my kid
But then I just feel bad afterwards like I'm feeling bad. They feel bad Everyone feels a everybody. Versus if I go out of my way and be nice,
I actually walk away and I go like,
yeah, yeah, I like myself better when I have that reaction.
Yeah, the boundary thing I'm not big on.
How do you play when you're at a social function
and you see someone like a hero of yours
that's way more, like that's super successful,
you're like, holy shit, this guy's here.
Like, do you go up to him and say, what's up?
Like specifically when you were younger in Hollywood.
No, I never would do that. In fact, I've been around Bill Murray
three times. He and Letterman are my gods. And I'm like, I don't ever want to have an interaction
with him until he wants to have one with me. It's not going to happen, but there are some people I
was around and I waited long enough and then they did want to talk to me. It's not going to happen. But there are some people I was around and I waited long enough
and then they did want to talk to me. And that's just I don't want the interaction
or they're trying to get away from me.
I'd rather just look at them and not have that.
Do you ever have my ego?
Do you ever a moment where you met someone that you really admire
and you're like, oh, fuck, I wish I didn't that he's not who I looked up to
or admired or never meet your heroes kind of moment.
That's a good question.
I would have to give a name at that point probably.
I mean, I would just be, you know.
I can just say that like,
I had been around Brad Pitt a couple times.
Yeah.
And I would not say a word
because I am so in love with Brad Pitt, it's insane.
Yeah.
And then through a crazy course of events, he did talk to me at some point. And I was like,
oh, here we go. I'm glad I, oh, really funny one was Stern. Kimmel had a party for Howard Stern,
as he does, right? He comes to LA and Kimmel always has this great party. And Chris and I were lucky
enough to get invited to one of those. And then, And then by luck had it that like two weeks later,
I ended up being on stern for the first time.
And he goes, yeah, I'm seeing that you were
at this party Kimmel threw for me, but you didn't say hi.
And I go, well, yeah, I was like trying to be the hot girl
at the party that's like ignoring you.
And hopefully you'd be intrigued
to come start talking to me.
He goes like, well well that didn't work
I didn't even know who you were
Yeah, that's the risk it runs
Probably could have met you but I was like I'll wait. There's a you know, Norm MacDonald to put out this book
I think it was released may before he died or maybe was after I'm not exactly sure but there was this excerpt in the book
I'm pretty sure was but there was this excerpt in the book I'm pretty sure it was Norm's and he talked about like how lucky he was being famous it
was interesting perspective because like you could look at a guy like Norm was
just so hilarious yeah it you you could see him having a
perspective on fame that is very like critical misanthropic or something yeah yeah
yeah and he was it wouldn't be punk rock enough. Exactly.
But I thought it was great.
He goes, for the last 40 years, whatever it is, I got the best version of everyone I met.
Every person that came up to me was happy.
They were excited.
They were on their best behavior.
And like, you grew up in, I mean, you were from Detroit.
Like, you spent some time in LA.
Like, when people are not famous, they treat you like shit in the fucking way.
And the fact that when people approach you,
there's a smile, there's excitement,
and then a little picture that you give to them,
they walk away, they're like,
holy shit, I just,
I think a lot of times,
if we don't reflect on how lucky we are
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Well two things I read an interview with Owen Wilson again in Playboy and he had a line on there.
And he had a lot in there. It's the article.
It's the article.
It really is the article for you.
It was.
It wasn't raunchy enough for me to masturbate to.
I had other material that I looked at for that, but then I really was there for the
interviews.
They were the best ever.
But Owen was in an interview.
I've memorized like half of this interview in Playboy.
He said so many funny things.
But one of them was exactly that.
He said, the guy asked like, do you mind getting recognized? And he goes, well, you know, you gotta see
that you're pretty much like where you go, you're giving people like the greatest part
of their day just by being there. It's kind of cool, you know? And I was like, oh, that's
great. The question he answered that I think is so oh and funny is he said,
do you have any tricks about getting out of speeding tickets?
He goes, yeah, what I try to do when I get pulled over is just start talking to the guy and
make a couple jokes and be friendly and what you're really heading towards is that moment where he just looks up and goes,
look at us on the side of this road playing our roles in this crazy game called life.
That's where he's trying to get to,
is where you both just laugh at the comedy
of this crazy game called life.
Oh my God, he had also just read like a book
on dog breeding and he like recited half of this book in the
interview.
In the interview?
Yes.
But I do want to add, in the interview, half of it is about this dog breeding.
Was he promoting Marley and Me?
No, unrelated to Marley and Me, but great dig.
But back to the people treating you like shit, this is a funny thing I have with my wife,
which is we have, our youngest daughter is my wife.
She's charisma on a thousand, everywhere she goes, everyone falls in love with her.
And I said, after I watched Delta go through life for about six years, I was laying in
bed with Kristen and I was like, you have no fucking clue what life on planet Earth
is like. Wow.
You don't know.
Wait, wait, wait.
Because this was you growing up.
Just a pretty super cat man.
Everywhere you went, everyone was happy to see you.
Yeah.
You go to Starbucks, they can't wait to ask you your order.
I'm like, you don't have any.
Now I know.
Now that I'm watching this little person just float through life with this butterfly of charisma,
I'm now realizing you don't know what's happening
in the real world.
Most people hate you upon seeing you
and they don't want to help you
and they don't want to be inconvenienced
and that's life on planet Earth.
But she has no clue that that's part of-
And when you said that, what was her reflection?
She just laughed.
That is so interesting, like the social part of life,
which is probably the most anxiety inducing to most people,
there are some people that can kind of float
through that effortlessly.
McConaughey is one of them.
For whatever reason, he is comfortable being McConaughey.
And Kristin, for her to get famous wasn't some huge,
like you see a lot of dudes, particularly dudes
in Hollywood, they weren't social butterflies
in high school.
Women did not like them. And now all of a sudden, they weren't social butterflies in high school. Women did not like them.
And now all of a sudden, they have all this access
and people like them and then there's this distrust
and then there's this weird misogyny that comes about.
It's like a cauldron of grossness.
Whereas Kristen was like, wait, everyone likes me now?
Yeah, everyone has always liked me.
Now there's just more people.
I think that was a very easy transition for her.
Dude, you're right about the misogyny that comes from it because it's that same imposter syndrome.
I don't deserve it.
Now they like me.
It can't be for me.
It must be for the success.
You don't really like me.
I resent you for liking this thing.
Yes.
Oh, man.
And it happens with billionaires.
How do you build a relationship on that. By the way, this was our conversation
with McConaughey. I'm like, you're one of the guys that this has just been consistent.
Yeah. The stage has just gotten bigger and bigger. Right, exactly. The guys get a lot
of money, especially like the tech guys. They want to be in the social scene. Yeah. But
tech guys, they get a lot. But the fact that people only are inviting them to things or
even come to their parties because they have the big Hollywood mansion.
I know, and they purposely got it for that reason.
And they resent that it's working.
But it doesn't fill the hole.
Yeah.
Okay, let's talk about filling the hole.
Now that you've gotten success,
is there a moment, well, you've always had
a level of success, for sure,
but now I think it's, at least through the success of the pod has just
Well, it's just what metric are you looking at because really now it's just financial probably in the past
I was more recognizable
I was on a you know parenthood for six years that ran non-stop punk was really big some of these movies were big
So they were
Recognizably, I'm sure I was more recognizable
So there were, recognizably, I'm sure I was more recognizable seven years ago.
But the depth of connection you have with your,
let's, your supporters and fans.
The armchairs.
I think you're underplaying, you,
that is a part of the zeitgeist.
Yeah.
Armchairs, expert on experts.
1000%.
I don't think, and I don't mean this in any disrespect,
apparently it wasn't part of the zeitgeist,
it was a hit show.
Well, you also weren't a 36 year old woman. In 2008. When I think of the Zeitgeist, it was a hit show. Well, you also weren't a 36 year old woman.
In 2008.
When I think of the Zeitgeist,
I don't think of that very specifically.
Thank you, and I concede to all that.
But basically what I'm trying to say is like,
there is a metric for success that we all have.
Yeah.
Of things that we want to achieve,
and that maybe they will fill that void.
Maybe some people don't have a void,
and there's just things they really enjoy doing.
Do you feel that you have, if you, one,
did you have a void?
Oh my God, I was a fucking addict.
Okay. Yeah, yeah.
I got a manhole cover inside.
But do you think that, are you at this point now
where you're like, I don't need to do anything else
and I feel accomplished and I have filled it all up. Yeah.
Do you, are you still fighting? You get this deal, you're like, what's the next one?
No.
What's the next biggest guess?
No, but it wasn't the deals that gave me that. Although they certainly play a role,
there's no question. But kids are what do that for you. Like what was so incredible about like,
look, I had other movies that had failed before Chips,
but like Chips was the most heartbreaking
because I had spent so much time on it.
But I came home, I was on a car ride home
and I was like really depressed.
And then I walked in the door and I was like,
oh yeah, these kids don't know that you even made a movie.
They don't give a fuck, and you're still dad.
Being dad is the first identity I've put on
that is real and substantive and permanent
and cannot be taken from me
and is not at the whimsy of the box office
or what was happening.
This is a real identity.
I am these two girls' dads, and that is my number one job and everything else can suck a
dick. I like it all but it doesn't fucking matter. These kids are everything. So they really fill the
good chunk of the hole. I have real purpose. I actually care about some people more than myself
which was new. It's an important thing. And then the other stuff, and what's funny is like, I'm a greedy pig.
I was obsessed with money.
I was hard to negotiate with.
I wanted the most as an actor.
I wanted the most as a director.
I wanted to make money.
And then I did not need a podcast to make money.
I did not think you could make money in a podcast.
I didn't know there was money in a podcast.
Isn't it funny how life works? I didn't think it would be big
I thought I'd like to talk to people and I like to be in a guest on people's podcasts and I thought well
Why don't I do this for fun? And then?
Lo and behold, that's the thing works. Yeah, what do you thinking happens when you start the podcast?
Do you what do you think? I remember Gordon actually saying real quick before we get into the park
Can we talk about the kids? Yeah? Yeah, yeah
Okay, so cuz you have a little girl
And I I was really fortunate like my my parents were awesome and like I am super grateful
For that experience. My dad was was awesome handsome and handsome, but like a really great dad who had a shit dad.
And I think he decided, I'm not going to be a shit dad.
He was making up for it.
And it worked.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And okay, so, but this feeling that they are the deciding factor, they are the arbiter
of your happiness in a lot of ways, right?
Like it's not this random. Oh you post a video and if people watch it or if people like this interview
Which has been most of your life. You're you submitting yourself to the whims of the art of your work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah
Okay, so now you have these two kids
How much weight is on you?
For are you are you concerned about their success?
Do you just concern about loving them
as they start to become human beings?
Are you trying to push them in certain directions
you think will be beneficial?
Like, right now I'm just loving her
and that's the thing that I do
and it's the best in the world.
But there's gonna be a time where like,
she's gonna ask me questions
and I have these conversations with myself right now where I'm like, okay, is this the
best answer for this? Maybe I should talk to my friends and ask, like, am I equipped
to solve life's problems?
Yeah, but isn't it so fun? Like, generally, you're mulling over and ruminating on something
that's really quite pointless. You're like, yeah, what are my ratings? What are these things? But those questions are like, they're so real and important. I love just thinking about them. And
I don't have the playbook. My kids have a swimming pool in their backyard. I don't know. I didn't
have a swimming pool. I'm like, oh, is money going to fuck them up? Will they be hungry?
Do you worry about that? Well, where I've landed on all of it is like,
in a weird way, I obsess about money so much.
So much of my life was about that.
I had a fantasy of what having it would feel like,
what it would do for me, what it would heal.
That wasn't the case.
Maybe for other people it is.
It wasn't the case for me.
I found, I got to find that out.
I'm lucky enough to have found that out.
So in some weird way,
I feel like, well, maybe they'll be liberated from that. Like, they don't have to go make money.
If the thing they do does make money, awesome. If it doesn't, also, they're going to be okay.
What I what I care the most about and by the way, you'll observe this is I was in my backyard,
we had a patio
and there were these steel poles that held up an overhang
and they're whatever, seven feet tall.
And when Lincoln was about two,
I'm just sitting out there doing whatever
and she starts trying to climb the pole.
And she just did it over and over and over and over again
for like an hour until she got to the top.
And I went, oh.
She'll be good.
She's got it.
She genetically has got it.
If she wants something, she's gonna fucking kill herself
until she can do it.
And then I just took a breath.
I'm like, okay.
Relief.
Also, duh, her mom's a go getter, I'm a go getter.
Odds are they're probably genetically hit the lottery
in some level, as far as being hungry and go getterness.
So now I'm just like, I just want them
to catch fire for something.
I don't give a fuck what it is.
My ego wants them to be writers,
because I'm a writer, and that's the shittiest job,
and the one I feel proudest about.
So I want them to be writers, but I don't care.
As long as they're on fire for it,
and they're trying really hard at it, that's great.
And I kinda want them to be fucking losers
and live at my house for the rest of my life.
I used to think I wanted them to like,
go to a good school, I'm like no.
No, don't ever go.
Don't go to college.
Yeah.
Flunk out and fucking live at my house for life.
Okay, the relationship with you and your wife.
Yeah.
I imagine they are learning how to be treated and how to treat a guy through your relationship.
Yeah.
My parents set the expectation of like how I should treat a girl and how a girl should
treat me.
Yes.
Yes.
I probably reflect on that through every certain situation I'm in, even in my marriage.
Yes.
Right?
Yes.
Are you like cognizant of that? Like in your treatment of one another in front of them?
If you guys ever get into a fight,
are you concerned that that will be like normalized?
No, we do a thing, this will trigger a lot of people,
I think on the far right, which is like,
if we do get in a fight,
and we resolve it behind closed doors,
which is what most couples do.
All the kids saw was the fight part.
So they get good at knowing how to escalate things.
They don't see the resolution part.
So we were in a pretty good habit of like,
when they saw a dust-up and then we resolved it,
we would then tell them, hey, I said to mom, look, when you said this,
it was me being eight years old,
I thought you were gonna do this,
and then mom says, and we tell them how we resolved it.
My wife sent me that clip, I think it's fucking awesome.
Oh, thank you.
I think that's fucking awesome.
I think there's some people for some reason.
There's pushback on this?
There's pushback on a lot of stuff we do.
But yes, that seemed, I don't know, people think the kids do. But yes, that seemed to, I don't know,
people think the kids don't need to see that or something. I don't know what it is. Maybe
teaching kids how to resolve is massive. I didn't, for my wife and I never grew up knowing how to
resolve anything. No, of course not. You know, it's just like magic happened. All of a sudden it
blew over, but you missed out on the whole. Yeah, your parents just tell you it's okay, couples fight,
and that's it. But the thing you're saying about, I'm way more than I'm conscious of it with my wife,
I'm conscious of it with them,
which is let's just assume the stereotype
that girls marry their dad is semi-true.
I certainly married my mom, there's no question about it.
That's a big responsibility.
If they're gonna go out and try to get me,
then how am I treating them?
And so just right out of the gates, like I take everything they say seriously.
I'm listening.
I am asking follow up questions.
So they made a dude that's not listening to them or is it that they're going to be
like, what the fuck is this?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like they just they'll expect that whether they, you know, I don't yell at them.
I have fucking boundaries and I'm the disciplinarian,
but I don't yell.
I don't get physical with them.
Like just these little things that like,
this is what they expect from a dude for life.
Anyone falling short of that, they're gonna be like,
what the fuck, what is this?
This isn't what I'm used to.
I even took it so far that I was like, okay,
if I ride motorcycles and girls marry their dads,
probably she'll date a dude that rides a motorcycle,
and then there's no way I can have her on the back
of some 16 year old's motorcycle.
And I'm like, the only way you inoculate someone from that
is she's got to ride,
because no one who rides is ever riding
on the back of a motorcycle.
So my girls have been riding motorcycles
since they were five years old.
Wow. That's far.
And I'm like, yeah, they ain't getting on back of some
knuckleheads. Cause you're like,
I'm not gonna stop riding motorcycles.
Yes, you're probably gonna like, dude,
yeah, that's off the table.
Yeah. I don't know if this helps.
And I heard it from a guy who was a great father,
but it was even before he had kids,
Luther, my best friend from college,
we were talking Indians, you grew up in an Indian household,
so much conversation is what are you gonna be
when you grow up?
And when they ask that, they mean,
how are you gonna be a doctor?
And I was joking around.
There's other options I've heard.
You can be an engineer.
Yeah, but all of those are disappointing.
Okay.
Like the doctor is, yeah, that's the thing.
And I was talking to him about, you know,
what do you want your kid to be, blah, blah, blah?
And he just said, honestly,
all I want is for my kids to be good people.
And that was so simple, but blew my fucking mind that,
oh yeah, that's all that matters.
Just be good people.
So what's interesting is that's Kristen's position,
and it's a great one.
I also think they need, shit does hit the fan.
Yeah.
So like, and this, by the way,
is what I love about raising kids together with her.
She has a completely different point of view than I do.
We have completely different experiences.
If one of our kids becomes an addict,
she's not gonna know what the fuck to do.
That's kind of my domain.
If they wanna go to school and study musical theater,
they go talk to mom, that's what she did. But that just want to go to school and study musical theater,
they go talk to mom, that's what she did.
But that just lines up, so I think they're getting,
I hope they're getting a nice dose of like,
Chris and I are opposites.
And we somehow live in the same house.
We have the same two kids,
and we took different routes to get here,
so I think that's kind of the fun of having a partner
is like, yeah, she's making them very kind.
I'm also like, when you walk by a dude,
look him straight in the eyes, I see you,
I'm not looking away, I'm not afraid, I'm here.
You know, they're getting that too.
And, you know, hopefully they're picking up both.
Yeah.
They're gonna fuck people up and sing about it.
Yeah.
So, really, it's looking like a jigglypuff. Outsiders the musical. Yeah, they're gonna fuck people up and sing about it.
Outsiders the musical.
Do you get worried because you like they're going to grow up privilege and you
became the person you are through like all the things you've had to deal with.
Do you feel like, uh,
you need to like try to instill some of those things into them?
Yeah, like manufacture some challenges and struggles.
Yeah, I'm super aware of that. And yes, we could make the world
pretty easy for them if we wanted to use all the resources.
But like, no, they go to a public school.
Oh, really? Yeah.
I'm like, no, no, you're going to have to go.
I don't want you to only know how to talk to rich kids.
You got to like you talk to everybody
There's a lot of little things I do
Yeah, make them do that's kind of completely unnecessary
But yeah, I want them I don't want them just to know how to talk to other kids with rich parents
and yeah get down with I mean, I think the thing that I am I
Get down with I mean, I think the thing that I am I
Do like most about myself is like I can get down with anybody I can get that I can go with Bill Gates for a fucking week to India and chat with that dude and
Be good and then I can sit at a fucking gas station Detroit and talk to six dudes that are going to a club
Yeah, and I can do that and then I can talk to the hillbillies at drag racing
Yeah, so I So I love that.
I wanna be able to talk and connect with everybody
and I want that for them.
I would not want them to miss out on how many radicals.
So you have to put them in those situations
in order to develop that skill set.
Yeah, like I'm into cars, right?
We'll go cruise Crenshaw on a Sunday when it's hot
and we'll post up in the Lincoln
and I pull the girls bicycles out
and they're just riding their bikes on Crenshaw
and like we're the only white folks there
with the fucking cool car.
And I'm like that's right, start talking to people.
Let's get this going.
Did you read any books on the topic
or anything that was like productive?
No, my wife read a ton of books though
and reported them back to me every night.
How awesome is that?
Thank God I'm not the only one.
I feel so guilty about this.
My wife learns everything.
She sits there, she pours through Google searches and books, and then she just, she's chachi
bt for me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like I just prompt her.
Yeah.
And then boom.
Oh, but thank God.
Okay.
There's a really good, I want to say it's a-
You can make an effort.
Read some books.
I got the books.
So if I got them, they're there.
I put them on the Kindle as well, and then, I don't know. If I could defend you on that, I would.. I got the books. To see. Also, if I got them, then there.
I put them on the Kindle as well, and then, I don't know.
If I could defend you also, you just grew up
with a great dad, so you just saw it every day,
so you didn't really, you probably feel like.
She keep smiling when I play with her.
Yeah, exactly.
You know what I mean?
It seems to be working.
Whatever we're doing is working.
Yeah, you had a shit dad,
so I don't know why you didn't read a book.
You know what I mean?
That's kinda crazy.
My mom was radical, and mostly, yeah, my parenting techniques are mostly just my mom.
Which was like everything was on the table.
You could talk about anything.
There was no kid gloves.
There was no lying.
I'm a big fan of just not, if you can get through it all without lying.
What about a relationship?
Like obviously you have a kid.
The relationship changes drastically.
How did you guys manage that with first kid? What about a relationship? Like obviously you have a kid, the relationship changes drastically.
How did you guys manage that with First Kid?
Speaking of these books,
one of the books we got before our first kid arrived
was Brain Rules for Babies.
And thank God the first chapter you read is like,
they tell you right in the first chapter.
I wanna say the number, it's either like 68 or 70,
it says 70% of marriages get worse after kids.
We're like, okay, that's a good heads up.
So I think going into it knowing like,
no, no, it's gonna get fucking worse.
It's gonna get harder.
You're gonna have less time for each other,
less patience, less sleep.
You're gonna become kind of like co-managers
of these fucking kids and that's hard.
And we've had hard stretches.
I will say though, they do get to an age
and I think a lot of people don't make it through that part.
But life starts coming back in like,
oh, we can go on a three day trip.
We can do this and it starts seeping back in. But yeah, if I go on a three day trip. Yeah. We can do this.
And it starts seeping back in.
But yeah, if I had charted how hard it got, it would certainly peak, you know, when they're
like six and four years old, forget it.
You're like, cool, I live with this gal.
I think these are our kids.
We're doing this together.
But I can't imagine she wants to see me.
It's reality distorting.
Yes.
Because when you're with the kid, it's euphoric.
They laugh and they smile, and then you and your wife
are the happiest you've ever been in your life.
So you're like, yeah, we're happy, everything's good.
But then you guys aren't spending any time together,
even though you're together.
So you feel like you're getting
that same emotional diet satisfied, but you're not at all.
We actually had to sit down and reflect on it.
We're like, what is different here? We're spending tons of time together.
And then we're like, oh no, we don't talk the same way we do.
Going out to dinner is much more difficult. We're exhausted.
And we had to make a conscious effort to pour back in a little, even if it's 30 minutes.
Also, the amount of compromise, I guess it depends.
I certainly know dads that are like,
yeah, you decide everything, I'll pay for everything.
Well, that's not the scenario in my life.
My wife is a gangster
and she's gonna have a lot of say in whatever.
And I'm very opinionated.
So I think even the kids and how we're gonna raise them
and making all these minute to minute decisions,
that's just Christianized nature.
Like we come from different points of view,
we generally have to compromise.
So it's just like another thing to compromise about,
but it's now something you care way more about
than you did about what restaurant you're going to.
Right, so you're like, no, this is vital to me.
They have to be this way.
So yeah, it's a recipe for just a lot of stress
and it gets rough.
Preparing for that is, I think,
and once you can view it through that lens,
doing anything exhausted is tough.
Yeah, yeah, right.
If someone was like, hey, there's no kid,
but you're gonna be exhausted in your relationship
for the next eight months, you'd be like,
okay, this is gonna be a little harder.
Yes, exactly, or the next few years.
Few years, exactly.
But-
You guys are gonna be your worst self
for the next five years, good luck.
Just tell us that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What happens is that you're smacked in the face
with it a few months in,
you're like, what the hell is going on?
Yes.
Being able to reflect, for us, that was very helpful.
Like huge, and at least you understand it.
And then when you can kind of pour back in,
even if it's like tiny little bits of time,
there's this like reminder of just why we got to the point
where we're like, hey, we really wanna bring life
into this world.
Like this is pretty awesome.
Yeah, well, this is pathetic,
but there are moments in that
stretch
Where I would be at my sink brushing my teeth and I would force myself to look over at her brushing her teeth
And I'd go that's a real person right there
That's a human being who needs love and is afraid. Yeah, and needs compassion and comforting
Yeah, she's a real but she's not a fucking robot mom.
As much as we're both now robot parents, I'm like, I, but I had to take,
like I had to be thoughtful and go like, that's a, that's a little girl over there.
Yeah. Who's in overhead. Just like, I'm a little boy who's in over my head.
And, um, okay. Yeah. Hi. Hi. This is hard. Yeah. Yeah. It's scary, right?
You're afraid you're doing a bad job. Yeah.
Yeah. You've been with Chris in 17 years now. Yeah. What is the number one piece of advice you
have to make it last? Oh, man. We were lucky enough that we started therapy like three months
into dating. Yeah. This is not gonna work. We were explosive together at first.
And I will say now having done it that way,
it was like my previous relationship,
which was long as well, it was nine years,
we went to couples therapy at the end,
and it's like taking your car to the shop,
and it's like, yeah, the trans is blown two cylinders
throughout this, you should have fucking changed
the oil knucklehead eight years ago.
And I will say, like, we went in, they were short.
We didn't do a ton of them, but the dude was like,
here's what's happening.
You guys are stuck in this pattern.
He says this, you always say this.
That triggers this, this is this.
Stop saying that and stop doing this.
It was really pragmatic.
It wasn't like, you know, ethereal.
We had to connect with our inner child.
It was like, stop saying this and when you say this.
And so I think luckily we broke a few patterns that would have destroyed us really early
on that was helpful.
And then I would just credit for me AA, which is like in AA, I figured out how to assess what was going on with me
in situations. I don't know that I would have learned that had I not had to be in AA, which
is like, there's one step in particular, which is crazy effective. It's the four step and
it's really good. It's misleading. First, all they ask you to do is like write a hundred
people, write all the people you have resentments against, you know, like, good, it's misleading. First, all they ask you to do is like, write 100 people, write all the people
you have resentments against.
And you're like, oh, that's fucking easy.
I hate that teacher, I hate this person,
I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.
And then the next column, you have to say,
what did that person threaten in your life, right?
And so you write what they threaten,
my financial security, my status,
by the way, there's only like six things people threaten.
And then you look at this list and you hate 150 people
and you realize what fear they're triggering,
it's three fucking fears.
Like if I have these three fears, my status,
my social, or my financial security,
if I don't have those three fears, I don't have problems.
These hundred people aren't on this list.
And then the last column is like, well, what am I doing?
So the example I think they give in the book, which is great, is like, I hate Bob from work.
Why?
What does Bob do?
He's constantly trying to get me fired.
What does that threaten?
My financial security.
What's my role in it?
Well, if I don't show up late, there's really nothing Bob can say to the boss.
As you're like, okay, great, so now I know my three fears.
I also know what I'm doing that enables
all that cycle to happen.
So that, just practicing that for years
when Chris and I would get in a fight,
I at least knew enough to go like,
that's interesting.
Whatever is going on right now, I know is not going on.
I know me good enough.
Now, one of these three things is really being threatened right now, I know is not going on. I know me good enough now, one of these three things
is really being threatened right now.
Give me five.
I just wanna figure out which of those three things
is happening and now I can come back into this
and go like, yeah, I feel really emasculated
when that happens and I'm worried about my status
all the time and it's a shitty character defect of mine
and I overreacted and let you know, let's go forward.
Character defects, and usually that's all that's.
Yeah, she's got her list of three things
that she's constantly triggered over.
And so I think just like learning to pause fights
and figure out what was actually happening with me
other than the dishwasher or the whatever thing
you think it's about going like,
it's never ever about any of those things.
It's about like these three core fears I have.
And if I can figure out which one of it is,
I can really right size it in my head.
Like, oh, this is an old thing.
This happened, I had to apologize to my now nine year old.
We're laying in bed.
She had given me a riddle the day before.
I had answered it.
Now we're laying in bed.
And she tells me that I got the answer wrong.
And I'm like, no, honey, I said whatever.
I give the same answer to the riddle.
She's like, no, no, you said this.
I'm like, that's not, and now all of a sudden I'm like,
I mean, an actual power struggle was an eight-year-old
in bed about whether I said this or that.
And then she got cranky and I got cranky,
and I was just kind of a dick.
I wouldn't let up about it.
I'm like, yeah, you got this one wrong.
I said that.
I'm like, there's no way I would say that.
I know math really well, whatever the thing was.
That night I go to bed, I'm like, that was weird.
That's not how you talk to Delta.
And then the next morning I came to her and I go,
listen, I wanna apologize about last night.
I overreacted.
You know, I was dyslexic in school.
I got sent to the learning disabled room.
I walk around with people thinking I'm stupid.
And if there's any moment where I look stupid,
I overreact so bad.
And that was what happened last night.
I don't know whether I got the riddle right or not.
Who knows, but that's what was going on.
I'm sorry that I was taking that out on you.
And my apologies.
And she goes, oh, daddy, I'm so that I was taking that out on you and my apologies."
And she goes, oh, daddy, I'm so sorry you had to go to learning disabled.
I was like, this is fantastic.
Back to like, you know, honey, when you get one right, you're like, oh, that's right.
That's what you do.
You just go on your shit and then they immediately meet you with compassion and understanding
and it's great.
The fight's almost worth having to hear her say,
oh daddy, I'm so sorry you had to go to learning to say
what you mean.
But the radical accountability.
Yeah, like that work, I guess from AA,
it's like you are, I'm gonna figure out what I can control
what I'm doing wrong.
Well, cause I can't live with my own.
You think, I don't live with other people's mistakes.
I live with mine.
People have wronged me.
Tons of people have wronged me over the last 50 years.
I'm not in bed thinking about those.
I'm in bed thinking about, shit, I did an eighth grade,
shit, I did a 12th grade, shit, I did a 24.
Like, I have the laundry list in my head of things.
I fucked up.
So it's like, I can't live with the discomfort of like,
if I've recognized I've done something
wrong, I just got to go clean it up because I'm the one that's going to suffer from it.
The other person, Delta wouldn't have thought about that thing the next day, but I'll think
about it. And so it's my own probably selfish, you know, preservation, but I can't live with
a big pile of errors.
The forgiveness is for self.
A lot of people have said that about the value
of forgiveness.
It's allowing you to relinquish these feelings,
not simply letting that other person get over it.
And get away with.
Another great saying from A.A. is,
resenting people is like drinking poison
and hoping they die.
Yeah, you're the one.
You're the only one this thing's living inside of.
It's like, what a victory to give this person you're already mad at, that you're fucking
cancelling yourself up.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
Hey, I hope you guys all join.
Can I say something really quick?
Yeah, sure.
I'm a huge Armcherry, big fan. I find that hard to believe, but thank you.
No, I'm a huge fan.
Between Day 7, Laurie Gottlieb and Anna Kendrick, I probably listen to one of those every month.
Oh my God.
I love those episodes.
Thank you.
Is there an episode that people tell you that was the most impactful to them that you hear
the most often?
Yeah, Day 7 is certainly one of those. That one's hard
for me to receive that compliment, probably for obvious reasons. Yeah. But my mom, I interviewed
my mom and that's one that people constantly bring up. Yeah. Because she told her whole story
completely shame free and honestly, and it was awesome.
And there were even moments,
because my mom's super duper open
and we have great communication,
but even something about putting the interviewer hat on,
I found myself getting curious
about things I had never asked her.
And then I got some kind of profound answers
that blew me away.
Like one was, which I had never thought to ask her,
I'm like, how could someone like you,
who's so brave and confident,
have been with someone like Greg, who was beating you?
That seems so disjointed from my idea of who you are.
And she said, well, I had just gotten divorced from your dad.
I met Greg, I got married too soon.
My family was already completely disappointed in me that the first marriage failed.
And I just thought, here I am again.
And the shame of admitting I failed the second time is worse than getting hit.
Wow.
And I was like, oh, whoa, fuck, dude.
And shame, boy, talk about the thing that is the most powerful.
Like, y'all get my ass kicked instead of feeling the shame of failure.
Family and failure.
Yeah, so that was radical.
I was like, oh, I get it.
I didn't even know I was curious, but yeah, I was.
I was like, how could you,
you're not my stereotype of someone
who ends up in that situation.
That actually leads into something I wanted to ask earlier.
You are fantastic on the podcast.
I think oftentimes actors, the more we get to know them,
the more we're like, ah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's a hard subject. Yeah, I'm good.'m kind of okay on, there's not really a lot going on.
It's kind of like you have a void internally, they have a void that we all see that is their
personality.
At what point, and I remember, I just re listened to the episode with Gordon and he said, as
soon as you started the podcast, this is what you need to be doing.
At what point are you like, oh, this is my lane
and I'm being validated for who I am.
I wanna know that whole, what are you going through
as that whole thing is happening?
Like you're starting the pod, you're realizing it's big.
Oh, this is the moment, this is what I've made it.
Well, let me own one of my previous judgments of Joe Rogan,
which was, I remember him announcing he was never gonna act again
or host anything, and he was just gonna do his podcast.
And I remember, because again, I'm insecure,
and I'm constantly thinking of what people think,
I'm failing or not failing.
I remember thinking, you're just not getting
the roles you want, right?
I had that judgment of him.
And at some point in Armchair Expert,
because there was a moment where I was on,
I was a cast member of The Ranch,
Bless His Mess, and Hosting Top Gear America,
and doing the podcast,
which was way too much and was bonkers.
And I was really happy as doing the podcast.
And I think my ego was like,
again, because I had made that judgment of Rogan,
like, oh, if I quit acting,
people are going to think I just failed out of it.
And at some point I realized...
Leaving the ranch, nobody sees this failure.
I'm going to let you know that right now.
Just to be honest with you.
Thank you. At some point I was like, no, I'm gonna let you know that right now. Be honest with me. Thank you.
At some point I was like, no, I like this thing more. I don't really care whether it looks like
I have been kicked out of show business or not.
And then also, I totally believe Rogan a thousand percent.
And not like I was ever saying it out loud
that that was the case, but like, yeah, in my mind,
I'm like, I owe that dude an immense, like, I was wrong.
Of course he likes that more.
It's so much better.
But I did have one moment that was really kind of interesting,
which is Adam Grant, this guy I've had on like four times.
He's a Wharton psychologist, professor there,
and he writes all these, you know,
New York Times pieces and stuff.
He's like a popular intellectual.
I was telling him, you him, my whole story was,
oh, Chip's failed, I really didn't know what I was gonna do.
I only wanted to write and direct,
and that wasn't on the table anymore.
So then I started this just out of boredom,
and then my failure led to the greatest thing
that happened to me.
And he said, I wonder if it's as separate
as you think it is.
And I said, well, it's completely separate,
acting and writing and directing in a podcast. And I said, well, it's completely separate, acting and writing and directing in a podcast.
And he said, well, what was your favorite part of making TV shows and movies?
And I was like, video village.
Video village is where the director sits and it's where the monitors are and it's where
you'll go and watch playback after a scene.
And this is where all the actors and the creative people are gathered around these monitors and you're just shooting the shit.
And I go, if I'm being honest, my favorite thing of show business is fucking video village.
I can be on set for 12 hours at video village, shooting the shit with other people that moved
out of their little town to come here.
I love that.
And he goes, I think you just moved video village to your backyard because all the same
people you wanted to talk to are now coming and now you don't have
to do any of the other stuff.
You just isolated the thing you actually like the most and now you're doing that part of
it full time.
And I was like, wow, maybe that is what happened.
I wasn't calculating that or doing it intentionally, but it is kind of what happened.
It's funny you say video village because I also think part of your appeal.
And again, I think we see you as Hollywood,
like I don't say elite as like a compliment,
but like you're in that circle.
But to me, you're a guy who gets what most Americans
are going through in a way that I think a lot of them
pretend they do and do not.
And there's been times where you'll have very nuanced
thoughts and you'll meet with resistance.
The Jonathan Van Ness episode comes to mind,
where you are being empathetic to what conservatives are feeling about trans issues, even if you don't
agree with them. And I think that is your superpower to us, like regular people, I think.
How is that dealing with maybe, you know, I think we have this idea that you need to have these
certain beliefs to be in Hollywood or to be accepted in that circle. Yeah. Is that
tough for you to navigate? Do you not care? Well, I care. I
have my own opinions. And if you're at dinner with me, you'll
hear my opinions, political or otherwise. But I have a much
bigger mission with the podcast, which is I want young dudes to
look at me and go like, oh yeah, that guy rides
wheelies on motorcycles and he talks about being molested and he talks about trauma and
he talks about addiction and he's vulnerable.
That's the main thrust.
I don't care about my political opinions as much as I care about the dudes who've come
up to me and been like, I went to a meeting because I listened to your show. I've been sober 18 months.
My brother's talking to me again. Like those moments are insane. To have someone come up to
me and go like, I agree that politicians and asshole. Great. I am also like my own pride is
like, it's embarrassing to me that people are spouting off these opinions that half the country has.
Whatever opinion you're popping off with, guess what?
150 million people have that opinion.
It's not that fucking interesting or novel.
It's boring as fuck.
It's the most pedestrian thing you'll say all day.
Your take on pizza is more interesting
because it's probably more
unique than 150 million people agree with you. So it's like, A, it's fucking boring. B, everyone
already does it. I remember Stern getting like a lot of criticism that he wasn't, you know,
getting really political when it was being called for. And he's like, it's okay to have a place you
go that you don't have to hear that shit.
And for me, I made a commitment early on, this isn't the place for that.
If you want that, guys, turn to any other fucking station, you'll hear it.
Yeah.
Well, one thing you have is that there's a much smaller subsection, people who have empathy
for the other side's opinions.
That is a very, that's not 150 million people.
I agree. That's probably not 50 million.
The only political opinion I'm happy talking about
in public is I do not believe half the country's bad.
I just don't believe that.
Forget what side I'm on.
I don't believe half the country's evil or bad
or wants the ruin of this country.
I think we have different opinions.
I think everyone probably wants the ruin of this country. I think we have different opinions.
I think everyone probably wants the best for this place
and we have different opinions on how to get there.
And guess what?
Both sides are fucking wrong all the time.
Both sides are, I have to remind the people in my bubble,
like, y'all, we came up with communism,
gotta remind you the liberals wanted communism.
I'm like, this isn't a fucking, you know.
We're all really fallible.
And I can't even be comfortable
until I think I understand at least what your intention is.
I need to understand why you feel that way
or you're motivated that way.
Cause the scariest thing to me is being around somebody
that I don't understand, that is unpredictable,
that I can't predict how they're gonna feel.
That to me scares me.
So I just really need to know what is it
that you're latched onto here that's emotional?
And generally, if I take the time to do that,
I force myself to make the argument
that the other side would have.
I go like yeah
It's rational for them and from their point of view and they're not bad. We're we have a different opinion. Yeah, I just kind of I
Reject that like half the country is this or that. Yeah. How do you feel Love the Jews. Good answer. Guys, this has been Dax Shepard. Love them the most.
This is awesome.
Thanks for having me.
This is awesome.
Thanks for having me.
Dax Shepard.
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Dax Shepard.
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