Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert I'm Dan Rather, I'm joined by Monica Monsoon Emmy, nominated three times, decorated three times, three times decorated.

I wish that as an Emmy nominee, just three times decorated. Oh, like decorated. My two state championships, one to two.

OK, so two state championships and an Emmy nomination thrice decorated. All right. Thank you.

I'll take it now.

Today we have an incredible singer I'm a huge fan of and largely because this is one of the first artists that my daughters and I shared as a favorite. It was very fun for us when the Halsy songs would come on the radio and we all get excited.

Yeah, it's nice to share music with your loved ones. Yeah, it is. Halsy is our guest.

She is a Grammy Award nominated, a platinum selling singer and songwriter, you know, from this year, manic, hopeless fountain, a kingdom in twenty seventeen Badlands and Room 93. She's got a bunch of amazing songs that we talk about and she has a new book out right now. It's poetry and we are lucky enough. It was a last minute idea to hear one of the poems, which was incredible.

It was. And her new book is called I Would Leave Me If I Could.

A collection of poetry. I love that title. I would leave me if I could. So please enjoy Halsy.

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He's an ultra. How are you doing? I'm doing good, how are you? I like your hairdo. Me too. Oh, you two meet.

I was like, I wonder if this is OK etiquette for me.

This is embarrassing. Is it for you? No, I'm a millennial. I get to do whatever you want. Yeah, I am envious of you guys. I just noticed that the other day I was driving around and I bought a very kind of douchy car. Nice. Yeah. Because I'm forty five and I'm from Detroit and I like horsepower. But you know, every time I see guys in this exact car I'm like, oh gosh, here comes these guys.

And then I'm fucking vaping and there's like vapor coming out the window. I'm like I am just a bull's eye of the person I think I don't like. Yeah.

It's like forty five douchy car from Detroit. So like smoke inside the house and listen to Eminem. Like what's going on.

Probably more like Bob Seger, but yeah I'm sure we go OK, where are you at right now.

I am in L.A. in the suburbs which is where I have decided to resign. OK, now you have a shaved head. I do more than that.

The site is slick. Yes.

Yes. Let me add the thing with the car and the vaping to look at this. Look at this ridiculous hairdo. Wow. Your hair is longer than mine.

Well, much. I had kind of longer hair. My daughter shaved her sides. I wanted to match her. And then I just had a ton of hair on the other side and I thought, this is crazy. So now I've shaved both sides.

I was watching a documentary and I saw you with this haircut. And I was like, that's not who I think I am.

Oh, nothing that you can go with.

Lots of personalities. Let's be open, OK?

I think I'm maybe in a little bit of an identity crisis. Oh, no, I think that's OK.

I feel like my whole life thus far has been an ongoing identity crisis. It has. OK, that's how you end up bald in the suburbs. But I am so, you know, it's fun.

How long have you lived out here? I guess, like unofficially, like five years or so.

I was living in New York before, but this is the longest time I've ever been in one place ever.

OK, so I think you and I maybe share this.

I moved to probably a dozen houses before I graduated high school and now I'm neurotic.

I cannot stand moving the house that we are about to leave. I've been in for sixteen years. It's the longest I ever lived anywhere by a factor of four or five. Yeah. And I feel so safe there and I would have never left. I just wouldn't have left. I didn't care if we became billionaires, I would have stayed there. It started getting kind of charming that our house was so average.

I kind of literally where I'm at right now. OK, good. Good. Yeah, that's where I'm at right now. I agree. You know, it's funny, I moved a lot growing up to my parents, like were always looking for cheaper houses and better jobs. Like my parents didn't even own a house until I was like twenty three maybe. Huh.

So I went to like eight different elementary schools and like, you know, the whole thing. So I'm kind of in a similar boat. But it was really funny because when the quarantine started, a lot of people I saw, like we're kind of posting about me being like, how do you probably live in a 15 bedroom mansion with servants?

And I was like, I live in a three bedroom ranch style in a cul de sac and I don't even own a car.

You don't you don't own a car? No, I have no. I was just like my you got me all wrong.

I got a follow up question about that. Is that because you're a New Yorker? Yes. How fucked were you when people couldn't Uber do you have a bicycle, an electric bicycle?

No, I just became that friend that was like constantly calling their other friends, being like, yo, man, can you give me a ride to my house that I don't want to leave is a ranch.

Really? I love a ranch. I'm upset. We're moving to a non ranch home.

I get those stairs and yeah, the notion that I'm going to have to climb a flight of stairs when I get coffee, I don't know that I love that again. I told you I'm getting up there. Forty five. OK, so motorcycle injuries, the knees aren't ideal. In fact, when we were remodeling this place we're about to move to, I was like, it should be a consideration that one of the rooms on the first floor is nice enough that when I can't climb stairs, I'll have to move down.

Kind of like male orangutans. They end up getting so fat they can't live in the canopy anymore. So they're just on the dirt by themselves.

I envision my future as being like a male orangutan in your bed on the first floor, wistfully nostalgic for better knees, thinking about how much square footage Christensen in up there.

Yeah. Now, here's another thing that we share in common. I think there's actually more than this, but so my father sold cars my whole life.

I was your dad in the car biz. The car game. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I always tell stories about how when I was growing up, going out with him was such a headache because we never got home from anywhere quickly because he would. Always run into someone who sold a car to. And so, like we'd be in the grocery store and I'm like 13 and I'm, you know, just a complete brat and don't want to be there.

And then I go to get milk and I come back and my dad's like, Cheryl, how is that Toyota Rav four, literally?

And I'll be like, Dad, who the hell is this woman?

And he'd be like, I sold her a Chevy Suburban in 2005.

I need to just also mention that my dad is like a very huge, lovable black man.

But for some reason, whenever he speaks, car salesmen talk. He sounds like Mr. Rogers.

Oh, sure. Well, it code switch, right?

A hundred. Yeah, 100 percent. So, you know, we're home and my dad's like you're like the guy talking to us completely normal. And then as soon as you're in the grocery store, he's like, Cheryl, how is the family?

What do you guys get out to the Cape? Literally, yeah. And then we get back in the car and he starts the car and bone thugs in harmony just to speak to mean.

And as a child, you're just like, oh, this is utterly confusing for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your dad was in the car business.

He was in the car game. I'll say just a hustler. Right. Every aspect of life was an opportunity to like, clear 10 percent profit. And they had all these scenes. And I got a very warped world view from him, which is basically like just take what you can get and run like hell. Right. Like the only objective was to turn some product, moved some units and make some money. And I totally bought into that. And I've been confronting it for a long time.

But did your dad have any savings that he passed on to you? Like, do you have some car salesmen vernacular that you can think of?

My dad used to do the sell me this pen thing. Oh, sure, sure. It was the worst thing ever. I was like, Dad, I'm eight. I want to watch fuckin Hannah Montana.

I hope you want to sell him the pen. Yeah. Tell me this pen. Sell me this pen.

And I don't know if this is a car salesman thing, but it has car salesmen energy, which is CSC, CSA, which is very, very parallel to Beedie.

I'll just add. Yeah, I agree. Hey, he'd be like, I don't care what you end up doing in this life.

You can be president of the United States or you could be a cashier at Shoprite. But whatever you do, you better be the best damn cashier in the shop. Right. I want you to be the best shop cashier that there is. Whatever you do, you better be the best at it. And I'd always be that cool. And also then, like, I don't believe you at all, right? Because if I do end up, you're going to be pissed.

Yeah. Yeah. I thought you were going down the road of a lecture my father gave me, which is he said, like, don't fool yourself. Every mother fucker is a salesman. I don't care what you or your doctor. No, no, no, no. That doctor's selling his opinion to those patients like you. Break down how every single job is a sales job.

So you better get good at sales no matter what line of work you end up in. Yeah, he said there's an ass for every seat. Don't fall in love with metal. I mean, it was just one afternoon, like you're going to be a bad purchaser of something if you're in love with it.

If you have an emotional attachment to a car, you're no longer making a responsible decision.

It's great advice. I've not followed it, but it's true. Yeah. Yeah. And there I found there's pretty much an ass for every seat. Yeah. Yeah. I think it backfired on my dad being that way though, because I remember when I was like thirteen, I was living in Jersey and I wanted to go into Manhattan by myself and my parents were like, no, it's not fucking happening, not a chance. So I made a PowerPoint presentation and was like, All right, so thank you for being here.

Great, lovely turnout. This is why I should be allowed to go to the city alone is because of this and this and this. These are the numbers, the emergency system, blah, blah, blah. Also exhibit A BRI who lives down the street. She's thirteen to her mom, lets her go. So I made him like a PowerPoint presentation. And then from that moment on, I just argued my way out of absolutely everything with my father.

He was like, I want you to be a great businesswoman. And I turned into like a lawyer instead or something.

I'm constantly arguing, arguing my way out of everything with him.

Did you have that kind of relationship where you were like outselling your father is the most complex relationship I ever had in my life because they got divorced when I was three. I only saw him every other weekend. He was a drunk for the first twelve of those years. He then got sober, which was great. And we were sober together at one point, which is great. But he was super alpha and aggressive and I was a burgeoning alpha aggressive person and I didn't like to be super star.

Well, I just didn't like to be dominated by males because I had all these stepdads that went wrong. And so, yeah, we were a match made in hell at times. But we were I have to admit, it's so similar. It's crazy and. Yes. Most of the things that have probably helped me over the years have been the things about him I hated that I've learned to harness I 100 percent.

I just started breaking that down in therapy. I was like, oh, quarantine, I have time. Let's do dad.

So, you know, and it's funny realizing, like, how many qualities that you have unintentionally absorbed or inherited and qualities that you perhaps resent in one of your parents. And then you see it manifest in yourself and you're like, why? I they like this about myself. And then you're like, oh, other people might hate this about me, though, you know, you have that, like, perspective. And that's definitely a fun one to get into.

Yeah. And now having moved to all these schools, which again, I did a handful of times, not nearly as bad as you. That's a rough experience. How did you do in that? I think there's definitely pros and cons.

The cons obviously are like a lack of stability, you know, a lack of like reliable friends to kind of go through the process of transformation. You know what I mean? It's nice to have people as a point of reference, like people you've known since you were young. You watch them grow up. You can then apply that to yourself and be like, OK, how am I growing up? I was constantly confronted by new people that I didn't really understand.

But there was something really great about it in the sense that, well, one, it taught me not to care what anybody thought of me for a really sad reason because I'd show up to a new school and be like, I don't really care if anyone here likes me because I'm going to move in a year anyway, which is, you know, sad for a little kid.

But it was also great because I think it made me the way that I am as a performer today, because every time I move to a new place, I invented a new persona. Yeah. So whatever I didn't like about myself, I could kind of shed layer by layer every time I moved where, like, you know, I'd be like, oh, I'm not really that confident.

So when I start this new school, I'm going to be confident, I'm going be funny and I'm going to be outgoing. Everyone's going to like me.

If that didn't work, I was like I could try again next school, you know, like, yeah, you got a lot of resets.

Yeah, for sure. So it teaches you how to condense your personality into a very this is salesmanship, which is really funny. We're getting into this. It teaches you how to condense your personality into like a really digestible and concise thing at a young age because like, you show up somewhere new, you're not going to be there. That long story, like I'm actually an eleven.

I like art and this. And I'm like this and I like that. Take it or leave it. You don't I mean, you're like, nice to me. And so so it kind of teaches you like you're essentially branding yourself.

You've come up with a one liner on a movie poster. Totally the worst kept secret. Yeah.

It's like my elementary school copy line, like you like, you know what I mean. So that's been really good for me in my line of work.

But it's also as well trauma in there too, that I've had to know unpack as well, which is like spending a lot of time alone making friends with mostly adults, which is weird for a child to do. All my friends are teachers growing up always. And like I said, there's some good in that, but there's some bad to lose. By the time I was like 19 or 20, I had felt 19 or 20 for like ten years.

When you were 17, you had a twenty four year old boyfriend, which on the surface you're a little for me, I'm a little bit like, oh, OK, is a little dicey.

Yeah.

But I imagine you maybe felt like that was the level of maturity maturity you.

Nina, I think that's that's a huge mistake that young women make to like meet an older guy and you're like, oh, he must like me because I'm so mature. And then you have to like years later you look back and you're like, what the hell did that twenty four year old man have anything in common with a seventeen year old girl? And you look back and you're like, oh, so that's what was happening. OK, you know, so I say this often.

So I was molested. And I'll say the lasting impact of being molested is that you have to confront the fact that, oh, there are some people on this planet that are out to get me. Yes.

Yes. Not everyone is kind. Not everyone's looking out for you. Yeah. And it's on me to figure that out. So it just it gives you a different set of glasses, which are just very scrutinizing and probably not as trusting. And I don't, of course, at the time didn't realize that transformation had happened. Yeah, I moved through the world very much like eighty percent of these people are trying to fuck me. It's not going to happen on my watch.

And came to find out years later actually that there's probably 70 percent or nice people in my math was wrong. Yeah. So I wonder, like, what age were you when it occurred to you, like, oh that twenty four year old probably took advantage in some way.

You know, I think it was in the last couple of years I think because I'm twenty six. So once I kind of gotten to the point of like having meaningful and fulfilling relationships with adults and adults closer to my age. I historically like an older man. Dator Sure. I always have been. And it was. Starting to get into relationships with people that were like, I don't know, less than 10 years older than me, you know what I mean?

I really started to understand those relationships.

And also, you know, what I think had a lot to do with it is once I started to find more professional success, my desire to be sexually empowered kind of just disappeared because being professionally successful is like far more fulfilling than being sexually successful. Sure.

Can we define sexually successful like many people are attracted to you and want to be with you and totally, totally.

Like, you know, when I was like 19, 16, 17, because I was really ugly kid, I was fucking hideous.

And hold on one second. Hold on. Possible as far as I'm willing to accept this, but I certainly need more information.

OK. And before we move on to how hideous in discussing you are as a child, which I'm sure you are, just please ask Monica what her dating profile the age range is. I want you to know that Monica was born in eighty seven, so she's thirty three. So hit her with some questions.

Monica, what's age. Give it to me.

Well it started at forty five I think, and I've since raised it and raised it and raised it because there are people that are excluded. Right. Like Brad Pitt was excluded and I saw him in that once upon a time. Once upon a time in Hollywood I was like, oh my gosh, my age cannot not include Brad Pitt.

So I had to raise it to that. And then we had Bill Gates on and I was like, man, I would.

So I guess it was a big tipping point. Yes.

So now and then I thought, man, if Ruth Bader Ginsburg was still alive, I would want to include her, too.

So true, you know, true to the 80s. Yeah, I actually really can relate to that for sure.

I think my favorite couple ever is Sarah Paulson in Holland.

Taylor, I know. I love it when I see them out.

I'm like, yeah, I, well, I want that for me. I want that for me for sure. Because, you know, the cool thing is I have daddy issues and mommy issues, so it's awesome. So I can just the opportunities are really endless. Sure. Sure.

OK, so why are you ugly? What's your proof?

I'm in middle school. Everyone else. Is this like burgeoning womanhood happening? Like, you know, everyone's like starting to become like sexual and confident like titties when they're coming in. You know, I'm like sixty five pounds, like four foot ten. I'm like so skinny. I need to wear like a couple of pairs of thermal leggings under my skinny jeans just to make them fit. Huh. That's a true story. I'm like glasses, buck teeth, frizzy hair.

Oh, sure.

Another thing we share. I had her run, but please continue. Oh yeah.

It was terrible. I looked like a nightmare cartoon rabbit or something over the summer like sophomore year. So I kind of like did the about a girl teen movie like making eye contact or straightening my hair body changed all that. And I was like, oh shit, I'm hot.

There we go. So then I started kind of running amuck with my hotness being like, what can this get me? Can I get free ice cream? Can I get a better parking spot? Can I get you know, and, you know, at a certain point now that I've gotten more successful, I think that and this I'm just being completely candid here. There's a better feeling when you can walk into a room and think to yourself, like, I am a very, very successful person and there's a lot of things that people in this room would want to talk to me about.

And a lot of, you know, cool things I could do with people in this scenario instead of walking into a room and being like, I bet I could fuck anyone here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I walk and going. I hope that that would be my dream. Well, Mark and I agree on this. I'm not going to be seen as pretty smart. We're seen as funny. We trade all that to be hot.

Like if we just shoot way, rather have people just think, here's my thing. If you end a sentence with and I would fuck him like so you could go like, oh Dex. Yeah, he's a dumb ass and he's so selfish but I'd fuck him. That's a big win for me.

But it's OK. It's because we've never felt valley. We've coveted that hotness. Yeah. So for you you felt hot, you already felt like you check that box off.

So then you want to be seen as smart and creative and funny and those that I'm sure.

But to be fair, I think one of the best things is that I spent most of my life ugly because I still feel like an ugly person. OK, that helps us because got to.

Yeah, I feel like an ugly pro.

Do you ever imagine we have this thing to where we look back at pictures of ourselves when we were certain we were had like we were terribly out of shape and we're ugly and I look back on go.

That was a good looking good. Do you have that now?

I look back and every single year my perspective goes, I was ugly until last year.

Oh, OK. And then next year I'll go. I was ugly until last year and then the year after that I'll go who let me shave my head. I was so fucking ugly, you know. And I mean so I just keep keep going. We can't move on without because young women are listening to this, and I can't have them think that actually I prefer to be hot.

No, no, no way, no way. No way in hell. I know.

People know that's kind of actually what I was getting around to those. The thing is that, like, that's one of the things I talk about with my I say my kids, my fans. But like most of them are older than me. I don't always see my kids. That is such a better feeling to feel empowered because of things that you've achieved instead of being like, oh, I'm in, because then you kind of get to a point to where, like, you don't even care that you could fuck people.

Yeah, I've had, like, heartthrob crushes of my ultimate life in Hollywood be like, Halsy, what's up like and have been like, you know, maybe not.

Maybe not, you know what I mean? Which is kind of cool. You're healthier than me because I said, oh, wow, yes. Let's date and maybe I'll think I'm great afterwards. And then I still don't like myself, but I had to really climb the ladder pretty high before I went. Oh, yeah. No one's going to give me that but me.

Yeah, that's a bummer actually. Soon. Yeah. OK, good, good, good, good, good. You weren't just born with it.

Once you start taking the highest people off of your bucket list, off your bucket list and you're like oh your bucket list. And you're like oh that's weird. I still hate myself. I guess I should call a therapist like immediately. I remember going into the bathroom of a Dream Girls home and looking at myself in the mirror. I'm like, No, man, you're still a piece of shit. Look at you. This is a great magic trick you pulled.

But you know, I'm not buying it.

Yeah, you know what? You are speaking directly into my to my soul right now.

Oh, good, good, good. I have the bathroom mirror experience to multiple times multiple or so, like I've been in the bathroom mirror. But like, I hope something happens and you get better in the next 15 seconds before you have to go back out there because this is not going to cut it. This like it? Yeah, it's not going to cut it.

Have you had even like the second layer of that, which is. Oh, I've assessed that this person's higher status than me or better than me, and then I get them to like me. And then again, instead of that making me feel better about myself, I then decide, oh, they're not as good as I thought because they seemed to really like me. Yes.

It's like, you know, I thought you were so cool and so smart and funny and then you decided you're interested in me. So you must be mentally ill. Yeah. You know, like something must be deeply wrong with you inside if you have decided to be attracted to me. So actually I'm better than you. And now this doesn't count anymore.

And you're very deceptive because you're a loser. Because you like me. Yeah. Literally. Then you're fucked.

It's just a cycle not to shift gears to dramatically. But I do think it's interesting that you say at seventeen is when you kind of have this budding into womanhood and feeling attractive. And I'm guessing that's the worst year of your life is are among the worst years of your life.

I think it was like the first absolutely terrible year of my life.

Yes. Isn't that so counterintuitive? I'm sure like zero to sixteen you're like, oh, if I felt sexy and people were interested in me, I would be so happy.

Oh, no, because I got myself into so much fucking trouble thinking I was sexy. Oh, OK. I got my sexiness was a superpower. I was like, I'm invincible. I can go live in a crackdown in Brooklyn. It's fine. No one will hurt me because I'm hot. Wrong.

Fucking wrong. Yeah.

Because at least before that, you know, I didn't go outside and my interests were limited to like, you know, and they still are. I shouldn't say that.

I kind of consider that like a phase that like seven to twenty two ish. It all kind of culminated for me.

I got into a relationship with somebody who was addicted to drugs and as a result, my currency of expressing love with them became doing drugs with them. Yeah, yeah.

And I never went all the way, but I teetered with some really dangerous situations, all for the sake of this like crazy hot relationship. And then I was like, OK, cool, being hot is going to get everyone killed. No one should be hot this lethal. And I'm going to go back to being a fucking ugly bookworm, 12 year old inside because it's much safer for me there.

Now, you also at that age, you discover you're bipolar. So do you think also obviously you probably had some desire to regulate your emotions with something? I have a lot of empathy for the person with an undiagnosed mental illness who's just trying to get relief from it.

Yeah. And do you think that was tied into it? Yeah.

I mean, I think a lot of what happens to. So you get really anxious and you get into situations where you have no control. And at that point there is like a departure that goes either one of two ways. It goes into, well, if I can have control over anything, then fuck it or the other departure, which is now I'm going to neurotically attempt to control everything. Everything in my life becomes a potential danger to me and analyzing every person and every scenario I interact with as a potential intruder or imposter or catalyst of some kind.

And you can't live like that, you know. So it builds up and builds up and it builds up. You know, for me, having a mental illness and being in a relationship with an addict was an absolutely terrible tornado.

Warnings of bad storm, perfect storm.

I'm a control freak and I can barely control my own emotions. And now I'm trying to control the emotions of a person who is not dealing with logic and reason the way that I'm familiar with. Yeah. So now I'm questioning my own perception of reality because I can't control myself. I can't control them. So what can I control and why am I even alive?

What is even the point of anything? You know, that was what the process was like.

I want to add one part, though, for people who can't kind of relate to it. For me personally, yes, I was in these situations that were physically quite threatening or dangerous, as you say, crack houses.

And on the surface, that looks very dangerous as it is. But the fact that the drug gives you a very predictable, emotional state, regardless of your surroundings, I always felt like, well, now in retrospect, I realize I was choosing my emotional stability or what I thought was emotional stability and control of my emotions over my physical safety, because to me, that was a trade worth making. Yeah, yeah.

I found myself in a lot of situations like that as well, ultimately with the drug becomingly, as I called it, a currency. A lot of infidelity in the relationship, too, you know. So it was kind of like, if I don't do it with you, you're going to go do it with someone else. Right? Right. Probably fuck them. And I'm going to take you back anyway, because this is what we do. So, yeah, no, it's kind of one of those situations.

And that was what I was choosing is I was choosing a sliver of time where we could be on the same page and enjoying. I'm saying that in air quotes something together in a time where I knew that I would be on his good side.

Yeah. Because I was partaking in the same experience as him, because whenever I would refuse, it will kind of manifest as in, oh, you think you're better than me, right?

It's like, no, I don't. I'm just sober right now.

He was manipulating you, by the way, and to feeling like you had to totally enable that behavior.

Yeah, it reminds me of what we say in AA, which is alcoholics and addicts are megalomaniacs with inferiority complexes. So that sounds perfect. Like that sounds like such a statement he made. Oh, you think you're better than me because he feels like a piece of shit that does that track.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was it really interesting process, but what it ultimately led to for me and circling back to the bipolar, which was like I had to kind of get my own shit together and stabilize my own self. And one of the first steps of doing that was removing myself from a situation where there's a literal chemical interference. I can't be baseline if I don't know what my baseline is because of drugs, because of trauma, because of gaslighting, because of PTSD, because of, you know, whatever in this in this kind of world when.

So I was like, OK, cool, I'm going to remove myself from that, figure out my baseline is and then kind of fix it from there. So I take Lexapro and I was unmedicated for like a really long time, but I just started taking it like maybe like six months ago. I think it was the quarantine that I did.

The literally exact same with Lexapro. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Lexapro, our sponsor sponsored by Lexapro.

No, actually, though, like, I can't speak too much on it because I have only been on it for six months, but I would literally become an ambassador for Lexapro because it has changed my fucking life. And before that I hadn't been medicated since I was a teenager because I'm an artist. So like I thought like if I took antidepressants and drugs and it would interfere with my creative process. Yeah. Your artistic struggle.

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I don't know about you, but I'm also a victim of being of a romantic, so even when my life was disgusting to me, it was Mirin Bukowski and I was like, look how romantic I am is disgusting, Ali.

No one would want to be in. And I am fucking making it look good, like I have a deep sense of romanticism about it.

It's so funny you say that about Bukowski, because whenever I felt terrible about myself, I would hole up in my house and like, read Bukowski and I'd be like, I'm the same as him. So it's fine. Yeah. Like, you know, to write an amazing short story and all this will be justified.

Yeah.

100 per cent. Wow. And that's how I ended up writing a book, which is crazy. I also the worst part was, is that for a while it fucking worked. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well that sucks because you don't want to subscribe to the belief that you need to be self-destructive to create. But for a while it fucking worked. And I look at some of like, you know, my biggest records like no ones and all this stuff.

And like I try to write songs about being happy and fulfilled and like good and like, you know, fucking eating my vegetables and like practicing mindfulness and like it. Those don't go No one no one's about being abused to do so. Like, you know, it's crazy about meditating. Yeah.

Does it hit the same abuse. Just hits different I guess for Billboard.

I've never had this thought before, but even as you say it of course, because people that can relate to that, that struggle are also trying to just feed themselves with anything that can distract themselves from those feelings. I can totally relate. Yet the people that are like, I guess practicing mindfulness, they're actually just not even consuming as much like they're off the treadmill of needing something to satiate their anxiety.

Yeah, people who are in dark places need music. People who are in good places are more productive than needing to, like, drown themselves in song for hours at night.

You know, what an interesting mousetrap.

There's not the replay ability factor. I guess. You know, it's funny, though, because I did think about that when I started the Lexapro. I have looked back on that time in my life where I like I haven't showered in a week. I think a blanket over my head. It's like 3:00 in the morning. I've texted like thirty people hoping someone is awake and I'm just sitting there and someone's like, al-Sheikh, why don't you start medication?

And I'm like, but that I'm going to lose my spark.

This beautiful spark covered it for what spark? You look like shit. You're fucking you're not doing anything like you're doing well is it's not a sport.

There is no spark like bitch fucking call your doctor like that. That's basically, you know, so and also I think I'm making some of the best stuff that I've ever made right now because the dark stuff doesn't disappear. It's just easier to access at an arm's length now in a way where it's not setting my whole life on fire because I'm living in the dark stuff all the time.

I'd also argue that you're at a really unique position to help other people who are feeling that way, first relate to them and then give some perspective on it. I think a lot of these things are just indulging the darkness without really any, as we would say, in program solution, like where's the solution? And so you're in a great place to be authentically relatable and also drop in some perspective and solution.

Yeah, because I guess then otherwise it's just really like making a list like songs that are sad or just like, you know, is everything OK? Yeah, I think Monika's.

Yep, it's bad. We did it, her notifications just blasted us.

But we're good. We're, we're good. I'm so sorry. I'm using I'm using my assistant's laptop and she had her notifications on. I was doing a pitch for a TV show that I'm working on the other day and the fucking notifications were just going off progressively. And I'm just like sitting there getting progressively angrier and angrier.

And it's my fault. That's my computer. Yeah. Happening, you know. Yeah. And everyone was just being so polite about it.

So now I have I am like I'm really sympathetic when it happens to other people because I'm like it's like the computer version of an intrusive thought. I can imagine what it would be like in person is if you were talking to me and I was just like, yes, I was thinking for the next meeting, fuck.

And then at the door, like just doing that the whole time.

So yeah. So I get it.

Now, one thing I've noticed and by the way, you're the first person I've interviewed that my daughters were really pumped about.

They're five and seven and all morning we listen to all now you're talking to me and you're like, you can't listen to her. Oh, no, no, no, no. Are you kidding?

But I will say, what is really cool about music now as opposed to when I was in my twenties, is even like the song that I become aware of you from with the chain smoker closer.

Like that one of the first lines for him is like, I drink too much and it's a problem, but I'm OK.

Yeah, like every song prior to that, like for me, all the 70s and 80s, rock is about fuckin fight for your right to party. Let's go.

Surely everyone's doing that. But just what a revolutionary thing now that in music people are really telling the reality of it to or at least voicing their concern or they know in pop specific.

Yeah. And Pop, it's such a difference.

Were you aware that that was a paradigm shift or that this was new or did it just feel like I'm obligated to tell my story and this is my story, not that song in particular, but just your music also is very honest about having mental health issues and. Yeah, trauma and all this stuff.

I started noticing it when I became sensitive to it because Pursat relationship, I completely cleansed my life and it was like, don't talk about drugs around me, don't come around me with drugs. I don't want to hear songs about drugs. I'm not listening to any of this like, you know, romanticize stuff that I loved when I was 17 and thought, drugs are cool.

Yeah. So there was a little bit of like a content shift for me.

So I started becoming more perceptive about the stuff that was on the radio and realized that through my storytelling I had a responsibility. I have been caused a tremendous amount of pain and had witnessed other people who had been in a lot of pain because of the situation. And I had seen people get arrested and people get hurt and I've lost friends. It's about being in a relationship with an abusive addict. Right. And then there's a graveyard, which was the lead single off my last album, which literally talks about someone locking me in a car, fucked up and trying to drive with me in it and me going, oh, I'm going to die if I stay in this relationship.

It's getting to a point now and reflecting and going.

There was once a time where I would have followed you to death, but like, not not anymore.

There's You Should Be Sad, which is a second lead single off my last album. And the hook of it is you can't fill the hole inside of you with money, drugs and cars. And I'm so glad I never had a baby with you.

Oh, uh huh. There's multiple songs in my last album. But I think the most important thing about them is that there's a dichotomy of anger, of being like, you know, you have hurt me. And then there's another perspective of sympathy, which is a vital component to telling that story. It's not just like I'm selfishly angry with you because your addiction ruined my life. It's I am sympathetic to knowing that the pain that you've caused me doesn't even compare to the pain that you are causing yourself.

I think some older people and by the way, I'm getting to that point where I'm getting like the people who hated the Beatles. Right. Rather, I catch myself. And I think there is some element of older people that listen to the current music and think it sounds a little victime. Mm. And not a ton of self responsibility or ownership of anyone's part in things. But you're doing that and I applaud that.

And I think if people listen to the nuance, they'll find that I think music is a difficult thing because it goes back to what you're just talking about.

Nobody wants to listen to a song about a girl who goes to Whole Foods and like, fucking does yoga and she's good and she's like in therapy.

She was tempted to get the cookies, but instead she got the kale and she felt right, seriously, like everything's good and she's going to go home and binge watch. Ten, fifteen now, you know what I mean? Like, that's my story. No, it's like I think you write when you're in pain because you need to exercise all of that stuff. I know for me personally, writing about stuff gives me this epiphany.

I don't usually even understand what I'm writing about until I'm kind of done writing about it. And then I look back on the song and go, Oh, all right. That was a sore subject. Yeah, I just came out like that. I'll tell people to I'm blue in the face like, yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. And then I'll get in the studio and I'll write something and listen back to it and be like, oh, I was harboring a tremendous amount of resentment about that thing.

Uh huh.

All right, good. And then you you have a choice to make then, though, do you want to sing about that resentment for the next ten years? Now, I relate so much.

I write because I'm feeling out of control and it's this little zone I can control everything in. And then so often I've written about things that I didn't understand, say when my dad died, I was like, I should feel something. Then I don't. I'm going to write about it. I took three days to write about it and when I read it, I was like a I connected to all the emotions I was not connecting to. And then B, I.

I understood it for the first time.

So I really I relate to you on that now. This is just a curiosity mine. I'm obsessed with Mac Miller. Yeah. Did you ever work with Mac Miller? I never worked with him creatively, but I did know him and that was actually a real turning point for me. This is a terrible thing to say, I think, because it puts a positive connotation on a. Heinously tragic event, but it gave me the courage and the faith to leave the relationship I was in.

I was already mourning the loss of the person that I was with, and it taught me a really valuable thing, just gave me that real fucking reality check that I needed.

And I think it probably did the same for a lot of other people, too.

I feel like I know what you're saying, like we've lost in our group several people, and it's heartbreaking. And also I get the most immense gratitude out of. That's right. That's what I will do. Like, yes, I'm so sad and thank you again to remind me that that's where all this ends, inevitably.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And these are a lot of these people are smarter and more talented and more gifted than I am. So if they come in navigated artfully, why would I think I could?

You know, I definitely agree. That was also one of the things for me, too. I was lucky enough to be in a position where I was like, OK, cool, I'm not ruining my life yet. But I never would have expected some of the people that I know and loved and lost to see them go down that path so aggressively and so rapidly. Yeah. You know, so I kind of recognize the spiral early. And I was like, all right.

Well, now I know. So it's like not to live vicariously through someone's death, which is like a weird, paradoxical statement, but it kind of gave me that perspective.

That's why I love Max music so much.

We were talking about writing about the bad and writing with responsibility. I think he was really, really good at that.

Yeah, me too. He really was letting you in on the it's not a great struggle. This is the facts. I can hear it in every song, being an addict, the struggle and oh, I found this girl and this will be my thing. This is going to kill this. I'm going to latch on to this now. It's this and that. Just, you know, all these life rafts you hope will break you out of that thing and then.

Yeah, they generally don't. OK, now I just have a juicy question. I want to talk about your book. OK, so you've sold a million albums, which is incredible. In this current age of album sales, just in the U.S. alone, you've been streamed six billion times.

I mean, that is just an I actually didn't know that. Thank you for being the first to tell me. I'm not kidding. I mean, really serious. I had no idea.

Here's my nosy question. Can you monetize that? Like, do you get paid for six? To me, something seems criminal that you would have it. Let's just say in the 90s of someone, something sold six billion singles, you know, they'd be rivaling our Amazon dude as they would be.

But yeah, I mean, there's definitely a lot of work to be done in music. And it's a hard conversation to have because on one hand, I do believe that people should be compensated for their intellectual property and for their work and for sharing pieces of their life in such a way. Because I always joke around most people when they make something they make like a tangible product and then they sell it. I'm selling organic matter. I'm organic material. I get sick, I will die.

I don't want to do stuff sometimes. And every two years I manifest whatever's going on in my life into a little fucking disk and then they sell it for eleven ninety nine at Target. And if people like it and they buy it, then I'm like OK, cool, they like me and if they don't like it and they don't buy it then I'm like, ok, no one likes me. And that's a weird thing to experience. Yeah.

You're evaluated every couple of years in metric. Yes. But to the same token, personally, if I fight this battle, I'm fighting it for up and coming artists because I don't wake up and need or want anything. Right. I never wake up and I'm like, dammit, I should have so much more money.

I actually have been dealing with that retroactively because when I signed my record deal, I'm just going to fuck and we're going to go we're going to get into it.

I and my manager just shrugged in the corner and he was like, yeah, do whatever.

You know, what's really cool about what I do is that I'm so open about literally everything that happens to me. And I think the greatest source of relief I have from that is that if my nudes ever leaked, I would be like, there you go.

That is the last thing. That's it. You got the O'Briens and I have seen it. You're welcome. But it's crazy. Every time I take a naked photograph of myself, I have a moment where I look at it and go, if this ended up on the Internet, would I be OK? And then I go, Yeah. And I said, Yeah.

So you've got to have an extra layer. Yeah, yeah. But when I signed my record deal, I was in New York and I signed like a boutique label and you know, most like pop stars, most of their deals that they started out with are like a couple million dollars. I signed my deal for one hundred thousand dollars. And that sounds like a lot of money to people listening, probably. But in the context of making a record, it's.

Because you have to pay for songs and production, I also have to live and travel in New York. And yeah, I to fly back and forth from L.A. and I need clothes for interviews and a makeup artist and all this shit and like, you know, so I end up looking back on the first two years of my career. I look like shit, my hair's a mess and makeup is smudged. But the record sounds great, you know, because I'm making concessions.

But, you know, some of my peers, some of my contemporaries have signed their first record deals for like three, four, five, six, seven million dollars. You know, I signed for a hundred thousand dollars. Yeah.

And that's because I think in the beginning, everyone was kind of just like, yeah, sure, she can sing, she's cool, whatever.

Probably also they're exploiting the fact that you had gotten some popularity on self publishing on the Internet. So they're thinking, oh, anything we offer this gal is going to be such a huge win for her.

Also, I'm poor. Yeah, I'm I'm super, super poor at the time. Like beyond poor, like live out of a duffel bag. Poor. Yeah. Also I don't mean to criminalize the people who signed me because I actually love them and they are amazing. And the reason why I am am today at this boutique label that I initially signed to, but I signed before the streaming era. So my rates of my like royalties were not very great because streaming wasn't really a thing.

Yeah. So all of a sudden I put out this debut record and my debut record is this anomaly because I'm not from the Disney generation, I'm not from the Nickelodeon generation. I was this like Internet thing that happened and there was a lot of them at the time, but none of them went to number two.

Right. I'm going to say for you, I like to brag for you. So it went to number two. Yeah.

Yeah, it was great. I mean, we sold one hundred and fifteen thousand copies of the album in the first week.

That's big kid numbers. Yeah, I mean, that's big kid numbers.

I'm just going to be completely candid. And that's when everyone was like, oh shit, OK, which is cool. But then, you know, my album started streaming. My debut album is double platinum, but my royalties and everything, all my rates of consumption for those records are based on a time when streaming wasn't really lucrative. So, yeah, that's right. That's why I wrote a book.

Well, what it forces you to do, I imagine because of the economics of streaming and whatnot, you probably love to tour. So I'm not even suggesting that. But certainly you have to tour. That's where you're going to make your living.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Which is an interesting thing to consider right now in a time when I don't know when touring is going to exist ever again.

How do you manage your feelings on tour tours is amazing and also the worst thing in the world. It's twenty two hours of the worst I've ever felt and two hours of the best I've ever felt. By absolute far, nothing compares to being on stage, which is great. Yeah, and for multiple reasons. For psychological ones and physical ones. There's, you know, this dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin fucking rush of being on stage is a physical element where you're like pushing yourself physically for two hours.

It's like a great workout why people get addicted to running and shit, you know, it's like that kind of feeling. And then there's also this amazing sense of you're walking on stage in front of upwards of twenty five thousand people and you know that every single person in the room already likes you because they bought a ticket.

You don't want to go on stage and feel insecure if like if you walk in that room and you go, damn, all these people fucking like me enough to spend money on a fucking ticket. I feel great, you know, and I'm not going to bore you too much because I know everyone's telling the same story. But you get off stage at 11 p.m., you're full of adrenaline. Everyone else goes to bed because they've been awake all day. You're up in a different time zone.

No one you know is awake. You're sitting alone on your phone scrolling through social media until three, four or five in the morning. You finally fall asleep. You wake up midday the next day because you have to be semi nocturnal to be awake enough to do a show at 9:00 PM. You know, maybe you eat some food, maybe you don't. You're depressed. You do the meet and greet. You meet one hundred people. Every single one of them is crying for a good reason or a bad one.

You have no idea why. And you love them if you know, for me at least, I, I love these people and I love spending time with them. So I am locked in. I'm not just like, you know, going through the motions. So I'm giving advice and hearing people's stories and taking on their traumas and like, yes, you know, I'm like filling up with all this stuff.

And then it's like, OK, now get dressed and go on stage, you know? And then you do that and you release it all. And then it's the same thing over and over again. You don't see the sun the tour bus drives underground. You wake up in the dark, you go to sleep in the dark. It can be really, really tough. But by the same token, if I didn't do it, I would have probably fucking killed myself by now.

So doing it, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. No one's complaining. It's just being honest about the experience of it.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. I mean I always think that because I think the weirdest thing about and I'm sure that you can but Jilian percent relate to this.

I still get those days where I wake up and I kind of look around and I'm like, what the fuck? Is going on. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What the fuck is going on? Like what are you talking about? What do you mean? This is what I do and this is my life. And people care about what I have to say. And then the imposter syndrome creeps. Oh, yeah.

Just waiting to be exposed.

Yeah. I'm staring in the mirror looking at myself like, who are you. Like, you know, like also the other thing is I have another name.

So like people coming home all day long and then I'm looking in the mirror like they can only say something over and over again. It sounds weird.

I'm like looking in the mirror like Ashley, Ashley, Ashley. That's not like Ashley.

Ashley saying my name over and over again, like and like laying awake in bed at night, desperately trying to retrieve memories from my life before this, because this life is so hyper stimulating, it eats all of your old memories. Those people are also deserving of my undivided attention. So it's like people talk about creating boundaries and not like letting those things in. But I don't have a choice because they deserve it.

You know, someone comes in and they're like, let's talk about abuse or let's talk about depression. Let's talk about coming out to my homophobic father or like, you know, whatever. And you're like crying and you're holding this kid and you love them more than anything in the world and you don't want to let them go and you don't want to send them back out into the dangerous world. Do you want them to just stay with you in the meet and greet where it's safe and you love them and then, you know, you get a minute with them?

Because if you do a hundred people and they each get a minute to two minutes each, almost two to three hours sometimes, you know, and then you let them go and you're like crying and you're like, I hope they're going to be OK.

And the next kid comes in like, it's my 18th birthday.

You know, I grew up in the back of a jeep to close. So it wasn't a rover, but fuck, it was almost a rover. And I can't afford that shit, literally. I'm like wiping tears away. I'm like, fuck, yeah, let's do a shot. And everybody said, eighteen, not twenty one fuck. Like, you know what I mean. It's like you're like what country man. What's the drinking age here.

It's crazy.

You go home and it's hard to remember what feelings are yours because so many of your feelings are manufactured.

I'll go home and be like, oh did I have a good day today or was I just in a good mood?

Because I did ten interviews where I had to pretend to be in a good mood. Yeah.

How would you know? You're also so distracted that you don't have to deal with any of the existential crises you're wrestling with mentally because it's so distracting and so consuming that there's relief in that.

And then when it ends, it ends so abruptly that now we're back to like, oh, that's right. I don't have a will. I don't have any, you know, like all these different things, like I'm not participating in my real life.

Yeah, that's the funny thing, too, is because you do this work so you can have fulfillment out of your life and whatever, and it's like what is the life left? But also that's kind of why in the quarantine, I kind of started getting my shit together because the beginning of the process is really hard. It was like, oh, I have no routine. My day is not being scheduled for me by someone else and I have no incentive to be productive or put on a face.

I have no incentive at all because no one's looking at me. Yeah, it's like being home alone when you're a kid. We're like the first week was awesome. It was like, I'm going to have candy for every meal, mentally speaking. And then eventually you feel like shit and you're like, I desperately need order. Yeah, desperately need control. And so, you know, figuring out what that means for you and you're not completely indebted to this routine.

And I don't know, it's really, really strange thing. And it's comforting for me talking to other people who live the same way, because I don't have a lot of friends who do any of the same or similar things to me.

Yeah, yeah. It's hard for someone to go in. Big deal. And you have a nice house. I've talked about this a million times in here, which is like, yeah, I felt the exact same way. I got all the shit and I was very alarmed to find out it didn't really fix anything. So then I had to go back to the drawing board. I would hope everyone would be lucky enough to experience that. And so I recognize it's a huge privilege, but also.

Yeah, just doesn't fix much shit.

Yeah. Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

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You wrote a book of poetry called Would Leave Me If I Could. Yes, any who he's fucking. I'm going to blow it. But it's a very similar line. I really that's what got me thinking about Macmullan, but anyways would leave me if I could. And it's a book of poems. And you had always written poetry. Right. As commensurate with starting to write music. Yeah. Yeah. And so had you ever considered like Oh yeah.

I might put those out like for me personally I thought I was going to be a writer. I didn't think I was going be an actor. I was going to try to be Bukowski. So this other side hustle ended up being the thing. But did you originally fantasize about being a writer? Yeah, I think so.

Just because, again, like, you know, growing up, not having a lot of real life friends, immersing yourself in books, learning all of your life lessons, like I learned everything through books, like I learned about misogyny through books before I experienced it in the real world. And I learned about civil disobedience through books before I experienced in the real world. I learned about sex through books like I consider myself largely fortunate to be at least remotely sexually empowered and having like a healthy sexual perception of myself.

Because my first experiences with sex were like a book of female written erotica that my mom had in the house where most of my other friends, their first experience with sex was like their creepy cousin telling them a story or like porn or trauma, you know what I mean? Like, my first consensual experiences with it was through reading a book, a book that was about female pleasure and power. Was it like Mrs. Chatterley's Lovers or something?

No, it was way cooler than my mom is, like this fucking sick grunge chick. Like, she's fucking awesome. She's also super young. I'm twenty six. My mom's forty eight.

Oh, my goodness. You just broke my heart. So I'm her here. So sorry. I probably saw it. Nirvana shows honestly you might have but that was just cool. Like she raised me on that kind of music and she had all these like cool fucking erotic books, just like Alanis Morissette and according to Franco Schlager, feminists like. Very cool. Yeah. But I always thought that I would end up a writer because it was where I felt the most confident in myself.

Music was kind of an accident. My parents, God bless them, I love them. But they were like just completely unaware of my existence unless they were yelling at me for being in trouble. Sure. So I'd come home with writing that I had done and be like, read this. And they would like, you know, pick it up and be like.

Yeah, and back to me and I like he didn't even fucking read it. Yeah, yeah. So I got so angry about that, that I started singing what I was writing because then people had to listen. Oh, interesting.

If someone fast forwards through a song in front of you that's fucking rude and they just stare at the CD case and like, oh, it's great songs. Yeah. I mean literally. Yeah but yeah I wrote the book. Part of the book is like there's so much I wanted to write and wanted to say that I didn't feel comfortable having attached to my face because when I sing it's coming out of my mouth and it's attached to me and it's like it's through the lens of all these like preconceived notions that everybody has of me through my music and like the public's inability to, like, separate a character I'm playing and who I fucking.

Yeah, you know what I mean. There's a pseudo anonymity to writing. Yeah.

There's a lot of shit in here that I'm fucking terrified about being out in the world. Like I talk about being molested, I talk about trauma, I talk about abuse, to talk about drugs and talk about a lot of stuff. A lot of it's like hypersexual.

And people like then have an opinion of what it's like to fuck me because I talk about what it's like to fuck me and like, you know, they're going to be like, oh, I would.

Or like I probably wouldn't want to know and not have, like, evidence of it, which is crazy, not just scrolling through my Instagram pictures of 2:00 in the morning. Yeah, I'm kind of terrified a little bit, mostly because I'm afraid of what's going to end up happening, which is like something is going to be taken out of context. Sure, it's going to be uploaded to like Entertainment Weekly. And it's going to be like Halsy comes clean about using sex toys.

Yeah, girl, fucking whatever. You know what I mean? Like, I'm worried about that. That is a bummer, isn't it, about current media? It's like everything gets distilled to a headline or more accurately, like a tweet. Yeah, you could spend all this time in real estate on the page and it has to be reduced to something. It's frustrating.

Yeah. Yeah, but it's OK because it doesn't matter. It's for the people like who are meant to find it. There's like a certain group of people who are going to go out and seek a poetry book by me, and if they read it and they love it, then it's for them and the people who it's not meant for aren't going to seek it.

That's the healthiest perspective I think one could have.

It's incredibly personal and it's stuff I could probably never get away with singing because it's like either too depressing or too boring. But, you know, I've tried to have that because I've been sitting on it for a while. That's the other thing. So I time to live with it. So I've been like, OK, cool. Like, what is it going to be for me when the world has this? I'm making this sound so dramatic like I'm about to put it.

It's like it's a fucking it's a poetry book of stuff. Like it's I'm not putting out a fucking the Magna Carta. Yeah. I'm going to write the beach like everything's going to be fine. Oh it is vulnerable. Yeah it is for me. And that's the other thing too is just like I write all my own music and because of the perspective people have of pop stars and a like successful female musicians, I think a lot of people think it's bullshit that I write my own music even.

Oh, really? Yeah. And I made all my albums like in my backyard and then go home studio that I built.

So like this was also kind of for me to have some agency and put out a collection of stuff that I've written myself just for my fans so that they know in their heart. But the narrator, the protagonist they're subscribing to is a authentic one, you know, because this helps them better build the profile of the person they're listening to sing.

Yeah, it's like a companion piece. Yeah, like a director's cut. Halsy Povey. Yeah, I'm doing super super limited and promotion about it because that sort of thing is like I don't want it to become this thing where everyone's like, oh this.

A twenty six year old female published author like what can she do. Oh yeah. I think it's not that deep.

I just, I wrote some fucking poems, you know, and I mean I like multi hyphenate. Yeah. Like I wrote some poems, I'm putting them out, I write literally every day. This is not that big of a deal to me. It is because it's scary. But it's also like again, like we said, I don't think I'm Bukowski.

You know, it's funny. Bukowski was a point of reference for me as I was writing, though, because a lot of it, like I said, is very sexually autonomous. It's very self deprecating. It's very sarcastic at times. And like I really wanted to see that from a female perspective. The things we just talked about was really important in the book, which is I'm constantly taking responsibility.

Right.

Most of the book is like I fucked up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, so that's important. Have you ever read Fear of Flying? Yes.

Oh yeah.

Are you obsessed with the zipless fuck like I am the zipless fuck. Do you remember the zipless fuck. That was the phrase she coined. She'd have these fantasies about being on the train and she would just fuck a stranger was her.

OK, it's funny you say that because I was actually trying to figure out where do you ever write something and don't remember where you're borrowing it from.

Oh, I saw the opening of this movie. Whooper has twenty years. I directed and wrote a movie. I'm not. Whooper just happened to be on TV, I go, oh, my God, I have almost shot for shot the beginning of Whooper and sincerely had no fucking clue, but there's no way that could be a coincidence.

I've actually had to start going through some of my stuff and being like, OK, like, can you think of anything that this might write? Some of my own.

At one time in high school, I accidentally verbatim plagiarized a whole paragraph from Not the Liar's Club, but it was amerykah. It was Pride, Cherry or something like that. And my teacher don't fucking know. And then when she gave it back to me, I think it was like probably two years later I dug it up and was reading. It was like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Little piece of shit is yours.

The best part would be for you to get a bad grade on that plagiarism and then feel like, well, fuck, now I want to prove to her she's actually a terrible judge of this stuff. But this show, very popular book, it's almost like having to call the cops and someone who's bought drugs from like they kind of got you over a barrel.

Oh, yeah. I've never thought I've actually never calling a cop. That's my new favorite metaphor. Me, you know what it is?

It's like I've had girls with boyfriends whose boyfriends would tell me that my boyfriend cheated on me with their girlfriend and I'd be like, thank you, but take that home with you and figure that out from your side.

Right. You know what I mean. Yes.

I'll just as a public announcement right now, you ever see Kristen fucking someone? That's fine. You guys enjoy that. I don't ever need to know that I have no interest. Doesn't interest me.

Also, if I ever stumble into a situation where I see Kristen fucking someone, I'm in the wrong place.

Well, oh, no one in public. It could be a whole exhibition thing. Could not be your fault if that's true. Could be at Whole Foods in a shopping cart. Sounds like she wanted to be found. Can I get you a really quick idea?

I would love that Monica and I are obsessed with getting a T rex skeleton and that's not enough for us.

And what we want to do is rent out the rib cage and the mouth as an area to fuck in to offset the enormous cost of one of these skeletons because they're like thirty million dollars. Yeah.

How would you support the fucking will handle that?

Don't don't get going to be some kind of mattress in the. Oh yeah. Yeah.

In the rib cage. They'll be a mattress. Got it. We'll build a fake T-Rex tongue. That is a mattress that you'll lay on the tongue. But just imagine being in the jaws of attractions mid coyte us. It's got to be exhilarating. And my question of course is do you think you would run out to T-Rex?

I thought you were going to ask me if I would invest in what you have on there if we get it up and running.

Yeah, I absolutely would agree. And we can make you public. Lexapro and the T-Rex fucking. Yeah, I mean, Lexapro took me to a place in my life where I feel comfortable in the jaws of a dinosaur.

Can I raise you a question? Yeah. If it's a success, then you need to open more locations. Would you consider belly of a whale.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. One of my great obsessions is as a kid, seeing a blue whale model at the Chicago Science Center. And just I want to live inside of a carcass.

I thought you were going to say that you're one of your earliest memories is looking at the blue whale as a child, I'm thinking I would fucking think you're not far off a couple of years later.

Listen, I did not have this idea, but it just crossed my mind and zero pressure. If I were you, I would say, no, I don't want to. But would you want to read one of the bombs to us? Sure.

I mean, if you guys are going to be nice to me. Oh, my gosh. Maybe I find a short one. Oh, you know what I'll do? I'll give you a cute one.

This one's cute. It was a cute one. Yeah, we like it. So it's called eight. The number eight. The number eight. Great. First of all, before we start, one of my favorite numbers very stable. It's even it's two fours continue. This one's got eight. There was a mailman I loved as a little girl. He would stop at the communal mailbox on the street in the center of the apartment complex and begin sorting mail away into one hundred and fifty different little boxes.

We lived in Toivo to. I would rush from my house to greet the mailman and he would talk to me as he worked, filing away bills and cards and coupons, and he would ask me questions, quiz me and give me a piece of bazooka gum for every question I got. Right. I would spin around and crush my sneakers rocking up and down on my toes, I would curl one piece of hair around my finger while I thought of the answers.

I was slide my tongue between my teeth in the windows where they were missing in between every mailbox. The mailman would look at me and smile. He'd pat me on the cheek and tell me that I was as smart as he was, as smart as any man. And I believed him because why wouldn't I? I was eight. I knew that George Bush would win the election. I knew the Pythagorean theorem and I had read 300 books from the public library.

Plus I could draw every animal by memory. And I liked him because he gave me chewing gum and he talked to me in his low voice, calm and soft, not the shrill, high pitched voice that they would use on my baby brother. One day the mailman didn't show up for work, I ran out and stopped in my tracks and there was a different man there. I asked if my friend was sick. The imposter ignored me. The new mailman showed up a few days in a row, the kids in the neighborhood said that the old one had a heart attack and a bowl of spaghetti and he died with noodles up his nose.

I cried one Wednesday. I ran out to the new mailman and asked him if he had any gum, and he told me to stay away from him because he didn't want to get in trouble like Charlie. I didn't know my friend's name was Charlie, and I didn't know how I could have gotten him in trouble, so I asked my mom how you could give someone a heart attack, and she rubbed your head and stretched your feet across the couch and said, it feels like you're going to give me one right now.

And I didn't want my mom to die, too. So I hid in my room and I cried because I was eight and a murderer. Oh, that was arm that sank on it. Yeah, oh, yeah, I love thanks for sharing that. Yeah, of course.

Guys, can I tell you the cutest part is you are describing how you would put your finger in your hair and twirl. And as you were reading that you were nervously touching an area that no longer has no hair.

You would have probably been twirling at that moment. You catch that moment. I did not.

I don't know if you remember when Bieber cut his hair for the first time, he would go like this in public because there was no but there was no SWU. But he was like so used to fixing it up. And so now that I have a bald head, I catch myself tucking nothing in my hair. Sure, sure. Yeah. It's like a phantom limb. Yeah.

Am I trying to flirt with someone like acounter.

But I just look like I have a tic and they're like, are you good. Is everything OK? Wow. You guys are the first people I have ever read anything to that isn't like directly like work for me or a friend or something. Oh yeah.

Flattener and I genuinely loved it. Me too. I also got Bukowski vibes because he was a mailman and so Bukowski. Yeah. Yeah. It's great where he worked in the Post.

Well, Halsy, this has been an absolute pleasure and a delight and a blast. And I thank you so much and I hope I cross paths with you in this glorious city of ours. I hope so, too.

I wish we could do it again. So I might have to write another book just so I can get back on this podcast.

Yeah, I'll probably bump into your mom at, like an AARP event or that if you have any single friends or, you know, your age, let me know is OK, great. Oh I'll pass them along.

But Monagle have first whack at them but you'll definitely be on that.

That's true. So much fun.

What a pleasure. I hope we do it again soon. Me too.

All right.

And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soul mate Monica Padman.

Can I ask you a question now when you go to Apple Music? OK, you with me so far? Yep. Do you ever do the essentials, like do the playlist option where you search for an artist and then you do, it'll say like essentials. Case in point is for me, Leon Bridges Essentials.

OK, what a playlist. I can't stop listening. They've made. Yeah. And they label it essentials. And did you look up Halsy essentials.

I should. Yeah you should. You should.

It was weird to bring up Leon Bridges. It just crossed my mind that it's I've been playing it a lot lately and I thought you'd enjoy it. I love Leon Bridges.

Me too. And I love Halsy.

I love Halsy, too. And I really like her as a person now. I just liked her as a musician. But now I really am.

I know she was very thoughtful, wise beyond her years. Yeah. You were way older than her. No way. Oh, my God. You could have held her like a little baby while you were her grandpa. That's right. I'm of the age of our parents. We discovered.

All right. Your grandpa. Oh, I'm the age of her grandpa.

Yeah. How old is she?

13, no, she's like probably twenty twenty seven or eight, let me look, I'm looking OK, she's twenty six. Twenty six.

Yeah, girl, so you are seven years older than her, you could have babysat her, could it be? Yeah, I could have. Yeah. When you were 10 and she was three.

Oh, would you feel more comfortable? Twelve and five. Yeah. Maybe like 13 and 13 and six. OK, maybe actually 14 and seven. OK, 14. So that worked. I didn't trust myself at those young ages. No one trusted me.

I was doing quite a bit of baby sitting at seven.

Yeah. Yeah. Six and a half. Carly was born.

Well I guess if we're going to count that I was babysitting at eight eight. Yeah. Would your parents leave you guys. I don't remember. I don't think so. OK, so it is more like you just hung out with your brother.

Barely. OK, do you like him when he was a baby.

Yeah. He was so cute. Oh I don't remember if I liked him. Like I can't go back in time. I have no idea where my headspace was at. But thinking about cookies. Probably, probably. But he was such a cute baby.

Could you give me a picture of him. I would love to see if he's as cute as that baby and the little white dress.

Way cuter. He was he was really, really waki. I don't find that hard to believe. I showed Arron the picture of you in a little white dress and he said, boy, if I had a little girl like that at home, no pit stops straight home from work. Yeah. Oh, pit stops. No, you don't stop at the bar. You don't even stop for gas.

You get home and you see that a little bit. You you know, what he should maybe do is Photoshop, one of his new hats he created onto a picture of himself as a baby that would really sell.

I'm telling you, it's a good idea that we just came up with.

Sharing credit, you had nothing to do with it, but I'm giving you full credit, thanks. Look. That looks like Delta. He looks a lot like Delta. Yeah, with her pizza. Wants a slice sticking that we use when Delta is about to, we'd say, show us your pizza slice and she's starting out. It was a perfect triangle.

Oh, my God. Your pizza's life.

She was not even one here. No. No, she was. Yeah, no. Yeah, October 2015, yes, she was born in 13. Oh, I thought no, I thought Lincoln was thirteen. I'm sorry she was born in Fort. Exactly, yeah. So she was December of 14. And this is October 15. Right, so she's about to turn to she turned. No, you're right. Oh, you're absolutely right. This is not fast math for you.

No, I'm all fucked up. Well, this is why they don't let surgeons operate on their family members.

They all objectivity.

Uh, you can tell by the amount of rubber bands on her are the one Hanaway memory lane.

Oh, man. Well, a stroll down memory lane.

You got your new faucets. Oh, shit. Yes, I did. Yeah. Are you so excited to install them? Oh, my God. Yeah. They're sitting outside your house. Yes.

Well, everything you own is on my Kirkley. Your treadmill I bought you for your birthday two months ago. Everything it is.

But it looks so sleek and beautiful.

And you use mine with the shield spray technology and you got to admit. Right, no spatter. It's awesome. I cannot wait to get in.

And the thing you're going to love the most about it is the touch too, because you can walk up with your hands completely full and and tell the the the fosset to start running with voice I.Q. or you can just tap it with your elbow, turn it on, and then you don't have to set down the plates with messy hands and turn it on and get the fast messy and then have to wipe down the fossil. It's such a pain in the neck.

This is this is going to save the cooking with chicken situation. Absolutely. That's hate.

That's my most hated part. Well, mine's more steak. I start dry rubbing the steak and I get God knows what E. coli all over my fingers. And I don't want I don't want to spread it. So instead, pop Boom-Boom just simple touch anywhere on the spout. It turns on generally my elbow. I do it and then it's at a preset temperature I like and then I just wash his hands.

No problem. I know it's glorious.

I'm so excited. Um, Halsy. Hulsey, Ashley.

No, Ashley, my name is Ashley.

One thing you forgot to ask is oh this is the note session.

Why her name is hot, why she picked Halsy.

I know why she picked Halsy because the boyfriend she had that was too old for her.

She would take the Halsy station to his house and that's where she started writing music for real.

Yeah, I didn't know I was told you could, you know, just in your research.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, and I fell on to it.

She took the Halsy train. Her at her station was Halsy that she got off of and I think he lived on Halsy Street as well. But I know there was a station and I think there was a street and that's where she took her inspiration. This is interesting. This is inspirational. Wow.

I just if you if your name that everyone knows us is associated with something in your past that maybe is not healthy.

Hmm. I wonder I wonder if that's a good thing like I've had, let's say some some lovers I'd rather never be with again, but I don't hold the name of their street against them.

Like if they had lived on a street that had a cool name that I liked, I'd still like it.

I think her situation was different than yours. I think it sounded like hers was an extreme and a bit dangerous.

Not healthy. Hmm.

OK, well, it's still a really cool name.

It is. It is. So then you're in this pic. I like that she compartmentalized the name.

I hope she did. Yeah. Doesn't remind her when she ever every time someone says her name, I hope it doesn't trigger Derek. I don't know the person. We don't know his name. We don't want to know his name.

OK, the man with no name. Voldemort. Oh Hamlet. Are you not supposed to say Hamlet out loud? I think in a theatre.

Oh, this is a theatre of sorts. This is our theatre. Do you like that?

They call in war like the Pacific theater they refer to. What do you mean the battles in the Pacific during World War Two against Japan. They call that the Pacific theater.

Do they call it the theatre, the theatre. Well, they say however you say OK, war theater.

Well, I didn't know because I thought maybe that's why you then mispronounce it, because they are actually saying a different word. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. OK, so they're saying the Pacific Theater.

Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah. I think it's cool. I mean, I don't know why, but I do. That's kind of cool.

It's a production that's for sure. Or yeah. It's a big production. It's the biggest logistical nightmare. Remember the war in Game of Thrones. I do. That was about the biggest production on television, I think it was.

And people underestimate how much of the success of war is logistics. That's what Gamescom that was his big genius, was getting supplies to where they needed to be.

I'm listening to the gang discussion book and the author pronounce it Genghis Khan.

And I don't want that to be true. But it might that might be how you say his name, Genghis Khan.

This is like Rihanna. Rihanna, who says Rihanna. Rihanna says it.

Rihanna. So her name is Rihanna. OK, all the people have you know, people are stuck in their ways. Yeah, I like Rihanna better than Rihanna. Well, you're just used to it. I sure am.

Speaking of musicians.

Oh, Mac Miller. Ding, ding. Yeah. You talked about a lyric from the Free Nationals album. Yeah. That Halsey's book of poems title reminded you of, but then you couldn't remember and you didn't quote it, but it kind of seemed like you wanted to yell.

Let me see if I can think about it now. It's something like if you can put up with me, you can definitely be by yourself or something crazy like that.

How did you find it? No.

Oh, I thought maybe you knew it. Oh, I'll find it right now. It won't be hard. OK, what I'm going to do let me walk you through this first. I'm going to close this YouTube video that's going to go to Apple Music, and then I'm going to go to my library. Mm hmm.

I'm going to go scroll down to Free Nationals', only full albums.

I'll listen to you all the way.

Essentials Nonessentials. It's its own album. OK. OK, now we go down to the Mac Millers song, which is.

Meanwhile, it's time to grow out of control. No, no. If you make one million, make it on your house, you can make it with me, you can make it on your own, Wolf.

Yeah, he's so good. Oh, so sad.

And everything will be fine. OK, so that song, if anyone is interested.

Yeah. Listening to it, it's called Time and it's on the Free Nationals album and it's so good.

Yeah. If you can make it with me then you can make it on your own.

It's kind of similar to that title isn't it. I believe me if I could.

Yeah, guys. No, no I don't. But that's how people feel. I know. I know. But I don't want her to feel like that. I know. I don't want anyone to feel like that.

But I also want people to tell their true feel, their artists. I feel all the feels. Oh boy.

Shall we play our favorite MacMillian song? Yes. Yeah, let's do it. We're going to get in trouble. Probably, but that's all right. It's worth getting sued over.

I think. I'm sure you do, too. You like in, right? I love it. Yeah, they say that's when you've arrived in Hollywood.

OK, I'd rather not. You'd rather not arrive.

What if we already talked about the impossibility? I don't know if we. If so, your favorite word is soul mate.

Yeah, it's an important word to me. That's an important word to you. Your very favorite movie is like well and good will hunting. This fucking song is called Soul Mate, and it's samples of good will hunting. It's it's the simulation.

This song can't exist. That's that's Robin Williams. That's the soul mate. Soul mate.

Which is what you all get. Goosebumps. Are you going to do something for your touch? Just like my soul mate, I never had to come off the ship. And you're always afraid to take the first step because all you see is every negative thing, what you call anything you want to loved by. Yeah, you might want something like Angel. You're going to have to ask something else. Check it out, guys. And it's really tragic.

It's very, very sad that he died. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, this is what is a tricky statement to say. I would probably not have discovered him had he not died because he died in Talib Kweli made a little kind of homage to him on his Instagram, which then made me curious about him. And then that's how I found it. I found him. Yeah. And then I just went down the biggest Macmillan Rabbit Hole. He's unbelievable.

Well, guess what. Hmm. That's a fact. I have I hate to say it that these are from Laura Duff.

So whoopsie. I did on purpose. Welcome just because it was just right. I just wanted to give you.

Can you do it at will? No, I can. Oh, OK. Some people can. Can you. No, no, no. But yes, some people can just burp and.

Yeah I can. Isn't that. Yeah that is shocking. A gross boy like me would know how to do that. I would expect you to know how to burp on command. Yeah. I know many people who can do it.

I knew kids in junior high that they would swallow a ton of ER and then produce farts. What.

That's true. Not immediately. It was always delayed by a while, but they fill their stomach up with er so that they could have tons of farts that night.

That night when there are no at like a sleepover. Oh yeah. Oh. Because boys light their farts.

OK. Or is that something girls do at sleepover.

I've never seen it. You have it now. Would you like me to do it for you. Actually, I probably have seen a guy do it, but I've never seen a girl do that partake. Well, I got to say, obviously the less light there is in the room, the more spectacular the event is. And what you see, which is I always enjoy, is you get that initial pop of flame. But if you keep looking, all of a sudden it just traces the butt crack.

You realize how much of the air is traveling perfectly in the butt crack because you get a perfect line about cratty of blue methane flame.

It's called something.

It's called something far blessin. Now it's called like blue blue velvet.

Let me look it up.

Fact it's going to be a hard on fire. Christmas went on love of fart lighting, also known as pyro flatulence flat.

This can't be real pyro flatulence fart lighting, also known as pyro flatulence.

Fleitas Ignition or fire breathing dragon is the practice of igniting the gases produced by human flatulence, often producing a flame of a blue hue. Hence the act of being known colloquially as a Blue Angel Blue Dart or in Australia and Lake Titicaca. Oh, a blue flame about a blue Christmas.

Is that on the hand? Not so far on the list. But we can add the word flatulence is so embarrassing as a word.

It's worse than the word fart by a long shot. It's weird that when the medical versions dirtier than them.

Yeah, same with halitosis. Oh, I know.

Because it's almost got the word hell in it. No, it's almost an automatic paea.

Yeah, a little bit ptosis.

Oh, there used to be a popular commercial when I was in junior high and it was like, do you suffer from chronic halitosis? And I feel bad for the people who got cast in those commercials because, you know, really what's happened, obviously.

Yeah.

Because, you know, the casting director and the director were like, yeah, he looks like he's got bad breath, he's perfect or she looks like she they're shits appropriately. Yeah. Oh, my God.

Maybe hopefully they said, does anyone here really have halitosis? And then someone said, yeah, me. And then no, that's worse.

No, at least they're out because these if you get famous for being in a halitosis commercial and then people meet you, they'll be like, oh my God, your breath is lovely. Like it would be so nice. Or if you had real chronic halitosis, halibut, halibut, toast.

Oh, helmet to helmet toasties.

If you had halibut toast. And then you are also the face of halibut toast everywhere you went in the airport, people like, oh, stay away from that person.

And then they'd be right too.

But OK, what's the commercial for? Is it to cure? Because then even if they didn't have halibut toast, they would it would seem like they just took that cure and they used to have halibut toast.

This is the this is the trad. pitfall of acting.

But you notice there's there's a look for a guy with diarrhea and commercials because I've seen a million diarrhea or anti diarrhea commercials. It's generally a guy in like a canoe. And he's a little overweight and he has a tucked in shirt. And it's a little messy and it's sure it's messy. Yeah. Like it's a little like untucked in areas.

It's a little bag full. Well, they're really trying to imbued on you is that his abdomen is a mess in all ways and he needs an anti diarrhea medicine like Pepto Bhishma.

So they see what else we got out of Pepcid AC is up. I don't think so. Anti diarrhoeal. I think it's mainly diarrhoeal. That's what it's called. Oh my God. It's a viral diarrhoeal.

It gets a Pepto is going to be the main first stop. Oh or an Imodium. Oh an Imodium hédi. Yeah. So there's Pepcid AC and Imodium and those letters must monoamine any website.

AC is an antacid I believe. OK, it's in the same category as a Tumbes or a Mylanta. Yeah.

We're really out on a legal limb here as far as getting sued because if someone has a very bad diarrhea and they go get Pepcid A don't do not poop their pants in a job interview, they come after us for lost wages.

They've got a case.

They're coming after you because I'm I'm straight out of. Yeah. Pepto Bisbal and Imodium. Those are going to be the routes you want to go for a anti diarrhoeal. Yeah.

Now, I did a science project, chemistry project in tenth grade where I investigated what was the best antacid. Oh. How did you used an actual acid in a test tube or a B?

I forget the details.

OK, I just remember that the winner at the time.

Oh, be careful. At the time was my Lantau, OK, we won't say who the other competitors were, Pepcid no stops.

OK, this is probably a published work.

It was a big deal at the science fair. Oh, yeah. You think your little study milestone's peer reviewed and published trying to make me feel small.

You know what I got to say about you? Can I give you a compliment? Sure.

You never have Helbert toast. Oh my God.

Thank you for saying that either. Do you. Thank you. Thank you. I've never, ever smelled Talaba toast on you. And again, I'm really sympathetic to whoever's got it.

Metacognition. I know some of it though is like, fuck you, you're not brushing your tongue or your diet's a mess. But then I'm sure some people are just genetically OK.

But also, when I went to my really awesome new dentist that I love. Yes.

That I might get veneers from her, she was showing me or teaching me new techniques for brushing because they're always evolving and OK, whatever hit us with some tips, you should always floss.

But also you need to brush your gums. Not like wear what you think you're doing where you think you're just like brushing, where the gum hits the tooth, like even below that chin point. Yeah, exactly. Even below that or above that. You need to exfoliate the gums.

Oh my gosh. I didn't it. I'm not doing that exactly.

So by my in circles on the gum itself.

Oh can I just get a chemical peel on them like an acid peel. Also she was saying important to do that. Most people don't. They focus on their tongue, which as we all know you just you said, yeah, I brush the fuck out of my face.

I should also brush your teeth, your palate, it.

That's so uncomfortable. I'm terrible. I've I've been doing it every day since you have. Yes.

Oh, it's like getting uh. What do I want to say. It's like it's like having some aluminum foil pressed onto a tooth filling it like doesn't feel natural. It feels like you're touching the backside of my navel or so it kind of feels like a covid test.

Feels like it's not in the same way, but like just like oh something shouldn't be up this high or something. But once you know that you're supposed to do it and then you do it, you feel really healthy and their teeth brushing. Oh, hi, Jane.

Have you seen any difference? No, it's mainly for halibut toes. Oh, OK.

I guess I didn't have it, thank God. But just in case I might get it or just have just eat something and then brought bad breath.

I'm going to give you a two bad options. I want you to pick the lesser of two. You're at a movie theater, you can't move seats and your seat mate either has.

Oh my God, I hate this question.

Observable bad breath or observable farts.

I would pick farts.

I think I would pick farts too. Yeah. Oh, I feel bad. Well I, I don't feel too bad because it doesn't seem like people know when they have Helbert toast because they.

I think they do. How could you.

Well because when quite often when I'm interacting with someone with severe Helbert toast they're talking the closest to my nose of anybody like your breath smells great. You're never getting up on my nose like it's a microphone and Kristen do.

She's got great breath, never up in my business. But, you know, occasionally there's a coworker who, you know, their breath smells like they just went down on a horse.

Yeah, they're talking to me is if we got to keep a secret in, my ears are located in my nose. And I think what my my conclusion is. Well, this person has no idea about their Helbert toast.

Right. Or they're a fucking asshole.

And then I don't feel bad for them personally.

They're just like, fuck, this is the hand I've been dealt.

I must be able to to guess what you do is you give a nice buffer. You're not a close talker if you have Helbert toes.

This is kind of my proof is that the people who have it don't know because they're not modulating the distance that they talk to you. But some people have held the toast and they are brushing their teeth. Absolutely. And they're using Listerine.

Well, again, let's not ask how they're brushing their tongue in their palate.

It's my opinion that if you use Listerine, you're going to be free of hell. But toast. But I don't want to embarrass. Actually, my dentist said that's not true. Oh, Christ.

You're just getting us in the legal battle after legal. She said it's not like you. Kirgiz has a real axe to grind. You know, she was she's being so informative.

She's saying it's not like you cannot brush your teeth or not do all the things you're supposed to do, not exploit your guns and then just use Listerine and then expect your match.

So this is a companion to great oral health care.

Yeah, yeah. You know, my dad's obsessed with oral health. He is very. And how does his breath. This is nice. Yeah. Wow.

He got super. It and now he's very disciplined about his. Does he rub everyone's nose in it, like just flossed? No, he doesn't. But he takes he's he's in there for ten minutes. Oh, good for him. Brushing maybe that, you know, straining.

It's well documented that I spend way too much time sitting on the toilet because it's kind of my time. Yeah. And as I age, I imagine that may lead to an undesirable haemorrhoid.

I think that can be a condition of sitting on the toilet too long. And I don't want one of those.

Yeah.

So maybe what I'll do to recapture that time is I'll start really getting neurotic about my oral health care. Is the metal by me another 15 minutes in there, like poking around in my teeth so that people can still talk to you while you're doing it.

That's what you're trying to avoid.

And they still talk to me while I'm taking a dump. It's just they eventually give up, you know, because the smell I'm going to get quite often.

That's part of it. Yeah.

Do you think that's why halibuts, like some people, they just don't want their family to talk to them so they keep bad as a deterrent? Yeah, I don't think.

I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't. I do. OK, well, I love that, that's all. Have a wonderful evening. You as well. God bless the.