Wndri Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcast, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcast. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Sheppard, and I'm joined by Monica Mouse. Hi. Hello. Our returning guest. He was phenomenal the first time he was here.

He joined us for Christmas as well.

He came by for Christmas.

He's been around a few times.

Josh Gead. What a party Josh is. Josh is a Tony Award nominated actor. He was in The Book of Mormen, which I got to see him in. I feel very lucky about. So lucky. He was in the Putnam County Spelling Bee. Yes. We get some The Backstory on that. Yeah. And then frozen, pixels, The Wedding Ringer, Beauty and the Beast. Oh, Gutenberg, the musical, too. That was recently. I saw that, too. Yeah. He has a book out right now. It's very, very well done. A beautiful memoir called In GAD, We Trust. This is a really fun interview. It was at the apex of our terror. Keep that in mind.

Yeah, and we talk about it.

We process it at the top.

Yeah, there's some fire talk, but it's a really armchair episode because it's funny. Josh is so funny, but also it's pretty deep. We talk about his dad and a lot of his insecurities. I don't know.

I thought it was a really beautiful and installation of what we try to do here.

It's great.

I agree. Also, we have February Armchair Anonymous prompts for folks who have great stories and want to chat with us on Zoom. Here are the February prompts. Live Reporting event disasters. I hope to not be reporting one of those. Yeah. Proposals gone wrong. Yeah. I guess that could be a wider net than first meets the eye because you would think just wedding proposals, but there's business proposals Sure. Yeah, there's proposals. So proposals gone wrong. Crazy 23andMe DNA testing stories. This is by popular demand.

They all were. I want to thank the Armcherries. I put out a post and said, What do you want to hear on Armchair Anonymous, and people really gave amazing prompts. So I appreciate that.

Yes. Love to our own devices. We would do wild card nurses and poop your pants stories exclusively. Okay, and the fourth is at home DIY project gone wrong. Yeah. Yeah, there's got to be a lot of those. So please enjoy Josh Gantt. I'm Raza Jeffrey, and in the latest season of The Spy Who, we open the file on Vitold-Piletsky, The a guy who infiltrated Auschwitz. Resistance fighter Vitałd Poletski has heard dark rumors about an internment camp on his home soil of Poland. Hoping to expose its cruelty to the world, he leaves his family behind and deliberately and appropriately gets himself imprisoned. The camp is called Auschwitz, a headish place where the unimaginable becomes routine. Poletski is determined he needs to organize the prisoners, build a resistance, and get the truth out, except when the world hears about the horrors of the camp, nobody comes to the rescue. In the end, it's just him alone, with only one decision to make, accept death or escape. Follow the Spy Who on the WNDYRI app or wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can binge the full season of The Spy Who Infiltrated Auschwitz, early and ad-free with WNDYRI Plus.

I'm Afwa Hersch, I'm Peter Franca Pan. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we're looking at the life of the most famous Queen of France, Marie-Antoinette. Her death is seemingly more well known than her life, but her journey from the daughter of the Austrian Emperor to becoming the most hated woman in France is just as fascinating. We're going to look at the ways in which her story was distorted during the French Revolution and dig deeper into her real experiences in a troubled, difficult time. Marie-antoinette is one of the most well-recognized but least well-understood names in history. We're talking about how her death led to the way that she was spoken about in the the 20th and 21st centuries.

Follow Legacy now from wherever you get your podcasts.

Or binge entire seasons early and ad-free on WNDYRI Plus.

He's an option expert.

He's an option expert. He's an option expert. He's an option expert. You want a coffee, right?

I always want a coffee. Do you remember what I like? You like cold brews. Oh, yes, you remember.

You mean something to me.

You mean something to me, even though you don't have me over unless it's for work.

But isn't that true across the board for all of us?

Yeah, it's fair because I don't invite you over to my place.

You've never invited me over. I've invited you over to, albeit for work. Still, it's in place. I don't have a podcast. Well, didn't fucking invite me over to chat.

Okay.

I can't top this. That's a no?

Oh, yes. It's been done and you could. No. Back to work. Ideally, you get enough leverage at some point that really you just get to work with all your friends, right? That's the apex goal.

My goal is get enough leverage to just work with my friends and do it across the street from where I live.

Maybe ideally in the backyard.

Now, that is like next-level thinking.

Okay, so let's address the obvious context in which we record this. We had a guest who canceled. Well, we had two guests that canceled for reasons they could not avoid the LA fires. I called you as one of my friends. Yes. And conveniently, you have a book out. So you do need to do some promotion.

That's convenient. Have we started, by the way?

Oh, yeah. Don't you remember ABR? Oh, God. Always be recording. Have you had the Titanic conversation? Who are you on the Titanic?

I'm Kathy Bates. Are we talking about the movie or are we talking about the real incident? The movie.

The film. Well, which is based on 100% reality.

I'm the unsinkable Molly Brown. Okay.

Okay.

I'm clearly playing a cello on the deck of the ship as it goes down.

I think you're the Billy Zane character.

Wasn't he naughty? He was a bad boy.

He was a bad guy, right? You seem like you could go either way as you spray whatever that is into your mouth.

Nicotine spray. You saw I had the lozenges.

I like to think of myself as the little old lady who's looking for a necklace towards the end of her life. She survived. Then it's just like, if I have to die, so does the worth and value of this necklace.

Yeah, I'm going to take it with me. Yeah.

I'm going to throw that in the ocean.

But yes, we're in a situation where a good part of the city is on fire, continues to be. I will say it's not at the peak of scariness.

They're starting to contain a little more.

A lot of help has arrived. There's a lot of airplanes on the scene now.

Can I say three things really quickly. Yeah, absolutely. One, my heart breaks for every single person who has lost their home right now. We know personally, 15 people who have lost everything. It is unthinkable what's happening. Entire zip codes are gone. Our friends from the Pacific Palisades, their communities are wiped out.

It's like Dresda.

It is absolutely a war zone. Secondly, I have never seen on such a personal level the bravery the camaraderie and the we are not taking this sitting down attitude as the SoCal community has shown hosing down each other's homes. We've been dropping items off at of the various shelters around town. They are rejecting what we're dropping off because it is so full. On top of that, we continue to donate, and I would encourage everyone who's listening right now, can we make a list available of the various places that people can make donations.

You're looking at me as if I'm going to make a list, but I bet I can get the list made. I don't want to personally lie to you and commit that I'm going to make the list and publish it.

But I want you to. I don't want her to have anything to do with it.

I'll see. That's why I refuse to lie to you in these pressing times.

As long as you delegate. Yes. Then check it off because if there's any fake numbers on there, I'm going to blame you. If there's any bank routing numbers that go directly to your account, I'm going to be pissed.

To primate LLLC.

I will do this a fourth time. I want to say that whatever happens next is on Dax, how we rebound as a city. The final thing I want to say is the firefighters.

Oh, my God. What bad motherfuckers. I can't believe it. I don't know that I've ever seen such fucking heroes in real life as these guys who are risking it all without given a flying fuck about fires two inches away from them.

I'm watching it like it's Sunday Night Football. These guys are so bad. Yes.

They really are. The aerial stuff is what I'm blowing my mind at night in a mountain range, zero visibility, Chinooks, everything right on top of each other, flying in complete blindness and dropping it bullseye every time. It's blowing away the Top Gun flight sequence.

It really is. I think that was their objective. They all watched Maverick before.

Thank God for Tom Cruise.

They flew out there and they said, Let's make it look as cool as possible. All things are true.

It's a tragedy of really unimaginable proportion until we saw it. Also, the folks that have trained to fight fires in the craziest situation, they're in thrall. They're doing the job they've been training to do in the craziest circumstance. I'm just imagining when it's be in the helicopter the whole time. It must be incredible to be able to put your skills to the test like that.

I don't know if you've had this sensation watching them when they drop the fire retardant in the water. The red stuff. The precision with which they do it, it is exhilarating because you're like, fucking save that whole community, please. And they are doing it. And it seems unthinkable because you see these massive flames heading towards these communities. It looks unstoppable, and they are stopping it.

It's a war, and I have to admit, when I'm watching those harrowing drops, many times I'm saying out loud by myself watching downstairs, Fuck, yeah.

Yeah. Then at the same time, you think about the too little, too late communities like the Palisades and like Pasadena. It is heartbreaking and devastating for those people who aren't on the ground in SoCal. Let me tell you now, it's going to be years, and we're going to need all the help we can get.

That's my plea is we're in it right now, and we're in triage mode, and we're dropping stuff off and we're X, Y, and Z, which is all great. We need to be doing it, but we need to be doing it in a month, in two months, in a year. This is going to be easy to forget, just like all natural disasters are. But this is a long haul, and it's going to take a long time. I encourage people to keep an eye on us and keep donating and keep helping, if you can, of course.

If you can in whatever way you can. Even the amount of people who have lost clothes. We were speaking to a family who lost their home, and we said, Do you need anything? And they said, We don't have any clothes. It's just little things that you don't even think about. You think about all the possessions. It's actually, in a way, really nice to be here. I needed a little bit of a distraction from the chaos.

Well, and I wanted to ask you because I sense just a hint of there's some ethical dilemma about doing something like this.

When you asked me to come today, I definitely hesitated. I posted about this the other day. I am doing everything I can, and none of it feels like enough. The reason I came on today I was like, Oh, we can start by talking about this. That is actually making me feel better about sitting across from such a piece of shit like you who continues to do podcasts in these kinds of situations.

Well, I think a knee jerk would be, although Well, these people are suffering, and I'm going to go do this thing that has really no value outside of just entertainment. That feels like I shouldn't be having fun while my friends are suffering and dealing with loss. I think that's an obvious thing to contend with right out of the gates. But My thing is me joining people in misery isn't a solution, A. It doesn't help them. It doesn't help me. I have a job, and when I can do my job, I should do my job. Amen. All the other people are at their jobs. That's my takeaway. No one at 711 right now is going, Do I feel guilty that I'm selling hot dogs right now when people are suffering? No, I'm at my job because I have a job and that's my commitment. That's my own personal takeaway on it.

It's a great point. This morning, we actually had this conversation where I said to my wife, I'm going to make a pot of coffee. And she said, Why don't you go to Starbucks, get it? I said, Why go to Starbucks? I don't want to go outside with the air. She goes, Because the community needs that right now. Restaurants need the support. There are so many people who are fleeing right now, and these places that aren't even in the line of fire are going to feel the effects of it. It is going to hurt everybody.

Yeah, it's catastrophic. I'm also just coming off watching the Churchill four-part documentary on Netflix, and you're watching what the folks in London did 57 nights in a row of Have you ever read The Splendid and the Vile?

That's Eric Larson. Eric Larson, one of my favorite author.

Yes, I have. We've had him on the show, not to brag.

Churchill?

Yeah. Him, too.

Yeah, he was great. Postumously, but we had him. He was great.

He was great.

Postumously, but we had him.

You guys did like through Ouija, how did you do? Ai.

We talked to the estate.

See, that's the promise. There's a downside, but that's the promise.

Yeah, I can chat with Churchill. But those people were waking up in a subway platform next to six kids. There was no bathrooms, and they went straight to work. Unbelievable. They stayed calm and they carried on. People will have complaints about me working, but that's my own ethic, which is, no, stay calm, carry on.

It's a great point. A stiff upper lip is exactly what I think of when I think of the British people going through that period. It is true. We're unfortunately living through a period of post-apocalyptic situations. The reason I started writing my book, that was inspired by telling the story of parenting in what feels like it's the end of the world. I have had two children, and most of their lives have been defined by pandemics, by disaster, by socio-political upheaval. You never stop and think about it, but we lived and we grew up in a period in which we had great ease The world was a very peaceful place in the context of history. But, Josh-Was it, though? It wasn't. It wasn't. Think about sapiens. Have you guys read the book?

Yes. We've had him on, not to cry.

I know you've had him on. I wrote half of it. But you think about what you've all said. We are living in the greatest time of prosperity and peace in the history of mankind.

And lack of starvation and our handle on diseases. And really, by all metrics, what you're saying, which I also feel is objectively wrong. So Yes, our tranquil '80s, our parents were freaked out by something much larger, which was you had Bay of Pigs. Nuclear Holocaust was on the table in a real way daily.

Before we were born.

No, '81. You were born in '81.

He's not even looking at any cards right now.

February 23rd.

Whoa. 1981? Yes.

The show The Day After was on NBC when you were five years old. That was a show about what do we do the day after the nuclear Anihilation. The greatest existential crisis of all time on planned Earth was crescendoing when you were a little boy.

I didn't remember it.

You weren't really aware of it. Then prior to that, our parents, Vietnam and Kent State, and shooting students.

Again, before we were born.

I'm just saying our parents.

Our parents definitely lived through period of upheaval, the likes of which resonates with what we're going through today. Political leaders being assassinated one after another, the world on the precipice of nuclear war. My parents hiding under their desks. That was not my experience in the peaceful and prosperity bubble that I lived in- Playing with GI Joe in Hollywood. In the 1980s and 1990s. Now, that is not to say that everything was perfect, but it is certainly not to say that it wasn't better than what I'm raising my kids through right now, which is Climate change is an existential crisis. The world seems like it's on the brink of chaos on a daily basis. We had a first-of-its-kind pandemic the first time in a century. We're doing this as half our city is on fire. I know. It's that proximity to chaos, and that is not to say that areas of the world haven't experienced this.

Oh, they're interviewing last night. I'm watching on Kcal. You've got a family that just came here from Ukraine, escaping the war, and apartment building burns down. Oh, those people are going from warzone to warzone.

Israel and Palestine.

Israel, Palestine. It's happening on a global level. It's not to say that there hasn't been places that have been directly affected by genocide, by starvation, by all sorts of crises during the past 40 years. But this period feels particularly dark.

I just want to push back and say it feels unique, but I actually think it's completely consistent with what happens on planet Earth. When we were at Carnegie Mallen, you had the Serbian-Croatian genocide with a million and a half people, and the things they were doing to the people as they killed them, they really surpassed anything that's happening. You think about Rwanda. Rwanda. It's been ever present. I think the real thing to remember is it's a challenging place. There's seven billion of us. A lot of shit goes wrong. A ton of stuff goes right. We're not unique, and we got to carry on, and we got to continue to make it a little bit better because this is status quo on planet Earth. It just feels because we're raising kids now, so we have a different lens than we would have had if even we went through the pandemic without kids. We're like, Okay, this is cool. You drink all day and you hang out with friends and blah, blah, blah. But now that we have kids, you're like, wow, they haven't seen other children for a year. That feels scary. So I just think our lens obviously changes because we have these little people we care about so much, and we're turning this world over to them, and we're a little scared.

What are we turning over?

That's 100% true. It's also, I think, frustrating that we don't learn from history that when it comes to, for instance, geopolitical conflict, there are certain things outside of our control. The pandemic, for the most part, was outside of anyone's control. This virus. This is outside of anyone's control.

There's all these people who want to be mad at the mayor. They want to be mad at the governor. They want to be mad. There's so many people that are trying to line up and blame this horrific thing on a single individual. It's like, Yang, blame Santa Ana Wins.

It's like, Guys, it's wind. It is really, really hard for to think about at a time like this criticizing anyone.

Do you see the video that Karen ambushing Newsan? I saw.

But by the way, in the same way, I never hold DeSantis responsible for the destruction of hurricanes. I grew up in South Florida. I know the pain and the chaos of those events. I lived through Hurricane Andrew. There's only so much you can do preventatively, and there's only so much you can do during the crisis. Really, your job as a leader is what you do after, what you do to speak calm to people during, and then how you rebuild. I know you were going to say, see, you lived through.

You lived through a hurricane. We just forgot. Also, 9/11, terrorism. Our memories are so short. We do forget that we go through these horrible periods and we recover from those periods, and then they come back. It is all temporary. It's really hard to say right now. You know what you guys are right. Fuck you all.

You never have a back on your show again.

I don't dare say that again. I'm not going to say that again. I'm not going to say that again.

Sacraligious.

It was funny. I was thinking, I was reading your book this morning, and you have the line in there which is, Comedy is tragedy plus time. I was like, Well, we're going to engage without the benefit of time. We've had Polo around. We've had a lot of different people who was like, Some people's first week on Saturday Night Live was 9: 15. People have had to decide whether or not they're going to carry on.

I remember that episode. That was Giuliani coming on. Oh, yeah.

But them having the ethical dilemma, is it appropriate to be funny right now? Everyone gets to choose how they handle the stress. I have a way of handling the stress, and mine is through laughing. All I would ask is, if that's not your way of handling stress, that's cool. Do it however you want. But I don't think anyone can tell someone else what they're allowed to do to handle it. Amen. I promise you, if my house was engulfed in flames, I would be making a joke because I've done it. I'm making a joke when my dad's dying. This is how I process it for better or worse.

That's how I process grief, too. It's therapeutic, and it's not appropriate for everyone, but it is how I'm wired, and I've always been unapologetic about that. My grandparents told me themselves that when they were in the Holocaust, a lot of how they got through their daily lives and being on the brink of death on a daily basis was by laughing.

If you can give yourself that little burst of happiness, it's a reminder that it's still possible on the other side. It's a great reminder like, Oh, yes, and I will laugh, and I will look experience fun and levity. For me, everyone gets to do it their own way.

Yeah, this has been great, guys. Thank you so much.

I'm glad we did this. We processed it all for the nation.

Because I couldn't get my therapist on the phone today, so this ended up being a good... Because their house was burned down. Yeah, because they no longer have a phone, a landline. I'm glad that you guys were here for me. Thank you.

Where are you got? You're leaving, though, right? You're deserting this town in its time of need. With all that stuff you just said.

Having said that, I think it's best to get out of here while the going is No, we're sticking close right now. We have discussed leaving because of air quality. We live on the West Side, very close to the fires right now. We're talking about it. We're talking about, do we maybe go like an hour south or north just to get the kids to be able to go outside. I'm supposed to leave tomorrow for my book tour.

Yes, that's what I meant.

I was going to cancel it. To your point, my wife said, Absolutely not.

How's that helping anybody?

Well, that's what she said. She said, You are actually more of a burden if I'm evacuating than you are a help. And so I think it's best for our family if you leave. There you go. Yes. Go to New York where you're useful. Yeah, totally. Leave LA where you're a burden to this family. You piece of shit.

But also, I just want to touch on one other thing. Yesterday, I was like, I need to stay on my bike riding schedule. I have a New Year's resolution that I ride to the observatory twice a week. So yesterday, I get out there and I start riding up the hill. And the gates are closed to go up in to Griffith Park, but I'm presuming for cars. And so I go around the gate and I get halfway up the thing, and then some rangers roll down on a loudspeaker, and they let me have it a little bit. And they're like, It's closed. And I go, Oh, yeah, to cars? And they're like, No, it's closed. There's no, all that to say. I'm like, Why can't I ride my bike? Get home, and I realize, Oh, all these motherfuckers, there are arsonists out. Exactly. In force. So they have no clue who is up in the hills to start a fire.

They've arrested two already. Yes. By the way, you were probably a prime suspect to them because you look like a piece of shit. You look like a real piece of shit. You look like the guy from the Titanic who took all the... Same again. Yeah, really. But with beautiful hair. I do think it is tough because to go back to what I said at the beginning. I've seen such greatness and I've seen such beauty in this city, and I've also seen such ugliness. We're all here. The looting, the people fucking flying their drones and affecting planes from dropping water, fuck you all. It's so fucked up. I know. Then the arsonist, people fucking going around and lighting more fires.

People setting their houses on fire. Yeah.

That part of it remains really heartbreaking really frustrating.

This is where we file into our natural state. Yesterday, Kristen is out.

This is Kristen Bell, for those who don't know.

Your co-star from the film, frozen one and two, and hopefully three at some point. She's out doing the Lord's work with the children, and I'm selfishly taking a bike ride. But I'm also nonstop with my buddy Brandon from the LAPD. She's thinking about helping, and I'm thinking, Yeah, I can feel the energy. I was at the gas station late at night, and a lot of the boys were out on dirt bikes, and it felt like Detroit on devil's night. I was like, Yeah, the young men are going to get into some shit. I get it. She's out helping, but I'm like, Okay, we got some chance I will have to defend the family at some point, and that's where my focus ends at me. We all just funnel into wherever I don't have friends at the LAPD, and now I feel like I should. Would you like me to put you on a group text with Brandon? Yeah.

If I see anything suspicious, I'd like someone official to reach out to.

Yeah, it's also status right now. It's really cool to be friends with a firefighter right now.

You have a direct number. I've got just three, 911. That's all I know. I just have the three numbers. I just have the three numbers everyone has.

It sounds like you're not going to play it super cool if I do give you as a number, though.

I'm telling you now, I won't. Do you want a role I'm telling you now, it would be like putting me on a text chain with Harrison Ford. Hey, bro.

What gun do you carry, Brandon? Did you report these potential hooligans? No, I just hit him up and I said I was just at the gas station. The boys are out. He's also from Detroit. I'm like, It feels like Devil's Night, Detroit. And he goes, Yeah, isn't it wild? You can feel it in the air. I'm like, Yeah, it's palpable. If you used to be a scumbag, I'm on that wavelength. I said, If I'm 21 and I'm broke, which I was, and I'm drunk, and I think, Oh, yeah, all these rich people's house burnt down, they took a bunch of stuff, but probably there's a bunch of jewelry and stuff just sitting on the ground. Your mind starts wondering, and I don't have anything, and they have everything. Even someone who's on the spectrum of dirtbaggery, they can be midway through and convince themselves. You can just see people making the argument, or at least I can see that happening.

I think that there's a lot of people taking advantage of a horrible situation right now.

They'll feel bad for it at You will either eventually pay a price or you will eventually regret it.

It's horrible to take advantage of people in any situation who have already lost so much. Yeah.

To pray on people who are victims is a rough look. But again, if you're penniless in the middle of nowhere and you're looking at multimillionaires-Are you planning on doing this tonight?

It sounds like you're-He's talking it through in a way.

You're really starting to strategize this in a way that's really-I'm saying I'd be lying if I couldn't understand the rationale. Am I at risk for me? Are you chasing my house?

We're not not keeping it on your house right now.

Well, I did notice you upgraded. Last time you were here in a Lexus 300 four-door sedan. Right. You're clocking it. Now you're in an upgraded Lexus SUV. That's a nice car.

What are you doing right now? I'm just very uncomfortable. I couldn't even tell you what my last car was.

It was black. Oh, jeez. You parked it right over here, and we took a long look at it because I said, This is the car I'd put you in. It's so South Florida. I was like, This is your car.

Do you feel like when you look at my new car, do you understand why I'm driving in that one, or are you like, this doesn't fit as well?

I do understand it. First of all, I don't own any of them, but they're great cars. You can drive them for a million miles.

I love them. They get the job done.

They're not flashy, but they're comfortable.

They're not flashy. But I'm going to tell you this now. I've never been a car guy. I know. I'm jealous of all of my friends who know every model and make of every car, and I can't do that. I've never operated like that. I look for a nice interior That's right.

In a quiet, soft ride.

Great stereo. Yes. It can get me from point A to point C.

Exterior colors, immaterial. You probably don't care about that.

No. I'm jealous that you have such a knowledge of cool cars.

I'd imagine what he's jealous of, and I don't want to speak for you. You're jealous of my enthusiasm because I get this.

I'm jealous of hobbyists in general. If you have a knowledge of something niche or something specific, I am jealous because I love knowledge. I love to collect knowledge. I love people who know something so well that is very attractive to me. I'm like, that's really cool to have great expertise. It's why I love your show. You collect knowledge for a living. This particular episode is making people stupider. But in general, when you have experts in different-No, we have that list of numbers, remember?

We got that list of numbers.

That's comment and curate. That I'm going to delegate. But what I I love is that that's what you do.

You invite people on this show who are experts in different areas. Oh, it's so great. It's the coolest thing. Are you going to add my book to your bookshelf behind you?

Absolutely. I wanted to start this episode. It's too late. But we've never started with a hard like this, and I wanted it to go. Hi, if you're joining us, we're here with Josh Gead, author of In Gad. That just felt like something I never got to do.

That's such a CBS 1979 Yeah.

As if the interview would be just finishing. Yeah. What a book. If you're just joining us, we're with Josh Gad, author of In Gad, We Trust.

Do you think there was another world in which you were born maybe 20 years earlier that you ended up on NPR? Or do you think your career would have gone stern, before podcasts?

I could answer, but I don't trust what the answer would be. I think my soul and heart always wanted to be NPR, but I grew up in an area where toxic masculinity was the currency. I didn't have a dad, and I He was doing all the things. I would like to believe, yes, I would have become Ira Glass, but the truth is I probably would have tried to be a knockoff Howard Stern. Yeah, not as good as Howard Stern. I've just, through many years, been able to finally pursue and embrace the person the little boy wanted to be and not necessarily the agro dude that was sending a message to everyone not to try to hurt me.

It's still there. Oh, yeah. As someone who edits, I think it's more Stern than it is NPR in a great way. Who doesn't love Stern?

But you You know what's great about Stern, too? I think like Dax, Stern could have ended up easily on NPR. I think Stern has the capacity and the skill set to be equally riveting on NPR as he is.

But he's choosing his authentic honesty over I love NPR. I don't want to be disparaging, but that's more curated and Stern is more honest.

Npr has very wet mouths. Oh, eeu. When you listen to NPR, it's a very moist... Don't be upset about it. It's an observation, but you know I'm Yeah. There's a quality that's very intimate and very wet.

Yes, I admire. They're great comedians who they're pacing so slow and they're not scared. They talk so slow and monotone, and they're not worried at all. They're losing people. In fact, the more boring is, the more into it I am. Yes. But what I think you're highlighting, which is worth highlighting, is our heroes, they were Trojan horses. Letterman came with the promise of irreverent, provocative comedy. But what you stayed for and fell in love with is you were like, Oh, I think he's always smarter than the person he's talking to.

Did you ever do Letterman?

Yeah.

He was the one host who always intimidated me. Oh, it's so scary. Because you know he's smarter. This was the same thing being on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. When I had to sit and pitch something to John. I have never been more intimidated in my life.

That's so scary. He scares me.

He's the smartest man in every room, and he just knows better than you know what's funny and what's going to work and what is not going to work.

Yeah. He's not always able to understand how to articulate it all.

And the delivery. Somehow he's confrontational without ever feeling like a bully. He's magic. But Stern is the same thing. You come for him making fun of Roni, but really, it's the intelligence that keeps you there for a long time. And Konan, He's so insanely smart. It's crazy. So he's making dumb, dumb jokes, but you know there's this intelligence behind it. And I think for me, that's the appeal of all those guys.

Yes, I agree.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare.

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I went back. We're almost exactly at five years since you were here last time.

Is that right?

Would you have thought that?

No, I don't think about the show very much. Sure.

Yeah, of course.

Why would you? I don't remember your car.

To save your family's life, if I said, How long ago were you here? What answer would you have given?

Oh, man, I I don't want to say goodbye to my family. You better get this right. I better get this right.

No, I think it's the perfect one.

This has become very ominous, this episode. Yeah, five years. That feels right. But I remember doing a guest spot or another appearance.

You've done Christmas with us.

That's what I did, and that was after. That's why I feel like it hasn't been five years because you invited me like today as a last minute, we need filler. God is good for filler episode.

No, you're a home run. Can I be honest with you? No, you're a home run. Just to alleviate any shadow talk you're having, I said to my wife, I'm fucked. I don't really know what to do. We had two episodes that were going to easily come out because I was going to record them on Thursday, and I don't know what to do. I'm like, who's in town and who would even be going. So we start thinking, and then I walk by on our kitchen table, your book is sitting, and I go, well, fuck, Gad's got to be promoting this book. Call him. It wasn't, let's go to the end of the list. It was like, God, Gad, set this book on my fucking dining room table. I was like, oh, he's got a book to promote. He should be in anyways.

So was it pre-pandemic?

Yeah, February 20th. It was right before your birthday.

Oh my God. Right before the pandemic hit and right in the middle of a fire.

Can't wait to see you when the dinosaurs come out of the ocean and start cobbling up people.

I'm really concerned about my third appearance on this show. I don't know where it's going to be. Live from the set of Hell. Here's Josh Getz.

From the bowels of hell. Can I tell you when I love about you? You are so fast and witty and fun, and I don't want to label it competitive, but I'm not going to let someone operate at 120 miles an hour while I'm next to them going 60. It's just not in my nature.

That's why you taste their cars. That's why you know everything you need to know about them so you can hurt them if they try.

You think so fast and you're so funny that it brings out the best side of myself.

But I'm not an expert in anything. That's not true.

Am I? This whole fucking forensic NFL bullshit I was learning about. What a nerdy. I'm It's the reading words I've never read before.

Like I talk about in my book, I thought it was the chopping up of dead bodies for investigative purposes. Instead, it's actually a thing that high schoolers do, which is another word for speech and debate. I'll get stopped today. Not today because- Today we're in the middle of something. There's bigger fish to fry today. But maybe next month again, people will be willing to come up to me and say, I know you from high school, but people watch my high school videos from speech and debate and forensics.

Well, you're a three-time national champ. I was a three-time national champ.

You have more respect for me than you've ever had.

Because she's a two-time national champ.

Are you? I'm a two-time state champ, cheerleading. I never did that. Yeah, competition cheerleading.

But it's in your list of things.

But I understand how hard it is to do. Cheerleading? No, just winning anything at that level when you're in high school.

So I didn't make the cheer team.

But you tried?

Multiple times.

In his book, he lays out the options for a high schooler, and he's like, Okay, the jocks are the athlete is not going to happen. Pretty accurate, right? Cheerleading, I just don't fit in the outfits, you said. Then Model UN, Insufferable, and then you get to forensics.

I fit that because it's got a performative element to it. Never learned how to play chess. Still, to this day, don't know how to play chess. I would have been the guy that played chess, but nobody taught me how. This is what not having a father around does is you don't learn things like love of cars, how to play chess. I missed all of that. I was like, oh, speech and debate. That feels like something I can do. A lot of how I fell into this was through that world.

Well, that's another thing that not having a father around will do. It will make you a performer and a comedian. A hundred %. It really will.

I'm so glad that you start the book in the way you do. First of all, it's very, very well written. Did you write it?

No, ChatGPT. Okay. Every day.

God, they got your voice. They really do.

They have it down.

It's really, really well written. But you start with your personal story, which, of course, starts with your parents. We touched on it last time, but your dad's almost out of a movie. Tell people about where your dad came from.

We've had this conversation, but every time it surprises you.

Well, the Columbia part was new to me.

The Emerald Trade. It is out of a movie. My dad was a Jew born in Afghanistan, which It was maybe their third or fourth stop. Correct. They were nomads. You can actually trace my lineage back to one of the original tribes of Israel, the Gad tribe. They were just going from place to place and being told, No, you are not welcome here. And surprisingly, Afghanistan, which seems like a great place for Jews, turned out not to be.

Yeah, that's what I always think about Jewish.

My father got into precious jewels along with his brothers. In Israel.

In Israel. They then moved to Israel when he's 12, and he learns to cut diamonds there.

When you're 12 years old, that's a great, great way to make a living. Yeah. And so by day, he was doing that, and by night, he was a bodybuilder.

Not what I'm expecting.

No. I have a picture in there, I think, of my dad just ripped. He looked like then as Beach, Schwarzenegger, really crazy.

That's who we talked about last time. That's right.

He looks like Kumal.

His body had just been unveiled five years ago.

Right, for Marvel. He looked like Marvel-era Kumal. Does Kumal still look like my head?

Yeah, I've been texting with him nonstop about our bodies. He's my only outlet to send shirtless photos of myself anywhere. Really? Because I can't send them to women.

Do you think Kumal would welcome me sending him shirtless pictures of myself?

He'd love it. We love the mail form.

All right, I'm going to send him.

You should.

No contact.

I'm giving you Brandon's number from the LAPD and then It's all on a chain. Oh, my God. The LAPD buddy would be like, Get me the fuck off this chain.

Anyway, my dad and his brothers end up moving to the United States, and they decide to start an emerald business. My father moves to Colombia. They own emerald minds.

In the '80s, at the peak of Pablo Escobar.

I remember traveling to Columbia at the age of four, and I just remember seeing armed people all around my father and just uzis, like automatic weapons, not even semis, and just thinking to myself, Wait, is this what everyone's dad does? I was so confused. All my friends' fathers were doctors or lawyers in South Florida, and my dad was literally in the middle of the jungles of Columbia, surrounded by dangerous people. He was always a larger-than-life guy when I was growing up. My parents got divorced when I was six, and I talk about my relationship after that. But what I also talk about in the book, which we've never spoken about, was I haven't seen my dad in about 20 years. I got a call one day while I'm doing Gutenberg, which you were so gracious enough to come to. Yeah, so much fun. My dad is in New Jersey, and he says, I'd love to come see your show.

This is a couple of years ago?

This is last year. Oh, my God. I said, Okay. I think he's on his third or fourth family now. I said, Come alone. I'll send a car for you, and why don't you stay the night?

Wow, that's nice.

I was very anxious about it. He comes to the theater. I'm looking for him in the audience. I don't see him. Are you eight years old? A hundred %. It's Halloween night. Of course. Andrew and I, after the show, decide to dress up as the mommy dearest characters. He's the Faye Dunaway character. I'm the daughter.

Is he holding a coat hangar? .

I look at Andrew after the show and I said, I need you to come with me. I'm very nervous about this. We go out, both dressed as women. My father's never seen me on stage in my life. Wow. Even as a kid. He was not the dad who came to my shows. This is the first time my has ever seen me on stage. I come out and I see a man that I know immediately and yet don't recognize at all. It was both exhilarating and really painful. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know interact. He looked frailer than I remember.

He was pretty old, right?

He's in his late '70s, but the gregarious person that I am, that's from my father. I think about my dad as this invincible figure, a force of nature, and he's not that. Andrew is amazing, helping me navigate it. I get in the car with my dad. He's hard of hearing English as his third language. He's repeating to me that he was telling everybody that he was sitting next to you that I'm his son and he was so proud. But also, I could tell he understood none of the fucking jokes in the show and just saw everyone laughing and so started laughing with him.

Great show for him. It's almost Cirque de Soleil. You could not speak English and very much understand what is happening.

Just unbridled chaos. Yes. We go back to my place and I order us some sandwiches, and I realized that I'm the father. Yeah, of In this situation.

Well, you've always been, really.

We start talking. He starts telling me about his life. It's incredibly awkward at first and then incredibly easy. Then I start to fall back into being a kid again. I don't know how to describe it. I start to feel like I'm in my eight-year-old body, and I'm talking to this man who approximates my father, and I can also tell that there's extreme memory loss going on from him.

Could you sense this was a mission of repair or just curiosity?

I think it was neither of those things. I think it was my son's in New York, I'm here, I'd like to see him, and we'll go from there. As simple as that. There's no question in my mind that my father loves me dearly. What he did to me and my family doesn't support that, but he has never not expressed his own form and his own idea of love. We're sitting there, we're talking, and it starts to become very apparent to me that he's lost everything. He's living on welfare.

Wow, because he was a high roller.

He owned, I think, the largest producing mine in Columbia. Had he held on to that, we would have been billionaires and lost it all. As there always is, he and his partner fucked each other and all paid the price. I'm sitting there and this guy who I always was like, Oh, my God, he's Invincible, is now like Al Pacino in Godfather 3. The next morning, I hug him, I get him a car, and I give him his jacket, and he goes, What's that? I said, It's your jacket. He goes, It's not my jacket. I go, No, that's your jacket, dad. He goes, It's not my jacket. Then I put it on him and I say, This is the jacket you came in. It occurs to me, perhaps this is the last time, A, my father recognizes me. He's not the guy who will go to a doctor and it seems to me like there's something debilitating going on. I love him and so I wish he would. But I'm also having this moment of going, Is this where this journey ends for us? If it does, I'm so grateful I had this. I lied to my mom.

I didn't tell her that I saw him.

That's a pattern because I think one of the meanest things he did do without probably any awareness that it was mean, he's left when Josh is a kid. Josh has no idea why they got divorced. Mom throws him out. Then when he's eight, two years later, there. He invites him to the Sheridan. By the way, that was the place when we were kids. Oh, it was. Do you remember the Sheridan? Of course. My mom took us there to tell us she was divorcing my third dad. Why is that? That was like the four seasons for us. You get invited to the Sheridan.

He says, surprise, and introduces me to his mistress and their son from Columbia.

The dad had another family.

I didn't know what to do with that. I start spiraling.

He swears you to secrecy. This is the cruelty that he probably wasn't aware of.

He was oblivious. My dad doesn't operate in familiar ways that we understand responsible parents. I'm grateful for that because, man, did it fucking teach me how to be a great parent. Yeah. I'm sure you have the same experience of learning from mistakes and vowing to never fucking repeat those mistakes. Yeah.

Can I share one part of my story? Because I happened to be writing about it just recently. Even at a young age, I was a little skeptical. I would go to his house on the weekends, and he was so loving. That's a gift I had. He was so affectionate for a dad in the '80s. He hugged us and kissed us and snuggled us and showered us in love. And he wasn't around. So there's this huge disconnect from what I would feel in that moment, but then the actions afterwards never matched it. It just created this huge dissonance where I'm like, What is this? I appear to be the most important thing in the world. Then I don't see him for three weeks, and he doesn't show up for my brother's field hockey games. We all know it's very important to my brother. Also, how is he living this rich lifestyle, and we're fucking dead broke. How's that happening? There's all this really just confusing, how do I compute the messages versus the actions?

The exact same story, except my dad would go months at a time and would live in another country. With one of his many other fuck buddies.

It makes love so confusing for the rest of your life, I assume.

A hundred %.

Who's to say what's real and what's not real? But then that's the question you live with forever. What is real?

I vividly remember sitting at the window in my home in Hollywood, Florida, waiting for my father to show up on countless nights where he never came. My mom knew he wasn't going to come, and he would tell me he was coming, and I believed he was coming, and then he wouldn't show up. I talk about this in my book, too, which is the kismet of my Disney journey, is the one place my father would always take me when I was growing up was Disney World. Wow. Disney World became a symbol of my relationship with my father, and Disney escapism became the salve that was healing any absence that I felt in my life.

I also think it sets you up for this pattern you then replicate in life where it's just like, high, it's low, right? Because the dads are always winning you back over. They feel bad, and whether they are consciously aware of it or subconsciously. But yeah, when they have you, they're playing this incredible show and they're going to make up for all this time. So it's like you get pretty to these insane spikes of love bombiness and then nothing. Disappearant. For me, it can fuck up all relationships going forward because it's like, this is the pattern of love.

Yeah, it can. It had the opposite effect on me and my brothers. I have such an incredible mother. My mom was so badass. Despite the emotional shrapnel that I felt as a result of her divorce, and I've had to heal and talk to her about that and forgive that because I didn't understand at the time that her mood swings and her anger and my brother's having moved to college, I was the only one in the house who was absorbing that, and that was scary, and that was lonely and the birth of comedy. It was a birth of comedy because as a result of her pain and her depression, I somehow found this weapon where I was able to make her laugh, and I was like, That's something. Tapping into that and then making that a career came from the seeds of that despair, as it often does, I would imagine. But that was hard.

When you were choosing to honor your dad's request to keep the other family's secret, was that out of loyalty to him or were you afraid of how that would make your mom feel to know?

A hundred % the latter.

The latter, right. You're responsible for mom's mood as a little boy. You're protecting her feelings from finding out about the other family. There's a lot of adulting going on.

I grew up too fast and I didn't grow up enough. I'm jealous of my friends who had both parents till they were 18, at least, and then a later divorce, I think, is sometimes maybe better, sometimes maybe worse. For me, it was a very different experience than it was for my brothers. My brothers were 10 and 8 years older, and they got the family journey. Mine was ripped away at six. You don't have the skills to process that. I became very destructive. I would lie constantly to my mom. I was doing horribly in school. It is almost impossible to flunk first grade. I was getting Fs and Ds.

Of course you were. Regulating with food enters the picture.

That's when I started to balloon. I was also actually physically destructive. I remember a day where I took something in the back of my mom's car, the little cigarette things that you would push down, and I burning holes in the back of her car. My mom could not figure out what the fuck was going on with me. It was this absolute burden on my shoulders of having to keep this secret and lashing out because I didn't know what else to do. My mom finally sat down and said, something's got to change. Got me to speak to a therapist. I was able to finally unburden this secret. Was able to finally find some path for my myself to navigate my own very difficult emotions and then was able to overcome all of the chaos.

Did the therapist tell you it was okay for you to tell your mom?

The therapist did. This was a period where I only wanted to sleep in my mom's room. I was afraid to sleep by myself. There was so much shit going on. I had one therapist who told my mom to lock me in my room. Oh, boy. My mom, God bless her, was like, You're out of your fucking mind. Let's switch. Then I found this incredible woman who was able to talk to me as a child and was able to get to why was I feeling so scared? I had this enormous fear of death. I was constantly afraid of dying. I was constantly afraid of loss. Once I had a grasp on that, I was then able to take all of that and start to focus my energies on performance. My mom found this local children's theater called the Hollywood Playhouse for the Performing Arts, signed me up, and that changed my life. Especially being overweight, I found that the greatest superpower I had was making fun of myself and using that self-deprecation to win people over. I also parlated into popularity. I became class president. I became a king in high school, and I didn't fit the physical bill what that usually looks like.

It makes it even that much better.

Funny is funny, and it attracts people. I suddenly was like, Okay, this is my high. This is what I'm going to lean into. Cut to me going to Carnegie Mellon drama for some reason.

Well, but really quick, you're crushing. You're in AP classes. You're the class president. You're a three-time champion. You apply to Northwestern. In fact, eight of you from your school apply, and then you're going to go to Juilliard or you apply to Juilliard and then you get rejected from Northwestern, and you're like, I can't wait to go commiserate with these other seven dipsets who certainly didn't get it. All got it. Oh, no.

Class of '99. All got in except for me.

I love these reality checks every now and then, just when you're certain you're the king. I'm confused, though, because in the book, you go and you audition for Juilliard, and it seems you got in, but then you went to Carnegie Mellon.

I did not get into Juilliard. Oh, you didn't? I had the worst audition of my life.

But you said, I Trojan horse my way into Carnegie Mellon. Sorry, tell me about Juilliard.

Juilliard, I go in there and I am bullish. I'm like, I got this.

After you didn't get into Northwestern?

Well, Northwestern is all about grades in SAT. Yeah, it is. At the time, I had gotten a 1350 on my SAT. It's not bad. I was thinking like, Oh, I'm shooting. But all my friends have got 1400 or above. Northwestern was out of the picture, and I'm like, Well, it doesn't matter. My backup, Juliet, is all about the audition. I go in there and I do Marty by Patty Chayewski. That was the piece that I had got in third place in my sophomore year of high school.

This is also a beautiful story. Someone forces you to do drama, basically. Correct. You do it and you fall in love with that as well.

I do it, and I'm thinking to myself, I'm fucking killing this. I describe the three people auditioning me as the Ringwraiths of Lord Sauron. It is really truly these hooded figures who are not willing to express at all.

I admire the lack of people, Oh, yeah. Can you imagine just watching something and saying nothing?

You have to think about this. These are also the same people at that time who had Kevin Klein and Robin Williams and all of the greats come through. So they don't fucking care about who I am.

They also get a high off of being so stoic.

A hundred %. Their stoicism absolutely gets to me. Then Michael Kahn, who's running it, goes, Do you have anything else you want to do for us today? I said, You have a classical piece? I do something from Henry 8, and I forgot all of the words and start improvising in iambic pentameter to a man who literally is responsible for not only Juilliard, but a Shakespeare festival in Washington, DC. I'm sweating. I look at them after I finish and I go, I will see myself out. Good luck with Juilliard. I go outside and I start crying. I look at my mom and I go, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'll never forget, we were walking through Central Park, and as we crossed the threshold into the park, it started snowing. For some reason, I was like, I think it's going to be okay. Then I applied to Carnegie Mellon and was feeling the weight of all the rejections. I saw that I could apply as a director. When you apply as a director, you have to do an audition for some reason to communicate that you understand an actor's journey as a director.

I go home and I do this audition, and the guy who runs Greg Lehane goes, Are you sure you want to be a director? I said, Why? What are you thinking?

Yeah, Good answer.

He's like, Well, I'd like to share this with my acting colleague, Tony McKay. Tony comes in and watches and he goes, You want to direct? I said, I guess I could be convinced to act.

I love directing, but But I don't know.

So I completely Trojanhorsed my way into musical theater. Then tried to Trojanhorsed my way into musical theater. That's where they drew the line. My class was crazy. It was Leslie Odom Jr, Josh Groban, Rory O'Malley. That is how I ended up there.

Also, what's a conservatory?

Conservatory is basically like Hogwarts for drama kids.

You don't have to do shit other than act, right? You just act.

In fact, I was desperate. Here's, again, my absolute jealousy of expertise was I wanted more academia, and I didn't get more academia. I got movement class one, two, three, and four. I got voice class one, two, three, four. You basically had to take seven to 10 classes that were academic in nature during the duration of your studies, and that wasn't enough for me. I'm more jealous of the liberal arts.

Yeah, mind-expanding.

Certain understanding. I definitely would never trade in my experience, but I did miss out on a fuller body of learning.

But I think the group that went sounds so fun because you describe a night, it was a three-story dormitory and there's a party and you drink a half a fifth of tequila and then you piss your jeans and then you take a 20-minute nap.

Have a threesome.

Regroup, go to the first floor, hook up with someone, go to the third floor, hook up with someone, and then make love to someone on the second floor. Yeah, it was fun. All the same night. You say it's not because of your prowess.

It's not because of my prowess. It's because I was the only straight person in my class.

What a blessing.

It was just a fuck fest. I lost 100 pounds in college. I substituted my food addiction for sex and alcohol. That just became the chaos of that period for me.

I'm imagining from your high school experience to this experience, I don't know how on earth one would resist that.

It It was a complete body transformation. I tied my hair blonde. Sure.

We're going to need a pick.

I will show you a pick. I lost myself a little bit. Yeah.

By the way, I think you should.

That's what college is about. No, in a bad way.

Yeah, but I think you should lose yourself in a bad way.

I started to get extreme anxiety. I was being looked at in a different way, and I didn't know how to handle that attention. I also didn't know this was me as a blonde.

Wow.

No, we got to show the cam.

Oh, baby. Yeah. This guy lives for three ways. This is...

Wow.

Okay, so for the listeners, you still have the dark eyebrows. But the hair is quite blonde.

Yeah, hair is platinum blonde. I felt like a stranger in my body. I was not used to being attractive. I was not used to being sought after. I didn't know how to operate in that body, and I also didn't know how to play the roles in that body.

Okay, Josh, really quick. This is why I'm saying it's a blessing that happened to you because I've brought this up many times on here. It's a trope in Hollywood. A lot of people end up getting enormous amounts of status, and that wasn't their experience all growing up, and they don't really know how to handle it. I've seen it most often lead to this bizarre version of misogyny. It's These dudes have all these women that like them, and they don't really trust it, and they hate them for it. Why don't you like me when I'm younger? I mean, I've seen that pattern materialize a bunch of times for people who got that attention and status late in life. You've all. I don't even know why I didn't say him by name. We're all thinking it. Yvonne's husband is gorgeous. He joins him when he comes.

Yvonne's always been that.

But I think had you not had that thing then, you would have had an opportunity to do it later. It's true. Why does that result in anxiety? Just because you're very disconnected, your identity is fractured.

I felt like a visitor in my body. I felt like an alien taking over another person's body. I don't know how to describe it. I had my eyes, I had my ears, I had my voice, but it was not me. I was playing a character.

Yeah, cool guy character.

And And by the way, I think it's why I continue to struggle with weight at this point in my life, because I really didn't know how to be that guy. Now, for health, I want to lose weight, and desperately trying to. But that was really, really strange.

This is something I also want to bring up, and I don't know how to tiptoe around it, but I'm just going to be dead honest. I was just thinking of you on my trip to Mexico City. So I'm with somebody who's on a version of a GLP-1 who's loving it. He more often is It's so weird to see this stuff and not have that pull I normally have. If you listen to our first episode, we do 20 minutes on what the perfect day of eating would be from your point of view, what you would start the day with. We got a general chow's chicken in there. We got everything bagel. We went through the whole thing. You're going to finish the night with sushi, but it'll be a lot of tempura. Hearing the amount of joy you get from that, I literally thought in my head, I wonder if there'll be people when GLP ones are virtually over the counter, if they'll choose not to do that because so much of the joy in their life is that. They don't want that relationship where it's not appealing.

I'm on a GLP-1.

Is it limited your joy at all?

It has suppressed in a great way that noise. When I wake up, I feel hunger pains, and so much of that is psychological. What this does is it takes away that signal. Yeah.

It's even working on addicts.

It is a miracle drug. It truly is, yeah. I was on a different drug that caused me diverticulitis. Okay, no good. I had lost 40 pounds. I was really bummed out because it was working incredibly for me and I had to switch. I'm figuring out this new one, and it is life-changing But it also doesn't negate the fact that it can't be in the place of having a healthy relationship with food, and it can't be in the place of having a healthy relationship with exercise.

Well, would it be fair to say it's treating the symptom?

It is treating the symptom. By the way, this is the first time I've opened up about Oh, okay.

I didn't mean to put you on that spot.

I'm actually really happy that I'm opening about this because I'm having my own journey with it. Sure. Sometimes I feel like I'm cheating myself by doing this. You shouldn't. I know a lot of people who aren't overweight like I am who are taking it. Then I feel like, okay, I should be able to do this because I need it for help.

Someone's shaving off the last three pounds.

Which is, I think, becoming you've been with this now.

It is. How do you feel about that?

I'm not going to pass judgment to each their own. I think that the problem comes when it prevents others who need it, medically, like myself from getting it, that's where I get upset.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, If You Dare. Yeah, I like to evaluate it in a world where it's completely ubiquitous and it's available. I think that's where you need place this theoretical thought process when you're going to decide if you're judgmental. Because I don't give a fuck if anyone does anything like that that's safe and doesn't have many side effects that makes them feel better. I don't know why I wouldn't want that for somebody.

Would you judge someone for taking suppressants for nicotine? Would you judge someone for taking antidepressants for anxiety? No. This is medication. It's treating a disease.

I'm not saying everyone should be on it, but for the people I know who are on it, it's making their life a lot better.

Yes.

Why would I not want that for them?

My wife is not thrilled that I take it.

Because she's worried you're not going to confront the core thing that's driving it. Correct. But again, that's... Position is binary. It's either or. It's like either you choose this route or you choose to confront. Obviously, you can do both.

Yeah, or a divorcer.

That's That's the third option. Well, we'll see.

It seems like you'd meet her if she gets out of the fire.

That's the thing. Right now, I need her this week. Unfortunately. Then we'll go from there.

This is not your wife, but I can easily see a hypothetical where someone fell in love with someone that was larger, and there is perhaps some shadow in their mind that says, Well, I wonder if they had all the options, if they would have still picked me, and now they're going to be thin and they're going to have all the options, and there's fear behind that.

I mean, I think that that's fair.

Some people hate them when their partner becomes a gym rat and they're in great shape. They're scared all of a sudden that they won't be enough.

I think that that's very fair. At the end of the day, my wife is so much hotter than me. You're like, She's not worrying. I should be more concerned about her.

Yeah, there's no version of you that still wouldn't be dying to be with her.

No.

Another generous take on that is that they're worried that their identity will shift completely.

Yours did, as you're saying. I've always been the funny fat guy. Can I be the funny skinny guy? Can I be the hot leading man? I know I could be those things. I don't know that people would accept me as those things. That's always really hard. We get typecast. We do a thing and people see us as that thing. I've been very blessed that I continue to challenge to not be tightcast, to do things that nobody expects.

Listen, Josh, I would honor this fear if I thought you were a one-trick pony who fell through tables as their main deal. You're like a crazy good dramatic actor. You're an improv genius. You sing like a motherfucker. Olaf is you. All blessings to all the writing. But that creation is Josh Gead. That fear for you should be nowhere in sight. Thank you.

I also think I have a healthier relationship with my brain than I did I bet then. Now, I think as I go on this journey of weight loss, I'm not as worried about that because my primary goal is I want to be there for my kids. Everything else is bullshit.

You also make your own shit. That's part of your genius. You do your own thing, so no one can take that from you. You'll keep doing your own thing.

I appreciate that. At the very least, I'll do more of this, more of your podcast.

You can come on once every five years.

But I don't get paid for this, do I?

I actually am going to give you $100 for coming in last Yeah, I already planned on it. I put my billfold in my pocket.

Is it in cash?

It's in cash. It's old-fashioned.

So I don't need to write it off. But now I do because it's on record.

But then you'll say you gave it back to me after and it was just a bit. Oh, smart. But really, you'll be fucking blowing a hole in that hundo on your way home. You're going to come up with so many trinkets to your life.

What if that's how the IRS takes me down because of this $100 that was promised to me on this bullshit?

No, but I can give you up to $18,000 tax-free. I'll take it. Yeah. Tell me about the gap between graduating from CMU and then I guess it would be Putnam.

I was singularly focused on one thing. I wanted to be on Saturday Night Live. That's all I wanted. In my fucking fragile little brain, I somehow thought going to Carnegie Mellon drama was enough to audition and be accepted. I'm not sure what I was thinking, but I started immediately out of college putting together a reel for SNL. I got Ron Howard to open the video. He said, Live from Josh's VCR. Oh, my God.

How did you get that done?

Bryce Alice Howard is my best friend. Okay. Because she married my actual best friend, Seth Gable, from when I was four. She let me borrow her father who was very willing to help me out. It was incredible. It did not get a job.

Open the door, she thought it might.

I kept sending in tapes for three years, didn't get on. Signed up for the Groundlings. Did that for two years. You did that for two years? I did the first two classes. They didn't accept me into the third level. Then I start to get little jobs here and there. I'm at the breaking point. I talked about this on my last time, so I'm not going to revisit all of this, but I basically am like, I'm quitting acting. I'm not making money. I had met my then-girlfriend, now wife, Yida, and I was like, I need to become a lawyer. I started applying to law schools. My mom, as you know already, basically is like, You're a fucking coward if you do that. I audition for this show called 25th annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and I get it, but I got the San Francisco version, and I don't know what I'm thinking because I have no work, but I turn it down. Oh, wow. They are done with me. They are fucking furious. Somehow, I find out they're replacing Dan Flogler, the Tony Award winner for the show, and I get them to give me another chance, but they're not having it.

I go I do my audition, goes fine. I then do the music audition, goes fine. I do the dance audition. It's an unmitigated disaster. I look like a fucking beached whale learning to swim again. Then I somehow get a phone call that I'm supposed to go to the theater that night. I go to this callback. It's me and this other guy, Jordan, who's on Broadway doing Avenue Q. I have nothing on my resume. I have one episode of I have the ground rules.

You were just summarily released from the ground rules. And you were studying college.

Yeah, and I fucking love college. It's out of necessity.

First floor, second floor, third floor.

Every fucking basement. We didn't even have a fucking basement. I'm out of the police. This guy goes first. He's out there for 10 minutes. I come out, I see 30 people who are all sitting in the circle in the square of theater. They're all directors, producers, investors. I crack a joke. I I start my scene, I get a minute and a half in, and the director, James DePine, and I talk about this in the book, says, Josh, can I see you up here for a second?

All of your teachers sound like Phil Hoffmann.

Oh, Philip Seymour.

You know what I do, basically. We've established this. I do one impression, it's Phil Hoff and everything else derived from that. Josh, can I? I don't want to talk to you. Come here. James calls me up, dismisses everybody, and he says, I don't think you take this seriously. I said, Excuse me? He goes, I don't think you take this seriously. I said, Well, what makes you think that? He goes, This is the opportunity of a lifetime. Everybody wants to do a Broadway show, and your first instinct is to come out and crack a joke. I said, Well, forgive me, but there are 30 people sitting in front of me who are about to decide my fate, and I figured I had two options. I could either break the ice or projectile vomit on you and your colleagues. So forgive me for choosing the I'm not even saying it jokingly. I'm super fucking pissed. Then he starts to lecture me about the fact that I don't have the discipline in craft to take this job. Oh, my God. I look at him and I say, I'll do respect. You can tell me I'm not right for the role.

You can tell me that I am not your favorite actor. You can fucking tell me I'm not funny. For you to sit there and tell me and judge my discipline after I literally spent four in conservatory, spent every last penny that I had to learn my craft, to study my craft, to stick with my craft through thick and thin, that is not something you get to take away from me. I said, Good luck with your show. I appreciate this. Thank you for the opportunity. I walk out, I congratulate Jordan on getting the role. I go back to my hotel, the Sheridan. No, actually, it was a Hilton. That was a Hilton. Well, they got it. Yeah, it was either Sheridan or Hilton.

Modern day Sheridan.

I called my mom up. She said, How did it go? I said, It didn't happen. As bad as it could. As bad as it could. I'm coming home, and I got a call from my then agent, Hannah Roth, and she says, Hey. I said, Hey, I'm not really in the mood to talk right now. She goes, Well, you have two tickets to go see Spelling Bee tonight. I said, Why the fuck would I want to go see that show? At this point, I had never seen the show. I didn't have enough money to get a ticket to see the show. I was just approximating what I thought it should be. I said, Why the fuck would I want to go see that? She goes, Well, the director feels that you should probably see it before you start rehearsals in two weeks.

Unreal.

Wow. It was a mindfuck. What was your all's post-conversation of that initial? My relationship with James is now wonderful. Recently, we had a dinner where we talked through everything, and he was incredible about it, but he was horrible to me during that process. Oh, he was? The whole show? The whole show. I was a punching bag. It was Was he so upset he was losing Dan? I think that was a big part of it. When we sat down and we discussed it and we had it out and he was so gracious and has since apologized to me for what that experience was, he said I needed to get my ass kicked. I agree with that. I don't think the psychological warfare was necessary, but I agree with it. But I would come back and I would smoke every night a full bong of hasheesh because I was so fucking scared. I was just fucked. I was always in a state of fear, panic, and it just didn't get better. I couldn't wait to leave. The cast was awesome, but also they missed Dan. Yeah, that's a hard position. It sucks being a replacement sometimes. I'm not sure if that's everyone's experience.

I go out of my way to be kind to my replacements because of what that experience was, but it fucking sucked. I would do it all again if I could because it taught me resilience.

Yeah, if you can get through that.

I think we coddle a lot now, and I think actors who are breaking in, you need to get your ass kicked, man, because it's a fucking brutal business. I learned from every minute of that, Even though it wasn't all roses and candy, it was everything I needed at the time to prepare me for a career that is filled with so many more lows than highs. Once you have that, you can handle the rest. Yeah, absolutely. There were times when I didn't think I could get through it. There were times when I would literally have anxiety attacks because James would call a rehearsal that I knew was just about putting me in my place and keeping me in a box. I didn't feel safe. I didn't feel comfortable improv-ing. I didn't feel comfortable being my funniest.

It's like with your confidence.

I had real problems with my confidence. That happened again on Book of Mormons.

It did? It did. Because I saw that.

I talk about this in my book as well. My director there Casey, who's brilliant and amazing, he came in after Jason Moore, who we had workshopped the show with for three years, left the project. He was coming into a situation that was like, Hey, we're going to Broadway. It's your turn to get it all going in a couple of months. He wanted to put his stamp on it. Based on my experience with Spelling Bee, I think I had my guard up.

You got a chip on your shoulder maybe a little bit.

Don't fuck with me. I am not to be fucked with here. And I think he felt I think he, in turn, sometimes did not love that I was basically doing whatever the fuck I wanted on that stage, and he wanted to control that. For right or wrong, it was his job, and I respect that, but we definitely butted heads. It was sometimes very unpleasant. Andrew and I sometimes got into it because a lot of what was going on during that time was Rannals and I, suddenly, we went from zero to 60. We had this entire show on our backs. We were not prepared for what it became. I was not ready for that pressure, and I think Andrew wasn't. We felt sometimes like we were being pitted against each other. You're in the midst of Tony season, and you're both vying for that award.

Were you guys nominated for the same thing? We were both nominated for the same thing. Yeah, what the hell did he do with that?

We both lost. It was a fucking roller coaster.

How old were you at that time?

I had just turned 30. Andrew and I now about it laughing about how stupid and petty all of the little bullshit was. But it was a pressure cooker. But it was a pressure cooker. It was so funny because going back and then doing Gutenberg, we had the complete opposite experience because we're in our 40s and don't give a shit about anything anymore because we've had so many life experiences.

The bucket's been filled up.

All of that stuff feels so insignificant. It's beautiful because our relationship has never been stronger. We came through the other side of it. We had the most amazing experience doing that show and being a part of a pop cultural phenomenon the likes of which musical, comedy, theater hadn't seen since the producers and I think hasn't seen since.

It's just Hamilton and that.

But in terms ofComedies, right? In terms of comedies, we're a rarity. That was hard. I have since been able to look back at all of it and own my part in all of it. What's your part? I was a cocky fucking guy. And part of the cockiness was a defense mechanism. You're scared. I'm scared that I'm not good enough. I'm scared I'm not funny enough. I'm scared I'm not worthy of the attention. I'm scared that I am going to let people down. I'm scared I'm going to let myself down.

You'll be revealed at some point.

I'll be revealed. I really peacocked and puffed up.

You know what's weird? I've never, to this moment, considered, although I experienced it being on stage at the Groulings, but where Theater is so different than doing a movie is you don't really know while filming the movie who's popping and stealing it. But on a stage, boy, the fucking verdict's in every 30 seconds, and it's very obvious what the response to the crowd is. If you're someone that's still doing a great job, but you're third in the crushing it, you know it.

Do you know how petty I was and hungry and starving for love and adoration? I'll never forget being so mad This is so ridiculous. But I was so mad that Andrew got the last bow, and I did. Sure. That is such a fucking joke.

I love that you're admitting that.

That I would even think that way because he clearly was the one who should get the last bow. But at the time, I was like, I've been doing this show for four years. I've been here from the beginning. I'm the funnier role. I wasn't. I wasn't any of those things. I was involved longer. That's it.

Well, if I can make an excuse for you a little bit, or not even an excuse, more of an explanation. No, you don't make an excuse. I was a real piece of shit.

And I deserve what's happening to me.

Yes. Isn't it true Europe fault for these high winds that just set LA ablaze? This is the same thing with Black folks, with women. In your mind, if you're not the best, they're going to kick you out.

Yeah. But also, you said it earlier. You grew up with a huge fear of loss. That does not go away. I have the exact same thing.

It doesn't go away. Also, I have always felt a fraud. I have an absolute case of imposter syndrome. When I go and I put myself out there, I am so scared I'm going to fail. I am so scared that what I think is funny, other people won't find funny. If I fail even one person, I don't think about the thousand people who enjoyed it. I think about the one person who hated it.

Also, do you give it the power that when I fail publicly, it's actually going to be so powerful, the failure, that it'll make you go back and reevaluate everything you thought thus far. I do it all the time. Yeah, it has the power to not only fail in that moment, but erase everything that happened before.

It is to the point now that I can't even watch anything I'm in because I judge it so harshly and so critically that I feel like a fraud. Actually, the beauty and the reason that I went back to Broadway and did a show with Andrew was I needed that again. I needed to put myself out there in the most in a vulnerable way at the age of 40 and have this guy who is the single funiest fucking human being I've ever worked alongside, other than the two of you. Thank you for that.

We've never worked together.

Is it alive because you haven't worked with us?

Well, no, it's honest. I needed that. I needed my ass kicked. The difference between when we did Book of Norman and we did Gutenberg was being on the other side of that and no longer focused about any of the little shit, any of the dumb shit, I was able to just enjoy and do a trust exercise every night, and it was fucking incredible.

That's the thing. The ultimate victim ends up being you because you were robbed of the experience. Yes. That whole experience you had, which is among 10 experiences on Broadway like that, you didn't get to experience. I didn't. Because you were so in the future and so behind and all these places other than this bizarre gift that doesn't really come around for people ever in this business. Yeah, you can run the risk of missing the whole thing.

It's funny. I think in a certain way, you need to go through that. I'm at an age now where none of that is a factor anymore. Because I've learned these lessons, every job that I do, every day I take in and I give gratitude and I am savoring it. You read about stories like Mandi Patimkin talking about he was so miserable to others and to himself for so long. My experience of working with Mandi was a complete opposite. I've never met a more giving person. I think that we all, in a weird way, have to go through that, not just in this industry, in our lives. Oh, yeah. You have to experience that.

Everyone with coworkers knows this. It's okay to go through all of that as long as you come out the other side acknowledging it.

I'm finally at a place, maybe too late, but I'm finally at a place of acknowledgement to say I was my own worst enemy in many of these situations. I was not present. I was afraid to be told no because that meant that I had to concede I was doing something wrong.

Proving you didn't belong there.

It was a waste of one of the greatest years of my life. I wanted to get the fuck out of that show by the end because I was miserable. I I was so bitter about that because if I could go back and do Book of Mormon right now, I would fucking leave this room and put that outfit on and get on stage because it was the greatest joy ever. What Trey Matt did is for the ages, and I didn't appreciate it enough at the time.

I have two stupid questions unrelated to your book.

Yeah.

In my research, I discovered something that is an Alexander Payne movie waiting to happen. So your mother and stepfather were involved in a legal battle over a burial plot that was done. When I read that sentence, I was like, That's insane. If I was to pitch that as a student executive, I go, no. What in this day and age people could be fighting over a burial plot?

My grandparents were buried in this South Florida Cemetery, and my parents bought a plot next to them. My mother is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. There are books about this generation. It is really difficult. The guilt is unthinkable. For me, I'd be like, just put me wherever. For her, it was such a loss. It was such a betrayal. The way she found out, which was accidentally from a friend who was told they gave that plot accidentally away, so fucked. It was a thing.

What is the solution to a problem like that? Do you exhume grandma and grandma?

Well, going through it now, we are literally in the process of figuring out what to do because there is no good solution.

No, bury mom on top.

But you anticipate that the fucking place will do its job. It has one job, which is put the boxes where they're meant to go. That's your only job. I don't know how they I'm not going to fucking mix and match that.

This is like the backside of babies.

I was about to say it's swapped at the hospital.

Yes.

You can imagine you going and paying your respects at the wrong grave for years. You should write this. It's actually a great fucking Alexander B. It's incredible. Ityes, it is.

There's no good solution. There's solutions. All of them suck.

But that's a good device for a film. There's really no solution that's going to make anyone in this scenario happy.

Now I'm worried about what the second question is.

I would urge you to tell people about Pictureface Lizzie because it's another book you have out. You're so prolific.

This has been a year of writing for me. I really wanted to challenge myself as a writer. I wrote Pictureface Lizzie, a kid's book, which is basically about my girls are obsessed with what their friends have and what they don't have. That a lot of times comes in the form of social media apps. They are constantly asking us why their friends are allowed to have TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, and we put such restrictions on them. This is a conversation so many of my friends are having, so many my friend's kids are having. It inspired me to write a book from the perspective of both the parents and the kids talking about this new doll called a pictureface Lizzie that is a mixture of an American Girl doll with the technological advances of having a social media application to it so that it's all-encompassing. This little kid, Eve, finds herself in a situation where all her friends do is talk about their picture-face Lizzie's, and she gets left behind. She goes to her parents and she says, I want one. How can I get one? They finally cave and they give it to her. Basically, they say, Just don't lose who you are in the process of playing with this.

Have a healthy relationship with it. She becomes absolutely consumed. But over the course of the book, she starts to miss the little things she used to do, the imaginative play, the experiential things. As she starts to balance having this thing and doing these analogs things, her friends become really attracted to what she's doing and put their dolls down and start doing that as well. It's been really amazing to watch families read this book together, experience this journey together, and start a conversation from it.

Why did you get such a hack to narrate it?

Kristen Bell was the only option I had at the time because similarly, I was canceled on by most of my previous tests, and that was without an apocalyptic event. I am doing what I can to give them a healthy relationship with technology, but also giving them the skills to be able to be without that technology because my concern is I know I'm addicted to it.

Parents are giving their kids advice that they themselves are incapable of following, which is hysterical.

That's it. We at least come from a background in which we didn't have any of this.

We can remember healthy in days.

I think part of the reason my kids love stranger things, your listeners are like, what dick shows their little kid stranger things but doesn't give them Snapchat?

You knew the shit I've shown my children? Yeah. In fact, when the fires were in this, again, I was making jokes. The fires were getting closer and closer. They were a half mile from here, and they were starting to evacuate. I said to the 10-year-old Delta, If it looks like we're going down tonight, I'm going to let you drink wine, and we're watching Pulp Fiction.

There you go.

I'm not letting you leave this planet without seeing Pulp Fiction.

I was fucking six when I watched Nightmare on Elm Street.

My grandpa took me on opening day to Scarface in 1981, and I was six. I watched a chainsaw cut up.

The worst thing that's ever happened to me is I was in college and I took my mother to go see Unfaithful, the Diane Lane sex film. Yeah.

Sex tape.

It's like fucking snuff film. I sat next to my mother as she's getting rammed by this really hot young man. I was like, God damn, I should have just read the reviews.

I got to tell you one more moment. My memory of the Thomas Crown affair, I'm like, That is the funnest movie. I can't wait to show my… At that time, Lincoln was probably nine. I'm like, I remember the sailboat scene and the cool this and the caper with the bowler hats and the McGreet paintings. Cut to Brosman's making love on the staircase. He's just sitting there and it's going on for a long time. Do you fast forward? No, we would go for it. Sex isn't bad.

Same. We He showed Ava Rainman, and I forgot that there's a scene Rainman. A hot one with Tom Cruise. Where like, yeah, he's just fucking away. Same with Jerry Maguire. Here's a period of Tom Cruise movies.

Was he going to sprint in every movie?

He was sprinting or fucking.

Yeah, because he's a great kisser on screen. He's a great kisser. We got to give him that. He knows that's where some of the money is. He's a great runner. Yeah, he's an incredible runner and a great kids are. Anyways, we're watching this scene that's now, as I remember, maybe 30 seconds, which now feels like it's 11 minutes long. Lincoln just goes, Do people do that, have sex? She goes, No, on the stairs.

Because the absurdity is very clear to a nine-year-old. But by the way, that is a very good question. Why would you lay on stairs?

Is that real? And I go, Actually, no, only in the movies where people have sex on the stairs. God, that is so your child.

That is so your fucking child.

Well, Joshy, thanks so much. Oh, you guys. Thanks, thanks, thanks. This was nice. This was a good distraction. And your book is phenomenal.

Thank you. This was nice. This was a good Your book is phenomenal.

Thank you. It's really, really, really good. It's very honest and it's very well written and it's quite funny. You're never more than three sentences away from a Josh Gadzinger.

Why didn't you write a blurb on the back? It's not too late. I could just send out a flyer.

Why don't I just write something in pen? I wanted these book promotional things. You find a single arm cherry, you can go like, Do you want this one that backs shit on in pencil?

Could you consider calling it the Book of Gad?

I did at one point, actually. Okay, that got taken off. There were so many puns available.

How does one pick? Is that you?

That is truly me.

What is that from? What photo is that?

I did it exclusively for the book. They take photos now for book. You think that they pull it off of the internet?

This is the first book I've ever read. They take it from your grand.

Where do you assume pictures on books come from?

I don't know. You know who it looks like? Tell me. And I'm embarrassed that I'm forgetting his name. But did you watch the second iteration of Wet Hot American Summer? Yes. Do you remember the guy where he always wore three collars? What's that actor's name? I know he went to school at Jada Pinket. Jordan. Joseph Gordon. Josh Gordon.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt?

No. Josh Gordon, I think. That doesn't matter. Everybody reading GAD, we trust.

And please go to Dax's curated list of places where you can support.

Yes, please do that as well. If you're struggling, I hope this two hours was a reprieve.

Yeah. Amen. All right. Love you. This was, by the way, reprieve for me. Thank you.

Me too. All right. Me well. Josh Charles.

That's a little late for that. Thanks, Rob. Josh.

I I sure hope there weren't any mistakes in that episode, but we'll find out when my mom, Mrs. Monica, comes in and tells us what was wrong. Burberry?

That's correct.

That's correct. Only wear Burberry to swim. That's Jay Zee line. That's when you know you've made it, when you only wear Burberry to swim.

I don't. I wear it for fact checks.

Oh, yeah. Looks stunning. Thank you. Are you noticing anything?

About you? Yeah. Yeah, you're growing your beard out. Okay, great.

Sure. Or maybe back out. I I just blue-dried my hair. Blow-dried?

Wow, okay.

What do you think? It looks nice. A lot of volume?

It looks fluffy.

Yeah, I got in the shower and I was like, What if we put a little moose in our hair and then hair dry it?

Oh, my God.

And here we are.

Because safety?

No. I think New Year.

Okay, that's great.

Stagnation.

Sure. You want to mix it up. Do you think a little bit of this potentially has to do with we had a guest in who has really fluffy hair?

No, but it is slightly impacted by the guest we're going to have after this fact check, which he is such an eclectic.

Very.

This won't sound like a compliment, but it is. Okay.

One of your classic compliments.

One of my classic compliments that has you feeling terrible afterwards. Whatever the most exotic lizard is, that's rough. That's bad. But with the colorful... He's just cool.

Maybe you go with some original words like cool.

And he knows this. He's also dangerous. He's like snake in the Garden of Eden. So much Easter eggs happening right now, but we're going to talk about that.

He's dangerous. Oh, I'm excited for that. I like a little danger.

But he's dangerous and colorful. So if you can think of another... I don't want to use unicorn because unicorns are for babies.

And you don't like unicorns. Except you do.

I love them. I love to call everyone a unicorn. But that's another thing I got to stop. I'm going to start blow-drying my hair and I got to stop using unicorn. Your contradictions.

Dangerous but colorful is like a flamengo because I think they eat it. You think they're dangerous? Yeah, I do think they're actually hidden danger.

Monty, you can just snap any part of them in half. They're very tall. Exactly. They're so tall and not robust.

That's your privilege because you're tall so you could snap, but I'm too short. I wouldn't be able to reach.

Totally disagree. I would put you in the running back category. Ding, ding, ding. Oh, thank you. Troy Lyons will get there. Yeah. No, you were low and powerful, so you would smash into those Flamingos little dainty toothpick/chopstick legs. Okay. No one wants to know this, but it would be-Facts.

No, this is like two fact checks in a row, we've been like...

Animal cruelty. True. But no, I need something a little more dangerous, but also radiant and beautiful and colorful. So I'm thinking with some of those lizards, they get pissed and they start walking on their back legs and they got their arms out. And they're They're mantles out, they flare out their big parachute around their neck, and it's full of colors.

What about peacocks? Are they mean?

No. These are brookies. Are you sure you know? If you're going to use a bird, we use a predator bird.

Those aren't colorful on purpose because they're trying to blend in. Right. I feel that I'm drawn to birds, not in life, but in pictures. Okay, sure. I have a big photograph in my apartment of a woman. She is a cage on her head, but the bird is free.

What is that metaphor?

Oh, it's deep.

It is locked in the cage of your own mind?

It's like golden cage a little bit, but the bird is- Golden handcuffs. Also, I almost bought this other piece of art, not Anne Monceor, New Lady. Okay. It was also a woman with a bird, and I immediately DMed and was trying to get it. Then I thought, How many things with birds can I you have.

Yeah, because now it's probably about to pass the many, many self-images you have that my children have generated and that Kristen's generated, right? Because you have a lot of, as we know, photos of yourself, art of yourself.

Well, I'm not in these.

We talked about that, though. Would it freak someone out who came over?

Okay, there's a picture that Lincoln painted of me when she was five or six. She was really young. And Kristen painted a picture of me for Secret turkey.

And she made a figurine of you. Yeah, with big boobs. And then Lincoln also made a big boob figurine, as I recall.

Oh, okay. I only have one. I think I have the one Lincoln made. Okay. And it's in a drawer.

So no one would see that unless they were-Yeah.

I mean, I want people to see it, but it invites a lot of questions. Which could be helpful in the rightcontext. Circumstance? Perhaps. Maybe if I get on the apps, which I probably won't, but if I do, maybe that could be my little picture. Well, that'd be great. I have a little mystery, too, but it's also being very obvious. You're also leaning over leaning in. Leaning the witness a little bit. But those other ones aren't hung up. I am going to display definitely Lincoln's. That's less about me. That's playful.

Yeah, it's a huge- They're all not about you in your defense.

Yeah, I didn't ask for them.

But we did ask the question, what would be critical mass, where even if they're not about you, someone might go, My Lord, this person has like 30 or 40 pieces of art depicting her. I'm not doing that. Even these famous artists, they tend to only do one or two self-portraits. Portraits, as I recall, right?

Yeah. Also the mouth. I mean, that's why I also have this space. I've put some of my art of me here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's right. So there's all that art, too. And then there's the arm cherry art, which we have a lot of.

I do, but that lives in our workspace. That feels fine. Right. That feels fine.

Real quick question. If you were a great artist, do you think you would do self portraits, and how many would you do? I guess I'm delighted Van Gogh did a self portrait because there were no cameras around. Right. So my only idea of what he looks like is what he drew of himself.

Yeah, but it's probably so inaccurate. If I did a self portrait-Well, that would be great.

If you were a really, really talented If you could do this and you could actually show us exactly what you see, that would be incredible. Because I guarantee you it would be super off. Crickets are out. Oh, yay.

I mean, you're a good artist, so you could do a self-portrait.

I think all those monsters I draw, I think those are all secretly self-portraits.

It's also a little like, that's how you're going to spend your time drawing yourself.

Yeah, but you're always there, right? If you need a model for something, it's like all you need is a mirror and you're sketchy.

Yeah, I'm probably not going to do that.

Okay, should we dive into the heartbreak?

Yeah, let's hear about it.

So went to the game. The Lions game. The Lions playoff game against the Commanders. Yeah. And if I'm listing a top and experiences with my best friend Aaron Wakeley, this is making the list.

We were so beside ourselves that we were down on the field at the Lions.

I had the singular goal of standing sitting next to Dan Campbell, the coach, in hopes I could get a sense of just how big he is, because I see him on TV. I also looked him up and it says 6'5. Oh, wow. But these football players are infamously... They're all a little bit embellished because they were coming out of college and they're entering the draft and they want to see him as big and as enormous. So it's always like, if you see 6'5, probably 6'3. Okay. I'm just going to guess there's a standard one and a half inch-Flub.

Flub. Flub.

Fluff. So I was just hoping to stand next to him. So Keegan Michael Keyes there.

Oh, friend of the pod.

Which is friend of the pod in the ultimate Detroiter. And I don't even pretend to be as authentic and committed to the lines as he is. It's his life.

Okay, great.

So I'm a bit of a poser, but I'm as excited as anyone, so that counts. Yeah. So he starts... He knows everybody, as you might expect. So he introduces me to Martha Ford. Do you know who Martha Ford is?

Martha? Martha Ford. Martha Ford. Oh, no.

Rob, will you look up her age while I'm chatting?

She's 99.

99. Monica, I have to tell you, of all the things... I mean, she's tied with Dan Campbell. So she, if I am to believe Aaron, was the daughter of the Firestone Tire dynasty.

Oh, okay.

Married Henry Ford's son.

Wow. Is she hot?

I'll get there.

Okay.

They own the lions, which I wasn't even positive I knew. The Ford family owns lions. Oh, wow. They own the Ford field, the arena. Martha rolls in on a golf cart, and she gets out. Next thing you know, I'm meeting her. She's so Tiny.

Yeah, I bet.

I loved her immediately because she was so tiny. She has a walker.

What color hair does she have?

White. Okay, just checking. I think once you're 99, your standard hair is white.

Yeah, but you might die it.

Not Martha. Oh, good for She is such a spitfire. So they get us to line up the team photographer is going to take a picture of us. And Martha has a walker. She's 99. And we're about to take the picture, and she goes, Get this out of here. She chucked her walker. She didn't want that walker fucking anywhere near this photo. And I was like, I love her. I'll be standing for this, and I don't want any evidence of this walker.

Oh, I love that.

Tough, fun. When I was shaking, I shook her hand for for a very long time because I loved holding it. It was like shaking hands with Delta. It was a tiny little hand, and she was so sweet, and I felt like I was in history. Marrying Henry Ford's son? That is wild. That feels like from another Eon.

Yeah, it does.

Then I start talking to Dan Campbell's wife, by chance.

What color hair? Brownish. Okay.

From Dallas. Super fun. And before I know it, she's turning her attention from me because Dan Campbell has walked out of the locker room. He walks directly up to her and gives her the longest kiss.

That's nice.

It was so nice. I was like, Oh, my God, I just love this whole thing. Then she introduces me to him. I'm shaking his hand. I'm very excited to be shaking his hand and saying things. I'm not even sure what I was saying. I hope he would kiss you. Well, I'll get to that.

Oh, my God.

It's some chit-chat, chit-chat, and then he gets distracted, and then he's talking to Keegan, and then he's going to carry on, and he gives Keegan a huge hug. And I'm like, I'm going to... Well, even worse, I'm like, I'm going to hug him. Goodbye. I'm really afraid to say this because I'm afraid some Lions fans are going to blame me that this hug jinks everything. Oh, no. And by the way, I did think it in my head for a couple of hours. I started feeling really guilty. Like, I in a... But I was like, All right, yeah, great meeting you. And I just make it very obvious I want a hug, and he hugs me.

He obliges.

And Monica, it was like, Hugging a water Buffalo.

What do you mean? I need more.

He is so big.

Like, Squishy?

No, no. His lats are like this wide. His neck is like this wide. For the listener, I'm holding my hands very far apart. Yeah. He is... I don't think he's 6'5. It's a little bit like Toto. He's taller than me.

Toto is 6'9.

Yes. In my heart. Same. But he's definitely taller than me. Let's just say that. And he is just like, hugging a Redwood.

Were you like this? You couldn't get your arm from him.

That's what I thought I was, but then I saw a video of it.

Oh, okay. All right.

I just loved it. I hugged him. I felt his lads, they were so big. I wanted him to throw me on the ground, which is interesting. I just wanted to feel his power a little bit. Yeah, I get But he was so nice. He's such a nice man. Yeah. He got emotional in the post game thing. I don't know if you saw that.

No, I didn't watch.

I think he's a vulnerable. I'm beaming like I'm eight years old. Aaron is so excited. Yeah. He took a couple of pictures. He goes, I took a couple of pictures. I'm like, oh, my God. I'm so glad you took some pictures. I go, They look like a little baby next to him. And Aaron goes, You guys look like twins.

Twins? So he's not... Wait, I'm confused now.

You should be. I'm not nearly as big as him, but my son is such a sweet boy.

Oh, he was making you- Yeah, he was basically saying you guys were almost identical twins. Let me look at this person.

Hold on. Do you just want to see a picture of me hugging him? Yeah. So you can get a sense of what I'm talking about.

Okay. Wow. For the listener who doesn't know- Dan Campbell.

It's everything I'm saying, right?

No, I'm about to say the actual opposite. The way you describe him is not accurate. Okay. I'm imagining... God, how do I... Okay, I can't do this well.

You were picturing a monster from Game of Thrones, like the hound or something?

But not muscular, really.

Oh, no. He was a safety- This guy's extremely muscular. Oh, he's the most muscular.

But when you say Water Buffalo, you have to understand what people imagine.

Water Cufflows are pure muscle.

That's why it's a great comp. It's not. Anyway, he's hot for the listener. This man is very attractive, and he's not what Dax explained, and he does look really tall and- Insanely Very muscular and fit. Yeah. And a very handsome face.

He looks like he could just run right through a cinder block wall. I don't want to know because I think he's younger than me, which would be a bummer, but I think probably true.

Not much.

Not much? Yeah, not much. Okay, that helps. How old is he?

48.

48. Okay. April birthday. Oh, here we go. Here we go. Rob's got it.

Look, I'm not here to make you feel... Okay.

First of all, there we are together. Yeah.

Look, I see what Aaron's saying.

And Aaron, I have the advantage that Aaron's behind me, so I'm closer to Aaron than... Look at this. Oh, look at his back, Monica. Look at the fucking width of his back and how tiny my looks on it. Oh, well. Actually, that's not my hand. That's Keegan's.

Oh, my God. You were...

That's a lot of beef right there.

This is so stupid.

I know. Anyone who watches football has a crush on Dan Campbell.

Yeah, I get it. Yeah. I get it.

He's like the rock of NFL. Okay. Ben Johnson? Oh, that's a heartbreaker. I don't want to talk about that. Why? We lost our offensive coordinator, right? Offensive coordinator? I thought you knew he died or something. No, the lion thought the coordinator is now coaching the bears. The bears took him.

Oh, this guy is attractive. Yeah.

Dan Campbell?

No. We already established he was now this new guy is also very attractive, and he is 38.

Okay. That is just a few months older than you. Correct. Oh, Mia, what if you were dating him and I was dating Dan Campbell? We could go to the drive-in.

We'd be rivals.

Now because of Rob, because he's with the bears.

Well, if I'm dating him-But if he was still at the Lions, we'd both be rooting for the Lions. This guy was at the Lion?

Yes, he was the offensive coordinator. Oh, wow. Okay, so it worked out perfectly. We could go to the games together and sit in the box and cheer for our boyfriends.

That'd be fun. That would be really fun.

It would be just like Taylor, your best friend.

Oh, yeah. How fun. Okay, wait. Real quick, you're not letting me get a compliment out. I I agree with Aaron in that picture. You guys do look similar.

God bless you. God bless you. If you hugged him, you would know we're not terribly similar, but I'm delighted that that's your verdict. Thank you.

Now you know what it's like to be me. When I hug big men-Charlie. Yeah. It has a very specific feel.

Do you like it or I like it? Do you like the feeling-Of being and safe.

Yes.

That's what I'm getting at. I'm hugging this guy and I'm like, Oh, wow, I'm good. If whatever runs up behind us, a rhinoceros, whatever, it's on him.

It's his job. Wow. And that's very unlike you.

Exactly. It's a unique feeling for me to be being held by a man that is so much more powerful and big than me that I know he should handle the grizzly bear when it comes through the door.

And do you not feel that with Aaron?

Aaron, I feel this perfect equanimity. I'm a wrestler, he's a puncher. Together, we're great. We're a duo. I totally feel safer on Aaron. I know that I don't need to worry about what's behind me. I know that Aaron is always looking out for me. I know Aaron would jump through fire for me. I think he feels that way about me. So yeah, when I'm with him, and this has been since seventh grade, I feel so safe all the time. He'll do anything to protect me and vice versa. But if a rhino comes through the door, Aaron and I got a team up on it. I'm not like, Brian, Aaron, go handle this. But if Dan Campbell was there, I'd be like, Dan, you're up. You would? Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Wow. That's a first. I've not heard you say that about anyone. Hence my getting it. Because you like getting into it.

I like being the guy that confronts the rhino, but also it feels very nice. That's great. To feel very safe that Campbell would be the one that would handle it.

Pin in this. I I want to circle back to something. Okay, great.

Pin in the safety? Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. So fast forwarding, got to be on the field when they ran out. That was incredible. Met Will Ford Sunday. It was just very fun to meet the Ford family. Chatted with a lot of different people. And then we were in the box with Roger Godell. Roger Godell is the NFL Commissioner. Okay. And has been for a long time. And just to put, I know it's terrible to quantify it this way, but it made me recognize how esteemed who the job is. His previous contract is 70 million a year. And he just signed another three-year contract. No one even knows what it is. But when you're paying someone more than Lewis Hamilton, I feel like you've got a pretty important job. All this info is coming from Aaron because he knows way more about I've all the ideas. So, Roger, people don't like him. I think it's the nature of the job. Yeah, no one ever likes the Commissioner. No, no one ever likes the Commissioner.

That's why they have to pay you a lot.

Probably. But I'm not entering with that raggage. I don't dislike him or like him. I just am flattered he wanted us in his suite, I think largely because of that Golden Globes thing. I left one thing out. Before I went up to the suite, they played a video on the big screen of me watching the Lion's Game at the Golden Globes, and then cut to, and I had to wave and all that.

Oh, cute. That is like McCona Hay.

Big time. And I've been in that situation several times at Lakers games in these different games. They'll put me on the Jumbotron. And it's at best, I would say, in the past, it's like a C plus. I feel like, generally, maybe 30 % of the Lakers crowd will know it's me and be excited. Okay. Because of that Golden Globes thing. It was legit. You know, I've always said, I'm always envious of that experience the American idol people get where they go to their hometown and they're in a convertible. I didn't think that would ever happen to me. And I'm like, When does that happen? It happened. Oh. They showed that thing, they cut to me, and the place legitimately went bananas. It was almost hard to accept, but it was-Yeah, that's sweet. It was unbelievably lovely. I felt so loved by my people. Then back, okay, Godell, Roger. He was immediately most engaging with Aaron. Who would it be? Asking Aaron a ton of questions, really engaging him, talking to me, but he's not playing the status game. There's a lot of people in the-I love that. Fucking Barry Sanders is in the box. He's the most famous lines player of all time and the best player of all time and the best running back in history.

He's in the thing. Roger could be chatting him up. He's talking to Aaron.

I love him. Yes.

Aaron was like, I was anticipating that I would have to see my way out of conversations while you did your thing with the person who got us the tickets. And I was like, Oh, this guy wants to chat with me, which he did. He's so down to earth, and he was so lovely and hyper-intelligent, and you can see why he's-How old is he? 65. Because- Still good. I did make one joke that got him. We were talking about the thing I talked about on a previous fact check, We're just like, you used to be younger than the players. Now you're older than them, but you're younger than the coaches. Now I'm older than the coaches, and I hope to be younger than the owners. Thank God Martha is with us, 99. Thank God. I have a while. Yeah. And he and I weren't talking about that. And I said, Well, how old are you? And he goes, 65. And I go, Well, you look fucking great, which is true. He's very fit and looks great. Yeah, look up.

Oh, he looks great.

And I go, You look fucking great. You're definitely going to make it to 70. Oh. That really tickled them. That's fun. Okay, so as you can see, we were on fire. We were screaming. We were meeting people we idolize. It was the two of us from down the road in a dirt road, and it was really, really fulfilling and beautiful. I was sharing it with Aaron, and it was so special. Fighting back the tears the whole time. The game starts. It's rough right from the get-go. We cannot get a stop. They score every time they got it. Luckily, we score every time we get it. Our offense is great. It just goes downhill, and it gets worse and worse and worse, and the crowd gets quieter and quieter, quieter. I start thinking it's completely my fault because I haven't been to a game.

And you hugged.

And I hugged Dan. I'm sincerely regretting hugging Dan Campbell. That's crazy.

I mean, yeah.

But I think all fans do this. Carly thinks that the two games they lost this season was because Lola, her dog, didn't have her Detroit Lion's bandana on.

People do this. Now you understand my knocking on wood.

I do. I was taking a lot of the blame for it.

Sorry. It's not your fault.

But I was also refusing to let the outcome take away what a fun season it's been, and then this crazy experience with Aaron that was as good as it could possibly get.

Good. Remember when I thought that Trump went because my ring was off my finger? Yeah. And you said, You're not that powerful. I kept telling myself- You said it in a nicer way, but you did say that.

I was saying to myself to try to get myself out of the dumps. You don't have any control over the defense. It'd be great if you did. You're not that powerful. You're not that powerful. But I was afraid other people would think I was that powerful. Sure.

We'll tell them now Here, you're not.

I'm not sure if it's not my... I'm only like 70 % it's not my fault.

That's how I feel about Trump. I still feel it. I still feel like potentially it was the ring and the bee.

I feel like that's very universal. Rob, do you blame yourself when your team loses? Yeah, I've got lots of superstitions when I'm watching. Yeah, oh, remember Rob Reiner was on? He said he went to the bathroom, they scored, so he had to keep going to the bathroom.

Yeah, it'll happen.

Stay Be tuned for more Armchair Expert, If You Dare. Okay, you wanted earmarked safety.

Yes, I did. So this is a big pivot, but it did remind me that while you were at the game, I had therapy.

Okay.

I had two big epiphanies.

You did? Would you call them breakthroughs?

Yes. Okay. Guided by my incredible-Your spiritual advisor? Yes. She really is worth her money.

Okay, great. Especially because you were a little bit on the fence on the New Year's, about whether you're going to continue on.

Well, yeah, I was like, maybe I just go to once a month, and I'm like, I got to go back to two times a week. So the fires, it was the first time I had seen her since then. Yeah. And first of all, January sucks. I'm going to say that just as a In fact, January is the worst month of the year. It's horrible. Bad things happen.

Jan 1 is when I had neurovirus, yaking for eight hours. I'm on board. The lion's loss.

Three out of the five last January have been horrendous.

Oh, yeah, I got it. You're saying across the board January blows?

Januarys are bad. Okay. I'm sorry that your birthday is in there, but it's a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad month.

Weather generally sucks.

Yeah. Weather sucks. People die. Things go up in flames, literally. It's bad. But I do think they've all taught me something. I've walked into February with new information. It's been a gloomy January for a lot of reasons. Yeah. And I was talking to her about that. Obviously, for the fires, we were fine, right? We didn't have to evacuate. Our houses are okay. Yeah.

We have the best version of it.

Exactly. So lucky. But still, it's just been like, oh, my God, there's so much loss everywhere every day. You're hearing about somebody else you know who lost everything, and you're trying to figure out how to help, and it's just overwhelming. So I figured it was just that. I was like, I think I'm just overwhelmed by everything going on. Then we got to that it was, I think more than that and more personal. And I think people who are struggling through this here who didn't have massive loss but are still down. Because I know a couple of people who are depressed who aren't normally. I'm surprised. And I realized that in the moment, especially in the moment when you're packing your bag up and it's I mean, you're panicked because you're like, I might have to be out of here in 10 minutes. You're standing in your house or apartment or whatever, and you are faced with the two most... Deepest, most existential questions that we have, which are, who do you really have and what do you really need?

It's both at the exact same time in a moment of panic, you have to know the answer.

I think we walk around with so much false security about those questions. We think we know or it's fine, but this is like push comes to shove. What's your reality? Yeah.

The rubber meets the road in an evacuation. Yeah.

If you're forced to ask those questions and the answer is, I don't know, it's very heavy. Unsettling. It's very unsettling and destabilizing and you feel untethered. Yeah. I think that's definitely what I am feeling and what I think other people might be feeling, too. It's just going to take some time to process. But I found that helpful to know, like, Oh, that's what I'm struggling with. It's a deeper...

It's much deeper. Because you can't work on future natural disasters as a cure. You can only work on the things that actually emerged in that situation that are personal.

Yeah. Also, she told me, and this was also fascinating is in times of true crisis, and this also happens in death, people become their truest most base version of themselves. Right. And not the person they've worked on becoming or are, mostly, but who they are at their core. Yeah. And It's so true. I was thinking about who I was and who other people were in my life and what was happening.

It is what I was bringing up about, we do have this genetic wiring to fulfill a role that when it happens, that thing really goes to the front and center.

Yeah.

Is it related to that or no?

Yeah, I think so. I think it's connected.

I think you're almost your genetics take over, not the artifice of your identity.

But I don't know if it's genetic so much as... Yeah, yes, but also what you did when you were a kid, how you coped, a lot of your biggest fears, your insecurities, those things come to the forefront, and they're leading the charge. They are the thing that comes out. It's wild.

And this is one of the times where having a high A score is really nice because you've done a bunch of these. I've done a bunch of police are at the house and fire departments at the house.

But you're still a person. You're still a person in there. You still have a personality in there.

But I have a lot of practice, like submersion therapy, which is like, yeah, we're going to dad's in the middle of the night, you live there now. That's disruptive. And then sixth grade is fun. I have a ton of personal experience where it's like, I lived on the other side of those.

Does that make sense? Yeah.

I think for a lot of people that have been terrified a bunch of different times, one of the only benefits is you're like, Oh, yeah, here's another thing, and it'll be all right.

Yes. I think there's two things happening. One is what you're doing, and then the other is what you're thinking, who you are in those moments. It's different, right? We talked about this before, where it was the first time I had to be like, I have to do everything. I have to figure out what I'm taking. I have to load it in the car. I have to make sure I have this, this, and this. Things I normally just say, whoever I'm with is going to do half of that stuff.

Right.

And So I'm doing it. But what's coming up and who I am in it and what I'm thinking is like, I have nobody. I am abandoned. I am really all I have is myself. I'm scared, first and foremost. I'm scared. I'm a fearful person, and I have overcome a lot of that in life, but not in this circumstance. I can't. So it's at a 10.

Well, you've probably just been ratcheting up what level for you is manageable over time as you've grown, right? Yeah. Like panic attacks and soul cycle versus now, there is a threshold that you've kept moving up. You can handle it and such and such. And then, yeah, some things exceed that threshold. Yes.

And it also was, I think, important for me to have understanding for how everyone is behaving. Everyone is going to behave quite differently because we're all different and had much different life experiences and deal with trauma in very, very, very different ways. Yeah. Because on Tuesday, Tuesday night, the first night when it was starting, I was texting with a lot of people, and I was like, I don't even know. I don't know what to do. I don't know how do we... Calleigh and I were both like, Well, yeah, we don't know what to do here. Where do we go? What do we do? We were also joking. Of course. And I was also texting with Jess, and in my head, I was like, Well, Jess is down the street. So that's easy. We'll go. And then at 9: 00, I started looking at the other fire, the Eaton fire, and it is getting bigger and bigger. And I called him and he was asleep. And I was like, Oh, my God, how can you possibly go to sleep right now? This is crazy. And then I was like, Yeah, I think that's who he is in crisis.

He really calm, but It's almost like whatever happens-Disassociated. Disassociated. Whatever happens is going to happen. I can't really control it, so I'm just going to go to bed.

I have a question. Yeah. Potentially dangerous, but this just happened, right? It happened with Tom Hanson. I was, to be vague, intentionally. I was very much on the verge of blowing everything up in a very public way because of my anger towards something. And I ended up sharing about it in a meeting that he was at. In that share, he learns of the timeline. So then he calls me the next day because he's my dad, and he wants to help me. And I don't call them back. And I don't call them back for three days. And finally, in the third day, he's like, What the fuck is going on? Why don't you call me back? And I finally FaceTime him, and I go, I didn't want to talk to you because I didn't want to hear the right answer. I didn't want I have the right answer, and I know you have the right answer.

And I know you have the right answer.

And so I was avoiding you because I wasn't there. I still wanted to torch everything.

Yeah.

And I didn't want to be talked down. And I apologize, but I just... So in that way, I think we often call people that we want to confirm the answer we're looking for. I do it. I know people call me. Someone wants to buy a motorcycle, they don't call their doctor, they call me.

Well, of course, but that's because that's your Well, and they know I'm pro-motorcycle, right?

Yeah. So I'm curious in that same construct, when you start texting people, do you feel that you start texting other people that you know will also be really nervous and not texting people that you know are going to tell you it's not bad?

That's a good question.

The dangerous part is, what didn't happen was you didn't text me.

Yes, I didn't.

And you knew it wasn't going to go well if you did, which is fair. Correct. And we invited you over and you didn't to be around my energy, which would have been probably rough.

Well, there were multiple things. There was so much happening then that that is more complicated. Okay.

But back to, do you think that's happening at all? Are you calling the people that are going to most reassure you? Are they going to call the people that are going to confirm it's as scary and dangerous as you feel like it is?

That's a good question. I mean, I guess I'm probably reaching out to people that will confirm warm, but more, especially in this case, I know for certain that you aren't panicked about this, right? Yes. Me reaching out to you, all I would have been It's going to be frustrating, probably. All I would have said is, I'm really scared. Then I think my fear then is if you respond without compassion, that will upset me. What's the I know where you stand on it, and I'm not sure.

Because I know what I would have done. I'm like, First of all, you will not die because you can get in your car and drive away from this fire. I'd start going through the reasons. Let's just start with, You're not going to die tonight. You're not going to die tomorrow.

Yeah.

If your car doesn't start, you call me, I'll pick you up. You're not going to die. Yeah. That would be my first goal is just go like, There's a lot of things on the table here. You might lose your shit. You might lose this beautiful house you've been building forever. We might get to that, but I would have just wanted to start with, this isn't a tsunami, and we live on the-No, I know. We can escape this.

Right.

Yeah.

Which would have been helpful, I'm sure, but I don't know in that moment, what is out of 10 is I'm alone.

Right.

So I don't think... All I was really trying to do subconsciously is confirm that I'm not or that I am. Get some validation or confirmation. And so I don't know. The range of people that I was texting, it wasn't all panic. Again, just slept. So I was like, okay.

Well, there's probably two things going on. There's a logistical call list, and then there's a comfort call list.

Yeah.

And yeah, I probably would have been bad at it. I would have gone straight into what I do often and try to avoid, but still keep doing, which is not observe you, but try to fix the anxiety. I would be trying to point out, We are not going to die tonight. I would be bad at going... I wouldn't be good at...

Yeah, which is you don't need to be good at meeting me in anxious. I don't think that's good.

I saw some people, I'll just leave it at that. And when I saw them, this was on Thursday morning, the look on both of their faces was, and I registered, Oh, fuck, their house burnt down. But it didn't. It didn't. Yeah.

But maybe they were sitting with some of these things.

They were. I'm not at all shaming anyone for how they dealt with it, but I went, Oh, my God, clearly, their house It was gone. It wasn't. So then I think the primal, primitive side of me goes, We can't have this. It's not productive. We are actually in a situation, and there is not room for that. So snap into survival mode. Yes. And so, yeah, I think I can tend to get frustrated in that situation that I think certain people are making things worse in an already bad situation.

Yes, I do think you did that.

That was definitely the vibe of my household. Yeah. So, yeah, that's-And I think I know that about you.

Sometimes that is where we butt heads because I feel like I can, should, it's okay for me to care. To be scared. And scared and whatever. Yeah.

And you have no more control over your reaction than I have over mine. Exactly. I think all of those things would have been true if we were heavily interacting during all that. Yeah. And I accept it all. And I caused a lot of that. But the only thing I wanted... The thing I need to say out loud that I hope you didn't feel is I would not be judging you or thinking you're stupid. I don't think you're thinking I'm stupid. If there was any part of you that's afraid to tell me how you feel because I'm going to be judgmental of it, that wouldn't happen. That wouldn't have happened. And I don't feel that way. I do get pragmatic about if everyone's baw before we've got in the car, that's going to be a really hard, right?

Totally.

But I'm not angry at anyone for having their emotions or judgmental of it. I recognize and accept it, and I don't feel above it.

But do you think, and whatever answer is right, my guess is you think I overreact a lot? In general, just in general, as a person.

See, it's the over that makes it a judgment. Can I observe that you and I... I break four ribs, break my clavicle into five pieces, break my hand, break my humorous, drive home six hours, we'll ride two more sessions on the track, drive home five, six hours, go to sleep, don't go to the doctor, don't go to the following day. So that's how I react to things. And then when you cut your hand, you were very scared and you reached out to a lot of people. So do I recognize the humongous delta between how you and I react to things? I absolutely do. But it's not over, and I'm not under. It is this is how Dax reacts for a myriad of reasons, and this is how Monica reacts for a myriad of reasons. And so that's the thing I wanted to bring up and make sure you're crystal clear on. I'm not saying overreact. I'm saying I see how you react to things. I can observe it. It's much different than how I react to things. But that does not make me conclude I'm better.

I feel that you think that I get upset over things. Well, I do. I get upset over things that you don't get upset over. To me, that's fine. The things I get upset over, I believe, are upsetting. And I think it's okay to be upset about those things. I understand that you don't. I do think at one point in our long friendship, I was like, Why aren't you upset about this? I used to be like that towards you. I don't understand why you're not upset about this. This is upsetting. I don't think that anymore at all. I respect that you don't, but I wonder if-We can go right at it.

There's a lot of things on the table here. Do I accept that about you? Yes. Does it make me love you less? No. Does it make me not want to be friends with you? Absolutely not. Now, you and I also do a job together. We sit down in here to do a fact check, and I sit down on a couch and I look across to see you. Often you're upset about things like the election, and you can't shake it when you're in here. Now, do I think inside of this box, we have to be entertaining and we have to to manage how much of a downer we are? I do, professionally. Right. I think we have an obligation. The newscaster has got to come on and they can't start crying during the thing. Now, they can feel however they want throughout the whole day. Go ahead.

Well, It's just very subjective. You cry, and people come in here and they cry, and they're allowed. To me, it's an asset not crying, but we've built here, and I do think it's we have built here, a place of honesty and to come in and to plaster a smile when I'm scared or there's fires or there's an election that I think is deeply disturbing to me. I'm not saying we need to wallow in it, but I think it would be such a disservice, not just to me to this show, to our audience, to what we've built here, to pretend like those things aren't upsetting.

It's fine if we have a bit of a difference of opinion on that. I do think this show has to be entertaining, and I don't think either of us can be in a shit mood for four weeks. I think we have an obligation to rise above that. I do. And we differ in that. And I understand what you're saying. I'm like, Well, this is honestly me. And of course, I'm not trying to make someone not be honestly them. But I know if I'm listening to Howard Stern and Robin, and one of them is just in a dark hole for three weeks, I have compassion for them, but I'm going to go listen to something else at some point. I can't join someone on my hour drive where I'm trying to feel, where I'm trying to distract myself from the things I'm worrying about, I'm looking for reprieve. So I think it's okay. We do have different opinions on what obligation we have here to a degree. And I think there's only I think there is room for us to be our real selves. Yeah. But I also think it needs to be monitored and we have to be responsible to do these people that rely on us for an escape deserve something fun and funny a lot of the time.

I get that. We did a really good job at that, I think.

Yeah. Anyway.

Do you think we did a good job at that? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, but we are We're running low on time. Facts. Yeah, we have facts. Okay, so this is for... Oh, and I guess it's timely that we talked about the fires and stuff because this is for Josh.

Gad. Gad. Wonderful.

We deep-dived.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. He's a perfect guest. He is. He's a perfect guest.

He really is. I DMed him and said so. Oh, good.

Yeah. He's funny, he's smart, he's emotional, he's truthful. Yeah. Yeah, what a soup to nuts. Same with Adam Scott. I was really delighted with the Adam Scott episode. Really, really delighted.

Sweetheart. Okay, Josh Gad, you can gift up to $18,000 tax-free, but now it's 19,000. Great news. Great news for everyone. You said your grandparents took you to Scarface in 1981 on opening day, and you were six, and it was 83.

Not as good of a story.

Well, eight is still young.

It's still young, but it's not a great story.

Six is But you know what? We already know that you wouldn't remember it if it was six. So it actually makes more sense that you were eight.

It does. Well, here comes the great thing, and this is on topic because he's written a memoir. I have tons of memories I have tons of memories, and I know my kids don't remember shit. So of course, I'm quite skeptical of them, but I could take a polygraph.

Well, yeah, because you believe it. So you'll pass it. I No. Every time someone says now, and I feel bad, but when people say like, Oh, yeah, I was three, and I remember, I'm like, You don't.

But okay, I'm reading Bill Gates' book right now.

Oh, he might because his brain is- I believe it. Yeah, but his brain's different than most people So speaking of Easter egg, I guess we can talk about this later, maybe if you want.

Okay.

Have you started telepathy tapes?

No. What is that? I saw that in the comments.

It's a podcast about neurodivergent, mainly nonverbal autism.

Oh, Kristin listened to it.

Yes, she did. Most of the girls are listening to it in our group. And Nonverbal autism. A lot of people have stories about their children-Communicating telepathically over a distance of miles, like in a town, meeting in a place called like, Mind Mountain or something where they all-I haven't got there yet. But also they Mainly with their parents, often. I mean, I'm only one episode in. I do think the human brain...

Has more potential than we're aware of.

Than we'll ever know. And I think I do think anything is possible for the brain.

I overheard a lot of it. I was debating whether or not to listen to it.

I asked a friend that we very much trust, you and I.

An incredibly smart friend.

Yeah. He says there's little science to back any of that up.

Yeah. And that will be so hurtful to the people who have experienced this, and maybe they've experienced it, whatever. But I would need a pretty robust bit of science behind it to believe that people are telepathically communicating over miles. It's a tough one for me.

I don't know about the over miles because I'm not there. Well, someone said something really interesting about it. They were like, We've all in some ways communicated telepathically, non-verbally to people we are very hyper connected to. Sure. And just in a room, you can feel. We can feel energy shifting.

There's real-But would you agree? I think that's way more pattern recognition. I know you so well. I've observed now so many contexts where things happen, and then I see the result of it. So often we're at a dinner and I hear someone say something, and I know in a second what you're going to think, and then I look over at your face and then you look at me and I confirm, Oh, yeah, I do know exactly, and vice versa. Yeah, but-That to me is more pattern recognition. Stimulus A A, generally results in output B.

But don't you think even when we're sitting here, I'm sitting there next to you. You can't see my face, but often-I can feel the fuck out of your energy.

Yeah, sure.

And vice versa.

I do, too. But I can't actually hear your thoughts.

I know, but I think that's a little rigid, I think. All I'm trying to say is I think people do communicate non-verbally a lot, and we don't even recognize it. Yes. And I do think people are on a scale of how attuned they are to other people's energies, and it depends on the person, definitely. Yeah. And so I don't know. I'm open to that being the truth.

Let me just say I want that to be the truth.

Yeah.

I would love the notion that these nonverbal kids are communicating telepathically. I actually want that.

Me too.

But I have such a knee jerk about getting duped Yes. I know there's an emotional thread to this that makes it a little bit... And that is a red flag to me. It's like, yes, I think when you get me emotionally involved, and I am very sympathetic already to the subjects, I'm not really in my most subjective not being named anymore. Yeah.

Remember the woman we had on- About hiring more neurodivergent people?

Yes.

She herself is neurodivergent. Yes. And remember, she has anesthesia. She had the opposite. She could just pull the meaning from a book, from basically staring at the pages. She does have skills that just- Bogle the mind.

Yes. Absolutely. Marine Dune.

Marine Dune. Yeah. Marine Dune. That's all very interesting. And I don't know why I brought that up. There was a... Oh, Memories, maybe? Memories. He talked about Memories. Okay, real quick. He said the funiest person he ever worked with was Andrew Reynolds. Minus us.

Present Company, excluded.

Exactly. But we have not worked with him, so then it brought up this interesting question.

Although you could count us doing an episode with him.

I don't count that. That's our work.

And his work is promoting.

I don't count it. It's a stretch. Then that brought up this interesting philosophical question that's in my book, Intermetso. There's a really interesting question that comes up in this book I'm reading that's similar to this of what's truth and what's a lie. And I'm going to... We'll talk about it next week. I'll bring it up.

Okay, great. It's a riddle. Read it like, do the thing from the book exact.

Okay, I will. That's it.

That's it? Yeah.

All right. I mean, GLP-1s, that was a really interesting topic and conversation I thought. I was happy he talked about it. Yeah, me too. But also, yeah, they're just doing so... They're finding so much interesting stuff about GLP-1s, and I'm interested.

I'd say 10% of Eric and I's conversations are about GLP-1s. Yeah.

It's really wild. Very fascinating. I want to try it.

Oh, wow.

Not for weight loss. For wine? No, not for weight. Not even for... I just want to see, what does it do on my psyche?

Eric's the It's not the exact same. There's no shift other than he doesn't eat as much. You know what I'm saying? And he doesn't crave sugar. And so he's not in a shitty mood because he hasn't eaten 10 pounds of sugar. So it's like it does impact his mood, but not because it's changing in his mood, but because he's not actually dealing with all the fallout from-Interesting.

Yeah.

Again, it sounds all the great but beneficial to me.

It might highlight what your addictions are, because if you stop wanting something, it might tell you, actually, you crave that a lot.

Yeah, yeah.

Anyway. All right. So that's it.

All right. I rode my bike by your house today.

Oh, you did? Yeah. Did you wave? Yeah. Love you. Love you.

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