I've got some new tour dates to tell you about. I'll be in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on August 11th at the Great Outdoors Comedy Festival. Get your tickets early starting Wednesday, March 13th at 10:00 AM local time with presale code Rat King. General on sale starts Friday, March 15th at 10:00 AM local time. We thank you so much for the support. We also have tickets remaining in Atlanta, Georgia, and St. Louis, Missouri. Those shows are in April. Get all your tickets through theovan. Com/tour. Today's guest is an actor, a comedian, a podcaster. You may know him from a lot of his films, or you may know him from his Armchair Expert podcast. This is my first time meeting him today, and I'm excited about it. I'm looking forward to getting to know him. Today's guest is Mr. Dax Sheppard.

Shine that light on me. I'll sit and tell you my stories. Shine on me.

I'm always amazed at those people that they find that live in They find them and the kids have been living in a basement.

An Ohio basement. It's generally an Ohio basement.

Yeah, I guess it's like an Ohio pastime.

I don't want to say- It is a bit... Well, it says on the license plate, Ohio Buckeye State, Slash, Basement, Captives State.

Yeah, dude. What if in years from now- Sincerely, I've seen 12 of those stories over the years on the news, and it's 100% of them have been in Ohio, like middle of Ohio. Oh, Definitely. It's like, A, they should do always like, Hey, show your basement.

Yeah, I think there should be mandatory basement sweeps in Ohio. You got taxes, you got the census. Fuck it. Task the census people with it. Just need to know how many folks are here. We're going to have to peek in the basement.

Hey, I want those cellar doors open now, buddy.

It's wide open so we can just sniff around a little bit. Nothing personal. Just 12% of you have people in the basement. And so it'd be irresponsible for us, and that take a little gander down there.

I wonder if the world devolves so much that things like that, the basement people, becomes a mascot for the city football team or something. Like the Cleveland basement.

Basement people. Does Louisiana have something that they over index in? When you're watching shows and you're like, yeah. Because Michigan has... I'm from Michigan. I want to say 40% of datelines I watch where the woman has married the husband. That's going to be Michigan. Then also, if some militia members are going to try to capture somebody, that's generally going to be. In fact, not to bring it down, but the Oklahoma City bombing was planned at the Amoco truck stop, like six miles from my house.

Oh, wow. It's amazing, man. Yeah. And that was in Michigan?

Yeah, right off of US 23. It was called the Oasis Truck Stop.

And how did they get it to Oklahoma City? People didn't bid on it, right? That's crazy.

Timothy McVeigh? Was that his name?

Yeah.

He just was regrouping in Michigan. It's a great place to brush up on your militia skills. I think he was in there with some of his militia guys. And then they needed a place to plan, maybe some big tables to lay out stuff. The Oasis gas station was turnkey for them. I'm watching the news and I'm like, I'm a kid-ish. I'm like, Oasis gas station? Where A, I'm afraid to go in as a kid because there's men sleeping in their semis. I like when I run in for a candy bar and there's a parking lot full of men.

A lot of those places, it's a real, I like to call it a molester's gauntlet that you run through. You're like, there's so many pitfalls here, so many traps. A lot of those truckers will leave the candy right in front of the truck. Sure.

A couple of dollar bills on steps of the truck. A little baggy with just some remnants of some speed. Well, I drive a bus. I have a tour bus.

Oh, you do now?

Yeah, not because I tour, but because my family and I go out in it for a few weeks every summer. Oh, yeah? I go to the Sand Dunes a lot. So regardless- You go to the Sand Dunes, you said?

Yeah. I'm just making sure what you said. Yeah, I've never been to the sand dunes.

You know them here in California, Glamis? Nuh-uh. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's such an incredibly weird and wonderful place. You can't believe it's in California the whole time you're there. It's 400 square miles of sand dunes, 20 by 20. The folks that are there are like the folks from the Oasis gas station that I grew up with. You're like, wow. But half of them are from Arizona because it's very close to Arizona. But it's on the Mexican border with the wall, and it's enormous sand dunes.Oh, look at this.

Oh, wow.

You could potentially even see photos of me. Yeah, look at this. On New Year's Eve, there'll be 250. It's the closest thing in real life to the original Road Warrior.

Road Warrior.

Specifically, Road Warrior.

Road Warrior was that movie. It was like Mad Max a little bit?

It was the second one. I think the first Mad Max was black and white and very Australian. Then Road Warrior was just, you're in the desert with Mel. Yeah. In the last of the V8 interceptors. Thank you so much.

I saw Mel Gibson. Colin.

Thank you. Wow. I'm so bad with names. I try to work on it. Really?

You just did that like a sniper.

I just did that to... You want to make a phone call? That's all me. Do you want to move my truck or anything? Take it for a ride?

Does he need it?

This is a plunger for a bomb I put in the lobby.

That's Banaka. That's breast raising.

No, it's straight nicotine. Oh, really? Yeah. No delivery device, just straight nicotine. Are you into nicotine?

Yeah, I've been into it. Do you want to try a little bit? Let me see. I'll hold it for a second because I was doing nicotine for a long time, and then I've had 14 days off, and I'm on the-Oh, well, then give me that back. Yeah. Well, now I've had one day off.

Oh, then take it.

Let's leave it right here.

Okay. It's TBD.

This is just there. But another comedian on the tour bus had I vape on him. I had a moment at night, it was just like I was falling apart. I don't know. Because sometimes if I'm up too late, then I'll do something to damage myself. Of course. I'll queue up some porno.

Do you have a preferred website? You do, but you don't want to promote it?

I just don't know.

It doesn't matter. It's not an important question.

I mean, a lot of the websites are-I don't do a lot of porn, but I'm increasingly wanting to.

No. I'm wondering if I'm on the right website. Because I think you strike me as a pro, and I don't say that judgmentally, but I feel like you've been to every corner of the internet.

I've been through some... Yeah, I've been through some probably, I don't want to call them worm holes, but I've been through some time.

I want you to jet-eye me just a tiny bit and be like, Save some time. This is where you want to be.

What happens to me? I'll be up late and I'll be fucking antsy or whatever, and I'll probably have been doing some vaping, and so then I'm like, All right, well, might as well watch a little bit of porno. Pornography. Yeah, just to fucking cap the night off because I'm a fucking king. Bookend. Yeah, because I do what I want to do. So next thing you know, I'm cued up on there. And I have this fear now that the porno sites are videoing you back. That's how they get people down the line. They're like, Oh, we see... Blackmail. Yes, for blackmail. It's like-Do you have tape over your camera or anything? That would be smart. Oh, my God. Here's what I'm doing, dude. I do something crazy. What do you do? I put the screen at an angle where it can only see the ceiling or whatever. And then I lean off and masturbate at an angle. Sure.

Sideway.

I'm the guy that does those. Remember that picture they used to have on the school, on the wall, the staircases that interfaced or whatever?

The M. C. Yes, M.

C. I'll take a real M. C. Escher angle.

Sure. Penis is off to your right hip.

Just making sure I'm out of the way.

Okay, but let's drill down into, because I think I know exactly what you-Dax Sheppard. It started with you're too late or you're up late.

Yeah, I'm up late.

I still relate, which is I'm supposed to go to bed at a certain time, or I know I feel the best if I go to bed at a certain time. But then once I've crossed that, now it's like, Well, I'm just fucking up. I'm fucking up. I already feel bad, so let's go all the way. Let's get the vape off our buddy. Let's get that porno. Let's get our computer tilted at a weird angle.

Yeah, let's rev up some porno. Yeah, let's fire it up. Let's make some fuck. I'll do Sleepy Time tea and vape, so I'm just living in this fucking-Speed Bolly zone. Yeah, this crazy like, Hey, what's going to happen with this guy? He might stay up, he might watch a movie, he might go to sleep, bro. This dude does his own shit.

Okay, so back to the bus. I have a bus, and I have to-It's a real bus.

It's an actual tour bus.

It's an actual tour bus.

Okay, and you guys keep it at home.

I think my neighbors think Aerosmith spending the night a lot of the time. It's a proper tour bus. Big old diesel pusher. Biggest cat out there. The ASX. Oh, there you go. That's me at a truck stop with my daughter,washing the windows.Sure.

It is. Okay, we just went over some of this, that this is the type of thing that we're looking out for.

Oh, yes.

You show us the first image you show us. No, that's awesome, man.

So I'm constantly now... It used to be I was a kid and I had to walk the gauntlet at the Oasis truck stop to get my candies. And now I'm back integrated because I can only pull the bus into the truck. There it is. Look at that. Wow. Isn't that a steed? Yeah. You guys are so good. Oh, so look, I got my weight lifting kit up there.

Oh, you do have it perfect in I travel with my weights and I got my grill pulled out. Where will you guys stay in a more upper... Is there a fancy K-O-A campground, or is there still just the- I think there is.

I think maybe Berkshire Hathaway bought some conglomerate of really fancy ones. That's not what we do. There is an app now, Hip Camp, I think it's called. It's just like Airbnb, where someone might have eight acres. They don't know what to do with the eight acres. They're not going to build on it. So they just put a 50 amp charger in a sewer line and some fresh water on that spot, and then you book it, you never see anyone. I just pull the bus into a field on a river, hook We'll get up and then we're good to go. Or we plan that we're going to be at friends house that have big driveways. That was at my friend's house in Jackson Hole, who has a big old driveway.

So you guys will just hit the bus and just take the ride, just go all the way up there.

Yes, but now I'm at the truck steps all the time, and then I step out of the bus and I walk the same way in to go to the professional cashier, this whole routine. The dudes I'm seeing are all the guys that they're just waking up in there and everything. Then I play this game in my head where I'm like, I'm walking tough enough, and I got my gloves on. Do they think I'm a driver? That's what I want them to think. If they see me getting out of the fancy bus, I'm I'm like, If I got to, you're not going to try. But I try to walk... The way I walk into the trucker entrance of the pilot gas station is the performance of my life. It beats any work I've ever done in film or television.

I believe it. It really does. It in my mind-Because I'm afraid of those guys.

If you really boil down to what it is, it's like I was afraid of them as a kid. I'm still afraid of them. So I fucking walk into that gas station like, You're going to have your hands full, my friend. It's someone else.

Yeah, even though you're fucking 6'2 in Jack.

But I feel eight years old. Yeah.

Dude, it's so funny. Sometimes you always feel eight years old, don't you?

I'm always. I have to actively remind myself I'm not. It's like a mantra. I have to go through a checklist. Okay, you're 49. You got money. You're not tiny. You've been in a trillion fights. What are you fucking afraid of? Did you have stepdance?

What did we have? Yeah, we had one guy, Mr. Charlie, and he was in-That says a lot that his name is Mr. Charlie. He was in the war, definitely. I don't know if he was called Mr. Charlie before the war, but I think he loved the war so much that he changed his name to Charlie. Which is confusing because was he in Vietnam? He might have been in Vietnam.

Because they were calling the enemy Charlie.

Yeah, I think he-He took on the enemy. That's extra dark. He might have because he would take my mom always to the Chinese restaurant all the time, and he He would do a lot of... He would pay homage in there. He did some bizarre shit. Sometimes he would take us. This is one crazy thing he would do. He owned a car wash that had all the... Coin-operated. Yeah, coin-operated, dude. So he always had-I've heard those are cash cash. Oh, Bro, he always had some money on him. My whole life, the one thing I wanted to own was a coin operated car wash. Yes.

You grew up hearing that it just prints money. It just sits there. No one works there. You stop in occasionally and grab a couple of thousand dollars in quarters.

You stop in to do CPR on somebody.

Pull a body out of the 55-gallon drum trash can.

Yeah, my mom would always take us to wash her car. That was a big thing that we would do. Anyway, so she met Mr. Charlie, and then he would take us to a holiday and Express sometimes for the continental breakfast, but he would say he was taking us out to eat, right? But it was just-It was just a free breakfast. We would just go in the door and eat, right? But I never knew. So I always asked a stranger if I could order a fucking something. Like, yeah, I'll have another waffle. And the people were just like, what the fuck are you talking about? I'm here for my son's soccer tournament.

You thought everyone worked there.

But he was good. And then he lost his mind or something, and he had Alzheimer's, and then he wore gloves a lot. It was like people always ask him if he played the piano, and he couldn't hear him. And it was just a lot of just... It just devolved.

What age was...

He might have died at 89.

Wow, he's much older than I was.

Yeah, he's much older. But your mom has a flair for older- Older men.

Okay, but back up. How old were you while Mr. Charlie was taking you to the Holiday Express?

I was probably a good 11, I bet.

He was too old to come in and be like, I got a new program, and I'm the dad.

Or did he do that? No, he didn't, really. He was pretty chill.

He wanted you to reach for the remote for him and stuff.

Yeah, he wore a cool hat. Sometimes he would get his dog in his lap, and he would tell us how much he loved his dog, and he would make us sit there and listen to him tell us that. But he was a pretty handsome guy. And what else?

How old was your mom while he was 89?

She was probably 70, I bet. No. I think he was probably 20 years older than my mom.

And your dad, how much older?

38 years old. My parents were 38 different. I know.

Why were you emancipated at I just didn't like being at home, man.

I fucking hated it. I didn't like my environment that much. I just didn't like it. I didn't like my environment. I didn't like not having a say in where I was or who I was. I felt like I just got in this space in life that I was like, this doesn't make any sense. This family, there's no connection. My family felt like a business that you had to work at, but you didn't I don't know what the job was, but you had to be there every day. Every day, you were just standing around. There's a kitchen. There's a fucking... But you have no idea what the business is, but you got to be there.

Was mom?

Yeah, so my mom was cool. My mom was My mom was just a different… She was just a different... She was just... My mom was just working all the time. What did she do? She sold things. Say, if you go to a CVS or a gas station, the things that are at the end of the aisles.

The Impulse buys?

Yes, she would go stock those a lot of times. Okay. And one time, she worked for this cookie company, and she would have these cookies, dude, just these huge boxes of fucking cookies, bro. We were children, dude. Jackpot. So we would go at night, sometimes, and sneak out in her car and just lay on top of them. And fucking the whole thing. It smelled so much like cookies. You could inhale and your stomach was full.

Oh, my God.

You were like, I can't take it anymore.

Have you ever thought about just fucking filling your Cherokee to the gills with cookies and reenacting that whole experience? It might be cathartic and therapeutic.

It could be interesting, man. No, I never thought about that. I did go to my old-If we were better friends, when we become better friends, I think I'm going to surprise you by just filling your Cherokee through the absolute broom of cookies.

You're going to get in late for something. You're going to be grouchy. I shouldn't have vaped last night. I shouldn't have went to bed 2 hours earlier. I got to stop checking off. Then you get in your car and you're like, Oh, my God. Mom? Is there a flavor of cookie I should be circling?

I love the Snickerdoodle, but these were more-Can I guess, were they an oatmeal raisin? They had something like that. Cinnamon oatmeal raisin? It was very… Because you open the box and they were in plastic inside of the box. And then they were all lined up. They fit exactly as many as they could in that box. It was an unbelievable amount of cookies to be around as a child. We couldn't even fathom it. That was That was the work mom did. She was just always gone a lot. And then once-You had two little sisters? Yeah. Well, I have two sisters and a brother.

But the brother is way older, right? It could have been your brother.

No, my dad had some children from her first marriage that were way I'm a day older. One of them was 57 when I was probably eight. Right. So you guys didn't probably-I think somebody shot him.

But how old's your older brother from your mom?

My older brother from my mom is two years older than me.

Oh, Okay.

Yeah, he's awesome.

Do you have a little brother syndrome like I do?

What is it?

Well, A, I thought I was terrible at everything. My brother's five years older than me. So I'm like, I'm so weak. I'm a terrible skateboarder. I feel like he's-Little brother syndrome. Oh, I wonder if I agree with what the definition on Google is.

The Little Brother Syndrome can manifest in one of two ways. A, a sense of entitlement. I deserve what he has, or two, a means for advancement. He can do it, I can do it, too.

I didn't even know I have this definition, and I guess I agree with some of the items in there. But in general, for me, I wanted to be cool and older, and I wanted him to let me hang out with him, and I was trying desperately to accomplish all these weird tasks I had decided was the entrance into being his best friend, and probably an inferiority complex. Then when I got around kids my age, I was like, Oh, wait, I'm strong. I'm not as terrible at that. Then I was high on that. But yeah, I guess wanting to be around somebody nonstop who was very ambivalent about me being around.Your brother?Yeah.

As he should. He was five years older than me.

Five years is a long enough stretch where it's like, yeah, if some kid is following me around and that kid is... He's going to be weird no matter what because he's younger.

And I was weird on top of it.

And you were fucking weird.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Left-handed dyslexic.

Were you really? Yeah, yeah.

Still.

Oh, God. I never had dyslexia, I don't think.

I think we both did. Did we both do Santa Monica College? Yeah, I did that. Yeah, me too. I have an associate's from there. Really? Yeah, I actually have an associate's degree from Santa Monica College.

I can't remember if I have that or not, but I remember there was always a rumor that Steve Smith went there. Did you ever hear that rumor?

No. Steve Smith, guitar player from Billy Eydal or Steve- Steve Smith, number 89, that played for Carolina Panthers.

Okay. Yeah.

I didn't hear about a single famous person going there.

Chad Johnson and Steve Smith played together at Santa Monica College.

Oh, I didn't even know they had a football team.

Wow. Chad Johnson and Steve Smith.

That's At Santa Monica. Your team, by the way, is so fast. I feel like we're on a CNN show or something. Really? Yes. This shit is coming up. It's barely out of your mouth and we're looking at a picture of it. They're excited. Rice Krispy treats with chocolate chips I sent them.

Dude, we've never even met before. No. It's crazy.

Yeah, I just like you a lot.

Well, thanks, man.

I DMed you to let you know. I just like you so much. I think you're one of my favorite people to see something pop up on Instagram. Every single time I like it.

Oh, thanks, bro.

When it's sincere, I like it. When it's really funny, I like it. When it's like, over the line, there we go. There are my Rice Krispy treats I was thinking of.

Oh, that's nice.

Yeah, I don't know. Do you have that with people where you don't know them, but I just feel like, oh, God, I just think I really like that guy. Yeah. You do? Yeah. Can you think of somebody recently? Would you reach out to that person?

I'm so bad at answering stuff.

I'll stop if you want. No, it's good. I'm just in the habit of asking questions. No, it's good.

I thought maybe Justin Bieber one time, but we'd met each other through someone. Then I just messaged him.

Did he respond?

Yeah, he did.

I have a really wild story of that variety, which is I I didn't know how DMs worked. I knew the people that I followed. I saw theirs, but then I didn't know there was general, you go there. I didn't know you could write, you could do whatever it's called. What's the one? It'll bring No, it'll bring you to all of basically the verified people who have messaged you.

Oh, interesting. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Top request. Top request. Top Request. Top Request.

I didn't figure that out until maybe two years ago, and I've been on Instagram for at least a decade, and I figured it out. And then I'm looking and I'm like, Oh, my God, these people who have reached out to me that I didn't see. One of them being, and of course, his was at the top.

My wife. Because he's the most...

Justin Beaver was at the top, and he was two years old. It was the nicest, most sincere DM about, Hey, either he had just gotten married or he's about to get married. He thought maybe Chris and I had some of the things figured out, and he just wanted to chat. Oh, wow. Then fucking for two years, I just didn't respond. Then I was like, Oh, my God. I really missed the boat on this. I could be mentoring Beaver in his love life. I'm there I remember that. I fucking saw the movie, The Doc.

Blind Side?

No, The Doc. Blind Side. Is that what you said?

I'm trying to think of a love movie. No, no, no.

It's The Doc about him.Oh.

The documentary about him.And.

I fucking loved it. I know. I'm not hiding from the fact that I think he's awesome.

Yeah, he's been through it. It's somebody that's been through a lot, too. I'm always curious when people go through so much, how do they end up still being able to take care of themselves?

Yeah, not dad. Huh? Not dad. Head. Yeah. Yeah, because I look at if you had given me all the stuff he had at his age, I would have jumped a Ferrari off a Mulholl in an accident with too many people in the car.

Bro, we didn't have any. Yeah, I remember I got a two liter of Diet 7 up, dude, and I I fucking set a vehicle on fire in my neighbor's yard. Yeah, if I had gotten any uppers at a young age, shit would have gotten bad, bro. Yeah. Do you want more from delivery? Well, who doesn't? You can get it now with Dash Pass from DoorDash. That's right. Dash Pass from DoorDash is the most affordable way to get everything in your area delivered to your door, helping you save money and time with with every DoorDash order. With zero dollar delivery fees and lower service fees, okay, on eligible orders, Dash Pass makes it easy to save on restaurants, groceries, retail items, and all of your local favorites that deliver on DoorDash. Wow, I didn't know they offered all that. Plus, Dash Pass gives you a special access to exclusive promotions and member-only menu items, all for $9.99 a month. Open the door to zero-dollar delivery fees and more. Sign up for Dash Pass today, only on DoorDash. That's 50% off up to a $10 value when you spend $12 or more after signing up for Dash Pass with code Theo24.

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Yeah. My addiction was only curbed by me being broke.

Because you're in recovery, right? Yeah. Okay, me too. Yeah.

Well, I think that's what actually turbo-charged me reaching out to you. I was like, I just liked you. And then I was talking to a friend of mine, Charlie, about you, and he's like, Oh, I love him. Yeah, I listen to his podcast. He goes, You know, he's sober. I think he's 18 months sober. I was Oh, wow. Now I really have a reason I could reach out.

That's cool, man. But yeah, I quit. It was nice of you. I'm glad that you did.

Yeah. We've already had a couple of really nice text exchanges.

Yeah, we have, man. We had a nice one the other day. Yeah, it's been fun, man. Yeah, I like meeting people that are in recovery. I feel a lot easier around people that are in recovery for some reason. And I don't know even what it is if there's an immediate level of care or connection. What do you think about it?

I think what's weird is, looking back on my life, it parallels exactly who I also hung out with as a kid, which is I only hung out with kids on welfare who also had divorced parents who also probably had violence in the household. I like being around people that I don't think are going to judge me. In the program, everyone there is a fucking scumbag. Everyone's a piece of shit. That's why we're there. The great The experience you have if you go to AA and you work the steps is you're like, you've made this list of things you've done wrong, and you're required to tell somebody, and generally it's your sponsor or whatever. You're certain when you walk in there and you let them have this list of things you regret that they're going to call the police on you or throw up in disgust with you. And they look at you, they're almost laughing. Like, Oh, that's it? Well, you didn't fuck any animals. I'm impressed you haven't fucked any animals.

And then you're like, Well, read the back of that second page. Yeah.

Oh, shit. You're right. Fuck, I left something now. But that look of like, Yeah, me too, is the most comforting thing for me.

Yeah, there'll be times when I'm in a meeting and you're sitting there and somebody says something and you can feel, this is crazy. It's almost like how volleyball teams all get their period at the same time. You can feel like Everybody in the room at the same time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You ever had that happen? Oh, yeah, for sure. And you're like, it's almost like a group of fish or something.

Some of the steam. Yeah, birds all change direction.

Some of the steam leaves at the same time, out of every... It's got to be some physiological thing, but it's unbelievable.

Yeah. Well, weirdly, I just interviewed this expert, and his book was called Super Communicators, and he was talking about them when-On armchair?

Yeah.

When two people are having a conversation and it's the same conversation, oh, yeah, Charles Duhigg. Fuck, they're fast. It's almost too much now. It's too fast, and I feel like I'm having deja vu. It's a triggering deja vu. No, no. Keep it up. Keep it up. Don't change it. We'll dial them down a little. You guys have a winning recipe. But there's basically three different conversations. All conversations fall into three categories. There's logistical ones, like what What are we supposed to do next? And then there's emotional ones.

What are you talking about? For what?

So a classic one would be you and your girlfriend are talking and you think you're having a conversation like, How should we fix this problem? And she's having an emotional conversation. She's saying, I'm overwhelmed by this whole thing. Got it. You can look at a brain in an fMRI and see the part of her brain that's active is the amygdala. The part of your brain that's active is the neocortex. So literally, you can't have the same conversation. It's like two different parts of the brain that do two different things. So you're like, Well, here's how we're going to fix this, hon. You're never going to do that again. I'm going to tell it. And she's like, Nothing is comforting her fear in that moment. You guys are just like... Then the more you talk having the two different conversations, the worse it gets for each other. So when you both are having the exact, the real same conversation, and you look at people's their brains in an fMRI, all of a sudden, their brains become indistinguishable from one another. Or another example is you can take a musician playing by themselves, and then another musician playing by themselves, look at their brain in an fMRI, and they have a unique pattern.

And once they start playing together or start doing a duet, their brain pattern become indistinguishable. So we will match our breathing when we're connected. Our heart rates will match. All this crazy shit will start mirroring. That's Start mirroring. Yeah, this is scientifically proven time and time again. So yes, that moment in a meeting, it's like it's chaotic. Someone fought over a parking spot. Another guy just got broken up with blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This person sludge hammers through So generally for me, when I've experienced it, was some moment of vulnerability. I just failed at this fucking thing, and we all go like, Wait, oh, God, I know exactly what it feels like to fail in that specific way. And now all of us have joined the same brain pattern. I think it's not like it's not imagined. I think it's physiologically observable, and it's so powerful. It's when you realize, Oh, yeah, we're social monkeys, and we're supposed to be in a group like this, and we're supposed to be dialed in, and it feels fucking right. I didn't go to church, or I was drugged to church. That was never a part of my life.

I don't have that nostalgia for that collective experience I know people in church have. I would go, my grandparents would take me, and my brother and I would get in trouble, and my papa Bob would flick our ears. We missed it.

That's a great comparison. When you said with the birds, how they all change at the same time. It's so crazy. I think there's a lot of other things going on that we just don't have the ability. Since we only have five senses, it's hard for us to... I think there's a ton of stuff and information that's in the world, but we only have five ways of inputting So we really are limited as opposed to maybe other things may have more, or in the future, they may have creatures that have more or something.

Would you consider yourself hyper vigilant?

Do you mean invading the capital or something like that? What? Are you talking about people that invaded the capital?

No, I'm guessing. I don't know enough about you. Hypervigilant. But if you leave the house at 14, my My guess is it wasn't the Cleavers.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I just didn't feel any connection at home. Then at a certain point, I was like, Well, why am I going to stay here and let this define me?

Where did you go at 14?

I went and stayed with a friend.Oh, you did?Yup. One of my buddies.

Their parents were fine?

Yeah, their parents were pretty cool, and we had a nice time. I still go over there when I go home. Their kids left a year later, and I was still-You stayed after they left?

Forever. Wait, so your buddy was a couple of years older than you?

He was the same age, but something happened. He drove into the neighbor's house or something. He was drinking, and then he had to leave. I was fucking still there. You were still there. They kicked out. Now I'm in his room.

You were being sponsored by him, but then he split, and they kept you. That's really funny. But it was like the- Did you feel weird as hell? Like that first dinner? Would you eat dinner with the family?

Yeah, I would eat dinner with them. We had fun, man.

And your buddy was gone and you were there?

Yeah.

It was-Do you remember that first dinner?

Oh, yeah, dude. I was like, Well, more for us. I was just in there. But I remember the first night I closed the door. To his bedroom? Which is now yours. This is when I had my own bedroom there, and I closed the door, and I was like, Fuck. I I hadn't had my own room. I was like, This is crazy, dude. And then, I must have had drugs on my mind at that point or something because I remember I opened the window then and lit up a little joint, right? And I didn't realize, I guess, how like, Stinky it It's just, yeah. I was just excited to fucking be a homeowner.

You thought you had your own home. Here we go. I'm finally on my own. No, you have a room, Theo. It's still in someone else's house.

His window was next to mine, and I guess his room was open. He fucking comes in there. He's like, Dude, what the fuck are you doing? We just got you in here, bro. You're going to get thrown out. And then he fucking bitched me out and then took the rest of the I went and fucking smoked it.

Went in the yard.

But that was fun, man.

When did you start doing drugs?

I think probably around then, I was smoking weed and stuff, but I wasn't doing anything heavy, and I never liked drinking or drugging. But then when I got I think I just had so much issues with dating.

Like you couldn't date and you wanted to?

I don't know. I just had so many issues with it. The girls like you? Not when I was young. And then I switched to a new high school when some of them did, and that was crazy. It was so scary. You're like, now, what do we even do? But then it was like everything was fine. I just could never be faithful in a relationship.

Yeah, me neither.

I'm going to try it. Really? Did you have a problem with it?

Fuck, no. Yeah, couldn't. It's like the longer I'm sober- Spray it on my tongue? Yeah, I go under the tongue and then let it soak in like you had dipping. All right. I just quit dip on the That's what it is.

Well, the other one of us have quit shit. We're spraying nicotine in our face.

Yeah, that's good. That's good for you, though. Yeah, it's great. This is the tobacco that's an issue. Yeah, elementary school for me was way too big, way too big. Most parents felt bad. They thought I had flunked a couple of grades.

Could you recall?

Yeah, I was just a big kid, and I was dumb because I was dyslexic and I couldn't read. You were really dyslexic? Yeah, and I went to special Ed every for two hours. They would knock at the door in the middle of class, and they would go, Dax, and then they would call someone else, and we'd stand up and we'd leave and go to special Ed for a couple hours. It was rough. Then I'm trying to tiptoe around the fact that most of the kids in that classroom were in wheelchairs and everything else. So I was confused. I'm like, Why am I? What's going on here? I was huge and dumb, and I don't know, Too many colleagues. Wow, there you are, man. Wow, I can't believe you found a picture. That's first grade?

That's Sheppard.

Yeah. It was big teeth. I didn't have braids. My teeth were all fucked up. I was in braces for nine years.

Really? My teeth were bad, too.

Anyways, I was in love with so many girls in elementary school. I had huge crushes. No girls like me. Then, thank God, my brother, in between fifth grade and sixth grade, when I went to junior high, he's like, Here's the situation. You're shaving your sides. We're going to have spiked on top. You're going to have banks now, long and back. You're a skateboarder and you're punk rock. Go. And I just went with it. And I arrived at Highland Junior High in the most popular girl in that junior high, Sasha.

She sounds beautiful.

Dude, she was so fucking beautiful. It was insane. God, dude. I'm walking down the hallway in the sixth grade hallway, and Sasha Croset is walking down the sixth grade hallway, and I'm like, Oh, my God, what's she doing here? That's Sasha Croset. She fucking handed me a note, and it went into my science class, and I opened it up, and it said, Will you go with me? And I was like, Dude, that's the first drug. That is the first drug. Or I went, I was like, What's happening? Is this a prank? Yeah. I had her phone number.

She was real serious.

Went home, went home, and was like, dialed the phone.

Remember You remember that?

Yes. Then I chatted on the phone with her for two hours, and then we were fucking going together.

In your room, you chatted with her, or did you have a universal phone? That's a hard question.

Sixth grade, I was living at my dad's for a few months. So yeah, I had my own room. There wasn't a phone in there, but it was easy to have privacy there.

And it was a landlord?

Because my dad was out. He wasn't sober yet. Really?

He was partying? Yeah.

He was going fucking hard. Sold cars, drove a Corvette, fucking bang, At the bar seven days a week. Yeah, he was everything.

Dude, that's so cool, man. Yeah, I remember walking- That changed my life. Oh, that changes everything.

I liked it so fucking much. I remember she was in eighth grade, and I was in sixth grade. We would make out at the bus before she got on the bus. I'd go to the basketball games with her, and she told me to go up her shirt. She's like, Go up my shirt. I remember going up her shirt, and I was like, Her bra felt so tight. I was like, I'm I was supposed to go under this bra, I think, but fuck it's so tight. It's going to hurt if I... And I was like, monkeying around in there and fumbling. And then she's like, Just go on around. She really made me do it.

She was really assertive.

Then I got up in there and got it. It was euphoric. It was such a high Such a high. Such a high. I didn't have it. And maybe this little brother, I just felt like, A, I could never turn down that attention if I got it. I couldn't resist it. And of course, I'm like, And they don't know. No one knows. Everything's I'm still very nice to this person, and that thing happened. And then, yeah, just a terrible pattern of cheating.

Yeah, the bad pattern starts, man.

Yeah, I was saying, when I think back now, I've cleared up like, dude, I quit drinking in 2004, in September of 2004. I had an opiate relapse, but in general, I haven't had fucking wreckage in 19 years.

Oh, that's great.

And so the stuff that really plagues me now is just really going back and being like, God, yeah, those girls didn't deserve. They deserved me to be faithful.

To be like, Yeah, she's got not to waste their time.

To not use them to prop up my own self-esteem and then need someone again to... Because it doesn't last. Oh, yeah, feeling great.

I remember walking across a gym. I was at this new school. I walked across the gym, and some girl, this girl was hot, dude. She was like... I think she had 30 tits. She was so hot. And she was looking at me, and I thought I had shit on my leg or something. I was literally so fucking embarrassed. I was walking across the gym. I could feel every step, and I was like, I've got to get across this gym.

I got to find a me or ASAP.

I got to de-shit myself because these bitches are catching on. And then after that, a girl came to the office one time and liked me. But before that, I'd been so nervous. One girl I liked in middle school, I didn't know how to tell her. I saved up the saliva in my mouth the whole class. And after class, I ran up behind her and spit right in the back of her hair.

That was your move.

It was like an animal. It was like, literally-I feel like a chimpanzee. When I think about it now, it's like, dude, you were an animal. You had no. I'm afraid you can just shit in the hallway and stare at her as you do. But when I think-Hey, you. When I think about the effect-Over here.

I love you. I love you so much. I love you so much. I'm sitting in the hallway for you. I'm sitting in the hallway for you. I'm ruining myself for you.

I'm fully exposed. Yeah, it was just such an effect. That thing had such an effect. And that became an addiction, man. Just in the sense of wanting It was a tension from women. It wasn't as much like a sexual addiction for me over the years. It just was like, I needed to know if there was any chance that that girl cared about me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just needed- You craved it. Yeah, I needed her to look at me. I just needed something I needed people to... I just needed her to see me. Yeah. And then it's okay if it played out how it wanted, but I needed to at least have her see.Not.

Be invisible.Yes. Yeah.

Because you feel invisible. I felt invisible of elementary school. I'm friends with the guys that have girlfriends. My friend Trevor is with Amy. We're always together. Can you see that I'm here? I know I'm too big for everybody, but you know.

Yeah.

I had a great relationship with my mom, but it kept getting punctuated by stepdads.

Oh, really? So you had unlimited stepdads?

Yeah, I had unlimited stepdads.

Almost like unlimited shrimp over at.

Yeah, it was bottomless stepdads. The sizzler of stepdads. But so it would be super connected, and it'd just be the four of us, my little sister, my brother, and my mom. And that was always perfect. But then a new guy would roll in, and then it was his program, and we had to have different manners at the table. And she'd be distracted, understandably. She was in her 20s, raising three kids by herself. I have no resentment towards her about it all. But yeah, there was… I just fucking I wanted to be loved at all times by a woman. I still want to be. My needs are unrealistic.

Oh, that's interesting.

If I'm dead honest and I'm in therapy, my therapist will be like, You know it's not Kristen's job. She's not your mom. She's not going to dote on you and be infatuated with your existence. I'm like, Wait, that's not... But I'm giving up so much. I'm not banging anyone. Shouldn't I be doted on and celebrated every time I walk through the door? Shouldn't there be a parade? Shouldn't my daughter be a parade? Should my daughters, every day I have not left. Shouldn't they be like, God damn it, dad, we got one of the good ones. I know your dad was out at three, but no one's proud of me. No one cares.

I remember my second girlfriend, and we were really in love. What age? I think this was in college. She broke up with me. She'd had it. I remember saying, You can't break up with me. You're my mom. That's what I remember. It came out of my fucking face. Oh, really?

Which was just a slight improvement over spitting in her hair. That's where you had matured to by the time you're in college. You can't. You're my mom. What a Freudian slip.

It was a Freudian water slide, dude. But it came out. I was like, You can't break up with me. You're my mom.Oh, my Lord.And I was like, Fuck. I didn't know for years what that even meant. Then once I got in a recovery and When I started getting a look at my life, I was able to be like, Wow, dude. I had no understanding of how to get affection or be fair with affection or anything like that. I didn't have a template. I didn't have a fucking idea.

I didn't know. What was her response? Do you remember?

I know she felt probably bad for me. Oh, good. She loved me for sure. Yeah. And she's a super loving girl. But I think she probably, years later, probably saw like, Oh, that dude was not a safe-He was not ready. Yeah, that guy was not ready.

No, he was not ready for a mature-And he's still fucking just trying to get ready.

He's still not ready, but- He's trying to get ready. But that stuff doesn't go away, man. That's the crazy thing. I thought at certain times of my life, I'll be like, Oh, in a couple of years, this will be gone. But it doesn't go away unless you do something about it.

Yeah, I have the fantasy that to be aware of it would solve it. Like, Oh, I see what's happening. I'm just trying to get... I'm trying to heal. Oh, God. I could go super deep, which is like, and this is recent, and this is probably too much for your show or the dude to listen to this.

But no, dude, if I cry on here one more time, I'm literally turning into the Garth Brooks of podcasting.

Oh, yeah, me too. I've been crying all the time. That's why I'm getting I didn't cry for 30 years, and now I can't make it through a day without crying.

Bro, it's like- It's for fucking being sober.

It's like you got the menace, you don't have anything to numb it, and here it is. But I also think there was a sexual component, which is like, okay, so my mom adores me. That's obvious. I was the golden child. I did not lack for a mom who believed in me or supported me or thought I was wonderful. She definitely did. But something would take her away from me. I was smart enough to realize, Oh, we can't fulfill this romantic desire of hers. That's something we can't fulfill. She's going to have to go get boyfriends. Right. Aka, she's going to have to have a sexual relationship with people.

Right.

So I think in some weird way, and I think I'm just starting to understand this aspect, which is like, I have to give that to any woman if I want her to stay around in a way that is world-class and You can't go. You don't want to go shopping for more. The priority I put on that part, the sexual part, I think was very outsize for what a woman would even give a shit about. Just as a little kid, I was like, Oh, the only thing I don't have that my mom needs is sex.It's a sexual part.

I need to be-That's what I want her to stay at all times, and I don't want any of these guys to come around.

Now, if I'm having this experience that also feels loving and nurturing with a female, my thought is like, I have to give her that thing in a way that she'll never go need it and leave me for it.

God, that sounds exhausting in a way. I mean, kudos to you, dude. Yeah, I don't know. That was the route I took. I was always so nervous with It would be like, Oh, shit. And it would be like, Yeah, oh, dude. So unbelievable. I would just yell things out like, That was great sex.

Hoping that you could rewrite history for her.

Yeah, and it's just, Oh, God, bro. Nobody has given out more bad sex, I don't think, than me. Hands down, there should be a game show, I think. And they just put a Whoop bracelet on you. People were like, no fucking way.

Oh, my goodness. Well, we haven't seen one this well. This is unbelievable. This is an underwant. Do you remember when they asked George Zimmerman's personal trainer on the Witness stand what he would rank his physical fitness level out of 10.

And George Zimmerman was the guy that shot the- Trevon Martin. Trevon Martin.

He had a physical trainer, which is comical in itself. But they asked the trainer, what would you give Zimmerman's physical fitness out of 10. And he said with a straight face, 0.8. Or some point, something. And I was like, Oh, my Lord. That is the last thing you want to hear your fucking trainer getting to the decimals when trying to assess your... Why not just say zero? I guess he thought if he said zero, it would be, Oh, do we have it? 0.5 out of 10. Oh, my God, is that? What he really said was zero. That was him like, he's like, I got to throw a half point in to just not be so cruel. Yeah, we got to have-You know what? He's sitting there, presumably. He's like, in that and behind that desk waiting, hoping, let's see here, I hope he gives me a four. Maybe he had a high end and low end of expectation.

That would be more shocking than the verdict. The guy's like, yes, I'm going-If he could take away one of the two things. Dude, yeah. And you don't want to be that little flubber in prison. I don't think because those are the guys I hear that get banged a lot around, like the holidays and stuff.

The holidays. Why the holidays? Because people are sentimental.

Yeah, it's like the little chubby guys in prison that get fucked around the holidays. That's what I've heard. What holiday is the worst? Christmas? Christmas, probably. Now, if it's Hanica, it's like an eight days long.

Yeah, very sad Jewish inmate.

Hey, somebody hide fat Josh. We got to fucking make sure he doesn't get banged up.

But yeah, I think- To get him in the... What do they call it when you're by yourself? Solitary confinement. Yeah, I got to put him in solitary confinement. Yeah, man. Easter's got to be a big one, too.

Yeah, there's a little bit more- Because there's a resurrection.

You're feeling extra bad about it.

Somebody's like, Yeah, I'm going to get hard again because Jesus did.

You It has arisen.

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Yeah, I was with... I've had three really long term relationships. I had a five year that started in high school and then lasted till me living in LA. And then I was with an incredible woman, Bre for nine years. But that one I thought I had outsmarded, which was I had already felt so fucking terrible about cheating on girls. I always got caught. Inevitably, I got caught. And I can't remember those phone calls trying to explain why you didn't care.

Was there anything worse than that?

Oh, my God. Well, It's tied with driving to someone's apartment to tell them that you're breaking up. I mean, those two for me, I've had a lot of motorcycle injuries. I take them a million times before I'd ever drive to someone's apartment and just say, I think we're in different places.

Yeah, and they're like, no shit. Oh, dude, the craziest is when you go over there and you knock on the door and they open it, but they walk away from the door after they open it. Oh, right. So it's just fully up for you to walk in and talk It's like when the gig is up, dude. Oh, fuck.

I hate it so much. And then you've been feeling that way for months, in my case, before you have the balls to drive over and fucking be honest. Yeah. And then so that drive is insufferable, and then sitting in there is so terrible. But there is that feeling when you walk out the door and you've made it and you're walking to your car, where you just go, Oh, thank God. Okay. You get that blast cast of relief. And then a day later, you're like, I think I'm in love with her. I think I love her so much, and I fucked up. I think I really fucked up. Then you're insanely in love with her for a few days. And then you got to white-knuckle that, just like it's booze or go to not re-engage. Anywho, what were we... When Brie and I met, we met cheating on two people.

Oh, okay.

I knew immediately, I'm like, I fucking love this girl. Oh, my God, do I love this girl? I want to have kids with this girl at some point. Wow.

Had you ever felt like that before or no?

I guess I did the girl I was cheating on with that I had been with for five years, certainly. But that had run its course in that I had moved to LA to pursue this. She hadn't joined me. It was obvious. We also got realistic about the fact that we only see each other four times a year. That got a little... It approached an open relationship, or maybe even became one. It was just like, Look, you're a human. I'm a human. I'm 21. Oh, yeah. You're with children. We were grown up about that. Then when I met Bre and we met cheating, I just had this moment of honesty with her, where I said, I would like to have kids with you and make it to 30 and have kids. I don't think you and I will make it if one of the requirements is monogamy. I I just think we're fool ourselves. If that's one of the deal breakers, we're not going to make it to the part I want to make it to where we have a kid. And she was like, I don't... So what are you suggesting? I'm like, Basically, I don't want to lose you over that.

I'm liable to do it, and I feel like you're probably liable to do it. We just met cheating on each other, on two people. And there was this weird intermarry. Whatever, period where she ended up chatting with her mom about it and all this stuff. And then at some point, she just came to me and said, Yeah, I guess if I don't know anything, I don't really care. And I was like, Yeah, and I have no desire to know about anything, but I'm not going to require that from you. We both were just like, I'm not going to require that from you. So I was in an open relationship for nine years. And we slept in the same bed every single night. We lived together. There was no craziness. Mind you, I was also a fucking full-blown addict during this period. But if she was at home, I don't know what happened. When I was at home, she didn't know what happened. And that, to some degree, worked. I mean, definitely worked. We stayed together for nine years in our 20s, which is almost impossible. And I love her like crazy. Still do. We're still really good friends, and both of our lives have worked out great.

And I wouldn't say that that was the reason ultimately we broke up. But all that to say, going back to getting older, being sober longer, I would have liked to have been someone that could have just been monogamous with her. I think she deserved that. I also think-Oh, yeah. I think even within those rules, I was scumbaggy. I definitely hit on her friend sometimes. I did terrible shit under the guise of like, Well, I'm not lying about this. I'm honest. That can be true. And also you can recognize that people are hurt, that you're leaving a wake of people that are bummed and hurt by you. It's like, great, I didn't lie, and I'm above board, but people around me are hurt by their experience with me. I don't like how that feels. Yeah.

You're like, bring it around your friends, and they know what you're doing. It's just all that shit. They all feel awkward. Yeah. It's like, what's going on here? Yeah.

That also, I think more like how many... Because we're very open about it.

Dude, I remember it It was New Year's Eve, and I was in the mountain with some girl and all of her friends. And then her friend and I ended up hooking up in the closet upstairs. And then a couple of hours later, she's like, Did you hook up with my friend in the closet? And I was like, That's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard of.

That's crazy. I was like, Let the shit out.

We're all just at this. So stuff like that, I think I feel like... And some of those things I've had to make amends for. I didn't do a ton of stuff like that, but there were certainly moments where it was like, I'd be in an instance where I had somebody I really liked and cared about, and there was still a part of me that needed to get more validation or needed to be seen. And it wasn't always even about sex, but sometimes I needed to know if I could flirt or if that girl would give me some response.

Well, that's when you connect the dots that like, oh, because I connected these dots in sobriety, which is like, oh, this is It's the exact same thing. Whether I want to acknowledge it or not, this sex thing and this approval thing is identical to cocaine. I had the most visceral experience of my life that pointed that out to me. Well, I had two. One was, and I was a few years sober, and I was single, and I was on MySpace.

And I was on TV. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, just take that in for a second.

So you were just damn Prince Charles or whatever.

I was enjoying the shit out of my space. And also, I hadn't looked at the sex component as potentially harmful to me yet. Yeah. But I remember a gal came over.

And you were good at sex, you said?

I mean, what could be more nauseating than a guy saying they're good at sex out loud? So that's just a lose-lose for me.

We'll just pretend that you're okay.

Okay.

I certainly- Because some people aren't good. Some Also, let's be honest, the more you fuck, the better you are.

You're not coming as fast. I'm not about any of that, dude. Sure you've had periods where you've fucked seven days in a row? No.

I was always too lazy to do something like that, I think. Oh, really? Yeah.

You were saved by your lethargy?

If I had sex twice in a week or... Yeah, I was always very like… It was like it took a while. Yeah, just like, yeah.

Okay, so I need to preface this I'm ashamed of this, what I'm about to tell you. I am ashamed of this. But this is very true. I was a few years sober. I was single. Someone had come over that I had met on MySpace, and I was giving them a tour of the house, and I was in the first room of the tour, and I had this thought that was like, Oh, this tour is so long.

You had a big house? No.

I didn't have a big house. I was like, But then I thought, What is this? I have a very familiar feeling. It's unmissable, this feeling I have right now. I took a second to I'm trying to figure out, I know this feeling. I know this feeling. What is this? What is this? I was like, Oh, my God, I know exactly what this is. This is sitting in my old drug dealer, Tom's living room, while he measured out shit and told me about his fucking day and got by telling me about his day. I wanted to scream, just like, fucking give me a bump and I'll listen to you forever, but fucking focus and give me the thing. That impatience.

Oh, yeah. Teamwork. You want teamwork.

Yes. Just like, knock off the bullshit, give me the thing, and then let's talk. I'll fucking be all ears for eternity. But that feeling is so specific to me that in that moment in the room, I realized I'm just, Oh, my God, it's the same thing. I'm like, I need this woman to give me the thing I need. And I hate that. I hate that about myself. I hate that for her. I hate all of it. It's just I don't want to be insatiable Probably needing something from somebody and dependent on them giving me the thing. And I was like, whoa. So that was one moment where I was like, Oh, God, they're the same thing. And once I I recognize that, I'm like, I probably have to think about it in those terms. Do I feel worse about myself? Are they benefiting from me? Whatever. Then the other crazy thing that happened that really sealed it for me was I was monogamous. It was for the first time in a decade. And then I was talking to my then-girlfriend who was in Boston doing something, and she told this story about bumping into somebody I knew she cheated on her ex-boyfriend with, and they're all at the same hotel.

I'm Well, I'm sure they fucked, right? So I'm like, I'm mad. I'm driving in the car on the 405, and I had been monogamous at that point for three months. We get in a fight over that, and we hang up. And I just had this swell, like a swell of horniness. The way you do when it's like, I got to get coke, or I got whatever, that really big swell. And all of a sudden, I was so horny. And I was like, I'm going to I'm going to text Kelly right now, and I can stop by her. I'm not supposed to because I'm now monogamous, blah, blah, blah. And then I just had a moment where I was like, That's interesting. You're in a fight. You feel emasculated by whatever just happened, and your body's smart enough to go, Well, let's get horny. You won't have to feel any of this. If you're horny, and we're at Kelly's house, and you're getting validated, and you come, all this stuff. I was like, Fuck, this is like a defense because it's just like any other thing. I'm so afraid of my feelings or feeling uncomfortable.

That your body created some defense.

My body was ahead of me. I hung up. I didn't even register what had just happened. All of a sudden, I'm like, I am physically horny. It's not like I made it up. And those two things for me, I was like, Yeah, this is a whole thing we got to figure out. Yeah.

Wow. Man, yeah, that's the craziest The hard part is that a lot of times it's not even you making a choice. It could be you choosing once you get the input, but your physiologicalness is making it's dealing you the cards, and you're like, holy shit.

And again, back to the brain, the area of your brain that's now sucking up all the blood and running the show, isn't the part of your brain, your neo cortex, where you would think through all the things that are going to happen after this? It's like you're not even... These two areas can't be doing the thinking at the same time. So once that swell of craving comes about, this is offline. You're like, I'm never going to see tomorrow, or that's tomorrow, Dax is probably. You're right. I feel bad for him, but today's Dax is about to get fucked up and feel good.

Yes. Everything, the ability to have any comprehension, really, or any forward thinking, completely disappears. That's crazy, bro. I mean, it It appears.

Yeah, it's gone.

It's unbelievable. You can't access it. No. I mean, my biggest thing was just that one of the things I ran into was just commitment. A lot of times I would get into a relationship, and then I just could not be committed. I couldn't be committed. I just couldn't do it.

What's your explanation of that? Was it because you wanted to hook up with other girls, or is it because you thought ultimately they would see that you're a piece of shit and be out?

I wanted to have the option to do what I wanted to do. I wanted I wanted.

You wanted it all. You wanted to go to Sizzler. Yeah, I don't know if I wanted it all. I'm in the mood for wings, and I'm in the mood for sailing, and I'm in the mood for my running shoes.

No, I just didn't want to have somebody else define me. There's a part of me that really doesn't trust having somebody else define me in a way. Does that make any sense or no? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, even I remembered when I had a girlfriend, I would a lot of times, I wouldn't even say, This is my girlfriend. I would say, This is my friend, and then their name. And a lot of that stuff I feel bad about, man, because it's not fair to them. So it was that thing. It was like, I just There's something I just had the toughest time with letting somebody else define me.

I don't want to speak poorly of your mother, but do you think it's okay to suggest that since mom didn't have your best interest in mind, that it was going to be pretty hard for you to imagine that anyone was going to have your best interest in mind?

I think there could be some truth to that. I just don't know. It's hard for me to get there in my head. Or intellectually, you could maybe see the thread, but it doesn't feel like anything real.

Right.

Yeah. And for a lot of times, for me, I got to get to that feeling space for it to activate inside of you. So I just think my mom was just There just wasn't a connection there, and I really wanted it.

How old were you when your dad died?

I was 16. And he was very old, but he was cool. I mean, he was old. But my mom would come to the baseball games. My mom was a fucking gangster in a lot of ways. She would come to the baseball games, and she would fucking scream, Hit it or we're leaving from her fucking astrovan in left field. Bro, I was already horrible at baseball. From the astrovan.

I was horrible.

Hit it or we're leaving, she would yell.

She didn't have any patience for-Fourth ending every time we were gone. Really? She would pull you.

Yeah.

She would pull. All right, he had five No, there's no chances. Let's go. She would pull me from the game. Yeah, it sounds like she had your best interest in mind. Totally.

She was just surviving.

Yes. Well, again, you can be sympathetic and not judgmental to it, but also acknowledge to acknowledge what happened.

Right. I think that's still where I'm at. There's still a part of me that has a lot of resentment. I think you'll have kids one day. It'll change it all.

It will because you'll start just subconsciously. You'll just be available Evaluating, Wait, where was I when I was three? I remember my daughter came in, our oldest daughter. This was probably a year and a half ago. She came in and she was like... She had a nightmare that me and Kristen got divorced, that mom and dad got I said, Okay, well, what happened? I think mom cheated on dad. And I said, Okay, well, a couple of things. I would never divorce your mom if she cheated on me. We would We'll go through that. That's not going to happen. But let's say it happened. What would then go on? What would happen next? She's like, Well, we wouldn't live together. And I'm like, Yeah, but I'd buy the house next door, and I will be with you nonstop. I'm not going anywhere. No matter what happens. That's not going to happen. But if that happened, I'm living next door to you, and you come and see me whenever you want. And maybe your mom will date someone that's really cool. Maybe there'll be another cool person in your life. We don't know what it would be.

But while I was saying all this to her, I was looking at her and all of a sudden, I was just like, Oh, she's nine. By nine, I'm on my third stepdad, and I've already been molested. I'm looking at her, I'm like, No, she's way too little to be on her third dad and to have been molested. Right.

Like, jeebus.

You have a compassion for yourself because I think in my mind, I'm always older than I really was, or I felt with it, or I knew the score.

You felt responsible. Yes.

And in many ways, I was. And then again, I'm palling around with my brother, who's five years older than me, so it was always a little bit five years ahead. But I look at this little girl and I think, Oh, yeah, that's way too many things to have happened to a nine-year-old.

Wow. Yeah, that's interesting. I think I probably need to get to that place in my life. I would like to. Yeah, I'm tired of living in the same place sometimes. So I'm just working on some of that stuff with my sponsor.

What's the longest you've been with a girl? A girl?

Probably three years, maybe. So pretty long, I feel like. And so, yeah, it'll happen. And then also I fell in love with my work. That's one thing I really fell in love with. I love to work. I love to work. It's a safe thing that I know.

How many days a year are you touring doing stand-up?

I don't know, maybe 100 shows a year.

100. And then you're where? In Nashville the rest of the time?

Yeah, or Nashville or-Do you know I'm building the house in Nashville? Hey, he told me that. Yeah. Over Texas.

That's crazy. So we're going to be best friends in Tennessee. This is so exciting. Maybe we should meet up in our tour busses at a Waffle House or something.

Yeah, dude. That'd be cool. What made you guys choose Nashville?

Well, it started with... I grew up around a bazillion lakes, where I'm from in Michigan. It's just lakes everywhere.

So it's rural Michigan?

Yeah. So I'm- Like, Charlevoix? I was... Charlevoix is so beautiful. No, not that far out. Oh, my God. If Have you been there?

Kid Rock always talks about it all the time.

No, it's preposterously beautiful. In fact, you go there and you're like, This is in the USA? That area of Michigan, the water is turquoise blue like the Caribbean. Torch Lake is like... It's so beautiful up there. And they have these Patosky Stones, which are all tortists, like turtle. They're impossibly beautiful flat stones for a skipper. It's incredible. But initially, I found a house I wanted to get there. I wanted to live out my fantasy of grown up broke, driving by the houses on a certain lake, and I was home visiting my best friend Aaron, and I was driving by that lake and I was like, Oh, shit, son, you could fucking have a house on that lake now. That happened. And I was like, I was weird. I was like, That happened?

Was it scary, though, to lean into a newer you that has money and all of that and opportunity and stuff like that? Sometimes I think I feel a little bit like Yeah, it's just like...

It doesn't fit well?

Yeah, I think sometimes I feel like it doesn't fit well. Sometimes I feel like, yeah, I've talked about this before, but it's like, I don't want to put... I like where I am.

Yeah, but is it that or is it that you're afraid?

I'm afraid of what people will think of me. Yes.

So I have that, too. I'm from a very blue collar. Half the town was on welfare. There's a fight in school three or four times a day. Violent, drunk, blue collar place. It's the last suburb out of Detroit.

Like a union? What's that? Like a Union?

Yes. Everyone's parents were in the UAW where I grew up. But it's the last suburb out of Detroit before it turns to just cornfields. So it's like if you went east, it got more and more built up. But if you went west of where I was from, it was just past yours. The kids got on my bus with horse shit all over their boots from shoveling shit. So it was like a hill.

Muir? Is that Muir?

I went to Muir Junior High. No, you didn't. Yes.

M-u-i-r? What? M-u-i-r? Yeah. Why do you know Muir? Billy Strings was just on here, and he grew up in Muir. No. He's an amazing guitarist.

I just watched it. You posted a clip a few days ago of it. Yeah. Yeah, and he was talking about shitting on a heated seat at the Sunset Tower. Yeah. I have the same thing, which is I hated rich people. I grew up, I hated rich people. They were the enemy, right?

I still hate them.

Yeah, I know. That's hard to come to peace with for me, which is like, at what point are you just a fraud? Because you're a rich dude now. And I can't identify with that because I hated rich people. They were the enemy. They were the people that made you feel shitty and that looked down on you.

Yeah, we had a veterinarian, dude. Our street was like, people would go from town and they would cut through our neighborhood to go to the nicer area where people lived at. And he was like a veterinarian, and he would throw out the dead animal stuff in our ditch all the time. Oh, wow. Yeah, he would literally stop a fucking black Mercedes.

Drop off six or seven cats.

Oh, he's just dropping off a bunch of fucking Bichon carcasses and just hitting the road up there to Richville, and we would all get out there and yell and call them queer or whatever. Then fry up the food.

Then thank them and thank Jesus for the meal.

No, we would throw the bones in each other. Thank you, Lord, for the user. We would make like dinosaurs out of the bones and hide them shit. But I think something like that. Yeah, there was... Well, the rich were always an enemy. You always had to have an enemy. I think there's still good enemies to find out there. And maybe they're not all rich. Maybe it's just more about greed or like...

Well, the thing that I'm entertaining is like, yeah, that's going to happen. People who are my people are going to hate me because I'm rich. I What can I do about that? That's their thing, just like it was my thing. And to pretend I'm something other than I'm not feels like an even bigger contradiction or hypocrisy. I got to be realistic. I still feel very comfortable in the shit, though. Most comfortable. I think if you met me, I whatever you thought or you were mad about. I don't think you would feel that way because I'm not above anyone. I got some paper, and I fucking love it, and I want to keep it. That's all I wanted. I've fucking been working so hard to get that fucking paper. I didn't want to be a rich guy, but I wanted the paper more than anyone else I ever made in my life.

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, and I think also being rich can be like an attitude, too. I think that's a lot of it. It's like there was something about the attitude of it. Nepotism, shit like that I don't like that. I don't like... I didn't like... That's some of the shit I just... I don't know.

I still have a chip on my shoulder about the East Coast, Bluebloody, these schools, the dress. But, dude, I went to vacation this year with my kids in Martha's Vineyard.

Right. So, yeah.

And I'm like, Well, what are we going to do here? How are we going to play this? You can't be there and act like you don't go there. My wife was like, why do you want to Martha's Vineyard? And I'm like, those Kennedy's could go anywhere. The Kennedy's were the gangsters of all gangsters. They could go anywhere. If they went there and set up shop, there has to be something there.

Oh, I see what you're saying. I got to see why the people that could have done anything landed there. Oh, that's interesting.

I was like, curious. And I went there and was like, oh, yeah, no shit, people. It was fucking incredible.

Is it nice?

Yes. And again, this is what I tell myself. What's nice about it is like, hey, it's just fucking gorgeous.

Have you been to Dayton Beach?

A million times. That's where we go for our winter break. My mom would drive us in a van, and we would sleep in the van down at Dayton.

Yeah, I hadn't been there before. It blew my mind.

But a different vibe than Martha's Vineyard.

Yeah, I can imagine that.

Did you go to Ron John down on Coco Beach?

Ron John's serve shop? Yeah, I've been over there, dude.

Yeah, I've been over there. It was all like getting the Ron John shirt when I was a kid.

Yeah, that was the best.

The sand is so hard-packed in Daytona that my brother and I, I remember going there. This is what always happened. We would drive down in a van, the four of us. We'd sleep in the van, and it would always be the shittiest weather that Florida had the whole year. We'd be leaving Michigan in the snow, and then we would get there all excited, and then it'd be like 49. So one day we were there, it was raining, it was cold as hell, but the scene was so hard packed that my brother and I were on our skateboards and we had like, windbreakers, and the wind just pushed us down the beach on our skateboards, like flying. One of my greatest memories of my whole life.

It's such a good feeling, dude. Yeah.

Skateboard on the beach.

I don't even know how you would do it. Oh, on the boardwalk?

No, on the sand. Oh, wow. I know people listening would probably not believe this, but A, everyone drives on it. So it's just really packed down. And then if it rains, it was just like being on concrete. Damn. Yeah. Oh, what a moment.

Yeah. What's Martha's Vineyard? I think of it as like there's ducks.

There are ducks. You're going to find all variety of waterfall there.

Yeah. And there's a lot of- But I'll tell you the thing that I'll say.

They do have a restriction on how big of a house you can build there. So this place versus the Hamptons. So the Hamptons detracts billionaires. Martha's Vineyard is millionaires. I know that's a stupid distinction to make, but for me, still with this weird class warfare thing, I was like, Okay, well, there's no yachts out here. There's no people with 40,000 square foot houses, and everyone No one's flashy. Everyone drives around in vintage cars. There's no like, Bentley's and shit. It's like everyone's an old Cherokee and stuff. You got Michelle and Barry. They live there. They got a spot. Their house looks to be bigger than the square footA lot. A lot. Yeah, that definitely looks like it's a lot.

Yeah, it looks like there was at least a kickback of a bedroom or two.

That might be some presidential clause.

Yeah, Bobby Kennedy is always up there. He always talks about it. Just growing up there. Yeah, they have the...

What is it? Kenny...

Kenny Bunkport? There it is. Is that their whole thing?

Yeah. You cross a little bridge out of Martha's Vineyard into a tinier island that's called Hyannis Port? Yes. That's where Ted Kennedy crashed.

No.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

There's not a single stoplight on the whole island.

It's just all stop signs. Do you think they'd put one in after what happened to Ted Kennedy?

You would think they would have put cameras everywhere.

Yeah, dude. Oh, I can't believe that. Yeah, I can't even imagine you pull up and somebody's just making just salmon or whatever on the porch.

Fresh salmon they just haust in. But yeah, I think maybe your money thing is a little bit like you'd be betraying.

It's just interesting to see what it's like. Okay, well, never had any money. Now I have some money. What's this like? I mean, the nicest part is being able to eat whatever wherever you want. Oh, yeah. That's the best, dude. You go to a restaurant and you know that you can pay the tab if your friends want to eat.

Yeah, there's three things that will make me feel rich. Because I was in LA for 10 years trying to get a job acting in clinic. So I was living on eight grand a year for a decade in Santa Monica. So I could never order pizza. I wanted pizza so fucking bad. I could just barely stay drunk on my budget. And then I had to really be entertaining to the dudes who had coke. But Where was I going with that? 8,000. Oh, so now when I order pizza, I'm like, Yeah, four. My mom said, We need one. I'm like, We'll get four. And I feel so rich that I can order any fucking amount of pizzas I want. The other thing is I go to the gas station and I'm not even sure what it is a gallon. And I love that feeling. I used to fill up my fucking Honda Civic halfway. And if it was 10 cents more, I was stressed. So just getting gas, I feel like a bazillionaire. And then the other thing is a second fridge with beverages in it. That's what kids I grew up with that were rich. They had another fridge in their garage with all kinds of beverages.

Those three things have me feeling like a Rockefeller.

Dude, we had this cereal closet. We ate cereal probably, I would say, 400 nights a year.

Okay.

And I remember we had this cereal closet, and sometimes if you were hungry, my mom would literally put you in. There was no light in there. There was 26 boxes of cereal in there. And she was like, Don't come out until you are full. And she just go in there in the dark and eat cereal.

And would you eat it with milk in a bowl?

No, you just fucking get your hand in there and enjoy yourself like a fucking man, boy. But that shit I loved, man. I just saw something the other day about the endless shrimp. They were having people ruined it.Oh, how?They were losing money. Red lobster. Here it is. Endless shrimp is financially ruining Red Lobster.

I lived for a fucking endless anything when it was broke.

Yeah, endless tits, dude. My fucking buddy's mom had. I remember that, bro, for sure, dude. She had those. Yeah, you had to get up early and feed those kids. Those things had milk in. Lobster. In an earnings report in early November, Ludovic Regis. Oh, my God.

They lost $11 million. They've been shrimp out. I think every company in the world is now operating like a startup. They think it's a good idea to just be hemorrhaging money the whole time and just grow, grow, grow. They're like, Fuck it. We'll worry about this later. We need more red lobsters on every corner.

The Thai Union Group, which owns Red Lobster, announced that its ultimate endless shrimp deal, which is normally a limited time offer, but was added to the daily menu in June. Wow. Was it exceedingly popular? That it's so popular it caused a restaurant to post an operating loss of more than 11 million. How would you not, after a week, look at the books and be like, Hey, the shrimp has to end?

Yeah. I don't know how it took them to the end of the year.

We want to keep it on the menu, the guy says. And of course, we need to be much more careful regarding what are the entry points and what is the price point we're offering. Now, for $25, guests can choose two shrimp-centric options. When they are ready for more, they can order additional shrimp selections. We had a place called the Big shrimp over there, and people would go there and fucking they had a...

Chitter Bay biscuits, though. Oh, those things are good. Those are incredible. Do you remember the first time you ate a red lobster? Mine's crystal clear.

We had a place called The Big shrimp. Okay. And it was not a red lobster. They had a huge... They had like a stuffed shrimp I'm like, mascot or whatever outside on Friday night. People would always just drive by and just call them a homosexual or whatever. It was pretty sad. They shouldn't, but we did it. It was just that shit.

I try to explain to people, when I grew up littering, not only was littering, it wasn't a thing. Littering? Littering. My mom's a good person, and we would stop. Sometimes we would drive to Toronto. As soon as we got over the bridge in Windsor, we would stop at McDonald's because they had special Canadian bacon, and we'd get everything right, and we'd be driving in the car, and we'd all eat, and then we'd pack the bag back up. My mom would roll the windows, just shove the whole thing out, and no one ever... It was a non-thing. It was like she stood out the window. No, it wasn't, bro. Yes, it was. In 1982, every third car was shoving an enormous bag of fucking trash out their window, and no one thought about it. My mom's not a heath, Yeah, I know. She would never do that now. I would never do that now. But yeah, every time you were done with something in your car, you'd be like, right out the window, didn't care. Cigarettes the whole nine. It was so liberating. I miss it.

Yeah. Oh, there was definitely something. There It was definitely something nice about back then.

Oh, yeah. It was so...

Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act. Causing litter.

They made it illegal in Michigan in 1994. Wow. Well, there you go. 94. I'm talking about '82 going to Toronto. I'm sure the The Canadians were ahead of us a little bit, but probably not until '89.

This is when nature was looking for a sip of orange soda.

Yeah, maybe we told ourselves, the deer eat that bag and everything. They'll eat it all right up.

Yeah, that was fun, man. I remember my buddy William's dad would take us to McDonald's sometimes and getting that orange soda. Remember how good it tasted when you were a kid? It's never tasted as good. It's still good, but it's not… There's nothing like when you're a kid and you're drinking orange soda and having a hamburger.

Do you remember the enormous… They had these barrel coolers? A kid might have a birthday party and they'd get the McDonald's barrel cooler with the orange soda in it.

No, I never saw that.

Oh, yeah. I went to a couple of birthday parties that had that. Just It's like a keg of orange soda. Is it even soda? It's an orange drink.

It's orange something, yeah. Oh, there it is.

You don't recognize that?

I never saw that.

By the way, that'd be a cool retro thing to have at the house. That'd be so sick, man. I might I'll add that to the list of an extra fridge with drinks and then a McDonald's barrel.

I remember getting... My mom would always be like, You guys should study the menu and make sure you get the best thing or whatever. We're like, What the fuck are you talking about? We're at McDonald's.

That would have been a McDonald's. That would have been a McDonald's when I was a kid.

She always tried to make it so fancy or whatever. And afterwards, sometimes we would go to get a dessert somewhere else at this cookie shop, and they had regular cookies that were for kids, and they had a couple of cookies that were for adults. Maybe like Eclair, but just like a fancy-looking cookie. Canole? Yeah, just shit that was not for kids. And every now and then, you would get one and you would just... Biscuit or whatever that's? Biscotti. Biscotti. The perfect trap. It looks like it's good, you get it, and it's fucking horrible, and you hate your sofa the rest of the day.

Oh, yeah, that is terrible. I got I was thinking of something else for a second.

Every time I got a Biscotti, I just wanted to fucking climb inside of my own dick, man. I hated Biscotti, and I still hate it.

The second you put it in your mouth, you're completely parched. You know you're wrong. It's just like a sponge.

You have to pretend it's good to your siblings, and they're enjoying their shit. They're fancy. Yes, they're enjoying their legitimate cookie.

Back to the money, though.

Yeah.

Did you pivot it, or was it something you never were that obsessed with?

No, I think, obviously, I I think everybody, you want to have some success.

There's varying levels, though. I've met kids that grew up in the same way I did, and they're not obsessed with it. I don't know how. My wife is zero interest in money. None. She doesn't think about it, care less. I I don't relate to that at all. But it's not like she grew up rich. She's from Michigan, too.

I don't like being taken advantage of. So I do like to do business, I guess, as well as I can. Right. So that thing. But I guess my thing is just like, well, if I have somebody, then what am I supposed to do with it?

Well, you're supposed to save it so you're safe. So that when you can't do this anymore, and they knock on the door and go, this was a big mistake. We should have never been letting you do this.

Which they probably will soon.

Do you live with that fear? I do. I record in the attic of my house, and I'm just always-For armchair, you do?

Yeah. Wow, that's cool.

There's a garage that's separate, and then above it is a little attic. It's like 105 years old. And I'm always waiting to hear like, Hey, we're so sorry, but you didn't really think you could have something this good and successful, right? It's like, You don't deserve this, right? And I'd be like, Yeah, I guess you're right. I think that sounds right.

Yeah, there was some bad paperwork or whatever.

I had this the first house. Oh, yeah, that's a picture of the attic. Why am I so close? Oh, that's like the maybe first episode. Yeah, I'm sitting way too close to Ashton. I don't even have a Lazy Boy up there yet, but that's the attic.

Oh, that was Ashton came on your podcast?

Or there's Pete Went. See, now I've got... But also I was so close.

Pete Went is from the music. I was so close. Fall Out Boy. Yeah.

But now we got Lazy Boys, and we're pretty separated.

Do you still want to do acting and stuff? You've been in some cool movies with Josh Jamal. He's a buddy of mine. Oh, he is?

That makes sense.

Yeah, he's a neat guy. Yeah, I love him.

He's a very for real person. Yeah.

He's a special dude. He's almost afflicted with being so handsome.

It's maddening. I met him because we all did a movie together when in Rome. He was playing my wife's love interest, and I was playing an underwear model. And I was like, Look at this guy. He's probably never thought about how his hair looks. He's never even thought about it. He's never thought about if he was in good shape. He's just in great shape. It looks so effortless. A lot of people look like it looks very self-conscious when they look good. Or they put some effort into it. It's like this guy's trying to not look great, and it's not possible. Yeah. Yeah. He's the real deal. He's He's a big boy. Look at him.

He's a big guy. What is he?

What is he? 6'4, maybe. 6'70 or something. 6'75.

Look at those streaks of gray.

My God.

Yeah, he's almost... I have some friends that are good-looking, and they're But Josh is almost afflicted with it. He's almost afraid to show his face.

He's trying to downplay it. Yeah, he's so modest about it. All I would do is walk up and down the street and then see if girls turned and looked at me. That's all I would do. I couldn't be trusted with that level of handsomeness for sure. I did enough wreckage not looking like that. But then you wonder, because I have a couple of friends that are so fucking good-looking, and they've always been so good-looking, and girls have always liked them, and they're not. They seem a little disinterested.

And being in women? Yeah.

Not like they're gay, just they're like, it's a a given. For you and I, we see someone, we're like, Oh, that girl would never like me. I'm going to make her laugh, and I'm going to put on a show, and I'm going to do this, and I might go dance, and I'm going to do all this. Maybe I could get in there.

It's a huge challenge. I'm going to learn French. I remember all that shit. Yeah.

And then an enormous reward if you get it. But I think they look in there like, Yeah, that girl would like me. Of course she would. Every girl so far has liked me.

So there's no challenge. Being undefeated with women, that'd be crazy. The craziest also, if you're so good-looking, if you want to see something good-looking, just look in the mirror. Why get a whole other person?

Why involve? Yes, totally. Why inconvenience yourself? Just hold up a fucking mirror in bed. Dude, that's exactly- Do you remember being a kid and you're your hair would look good. I had all these colleagues. I was so self-conscious. Yeah, me too. I hated how I looked. We looked at that picture of me. The colleagues are everywhere, right? So once in a blue moon, my hair would feather correctly, and I was just looking at it and I'd be like, Fuck, I can give anything if my hair was staying like this forever. I remember trying to make deals with God. If this is the hair, I have to just keep it like this forever. I don't ever need to change it. We got this. We finally got the feather looks right. It was a daily-I was so ashamed.

I think I was so... I just had no self-confidence. If a girl looked at me, I literally couldn't fucking handle it. You couldn't. I had to be like, I must look fucking horrible. I spent as much time as I could going into the bathroom, making sure I looked at least decent. I had the worst acne, and the acne, the kind where if you smile…

Some would pop.

Yeah. Then you're just sitting there like this.

You could like, you'd sneeze and fucking…

This is hilarious.

Oh, man. That's such a bummer. I had pimples. I had a good amount, but I didn't have… I don't think you call it acne.

Oh, I had the kind that were so... Cystic?

Yeah, they were in your bones or something. You had to go see a surgeon. What the fuck? And metastasize into your bones.

And they gave you... All they had was... Your back hurt.

It was so severe.

All they had was oxypads, right? Yes. And they burned your face. They made your whole face fucking burn.

And you'd scrub.

Oh, you would scrub. You feel so guilt.

It's got to be your fault. You got to pain yourself.

Yeah, that was it. I never thought about it. I thought it was my fault or something. And you would just scrub and you would be like, tomorrow, this is going to be so much better.

It just made it way oilier and way worse.

It was fucking... Then they took you to get this shit. It was this yellow. Like, stuff you would put on, had this You went to the blotter and you put that on. From the doctor? Yes, we went to the doctor. It made all your skin peel all your face.

It was like an acid wash.

People were like, This guy doesn't have acne. This guy was in a fire.

This guy's a zombie. Yeah, this guy. His skin's peeling off. Oh, man. It's rough being a kid, isn't it?

It was so rough. Then sometimes you'd wake up and one of your arms was a little longer. You're like, What the fuck? You'd see your buddy and his fucking chin would be seven inches longer.

You're like, What the fuck? It was last week. Having an Ian. That was me between eighth grade and ninth grade. Again, I had this Muir Junior high. I have my basketball, physical I had to take to do eighth grade basketball. And then I have the ninth Grade 1. I did not make the team in ninth grade. But in eighth grade, I was 511 and 159. Tall. And then in ninth grade, I was 6'3, 149. So I lost 10 pounds. Meath. Grew 4 inches. I had a terrible... I was still following my brother's directions. And he was in a perm phase, so he convinced me to get a perm on top, and it was super long in the back. Really? Yeah, I had a perm on top. It was crazy long. The bat wasn't perm, right? So it was just fucking straight. But up top, I had a lot of body. And then my nose just got huge and my chin retracted, and I got super tall and skinny, and I went to a new high school. From like-What a creature. You were a creature. I was. I crawled out of a swamp. I had life so good at Muir.

Girls liked me. I had a ton of friends. Then I just showed up at this other high school, and I looked fucking nuts.

John Muir, Junior High. Is it based on the John Muir Trail or no?

That's the Redwoods guy. Isn't it the Muir? No, mine is Margaret E. Muir. I think we're confusing Muir. My school is Margaret E. Muir in Milford, Michigan, which I heard, sadly, they just closed down. I've never wanted to go to a high school reunion, but I got the idea last year. I'm like, I want to host a junior high reunion because that was the sweet spot.

Yeah, junior high was, dude.

It was so fun. I had a spree.

Do you remember spree? Spree's the candies? No.

This might be me being five years older. It was a moped, a Honda spree. I lived miles away from my friend. It's like, all of a sudden, I had a spree. My dad bought it for me in a drunken stup where he felt bad about something and bought it for me. Oh, yeah. So there's a spree.

My dad used to get us hot dogs all the time.

That was his I'm sorry.

Sometimes you'd come in and there'd be six hot dogs for you because he would drink, too. He would drink and he park his... He had a Thunderbird or something. He would park it in the ditch a lot of times outside of our house. I think our mom actually dug the ditch so he would land in it. They were at a huts.

But I had that black spree you saw with the very sexy purple writing. I was mobile. In seventh grade, I could go anywhere. That one in the upper corner, look how sexy that thing is. By the way, that vanilla-colored one is really good. That's beautiful. Now that I'm older and more mature, I would-Yeah, go get you that. I would like that vanilla one. But I could I ride everywhere. I had girlfriends. I could go to their houses while their parents were at work. It was such a perfect time.

Dude, I remember they had a girl that lived close enough to me, and I remember walking down there one time because she would sometimes let people touch her breasts or whatever.

I love it. I think this is rural shit that people don't really relate to.

Yeah. She'd be like, Hey, come over and touch my breath.

There were a lot of girls like that in my town.

And this girl was big, big bone, built like a tree almost. You could run and hide behind her like that with a buddy on different sides of her. She just had the hardest chest and tits and everything. I remember it got me to be like, I can't even- Way hard.

Just help me out with that additive.

They were very- They had just fucking rock hard. Really? She was mostly bone, probably in her.

She had some bones in her breast, maybe.

She was fucking real. She was mostly sternum.

She was tusks. Oh, yeah. Mure, Michigan, and Milford are about 100 miles from each other, but that is where Billy Strings is from, Mure, Michigan. Population 660. Oh, so that's a city. Mure is a junior high in Milford that I went to. Okay, got her. Margaret E. Mure. But anyways, so I had this fantasy, and I'm still best friends with my best friend who I met at Muir Junior High in sixth grade, Aaron Winkley. And so both of us, that was the highlight of our life. He's a recovering addict, too. We went hard together. He stretched it out another 14 years. I don't know how he did it. But we wanted to throw this thing, but we had to consider certainly a lot of guys are going to want to kick our ass at this thing.Oh.

The Junior High thing?Yeah.

From my town. There's certainly some dudes who are not thrilled that I grew up married Kristen Bell. Maybe they wanted to kick my ass in junior high, but a lot of dudes got enormous. A lot of guys went to prison. You think so? Yeah.

You think some people would really be upset, you think?

Yeah, I'm pretty certain of it. Then we were like, How are we going to have this thing and not have to fight? We don't want to do that, but it seems highly likely. Have you been to a high school reunion? Did any guy get pissed?

Yeah, I've been to stuff like that. We did a nice dinner recently. Yeah, there is something you just don't want people to feel that you're different than them. That's one of my biggest things is just trying to make sure that my buddies and stuff, as much as I can, don't feel that I think I'm different than them. You think you're better. Yeah, and to try to check my thoughts, too, and see what's going on with me so that I'm cognizant of that. But have they changed? My ego is one of my biggest fears because it grows. You don't even know it's growing. The next thing you know, you're just a complete asshole. I will be stressed out and be angry sometimes, but I don't know if I get into the ego space as much, but I get into the overwhelmed space a lot. But yeah, I think a lot of my friends from where I'm from have been pretty stoked about just podcast and the people we get to talk to and stuff like that.

Oh, dude, I was thinking of you on Friday because I watched the Rick Flair doc. Oh, yeah. The 30 for 30 on Rick Flair. That was great. I remember you had them on.

That was unbelievable. Unreal. Just being able to spend time with a piece of your own life like that. Like Michael Landon, I would love to spend time with, but he's dead.

That's your dude, Michael Landon. Yeah. That's an interesting choice.

I love Michael Landon, dude. We loved him. He was supposed to come to our town. He was supposed to come to the rodeo once, but he didn't show up or whatever. What project? My mom was all pissed because she even went down there to see him. She did.

Okay. This is…

Yeah, she went down to see him.

Psychological and you want to…

Well, I think he was supposed to come.

What project did you fall in love with Michael Landon from? Highway to Heaven?

Both at the same time. Highway to Heaven with Victor French, and then also with Victor French when he was on Little House on the Prairie. I met Nelly Olson one time at Chase Back.

What a fucking head of hair.

My goodness, that's a mane.

Do you think you're subconsciously trying to have the same hair?

Maybe today I am a little bit. The hair is fucking...

My Lord, what I would have done with that hair.

Oh, dude, I'm not even gay, and I would have definitely kissed this dude. That guy's beautiful.

I would have done whatever he wanted to do if he let me just do this through the top of the air.

What's the price? That dude's better looking than 80% of the girls I've ever dated, which is crazy. Do you enjoy podcasting more now? What do you feel like for yourself?

Yeah, I didn't answer your question.

How free did you get when that started? Because you started podcasting, a lot of people weren't doing it.

Yeah, but I also felt late to it. There were. Maren was already there. Chris Hardwick was already huge. I definitely felt like I'm a poser that I'm starting a podcast. We just had our six-year anniversary last week.

Yeah, I think that's where we're about at.

You're beyond that. I looked at you. You've been podcasting for eight years. Oh, wow. Minimally.

Jesus Christ.

Yeah, so you're already doing it. I felt self-conscious like, Oh, this is so embarrassing.

Was it embarrassing in your acting world or in that Hollywood world? Did it feel like a weird thing to do? Because sometimes people are always a little weary sometimes. I think they're less weary now, but people, I think five or six years ago.

Felt like it was below.

Yeah, just like, What am I doing?

I didn't have that fear. I had more the fear of what does Maren think? What does Chris Hardwick think? The people who have already done it and proven, what does Rogan think? This is embarrassing that I'm now trying to hop into this thing that they've all been doing for years. But weirdly, yeah, now people will act like I was somehow early because then, of course, there was a much bigger wave after we started. But But I love it so much. I don't have any desire to act. I haven't acted in a couple of years, I guess now. I'm so fulfilled. I am on four shows a week, and I produce six shows a week.

Oh, wow. I didn't know you guys were doing all of that.

Yeah.

So it's very like-Thank you so much for taking the time today, dude.

Oh, my God. I wanted to be on so bad.

That's awesome, man.

But I love it. Do you love it?

Yeah, I love it. I just love it. I love wanting to learn more. I love the scary part. I think I've evolved as a human because of it, which is like, I was happy where I was. Yeah, it was working just fine. Yeah, I think I was enjoying myself. And it's like, I don't know if I've gotten I mean, I just learned. You can't help but learn more from listening to people.

Well, I do. So Mondays on our show is celebrities, and then Thursdays is experts. So like scientists and fucking startup people, you name it. Bill Gates has been on. Who was last? You just saw I had that Pulitzer Prize-winning author who's written this book on communication. Thursdays is constantly someone really challenging that's super duper smart. I feel like I'm still at college, but I don't ever have to go to class. I don't have to write an exam paper. The smartest people in the world come. Bill Gates has sat down and chatted with me.

What was he like, dude? Because he gets such a rap. Everybody thinks he's this lizard.

He thinks that people think he has children in his basement and he's dream of an adrenal cram to stay young. Which is so comical because I've both interviewed him a couple of times, and just look at him. It's not working. He's aging very expectedly. If Bill Gates looked 36, I could see where you would have that conspiracy theory. But he looks fucking his age. Well, yeah. Right? God bless him. He looks exactly how he should.

What does he seem like? I think I get worried when people have so much control. That's the one thing that I think about, wealth and stuff. I feel like they should put a cap on how much wealth and control somebody could have. Because here's what I wondered is, if say, if one person makes so much money, does that mean other people don't have that money to make? No.

I think a lot of people have this zero-sum thought of how the economy works, but that's not the case. People invent shit and grow the economy. So my favorite biography I've ever read in my life, everyone should read it, it's called Titan. It's about John D. Rockefeller, and it's about him building Building Standard Oil. And so this dude, John D. Rockefeller, when he became 100 Millionaire, that had never existed. The economy was so small at that point that I think they say that out of every dollar that existed in America, he had 50 cents of it. So all these inventions, all these products, they all just swell it. So it has an infinite ceiling. But I think people think of it as like, we're at a ceiling and they got this, but that's not actually. Our GDP swells and swells and swells, and everyone has. But John D. Rockefeller took all that money, and he started mid-career, in his 40s, he was like, I I'm going to solve everything now. The south, what's going on in the south? People think Southerners are lazy. Why do they think they're lazy? He deploys a team of scientists.

They figure out, 40% of the people in the south have hookworm from walking barefoot. When hook worm gets in your body, it overtakes your intestines. It saps all your energy. They have no energy because they're not taking in the nutrients from their food. He's like, We got to eradicate hook worm from the south.

Worms were stealing the vitamins?

Just this growth inside your intestines prevented the nutrients from absorbing. So he sends out a team of people to educate everyone in the south to A, wear shoes. And then there's a very simple cure for it, which is, I think, an iodine regimen. So he also sets up free iodine regimen to get rid of... He eradicates hookworm. There was no such thing as research science before John D. Rockefeller. He's like, All we have is these doctors. They graduate from all these different schools. No one knows what degree is what. There's no standard. And then he said, Well, what's the best medical facility in the world. It's Johns Hopkins Hospital. He paid them to come up with a curriculum, and then he went to every medical school in America and said, I will pay you if you adopt this curriculum so that our doctors all have a standard level of aptitude.

So he created that.

And then he created medical research. That didn't exist, where scientists are in a lab actually studying pathogens and coming up with... So he spent his whole life... At the point that he died, he had probably saved more Americans than any other human being. Bill Gates is Rockefeller. You should watch the doc Bill's Brain on Netflix.

He might have autism or something. Does it seem like it, maybe?

That seems like he probably has some divergent stuff.

My friend said he has it.

I'm not qualified to diagnose it, but my guess is he's probably on some spectrum of some neurodivergent. Now, what is that? I don't know.

Well, and a lot of people are now some of the greatest, it's almost like where we're heading as a It's people that have some form of autism are now able to capitulate or something or conceptualize the next thing that we need as a society or something that the rest of us can't do. It's almost crazy how something that 20 years ago was considered probably more of a deficit is now considered like, if this guy doesn't have a little bit of autism, we're not letting him near the counter.

Well, my guest I interviewed last Friday, it hasn't aird yet, but she is a neurodivergent expert. She herself Health is neurodivergent, which was a really interesting interview because I've never really interviewed someone that was just very open about that.

What does it mean neurodivergent?

So that could be dyslexia, ADHD, autism, hyperlexia. There's a bunch of things that would... It just means that you're not the normal. But one in five people in America is neurodivergent. Really? Yeah. So 20% of us are. I am because I'm dyslexic, so I qualify for that. But yes, she was saying the things that a lot of neurodivergent people add to a company is they don't fall for group thinking. I see what's going on. They don't mind pointing out that, No, that's actually not right. There's some helpful disagreeability that they don't get along. They've been so on the outside growing up. They're so used to that dynamic of feeling awkward and people not embracing them, that for them to point out the clear obvious thing in the room is no problem for them.

It's easy for them because they've been sitting there watching the whole time anyway.

Top five most valuable companies in the world right now.

Autism.

Well, Microsoft, Bill Gates. I don't know. He's probably neurodivergent.

Probably 20%.

Elon Musk is admittedly autistic. Google, Serge and the other gentleman, I don't know.

But these are all- Bezos, definitely. He's coming up a little bit tismed out. And then that other guy, what's the last one? It's not Baskin Robbins. What's in another huge company?

Oh, Berkshire Hathaway.

Yeah, maybe.

Warren Buffet.

Warren Buffet. Now, he seems just old-fashioned.

Although there's a great doc on him, too. Is there? Yes. It's fascinating.

I got to watch some more of these, man.

And talk about a dude that's living the way he was. He was forever the richest man in the world. He drives the same 1987 Cherokee that he's always had. He lives in the same 518 5,000-square-foot brick home he bought in Omaha, Nebraska, when he and his wife got married. You're like, why does he even have? What's the point of having all this money? But he, again, I'm not a fucking doctor. I'm not going to label him something, but in the doc, he can sit at his kitchen table and just go through a pile of documents like this. And he's fascinating reading these spreadsheets and doing this analysis. And when his wife left at some point, she wanted to spend time on the West Coast. She told her neighbor friend, Would you check in and make sure he eats? Because he'll forget to eat. He won't eat. That woman started coming over and making him dinner, and then she moved in.

No way. Now they're lovers.

Then the original wife, everyone was happy. The original wife died of cancer. He was with her a lot. Then he's still with this woman. You're like, this is a cool doc.

I mean, who knows what- Wow, that's interesting. I didn't know that about him. I got to do some more learning, man.

Well, you have more time than you've probably ever had. The last 18 months?

Yeah. We want to get her on. You had her on, Brené Brown.

Oh, yeah.

I want to talk to more people that are good about thinking about navigating different things, grief, shame, stuff like that. I want to have some other ask I have some suspects of that.

Well, Brené Brown, her knockout punch sentence that stuck with me is, guilt as I did something bad, shame as I am something bad. And That's a great thing to run through my head when I'm spiraling like, what am I actually feeling right now? Are you afraid you'll potentially lose some of your audience by going down that road?

No, not at all. That's good. I think people are curious about stuff, and I'm curious. I think one of the reasons I was so late... I got an antidepressive when I was 20, and so I didn't realize that that kept so many of my feelings in a fucking cage. Because a few years ago, I was like, dude, why am I It felt like so much more feelings than some other people sometimes? And then I was like, oh, because you've regularly been on that medicine for 17 years. And so you got it.

Well, also fucked up, right?

Yeah. And in part, yeah. Or at least not in recovery, not getting to be able to get a little bit of a glance to myself. What was your preferred substance? Cocaine. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

What a drug. I just had Bateman on last week.

Oh, I love him. He's fascinating to look at. He has one of those faces. You can tell why he's an actor because it's just the most... Everything about it is so engaging.

And interesting. You could just stare at it.

Yeah, it's interesting. You're just like, he just...

Do some thinking for me, Bateman. I'll watch. Take your time, too.

But he was a Hoover, admittedly.

He used to party, yeah. We were talking and I said, Do you ever... I said, I'm not going to do this. But I was directing Chips, and I was talking to an actor on the movie, and she said that she and her boyfriend had gone stayed at Cocaine Hotel in Columbia. I was like, Cocaine Hotel? What's Cocaine Hotel? She's like, Do you know about the Cocaine Hotel? It's everywhere. It's on the tables everywhere you go, in the rooms, at the thing. It's a hotel to do cocaine. I said, Do you ever, Bateman, do you ever think about just spending a few days down at Cocaine Hotel? He's like, Well, I don't know. I mean, there's so much shit in Coke now. I said, No, I think this is farm to table Coke. I think the guy Guys are stomping on it in the backyard and then bringing it in in a dustpan and then dropping it off. I think this is as medicinal and pure as it is.

Well, that's what we need in this country. Dude, make Coke great again. Farm to table. We need Farm to table cocaine. We do.

You got your vegetables. We did that. You got your farm to table vegetables.

It's sad that a kid can't get some decent cocaine in this country. It really is.

Yeah, you knew you were going to be huffing some baby laxative and some acetylene or whatever. You knew But now it's different.

Dax, we'll have to catch up again sometime, man.

Yeah, I would love it. I'd love to have you on ours as well.

Yeah, man. I'd love to come on, dude. I appreciate that. We'll take a little break.

We'll recharge. We'll get curious about each other again. Think about some things that we could- But I don't want to have too high hopes. About Nashville? You know what they say in our program? Expectations are resentments under construction. You know that one?

Yeah.

That's a good one. Do you like it?

Yeah, I like that. Expectations are resentments under construction. Yeah.

But with that said, I'm still going to allow myself to have really huge expectations. We got to get out on a fucking boat on the lake.

Dude, now that's some fun stuff.

You can do- Some barbecuing on a fucking pontoon boat.

Good fishing out there. What else is there?

Canon balls.

People are so nice, too. It's very nice. It's a small city. It doesn't feel super big.

What side of town do you live? Do you live by Franklin?

No, I live just right on the out, right on the edge of town of Nashville. Mead? Probably nine minutes from downtown. You don't want to tell anyone? I don't live in Belmed. No, I just live in... It's called... What is my neighborhood called? Oak Hill or something. Okay. There's not a real hill there, but I think there used to be, but somebody stole it or something. But it's good. I got nice neighbors, and I got... But the zoning there is getting a little bit weird. But it's a city in progress. I love it.

I love it. Yeah, I'm excited. I go down there and I'm like, Oh, yeah, people People are still happy to be in this country. They're having fun. I miss that.

Do you miss... Was there a reason that you wanted to take a break from acting or not act? Were things not as funny as it used to be? Or was there...

Yeah, I was on the verge of telling you this thing. I would have not put all this together, but I had this guest on, Adam Grant. He's a behavioral psychologist at Wharton. He writes a bunch of shit. He's like a thinker. We've had him on a few times. We were talking about my story was, okay, I spent two and a half years making It came out, it didn't open well. And I was like, fuck, what are we doing now? I thought for sure I'd be writing, directing for the next 10 years. That was my identity. I'm a writer-director, blah, blah, blah, blah, in the midsts of all that. My story was like, Yeah, be flexible. Don't get too set on something. If something shows up, just run at it and see what happens. And he said, Well, do you think these things are so different? And I go, Yeah, a podcast and acting and shit? Yeah, I think that's a lot different. And he said, Well, what's your favorite part of acting? I was like, Hmm. I was hanging out at Video Village and shooting the shit with the other actors and the directors and the writers.

That's my favorite part of Hollywood. It's like, all these people have moved from some town. They were on fire, and I get to hang with them, shooting the shit at Video Village, where they watch playback and everything.

If you don't know what Video Village does- Yeah, videos where after you do a shot, you'll go there and just look at the shot with the director sometimes.

And they'll say, You did this and blocked him there, or she'll say, Don't walk over there, whatever it is. I said, That's what I love about acting. And he said, Well, don't you think you've just made Video Village in your attic? Don't you just sit here and now actress come over and you do your favorite part of acting, which is shooting the shit at Video Village? I was like, Oh, damn, I guess that is what happened. I weeded out all the stuff. I didn't want to do wardrobe fittings and auditions and all this stuff. Now I just get my favorite part, which is hanging with other creative people and chatting.

Yeah, dude, that's cool. Yeah, that's interesting because sometimes I get people will talk about, do you want to do this? Do you want to do that? Sometimes there may be a friend or two you want to do something cool with. But the best thing about it would be that you get to hang out with that friend.

Yes. The other shit would just get in the way of the hang.

Yeah, it feels like a nightmare. Some of it. You're like, Well, I just want to…

Yeah, I don't want to talk to a second AD about a wardrobe fitting across town for two hours.

Yeah, I just want to hang with David Spade and fucking cut up. Yeah. Dude, I'd love to come on sometime, man. Yeah, let's do it. I appreciate you making time for us today, dude. I know we're all over the place, but we're just getting to know each other. Yeah.

We'll do another one that's more cohesive, maybe. I doubt we will. Maybe not. I bet we'll be able to make that happen. I'm already in my head thinking about 26 stories I started that I never finished. Why didn't buy the house in Michigan? I was going to buy a Lake house, man, fuck that.

Yeah, I can think of a bunch of stuff. I'm sure when I listen back, I'll be like, Dude, you should have figured some stuff out, man. All right, well, this is off to a raucous start.

I can only imagine what's going to happen in Nashville. I mean, my Lord.

Well, you have a family. I don't. So, yeah, I'll probably just be milling around in your yard.

Yeah, but we'll get out on the pontoon with some shotguns and start slinging skeet.

I shot my first shotgun out there.

In Nashville?

Yeah, Kid Rocks us in the backyard. He'll have a bunch of people over sometimes, and they had a fucking skeet thing. He was shooting it off the cliff, and we were just popping them off. It was cool. But yeah, it's a fun place, man. Just a lot of nice people there.Dack Sheppard, thanks so much, man.Oh, my God.

Thanks for having me.Yeah.

I appreciate it, bro.Nice to meet you.You, too.

Now, I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this piece of mind I found feel it in my bones. But it's going to take.