Transcript of Alan Ritchson

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dax Shepard, and I'm joined by Monica Padman.

Hi.

This is an incredible opportunity for us for many reasons. A, he's a mega, mega star. But also, you and I have had debates about this man, and then he got to come in and actually—

oh, that's right—

hear from him. People might remember Alan Ritchson was talked about heavily when I was referencing this motorcycle video that happened in his neighborhood with a belligerent neighbor.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, yes, this is the gentleman that was involved than that.

Yeah, but of course, talk about it.

Most people know him as Reacher, this gigantically successful international blockbuster Reacher, uh, War Machine, Blue Mountain State, Fast and Furious, Fast X, uh, and he has a new movie out now that is so cool and so bold, uh, Motor City, uh, so check that out. And then coming up in September, uh, look for Runner with he and Owen Wilson. Please enjoy Alan Richson. Tell me what's happening. Where do you live?

I live in Nashville now.

Me too. Well, we, we too have a house there. I was there last weekend. Mount Juliet. Oh, cool. On the lake.

Oh, you are one of the lucky ones, man. I want to be there. I want a lake house so bad.

How long have you been there though? Because I read that you were nomadic for a minute, which fascinates me.

I did not want to settle down. I was traveling like a circus with my wife and kids. My boys are 13, 12, and 10. I was having the best time. I'm working. I come home, hang out with the boys. It was heaven for me and not for them. Selfishly, I was like, this is great. Yeah, I love this. They're like, we really want friends.

We want to go to sleepovers.

They're like, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So we were in New Zealand, we're shooting War Machine, and had the most idyllic dinner we've ever had. It was magic hour. It was like, you know, the cobblestone streets and the mountains and the water. It was beautiful. It was great. And we were walking back and it's like cultishly idyllic. People on slacklines and like picnicking and stuff. And my oldest boy like bursts into tears. I was like, what did I do? And my wife goes, what did you do? And he goes, I just saw those kids over there playing and they have friends. And like, you know, and I think it just hit us that like, oh, we're really at a age where we got to, like, settle down.

I want to go back to something that really struck a chord, which is your kid cried and your first thought was, what did I do?

I know, I caught that too. That's very Dax.

That's so me.

Yeah.

And then I've noticed it's so my brother. It's like a family thing.

Where does it come from for you?

I'm trying to figure that out. I think my mom probably picked it up from her dad. I don't know. But I've talked to my brother about it. I'm like, what's going on with us? And he goes, don't you just feel like you're always in trouble? And I'm like, yeah, I feel like I'm always in trouble. And like, if anything happens or anyone's mood's a little crooked, my first thought is like, oh fuck, I did something.

You're like hypervigilant? Yeah, super hypervigilant. Do you have ADHD?

Yeah, I newly believe I have that.

Okay.

But what is this thing where it's like, I'm in trouble, I must have done something?

Hypervigilance. Yeah, you learn to read the room real quick. The survival mechanism is like, am I responsible for this and what can I do to fix it? I suffer deeply from rejection sensitivity dysphoria, which is part of ADHD, right? Yes. I've never talked about this before. I've talked about bipolar before. Yeah, I think I have it all. I think I have like— yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess it's working. But I just hired an ADHD coach.

Oh really?

To kind of help me, because I feel like pre-40, the ADHD brain is a superpower, but the fuel comes at a huge cost later in life. Your gas tank runs off cortisol.

Yeah, yeah.

And stress and like the, the fear of the pain of rejection and criticism. And I hate it so much because it's such a visceral, violent, sickening reaction, bodily reaction, that like I'll do anything to avoid it, you know? So like, I'll be perfect for you. Yeah, this will be the best experience or relationship you've ever had.

Yeah.

So you're not ever going to be mad at me, you know? That doesn't work.

It's exhausting for the people.

In my case, it's not reality.

My kids have said it's not real. Had to ask. That's why I've been confronting it, and that's why I heard it in you, is my kids finally said like, I hate when you say that.

They recognize that.

Yeah, I'll always go, oh, did I do something, or did I upset you?

That's really perceptive.

Yeah. And they said in a very soft way, I don't like that, because what it does is like, I'm dealing with something, and then all of a sudden it's about you, and I gotta reassure you that you're not in trouble. And it's like, I'm the one who's upset. I'm like, fucking duh. Yeah, so selfish of me. I think I'm being very selfless and trying to apologize or whatever, amend whatever thing I did wrong, but in fact, it's like, yeah, it's like stealing their thing in a way, seeing them less because you're recognizing your own Yeah, because they're now in a position where I'm like, did I do something? They have to now go like, oh, no, you didn't do it. They have to now comfort me when I should be coming in to comfort them because they're upset. But instead I've said, did I do something wrong or did I upset you? And now they got to comfort me, right?

They've learned to hide their emotions from you. Like, oh, well, I guess I can't be upset around Dad because he's going to feel all crazy.

Yeah, rejection or whatever. Start apologizing. Exactly. Being aware of that and recognizing that they're aware of that, which is impressive. What does that awakening do to you? You're putting more energy into managing the awareness of it or confronting it before it happens.

My whole life is a series of things I've quit, right? It's just like, I don't know when I accumulated all the badness, but at some point I had to start just removing alcohol at 29 or removing this. And then now we're down to this. It's like, yeah, I gotta stop that. I cannot ask you repeatedly all the time, did I do something wrong? Are you upset with me? I have to trust that they will tell me if that's the case. And then this weird AA thing starts happening, right? Which is like, they always tell you, you can act your way into thinking different. You cannot think your way into acting different. So it's like, by simply stopping the repeated, am I in trouble? Did I do something? By stopping the action, the thoughts dissipate. You know, it's like reverse hacking that disloop I'm in.

Yeah.

Do you find any purchase in that kind of rationale?

Yeah, it's like almost a little bit of that, like, fake it. You can learn to love anybody and fake it till you totally get through this chapter. It's a little bit of that theory, but yeah, I get that totally.

There's obviously a genetic component to ADHD, but I'm sure embroiled in that is some childhood stuff.

I was just diagnosed. I have all the diagnoses. I feel like, you know, like when you see people on like late night and they're like the most gorgeous, wonderful, well, like everything's perfect. I was such an ugly duckling when I was a kid. Everyone be like, yeah, right. I know, I hate that. I don't buy it. I don't buy it when I see it. But sometimes I feel like people, they have these like sympathy diagnoses where you're like, yeah, I'm just so messed up. You know, you look pretty put together to me. Exactly. Some people maybe really mask it well or like deal with it well or whatever, but I keep finding out that like I have these pretty sinister things under the hood that are like really corrupting relationships in my world on a day-to-day basis. And the evidence of it is everywhere. Things are not always great. In the very few relationships that I have. Right.

Yeah.

Right.

By any means.

Yeah.

Yeah. There's damage. Yeah.

And so I'm like, why are like the 3 relationships that are important to me not working at all? And so, you know, you start to look under the hood. I was diagnosed recently with CPTSD. CPTSD. Chronic post-traumatic stress syndrome. Oh, wow. Which is interesting because PTSD, what I've learned, and look, I don't know, I'm not an expert.

You might be. Let's see.

PTSD, from what I've learned from the psychiatrists, psychologists who are experts in the field, is it's actually much easier to heal from those sort of one-off traumatic events.

Oh, uh-huh.

When you have chronic PTSD, trauma with a little t is how it's described, repeatedly over and over and over again as a kid. Like if there's like a narcissistic adult in the home, right? Or an abusive adult.

Yeah.

Food scarcity, an imprisoned parent, addiction, sexual abuse.

Yeah. Right. So, and repeated. And if it's made worse by having no secure attachments, they're almost likely to like never fully recover.

Right.

Right.

Right.

And so there are now methods that I've now experienced, like EMDR, electromagnetic. So you have this vibrating pulse in your hand that keeps both hemispheres online, so you don't get locked into this— when you start talking about trauma.

Yeah, yeah.

Talk therapy, you don't get locked into this shutdown mode, right? You keep both hemispheres on, and somehow in doing that, it allows you to sort of process this stuff differently where you can move through it.

So really quick, you use little handles because my wife did eye stuff.

Yes, that's a part of it too. Yeah, but you have the stimulation that is a part of the process, right? And you work through these traumatic events, you rebuild them, you create a new narrative around it, you re-experience it.

You're building a neural network.

Yes. Anyway, so finding out that like I have CPTSD, I need to work through this stuff, going through the trauma, my therapist was like, hold on, what you just said is not little t stuff. Like, what you just said is big T stuff. No, no, but I deserve that. She's like, that's why people say when they're the victim of like this kind of abuse, you make it all your fault, you know, when you're the victim of abuse as a child. Working through all that has just been pretty eye-opening.

I'm already relating to you so much, just even the way you speak, right? Yes, because even I see people on talk shows, oh, I was a wallflower, and they're a 10, and you're like, right?

Yeah.

And so every time I'm doing this, right, like, I've talked about being molested on here, right? Like, it's rough. There's a voice in my head that's from fucking Detroit, and this kid's going like, oh, you fucking need so much attention.

Oh, boo-hoo. Yeah, poor you.

Like, that fucking shadow voice that is so worried I'm being judged. Like, we're talking about the person on the talk show versus, yeah, you go through some shit, it's fucking up some of your relationships. You have some wreckage from this. You're just supposed to ignore that. I mean, you could, or you could drink yourself to death at 60. So like, the notion that there's anything indulgent about it, as opposed to like, no, I'm on a mission to like get this as right as I can before I die, which is honorable. Yeah, but just having to fucking constantly talk to that chorus of fucking kids I grew up with, basically, right? Do you have that? It's like any action I do, I hear the fucking assholes from my neighborhood.

I just feel like I'm not driving the car. Those voices are more than voices. They got a hold of the wheel. And I can intellectualize in this moment. I'm like, fuck, this is rejection sensitivity syndrome. This is probably related to the fact that I was so terrified of upsetting the way the machine was working in the home as a child, tiptoeing on that broken glass. This is where all the reaction— I can see it happening in the moment like an out-of-body experience and then still have zero control over it. I can't stop it. And then it does damage to the relationships. Now I'm lashing out because I feel so hurt and rejected and criticized when the scale of that rejection or criticism— it was just a comment to them, but it felt like a life-changing gut punch to me.

You're wrong.

So then the relationship is out of balance. It's volatile. There's too much volatility in my house. I feel bad for my kids.

Yeah.

I feel bad for my wife. It's not great all the time. And it's like, oh, is there— clearly it's a part of all this thing.

But what's funny is that you or I could think even talking about that might invite criticism when what you're saying right now is like deeply admirable in all ways.

Oh my God.

It's like you're taking accountability for your shittiness and your struggles. You're attempting with all your might to make things better. You're failing.

For sure.

But the huge difference is like, you act like an asshole, you're not aware of any of this, you then shut down. I don't know what your pattern is. Then you and your wife finally amend some way, you never address it, and she's left to think like, well, this is as good as it's ever going to get because he has no awareness of it, he's not making any effort. Versus even if you are unable to hit the brakes in those moments, the simple fact that you know it's happening, you're committed to trying to reduce that gap, everyone in your life I hope you would think, but I've been with my wife for 20 years, right? You've been married for 20 years.

Married for 20 years. Yeah. Known each other forever. And a lifetime of like that kind of volatility though, where then there's just this push-pull, like it does damage though. At some point people get fed up with just the coming back and realizing like I was wrong and I know you didn't really mean it. Like I overreacted and it's exhausting and there's a cost to it, right? And so JP Saxe, singer-songwriter I love, he's amazing. He was at my house and I said something to him that he ended up turning into a song, a beautiful song I love. I hope he releases it someday, but I just said in conversation, conversation. I said I wouldn't wish myself on my own worst enemy. I feel like it's just damage waiting to happen in a relationship, which is why I tend to pull back and be like a real lone wolf. I don't have a lot of friends in relationships, and that's the way that I protect people, not by like elevating myself through those. It's more like I'm going to give up before I mess anything up, mess anything up, right, to protect you from myself. I think that life to me is like really about meaningful relationships and community and being an effective agent of love and change in community, whatever that is— family, neighborhoods work, how can we be like a light that just brings the best out of the world that we are blessed with to occupy?

And then, you know, feeling like it's actually better if I just don't have any of that. It's like a weird place to be.

Yeah.

But that's not true. You would not be married for 20 years if you didn't have—

Unless she has Stockholm syndrome.

No, we remember Elizabeth Smart said she doesn't believe in that. And if she doesn't believe in it, then I don't believe in it.

Well, it's a very interesting perspective.

She gets to decide that. But you would not be in this type of relationship if you didn't have qualities, great qualities. I feel like you focus a lot on the harm you're causing, but you're also bringing joy. Yeah.

Great point.

When I'm like, you have to also be able to tap into that and realize that's the real part of you. That's really you.

'Cause I bet you're a fucking party as well. Are you a party?

I wouldn't think so. You're fucking, you're like the fun party. I know my kids like me.

Yeah.

My kids like, you know, this says a lot.

People, they have autonomy and they can evaluate like, yeah, there's some bumps, but fuck, the highs are good. And oh, all men, you know?

Yeah, it's maximizing the good things and minimizing the bad things. We all have a mix. We have a friend like this currently who's just very like, I'm bad, unregainable. Yeah. And it's, as someone who loves this person, it's like, that's crazy. You are offering so much, and if you don't see it, it's sad.

Yeah, I think it's all part of the ADHD brain though, is like, let me get ahead of like the rejection issue, which is going to cause all kinds of volatility, you know? Like, let me just protect everybody from that.

Is your father still alive?

Both my parents are still alive.

Both your parents. My inclination is to ask if the Master Sergeant—

Chief Master Sergeant—

Chief Master Sergeant ran a really tight ship that is some of the source of this childhood anxiety. And then my inclination is that you probably are the type of dude that your dad's still alive. My dad's dead, so I'm free to talk.

All right.

It's hard to talk about the folks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But let's go about school, because I think anyone that knows you would be shocked. Even I was to learn, like, I don't know if you were tiny, but you were a very late bloomer. Very. You moved around a lot, right? You're born in North Dakota, you go to Illinois, and then you end up in— sounds fake, but Niceville, Florida.

Yeah.

What age did you land in Niceville, Florida?

I was in 5th grade, going into 5th grade.

Going into 5th grade. So one year left of elementary.

Yeah.

Okay. And then Mama's an educator?

She became whatever put her closest to us. So she'd, like, work the computer lab at a school. She'd, like, be a substitute teacher. Whatever got her closest to us so she could see what we were doing all the time.

And you have an older brother and a younger brother?

Yeah, that's right.

Okay.

What is the age gap?

18 months, uh, with my older brother and 6 years with my younger brother.

Okay. And what was your older brother like? And did you think he was radical?

I looked up to him because he was an overachiever. He was super, super smart, International Baccalaureate in high school and really good grades. And then he went on to become a chemical engineer and get a master's. And he also paid for his school. He was one of the fastest runners in the country. Oh, really? So he was athletic. And so he would do something and be like, well, I guess I have to run a 4-minute mile now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good luck.

So he sort of continued to raise the bar for me, and I always really looked up to him for that.

Was he protective of you?

Not really. I was more protective of him. I remember the first time I ever got punched. I was in 4th grade, he was in 6th grade, and we were playing 500 or whatever. You just chucked the ball up in the air and a mob of kids go land on it, right? And it got a little physical.

Yeah.

And some kid who I'd never seen before was in his grade, and, you know, a 4th grader to a 6th grader is like gigantic. He shoves my brother around. My brother's like Come on, man, let's go. And he just leaves. I was like, we don't just leave when somebody shoves. So I run over the kid and I was like, wham! And I shoved him as hard as I could to the ground. I was like, don't ever touch my brother. And I make the mistake where I turn around and walk away like a dork.

You think you've won, like the movie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I walk away and I just feel this tap on my shoulder like this. And he uppercutted me so bad. I think in real life I was probably 24, 25 feet off the ground as I sailed back. I had the biggest goose egg on my jaw. Really? I was working with Guy Ritchie on Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, and one of my favorite things about working with him is he's an intellectual. Like, if you spend time—

like, you know, but I'm obsessed with him and his whole work style and the barbecue thing.

It's the coolest.

He's like made an art form out of living, right?

Yeah, his work-life balance, the overlap, the Venn diagram synergy, it's a circle. It's just like this perfect— he's figured out a way to like live and work at the same time in the funnest, coolest way. He loves to just wrestle big existential philosophical questions. And we'll sit in his trailer just for hours, you know. Like, I remember the last day I was working, it was a night shoot. It was my last day. I was wrapped out. Uh, Guy would like to see you in his trailer real quick. I was like, oh gosh. So he comes, he goes, right here, my boy. And I'm like, no, I gotta— it's nighttime, dude. It's like 3 in the morning. I want to go to bed. He's like, no, no, we're gonna—

he just wanted to talk.

Yeah.

He said at one point, he goes, I think everybody should wake up in a pool of their own teeth and blood at some point.

He really amped it up.

He goes, I think it would make the world a better place if everybody did, right? At the time I was No, no, that's like such an Old Testament God kind of thing. And like, there's a whole new way of doing things. You love everybody. And he was like, so vehemently disagreed. And since that point in time, so many things have happened in my life where I'm like, it would be so much better if everybody woke up. Sometimes that's the best way to, you know.

Oh, we'll get to that too. Yeah, yeah. I'll be driving around L.A. a lot.

I'll be at a light and I see the fucking 5'8" agent in a 911 screaming at a woman in a car.

And I go like, yeah, you're just not from where I'm at. Like, you just want it. And I wish you had been where— because you don't fucking act like that. Like, there are consequences for acting like a bully in the world.

Yeah, there aren't a lot of consequences these days.

So the ride through school, not a big dude, how was it? Also, you— another shocker— you loved musical theater.

Yeah, that made it interesting because I was in the Deep South. Yeah, yeah. And I was a little bit nerdy. I mean, we're going back to this, like, that was such a— you're such a nerd.

I one time had a pimple on my cheek that was so big.

Exactly. But like, I was just like, oh, the most efficient way to get to school is rollerblades, because then I could, I could roll right into chorus practice. Oh, you're a target, right? So yeah, so I'm like in chorus, in music theater, doing drama, riding it on rollerblades. Like, I'm like, the linoleum floors are perfect for these. The dudes just hated it. It was interesting. And so I would sort of combat that with like acting even goofier. Jim Carrey was my idol. I was Jim Carrey every year for Halloween.

I would dress up as him every Halloween, go to school like that, doing lines, goofy lines.

Yeah.

Excuse me, I asked you a question. Like kids eating lunch, they're like, get the fuck away from me, Richardson! They hated it. It was fun for me. It was a little tricky with some of the dudes that didn't understand a guy like me in that place. And I was half in and half— like, I liked dance.

What kind of dance?

Ballet.

I know you met your wife in a ballet.

I have an Associate of Arts degree in ballet just because I had enough credits when I quit college to get one. You know, they're like, you can have a ballet degree. I was like, okay, that's so cool.

But I was so—

at that point in time, I wish I knew what I knew now and really embraced it. But like, I was so ashamed to be there. I didn't want people to know. I was afraid to open up in class because I didn't want to be viewed a certain way. And, you know, silly. So I kind of just enjoyed the arts, and I felt like I wasn't allowed to enjoy the arts.

Did Dad like these pursuits, or would they seem a little emasculating.

He supported my brothers and I in everything we ever did. To a degree, he'll always be my hero for this. He was Chief Master Sergeant Richardson. 1% of the Air Force achieves that rank. Of all the branches, it's the hardest to achieve. Okay, because it's so limited. He's a great leader. He was well respected by the people that worked for him. I like really looked up to him, the way that he worked. He would like run the King Hangar on Eglin Air Force Base, the largest Air Force base in the world. And when we got really busy and just trying to discover who we were and trying lots of extracurricular activities, we couldn't afford it. We're broke. You don't make a lot in the Air Force with a family of 5 that's busy. And so he took a job as a night security guard at the tiny little local airport.

No way.

And he did it for enough time to get us through like a busy season, but he would work all day and then come home and nap and then go do this thing at night. And I remember hearing about my mom was like, you don't have to do this because I'd overhear them in the room and the people that were ranked way under him would see him at the airport like, what the hell are you doing here, David? You know, and they tease him for it. He would talk about how humiliating it was.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And by the way, it's like deeply admirable.

Deeply, deeply. So I would hear these conversations, I'd cry because then I feel bad because I'm like, he's doing this for me to be able to go to like a chorus event across the state in a competition. And anyway, I hugely admire him for what he's doing. But so he supported in a big way.

Yeah, right, right, right.

I had a full ride. I could have gone to any college I wanted, like vocal scholarships offered everywhere.

You were also going to high school and this community college at the exact same time.

So I started college early a little bit, but like I just wanted to get it done with. But I eventually had academic scholarships paid for school. I had vocal scholarships and that kind of thing. And I quit school. I'm like, this is not for me. I have to experience life in a different way. And I've been invited to like start modeling, which is really a fruitless business.

But before we get to modeling, tell me about the tumor and how big was it and were you super insecure and what was happening with that?

Well, that was an interesting little hiccup.

A little speed bump in adolescence?

My face was growing like sideways like the Elephant Man.

Okay.

And at first, like at first, my mom's like, maybe the other side will just take a minute to catch up.

Right, right, right. Delayed, yeah.

And people start calling you names and you're like, How old were you?

High school?

Yeah, I was like 15. So my chin starts growing like way out and we didn't get any help. I went to go get my wisdom teeth taken out and we got an X-ray for the wisdom teeth and the orthodontist, whoever we were seeing, he comes in, he goes, I think you need to sit down. We're like, what? You have a tumor in your chin. We saw in the, you know, and so they showed us, it was a huge thing. They operated, they took the wisdom teeth out. They cut my gums from here to here, peeled it all the way down.

Whoa.

And they had to take the tumor out and like fill it in with osteoclasts or whatever and tack it down and shave like the stuff that had grown like sideways.

On the mandible.

Yeah, so like this whole— like all this was shaved down.

Whoa!

And you still have such an impressive chin. I can only imagine how much chin you would have.

I'm shocked.

What's funny is the doctor at the time— I had no idea that I'd be like in the entertainment industry. Like nobody in my family was. I didn't even know it was a career. But the doctor was like, so we can do this one in two ways. Very simple. We can just cut you open here. You'll have a scar the rest of your life. I have a feeling looking at you, probably better if you don't have a big scar like that for whatever you're gonna do in life. So it's gonna be a lot worse for you, but we'll do this way. So they went inside. Yeah, I'm glad it did.

And was it immediately noticeable? And did your confidence go up?

Oh, huge.

Yeah, I would have been very insecure in high school.

Yeah, yeah. I still remember walking down that— like, if this was a movie, like a teenage movie or whatever, the camera's just floating down the hallway and you see girls jumping out of the way and like grabbing onto their friend. Get away from me, monster!

You're the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just like—

oh, and you love Jim Carrey musical theater.

Yeah, okay, at least I can sing.

I want to be your friend, look out for you.

No wonder you have rejection sensitivity.

But that also really taught me I'll never, ever look down on somebody or criticize somebody or make somebody feel less than for something that they have no control over.

Yeah.

So yeah, you start modeling. And what was that?

That was the first time my dad would not speak to me. Oh, okay.

Yeah, because it's so vain.

So he made decisions in his own life that he, I think, kind of regrets. Like he was into drugs and partying. And he was unfocused. He was like orphaned. He's one of those guys where you hear his story and you're like, what chance did you have at any normalcy or success in your life? You've got a family. He found a way to keep his marriage together. There's a lot of things that I'm like, man, he triumphed over his story. So I respect that, but he should have been in the major leagues as a baseball player.

Okay.

He would have been playing for the Cincinnati Reds had he not been into drugs and shown up. But he went in the military because he had to. And so he saw more for us and we were bright and driven and gritty and accomplished.

And he had worked two jobs to make sure you guys had opportunities.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

And college is paid for. And I'm like, it's not for me. He recoiled from that a little bit. And then my follow-up is, I'm going to be a model.

Oh God.

He's like, are you an idiot?

Yeah.

This makes no sense. And it didn't make sense to me either. The first time I went to a modeling agency, I'd been invited. They'd seen me somewhere and they kept calling you. You got to be a model down in Miami. And I was like, all right. So it kind of stayed. And so for a couple of months I was like, oh, maybe, maybe. And eventually I was like, you know what, I'm going to do that just because that's more interesting than this. And like, I don't know where that could get me, but I'd like to see And what did Catherine say about that?

Because you guys were already together at that point.

We were like just friends. We met in high school, dated for a summer in high school, and kind of went our separate ways.

You had a little break.

So she was in Gainesville, Florida. We got reacquainted at some point during the modeling time, and I was like, oh, she's great.

Oh, okay, okay, okay. I thought it was meet in ballet class, no break.

And then, yeah, no, so we kind of had our lives.

Success as a model, right? You are Abercrombie and French.

Yeah, Abercrombie and Fitch. He has a hard time saying it.

I'm like, no, it's Abercrombie Crombie and Finch, right?

Yeah, he's like Amber Crombie.

Amber Crombie and Finch.

I probably saw you on billboard, whatever they're called, you know, up in the store. I love this. In the catalog.

The catalog.

He also did some underwear modeling.

Yeah, Abercrombie for me is like— I remember the whole MeToo thing started happening, then to like Bruce Weber who shot that kind of stuff, and the stories that were coming out and the allegations were like, yep, that happened to me, that happened to me, that happened to me.

On the male model side too.

Yeah, dude, I was like, man, should I speak up? Because at that point in I was an actor with some visibility. I mean, definitely nothing like what I'm experiencing now, but there was a bit of a platform there. I just couldn't bring myself to like insert, you know, open up the can of worms in that conversation.

I can too.

Were you hearing the dudes that were like, oh, me too, you're a dude, really?

Kind of, yeah. Part of it is like, I don't want people to think I'm doing this for publicity, right? I don't want to bring this shit up. But it was denied and settled in all those cases that were brought up, right? And it was like, man, I just wish people knew what was going on in that business.

Yeah. And there was something being done to protect people because the photographers were largely predatory.

It was whole system, dude. The whole system is set up to facilitate that kind of behavior. You're traded to photographers, you're traded between clients that want to, you know, have you. The agents are doing it and they know what they're doing. I almost punched an agent in the fucking face because I had told them to stop sending me to people who were like trying to molest me on these jobs, right?

Yeah.

I was like, I just need to eat, okay? That's all I'm here for. I don't want to mess around. Like, there are people in the business, like, I worked for JCPenney's for a long time. I was like a regular client of theirs. It fed me and it got me through and it wasn't splashy or cool, but they were just good people that just wanted to do something. And then there's the rest of the industry, right? I was like, I don't want to do that. I don't care. Well, you kind of have to if you want to get the COVID of Vogue. And I was like, no. And so anyway, I had this thing happen at this shoot. I went straight to that agency. I pulled this dude out of his chair and I was like, I'm going to fucking kill you, dude. You knew exactly. He's like, I know, I know, but I just wanted you to have it. I was like, no, it's like a game to these people. It's a game, man. And it's like, I remember, you know, I ran into him years later.

The photographer?

No, the agent that sent me into that last time when I finally quit. And I was like, don't ever call me again. I'm done. That was the last thing I ever do in this business. But it was so weird seeing him years later. The universe has a funny way of doing this. The night of my Reacher premiere for season 1—

oh wow—

I ran into this dude at the lobby. It was like, Alan, Alan! And I was like, oh my God, I I know that one. And I turn around and it's him. And he really started my acting career out of just a pure hatred for where I was in that business. And I was looking for opportunities to like just do something else outside of modeling.

He drove you out of that business.

He drove me out of it.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then there I was about to experience the most success I've ever had many years later. And it was like confirmation that I survived it well. Yeah.

Yeah.

And did the right thing.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

If you dare.

We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking that your keys are actually in your hand before you close the car door. Have you ever stood in a parking lot full of sun staring at your keys sitting right there on the seat, 4 inches away and completely useless to you? It's a very specific kind of humbling. Yeah, checking first is a good idea. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds. And for fast, reliable help when you need it, add an Allstate Roadside Plan today. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary. Insurance and roadside assistance plans are subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Insurance provided by Allstate North American Insurance Company, Northbrook, Illinois. Roadside assistance plans provided by Allstate Motor Club, Incorporated, an Allstate affiliate. Could you go all the way to to letting go of the resentment?

I don't know.

For the listener, Alan just furrowed his brow and dropped the chair.

No, I don't know, man. I feel so much right now just thinking about that because it's also up to these people to want to create change in the world. I can let go of the resentment, and then what does that do for the world? It allows these predatory fuckers to just continue you look at the politics that we deal with right now, like, like the White House is in ruins, a fucking UFC cage on the lawn, and like, you just do it, you just fucking do it, and nobody says anything, and no consequences. It wasn't done legally, there's no plan in place. Now you're asking for money to create— so like, it's like, what are we doing? And there's no consequences. And so I'm just supposed to let go of my resentment that this fucking guy is just raping the world that he lives in for whatever gain he personally can have. And I'm supposed to let that go? And then what? It fucking still exists.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So no, I'm not going to let him go. I fucking hate it. I hate that that shit still lives in the world unabated, unchecked, unresolved, uncleansed. Look at the Catholic Church and like the predatory behavior that is just going completely unmet with those victims that are still unheard, unseen, No forgiveness, no resolution, no cure. And what is releasing the fucking resentment going to do for the world? Like, I think we should hold on to some of that anger so somebody gets Guy Ritchie'd and wakes up in a pool of their own teeth and blood.

Well, also, just— okay, just—

sorry, I know I swore I wasn't going to get all fucking worked up.

We're in an awesome spot.

Yeah, this is the place for that.

This is why my wife hates me, by the way. She's like, you can't get that mad about coffee mug. I feel shit.

I don't know. This is fucking lovely. Okay, so You know, I'm 9 years older than you, I think 8 years older than you.

I'm 43.

I'm 51. And then I've had to be in AA for 22 years or 23 years, right? So there is a saying in AA which is resentments are fine for other people. A lot of people can hold resentments. Addicts can't. Addicts drink over resentments. The resentments are drinking poison and hoping your enemy dies.

Yeah.

So if you start from just a different perspective, which is like, hey, am I the type of person that can hold resentments? I can't live with them. They fuck me up, and then I have to medicate. And you have, as we just talked about, a whole bevy of fun.

I don't think I'm that different. Yeah, yeah, you have a suite.

Admittedly.

Yeah, yeah, you have a suite of behaviors that my hunch is resentments don't do well in your body either.

Yeah, yeah.

And You currently are laying it out as if it's a binary option. It's let all the fucking sickos win, or carry the fire in your stomach at all times and let it fuck with your cortisol. There's a third option, which is like, you can confront all that, you can be vocal about all that, and you can free yourself from the toxic part, which is like the Or there's an option D, Barrett .50 cal from 1,300 yards.

There's an option. There's an option E, which is what I think I tend to do. Probably not well. Obviously, there's a lot that comes up. It manifests in, like, unhelpful ways. I admit that.

Yeah.

Okay. But I have accomplished, I think, a lot of good because I have used the resentment that I probably have not let go of and turned it into motivation.

Yeah, yeah.

To accomplish things that I think benefit other people. It becomes motivation and grit and drive to, like, make the world a better place in a real meaningful way. I don't want to get into politics, but, like, if I do, it's because I have so much resentment for the evils of the world that have abused the power in politics and neglected the opportunity and their obligation to help people en masse. I would go into that field. Field and beat all these fucking people at their own game and be the best politician in the world so that I can have access to helping people in a way that they should have been helped the whole time. That's going to come from a place of resentment. I hate to say it, like, how else do you get there with that? Because otherwise you get complacent and content, and I hate that. It stops inertia. It makes you sedentary, lethargic, apathetic. I am so allergic to those things. It's not in me. I'd rather be motivated by resentment and this ugly fuel that actually gets shit done in the world. Okay.

Okay, great. First of all, I love you. You're a brother. Like, what's going on in your head is so familiar to what's going on in my head.

Okay.

I just want to say that. Secondly, you would acknowledge that you're not going into the gym for 2 hours with resentment as the fuel, are you?

I have.

You have?

Yeah.

Okay.

I have before.

My hunch is you're quite motivated in many domains of your life without that being the fuel.

Certainly, like, there's enough catalysts elsewhere.

Think of the effort you put in out of love for your boys, right? Or the effort you put in for your wife. Like, effort is at your disposal. The thing I feel from you that I have so deeply is fucking bullies. They're number one for me. And Monica's watched this a dozen times out in the real world. It drives everyone around me nuts. I cannot observe it and I get involved. I'm literally powerless if I see someone someone that's bigger and stronger or has more leverage victimizing someone, I just gotta fucking get involved. So I just want you to know, you and me, you and me both relate.

You guys can't hang out.

We should take a walk.

It would be an amazing time until the unfortunate moment that's, you know, where like something is dropped in front of you that's like needs to be addressed, and then you take care of it and confront it, then you go back to having fun.

But guess what? If you two are there, or one of you, there's always going to be that moment every single time.

What does that say about you?

Because you know—

because what does that say about humanity?

You're always looking for it.

You find what you're looking for. That part's true. I have learned that over time. If my main mission in life is to protect people from bullies, guess what I find all the time that other people aren't even seeing?

And guess who he becomes?

A bully.

Well, hold on. No, is that a bully if you're bullying a bully?

Listen, that's not necessarily true. And it's tricky. Listen, I'm such a justice freak as well, so I like see you and I love that you care so much, but I think you can care deeply and do all the things and not feel like—

carry the poison.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Be so enraged.

I guess I just, you know, I want you to be right.

I'm right about everything.

I'm not even so sure you are. I know I'm not. When I look out in the the world, the people that seem to enter this state of complacency and contentment that looks like a loss of inertia in the fight for justice. And that scares me.

I understand that being scary. I really do, because I'm the same way.

That would be like my greatest fear. It's like, well, just the world messed up. What are you going to do?

Yeah, that's the world.

We need 1,000 more people that are full of anger and rage and 1,000 less people that are like, what are you going to do? I mean, tell me I'm wrong.

Well, I happen to live with an example, right? So I'm going to tell you one story. Unfortunately, the listeners already heard it 20 times, but I think you'll dig it. This happened, I don't know, maybe 10 years into being with Kristen. One of these things happened, right? Oh, I know. We were driving down Sunset Boulevard. Someone threw a fucking huge drink at the windshield of my car. Emergency breakup. And I'm beating the shit out of the guy in front of the newsstand in front of Château Marmont. I'm in a suit. We're on our way to an event.

Amazing.

So what my wife told me at some point, which broke through all of it, she She said, I think you think that you protect everyone in your life that you love, and it's so sweet. And I said, yeah, that's why I'm here. I'm here to protect my mom who got her ass kicked, my little sister, my brother, anyone I love. And she said, and it's so honorable, and you just want to make me feel safe, right? And I go, exactly. And she goes, I feel so unsafe when I'm with because anything can happen. And I've observed a lot of stuff happen. And that was the breakthrough for me where I was like, well, fuck me, because my goal is to make you feel safe. And if I'm making you feel very scared, I need to recalibrate, at least around her. Does that register at all? It's like I was getting the opposite reaction that I was hoping I was giving to the people I loved.

That registers to me. But I'm fully capable of holding on to two ideas and truths at the same time.

Yeah, yeah.

Same. And so I wonder if that fucking whoever has ever chucked a cup at a car ever again. Yeah, doubt it's ever happened. And so not everybody is cut out for— really, a lot of people are not the warriors, right? Yeah, we need some people who are different.

That's right. In the tribe of 100 people, someone's gonna meet the end.

Yeah, you know, and you think about the Conservative Party these days, there's so much toxicity there and corruption, I think. And you could sort of blanket, like, all Republicans are bad or whatever, but there's something about the genetic makeup of some of those people that become like soldiers and stuff that, like, we need people who are a little bit like I'm gonna do this. Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah. I understand that there's a balance to culture where we need some people, and not everybody is meant to be around that kind of— but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't also live in a world where we actually create scenarios where that guy probably has never done that to somebody else again.

By the way, I want you to know I'm in the middle of you two fully. We had a big debate on here. I bet you can guess what month it was. Oh my God, where I was so happy. I don't think a video has ever made me happier than watching you beat the shit out of the guy. Yeah, that fucking shoved you on your motorcycle. And Monica and I had a fucking half-hour debate on this show about that.

Yes.

Oh, did you really? Because I loved it.

It was my favorite thing I saw.

So funny.

And then even just the poetic, beautiful ending where it's like the cops were going to charge him and then you were a mensch and dropped charge. Like, the whole thing was in a bow, my ideal scenario. And I was saying to Monica, and I do believe this, and I'm with you on this, Which is like, yeah, that's all fine and good for people who play by your moral code. If you're all playing the same game, that's fine. You can all operate that way. But there's going to be a handful of people. There is Putin in Russia. There is fucking Kim Jong-un. These people are real. They exist. They're not playing by those rules. Someone on our side has to play by their rules. So I do believe that deeply. There is a time and a place, and I'm not asking to give up any of that. What I would hope is that we can do that without carrying the toxic part that hurts us. That's really my only dream for you or for me.

I want to share in your dream. Did you ever read The Giver?

No.

What's that?

In, like, middle school, I think it was, like, required reading in our school.

Same.

Brenton Thwaites is a friend of mine. He played, um, in the movie, you know, The Giver. It's so funny because essentially the story is in that world, somebody has this gift to receive all, basically all the memories and pain of the rest of society, right? And so they impart impart that emotion to the giver, and he's the vessel for that then for the community. And it becomes a burden that you realize, like, one person is not meant to hold all this, right? So, yeah.

That's right.

So he becomes a bit of a sacrificial lamb, you know? And it's a very interesting glimpse into, like, the psychology of, like, communal pain and suffering and knowledge and the zeitgeist and all that. But, like, some people are, I think, kind of meant to be the giver. For a lot of people, that's, like, their lot in life is, like, I'm the one that's going to have to carry this for us, you know. Some people say an empath is like a defense mechanism that people learn, and others say that you're a deeply sensitive human being that just feels vibrations, you know, sort of ahead of other people. And really, they're the canary in the coal mine. I got a tattoo of a canary because I've had this conversation with my middle boy so many times about these deeply feeling, you know, experiences where, you know, realize like there are some people in society whose role it is, unfortunately or fortunately for us, to be the canary in the coal mine when the pain in the energy body. The pain body grows to the point where it's like somebody has to raise a hand and go like, it's so great, I can't take it.

And then I think we also have archetypes in our society that are then the people that have to go out and fight that, people that have to go out and heal, people that have to feed, you know.

I'm with you. I do believe that we are this wonderfully dynamic group of different character types that help us all succeed as one species.

I want to be clear about something because I was dragged into— we we had a debate about you. Okay. Well, about, about the situation. Yeah. Yeah. As Dax said, he was like, yeah, I love it.

Oh my God, it's so great.

I'm like, I love this dude now.

I know.

He was like, we gotta have him on. I was like, okay. No, but I am very much for justice. In fact, sometimes we argue about this where I'm like, no, no, no, we have to say, we have to be on this show saying this, like it is important. And he's like, this isn't the place for that. We don't need to do that. I am very justice-oriented as well, but I literally cannot— I do not have the physicality to enact justice. Well, I am a sheriff, but not with violence, not with physical acts, but I do it another way. And so I guess my thought is like, there are multiple ways to be a sheriff and to be angry and to speak up and to help facilitate the thing that you ultimately want, which is for people to care. Yeah, you know, and so I think there's more than one way to do that. One way doesn't involve your publicist having a lot of work to do.

But Monica, you're sheriffing in the way that you can with people who respond to that type of sheriffing. You're in the lane you were born into, and you're doing it to your ability, which is like, you're very smart, you're very assertive, you're not afraid of confrontation. You'll get an email battle, you'll get on phone and getting a verbal battle. You're doing the things that you can do and you were born to do. And also there's dudes shoving people in public and pulling people out of cars. So your skill set's not going to work in that situation. You can't call the dude, you're not going to send an email. And so I happen to be born this size. I had an older brother, I fought a lot. So that's now my role in that situation. I think what we're arguing for is like, it's okay that that's a domain, this is a domain. I don't think anyone should be out picking fights, but I do think people should be protecting other people when they see someone one getting hurt.

I do think you should protect other people.

If you take anything to the extreme, you start to get a better sense of it, right? If I reach a place of enlightenment where I've let go of all resentment and anger and contempt, which sounds fascinating, I would love that future for myself and for everybody, really. You achieve a state of like Zen, almost like a monk. Imagine like me becoming like a totally empty vessel for the now as a monk. I just don't think society can run off nothing but monks.

I agree with you. I agree. I also don't think it's just possible even wanting for that.

You can't.

And so I don't know where that leaves us, but I guess that's where the conflict lies for me, where it's like, that just doesn't seem like a realistic solution to society.

But don't you think tens— and we talk about this a lot with this type of personality— that energy—

no, it's great.

There's so many wonderful things about it. There really, really are. I wouldn't be still sitting here if there weren't. But you guys, I do think, tend to operate at tens and ones. This is true, you know, always. Yeah. And the 10s are really fun for everyone. They're great. It's like, oh my God, this is the best.

And then we're in the sand dunes.

The ones are like, oh my God, untenable, you know? And so I do think the overall goal has to be to live between like a 3 and a 7.

You know what, that's so well said. I'll agree and relent to that point. You're right. I think that makes sense. I can buy into that.

I think you get down to 7.

I love that. Look, in my faith, you know, my core belief is I'm a Christian. I think what Jesus came to do was less establish a religion and more establish a way of leading with self-sacrificial love. It costs you something to love like that. $200, a little bit of time.

My wife's right. It's no problem, right?

No problem. Yeah. Basically nothing. You're keying into like, I think the most deep sacred truth in our entire universe is which that we are made to sort of in this environment lead with a self-sacrificial love and all opportunities to do that. I think if we lived in a world where everybody's looking for opportunities to sacrifice a little bit of themselves or a lot to make other people's worlds better, that's heaven.

Yeah.

You know, the whole idea of like heaven and hell and you're going to do bad and there's some transaction that takes place and you either go get this prize or you go to this bad place. Like, that's not it. It's we have the opportunity to create with our tongue, with our words, with our actions, hell or heaven right here, right now and experience the fullness of what is on offer.

Okay, did you know that Alan was on American Idol?

I didn't.

After 3 years of modeling, wow, he became a contestant on American Idol Top 86, came for Hollywood Week. Yeah, got cut.

I think he got a brutal cut. My real-world experience on the show, I was full of curiosity and I was full of gratitude I had never been to LA before, and everything about it was, to me, the energy of this town was just full of passion. It was infectious. I more approached life as like a realist and an opportunist and somebody who's like, "I don't really know what I want to do, but I hope it's cool and fun, and I'll give it my best when I find it." But I was suddenly around people that would kill to have a record contract, literally slit your throat if it would help them. It meant so much to them. And fast-forwarding to the day we got cut, I remember they came in. I could kind of tell it was going to happen. There was 3 groups, I think, and we were the first group to go. And so, you know, found out and I was like, well, that's a cool experience. And I remember the person next to me fell on her back, like doing a dead cockroach, screaming and wailing, ah, like into the sky. Like it was like her whole life and everybody she loved had just been taken from her.

Right.

I was just observing it. Like, what is it like to want something that bad?

Right? Yeah.

Like, what is it like to want something that bad? I'd never felt that before.

Yeah.

And then I think there's something wrong with me as an artist because because I'm like, I think I could figure out a way to— I don't think I'm not gonna cry. Yeah, you know? And so then I think, maybe I'm not meant to do this. Maybe I'm not really an artist because I don't feel like that.

Yeah, you're not gonna die if it doesn't.

I'll just figure out another way. There's always another way. So it was an interesting eye-opening experience for me, and it made me want to move out to LA. I still didn't know about acting at that point, but for music, I was like, I guess this is a bit of a musical mecca, so this would be a great place. And I want to be around people that feel like they're going to die if they don't get this thing. I just want to learn about what that is.

How was Kat doing with Hey, now we're moving to Hollywood.

She was always—

she liked it.

She grew up in a little town called Defuniak Springs on a little farm, and I grew up in Niceville. I think we were meant for bigger and better things. I mean, nothing wrong with that place, but it was like I had to get out of there.

Yeah.

Also, you coming to ADHD nirvana, Hollywood.

Yeah.

The stimuli, the energy. Yeah. The fucking frenetic chaos.

Yeah.

Yeah. And the city of opportunity. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I just wanted to be around opportunity.

You just had a real stutter start. 15 years, 16 years.

For the first few years, I coasted on instincts. The American Idol thing sort of opened some doors to where people that I would meet, like, do you have like an agent or a manager? I'm like, no, you know. Well, I can get you a meeting on this thing and just talk about how you were on American Idol. And so it like kind of got me in a couple rooms. And then my very first thing was I played Aquaman on Smallville.

Yeah, 2005 to 2010.

Yeah, so I guest starred some on that.

But there was a poignant moment in all this, right, which is you were guest starring on that show and then they were gonna do a spin-off of Aquaman.

Yeah, that happened. So right out of the gate, you know, again, coasting on instincts, didn't know what I was doing, but it was working. I started in season 5 on Smallville, and there was a ratings record the episode I came in on. So pretty deep into the show, they're like, suddenly a boost in ratings. Yeah, nobody was showing up for me, but I mean, it was like, I think they thought the idea was that this character was so exciting that it was like something.

Yeah.

And so I was offered my own show.

Yeah.

And it was very strange because like out of nowhere, suddenly I'm getting calls from the studio at like 10 o'clock at night. This guy'd be like, "Ellen, I'm your guy. I'm here to keep you out of trouble. It's gonna be a rocket ship. If you ever go to the club, you get a little too drunk, you get in a fight, we're gonna clean your mess up. You call me first, okay?" And I was like, "Wow, what is happening?" I was like, "That's Hollywood?" Yeah, in '05. In '05. Yeah, yeah, it's not like that now. But, and I was such a goody-two-shoes, I was like, "Well, it's never— I'm never gonna call this guy." Yeah. And there was a merger at the time that happened between Warner Brothers and UPN to create the And the president of UPN took over at the time and looked at the slate like, here's a guy with no resume whatsoever. He doesn't get his own show.

Yeah.

And so they kind of canned it.

Then Justin Hartley.

So they came back to me though because they had hired somebody and he got into trouble. I guess he didn't call that dude fast enough. Wonderful. And they're like, well, that's not going to work. And so they came back, we started the deal again, and I was like, oh, I am going to get my own show. And then all of a sudden Justin came off Passions and they were like, oh, this guy just came available. They really like him for this.

Yeah.

And it was perfect for me starting out because I realized, oh, you gotta hold real loosely to this stuff until you're like, check is in the bank, you're in front of the camera, nothing is certain.

It's aired, dude.

If people go to the premiere to see themselves in a movie, they're not in it. Like, you gotta wait till it's in theater.

It was a good life lesson for me to like just be real, just hold loose.

So that would be up to 2010, and then 2014 is kind of pivotal as well because you get an opportunity to audition 4. Yeah, yeah. And walk me through.

Yeah, so I had been on a show called Blue Mountain State, which still has a lot of cultural relevance, which is wild to me because it's just— at the time when we were making it, it just got missed, you know. Spike TV trying an original scripted show for the first time, and there was really no audience for it, but still number 1 in the 18 to 35 male demo. And just people that it was for found it and liked it. But it was like, I could go outside, no problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem. Nobody knew who we were. And the show was canceled. Spike scrapped their scripted to department. It was sold to Netflix. And at the time, I think Netflix was like still mailing DVDs.

Yeah, right.

And I'm like, who's Netflix? You know, just sold to Netflix and then became like number one comedy on their platform. And suddenly I was in South Africa working on something and we're going up like Lion's Head on a hike with my kids and everybody's stopping me.

Oh, Thad Castle.

And I was like, what's happening? I had been on the show for 3 seasons. Yeah. And so something happened in that moment where I was like, oh, like I'm the guy. Yeah, here we go.

Here we go. Oh my God.

Yeah.

You should be handed me work. I have like this kind of arrogant arguments towards my contributions to that show. And I saw things happening in the industry that I felt like it's not really about talent, it's just who's hot in the moment.

It's also almost impossible to evaluate yourself at that age, in that moment, in Hollywood, on a show. It's like one day you're like, I think I'm the best member of this cast, and then 2 weeks later you're like, I don't even think I'm in this show and no one cares. It's like, exactly, it's so fucking— exactly.

I didn't have the right attitude, and I certainly had never— again, I'm just an opportunist tripping my way through one opportunity after another and kind of meeting it with instincts and luck and just happen to look like Aquaman enough. So when Thor comes around, I felt like I booked the Aquaman thing just kind of based off looks. Like, I look like the guy, you'll probably just book it if I look like the guy. And I had my sides in my hand, I didn't even memorize it, you know. I was like, it just was some like reading.

Yeah, yeah.

It was a uniquely unusual audition in the sense that it was kind of what people who aren't in the business picture when they— like, it was a theater stage, there was a spot spotlight. The curtains had been drawn, and there were two people in a darkened theater in chairs. Why is the casting director in this? It was as kind of uncomfortable as it gets. I just kind of half-assed it. And it was so bad that the casting director called my team, and they're like, we never do this. We've seen thousands of guys. We're not going to waste our time. However, when he walked in, I turned to my assistant, I said, if he has the craft, this part is his. And he did not have the craft. He did not show up, and this was his part to lose. And I was like, ooh, yeah. And that hit me, and I knew I was standing at a crossroads where I had a decision to make about I wanted to be in the business. And I had enough success to feel like, I think I'm doing what I'm supposed to do for the rest of my life.

Yeah.

I need to take this seriously because I never want that feedback again. I don't even know what it means, the craft. I was like, what is the craft? It was so nebulous to me. And so I kind of took a break. I started studying with this guy every day. I would come in for 3 weeks just to work on those sides because I said, I want to know what it was supposed to look like.

Yeah.

There was just one read, 3 weeks scene where he goes, "That. Did you feel that?" And I go, "Yeah." Now, how do you do that in 24 hours? He goes, "That's the craft." Yeah. That's the craft everybody keeps talking about. I started working with Deb Aquila.

She's now head of casting at Paramount.

Yeah, Paramount.

Yeah.

She ran a little tight little masterclass and my agent was trying to get me in and just spend 6 months or a year, like, just studying the way that I should have studied and learning from her. And she didn't want to take me. She's like, "I know who you are. You're the guy that yells on that stupid show." And I was like, "Oh, I could do so much more." Yeah, I read some quotes from her.

She didn't mince words with her evaluation of you at the time.

No.

Yeah, no. She's not— I'm not a fan.

Yeah.

And I had to fight my way in. And so I go, give me something to prove myself. So she gave me this really hard— you know, she thought it was gonna be like, he's never gonna do it. Come back at 9 AM. I was like, all right. And I go home, I work my ass off, and I'm like, I'm gonna prove to this person that I'm gonna be good at this. And I showed up the next day, I nailed it enough to where she was like, okay, you can be in the class, but if you fuck around and you think you're here for women or whatever, like, yeah, not like— then I'll kick you out in 2 seconds. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so the first time I showed up to that class, nobody Nobody said a word. It was like a cult. It was silent. Everybody sits down. I'm like, I don't know anybody. Nobody looks at me. Nobody says anything. I'm not like, hey, you're the new kid. It was like probably 20 people. And in walk these two, guy and a girl, and they wait up front and they're quiet. And Deb walks in and she just kind of nods her head like this. Nobody said a word.

Oh, wow.

And they launch into this piece and they're signing to each other. And so I'm like, oh, they're like hard of hearing. But I was so captivated by this like 10-minute piece that they did. I was crying. It was so moving. They get done and she goes, Same kind of idea. She's like, that was what we've been working toward. How did you feel about that? She's like, oh, that was what— yeah, I did understand. I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait. They know sign language. They learned sign language for this class.

Yeah.

No one's ever going to see the work they just did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, they say like the sign of a true artist is somebody that can do their work, like paint their picture, write their song, and throw it away, and nobody will ever know. That's really like when you know that that's what you're born to do is when it's not for anybody. It's definitely not for money. It's not commercial.

It's internal.

Yeah. And it's like Socrates even talked about this. We have an obligation. There's a moral and ethical need for us to create for non-commercial reasons. It's so against our capitalist upbringing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Nothing's worth doing unless you can monetize it.

So my whole worldview is like sort of being corrupted in that moment where by this beautiful thing that I just witnessed that was for the 15 or 20 people in that space. Yeah. Right, right. And no one else would ever see it. And they did all that work for that. Sign language. Yeah, yeah, yeah, dude, it blew my mind. Yeah, that moment changed my career forever.

Yeah.

And I go, that's what I'm up against, and that's who's working in the business, and that's like what is expected, and that's how they work, and they're not even doing this for a paycheck. Yeah, I better never complain about the work that I'm doing, and I better show up.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

If you there. Now, how were you navigating— you had security on Blue Mountain.

Blue Mountain State.

Yep, you had security. You were regular Three Seasons. How were you dealing with the gaps in security emotionally, mentally?

Well, my wife supported us in the early stages of our career. She was a senior financial analyst ICM.

Oh wow, nice.

It was pretty helpful for us because when I started to get to the point where there were contracts being negotiated, she's like, so Jennifer Aniston gets— you know, I don't think they're gonna give me what she gets, but she knew enough for me to be like, oh, this is actually what's possible. It was helpful, you know. But we've eventually transitioned into her being a stay-at-home mom, so when we started having kids, she left.

So that's nice, you had the safety net of her, but your own value worth, I'm a failure. Were you good in those periods in between, or were they hard?

Funny, you know, after that Thor moment when I had decided what I was going to be, there was no stopping me. When I decide that I'm going to be the best at something, yeah, I'm going to be the best at it, and you just have to move. And I'm still that way, and I've always been that way, you know. But I just hadn't really made that decision. It hadn't galvanized in my head what I needed to do with my life or how to do it. That was a pivotal moment for me. From then on, it's like, I'm gonna be the best in the business. I'm gonna get everything I'm after. I'm gonna win every prize. I'm gonna win every contest.

You're the American Idol girl.

The opera. Yeah.

And I got enough feedback from life, thank God, you know, that was like, you're in the right place doing this. You know, I'd screen test for 4 or 5 things and I wouldn't get it. I'm like, I'm not just going up for 100 auditions, like nothing happens. I was up for everything. And when I wasn't, I was like, well, then I'm definitely not right for it. I'm okay. Because I'm right for enough. You know. And I remember one day, I don't think I've ever told this story, but I went out for a show called Titans. I went out for the lead role. It's essentially Robin, you know, it's kind of a show about sidekicks. And I remember walking out of that audition so confident that I called Kat. She goes, how'd it go? I go, I'm gonna go buy a car. And she goes, what? And I go, yeah, I'm going to buy a Tesla. I just booked that show. And she goes, you booked it? Booked it? And I was like, well, no, but I'm gonna book that show. And I went and bought a car.

Wow.

I bought the P100D at That thing was so— it was the fastest production car, you know, at the time. And I'm whipping around in this Tesla and I have no idea if I really have the part or not. My instincts were right. I got a call and they were like, they'd like to offer you a different part on the show. And I was like, excuse me? Yeah, I just bought a car. Yeah, I need the lead. And they're like, no, you— they don't feel like you're right for the lead. I was like, I killed it. And they were like, no, they just want somebody a little younger. They actually feel you're really you write for Hank? And he's like, uh, pill-popping alcoholic vigilante. He's a little edgier, and they feel like that's you. And I was like, no. And at the time, I passed so many times.

No.

Oh yeah, I was like, no, I'm the leader, nothing. And at the time, Shazam was happening, but I was on the way to screen testing and eventually screen tested for Shazam and had a lot of positive feedback from the studio. And so I kept getting these calls from like Geoff Johns about doing Titans. I was like, no dude, I was born to play Shazam. Like, a kid Superman? Yeah, yeah. So I turned it 5 times. And on the one hand, they just kept offering me more money. Yeah, that's what I was like, I'm not negotiating. I really am not gonna do this.

Yeah.

And eventually got to the point where I remember I was in my backyard in LA. Geoff Johns called again. He was like, listen, I know for a fact you're not gonna get Shazam. The director really wants to work with somebody else, but I'm not going back to you for this part. You have to say right now where they're gonna— I was like, so devastated. But I was like, all right, I'll do it. And so I took this other part, which I really enjoyed, but Hawk and That was a fun— yeah, but that— yeah, so anyway, but I had almost no days off since then. That was a pretty interesting time in my career. There was some catapulting happening to like newer rungs on the ladder. But until then, I mean, to answer your question, there was like a relentless belief in myself after I decided like, I know what I'm doing.

Okay, so 2020, we start talking about Jack Reacher.

Yeah.

And you get that you have to put on a ton of muscle.

Yeah, it was the first time I got a call from the studio and they were like, so let's talk about your workout. And I was like, this is the first time this conversation's ever happened.

You've got a lot of fun calls I've never gotten, like the fixer.

Yeah.

The let's talk about working out. I've never gotten those calls.

I didn't love the call about your weight. Like, you need to be bigger and stronger and fat. And I was like, oh, most people just trust that I'll show up. It's like, I've never had that call. Being under the microscope like that really taught me a lot. I can empathize with what women really experience in the business because that's like, yeah, commonplace for women.

Yes.

It's hard.

Yeah.

When suddenly, like, I'm in my head about about my body. So I'm like, everybody's looking at me, they're like, we want photos and send us weekly updates. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Yeah, I wouldn't like that.

Yeah, it was hard, but I made it my mission.

Although on their side, if I make the argument for them, which is like, in the book he's fucking enormous, like mythologically large. Yeah, like, in fact, I only know this because I was researching you, but yeah, there was a revolt when Tom Cruise played him because people were like, what the fuck are we talking about? The guy's supposed to be 6'5" and humongous.

Yeah.

So in their defense, it's like, we're gonna spend a fortune on this, this is gonna be the thing, it has to be perfect. The It's got to be enormous. That's what we want. If that's not for you, great. I also believe in that, which is like, no, no, this is the thing we want.

And I was really unproven. Nobody in the studio system there or at the network was like, slam dunk, understood kind of like who I was. I'm just a guy they're like taking a huge bet on.

Yeah.

It was risky. Right. And so they don't know who I am. They don't know my work ethic. They don't know my drive. They don't know anything about me. And they're just like, we need to manage this. They micro managed that moment in my career. You know, Don Granger, who I love, I'm a huge fan. He's been my boss on Breacher since the beginning. He's now at Paramount, but like, he was Tom Cruise's partner for forever.

Skydance, dude.

Yeah, so ran Skydance, now Paramount. He wrote me a 5-page handwritten letter about every detail of what that performance should look like and gave it to me the day before we started shooting.

The day before?

In this scene, this is what you should do with your face, your jaw. This is when you should clench. This is how you should look relaxed. It was micromanaged, and I appreciate it.

Yeah.

It was super helpful. Because I was like, all right, I'll take all this in.

Yeah, this is good for you.

Give me more, right? I was like ready for that. I wanted it. I realized I was a very small part of a big machine, and it was going to be a village that was making this character come to life. And I was just sort of the vessel, right? And so I released myself to this feeling of like, this is mine.

I'm impressed.

That would have triggered every insecurity I'm walking around with. Like, oh, this dude assumes I can't do any of this.

Totally. I had to let that go because I knew it was bigger than myself. And I wanted to succeed, right? And so I was like, "This is probably what this one is gonna take to work." There were a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and nobody quite knew what Reacher was at the beginning. And so everybody had a different take. He's more stoic. He's more mean. He's more angry. He's funny. And so I knew the part well enough. I had every script memorized completely. So now it'd be like, "Okay, my turn." And so another producer would walk over and, "Can I do the version where Reacher's really funny and kind of like loose about it?" And I was like, "All right, let's do that." Oh, cool.

They gave themselves all the options so they could make it anything they wanted.

There's a version of Reacher for season 1. That's every version you can imagine.

So Reacher's fucking enormous. Like, 56 million global viewers in one week of season 2. I don't know if people understand how enormous that show is.

It's pretty unprecedented.

It's fucking mega.

What's crazier for me, centers on this one person, this titular character. It's not like Stranger Things where you're part of like an amazing ensemble. I mean, yes, we're part of an ensemble every year, but it's an anthology and it's mostly rotating. And for that much visibility to really be on one person is very unusual and a gift. And in so many ways, and I'm so grateful.

And then it's opened up the door to all these other projects, one of which I watched last night, Motor City.

What'd you think?

I fucking loved it. As I think I told you right when you walked in, I watched it with Kristen last night and she was blown away, which I love the most because I'm like, I'm going to watch this movie with this dude, Alan. I'm sure it's going to be violent. Like, I'm going to love it.

Yeah.

You know, if you want to watch it, she's like, yeah, I'll watch it. But it's so much more than that.

It's so Shakespearean. Yeah, it's so unexpected.

So it's a silent movie, Monica.

No dialogue.

There's no dialogue. And it's so funny because of course I've not seen a trailer. I've known nothing about it. We sit down, we watch it. Fucking opening scene's really cool. Kristen's like, oh, that was a cool kind of montage to open. Like, I feel the vibe.

This is good.

Waiting. Okay, now we're going to hear some talking. Once we get to like, I think maybe 10 minutes in, Kristen's like, there's no way they've gone 10 minutes and then they're going to hit us with dialogue at 15.

Yeah.

So you just kind of start realizing like, oh, fuck, they're going to do this. There's this tension of like, oh, this is great. How are they going to pull that? Are they going to pull this off? And you guys fucking pulled it off. You made a silent movie that was riveting and awesome and visually fucking beautiful. And I'm really—

the filmmaker, he killed it. He really honored what was on the page. Chad St. John wrote it.

Wrote it.

Yeah. But of dialogue. It was a very thin script, or, you know, so I'm like, what is this?

Can I just say, it was on the blacklist in 2009.

So if people don't know, in Hollywood, every leading man had been attached to this thing at some point.

I read that.

Every leading man, literally.

Jake Gyllenhaal. Fuck, I made the list.

Hugh Jackman.

Like, Chris Evans. Uh, Gary Oldman was in it. Gerald Butler. Adrian Brody. It was greenlit 9 times, different directors.

When I read that script, I remember I sat back and I was like, oh, I just read a masterpiece. I've never felt so deeply connected to, at that point in time, to a piece of material that I just read. I mean, it was so moving. I was I was like, this has to get made.

Yeah. So for people who aren't in Hollywood, The Blacklist became this thing— I don't know what year— but basically all these scripts pass through town. Mostly assistants just read them. They kick them up to the agent. If it's good, then the agent kicks it to the actors and producers are involved. But at the end of every year, there's kind of this committee that decides what was the best scripts that didn't get made.

Yeah.

And it's The Blacklist, and it's a cool list of like, you know, the 10 best scripts or however many it is. And this was one of them for a long time, 2009.

Yeah, it was the brainchild of Greg Silverman, who at the time was president of Warner Brothers. It was interesting because he called Chad and he goes, "I want to make a movie with no dialogue so that everybody around the world can have the same shared experience without language getting in the way." And Chad's like, "Okay, yeah." And this is what he cooked up.

Well, by the way, it forces you as a writer to do the thing you're told as a writer to do, which is like, "Don't tell me anything you could show me." That's one of the principles of screenwriting.

We rely so heavily on verbal cues. It's just one tool in our toolkit, right? And so when you remove that, you have to make really interesting choices, right? And so anyway, man, I'm so proud of it. I want so badly for this to do well so that we can continue to make more interesting stories like this. Just continue to stretch the canvas for what's possible for storytelling in Hollywood.

Yeah, it's a radical, huge swing that totally worked.

I'm so glad you feel that way.

So, it's set in 1973 Detroit. Ding, ding, ding. You're an ex-cop. Con, you meet a girl in an alley. She's getting roughed up by her boyfriend, or we're assuming her boyfriend. You handle that dude and his buddies. You guys start dating, and then there's a frame-up, and now the movie kind of takes off, right? For me, I think this would be a really unique, fun challenge because I rely on my verbal everything. It's all I am. Like, I am a talking machine, and I'm an improv machine, and I'm not sure I give you the face that you need emotionally, but I can give you like— right, I'm part of the problem. I rely on that so much.

Right, right.

To do a movie where you took away my superpower and I just had to convey everything through action—

yeah, I feel the same way. I mean, it feels limiting and it feels like, is this going to be enough? And I also don't want to like over-project because I feel like I'm like compensating for anything. For me, I was like, I guess I'm really just gonna have to trust this. Yeah, yeah. But Potsy's a genius and you just tell he had it under control.

He comes from commercials and videos, very stylized, right?

Music videos, stylish.

Yeah, I haven't seen his other two movies.

He made one about Billy the Kid that was such a cool, interesting take on that story. It played really well at, I think, Venice or Cannes. He got noticed in the right way.

Yeah, yeah, visually it's fucking stunning. Shailene Woodley's in it, she's incredible.

Ben Foster is amazing.

Ben Foster, as usual. It's just so fantastic and it's such a cool experience. And yeah, I'm glad to hear that Silverman was conscious of this perspective, because I was thinking when we were watching it, not even knowing that, I think I said to Kristen, I'm like, oh yeah, this is like Cirque du Soleil. I watched 60 Minutes on Cirque du Soleil, and the reason that's the most successful show in Vegas year over year is because everyone visiting from Japan, from China, anywhere, the Middle East, they can go to this show and they enjoy it just as much as the people. And I was like, oh, this is cool.

And it's a spectacle, intentionally international. Yep, yep.

Yeah, it's very cool. You have so much stuff going on. I'm not really sure how you made all this stuff, but reach Reacher comes out sometime this summer.

We got Motor City July 24th in theaters. I don't think we've announced the exact day, but we have Reacher very shortly after, season 4, and I think it's the best season we've made yet by far.

Wow. And then you have Runner with Owen Wilson.

And we have Runner with Owen Wilson.

That's September.

We don't know that.

Yeah, I think I read that online.

Yeah.

How'd you like working with him?

I had a great time. He's super smart.

So smart.

Disarmingly smart.

Yes.

Because, you know, you have some idea of— as we all do, like, you have some false relationship with characters that he's played, and comedians in general, they're playing buffoons in movies. Yeah, exactly. But Anyway, you meet him, he's hyper-intelligent.

Oh yeah.

And very thoughtful. And I get feedback a lot. I've really moved like heavily into producing and so developing material, setting material up at studios and then executing that. I love doing that. And part of that is because I can see the macro well, right? I'm never just looking at my character. I develop all the characters and story. I just wrote this Vietnam story that we shot for Amazon. I co-wrote that.

What's that called? Thornton.

Incredible movie. It's in the can now. We're in post, but was a writer on that. I like being a part of these ideas and mining for the best story there, but not a lot of actors— a lot of them are more myopic, right? And so when you get into conversations with actors that you're hiring or you're working with, the conversations almost always stay in the realm of, like, their character. You know, I wouldn't do that. And what if my character did this? And that's sort of to be expected. And so when you show up and have a conversation and he's talking about, in the 1600s, there were sailors that were going into the ports. And I started thinking, for this story, it sort of reminds me that just read a weird book. Totally. That he's processing everything coming in through this weird philosophical and existential and thoughtful and just so much more about the big picture of what we're making and why. It caught me off guard a little bit.

All three of those Wilson brothers are shockingly brilliant. Yeah. And I think the parents were professors in Dallas or something, at least one of them was, and they just read all day long.

But they're storytellers. They do know how to tell a whole story.

All those things he wrote with Wes, those are like the best Wes movies, or the Owen and Wes Yeah, it was great.

He's really impressive. We had a great time.

And then the man with the bag is Christmas time.

Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger. Santa. He crushed it.

Alan, I saw the— I saw the Reacher. It's so good. You're doing really good. It's really good. So impressed. I'll tell you one thing. I went on a motorcycle ride.

I didn't know him yet.

I went on a motorcycle ride. Tom Arnold invited me. We go up to the Rock Store in Malibu. This is 20 years ago. He was the governor at the time. Motorcade taking us. I'm so excited. I can't believe it. We sit down for breakfast. I get up and go to the to the bathroom. And when I come back from the bathroom, I sit down and he goes, "Dax, I've seen The Punk, I've seen Without a Paddle, you're hilarious. I'm so excited to see everything you're gonna do." And I'm like, I can't believe Schwarzenegger knows my resume. We walk outside to get on the motorcycles and I go to Tom Arnold, I go, "Fuckin', what about Schwarzenegger, like, knowing all my shit?" And he goes, "Oh buddy, as soon as you went to the bathroom, he's like, who the fuck is this guy?" Mm-hmm. What was it like working with him?

It was a treat. He taught me a lot about how gratitude should manifest in the life of somebody dealing with fame. I'm transitioning into a part of my journey where I'm recognizing how present fame is and how toxic it is, how intrusive. But also like this relationship that I have with the audience, I'm so grateful for. And I want to foster that. I want to continue to tell stories that resonate with people. And there's like a real symbiotic relationship there, right? I appreciate it, man. I hate fame. Yeah, right? Like, who wouldn't? My family hates it. My kids— we're interrupted 1,000 times a day when we go places, and they seize up because they're invisible.

You're also in a unique situation that, like, Vince Vaughn's in, right? Which is like, you're not hiding. There's no hiding you. You're fucking enormous.

People in my family have a different relationship with it. So like, my wife is like, I want you to have a very binary black and white— when your family's around, you do not take pictures with people. You don't allow those interruptions. And that's really hard for me because on the one hand, it's just more efficient. To be like, sure, let's do this. Right.

Yep.

And on the other hand, they don't know that they're the 30th person to interrupt us today. So then I'm caught in this place where I feel like bad that it's happening and I don't want to disappoint them. It's just like, man, there's so much conflict happening, right? So you never know how those interactions are going to go, right? It's scary going out in the world, you know, because you're like, I don't know what today's going to have for us or who I'm going to frustrate. And then I work with Arnold, who deals with this on a degree that I will probably never experience.

Very few people will.

Yeah.

His level of fame when you're with him is something that is like, oh my God, it's hard to describe.

It's 100% of people. That's 100% of people.

And his energy is so felt or understood by the zeitgeist. People feel him before they see him. And you can see them like this, and then they're like, what is this feeling in this disturbance? Oh my God.

Yeah, there's like a meteor coming through.

Yeah, it's like, man, his pull, the gravity is huge, right? And so he's dealt with it for decades on a degree that I can't quite probably understand. He stops for everybody. We would be in the middle of a scene in a diner and people would be like banging on the glass, you know, because our lockup wasn't tight enough. Like, oh my God, you better take a picture with us! Oh no, be right there. Yeah, come outside and take a picture with him.

Yeah, I'll be having a stogie.

Yeah, he has no problem. He makes time for everybody. And so I look at that and I'm like, Kat, if this is his attitude, like, I have no excuse. And she's like, he doesn't have kids, you know? So it's just like, man. Anyway, but he showed me something really interesting in the way that he approaches life and his lot life, and I really deeply admire how he treats people.

You're not going to leave without telling me my favorite thing that I saw all year. So you're in your neighborhood, you have a Ducati— no, you were on a Kawasaki.

I was on a Ninja at the time.

Yeah, you're on a Kawasaki, and then you got your boys riding.

Yep.

How much had you been riding in the neighborhood? Do you think it was really that annoying?

Okay, for context, because people have no context about what was going on—

yeah, people just saw a video of you.

I got the rights to MotoGP. I love motorcycles, they're so fun, and I want to tell stories about, you know, I want to make like cool Fast and Furious kind of like thing for motorcycles, like international. It's like, it's cool. I love it. It's cool.

You see Pitt's doing a TT movie right now. Yeah.

Channing, you know, like Hemsworth is doing a motorcycle thing. Like, it's cool. It's like, we like that. It's cinematic and cool. And so, you know, we just set up a film, but I'm going to be riding every bike in that thing and riding it in crazy scenarios. I really got to know how to do every kind of stunt. So I have every kind of bike you can imagine, all levels of stunt bikes, dirt bikes, and I practice on these things all the time.

Yeah.

And the bike that I was riding that day, I had just received. It was custom custom-built for me, and it's exceptionally loud. And so I never left first gear because it's not meant to go out, it's meant to go up. So I was just kind of playing with this thing while they're putting along. We're hardly moving.

Yeah, the kids are riding slower.

And it was our first time around. I've never met that guy ever in my life, never seen him before. He lied to TMZ about us, like, I told him the day before, hey buddy, you should really slow down. None of that was true. He wasn't even there when we went up his street. We just went up one time, so he's in the back of the neighborhood We go around right through all the streets. We go through the back cul-de-sac. We do that all the time.

Yeah.

Every day I'm in town, we do that kind of thing. When everybody knows who you are, you're used to getting strange looks from people, right? And everybody in the neighborhood knows who I am.

Yeah.

They know we live there and people that kind of like gawk or do a slow stare. It's normal, right? And so I think this guy's just doing what everybody does and you can see I'm like not really slowing because I didn't think he was gonna step in front of me. I thought it was like somebody going, oh, it's gonna be Harry. Yeah. Yeah. And then all of a sudden he steps in front of me and I'm like, what the And that's when it got weird, you know, so I'm like, this is obviously not a normal reaction. But that bike, I wasn't going fast and it's loud, so I can understand how somebody who doesn't know what's going on might be like, it's so loud, he's racing through the neighborhood. You know, anyway, I get myself together, he starts coming at me pretty aggressively, I push him down.

Yeah, he's a big dude too, right?

He was huge.

Yeah, yeah, he had to be 6 feet tall.

He was the same size as me. Yeah, he's like 6'3", probably 6'4". And he was heated, and so he's stepping in my grill and I push him back.

He's in your shit. He has violated your bubble.

I don't do the thing where I'm like, you know, you see videos of people on YouTube fighting and they're like, they're in their face for 5 minutes about to kiss and stuff like that. That's not going to happen with me. Right? So as soon as he started coming, I push him back and I get close to him and I smell alcohol. And I was like, oh, it's Sunday at like 11 AM. This guy's drunk. So I asked him, he didn't say anything. And I was like, that's what this is. And so in my mind, I'm like, all right, that's what this is. Just leave. And so I go to leave and he gets in front of my bike again. And you can't really tell on the body camera, but he shoves me two-handed, shoves me off the bike. Me and the bike go to the ground. And I'm like, no, that's the second time I tried to leave the neighborhood.

You tried to de-escalate a lot.

That was it. At that point, there's no more conversation. I've got to protect me, and I've got to protect my kids, and I've got to get us off the street safely. Yeah. And that means getting him out of the picture. Yeah. So I hit the guy.

Yeah.

And, um, as it's happening, I'm like, I really can't hurt this. I don't want to, like, knock him out. I don't want to break a bone.

You want to get him out of your life with the least amount of, like, aggression. You want him to go like, oh, okay, I'm out.

Yeah, but I wanted just enough to where he was like, okay, oh, I see where this is going. I don't want that.

Yes, you didn't want that.

When I watched that tape back though, I'm like, he actually came back again. Again, I wasn't even paying attention because I was trying to get my bike to turn back on. And when you look back at it from the neighbor's tape, which is so unhelpful to my life.

Yeah.

He like was on the approach again. I didn't even notice.

Yes. Yes.

He was, or another neighbor was just videoing this the whole time. Few people.

Right?

There's a couple people. It's very strange that like only the last 10 seconds of that thing, none of the beginning, and it was sold to TMZ within 6 hours.

Right.

Very strange.

Yeah.

And this dude went and did press. I watched this guy talk.

Oh my God.

He's so full of shit. Blah, blah, blah. I'm impressed you— I mean, obviously I think it was the right decision to not press charges and just not be involved with the dude in any capacity.

If anything makes you go like, maybe God is real, it's when you buy a chest pack a year before and you're a daily rider. And I've never once— I bought it thinking like, maybe I'll just use that. So, and I put it away. Never once have I thought like, I need to put that thing on.

Yeah.

And I step into the garage that day and it was like somebody talked to me. It was like, where's that thing? Thing. And I was like, where is that thing? I should put that on and just see what I get. I don't even know where it is. And I dig through my cabinets and I find it tucked away on top of a shelf. And I'm like trying to figure out how you even put it on.

It's a body cam, right?

It's a body cam that holds your cell phone. Wow. If I hadn't had that, dude, I'd probably still be in jail.

Oh.

Because the cops came to arrest me that day. Yeah. And they only had the tape to go off of that. Like, thank God.

Yeah.

Thank God. It was a gift from God, I think, that I had that premonition or that intuition that I put it on, that I had it, that I could wear that. It changed the course rest of my life forever.

Yeah.

How did you respond? You— I mean, it took over the internet.

It was the scariest thing I've ever been through. I don't like that kind of conflict. I like to work. I don't like things that are ill-gotten. I don't like bad press.

Did you go straight to, oh, this is the shoe dropping, this is all too good, here comes the shoe dropping?

Yeah, I was like, oh, this is like people that, you know, talk about how like when you've reached success you self-sabotage because people aren't okay with having success. And I was like, I've self-sabotaged myself. Like, this is me about being ready for success or whatever.

You start beating yourself up.

Yeah.

And then my kids had to experience that. It was really hard. I'm like, that guy doesn't know how much— my kids won't ride with me anymore. Like, he robbed me of that, man. Like, fuck that, dude. Fuck that. I have so much anger. I have so much resentment that I just can't quite let go of. And I have nowhere to go because there's no real resolution there. I just decided to let it go, but he still took a lot from me. My bike still doesn't work. Like, I still have people trying to fix it because things broke on it and it's custom parts. And so that my kids won't ride with me.

I mean, he is the most hated man on the internet. I mean, you have that going for you. It definitely sucked for you, but it made you a hero for me, right?

Well, I appreciate that.

You know, I loved it. You tried your hardest. I tried so hard to get out of it.

I did.

You had your kids with you. I fully get the whole scenario. And this dude insisted on this interaction, and then he paid the price. So in a box with a bow, for me, you did You did perfectly.

I appreciate that.

Yeah.

But I also understand when the whole world now all of a sudden is talking about you, that it just immediately is terrifying.

Yeah. My wife was at a retreat, the Hoffman Process.

Uh-huh.

They take your phone. I had no way to contact her. I was the sole caretaker of our kids.

Right.

And so I had another week with her being gone where I couldn't even communicate with her.

Just know she's getting out of Hoffman to learn this.

Yeah. I'm like dealing with my kids and I'm calming them down and reassuring them that It's going to be okay. And are you going to get arrested? I'm not going to get arrested. I don't think the cops call me outside and there's an army of cops on my porch and I'm like dealing with this and I'm trying to calm my kids down, like the whole thing. And then she's not there and I'm texting her and I'm like, so I just had to punch a guy. The roller coaster of texts that she experienced when she got out of there was like, so I think the DA is letting me off.

That's why you should always read the last email first.

Yeah.

Problems always solve themselves by themselves.

But I had no support in that moment. I had nobody to process it with. I was trying to be strong for my kids. I was terrified because I thought my entire career tanked. You know, I had CEOs of studios calling going, what is this tape? Are we okay? Because I had deals everywhere.

Yeah, it's stressful.

Oh dude, I feel like I'm never going to work again. So anyway, it was a lot.

For me, it was very healing to see that the asshole—

and again, that's sort of why though, there's just a lot of tension in being human where it's never binary. It's never as simple as going like, you know, we have to live in the colorful gray. Yeah, the gray in between that says we need to stand up for ourselves, and we also need to have a heavy heart about those kind of situations because we shouldn't want for those kind of things to transpire.

And you don't.

You didn't. Again, that's why you're so clean on this. You didn't want that. You tried your hardest to get out of it.

Anyway, I appreciate your support.

Just know I was out here on your behalf.

I'm sorry.

That does blow. The thing that really really just hit me is like, if my girls don't want to ride with me, it's temporary.

It's temporary.

That was our best bonding.

There's nothing funner than riding with your kids.

There's nothing.

There's nothing fun. You're like, look at us, and you drop behind.

They get done and they're like, that's the most free I've ever felt, Dad. You're like, oh my God, what are we building? This is amazing. Yes, yes, yes. And these memories that they're gonna have of us doing that, I can't convince them to do it again, and I don't blame them. Yeah, yeah, they don't want to do— they don't want to deal with that, dude.

Alan, I dig you so much.

Oh, thank you. You're fucking radical.

I truly hope we see each other in Tennessee. Everybody check out Motor City, July 24th.

Please do. I'm rooting for this thing so much.

I am too. It's so cool, it's so brave, and you guys executed. You had a very small window of re-entry whether you can make it work, and you crushed it. So it's so good. I hope you'll come back season 9 of, uh, Reacher.

Yeah, yeah, I appreciate it.

Thanks, brother.

Thank you.

Just a quick reminder that as part of our summer break, here's a run of one of our favorite Fact Checks. Monica Padman.

Hi.

How you doing?

Oh, I thought there was going to be more. It seemed like there was going to be a little more.

Yeah, of course. It sounded like there was a statement that was going to follow, but there wasn't. But I was really just thinking about the fact that we rode to the attic today, which is always a great start for my day. Just wanted to throw that out there.

Oh, that's nice.

And I do worry when you live across the street, I guess I could just walk over to your house and then walk you here.

Well, yeah, that might be a fun ritual. Sure. Also, we won't ever have to travel.

That's true. We'll live where we were.

Yeah. We can walk from your house to the attic. 3 steps. Mm.

So exciting.

Yeah. So, I mean, we should tell the Armcherrys, because, I mean, not to, like, bring it down. I know they're going to be sad about this, but eventually our attic that we're in right now No, it's gonna get demolished.

It's gonna be dust and ash.

Yeah, but it's gonna be a while, do you know that part?

I hope we cannot get a permit for that thing I'm trying to build. It's just not happening.

Oh great.

So, well, yeah, I mean, great for the mojo of this attic. Yeah, um, but bad for like, I need to exercise and that's where my exercise equipment is supposed to go, this huge garage. There's no designated place in our new house.

What about the gym?

I mean, the, um, the basement, right? Well, that's kind of what I've been pushing Belle for. So in our current house, we have a basement. That's where all my gear is, right?

Yeah, my ripped gear.

That's where the heavy things are that I lift up and set down.

Yeah.

So I said, look, hon, I know the basement of the new house is a theater room.

Yeah.

But it's gonna probably have to be a gym for a year. She did not like that. She was like, put it in my office. I'm like, I can't fit all that crap in your office.

What about the—

also, then you don't even I don't even have an office.

Oh, she's not thinking things through.

No. And I'm like, I can't go a year without working out. I'll commit suicide in the backyard.

Oh my God, don't say that.

Oh my God, by the way, can we talk about suicide? Oh sure.

I mean, I know this is gonna be a weirdly encouraging, um, take on suicide.

Oh goodness.

Okay, for real.

As I get deeper into Gladwell's book, I want you to read it so bad.

I will.

This shit, I love him.

The tackles.

Yeah, he's so fearless. So it's talking about, oh, the famous poet, um, she killed herself.

Emily Dickinson?

No, but you're in the right world.

Uh, Emily Plikinson? Oh, Plath. Sylvia Plath.

Sylvia Plath. So she killed herself in England, and what she did was put her head in the oven and turned on the gas. And at that time, every single every single house in London burned a type of fuel called town gas.

Okay.

Not natural gas that we now use.

Uh-huh.

So town gas was this kind of dirty mix of all these different gases, but you could kill yourself quite easily with it. So when all of London had town gas, the number one killer of people was town gas, was people committing suicide with town gas, 'cause it was very easy to do. And so the traditional traditional thinking on suicide was like, well, if you get rid of town gas, people just find another way to kill themselves. And that's what I thought going into this chapter. And that's called the displacement theory. That, okay, yeah, if you took away guns, then people would just use knives or whatever. But the work of a certain sociologist or psychologist started investigating and realized that there's a strong coupling aspect to suicide. So it's not just that someone's, on a warpath to kill themselves. It's that they have ideations, they think about it, and then the situation is right.

That's right.

And so what happened was when they switched over to natural gas, the suicide rate did dramatically drop. It didn't just move over to another method.

Yeah.

And then he goes into the folks who have jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, which I think is like 1,500 at this point.

Of any structure in the world, the most people have killed themselves.

And there's always been these movements to put up barriers so people couldn't do it, but then the argument was, "Well, no, they'll just jump off something else. We're gonna spend all these millions on these barriers, and they're just gonna jump off something else, so why not put it into healthcare or something, or some prevention?" Which, again, I would have probably bought into that theory. But what one of these people did is investigated, of the, I wanna say, it was like maybe 500 people who had been interrupted in their attempt to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge over 70 years. A person went and interviewed all those people that had been interrupted, and only 25 of the 500 had ended up killing themselves. Wow. Yes, isn't that so interesting?

Suicide is one of the hardest topics. For me. I get very anxious during that kind of conversation.

Yeah.

You know, I used to have— when I had a really bad anxiety, I used to feel like I was not suicidal, but I felt like all of a sudden I was gonna snap into— I was just gonna look down and I will have done it. Uh-huh. Like it will have happened to me. Yeah. Which is not what happens, but—

right, right.

But I was— yeah. So I had a lot of anxiety around suicide.

Yeah.

But I I think that's really profound, and sorry, I mean, not to be political, but this—

Well, 20,000 people a year kill themselves with a handgun in the US. Now look, I'm a gun owner. I just want to be dead honest about that. I own guns. I also, if there was a button on the wall I could push and there's no guns in America, I would push that button in one second. So I have a very complicated relationship with it. I don't like them enough that I would want one kid in a school getting shot over my loving of them. Again, I know it's much deeper than that for people, and it's a constitutional right and all this stuff. So I'm not even gonna get into the weeds on that. I'm only gonna say the data he gave is that it would appear that it would cut at least 10,000 deaths off a year off because this coupling mechanism is so strong.

Just— It's amazing.

And that's why I'm so drawn to everything he writes, 'cause almost every chapter chapter, I enter with the exact mindset that most people have, and then it's like some opposite way of thinking about it that's substantiated with data. I love having my opinion changed. It's so fun.

Yeah, it's so rare. Not for you, in general, in life, it's hard for people to do that. I'm giving you a compliment.

Uh-oh, thank you. But I find it very euphoria-inducing. Like, as I was driving home from work yesterday, listening to it, and I was like, I was just like, uh, all a, all a titter.

Like a little baby.

A little baby boy in a, in a toilet bowl of stew. Should we tell people that we think we might be having a baby?

Oh, sure.

I want to, I don't want to start the rumor mill, but, um, I used Monica's toilet at her new house, which is a non-functioning house. And I, what I did is I flushed the toilet and it flushed properly. And I was like, oh, the water's still on.

Great.

Then I whizzed.

Okay. Then I hit the flusher again. Oopsies. No water in there. So then I came to you and I was like, I've peed in your commode and I'm gonna have to bring over a 5-gallon bucket of water and flush this thing. You're like, yeah, yeah, we'll get to it. And then you were there like a couple days after and you were gonna pee your pants. And so you peed on top of my—

I did. I didn't wanna put pee in another toilet 'cause that would just be multiple things we'd have to figure out. So I peed on top of your pee and it's all still there. This is weeks ago.

Oh geez.

And I'm so embarrassed for us.

And we think that maybe the mixture of the pee, a life will grow. We don't know. We don't know. Maybe Malcolm Gladwell could weigh in on how many broth babies there have been.

Historically, how many broth babies there are. I think this would be so exciting though if we went over there and took, well, we went over there. The 5-gallon water bucket, and then we heard, "Mama, dada," and there was a little yellow baby down there.

No, I would really love it. I would take care of it.

Of course we would. Our little urine baby.

Yeah, it would probably need to like live in that toilet.

It might need to live in that toilet, you're right. And it would be jaundiced.

Well, for sure. Okay. Extremely jaundiced. Okay. Anywho, okay, Claire. Claire. So the TV movie that Kristen was in—

Oh, yes, we got the name of it.

Yeah, I got the name of it. The TV movie that Kristen was in with Claire was called Polish Wedding.

Mm.

And she had braces in it. But in the still that she showed me, her mouth is closed.

Do you think that was a racist thing where they were like, "All Polish people wear braces.

Everyone in this movie has to have braces." They have bad teeth, they spend all their money on braces. That's a stereotype.

So, Kristen had braces in real life, or she had, um, like prosthetic braces? Or Claire had braces?

Oh, good question. No, Claire didn't. Kristen did. She said, "I had braces." Oh. But maybe you're right. Right, maybe that was the character had braces, because did Kristen have braces? Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't think she did.

I want to say she had them for like a week.

Okay, well, that's just not—

people— no, like they were almost perfect.

No, I don't buy any of that. No, no, no, no, no.

Well, they went to the orthodontist and he goes, but I can have this fixed by Sunday. I'm gonna put these braces on, you know, take them off Sunday and you're gonna have a beautiful smile.

I would ask Google, but instead I'm I'm gonna ask Kristen's mom. Okay, we have a quick question. Quick question: did Kristen have braces in life, and for how long? And if so, for how long? Was it over a week? We'll see if she responds.

I think she's at work, but we should open up an orthodontia clinic that's called One Week Orthodontia.

Whether we could be a huge—

I know, I know, but think how much business we would I would do in that first few weeks before people got wise to it.

Your morals, your morals. Oh my God, like the thing you sent me last night.

Oh my God, I have the greatest idea. You think I can't even say it?

It's— you have to make it very clear you're kidding.

Okay, so I'm, I'm definitely joking. I have no plans to really do this, but we're watching The Morning Show.

Yep.

And you know, it's loose— I'm guessing it's loosely based on Matt Lauer.

Maybe they haven't said that explicitly, but I would say yes.

Okay, so it appears to be kind of based on Matt Lauer, and of all of his indiscretions, there's no arguing the guy was incredibly good at that job, right?

Yeah.

And, um, Bill O'Reilly, even though I can't— I never watched the show and my politics are opposite— tremendous at that job. He was number one in the ratings for every year he was on that network. So anyways, I was starting about launching a network called Canceled, Canceled Network, or Canceled TV, and it's just all these guys that have been canceled. And, uh, you know, I think people in public would be like, I hate that person, but then at home they would probably watch it because they would think no one's looking at them. It was really an exploration of the difference between your public and private life.

Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. And that's a joke.

That's a big joke. That's a big, big joke.

But yeah, but I do think it would be very successful.

No, I don't—

I'm not saying want it to be successful, I think it would be very successful.

I really don't.

You don't?

No, I don't. I mean, I think they'd have a percentage of people who would like it, but do I think it'd be popular? No.

And then you, you made a— you came over the top, really, because I was saying Lauer and Bill O'Reilly, which I don't think either was accused ever of forcing anyone against their will, rampant abuses of power, but I don't think there's any rape allegations, right? But then you came over the top and said you could have Weinstein do like a movie of the week too. It'd probably be good.

Nice. I know, I said Weinstein.

But that one, he's a—

Well, I had a feeling, so actually that's why I said it. I was wondering what you were gonna say. You didn't respond to me for the rest of the night.

Oh no. I was caught up in the show you've told me to watch.

But I wondered, what your response was gonna be, because I thought maybe you were gonna say something like that, like, that's not the same thing.

Uh-huh.

But it's close to the same. It's the same thing.

You're right. You're right. It is.

It is.

You're right, it's the same thing, and there's a gradient.

Yeah, there is, but—

But it doesn't matter.

I know, because I'm always saying that, and the more I'm like watching some of this— actually, I finished The Morning Show last night.

Okay.

And Steve Carell, God, I love him so much.

Your undies were really in a mess. That's what Mom said about you last night. She said, "Oh my God, Monica had to change your pants 5 times over how good Steve Carell was." Oh yeah.

Everyone's jealous of Steve Carell because I talk about him all the time.

He's the new Gene Cordell.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Yeah, but anyway, Steve Carell's so good. But I'm watching this whole thing and I'm just like, yeah, it's horrible, these abuses of power and the chain of power. Yeah, and it's really bad. And sure, so technically Luckily he didn't rape anyone.

I'm only drawing a distinction between consensual sex and non-consensual.

I know, but I think the line is a little more blurry than people have traditionally given it credit.

Yeah, I think you're probably right.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm seeing this because I'm listening to Catch and Kill, Ronan's podcast, which is really good, and I'm reading his book as well, which is also really, really good. And yeah, when you start hearing the accounts from a lot of the people, like Rose McGowan one's account. All this, like, she's being touched out of nowhere, right?

Right.

And so it's just like you're catching up, your brain is trying to catch up to what's going on, and then it's evaluating all the ramifications, you know, career and/or otherwise. And so by the time you could even launch maybe a game plan, you're pretty deep into an assault.

Yeah, exactly.

And so I definitely underestimate how much of what could have appeared to look like consent— Exactly. Isn't.

Exactly.

Which is another great chapter of Malcolm's book, is the complexities of consent. He's like, number one, one of the biggest challenges is how can you even educate people in college about consent when there's no consensus on what consent is? Is it nodding yes? Is it removing your own clothe— like, like, yeah, he starts polling all these people on what thing constitutes consent, and there's just no consensus around that.

Yeah.

So it's like you don't even really know what marching orders to give everyone.

It's true.

It's such a complicated topic.

Oh yeah.

Okay, baby, pee baby, pee baby. What are we gonna name her?

Pee baby? Consent?

I think we should name him or her pee baby.

Are you hungry, pee baby?

She might not like that.

Well, she won't know that because she'll assume every— well, likely not, but, but, but also she'll just assume that everyone was born in a toilet.

Oh, that's nice for her. Yeah, although a pee baby, you know, could have both parts. Oh, maybe, which would be cute.

Yeah, a little dinger and a little doo-doo. A little diddy and a little doo-doo. A hermaphrodite?

Yeah, hermaphrodite.

I learned in anthro there's really only been, I think, one or two in history.

Really?

Yeah, because part of the definition is that both sex organs have to function. So quite often, like, you'll see— there's all kinds of things that could happen in the womb during the development where something was interrupted, but then it came back online. So you can have women with a vagina that appears almost to have like a penis on top where the clitoris is. But it's not really, but you know. There's been some cases that were filed as hermaphrodite, but they're not. They don't have functioning sex organs.

This says there's approximately 700 worldwide.

I don't believe that.

Characterized by the presence of both ovarian and testicular tissues.

Tissues?

Or one or both gonads.

Okay, but, all right, so I think at least in my anthro class, they had to be functioning, not just present.

Yeah, they call this true hermaphroditism.

Okay.

All right.

Well, look at this. I just claimed I love being—

my mind changed.

So thank you, Rob. It doesn't feel as fun when you do it as when—

sorry.

I'll put some music underneath it. Please.

So she said—

Claire, now we're talking about Claire.

Yeah, back to Claire, not pee baby. Okay. Okay, back to Claire. So Soho, at some point you were required to be an artist.

Oh yeah, I didn't want to make her eat up her time explaining the history of that to me, but I was like, I didn't know that.

I know, I had no idea. It says the artist-in-residence zoning law was passed in 1971 to allow for the conversion of 200 commercial lofts to residential use on the condition that each loft contained a certified artist. SoHo and NoHo were essentially zoned for, quote, joint joint living working spaces so that these properties would be off-limits to any non-certified artists. For years, the law was widely ignored as agencies like the Department of Buildings concentrated their efforts on matters more pressing than carving out affordable spaces for artists to live.

How does one become certified as an artist, I wonder?

I know.

And why aren't I certified?

Should we explore this?

Good question. Yeah, we should figure out the process.

'Cause I wanna get some dirt cheap square footage in Manhattan.

Uh, yeah, in SoHo. Soho's awesome. Yeah, if I was living in New York, I'd probably want to live there.

You would? I'd live in the West Village.

Or the West Village. Yeah, it's hard to pick one or the other.

All the good burgers are over there in the West Village.

I'm hungry.

Corner Bistro.

No, but Emily's is in Brooklyn.

Yeah, yeah. Well, there's an Emily's in the West Village, but it's not our— it's not our Emily's. It's beautiful.

It's the same Emily. And all the burgers are a little bit different in each location. So ours was Brooklyn. Oh, so good.

We'll eat there again. Maybe we'll bring our pee baby there.

Aw. Traveling with her's gonna be hard, I will say.

Is Kristen gonna be her grandma or her mom?

Well, no, she won't be her mom 'cause her pee's not in there. I guess she'd be a stepmom.

That doesn't feel super complimentary though, does it?

Well, I mean, I don't know what to say. That's just the truth. Truth of the, the world. I know her pee is not in there. Okay, but I'm not convinced that she won't go pee in there before our baby's made.

Well, if it can sing really well, we'll know.

Yeah. Okay, so her mom— oh yeah, her mom had a daycare, and that just reminded me, you know, my hot grandma had a daycare.

Oh yeah, God, would I have loved to have been one of the dads dropping the peepee baby off and then chatting up your grandma.

Unfortunately, there were no pee-pee babies there, but I would spend summers, you know, with them. And so I was always around all these little kids, and I was really jealous.

You were?

Yeah.

Oh yeah, of your grandma's attention?

Yeah. And then like when my mom would come, like sometimes I'd spend the whole summer, but my mom would be there for like a week or two, and then my mom would play with some of these kids, and I did not like that. No. And then my aunt would sometimes 'Come in and also be nice, like, read us both a story.' And I was like, 'No, that's my aunt.' Yeah.

Do you think that's from being an only child for 8 years? Yeah, probably.

I wanted a sibling so bad.

Do you think you're gonna have a strong streak of jealousy in your next relationship?

Hmm, maybe. Yeah, I hope not.

Maybe though.

No, I mean, I'll try not to. I'll work on it. I'm serious.

I know, I was just curious.

How do I know? I can't predict that.

No, but you have like a hunch maybe based on the babies playing with grandma and your mom.

Well, okay, look, people evolve, okay?

I'm not—

I do just think though, when you're born second, like your whole worldview is you gotta share mom with this kid. It's just, you're forced to practice sharing.

Yeah.

Yeah. And in defining love, love not including exclusivity.

Exactly, that's true.

That's— it's no one's fault if you're born— I would say my brother is much more like you just because he too had 5 years without me.

Yeah, that's true. I mean, I guess if I feel safe by the person, I probably won't feel jealous, right? But I probably didn't feel safe with my mom.

Or your beautiful Gaga.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

I feel like it's off-brand for your hot Gaga to have had a daycare.

Oh really?

Yeah. Well, because I'm going to all the stereotypical Indian immigrant stuff.

Oh.

And I think like engineering, medical, all these different things.

Dairy Queen.

No.

Oh yeah.

No, I never think, uh, uh, childcare.

Not my grandma's age. Women were not doing that. Women were housewives, right?

Or housewives.

Yeah, she was a housewife, but then all also ran a daycare.

Oh, okay. Was it profitable?

I don't know how much she charged.

They made a good living though, right? They saved a bunch of money.

Oh, they were very frugal. They didn't spend any money. Like, she made all my mom and sister's clothes. But yeah, my grandfather was a professor, so yeah, they had money, right? And they gave me all of it. Yeah, just kidding, just kidding, just kidding. Okay, so— oh yes, so she was talking about the guy in my so-called Life, who was in a Noxzema commercial. So Jared Leto, who is in the Noxzema commercial, but he was actually in the commercial you liked with Rebecca Gayheart. He was her love interest.

Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Yep.

I can't think of any accolade that would more prove that you were the most beautiful couple in the world than to have a Noxzema campaign.

I agree.

Wow.

The skin of angels.

Oh boy. Okay, was Titanic the biggest movie of all time when it came out? It set the record for highest domestic grossing movie ever from its debut in December 1997 to close in October 1998, making more than $650 million.

Just domestically? Yeah.

You said psychology is 150 years old.

Mm-hmm.

The late 19th century marked the start of psychology. As a scientific enterprise. Psychology as a self-conscious field of experimental study began in 1879.

Wow, I almost nailed it to the dot.

Do you wanna do exact math?

It's 141 years.

Wow, great job.

So I was 9 years off.

Yeah, really close.

Hey Google, what is 9 divided by 141?

The answer is approximately 0.06383.

0.0.

Yeah, so it's less than 1% off.

By the way, there is nothing cuter than Google in your chair.

It makes me smile so much every time I walk in.

She has her own microphone, right?

She is really—

I feel like she has a cuter than the pee baby.

Don't you think she's, um, in love with that microphone? Because they look almost the same. Yeah, they're like the clearly of the same species.

Yeah, that's nice. Oh wow. Okay, the DSM history that you Yeah. I can't find anything on that, and then I checked with Wendy.

Mogul?

Yeah, she said a lot of stuff about the DSM, and you're right that it's like—

Controversy.

Correct. But she doesn't know anything about the thump, although she was like, I kind of remember hearing something like that, and I said, I think you may have heard it on our show.

Oh, no, no, no, there's a, I could bring it up on YouTube right now. Bring it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. I've watched it 3 or 4 times. English man who tricked psychologists. Let me see if it pops up. If it doesn't pop up, I'm going to move on. It didn't pop up, so let's move on.

Okay, so you'll find it and we'll put it on the yearly fact check.

Oh geez.

No, we'll talk about it.

We'll revisit it.

Yeah. Mhm. Okay, so the percentage of bipolar in In the US, bipolar disorder is a neurobiological brain disorder that affects approximately 2.3 million Americans today, or almost 1% of the population. Her estimate was a little higher, but she said, "I don't really know for sure." Right.

Then you get, we always get into this, you and I. It's always like, is that people who have already acknowledged they are?

Mm-hmm.

Or it's hard to know in that figure.

Population?

I think this is people who are diagnosed, I would guess.

Yes, there's gonna be a lot. Then you go like, oh, there must be a ton of undiagnosed people.

Sure, but there's no way to do any statistics on that. We just can't do it.

We don't have the tech.

Unfortunately, we do have a good piece of tech in here. We do. But we don't have all the tech. Hey Google, how many pee babies exist in the world?

Oh, great question.

Sorry, I can't help with that. Well, eventually she'll get to say one when ours is born. We'll get back to you, Google.

Okay.

We'll tell you first if we have the first example of one. All right. I love you.

Bye.

Love you.