Transcript of EP1 - You Took Something Away From Me

Hi, I'm Monica Padman, co-host and producer of the Armchair Expert podcast. If you listen to Armchair, you've probably heard me talk about my favorite podcasters, Elizabeth and Andy from Nobody's Listening, right? Elizabeth and Andy are my go-to comfort podcasters, and they've been a constant in my ears since 2010. So it was really upsetting when in 2016, they just all of a sudden stopped podcasting. It was so abrupt, and I always wondered what happened. And when I finally had the chance to ask them about it in person, I was shocked. It's a crazy story. It involves Elizabeth and Andy having their locks changed, the LAPD stepping in, and the death of a listener. When we started this project, our goal was to tell that story, but it ended up taking us on a path we could have never imagined. This is Beth Stead.

Elizabeth, I wish I could give you a hug so bad right now. My husband told me that you, Elizabeth, were one of the sweetest crush. I'm a 28-year-old dance and yoga instructor, though I use a different name professionally. Hello, Elizabeth. What he is absolutely the amount I meant to give you. Elizabeth, were you best counselor or therapist? I am desperate to figure out what's happened to you. Are you all right?

I'm really excited because we have two of the biggest celebrities in my head in the attic today, Elizabeth and Andy from my favorite podcast, Nobody's Listening, Right? Oh, thank you. So I have you guys here. It's very exciting for me. We'll get into all the reasons why. But the reason we're doing this show is because you took something away from me, and I never knew why. And so this show is going to explore why, why you guys went off the air. But before we really get into any of them, before we really deep dive, we're going to take the time today to rewind and talk about who you guys are and what the shows were. Yeah.

Let's do it.

You guys are the OG podcasters.

Yeah, I will say in preparing for this podcast, we did pull our original podcast that dropped February fourth, 2010.

Wow.

Looking back, it's so funny because Andy is a record producer. I was in comedy. We had moved here from New York to Los Angeles, and I had stopped performing. I was just writing. Are trying to write. Yes. Not getting paid to write. I missed all of my comedy friends, and so this was a way to have them come over to our house, interview them once a week on our original show, Totally Lame.

Yeah, around that time, there was a couple of shows on public radio that I liked listening to that I think had started posting as podcast. Yeah. That's how we even got whiff of what a podcast was. Then one of your friends was Marc Maron's roommate at the time. Yeah, how wild. That was right at the beginning of Marc's thing where it was like, he has a big podcast that's just started. That's how it was in the air for us.

Mark was a turning point for us because we had between 16 and 50 listeners for the first however many episodes. And then Mark came on and suddenly it was like hundreds.

Oh, wow. I found you when I was, this is a time in my life Also not getting paid to do the thing I was here in Los Angeles to do. But I was getting paid to babysit. That was my job. I worked in Marina Del Rey. Oh, that's right. For those who don't live in LA, that's a nightmare. It's a different city. That's a nightmare. Yeah, this is a nightmare. I had to be there at 6: 00 in the morning. I worked 6: 00 to 8: 00. Oh my God. I got them ready for school. Then I went home, and then I had to come back to pick them up from school. Then I was with them until whatever.

Wait, what was your break in between?

It was 8: 00 AM to 3: 00.

No, Monica. I know. This is actually insane.

Okay, yes. I had this crazy commute where I had to drive to Moreno, where I drive back I've been driving four times. Wow. So somehow, I must have just been searching. I have no idea how I originally came across. At the time, I was at UCB. Ucb was my world.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Ucb, for people who don't know, is an improv theater in Los Angeles. Very well renowned. I was obsessed with everything there, all the teachers. You guys had a lot of those teachers on your show. Anyway, I somehow stumbled across one of the episodes, and you had already been in it for a little bit because I was able to just binge.

Yeah.

Which is ironic because Well, we'll get to this. But it really got me through for so long. That stupid commute. Because I was obsessed, I was listening to Totally Lame because things were going so well with Totally Lame, you started another podcast. Yes. Totally Married, which was you and Andy giving advice to listener questions.

Yeah.

And then after that, you did a third podcast, Totally Mommy, which was about your journey into motherhood. And I didn't even have kids. Also, I wasn't married, but it didn't matter. I was all in. And you had a woman on, your friend, and she was a therapist. And I, at the time, was looking for a therapist. So I Reached out to the totally lame email.

Oh, my God.

We have to find that at some point.

Andy, do you have the totally lame... Can you get on to totally lame email?

I just need to get WiFi on here.

You still have access?

What we should have thought of.

We got Access, Baby.

Whoa, I'm scared.

Okay, we got January 21st, 2015. Hi, Elizabeth. My name is Monica. Oh, my God. I was interning at UCB years ago and saw you perform in Aaron McAfee's. This Feels Terrible Show.

Wow.

Oh my God. That must have been how I found it.

Wow. I thought you were such a fun storyteller, and you plugged your podcast at the end, so I started listening to Totally Lame.

We got to the bottom of it.

A mystery Very solved.

And have been an avid listener to all your podcasts ever since. It should also be noted that even though I'm not married nor have a child.

Oh my God, I'm still saying the same lines.

I still love listening to Totally Married and Totally Mommy. So one, you're great, and two, I'm weird. Eow, eow, eow.

It's so exciting.

It's so sweet. No, it's so sweet.

Anyway, I'm actually reaching out because I was listening to your Totally Mommy with so-and-so, I was wondering if she's currently working in a practice here in LA. I've been looking for a therapist for a while and I've been researching a lot of people, but it's hard and scary to pick someone at random. It's not urgent, but it would be helpful to delve deeper into some of my issues, such as why I'm a single person in my 20s who downloads a mommy podcast every week. I looked online but was unable to find anything. If you happen to know if she's currently seeing patients and could pass along her info, that would be great. Thanks so much. Elizabeth responds, same day. Hi, Monica. Thank you for the email and kind words. I love that you found me through Erin's show and are still listening. I reached out to so-and-so. She passed along her email. I totally hear you on the difficulty of finding a great therapist. It's so hard. Her email is this. Good luck and thank you again for listening. I want to read your response. Oh, no, there's more. Elizabeth, thank you so much for replying.

I will definitely reach out to her and see if there's any available options. One other thing I forgot to mention in my first email, I'm a comedy actress/writer.

No, I want to die.

I'm going. I'm going. I'm going.

I'm going. I want to die. I hate this. Which is what first drew me to Totally Lame. My childhood goal was to one day be on Oprah. Then she went off air and destroyed that dream. When I found Totally Lame and tuned in week after week to your amazing show in, which I got to listen to my Comedy Heroes, and in some cases, peers, my new goal was to one day be on totally lame. Oh, my gosh.

Wow.

Wow.

Sadly, another dream, dead but not forgotten. Basically, in a long-winded way, I'm trying to say, You are Oprah, so I don't think you need to hold out on meeting her or feeling her presence. You're already there. Monica. Oh, an experience. Oh, my God.

I feel weird.

Isn't it surreal?

I have all these feelings right now.

I got to read your response. Ha ha, oh, Monica, will you marry me? I adore you. Oh my God. Thank you so much for the kind words, the kindest. What a response.

It's so embarrassing.

Oh my God.

Okay, well, we'll just move right along from that. I did end up seeing that therapist for a really long time. She's amazing. Yes. And so that was in 2015. And then three years later, D Dax and I launched Armchair Expert in February of 2018.

Oh, my God. Has it been that long? That's insane.

And when Dax first said, I think I want to do a podcast, I said, I'll help you. I immediately thought of you guys, and it was scrambling. I need to figure out how to do this. I told him I would figure it out. I reached back out to you to see if I could potentially shadow you, or I don't know, you could just show me what to do.

Oh, boy.

Do I start with, This is a comedy writer or a comedy actress? For me, you might remember me.

Hi, Elizabeth. Hope you're well. I'm Monica, so-and-so's patient. I've been listening since the early days of Totally Lame, and they have all really brought an abundance of joy inside into my life.

You once proposed to me.

We're married.

I work for Kristen Bell and Dax Sheppard, and we have just begun talking about starting a podcast. It's literally a seed of an idea now. Just a thought bubble. Smiley face. But I was wondering if you would be open to meeting me so I could pick your brain on the podcast world in both theory and logistics. I know you have a family and are super busy, so no worries. If you can't, I totally understand. Please let me know. Thanks so much. Best Monica, a Comedy actress. I'm just kidding. Just kidding. That's very sweet. Yeah. Professional. You didn't mention the proposal.

I didn't. I played it cool.

How crazy is it, though, that you emailed about just this idea of a podcast?

It is so crazy. It is really hard for me to go back and think about a time when it was a, quote, thought bubble or a seed as we're seven years in, and it's grown into such a huge part of my life.

Yeah, and I think that it'll be successful if you keep at it.

Oh, thank you. I'm going to keep going. I think it's important that I point out I had my own very intense parasocial relationship with you two. And to the degree that I reached out and met you, that's crazy. But it is all very relevant to this whole series.

Yes.

And I know we're laughing and we're having fun here, but this is all important backstory to get us to something that is not a laughing matter. That leads us to something interesting because as I noted in the email, that was a dream lost but not forgotten because you guys at that point had stopped doing totally lame.

We must have. Yes. After having totally lame. Actually because of this, Andy was unaware that I was also responding to every email.

And also proposing to people. I definitely didn't know that.

Proposing. I I don't think to people. It was just to Monica.

Yeah, I think I was special. Okay.

But we started a new podcast called Totally Married, which it really wasn't about marriage. It was just two people who are married. It's similar to our podcast now, Nobody's listening listening, where it was just Andy and I hanging out, catching up. But the second half was us giving unqualified advice to listener questions.

You guys received the most incredible questions. They covered such a wide spectrum of topics. I mean, obviously, there was relationship questions, but then there was also really serious questions with pretty intense implications. Andy, can we play a couple of clips maybe so that people can get a feel for the show.

When I was grabbing clips, I wanted to get some that were random and fun, and this one jumped out.

Question is the following. I've been slightly in love with my friend for about five years. One problem is that I'm gay, and he isn't, or at least he says he isn't. There have been strange things in the past where he's definitely been half-flirting with me, and some people have agreed that he seems to like me. I've told him how I feel in the past, and he's always very politely said, No, thank you, but then continues to initiate conversations with me, even though it It makes my heart to have a friendship with him when I really want more. So that's the background. Here's my question. Oh, this is a good one. How ethical is it to possibly ask to pay him money just to hug me? Almost like a very vanilla version of prostitution, I would offer him around $150 to just hug me for an hour/ talk to me while hugging. Nothing more, nothing sexual, just that. I'd be totally okay with killing the friendship, a likely scenario, because it's difficult having to talk to him, and I don't enjoy just being friends with him. I really want to scratch that itch of having him in some way, and any level of intimacy or company with him, even if just hugging, is the most appealing thing in the world to me.

My question is whether if you were single Will, would you accept this proposition from a friend you've known for over five years, and just how bad of an idea this might be if it goes wrong? On a similar note, do you guys have any advice on how to get over unrequited love? This is a terrible idea. Yeah.

It's a terrible idea.

I mean, I love this question.

It's one of the best questions without a doubt.

Thank you for this.

A terrible idea.

First of all, I'm confused. Does Hugging? Scratch that itch?

Hugging? This guy just wants any piece of this guy, and I think he's probably hoping that it would escalate.

That's my thing is, would it just be hugging or would you then just be... Wouldn't you be so sexually frustrated?

He wants a hug for an hour. Can you imagine if a friend of yours... See, I don't even understand where they're at in this relationship because I can't... In all of my friends, historically, imagine what it would be like if one of them was like, This is going to be a weird request. I got $150 burning a hole in my pocket, and I want nothing more, nothing more than just to hug you for an hour. Would you do that for $150? That sounds- The friendship is over. If it's legitimately, if the person is legitimately asking that, like the writer in her is proposing, I'm pretty freaked out, I think.

Well, okay. Yes.

And why aren't they just hugging each other anyways?

Well, not for... He wants to cuddle. Not for an hour. He wants cuddling. So my thing is, if a lesbian friend of mine who I've said no thank you to in the past is saying, Can we just hug for an hour? To me, and also maybe you guys don't feel this way. Hugging is... Cuddling is extremely intimate. And I think for guys, it's extremely intimate in a weird way, even more so than just fucking something, right? Like, You got to really love someone to cuddle with them. For an hour? Yeah. I don't even get hour-long cuddles.

Have we ever cuddled for an hour?

Well, maybe. Actually, I'd like more cuddling since it's here.

No, I know. I'm not good in the cuddle department.

But I'd like some more, actually. Yeah, I hear that.

That's great. But just an hour?

Okay.

Is this question a joke?

What if this guy was like, This podcast has been stale lately. I'd love to spice it up a little bit. No, I mean, listen, if you're okay with killing the friendship and this is a Halle Mary pass, go for it. But I'm going to say, And please keep us posted.

Hey, we don't.

You never know. What a doosy.

God, that's hard. I feel for that person who just wants to be touched.

I know. Why that one person? Yeah. I mean, we all go through that, though. We've all had crushes that are reciprocated.

I know.

I guess in some ways it's nice that he has the means to...

He's very wealthy. He's very wealthy. He has one thing going for him. Sorry, we are totally off the rails, but this is a prime example of what your show did. We are now talking about the question. It really made you think and deep dive on, honestly, what it just means to be a person. Do we have any clips of maybe the more serious questions?

Yes. Let's look at this one. Okay.

My sister and I were raised by my mother. My father abandoned the family when I was very young. My mother was a dancer. To say that she pushed us is an understatement. She literally said on more than one occasion that the only reason anyone would care about us would be because we stayed pretty and danced well. That's a lot of pressure. Even as a little girl, I thought that was an evil shithead thing to say, but my point is that we didn't have the best role model. Now, my sister-in-law says she's trying to spare her daughter from awkward teenage years by telling her to lose weight. She's 15. I'm just having flashbacks to when I was a teenager, we would have been screamed at if we gained 5 pounds. I think about how terrible it feels to have a mother like that, and I'm more concerned about that than my niece's weight. My husband thinks I'm overly sensitive because my upbringing. I know what a bad mother would do, but I really don't know what a good one should do in this situation. Any ideas? Health is important to me. I'll happily help my niece if she came to me for advice on her own.

I'm just so scared about her relationship with her mother. Am I just being paranoid? Is it ever okay to step in and tell someone to lose weight? I really don't know. So what are our thoughts?

I'm trying to imagine if there is a scenario where it's appropriate first.

Well, in this case, this 15-year-old, her mother's concerned that she's a little overweight. So it doesn't sound like she's putting her health at serious risk. I had chubby phases for sure, and my mom definitely put pressure on me, honestly, because it gave me issues. It then compounded and then turned into me not being in tune with my body, and it was all about restricting or binging or whatever.

Yeah. But if it more seems like this is something that mom's uncomfortable with and not actually I don't know, though. I could see the mom being like, Oh, this is going to be a little bit harder for her because she's a few pounds overweight.

A, that's her own shit. I mean, yeah, maybe society would make it harder on her, but I guarantee you this girl would rather just have society being on her than society and her mother being hard on her. I mean, that sounds like the whole like, Oh, I'm fine with you being gay, but it's upsetting because everyone else This is going to be hard on you. No, you're not really fine with it.

But okay, let's not use such extreme examples, maybe. Okay. Let's make it something like this. Let's say the kid wanted to wear a police hat. We're talking he's starting middle school at a new school, and his thing is he likes wearing his police hat every day. And you know that things would be so much easier for our boy if he didn't show up in the police hat.

This is really truly adorable because this just goes to show The difference in what it feels like to be a guy who has never struggled with your weight as a girl already with a mother like that, I can tell you with 100% confidence that this girl feels the vast majority of her self-worth is tied up in how she looks, and she feels like she's failing, and the person who loves her the most in the world is saying she's not good enough.

Okay, that totally makes sense to me. I was trying to boil it down to more the parent perspective of just the parent having the moment like, Oh, this will be hard for the kid, or things could be easier if this wasn't an issue, do I say something? I was trying to use an example-Oh, I see what you're saying.

Okay.

That was small.

Right. Well, I mean, parents face all the time a child who wants to wear clothing that's associated with the other gender. Sure. These kids who are transgender or gender curious have one of the highest suicide rates of any social group because they lack the support starting where they need to feel the most secure, which is at home. My point is your kid is going to be treated by society however she's going to be treated. At the very least, you should be supportive. And of course, I feel very sensitive to this issue.

Mom of the Year.

Yeah, you did a great job.

I'm impressed that you knew Gender Curious seven years ago. Right. Or almost 10 years ago. I know.

You were ahead of the game.

Yeah, you were ahead of the game where I'm talking about police hat analogies.

And you say it's so adorable.

I'm so patronizing.

I'm so adorable.

But to be fair, this question, it came to mind because it was about something that really hit home for me, which is body image issues.

We had tons of those.

The issues? I mean, I do. But this question got a lot of action in the comments section, which made me realize that sometimes our show actually did resonate a lot for especially women.

That makes sense. I bet you got a lot of... Did you get a surge of self-esteem when you gave that answer? Because that's intense. That's really giving major life advice.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. My ego was getting boosted left and right. I was giving advice Nice. Our show was growing. It's funny listening back to that because I remember that writer in her. She was a Norwegian listener. That's right. I was responding to all these emails. I started to develop relationships with some people.

I know we're revisiting a lot of this, obviously, for what we're doing here. I didn't know to the depths of you responding to people like, You're so kind to respond to Monica and whatnot. What I've been wondering lately, revisiting this, You must have really liked that part of it, or did you just feel like you needed to or somewhere in the middle of that?

I think something in the middle. Particularly young women reaching out, and I would talk a lot about losing my parents and grief and body image issues and all of these things that I think I connected with other women on, I felt like an obligation in some ways. Also, I mean, ego comes into it, feeling a little bit like, I've got some answers. To be totally honest, I needed an ego boost at that time. This was all I had. I mean, I obviously had you and our family and stuff. But I have been trying so hard for so long to become a TV writer, and it was a slog. Having this and having people look up to me felt good, I think.

Yeah, I get that. I mean, we have this website that was bursting with comments, too.

Yeah, we had 4,000 pages of comments on our website. Oh, my God. It became this community, and listeners would connect. Yeah.

That probably felt really special as the cult leader. I'm kidding. But also, but yes, like, oh, look, look, I'm bringing people together. Yeah, I'm sure it did give a little bit of a boost of, I made this. I did this. It feels good.

Right. I think it was really healing for me to speak to this stuff, too, because I was processing, becoming a mother of a daughter and son. I was processing a lot of my own stuff.

And connecting with people that you realized were having the same issues as you.

Yeah. We had serious things like that that generated comments. Then we had just random silly fun questions that were really our bread and butter. This one we're about to play, stood out, regarding our comment section for reasons that will be self-explanatory. I love this question because I'm loving that a lot of these questions now are, My husband has a problem, and I was hoping for some listener feedback. I guess we don't have to answer this. We could just hear what our listeners have to say.

You're really insecure about that, aren't you?

Yeah, because I just know our advice is so stupid. The people now are writing in, which I get it. Our listeners are all smart and have great opinions.

That's the best thing about this podcast. I know. No, I know. In your website.

I know. Hilarious. So everyone, go log on to totally leave and go leave feedback. Okay, so my husband cannot pee in a stall/urinal situation.

Oh, I got some great advice.

He can pee in public places, but only if it is a private bathroom.

I have had a couple of tips over my lifetime handed down to me by some people. One is the bolt technique. And the bolt technique, my buddy Marcus in college told me about this. Basically, if you're looking at the urinal and the pipe, there's that big bolt, and all you do is stare at that bolt and just say, bolts, bolts, bolts, bolts, over and over in your head. I'm not kidding. I found that to be effective. I use it to this day. Also another advice from college, my roommate, Christian, he would have a hard problem with that, and he would pull out his driver license and read his driver's license while he peed.

But that's at a urinal when there are other people?

That you got to be willing to have people wonder what the hell is going on. But I recommend bolts, bolts, bolts. And when bolts, bolts, bolts doesn't work for me, I wait for the stall. I have no shame in waiting for the stall.

She's saying he'll only go if it's a private stall, like if it's a bathroom with a door.

He cannot pee in a stall/urinal. I'm sorry. That whole bolts thing, hopefully that helped another listener.

Yeah, I'm sure it's not for nothing.

Oh.

So what's your advice here? I don't know. Yeah, I guess we'll leave it to our listeners. She was wise. She was a wise woman.

I love how Andy just lit up at the mention of a urinal.

It's really his area of expertise. So, yeah, those are three clips out of thousands that give you a little tour of our show.

And I should say all of this is incredibly relevant to Armchair for a few reasons. One, we have Armchair Anonymous, where we talk to people, and it's so fun and cool.

It's the best. Honestly, I love connecting with listeners. I mean, obviously, I love connecting with listeners.

Not only that, though, so much amazing stuff came out of it, especially for, say, your career.

That's very true. Honestly, everything good in my career originally started with it because people I knew from the UCB Theater, like June Diane Raphael, Casey Wilson, they got me to sell my very first pilot, got me my first real writing job. Then Tammy Saker, who I met on the podcast, she had been a fan of the podcast, she got me to sell my second pilot.

Not only that, though. Yeah. Let's not forget that's how we met you. Yeah.

I know. It sounds like it was going so well. It was. Then why did you suddenly stop?

We had something scary happen to us.

It all started actually with an email from a listener with a question for Totally Married.

Do you see the email?

Oh, my God. The subject of the email is you may recognize my vagina.

If you don't want to wait for more Best Dead, you can binge the entire series today at patreon. Com/bestdead, where all 10 episodes are available ad-free right now. Beths Dead is presented by armchair experts Monica Padman and nobody's listening, right? It is produced by Monica Padman, Elizabeth Lame, and Andy Rosen. Additional engineering by Rob Hollis. Music by Andy Rosen.