Monica Lewinsky Returns

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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dax Shepard, and I'm joined by Monica Lilly Padman.
And it's important that you make that clear today. Because there's two Monicas here today.
Yeah. On a second trip.
Yes. Monica Lewinsky.
Welcome back, Monica Lewinsky. Yes, this was really fun.
I really enjoyed this one. She has a new podcast out called Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky.
She has incredible guests. Yeah.
And the theme's really awesome. It's about reclaiming your identity.
Yes. Obviously, she has had a very unique life.
Yeah. And she's generous in talking about it, which is really nice and helpful.
Like, she said so many things that I think are going to resonate with a lot of people. Yeah.
She said one thing that I was thinking about for days. What? I don't want to say it.
Oh, you don't want to spoil it? Yeah, I don't want to spoil it. I just't want to spoil it yeah i don't want to spoil it i

just think i think it's gonna hit with some people and i hope it does um and i uh bts we were in some

emails after um and emma was talking to her team and they they were like it's so confusing between

the monica yeah so they had to start referring to it as my Monica. Oh, I like that, my Monica.
Yeah. Please enjoy Not Our Monica Lewinsky.
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Learn more at discover.com slash credit card. Rob found that I didn't even know about it.
And apparently I was in the dark. People made fun of me.
But you love it, right? I love it. And immediately, yeah, you and Rob could have some weird male-female home goods store that would service both ends of them.
Let's do it. Oh, my gosh.
Yeah, exactly. Thank you.
You're so short in this. It's a little sinky.
You know what's nice is the complaints are universal. They're not consistent.
No one likes it, but for a myriad of reasons. So we can't even really figure out how to fix it.
This is the third couch. Oh, okay.
And again, it's not like everyone's like, it's too deep or it's too shallow or it's just for you now, it's too short. Or I'm too short.
I think it is. I think people sink in it a little bit.
Okay. Okay.
How are you doing? Good. I'm a little tired.
I was like, oh, this is not the kind of mindset you want to be and go to try to sound like a human. No.
And I also keep thinking there's an earthquake happening today. What is that about? Is there? No.
Like you have a premonition or you're feeling it? No, no. It was like three times today.
I sort of was, oh, was that an earthquake? Okay. So a little on edge maybe.
I don't know. You're anxious.
Is that it? Yeah. You think? Okay.
Would it comfort you at all to know that I too don't feel energized and bright? Okay. Me either, actually.
Maybe it's some weird thing with the moon or some shit like that. Oh, I have heard March has a lot of astrological issues.
Oh, tell us about them, please. A couple retrogrades, some other big things.
Mercury's in retrograde, which makes sense that here I am coming back to the podcast. That's right.
Circling all the way back. What do I have? You have a hair.
Oh. I'm here.
Oh. Oh.
Oh. They're so precious.
I'm fighting so hard for every one of them. Do you have, let me start there.
We're of the same age. When's your birthday? January 2nd.
I just turned 50. Oh, no, no.
I'm older. Yeah, you're like a year and a half older.
Okay. Get over it.
But congratulations. Oh, thank you.
Right?

Exactly.

You're really well played.

Did you buy a jumpsuit on your 50th birthday?

I already own like six.

I had a whole jumpsuit phase like two years ago.

It was a good phase.

But I guess what I'm asking, is there anything you're in a full-fledged battle with?

So for me, it's my hair density.

Okay.

And I'm applying with a dropper in the morning and at night, and I hate what it does to my hair. It makes it really crunchy and greasy.
And I'm like, yeah, I just got to fucking deal with it. I think sometimes the old issues that you kind of go, wow, I've been working on this for a really long time.
You just observe it showing up in a different way. So I think I had one of those this morning of, huh, I don't want to get too detailed, but I've talked about this thing.
That's probably not the thing you should talk about when you have a first conversation with somebody that you've been set up with romantically, probably not the thing to talk about intimate. It was an overshare and I felt really comfortable with the person, which was nice.
But then after I just thought, okay, but I also told that same story the other week to, in a way that was a little inappropriate. Clearly there's something that I need to deal with about this whole thing.
I just sound super cryptic. Sorry.
No, I love it. I really want to have coffee so I can be told the same thing and then levy a verdict.
There's two ways to think about it though, right? One is you go ahead and be you and you're going to weed out whoever that's not the right fit for them. Because that's served me really well for 52.
Well, that's what I was going to say. 51 and a half years.
So that's one side that's defendable. But then the other side is exactly that.
Yeah, I do that. And it does weed out people.
And I think the people I'm weaning out are the people are probably better matches for me. And I'm probably attracting like-minded, hyper-explosive, overly intimate, very quick.
And you got to figure out which side of the line you're on. I think we're all very self-aware people here who are aware of ourselves, our emotions, our behaviors, how we want to show up in the world, as opposed to how we do actually show up in the world.
Yes. Right? And so you just keep trying to chip away and move towards something.
Yeah. And they're just those moments where you go, okay.
I'm not there yet. Yeah.
I agree that we all think we are, but do you think it's an illusion of self-awareness? Huh. Say more on that.
Yeah. So I guess what I'm saying is I think we are all semi self-aware and we know how to read a room.
We know how to do this stuff, but we are who we are. And at best, it's a con.
And at worst, we're not even impressing upon people what we think we are. I think a lot of us have the illusion of it, but really we all know who each other is.
Okay. I'm going to show off for a second.
Yeah, do it. My therapist told me last week, she made a comment about, can you see how much you've changed and how much you've evolved and healed in these certain areas? Yeah, that's a win.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If the self-awareness weren't real, you wouldn't have these evolutions.
You wouldn't be course correcting. In behavior.
So are you going to become somebody totally different to who you were in your natural state? Probably not. But I think we can mature and heal.
Yeah, I do too. I don't think this is binary.
I don't think it's like, you're right. I don't think it's binary.
I don't think it's like self-awareness is a total illusion and you can actually know how you're coming across. I think there's a big gray area in spectrum there.
I mean, it's interesting. I don't know why this is what comes up, but I remember when I was learning how to do public speaking for my Forbes talk and then the TED talk, I worked with someone who's a delivery coach because the way you think you're delivering something in your head may not be how the audience is receiving it.
Ooh, that's a great question for your podcast. Yeah.
Because I had the very, very stark example of listening to me argue with Kristen. Yes.
And I was like, oh, that's not how I think I argue. In my head, the experience is way different than now I'm objectively listening to it.
Have you had some aha moments if you had to listen now to yourself for hours? On so many levels. There is one, which is the fact that I'm so lucky.
I have super deep trauma of having to hear my own voice because of Linda Tripp taping me for 20 hours. And then I had to authenticate the tapes.
Oh, you did. Yeah, so I had to sit in the independent counsel's office listening.
It was awful. Oh, my God.
Hold on one second. One second.
That's torture. No, no, it was.
That's what they should have in Guantanamo. Even take it out of the insane context it was in.
If you just said, hey, by the way, we have 20 hours of you and your friend Aaron talking. Now sit here and listen to it.
The things I would say with Aaron and I at a table, there's no way I wouldn't be. I couldn't make it through 20 minutes of chatting.
Oh, no, it was so awful.

Whoa. If you were asked to recall a conversation, you would probably not remember all the likes,

the ums. You would try to remember the smart erudite things you said.

Yeah, exactly. Incredible point you made.
Hour 10. Exactly.
Not the snarky things that you say about people you love. And I never liked the sound of my voice to begin with.
So all of that. And then of course they became public.
You had come to terms at least with, that's how my voice sounds, right? You'd already crossed that. Oh no, no, okay.
It was just pushed down on the list of awful things. There's that where it's just like, my voice, my voice, my voice.
And then also this thing about repeating myself. Even I listened to our first chat, half of it on the way here because I was like what if I tell all the same stories again what if I'm actually not as interesting as I think I am yeah yeah yeah but I think too in terms of listening it took me a handful of interviews to feel like okay maybe I cracked this and I was so proud of myself and And then I listened and I was like, oh, I wasn't actually, maybe it was good because I didn't say very much this time.
Monica, have you broken any bad habits? Yeah. Monica edits.
So she has to hear every single thing she says. I at least get a version.
By the time I hear it, it's been dramatically cleaned up. So even at that, I've got a lot of work to do.
The editing process is very interesting, especially I'm kind of pivoting, I guess, a little bit, but especially if it's a fact check and Dax and I are in something heated, having to edit that is always tricky because first of all, I'm like, I have to hear that again. Normally, if you're in like an argument with someone, you leave, you both retain the thing.
You step away from it. Yes, you step away from it.
So you have distance. So then it fades.
Also, you leave thinking you were right or the points you made were right. I think of the ethics all the time that you have to have when you're editing arguments between us.
You have so much integrity because to keep in a great point that someone your adversary quotes made, it's got to be hard. And not adding lots of ums.
It's made me better just as being able to be objective about the show, because there are times where I am like, I, Monica, want to keep this in because I think I come off better or it's the point I've been trying to make. And he is doing the thing I'm saying he's doing, but I know it's not additive to the show.
It's not good. It's going to make people mad and I have to cut it.
But there's so many times that I leave and I'm like, I'm keeping that in. I'm not killing this, darling.
This one's going to be there. I'm going to leave it.
And then I'm in the edit and I'm like, I got to get rid of it. She has a ton of integrity.
I just want to scream from the rooftop. She has incredible integrity.
And often I imagine myself in the same situation as her. And I think I have integrity.
But it would be really hard. Forget whether or not I could pull it off.
It would just be like, fuck, OK. Also, I think in some ways it's bad for us because this happened recently.
We had a couple of people on the show that I have very different opinions with. Wait, can you say who? Yeah.
Andrew Schultz, who came out today. It was a great episode.
I was very happy with it. Comedian, right? Comedian.
And then someone we haven't had on yet, so I'm not going to say who. Adolf Hitler.
We have slightly different views. Slightly.
Vladimir Putin. You know, we do these episodes and then we leave, but then I, that week, was editing both of those episodes.
So then when we came into the fact check, I came in so hot. Loaded for bear one more.
Yes, because I was in this other. And then he just wants to talk about regular stuff.
I'm like, no, men are a problem. And he's like, why are you saying this? And it's because I've just been in this mindset.
It's really hard to compartmentalize. And it's in your ear.
You're listening. Yes.
Did you have a background in storytelling that led you to the editing part? Emma, one of our producers, she gave me a really good compliment the other day because I love writing and I write a lot. This Monica is too.
I'm just kidding. Yeah.
Both Monica's in the room. I know.
And Emma said, because I was like, oh, yeah, I do want to eventually like do more writing. No, no.
Do more writing. And she was like, you write every time you edit an episode.
And she gets a cleanup of it. So she sees it.
She's like, you're doing that. You're creating a story.
I was like, that's nice. Well, she's a great writer.
She's written tons of stuff for Kristen over the years prior to being here. She was a UCB person.
So she has the background to do it. But no one should ever feel bad for us.
We have literally the nicest job on planet Earth. The best job ever.
We go through stuff.

It's just random order. You can't predict it.
It just happens to be two male comedians that have this stuff that happened because they both have specials coming out. And then for two or three weeks of our life, both through the interview, then the edit, then the fact check, we can't not be in the cloud of that experience.
And it is just kind of funny. I guess it's great, actually.
It keeps life novel, which is we're always in some weird cloud of whatever the guests were. And we're being authentic.
I mean, I guess that's the other thing. We're maybe trying to compartmentalize, but it's really hard to do.
You're going to bring in where you're at mentally. How deep do you get when you hear it has pretty much a good pass been done? For the most part, I'm hearing version two.
But then sometimes I'll go back to the assembly for the interview. And then I have a great moment of being like, wow, you fucking didn't ask that question.
How could you not ask that question? As a follow up of assuming I had asked it and just passing judgment on people going, why would you cut that from the conversation?

And then it turns out.

It's not essential.

I'm so glad you're laughing at me.

No, it's such an insular, weird thing. It is.

Has it been hard for you to ask the next deeper question?

Like they've offered to pursue a road.

It happened one second ago.

You say the Linda Tripp tapes. Uh-huh.
I like you. I don't want you to have to get embroiled in any of it.
Also, that's fascinating. I need to know more about sitting and listening to a conversation, right? So it's like those little nudges you have to give yourself, those come easy or hard for you? They're hard for me.
Probably a little bit because I'm codependent. It's really important for me that somebody comes to have a chat.
They feel safe. Exactly.
I don't want to trigger anybody. I don't want someone to be upset.
So I think it's probably that. Yeah.
And then still because I just did my 12th interview, that's still kind of new. I'm definitely present.
I'm definitely having conversations that are interesting to me and exciting to me, but I still feel like I could be more present. Not as worried about the thing you're creating.
Right. Or trusting myself too.
Just trusting yourself that you can sit down and have a conversation with someone. I think especially with the show and the theme of reclaiming, it's not hard hitting.
And so my assumption has been I can sit down and have a conversation with anyone and it'll flow out.

It's not perspective.

Yeah, something will come.

Right.

But that takes trusting yourself, right?

That's the curve of this experience, I think, is you just get more and more confident.

Oh, the thing will happen.

It always happens.

As I keep staring at your 500 million streams.

Yeah, turn that around. Come on.
Yeah, that was brag. For a newbie podcaster.
That's a bit brag. But that's amazing.
But back to the thing of asking the follow-up question. I think as long as the next follow-up question is something that I'm really interested in, that you might think is too vulnerable, but I know and trust in my heart that the answer to this is not going to alienate you to people.
It'll actually endear you to people. I'll make those judgment calls, right? Where it's like, yeah, they went to five.
My interest is I want seven. What happened after that? And if I have a lot of faith in the fact that that piece of information will just make you love the person even more, then I don't mind kind of, I guess, pushing.
Well, do you want to ask me something so that people love me more? No, it'll happen. It'll happen.
Actually, haven't you felt that over time, just you? The more people have gotten to know you. You're pretty universally.
Yeah. I've only heard amazing things about you.
Obviously, we think that too. As much as people hate that couch is how much people all love you.
It's like kind of universal. That is very nice to hear.
It actually was a span of a year for me. So I turned 50 the year before in 2023.
And then it was 10 years in 2024 from my first Vanity Fair piece. And I did a lot of personal spiritual growth work going into my new decade and into this last year.
And the number of, I don't know, see, you're making me emotional, but the number of times in that period that I just would pull the car over because I'd start to cry or be in conversation with someone and just thinking about how things had changed in a way for me that I just never could have imagined. And I'm so, so grateful.
Yeah. You said turning 40 was absolutely miserable.
Yeah. But turning 50 was fine.
It was great. Actually, I had a lot of acceptance.
You were kind of in a coma for a decade, right? And then 40 to 50, you came out. It kind of blossomed.
You know, moving into 2014 and the essay, I've done this, I can now call it resonance work. People understand when I say- What's resonance work? It's like sound-based, but vibration and resonance work.
Like EMDR? No, I've done EMDR, but I've worked with someone for probably over 15 years now on repairing my energetic bodies and field. And he uses sound to repattern your field.
Oh, wow. Depends on how woo-woo you are there.
But I've just called it consciousness work or my energy work. And one of the first things we did was around changing my relationship to fame.
And so my whole goal in that was bifurcated into two things. One being being seen for my true self and the other was, it sounds so corny, but it's just leading or coming from compassion.
That's what I want my resonance to be in this feeling of when we have compassion for other people that boomerangs back to us. And my story is such a collective story.
And so when people would have compassion for what happened to me, that compassion would radiate. Okay.
So I think if we plotted your experience with fame, that might be the most extreme that we've ever had that I can think of. Probably.
Total pariah of a whole country to lessening degree globally to, I really think, pretty universally loved. I think when people see or hear your name, they have a good feeling.

And guilt. I think everyone also has a collective feeling of guilt.
Yeah.

I'm like, oh.

Yeah.

But I guess from your perspective on the inside of that, to have been on both ends of the dynamic extreme, how do you trust either end of it?

I could imagine you being loved and really having an impossible time accepting that. And then even thinking, okay, great.
You love me, but fuck, I know where this ride goes. It's going to flip again.
Or it could. And there is panic of that.
For you, I'm imagining reality itself is a little harder than it is for the average bear because it's been so extreme in both sides. A hundred percent.
And also too, you know, when you're writing and there's a seed that starts to germinate and you kind of go, I don't know when this is going to grow and I'm going to write this thing. But I've had this thing for quite a while now where I've just been thinking, I've also seen different angles of power and felt when power shifts, how that impacts other people too.
When Me Too happened and I just started to find myself invited into rooms that I wouldn't have been invited into the year before. I wasn't different, but the world was different.
Caught up to you. And so what are all the pieces there that lead to those shifts and what does it mean, which is interesting to me.
But I think the fame thing is very strange. I had somebody say once, fame is just more people knowing who you are than you know of the others.
Or it's like strangers knowing who you are. It's asymmetric.
Yeah. Right.
There are trappings that can come with it. Usually it's the positive side.
You have a lot of resources and help. And the negative is you lose your anonymity and privacy.
Did you have resentment when that power shift happened? When you were invited into the rooms? Were you like, yeah, I've been here the whole time and now you're letting me in? Maybe 20%. I think just having experienced the depths of sadness and lack of purpose.

Hopelessness.

Yeah. Hopelessness.
All of those things.

What the fuck am I going to do for a living?

Yeah.

How am I going to ever date a guy?

I think that 80% was just the gratitude of that and 20%. But to that point, it's why I

really dislike the word reinvention. Like, oh, you reinvented yourself.
I think, no,

there was nothing wrong with me. I evolved, I matured, the world changed, but that reinvention seems to imply what was there before needed to be changed.
Okay. So the 10 years, really, I would argue longer, 16 years, from 98 to 2014, you get your master's in social psychology, you do a lot of things.
You attempt a lot of things, but you're kind of frozen as well. Do you think you're younger than you are? In some ways, yes.
Yeah. Not that you're immature, but I was just like, oh, you're not your age.
No, it's a very strange thing because I think I had to mature and grow up faster in some areas and in others, very stunted. And also it's interesting because I dated somebody who has had an addiction that was in its sort of wildest throes for a decade.
And he and I were talking, he was like, well, the decade where I should have been meeting somebody and having those kinds of experiences, right. He's like, I was in the throes of my addiction.
And I too had lost that decade. When you're learning to date and you're learning how to be in relationship.
And I had lost that also. I also remember reading this interview with Matt Damon that I think he was saying his brother had this theory that people often remain this sort of same maturity age

when they become famous.

Yeah.

Like it stops there.

Exactly, sort of frozen in amber in one of those moments.

If everything you want is happening perfectly,

why would you change?

It would be counterintuitive to say,

everything I'm doing is working perfectly.

Let's change up this recipe. I think it's much easier to go like everything's in a shambles.
I need to take a look inward and figure out how I'm fucking all this up in this pattern. I'm in always results in this.
So I think for the young movie star where it's like all of a sudden super rich, everyone likes you career fulfillment and they're going to go back to the drawing board. That's a big person that does that.
That's true. Can I ask, is long distance more appealing to you? No, but I'm an anxious attacher.
What's that mean? Tell me the symptoms of anxious attachment. Let me open Instagram and find a meme that tells you the things where I take every fucking box.
I will now never go on a date again after this airs. No, I'm just kidding.
No, you go on a date with the right person after. Yeah, that's right.
What are the characteristics of being an anxious attacher is you need reassurance. You always think people are mad at you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's hard with relationship stuff, I think, is that you can't see your progress.
It's like it has to be in vivo. You have to meet someone and you like them and they like you and you start the process to go, OK, has this gotten better? And so that I think can be complicated, too, because you may not know where you are.
Also hard to evaluate because the nature of a relationship is it's incredibly powerful and dynamic at the beginning. And then you're trading different hormones hormones for here and now hormones and you're trying to evaluate that versus is this getting boring or is it getting more stable i don't know that i have been the love of someone's life yet romantically and so that feels sad to me i can relate to that now what would happen if on your deathbed, a genie came down and went, Monica, these two people, you were, and you missed it.
Is that possible? I can't imagine you not being the love of someone's life. Romantically.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I know my parents.
Yeah. No, I mean, yeah.
Let me say this. I think that I have historically liked complicated men and usually an anxious attacher likes an avoidant.
Okay. So it wouldn't totally surprise me if that happened because I would probably go, see, I knew it.
I knew they really loved me. I knew I really mattered.
But I guess where my head went was when situationship became a word. I was like, oh, I've had a lot of situationships.
What are those? You said that in an interview I just read, and then I didn't know what situationship meant. It's like a half relationship.
Right. It's sort of an involvement.
Let's just say a relationship is two people agreeing to try to build something for the future together as a unit. And I think a situationship is usually it could become a relationship, but you're not necessarily saying it's a relationship yet.
One of you is probably hoping it becomes a relationship and the other one's like, I'm not so sure, but I still want to keep a toe in. I'm not ready to run the other way or whatever that is.
I had someone tell me once that a woman should always have three men in their life. The guy who takes her to dinner, the guy she's fucking and the guy she likes.
That's the way to kind of keep it in balance. I do want to say, though, because I so relate to you.
And that sentence is heartbreaking, what you said, that you don't feel like you've been the love of anyone's life. And I really relate.
But me being on the outside in this conversation, what I wish the reframe is, is who's the love of my life? As opposed to like, who can I be for somebody else? It's who's yours. I think that I've loved a lot of people.
You think you have had a love of your life, potentially, or some. Well, that's interesting.
Now I'm going to have to reevaluate how I'm defining this all. I was just saying to someone the other day, I feel like in my life, I would not be surprised if I met somebody and it all sort of fell into place now as a mature 51 and a half year old, whatever version of that relationship that would be.
And I wouldn't be surprised if it just kind of never happened. Yeah.
Either way, some of it I think is maybe karma. Some of it is a lot of the time and work and energy that I've spent on surviving.
I might have otherwise used to figure out emotional intimacy. Out of this enormous hole you were put in.
That takes a lot of energy and focus and attention. It does.
But where I feel really lucky and I imagine you're the same is just, I have really fulfilling friendships and relationships in my life. And so it's the combination of emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy.
It's a little tricky for me. And I think increasingly society's evolving.
The number of married people in Manhattan in the 80s versus now is one third of what it was. And I do think there'll be less shame surrounding whatever version of you meeting your needs is.
I remember, I don't know what happened to it. I read about it before the pandemic.
There was a matching site, not dating, that was matching people to have kids together. And I just thought that is so genius.
You know, it's really interesting. And as you were saying, Dax, about the spectrum, we are becoming this society of spectrum in so many ways.
And it's going to be really interesting as we move forward, too, of how are we going to historically look at scientific data that was so binary?

You're a man or woman, gay or straight.

And we're moving into a world that's more nuanced, while the chasm between groups is even bigger and worse.

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Dad?

How do you make a happy egg?

Well, it starts with a happy hen.

Happy egg. Happy crack.
Happy flip. Happy poach.
Happy egg. Well, it starts with a happy hen.
Happy egg. Happy crack.
Happy flip. Happy poach.
Happy whip. Happy hen.
Happy egg. Happy sizzle.
Happy brunch. Happy hen.
Happy egg. You can make eggs a bazillion ways, but that orange yolk is how you know it's happy.
Lamont Jones' world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story.
From Wondery comes Death County PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern. Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried.
With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story.
It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Do you watch Severance? I do.
I'm not caught up on it. Oh, dang.
Okay, sorry. I know.
There was a scene in the last episode. It aired? The last episode that aired, which was Friday, which is the second to last episode of the season.
But there's an exchange that happens between two people. It's so heartbreaking, but it sort of speaks to, I think, what we were just talking about.
And I don't think it's a spoiler. That's never a great sentence.
I know. I'll just say without giving too much away, there's two people who were in love in.
Right. Their innies are in love.
Their innies are in love. Okay.
And then their outies have found each other, but one's married. Yeah.
They're talking and the one who's not married says, I've never been in love. Not really.
And the other one says, now you have. How does it feel? And it was so heartbreaking to me because I was like, I've never really had that thing that he has with his husband.
I found it so debilitatingly. Where do you think your, where do you think your issues come from? Oh, God.
So many. They're well documented.
So many. Mine, I think, God, it's just so boring for the audience at this point.
But growing up in Georgia, brown kid, boys didn't like me. Well, more importantly, one boy liked her.
She liked the boy. And the boy said, I can't really be with her because she's Indian.
Oh. He said her parents work at Dairy Queen, but that was code for Indian.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. And they don't.
Yeah. He said, I would butt.
And so it was early days like, oh, I'm unlovable. It has nothing to do with anything I can control here.
Skin bleaching. Did you not think? Well, I looked into all that for sure.
You should have seen me on the beach just covered in towels. So that got set early on and then was confirmed in quotes a few more times where I was like, yeah, okay, so that's that.
I'm not going to have that. Then I would fantasize and be attracted to people I couldn't have because they couldn't really reject me because they were always not in my realm of having.
And I'll add a particularly cruel twist is this pattern also is anyone that likes her. They're problematic now.
So when people do like her, something's wrong with them. Yeah.
Because she's already accepted. No one likes her.
That's immovable. So if no one likes her and someone likes her, what the fuck is wrong with this dude? There must be a catch.
There must be something. It's like, there's always like a, there must be.
Isn't it maddening? Especially when you love somebody. I'm like, where's my magic wand? I know, but that's how I feel.
I can see it in other people. It's so common.
I just want to add, we have so many guests where Monica and the guests go off to the races and they connect so much on this thing. It's interesting because I think I feel so much shame around it because I'm super open in my friendships with people at a private conversation where it's not out there.
I'm very, very open, but I think I feel so much shame from it. I talked about this the first episode of my podcast was me being interviewed.
Yeah. And so I talked about when Joyce Brothers went on the Today Show and said, can you imagine someone bringing Monica Lewinsky home and telling their parents that they were going to marry me, basically.
And so I think there's this fear of, oh, see, you were all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Of course. There's so much deep stuff.
I know. Top that off with whatever childhood shit I had, too.
Yeah, exactly. This is kind of a great segue to one of my questions.
So yes, basically what we're really talking about is very few incidents can result in this kind of permanent life trajectory. And so when we talk about reclaiming, the premise of reclaiming, right, is something you've lost or was taken that you get back.
Well, first, let's talk about that, because I have a broader question of should we reclaim? Is it always the right move to reclaim? Or is there time to jettison the thing we thought we needed and accept what is and then build something new? To me, the building something new is a reclaiming. What it usually is, is there would be maybe a hole or something that we could label this person, this job, this opportunity, whatever it was that you felt was lost.
You either try getting that very same thing back or you're finding something else that then fits that slot. There are these kind of capital R and lowercase r reclaimings, big things being my last decade, reclaiming my narrative.
That's a capital R. But the example I'll give is I have road rage.
Oh, we would be fun in a car together. Oh yeah.
I will yell fuck face before I then also flick the person off. If I stop myself from doing that, I've reclaimed my calm.
I like that. It's kind of an ethos.
It's like mindfulness. It just kind of blankets all of our lives in different ways.
When I was forming the show and pitching it, the best example I could think of that shows this elasticity with the concept is Taylor Swift and Taylor's versions. So she has this catalog, it gets taken away from her and she can't get it back.
So she comes up with a whole new way of reclaiming her music. And I think the conversations that I'm having, it was great.
I sat down with John Chu the other week. It was kind of a broader thing, which is around his identity and his identity and his work.
So it's really loose. Now having had this conversation, I'd want to talk to you about identity.
I'd want to talk to you. I'm really interested in the rehab narrative of people who are publicly successful, go to rehab, how they come back out without those crutches and find the courage to continue to do.
Jason Isbell won his Grammy after Aaron Sorkin won his Oscar. Well, we love stories.
Yeah. You're doing a show with Amanda Knox? Where are you guys at in that? We are going to finish shooting in two weeks.
Oh, really? Yeah. Is it here in LA? Overseas.
Is it in Italy? We did shoot some in Italy. Is that hard for her to go back there? She did not go back for that portion, but she has been back.
She is a brave soul. I will definitely have her on the podcast when the show is coming out.
How did you come to meet her? Do you know John Ronson? Have you ever had him on the show? So he's just a brilliant guy and had written a book. So you've been publicly shamed.
Oh, he sort of brought the Justine Sacco story. This was the woman who got on the plane.
Oh, and when she landed, she was fired. Jonathan Hyde just brought her up.
Oh, okay. Yeah.
While John didn't write the story, I mean, the Times had covered it. He went into her story in context.
But so John and I knew each other and then John knew Amanda and had connected us. But then we actually met, we were both speaking at the same event and it was her first speaking event.
Okay.

How many do you do a year? I haven't done that many this last year. I was doing a lot.
And then coming out of the pandemic, I had a whole bunch that had been scheduled. It's not picked up in the same way.
And I think I was tired. I love doing it.
I really like talking to young people too. That feels really meaningful to me.
And also I think there's no playbook on how to transition from having this big public story that is traumatic and moving on in your life in a way where you're able to support yourself that you're not having to relive your trauma every day all the time. Or lean on it somehow.
And so when I'm public speaking, it's going backwards to move forwards and to sort of help people and feel less alone in all those ways. That's what I love about the podcast is that I just get to sit and talk to people and kind of hear their stories.
You can make an argument in either way. So like you take the power away from something by openly talking about it.
This is the antidote to shame. That is true.
That's been my experience with sharing stuff. But then there's another thing to monitor, which is like, how damaging is it to constantly revisit it? What is the damage of just not being able to put that away forever? And that's gotta be really hard.
The ideal place for it is to just be able to choose. I want to do this versus I have to do this because I've got to pay my mortgage or I've got to put food on the table or pay for therapy.
I think those are the differences. But even with the net, there's categories, which is interesting because I mean, almost your obligation if you're a member of AA is you get sober and then you share your story and you share your story for the rest of your life.

And you get a daily reprieve from sharing your story and you encourage other people and inspire other people. No one's going like, enough of your story.
They're not going like, get over it. In that domain, that's a wonderful, powerful thing.
But then in other domains, people are going like, enough. Oh, yeah.
The problem is that the way trauma sort of worms its way into our memories, into our physical tissue, you can't totally excavate it out. EMDR can help an enormous amount.
But my therapist is a trauma psychiatrist. She'll say the echo gets quieter, but it's always there.
And so there is that element to of how am I protecting myself and my own mental health? But it's a difficult thing. What's happened to people in global scandals, especially when you're young, because you get very defined by it.
People tell you to move on. And yet when I came out of graduate school, I couldn't get a fucking job.
They're telling you to move on, but no one else has moved on. Exactly.
Okay. I always bring it back to this because I just found it to be very powerful, but we had this sex therapist on and I was asking if because of sexual abuse, you have certain, we'll call them kinks, but positively you have preferences.
How can you blame someone when they've been given this situation? If they have certain desires for the rest of their life, is that good or bad? Right. And she said, oh, this is very, oh this is very very simple she used sub doms like there are a lot of people that have been abused that they like to be in these sub dom relationships and she just said if you have shame and secrecy around it it's bad and destructive if you have no shame and secrecy then yes explore what you were given here's your isms now so i was wondering in that way.
Where are you going, Dax? No, no, I'm not going sexual at all. But what I'm going towards is

you were in a very extreme situation and you're going to have things that developed out of that. At what point are you able to just make peace and accept? Oh, yeah, there are certain things in me that I don't need to fix.
This was the hand I was dealt. I'm now this way.
I don't have to fix it all.

And do you have acceptance of whatever things grew out of that?

My experience is that, but maybe a tiny bit adjacent in that, yeah, I'm just not going

to get to working on that.

And I'm okay with that.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

It's that acceptance.

And that was a lot of what I had in my 49th year.

So right before I turned 50, and it's so freeing to just be very happy with who I am and very comfortable with who I am. And it's like, you no longer, I mean, people don't buy CDs anymore, but you no longer go out and buy the CDs that the guy you like, you know, likes.
It's no longer that. Yeah, in the past, you'd have been trying to figure out what music this guy liked.
Exactly. Or, oh, you surf, I surf.

Has that always been you like, you know, likes. It's no longer that.
Yeah, in the past, you'd have been trying to figure out what music this guy liked. Exactly, or, oh, you surf, I surf.
Has that always been you, or was that post this trauma that you felt like you needed to be what the other person wanted you to be? I think I was always like that. Also growing up at a time where not all young women, but many young women got messages from their moms about how you're supposed to be in a relationship.
What does it mean to get a man or keep a husband? Or I remember hearing in class once and they were like, well, they used to call women going to college was getting an MRS degree. Oh yeah.
I've heard that. Underneath it all is the message who you are and how you are right now is not enough and not okay.
Eventually you'll attach yourself to something with substance. That'll be a man and a husband and then you'll have an identity.
And then you'll be a mother for Gen X. Are you Gen X? No millennial.
Yeah. I was like your baby.
37. You're Gen X.
Right. Right.
Cause you're, yeah. Sorry, Dax.
It's interesting. I found this really useful, although it felt so banal to me at first.
But one of the mantras my therapist had given me was, yeah, this is what I do. Sometimes when I'm feeling anxious, I send an extra text to start with not making it worse on myself.
And so starting with self-compassion and recognizing. And I think going back to something we were talking about much earlier, but in terms of the self-awareness and the evolving that happens, we're also all these different versions of ourselves, right? The different ages and the different parts.
And so that's also recognizing, again, kudos to my therapist. She's like, well, the you who sends the email may not be the you who's waiting for the response.
Totally. God bless therapists.
Oh, my gosh. Seriously.
Okay. You've had some great guests already.
We could talk about many of them, but I am interested specifically in a few. Okay.
Molly Ringwald. Of course, and I have to imagine you are the same as me because we're the same age.
And the sun rised and set on Molly Ringwald. Oh, yeah.
First of all, Molly is an extraordinary woman. She is brilliant.
She's an incredible writer. She has such presence.
And she has a really unique presence, too. So I was excited to talk to her because, right, we grew up with her.
It was really fascinating to hear that John Hughes wrote 16 Candles for her, having never met her and having just been given her headshot, which I was like, okay, that's very complimentary and also a little creepy because she was a teen, not trying to disparage the filmmaker of our generation. As a woman, I think it was an objectification that then had things projected onto it.

He created a movie version of Molly Ringwald that became an identity that probably wasn't Molly Ringwald's identity.

It was probably a chasm of how he saw her and portrayed her in all these projects that wasn't her. That would have been a good question for me to ask.
Well, that's maybe for him. Well, he passed away.
Yeah, we'd have to have ghost podcasts. We have to find a medium.
Oh my God, that's a funny, stupid show where we have a full medium and we interview dead people. That would be great.
Yeah, kind of like an impression. I wanted to do somehow a TV show when journalists have passed away.
If you can get access to their notes. And does that mean anything that was off the record in their sources? You know, if both people had died, like, wouldn't that be interesting? I wonder how many stories might be totally recontextualized to know who the sources were.
Yeah, we just interviewed Michael Lewis. Yeah, he's brilliant.
Yeah, and he was telling us that while writing the big short, two of the characters in it, what he was not allowed to share was that his dad was the president of Lehman Brothers. It was like some off the record thing.
Oh, wow. He's like, it absolutely killed me because it was so relevant to what was happening.
He was betting against his father.

So yeah, that kind of stuff would probably come out.

I just think it would be interesting.

So what was Molly's version of that experience?

She only knew fame from this very young age and this catapulting into a high level of fame

on the cover of Time.

Marrying a beastie boy.

She is an icon. She dated him.
I don't think they married.

Okay.

We'll fact check it later.

I just remember thinking, this is ideal.

I feel like I should know that. I made one of the worst comments to her.
I've only met her once. I was seated next to her.
This is in my list of 20 dumb things I've said to people. I was sitting next to her and I was so excited.
I was with Kristen. So I was like, this is safe because I'm with Kristen.
I was like, is it a bizarre experience that every time you sit down with anyone of my age, you know, they were in love with you. That's an interesting reality I'm curious about.
Yeah. It's just an awkward question.
What is she supposed to say? There was no answer she could give. I didn't think that part of it through, but I am still fascinated by it.
That's a very interesting way to go through life. How did she reclaim? Her Paris years.
She moved to Paris to really find out who she was. As a non-famous person.
Exactly. Which is incredibly brave.
Beanie we've had on and we love Beanie. Just the best.
Just listened to Beanie's edit yesterday. Well, it's funny because we started talking about the tapes and Beanie and I had talked about the process and that came up and I was listening to the edit and I was like, I didn't explain.
If somebody doesn't know my story, they're not going to know. This is where I'm learning.
Oh, that's one of my, you just reminded me of one of my questions. Oh, okay.
Go ahead. You must be experiencing this in a very exaggerated and compounded way.
The impermanence of everything is so fascinating. Yes and no.
Because you meet tons of people that literally Clinton is a dude from their history book. Exactly.
And that's all. Okay.
So I have this weird cultural relevance because I'm a lyric in fucking rap songs. Which rap song? I've heard you say that.
Which one? Over 125. What? Yes.
Oh my God. I mean, Beyonce's not a rapper, but I'm in partition in a not very nice way.
You're the most rapped about person in America. I know.
Beyonce should come on your show. Beyonce should come on my show.
I would love to talk to her. She's extraordinary.
So there's that, but I had a weird thing. I was at, you know, the artist Shepard Fairey.
Yeah. It was his gallery.
And some eight-year-old kid came up to me and knew my history. Wow.
The whole thing was weird to me because I'm like, you're eight. You shouldn't know anything about me.
I mean, I joke a lot about people used to say, no offense. Do you know who you look like? And now it's the TED talk or anti-bullying work.
Leno's got a great story about this. He's doing a live standup show in Vegas and he's just fucking around before his set.
And he sees guys with a dolly and they have a huge statue clearly under a tarp. And he's like, wow, what is that? And they're like, oh, it's the Elvis statue.
He's like, well, are you going to go fix it? And they're like, no, we're taking it down. Nobody who comes to Vegas knows who Elvis is.
Isn't that wild? That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about going, oh, wow.
None of it matters. It all moves fast.
It's in, it's out. It's so temporary and it's so impermanent.
That's kind of what I'm talking about. How could everyone know something at one point and then no one knows? That's the part that I feel as I'm getting older.
It's like, oh yeah, I'm just now transitioning into that thing where I'm not really relevant in these young people's life. You have a voice in a different way.
So they may not know you from those earlier things. But I think also, again, this is a fact check, but isn't Nelson Mandela's story too? Early years of having been known one way and then becomes known more from the latter years of his political career than some of the earlier ones.
I feel really lucky because I feel as if in this last round, I mean, I was always a public person, but not hiding in many ways. Driving your exposure.
I can sit outside at a restaurant now. I might worry a little if I'm going to a restaurant where paparazzi hang out.
But even then it's like, okay, my hair's lighter. I don't get recognized, which is really nice.
Yes. Midway through life, I'm just really struck with like, oh, wow, Yeah.
And everything that happened to my grandparents meant so much and it's just gone. It's sad and it's good.
We're just here for a minute and that's it. In this dimension.
The statue will come down at some point. Okay.
Wait, what's this spray stuff? I'm just curious. Oh, interesting.
It's a pure delivery system for nicotine. Okay.
No bullshit, just nicotine. It's a liquid.
Cool. The whole family's addicted to it.
Okay. Yeah.
Were you ever a smoker? Social smoker. I usually have a cigarette on election night every four years.
Okay. You should maybe try that, Monica.
If I was going to do it, yeah, that would be the time. All right.
I just have one salacious question for you. Oh, okay.
Hold on. Let me.
Yeah. Get your salacious armor on.
Exactly. The Menendez brothers.
You went to school with them? Yes, I did. The youngest one was, I think, a year or two older than me.
Really, my memory of him was sitting next to him, waiting to audition for the music man. Oh, both of you.
Yeah. We had the same call time.
I don't know. Not call time.
I don't know. Audition time.
Audition time. Audition time.
Audition time. Right, exactly.
So the older brother was gone before you got to school? I think so. I don't remember their age differences.
So it happened while you were in school? Yes. I think they were on Maple or Elm.
I can point the street out to you. I just can't remember which one it was.
And it was like, oh, that's the house. Yeah, it's a pretty wild thing to happen in high school.
We had some wild shit. Yeah, but I think, again, it's interesting.
It's one of those stories. It's like yours where you go back and watch it and you go, oh, I see it completely different now.
Right, exactly. Whatever society ends up deeming as the right thing to happen for them is fine by me.
I hope if they do get resentenced in some way and let out that it becomes a much bigger conversation for all of the people who are languishing in prison, who committed crimes as a result of having been abused. Yeah.
Because I think that's the majority of people. Otherwise, it just bothers me that it's sort of the attractive white boys.
There's so many different instances where it's so easy for us to look at a story and think of everybody, whatever category of story is a monolith. And I love context.
I have been known to send emails that are like, here's a short version. Here's a long version.
You choose which one you want because I will always go with the long version. But people like the short version a lot of people do well I'm glad you're doing reclaiming because you're built to talk you're a great great guest the first time and you're a great guest the second time and if any of us can figure out how to shoot this shit for a living fucking what a win I also we talked so much about your growth but obviously even even when were you on? When was it? Was it 2018?

It was early. I think it was 2019, but it was pre-pandemic.
It was pre-pandemic. But you feel so different to me.
I would agree with that. Oh, good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were newer into the reintroduction.
Yeah. It would have been four years, five years, but we wouldn't have made impeachment yet.
Having been a producer on Ryan Murphy's impeachment and having a first look deal was really the first opportunity I had to do something that had nothing to do with my story. Even though my lens is shaped by and my brother was always like, OK, you can't have these head scratchers.
You have to take people on a narrative journey of the projects you're going to do. It's like, why are you doing that? You're not an expert in a certain...
Okay, Pete's not that harsh, but... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's what you hear from Pete, whether that's what he's saying or not. Yeah, no, no.
But he finally thinks I'm funny. It's a big win.
It is such a big win. 51 years later.
Yeah. Actually, I have John Oliver to thank for that.
He's like, well, John Oliver said you were funny. So he's a big fan of this show.
Hi, Mike. We're giving you a shout out.
I was going to be embarrassed. So with impeachment and having had a first look deal and focusing on other people's stories, but then with the contraction in Hollywood, it became difficult.
And as someone said to me, producing is an expensive habit. Like if you're not in a deal or independently wealthy.
So I love producing. I love storytelling.

It's rough.

It is.

It's hard.

It's hard.

I would apply the racing adage. That's my favorite, which is, you know, how to make a

small fortune in racing. Start with a large fortune.

Oh, yeah. Exactly.

Increasingly. That's good.
You want to make a small fortune? Want to become a millionaire as a producer? Start with a billion. Yeah, exactly.
Well, Monica, this has been a blast. Everyone should listen to Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky.
It's available absolutely everywhere. We're siblings under the wondery world.
So delighted to be with you. Thank you guys so much.
We love having you. Thank you.
Stay tuned for more armchair

expertise. So delighted to be with you.
Thank you guys so much. We love having you.
Thank you.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

At 24, I lost my narrative, or rather it was stolen from me.

And the Monica Lewinsky that my friends and family knew was usurped by false narratives,

callous jokes, and politics. I would define reclaiming as to take back what was yours.
Something you possess is lost or stolen, and ultimately you triumph in finding it again. So I think listeners can expect me to be chatting with folks, both recognizable and unrecognizable names, about the way that people have navigated roads to triumph.
My hope is that people will finish an episode of Reclaiming and feel like they filled their tank up. They connected with the people that I'm talking to and leave with maybe some nuggets that help them feel a little more hopeful.
Follow Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Reclaiming early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
What if your mind could trick your body into feeling sick? Or even worse? In Hysterical, I investigate the bizarre medical mystery that unfolds in a high school in upstate New York. It starts with one girl developing strange, violent symptoms, and then another, and then another.
Rumors begin to swirl. Is it something in the water, inside the school, or is it all in their heads? Hysterical is my search for answers, and along the way, I uncover surprising connections to unexplained incidents around the world.
Events that challenge everything we think we know about our bodies and our minds.

Named Podcast of the Year at the Gambies, Hysterical is a mind-bending, unforgettable ride.

Binge all episodes right now, exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Start your free trial of Wondery+, in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Stay tuned for the fact check so you can hear all the facts that were wrong. Hi.
Hi. Okay.
I've never met Aaron Weekly. Oh, hi.
But I heard he's the ultimate boy. He is so darn human.
I wish I were flawed like Mr. Weekly.
Oh, my God. This is a huge day.
Yeah. Aaron needs the robot.
He has a very cute smile. I wish they made robots with teeth.

Oh, yeah.

See, this is the thing about the robot.

He's very sad.

He has a cute smile, but it's no teeth.

Because he doesn't need to eat.

Yeah, exactly.

I run out of electricity.

If I correct you, get your energy from food.

Yeah, we do. Okay, well, Aaron's here Aaron's here Welcome Aaron Just fresh off the airplane You banged on the door I was down for like one minute Oh, so you're recovering still a little bit No, no, no I was like, if you give me five minutes, I'm going to nap Yes, any free five minutes I.
I heard you came in here at a certain time. I'm like, oh, I got at least an hour to nap.
Then we yanked you right out. Thank God.
I don't need a nap. I'm here to party.
You got adjusted to the time zone, man. That's true.
This was a very haphazard trip. We were talking on the phone yesterday.
And I just go, should you come out tomorrow morning and record some more of our podcast? Well, that's because we have to finish. I said, yeah, I was kind of just waiting to see, you know, what schedule is.
He goes, well, fuck, this week probably would have been good. And I'm like, it was a regret.
Start a regret. And then I said, wait a minute.
It's not too late. Okay late.
Okay. I have an exciting update for you.
But first I want to ask Aaron an important question. Oh, wonderful.
Okay. Would you rather eat someone's hair, skin, or spit? Skin.
Or fingernail. Skin? Yeah.
Oh, God. Not a.
Skin. Oh, yeah.
Fingernail we added in like. Skin.
Oh, I'd eat skin all day over fucking hair and spit. Okay.
And nails. Can you order it so skin easiest? Okay.
Skin. I'd be honored to eat some skin.

Don't you think the context is a little relevant?

Because it's really like, what one do you want in your food?

One of those items has to be in your food.

I said spit because you wouldn't know.

Okay, but if you would.

If you did know.

Yeah.

If you did know, I'd rather chew on someone's skin.

Ah!

Okay, well, let's be really specific.

Because I was just telling Monica all about Aaron Stinchcomb and the murder and all that. Yeah.
And there was a period, Monica, where he worked at Big Boys, the same one that Aaron and I worked at. Oh, girl.
You've heard our Big Boys stories. Oh, yeah.
Okay, so now here's your choice. You, shit comes making up mall.
No, say it normal. Oh, sorry.
When you're a murderer. I know, but he had a bad life.
You said the carpet. Yeah, there's a lot of burning carpet.
So Stinchcomb is making you a malt. Okay.
And you either see him spit in it really big or cut off the tip of his finger and put it in the malt. And a malt.
Yeah, I guess I'd have the. Or take a hair out of his head and put it in there.
Oh, fuck. His hair.
I think I'd have the spit and the malt. Really? And then skin? And then skin on any solid food.
Okay. So like a salad if it was in the mix.
I mean, preferably a hamburger or something. But yeah.
Right. Okay.
So it just felt like that. You don't get like that.
But yeah, salad. No, that's fine.

I would think it was, or pretend it was ham or something.

That ended up in your milkshake?

Ham.

It comes out sometimes.

Everything I eat is ham when I don't know what it is.

All I eat is ham.

Ew.

If I don't know what it is, I assume it's ham.

You should have saw him when he was younger. All he did was eat ham.
All right. All right.
So we got a. Well, that's fun because now we have three different things.
I said spit. He said skin.
You said hair. Yeah.
And I asked. Wobby, wobby or fingernails? No, skin.
He was skin. I asked Callie.
Oh, good. And she's the only other person who said hair like me.
Wow. I think because girls deal with so much hair all the time and it's on your brush and you're taking it out.
You have a much closer relationship with hair. Should we ask Kristen? Yeah.
Yeah, I want to ask her. She's not going to answer because she's baking.
You think she's a hair person? I hope.

Who do you think is a fingernail person?

I want to hang with that person.

Maybe Walt Goggins would like that.

That one came out because I, in the last episode, was picking at my fingernails, and then I was moving it around, and I dropped it.

And then I said, somebody is going to find this so—and many people, including you, I think is going to find this so disgusting. Hi.
Quick question, because we're polling everyone. You are either going to find in your food.
At a restaurant. At a restaurant.
A long. No, don't say long.
Just say normal. Hair.
Skin. Spit.
Or fingernails. Don't say fingernails.
Yes! Yes! Yes! That's a big victory for Monica. But by the way, I don't know why it's such a big victory because I agree that it's probably women feel fine with hair.
She said it so fast. She knew.
Hair, obviously. But mama, what about spit? You wouldn't know.
You just wouldn't know. You'd be eating and then someone go, someone spit in there and you go, oh, I didn't know.
Right, but you just, but I would know because you just told me. Yeah, exactly.
I would find it. Correct.
So if you're going to tell me after I ate, I spit in that, it's going to make me a little nosh. And here's the bacteria levels, and spit are super high.

Skin could have some sort of a fungus.

Fingernails are dirty.

People have stuff under them.

You scratch their asshole.

Yeah, hair generally.

You don't scratch your asshole with your hair.

Unless it's so long.

Sometimes I do see it with my hair.

Unless you're Rapunzel.

You know, a reasonable amount. Yeah.
Okay, that was the right. There's not bacteria on hair.
That was the right answer for your gender. I feel so vindicated.
What do you want in your food, Dax? Aaron wants skin because he'll pretend it's ham. And then I want spit because I wouldn't know.

But you would know. But I would know.

Someone would say, hey, there's spit in here.

Or they go, there's a hair in here or there's skin.

Yeah.

I probably would continue to eat if there's spit.

By the way, there's spit in all your food because people are talking in the kitchen,

coughing.

Well, maybe not all your food. Some of the food.
Kristen, don't you think you've eaten my hair? Oh, I know I have. Yeah.
Yeah. I said to know Monica is to have pulled her hair out of like your armpit randomly.
It's just on you. It's just always on you.
For sure. Okay, well, I appreciate you.
Yeah, thanks for answering. I know you got a busy cooking project going.
No problem. All right, love you.
I'll try to keep my spit hair, fingernails, and skin up. No, I'll put it all in there.
Throw it in. Make a salad tonight.
All right, I love you. Yeah, see, if it's Kristen's, I'll eat all of it.
Yeah. With a fork and knife.
Yeah. Sure.
And ask for a second. I'm sure, again, I'm sure I have.
Like, I'm sure I've eaten her hair. I've probably accidentally eaten a little bit of her fingernails.
That one feels the only one that feels dangerous because it could maybe cut your intestinal tract. Do you guys not bite your nails? I do.
I do. So you've eaten it.
Then I chew on the nail. Exactly.
And you're right. Sometimes I'm like, where is the nail? You ate it.
You ate it. Obviously.
Do you put it on a plate or something next to you? Oh. When you're biting them off? No.
Wait, you said you were moving them? Oh, yeah. She kept moving it all over the couch.
Oh, in here. Yeah.
Right.

She couldn't get comfortable where she was putting it to remember me.

Yes, yes.

The best case scenario, remembering it would throw it away.

That is right.

But every time she'd commit to a place, she'd be talking, then she'd realize, like, oh,

I'm going to forget about it there.

Yeah.

And then it'd bend up between her.

I put it in here on my computer.

Then it was getting a little lost.

I didn't like that, so I put it back up.

And then I did drop. It is lost.
Yeah. it went between your legs on the couch at some point i just am not that gross i mean obviously it's my own oh yeah i don't know one's no one's grossed out by their own oh my god when i tear uh like i tear my nails or not my my toenails yeah me too and um i wouldn't do this anywhere like I wouldn't do this at your house or in here

sure my toenails and stuff off. Yeah, me too.
And I wouldn't do this anywhere. Like, I wouldn't do this at your house or in here.
Sure. But at home, I tear it all apart and it just goes.
Everywhere. Oh, I want it to be away from me.
So when Ruthie gets so grossed out, because if you vacuum next to my bed it's like oh my god it's like you're like a bunch of nails seven year old boy oh I have a new one to add booger boogers last for me like I'd rather have everything above but booger.

You'd rather eat a fingernail over a booger?

Yes.

That's extreme.

I think I would, too.

Anyway, let's clean it up.

This is from Monica Lewinsky.

Okay, okay, okay.

But do you want to hear the thing I saved for you?

Yes.

Hi, Monica and Dax.

Love this episode so much.

I know Monica doesn't read the comments, but I was the person with the clipboard who recognized Monica and said I was a big fan. Just to hopefully quell any anxiety in the future, I wanted to say that no one is judging you for not stopping.
Baiting people with emotive causes, no matter how important, is manipulative and counterproductive. Our goal is never to make anyone feel bad.
It's great when people stop, but it's totally fine when they don't. We never know what each person is going through.
Also, I promise every person out there has received serious verbal abuse, LOL. So a sorry not today is perfect.
Most of us who do this job are starving artists. And while we love the causes we represent, it's not our end goal either.
Like you, we hope to not be harassing people on the street forever. You definitely didn't lose an arm, Cherry.
The interaction made my day. Aw, Tex.
Isn't that great? I feel so bad now. You feel worse because she was letting you know that it's okay.
But she's so nice. And she liked meeting you.
It was fine, despite the fact that you were running from her as fast as you could. She doesn't do her.
I know. Monica was going, oh, thank you.
Like, right? Yes. I didn't know how to handle it.
Yeah, you got overwhelmed. I understand.
That's such a nice person. Isn't it? The fact that she still listens is shocking.
Morning Morgantown is her handle. Morning Morgantown.
Shout out. Yeah.
Thank you for listening. Thank you for trying to make me feel better.
I was like, yeah, that's right. You leave your town and you come to LA and you don't know what to do and you just got to find something.
And I can imagine myself having the job when I first got here. Of course.
Yeah. I can put myself in her shoes very easily.
Me too. I did that.
Yeah. Like coming here and just like, God, how on earth do I make a living? Okay.
And some friend tells you, you know, you could be with a clipboard in front of Ralph's. Yeah.
Which is great because if you get hungry, it's directly behind you. Sure.
There's bathrooms. Sushi.
Sushi. Yeah.
Yeah, I just, she's a very nice person. Yeah, I was happy to read that.
And okay, what did she say you can say? Sorry. Sorry, not today.
She said sounds great. Yeah, but I'm not good at it.
I always fumble it. Yeah, you flubbed it twice.
Yeah. Can't you just.
Two for two on flubbing. Put an earpiece in or something.
Yeah, I i did think like that's a great i need headphones but i didn't it was too late you just go well when i've done it how long has she been in the er wait did they intubate have they intubate i mean if you hear someone's dealing with intubation on the phone you're not gonna think a dick. No, you're not.
Erin, I wish you would have come a couple days earlier because Lincoln had a spectacular birthday party on Sunday and it was volleyball themed. I saw the new rope.
Yeah. Yeah.
Right? Yellow rope. And I was like, oh, I was hoping there was a party coming up.
But I missed it. Yeah, we did four games.
It was so fun.

Did it look intriguing this time? No.

Nothing. But I was in the middle of so many

other conversations that had

piqued my interest much more.

What were the topics of those

conversations? So many. The peptides.

Oh, right.

It's always a combo here. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're asking her. Maybe Aaron feels like you do.
How do you feel about peptides, Aaron? My first thought is that I probably need a lot of peptides. Because they're not.
I want in on the peptides. I knew he wasn't going to be.
Why did you present it like that? You knew he would not be. No, I think it could easily go the other way.
Because that would be consistent with Aaron. Because your thing was like, why do we have to do all this shit? And now everyone does it.
I brought it up subtly to Ruthie, hoping that there'll be peptides in my house at some point. I really did.
I could see it going the other way where he'd be like, yeah, fucking you look how you look. That's also very Aaron.
Apparently not. Apparently not.
Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess someone's making peptides look good.
That would have been my guess. This is tricky because like.
Monica doesn't, she's kind of anti-peptides. I had a whole therapy session about it.
About peptides? Yes. About the fact that so many people around me are taking these peptides and there is something in my gut that tells me no to that.
Not to other people, but for me. Sure.
But it's hard when more and more and more people are doing it and they like it and everyone's yucking it up and loves all the new peptides yeah yeah there was a very funny moment when you brought up that conversation because there was an exchange back and forth where it was like all these numbers. Remember how funny that was?

It was so substance.

Are peptides, okay, even though I said that,

I don't think about them two seconds,

except for a month ago when I left here,

I told Ruthie, you know, they got peptides for,

or I say, you know, these guys are taking peptides

for this and that.

I don't even remember what it is now, but I'm like, might want to get in on that. But I, but that's it.
I don't know. Are they accessible? Where are they? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
You can go to a hormone doctor. But this all started because a woman in Germany took a peptide that brings out all the melanin in your skin.
And she has turned herself black. And she's moving to Africa because she says she identifies as black.
That's insane. It's crazy.
Yeah. It's offensive on a lot of levels.
That's what started the whole peptide conversation. The brain peptides.
Oh, yeah. That's what I was interested in.

What's that?

I think it's called dihexy or something.

And it's a peptide that, yeah, makes you think faster.

More sharp and such.

And I take it on days with interviews and research.

Oh, God.

Like, I need that.

Yeah, clear up some of the fog.

No, you don't.

Please? You've done a million interviews without peptides that have been great. Oh, yeah.
How do you know it's not actually making it worse? Haven't you realized how good it is? I'm going to have to rely on you to tell me. I've noticed for the last year that your interviews have been bad.
And then I'll go, oh, that's about the time I start. I don't think I haven't noticed anything better.
Yeah. I mean, I don't know.
Yeah, my memory is a little better. My word recall is a little sharper.
And I take it on research interview days. Does it work instantly? I don't even know.
I mean, truthfully, I'm not even sure if it works. Yeah, I don't know.
You don't feel any different. Nor do you like, you're on testosterone.
Yeah. It's not like you take a shot of testosterone and you're like, I feel.
Right. You don't feel anything.
Yeah. You just notice, oh, I've worked out more.
I've, you know, I've more engaged. Like retrospectively, you kind of notice this.
I was a little bit afraid. I have the implant now testosterone in my ass cheek.
So this is my second time. I just went in last week.
And, um. Oh yeah.
One time it looked like you got shot. It looked like my left butt cheek was going to fall right off of my body.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't, it like.

Bruised really bad.

Yeah, I like, I called up there and I was like, this is, I have pictures.

Yeah.

You know, I don't know what you put in me.

See?

But, of course, that was so long ago now.

Nice. I was gladly turned over and let him do it in my other butt cheek.
And this went out without a hitch yeah oh nice yeah um yeah so and they said my levels were so good that we don't have to check it for six months instead of four oh no that's how long it lasts it's anywhere from three to six oh weird you know i never know i I never know. I'm never convinced I have testosterone, even when I'm shooting at myself.
Yeah. Like, am I really putting testosterone in my body? Because I'm not feeling anything at all.
I'm still tired. Right.
I don't have a sex drive. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's not. Yeah, they're not magic cure-alls.
They're just like, it gets your levels to where they were when you were 30.

And when you were 30, you didn't, you weren't like, my God, I'm jumping over cars.

You just were how you were.

Yeah.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. But not the melanin.
That's not back to when you're 30. That's changing something fundamental about yourself.
Yeah, this kicked off a very fun debate. Yeah, I'm really against it.
Yeah, you're really against it.

And my counter was like, if you have a range of what your skin color is, like mine in the summer is. We all have a range.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you have a range of what your skin color is.
Me in the summer, I way prefer, right? I'm like six shades darker than I am in the wintertime. It's pretty dramatic.

I tan pretty well.

I way prefer to look that way.

I can look that way if I sit in the sun all day. But if I could take a peptide that I would look that exact shade that I naturally look anyways, without all the sun damage, it seems kind of crazy not to do that.
If you're just picking between hours in the sun versus this peptide for the same result. you don't have to pick that you could pick just living a normal life where sometimes you look tan and sometimes you don't like everyone has to deal with everyone has to deal with there are things i like about myself and there are things i don't and there are things that I like in the summer and things that I, whatever.

Like being able to have everything you want,

I think is bad.

Buddhism.

Sure.

I think if I could take a peptide for my skin right now.

Yeah, right.

Don't you want it in the summertime?

It's like transparency.

It's who you are, Aaron.

It's who you are.

No, this is him in the winter.

In April. Exactly.
In April. Correct.
It's who you are in April. So, you have to be who you are in April.
Well, thank you. Well, hold on.
Should they, do you have the same policy on whitening toothpaste? You have a range of what your teeth whiteness could be. You can use this product that'll make them the whitest they're possible.
Yeah. I think that's fine.
And I'm super supportive of that. I think that's fine.
I think whitening toothpaste is fine. I do think it's mostly accessible.
Whitening toothpaste. Right.
I think everyone can have whitening toothpaste. But now we're jumping topics.
No, it's all connected for me, though. It's like if you if you are able to make yourself perfect in quotes, perfect.
Well, I think that'd be a good distinction. I'm arguing to be the best version of yourself you can be.
You comb your hair, you cut your hair, you brush your teeth, you do all the things, you take care of your skin, you put moisturizer on, you're trying to be the very best version of yourself. And so my favorite version of myself is July.
Um, cause I think I look best tan and I can do that through sun damage, or I could do it through a peptide and get no sun damage. It seems preferable.
Okay. Now you're right about the fact that that I'm going to get sun damage anyways because I like to be outside and I'm going to be on a boat and ride motorcycles and hiking.
So in my case, it's kind of – I just think we need to – we have limits. Humans have limits on who they can be.
And I think that's okay to have limits. And I actually think it's – well, what we did talk about and what I did what came up in therapy which is I had to I've had a many many many long years worth of figuring out how to accept myself yeah and physical things that I don't like being different from everybody else.
I feel that for the most part, for the most part, it's pretty tenuous, but still I've achieved that. And I think it's an important part of being a person to accept yourself.

On the surface, that sounds correct. But I would argue we would draw a line in that statement somewhere.
We're all born looking a certain way. Yeah.
And there are things we like and things we don't like. And I think you got to just learn to accept that.
and we were at this birthday party

with all these children who I think are perfect. Oh, yeah, me too.
And the idea that they are going to go inject their bodies with things to change who they are is so sad to me. Yeah.
And I can see it in the children. We're the children.
I mean, we are them. We should just accept who we are.
Yeah, I just think it's a huge spectrum and it's not black or white. It's like we don't accept that our teeth are yellow.
We don't accept that we can't see right without glasses. There's tons of stuff.
We don't accept that our hair shouldn't be styled and conditioned and we don't accept that our skin makes enough moisture to look how we want and we put moisture on it. It's just like, you're just moving out the ring.
But my, my, my, my, my, what's that? We are. That's my whole point is what's the, when are you going to call it? What's the stopping point? Yeah.
Yeah. And so what I landed on in that conversation was, yeah, I felt awkward and had a big nose and was super skinny in high school.
And I learned to bet on my personality. And I did that.
I made that growth. And that is where my core self-esteem comes from.
Also, this is my one trip on planet earth. And I'm going to go as hard as I can on this trip.
I'm going to try to have the exact body I always wanted. And I'm going to try to, you know, I'm going to try to do everything on this one trip.
Aesthetically. In every single way, every conceivable way.
Travel to the whole place. Like, I'm going to devour the whole thing.
Sure, that's you. Yeah, yeah.
And you can do that. For me, it's just like, well, when are we going to stop? When everyone looks exactly the same? Like, what? By the way, I get it.
And I think what you're saying is totally valid. Anyway.
Well, what else? You're going to join us. I asked you this morning.
Oh, you are? Yeah. I am.
I'm excited. Yeah.
I'm going to come and deliver food. You guys deliver food.
Very exciting. Deliver some foodies.
I'm kind of scared. Well, you know what you should be scared about? It's pretty consistent.
You smell a lot of food and you get pretty hungry, but you're working. Yeah.
There's no time to. You can't eat on the job? Not time to pull over.
Go into their bags of food. Can we order our own food? That's what ends up happening is we get home so hungry and ready to order.
And then I spend way more than I have made times what was made oh wow yeah did you explain the to it already on the podcast what we're doing we did but you can do a little bit you did oh i just wondered yeah yeah i haven't no one mentioned it to me so i didn't hear yeah i have a i have a delivery account and i we turn it on and then we just start delivering food and we shoot the shit and then we ask some reader questions some moral dumbfounding questions and it's delightful it's delightful yeah and you're on a car ride you know what is interesting i think i might have already told you this i'm realizing now i don't know how it'll translate there's such a specific way people communicate in a car and I'm really seeing it now that I'm editing it. Yeah.
When you talk in a car, you really talk because they're up front. Oh, interesting.
There's kind of a cool openness because you're not looking eye to eye with anyone. There's some weird outcome of not staring at each other while you're talking which is it's just different and

interesting cool it's so car talk like as soon as you're hearing it you're like yeah that's a road trip with friends or that's driving to go get food with friends that's what it sounds it just has a very specific sound that's fun yeah i like i'm excited i like that um i just remembered part of why I don't.

Like peptides?

Yeah.

Okay.

Or what part of what's

bottom. I just remembered part of why I don't.
Like peptides?

Yeah.

Okay.

Or part of what's bothering me. Yeah.
It's obvious it's about me. Sure.
All things that bother us are about us. I feel like I'm scared that nothing is real.
Like that there's nothing basic that we can all touch down on anymore as real as reality just like i mean in the news in personal life in everything it's like is there anything we could all agree on yeah and it's starting to feel less and less and less so and that scares me uh-huh it makes sense it's weird if i were you i might feel like fuck you white people you already hit the lottery and now you want more oh that is for a hundred percent part of it too like when when I'm thinking specifically about some of the people, I'm like.

Now you want my skin tone?

Exactly. Literally.
It's like, oh, you're you.

Have been happy to be superior to this your whole life, but so you're going to but you're going to pick and choose the things you like about these differences and and take them on.

But you're not really different you're going to pick and choose the things you like about these differences and and take them on.

But you're not really different. So you don't have to deal with the negative side of it, but you get the positive.
Well, that's specifically with making yourself black. Skin, skin color.
Yes, that's a big thing. Like, oh, I like the way it looks, but I don't want to be like marginalized.
I would have liked to have been lighter and, and I couldn't do that. Right.
So there's a part of me that's like, so you guys can't do that. It's not fair.
It's just not fair. For me, the ethical line in the sand is if you're going past what you just naturally look like, that's dicey.

So you can get August tan.

Exactly.

Nothing more.

Like you could just decide to go to a tanning booth.

No one would be mad about someone going to a tanning booth.

Yeah, that's true.

But that feels temporary.

So is this peptide.

It doesn't permanently turn you.

So she has to do that? Oh, she's on a horse dose of that thing. Forever? Yeah.
Until she decides she wants to be white again. Yeah, exactly.
Which will probably be soon. Exactly.
Yeah, yeah. There she is, Erin.
There she is. Oh, God.
I know. Can you fucking believe that? Also, she has like triple H titties, like fake.
So this notion that she's like on the Savannah trying to be Maasai, and she has these enormous boltons. It's just wild.
Wait. Okay.
And I know I'm behind. I have so many questions.
Yeah. Her hair.
I know, that's what I said. The hair is very confusing.
Now, if there were a peptide that I could take, that would be thick, thick hair, I would do it in a second. You don't get to.
Or do I? Maybe I will. I'm already putting a topical on to try to keep it as thick as possible, And that's not a problem.
It seems like the difference is like whether it's external or internal is like the tipping point. That is a difference for me.
I don't know why. Yeah.
Well, I mean, it is changing like cellularly, which I think is bad or unfair. Yeah.
Just, yeah. I don't think there's much going on with this talk outside of Los Angeles right now.
Okay, that's a good question I have. I'm joking.
Yeah, maybe this is like And when I say that, I just mean in Michigan. Yeah, I am curious about that.
Well, no, this is likely a conversation that will be happening in the rest of the country and in a couple years just like every other thing that starts here minimally we would agree these are really kind of arbitrary lines we draw everywhere i draw them too they are i draw them too like yeah i think me going and getting facial reconstructive surgery and a different getting brad pitt's nose and stuff for me for whatever, that is a betrayal of who I was born to be. And then taking testosterone and eating lots of protein and working out.
That's not to me. And it's just, I decided that.
Right. You know? Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Like I, I want Brad Pitt's body and fight club and I'm, I'm happy to go pursue it in any way I can.
And I would not be happy trying to pursue his face in any way I could. and that's just so interesting you wouldn't well maybe you would you wouldn't like go go go go go go go go go

go

go

go

go

go

go

go

go happy to go pursue it in any way I can. And I would not be happy trying to pursue his face in any way I could.
Well, you're not trying to pursue it. Well, maybe you would.
You wouldn't like go get surgery. If there was a surgery, I wouldn't get it.
I wouldn't get like calf implants. Exactly.
Yeah. So right.
There's some weird line where my muscles also have to be real. Yeah.
It's all so arbitrary. It is.
It is. It is.
But it's just feeling like there's really just shaky ground everywhere and I just don't know what I just need to be what I need to do is just get very clear with myself what matters to me like it doesn't whatever everyone else does is what everyone else does. That's fine.
But I just need to like sit with what I. And by the way, this is the tip of the iceberg.
Like this is what's going to happen in cascade fashion over our lifetime. Yeah, I know.
Like the stuff's coming out hourly. Yeah.
What? They can do that? What? They brought back the fucking? They brought back dire wolves today. I don't know if you saw that in the news.
From Game of Thrones? Yes. What do you mean? Those wolves that are referenced in Game of Thrones, they got DNA off something and they've brought them back.
They're real? Big ass wolves. Oh my God.
Yeah. I mean, they're not going to be...
Yeah, but again,'s like, then what are we going to do? Bring back a dinosaur? I hope so too. Yes.
You guys are not. I want a baby one for my room.
Anything from any movie. What kind do you want in your room? I want a baby dinosaur.
Is that it? Is that it? Yeah. Oh.
Have you ever heard Aaron say that? That is a cute. Yeah, I have.
He does it so good.

We do want Aaron.

You want to do it?

Yeah.

Let I do it.

It's like a synthesizer's in his throat.

Okay.

Monica Lewinsky.

Monica Lewinsky facts.

Okay.

What does it mean for Mercury to be in retrograde?

In astrology, Mercury in retrograde means the planet Mercury appears to move backward in the sky from Earth's perspective.

And astrologers believe this period can lead to miscommunications, travel delays, and other challenges related to Mercury's domains of communication, travel, and technology.

During a Mercury retrograde period, astrologers believe that communication can become more challenging.

Oh, I already said that. um that's um proof of it we are probably in retrograde right now because it goes into retrograde roughly every 30 days and each retrograde cycle lasts for about three weeks so there we have very few days where we're not in retrograde, it seems, which I don't understand that part.

It seems like it'd have to be exactly 50-50.

It's going to approach the exact same amount of time it retreats.

Yeah, I don't get it.

I don't get it either.

But astrology doesn't make sense.

So that's why it's consistent with astrology a little bit.

Sure.

That makes me think Erin's daughter's born on leap year. Oh, that's so rare.
She's only four years old. Oh, no, she's not four yet.
Oh, she's not. Yeah.
She's driving, but she's not four yet. She's, yeah.
What is that on her license? Four. But they let her drive.
Oh, my God. For her picture.
So cute. She's not four not four.
She used to hate that when she was young, but she has embraced it fully and loves, you know. Yeah, I would feel very robbed that two years in a row, your birthday doesn't even pop up on the calendar.
I know, but you're so unique. Yeah, she's embraced the uniqueness.
It used to be, though, because she's the baby. And so they're like, you're one.
You would make her say. You know, like, that's all you got to say is you're one.
And they can say it for four years to you that you're one. So, yeah.
That's tough. She would cry and hated being one.
Oh, yeah.

But, yeah.

It's going to really work in her favor the older she gets.

She's going to be 16 when she's 80. Yeah, when she's 50.

How have you liked your new tattoo?

Oh, I love it.

Oh, good.

Yeah.

Yeah, good.

Because it was a last minute decision.

It was.

I mean, why the hell not? Yes. I'm very excited that you and I got matching tattoos.
Me too. I've said, I've told a lot of people, just too cute.
Just too cute. When we're together, it's just two cuties.
Just two cuties. That's what it stands for.
Does anyone think it has to do with Jesus Christ not yet but it can in the right company it means what would it mean Jesus to Christ Jesus to Christ I love Jesus twice the second coming of the second coming. Oh, that's.
Yeah, it's the sequel of JC. Oh, God.
JC too. So you're, oh my God, it's claiming that you yourself are the second coming.
No, just you're declaring, I can't wait for the second coming. Oh, I see.
Okay. Okay.
Number of married people in the United States in the 80s versus now.

In 2023, there were 62.18 million married couples in the United States.

This is an increase from 40.2 million married couples in 1960.

While the number of married couples in the U.S. has increased in the past few decades,

this could very well be just due to a population change.

Since the U.S. population has been increasing, the marriage rate has decreased significantly since 1990.
In addition, the divorce rate has almost halved since 1990. Oh! That's kind of good news.
So less people are getting married, but more people are staying married. Yeah.
Higher percentage are staying married. I guess that's a silver lining.
Despite concerns that more people are getting divorced than in years past. Okay.
Now, did Molly Ringwald marry a Beastie Boy? No. Did you think that? No.
Okay. Okay.
Not Mandela effect. Correct.
The Menendez brothers, Eric's 54, Lyle's 57, Monica's 51. So she never, never She missed high school with Lyle But was there for With Eric A year or two Monica Lewinsky went to High school with the Menendez brothers Wow Isn't that right there? That's how Stinchcomb came up Yeah Because I was like Can you imagine going to high school With that circus going on? Because he was still a The younger brother brother was still in high school, right? Yeah.
I think. Oh, yeah.
Crazy. Scary.
Well, that's it for Miss Monica. Do you think Hermione hangs out with Monica Lewinsky? I hate to say this because I really do like Miss Lewinsky.
But I prefer my mom, Monica Padman. Oh, thank you.
Yeah. She's a very good mom.
I do care deeply for him. Even though he's an old man.
That's okay. Everything's always okay.
Sometimes I don't know when he's here and when he's left, you know. He's always here.
Yeah, he's always here. I very rarely leave my apartment.
When you find a place you like where I'm at in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, USA, you stick around.

Yeah.

All right.

That's it for Monica.

All right.

Love you.

Love you, Aaron.

Love yous. Thank you.
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