Monica Lewinsky Returns

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Speaker 1 Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dak Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Lily Padman.

Speaker 2 And it's important that you make that clear today.

Speaker 1 Because there's two Monicas here today.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 On a second trip. Yes.
Monica Lewinsky.

Speaker 2 Welcome back, Monica Lewinsky.

Speaker 1 Yes, this was 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.

Speaker 1 It's about reclaiming your identity.

Speaker 2 Yes. Obviously, she has had a very unique life.
Yeah. And she's generous in talking about it, which is, which is really nice and helpful.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 2 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 think, I think it's going to hit with some people, and I hope it does.

Speaker 2 And I, uh, BTS, we were in some emails after, um, and Emma was talking to her team, and they were like, it's so confusing. Between the monicas, yeah, so they had to start referring to it as my monica.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 I like that, my monica. Yeah.
Please enjoy not our Monica, Lewinsky.

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Speaker 1 He's an all-transfer.

Speaker 1 He's an all-transfer.

Speaker 1 He's an all-transfer.

Speaker 2 Rob found that. I didn't even know about it.
And apparently I was in the dark. People made fun of it.

Speaker 1 But you love it, right? I love it. Immediately.
Yeah, you and Rob could have some weird male-female home goods store that would service both ends of that. Home goods.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. Thank you.

Speaker 3 You're so short in this.

Speaker 2 It's a little sick.

Speaker 1 You know what's nice is the complaints are universal. They're not consistent.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And again, it's not like everyone's like, it's too deep or it's too shallow or it's too, it's just for you now, it's too short. Or I'm too short.
I think it is.

Speaker 2 I think people sink in it a little bit.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.
How are you doing? Good.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 3 And I also keep thinking there's an earthquake happening today.

Speaker 1 What is that about? Is there? No. Like, you have a premonition or you're feeling? No, no.

Speaker 3 It was like three times today. I sort of was, oh, was that an earthquake?

Speaker 1 Okay, so a little on edge, maybe.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 Anxious.

Speaker 1 Is that it? You think? Okay. Would it comfort you at all to know that I too don't feel energized in the way?

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Me either.

Speaker 1 Actually.

Speaker 3 Maybe it's some weird thing with the moon.

Speaker 1 Oh, I have a lot of people.

Speaker 2 I feel like March has a lot of astrological issues.

Speaker 1 Oh, tell us about them, please.

Speaker 2 A couple retrogrades. Some other

Speaker 2 things.

Speaker 3 Mercury's in retrograde, which makes sense that here I am coming back to the podcast. Why are you circling all the way back?

Speaker 1 What do I have?

Speaker 1 I have hair. Oh,

Speaker 1 they're so precious. I'm fighting so hard for every one of them.

Speaker 1 Do you have, let me start there, or of the same age?

Speaker 3 When's your birthday?

Speaker 1 January 2nd. I just turned 50.

Speaker 3 Oh, no, no, I'm older.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're like a year and a half old. Okay.
Get over it. But congratulations.
Oh, thank you. All right.

Speaker 1 Really well played.

Speaker 3 Did you buy a jumpsuit on your 50th birthday?

Speaker 1 I already owned like six. I had a whole jumpsuit phase like two years ago.

Speaker 2 It was a good phase.

Speaker 1 But I guess what I'm asking is, 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 3 I think sometimes the old

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 So, I think I had one of those this morning: huh?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Probably not the thing to talk about.

Speaker 1 Intimate,

Speaker 1 probably.

Speaker 3 It was an overshare, and I felt really comfortable with the person, which was nice.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Clearly, there's something that I need to deal with about this whole thing. I know it sounds super cryptic.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 One is you go ahead and be you and you're going to weed out whoever that's not the right fit for them.

Speaker 3 Because that served me really well from 50 to 15 years.

Speaker 1 Well, that's what I was going to say.

Speaker 3 51 and a half years.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I think the people I'm weeding out are the people who are probably better matches for me. And I'm probably attracting like-minded, hyper-explosive, overly intimate very quick.

Speaker 1 And you got to figure out which side of the line you're on.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Right. And so you just keep trying to chip away and move towards something.
And they're just those moments where you go, okay,

Speaker 2 I'm not there yet. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I agree that we all think we are, but do you think it's an illusion of self-awareness?

Speaker 3 Huh. Let's ignore on that.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 3 We're going to show off for a second. Yeah.
Do it.

Speaker 3 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. Come on.
That's a win.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If the self-awareness weren't real, you wouldn't.

Speaker 1 have these activities

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you do. I don't think this is binary.
I don't think it's like, you're right. I don't think it's binary.

Speaker 1 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 the spectrum there.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's interesting. I don't know why this is what comes up, but I remember when I was.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's a great question for your podcast. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because I had the very, very stark example of listening to me argue with Kristen. Yes, in your early.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 because of Linda Tripp taping me for 20 hours. And then I had to authenticate the tape.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so I had to sit in the independent counsel's office listening. It was awful.
Oh my God, hold on.

Speaker 1 One second. One second, one second.
That's torture. No, no, it was.

Speaker 3 That's what they should have in Guatanamo.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 The things I would say with Aaron and I at a table, there's no way I wouldn't be. I I go to make it through 20 minutes of chatting.
Oh, no. It was so awful.

Speaker 3 Whoa. If you were asked to recall a conversation, you would probably not remember all the likes, the ums.

Speaker 3 You would try to remember the smart erudite things you said.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Incredible point you made, our 10.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 You would come to terms at least with, that's how my voice sounds, right? You'd already crossed that. Oh, no, no, okay.

Speaker 3 It was just pushed down on the list of awful things. There's that where it's just like,

Speaker 3 my voice, my voice, my voice. Yeah.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 What if I'm actually not as interesting as I think I am?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 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 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

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 step away from it.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 I think of the ethics all the time that you have to have.

Speaker 1 When you're editing arguments between us, you have so much integrity because to keep in a great point that someone, your adversary, can quote, made, it's got to be hard.

Speaker 1 And not adding lots of ums. Yeah, you're just taking this drag of all the ums.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Yes. And he is doing the thing I'm saying he's doing, but I know it's not addited to the show.
It's not good. It's going to make people mad.
And I have to cut it.

Speaker 2 But there's so many times that I leave it. I'm like, I'm keeping that in.

Speaker 3 I'm not killing this darling.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But it would be really hard. Forget whether or not I could pull it off.
It would just be like, fuck, okay.

Speaker 2 Also, I think in some ways it's bad for us because this happened recently. We had a couple people on the show that I have very different opinions with.

Speaker 3 Wait, can you say who? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Andrew Schultz, who came out today. It was a great episode.
I was very happy with it.

Speaker 1 Comedian, right?

Speaker 2 Comedian. And then someone we haven't had on yet, so I'm not going to say who.

Speaker 1 Adoff Hitler.

Speaker 1 We have slightly different views. Slightly.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Vladimir Putin.

Speaker 2 You know, 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.

Speaker 1 Loaded for bare one month. Yes, because

Speaker 2 I was in this other zone. And then he just wants to talk about regular stuff.

Speaker 1 I'm like, no, men are a problem.

Speaker 2 And he's like, why are you saying this? And it's because I've just been in this mindset.

Speaker 1 It's really hard to compartmentalize.

Speaker 3 And it's in your ear. You're listening.
Yes. Did you have a background in storytelling that led you to the editing part?

Speaker 2 Emma, one of our producers, she gave me a really good compliment the other day because I love writing and I write a lot.

Speaker 3 I'm a great writer. Because Monica is too.
I'm just kidding. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Both Monica's in the room.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And she gets a cleanup of it. So she sees it.
She's like, you're doing that. You're creating a story.

Speaker 1 And 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.

Speaker 1 But no one should ever feel bad for us. We have literally the nicest job on the planet earth.

Speaker 1 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 up.

Speaker 1 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. Yeah.
And it is this kind of funny.

Speaker 1 I guess it's great, actually. It keeps life

Speaker 1 novel, which is we're always in some weird cloud of whatever the guests were.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 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 and done.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 How could you not ask that question?

Speaker 3 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, I know.

Speaker 1 I'm so glad you're laughing at me.

Speaker 2 No, it's such an insular weird thing.

Speaker 3 It is.

Speaker 1 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 trip tapes.
Uh-huh. I like you.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 So it's like those little nudges you have to give yourself, those come easy or hard for you.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 They feel protected. Exactly.

Speaker 3 I don't want to trigger anybody. I don't want someone to be upset.
So I think it's probably that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And then still, because I just did my 12th interview, that's still kind of new. I'm definitely present.

Speaker 3 I'm definitely having conversations that are interesting to me and exciting to me, but I still feel like I could be more present.

Speaker 1 Not as worried about that thing you're creating.

Speaker 3 Right. Or trusting myself too.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And so, my assumption has been I can sit down and have a conversation with anyone and it'll flow out. It's not something that

Speaker 3 takes trusting yourself

Speaker 1 with this experience, I think, as you just get more and more confident. Oh, the thing will happen.
It always happens. As I keep staring at your 500 million streams,

Speaker 3 yeah, turn that around.

Speaker 1 Come on. Yeah, that was a movie podcaster.

Speaker 1 The brag.

Speaker 3 But that's amazing.

Speaker 1 But back to the thing of asking the follow-up question.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 And if I have a lot of faith in the the fact that that piece of information will just make you love the person even more, then I don't mind kind of

Speaker 3 ask me something so that people love me more to actually.

Speaker 1 Oh, it'll happen.

Speaker 2 Actually, haven't you felt that over time, just you, the more people have gotten to know you.

Speaker 1 You're pretty universally.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I've only heard amazing things about you.
Obviously, we think that too.

Speaker 1 As much as people hate that couch is how much people all love you. It's like kind of universal.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And I'm so, so grateful.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you said turning 40 was absolutely miserable. Yeah.
But turning 50 was fine.

Speaker 3 It was great, actually. I had a lot of acceptance.

Speaker 1 You were kind of in a coma for a decade, right? And then 40 to 50, you came out.

Speaker 3 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 that.
What's resonance work?

Speaker 3 It's like sound-based, but vibration and resonance works.

Speaker 2 Like EMDR?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And so my whole goal in that was bifurcated into two things. One being being seen from my true self, and the other was, it sounds so corny, but it's just leading or coming from compassion.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right, right.

Speaker 3 And my story is such a collective story. And so when people would have compassion for what happened to me, that compassion would radiate.

Speaker 1 Okay. So I think if we plotted your experience with fame, it might be the most extreme that we've ever had that I can think of.

Speaker 3 Probably.

Speaker 1 Total pariah of a whole country to a lessening degree globally. Two, I really think, pretty universally loved.
I think when people see or hear your name, they have a good feeling.

Speaker 2 And guilt. I think everyone also has a collective feel of guilt.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Like, ugh.
Yeah. But I guess from your perspective on the inside inside of that, to have been on both ends of the dynamic extreme, how do you trust either end of it?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Or it could.

Speaker 3 And there is panic of that.

Speaker 1 For you, I'm imagining reality itself is a little harder than it is for the average bearer because it's been so extreme in both sides.

Speaker 3 100%. 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 I wasn't different, but the world was different.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 It's asymmetric, yeah. Right.

Speaker 3 There are trappings that can come with it. And usually it's the positive side, you have a lot of resources and help, and the negative is you lose your anonymity and privacy.

Speaker 2 Did you have resentment when that power shift happened? When you were invited into the rooms? Were you like, uh, yeah, I've been here the whole time and now you're letting me in.

Speaker 3 Maybe 20%. I think just having experienced the depths of sadness and lack of purpose.

Speaker 1 Hopelessness.

Speaker 3 Yeah, hopelessness. All of those things.

Speaker 1 What the fuck am I going to do for a living? Yeah. How am I going to everyday die?

Speaker 3 I think that 80% was just the gratitude of that and 20%.

Speaker 3 But to that point, it's why I really dislike the word reinvention.

Speaker 3 Like, oh, you reinvented yourself. I think, no, there was nothing wrong with me.

Speaker 3 I evolved, I matured, the world changed, but that reinvention seems to imply what was there before needed to be changed.

Speaker 1 Okay, so the. 10 years, really, I would argue, longer, 16 years, from 98 to 2014.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 3 In some ways, yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Not that you're immature, but I was just like, oh, you're not your age.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 He was like, well, the decade where I should have been meeting somebody and having those kinds of things.

Speaker 3 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 a relationship. And I had lost that also.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Like it stops.

Speaker 3 Exactly. Sort of frozen in amber in one of those moments.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 and this pattern I'm in always results in this.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 That's a big person that does that.

Speaker 3 That's true.

Speaker 1 Can I ask, and is long distance more appealing to you?

Speaker 3 No, but I'm an anxious attacher.

Speaker 1 What's that mean? Tell me the symptoms of anxious attachment.

Speaker 3 Let me open Instagram and find a meme that tells you the things where I take every fucking box and

Speaker 3 I'll never go on a date again after this airs.

Speaker 1 No, I'm just kidding. No, you go on a date with the right person after that.
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 What are the characteristics of being an anxious attacher is you need reassurance. You always think people are mad at you.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And you start the process to go, okay, has this gotten better? And so that I think can be complicated too, because you may not know where you are.

Speaker 1 Also hard to evaluate because the nature of a relationship is it's incredibly powerful and dynamic at the beginning.

Speaker 1 And then you're trading different hormones for here and now hormones and you're trying to evaluate that versus is this getting boring or is it getting more stable?

Speaker 3 I don't know that I have been

Speaker 3 the love of someone's life yet.

Speaker 1 Romantically.

Speaker 3 And so that feels sad to me.

Speaker 2 I can relate to that.

Speaker 1 Now, what would happen if on your deathbed, a genie came down and went, Monica,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 3 I mean, I know my parents.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I mean,

Speaker 3 let me say this. I think that I have historically liked complicated men and usually an anxious attacher likes an avoidant.

Speaker 1 Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 So it wouldn't totally surprise me if that happened because I would probably go, see, I knew it. I knew they really really loved me.
I knew I really mattered. But I guess where my head went was

Speaker 3 when situationship became a word. I was like, oh, I've had a lot of situationships.

Speaker 1 You said that in an interview I just read, and then I didn't know what situation was.

Speaker 3 Really?

Speaker 2 It's like a half-relationship.

Speaker 1 Right. It's sort of an involvement.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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:

Speaker 3 the guy who takes her to dinner, the guy she's fucking, and the guy she likes. And so, like, that's the way to kind of keep the keep it in balance.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 3 I think that I've loved a lot of people.

Speaker 2 You think you have had a love of your life, potentially, or some.

Speaker 3 Well, that's interesting.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Right.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 to figure out.

Speaker 1 Yeah, clawing your way out of this enormous hole you were put in. That takes a lot of energy and focus and attention.
It does.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And so it's the combination of emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy

Speaker 3 that's a little tricky for me.

Speaker 1 And I think increasingly society is evolving. The number of married people in Manhattan in the 80s versus now is one-third of what it was.

Speaker 1 And I do think there'll be less shame surrounding whatever version of you meeting your needs is.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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 the society of spectrum in so many ways.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 You're a married.

Speaker 3 Gay or straight. And we're moving into a world that's more nuanced while the chasm between groups is even bigger and worse.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more armchair experts,

Speaker 1 if you dare.

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Speaker 2 Do you watch Severance?

Speaker 3 I do.

Speaker 1 I'm not caught up on it. I'm not saying.

Speaker 3 Okay, sorry. I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 And There is 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.

Speaker 2 But there is 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.

Speaker 1 That's never a great sentence.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 2 I'll just say without. giving too much away, there's two people who were in love in

Speaker 1 their innies are in love.

Speaker 2 Their innies are in love okay and then their outies have found each other but one's married yeah

Speaker 2 they're talking and the one who's not married says i've never been in love not really

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 3 Oh, God.

Speaker 1 So many. They're well documented.
So many.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 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 an Indian. Oh.

Speaker 1 He said her parents were at Dairy Queen, but that was code for Indian. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah. And they don't.

Speaker 2 Yeah. He said, I would, but.
And so it was early days like, oh, I'm unlovable. It has nothing to do with anything I can control here.

Speaker 1 Skin bleaching? Did you not think that? Well, I looked into all of that for sure.

Speaker 2 You should have seen me on the beach just covered in towels.

Speaker 2 So that got set early on and then was confirmed in quotes a few more times where it was like, yeah, okay, so that's that. I'm not going to have that.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 And I'll add a particularly cruel twist is this pattern also is anyone that likes her.

Speaker 2 They're problematic now.

Speaker 1 So when people do like her, something's wrong with them, obviously. Because she's already accepted no one likes her.
That's immovable.

Speaker 1 So if no one likes her and someone likes her, what the fuck is wrong with this dude?

Speaker 2 There must be a catch. There must be something.
It's like, there's always like a there must be.

Speaker 1 Isn't it maddening? Especially when you love somebody.

Speaker 3 I'm like, where's my magic wand?

Speaker 2 I know, but that's how I feel. I can see it in other people.
It's so common.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 And so so I think there's this fear of, oh, see, you were all right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course.
So you have so much deep stuff. I know.

Speaker 3 Top that off with whatever childhood shit I had, too. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And so when we talk about reclaiming, the premise of reclaiming, right, is something you've lost or was taken that you get back.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Or is there time to jettison the thing we thought we needed and accept what is and then build something new?

Speaker 3 To me, the building something new is a reclaiming.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 you either try getting that very same thing back or you're finding something else that then fits that slot.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 Oh, we would be fun in a car together. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 I will yell fuck face.

Speaker 3 But before I then also flick the person off, if I stop myself from doing that, I've reclaimed my calm.

Speaker 1 I like that.

Speaker 3 It's kind of an ethos. It's like mindfulness.
It just kind of blankets all of our lives in different ways.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 Well, we love stories. Yeah.
You're doing a show with Amanda Knox? Yes.

Speaker 3 Where are you guys at in that? We are going to finish shooting in two weeks. Oh, really?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Is it here in LA? Overseas.
Is it in Italy?

Speaker 3 We did shoot some in Italy.

Speaker 1 Is that hard for her to go back there?

Speaker 3 She did not go back for that portion, but she has been back. She is a brave soul.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 3 I will definitely have her on the podcast when the show is coming out.

Speaker 1 Yeah. How did you come to meet her?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 This was the woman who got on the plane.

Speaker 1 Oh, and when she landed, she was fired. Jonathan Hyde just shot him.

Speaker 1 She just came up on an episode. Yeah.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But then we actually met. We were both speaking at the same event and it was her first speaking event.

Speaker 1 Okay. How many do you do a year?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And I think I was tired. I love doing it.
I really like talking to young people too. That feels really meaningful to me.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 You're lean on it.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 What is the damage of just not being able to put that away forever? And that's got to be really hard.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I think those are the differences.

Speaker 1 But even within that, 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.

Speaker 1 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 other domains, people are going like, enough.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But my therapist who's a trauma psychiatrist, she'll say the echo gets quieter, but it's always there. And so there is that element too of how am I protecting myself and my own mental health.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And yet when I came out of graduate school, I couldn't get a fucking job.

Speaker 2 They're telling you to move on, but no one else has moved on. Exactly.

Speaker 1 Okay, I always bring it back to this because I just found it to be very powerful.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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, very simple.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 in that way, where are you going? 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.

Speaker 1 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 is the hand I was dealt.
I'm now this way. I don't have to fix it all.

Speaker 1 And do you have acceptance of whatever things grew out of that?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 Right. Okay.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 happy with who I am and very comfortable with who I am.

Speaker 3 And it's like you no longer, I mean, people don't buy CDs anymore, but you no longer go out and buy the C D's that the guy you like, you know, likes. It's no longer that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, in the past, you would have been trying to figure out what music this guy likes.

Speaker 3 Or, oh, you surf, I surf.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 3 I think I was always like that. Also growing up at a time

Speaker 3 where

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 Or I remember hearing in class once that they were like, well, they used to call women going to college was getting an MRS degree.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, I've heard that.

Speaker 3 Underneath it all is the message, who you are and how you are right now is not enough and not okay.

Speaker 1 Eventually you'll attach yourself to something with substance. That'll be a man and a husband.
And then you'll have an identity.

Speaker 3 Right. And then you'll be a mother for Gen X.

Speaker 1 Are you Gen X moment?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I was like, your baby. 37.

Speaker 3 You're Gen X. Right.
Right. Cause you're, yeah.

Speaker 1 Sorry, Dax.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Sometimes when I'm feeling anxious, I send an extra text to start with not making it worse on myself.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 1 totally yeah 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 were 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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 her generation.

Speaker 3 As a woman, I think it was an objectification

Speaker 3 that then had things projected onto it.

Speaker 1 He created a movie version of Molly Ringwald that became an identity that probably wasn't Molly Ringwald's identity.

Speaker 1 There's probably a chasm of how he saw her and portrayed her in all these projects that wasn't her.

Speaker 3 That would have been a good question for me to ask.

Speaker 1 Well, that may be for him. Well, he passed away.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we'd have to have ghost podcasts. We have to find a medium.

Speaker 1 Oh my God, that's a funny, stupid show where we have a full medium and we interview dead people. That would be

Speaker 1 kind of like an improvisation.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we just interviewed Michael Lewis.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he's brilliant.

Speaker 1 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 or something.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So yeah, that kind of stuff would probably come out.

Speaker 3 I just think it would be interesting.

Speaker 1 So what was Molly's version of that experience?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 I don't think that she was. Dating to Mary.
Okay. I stayed in the middle.

Speaker 2 We'll catch it later.

Speaker 1 I just remember thinking, this is ideal.

Speaker 3 I feel like I should know that.

Speaker 1 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, but I was sitting next to her and I was so excited.

Speaker 1 I was with Kristen. So I was like, this is safe because I'm with

Speaker 1 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.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's just an awkward question. What is she supposed to say? There was no answer she could give.

Speaker 1 I didn't think that part of it through, but I am still fascinated by that's a very interesting way to go through life. How did she reclaim?

Speaker 3 Her paris years she moved to paris to really find out who she was as a non-famous exactly which is incredibly brave beanie we've had on and we love beanie

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. Go ahead.
You must be experiencing this in a very exaggerated and compounded way. The impermanence of everything is so fascinating.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yes, and no.
Because you meet tons of people that literally, Clinton is a dude from their history book.

Speaker 1 That's all.

Speaker 3 Okay, so I have this weird cultural relevance because I'm a lyric in fucking rap songs.

Speaker 1 Which rap song? I've heard you say that.

Speaker 3 Which one? Over 125.

Speaker 3 What?

Speaker 1 Yes. Oh, oh my god

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 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 shepherd fairy yeah it was his gallery and some eight-year-old kid came up to me and knew my history.

Speaker 3 Wow. The whole thing was weird to me because I'm like, you're eight.
You shouldn't know anything

Speaker 3 about me.

Speaker 3 I mean, I joke a lot about people used to say, no offense, do you know who you look like?

Speaker 3 And now

Speaker 3 it's the TED Talk or anti-bullying work.

Speaker 1 Leno's got a great story about this. He's doing a live stand-up show in Vegas and he's just fucking around before his set.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He's like, where 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.

Speaker 2 Isn't that wild?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's like, oh yeah, I'm just now transitioning to that thing where I'm not really relevant in these young people's life.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 Driving yourself, yourself.

Speaker 3 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 is lighter.

Speaker 3 I don't get recognized, which is really nice. Yes.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 We're just here for a minute and that's it.

Speaker 3 In this dimension.

Speaker 1 Many of the statue will come down at some point.

Speaker 3 Okay, wait, what's this spray stuff? I'm just curious. Oh, interesting.

Speaker 1 It's a pure delivery system for nicotine.

Speaker 2 Okay. No bullshit.

Speaker 1 It's not just nicotine instead of liquid. Whole family's addicted to it.
Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Were you ever a smoker? Social smoker.

Speaker 3 I usually have a cigarette on election night every four years.

Speaker 1 Okay. You should maybe try that, Monica.

Speaker 2 If I was going to do it, yeah, that would be the time.

Speaker 1 All right, I just have one salacious question for you. Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 Hold on. Let me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, get your salacious armor on. Exactly.
The Menendez brothers. You went to school with them?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 Oh, both of you.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 We had the same call time.

Speaker 3 Not call time.

Speaker 1 Audition time.

Speaker 1 Right, exactly. So the older brother was gone before you got to school.

Speaker 3 I think so. I don't remember their age differences.

Speaker 2 So it happened while you were in school?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 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 ship.

Speaker 3 Yeah. But I think, again, it's interesting.
It's one of those stories.

Speaker 1 It's like yours where you go back and watch it and you go, oh, I see it completely differently. Wow.

Speaker 3 Exactly. Whatever society ends up deeming as the right thing to happen for them is fine by me.

Speaker 3 I hope if they do get re-sentenced 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,

Speaker 3 because I think that's the majority of people. Otherwise, it just bothers me that it's sort of the attractive white boys.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I have been known to send emails that are like, here's a short version, here's a long version.

Speaker 1 You choose which one you want

Speaker 3 because I will always go with the long version, but some people like the short version.

Speaker 2 A lot of people do.

Speaker 1 Well, I'm glad you're doing reclaiming because you're built to talk. You were a great, great guest the first time and you were a great guest the second time.

Speaker 1 And if any of us can figure out how to shoot the shit for a living, fucking what a win.

Speaker 2 And also, we talked so much about your growth, but obviously, even when were you on? When was it? Was it 2018?

Speaker 1 It was earlier.

Speaker 3 I think it was 2019, but it was pre-pandemic.

Speaker 2 It was pre-pandemic but you feel so different to me oh really

Speaker 1 oh good

Speaker 3 yeah yeah yeah you weren't 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, okay, you can't have these head scratchers.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 Okay, he's not that harsh, but you know, that's what you hear from me.

Speaker 1 That's what he's saying. Yeah, no, no.

Speaker 3 But he finally thinks I'm funny.

Speaker 1 It's a big win.

Speaker 3 It is such a big win.

Speaker 1 51 years later. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Actually, I have John Oliver to think for the, he's like, well, John Oliver said you're funny. So

Speaker 3 he's a big fan of this show. Hi, Mike.
We're giving you a shout out.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And as someone said to me, producing is an expensive habit. Like if you're not in a deal or independently wealthy.

Speaker 3 So I love producing. I love storytelling.
It's rough.

Speaker 1 It is. It's hard.
It is 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,

Speaker 1 exactly. Increasingly, as long as you want to make a small fortune, want to become a millionaire as a producer? Start with a billion.

Speaker 1 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 Wondry World.

Speaker 1 So delighted to be with you.

Speaker 3 Thank you guys so much.

Speaker 2 We love having you.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more Armchair armchair expert.

Speaker 1 If you dare,

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Speaker 1 stay tuned for the fact check so you can hear all the facts that were wrong

Speaker 1 hi hi

Speaker 1 Okay, I've never met Aaron Weakly.

Speaker 1 How hi. I heard he's the ultimate boy.

Speaker 1 He is so darn human.

Speaker 1 I wish I were flawed like Mr.

Speaker 2 Weekly.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 This is a huge day. Yeah.
Aaron

Speaker 1 is a robot.

Speaker 1 He has a very cute smile.

Speaker 1 I wish they made robots with teeth.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. See, this is the thing about the robot.
He's very sad.

Speaker 1 He has a cute smile. He has a cute smile.
But it's no teeth. No teeth.

Speaker 1 He doesn't, because he doesn't need to eat.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 I run out of electricity.

Speaker 1 If I'm correct, you get your energy from food.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we do.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, Aaron's here.

Speaker 1 Aaron's here. Welcome, Aaron.

Speaker 1 Just fresh off the airplane. You banged on the door.

Speaker 1 I was down for like one minute. Uh-oh, so you're recovering still a little bit.
No, no, no.

Speaker 1 I was like, if you give me five minutes, I'm going to nap. Yes.

Speaker 1 Any free five minutes. I heard you came in here at a certain time.
I'm like, oh, I got at least an hour.

Speaker 2 And then we yanked you right out.

Speaker 1 Thank God. I don't need a nap.
I'm here to party. You digested the time zone, man.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 This was a very haphazard trip. We're talking on the phone yesterday.

Speaker 1 And I just go,

Speaker 1 should you come out tomorrow morning and

Speaker 1 record some more of our podcast? Well, Dex, because

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 it was a regret. Started with regret.
And then, wait a minute, it's not too late. Okay, are you? I have an exciting update for you.

Speaker 2 But first, I want to ask Aaron an important question.

Speaker 1 Oh, wonderful. Okay.

Speaker 2 Would you rather eat

Speaker 2 someone's hair,

Speaker 2 skin, or spit?

Speaker 1 Skin. Or fingernail.
Skin? Yeah. That's right.
Oh, God. Not a fingernail.
No.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Fingernail we added in like...

Speaker 1 Skin. Oh, I'd eat skin all day over fucking hair and spit.
Okay, well,

Speaker 1 and nails.

Speaker 1 Can you order it?

Speaker 2 So skin eats.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I said spit because you wouldn't know.

Speaker 1 Okay, but if you wouldn't. If you did know.
Yeah. If you did know, I'd rather chew on someone's skin.
Oh!

Speaker 1 Okay, well, let's be really specific because I was just telling Monica all about Aaron Sinchcomb and the murder and all that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And there was a period, Monica, where he worked at Big Boys, the same one that Aaron and I worked at. Oh, sure.
You've heard our Big Boy story. Oh, yeah.
Okay, so now here's your choice. You

Speaker 1 shit comes making a maul. Don't say it.

Speaker 2 Oh, sorry.

Speaker 1 When you're a murderer?

Speaker 2 I know, but he had a bad life.

Speaker 1 You said the carpet. Yeah, there was a lot of burning carpet.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 Stingcomb 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. In a malt? Yeah, I guess I'd have to.

Speaker 1 Or take a hair out and beside it and put it in the balt. Fuck.
I think I'd have the spit and the malt. and the malt really and then skin and then skin on any solid food

Speaker 1 Okay, it's like a salad if it was in the mix. I mean, preferably a hamburger or something, but yeah.

Speaker 1 So it just felt like

Speaker 1 yeah, salad. No, that's fine.
I would think it was or I pretend it was ham or something. That ended up in your milkshake? Ham.

Speaker 1 It comes out sometimes. Everything I eat is ham.

Speaker 1 All I eat is ham.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 So we got a... Well, that's fun because now we have three different things.
I said spit, he said skin. You said hair.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And I asked Cobb.

Speaker 1 Wabby, Wabby were fingernails. No, it was skin.
No.

Speaker 2 He was skin. I asked Callie.
Oh, good. And she's the only other person who said hair like me.

Speaker 1 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 and the whole thing.
You have have a much closer relationship with hair.

Speaker 2 Should we ask Kristen?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, I want to ask her. She's not going to answer because she's basically a hair person.

Speaker 1 I hope.

Speaker 1 Who do you think is a fingernail person? I want me. I want to hang with that.

Speaker 1 Maybe Walton Goggins would like that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this came out because I, in the last episode, was picking at my fingernails and then I was like moving it around and I dropped it.

Speaker 2 And then I thought, I said, somebody is going to find this so, and many people, including you, I think, is going to find this so disgusting uh hi

Speaker 1 quick question

Speaker 1 because we're polling everyone you you are either gonna find in your food at a restaurant at a restaurant a long no don't say long

Speaker 2 just just say normal uh hair

Speaker 1 skin

Speaker 1 spit or fingernails

Speaker 1 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 agreed that it's probably women feel

Speaker 1 fine with hair.

Speaker 2 So she said it so fast. She knew.
Hair, obviously.

Speaker 1 But mama, such a handful to me.

Speaker 1 You wouldn't know. You just wouldn't know.
You'd be eating and then you'd someone go, someone spit in there and you go, oh, I didn't know.

Speaker 3 But I would know because you just told me. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 You find it.

Speaker 3 Correct.

Speaker 5 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 in spit are super high.
Skin could have some sort of a fungus.

Speaker 5 Fingernails are dirty.

Speaker 1 People have stuff under them.

Speaker 1 Hair.

Speaker 2 Yeah, hair generally, you don't scratch your asshole with your hair.

Speaker 5 Unless you're asshole.

Speaker 1 And generally,

Speaker 2 sometimes your eyes do shit.

Speaker 1 Unless you're rubbed.

Speaker 2 You know, a reasonable amount.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay, that was the right answer.

Speaker 5 But there's not bacteria on hair.

Speaker 1 That was the right answer for your gender.

Speaker 2 I feel so vindicated.

Speaker 5 What do you want in your food, Dax?

Speaker 1 Aaron wants skin because he'll pretend it's ham.

Speaker 1 And then I want spit because I wouldn't know.

Speaker 2 But you would know. But I would know.

Speaker 1 Someone would say, hey, there's spit in here.

Speaker 1 Or they go, there's a hair in here.

Speaker 1 Or there's skin. Yeah.

Speaker 1 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 and

Speaker 1 coughing.

Speaker 1 Well, maybe not all your food.

Speaker 1 Some of the food. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Kristen, don't you think you've eaten my hair?

Speaker 1 Oh, I know I have. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
I said to know Monica is to have pulled her hair out of like your armpit randomly and thought, how the fuck? It's just on you. It's just always on you.
For sure.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, I appreciate you. Yeah, thanks for answering.
I know you got a busy cooking project going.

Speaker 1 No problem. All right.
Love you.

Speaker 5 I'll try to keep my spit hair, fingernails, and skin out of the colour.

Speaker 1 I'll put it all in there. Throw it in.
Make a salad.

Speaker 1 All right. I love you.

Speaker 2 Yeah. See, if it's Kristen's, I'll eat all of it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. With a fork and knife.
Yeah. Sure.
And asked for a second.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 that one feels the only one that feels dangerous because it could maybe cut your intestinal tract.

Speaker 2 Do you guys not bite your nails? I do.

Speaker 1 I do. I've eaten it.
Then I chew on the nail. and you're right sometimes it goes i'm like where is the nail you ate it you ate it do you put it you put it on a plate or something next to you

Speaker 1 oh

Speaker 1 when you're biting them off no

Speaker 1 wait you said you're moving them oh yeah it was she kept moving it all over the camera oh and here yeah right she like couldn't get comfortable where she was putting it to remember me i'm

Speaker 1 best case scenario remembering would throw it away but every time she'd commit to a place she'd be talking then she'd realize like oh i'm gonna forget about it there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then it bined up between.

Speaker 2 I put it in here and my computer,

Speaker 2 but then it was getting a little lost, and I didn't like that. So I put it back up.
And then I did drop it is lost.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it went between your legs on the couch at some point.

Speaker 2 I just am not that gross. I mean, obviously, it's my own.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, I don't care.

Speaker 2 No one's grossed out by their own.

Speaker 1 Oh my God. When I tear,

Speaker 1 like, I tear my nails or not my toenails. Yeah, me too.
And

Speaker 1 I wouldn't do this anywhere. Like, I wouldn't do this at your house or in here.

Speaker 1 But at home,

Speaker 1 I tear it all apart and it just goes where,

Speaker 1 oh, I want it to be away from me.

Speaker 1 So when Ruthie gets so gross out, because like if you vacuum next to my bed, it's like,

Speaker 1 oh, and it's like fix up a bunch of nails. Seven-year-old boy.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, Oh, I have a new one to add.

Speaker 1 Booger.

Speaker 2 Boogers last for me. Like,

Speaker 2 I'd rather have everything above Booger.

Speaker 1 You'd rather eat a fingernail over a booger? Yes.

Speaker 1 That's extreme. I think I would too.

Speaker 2 Anyway, let's clean it up. This is from Monk Lewinsky.

Speaker 1 Okay, okay, okay.

Speaker 1 But do you want to hear the thing I saved for you? Yes. Hi, Monica and Dax.
Love this episode so much.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Just to hopefully quell any anxiety in the future, I wanted to say that no one is judging you for not stopping.

Speaker 1 Baiting people with a motive causes, no matter how important, is manipulative and counterproductive. Our goal is never to make anyone feel bad.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Like you, we hope to not be harassing people on the street forever. You definitely didn't lose an armchair.
The interaction made my day.

Speaker 1 Isn't that great?

Speaker 1 I feel so bad now. You feel worse because she was letting you know

Speaker 1 that it's okay.

Speaker 1 And you didn't lose.

Speaker 1 And she liked meeting you. It was fine, despite the fact that you were running from her as fast as she was.
She doesn't know.

Speaker 1 I know. Monica's going, oh, so, oh, thank you.
Like, right? You're. Yes.

Speaker 1 Didn't know how to handle it. You got overwhelmed.

Speaker 2 I understand.

Speaker 2 That's such a nice person. The fact that

Speaker 2 she still listens is

Speaker 1 Morning Morgan Town is her handle. Morning Morgan Town.

Speaker 1 Shout out. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Thank you for listening. Thank you for trying to make me feel better.

Speaker 1 I was like, yeah, that's right. You leave your town and you come to LA and

Speaker 1 you don't know what to do and you just got to find something.

Speaker 1 And I can imagine myself having the job when I first got here. Yeah.
I can put myself in her shoes very easily.

Speaker 2 Me too. I do.

Speaker 1 Yeah. 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.

Speaker 1 Which is great because if you get hungry, it's directly behind you. Sure.
There's bathrooms.

Speaker 2 Sushi.

Speaker 1 Sushi. Sushi.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 yeah, I just,

Speaker 2 she's a very nice person.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was happy to read that. And okay, what did she say you can say?

Speaker 1 Sorry,

Speaker 1 not today. She said sounds great.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I'm not good at it. I always fumble.

Speaker 1 I flubbed it twice. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Can't you just two for two on flubbing?

Speaker 1 Put an earpiece in or something.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I know. I did think

Speaker 2 I didn't need headphones, but I didn't. It was too late.

Speaker 1 Can't you just go?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 how long has she been in the ER?

Speaker 1 Wait.

Speaker 2 Did they intubate?

Speaker 1 Have they intubate? I mean, if you hear someone's dealing with intubation on the phone, you're not going to think they're a dick. No, you're not.

Speaker 1 Aaron, 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.
Bright yellow rope.

Speaker 1 And I was like, oh, I was hoping there was a party coming,

Speaker 1 but I missed it, huh? Yeah, we did four games.

Speaker 1 It was so fun. Did it look intriguing intriguing this time? No.
Nothing.

Speaker 2 But I was in the middle of so many other conversations.

Speaker 1 Well, you were.

Speaker 2 My interest much more.

Speaker 1 What were the topics of those conversations?

Speaker 2 So many. The peptides.

Speaker 1 Oh, right.

Speaker 1 That's always a combo here. Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Asking Aaron. Maybe Aaron feels like you do.

Speaker 2 How do you feel about peptides?

Speaker 1 Aaron?

Speaker 1 My first thought is that

Speaker 1 I probably need a lot of peptides.

Speaker 1 I want an animal. I knew he wasn't going to be.

Speaker 2 Why did you present it like that? You knew he would not be.

Speaker 1 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? Like, now everyone has to do it.

Speaker 1 I brought it out subtly to Ruthie, hoping that there'll be peptides in my house at some point.

Speaker 1 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 errone.

Speaker 2 Apparently, not apparently not.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, I mean, I've guessed someone's making peptides.
That would have been my guess.

Speaker 2 This is tricky because, like,

Speaker 1 Monica doesn't, she's kind of

Speaker 2 therapy session about it.

Speaker 1 About peptides.

Speaker 2 Yes. About the fact that so many people around me

Speaker 2 are taking these peptides, and there is something

Speaker 2 in gut that tells me

Speaker 2 no to that not to other people but for me sure

Speaker 2 and so but it's hard when more and more and more people are doing it

Speaker 1 and they like stand close and everyone's yucking it up and loves all the new peptides

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 2 it was so substance.

Speaker 1 Are peptides?

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 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 a, or I say, you know, these guys are taking peptides for this and that.

Speaker 1 I don't even remember what it is now, but I'm like,

Speaker 1 might want to get in on that.

Speaker 1 But that's it. I don't know.
Are they accessible? Where are they? Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 you can go to a hormone doctor.

Speaker 1 Most of them can prescribe you them.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And she's moving to Africa because she says she identifies as black. That's insane.

Speaker 1 It's crazy. Yeah.
It's offensive on a lot of levels. That's what started the whole peptide conversation.

Speaker 1 The brain peptides. Oh, that's what I was interested in.

Speaker 2 What's that?

Speaker 1 I think it's called dihexy or something. And it's a peptide that,

Speaker 1 yeah, makes you think faster. More sharp and

Speaker 1 such.

Speaker 1 And I take it on days with interviews and research. Oh, God.
Like, I need that. Yeah, clear ups.
How do you

Speaker 2 know you don't? Please. You've done a million interviews without peptides that have been great.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 How do you know it's not actually making it worse?

Speaker 1 Haven't you realized how I'm going to have to rely on you to tell you? I haven't noticed for the last year that your interviews have been bad.

Speaker 1 And then I'll go, oh, that's about the test.

Speaker 2 I don't think I haven't noticed anything better.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, my memory is a little better. My recall, my word recall is a little sharper.

Speaker 1 And I take it on research interview days.

Speaker 1 And not. Does it work instantly? I don't even know that.

Speaker 1 I mean, truthfully, I'm not even sure if it works.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't don't know.

Speaker 1 You don't feel any different.

Speaker 1 Nor do you like, you don't, you're on testosterone. Yeah.
It's not like you take a shot of testosterone. You're like, I feel.
Right. You don't feel anything.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You just notice, oh, I've worked out more. I've, you know, I've, I've more engaged.
Like retrospectively, you kind of notice this. I was a little bit afraid.
I have the implant now, testosterone

Speaker 1 in my ass cheek. So this is my second time.
I just went in last week.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You know, I don't know what you put in me.

Speaker 1 See?

Speaker 1 But of course, that was so long ago now.

Speaker 1 I was gladly turned over and let him do it in my other butt cheek. And this one went off without a hitch.
Yeah. Oh, wow.
Nice. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, and they said my levels were so good that we don't have to check it for six months or something instead of four. Oh, wow.
That's how long it lasts? It's anywhere from three to six. Oh, weird.

Speaker 1 You know, 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?

Speaker 1 Because I'm not.

Speaker 1 You're not using it anymore. Yeah, I'm still tired.

Speaker 1 I don't have a sex drive. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's not.

Speaker 1 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 feel, you weren't like, my God, I'm jumping over cars.

Speaker 1 You just were how you were. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

Speaker 1 If you dare.

Speaker 1 A Diamond is Forever. Here on the show, we talk to guests about their past, where they are today, and what they want for the future.
And it kind of makes you realize you're never really done, are you?

Speaker 1 You're constantly changing, shedding old versions of yourself to reveal someone stronger, smarter, funnier, even. Although my kids might argue that.

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Speaker 2 But not the melanin. That's not back to when you're 30.
That's changing something fundamental about you.

Speaker 1 This, yeah, this kicked off in

Speaker 1 a very fun debate.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm really against.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're really against it.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I way prefer to look that way. I can look that way if I sit in the sun all day.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 If you're just picking between hours in the sun versus this peptide,

Speaker 2 you're not picking that. 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

Speaker 2 i would look tan 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.

Speaker 1 I think if I could take a peptide from my skin right now. Yeah, right? Don't you want it? This isn't the summertime.
Make transparency. Aaron tan's really hard.

Speaker 2 Aaron, it's who you are

Speaker 1 in april

Speaker 2 in april correct it's who you are in april

Speaker 1 you have to be who you are in april well hold on should they should do you have the same policy on whitening toothpaste

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 2 and i'm that's fine super supportive of that i think that's fine i think whitening toothpaste is fine I do think it's mostly accessible.

Speaker 2 Whitening toothpaste.

Speaker 2 I think everyone can have whitening toothpaste.

Speaker 1 But now we're jumping topics.

Speaker 2 No, it's all connected for me, though. It's like, if you, if you are able to make yourself perfect in quotes, perfect.

Speaker 1 Well, I think that'd be a good distinction. I'm arguing to be the best version of yourself you can be.

Speaker 1 You comb your hair, you cut your hair, you brush your teeth, you do all the the things, you take care of your skin, you put moisturizer on. You're trying to be the very best version of yourself.

Speaker 1 And so my favorite version of myself is July,

Speaker 1 because I think I look best tan.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 No, you're right about the fact 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 my.

Speaker 2 I just think we need to, we, we have limits,

Speaker 2 humans have limits on who they

Speaker 2 can be.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 I had to,

Speaker 2 I've had a many, many, many

Speaker 1 long

Speaker 2 years worth of figuring out how to accept myself

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I think it's

Speaker 2 an important part of being a person to accept yourself.

Speaker 1 On the surface, that sounds correct.

Speaker 2 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 gotta just learn to accept that and and you know another we were we were at this birthday party with all these children who i think are perfect oh yeah me too and

Speaker 2 the idea that they are going to go inject their bodies with things to change who they are is so sad to me.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I can see it in the children. We're the children.
I mean, that's we are them. We should just accept who we are.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's just like, you're just moving out the ring. But my, my,

Speaker 1 my, what's that? We are.

Speaker 2 That's my whole point. Is what's the, when are you going to get it?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 always wanted.
And I'm gonna try to, you know, I'm gonna try to do everything on this one trip.

Speaker 2 Aesthetically.

Speaker 1 In every single way, every conceivable way. Travel to the whole place.
Like I'm gonna devour the whole place.

Speaker 2 Sure, that's you. Yeah, yeah.
And you, you can do that. For me, it's just like, well, what's when are we gonna stop? When everyone looks exactly the same?

Speaker 1 Like what? By the way, I get it. And I think what you're saying is totally valid.

Speaker 2 Anyway, well, what else?

Speaker 1 You're gonna join us. I asked you this morning.
Oh, you are.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I am.
I'm excited. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I'm going to come and

Speaker 1 deliver food. You guys deliver some

Speaker 1 food.

Speaker 2 I'm scared.

Speaker 1 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 not time to stay.

Speaker 2 You can't eat on the job.

Speaker 1 Not time to pull over. Go into their bags of food.

Speaker 2 Can we order our own food?

Speaker 1 That's what ends up happening is we get home so hungry and ready to order. And then I spend way more than I've 40 times what was made.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. Yeah.
Did you explain to it already on the podcast

Speaker 1 what we're doing? We did, but you can do it. A little bit.
You did. Oh, I just wondered.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 No one mentioned it to me, so I didn't hear.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I have a delivery account, and 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 dumbfoning questions and

Speaker 1 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 interesting when you talk in a car you really talk because it's there up front oh interesting there's um there's kind of a cool openness because you're not looking eye to eye with anyone there's some there's some weird outcome of not staring at each other while you're talking.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 That's what it sounds like. It just has a very specific sound.
That's fun. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I like, I'm excited.

Speaker 1 I like that. I'm excited.

Speaker 2 I just remembered part of why I don't.

Speaker 1 Like peptide? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Or what part of what's bothering me

Speaker 2 is obviously it's about me. Sure.

Speaker 1 All things that bother us are about us.

Speaker 2 I feel like I'm scared that nothing

Speaker 2 is real. Like that, that nothing, there's nothing

Speaker 2 basic that we can all touch down on anymore

Speaker 2 as real, as reality. Just like.

Speaker 2 I mean, in the news, in personal life, in everything, it's like, is there anything we could all agree on?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it's starting to feel less and less and less so. And that scares me.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh. It makes sense.

Speaker 2 It's weird.

Speaker 1 If I were you, I might feel like,

Speaker 1 fuck you, white people. You already hit the lottery and now you want more.

Speaker 2 Oh, that is for 100% part of it, too. Like when I'm thinking specifically about some of the people, I'm like, now you want money?

Speaker 1 You're going to exactly.

Speaker 2 Literally, it's like, oh, you're, you

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 take them on. But you're not really different.

Speaker 2 So you don't have to deal with the negative side of it, but you get the positive.

Speaker 1 Well, that's specifically with making yourself black.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I couldn't do that. Right.
So there's a part of me that's like, so you guys can't do that.

Speaker 1 It's not fair.

Speaker 2 It's just not fair.

Speaker 1 For me, the ethical line in the sand is

Speaker 1 if you're going past what you just naturally look like, there's that's dicey. So you can get August 10.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Exactly.
Nothing. Like what you really, like you could just decide to go to to a tanning booth.
No one would be mad about someone going to a tanning booth.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's true. But that feels temporary.
That doesn't.

Speaker 1 Well, so is this

Speaker 1 peptide. It doesn't permanently turn you.

Speaker 2 So she has to do that?

Speaker 1 Oh, she's on a horse dose of that thing.

Speaker 2 Forever. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Until she decides she wants to be white again. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Which will probably be soon. Exactly.
Yeah, yeah. There she is, Eric.
There she is. Oh, gosh.
I know.

Speaker 1 Can you fucking believe that? Also, she has like triple H titties. Like,

Speaker 1 so this notion that she's like on the savanna trying to be Maasai and she has these enormous bolt-tons.

Speaker 1 It's just wild.

Speaker 1 Wait. Okay.

Speaker 1 And I know I'm behind. I have so many questions.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 her hair. I know that.
Right, the hair is very confusing. Now, if there were a peptide that I could take that would make thick,

Speaker 1 thick hair, I would do it in a second.

Speaker 2 You don't get to.

Speaker 1 Or do I. Maybe I will.

Speaker 1 I'm already putting a topical on to try to keep it as thick as possible. And that's not a problem.

Speaker 1 It seems like the difference is like whether it's external or internal is like the that is a difference for me.

Speaker 2 I don't know why.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, it is changed. It is changing like cellularly, which I think is bad or unfair.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Just,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't think there's much going on with this talk outside of,

Speaker 1 okay, that's a good question I have. Yeah, maybe this is like.

Speaker 1 And when I say that, I just mean in Michigan.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I would

Speaker 1 talk about it.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 reason

Speaker 1 that is a betrayal of who i was born to be

Speaker 1 and then taking testosterone and eating lots of protein and working out that's not to me right and it's just i decided that right you know yeah exactly yeah like i i want brad pitt's body in fight club and i'm i'm happy to go pursue it in any way i can.

Speaker 1 And I would not be happy trying to pursue his face in any way I could. Well, you can't.
It's just so interesting.

Speaker 2 You wouldn't, well, maybe you would. You wouldn't like go get surgery.
If there was a surgery, I wouldn't get it.

Speaker 1 No, I wouldn't get like calf implants.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Yeah.
So, right. There's some weird line where my muscles also have to be real.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's all so arbitrary. It is.
It is. It is.

Speaker 2 But it's just feeling like there's really just shaky ground everywhere.

Speaker 2 And I just don't know what's going on.

Speaker 2 I just need to be, what I need to do is just get very clear with myself of what matters to me. Like it doesn't, I,

Speaker 2 whatever everyone else does is what everyone else does. That's fine.
But I, I just need to like

Speaker 2 sit with what I.

Speaker 1 And by the way, this is the tip of the iceberg. Like this is what's going to happen in cascade fashion

Speaker 1 over then our lifetime. Yeah, I know.
Like this stuff's coming out hourly. Yeah.
Like, what? They can do that? What? They brought back the fucking, they brought back dire wolves today.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you saw that in the news.

Speaker 2 From Game of Thrones? Yes.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I mean, they're not going to be.

Speaker 2 And then again, it's like, then what are we going to do? Bring back a dinosaur? I hope.

Speaker 1 I hope so. No.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 I want a baby one from my room. from any movie what kind do you want your i want a baby

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 oh

Speaker 2 have you ever heard aaron say that he is a cute uh yeah i have he does it so great we do one aaron you want to do it yeah

Speaker 1 synthesizers in his throat okay

Speaker 2 Monica Lewinsky.

Speaker 1 Monica Lewinsky facts. Okay.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And astrologers believe this period can lead to miscommunications, travel delays, and other challenges related to Mercury's domains of communication, travel, and technology.

Speaker 2 During a Mercury retrograde period, astrologers believe that communication can become more challenging.

Speaker 2 Oh, I already said that. Sorry.

Speaker 1 That's proof of it.

Speaker 2 We are probably in retrograde now because it goes into retrograde roughly every 30 days, and each retrograde cycle lasts for about three weeks.

Speaker 2 So we have very few days where we're not in retrograde, it seems.

Speaker 2 Which I don't understand that part.

Speaker 1 It seems like it'd have to be exactly 50-50.

Speaker 1 It's going to approach as the exact same amount of time it retreats.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't get it.

Speaker 1 I don't get it either. But astrology doesn't make sense.
So that's why it's consistent with astrology a a little bit. Sure.
That brings, that makes me think, Aaron's daughter's born on leap year.

Speaker 2 Oh, she's only

Speaker 1 four years old. Oh, no, she's not four yet.
Oh, she's not.

Speaker 1 She's driving, but she's not four.

Speaker 1 Well, what is that on her license for?

Speaker 1 But they let her drive. Oh, it's a rattle for her picture.

Speaker 2 So cute.

Speaker 1 She's not

Speaker 1 four.

Speaker 1 Oh, she used to hate that when she was young, but she has embraced it fully and loves, you know, every case.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I would feel very robbed that two years in a row, your birthday doesn't even pop up on the calendar.

Speaker 2 You're so unique.

Speaker 1 Yeah, she's embraced the uniqueness.

Speaker 1 It used to be, though, because she's the baby. And so they're like, you're one.
Yeah. And you would make her.
You know, like, that's all you got to say is you're one.

Speaker 1 And they can say it for four years to you that you're one.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 yeah. So

Speaker 1 that's tough. tough.
She would cry and hated being one. Oh, yeah.
But yeah.

Speaker 2 It's going to really work in her favor the older she gets. She's going to be 16.

Speaker 1 Yeah. She's 80.

Speaker 1 How have you liked your new tattoo? Oh, I love it. Oh, good.
Yeah. Yeah, good.

Speaker 1 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 a matching tattoo.
Me too. I've said, I've told a lot of people, just too cute.

Speaker 1 Just too cute. When we're together, it's just too cuties.

Speaker 1 Just too cuties.

Speaker 1 That's what it stands for.

Speaker 2 Does anyone think it has to do with Jesus Christ?

Speaker 1 Not yet. Okay.

Speaker 1 But it can in the right company. It means.
Doesn't. Right.

Speaker 1 What would it mean? Jesus to Christ.

Speaker 2 Jesus to Christ.

Speaker 1 Yeah, too.

Speaker 1 I love Jesus twice as much. The second coming of Christ.
Second coming. It's all about the second coming.
Oh, that's. Yeah, it's the sequel of JC.

Speaker 1 JC2.

Speaker 2 So you're, oh my God, it's claiming that you yourself are the second coming.

Speaker 1 No, just you're declaring I can't wait for the.

Speaker 1 Oh, I see. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Number of married people

Speaker 2 in the United States in the 80s versus now.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 In addition, the divorce rate has almost halved since 1990.

Speaker 1 Oh!

Speaker 1 That's kind of good news. So less people are getting married, but more people are staying married.
Yeah. A higher percentage are staying married.
I guess that's that silver lining.

Speaker 2 Despite concerns that more people are getting divorced than in years past. Okay.
Now, did Molly Ringwall marry a beastie boy? No.

Speaker 1 Did you think that? No. Okay.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 Not Mandela effect. Correct.

Speaker 2 The Menendez brothers,

Speaker 2 Eric's 54, Lyle's 57. Monica's 51.
So she never...

Speaker 2 She missed high school with Lyle.

Speaker 1 But was there for

Speaker 2 Monica Lewinsky went to high school with the Menendez brothers?

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 that's how Stinchcombe came up. Yeah.
Because I was like, can you imagine going to high school with that circus going on? Because he was still, the younger brother was still in high school, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I think.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Crazy.

Speaker 2 Scary. Well, that's it for Miss Monica.

Speaker 1 Oh, do you think Hermium

Speaker 2 hangs out with Monica Lewinsky?

Speaker 1 I hate to say this because I really do like Miss Lewinsky, but I prefer my mom, Monica Pasman. Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1 She's a very good mom.

Speaker 1 I do care deeply for him.

Speaker 2 Even though he's an old man, I think.

Speaker 1 That's okay.

Speaker 1 Everything's always on.

Speaker 2 I don't know when he's here and when he's left.

Speaker 1 He's always

Speaker 1 here. I very rarely leave my apartment.

Speaker 1 When you find a place you like where I'm at in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, USA,

Speaker 1 you stick around.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 All right. That's it for Monica.

Speaker 1 All right. Love you.
Love you, Aaron. Love you.

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Speaker 4 Hey there, Armchairies. Guess what?

Speaker 1 It's Mel Robbins.

Speaker 4 I'm popping in here taking out my own ad. Holy cow, Dax, Monica, and I, I don't want this conversation to end and I'm so glad you're here with us.

Speaker 4 And the other thing, I can't believe, Dax loves the let them theory. He can't stop talking about it.
I hope you're loving listening as much as I love having you here.

Speaker 4 And I also know since you love listening to Armchair Expert, you know what you're going to love listening to?

Speaker 1 The Let Them Theory audiobook.

Speaker 4 And guess who reads it?

Speaker 1 Me.

Speaker 4 And even if you've read the book, guess what? The audiobook is different. I tell different stories.
I riff. I cry.
You're going to love it because it's going to feel like I'm right there next to you.

Speaker 4 We're in this together as we learn to stop controlling other people.

Speaker 4 So thanks again for listening to this episode of Armchair Expert and check out the audiobook version of the Let Them Theory, read by yours truly, available now on Audible.

Speaker 4 You can even try it out for free with an Audible trial.

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