David Sedaris #5

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now.

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts,

or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert.

I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Sticky Brain.

Sticky Brain.

My new nickname.

Your new moniker.

Heavyweight champion. Oof.
Returning number five. Yeah.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. David Sedaris.
My God, I couldn't love someone more. Our most frequented guest.
Yeah. What an honor to have him as our most frequented guest.
Oh, my God. If I had to pick a most frequented, a tie between him and Malcolm Gladwell.
Yeah, we got some good ones. We got a couple of good repeat offenders.
Sedaris is a humorist, a comedian, an essayist, a best-selling author, a radio contributor. He's on the television on one of those morning shows.
He's got kind of an Andy Rooney vibe on site. I love it.
His books, Happy Go Lucky, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Calypso, A Carnival

of Snackery, the best titles ever.

Dress your family

in denim and corduroy.

Oh, and corduroy and denim.

He is on a 40

city tour across the United States

starting March 30th

till May 19th

including Burlington,

Vermont, Albany, Philadelphia, Boston,

Akron, Detroit, Fort Wayne, Dallas, Nashville,

many, many more. Go to

Thank you. till May 19th, including Burlington, Vermont, Albany, Philadelphia, Boston, Akron, Detroit, Fort Wayne, Dallas, Nashville, many, many more.
Go to davidsedarisbooks.com to see his tour. A lot of Arm Cherries have gone per our suggestion, and I always hear how much they love it.
He puts on a great show. I really do recommend you go see him live.
There's really nothing like it. He's a gift.
And as I've been talking about lately, we're listening to his short stories every night before bed. There's one-offs before bed.
It's just, it makes me so happy. I love David Sedaris.
Please enjoy. This message is brought to you by Apple Card.
Apple Card is a no-fee credit card that gives you daily cash back every day. That's 3% back at Apple and 2% back on every purchase made with Apple Card using Apple Pay.
Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval, variable APRs for Apple Card range from 18.24% to 28.49% based on credit worthiness.
Rates as of January 1st, 2025. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City branch.
Terms and more at applecard.com. We are supported by Allstate.
Some people just know they could save hundreds on car insurance by checking Allstate first. Like you know to check that you took your allergy pill first before you go to the botanical garden.
Like you know to make sure that cute coat you bought is waterproof first before you wear it outside on a rainy day. Or checking that a potential partner is an arm cherry.
Checking first is smart. So check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds.
You're in good hands with Allstate. Savings vary.
Subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Allstate Fire and Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois.
boy.

My prize possessions are behind me.

He was mad that the face wasn't turned out. And I said, I don't care about a fucking picture.
I know. I want the writing of this man I'm idolizing.
He picks them out so specifically that I understand. Maybe I'll do a glass wall in my next house.
And I'll hang it, and you can choose what side you want to see.

When I went to Egypt a couple months ago, all the postcards were bullshit.

I went to Fiji.

It was the same thing.

I would expect that from Fiji and not from Egypt.

Where is this from?

No way.

That's impossible timing.

You just brought up being in Egypt. There being bad postcards, and then here one arrives.

I got that in Australia, but it was Egypt, and I wished I'd brought it to Egypt. You know what's so nice about this is that I wasn't going to bring up that I haven't gotten a postcard from you in a while, but I've thought about and noticed and been scared that I haven't gotten a postcard from you in a while.
And I would have never brought it up, but here one has arrived, and now I don't have anything to even ruminate to read it aloud well I don't know if these are private exchanges it says it's not the first time I've cheated on Hugh somehow this one's things for some reason I want to read this first by myself and my dad I just and then maybe on the fact check okay Hugh doesn't want postcards he doesn't want me to text him. He wants letters with stamps on them.
Okay, that's a high bar. That's a lot.
If I'm going to like 44 cities, I have to get the letters printed out. That's a commitment.
And I have a lot of stuff to do. Of course.
Already. Of course, you're busy.
That's why you're there. Okay, I'm going to read it.
Thank you. Good idea because there's nothing incriminating.
But okay. Dear Dax, have you been to Egypt? If you like being hassled and tugged on, it's the place for you.
There are 100 million stray cats there. So it's good too if you're afraid of mice.
I didn't see a single one in Australia now. Sincerely, David Sedaris.
These are my, yeah, I don't want to make you uncomfortable. These are like the treasures of treasures.
We have the fires. I put my journals in a huge fucking suitcase and then I grabbed this off my wall.
We were just talking last night. We had dinner with somebody.
You can name drop. Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Oh my goodness. She looked out her window and saw flames.
So she had to evacuate and she didn't grab anything. And so we were talking about what would you grab? Exactly.
What'd you say? What did you say? Picasso painting this big. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Grabable. See, I'm jealous that you have that because in all these different fears I have, like somehow I'll still end up penniless.
I'm still convinced that'll happen. I wouldn't like one item that I could just put in a backpack and land somewhere and be like, okay, well, I will have rent for some time.
This Picasso is going to still be valuable. And you know, it's small.
Yeah. And I have a Franz Kline painting that isn't much bigger.
So I could put that in the same tote bag. You're set.
Do you want to explain the value of art to Dax? Because he has a hard time understanding it. I understand it.
Well, you fight back against it. My argument is if you enjoy the image, I don't understand the difference between a nice print and the original work of art.
Unless you're collecting it for an investment. But if your claim is just, I look at this and I feel a certain way.
I think it's a mental trick that because there's only one of them, I feel even a more different way. Does that make sense? Yeah.
I mean, if you told me that you had a Picasso print, I would be like, that's nice. Well, first of all, I wouldn't tell anyone I had one.
This would just be for me to sit in a room and stare at and get whatever transcendent thing you all are claiming to get from it.

You had a Picasso painting. Yeah.
I would say, oh, God, I'd love to see it. I don't usually go to museums because what they have, I can't buy it.
Well, the vagina soap museum you went to changed our life. The vagina soap museum.
But I went to a museum somewhere a while ago, and I had time on my hands. and I looked at the Picasso paintings that they had

and he was such a forerunner and such a genius. And the surface of those paintings was so alive.
No one can touch that guy. You know, Picasso was an asshole.
And when you stand before his paintings, you don't know. Why do you have to force yourself to go through all of his worst moments? Yeah.
It's interesting that it's really troubling for people with artists and art, but no one is like, guys, bad news. Einstein raped his niece.
E equals MC squared. We can't touch it no more.
No one has any issue with any kind of scientific breakthrough that was done by a monster. There's no moral dilemma.
It's like, if this thing serves me, it's a technology I want, I don't give a fuck what the person who invented it did. Yet the art serves you.
You can't really make an argument that one's more important than the other, yet there is this very arbitrary distinction we make between scientists who are pedophiles and shit and then artists that were. Yeah, that's a good point.
Thank you. I wanted to land one good point today.
But even with writers, like Céline was monstrous. That's the French.
Yeah. You can't deny his skill.
You can't deny his power as a writer. Another thing is he wrote quite a while ago, so it's not like young people are blocking to read his books.
But right now, we're doing something that in 50 years from now is going to be unforgivable. But we can't even imagine it.
We're not even thinking, well, it's probably... I already know what it is.
We're eating animals. When I bring it up to my friends and colleagues in Los Angeles, no one wants to acknowledge us.
There will be a moment where they'll look back in time and they'll go, so anyways, in LA,

in 2025, brown people worked and white people didn't.

White people didn't cut their grass.

They didn't clean their house.

They didn't make their food.

They didn't deliver their food.

They didn't do anything.

It was only brown people that did that stuff.

People go, that's nuts.

That's gonna happen.

And when I bring that up to friends, and I'm not saying like fire your Latina housekeeper. I'm just saying have enough humility to say we're engaged in it now.
And they'll go, no. What was a huge improvement from where my housekeeper came from? And I go, that's exactly what the slave trader said.
It's the same argument. I think maybe fossil fuels will be part of it.
Maybe eating meat will be part of it. I think that's going to be a big one.
But that's the stuff we can suspect. There's things we cannot even.
Truly. Yeah, it's like they wore blue shirts.
Can you believe? I think the fossil fuels will go more in the category of like, can you believe they use a smoke? They use a pull smoke into their lungs and then hold it for a minute and do that several hundred times a day. It just seems stupid.
I have a list on my computer called countries I have been to. Now, my boyfriend Hugh criticizes me because he says, I just want to go to a place in order to cross it off my list.
But yeah, it's that simple. It means a lot to me.
This is what I want to do. We went to Monte Carlo last year.
So we went to this Michelin-star and our food just arrived and three men at the next table lit cigars. And then two men at the other table on the other side of us said, oh, we can smoke cigars.
And then the waiter came and said, how's your meal? And I said, well, now that you mention it, it tastes like ashtrays. And he said, well, we can't say anything.
And they couldn't say anything because people were so rich. The people smoking the cigars at the next table, it's like, well, we've finished our meal.
So the important people have eaten. And I said, can I burn a tire at the table? That's what I would like to do.
I've got a little money. A little inner tube, a little model glue, set it ablaze.
I thought maybe the server was going to come back and light up a cigar. To think that it just seems to be normal.
Oh, yeah, yeah. I smoked on an airplane on a flight to Germany when I was 16.
I woke up in the middle of the night, and I'm just wondering. Yeah.
Was there a time when you couldn't order a drink on an airplane because it was a Sunday? Oh, I have no knowledge of that. That's a great question.
Or let's say if you were flying over North Carolina, would they say, you've got to finish your drinks in like a minute because you're flying over North Carolina. You couldn't sell liquor on Sunday in North Carolina until.
I wonder, it might have to do with the hub of the plane. Delta is an Atlanta plane.
And I think you can drink there now on Sundays or buy liquor. But at one point you couldn't.
So maybe you wouldn't be able to on that plane. But on United, you could.
What if you're taking a red eye, David, and you left New York at 1.45 a.m. And then you could have one drink.
Then it was two. But as soon as you got to Chicago, all of a sudden it was 1.46 again.
And everyone got to have a round. And then you just chased the time change for the 2 a.m.
cutoff. Although I guess in New York, it's 4 a.m.
That scenario would work great leaving Detroit because it's 2's 2am. One of the things you don't count on when you write is you're dated so quickly.
Even if you write something about people not having exact change for the flight attendant. Because there was a kind of man who would get on a plane and buy a drink with a $20 bill.
And he knew the flight attendant wouldn't have change. Whereas my mother always taught me if you have a $20 bill, buy a newspaper, buy some gum, buy something in the airport so you can have correct change when you order a drink.
Because they would not give you change. Well, they would, but it's a pain in the ass.
Oh, it's just a kindness. Yeah, if everybody pays with a $20, the flight attendant is like, fuck.
And you know, the flight attendant used to go down the aisle saying, does anybody have any change for us? Right. Do you feel very protective of flight attendants? Because I do.
Monica saw me get into it with a first class customer that was sitting in front of us. In rapid order, he was at the bulkhead and he had his bag in front of his feet.
And there's nobody that doesn't know you can't have your bag there, right? So they ask him to put it away. Oh yeah, I'll get to it.
And then he doesn't. And then they come down, they really need to take up.
Sir, we really need you to put that. Oh, I thought I could get it by you.
No, you can't. So I'm flagging him.
We're right behind him. I'm like, I don't like this guy.
And I'm going to pay attention to everything he does. So then the next thing was she came to say, have you made a selection for lunch? He said, what are the options? She's like, the menu's right next to you.
Well, just tell me the options. We have a short rib and we have a chicken breast.
No, she said chicken. Chicken.
It was a chicken thigh. And he said, is that white meat or dark meat? And I wanted to go like, how could you have gotten to 56 years old and not know the thigh is fucking dark meat? Why are you making this woman? So then I needed to pee.
He had gotten up to pee.

I'm sitting on the armrest.

Clearly, I want everyone behind me to know, don't get up.

I've claimed that I'm next.

So when he exits, he sees I'm in the waiting position to go in.

So he gets to his seat, which is one row in front of us.

And then he decides to like open up the thing.

He's just kind of looking around.

He's not even grabbing his bag.

He's just blocking it.

And then like a hockey player, I just fucking ran through him and shoulder checked him into the seat do you like the ending of that story monica didn't like there's more no that's not the end of the story okay there's an important piece to this which all that happens dex is being very aggressive and look i hate that guy that's annoying that he's that way. But I'm more concerned about his behavior than I am about this stranger.
Because I represent you. Yeah, and you know better.
Why cause even more chaos? Because someone needs to smack this guy on the nose. That's why.
That's very simply why. Anywho, so then he causes this ruckus.
He sits down, and a few minutes later, the guy turns around. We were at South by Southwest X, posted a panel.
This guy turns around, hey, I saw you last night doing the panel. You were so great.
Like, he was so nice to him. You're going to like the end of the story, actually.
And then also, worse, then we had to Google who he was. Well, I was like, oh, no.
He was at that panel. We are just signing to deal with deal with amazon that was an amazon movie did i just fucking shove one of our new bosses now i'm staring through the gap when he lifts up his laptop to do some work thank god it says his full name on this sign in for his password and then the second we land i open it up when i find out i was like oh he's just a fucking lawyer i knew it he was like a lawyer representing one of the actors that was on the panel.
It's so funny, though, how you can be on a plane and have a towering hatred for somebody and they have no idea. I would have given anything to fight him in a parking lot.
That's how mad I was at how he's treating this flight attendant. I was in Australia a couple of weeks ago.
They made an announcement. They said the flight to Tasmania is full.
So we're asking you to gate check your bag. If you don't care to, and you want to bring your bag on the plane, you'll soon find yourself in a situation where there's no room for your bag.
We will gladly send it on the four o'clock flight. So that's a way to do it.
Yeah. I just had a knapsack and I had something else under my seat.
And I had my knapsack in the overhead bin. So he puts his bag in there, and he's pounding on it.
It won't go in all the way because of my knapsack. Yeah.
And I said, I think it won't go in there because of my knapsack. So he pulls my knapsack out and puts his bag in and says, what do you want me to do with this now? No, we didn't.
Stop it. I said, just go.
And I was in first class. I said, just wherever you are back there.
Just go. Just keep on walking.
Oh, my God. That is so crazy, though.
Did he get shoulder checked? He doesn't need to get shoulder checked. What needs to happen to him? You say, put it back, please.
Okay. And he goes, eat this ass.
I saw a flight attendant once. A guy was pounding on a

bag to get it in. The flight attendant turned to me and said, I just thank God it's not a living

thing. But I had a towering hatred of a flight attendant.
He was standing right at the door of

the plane and he said, can I get you something to drink, young man? And so I just ignored him.

And he said, young man. And I ignored him.
And he said, young man. And he said, can I get you something to drink, young man? And so I just ignored him.
And he said, young man.

And I ignored him.

And he said, young man.

And I said, I'm not young.

Why don't you just say old man?

Because that's what you mean.

Oh.

That's his charm.

He's going to flatter you

because you want to hear that you're young.

You see it a lot with Bellman at hotels too.

Yeah.

Can I help you with that bag, young man?

And they say it to women more. Yeah.
They'll say it to like a twisted stick figure with a walker. Hey, young lady.
And she's supposed to say, he thinks I'm young. Right.
She waddles up. Here's my new thing.
Okay. And again, I go on these tours and that's why I'm traveling and somebody else is paying for my ticket and I'll admit it, I'm in first class.
Already you're thinking, you don't have that much to complain about. Look, you're in first class.
But the flight attendant kneels and looks at the manifest and says, Mr. David, what would you like? And I'll say now, oh, can I see the manifest for a second? I say, see, it says David Sedaris.
I said, David is my first name. My last name is Sedaris.

So I'd be Mr. Sedaris.

Because they don't want to take a chance

on pronouncing your last name.

So they just call you whatever your first name is.

That's just laziness.

Part of my job when I sit down and write books

is to pronounce people's names

when they put them in front of me on a post-it note.

And I pride myself on it.

You know those Irish names? Someone said, oh, those Irish names, they always look like a Wi-Fi password. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Do they have some symbols above their alphabet too? And those can be hard, but if you worked at the airport or something, you'd get them after a while. Chinese names, you'd get them if you took an interest and asked people and you would say yes whenever you were right about them.
So I just object to the laziness. My childhood friend who was just out, Ken Kennedy.
Ken Kennedy, that's really nice. I've used his name in many movies if I have to improv because it has such a great alliteration.
So Ken Kennedy, he lived in Novi, Michigan and he grew up on Buckminster Way. And one night he was coming home from work and he got pulled over by a cop and the cop came

up to the window, license and registration, looks at his thing and goes, you have any idea why I pulled you over tonight, Mr. Buckminster? He saw his street name and thought his name was Buckminster.
Like really trying to hand it to him. It was a big mistake.
It was a street name. Buckminster is my first name.
My last name is Street street it was interesting when i was in australia not a single person waiting for me at the baggage claim to take me into town said how was your flight which i hate if you ask me how my flight was you're just dead to me and i've said to people before it's such a bad icebreaker i know then why do why do you... You'll call that out? Yeah.
At a hotel,

not a single person said, welcome in.

How are your travels? Right. They would

say instead, gosh, that

suitcase, how did the wheels work on

that? Are those good wheels on the suitcase? You know,

the actual question. Something specific

that you could actually answer. Yeah.

It never felt gimmicky. You don't like

platitudes. Yeah.
It just felt

more genuine. But like a corporate personality is.
Yeah. It just felt more genuine.

But like a corporate personality is no personality.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just like getting through every single thing.

But do you think everyone has to have a personality that you interact with?

No, I'm not opposed to it.

It's preferable, right?

I like it if I'm going to the security check at the airport and that person has a personality. Me too.
Love that. TSA guy, personality, love that.
Everybody, I'm happy. You know who I don't want to have a personality? Is the pilot.
Sometimes you're on a Southwest flight and they kind of pride themselves on that they make jokes. That's not who I want making jokes.
But I was on tour in the fall and I went to Chicago and I was checked in by a woman with Down syndrome. At a hotel or at the airport? At the airport.
She checked me in for my flight and she had a very hard time pronouncing the name of the city I was going to, but it was a difficult name. And a lot of times if you have Down syndrome, your tongue is kind of thick, so it can be hard to say.
So I had to ask twice. But I thought, wow, why haven't I seen this before?

And then I started thinking they should hire a guy with Down syndrome, or it could be a woman,

dressed in a pilot's uniform to stand at the front of the plane at the beginning of every flight and say,

we'll be flying over South Dakota.

And then all the people who get off the plane immediately would be the right people.

And then we could just take off.

They would be the right people. Just hire people with Down syndrome to pretend they were the pilots.
Yeah. And you think that's like a test of something.
It just weeds out the riffraff. That's interesting because I don't want to get political.
But when I was sounding the alarm a year ago going, guys, Biden, he's too old. We must have another option.
And people were offended by that. My analogy was, if you got on an airplane and Biden came out of the cockpit, and was like, you know, you would get the fuck off.
And isn't running this huge country more important than flying one airplane? I thought that was a good analogy. It was.
Thank you so much. It's probably tied with your Down syndrome analogy.
It bothered me when people took that and said, well, you're just being ageist. And it's like, no, there are people his age who are vital.
He's not vital. And you would just be on the edge of your seat.
It's like having your kid in the school play. You're so afraid they're going to fuck up.
Every time he opened his mouth, it was just anxiety. People are like, do you watch the debate? And I'm like, no, no, I would never watch that.
I don't want to see like on YouTube years ago, bum fighting, right? They pay two homeless guys to fight. I don't want to see that.
I never heard of that. You haven't heard of bum fighting? Oh, it's so nasty.
I was in the Philippines a couple of years ago and I was on a television show called Wow Wow Weed. Like they invited me to be on this show.
People there are so desperately poor and people would wait in line for days to get in. You give the host money, so he gets a fistful of money and he says, I've got $100 here for the craziest dancer.
And then there'll be like people in their 80s, like break dancing, really humiliating themselves in order to get the money. And it was like, I didn't know the show was going to be like this.
Yeah. What did you do? Every now and then you're on a show and it goes somewhere and you're like, fuck, I'm just standing now in this situation.
I was just brought on and then I gave money to the host to give away. And then I saw what was happening and it was like bum fighting.
Yeah. It is a version of that.
That seems like it would be in the Bible under things not to do. Yes.
There should be some mention of bum fighting if you look that word up in the dictionary. Is that the word, exploitative? Okay, but is this just as bad? So I was in Pakistan.
This man came up and he was begging for money.

And I said, I will buy your shawl.

Then he was like, oh, I'll give you the shawl.

And he was trying to give it to me because that's what people are like there.

If you say to somebody, I like your glasses, they give you.

And I'm like, no.

Luckily, there was someone who could translate.

And I said, you want money from me and I want something from you.

So I pay you.

I mean, the money I was paying him for a shawl was like 50 times with the shawl.

I'm not a customer buying. Anyway, we finally made that understood.
And then we went over here and then we came back and he already had a new shawl on and he was modeling it. And then I was like, I want that one too.
Everything just looked better on him. You just wanted to have his frame.
He was just a good model. Oh my God.
That is so. I have a similar situation and really who had bit the most in the house was Kristen, which was, I was in Italy and I have a good relationship with Ducati.
I got to tour the factory where they make the motorcycles in Bologna. And the tour was given to me by this very, very nice man who did not speak nearly any English.
And he had a very cool vintage Ducati leather jacket on. And I had mentioned two or three times how awesome his jacket was.
And at the end, he took off the jacket and he tried to give it to me. And I was like, oh, no, no, I absolutely cannot accept this vintage jacket.
I was successful in not taking the jacket, but I was so moved by this gesture. He said, I'm going to Los Angeles.
And I was like, you must stay with us. I was really panicked because the gesture was so nice.
And he fucking did. This man came for a week at our old house and I was working the whole week shooting a show and Kristen wasn't working.
There was just an Italian man in our house that spoke almost no English. You should have taken the jacket at that point.
I know, Jay, bring that jacket when you come. That would have been fair.
Yeah, exactly. I regret not taking the jacket after he was there, day seven.
I went to Australia with my friend Dawn. Her dad had a music store, and he would get a lot of letters from prisoners.
Oh, can you send me some guitar strings? And he was a lovely man, Dawn's father. So the people would get out of prison and they wouldn't have any place to go.
And so Don would be at home alone with someone who'd just gotten out of prison, stole from her jewelry box. Sometimes kindness can really bite you.
I mean, it really can. Actually, this is interesting when you're talking about the shawl.
For us, it's humiliating for him to just give you something and then you're giving money. But is it humiliating objectively? Not really, right? If they want the thing.
Oh, yeah. Emotionally, it feels horrible to watch it, but also they don't feel horrible.
When I was in Australia a few weeks ago, there was a hotel that had a notice on the desk that said, we are cash free. And then it said, money can contain 163 bacterias, something like that.
And then they had written, we charge an X fee for using a credit card. No.
Yeah. Anyway, when I was in Egypt, there was this kid selling big balloons.
And they weren't inflated, but you'd inflate them yourself. They were just big.
I thought, oh, they'd be good to give away to people at a book signing or something. So I bought all the ones that he had and I gave him money and he kissed the money.
And the money there, you have to have a big stack of it. Like $100 would be such a big stack of money, you could barely close your wallet.
And it really stinks. Like the money really stinks.
And here was this kid kissing it and this other place won't even take it. Exactly.
Right. And they don't know what stinky money is.
Australian money is that plasticky money you could put in the dishwasher if you wanted to and it would come out fine. Yeah.
I guess nothing's objective really. Were you doing readings in Australia? Yeah.
Okay. So you two are worldwide.
Yeah. What are some of the countries? Australia.
I went to England and did something, and then I went to Australia, and that was just a vacation. And then I went to New Zealand, and then I went to Australia, and then I went to Fiji, but that was just a vacation.
And then I went to Hawaii, and that was for work. Everyone used that was vacation.
When I was in Hawaii, someone told me I was in Hilo on the Big Island.

Oh, okay.

Someone said,

oh, there was a woman who recently had a baby on the ground.

She just stopped.

The baby came out of her

and then she kept walking.

The baby was being dragged by its umbilical.

What? No.

That's what I said.

And they said,

no, it happened in front of Pineapple's restaurant.

Lots of people saw it. And I said, what was the baby's drag name? And they said it was her 11th child.
And she just kept walking. But you know what? If you were at 11, you might be like, eh.
It's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm not in a position to judge. I haven't had 11.
God. I want an update from you.
Where are you at on your smile

journey? Because we've kind of caught you

throughout your progress. You had gotten all

your teeth fixed, but you were telling us that even

though they're fixed, you still just have this muscle

memory where you hate to smile. I don't do it

in front of the mirror. I still can't look at my teeth.

I had to go to the dentist the other day,

and she held up the mirror, and I'm like,

have we not been through this? I can't look. You don't ever want to see those.
During the pandemic, I got those Invisalign because I had massive gaps. I was at a nice hotel checking in.
I would feel them thinking, you don't belong here. It's shocking not to feel that way.
Like no one's ever said to me, you have beautiful eyes. Just no one's ever said it to me, right? I don't know what that's like to have beautiful eyes, but I'm fine with that.
But nobody ever said, oh, you have such a nice smile. And then somebody said it to me after I got my teeth fixed.
And I thought I never in my life thought I would ever hear that from anyone. Did it feel good or did it feel like a cheat? You know, there are women who have magnificent breasts.
Me. Just born with magnificent breasts.
Yeah. I think if somebody else and has a maid, you know what? This is a better analogy.
Okay. I don't know that I still have them, but I used to have magnificent calves.
They were like Popeye's arms, like bowling balls. And then people started getting calf implants.
Right.

And it's like, I have big calves because

I'm short. It's something

you get as a bonus.

And because I walk so much

and you just paid to have

your big calves. But ultimately, I don't

really care. Yeah.
This is

the exemplary conversation

for a lot of people. Yeah.
I was picking up trash

in England and I found a strap-on penis that was like an inch and a half long. Wow, they sell that.
And I thought, who are you going to fuck, a Cabbage Patch doll? That's small. There's a kink for everything.
Wow. Maybe they were in love.
I got to pick the right species that would be smart enough to be consenting. Like maybe they were in love with a small chimpanzee and they wanted to consummate the relationship.
We've talked about this a lot. Like, is there an animal that is morally fine to be in love with? And we've concluded that female humans can guilt-free date male dolphins because male dolphins are so horny.
They constantly are getting caught trying to fuck the people they're swimming with. They're perverts.
And there's these scientists that studied them and the dolphins fucked some of the scientists. We don't think it's right for a male human to fuck a female dolphin, but vice versa is totally fine with us.
What's your verdict on that? Gosh. Because bonobo chimps are famously very horny so i think i'd be fine with

a male bonobo chimp dating a female no i'd be better with a water creature it would just be more sanitary again okay but ethically it's more ethics question stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

We are supported by Claude,

the AI assistant that

just feels different. You know, we're curious about the old artificial intelligence here on

the pod. We are curious.
And we always want to give our armcherries the if you know, you know

tips. We sure do.
So they need to meet our new pal, Claude. While other AIs sound like robots, Claude just gets it with the emotional intelligence.
Whether I'm researching guests or refining my latest meal plan to get Brad Pitt's abs or looking for the best dating advice to give Monica, Claude is the fact checker in your pocket while you're in the armchair. Well, that's exciting for us.
I like having an extra companion. Welcome to the team, Claude.
You can try Claude for free now at Claude.com. That's C-L-A-U-D-E.com.
We are supported by Quince. Something about the weather warming up makes you want to get outside and go somewhere new, doesn't it? It's the spring travel itch.
Oh my gosh, it's spring break is upon us. Whether you're in school or not, you should still take a spring trip.
Yes, I'm taking the girls to Hawaii. If you've got spring break travel plans of your own, get where you're going in style by treating yourself to a first-class quality suitcase at an economy price with Quince.
Quince has premium luggage options and durable duffel bags to carry it all. We've told you before about how we love our apparel from Quince.
So many cute things. The cashmere, it's so soft.
Beautiful sweater. But also, I have these knives from Quince that are incredible.
They do have really, really, really high-end products. They're the greatest.
So you can get ready to head out with your Quince luggage and stuff it with some fresh outfits from Quince and look amazing on your trip too. They've got it all.
For your next trip, treat yourself to the luxe upgrades you deserve from Quince. Go to quince.com slash DAX for 365-day returns plus free shipping on your order.
That's quince.com slash DAX to get free shipping and 365-day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash Dax to get free shipping and 365-day returns.
Quince dot com slash Dax. We are supported by BritBox.
There are some incredible shows coming out of the UK right now. The clever writing, the picturesque settings, the witty dialogue.
They just do TV differently across the pond in the best way. And, you know, they're the masters of charming mysteries set in quaint little villages where three people die a week.
Not only do they have a huge selection of classics like Pride and Prejudice, but their new original shows are insanely good too, especially Ludwig with David Mitchell from Peep Show. He plays the introverted puzzle maker guy who accidentally becomes a detective and solves murders like they're crosswords.
It's twisty and clever and an absolute treat to watch. So if you want to mix it up and see things differently, try BritBox and stream the best British TV.
Go to BritBox.com and start a free trial today. We are supported by Liquid IV.

I love an electrolyte.

You know this. I was banging some Liquid IV on my bus trip back because I was drinking so many sodas and everything as I tend to do coffee sodas.
I was like, you know, I need some deep hydration. Yes, you do.
I just filled up a little water bottle with it, pounded it, and felt incredible. It tastes good, too.
Yes. Liquid IV's formula, powered by LIV HydroScience, is sugar-free, delicious, and is clinically studied to maintain hydration better than water for up to four hours.
There are a ton of flavors, so you're sure to find something that's right up your alley. And many of the flavors are sugar-free and still taste great.
That's my jam, sugar-free. Break the mold and own your ritual.
Just one stick of Liquid IV gives you three times the electrolytes than the leading sports drink.

And there's eight essential vitamins and nutrients.

It's always non-GMO, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, and soy-free.

Give yourself the power of extraordinary hydration from Liquid IV.

Get 20% off your first order of Liquid IV when you go to liquidiv.com and use code DAX at checkout.

That's 20% off your first order with code DAX at liquidiv.com and use code DAX at checkout. That's 20% off your first order with code DAX at liquidiv.com.
A friend recently showed me a YouTube video, and it was Spanish feminists protesting the rape of chickens. And I thought, oh, who would be so low as to rape a chicken they meant roosters the roosters were raping the chicken and then their point was that if you have free range chickens and a rooster starts raping the chicken can run away or something but if they are in close captivity the chicken doesn't have any and then i thought okay yeah that's fine that some backing behind it.
I'm okay with that. A female snapping turtle has no peace.
The male is just constantly on top of it. Orangutans too.
But at least they can try to swim away or try to escape in a way that they couldn't if they were. They also must be master disassociators because they can just literally leave the world and go inside their shell.
You know, they can really disassociate quite literally. I read The Hem of His Garment this morning, which is phenomenal.
It was in The New Yorker September, I guess, of last year. That's a pretty crazy story.
Will you tell Monica that you got invited to go meet the Pope? The Pope wanted to meet with humorists and comedians from around the world. So I was just minding my own business.
And then I got an email. I guess it had been sent earlier, but it didn't get to me.
And it said, after tomorrow, you're invited to meet the Pope. And I was in England, so it was an easy flight.
So anyway, I thought, I'm not a Catholic, and I honestly don't care about the Pope. But I thought, it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
I'd be dumb not to do it. So I went and I met the Pope.
There was a hundred of you invited? Yeah. When I came back, I was like, I met Chris Rock because he was one of the people.
Oh, wow. That to me was more like, oh my God, I can't believe I met Chris Rock.
You listed every comedian that was invited virtually in the article and you're like, each one of those people I would want to hang out with for sure and meet more than the Pope. But they're going to be there.
So this is kind of a fast pass to me and all these other people I would. Most of the comedians were Italian, but they were from all over the world.
I met this one woman from Switzerland. There was an Italian woman who was the only person to speak.
And I'd met her before. Very well-known Italian comedian.
And when I met met her she had just adopted two teenagers from romania oh wow teenagers they were taking her canceled checks and selling them because they had her autograph on them oh my god they were gypsies and then she thought it was the funniest thing in the world anyway so i asked about the kids and oh they're doing great oh they're, they're great. They're in jail.
I see them once a month. Everything worked out.
So we just went. The Pope read something to us.
That's what I don't understand. I would presume if I were you, oh, he wants to have some kind of dialogue.
Right. As you said in the article, yeah.
Why have you guys all come and then he sits in a chair and then this woman makes a speech and then that's that. What was gained from this? She made a speech.
It was like 45 seconds long. And then he read a speech and it was in Italian.
Did anyone ever translate it to you? Yeah, they gave us a copy of it. He could have saved time.
Laughter makes the world go round. It's essentially what he said.
So he was thanking you guys. It sounds more like he was acknowledging your contribution to the planet.
No, he was just saying like, oh, it helps to laugh. Why don't you all fly here so I can tell you.
God would like us to laugh and laughing's okay. He's a progressive Pope, right? That's a whole thing.
But he had said faggotry twice in the three weeks preceding David's arrival. He said it in Italian, but it translates to faggotry.
But he was saying there was too much faggotry in the seminar, which I thought was just funny. And then he apologized, and then he said it again.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
He's 86. He is.
And there were people, I can't believe you went, and I would have boycotted. I wouldn't have gone.
He said faggotry. but the Pope cannot perform a gay marriage, but he was blessing gay couples about to be married.
He's a very progressive guy for a Pope. Yeah.
Yeah. He sat there and we all met him.
You shook his hand. Friends of yours had advised you should kiss his ring.
Then others said, no, you don't. He actually doesn't like getting his ring kissed.
Yeah, this one doesn't like getting his ring kissed. Did you watch Conclave? Loved it.
It's so good. I loved it.
But you must have had a particular interest having just been there and experiencing that. Did you cry when you watched Conclave? I didn't cry.
Did you? I cried when the guy from South America spoke in Spanish. He starts off speaking English and then it moves into Spanish.
What he said was so beautiful. And the Spanish was so beautiful.

And his face.

I'm not a religious person and I'm not a Christian.

But I thought, I'll follow you.

Yeah.

And what he said was that the church is not the past.

He said, the church is what happens next.

I don't even know what it means.

Right.

It's like a great song.

You don't know the lyrics too.

Here's to my eyes.

And I saw it and I rented it.

And then I played that again and again and again and again and again and again.

I loved it.

Yeah, I did too.

The clothes in that movie, I mean, come on.

They're remarkable.

Well, that's where the story goes.

Well, because there were 100 people there.

And you figured every single one of them was going to put it into a routine.

So what would my take be? And my take was the clothes. And I went to a place that's been dressing the Pope.
Well, before you get to there, I need to know, are you off the dome that knowledgeable about all those articles of clothes or do you yourself have to do some research when you write that piece? I looked up the names of things because I didn't know those. And they're inherently interesting, those names.
Like, they're words I've never heard. So I'm like, ooh, I'm intrigued by this.
Like a cassock, that's pretty simple. But the sash is called aphasia.
Yeah. I like it when I read something and there's technical language in there.
Me too. Like, not too much, but just some of it.
It was trying to describe the clothing as well. And then I went to a place that's been dressing the Pope for 300 years.
And I thought they wouldn't sell to a layman. And you went with Julie.
Julie Louis-Dreyfus. Julie Louis-Dreyfus.
What could be more fun than having her in tow? She was just fantastic. So you were trying to think of a ruse by which you'll be able to buy these robes.
It takes nine months to have one made. But then they had one that was never picked up for some reason.
So anyway, I walked right out the door. Off the rack.
And then I started wearing it out. And it's so interesting.
I wore it in London where it's not a Catholic country. With the collar? Yeah, with the collar and everything.
Oh my God. And then would see me from a distance and then look away when they got close.
They couldn't look at my face. They're scared you'll see all their sins just screaming across their face.
I don't know. Again, it's not a Catholic country.
I'm an atheist and I don't like looking at a priest. I'm like, he can see what a scumbag I am.
This is his stock and trade. He's like, you fucking need to come in.
I think it triggers that in people like, oh, we're in trouble. Maybe that's it.
Oxford Street in London, it's like there's a shift change. And at six o'clock, Christians go home and Muslims take over.
Oh, really? Interesting. Even the beggars on the street go home and are replaced by beggars from the Middle East.
Wow. Oh, wow.
And so everybody on Oxford Street after a certain time at night is Muslim and often they're dressed in, I don't know the names for the clothing. Right.
And they are always treated differently. They are people look me in the face.
Because they're living a very pure life. Yeah.
They were living a religious life. Yeah.
I felt like they were looking at me like, whatever. You know, if you want to believe that, go ahead.
Right.

We're both wearing black.

And so it was interesting.

That is interesting.

I can't imagine anything more amusing than being on a trip to London and knowing who

you are and then just looking over and seeing you strolling around in a priest outfit.

That's really spectacular.

I'm almost jealous of anyone who saw you and knew who it was. It has 33

or is it 32 buttons?

One for each year of Christ's life.

Okay. And so you're supposed to

think about that every time. Second time you put

it on, you're pulling it over your head.

You're wishing that he was crucified

at 12.

That's a lot of work.

I wore it on stage one night and the

lights were really hot. And so I'm trying

to unbutton it while I'm reading.

Will you tell Monica your joke about

Thank you. That is a lot of work.
I wore it on stage one night and the lights were really hot.

And so I'm trying to unbutton it while I'm reading.

Will you tell Monica your joke about Epstein nails?

A man dies and he has a company that sells nails and he turns it over to his son-in-law. And one day he opens a newspaper and he sees a full page ad and it's a picture of Jesus on the cross.

And it says, we used Epstein nails.

And the guy calls his son-in-law and says, are you out of your mind? This is no way to sell our product, right? A couple of days later, he opens a newspaper, and he sees a picture of a cross, and lying face down in the dust in front of it is Jesus Christ, and the caption says, they didn't use Epstein nails.

Oh, my God, that's fantastic.

What I like about that, too, is that people think it's a Jewish joke.

It's not.

It's just a dummy joke.

Yeah.

The best joke I've heard lately, someone told me at a book signing, was a guy wakes up in the hospital following a horrible accident and says, Doctor, doctor, I can't feel my legs.

And the doctor says, I know.

I just amputated both your arms. That's great.
It's funny what you just said about you think it's a joke about one thing and then it's not. And that's why it's actually funny because it's actually not offensive, but you're scared that it is.
And then you're like, oh, I can laugh. There's like a relief in it.
I was watching Shane Gillis's stand up. Have you watched him? Have you seen him? Oh, you would absolutely love it.
He's very, very funny. But it came out like a year ago and a lot of people watched it.
And I remember Kristen was like, I don't think you should watch it. You won't like it to me.
So I didn't. And then since then, we've had some other people on who I do think are offensive.
So then I was like, now I want to see this guy and see. And I don't find it offensive at all because it's so nuanced who you're making fun of.
And that to me is the difference between what's offensive and what's not. Isn't he really sweet? He's really sweet.
And then back to, I almost brought this up when you were talking about the Down syndrome check-in person, which is he has several family members that have Down syndrome and he has opened up a bagel and coffee shop in the small town he's from that's run entirely by these Down syndrome people. And he goes, yeah, it's running.
You know, it's up, people go in and it's going exactly how you think it would. He says there's a really long line, not because.
Well, there's a place in, is it Savannah or is it Columbia, South Carolina? And it's a coffee shop and everyone who works there has Down syndrome or some people have brain damage, you know, they were in an accident or something like that. It's so funny because they don't take cash because making change is too much.
When you get a coffee, it just takes a really long time to get it, and it's filled up to the very top, but you just feel really good. Yeah, of course.
Someone told me about a place in Dallas called Howdy, and it's an ice cream parlor, and everybody who works there has Down syndrome, and so I said, I'm going. Yeah, yeah.
And we went, and they make the ice cream too, and they had Dr. Pepper ice cream.
I would have tried it, but it had chocolate chips in it. And I can't eat chocolate.
You can't eat chocolate. But it's such a good idea for a business because you don't care.
I mean, yeah, it takes a little bit longer. Yeah, you're happy.
The Shane guy, is he Southern? He's from, I think, Pennsylvania. I know what you mean, though, that sometimes I think people hear a word and then you're making a joke at the expense of something.
And it's like, no, you weren't really listening. You stopped at the word and you didn't listen to the rest of it.
That happens a lot. Yeah.
I think that's what separates a very, very good comedian from a shock jock. And to some people, it can all sound the same, but it's really, really not.
I'm glad you liked him. I think he's the funniest guy.
We saw him live at the Greek and it's the greatest standup I've ever seen. You would love his special.
What's it called? Beautiful Dogs. Gosh, something you said a second ago, somebody gave me a rape whistle.
It was a red whistle and it was in a plastic bag that had rape whistle written on it, right? And I thought, oh, I'll give it to a teenager at my book signing. So I was waiting for the perfect person, and the 17-year-old boy came with his mother, and I gave it to him, and I said, I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I think you're supposed to blow into it the second you start raping someone.
And then someone was offended by that, and I thought, no. No.
A woman's being raped. She's got her hands full.
Why can't the guy? I mean, it's the least a guy could do is blow into a rape whistle. Do your part.
Oh, one thing I want to hear you talk about a tiny bit is in the hem of his garment. You say, I'm not queer.
I'm gay. Tell me the distinction between that.
My objection to queer isn't that it used to be a slur. And it really is a generational thing.
When I'm signing books, if I meet gay men my age, I say, there's not a right answer. I said, but where do you stand on the word queer? And 90% of them feel the way that I do.
Which is it used to be yelled at you, right? Right. But I don't care that it used to be a slur.
It's the fourth time in my life that I've been rebranded. And nobody ever asks.
I was in Australia not long ago, and the flight attendants for Qantas were getting new uniforms. And I just said to one, oh, I love your uniform now.
I love the way the navy blue is next to the red, is next to the pink. And she said, well, we're getting new uniforms.
And I said, what if you hate them? And she said, we're all getting a chance to vote on them. But nobody did that with queer.
The word just changed to queer. And then people say to me, as a queer writer, and I'm just like, no.
I didn't pick that. Yeah, I didn't pick it.
And also, it's an umbrella term. When I was in Australia, somebody said, oh, I know a nun who identifies as queer because she's married to God and that is an alternative sexual state.
I meet a lot of women who identify as queer that are married to men, but they're open to the idea of a three-way or something, so now they identify as queer. And I just don't know why I'm on their team.
You're like, we're not the same. Right.
Somebody lumped us all together. I just want to know, who did the lumping? Or BIPOC? What's BIPOC? Black, indigenous people of color.
If you're like a Native American or you're black. Or you're from Hawaii.
But wouldn't you just rather be Native American or be black? Right. But somebody decided.
But it wasn't Native Americans or black people. It was some humanities professor who decided that we're going to invent this word.
It's so ironic because it's an attempt to be inclusive. And then in fact, it just sort of erases people's individual identities.
I mean, I was just thinking this earlier today. I thought if they were straight people and gay people picking sport teams, gays would say, let's take the trance.
I just feel like the genderqueer people would be the last ones on the field. You know what I mean? You'd be like, Chunk, we already took the nuns.
Okay. Take the genderqueers as well.
You know, and they have green hair and their septum rings and they come over and they're a team where they just complain about everything. I did a little CBS Sunday morning thing.
Yes, I watched it. How I don't want to be.
And then I don't ever read anything about myself, but apparently my friend Pamela Paul, who writes for the New York Times, she said, can I quote you for my op-ed piece in the Times? And then the Times ran a letter and it was like somebody went off on that aspect of it and called my position problematic. But it's like, if I'm gay, I think I have a voice.
Yeah, you're the right. I think I should be able to say I don't like that.
It's not like there are people in Puerto Rico being called something and I say, I don't agree with that. Yeah, it's about that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a word people are directing toward me.
Plus, I have a problem with problematic. If everything's problematic, nothing is.
Yeah, that word for me is a big... It's problematic.
Yeah, it's rough. I do read the comments of this show, and I had made a Boy Scout joke.
I've now forgotten. It was like a Boy Scout leader and a young boy walking into the woods.
They're going to go camping. I'm sure you know this one.
I got to walk out alone. Yeah, exactly.
The little boy goes, oh, man, I'm so scared. It's so dark.
He goes, how do you think I feel? I'm going to have to walk out alone. It's a great joke.
Someone was very mad at me. How dare you make that joke? It's disgusting.
And I wrote to them, I was molested. If I earned a single thing out of that, I can fucking make that joke as many times as I want.
And she goes, well, I wasn't, so I don't know. And I was like, well, you weren't, and you're telling me how to deal with it.
You don't have any business in this, really. That one got me mad.
I wrote an essay in The New Yorker about my close friend, Dawn. And I just said in passing that one of her lungs had collapsed.
So she was super nervous about COVID. And so she wore her mask long after everybody else.
And she and I were at O'Hare airport. And I said, Dawn, I think it's time to let it go.
Look around you. Nobody else.
And she took her mask off, immediately got COVID. But the story was about our almost 50 year old friendship.
Yes, of course. So then my publicist called and said, I just think you should know this is happening.
And it was like a tidal wave. I was ableist.
And I bullied a vulnerable person into taking her mask. I hope she never talks to you again.
Oh, my God. You almost killed her.
I hate people like you. And it never occurred to me.
No one was angrier than Dawn because she doesn't identify as vulnerable. Right.
And you can't bully her into anything. Takes away her autonomy in this somehow.
Also, if it's a New Yorker, your editor is like, I don't know about this. No one saw that coming.
And then people were so angry about it. I didn't respond to any of it.
I didn't read it. Some of it got back to me, but I just thought I'd love to meet one of those people.
I have that fantasy too. Like, I wonder if I sat and talked with them.
Could we join the same reality together at some point? I do have a curiosity. Like some of these people are very mad.
I just want to go like, I would love to have lunch with you and see if at the end of that lunch, you could really still feel that way. But as soon as they even meet you for lunch, they're not going to be that.
They're not that. That's a presence you're able to have when you're not in front of another person.
That's an online rage. I think what's a little bit happening is there was a barrier of effort before where your passing thought to get to you would have involved sitting down and writing on paper and then finding an address and a stamp and all that.
So you wouldn't do it. You would just let it remain a passing thought.

But now you're already at the keyboard

and the passing thought can come out.

And so I have to often check myself and go,

let's just recognize this person might not even think this.

It was in their head that second

and they had the keys right there and they did it.

I've only written a comment one time

and it was in the New York Times,

did an article about Tom Brown, the fashion designer.

And people wrote in, oh, I can't believe who would wear that.

I can't believe that's so expensive.

I'm not going to be my age because I think certain people like Lena Dunham, who I've done a show with and spent a little bit of time with and is a lovely person. Yeah.
And talented person. But I think it's hard for her because of her age, Her audience, her peers rather, grew up online and they fucking are brutal.
Amy Schumer, it's the same thing. People are just brutal.
Amy Schumer has a new movie. Yeah.
But it was funny. I haven't seen it.
And then people like, you know, I wanted to write like, really? I thought it was really funny, but then I thought, when do I become a part of the whole cycle? That's kind of my policy. I don't defend myself, but I defend other people I like.
I'll get involved in the comments to defend other people. You wrote a children's book, Pretty Ugly.
Did people buy it? Yeah, I guess. It was written 20 years ago.
It was? More than 20 years ago. And Ian Falconer did the pictures, but it was for a project of cartoons for kids that the art director for The New Yorker put together.
And then, a couple years ago, she decided to bring it out as a book. Ian died a couple months before the book came out.
So it was done 20 years ago, but it came out a couple years ago? Yeah. Okay, what I love about, because you were on Seth Meyers talking about it, but you're like, there's no message in this book for the kids.
There's no lesson and there's no message. And I just loved your defense of that.
Well, poor kids. I mean, everybody.
Look at every children's book. There's a message, and it's not doing any good.
There's still an answer. Like, look at these adults.
It didn't work. The baseline of piece of shit has not really fluctuated at all.
Pre or post all these great books. What was the message of brain eggs and ham? It's not a message, is it? Dr.
Seuss was pretty good at it. He wasn't beating kids over the head with anything.
But you're right. There's this impulse for everyone to teach them a lesson every second they're awake.
And it must be exhausting. Well, you know, it's interesting to me too, the reviews of children's books now and Publishers Weekly and Kirkus, which are publications that review new books.
And it was so interesting. It said, characters' skin color is the same as the page because they all review the books for diversity.
What color are the people and how many? That's a consideration. I don't read children's books.
It's been a while. Yeah, I don't.
There was one that I bought 20 copies of, and it's a German book. And it And it's a mole, and someone's shed on its head,

and it goes to different animals and said,

did you do this?

And then the horse says, no, my shed looks like this.

And the goat says, no, my shed looks like this. This is so German.

And it's really beautifully drawn in.

Oh, my God, I want this.

It was a great size.

And then it got translated into many different languages.

What's the name of that book?

I want to get that.

It's got the word mole. Shisha in it? It's like the little mole who wanted to know who did it on his head.
Okay. How could he not? And there's not a lesson in it, except you see what horseshit looks like.
You get educated on scat. Yeah, which is important.
We did a whole episode on toilets as they vary around the world, And the German toilet in particular is designed with a landing pad so you can examine your shit to diagnose your health. And I was like, that sounds pretty smart.
The first time I went to Germany, I thought, what? Why is there a staging area for my turd before it fucking goes into the sewer system? They're sick over there. I like it.
I know, it's pretty fun. When Hugh just had his hip replaced, I went with him to the hospital.
I was with him in this little examining room and one nurse or one doctor after another came into the room and they asked questions. Each one of them had a personality and one of them said to Hugh, when was the last time you had a bowel movement? I said, ah.
Because we don't do that. We do not do that.
We do not talk about that. We do never, ever, ever, ever, ever.
And I thought everything could fall apart if I listened to his answer. After 35 years.
35 years, yeah. I am so impressed.
I'm shocked because I didn't think I would ever wander into the area that you're a prude. I mean, you acknowledge this is like very prudish of you.
No, I think it's good for a relationship. A lot of people think this.
Never happened in our house. I mean, I know people who have that relationship.
Right. So when you guys get a hotel room, do you make sure you get a suite that has two toilets in it so that you guys can split up? No, but if Hugh were to go into the bathroom, I would...
Respectfully not go for a while. Turn on the TV.
Not the TV, but something. It would depend.
If there was a bathroom and it had a paper door and he went in there, then I would say, I'm just going to listen to this podcast with these big noise- noise canceling headphones on. Time for me to practice my accordion.
Yeah, or I would leave. When we lived in Normandy, there was one bedroom and then the bathroom and then the kitchen.
And when we had company, he would be out somewhere and I would say, I'm going to go for a walk. I would be back in exactly 20 minutes.
You know, so people would know. Now's the time to try to move your bowels yeah this is interesting I'm surprised and I do like it I mean this is an ongoing debate for people in relationships does it ruin the romance does it ruin it we had a house guest a while ago who said I'm gonna go downstairs now and take a shit and I said why do you even say that just go downstairs I'm glad I know this about you now because I talk about it a lot.

I probably would get myself disinvited had I not known this prior to coming over.

It's just a different way of life.

They're two different paradigms.

Right.

People who acknowledge it and say it's a part of life.

I think it's funny.

I think it's very inherently funny.

I like hearing about other people.

Do you like a pant shitting story?

That's my all-time favorite story. There's nothing better.
I like your story about shitting in your pants. Was it Home Depot? Yes.
Bending over to pick up some wood in the bathroom was a quarter mile away. Yeah.
And I know there's cameras in there and I know I'm recognizable and I'm walking. I clearly shit my pants.
Did I tell you when I got in there, the great relief was there's trash cans in all the stalls at Home Depot, which I think lets you know what the overall health of the laborers in the parking lot is. Clearly they had so many pairs of underwear in the bin for the paper towel that they were like, we got to put 55 trash cans in each stall.
I was at the airport a few weeks ago and my friend said, oh, look at that man. He looks so good in his seersucker suit.
And he was like in his 70s, and I fell in behind him later, and he'd completely shit in his pants. Oh, yeah, that's a gift, though.
Did you get immediately excited? No, I felt contempt for him. Oh.
I got really early for my flight to the airport. I knew there was a gift shop.
I knew they sold clothing. I'm like, why didn't you go

and buy a pair of pants at the gift shop

if you thought this is a nice suit,

I'm going to put it in a plastic bag.

And I thought, you can't not know.

Even if you sat in someone else's shed,

you'd be like...

Right.

It triggered your laziness thing again.

Yeah, disrespect.

I think that's the recurring theme

is that when you smell laziness...

Literally.

Like, fucking handle your business. It wasn't about anything other than that.
Then I thought, well, maybe he took his underwear off. And he just still stinks a bit.
Could you see it or you could only smell it? No, you could see it. And I thought, what would I have done? So I would have bought the shorts.
If you're that married to the pants, I would have completely washed them in the sink. It takes some work, but it's seersucker.
You could get it done. If they had a hand dryer, you could go through all that and hand dry them and put them on again if you needed to.
But I wouldn't even feel confident to do that. I would have thrown the pants away or wrapped the jacket around your waist.
I sent Monica a photo one time. I was at the pharmacy and I was in line and the woman in front of me who was wearing yoga pants had shit herself.
Her pants were full of shit and she was waiting in a very long line and she was so casual. And I just thought, this woman's a gangster.
I couldn't do that. I had to admire the bravery and the fuck it-ness of her demeanor.
I just was like, man, when I shit my pants, I'm racing to handle it. This woman was like, no, I'm going to stop by the pharmacy.
That's on my list. God knows where else she went.
She might have gone grocery shopping. I would have gone to the second person in line.
And I would have said, there's a woman back here who's shitting her pants. Do you mind if she goes in front of you? And then when you led her up there, people would look at the back of her pants because they'd want to say, hey.
And then be like, okay. Yeah.
I was in life. Oh.
Yeah. I probably would have judged her for wearing sweatpants outside the house.
Yeah. There would have been a lot of offensive things for you.
The chin in the back of it would just be secondary. The entree would be the sweatpants.
Yeah, of course.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

We are supported by ZipRecruiter.

Go get recruiting.

Finding the right match is hard.

Like with dating, some people get lucky and marry their high school sweetheart.

But others of us spend years in the dating trenches trying to find just the right fit. Tell me about it.
Well, get this. ZipRecruiter knows the struggle of finding the right match when it comes to hiring, and they've come up with a solution called ZipIntro.
It's basically like speed dating for hiring. With ZipIntro from ZipRecruiter, you can post your job today and start talking to qualified candidates tomorrow.
You'll meet several interested, qualified candidates at once, all at a designated time to make your search for the best fit as convenient as possible. And right now, you can try Zip Intro for free at ZipRecruiter.com.
It's super easy. Just pick a day and time for your interviews and Zip Intro does all the work of finding and scheduling candidates who fit your needs.
And you can start interviewing as soon as the next day. Enjoy the benefits of speed hiring with new Zip Intro, only from Zip Recruiter, rated the number one hiring site based on G2.
Try Zip Intro for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash DAX. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash dax.
Zip intro. Post jobs today.
Talk to qualified candidates tomorrow. We are supported by Brooks Running.
If you're a runner, you've definitely heard about Brooks. They're a reliable, high-quality brand known in the running community for being the best in the biz.
Brooks gifted both of us pairs of the Glycerin 22 sneakers, and man, I love mine. They're really comfortable.
God, the right pair of shoes can make all the difference when it comes to getting out and working out. I'm doing some of my sprints in them.
Uh-huh. Oh, just total comfort on my knees.
Also, great design. Yeah, very stylish.
The Glycerin 22 is for anyone whose feet crave a cushioned experience. The wide platform plus the tuned heel and forefoot help your foot land and transition from heel to toe smoothly and steadily.
Okay, this is smart engineering. Listen to this.
The sole of these shoes has a next-gen nitrogen-infused foam with larger cells in the heel to provide plush landings. And then there are smaller cells in the forefoot to invite responsive toe-offs.
That's a fancy way of saying they thought of everything here, and these shoes perform great and feel even better. So whether you're running, hitting the gym, or just want to feel maximum comfort and stability as you live your active lifestyle, give Brooks a try.
Learn more at brooksrunning.com. We are supported by Anytime Fitness.
We're all about striving to be the best version of yourself, both mentally and physically. Moving your body is a great way to build strength in both areas.
If I had to lose anything in my routine, the very last thing I would lose is my physical fitness routine. And you know, I'm now lifting heavy weights.
You've even got some heavy dumbbells. I've got some heavy because I have to get my bone density tip top because perimenopause, ladies.
That's right. The more fit, the stronger you can be, the better the rest of your life's going to be.
That's right. To get stronger mentally and physically, go to Anytime Fitness.
You'll get a personalized training, nutrition, and recovery plan, all customized to your body, your strength level, and your goals. You'll get expert coaching to optimize your results anytime, anywhere, in the gym and on the Anytime Fitness app.
And you'll get anytime access to 5,500 gyms worldwide, all with the right equipment to level up your strength gains and your life.

So get started at anytimefitness.com.

That's anytimefitness.com.

Okay, I was earmarking Instagram

because Amy's so funny on Instagram.

Oh, she's great at it. She's so great at it.
I don't know where she's finding me. She is the most obscure.
I implore everyone to follow Amy Sedaris on Instagram. It's probably the best follow on Instagram other than Shaquille O'Neal.
Where is she finding this? Do you ask her? She's just at it all the time. She's scouring the corners, though, of the internet.
It's Instagram curated. Yeah, she's like a museum curator.
She's not posting pictures of herself or anything. It's really her point of view.
You could not get her to put something on there that she doesn't think is funny. I don't know her at all.
I've never met her. I feel like I know her better than anyone I know who's posting actual photos of their real life.
I'm like, oh, I understand her brain completely by these posts. When Amy's on a talk show, it's different when it's someone in your family because you're like, it's not really her.
Because it seems more maniky. And she's not.
One of Amy's best qualities is that she's a really curious person. And I think that's expressed in her Instagram.
Does it ever encourage you to have an Instagram? I have one, but I've never seen it. Okay.
So you don't really have one, but the team has one. Every now and then I'll go to a play and I'll say, oh, would you put this on the Instagram account? Or they'll say, we want you to be more involved.
Then I'll do it for like a day, but then I forget. I don't know, it's just not my thing.
I understand, but I feel like you might be able to curate some stuff as well. But it really takes a lot of time.
Yeah. It does.

I've been watching this thing lately on Instagram, and it's people getting sentenced for crimes they committed.

So somebody will get 900 years in prison and they'll pass out.

So it's just interesting to see.

But anyway, one of them, I watched not long ago, I don't know what he had done, but the

judge is off camera.

And the judge said, you did this to a child.

You would do this to other childs. Childs.
Given the position you have on the calves, what is your thought on the Ozempic Trisepatide GLP-1? I'm struggling to lose five pounds. And you walk 30,000 steps a day.
But I don't care. I know there are people who struggled for years.
Their entire life. And I think this must be just great for them.
Yes, I'm so supportive of it. But I was just curious, since you put so much fucking effort into.
Yeah, they're not taking anything from me. Yeah.
That's my opinion. I made such a massive change in so many people's lives and made them happy.
And then people say, well, we don't know what the long of it. know.
True, we don't. Although diabetics have been on this medicine for like 20 years, they do.
I don't think that's a really strong objection. I really care about baths.
I want to take a bath. I don't want to take a shower.
I look forward to my bath all day. How long do you stay in the tub when you're in there? 45 minutes.
Oh, nice. Okay.
It's a real session. And I look forward to dinner.
And so if I were on a Zempic, then I wouldn't, I can't walk away from food. Last night we were at dinner, I noticed some people had some food on their plate.
And normally I would have said, actually, pass that over this way. You ate most of Whoopi Goldberg's dinner at the Pope invitation.
I'll eat anyone under the table. Well, we should really have a meal because that could get violent.
Really, Even people who think, oh, you can't out-eat me. Yeah.
No, I like to eat until I hate myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's when you know you're there. I think that serves up for a lot of people.
Yeah, when the shame sets in mid-meal. It's funny.
My brother and I are exactly the same. And I don't know if it's because having six kids, they tend to corral my plate to keep you away from it.
And I just would eat because if you finish first, then maybe you can get second. It's not like I need counseling, but watching my brother eat, I think that's me.
Yeah. Same with me and my brother.
Limited resources. And it was a race every time we ate.
And I hate sharing. I think of myself as a very generous person.
I'll buy you anything. I don't want to share any of my food.
I don't enjoy it. I'd rather not do it.
I went to dinner a couple nights ago with some very generous people. And what I ordered was so good.
I didn't offer anyone a taste because I wanted it all for myself. And they would all say, do you want some of this? Do you want some of this? And I would take their food.
Never offer. Never reciprocated.
Didn't offer any of my own. Yeah, I've been in that position too.
I mean, you're ordering the thing you want to eat. So yeah, you don't want to give half of it away.
I don't like it sometimes when you go to places with people you don't know that well. And it's a small plate thing that you share.
Oh, share plates. Because I want all of it.
When we're ordering, that's where I have to start the whole process. My wife will go, oh, should we get such and such for the table? And I'll go like, well, I want one for myself.
Yeah. So make sure I have my own appetizer.
And I feel crazy, but I can't even enjoy it because I'm racing. You can soften it by just saying, let's get two.
But I don't mean to. I don't want four people sharing two.
I want three people sharing one. I have my own.
You are having a really big reaction. I want my own and then part of yours.
Exactly. I want my own and then the sharing one we're all getting.
Okay, but you both have money so you can say let's start with two and maybe we'll get another one if everyone's still hungry. Nope.
You guys aren't resonating with this? You know what I like to do is when dessert time comes I I like to order more dinner. Oh, yeah.
You might like this. We were in Austin six months ago, and we went to Lambert's, my favorite steakhouse there.
I got a ribeye. And you would know as a fellow addict, the first bite, I'm angry.
I'm like, fuck, this is so good. It's going to disappear.
I should have ordered two. It'd be crazy now if I ordered a second one because Monica will be waiting.
I was very uncomfortable with how good it tasted and how panicked I was. It was going to run out.
So we went back two nights later and I got two ribeyes. I could relax and breathe and I enjoyed the shit out of both of them.
But it's like, you know, when something's so good, my first thought is like, fuck, it's going to go away. There's a place in Melbourne called Tipo 00, which is a kind of flour they make pasta out of.
And it's one of my favorite places. So I was there for two days and so I went both days that I was there.
And the second day I ordered two pastas. Yeah.
And did you eat them both all or were you like I'll save some, take some home or no? I ate them both all. And I would have eaten dinner there both nights too, but I was doing a show and I eat dinner while I sign books because otherwise I'm not getting out of there to all the restaurants going to be closed.
I hate having my picture taken. I hate how people take your picture like you're a statue.
They don't ask you. It's so rude to me.
Anyway, so they have signs up, no pictures. And this woman came up and said, after standing in this line watching you eat for 10 minutes, I understand why you don't want any pictures taken.
Because I eat like that, like a caveman. Well, yeah, maybe part of it is the big family, but the addict thing is a piece of this.
Can you relate to the panic the second you recognize it's something you really love? But I haven't been to that place. I'll go there.
The Four Seasons there has a smoked ribeye. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's pretty great. My fetish is that same hotel.
We were in Tokyo end of January. And so we went to a teppanyaki restaurant at the Peninsula Hotel.
And it was the best steak I've ever had in my life. Really? Unbelievable.
I will go just for that now. That's still the greatest gift in life is when you have a meal like that.
And I was just sitting there thinking, how many entire cows have I eaten in my life? And this is the best. Wow.
And then I like to sit next to somebody who I know doesn't finish their food. Yes, yes, yes.
That's very smart. Tactical.
But back to the Ozympic thing, I agree with you. I think that takes away your desire for food.
And that's sad. I know.
I've thought of many people I know who live to eat. And I thought, I can understand.
They don't want to lose their passion. Their excitement for dinner.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But plus, Hugh is a really, really good cook.
And he's a very generous cook. He'll say, what would you like for dinner? And if it takes four hours to make it, and I'm not saying he'll do this every night, but a lot of times he'll spend four hours.
Wow. What's your single favorite dish of his? It's this manicotti my mother used to make.
Other people have tried to make it and he just makes it perfectly. It just takes me right back to my mother.
And most people, they don't make a meat manicotti. And I like the store-bought shells.
He started making his own shells and it's like, no, no, no. I like those ribbed store-bought shells.
The big boys. They're like a taco shell, pasta style.
It would really change our relationship if we didn't have that to do together. We always eat dinner at the table.
The only time we're allowed to watch TV is at the Academy Awards. But we eat dinner at the table with candles on the table.
It's a lovely thing to have with somebody. It is.
Where would we be if we didn't have that? Well, you just eat half of a manicotti, I guess. I have many friends on it, and they seem to still enjoy it.
They just don't want to overdo it like you and I want to do. I just can't imagine putting anything away.
You know, like when you meet people who take three puffs of a cigarette and put it out. Four sips of wine.
Right. Or just turn back to their scotch and it's all, all the ice is melted.
Or I'm regularly at a table and people go, should we get that banana pie to have a bite? That's me. I just don't eat dessert.
I got to do some bargaining with myself. So I'm like, I'll go savory.
I go as hard as I want on savory, but that's off the table for me. And I just think, look at these psychopaths.
They're going to order a dessert and they're going to have a bite. Well, last night at dinner, we split a piece of banana cream pie.
But I felt good about that because I could have had a whole piece of banana cream pie for myself. But I need to lose 4.8 pounds by the 28th of March.
Okay. What is happening on the 28th? I start a new tour.
Okay. And you want to be this very specific way? I want to be 145 pounds.
Okay. Wow.
When I start my tour. That's the only way I do it.
I'm just strict with myself and I get out of control and then I kind of reign it. But it's like a five pound reign.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You just talked about your mom and how much you like that it reminds you of her. And I just want to say out loud, I heard you say the sweetest thing in one of these interviews I was watching where you said, my whole mission as a writer has been to make the rest of the world love my mom as much as I did.

Yeah, that's what I feel. That's so fucking sweet.
My dad would get so mad. What do you have to say that for? But he never understood.
My father would say, I love my mother. She was a wonderful woman.
What was so great about her? Oh, I loved her. She was wonderful.
How was she wonderful? She was a wonderful woman. And it's like, he could say to me, my mother, I was an alcoholic.

Or my mother pressed my face against the skillet one time to teach me a lesson. She didn't do any of those things.
It wouldn't make me dislike her. It would make her more real to me.
Because when you're just saying she was a wonderful woman, you're not telling me anything. If you can include somebody's weaknesses in something that you write.
I wrote something recently. When we were kids, we'd have dinner together.
And my father would leave, go downstairs the second he could. And the rest of us would sit around the table with my mother for hours and hours.
1030 on a school night. And we're still with our mother around the table.
I think she really liked having a lot of kids, and she liked us, and we liked her.

And she would go to the bathroom,

and we would follow her to the bathroom,

and she would throw up every single night.

And then she would come out and say,

I ate something that didn't agree with me.

And it wasn't until you're older that you're like,

oh, the dental problems, mama's bulimic.

Maybe now it would be a bit different, but at the time there wouldn't have word for it. That didn't make her a bad mother.
No. Right.
If my goal is to make people love my mother, I don't think that that impedes my goal any. No, it just makes her human.
Okay, you're going on a 40-city tour. You do it every single year, right? Every fall and every spring.
Do you love being on the road? Yeah, I do. You will do a reading and as you already know, lots of armcherries go and we hear about it all the time.
Like, oh my God, I saw Sedaris in Skokie. I saw him in all these places.
And you do book signings generally and they go on until they're over, right? Yeah. How long are they? The longest one was 10 and a half hours.
Oh my God. That was on a book tour.
Right. Can't you get piles? Is that a thing? Isn't piles the old word for hemorrhage? Probably, but people are going to wait in line for 10 and a half hours once.
They're not going to do it a second time. Gotcha.
But usually if it's a lecture tour, it's a different thing because people bought a ticket. I got the longest one I did recently.
It's like five hours. But usually I get in the theater and I start signing books immediately because I don't need any prep time.
And I'm there at the theater because I got to do sound checks. So what am I going to do? Sit in the dressing room? So I do it beforehand and then I do it after.
Usually you do it an hour before and two hours after. I reread themes and variations today.
Do you recall that story of yours? It's so good and And it's all about signing. I mean, mostly there's so much fodder in these signings.
You get so many wonderful stories, but yeah, this woman came up to David and said like, I put my bra back on for you. Yeah.
She said, I take it off when I come home from work. I don't put it on for anyone.
Once it's off, it's off. And it explained so much to me because I found this woman's phone in England and I tracked her down, which is really hard to do.
And I knocked on the door and her husband came to the door and I said, I found a telephone. He called over Sherry.
And then she comes to the door with her arms crossed over her chest as if I stole her phone. And then I realized, oh, she took a bra.
And her arms are crossed. Now he starts asking everyone who comes up to get a book signed, when do you take your bra off? That's actually a great question for people.
Some of the women are like, oh, heavens no, I take it off in the car. They don't wait to get home.
Wow. I met a Scottish woman who takes it off on the bus.
And I hadn't even thought of it either. Reading that story again, I was like, it must feel incredible to get that fucking bra off.
Like, I can actually feel the sensation of liberating these boobs that have been bound up. You know, like, sometimes you're wearing a pair of shoes that's too tight or something.
And you come home and you take them off and you're like, oh. The last thing you want to do is put them back on.
I am not in a rush to get it off, but I wait till the longest moment before I put it on in the morning. So like if it's a weekend and I'm not going out anywhere, I probably won't wear one.
But when I get home from work, I'm not like, I got to get this thing off. You're not dying to get out of it.
Now, is there any element of that that you're like, I must protect their buoyancy? Why I don't put it on? Why you don't take it off right away. No.
No. I just forget.
Okay. I have Great Bra Skims shout out sponsors.
Yeah, big, big shout out. But is that like, when I was in Hawaii, I saw people with long sleeve shirts on and then they had hats on and they had things protecting their necks and they had sunblock.
But part of me thinks when you're 60, gonna look 60 whether you live your life in the shadows you're gonna age regardless so is that like that with breasts i've had girlfriends that's why i asked i've had girlfriends are like i have to keep it on until i go to bed because i don't want them to get saggy they're thinking of maintaining the buoyancy of of their breasts. I don't think that's going to help.
But by that reason, then a tight brief would keep your ass firmer than boxer shorts. But I'll tell you this from anecdotal experience and one experiment.
My testicles were getting droopier and droopier and droopier. And one of the most embarrassing moments I had, which I've told on here before, is I was shooting as a guest star on the TV show and the lead actress was not working that week.
They gave me her trailer. And this is a very perverted, and I'm sorry for this story, but this was 20 years ago.
I already love it. I finished my last day of work and then I was told, oh, they're actually calling her in, this actress, back to her trailer.
And so I started getting kind of horny with the notion that she might walk in while I was naked. And then I happened to walk by a mirror and it was a very hot day that day of shooting.
And I looked and I was like, oh my God, my testicles are longer than my penis. This is a nightmare if she walked in and saw how droopy these balls are.
Your dick should always be further down than your testicles. And again, this was 20 years ago.
And I was like, where are these balls going to be when I'm fucking 50? Like, I'll have to tuck them in my socks. That's what I was en route to.
Then I did a movie. I guess it was 10 years ago, nine years ago.
And in the scene, I had to wear me undies. They were tight.
They were boxer briefs. And I was like, oh, I actually like these.
And I switched to those kind of panties. And David, my testicles are half the length that they were when I was wearing boxers for a decade.
Hey, it's really funny to hear a man say the word panties. I'll never call a woman's undergarments panties, but I exclusively will call men's panties panties.
Because a woman said to me, I had used the word panties in an essay. She said, only men say panties.
I don't think that's true. I think women say it in a sexual context.
But I agree that you're not like, I'm going shopping for panties today. What would you say? Unmentionables? No underwear.
I think, personally, that if your testicles, they look like taffy. I'm going to add that.
Yeah. Like saltwater taffy.
If you put an ice cube, then the coldness. So maybe the heat had something to do with it.
It had an enormous amount to do with it. But I'm telling you, even ice cubes would not have rectified this situation.
And I put my clothes on so fast and got out of that trailer, you can't imagine. Have you ever seen kangaroos balls in Australia? They're just really disturbing.
So long. Taffy-like.
Oh, God. We're going to have to do some Googling.
I could have put mine in a ponytail. Oh, my God.
There was another book. I absolutely love that you say that.
When my second book came out, my first book, it was just stuff I'd written on. And the second book, they said, what's your book going to be about? And I said, oh, go to a nudist colony.
Because I'd never read anything about it. And I don't even like walking around my house barefoot.
I'm the last person to go to a nudist colony. And I kept putting it off.
And then my editor found a place. And it turned out to be a senior citizen's nudist trailer park in upstate New York.
So I went and I lived in a trailer. So I would get to my trailer and I would put my clothes on and then someone knocked on the door and I'm like, just a minute.
I'm racing to take my clothes off because if you answered the girl with your clothes on they'd be like, what's going on here? It was opposite land. I was invited to somebody's house for dinner naked and I went naked naked and you bring a towel and they're naked.
You did that for how long? Ten days. Wow.
That's the problem. I have seen enough documentaries about nudist colonies.
It's just not what you want it to be. It doesn't attract the people you want to see.
And this is Senior Citizens Nudist. So they were playing the Tonk a lot, which is a game where you take a metal ball and you toss it.
And then the game's over and you go and you bend over and collect. So you were seeing people's assholes.
Yes. They had a snack bar and the waitress would have a tampon string hanging out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No.
Yeah. People would come out of the bathroom and they'd have a big ring around their bottom so you would know exactly.
Oh would know exactly. Sometimes people go in the bathroom and you think, oh, maybe they needed to wash their hands or something.
Clean out their seersucker suit. Wow.
What a thing to do. Yeah, it's not sexy.
You want it to be sexy. It's not sexy.
If there's dick and balls around, I'm going to stare at them. I can't imagine myself getting immune to it.
You know, I think being gay and being in a locker room or something, you're always kind of living in fear that someone's going to say, what are you staring at? Yes, yes. You're just extra super conscious.
That's my straight privilege. I can totally stare at dicks and balls.
Yeah. And no one thinks anything.
It's not dangerous for me. But I always thought people are just so wasting their time when they're thinking about like trans women in the bathroom.
Hey, there's nothing to look at in the bathroom. And a trans woman is like, that's gay people you don't want in the locker room.
You know what I mean? But not that they're going to attack you, but they're going to appreciate, you know, they're going to be looking at you in a way. Well, my bigger issue is it's always the same thing.
No one's worried about a trans man going into the bathroom. They're worried about a trans woman going into the girl's bathroom.
So they believe that this person is a predator who will abuse children. And they're like, they can't be in the girl's bathroom.
They must be in the boy's bathroom. There's no concern that the boys are going to get molested by this predator.
It's just like they're with girls. They can't be with girls.
they must be with the young little boys. Nothing got safer.
You've prioritized little girls getting molested over little boys. Does that make sense? Yeah.
But I haven't read about a single person being attacked in the bathroom. No, it hasn't.
No, no, no. It's a complete, it's craziness.
And how you're monitoring this, let's say it passed. No trans women in the bathroom.
Is someone at the door checking dicks and genitals? Is that what we're all signing up for? No trans men in the bathroom? I have to show my dick and balls to go into the... I mean, try to work out how it's going to be enforced and I'm not clear.
You know, when people were ragging on Ellen DeGeneres, and I don't know her, I've never met her, but I think she did so much more for gay rights than most activists because people watched

her and people grew to love her and then she said i'm a lesbian and they were like okay yeah i already

love you too late yeah and i just think trans people need that because i can't think of a

single one that i've met who's i was like oh get that tiresome asshole away from me i just can't

think of and that doesn't mean that they're all lovely but i was in australia and i went into a

Thank you. That's how all things become palatable.
You meet people who you like, who are of different religions, races, all of these things. And then you're like, oh, that's fine now.
Most hardcore racists, they've never even been in class with a black kid. They don't know any black folks.
They hate them, but they've never ever even met them. It's generally the case.
Did you watch Sing Sing? Yes.

We had Coleman Domingo on for that. Because when I said earlier that when dawn, you know, prisoners would come get out of prison and stay at our house.
When I saw that movie, I thought I should take prisoners in my house. Because when he got out of prison at the end, I was so glad to see that his friend was there waiting for him.
But I thought, oh, I want him to come and live in my house and then find a job.

And I'll be that step between.

And again, it's not like he was really in prison.

It's just that movie made me.

You want Coleman Domingo to come live in your house.

Yeah, I can relate.

He was on the show?

Yes, I love him.

He's pretty special.

Oh my God, do you know him?

No. Oh, he is as special as they get.
Is he pretty tall? Yeah. He's tall.
He's got gorgeous legs. He was wearing short shorts.
As you know, amazing fashion. Yeah, he's crazy into fashion.
Okay, but I want to really, really beg people to go see you in person reading your stuff. It's so, so fun.
I've done it. And you're going to 40 cities.
And I think people would be shocked how close you'll probably be to where they live. It's not like you're just in major cities.
You're in Akron. You're in Fort Wayne.
You're in Burlington, Albany. You're all over the place.
People should go to davidsiderisbooks.com and get tickets. It's such a fun evening.
And if you want to hear him ask you a weird question, very high likelihood that'll happen if you stay in line. You'll talk to everybody and you'll write something very inappropriate in their book.
You'll ask them a very inappropriate question. It promises to be a real experience.
That's nice of you to say. Yeah.
And also, for anyone who's not listened to the audio book of Happy Go Lucky, I really recommend it because themes and variations, that recording of that story is from a live show. And the amount of laughs in that, you don't pound for pound hear comedians really getting that long of laughs.

It's such a funny piece. And to be an audience listening to it, I think is so great.
Well, I want to do my whole next book completely live. That's a good idea.
Well, because sometimes if you record in the studio, then it can be edited in such a way that it fucks your timing up. But if you're doing it live, then you can't.
I like that. That and you're getting real-time feedback of what part we want to sit in for a second.
Is it possible for you to really know what part we'd like to sit in for a second? But the audience forces you to sit in some things. I tried reading something about going to Fiji.
I wrote it when Hugh and I were in Hawaii. But I was on tour, but I had a five-day break in the tour.
So I read something out loud, and then I go back to the room and rewrite it and read it out loud. Because you read it out loud, and you think, oh, I thought people could relate.
People can't relate to this, so how do I make this more relatable? And people are just confused by that, so let's get rid of that. Ultimately, you could have an editor telling you that, but I'd rather you be the editor.
You're working in like a standup routine in some way. And I think that's kind of cool and novel.
So I have new stuff. A lot of times people are, oh, you're going to be reading from your books.
No, I never do that. Right, right, right, right.
So anyways, everybody go to davidsiderisbooks.com and please go see David live before you perish because it's totally worth the trip. And then, yes, listen to Happy Go Lucky because I had so much fun re-listening.
I adore you. Oh, thank you so much for having me.
You are, I think, have the crown for the most. You are Alex Baldwin or Steve Martin.
Let's keep it up. Keep coming back, please.
Every armchair, if you ask anyone, like, who are your favorite guests? We pull them. You always come up.
I meet so many people who listen to your podcast.

In Australia, I even met a lot of people who listen.

We want to go there and do a live show.

Yeah, that's what I say.

Go see him live.

That's what I say.

That's exactly what I told him to do.

All right.

Love you.

Love you.

See you around soon.

Thank you.

Stay tuned for the fact check.

It's where the party's at.

You're stressed out.

Yeah, but I'm trying not to be stressed out because...

Buddhism.

Yeah.

I'm trying.

I was yesterday Buddhist.

Did you get impacted by the... Extremely impacted by White Lotus and Ali.
We won't talk about it. We're not going to talk about it.
Because you haven't finished. But I do want to talk about it overall.
There are so many parts of the whole season. The whole season is about— I mean, the whole series is really about Buddhism, I think.
But this season specifically is, is like, you know, kind of hitting you over the head with it a little bit. In the most realistic way.
Yes. He, oh my God.
I just, I just think Mike White is so brilliant in his accuracy.

Like everything, every storyline is so accurate.

Yeah.

It's so funny.

He dabbles in Buddhism.

So it comes through in all the seasons, I think.

Because I think what they're all saying in different ways,

obviously the first season is a class, is speaking to class, you know, and second season is speaking to relationships and then this one is religion, that he just shows over and over again how flimsy our grasp on reality is. Uh-huh.
Like what we think is true to us and what our identities are and who we are. And even our beliefs are so flimsy.
Everything is so tenuous. Yeah, we've built up a lot of artifice around what is at the end of the day, another animal on planet earth.
But we've created all these things and manufactured things. And then, yeah, we have institutions of thought and they all feel really substantial and permanent and real.
Nothing's real. But it's just all stuff we made and it's ideas we thought up and told other people and they caught on.
We're just here. I was thinking in the simplest terms, they were going to breakfast.
They're always going to breakfast on the show. And it seems so fun.
I get like so excited at the notion of being at a hotel and going and getting breakfast when I see the scenes. And I go, oh yes, breakfast is so fun.
And then I go, yeah, because it's eating. It's the essential thing.
We really do have a purpose, which is we have to eat food. That's like one of our purposes.
Like the most consistent source of joy in your life is eating. Like you're almost guaranteed three times a day to have this like fun pick me up.
Not anymore for a lot of people. Well, true.
That's a good, I'd bring up Ozemp. I know.
Peptides. Does that make any sense? I was like, it's, oh yeah's oh yeah it's not a mystery why breakfast lunch and dinner is so fun because we have to eat to stay alive that's our purpose yeah but we but then we put so much on top of it the expense like i'm going to a fancy restaurant that proves that i i'm um i'm doing a valuable in society and that people want to be, I'm superior.
Like we put, we make all these hierarchies and it's all made up. Like everything is made up.
I was, because yesterday I was walking to go somewhere to work and I like sat down with my computer and I thought, how do Buddhists work? Like, I don't want to do that. What is the point of this? What is the point of sitting here and picking apart this conversation and making it sound good? And all of this is for money.
And like, Why? Well, hold on. No.
Why? There's a very Buddhist approach to work. Yeah, you should definitely.
No. Well, if you make it about money, then yes.
Being diligent and meticulous and thoughtful and mindful about process is very Buddhist. It is, I know.
And. I know.
But for me, there's stress on it, right? Like I'm doing it so that it's so good so that we are able to have all these downloads and then we're able to earn our money. And it's all like, and I'm able to feel comfortable in that big house.
And like, it's all dumb. You're having a real reckoning.
Yeah, it's all dumb. And it is so, so ironic and so stupid.
But I, the weekend started, I mean, again, this is like a bottle. This isn't a bottle episode, but it kind of is.
You love your bottle episodes. Yeah, yeah.
You want to keep them going. On Friday, I mean, on Saturday, I went shopping with Callie.
Uh-huh. And as we love to do.
Yeah, and you went to a new store. I went to a new store that I was really excited to go to.
Yeah. That's a fancy store that, you know, you walk in and you do, it's very pretty woman.
You come in and you have to prove yourself there a little bit. And Callie even said, she was like, opposite of Costco.
I'm just finishing the acquired Costco episode. Completely opposite of Costco.
Costco is a fantastic company. Like when we walked up, they said, do you have an appointment? We said no.
And then, and then they said, okay, it's fine. How many? And we said two.
And they said we could go in. While we were there, there was a watch.
Beautiful watch. There was a gorgeous watch, two actually.
And the first one I tried on was gold, Cartier. Beautiful.
It has like this tiny face. I love a tiny face.
You love a tiny face, yeah. I like a bigger face.
I love a tiny, it's so tiny, you wouldn't believe it. Okay.
And it's vintage. Do you need a magnifying glass to see what time it is? Almost, almost.
What if it came with its own matching magnifying glass you kept in your pocket? Yeah. But it was tiny too.
It's so tiny and you you know, I put it on and it was beautiful. And then he said the price.
I was like, oh my. You had to tell your face not to react.
Yes. And I was kind of like, get it off.
Like, I can't. Get it away from me.
It shouldn't be on me. Like, get it off.
Yeah. How much was it? $50,000.
Oh. Cowabunga.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
So he took it off. But there was this other one I had seen and Cal was like, maybe you should try on that other one.
He put it on my wrist. White gold Cartier, tiny face.
Also vintage. I mean, it is so pretty.
It looks great on my wrist. Yeah.
It's extremely unique. Uh-huh.
Asked the price. He told me.
It was significantly cheaper than the first one. Right.
So then it felt... Like a bargain.
Felt cheap. I said, I'm going to think about it.
Yeah, okay. Took it off.
Callie made me promise her I wouldn't buy it that day. Good girl, Callie.
Good girl. She said, that's something to think about.
Yeah, that's a think about purchase. And I said, sure, yes, that's right.
And I... She's like, just wait till you watch White Lotus on Sunday.
Well, that's where this is going. Okay.
So, I was ruminating on this watch for 48 hours, basically. We spoke about it even.
Yes. And I, you know, I was like, I really, you know, I was looking on the internet to see if I could find anything like it.
Yeah. I couldn't find it.
You couldn't. No.
Because my first thing would simply be anything vintage at a really nice store, they're marking it up 100%. So why not find it in the wild if you really want it? Well, I've been scouring.
And you couldn't do it. It's nowhere to be found.
They found the only one. And so then I was like, God, should I do it? And then I've been asking people.
And of course, some people are like, absolutely not. No.
And then some people are like, well, I mean, like it is an investment. It's, you know, people do that.
So anyway, you know, I've been doing this whole thing. A lot of math in your head.
A lot of math, a lot of thought about this watch. And then I'm, I am watching the episode.
Yeah. And there's a scene.
Yeah. There's a scene with the mother and the daughter.
Have you got there? Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. And there's a scene.
Yeah.

There's a scene with the mother and the daughter.

Have you got there?

Yeah.

Okay.

We're basically the daughter who's been,

she's there to become Buddhist.

She wants to go to this monastery.

She wants to live there for a year.

Yes.

And the mom says,

you need to stay there for one night.

Yeah.

And like,

if you're fine with that,

then okay. We sign off.
Which seemed like an easy thing to do, right? Yeah. And she goes and she comes back and essentially, if you haven't watched this yet, maybe turn it off.
But like. Oh, fast forward is what you want to do.
Yeah, yeah. She's crying.
Yeah. Because she just can't do it.
Yep. She's crying because she's spoiled.

And she's so spoiled.

But even the fact that she's a victim in that

is also funny to me.

Well, I took it as she was really disappointed in herself.

She was, but it is like, I don't know.

She's getting comforted because she's so spoiled. She can't live in a modest it is like, I don't know.
She's getting comforted because she's so

spoiled. She can't live in a modest, you know, I don't know.
Anyway, she basically says like, I can't do it. And the mom is like, I know you can't.
And she basically gives sort of a disgusting but in some ways scarily viable reason for why they should be spending their money and living rich. Yeah, yeah.
And I was just like, oh my God. How we twist.
This is, yeah. Oh, and then there's, for me, the most poignant scene in the, well, there's a few.
Yeah, fast forward. But he basically asks his family members if they can live without money.
Is that what you're going to say? Oh, no. That's the one that really hit me.
So that one hit you. The one that hit me was like, you know, yeah, the dad's finding out if these kids can live without money.
His wife's already told him she can't. Yeah.
You know, I'm sitting there going like, yeah, if someone asks me that question, it feels like a way bigger proposition than I want it to feel like. Yeah.
I mean, it feels embarrassingly like I've become dependent on this thing. These luxuries.
This thing gives me comfort. Yeah.
Like, I think a less generous version is, like, people want to feel superior. I don't know if it's that dark for most people.
Most people just want to know, like, I did good. I did good.
There was, like, you could do good or you could do bad. You could try hard or you could not try.
You could study. like you i okay yeah i i did good i did

all the things i was supposed to and i did good yeah that's much less than like oh i'm way better than mike who can't own a pontoon boat subconscious like it's not it's murky it's it is i did good but with the I did good comes subconsciously

some on this hierarchy of humanity. Yeah.
I have achieved a position that's fairly high up. Well, what I totally agree with you on.
And that's wild and dumb. What's dangerous is what you're really afraid to lose is actually not the trip or the first class.
It's the pride that you did good. The notion that without those symbols of that, you could no longer say I did good, which is a terrible way to evaluate your life because if you're a good friend and a good parent.
Also, what if your job is you go work at the nursing home? You did fucking good. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Actual good. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. But they don't have money and Cartier watches to show for that.
Right. They're all presentations.
I mean, it's so depressing. Mike White says, you know, identity, what Buddhists believe identity is suffering.
You know, that is what causes it. You're tied to your identity.
And yes, and it can cause pride. And even the belief that you have an identity.
Yes. Because Buddhists are like, it's contextual.

You're a different version in every single environment you enter. Yeah.
In this obsession with, no, I have one thing in all environments and in all contexts. Yes.
Creates all this suffering. Right, exactly.
That's the whole point is nothing's fundamental. Nothing's fundamental.
It's all based on where you are, who you are in that moment, what you believe in that moment but could change at any second. But there is, I do think, one thing that is fundamental, which is love.
Like that is part of this show, this series, but also the season two where like one of the characters has the most bizarre arc of the whole, I think of anyone, Saxon, that character, where he's like repugnant. Yeah.
And very much tied to money and. Being a successful businessman like his father.
Exactly. Yeah.
You know, masculinity. Being alpha in the worst version.
And then by the end, he like two of the character, he sees love for real. Yeah.
He witnesses it. Yeah.
And he is about to, he's like crying. Yeah, yeah.
Because he wants that. That's really what is all there is to have.
That's right. Yeah.
So I'm not getting my watch. But I think the distinction between who is made miserable and who is it not is their identity just that achievement or not? I think it's tempting to just evaluate like expensive stuff is bad or expensive life is bad.
And I don't, I'm not willing to go there. I think having your identity tied completely anchored to that is very bad.
Now I've loved Buddhism and I've been reading it and I really like it. And it brings me a lot of perspective.
Yeah. But I'm also going to say the world can't be Buddhist.
They could be. Yeah.
We would not have vaccines. We would not have medicine.
We would not have all the many things that we also really like and think are beneficial for mankind. That's not their pursuit.
Their pursuit is acceptance and harmony. So, you know, I can't go fall.
I don't think I'm willing to go full in on the whole world should be Buddhist and no craving and no striving and all that stuff. Because I also don't, I don't, I think we're in a much, much different world.
But maybe you could argue maybe everyone would be happier, but they'd be dying much sooner and there'd be no solutions for a lot of things we want solutions for. Yeah, they don't think like that.
They're not going to band together to come up with the huge hydroelectric power plant or the sanitation system or that's not what they're going to do. They're going to live very simply in harmony.

I mean, they're not going to try to anti-age.

No, they're going to, they're going to, they're accepting that this is one,

one droplet out of the ocean and we come back to it. I do think it's a very beautiful idea that we come back and we find this, we find our people again.
I like that a lot. In different forms.
It's very comforting, yeah. I think I believe it.
Like there are people in my life that I feel I've known. You've done this dance before.
Yeah. Yeah.
Who knows? Like who knows in what way? Yeah, yeah. Here's a scene I thought you were responding to.
Is the teacher is saying, often we wake up with anxiety. What does he say? I don't remember.
He's like, we wake up with anxiety and we're uncertain about what will happen in the day. And we have fear.
And so what we do is we reach for our identity or our ego. I don't remember the exact words, but we reach for that thing to comfort us.
And I like anytime, AA is great at doing this, anytime that someone acknowledges what the real feelings are. Like, yes, I wake up with anxiety all the time.
That's my roughest part of the day is right when I wake up. Because it's like, yes, what could go wrong today? What has to be done that I'm afraid I can't accomplish? All this stuff.
And so it's almost CBT to just go, oh yeah, they've been already acknowledging this for a long time. And they're basically just saying, observe it as well.
There's a little distance from it. There's an acknowledgement it's very human.
Yeah. It's standard.
That's what's very comforting to me about Buddhism. It's like, yes, these feelings are very normal to humans.
Oh, yeah. And here's what you will normally do to try to push the fear away.
And here's another thing you could do. And I like that part.
Right. The kind of global judgment of things.
It gets too dogmatic and too like every other religion for me at that point. If there's like this big judgment about other things.
I don't think, it's not a judgment. It's an acknowledgement that the way modern humans, mostly, not all, walk through the world is doing us a disservice.
We are causing ourselves so much suffering in pursuit of pleasure. Yeah, on the worst side and then just safety, which is defendable.
But for all of it, there's always these, you know, there's just too many great exceptions for all of it. So it's like I immediately think of Bill Gates.
Like here's a guy who, per a Buddhist assessment, has generated way too much of everything, money, create all these products. But that's clearly not his identity because he's giving everything he's made away.

And he's impacting the world in measurably tens of thousands of lives saved.

And so the whole endeavor is outside of that belief system and I think really valid and admirable.

Right.

But I guess they would say that's his identity. He doesn't have one.
He's a person that did those things. Yeah, well, I think his identity is kind of like Rockefeller's, which is like, I was put here.
I was given this crazy gift. It allowed me to generate all this thing and pool this money so that I can go fix things.
Like that's their identity. And it's a cool one.
I support it. Right.
Yeah. I mean, I hear what you're saying, but I guess the goal, I think, is that you aren't doing any of that.
You aren't doing that. You're not like saying my identity is that I help people, even that.
Like you don't put the labels on yourself because they're, as they would say, a prison. Your identity is a prison.
It's a cage. Whether it's a good cage, whether it's an admirable cage or not, it's still constriction.
Yep, that's true. Anyway.
Anywho, wow. Yeah, it's a lot to sit with.
Yeah. I'm not getting my watch.
I am wearing another watch I have right now. I bet a lot of people listening would go like, I can't relate to this at all.
But I would say, ask yourself if you could move to a place that's half the size that you currently live in. That's all that's happening.
It's like, it's the proposition of having less than you have. Yeah.
And I think that's a universal fear. It's not a, I mean, yeah, we brought in material items and things, but it's just about the treadmill.
The treadmill every person is on to get to the next rung.

Yeah.

No real satisfaction that we're all doing that wherever you are on this ladder.

Yes.

And that's the whole thing that is causing pain.

Yeah.

So I— You're Buddhist.

I'm quitting. I'm quitting everything.
I'm selling my house. And I'm not buying that watch, I'll tell you that.
I do think it has the little bit of appeal that a geographic has. And people didn't listen to that episode 10 years ago.
But a geographic is a common solution for addicts. It's also a common solution for people with mental health disorders.
I'm going to go somewhere else and I won't have my problems there. Yeah.
And I do think there's a little bit of a fantasy. I think if you sold everything and you quit your job and you got into this one bedroom, tiny bachelor thing, I don't believe your happiness or fulfillment or purpose is going up.
I don't. I think you're going to get in that little box and go, huh, wow.
Okay. I did all that because that was going to result in something.
Well, no, if you are truly committed to Buddhism, there isn't a goal. You are there.
You are present. That's the goal.
Like it's not, But it's not to even—enlightenment isn't— I'm just saying, I think if you did all that and you pursued all that, you would get to a point where you're like, I could have done all this and not changed anything. Well, I'm going to try.
I don't know. It's just a lot.
Like, it's hard to look around. It's hard to have this sense of like, that's correct.
Like, I think that's correct that our identities are prisons. Yet, I have constructed a hard identity for myself and I know that.
And so, to carry both, like to know I'm doing a thing that I know. I'm participating.
I'm participating in a thing that I actually know is not the ideal way. Yeah.
That's like a hard thing for me currently today to reconcile. I think fully committing to a singular view.
I just, I like nuance and moderation. It's like, no, there's some good tenants.
And there's lots of great points that bring to your attention that you should observe and track. Yeah.
And you can improve on. But like, is full Buddhist the correct thing or not Buddhist at all, the capitalist thing, correct? I guess I'm just like, no, again, they're just two stories.
They have valid points. And you try to make the version that leaves you with the most peace and contentment.
I think most people could never achieve full enlightenment. Monkhood.
Yeah, or be like truly Buddhist. I don't.
So yeah, everyone who believes, not everyone, but most people who believe any of this is, you are combining it with the reality of, especially in this country, with our world, you know.

Yeah, reality.

Yeah, yeah.

That's interesting.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Comcast Business helps retailers become seamlessly restocking, frictionless paying favorite shopping destinations.
Thank you for shopping. It's how nationwide restaurants become touchscreen ordering, quick-serving eateries, and how hospitals become the patient-scanning, data-managing, healthcare facilities that we all depend on.
With leading networking and connectivity, advanced cybersecurity, and expert partnership, Comcast Business is powering the engine of modern business. Powering possibilities.
Restrictions apply. Anyway.
Anywho. Okay.
This is for David Sedaris. Oh, boy, oh, boy.
The fun thing about Sedaris, aside from that he's just so perfect every time. Yeah.
Is it always reinvigorates me to go back and re-listen to all this stuff. And I've just, since we've interviewed him, I've just been on a tear of listening to all this stuff.
So fun. Listen to this incredible one in Happy Go Lucky.
And the specific story is Lady Marmalade. Okay, great.
It's wild. The stuff he is able to cover.
Yeah, he's incredible. He's just incredible.
It's kind of Mike Whitey, actually. He's just so brutally honest with it.
The Marmalade story is about, like, over the years, the many weird things his dad did that were very perverse but didn't seem to cross the ultimate line for him. It was also the 70s or whatever.
Yeah. But like he examined, he wanted to examine David's asshole at one point because his stomach hurt.
Okay. And he's like, you probably have hemorrhoids.
And he was like, didn't know what that was. And his dad made him bend over the counter and he looked at his ass.
Now, as he said, he didn't like put his finger in his butt or anything, but he definitely like examined it. He said as if he were looking at a gem.
Oh, my God. And he did that three times throughout his childhood.
He also wanted, he was very into photography and had these art photo magazines. And he asked David's sister when she was 17 if he could take pictures of her topless in the woods.
Yeah. it's not good.
It's like very bad. Yeah, very.
Just a series of things and then later his sister who ultimately died by suicide or of suicide accused the dad of sexual abuse. Really? And then them trying his siblings to evaluate whether they believe her or not which is like so real.
Oof, yeah. It's just so real.
It wouldn't be this way on TV and it wouldn't be this way in the media, but this is really what happens. This is what really happens.
Yeah. It's such a delicately assembled story.
Okay. Now, was there a time where you couldn't order a drink on an airplane because it's Sunday? No.
I mean, maybe at some point you couldn't drink at all, obviously, on planes. But state laws regarding alcohol sales, such as blue laws, do not apply to alcoholic beverages sold on airplanes, even if the state has such laws.
Airlines are subject to federal regulations regarding the sale of alcohol, which generally supersedes state laws. If you really step back, it's interesting that they allowed drinking on an airplane.
Yeah, I know. You got a hundred strangers sitting in a very tight area and you're allowing them to get drunk, which we know makes humans unpredictable.
You could see where it would have never been allowed. I agree.
I mean, I'm all for it. People are nervous, makes the time go by.
You don't have a problem like me. It's lovely, but it is a curious policy.
It is. They should allow weed, I guess, too.
But mushrooms, probably not. Well, weed is different unless they're eating it.
You wouldn't want the smoke. Yeah, you wouldn't want the smoke.
Yeah, you're eating it. Yeah, I guess.
It's fine, I guess. But there's obviously certain drugs.
PCP don't, no. Well, illegal, illegal drug.
I'll probably not allow. Shooting dope? No, you can't have ODs up in the air.
I don't think so. The priest dress, a cassock, Catholic cassock, or cassock.
It has 33 buttons representing the years of Jesus's life. Anglican cassocks may have 39 buttons symbolizing the 39 articles of religion.
Right. But I don't know.
I didn't know there were 39 articles of religion. I didn't either know that.
Okay, I have a surprise. Oh, I like surprises.
I brought everyone one of the books, the book, the children's book, The Story of the Little Mole Who Went in Search of Whodunit. This is the story about the poop on the head.
I got one for you too, Rob. And he said it's, well, Werner.
Yeah, Halsworth. Yeah, these are very German names.
Wolf and Werner. And on the back, it says, When little mole looks out of his hole one morning, plop, something lands on his head.
Whodunit. Oh, and guys, just for the viewer, here's a holdup of it and the listener.
It's not like a little bit of bird poop. It's a big turd.
It's like a soft-serve turd. It's a really big poo-poo.
It's covering his entire head. And there's flies on it.
Well, I cannot read this to the children. Yeah.
This is going to be right up their alley. They're disgusting like me.
Well, you made them disgusting. I think I did.
Anyway, so this is an exciting... Thank you.
Oh, wow, look at this page. Oh, fun.
It's a yak dumping big plops of... You would know, you know, whenever you see that horse droppings, which I see on the hiking trail sometimes.
Oh, sure, yeah. Make no mistake about it.
It's horse dump. I know.
Because there's like clumps of hay still in it. Ugh.
Yeah. I'm so glad we don't eat hay.
That's a Buddhist thing. They could probably figure out how to eat hay, but I can't.
I want to eat ribeye. Oh, yeah.
I want a burger. I think I'm going to have a burger tonight.
Burgie? That is like so indulgent to eat burgers. Oh, no.
I'm not sure how this is going to work out. I know.
I'm going to New York on Friday. Be a Buddhist when you get home.
Where I really indulge there. Yeah, no, be a Buddhist when you get home.
Okay. There's plenty of time.
I'll give myself another week to be a heathen. Fully actualized.
Yeah. Okay.
Oh, I had to bring this up because he talks about diversity in kids' books. And so I have completed the studio since we last spoke or since we interviewed Seth.
Do you love it as much as I did? I loved it so much. So my privilege, the Buddhists wouldn't like this, but my privilege that I had access, we had access to all, we had, to the screeners, but I couldn't get in to the screeners beforehand.
It's always impossible to get. So I was like, whatever, I'll just watch it when it comes out.
And so, the first two episodes came out and I watched it and immediately I was like, I gotta figure out. We gotta figure this out.
ASAP. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I have to watch all of it. I watched it all one day.
Oh, great. I was obsessed with it.
It's so good. Yeah.
It is so good. It is so stressful.
It's so stressful. I almost want to watch it again without the stress.
It's so, so, but, oh no, Buddhism's my new, the pit. Yeah.
You switched right from, uh, but, but, oh, this would interest you. I was talking to Tom Hanson.
Well, I had lunch with, I had dinner with him yesterday before my meeting and, um, he was just coming from seeing John Wells. Oh, fun., fun.
And he said, are you watching? I said, no, but Monica's watching it for me, and she brings it up on every single episode. And he's like, it is so good.
He went on it. He is right with you.
The cool kids know. And he's like, Noah Wiley's such a man now.
Oh, I know. Oh, wow.
He and I kind of went through the same transformation. Right? Wasn't he a medium-sized boy? He was.
He was. Well, in the show, he's wearing a hoodie, so you can't see his body, really.
But he's kind of, he's really masculine. Yeah, he has.
He's really become quite masculine. His neck is thicker.
You want his bod, right? You mean I want it on me or in me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, I do.
I am so attracted to him. Yeah, that's him.
That's him on Friends. No, that's ER, right? No.
Oh, they guest start on Friends as doctors. That's cute.
Yeah, so that looks like me on Punk'd. Oh, he's still, he's so cute.
And let's see him now. Oh.
Oh, wow. Oh my God, is he hot.
Wow. Okay, so I'm just, I haven't watched.
When you see him intubate. Oh, he can intubate like a motherfucker.
I bet he knows how to intubate. Oh, in real life.
Yeah. Probably.
He's done this so many times. But you would think I would know how to mix some music from how many times I hit buttons on Parenthood and I don't know anything.
I think it's different with this kind of thing. Okay.
Because he's a better actor. Because you haven't seen it.
Yeah. But he.
Wow. I would let.
Him intubate you? I would let him perform a surgery on me. Oh, you would.
Yeah. Wow.
I think he would kind of know how to do it. Okay.
I know you're mad about that. No.
I want you to expand how many people you let do surgery on you. Not limit.
Thank you. Yeah.
That's very Buddhist of you. Yeah.
Yeah. Anyways, hot as hell.
I think you'll have enough surgeries. There's enough.
Oh, my God. Let's hope not.
Yeah, there's enough surgeries for Noah and I to. Don't say that.
You're going to get another one of those piercings. I know you.
I do want it. I know you so well.
You'll get another infected piercing. I will.
Another ring swollen around here. These are all coming.
Yeah, something happened. Oh, remember I told you I had an earring in recently and it was hard to get out.

Yeah, got infected.

Your ears are telling you very clearly, we don't want adornment.

And I refuse to accept it.

Good for you.

Anyway.

Identity.

I love that he loves the pet.

Yeah.

People love it.

It's like really gotten huge.

I'm going to go in.

Yeah, you got to go in.

You got to go in. I'm just behind on Righteous and I was behind on White Lotus.
So. Okay.
Now, why was I bringing up the pit? Siparis. Oh, Buddhist is your new pit.
Right. But it was, I was going to say something.
Oh, yeah. Okay.
So the studio. So there's an episode in the studio about diversity, about casting.
Oh, my God. Yes.
Yes. Ice cubes in it.
Yeah. It is so well done.
It's so funny. Yeah.
And so well done. No one can figure out what's racist.
That's so true and funny. It's so accurate.
Yes. Oh, my God.
I was laughing so hard. Yeah.
So hard. And also, like, because they each individually have the realization that something is potentially racist.
Yeah. And you see them all have the realization at different times.
And it is, oh, my God. It is brilliant.
It is chef's kiss. Chef's kiss.
Highly recommend the studio. Okay.
Now, how many cows does an average meat eater eat in a lifetime? Okay. Okay.
The average American consumes approximately 174 animals per year, including 23 chickens, a third of a pig, a tenth of a cow, three quarters of a turkey, and smaller amounts of other animals like fish and shellfish. This translates to roughly 11 cows over a lifetime.
I think I've eaten more than that. Yeah, you do think that.
Does it count human DNA in hot dogs? Huh? Oh, yeah, like one millionth of a human from the hot dog consumption. Oh, yeah, maybe that counts.
Maybe that counts. Okay, is piles the old word for hemorrhoids?

Yes.

Swollen, inflamed veins in the lower rectum and anus.

Oh, ding, ding, ding.

This is what David's father was checking for.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, whoa.

They can be internal or external.

I am shocked that I've never had a hemorrhoid.

I'm shocked you haven't.

It feels impossible.

Are you sure you haven't?

I have some weak systems, but I have some bulletproof systems. As we know already, my teeth are bulletproof.
Right. I think my anus is too, because we both know I sit on that toilet for fucking, as long as I can.
As long as my life will permit. Yeah.
But you have had blood. Until my legs fall asleep sometimes.
You've had blood. What did you have? Fissures.
Fissures, yeah. Yeah, I had a bad run of fissures.
Yeah, that's not strong. It's rough.
But it's not a tongue hanging out of your butt well. Piles.
I've never had piles. Okay.
But if I did, Noah Wiley could get them off. Would you let him look at your piles? If I got waxed and everything.
Okay. Everything else was gorgeous.
How old is he? Oh. 53.
Grade age. Mm.
Mature. Just about to be picked off the vine to made into wine.
Yeah. Yeah.
He's lived such a long life in the ER. Oh, God.
It's crazy he's still at it.

It's exhausting work.

I know.

It's getting to him.

He has a... I won't tell you.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

That's it.

Okay.

Great.

I love you, David Sedaris.

Love you, David Sedaris.

So much.

All right.

Oh, yeah.

He brought us...

We have postcards, but I didn't bring mine.

Isn't it behind you?

Yours is.

Why isn't yours behind you?

I have it in my house.

Oh, that's a good place for you. We have postcards, but I didn't bring mine.
Isn't it behind you? Yours is.

Why isn't yours behind you?

I have it in my house.

Oh, that's a good place for it.

Yeah.

I thought for some reason it went behind your head.

It's on my fridge.

Okay.

Love you.

Love you. armchair expert early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. What if your mind could trick your body into feeling sick or even worse? In Hysterical, I investigate the bizarre medical mystery that unfolds in a high school in upstate New York.
It starts with one girl developing strange, violent symptoms, and then another, and then another.

Rumors begin to swirl.

Is it something in the water, inside the school, or is it all in their heads?

Hysterical is my search for answers, and along the way, I uncover surprising connections to unexplained incidents around the world.

Events that challenge everything we think we know about our bodies and our minds.

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

Binge all episodes right now, exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+.

Start your free trial of Wondery+, in the Wondery app, or on Apple Podcasts.