Dove Cameron

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Speaker 1 Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Rather, and I'm joined by the Duchess of Duluth.

Speaker 2 Hi there, it's me.

Speaker 1 This was a favorite.

Speaker 2 This was a great episode.

Speaker 1 It was an incredible episode. One of these, I say they pop up like every 15th episode where one's so moving.
Yeah, very beautiful and so inspiring

Speaker 1 to do this job to eternity. Yeah.
To sit down with a stranger and like a very special, intimate exchange. Yeah.
Lucky as hell. So nice.
Dove Cameron. By the way, when I came in after this,

Speaker 1 and I'm talking to the girls brushing their teeth, they don't ever care who I've sat with that day.

Speaker 2 And I said, oh man I had a great interview with this actor Dove Cameron and they flipped out they couldn't believe it she hits a lot of markets it's kind of funny uh we uh anna was over watching our Sunday night shows before we recorded and I said oh we're having Dove Cameron this week and she was like oh my brother loves Dove Cameron oh really and then also her mom And the mom yeah Calvin and Calvin

Speaker 1 loves Dove. Yeah.
Well, she's an Emmy award-winning actor and singer. Descendants, live in Maddie.
Shameless, Cloud9.

Speaker 1 Her album, Alchemical.

Speaker 2 Alchemical. Which we learn about.

Speaker 1 I learned how to pronounce it and I've already forgotten it. Volume one is already out.
And she has a new single out right now, Too Much.

Speaker 1 It's a great song, and it's really blowing up. Ooh, lovely.
As I would want for her. Yeah.
This was awesome.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And please enjoy it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, please enjoy Dove Cameron.

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Speaker 1 What are bloomers, guys?

Speaker 3 I know a bloomer. I know a bloomer.
I'm all about a bloomer. They originated in cheerleading.
Some of them can be late. Some of them can be early.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Wait.

Speaker 2 Oh, that's a funny joke. She just.

Speaker 1 Oh, late bloomer, early bloomer.

Speaker 2 That's like something that would be on connections.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 3 I hate that I don't know what that is.

Speaker 1 It's a New York Times puzzle, and it has 16 words, and you have to put those words into four groups so they're associated. It's increasing hardness.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, you would get the first four, you'd be like, oh, die.

Speaker 1 That's easy. But then it gets hard.

Speaker 3 And then it gets horrid. Horde.

Speaker 1 It gets horrid.

Speaker 1 What's happening with your teeth? I'm already jealous.

Speaker 3 My tooth gems.

Speaker 1 Yes. That's cool.
You're very cool. I've been circling.
I want a gold tooth cap.

Speaker 3 I have a girlfriend who has a gold tooth cap and it is so cute.

Speaker 1 Can you connect me with her gold capist? Absolutely.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 3 I can't believe I'm already making connections.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Wow. I have a question because I'm just first time sitting in this.

Speaker 3 Is there a way to angle the camera so I'm not flashing everybody?

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 that's a great.

Speaker 3 Okay, gorgeous. I love it.
Because there are so many cameras that I don't know what you're catching. And I always just like to

Speaker 3 mission statement.

Speaker 1 I don't desire to have my ass. To show my ass.

Speaker 1 I don't desire or respire to have my ass out.

Speaker 2 It would be so annoying if we did film this whole thing and then we we were like, uh-oh.

Speaker 3 I've been on TV for so long.

Speaker 1 You gotta ask these things because someone's gonna be like, oh, your ass was out the whole time.

Speaker 1 And no one thought to tell me.

Speaker 3 No one thought to tell me.

Speaker 1 I've gotten brattier over the years, more protective of myself. I've gotten brattier.
It happens when I do stuff with Kristen. They'll have blocked it where they want me on her left side.

Speaker 1 And we're like, no, no, we don't do that. I'm always on her right side.

Speaker 1 And then Monica and I do stuff too. And it's like, I'm so sorry, but I got to be on her right side.

Speaker 3 So wait, is that because it's a girl's side or your side?

Speaker 2 He likes one side. Yes,

Speaker 1 I like one side too.

Speaker 3 Which side? We can never be photographed together because we're the same side.

Speaker 1 Oh, or we can just like prom. We would always do profile.
We could prom it.

Speaker 3 I just have a stronger symmetry on the right side. Like, my jaw is more defined on this side.
I have a slight difference in the tip of my nose. I also think maybe this eye is like slightly bigger.

Speaker 3 I'm sure it's an insanity.

Speaker 1 You do have a very powerful mandible like Kristen. My jaw? Yeah, it's very powerful.
Oh, I've never heard that. You haven't? Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 I love a powerful mandible.

Speaker 1 Yeah, mandibles, it's essential for chewing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm trying hard. I got chin filler.

Speaker 3 Make it pop.

Speaker 2 Yeah, try to pretend.

Speaker 3 But see, you've got this beautiful thing happening where you have a very small face and huge features.

Speaker 1 Bingo. I've been pointing that out for years now.
Almost cartoonish, the proportions of the eyes.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I've never heard it like that. I like that.

Speaker 3 I was just reading something the other day about the different beauty preferences for all around the globe and the small face, big features is very youthful.

Speaker 2 I do read young.

Speaker 1 And Dove just ding, ding, ding last night. We were with Rob, who you just met, his little boy Vinny.
Is Vinny a little person, Rob? He's 4% size. 4% size.
He's really so tiny.

Speaker 1 And his eyeballs are as size of ping pong balls. And we were eating dinner with him last night.
And I was like, this ratio of eyeballs to face size is the most appealing thing I've ever seen.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 If he could keep that running.

Speaker 3 You should keep that to yourself.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 He was staring at your son thinking.

Speaker 1 We all were.

Speaker 2 Everyone at dinner was just staring at the baby the whole time.

Speaker 1 And that kind of right-sizes the ship because his son sexually, verbally assaulted my 11-year-old last night.

Speaker 3 So you were just balancing this?

Speaker 1 I'm just trying to balance it in her defense. He's a baby Vinny, and he's talking to Link.
He loves Link and our daughter. Look at that little

Speaker 1 fucking. Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 Shockingly large eyes.

Speaker 3 What a beautiful little babe.

Speaker 1 He's talking to my 11-year-old and he goes, I like your hair and your body. And I like your butt.

Speaker 1 one, two, three.

Speaker 3 I like your hair, I like your body, and I like your butt.

Speaker 1 Pretty good. You don't say that, Vimy.
Oh, you said that?

Speaker 1 He's three. He didn't know what he was doing.

Speaker 3 He has to know almost no words, and those are some of the words he knows.

Speaker 1 He had already complimented on her earrings, and now he was just moving on to anything he could think of. So, hair, body, butt.

Speaker 3 He's like, nice knees.

Speaker 1 Yeah, good knees.

Speaker 2 He's so ahead of the game with those big eyes and giving compliments.

Speaker 1 Oh, he's a little bit. He's going to slay.

Speaker 3 He's going to absolutely slay and slay in.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 3 I also love this crazy combo of you have a protein shake, you have a Diet Coke. I really know I'm home.
I come never anywhere with less than three beverages in my purse.

Speaker 1 Now, clearly, you must be seeing the litany of ADHD messages on Instagram, like posts. Have you noticed this tidal wave of...
I don't know if it's my algorithm or everyone's.

Speaker 3 No, no, it's everyone's.

Speaker 1 One thing that I saw was someone saying ADHD people always have like three drinks.

Speaker 3 Really? I I think it's because we're so stimulus addicted. I realized I was a stimulus addict 10 years ago.

Speaker 3 I was little and I was like, I can't do anything unless there's many things happening at once.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 You know something funny? This is just a random anecdote that I have for you. Your wife guest starred on my Disney Channel show.

Speaker 1 Oh, she's a bad guy.

Speaker 3 Why she came for an episode of Live and Maddie when I was itty bitty? And it was because she was friends with Andy Fickman, who created Live and Maddie.

Speaker 1 He did?

Speaker 1 We love Andy Fickman, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Isn't he part of Reefer?

Speaker 1 That's where they met. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And as Heather's the Musical.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And they did you again together. Oh, yes.
He's a sweet, sweet boy.

Speaker 3 That's my man.

Speaker 1 I, too, was there, not on that trip, but my best friend who's visiting right now brought his, at the time, 11-year-old son, and he was obsessed with that show. And I'm like, Maddie? Yes.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, do you have a dream thing to witness? And he was like, Living Many. So I figured out how to get us in there so he could watch.
That's so cute. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So, I have a little anecdotal history with you as well.

Speaker 3 I'm actually glad I didn't know that because I was such a fan of both you and Chris. I probably would have passed out.

Speaker 1 You think so? Yeah, oh, yeah. And you can be honest, probably more of a fan of Kristen.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 No, but genuinely a huge fan of you as well. I was always a massive comedy girl growing up.
I remember you guys have a movie together that I was really obsessed with. Hit and run.

Speaker 3 That opening scene when she's crying and all of that. It's so beautiful.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so Nina Dax wrote that. Yes, I do.

Speaker 3 I remember.

Speaker 1 That's our favorite thing we've ever been a part of because it was just our movie that we paid for. We made it because we wanted to make it.
And it's all my cars. Yeah, it's very special.

Speaker 1 We just showed it to our daughters. And how old are your daughters? 10 and 11.
Perfect. Let's talk about Washington.
Okay. Because I have spent almost a decade of my life up there.
Why?

Speaker 1 My ex-girlfriend of nine years, Brie, was from Marysville, Everett, lived on the Tulalip Reservation on the Puget Sound. No way.
And your Bainbridge, which is an island. Uh-huh.

Speaker 3 The Pacific Northwest is so beautiful and it's full of people who are born there, raised there, never leave.

Speaker 3 And then if you're not from there, I'm always shocked that you might have a reason to go there.

Speaker 3 It feels like a Twilight Zone-y area that to me does not exist outside of the people who eat, sleep, and breathe that community.

Speaker 1 You're right. It is a very specific area.
I took to it immediately because her friends were all also alcoholics, which I loved.

Speaker 3 Probably a lot of drinking.

Speaker 1 And masculine, they might be driving a truck and maybe they work for the forestry service, but they're also liberal.

Speaker 3 Super liberal.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I was like, oh, this is refreshing. You found the feminist, liberal mountaineers.
Mondel Ferrara bumper sticker from the 80s on their truck still. But did you go crabbing?

Speaker 3 We went gooey duck.

Speaker 1 What's gooey duck?

Speaker 3 Yeah. I still don't think in my adulthood I could explain what a gooey duck is.
It's like this massive, I'm going to get it wrong and everyone's going to be like, oh, long gooey duck.

Speaker 1 We'll fact check. We'll fact check it out.
The gooey duck community is going to be vivid.

Speaker 3 But it's this massive, long, amorphous clam thing. It's a hard shell sea animal.
Inside, there's some eatens, and you like boil the gooey ducks like a clammy oyster.

Speaker 3 I never liked them.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this sounds horrible.

Speaker 3 It sounds disgusting.

Speaker 3 But I remember the hunting process being super exciting and romantic in between kayaking, hiking. It was a very natural North Face branded upbringing.

Speaker 1 What age did you start drinking coffee? Because I'll say this. When I started coffee, what age did you start drinking transition?

Speaker 1 After spending time there, one knock I have on the area is you get exhausted there. It's drizzly and dark and damp.
Yes. I was like, oh, duh, the coffee revolution started here.

Speaker 3 I have my own theories about how Seattle became what it is because Seattle particularly has a huge coffee culture, huge underground music culture, and huge jazz music and wine culture.

Speaker 3 My theory is the same as yours. I think that everyone was like, it's fucking miserable outside.
What can we do inside?

Speaker 3 And then you got all of these little jazz bars and these weird little underground city hubs.

Speaker 1 Capitol Hills. Capitol Hill, so fucking sick.

Speaker 3 And then everybody just sort of stayed inside and never came out. And it became like this cozy little, we listen to jazz and drink wine.
And everybody's like a little bit pretentious.

Speaker 3 Depressed, pretentious, but like you're chill about it.

Speaker 1 Good.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I started drinking coffee at like 12.

Speaker 1 That was my hunch. I don't think you could have made it to school if you weren't because it's just too dark and drippy.

Speaker 3 It's just disgusting outside. The rain used to be such a constant for me that it was like you're walking in the rain.
You don't put makeup on. You don't do your hair.
You surrender to the rain.

Speaker 3 And then I lived in LA for one year and I went back to Seattle. You lose your tolerance.

Speaker 1 That's me in Michigan now. I'm like, oh my God, it's too cold for humans to live here.
How would I ever? Yeah. I got a second dig about Seattle.

Speaker 3 Give me the dig.

Speaker 1 It's raining 200 days a year and no one can drive in the rain. Seattle people are going 30 miles an hour on the highway when there's a little drizzle.

Speaker 3 It's true, but I also think it's because truly they have nowhere to be.

Speaker 1 Yeah, good point.

Speaker 3 Not in a derogatory way, but in a healthy, we're living a real human life. We're living slow.

Speaker 3 Now that I live in LA and New York and I'm really splitting my time, the rushing and the mania of these cities, you go back to a healthy, normal working city where it's like, you go to your job, you go to the airport, you bank three hours.

Speaker 3 So I think that that's part of it. It's less that they cannot drive in the rain and it's more that they're like, eh, fuck it.

Speaker 1 Okay, so what did mom and dad do on this island for a living?

Speaker 3 So crazy enough, they didn't work on the island. They worked as far away as they possibly could.
They had a business out of India.

Speaker 3 The country india oh wow jaipur and new delhi jodhpur some select parts of mumbai they were importers so they would design jewelry and certain goods.

Speaker 3 They had all of their suppliers in India, which is where all of the silver, gold, all the fine gemstones, all of the materials are in India.

Speaker 3 And they had all of these houses and suppliers that they worked with. So they truly spent half of their year in Jaipur and New Delhi.

Speaker 1 Oh, really? And were you going with them on these trips?

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. I have an older sister and she was very much in high school and they were like, you can't do your homework on the road.
And I was like, I want to be homeschooled. I want to travel.

Speaker 1 How much older is she than you? Seven years. Oh, that's a hefty.
That's Monica and her brothers.

Speaker 3 They say that that's like the only child. It is.

Speaker 2 You grew up in two different lives.

Speaker 1 You wouldn't go for six months, though, would you?

Speaker 3 No, I think the longest I went was four months. Wow, though.

Speaker 1 That's a long time. That's hefty.

Speaker 1 And did you love it? Did you hate it?

Speaker 3 Absolutely loved it. I feel like I've spent so many of my early brain-forming amoebas connecting memories in India and it was so life-changing.

Speaker 3 My dad was always also really big on if you ever are saving money, it's for travel. If you ever do anything, it's for travel, it's for education, it's for expanding the frontal lobe.

Speaker 1 It's not a rad car. No.
Like me and my dad think.

Speaker 3 Travel is always the number one to do. And so I was really lucky because my parents were just like, she's so small.
What is she really going to fucking learn in second grade?

Speaker 1 Let's get out of here. So you did homeschool the whole time you were on that island?

Speaker 3 I was was in public school, which on Bainbridge Island is like 20 kids. I did public school from kindergarten through second or third grade, and no kid is happy in school.
But I was really struggling.

Speaker 3 I was starting to get a little weird and internal. And my parents were like, She doesn't have peers.

Speaker 1 Were you shy?

Speaker 3 I was really self-expressed. I was very precocious, and I was too much for other kids.

Speaker 3 And I really, really wanted to be friends with other kids, but I think I was not an easy fit for groups of friends.

Speaker 1 Did you come on like a freight train? I think probably. Yeah, I can smell it.

Speaker 1 But you're like,

Speaker 1 actually. No, I love it.

Speaker 3 No, I've really mellowed out over the years, but I think as a kid, I wanted to like love people and love them hard. That's also around the age where kids start to suss out who's weird.
Yes.

Speaker 3 And kids start to be like, you're doing weird things and we're not doing any of those things.

Speaker 2 In-group, out-group.

Speaker 3 And I was very much in the middle of the day.

Speaker 1 Your level of intimacy is very uncomfortable for me at age. Yeah.
Which I was similar to, by the way.

Speaker 3 Right. I feel like so many of us, especially in the industry, have that story.

Speaker 1 I'm like, is your stepdad hitting your mom?

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. I was like, are you hellaciously traumatized? And they were like, I just want to go home and watch Nickelodeon.
And I was like, I don't have Nickelodeon.

Speaker 3 I very much like also was always hanging out with my parents' friends. And so I was trying to have real conversations when I was too little to be doing that.

Speaker 1 Did you love being told you were old for your age? Yeah.

Speaker 3 I was one of those kids that was wearing big coats and being like, I'm just so stressed. Honestly, I'm exhausted, like with my empty wine glass.

Speaker 1 You wanted to have been going through something.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I wanted to be stressed so bad. I understand.

Speaker 1 What age did they get divorced?

Speaker 3 13 or 14.

Speaker 1 Okay, so does it correspond with you moving to Burbank? Kind of. Wait, we got to add before you move to Burbank, you start acting at eight.

Speaker 1 You're doing local theater in Bainbridge and you're already on that trajectory before we go to Burbank.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that was kind of the only place my mom could stick me. She was like, you got to channel the energy and you hate soccer.
And I was like, let's do theater.

Speaker 3 It was this tiny, sweet little community theater where they were putting on Lame Is Teen Summer. And I was playing Little Cosette and doing Shakespeare Summer Camp and playing Lady Macbeth.

Speaker 3 And I was so into it. And then, funny enough, the first gig I got was for Ryan Gosling's Halloween band.
Oh,

Speaker 1 God. He had a Halloween band.

Speaker 3 And it is fucking incredible.

Speaker 1 It's so

Speaker 1 good. That fucking

Speaker 1 sick.

Speaker 1 It's so hard to like him, but I can't resist.

Speaker 3 Something about him. I just can't resist it.
He had this crazy Halloween band called Dead Man's Bones. Dead Man's Bones.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 3 He's a Dead Man's Bone. First time he's ever spoken today.
And it's really quite good. I still listen to it.
It's very experimental, him and his friend.

Speaker 3 But they had this concept of having like a ghostly children's choir.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 3 My first ever gig. I got paid like $120 or something.

Speaker 1 This is why you're still in Washington.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I played like an adults-only underground club.

Speaker 2 Oh, wow. Because he was there.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they came through on like a little tour, like a club tour.

Speaker 1 And they were casting locally. Whoever was managing that show had a lot on their plate.
Yeah. You have 13 shows and you got to find a ghost choir in every city.
A children's ghost choir.

Speaker 2 He had big aspirations, but it worked out for him.

Speaker 3 And we're so proud of him. I don't know if you know this guy.

Speaker 1 His name is Ryan Add. Like, I think it worked out fine.

Speaker 3 He's doing great. So that was my first ever thing.
And then I was just so convinced that I was going to. find my people in Hollywood.
That was more the impetus.

Speaker 1 So you were kind of driving this move to Burbank. 100%.

Speaker 3 My parents wanted absolutely nothing less for me than to be in film and television. I think it was something that they felt was kind of inevitable.
And that was my sales pitch.

Speaker 3 I was like, I'm going to do this when I turn 18 with or without you.

Speaker 3 I would really love your support and I would love to start before it gets much harder for me to start when all the other girls are 18.

Speaker 1 Right, right, right.

Speaker 3 My parents split up. My mom moved out.

Speaker 3 I lived with her in her little apartment on Bainbridge Island and she had just gotten her master's degree in sustainability, which was so badass to watch my mom do that.

Speaker 1 And a little ahead of the curve for her. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 Very like Washington. That was when she was talking to me about fuel efficiency, all these things that now are super common knowledge.

Speaker 3 Glass bottles are not more sustainable than plastic bottles because of the amount of resources we have to use to ship them, all these things.

Speaker 3 It was such a cool thing for her to do once she had already had her whole business that she ran with my dad.

Speaker 1 When they divorced, did dad just keep going with the business and she just left the business?

Speaker 3 Yeah. I think he tried to keep the business going for a while.
I think it was kind of impossible to run on his own. The business ended up going very under a few years after that.

Speaker 1 This is an incredible amount to be happening at once for dad. If he's losing this business, he's had for a very long time that's stable.
And his wife, he's had for a long time.

Speaker 1 And then now his daughter's moving down to Burbank.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it was a truly complex transitional time in the family. I'm going to be 30 next year.

Speaker 3 And as someone who has retroactively studied my family dynamics ad nauseum in therapy and in my own existence and my brain and my life, I truly don't know if it could have gone any other way.

Speaker 3 They were always going to divorce. It was not a surprise.

Speaker 2 So you felt that when you were in the dynamic they are supposed to be together.

Speaker 3 I think I knew that from as early as you can know that.

Speaker 1 Well, there's an interesting thing at play, and Kristen and I have this too. It could go wrong.
It's gone well.

Speaker 1 But when you're both locked into somebody because you have a kid and you're locked into them professionally.

Speaker 1 I think that's an interesting dynamic to navigate because you're kind of like, I'm not sure how much of this I'm picking as much as now. I just am locked.

Speaker 1 We have these two commitments together and that can be be hard.

Speaker 3 I think that my mom would very confidently say that they were not a love match. It was not something that they endeavored to do was be together for as long as they were together.

Speaker 3 And when I moved in with my mom, it was because my dad and I were having a very difficult time. with a very tenuous relationship at that point.

Speaker 1 You were 13?

Speaker 3 13, 14. It starts getting dicey around there.
As an adult, now I can look back and be like, that was fair on my part to distance myself.

Speaker 3 Everything was kind of falling apart at once and getting very human and very real and very adult. And my mom just kind of scooped me up and was like, we're getting the fuck out of here, kid.

Speaker 3 My mom is the most beautiful woman on the face of the planet. And she is so astute, so intelligent, so sensitive.
And I think she was just like, and look over here.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Did dad have some mental health stuff? Did he have depression?

Speaker 3 Very much. But it was more than that.
I'm not sure the tone of the show.

Speaker 1 How deep is it? So

Speaker 3 deep. My dad

Speaker 3 was severely depressed, which manifested in a lot of violence, emotional, mental, physical outbursts, very kind of unsafe. And it got worse as I got older.

Speaker 3 And especially when my sister left to go to college and I was the only kid and I was also dealing with my own transitioning into teenagehood depression.

Speaker 3 And there had also already been a really big dark streak in our family because my best friend was murdered by her own father.

Speaker 1 Oh my god. No way.

Speaker 3 I feel like the first eight years of my memory were pretty good. Maybe some tension with the parents.

Speaker 3 Don't really see them kiss, but not as aware as after that murder-suicide very real thing happened when I was eight.

Speaker 3 I think it really did shift the dynamic because they were very close to our family and it just accelerated a lot of darkness in the family.

Speaker 1 As your mom, I was like, oh, it can go this way. I'm not going to be around for this version.

Speaker 3 Yes. And also, my mom was so young when she met my dad.
They were 20 years years apart. They got pregnant and it was kind of like, okay, we're going to get married.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 My mom is very open about this. I'm not saying anything that she wouldn't feel comfortable with me sharing.

Speaker 1 I have the same kind of mom. Isn't it a blessing?

Speaker 3 I think it's necessary. It's a sort of a generosity that you give to your kids because it's really helped me in my development.

Speaker 1 I think it's all getting reframed, but whereas that stuff used to cause shame, now I think it's more a testament to bravery and resilience. Like all these stories, for me, they're empowering.

Speaker 1 They're not shame-inducing. They're like, oh, fuck yeah, these humans live through this.

Speaker 3 That's rad. I always found found it strange, this taboo around mental health or loss or trauma, because I would mention something that I thought was singular to me in my young life.

Speaker 3 And like, eight hands out of 20 would go up and be like, me too. And I was like, so we're all pretending this is a singular issue and we're keeping it to ourselves for whose benefit?

Speaker 1 I know, who? Our neighbors?

Speaker 3 Exactly. You know, sort of like a 1950s.

Speaker 1 People were also fucked up. They got some shit going on next door.

Speaker 3 How much more helpful would it be if we could all.

Speaker 1 You can't keep your darkness hidden indefinitely.

Speaker 3 It's untenable.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So you could have that goal, but it's not even going to work.

Speaker 3 But also, I think we're already doing a disservice to ourselves by calling it a darkness.

Speaker 3 I take back my framing of that because it's only dark in comparison to something that we've constructed that's actually not real or attainable.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's relative to a fantasy.

Speaker 3 Relative to this cultural dream that's never existed and is super toxic. So I'm always very open.
I just sort of have a knee-jerk reaction to being like, am I being too open?

Speaker 1 Are you okay? I definitely border on Overshare.

Speaker 3 Me too.

Speaker 1 I would love to just make that selection right out of the gates. That's totally great if that's not your jam, but there's no way I can talk about your job for two hours of dinner.

Speaker 1 I got to talk about it.

Speaker 1 What is that?

Speaker 3 I get so burnt out if I talk about anything except for someone's real life. Yeah.
But I'll be at the airport with someone who's helping me with my baggage or something or like a security person.

Speaker 1 I'll be like, how's your mom? Like, I've never met that person before.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, what are you doing after this? What's your night going to look like?

Speaker 1 How did you get out of bed today? Yeah.

Speaker 3 I'm like, and where did you go to college? And who was your first first love?

Speaker 3 I love it. I love humans.
I wish we could just demystify.

Speaker 1 So when you got down to Burbank, did you get a wave of, oh, it's a little less intense here? And this is nice.

Speaker 3 Yes. When I got to Burbank High, Burbank High School, I was so culture clashy at first because it was huge.
The school was bigger than the population of the place where I was from.

Speaker 3 We have a friend that graduated from there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're kind of familiar with the vibe. I love Burbank.
He was also a show choir person. So was I.
I know you're a national champion, right?

Speaker 3 My choir was. I don't think I was, but it was so cool.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I fucking lived and breathed for show choir.

Speaker 1 What makes it show choir? I'm a Philistine. I just know the word choir.

Speaker 3 Show choir is you're putting on like a 20-minute traveling medley mashup dancing.

Speaker 3 It's fun. It's super sick.

Speaker 1 So there's dancing and voguing.

Speaker 3 Costume changes.

Speaker 1 It's super... Full out and competitive.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Is Burroughs the same thing?

Speaker 3 Burroughs is the same thing and we are rivals, baby.

Speaker 2 Okay, Burroughs is where our friend went. I'm sorry, you were actually a rival of our friend.

Speaker 1 Oh, I didn't realize I was in an enemy territory.

Speaker 2 I feel fucked up.

Speaker 1 I feel

Speaker 1 a little morally torn right now.

Speaker 3 It's very funny because my absolute best friend in the world, Veronica, we met because she was in the rival show choir.

Speaker 2 Oh, fuck. Because it's very glee.
This Burbank versus Burroughs is glee. It's what it's based on.

Speaker 3 People were getting their fucking tires slashed and shit.

Speaker 1 Like, it was so nuts. Oh, I love it.

Speaker 3 And also, like, so camp.

Speaker 3 Some weird rural California school to compete.

Speaker 1 And then everybody's like, you smashed our fucking tires. You got to go full out on that gun today, dude.
Like, it was so funny.

Speaker 3 People that are locked in on those fucking harmonies, dude.

Speaker 1 Show them where we come from, Brewbank.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I loved it. Did you hang at that AMC?

Speaker 3 I still hang at that fucking AMC.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a powerful AMC. What is 30, 70?

Speaker 1 There's like a couple of magic.

Speaker 3 There's a powerful magnetic field under that AMC. I take my very Italian boyfriend and I'm like, isn't this amazing?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I'm like, this is San Fernando.
It's about as American. I always say to people who are not from here, if there is a Midwest of LA, it's Burbank High.

Speaker 3 It is.

Speaker 2 It's very suburban.

Speaker 1 It's a lot of tradespeople that live there that are crew members. They're lighters.
They're daffers.

Speaker 3 We have the candy shop and three frozen yogurt spots.

Speaker 1 Yeah. A Nordstrom rack.

Speaker 2 That's as suburban as it gets.

Speaker 3 I really go there when I need to like crack align my brain. When I need like an alignment adjust, I go back to San Francisco.

Speaker 1 Remember who you are. Okay.
So you're going to Burbank High and then you're starting to audition. Yeah.
Then you get this pilot, bits and pieces.

Speaker 3 Okay, research.

Speaker 1 And you shoot bits and pieces. And then what happens during the filming of bits and pieces?

Speaker 3 Normally, as a 14-year-old, all you get sent out on is Disney.

Speaker 3 And I remember my first couple rounds of going in for Disney and all of the casting directors being like, please don't send this girl in anymore. She's not funny.

Speaker 3 And she's actually quite dark and she's off-putting. And I was like, fuck you guys.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I came here because I wanted to do dramas. Yes.

Speaker 2 Serious activity.

Speaker 3 Super unshaken. I, at that point, was very not 14.
They kept being like, she's not reading as young as she biologically is. She doesn't have that sparkly thing.

Speaker 3 And the reason that my mom felt confident enough to bring me to LA was because we got really far in the process of casting for True Grit, Cohen Brothers.

Speaker 1 Oh, no kidding.

Speaker 3 We got super far randomly out of a Seattle office.

Speaker 1 Did you get to read for them?

Speaker 3 No, but we got down to the point where we'd been going in for like three months and they were calling us with updates. It's down to you.
And three other girls, it's down to you and two other girls.

Speaker 3 And so my mom was like, oh, so my kid's not out of her mind. She might be able to do this.
And so I really wanted to keep going out for film. And there was all these really exciting things happening.

Speaker 3 And Disney, in the least ungrateful-sounding way, it just was not on my bucket list.

Speaker 1 Right. You're trying to be older.
We already like the compliment. We're mature.
Yeah. You're not trying to get on a kid show.
You're trying to be in true grip.

Speaker 3 And I also didn't have cable. So I didn't have the Disney upbringing.

Speaker 3 I saw it at my friend's house. I knew what it was, but the basic like bunny rabbit ears wasn't a thing in my house.
And so we stopped going out for Disney.

Speaker 3 And then my agents got this call being like, we have a Disney thing, but it's being directed by a guy who mostly does film, Andy Fickman. It's like a sort of a breaking the fourth wall thing.

Speaker 3 It's a bunch of movie people and the script is actually really funny. Would you go in for it? And I loved all of Andy's previous work.
She's the man. And so I was like, yeah, fuck it.
Whatever.

Speaker 3 I'll go in. And I was reading for something else because one of the casting directors from Disney famously did not like me.
I didn't know why.

Speaker 1 I don't like how she makes me feel.

Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. And I went in and I just decided to go full manic balls to the wall, stupid schlapstick, over-the-top comedy.
And I booked it.

Speaker 1 When you were doing that, did it come with some discomfort? Were you like, I hate who I am being right now? Or you were like, oh no, this is fun to be this too.

Speaker 3 I was just having so much fun because the comedies that I was raised on were all of the Monty Python and Gone with the, not Gone with the Wind.

Speaker 1 That's a hell of a woman. You know what I'm talking about? What's that?

Speaker 1 Pass at Blanca and like all

Speaker 1 Godfather.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more armchair expert.

Speaker 1 If you dare.

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Speaker 1 The pianists.

Speaker 3 The pianists, exactly. I'm thinking of a Mighty Winds, all of those that Christopher Gas

Speaker 3 and Mossy Python. So I knew stupid comedy better than rhythmic laugh track comedy.
And so I just went in being like, I'm going to be so crazy, stupid.

Speaker 3 And I'm going to like scream at the top of my lungs and do the most outlandish choices because either I'm going to get the role and have so much fun doing that or they're going to be like, that was so crazy.

Speaker 3 Never bring her back. And I was comfortable with that.
I was like, I don't want to really do Disney anyway. So we booked it.
I had so much fun.

Speaker 3 And at the time, it was a sort of a modern family setup, the blended family. I was playing the older sister who really loved fashion with Braddy and didn't want to deal with her little siblings.

Speaker 3 And then we had Joey and Tenzing who ended up playing the brothers. And then we had another younger actress who was playing my younger sister.

Speaker 3 And then we had this very pivotal scene where we're talking in the mirror during the pilot that I guess swung Disney in the direction of they had always wanted to do a twin show, but they never tried it.

Speaker 3 And at that point, I had already done one. Disney Channel original movie for them where I was like snowboarding and it was so crazy.
And they just bet on me. We went away for like nine months.

Speaker 3 They were like, don't work.

Speaker 3 And then one day they called me and they were like hey show's picked up get ready for everything in your whole life to change also you're playing twins and we'll see you on monday wow yeah yeah yeah yeah is it way more work if you're playing twins or no you're shooting every scene twice yeah

Speaker 3 honestly i had fun i feel like everybody's waiting for me to be like so tell me about disney yeah

Speaker 3 we had the best team we had ron and john who were our showrunners i really grew up on that set when i was getting my driver's license all the showrunners and writers walked out with me i got picked up on the studio lot by the driver and they showed up with signs being like, watch out, new driver on the road, disaster.

Speaker 3 And I was like,

Speaker 3 it was just a really lovely, safe way.

Speaker 1 So it was huge. Live and Manny comes out and it gets 5.8 million viewers.
And that's the most viewers Disney had gotten in two and a half years. Oh, really? I didn't know any of that.

Speaker 1 It was hugely successful.

Speaker 1 And you do four seasons? Yeah. What was it like to have overnight fandom from young people?

Speaker 3 I couldn't have prepared. I also think I surprised myself by being more introverted than I anticipated, which you truly don't know until you're put into that situation.

Speaker 3 And then you're like, oh, I'm very introverted. I didn't really learn how to navigate fan attention or public attention for many years.
I used to have panic attacks.

Speaker 3 So not to heavily shift, but to give you context, at the point that Live and Maddie was airing and I was working, my father had taken his own life. Oh.

Speaker 3 And so there was so much going on in my personal life. That's going to affect any kid.
When you're 15 and that happens, it changes the course of your life.

Speaker 3 And within the same calendar year, we were in 900 million homes that translated into all these different languages.

Speaker 2 So overwhelmed-like two of the biggest things someone could experience at once. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And one great and one terrible. And I'd imagine I would feel guilty and join the great thing because this other thing happened.
I just imagine tension between those two things.

Speaker 3 I couldn't at 15

Speaker 3 land in a soft spot around around what happened with my father. There was no way for me to wrap my head around it.
We were at his funeral on Bainbridge Island.

Speaker 3 And then a couple months later, I was at the grove with people asking me to sign glossies. And I didn't know how to

Speaker 3 really reconcile with that because like the beginning of my career, I was so shrouded.

Speaker 3 by

Speaker 3 this heavy cloud that it didn't hit me that I was a famous person until years later. I really was protected in the sound stage.

Speaker 3 I would come to work every day and some days would be good and some days would be bad and everybody was super protective of me.

Speaker 3 And it was kind of like a volatile time in my life in general, just being a teenager, being on TV. The show was a great escape.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I bet when you get there and you don't think about the fact that your dad has died for 11 hours and then you get off.

Speaker 3 It was this mind fuck because you're in this world of like, hi guys, I'm Dev Cameron and da da da da. And you get home and it's silent and your mom is like, you okay?

Speaker 1 And you're like, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Am I okay?

Speaker 3 And then you're in therapy. And then they're like, you want to be medicated? And you're like, I don't think so.
I don't know if I can act if I'm medicated. It was this crazy teenagehood.

Speaker 1 Were you having any

Speaker 1 guilt about being in Burbank?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it was a weird thing because to be completely honest, I tried to mend my relationship with my dad a lot.

Speaker 3 There's this thing that happens with a lot of people who are depressed where where they are perpetually pushing people away.

Speaker 3 And for the entirety of 13 and 14 and 15, I was really trying to connect with my dad. He was always a depressive person.
My mom and him met, and he was like, I'm super suicidal.

Speaker 3 And she was like, okay, I'm 20.

Speaker 1 We're going to try to get you out of this. You know, like, boy.

Speaker 3 Yeah. So it was always sort of there.
But I was really just like, I miss my dad.

Speaker 3 I know something's weird. He doesn't answer when I call.

Speaker 1 Well, the most heartbreaking part, part, it would seem to me, is that you at least had the fantasy at all times. This will get repaired one day.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I keep trying, but one day he's going to be feeling better and I can get it repaired. Yeah.
Sorry. No.
And then they go, oh, God, yeah, I'm not going to be able to repair that. It's really sad.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It's true.
It's,

Speaker 3 it's, it's also like,

Speaker 3 I think about this a lot because

Speaker 3 I was so young

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 I have a memory of him coming to stay with us once in Burbank. And I just remember thinking all the color had left his face.
And I didn't know he was drinking so heavily and all of that.

Speaker 3 And I remember being young enough, like 14, he was staying on a little blow-up mattress in our living room. He wasn't looking at me in the eye.
I thought he was mad at me.

Speaker 3 And I came to like say goodnight or lay down next to him because I was still a very young 14. Mentally, I was mature, but I wasn't dating.

Speaker 3 I was my parents' kid and I was very insulated and very protected. And I remember remember laying down next to him just for a second to be like cuddle time routine.
And he didn't really move.

Speaker 3 And I remember him being like, I think you should, you should go to bed. And I remember receiving that as just such a rejection that like he didn't want to,

Speaker 3 and I didn't know what it was. I truly thought he was angry with me for something.
And, you know, when you're a kid, you blame yourself.

Speaker 3 Of course.

Speaker 3 And so I was like, maybe I'm behaving badly or something. I didn't really get it.

Speaker 1 Or I would just feel guilty that I'm pursuing my own life.

Speaker 3 He was always vaguely supportive, I guess. He was worried about me more than anything.
He was worried that I wasn't going to be able to survive in Hollywood.

Speaker 3 And I knew that, but I had gone back to see him after I had lived in LA for a year and I stayed for the summer at our family home.

Speaker 3 I went because I wanted to spend the summer with my dad and I wanted to see him. And we hadn't seen each other for so long.
And I remember him doing everything he could to get me to not stay with him.

Speaker 3 He would send me to stay with my friends.

Speaker 1 He probably didn't want you to see him, how he was existing.

Speaker 3 Yeah. He was like a famously tight walleted man.
He was always like, you get $100 for clothes every year before school.

Speaker 1 And if you grow out of them, that's your problem.

Speaker 3 You go secondhand shopping.

Speaker 1 You got to get six outfits out of this.

Speaker 3 He's like, if you grow, that's your fucking problem. And then the rest, like, you have a sewing machine figured out.
And I was like, all right.

Speaker 3 But the summer that I stayed with him, I remember he was just giving me money to get out of the house. And I was like, that's so bizarre.

Speaker 3 And I didn't really realize that he had already put a plan in place. He got rid of all of the animals.
He was getting rid of all of his money.

Speaker 1 God, isn't it weird to think of someone planning for that long, something like that? Yeah. It kind of goes against my stereotype of it overwhelming you in a moment.

Speaker 2 Well, it might not have been as consciously planned as just like, I don't want anything.

Speaker 1 You've lost even the desire.

Speaker 2 Yes, you've lost the desire to even care for anything or have anything.

Speaker 3 I still go back and forth on that because I found out later that he was paying my friend's mom to get me groceries and basically was just hawning me off on another family.

Speaker 3 I internalized it for two years that he was just mad at me.

Speaker 3 And I was constantly trying to fix our relationship and reach out, and he just wasn't having it.

Speaker 3 And so, I don't think at the time I felt guilty for being in LA so much as even when I was on the island, still

Speaker 3 he was

Speaker 3 not really wanting to see me. And so, I was kind of like, I'm always here.
I'm always wanting to connect with you.

Speaker 1 Your side of the street was clean.

Speaker 3 And I found out also that he had attempted something

Speaker 3 really publicly, and my mom kept that from me.

Speaker 3 And that was the big turning point of my mental health was just being like what do I not know and my mom was probably right to keep that from me but of course when I was 14 or something I was like what the fuck so I really didn't know what to think of it the last thing he texted me was I love you Chloe and then we got a call the next day and it was like

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's really crazy.

Speaker 3 I honestly don't talk about it too much.

Speaker 2 Yeah, understandably.

Speaker 3 Not because it's hard, honestly, because I do talk about it, but I talk about it with this kind of like, here are the facts. You can disassociate it.

Speaker 1 right?

Speaker 1 So I went into therapy for the very first time three years ago or two, or whatever it was. Oh, really?

Speaker 1 Weirdly, since I was in recovery for so long and I was like, well, I'm getting everything I need from there. And yeah, I can tell you my story.
I can tell anyone my story. Yeah.
It's a timeline.

Speaker 1 And then in that therapy session, as I was talking to him, for the very first time,

Speaker 1 the emotions were attached to the timeline. And they just are not generally for me.
So I can relate to these moments where like, oh, okay, the emotions are here now with the story. Yeah.

Speaker 3 A lot of the time, trauma is very sensationalized. I'm sure you know.
Yeah. I've become very protective of that over the years because I used to be much more open about speaking about it.

Speaker 3 I had a friend who died very publicly in the last few years. And that was when I tried to reorient a little bit my autonomy over what spaces I share that much.

Speaker 1 Well, my therapist said to me, he's like, you know, some stuff you can keep for yourself.

Speaker 1 Not because you're hiding it out of shame, but just it's yours to keep and you should keep it, Having it for you in a weird way, which is a new concept.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's sort of the opposite of what we were talking about earlier, which I was actually going to say that I think it's actually okay, not out of shame, but when we were saying sharing is important.

Speaker 2 And of course it is, but it's okay to have things that are just yours. Yeah.
It doesn't mean it's your secret. It's just yours and you can protect yourself.

Speaker 1 Well, that's your life is just sliding that line back and forth. And it's like, yeah, I felt comfortable with it here.
And now I feel more comfortable with it here. And it'll probably change again.

Speaker 1 And it's fine.

Speaker 1 There's not a right or a wrong it's just am I betraying myself do I regret it later right you did make me cry today though because I was seeing the tattoo that you got and I have little girls and I say that

Speaker 1 same thing to them all the time

Speaker 1 that's so oh and I was like oh my god I can't uh

Speaker 1 yeah if they had to tattoo that um them at some point because something went sideways You know, it's just heartbreaking.

Speaker 2 What is the tattoo if you don't mind sharing?

Speaker 3 It says, we'll be friends forever,

Speaker 3 which is just like the sweetest.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Jim like almost every down the way to go. I'm like, you know, we're going to be best friends for the rest of your life.
Rest of my life. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Unless I get a procedure, hopefully.
Red Limit for 180.

Speaker 1 Maybe I get that with the moment.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm like, we're fucking best friends from this day to the end.

Speaker 3 Well, and that's what it should be, right? I'm so moved to hear you say that about your girls because I truly was best friends with my dad. He tried his best.

Speaker 1 There's probably equally sweet relationships, but I find it hard to believe there are. I just can't imagine

Speaker 1 between a dad and daughter. I just think like, fuck.

Speaker 1 Moms and sons are having this. And I suppose I did have that with my mom, but just, it's inconceivable that anything could be sweeter.
In fact, we went to see my 11-year-old sing in her choir.

Speaker 1 She goes to an all-girls school. So it was just all these little girls up there singing.
And I said to my wife, I'm like, they're the best thing we've got. Daughters on planet Earth.

Speaker 1 Like of all the bells and whistles, this is it right here.

Speaker 3 Did you always want to be a dad?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 I love that. I thought I wanted boys.
Really? I think as a guy, that's what you think. You're like, I'm going to have a son.
I'm going to teach him how to carve a piece of wood.

Speaker 1 I'm going to teach him how to throw a right hook. Teach him how to do donuts in a car.
That he's fucking good. That he's fucking stupid.
And then I let him loose onto this planet. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 But I'm so fucking grateful I didn't have boys because I actually don't want to teach any of that shit. I want to like go to Taylor Swift concerts.

Speaker 3 Butterfly clips and the beard.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 That's so sweet.

Speaker 1 Bait my nails and dye my hair. Yeah, so much more fun.
Okay, so back to your career. So Live and Maddie's enormous.
But then Descendants comes along and that's its own juggernaut.

Speaker 3 I think Descendants was bigger than Live and Maddie.

Speaker 1 6.6 million views versus the first. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 I don't know why these tats are killing me.

Speaker 1 6.6 million

Speaker 1 numbers.

Speaker 1 They don't change.

Speaker 3 I can rely on them.

Speaker 1 So Descendants is a whole nother way. And now there's tons of singing, and you'd already been in choir.
And I guess you start releasing music around Descendants time or before? No, after.

Speaker 3 It's confusing. I did so many weird things in that time.
I had a band with my Ben boyfriend.

Speaker 3 It was so wild.

Speaker 1 It had a weird name, a girl and a...

Speaker 3 Girl on the Dreamcatcher. I did not name it.

Speaker 1 And the band was not my idea. No, no, the band was not my idea.

Speaker 3 Neither neither was the name and none of the music that was something that was entirely his thing and it's sort of like a fever dream i forget all the time that that ever happened so like i guess technically that was coming out around then but no i didn't sign with a label or start releasing my own shit until 2019.

Speaker 3 it was actually after we finished filming all three because Disney had Hollywood records that I think was with Capital.

Speaker 1 And that's what Out of Touch, Bloodshot, Waste, and So Good are all on?

Speaker 3 No, I was never with Hollywood Records. No, Hollywood Republic.
I think they were with Republic, but I was never signed to them because actually I did a audition to be signed to the Disney label.

Speaker 3 It was so funny because first of all, I was very nervous, but I was in like a little yellow dress and my short little blonde hair was in like pigtails and I was singing covers from a boombox.

Speaker 3 And their comment was, We already have so many blondes. And so they didn't sign me because they had like Olivia Holtz and a few other blondes that were on the channel at the time.

Speaker 1 They were swimming in blondes. They had their blonde quota filled.
And so they didn't sign me.

Speaker 3 And I remember being devastated.

Speaker 1 Oh, you did an an Imagine Dragons song. 2013 on top of the world.

Speaker 3 That was in the pilot of Livin' Medi. Nothing on Disney was ever my doing.

Speaker 1 I'm sure you know that. I think a lot of people don't.
Disney would be like, this is your song you're singing this week.

Speaker 3 And then you go in on the weekend and then you shoot on a Monday. It gets done and dusted for you.
Technically, I'm on them, but they're not mine.

Speaker 1 Okay, got you. You do the three descendants.
At that time, now you're in two wildly successful things. So who were you looking at that you were like,

Speaker 1 I'm grateful, but also I fucking want to be this person. What things did you want to be in? And were you like, I want to be Emma Stone?

Speaker 3 My film heroes, I loved Renee Zellweger. I loved Nicole Kidman.

Speaker 3 I loved Jessica Lang, but then also I was hugely obsessed with like Rocky horror and all of these things that I truly shouldn't have been watching at a young age.

Speaker 3 And I was like, that's the kind of uncomfortable, campy, weird, left of center shit I want to be making.

Speaker 3 And honestly, still what I want to be making is kind of a page turn and I'm moving on way too quick, but I just did this show for Amazon that has got that weird little sticky, icky thing about it in the script.

Speaker 3 What show is that? Right now, it's being called 56 Days, which is the same title of the book. It's based on this best-selling novel.

Speaker 3 Without saying too much, because I'm sure that Amazon would have like a helicopter land on your roof and be like, shut the fuck up.

Speaker 3 I can't compare it to anything that I just listed because it's drastically different, but it's got the same sort of touch of unease. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Do you like Severance?

Speaker 3 I have never watched Severance. I know I'm so in trouble for that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. I just need your sag card card before you leave.

Speaker 3 It's fine. I'll just put it through the shredder.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's fine that you didn't see it, but I am going to have to get it.

Speaker 3 And Ben Siller just texted me.

Speaker 1 He is here.

Speaker 1 He is not going to work with you ever.

Speaker 1 Okay, so then we'll just race through. You did Shmigadoon, acting, acting, acting.
I want to talk about singing now. Okay.

Speaker 1 Because while you're starting to release music and it's getting very well received, is there any battle between which one I want more, which one I want to focus on, which one's more rewarding?

Speaker 1 You have a finite time, and so you have to make some decisions. And where on the scales are those two things?

Speaker 3 So I had this super bullish, weird thing where I was like, film and TV is so fun and so is music. Why doesn't everybody try to do it?

Speaker 3 And then I tried to do both at the same time and I was like, I am going to be hospitalized.

Speaker 3 You simply can't. I wish I could explain it because I was uneducated and I was like, I want to do both.
And I would assume that many people think that it's very doable.

Speaker 3 I'm here to tell you, I have tried to do both. You simply can't.
A couple of reasons. One is that film and TV is scheduled for you.

Speaker 3 Unless you are biggest name top 20, you can't be like, I love this film. I would love to shoot it in London in September after my tour.
That's never going to happen.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 So music is really more up to you, except festivals and shows. And the problem is that when you also have a large team who's doing music and film, the thing that ends up getting cannibalized is music.

Speaker 3 It seems the most flexible, but then I'm over here being like, I wrote a fucking album and it's not going to come out till when? And it's like, yeah, but you should really do this show.

Speaker 3 And it's like, I absolutely would love to do the show.

Speaker 3 We're also making an album and so you can't plan at all yeah i guess we've seen people do both but it's a spell of one a spell of another you don't see someone with a number one movie in america and they're on tour yeah well and also that's the other thing is if you have a number one hit it's not just you look at your phone and you go like oh it's doing well on spotify you have to promote that all over the world you have to be performing you have to be doing everything a hit will take over your life.

Speaker 3 I had a hit song in 2022 and it was the only thing I did. It's crazy what a hit song will do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm fascinated.

Speaker 1 Of course, we interview musicians and the economics of it are so fascinating to me that a hit equals now it's time to work and make money off this thing that you didn't make any money off of it being a hit.

Speaker 1 Opposite of a movie, which is like, it's a hit. Great.
You got the money. Yeah.
Yeah. Who cares? My marketing.
My next paycheck will be bigger, but this is, oh shit, this thing's hot.

Speaker 1 I got to go everywhere now and perform this everywhere.

Speaker 3 You are your own sort of one-man show in the sense, yes, you have people to do your hair and your makeup. Like everybody in the industry has their team.

Speaker 3 But like if you show up on a movie set, it's everybody else's job to pull off the thing.

Speaker 3 It's your job to pull off the thing how they ask you to do it.

Speaker 3 Whereas with music, you are the director, you are the producer, like you are the little drummer boy in the front of the parade being like, go again, go again.

Speaker 3 You are your own sort of planetary system. And I am someone who really runs everything with my music.
I have an incredible team around me, but I'm not one of those artists that's like, I trust you.

Speaker 3 I do trust my team, but I'm also like, let me hear it again. Let me hear it through headphones.

Speaker 1 It's going to be the exact thing that's in your mind.

Speaker 3 And I will be sitting in the studio being like, can we do a breath here? I'll go in down to the final last day and I will be working on. mood boards with video directors and I will be scouting people.

Speaker 1 Well, you're the product in this domain and in a movie, the movie's the product.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And I'm so obsessive just because I really have an idea of what I want it to be.
And that's part of the fun. My partner is always like, babe, you got to chill out.
You're going to burn out.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, yeah, but it's that extra 10% of attention that for me as an artist takes it from whatever I did my job to, oh my God, I'm so proud of this.

Speaker 1 Is it weird? Like you won Best New Artist MTV Video Music Award in 2022 and you won New Artist of the Year American Music Awards in 2022. You've been singing for 10 years.
Is that weird?

Speaker 3 It was weird in the sense that I actually had not been doing it for that long. The music I released initially was my partner's music and Disney's music at the time, my partner.

Speaker 3 Then the music after that, it wasn't music I was entirely writing because labels are very like, you came from Disney, you have a good following. We think you should go on this record.

Speaker 3 And I would rewrite some of it, but not really all of it. And it would be stuff that I kind of liked.

Speaker 1 You made it just enough of your own to do it, but it wasn't your own.

Speaker 2 You didn't feel ownership.

Speaker 3 No, and I was extremely plagued by, I think this is who people want me to be. And I had done that for so long on Disney that I was like, I know how to do that.
I guess I'll do that.

Speaker 3 And then I was enjoying it because it was new, but there was no onus.

Speaker 3 Boyfriend, the song that I wrote that went a little wild, it was the first song that I had ever written entirely top to bottom from nothing.

Speaker 3 All of these other records that that I know people have heard and fans have loved that I'm sure I will get back on Spotify one day, they were originally written by other people.

Speaker 3 And then I had sort of changed some lyrics to fit more my story just because I was like, I don't think I would say that. Or I was starting to experiment with writing.

Speaker 3 And that's what a lot of artists do is they'll take records that other people have written and they'll put their own spin on it and change some things. Not everybody has the time.

Speaker 3 to take six months to sit in the studio and only do that. So there's no hate or shame in that.
That's pretty normal. And then some people, that's their whole gig, they're singer-songwriters.

Speaker 3 That's what they do. I never really believed in myself enough to try to write a whole fucking song based on like a concept that I had had.
And I one day was just like, maybe.

Speaker 3 And so I went into the studio to try to start to write. And my label really didn't think anything of it.
They were like, have fun, babe, you know, like dropping me off of them all.

Speaker 1 They were like, okay.

Speaker 3 And I wrote Boyfriend pretty early on. I think it was the first one that I wrote in that time, or if not the first, like one of the first.

Speaker 3 And I randomly put it up on TikTok because that's what the label is. Like, everything's on TikTok.
And I woke up to a crazy record breaking. Like, I had almost no TikToks up.

Speaker 3 Literally, the TikTok was live photos that I had taken taken of myself that I turned into video and just put together.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. It was not a good TikTok.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I guess singing about being bisexual or attracted to women.

Speaker 1 My sister knew all about it. Wow.
She looks at my calendar. Oh.
And she goes, Oh, you're interviewing Dove today. And I said, Yeah.
Are you hip to Dove? And she's like, Well, yeah.

Speaker 1 I watched all the descendants with the girls. And then her song, Boyfriend's Awesome, and she was telling me all about it.
And I'm like, Oh, this is interesting. Let's hit her radar.

Speaker 2 You're hitting a lot of different demos.

Speaker 1 We got those demos, which is great.

Speaker 2 My friend's mom is very into you.

Speaker 1 Oh, really? Yeah.

Speaker 1 We got a mom's mom's.

Speaker 3 So anyway, it was the first time I'd ever experienced something that I had conceptualized, brought to life.

Speaker 1 Before you, this didn't exist, and after you, this exists.

Speaker 3 Right. And then kind of before that, I felt like I didn't exist.
And then after this thing, I felt like I finally existed in a more authentic way in the world than I ever had before.

Speaker 3 And also coupled with this coming out of it all, which I was pretty afraid to do.

Speaker 1 I can tell you what my fear would be. What is it? My fear would be, oh, people are going to think this is opportunistic.

Speaker 3 Oh, interesting.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 3 I mean, I got some of that after I came out, but it was actually, I had made a music video for another song that I had released called We Belong.

Speaker 3 It wasn't a music video, it was like a visualizer because we had no money for a real music video. And there were all these faces being drawn and like embracing in cartoons.

Speaker 3 And someone sent it back to me, and I realized that it was only representing heterosexual couples, even though they were drawings. They were very like white heterosexual couples, boldly non-inclusive.

Speaker 3 And so I just sent a note back being like, Can we get some more representation in this cartoon? Right. Everything still remained white and outliney.

Speaker 3 It was just more varied and silhouette and men and women and then women and women, men and men, androgynous looking. I was just like, this is weird.
It doesn't really represent me.

Speaker 3 And also it was kind of a jarring POV for me where I was like, that is so hetero and narrow. And so I put that out.

Speaker 3 And then it was like the time when people were putting emojis to hint at what was coming. So when people were like, when's the new single coming out? And I was like, emoji, emoji.

Speaker 3 And then like the women, loving, women, emoji, kissing. And then the song came out and it wasn't about being queer.
Right. And everybody was like, You're queer baiting.

Speaker 2 This is horrendous.

Speaker 1 So it's queer baiting.

Speaker 3 Queerbaiting is when something is for the queer community and it's not quite, or you like keep it in the hetero bubble, but you sort of give crumbs.

Speaker 3 It's a marketing technique that a lot of shows have been accused of where they'll also give same-sex people a lot of tension, hinting that there might be something there, and then they never fully go there because they're like, that's not really what it is.

Speaker 3 They just want to get the queer community and sort of make money.

Speaker 1 But not commit to telling the whole storyline.

Speaker 3 So that's queer baiting. So I had to basically go on Instagram live at the time and be like, guys, I'm not queerbaiting.
I'm queer.

Speaker 3 And I just wanted more fucking representation in the fucking cartoon. And the emoji was just hinting at the music video.
I was so confused by it.

Speaker 1 It wasn't a dog whistle for the queer. No.

Speaker 3 And also at that time, I never said it publicly, but all my friends, all my family, they knew I was queer. But I just hated that I had to say it, but I did.

Speaker 1 I guess that's what I'm wondering. When does that paradigm start where it doesn't really need to be declared? Not that I care.
I'm not like someone's like, why do you got to tell me?

Speaker 1 That's not what I'm saying. It's just like, when will it not even be interesting to anybody?

Speaker 3 We have a long way to go.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I do too.

Speaker 3 We've made like a little bit of progress within our own internet-y liberal bubble of people who are maybe queer community adjacent.

Speaker 3 And also just like within the queer community, there's some weird discriminatory things. Even within the queer community, people are very heavy on.
labels. You have to define yourself.

Speaker 3 You have to know what it is. Also, show us proof.
There's a lot of weirdness. Purity tests.
Yeah. And also just if we have that issue within the community, I think we have quite a ways to go.

Speaker 1 Well, that's the erroneous assumption: there would be some kind of unified harmony among a group of people because they have a single thing in common. It's like, well, no.

Speaker 1 That's just like one element of who they are. They're from every socioeconomic bracket.
They're from every ethnicity. They're from every type of trauma background.

Speaker 3 I had a feeling that people were going to say I wasn't queer enough.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 3 I didn't really have an issue being second-guessed because I truly was like, I know who I am.

Speaker 3 My hangup was more, my experience in my personal life was so liberal, wonderful, beautiful, kind, protected, sweet, nurturing, supportive. And my experience of the outside world was so scary.

Speaker 3 I was also on TV in the 2010s. We were still like, she's 110 and so she's fat.
People were being so crazy. It was tabloid time.
People were just making shit up about celebrities.

Speaker 3 I was on the tail end of all that really ugly shit. My body type now would have been like, ooh, she's really, you know, it was a terrible time.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, just six years prior to you being being on that show, they're asking 17-year-old Britney Spears if she's had a breast augmentation in the middle, like a 60-year-old.

Speaker 1 Or if she's still a virgin, yeah. Everyone's asking her, it's so crazy.
She's still a virgin, yeah, but really, what about anal? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, it counts still, right?

Speaker 1 It counts.

Speaker 3 It was so bad, and so I just hadn't really recovered from that or thought that society would be like, walk on, you're queer. We kind of knew it.

Speaker 1 I wasn't expecting that. Yeah.
Okay. So now you're releasing more singles.
You did, I'm afraid to say it. Is it alchemical? Oh, yeah, yeah.
That's a weird word for me. Is that a real word? Alchemy.

Speaker 1 Oh, I know alchemy is a word, but alchemical.

Speaker 3 When something is

Speaker 1 believe you, I've never heard it. I've never sit here.

Speaker 3 No, I'm needing to prove this to you right now.

Speaker 3 I'm feeling like this space is no longer safe.

Speaker 1 Educate me.

Speaker 3 You know, the practice of alchemy, when something is something that can transmute energy, it is alchemical.

Speaker 1 And it was volume one. There has to be a volume two.
You would think. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Logic would follow.

Speaker 3 You painted yourself in a box there a little bit, which is no, it's kind of cunchy just to have alchemical volume one.

Speaker 1 It's like, where's alchemical volume two?

Speaker 3 It's like in the vault, maybe.

Speaker 1 Make a pitch. Yeah.
Do another album. Call it alchemical volume three.

Speaker 1 Some completely different name. Volume one.
And just your thing is you call everything volume one. That's so.
So maybe we'll get to a volume two.

Speaker 3 It'll be like volume two. It'll be like 40.

Speaker 1 Her thing is volume one.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 I thought it was funny to do alchemical volume one and three and then just be like, where's two?

Speaker 1 And it's like, you haven't heard it. Terry Taylor Swift of you.
Oh, really?

Speaker 2 You know, keeping keeping things and then big releases.

Speaker 3 That's true. That's true.
I could learn. I went in to write what I thought was going to be alchemical volume two, but this crazy thing happened.

Speaker 3 I spent two years basically off the face of the earth and processing a lot of trauma.

Speaker 3 I found my dad's baby journal and that sounds like it's nothing, but I truly had all of this storyline in my head that my dad didn't like me, didn't love me, didn't ever see me, didn't ever know me.

Speaker 3 So I had all of this unresolved shit.

Speaker 3 Probably with men in general, I went through like a horrendous breakup just one of those like if i could tell it you'd be like no no like it just like kept getting worse and i not going to talk about it but it was something that really truly like took me out at the knees yeah i don't even know how the fuck it happened if i'm honest i went through two really bad long-term relationships kind of back to back the first one was kind of all bad the second one it had its beautiful moments and then towards the end it was just horrendous and I was in this like weird situation where my friend had just passed so I was coming off of antidepressants and I was trapped in Canada during COVID, couldn't leave, no one could come see me.

Speaker 1 She's Louise.

Speaker 3 And then we broke up and I was like,

Speaker 1 untethered.

Speaker 3 It was wild and all the streets were shut down and it was just the most horrendous fallout from that relationship.

Speaker 3 And so we're glossing over some things, but if I were to say those two years, sort of 2020 into 2021, I was kind of listless. And that was when I dyed my hair came out, wrote boyfriend.

Speaker 3 And then boyfriend came out. And then I was like kind of listless again because I was like, I don't know what I'm doing.
I don't know how to follow up this song. I didn't write anything.

Speaker 1 It can be a burden. I was like, I don't even know how we did it the first time.

Speaker 3 And I also won all these awards prematurely, which then I was like, guys, are you fucking shocking?

Speaker 1 I'm a fraud. I got lucky and I don't know how to do this again.

Speaker 3 So much imposter syndrome. And so then I found my dad's baby book and I basically swore off of dating anybody rest of 2022 into most of 2023.
And I dipped into the deepest, darkest depression.

Speaker 3 And I just fell off the face of the planet. Did a lot of internal work.
And everybody was like, you gave up your career. You don't give a fuck.
And I was like, I can't make myself get out of that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, we've got bigger fish to fry.
Yeah. I was like, I

Speaker 1 will get to it in a year.

Speaker 3 It kind of hit me all at once. My best friend was like, you have never stopped working.
And I was like, yeah, but if I stop, everything's going to find me. And then it did.
Yeah. It always does.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I was like, fuck you, Veronica. You were fucking right.
I don't know how I'm going to get myself out of this.

Speaker 3 And so I just bared down, isolated myself, which is not something I recommend, but something I definitely did on instinct, kept myself out of trouble, stayed in my house, and then had a lot of dark nights of the soul and just kind of dug, cleansed, dug, cleansed, and basically purified myself in the craziest way.

Speaker 3 And then I met my partner.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the Italian stallion.

Speaker 3 The Italian stallion. And then I tried to write the album.
Two months after we started dating, I wrote the first song about him. And it was very clear.

Speaker 3 that the album was going to be a massive departure from anything I was doing before. I was like, why are we trying to write a part two when I was so depressed in those songs?

Speaker 3 And this one is like a fully different book. Why am I trying to make them be married? I can't.
Right.

Speaker 1 That's why you're going to release a new album called Volume One.

Speaker 1 It's a new volume one. It's a lot.

Speaker 3 And then I'll get depressed again.

Speaker 3 We got it scheduled.

Speaker 3 I'm going to be depressed probably from November to like March, I would say. So don't reach out.

Speaker 1 No, no, no.

Speaker 3 Honestly, I don't mean to make light.

Speaker 1 But you're having tons of success with now your happy falling in love song.

Speaker 3 I really didn't expect that. I couldn't have written this album if I had not dropped off the face of the planet and learned a little bit more about who I was as an adult and as an individual.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more armchair expert,

Speaker 1 if you dare.

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Speaker 1 In going through all the dad's stuff, I mean, here's what I would hope for you. Did you come to accept?

Speaker 1 Oh, no, he most definitely loved me like crazy, and he most definitely had a lot of conditions that had nothing to do with me.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It's so funny because finding this baby book was really like a pivotal thing in my human evolution timeline.
I can't overemphasize enough what it did for me.

Speaker 3 This came straight out of that excerpt, which was something I apparently said to him on the changing table when I was two, like barely verbal. We'll be friends forever.

Speaker 3 And he was like, hold on, and had to date it and time it. And he was like, we will be friends forever.

Speaker 3 But there was so much in there that was like, today you read the first word out of your newspaper. You're so smart.

Speaker 1 You know, like,

Speaker 1 stuff that I, I, I never got from him

Speaker 1 when he was alive.

Speaker 3 Stuff that he was too sad to tell me as I was growing up. And

Speaker 3 I think just knowing that he really did see me, the things that he would say about me, I was so shocked were things that were still true now. He was like, you're so intense.
You're so independent.

Speaker 3 You're so fiery. You always stand up for yourself.
You always apologize first. You always make sure everyone around you is okay.

Speaker 3 And I was like, how do you glean this from someone who's five and under? I don't know. You must be really paying attention.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he knew you.

Speaker 1 He saw you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And so I think, like,

Speaker 1 God, I'm like, fully right.

Speaker 3 But I think there was something in that. I had always thought that there was something wrong with me.

Speaker 1 Of course. And also the way that my dad really didn't love my mom very well.

Speaker 3 My mom and I were so similar. I was like, there's something wrong.
He doesn't love us. He doesn't like us.
And I really like and love him.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And so I think it really skewed my perspective on having to be something for so many people. I thought that I had to win love.

Speaker 3 I thought that I had to put up with dark things to be worthy, to be good enough.

Speaker 3 Also growing up with an unstable parent, you really start to sort of calculate and read other people's behaviors and triggers before they get triggered. And so you're walking on eggshells.

Speaker 3 You're trying to be the perfect everything.

Speaker 1 You're trying to control the environment they're in so the bad thing doesn't set off.

Speaker 3 And you start to do that in everything.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You become neurotic about your surroundings.

Speaker 3 And apologetic. Anyway, all of that is to say that when I read that actually I was entirely wrong and he couldn't wait to see who I would turn into and truly saw me.

Speaker 1 Madly in love with you. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And in the way that I was with him, I was finally able to like put this massive rock down. Oh, I have always been exactly who I am.
I have always been seen as the person I am today.

Speaker 3 And really he didn't miss anything.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's very sweet.

Speaker 3 If he could love me like that, I can love me like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 That also, I think, was really what made my life what it is now is that fucking baby journal. So keep a journal for your fucking kids.

Speaker 1 Well, then let's you enter into this Italian stallion situation, which

Speaker 1 is probably a healthier version of yourself. Oh, yeah.
What's different about an Italian? Yeah. Oh, the song is crap.

Speaker 1 Don't come out. You should have snap.
I was going to say. What were you going to say?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was going to say, what's different about him than the others.

Speaker 1 How's he not part of the pattern? Exactly.

Speaker 3 Without bringing anyone else into it, my political answer.

Speaker 3 What my partner is that I have never seen firsthand is he is the most honest, beautiful, truly off-the-charts, intelligent, funny as fuck, kind,

Speaker 1 good-hearted person.

Speaker 1 Why did you do this to me?

Speaker 1 Sorry, I don't know how to talk about anything else. Other things, other things.

Speaker 3 Both of our mascaras running.

Speaker 3 I also love this laugh like you're in pain. You're like,

Speaker 1 so crazy. It borders on maniacal.
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 I'm right there with you, baby.

Speaker 1 Well, one thing I read that you said about him, which I thought was really neat, is there seems to be an embrace of a dual masculinity, femininity that maybe is Italian, maybe it's just the group that you're surrounded by, but that they seem to have a great comfort in being both sides.

Speaker 3 He's really in both of his energies, I would say. He's really masculine and feminine in all of the most beautiful ways.
I always like to say that I would have found him in any body.

Speaker 3 I truly think that he is the most beautiful soul. He's kind of shy.
And so, actually, I think he puts out this air of unapproachability. Aloof.
Yeah, which is really just he's introverted.

Speaker 3 The thing that he said to me first, that then I started saying, because it's really true, is that I was really afraid of humans at the time that I had met him.

Speaker 3 And I had really been convinced that something was wrong with me and I was not allowed to engage with the other humans for fear of either me inadvertently harming them or being harmed.

Speaker 3 And I was starting to get really introverted and weird. And when I met him and when he asked me out, it was maybe only three or four weeks into dating that we were crying and doing the deep dive.

Speaker 3 And he was like, I think I really needed you to come into my life because I was starting to disappear. That was exactly what it was for me.

Speaker 3 He's my proof that I can be here in the most beautiful way because I have the most incredible friends, but the way that he sees me is something that I've never experienced.

Speaker 3 And the way that we're best friends, and I think that's really one of the cornerstones of our relationship, is just the way that we are so healthy for each other. We really are normal human beings

Speaker 1 first.

Speaker 2 It sounds like he's giving you permission to just be you.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah. The main difference I really can stand on is that he wants me to be as big and expressed and healthy and whole and off the rails.
Whoever I am, he wants me to be that at a 10.

Speaker 1 Very few guys are secure enough to let you be a supernova and not be afraid they're going to lose you.

Speaker 3 And that was really my experience. He really couldn't be more the opposite.
If I'm ever hiding in any way, he's like, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's my biggest.
amplifier.

Speaker 3 And that to me has just been so healing.

Speaker 1 Also just for like my inner child. We love this kind of guy.

Speaker 3 We love this fucking man.

Speaker 3 This guy's all right.

Speaker 1 He's okay. He's good.
He's good. He's good.
He's a good guy. He's a bikini.

Speaker 3 What the fuck is a bikini?

Speaker 1 My best friend Aaron and I at times talk like mafioso. And we just thought, what if one of the family's last name was bikini? But then they had to sell it.
It's like, don't worry, he's with us.

Speaker 1 He's bikini. He's bikini.
It's just funny you say the word bikini like.

Speaker 3 It's just so like, yeah, yeah, like it's off.

Speaker 1 This guy's fucking bikini.

Speaker 3 Oh, oh, you don't want to fucking go over there.

Speaker 1 The whole family bikinis, right?

Speaker 1 this place is full the whole block is bikinis

Speaker 1 you don't even want to go over there the guy parking your car bikini bikinis the guy sipping your dish bikini everywhere watch your mouth so stupid i want to make sure i'm plugging the right thing too much too much too much too much

Speaker 3 great song watch the video great video thank you tell me what's coming this year too much is in charge right now yeah too much is running the show it's the bell of the ball she's the bell of the ball i have a new single coming out very very soon we're kind of vacillating between two but I'm pretty sure I know which one I want it to be.

Speaker 3 What month is it? March? Okay, I have a new single coming out next month. Okay, great.
And then probably just one more, and then somewhere in there, the album.

Speaker 1 You'll do the album. We'll do the album.
Well, Dove slash Chloe.

Speaker 1 Your friends call you Chloe. Your work associates call you Dove.
Uh-oh.

Speaker 1 Dove was our dad's nickname for her.

Speaker 2 Well, what should we call you? What did we earn today?

Speaker 1 I want to call it. Come up with something Chloe.

Speaker 3 It's like Dolores.

Speaker 1 Or Chloe. Chlove.
Chloe. Clove.

Speaker 3 Clove is good. Clover.
Oh, shit. Yeah, get that vape mist in the atmosphere.
Get that nicotine mist all up in the atmosphere. Usually this nice, smoky, scent environment.

Speaker 1 This has been really one of my faves. This was so fun.
Really?

Speaker 1 I love if I get a cry in in an episode. Like once a year, I get a cry in.

Speaker 3 Once a year.

Speaker 3 I'm feeling so connected. I'm feeling so high-vibing.

Speaker 3 No, I'm the same.

Speaker 1 Well, the father-daughter stuff's a real cheap shot, so pretty high. I came in and getting some tears out of me.
But this was incredible. This was so nice.
Yeah, I really, really enjoyed this.

Speaker 1 You're wonderful. You deserve everything.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to get your friend's gold tooth person.

Speaker 3 I'm going to get your friend's gold tooth.

Speaker 1 The listener viewer will see me at some point in the near future with a gold tooth, and we will have you to thank.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we're going to know this is where it all started.

Speaker 1 All right, we'll come back. Okay, I will.
All right.

Speaker 3 Just like tonight for dinner.

Speaker 1 We can just let go of it.

Speaker 3 Don't be a little bit bikini reunion.

Speaker 1 I sure hope there weren't any mistakes in that episode, episode, but we'll find out when my mom, Mrs. Monica, comes in and tells us what was wrong.

Speaker 1 Hello, happy fact check.

Speaker 2 Happy fact check. You've been gone.

Speaker 1 We recorded on Thursday. Yeah.
Right? Yeah. Which normally is one second ago.
Sure. Right.
Sure. But I went to Disneyland

Speaker 1 all day Friday. Uh-huh.
Went there Thursday night.

Speaker 1 Then flew crack ass to Austin on Saturday, went to a sprint race, waved a checkered flag. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Then went to the race on Sunday, walked another 10 miles, then Monday went to the trek and rode all day, then flew back last night. So I feel like we haven't worked in three weeks.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 I also feel like it's been a while.

Speaker 2 But for you feel rusty.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't remember how to do it.

Speaker 2 It's for the opposite reason, though.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 I, last week, I tried to get everything done,

Speaker 2 all the edits, so that I didn't have to work on Friday.

Speaker 1 What were you?

Speaker 2 I just didn't want to. I just wanted the day.
I needed a day.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, to relax.

Speaker 2 And I did end up having to do a tiny edit in the morning, but it was fine. I was, oh, and I had a meeting, but I was done by

Speaker 2 11.30.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 Virtually a three-day weekend.

Speaker 2 Yes. And then you know what else I did?

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 2 On Monday,

Speaker 2 I decided the same thing. Oh, wow.
And I was like, I'm going to just have to do extra on Tuesday, but it's okay.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 And I really needed it. I didn't really realize it.
Yeah. But I really needed like a little tiny chunk of

Speaker 1 rusty, compressed.

Speaker 2 Rusty, just getting to decide what I want to do and not think like, and at what point am I going to go open my computer and do X, Y, and Z.

Speaker 1 I think your skin is proof of it.

Speaker 3 I'm wearing new makeup.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. Did you discover that in your leisure time? Yeah.
A new brand. And,

Speaker 2 well, actually, maybe it's not the makeup, although today is the first day I'm wearing this new makeup. Okay.

Speaker 2 I have also been using vitamin C serum.

Speaker 2 Which does brighten your complexion.

Speaker 1 It does.

Speaker 2 Yes. And I used to use it, but I I stopped all my stuff when I went to my new.

Speaker 1 When you had your heart reset.

Speaker 2 When I had my heart reset, the goddess at Corrective Skincare, I like just stopped everything and just did my basic, basic regimen with her.

Speaker 2 But then I was like, ooh, I'm going to dip my baby toe in the water.

Speaker 1 You kind of wanted more action. A little bit.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so far.

Speaker 1 One day.

Speaker 2 No, no, I've had, I've done vitamin C for like a week.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. Did you tell her you were going to?

Speaker 3 No, but she's cool.

Speaker 2 She's cool a bit.

Speaker 1 Do I need it?

Speaker 2 Vitamin C serum is great.

Speaker 1 It's a great serum. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Experts agree.

Speaker 2 They do.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's good to wear sunscreen if you're going to use vitamin C serum.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I don't. Yeah, we'll use browns.
I think you that's for people that are white, probably.

Speaker 2 No, but actually, I am a little nervous. So there is this little thing on my face here.
Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 And we don't think it's

Speaker 1 a pimple oh so now i'm a little anxious that it is some sorry world um that it is some something that might need removal okay now if i need it removed i did think this all through i was like what if i have a band-aid on my face for like two weeks that's cool as long as you say like i got it um i got careless with a knife and stabbed myself if there's some kind of cool reason yeah raccoon scratched you okay yeah dog bite.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I had something removed and I have a band-aid. I know.
Or this is a wart removal. I don't think it's a wart.

Speaker 2 I think it would be hypoplasia.

Speaker 1 Cancer. Hyperplasia.

Speaker 2 I look, is it okay, really, if I have to get this removed and I have to have a band-aid on my face for two weeks? I think we're going to have to figure something out.

Speaker 1 I can't perform with a band-aid on your face. I can't.

Speaker 2 I can't even perform in life. I'll have to be in my room for two weeks.

Speaker 1 And you

Speaker 1 you don't want to ruin one of your trips because I was going to say you could have it done right before

Speaker 1 spring break. You don't want to really want to go.
You just got to do what Sia does.

Speaker 2 Wear something over my face.

Speaker 1 Or your haircut?

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Like a wig, but it's in front of my face.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well,

Speaker 1 I don't think you would need to supplement your hair. Well, that'd be funny to pull it in front of your

Speaker 1 time you did pull your hair as much as you could?

Speaker 1 Because you had had a chemical peel. Oh, yeah, remember, and then we had a hot gas.
Oh, it was Chris Pine, right?

Speaker 2 Yes. Yeah.
Oh, my God, that's right. I had it.
It wasn't chemical peel.

Speaker 1 And there was just like an oval slit in the middle of your face.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I really, I wore my hair.

Speaker 2 I was like really wearing it.

Speaker 1 Like, yeah, like real protective. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I guess I'll

Speaker 2 be fine. I guess I'll do that if I have a band-aid.

Speaker 1 Okay. Maybe.

Speaker 2 I I don't know. Oh, speaking of big revelation, since the last time we spoke, oh, shoot, I think I may have cut it.

Speaker 2 We talked about hats. I do think I cut it.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. We talked about hats

Speaker 2 because I don't wear hats ever. Right.
But since we talked about it, I've worn a baseball hat twice. You have?

Speaker 1 And how do you like it? How's it going? Okay.

Speaker 2 I like it because I feel like a different Monica when I wear it.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's a whole identity.

Speaker 2 It's a completely different identity.

Speaker 1 And what is that version of Monica like? Like baseball games?

Speaker 2 She's, no, she's very,

Speaker 1 what's this facebook? Over it. Oh, she's over it.

Speaker 2 No, it's not, it's not so much over it as like, I'm just so chill.

Speaker 1 By the way, the look you just gave, a woman gave me in a restaurant on Monday night. Why? I was walking from the bathroom and I like caught eyes with this woman and this man.

Speaker 1 and like she was just like looking at me straight and i was just kind of looking at her back straight and then all of a sudden she went

Speaker 1 like gave me a real weird eye roll and i was like that was weird what were you wearing

Speaker 1 black t-shirt and

Speaker 1 jeans yeah and was it a fancy place oh no no no no it's um

Speaker 1 It was great. It's Mediterranean.
It's right under the Soho house. It was very.

Speaker 2 Oh, I

Speaker 1 letters. Yes.
R-A-B or R-I-B. It's not in it.

Speaker 2 I think there's an A in it.

Speaker 1 A, A, R, B.

Speaker 2 It had really good. Okay.
That's the place that Erica, Jess, Laura, and I fled to when we got kicked out of Barton Springs.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 Abba, Austin.

Speaker 3 Abba? Yeah.

Speaker 1 ABA. Yep.
Okay.

Speaker 2 ABA. ABA.

Speaker 3 Always be aing.

Speaker 2 Always be achieving.

Speaker 1 Always be aiding.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we went there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, big, huge tree outside. Yeah, gorgeous.

Speaker 2 And tasty as hell.

Speaker 1 Yes. And then a very funny thing happened, which was I hung out with my friends Amy and Rory the whole time.
Rory and I went to the both races together.

Speaker 1 And what's so nice is he lends me one of his cars while I'm in town.

Speaker 2 He did the last time we went there.

Speaker 1 Very nice car. Yes.
When we were there for unboxed, he also lent it to me. And I find that to be one of the most touching things imaginable, just because I'm super into cars

Speaker 1 and I do not like loaning my cars out. Yes.
And it's a very, very nice car.

Speaker 2 Very nice.

Speaker 1 It's a Bentley Speed.

Speaker 1 It's crazy. Like it's a car I wouldn't personally loan out.
Yeah, or by myself, you know, it's so nice.

Speaker 2 It's gorgeous and it's green.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a sexy green.

Speaker 2 And we went to Dairy Queen in it.

Speaker 1 And I was nervous. I did again.
I did. Uh-huh.
Anyways, I love it. I feel so fancy driving around Austin in it.
And it really touches me.

Speaker 1 So we went out to eat on Saturday with his dad and his stepmom and Andrew. And I was there for, oh, Lambert's, our spot.
So I had put my credit card down.

Speaker 1 Soon, I gave it to him as soon as I got there. And I was there before them.
So the bill comes, I pay. He's furious.
He really wants to pay.

Speaker 2 You can't pay. You got two steaks.

Speaker 1 Exactly. I knew I was going to eat like an asshole and I did.

Speaker 1 And so. What was really funny was he said, okay, tomorrow night, I'm paying.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And I said, okay, well, well, we'll see. And then he texted me in the day, if you don't let me pay, I'm not loaning you my car anymore.
Shit. And I said, really good leverage.

Speaker 1 I'm definitely going to let you pay because I want to borrow your car. And then he decided last minute, I'm going to stay home with the kids.
Just Ange is coming, but you must let Ange buy.

Speaker 1 And I was like, okay, okay.

Speaker 1 So we have this dinner. It's spectacular.

Speaker 1 There's a woman with a huge group of people. They're all from Minnesota.

Speaker 1 The manager comes over and says, Um, this woman has bought your dinner

Speaker 1 and sent over a dessert.

Speaker 1 That's so sweet. So, I was like, Oh my God, Angie, I can't wait for you to go home and say, You still you didn't get to buy, even though I agreed.
I didn't buy, but no, nor did that. That is

Speaker 2 the universe giving a big old wink.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes, very nice woman.

Speaker 2 That's so sweet. Shout out.

Speaker 1 I gave her a big hug, big strong hug.

Speaker 2 Oh, okay. That reminds me of two.
Okay, that reminds me of something. It has been a long time.

Speaker 1 Yes, right?

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 But pause on that, pin in that.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Let's talk about paying and stuff.

Speaker 1 Okay, great.

Speaker 2 When I first started working for you guys, you know, I only had so much dollars in my pocket.

Speaker 1 Sure, sure.

Speaker 2 And I was coming off a soul cycle. Yeah.
And then, but we all would hang out as a group and then we go to dinner. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I, I always did, I felt like this is ridiculous that they're paying every time and I think it's bad. And then, you know, people would offer and I would offer yeah and

Speaker 2 i think sometimes

Speaker 2 when you're in the position of paying you feel like it's a just like gesture of an offer right

Speaker 2 but it's not like i

Speaker 2 i think now i'm on sort of the other side of this and i i do also struggle yeah because I want to treat my friends to things.

Speaker 2 I also understand what it's like when they're saying,

Speaker 2 please, please let me pay.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 2 And I, cause I'm like, you're just, I think you're just saying that because you want to be a polite, good person.

Speaker 2 But actually, what I do know from me is you, if you let someone pay every single time, you end up feeling like a mooch.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 And it feels bad.

Speaker 1 Two things are happening for me, and it's a challenge. One is,

Speaker 1 it was pointed out to me by Tom Hansen, very smart man who I think learned from a therapist.

Speaker 2 Great. We love therapy.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's like, you, you have to, relationships have to be reciprocal. Yes.

Speaker 1 And, um, and that's true. I get that.
And it's just a bummer that it has to be seen as reciprocal just financially.

Speaker 2 It doesn't, though.

Speaker 1 Because here's my dilemma. So I get it.
Yeah. People want to,

Speaker 1 well, A, they want to treat you and they want to

Speaker 1 reciprocate, but I have an ethical dilemma with it, which is like, I get paid too much money. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Um, it seems crazy that of the two of us, you're working your ass off. That's not to say that that's Rory and

Speaker 1 the situation, just yeah, just in general, if it's everyone's working hard, everyone's working hard. And if it's a lot less of a ding to me,

Speaker 1 I just feel ethically like this feels crazy. The example I gave my mom, because my mom tries to say, I like this, yeah.

Speaker 1 I said, Mom, just imagine we're walking through the desert and you were allotted a half gallon of water and I was allotted a swimming pool. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And we're traveling through the desert and you want to share your water with me. It's nice, but I just ethically, I know.
I could just fucking, it would be so wrong of me to take your water.

Speaker 2 I think that too.

Speaker 2 But what, what there is a risk of

Speaker 2 is a power imbalance does start, can start forming.

Speaker 1 I know, but what blows is it's mostly in the mind of the person who's getting something for free, which I get.

Speaker 1 Yes, there are certain personality types that it does lead to resentment. Hence, Tom telling me that you got to

Speaker 2 make sure you're,

Speaker 2 I think it in different, for different people, resentments on both sides. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, there can definitely be a, I've done so much for you.

Speaker 2 And now,

Speaker 2 and you aren't doing the, you know, whatever.

Speaker 2 I think humans, even though we think we're bigger than that,

Speaker 2 sometimes it slips in.

Speaker 1 We're keeping score. I don't, it's tricky, though.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think it's tricky.

Speaker 1 Well, like, I, I, I'll notice, like, okay, I'm about to make Rory mad.

Speaker 2 Like, you want to feel equal to anyone in a relationship, French, anything, you know? And so, if one

Speaker 2 person,

Speaker 2 again, it's tricky because I

Speaker 2 feel the same as you. I'm like, I am happy to pay because I also don't contribute in many other ways that these other people are contributing.

Speaker 2 So, to me, it's all equal, but there is something about finances for people that make everyone go bonkers.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 I have a friend who does well, but also has times of not being, you know, struggling a little bit.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And she is actually like, if I,

Speaker 2 if we're out to dinner, she'll off, she'll definitely offer. And I'm like, no.

Speaker 2 And she will just say, thank you. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because she also understands like, yeah, we just spent this dinner talking about yeah a rough struggle yeah

Speaker 2 yeah that would be kind of crazy for me to be like okay yeah we'll split it in half now yeah yeah it's just tricks but money makes relationships complicated yeah it really does i hate that but i think it's real i know what you'd like to go is like oh we're we're kind of like a group one of us got this thing i'm going to share it

Speaker 1 But it is complicated. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I'm trying to think, when I was on the other end of it,

Speaker 1 I wasn't resentful, but I was judgmental.

Speaker 2 What do you mean?

Speaker 1 Like when I was broke and maybe where I'd experience it with is my brother would pay for everything,

Speaker 1 which was so nice. Yeah.
And he really took, he took me on vacations. That's nice.
Yeah, it was super nice. And it was a nice luxury in those eight years of being broke.

Speaker 1 But I, because I coveted money so much and I didn't have it, I would be like, God, they're so wasteful. Like the way they order food,

Speaker 1 so much stuff goes uneaten.

Speaker 2 That's interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I was like often judgmental, which I regret.

Speaker 1 Cause now surely, if you were witnessing me, you would easily say that. Anyone can like I, my thing is I'll order too much food for if people are over or whatever.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I act just like my brother does. Right.
So I have to think, yeah, some people are like probably maybe fine with it and appreciative and also judgmental. and that's fair because I was.
Huh? Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's all based on our like, I remember walking to my brother's garage, and he had like

Speaker 1 so many snowmobiles, uh-huh. And I was like, What the fuck does he need? All these snow, he can only ride one.

Speaker 1 And he's like, They're not fun unless I can have friends come ride, and my friends don't own them. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And yeah, I look at my garage and I'm like, Yeah, there's three motors that I was like, don't need, but when Aaron's here, we ride together or what, you know, they're only fun if I can.

Speaker 2 Maybe you should apologize to him.

Speaker 1 maybe i should that's a good idea yeah but he i don't know if he knew i was i guess

Speaker 2 he's like no it's hard to do my sister occasionally listen so maybe this would get through oh yeah yeah yeah it it's so much it's so based on our our past too because i don't i don't think i had

Speaker 2 judgment over like excess

Speaker 2 but i didn't grow up feeling like i didn't have enough yeah yeah So that's probably why.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But I definitely felt like I need to be an equal here.

Speaker 2 That's my own bad.

Speaker 1 That's my own past stuff.

Speaker 2 Okay, now back to my pen.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 Something bad happened. Oh.

Speaker 2 Okay. You know, on the streets of places, there are people with clipboards.

Speaker 1 Yes, who are trying to sign you up for things.

Speaker 2 Yes, they're trying to sign you up for things. They are always like, it's always a nice cause.

Speaker 2 You know, I, I

Speaker 2 believe in these people's hearts.

Speaker 1 Yes. They have good hearts, probably.

Speaker 1 I don't know them, but

Speaker 1 I'm never

Speaker 2 gonna stop and sign a thing on a clipboard. Yeah.
And in fact, when I see, when I like approach anyone with a clipboard, I get like this sense of dread.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes. I think we all do.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it's pretty universal. And I think like, oh, what are they, why?

Speaker 1 It's even worse than someone panhandling. You've somehow like that, you've worked through the guilt of that years ago.
Yes. And those first, they want something.
This is like they want a good change,

Speaker 1 whether or not I agree with their right.

Speaker 2 They want change for the

Speaker 1 out there like volunteering. I know.
I know.

Speaker 2 And all it would take is just a few minutes of conversation and my signature.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I've read some of those things. I'm like, I'm actually not aligned with this.

Speaker 2 That's happened to me. But they know, they're smart.
They're very smart because they know what to say, right? They'll say, they'll say, do you want reproductive rights?

Speaker 1 Exactly. Sign this non-toxin apple.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Do you believe in trans rights? That's a big one where I'm like, yes, but I'm not, I don't want to talk to you. Like, it's like, it gets.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so my normal method is just to like, I just say sorry and I just keep walking

Speaker 1 with my head down. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I say sorry honestly with a little bit of like

Speaker 2 irritability.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 Callie taught me, she said, I think a good way to do it is to say, not today, but thank you and keep going. And I was like, that's polite.
It also, it also says,

Speaker 1 I will,

Speaker 2 just not today.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 you really are service.

Speaker 1 So then you can't go back there if you've used that method. It can't be a place you visit every day.

Speaker 2 Well, if, oh, you think they're going to be there every day?

Speaker 1 Yeah, like if you are going grocery shopping, great. That's once a week.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But your normal Starbucks, you can't say next time because you'll see them the next time. They're outside Maru a lot.
Oh, I know. I've walked like four blocks out of the way to avoid.

Speaker 1 They're preying on the.

Speaker 2 Exactly. Yeah.
Okay. So I

Speaker 2 practice, okay, she taught me that. I was like, that's good.
I'm going to start adopting that because I don't like the way it feels when I say sorry. Right.
So a couple days later, I was on Larchmont.

Speaker 2 Of course, there's clipboarders. I don't remember what they were trying to get me to do, but I said, not today.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 I got a little tripped up because he said, I like your pants.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 And I was like, oh, thank you. And then he got.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 And he came in again and I was like, oh, not today. But I'd already said it.
So that one wasn't great.

Speaker 2 That one wasn't great. That was my first attempt

Speaker 2 and then

Speaker 2 on Friday this past Friday you're gonna hate this y'all my day off I decided to go shopping obviously

Speaker 2 and um on Sycamore and so I was walking I see some clipboarders

Speaker 2 but I don't know they're actually not holding a clipboard this time but they have like some sort of setup you know yeah a kiosk

Speaker 2 makeshift something

Speaker 2 and um and I was like oh no okay not today Thanks. Like, I practiced in my head.
Yeah. And then I went up, I started to walk past and they

Speaker 2 said,

Speaker 2 do you, something like, do you like the earth?

Speaker 1 Or

Speaker 1 do you like breathing fresh air?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Or do you care about the environment? Or maybe it was like, do you want to protect something? It wasn't actually that me or, you know, that.

Speaker 1 aggressive. Okay.

Speaker 2 And I said, no, not today.

Speaker 2 No. And then I got anxious.
And so then I started walking really fast. And then the woman, there was, it was a woman and a man.
And the woman said,

Speaker 1 are you?

Speaker 2 Oh, no. I know.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wow. Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 She said, are you Monica? And I said, oh, yeah, I am. And I'm still walking.
I mean, this is a nightmare.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Now you want to start running.

Speaker 2 And I like my pace is picking up.

Speaker 2 And I was like, yeah, oh, yeah, I am. And she was like, oh, my God,

Speaker 2 I'm a huge fan.

Speaker 1 And I'm walking still. Okay, yeah.
I can't stop.

Speaker 3 Yes, that's worse, right?

Speaker 2 It's worse if I'm like, oh, you're a fan. I guess I will come over and shit chat with you about the earth.

Speaker 1 Right. Oof, yeah.

Speaker 2 This is a really big picture.

Speaker 2 So, yeah. And I was like, oh, thank you so much.
And I meant that. I'm very grateful that this very nice person who's spending, I'm going shopping and this person's spending her day for the earth.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And she is a fan of us. It's like, this feels like awesome.

Speaker 1 Really? Make it easy. I'm sure she's a fan of us.
But it gets through of me.

Speaker 2 Well, now we probably lost her.

Speaker 1 Oh, God, Monica. You should have signed.
Just signed.

Speaker 2 I didn't have time. Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 This was actually a part of it. I had parked on the street where it was going to start towing in 40 minutes.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you got a time.

Speaker 2 I was on a clock and I hadn't even gotten to the store yet.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. You didn't have time to get political or you didn't have time to be an activist that day.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It was a shopping day. It was my free day.

Speaker 1 Stay tuned for more armchair expert

Speaker 1 if you dare.

Speaker 1 This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card members can earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases wherever they shop.

Speaker 1 This means you could be earning daily cash on just about anything, like a slice of pizza from your local pizza place or a latte from the corner coffee shop.

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Speaker 1 I just say, I'm very happy. I'm not sorry.
All right. I just go, oh, no, thanks.

Speaker 2 Like literally outside of Skylight Books, they say,

Speaker 1 do you care?

Speaker 2 Do you care about the kids and children in Palestine?

Speaker 1 Oh, boy.

Speaker 2 It's so, like, saying no, thank you. You've said no.
It feels like bad energy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 And that's why I just say sorry.

Speaker 1 I'm so sorry. I'm a bad person.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's like.

Speaker 1 I'm a bad person.

Speaker 1 That's the subtext. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Anywho. Well, I hope they clean that up.

Speaker 1 That's soliciting. All these signs, all these places have signs that say no.

Speaker 2 If you think I should start my own, that's to get these clipboarders gone.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. That would be ironic.

Speaker 1 Yeah, a petition to get rid of

Speaker 1 a measure, state measure to get rid of.

Speaker 1 You can't hold that. I feel bad.

Speaker 2 They're doing such, everyone's so, they're good people. Like, I recognize that.
But

Speaker 2 I just don't,

Speaker 2 I think, honestly, I feel pessimistic that signing signing this thing is going to do anything for the children in Palestine.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I,

Speaker 2 what I want to say is, like, I've already, I already support them. I've already given money.
I've already done my part on both sides.

Speaker 1 So don't come over here.

Speaker 2 Also, you guys, you clip borders over here.

Speaker 2 I'm doing my part.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Signing this to me means nothing. And all you've done is make me so mad

Speaker 2 at this cause now. Now I'm mad at your cause.

Speaker 1 Right. Now I don't like any of the kids of the world.

Speaker 2 I hate the children of the world.

Speaker 1 I'm glad I'm not,

Speaker 1 I'm not getting that much clipboard traffic. Thank goodness.
You don't walk very much.

Speaker 1 It does make me remember though, you know, in the airport before, back when you could go through security without a plane ticket, pre-9-11, there were all kinds of people work in the airport.

Speaker 1 And there is a whole legion of people that come up and they would hand you a little piece of paper and and you look at it. Maybe it was lightly like a present, like it was a tiny little trinket.

Speaker 1 And then you'd open up and it would say like, I'm deaf and mute. They're working.
They were, they used to work LAX

Speaker 1 hard. And I remember being like, maybe Chris and I there and like someone's coming up with a little trinket.
And I'm like, don't take it. Don't take the trinket.
Don't. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Obviously. Because that one feels like a.
Also, you're going to get a

Speaker 1 hex or a, what do you got?

Speaker 2 Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 1 A spell on you. You might get a spell on you.
If you take the trinket and you've touched it.

Speaker 1 You don't give them money.

Speaker 2 I know. Is that like, is that our generation? We like saw some movie or something that taught us about spells or slimmer or something.

Speaker 1 That's a thinner. Thinner, right? Is that it?

Speaker 2 It's not Spielberg, but I don't know who it is, but just the most famous

Speaker 1 King, Stephen King.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 1 He gets a,

Speaker 1 what do you call it? It's not a hex.

Speaker 2 No, a scary man

Speaker 2 will touch you and say thinner. And then you like get really thin and you disappear.
Yep.

Speaker 1 A curse. A curse.
A curse. A curse.
A curse.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That's so funny that you bring that.
I've never seen it and I had never heard of it. But one time, remember I was at,

Speaker 2 again, because I walk so much. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I was at a stop.

Speaker 1 light ready to cross an unhoused person touched me right i remember that yes and it kind of caressed your back yeah and it it was really creepy and i really didn't like it and then when i told jess he said theener oh okay so that was your big update that was a big update of mine yeah the clipboards yeah i like it it was a good one but you told me you had an update and i just wanted to make sure that i i do have another update you have another update well but do you want to tell me any of your updates let me see if i wrote anything down in my um fact check category oh you know i've actually formed a um i encourage you to do this

Speaker 1 i made a notes folder called bucket list I've never actually had a bucket list. Have you ever actually written down a bucket list?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 But I thought it was a good idea. So I've done.

Speaker 1 Oh, what's on it? Isle of Man. That's a motorcycle race on the Isle of Man.
It's crazy. The one you taught us about here.

Speaker 2 You said people die.

Speaker 1 Yeah, every year someone dies.

Speaker 1 I got to go to that.

Speaker 1 That Iowa bicycle ride that you cross Iowa.

Speaker 2 Do you need to be in it or can you just go?

Speaker 1 I'll probably do, there's a day before the race, maybe Saturday or Friday, where you can ride the course.

Speaker 1 Okay. It has a crazy name.
But I would like to ride the course and then spectate for the madness. Okay.

Speaker 1 The bicycle ride across Iowa. Okay.
That sounds so fun. Great.
And then the Great Loop on a boat, which I've talked about before.

Speaker 1 Of course. 6,000 mile.

Speaker 2 Of course, all of yours are

Speaker 1 transportation oriented.

Speaker 1 King of conveyance.

Speaker 2 King of conveyance.

Speaker 1 The king and conveyance.

Speaker 1 Oh, no, I I haven't written anything down. Okay.

Speaker 2 Well, yesterday,

Speaker 2 I relearned Mahjong.

Speaker 2 Rachel, Anthony, Allison, and I used to play Mahjong a lot. Okay.

Speaker 2 Way back in the day. And now it's like hip.
Like everyone's playing Mahjong.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think Kristen went to like a Mahjong learning.

Speaker 2 It was a Mahjong thing.

Speaker 1 And there's different countries of origin versions of Mahjong.

Speaker 2 Yeah, American Mahjong is the one that Jewish women

Speaker 2 play.

Speaker 2 And that's the one that's taken off.

Speaker 1 But there's an Asian ones here.

Speaker 2 It's originally Chinese. Mahjong is, but this is different.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's so fun. But I had forgotten, I completely forgot how to play, but I felt like annoyed that it was back in, it's like in vogue.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 And I was pre.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Is it more complicated than than spades?

Speaker 2 It's so complicated.

Speaker 1 So complicated.

Speaker 2 But in such a fun way. I think you'll like it.

Speaker 1 You should learn. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's parts you're not going to like because there's a lot of pomp and circumstance.

Speaker 1 A lot of pageantry.

Speaker 2 Yes. There's a whole way of like the way you set up and then you like push your wall out and then the way you deal is very specific.

Speaker 2 And then you do this thing called the Charleston, which is a way of passing.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 yes. And then you have a booklet.
It's a new one every year.

Speaker 2 The National Mahjong League puts out a new card every year. Oh, wow.
And so each card has like many, many lines of variations of what you're basically trying to make on your wall.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2 And it's so fun.

Speaker 2 And it was.

Speaker 1 Can you play with tiles?

Speaker 2 Tiles. Tiles.
And obviously, I bought a set.

Speaker 1 Yeah, real nice set.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but actually mine's a little cheeky.

Speaker 2 Oh, playful. Yeah, the winds have

Speaker 2 winds are a part one

Speaker 2 suit-ish of the tiles. Mine have mermaids on them.

Speaker 1 Oh, fun. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So anyway,

Speaker 2 I was really reinvigorated by it. I didn't win.
We played two games and I did not win. So that was hard.
That is not sitting well.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Rachel grew up playing Mahjong. She's been playing for 27 years.

Speaker 1 Right. There's like the girls in spades.
They'll be unstoppable.

Speaker 2 Exactly. And her mom plays in tournaments and stuff.
Oh, wow. And

Speaker 2 so she's the one that taught me. And then she taught us yesterday, which was really fun.
But also, what I think I want to do,

Speaker 2 I feel bad because Amy listens to this show religiously. Shout out, hi, Amy.
Amy was there last night as part of the learning group.

Speaker 1 Who hosted the learning group? Me.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 1 I did.

Speaker 2 It was just Laura and Amy and Rachel.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 then I think what I'm going to do to get ahead

Speaker 2 is have another group.

Speaker 1 Oh, an accelerated group?

Speaker 2 No, just so that I, I'm playing double. Okay.

Speaker 2 And with, with another, with Elizabeth as the teacher. So just in case

Speaker 1 Rachel and Elizabeth have different techniques, i want it all okay you're committed to getting really good at it yes oh wow

Speaker 1 i guess i should learn i'm in the process of learning bridge which our lessons are like every two months and we all forget who's teaching this nice gentleman oh yeah he's a professional bridge player and teacher yeah well that's fun yeah but we forget because we've only done two or three lessons in the over six months that's not good yeah i gotta hit it much harder than that.

Speaker 2 Anyway, that's my update.

Speaker 1 Oh, wonderful.

Speaker 2 That's my big update. Okay.

Speaker 2 This is for Dove.

Speaker 1 Ah.

Speaker 2 Great episode.

Speaker 1 What a lovely episode.

Speaker 2 Beautiful episode.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All of her.

Speaker 1 All of her. All of them.

Speaker 2 For people who don't remember, that was Seth.

Speaker 1 Seth's daughter.

Speaker 2 Seth's daughter. Yeah.
Seth Green's daughter.

Speaker 1 Seth Green's beautiful.

Speaker 1 Beautiful doesn't even describe it.

Speaker 2 She's sparkly as hell.

Speaker 1 She's a fairy. Yeah.
She's like Tinkerbell. Yeah.
But with red hair.

Speaker 1 I don't know what color hair Tinkerbell had. Probably blonde.
Probably. You like to put those sprites and those fairies, make them blonde.

Speaker 2 Exactly. Perpetuate.
That blondes have more fun because they're fairies.

Speaker 1 May make wishes and dreams come true. Ugh.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 Bloomers.

Speaker 2 Bloomers. Where do they originate? The bloomer, the Turkish dress, the American dress.
Oh, this is kind of a ding-ding-ding namahjong.

Speaker 1 It is. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Locations.

Speaker 2 Or simply reform dress are divided women's garments for the lower body.

Speaker 2 They were developed in the 19th century as a healthful and comfortable alternative to the heavy, constricting dresses worn by American women.

Speaker 2 They take their name from their best-known advocate, the women's rights activist Amelia Bloomer.

Speaker 1 Now, is it just a skirt or there's pants in it? There's legs.

Speaker 2 There's legs.

Speaker 1 There's legs. It's like

Speaker 2 a bloomer is like...

Speaker 1 Shorts?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 The name Bloomers was derogatory and was not used by the women who wore them who referred to their clothes as the reform costume or the American dress.

Speaker 2 The bloomer costume caught on among some white middle-class women who sought, quote, dress reform as an integral part of the fight for women's equality in the mid-1800s. So that's cool.

Speaker 1 My thing would be back then you didn't have washing machines. You're still hand washing everything.

Speaker 1 The notion of splitting up the dress into two pieces sounds smart because what if the top got dirty, but not the bottom, or vice versa? Interesting.

Speaker 1 You sat in a little something, you could just wash the bottom. Yeah.
But the top remained clean.

Speaker 1 True. It seems like it cut, it would cut laundry down.
That's true.

Speaker 2 What do they use? Just regular soap?

Speaker 1 Lie. Ew.
I think.

Speaker 1 Which is also what you can decompose a body with.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You put a body in a barrel.
Don't teach it. Pack it full of a lie.

Speaker 1 Don't you? And then you open it up in a couple hours and it's just jello. Ew.

Speaker 1 No, I don't know what it is.

Speaker 3 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Ew.

Speaker 2 That was so, I like saw it. I saw it.
You saw a jello body.

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

Speaker 2 Does having lots of

Speaker 2 drinks around you mean you have ADHD? No, not necessarily. It doesn't.

Speaker 2 It could be the result of many things, a busy lifestyle, forgetfulness unrelated to ADHD, or simply a preference for having multiple options available.

Speaker 2 Okay, the gooey duck, which she brought up, they gooey duck

Speaker 2 hunt or whatever, gather.

Speaker 2 Rob, can you bring up the pic?

Speaker 2 It's a wild-looking, disgusting clam.

Speaker 1 Would you eat it? No. Having seen a photo?

Speaker 2 No. And I like seafood, but uh-uh.

Speaker 1 Not this seafood.

Speaker 2 Native to the coastal waters of the eastern North Pacific Ocean, from Alaska to Baja, California.

Speaker 1 Teeming with.

Speaker 2 Oh my God. Typical lifespan of 140 years.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. You could be eating an animal that's 130 years old.
Oh,

Speaker 2 that feels unethical.

Speaker 1 It does.

Speaker 1 Gross.

Speaker 1 It looks like a...

Speaker 1 A white elephant penis. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it really looks disgusting.

Speaker 1 I don't understand for the listener, the clam clam shell only covers about 33% of this thing's body. I don't even understand.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. That's so phallic.
And the clam looks, the shell looks like balls in this photo. This looks like a cowboy.
It's very cowboy.

Speaker 2 It's very penisy. Oh, no!

Speaker 1 Boy, I can't imagine eating this. This is so good for everyone who eats it.
And then what's inside a big ball?

Speaker 2 Well, that's the clammy part, I think. That's the gooey.

Speaker 1 It's like the skin is peeled off. That's that bottom part.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 revealing all that tender, delicious.

Speaker 2 It's that one's uncut.

Speaker 1 And it's called a gooey duck.

Speaker 2 Or that one's cut. Sorry.
Excuse me. That one's circumcised.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. God bless.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 What do you put on that thing? Fucking wasabi or something to kill the.

Speaker 2 I mean, if it's... If it's clams, I guess you boil them maybe.

Speaker 1 You slice it into tiny. tubs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you blanch, boil it, and then you enjoy it raw or sashimi or cook it in various ways, like stir-frying. Anyone putting it on a hot dog bun?

Speaker 1 Eating it like a tube steak?

Speaker 2 Wait, this says the shaft

Speaker 2 can be one meter, three feet.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 definitely elephant-size. Wow.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's the largest burrowing clam in the world. And as we said, one of the longest living animals of any type.
Wow. Oldest has been recorded at 179 years old.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 I feel like it's not good to eat these.

Speaker 2 You could be cutting.

Speaker 1 What's better to eat an animal that had 150-year life or to eat one that has only got a year and then you rob half of it?

Speaker 1 Huh.

Speaker 1 Probably the former.

Speaker 1 We'd agree if someone was eating humans,

Speaker 1 it'd be a lot better if they ate our 100-year-olds than our children.

Speaker 1 Fuck.

Speaker 2 I guess that's true, but you're also, if you ate a 50-year-old gooey duck,

Speaker 1 you're cutting.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like you're really prematurely robbing it of 100 years.

Speaker 1 100 years. 120 years.

Speaker 1 Oh, boy.

Speaker 1 Well, we don't have to deal with this because we're not going to eat any gooey duck or people anytime soon.

Speaker 2 Okay, Disney's music label.

Speaker 2 Disney Music Group is home to Hollywood Records.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 That was a fact. Queerbaiting.
Queerbaiting is a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at but do not depict same-sex romance or other LGBTQ

Speaker 2 representation.

Speaker 2 Or this says harassment, abuse, or targeted provocation of gay people.

Speaker 1 Do we want to discuss if I'm queer bait or not?

Speaker 2 If you want.

Speaker 2 Do you think you are?

Speaker 2 You're not queer bait.

Speaker 3 It's not like.

Speaker 1 That was a derogatory term in elementary school. Oh, queer.
Queer bait. Yeah.
Queer bait. It's so weird.
So weird. Because it's not even, you're just saying you're attractive to queers.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but back then, anything having to do with

Speaker 2 anything gay

Speaker 1 adjacent to gay was remember when Gap

Speaker 2 had do you remember this? And maybe that was just my gen for a while, like wearing gap gap stood for gay and proud.

Speaker 1 Oh, oops.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so it's like you weren't allowed, like if you wore that, people would say gay and proud.

Speaker 1 Boy, how as a company, do you like combat that? Combat that, um, include everyone and also go, we're not a strictly gay.

Speaker 2 Exactly. Yeah.
But that was before. Now,

Speaker 2 isn't that so funny? Just not an issue. Right.
Not, thank God. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Speaking of real quick um what i am noticing maybe we already talked about this if we did i'm really sorry but it's so funny to me watching er

Speaker 2 what was so important back then and what was like top of mind fear wise yeah what was going on aids aids there are so many episodes about aids really so many storylines yeah che che

Speaker 2 this four-year-old boy died of aids It was horrible.

Speaker 3 He was so cute.

Speaker 1 There's a very famous clip of Walker, Texas Ranger, the Chuck Norris show.

Speaker 1 You didn't see it, but you know exactly what it is. Okay.

Speaker 1 And I want to say it's Haley Joe Osmond is the guest star. He's a little kid.
Okay. And it's this clip that goes around my Instagram all the time.

Speaker 1 And it's Walker talk, and he's with the little Haley Joe Osmond. They're talking two other men.
And Haley goes, yeah. And then Walker and I really had a long talk.

Speaker 1 And that's when I told him I have AIDS.

Speaker 1 It's like,

Speaker 1 how dare they?

Speaker 1 How dare they make this scene? It's like four cowboys. Like, I don't know.
Wow.

Speaker 2 I mean, good for them for trying to.

Speaker 1 Oh, do we have it? Oh, my God, Rob. You're incredible.
We're coming, we're coming to Clip Show, and I like it.

Speaker 1 Are we going to have volume is the question?

Speaker 3 Oh, there's a woman involved.

Speaker 1 Oh, maybe I misremembered who he's talking to.

Speaker 2 It makes sense if it was a woman.

Speaker 2 Hi, and it's a little visitor. Now,

Speaker 3 I don't want yoli how you say it in Cherokee.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 pardon my French, but I'll be dance.

Speaker 3 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Walker told me I had eights. Oh,

Speaker 1 even better.

Speaker 1 Walker told me I have eights. Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 How on earth did that fall under Walker's performance?

Speaker 2 He was a big non-sequitur.

Speaker 1 D'Alse. They were like talking about Cherokee, and the boys picked up some other language.
And then Walker told me I have AIDS. What if he just guessed? They're not based on any lab results.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. Little man, I think you have AIDS, just judging from the way you walk.

Speaker 2 What year was that? 90s? Yeah. Yeah, 90s.
90s was a really big time for AIDS.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think I'm imagining

Speaker 1 Gen Z and stuff. Like when I was in 11th grade or 10th grade, turned 16, Magic came out

Speaker 1 as having AIDS or HIV. Yeah, HIV.
And a book. And it was, oh my God, he's going to die.
And I know everyone's going to die that gets it.

Speaker 1 It's so different.

Speaker 2 So different. I mean, do kids even know about AIDS now?

Speaker 1 My kids don't ever bring AIDS.

Speaker 2 I doubt they know.

Speaker 2 I mean, I was so scared of aids it was in my prayer it was yeah even though you didn't do any of the things i didn't know i just knew it was a scary thing so part of it was um no cancer aids

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 i remember on the other end

Speaker 1 reading a article that said of the population in new york that had hiv uh-huh

Speaker 1 92 were either gay men or intervenious drug users right Right. So I used that to regulate my fear of it because I was out of the world.

Speaker 2 You were an intervenious drug user?

Speaker 1 No, I was never an intervenious drug user.

Speaker 2 You never did?

Speaker 1 I never shot anyone in heroin, no?

Speaker 1 Thank God. Thank God.
Yeah. I really might not have come back from that.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, no intervenious drug use for me. Thank God.
Lots of sharing

Speaker 1 dollar bills with blood on them. Hepatitis was in the cards for me, but not.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you could have got HIV.

Speaker 1 I guess it's really unstable, though. It dies when it hits the air pretty easy, like way easier than we were led to believe at the beginning.

Speaker 1 But yeah, because

Speaker 1 I would have sex with someone, not wear rubber. Yeah.
And I'd be convinced I had HIV for two weeks.

Speaker 1 And then I'd go get tested and I didn't. Yeah.
And at some point, I had to get my hands around the sphere.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I based it a lot on that article.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 yeah.

Speaker 2 And for a while, remember, there were like rumors you could just get it from drinking out of someone's glasses.

Speaker 1 At the very beginning, they didn't want kids in pools with their girls.

Speaker 1 So bad.

Speaker 2 And then this huge stigma. I mean, definitely did not help with gay stigma.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 No. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Big AIDS, you know. I don't think he'd mind me saying it.
I know I told you, but I think. So one of the episodes, there was, there was a boy, a young man who had hiccups.

Speaker 1 Yes, and he saw it was a side effect of HIV.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he had hiccups, and then it was really fine. It was nonchalant, it was nothing, it was silly.
He was getting married, yeah, his fiancé. She was there too.

Speaker 1 Everything this was an ER episode, uh-huh, okay, and then

Speaker 2 they just do a scan just to it's fine, but we're gonna do a scan, and then there was some

Speaker 2 thing, like some lung thing or liver, something

Speaker 2 that meant he had AIDS.

Speaker 1 Oh

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 Jess

Speaker 2 has this hiccup issue.

Speaker 1 Yes, he does.

Speaker 2 And so I saw this and I really was like, did you call him immediately? Well, it was at night and I thought, I need to sleep on it because I think this is going to be a hard conversation.

Speaker 2 But I also think

Speaker 1 you have hiccups.

Speaker 2 I'm like, what if I was meant to watch ER to save Jess?

Speaker 1 Right, right, right.

Speaker 2 And so the next day I did call him. I don't normally call him on the phone.
Yeah. And he was probably scared.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, and he should be.
I said, hey, you know, it's not a big deal, but I just, I was watching this episode of ER and this happened. And it was AIDS.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he just like was quiet.

Speaker 2 And then he said, I get tested. I said, okay, well, just make sure you're continuing to get tested.

Speaker 1 Right. Monitor those hiccups.
Anyhow,

Speaker 2 are you queer baiting or what?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 1 we have talked about that I flirt with men and women. Yeah, you flirt with everyone.
That's right. But I don't think I'm queer baiting.

Speaker 2 I don't think I'm either, but

Speaker 2 I'm not the recipient, so I can't say. Right.
Maybe some people might say that you were.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Stop flirting with me unless you.
want to steal the deal. Yeah.
Yeah. And I don't want to steal the deal.
I just want to flirt. I know.

Speaker 2 But it's like,

Speaker 2 maybe you shouldn't. Maybe you lost that right when you got married.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I don't think so.

Speaker 1 Also, it does make me think of

Speaker 1 a Sederus chapter. We were listening to, this is now the funnest thing.
I think I told you. We now listen to Sederis at night in bed.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 And he's talking about. every doctor he knows has pulled things out of people's rectum.
Uh-huh. As we've learned from the nurses we've interviewed.
Yep. And he says,

Speaker 1 most people claim it's from falling down on something. Now I'm clumsy and I've fallen a bunch of times and I've never stood up and had a candle in my ass.

Speaker 1 In fact, I'd argue that I could probably fall down every flight of stairs in the World Trade Center holding three candles and a baseball bat.

Speaker 1 And I'm pretty sure at the bottom, I wouldn't have any of those items up my ass.

Speaker 2 That is very funny.

Speaker 1 Words it so much better.

Speaker 2 God, he's funny.

Speaker 1 Oh, is he funny?

Speaker 2 He's brilliant.

Speaker 2 All right. Well, that's it.

Speaker 1 Well, big

Speaker 1 shout out. Love.
Shout out to Dove. Yeah.
That was an awesome episode.

Speaker 1 I liked it so much.

Speaker 2 Me too. I hope everyone listens.
And if you listen, pass it on.

Speaker 1 Pass it along. Forward it.
Forward it. This would be a fun one.
Watch on YouTube if you want to see me cry. Sure.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's your kink. You're like Monica.

Speaker 2 Yeah, true.

Speaker 1 You like a nice cry. All right.
Love you. Love you.

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Speaker 4 Dive into career-defining moments, and explain the why behind plays that change a game, a team, or a championship. LeBron and I have lived this game at the highest level for decades.

Speaker 4 We've been in those pressure moments and made those game-changing decisions and learned from the greatest basketball minds in history.

Speaker 4 Now we're pulling back the curtain and sharing that knowledge with you. Time to go beyond the highlights and get into the real heart of basketball.

Speaker 4 Watch Mind the Game Now on YouTube, Prime Video, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.