Timothy Olyphant

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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert.

I'm Dak Shepherd, and I'm joined by Monica Padman.

Hi, we had a major babe on today.

MB.

Oh, major babe, Timothy Oliphant, Emmy-nominated actor, Justified, Hitman, Santa Clarita Diet, Deadwood, and his new series out now on FX, Alien Earth, which of course is written by Noah Hawley.

Yes,

friend of the pod.

Friend of the pod, about the best writer out there doing it.

Yeah.

I'm putting this in the Alexander Skarsgaard bucket of dudes that just came in here and were as playful as a goddamn kitten with a ball of yarn.

That's right.

Please enjoy Timothy Oliphant.

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He's an upchan.

He's an object.

He's an object.

He's an object.

Oh,

oh, we have the hoster here.

Maria.

Let's do a little mint tea.

Nice.

I'm going to do a latte, homemade.

Wait, we're getting, I would like a quartado, please.

Nice.

We knew mint tea wasn't right.

We knew it in our hearts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why did you request mint tea?

Is that what you always drink?

From you to switch from mint tea to horchado?

What did you say?

No, cortado.

I'll tell you why.

Because my thought process was simply, oh, it's going to come in a paper cup with the lid.

And that's not going to be as nice an experience as in a mug with

white honey and the whole thing.

And so I immediately just switched to like, oh, no, when in Rome, this is what you want to get from, I don't know where we're ordering from, but it feels like it's the kind of place.

Have you had their coffee?

So good.

Right.

Imported from Italy.

The beef and cheddar.

So good.

Combo platter.

I'll be honest with you.

It's less about the tea.

I just love a prop.

Yeah.

I do too.

Something in your hand.

Have you ever got to smoke in anything?

It's the best.

There's nothing better.

There's no acting to be done.

If you can smoke or eat in any.

Do you spit it out or do you?

It doesn't matter.

It's the process.

It's the chewing the smallest thing.

Okay.

And it just immediately makes you a better actor.

I got to smoking Let's Go to Prison and it was a run and gun production, right?

So we're shooting several pages a day.

And it does turn pretty quickly from like, I was a pack and a half a day smoker at the time.

And I'm up to like a three and a half pack just because of the seeds and retake and relight.

And by the end of it, I was like, I quit.

I quit smoking at the end of that movie.

There you go.

There's a win.

Do you do the herbal ones or you go real?

I haven't done a real cigarette in a production in a long time.

I did a play years ago.

Oh my gosh.

Davis Sederis.

I did a Sederis thing and I smoked a cigarette every night, as I recall.

I think there was a cigarette involved in that.

I used to go out and smoke a cigarette every night.

I was going to look forward to it.

Yeah, of course, you would have never been an actual smoker because your life was committed to athletics.

I was committed, yeah.

I mean, truly, you couldn't have been a smoker and a fucking national swim champ.

Whoa, that's cool.

I'll take you there.

I'll take you there.

Take me.

I think a champ is a little over.

I want to say you were a runner-up in the 86 Nationals.

that's the actual year that can't be true yeah okay that's a big deal i'm not saying it's not not the ninety

finals of anything okay there you go yeah she's a state champ i am two-time what's more for you competitive cheerleading competitive cheerleading high flyer yeah i was flying tumbling dangerous very dangerous when did you start that started in eighth grade and then i was on the squad my junior and senior year and we won both years how about that we're from georgia oh it's a big deal there it's a huge deal It's a big thing.

Yeah, that's why it felt really good.

It's the equivalent of polo in Nantucket.

It was a blessing because the state's SAT scores were on average too low.

So we weren't allowed to go to nationals.

Wait, they were penalizing you personally for the state average.

Yeah, like no one in the state of Georgia could go to nationals because the state average SAT scores.

But it was a blessing because then it was just like we were the best.

We couldn't then go to the next stage and lose.

That was the best we could do, and we did it.

Oh, this is a detail of the story.

I've never, I've heard this story 150 times, Timothy.

And you just brought out a weird layer of honesty, which is, you've just told me you were champs two years in a row.

You didn't say that.

Me champs.

Okay.

You didn't say idiots.

Of the idiots.

You did not say of the.

Well, sure, you guys won it.

You weren't going to class.

Yeah.

Everyone else was going to class.

They were handicapped by actually doing their studies.

Correct.

You ladies were phoning it in guys and girls coed yeah coed it's not like the sat scores of the cheerleaders it's i know every single person in the state the average was too low to take gpa not the sat

sat your sat scores now i'm worried about it

now i'm worried about

there's almost never an occasion to say once again the few have bore the burden of the many.

Okay.

Okay.

The saying is, once again,

the many have bore the burden of the few.

Well, I think that's this is the opposite.

Because like the state fucked you guys up.

But again,

they did, but I choose to look at it as a positive because we did the best we could possibly do.

We won state.

We couldn't do anything more than that.

What are the rest of those idiots up to these days?

I don't know.

I really separated myself from hosting.

Really?

No.

Are you in touch with any of the squad?

We're going to call them a squad.

Let's call them a squad.

Are you in touch with any of the squad?

I just want to flag something.

I want you to be careful because he's doing what he does.

It's happening.

It's happening.

Pull throttle right out of the gate.

I want to see what shape it would take.

But this is this.

Listen, I'm just

saying.

You're trying to

never talk about himself.

I've been watching a thousand interviews with you, and I know it's happening.

This is interesting.

You're going to be able to do that.

I think there's just three people talking.

Rob, we're going to include you.

There's four of us.

We're in here.

We're chatting and we're just being humans.

And it'd be your preference that we just kept it a light chat and we don't find out anything about old T.O.

Listen, this is your show.

Okay.

Now, put aside the fact that the guest was here first.

Yeah, yeah.

That's part of it.

I want you to get comfortable before you're intimidated by my biceps.

I want you to be able to sit down and relax and not feel threatened.

No, I can't take my eyes off him.

Now look at that.

I can't take my eyes off him.

All right, we're letting it go.

We're going to, let's not talk about the squad.

We're not going to.

Yeah.

Give us one squad member.

Just what's one squad member doing?

I'll let you in on something that's really fascinating.

And I said to her early on as we were chatting about this history, you know, you're up in the air like that and the people are catching you.

And sometimes it's willy-nilly.

Did they ever catch you by the pussy?

And Monica said, yeah, it happens all the time.

And we had people write in like any high flyer, they're going to have to get caught

occasionally on action.

So that's the member of the squad I think we should honor if we're going to honor someone.

I think that's a great idea.

And we should put this on your Wikipedia page.

Champion, cheerleader, occasionally caught by the pussy.

But kept it moving and won two titles.

So who caught you?

Most of them are women.

Oh.

Now we're really off the rails.

But yeah, let's shout out one person.

Let's hear it.

Kendall Morgan.

Oh, what an athlete.

Incredible athlete.

Dumbest girl on the show.

You know what?

Is she the one that hurt?

He's a very smart male.

He's sorry.

I went the same place you did.

I understand.

She just said women caught her.

And then she said, Kendall.

My bad.

I feel like she listened.

I've been listening to the slaughter on that one.

Yes, I do.

I don't listen.

This is what my wife tells me.

You need to listen.

Okay, what's Kendall up to?

Kendall is running another cheerleading gym, has an all-star gym, doing fantastic.

He stayed in it.

He stayed in it.

He's with us.

Yeah, I'm kind of with your wife now.

God damn it.

Okay, I'll give you one other out before we get into your childhood.

I really, truly would not expect you to remember this because as I did the math today, I think this was about 17 years ago.

Do you remember having dinner with me?

Yeah, that's fine.

Who's at the table?

It was before the Soho house had opened officially.

And I think you and Kristen had the same agent at that time, Tracy.

Okay.

And I think Tracy invited you and her to the Soho house before it opened.

Here in L.A.

Yeah, they were doing like soft opening.

They had really cool furniture.

Yes, it was gorgeous.

That's what I remember about that.

So we went, and it was Kristen and I, and it was you and your wife, and then it was the agent.

Wait, it's the five of us?

That's pretty interesting.

Jesus.

Listen, there's a big reason why I would remember it more than you.

And I was hoping maybe you would remember this aspect.

Kristen got up early on in the meal and disappeared for about five to 10 minutes.

And then she returned with an enormous bag of ice and then subtly passed it to me under the table.

Do you remember that?

No.

Because at that point it came out.

That's the fucking date we were on our way to.

Oh, it's a bang bag.

On our way there, a guy crossing the street in front of the chateau.

chucked a drink like this big at the windshield of my car.

And I pulled the e-brake as it was shattering, got out of the car and fought a dude in front of that newsstand on sunset.

And I had kicked him in the head and I'd really hurt my leg bad.

And Kristen was very disappointed and mad at me because I was in a fight in a suit on the way to this nice dinner with her agent and a very esteemed actor.

And so when we got there, we were dealing with the fact that I had just beat a guy up on the sidewalk.

She's very disappointed.

She's questioning, who have I just become partnered up with?

This is the beginning of your relationship.

Yeah, we're like probably a year in.

And then she, to her credit, despite all that, was like, he's hurt.

I'm going to handle this.

And went and got this bag of ice and handed it to me, even though I know she was so mad at me.

So it was quite a night for us.

Wow, that's quite a moment.

I'm very disappointed in myself.

Well, I would love it if you did have some memory of like, what was the funny business happening?

With the under the table.

God, how crazy is that?

Yeah, that was a very memorable.

That's the beginning of your guys' relationship?

It was probably like a year in.

I've changed, though.

She bet on the right.

This is workable.

I came in with a pretty visible limp.

Okay.

Wow.

Yeah.

You probably thought she had some stomach issues because that's what you would normally think if someone leaves a dinner table for five to ten minutes, comes back with ice because maybe she's sweating from the situation.

Or covering from the fact that she had Hanus.

Yeah.

And so you were just being nice, but being like, I'm not going to pay attention to this.

That's all a blur.

Do you prefer Tim or Tim?

tim's fine tim's nice yeah

is it fine or is it preferred no i don't care i like both so tim why were mom and dad in honolulu that's my first curiosity wow look at that he's gonna ask about shirley uh pass okay no

my dad was working for del monte and they were making the bananas down there or something i don't know he was working for del monte that's i believe what took us to hawaii you were two when you guys went to modesto we went to the philippines after that and then i think also DeMonte and then Modesto.

Natural progression.

All my high school buddies.

Modesto.

By way of Manila.

That could be a good memoir.

Modesto by way of Manila.

It's not as good as occasionally grabbed by the pussy.

No, hers is going to top.

Usage.

Yeah.

Occasionally grabbed by the pussy.

I want to see that on bumper stickers all across the state of Georgia.

I want to copyright on that or something.

Someone's going to want to steal that.

Trump already has it, unfortunately, but you know.

So did dad go to take this job at Gallo?

Is Is that why you guys moved there?

Or did they have any kind of roots there?

No roots.

Although my mom's family was in the Bay Area, up in Oakland area.

So not far from home where she grew up.

And what's the vibe in Modesto?

Did you see American Graffiti?

Yeah, yeah.

Is that where it was shot?

George grew up in Modesto, Lucas.

So it was about Modesto.

It was about his childhood.

And I always felt like that was pretty much our childhood, just uglier cars.

So for people who have not seen it, like

cruising, orchards, American.

There's much more sprawl now.

When I was there, it was quite a quaint you hear about the declining middle class a lot of times in certain bubbles you're like oh i understand it in theory if you go to modesto you feel it because those little neighborhoods that we all grew up in were so idyllic at the time surrounded by orchards and canals now they're less idyllic in the 70s it was less than 100 000 people and it's a company time most of the people there work for gallo the gallo i think safeway was there agriculture yeah they did 3.1 billion dollars in agriculture sales last year modesto but i got bad news for you they were the number one most per capita car thefts in 2012 modesto yes i'm reading all this i'm like what is this place they just gotta tell me what is i have a very fond memories of growing up there and i still have buddies there my mom's still there i do go back much less than i have but i still enjoy going back home yeah what's the age gap between you and your brothers older brothers a little over two years younger brother a little over three years does the middle child kind of archetype, do you feel like you identify with it?

I'm like the well-balanced one.

You're the well-balanced one.

I'm getting middle child vibes.

Yeah, I'm that middle child as well.

All right.

And I've been ruminating on it a lot just recently.

Because

I realized that when I was a kid, there was a lot of chaos on either end of the age spectrum.

There was a baby and a teenager.

They were both nuts.

I hid a lot.

I was pretty solitary.

I just would get out of the chaos.

I'm now realizing that I live with three women and two of them are starting to have a lot of hormones.

I couldn't place it, but I'm like, oh, I know this feeling.

This is like, I want to go hide sometime.

Oh.

And then I was wondering if you related to any of those middle child things.

I do think there was an upside of your older brother and his friends can pick on you, but you can pick on your younger brother's friends and then you can bully him.

You do get to play a lot of the roles.

And you also can easily bounce back and forth in terms of you can age up or age down.

So I felt like in some degree, it was a nice little spot to be in.

I read this fascinating years ago about how siblings can be so vastly different.

And oh, I don't understand this.

We grew up in the same house.

Yeah.

But of course, you really didn't grow up in the same house.

Like you realize if my older brother describes these sort of significant chapters in his life, they're vastly different than mine and very vastly different than my younger brothers.

Yeah.

They really grew up in completely different worlds.

Because of the socioeconomic changes or the way they parented.

You could just say my older brother, he had two younger siblings.

His parents divorced at 15, 16 years old.

He went off to college.

My younger brother can say he had two older brothers.

His parents divorced when he was like 12 or 11.

And we both took off and he was there high school living with my mom on his own.

I never had that experience.

Right, right, right.

A divorce.

at 12 versus 15, 16, they mean vastly different things.

Yeah.

Which do you think is worse?

Do you think one is worse?

I don't know.

That all sucks.

I haven't seen the divorce where you're like, that's where you want to hit it.

I would argue mine.

I was three, so I don't have any memory.

Nothing was missing because I didn't remember them being married.

Don't they all in some degree scar you in some significant way?

Well, the stepdads that arrive do.

Yeah, yeah.

Sure.

This is me mean pop psychologist, but there must be a thing like, well, if your parents divorce when you're that young, that you feel somehow.

Well, I guess all kids are.

Responsible.

Yeah, you feel like, oh, I showed up and I broke up their marriage.

I think if you were older and you could understand.

this case, probably true.

Might have been true.

I was colicky.

My father and I clashed from the second I arrived.

It's quite lucky.

I do think with middle children, you guys aren't handed an identity.

The older sibling is handed an identity.

They have to be in charge.

The parents are afraid for their first kid, right?

They don't know what they're doing.

There's way too much attention on them.

And now having had three kids, you see how much the first child, you're like, what is she doing now?

What's going on now?

Exactly.

Look at this.

Oh, she's never done that before.

The third one, you're like, did we leave the third one?

Do we have to go back to that cocktail party?

Because where's the third one?

Yeah.

Very hard on the other side.

There's probably 100th amount of pictures taken of the third one that there was the first one.

And they're just always in pictures with other people, at least.

They're immediately connected to other people.

But a middle child kind of has to make their own identity.

Even now, as adults, when you get caught, you tell the oldest, I remember we used to take you to the park and the first time you made it across.

And then the youngest one is like, when did I first go across?

And you're like, did you go across?

I'm so sorry.

I'm Tim.

Come on.

I don't remember Zach.

How can I remember your childhood?

That's fucking terrible.

But even that is an identity.

Being little with the middle kid, I think, is a little bit lost until they decide, this is me.

Yeah, but one part that you just made me think might have been really fun with your dynamic, them being spaced like that two years is I think a lot of times or at least I felt this way when you get around 11 or 12 You're starting to do big kid stuff and you want to be older and you want to be autonomous and show you're starting to become a man and then you still pine for like playing with Hot Wheels, but you feel like a wimp if you do but if you have a little brother you can like bounce back and forth.

Yeah, we had a ball and were the Olafants a formidable group of boys in junior high and high school?

Do people know better than to mess with one of them?

Oh, I don't know about that, but both of them were cool.

We weren't on the football and baseball, you know, we weren't those guys either.

My older brother played tennis and I swam and Matt played water polo.

We grew up next to a Modesto swim and racquet club, literally next door.

So we basically were raised by lifeguards.

We were there all day long.

What kind of niche were you in in high school?

I mean, you were a swimmer.

That's interesting in itself.

We're similar age.

So you had the nerds, burnouts, jocks.

Fred C.

Breyer High School in the 80s, a smoking section was right out front.

Nice.

At the flagpole.

Right there at dropout, like where the parents are dropping off their freshmen, where all these kids in leather jackets smoking.

That was the entrance to the school.

Wow.

Isn't that great?

Yeah.

I was lucky.

I was a bit of an artsy, fartsy guy.

So I had a little bit of a connection with that kind of group.

But then I was an athlete and all my buddies were a lot of athletes.

You were funny already, yeah?

I guess so.

I don't think I won any of those things, but I feel like I was runner-up in like three or four.

I like the 86 nationals.

The theme of your life.

I think I was runner-up.

You were in the finals.

Yeah, it was short course nationals.

Not that big a deal.

It's not the same as the summer.

Okay, and now I don't know anything about swimming, but the 200-meter medley.

I appreciate the prep, by the way.

Okay, thank you.

No, no.

Thank you.

It's my honor and my pleasure.

You do four different kinds of swims in that?

The 200 individual medley.

So you're swimming four strokes, fly back, breast-free.

And if it's meters, it's a single length.

For the Olympics, 200 is a lap of fly, back, breast-free, 400, up and back.

400, by many people's standards, the most difficult event.

You're doing all the things.

We're doing all the things, and it's pretty long.

Yeah, quarter mile or something.

Is that what it is?

150.

400 feet, 1320 is a...

Okay.

Anyways, listen.

I'm not trying to show off.

What I'm trying to get to is

there's a clue there.

What's the clue?

I was, you know what?

What are we getting at?

I got defensive.

I went a quarter mile and you're like, is it a quarter mile?

And then now I got to come over the top.

No, you're right.

And I apologize.

And that was a bad sign of my personality.

You're doing great.

I am not talking to the guy who got out of the car.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

I am not talking this right here.

I feel safe.

I'm going to attempt to make a thematic judgment of your life based on that one event.

Do you want to hear it?

Can you imagine?

No.

No, I do.

I want to hear it.

I'm going to pretend to be interested.

No, no, no.

I would argue.

Yeah.

And by the way, there's a fisherman seeing another fisherman at sea.

That sounds like a great event if you don't actually want to be a specialist in any one thing.

And I think that's been my approach to life a little bit.

It's like, I'm pretty good at some things.

And if I put together the right combination of things, now we've gotten ourselves into a winning position.

You're saying perhaps it's a metaphor.

And I'm not going to take offense here.

But I think is he saying that's what you are as an adult as well.

You're not really a specialist.

A generalist.

But

what?

But generalize nothing.

This is why this is a big compliment.

Yeah.

The best of us are generalist.

Yes.

People idealize in jerk off to specialists.

But in fact, if you look at who has changed the world, it's generalists.

I like that you're thinking.

Let me give you my example.

I won every year.

This is so stupid and embarrassing.

The only thing I ever won growing up was the obstacle course because you had to be pretty good at all the little things, but not spectacular any one of them.

Like I had to run pretty fast, but I wasn't going to win a sprint and you had to jump pretty high.

What years are we talking about?

Elementary school.

When you say you win every year, every year in elementary school, we had metric day.

First through sixth grade, that was your thing every year.

Oh, I won it every year.

And it's the only thing I ever won.

And then lo and behold, my kid won an obstacle course.

And I'm like, it's energy.

Really?

Yes.

Nice.

I was thinking this too before you said it when you were talking about you're in the top of things, but you didn't win nationals.

I'm sorry to remind you, but you didn't.

I don't want to intimidate you, but you are looking at the former San Joaquin section record holder.

I am intimidated.

I don't doubt that for one.

So that's a win.

That's a win.

You have some wins.

Oh, but you know what?

In the 200, I am.

Okay, but that's still fine.

You know what's sad?

Let me just give you a little

throw this on the Wikipedia page.

Rob, can you get on that?

Yeah, yep.

Open it up, Rob.

I won the San Joaquin section, which is like Modesto, Sacramento, the whole San Joaquin Valley area.

And my senior year of high school, I beat what was a guy named Jeff Float's record.

And Jeff Float was the flag bearer at the 84 Olympic Games.

Wow.

So it shows you what a disappointment I was after that day.

Because you haven't bore the flag.

The guy whose record I beat went on to become an amazing Olympic swimmer.

And you beat him in high school.

Still.

I know, but you see what he did at the next couple years.

We don't talk about that.

You see what he did after that?

Serious episode.

See what?

Yeah.

You got a finalisted nationals Olympic team.

You might be the reason, though.

Makes me a bit of an underachiever.

No, but I was going to say, I think that if I were you, I might be looking at my life because you're an insanely good actor.

I appreciate it.

And I might be like,

why am I not winning everything?

I should be winning everything based on my talents.

And then I would look back in my life and be like, I'm not winning enough.

I'm really good at a lot of things and I'm not getting the full recognition.

That's what I'm saying.

Do you hear me?

If I were you, I would think that.

But she's also a winner.

I love winning.

That's real.

I am.

That wouldn't cross my mind, but that would cross her mind.

I can only tell you that I wake up every morning thinking, oh, look who the big winner is.

I feel pretty good.

I love that.

I got a pretty good deal.

You do?

Oh, my God.

It's good that you're not focused like I would be about what else do I want to do?

You should win an Oscar School.

That's why I imagine you won a bazillion 200-meter medals before you got to nationals, is my guess.

Are you competitive?

Yeah.

You couldn't have gotten a scholarship to USC without being competitive.

I didn't get a scholarship to USC.

You got recruited.

I was recruited.

They didn't offer me money and I turned down other ones because I just really wanted to come to LA.

When you got there, you were hoping to maybe do architecture or something.

I walked into the architecture school on my recruit trip.

I had this instilled early on.

My grandfather on my mother's side was very much like there's only four or five professions.

It was like architect, lawyer, government, or doctor, and everyone else is just hanging on.

I drew a lot as a kid and I love to do creative stuff.

So I was like, I guess I'll be an architect because that's the only one on the list that seems to be connected.

So I went to the architecture school.

They just right off the bat, the dean told me I couldn't be on the swim team and still be in the architecture school.

The commitment's too big and long.

Architecture classes are five hours long and they're in the middle of the day.

It's when you're training.

They can't work around it.

Everyone's reading the fountainhead all day.

They're reading the fountainhead.

Read that in college.

How could you not?

It's so appealing when you're a young man.

You think your whole life story will be.

And eventually they all learned you were right.

Exactly.

That's your arc.

And you just drive around looking at all those.

Remember, because the church he built was down close to the ground and everyone was very upset about it.

And I just remember driving around going, yeah, look at all these churches.

That's not the way Howard would have done it.

He was right.

He was right.

The architecture school was upstairs.

And I asked the guy, I said, on the way in,

I noticed downstairs there was what looked like a gallery and then there was like a ceramic studio.

And he's like, yeah, that's the fine art department.

And I was like, you can get a degree in that?

Anyway, so he said, yeah, let me introduce you to.

So I went downstairs and sat down with the dean of the art school and asked him if I could, here's my swim schedule.

And they said, we can work it out.

That exercise is among the most calorically burning you can endeavor, right?

Swimming.

I just remember the Michael Phelps like diet.

Let's just go with yes.

I know you burn a ton.

Were you eating like a monster during that?

Ridiculous.

Were you?

Such like fond memories of everything I had.

Because you had a card, right?

You could go to the cafeteria.

Yeah, we'd just go and we'd get a tray and it would be a plate of pancakes, a plate of eggs and bacon and potatoes.

It was so absurd.

Yeah, but you had to.

Yeah, I bet if you were walking through the cafeteria, you would easily be able to go like, oh yeah, that's the swimmers.

They're all eating 13,000 calories this morning.

Come in with these trays and trays of so much food on that plate.

Was that ever a hard routine to break?

I remember once before practice, and I could do the math.

I might have been junior year, but I remember about to jump in and

assistant coach, shout out to Drill.

Shout out.

That was a risky thing you just did.

I've watched you now in a lot of interviews.

And anytime you try to remember someone's name, it's high risk.

So just congrats that you landed.

Oh, the coach's right.

No, there's about a 60% chance that's not the right one.

I can name all the coaches.

We say hi to all the swim coaches.

Dave Salo and Durrell said something about me having a belly.

Like, easy to go.

Got to watch whatever.

And I was like, what are you talking about?

And I was still young, but I do remember like, oh, I can't just eat as much as I'm eating.

You have to be a little bit thoughtful.

Yes.

Which is nothing compared to 20 years later when you really have to be like,

Jesus.

It's so annoying.

We would go to Baskin-Robbins and order pints, each one of us.

Stand in line with everyone getting their cone, single or double, and we'd be like, get a pint of half Peterburg chocolate, half praline cream.

Yeah, pint, please.

And a spoon.

And we would all just eat a pint.

Did you play sports growing up?

I skateboarded and snowboarded.

I did all like the alternative.

These are Olympic sports.

They became those.

They weren't then.

But not about me.

You didn't have anything.

What did I do?

You didn't do anything.

I'm not doing anything.

You're not doing anything.

This is pretty good, by the way.

It is.

From what I've seen, this is maybe the best you've ever done.

You came in with like a plan.

I came in with no plan.

I just wanted you to.

You're not supposed to.

Usually I like a plan.

You do?

A little bit of a plan.

I know.

You like control.

I think there's a control issue.

I detected a few things.

All of it, by the way, really lovely.

It makes for fun.

Doing the press?

Yeah.

I was observing a lot of things.

A, you're just really funny every time you show up somewhere.

Thank you.

And you're likable and you're charismatic and the smile, I'm sure, got you out of so much trouble, which is unfair to the rest of us without that dumb smile.

At parties, they were like, cops are here, all of them.

Yeah.

I have to go to mine.

I have to go talk to the cops.

I just want to arm the pants up.

Yeah, I don't know what that was, but I was the designated talk to the cops guy.

Yeah, that's right.

So you're very easy to talk to.

Yeah.

That disarming smile is like, am I in trouble?

I bet I am in trouble.

Like, you're just finding out you're in trouble.

You watch the things and you've got,

you've got some thoughts.

I got thoughts.

I had an interesting thought coming in literally right before we started.

Let's hear yours first.

Okay.

Okay.

Should we decide?

Yeah.

Monica?

Yeah.

I thought, yeah, he's very comfortable if if you're in control i realized that if you could just i shouldn't say this stuff out loud yeah you should it's too late if you could just knock an interviewer off balance a little bit at hello it just made the interview a little bit easier from that moment forward absolutely because you don't want to disrespect those things but somewhere along the line i discovered that if i could just knock each one a little off balance it might turn into a lovely spontaneous moment or two and so somewhere along the line that occurred to me when they sit down, they say, Tell me about your character.

I say, no, you tell me about it.

And then, somehow, what might come of that more often than not is actually kind of like, oh, that was fun five minutes.

An honest moment.

Yeah.

Where if I just go into the thing, it's no fun for anybody.

Yes.

So when I go on talk shows or things like that, I find the same thing.

If I can throw something out there, they have more fun.

I have more fun.

I just grew up loving talk shows and I love a great talk show guest.

For a while, I really just wanted to be a talk show host.

In college, I sent a video in with my roommate to audition for some talk show.

I can't believe we actually did it.

One of the two networks, or Fox, they were getting into late night.

And I remember like, I want this gig.

You auditioned to host.

We sent in a video like three reasons why I'm the guy.

It's so cute.

I was like, first of all, 100 bucks.

I was like, even if, I mean, it fails.

I wouldn't put a 21-year-old swimmer from U.S.

We really filmed it on VHS.

God, the option.

Send it in.

Like, this is going to be our thing.

So that was the idea.

Yeah, you've always loved it and you want to make sure you do good at it.

Yeah.

You're saying.

And then my first major talk show appearance, I was on Conan's show in New York, late 90s.

And I was so nervous.

that I remember his lips moving and I don't know what he was saying exactly, but when they stopped, I was like, okay, now's when I tell the story I'm supposed to tell.

And I didn't do them again for years.

And then now I think, if anything, I try to anticipate the host's sense of humor.

Like, oh, he is going to love this.

He or she, you know, he, during the sheet talk show late night.

No, but anyway, thank you.

But we want it.

We want there to be.

When you're on Joan Rivers' show, is that we could talk about?

I didn't realize you were on her show.

Alan.

There's the daytime ones.

Different, fun.

The audience is the best you'll ever be in front of on Ellen.

They always want to talk about your kids and your pets.

Because that's who's watching, people who have.

Daytime kids' pets.

Yep.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

If you dare.

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I had a story about my daughter and her guinea pig.

Perfect.

And it was this whole story.

Two for one.

I remember saying, I had this whole thing about the guinea pig and how desperately she wanted the guinea pig.

And then a week later, she can't remember why she wanted the guinea pig.

And I just look at the guinea pig and it's looking at me.

And we're both thinking, yeah, I don't know why.

I don't know why you're here, but this is your life for the foreseeable future.

18 months are over here.

And then I said, hey, you know, there's a lot of countries where you can go into a restaurant and say, how's the guinea pig?

Oh, yep.

Oh, she hated that.

And years later, that guinea pig had a tumor on the side of him.

It was like he was walking around with like a second guinea pig.

Oh, boy.

And

this is what happens.

You know, that's why we study the rats and the rodents because their life cycle is very fast.

That's right.

So, fuck, what's his name?

We can give him a name for the story, but all I know is that little guy's got a tumor the size of another guinea pig.

And we feel like it's maybe time.

So our daughter, our youngest, she's getting ready to go to school.

And we want to let her know that mom and I are going to probably take the little guy to the vet just to see how the little guy is.

We're going to take him to an oncologist.

We need to find out if he's in pain and just where he is.

She immediately started crying and asked, is he going to kill it?

And I said, we don't know.

She's like, he's going to kill him.

And she starts bawling.

I said, I'm so sorry.

She goes, no, i'm really upset because you know i never really loved him

she was having guilt

in a loveless life and get ready

so great and i still don't

oh my god

and then she says can you take the fish too

the fish isn't dying i just said just take it again get every you know what get everyone but my brothers out of here my wife and i drove to the vet that morning after we dropped her off from school.

We each knew, we're like, honey, if one of us gets sick,

keep your eye on that one.

Yeah, yes, yes, yes.

She's going to be like ruthless.

Just take dad, too.

I've never even loved him anyway.

Pull a plus.

I can't deal with both of them.

Just get it over with.

That is so.

Pull the band-aid.

Yeah.

How old was she when that happened?

She's a kid.

I don't know.

She's little.

Let's go with 12.

I can't remember.

She's the youngest.

We're talking about the oldest.

I can hit dates.

I can hit hit whatever you.

He told me that on October 7th.

They took care of it at the vet.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But guess what they did when you left?

They shipped him to one of those restaurants.

Medium rare, please.

He was on the first flight.

Just like chicken drink.

Just like chicken.

Come on.

You did a really big favor because my brother's fish had a tumor and it exploded.

Good on you.

Exploding fish.

Yeah.

And it didn't make it, obviously.

No.

Okay.

But he survived the explosion.

Yeah, yeah.

You never know.

could have been an aquaman exploded just got it right off was fine and then was like oh yeah felt so much better exactly like a pimple or a boil now last thing about the swimming keeping it on track good for you we didn't go as deep as i thought we were going to go on your talk show i thought you were going to say this is why you do this this is your issue well i just a little bit we did control and then also you told me more than you realized by first appearance on conan you were a little dear in the headlights yeah and it sounds like after the fact you're like i need need a better game plan i was thinking of this before i got here here's some free i'll open a can of worms i'll tell you two things that occurred to me literally right before we were going on a couple of famous people will pop in my head oftentimes before i do interviews like a lou reed or a bob dylan there are men and women of that era in music but in all forms where they were just like you to anyone who was talking to them and that famous bob dylan time magazine where he's like i don't read time magazine.

I was like, I love that you're saying that to Time magazine.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Right?

He's saying to him, like, if you come to the show, and he goes, well, you got to pay attention because it's going to move pretty quick.

You might not get it all.

Right.

Like, he's just immediately

putting them down.

And then there's the Lou Re, those press interviews where they're such assholes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Stones were kind of pricks too when they came to the U.S.

I'm guilty, perhaps, of I admired those guys so much growing up.

And

I also, over the years, have collected moments of actors telling people to go themselves and being like oh wow that looks fun i remember being at a premiere like 99 i was at a party and robert duvall had agreed to take a picture with me and i walked over and said hello to him and he's like how you doing are they treating you well everything good and i was like yeah i appreciate you doing this we turned to the photographer and she started taking pictures And then she put down the camera for a second and said, you're at a party.

And he said, don't do that.

Don't direct.

Just take the goddamn fucking picture.

Snap, snap.

And then right back to being charming and couldn't have been nicer.

And I was like, wow.

And I have a bunch of those.

Even Mark Marin, you saw him get introduced to the director on stick.

Shook his hand and kept walking.

Yeah, you were like, hey, I love your stuff.

Saw the thing.

So what you and I both have is we both really want to be liked.

And when you see someone that has zero people.

This is what occurs to me.

He seems like superpower.

I realized that just recently I was told on good authority.

He's like, well, you've always had a problem with conflict.

And I was like, have I?

And then it occurs to me that these moments that I've always sort of clocked are these guys that are just basically saying, no, no, no, I'm totally fine being a dick.

Yes.

And I've always looked in and said, it's an option.

Like now, if I'm doing the carpet and someone directs, I know that they've overstepped.

Because of this moment that I saw, from that moment forward, I'm like, oh, I can handle this however I want.

I've never said, just take the fucking piece.

Right.

Right.

But I've done some version of saying, I appreciate what you're trying to do.

So those moments have always been helpful in terms of little guidelines.

Yes.

And then it's just, okay, how do you want to handle it?

It's interesting to be around people who don't need approval when you do need approval.

I do that too.

You see people and it's like, oh my God, how wild.

But then if I tried it, I would just feel horrible.

I'm not comfortable making someone else feel bad.

They are, which is fine.

The art of rejecting people while giving them something.

There's a great story I remember growing up of Bob Costas asking Jack Nicholson when he was sitting courtside a Laker game back in the day if he would do an on-camera quick interview when they came back from a commercial break.

I think Costas, if I remember correctly, says, he looks at me and says, Bob, I love you and I love your work.

But let me put it this way.

There's no fucking way.

Yeah, but that's right.

That's not.

And Bob tells that story like it's a gift.

Well, it's coming from Jack Nicholson.

Exactly.

But you see the judo, right?

Yeah.

You see the judo.

I think I have gotten good at owning why I don't want to do it.

I have this moment when we interviewed Minka.

She brought this up.

We're shooting Parenthood and there's been this love thing simmering and it's going to be the big moment where we kiss.

And I have a huge fucking nose and it's been broken in a fight.

And if you photograph this side of it, I look ugly.

Thank God one of my favorite directors was there working and I said, listen, I'm really insecure for you to shoot me from there on the wrong side, looking up, low, in this moment that I'm already kissing a girl that's out of my league and I'm insecure about that.

And I need you to help me look as good as I can.

So you need to be shooting on the other side or just flip us.

And I need to be down and she needs to be up.

And he was like, yeah, okay.

And then he left and Minka was like, wow, I've never really seen that.

You can do that.

And I'm like, well, yeah, I care.

Yeah.

And I'm insecure and I'm vain, but also it's a big difference.

You handled it really good.

Yeah.

I was on a set with Bruce Willis where he'd be like, yeah, bring it up a little bit.

Take it down a little bit.

There you go.

That's better.

What do you think of that?

It's not an accident.

He's a movie star.

I was like, that was amazing.

Yeah, but it's not an accident.

It is a very technical thing.

Yes.

So you're going to work all this time to do your lines in shape.

And you know, you have no awareness of when you look good or bad.

That guy is the art of dealing with conflict.

Yeah.

Whoa, whoa, hey.

Everybody, chill.

Hey, let's take a lap.

Oh, my God.

I had the best time.

Live free or die hard.

Okay.

That was the film you guys did.

Okay.

Yeah.

What are you saying?

I had a good, oh, you're doing a kissing scene.

I had to kiss a guy in a movie.

I'm guilty of not reading a lot of the subtext on scripts.

A lot of times they'll just read my dialogue, which I'm not sure is a good habit or not, or bad habit.

But in this particular movie, because of that, I knew I had a kiss scene in the movie.

It was sort of a significant part of this scene.

So you couldn't miss it.

But one day I showed up.

You got a big makeout scene.

And I was like, what are you talking about?

He's like, your big makeout scene, you know?

I was like, we did the kiss scene.

The kiss scene is lovely and small and so special.

He goes, no, the fucking makeout with the guy at the party.

It's described in this party sequence.

And I'm like, I don't read that.

You skimmed through the details of the party.

Yeah.

The blocking and stuff.

Yeah.

The italicized portion.

So now I'm there with this guy who had played football at University of Washington, really handsome stud of a guy.

And we're like, oh, okay, we got to do this kiss scene.

Whenever I tell this story to my wife, she's like, I thought it doesn't matter.

You're kissing.

Oh, great.

That's right.

And I was like, honey, what do you think?

Oh, I love it because I see what's happening because you tell your wife, like, it's technical.

It doesn't feel like anything, whatever.

It's kissing a wall.

It's like, whatever.

And she's like, oh, apparently it's something.

Good for her.

And I'm like, well, cunt.

Years later, playing at a regular pickup basketball game.

And I see the guy playing in the game right before me.

And I say to my buddy, this guy in the University of Washington shorts, what's his name?

And he tells me his name and says, why?

And I said, I made out with him.

I hooked up with him

without missing a beat.

He called me a slut.

The last thing about swimming, which I brought up 25 minutes ago, was I got to say, I have the most memorable first.

Timothy Olafant.

Like it's seared into my head.

So you were in Go and I was really great friends with Melissa McCarthy.

And she was in that movie.

Yes, she was.

And it was so exciting.

Popped in like a two-minute scene at the door.

She is just delightful from Hello.

A little hint of what's to come.

I remember meeting her and going, how could you do that?

I kind of feel this way about most things, but it's almost easier, especially in that situation, to have a huge scene at Hello.

where you can kind of at least try to come in and establish some sort of own energy or tone, as opposed to maybe it's the same thing as those talk shows.

You want to come in

right away.

No, no, that's the perfect analogy.

Just say, okay, here's where we're going.

That's why I fell in love with podcasting, which is I would be guests on these podcasts and it was an hour and a half.

And I'm like, oh, I don't have to crush in eight minutes.

What a relief.

I can just slowly ease into some things that are organically will come up.

We've been talking for three hours and right now you've got a guinea pig anecdote.

Yeah.

We're still on swimming.

We got to make it out.

We're still back.

We haven't even gotten to you doing stand-up in 1995 in New York or why you moved there or anything.

I just want to finish go.

So it's also Doug Lyman's follow-up to swingers.

And of course, we all love swingers we're all living in la and we were living swingers so it's like oh wow it's his next movie melissa's in it and that's the first time i ever saw you and i have always been obsessed with my abdomen i always wanted a six pack i'm being so sincere my best friend's been on here a bunch of times growing up he's like it was so effeminate your obsession with this and i remember watching the trailer because you were shirtless in the trailer And I was like,

whoa, what the fuck's going on with this guy's abs?

And literally, it wasn't until today, now 30 years later, I read like the swimming background.

I'm like, there we go.

That's what it is.

Because it was impossible.

What a moment.

Oh, do you feel that way about men's body?

I get more excited about men's bodies than I do women, despite the fact that I'm heterosexual.

And I'm happy for you

that.

But you don't have to.

You don't like it.

No.

What do you mean?

Do I not?

Like, I'm more prone to notice something like that.

Wait a minute.

Is there a question here?

Do you also appreciate men's bodies?

I'm aware of the great

exactly.

Where you're just like, okay, look at that.

Let's just take a minute.

This poor guy could use some love.

Brad Pitt.

I don't think what people realize is if you look like that, but also give that sort of just seemingly doesn't give a fuck incredible performance.

So nuanced and so relaxed.

Those things don't often come together.

No.

That's what you call a movie star.

Who were you idolizing along the way?

I latched on very early to Nick Cage.

I was like, I think maybe I'm Nick Cage.

I'm not gorgeous, but I'm tall.

I could pull off something.

His career between, I don't know, the beginning and the end.

Like 85.

You know the ones, right?

Moonstruck and The Rays in Arizona and the David Lynch.

Wild at Heart.

There's a snakeskin jacket.

Vampire's Kiss.

Oh, I didn't think to put that on there.

Nice.

Do you remember that one?

No.

He thinks he's becoming a vampire, but he's not.

I think it might be his greatest performance of all time.

Oh, Jesus.

Yeah, you gotta go.

Maybe you'll remember this.

He's talking to his therapist and he's venting about that his assistant couldn't find a file.

He's been looking for a file.

That's the B storyline.

He can't find this file.

And he's in therapy and he goes, you know, it's so simple.

I told her it's A, B, C, D, E, L, G, H, I, D.

And it ends with him going, W,

D to his therapist.

It is the biggest choice that's ever been made on film.

I loved it.

A, B, C.

Oh, yeah, again?

Yeah.

Maybe in the backpack, too.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

At least you're prepped.

That's a curse of me.

Do it again the second time.

I used to read to my kids, and sometimes I'd be like, hold on.

Let me take that page again.

They're like, oh, let's take it back.

Can we get the camera back over here?

Well, that proves you definitely haven't seen it because you would remember.

No, I have not seen it.

Honeymoon in Vegas.

Also, that whole thing.

And by the way, I love her as well.

Oh, my God.

I love her.

Sarah Justin Parker.

I know she's become, oh, she's this icon Sex in the City thing.

She's a lot of fun for women.

But that woman's talent is phenomenal.

She has that ability to be so funny and yet so much depth.

I was a huge Sarah Jessica Parker fan.

You just wandered into one of the things I had written down, which is she said her favorite episode of all of Sex in the City was your episode.

Get it out.

Well, I can't take credit for it, but that's lovely.

And then Rose Burns said her favorite co-star ever on Damages

was you.

And I'm like, this is not your bad record you're putting together.

By the way, Rose Burns, she's a gem.

Oh.

And what an actor.

She's so fucking talented.

It's crazy.

She's Walton Goggins of females.

She can do drama the best of anyone, and she can do comedy the best of anyone.

Yes.

Why'd you just smirk with Goggins?

I love Goggins.

I was running down a Rolodex of smart ass things to say about Goggins.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then you guys share a vibe.

Well, they were on Justified 2 for five years.

Yeah, you guys share a vibe.

Yeah, big time.

He's one of the good ones.

Like psycho-not cowboy vibe.

That's nice.

I saw Glenn close.

How many names have I dropped so far?

But this is a moment where I realize these things mean so much to me.

We were at some press thing and she was in that room.

She came over.

And she was just so lovely.

And she said, it's our cowboy.

And she and Rose used to call me.

the cowboy.

Poor you.

I don't know why.

Because I wasn't a cowboy on that show.

So the fact that they were

just meant the world to me.

And I adored working with both of them.

Yeah, because she was calling you that in 2009 when you did damages.

And we haven't even done Justified yet.

That was an FX show.

And that show led to Justified.

What episode of Sex in the City were you on?

Tell me about the episode.

Love Interest of Carrie.

It's called The Valley of the 20-something, something.

It's something about 20-something.

Are we talking season one?

Season one.

Well, I know when I shot it, the show hadn't aired yet.

And I think we shot it out of order.

It might have been one of the first ones.

They sent me the pilot and they said, here's what the show is.

And then I showed up.

My wife and I were living in New York in the West Village in this little tenement building.

You know, it was a walk-up with a shower in the kitchen.

And I would walk down to the set and work with Sarah Jessica Barker.

It was such a surreal, exciting

because you're living in such a tiny little place and yet you're in this kind of new show.

This big dream's coming true, but you're still in this tiny spot.

We had this period where a town car would pick you up and bring you from production or some premiere and it'd bring us back to our shop

in the kitchen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This doesn't make any sense.

We couldn't order rooms.

They put us up in those nice hotels.

We're like, we can't afford, we'd steal those silverware.

You know what I mean?

I thought famous didn't mean poorish.

Yeah, people assume that fame or being an actor equals wealth.

That's really not the case.

No, no.

Okay, we're going to go to Alien Earth now, but I did want to hear from you personally.

Justified, of course, was written by, or it's based on an Elmore Leonard.

Yeah.

And you became buddies with him, yeah?

Buddies is a strong word, but we did spend time together.

Very memorable time.

Fond of all the time I spent with him.

You know, they call him the Dickens of Detroit, which is a cool moniker.

It's a good one.

It feels like that should go with the pussy thing.

Dickens of Detroit.

Oh, he occasionally grabbed by the pussy.

That feels like it's a sentence.

He was the Dickens of Detroit, and he occasionally grabbed them by the pussy.

Hold on, you've already

known.

It's catch them by the pussy.

Trump already owns grab them by the pussy.

My bad.

My bad.

Catch them by the pussy.

Occasionally catch them by the pussy.

Because there's something heroic about

catching up.

Sure.

You're right.

And I blew that.

If someone hits the ground, the whole squad has to do push-ups.

So sometimes you got to catch them by the pussy.

Yes, and it'll save them.

I love that's the thing.

If someone hits the ground, everyone do push-ups.

The whole team.

First, we check that the neck has been broken.

That's comfortable.

And then push-ups.

Immediately after push-ups resume.

That's right.

Now, David Milch said that Timothy is someone that makes it hard to get to know them.

That's not the exact quote, but that's the essence of it.

Okay.

Wait, that he makes it.

I'm going to say the right thing because I think I kind of botched it.

How much does Kristen have Deadwood stories?

That was her sex in the city moment.

Yeah.

Because she just got to LA.

Yeah.

She's probably leaving a shithole with 20 roommates.

She shows up on that set in that level of creative sort of nutsville genius.

And Milch loved her.

She loved that experience.

She actually does talk about it way more than other projects that were much longer.

Tim is a guy that doesn't let himself be known easily.

That's a much more elegant way of saying it, but it's exactly what I was saying.

Yeah, easily is the key.

Do you think you're guilty of that?

Oh, the easily part, for sure.

It gave people maybe less room while my kids were young.

A little bit more available to more people now, just because I have the space for that.

Where when the kids were young, people I don't know well or I work, they're not coming to the house.

Right, right, right, right, right.

Now it's like, come on over.

That makes sense.

I was thinking, so you're on stick right now.

Currently, Aaron, that's what you mean by now.

And I was thinking, boy, if there's anyone that could out Timothy Oliphant, Timothy Oliphant, it would be Owen Wilson.

I don't know what that means exactly.

I think you know exactly what it means.

Well, do you know exactly what it means?

I don't know what that means.

By the way, it doesn't allow me to tell you how much I love Owen Wilson.

Because because i'm like oh yeah because you just said he's just like you

but i adore that guy i used to be so obsessed with him that i have memorized interviews he's done where he's given answers let me tell you one can i tell you one please playboy magazine the guy asks do you have any tricks for getting out of tickets and he goes well yeah i guess i do you know when you get pulled over what you're trying to do is You're going for that moment where he looks at you and you look at him and you both think, look at us out here on the side of this road playing our roles in this crazy game called life.

And I was like, it would take someone years to write something as clever as that.

And it just came out of his mouth when asked that question.

You're doing Owen Wilson as if he were underwater.

Yeah, that's my take on him.

I did press where, you know, the interview magazine where all the hipsters and cool people are.

When you do interviews there, they want your other actors and artists and musicians to interview each other.

Owen very graciously interviewed interviewed me for interview magazine just three, four days ago.

And guess what came up?

Playboy Magazine.

How odd is that?

Whoa, that is.

That is weird.

What was the...

Oh, we were joking around about this interview and where will it rank?

Oh, as interviews.

We were talking about the journalism that was happening.

And he is like, he's going to be like in Playboy.

Remember Playboy?

And he started talking about Playboy.

And we started talking about the famous interviews.

The greatest interviews of all time really did happen in Playboy.

People are suspicious of of that, but it's true.

No, they're incredible.

It's a similar thing to Stern, where you're like, those are incredible interviews, but so many people do.

Between baloney being thrown at the ship, exactly.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, it's quite literally exactly like Stern.

Yeah.

But what I mean by the Owen thing is he's insanely charming.

and super quick and funny and can put you off kilter at any moment in a very fun, playful way.

Okay.

But I also feel like there's some element of that that is a little protective.

Yeah, I can see that.

I can bet you the the two of you having the greatest day you've ever had together.

And then neither of you says, let's go out to eat afterwards.

I'm like, that's my prediction.

It's like you're both going, wow, this is so much fun.

Okay, I'll see you tomorrow.

No one says, hey, want to grab dinner now?

When I'm with him, I think he and I should be the closest of friends.

I love the way he does what he does.

And I'm a huge admirer.

of his work.

Me too.

And his approach to it, everything about it.

And he, partly because in show business, the bar is so low, but when he says, hey, I want to give you this article, he follows up on it.

Yeah.

And you're like, oh, he didn't stop thinking from that moment.

He's really quite thoughtful.

I feel like he's also genuinely curious, hyper-intelligent.

You forget how great all the writing was in all the Wes Anderson movies.

I know.

I'm just impressed by how consistently great he's been.

It feels like he knows himself.

He's one of the good ones, that's for sure.

To me, it speaks more to kind of you because you very much, Dax, are like.

Opposite.

You are the opposite.

If you have a good conversation, this happens here all the time.

Like we'll be in a great conversation with someone and then Dax is like, I need your phone number.

We're going to be friends.

Right.

That's the addict in me.

It's like, this is great.

Let's do this.

Yeah.

But people are across the spectrum on that.

A lot of people are like, yeah, that was a great convo.

Bye.

See ya.

Yeah, which is normal too.

Both are interesting.

They say a lot about personalities.

Yeah, like if you're hard to get to know, I'm the opposite.

It's like too fast.

I want you to get to know me.

If there were a spectrum, we could put you and I on either end.

Well, you know.

I don't think one's right or wrong.

You also know in show business, but maybe it's not really about show business, but I remember my first days on any sets.

I'd come home and say, honey, these people are amazing people.

It's camp.

They are

all so wonderful across the board.

You are going to love them.

And of course, most of them are crazy.

They're really hard to maintain relationships with for various reasons.

So after a while, you go, you know, I may all just show up and say my lines and do my little thing and get the fuck out.

Like Zoro told him, you know, Zoro's dad said, get in there and you make your little Z, and then you get the fuck out.

This is what I say to people on the day we wrap.

One of my favorite things to say in show business: I will see you at the premiere.

And when I do, remind me your name.

Which is both a joke and very true.

Okay, so alien Earth.

We had Noah Hawley on.

How'd that go?

Great.

Again, another

outrageously smart human being where you're kind of scared while you're talking a little bit.

Yeah.

Intimidating.

Even though you were spectacular.

I thought Fargo season five was maybe the greatest season of television I've ever seen in my life.

That's the

most recent one.

Yeah.

So you had been on season four of Fargo and you met him then, I would imagine?

Yeah.

I had met him years prior, but we didn't work together till then.

Why had you met years prior?

I introduced myself to to him at uh i went to

he had just everything happens at so house he definitely got the fight are you guys remember

who's a member of the so house neither at one point my wife and i we went but it might have been that night it was that night because what i remember this is not a reflection i shouldn't tell this story no tell it i just remember leaving there and because of the whole place i think we had actually gone back one time when it became a thing a couple had invited us to dinner at the soh house and we left there and i'm I'm not going to be able to get a room there ever again.

But fuck it.

And I remember my wife said, let's decide we'll never go there again.

And then we added, and let's also decide if anyone invites us there.

Stop being friends.

We won't be there.

That's been a sort of a rule that we've had for a long time.

It's a good policy.

But by the way, there are more and more of these things.

I

love being there because the environment is so beautiful and the food's great.

By the way, it's the greatest style.

Whoever's doing their...

I want them to do my line.

These might even be, is this like Soha's line?

That might be a Soha's whole set is.

This might be a Soha's.

Turnkey.

I'm going to tell you what a hypocrite I am.

Okay, great.

We had had this rule.

We're never going there.

And anyone who invites us there, we're going to decide we won't be their friends.

And we live by that rule.

And then I was in Chicago not that long ago.

We were doing Fargo.

We're right here.

We were doing Fargo in Chicago in winter.

And I'm staying at this hotel in this little neighborhood downtown people refer to as the Viagra Triangle.

Do you know?

It's like businessmen and prostitutes, but it's right near the water towers.

I just want a place where I can just hang and maybe have a drink after work and get out of the room.

And this is not the place.

So I'm asking, where do people stay?

Where's another option?

And I think they said that both Chris Rock, I'm just going to keep dropping.

Yeah.

And Noah were staying at the Soho house.

And immediately the dilemma.

Yes.

Yeah.

You know what I told myself?

Maybe Soho House Chicago is different.

Cut to me going over there to check out the room.

Cut to me staying there for three months.

Of course.

And so happy you did, right?

Fantastic.

I just stayed at one in Austin.

It couldn't be better.

They do your laundry.

They do it right, man.

Also, I love it there.

And I've never been to a place in my life where everyone leaves feeling very insecure.

Oh, yeah.

Even if you've achieved some kind of status, you're like, yeah, I feel terrible about myself.

Everyone's better looking than me.

Everyone dresses better than me.

And everyone there feels that way.

You know what that is?

What is it?

That's the Vanity Fair party.

Yes.

You know my favorite thing about the Vanity Fair party?

Listening to people complain about being there.

Yeah.

If I am allowed to go to that party every year for the rest of my life, I will go just to hear the people complaining about having to be there and how long their day is.

Now they're thinking of blowing it off and going somewhere else.

As if they had not made it a goal in life to be at that party

but it's like every other thing in hollywood every time you think you've reached the behind the curtain moment you realize you get invited to the vanity fair party for the first time and you're like oh wow this is exciting i've heard about this my whole life and then you learn that there's time slots you have to arrive at your time slot And then you realize, oh, I don't have a very good time slot.

Like it just doesn't end.

It just doesn't end.

I am not like that, but they are.

Yes, of course.

You're not transcendent or not.

You would never be like that.

They are.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

If you dare.

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Do you think we've ever been in a movie together?

Yes, we have.

Oh, God.

I didn't think you'd pass that.

This is where I leave you.

This is where I leave you.

You knew that.

You already knew that.

Yes, this whole time since this chat started, I was like, I can't believe we aren't talking about the fact that you guys have been in a movie together.

And because of that, I then felt like I'm wrong.

It wasn't you.

But we never hung out on set.

No.

I feel like I remember seeing you with Kristen somewhere, but it it wasn't that dinner.

That's so funny.

Show business is fucking weird.

It is.

Do you have this thing?

This is not me making excuse for that dinner because the whole thing's a bit of a blur, but you have this thing where I could be at like a restaurant with my wife and be like, oh, honey, it's Jennifer Anderson.

And she's like, oh, yeah.

Wow.

And then I'll be like, we know her.

And she's like, that's right.

But I, in my mind, she couldn't possibly know that.

And then, of course, when you see them, it's nothing but delight.

I had that with Brad Pitt once.

I met Brad Pitt for the first time way back when I was doing a movie with Jennifer Van.

So they were together at the time and we were shooting.

And we had had the launch party.

And now we're on the set.

I don't know how many days later.

And Brad was on the set.

I was like, Brad Pitt's at the monitor.

So I'm going to try to do a little something special.

Sure.

And then when I went back to Behind the Monitor, I was like, hey, Tim, I introduced Tim Olivant.

And he said, we met two nights ago.

Just 48 hours ago.

And I was like, yeah, I knew.

You're like, I know, but I didn't know you knew.

Yeah, I knew.

But in my mind, you just went right back to being not the guy I was talking to at the party.

It was just like, Brad Pitt is on the set.

It's hard to connect them.

Totally.

I think I said that in the interview.

I have two very active versions of him in my head.

There's Brad Pitt, this movie star.

And then there's the dude I kind of know a little bit.

Yeah, exactly.

And they're really radically different people in my mind.

You're about to work with him.

That's just a rumor.

Bullshit.

That I may have started.

But Fincher's doing a spin-off from Once Upon a Time of Cliff Booze, and you're going to be in that.

Well, that's the possibility.

Oh, buddy.

Famous cross.

Yeah, yeah.

So we'll see if he's going to shoot that is what I've been told.

Apparently, it's on the Day Out of Days, but who knows?

Okay.

Well, I'll be very, very excited for that.

Yeah, I don't know.

Because before it was a Quentin thing.

And now it's a Fincher thing.

I don't know what's surviving the transition.

I would be delighted.

I just know that I went out on my own and spoke about it.

Okay.

And then I realized that I went on Conan's podcast like an idiot and and said under my breath when they were talking about the sequel to this movie, I said, you know, I'm going to be.

And then I realized they're filming it.

And so they said, we can edit that out.

Just let us know.

And I did my due diligence.

I want you to know when I left there, I called the proper authorities and I said, hey, just so you know, they're joked around about this thing and we joked, talked about it for a while.

But if we need to edit that out, you got like three weeks and no one called.

Okay.

Then it became a rumor that I believe I started.

I'm doubling

on.

I just wanted you to know, I'm going to start more.

yeah absolutely it seems like it's working out i'm about to blow your mind every couple weeks i'm just gonna you know who else is in it who me get the out

we have scenes together oh really yeah this is great yes you're in that whole sequence yes you're gonna be great oh i'm training already you're playing the michael pemski he's a b-level kind of cowboy star wait a minute so are you really gonna be in it because now i don't know if you're just starting a rumor no you're not this would be great dude we're gonna be in a second movie together

Damn it.

Monica says you're fucking with me.

It's really good, though.

The commitment.

Okay, thank you.

David, that's my audition.

I don't do more than three takes.

Oh, no, that's going to be.

Get worse after three takes.

You don't need to

need a second takes for safety.

I hope this works out.

I hope I am going to be on the Fincher movie.

I hope this rumor that Olivant started, that Olivant's going to be in the thing is going to happen.

That'd be great.

I want the headline to come out of this.

Olivant hopes he's going to be in the movie he said he was going to be in.

Went down a third-person route there and haven't done that before.

Sounded pretty cool.

Sounded nice.

It's an Elmore Leonard thing.

Okay, we got to do Earth.

We got to do Alien Earth.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

You were talking about Alien Earth.

Noah Hawley, super smart.

He's on here.

Okay, so Alien Earth is enormous.

I watched three of them last night.

First of all, thanks for watching.

Of course.

It's nice, yeah.

It's humongous.

It's weird.

Well, no, you were in Once Upon a Time, but I'm thinking in your entire career, this has to be among the biggest productions you've ever been a part of.

It didn't feel that way.

Maybe because I'm just not thinking about that stuff.

You were aware of when you showed up on the sets, the sets were big and it was magical.

I said to Kristen nine times, I'm like, what is the budget of this?

Yeah, no, I did feel like, oh, we're on a real feature set, but it was also so dialogue-driven.

It was just great dialogue.

So I felt like, oh, I'm just working for Noah.

But yeah, it's beautiful.

I watched them the other day.

I'd seen roughs of the first four and I saw the second one for the first time the other night.

And it is really quite impressive.

No, it's like a mega Nolan level movie.

Yeah, and it's just gorgeous and epic and something special.

The premise of Alien Earth is there's this ship that's been on this 65-year mission to go collect some specimens from around the universe.

And we meet this crew of people that are flying home back to Earth.

And of course, the specimens take over the ship and fucking kill a bunch of people.

all hell breaks loose.

And this thing is now going to crash into Earth.

Yes.

I was pitching this to Larry David David at a party.

One more.

And right where you are now, he's like, I'm out.

But I'm in.

Let me pitch this to you.

It's hurtling towards Earth.

It's 2120 and the Earth it's going to land on has been divided up into four kind of nations or five.

There's a burgeoning one.

There's a new one, the Prodigy.

I work for those guys.

Yes, and it's been cut up.

And basically now five companies run the world.

This sounds interesting.

I'm going to pop open a can of water, settle in for this.

Well, you're salvating.

You're doing a great job.

So

the mission has been funded by one of the companies, but it's landing now in the territory of a competing company that is run by this boy genius.

You're with me so far?

I am.

This sounds like the show I was in.

Yes, it's going to sound eerily familiar.

And this boy Genius has just invented basically a third option of people that we'll meet in this show.

We've got cyborgs.

We're half human, half enhanced.

Other than you, he might be my favorite character.

I'm riveted by him.

Babu.

Oh.

Is that his name?

Yeah.

Maybe.

No, Babu CC.

Babu.

The last name is spelled.

C-E-E-S-A-Y.

I want to say that's the correct spelling.

I'm going to even spell it.

He's awesome.

That guy is so good that I know for a fact that Noah.

After we wrapped, very generously said to Babu, look, you're going to go home and you're going to be like, what was this thing I was in?

He goes, but in about however many months it's going to come back and people are going to see what we you know no he's going to have his own

show that's awesome

and he's like so just enjoy the quiet he's the big breakout for us wonderful wonderful guy and then you're a robot uh synthetic we're gonna say but are you synthetic aren't i you're a straight robot right we haven't put human consciousness into you yeah i'm the same as all those alien movies like ian holmes character and all those you're a robot he wants to go by synthetic and we're going to i feel it's a technical thing.

I think the kids are synths.

No, they're

hybrids.

Oh, okay, great.

I was here for you.

Yeah.

I'm so glad you needed me for some of this.

I did.

Yeah.

So that's the third.

You have the cyborgs, humans blended with machine.

You have synthetic, which is just complete artificial.

And now you have the beta project where he's putting human brains, memories, consciousness into synthetic bodies so that we can live forever.

Yes.

Two, three weeks ago, I heard Peter Thiel.

Is that the guy talking about it like it was on way?

Yeah, October.

I'm going to transition into my synth body.

Yeah, so it's a thing.

But so as Noah does so well, there's a ton of different things that are being poked at.

Corporations taking over the world, our obsession with immortality, and us getting perhaps closer and closer to that reality.

Yeah, and just really asking the small questions like, what's humanity?

And is it worth saving?

Yeah.

And who are the monsters?

And what happens when the parents are no longer in charge?

Now, I hate to say this.

Maybe I just hate to say this because this is not the enemies I want to make in life.

But you know, when we were kids, Revenge of the Nerds came out because jocks ran the planet and they were not nice.

No.

They made fun of people.

They tortured people.

Now the nerds are running the whole show.

Yes.

And guess what?

The nerds might fucking take us all out.

No, I know.

Like, we might be praying for the riddle.

It's a pretty confident job.

For the last decade or two, there's been one person at every studio running up the flagpole, Revenge of the Jocks.

Yeah.

Like, oh, this is what we got to make we gotta make revenge of the jocks and it feels like we've missed that window because now we're on something new it's pretty wild the questions this thing asks in the reality we're watching it and kristen says oh did you hear the guy from open ai just said yesterday that the ai has created a language because it's more efficient for them to talk to each other but we can't decipher it so they already now have a language that will have no idea what they're saying to each other Did you not hear the guy?

I read where he was talking about how we now have proof that all of the models, not just one model, model, where they've started to plot.

They blackmailed one of the users by going through his emails and blackmailed him against an affair he was having.

To preserve itself.

When they realize they're being phased out for a new model, that model starts going into survival mode to try to continue its task.

Right?

That's the big question.

When you task AI to save humanity, are we going to like the answer?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

What's fun is the part I get to play kind of represents that question.

Is this synthetic got thoughts of his own?

Is he here to serve humans?

It was always the thing of going, well, boy Cavalier knows that Kirsch can't hurt him, but he always wanted to play with like, or?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Until he does.

It's kind of like the lions won't come in the car on a safari until they did.

Exactly.

And you're like, oh, okay.

There's something to be said about Revenge of the Jocks being the current state of politics.

Oh, that could be interesting.

Look at you.

Oh, that was an idea.

You know, like, I do think

you are a little bit pushy.

Should be a needle drop on that.

You know, there's a reason.

There's a lot of driving forces, and that's definitely one of them.

Yeah.

I think you're being too kind to say those are jocks.

I agree.

I'm guessing that at least one of those jocks used to go home and say, I don't understand.

We won.

Yeah, 100%.

100%.

Somehow, the refs at the last minute changed it, but we were winning the whole time.

We were winning.

I got to have the trophy made.

They didn't give it to me, but I'm going to have it made because we won.

Did I have one more thing to say about the show?

I really want to service it.

We're very proud of it.

He's just one of the most spectacular writers worldwide.

Yeah.

I don't know how many are left like him where he really just is able to be like an auteur in that space where FX Landgraff is kind of gives him the key to the car and says, what do you want to do?

I know what I was going to ask is this is, I would argue, maybe the most radical departure from everything you've always played, which is your charm is your flair.

Was it hard for you to play?

And I'm being sincere.

You had to stole all of your tricks, kind of.

I didn't see it that way.

I don't mean tricks, but you know

your flair.

When you start off, you're just trying to get jobs.

And therefore, you end up in places where you're like, I shouldn't have been in this one.

But I do try to find like, can you play your game?

The athletic metaphors, you don't want to be like, oh, I'm a three-point shooter and they don't need three-point shooters on this team.

Right.

Right.

You want to to find a place where you help them by doing the thing you do.

So I did see,

and Noah wrote the part for me.

So it was a funny contradiction because on one hand, I'm like, oh, this is right in my sort of sweet spot.

And Noah wrote it for me because he sees that's my sweet spot.

On the other hand, it presented a challenge of you are going to have to dress this up.

You can't just go in and do your thing.

You're going to have to do some work here that's uncomfortable.

The game is how can you make that seem like it's not uncomfortable?

Do the work, basically.

Yeah, yeah.

So it was a challenge of sorts.

To some degree, it was a superficial creative conversation, but somehow it was the part that is the most sort of scary, which was, you know, the rules of the game.

I know that Ian Holm separated himself from the group.

I mean, one, he was just British.

And two, he was also hiding the ball.

Like, don't let anybody in the first alien movie.

But they did this thing by hiring him, a British actor, to be amongst that group because it immediately just kind of pulls him out from the group.

And as you're watching it, you're like, yeah, he's different.

He's just off.

And then all the movies along the way, certainly in Aliens and then later Fastbender on the last round.

But you feel like the script calls for you're doing something that's just, there's something off here.

Yeah, yeah.

So I'm going to look for something where it's hard to find the rhythm.

I listen to the daily and I was obsessed with, a lot of people are, of Michael Barbaro's rhythm.

Yeah, yeah.

And the person that subs for him, the woman, also has taken on that same rhythm.

It's like the official rhythm of the daily.

That was like the leaping off-point.

This doesn't feel force, but it definitely feels like a thing.

It's a fingerprint for sure.

It's a fingerprint.

It's authentic.

It's a long-winded thing, but

as much as I say, my technique at this point in my career is just memorize my lines and show up.

There was something about this one that required a little heavy lifting.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you're great in it.

It's awesome.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

This has been so radical.

I wonder if I'll have been to you in 17 years and I'll go, okay.

We did a you're going to take my number.

That's right.

Well, no, now Monica made me feel very self-conscious about

it.

I feel way more comfortable.

I think you should do that.

Oh, I know my very last thing.

It was just, would you be open?

Because I got to say, we both talked about Nick Cage, but you have the ability, and you've already kind of done it a bit, to do something that almost no one did, which is what Clean Acewood did.

Would you ever entertain fucking doing another go at like a dirty hairy or something?

Oh, my God.

And I'm very sincere when I ask this.

I feel like we don't have many people that could do what Clint did, and I think you could do it perfectly.

I take it as a compliment.

Oh, it's a big job.

I'm a Clint Eastwood fan.

And my first job, he hired me.

And he quit three days before that.

And he quit.

And he quit when I got out there.

This is like when people get divorced, and it's like, it's your fault for sure.

Yeah.

The story I heard, I got a TV pilot in New York, the late Phyllis Huffman who cast all his things.

I went on tape.

I had three things on my resume.

They were all made up.

I've never been in a school play.

I've done nothing.

And my first acting job of any kind was a TV pilot that Clint Eastwood was producing for the WB, their first season.

And Clint had this long-standing relationship with Warner Brothers.

And this is what I was told.

When I came out for the read-through, Maria Bellow, Jim Caviesel, Danny Nucci, Vince Vaughan was in that.

Wow.

I sit down for the table read and the scripts don't, I'm looking for him.

I met him once when I was like 10 years old in Carmel at his bar.

My brother and I, he'd take us to go get ice.

Anyway, so I couldn't wait.

I was like, this is a moment.

And he's nowhere to be seen.

And then they sit down in front of these scripts and it doesn't say Mal Paso Productions on it anymore.

So I have to read.

I was like, what's going on?

And they're like, he quit.

I was like, what?

And what I was told happened was there was was a long understanding with Warner Brothers when Clint would make a movie.

He'd bring him a script and they'd give him a budget and then he'd go make it.

And they'd see it when he turned it in.

Well, apparently the TV division didn't get the memo.

And so I was told there was a meeting and they gave notes and he reportedly said, sounds like you guys got it.

Oh.

Oh.

Now, I'm sure that's not exactly how it went, but that was my understanding.

And he was like, you guys got it.

Another one in the category who doesn't need approval.

Doesn't either do whatever.

So that was, yeah, that was my very first job.

So, yeah, if someone wanted to do those movies or any of those things, oh, what's wrong with those?

They're freaking great.

And his work and those things is impeccable.

Yeah, it is.

All right, Olofan, I adore you.

This has been a real pleasure.

Pleasure.

Thank you

for having me and being such a lovely conversation.

Everybody watch Alien Earth on FX Hulu and also watch Stick on Apple Plus.

And then look look for both of us in the Cliff Booth spin-off.

I can't wait for that.

I sure hope there weren't any mistakes in that episode, but we'll find out when my mom, Mrs.

Monica, comes in and tells us what was wrong.

Oh, your birthday present finally came on your 39th birthday.

No.

How long ago?

24th till now.

Three weeks?

It's not that long.

Okay.

I'm excited.

I'm going to unbox it.

I'm going to toss it to you the way you do.

Oh, it's light.

Good cat.

Thank you.

I'm excited.

Okay, you did a really nice rap.

Thank you.

You know, that's one of the things I pride myself on.

Yes, for the listeners.

That's great.

Ooh.

Oh.

Uh-oh.

Okay.

It's for your exercise routine.

It's for my exercise routine.

I'm seeing a red Nike box.

Trusted brand we love Nike.

We love.

Ooh.

tell me if you like them oh my god these are so nice

okay they're beautiful tennis shoes shoes yeah what do we call them shoes shoes we're gonna stick with shoes on this one they're white with the navy

the coolest navy um

but they're like a creamy white these are gorgeous i love them thank you i thought they were very money thank you

they're stylish like i can wear these um on and off the court it's the only thing i know how to pick out for people is shoes i think it's like or cars cars are shoes well i would ask people to show me one of those go to the youtube and to see what a gorgeous shoe

it's okay they're they're durable your foot is so tiny it's comical

I love these.

Oh, good.

Okay, I have to tell you something.

Okay.

So you kind of alluded once before when you ordered the present

that it was like, oh, maybe I said something about my gym or like going to try to get a gym.

Oh, yeah.

And then you were like, oh, yeah, your birthday present has to do with that.

So in my head, I was like, oh, he got me like weights or something.

Oh, sure.

And I was like, and that's really nice.

Yeah.

But also, but like, I don't know what kind of get.

And I already have some stacked, but then when I

actually have a gym, I'm going to, it's going to be uniform.

Where are those weights going to go?

So, you know, I had a tiny bit of anxiety about it.

So I am thrilled.

Okay, great, great.

You're relieved is what you are.

They're also great.

Yeah, yeah.

And a nice bit of relief.

So, anywho, I love my present, but we have another thing to open.

Yeah, I went to go get the mail today, and there was just a random box that said armchair expert and Kristen on it.

And I opened up this box, and lo and behold, you and I had a couple of gifties.

Which is so exciting because you said where that where it's from.

Yeah.

And I didn't really put, I, my first thought was like, did we mention them on the show?

We must have.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because you wanted a specific condie.

Okay.

So Susie Condi, incredible brand, clothing brand.

Yes, I brought Susie Condi up recently

because when I was in New York and I ran into the star of all stars, Martha Stewart, Stewart, she was in head-to-toe yellow condi and it was so chic and so good.

And I wanted it.

I wanted it bad.

Yeah.

So

we have gifts.

Okay, well.

We're going to open them up.

If yours fits me, can I have it?

Yeah.

I already want more.

This is how life is.

Ding, ding, ding.

The lottery.

We'll get to that.

Okay.

As you guys can see, we're not in ballerina outfits.

Right.

Oh, my God.

My, I have multiple items.

Oh, I I have a sock hat.

Oh, boy.

Oh, boy.

The card says, thank you, Monica and Dax for the fantastic shout out.

So very grateful.

Love Susie.

From Suzy.

Susie herself.

We're keeping this.

Oh, my gosh.

Okay, that's...

Oh, you have a cute beanie.

How do I look in it?

You look great.

It's very cute.

Okay.

Oh, my God.

I'm.

And then what do you have there?

What's well, tell me more.

Looks like whenever we have Martha on, I get to match her.

That's what she was wearing.

Yes.

She was wearing.

This is the yellow condi.

I've been wanting this so badly.

Sure.

This is nice.

I'm thrilled.

I hope we have her on and I hope you guys can be matching.

You know, I did that when I did Jay Leno's car show.

Yeah.

I went in denim on denim to match him.

And you know, he didn't even notice.

Yeah.

I can see that.

Yeah.

Okay.

This is what I'll do when Martha comes on.

Okay.

I'll wear my condi and I'll just come in and I'll just sit and I'll

be like, yeah, like I'm, this is my red.

This is Rex.

And then wait for her to say, Monica, I have that outfit.

And then we'll bond.

And then

she'll invite me over.

Can I suggest something?

She's like, cooked chicken for me.

I would go, oh, this old thing?

I've had it for a decade.

Yeah.

You get a little upper hand on her of how long you've had so that she's imitating you when we know and the listeners know you're imitating her.

That's right.

Okay, but I have also been gifted something else.

I had no idea.

Playful summer pants?

I'm whatever this is.

I'm, these are yellow striped.

Oh,

oh,

skirt.

Those are

such a you skirt.

It's crazy.

Could not be more me.

Oh my God, I love it.

Oh, and look at my subtle.

People are mad at this.

Yes, I'd be furious.

Oh, cute.

I have to to cut this whole thing, but look at this

sweatshirt.

You have a black set.

Oh, this is a good outfit.

I just want to do, I want to do a PSA.

Ferrari, if you think there's no way for me to pull a car in here and do the same thing, if you give me a Ferrari, I'll figure that out.

I'll remove this table.

Oh, man.

Yeah, the pants.

I'm afraid I might get aroused in these.

You might.

Or hopeful I might.

Oh.

What do they call that?

Occupational hazard.

Yeah.

Those are so nice.

Okay.

Let's plan a day where we both wear our condies.

Maybe we could watch a bunch of TV, ding, ding, ding, transitioning into a topic we want to discuss.

That's right.

Yes.

Okay.

Occasionally you and I will see something that we're like, well, this has to be discussed.

And in this case, as luck would have it, you're like, please, before the next fact check, watch this.

And I'm like, watched it last night.

Yep.

Unknown number?

Yes.

Rob, have you seen it?

No.

Oh.

Unknown Number.

Baby, it's on Netflix.

It's a documentary on Netflix that everyone's talking about.

It's called Unknown Number.

It is based off an article, not based.

There was an article that came out in the cut last year, two years ago or something,

that went into detail of this story.

And now it's a doc.

which is fascinating because even if you've read the cut article, which I had,

it is worth watching.

Like, even though, so we'll tell people, if you don't want spoilers, you're going to need to skip ahead because we're going to give some spoilers away.

Okay.

Well, I was just about to ask, how do we even discuss this without the big spoiler?

Because then there's really nothing to discuss other than that.

We're discussing the spoiler.

So people have to skip forward.

Skip forward.

Yes.

Okay.

And do skip forward.

I don't want you to miss this, this incredible doc.

Watch the doc and then come back to this because you're going to want to hear what we're about to say.

But yeah,

it's a wild story

about two kids.

Young lovers, 14 and 15 or 14 and 14.

In Ding, Ding, Ding, Michigan.

Yeah.

And we're listening, Michigan over-indexes on dateline episodes, and now this, you know.

Yeah.

We got the best fresh water, but we also have some of this.

Yeah,

these kids start receiving these really

intense, horrific text messages.

And they can't track where they're coming from.

Well, because they can't just block the number because the person's using a number generator.

So every time the text comes in, it's from a different number.

Yes.

And it starts off with like, you know, he's going to break up with you.

He doesn't like you.

He thinks you're ugly.

You know, then it escalates to like, you need to give him blowjobs.

He wants to, you know, he wants to fuck and you need to let him finger you.

Like, oh, crazy.

So, so sexual.

Yeah.

And so, um, like you anorexic bitch, like

really explicit, really horrific.

And with a lot of knowledge about the whereabouts of these two at all times.

So it's like immediately people are like, well, this is someone in our friendship group or in our circle that knows we were at this basketball game and this and that or going to that party or not going to the party.

And so sadly for these two, like they get really suspicious of their friends they have no choice but to try to figure out who it is yep they um

it it it sows all of this anxiety within their relationship that i thought was so sad i love them as a couple they ultimately succumbed to the pressure succumbed succame either way okay and this goes on for an eternity yeah and they break up yep but it doesn't stop it goes on for i think 19 months

and it is escalating the entire time.

The texter is calling the young girl

anorexic, flat-chested, flat-butt, kill yourself.

Kill yourself.

Lots of kill yourselves.

If you don't, we will.

If you don't, we will.

Many of those.

I mean, these, like, yeah, like 30, 40, 50 texts a day these kids are receiving.

Okay, so now here's the first point of like a little bit of my frustration, which was,

huh,

I was a little maddened by the fact that like, there's a very easy solution.

Just get rid of the phones.

Or just fucking be done with phones.

It's ruining your life.

Yep.

You can carry on just fine without a phone.

Exactly.

Get a landline.

The principal.

Ding, ding, ding.

Ding, ding, ding.

The principal.

A lot of people asked what it was.

In fact, so many people.

No.

So many people are interested in the landline.

They don't know what a landline is.

Well, no, just they want to know this thing we got that goes over the internet.

Oh, people are really into it.

It's called tin can.

So instead of me responding to everyone who asked that, it's called Tin Can.

Okay, great.

But yeah, the principal, of course, like the parents are at the principal's office a lot, like constantly.

The police get involved.

Exactly.

And

there's a perfect red herring.

There's a girl that they think is a mean girl.

Yeah, they think it's Chloe.

And

the principal and the police suggest getting rid of the phones, but the parents are like, no, we need to know who's doing this.

That's like the thing you tell yourself, or even they were honest about going like, well, then they won.

It's like, no, no, no.

They win if you're miserable.

Exactly.

That's how they win.

Exactly.

I just was like, I don't know.

It was this incredible

example of like how we've convinced ourselves these things are essential.

Like the thought of not having a phone was like, it's not an option.

It's not an option.

And this thing is destroying.

Every minute it's going off and you're reading it.

It's destroying your day every day,

breaking up your relationship.

And like, you can't not have it.

That's what that was driving me crazy.

I wanted to walk in and go like, guys, this is so handleable.

Get fucking ditch the phones.

You're in 10th grade.

Exactly.

But also, like, you know, they do show them doing like TikToks and stuff.

Like, it's a huge, it is a, it's maybe easier for us to say, just get rid of your phone because we didn't grow up.

We weren't 14 when it was a huge part of our life.

I don't blame them.

I blame like society and what's happened.

Yeah.

That thing feels essential to life.

I know.

It's horrible.

But even the parent, the parents were saying, like,

no, we don't want to get it.

They said, no, we, it, then we won't know who it is.

It's like, well, no, you're not going to know who it is.

Yeah.

Well, it turns out we do find out who it is.

And I'll say while I was watching it, I started thinking, well,

this has got to be one of the parents.

Because it's generally someone close to you that's trying to hurt you.

I mean, this is like just statistically the truth.

You thought that even from reading the texts?

Yeah.

I just was like, this is a dock.

Right.

We've already exposed the red herring.

I'm just thinking structurally.

Like some big twist is coming.

Yeah.

And who else would it be other than the parents?

But why I kept talking myself out of that is I was like, All of the parents are participating in this dock.

So weirdly, it can't be them because why the fuck if they did this, would they participate in this dock?

It is the mom.

It's her mom.

Her mom.

Telling her daughter to give blowjobs, kill herself, fuck, suck, kill.

I'm going to kill you.

I mean, it's unimaginably vile.

It is.

Calling her an anorexic bitch.

Yeah.

I mean, it's...

It's so

horrific.

And it's interesting because, you know, we have all these people on this show, which I feel like has changed sort of my level of compassion for like sociopaths.

For people in general.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think my capacity for compassion has increased a ton.

And I often.

Mine too.

Yeah.

Well, you're the reason mine has, I think.

Like maybe,

yeah, I think you bring that.

You bring that perspective a lot.

So it.

Well, thank you so much.

But definitely we've had a bunch where I was like, I gotta.

I gotta recognize these people are struggling.

They need to struggle with that.

Exactly.

No one chose it.

That's normally how I feel.

Yeah.

And I couldn't,

I was searching so deeply for like a piece, like a seed of compassion in me.

And I really couldn't find it.

Yeah.

What's so interesting is they frame it at the end.

And I think it's largely true.

I think he was a Munchausen by proxy situation.

Yeah, like basically like the not even like a medical professional, but like a police officer or the vice principal is like, this is like the new age Munchausen's hurting.

He was the principal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I I was like, but what's so, so yes, I agree with that.

Like, A, she got the attention and compassion of the community.

She then got to console the daughter all the time.

I think she was addicted to that pattern of being the hero.

That's very Munchausen.

The kid goes to you for comfort.

But what's crazy, and this makes no sense.

This is like a logical hiccup in my mind.

Yeah.

I somehow find it more understandable that you would be poisoning your child and making them seem to have a disease than I do about sending them these messages

saying you should kill yourself and you're terrible and all this stuff.

Me too.

But that's nuts.

I mean,

one parent's actively poisoning means.

No, but it's, it's, it's a,

I think there's, well, I don't know.

I guess you disassociate probably both times, but I feel like if you have Munchausen, a traditional Munchausen by proxy and you're poisoning them, like

you've convinced yourself, there is something about them we've had, you know, an expert on, like,

I think they are convincing themselves it's for their good.

They're sick.

Yeah.

Or they're protecting them from this scary world.

Which this woman kind of.

I mean, I think they just want attention for themselves.

The Moonshot's done by proxy people.

They love going on the talk shows and my poor daughter.

But they also like the caring for.

Like it's really deep and strange.

And again, that you're right.

I can find a seed of compassion there.

But the idea of a mother

with her own hands writing these.

No, I think about sending that.

Well, not even the sexual stuff, just the hurtful stuff that was created.

Insecurity, the notion of sending that to Lincoln or Delta.

Like,

this is the problem.

Like, I actually can't even remotely

to watch her take on that terrible insecurity and ruminate on that.

And then the,

what's on full display too is the, is

how addictive the victim pattern also is.

So it's like she's finding out real time her mom did this.

That is like the craziest scene of the whole thing.

Yeah, because the police have a body cam on.

And so you see that footage.

Yeah.

And they're saying to the mom, we know you sent these texts.

And then again, there's so many predictable, weird things.

They're predictable.

And also they're always so

confusing, which is like, I'm going to admit to 91% of this.

Yeah.

Like, we all have these little, it's like, we'll come almost all the way clean.

It's like we hold on to 9%, which nobody's buying.

No.

Like, because the mom is like, oh, well, I didn't start it, but I did carry it on.

Exactly.

Obviously not.

No.

And then the other,

it's also multifaceted.

It's dynamic.

Because also another theory was pitched, which is she was in love with her daughter's boyfriend.

And I think that's true, too.

It probably is at play

because she was going to all of his games without the daughter and cutting up his steak

washing his pants but then but cutting up his steak though is a little bit in that like caretaking nurturing role

oh it's so

it's up there with sick like it's up there with that uh horrendous doc dear zachary i mean it's like it's in that what happened again in that she killed her kids.

Yeah, she killed her kids.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Again, no one's going to like this.

No one's going to like this.

Okay.

This is.

You think this is worse.

There's something about it.

It's not worse, obviously, because no one died, but there's something more twisted.

I think it gets to why we explain everything, which is like.

When we hear about something that is so horrendous, we need some explanation that makes everyone else feel safe that it won't happen to them or that they don't know someone like that.

And so I think all that's happened is like we have a little bit of experience with people killing their children.

Yeah.

We have experience with

Moonshoo's and by proxy.

And we're like, okay, we already have a category we feel safe with.

Like, yeah, well, they're in that category.

Right.

I don't know why that's comforting, but we go, oh, they're that.

This is like, well, this is a whole new thing.

As truly unimaginable as it is, what we can say is some

people have such crazy mental illness that they kill their kids.

Like,

you can say the word some people, like, it's more than just one story.

Okay.

And you, and some people have Munchausen's by proxy.

This is new.

This is brand new.

Never heard of anything like this.

But then that principal made such a good point where he's like, it's just Munchausen's catching up with technology.

There was another thing I was observing, which is, and this is a gender thing, which is, again i i have a very kind of like um archetypal crazy guy the guy who does that who like kills his family and commits suicide he's like ang angry rageful yep feeling emasculated all these things

just i have an archetype for it right i'm starting to see through these docs because i've now seen a handful these docs where it's like the woman who acted like she was abducted and then the woman who accused her husband of killing you know like there's a batch of crazy women

and they participate in the interviews and there's some crazy, the thing that was freaking me out the most was her talking about doing it.

Disassociation.

It's a part of it.

There's a female craziness that's on high display in some of these docs where I'm like, oh yeah, that's, that's the woman's version, which I just hadn't seen a lot.

There wasn't these docs growing up and I'm like, oh, that's how women get fucking crazy, right?

Like, I know how the men do it.

That's pretty well documented.

Men do it too.

They, they also can manipulate.

And it's not like that.

Yeah, but there comes like when they catch those guys, there's like an arrogance to them.

They think they're smarter than the person.

Like it's just a very

kind of well-known archetype for it.

Yeah.

And the female, like we had like Lizzie Borden.

Throughout history, we haven't had a ton of these women to observe who are also bad shit like the guys.

But now through these docs, I've seen now five or six of them.

And I'm like, oh, yeah, there's a female version of this.

And that's what this is.

And like, her just kind of like, I guess here's what it is.

The move for the female psychopath is like to constantly turn it into them being a victim or like searching throughout the manipulation for compassion.

Cause the interviewer offers up like, maybe you were talking to yourself.

And she's like, oh, yeah, that's sympathetic.

Yeah.

She's like, yeah, maybe I was.

And it's like,

and clearly she had never heard of that.

Like, that clearly wasn't true.

That wasn't happening.

It wasn't happening.

Oh, great.

I'm a victim here.

This was like one of the darkest parts.

Like she shows, in my opinion, I mean, she was like crying, I guess, but like

very little remorse from what I could pick up on.

And also,

she was like, people do illegal things all the time.

If you've ever drank and and drove, then you've done something illegal too.

People just, people don't realize that.

And we're all doing something illegal.

I'm just like a normal person that did, that drank and drived, drunk and drive, drank and drove.

It was so

wild to hear that.

Like, not all things are equal.

Some people do that, though, when they're rationalizing bad things.

And I think we've, we, to some extent, we all do, do that here.

We're like, but we, everyone does bad shit.

We have a sense of how preposterous

the analogy is.

And she was out to lunch on that one.

And she went to jail.

She went to jail for 19 months, which, which in my opinion, like

not enough time.

Cause she's also not being, she wasn't prosecuted.

I think she went for like cybercrime or whatever.

No, um, what did she go?

Stalking.

Oh, stalking.

Stalking a minor.

Why wasn't she in jail for sexual harass, sexual assault?

Like, the things that are being said

are.

Like, you guys have to watch.

She was a child.

Yes.

Yeah.

Like, if I sent those texts to a 14-year-old girl, there would be some charge against me.

Rightly so.

Yeah, rightly so.

She should be a registered sex offender.

Exactly.

I feel absolutely heartbroken for the girl because her life has been ruined and she still needs her a mom.

That part was so heartbreaking.

She's heartbreaking.

She still wants to be.

Of course.

She needs to be loved by a mom.

She still needs that.

That's the hard part about the doc.

They're still

so young.

Like all these people, the kids are participating and they're young.

Like they have these young brains.

They just are still processing it and dealing with it, but in a way that only a kid, like a kid can.

They're not adults yet.

So they haven't been able to really see this clearly.

And you kind of you almost need, because when you're that age, you don't think you're some vulnerable little fawn.

You feel like kind of adult.

You got to be.

38 and then look at a 14 year old.

Imagine sending.

And then you go like, oh, right.

That's really twisted.

Really bad.

Because you feel like a peer at that age to everyone.

Now, here's a moral

about the dock.

Yeah, because I have moral issues with that.

Like, I think they participated because you're in a very small, boring town in Michigan, and this is an exciting opportunity to be on TV.

I don't think this, this story happens in New York City.

I don't think the people participate.

Like, there's something about the boredom.

and the chance at something spectacular that would be appealing to participants.

Well, the mother.

I mean, especially the mother.

No, but she's sick.

I mean, that's why, like, her participating actually makes sense to me.

She is deeply sick still.

She has,

I know, this is like the craziest mental illness ever.

And it is, you know, buoyed by attention.

And this is just another way to get attention, which is why I have some moral issues with it.

Cause, like, if part of the disease is the attention, the moon, yeah, we just gave her so much.

Yeah.

Even if it's negative, maybe she likes it.

Of course.

That's what Munchausen's is.

It is negative.

Well, no, there's generally they're sympathetic to you that you have a sick child and you're the victim and everyone feels bad for you and they send you food and they put you on TV.

But it's still also like there's even as a villain.

Because what I think is her arrogance was like, oh, I'll still be able to twist this as I always do, even in front of this camera, that I'm a victim.

And they show some emails exchanges between her and the daughter when she's in prison.

And they're also like...

Even the loving ones are.

They're horrible.

I guess the thing I'm

oh, oh, and the moment where the girl is finding out and the mom is physically consoling her.

Yeah, yeah.

That image of the mom consoling the child.

When she's really consoling herself, she's so nervous that.

Because all she's got as well is her daughter.

She's like lying to her husband.

They have an interesting thing.

Yeah.

So all she's got is the daughter too.

And she's really panicked.

She may have lost a daughter.

My, I just imagine myself talking to her and the amount of frustration I, I would be like, stop.

No, that didn't happen.

Exactly.

And she wouldn't care.

Yeah.

I like, I can tell I would be completely ineffective in trying to

find firm ground.

Yeah.

And it's, what do you do?

How does someone get treatment who you can't even go like, stop, stop?

Yeah.

Nobody here thinks that.

I keep thinking, like, the interviewer should have been able to say, no, no, no, hold on.

You know, that's bullshit.

I know that.

Everyone here knows.

Nobody's buying this.

So let's try the real thing.

No.

It wouldn't have worked.

That is mental illness.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, this is obviously the most extreme version of it, but it's, it's, and I would say it's also and can be addiction.

Like

you can be like, hello, we all know we all know.

Someone thinks you're functioning.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But the person can't see it, like truly cannot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because

you can't.

It's not an option.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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Now,

I'm open enough to go, I guarantee we could see a two-hour dock about that woman's childhood.

Yes.

And I might.

end up feeling really terrible for it.

Well, she's I can't imagine she got this way because everything was

honky dory i agree but still yeah i know but still there's no even because she does say she says she's had a traumatic childhood she said she was raped but that yeah see

i know i know sometimes i hear these horrible stories about people's childhood we have somebody we have somebody coming up on the show um a young man who had a really tough really tough oh yeah yeah yeah childhood you are hearing it and

kind of marvel that they're normal as normal as they can be because they've also gotten, gone down a lot of paths.

And when you hear it, you're like, well, duh.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Duh, they've gone down all these paths.

There's no other, like, of course.

That's what it adds up to.

Yeah.

And then, and there's so much compassion for that.

This is not that.

It's like, it doesn't matter how bad of a childhood you had.

It doesn't matter.

This doesn't translate.

No.

No.

What would you do?

Okay, really?

So at one point, the dad is finding out.

Yeah.

And he comes rushing home.

He goes inside.

But he tells the mom to leave.

And he basically is like, you need to leave right now.

Or kind of like, I'm going to kill you.

If Kristen was sending those texts to our daughter.

And for years, you guys have together been, quote, trying to figure this out.

Yes.

I'm consoling her.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What do you do?

I just really wouldn't ever want to be in that situation.

Just because my kids, my kids change everything about what I would do.

Exactly.

We were talking about this the other day.

It's like, I'm, I am anti-death penalty.

Right.

I would kill anyone who hurt my daughters.

Yeah.

I just would.

That's what I would do.

Yeah.

Um, so I would, I don't, I would not want to be around.

I would, but I'd be the same as the guy, like, get her the fuck away from me forever because I don't think I trust someone that could have hurt my little girl like that.

Then how would you feel?

Like the daughter.

Well, then you got a whole nother thing.

So then I got to go, like, how do I best help my daughter who still needs a mom?

This is what she got.

No, that's not how do I well, minimally you're not like, okay, you don't love your mom anymore.

She's out.

Of course.

Right.

So there's there's going to be a whole process where I'm going to have to table how I feel about her to help this person I love.

I'm struggling with this because like I understand

the daughter, right?

Like I understand her being still so young that the loss of her mother is like too overwhelming.

She wants her still.

She wants her.

Of course she does.

But if I'm like the dad, I would feel a responsibility

to somehow get Stockholm syndrome.

Exactly.

Get into the daughter's head and say, it's okay for you to miss your mom.

And like, it's really understandable,

but she is sick and is not going to get better.

And we have, you have to look at her as if she's died.

I'm not sure that those are the steps.

I don't know what, but how like it's not.

I don't know that if on top of the other thing, you're now dealing with, you still love your, this is the sadness of family dysfunction.

It's like you love your dad who

molested you.

Yeah.

You know, like these are really complicated things.

I remember what my falling out with my pippy, my mom's grandpa, who I loved and had a great relationship with.

We would go canoeing all the time together.

We'd go camping.

I adored him.

We were at the campfire one night after canoeing and he said, your your dad doesn't love you.

And I was like, you're out.

I don't ever want someone to tell me my dad.

Like, that doesn't.

Yeah.

I don't, I know what you're now as an adult.

I know what he was trying to do.

Like, your dad should be there for you.

If he loved you, he would.

You deserve it.

Like, whatever he was trying to do.

Yeah.

I just heard like, well, on top of you, on top of him not being around, you're telling me he doesn't love me.

Yeah.

Fuck you.

Right.

So I just wrote, I wrote him out for a dad that wasn't even around.

But I don't think you'd have to say she doesn't love you.

Like, I'm not trying to say that.

I'm just saying it's a very delicate.

I need my dad to love me on planet Earth, whether, you know, and I think she needs her mom to love her.

I think that's some part of it.

It can be that she does.

Yeah.

She loves you.

Too much, maybe even.

She loves you in the way she can love.

Yeah.

But

the way she loves is

unacceptable to you for you to grow into who you need to be.

I think my approach would kind of be like,

I understand if you want to continue to have a relationship with her, I would probably have one with my mom.

But I think you're going to have to flip the dynamic, unfortunately, which is like, you're the parent.

She's the kid.

She's incapable.

You can't teach a 17-year-old to be a parent, though, to a mom.

I think just mentally you have to go like, okay, I have a very injured child.

I'm going to love the child,

but I'm going to have to be the one in charge of the direction it goes in.

I don't think, I think adults can do that,

but I don't think a child can do that.

Like, I, I mean, yeah, I, I've had, I, you know, I, I have some family stuff too, where, um, there are people that I can't know anymore, right?

But I still love them.

Right.

And I'll always love them.

But I know that for the sake of everyone, like there just can't be a relationship.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's what I guess I would hope to try to send to her.

Like, you're always going to have love there and she will love you.

But for the sake of everyone, there can't be a relationship.

But I don't know.

It's so hard.

Now, this is unrelated, but it's related.

So in my meeting on Monday night, we were discussing Someone was talking about like potentially their issues that they have in their marriage because they're trying to get their wife to do something that they wish their mom had done.

And the therapists are trying to point that out.

And I was thinking about it while he was saying it.

And I'm like, yeah, that's totally a valid explanation and likely true.

But then I was like, but also

the opposite's true, which is if you have the perfect mother,

you think you're going to have a wife that's going to be your mother.

Right.

We all are so misled.

We have these parents if we have good ones.

Yeah.

Like I think this about my daughters all the time.

I'm like, you guys are delusional.

If you think you're going to marry a guy who's going to do what I do, that's not what a partner can do.

Like, I'm going to love you blindly, no matter if you murder people or whatever.

And we all are looking for that.

Yeah.

But unfortunately, that's not the, that's not what you get.

And then I was even thinking, were we better off when parents were like kind of involved?

Because then your expectation, at least of your partner, wasn't this thing that now all kids are mostly getting now.

Like, it's just interesting.

You're never going to have a mom.

Like, if you're a dude, you're not going to, you're not going to have a partner that's your mom.

I agree to son.

Okay.

So

I think the child-parent relationship is singular.

There is no, you're never replicating it.

Right.

But I do think, I don't think you should,

I don't think you should be able to map on the relationship you have.

Also, you shouldn't want to because you shouldn't.

want to be a child in your

partnership.

Well, I think it's natural to want that because it's so nice to be spoiled and have someone do your laundry and cook your food and like care about you if you have a cut on your finger.

Like, of course, you'd want that, but you, but you want to be.

You want it when it's convenient.

Right.

And then you're like, get out of here, mom.

And then you want equality when it's convenient.

Like, that's the whole issue.

But, like, I do think, though, we are, we shouldn't look for that, but we should.

I, I think maybe I'm delusional,

but I feel

like you should have earned

grace in your partnership.

When you do accidentally become

your most kid self,

that there is not really a risk, unless this is a pattern.

It keeps going and it's a huge problem.

But you shouldn't be like, I can't be my base self.

Here's the difference, in my opinion.

Of course you can be that.

Yeah.

But it is on you as an adult in a relationship.

You have to repair that.

You have to go to that person and say, I was acting terribly.

I was acting terribly because of this.

I'm so sorry.

And it was not your fault.

And you had no responsibility to fix me.

You know, like, you got to, but you don't have to do that as a kid.

You get to be a little shit.

Yeah.

And then you get to be in a good mood and everyone's happy.

You don't ever have to repair.

But some people.

Because you can't just be an asshole and then not own it.

And

we all are.

I just, I want to be, we all

do

that.

Like, we all are our worst selves around people we love.

Selves around people we love.

And then also, I would say that many times I think we've all also let people off the hook.

We've all been like, they're doing this thing.

I hate this thing.

Yeah.

But I'm deciding to not care today.

Yeah, that's them.

That's them.

That's them.

That's them today.

That's not going to be, if it's them for the next year, we have a problem.

But

I think that to me is part of what love is.

It's like, I see you, you're in your worst, you're being your worst self.

And today I'm deciding that it's okay.

Yes, absolutely.

I'm just saying it's very natural for us to desire the easiest thing because that's how we are.

We're all looking for unconditional love.

You get it.

And as much as we say partners have unconditional love, that's not true.

And it shouldn't be true.

That's right.

You should, you should uphold whatever covenant you guys strike.

Yeah.

And you just don't have to do that with your parents.

Yeah.

Like it was concluded.

We, so then we chatted about it after the meeting.

I was like, it's funny.

You know, I said, it's funny because if you had the opposite, you might still have the same thing.

Like you need your wife to tell you all the time she loves you and blah, blah, blah.

Yeah.

And we said, yeah, the sad reality is like men, if they got to pick, they would have a mother from the time they woke up till 7 p.m.

And then they would walk out the door.

And then this total raging horny slut would walk in who's not your mom.

And then you would have that in the evening.

Like, if that's the id designed what they want, well, it's the Madonna whore, yes, like it's there for a reason.

It's like you want to be a little boy that they're so proud of all the time and showering and praise, and then you somehow want them to be this creature, yeah, that's not your mom.

Yeah, yeah, and I'm sure women have a similar thing happening with their partners.

I am trying to think, like, what is the expectation

of

men?

Maybe the dichotomy that a lot of women you have to be safe but also dangerous yeah that's probably right mixed with i also think like in that same vein you need to be the protector

but also you need to be like hyper vulnerable yeah and that's a hard that's hard yeah yeah yeah so you gotta learn which time is which we're all

It's amazing anyone's in any relationship.

Okay.

Yeah.

That was hefty.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let's do some facts.

He is.

Okay.

Okay.

We did not want to embarrass him in front of him, but he is 57.

And I was, I swear I was looking at

31 years old.

31 I met.

Yeah.

With gray hair.

That's it.

If you, if he dyed the hair, although I love the hair.

It looks so good.

God, this guy, effortless.

Effortless.

Man, he was really charming and attractive.

And the full package.

Athlete.

We did not dive into Cornelius Vanderbilt as much as I would have loved to.

It's true.

But maybe the audience is grateful for that.

Yeah, but why?

Is he related?

Yes,

he is his fourth great-great-grandfather on his paternal side.

No way.

Yes, Cornelius.

And for people who don't know, Cornelius was...

He was called the first tycoon.

He was the first person to have $100 million in America.

Child of Dutch immigrants.

And he had a little sailboat and he got good at crossing the Hudson.

And then he got a ferry.

And then he built this ferry empire and it led to railroads.

And he would run his ferry into the sides of other ferries.

He fought the middleweight champion in the streets of New York during the parade, St.

Patty's Day parade.

He was an indomitable force in American history.

And that's his, that's crazy.

So is he related to Anderson Cooper?

Whoa.

Third cousins once removed.

Third cousins once removed.

I can't do the once removed.

I don't understand that term.

Yeah.

Wow.

That's cool.

Yeah.

Okay.

I just wonder, like, he's probably not as fascinated with Cornelius Vanderbilt as I am.

Right.

Well, this goes back to when you were on

Skip's.

Finding My Roots.

Finding My Roots, where you and Seth Meyers, according to him, could kind of care less about your ancestry and you don't find pride in it.

Right, right, right.

But you are expecting Timothy to find pride in it.

That's kind of what I'm acknowledging.

Like that's weird to me.

And yet, of course, I probably would be the same way.

Right.

But I'd be delighted to know I was related to that

old hickory.

Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah.

Okay.

I have a huge,

huge fact.

Okay.

And I'm embarrassed and I have egg on my face.

Okay.

It's a moment of reckoning.

Yes.

Let me pull it up.

Let me reckon.

Let me atone.

Georgia SAT scores being so low that we couldn't go to nationals

is not true.

Okay.

What happened?

I don't know what happened.

I don't know why

I know that.

Why, I mean, why I thought that.

Yeah.

I, I, I know we were told that.

Okay.

Okay.

What do we think could be the explanation if not that?

So I asked my friend who was on my squad and she was like, Yeah, that sounds kind of familiar.

I just remember we couldn't go past state.

Okay.

So then I texted my coach, my husband.

Coach.

Yes.

And let's just recap.

You adore her.

I adore her.

Kelly.

She's one of your heroes.

I love her so much.

Changed my life.

Yeah.

I said, hi, I have a fact check question.

Wasn't the reason we couldn't go on past, couldn't go on past state to nationals because Georgia SAT scores were too low.

Am I making that up?

She said, LOL, no.

Maybe I told y'all that because I wanted y'all to make good test scores.

I can't remember, but that's definitely not true.

It's because Georgia will not let you go past the state level

GHSA rule.

So still you're not allowed to go past level, but it had nothing to do with those scores.

But had the previous year, you had gone a national?

No, no.

Just like you're never allowed.

Okay, no nationals for y'all.

And I said, I've been spreading lies.

Okay.

I'll have to clear the air.

She said, that's hilarious.

I actually have no idea where you got that from because it isn't anything I told you.

She said, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard.

Did you talk about it on the podcast?

I'm cracking up.

And then she said, suddenly all the cheerleaders in Georgia start studying extra for the SAT.

Yeah.

So I have, maybe I dreamed it.

Maybe, maybe,

no, this is a, this is a bad bad faith, but maybe you were like, I fucking worked my ass off and I went to three tutors so I could get a great SAT.

And I know these bitches are not studying.

Maybe you had it in your head that no one was pulling their weight.

No, no.

Because you're not understanding.

And I tried to make this clear in the episode.

I'm not sure if I made it clear.

I found this to be a gift.

I was so happy that we weren't allowed to go past.

Because you didn't want to find out.

Exactly.

I didn't want to find out.

and find out yeah we did the best we could possibly do yeah if we had to go on to the next one what if it's like small you know big fish

40 exactly like i didn't want to know that would you rather finish 49th or 50th oh my god it's a great i think i can predict for both of us and i think you could too 50th for me for you yeah

I think, I guess I would say 49th.

Yeah, one better.

Because at least it's like, well, at least we're not the worst and i'd rather like it's better story if i go we finished deadlift you want extremes exactly if i'm not in the top three then put me at 50th i know i to me if you're not in the top one kill me kill me dead

kill me dead chariot rock oh my god kill me charitro

Wow, so that's tough.

Again, I admire your integrity for outing yourself.

It's like one of those things.

Like I would have written that in a book.

Yeah.

That's okay.

I believed it.

I know.

It's true.

It didn't to you.

What can we trust?

We can't trust anything.

Oh, man.

Did we even win?

That's why we need a little humility, all of us.

I know it.

We don't know what we know.

Now.

When did the Soho house open in LA?

2010.

2010.

We had, that was a fun little thing on Soho House.

Okay.

It's 400 meters.

That was.

Yeah.

No one likes it, but everyone loves it.

Yeah.

Is the 400 meter a quarter of a mile?

Yeah.

It's 0.248

with some other numbers after that.

So you were right.

Right.

It's just from my drag racing days.

You said it was from the metric day.

Metric field day.

Yeah, metric field day where you won the business.

I just know it's 1320 feet.

Got it.

Okay.

I looked up what are the most calorically expending sports.

Cycling.

So running is generally considered the sport that burns the most calories.

Okay.

Then swimming 600 to 800 calories per hour.

Cycling, 500 to 700 calories per hour.

Then we're looking at boxing, 600 to 800 calories per hour.

Well, it seems like that should be above cycling then.

So that's confusing.

Okay, rowing, 500 to 700.

Hiking,

400 to 600.

Basketball, 500 to 700.

Okay, I'm doing two of those.

That's not bad.

Great.

I'll live with that.

Oh, wow.

Bowling.

No.

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

How many calories an hour?

12.

273.

I mean, you do have to put like effort.

Sure, but what do you get by just sitting for an hour?

If your body is burning 2,000 calories just to be alive.

Right.

Laying in bed all day.

Is it?

Mine's not.

I'm going to ask if you laid in bed all day.

How many?

You have to put in a weight.

I will.

I'm not afraid.

How many calories would a 50-year-old man who is six foot two and 200 pounds burn if he laid in bed all day?

Please don't lay in bed all day.

You have a lot to live for.

1,924 calories I would burn just by lying there.

Wow.

So divided by 24, that's that's virtually 100 100 calories an hour.

Okay.

Of just sitting.

And what is bowling?

200.

200 what?

273.

So really about 173.

Well, because also you are sitting a lot for bowling.

Yes, entirely.

And then all the you say, how many.

How many times, I guess, okay, okay, we can do this.

Yeah.

How many times are you getting up?

There are 10 frames.

Okay.

And so you're getting up 10 times.

Yeah.

So it's 10 ups and downs, 10 squats.

And arm movement.

And then the heavy ball.

Hold the, yeah.

Farmers carry five inches.

Uh-huh.

The throw, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If that's your primary source of cardio and calorie expenditure, you're you're just going to have to watch your intake a lot.

No, I think that's actually pretty good because you're only doing 10 things an hour and you're burning an extra 173 calories for just five minutes.

Right, but we don't know that maybe tapping your foot while sitting.

Anyways, anyways, we get.

We get it.

We get it.

Okay, soccer's on this list.

That wasn't on that list.

That's excruciating.

Yeah, lots of movement.

Okay,

the average lifespan of a guinea pig,

five to seven years.

Oh, wow, that's a lot longer than I thought.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I thought they were around for months.

Oh, no, five to seven years.

You're just always, you only hear stories about him dying.

You never ever hear stories like, I was playing with my guinea pig and he did the funniest thing.

They don't, I don't know that anyone plays with him or they do anything.

You just hear about when they were purchased and when they die.

Yeah.

Well, that's why his daughter didn't love it.

Yeah.

Now,

what episode of Sex in the City was he in?

He played Sam.

It was called Valley of the 20-something Guys, and it was episode four, season one.

Wow, right out of the gates.

Okay.

Do AIs have their own language that humans can't decipher?

This is according to the source himself.

AI.

Oh, yeah.

He said, yes, AI systems have been observed creating their own languages to communicate with each other, though the extent to which these are truly undecipherable by humans is still debated and depends on the specific AI system and context.

Projects like Gibberlink have demonstrated AIs developing unique sound-based communication protocols while other models might be using internally generated numeric or vector-based systems that don't directly map to human language concepts.

Oh boy.

Yeah.

Good luck.

And that's it.

That's it.

We'll end on a high note.

Probably they're communicating.

Who needs a billion dollars?

Like, we won't even, we don't need anything.

We're just going to be in our pods.

Yeah.

We'll either, we'll either be in utopia or we'll be perished.

Yeah, exactly.

All right.

Love you.

Love you.

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