Adam Scott Returns

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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert.

I'm Dan Shepard, and I'm joined by the Duchess of Duluth.

Hi.

Our sweetest friend, Adam Scott, is here today.

Yeah.

We discovered, which I would have not guessed.

Yeah.

I forget now.

Seven.

But in seven, in the interview, we realized he was his seventh guest.

It does feel like it's been a long time since he's come on, but not that long.

No, I just didn't think he was that early.

I felt like we were up and running for a while and I reached out me too but yeah um so this is his second trip oh this will be good because i remembered this there's a point in the interview where i go weren't you super into hip-hop yeah you did and he's like no yes and i was so discombobulated by that because I'm like, I know I remember this. Okay.
And it hit me after this interview and I text him and I was like, oh my God, you know what I think I'm confusing is, were you obsessed with do the right thing and Spike Lee and started wearing African gear? And he's like, a hundred percent. So that's what it was.
I knew he went through a phase and he was wearing like the tri-color Africa shirts and it was do the right thing. So I'm not, I wasn't totally insane.
There was some connective tissue. Got it.
That makes sense. Yeah.
And also lends itself to him being a cinephile. Yes.
Big time. Parks and Recreation, Step Brothers, Big Little Lies, Party Down, The Good Place, and alas, arguably the greatest show on television.
Which returns to Apple TV Plus on the 17th, Severance. I can't wait.
So excited. It's so good.
It's so, so good. And I got to do the Severance podcast that they're doing, which is really, really fun.

That's great.

Yeah.

I do recommend, it's been three years.

I have a pretty good memory.

I don't remember anything.

It is so worth starting it from the get-go.

It's so enjoyable.

I had forgotten so many great things about it.

I rewatched it as well.

Oh, you did?

Yeah. I mean, it's just, what a show.
It's fantastic. Please enjoy Adam Scott.
This episode is supported by FX's Dying for Sex, starring Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate. Inspired by a true story, this series follows Molly, who after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis, decides to leave her husband to explore the full breadth of her sexual desires.
She gets the courage and support to go on this sex quest from her best friend Nikki, who stays by her side through it all. FX is Dying for Sex, all episodes streaming April 4th on Hulu.
We are supported by Claude, the AI assistant that just feels different. You know, we're curious about the old artificial intelligence here on the pod.
We are curious. And we always want to give our armcherries the if-you-know-you-know tips.
We sure do. So, they need to meet our new pal, Claude.
While other AIs sound like robots, Claude just gets it with the emotional

intelligence. Whether I'm researching guests or refining my latest meal plan to get Brad Pitt's abs or looking for the best dating advice to give Monica, Claude is the fact checker in your pocket while you're in the armchair.
Well, that's exciting for us. I like having an extra companion.
Welcome to the team, Claude. You can try Claude for free now

at Claude.com. That's

C-L-A-U-D-E

dot com.

He's an upchair expert He's an upchair expert

He's an upchair expert

He's an upchair expert

Steel Steal yourself. Is that the expression? Oh my God.
Steady, steal. Prepare yourself.
Okay. Thank God there's no buttons on your slacks like Camillo Anthony.
That doesn't stop. I wonder what it is I'm supposed to be looking at.
Yes, this is very nice. You're fucking hot as hell.
It adam you're a thousand percent sexy as fuck what is this from i've always known you've had good hair like enviable hair but this photo i can't do things like like you can take big swings with your hair would you acknowledge that and i would say that's a big swing and i think it might be a bit of a miss. No! Oh, my God.
The whole thing just feels a little stupid. No! Adam, listen to me.
You can own this. Can I hold this up? Can you see that, Rob? But look at this.
This is great. You do have great hair.
Fuck, you have good hair. You're welcome.
I'm stealing this from Arnett. He would call it the 40-yard stare, like that Vietnam.
like middle distance stare. Yeah.
Like, am I seeing a sniper in the background that you're not? Right. Me and Pratt used to do it on parks.
It would be saying something stupid to each other and then just kind of breaking into. And it's like, what are you? Exactly.
There is this middle distance where it's so clear i wasn't looking at anything it was just look over there yeah that's maybe part of why it's embarrassing no no no you're so self-deprecating it's a gorgeous picture it is i don't think i'm just gorgeous absolutely gorgeous by the way it's so different in here than where we let's take a second process this. How long have you been in here? Three months.
Because I listen to the show. I don't watch it.
So I don't know. Yeah.
Take it in. First of all, Rob did all this.
It's really nice. Can you believe- It's like homey.
Yeah, it is. And well-designed.
I know you have impeccable taste, Monica. Thank you.
But this wasn't me. This all rob it's really lovely yeah you can almost forget

right that's the dream it's nice and you got the camera sort of hidden it's really nice on a style we have overs in this podcast which people don't have over they line up in a line overs it's so good you're a director you know these things what if i said i'm a director at heart Ew.

That's gross.

I'm a storyteller at heart.

Oh, that's worse.

I'm a director at heart? Ew. That's gross.
I'm a storyteller at heart. That's worse.
I'm even scared to admit out loud how much I hate that because so many people I love I've heard use that term. I know.
And it's true. We are story animals.
Stop it. Just cut it out.
Since the dawn of man, we've gathered around the fire. We tell stories.
We can stop saying that. Yeah.
that yeah i would like to stop yeah you've seen people you love say it right of course yeah i'm sure i've said it jesus we're gonna pull it for the fact check both of you saying a thousand times a stream is there any other current words that piss me off yeah nomenclature that's rubbing you the wrong way? I have too much of it to the degree that I'm not proud of myself. Too much of what? I am hypersensitive to words people are using in pop culture to the degree that I have to be a little self-reflective and go like, this is the kid in high school.
Like, I'm still looking for reasons that all the popular kids have their code. You feel left out.
I got that. I think that's why it's such an acute.
Because Monica will tell you, I've called out words like artisanal. The second artisanal, I said, you watch.
That's going to be on a fucking Arby's sign. It wasn't on Arby's, but it was on Subway.
My current one I'm tracking is Atelier. This is the new word.
Wait, I don't know this one. Great.
You're getting it on the ground floor. You do know it.
It just means like a shop. You don't know it.
It just means a nice shop. It's like an apothecary bubbled up a few years ago in the wrong places.
Yes. Atelier, which I learned this from Monica, this is like a small bespoke handcrafted luxury item and it's the studio for it, which I'm fine with those Italians having their ateliers or French whatever it is.
Yeah, it's where the designer actually makes the items. It's a real word.
Sure. But we don't use it to describe the sandwich shop in Beverly Hills.
Correct. Which is coming.
I just started hearing atelier a little too much and I was like, Monica, you watch The Gap's gonna have an atelier. Yeah.
Okay, so we have storytellers. That's rough for me.
It's rough. And again, so many people, I love it.
I see you. Sure.
I don't think people can get through an interview without saying it these days. Holding space.
Can't you just do that without talking about it? Does that trigger you at all? I've never said it. I do think it's rough.
This is where the left is losing people, by the way. Stuff like that.
100. Because it's cultural and rhetorical.
That's that's it of the two parties there's one that actually helps out the working class and it's not the one that won it's the one that rhetorically and culturally don't know how to talk to them right yeah so it's shit like that 100 but wait holding space means i'm just creating space for myself well i think it's more often used in like, I just want my husband to be able to hold space for me to have my emotions or hold space for a coworker or a friend. Right.
It sounds a little too sanctimonious. I think I tuned that one out.
So I use one that probably people hate. I will say often my story, my story about you and I is this, or my story about losing that job.
That to me feels a little more honest, which is I know I'm a storyteller. Yeah.
And it's just, it all comes back to storytelling, you guys. This is just a story.
Monica's visibly uncomfortable. We thought our pants were going to explode, but they've retracted.
It's literally the opposite. Were you wearing three belts when you walked in? I didn't notice.
Isn't it funny in movies where they flash to the future and you see them taking stabs at what will happen fashion wise in the future? I think in Back to the Future, people have two ties in the future. Right, right.
In 2015, which by the way, you would have known that already. That's right.
You know what no one's playing with, which they should be, is that as we see drugs like Ozempic become ubiquitous and people will more and more have the same body shape. It's almost interesting that no one's projected that in the future, everyone just virtually there'll be like three versions of people.
Yeah. Also with Botox and fillers and all of those things.
Yeah. People's faces are starting to just look like one thing.
I mean, young teens are doing Botox and filler. I know.
I wish I was alive when they were 90 so I could see how perfect they look. I bet it's really going to work out.
I feel like an old lady to say I'm against it, but I am. You are, even though you're honestly.
For kids to do that. For like an 18-year-old, you don't even know what your face is yet.
But also, you're not done forming and growing. I have two teenagers teenagers so they're always on tiktok and instagram stuff and yeah there's a lot of perfection and redefining perfection it's all really crazy it's very sci-fi it does make me think did you ever have these days when you're in elementary school i'm plagued with a lot of cowlicks i don't have the head of hair you do back Back to your hair.
Cowlicks. You know, where your hair juts this way

and then that way it's all skiddy wampus

and back I have a swirl.

So the middle part with a feather

when you and I were kids was king.

Totally.

You had to have that hairdo.

Bo and Luke Duke had it

and I just couldn't get it on the middle.

It was always off to one.

It was like a 60-40 split.

And so occasionally I would have a morning

like in fourth grade where I would feather it. It would look great.
And I would make this weird promise to the deities. I would say like, I commit to this hair for the rest of my life.
If you can keep it looking this way. If it can remain this perfect, I will keep this parted down the middle, feathered construction for the rest of my days.
Okay. Now, did you ever do any dumb thing like that in front of the mirror?

I remember my brother had the little lead figurines for Dungeons and Dragons.

They were made out of lead.

Yeah.

And as a kid, I heard lead is poison.

So you need to be careful.

I used to just steal all his shit and look at it.

He's older than me.

So I remember one day taking one of these little

lead figures and just sticking my tongue out and just touching it and then just being like what am i doing and i remember looking into the mirror in our living room there was a mirror hanging there and just going i don't want to die thinking that it was imminent okay what you stumbled upon right there is called the call of the void do you know this term no so the call of the void is very very common for people to experience this you're on an extremely tall building you're looking over the edge and the voice is going jump you fucking pussy for some reason it's taunting you yes and that's what licking that lead was and i would have done the exact same thing like whoa it's pretty powerful that's what it is but you got to be on the other side of answering the call of the void which is you did it and it sounds like you had immediate regret yeah it was a stupid thing to do did you think in your mind at that time you thought you'd be dead before the day's end i thought i would would drop dead any second. And were you like touching your tongue? Getting under the faucet.
On Instagram, I'm constantly shown, you know, those kids that are now climbing skyscrapers all over the world without any equipment. What? Yo, they're just free balling it.
And they're running and jumping. They're not like being careful.
Oh, they're getting up to the top of literally the empire state building and balancing on one leg and taking some pics yeah they have their drone up there and they're just like what's up oh some toss them a beer crazy and there's a documentary on a couple that do this in eastern europe on netflix their whole group of friends are traveling the world doing this and they die often of course because they fucking fall yes yes but I'm on that algorithm on Instagram and I'm constantly being shown these those because there's nothing that I enjoy more than watching these people on the edge of the fucking skyscraper and I love it. Yeah.
It makes my hands sweat so profusely.

I get butterflies and I get an adrenal rush, I think, watching them.

And then I have to just put it down and not look anymore.

Sure, sure.

Yeah, it's weird.

Look in front of the mirror and say,

I don't want to die.

It's like, well, it's just a video.

You're fine.

Were you a really good kid?

It sounds like you were a really good kid. That's the extent of.
Mischief. Yeah.
Yeah, I must have been a good kid. I can really relate to being the younger brother who he'd leave the house to go do something fun.
And I would run to his bedroom like a chimp, just like hold his objects. 100%.
Covet them. Oh, yeah.
Look at Chimp, your little possessions.

His idols.

I felt like I was holding special idols.

I remember once he came home when I was in the midst of one of my archaeological digs.

And I hid behind a chimney that came through the middle of his room.

And I just hid there for 15, 20 minutes while he just sat on his bed reading a comic book or something. I was staying at my grandparents' roadside motel in the summertime.
And I had an Uncle Rob who was five years older than my brother. So this guy was on top of the world.
He had a 68 Camaro. He played the guitar very well.
He had a dirt bike. And I got into his room when he was out.
And I found just a treasure trove of firecrackers. Oh, shit.
And I's got major power moment in here firepower i was like oh there's 60 of these i'm gonna steal one black cats and then later i was out in a field next to motel and i lit them off and i was like very scared and excited and then i just hear they're loud aren't they oh fuck and i turned around it was uncle rob and he fucking called me red-handed just like the cool uncle you'd guess he didn't mind too much yeah he understood what was going on the other day you told me you've never stolen i didn't say that yes you did no yes you did no then i said yeah you tried to steal a parking meter parking again i did steal and then i said no i did steal a parking yeah you said then i tried and i tried to rob 7-eleven different compartment because i was drunk but now here we go it sounds like it sounds like he was in his right mind when he stole these fireworks it does i was pretty hammered what is that that's a nicotine spray you've certainly seen me use yeah yeah yeah on our yearly vacation yeah i've got yeah what are you rocking zin yeah yeah that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's right. You're a Zin man.
So stupid. What's a Zin? A Zin is like a little pouch of chemicals.
It's kind of like a Skull Bandit. Except it's non-tobacco, or maybe Skull Bandits are non-tobacco.
No, they're tobacco. Okay.
These are non-tobacco. It's just nicotine.
Bandits are made in an atelier in Raleigh-Durham. So are Zans.
They're made in a gorgeous atelier in Terre Haute, Indiana. Very bespoke, very atisinal.
And they fold each packet. Bespoke, that's another one.
That one doesn't bother me. Agents started using it, describing different kinds of movies and shows.
By the way, that's a great source for trigger words is agents. Because agents, kind of like Silicon Valley bros, there's a lexicon and you got to stay abreast.
And political talking heads. There's always a new word kind of cycling through.
A few years ago, it was crossing the Rubicon. So-and-so is going to cross the Rubicon into- That's so true.
You're so right. This cycle, it was something else, but yeah, it's annoying it's annoying okay now i gotta go all the way back because when i talked about your hair so basically we're getting into this era where the faustian promise could be we're nearing a technology that at eight i could have injected myself with something and my hair would have looked like that for the rest of my life that's where i was going with that entire story yeah like the notion of freezing your face at 16 is kind of interesting.
I don't have a moral judgment on it quite yet. My face has gotten better over time.
So that would have been a big mistake. Mine too.
Is yours improved? I think so. I look at photos of me when I was 30 and I'm like, what's going on? And it might just be the way you perceive yourself.
It's hard to gain perspective on that. I just saw the substance, which was super interesting.
Yes. So good.
But remember when the kid in the doctor's office introduces her to the idea and that kid's perfect face? Yeah, but creepy. Very creepy.
That's what I immediately think of when you say there'll be like three different kinds of faces. Or if you have the power to just freeze your face, everyone starts kind of morphing into a face like that.
To me, that looks like a YouTube tutorial face. It's just weird.
And it's become this standard that people are looking at on social media. It's hard to say what's better or worse.
Is that better or worse than you and I thinking you got to look like Brad Pitt and there's no chemicals or I can't freeze my. There's nothing you can do.
No, I'm not sure if it's getting better or worse. Yeah.
Okay. But my sci-fi fantasy is this.
So if we just think really quickly that your cells divide and they make perfect copies of themselves. Yeah.
So there's this great mystery. How then does your body evolve and look differently? If it's making perfect mirror copies of each cell, what is this aging process? How are the cells changing? And there's a lot of science that's getting close to figuring that out.
So let's just say there is a future in which you take it and then that's it. You're arrested exactly where you're at from now on.
Your cells will just duplicate as they should. That's an interesting sci-fi movie where everyone is 28.
The wise elders are 28. And everyone is immortal.
Probably unless they get hit by a cars, unless some kind of accident happens, their cells are just going to make perfect copies of themselves. So that would be an interesting sci-fi movie where everyone's 30 one guy's 130 and one guy's 30 yes but they look exactly the same and it just makes me wonder like status wise and how you treat people at a grocery store and all this weird stuff if everyone was the same age what would that do that would be really weird also it would make the first 30 years of your life or 28 whatever number everyone number everyone decides.
You'd like be living in a bubble because you have to protect yourself until you get to 28. Yeah, so you don't get messed up or die before 28.
Well, I did think of that as once you get the procedure, it'll heighten your fear of accidental death because you're not going to have any diseases. People would be so much more accident phobic.
And also there would probably be some sort of celebration when you hit 30 or 28 or whatever it is 27 that's when they always say you just start going downhill from there is that right is that like the that's when you like kind of peak remember looper one of the great sci-fi movies of the last 20 years or so ryan johnson yeah they have that party when you close your loop and you know your death date. Is that what it was? They throw a party and it's a really dark, weird thing.
But that's the great thing about really good sci-fi is when you drop in and you see kind of the customs of this new altered environment. And when it's pulled off well, like in Looper, it's really kind of mind bendy.
Yeah. That's the fun stuff to think about is not the actual big juicy tech.
Cultural reverberations of these. Like if a guy that's 130 is dating an actual 30-year-old woman, but they look the same, do we throw out that whole thing we care about? And what are the apps that would be created to catch you up on what a 30-year-old is into? You're fucking 430.
What if, okay, we got to get back to reality, but after this, no, but listen, dating a 430 year old, then it's like they're mature. Right.
That's cool. I don't know.
What if, okay. So these new meta glasses, they have a speaker right behind whatever the arms I'm told that you could be in China and you can have the AI be translating what someone's telling you in Mandarin and you'll hear it in English.
I think we're really close to the Star Trek. Like we're wearing glasses, a Chinese guy's wearing glasses and we're just communicating.
So knowing that that's close now, what if back to the 300 year old, let's call it a woman dating a 30 year old man. That's safer.
That's safer. We like that.
And then the 30-year-old man goes, I loved this new show, Tabickawee Crossing. It's a great show, both.
It is a good one. And then the woman in her ear hears, I'm watching this new show, Dawson's Creek.
The AI knows where this reference is going so they can communicate. They can have the conversation.
Wait, what? Different references. Do you understand what I'm saying? Sort of, but they're still living

in the same world. Like, you'd be talking about

Taylor Swift. Like, let's say you and I were on a date.

You'd be talking about Taylor Swift and how great she is, but I'd

be hearing Madonna so that I understood.

It's a cultural equivalent. Translator.

Cultural translator. So you can have the same emotional

interaction and just be on

the same level at all times.

So all cultural references become

the same, too. Yes.
Everything even evens out so there are no obstacles anywhere no it's just emotion i'm conveying an emotion that's right you say you like raiders of the lost ark and i hear tron tron 3d yeah i mean that just made me sound so much older than i intended these aren't real relationships You're just hearing what you want to hear. Because what if you didn't like Taylor Swift objectively? And I'm talking about Taylor Swift and you're hearing Madonna is something you do.
It's just translating into what you like. No, no, no.
See, I mean, my version of this cultural translator, you're saying Taylor Swift. And my equivalent of that was Madonna.
Now, I actually feel about Madonna however I felt then. Right.
So maybe I thought she was, I don't think this will, I just think she was a stage show. She wasn't really an artist.
Let's just say that's what I thought. We don't, we're not.
That's not what I think. None of us think that.
We don't say that. So I'm hearing you talk about someone who's a perfect comp.
And then I feel the way about, and then I go, she's not for me. I don't like.
But your AI would be so attuned to you that it would know, if you say Taylor Swift, to perfectly translate that to, maybe it's not Madonna, maybe it's Emmylou Harris. It's attuned to you and your taste.
If the objective is to get along with this person you're talking to and create an emotional connection and get rid of any snags along the way. It'll just provide equilibrium for everything.
So in your version, like a liberal and Democrat are wearing the glasses and the liberal goes, I'm so afraid the earth's going to catch on fire. And the person hears, I'm so afraid of immigration.
Yeah. And everyone's like, I know, I know.
I totally agree. I totally agree.
Yes totally agree yes i'm scared too oh that's wild okay this actually brings me to a real question first of all and i told you this privately so i'm not just fluffing your pillows now that we're in public your pillows i like that not a really common colloquial we go on this trip every year it's the funnest trip of the year for us so fun our friend fun. Our friend Jimmy Kimmel hosts all of us in the most generous possible capacity.
The loveliest. And there's a lot of things you could say were the bells and whistles of it, the location, the accommodations, the activities.
But for me, it's dinner every night. Yeah.
It's a giant table. How long would you say this table is? 40 feet.
Probably 50 people, 40 people, would you say? Yeah, that feels right. Everyone is terrific.
And every year there's additions and people can't make it and someone else arrives. And it's always just a fascinating group.
So you can't miss no matter who you're seated next to. But, and I don't want to rank, it's not polite to rank, but if you and I get seated next to each other, I'm like, this is going to be the greatest

three hour dinner.

You're the funnest person to talk to.

I love talking to you.

That is so flattering.

And when you texted that to me, I immediately went and got Naomi and told her.

Because my immediate reaction when finding a seat at that dinner is if I'm sitting across

from you or next to you, I'm like, I really don't want Dax to feel like he has to talk to me. Oh, my God.
And I'm trying to engineer getting seated across from you. And I love sitting with you, too, because you're an inherently interested person and you're so fun to talk to.
And I've always felt that way about talking to you, even when we didn't really know each other that much. You can just drop in with you and talk about stuff and you always have something to say.
And you telling me that was a huge deal because I also feel comfortable sitting across from you or sitting next to you. Like I'm immediately at ease.
Same. So, so much of our conversations, and this is where one of my questions comes in.
We have a lot of nostalgic conversations. We have a lot of the same favorites from the 80s and 90s.
We did, I don't know, 90 minutes on Against All Odds. Oh, you had Jeff Bridges.
I did. And I brought up the car chase scene and I asked how much of the driving he did.
Questions only you and I would want answered. Yeah, if I'm the glasses i just heard now and then maybe that's a pretty good comp okay yeah he talked about that being the first movie he started physically training for and how it created a lifetime interest in exercise that's so interesting i was watching a behind the scenes thing on temple of doom and they're like harrison really had to bulk up for this one.
And it shows him at like a shitty gym, just like doing bench press. With those plastic weights filled with sand.
Yeah. Like nothing.
He did some bench press. Not nothing.
He's definitely exercising, but gyms have changed a lot. There's no trainer there.
He's just by himself. No squats, no deadlift.
No, no, no. Just bench and some curls.
And then a couple of beers, a couple of beers and a doobie and let's get to set. But I guess what I was wondering is you have this deep nostalgia.
I want an explanation for it. And I'm wondering, do you think we're just that way? Or is there something about childhood that was so comforting? You would recognize you're more encyclopedic about that whole era than most people you talk to yeah you always blow me way out once we start talking yeah you've watched the behind the scenes of temple of noom i have right in the last three months i've gone and looked at that it's so comforting to think about that era and i think movies in that era in particular were geared for us yeah when i referenced temple of doom that is my favorite movie i was 11 when that came out that and goonies and et i know it's kind of tired now because our generation has beat the nostalgia to death a little bit back Back to the Future, those movies, at least for me, they meant everything.
I ask myself that a lot. Why did this stuff mean so much to me? At least for me, that whole period of time from 82 to 88, when I started getting interested in beer and just a social life.
Hip hop. For me, it was like the dead.

Why do I think you had a crazy hip hop phase in high school?

I didn't.

I think you're thinking of Macklemore.

Oh, I don't know if I am.

If I could count the amount of times.

You get that all the time.

I know.

Oh my God.

That's why we wanted to do this on video, to be honest with you.

To see if Macklemore and I, because he's not here, so you don't know.

But is he? But I think people would think it was Macklemore posing as Adam, probably. You're right.
It's a particularly potent period of time. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
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Okay, last thing I'll say about this.

Then I started watching this brat pack documentary yes that's another chapter of that same period of time those movies hit me so hard pretty in pink oh my god oh my god pretty in pink yeah and the psychedelic furs and how that was making me feel but i was watching the brat pack doc was having the realization like, oh, we also lived in a very peculiar time where five of the biggest movie stars alive were 21 years old. I think of that now.
And of course that would seem crazy that there would be this cadre of enormous stars, but that was a unique thing that was happening when we were kids that we didn't know was unique. They're greenlighting like 12, 15 teen movies a year.
Right. From that period, they still don't look look that young to me and i think it's because they were six years older than me or something they looked sophisticated and adult like of course they were driving a Porsche and dressed nice and had a big apartment and they were 21 yeah did you have that monica am i wrong about that that's a unique aspect you didn't have that when you were 12 oh the 21 year olds yeah it was like a whole

crop of movies every weekend then zach afron a little bit before i'm sorry a little after i'm not calling you a baby yeah i'm a big girl harry potter stars no i was like the friends era they were young i guess they were young too but yes older than me but i was going to say nostalgia i think exists because it's the

things that you consumed before everything got complicated that's right and also before you started wanting things for real chasing things and deciding i want to do this with my life it was just pure and there's only a very small amount of time you get in life of purity totally and that window for us happened to be during this spielberg era where elliot in et indiana jones the kids in goonies michael j fox in back to the future these were heroes luke skywalker changing the world yeah and they were all scrappy nobodies and divorce was making its way into these movies which i like et is a very divorce driven movie i was in a divorced family on my maybe second stepdad feeling like i want to just be in the world on my own a bit yeah and all these kids these protagonists in these movies were just kind of on their own the parents weren't figuring prominently into any of these things no and i think that was really appealing it sure was yeah get them out of here and let me run the show a little bit let's see what we can do because those kids in et were just like yeah okay mom and they would just go up on this alien on our own dude Yeah, dude. We're going to outrun the cops.

So when I went back to consult your previous episode, I would have not guessed this.

What number do you think Adam was?

Early.

I think really early.

Maybe 32.

Right.

I would have gone 40s.

What would you say?

First five?

Seven.

Stop. Wow.

Seventh guest that you had.

Yes.

I remember it being early, but I was kind of taking a flyer by saying five. Seven.
Yes. Not only seven, but Monica, as I listen to it, the episode starts with housekeeping.
And it's me explaining. Monica's a part of the show.
She's going to talk. She's not interrupting.
Like I read in comments that she's an integral part of the show. It's me explaining.
Oh, boy. I just got like sweaty.
Yo, I got sweaty listening to the whole thing. Seven? How long ago was that? Seven years ago in February.
Wow. Congratulations, you guys.
But obviously so much has happened since then. Yeah, seven years.
What I learned in a bunch of interviews I listened to of you today, one was I heard you on Fresh Air saying, which I thought was really funny, that you were just obsessed singularly on TVs and movies. And that's all you thought about.
Yeah. And I was thinking, if you go into acting, that was a great use of time.
But if you're just an average person, this is not all I've ever thought about and obsessed about is tv and movies somehow that sounds like a loser-y endeavor yeah right i was thinking like just by the fact that you landed in it means that it was totally justified and what a great thing to be focused on your whole life i think in the low points of trying to do this that certainly crossed my mind like what have i done with my life because it's all I thought about and talked about and cared about. It was 99% screen time.
Right. And here I am with nothing to show for it and no practical skills of any kind.
There was a real low point in 2000 when I had not gotten six feet under. I tested for that with Michael C.
Hall. Thank God he got it because he was incredible and I was not ready to do that.
That's heartbreaking. Then you're watching it.
That was a hefty role. A hefty role and a hefty show.
But you played his lover ultimately, didn't you? Yeah, I did play his boyfriend for a couple episodes. So they brought you back so they brought you back yeah they did but before it was even on tv and when i did not get the role it was after a series of blows work-wise just not having worked in six months or you know one of those we all went through it and i was nowhere i had been at it at that point for like seven years or something and was at square one because when you're living like guest spot to guest spot and indie movie, you never hear from those people again.
To remind people, you and I were in one of those together. Hair shirt slash too smooth.
Too smooth. This is when you were vomiteer.
I was vomiteer, but do you know what his role was? I don't know if you knew your role the last time we talked. Guy in bar? Fan at bar.
Fan at bar. Almost worse than guy at bar.
It is way worse. It's far more humiliating.
And who were you? Vomiteer at party. What does vomiteer mean? Someone who vomits at a party.
Are you on camera vomiting? Yeah, I think so. Oh man.
I hope so. That's what was promised.
I never seen too smooth you haven't seen it hair shirt have you seen it i've seen it i don't want to get bogged out in that but you want to know who else was in that movie that i doubt you know was in that rebecca gayhart rebecca gayhart nev campbell of course and then our two leads which i looked at the poster this morning our poor two leads are in the deep deep background and nev and rebecca are front and center and they maybe had like i don't know three scenes nev was playing like a big star hence you being a fan fan at bar at bar yeah that's me being vomiteer at party that's right alfonso corone was in that movie what i remember he and dean were good buddies yeah he played a director in the movie that is so wild so you and I have been in a film with Alfonso Cuaron. Absolutely.
We are colleagues of Alfonso Cuaron. We are peers with Alfonso Cuaron.
That's really, really funny. So obviously since then you have done a ton of stuff, but severance is the most spectacular thing.
And as you know, cause Chris and I sent you voicemails. Yes.
Almost after every episode. I'd like to play a couple of these.
Hey, so we're in bed and we just had a quick question. Hi, we just had a quick question.
Are you guys fucking drawing this new season? Is that what's taking so long? What in the goddamn hell is taking so long? These are the kind of messages you would receive after you son of a bitch. You wanted the compliments where here comes the fucking complaints.
Belle and I just sat here on the edge of our seat waiting to find out what happens when you guys come to. You fucking prick.
You piece of shit prick. And that goes for Ben, too.
Losers. Oh, buddy.
Are we fucking pissed that this episode just ended when the switches were thrown? So you wanted the fucking cake? And now you got to take the rat poison, too, you piece of shit. Okay, so that's kind of an average.
Was that for the finale? It was, I think, one before the finale. This ended up being three.
Oh, another thing. It's going to be a long fucking week for us and for you.
Yeah, because we're waiting. So either block my number or get used to this shit.
Fuck you. You piece of shit.
Okay, and then the last one. Quick update.
You'd probably find funny. My wife just ran through a plate glass window off the second story of our home and was rushed to the hospital you probably want to know if she's still alive i will tell you next week i have all those on my phone as well i want to play one of your responses which was so good you can't imagine how much pleasure it gives me to have the both of you over a barrel like this i may as well tell you now that the entire season was created just to frustrate and destroy the both of you eat shit because you're so fucked oh yeah that's cute But you went into severance, and I learned this from you.

I don't know if this is secret or not, but you were involved, and then maybe you weren't involved for a minute, and then you were involved.

So it doesn't start on the firmest footing, maybe, or I don't know what you go through before you end up there.

But you go right at really what point in the pandemic?

Well, we were scheduled to start the end of March, 2020 or beginning of April, something like that. And actually went and did a table read March 7th or something.
And then I was going to go home, get all my shit and come out. And at the table read, they passed Purell around.
We were like, this pandemic thing is fucking, this is weird. And then as I was there, just for like two days, shit was contracting in New York.
And I was like, maybe I should go get Lysol wipes for my room. Like, what's going on? Then I flew home and then everything happened.
So we didn't start shooting till October. But even that.
But that was early. We were one of the only shows actually shooting.
So a lot of shows were doing this where you have a mask, a plastic thing in front of your face and all that shit. For the actors, the only time we saw people's entire faces was when camera was rolling.
We would rehearse with all that stuff. And there was a special person with your own box to put your mask and all your equipment in.
Yeah. Oh, my God.
All that to say the isolation from each other and in general, because I would wake up in my apartment, go down to the van that took me to set with it had a plastic sheet between me and the driver. Oh, my God.
And go to my room where you weren't allowed to have anyone in your room. Suffice it to say, the only real human contact was after action, right? Yeah.
So it kind of fed into the show. I didn't notice that your mom had died as well right before, I guess it would have been that table read.
Two days before the table read. I think the most interesting part of this is so then the memorial gets kicked all the way to December or something.
December of 21. Okay.
So very far away. But what immediately happens after she dies is you go into quarantine with your family and it's like groovy, right? You're with your family.
I think in particularly a time like that where there's the loss of this person, but at least you're connected to the fact that the whole thing just carries on and that's comforting and maybe misleading. And then you get completely by yourself in an apartment in New York in this very lonely situation already.
And I'm imagining everything kind of must hit the fan at that point. Yeah, it really did.
And it really was sort of from the moment I walked into the apartment and closed the door and it was dead silent. And I was like, oh, okay.
I need to come to terms with, at that point, she had died six months before. But like you said, I was cocooned with my family, with the people who love me the most and was insulated, which is, I guess, one of the things love is for is to make you feel better.
And they suffered a loss as well. But obviously, I was the one who was going to be grappling with it in sort of a unique way for my kids in the Amit.
So I'm in that apartment and I needed to find a way towards grieving and defining what this is and what happened. And I really did it through the show.
I mean, I sort of just decided I'm going to figure this out, but the show is about grief. I hate to say it was a good coincidence, but by God, if you have to go through this, the fact that you got to play someone who's grieving the loss of somebody and you're lonely as fuck in real life.
Yes. You don't have to act really.
Yeah. Just gliding right into it and very directly letting it out and processing it in the show.
There's a scene in the show actually where we were on the side of the road at the site of my wife's car accident in the seventh episode and just by sheer coincidence because we shot the whole season at once it was on the one year anniversary of my mom dying oh wow and i didn't realize it till that day and so there were things like that where i could pretty directly process when you shut the door to the apartment and you go, we got some dealing to do. Are you overcome with fear for that process? What's your reaction to knowing that? Oh, we're going to go through some stuff now and we're going to be by ourselves and we're going to get into this.
I'm a person who tries to compartmentalize and push things to a later date.

Yeah.

And so I busied myself with getting ready for the show and the election was about to happen.

And so I was preoccupied with that.

And so I closed that door and was like, oh, shit.

And really felt the loss right there. Like there is a giant elephant in this room with me, but it'll be there.
I'm here for eight months or whatever. I'll be fine.
And eventually after a few weeks and just hours of alone time, because no one was socializing really and restaurants, you know, it was so weird that i really did have to figure it out there and i didn't talk to a therapist while i was there and i really should have i did in a way sort of come to terms with it and come to terms with the fact that grief is something that is a flat circle in one way or the other it stays with you and sometimes it feels like it happened 10 minutes ago and sometimes it feels like it happened 50 years ago yeah and sometimes it's surreal that that person is no longer in your life it's just like unbelievable it's really hard to imagine someone exists and they don't as dumb and simple that is to say, it is so weird that you can exist and then not exist.

Yeah.

And someone that is so instrumental in who you are.

You know, this thing that I'm doing for a living, when she was gone, I realized that part of the reason I was doing this in the first place was for her to see it. Yeah.
Yeah. You know? Yeah.
Of course. Yeah.
And so when that was gone, I was sort of like, who am I going to impress? Yeah. So I had to straighten that out and sort of come to terms with the fact that these feelings and this love that you have for a person and their love for you doesn't go anywhere.
It's still here. It's kind of what you're made of.
Yeah. The structure of you is that.
That's right. And a parent dying, it's like part of the sky going away or something.
It's sort of a big thing. Well, it's the thing you're most tethered to.
Yeah. So when my dad died, I had these conflicting feelings of like, A, he had become a dependent of mine.
You were taking care of him. Supporting him.
So unfortunately, a lot of our conversations over those last few years were like, I need this. It's just not a great dynamic.
It's hard. Yeah.
And then, you know, I lived with my mom primarily my whole life. When he was dying, it was a lot of work for me.
So I had this conflicting, I felt a sense of relief when he died. And I was like, okay, this battle's over.
We got him through it without too much carnage. That's a win.
I had a misleading sense of relief for a few months and then opened up the door to like oh i'm never gonna chat with him again or he's not gonna see anything i do you know but through all of that i was like also thank god it's not my mom because my mom for me is the thing you're talking about like dax wants to live in the woods and fucking be annihilated drunk all day and anything I've ever done positive was because my mom believed enough that I was a good boy and I needed to make her happy. And so I've often thought if she's not around for me to even think, what would she think? That feels like a very scary place for me to be in.
I really rely on her to almost be my super ego. Just like in the back of your head, your mom is this very unique station.
It's so fucking thankless. You watch Naomi and I watch Kristen.
Yeah. Jesus Christ.
And meanwhile, I'm walking around like. And they're like, dad.
You know that Nick Kroll special where he's just like, moms are annoying. Yes.
They are. Why? It's so unfair.
Because they know you so well. Yep.
That's right. In a way that no one else does.
Not your dad. No one.
They just know. They were in your body.
Well, they're who you are able to be scared in front of vulnerable. Yeah.
Even as an adult, something would happen. I would call her no matter how embarrassing.
You know that that call is there. Yes.
You know, to your point, guaranteed. I'm feeling better when I get off the phone with my mom.
100%. She'd somehow find the silver lining.
That's right. Horrific.
And give you the kernel of whatever it is. At least for me, part of a son's journey, and I'm sure it's the same for no matter what gender you are.
There is a period of time where you need to peel away and show that you don't need your mom. You've got this.
You're good. You're a big boy.
Yeah, that's right. And I already know anything know anything you're gonna say anyway because i'm a grown-up now but thinking back on that stuff is painful but i think also just being a parent now you just know you don't care no anytime my kids are shitty to me ultimately i don't really give a shit i almost think good for you yeah sometimes like when they tell me off i'm like good for you you got some backbone yeah not bad you're supposed to hate me from time to time that's right it would be weird if you didn't roll your eyes and slam the door right now yes if you're lucky you get two sources of unconditional love and then when that starts going away yeah it's so scary what's left it is It is scary.
We have the great luxury and gift of, I think what you do with that is you just turn it on your kids. It's like, I don't have that thing.
I miss that thing. I'm never going to have that thing, but I have this thing.
Yeah. Imagine when you don't have kids and you go through the loss of a parent.
It's got to be really destabilizing. Yeah.
Kind of now not tethered to really anything. I can't imagine.
Monica, are both of your parents with us? Yes, they are. I live with so much fear of something happening to them.
And I think part of it is that I don't really have a place to channel it. But in some ways, I think not that it's a cop out.
But like you said, in the pandemic, you could sort of channel it with your family. We're all ultimately by ourselves, really.
And so when you really sit with it, you are going to have to process it anyway. At some point.
Yeah. And the kids aren't really going to be the answer to that.
They probably don't deserve to be the answer to that. They're going to bail like every other kid does.
My son's in his senior year in high school, and that's going to happen in less than a year. That's awful.
Oh, my God. It's so awful.
Why? Why is life structured like this? It's crazy. It's so wild.
And you were so kind, too. He came over and interviewed you for his film class.
Oh, yeah. Boy, oh, boy, was that a feather in his cap.
doing a little mini doc on cars and dax shepherds in his that's pretty cool he's so smart and such a kind lovely person and into really cool stuff it's the best but it's going to be incredibly sad when he fucking leaves. Oh God, yeah.

Jesus.

Well, yeah, you shut the door to an apartment in New York

and that had some justification,

but the notion that you'll be shutting your door to your home

when Frankie leaves,

you'll go, we're going to have to deal with this.

Yeah.

Now we just have each other.

Yes.

Jesus.

Maybe they'll come back.

My brother went back home for a while.

Really? Yeah. Like after college or, okay.
He just recently left. Yeah.
Wow. Yeah.
So you never know. Good for him.
I was panicking for my mom because that's even worse. It's like, then you have a really long time.
I think you probably trick yourself into this is forever. Great.
He'll live here. This is just the way it's going to go.
She gets to make sandwiches for him every day. And now now he's really gone did she have to go through the grieving all over again to youtube instead she likes youtube i think she's just watching youtube she's dealt with a ton of shit and she's figured it out where do they live georgia so anyway i was like oh no and also she just lost her dad and i, oh my God, my brother's leaving and that's happening and this is a disaster.

But she's-

Well, you know what?

When that happens sometimes,

the second time they leave-

Is that of this middle ground?

Yeah.

Maybe it's like, okay.

I remember when I came back in between years at school,

I had only been gone for eight months.

And I remember moving back into my mom's house

and she was a little like,

huh? Okay. Yeah.
You're here now. She had processed and transitioned.
She had already moved on. So there was some adjusting to happen.
The baby boomers did it quicker. They know how to get through something really bad.
That's right. Okay.
Now back to severance. So those are kind of unique circumstance in which you are filming the first.
And so here's what happened. As you know it's my favorite show told you non-stop we got six screeners for the upcoming season oh you did which we were ecstatic about i came in and i lord these few things i get over because christen has

access to everything in the world i'm never offering something cool and i'm like uh i guess

who's got six episodes of next season.

So, so excited.

Sign in to watch them.

And I go, I'm like,

I'm like,

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I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, i'm like uh i guess who's got six episodes of next season so so excited sign in to watch them and i go let's watch the recap i wonder if you've done the same thing i had the same crisis yeah of morality or i was like i want to so bad but i don't think i should and mainly actually because i want to be watching it while the world is it. There's something about you being like, we have to wait a week.
That makes it really fun. It's fun.
But that's not why I didn't watch the new ones. I watched the recap and I was like, hon, are you remembering this? Yeah, yeah.
And she's like, not as much as normal. And Kristen can really remember a TV show.
Monica will tell you. Come back from Game of Thrones.
She still remembers. So I was like, I'm inclined to start over, which I've done.
I can't recommend this enough to people. You should start right now in anticipation.
I'm doing the same thing because Ben and I are hosting a podcast. Which I hope to be on.
Yes. Where we go through every episode of the first season.
Then we'll be doing a weekly thing for season two. I love that.
And rewatching the show. I hadn't seen it in a long time and it's been three years.
So we're encouraging people to rewatch the whole season. I can't believe how much I forgot about it.
And I can't believe how much I'm enjoying rewatching. I think more than I've ever enjoyed rewatching.
There's a lot of it that feels like I'm watching it for the first time. Oh, that's great.
I think because of the gap between seasons. Long time.
But then also the density of it and the subtlety of it. And it's interesting watching it, knowing more about it.
I think you get more from it. But anyways, all that to say, I didn't watch any of the new season because now I'm on episode four.
Kristen went out of town. I already decided, fuck her.
I'm going on without her, which is another rare. I don't do that.
That's a tough decision to make, whether or not you're going to be honest about it or re-watch those episodes pretending it's the first time. Yeah, three viewings before we go.
Yeah, that's right. That's right.
I guess my fear, because I love the show so much, is what do you do with the second season? Right right how long did that take for them to crack

that also dan is that the writer creator's name yeah the only thing he had ever written for before this was lip sync battle yeah man do you know this story he wrote for lip sync battle he sent the pilot for severance as a writing sample to red hour yeah and nikki weinstock and jackie Kong at Red Hour Hour read the script and thought it was great and brought it to Ben. And so, yeah, it was more of a sample like, hey, I'm a writer.
But they were like, what about this as a actual thing? And Dan was working at a door factory when that sample was sent to Red Hour. Oh, my God.
Yeah. In what state? In California? Here somewhere.
Good for us. We're manufacturing doors.
I thought that was more of a Wisconsin thing. Listen, without doors, what are you going to do? This city would collapse.
He's just the coolest guy and brilliant, obviously. And he and Ben just started working on this and developing it.
And Jackie and Nikki, I'm sure Dan was kind of scooped up from nowhere, having no real credits. It's fun talking to him about the show and where it can go and stuff.
And he has it all in his head. And also when he's thinking of something new, it's really fun to hear him sort of go, oh, yeah, that's cool.
And then little cul-de-sacs and roads he goes down he always takes an unexpected strange direction but also

as far as the kind of language of lumen there is no one who can really crack it and write it like he can't it's a really particular thing that he invented and has a real direct line to is the strange phrasing and nomenclature of human and cure and this whole world it's really fun how much of ben's fingerprint is on it directorially because and i'll admit this i had not seen escape from danimore or i saw the first one i don't know why i didn't continue yeah but we just watched it, I don't know, three weeks ago and fucking loved it.

It's amazing. I just rewatched it too last week.
And did you see the parallels? Yes. It's a similar thing.
You're like trapped in a world. You don't have your autonomy.
You're trying to escape. I don't know.
It's interesting. Yes.
I really zeroed in on this time watching Dan Amora, how art figured into their lives. because John Turturro and Christopher Walken's characters,

particularly John, Irv, his life is really connected to art and the paintings and the rules and all of the sort of culture of the world is really important to him. And the guys in Dannemora, Benicio del Toro and Paul Dano's characters, you know, when you have very little, your sort of stimuli is really cut off.
These things become really important. And in Severance, it almost seems dangerous.
You're looking at all those hallways. They're stark white.
They're meaningless. And then the painting that he hangs up, it's like the most exciting.
It's like the fucking sphere in Vegas in that world. Totally and when christopher walken's delivering the new tote bags for the manual that's a huge deal yeah it's an event could you see all this stuff when you read the script not like this the tone of it was really found during the first season i think you know usually when you go back and watch the first season of any show that you know and love the first few episodes, it's like, OK, they're figuring it out.
Since we shot the season all at once, we were still shooting the first episode 10 months in. So something that worked in our favor is us finding our sea legs was spread out over the season.
There's no moment you can detect that. And that's to Ben and Dan's credit.
Were you guys worried? Were you like, maybe we should put masks on and maybe we should redo the COVID experience while we shoot season two to keep the calm. Right, to keep our isolation.
Because that was magic and that's scary. It's scary going back to anything that worked or works.
As much love I have for the show as I have anxiety about how

we perpetuate this world in a way that ends up being satisfying logically. It's a big endeavor.
You know, when we started season two, it was like, there is this steep mountain in front of us. Holy shit.
Okay, let's go. She's like doing Pulp Fiction too.
Dude. Yeah.
And just the enormity of it, it's so much to do. And I love that.
I love getting in and chipping away. And I love working with Ben.
Something we have in common is we don't want to stop until we get it right. I completely trust his taste and his eye.
And that's something that you have to have in a director is complete trust. And how often is that? But I do with him.
I have no business saying this, evaluating his career in this way, but I'm going to. So it's like, he did Tropic Thunder.
He made that movie so big and glossy and action-y, which is cool. He showed he could do that.
I was watching Dan Amore. I was like, okay, so this is him saying like, I don't have to fuck with comedy.
I know exactly how to do drama.

And I feel like severance is the beneficiary of him having proved he can do everything.

And now letting in some of the comedy and the weirdness.

This to me just feels like the total synergy of all the previous work.

That's really interesting.

There's just like a confidence.

It can be anything because the show is often hysterical, I think, and it's just all things now. Yeah.
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okay walk in and to turo doesn't sound like you got to bond with them in season one too much because you guys were in lockdown with tuturo i did because we had so many scenes together with walk-in in season one didn't really have all that much time with him i had a couple scenes and it was incredible to just be anywhere near christopheren I couldn't fucking believe it yeah actually on my first day shooting with both of them it was like six weeks into the shoot and they both were starting on the same day and I was so excited and actually took a picture of the call sheet and send it to my friend Stu.

It was like, guess who I'm working with tomorrow, bro.

It's so fun to still be that excited.

Oh my God. That's great.

I was so excited, but couldn't get to sleep because I was so excited.

Stayed up to like four.

Oh boy.

Woke up, not because of my alarm, but because of pounding on my door.

I was supposed to get in the car at probably 6 a.m and it was 8 30 oh no oh my god two and a half hours sleeping set was an hour away oh no now it's rush my assistant was pounding on the door which means he had time to drive from set all the way down to tribeca and pound on my door. This was the first day with John Turturro and Christopher Walker.
Have you bragged to your buddy the night before? Yes. Which is the kiss of death, right? You're showing up feeling great about yourself.
Oh my God. I let him in and was running around the apartment crying, trying to get all my shit together.
because usually i wake up with at least an hour of just time to drink coffee and read the fucking whatever okay so you finally show up on set presumably you know these two legends who you can't wait to work with they've been told our lead actor yes we can't find him i just had to go apologize and what did you say i said i am so sorry i just flew in from china the thing that really sucked about it is that i knew no matter what i say it's gonna sound like bullshit no matter what i say yeah you're a guy who just slept in two and a half hours i now have put myself in a position where i have to earn it back with these two guys who I don't

know. And I've been working on this first impression now for a while and I am starting

at a serious deficit. Yeah.
You're in a hole. No matter what I say, no matter how gracious they are,

they're going to be like fucking dick. The number one on the call sheet ends up being an asshole.

I might've been tempted. I don't know if this manipulative is also just dead honest i probably said to them you're to blame i was so excited to work with both of you that i couldn't go to sleep till 4 a.m that would have been a good move maybe bury it in some flattery but also that might have sounded like god this guy's a pathological liar on top of being these guys a addict.
That's what it is. Just immediately went to, is that what you immediately think everyone is thinking about you is this guy's drug addict.
This guy relapsed. Totoro was just like, oh, happens to everybody.
Happened to me. In the seventies.
Yeah. Right.
I have so much curiosity about both those gentlemen. They're in a similar category for me where there's this group of actors where I'm like, they're so intrinsically interesting and unique and different that I almost can't believe they can also act.
They're so genuinely authentic. I can't believe that Christopher Walken finishes work and then goes home and makes himself something to eat and watches television and goes to sleep.
Yeah. Like what?? Or he's behind a guy at the Harkin Garage arm who can't get his credit card to work.
He's just there for 12, 15 minutes. Should I get out and try to help him? Yeah.
He's dealing with that stuff. Christopher Walken.
No. So to see him in the makeup chair looking at his phone, I'm like, oh my God.
Tutoro is similar for me. I went to see his directorial debut opening night in 92 mac anyway i held all that back till i got to know him a little bit and then eventually kind of unleashed it all on him and did he like it yeah he's the coolest and such a sweet who is he he would be such a great person to have on we're trying oh i love a fascinating guy and one of the great actors that we have i mean he is a beautiful actor yeah that's another word i feel is overused more so like 10 years ago but beautiful everything's beautiful i like you describing him as beautiful and i have often

described that that whole storyline on severance it's hard to imagine that show without it i know it's really the heart of the show really really is it's beautiful it is beautiful they're both beautiful the way they play it is just impossibly perfect they're really close friends and have been for a long. And it was John's idea to have Christopher Walken play that part.
You can just see the love there that they have for each other. And he was really taking care of Chris on set.
Not that he needs to be taken care of, but he would come in for a scene every few weeks. It was just so sweet and lovely.
And that's a rare thing to have someone who is that kind of embedded in our consciousness. I'm going to put you in that category, which is I think the most impressive thing about those two from the outside, not knowing them at all, is just going, yeah, man, these two are still fucking starving to make art.
Like they're still dying to express themselves. I don't have that as much, sadly, but I see that you have that a ton.
I think that'll be you as long as you want it to be you. That's very kind of you to say.
I'll close on this. But you're doing that here.
I'm doing a different version, I guess. Yes.
Well, we're all storytellers. I mean, we're just three storytellers.
There should be a fire right here, you guys. The last thing I'll close with is just an interesting conversation that we had this summer.
And I've played it back in my head a few times to double check. It didn't at all offend you.
But we were talking about the people that recognize you. I don't know if you remember this conversation.
And there is an enthusiasm people have towards you that you have a hard time accepting, I think as we all do. But I was trying to explain to you why I understand it very much so in regards to you, which is I think you are for people what Nicolas Cage was for me, which is this guy isn't the high school quarterback.
He's one of us and he did it. He got invited to the big party and he's the star of the big show.
And I see myself in him. And I think that's a rad space to occupy.
And I don't know how you took that, but I know that's how people feel about you. That's how I feel about you.
I'm like, oh yeah, the dude I was making jokes with in the classroom about the popular people. He somehow is there.
I keep thinking about Nicolas Cage walking out on that talk show and doing those kicks. Oh yeah.
That's on Instagram all the time. Have you gone down the full YouTube rabbit hole of his compilations of talk show appearances? No, I should.

He's number one of all times.

The best.

I'm just going to tell you, he's talking to Letterman about, he goes, you know, Dave,

you know, I have this King Cobra, it's Daryl or whatever his name is.

You know, I just love getting going from work and I go over to see how Daryl is and I put

up the sheet and Daryl just kind of like, he looks at me and he's saying hi. And then all of a sudden he just says, fuck you, Nick Cage.
He just starts screaming at Letterman. He's doing this cobra attacking the cage.
The fact that you thought he was attainable is super hilarious. Yeah, that's amazing.
I thought I could get that wild on TV. I could see the direct line from Dax to Nicolas Cage.
And I'm sure Letterman loved that. Yes.
Well, I'll say that that is so kind of you to say, and I'll accept it just as much as I did this summer when you said it to me, which is not really at all. But I appreciate it, and you're kind and lovely to say so.
And I think that this show as a fan is so great and it is where you're able to funnel and express yourself in a really direct, important way. And I think you being so actualized and you journaling every morning is a really important thing.
And the fact that there are as many people listening to this as there are hearing that healthy behavior from you, because listening to you talk about that makes me want to do it. I'm like, yeah, that makes sense.
And without being preachy or self-helpy about it, you're just talking about yourself and how you're living your life. And I think that that is incredibly important.
And you're doing a lot of good just by sharing yourself in a more direct way than you would have been able to by acting. You're really kind of sharing your insides here.
And that's really hard to do. So I'm grateful that you're doing this.
Well, thank you, Adam. And I'm grateful that you're doing this well thank you adam and i'm grateful that you're doing this monica thank you from episode seven to episode 807 what a gap 807 807 that would be incredible rob what would it be oh damn oh my god that's a lot of episodes so i just don't want you to let 832 episodes go by between the next visit wow that's a lot all right everybody see severance it comes out on apple tv plus on january 17th and the podcast comes out on january 7th two episodes initially and then weekly as the show unveils yeah two episodes initially and then one episode

per day until season two premieres on the 17th and then season two will have one episode per week okay wonderful that's a complicated schedule i just gotta say this new season we also add alia shawcat who we're obsessed with love her merit weaver who i loved on nurse jackie Gwendolyn Christie,

Brienne of Tarth.

Oh, wow.

Oh, this is so exciting.

These castings. with Merit Weaver, who I loved on Nurse Jackie, Gwendolyn Christie, Brienne

of Tarth. Oh, wow.

This is so exciting. These casting

choices are as good as it gets.

Yep. All right.
That's all.

I love you. Can't wait for our next chit chat.

Thank you. Everyone watch Severance.

Thank you, Monica.

He is an arm care expert, but he makes

mistakes all the time.

Thank God Monica's here. She's gotta let him have the facts new shirt old shirt new attitude oh boy oh wow who's roxon um motocross racer oh is that you rob okay did you take a little fall

even though you haven't done them before apparently you can still do them it's your new year's resolution great segue to talk about don't die that doc because he was working so tirelessly on his splits which i guess he had identified as something that was youthful. Yeah.
Well, limber. Limber.
You want to be limber and flexible. That is, that's important.
That's why people stretch and stuff. Yeah.
It's just such a specific goal, the splits. I can see myself making one like that because a lot of my goals aren't totally logical.
Well, remember, it's Max's New Year's resolution. To do the splits.
Yeah, and you said, I don't think he can because if you don't learn by a certain time. I think there's an anatomic reality to all this, but maybe I'm wrong.
According to Don't Die Guy, Brian Johnson. That's nice.
You remembered his name. I didn't think I had it, but I do.
For people who don't know, it's a talk about a guy who has sold an internet company and has some $400 million or something and is spending two and a half million dollars a year to reverse his aging and try to live as long as possible. Yeah.
He's doing it with this company where they have steps and it's all in like it's wild. It's diet, the exercise.
It his whole life it's just devoted to that yeah and um i didn't finish oh you didn't finish no i got okay i got to a part that was a critical part of the story where i think it explains a lot of his backstory and perhaps what led him here but then i stopped and then i forgot to pick it up. And then I remembered we were probably going to talk about it.
So I thought, oh, I should finish it. But then I watched Conclave instead.
I did too. Not in that order, but I did see Conclave last weekend, which is not the type of movie I'm going to run towards because it's the Catholic Church.
Sure. But I'm going to get derailed by that.

I'm a little bummed you didn't finish because, again, there's so many knee-jerk immediate

things you want to say about this.

And I was just kind of wading through those and trying to resist that urge.

And you're watching all these pundits who just, they have vitriol for this man, like

hatred.

They're so mad at this man for doing it, which I who cares? Ultimately, it's his life. Yeah.
He made this money. He can spend it any way he wants.
If anything, he's dumping it right back into the economy. So maybe they should be delighted about that.
But there's some obvious things. First and foremost, you're right.
It appears at least from the doc that is it's his entire day. and then so yeah the first question begged for me is like well what's the point of being alive if the only thing you do while you're alive is try to stay alive which i think is semi-relevant but then also no that implies there's some qualitative way to measure how one's spending their time i'm choosing to spend my time one way that would not be pleasurable for me to do it his way so yeah for me that would be a bad cost benefit but for him i i think he like he's very very lonely the doc is kind of sad and sweet it's sweet and his house looks like it's so nice but it looks empty and cold and cold it's very modern it's probably supposed to be cold because i think you're supposed to keep your body kind of cold sure and you probably shouldn't have too much color because maybe that's bad for your eyes or something i thought about him this morning i was like i am incredibly envious of his um 30 days in a row of a 100 sleep score.
Yeah, that's that is dialed. It is.
But then for what? I know. Then you don't.
The energy you're saving is used to just like do the red light therapy. And yeah.
However, anyone wants to live their life, if it's not causing harm to somebody else is fine. Yeah.
But I did think spoiler. This is sort of where I stopped, but I got some information that he was Mormon.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

You weren't really towards the end.

I think you're about halfway through.

Yeah, that's probably right.

He was raised Mormon and had a Mormon family before he left the church.

Yes.

And his mom and dad got divorced and the dad was had his own struggles.

Yeah.

He loved Coke, which made me like the dad right away.

Sure.

And was in jail. It was a drinker.
Yeah. You know.
He set up on all of these fronts to need a lot of control in his life. This overlaps nicely with the Aaron Rodgers doc, which I keep bringing up, because he was raised in, by his account, a very, very constrictive, dogmatic version of Christianity that he found very, very cumbersome.
And you weren't allowed to question things and all the normal pushback. But there does seem to be a little bit of a pattern where people who are raised in that and escape it, find their way back into another version of it, just missing the deity.
Yeah, of course. Yeah.
It's a discipline. You don't shed your personality that much.
I mean, this is like such a dumb anecdote. But when I was home, my brother is like always sick at the holidays and he was staying at the house and he like came downstairs and he was like, I feel that thing in my throat where I'm definitely about to be sick.

Yeah.

And we were like, and I was like, maybe not, you know, maybe it's just a little scratch. You're probably fine.

And then he was like, well, I know, I know what this feeling is.

And then he went, but whatever. The next morning I came downstairs and I asked my mom, I was like, is he sick? And she was like, you know, if he was sick.
And I was like, what do you mean? And she was just saying, like, he's just very vocal when he's sick. He talks a lot about it.
He needs a lot. And she said, you have never been like that.
You just went to sleep always since you were little. If you were sick, you just went away and just went to sleep.
Right. And I was like, huh, I guess I still kind of do that when I'm sick.
And she was like, yeah, people don't change that much. Yeah, right, right, right.
And like a mom can see from day one till whatever. You could fast math if you wanted.
365 times 36

that's a biggie. 37.

37.

13,505. Thank you.

That's it?

No it's more than that. 365 times

37?

There's only what? 13,505.

That seems like. It's not that many.

I did it in my head so I might be wrong.

I did it in my head.

That's something Aaron Rodgers can do. Insane

I'm not going to be able to do that. and five that seems like it's not that many i did it in my head so i might be wrong i did it in my head that's something aaron rogers can do insane amounts of math in his head oh whoa yeah like his one kink is he can square anything real time you can throw him any number and he can square it which is cool but in any rate he has a very militant and some would applaud and I have no actual opinion on it, but he is he's in a five day silent room with no light.
He's on an ayahuasca trip every few months. He's like if he's not playing football, he is pursuing the spiritual path he's on.
But with a veracity that just feels very still religious yeah and then i of course i'm like yeah i don't believe there's a guy in the sky i understand why you're rejecting that but then there's also a lot of angles of this ayahuasca thing because you get to see him practice that a lot where it's you know to me it's just as you know you got to play drums and do the whole thing and the incense. And I'm like, are you just out in another on another ledge? Yeah.
And it has similar things, rituals and all of the same things that religion has. Yeah.
I guess you really just communities, the religion community is the superpower, the magic power, the deity. I do think when people get together and they agree on something and practice in a way, it's whatever.

Yeah. So he's back to the dude.
So, yes, he was raised Mormon. And so in some ways that he brings that same diligence and work ethic to this pursuit.
Yeah. But what gets really sweet and sad about it is he's very, very lonely.
He, you know, he had this really bad experience with this one woman after he had been divorced who he broke up with when she had cancer and she sued him and said he should support her forever because he's rich. And, you know, I'm like, you don't get a severance package when you date someone.
It's just not even the person's rich. That's how dating works.
You're not, you don't get a severance. You're not owed.'s just not even the person's rich that's how dating works you're not you don't get a severance you're not owed yeah so the guy but very publicly got sued by this woman and of course people just because he's rich he's the oppressor and she's the oppressed forget the other stuff but also because she had cancer that's a tricky that's tricky for i think for anyone to hear that it's a little like you during that? Well, again, you assume they left because the person had cancer.
Well, no, but the problem is when you leave someone in their time of need, regardless of how bad they are personality. I mean, this just gets it gets complicated.
It's a bad look. It's a bad look.
But you can imagine you've been with someone for a year. You're already on the verge of breaking up and then they get a cancer diagnosis.
You're like, I was already out. There's no way I have the capacity to now care for you for two years when I was already not wanting to be with you.
I don't know. Well, anyways, let's not get him.
He's lonely and he has this boy and his son and him are so, so close. And his son also had left the religion.
So he's dealing with the same. They can relate can relate on that and the kid's gonna go to college and you can tell he's really really scared about losing his buddy yeah and all that's really touching and by the end i liked the guy i guess is what i'm saying that's nice yeah yeah so he does have a company that's helping him but he also he's going down to this little you know there's agen.
It's called like Opportunity Land or something down in Honduras. They've carved out this little Prosperia.
I think it's called. Jeez.
The government granted this little area on a peninsula and basically total free market everything. You don't have there's no FDA.
So there's a lot of experimental experimental medicine happening down there there's a lot of like crypto weird financial stuff happening it's just um free for all it's a free for all wow and he goes down there and he gets this gene therapy which is just not allowed anywhere but prosperia so it's like he has got a company and a pro call but he also he's going rogue a little he goes rogue and when you enter a path like this i I don't know if you can help but go rogue. Because, yeah, I'm on the ladder somewhere.
Like I'm doing things with the goal of living a long time to see my grandkids. And I'm doing a lot more things than other people do.
Yeah. And they likely think I'm spending too much time doing that or whatever.
Yeah. And for me, it feels completely normal and it's not taking over my life and yeah again i think whatever people are doing for themselves to get through life uh if it's not and they're not hurting anyone i think people maybe rightly so maybe not i don't know it's a scale of luxury right like this guy gets to because of his work like you know he created this thing and he made this money got divorced over work non-stop because of that he has the luxury to devote his life to living forever and i think for a lot of people who watch that they might say like like, oh, that's crazy.
But there's probably an element of, well, why does he get to devote his time to living forever? And I don't. I have grandkids or, you know, I want to live to see my grandkids and I have to work a nine to five.
I could never do that. And so there's just it just gets hard.
I would like to do something very self-serving, but I don't really know how else to get the message out. I desperately need a tattoo artist in L.A.
I don't want to fly anywhere. I don't want anyone to have to fly here.
I want a good tattoo artist who is open to this is a total transaction going in and altering all of my tattoos enough that it is now an original piece of work. And then sign me over the rights to that.
And I will pay for that so that I own my art and can go short sleeve in commercials again. Got it.
Is someone experiencing cover ups? Okay. That's a good way of saying it.
Experienced in cover ups. Yeah.
If you could hit me in the comments of this episode and I'll find you. But I definitely need to sit down and have someone go through and alter every single thing so I can have my arm back.
That was self-serving, but I've been meaning to, I don't know how else to solve that. Yeah.
Great. Okay.
Anything else? You want any appeals to the audience you want to put out there? You looking for any specialists in any categories? No, no, not Conclave. What a movie.
Conclave was great. Please see it.
see it i think it's like yeah a hard sell just based on the genre it's it's a pope movie kind of it's really not it's about the process of electing vetting electing um a pope yeah and it's so much more complicated and human it's so human yeah at the end of the day even though it's supposed to be godly and um you know above us it's not it's people making these decisions there's ambition and power the things i liked right away is they are encased in traditions down to the tiniest things. Like the way it starts and the way you take the ring off the Pope.

And there's a device that already exists.

You put the ring in this thing.

You chisel off this one piece.

And that instrument exists.

And then the wax press.

And every single thing has a way of doing it and an order to it. And all these little devices that go along with it.
I think to add validity and credence to the whole thing. I mean, I think it's very calculated.
But there's something I loved about watching all these little weird customs that go along with this whole process.

It's really good.

Shout out to Tucci.

He was phenomenal.

Yeah, Stanley Tucci was in it.

Love him so much.

Double Rose Prada, friend of the pod.

Yes.

Ralph Fiennes is good, too.

Oh, my God.

He's so good.

Can you explain to me why Ralph Fiennes is Ralph Fiennes?

That still is a big mystery to me.

I'm just not sure.

Okay, but his name is R-A-L-P-H Fiennes. Yes.
And you pronounce that Ralph Fiennes? That still is a big mystery to me. I'm just not sure.
Okay, but his name is R-A-L-P-H Fiennes.

Yes.

And you pronounce that Ray Fiennes.

Yeah.

That's a huge mystery to me.

Yeah, I guess maybe his parents made that up.

I don't know.

Because, you know, his brother, Joseph.

His brother, I think, is Ralph Fiennes, spelled R-A-Y.

It's apparently a UK tradition.

Is it?

Oh, it's like.

It's like it's pronounced Ralph as Ralph.

Rafe.

Rafe.

Strange English quirk where something is pronounced entirely different than how it's spelled.

Well, his brother, the other, the actor.

Joseph.

Joseph Fiennes.

He doesn't have a fun one like that.

He doesn't get to go by like Zoe.

Right.

People do sacrifice a lot for what they believe to be bigger than them not everyone does but a lot of people do i'm a little more cynical i think a lot of people try to do it and then there's just cracks everywhere in pursuit of that yeah that's probably true i mean again it's back to the don't die like i think Like, that's their decision. Yeah.
I actually think it's a fairly noble one, whether it's possible or not. I think the pursuit is fine.
Can I ask what's noble about it? Why is it good to not have had sex with a woman? That's not it. It's giving up your life to the service of something else.
Got it. Not having sex part is a piece of that that they've decided that I didn't grow up in that so I can't speak to it, you know, but they, whatever, have their own reasons for it.
And- It's a weird one to pick. Speaking of giving up your life for your, you know, sacrificing, I remembered during the fires, you know, the fires are still happening, but're getting contained more and more contained which is really good uh-huh my hot professor yeah he was a firefighter before he was a professor yes and i just it just like occurred to me when i was walking and i was like oh yeah of course all.
I know. He had the brains.
He had the brawn and the firefighting skills. He had it all.
By the time this airs, I'll have gone to see the Lions play. Oh, fun.
Which I'm so excited about. Oh, that's great.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is it a playoff game? Yeah. Nice.
They had a bye week, so they got to sit out the first round of the playoffs and now we commence that's very exciting they're gonna play the washington commanders commanders yeah okay were they not so they were the washington redskins correct which is a no-no for obvious reasons so they they got rid of that name but weren't they for several years rob just called like washington football team yeah yeah a lot of sports there's like a hockey team like that right now too that's just the hockey team oh that's kind of cool they take a little while to name and brand everything so there's like two or three seasons occasionally where they're not a real team yet it's just so funny um are you gonna go to the wash the Washington football team game? Doesn't have a great ring to it. Yeah, there's a Utah Hockey Club right now.
The Utah Hockey Club. That sounds so AAA-er.
It does sound really far down. It doesn't sound like NHL.
Yeah, that's true. Hockey Club.
Hockey Friends. Detroit Hockey Friends.
Well, that's very exciting. Yes.
I mean, I'm taking my boyfriend, Aaron. Fun.
Oh, that'll be great. We also get to be on the field during warm up and stuff.
Oh, cool. Yeah.
That's very fun. Oh, I'm very excited.
You're going to be like the McConaughey? I mean, A, I don't deserve to be the McConaughey. Nobody can be the McConaughey.
But of course, I would love to be McConaughey. And I haven't earned being the McConaughey.
McConaughey has not missed Longhorn's game, I think, in 30 years. He has left vacations.
You know that incredible story I told that Kutcher told me, that he heard him partying very late at night in the Bahamas at 4 in the morning. And then when he woke up at 9 and turned on the football game, McConaughey was magically standing on the field in Austin.
Yeah, he knows how to teleport. He's the only one.
Yeah, so I just, I don't even deserve that. But, and I'm also wondering if I'll bump into other Detroiters.
Like, will I see Sam Richardson? Yeah. Will I see any of these folks? That's very fun.
Will I see Eminem, who I've never met? If they go to the Super Bowl, are you going to go? No. Where is the Super Bowl? New Orleans.
New Orleans. New Orleans at the Caesars Superdome.
You've been to the Super Bowl. I've been twice for work.
I went once for Ellen and once to promote chips. Yep.
And as I said, it's the only two times in my life I've been nervous somewhere. Yeah.
I just don't like what kind of targeted. I don't know.
I just start ruminating. And then I enjoy the Super Bowl so much being at home and eating the snacks and being able to actually follow the game.
This was even a decision when I was like, do I go to one of the early playoff games or, you know, God willing, they'll go all the way. Do I go to a later one? And I was like, no, as it's getting more and more intense, I actually need to be at my house watching play by play with a close up and hearing the calls and all this stuff because I can't follow things all that well in person.
Yeah. I'm not great at that.
A little distracted. I feel like football is a newer interest and that's fun fun.
Yeah, that's not my sport. I'll watch two or three games throughout the year, tops.
Yeah. But I do generally watch the playoffs because I want to be very excited about the Super Bowl.
Sure, sure. Because I love the Super Bowl just as a holiday.
Yeah. And I feel like I can amplify it if I actually know the stakes and who went through what to get there.
Yeah. So I generally will start watching and maybe the second round of the playoffs.

But the Detroit thing adds a whole new thing.

I watched a ton of Detroit games.

I put it as a season pass

and I actually watched all the games.

I know.

I think it's fun to have a new interest

as we get older.

For sure.

Yeah, I think you got to fight the inclination

to stop being interested in anything.

I think that's the natural arc of life. Yeah.
We just get interested in less and less things. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
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Have you seen the coach, Dan Campbell? Dan Campbell's bigger than all of the players. He is an enormous, he's an ex-player.
Oh, cool. And he just has an enormous head and neck and shoulders.
And it's really encouraging for your leader to look bigger than the players. Yeah.
Like yet at any moment he might pad up. I like a coach that knows the game.
Walks the wall. Personally, like at Waffle House when they have to work at a Waffle House in order to be the CEO.
Oh, they waffle house when they have to work at a waffle house

in order to be the ceo oh they do yeah they have to serve some time yeah walk do the do all the jobs uh-huh break up a couple thousand fights at 2 a.m exactly okay jj reddick the lakers coach okay isn't he you know the funny thing is Rob knows fantasy football is that fair to say Rob yeah yeah like he doesn't have any coach on his roster in fantasy so there's no reason for him to know I still expect you to know all of it I did win Charlie's League this season you had Gibbs though right yeah I had Gibbs and a lot of Bengals players so the running back right now for the Detroit Lions is absolutely insanely talented and he got four touchdowns in the Viking games which was a Lions record I mean he is young very tiny and unstoppable that's awesome yeah okay I'm right about JJ Redick he's the head coach of theakers. And this is a sad thing, but I didn't know that.

And I saw he popped up on my Instagram because he lost his home.

Okay.

But I was looking at him and I was like, this is the coach.

He looks so young.

Oh, okay.

This is now the age bracket you've entered.

Yes.

Now I'm at this point where I'm like, what is going on?

But he is 40, which is better.

I thought he was younger than me when i saw and i got very well you're unnerved i think you can measure your age in this very predictable way where it's like for a long long time all the players are older than you then you have a moment in your early 30s where you go oh oh, geez, I'm older than all the professional athletes. And that's startling.
Yeah. But then you still have the coaches.
Yeah. And now I am at the age, Monica, where I am older than quite a few of the NFL coaches, which seems impossible.
Those growing up, those were all old, old men. And it's part of it also that they are hiring younger.
I think they are. They are.
Okay. Speaking of age because we were really trying to figure it out while we were watching it.
Nate and I had an impromptu dinner last night at Morton's our home base. He was saying how much he liked watching the clips of Brolin and just how masculine Brolin is.
We just kept talking about how could there be anyone more masculine.

Then we were talking about No Country for Old Men.

And then I was like, we got to watch that shit.

We still watch Once Upon a Time in Hollywood together.

And then I just had this moment of recklessness.

And I go, should we go right now and watch No Country on a school night?

Wow.

And we did.

We came back here and we watched No Country for Old Men last night damn near he left it like 11 30 at night on a week that night but brolin is 38 in that movie oh but he carries himself like he's a little over 40 we concluded okay you know he looks like a man that's been around for a while and then javier bardem love him what a performance i mean he won the academy award for it that was in 2007 2007 that's so long ago it's so long ago woody harrelson's very young in it brolin's 38 great movie very unsatisfying ending but great movie i am accumulating a list of re-watch. I would like to rewatch Minority Report.
Interesting. Okay.
Tom Cruise and Spielberg. Yeah.
I'm going to watch it tonight. I need to remember to watch it tonight.
Well, this is good. We're talking about movies because Adam Scott loves movies.
He's a movie file. A cinephile.
A cinephile. Oh, also, we talked about words that have entered the zeitgeist that people, atelier, you know, things people are saying too much, really.
There's a new one. Oh, there is.
Yeah, I learned. I learned that elevated is out.
People say elevated a lot. Like, it's this, but elevated.
It's high end. Yeah.
It means high end. Yeah, but.
No one says that now? that now no we're not people say it too much oh i was thinking you were saying it was canceled and i couldn't wait to hear the connective tissue between no it's like atelier it's like everyone's just saying it but i don't think so elevated's already a little pedestrian though what do you though. What do you mean? It's not foreign.
Elevator, elevated. Atelier and artisanal, those have the, you know, appeal of being foreign and very exclusive.
We were just talking in general about words that are just overused. He even said beautiful when people are like, oh, like, it's so beautiful, like using beautiful a a ton yeah and elevate i learned it's somebody said they were so annoyed by that word and i was like i do hear it a lot my trigger isn't that are you say about glimmer glimmer that was the thing that came up in comments a while back when we were saying there should be a positive version of triggered oh and a lot of people wrote oh there is a term for and it's glimmer huh yeah it's when you're activated like if you're triggered you're activated right by a word yeah in a negative way generally but a glimmer is something that activates you but in a very positive way oh because i had some fact checks ago i was talking about being triggered in a really good way.
Oh. Right.

But I was like, the word feels wrong.

And I learned there is a term and it's glimmer or glimmered. And I like that.
Yeah. But my specific trigger about Atelier and artisanal is it feels elitist.
It feels like it's someone trying really hard to sound super sophisticated. And so that's my trigger.
It reeks to me of being a snob. Whereas elevated doesn't do that for me.
Sure. You know, I get it.
I get that. But they're ironically, they're not trying to be a snob.
They're trying to be elevated. Sure.
Which is a little bit of snobbery. All right.
Where's Skoll manufactured? Raleigh-Durham. Its corporate headquarters are located in Richmond, Virginia, and it maintains factories in Clarksville and Nashville, Tennessee, Franklin Park, Illinois, and Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
Copenhagen and Skull are the company's best-selling brands, and each represents more than $1 billion per year in retail sales. This is a little bit tempting for me to get back on chewing tobacco.
The notion that I could be getting it fresh off the line in Nashville is very tempting. Fresh? Yeah.
Minutes old? You could get it it minutes old brings me back to the time we put the roof on the hot dog and hamburger bun factory in detroit and we got to have hot dog buns that came right out of the conveyor belt and they were one of the most delicious things i've ever had in my life you can't imagine how good they are a second after they're made are they or yes but is it it's it? It's so hard to know what's mental. It's really hard to know.
I guess. But then you're kind of getting into placebo effect.
Sure. Which is real.
Yeah. Remember when we went to the.
Hawaiian sweet roll. Hawaiian sweet roll factory.
Yeah. King's Hawaiian sweet.
That. And we got them straight off the bell.
And what do you think? How do those taste? course they taste amazing but i i also know i i don't i know what i don't know and i can't know if that's placebo or not i mean hot one is just that it's hot but it's like it's not even set yet like the molecules haven't even totally formed the thing that also made that um king that King's Hawaiian sweet bread factory tour so awesome is that at the tasting station where we're eating them right off the conveyor belt, there was a block of butter the size of that refrigerator.

I've never seen a block of butter that big in my life.

It must be what they dump into the mix.

And we just had these fucking spades that we were just carving off huge chunks of butter and slathering it all over.

You know,

Thank you. It must be what they dump into the mix.
And we just had these fucking spades that we were just carving off huge chunks of butter and slathering it all over. You know, butter sculptures are a thing now.
No. Yeah.
People are getting into butter sculptures. Oh.
So they should use that big butter and make it into some sort of. Yes.
Chisel away. Every david okay now okay is 27 the age you start going downhill between 25 and 30 physically physical physically physical peak between 25 and 30 that's not to say you shouldn't keep working on your exercise and your physique as you said you've never better shape.
Yes. I'm I think I'm superior to my 27 year old.
Yeah. For 7-Eleven chili dogs a day and a 12 pack of beer at night and pack and a half of camel lights.
But I guess in some ways you were at your physical peak because now if you did all that, you'd die. I this morning when journaling, I'm like, I what is going on? Like like i couldn't sleep for longer than an hour last night yeah i woke up with a headache and my body's so sore i'm like what happened nothing happened to me sprinting's not helping for sure yeah and the air is bad i mean we all have headaches i'll leave this to you to decide if this is too gross for the fact check it likely is but i at the same time i am proud as a peacock about this as you know and maybe i've shared in the past um a weird hobby of mine is is i do like to weigh myself in the morning right before i go evac sure because i'm curious you want to see i want to know how much that weighs yeah and i have been doing that year or two.
What's the biggest? It's never above a pound and a half. Okay.
There are times I look and I go, well, buckle up. We're going to, this is okay.
Okay. Never been a more than a pound and a half.
I swear to God, this was four mornings ago, three mornings ago. I couldn't even finish journaling.
I had to go evac and it had been, I didn have a couple good days prior to that oh okay the first round was robust then i was doing some posting then round round round round round round round round round round round round round are you going back and forth are you just i just stay yeah i'm in there for probably 30 i just read i just read that's really really people hate that yeah they're convinced i'm gonna get hemorrhoids yeah but which you've had and they can have a good laugh if i get them but I haven't yet. I thought you've really bad.
People hate that. They're convinced I'm going to get hemorrhoids.
Yeah.

Which you've had.

And they can have a good laugh if I get them.

But I haven't yet.

I thought you've had them.

No, never had a hemorrhoid.

Thank goodness.

You just had an anal fissure.

Anal fissure, yeah.

I wouldn't believe this if I told, if someone told it to me.

I got on the scale.

I was 197.8.

I was on there for a half hour.

It's not an experience I never had in my life. Got on 193.8.
No. Yes.
Is part of it water, though? No, because I'd already peed a bunch. But did you have diarrhea? Very little pee came out.
Was there diarrhea? What do we call diarrhea? It was like... Water.
No, it wasn't water. But...
But it was mud. Then there's water in there.
Whatever the case. Okay.
I 3x my previous. I thought about that every 20 minutes the whole rest of the day.
Yeah. It's like hard to compute four pounds.
Like at your body weight, that's almost 5% of your total mass in 30 minutes. I've never had an like that that is a lot it was wild did you feel much lighter after i felt so much better i'd woke up that morning cranky headachy body achy got all the poison out yeah i felt good i did i did my sprints that day were you much faster there's no way for me to know i just run as fast as i can i'm just clicking my clicker my clicker so john troturo he said mac first movie 1992 now in the wondering plus i said he was wrong and he's not wrong oh interesting yeah this is really i actually think speaks to the how hard it is to get facts no i actually think if we go back so i said he's right mac 1992 oh wait he's wrong like i read the same thing i'm reading yeah but i think my brain well definitely wasn't working that day but I was like no, no, it's Illuminata, 1998.
So I think in my head, 1998 was before 1992. Okay.
But six years after. But actually after.
Upon reflection. Yeah.
Yeah. So he's right.
He's right. Mac, 1992, first film he directed.
I'm not surprised he's right. Not because I think you're prone to be wrong, but just he is such a steel trap with these.
I agree. I was surprised that he was wrong and turns out we didn't need to be surprised because he was right.
Yeah. What's the name of Nicolas Cage's King Cobra? He has two Sheba and Moby.
Great names. They're really good names for a King Cobra.
Yeah. I already can't compute.
Let's get some of the animals that live outside to live inside our house. Although I caveat to that.
There are three birds that going on now four months. It used to drive me a little crazy because I'll be in bed journaling.
I hear us whapping on the window. Yeah, sure.
They fly out of the tree and then they try to sit on a little piece of the window there's a little green guy he's a little guy he's about this big and he's green and he sits there and he like packs at the window and he flaps his wings then he goes back in the bush then he comes back up then we have these two larger birds with a big red crest and long tail feathers they are also on this one there's something about this window into the bathroom and i can't decide if they want to come in or they're just curious or they're confused i don't know what's going on but we have a veritable aviary just outside the window that's exciting yeah are you putting out food and no i was kind of laughing at that like the amount of effort i put into getting crows to woo crows to no avail. And I'm doing nothing for these three birds and they want to get involved.
It's a life lesson. Hard to get.
Way hard to get. Yeah.
No one wants availability. They don't.
No. Jesus.
All right. That's it.
That's everything. Yep.
That's it for Adam. Well, I sure do love that boy.
What a lovely man. He is.
He is the loveliest man.

I'm just delighted I got to meet him.

And we're sorry that the crickets came in the middle of his sweet moment.

Was it audible?

I didn't hear it.

Okay.

But if you heard it, we apologize.

All right.

All right.

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