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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Lily Padman. Hi. Today we have Ash, a singer-songwriter and a great guest at a wedding. I don't think she leads with that, but as someone who attended a wedding with her, I got to tell everyone that she is a party to have at your wedding. Great. If you're looking to fill some seats and she has availability, I would reach out. Her albums are Wilson, Ray, Ashlyn, and The Dream, which is with Phineas, their band, The Favors, and she has a new album out on the 16th of October called The Girl of Your Dreams, which contains the incredible song, Stop the Wedding, which we are going to be lucky enough to hear. She sings for us, guys. She blows us right out of our chairs. It was such a treat. Please enjoy Ash. We get support from. From Quince. I have to say, I am so ready for fall. I want sweaters. I've been craving a true crisp morning where I actually need a jacket. I can't wait. I'm fully there. The second it dips below 70, I'm like, this is my season. Give me the layers. Give me the boots. Give me a reason to wear something other than a t-shirt. And honestly, that's why I love Quince, because fall is when your wardrobe actually has to show up. And everything at Quince is 50 to 80% less than similar brands. We're talking 100% Mongolian cash. Cashmere sweaters starting at $60. $60. $60 for cashmere that you'd expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag. It's amazing. Gets me every time. It really shouldn't be real, but it is because they go straight to the factories, they skip the middlemen, and they just hand you the savings. The stuff isn't trendy. It's the kind of pieces you grab over and over because they work every time. The 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters for me are it. When I look at Steve McQueen, this man owned a couple of sweaters he wore all the time, and he looks iconic. It's a uniform. And Quince isn't just about the clothes. They have hotel quality bedding, cookware, bath essentials, thoughtfully designed furniture. You can really go there and outfit your entire apartment or house. So if you're in need of any kind of fall refresh at home too, same quality, same attention to detail for every corner of your life. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada. And the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was armchair expert. It's the best way to support the show. This episode is presented by YouTube premium. YouTube was already great, but premium supercharges it. If you like YouTube, you'll love premium. Try YouTube premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies. Terms apply. Cancel any time. Now let's get into today's episode. We'll be right back. Hey, come right up your butt. Whoa. What? They're known to. How often are y'all hanging out outside of this? Well, we're together five days a week. And then she's generally around before and after a bit. Yeah. We do some hangs before and after. Her best friend is on the porch at all times, Anna. That's right. She works for Kristen. So, you know, there's a lot of hanging. It's very incestuous. It is. I love that. It is. I used to basically spend the night every night. Yeah. During COVID, she lived with me. She lived with us for quite a period. Just immediately post seizures. Yeah. I had a seizure. Whoa. Yes. And so my mother, Kristen, felt like she needed to keep an eye on me. My mother, Kristen. Yeah. She did. And it was very sweet. If I could have her as my mother checking on me. She's a good one. I would be down. I recommend her as one. Needing me. I think she's taking new patients, actually. She is. I've grown on. Yeah. I think you might be able to slide in there. Okay. Will do. Okay. So now the wedding. Yeah. We met at a wedding. And I just want to tell you. We met at a wedding. We met at a wedding. I want to say from my perspective what happened, which was there was a rehearsal dinner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was conventionally the rehearsal dinner. The night before, right? I know what you're going to say. Okay. And I'm at a table. And I even shared about it on here. You did? I was positioned between polar opposites of a spectrum. Like someone who grew up in communist Poland. And then a music manager who's been doing it for 30 years and has seen every level of depravity. Right? So. Yeah. They put you in a fun spot. Yes. So I was bouncing back and forth between these conversations. And then I was randomly also glancing because I was the oldest person there. I'm like. Stop. Well, non-family member. I'm surveying who's at the other table. Right? And I'm just kind of like going down. I'm like, I don't know that. That person looks like they're on TV. That person looks like an influencer. And then all of a sudden I see your little face and you're staring directly at me. You mouth, as I recall, I want to meet you or something like that. Right? Yeah. And I was like, oh. Oh, how comforting. There's all these young people and I feel very old. And then I got to meet you. And it was a delight on my end. That's nice. It was a delight to get to meet you. I don't know what got into me at that wedding. I was so social. How fun. In a way that I'm fairly introverted. I present bubbly. I present extroverted. Yes. But I very much am not. False advertising. It's all fake. She is similar. Yeah. I saw. I saw her at breakfast knitting. There you go. By herself. Oh, very on brand. Very like, what you doing over there, Tristan? She really likes to recharge by herself. Yes. I would say not even recharge, just be. She likes solo time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's something special to that. I agree. I, once in a while, and I think Phineas' wedding was such a good place to do that where I'm like, I'm here by myself. My husband was at a wedding. Yes. Best friend's wedding. Mr. Canada. John Canada. John Canada. So we had two weddings this year. Uh-huh. And they were on the same day. Oh, man. The wedding he went to was like a 30-person, tiny, private. In a field. Yes. On a cliff. That sounds long. We were, we were at a different wedding. We were at, we were in high cotton, as they would say. Do you know that term? No. It means like, things are good. Wealth is there. You know, like, you're highfalutin. Yes. Yeah. It's probably a very, I'm sure it's a very. I know. I hated that. If you separate cotton production from slavery, which is certainly hard to do. I was like, cotton is a word we like, I guess, can't say anymore. It's a triggering word. But, but I do think when the cotton was high, that meant like, oh, you were about to get paid. Oh. You know, when it's high cotton, we're about to harvest and everyone's going to get paid. Some people are about to harvest. And the cotton is high. Okay, right. So again, we can somehow parse out. Yeah, it's hard to do. It's hard to do. It's challenging. There's a lot of these words that went down. It was a. It was a fancy wedding. It was fancy. It was fancy. It was certainly the fanciest. It was really nice. It was really nice. It was wonderful. Yeah, because I don't want to give the impression that it was ostentatious. It was not. It was just beautiful. Also, another reason why I felt so social is like, I am one of Phineas's good friends. Yeah. And I knew that these people are here because they love him. He doesn't have superficial relationships. Yeah. So I knew that I was safe. So when Jason Sudeikis is like, you know, a couple seats down from me. I'm like, hey, buddy, we've never met before, but we're going to be friends. Yeah, I felt very comfy. And so I met you and I just immediately was like, oh, this guy's so down to earth. And well, thank you. Sweet. The power of a wedding, which was really on display there. I almost could see the utility of weddings historically, which is you trust everyone there. We all love this person. This person has co-signed on all of us and there's an immediate kind of trust. I think people were being very. Very candid immediately. Yeah. Like that you wouldn't be in another setting, but it's just like, okay, these two who we trust have vetted everyone here. Also, I do want to say, cause I would hate for anyone to get the wrong impression. Yeah. There were a couple heavy hitters there. Sudeikis being one, Biebs, but in a lovely way, most people were childhood friends from both folks. Yeah. I mean, you had me there. Yeah. How long have you, when you met Phineas at 19? Did you tell me? He was 19. He was 19. I was 22. Okay. I'm the big sis for sure. We adopted each other pretty quickly. Yeah. How did you meet? Technically we met in a crosswalk. We knew of each other and we're in mid crosswalk going like, Hey, and then we needed to get out of traffic. But then we got put in a writing session a couple of weeks later. At ages 22 and 19. Yeah. Okay. Who was putting together a writing session at those ages? We had managers that were at the same company. Oh, okay. So they're like, we think you guys are going to like each other. Yeah. And I was married at the time. The first round. Yeah. This, uh, practice round. Yeah. The tough round. Yeah. The round that made me tougher. Yeah. 22 is an ideal age to get married. Yeah. That was, or no, actually I was 23. I got married at 23. So it was then, but that session with Phineas, I think you meet some people that you immediately, I don't know what you guys feel about past lives. Oh yeah. Hit us with it. Do you get into that? Well, listen, we do a lot of astrology here, which is not my bag, but I don't. Mind doing it. And so, yeah, I'm, I'm up for past life. Let's hear it. You buy into it. I don't buy into you're coming back as a beetle or a tree or whatever that way. I'm not sure. certain of that sure feel pretty certain because there are folks that i've met and even how comfortable i was with you immediately i don't know that we were best friends in a past life maybe but i think maybe we ran in you were my barista there was a comfortability there i buy into that and phineas and i we must have been like mother son or maybe he was the mother and i was the son you know just really connected and i've only had a few of those people the documentary about those two had not come out yet right about he and billy oh no billy had just put out ocean eyes oh wow and it was just starting to take off when we met so i really got to meet him in his most vulnerable state you know that's the best time when things were starting to rise but he wasn't phineas yet right he wasn't a single name artist that everyone knows no and i feel really lucky that we met back then also just to have all the years that we've had under us now but love him dearly i loved the wedding it was so fun i had the best time you hit me i have to say this okay please do you and kristin are so free thank you you were on the dance floor just letting it rip thrashing yourself around you heard about the shirtless yeah oh yeah yeah well that was later in the day it was hot as hades right it was a very hot hot weekend i thought to myself this armchair expert episode is going to go so well because i have seen him half naked wow and i thought i'm good it's gonna be great if he had his way every guest would see him hey now hey now hey now shirt off anytime you can well it has to be justified by the way you were a hit you know that we were all talking about it the next day right no that means me of course it makes me again i'm the oldest person there so you know i mean just objectively of the friendship group i'm the oldest one there by far is jason you were born the year i graduated from high school ash well you look good thank you thank you that delights me to no end because i was totally comfortable by the way but i'm also very cognizant of the fact that everyone here is in their 20s for the most part or beginning uncomfortable at all no i'm just aware of it and then you're trying to gauge like you don't want to be the weird old guy at a wedding so i'm like this may be the last year of my life i could go shirtless here and it's not insane you were not the way no one thought of you as old and by the way you're not old you don't have an old energy no you're very youthful yeah but i would say that is why they are free they are older there is a wisdom like age frees you a bit there's an embodiment i feel like correct me if i'm wrong yeah i feel like you seem and your wife seems this well very certain of who you are i like to think so yeah i think i'm pretty positive who i am at this point and you're probably pretty okay with that guy i am at this point yeah yeah i had to quit a lot of things and do a lot of things to arrive here so yeah i like where we've landed well and to that point that just tells me you've worked really hard to get to a place where you're okay with who you are yeah i'm probably proud to be yes no let's be honest as well i had exchanges with bieber i'm still selfish conscious right in that moment i'm aware of the enormous status gap yeah like it's an objective i understand he lives in a different world than me he has the pressure of if he is close to you you're thinking about that he's close to you right that's an alienating and an isolating experience that i don't have to deal with that's not an enviable position i don't ever want to be in a space where the whole room is hyper aware that i'm there and it's stressful kind of half looking that's too much pressure on any person no i think that's why i kind of never looked in his direction i was like let's not make him feel yeah the story i told myself was that you guys were all at his bungalow partying this is great uh playing music his music oh really because you guys i think we're maybe next to each other i didn't even know that i'm not a stalker i just saw you guys at some point going we're all neighbors yeah yeah i thought i heard you laugh and i heard bieber oh music and so i thought you guys oh i wish i thought y'all were very close no that was my first time talking to him in real life wow isn't that funny we're all doing that yeah we're all making assumptions about other people and their relationships and where we stand and all that oh it's so interesting it's like the grand social experiment yes yeah and you're kind of at least i was i was qualifying my position there why do i get to be here in this very special moment of their lives why do they get who's that motherfucker here why do they deserve to be here you know i was very psychoanalyzing it well we're little monkeys we are and we're in a little group of people and then like status is undeniably on the table and obvious like again if bieber is there that is what it is yeah my heart goes out to him because i would have a really hard time in that situation it would be really hard for me yeah i think monica's right i don't think it's an enviable position and hard to relate to others like we're relating to each other the experience of being there and a little nervous and like does this person know who i am or they don't yes he had a completely i can only guess he'd be stupid to not assume every person there knew who he was totally okay i want to know about san jose take me to san jose 1993 you're born wow you are so cute isn't she the cutest and two things i want to say about and i never do this i never comment on looks wow i'll take it it's nice it is of course no you're so beautiful you remind me of lincoln oh sure his oldest daughter yeah like me i think you're really likable that's why you are very likable but you guys have a similar energy and also are you familiar with gillian jacobs gillian jacobs yes love the show love that we love oh yes i love that show you are her twin do you get this i know what you're saying i've never gotten that i've gotten some random ones this is you i'm now permitted to join in you really look like her i will take that compliment i would have gone up to her if she was at the wedding yeah you have a history of going up to people you know my margot robbie i do i do i do oh my god so you went somewhere with phineas there's a really funny backstory in this which is phineas has already written the barbie song and it's already won an academy award and he's never met margot robbie right yeah loser yeah you guys go to a barbecue together and she's there is that the story it was a halloween party oh halloween party yeah i was marie antoinette marie and i have like the beehive and the whole thing and the blood across my neck i was marie antoinette i was marie antoinette i was marie antoinette i looked good as hell i had a couple drinks yeah yeah i saw her and i just thought why not yeah just go go up to her you got nothing to lose you do oh you have everything to lose no you're right you have nothing to lose there's no harm in asking there's harm in asking i'm finding that a lot recently this is such a tangent but people will ask me for something sometimes there is harm like even messaging you the other day i was like if i ask him this question he's uncomfortable it puts you on the spot there could be harm in that well it's nerve-wracking i'm the perfect person i did feel like there's enough of a kinship where i was like hey i was flattered to be asked to be in her video that's what she asked me to do and on that day i don't know if i should bring that i'm recording two mom's cars that day back to back on saturday so and i have the kids and no so you can't know my yeah i can't do it he's a very busy fellow that's so flattering to ask someone that but also i agree with you that some asks are too much they like change your perception of somebody yeah when someone asks you something that you don't want or feel like is probably was an inappropriate ask of you my approach now is i completely ignore it like i refuse to let you put me in a position where i've got to now explain to you why i don't want to do it be uncomfortable you be uncomfortable the whole thing is like you made this mistake and it's not mine to deal with you're not mine to deal with you're not mine to deal with you're not with and so i just fucking ignore it if it's something that i think is crossing the line or it's just too murky and i don't want to deal with it i feel emboldened to just pretend it never happened it's on them i think that's incredible advice i don't know you to be in this crazy uncomfortable situation because we have our phones on us all the time i think people assume that they have access to us free access and i feel like i've been learning this in the last couple years and i feel like i'm the only one who has permission to my access without me saying hey yes so if you happen to have my number which now you do i do if you text me or call me great but i haven't just given you permission to have access to me every single moment of the day and if i text you at some point and say my daughter loves the wedding song she wants to hear it on her birthday will you leave her a message ignore that ignore it yeah what are you talking about or if i text you at some point and say my daughter loves the wedding song she wants to hear it on her birthday will you leave her a message ignore it yeah what are you talking about ignore it yeah what are you talking about ignore it yeah what are you talking about if it's for lincoln if it's for lincoln if it's for lincoln okay but think of the example but if like okay but think of the example but if like okay but think of the example but if like i i'm asking you to be an on-demand i i'm asking you to be an on-demand i i'm asking you to be an on-demand organ grinder monkey for my amusement meant you just ignore it yeah because they're not gonna have the balls to bring it back up you're also a man i sure am do you feel like i'm curious if you feel a different experience that as women i feel like i've a little bit had to if you don't respond you're a bitch 100 you feel that way i like that advice i wouldn't feel comfortable ignoring i do think it's great advice by the way so years i confronted it i would go like you know what i don't think this is like a fair ask of me but now i'm in a debate with you they get defensive this is like six exchanges that i don't deserve to have to do and that's also an option you can be like truthful and say this is inappropriate or you can do the really easy thing which is just say hey i'm sorry i can't no thanks you can lie you can lie or it's actually not a lie you can't because you saying yes would not make you feel good right so yeah you can just say oh i'm so sorry i can't do that period and then that does go away but you've responded honestly with the boundary but do you think they would interpret that as i can't do it period like oh right she's on her period that's why she can't do it am yes you are you are in that way it's honest too if it's the luteal phase yeah i can't we're always on our period okay you get like one week we're always in our luteal phase by the way you're actually guys i'm ovulating today do i feel yeah yeah yeah yeah you're glowing fertile fertile you're catching me on such a good day tomorrow it all changes i now have the app you do to follow flow flow yes and i have flow for partner sick yeah and if i open it and i'm not gonna say who i got it for there's just a lot of women in my life let's just say and i have it you didn't get it this will get cut up you got a wife daughters that i need to know too if they're on another planet yeah so at any rate one app well no we started it with a calendar i think that's genius but at any rate yes i opened it i've only used it a couple times i happen to be a hero this one's i opened it and it said you know your partner's four days out offer her a substantial meal well the night before i had made the most enormous batch of spaghetti that was exceedingly substantial and i was like look at this i'm fucking ahead of sketch isn't that crazy it gives you tips yes you were like locked into the cycle already i somehow subconsciously knew it was time to prepare a substantial meal the night before genius i recently had my iud taken out about four months ago we're not ready to have a baby today i have a hit song right now yeah you're working on that first but next year i was like well i want to make sure my body is ready when that time comes you want to get that natural rhythm there for a minute yeah and i never had pcos when i first hit puberty and then when i went on a diet i was like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna get off birth control pill for 10 years which is now famously horrible for you and i don't know for 10 years i was on it for a long time too really very long are you natural now well i got your personal question no it's fine you do not have to answer no of course i froze my eggs how many eggs you got oh i don't have very many i'll tell you that girl i froze my eggs and actually this is important because i refused to get off birth control i was like i'm not getting off birth control just to freeze my eggs this is part of my daily life i need it i need it for x y and z blah blah even though the doctors were like it's probably gonna be better for you if you get off of it for a couple months i'm like i'm not i didn't wow then that went horribly you didn't get off it i did not get off i got off of it like the month before and then i did the retrieval and then i got two eggs which is not ideal scary and then i did it again and so then i was like oh fuck okay i should probably do it again and i will stay off the birth control so i was off of it for a year i did it again and it was a better result still wasn't amazing but it was better so it is important to be off of it for a little bit i think your body crazy i have no idea how old you are 39 so what i mean could be eight twenties for sure i will take it i'm not i was graduating she was in kindergarten when you were wow yeah wow those are kinder garden thank you kindergarten but yeah congratulations on making that choice that's so intimidating and scary and i'm glad the second round was better she made a whole podcast about it which is phenomenal called race to 35 i will be listening to that thank you yeah i did it with a friend and we went through every day wow we're feeling what we're doing we do the shot 33 this is a great time we're in that window where i'm like let's get all the tests done phineas actually told me to do the is a genome where you get your blood tested and see if you have any of the yeah some of the stuff diseases i had nothing amazing and now my husband doesn't have to do it because our kids won't you're the idea that you both get something he has a recessive yeah yeah i mean how did we get here this is what we do this is what we do you guys are really good conversation which i by the way haven't told the story i know i know it's earmarked it's okay we don't know what to talk no we have to let's go to the next question which is why you do you get oh oh the cycle i i'm adhd hi guys yeah we all are i want to get to a normal place and now i'm starting to but i've never experienced the full range of the female scope until the last four months yeah how's that going wow what are the highs what are the lows i genuinely feel this week of the you're ovulating i feel more magnetic i feel more social i feel funnier you're open to mating i would like to make yeah yeah yeah yeah i have found people attractive this week that are not attractive never oh god that's great i love my husband he would be fine with me saying this but whoa this week hits and you're like oh my god has he always been that good looking i don't think so great but then two days from now i will be yeah everyone will be great anyways it's just interesting margot robbie was great okay i know how it started because we were wondering if there's bad questions that's where it all started then it turned into yes so yes you see her you decide i'm going in you've had a couple drinks you approach her and what do you say i say hi so sometimes people say that we kind of look alike which is the worst thing you could say to margot robbie because she's one of the most beautiful people on the planet so you're guessing you do hi i'm margot robbie i'm margot robbie i'm margot robbie i'm margot robbie i'm margot robbie i'm margot robbie so how did she respond let's first find out the answer to that because i think it went well it went so well well because she's lovely and she said we should start a band great response so cute oh and then she said she has a cousin who looks like us oh oh my god there's three of you so she was like we'll rope my cousin and i think it was cousin it could have been someone else but triplets i think you can get gillian involved we got a real something going on okay genius this is what a friend of mine said mine did okay so my friend scott johnson constantly got told he looked like keifer sutherland all through our 20s and lo and behold he's at a bar drinking one night in korea town and he goes into the bathroom and fucking keifer sutherland is standing in front of the mirror like 24 well scotty at this point is probably 34 30 and then that's who he is the show oh sorry that's the actor yeah and uh scotty saddles up next to him at the sink and he goes you must get so fucking sick of people telling you look like scott johnson yes he started laughing they went and drank together and then scotty went back to his house and they partied all night oh that's such a funny way to say it do you possible way for that to go but i think that's the move instead of telling people that you look like them do you say you though because you have to look so much and he does look a lot but reminder liquid courage was involved yes i would not have said i thought it was a cute connecting moment it was it was luckily she was great yeah i guarantee she agrees this is my best story there's no way my best story he remembers this story she's like we should start a band you should have been like do you know how to sing i do you could have really you imagine and then i know the way i turned it i said i'm here with my friend phineas she introduces margo to phineas who phineas has already done the barbie talk we haven't met yet and i was like do you you want to meet my guy my friend love it so i go over to phineas and i'm like hey do you want to meet margo and he's like we're in a band together do you want to meet my bandmate margo he was probably mortified this poor guy i have put him through the ringer but you know what it's good for him it's good for him yeah stay tuned for more i'm if you dare we are supported by allstate checking 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But at some point, you're ready to put it out there, and that transition from private to public can feel like a huge deal. Squarespace makes it feel like a step. Beautiful templates, built-in SEO, email campaigns, scheduling, analytics, everything you need to go from, I've been working on this, to here it is, come find me. All in one place, no code, no stitching together a bunch of different tools. So, if you've been sitting on something and waiting for the right moment, this might be it. Head to squarespace.com slash DAX for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your free trial. It's your first purchase of a website or domain. Okay, San Jose. Oh, yeah. Wow. Tell me the vibe growing up in the 90s. How many siblings do you have? I know about your brother. Yeah, I had one older brother. Okay. Just the two of us. I was the baby. But I was the older child. He was the super artsy, free spirit, push the boundaries, rebel. Addict. An intense personality. Also just loves to have, like, just will pull everyone in, and then their whole heart will get wrapped up, and then they can't save that person, so then they fall apart. Was he a good big brother? Did he look out for you? He was a great big brother. He was. Yeah, he was really special. For context, he died in 2020. I'm so sorry. Thank you. To add to an already great year. Yeah. Well, in my career, I had the same thing. Song Moral of the Story, it was, like, the first song of my career that kind of changed the trajectory. It's on the Netflix movie, All. To All the Boys I Loved Before. To All the Boys. The second one. Yes, this kind of breaks out. Yeah, it was definitely the breakout moment, and that was in February. Then the songs taking off were Book and Radio Tours, March Hits, COVID. Then September 11th, my brother dies, heroin overdose. Oh, my goodness. And it was just the most insane. Which, this is an interesting, I'd be so curious to get y'all's advice about this topic. I'm going through a similar time of my career, where there's one song taken off, and there's this success. My body. Is waiting for disaster. I'm in, like, what is it called? Having a trauma response to it. My nerve endings are pretty fried. I think it's good that I'm catching you at this point of my cycle. Because I kind of feel as boosted up as I can. Yeah. But my nervous system is really shot right now. I'm not surprised. So, what do I do? Ash, do you think this. I would be guessing, I don't know you well enough, but my guess would be that this pattern actually predates 2020. In life, when things got good, did the floor fall out in childhood a lot? The floor fell out for me often, right? We were moving houses a lot, you know, things were happening a lot. So, every time something was good. It was like, for how long? You can't trust it. You just always thought for how long? That's what life is living with an addict though, always, for your whole life, is it's a high. Their high is also your high, because they're, like, happy, and they're fun, and they're, like, loving. And then there's a crash out at some point. Yeah. So, there's some, like, okay, they're in this phase, so that means this other phase is about to come. The luteal phase is around the corner. Yeah, the luteal. The luteal's on its way. They're ovulating, but they can't ovulate forever. Yeah, but it's coming. You grow too fast. It's hard to live like that. Yeah. My dad was severely bipolar, which really hit when I was eight. So there was, like, a big shift then, which I've always said, I'm so grateful that zero to seven, those were the most informative years. Those were actually fairly stable. And then seven on, everything shattered. There was so much trauma that my little body didn't know what to do with all of it. Yeah. There was so much therapy, for sure, and EMDR, and trying to tap into it. I'm definitely the healthiest version now, today, but there is stuff that lives there that you're just ready for the rug to be pulled out. Well, your brain is formatted. You create neural networks. You have a higher arousal setting. I have a higher arousal setting. There's only a lot of physiological things that you will continue for life. Yeah. You're likely more prone to an autoimmune disease. Yeah. There's a lot of predictable stuff. My husband has had no trauma, and I wouldn't wish any of it on him, but, you know, I'm explaining some of this to him, and it is really hard for him to totally wrap his head around that, because when he's experienced moments of excitement in his life, it's just excitement. Right. And I've actually met more people like that than not, and I think when I meet someone like you that can understand or relate. There is like a connection there. I think the thing we're all trying to get to is, yeah, the shoe's gonna drop. By the way, the shoe drops for everybody, right? It's gonna. If someone you love's gonna die. All these things are gonna happen. Yeah. I think what you and I can get stuck in is there was a period where we didn't have the agency to deal with the fallout of these other people, and we still think we don't. And the truth is, yeah, something's gonna go bad. But also, you'll be able to. Yeah. You'll be able to handle it. But I'm a force. You're living with the fear that you'll be. Poured in the storm. Incapable of handling whatever comes, as if you're seven. But you're not. Yeah. You're not seven. You're 33. You're a gangster. You're prolific. I am a gangster. You're creative. You are. You will handle whatever comes your way. So I think the thing is trying to right-size this fear of like, yeah, what's gonna happen that I can't handle. But you can handle it. Reprogram. Yeah, just learning to recognize you're not eight. What helps you recognize? You're not eight. What helped you sort of reprogram? I had a situation where my mom was newly dating again at 70 or whatever. She had had this wonderful husband and he passed and I adored him. And then all of a sudden there is a new boyfriend coming to my house to visit when she came to visit. And I first was like, no, you can't. How long have you been with this dude? No, I don't want to do to my house. Right. And I had three or four days where I was just like, it was off the table. No, you can't bring a guy I've not met to my house. I have children, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, fair. Four days went by. And I was like, oh, you think you're 10 and if this guy comes and you don't want him to leave, he won't leave. You have to protect. You're an adult man who I'm sure physically can remove the guy. You're not in danger, right? Even if she's chosen wrong again and the pattern's here again, I'm not eight anymore. And I called her back up and I was like, I'm fine. Bring him. And if I want him to leave, I'm going to tell him to leave. Good for you. It didn't go great. And I did end up talking to the guy. It didn't go great. And so that was, that was, it was good proof for me that I was like, oh, right. I'm an adult that can take care of myself. Yeah. And if I don't like the guy, I'll tell the guy. I've been saying the phrase, I am safe in the life I've created for myself every morning. Yeah, that helps. That's helping. Also, I think there's a little bit of what's the phrase where you miss? I am about to start my period, so I don't have a brain. That's the work those days. It's a bad. It's. Blah. I got all the options here today. I think you really do. You're welcome. I think what Dax said is like, yeah, this is life. Bad stuff will happen. That's inevitable. Yeah. But it's not because of the good thing. They're not tied together. That was going to happen anyways. Yeah. You just happen to have a good thing happening. Bad things happen. It's coincidental. It's attribution error. Ah, attribution error syndrome. I got there. Attribution error. It's not because of that. You are. Look at you. I did it. I did it. Before your period. What if she started this moment? Oh, please. The flies show up. Oh, you called the flies. It's really inappropriate. Is it okay that I have my shoes up? Yes. Ours is not inappropriate. Okay. But it's like decoupling those two things. Bad stuff happens. Good stuff happens. They're not related. That's really great. Decoupling is a good word for it. I also think an additional thing that's likely on the table. So there's that thing. There's like, well, I won't be able to handle this thing. I'm so terrified of what's coming. I can feel something's coming. I'm not capable of handling a challenge, which you are. That's one issue. I think another one, which I suffer from is I don't deserve this. I'm not worthy of this. I'm an imposter and the universe is going to smite me immediately if I'm mistaken for being worthy of this. And that's the internal self-love part. And I hate to report what got me through that mostly is just having children. I hate to say because I found such an idea. I feel so worthy of my identity in so much esteem in my role as a dad that I feel so worthy of all things now because I just found this bedrock of esteem for me. I know that's not for everyone, but for me, that's how it was. That's really profound. There's always that in the back. It's much more subconscious now. My conscious brain knows I'm great and I feel it's a waste of my time. It's like I'm not worthy of what's coming. And even more dangerous, if you think you're not worthy, you will prove you're not worthy. Yeah, you'd like put your own limiter on yourself. You'll put on a piece of shit somehow. Like your brain, weird subconscious will be like, let's prove I'm right. Yeah. And then you'll make some shortcut that normally you wouldn't. Or you do some inexplicable thing that only in retrospect you'd go, oh, I self-sabotaged to prove I was right, that I wasn't worthy of this. I mean, I almost quit music. I almost quit music altogether, had a pretty big mental nervous breakdown because it was sort of off the back of the moral of the story moment and my brother dying and all that trauma that I wasn't dealing with. And then mind you, all the childhood stuff that is dangerous to go near. So that just gets set aside as well. And then we got closer and closer to this big tour coming up. And every day we got closer, I started having panic attacks for the first time. Panic attacks are scary. They're so scary. You think you're dying. Yep. Have you experienced them? Oh, yeah. I used to get them a lot. I haven't had one in a really long time, actually. What a horrifying. They're horrifying. She's an overachiever. So, you know, when she's going to have them, she's going to have them all the time. Yeah. It's every morning. Sometimes in the car, which is really fun. No, not while you're driving. In a soul cycle, going to pass out and fall off a bike. Yeah. It was awful. I mean, it was such a horrible period of time. I relate. It's so bad. And you do. You feel like you're going to die. I feel like something's really deeply wrong with you. I went to so many doctors. They're like, you have anxiety. I'm like, you don't understand. If you think what I have is anxiety, like, you're wrong. And it was. It's born from anxiety, right? Did you see a therapist? Yes. I started therapy for the first time. That helped. And I hate this answer because it's sort of an external thing. But I started nannying for them. Not your kids being the answer to both. You want to borrow them? I need to meet these kids. I mean, the kids are deeply special. But it was more that I had stability. Wow. Because before that, I was working on a soul cycle. I was babysitting all the time. I was auditioning. I was like, what is my life? Were you doing this at the time? Was this before armchair? Yeah, way, way. So, yeah, this was when did I start? I don't remember. Well, Delta was born in 14. So probably 14. Yeah, right around 2014 then. Wow. So, yeah, I just had this job that I knew. I went in the morning and I left and I had, like, more freedom. Structure. Is that how you met? Yeah, I started. Well, we met socially. And then in that social connection, we found out she babysat. I love that. None of the kids died when she babysat. So then we said. They were thriving under my care. Manny. Yeah, they became so much smarter. Darker. Yeah, they got melanin. Darker. Darker. That's awesome. I was giving them the panic peptide every night. Anyway. San Jose. Yeah. When the bipolar episodes started, it's, I presume, destabilizing for everyone involved yet. It's a contagious condition in ways. Yeah. You just start feeling like you have responsibility over it. Whatever you do is in control of their volatility. You're trying to regulate them and keep them. Yeah, whatever they need to make sure you're safe and your mom's safe and your brother's safe. Do you have an autoimmune yet? Not yet. That's so stressful. Sort of bring this up to the nervous system thing and how much of this is psychosomatic because my allergies are abnormally bad and feeling like I'm getting sick all the time. And I'm like, I'm good. I am healthy. This shouldn't be like this. It could totally be the start of an autoimmune thing, but the whole body keeps the score. Yeah, yeah, right. It's like, I haven't read the book, but you don't have to. No, no need to. It's in the title. Yeah, great title. Yeah. I almost feel bad for him. I know. Like that title, he should have made it a little more elusive. Yeah. Great book. I actually read it. It's a phenomenal book. It has some critics now. There's like a wave of criticism about it. Yeah. But at any rate, I don't know how you're not an addict. I know. I think that I got to see, so my dad, for all the wonderful things that he was and is, we don't speak, but he's self. And I just saw between him and my brother's story, it took all the sparkly bits away from using. I'm surprised alcohol didn't ever become a problem for me. It's only just brought me closer to Margot Robbie. Yeah. So that's a real asset, really. I think that's just by the grace of God or Oprah or the universe. Body chemistry, probably. It's literally just probably genetically. Yeah. You don't have it. Yeah, because I'll start smoking. I'll start smoking, and then I'll be like, I'm good, and then I cannot smoke. I do feel like that's rare. Yeah, that's Kristen. When I met her, she smoked, and then three months went by, and I'm like, wow, I've never seen someone so effortlessly quit smoking cigarettes. And she goes, I haven't quit. And I go, you haven't had a cigarette in like three months. She's like, really? Isn't that weird? And I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you? How could you not? All I would think about when I quit was- Maybe I'm like your daughter because I'm like her. No. You also start doing piano and vocal lessons around. At the same time, I guess, the bipolar rises because you're eight when you start doing all that, right? Yeah. Is that a retreat? Yeah, music definitely was a place to find something that was only mine. You also can exhibit control. Yeah. I put my finger here, this comes out. Songwriting was such a novel. I get to process what's going on in my life through words that no one has to hear. I just wanted so badly for my family to be okay. That they would have never known that I wasn't okay. I would have never expressed that I was hurting or not okay, or I didn't know what my favorite color was. Everything was so wrapped up in them. Yeah, there was this one small piece that was all mine and that was writing. So I think that definitely shaped me for sure. Yeah. This stuff can give you your best hobbies. Your trauma? Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that you end up loving for your life. Yeah. There's the healing that can come from it. How are you getting validated in a way that would make you confident to try to get into Berklee? I don't know that I was. Things got really hairy my senior year of high school. There's stories that I think one day I'll be able to tell, but that don't fully belong to me. So I get nervous about sharing them, but our house was bombed because my brother was affiliated with a gang. And then our dog got shot, thing after thing after thing. These are not just things. These are enormous things. Nervous. Literally bombs. Just literal bombs. Mosh-mosh cocktail to the back of our car. Oh, man. Cortisol. And that's got to be another thing. My body is ready for trauma. I'm good in a crisis. You want me on your team. I'll go further. I get high in a crisis. 100%. Love it. Have to keep myself from searching it out. Starting a crisis. Or just, I see this shit happening over there. I want to run over there. I just want to be involved. It is a little bit of maybe a savior complex of like, I'm going to save you from your trauma because I know I can handle it. Yeah, yeah. I have years. Training. Of training. But you're a SEAL. My husband's father was diagnosed with kidney cancer this past year. And I was like, ready in action. Let me be. I'm going to help you guys. And of course, it's like, you're going to make the kidney cancer go away? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wrote a song that I'm certain is going to chase this. Kidney cancer. Are you kidding me? Stop the wedding. I've never considered that I get high from it. But I think there's ego in it for sure. Well, if I could defend this or be more compassionate to us. Again, the arousal setting got pinned. If Molotov cocktail is fucking blasting off, right? So life can be a little agonizingly boring in a way. This is what the dopamine seeking is. It's like you can be suffering under peaceful, normal conditions, which is not your fault. It's your responsibility. You've got to not get yourself into shit. But yeah, I feel very alive. All my senses work great. I'm plugged in. And that elevated state is pleasurable and a bit euphoric. It's probably why I love being on stage. It's high stakes. My therapist was like, there's an amount of cortisol and adrenaline that's released in the body on stage. That's the same as going to war. Surely. Your body doesn't know the difference between these fans screaming at you and you're fired up. Yeah. Yeah. Another gear kicks in and you are trained for this. So this is like, yeah. If people are coming to my show and they want to meet me or come backstage, it has to be before. Because if it's after, if it's right after, I'm still in the adrenaline high. But if it's like even 30 minutes after, I crash. Yeah. Which is not sustained. I'm going to have to figure that out for this next run that we're planning. You're allowed to take some time after. Why? You don't know anyone anything. You're allowed to take the. A minute to relax? Me staring you into the eyes like. You're like, am I? Are you sure? Are you positive? You're allowed to have rules. First time this is occurring. Yeah. They come before. That's it. I just got off the road with Benson Boone. Oh, fine. Who was and is the nicest person you'll ever meet in your life. Really? Yeah. If you ever get the chance to have him on. He's a human sparkler, right? Connect us. We would love to have him on. I would love to. I want to do a backflip off this table. And he would. He has a beautiful face. He has a beautiful physique. He's very handsome. Even when you're not ovulating. Even when you're not ovulating, he's handsome. He's like, he's luteal phase resistant. I was in my luteal phase both times. So I was on the road with him for two weeks in the luteal phase. Then I got off the road and then I, you know, follicular ovulating. And I was like, man, I was on tour with a handsome guy. And then we had one last show of the tour. He had to cancel a show. So, and so I came in for the remake of that one. I was back on my luteal. So I couldn't appreciate. Wow. Us men have no clue. We're like, boy, there was no rhythm. I guess my hair looked bad that day. When you're a young man, you have no fucking awareness of that, the luteal phase. And you're just like, wait, why was, she was giving me a lot of rhythm last time I saw her. And now, what happened? Did I get disfigured? What has happened? That is so funny. We have no clue. Yeah, that's really tough. You have so much compassion. I am so, so sorry for you guys. But so before he goes on stage, he prays. I can't speak for him. I don't know if he's so religious anymore. Because he came backstage and he invited me to like the prayer circle. Oh, fun. First we dance. Everyone's twerking. And then we huddle up and we pray. And it was the most sweet, kind of transformative, grounding thing. Ritual. And I thought, I think I'm going to start praying before I go on stage. Sure. I do my mantra. Really cool. So my prayer is the equivalent. But I meditate. He's not allowed to tell us. I do transcendental meditation. But you have a mantra that's given to you. And that's what you say over and over again in your head while you're meditating. I don't want you to tell me if you don't want to tell me, obviously. But why don't you share it? I have no idea. But when it was given to me, I was instructed to not ever tell anyone what my mantra is. By someone? By the instructor of transcendental meditation. It's not like a sentence. It's like a. It's a word that makes no sense to me. It's a sound. It's like clitia or something. What if I got it? Clitia? You're quite far off. But yes, if anyone would get it, it would be you. Clitia? What if it's clitia? Should we bore her with our story? You go. I'm traveling. And then I'm talking to Monica. She goes like, I've been being so weird in my apartment. I'm like, what's going on? She's like, I'm just fucking singing some bizarre song out loud. And I go, sing it to me. She's like, no, I'm not going to sing it to you. Whatever. We finish up our business. I hang up. I call her back. I call her back in like two minutes. And I said, is this the song? I think. What? I said the words are. Didn't I say the words? Oh, you said, I have made a song around xanthan gum. Yeah, around the word xanthan gum. And she's like, no, I'm not going to do that. I hang up. And all of a sudden, it occurs to me. I call her back. And when she answers, I go, xanthan gum. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da, xanthan gum. And she goes, ah! She screams so loud. It was so weird. And then got paranoid. She's like, you installed my. You installed my TV. Can you, like, hear? Did you. Yeah, I was like, did you do something with my Sonos where you could hear me in my apartment? Well, see, you're just that connected now after all these years. I mean, it's a lot. How long ago did this happen? Like, had you been working together for a while? It was wild. I think, you know, circling back to what you said, I was going to say it earlier, but I think we've known each other in another life. Yeah. Oh. I feel. I can totally tell. If I believed in other lives, I would co-sign on that. Like, there's just like, oh. Yeah. I've known this person for way longer than I've actually known him. Yes. What is that? And then sometimes I'm like, ooh, I wonder who you'll be next time. You know, I like it in theory. I think we all have some things that are inexplicable. And I think some explanations for people seem most salient. Yours happens to be like, for you, that just really resonates. Like, yeah, I feel like I've been here before. And again, our friend Phineas, every time I leave him, I'm like, no, he's 51. He's definitely my age. Or he might even be 51. If past lives is real, this is his seventh, 70th time. Oh, he's been around. It's his dad's 80th round. That's the most mature person I've ever met. That's so cool. Yeah. Okay, but back to Berkeley. Oh, yeah. How does one get into Berkeley? You submit, I presume? I auditioned. You have to audition. You fly to Boston and audition? Sing. I think I drove to San Francisco. Okay. They have teachers that come to different cities. Did my audition. I think I sang an original. I think I sang an original song. So it was like, I'm a singer and I'm a songwriter. And then I sang a Nora Jones. I sang I Don't Know Why. One of my favorites of all time. She sang for us as well. She did. Highlighted. Wait, you've had her on? Yeah. Early days. Yeah, I'm definitely going to go listen to that. Yeah, it's so good. I love her. And she came and sang Christmas Jingle. Oh, that's right. I got a partial scholarship from that audition. And I might have to owe that to her. Oh. I think you owe it to yourself, but yeah. Now. A little bit of both. Yeah. So when you go to Boston, A, this is an enormous cultural shift between San Jose and Boston. You also have the weather. You're also now not around the chaos. Is the experience dreamy? How do you change in those four years? I think it was the most rapid changing of my entire life. I don't know that I've experienced that level of zhuzh since then. Yeah, before or since. Yeah, like, so who would you say you entered as and then who did you leave as? I entered. I entered as a very scared, sad, frightened, insecure, tiny person. I was really terrified. I had a vocal coach who just was begging me to find pride in my voice and that I could do this. And it's funny because she came to a show when I was headlining and she's like, look at you with all that confidence. She saw me in probably my most like naked mole rat scared state. I love when she comes to shows because it's like such a callback to that. I left Berkeley. I moved to Nashville for songwriting. That first year in Nashville was still a little insecure. One of my questions is why Nashville coming out of Berkeley when you could also probably go to L.A. or New York? All my friends were going to New York or L.A. I knew that starting my career at Ground Zero. And those cities was going to eat me alive. Nashville at that time, I still think to an effect still is this way. It's a reputation town. Like you make enough friends. You show people that you're talented. You're a good hang. Yeah. You just got to be a good hang in Nashville. I also think, would you agree, Nashville has a journeyman structure in the old sense. Earn your stripes kind of. You learn your craft. There are rungs of ladders you can apply. and move up, whereas here it's like, I don't know, No, be nothing and then have a viral hit and be huge. I don't know what the intermediate steps are here. Whereas there, there's a little bit more of a journeyman. I would not recommend go straight to LA if you're a dreamer and you have ambitions of being anything. It's hard. LA, for me, it started to warp, at least when I was here. I've lived here for seven years and it started to warp. I probably was not in the right circles at the right time, but my story of why I was doing it, because I was around people that were doing it for the wrong reasons. I just saw Sally Fields did a little quick interview on the red carpet. And she was like, if you want to be an actor to be rich and famous, get the hell out of here. That can't be the point because you're going to get knocked down too many times and you're not going to get back up. And I think my why of why I wanted to be a music artist and a songwriter started to get a little bit warped. Yeah. More about that. More about the result and less about the experience or process. Yeah. And so I've kind of come back. Well, to Sally's point, anything short of rich and famous, then nothing's enjoyable. Whereas if you love acting and you're in a play, like, look, I was at the Groundlings performing for free. I couldn't have been happier, right? Like, I was doing a show every Sunday and I was like, oh, I love this. If the only result you're interested in is rich and famous, like, then nothing can be enjoyed until rich and famous. And then that's not enjoyable. Or silly either. That used to not be cool. Like, when I was a kid, wanting to be rich and famous was gross. You had to pretend you didn't want that. Yeah. If you wanted that, you had to pretend, yeah, you would be a hipster or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Tell me if you think I'm wrong, but I feel like I see more kids now interested in, I want to be an influencer. I want to be a movie star. I want to be X, Y, Z to be rich and famous. Where did we lose the plot in the last? Do I sound like an old fucking lady? No, I think. Right now? Like, the camera. You sound like. The oldest lady we've ever interviewed. I sound like an old lady. No, I think you're absolutely right. Well, look, no. What I'll push back on is, like, everyone has always wanted to be rich and famous. Period. Throughout time. I think that might be your experience. And you might be projecting that. I'm just saying, no kid in their hometown, when they imagine being Margot Robbie or Timothee Chalamet, is not thinking, yes, sign me up. That looks fun. But I think what's happened is. We have had a shift in the industry, which is the only way to get that in the past was to become a really good actor or a really good singer. But then we had. And I love her. So this is no shade. But then we had, like, the Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian phenomenon. And these people became billionaires. So now there was a new avenue to being rich and famous that didn't require a ton of training as an actor or singer. And that's fine. So I don't fault anyone. Everyone wanted to be rich and famous. But the hurdle to become that was pretty significant. And there are avenues now to be rich and famous that don't require, to me, a terribly objective skill set. Talent, yeah. Like, if you're hot and you look like you're having a great time everywhere you go, that could be valuable. And by the way, good for them. It maybe is valuable. Good for them. I got no beef with that at all. That's so interesting. Rich and famous, though, I think when you're young and you're seeing, you know, whatever. Timmy Shaley? Yeah, on the cover. And you're like, oh, my God. It seems so glamorous. But really what's under it is, like. Everyone loves them. I want to be a person that everyone loves. Yeah. I want to be enough. And that's what rich and famous is getting conflated with. Is a proxy for. Yes, exactly. But it's really like, everyone in the whole world loves this person, and I want that. And you're definitely naive about what that is. Exactly. Because then you're Bieber at the wedding, and you know everyone's thinking about you, and that's very uncomfortable. Well, that's crushing into a new fashion. Right, right. That's icon status. I always wanted to be as successful as Bon Iver. Justin Bernan. Yeah, oh my God, he's incredible. He can go to a Trader Joe's, but he can also sell out an arena. And get a great table at a restaurant. There are things you want. Skip the line. So I was a competitive gymnast for eight years. Oh, wow. Oh my goodness. When I was a kid. Oh, wow. Homeschooled for it, was going to the Olympics. Saw the Olympics, wanted to go to the Olympics. Yeah. But it was from such a place of I want to be great. Yes. And I want to be important. Are you watching Lanterns? No. Okay. Well, it's great. It's great. But there's something that happens. It's not as small. I don't think. It sounds like it's going to be. Beep. There's a eulogy that's being given. It's not as big. I love a eulogy. It's a eulogy that's being given that's written by the person who's died. They've pre-written it. Okay. Okay. Lovely. Whoa. Yes. And the last line is, "I hope I mattered." And yeah, I was watching with my friend and we were both like, "Oof." It like really- Distills it down. It's all we want. Yeah. Yeah. We want to matter. It's just, who are you going to matter to? Yes. Do you need to matter like Dolly mattered or do you want to matter to your kids? My therapist phrased it another way, which is very similar, but he's like, "Do you think you exist?" I mean, it's weirdly that deep. Like if I'm not observed and people aren't witnessing it, do I exist? You have this deep desire to know you exist. You're not even sure you exist if you see, if you feel invisible, you're in eighth grade and no one says hi to you all day long. It can feel like you don't exist, and that's heartbreaking. I think that's the whole reason why we want to find love in life, because you want someone to be a witness- Yes. to your life. It's a little selfish. I buy into that fully. They help you know you exist. Yeah. I want to be on the porch wrinkled up with my husband, and I want him to know what I looked like now- Yeah. and what I sounded like, and the changes I was feeling. You have experienced all of it. You're telling a story. You're creating a story. The story is your life. If no one reads that book, it's a little bit heartbreaking. You exist. Yeah. That's why I have a fascination with cemeteries. Okay. I love it. You performed at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Yeah. That must have been a joy. Very cool. It's cool to see a sea of heads and then a sea of tombstones. That was really powerful. But why do you like them? Just because it's a reminder of life? I just like to feel small. In, I think, a healthy way. In a humility way. Yeah. Like the ocean. I think we make ourselves so grand. It's funny because we hold multitudes. We're like, "I'm small, but I'm important." But I love looking at a tombstone that's like 1780 to 18-whatever. And I just imagine the adventures that they had, and the laughs that they had, and were they funny? Were they talented? Did they have kids? Were they someone's brother, sister? And you create this little life, and their story's over. It's done. And that's going to be me. Yeah, exactly. It's going to be me tomorrow. I don't like that. Okay. Not tomorrow. But I know what you mean. It's a blip. Whether it's 30 years or 130, it's short. It is. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We would sometimes drive to Toronto from Detroit, my family, my mom and my brother and my sister. I would see these apartment buildings. There's so many windows. I'd be in the backseat of my mom's Pinto, and I'd go, "It's almost incomprehensible. Every one of those windows has a me in it that feels very important." Yeah. And then a bunch of other. My mom's in there. My brother's in there. It's overwhelming. It's overwhelming. It's overwhelming. It's small, but we really don't think about it. We're thinking about it right now, because we're lucky enough to have this conversation, but we're going to leave here in an hour from now. We're going to forget that there's a bunch of people in those windows living there. Yeah, and they all are having important lives, and they're the star of it. Yeah. Okay. Wow. We're really doing it. I want to. I love this. I'm having a nice time. Oh, good. We try to provide one. Yeah. We aim to. This has been like a real port in the storm. This week has been fucking insane. And then the music video of it all, like I said, my nervous systems, but seeing this on my calendar has brought me so much joy. Oh, wonderful. I knew it would be nice. I have a question about the financials of when you moved to Nashville and you start. You're doing a couple different things that I assume are paying the bills, which is you're starting to sing on other people's stuff, and then you're also writing, like you write a song with Demi Lovato. For her. In the acting world, we know it's like, if you get one national commercial this year, you'll be okay. You're going to be able to make your rent. You can live. We know what one needs to do to survive here, but how does one cobble together and which things buy you more time, basically? When you write that song for Demi Lovato, do you go like, oh, okay, I have this chunk of safety? You're trying to get a publishing deal. As a writer, that's your first stop, your goal. I was making coffees, barista, and I was in every writing room that would take me. I was in like two sessions a day. For months at a time, and then would work at night. And were you learning a ton in those, or were you too distracted trying to prove yourself? Boot camp. I was still insecure. Well, no. I was insecure in trying to prove myself. Yes. Yeah, sure. I would be. Both. I'm asking because I would have missed a lot of lessons trying to prove to them I deserve to be there, even though I didn't think I did. Yeah, trying to come up with an amazing idea. Yeah. Nashville, more so than LA, at least at the time. They want to. to teach you, you're in right rooms with people who are very yes and so you'll say an idea and then they'll piggyback off you that's why I loved writing with Phineas because he is such a yes and writer I've had the pitfall of being a but so you know because I don't know if that's good enough or I'll put a period at the end of something so I definitely was learning a lot from those Nashville writers I had no business being in some of those rooms and honestly I only got in them because I was a good hang you're gonna like this girl she's you know fun to be around fun or whatever that got me further than my talent did and then the talent crossed over to the next thing but yeah so the financials were tricky for a bit I signed my first record deal and publishing deal 2019 18 and then I was able to just do that and then the progression as you put out like some singles and then you put out an EP with four songs and then you put out a second EP finally then you do a full studio album yeah and the first one was of the first three because now your fourth one's about to come out October 16th yes like tomorrow I'm so excited so exciting the first one I would imagine you're pumped right the first one probably shockingly does well for you yeah everyone says you write your first album your whole life yeah yeah yeah it's all leading up to that one yes you have your entire life to draw from then you have no idea what to fucking write about after that second season of a show is similar it's like oh now what yeah but so did you spin out when it came time like okay well let's follow it up yeah is that so stressful I think man and I'm talking about him way too much he really is such a big part of my life but Phineas was on Till Forever Falls Apart which was on that album and that was a part of I got a follow-up moral of the story with Phineas and I and I got a follow-up moral of the story with a great song wrote that sent it to him said do you want to sing on this and that's the song you guys played at the wedding it's so good so awesome it's really special also I remember being a kid when I first started writing and dreaming of a duet wouldn't it feel amazing to be on stage with someone else yeah and we're having this magical movie you know I'm picturing it in my head as a movie and I get to do that so often yeah I'm living this very special it's a big vortex of energy and hormones and it's awesome it's the coolest thing yes then you guys you do the favors with him yeah I'm just gonna flag home sweet home no that's my song on that album the dream it's so funky and fun a little disco-y huh yes there's some hints that one is a bit bgz and then I'm stop the wedding's very alba-y in a lovely way big inspiration for me to the degree that you've seen the play and everything and you've watched the my children watch the movie quite often oh yeah like once a year mama yeah mama yeah meryl streep oh I don't really get I don't know if you get starstruck I mean you see stars all the time on this couch but meryl streep yeah forget it I'd fall over and die sometimes people say we look alike yeah the aforementioned without a paddle that was the first movie I was ever in first time they sent me away to go do all these different things you have to do when you're in a studio movie and one was go to this thing show west and I like come out we're all on stage with all these other movies that are coming out and I bounce out the back door to have a cigarette and fucking miss street no out there banging a dart yeah she and I killed a fucking dart and I'm like one year ago I had been trying to get a role for nine years and didn't get one and then somehow I'm now back you know who you were no fuck no yeah no that's okay that's great smoking a cigarette with her that's so cool that's your best story yeah I agree wow pull that one out more I was keeping it in the back pocket I know I'm running out I'm running out there's only a couple couple left cigarettes with some pretty cool people but no one as cool as her I should start I will ask you when you meet John Canada I just this name is too much for me it's crazy how does someone end up with the name Canada I'm a shepherd uh my family apparently at one point herded animals clearly shepherds I think it comes from Kennedy O'Kennedy they're Irish okay and I think maybe someone wrote it down wrong when they came over okay great so O'Kennedy became Canada Canada Kennedy Canada so really I'm kind of a Kennedy wow if you really one of the many stretch it yeah you really stretch it what does John Canada have that makes you willing to give marriage a second shot I love that well I mean I could label so many things the best thing everyone is in his circle I'm a very small circle tiny tiny if you have permission in then you are very very important to me sacred he has this selflessness to him and this compassion to him that he just all walks of life whoever you are just pulls them in and makes them feel seen feel hurt feel understood I don't know how he does it the aforementioned non-trauma yeah well I was gonna say he's not worried people are going to be liabilities they're not gonna hurt him yeah all my compassion and my empathy has come from my trauma so I'm like where does this get born of I think I'm a really kind person he makes me look like a real piece of shit I like the idea of our kids being able to have that balance of a little bit of a hard-ass mom and then this guy who's just always gonna listen and be like whatever you have for me i'm here and it's really sweet i think that's his best thing and then again back to the past life thing i don't know i looked in his eyes i looked at him and i thought you look like my children whoa like my children are gonna look like you the moment i met him wow that's crazy well it's ovulation time today i know i know let's get it over here he's flying in tonight i know he's gonna be in the music don't wait don't wait don't wait you have all these stories about how you won't be able to do the thing you want to do and chris and i our careers both got way way better okay magically we're like i don't know how this is gonna work and then there's some kind of magic that happens i needed to hear that yeah yeah yeah i think i'm on the same page what i'm not gonna do is let my success get in the way of my greatest dream which is to be a mom there you go but i also really want to go on tour next year yeah you'll go on tour kristen shot six movies she was pregnant she's nursing she's you know you do it also there's the stigma with being a lady that the minute you have the baby it's like your fault it's on the down side of your career i'd love the trajectory to be a continuation of up i think you guys might be outliers no i can point i can point to natalie portman i can you point to so many people that you're just not aware that they had kids yeah so many people have kids that you don't know have kids yeah yeah it is different acting world because you can kind of disappear for a while it's worse because you're disappearing no it's worse your character isn't pregnant she's working as a consultant she's supposed to be a single person like she's super pregnant it's harder you're allowed to be pregnant you can be you can be a pop star who's pregnant you can hide then they do when people are working like but you don't even need to you don't need to hide you can be you singing this song with a big baby pump is radical who doesn't want to see that it's gonna be so cute yes there you go yeah john canada is also very handsome oh wow the video is like this old vintage 1960s dating game show oh fun and we need all these like hot male contestants oh look at you getting the asses out of you no i'm the janitor that finds the oh we were gonna ask him to be the host the old pervy host kissing all the contestants on the lips you're like i have an idea for my character you want me to be does that work for this song yeah i'm so sorry you can't make it that day so i just want to ask obviously you're here to promote the girl of your dreams which comes out october 16th i'm here to talk to you i know you are but that's my foot in the door but your project that's forthcoming is the album the girl of your dreams is this the first time i'm assuming it would be really radical to already have a single that's totally working before the album comes out it does not suck it's definitely a vote of confidence i also kind of reserved myself that this would be my last record if people didn't like it because i really loved it and i know that it's my best work this is the best i've ever brought to the table from my voice and what i'm singing but also the writing and the producer i worked with noah conrad he also produced moral the story and he's at his best i I just know that this is my best. So if my best doesn't cut it, then I'm like, all right, we're going to pivot. Hold on. I got to fully disagree with this. I don't love that either. I'm not saying it's advice to other people. We just interviewed Guillermo del Toro. There isn't a more creative volcano on planet Earth. Tons of these movies that were fucking absolutely brilliant, no one saw. If he would have been like, well, I did Pan's Labyrinth and it didn't make $600 million, so I guess I'm in the wrong business. And this, by the way, contradicts what you just said, which is like, if rich and famous is the goal, then get the fuck out of the business. Making great albums that you're proud of is the business. Making your art. I think it's like, can I keep paying the bills with it? Right. Well, John Canada's going to, you know, he's going to have to help you work. He's going to have his master's in accounting. Well, there we go. That's a reliable job. That's a far better. Backup plan than either of us. By the way, my grandma loves that fact. Yeah, that's a good fact. Well, that's a reasonable man. Sensible man. Sensible man. He's a drummer in a band. I just read this Instagram. I was thinking about this on the toilet today. You see these things on Instagram. And even if you recognize at the moment, this probably isn't scientific. It's stuck in your head forever. And you will eventually think it was scientific. So I read this thing recently that they IQ test on musicians. And that. Drummers are the smartest across the board. Wow. From all the musicians. And again, I can't imagine how robust this scientific study was, but it's now in my head and will be for life. So he's probably brilliant because he's a drummer. He's very smart. There you go. Yeah. One more bit of data to the study wasn't like some crazy percentile of his class. Okay. There you go. And he's drawn to the drums. They were pointing out something about rhythm. Like something about time. There's some mental, well, your brain is doing two things at once for the right. It's like the people who can, which I'm not even doing right right now. Yeah, I can do that. I think the hardest one is this one. Oh yeah. Concentric circles that go the opposite way. Did I do it? I can't. Oh, oh, but then you keep going. You're doing it. You're doing it. That's a great, see Monica's going like this. Shut up. She's about to start her period. Yeah, you're in your. Yeah, well, you got a little, you know, a little skinny wampus there, but yeah, that's a hard one. Wow. I can't do it. Yeah. Do you make all your guests? Do you think? No, you're the first. Again, I've got four tricks left. Wait. So going back to this whole I would have quit thing. I don't think I'd put as much stake into it. I just signed my first major record deal for this album. And it was off the back of my biggest collaboration. Project with Phineas, a band, there was just this hype and momentum that was setting up this record for commercial success. And if all of that momentum and the best writing that I've ever done didn't sort of materialize in a commercial way, there is so much to this job that I hate and that I am unwilling to continue doing for nothing. And I'm not going to continue doing it. I'm going to continue doing it. And I'm going to continue doing it. Stop the wedding Stop the wedding, stop the wedding If your heart is dreading, hands are sweating While the sun is setting, you'll be getting out You don't have to waste your life and wear your heart out The hoarding signs are flashing, now stop the wedding Stop the wedding Stop the wedding Even though the tables say That the guests are waiting You can burn the dress and run away Stop the wedding Stop the wedding Only you can start Stop the wedding Only you can Stop the wedding Oh, girl, you let it rip! Oh, you let it rip! It's beautiful! Sorry, I'm just wailing at you. That's our preferred. I love it, I got a little welled up. Oh, it's so good! So good. Thanks, guys! I loved meeting you at the wedding, and I loved this interview. I'm so glad, and I feel very grateful that you sang for us. That was really beautiful. That was fantastic. Yes, and I want everyone to listen. To every single track on The Girl of Your Dreams, starting October 16th. And go back, listen to all the albums. Yes, yes, yes. Thanks, guys! Yes, yes. Take the journey that we're currently on. Yeah. All right, adore you. I love you guys. He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here, she's gotta let him have the facts. I have a little treat for you. What is it? I want to start this with an audio clip. Okay. This was found on. This was found on Monica's computer today. Okay. And I think you're going to enjoy it. Mama made it. But how did you get in Mommy's tummy? Yeah, how'd you get in there? Mama? I didn't get in there, I got made in there. Right. But how did you get in there? What do you think you grew from? You know, like a tree has to grow from a seed, right? A blood cell. No, an egg. An egg. An egg. An egg. An egg. An egg. That's a new thing. And that, um, electric cord on an egg, it's coming, it connects to the ball in the middle, and then the, the string on the other side, it connects to my tummy. String. The umbilical cord. To my tummy. My umbilical cord on it, that's you too. That's right. My umbilical cord. Well, hold on, hold on, hold on. What made you use your umbilical cord? Is that what you're telling me? Mm-hmm. Okay. Do you have any questions for me? So what part did I have to do this? The umbilical cord. The umbilical cord. The umbilical cord. The umbilical cord. Okay. You fed me. You fed me. You don't have a question. You snuggled me. Oh. You snuggled me. Yes, I've done all those things, but that's after you were born. How do you, what role do you think I played in you being born? Do you think I was a part of that? You cut all your umbilical cords. She's rude. I can do that, you're right. She's doing gory. Do you think mommy just grew you? Do you think I thought about it, and I was like, "I want to be pregnant," and then, poof, I was. How do you think you got into this? She's rude. She's doing gory. How would she know this? Daddy put me in. Oh. Daddy put me in. Yes. So. Seriously? Yeah. Oh my God. So mommy's body makes eggs, and daddy's body makes sperm, and my sperm swam up mommy's uterus. This one made mama's little balls. This one made mommy's little balls. Once pregnant, we went out to eat with Ryan and Amy and Crosby and Millie. They were both born. Yeah. And it was an untenable dinner. It couldn't be had. And it was at Big Boys where you're invited to be quite rowdy. But even it was too much for even the back room at Big Boys. Yeah. And I remember leaving there in a bit of a panic because Kristen's about to give birth. Yeah. And we're going to be in the same situation where it's like we can't even get through a meal at Big Boys. And lo and behold, when it's your kid. Of course. It's something magic happens where it's like, yeah, I don't want to be playing Monopoly with someone else's kid. Like that doesn't sound very appealing to me at all. Yeah. It's deeper than that. It's deeper than like I don't want to be playing with the kid. It was just like it had nothing to do with her children. They're great. Yeah. It was just like I'm very glad that my day is mine. yes of course yeah yeah yeah and it yeah that makes a ton of sense it's strange and then that night or like at five i went to a new place shout out oh okay buckle up for a new shout out hotel lucille it's in silver lake it's a new hotel and they have a new restaurant in there very cute um so anna and i went and there was i won't say who but um an actor there and we were kind of we were kind of confused because there was this actor there was another man and then there was a lady and there and there was a baby uh-huh and we couldn't figure out who's the actor's baby or the other and the other man was holding the baby really like it was his and then but also the actor was also kind of holding the baby like it was just like oh maybe he was practicing for a role no i was like maybe these are two dads okay sure and i was like who's that lady you know so there was a lot of questions but the baby was so cute and the maybe one of the dads or uncles or friends or something was standing up with the baby and like holding it and the whole restaurant was like drawn to this child and like staring and it was so so so cute and it was just a confusing day sure yeah yeah but um compounded by flies well now okay oh i have really well yes my flies are here officially thank god okay because there was some fake outs on friday there was blood okay so i was like oh great we're starting yeah and then nothing spot on saturday or sunday oh my goodness and then i was like um but then today it's a ride full force full flow yes um but i don't know what's going on with my instagram adam oseri if you are listening please help me what's going on on my dms so i only have it set to ic primary yeah so i only see who i follow yeah dms right something's glitching and people's dms are coming in about like five of them are coming in for people i do not follow and you see the top where it goes primary or general you're sure you're not in general yeah but i didn't mean to insult you promise you never know mine is doing that too what's going on oh wow there's been a breach of security did you want to ask rob if he's checked primary in general well you feel insulted by that i just i was trying to work through the things that have plagued me in the past but the i told you that i follow primary so i've clearly well that did make me know that you know the difference okay yeah well yeah sorry i asked i check it a lot and i keep checking because i'm like what is happening i've refreshed it i the universe selecting about to say okay so i don't want to right i don't know that i'm also then telling instagram give me more of these that's true so i haven't been looking at them yes but then today i got one and i you know you can see the first couple words uh-huh sure so it said itchy ear canals okay and now you're like this could be a great tip yes yeah so i opened it and it said itchy ear canals are the worst thing i've ever seen in my life are a symptom of perimenopause what if well first of all that person also commented i read that comment oh great well they they're hitting it from all angles which is great unless it's two different people i don't know i just was like fuck okay so i am in it but what's tricky is i have a really itchy ear condition but mine's from psoriatic arthritis right so i have to put this it's not a steroidal but it acts like a steroidal does i have to put it around a q-tip and then do the inside of my ears because they're all because they're all plagued with crazy itchiness right from psoriasis is in my ears yeah but i don't have that i don't have psoriasis i'm only saying it could be something else is what you're saying which it could it could be it just feels right now that they said that and i am 39 years old yeah like and it hits indians earlier we found out that mary claire because i think i think you're still young for it but yeah i could i mean for i think for americans i'd be a bit young generally but since she said that and my my mom hit menopause when she was 50 and it's a 10 year it's yeah but this is a 10 year thing okay so that is annoying if that's true that that's why i have it okay so you're gonna go get your hormone levels i think so yeah why not i think it's making me feel like i need to do that but then then it did feel a little like oh god this everything's happening scary the timeline of menopause menopause babies my eggs dying off aging but specifically tied to children and coming off of these babies but then these kids playing monopoly it's just a lot yeah so i don't really know where i land but that's just what i've been thinking about sure sure sure sure and then um yeah i do think i want to get some sort of ointment yeah you should get to you should put an antidepressant on your face in there yeah it's so i just read a post again these posts present to science and they all say they have a study behind them but i don't i don't chase down the study yeah and then just gets in your head as fact but the one i read the post was about the power of the inside of a banana peel that it is a natural uh histamine reducer so you can put it on it's saying you can put it on like mosquito bites and it'll get rid of like 90 of the histamine reaction and even said that it's really high percentage interesting because maybe cram a banana peel in your ear and see what happens well that's the other thing as we've talked about there's so many mosquitoes like what if i just have a couple mosquito bites in there i mean circling back to the original there's a bug in my ear yeah yeah um wow okay well i'll try well how did you feel i hung out with you on friday night and you're in a real chipper mood i'm allowed to be in a little i wasn't saying you i'm only i was just saying i hung out with you friday and you're in a super chipper mood that was a fun night don't gaslight me i'm not what do you think i'm saying i don't know what you're saying i'm saying we had fun friday night you were in a very giggly mood i thought you just want to talk about friday night oh i see okay yeah it's fun i thought you were saying things have changed since friday which i do think you were saying i wasn't okay okay i believe no i'm just trying to get us to the next piece of content which i feel like is watching that movie and there was a lot of people that were like oh my god i'm gonna watch that movie and i'm like oh my god kind of funny that i thought the surround system was so good that i thought you were making weird screaming noises we were watching violent night part two yes kristin's movie coming out yes we got a sneak peek yeah we're watching in your movie theater and and the sound you were on the very far right of the room and i was to the left yeah yeah and you're right next to a surround speaker yeah and i just hear like it was really loud yeah and i was like wow monica's going for it like she's feeling so tantrumy or something like she can't she's feeling unbridled and it was really fun to think you're over there just making a ton of noises like baby noises yeah there was like some baby laughter or something some weird noise anyway it wasn't me it was the movie but lincoln also thought it was you which was great right because she was between you and i and she too thought you were just starting to pop off i do have a question about that so i don't surround sound surround sound is a little i think it's weird for me tell me more i think my brain doesn't like it yeah because also at the beginning of the movie i couldn't understand anything uh-huh and i didn't know if it was you know the bugs in my ear now i know perimenopause yeah but or was like sound mixing i didn't know what was going on right so i started you know we're watching a final mix the movie doesn't come out for months that's what i'm saying that's what i kind of wanted to ask but then i felt scared to ask in case it was implying the quality wasn't good correct yeah so then i go am i the only and then i stop right because i felt yeah and then and then lincoln looked over and i was like i feel i can't understand what they're saying oh yeah yeah and she was like oh he said and she just said exactly she didn't have any problems well right they have those young ears yeah and she can hear lyrics like she's also just right now and she watches a lot in that zone sure so i then i was like oh no it is me this well no several things a common complaint i think everyone agrees they do not mix the dialogue loud enough the dialogue's coming out of the center channel because you're looking at the person so the the sound would be emanating yeah from in front of you unless someone behind you is talking that's when it would come through the surround uh-huh right as whatever point of view the lens is right if a helicopter is approaching from behind the characters you're going to hear it there yeah the goal is to give you a sense of the 360 degree sound but you are you happen to be seated directly next to the surround speaker yeah so you're going to be hearing it louder than all of us interesting yeah just because you're closest to it right so probably for you the mix was a not good yeah then b they just in general do not mix dialogue high enough i can't tell i was riding that vibe did you see me riding the volume like a rented mule i was every time they were talking i had to go up and then every time an action sequence started i had to go down to be overwhelmed and that i feel like is so standard in movies yeah huh yeah i don't notice it in the movie theater i don't you don't think but maybe because it's such i don't know they go loud as in the movie here too just in general and then i but i checked with honest she also couldn't understand anything and she thought maybe it was just because her accent oh and also the there's often the little boy talking i couldn't i couldn't hear what it was a sequence in the car it was i was like i don't know anything that just happened right i got nervous but anyway i didn't it wasn't me participating laughing screaming whatever that it was just the movie itself yeah but it was so fun to think about it and then we had a really good laugh at the notion of you it would have been great yeah next time just start doing that maybe okay okay stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare you i have a couple sim moments i want to talk about oh great that are huge one has to do with you oh good so for a couple weeks or a month or something you brought up a couple times that there is a place in nashville called lebanon oh yeah spelled lebanon yes and you brought this next town over for me you brought this up a couple times it's like it's funny because it's spelled lebanon but they pronounce it lebanon yeah great i had to send unfortunately some sympathy flowers for you so i'm going to send you some sympathy flowers for you um and to my friend's mother okay and she's they live in tennessee uh-huh okay and i couldn't get them there and it was like a whole thing and so i had to ask my friend um for help and she was like well you can always send it to okay my my friend's grandfather passed away okay so she was like you can always send it to his house uh-huh my mom is going to be there next year yeah um and i was like okay i'll do that and she sent the address and it was lebanon lebanon road yeah sure and in old hickory mount juliet oh really wow so a neighbor i know and i i feel like she once told me that like that's where papa's from but i didn't or like that's where papa lives and i didn't really put it together but when i was seeing it all written out it was so weird it was like whoa yeah really it's the same place and rob's friend hanford also lives in in mount juliet i almost said lebanon but yeah i believe mount juliet road turns into lebanon road wow i know isn't that so crazy i moved to the secretly the hippest place in nashville where papa lives yeah isn't that so strange like papa who i've known since i was 13 14 isn't that weird though it's like papa came there and then you came there weird and i'm in the middle so that was sim number one yeah that was sim okay another sim crazy oh i was at cara yeah and i randomly got like a craving slash just i thought of chewy granola bars do you remember chewy like the brand yeah the brand yeah yes yeah they're still around okay well so i haven't thought about chewy granola bars 45 years okay since you were hanging with papa uh-huh yeah um a long long long time i just don't think about them i never see them at the grocery i i don't know and for some reason i thought to just ask anth i just texted anthony i said do you remember chewy granola bars yeah and he said i just ate one five minutes ago really well he has children but just but not even the fact that i thought and he just ate it and that i thought to text him of all like just kind of randomly yeah and what did he eat the chocolate chip one i didn't ask for i bet that was the kind i like yeah i think everyone preferred those i just what and he wasn't as freaked out as freaked out because they've never left his his purview probably exactly so for years years that had been gone for 40 years or whatever i think my brain you're not even 40 years old so not 40 years i think my brain must have known he like that he had just enjoyed one he sent out a little pulse in the universe that said he's satisfied in the way that only chewies can satisfy him is a very fingerprinting signature but we lived together for a long time i don't remember he wasn't gorging himself on chewies i think it's because he has kids well for sure it makes sense that i would have randomly thought of them and then he had just eaten one yeah it's so weird it's spooky just in time for halloween that's what he said he made it about halloween and spookiness and i was like no this is about powers okay this is standalone all right yeah okay um so that was crazy yeah who are you gonna be for halloween who should i be a chewy granola sure chocolate chip chewy baka oh that's fun but i don't think that's a cute outfit for me probably too hot given the trajectory we're on that's true although next week it's supposed to be in the 70s oh well it's been a hundred or more for the last four days straight it's been stifling it's been violent it's been aggressive it's been hostile you can't leave the house i know but i have you've been leaving the house and then i do get headaches back to your kids playing monopoly uh-huh the thing i've had to reset i've successfully is there's a whole lot of driving your kids all over the place yeah which is never i'm never in the mood to like get up and go drive across town for any reason but i've really successfully reframed it where it's like a i love driving yeah it's an opportunity for me to drive these cars i collect that otherwise i wouldn't drive yeah and then b it's i'm i'm with them obviously it's just the two of us going somewhere so i've been driving a lot lately and i've actually been enjoying it lately that's nice yeah and um one operation that i've been doing lately is i've been driving a lot was to pick uh delta and her friend up at target okay you know what i love is target is a comp for my mall experience like she wants to be dropped off at yeah at target yeah which we did okay and so i had to pick her up at 5 10 in the parking lot but i'm like i'm a half hour early i wanted to buy fake cheese and i'm like i'll just go up into target and sniff around okay end up buying some starbucks coffee pods that are butterscotch flavor really nice oh yum and then um all this fake cheese okay trying to help delta with her goal of not eating dairy because she has the same congestion i do so what's she has quit eating dairy it's very impressive to see an 11 year old self regulate and we we we do a daily gratitude like less not today less coughing yeah okay let's we gotta he's got to focus on what the wins are when you quit shit because you just forget that there's any anyways vegan cheese or like what's fake cheese i think it's all oil is what they make it out of ultimately right but it tastes good but it melts did you ever have the um badass breakfast sandwiches we used to get all the time yeah those were everything on that was fake the meat was fake the cheese was fake i forgot about how delicious they were good yeah that's what got me amenable to yeah fake cheese at any rate okay you went there i keep thinking i'm gonna bounce you know i'm gonna uh bump into them in one of the aisles but i'm not so i've gone through the whole store and then i got my shit and i'm buying and i'm like i wonder where they are and then i look across and there's a little cafe section behind the starbucks inside target and i just see the two of them at a table yeah they're like playing with whatever slime they bought yeah and they're just they're two girls hanging at the mall oh i love it and i got spotted by her friend sure don't do your dad's here yeah and i was like oh shit i'm cramping her style this is fine she she wasn't bothered i'm just telling you that i saw my little girl from afar yeah with her girlfriend at a little table having like a girl's day so cute well i thought she was like oh my god she's like oh my god she's like oh my god she's like oh my god it's funny because on friday the friday we just spoke of yeah when um i came over to watch the movie we all had dinner and then we waited a minute because you had to go pick up lincoln yeah um from a hang at a restaurant yes and you left and i thought i was like god i like had this visual of you driving up and picking up your daughter from a hang and it was so it was like it's so cute and i was like oh my god i'm so happy to be here and i'm like oh my god i'm so cute and it's so i like know the feeling so well my dad dropping me off and picking me up at the yeah the mall or the movie movies or any of these things and like you're him like you're a dad that picks up their kids from hangs it's so strange and i'm trying to really enjoy it and i'm successfully i've just currently started really really enjoying it that's very yeah yeah i floated the whole ride home but yeah there are just moments you know when to get existential but you know like you can really you know people in relation to you and you can of course be empathetic and sympathetic and understand that there are other people they are themselves and their place in the world with they exist without you well just yeah but it's just very like then there are just certain moments that click they're they're fleeting right but like that was a moment where i was like yeah he's just he's just someone's dad that's right like it's so you're just like i'm a choke yeah you're just someone's dad i'm her a show you're just someone's dad i'm her a show you're just someone's dad i'm her a show you're just someone's dad i'm her a show yeah yeah it's so wild i know it's wild for me i love it you know you always in life you a little bit feel like you're playing a character yeah and i do i'm like oh i'm playing the character of a dad you know well i'm just aware of exactly what you're saying like oh i'm a middle-aged man picking up my teenage daughter yeah that feels like a character i once knew about right but now i'm that character i know and so you're half you have this awareness of exactly what you're saying like i know what i look like i look like a middle-aged man picking up his daughter or daughters yeah and i don't know i'm just aware of what that looks like i have some some level of self-awareness of it and then just obviously the intrinsic feeling of it all but those two things are chatting i know it's just so that's like callie's mom and callie's dad callie's mom and callie's dad are are still callie's mom and callie's dad to me forever even though i'm 39 years old and i'm an adult enough to like do adult things with them but like we'll never be adults together their primary identity will always be the parent of your friends yes and like that's you you're lincoln and delta's dad to like a lot of people yeah and i think some parents get frustrated that their kids can't see them as people right you know it's it's my great regret right that i couldn't have better seen my dad as just a person and not not my dad yeah but i would say it should be a embrace because it's a very unique it is like i don't think you're supposed to no i think you're supposed to embrace it and you're supposed to get yourself to enjoy oh yeah they look at me just like i looked at my parents and that's how it is yeah and there's something about it that you know that shouldn't be messed with yeah yeah like it's it's not an accident that this is how it works very strange yeah but you want to go like you realize you're driving me insane right i'm a normal person with a normal throat and i'm like i'm not a normal person with a normal throat and i'm not threshold of but who can care you don't give a fuck if it's your parents yeah just don't care um okay i have to out myself oh because when we did facts for ash and i was reading phineas's response and then i read my i read our exchange yes and i used the phrase waterproof evidence yeah and then you said is that a phrase but i just moved on okay yeah and i let it go thank you thank god yeah um and then i after i was like oh yeah that isn't right it's watertight so then i voice memoed you that and then you said that's also wrong well i just said the popular the colloquial term is airtight which like i think watertight makes sense though because if you have a tupperware and it's filled with water and you turn it upside down and it doesn't leak out that water it's watertight yeah and that's then that's great and i prefer that over some air leaking out okay but i think if it's airtight it'll be watertight i just don't know because air is smaller than water so water if air can't get out then certainly water can't it's like you know you're going to the the nth degree okay you're gonna stick with watertight that's fine i think i like and you should okay you're just not gonna get that nostalgic knee jerk i see not of sure familiarity that you're looking for well water like when you go like no it's this case is waterproof people are gonna be like hmm i wonder if she means like does that mean the same thing as airtight or does it mean something completely different waterproof was wrong yeah but watertight but even watertight i think if you say it people will have to there not gonna challenge you on it like i didn't they shouldn't and then they're gonna go well i assume about 60 that means the same thing as airtight and also they're gonna have some anxiety that watertight means a completely different thing hopefully they just think it through and it causes them to like really think a little and lose sight of what even you guys were talking about they think about the tupperware filled with water turning upside down oh yeah i mean i guess that makes sense there's no water leaking out yeah and the water is the evidence and it's also just interesting because we're mostly they're pitching things on being water resistant or waterproof keeping water out but you want a new you want a new tradition where we talk about keeping water in when we're talking about evidence leaking and we're talking about because again a ship you want to keep water out i think it's because yeah we're talking about leaking and when i think about leaking i don't think about air i think about water right nailed it i have a question for you but i don't want to embarrass you okay okay was it about my face yes oh great great great i was hoping it would come up on the um the interview no i was never gonna bring that up on oh i would have been happy to because i have a whole thing because we went to an event last night we went to a charity event oh and i'm like oh there's gonna be a red carpet i have my whole face is scarred up and then i was like what will i tell if there's well as it turned out luckily there wasn't any press but it was a fundraiser so i was expecting there to be pressed and of course i'm not even going to do an interview but if somehow sometimes they happen yeah sure and so i was prepared to say that i was operating a steel grinder a metal grinder and that the sparks dotted me okay and i was gonna say hold on i was gonna lie knowing the only reason i was looking forward to this was to lie in that interview so that arm cherries would have the inside scoop arm chairs would go no that looks like the high fricator 2000 uh-huh okay so for the listener who can't see or watcher that you have spots all over all over your face yeah yeah yeah now it's called what well this was pointed out to me and i and i thank this commenter a dermatologist wrote in about my high fricator oh but that's not what you were calling i wasn't i was calling it something you're calling it a high factor yeah yeah i liked that high fricator and they taught me how to say it okay and they said all in all they weren't terribly worried they thought that the pain would be a big enough um dissuader to prevent any real damage okay well i think they might need to watch this episode no listen this is this is what i did last round if you recall i had more last round no yes i had way more around my neck and shoulders i had a shirt on your face yeah yeah it's on my face even the tip of my nose i got a little you see it's just a lot you've done a lot you've done a lot to your face yeah yeah it was so fun i need you to be careful and i think that the this new thing is your new cutting hair anxiety no not yet i'll i'll admit to it when that happens i don't think you know it until a little later no cutting my hair as an anxiety release is like i kind of can't pass a mirror without seeing something right that's that pattern yeah this is like i was accumulating making mental notes for two months since i haven't been by my east coast high for cater 2000 yeah and so now i finally have gotten one on the west coast and it was sitting on my desk for a week and all last week i wanted to use it so bad but we were too busy so saturday came around i was like oh finally time for me and my high for cater 2000 and so i set it up on my desk this one's even nicer this one seems to have not been refurbished i think it's brand new and it came with tons of attachments what's the other one didn't it this one's gorgeous okay so i fire it up and i get to zapping and it's all i've already clocked them all like i'll just start digging around my hair to find shit this is i already had a laundry list of things that needed zapping this was always coming this is like two months out okay and so listen when i saw you today when you first walked up i was like what has he done done yeah what is he doing yeah it's great in like three days i'll have no hyperplasia anymore on my face what even is hyperplasia oh doodads like skin grows i've never i have never noticed yeah you're not taking your index finger and rubbing it across my forehead and scanning for bumps i know but you don't have any well now i don't because i just zapped them all kingdom come on saturday and a few, I got a whopper under my arm. That one I have been, It'd been driving me insane for two months. I'm like, fuck. Was it raised? It was a proper skin tag. Okay. That, I, okay, sure. Like, but whatever's happening on your face, no one notices. And yet here you are making like, you're so scabbed up. Yeah, I love it. I don't mind it at all. And I then imagined in the middle of the interview, I zoned out at one point. And I imagined like every day you come in and like. Yeah, I'm just, my whole face is a scab. It's an SNL sketch. Uh-huh. That every day it's worse and worse. Progressively. Yeah. I'm losing more and more sight of it. Exactly. I wish to God, I wanted the interview subject to bring it up. He would never. Because I was going to tell him it was from a metal grinder. And then I wanted just, I just wanted to give the armchairs a fun secret that they would, they would go bullshit. He was zapping his face. That was not from grinding metal. But the grinding metal would be a, you would totally buy that. Because, you know, it's just showering sparks. I have burnt myself using the metal grinder. And it's just showering sparks. So they could have landed and zapped me. Yeah. You could also maybe say like oil splatter from cooking. Yeah. You won't. Not, not, not macho enough. I need metal grinder. Yeah. It's not macho enough. Instead of what it is. I'm in there. Yeah. With vanity central with six mirrors and all this lighting. I am using like shop lighting. I have this like really powerful rods that you put under the car to be able to see under there. So I'm, my desk is like, it's a mix between Izzy building an engine. Or is he zapping his face? Wow. Well, my goodness. Thanks for noticing. I would have forgot to bring it up and I'm happy to talk about it. I'm not embarrassed. Good. I mean, I don't want you to be embarrassed ever, but I do want you to be a little careful with your face. Okay. I'm being very careful. You have a nice face. You can just let it be. Well, no, because the gross will take over. You won't be saying that. Yeah. They get bigger and bigger. Okay. Um, some facts. Yes. Ash facts. Okay. First things first. I have a text. You got to tell me about, I asked Phineas and Claudia. I said, hi, I'm doing a fact check for Ash and Dak says he was the oldest non-family member at your wedding. Can you deny or confirm please? Phineas false exclamation point. And then who was older? Zane low exclamation. How old is Zane? 53 53. All right. All right. And then I said, thank you. I will be setting the record straight. Okay. He came back actually also a guy named Paul who is 70. And then I said, great. This feels like waterproof evidence. Waterproof evidence. Is that an expression? Then he said only guy with no shirt to be clear. Okay. So that's really the only thing I can say that is unique. Yeah. Okay. Also though, she made a point because she brought up being at a table by Jason Sudeikis. Yeah. And then she started to say, how old is he? But we, we moved on. Yeah. He's 51. He's your age. When's his birthday? His birthday is on September 18th. Yeah. So I'm much older than nine, over nine months. Okay. We were rounding up over a year older. We're not rounding up. Um, don't need to nine months is an eternity. Hopefully you're going to explode. Um, is high cotton a bad phrase? The phrase in high cotton or tall cotton is not in here. Oh, I said is high cotton. It filled in a racist term. So I let it run with that. Yeah. The phrase in high cotton or tall cotton is not inherently racist as it originates from rural Southern agricultural life to describe a successful harvest and financial prosperity. Obviously that's what, that's what you said. That's what it means. It's you don't love offense, you know, Oh, Ash said birth control pill. She was like, which we now know are bad for you. Not necessarily true at all. No. So I did DM Dr. Mary Claire Haver. Yeah. Great. She didn't respond. No. Yeah. In time. Yeah. So, um, I think she's a very busy woman. I think a lot of people, because I know Kristen's got an unanswered DM too. She is very busy. Yeah. So maybe on a fact check in 2027. Yeah. We'll find out. But I just went to overall Google, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, birth control pills are generally safe and effective for most people, but they do carry potential side effects and rare risk depending on individual, individual health factors. But like, it's not like an overall. The thing that she's talking about is the strokes. Is that? Yeah. Or was she talking about having kids? I think she was kind of referencing, cause she said it's, I've been on it for 10 years and like, and she was talking about the kids thing. That's what it led to. I filled in the blank. I thought she was talking. The thing I always hear people panicked about is the strokes. That used to be a very common fear, but I haven't heard about that in a while. But it actually can have some health benefits. It can lower cancer risk, symptom relief, obviously, but birth control can help with cramps and heavy bleeding. Skin benefits for some. Yep, exactly. Criticism of body keeps the score. I think there's a school of thought that is if you're suggesting this is trapped in your body and you need to excavate it, but the excavation for people could be more damaging than not doing the excavation. I think that's, if I understand the pushback correctly. I think that's part of what it is now. Look, I've, as I've said, I love body keeps the score. I think it's a great book. And again, what's probably true is that it's very accurate for certain people who have had really intense trauma. And then there's probably other people who don't need to excavate who excavating is not a good idea. You know, I don't know, but it's such a range of people with a range of conditions that to say one approach is going to work for everyone naturally, you're going to be able to find a subset that that's not the right thing to do with. Yeah. It says critics and journalists point out that the book can over-medicalize distress, inflate the definition of trauma and ignore broader social, political and structural forces behind violence. Some science writers also argue it misinterprets certain data or presents an overly bleak view of recovery. Interesting. Yeah. That might be it. Yeah. That's it. Okay. That's his all. Love you. Love you. Bye. Bye. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking what the warning light means before pulling out of your driveway. You absolutely convinced yourself it was probably just a sensor thing right up until you were standing on the side of the road waiting for a tow. Yeah. 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