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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert.
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I m Dan Rather, and I m joined by the Minister of Mice.
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Squawk, squawk.
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That s me.
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Squeak, squeak.
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Warning, Monica s not in this episode.
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Yeah, the Minister of Mice.
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Mice was tending to the Papa Mouse.
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I was tending to the Grandpa Mouse.
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The Grandpa Mouse.
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So I had to miss this, which was really, I hate missing interviews so much.
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It really, it stirs up stuff.
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I know, sure, sure.
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I don t want to make you feel worse, but I really wish you had been here because it was really fun.
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He s really delightful.
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I m a huge fan, really.
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He s such a good actor.
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Oh, it s insane.
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Paul Giamatti, what an actor.
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He was in Sideways, Billions, Big Fat Liar, John Adams, Cinderella Man, and his new movie that is out now is awesome.
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I enjoyed it so much.
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The Holdovers, which is an Alexander Payne movie.
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We trust Alexander Payne, very trusted brand.
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Also, Paul has been nominated for a Golden Globe since The Record.
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Probably because of The Record.
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Well, I actually do want to say that.
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It s probably true.
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So if anyone in the future ever wants to get nominated for anything... Yeah, you don t even have to be in acting.
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Like, if you re Mick Jagger and you want a Golden Globe, come on the show.
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Come on this show, and it happened to Willem Dafoe as well.
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Okay, great, that neutralizes it, because I was going to say they might, if they re superstitious, think they have to come when you re home dealing with.
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Don t say that.
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Well, I m just saying the example of Paul.
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He s probably going to lose because I was here and Willem s going to win.
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Don t you dare say that.
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Paul s going to win.
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He should win.
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He must win.
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We love Paul.
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And so will you.
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Please enjoy Paul Giamatti.
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This is very nice.
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Have you been offered everything?
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I have.
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I m having some tea.
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Okay, great.
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I m going to put this here.
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I know you don t want it, but if you change your mind, there s a water.
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I love this stuff.
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It s fun, right?
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Yeah, it s really fun.
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When we were kids, there was no attempt to make water cool.
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No.
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It s very bizarre, the whole water thing.
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Yeah.
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Very strange.
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Oh, there we go.
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Oh, don t you find that you sound 10% smarter?
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I sound smarter.
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I sound more attractive.
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Uh-huh.
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Now you have a podcast.
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I do.
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And I m wondering if when you would be out promoting movies and stuff and they d make you do radio, did you find that you loved it?
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Yes.
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I actually generally enjoyed the radio stuff more.
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Yeah.
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And I think because of that, they used to make me do the radio stuff a lot more.
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Radio in general, audio, just sound stuff.
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I still like to listen to like old radio drama and stuff like that.
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How do you find that?
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There s a whole station that s all old radio shows.
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Oh, wow.
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Well, now that you do a podcast, can t you imagine how much work those things were?
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It s insane.
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And I was just saying,
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The whole thing is so much more work than I expected it to be.
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The podcast.
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Yes.
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And it s not even written, right?
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No.
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It s not like these radio plays.
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I wish people did that stuff still.
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And I don t know why they don t.
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They do it in England still.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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And it s great.
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Yeah, I just met a dude who writes for a radio show in England.
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There s one that s been on for like 70 years called The Archers, which is only 15 minutes a day.
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And then on Sunday, they play the whole week s thing.
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And it s episodic.
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Yes.
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And it s been on forever.
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And some people, their entire career has been being on the archers, playing one of these farmers.
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Like these people on Simpsons or... Or the soap operas.
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We re going to talk about soap operas.
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Oh, absolutely.
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Very good.
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Back to it being on for 70 years, the only thing I have in my life like that is 60 Minutes, which my grandparents had it on every Sunday when I was there.
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And then when I watch it on Sunday, it s like the only thing I have that reminds me of tradition and this thing that I ve been doing forever.
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Super comforting.
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A little while ago, I was in a hotel, it was like a Sunday night, so I watched the CBS Evening News, and then 60 Minutes, and I was like, this is so sane feeling.
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I got the news, I got what I need to know, I don t need 24 hours of it, and a panel of experts like rehashing the same thing.
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I don t need an argument.
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I got plenty of those in real life.
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I don t need opinion.
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I don t need any of it.
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I got it really gently.
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I got just enough in 60 minutes.
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I got three different stories.
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I was like, this is what it used to be like.
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And there s some genius to the construct of 60 minutes, which is I generally want five more minutes, which is probably the sweet spot.
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That s right.
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Yeah.
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You do want a little bit more and that s smart.
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Yes.
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It s a bit of coitus interruption.
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Yes, it is.
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In a great way.
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But you re right.
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It leaves you wanting more, which is nice.
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And if you think about pitching 60 Minutes today, there s some devices in it that seem almost off-putting.
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Like, it starts with an actual stopwatch.
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It s almost like a task.
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It s like, oh, you ve got 60 more minutes of this.
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That s right.
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Yet it works, and I don t know why.
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Yet there s something exciting.
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We ve started.
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It s kind of like, boom, the starting gun, and you re going.
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So it gives it that, too.
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And that s always been the thing.
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Even from the beginning, it s had a stopwatch.
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It started in the 60s or earlier.
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I m embarrassed I don t know the history.
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This is kind of my nature, though.
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Like, I ll be so into something.
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I ve been in AA for 20 years.
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I don t know one thing about the founding of it or Bill W. I get the gist of something, which almost feels better.
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I want the spirit of everything.
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Exactly.
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I m not a big details guy either.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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Now, have you had the fun experience watching 60 Minutes where for all of my life, none of the commercials pertain to me at all.
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It was for a Viking cruise down the Rhine River.
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Sure.
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Medication for very old people.
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Geritol and stuff like that.
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Yes.
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Been a musical.
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And now 75% of the commercials.
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I literally, I ll go, I should ask my doctor about that medication.
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Maybe I should get Centrum Silver.
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And then the Ryan Cruz looks incredible to me now I used to think it looks so boring and I m like wait you sit down in Europe goes by on the window
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A cruise in general looks kind of amazing.
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Yes.
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Those giant cruise ships.
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It s like a building.
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It s like a skyscraper on its side.
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It s just crazy.
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Yeah, it s like a city block.
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It is.
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And they re so fucking tall.
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That s the overwhelming thing when you see one in real life.
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They re freakishly fucking giant.
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Yeah.
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And then they conceive of something going so horribly awry, like all the toilets break down or something.
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It s fantastic.
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And somebody hasn t really done a good movie like that, have they?
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No, other than- Have everybody trapped on a thing crapping in plastic bags?
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Has somebody done it?
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Close.
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Did you see Triangle of Sadness last year?
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No.
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Oh my God, Paul.
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I know, I know.
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Listen to me.
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Please watch it.
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I ve heard it s really good.
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And there s a 30-minute set piece on a yacht that s gonna give you everything you wanted in the world of PQA shitting and toilets malfunctioning.
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Fascinating.
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Okay, all right.
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And people have urged me to watch it, so I ll see it.
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Oh, it s delicious.
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Okay.
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You know, I don t know that I... Let me start by saying I m an enormous fan.
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Genuinely.
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I appreciate it.
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Yes, I love watching you.
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You re like 60 minutes.
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I could watch several hours more every time I watch you.
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But you re in a great way kind of an enigma.
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I don t think I have even a theory of what your background was.
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But yet I have to say I m kind of shocked to learn your background.
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which is like a father that was a professor at Yale, and then the president, and then the president of MLB, and so academic, and you re like third generation.
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My question to you is what did you think my background was?
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I ve gotten this frequently for years.
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Oh, yeah.
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What a shock.
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Well, let s just say that my fantasy of the life you had, everyone looks like a Kennedy.
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And is on Martha s Vineyard all the time.
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Oh, you mean my actual background.
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Sounds like it must be all Kennedys playing football on the lawn.
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Yes, like the East Coast, blue blood, sweaters around a neck.
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I was around people like that.
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My family is not exactly like that.
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I have a weird jumbly background.
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Yeah, I looked at pictures of Bartlett.
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Yeah, your father.
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The Italian guy.
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Right, so it s not the waspy thing I was imagining.
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No, his mother was waspy, sort of.
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Okay.
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And so there s one line of waspiness.
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His mother was from New England.
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She has roots that go back.
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May have lost a family member to a witch burning or something.
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That s perfectly possible.
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I would love to find out.
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Have you been tempted to do that genealogy show?
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The TV show?
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Yeah.
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They asked me to do it once and I was like,
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I d like to know first what s going on and then maybe I ll be okay with everybody knowing.
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There s a certain degree to which I have enjoyed people not knowing.
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That s why I think I didn t do it.
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But I would like to know.
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So my thing is, I don t want to roll the dice and find out I have slave owners.
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And there s an excellent chance that it might be true.
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Double digits.
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You don t want to find that out.
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And I don t know that I want to know that I had an ancestor that burned women at the stake.
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Right.
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It d be interesting.
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Also, I m not someone who gets great pride from my previous generation s accomplishments.
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You know, like I meet people and they re like, Beauregard, whatever it was.
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And I m like, you didn t show up for work this morning.
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Like, that s what you did.
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Right.
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Yes.
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It doesn t really matter that much.
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It s not trickling down to me.
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I don t have that either.
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You can find something very unexpected or something strange.
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Maybe somebody was murdered.
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Something like that could be interesting.
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I ve been writing about my family, and yes, a couple of my great-uncles were murderers.
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Now, that I m insanely interested in.
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Great-uncles?
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That s not that far back.
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No, no, I grew up with them.
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The Honchels from Kentucky.
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Amazing.
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Crazy.
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That does give me pride.
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I ll tell you why.
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It s like a reverse pride, which is they were batshit crazy.
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Yeah.
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My dad was partially crazy, and I m like 30%.
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You re okay.
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Yes, absolutely.
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The alcoholism s been bad through all of it, but not as bad.
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It doesn t always degenerate.
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Actually, things can get better.
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And it isn t that thing of the sins of the father visited on the child all the time.
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It doesn t have to be that.
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Right.
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It can be a clean slate.
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Yes.
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Now, you ve got a lot of things going on, because I, too, am a younger brother, and you have a very dynamic father.
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Did you have a sense that it was going to be hard for you to shine?
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in this family?
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My dad was a very down-to-earth person, so there wasn t ever some sense of expectation was such that you have to measure up to something, you have to be this or that.
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And you didn t inherit that generic American, like, you got to do better than your parents?
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Well, just this notion that this country is based on you sacrifice for your kids, they have a better opportunity, like, it keeps getting higher, and your father s the president of Yale, and you re like, where do I go from there?
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No, I don t think I did, but I will say other people in the world would look at who he was and be like, well, you gotta live up to that shit, don t you?
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So any sense of that came from other people, and you have to deal with that because there s expectation, but I didn t get it from him.
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Okay, and what s the age gap between you and Marcus?
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Six years.
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Do you grow up thinking you re terrible at everything and then you re around peers and you go, oh, I m not as terrible as I thought I was at everything.
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Yes, and definitely in terms of athleticism.
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My brother was a great athlete.
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My sister was a really great athlete.
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I actually come from a lot of athletes.
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My great-grandfather was a champion long-distance swimmer.
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Which explains why you were on the swimming team, probably.
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Yes, and so swimming s a big thing.
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My grandmother was an Olympic diver on the Olympic diving team.
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No way!
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My mother was some kind of champion synchronized swimmer, which always makes me laugh.
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My mother s father was this big football coach, sportsman, so all this sports stuff.
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I was like, that ain t me.
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I think what happened was you like looked around and you re like, well, I m not going to be the president of Yale and I m not going to be in the Olympics.
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I better just pick my own fucking path.
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Well, no, I think my dad and I looked around and we re like, not us.
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So my dad and I bonded about books and movies.
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It was an artsy family, so it wasn t surprising.
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Well, yeah, your sister s a jewelry designer.
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She was a jewelry designer and she was a ballet dancer.
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She did a lot of things.
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Can I ask you one really inappropriate question?
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I ve noticed that the professional divers, they have the best bodies.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t know what it is about that activity.
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When you watch the Olympics, you re like, yeah, those are good fucking bodies.
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Was the grandma have an incredible body?
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I think grandma back in the day did.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the pictures of her, she s foxy.
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SPEAKER_01
You re right, the divers, men and women, they get these incredible bodies.
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And it s gotta be aerodynamic to hit the water and cut into it nicely.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think all the rotating, like the abdominals are great.
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Probably, yeah, probably.
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SPEAKER_01
Okay, so is your sister in the middle?
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My sister is in the middle.
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She was three years older than me.
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She passed away this year.
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It was a sudden thing and it was several months ago.
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SPEAKER_01
Oh my gosh, I m so sorry.
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SPEAKER_01
I appreciate it, thank you.
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But she was an amazing athlete.
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One of these kinds of physical geniuses.
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Anything you threw at her, she could take it up and master it.
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So were you the baby of the family?
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What was your role?
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SPEAKER_01
I was a little bit the kind of hammy.
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SPEAKER_01
Well, I mean, everybody was funny, but I was definitely a clown.
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clowny a little bit, and it was not the most uncontentious household that I ll say.
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And so I think I was also not the peacemaker, but I was a little bit the jester, gonna make a joke.
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Yeah, relieve some tension.
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I ll be over here reading a comic book.
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I m going to stay out of the way.
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One thing I ve noticed about siblings, and I m watching it with my own two children, I think one benefit is you really learn to take it on the chin.
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You get blasted nonstop.
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If you have siblings, they tell you the harshest shit.
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SPEAKER_00
Brutal.
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And maybe the whole family s having a good laugh at when you fell.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there was a bit of a teasing, ragging culture through the whole family.
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SPEAKER_01
My parents ragged on us, and it was affectionate a lot of times.
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Sometimes I forget I have that, and other people don t necessarily love that.
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SPEAKER_00
I have that too.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, also, I married an only child, and so her appetite for being made fun of is generally lower than mine.
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And then my sister will be over and we re just so cruel to each other and we love it.
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It s such a sign of endearment Yes, nothing would make me laugh more of my sister just ripping the shit out of me.
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Yeah, it s perverse, but you learn to love it Yeah, I think it s an advantage when you interact because the beatdowns are endless I think that s a good point and very true.
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You developed a pretty thick skin already Did you do good in school and what kind of kid were you in school?
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If I was interested, I did well.
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I could fuck off a lot if it didn t interest me, but also I m pretty much math illiterate.
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Major blind spot.
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Okay, okay.
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Yeah, like it s incomprehensible.
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Demoralizing and incomprehensible.
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I can count on my fingers that that s tricky.
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SPEAKER_00
We d make a great team because I m dyslexic.
1
SPEAKER_00
So reading was not for me, but math came very natural.
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That s very interesting.
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My brother had some stuff like that and he s actually pretty good with math and I m the opposite.
1
SPEAKER_01
Somebody told me there is such a thing as dyscalculia, which is sort of numbers dyslexia.
1
SPEAKER_00
I wouldn t doubt it.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, we give these very arbitrary names to things we observe.
1
SPEAKER_00
And all they re observing, because I was labeled that as a kid, but then when I was at UCLA, I had to go through really comprehensive testing to have that label.
1
SPEAKER_00
And what they re looking for is some baseline of intelligence in all these categories, and then a huge trough.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because that s inconsistent with how most people s intellects are.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
1
SPEAKER_00
But if you just have this fallout, like clearly you have.
1
SPEAKER_00
Totally.
1
SPEAKER_00
That would be a learning disability these days.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think back in the day, I can remember somebody saying to me, maybe you just have this sort of thing.
1
SPEAKER_01
Nobody did anything about it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Nobody gave a shit.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was at the phase where they knew how to label dyslexia, but they had absolutely no way to help you with that.
1
SPEAKER_01
I can remember that.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it s terrible.
1
SPEAKER_01
I remember kids where it was just miserable.
1
SPEAKER_01
There was no help for it, but you had this stigma of something attached to you.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was terrible.
1
SPEAKER_01
Are you chewing?
1
SPEAKER_01
Was that what you were doing?
1
SPEAKER_00
I was, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know what happened is you were early, so I came down a little early.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I m sorry.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had, no.
1
SPEAKER_01
I always get places early.
1
SPEAKER_01
They usually have to build lateness into my schedule.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because I get everywhere early.
1
SPEAKER_01
Sorry.
1
SPEAKER_00
No, no.
1
SPEAKER_00
No, it s admirable.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s on a resolution every single year.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I had mapped out perfectly, going, yeah, I m going to get a dip in.
1
SPEAKER_00
I ll be 20 minutes, and I ll finish up, and then I ll see Paul.
1
SPEAKER_00
You came, and I was like, we re going down with a dip.
1
SPEAKER_00
Nice.
1
SPEAKER_00
Did you ever do that as a kid?
1
SPEAKER_01
I would do it sometimes.
1
SPEAKER_01
I had a roommate in college who really did it a lot.
1
SPEAKER_01
Where was he from?
1
SPEAKER_01
Chicago.
1
SPEAKER_01
He did it a lot, and some other guys that I knew growing up did it a lot.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s disgusting.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s disgusting.
1
SPEAKER_01
It is the grossest habit.
1
SPEAKER_01
It really is.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I ve had a lot of nasty habits, and that was one that I couldn t... I mean, the spit aside... Like you right now, the audience can t see where you re looking, but you re just staring at my spittoon.
1
SPEAKER_00
At a bottle full of spit.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you re just thinking, I was like consuming you.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m remembering how my roommate, there were like big gulp cuffs sitting around just breathing with fucking spit.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, we would all do it and it was disgusting.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s foul.
1
SPEAKER_01
But also it just tasted bad.
1
SPEAKER_01
Now, I smoked cigarettes like nobody s business.
1
SPEAKER_00
Me too.
1
SPEAKER_00
What was your brand?
1
SPEAKER_00
When I was younger, it was Marlboro, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oops, I just said, but it switched.
1
SPEAKER_00
But that s where you started and that s where I started.
1
SPEAKER_00
I started with Marlboro Lights and then I landed on Camel Lights.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_00
I could tell.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s exactly where I went.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now, I couldn t tell your background, but I knew you smoked Camel Lights.
1
SPEAKER_00
And let me tell you something, I was elitist about this.
1
SPEAKER_00
I made assertions about people based on what cigarette brand.
1
SPEAKER_00
We both know if someone s smoking Parliament, like that s a certain thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
It really is.
1
SPEAKER_00
You need attention.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I do too, but you re going to be, what, European?
1
SPEAKER_00
What are you doing?
1
SPEAKER_00
But parliaments were the ones with the weird filters, weren t they?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think they had like a triangle at the top of it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh yeah, it was that thing.
1
SPEAKER_01
But just seemed to me, I don t need some gizmo.
1
SPEAKER_01
I don t need some fancy gizmo of my cigarette.
1
SPEAKER_00
I just want the straight delivery system.
1
SPEAKER_00
Here s my fantasy.
1
SPEAKER_00
They re going to come out with a pill.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, let s just ask you, if they came out with a pill that inoculated you from lung cancer, would you return to smoking?
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s a really good question.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s a hard one, isn t it?
1
SPEAKER_01
No, I think I d say yes.
1
SPEAKER_00
No, I m not sure.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think I d absolutely say yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
Even though when I quit, I m quit now, and I have no desire.
1
SPEAKER_01
The first time I quit when I was about 32, I smoked a lot.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, I m gonna die.
1
SPEAKER_01
A couple packs a day.
1
SPEAKER_01
More than a couple.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
And if we re drinking, we re gonna... Even more.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, I m gonna die.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so I stopped.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I thought about it all the time.
1
SPEAKER_01
And about six years later, I started again.
1
SPEAKER_01
Then I was getting back up to a couple for sure, and then edging over that.
1
SPEAKER_01
And that time I quit, now I don t think about it ever.
1
SPEAKER_01
I don t either, but.
1
SPEAKER_01
But.
1
SPEAKER_01
I d still do that.
1
SPEAKER_00
I wonder if we have the same trigger, especially if I m back in the Midwest or on the East Coast or it s raining and I m in a car and I go, roll the window down and fucking.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s kind of it.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s something about- It s generally that kind of thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
In a car with the rain.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I know what you mean.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, baby.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I know what you mean.
1
SPEAKER_00
The sound of the rain, the smell in the car.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s more humidity, the smoke s thicker.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s burning different.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s true.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s like a lot of things happening.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s very romantic.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes, it is.
1
SPEAKER_00
All grown up, my father, we d go to his house on the weekend.
1
SPEAKER_00
He only owned a Corvette, so there s one seat for two boys, and he fucking killed, listen to this, Vantage Menthol 110s.
1
SPEAKER_01
What?
1
SPEAKER_00
What are you doing, Dave?
1
SPEAKER_00
What the fuck is that?
1
SPEAKER_00
We would drive to 10 gas stations, Paul, so he could find his cigarettes.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Benson and Hedges, ten thousands or whatever they were, was my father.
2
SPEAKER_01
And they were these giantly long things.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yardsticks.
2
SPEAKER_01
And he was the guy who was, like, lighting two of them at once, forgetting he still had one going and lighting up the other one.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so, actually, I think probably the first time, I can t believe I m talking this much about smoking.
2
SPEAKER_00
We don t have to talk about smoking so much.
2
SPEAKER_01
We re kind of promoting it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I like it.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, totally.
2
SPEAKER_01
Probably the first cigarettes I ever smoked were his that I stole.
2
SPEAKER_01
My mother smoked too, but not quite like my dad.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I think those are probably the first things I started with, with those Benson and Hedge.
2
SPEAKER_00
Would you light one up now?
2
SPEAKER_00
Never.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because like you, I quit at 30.
2
SPEAKER_00
I have not gone back.
2
SPEAKER_00
We re going on 20 years.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I quit at 32, and then I quit 10 years ago again at 46.
2
SPEAKER_01
Have you ever gotten ensnared in the vape?
2
SPEAKER_01
No.
2
SPEAKER_01
I found that unpleasant.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, great.
2
SPEAKER_01
I worked with a guy who was just sucking on that thing all the time, and I tried it, and I was like, nah, I don t care for this.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so I m glad that was your response.
2
SPEAKER_00
I, at 17 years off cigarettes, during COVID, I was up at Lake Arrowhead.
2
SPEAKER_00
Have you ever been up there?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
So we were in the mountains.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s snowy.
2
SPEAKER_00
And my friend was visiting me smoking cigarettes.
2
SPEAKER_00
And again, there s something about those pine trees.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was really desiring it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Another guy was vaping.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m like, well, I want to smoke so bad that I m going to pacify myself with this vape.
2
SPEAKER_00
Look up a year later and I ll tell you why I m so glad for you.
2
SPEAKER_00
You never got on it.
2
SPEAKER_00
It gives you what you always wanted out of the cigarette, which is you want to hit the cigarette nonstop.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s why you were at three packs a day, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s not lit, but it s always in your hand, and you can smoke all day long.
2
SPEAKER_00
The hand thing was a big part of it for me.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
The prop thing, the physical nervousness, or whatever it was, of having this thing to play with.
2
SPEAKER_01
I could see that with those things.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, please, a little gizmo like that, I mean, it s great.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a fidget.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so I m really glad you don t like those, because then I had to fucking quit that thing, and I was like, wow, there s just like quitting smoking all over again.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes, of course.
2
SPEAKER_00
Maybe worse.
2
SPEAKER_00
Probably worse.
2
SPEAKER_00
Nicotine level was through the roof.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let s go to the boarding school.
2
SPEAKER_00
You weren t a boarder.
2
SPEAKER_00
I wasn t.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I don t know why because I do have this chip on my shoulder about the elite class and snobby people.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
2
SPEAKER_00
All that stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yet...
2
SPEAKER_00
Many of my favorite books take place at boarding schools, whether it s Tobias Wolf or Catcher in the Rye.
2
SPEAKER_00
I do also have this.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a really great fantasy.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you experienced it.
2
SPEAKER_01
The fantasy around it s really powerful.
2
SPEAKER_01
I really genuinely think it starts with the English because the whole thing is a knockoff of the British system of those fancy boarding schools.
2
SPEAKER_01
All that fucking Eaton boarding school, all the guys in swallowtail coats walking around with the boat ties on and going to their classes.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s really all Harry Potter is.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a boarding school story.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s that British boarding school story.
2
SPEAKER_01
And people love that shit.
2
SPEAKER_01
That British cozy tea time.
2
SPEAKER_01
Tradition.
2
SPEAKER_01
Scones, and then I m playing field hockey or whatever the hell it is, and I have my school master, and I m doing all this stuff with my scarf wrapped around my neck.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think it comes from the fantasy of the British, and it s transplanted here.
2
SPEAKER_00
I agree with that, but what do we think is so appealing?
2
SPEAKER_00
I m spitballing, because I don t think this is it, but is it like the notion of being with all boys?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s almost like summer camp.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think there s that too and there s this idea of like being a rascal and fucking around a bit trying to get away with shit Yeah, boys will be boys.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah together young men being formed but again that all comes from the British man Yeah, all this notions of kind of young men and tradition and all the stuff So you went to chote I did which is very much one of these schools, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
There were very much you weren t bored
2
SPEAKER_01
No, I was a day student, because I wasn t that far away from New Haven, where I grew up.
2
SPEAKER_01
I didn t want to board anywhere.
2
SPEAKER_01
My parents didn t want to send me to a boarding school.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it was a good school, academically.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then it put you probably on a trajectory, if you would want to be on one.
2
SPEAKER_00
For sure.
2
SPEAKER_00
I guess I m always... I don t want this to sound judgmental, because I don t know anyone s story.
2
SPEAKER_00
But the notion of me sending my children away is insane to me.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m already panicked that they re going to go in eight years.
2
SPEAKER_00
I know.
2
SPEAKER_01
Devastating when they go.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so sending him out at 12.
2
SPEAKER_00
I agree with you.
2
SPEAKER_01
I would never do it either.
2
SPEAKER_01
My son, I liked him.
2
SPEAKER_01
I really liked him.
2
SPEAKER_00
I want him around.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
I like hanging out with him.
2
SPEAKER_01
He s great.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t want to send him away.
2
SPEAKER_01
Now, I suppose if your kid s a nightmare, maybe you want to send him away or need some help or whatever.
2
SPEAKER_01
But it s a weird notion to me, too.
2
SPEAKER_00
Were you going to school with kids that their parents were hedge fund people or whatever they were?
2
SPEAKER_00
For sure.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t think I knew what the fuck a hedge fund was at the time.
2
SPEAKER_01
I still don t really exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was on a TV show about it and I still don t know what the hell it is.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes, it s interesting.
2
SPEAKER_01
I grew up at this institution that was the next step in the process of this sort of elitism and stuff like that.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I was around all of this, but
2
SPEAKER_01
I was around it in a different way.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was around the academic part of it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was around the professors.
2
SPEAKER_01
So to me, that place like Yale was a place of scholarship.
2
SPEAKER_01
You went and studied old manuscripts.
2
SPEAKER_01
It wasn t, I m going to go be the head of the CIA if I go to this place.
2
SPEAKER_01
So even when I then went to Choate, I was like, oh wow, there s kids from New York here.
2
SPEAKER_01
I had not had any experience of that myself.
2
SPEAKER_01
Crazy stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
And kids who have like expensive drug habits at young ages.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it was just revelatory and shocking and strange.
2
SPEAKER_00
Did you feel on the inside of it or the outside of it?
2
SPEAKER_01
No, very much on the outside.
2
SPEAKER_01
You felt like an anthropologist there?
2
SPEAKER_00
Very much so.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s exactly how I would describe it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I think at those places, if you re a day student there, it s that to begin with.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re outside of it now anyway, because it s a completely different experience to live there.
2
SPEAKER_01
I imagine.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
2
SPEAKER_01
I didn t live there.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I imagine you get so much closer to everybody if you were living there.
2
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re living in these dorms with these teachers.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s crazy.
2
SPEAKER_01
It is wild.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the interesting thing too was, not me, but a lot of the other day students,
2
SPEAKER_01
were scholarship kids from the area.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so they weren t that thing.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a working class area around that school.
2
SPEAKER_01
And a lot of those schools, which is actually in the movie that I m in, The Holdovers, that movie s all about class.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s a couple of big, big metaphors that are happening currently that are really prevalent in it.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it is interesting because on the surface, you re like, yes, this is a wonderful thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let s take people that don t have a lot of opportunity and give them the apex of opportunity.
2
SPEAKER_00
But in doing that, I mean, I felt less than in a town where there wasn t much income inequality.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I don t know what I feel like if we re on welfare and I go, and these kids are going to Vail.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I was coming from a place and I was like, this is fucking wacky as hell.
2
SPEAKER_01
I can t even imagine.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the interesting thing is so many of those kids were the smartest.
2
SPEAKER_00
The ones that came on scholarship.
2
SPEAKER_00
So fucking smart and interesting.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then they re next to like fourth generation.
2
SPEAKER_00
Totally.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the movie s so beautiful in doing this because I think, and I m curious if you ve had this experience.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I grew up hating rich people and then lo and behold, I got a bunch of money.
2
SPEAKER_00
And now, I feel that ire.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, wait, wait, wait.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a really interesting dilemma.
2
SPEAKER_00
And very American.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_00
I love this movie because I feel like I ve lived on both sides of it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think I ve learned that, yeah, both sides suffer.
2
SPEAKER_00
There is the illusion that this thing s gonna solve everything.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then even your character, you live in a world where you too are in judgment of these lackey kids who are spoiled.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
He s not socioeconomically from that background either.
2
SPEAKER_00
Correct.
2
SPEAKER_00
but he s in this world and he s comfortable in this world, but not really.
2
SPEAKER_00
And of course, as you come to find out, the money s not solving anything for these people.
2
SPEAKER_00
In fact, it s probably making everything worse in some ways.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it s very fair.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it is very fair.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I mean, you know, it sucks to be a human being.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
It sucks more for a lot of people than other people, but it kind of sucks to be alive sometimes.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s hard.
2
SPEAKER_01
It is.
2
SPEAKER_00
It is.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s really hard.
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you have nostalgic feelings for Choate?
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you have friends that you made there that you re still friends with?
2
SPEAKER_01
Very few.
2
SPEAKER_01
I had a rough time there.
2
SPEAKER_01
Those places, I don t think they re the same anymore.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like Bulleins overlooked or not even thought of?
2
SPEAKER_01
Sure, but it wasn t even necessarily the kids.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was the teachers.
2
SPEAKER_01
That teacher that I play, when I went there, is only 10 years on from when the movie s set.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was still those guys, and a lot of them were guys.
2
SPEAKER_01
The idea of conveying learning was harsh for a lot of those people.
2
SPEAKER_01
And they re pissed off about a lot of things.
2
SPEAKER_01
They re unhappy.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re like uber intellects, but they didn t get to the upper strata.
2
SPEAKER_00
No.
2
SPEAKER_01
And some of them were better and more rigid and more rigorous even in college.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because maybe they have something to prove themselves.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was harsh.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so, you know, I didn t have a great time.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m not gonna lie.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m not gonna lie.
2
SPEAKER_01
On the other hand, the friends I have are great friends because it s the boot camp thing where you re like, okay, we got through that.
2
SPEAKER_00
Common suffering really does bond people.
2
SPEAKER_00
Did that experience make you at all suspicious of what the Yale experience would be?
2
SPEAKER_00
It was a place I was more familiar with.
2
SPEAKER_00
Would you visit dad there?
2
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
2
SPEAKER_01
I can remember when he was teaching, going to his office and stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
He must ve been so proud.
2
SPEAKER_01
Of him in general?
2
SPEAKER_01
To go visit him.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, sure.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was awesome, too.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
His office when he was a teacher, it s all this fake medieval stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s all this phony fantasy.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s an awesome fantasy library.
2
SPEAKER_01
Life s a fantasy anyways.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s all fantasy.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a really seductive fantasy.
2
SPEAKER_01
As a kid and a kind of nerdy kid like I was, it wasn t a big athletic kid.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s books everywhere.
2
SPEAKER_01
And his weird eccentric colleagues are all sitting around in their tweed and their fucking corduroy.
2
SPEAKER_01
Some pipe smoking.
2
SPEAKER_01
Pipe smoke was a really evocative smell to me.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_01
like they re all smoking their pipes and sitting around and talking.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, a lot of the time they re sitting around talking about baseball, because they re all baseball nerds.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, maybe this is too anecdotal, but they re specifically baseball nerds.
3
SPEAKER_00
They are specifically baseball nerds.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
The elite school people, that s their sport for a reason.
3
SPEAKER_00
It is their sport for some reason.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re not obsessed with football in the same way, because I think it s the statistics.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think it s the stats.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was just going to say, I think it s the statistics.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s all of that kind of like pouring over all the statistics.
3
SPEAKER_00
Memorizing data.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, all that stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
Being able to quantify humans so easily.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes, yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
I need to take a leak.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Does this happen at folks  shows?
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
3
SPEAKER_00
We can step out or we can stay.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, stay here.
3
SPEAKER_01
Record the entire thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, great, great.
3
SPEAKER_00
I applaud that you re confident enough to advocate for yourself when you have to pee.
3
SPEAKER_01
I can t pretend anymore.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, no, totally.
3
SPEAKER_00
It happens probably 1 in 10 interviews.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we ve been thinking about installing a mic over there.
3
SPEAKER_00
In fact, it happens so often.
3
SPEAKER_00
You may be wondering to yourself, why don t they have a door?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, we ve entered this stage of this experience where we ve become superstitious.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because, you know, we all suffer from imposter syndrome.
3
SPEAKER_00
So this is too good to be true.
3
SPEAKER_00
So now superstition s afoot.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we can t alter this place at all.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like the garage you saw when you walked in that s almost done, the black one, that was built as a new studio.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we decided that s too dangerous.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s mojo in here.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we ll just live with no door.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, back to Yale, the pipe smoke, the analytics, the statistics.
3
SPEAKER_01
Baseball.
3
SPEAKER_01
I can remember my dad just sitting around these guys talking about baseball all the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
Weird, weird world.
3
SPEAKER_00
So was he still there when you started Yale?
3
SPEAKER_00
No.
3
SPEAKER_00
How old were you when he died?
3
SPEAKER_00
He died very young.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was 22.
3
SPEAKER_00
He was 51.
3
SPEAKER_00
But he had already left Yale and he was probably in between going to MLB.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think he was not really doing anything.
3
SPEAKER_01
He kind of took a year off.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think he still was sort of teaching.
3
SPEAKER_00
What did he teach?
3
SPEAKER_01
It s funny how vague it is in my mind.
3
SPEAKER_01
He was a comparative literature professor.
3
SPEAKER_01
He taught Italian and English literature of a particular period.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, interesting.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then you majored in English.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was an English major, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
And when you entered there, were you already set on what you wanted to do?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, I wanted to be an anthropology major.
3
SPEAKER_00
You should have.
3
SPEAKER_00
80% female major.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t quite sure what that meant to me.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was interested in a lot of things that anthropology seemed to
3
SPEAKER_01
Cover when I had to take a statistics class.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was immediately like fuck this I see numbers my fucking brain just shut down So I can t do this because I couldn t get through that class and then I wanted to be a fine art major because I draw too I took a class and he kind of persuaded me was like you should think about doing this and then I thought I m just gonna be sitting in a studio drawing all the time I m at this place and I should do something that is more Expansive and I can do a lot of different things and English seemed like a thing where you can
3
SPEAKER_01
jump around, do all kinds of things.
3
SPEAKER_00
Did you have any fantasy about what you were going to do as a job or a career?
3
SPEAKER_00
Did you think you would be a professor?
3
SPEAKER_01
In some weird way, there was some sort of default thing that it was like, I m probably going to be a teacher because everybody s a teacher.
3
SPEAKER_00
When we didn t mention your mom taught English for 20 years.
3
SPEAKER_01
My mom taught English and her parents were high school teachers and my father s father was a professor and everybody was teachers.
3
SPEAKER_01
My cousins, teachers, everybody.
3
SPEAKER_01
How does acting come up?
3
SPEAKER_01
I d always loved acting since I was a little kid.
3
SPEAKER_01
So from the school play in grade school, I was excited to do whatever in it.
3
SPEAKER_01
My mom had had some aspirations of being an actor.
3
SPEAKER_01
She didn t do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
She took us to theater a lot, took us to movies a lot.
3
SPEAKER_01
Encouraged it to some extent.
3
SPEAKER_01
My brother was really into it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he was more definitely into it.
3
SPEAKER_01
At some unconscious level, I think I always was gonna do it.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I was telling myself, you could be an academic, you could try and do graphic design stuff, you could do these other things, but I didn t really want to.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so, they have a theater program, Yale.
3
SPEAKER_00
I didn t have anything to do with it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, you got your master s there.
3
SPEAKER_00
I got my B.A.
3
SPEAKER_01
in English there.
3
SPEAKER_01
I got my master s, I went back to drama school, to the graduate school.
3
SPEAKER_00
Having not acted any of the four years?
3
SPEAKER_01
I acted extracurricularly.
3
SPEAKER_01
There was a big scene of doing that.
3
SPEAKER_01
You d do plays wherever, in the dining hall.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so you were doing that while you were... I was doing it constantly, but I was not doing it as an actual discipline.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was just doing it for the fuck of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because there was some part of me that was just like, you re not really gonna do this.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I loved it more than anything else.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, now let me ask you this, and I m gonna recognize how delusional this is, but at the time, it wasn t my delusion.
3
SPEAKER_00
I loved movies.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was looking at it, and I was like, where am I in this?
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t feel like I m goofy enough looking to be a comedian, and I don t think I m handsome enough to be an actor.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I m wondering if any of your trepidation and committing to it is that you re not looking on screen and going like, yes,
3
SPEAKER_00
You know what I m saying?
3
SPEAKER_00
That could be mildly offensive.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, no, not at all.
3
SPEAKER_01
Not at all.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s a very funny question to me because I don t think I ever thought as a child, somebody asked me this recently because I m doing all this publicity stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
Somebody said, so did you want to be an actor as a child?
3
SPEAKER_01
And I said, no.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they said, really, you didn t?
3
SPEAKER_01
I said, no, because in that case I would have had to play a child and that wouldn t have interested me at all.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like I don t want to fucking play a child.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so the person said to me, did you see something that made you want to be an actor?
3
SPEAKER_01
Somebody, something.
3
SPEAKER_01
The immediate thing I thought was Telly Savalas in The Dirty Dozen when I was a kid.
3
SPEAKER_01
I looked at that and I went, that fucking guy is amazing.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s crazy looking.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s crazy sounding.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s playing a crazy person.
3
SPEAKER_01
This movie is fucking amazing and insane.
3
SPEAKER_01
I can t say to you that I wanted to be Telly Savalas.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right, right, right, right.
3
SPEAKER_00
It just turns some imagination.
3
SPEAKER_01
My imagination was gripped by constantly things like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think if there was something that I looked at when I was in college and I went, I do want to do this, it was Dennis Hopper and Blue Velvet.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, no kidding.
3
SPEAKER_00
With the ether?
3
SPEAKER_01
What a performance and still that movie.
3
SPEAKER_01
But as a kid, I loved movies and I loved watching.
3
SPEAKER_01
Planet of the Apes movies, things like that are what got me excited.
3
SPEAKER_00
That makes sense.
3
SPEAKER_00
But if your brother was already on the path and he s like a big athlete, I might just be like, well, yeah, that s for him.
3
SPEAKER_00
He s like a stud athlete.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think so.
3
SPEAKER_00
He ll probably make a living at it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes, and he did and he does.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now, when did you start overlapping with Ron and Edward?
3
SPEAKER_00
In graduate school?
3
SPEAKER_01
No, it was undergraduate.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if they were theater majors.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was doing these extracurricular plays, and both of them earned some of those.
3
SPEAKER_01
Ron was my age and was in my class.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, and then Edward s a little, one year, two years younger than me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Two or three years younger than me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Do you remember watching him or anything?
3
SPEAKER_01
I remember doing a play with him.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was probably quite memorable.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t remember seeing him in anything else, but I remember being in a play with him.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we both had tiny parts in the play.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s pretty fucking cool that the two of you are... It s funny.
3
SPEAKER_00
It is.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s very funny.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you guys are on a very short list of people over the last 30 years that have just been mind-blowing.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, he s amazing.
3
SPEAKER_00
As are you.
3
SPEAKER_01
I appreciate it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
But he was a lovely guy.
3
SPEAKER_01
I remember him well, and he was very funny, and we had a good time in this ridiculous play with these little parts that we were playing.
3
SPEAKER_01
He and I had to have an idiotic sword fight in it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s fun.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was great.
3
SPEAKER_00
All right.
3
SPEAKER_00
So now you get your master s in this.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s in the graduate school.
3
SPEAKER_00
In the graduate school.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then is the decision, I imagine, next move to New York?
3
SPEAKER_01
I actually moved out to Seattle after college.
3
SPEAKER_01
What happened is my dad died and I think I was a little bit disorientated by that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I went out there for three years.
3
SPEAKER_01
Three years.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ended up living up in Capitol Hill.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s where I did all my drinking.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, sure.
3
SPEAKER_01
What an amazing place.
3
SPEAKER_01
I live right up on the top at 17th and Republican.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, wonderful.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it was so great up there.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now, did you live out there?
3
SPEAKER_00
I dated a girl for nine years that was from Marysville, Everett.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we were up there nonstop.
3
SPEAKER_00
She had gone to U-Dub.
3
SPEAKER_00
All of her friends lived on Capitol Hill and we would drink
3
SPEAKER_00
40s at Gasworks Park, and go to the Troll, and I just loved it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Coffee and booze, it was just fantastic.
3
SPEAKER_00
Talk about a place to smoke cigarettes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Cigarettes the whole night.
3
SPEAKER_00
Rains nonstop.
3
SPEAKER_01
Raining nonstop and sitting in the car.
3
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, I loved it out there.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so great.
3
SPEAKER_01
So what were you doing there?
3
SPEAKER_01
I moved out there.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had a girlfriend who was from out there, from a small town across the Puget Sound.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so lived out there, and there was a whole kind of cadre of people from out there.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then a bunch of people I knew who were acting.
3
SPEAKER_01
moved out there.
3
SPEAKER_01
So again, my instinct took me out to where acting was going on, but I kept telling myself, I m going to do something else.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was working in a little black box theater that these people were running.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then I did odd jobs and stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I thought about doing other things.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then I got an agent.
3
SPEAKER_01
And at this time, there was a shit ton of work out there.
3
SPEAKER_01
You could actually make a kind of weird, very minimal living.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I was doing industrial films for Boeing and doing this weird theater.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so I think because of that experience, I was like, this is really what I actually want to do.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I m an idiot.
3
SPEAKER_01
I should just go back to school to actually learn what it is.
3
SPEAKER_00
Even though you had all the on the ground experience, you re entering a world of theory, going to graduate school, having not ever studied it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was glad I had that real world experience.
4
SPEAKER_01
experience, but you re actually doing a lot of plays, and you do a lot that you re never gonna do again, and so you got actual real experience actually acting.
4
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, there s a lot of theory, and you pick and choose what suits you or works for you.
4
SPEAKER_00
So then after Yale, do we go to New York?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
We go to New York.
4
SPEAKER_01
We go to New York.
4
SPEAKER_00
And is that scary for you, or you re excited?
4
SPEAKER_00
I was excited to actually be in New York doing it, absolutely.
4
SPEAKER_00
What year did you graduate from getting your master s degree?
4
1994.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
So, you were on Broadway while you were there?
4
SPEAKER_01
When did you get your first... I think that happened maybe the end of 94 or 95.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m not sure which year it was.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I ended up in a play at Lincoln Center.
4
SPEAKER_00
You did back-to-back there, yeah?
4
SPEAKER_00
I did.
4
SPEAKER_00
Nicely done.
4
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
4
SPEAKER_00
So... Nice digging, man.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m embarrassed I even had to look at the date.
4
SPEAKER_00
I know!
4
SPEAKER_01
Listen, I m amazed you knew that at all.
4
SPEAKER_01
I spent about a year or so working there, which was unbelievable.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s two things you ve probably detected that s already of interest to me.
4
SPEAKER_00
I want to know what chips on your shoulder you inherited from your childhood.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then I m also very interested in, and we just talked about mine, which is these evolving fantasies of where you re going.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
I love these.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I m wondering at this period, in your mind, are you going to be a Broadway actor?
4
SPEAKER_01
Fantasy and imagination about yourself is fascinating.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because I genuinely think it s pretty much all we re doing most of the time.
4
SPEAKER_00
I agree.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think our capacity for fantasy and imagination is the primary function of consciousness.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s an interesting question.
4
SPEAKER_01
What was I imagining I was going to do?
4
SPEAKER_00
Post-Yale.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because to me, the theater seems way more open to you.
4
SPEAKER_00
As an actor in general, yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes, it s a meritocracy.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s true.
4
SPEAKER_00
If you re fucking great.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes, I think you re right.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot more expansiveness in thinking about what you can play.
4
SPEAKER_01
Ability trumps a lot.
4
SPEAKER_01
I had no experience of doing anything else, but I also loved it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I still love it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t do it enough anymore.
4
SPEAKER_00
My guess is you miss it so much, the visceral experience of staying on stage, and then the notion of doing eight a week is just insane.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s where my wife s at.
4
SPEAKER_00
She s like, I m gonna die if I m not there, and if I m there, I m gonna die.
4
SPEAKER_01
Particularly if it s not a good play.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you re in a bad play, it s 10,000 times worse than being in a bad movie or a bad TV show.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes, because you gotta repeat.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s an incarcerated feeling.
4
SPEAKER_01
And yet, even in a bad experience like that, when it ends, you re kind of heartbroken.
4
SPEAKER_01
Almost more so with the bad experiences, more so than any film or TV thing I ve ever experienced.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, really?
4
SPEAKER_00
The sense of sadness that you re going to leave these people.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it is.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s more intense, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s what we were saying, like it s so bonding to be here.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s super bonding.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think that s a lot of what I liked about the theater, was bonding with the other actors and the audience and stuff like that.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve talked about this too much recently, because I just had this experience where Kristen joined all of my old Groundlings friends and troops.
4
SPEAKER_00
You have one day to learn a musical they did, Chorus Line.
4
SPEAKER_00
They got it on Tuesday, they performed it on Wednesday.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a mess, it s so funny.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s awesome.
4
SPEAKER_00
She got to drop into my old life.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then, so I was so nostalgic because it s over 20 years since I was there.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was just really remembering my favorite memories of the whole experience is when we would write a sketch, we d put it up and it would just eat shit.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then we d grab our props and we d walk backstage into the green room and we d look at each other like,
4
SPEAKER_00
Holy smokes did that thing go up in flames.
4
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s something so intimate about that moment that they re my favorite moments.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re my favorite moments, too.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I also have a real taste for when something just goes wrong, too.
4
SPEAKER_00
Whatever it is.
4
SPEAKER_01
Something unexpected happens.
4
SPEAKER_00
The reason I like that is that now we re playing by different rules.
4
SPEAKER_00
Totally.
4
SPEAKER_01
It feels funnier.
4
SPEAKER_01
Just, it s fantastic when something goes wrong.
4
SPEAKER_01
You have to take control of it.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s also something I love.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s akin to those moments that you have, I have them on stage, I have them in movies too, where you pop outside of yourself for a moment and you re like, what the fuck am I doing?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, this is preposterous.
4
SPEAKER_01
How bizarre what I m doing is.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s a reminder too of something that I like about it, which is that we re fooling people.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_01
I like fooling people.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s a benevolent con game.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s delightful.
4
SPEAKER_01
Hopefully it s helping people by fooling them.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so 95 things start kind of moving for you.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I have to imagine this is one of your favorite years to look back on.
4
SPEAKER_00
I guess so.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s all a little bit of a blur to me.
4
SPEAKER_00
But you re in a Woody Allen movie, you re in a Sidney Pollack movie, and then you re in Tom Stoppard s Arcadia.
4
SPEAKER_00
All in a year.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s not like you weren t doing things, it s just, but now this year hits hard.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, no, and it was a surprise.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I do think I thought I was just going to be doing theater.
4
SPEAKER_01
I didn t think I was going to be on Broadway.
4
SPEAKER_01
That was a surprise.
4
SPEAKER_01
I had a lovely, funny, little, weird, supporting character part in that, which was just great.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the movies I was doing, barely anything to do with them.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but you re sitting on a Woody Allen set.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s crazy.
4
SPEAKER_01
I got to act with Woody Allen.
4
SPEAKER_01
I had two lines or something.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then Sidney Pollack and all this stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
So yes, I was around that stuff and it was a trip.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, now the fantasy starts evolving.
4
SPEAKER_00
Now you ve experienced it in real life.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you experience it and yet I talk about how important fantasy is.
4
SPEAKER_01
But there s a part of me that s extremely pragmatic and realistic.
4
SPEAKER_01
Could we say maybe you re pessimistic?
4
SPEAKER_01
We could say that.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s exactly right.
4
SPEAKER_01
And skeptical.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I don t think I was sitting there thinking, I got it made now and everything s just going to be smooth sailing now.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I had no conception that film or TV would be anything that would pan out as anything.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is amazing and sort of surreal and fantastic.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I thought theater is what I m going to probably actually do.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then that was actually exceeding my expectations too.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is the one benefit of being very pessimistic.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like everything that happened for me, I was like,
4
SPEAKER_01
Still, everything that happens to me exceeds my expectations.
4
SPEAKER_00
So private parts is a big, big... Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
And of course, this is where I become aware of you as someone who loves Stern, can t wait to see that movie, can t wait to see who s going to play Pig Vomit.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m primed to like this.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then lo and behold, the movie turns out fucking great.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a really good movie.
4
SPEAKER_00
You just blast into the world like out of a cannon in this role.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was a really great written part.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I do think that I had been doing a lot of this wonderful little bit part stuff, but it was very confining.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s very stressful, I think, doing those little things.
4
SPEAKER_00
Incredibly stressful.
4
SPEAKER_00
Having two lines is way harder than having 100.
4
SPEAKER_01
Way harder.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I have nothing but the highest regard and respect for the people who come on a set and have two fucking lines.
4
SPEAKER_01
Me too.
4
SPEAKER_01
Or they have to be the bartender who has a whole fucking ballet with all the glasses and drinks and they have to repeat it every time.
4
SPEAKER_01
Or they have to come on and burst into tears for one scene.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re the heroes of the whole thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
They are the heroes of the whole thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
But you re there in private parts.
4
SPEAKER_00
And now you ve got enough to do that you re, well, I m guessing, you re working enough that you get a rhythm going, you can get in the zone.
4
SPEAKER_00
I suppose so.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I didn t know what was going on.
4
SPEAKER_01
I d done some film stuff, but I still really didn t know what the hell I was doing on film.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I got this really great part.
4
SPEAKER_01
that allowed me to just go bonkers.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there was no cap on it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that director, Betty Thomas, was amazing.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I learned a ton, and we rehearsed.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I ve never done a lot of this since, except working with, like, Alexander Payne or something.
4
SPEAKER_00
The rehearsal and that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
There was a lot of caretaking with the movie that really had no right to.
4
SPEAKER_00
No, I know.
4
SPEAKER_00
You could ve made any piece of garbage you wanted with that, it would ve been fine.
4
SPEAKER_00
Certainly the people financing were like, give them anything and that audience will go see it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Totally.
4
SPEAKER_00
The Betty of it all, what a breakthrough.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it gave that movie actual heart and actual, yes.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s a really good movie.
4
SPEAKER_00
Did you get on with Sternwell?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he was great.
4
SPEAKER_00
He s so lovely, right, in real life?
4
SPEAKER_01
The nicest guy and really fun to work with.
4
SPEAKER_01
Curious.
4
SPEAKER_01
Curious, really game to do whatever.
4
SPEAKER_01
Playing himself in that thing, which is not an easy thing to do and actually doing it really well.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_01
The whole thing was great.
4
SPEAKER_01
It spoiled me for most movie stuff for a while after that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Things really take off.
4
SPEAKER_00
The fact that you drop into
4
SPEAKER_00
No, you know what?
4
SPEAKER_00
You already did that.
4
SPEAKER_00
No, when did you do?
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, no.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Saving Private Ryan.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I think it s insane you re in that movie.
4
SPEAKER_01
I can t remember whether that s before or after.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, at least it came out after.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t remember.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, you have a couple lines and stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
Then you have private parts where you steal the movie and then boom, you re in a Spielberg movie.
4
SPEAKER_00
movie one year later in a World War II movie.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s bonkers.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ve never had a plan.
4
SPEAKER_01
So everything was going to be surprising to me.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then it s hugely surprising to be doing something like that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
We re going to talk really quick about, for me, the next big thing is American Splendor.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I d seen you as Pig Vomit.
4
SPEAKER_00
Now I see American Splendor and I m like, Oh, this guy is kind of on another level.
4
SPEAKER_00
And especially when they were intermixing the real footage of Harvey with you, I was like, oh my God, he s doing the most incredible job imaginable.
4
SPEAKER_01
You play a real person, you can get away with stuff, but the real people were there for all of us, which was great.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I remember Judah Friedlander, who played Toby Radloff, the very peculiar friend of theirs.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_01
And people were like, well, this guy— That was the one that I thought was over the top.
4
SPEAKER_01
Of course.
4
SPEAKER_01
People were like, this is ridiculous, what he s doing.
4
SPEAKER_01
And he was underplaying it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Fantastically, too.
4
SPEAKER_01
The actual guy was more than that.
4
SPEAKER_00
You re 100% right.
4
SPEAKER_00
I almost think they should have shown the real guy.
4
SPEAKER_00
because I was watching going like, this guy s swinging way too far for the fences.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then at the end, I m like, that guy s a genius.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then of course, sideways, because now you go from, even though you re a pessimist, you probably started entertaining the notion of like, oh yeah, I m a character actor that s going to work and come buy a house.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is going to be a profession that I m not going to be uncomfortable in.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think I felt some degree of maybe I ll be able to do this for a long time.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ll probably be able to find a job.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m lucky as hell, but I did have
5
SPEAKER_01
this feeling of, I think it ll be okay.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because I didn t feel that, and I still don t.
5
SPEAKER_01
No.
5
SPEAKER_00
Entirely.
5
SPEAKER_00
Probably wouldn t have chose this industry if you had.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, probably not.
5
SPEAKER_00
So yes, I definitely felt a bit more of a sense of security.
5
SPEAKER_00
So when you step into doing lead roles, do you have any apprehension or fears?
5
SPEAKER_00
Or you just saw the character and you knew you could play it and you re like, yes, let s go.
5
SPEAKER_00
I guess so.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, that part I really wanted to do because I just thought, wow, what a crazy colorful part.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it was a bit of a fluke by getting that part at all, but it was a great thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
I look at it and this isn t false modesty or something.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t consider myself playing the lead.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t consider myself a lead actor.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think it s a different thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
I feel like I ve been lucky to play maybe the central character of an ensemble.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I don t say that to be Pollyanna-ish.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think really being a proper leading actor is something different.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s intimidating to me.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
5
SPEAKER_00
Holdovers are straight the lead.
5
SPEAKER_00
Am I?
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t think of myself that way.
5
SPEAKER_01
And again, it s not because I m some kind of great guy or something.
5
SPEAKER_01
I have a big ego.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m an actor.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I don t somehow think of it ever as feeling like I have to carry this thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
You know, I watched Denzel Washington in Equalizer 3 on the plane, which was amazing.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, I could never do what this guy does.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t have that.
5
SPEAKER_00
What is the actual element you think you know?
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what it is.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, cause one thing we could say about like movie star leads.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t do that.
5
SPEAKER_00
Clearly I don t.
5
SPEAKER_00
But let s try to define what they re doing.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I m not putting myself down either.
5
SPEAKER_00
I just don t think I do that.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m going to propose to you.
5
SPEAKER_00
what the thing is.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes, please.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then why I think you have it.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I would define like a true leading man or a leading lady as someone you can watch just exist.
5
SPEAKER_00
They don t need much story in that moment.
5
SPEAKER_00
They don t need any action.
5
SPEAKER_00
De Niro for me is the prime example.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like him in Casino, he could walk down the street if it went on for
5
SPEAKER_00
Ever.
5
SPEAKER_00
I would watch it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Clooney in the back of the car at the end of Michael Clayton taking a cab ride.
5
SPEAKER_00
It goes on for 11 minutes.
5
SPEAKER_00
I wish it was 18.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right.
5
SPEAKER_00
You re absolutely fascinated with the human being s face and whatever charisma is just falling off of it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that to me.
5
SPEAKER_00
is what the leading person is.
5
SPEAKER_00
Has to have.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, I appreciate you saying that.
5
SPEAKER_01
I still am skeptical.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, that s fine.
5
SPEAKER_01
It is that compulsive watchability.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I can watch you shuffle around your shitty room in that fucking prep school for eternity.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, have a couple drinks, do it.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, just exist in that little shitty room.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s nice to hear.
5
SPEAKER_00
I appreciate it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, we must touch down on sideways because for several reasons, A, we re coming up on 20 years of it coming out, which I think must feel insane to you.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s freaky.
5
SPEAKER_00
Are you having those feelings?
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, for sure.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I have them all the time.
5
SPEAKER_01
You hit 50 and it suddenly becomes this very different thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
It starts accelerating even more.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s hard for me to believe.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s this strangeness.
5
SPEAKER_01
When you re a kid and you re 25 and somebody s 35, it seems a lot older than you.
5
SPEAKER_01
Now I m 55, somebody 75 doesn t seem that much older.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, percentage-wise, it s less of a gap between 25 and 35.
5
SPEAKER_00
It is.
5
SPEAKER_00
I know you don t like math, but that s two-thirds versus five-sevenths.
5
SPEAKER_00
No, I actually follow that.
5
SPEAKER_01
I understood that.
5
SPEAKER_01
That gets freaky.
5
SPEAKER_01
And to be able now to think in decades of time.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
I journal every morning and almost every day that I write the date, I go,
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh my God, it s already November.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it s already December.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it s already January.
5
SPEAKER_00
I still can t deal with it s the 21st century.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m like, we re living in 2020.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, that s crazy to me.
5
SPEAKER_00
And think when we were growing up, because you would still meet someone s great-grandfather that was born in 1899.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think about that all the time.
5
SPEAKER_00
My neighbor growing up, that guy was alive, he knew Civil War veterans.
5
SPEAKER_00
And from the 1800s, and shortly will be from the 1900s.
5
SPEAKER_01
But that s freaky to think actually how close all of that stuff is.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes, that s the other thing that starts occurring to you is like these lives are so short and all this stuff has happened so quickly.
5
SPEAKER_01
In all of human history, it s really freaky.
5
SPEAKER_00
I ve reached a phase.
5
SPEAKER_00
This one s scary to me.
5
SPEAKER_00
It makes the whole thing feel very precarious.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m like, oh, these lives are so short.
5
SPEAKER_00
How do people get things done?
5
SPEAKER_00
How are we moving things forward?
5
SPEAKER_00
By the time someone figures it out, it s over.
5
SPEAKER_00
Over.
5
SPEAKER_01
But it s the sheer mass of humanity is just moving shit forward.
5
SPEAKER_01
But then it isn t conceivable, because you re like Thomas Edison, who may not be the greatest example, because apparently he was kind of an asshole.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, everybody was.
5
SPEAKER_01
Stole people s inventions and stuff like that.
5
SPEAKER_01
But it s like, how did you do all of this?
5
SPEAKER_01
I m 56.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, I m running out of time.
5
SPEAKER_01
How am I going to contribute?
5
SPEAKER_01
I m not really.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I suppose we all are, whether we know it or not.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s a line in the movie that brought me to that place I ve been honing in on, which is like,
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, we re just recycling ideas.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think because you re talking so much about, well, you give someone the stoic.
5
SPEAKER_00
Marcus Aurelius.
5
SPEAKER_00
Marcus Aurelius.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was that that fucked me up.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was like, Marcus Aurelius knew more than we know.
5
SPEAKER_00
Or at least was new stuff that we feel like we re just getting to now or something.
5
SPEAKER_00
Or maybe providing scientific evidence to.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but you re right.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like he had this shit figured out.
5
SPEAKER_01
then, but then you re like, maybe even being the emperor of Rome, he had more time to sit around and actually think about shit.
5
SPEAKER_00
Pretty boring, I think.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think there was a lot of time to kill, even for those guys.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
There must have been.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then I wonder, we re so entertained, will we ever progress?
5
SPEAKER_00
I guess AI will do all the progression for us.
5
SPEAKER_00
I suppose so.
5
SPEAKER_00
It is this movie though that really amplified my feelings surrounding it because you re a history teacher and you re teaching.
5
SPEAKER_00
All these old school classical.
5
SPEAKER_00
Western civilization.
5
SPEAKER_00
The bedrock of everything.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re defunct.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and they are our culture.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re the software we run.
5
SPEAKER_00
Totally.
5
SPEAKER_00
Whether we try to avoid it or not, it s so deeply encoded in everything that it s there all the time.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s crazy.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you have this incredible experience in 2004 and with Alexander Payne.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now I m going to be honest, I really debated whether or not I would bring this up because it puts you in a very tricky situation.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh my God.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I ve heard a few interviews with him where I thought like an NPR and I was like,
5
SPEAKER_01
Does he like actors?
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, interesting.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_01
Really?
5
SPEAKER_00
Does he come across as sounding like he doesn t?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Maybe we just get in the way of what he s trying to do.
5
SPEAKER_00
That was the sense I got.
5
SPEAKER_00
But then I was reading about how beautiful your guys  collaboration is.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think he likes actors a lot.
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, okay.
5
SPEAKER_01
To some extent, knowing him as well as I know him now, there s a bit of enjoying playing the contrarian.
5
SPEAKER_01
and enjoying undercutting things.
5
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
5
SPEAKER_01
And undercutting expectation.
5
SPEAKER_01
And if somebody says something to him that strikes him as a little schmaltzy, he s gonna take the piss out of it a little bit.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, someone s trying to be saccharine about the experience.
5
SPEAKER_00
Or something.
5
SPEAKER_01
He can t help himself but sort of like undercut it.
5
SPEAKER_00
I like that.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
5
SPEAKER_00
That makes sense.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because I think he actually likes actors very much.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, that s a great explanation.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think he might ve just been being sassy and sarcastic.
5
SPEAKER_01
He s a little sassy.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think he s gotten less so, actually.
5
SPEAKER_01
He s mellowed over time, in my experience of him.
5
SPEAKER_01
Still though, his nature is to just be contrarian and irreverent.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I will say he is one of my all-time favorites.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s these, I live for them when I m watching a movie where, and I can name them, where like, you re watching it, you think it s this, you think it s this.
5
SPEAKER_00
One thing happens and you go, oh, we re on this right.
5
SPEAKER_01
The movies are also full of all this, not irrelevant stuff, but kind of ancillary stuff that s like, do you really need to see this person?
5
SPEAKER_01
It s not the flashy stories.
5
SPEAKER_01
No, but it s also all these kind of private moments of people doing shit.
5
SPEAKER_01
You don t need to see me throw a football in this movie.
5
SPEAKER_01
Right.
5
SPEAKER_01
But somehow it feels really important.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_01
To see this private moment this person s having.
5
SPEAKER_01
But it s filled with stuff like that.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, and then later when you guys are playing pinball, is that what it s called?
5
SPEAKER_00
Pinballing?
5
SPEAKER_00
The little ball?
5
SPEAKER_00
Candle pin.
5
SPEAKER_00
So when you re doing candle pin, though, the kid is helping you.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it s kind of a very sweet moment.
5
SPEAKER_00
Very sweet.
5
SPEAKER_00
And because we ve seen you throw the football, it s a payoff in a way.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s true.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
I hadn t even thought of that.
5
SPEAKER_01
But all those private moments, me watching the kid ice skate, that s nice.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, this movie, it s beautiful.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s so nostalgic in the best way.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s very meticulously shot to look that way.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like it s a throwback visually, but I was shocked with just how wonderful the photography looks.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s so rich.
5
SPEAKER_01
The cinematographer was great.
5
SPEAKER_00
So, I m watching it last night.
5
SPEAKER_00
Kristen s just blowing through the living room to get the roller skates to take the kids to a birthday party, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
And I m on the couch watching it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And she just walks in and she s like, oh, what are you watching?
5
SPEAKER_00
And there s a closeup of you, and your character is, as they say, wall-eyed.
5
SPEAKER_00
But at that moment, she just looks over and I haven t heard you called wall-eyed by another person.
5
SPEAKER_00
In the movie yet.
5
SPEAKER_00
In the movie yet.
5
SPEAKER_00
And she goes, wait, is Giamatti s eyes like, had a real moment where she s like, have I missed for the last 20 years?
5
SPEAKER_01
that Paul has.
5
SPEAKER_01
Listen, I had a friend I ve known since I was five years old, saw the movie, and he said for the first 20 minutes of it, he felt bad, because he was like, have I never noticed that his eye was like this?
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, it was phenomenal.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, which is great.
5
SPEAKER_00
Almost the very next scene, two students are complaining about you, and they call you all up, and I text her, oh, it s a character thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s a character thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
We were all really happy that it worked out that well.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s incredibly convincing.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
You didn t want to tell anyone, but then you were on Stephen Colbert, and they found in the credits
5
SPEAKER_00
Did it annoy you to have that in?
5
SPEAKER_01
No, not really.
5
SPEAKER_01
He gets you there early to rehearse and stuff.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I wore it around for about two weeks to get used to it because I didn t want it to be.
5
SPEAKER_01
I also have a real thing about don t come near my eyes.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m not squeamish about practically anything except my eyes for some reason.
5
SPEAKER_01
And the idea of the fucking contacts and stuff.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I wanted to make sure I got used to it at first.
5
SPEAKER_01
And actually, they re really amazing.
5
SPEAKER_01
You don t really notice them.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you can t see, but you get used to it.
5
SPEAKER_01
Maybe he can t see either so that actually contributes to it.
5
SPEAKER_00
We just had Willem Dafoe on last week.
6
SPEAKER_00
That was great.
6
SPEAKER_00
He was super interesting.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, isn t he incredible?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, he s amazing.
6
SPEAKER_00
But he was talking about those teeth he had to wear in David Lynch s Wild at Heart.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, yes, that s right.
6
SPEAKER_00
He has crazy teeth.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s like, I put them in and then the character was just there.
6
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
6
SPEAKER_00
I love stuff like that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
6
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how to ask this question.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, jeez.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of to the movie star thing.
6
SPEAKER_00
The breathing and existing that you do is so natural.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s everything in the performance.
6
SPEAKER_00
The dialogue is incredible.
6
SPEAKER_00
And your mastery of all that complex historical stuff seemed very challenging from the outside.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m like, I would not want to learn any of these.
6
SPEAKER_01
Complicated language, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s not just that you have to memorize it, you have to know the point you re making.
6
SPEAKER_00
You have to understand the material you re referencing to be relevant.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
So was there like a little crash course on this stuff?
6
SPEAKER_01
No.
6
SPEAKER_01
Somebody said to me the other day, like, what kind of part would you like to play?
6
SPEAKER_01
And I said, I d like to play a guy who doesn t talk very much, actually.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because I frequently get the guys who talk a lot.
6
SPEAKER_00
You ve got that great voice.
6
SPEAKER_01
Whatever it is, I figured I have to play these hyper-articulate people.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m used to having a lot of words.
6
SPEAKER_01
So it s not like it s easy, but I think because I ve had to talk a lot.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I think having done theater, it s like you d get more proficient in talking bigger chunks of dialogue.
6
SPEAKER_00
But you re always so articulate in all these roles.
6
SPEAKER_00
And yes, you always have heavy lifting that if I don t meet you, my assumption is you talk like that.
6
SPEAKER_00
No, I don t.
6
SPEAKER_00
No, but like Edward Norton, he actually talks like that.
6
SPEAKER_01
He s a very articulate guy.
6
SPEAKER_01
Right.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yes, I m less so.
6
SPEAKER_01
I like that.
6
SPEAKER_01
I used to be very bad at articulating.
6
Okay.
6
SPEAKER_01
Anything.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think I ve gotten better at it, but I m not the most articulate.
6
SPEAKER_00
You re great on camera though.
6
SPEAKER_01
Have I tanked this whole interview?
6
SPEAKER_00
No.
6
SPEAKER_00
No, no, no, no.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was just blown away with how naturally all that stuff came out.
6
SPEAKER_01
But it takes work on my part.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s not easy.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I look at it and go, I could have done that better.
6
SPEAKER_01
It could have been delivered better.
6
SPEAKER_01
Really?
6
SPEAKER_01
Oh, definitely.
6
SPEAKER_01
Especially that kind of stuff.
6
SPEAKER_01
I kind of go,
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if you really are understanding what I said.
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if you re really following what I said.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I believe that guy is one of these geniuses that lacked either ambition or had some personal... Too smart for their own good.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes, it alienates them from others.
6
SPEAKER_00
Totally.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then they re so insecure that the only thing they have this security in is a thing that further alienates you.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s a vortex.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s that hilarious tragedy of the person, too, who just loves their own wit.
6
SPEAKER_01
He did, as a little boy, get people rewarding him for it.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s not so attractive in a 56-year-old man.
6
SPEAKER_01
Okay, now your other knack that you have, and you must be aware of it.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m gonna weirdly compare you to my wife in this way.
6
SPEAKER_00
She can play an unlikable person on paper, and she does it perfectly, but she has a spirit that you re attracted to.
6
SPEAKER_00
So you keep doing these kind of impossible roles.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
Sideways.
6
SPEAKER_00
They re challenging.
6
SPEAKER_00
What a fucking blowhard asshole.
6
SPEAKER_01
That one s, I actually think the guy in this movie, I like him better.
6
SPEAKER_01
I actually think he s less of a blowhard.
6
SPEAKER_00
I do too.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s not self-pitying.
6
SPEAKER_01
There s something about this guy I like better.
6
SPEAKER_01
The other guy, I don t like as much.
6
SPEAKER_00
I agree with you 100%, but if we never go into the second or third act of this movie, you re a fucking asshole.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, making good points, but he s doing it all the wrong way.
6
SPEAKER_01
And he s just harming people.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yes, he s not doing it right.
6
SPEAKER_01
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I would love to point out as well, Divine Joy Randolph.
6
SPEAKER_00
Amazing.
6
SPEAKER_00
I love that this storyline was put in this.
6
SPEAKER_00
So really quick, you re teaching at this really elite school.
6
SPEAKER_00
Nobody likes me.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m a prick.
6
SPEAKER_00
You re there to keep the integrity of the education alive and punish these rich kids.
6
SPEAKER_00
You re clearly resentful that they re spoiled.
6
SPEAKER_00
And this gal is the cook, and her son got to go there.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yes, he got to go there, and he s been killed in Vietnam.
6
SPEAKER_01
Right.
6
SPEAKER_01
It was 1970, 71.
6
SPEAKER_01
Then there s another kid.
6
SPEAKER_01
There s a student whose family sort of abandons him.
6
SPEAKER_01
Dominic Sessa, his name is.
6
SPEAKER_01
Sessa.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he was never active before.
6
SPEAKER_01
No.
6
SPEAKER_01
Did you not know that?
6
SPEAKER_01
No.
6
SPEAKER_01
That s the first thing.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oh, what an asshole.
6
SPEAKER_00
I know, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Fuck Dominic.
6
SPEAKER_01
Now, to me, that s a far more incredible thing.
6
SPEAKER_01
He does those long monologues in one take.
6
SPEAKER_01
He did them in one or two takes.
6
SPEAKER_01
They found him at one of the high schools we shot at.
6
SPEAKER_01
No.
6
SPEAKER_01
How old is he?
6
SPEAKER_01
Now he s 21.
6
SPEAKER_01
He just turned 19.
6
SPEAKER_01
He was still in school at the school we shot at.
6
SPEAKER_01
Brilliant.
6
SPEAKER_01
Never done a performance like that.
6
SPEAKER_00
You ve had this experience twice.
6
SPEAKER_00
win-win that guy s a real estate champion.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s true.
6
SPEAKER_00
I met him and he, to me, I m like, well, here s the new Sean Penn.
6
SPEAKER_01
Amazing.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that was interesting because I remember Tom McCarthy, the director saying, I can either get an actor and sort of make him look like he wrestles.
6
SPEAKER_01
or I can do the wrestler and hope he can act, which was the smarter thing, because I think you really need a kid who knows how to do that.
6
SPEAKER_01
And he found this kid who, again, had never acted before in his life.
6
SPEAKER_00
His wrestling makes that movie.
6
SPEAKER_00
It does.
6
SPEAKER_00
If you don t see him do that shit, the movie s not grounded and I don t care.
6
SPEAKER_01
You gotta get the kid who really knows the world of it, and is that thing.
6
SPEAKER_01
And he turned out to be brilliant.
6
SPEAKER_01
Brilliant.
6
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so with this kid, wow.
6
SPEAKER_01
The interesting thing is there was another kid they were thinking of putting in it who was a much more seasoned kid, and good.
6
SPEAKER_01
Everything about Dominic, though, I was like, just look at the kid, and he looks like he s from the 70s.
6
SPEAKER_01
My wife, that was the other thing she said.
6
SPEAKER_01
She said, how could that actor be alive today?
6
SPEAKER_01
His hair was like that already.
6
SPEAKER_01
It was just something about his face.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
6
SPEAKER_01
When I was young and my brother s friends or older kids who were in high school, they looked like they were 40.
6
SPEAKER_01
And if you look at them again, they still look, you look at a high school yearbook from them, they all look like they re 40.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they wear business suits and stuff.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they all like have big white ties, glasses and stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
Driving Buicks.
6
SPEAKER_01
They all look like they re 40.
6
SPEAKER_01
So he has that quality of looking like a kid and looking older, too, like the 70s.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I thought it was great, too, because he s making this kind of memory movie about the 70s, and if you re doing that, do the 70s thing and put the kid who s never done anything in it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Which was also a thing.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like Bud Cort, or like the woman in Days of Heaven, Linda Mann.
6
SPEAKER_01
Do the really cool 70s thing and put the person s everything.
6
SPEAKER_00
This is also a very Alexander Payne thing to do, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
I think so, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
Chris Kliney did that with.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes, in Election, there seem to be a few people that I m like, are they hackers?
6
SPEAKER_01
And he ll do that with small parts too.
6
SPEAKER_01
If there s somebody who s the store guy, why don t we put the guy who actually runs the store in the movie?
6
SPEAKER_01
So he does that too.
6
SPEAKER_01
Did you have a beautiful time doing it?
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, so often on these movies, I think people would be comforted to know that what you re seeing on screen is weirdly kind of happening.
6
SPEAKER_01
In this movie, for sure.
6
SPEAKER_01
In the other movie I did with him too, also the case.
6
SPEAKER_01
He creates his sort of atmosphere where it s very intimate.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I read in an interview you were saying that your character in Sideways in retrospect kind of paralleled what you were going through in real life in a sense.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes, I think so.
6
SPEAKER_00
You were getting divorced and you were going through a lot of stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
I ve been a little bit past that, but yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then you feel like in some bizarre way these two are connected.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s a similarity in the characters and then in the movie, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
Now it s a whole weird loop that gets closed now 20 years later.
6
SPEAKER_01
And in some ways it s not the same character, but it s similar.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it s like, you re seeing this guy 20 years on,
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I didn t finish the point I was making.
6
SPEAKER_00
So you do these kind of impossible characters where they re so unlikable and then yet your heart is breaking for them and you want so bad for them to be embraced and welcomed in.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I wonder when you re reading things
6
SPEAKER_00
Do you ever think like, ooh, this is unlikable?
6
SPEAKER_00
Do you have the inner confidence that you go like, I can pull this off?
6
SPEAKER_00
I should take a leak.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, good, good, good, good.
6
SPEAKER_00
Does this happen?
6
SPEAKER_00
No, I love this.
6
SPEAKER_00
I generally pee every 25 minutes, so it s comforting to know you re on a similar schedule.
6
SPEAKER_00
We should get some kind of a sponsor specific for this one.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like there s some medicine that helps you not pee in the middle of the night, I think, or flow something.
6
SPEAKER_00
Sure, sure, sure.
6
SPEAKER_00
Depends.
6
SPEAKER_00
Might want to step in.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s depend, actually.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it is?
6
SPEAKER_01
Yes, it is.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because I remember I was sitting around once with a bunch of people and I discovered a friend of mine was the voice of Outback Steakhouse.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oh, beautiful.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, you re kidding me.
6
SPEAKER_01
I didn t know it.
6
SPEAKER_01
He was Australian.
6
SPEAKER_01
I thought the guy doing that was not actually Australian.
6
SPEAKER_01
And he was like, well, they make me exaggerate even my existing accent.
6
SPEAKER_01
We were talking about something and we started joking about like, can you imagine being the guy who has to do Depends?
6
SPEAKER_01
And we were all laughing about it and one of these guys had gotten kind of quiet and he said, it s Depend.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s Depend, actually.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oh no.
6
SPEAKER_01
And we said, no.
6
SPEAKER_01
And we said, really, it s Depend?
6
SPEAKER_01
No, it s Depend.
6
SPEAKER_01
He goes, no, it s Depend because I m the voice of Depend.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it was just, yeah, exactly the reaction.
6
SPEAKER_01
I was a little worried.
6
SPEAKER_01
It was like, no, really, Chris, are you wearing them right now?
6
SPEAKER_00
That would have been my assumption.
6
SPEAKER_00
No, it wasn t.
6
SPEAKER_00
In fact, maybe wouldn t have even asked any follow-up questions.
6
SPEAKER_00
No, I had to.
6
SPEAKER_00
I had to know.
6
SPEAKER_00
How great, so you had three, because you already have your Liberty.
6
SPEAKER_00
What campaign did you do?
6
SPEAKER_00
Did I do?
6
SPEAKER_00
You did an insurance.
6
SPEAKER_00
Liberty Mutual Insurance.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think so.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s amazing.
6
SPEAKER_00
You remember that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so what a room to sit in.
6
SPEAKER_00
We ve got Outback, it s a pen.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes, really auspicious.
6
SPEAKER_00
If Will Arnett would have walked in and done a GMC commercial.
6
SPEAKER_01
Totally.
6
SPEAKER_00
The Outback Steakhouse thing blew my mind.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
I d like to meet the guy who does Foster s.
6
SPEAKER_00
Australian favela.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and what s really funny to me is that I could have sworn this was not actually an Australian, because it sounds so hokey, the accent.
6
SPEAKER_01
And he was like, well, believe me, they keep making me make it even more extreme.
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, they re selling the fantasy.
6
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
6
SPEAKER_01
You re going to the Outback.
6
SPEAKER_01
Exactly, the fantasy.
6
SPEAKER_00
Bloomin  Onion.
6
SPEAKER_00
Bloomin  Onion.
6
SPEAKER_00
So do you ever read these scripts you get offered and think,
6
SPEAKER_01
They re going to hate me at the end of this.
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t really worry about it that much.
6
SPEAKER_01
The one thing I read and I thought, well, this is going to be a lot was the John Adams show that I did, because I thought this is a lot of an unlikely.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I thought, I m gonna make him really unlikable because that s not the expected thing to see one of these guys be a huge pain in the ass and not a very nice guy and kind of crazy.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s like nine hours of watching somebody just be a pain in the ass over and over and over.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s interesting though, because I had read the McCullough book.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I loved him.
7
SPEAKER_01
I actually came out of it not liking Jefferson.
7
SPEAKER_00
Same.
7
SPEAKER_00
What an asshole.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I ve now read like five other books of that period and I ve yet to read the one that s positive about Jefferson.
7
SPEAKER_00
I know.
7
SPEAKER_00
Other than he was brilliant.
7
SPEAKER_00
I was completely surprised.
7
SPEAKER_00
I thought he was the good guy.
7
SPEAKER_00
You growing up, you think that?
7
SPEAKER_00
What an asshole, actually.
7
SPEAKER_00
Terrible.
7
SPEAKER_00
And also like a real politician.
7
SPEAKER_00
Kind of backstabby and full of shit.
7
SPEAKER_01
Born rich, died and dead.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
Fucking traveling Europe with a 13-year-old girl.
7
SPEAKER_00
Totally, all of it.
7
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s just vile, dude.
7
SPEAKER_00
Weird, double-crossing people.
7
SPEAKER_00
I had no idea.
7
SPEAKER_01
In fact, I ve made it a mild commitment.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m like, I ve got to read one positive version.
7
SPEAKER_00
I think probably you re gonna have to go back in time, World War II era or pre-World War II.
7
SPEAKER_00
Those biographies.
7
SPEAKER_00
When people were not gonna write a hatchet job about one of those guys.
7
SPEAKER_00
Right.
7
SPEAKER_00
About the McCullough thing, because you re right.
7
SPEAKER_00
He s much more appealing.
7
SPEAKER_00
He has integrity.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, well, he does.
7
SPEAKER_00
So does the guy I play in The Holdovers, by the way.
7
SPEAKER_00
He s got integrity.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
7
SPEAKER_00
But it s coming out the wrong way.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
I read that book and I thought it was much more admiring
7
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, hmm, it got to be other shit going on.
7
SPEAKER_00
And so I read another biography of him.
7
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t that it was negative, but it was much more like, ooh, wow, what a weird, dark guy.
7
SPEAKER_00
And then just kind of looking at stuff and reading stuff about the family and the kids.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s telling.
7
SPEAKER_00
His kids were messed up.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, this couldn t have been so great.
7
SPEAKER_00
And then thinking about being a parent was different.
7
SPEAKER_00
They treated kids, I mean, you were 10, you were an adult now.
7
SPEAKER_00
You go out into the world.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I don t think the idea of children, the way we think of it now, that comes along later in human history.
7
SPEAKER_01
Let s start with the fact that you lost half of your kids.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think about this all the time.
7
SPEAKER_01
You couldn t have been as close to them because that would have been insufferable.
7
SPEAKER_01
There had to be some level of detachment.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you think about Abe Lincoln being in the White House, he s already lost two or three kids and he s leading the country.
7
SPEAKER_00
But also, most of the times you re going to need the kid to do a job around the house.
7
SPEAKER_00
You can t have this preciousness about it in the same way that I think we did.
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, you hear about different cultures.
7
SPEAKER_01
As we talked about, I did major in the useless major anthropology.
7
SPEAKER_01
A lot of cultures don t name kids till they re two or three years old.
7
SPEAKER_00
Let s see how this turns out.
7
SPEAKER_01
You re attached.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
So I do think it was different and hard for us to comprehend.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
The whole idea of people are the same, human nature is the same.
7
SPEAKER_00
I don t know that I buy it entirely.
7
SPEAKER_00
I think a lot of things are different.
7
SPEAKER_00
Consciousness changes in some weird way.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m inclined to say I like, I love liking my kids and loving them.
7
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
7
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
7
SPEAKER_00
Me too.
7
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m inclined to.
7
SPEAKER_00
Go with the way we re dealing with it now.
7
SPEAKER_01
But I can also admit, I would be of my era.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think a lot of people have a hard time... You would not be the guy, like, breaking the mold.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yes, I think people have a hard time accepting that.
7
SPEAKER_01
Bill Burr has a great stand-up routine.
7
SPEAKER_01
He s like, all these white people are like, if I was alive then I would have been setting... No, you would have been doing exactly what you re doing now.
7
SPEAKER_01
Nothing.
7
SPEAKER_01
You re tweeting.
7
SPEAKER_00
I think that that s a really harsh truth.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
Talk about fantasy and wanting to fantasize about who you are or would have been or anything.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
So what got you over the hurdle with John Adams?
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think it was looking at that book and thinking to myself, I don t know, these guys seemed kind of crazy in some ways.
7
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s a very different world and they seem sort of insane.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I ve talked about this a bunch of times, but it is interesting.
7
SPEAKER_00
A guy in the makeup department, because I had to age in it.
7
SPEAKER_00
So these guys did a lot of research about him physically, so they d be able to say, well, this happened to him, and he lost his teeth and he went blind, and we didn t do all that stuff.
7
SPEAKER_00
Did he have gout, too?
7
SPEAKER_00
Do I remember?
7
SPEAKER_00
I m sure he did.
7
SPEAKER_00
They all fucking did.
7
SPEAKER_00
None of them had teeth, and they all went deaf and went blind.
7
SPEAKER_00
And then he lived to be 90, which was, like, crazy.
7
SPEAKER_01
And he died on the same day?
7
SPEAKER_01
Same day as Jefferson?
7
SPEAKER_00
Same day as Jefferson.
7
SPEAKER_00
They both lived to be very old men.
7
SPEAKER_00
But he found some scholar who d put together from all of his letters, particularly his letters to his wife, but other people, every time he mentioned something about physical ailments, and it was pages and pages and pages and pages and pages.
7
SPEAKER_00
I have the shits, I have a headache, my eyes hurt, my teeth hurt, I can t walk.
7
SPEAKER_00
Depressed all the time.
7
SPEAKER_00
Taking to your bed, which was the thing that people did when they were depressed.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they would lose months, some of these people.
7
SPEAKER_00
Months.
7
SPEAKER_00
He would.
7
SPEAKER_00
He would have huge bursts of activity and then he d be prostrate in bed for weeks.
7
SPEAKER_00
And it would be all this like, my eyes hurt, my teeth hurt, I can t breathe.
7
SPEAKER_00
Constant hypochondria.
7
SPEAKER_00
But again, life was really precarious, so I mean, yeah, constant.
7
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of it might have been imagined, but I thought, this is the guy.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s true.
7
SPEAKER_01
I worked with someone who worked with someone who was legendarily a prick and a great actor.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, how d you do with them?
7
SPEAKER_01
Because this dude was kind of alpha and older, and so was this dude.
7
SPEAKER_01
So this actor said, you know, at first this guy was a prick and I was like, yep, he s what I thought.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then I noticed a few weeks in and I asked him, do you have back problems?
7
SPEAKER_01
And he said, oh, I can barely live.
7
SPEAKER_01
My fucking back is so messed up and has been, and I work through it.
7
SPEAKER_01
And on some level, I don t think anyone should ever be an asshole, but you go, yeah, I don t know what it s like to be in crippling pain all day long and have to work.
7
SPEAKER_00
And the sort of bound up thing of that, that s like, maybe you have back problems because you re fucking stressed out and grinding away at everything and tight.
7
SPEAKER_00
And that s exactly what it was.
7
SPEAKER_01
Right, so it s like, I m comparing my cheeriness to John Adams, and I have air conditioning, I drive around in the car, and I have food in my fridge every day, and fucking, I ve never been attacked by an animal.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s a really good insight.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it really is.
7
SPEAKER_01
They were living a fucking brutal life.
7
SPEAKER_00
Brutal life.
7
SPEAKER_00
You couldn t drink the water, you d get dysentery, so everybody was like, slightly hammered all the time.
7
SPEAKER_00
And he didn t drink.
7
SPEAKER_00
He did, actually, though.
7
SPEAKER_00
Oh, he did.
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, he didn t drink, but he d have a big tankard of hard cider in the morning.
7
SPEAKER_01
Oh.
7
SPEAKER_00
They were all fucking cock half the time.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he s very judgmental of other people s drinking.
7
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
7
SPEAKER_01
He only drank in the morning Okay, thank you for indulging me on that there s two last things about the holdovers I want to ask you about one is simply I Shot in that same cute little town is in the Berkshires the one with the waterfall.
7
SPEAKER_00
There s a little dam in town North Central, Massachusetts
7
SPEAKER_01
So I was there doing this movie called The Judge.
7
SPEAKER_01
There s no place to stay really there other than bed and breakfasts.
7
SPEAKER_01
So this bed and breakfast was myself, Jeremy Strong, before Succession, and Robert Duvall at the end of the hallway.
7
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I would go down the hallway and I d sit at the end of Robert s bed while he was in bed with the covers up.
7
SPEAKER_01
And he would just tell me stories for two hours.
7
SPEAKER_01
Back to your point of looking at your current position on the planet in time and space and going, how did we end up at the foot of Robert DePaul s bed?
7
SPEAKER_01
Asking him about Coppola.
7
SPEAKER_01
Amazing.
7
SPEAKER_00
But anyways, just watching the movie.
7
SPEAKER_01
Lots of thinking about that kind of thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yes, watching the movie made me very nostalgic.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s amazing.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like 10 years ago.
7
SPEAKER_00
I was at a thing once, I saw him and I was like, I can t even be in the same room.
7
SPEAKER_00
And they were like, do you want to meet him?
7
SPEAKER_00
I was like, no, I don t want to meet him.
7
SPEAKER_00
They brought him over anyway, and I had to meet him, and I was just like, oh my god.
7
SPEAKER_02
I felt ashamed.
7
SPEAKER_02
How do you think I felt?
7
SPEAKER_02
You re a brilliant actor.
7
SPEAKER_00
I had this crippling sense of shame, just being in his presence.
7
SPEAKER_00
And there was an awkward silence, and he did.
7
SPEAKER_00
So he goes, so where are you from?
7
SPEAKER_00
Like that.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, New Haven, Connecticut.
7
SPEAKER_02
Hey, pizza.
7
SPEAKER_00
Best pizza in America.
7
SPEAKER_02
Pizza.
7
SPEAKER_02
He goes, hey, I was trying to have pizza.
7
SPEAKER_02
That wasn t so good.
7
SPEAKER_00
I was like, oh, God bless you for finding something to fucking talk about, because I feel shame.
7
SPEAKER_01
If you are in a pinch with Duval, you just talk about food, because he knows the best food in every place.
7
SPEAKER_01
That was what we talked about.
7
SPEAKER_01
At one point he goes, what do you think the best barbecue is?
7
SPEAKER_01
in Texas.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I go, I love Salt Lake.
7
SPEAKER_01
Oh, Salt Lake.
7
SPEAKER_01
Salt Lake.
7
SPEAKER_02
Smitty s.
7
SPEAKER_02
Smitty s is the best.
7
SPEAKER_02
And he like lit me up because I didn t know Smitty s was the best.
7
SPEAKER_02
And he got pissed at me.
7
SPEAKER_02
He was just like, no, no, wait a minute.
7
SPEAKER_02
I was like, that s not so good.
7
SPEAKER_02
That s not so great.
7
SPEAKER_02
What s so great about it?
7
SPEAKER_02
I m at a better place than Chicago.
7
SPEAKER_02
And I just was like, okay, whatever.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m not going to argue with you.
7
SPEAKER_00
Dueling Duvall, this doesn t happen very much.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m so glad you had that experience.
7
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so anyway, that town made me really nostalgic.
7
SPEAKER_01
Now, did I understand you correctly in an interview?
7
SPEAKER_01
I think what I heard you saying is that there s no video village.
7
SPEAKER_00
Not on Alexander s movies, no.
7
SPEAKER_00
Does he watch playback somehow?
7
SPEAKER_00
This time he occasionally had one of those clamshell things to look at, and that was different from sideways, but he very rarely ever looked at it.
7
SPEAKER_00
And no, he doesn t have any video.
7
SPEAKER_00
And on sideways, when I first walked onto set, I was like, where s all that stuff?
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, for people who don t know, on any set, you have the stage or where the action s happening.
7
SPEAKER_01
And just off to the side, you have a bank of monitors, usually two or three monitors.
7
SPEAKER_01
The director s watching what the camera s catching.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s a live feed from the camera.
7
SPEAKER_01
And if you have three cameras going, there s three different screens, and then that s all being recorded digitally, and you can review the take afterwards, which is very common.
7
SPEAKER_00
Jerry Lewis invented it, supposedly.
7
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I ve heard that, too.
7
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if it s true or not, but I m told that he came up with it.
7
SPEAKER_00
Because he was directing himself.
7
SPEAKER_00
You want to choreograph a thing in the frame like that, it really makes sense.
7
SPEAKER_00
So, no, there isn t one.
7
SPEAKER_01
And do you even feel, because it s a period piece, and it s being shot like it s in the 70s, and your co-star looks impossibly like he s from the 70s, and then there s no video village, did the whole experience feel a little bit analog in a great way?
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but Sideways did too.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s like he makes 70s movies anyway.
7
SPEAKER_00
The feeling of it, I imagine, is what it felt like making a Hal Ashby movie.
7
SPEAKER_00
It feels very Hal Ashby.
8
SPEAKER_01
about it, but for sure on this one in particular, yeah, it really felt 70s.
8
SPEAKER_01
And the sound was done that way.
8
SPEAKER_01
Nobody was miked.
8
SPEAKER_01
It was all like mono sound.
8
SPEAKER_01
He wanted it all to sound that way.
8
SPEAKER_01
But the absence of the video village thing s huge.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s a completely different ballgame without that stuff there.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it sounds so intriguing.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s great.
8
SPEAKER_00
We certainly won t hire me now that I ve said disparaging things about the interview I heard, but now it s been cleared up.
8
SPEAKER_00
You pointed out that no, I would love them.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, no, I think you would.
8
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
8
SPEAKER_00
I do want to ask you one thing about chin wag your podcast.
8
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
8
SPEAKER_00
First of all, who is Steven asthma?
8
SPEAKER_01
He s a philosophy professor at Columbia college in Chicago.
8
SPEAKER_01
No way.
8
SPEAKER_01
He teaches philosophy at an arts college.
8
SPEAKER_01
What a great co-host.
8
SPEAKER_01
He s amazing.
8
SPEAKER_01
You hear philosopher and you think it s going to be one thing that it s not.
8
SPEAKER_01
He s not like that at all.
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t think that.
8
SPEAKER_00
Our favorite guests, we just had it where the person started as a mathematician.
8
SPEAKER_00
They now teach law at Yale, but also a master s in philosophy.
8
SPEAKER_00
They re my favorite people to talk to because I just love the pushing on every angle of every thought.
8
SPEAKER_00
and is like, oh, this is cultural.
8
SPEAKER_00
Is that really amoral?
8
SPEAKER_00
Why?
8
SPEAKER_00
Explain that to me.
8
SPEAKER_01
And if they have the ability to convey stuff simply like that, it s the best.
8
SPEAKER_01
You really are like, I can ask you anything.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_01
And you re going to have some interesting answer.
8
SPEAKER_01
And you are going to start from a place of saying to me, this isn t the ultimate answer.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I love it.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s that ability to just go, there s always going to be another step beyond this to think more about this.
8
SPEAKER_01
He s amazing like that, Steven.
8
SPEAKER_01
How did you become... I happened to see him give a talk online because I am very interested and have been all my life in very strange things.
8
SPEAKER_01
And as I keep talking about fantasizing and imagination and consciousness, I m very interested in stuff like this.
8
SPEAKER_01
but I m very interested in UFOs.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m very interested in the Sasquatch.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m very interested in this stuff.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m very interested in why people believe in this stuff.
8
SPEAKER_01
And he gave a talk about imagination and consciousness.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I d happened to see it was during a COVID lockdown.
8
SPEAKER_01
So I went and watched it and thought, this guy s...
8
SPEAKER_01
really interesting, and he s really cool-seeming.
8
SPEAKER_01
He s very accessible.
8
SPEAKER_00
He s fun.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
He played professional guitar with Bo Diddley, backup guitar.
8
SPEAKER_01
So he s got this whole other thing going on.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
So I just got in touch with him.
8
SPEAKER_01
And then we just started talking a lot, and then he was like, oh, we should just do, you know, I, no.
8
SPEAKER_01
idea of doing something like this and then somebody was weird enough to actually give us money to do it.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_01
I ve really enjoyed it.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s been amazing because I love shit like this and I ve not really ever talked about it much outside of a very small group of people.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you know, it s interesting because that stuff doesn t appeal to me.
8
SPEAKER_00
No, I m going to tell you why it doesn t.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think it s all about your childhood.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I was thinking about the fact that your father was a member of the Scroll and Key.
8
SPEAKER_01
He was, yes, which is one of those secret societies.
8
SPEAKER_00
Do you think that s a seed that gets planted?
8
SPEAKER_00
That s very fantastical.
8
SPEAKER_01
It is very fantastical.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I think you re probably right that that goes in there at some level.
8
SPEAKER_01
And again, it s all that British fantasy of the library with the secret books and the secret hidden panels.
8
SPEAKER_00
What s really going on?
8
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think, too, though, I happened to take in a lot of things as a kid.
8
SPEAKER_01
The culture I was consuming, I was unsupervised a lot of the time.
8
SPEAKER_01
So I was watching a lot of universal horror movies, and The Twilight Zone was a humongous thing for me.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
And In Search Of.
8
SPEAKER_01
My child in the 70s, this stuff was everywhere.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_01
Easter Island and all this shit.
8
SPEAKER_01
It just went in there.
8
SPEAKER_00
My character defect is I was deceived by many stepdads, by older brothers, by adults who expressed one agenda and it turned out they had another one.
8
SPEAKER_00
So if anything, I am on the highest alert for being fooled.
8
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
8
SPEAKER_00
Bullshit.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_00
I ll say I m kind of good at it too.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like we do this show where we interview people about crazy stories and we don t know the stories, but I have this knack for predicting where they re going because I m just on high alert from being fooled.
8
SPEAKER_00
So anything like Sasquatch, I m like fucking bullshit.
8
SPEAKER_00
That guy s in a suit and it gets in my way.
8
SPEAKER_00
I actually robbed myself of probably enjoying some fun.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s a really interesting question though.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and it sounds like your dad was pretty trustworthy.
8
SPEAKER_01
He was pretty trustworthy.
8
SPEAKER_01
So why am I interested in this shit?
8
SPEAKER_01
I have a very good friend who is a voting rights lawyer.
8
SPEAKER_01
He does a real important thing in the world, and he has frequently known him for a long time, been like, why?
8
SPEAKER_01
Are you wasting your fucking time on this?
8
SPEAKER_01
And I m always like, that s a really good question.
8
SPEAKER_01
Am I wasting my time?
8
SPEAKER_01
I think the reason Steven was so interesting to me is because I see it in a larger way.
8
SPEAKER_01
Like, I m interested in why.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, what s the function of this?
8
SPEAKER_00
Why is Sasquatch even a thing?
8
SPEAKER_00
Why are conspiracy theories?
8
SPEAKER_01
And that s why I think anthropology was interesting to me.
8
SPEAKER_01
Why do people believe the weird fucking things they believe?
8
SPEAKER_01
I m fascinated by the whole alien abduction thing that happened in the 80s and the 90s.
8
SPEAKER_01
People are being kidnapped by aliens.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I ve always said, if you could prove to me it was actually aliens, I might think that was less interesting than if it was just something in people s heads.
8
SPEAKER_01
Because why the fuck is that happening?
8
SPEAKER_01
That I m supremely interested in.
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, ultimately, that is what it comes down to a lot for me.
8
SPEAKER_00
Can I add two wrinkles
8
SPEAKER_00
One of them I did learn in Anthro and one I learned washing cars in Detroit.
8
SPEAKER_00
So when I was in Detroit, I worked with like seven Filipino dudes who are all from the Philippines.
8
SPEAKER_00
So all of them had
8
SPEAKER_00
ghost stories from the Philippines.
8
SPEAKER_00
Very, very detailed.
8
SPEAKER_00
One, they hit a witch on the road and the blood was dripping down the window as they were going 90 miles.
8
SPEAKER_00
Even though I m a skeptic, I m on a bullshit thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
I have great respect for culture.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so I have often said this and it infuriates Monica when she s here.
8
SPEAKER_00
I will say they do have ghosts.
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t have ghosts in my culture, in my world.
8
SPEAKER_00
They do.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m telling you all seven of these dudes, they do.
8
SPEAKER_01
But this is that thing that I m saying too about human nature as it changed.
8
SPEAKER_01
People are different, actually.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_01
People are different.
8
SPEAKER_01
Cultures are different.
8
SPEAKER_01
Shit happens there that just does not happen here for whatever reason.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s not a sense of exoticizing them or something like that.
8
SPEAKER_00
No, no, no.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s actually just honoring what they re telling you.
8
SPEAKER_01
I 100% agree with you.
8
SPEAKER_01
Japan, 99% of the population believes in ghosts.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, there are ghosts, see?
8
SPEAKER_01
Now, I happen to believe in ghosts.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, great.
8
SPEAKER_01
But that s because...
8
SPEAKER_00
I m glad you do, if you re doing a show on ghosts and you don t believe in them.
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, no, because Stephen doesn t.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, okay.
8
SPEAKER_01
Stephen s completely skeptical, but I ve had enough experiences that I can explain away skeptically.
8
SPEAKER_00
You have the sword situation when you were playing.
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, I go, that one I can t explain.
8
SPEAKER_01
There s a handful of ones I can t explain, and therefore, I can t say I don t believe in them.
8
SPEAKER_01
But there s plenty that I can go, I doubt my own experience.
8
SPEAKER_01
I don t think that was something supernatural.
8
SPEAKER_00
I ve had weird shit, and I just don t have an explanation, but I m kind of comfortable with not having an explanation, if that makes sense.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think a lot of people are very uncomfortable not having it, and then so they come to a conclusion.
8
SPEAKER_01
You re comfortable with ambiguity?
8
SPEAKER_01
You re comfortable with things not being closed off in a neat way?
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, exactly.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m okay with the fact that it s a mess.
8
SPEAKER_01
I like things that don t have a solution or an ending or an ambiguity.
8
SPEAKER_01
I like it.
8
SPEAKER_01
Me too.
8
SPEAKER_01
That takes a lot of tolerance.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_00
So the second story is this professor I had at UCLA, she had done her field work in Sub-Saharan Africa and the actual class was on witches and magic.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so where she did her field work, people get spells put on them a lot.
8
SPEAKER_00
She became really, really sick while she was there.
8
SPEAKER_00
Now, I cannot tell you how much I trust this woman.
8
SPEAKER_00
She s empirical as you could get as a human being.
8
SPEAKER_00
She goes, look, I was there for a long time.
8
SPEAKER_00
I got ill.
8
SPEAKER_00
I saw some doctors.
8
SPEAKER_00
Nothing was working.
8
SPEAKER_00
Nothing was working.
8
SPEAKER_00
This older woman who was recognized as kind of a healer pulled me aside and said, you know, you have a spell.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m pretty sure who put it on you because you re an outsider and this and that.
8
SPEAKER_00
And of course she s like, I respect that they believe in that, but of course I don t have a spell on me.
8
SPEAKER_00
It got worse and worse and worse.
8
SPEAKER_00
And she went and had the spell taken away and it happened.
8
SPEAKER_00
She was relieved and she was fine.
8
SPEAKER_00
And she goes, look, what I m telling you is that couldn t happen to me here, but I m telling you that happened to me.
8
SPEAKER_01
That happens there.
8
SPEAKER_00
That is the power of it.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so I do believe in the power of it.
8
SPEAKER_00
I do believe you could be under a spell, even though I don t believe I could be under a spell.
8
SPEAKER_01
And again, that s some kind of intense generative power of imagination.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think it s a genuine sensory organ, like sight, smell, taste, and you can generate.
8
SPEAKER_01
And if it s an entire culture believing in this, something s going to change.
8
SPEAKER_01
I know this all sounds very kind of kooky.
8
SPEAKER_01
I do buy it, but I m still somewhat skeptical about it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I basically just have this kind of worldview where it s like, I know what s real for me, but I m not arrogant enough to think that s what s real for everyone else.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s nice.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s a good worldview.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, this has been lovely.
8
SPEAKER_00
So you talk about ghosts and Sasquatch.
8
SPEAKER_01
All kinds of things.
8
SPEAKER_01
We have expert guests, but we also have like Tom Hanks will come and we ll talk about time travel.
8
SPEAKER_01
And hopefully it s nice for people to come on and they don t have to talk about what they might always talk about.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yes, I think it d be so fun to come on and just chat about this weird thing you believe in.
8
SPEAKER_00
It would be great if you did it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I d be joining Stephen probably in his point of view, but we could really rip.
8
SPEAKER_01
You would be, and that s great.
8
SPEAKER_01
But we also talk, because I m interested in Roman history, so we talked to a Roman historian.
8
SPEAKER_01
We talked to a guy who s a big researcher in psychedelics and stuff like that.
8
SPEAKER_01
Oh, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
We talked to a dream and sleep expert.
8
SPEAKER_01
Psychedelics is another thing.
8
SPEAKER_01
Fascinating.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, well, I got to tell you, Paul, this has been a delight.
8
SPEAKER_00
It really was a delight.
8
SPEAKER_00
This has been so delightful.
8
SPEAKER_00
I want everyone to check out The Holdovers.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s a fantastic movie.
8
SPEAKER_00
If you like Alexander Payne, it is bullseye Alexander Payne.
8
SPEAKER_00
And just a beautifully shot movie.
8
SPEAKER_00
And you just get to spend two hours and another time in space.
8
SPEAKER_00
And you re just fucking brilliant.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re going to get nominated.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that kid is impossibly good.
8
SPEAKER_00
I hate him now that I know it s his first thing.
9
SPEAKER_01
And Devine is- Devine is amazing.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yes, it s just oozing out of her.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then listen to Chinwag Podcast, available, I presume, everywhere.
9
SPEAKER_01
Everywhere.
9
SPEAKER_01
Everywhere.
9
SPEAKER_01
Thank you, sir.
9
SPEAKER_01
All right, be well.
9
SPEAKER_01
Next up is the fact check.
9
SPEAKER_01
I don t even care about facts, I just wanna get in your pants.
9
SPEAKER_01
So, update.
9
SPEAKER_03
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_01
You re sad.
9
SPEAKER_03
Oh, that s an update, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you re sad because your grandpa died.
9
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
People were following along.
9
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_03
I don t look at the comments, but I assumed maybe some people Asked or what?
9
SPEAKER_03
I mean the holiday special was a lot about that.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yes people really liked that I read a lot of comments about that.
9
SPEAKER_01
I think a lot of people said
9
SPEAKER_01
that they were grateful that you had shared that, because they, too, were missing someone they loved, and that, you know, for so many people, Christmas is... Hard.
9
SPEAKER_01
...brings that exact thing up, so it s largely ignored everywhere else, so to hear... Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
...you share about going through it, I read a bunch of comments that said they were grateful... That s good.
9
SPEAKER_01
...that you shared that, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_03
That s the purpose of...
9
SPEAKER_03
and sharing it.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
9
SPEAKER_03
Because hopefully people feel seen.
9
SPEAKER_03
But yes, so at that point, felt like the end, but it was not the end.
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, that s the tricky thing about these people at the end of the line.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s really hard to nail down.
9
SPEAKER_03
I know.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Two days before my dad died, I got a call from my uncle Randy.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like when I left, he was nonverbal.
9
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
He was like, just, there s a body laying there.
9
SPEAKER_01
And he called me two days later and he s like, this is miraculous.
9
SPEAKER_01
Your dad woke up and he s, and I m like, selfishly, I was like, oh my God, I don t know if I can do another round of it.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then the next day he died.
9
SPEAKER_03
Oh, then, well, they, you know, they call that the rally.
9
SPEAKER_03
Oh.
9
SPEAKER_03
It s called that.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay, well, he had a rally, and then the next call was like 36 hours later on New Year s Eve, and it was the hospital saying he passed.
9
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, it s very confusing.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, you know what s really confusing is there s a different year there.
9
SPEAKER_01
Because of the time change.
9
SPEAKER_01
He died in 2013 there, but 2012 here.
9
SPEAKER_03
Weird.
9
SPEAKER_03
But his death certificate says 2013?
9
SPEAKER_01
If you want to acknowledge that as being a legitimate certificate.
9
SPEAKER_03
We don t have to.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_01
This is relativity.
9
SPEAKER_01
This is Einstein s relativity.
9
SPEAKER_01
My dad died in 2012.
9
SPEAKER_03
But your brother s dad died in 2013.
9
SPEAKER_03
No, he was in Oregon.
9
SPEAKER_01
My uncle s brother died in 2013.
9
SPEAKER_03
Weird.
9
SPEAKER_03
It s like a riddle.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s a riddle.
9
SPEAKER_01
Delta brought home a math riddle yesterday that was so pleasing.
9
SPEAKER_03
It was?
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God.
9
SPEAKER_03
What is it?
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, I solved it.
9
SPEAKER_03
Did you want her to come up and say it?
9
SPEAKER_01
Shit, should we get her up here?
9
SPEAKER_03
Maybe.
9
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, let s do it.
9
SPEAKER_01
Tell her riddle.
9
SPEAKER_01
Let s do it.
9
SPEAKER_01
Hi.
9
SPEAKER_01
Would you ask Delta if she would come up to present her math riddle from yesterday?
9
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
9
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
9
SPEAKER_00
Dad wants to know if you will go up and present your math riddle to him in the attic.
9
SPEAKER_00
We want to record it.
9
SPEAKER_01
We want to record it because it s a good riddle.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s worth repeating.
9
SPEAKER_00
All right.
9
SPEAKER_00
She s on her way.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
9
SPEAKER_01
De-money!
9
SPEAKER_03
Oh my gosh, we have the most special visitor.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, you brought the piece of paper, too.
9
SPEAKER_01
Perfect.
9
SPEAKER_01
Here, sit here, my love.
9
SPEAKER_01
Hit everyone with the riddle.
9
SPEAKER_01
They re so good.
9
SPEAKER_02
So the problem was how can you add eight fours together so that the total adds up to 500?
9
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, how do you?
9
SPEAKER_01
Add eight fours?
9
SPEAKER_01
You have eight fours to work with.
9
SPEAKER_01
How do you get to 500?
9
SPEAKER_01
Don t spoil it yet, Doug D.
9
SPEAKER_01
Let them mull it up.
9
SPEAKER_01
Rob, don t search for the answer, think of the answer.
9
SPEAKER_04
No, I m writing fours.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I m writing fours down too.
9
SPEAKER_03
Okay, how do you, to get to 500?
9
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
And Delta, because I ll probably embellish, but how long do you think it took me to figure out the answer?
9
SPEAKER_01
It was one of my proudest moments.
9
SPEAKER_02
Three minutes.
9
SPEAKER_01
Three minutes.
9
SPEAKER_02
Wow, and is it a riddle or is it like math?
9
SPEAKER_01
No, it works.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s not bullshit, it s no trick.
9
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it s a math magical wizard challenge, we do it every week.
9
SPEAKER_01
Math magical wizard.
9
SPEAKER_02
Okay, can I use a calculator to try some stuff out?
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, do some stuff, make some moves.
9
SPEAKER_01
Delta, how was your day at school?
9
SPEAKER_02
Good.
9
SPEAKER_01
It was good?
9
SPEAKER_01
Anything eventful happen?
9
SPEAKER_02
No.
9
SPEAKER_02
It s five o clock.
9
SPEAKER_01
No?
9
SPEAKER_02
I m gonna leave soon, though.
9
SPEAKER_01
What do you mean?
9
SPEAKER_02
I m going to have a play date with Freddy.
9
SPEAKER_02
Oh!
9
SPEAKER_01
He s on his way over?
9
SPEAKER_02
No, I m going to his because everyone s coming over tonight, so.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, Aaron and Ruthie and all that?
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, they re back?
9
SPEAKER_01
And you wanna be outta here?
9
SPEAKER_02
No, and the grandparents are gonna be here too, so it s- Not too much.
9
SPEAKER_02
Mom says it s too stressful to have Freddy here over too.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
9
SPEAKER_01
So you wanna hang, but it makes more sense to go to his house, because our house is so full.
9
SPEAKER_02
And we might be able to make pizzas, because his mom s a cook.
9
SPEAKER_02
Ooh.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s so cool.
9
SPEAKER_02
I know.
9
SPEAKER_01
And I always keep your friends private on here, because I don t know how their parents feel.
9
SPEAKER_01
But I think I feel okay saying that Freddy s the coolest dude I ve ever met.
9
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Isn t he radical?
9
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
I mean, what a guy.
9
SPEAKER_03
I don t think that I can do it fast enough for this to be, like, you know, good.
9
SPEAKER_01
You want me to walk you through the answer?
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
I ve got an answer for it.
9
SPEAKER_03
Oh, he did it.
9
SPEAKER_01
Did you look it up, you piece of shit?
9
SPEAKER_03
No, he didn t.
9
SPEAKER_03
He just did it?
9
SPEAKER_03
Okay, give us your- All right, what are you gonna do?
9
SPEAKER_04
It s 444 plus 44 plus four plus four plus four.
9
SPEAKER_04
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_03
444.
9
SPEAKER_03
Good job, Rob.
9
SPEAKER_03
Plus, what was it?
9
444.
9
SPEAKER_01
Uh-huh.
9
SPEAKER_01
Plus 44, which gives you 488.
9
SPEAKER_01
Uh-huh.
9
SPEAKER_01
Plus 4, 512.
9
SPEAKER_01
Plus 4, plus 4.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_03
Okay, interesting.
9
SPEAKER_01
Isn t that good?
9
SPEAKER_03
I was doing, I was in my multiplication.
9
SPEAKER_03
I hadn t got yet to adding.
9
SPEAKER_03
That would have taken me so long to figure it out.
9
SPEAKER_03
Nice.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s a fun one, isn t it?
9
SPEAKER_01
I really liked it.
9
SPEAKER_01
It was very satisfying.
9
SPEAKER_03
That is good.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, because I started going like, okay, four times this.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, there s a lot.
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, none of that, you know, eight fours only adds up to 32.
9
SPEAKER_01
Uh-huh.
9
SPEAKER_01
Now how do we get, how are we going to get to 500?
9
SPEAKER_03
I m surprised you guys got it so fast because there s so many things to try out.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
9
SPEAKER_01
But you have to first get yourself as close to 500 as you can, right?
9
SPEAKER_04
That s what I did.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_02
Figured it out seconds later.
9
SPEAKER_03
I use that as a clue that it s a third grader problem Yeah, cuz you start squaring stuff and you re like, oh no that would be a kabillion so it s not like yeah I thought there was gonna be multiplication and then addition and then subtraction.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh Yeah But no
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, if you needed to use 10 fours, you could have done that.
9
SPEAKER_01
You could have added an extra and then minused an extra.
9
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Maybe you should hit TJ with another problem.
9
SPEAKER_01
How do you get to 500 with 10 fours?
9
SPEAKER_01
Not only give TJ the answer, give them a riddle.
9
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, the math magical wizarding challenge is our homework and it s like really fun.
9
SPEAKER_02
Sometimes there s like, um, how do you get the guy across the river?
9
SPEAKER_02
He has a chicken, a fox, a chicken, a fox.
9
SPEAKER_02
And some seed.
9
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s a great one, that s a classic.
9
SPEAKER_01
Do you know that one, Monica?
9
SPEAKER_03
Say it one more time.
9
SPEAKER_01
There s a guy with a boat, and on one side of the river, he s on the side of the river with a boat.
9
SPEAKER_01
He s got a chicken, a fox, and seed.
9
SPEAKER_01
And he can only bring one thing in the boat at once.
9
SPEAKER_01
And he can t leave the chicken and the fox together, because the fox will eat the chicken.
9
SPEAKER_01
He can t leave the chicken and the seed together, because the chicken will eat the seed.
9
SPEAKER_01
And you can only bring one thing in the boat at once.
9
SPEAKER_01
How does he get all three across the river?
9
SPEAKER_01
He takes the feed over.
9
SPEAKER_04
No, because then the fox would eat the chicken.
9
SPEAKER_01
No, oh yeah, you re right.
9
SPEAKER_01
He takes the chicken over, then he sails back, the chicken s on the other side.
9
SPEAKER_01
Then he grabs the fox, he brings the fox over, but then grabs the chicken and brings it back.
9
SPEAKER_01
Then brings the seed over.
9
SPEAKER_02
We did a different version of that instead.
9
SPEAKER_02
We did,
9
SPEAKER_02
two kids and two parents and they had a boat and um either only one parent or two kids could go on the boat at one time so it s the um the two kids get on
9
SPEAKER_02
The answer is the two kids get on, one of the kids drops off the kid, the other kid on the other side, one of the kids rolls back.
9
SPEAKER_02
And then goes to that side, then the parent gets on, rolls there, then the kid switches with the parent that was on that side, so now there s a parent on that side, rolls back,
10
SPEAKER_01
Are you trying to get?
10
SPEAKER_00
I got it.
10
SPEAKER_00
The whole family over.
10
SPEAKER_00
The whole family.
10
SPEAKER_01
And then the kid takes the other kid back there, then there s one kid, and then the parent, and then goes back, switches with the parent, then the kid that s on that side goes, grabs the kid, and then sails over to the other side.
10
SPEAKER_02
It s a lot of trips, but you do get the whole family there.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s a lot of trips.
10
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
10
SPEAKER_00
Great, I love this.
10
SPEAKER_02
These are really fun.
10
SPEAKER_02
Will you keep, maybe we ll do like,
10
SPEAKER_02
monthly riddle segment.
10
SPEAKER_02
Are you up for that?
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_02
I think people love riddles.
10
SPEAKER_01
They would love it.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_02
I love it.
10
SPEAKER_02
Well, I love you.
10
SPEAKER_02
I ll miss you while you re at Freddy s.
10
SPEAKER_01
Have fun at Freddy s.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_02
Make some good pizza.
10
SPEAKER_01
Love you guys.
10
SPEAKER_02
Love you.
10
SPEAKER_01
I was about to take off my seatbelt.
10
SPEAKER_01
Bye.
10
SPEAKER_02
Bye, Buttercup.
10
SPEAKER_00
I m glad you re feeling better, buddy.
10
SPEAKER_02
Lord, you are a magical human being.
10
SPEAKER_00
Gosh.
10
SPEAKER_02
That ll clear up the blues.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, she does help.
10
SPEAKER_00
That s why I feel like I kind of have to have a kid so that my parents feel happy again.
10
SPEAKER_02
Oh, to make them happy.
10
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_02
Do they want that for you?
10
SPEAKER_00
I think they d be totally happy.
10
SPEAKER_02
Right.
10
SPEAKER_00
If I had one, but they have done a good job of telling me that they don t need that.
10
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_00
They are nice to me.
10
SPEAKER_02
They are nice to you.
10
SPEAKER_02
But I can say from my point of view, grandkids would be fun at some point, but the big reward was having the kids.
10
SPEAKER_02
I don t really need more.
10
SPEAKER_02
It might be a fun thing later, but you re the reward.
10
SPEAKER_02
They re little Deltas out in Hollywood.
10
SPEAKER_02
Doing all this stuff.
10
SPEAKER_00
I know.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s actually, they don t know yet, but if they had one, I do, like, I know, ding, ding, ding, why I m so sad.
10
SPEAKER_00
That relationship is so special.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_02
Although it would never be the one you have because you re not gonna be dropping your kid off there.
10
SPEAKER_00
I know, but your parents can be a different version to the grandkids.
10
SPEAKER_00
And I feel sad a little bit that my parents don t get to do that.
10
SPEAKER_00
They d be so fun.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh my God, your mom would love that.
10
SPEAKER_02
Cooking all the food for her.
10
SPEAKER_00
Making so many sandwiches for this little baby.
10
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, milkshake.
10
SPEAKER_02
Come home, nice layer of fat on every time she returned.
10
SPEAKER_00
And the kid wouldn t be like me who gets annoyed over every, like, everything.
10
SPEAKER_00
Right, they would love it.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they d love it.
10
SPEAKER_00
And it s too bad she can t do that.
10
SPEAKER_00
And my dad would love it.
10
SPEAKER_00
He d love having this little baby around.
10
SPEAKER_02
To educate.
10
SPEAKER_02
Explain how the world works.
10
SPEAKER_00
And she would like it.
10
SPEAKER_02
From his unique point of view.
10
SPEAKER_00
She wouldn t mind if he s repeating himself.
10
SPEAKER_02
Or taking positions we re not sure he even holds.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
She might even say, can you explain that one more time?
10
SPEAKER_00
Right.
10
SPEAKER_00
And that s exactly what he wants to hear.
10
SPEAKER_02
I ll do that for him next time around.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so I think they would be incredible grandparents, so I feel sad about that.
10
SPEAKER_02
At best, they ll have the relationship my mom has with my kids, which is like, once a year, they re gonna see twice.
10
SPEAKER_00
No, but they would come a lot.
10
SPEAKER_00
They re gonna live here.
10
SPEAKER_02
How long do you think you re gonna allow that to happen?
10
SPEAKER_00
I know, but they wanna play with my little baby.
10
SPEAKER_02
I know they do, and that s very sweet, but at the 12-day marker, when they re living in your house, you re gonna be like, okay, let s schedule another one in a couple months.
10
SPEAKER_00
But if I m a single mom, I might like it.
10
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, we ll see.
10
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, who knows?
10
SPEAKER_02
A brand new baby plus your parents now living in your house, that s a lot of change.
10
SPEAKER_02
I know.
10
SPEAKER_00
If I get pregnant soon and it s a boy, I think it ll be my grandpa.
10
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, also I m gonna be your children s grandpa.
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, you ll be their uncle.
10
SPEAKER_00
Why do you have to be their- Cause I m your dad.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah.
10
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_02
Do the math.
10
SPEAKER_02
Jesus Christ.
10
SPEAKER_02
How soon you forget.
10
SPEAKER_00
You ll be their Los Angeles grandpa.
10
SPEAKER_02
I will.
10
SPEAKER_02
And I will spoil her.
10
SPEAKER_02
And it s not my responsibility whether she turns out to be a piece of shit.
10
SPEAKER_00
You re going to be so upset when I have a boy.
10
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I won t talk to you or that.
10
SPEAKER_00
He won t be there, grandpa.
10
SPEAKER_00
Boys need grandpas too.
10
SPEAKER_02
No, because I just had an experience recently.
10
SPEAKER_02
I was around a little boy and what was clear to me is like, he worshiped me.
10
SPEAKER_02
Like he wanted to be me.
10
SPEAKER_01
God.
10
SPEAKER_02
And I was like, oh, this would be fun to have a little guy that was trying to be like you would be so cute and sweet.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh no, this is the worst case scenario.
10
SPEAKER_00
My little boy comes over here and plays and then he comes back over to my house and I say something and then they say, that s wrong, Dax says this.
10
SPEAKER_00
I m like, get out of my life.
10
SPEAKER_02
You re missing the point for me, which is if they wanna be like me, now I have a buddy to go ride motorcycles with and go to the dunes and like, you know what I m saying?
10
SPEAKER_00
I think my baby s gonna be more into math.
10
SPEAKER_02
I wasn t around a little boy and I was like, yeah, I guess I would ve liked a little boy.
10
SPEAKER_00
You would have liked whatever you had.
10
SPEAKER_02
For sure.
10
SPEAKER_00
You would have loved whatever.
10
SPEAKER_02
But I m never gonna be my children s heroes.
10
SPEAKER_02
It s like, it lines up gender-wise a little bit.
10
SPEAKER_00
Can we say what happened?
10
SPEAKER_00
What happened?
10
SPEAKER_02
You ll be reminding me.
10
SPEAKER_00
We can cut it if she wouldn t like it.
10
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_00
But the, I mean, the sweetest thing happened.
10
SPEAKER_02
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
On New Year s Eve, we were at the Richardson s and you guys had just landed home and came straight to the Richardson s.
10
SPEAKER_02
And Lincoln and I had spent the whole flight working on her admittance essay for this school she wants to get into.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yes, she wants to get into a school and one of the essay questions was.
10
SPEAKER_02
Who alive or dead do you admire?
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_02
And why?
10
SPEAKER_00
And she wrote about me.
10
SPEAKER_02
It s much better than that.
10
SPEAKER_02
The list started.
10
SPEAKER_02
The list was Monica, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Taylor Swift.
10
SPEAKER_02
And to be honest with you, Monica, and I love you, I was like, pick Taylor Swift, because you re going to have so much to say about her, and you know her whole life story.
10
SPEAKER_02
This is going to be a slam dunk.
10
SPEAKER_02
And she picked you.
10
SPEAKER_00
She picked me.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s the best thing that s ever happened to me or will ever happen to me.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s so flattering.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s crazy.
10
SPEAKER_02
And she started this exercise by looking at Kristen and I immediately, and she goes, I m not going to pick either of you.
10
SPEAKER_02
Like, being warned.
10
SPEAKER_00
She also, that was probably smart because if she picked one of you, she might feel, and I think you two would be very happy if she picked one of the other of you.
10
SPEAKER_02
I prefer she picked Kristen over me.
10
SPEAKER_00
I know.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yes, of course.
10
SPEAKER_00
But she, as a kid, that s hard to do.
10
SPEAKER_00
To, like, pick between your parents.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
And then they re both sitting there on the airplane and it s like, ah.
10
SPEAKER_02
Now, I saw it as a totally different thing.
10
SPEAKER_02
And for the record, Kristen doesn t really buy this theory, and you likely won t either.
10
SPEAKER_02
But what I took from it was really comforting to me.
10
SPEAKER_02
She wants to get in this school.
10
SPEAKER_02
She is a very smart person.
10
SPEAKER_02
Very.
10
SPEAKER_02
She knows people are interested in us a lot.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh.
10
SPEAKER_02
She had a bit of a layup, and she didn t take it, and she didn t want to take it.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh.
10
SPEAKER_02
To me, that was her displaying some integrity.
10
SPEAKER_02
Like, I want to get in this school and I want it to have nothing to do with either of you.
10
SPEAKER_00
That s a very interesting point.
10
SPEAKER_00
Could be.
10
SPEAKER_02
I like to think that s what happened.
10
SPEAKER_02
I was working on the other questions with her.
10
SPEAKER_00
I think it s just she really admires me a lot.
10
SPEAKER_02
The bottom line is you beat out Taylor Swift and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
10
SPEAKER_02
However it shook out, you really came out on top.
10
SPEAKER_00
Minus me, we have the same people we look up to, so I also appreciate that.
10
SPEAKER_02
Those two would be on your list as well.
10
SPEAKER_00
But then I d pick her.
10
SPEAKER_02
Lincoln, I d pick her.
10
SPEAKER_00
I look up to her.
10
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that s how I interpreted that thing.
10
SPEAKER_02
Look, some kids go to a party and they go, my dad s on those white socks.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_02
And cheated the opposite of that, in my opinion.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think that s great.
10
SPEAKER_02
Which I like.
10
SPEAKER_00
You admire.
10
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, it made me feel so good.
10
SPEAKER_02
As it should.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I was so fired.
10
SPEAKER_02
They adore you, both the girls.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I love them so much, very much.
10
SPEAKER_02
Congratulations.
10
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
10
SPEAKER_02
You beat out RBG and T.S.
10
SPEAKER_02
Eliot.
10
SPEAKER_00
And T.S.
10
SPEAKER_00
Eliot.
10
SPEAKER_00
T.S.
10
SPEAKER_00
Eliot didn t even make the cut.
10
SPEAKER_02
Didn t even make the cut.
10
SPEAKER_00
But I do feel very grateful.
10
SPEAKER_02
You beat Obama.
10
SPEAKER_00
I beat everyone.
10
SPEAKER_02
You beat everyone.
10
SPEAKER_00
Beat everyone in the whole world.
10
SPEAKER_02
You beat Jesus.
10
SPEAKER_00
I love winning.
10
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, you won.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s a real privilege to get to be around them for so many days of their life.
10
SPEAKER_02
They don t have a memory without you.
10
SPEAKER_00
vacations and stuff, but I m there.
10
SPEAKER_02
I mean, they don t have, they can t think of a time in their life when they didn t know you.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I know.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s so special.
10
SPEAKER_02
It is.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
I was just in the house earlier and there was this, I guess it s a- Squishy?
10
SPEAKER_00
No, it s like a pencil holder maybe or something that Delta made Kristen for Christmas.
10
SPEAKER_00
And she saw these little pictures of her as a baby.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s so cute.
11
SPEAKER_05
It s so cute.
11
SPEAKER_05
But then there s a small picture of me and a small picture of Carly.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh.
11
SPEAKER_01
Well, her old, you know, in front of her bed, she has this little picture wall.
11
SPEAKER_01
And there was a moment where there was like six pictures of you and none of me.
11
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, this is, we gotta, we gotta make a little more effort for me.
11
SPEAKER_01
You gotta put a couple more.
11
SPEAKER_05
Come in.
11
SPEAKER_05
Oh, be there.
11
SPEAKER_01
You re back.
11
Hi.
11
SPEAKER_05
We were just talking about you.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_05
In a good way.
11
SPEAKER_01
About the cool present you made, mom.
11
SPEAKER_01
What s up?
11
SPEAKER_03
I just said Aaron s here.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh, Aaron s here.
11
SPEAKER_05
Oh, should we bring him up too?
11
SPEAKER_01
Tell him to come up.
11
SPEAKER_03
Okay.
11
SPEAKER_05
Also, I haven t talked about my grandpa yet.
11
SPEAKER_01
Let s talk about him.
11
SPEAKER_05
Okay.
11
SPEAKER_05
Well, he died.
11
SPEAKER_05
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_05
a couple days ago.
11
SPEAKER_05
We did talk about it on Sync that s coming up.
11
SPEAKER_05
I always feel a little guilty about that.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, when I was doing F1, I would try to pick what I was going to talk about.
11
SPEAKER_01
And then sometimes it would be
11
SPEAKER_01
it seemed insane that I wasn t gonna talk, like I d already talked about it there, because that was Monday morning, and then I would just break it.
11
SPEAKER_05
I d break the rule.
11
SPEAKER_05
Well, yeah, you have to break it, because this is the main hub.
11
SPEAKER_01
This is the golden goose.
11
SPEAKER_05
Yeah, this is the golden goose.
11
SPEAKER_01
This has to have priority over everything.
11
SPEAKER_01
It does, so then it gets confusing.
11
SPEAKER_05
Of course, I would talk about this multiple times.
11
SPEAKER_05
This is a big deal.
11
SPEAKER_05
Yeah, yeah.
11
SPEAKER_05
But, and it s the first time I ve experienced
11
SPEAKER_05
which is so lucky.
11
SPEAKER_01
It s crazy.
11
SPEAKER_01
It s wild.
11
SPEAKER_05
It s the first time my mom has, and she s in her 60s.
11
SPEAKER_05
It s so lucky.
11
SPEAKER_05
It s unbelievable.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
As I told you, I was younger than you when my dad died.
11
SPEAKER_05
My dad was 18 or 16 or something when his dad died.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh, really?
11
SPEAKER_05
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_05
And his mom is, you know, he s experienced it.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_05
Well, hello!
11
SPEAKER_01
Hi.
11
SPEAKER_01
Hello.
11
SPEAKER_01
Welcome.
11
SPEAKER_01
You have to let Aaron sit there.
11
SPEAKER_01
Can he sit there so he can say hi?
11
SPEAKER_05
Come over here.
11
SPEAKER_05
Oh.
11
SPEAKER_01
Come over here, the bunny.
11
SPEAKER_01
Do you want to sit on Aaron s lap so you can be next to the microphone?
11
SPEAKER_01
Or do you want to sit on my lap next to this microphone?
11
SPEAKER_01
There we go, we made it all work.
11
SPEAKER_01
Do you want my headphones?
11
SPEAKER_03
Are we recording?
11
SPEAKER_01
What the hell else would we be doing in here?
11
SPEAKER_01
Just chatting with headphones on.
11
SPEAKER_01
That d be insane, wouldn t it?
11
SPEAKER_04
It d be cool though.
11
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, I would do it.
11
SPEAKER_01
You re not wrong in that I would do it.
11
SPEAKER_01
Sharon, pull your microphone closer and tell us, you re just back from the slopes.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, just pulled up.
11
SPEAKER_06
How was it?
11
SPEAKER_01
Mammoth, first time skiing at Mammoth.
11
SPEAKER_00
Oh man, first of many trips to Mammoth.
11
SPEAKER_00
Was it fun?
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
I can tell you it was not 40 and sunny.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
Day one and two, it was like 12.
11
SPEAKER_00
That s rare there.
11
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah, yesterday was freezing and whipping wind.
11
SPEAKER_05
Oh wow, but you kind of want that.
11
SPEAKER_00
Well, I don t care.
11
SPEAKER_05
Yeah, you re used to it.
11
SPEAKER_00
Today was that day, though.
11
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it was.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was warm and sunny.
11
SPEAKER_00
Man, it was gorgeous.
11
SPEAKER_00
So Ruthie and I skied till noon, then we hopped and drove back.
11
SPEAKER_00
Then Delta just welcomed me, and I pulled the suitcase in, and she told me to come on up.
11
SPEAKER_00
To get your ass upstairs.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, what are you waiting for?
11
SPEAKER_01
But the diesel truck needs a name.
11
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to say, like, you know, how did old Tony do or whatever.
11
SPEAKER_00
Old Tony s good.
11
SPEAKER_01
It s pretty bad, old Tony.
11
SPEAKER_00
Old Tony roll.
11
SPEAKER_05
Sounds rusty.
11
SPEAKER_00
Old Tony ran great.
11
SPEAKER_00
Ruthie was like, God, you look good in a truck.
11
SPEAKER_00
Oh.
11
SPEAKER_00
And it sounds so sexy.
11
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
11
SPEAKER_00
She loved that diesel.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh, wow.
11
SPEAKER_05
Well, that s a Bama girl for you.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
Roll Tide.
11
SPEAKER_05
Don t say that ever again.
11
SPEAKER_01
Listen, go blue, beat Roll Tide.
11
SPEAKER_05
Thank God.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
It was hard for me.
11
SPEAKER_01
I was finally, I reaped what I sowed because it was playing a New Year s Day at the Richardson s U of M versus Alabama.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I kept peeking my head and I said, how s the tide rolling?
11
SPEAKER_01
And they were ahead most of the time.
11
SPEAKER_01
But then Go Blue came and said, no more roll tide.
11
SPEAKER_01
Go Blue s here.
11
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
11
SPEAKER_00
Happy birthday, Dad.
11
SPEAKER_00
Oh, thank you.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
And how was your accommodations up there?
11
SPEAKER_01
It was nice.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
The girl, uh, uh, Adelaide or Madeline broke her nose on day one.
11
SPEAKER_00
Madeline struggled and, um, we had a little, just a lot of hurt feelings, a lot of,
11
SPEAKER_00
It s scary up in those big mountains.
11
SPEAKER_00
I mean, last year was my, I was terrified when we went to Vail.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
It s overwhelming when you pull up and you see the hill.
11
SPEAKER_01
You re like, ooh.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
It looks very scary from the street.
11
SPEAKER_00
I felt for them, but at the same time, I was very happy that it clicked for me.
11
SPEAKER_01
How many crashes did you have?
11
SPEAKER_00
Only two.
11
SPEAKER_00
Oh, that s not bad at all.
11
SPEAKER_01
You re going to ski circles around me the next time we go.
11
SPEAKER_00
That s the goal, yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
No, but I can party with you.
11
SPEAKER_00
I don t care what color hill I go on.
11
SPEAKER_00
Oh, the whole thing now.
11
SPEAKER_03
Daddy, can I tell you a story after this?
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, of course you can.
11
SPEAKER_01
You can tell me a story anytime.
11
SPEAKER_03
No, but on there.
11
SPEAKER_03
Oh yeah, tell me.
11
SPEAKER_03
Okay, that today, everyone was putting their shirts over their nose and yelling about that someone farted.
11
SPEAKER_03
Okay.
11
SPEAKER_03
Because it stinked on the carpet.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh, it stinked on the carpet?
11
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
So someone, they farted, it went through their pants, into the carpet, and then permeated the carpet?
11
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, and it smelled on the carpet.
11
SPEAKER_01
Were people sniffing the carpet?
11
SPEAKER_03
No.
11
SPEAKER_01
Like dogs?
11
SPEAKER_03
Was it poop?
11
SPEAKER_01
Did someone poop themselves?
11
SPEAKER_03
I don t know.
11
SPEAKER_05
Did you ever figure out who did it?
11
SPEAKER_01
You didn t figure out who did it, but you have your theories.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
It s gotta be a dude.
11
SPEAKER_01
Dude.
11
SPEAKER_01
Was it a boy you think?
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
Boys are stinky.
11
SPEAKER_06
Stinky boys.
11
SPEAKER_01
Fart all the time.
11
SPEAKER_01
Poop and fart.
11
SPEAKER_01
Pick their butts and their nose.
11
SPEAKER_01
Hard boogers.
11
SPEAKER_05
Elephant shaped.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh wow.
11
SPEAKER_01
Blast from the past.
11
SPEAKER_04
A literal blast.
11
SPEAKER_04
Every time, it always reminds me of the video.
11
SPEAKER_04
The guy that, like on the court that he narrated, the guy dumping his fingers.
11
SPEAKER_01
Let s see if we can do it together, okay?
11
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, yeah, let s do that.
11
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so let s start with, we re trying to cut away.
11
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
Okay, three, two, one.
11
SPEAKER_01
We re trying to cut away, but our cameras are all fucked up and this network is a mess, so I guess we re just gonna have to hone in on this guy, dumping his fingers up to his knuckles in his asshole.
11
SPEAKER_06
Come on.
11
SPEAKER_01
This is our favorite family video we watch over and over again.
11
SPEAKER_02
Wow.
11
SPEAKER_01
So I guess we re just gonna have to hone in on this guy.
11
SPEAKER_02
I love this guy dumping his finger knuckle deep into his asshole.
11
SPEAKER_01
Our cameras are all fucked up, this network s a mess.
11
SPEAKER_05
So we re just gonna have to hold him.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God, I lost it.
11
SPEAKER_05
Oh wow, that was pretty incredible.
11
SPEAKER_01
Child Protective Service may come pick you up.
11
SPEAKER_05
Yeah, I m leaving that in.
11
SPEAKER_01
All right, well, let s get this shit back on course here.
11
SPEAKER_01
Let s see if we can land this plane a little bit.
11
SPEAKER_01
You guys are just in time to hear some facts about Paul Giamatti.
11
SPEAKER_01
Or not, or lack of facts.
11
SPEAKER_05
No, there s some.
11
SPEAKER_05
I was just gonna, I was finishing my story.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh, please, okay.
11
SPEAKER_01
I know, it s very.
11
SPEAKER_05
It s really, it s chaotic.
11
SPEAKER_01
It s chaotic and it s not thoughtful.
11
SPEAKER_01
We were talking about grant Monica s grandfather died and this started she was crying when this started and now we re talking about dumping.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh my.
11
SPEAKER_01
So we ve really been disrespectful to the whole grieving process.
11
SPEAKER_05
It s what we do, I guess.
11
SPEAKER_00
I guess.
11
SPEAKER_00
Sorry about Grampy.
11
SPEAKER_05
Oh, it s, it s, thank you.
11
SPEAKER_05
Thank you.
11
SPEAKER_05
It s one of those weird ones to respond to.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_05
Because he was in his nineties and lived an amazing, great life.
11
SPEAKER_05
But you want to say, it s okay.
11
SPEAKER_05
Like when people say, I m sorry, you want to say it s okay.
11
SPEAKER_05
Well, I have been saying it s okay.
11
SPEAKER_05
That s what I hope.
11
SPEAKER_05
But it s not really okay, like it is.
11
SPEAKER_00
Like what if you get to keep your Papa Bob until you, or you know, you just get to know him that much longer.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
I know.
11
SPEAKER_01
My Papa Bob died when I was 20.
11
SPEAKER_05
I know, so it s okay.
11
SPEAKER_05
But it s still really sad.
11
SPEAKER_01
Basically, we put you in a position where you have to say thank you to us.
11
SPEAKER_01
I know, that s why.
11
SPEAKER_05
I guess it s good we did talk about it on Sync, because this version of it is different.
11
SPEAKER_05
Thank you.
11
SPEAKER_05
Anyway, yeah, so, alright, couple facts.
11
SPEAKER_05
When did 60 Minutes start?
11
SPEAKER_05
Debuted in 1968.
12
SPEAKER_01
68, seven years before we arrived on planet Earth, Aaron.
12
SPEAKER_01
They were already in their seventh season when we hit the scene.
12
SPEAKER_03
The nicotine level in vapes versus cigarettes.
12
SPEAKER_01
Well, we ve got an expert here.
12
SPEAKER_01
This is helpful.
12
SPEAKER_01
Aaron knows all about them nicotine levels.
12
SPEAKER_03
All right, let s hear it.
12
SPEAKER_02
Well, I can tell you, yeah, I don t know because the less I know, the more okay I am with vaping.
12
SPEAKER_02
I have gone up and down.
12
SPEAKER_02
I think, you know, maybe the last time we were together, I was smoking this one that was so, I needed so much nicotine and so like I smoke.
12
SPEAKER_02
I wanted to be one of those guys that pull off of like a bottle full of liquid or whatever, you know, people are doing where they create a cloud that covers a city block.
12
SPEAKER_01
Right.
12
SPEAKER_02
Or you see it billowing out of a car window.
12
SPEAKER_02
But I didn t want to be that guy, like holding a big...
12
SPEAKER_02
So, yeah, anyway, I, I got real finally and I m like, okay, you can t because the button started going off and smoke was going like, I think my pants caught on fire one from the, oh my God.
12
SPEAKER_01
It would just start letting smoke out.
12
SPEAKER_02
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
12
SPEAKER_02
Oh wow.
12
SPEAKER_02
And like when I got that multistrada, I thought the motorcycle was on fire the first time driving down the road because I had it in the little holder.
12
SPEAKER_02
Oh, yeah.
12
SPEAKER_02
And all of a sudden, just smoke was coming at me.
12
SPEAKER_02
I m like, oh, my God, it s on fire.
12
SPEAKER_02
The first time I drove it, it was a vape.
12
SPEAKER_02
Oh, God.
12
SPEAKER_02
Anyway, I m not a. You re not an expert.
12
SPEAKER_02
I really enjoy it still.
12
SPEAKER_03
Okay.
12
SPEAKER_03
Well, a 20 milligram vape with 40 milligrams of nicotine.
12
SPEAKER_01
There we go.
12
SPEAKER_03
Is therefore the equivalent of smoking one or two packs of 20 cigarettes.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
So it s a pack.
12
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_03
Um, okay.
12
SPEAKER_03
You said that he met Ron and Edward at school, but there, but I don t know who they are.
12
SPEAKER_03
They re obviously famous people.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, yes.
12
SPEAKER_03
Ron Howard?
12
SPEAKER_01
Nope.
12
SPEAKER_01
Ron Livingston.
12
SPEAKER_03
Oh, okay.
12
SPEAKER_01
What was his second name?
12
SPEAKER_01
Edward?
12
SPEAKER_01
Edward Norton.
12
SPEAKER_01
Edward Norton.
12
SPEAKER_03
Oh, yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like Yale.
12
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, Yale.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
12
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
12
SPEAKER_03
So hopefully the listener is listening because that s- I can t believe that s all I said.
12
SPEAKER_03
Not said.
12
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oops.
12
SPEAKER_01
Well, thanks for clearing that up.
12
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_03
All right.
12
SPEAKER_03
So Ron Livingston, Edward Norton.
12
SPEAKER_01
They were in the same class?
12
SPEAKER_01
He was, I want to say, Paul said he was two years ahead of Edward.
12
SPEAKER_03
Well, also Paul was there for his master s.
12
SPEAKER_01
Well, he was doing plays extracurricularly during his BA with Edward, but he was two years ahead of him.
12
SPEAKER_01
And then he came back and did his master s and then did plays through that.
12
SPEAKER_03
Right.
12
SPEAKER_01
They re the same age, Ron and Paul.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh, they are?
12
SPEAKER_01
Both 56.
12
SPEAKER_03
Oh, wow.
12
SPEAKER_03
Ron seems young.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he does.
12
SPEAKER_01
Don t you think?
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_03
Okay, did Thomas Edison steal inventions?
12
SPEAKER_03
It says 22 people actually invented incandescent electric lamps before Edison did.
12
SPEAKER_03
And Edison didn t steal their idea, rather Edison improved on their idea by first understanding the market.
12
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, there s a lot of, okay, Edison did not invent the light bulb, but I think he did.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I had never heard that about Edison.
12
SPEAKER_01
I ve heard a lot of stuff.
12
SPEAKER_01
Delta s got her hand raised.
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SPEAKER_03
Oh, Delta.
12
SPEAKER_03
Delta Bell Shepard.
12
SPEAKER_00
I have a question for you or Daddy.
12
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
12
SPEAKER_00
Have you ever farted and has it ever... Been picked up by the mic.
12
SPEAKER_03
Picked up by the mic.
12
SPEAKER_03
Great question.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
It has a couple times, not Monica, but me.
12
SPEAKER_03
Not me, I ve never farted in here.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and only during a fact check, because I lower my guard a little.
12
SPEAKER_01
I m more professional when the guests are here.
12
SPEAKER_01
Or pictures with the guests.
12
SPEAKER_01
Well, one time, yes, with a pitcher.
12
SPEAKER_01
With Liz.
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SPEAKER_01
During a pitcher taking, with Liz.
12
SPEAKER_03
Before Liz was our friend.
12
SPEAKER_01
Your friend Liz.
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SPEAKER_01
I farted on her during the pitchers on accident.
12
SPEAKER_01
It just came out and it was loud and we were both shocked by it.
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SPEAKER_01
Oopsies.
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SPEAKER_03
But I don t know if we ve ever heard the fart.
12
SPEAKER_02
So nothing really.
12
SPEAKER_01
Well, several times I ve gone like, and then I stare at you, because definitely I heard it through the headphones.
12
SPEAKER_03
Oh.
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SPEAKER_01
But you were maybe distracted with your facts or something.
12
SPEAKER_03
I don t think, I don t think I ve ever heard it.
12
SPEAKER_01
Rob, do you remember hearing any over here?
12
SPEAKER_01
I don t think so.
12
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
12
SPEAKER_01
Okay, Monica s gotta get through these now.
12
SPEAKER_03
No, that s it.
12
SPEAKER_01
That was everything.
12
SPEAKER_03
That s all the facts.
12
SPEAKER_01
Did you like Paul?
12
SPEAKER_01
You were hearing it for the first time.
12
SPEAKER_01
I was hearing it for the first time.
12
SPEAKER_03
Isn t he so fun?
12
SPEAKER_03
I love his voice.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
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SPEAKER_03
Great voice.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
And he and I loved smoking.
12
SPEAKER_01
We talked about smoking for 30 minutes.
12
SPEAKER_01
I hope you left every minute of it in.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we were talking about if they invented a pill where you would inoculate you from getting cancer, would you go back to smoking?
12
SPEAKER_01
And we were both thinking, probably.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, at least with good company.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, good friends and family, your children in the car, you d have to give them the pill as well.
12
SPEAKER_01
All right, well, buddy, what?
12
SPEAKER_01
I love you and I m sorry that you re granddaddy dad.
12
SPEAKER_01
Granddaddy.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t have headphones on, so I don t even know.
12
SPEAKER_03
Thank you.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
And I m, I m sorry that we were having a real moment and then all hell broke loose.
12
SPEAKER_03
It ll happen.
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SPEAKER_03
I guess that s life.
12
SPEAKER_03
It s okay baby.
12
SPEAKER_01
Did you know her grandpa died?
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, she texted me that she was going and she couldn t take me for the birthday trip because she was going to see her grandpa.
12
SPEAKER_03
Right.
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_03
He didn t die then, which was a surprise.
12
SPEAKER_03
He held on for a little longer, got to see him again.
12
SPEAKER_01
He wanted to make it to 2024.
12
SPEAKER_03
Well, there is.
12
SPEAKER_03
Okay.
12
SPEAKER_03
So, so I do feel not guilty, but yes, guilty.
12
SPEAKER_03
My grandpa used to have this superstition.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
12
SPEAKER_03
If you start the year together, you end the year together.
12
SPEAKER_03
That was always his thing.
12
SPEAKER_03
So he was very superstitious around New Year s.
12
SPEAKER_03
We all had to be there.
12
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_03
I never like hung out with friends.
12
SPEAKER_03
I just did family stuff.
12
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_03
I did break it before when I lived here and I had to work at SoulCycle.
12
SPEAKER_03
So I had to come back.
12
SPEAKER_03
So I broke that.
12
SPEAKER_03
No one died.
12
SPEAKER_01
Right.
12
SPEAKER_03
But then this year we were not all together.
12
SPEAKER_03
And then he did die a couple days later.
12
SPEAKER_01
Right, but he, under no circumstances would he have made it to the end of the year.
12
SPEAKER_01
I know, I know.
12
SPEAKER_01
I saw a picture of him, yeah.
12
SPEAKER_03
I know, I know.
12
SPEAKER_03
So, I mean, he kind of self-fulfilled that prophecy.
12
SPEAKER_03
He did that.
12
SPEAKER_01
Also, in a weird way, you were absolutely adhering to his policy, which is you shouldn t start the year together if you re not gonna finish it.
12
SPEAKER_01
And we know we re not gonna finish it together, so it d be bad luck to start it together.
12
SPEAKER_03
Oh, I like that spin on it.
12
SPEAKER_01
The only way you could have seen them at the end of the year is if you two died in your entire life.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh.
12
SPEAKER_01
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
12
SPEAKER_03
True.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_03
Okay, I love it.
12
SPEAKER_01
That s another one of Delta s math riddles.
12
SPEAKER_03
Tell TJ.
12
SPEAKER_02
Well, I love you.
12
SPEAKER_03
Love you, happy to see you, Aaron.
12
SPEAKER_02
I m happy to see you too.
12
SPEAKER_03
Well, love everyone.
12
SPEAKER_01
Love everyone.
12
SPEAKER_03
Happy New Year still.
12
SPEAKER_03
How long do we say that?
12
SPEAKER_01
God drives me nuts.
12
SPEAKER_01
Long time.
12
SPEAKER_01
There s nothing worse than like,
12
SPEAKER_03
I m going to say in June.
12
SPEAKER_03
Carry it through June.
12
SPEAKER_03
All right.
12
SPEAKER_03
All right.
12
SPEAKER_01
Love you.