Armchair Anonymous: Wild Card XI

Summary

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard:

“Armchair Anonymous: Wild Card XI”

Release Date: January 16, 2026
Host: Dax Shepard, with Monica Padman
Guests/Callers: Marcos (Texas), Jane (UK), Danny (Germany), Aaron (Virginia/DC)

Episode Overview

This “Wild Card” edition of Armchair Anonymous features Dax and Monica engaging with listeners who call in to share unpredictable, jaw-dropping, and quirky personal stories. As always, the tone is equal parts empathy, humor, and curiosity—exploring the messy, brave, and sometimes hilarious realities of being human. The episode’s core theme is serendipity, chaos, vulnerability, and resilience, as listeners recount high-stakes events, near disasters, and profound coincidences.

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Key Stories & Discussion Points

1. Marcos: The Cadillac Inferno Rescue (04:05–13:19)

Story Highlights:

• Setting: McAllen, Texas, mid-2000s; Marcos is with friends (including “Marine Mike”) after a ska concert when they hear a car crash and explosion outside his apartment.
• Heroics: Marine Mike bolts toward the flaming car; Marcos follows, fearing it might be his coworker’s Cadillac.
• Rescue: Mike drags an adult male from the burning car; the man frantically screams about his trapped children. Mike reassures him, “I already got the kids out of the car. You can stay away from the car.” (07:39, Marcos)
• Aftermath: The group pulls the man to safety just before the car explodes a second time; club-dressed nurses rush in to triage until emergency services arrive.
• Emotional Fallout: Party returns to silence; fear of underage drinking prevents them from talking to cops. The next day, Mike confirms with police that everyone survived and declines making a report.

Notable Quotes:

• “He tells me right away, ‘I already got the kids out of the car. You can stay away from the car.’” — Marcos (07:39)
• “That last time, it was very Final Destination. Scenes of sparks and the shrapnel. And nobody got hurt, nobody got hit. And that’s when I’m like, okay, that’s it. It’s time for us to go.” — Marcos (09:18)
• “That’d be a fucked up police department with that much going on. They’re like, ‘Wait, we gotta prioritize these minors in possession.’” — Dax (10:35)

Segment Memorable: Intensity, humor in coping after crisis, and deep appreciation for “Marine Mike’s” military reflexes and courage.

Timestamps:

• Crash & first explosion: 05:58
• Rescue & info about the kids: 07:39
• Car’s second explosion: 09:10
• Party aftermath: 10:19
• Food/region banter, personal updates: 11:32–13:19

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2. Jane: Disney World Marathon & The Ladder Calamity (13:49–24:29)

Story Highlights:

• Background: British caller Jane recounts her daughter’s Disney World wedding adventure—spending 19 days straight at the park (“She’s a real Disney adult.” (15:08, Monica) ).
• Turning Point: Pre-party for the post-wedding celebration, Jane goes into the “loft” (attic), only to have the ladder slip out; she falls seven feet, hits her head, and crushes her foot.
• Struggle and Grit: Alone at home, she crawls to fetch crutches, calls emergency services, and is amazed by the rapid ambulance response (“We can wait for hours in the UK … four hours, five hours.” (18:39, Jane) )
• Hospital Ordeal: Receives morphine; spends hours in A&E for a “nutcracker” foot fracture; resolutely gets patched up, dons party clothes (only one shoe), rolls into the party in a wheelchair to cheers and celebration.
• Reflection on NHS: Jane praises the National Health Service for emergencies but describes long waits for elective care.

Notable Quotes:

• “Nobody needs to know about this. It’s fine. I’ll dust myself off. It’ll be fine.” — Jane (16:57)
• “Would you agree … there’s probably an age where maybe you have to admit to yourself there’s no more up ladders?” — Dax (23:33)
• “The NHS is free for accident and emergency… There’s an infinite demand and a finite resource.” — Jane (22:34)

Timestamps:

• Disney party lead-up: 13:49–15:48
• Ladder incident and aftermath: 16:16–21:31
• NHS and philosophical reflections: 22:22–23:30

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3. Danny: Full-Circle Car Theft—Therapist Meets Her Own Robber (26:06–39:18)

Story Highlights:

• Backdrop: 2012, USA. Danny, a grad student, waits tables, writes, powerlifts. Her Dodge Charger (famously easy to break into) is burglarized multiple times, losing cash, schoolbooks, a bright neon green aux cord, gym gear, and electronics.
• Irony Strikes: Two years later as a therapy intern for young male offenders in drug court, one of her clients opens up about his crimes—including hitting the “same car three times in one week,” and holding onto a distinctive green aux cord because it was his favorite color.
• Shocking Realization: Danny has to process, in real time, that she’s listening to the boy who robbed her years earlier. She chooses not to tell him, prioritizing the therapeutic relationship.
• Philosophical Reflection: The experience reframes her anger and loss, offering rare perspective on the “other side” of addiction, deprivation, and shame.

Notable Quotes:

• “He tells me…the only thing I didn’t flip was there was a lime green auxiliary cord, and it was my favorite color, and I’d never seen one that color before, so I kept that. And I still have it.” — Danny (35:15)
• “In what world am I sitting there in the youth correctional facility as the substance abuse counselor for the kid that robbed me blind?” — Danny (35:26)
• “He needed something from me when we were having that conversation, and he needed something from me when he was robbing my car, and I didn’t need anything from him.” — Danny (36:52)
• “Do you want to be the person who gets called for help or the person who calls for help? Because those are your choices.” — Dax quoting his mom (37:04)

Timestamps:

• Car thefts: 29:06–30:54
• Therapist twist: 32:15–35:26
• Reflection & resolution: 36:23–37:40

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4. Aaron: The Cursed Scooter Ride (39:38–50:28)

Story Highlights:

• Prelude: August 2024, Aaron and her fiancé are deep into “their scooter phase” and decide to ride home a short 0.4 mile from the metro.
• Disaster: She hits a pothole, flies, and faceplants into rocks and cement—rendered unconscious in a pool of blood. A bystander dryly says, “I think she needs help.” (43:26, Aaron)
• Medical Ordeal: Aaron is rushed to the ER; her fiancé gets in a verbal altercation with the hospital staff (“His name’s Rocco, and he has a temper that matches the name.” (44:39, Aaron) )
• Injuries: 12 staples in her scalp, 11 stitches on her forehead, 8 on her chin, broken elbow, six cracked teeth, and an inch of tongue bitten off; yet makes it to her bachelorette party weeks later, sling and all.
• Aftermath: The bloodstain marks the sidewalk over a year later; she jokes about being a data point in the scooter-injury epidemic.

Notable Moments:

• “I remember trying to catch myself with my arms, but I don’t. I catch myself with my face.” — Aaron (41:53)
• “He says, ‘Don’t freak out. You’re fine. You got in a scooter accident… Your face is a little fucked up.’” — Aaron (45:15)
• “How far do you live from the metro stop? … Point four miles. It’s an eight-minute walk. There was no reason for us to get on these scooters.” — Aaron (47:49)

Timestamps:

• Scooter accident: 41:02–41:59
• ER & fiancé/family drama: 44:14–45:17
• Revealing injuries, photos, and post-op reflections: 45:22–47:53

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Noteworthy Quotes & Banter

• “Wild cards. Keeping them wild. Keeping them real wild.” — Dax (50:54)
• “You remind me so much of Jason DeLeon… Did you major in anthro in college?” — Dax (12:19)
• “There’s probably an age where maybe you have to admit to yourself there’s no more up ladders anywhere.” — Dax (23:33)
• “With the help of arm cherries, we’ll get some suggestions on the fire rhyme dish.” — Dax (improv song, 50:54)
• “Shoes make an outfit.” — Monica (21:44)

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Episode Structure

• 0:00–04:05: Lighthearted banter, numbers guessing, and “wild card” intro
• 04:05–13:19: Marcos (Car fire rescue)
• 13:49–24:29: Jane (Disney & ladder accident)
• 26:06–39:18: Danny (Car robbed by future counseling client)
• 39:38–50:28: Aaron (Scooter faceplant and immense injury)
• Throughout: Dax & Monica respond with empathy, humor, personal stories, and philosophical tangents

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Memorable Moments & Running Jokes

• Monica geeking out over 19 consecutive Disney days (15:08, “She’s a real Disney adult.”)
• Dax riffing on underage drinking and small-town Tex-Mex pride (10:35, 11:50)
• Ladder refusal: “Ladders are a young man’s game.” (23:56)
• Therapy meet-cute fantasy: Monica’s perpetual search for rom-com moments (37:20)
• Scooter injury economy: Dax joking about ER business booming thanks to scooters and pickleball (48:33)
• Listeners thanking Dax & Monica for building a community for sharing vulnerability (39:18, Danny’s tribute)

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Heroism in chaos: Ordinary people can be extraordinary in crisis.
• Serendipity & life’s surreal overlaps: Sometimes, the universe arranges wild encounters (like your client being your former car burglar).
• Resilience and humor: From gnarly injuries to embarrassing misadventures, humor and stubbornness (and the occasional morphine) see us through.
• Gratitude for connection: Vulnerability shared creates community, compassion, and perspective.

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For those who haven’t listened:
This episode is a rapid-fire mix of heart-stopping escapades, physical mishaps, serendipitous ironies, and good-natured ribbing. Dax and Monica’s compassionate curiosity highlights the wild, messy beauty of real life—with all the love, loss, chaos, and occasional morphine that entails.

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Transcript

[Dax Shepard]

Wondry plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free Right now. Join Wondry plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. Today is Wild Card. What number in Wild Card do you think this is?

[Monica Padman]

9.

[Dax Shepard]

And don't you think you. You went further than what you really think?

[Marcos]

Right?

[Dax Shepard]

Because you know I'm going to say it's high. You really think it's 7?

[Monica Padman]

No, I think it's 9.

[Dax Shepard]

You think it's 9? It's 11.

[Jane]

Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my wild card. Lucky 1111.

[Monica Padman]

I love 1111. That's my number.

[Dax Shepard]

I guess that's when we do Wild Card, the 11th episode. You'll get really excited. You're only halfway there on but. But you know, there's a doozy as all wild cards are and that's why we keep doing them and that's why we're going to push, push, push until we get to 1100. Push, push, push, push. Louis, forget about the car. Push, push, push.

[Monica Padman]

That's Toto, friend of the pie.

[Dax Shepard]

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[Monica Padman]

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[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you did prince curtains. QCs.

[Monica Padman]

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[Dax Shepard]

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[Marcos]

Hello. I'm doing great.

[Dax Shepard]

Where are you in South Texas?

[Marcos]

McAllen, Texas. Out in the Rio Grande Valley.

[Dax Shepard]

What's the biggest city? I would know close to there.

[Marcos]

I was actually very curious about this cuz I always hear you talking about everywhere in America.

[Dax Shepard]

You found my blind spot.

[Marcos]

We are about five hours south of Austin.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, oh, okay.

[Marcos]

We are literally on the river.

[Dax Shepard]

Mexico's across the river.

[Marcos]

Yes. I'm actually an hour east of South.

[Dax Shepard]

Padre island, where I went on vacation at one point Christmas time. And are you a drummer?

[Marcos]

Yes, I'm a music teacher.

[Dax Shepard]

Wonderful. And what's great, Marcos is wild card. You could have murdered someone. You could have saved someone. We have no clue.

[Marcos]

The year is about 2006 at the time, 19 years old. One of the only one of my group of friends to have their own apartment. That was always the place we would all hang out. I'm hanging out with our local ska band, who is also a bunch of 1819 year olds as well. They would play shows. After the show, we'd all go back to my place, hang out Have a great time. One of the main characters in this story, we're going to call him Marine Mike.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, great name.

[Marcos]

He's fresh out of Service. This is 2006, so he was all over the world. We met through an acquaintance. We're both from small towns that are really close to each other. So we became real quick, good friends. After one of these gigs, we're out of my place. It's probably around midnight, 1am so you.

[Dax Shepard]

Can imagine I need to know how inebriated we are. We smoking weed.

[Marcos]

Just drinks, a lot of drinks. And just stuff ska band would be doing.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, okay. Great Scott. Shit.

[Marcos]

So we're there hanging out, sliding doors open, people smoking cigarettes outside. Half of us are inside the apartment. Now the apartment is a block away from a main road. In between that block is a bunch of grass, trees. And this is like very southern Texas. So mesquite trees, tall grass. So we're all in the apartment. We hear screeching tires real long. We heard the crash. And initially we all look at each other, kind of excited. Let's go be a part of this car accident. Let's go see what happened. But as soon as we look at each other, we hear an explosion.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh my goodness. Oh wow. Okay.

[Marcos]

One of the guys that was outside, he peeks over the fence and he's like, there's fire out there. As soon as Mike hears that he is gone, he bolts out the gate. We all look at each other like, well, we gotta follow him.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. To help, not to flee.

[Dax Shepard]

No. Right. Marine Mike's gonna save the day.

[Marcos]

We ran out the apartment, cross the parking lot. We see a silver Cadillac. Can't remember the other vehicle that's in the middle of the intersection. The Cadillac is completely on fire. The whole front end flames going all the way up to the stoplight.

[Monica Padman]

Does that make you feel sad because you love Cadillacs?

[Dax Shepard]

I hate to see a Cadillac burn, if that's what you're asking. But also from, I'm getting strong Jason deleon vibes, which makes me feel very heart swelling.

[Jane]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, because I looked over and you had, it's 11:11.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, maybe a lot of things were happening.

[Monica Padman]

And you had a big smile on your face.

[Dax Shepard]

Uh huh. And it was because I was like, oh my God, he's so Jason deleon and he's in a punk scene, but he's a good kid. Yeah, it's all happening. Yeah.

[Marcos]

The scary thing about the Cadillac was that I had just started a new job and one of my co workers had the same car So I thought maybe it could have been her. Cause we all lived in that same little neighborhood. So I start running towards the car. I see a man. I can't remember if he's hanging out the passenger window or if he's hanging out the door. Mike is yelling at us, help me. We gotta help. We gotta do something. Mike's already pulled the guy outside of the car, me, three other guys and another girl. We run up to the man, grab them each by a limb. We start dragging him because the car's on fire. He's yelling at us about his kids. My kids are in the car.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, no, this is horrifying.

[Marcos]

He's trying to get up to go get him. We're trying to keep him down. I look at Mike, he knows what's happening. He tells me right away, I already got the kids out of the car. You can away from the car.

[Dax Shepard]

He's like, I do more before 5am than most people do all day. I already got the whole family out.

[Marcos]

To my recollection, he was out there directing traffic, checking on the other car. Traffic's piling up on both ends. So we dragged this man maybe about 20ft away from the car. The fire is only getting bigger. Let's pull him further away. We actually get him onto the main road, which is probably about 30, 40ft away. I'm looking at Mike. He's running back and forth, making sure everything's going clear. Lot of traffic, no ambulance, no fire trucks, no cops have shown up yet. We're all there leaning on this guy, trying to keep him calm, letting him know your kids are okay. Very out of the car. He's got blood all over his face, all over his shirt. I look to my right with all the traffic lights and everything that's happening, all the car lights. I see five women running up to us in club gear, heels, skirts, everything. They're just yelling at us. We're nurses. We work in the.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God, this is great. Sexy nurses.

[Marcos]

We can take care of it from here. We got it. Like, don't worry about it. We got it because we're just a bunch of kids. We're all 18, 19 year olds. Let's let them do their thing. We stand up and I'm starting to think cops are going to show up. They're going to ask questions. We've been doing our own thing. And as soon as I start thinking about that, I hear like a click, click coming from the car. I grabbed the girl that was next to me, I pull her into me and then the car explodes again. No. Wow. I was talking to Mike about. He had mentioned the car exploded when he was trying to pull the guy out, which is the second time, because initially the first time was what we heard. So we're thinking maybe it was either the battery, the gas tank, or the.

[Dax Shepard]

Tires or something in the trunk that was explosive.

[Aaron]

A body.

[Dax Shepard]

Maybe he had a can of gas in the trunk or something.

[Marcos]

But that last time, it was very final destination. Scenes of sparks and the shrapnel. And everything just flew right between us. And nobody got hurt, nobody got hit. And that's when I'm like, okay, that's it. It's time for us to go. I called my friends who were there, like, everybody, let's go. We gotta go. We gotta go. We start running back to the grass. I can't find Mike. I start yelling at everybody, where's Mike? He's already halfway between me and to the apartment, puking in the midd. The middle of the empty lot.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Marcos]

Just adrenaline. He tells me later on he inhaled a whole bunch of smoke.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Marcos]

While this is happening, my pregnant sister's calling me because she lived two doors down. She heard the explosion. She knew I was out and about. And I'm there, out of breath, yelling at people like, we gotta go, we gotta go. She's just like, you need to come to my house right now. I need to see your face. And I say, okay. I get everybody together, go back to my apartment. I run to my sister, calm her down. I go back into our apartment. And this party scene that used to be now is just. Everybody's sitting in silence, staring at each other.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Trying to process everything that went down.

[Marcos]

And then somebody was like, well, I guess we gotta cheers to that. Yeah. We just went right back at it. And the whole night, we kept wanting to peek over, but some of us are just like, no, no, no, the cops are gonna show up because, what.

[Dax Shepard]

You'Re afraid they're gonna get you for underage drinking or something?

[Marcos]

That was our main concern.

[Dax Shepard]

That'd be a fucked up police department with that much going on. They're like, wait, we gotta prioritize These minors in possession.

[Marcos]

We're always just trying to play it smart. So I talked to. I feel like in the time it happened, he said he blacked out, but now it's kind of come back to him. And he said he can clearly remember getting into the car to pull the man out. He saw the dashboard melting. We all remember his hat had been singed. His trucks were all black and the kids were fine. So the next morning, when Mike was leaving, he saw the cops out there doing an investigation. So he pulled over to ask him.

[Dax Shepard]

He's like, hey, I did your job last night for you. Give me some info.

[Marcos]

Well, this happened. He's like, yeah, I was the one that pulled them out. Oh, do you want to leave a report? He's like, no, absolutely not. We found out everybody came out of it just fine. The other car looked like it had just had damage, but that Cadillac had gotten it really bad.

[Danny]

Scary.

[Dax Shepard]

Saved the day.

[Marcos]

I've always been very curious about it, but that was almost 20 years ago, so it's kind of hard to look back on reports and find out what might have happened.

[Dax Shepard]

What kind of town is it? Is there, like, military clothes?

[Marcos]

No, it's kind of like a ports town. We're in between South Padre and Laredo. Really big on culture. We're very proud of ourselves. Nine, five, six. Everybody that moves out of here to bigger cities will tell you the one thing they miss the most is the food. Austin's okay. San Antonio's better. We're probably the best.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

No kidding. In what? Tex Mex? Is that what we're calling Tex Mex?

[Marcos]

Tacos, barbacoa, tamales.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, keep talking.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Marcos]

In fact, Mike actually lives in Colorado now, and that's what he was telling me. He's like, that's the one thing I miss the most.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So what did Mike end up doing for a living? Like, how does he keep this adrenaline up?

[Marcos]

He was into bikes. I know he was into cooking for a little while. We kind of lost base for a while. So when I caught up with him, we spoke for. For about a couple of hours. He just reminds me a lot of you, Dax.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, this is hilarious because you remind me so much of Jason DeLeon. Did you major in anthro in college?

[Marcos]

I should have. I was a halfway music major and decided I'm going to go my own way. I teach at a private music school.

[Dax Shepard]

And you teach all instruments or just drums?

[Marcos]

Mostly a drum instructor, but we also teach groups and how to be in a band, how to play in bands. So I run the school. I have about four different groups of all ages. I like to say I teach from 4 year olds to retirees.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, Marcos, it's a delight meeting you.

[Marcos]

Yes. If I can do a quick show, shout out to my fiance. She's the one that set up the headset, and she would like for me to let you know, Dax. She's a year plus, sober now, she's also a very proud sponsor. Listening to everything you guys talk about really puts that in perspective for me. I come from addiction as well. But she takes responses very seriously. She's really great to them. Makes me very proud of her. And hearing everything that you've been through, people you guys talk to, really puts a lot into perspective and makes me see how special she really is.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, thanks, Marcus. And congratulations. Please give her our love.

[Marcos]

I will. Thank you so much, guys. I love the show.

[Dax Shepard]

Thanks, brother. Take care.

[Marcos]

All right. Bye. Bye.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, that's insane how much he was like deleon. Do you remember what he looks like? Enough.

[Monica Padman]

I have a picture in my head.

[Dax Shepard]

In a musician into punk. Deleon was in Texas originally. Something spooky.

[Monica Padman]

It could be.

[Dax Shepard]

You know how there's only a few copies of us?

[Monica Padman]

Exactly. I was just about to say there's cookie cutters, and then they change little tiny things. Just like a couple tinies.

[Dax Shepard]

That's right. For deniability. Hello. Hi.

[Jane]

How are you?

[Dax Shepard]

Good. Can you hear us, Jane?

[Jane]

Yeah, I can hear you. Can you hear me?

[Dax Shepard]

Wonderfully. We're already charmed by your accent. Where are you?

[Jane]

I'm in the uk. I'm from England.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wonderful. So what time is it there right now? Seven.

[Jane]

Yeah, 20 past seven.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, what happens today? That's a joke.

[Jane]

Yeah, tomorrow.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, tomorrow. What happens tomorrow?

[Dax Shepard]

Is it 7:00am no, it's 7:00pm I know.

[Monica Padman]

That was my joke. Like, what happens where.

[Danny]

God, I got the joke.

[Aaron]

Thank you.

[Dax Shepard]

I heard rock star. I cried. Don't be mad at me, Bill Maher. I just didn't get it. Okay. So, Jean, you have a wild card story.

[Jane]

Yeah. Which took place last summer. So the summer of 2023, my daughter got engaged, and she said, I would love to have my wedding in Florida. She's a Disney baby.

[Marcos]

Aw.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay.

[Jane]

So we said, fine. So it was her. Her husband, her two children, and just a small group of family. But we said, if that's what we're doing, there has to be a big party when we come home. So we had a fantastic wedding in Florida for the whole of May.

[Dax Shepard]

And were you physically at Disney World for the wedding?

[Jane]

No, just outside. And then we spent 19 days every day. She had us, like, a military program.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow. At the park.

[Dax Shepard]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. You went for 19 days in a row to Disney World?

[Marcos]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

That's incredible. She's a real Disney adult.

[Jane]

She'll be thrilled to hear you say that.

[Monica Padman]

I love it.

[Dax Shepard]

Is she in one of those gangs did she wear gang colors?

[Monica Padman]

Oh, yeah, they have.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

There's Disney Gangs Club 33.

[Dax Shepard]

How did this happen to her in the UK?

[Jane]

It's our fault. We took her to Disney when she was four for the first time.

[Monica Padman]

Like many do, but some just really take to it.

[Dax Shepard]

I wonder if. Because for her it was so far away.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, that adds very enchanted.

[Jane]

Very much so. And two young grandchildren who are exactly the same two girls who appear in this story.

[Dax Shepard]

19 days. Wow.

[Danny]

Wow, wow.

[Aaron]

That's great.

[Monica Padman]

I love it.

[Dax Shepard]

I would like to know what the world record is. I feel like you have to be approaching it.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, so you got back for the party.

[Jane]

The party was in June, so it's a Friday evening. I had woken up that morning and I was a little bit sad because my parents had called me and said they couldn't come. My dad was in his late 80s, his heart was failing and he said, I just can't make it. So I thought, I'll go for a walk and then I'll come home and I'll get myself ready. So I came home from the walk and thought I must go up in. We call it a loft. You guys call it attic.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Okay.

[Jane]

Went up into the loft, fitted the ladder to the loft.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, boy.

[Jane]

Climbed up the ladder. This is where it changed three steps from the top. I lent into the loft to grab a suitcase and the ladder just went out from underneath me.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

[Jane]

Seven feet.

[Dax Shepard]

Completely unprepared and falling backwards. Right.

[Jane]

Well, luckily I fell standing, but I turned mid air and as I turned, my knees buckled, hit my head on a cupboard on the way down, and then just ended up sitting on the floor on a ladder. And my first thought was, like, when you're a child, when you've broken something. Nobody needs to know about this. It's fine.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, of course.

[Jane]

I'll dust myself off. It'll be fine.

[Dax Shepard]

What is wrong with us? It is everyone's instinct.

[Monica Padman]

We want it to be fine. Well, our brain really wants it to just be done and okay. And so I think we trick ourselves.

[Dax Shepard]

But there is this also added layer. You're embarrassed, of course. And it'd be best if no one ever knew new. And it's like we think we're so unlovable that if we were to do something like that, like, we gotta hide that.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Jane]

I held that thought until I stood up and I couldn't put my left leg on the ground. And I had what we call trainers, you call sneakers. So I took the sneaker off and my Foot was swelling. I was on my own in the house. My husband was out doing last minute chores before the wedding and my daughter was due any minute to wrap up final arrangements. So I started to cry.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Jane]

And I went down the stairs on my bottom like a baby.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Jane]

Got to the bottom of the stairs, switched onto my knees, crawled down the hallway on my knees, got to the stairs, we have a cupboard under the stairs. And dragged some crutches out. Oh, that's convenient because I had knee surgery.

[Monica Padman]

What if they were in the attic again and you put the ladder back?

[Dax Shepard]

I just gotta get back up there to get those crutches.

[Jane]

I don't ever go back up in the los. Got myself up onto the crutches and found a telephone, phone the emergency services and they said, said, we've got a car in the area, we're with you in 20 minutes. Which is very unusual.

[Dax Shepard]

That's quick, right?

[Jane]

Yeah. We can wait for hours in the uk. Four hours, five hours. Ah, So I was thrilled. Took some painkillers. You know, the adrenaline's going. I'm still thinking, this is going to be fine, it's going to be okay.

[Dax Shepard]

You've got like an urgent care in your house. You got painkillers, you got the crutches. I don't know why you need to go to the hospital. You should have popped in the X ray machine and called it a day.

[Jane]

Open the front door, floor, found an ice pack and just sat down in the chair and waited. They arrived and walked in, lifted the ice pack up and said, pain on a scale of 1 to 10? 7. I was like, do you take morphine?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds nice.

[Jane]

Load me up with the morphine. And she said, we need that to just kick in. We'll have a look and then we'll call for an ambulance. But it could be hours. Suddenly I remembered I've got to be at a party at 7 o' clock in the evening and this is now midday. And I'm panicking, still crying. And she said, we're never gonna get you there. It's just not gonna happen. I was saying, I've seen this on the television. You tell that to everybody today. It's not an option. My daughter appears, she's crying and I said, can my husband take me? And they said, no, we've given you morphine.

[Dax Shepard]

What does that mean? The husband isn't, can't we drive ourselves?

[Monica Padman]

I know, but maybe not. If they've administered something, maybe still arrest.

[Dax Shepard]

Me, call the cops on my way to the hospital.

[Jane]

So I said, we've got one option. Put me in the back of your vehicle, clear on the driveway, get me in the car. And to be fair, they agreed.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, nice, good.

[Jane]

So hobbled out to the car, got into the car. We live fairly near to a hospital, so they took me to our. We call it accident emergency and it's full of interesting characters. I'm sure you have the same in emergency rooms.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Have you seen the Pit?

[Jane]

No, we can't get back here yet. I'm desperate to see it.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, I can't wait for you. Eventually it'll come. It has to come over there.

[Jane]

Well, I'm an ER baby, so I remember.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. Noah Wylie. Don't worry, he's still hot.

[Marcos]

Hotter.

[Monica Padman]

He might be hotter, yeah.

[Jane]

So they wheeled me into what they call majors. You need a head assessment because you've hit your head hard. We're just going to park you here and you need to wait. So I sat for another hour and they came out, took me in for assessment. Your head's fine. We're moving you to minors. Another hour goes by. By this time, I'm feeling quite sick because of the morphine. I'm vomiting.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, this is awful.

[Jane]

I need to go to a party. They finally take me through for X ray. I wait another hour and then they pulled me back in and said, the orthopedics team have said you've done a very bad break to your foot. You've crushed your foot. It's what they call a nutcracker. So where I landed and twisted, my toes went one way, my heel went the other and the middle part was compressed. So you're going to be in plaster casts for six weeks on crutches. No weight bearing. I'm still looking at my watch and my phone. Don't care, just get it done. They plastered me up and I was discharged at 6 o'.

[Danny]

Clock.

[Jane]

My husband drove me home.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, victory.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God, you made it.

[Jane]

Got dressed in my new clothes for the party. One shoe on because I couldn't wear the other shoe, which was deeply distressing. Monica, as I'm sure you'll understand.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, shoes. Make an outfit.

[Jane]

My husband piled me into his 911 Porsche. Oh, we got to the party. Somebody had commandeered a wheelchair. I don't know where from. I didn't ask. And I arrived at the party an hour late, but to cheers and celebrations. So it was hard, but we made it in the end.

[Dax Shepard]

I'd say the silver lining blessing is you're on your feet a lot at Those weddings and you got to just be seated and you still had some residual morphine cooking. Maybe you had a cocktail. It might have been nice.

[Jane]

I wasn't allowed to drink because they'd given me blood thinners. But, yeah, there's pictures of me in the wheelchair dancing, having a great time. So it was fantastic. But at the time, it was just awful.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow. Okay. At the risk of getting political, I am curious, what would you give your overall health system there? Because we're told over here that it's like. And I'm just curious from the story, what would you give it out of 10?

[Jane]

The National Health Service is free for accident and emergency. It's perfect. The issue is the system has an infinite demand and a finite resource, and it can't cope. So people are readily used to spending hours waiting for treatment as an emergency. If you're in a road traffic accident, it's different. You know, if it's life threatening, it's different. The challenge comes if you need a hip replacement or a knee replacement and you're on a waiting list.

[Dax Shepard]

How long might you wait?

[Jane]

Could be six months, it could be a year, it could be three years. There's a big backlog in the system because of COVID Oh, wow. Every emergency I've ever had having my daughter, no complaints at all.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, great. And the free part's really nice. You just left the hospital and that was it that you waved goodbye, Right? Yeah.

[Jane]

We pay from our salaries. We have taxes and something called national insurance, and that contributes to the cost, but it doesn't cover all of it. But, yeah, it does the best it can under the circumstances. And that day it's a save me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Okay. Wow.

[Monica Padman]

Wow, you made it to the wedding.

[Dax Shepard]

Would you agree? Maybe we're the same age. I do think there probably is an age where maybe you have to admit to yourself there's no more up ladders anywhere. Yeah, but it's hard to know, right, Because I feel quite confident to climb a ladder right now. But I'm hearing the story. I'm like, yeah, that could happen to me for sure this weekend.

[Jane]

I'm a little bit older than you. I'm nearer 60 than I am 50, so I've never been up a ladder since.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, that's wise.

[Dax Shepard]

Ladders are a young man's game.

[Jane]

They are indeed.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, Jane, we're delighted that we have a listener in the uk or minimally, your daughter, who made you tell the story to us. However it came out, we're happy to have you.

[Jane]

I don't know Any other armchairers in the uk, But I'm sure they will appear as a result of this. So it's been great to beat you.

[Monica Padman]

Get us out there.

[Dax Shepard]

You need a piece of merch. That's what you gotta cruise around town in a little merch. And then maybe they'll be like, what's that?

[Jane]

That would be great.

[Dax Shepard]

It'd be your next 19 day trip to Disney World.

[Jane]

It's been great to meet you both.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, you too. Take care.

[Jane]

Have a good day.

[Dax Shepard]

All right, bye.

[Danny]

Bye.

[Dax Shepard]

19 days at Disney World. My imagination of it is there would be phases, right. It's like the first three days would be great. And there would be a lull, right. And be like, we got to stop coming. And then it'd shoot back up again. You'd have a great day. Right.

[Marcos]

Don't you think?

[Dax Shepard]

You'd have the whole spectrum of experience.

[Monica Padman]

But she sounds. The daughter sounds diligent and knowledgeable. So she had a whole system. So she's not doing repeat heats.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Isn't there like eight parks if you.

[Marcos]

Mix in like water park.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow. Do you think they went to the water park?

[Monica Padman]

Oh, they went to all the. Blizzard Beach, Epcot. That one with animals.

[Dax Shepard]

Animal Kingdom.

[Monica Padman]

Animal Kingdom. Thank you.

[Dax Shepard]

Or Seasons. Lazy River. Do they still have MGM Universal? But it sounds like she's just Disney.

[Danny]

It's all.

[Dax Shepard]

It's all in the mix.

[Monica Padman]

Magic Kingdom. Maybe she's a magic Kingdom.

[Dax Shepard]

Like Kiss. Four days. Days. Kiss me. Florida.

[Monica Padman]

Gosh, I could go back.

[Dax Shepard]

I was pretty recently. Maybe Lincoln's birthday.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, World, but.

[Jane]

Oh, World.

[Dax Shepard]

Aaron and I went to World.

[Monica Padman]

World is fun.

[Dax Shepard]

We had Caitlyn the guide, who's an armchair and she's wonderful. Hello. One of my favorite girl names. Danny.

[Monica Padman]

Hi.

[Danny]

Well, thank you very much. I wish I had a part in picking it, but I didn't.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Do you have a favorite boy's name?

[Danny]

Actually, I do. My favorite boy's name is Rob Roman. That was my favorite boy's name forever. And that was going to be my boy's name. And then of course, I had three.

[Dax Shepard]

Daughters, but that's what happened to us. And we just said, fuck it. We were like, yeah, we're going to have a boy. He's going to be named Lincoln. Oh, it's a girl. Okay. Still going to be named Lincoln. So Roman as a girl could have been radical.

[Monica Padman]

Definitely.

[Danny]

Definitely could have been. But I couldn't get my husband on board. So there we go.

[Dax Shepard]

Husbands. Who needs them? So, Dani, where are you?

[Danny]

I am in Germany. Germany.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my goodness.

[Dax Shepard]

This is our second international call in a row. Oh, cool. Are you in the military? Are you on vacation? What's happening in Germany?

[Danny]

I am military adjacent. I'm a federal civilian employee and I support the medical detachment for the army out here. So we've been here for about four years.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow, so you're a CIA spy. Is that what that was code for?

[Danny]

I mean, I can't confirm or deny.

[Monica Padman]

Did you respond to the CIA prompt.

[Dax Shepard]

Tell us if you're an undercover CIA agent.

[Danny]

Did anybody though?

[Jane]

Let's hear a question.

[Monica Padman]

Wow, that's exciting.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Do you like it there?

[Danny]

Yes and no. I mean, there's a lot of things about the States that I miss. Convenience, culture. And we live in a very rural part of the country. So, like everything is shut down on Sundays and after 2pm on Saturdays, you can't really get anything done. So like it's a culture shift. But it's also just been an incredible experience. Like my oldest daughter is nine and she's already been to 17 countries. It's incredible.

[Dax Shepard]

And has she picked up German?

[Danny]

A little bit. So our German collectively is not good because I live and work in an American bubble. They go to an American school. We think and communicate in English so we can get by at like restaurants and ask for like directions and stuff. And that's about it.

[Monica Padman]

Wow, how fun.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so you have a wild card story. Well, I don't even know if you would know it's a wild card story, but for us it's wild. Yeah, we have no idea what's coming.

[Danny]

Do you want to know what prompt it would have fit under?

[Monica Padman]

No, you can tell us.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, no, I like surprises.

[Danny]

Okay. So I'm very intentionally keeping some of the details here vague. The reason for that will be become self evident a little bit later. So this starts in 2012. At the time I was like 23 and I had just started my first graduate program. So I'm in grad school. I was going to a private university in a very overpopulated, very high cost of living part of the country back in the States for this. During that time in my life, because I was in grad school, everything was expensive. I was hustling hard. I had an assistantship at my graduate school to offset some of the cost of teaching tuition. I was a freelance writer for a handful of health and fitness lifestyle type online publications and I waitressed. And so I was gone all the time. And I've been like a hobby bodybuilder, powerlifter for like 20 years.

[Dax Shepard]

Now, why aren't you wearing like a tank top or something? I'm like, kind of bummed I can't see your guns.

[Danny]

I thought about it for a minute, but that's not the point. Okay, but anyway, so I am never far from my gym bag, right? So at this point, between having three jobs and classes and this time consuming hard hobby, it was not uncommon for me to leave my apartment at 6 o' clock in the morning and then not come back at all until midnight or later. And every time I left my apartment, I had to take everything with me. My car was the center of my universe. At the same time that I had just started grad school, I also started working at a new restaurant. So the night that this started, I was leaving my shift at my restaurant.

[Aaron]

It was like my third or fourth.

[Danny]

Shift where I was able to like take my tips home. And they typically don't have like an employee area in the back of the restaurant, so there's nowhere for you to like put your stuff. So I. I left it all in my car. You had the option of leaving it in the back office if you wanted to, but like this type of establishment.

[Dax Shepard]

It'S hard to know what was less safe, the car or the office.

[Danny]

I cannot confirm or deny that our assistant manager was selling drugs from the curbside pickup.

[Dax Shepard]

What a blast.

[Monica Padman]

He's a hustler too.

[Danny]

It sounds like I just left everything in my car. My car was locked. It was in the employee parking. My plan for the night was to run by my bank, make one giant cash deposit of like my three or four days worth of tips, and then go home. My first indication that something was wrong was when I got to the employee parking lot and the driver's side door to my car was wide open.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it's a bad sign.

[Danny]

Generally not good. But of course I immediately defaulted to self blame and was like, God, Danny, you're so stupid. I can't believe you left your door open. I started walking in my car and I realized that it had been just ransacked. It was trash. There was stuff all over the place. And to kind of make a long story a little bit short, my car got broken into an additional two or three times that. So same week.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow. Oh, wow.

[Danny]

So the people who came and broke into my car, initially it was an easy target because you have to like, make a police report. You have to like, find an auto body shop that can fix your car. It's not like I can just fix my vehicle. And then life didn't stop at the Time I was driving a 2006 Dodge Charger. I've since learned that that was a particularly easy car to break into because all you really had to do was stand there by the driver's side door. And with the right amount of force and the right shape tool, you could just punch the manual lock out of the door and then it would just open.

[Dax Shepard]

It's always like in the top three most stolen cars in America. Oh, yeah, I of these, I think my Hellcat in particular is the number one stolen car. And mine was stolen.

[Danny]

So over the course of these three break ins, they took all of my grad school textbooks.

[Dax Shepard]

That's weird. It's just heavy and not that valuable.

[Monica Padman]

Well, full of knowledge.

[Danny]

The motivating factor there was is that my textbooks were in a coach bag. So they took the bag that had all the books in it. Right. They got my laptop that I carried around for writing. They got my lifting belt and my lifting shoes. They took everything. But one of the, like salt in the wound things for me was they took my ipod, which is whatever, but they took my auxiliary cord. I had this like double ended auxiliary cord because it was 2012 and you still needed that to play your music through your speaker. Right. And this cord was bright green, neon green. I have to this day never seen a piece of audio equipment this color. And I thought it was so cool. So we fast forward two years, I've recovered, things are fine. I'm now at the end of my graduate school program. I am no longer working as an assistant for the graduate school program, but I am interning because internship was a significant part of my grad program. And the internship that I had at this point was for a nonprofit that provided individual and family therapy services for juveniles who are involved with the juvenile drug court system. So I am a therapist.

[Dax Shepard]

I love where this is going.

[Danny]

I specialize in addiction and I specialize in trauma. But at this point, I wasn't fully licensed. I was just a little tiny baby intern. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. All of my clients were between the ages of 10 and 19. Most of them were male. And they had all been at one point in time incarcerated or involved with the law because of drug crimes. And given where we were at that point in time, the primary substance was was meth. It was such a cool experience. Like, that was a really good internship for me. But it wasn't what you think of typically when you imagine doing therapy as like this very naive junior baby therapist because I wasn't in some Plush office, asking people about their mothers. You know, I was going to rehabs and I was going to halfway homes, and I spent so much time in the youth correctional facility, where I would sit there with my hands on the table where the security guards could see them. And my patient, my client, would sit across from me with their hands on the table, and we would interact with each other while the security guards, like, walked by and stared at us. And it was just such a bizarre environment to be in. And that's where I was on this day, having a conversation with one of my kids that I had been working with at that point for about four or five months. And to get to the point where a drug addicted teenage boy is comfortable being vulnerable with you is a heavy lift. That is a lot of work. But I was there, and he was open with me. And he had been using this session time to start reflecting on some of the shame that he was feeling now that he was incarcerated and sober and able to, like, reflect on some of the things that he had done while he was in pursuit of his addiction. And so he was kind of processing the shame of stealing from his grandmother and selling her stuff for drug money and stealing from his friends and selling their stuff for drug money. And then he was telling me about how when he ran out of things to steal and sell from his various family members, how he and his best friend, who ironically was also one of my clients, they resorted to breaking into cars. He then starts telling me about all of the stuff that he was stealing out of cars. And again, he was really processing some shame. So he was describing things like he got, like, a Cheetos puffs jar full of loose change that said Disneyland money and kids handwriting on it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that'll burn.

[Danny]

Doesn't feel good. But he was doing a really good job of sitting in the shame. And if I had been a good therapist at that point, I would have known to keep him there, because that's where the work is, right? I was not a good therapist. I was a crappy little baby intern. So when he wanted to immediately pivot and start telling me stories that made him look cooler and feel better about himself because that was safer for him, I let him. Which is why he started telling me stories about cool hauls that he got. Like when he would get purses or big chunks of change or cash, or this one time that they were able to hit the same car three times in one week, and how they got, like, all this gym equipment and how they got the ipod. And then he tells Me, the only thing I didn't flip was there was a lime green auxiliary cord, and it was my favorite color, and I'd never seen one that color before, so I kept that. And I still have it.

[Dax Shepard]

What?

[Danny]

I fully dissociate it. Because in what world am I sitting there in the youth correctional facility as the substance abuse counselor for the kid that robbed me blind?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Three times.

[Monica Padman]

This is sim.

[Danny]

Monica. Your dad was putting in overtime. Like, this would be crazy.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God. Did you tell him?

[Danny]

I didn't say a word.

[Dax Shepard]

Unless you were so involved in his recovery that he was eventually making his nine step. And you could say at that point, hey, that was my shit, and give him an opportunity to forgive. But other than that, my question would be to myself. This is really interesting that this happened to me. What is the thing that I am supposed to be learning right now about this? And I guess I feel like I would hope I would go, oh, wow. Yeah. I was so bent out of shape about all that stuff and so rare and unique that I would get to hear what was happening in the other person's life on the other side. And it might kind of right size how I felt about that whole thing. Like, all right, that was just stuff, but that was someone's life in total chaos and destruction.

[Danny]

Well. And ultimately, that's kind of where I landed. So I just kind of froze in the moment because I did have so much respect for how hard it was for him to create a trusting relationship with someone, given everything that had happened to get him to that point in his life. And I didn't want to destroy that. I knew that if I responded the wrong way, that therapeutic relationship was gone. So in reflecting on it, in supervision with my supervisor and my college mentor, he needed something from me when we were having that conversation, and he needed something from me when he was robbing my car, and I didn't need anything from him.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's kind of what I'm hoping was the feeling. It's kind of like if you've listened to. You've heard me say this, my mom said to me at one point, like, do you want to be the person that gets called for help or the person who calls for help? Because those are your choices. And it right sized my annoyance of getting called and asked for money so much. I was like, all right, I'd rather be picking up the phone.

[Danny]

Exactly. And it's funny because every time you have said that on the podcast, it makes me think of the story. So I was like, I gotta throw this one.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

That is wild.

[Monica Padman]

I thought for a second, just like half a second, it could have been a meet cute.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow. That she's gonna date her patient. Because you both love the cord.

[Monica Padman]

I just love meet cute.

[Dax Shepard]

I know.

[Monica Padman]

You know, And I'm looking for them at every.

[Dax Shepard]

In any. Yeah, Any combination.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Danny]

I also meet my husband during this phase of my life, but he was not involved in this story. He was working at my grad school.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. It's not a meet cute.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, but hold on. We have something for you because he was working at your grad school. Was he kind of a professor?

[Danny]

No.

[Monica Padman]

It wasn't an abuse of power. I'm not interested.

[Danny]

He was the associate athletic director and I was the grad assistant.

[Dax Shepard]

Ah, that's. And do you guys train together?

[Danny]

So we have three children, so our training schedule has changed dramatically. So we just kind of do what we can at this point.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, right, right, right.

[Jane]

Sense.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, Danny. Yeah. That's a wild story.

[Monica Padman]

That is so. Sam, that is crazy. What did you submit for?

[Danny]

I submitted for Wildcard, but it could have also been simulation moment.

[Jane]

Okay.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Danny]

You guys haven't put out a prompt about robbing your therapist for drug money?

[Monica Padman]

No, not yet.

[Dax Shepard]

We'll do that on the same week. We do. Tell us if you're an undercover agent with your full name. Well, Danny, lovely meeting you.

[Monica Padman]

Thanks for chatting.

[Danny]

You too, guys. Hey, thank you. That you do and you put out there. I am so appreciative, both personally and professionally, of the work that you've done with everybody having the Internet in their pocket now, the risk associated with vulnerability out in the wild is so high that often people just aren't doing it. And we get so wrapped up and isolated in the loneliness of whatever story we're telling ourselves. And what you guys have created here with this allows people, through these parasocial relationships that we've developed with you, to experience authenticity and vulnerability and imperfection and all of that stuff in an environment that feel safe. And it enables people to then be empowered to go practice that out in the wild in their real lives. I have so much gratitude for you, and I hope you have an appreciation for what you're putting out there. So thank you, guys.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, thank you, Danny. A feeder. Zayn.

[Jane]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Goodbye.

[Monica Padman]

Is it night there also? I guess it is.

[Dax Shepard]

It is probably nine now.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God. Dead night.

[Aaron]

Hi.

[Danny]

Hi.

[Aaron]

This is so exciting.

[Dax Shepard]

How are you, Aaron? Are you in a hotel?

[Aaron]

I am. And I tried to be in the hotel closet, but it's in the bathroom.

[Dax Shepard]

No, no.

[Monica Padman]

You've done a great job.

[Dax Shepard]

And hotels are generally good because. And I was going to comment on this. I knew you were on a hotel because I knew you would never put that carpet in your home. But carpet's very good for sound.

[Monica Padman]

It is good.

[Aaron]

That's great. And the cleaning team is done next door. They just finished. I was like, you guys have to le.

[Dax Shepard]

Are you on vacation or you're working?

[Aaron]

Neither.

[Dax Shepard]

You left your husband today?

[Aaron]

My husband is in a wedding.

[Jane]

I did.

[Aaron]

I left him. We've been married three weeks, but that was enough. I said nope.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, thank God you figured it out that soon. I mean, it could have been for a long time.

[Aaron]

We're in Richmond, Virginia. We actually live just outside D.C. i live, like, two miles from where Lauren Graham used to live.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, no kidding. Okay, so you have a wild card story, which means we have no clue what's coming. All we know is there's a stack of photos that we have not. Not peaked at.

[Aaron]

Yeah, I'm sorry about the photos. You'll understand why. It was August 1st of 2024. My then fiance and I were out in Washington, D.C. for a night with his brother, and we decided to head home, back to Arlington on the Metro. So it's important to know that at this point in our lives, my now husband and I were deep in our scooter phase.

[Danny]

Like, we thought that we were saving.

[Aaron]

The world one lime ride at a time. We get off of Metro and there's a bunch of scooters parked right outside the Metro from people who left them there. And we're like, let's scooter home. My husband's having a hard time getting his going, so I just take off. I'm like, eat my dust.

[Danny]

I'm out of here.

[Marcos]

Okay.

[Aaron]

And I make it half a block. And not a New York block, an Arlington block. So not far. There's a really small pothole with loose gravel in it. I hit that, and I'm in flight. And I'm not going slowly. I had a few drinks. Not too many, but enough.

[Dax Shepard]

But enough to ride a scooter and leave your fiance.

[Monica Padman]

Eat my dust. Like you're Michelle Tanner or something.

[Aaron]

Exactly. So I'm in flight. I remember trying to catch myself with my arms, but I don't. I catch myself with my face.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh.

[Aaron]

I'm launched into a wall of rocks. And then I hit the cement, and then the handlebars hit my chin.

[Danny]

Oh, those three boys.

[Monica Padman]

What do they call that? A hat trick?

[Aaron]

Yes, exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

For one second, can we just ponder, how does lime exist liability wise? I don't understand. I mean, I'm glad people can take their own risk and ride these things. I want that kind of society. But I'm also shocked with, like, someone's on AI and it didn't give them the right thing and they're suing AI over someone's like, no, this is a machine. You don't need any training. You can. Everyone's getting up probably.

[Monica Padman]

We've heard so many.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, our friend blew out mcl. Acl. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

But you sign something.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh. When you first signed up for the.

[Aaron]

App, terms of service make Apple look like a joke and you don't read it, of course. You know, they probably say death, dismemberment, all those things, but you're just thinking, I want to get on and ride.

[Marcos]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Now I'm in the mood to get going.

[Jane]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

So were you wearing a helmet?

[Dax Shepard]

No.

[Aaron]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

Don't be fucking. Don't be a nerd.

[Monica Padman]

Please stop this.

[Dax Shepard]

She's coming from the bar. Girl.

[Aaron]

There's been no scooters since, so don't worry, I don't have a need for the helmet. But anyway, my then fiance rolls up a few seconds later, probably in the grand scheme of things, I'm face down, passed out in a pool of my own blood. Arguably, one of the best parts of the story is a very calm woman is walking her, and she turns to my fiance, who's like, jumping off of his scooter, trying to see if I'm okay, and she just turns to him and goes, I think she needs help.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, well.

[Aaron]

And he's like, thank you for that.

[Dax Shepard]

This makes me think of something I just learned about on the Internet today, which is there's a gag people do when someone's crashed their car. It's like in the intersection or it's up on the grass. And you drive by and you roll down your window and you go, oh, I'm so sorry, you can't park. Park there. In the reaction that people. A hundred percent of the people react in the same way because they've just crashed.

[Monica Padman]

They're like, you.

[Dax Shepard]

So.

[Aaron]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God. It was a montage of all these people saying, you can't park there. It's such a funny trend. And that's kind of what that woman did. Like, oh, you know, I think she might need help. Oh, really?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, exactly.

[Aaron]

He was like, her lack of real concern is crazy. He's like, she should be studied and be in crisis situation because she wasn't worried at all. So at this point, everything goes black for me. I have nothing from that. Happened around 11:00pm to 5:00am oh, wow. The ambulance takes us to the hospital where Rocco, my husband, now tells them he's not my husband.

[Monica Padman]

He's got to go.

[Aaron]

His name's Rocco and he has a temper that matches the name.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, ok.

[Dax Shepard]

Correct.

[Aaron]

You know, Brooklyn, New Yorker. So he gets in a very big fight with the character large nurse, uses some colorful language with her, and he's forcefully asked to leave by security.

[Dax Shepard]

Again, the pit.

[Monica Padman]

It is the pit.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

He's not even allowed to be in the hospital with me anymore. So at some point he was allowed back in when things calmed down. And I think when her shift ended, I wake up like 5am I look at him, he's like, hey, don't freak out. You're fine. You got in a scooter accident. And he says, he didn't say this. I remember it clear as day. He says, your face is a little fucked up.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Aaron]

But you're fine. And he swears he doesn't say that he did.

[Monica Padman]

That's not the kind of thing you forget.

[Dax Shepard]

And you know what? For the listener, I think you'll be comfort to know, like, we're looking at Aaron and she looks completely normal.

[Marcos]

So.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine someone going like, does she have a face?

[Aaron]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Aaron]

His aunt insisted that no ER doctors touch my face, that a plastic surgeon takes care of the face. I find out in the next few hours that I had cut, like I said, my face, the top of my head, my chin. So I have 12 staples in my scalp. I have, I think, 11 stitches on my forehead and another eight on my chin. I broke my radial head. So my elbow. I skins both my knees to shit. And I cracked six teeth and bit off like an inch of my tongue.

[Jane]

Oh.

[Dax Shepard]

I think you could have got less hurt diving out of the third story of a building.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my gosh. I'm really scared of the picture.

[Dax Shepard]

Me too.

[Aaron]

Monica, for you, I didn't include the tongue picture.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, thank you. That's too much.

[Aaron]

It's not positive. Also, I'm insecure about the tongue picture because I didn't have the best oral health in the following days. So my tongue doesn't look great. I couldn't let you guys see that.

[Dax Shepard]

And did it affect your speech at all?

[Aaron]

Tongues heal quickly, so. So I was able to talk pretty normally within a few days, but it hurt for a couple weeks. But you guys can look at the pictures now. I Have the whole night. The progression. So it starts with, like, a nice selfie of us.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, you guys are so happy right now. Oh, I saw a hint of the next one.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, okay. Here's what he was talking about. Your face being.

[Monica Padman]

I think she meant that one because, like.

[Dax Shepard]

No, I think.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, okay, okay. It's swollen. Yeah, we're getting. Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, we're getting. Getting a little. Oh, we're back to kind of cute.

[Monica Padman]

But now you have a lot of cute tank, too.

[Dax Shepard]

You have a lot of bandages all over your face.

[Aaron]

And then I also included. My bachelorette party was three weeks later. So they made me, like, a sling that said bride on it. They tried to make it festive.

[Danny]

Oh, that's cute.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, fun. That's sweet.

[Danny]

Okay, we got a head.

[Dax Shepard]

Enormous gash on the head. I can see why it required 12 staples. This is the blood residue on the sidewalk where you. You fell. So Rocco had the good foresight to take a photo. Is that him that took that?

[Aaron]

Yeah. Do you guys want to know something hilarious? This was the beginning of August, and we were in a very dry spell, so there was no rain for like a month after. That stain is still a year and two months later on the pavement.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my. Oh, what pride you must feel.

[Monica Padman]

It is a lot of blood.

[Aaron]

But probably the best part, other than the woman with the dog, was a few days later, I'm talking to my dad on the phone about the accident. He's like, how far do you live from the metro stop? And I didn't respond. I went silent. And he goes, aaron, how far? And I said, point, four miles. It's an eight minute walk. There was no reason for us to get on these scooters.

[Monica Padman]

We just wanted to have a little fun. They look fun, like I get.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, they are fun until they're not.

[Aaron]

Oh, they're so fun. We loved them. And we heard all of the accidents that happened. We have a friend who's an ER nurse, and she would tell me, don't go on those things.

[Danny]

And I was like, whatever.

[Aaron]

That's other people.

[Dax Shepard]

I try not to be judgmental because, look, I'm riding my kid to school on a motorcycle. But we see moms and sons and moms and daughters riding to people on the line to school every morning. And I'm like, oh, no, I just know too many. I would say pickleball and scooters have kept the ER in the medical business in business over the last six years.

[Aaron]

The dentist, when I went to him, he was like, you're like, my 15th person this summer.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a boom. It's a boom.

[Aaron]

The near death episode had come out right before, and it made me feel better. I listened to it, like, the day after I got out of the hospital, and I was like, I'm doing better than these people.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Oh, wow. As a smart investor, I feel like I'd like to find out where Bird or Lime's going next and somehow invest in the medical industry in the area. Yeah. Dental. Anything adjacent. Medical.

[Aaron]

Like buying storage places next to military bases.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah, that's smart.

[Monica Padman]

That was a good tip.

[Dax Shepard]

Cadavers. Like, if I could invest in cadavers because they need the tendons for all the knee and injuries.

[Aaron]

Oh, God.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, Aaron, this is delightful.

[Aaron]

Thank you. I'm so thrilled you guys rescheduled, because originally, when y' all reached out, it was the day of my wedding rehearsal, and I did call my husband and I said, can we push the rehearsals? And he said, for what? And I said, so I can meet Dax and Monica. And he goes, no, we can't push our wedding standards.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I can imagine if you have. Dad pushed it, and I bumped into Rocco somewhere. It might be Fist, might be flying in a hurry. It sounds like with his temperament in mind.

[Aaron]

It would either be love or something else.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I'm old now, so it'd be love. I figured out how to be loving.

[Aaron]

He's a softy, too.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Well, have a blast at this wedding and just walk everywhere. Yeah.

[Jane]

No more scooters.

[Aaron]

Unfortunately, I do miss it, but I don't miss the running.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

All right, well, have a great time at this wedding. It was lovely meeting you.

[Aaron]

You guys, too. Bye. Thanks so much. Much.

[Dax Shepard]

Bye.

[Monica Padman]

It would have been cool if we had FaceTimed into their wedding rehearsal.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah, if you guys want us.

[Monica Padman]

To do that, we might. We have to look at our schedule.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. If it lines up perfectly. Is that what you're saying at 11am if your wedding's at 11am Yep. Pacific time, we'll be there. Okay. Wild cards Keeping them wild Keeping them real wild. Real wild.

[Marcos]

All right.

[Dax Shepard]

Love you. Love you. Do you want to sing a tune or something? We don't have a theme song. Oh, okay, great. We don't have a them song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're going to ask some random questions, and with the help of arm cherries, we'll get some suggestions on the fire rhyme dish. On the fire rhyme dish. Enjoy. Follow armchair expert on the way. Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondry. Com Survey.