Eva Benefield (on surviving the Black Swan Murder)

Summary

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Guest: Eva Benefield – On Surviving the Black Swan Murder
Episode Date: July 29, 2026

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Overview

In this riveting episode, Dax Shepard (joined by Monica Padman and Kristen Bell) welcomes Eva Benefield: true crime survivor, author of the memoir Ghost Girl: Surviving the Black Swan Murder, influencer, and founder of Ghost Cowboy Apparel. Eva shares the astonishing and tragic sequence of family events that led to the murder of her father, her mother’s sudden death, and the years-long aftermath involving a manipulative stepmother, legal nightmares, social media attention, and profound personal loss. Balancing dark humor, vulnerability, and resilience, Eva offers an unflinching look at trauma, survival, and the search for meaning.

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Main Discussion Points & Key Insights

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Eva’s Early Life and Family (06:31 – 10:29)

• Charleston Roots: Eva grew up in Charleston, SC, describing the "Low Country" as historic, beautiful, and marshy—a close-knit, traditional Southern community.
• Family Dynamics: Her childhood was idyllic; her mother was gentle and talkative, her father quiet and steady. She had two older half-brothers from her mother’s previous marriage.
• Southern Taboos: Divorce and family issues were often swept under the rug. Eva notices, in hindsight, how much was left unspoken due to Southern decorum and churchgoing norms.

“In the south, you don't really talk about your dirty laundry. We’re sweeping that under the rug.” – Monica Padman (09:52)

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The Morning Everything Changed (10:29 – 17:13)

• Mother’s Sudden Death: At age 14, after a typical teenage disagreement, Eva’s mother didn’t pick her up from school; finding her unresponsive at home became a life-altering trauma.
• Health & Loss: Her mother was the picture of health, making the fatal heart attack (from an unknown arterial blockage) even more shocking.
• Early Coping: Eva returned to school within days, supported by family but stunned and numb.

“I just kind of got up because instinctually... I know what's about to happen. I don't want to see the gurney. I'm going to go to the other house.” – Eva (15:23)

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Navigating Grief & Change with Her Father (17:41 – 24:04)

• Father-Daughter Bond: Eva and her father became very close post-loss, spending memorable months together.
• Quick Remarriage: Within nine months, her father met and married Ashley, a much younger woman, after only 13 days—shocking Eva and completely out of character for her otherwise meticulous, methodical father.
• Disorientation: Eva was caught off guard by the rapid changes, feeling as though she was swept along by decisions she hadn’t been prepared for.

“He was usually very slow and meticulous in thought about everything... This was so out of character.” – Eva (27:33)

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Life With Ashley: Manipulation, Instability, and Fear (33:01 – 46:47)

• Ashley’s Arrival: Eva immediately sensed Ashley’s "fake niceness" and manipulativeness, describing her as an "airhead" who was quick to assert control and report perceived grievances to her father.
• Ballet Company Scheme: Ashley convinced Eva's father to fund her dream ballet company, attracting international ballerinas, but she was quickly undermined (and resentful) when professionals took over.
• Escalation: Ashley’s behavior grew erratic, with gun obsessions, wild accusations against Doug (Eva’s father), wild paranoia (including claims of being poisoned), and ultimately, Child Protective Services involvement.
• Coping Through Avoidance: Eva dove into her own activities—school, sports, social life—to avoid the chaos.

“She was acting super smart, but she just didn’t know anything about anything.” – Eva (33:19)

“There was a day my dad came home with a duffel bag of cash.” – Eva (39:15)

“It’s funny and sad that your dad would accuse you of kind of deserting him when in fact, he brought a force into your house that would make you leave.” – Dax (40:12)

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The Murder of Her Father and Its Aftermath (54:17 – 63:22)

• Shooting: During preparations to move to Maryland, Ashley fatally shot Doug in their Florida home, leaving loaded guns accessible even with a toddler present.
• Immediate Aftermath: Eva learns of her father’s murder over the phone. Her initial reaction: “She did it, didn’t she?”—immediately instinctual and tragically correct.
• Media Storm: The murder brings overwhelming press, tabloid interest, and TV inquiries. Eva agrees to interviews to defend her father's character and correct public narratives.
• Social Media Response: Eva's irreverent, dark-humor-inflected TikToks about her trauma go viral, helping her process the events and building a following.

“My initial reaction was, ‘He’s dead and she killed him.’” – Eva (58:20)

“I just can’t cry in front of people. I'm so... I wouldn't say numb to it, but it doesn’t really phase me.” – Eva (61:31)

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Legal Battles & the Road to Justice (68:46 – 81:20)

• Pre-Trial Trauma: The pre-trial process exposes Eva to graphic evidence and re-traumatizes her—autopsy photos and the attempt to paint her dad as aggressive or sinister.
• Trial Outcome: Ashley is ultimately convicted of manslaughter (not murder), getting 20 years plus probation despite Eva’s wish for a murder conviction; there was even some evidence of Ashley soliciting a hitman.
• No Real Closure: Eva describes achieving her own closure before the verdict, recognizing that “my dad’s dead, there’s no bringing him back.”

“I looked at my best friend and I said, ‘I have to go outside.’... I wailed out before I could get outside.” – Eva, on witnessing crime scene photos (70:17)

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Survival, Healing, and Creativity (83:27 – 90:29)

• Loneliness & Community: Eva talks about the isolating nature of such trauma, and the unique support she has built through social media and her Ghost Cowboy Apparel company.
• Art as Healing: Creating art—taught to her by her dad—and running her T-shirt business became essential coping strategies.

“Creation is the best response to destruction.” – Paraphrased from Dax describing Eva’s outlook and the theme of her memoir (76:12)

• Life at the Beach: Moving to the beach, running, and reconnecting with nature marked a turning point in her healing.
• On Therapy: Eva is candid about not attending therapy for fear of “never recovering” if she opened the emotional floodgates.

“I had relentless positivity, and that’s just what’s gonna get me through.” – Eva (90:01)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Southern Secrecy:
  “We’re sweeping that under the rug... Especially when you’re a very avid churchgoer. It’s kind of frowned upon.” – (Eva & Monica, 09:12)

• On Step-Parent Manipulation:
  "First time she threatened the car, that pissed me off... we're not doing that." – Eva (34:21)

• On Trauma & Humor:
  “My immediate reaction to heartbreak, sorrow, everything is a joke almost immediately. That is my defense mechanism.” – Dax (63:28)

• On Justice & Waiting:
  “I was anxious for a little bit, and I couldn't figure out why until I realized, oh, this is the first summer that I'm not dealing with my business in a lawsuit. I'm not dealing with a murder trial. It’s just quiet.” – Eva (82:56)

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Segment Timestamps

• 03:00 – Meet Eva & casual introductions
• 06:31 – Childhood in Charleston; family background
• 10:29 – The day Eva’s mother dies: trauma, details, first response
• 17:41 – Father-daughter bond post-loss; quick remarriage
• 21:19 – Meeting Ashley; the shock and age gap
• 33:01 – Life with Ashley, manipulation and family chaos
• 39:15 – The cash, the ballet company, and Eva’s coping mechanisms
• 54:17 – The murder: events, discovery, aftermath
• 61:00 – Media attention, TikTok, and public narrative
• 68:46 – Pre-trial, reliving trauma, justice system
• 76:12 – Art, Ghost Cowboy Apparel, creative healing
• 83:27 – Building community, isolation, and moving forward

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Eva’s Advice and Reflections

• Helping Others: Eva continues sharing her story to help others enduring trauma, using humor and transparency as tools for connection.
• Building a Life: Despite everything, Eva has built a business, a community, and a version of happiness—demonstrating the “relentless positivity” modeled by her upbringing and her own resilience.

“Everything happens for a reason... That was the biggest thing I just. I told myself for so long.” – Eva (89:29)

• Message for Readers: Dax concludes by recommending Eva’s memoir (Ghost Girl: Surviving the Black Swan Murder), particularly for young women facing adversity, praising her open, youthful, and non-pretentious writing style.

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Closing Thoughts

This episode is a moving portrait of survival, self-reinvention, and the messiness of being human when life is turned upside down. Through Eva’s story, listeners witness the convergence of family tragedy, psychological manipulation, the limits of the justice system, resilience through creativity, and the healing power of telling your truth—sometimes with a joke, sometimes with unsparing honesty.

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Recommended Reading:
Ghost Girl: Surviving the Black Swan Murder by Eva Benefield

Eva Benefield online:
Instagram: @ghostcowboyapparel
TikTok: [Check Eva’s viral series on loss, trauma, and dark humor]

Podcast Host: Dax Shepard
Co-hosts: Monica Padman, Kristen Bell

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End of summary

Transcript

[Dax Shepard]

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Lily Padman.

[Monica Padman]

Hi.

[Dax Shepard]

Today we have Eva Benefeld on and she is a true crime survivor, author, influencer and founder of Ghost Cowboy Apparel. She has a new memoir out called Ghost Girl Surviving the Black Swan Murder. So Eva is the daughter of the victim of the Black Swan murder.

[Monica Padman]

This is a wild story.

[Dax Shepard]

A wild. The wildness had begun long before the official wildness.

[Kristen Bell]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

To hear all about it.

[Dax Shepard]

She's been through everything. Please enjoy. Eva Benefield. We get support from Quince.

[Monica Padman]

Have you been wearing the quince linen shirts?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I've been wearing them a suspicious amount. Yeah. European linen ones. They're 34 bucks, which is genuinely insane for how nice they are.

[Monica Padman]

It doesn't even make sense.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, here's the deal. They work directly with the factories, cut out all the middlemen. So you're paying for the actual quality and not some brand's marketing budget. Everything's 50 to 80% less than comparable stuff. I love it because it's all very classic and traditional and I know I'm going to be able to keep it for a very long time. And the quality's off the charts.

[Monica Padman]

That's true. The style is very consistent. Whatever you get there, you walk down the street, you're going to look good. They have these lightweight cotton sweaters, which I love for when it cools down at night. It's nice. Drape around your shoulders in the summer and then throw it on when it gets a little cool. And it's not just clothes. They do home stuff. Ding, ding, ding. Travel stuff, everyday essentials. It's all the same model quality without the markup.

[Dax Shepard]

Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quints.comdax for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N c e.comdax for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comdax we are supported by Autotrader. All right. If you've been putting off car shopping because it sounds like a whole thing, buying your car online on autotrader makes it way easier. Really. You can shop tons of cars online, compare prices, check financing and trade in options, all from wherever you are. And if you want to start online and go to the dealership for a test drive, you can do that too. Really what I like is the flexibility. Start online, finish at the dealer or the other way around. Your info stays with you. So you're not Starting the process from scratch. Plus you're working with local dealer listings, so you've got real people helping behind the scenes. And when you're ready, you can pick up your car or have it delivered. Really? Buy your car online on Autotrader. Really?

[Eva Benefield]

Thank you.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm Dax. How are you?

[Eva Benefield]

Good, how are you? Hi.

[Monica Padman]

Hi. Nice to meet you. You welcome.

[Eva Benefield]

Thank you.

[Monica Padman]

Sorry, I know you were early. Sorry. What made you wait?

[Eva Benefield]

I realized, well, I was like early once today. I was late to the airport this morning.

[Monica Padman]

Oh no.

[Eva Benefield]

My layover was 10 minutes.

[Monica Padman]

No.

[Eva Benefield]

I don't know how it happened. It said 53 minutes. I was like, okay, I have time.

[Monica Padman]

That's so stressful.

[Eva Benefield]

I wasn't stressed out until I realized we were boarding when I got there and I was like, well, don't need to be stressed anymore.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, jeez.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. I woke up late this morning and New York wasn't bad. LaGuardia wasn't bad. And then I think I flew into LAX maybe once before.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, really?

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. Cuz I used to go to San Diego a lot, but I haven't really spent a lot of time here.

[Monica Padman]

Are you going to be here for a little bit?

[Eva Benefield]

Go back to Charleston tomorrow. Did you.

[Dax Shepard]

Did I miss. Did you fly in today?

[Eva Benefield]

I flew in today from New York. I flew into New York yesterday.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. You were all over Charleston, New York yesterday.

[Eva Benefield]

Here, Charleston.

[Dax Shepard]

What time did you take off?

[Eva Benefield]

I took off at 5. No, we boarded at 5:50.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, New York, 2:50.

[Dax Shepard]

This is miserable. Do you feel terrible?

[Eva Benefield]

So I Woke up at 4:15 yesterday to get the airport to go to New York.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Eva Benefield]

I got to bed at like 10:30 last night, but I woke up at 4:15 and I was like, I have 20 more minutes. I'm just going to sleep until, you know, the driver texts me. Did not. It was 5:15 because I was waking up all night like, oh my God, I have to go. Oh my God, I have to go.

[Monica Padman]

I hate that feeling.

[Dax Shepard]

And you recently slept. Impasse. Jury duty too.

[Eva Benefield]

That was a couple years ago. So you did your research.

[Dax Shepard]

So you kind of have a pattern of. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

Actually, no, I don't. I wake up to five or six every day. You do my hatch alarm clock? Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, and it like rises slightly, you

[Dax Shepard]

know, It's a hatch alarm.

[Monica Padman]

Gently.

[Eva Benefield]

Oh, it's life changing.

[Dax Shepard]

Tell me about it. Let's do an ad for them right now.

[Eva Benefield]

Yes, I would love that. It's just an alarm clock. And it's a sound machine too. Cause I love my rainstorm yeah. And then it lights up over the course of, like, 10 or 15 minutes, and it gets brighter and brighter and the music gets louder and louder. And then you wake up gently.

[Monica Padman]

A gentle wake up.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, my fear would be it would be the proverbial frog in hot water being brought to a boil. You know that old adage.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

That if you slowly and incrementally raise the loudness, I might just get used to it as I was sleeping. Does that make sense?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

As opposed to being, like, hit and shake.

[Monica Padman]

I know, but it's bad for your system,

[Kristen Bell]

you know?

[Dax Shepard]

Wake up with some cortisol sometimes.

[Eva Benefield]

Now I wake up before it starts really going off.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, you do get used to it.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you pick a song or is it a sound you wake up to?

[Eva Benefield]

It's a sound I have. Retro alarm clock.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, nice.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay, so it is a little. Yeah, it'll get your attention. Eva, right?

[Eva Benefield]

Yes, Eva.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm dyslexic, so I'm like, yeah, that's definitely Eva. But then I'm like, also, who knows, Ava?

[Eva Benefield]

I just don't know all variations.

[Dax Shepard]

And when I see Eva, I hear Eva. Did you like it?

[Eva Benefield]

That was a big elementary school thing.

[Dax Shepard]

Did people plague you on the playground with saying Eva like that?

[Eva Benefield]

Oh, yeah, they did. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

This is like Monica was trying to hide her Indian ness. And then Bennett, like, Beckham came out, which you're too young to know about, but it was a huge movie about a young Indian girl in England learning to play soccer.

[Monica Padman]

And it really exposed me because it was like, oh, she looks like that girl, so she must be Indian.

[Dax Shepard]

She must be a great soccer player.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, it obviously.

[Dax Shepard]

So you grew up in Charleston. You were born in 2001.

[Eva Benefield]

Yes, the book.

[Dax Shepard]

One of the characters is kind of the Low country is what we call it.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Explain the Low country to us.

[Eva Benefield]

Have y' all ever been there or anywhere in the Low Country?

[Dax Shepard]

I've been to Charleston, so, so long ago. But, yes, I've been there once, and it feels like you're time traveling. It's like the most charming.

[Eva Benefield]

It does. It's kind of like the beach, but we have the beach there, too. But it's marsh. It's not rocks. And the only rocks we have are the jetties, and that's for sediment mo and stuff. And then you smell pluff mud at low tide. You can hear little fiddler crabs rolling around everywhere, and you'll see mud minnows. And it's just serene and quiet and peaceful and hot and humid and it's

[Dax Shepard]

beautiful and historic as hell. It's probably, like, among the oldest cities still thriving.

[Eva Benefield]

Oh, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Is it Isle of Palm? Is that near it?

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, that's where I live. Oh, that's where you live.

[Kristen Bell]

You live?

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Where does Danny McBride live?

[Eva Benefield]

So he lives on Sullivan's. My favorite restaurants on Sullivan's. He also frequents there, so I'm seeing him all the time.

[Dax Shepard]

Is it exciting?

[Eva Benefield]

Kind of. I mean, everybody that's local is like, oh, it's Danny.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Do you know Bev and Bob Miller?

[Eva Benefield]

What?

[Monica Padman]

If you knew them, that would be so cool. I mean, they live in Isle of Palm. I feel like I'm saying it wrong.

[Dax Shepard]

Welcome to my world. That's how I feel every time I say something.

[Monica Padman]

Every time you say a word, you

[Eva Benefield]

can say Iop and I'll know the reference.

[Monica Padman]

Iop. Okay, perfect. Yes. That's one of my best friends growing up. Parents. And they moved there 10 years ago. They love it so much.

[Eva Benefield]

I'm sure if I was running around, if you showed me a picture, I would see them.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Because it's small, right?

[Eva Benefield]

It's small. And I'm an avid runner, so I will run into people in, like, Mount Pleasant or downtown, and if I talk to them, I'm like, oh, yeah, I live on All Palms. They're like, oh, my God, I've seen you running out there. I'm like, yeah, that's me. Probably.

[Dax Shepard]

You're like the local forest gum.

[Eva Benefield]

I think so. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So you have a pretty idyllic childhood at the start. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Tell me about your relationship with mom and Dad. I know they differ, but. Yeah, just tell me about that.

[Eva Benefield]

A little bit brought up like any other Southern household. It was loving. It was. My mom was just a sweetheart and gentle and kind. Wouldn't hurt a fly. And she talked a lot. My dad was very quiet, very chill, so she was talking all the time. And he would just let Renee talk church every Sunday and just. You can't complain.

[Monica Padman]

Brothers and sisters?

[Eva Benefield]

Two half brothers. Okay. So they're 14 and 11 years older than me on my mom's side.

[Monica Padman]

Got it.

[Dax Shepard]

So she had already had a marriage.

[Eva Benefield]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Again, I didn't grow up in the South. I grew up in the heathenist North. Divorce was like, who wasn't? Was that an issue?

[Eva Benefield]

I think so. My mom's side of the family didn't really like the idea of it because divorce is just not. Especially when you're a very avid churchgoer. It's kind of frowned upon. And I Also still to this day, don't really know all of the things about that marriage, about what they thought of my dad. I also don't get to see them very often. They're upstate South Carolina. But I also, I think it's just been kind of hush hush. Nobody wants to talk about it. So it's just the elephant in the room sometimes.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And you were so young when she died that I'd imagine too, there would have been many, many conversations about her previous life, in her opinion. When you were old enough to like understand all those details.

[Eva Benefield]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

But also, in the south, you don't really talk about your dirty laundry. I'm from Georgia. There's just a. We're sweeping that under the rug. And not really back then, anyway, it's still now.

[Eva Benefield]

When I was young, my mom, she was very picky about the moms that she would hang out with. And I would always ask why? Because I would have friends and she really wouldn't hang out with their moms. She was like, you'll get to an age where you'll understand. And one day I got to the age where I understand. It's like once everything happened with my dad, I could hear the parents talking, I could understand and pick up on. Especially in Charleston, South Carolina. It's a little pretentious sometimes. Yeah, totally. We can sweep things under the rug very easily if we have to.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Okay. So tell me about the morning when you're 14, you're fixing to go to school and you and mom have a little disagreement. Tell me about that morning.

[Eva Benefield]

So I was a brat.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Eva Benefield]

As a wheel. Yeah. I mean, I was 14, I was moody, my dad was out of town, my mom was taking me to school. She was a talker and I did not want to talk. So we were in the car and I just was kind of being a brat. And she dropped me off and I got out of the car and she was like, love you. And I slammed the door and I walked inside. And I also now realize I had very bad anxiety going to school. I didn't know that it was anxiety until later, but every morning it was like a stomachache and kind of shaky. And I didn't realize until now, I'm like, oh, that was freaking out a little bit every day before school. So I was just kinda in my own little world. Slammed the door, went to school, that was that.

[Dax Shepard]

What was happening at school, do you suppose that was giving you anxiety?

[Eva Benefield]

So I just switched from a smaller school to. It's the second largest school in South Carolina.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Eva Benefield]

So it was a big culture shock. I was private up until middle school. I went into a smaller public school for middle school. But it was still just a huge change seeing all of that. So I think it was that a little bit that just kind of threw me for a loop every day.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, a humongous high school. Yeah, that is scary. So after school you're expecting mom to pick you up. That was the routine.

[Eva Benefield]

And she did not answer her phone. I was waiting at the carpool line and she has a tendency to be late. She could have been late to her own funeral and it would have been normal. So I was like, okay, I'm gonn gave her some grace. But then 30 minutes went by and still nothing. I tried calling her, I tried texting her and just nothing.

[Dax Shepard]

At no moment where you're like, oh, I slammed the door, she's teaching me a lesson. Was there any part of your brain that was like, oh, maybe she didn't pick me up on purpose?

[Eva Benefield]

No. My mom was never one to hold a grudge. I probably had texted her earlier that day. I know I was texting in the group chat with her and my dad first period that day. So I didn't think she was holding anything against me for that moment.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. So how did you get yourself home?

[Eva Benefield]

A friend from the private school, she switched to that school. I was like, hey, can you give me a ride home? Because my mom's nowhere to be found. So her and her mom took me home.

[Dax Shepard]

And when do you start getting nervous when you get home?

[Eva Benefield]

I show up to the front door because I didn't have my key. Knocked on the door, she didn't answer. And every spring and every fall, she loved fashion. She had so many clothes. She had two of the same item in almost every single thing. Some with tags on it still like a problem.

[Dax Shepard]

Was her name Monica Padman?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, exactly.

[Eva Benefield]

She switch her closet out. She had a huge walk in closet and then she'd put everything in tubs and she would be up until 2, 3 in the morning switching closet out. Yeah, it's almost wintertime, we gotta get the fur out, you know? Oh yeah. So I was like, okay, maybe she's just sleeping cause she's not answering. And I went and knocked on the door, didn't hear anything back. And at that point my friend's mom was like, hey, let's just go get some dinner and then come back. So we went to Chick Fil A, sat down, got some dinner. Wow, you left, went back, still nothing. And the house, their room Was to the left of the front door behind some bushes. So I went and I crawled into the bushes and their lights were off, but also still not that unnormal because my mom hated overhead lights. She liked natural lights. So I was like, maybe it's getting darker out, so she just wants to circadian rhythm. And I saw kind of a silhouette, and I didn't really want to make anything out of that, but I went to my friend's mom and I was like, hey, something's wrong. I think we need to get in the house. I mean, it was just us three girls. So we went across the street to the neighbor, and the neighbor, he and his wife came out and he huge, tall dude, and went and just busted the door down.

[Dax Shepard]

Are you first to go in, I'd imagine at your house?

[Eva Benefield]

I went in briefly and I kind of looked and I went back out and my neighbor went back in. My dog, Sully, he was the sweetest golden retriever you'll ever meet in your entire life. Was mean. He was being mean to my neighbor. So he came out and said, hey, Eva, you need to come get Sully. He'll bite me.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh.

[Eva Benefield]

And so I went and I got Sully. And that's when I saw my mom. So I took Sully out and my neighbor. I waited a few minutes. My neighbor came back out and just shook his head at my friend's mom and his wife. And so that's when I kind of knew. Okay, something happened. Something's not good.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, no.

[Dax Shepard]

How sweet of Sully, though, that he was like, she can't protect herself right now. I gotta keep everyone away from her.

[Eva Benefield]

I have never seen him like that. And to this day, he's never, never been like that again. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So what is it like to find mom? That is terrifying. Is your first hope. Like, we just need to get her to a hospital.

[Monica Padman]

Did you like, run in when they were shaking their head?

[Eva Benefield]

No, I didn't want to see that. I just knew, you know, at that point she hadn't answered anything. If she was even mildly unconscious, she probably would have came too eventually.

[Monica Padman]

Right, Right.

[Eva Benefield]

I had a gut feeling and I knew. So I just kind of got up because instinctually, I think everybody started calling my sister in law and 911 and everything. I was like, I know what's about to happen. I don't want to see the gurney. I'm going to go to the other house.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

So went across the street, sat down.

[Monica Padman]

Oh.

[Dax Shepard]

Had she had any health scares prior to that?

[Eva Benefield]

No. You know how Greens Powders are a big thing now. Yeah, she was on that in the 90s.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, really?

[Eva Benefield]

She was healthy, Always working out, always going on runs and walks, drinking her protein shakes. You know, like the Quest chips. She was having a special order, those from the old brand that used to own it.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Eva Benefield]

Oh my gosh.

[Dax Shepard]

She was into Quest chips back then.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, I remember I was like five or six. She was going on advocare.com and getting quest chips advocate. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah, Always very, very healthy.

[Dax Shepard]

Crazy unexpected.

[Eva Benefield]

So that was just the furthest thing from what I thought.

[Dax Shepard]

And she had 75% blockage in an artery. Is that the conclusion?

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So she had a heart attack and died.

[Eva Benefield]

Yep.

[Dax Shepard]

And you're 14 and you're at a new school and your dad's out of town. How long does it take for him to get home?

[Eva Benefield]

He got home, it was middle of the night that night.

[Dax Shepard]

It was the same day.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. My sister in law and my mom's ex husband came to pick me up and so we went over to my brother's house. I did my homework and went to bed. And then my dad woke me up probably 2 or 3 in the morning.

[Dax Shepard]

Were you in a state of shock at that moment?

[Eva Benefield]

I think so. Not sure. I don't think I really ever had like a full grief moment. I think that I was just so shocked. And I was out of school for three days. That was a Wednesday. I was out Thursday, Friday, went back Monday. Just tried to get back to normal.

[Dax Shepard]

And were people urging you not to do that?

[Eva Benefield]

Not really. My dad and my brother and my sister in law were just kind of like, do what you want to do.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah. And how is your dad taking it?

[Eva Benefield]

He, I think held it together for me. I didn't see him really break down until her funeral, which was a couple days later. But that was the only time I saw him break down. And he would console me when I came to him about it and just say, I miss her too. I don't think that he wanted to show me that he was mourning, so I think he wanted to stay strong.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. How did you and dad's relationship evolve after?

[Eva Benefield]

So we were already pretty close. I was always kind of tagging along the Lowe's and helping with house projects and doing whatever, and we just got even closer. That was like nine months of pure fun. He kind of did whatever I wanted to do.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, you kind of have leverage at that point.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

So, I mean, I remember I'd been begging to go to San Diego for so Long. And I think a month after that, he was like, so guess what? We're going to San Diego.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

No way.

[Dax Shepard]

It's like, anything I can do to help cheer her up, right?

[Monica Padman]

Or. And also, just, let's live life.

[Dax Shepard]

Were you carrying any guilt over your last exchange?

[Eva Benefield]

That weighed on me for a little bit. And, I mean, the more I talked to my dad about it, too, because he knew that was something I can't keep a secret. I can't tell a lie. So I just immediately went to him. I was like, this is the last interaction we had. And he was like, you know that that is not what your mom would remember you by, or you should remember your mom by that. That meant nothing to her.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And as a parent of teenage kids, that's standard biz. They're just randomly, like, terrible to you for no reason.

[Monica Padman]

It's just the way you quickly go, like, did I?

[Dax Shepard]

And you're like, no, I didn't do. This is just happening.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

When did the Bible verses every morning start?

[Eva Benefield]

I think it was towards the end of my high school career because I could drive. I was out of the house a lot. He mentioned it a couple times, that it hurt him a little bit when I got my first car and could get out of the house because I was never around anymore. That was something that he brought up in two different conversations we had about Ashley, which was like, you're never home anymore. I miss you. You know, as soon as I gave you your car, you were just gone. And so I think that was kind of his way of connecting after that.

[Monica Padman]

Well, sorry, what is the Bible? I don't know. What is that? You just did it every morning.

[Dax Shepard]

Every morning, he sent her a Bible verse. She always woke up to a Bible verse for years.

[Monica Padman]

That's lovely.

[Dax Shepard]

Which later comes into play.

[Monica Padman]

Got it. Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

Circle Mom.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So during that nine months after your mother died, you did specifically ask him, do you think you'll ever remarry?

[Eva Benefield]

I asked him the night that he came home after my mom died.

[Kristen Bell]

Wow.

[Eva Benefield]

That was, like, my first question. You know, he gave me the whole spiel of, like, I've seen a lot of death, and I'm here for you, and we'll get through this together. And then I asked, are you gonna get remarried and have kids? And he said, no. I mean, it was, like, probably three in the morning. He had just flown in from Texas, and he was like, I don't think so. No.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you understand what his job was? He was a consultant for defense contract actors. You know, like, what was kind of. Kind of?

[Eva Benefield]

I think.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. It seems like an abstract job to have your hands around.

[Eva Benefield]

As a kid, he had some crazy technology. He was a brain guy. Encryption was his forte. So he was doing a lot of encrypting on some crazy government projects and kind of consulting the military and just anything that needed protecting. He'd have, like, prototypes of stuff. I'd go to his office, and I was 10. I didn't really know what I was looking at, but I remember some of it. I can't even wrap my head around it now.

[Dax Shepard]

So nine months later, he's in Florida, right. Where he meets Ashley.

[Eva Benefield]

Yes. Yeah, they did meet.

[Dax Shepard]

He was at a dinner or something.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, something in Palm Springs.

[Dax Shepard]

Palm Beach.

[Eva Benefield]

Palm Beach. Is that it?

[Monica Padman]

Palm Springs is here.

[Eva Benefield]

Palm Springs is here. Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

But she was working for the Trump campaign.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So definitely. She was probably in Palm. Or not. She was probably in Palm Beach.

[Eva Benefield]

That was definitely it.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so they met. Now, this is crazy, right? This little chunk is wild.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

They met, and then 13 days later, they got married.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And she's 24 and he's 54.

[Eva Benefield]

Yep.

[Monica Padman]

And you are 15.

[Eva Benefield]

15.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, explain the first time you are made aware of Ashley.

[Eva Benefield]

So we were in the car. He was picking me up from school because I couldn't drive yet. I was 15. And so he picked me up, and he always had his conference calls on speaker. And he picked me up from school. We were on the way home, conference call on the speakerphone, and I hear them talking about this conference that they were gonna have the next weekend in North Carolina. And they said, doug, are you gonna bring your girlfriend?

[Monica Padman]

Oh, boy.

[Eva Benefield]

And I was 15. So that week or two prior, I had seen him kind of at night in bed on his phone, like, sending a heart emoji, you know, like a kissy face. So I just kind of put two of them together. And I was real quiet at first when he got off, and he said, what's wrong, Eva? I said, said, what are they talking about, your girlfriend? He said, oh, they got me confused with another guy. It's not me. I said, well, I saw you texting a heart emoji to someone last night. He was like, it's not my girlfriend. We're just friends. I said, well, have y' all gone out to dinner? And he was like, yeah. And I said, well, have you kissed? And he was like, yeah. I said, so you're dating?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. You're like, so that's more than a friend.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So it's exactly what they said on the phone.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

So I was like, okay. At that point, I didn't really know what to do. I was just like, all right, I trust you. If this is making me right.

[Dax Shepard]

Because you don't have any idea. She's 24. You don't have any idea anything about her.

[Eva Benefield]

No clue.

[Dax Shepard]

Kids have varying opinions, right? I've talked about this with my own daughters. Like, okay, so if I die, is mom allowed to remarry? Funnily enough, the verdict was, mom can remarry, but I can't.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, okay.

[Dax Shepard]

So I don't know why it's that way. But at any rate, also, between the two of them, there's a much different reaction to that. So I'm wondering, would it have been your wish that your dad never dated again? Or were you like, he needs a date and not be lonely?

[Eva Benefield]

I don't even know where I stood at that point. I feel like I was annoyed, but I didn't think that it would go any further than that. One second he's single, next second he has a girlfriend. It wasn't introduced in any sort of slow way. Like, you know, start bringing her over, and this is a friend. And then it was just kind of like, boom, we're dating. I think that if it had been that way, I would have been a little more pushing against it. Like, hey, no, this isn't cool.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

But just because I had no choice but to kind of react and be like, oh, okay, I didn't get a chance.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, in none of the scenarios I modeled out with my own children was anyone allowed to date within nine months. I think even with mom being allowed to remarry, it was like, after X

[Eva Benefield]

amount of years, I understood that she was dead yet. So I was just kind of like, exactly.

[Monica Padman]

That's a lot.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You're dealing with such upheaval.

[Monica Padman]

This is interesting. I have a friend who has been through a similar thing. Her mother died, and then her father remarried very, very quickly to also kind of like a pretty young and very fast sort of random.

[Eva Benefield]

Right. It's more common than you would think. I've heard a lot of stories since then, and people be like, yeah, men just remarry a lot faster. They can handle it. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

What's funny is, as I'm learning this story, because, by the way, I didn't follow any of this. Right. Like, I wasn't aware of the Black Swan murder.

[Kristen Bell]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, Yeah. I don't watch any of those shows. I don't watch 48 now. I've seen 48 hours researching you. But I had no clue that that had happened. So first finding out that your dad married this woman 13 days later, I'm going, I need an explanation.

[Eva Benefield]

Right?

[Dax Shepard]

My conclusion, tell me if I'm completely off base, which is like, she's sending him naked photos and stuff. She's very sexually engaged, and he's very religious, and he can't have sex with her if they're not married. So literally, this thing is like, fast passed just to have sex.

[Eva Benefield]

Well, so here's also something. I don't think that she was as religious as she made out to be to my dad. I think that she just was like, like, if that's what it's going to take, then I'll get married right then and there. You know, like, in her head, she wasn't saved out, really. She was like, yeah, well, I'm a Christian too, so we have to.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, geez.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, it only worked to her benefit to fast pass it, which again, I try to resist my poking at religion, but therein lies one of my issues. Like, what are we talking about? You got to get married and you got to make some crazy decision to

[Eva Benefield]

appease when people do it that fast. Because I have friends that are getting married now. I'm like, we're 25. Like, slow down.

[Monica Padman]

There's time. There's time.

[Eva Benefield]

You don't know these people.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly. You don't even know you yet. Really.

[Eva Benefield]

You know, our brains are just starting to develop.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Now, when did you meet her? The next day after the wedding. The secret wedding.

[Monica Padman]

Wait.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, So I wasn't even at the secret wedding. They were dating. And then the next day they were still dating, but I met her. And then the next day, to my knowledge, they were married. So it was like three days. You know, got the introduction and then the next day.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, explain the introduction, I think you said, but you anticipated them going like, okay, so we're gonna be dating. And then your worst case scenario is like, God, did he propose to her?

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. So the next day he was like, actually, she's in town. Let's go pick her up from the airport. I said, okay. So I went and got in the truck and we went and picked her up from the airport. And he was just kind of making the small talk for us. He was like, she's a ballerina and teaches children, and she's done this and done that. I was like, okay, cool.

[Dax Shepard]

Were you shocked by the fact that she was nine years older than you?

[Eva Benefield]

I didn't know the exact age. It just kind of went over my head at that point. I don't really remember the rest of that day. I know it was just kind of small talk. And I think they went and did their own thing and I went and hung out with my friends. The next day, I was getting ready to go to my friend's house, and my dad came upstairs and he was like, you need to come downstairs and we need to have a family chat. And it struck me a little weird that he said, family chat.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Why don't you get the non family member out of here and we'll have a little chat?

[Monica Padman]

You mean me and you? Yeah, we can do that. Totally.

[Eva Benefield]

And he said, no, I think, like, we all need to go downstairs and talk. And I said, I don't have anything to say to her. Y' all are dating. Good for you. Yeah. The only thing that I would go and sit downstairs for right now with her is if you were gonna say you want to propose? And those words came out of my mouth. And then the next second, he said, we're married. So I wasn't legally allowed to drive my car without an adult with a full license yet. So I got in the front seat, made them both get. It was a two door Jeep Wrangler. So they had to like, go crawl into the back seat. Oh, my God, how they sat in such a rule like this. And I was angrily driving over to my friend's. They took my car. And I was just at my friend's house.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

This is a lot to process. Had your dad displayed any previous kind of rash, impulsive decisions, or is this completely out of character?

[Eva Benefield]

That was so out of character. I mean, he was usually very slow and meticulous in thought about everything.

[Dax Shepard]

He's into encryption, for Christ's sake.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. The biggest life lesson I learned up until that point was measure twice. Cut once from him because I was always doing home projects. So he was always very mature, meticulous about decision making.

[Dax Shepard]

Whoa.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Simultaneous to this, this is also interesting. Your friend moves into your house.

[Eva Benefield]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Tell me about that.

[Eva Benefield]

So that was in the fall, right when school started. When I found out about Ashley and my dad. She moved in that December, right after Christmas. I was at a lacrosse kind of showcase thing up in North Carolina, and my dad and Ashley were there. We all went together. And I was in the middle of a game, but had stepped out off the field. And I saw that she had texted. She was like a friend that I had in school, but never out of school. That was freshman year, so we were in sophomore year now and we were still in touch but never really hung out. And she had called me a bunch of times and texted me. I called her back and she said, hey, this is really last minute and random, but I need somewhere to stay. Could I stay with you? And I said, yeah, sure, why not? So I asked my dad and my dad was like, I mean, we have three extra bedrooms upstairs. Y' all have at it. So we went and picked her up. She moved in.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking that your keys are actually in your hand before you close the car door. Have you ever stood in a parking lot full of sun, staring at your keys sitting right there on the seat, 4 inches away and completely useless to you? It's a very specific kind of humbling. Yeah, checking first first is a good idea. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds. And for fast, reliable help when you need it, add an Allstate roadside plan today. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary. Insurance and roadside assistance plans are subject to terms, conditions and availability. Insurance provided by Allstate North American Insurance Company, Northbrook, Illinois. Roadside assistance plans provided by Allstate Motor Club Incorporated in Allstate affiliate. We get support from skims. Monica has been on a whole kick lately.

[Eva Benefield]

I really have.

[Monica Padman]

When I get new skims, it is like Christmas. I get so excited. I love skims and they have skims cotton, which I literally reach for every single day. The fabric is really soft, but it also holds its shape. There's nothing worse than Sagsville. Exactly. It's really bad. Skims never does that. Every single piece I've gotten from them still looks brand new. After a lot of washes, no stretching. They lay perfectly and they support in all the right places.

[Dax Shepard]

You're pretty particular about that stuff too, which is saying something.

[Monica Padman]

It is and I'll just say it. The lightweight cotton thong is the best one I've ever tried. I also have their cotton jersey T shirt. I have it in black and I really love it. It is a tight fit, but it is very flattering sometimes. I don't love a tight fit shirt, but skims just does everything right. I really don't know what they're doing over there. The T shirt is perfect for summer. It's a great summer shirt. Go get yours. Shop skims cotton and all of my favorite [e-mail] after you place your order. Be sure to let them know we sent you. Select Podcast in the survey and be sure to select Armchair Expert in the drop down menu that follows.

[Dax Shepard]

We are supported by Walden University. You know that feeling when you've been thinking about making a move? Going after the degree, the promotion, the thing you keep telling yourself you'll get to someday? Walden University is built for that moment. For over 50 years, Walden has helped working professionals get the w, the knowledge, the skills and the confidence to create real change in their careers and communities. Their programs are designed around your life, not the other way around. With Tempo Learning available in select programs, there are no rigid schedules or set weekly deadlines. You move at your own pace. And Walden's faculty aren't just academics, they're practitioners who bring real world experience into everything they teach. Teach from your first class to career coaching and beyond, Walden is your partner the whole way. Take the first step and learn at a pace that works for you. Visit waldenu. Edu Walden University Set a Course for Change Certified to operate by Chev this episode is brought to you by the New Max Original Comedy Series Stuart Fails to Save the Universe from the world and creators of the Big Bang Theory comes a new comedy series. Stuart Bloom, comic book store owner and lovable underdog, acts as accidentally breaks a device built by Sheldon and Leonard and kicks off a full blown multiverse Armageddon. Now he's on a mission to put reality back together alongside his girlfriend Denise, a geologist named Burke, and physicist Barry Kripke. Along the way, they're running into alternate universe versions of characters you already know and love. Check out the new Max original comedy series Stewart Fails to Save the Universe, now streaming exclusively on HBO Max with new episodes Thursday at 9pm Eastern. Subscription recording required. After the kind of shell shockness wore off, what was your assessment of Ashley, your new stepmother? What were your first impressions of her?

[Eva Benefield]

I could tell she was kind of fake nice and not smart. It was kind of like talking to an airhead all the time. I picked up on it as time went on and I got older as well, that she was just kind of acting super smart, but she just didn't know anything about anything.

[Dax Shepard]

And you were feeling the manipulativeness?

[Eva Benefield]

Yes, that was pretty quick. I would say that I started realizing I didn't have her way. So she would go to my dad and my dad would be like, well Eva, you gotta do this. Cause Ashley, you know, and your dad

[Dax Shepard]

wanted her to step in and be a motherly figure cause she didn't have one anymore, right? But she wasn't a good match for that role. Right. I mean, again, she's nine years old.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Eva Benefield]

She was eight years older. Both my brothers are married, and I'm very close with my sister in law, my oldest brother's wife. She had moved in right after my mom passed to kind of help with the house stuff. And my dad was out of town a lot, still traveling. So it was me and Bev. And, you know, she taught me everything that I needed to know at that point in my life. And I was like, no, I'm good. I don't need another 20 something year old. I have Beverly. So I was nice to Ashley, but as soon as she started to put her foot down about certain things and say, well, no, I'm gonna tell your dad or you have to do this or I'm gonna take your car away. The first time she threatened the car, that pissed me off. I was like, no, we're not doing that.

[Dax Shepard]

And were you afraid of confrontation or.

[Eva Benefield]

No, not really.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so you would fight back in those moments?

[Eva Benefield]

Kind of. I'm not a confrontational person, but I will get my punches in when I can, you know, so I'm not a pushover. Yeah. So if she said something, I'd try to be polite about it, at least until. If she kept pushing, that's when I'd just. Just kind of be like, no, I'm not doing that.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And as this wild experiment is running its course, what are you noticing in the nature of their relationship?

[Eva Benefield]

Super. All over each other. Lovey dovey at first, very much PDA all the time. It was disgusting. As time went on, it was Ashley just bitching about something constantly, and my dad just kind of sitting there and taking it and listening. Eva said this or somebody said this, and my dad was quiet and chill, so he'd just kind of take it and not say anything.

[Dax Shepard]

He's like, get me back to my encryption.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, exactly. Get me back to my office. That's why he's out of town all the time. Yes. But then she started going with him.

[Dax Shepard]

What was the event that led to him firing the gun in the house?

[Eva Benefield]

I wasn't home. Neither was my friend that moved in with us. I think what had happened was she was upset about something. And I mean, when she got upset about something, she was in his ear, just nonstop. And I think at that point, from my understanding, it was out on the counter or he was cleaning it or something, and she just would not stop. And he got frustrated and just shot it up into the Roof. And that shut her up.

[Dax Shepard]

Part of the thing they bonded over Monica when they first met is they both love guns. She had like, multiple guns on her

[Eva Benefield]

the night they met Publix one time, just me and her. And she made a comment about a gun and I was like, are you packing? And she pulled up her shirt and showed me. I said, we are in public in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. There's nothing here that's gonna harm us. It was just kind of a weird flex. I think she thought it was cool,

[Monica Padman]

like tough or something.

[Dax Shepard]

She's campaigning for Trump. She's really kind of the prototypical check in all the boxes.

[Eva Benefield]

Trump girl.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah. Loves guns, has multiple guns on her at 24.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

God. I would, of course love to know her entire childhood, how we end up as her.

[Eva Benefield]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

It's so tempting the whole time I'm learning about her to really assign her a lot of different personality disorders I know about. She feels very, very borderline personality.

[Eva Benefield]

I think it was either that or histrionic. It was whatever Amber heard has it was the same is what we discovered.

[Dax Shepard]

Cuz she either thought your dad was a savior or that he was evil.

[Eva Benefield]

Like evil killer out to get us all.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Those were the two options on the table. He's everything or he's not nothing. Okay, so in 17, so at this point, they would have been together for, I guess, a year and a half or something.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, something like that.

[Dax Shepard]

She has to have a ballet studio.

[Eva Benefield]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Which again, this feels very transparent. I hate to sound so judgmental, but it's like she wanted to open an international ballet company that would be really inclusive, meaning it would have all these people that normally wouldn't have gotten taken to a ballet company, I. E. She never got, you know, it sounds like she's trying to figure. Figure out a way where I'm going to create a version where I would have been there.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, that was exactly it. She wanted that. I think she didn't make the cut for ballet.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

And so she wanted this ballet company and my dad wanted to give her the entire world on a silver platter. Was like, okay, let's make it happen. And he was smart and he knew how to pull together investors and make things happen fast. So that's what he did.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So they start this ballet company and lots of ballerinas fly from all over the world to come audition and become members of this.

[Monica Padman]

And she's like, running.

[Kristen Bell]

No.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But she mostly doesn't even show up.

[Eva Benefield]

She was very there the first few months it was towards the end when she wasn't showing up as much anymore after they announced the pregnancy. So that's when she was starting to have a bad pregnancy, and so she wasn't showing up to the ballet things anymore. Another thing that I think happened is some of the investors and my dad probably. And I also. You have to take this with a grain of salt, because I tried to stay out of it as much as possible, but from my understanding, my dad and the investors realized, hey, she kind of acted like she could run this entire thing, but she can't. Let's pull somebody down from New York that actually knows what the hell she's doing. So they pulled down this woman who started running things appropriately and trying to get things pulled together more properly than she was. And I think that she did not like the power being taken away from her. So she started acting out, and that's when she just vowed at this moment.

[Dax Shepard]

And you're getting older and wiser and more savvy. Right. Are you assessing this as, like, oh, yeah, this is just a gold digger using my dad to execute all of her dreams?

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, kinda. I mean, there was a day that my dad came home with a duffel bag of cash, and I just kinda looked at it, and I asked him, I was like, what's that? Where'd you get that? And he was like. He didn't say much about it. It's for the ballet. I said, okay. And then he said, just don't take Snapchats of it and show your friends. We don't want people knowing this is in the house right now. Oh, geez. Yeah. I said, okay.

[Monica Padman]

You're.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Were you, like, get me out of here. It's time for me to be out of here.

[Eva Benefield]

I was just so enthralled in my own things. Yeah. I just was kind of letting them do whatever they wanted to do. And then I was trying to make it through high school.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And do you think you were running as fast as you could a little bit to stay focused on things that wouldn't have you thinking about the fact that your mom died?

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. I was always out hanging out with friends or at lacrosse practice or just doing anything that I could to get away? I started going to the gym every morning before school and then had lacrosse practice after school, and it was always,

[Monica Padman]

yeah, he didn't want it.

[Dax Shepard]

It's funny and sad that your dad would accuse you of kind of deserting him when in fact, he brought a force into your house that would make you leave. No one's going to hang around, sit around a table, and act like this is the dream family scenario.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. And I was holding a grudge against my dad for so long about that. And he would always deny, deny, deny. Like, well, you left me, or you're resenting my wife. And so he used that line a couple times. Well, you're resenting my life. So, you know, why should we do this or be nice to you or whatever? Not that my dad was ever mean, but why should she be nice to you if you're resenting her until it was after she left that I think he had come to a moment and was like, oh, Eva, that must have really hurt. Cause he eventually came to apologize. And that's all I was looking for, was some sort of apology.

[Monica Padman]

He got sucked into this vortex at a very vulnerable time for him as well. So, like, ugh.

[Dax Shepard]

It's another high horse I'm tempted to sit on, which is like, I watched the Anthony Bourdain documentary, and it's so heartbreaking.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And, yeah, he falls in love with this really young woman. He gets really insecure. It's a very bizarre relationship. I've seen so many men, older men, who get with young women, and they can't handle it.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not good for them.

[Eva Benefield]

It's just like a distraction, the honeymoon stage. And, you know, he was like, this is great. Nothing's wrong.

[Dax Shepard]

She's hot.

[Eva Benefield]

And then he's in too deep and he can't get.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

He owns a fucking ballerina company all of a sudden.

[Eva Benefield]

Right? Yeah. Like, what the hell?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So the pregnancy. Did they wait a while to tell you about that? Or how do you learn that she's pregnant? And I can't imagine you are excited about that.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Because that means she's around permanently in some sense.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. So me and my friend that had moved in were sitting in my bed, and they came up into my room and they were like, hey, we have an announcement. And my dad framed it like, you are going to have a baby sister and y' all are going to share birthdays. Because her due date was right around my birthday. That was the worst way to tell

[Monica Padman]

who that teenage girl.

[Dax Shepard]

That was so male of him. He didn't realize, like, no, I already feel less important because now my birthday is not my birthday. This is great news. And we're naming her Eva. And you're going away, and actually, you're being sent off.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You don't exist.

[Eva Benefield]

You don't need this anymore.

[Dax Shepard]

So after she got pregnant, this kind of Escalates the craziness. Yeah. Getting pregnant, I guess in order. I think what seems most relevant plot wise is she moves back to Florida with her mom at some point. How do we go from getting pregnant? We have an announcement to her moving down.

[Eva Benefield]

She was going back and forth a little bit more just because she was having a bad pregnancy. And then eventually one day I asked, where's Ashley? And my dad said, oh, she's having a really bad pregnancy. We decided that it's best for her to be taken care of by her mom. Cause my dad was traveling so much still. She was just down there in Florida and that was that. And then I came home one day from school and her car was gone and all of her weird little hot glue seashell pictures off the walls were gone. And a note was on the bed.

[Dax Shepard]

And what did the notes say?

[Eva Benefield]

I have no idea. I just remember my dad reading it and looking crushed and just going silent. I actually left the house when I found all of that. And I was going over to my sister in law's house because I was like, I don't want to be around that. And she said, no, turn around. Go be with your D. So I went. I turned around and he just. He went very quiet.

[Monica Padman]

Were you like, what happened?

[Eva Benefield]

I don't even remember if words were exchanged other than she's gone or she left me.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, Jesus.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So at this point, I'll add that the ballet company's now gets shut down. It costs Doug like a hundred grand something crazy. Just gone. She now lives with mom and she's pregnant still. Yeah, she's pregnant. And now she starts this narrative that. That she's pretty convinced Doug killed Eva's mom.

[Eva Benefield]

Yes. Oh my God, she did that. Along with he's out to kill me and her and he's beating me and he's beating her and poisoning me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, he's like figured out in her mind that he had poisoned Eva's mom and so. Oh, now he's poisoning me.

[Eva Benefield]

She was pulling medical records for my mom. She was trying to get the grave dug up.

[Dax Shepard]

No.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, I didn't know that again until after, but I knew about the poison. It was like a really weird thing while she lived with me was they were obsessed with teas. We had a tea drawer. And I was an avid coffee drinker with my dad for so long, which was another weird thing that I picked up on cuz it was always coffee with my mom every morning, coffee. And then all of a sudden the coffee's gone, the tea's There and every kind of eclectic, weird tea you can get. And he would send her boxes of tea down to Florida, take them to her. And so she eventually, eventually came to the conclusion, oh, these teas must be what's poisoning me. That's why I'm having such a bad pregnancy.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Eva Benefield]

So she started going to the doctors in Florida, and they would run all these tests, and they couldn't find anything. So she would go from doctor to doctor to doctor and try and get them to run more tests and do more labs because she was convinced until one of the doctors fired her as a patient and they said, get out of my office. Nobody was fitting her narrative and her agenda. So she was getting mad.

[Dax Shepard]

Would you agree that she's now significantly less stable than she was when she arrived?

[Eva Benefield]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

So did you have any kind of theory on what was the catalyst for that? Do we think it was like being pregnant and hormones now more than ever?

[Eva Benefield]

I think that she just stopped getting her way as much. And you can only play that part for so long before you start to get frustrated with the outcome. And so, I mean, it just happened to her in prison. She got put into. What's the word?

[Monica Padman]

Solitary confinement.

[Eva Benefield]

Solitary confinement, yeah, because she assaulted a cop in prison, and they moved her to a new prison in January. So I think she was probably playing like, pretty nice girl and then wasn't getting her way still and got frustrated and assaulted a cop. Same thing.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, man.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so now it's getting really, really dicey for your father because she's starting to accuse him and call people. And Child Protective Service is now getting involved, and your father's under the weight of these accusations. She has the baby, and Monica immediately starts hyperbaric chamber treatments to rid her and the baby of the poison that her dad.

[Eva Benefield]

25 treatments or something.

[Dax Shepard]

They let her 26 consecutive days, 40 hours of treatment. Yeah. There's video of the pictures of the baby in this hyperbaric chamber so that she can get the poison out.

[Monica Padman]

It almost sounds like psychosis. Like, Cohen, we had someone on who he has, like, a schizophrenic adjacent disorder and led to all the psychosis? It kind of sounds like that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Well, that's what these situations leave all of us with, is how much did she herself believe, how much was just evil calculation.

[Eva Benefield]

I think it was both. I think it was evil calculation to start. And then she just got to a point where she started to believe it because she said it so much. Much. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You can convince yourself her ultimate goal was, oh, I'm going to get a divorce and I'm going to take his money.

[Eva Benefield]

I don't know. I think at that point he did not have a lot of money and it was becoming very apparent he had

[Dax Shepard]

just dumped a ton on this.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. I mean, at this point, he was still paying the medical bills for the kid. He was paying for her. He was paying for her mother and for me and then for himself. He was just spread so thin.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm trying to think of the different things that happened during this time, but he wants to see the baby. She will not allow that. And then there's a hearing, and in this hearing, he has to basically prove he has not been poisoning her and that none of these allegations are true. And in fact, that is the outcome. Thank goodness.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

What grade were you in at that point? Are you like a senior, maybe?

[Eva Benefield]

I was around junior, senior year.

[Dax Shepard]

As you're seeing your father go through this stuff, how is it landing? Are you urging him, like, just let this go?

[Eva Benefield]

It was back and forth for a while. He kept me out of a lot of it because I didn't find out that There was over 10 allegations made against him in this time. There was a period where CPS did get involved, and I moved out into my brother's house for six months, and then I moved back. That was right at the end of my senior year. And I moved back in with him and he was just keeping me kind of out of it because I had asked him to. At that point, I said, I don't want to know what's going on. They were trying to reconcile and they'd be together at one point, and then she would do something again and cops would show up at the door and, you know, another allegation. He called me at one point and he was like, hey, I just need you to kind of. I had to speak to someone on the phone just to give a character reference. You know, this is my dad and he's a great guy and he would never hurt anyone.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Eva Benefield]

He did that one hearing. I don't know if that was senior year. I think it was. And the judge said there's not a scintilla of evidence that proved proves that Doug is guilty of any of this. This is ridiculous. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

He was probably pretty embarrassed by all this, too. I can't imagine he wanted you to know he knew he married a girl after 13 days.

[Eva Benefield]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

He knows what a disaster this has been. And he necessarily want you to know she's now accusing him of trying to kill her.

[Monica Padman]

He knows you've been embarrassed basically all.

[Eva Benefield]

So I went and visited. At this point, he had met the baby, they were back together. He was living in Florida. This was second semester my senior year because he got me an apartment in Charleston and he moved to Florida. So there was Christmas where he asked me to go meet my half sister for the first time. And I went down there and I stayed with him in his apartment and I met the baby. So this happened twice. We went to church. And she was wearing a bodycon sparkly sequin dress that went up to her butt cheeks and stilettos into the late night service in Sarasota, Florida. And her mom and the baby and my dad and I walked in, the baby started crying. I was overwhelmed. I had to go step out in the hallway. And her mom and her followed me out there and cornered me. And they basically were saying, why are you crying? Did your dad do something? You know he's out to kill us.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my God.

[Eva Benefield]

The mom was said, here's my number, I'm writing it on a piece of paper. Don't put it in your phone because he can hack our phones and he can get my number and he'll kill me. And I literally looked at her and. And I said, fuck off.

[Monica Padman]

Good.

[Eva Benefield]

At that point I had had enough. I said, my dad is not a killer. He didn't kill me. He didn't kill my mom. Went back into the service, finished the service, went to bed. And I told my dad at that point. But I don't think they had really registered what exactly? Cause I was kind of just like. They just were being really weird and annoying. Fast forward to Easter of the next year. He asked me to go back to Florida again. So I did. And we were all shopping before dinner and Ashley and her mom pulled me into a corner of the store that had a hu. So I guess nobody could hear them. But again, same thing. Your dad tried to kill me, he tried to kill your mom, he's gonna kill us all. And again I just said, leave me alone. I don't know. So the next morning I told my dad, I said, hey, I can't do this anymore. This is the second time they've tried to convince me of that I don't wanna be around them anymore. And he said, he's like, that's it, I'm done. I have tried again and again and again to show this woman that I love her and there's nothing wrong with, with me. I'm going to pack up my car and I'm leaving too. And I said, no, dad, the baby is about to be here to open her Easter basket. I don't think you should leave. You need to have that experience with her. She's old enough to remember that. So I told him to stay. I said, I'm going to go to Charleston. You can come back tomorrow. And he stayed and he didn't come back. So that was like, a moment that I could have been like, good for you. Leave. And I didn't.

[Monica Padman]

But your reason was so kind and generous.

[Dax Shepard]

Also, even if he had come back with you that weekend, he would have been back.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

There was no breaking this cycle without something radical.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Were you feeling abandoned? I mean, you're in high school and you're living in an apartment. Your mom's gone.

[Eva Benefield]

Not really. I thought it was cool you had an apartment.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that is kind of cool.

[Eva Benefield]

I had a triple early out, which meant I only had one class.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh, really?

[Eva Benefield]

So I actually almost didn't graduate because my attendance record was so bad that year or that semester. But at the time, it was in Mount Pleasant. It was in the neighborhood that my best friend and my boyfriend at the time lived in. And so, I mean, everybody would just come over after school. My dad passed through a lot, so I would see him once or twice a week going to North Carolina and home from North Carolina. So I didn't feel too abandoned. And I also. I mean, I texted him all day, every day. I called him all the time. He was still my best friend.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

So we were always talking and hanging out. You know, I was still super close with them.

[Dax Shepard]

God, to have your own apartment and a boyfriend.

[Monica Padman]

That is exciting.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. At some point during this, I guess post Easter, she decides, okay, we're going to be together. We all need a fresh start. Let's all move to Maryland.

[Eva Benefield]

Yes. So that was my freshman year of college, actually.

[Dax Shepard]

You have the worst first year of college of anyone I've ever heard. Because it's 20. 2020.

[Eva Benefield]

So that was going into my sophomore year. I graduated high school 2019. I didn't continue college after that because I told my dad, hey, I'm not letting you pay tuition for me to cheat online school. Like, that's not gonna happen. I didn't know what I wanted to major in yet, so it was going to be a gap year. Covet hit right at the end of my freshman year.

[Dax Shepard]

So they have this plan that they're going to move to Maryland. And your father goes over to the house to pack.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

The Florida house.

[Eva Benefield]

The Florida house.

[Dax Shepard]

The Florida house.

[Eva Benefield]

So he had his apartment. He packed it up. She was living with her mom. He went and packed up their house and had a big U haul in the driveway. She had three guns loaded. One in the pantry, one in a laundry basket down on the floor, and then one in a closet in different rooms.

[Monica Padman]

And there's a baby.

[Eva Benefield]

There's a baby walking around that is a toddler now and can reach into a hamper.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh my God, the stuff stupidity of that is fucking ghastly.

[Eva Benefield]

He was in the room and she just shot him and killed him. She shot him. Didn't hit him enough to kill him immediately. I think he hung on for about two hours before he fully passed. But she waited 15 minutes. She went over to the neighbor's house. There was like 15 minutes in between him getting shot and the cops getting called. So before the cops even arrived, the detective arrived on scene. Her lawyer was already there, there. And she just kind of left him to bleed out. I think she was hoping that he was going to bleed out so he couldn't say anything.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So he was shot through the leg and the arm, but the one through the arm had entered his body and went into his chest.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And then she went over to the neighbor's house and basically tells the neighbor, oh my God, he was assaulting me. I had to kill him. It was self defense. Now this feels very calculated. I don't think she wanted to be evaluated with her delivery on 911. So she delegated it, basically. So now the neighbor's gotta report what happened.

[Eva Benefield]

Right. And 10 minutes before it happened, the mom and the baby went down to the little park nearby. Right before it happened.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, all these guns around and I mean, the fact that it wasn't premeditated is hard to believe.

[Eva Benefield]

Everybody knows you keep your guns in your safe. The safe probably should be the first thing to go in the U Haul. So it's like, why was there one in a backpack in the closet? Closet.

[Monica Padman]

That is so crazy.

[Dax Shepard]

I will add this. We left one detail out, which is your dad, at one point, at the height of this, did write a letter to the sheriff's department accusing Ashley of having a split personality. So it seems like there was a moment where he kind of accepted what he was dealing with. But then of course, they reconciled.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. And he always had the most positive attitude too. Whenever I was dealing with anything, he was almost projecting his false positivity on himself me, because I think he just wanted to believe this isn't happening.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, denial.

[Dax Shepard]

So you start getting concerned. Obviously the following morning, because normally you would have woken up to text of some scripture.

[Eva Benefield]

So the night before, I texted him around 5 and I had said, hey, like we're out at the sandbar. I sent him pictures of what we were doing. We were on the boat and the next morning I went to go text him or I'd check his text and talk to him. And he hadn't sent me a bible verse, so I thought that was kind of weird. But I also knew some mornings he woke up at like 4 and started his day at 4 o' clock and had a meeting at 5 or 6. So I knew that happened sometimes. And he would always get back to me and say, I'm sorry, I had a meeting. There was a couple times, he's like, I did a double workout today. So it was a couple hours. I was like, okay. So I didn't let it get to me at first. And then another hour went by and still nothing. I still have all the texts on my phone. If you kind of pull it to the side, you can see 30 minutes, 30 minutes, 30 minutes, 30 Minutes. And then the texts start turning green. So I knew something was wrong. I started googling car accident. I texted Ashley, I said, hey, have you heard from him recently? I haven't heard from him. Starting to get worried.

[Monica Padman]

God, the trauma.

[Dax Shepard]

Did she respond again?

[Eva Benefield]

No, she didn't. I don't even know if it went through or not because I remember feeling so stupid for even reaching out to her. I deleted it. But I called my friends and all of my friends are like, eva, you have anxiety. You do this when we don't answer fast enough. You know, it's probably just your mom. I called my sister in law and she lived five minutes down the road from the job that I was supposed to start that day. And so I went over to her house to hang out and I was telling her and she was like, eva, you have nothing to worry about. Everything's fine. He'll get back to you. And we were sitting in there in the living room and I got the call from my uncle and it was both of my uncles on the phone. I don't know if they were together or they had just patched each other in at the same time. Yeah, he said there had been an accident. And I said, what happened? And he said, your dad's. And my initial reaction was, he's dead and she killed him. And so that's what I said. I said, I was like, is he alive? He said, no. And I said, she did it, didn't she? And he said, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Oh.

[Eva Benefield]

So that was that.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, now, well, that's simply not enough for you to go through. So now we've got to have a media circus.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

What do you do with that? Is it this same kind of. Kind of shutdown? I really can't even process what this.

[Eva Benefield]

In that moment.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

My uncles were talking and talking and talking, and I said, hold on. And I set my phone down and I looked at my sister in law. They had their newborn and she put the baby down on the couch and I crawled up into her lap and I just looked at her. I said, I don't have parents. And she said, I know. She was crying. I wasn't crying. I was in shock. But I had friends down the street because it was in the same neighborhood that my apartment was in too. And we were all going to hang out after my shift. So I called my friends and I said, hey, are y' all so still there? I drove over there. I couldn't even get my foot to fully step down on the pedal because my foot was shaking so much. I sat down on the porch and my friend, he was like my best friend, and he said, what happened? And I said, she killed him. And everybody just kind of looked at me. They said, all right, what are we doing tonight? You know, what are we going to do? We had plans tonight. Are we going to continue the plans? And I said, I would like to continue the plans. I think that it's about to get pretty hairy with the media.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, boy. I mean, by the way, at 19, this would be my solution. Like, I don't even know what your solution, but I would have been drunk very quickly.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, I was drunk shortly after that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It's just too much. And I'm like, okay, let's add that way too much. Let's add that to the mix and see if that helps. Okay, so how soon after does the first bit of media attention start?

[Eva Benefield]

I mean, within a couple hours, there was the local news doing the Estranged Wife shoots husband in Sarasota, Florida. And then a few weeks later, maybe we got some calls from some big bigger media. Then it just kind of snowballed from there.

[Dax Shepard]

Some part of me that would be exciting in some way, like, oh, my God, news are calling me. That would be an exciting element for me. Having had nothing spectacular happen to me, I might have initially been like, I

[Eva Benefield]

don't think that I ever felt excited about it. I just kind of said yes to everything. I didn't ever feel Nervous. So I just kind of kept doing it. And, you know, I think that my family, my dad's brother and my family just kept saying, you're doing such a great job. You know, you're so well spoken. You can really hold your own for your dad. And that's when I was like, you know what? Yeah. People need to know that he was a good guy and he needs to have some justice. And this doesn't make me nervous. So I'm just gonna keep doing it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah. You're representing your family well.

[Eva Benefield]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

So this turns quickly into. Yeah. Media attention, TV specials, tabloids, social media scrutiny.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like the full storm takes off and I think you can sense people, they want an emotional performance from you.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. It was very tabloidy. It was very.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Young woman, older man.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. And the daughter that's left alone. There's always these tear jerker questions. I could sense that they wanted some sort of emotional reaction online for the clickbait.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Oh, and did you feel like stubborn? Like. I'm not giving them that.

[Eva Benefield]

Not really. I just can't cry in front of people.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

I'm so. I wouldn't say numb to it, but it doesn't really phase me. I can talk about the most gruesome things I've dealt with this entire time. And I think the other side, the media likes that because everybody wants to know I wasn't intentionally feeding into it. I'm just like, well, I'm an open book and I don't have an issue talking about it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. But it's also a very heightened experience to turn on the TV and see yourself on it.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. Well, it wasn't weird. I remember the first. It was a CVS 48 hours that I did and it came on the TV and I was like, the camera does add 20 pounds. That's all I can think about. So honestly, it wasn't really exciting for me to see myself on tv. I was more annoyed at some of the media was still trying to paint my dad in this terrible light. So I was like, okay, I have to keep going.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. Entertaining the notion that it was self defense maybe.

[Monica Padman]

So was she in jail? Was she then did she get.

[Eva Benefield]

She was on house arrest. Oh, yeah. She was in jail for like 10 days or something. Afterwards she got put on. On house arrest.

[Dax Shepard]

When do you start making tiktoks? Before the trial or during the trial?

[Eva Benefield]

That was 2020. When it happened. I started my first TikTok that I made about. It was December, January of 2020. 2021 is I woke up with millions of likes, thousands of comments, millions of views.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Eva Benefield]

And then within a week or two, I had 200,000 followers and experience explain

[Dax Shepard]

the TikToks you were making at that point.

[Eva Benefield]

I wasn't really doing a whole lot of talking on TikTok, but I had used a sound or two that just was fitting of like, mom died, dad remarried, boom, dad murdered. So it wasn't a lot of context. And I think that was just enough for people to comment, what the, you know, what did I just watch and then replay it and then the algorithm picks up on it. So it just got very widespread very quickly.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And you are are mostly exploring some dark humor throughout all this.

[Eva Benefield]

Oh, it was all jokes. The only time I didn't joke about it was explaining it, but even then I just joked about it. So what else am I going to say about.

[Dax Shepard]

I feel like I'm watching a playbook of exactly how I would have handled it, to be honest. Thank you. My immediate reaction to heartbreak, sorrow, everything is a joke almost immediately. I'm almost in the middle of watching something horrendous and I'm already kind of. This is my defense mechanism.

[Eva Benefield]

I crack jokes all the time about things I probably shouldn't, which is not great. But my friends and I, I stayed over at my friend's house for probably a week after all of that happened, the night we got drunk. And then we just kind of continued the party for a week after that. And at that point the orphan jokes started rolling around. Cause it was like, well, you visit like our orphan, she's just hanging out on her couch. And they didn't care. They wanted me to, but the orphan jokes came on within days.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Whatever you need to do to survive something like that, like no one can judge it.

[Dax Shepard]

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[Monica Padman]

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[Dax Shepard]

We had the most horrific event happen out of respect for the people involved. I won't even detail but suffice to say we had roommates and I was with three of them and we got this completely tragic bit of information. I received it first and I had to go tell my other two roommates who were with me out of town. And at the end of explaining it to him I already had the punchline. Yeah, I had a joke. And then they're all so fucked up too because we're all from fucked up houses. They were right on it. It's just like that's just how we did it.

[Eva Benefield]

It's funny. I mean you to laugh sometimes.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that was my approach. But I also would be juggling with that often feeling guilty that I wasn't having the reaction everyone thought I should.

[Eva Benefield]

I did. That happened with my mom too is I never really had this breakdown and I think after the murder happened I was kind of waiting to see am I going to crack? Cuz I immediately my first reaction was oh my God. My parents second reaction was oh my God. Rent's due in three days. So I immediately had to start thinking how am I going to pay my bills? How am I going to do this? The house mortgage fell on me. There were so many pieces to pick up that I was just left to deal with that. I didn't have a second to sit down and think oh my God, what just happened?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, you're 20 years old.

[Eva Benefield]

I was like joking and then somebody was trying to serve me for the mortgage on the house. So it was like I couldn't have

[Monica Padman]

the love of really wallowing in it

[Dax Shepard]

while another parent nurtured you.

[Eva Benefield]

And like I couldn't afford therapy so I just kind of did what I had to do.

[Dax Shepard]

I always had a suspicion that if I were to let it break through, I would never recover.

[Eva Benefield]

That's why I haven't to this day gone to any sort of therapy. I went to a psychiatrist for like two weeks after the pre trial. Cause I think that messed me up. I couldn't sleep for days after the pre trial, but I was almost scared. Everyone kept saying, well, maybe if talk therapy isn't for you, EMDR might. Because that's. What if you just can't get it out, it's subconscious. And that is. I had a lot of like, nervous system issues after that. It was coming out in different ways. So I thought maybe it is just a nervous system thing. But I didn't want to tap into that because that's a can of worms that I don't know if I open it, what's going to come out.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you have any autoimmune stuff?

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, I had some autoimmune stuff. I had blood sugar dysregulation. I had just like the most random things. A lot of hormonal issues.

[Dax Shepard]

The body knows. It doesn't give a fuck. The body doesn't get what the. Like, oh, we're just gonna ignore this and focus on something else and run faster forward.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

The body's like, no, you're not.

[Eva Benefield]

No. So that's what really got me into like the health and wellness scene and exercise and just nutrition. Because I had to figure out how to fix all of that too.

[Dax Shepard]

So what was it about the pre trial that was so disturbing?

[Eva Benefield]

So it was only one day, and it was basically whether or not it was gonna go to trial for murder if they. It was out of self defense or not. But it was one day and they had all these. It was mostly evidence just thrown up on the screen. And so all day they were going, this is evidence. Picture number this. You're about to see this. And they would put it up on the screen. And then halfway through the day or so, or towards the end of the day, Suzanne o' Donnell came up to me and she said, hey, what we're about to put up on the screen, some of it might be graphic. If you don't want to see it, we don't have to show it up there. But if you want media to see it, we have to show it. I said, well, I want media to see what she did to my dad. And there was like a couple times that I had seen a few more graphic pictures, but it wasn't anything with my dad in it. But I think something glitched or they didn't announce it because I thought, well, if they announce it, then I can just look down before I see it. They didn't announce it. And just boom. Dad's autopsy pictures, like chest up, eyes open, blood on the face, like literally out the of of a horror movie on the screen. Big screen. And so I looked at it and it was almost like I couldn't look away. And then I looked down and then I sat there for a second and then I just looked at my best friend and I said, I have to go outside. And I thought I was doing such a good job keeping it in, but there was kind of a door and then a little space and then another door out into the hallway. And I like wailed out before I could get outside. I told her like a day or two later. I was like, you know, I think I really held it together. She said, no, everybody heard that.

[Monica Padman]

It's okay that they heard that. That's the reaction of someone seeing their dad.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

In that state.

[Eva Benefield]

I did go to a psychiatrist for a couple weeks after that. Cuz every time I closed my eyes for weeks after that, I couldn't fall asleep.

[Dax Shepard]

You should never ever have to see, oh my God. Someone you love injured like that and hurt. How soon after that is the trial?

[Eva Benefield]

One year. Exactly. So that was July 2023 and then July 2020.

[Dax Shepard]

And in the book that's kind of more agonizing than anything else. Yeah, the whole waiting for justice.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, the trials. It was also around the time, I don't know if y' all are familiar with the Murdaughs in Yale. So that happened around the same time as my dad's stuff. And so. But that was going to trial a lot quicker. So I kept thinking, maybe this is going to go to trial pretty quick and I can get justice. And it just kept getting pushed and pushed and they would file something else. And she switched lawyers, so they have to. The pre trial finally happened in 2023, and then it was a year, which is typical, I think, for the justice system to have a year later after the pretrial. So it wasn't too far. But yeah, it was four years of waiting for this, which was gruesome.

[Dax Shepard]

You just were like, I've got to know she's going away. Was the anxiety of that. Like, I must know she's going to pay for this kind of.

[Eva Benefield]

At that point, I don't want to say I didn't care, but it had taken so long and I had finally gotten My feet back on the ground and my life set up and I was heading in a good direction. And I was just like, you know, if she goes to prison, she goes to prison. If she doesn't. I think that's what I told myself. Also, subconsciously, I was kind of hoping it would kind of just be over with. But it was also this weight on my shoulders of knowing it was going to happen.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

And anticipating the outcome.

[Monica Padman]

Talking about anxiety.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, it was just like a mental. Every day I would wake up and think, oh, it still hasn't happened yet. You know what's going to happen when it does?

[Monica Padman]

There's no closure.

[Eva Benefield]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you start between the pre trial and the trial? Is that when you start your company?

[Eva Benefield]

Oh, yeah. I actually started Ghost Cowboy in 2021. It kind of just took off very fast.

[Dax Shepard]

Tell me, how did you get the idea for it?

[Eva Benefield]

It started randomly. I was working, doing social media for a company based out of Charleston. They had all in house production, so they had the T shirt printing machines, the embroidery machines, the shipping. I had a couple of funny. There was like, memes. It was back when Kanye and Pete Davidson had their rivalry.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, huh.

[Eva Benefield]

So I hadn't. Yeah, I hadn't had the website set up yet, but I had this idea for myself too. I just. I wasn't gonna make a T shirt and sell it, but I was like, oh, I'd wear a funny T shirt with. It was like Kanye holding up stick figure drawings and he had crossed out Pete on it or something. And I put that on the T shirt and I wore it in a TikTok and it went crazy. I mean, it was like 120,000 views within a first couple hours. So I told my boss, I said, hey, should I put it up on the website? They had like an old website they weren't using. He said, yeah, why not? And it did great. And I said, okay, if I do that again. He had thrown me like a grand or something. I saw the sales. I was like, I know what kind of brand T shirt we were using. Like, that blank was cheap. You know, he threw me chump change. So I said, if I do this again, I want 50% of the profit. He said, okay, if you do it again. And then I did it again. And then the third meme T shirt went super crazy viral. And at that point, I said, okay, I kind of want to just have a stab at this T shirt thing. And so I set up my own website. Ghost Cowboy has no meaning behind the name. I actually don't love the name of it. But, you know, it was just so random and people liked it.

[Dax Shepard]

We have a catchphrase in our description that we can't stand anymore.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, yeah. Messiness of being human.

[Dax Shepard]

We don't like it. Too cute. That's something about it.

[Eva Benefield]

Everybody knows it. So I was an artist, and I didn't want to get known for the pictures taken off of the Internet and memes and stuff. So I just started using my Tik Tok. Every day for 60 days. I drew something. And I think that people really liked the fact that I could draw it and then immediately go put it on the printer and print the shirt and then put it up on the website so people would comment, you know, you should draw this, or you should do this kind of shirt and this kind of color. You should do this on a hoodie or a crew neck. And so for two months straight, a new shirt every single day. And that series started picking up some heat. And that's just what took the company off.

[Kristen Bell]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

And now you do all kinds of goods. Yeah. What other things do you guys?

[Eva Benefield]

I do sweatshirts, T shirts, crew necks. I do hats occasionally. It's kind of whatever I'm feeling. I do a new design every, every week. And yeah, it's just me back there in the warehouse because I split from that guy. We become business partners over a handshake. I was young. I was 21. I didn't really know what I was doing. And eventually I just was like, you know, this is all my art. I'm doing all of the work for this. I was giving him overhead to pay his employees to do the production for me. So I was just like, I'm gonna step away and do this all by myself. And there was a little bit of a backfire on that. He said, no, and you're an employee. I said, no, I'm not.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

So I had to take some legal action, which took about a year. So I wasn't ever able to really get into the lawsuit details. But I came home from the murder trial and immediately had to get on call with my two attorneys because I was still dealing with this lawsuit. I was paying myself nothing because I had to afford this lawsuit.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

And eventually it settled. And that was. Was kind of that. It's back. But I lost all of the employees. I had to start fresh with the production. So I got things back to, like, the volume that I was doing sale wise. But it's just me back there. So now customers still think that it's like a full blown team. No it's just me in the back of a warehouse printing out the order.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow. Well, you have this theme recurrent in your book, which is creation is the best response to destruction.

[Eva Benefield]

Yes. My dad taught me how to paint and to draw. As soon as I could hold a pencil, I was drawing stuff. And I was always upstairs in my room painting something or doing a craft or. That was just kind of how I like to spend my time as a really young kid. And then I got into middle school, and I realized, you know, I actually am kind of pretty good at the portraits thing. So I started doing more portraits. And my dad was a phenomenal artist. I mean, could paint any. Anything you asked him to. Just. It was insane how good of an artist he was. And he taught me how to do all of that. And then it was an outlet for me. I would either go on a run or I'd go paint something that kind of just got myself out of my head.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So the trial a. In the trial, when that finally happened, did you guys ever have moments? Did you guys lock eyes ever?

[Eva Benefield]

No, she didn't look at. I think the first time I saw her was in the hallway, and I lost it, because at that point, I hadn't seen her in so many years. And I had to run into the bathroom. I cried. I came back out. I was like, all right, let's do this. Ever since then, that entire trial, I was trying to stand right there and make her look at me. Her eyes were glued to the floor or glued to her little notepad in front of her, and she was just scribbling away. Even during the victim's impact statement, she wouldn't have even look up.

[Dax Shepard]

There's demonstrations going on outside the courthouse.

[Eva Benefield]

Oh, yeah, the purple people. They were all in purple because purple is the women's survivor, like, the domestic violence survivor color. That was a funny story. The last day of the trial, which, obviously, I support women, and I want to get women out of domestic violence situations, but we were against those people that were wearing purple and protesting the entire two weeks, blaring crazy. They had her child, my dad's child, out there with a picture of her on a T shirt screaming, free my mom. Or something like that. This kid is 6 years old. She doesn't know what she's doing. And some reporter shoving a camera in the kid's face. It was ridiculous. But, yeah. The last day of the trial, my uncle wore purple to the courthouse. We were like, are you joking? Like, really? Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Just on accident.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Is he colorblind? Did you Learn on that day.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, I guess that might have been his excuse that day, but no.

[Dax Shepard]

What are you talking about?

[Eva Benefield]

This is red. No. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Isn't that so frustrating when you're like, I'm on your side technically.

[Eva Benefield]

And yet so hard to navigate that? Because at that point, like, I had my own platform. I didn't want people to think that I didn't. And Reddit was not a nice place for me.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not a nice flag.

[Eva Benefield]

Instagram and TikTok were great. All the comments had been so kind, but Reddit and Twitter I could not love.

[Dax Shepard]

Now those are more toxic.

[Eva Benefield]

People were saying, I have my dad's eyes. But there was one that was like, she's going to turn out to be an abuser just like her father because they have the same eyes or something. I was like, really? You're really going to say that?

[Monica Padman]

What is wrong with you?

[Eva Benefield]

I don't know.

[Dax Shepard]

Also, a lot of church supporters, I

[Eva Benefield]

don't want to say that they had faked being friends with those people to kind of gain support in the community, but I kind of feel like that's something they would do. Yeah, I didn't want to look like a bad person. Bashing.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You're going up against like a Woman's Defense Fund League coalition in the church and then you're the victim. Really? Upside down.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you learn anything in the trial that was upsetting or you wish you just never learned about your dad? Because part of the defense is going to be them trying to paint your father as this terrible person. And then you're going to inadvertently learn all kinds of stuff about your dad that maybe no one needs to ever learn.

[Eva Benefield]

I didn't really not know anything. You know, everything was kind of already made aware to me before. There were text messages between them. Some interesting, sexy text messages that you'd rather not see. She's like, come on, D. Yeah, like, there was a couple reports where they talked about, like, choking and all the sexual stuff they wanted to do. I'm just gross. But there was one thing he texted Ashley at one point that he had said, renee doesn't exist to me or something because she kept bringing my mom up. And he had said that, like, she doesn't exist to me anymore because he's

[Dax Shepard]

got to pacify her.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. That was a little gut wrenching because, I mean, I'd always known my dad to just love my mom to piece of it.

[Kristen Bell]

And it wasn't true.

[Eva Benefield]

It wasn't true. Yeah, I know it wasn't true.

[Monica Padman]

But that's of course, it's hard to see that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah. What did you learn about the power of charisma during that trial?

[Eva Benefield]

I mean, everything. She just had her agenda set, and she just would do anything to try and force the agenda. Like the alligator tears on stand. That's what everybody said when she was crying and she looked worse on certain days, was dressing just the whole thing. She was playing a role.

[Dax Shepard]

She's kind of built to play that

[Monica Padman]

she's been doing it. She's been playing a role for years, her whole life.

[Eva Benefield]

And that's what I put in my impact statement. I said, you know, this is a role that you finally thought you were going to get and keep or something, or the best performance of your life. That's what I said. And, you know, she tried.

[Dax Shepard]

Now, post trial, you have some, like, reckoning to do. You've got to kind of figure out what. What's ahead. And I'm curious.

[Monica Padman]

She's convicted. Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

She got found guilty of manslaughter. So she got 20 years, plus 10 years of probation, but obviously that could be shorter.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah, it was five to one at first with the jury. She was gonna get murder two, but then all five came down to meet the one at manslaughter. I don't know the reasoning, but that was really annoying to hear. I thought it was murder one.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

It was first degree. There was also reports that came out during the end of that that two different people had said that she had reached out about hiring a hitman, but it wasn't enough evidence to back it up.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. To submit that. So were you expecting some closure or sense of relief once she was convicted and found guilty? That did not come. Or did you not even expect it or tell me all the wave of emotions post.

[Eva Benefield]

I was relieved post trial for sure. Ready to get out of Sarasota and never have to go back. I kind of had done a really good job of giving myself the closure, so I wasn't looking to the verdict for validation, you know, because it was like, well, whatever she gets, my dad's dead. There's no bringing him back. And I already have everything that I need at this point, so I just need to figure it out on my own. But it did feel good to have that behind me. And even the next summer, because I had two summers in a row of anticipating some sort of trial, I was anxious for a little bit, and I couldn't figure out why until I realized, oh, this is the first summer that I'm not dealing with my business in a Lawsuit. I'm not dealing with a murder trial. It's just quiet.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

And I don't have to deal with anything anymore.

[Dax Shepard]

But that can also be scary.

[Eva Benefield]

Oh, I was freaking out. My roommate at the time was like, well, maybe it's because, like, you just are not used to being comfortable.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Just you're a rough setting and the nervous system, the cortisol. Like he had been living at a very, very heightened for years now.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You've gotta, like, figure out how we're moving forward. And I know many of the reasons, but tell me some of the things that you focused on and became your path out of this whole chapter.

[Eva Benefield]

I knew that I had built my platform up to this point. And when I had started posting, the reason I kept posting was I wanted to help people because I'd get so many comments and DMs and people coming up to me in grocery stores saying, hey, I'm dealing with this. And you helped me laugh about it or you helped me look at it in a different light. Or I got a comment the other day that said, I'm dealing with something and I'm gonna start referencing your videos anytime I start to feel alone. And that just made me feel so good because I. I had felt so alone. Sometimes I still do. None of my friends are doing the things that I'm doing right now or I was doing. And it's kind of scary being like, I don't have a fallback plan. I'm doing this on my own. I don't really have a.

[Monica Padman]

Relax.

[Dax Shepard]

You talk about how isolating the experience is, cuz. Yeah. Who on earth can relate to you, really? Your boyfriend of three and a half years was urging you to, like, get over yourself.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, get over it.

[Dax Shepard]

Which ended that relationship.

[Eva Benefield]

After my dad was. I realized that, yes, it was very isolating. And first of all, I mean, it was like a high school into college relationship. But he's told me one. I was like, get over it. And I realized we're just on different paths right now. You have your parents, you have your fallback plan. This is my plan B.

[Dax Shepard]

This is my safety net is plan B. Unfortunately, we're down to that.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. So I was just like, I just need to figure out what I'm doing. And it really just made me think, okay, we are just not meant to be together right now. You know, And I just need to figure out my life. Also, I didn't handle it with Grace. I think I was like blacked out. Not drunk, but just in a daze of what is Going on with my life right now.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Eva Benefield]

I started posting on social media and just realizing I can help people feel less alone because I needed a me in that moment, and I didn't have a me. So I just kept doing that, and I built this community that made me feel less alone. I helped other people, and I wanted to finish the book and get that out there.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, you have really good habits. You have art, you're creating nonstop. You have your business, which is great. Sully's still with us.

[Eva Benefield]

Oh, Sully.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, the dog is still with us.

[Monica Padman]

Does.

[Eva Benefield]

He's 13, but he acts like a puppy, so.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my gosh. He's been through a lot with you.

[Eva Benefield]

I say that if he could write a book, his book, he would do a lot better than mine.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Tell me how the ocean in Charleston and all those elements you've come to lean on and how helpful they've been.

[Eva Benefield]

So right when I started writing Ghost Girl, I had just moved into my house on Olive Palms. I started going down a really dark path. I mean, I was going out every single night. I started my business. I was making money. I was doing on my own. I was drinking, I was partying. And then I had one terrible, terrible, terrible hangover and realized that I need to stop doing this because it is not the correct. I'm blowing money. I'm waking up at 10am or 11am every day or 1pm like, just not good habits. And I found this house and I moved out. And I had always. My parents saying, growing up, you know, we're going to move to the beach one day. Or we were always out there, the beach. We were always in the marsh. We were always doing something outside. And so I saw this house I had bought, a 1978 F100 that I was rebuilding, and I sold that.

[Dax Shepard]

Great choice. I just want to tip my hat to you.

[Eva Benefield]

Thank you. I loved that truck. But I sold it so I could afford two rents because I had my apartment in Mount Pleasant. And I found this house and I had to have it. I sold it so I could afford the two rents to get rid of my old lease and move into this beach house. And I went dark. I got back to my old self of waking up early. I was getting back into shape. I was running all the time. I had Sully. I had my business, and I just kind of had a few friends and my roommate, and I just was out at the beach every single day. And I had the luxury of my own business. So if the UV was high, I was going to go Tan.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Your Instagram is beach, beach, beach, beach, beach, beach, beach, beach. I can tell that's like a huge source for you.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah. Tomorrow the UV is in 11 and I'm not there.

[Monica Padman]

I'm flying.

[Dax Shepard]

I love that you're chasing you.

[Monica Padman]

It's hot. It's nice out here.

[Eva Benefield]

Oh, it's so nice. But I'll be on an airplane tomorrow, so I wish I got to experience the outside. Today was great, but. Yeah, no, I saw a post on Instagram today and it said, the UV is my stock market. I'm checking it every single day. I time my mornings. If I don't have to go to the warehouse, I'll be like, okay, wake up at five. I was up until recently training for a marathon. So it was, you know, an hour, hour and a half every morning of running and then lifting and then doing this. So I'd be like, all right, if I can finish all my things by 11, I can be on the beach by 11:30 and then can go to the warehouse at. That was like my summer schedule was in.

[Dax Shepard]

This is a good existence.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you run in the marathon?

[Eva Benefield]

No. So this happened to me last fall, too. I had a different race and I was actually supposed to be in Ventura last weekend to run it, but I tore something in my glute and it caused it. Band syndrome. Yeah. And I got to a point where I could run on it, but not well. And at that point, I think I was so emotionally. Work is busy. The book is coming out. I have a lot of things going on, and my PT said, I can expect you to run it, but come home injured even more. I said, why would I do that? Yeah, exactly. So I have a fall race that I'm planning on now.

[Monica Padman]

Nice.

[Dax Shepard]

I love the voice of your book. It's very young, and I say that as a compliment.

[Eva Benefield]

That's kind of the biggest thing I get.

[Dax Shepard]

I really, really dig it, though. I'm really glad you aren't trying to purport to be some 50 year old looking back on your life with all the answers. Like, there's something about all the current vernacular you're using and just the way you're talking is very, very useful book. I think, like, young people would love reading this book.

[Eva Benefield]

I also started writing it in 2021, so I moved into the beach house and then I started writing it. I mean, I was younger and so I've kind of grown into it. And it's interesting because I'll go back and read some of it and be like, I Wouldn't say that now, but it's good.

[Monica Padman]

It's of that moment.

[Eva Benefield]

It really captures four years of my life and into now.

[Dax Shepard]

It's almost impossible to believe that you're doing as well as you are. I mean, it's like, I feel like I want in 10,000 people all these things could happen to, and you would still be functional and building and creating. It's crazy.

[Eva Benefield]

Well, so my mom and my dad always said everything happens for a reason. And I had so many weird instances where that just kind of came to fruition after the fact that that was the biggest thing I just. I told myself for so long of, like, everything happens for a reason. It sucks, but it's supposed to happen. My brother, ex military, I had him kind of in my ear. Almost like David Goggins in your ear. Just like, suck it up, get through it. And so I did have. Have this kind of war path of, you know, I'm just gonna have relentless positivity, and that's just what's gonna get me through. And then, I mean, obviously, eventually I did start getting into the neuroscience of it all and just how you can really train your brain to get through and stay positive.

[Dax Shepard]

We're insanely resilient, and you're a premium example. That is fucking the highest example.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I really hope everyone checks this book out, and I hope if you have a young girl in your life, you buy the book for her. It's called Ghost Girl Surviving the Black Swan Murder. Eva, real pleasure to meet you. Thanks so much for being willing to tell us the story.

[Monica Padman]

Great.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. All right, let's get you some UV. Let's try to get a 12.

[Eva Benefield]

What's the apex?

[Dax Shepard]

Just a quick reminder that as part of our summer break, here's a rerun of one of our favorite fact checks. Two peas in an hour, Monica. I'm actually concerned.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh, a little scary. That's a lot of.

[Monica Padman]

I only pee once a day.

[Dax Shepard]

Once a day. Know. I mean, in two, in an hour,

[Kristen Bell]

you're like, some would think that's scary,

[Dax Shepard]

but initially that part's scary. But then you get used to that.

[Monica Padman]

That's right.

[Dax Shepard]

And then it's scary if she goes twice in an hour.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Well, I did think for a minute that I was getting a uti, but I'm not.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Kristen Bell]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

It's my mom's fault because she.

[Dax Shepard]

She gave you dirty underwear?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, she does my laundry. No, she takes cranberry pills. She's been taking them for a long, long, long time. And she, like, swears by the cranberry pills. And so I started taking them for a while, and then I stopped. And so when I was home for Christmas, she was taking hers. And she said, are you still taking your cranberry pills? And I said, no, I'm not taking them anymore. And she's like, why? Yeah, she's like, why? You should take them. Whatever. And I was like, I'm not taking them. And then on New Year's Day, I called and we were talking about our resolutions, and she said, what are your resolutions? Cranberry pills. And I was so annoyed. I was like, no, I'm not doing it. Like three or four days later, I was like, I think I'm getting great. And I had to go pick up some good old cranberry pills.

[Dax Shepard]

She'd be so happy, right? How could she not?

[Monica Padman]

I just told her I'm back taking the cranberry pills. I didn't tell her.

[Dax Shepard]

You didn't admit.

[Monica Padman]

No, I didn't.

[Dax Shepard]

It was under duress.

[Monica Padman]

I did not.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I'll just say in a forthcoming episode soon, next week.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

We have a guest on who's talking about throwing a birthday party. And I went on and on about how I don't want a birthday party. Half the episode is about how I don't want a birthday party. And we walked out of the garage from that interview. And I was like, that's weird. Kristin's got a man over in the swimming pool.

[Monica Padman]

A big man.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I did. Did not notice it was Aaron at first. I was just like, oh, she's got a man over. I saw a little bit of There's a woman in the mix. And I'm like, oh, these are her singing friends over.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So then I come around the. The hedges and I see my son's here. Sharon Beasley.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. And I go, he's in the hot tub.

[Dax Shepard]

My very first thought, not to get too dark for the cherries, but this is our past. I'm like, the only time Aaron has ever shown up in California without letting me know he was. Was coming was the day I opened my apartment door in Santa Monica. There was standing there, and it looked like he had been drugged behind a car for a week and he had been smoking crack for five days.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, you can't.

[Dax Shepard]

A tiny moment of I think I'm going to die or go get on an airplane and fly to my dad. He got on an airplane.

[Monica Padman]

So you thought. You thought something bad was happening.

[Dax Shepard]

I was already sober for a year maybe at that point.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I just got a bit of a ptsd. Like, why would Aaron just be here without telling me he's coming?

[Monica Padman]

But did it make you feel better that he was in the hot tub and laughing?

[Kristen Bell]

Well, I said, surprise. And he goes, are you coming off of crack again? And I said, I'm here and I'm healthy.

[Eva Benefield]

Oh, good.

[Monica Padman]

I didn't really think that Ruthie was there too.

[Dax Shepard]

But you never know. She might have been like, we gotta get Aaron to back in this house.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, God.

[Dax Shepard]

It wasn't that really deep. As I'm saying. I just had this really weird moment where this has only happened one other time. So Kristen at that point had to acknowledge you're having a surprise party. I've planned a party. And I brought Aaron and Ruthie here for the party. And then I was really excited.

[Monica Padman]

Good.

[Dax Shepard]

Cause I didn't have to ask anyone to come. I didn't have to get scared about that. There wasn't a bunch of time for me to worry about who's not gonna show up. Cause it was just gonna be the next day, which was last night.

[Monica Padman]

It was perfect timing. She planned. She knew she was gonna tell you, which I thought was a good plan. That there wasn't gonna be a real jump out moment. And also, Rob and I did great acting because during that interview, we all knew.

[Dax Shepard]

You already knew.

[Monica Padman]

Of course we knew.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you feel so bad for me? Like, what a dumb, dumb. He does. He's digging himself deeper and deeper.

[Monica Padman]

No, I was just like, oh, this is gonna be a funny moment.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

But then I also was like, if he is then up mad that this is happening or anxious. We had an interview scheduled the day of your party, which was yesterday. Yeah. And it was scheduled for 2 o'. Clock. The party started at 5 o'. Clock.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And I was like, oh, no. Okay. I think we should probably move up the recording. When is she going to tell him? Because he needs to have enough time to do his research. He's going to be mad if he doesn't have enough time to do his research and if he already doesn't want the party.

[Dax Shepard]

How I'm gonna react to everything. I'm learning terrible stuff about myself right now.

[Monica Padman]

The party to happen, he's gonna be even more mad about it.

[Dax Shepard]

He's gonna hit people, he's gonna hit the children.

[Monica Padman]

But you were very happy.

[Dax Shepard]

Hey, my son's there. So I am happy right away. Aaron's here. This is unexpected. I had just seen him a couple days before in Detroit.

[Kristen Bell]

I mean, which was a surprise or

[Dax Shepard]

it was last minute.

[Kristen Bell]

Last minute. And so exciting. I was like, oh, I get to see dad before my trip and get to pretend that it's our last night together. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But Aaron, been here for 10 minutes. But, boy, we've already had a very eventful trip.

[Monica Padman]

Yep.

[Dax Shepard]

So yesterday, before the interview and the fact check that was moved up, I said, you want to go for a ride in the new station? To which Aaron was like, absolutely. So we went for a little rip around town. It was so fun. And then I was like, let's quickly. I think we can. Before the fact check, we get some eggs. So we stop at Cafe101. We parallel park the wagon on the street. Street. We go inside, we sit down. We're there for, I don't know, a minute and a half. And a stranger walks in. And he looks at me and goes, white car. And I go, yeah. And he goes, it's on fire.

[Monica Padman]

Horrible.

[Dax Shepard]

And I just.

[Monica Padman]

Ptsd.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God.

[Monica Padman]

Too many fires in this city.

[Dax Shepard]

I sprint out of the restaurant. I'm. I'm fully expecting it to be engulfed in flames. So we sprint outside, get to the wagon. Sure enough, there is smoke coming out, out of the hood. Pull the hood pins, open it up. A wiring harness is on fire. There's flames. I don't know how this worked. Did you see this happen?

[Kristen Bell]

The spit?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. Yeah, I just went. I spit as hard as I could

[Kristen Bell]

at the fire, and it went out.

[Dax Shepard]

It went out. I might have a superpower I didn't know about.

[Kristen Bell]

I was just grabbing a fire extinguisher. I couldn't figure out how to pull the plastic pin off. And by the time I got the pin, I was watching him, and he went. And the fire was gone. It's just smoldering.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know how that worked.

[Monica Padman]

I do worry about that with fires, about using the fire extinguisher, because it's not something you can practice.

[Kristen Bell]

Well, you should. I guess. I guess I realize that. Oh, I should know how to do this.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I know. I have one by my bed, and I look at it a lot, and I think, I don't really know how.

[Kristen Bell]

You should get the safety off and everything ready to go.

[Dax Shepard]

It seems really simple. And then also, when you think about it, it seems really hard.

[Monica Padman]

There's a video of Taylor Swift trying to use one in her kitchen. And she's also like, what the fuck?

[Dax Shepard]

She didn't do a good job.

[Monica Padman]

She did end up doing a good job, as she always does.

[Dax Shepard]

Good job.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Was something on fire in front of her?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, in her kitchen. Oh, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And someone was running video.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And then I'm piecing together because there's now a woman behind the car who I guess was either parking or got in her car. And then what became obvious is she must have got the hotel guy. But I do wonder, had we not just had the fires if like she would have been so incredibly. She might have saw smoke coming out of a car. Like, it's not my problem exactly. But yeah. Everyone's on such high alert that I think she immediately.

[Monica Padman]

I think that's right. She's like this whole area is about to.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

Like ignite.

[Dax Shepard]

I was then thinking like, oh my God, what if I had set another

[Monica Padman]

round of fires in finally got Los Feliz.

[Dax Shepard]

People have been like that entitled bastard.

[Monica Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

Why is he gonna have these cars that catch on fire?

[Monica Padman]

Old new cars that keep catching.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Kristen Bell]

He can afford a new one. But he bought an old one.

[Dax Shepard]

He should be driving electric. That wouldn't caught on fire.

[Kristen Bell]

You went near the end of it.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, but you can drown in them. I shouldn't say that.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, when they catch on fire, you can't go breathe anywhere near them, as we're now finding out. That's the crazy part.

[Monica Padman]

But also, you know that horrible story and I don't know all the details, so I don't. And it's very Sad, but Mitch McConnell's sister in law drove into a pond. Yes. In a Tesla. And like couldn't get out and died.

[Kristen Bell]

Ooh.

[Monica Padman]

And I think it might have to do with that Tesla. It probably shuts down.

[Dax Shepard]

The door opens electrically, mechanically, or I think I don't want to be sued. I think there's a release on there as well. If you had read the manual and practiced like a fire.

[Monica Padman]

No one's doing that.

[Kristen Bell]

It's in the door. It's right there.

[Dax Shepard]

It's what?

[Eva Benefield]

It's right there in the door, though.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay.

[Monica Padman]

Well, apparently people like came and tried and they. They were there and they couldn't.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I'm vaguely aware of that.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I probably talked about it before.

[Dax Shepard]

I think you did. It was when you were wanting everyone to have a window smashes.

[Kristen Bell]

Nice.

[Monica Padman]

Aaron, I have an update for you.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh, please.

[Monica Padman]

I think one of the last times you were here, we were talking about my running.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, I remember this.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. And I want you to know, since then, a sign has been put on the yard. Not by me. That says no. It says no dogs allowed. Slash no trespassing.

[Dax Shepard]

I forget congregating.

[Monica Padman]

It says something explicit like no more of this so it was solved for me.

[Dax Shepard]

I thought you were gonna bring up chest hair. That's where I thought this was going. No, the last time you seen, you talked about having shaved his chest hair, how sexy he felt.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, so what's the update on that?

[Kristen Bell]

Well, I just had my back shaved again.

[Monica Padman]

Are you making cashmere?

[Kristen Bell]

I should, because it's an enormous amount of fur that comes off really quick.

[Dax Shepard]

Aaron, I've never let you feel this.

[Kristen Bell]

No, but I've seen it.

[Dax Shepard]

Very select group. Go ahead and touch.

[Monica Padman]

Be really careful.

[Dax Shepard]

Give an honest what you think about that.

[Eva Benefield]

Oh.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Is that not the softest thing you've ever felt?

[Kristen Bell]

Can I sleep with it tonight?

[Dax Shepard]

Dude, you know blanket made of that?

[Kristen Bell]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, so you can make some.

[Eva Benefield]

I know.

[Monica Padman]

You got to be careful.

[Kristen Bell]

That is. It is cashmere, isn't it?

[Dax Shepard]

It sure is. There's no wow. And you know, now Delta's leg hairs are in here too. Oh, yeah. So we're getting it. We're harvesting from my back and her legs.

[Kristen Bell]

The whole family.

[Monica Padman]

Maybe it can be a joint Aaron's hair, because then we can really get some movement on it.

[Dax Shepard]

At the risk of hurting Aaron's feelings. Aaron has had dense body hair his whole life. He's a man. He's always been a man. I'm not. I've always not been a man. I've always felt like a pre teenage or a woman next to him. And he's always had a gorgeous Burt Reynolds chest hair since we were 17.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, so you think it's coarser?

[Dax Shepard]

I think it's coarser. Would you?

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All I'm saying is the amount.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, well, you don't have to have cashmere. We can do mohair for you.

[Kristen Bell]

So Ruthie just shaved me again with the dog. You know, it's got a vacuum. I may have said this before, but

[Eva Benefield]

I don't think I don't it actually

[Kristen Bell]

as a hose and you watch it accumulate in a chamber.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow.

[Kristen Bell]

And this is so fun. Cause that's why I realized I'm like, oh, my God, I have so much hair. Like this much like came off my back.

[Monica Padman]

Whoa.

[Kristen Bell]

Aruth is super grossed off by it.

[Monica Padman]

Well, she can't touch the cashmere then.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I know we're both getting hair now everywhere. It's maddening. But have you noticed, have we already talked about our armpit hair? Have you noticed your armpit hair is like. Will be 2ft long sometimes if we

[Kristen Bell]

haven't talked about it. Yeah, I've been chopping mine with scissors.

[Dax Shepard]

Same. I now give myself, like, a haircut in my armpit.

[Kristen Bell]

Me too.

[Dax Shepard]

And then I have this very weird. I want. Do you have this where it's like. I have it in my mind. It's supposed to be some length, or else why would it be that long?

[Monica Padman]

Sure.

[Dax Shepard]

Because when I. I'm tempted to just, like, cut it as close to the skin as possible. So I have to do it less. But then I think, aren't you supposed. Is there to be some length?

[Kristen Bell]

I wonder that, too.

[Monica Padman]

Can you just keep, like, grow it out just so we can see how long it gets?

[Kristen Bell]

You're right. There should be video evidence of some of this.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, why I had to finally confront it, other than, like, maybe my kids pointed it out and I was embarrassed. But also, you can't even get your deodorant to the skin anymore. Cause it just clumps up in your hair. And then you have dingleberries in your armpit and you're like, what the fuck is going on? Why am I a mess like this

[Monica Padman]

red L. Well, 50, you know, not Aaron.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, not yet.

[Kristen Bell]

Not even close.

[Dax Shepard]

Six months.

[Monica Padman]

We'll talk about your party.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, great. How about you guys talk about my party?

[Monica Padman]

Oh, it was a yacht rock theme.

[Dax Shepard]

It was a yacht rock theme. It was at my favorite roller skate rink, Moonlight, Rollerway, to name drop. Kimmel made the playlist, as he's made me many playlists in the past that I love. And Kristen enlisted him to do that. Tons of blasts from. From the past. A lot of my Groundlings friends. Just an incredible, perfect group of people. My dad came all the way out from across town.

[Monica Padman]

Tom Hansen, Adam Perry Lang made that.

[Dax Shepard]

Adam Perry Lang cooked.

[Monica Padman]

It was incredible.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Did you get on both of the meats?

[Monica Padman]

I just had the pork.

[Dax Shepard]

You just. The pork ribs?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. So insane.

[Dax Shepard]

How good were those?

[Monica Padman]

They were so good. And the cornbread was so good.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, it was damp as a motherfucker. It was like a. It was like a. What do you call it? Cake. A sp.

[Monica Padman]

Pound cake.

[Dax Shepard]

Pound cake.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. It was delicious.

[Dax Shepard]

I was really excited about the Adam Perry Lane of it all because most of my friends that were there didn't know about him. And I don't know what their expectations were at a roller skating rink, how good the barbecue is going to be, but he is a. One of the best barbecue. He does these popups around la and there's lines around the block. Yeah. And he's just there cutting ribs at

[Monica Padman]

a roller skating ring. It was really sweet of him to do that he's a very nice man.

[Dax Shepard]

He is incredible.

[Monica Padman]

Also enlisted him to teach Kristen how to make crepes for Christmas one year, her birthday, I forget. And like got her all the machinery and stuff. And now she knows how to make crepes.

[Dax Shepard]

She stuck with it. She goes through little phases. You know, there's no crepes for months and months and months. And then there's crepes 10 days in a row. She could cook some compulsively.

[Monica Padman]

I guess we got to talk to them tomorrow. Well, exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you should bring that up. She would love to.

[Monica Padman]

I thought I had a craving for crepes like three days ago and it was not 9pm So I didn't think it was possible for me to get it, but I wanted it so bad. And then the next day I told her I was craving them. She said, I'll make them for you. And then guess what the word was on wordle today.

[Eva Benefield]

Crepes.

[Dax Shepard]

Plural or singular?

[Monica Padman]

Singular.

[Dax Shepard]

Singular.

[Monica Padman]

Isn't that weird?

[Dax Shepard]

That's suspicious. So normally this is Delta's birthday party is here every December and we always get the rink for two hours. And it's always my commitment to skate as long as possible because it's such a unique opportunity. But the window of this party was 5pm to 10pm and I was like, I don't. Oh, I got to back up. One other thing that happened because I didn't know I was having a party is that day before I rode the furthest I've ever ridden on my new road bike. Oh, I. I told you I passed your house a couple different times. Armchair he sent me. I was even paparazzi. I didn't know it.

[Monica Padman]

Oh yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I went everywhere. I was down the LA river, down past Spoke, then out in Glendale, then back into Silver Lake. So the. That whole day when I came out and. And he saw him in the pool, I was like, I went too hard. I can barely walk.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh.

[Dax Shepard]

Then she said five to ten, we're skating. Five hours skating and we're going to skate. We're going to skate hard. And oh, one thing I got to add is people really went for it with the yacht rock theme. Aaron had an incredible outfit.

[Monica Padman]

He really did.

[Dax Shepard]

Turnkey bought off of Amazon. Amazon? Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

It was perfect.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it was white.

[Monica Padman]

It was white.

[Kristen Bell]

White on white hat. Pipe.

[Dax Shepard]

The pipe really pushed it over. I don't even know why it makes sense, but it doesn't.

[Kristen Bell]

I don't know.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't. I can't like I'm rack my brain of where I've some famous image of a captain with a pipe.

[Monica Padman]

I love boat or whatever.

[Dax Shepard]

But again, I don't even think on Love Boat.

[Monica Padman]

That was the other one where they're all. All shipwrecked.

[Dax Shepard]

Gilligan's Island.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, Gilligan's Island.

[Dax Shepard]

Skimperton smoke a pipe.

[Kristen Bell]

Like Gorton's Fisherman have a pipe or something.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah. But again, that's a yellow rain slicker.

[Monica Padman]

Mandela effect. We all just think we know these captains have pipes, but none of them do.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't think any of them do. And how long had it been since you skated, Aaron?

[Kristen Bell]

Probably seven years.

[Dax Shepard]

Seven years.

[Kristen Bell]

I was a lot heavier, and I.

[Dax Shepard]

And you were at 320 at that point. Yeah.

[Kristen Bell]

And I remember, really, because I was like, I'm gonna do this. And I was real wobbly. And then after a few laps, I was expecting everyone to be watching me because I thought I was that good. So fucking stupid. I'm like, oh, really? I'm just a fat guy roller skating and I'm old.

[Dax Shepard]

But you're waiting for them to notice how fucking cool way you look. I didn't know your old man.

[Kristen Bell]

Everyone's going to high five my kids,

[Dax Shepard]

hoist you up on their shoulders.

[Kristen Bell]

Probably got beat up the next day.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, despite that, you did quite well. And Monica, let me thank you in public. You have sat out the last two skatings.

[Monica Padman]

I have. But then it was your birthday, and so I thought I got to do it for your birthday.

[Kristen Bell]

That was so sweet of you.

[Dax Shepard]

And did it? You did?

[Monica Padman]

I did it. I did like.

[Dax Shepard]

You did quite a bit of.

[Monica Padman]

I did like, 12 laps or something.

[Kristen Bell]

Maybe more, I think more, I'd say.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I want to say you were out. You had three different sessions, didn't you?

[Monica Padman]

I had multiple sessions. I. Even after eating, I put them back on.

[Dax Shepard]

And I learned today, earlier today, that you actually had gone out by yourself to do a little trial run. Like the garage in Tennessee.

[Monica Padman]

I did. Where I learned to ride my bike.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I got a little nervous not having been on them for a couple of years. Years. And I was first to arrive at the party. And so I just went out on my own and did a little practice. Yeah. Found my sea legs. I'm not good on them, like. And I don't. Ryan tried to help me. He was like, you know, you go more side. Side to side. I go more front to back, I guess.

[Eva Benefield]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

It's sort of my proprietary move. So I'm just not very, very good at it. But that's fine. It's hard for me to not be good at it. But, yes, you. You kill it.

[Dax Shepard]

I ate, though. Let me say that.

[Kristen Bell]

So.

[Dax Shepard]

And by the way, on the way there, I said to Aaron, okay, if you haven't gone in a long time, her prediction for you is you think you're going to be bad, and then you're going to get out there and go, oh, my God, I'm actually quite good. And then you're going to get overconfident. Fifteen minutes, and then that's when the big Brett comes. And I had been skating for a good hour and a half, two hours at this point. I was very loose. I was feeling very confident, and I decided, you know what? As I said, skate by Joy because she was high fiving people on the sidelines. I'm like, you know, it's gonna be radical, so I'm gonna blow by shooting the duck.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, I knew you were trying to do.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, did you think I just fell out of nowhere?

[Monica Padman]

I knew you were doing something with Joy, but I didn't know that was so. For.

[Dax Shepard]

People don't know. Shooting the deck. You, like, you get on one skate and you bend down. I can't even bend down on one leg if I wasn't wearing skates, Especially with the biking from the day before and the two hours skating. And I got halfway into this commitment and realized I'm going down. And I went down pretty hard on my hip.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, it's scary.

[Dax Shepard]

Luckily, you were on the rink at that moment.

[Monica Padman]

I was.

[Dax Shepard]

And you were right behind me. So you saw the whole thing.

[Monica Padman]

I did.

[Dax Shepard]

Made a loud enough noise that I think most everyone looked.

[Eva Benefield]

I missed it.

[Monica Padman]

I don't think so.

[Kristen Bell]

I was. I was skating, but I missed it.

[Monica Padman]

I don't think so.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm not sure if I want. I wish you had or I kind of.

[Kristen Bell]

Well, I wish I had.

[Dax Shepard]

But of course, you skated up to

[Kristen Bell]

me and you go, the duck bit back.

[Dax Shepard]

The duck shot me.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah. I was like, what? And I didn't even know that.

[Monica Padman]

You got up really fast. You didn't look hurt.

[Dax Shepard]

That's the goal.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, but I knew you were.

[Dax Shepard]

And then you didn't. You hadn't seen. You were. You hadn't seen Fall Guy.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

And so. Have you seen Fall Guy?

[Kristen Bell]

I did.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, what a movie. Right?

[Kristen Bell]

So good.

[Dax Shepard]

Every time this stunt's over, they give the thumbs up like, I'm good. They're not good. Their back's broken. They're like, right. So then I was like, I gave the thumbs up and for the People who had seen it, but you hadn't seen it. And then I felt compelled to try to explain to you my jokes. I was in a.

[Monica Padman]

You came back around.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. I was in a good deal of pain and I had given you the thumbs up and I needed you to know that was enough said.

[Monica Padman]

Are you okay? And then you gave the thumbs up and I was like, no. And then you had to come back and tell me what in fact wasn't okay.

[Dax Shepard]

It was not okay. But I kept going. I was like, is it fra. Is my hip fractured? Maybe it's fractured. Let's just keep going. There's nothing they can do for that. So you can put a caster on your hip.

[Monica Padman]

This is why it's really roller skating.

[Eva Benefield]

So tricky.

[Monica Padman]

Cuz you have to commit if you're going to have fun and if you're going to be good. But then you will fall. So you're choosing.

[Dax Shepard]

Especially if you try to show off like me.

[Monica Padman]

Well, once you're feeling it, like everyone's going to try. And that's what I don't do. I just do half because I don't want to fall and I don't fall. So that's great.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. But then there were very few falls last night.

[Eva Benefield]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

In fact of a shocking few falls. Cuz at Delta's party, the first few years people were going out really bad. People had wrist injuries. It was like 20% of the dads were up the next week.

[Monica Padman]

Ana fell last time.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. She went down pretty hard. I saw that. Kind of great though.

[Monica Padman]

So you see it and then you just like, you kind of look away. Let people recover on their own.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, no. So that's a great. As you know, I like getting embarrassed. So when I fell down at the movies, you know, I was laughing hysterically but the pain was so sharp, like I wanted to laugh because it's just embarrassing. I tried to shoot the duck. Joy watched the whole thing. Her friend's watching. She doesn't know me. So there's a new person. I at least Joy is my like sister.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I've known her for 12 years. It was painful enough that I couldn't actually get to the laughing part. I just got.

[Monica Padman]

You were pretty big though.

[Dax Shepard]

I was performing. I came out of retirement from acting and put on a real good thing, then gave a thumbs up and only two people got it because I thought everyone saw Fall guy and they had it. Stay tuned for more armchair Expert if you dare. And then Kristen. Somehow I'm not. I haven't even asked her logistics but our. Our favorite treat in the world from Michigan is Saunders Bumpy Cake. For people who've never had Saunders Bumpy Cake, it is a chocolate damp devil's food cake base and then these huge ribbons of Twinkie filling all covered in a fudge icing. Did you try it?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I did. I hadn't had it before. I loved it.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you like it?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I loved it.

[Dax Shepard]

You're not. That's not your thing.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh, fuck. Yeah, it is.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay.

[Monica Padman]

It was really good.

[Dax Shepard]

When we were kids, you didn't love chocolate. Yeah, right, right.

[Kristen Bell]

I do know. I had some for breakfast this morning,

[Dax Shepard]

and I fucking went nuts. I had my immune suppressant before the party because I knew we were gonna have bumpy cake. And I ate way too much. Way too. So I coupled the hip pain with, like. I made myself sick. But then I was like, you must get out and push through all of this. Did another couple hours of skating. It was fantastic. It was a great, great party.

[Monica Padman]

It was a lovely party.

[Dax Shepard]

And as I told you, what was really kind of novel about this party. Cause I've had them in the past. I'm always. I get feeling really guilty. Like Tonight he drove 50 miles across town through rush hour traffic to get to the party. And he's older. And then I'm out skating the whole time. And the whole time I'm like, I gotta go sit and talk to Tom. He drove all the way here. And then virtually everyone that's showing up, I feel like I should be talking to them for a half hour. And then I had this light bulb moment. I was like, everyone here is a blast to talk to. When I look around, everyone's quite happy talking to whoever. I'm not needed here. I can stop feeling guilty about that.

[Monica Padman]

Did you have the moment where you were like, oh, all these people I've collected?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I tried to have that moment. I did. I was in the bathroom, and I actually even did my mantra for like, two minutes. I was like, I really. I really want to. Yeah. Have that moment and see that. And then Tom Hansen, who knows me so well, he hugged me and he said, are you able to let any of this love in? And I said, trying real hard. But also, I'm pretty sure everyone's here just because Kristen invited them. Like, if I'm being honest.

[Kristen Bell]

So silly.

[Dax Shepard]

I know it is.

[Monica Padman]

That's so unfair. That's so unfair to all of us.

[Kristen Bell]

To you? Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, to anyone who went, I don't know.

[Dax Shepard]

It's still my residual low self esteem or Something, I don't know.

[Kristen Bell]

It was the funnest party I've ever been to

[Dax Shepard]

and there's no fucking booze there. That's saying something.

[Kristen Bell]

I mean I'm still right riding on it today.

[Dax Shepard]

I gotta push back a little bit. I guess you're not counting your birthday parties because Aaron's birthday is July 2, which becomes a Fourth of July Aaron's birthday spectacular. It was often at his dad's farm and it would be like a three day party with 50 people camping. Those were, those were fun. Awesome. Those were damn good.

[Kristen Bell]

Those were good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But I'm happy you had a great time.

[Kristen Bell]

I had fun, man. I had so much fun.

[Monica Padman]

It was really fun.

[Dax Shepard]

So much fun. And I don't want you to get the wrong impression. I, I, I, I did. I felt very loved.

[Monica Padman]

Good.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I mean when you were blowing out your candle, I looked around and I was like, oh this is so lovely.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, what I thought of many times is like this is. You'd be hard pressed to find a better group of 40 human beings.

[Monica Padman]

It was a really good group. I felt lucky that I was, I had been collected.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh.

[Monica Padman]

Over the 50 years. I was happy to be there.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you have a favorite conversation with anyone?

[Monica Padman]

I had so many. I, I had one I can't repeat.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay.

[Monica Padman]

That was the most memorable. It was with Eric. Yeah. Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

He's so open though.

[Monica Padman]

I can't because it's not about him.

[Kristen Bell]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

I can't wait to hear that.

[Monica Padman]

Jesus. He, he never fails. Like I think I know every, I think there's not one thing he can say that will get me and man got you man. Does he. I got to talked to Joy. I ate with her and that was so nice. Hadn't talked to her.

[Dax Shepard]

That's what that I was excited about that I was more looking around, seeing people. I love talking to each other and watching you guys chat. I was like, oh yeah. My sisters are chatting. Like yeah. And she was wearing all day glow yellow.

[Monica Padman]

Like full.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh yeah. Like amazing. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Neon fishnets.

[Monica Padman]

So awesome.

[Dax Shepard]

We came up with my superhero name cuz we were of course talking about spades.

[Monica Padman]

Uh huh.

[Dax Shepard]

And her friend she was with was black as well. And she's like this is the upside down world. They play spades. We don't play spades. And then her and I came up with that. My superhero name is the appropriator and my catchphrase is I'll take it. I see something from your culture I like, I'll take it.

[Kristen Bell]

The appropriator oh, that's funny.

[Monica Padman]

Really fun to talk to Nate and talk to see Nate in such a long time.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Again, if Nate tucks at a party, what am I worried about anyone finding someone to talk to. How about you? Did you, did you chat with anyone new that you were like, oh, that.

[Kristen Bell]

I loved catching up with all the. Yeah. Like the old Groundlings, your crew from back then. Like, I hadn't seen Ben, Tim Lovestead, Nat. Yeah. So that was all very fun and super comfortable. Like we all just dove into conversations that were fucking great.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Ben sent me a text. Like I talked a lot with Aaron Weekley. It was so fun.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, it was great.

[Dax Shepard]

And that vaccine, of course, probably stole the show. He was the same white outfit Aaron had, but his was short shorts.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh my God.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Kristen Bell]

And he was very sexy on those roller.

[Monica Padman]

He was so good. Yeah.

[Kristen Bell]

Like I said, best party I've ever been to.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, man.

[Monica Padman]

It's kind of your birthday too. You get to take. You guys get to share birthdays.

[Kristen Bell]

Felt like it. Yeah. Kristen did a damn good job.

[Dax Shepard]

She really did it.

[Kristen Bell]

She was very worried and she said I, boy, he's really been talking a lot and that he's very grateful he didn't have a party. And what a love.

[Dax Shepard]

I think she had heard me say like four times between my birthday and yesterday. I'm so glad. I would hate a surprise party. And the poor girl had planned a surprise party

[Monica Padman]

now that it's happening.

[Dax Shepard]

So happy. And that just goes to show I'm known better than I know myself in a lot of domains. Like, yeah, I was delighted. Is it bad? As long as I didn't have to go through any of the. Yeah. Anxiety of it all. It was absolutely delightful.

[Monica Padman]

Would you have been upset if it was a real surprise? I guess there's no way.

[Dax Shepard]

I think so. But I just. I don't know how you get me to the rollover.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

I think she would have had to tell. I'm just so annoyingly curious about why would we be.

[Kristen Bell]

Panay wasn't going to. To take you to the roller ring.

[Dax Shepard]

The only thing that had been planned and I had been tricked on is that Panay and Nate and I were supposed to have dinner that night. That was the big plan. And even like on Monday I asked Kristen, can I go to dinner with Nate and Panay? And she's like, yeah. I'm thinking she must have been laughing her buns off. The plan was coming together perfectly. And then so I was both really excited about the party and then I Was like, oh man, I was really looking forward to going to dinner with Banana. So we just decided we will also go to dinner next week.

[Kristen Bell]

Where are you guys going? To Martin's I hope.

[Dax Shepard]

Hope we bring George Kittle with us. Aaron and I decided the best compliment you could give any guy is to say like oh I'd love to go to Morton's with that dude. Like if you don't know him but you see him from afar and you go fuck, I'd love to go to Morton's with that guy.

[Kristen Bell]

I mean he is great guy.

[Dax Shepard]

I like Dan Campbell.

[Kristen Bell]

Convenient. Goes directly to Morton's.

[Dax Shepard]

Don't stop.

[Kristen Bell]

You guys wouldn't even have to say it.

[Dax Shepard]

We get there and the food would be on the table.

[Monica Padman]

Goodness.

[Dax Shepard]

What's the equivalent? Is there equivalent of that for the Gales?

[Monica Padman]

Oh like the spa Solo. Yeah. Also the mall I guess.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh yeah, shopping.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, go right to the mall with her.

[Monica Padman]

I'd go shopping with her.

[Dax Shepard]

But like what do you want to do with Ashley and Mary Kate the first time you hang out besides tour.

[Monica Padman]

My pants just fell. Exploded. My underwear fell off. I don't know if I can go shopping with them. That's confusing you be.

[Dax Shepard]

I imagine I would be self conscious if I were you. Cause I'd be afraid everything I said I liked. You'd worry they didn't think it was a good style.

[Monica Padman]

I guess we would go to their store.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

And I say, what do you guys think I should get? I'll pay. And they'll be like, I know you'll pay.

[Eva Benefield]

We don'.

[Monica Padman]

Discount.

[Dax Shepard]

We don't around like that.

[Monica Padman]

And then they'd pick out some stuff for me and then we'd all go have martinis. They would smoke cigarettes. I wouldn't.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh man. Smoke.

[Monica Padman]

No, I've never done it. And even for them I won't.

[Kristen Bell]

Wow.

[Monica Padman]

I'll roller skate for you, but I won't smoke a cigarette for you. Let me go to bed early.

[Dax Shepard]

Super early.

[Kristen Bell]

Right away.

[Monica Padman]

Anyway. Well, it was lovely and I. I hope you feel happy today.

[Eva Benefield]

Oh, I do. Just.

[Dax Shepard]

I took my immune suppressant and I think I have a cold that came back and I think I have a fractured hip. But that. But also just beaming with gratitude. I did feel. I felt hungover this morning in fact so many times. I don't know if you remember this. You remember I got like a really cool sweatsuit for Christmas in a watch. And I was at your house. We were in the backyard and I somehow fell and fucking split my lip like wide open.

[Monica Padman]

When you were little?

[Dax Shepard]

No. And I was like home for Christmas. And our Christmas started at a certain time, and then we had stayed up till nine in the morning the day before. And then. So I didn't wake up till five. So I got to Christmas Eve, our big family tradition, quite late, and I just had this enormous bloody scab on my mouth from the night before. And you know, we had a lot of those. So anyways, when I was woke up, I was like, I have a headache from eating all the cake. I'm sick and my hip hurts. I feel like I was at somewhere.99 or something.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, should we do a little. Just quick facts, some facties. Yeah, this is for Reid Hoffman.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

You said that Martin Luther raised literacy rates from 3% to 95% according to AI.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

While there isn't a precise percentage readily available to quantify how much Martin Luther raised literacy rates, historical research indicates that the Protestant Reformation formation, largely driven by Luther's teaching, significantly increased literacy levels across Europe, with some studies showing a difference of nearly 20 percentage points between predominantly Protestant and Catholic regions. Essentially, areas with the larger Protestant population had substantially higher literacy rates. But there's no percentage.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm clearly way off given that percentage, because.

[Monica Padman]

But you got it from weirdest people on earth. Joseph Henrick, Joe, Joey. Go back and listen to that one. Is our unemployment rate as low as it's ever been? The unemployment rate was 3.4% in January and April 2023, the lowest in 55 years.

[Dax Shepard]

55 years.

[Monica Padman]

The last time the unemployment rate in the U.S. was this low was in the first five months of 1969. The average unemployment rate during the Biden administration was 4.1%. Really low.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, very low. A lot of countries have 10% and above.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, 1984 did come out in 1949. 49. But we think he wrote it in 1948.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, but he had said. Read our guest. No, it was. It was 48. Which was clever, cuz 1984 was a flip of 48.

[Monica Padman]

And we still think that's true, but it did not come out until 49. The price of Bitcoin today is $104,627.70.

[Eva Benefield]

Wow.

[Monica Padman]

Wow, wow, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Aaron, did you watch that Greatest Heist doc on Netflix?

[Kristen Bell]

Not yet.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, well, in a nutshell, these two incredibly weird people. I don't feel bad saying that their

[Monica Padman]

names are Ilia Dutch Lichtenstein and Heather Razzle Khan Morgan.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, so a bit of a clue in their names. And they stole.

[Kristen Bell]

Stole.

[Dax Shepard]

I always say stole. That's one of my things. They stole 70. Yeah, there they are.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh man.

[Dax Shepard]

Boy, that photo of him on the left. He might have Stockholm this.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. This makes me feel sad actually.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, it's not. Yeah. You are not happy for either of them. But they stole $72 million in Bitcoin that they really couldn't unload. So they just held it. By the time they were arrested it was worth $4.5 billion. So it's the greatest theft in the history of the world.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh my God.

[Dax Shepard]

No, I have not.

[Monica Padman]

Now worth 10.8 billion.

[Dax Shepard]

Now we're 10.8 billion. If you had 72 million, it was

[Monica Padman]

stolen from Bitfinex or Bitfinex. I don't know. I don't know. And it's a Hong Kong based virtual cryptocurrency exchange.

[Kristen Bell]

So that's.

[Monica Padman]

Yikes.

[Kristen Bell]

We've had friends that were involved in some thefts of that, right?

[Monica Padman]

Yes, we did. Well, that was of.

[Dax Shepard]

We have a friend that's a victim of Victim.

[Kristen Bell]

That's what I mean. Yikes.

[Monica Padman]

A lot of money which I can

[Dax Shepard]

only imagine what it's worth now. Cuz that was what, five years ago?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I was. Yeah. Oh, I have a thing marked here. So you made a car. You designed a car using AI and you decided you wanted to show it.

[Dax Shepard]

I would love to. Well, I. You want to put on the TV because you're so good at that now.

[Eva Benefield]

Y. Email me it.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, and I'm going to send you one picture after that of a Ted Sears poster that I. Well, there's two. There's three actually that I really like. Let's see. Oh, I. I'm gonna send four things.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my God.

[Kristen Bell]

That might.

[Dax Shepard]

Because then I did something for our show.

[Monica Padman]

Exciting. All on AI.

[Dax Shepard]

All on AI.

[Monica Padman]

I played around with some merch stuff on AI. That was fun. Ooh. Okay. So.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. So for the listener. Yeah. So I want a 15 passenger van for Nashville. Cuz we' assume we're always going to have so many people staying with us at any time we go to dinner we're going to need like tons of seats. So then I was like well I want a 15 passenger G van, a Chevy, but I want it to be John Player paint scheme. I want it wide body. I just said like not a ton of things and it spit this one out. It's fit three amazing ones. Yeah, that's the John Claire livery famous paint scheme. Isn't it interesting how they certain things up? Like look at the grill. It's kind of going to say Chevrolet but it doesn't.

[Monica Padman]

Sure. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It's weird. And then, like, there's normal letters on the tires and then weird, abstract. And that's the third one. Look at that. Can you imagine if I can send it?

[Kristen Bell]

Here's the weird thing I did.

[Dax Shepard]

Look. And I'm only noticing now that it's blown up that big. It's got two gas.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh, it does.

[Dax Shepard]

Fuel doors. Yeah, two fuel doors. That's weird, right? You see that Money.

[Kristen Bell]

You need a lot of gas for this.

[Dax Shepard]

Probably knows I'm going to be my foot in the kitchen the whole time. Okay, now go Rob to the other.

[Monica Padman]

What is.

[Dax Shepard]

John Player was a cigarette brand that sponsored Formula one and racing. And they have this signature black in gold.

[Kristen Bell]

So that.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so I said, make an A. Make a poster for a beer brand named Ted Sears in the style of Miami Vice.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah. I love this one.

[Dax Shepard]

Isn't that great?

[Monica Padman]

That's really cool.

[Dax Shepard]

And again, what does it say? It doesn't say Miami Beer, but it says, like, almost makes you think it's like a Thai beer or something.

[Monica Padman]

Underneath it's just squiggles, kind of like hieroglyphics.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, get that Egyptian. Okay. Now then I said, give me a beer brand, you know, Ted Sears. I want a muscle car, a motorcycle, and a muscular horse.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow. This one is a little.

[Kristen Bell]

The horse.

[Dax Shepard]

That thing is ripped.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, this is so funny.

[Kristen Bell]

All right.

[Dax Shepard]

And then I was like, what if a beer brand named Ted Seeger sponsored hydroplane race boat and it made that. This is incredible.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, but what's on the side? Did you.

[Dax Shepard]

I think it's a. I think it's barley or beer hops. Yeah, probably.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

All right. And then look at this. Beautiful.

[Kristen Bell]

Get that out of here.

[Monica Padman]

Would you say a crow with a cherry?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, a crow with a cherry in its beak.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

But I had to do many to come up with this one. This one took a while. Did you see this? What's this?

[Kristen Bell]

That's your. Oh, that was your invite for the party.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I didn't see that. It says you're Rock Rock.

[Kristen Bell]

Right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. That's not an H, it's an R. It's Y R, A C H. Right. And captain's questionable. There's. Oh, he's got sneakers on. Yeah, He's a jacked crow.

[Monica Padman]

This.

[Dax Shepard]

No, I hadn't seen that. That's great. Look at that vascularity.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh, my God, that crow is.

[Dax Shepard]

How scared is that other crow that's flying in the background? He's probably flying to get the. Out of.

[Monica Padman]

I didn't realize she used AI for it. Oh, she must have. Well, that's that.

[Dax Shepard]

That was it. Those were all the facts. A fun aid tour. Yeah, unless you're listening. I guess that'll all get cut out if you're. I was just thinking, if you were listening and you couldn't see any of

[Monica Padman]

this, go to YouTube and watch it.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

All right.

[Kristen Bell]

Love you.

[Monica Padman]

Love you, love.