Hunter Biden

Summary

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Episode: Hunter Biden

Date: June 15, 2026

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Episode Overview

This rich and remarkably candid episode features Hunter Biden—the son of President Joe Biden—joining Dax Shepard and co-host Lily Padman for a deeply vulnerable, often humorous, and profoundly human conversation. Hunter discusses the harrowing depths of his addiction, the impact of personal and public tragedies, his journey to recovery, and the challenges and misconceptions that have defined his public life. While lightly touching on media scandals and political fallout, the episode's core remains resolutely about addiction, trauma, identity, and the universal struggle to find hope and healing.

Theme:
Vulnerability, addiction, shame, family support, personal recovery, and reclaiming your narrative—even under the blinding spotlight of public scrutiny.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Addiction: The Most Ubiquitous Disease

(03:11–10:18)

• Nicotine Addiction and Quitting: Hunter recounts his process of quitting nicotine through a hypnotist, describing it as surprisingly effective.
  • "He said he could get anybody off of anything. I was shocked... At the last session, he said, that's it. You're done. And I was done." —Hunter Biden (03:52)
• Alcohol's Unique Dangers: Dax and Hunter agree that alcohol is under-appreciated for how destructive it is, due to its ubiquity and its impact on every organ in the body.
  • "You add up every single other known drug and the amount of deaths caused by alcohol is 5x the sum total of every other drug." —Dax Shepard (05:24)
  • "Alcohol... is the only drug that impacts every organ of your body and every pleasure center of your brain." —Hunter Biden (05:58)
• The Ubiquity Dilemma: Dax notes that unlike other drugs, alcohol is ever-present and thus uniquely difficult to quit.
  • "You're never more than a couple hundred feet from alcohol... everywhere I go." —Dax Shepard (06:59)

2. Stigma, Shame, and the Crack Label

(08:06–14:53)

• Talking Openly About Crack: Hunter strives for honesty—even when it unsettles people—about being called a "crackhead," recognizing the intensified shame and racist stigma attached to crack vs. other drugs.
  • "The reason I talk about crack... is because it comes with such a stigma and it's so shocking to people." —Hunter Biden (08:22)
  • Lily Padman brings up racial disparities, and Hunter discusses sentencing reforms and the origin of the stigma.
• Public Shaming & Media Frenzy: Hunter describes being relentlessly depicted as a degenerate in the media.
  • "I was on the [cover] of the New York Post more than anybody in the history of the newspaper." —Hunter Biden (14:19)
  • "You count me in that category... you're permeating all this during the election... There's no press release that you got sober." —Dax Shepard (14:53)

3. Personal Trauma and Early Life

(15:34–23:40)

• The Car Accident (1972): As small children, Hunter and his brother Beau survive a car crash that kills their mother and baby sister. He reflects on how this trauma profoundly shaped him, even when surrounded by family love.
  • "My dad is literally the best dad in the entire world... But I felt guilty thinking that my life was anything but this bundle of love." —Hunter Biden (19:18/21:00)
• Growing Up Biden: Discussion of his upbringing, the close relationship with his brother Beau, and the supportive web of family.

4. Genesis and Mechanics of Addiction

(28:07–41:10)

• First Drink, the "Magic": Dax and Hunter both describe the first time alcohol provided relief and connection—the "magic" feeling craved by many with addiction.
  • "I picked up a champagne glass, went underneath a table with a tablecloth... drank the glass and thought, oh my god, this is the answer to everything."' —Hunter Biden (28:39)
• Cycles of Guilt, Shame, and Use: Hunter discusses the interplay between trauma, fear, guilt from early experiences, and the perpetuation of addiction.
• The Masculinity Game: They unpack how overdrinking can be tied up with performative masculinity and self-worth.
  • "There's a big chunk of masculinity involved in this whole journey... a real indicator of my alpha masculinity." —Dax Shepard (38:40)
  • "Because I'm not that guy... it becomes a shield for everything and it becomes this identity." —Hunter Biden (39:14)

5. Pathways In, Out of, and Back Into Recovery

(41:10–54:46)

• First Stints at Recovery: Hunter spends time at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads in Antigua, finds initial success but struggles with relapses.
  • "All you have to do is change everything." —Hunter Biden on recovery (38:07)
• Beau's Support: Moving moments of Beau’s tireless help—picking Hunter up from rehab, attending meetings.
  • "My brother picked me up from the airport and immediately drove to a meeting..." —Hunter Biden (41:53)
• Aftermath of Loss: Beau's death from brain cancer becomes a tipping point, accelerating Hunter’s addiction spiral.

6. Crack Addiction and Hitting Bottom

(49:39–56:49)

• Descent into Crack Use: Hunter candidly discusses his first intentional use of crack and its devastating effectiveness.
  • "I knew the worst possible thing that I could do was go smoke crack. And that's what I decided... And it was a revelation." —Hunter Biden (49:41)
  • "The highest that you get as a crack addict is the millisecond before you ever ingest a drug." —Hunter Biden, referencing brain scans (51:57)
• Addiction's Dehumanization: He describes the isolation, criminality, and social alienation that ensued.
• Moments of Extreme Loss: Dax: "The end of all our stories is ultimately isolation." (59:04)

7. Radical Honesty, Recovery, and Redemption

(59:33–76:59)

• Radical Honesty: Hunter credits public exposure—"my entire digital life released"—for liberating him from secrecy and shame.
  • "That is a gift. There's nothing to lose... It was so ubiquitous that I didn't have any other choice unless I wanted to die." —Hunter Biden (80:14/81:47)
• Letting Go, Making Amends: Grappling with anger, resentment, and whether it's truly possible to move past public shaming.
  • "The most dangerous emotion an addict can have is uncontrolled anger." —Hunter Biden (75:31)
• Gratitude for Hardship: Hunter shares gratitude for his suffering, viewing it as essential to becoming who he is now.
  • "Be grateful for all of that suffering because there is no way that you are here sitting in this chair right now without all that..." —Hunter Biden (76:59)

8. Infamy, Scandal, and Public Scrutiny

(64:40–81:47)

• Burisma, the Laptop, Political Attacks: Hunter addresses the reality that his business dealings were improper in terms of perception, but says there’s no evidence of criminal corruption:
  • "You have 25 years of my entire digital footprint... There’s not one single... in which I say, 'Hey Dad, I’m getting paid by these guys.'" —Hunter Biden (67:47)
• Enduring Media Onslaught: Discusses being the subject of eliminationist rhetoric and how he eventually took control by sharing his own story.

9. Family, Support, and Biden Legacy

(83:55–90:24)

• Family Impact: Reflects on the hurt caused to loved ones and particularly the emotional cost borne by his father in the public arena.
  • "He’s the best dad... but now my dad and I talk literally almost every day." —Hunter Biden (83:43)
• Observing Joe Biden: Offers a frank assessment of his father’s aging, his integrity, compassion, and his unique non-narcissistic approach to the presidency.
  • "He came to that office without that narcissism... more empathy and compassion for normal people..." —Hunter Biden (86:13)
  • Shared historical anecdotes (e.g., Joe Biden to Putin: "I look into your eyes and I don’t think you have a soul."_ —Story retold, 87:42)

10. Ultimate Takeaway: Compassion, Connection, and the Shared Human Struggle

(90:24–92:52)

• Dax and Hunter recognize their shared connection as people who know the depths of addiction and recovery, extending compassion to all others in that space.
  • "I admire anyone who's gone to hell and back and shares it deeply. You and I have a connection that's deeper than all these extraneous other things..." —Dax Shepard (90:24)
  • "It's incredible... Do the next right thing and show compassion. That's what I learned from it. And I often fail... but I think about it every day." —Hunter Biden (91:58)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the power and challenge of honesty:
  "What are you going to say about me? What are you going to ask me?... I've been sober for seven years on June 1st." —Hunter Biden (13:27–13:54)

• On shame versus guilt:
  "Shame is 'I am bad.' Guilt is 'I did something bad.'" —Lily Padman (59:18) "Shame is I will never, ever be good enough... I'm unworthy of love." —Hunter Biden (60:13–60:17)

• On public attack and being "outed":
  "If they never released any of this stuff, I wouldn't have admitted to anybody. I'm not sitting here talking to you out of some insane courage... I'm sitting here because you know what? It's already out there." —Hunter Biden (80:08)

• On gratitude for pain:
  "What it really is, is being grateful for every awful thing that ever happened to you that brought you to right there." —Hunter Biden (76:59)

• On his father's unique approach to office:
  "He came to that office without that narcissism... he had more empathy and compassion, for normal people because he was the most normal person to ever occupy the office." —Hunter Biden (86:13)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

| Segment | Timestamp (MM:SS) | |------------------------------------|----------------------------| | Opening & Addiction Framework | 03:11–10:18 | | Stigma: Crack, Shame, Media | 08:06–14:53 | | Early Life, Trauma | 15:34–23:40 | | Discovery of Addiction | 28:07–41:10 | | Relapse, Recovery, Beau's Support | 41:10–54:46 | | Crack Spiral, Isolation | 49:39–56:49 | | Radical Honesty, Amends | 59:33–76:59 | | Public Scandal, Family Fallout | 64:40–81:47 | | Family Legacy, Joe Biden | 83:55–90:24 | | Closing Thoughts on Recovery | 90:24–92:52 |

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Tone & Language

The conversation is arrestingly frank but punctuated by humor and warmth, especially between Dax and Hunter as fellow "survivors." It swerves from sobering, detailed accounts of addiction and trauma to philosophical musings, and ends on compassion, connection, and hope. Hunter refuses to wallow, even when relaying painful moments of public ridicule or personal collapse, and there's a deep current of gratitude for recovery and family.

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Who Should Listen

• Anyone seeking insight into addiction and the mechanics of recovery.
• Those curious about the private human reality behind a tabloid persona.
• Listeners interested in trauma, stigma, family dynamics, and radical self-exposure.

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Suggested Follow-Up

• Hunter Biden’s memoir: Beautiful Things (for a complete account of his journey)
• Resources on addiction recovery, shame resilience (e.g., Brené Brown, Gabor Maté), and support groups.

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“What it really is, is being grateful for every awful thing that ever happened to you that brought you to right there.”
—Hunter Biden (76:59)

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Transcript

[Dax Shepard]

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

[Lily Padman]

Hello.

[Dax Shepard]

Today we have Hunter Biden on, who is an author. He was a lawyer, he was a lobbyist. He is an artist and he's a recovery advocate. Obviously he's the son of Joe Biden, the 46th president. And he has a book out now called Beautiful Things detailing his harrowing journey through fucking hardcore addiction.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And so this is a very addiction heavy episode. It's. We try to minimize any political nature. I think this is the kind of story I love to hear about addiction. That's primarily what it is.

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

So I hope everyone goes into it with an open mind because it's incredibly honest and vulnerable and powerful.

[Lily Padman]

I agree.

[Dax Shepard]

Please enjoy Hunter Biden. We are supported by Quints. Every summer I realize I become a real creature of habit. I end up reaching for the same few things over and over.

[Lily Padman]

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[Dax Shepard]

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[Dax Shepard]

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[Lily Padman]

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[Dax Shepard]

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[Lily Padman]

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[Dax Shepard]

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[Hunter Biden]

Good. I'm really, really sorry I'm late. No. You bringing sugar? Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

All right. Hey, Monica.

[Lily Padman]

Nice to meet you.

[Hunter Biden]

Nice to meet you.

[Dax Shepard]

Luckily, we had Sugar in the Raw. Otherwise, I was bringing out a white. Yeah. Bag of white powder. I was like, that's what a start for these two.

[Lily Padman]

That is hilarious.

[Dax Shepard]

Sugar in your coffee. I'm a little shocked. I'm going to be. Hon. Us going to start with stereotypes?

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I thought you were tougher than this.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, no.

[Hunter Biden]

I got my few things. I got my nicotine a little bit. I quit smoking when I got clean. Melissa, my wife, she convinced me to go to this guy. What's his name?

[Dax Shepard]

The hypnotist.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know his name, but I know of him.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah, exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

And I was like. And I went. And it worked.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

And then like six months later, I don't know, it was like my first indictment or my second. I was like, I need to nicotine. He said he could get anybody off of anything. I was shocked. Have you seen this guy? Like, he's like, out of a movie. He's got the worst toupee you've ever seen. He brings you into his garage that has all this bric a brac everywhere. Yeah. You sit, like, in a bar lounger and he has a bottle of water. At least as I remember, he's just talking to you about nicotine and cigarettes and when did you start? And things like that. And all I remember, he just was doing this. There's never a moment where you're like, you're under. At the very end, he comes and it's three sessions. And at the last session, he said, that's it. You're done. And I was done.

[Lily Padman]

That's pretty amazing.

[Dax Shepard]

How about the physical withdrawal?

[Hunter Biden]

No, done.

[Dax Shepard]

You didn't feel the craziness?

[Hunter Biden]

No, no. He does it over three sessions. In, like, the first session, you're gonna smoke half of what you smoke.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Hunter Biden]

Okay. Second session, you're only gonna have two cigarettes a day. And then the third, you're done. And I was done. I mean, I was smoking since I was 17. I mean, like, pack of marbles a day.

[Dax Shepard]

When you were sober? Probably a back.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah. And when I wasn't.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Well, when I look back. I remember my epic hangovers. And at this point it's hard to really know because I also would smoke like three packs of Camel Lights on nights that I partied. If you're blowing lines, the cigarette never goes out. It's just one after another and you wake up feeling horrendous. You're like, I don't, I don't know how to unravel. Was it the alcohol? Was it the cocaine? Was it the insane amount of cigarettes?

[Lily Padman]

Isn't that the whole problem? It's one.

[Hunter Biden]

You can talk about it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's kind of your position. I've heard you speak on this a bit. I think statistically we would agree, Right. I think the shocking number I heard you say is like you add up every single other known drug and the amount of deaths caused by alcohol is 5x some total of every other drug. Yeah. Which I guess then you could try to parse out, like what is the quantity aspect of the drug and then what's the qualitative aspect that's causing that destruction?

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

What do you think?

[Hunter Biden]

I think it's both. Alcohol, number one, is so ubiquitous, but beyond it being ubiquitous, it's the only drug that impacts every organ of your body and every pleasure center of your brain. If you're into stimulants, it's like the dopamine reactor. If you're into opiates, it's the opioid receptors.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly.

[Hunter Biden]

Alcohol does all of them. And then you become truly physically dependent upon it. Meaning that your body will shut down if you deny it the amount of alcohol that you've been putting in it and you'll go into seizures and die. And the only other drug is basically freeze dried alcohol is the benzos. And so from that perspective, and then you just look at the societal effect of it and that part is the quantitative part. And the quantitative part being that it is so ubiquitous. The amount of deaths and destruction that alcohol causes in everything from car accidents to literally just people falling down the steps to people beating the hell out of their partners or the kids or things like that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, man. You remind me of how insanely hard alcohol was to quit. In that you're never more than a couple hundred feet from alcohol. If you're in LA or generally anywhere I went anywhere, you're always within a couple hundred feet of this thing you were trying your hardest to never consume

[Hunter Biden]

and sometimes your own home.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. If you have a partner who does it normally. Yeah. I kind of almost forget how insurmountable that first section was of just like, how will I ever begin to ignore the amount of alcohol I just see all the time, everywhere I go gracefully. I've not walked in in 23, 22 years. I haven't walked into a lot of rooms and saw bowls of cocaine.

[Hunter Biden]

No, exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

And if I saw bowls of cocaine every hundred feet.

[Hunter Biden]

Crack either. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Or heroin or opiates for that matter. Or other synthetic opiates, weed.

[Dax Shepard]

Now it'll be interesting to see what the kind of long term result of it'll all be. I'm generally in favor of it being legalized or fully in favor, but it is becoming ubiquitous now.

[Hunter Biden]

Oh, me too. By the way, I'm not for prohibition. Yeah, it is what it is.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

I would rather see legalization of everything, but before it's just a much more honest approach. And I don't know about everything, but haven't fully thought it through.

[Dax Shepard]

I used to think that when I was younger.

[Hunter Biden]

Crack at your 7 11, San Francisco, you can see. But that's the thing, by the way, the reason I talk about crack, the way that I talk about crack is because it comes with such a stigma and it's so shocking to people. And I don't say it to shock people. Joe Rogan did this whole thing where, oh my God, you should hear him talk about crack. It's like a lost lover. Well, it's just honest and I don't mean to talk about it that way. And I want to always make clear it is actually that dangerous. And the other thing about crack for me is this idea that there's this process and it's a whole different thing. And it's kind of like the secret. It's not.

[Dax Shepard]

It had bad branding. I mean, crack sounds bad branding. Yeah, it's like you're already. It sounds gross crack.

[Hunter Biden]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

If it were called taint cocaine, it's one. It's adjacent to taint cocaine.

[Lily Padman]

It's because there's also some racism in the mix.

[Hunter Biden]

Well, there's a huge amount of racism.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, the whole thing.

[Hunter Biden]

When I was in law school, my senior, analytical writing. It's like your thesis that you write at Yale. That's what I wrote about. I wrote about the disparity in sentencing as relates to crack, which the Obama administration changed and then the Biden administration got rid of altogether.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. This arbitrary distinction.

[Hunter Biden]

Legally, the response to it was understandable in retrospect in that it kind of came and it just tore apart communities at record speed and the level of violence. But the level of violence always is never necessarily associated with use. The level of violence is all around the trade. And I say to people, just go watch the fucking wire, you know what I mean? Like, it had an astounding effect on so many communities. And the reason that I am so open about it, number one, is just because you've had probably the same experience. I don't know of anybody who hasn't been impacted by addiction in their lives one way or another. The thing is though, as much as we talk about it, people don't talk about it and it's really hard for non addict to understand.

[Dax Shepard]

I want to express an overarching goal I have for talking to you, which is I try my hardest to keep the show apolitical. I want Republicans to feel as welcome listening to this show as I do Democrats. I think the things I'm interested in talking about, I'd hope everyone would get to hear about addiction, about trauma, about all these things. So my goal is to keep it as apolitical as possible. But I'm going to break it right now to just say there's only been a single moment that I thought Trump potentially lost his momentum with his base. And it was the one moment he tried to come after your dad about your addiction. You could just feel in that audience, everyone was like, oh no, you're talking about my son, you're talking about my brother in law, you're talking about my mom. That one didn't work. I just think it's so pervasive and everyone's had the heartbreak of it. So few people are fully insulated from it that I just thought, wow, weirdly, of all these things, that's the thing I think cut through the sharpest.

[Hunter Biden]

Well, your intuition or insight into that is actually really spot on. Which is interesting because that's what the whole attack on me initially was all about, was all of the salacious pictures that they stole and cobbled together from I don't know how many different devices. Idea that there was like one laptop that somebody had, it's just bullshit.

[Dax Shepard]

Your whole life was a fucking train wreck. Right? There was evidence all over of the

[Hunter Biden]

train wreck, by the way. But like you, not my whole life. Three years of extreme addiction is, you know, I mean, you look at those pictures and 90% of them are somebody taking a picture of me. But regardless, then what they did is they conflated two things. One that was completely untrue with one that was completely true. I was a crackhead. The thing that wasn't true was that I was taking bribes from like Ukrainians and Chinese and involved. But if you can get somebody, you know, there's this thing called eliminationist rhetoric. Rachel Maddows talked about it and originally was perfected by the Nazis, but then Putin picked it up in the early 2000s in which if they can get just 5% of the people to believe that you're a pedophile or a crackhead attached, like the worst thing that you can say somebody, the ability to get 30% of the people to believe that you're taking bribes is that much easier.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, and then we're circling back to the far reaching tentacles of labeling crack crack. The kind of racial connotations, the now new heights of shame reached by the addict. If you're a cocaine addict, you're in great company. You're with Sigmund Freud, for Pete's sakes. You're with luminaries and Nobel Peace Prizes.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

When you're a crack addict, your group is totally different. And so you're already juggling the shame of an addiction. And then you add on this other factor which is like, oh, no, it's. I'm full exclusion of my community. This is the one thing that. No, I am the bottom of the barrel. Even among addicts. I am the shittiest of the shitty. So, yes, if we establish you as a crackhead, then really your reputation's gone. So all things are conceivable at that point because we've already designated crackheads as being zombies who are the worst of the worst.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So it all works in concert beautifully.

[Hunter Biden]

Actually, to be clear, I handed it all to them on a silver platter because I was a crackhead. And so my thing now is. Yeah, yeah. So what, what are you going to say about me? What are you going to ask me? Like I just did Candace Owens and she was vicious to me for six years. The line that she used over and over again was degenerate crackhead or crackhead's first son. You know, I've been sober for seven years on June 1st.

[Lily Padman]

Congratulations and clean.

[Hunter Biden]

It's over on. Not that I find any distinction between the two, but she didn't know that.

[Dax Shepard]

She did not know that.

[Hunter Biden]

No, she just assumed that I was doing coke or doing crack because what about the bag of cocaine that was found in the White House? And you realized that for six years the New York Post ran a picture of me. I mean, I was on the COVID of the New York Post more than anybody in the history of the newspaper.

[Dax Shepard]

No kidding.

[Hunter Biden]

In one year, period of time Going back to like Alexander Hamilton. And I was their number one story. They were writing one and a half stories about me on average a day for like a year. And then it went to one story every two days for the next five. And each one of those stories was awful to begin with, but it always included a picture of me with a pipe in my mouth or in a motel room with a woman like a degenerate crack addict. And so why wouldn't people think still using it? I'm shocked by how many people are shocked when I say seven years.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, in defense of those people, you count me in that category. Of course you're permeating. I don't even follow a lot of that stuff. I don't follow the New York Post. But you're permeating all this during the election. I'm aware of the fact that you're an addict. There's not a press release that you got sober. There's no big headline that you got sober. I don't know till I think I see you on Channel 5. That was the first time I had seen you post all of that, where I was like, oh wow, this dude's talking about it. This is rad. He's sober. And what a fucking story. And my kind of story, right, Exactly. So let's go through it, I guess. Let's start in Wilmington, Delaware in 1970. You arrive, you're a one year old brother on the scene. Yeah, yeah. Beau, how much older is he then?

[Hunter Biden]

A year and a day. Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, you guys really nailed the Irish twins.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah, exactly. I guess technically we missed it by a day.

[Dax Shepard]

Joe was not waiting.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah, there's no way we would have

[Lily Padman]

wanted a family

[Hunter Biden]

then. My sister was born. We're 16 months apart.

[Lily Padman]

Really soon after.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, your mother, man. Three children under two and a half or something. That's bonkers.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I would imagine for you it's really hard to know what to assume people know about you and what people don't because you're caught in the center of you. I think people vaguely know there was a tragedy.

[Lily Padman]

I think a lot of people don't know.

[Dax Shepard]

I agree. I vaguely just like, oh yeah, Joe Biden went through hell when he first became a senator. I know he lost some family members basically. Right. But yeah. December 18, 1972. What's happening?

[Hunter Biden]

Go back. My dad was 29 and he decided that he was going to run for Senate against this guy named Caleb Boggs, two term governor. And I think at the time he was three term senator. And this incredibly liked incumbent and my dad ran this campaign in Delaware. What you could do at the time in which he was able to reach almost every single voter by literally just he, my aunt, my uncles, my grandparents, and my mom, more than anybody.

[Dax Shepard]

Canvass the whole state. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Feet on the ground.

[Dax Shepard]

For real. How many people lived in Delaware at that point?

[Hunter Biden]

I bet you like 600,000.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow. You could conceivably go meet everyone.

[Hunter Biden]

They put a piece of literature on everyone's doorstep, every home in the state of Delaware.

[Dax Shepard]

And what was his novel offering?

[Hunter Biden]

That people were like, yeah, remember 1970? You had a Nixon landslide also. And so he talked about civil rights and he talked about the environment, and he talked about just new leadership. And he won by a razor thin margin, but he won. And it was a shock to everyone. I don't think it was a shock to my mom.

[Dax Shepard]

Where did that put him historically? His age?

[Hunter Biden]

The youngest ever to win an election. So.

[Lily Padman]

Wow.

[Hunter Biden]

He couldn't take the oath of office until he turned 30. You can win, but you can't take the oath of office until you turn 30.

[Dax Shepard]

President's 35.

[Hunter Biden]

President's 35. And the House of Representatives 25. So anyway, he wins and he goes to D.C. for the day to interview potential staffers. And my mom was supposed to go down because they just bought a house with us. And she decided to delay it a day because she wanted to buy a Christmas tree. It was December 18th because we were celebrating Christmas in Delaware, I guess, and she was pulling out from an intersection at a stop sign. This is a big hill. And a tractor trailer slammed in the side. It was me, my brother, and our dog and my sister and my mother and Beau and I survived, but just barely. We were trapped in the car, but my sister and my mom were killed pretty instantly.

[Dax Shepard]

Imagine about to turn three. Three months away from three.

[Hunter Biden]

Exactly. I was almost three, but was almost four.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you have any mem. I mean, I can't imagine you have any memory of the exact.

[Hunter Biden]

Of the accident itself. No, I have memories. You probably know this. It's very rare. They say like 10 or 15% of people have memories before the age of 7 or 5 or something like that. I believe I do, yeah. But I don't know if it's because so many people have told me, told

[Lily Padman]

me, and photographs, but trauma might add a different element to it.

[Hunter Biden]

And so I choose to believe that I actually have the memory. Like the memory of my mom carrying me around. They used to carry us around like picnic baskets.

[Dax Shepard]

It's also irrelevant whether you remember or not like we had Gabor Mate on. Right. It's like Gabor Mate was abandoned by his mother for a couple months.

[Hunter Biden]

I love him.

[Dax Shepard]

He's the greatest. He doesn't remember that, but all of his circuitry remembers that. It said his arousal setting at that moment.

[Hunter Biden]

Exactly. And by the way, I used to deny myself the idea that the accident and the trauma of it and the loss of my mother and my sister being in the car, all of that had any impact on anything in my life. I was so surrounded by love in the immediate aftermath of that. And then going forward, like my dad. I don't give a shit what anybody thinks about him politically. My dad is literally the best dad in the entire world. He's even better grandfather, which pisses me off, but he is the best dad

[Dax Shepard]

in the world also. Your aunts and uncles moved into the house.

[Hunter Biden]

My aunt moved into the house. My aunt Valerie and my uncle Jimmy converted the garage into an apartment. And my uncle Frankie was in and out, and my grandparents on both sides. We spent every summer up in the Finger Lakes, up in Lake Auasco with the hunters, who I'm named after. I probably spent at least two nights a week at my grandparents, what we call mom and Dada Biden's, every week until I. I graduated high school.

[Lily Padman]

Wow.

[Hunter Biden]

And on top of that, because of the notoriety of the thing, an entire state, which is a small state, was pulling adopted. And so everywhere we went, we had more aunts and uncles than anybody deserves and still do. And so I kind of always denied the idea.

[Lily Padman]

You're like, I'm fine.

[Dax Shepard]

What would probably would have felt ungrateful? That's exactly the amount of love.

[Hunter Biden]

And then my mom came along. My mom now.

[Dax Shepard]

How old were you on Jill?

[Hunter Biden]

Seven.

[Dax Shepard]

Seven.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah. I think seven, seven, eight.

[Dax Shepard]

It's also relevant. Sabo received a ton of broken bones, right?

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah. He was in a. Basically like an attraction in a body cast for a long time.

[Dax Shepard]

But you had a fractured skull and brain damage.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. I know.

[Lily Padman]

Like, how could it not impact?

[Hunter Biden]

But you nailed it. I felt guilty thinking that my life was anything but this bundle of love.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you guys do a lot of debriefing about it or processing it?

[Hunter Biden]

Not the accident, it's the art. But we talked about my mother and still do, incessantly.

[Dax Shepard]

She didn't pretend that she did not.

[Hunter Biden]

Did not pretend in any way that she did not exist. Including my mom. When my mom became. She honored the memory of my mother in a very real way. I mean, I talk to My aunts and uncles about it to this day, about how, by all accounts, and obviously I'm biased, my mother was a extraordinary human being. Everyone will tell you that. My dad got elected at the age of 29 for one reason. It was because of my mother.

[Dax Shepard]

So you're right up until Georgetown. You're at a private school, Catholic. Maybe a Jesuit school.

[Hunter Biden]

No, it's not Jesuit. Was Norbitine. But I started off. My Aunt Val was a teacher at the Wilmington Friend School, so a little Quaker school in Delaware. It was great. And I went there until ninth grade. And my dad had gone to Archmere, which is a little Catholic school on the border of PA in Delaware. And I played football and I decided to go because my brother had gone there, which was probably a mistake.

[Lily Padman]

Why?

[Hunter Biden]

But. Well, it's just I'm much more suited for the Quaker ethic than I am to the Norbertine Catholic school ethic. But I have great friends there.

[Dax Shepard]

How were you and Beau different?

[Hunter Biden]

We were inseparable. And we fought like brothers. Fight. But no one else could fight my brother without me or somebody do something to me without my brother standing in the way.

[Dax Shepard]

My brother would kick my ass, then go beat up the bully at minute later.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah. By the way, Bo and I were more evenly matched. I know that I was much more pugnacious than he was. The difference between us is that Beau was a extrovert. And also he had a confidence that was just immediate. You can ask anybody. Bo was an extraordinary human being. And I mean, everybody called him the sheriff. He never drank. He was always the guy that drove the car. He was always the one that was, you know, cutting people off when they're about to do something stupid. Neddy was like that from the time he was 8 years old. And I loved drawing and I loved poetry and I loved sports, but I also loved playing with my army men by myself in my room.

[Lily Padman]

You were sensitive.

[Dax Shepard]

You were sensitive.

[Hunter Biden]

I was much, much, much more sensitive.

[Lily Padman]

Addicts generally are.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that's part of our pr.

[Hunter Biden]

Because we're not stupid, too. Exactly. That's what I always say. But that was the difference between us. He was the constant presence in my life in only most beautiful way that I can articulate.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, you go to Georgetown, you get a history degree. Were you always set on going to law school? How did you decide that?

[Hunter Biden]

So when I was at Georgetown, the best part about Georgetown was is that I got to meet these really incredibly fascinating young Jesuit priests that were very much a part of campus life, at least back then. I Met a guy named Ted Dziak who had started a thing called the Jesuit International Volunteer Corps. It's basically like a Peace Corps, but it is done under the auspices of the Jesuit community. But it's non ecumenical. You don't go out and proselytize or anything.

[Dax Shepard]

You're not trying to convert people?

[Hunter Biden]

No, you can go out if you're a Methodist. It's just public service. And they had a beachhead in Belize in Nepal and Micronesia at the time. And we started a thing called the Jesuit International Volunteer Summer Program in Belize. And because of that, I was really involved also in a thing called the center for Immigration Policy and Refugee Assistance. And there was another Jesuit there that ran that. He was one of, like the OG refugee and immigrant advocates in the country. And I was involved in that. And I decided that I was going to do the Peace Corps. And another guy, guy named. Naming all these people Father Watson, Bill Watson, he said, why are you going abroad? Joined jvc, which is a domestic version of the Peace Corps.

[Dax Shepard]

What about Portland?

[Hunter Biden]

Exactly. Because he was from Portland, which, by the way, was the greatest thing ever, because this was 1992. It is just the coolest place in the world.

[Dax Shepard]

Coffee, cigarettes, grunge.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah, exactly. I mean, like I sat in Pal's bookstore and read all the Beat poets. You have an endless cup of coffee and three packs of cigarettes and you live with other volunteers. You make 80 bucks a month. That's all you get. And you pull your money together for groceries, but you're riding the bus and you're working in the community and living in the community that you work in. Which was me in the basement of a church figuring out how to get people food or get their lights turned back on or, you know, get the heat turned back on in winter. It was the greatest thing ever.

[Dax Shepard]

And you met your first wife there?

[Hunter Biden]

Yes, exactly. And she was a volunteer also. And then we, shortly after that, had Naomi. We got married. I went to law school. I did my first year at Georgetown.

[Dax Shepard]

You were married with a kid at 23, right, exactly.

[Hunter Biden]

And I had Naomi on my last exam of my first semester of law school. And the professor let me out of the exam, so I took it after Christmas and he gave me an A. And I did really well. And I'd always wanted to go to Yale. I got rejected, and I didn't think I was necessarily gonna get in, but I did really well and got into Yale as a transfer. They accept like five to seven people a year.

[Dax Shepard]

Sidebar. Was it interesting to leave the bubble for the first time and go to Portland in that. You grew up in Delaware, Dad's a senator. It's politics, politics, politics. Then you go to Georgetown, which is in D.C. again, you must at that time think the entire country thinks about politics all the time and cares.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And then you go to Portland and was it nice to get an outside perspective and did you feel that happening?

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah, not as much because I needed an outside perspective from the politics thing. But the difference with Beau and I was that we never grew up in that. We grew up in Delaware. My dad took the train back and forth every day. And so in a state of 600, which is like now, I think a million people or just under a million people, everybody knows my dad. And you guys kind of get this idea. Uncle Joe, they knew him as Joe. Like, when I get pulled over by the cops, it wasn't, sorry, sir. It was like, I can't wait till I see your dad. He's going to kick your ass. You know, I mean, like that was our existence. When I went to Georgetown, that was a little bit different, but still not overwhelming. It's not like anybody knew who I was, by the way, that people on the street know who I am now. So when I went to Portland, though, you're absolutely right. I don't know what you think about the addiction thing, but for me now, in retrospect, particularly this time, this last seven years in which I had to kind of make a choice, the ultimate choice, to live or die. So many of the decisions that I made in my life that had really horrible consequences were all based in fear. Fear of judgment, fear of sticking out, fear of being found out, fear of showing truly who you are. But when I was in Portland, I could be the guy that was sitting and reading Ginsburg and the Paris Review,

[Dax Shepard]

Naked Lunch and Bukhal Stick.

[Hunter Biden]

Exactly. While I was making 80 bucks a month and not giving a shit.

[Dax Shepard]

Can you think at this age? So if I do it, it's like there's some really memorable moments with using. One is the very first time I decided to drink some beers out of the fridge. My dad was a recovering addict, so I was never going to do it. Then one day I was like, no, I'm going to do it. I'm going to find out on my own. And I do remember having like three beers out of the fridge and literally thinking, oh, fuck, this is the feeling I've been craving and couldn't articulate. I don't know, I can't compare it to non addicts, but just Immediately I was like, this is a magic 100%.

[Hunter Biden]

I know exactly where I was. I know exactly what happened. I was at a adult party with my brother. I picked up a champagne glass, went underneath a table with a tablecloth over it, drank the glass and thought to myself, oh my God, this is the answer to everything.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh yeah, truly.

[Hunter Biden]

Because then I left underneath the table and I danced with everybody and I was happy and I didn't continue to drink. Drink. All the trolls clip this stuff. I wasn't drinking at the age of 8, but I remember that experience, you know, when people say, why did you do it? Because it worked.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, yeah, it's a medicine that works

[Hunter Biden]

and it works like that. And then you find something that works even better. I played football so, you know, during the football season none of us would drink kinda. And it's what we did. It's what we did on the weekends.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, what are you gonna do? Be the one person not doing it. It's a hard thing to ask people,

[Hunter Biden]

you know, it's time I really drank after I was 8. Remember what it was exactly, and talk about regulating emotions is a friend of mine had taken his parents car with another friend of mine. They had a couple beers or whatever it was, speeding down one of these back roads in Delaware and ran into a tree and she died instantly. Talk about the wrong response to that. That the wrong response to that was he was my best friend at the time is that we stole beers in the back of his house. And I remember the enormous guilt. I don't think I've ever told this story. I remember my dad picking me up from his house the morning after we, between us drank a 12 pack, I guess, or whatever. But you know, you're 15 years old and going to mass. We'd go to mass every Sunday at St. Joe's on the Brandywine, Little Catholic church. And having to leave and tell my dad I think I had the flu and thrown up outside. And I think it was less a response to the alcohol than it was to the enormity of the guilt that I had. Just like our friend, the consequences for him for what happened were enormous. And the guilt of that, and as you know, guilt is appropriate, but the thing that is not is the shame. So then what's the only thing that you know your brain is telling you works so that you don't have to feel that shame and anxiety over that shame of the thing that you're not telling somebody? Oh, I know. Have another drink.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

So that was like at 15 and then it's a cycle. So when I get to Portland, I've made it through college. I actually did pretty well. Not without Oktoberfest in Burlington, Vermont. Got in a street fight and somebody curbed me and broke every tooth out of my.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Hunter Biden]

Stomped on my leg on the curb and broke my leg in three places. I was in a cast for six months. And, you know, I mean, oh, it was awful. Awful. But that didn't stop me. Yeah, that didn't stop me. So when I speed up to Portland, there's this whole new me. No expectations, nobody that knows all of the small town or the small college kind of group. And it's filled with purpose. Yeah, it was incredibly promising. And so I drank, and obviously to excess. I don't know what your drinking was like, but I wasn't a blackout drunk, unfortunately. I really wish I blacked out because I could go and go and go.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, the bill never came due at that age.

[Hunter Biden]

No. And the truth of the matter was, is because I wasn't engaged engaging in anything in which the bill came due. We were going to nickel beers at Knob Hill in Portland and playing pool. We didn't have any money beyond, like a keg. Yeah.

[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 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, an Allstate affiliate. This episode is brought to you by Pendulum. Now, listen, I'm going to be honest with you. Until pretty recently, if someone said microbiome to me, I would have assumed they were trying to sell me something at a juice bar in Silver Lake. But it turns out your gut health is kind of running the whole operation. Your energy, your cravings, how you digest food, even your mood. Mood. So much of that traces back to what's going on in your gut. And once you start looking into it, it's one of those things you can't really unlearn. Pendulum Metabolic Daily is doing something different. They focus on what are called keystone strains, including a live strain called Akkermansia, which you can only get from breast milk. It's also the number one GI doctor recommended Akkermansia product. So if you're curious about the gut side of the equation, check out out pendulum. Go to pendulumlife.com armchair to save 20% on your first order using DAX20 we get support from skims.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, I just really love skims. It's pretty much all I wear as an undergarment.

[Dax Shepard]

Once you're pampered the way that skims will pamper you, you don't want to go elsewhere.

[Lily Padman]

You can't go back. They're so comfortable and they fit so well. It's everything when it comes to a bra and underwear as well. Don't forget about the under panties. They have a really good thong. Again, these are tricky items because they can be very uncomfortable but that you want to look cute. You can get both with skims.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so what is it specifically about the cotton? Because I feel like cotton is cotton. What's the diff?

[Lily Padman]

That's what I thought too, but guess what? It's really not the same. Skims figured out how to make the cotton feel elevated. The everyday cotton fabric, it's so soft. It holds its shape. It doesn't do that thing where it stretches out after two washes.

[Dax Shepard]

That's the downside of cotton.

[Lily Padman]

It is, but I basically replaced half of my underwear drawer with the pie because nothing else was hitting the same standard.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, that's a real endorsement from someone who's very particular about this stuff.

[Lily Padman]

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[Dax Shepard]

This episode is sponsored by Better Health.

[Hunter Biden]

Help.

[Dax Shepard]

Summer's one of those seasons where there's this pressure to be on all the time. Say yes to everything, pack the calendar, and then you end up more burnt out than when it started.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, there's a real difference between surviving a summer and actually thriving in one.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm feeling it right now. It's approaching and I have 90 things I insist I have to do on this little tiny sliver of time.

[Lily Padman]

And yeah, it gets a little stressful, stressing you out. Well, it really helps to have someone else in the game to help you get through it.

[Dax Shepard]

Check in. Yeah. And if you've been thinking about trying therapy, better help makes it really simple to get started. It's the world's largest online therapy platform. Over 30,000 therapists, all fully licensed. They match you based on a questionnaire and they've been doing it for over 12 years. So the matching is dialed in and if it's not right, you can switch anytime.

[Lily Padman]

There's no friction, just support when you need it.

[Dax Shepard]

You don't have to say yes to everything. This summer, find support in therapy, sign up and get 10% [e-mail] DAX that's better. H E L P. When's the first time it occurs to you? I think this is like for the layperson, there's these kind of stereotypes that are true and not true. Which is, first of all, this notion of like a bottom, which is like, well, there's not a bottom. I had like 30.

[Hunter Biden]

I always say at bottoms you're dead. Maybe in jail if you're looking at.

[Dax Shepard]

But just that moment you go, oh, I should have died last night. Or I should have died over the last four. Life or death. That's a bottom.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And you go, are we going to keep going? And often you keep going even though

[Hunter Biden]

you write you find a new bottom.

[Dax Shepard]

When do you start recognizing I do this differently than people and probably I'll have to quit at some point.

[Hunter Biden]

When I was 29, I start to realize my pattern of drinking was unlike anyone. Not anyone, because you find your group, you know what I mean? But even among those heavy drinkers, I would still be going at 6 in the morning. Morning while I was like, what are you guys doing? And then When I was 33, my wife at the time said, like, you need to slow it down.

[Dax Shepard]

Were you accumulating any wreckage? Had you gotten DUIs? No.

[Hunter Biden]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

You were keeping it pretty.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah. And I, you know, I built my own law firm. I graduated from Yale, I did really well from law school, and I was a senior executive vice president at a major bank when I got out of law school. And then I went to work for the Clinton administration.

[Dax Shepard]

You had a lot to lean on.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

You're doing well. You're getting gigs that other people aren't getting.

[Dax Shepard]

You're able to shore up the plummeting self esteem from the addiction with these external things.

[Hunter Biden]

And I had three kids by that.

[Lily Padman]

Well, right. But were you also thinking that maybe it's a part of your success? Like, I could see you kind of anyone being sort of like, well, this is part of the whole recipe. I do this and I'm successful and

[Hunter Biden]

it becomes a part of your identity.

[Lily Padman]

Identity, yeah, definitely.

[Hunter Biden]

And what I always say when people. People come to me and I love it because I say to them, I don't have any answer for you other than getting clean and sober is easy. All you have to do is change everything.

[Lily Padman]

Right.

[Hunter Biden]

But it becomes a part of your identity. And you think, what am I going to do? What am I going to do on a Thursday? What am I going to do on a Friday vacation? What am I going to do on Tuesdays? Everything revolves around drinking. What am I going to do on

[Dax Shepard]

vacation when I celebrate?

[Lily Padman]

What am I going to do at 5 o'? Clock?

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah. Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

5 o'.

[Hunter Biden]

Clock o'. Clock. 11am yeah. Try 11am yeah, exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Can I sprinkle in another, I think, facet of this very complex system of addiction? I think for men, at least for me, there's a big chunk of masculinity involved in this whole journey. For me, which is, again, I was the dude who went harder than anyone and I showed up and did my shit. And I had great pride in that. That was a real indicator of my alpha masculinity. It validated. Just scratching and clawing for this validation of being appropriately masculine was also some facet of it. I don't know what percentage, but it was in the mix. Was that happening for you too?

[Hunter Biden]

All of that fear of really being seen, you build up this Persona of being tougher than anybody, more capable than

[Dax Shepard]

anybody, because really, I'm just a sensitive dude who wants to entertain people and love my daughter.

[Hunter Biden]

So it becomes a shield for everything and it becomes this identity. And it's literally the polar opposite of your true self. Because I'm not that guy. I don't want to be that guy. And so doing a speech, doing anything public, I needed a drink to do it. I thought I needed a drink to do it. In the past life, if this was seven years ago, for me, the idea that I wouldn't literally be a puddle on this couch just if you put a microphone in front of my face and knowing that there's a camera in the room or that I had to get on a stage and do something, I was so afraid of that. Now, unfortunately for everyone, I don't exactly. So I do a lot more. But you're exactly right. So it Becomes your Persona. And what happened with me is what I did was like, okay, I'm going to prove to everybody that this is not a problem. I'm not going to drink for January Drive January. I'm going to do 30 days. And I'd get six and I'd break and I'd say, oh, that was just one break. It was for the weekend. And then what ends up happening is then you start hiding it. It becomes binge even more, more. And then I'd be like, hey, I got a trip that I got to do for business. And that business trip would be two days, that would stretch into four, that would stretch into five, and then it would come home.

[Dax Shepard]

You're dead on arrival. I just laughing at how many times the game plan evolves so quickly. So you have 30 days and then just weekends. No, just Wednesdays and weekends.

[Hunter Biden]

Just beer, not Jack Daniels. Well, not.

[Dax Shepard]

And it just erodes so quickly from the abstinence to the like one day a week to full on.

[Lily Padman]

Is there's also physical dependence. There is physical dependence that people take out consideration. Yeah. It's like you can't actually just stop at any moment. You kind of have to like tide trape. And if you're an addict, you can't tide tray. Like it's this crazy.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah. Nobody talks about it. Nobody talks about all of that in terms of the wellness piece of it and ways to be able to mitigate that and how you should do it with somebody, really do it, understanding what you're doing. But regardless, is that for me, it became so many promises made, so many promises broken around alcohol that BO just like, hey, let's do something about this for real. Let's start to look. And I found Crossroads in Antigua. Eric Clapton's place.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I sent my best friend Aaron there.

[Hunter Biden]

It's great. By the way. It was for me at that time. And this is. What is it, 2003. So 22, 23 years ago. It's in Antigua, but it's not a

[Dax Shepard]

resort and you earn swimming privileges. Like Aaron would call me and be like, oh yeah, I did all blah, blah. I'm gonna get to swim in the ocean today for two hours exactly.

[Hunter Biden]

You get to go on the bus to go to the ocean to go women. And it has a real community aspect. At least when I was there. They were really wonderful. And I get there with all of those preconceived notions of how my life is going to be so empty because I don't have alcohol in it anymore. And I was introduced to the program. All of a sudden I was like, wait a second, this may work. And I got out. My brother picked me up from the airport and immediately drove to a meeting over at Dupont Circle Club.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, what a good big brother.

[Lily Padman]

I know.

[Hunter Biden]

He went into. It was an open meeting. He went to the meeting with me.

[Dax Shepard]

That makes me emotional.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah, yeah. He goes up to this guy and says, hey, do you sponsor people? Because he had spoken in the thing. And he goes, yeah, of course. He goes, I'm going to introduce you to my brother. And I got my sponsor. I stayed clean and sober. And again, I hate the distinction.

[Lily Padman]

What is the distinction?

[Hunter Biden]

Well, you say you're sober if you're not drinking and you say you clean in the other program if you're not using drugs. It's all drugs. But anyway, I was not on any mind altering substances whatsoever for about seven year period of time.

[Dax Shepard]

Time. And did you love the program? Did you start yielding all the results?

[Hunter Biden]

I still love the program. Those people that I met are still clean and sober. And when I say people like a handful that through everything have always been a lifeline for me. If I had my phone in front of me, you'd find like four texts every day from those same people that gave me a lifeline back.

[Dax Shepard]

When you're looking at the landscape in front of you. Yes. All you see is all the things you're not going to have, like the camaraderie with friends, the intimacy with men, the to do on vacation, the celebration, the salve for disappointment. You're very aware of all the things you're going to lose. But what you don't consider is you're also going to lose this impossible weight that has been on your shoulders, which is the shame and guilt and regret. But you don't even know that yet. You can't conceive of a moment where you won't be walking around feeling like the biggest piece of shit that ever lived. That's not even in your imagination yet. And I think the gift of it that's kind of hard to sell kids on or sell people that are new to it is like you can't really even imagine what it's like to walk through life with maybe regrets, but not shame. And you've made amends and you're walking free of all that because for most of us, it's been decades since we knew what that feeling was like.

[Hunter Biden]

It's impossible to tell somebody. The only thing that we can do is show them and hope that they get the chance to experience it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

And by the way, that seven years wasn't like I was hanging on by the skin of my teeth in any way. But what I now know is that I had not fully done the work because there was that armor that still existed in which that shame still lived. And not even about specific things, just about truly being me. And so, anyway, I relate to lapse. Yeah, I'm on a plane, and it was 2010, I think, and I'm coming back from a business trip in Europe, clean. It's over. I have been upgraded to, like, this business class, but I was the only one in there. She comes by with a cart, and it's a Bloody Mary cart, like a full Bloody Mary cart. And I swear to God, you know, through my head, one of my counselors at Crossroads had told me a story about how he had been so sober for seven years and he had a drink on a plane on his way to Washington, D.C. from the west coast, and he woke up in Indianapolis, Indiana, in a motel. Why, that would be a. In any way like that. Maybe I should try this.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

But I did. I had a drink. And of course, I didn't have one Bloody Mary on that plane. In which I think I probably came and told people that in my group, I had had six. And I got off the plane and I went to a corner store on the way home and picked up, you know, a fifth of Smirnoff in that plastic bottle and put it in my bag. So then about a year later, Bo comes and says, back to Antigua, pal.

[Lily Padman]

Are you like, oh, my God, My brother has to keep. Do you have guilt about that?

[Hunter Biden]

No, no, I don't have any guilt. Guilt about how much my brother adored me. He wasn't like, oh, God, I gotta go get Hunter. He was like, what the fuck? You've been trying so hard. We'll just get you back, man. You're doing great. When we get back, I'll go to meet. I think the meetings are great. I love it. I could use it, too. I was like, never any, like, talk about unconditional love that they had between each other. But anyway, thanks, Monica. Now I think I maybe should have been guilty of joking. I'm joking.

[Lily Padman]

I really letting people down is part of the shame.

[Hunter Biden]

I had guilt with my wife at the time. I had guilt with my kids, who I adored and adore me. But then I cycled. Then it was like I came back from Antigua that time. I got shingles. Three months later, somebody prescribed me oxycodone. I started down that path and which led to a bottle of Smirnoff. And I was in that cycle. And then Beau got diagnosed with glioblastoma in 2014. 14. It's a death sentence.

[Dax Shepard]

If I were you, carrying around I'm a piece of. And I'm a scumbag, and my sweet brother gets this diagnosis, I would think the amount of shame it would exponentially trigger in me that I should be the one dying. Why on earth would it be him?

[Hunter Biden]

100. You already have this latent survivor's guilt that exists. And this is why I've opened up to the idea that I can talk about that trauma now. Because, of course, it had something to do with everything and just forget about the drinking or addiction. Just in terms of my fear. You already have that latent survivor's guilt. The worst dream that I ever had in my life as a kid was my brother dying. I remember vividly. The only nightmares that I ever remembered was that with losing Bo. And that became true. But playing in slow motion, like, you know, the end is near coming, and it's going to be awful. And it was awful. And I did things like I decided to join the Navy, and I relapsed the day before I went into the Navy Reserves at the age of 42.

[Dax Shepard]

Pissed hot.

[Hunter Biden]

I get. Yeah, pissed hot.

[Dax Shepard]

Discharged from the.

[Hunter Biden]

Discharged from Navy Reserve. I now am sober. I'm going through all of the treatments with Beau and all the. The things that were trying, and you get down to the end. They're doing experimental stuff. But anyway, he passed away was the 30th of May, 11 years ago. And from there on out, just everything. Not because of him. Regardless of that, I just as easily could have completely screwed everything up. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Even if he had stayed healthy.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah, even if he stayed healthy. It accelerated.

[Dax Shepard]

Accelerated the process.

[Hunter Biden]

And the biggest thing that accelerated is immediately after Beau died, my marriage fell apart. I mean, immediately after we attempted to do things. I attempted to go back to rehab. I stayed in. I had a sober coach. Everybody was afraid that I was going to kill myself. And that all fell apart within a year.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you remember? You must. It's a rhetorical question, but the first time you smoke crack, From June of

[Hunter Biden]

2015 to the end of June of 2016, I had been in and out. I did, like, 45 days in inpatient patient. Then I came out and I did this thing where I had this guy that three times a day I'd have to blow into a breathalyzer, and it takes a picture of you. And so I was doing that and then I had a relapse over Christmas. Dicey on its own. Yeah, I relapse. I admit that. I relapse. I go back into a outpatient program, which is like six hours a day in D.C. but I'm living by myself for the first time in 46 years. And by the way, nobody's fault but my. My own. Just to be clear, I'm not blaming my.

[Lily Padman]

It doesn't sound like you are.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

I think it's even more important for me to say that over and over again. And I relapse, I use cocaine, and I drink, and I come back into the program on the Monday and I say, hey, I relapsed, I drank, and I use cocaine. And they say, you got to go take the drug test. And I said, I'm not going to take the drug test. It's not protected by hipaa. You're protected in a rehab facility, not in a categorized medical facility. It's discoverable, and I don't want to do that. I'm telling you what I did. I'm not keeping anything out. They said, well, unless you take the drug test, you're not coming back in. And so it was on k Street in D.C. and I walk out, and I know Lincoln park, which is literally two blocks away. And I knew the worst possible thing that I could do do was go smoke crack. And that's what I decided was the answer. And I did. And it was a revelation. And again, Joe Rogan. I don't mean this as a love letter. What I mean, it is as the ultimate warning from someone whose life was torn apart by it. It was staggeringly effective and immediate, and. And that began a cycle for people who don't know.

[Dax Shepard]

So when you snort cocaine, it goes into your sinuses. It slowly dissolves. It slowly enters your bloodstream. When you smoke it, your lungs convert it immediately. They dump it all in your blood. The only thing that's faster is shooting intravenously. It's a different experience because you're getting all of it right away.

[Hunter Biden]

And there's a piece about crack that also is this idea that crack is dirty. But really the truth of the matter is the way that you manufacture crack, I figured out how to do that pretty quickly and got much better and better and better at it. Most of the impurities that you could find in it when things were mixed get burned out. And so it's a very, very pure form of the drug, which has a immediate effect. There's a really crazy study that I heard out of University Of Pennsylvania, in which crack addicts, they did these brain images. Yeah. But live with smoking. The highest that you get, get as a crack addict, is the millisecond before you ever ingest a drug.

[Dax Shepard]

That's the dopamine dump.

[Hunter Biden]

And that's the power of the drug. It's not even the drug. It's literally power of the brain. The power of the brain. It's crazy. And so it worked really effectively.

[Dax Shepard]

What you're looking for is like the micron before obliteration is the goal, which is so fucking up.

[Hunter Biden]

So up. God, it's so up.

[Lily Padman]

It's sad. I mean, that's why when. When you tell the stories about people saying degenerate crack addict and stuff, it's like, who can hear these things and not think? One, thank God I don't have that. Two, this is sad. We need to help people to, like, shame, to add to the shame. I do not understand.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. As if the person's like, thriving in life, in cars, smoking pipes.

[Hunter Biden]

As you can see from the thousands of pictures, I was not thriving.

[Lily Padman]

Hey, do you want to trade places?

[Hunter Biden]

There are a few. I look pretty good, though.

[Dax Shepard]

You went to depths I didn't. I became aware of your story because a woman that spent some time with you wrote some piece that I happened to read, and I quite enjoyed it for a few reasons. A, she, like, liked you. This woman who wrote this thing. I don't even know specifically what it was like. Well, that says something. If you can hang out with an heir addict who's fucking smoking rock all day long, and you come out of that, you still kind of like the person. There's really kind of revealing because you're at your darkest, shittiest, monstrous. You're just a bottomless pit. Right. Of giving me more of everything. So the fact that that person still had kind of a kind opinion of you, I found fascinating. But also it was an interesting perspective to see the person orbiting someone in that zone and then just imagining people that orbited me when I was in that zone. I never really got get to hear what that person's experience is like.

[Hunter Biden]

You kind of heard from a lot of them. I overcompensated, knowing what I was doing to myself with being as compassionate, empathetic, and generous to a fault. You know, basically, come beat me up.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, you're getting robbed all the time.

[Hunter Biden]

All the time. I mean, I don't know how many laptops and phones that were stolen from me. And I don't say this like, oh, I was such a victim. The way that I assuaged my guests guilt was I just would give it all away or know that it was going to be taken all away. And it didn't matter who it was, it didn't matter if it was bicycles who lived with me in my apartment knowing that she was robbing me blind every day, or whether it was a prostitute, by the way, which was all about drugs. That's the fastest way to be able to figure out, if you want to figure I'm not going to tell people to figure out how to get drugs is that that's the easiest entryway, particularly for someone like me into that one world. I mean, eventually I had to go down to like the flower District at 4 o' clock in the morning and score and nowhere to go. You have guns, you know, in my face.

[Dax Shepard]

You're not naive. You're a smart dude, you went to Yale Law. You also recognize, like, I am desperate for this thing. The people around me are even more desperate because they don't have any means. And so I'm not naive. Yeah, I'm going to get taken for a ride and I'm willing to get taken for a ride because I want access to the thing thing. It's all a terrible symbiosis of destruction, by the way.

[Hunter Biden]

And I consciously knew that I was killing myself. 100% knew it. And it would go up. And even during that period of time, like I went for treatment and did ibogaine and 5 Meo DMT therapy.

[Dax Shepard]

Were any of those effective? I hear about people claiming, I think

[Hunter Biden]

that they can be very, very effective. My experience with 5MEO DMT was one of the most spiritually enlightening things that I've ever done. But that's because I did the ibogaine before it, which was not as effective for, because I was smoking crack up until the three hours before I went and did it. Ibogaine is, I think, one of the strongest, if not strongest, psychoactive hallucinogen on the planet. It's a plant from the iboga plant in Africa that they've used for thousands of thousands of years. Studies have shown that it has a great impact, particularly with people with PTSD and opiate addictions. It's a very, very long lasting 12 at least. My experience was like over 12 hours, you know, and then I went and tried to do ayahuasca and I did that frog toad venom where they cut your arms and purge you. You know, I went to this charlatan in Massachusetts and did ketamine infusion therapy, but all the time I'm still using. And I believe in those things and I believe in those alternative things not as an answer, but as additive to something. If you approach it with the respect that the plant medicine actually requires from you. I don't want to ever do any of them again. Yeah, I'm afraid to do anything again.

[Dax Shepard]

But also, yeah, the notion that you're gonna take one thing to break your, to break your desire to take another

[Hunter Biden]

thing, but it can be when you're really healthy is. It can be a mind expanding experience.

[Dax Shepard]

It can break up neural networks that have existed since the first trauma and it can rewire new pathways.

[Hunter Biden]

You see, literally, if anyone ever really, really stops to think about it is kind of the perennial philosophy of the connection of all things, that everything is love. And I don't mean love in terms of the more sense of it, but in terms of there is no distinction between me, you, this table, this earth, the universe and anything else. At least that's the experience. These are arbitrary boundaries, impossible to articulate, which isn't a beautiful thing to experience, but it's not the answer. The one thing is you still come back from that. And if you're filled with shame and fear, it's also just.

[Dax Shepard]

The wreckage is just piling up. You lost your family.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You have a relationship with your brother's widow.

[Hunter Biden]

I mean, awful. What grief and addiction, loneliness and every other thing that you can come up with. To think why something like that would have been a good idea for anyone while you know that you're tearing your family apart. I mean, talk about the shame. And the only thing that has, you know, is being able to talk about it knowing that like I'm going to talk about this now and there's going to be be 400 people that are going to come into your comments and say what has come bag, you know what I mean? And by the way. And me say like, yeah, I don't know. By the way. I don't know and I don't care. Maybe put it this way is that when I was in the depths of my addiction, I did some really, really shameful things that I have no excuse for. And I don't think that drugs and alcohol and addiction are, are ever an excuse. But I do know this. Certainly part of an explanation.

[Dax Shepard]

No, I can observe you off of it and I can observe you on it. And they're pretty distinct creatures. I think people have some fantasy of what the crack scene's like. But again, when I've been with friends, it's like Full vulnerability, full lack of any fear that you'd be judged. Full expression of yourself. That's the joy of the thing is, like, I'm telling you how much I love you and so scary for me to do sober as a dude.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah. It's just hard to find many compatriots. Many compatriots. So that group becomes smaller and smaller and smaller until you're in a Super 8 motel off of 95 in West Haven.

[Dax Shepard]

In of all of our stories is ultimately is isolation. So Even if there's 20 people in the other room, you're in a closet smoking crack and you really don't want to be interrupted. And you just need that there to know you're not completely alone, even though you.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, I think it's maybe worth. We maybe should have done this earlier, but to remind people of the difference between shame and guilt, because those are very different. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like shame is I'm bad and guilt is I did something bad.

[Hunter Biden]

Exactly. So guilt, to me, as a good Catholic boy who doesn't really practice much anymore, but I learned some good things, is that, yeah, guilt's an appropriate thing.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, we should have.

[Hunter Biden]

Should feel bad about this, that and the other thing, you know, go read my book. I feel bad for it all.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

And what you should do about that is that you should atone and make amends. And I don't mean atone like, go, you know, whip yourself with thistles on your back until you bleed. I mean, go and say, I'm fucking sorry. Yeah, I apologize. Not expect the other person to say, oh, I forgive you. But you make it clear that you know that you did wrong. Shame is I will never, ever be good enough.

[Dax Shepard]

You're a human being.

[Hunter Biden]

I'm unworthy.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm unworthy of love.

[Hunter Biden]

I'm unworthy of trust. I'm worthy of my own self. Love. I mean, that's the thing about the honesty. The biggest thing to get honest about. Like, I always talk about this thing, radical honesty. You got to get honest with yourself. That's what, like, you really, really, really do. And I never really knew what that mean, though. You hear all of these things in the room, even, like, the serenity prayer. Well, what the fuck does it mean? Know the difference between, you know, like, I don't. I don't know. But there was a moment when I finally, finally put it down almost seven years ago. It wasn't by any virtue of my own. I had that experience of, like, it wasn't a White light. But it was like, you have a choice.

[Dax Shepard]

There's a tiny window open right now.

[Hunter Biden]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

And if you don't step through it, you're going to be dead.

[Hunter Biden]

As clear as you two sitting across

[Dax Shepard]

from me, I want to do two seconds on this because it just kind of came up and again, I can forget now. Look, I relapsed on opiates, but I have. Haven't drank in 22 years. Right. I'm pretty removed from. Because each of these addictions has their own specific personality. I talked to opiate addicts and I had that experience. And that's one experience. It's much different from the hardcore alcoholic experience for me. But I was reminded of this because my best friend who I sent to treatment and I were talking about a third friend who is hardcore going through it right now, and I was reminded. We were just talking about. I called him to say how grateful I am. He's sober. Seeing this other friend, I'm just so grateful. Grateful. And we were talking, and what we both agreed about that I think might be, again, enlightening to people is like there's a point where there's a third rail in your mind. It's not necessarily you want to die. You want to die for a period of time long enough that when you wake up, all of the wreckage will magically be gone. There's this third desire. It is obliteration and death, but it's not. I remember not wanting permanent death, but I definitely wanted to die for like three or. Or four years and then wake up with a clean slate. That was like a bit of a fantasy.

[Hunter Biden]

Disappear. It was a literal fantasy with me. You think about it. I came out to California, told everybody I was going to rehab because I was going to disappear. That was in my head, is I'm going to disappear for three years, and then either I'm dead, but more realistically, I'll come back a new man. You know what I mean? But I was disappearing for all intents and purposes. Purposes, if any rational person would look at.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a little boy in you that's like, maybe if I run away long enough, they'll remember that they loved me and that they miss me and they'll forget about all this.

[Hunter Biden]

First time I ran away, what I did is I wrote a note and then I went. Hid under my bed so that I could hear everybody tell me how much they missed me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Hunter Biden]

That's what it was.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And it doesn't go away. You just. You're still acting like that as like a full grown adult male man. Exactly. We're all just kids, 50 years old. Like, if I. If I disappear for three years, they'll be so glad when I walk back up the driveway. We could put all this behind us.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah. Don't go away.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more Armchair expert, if you dare. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. I feel like spring always does this thing where you realize you've been thinking about something for a long time, and suddenly it feels like, okay, maybe I actually do something with it.

[Lily Padman]

Totally. It's less pressure, but more like readiness.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Like you've been sitting on an idea or a project or even just a perspective you care about, and you're like, maybe this deserves to exist somewhere outside of my own head.

[Lily Padman]

And may being Mental Health Awareness Month, there's already this broader conversation happening. People are more open, more curious, more willing to engage, which is where something

[Dax Shepard]

like Squarespace comes in. It makes that jump from idea to actual thing feel way less overwhelming. You can build a site that looks good, works well, and actually reflects what you're trying to put out there.

[Lily Padman]

And it's not just hypothetical. Wabi Wob literally used Squarespace to build our site.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And Wabiwab is not trying to spend 40 hours figuring out web design.

[Lily Padman]

It just worked, which is kind of the point.

[Dax Shepard]

So if you've been sitting on something and waiting for the right moment, this might be it. Head to squarespace.comdax for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

[Hunter Biden]

Not only did my fantasy not come true, the whole world, right when I got clean in June of 2019, it just fell on top of my head, outside my doorstep, in every single crevice and nook and cranny of my life.

[Dax Shepard]

You were being accused of everything. Brokering deals with the Ukrainian oligarch to win favor on this. Let me ask you. Certainly your behavior couldn't have been above board board for 15 years while your own desperation was raging. Right.

[Hunter Biden]

Here's what I own.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Is there any validity to some of the.

[Hunter Biden]

Here's the validity. The validity is I should never have taken the board seat with Burisma. That's the validity of it.

[Dax Shepard]

That's the Ukrainian company.

[Hunter Biden]

Yes. The Ukrainian oil and gas company. It was not with Ukraine, was not with a foreign government. It was not with an oligarch. It was public about going on the board. I served on 14 other boards. Before that, I was chairman of the board of the US World Food Program, the largest humanitarian organization in the world. I was vice chairman of the board of the largest railroad company in the world, which is the national passenger rail system, which is Amtrak. I was chairman of the board of the Truman National Security Project, Chairman of the board of the center for National Policy. I was a professor at Georgetown's master's program in the School of Foreign Service for four years. I had my own business in consulting, and I had been in more places in the world than 99.9% of people.

[Dax Shepard]

Very high functioning addicts.

[Lily Padman]

Extremely.

[Hunter Biden]

That makes it harder, by the way. And I was up council to, at the time, the most prestigious law firm doing corporate governance at Boychiller and Flexner and had my own business. And so when they came to ask me being on the board, I said, no, I would represent them as lawyer. And I represented the lawyer and the former president of Poland. The first democratically elected president of Poland, President Kwaznevsky, asked me after representing them for two or three months, because they were under an extreme inordinate amount of pressure from the invasion in Donbass, where their wells were from the Russians. And the entire purpose of that incursion into Eastern Ukraine was to extract and take over what they could not take over, the single greatest resource in Ukraine, which is natural gas. And so he convinces me that we'll be public about it, you'll be transparent about it, and you come on the board. It obviously turns out to be a mistake, but not because of anything that I did and not because of anything that my dad did. And the reason that we know this is, this is because you have 25 years of my entire digital footprint. You have every single email. I think I literally am probably the only person in the world, if this happened to anybody else. Every photo that you ever took, every selfie, every voicemail, every single text message, every email that you've took in 25 years were dumped in the Internet and to this day remain there. Whether it is your selfies, nudes or whatever. We're out there.

[Dax Shepard]

90% of us are getting canceled.

[Hunter Biden]

Oh, yeah, by the way, 100% people would get canceled.

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Hunter Biden]

There's not one single email text message. They have all of my voicemails. They have voicemails from my dad saying, sweetheart, please, where are you? You need to get help. I mean, they have everything. There's not a single thing in that in which I say, hey, dad, or hey, dad's chief of staff, or hey, dad's secretary, or hey, anybody. I'm getting Paid by these guys. We need to do this. Not a single one. There's a text message in which the board secretary of Burisma says, it was nice meeting your dad. And I know we were at a restaurant together, and he sat down and there were 10 other people at the table. He was in from Ukraine. I introduced him to my dad, and that's it. Now, they had an impeachment hearing over that. And so I take responsibility for doing something that could ever cause the perception of that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

Now, not to get political, but what these guys are doing now, and I hate even putting the comparison between the two, because that was the standard by which we as a family had lived. And here's the point. I really don't care about rehashing that, but I'm more than willing to and welcome it. But what they did was in 2018, there was a Ukrainian, Russian oligarch who was offering for sale my laptop. This before a laptop repair shop guy ever existed. He was offering it for sale. And Rudy Giuliani, along with Lev Parnas and a guy named Igor Fruman, the that he deputized, went to Ukraine and then to Austria. Eventually were on their way to Austria to buy this hard drive, and they never made it because Lev Parnas gets arrested. Lev Parnas, he's one that got arrested. He was working for Rudy, and he gets thrown to the wolves. And so he tells the whole story in truth. Rachel Maddow made a whole documentary about it called From Russia with Lev. And Lev points out that what they did was. And what they eventually found found was a record of my addiction. And that was going to be the October surprise. But the problem was is that in between that time, I had sat down with Adam Entos of the New Yorker, and I had told my whole story. Nobody told me to.

[Dax Shepard]

You went rogue for that one?

[Hunter Biden]

100%.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah. But intuitively I knew. And this was the difference between any other time that I'd gotten and clean or sober ever, which is I get a call from this guy, he wants to talk about Ukraine. I say, where are you from? He's from the New Yorker. I had an obsession as a kid with the New Yorker. Thought it was the greatest publication ever, to the point where I had the covers cut out, taped up to my wall.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

And then I read some of his work, and he's an incredible journalist. And I said, I talked to him. He just was really honest. And I told him my whole story as it related to his addiction. And so I had outed myself. I think Adam Said one of the first calls that he got after he did that story was from Steve Bannon. Said, you m effer you scooped us. And so they had it. They had a hard drive, they had the phones, they had the laptop and two phones that were stolen in Las Vegas. They had a laptop that I left in my psychologist office in Massachusetts that was there for a year and passed around.

[Dax Shepard]

What a hunt for all this.

[Hunter Biden]

Oh, yeah, exactly. And then a laptop repair shop owner who happens to be blind, literally legally blind, turns over, not to anybody, except, surprise, surprise, my arch nemesis, Rudy Giuliani and his lawyer, who cobble it together and cobble all of these sources together, and they present it to the world two weeks before the election. And remember what Rudy did is he went to the courthouse steps in New Castle County, Delaware, with a laptop, which was no such thing, with Bernie Carrick, of all people, who's now, God rest his soul, dead, but he was the former police chief who was indicted for bribery and fraud. And they go to the steps and they say, this is a record of degenerate. There are inappropriate pictures of minors. And they do exactly what is elimination rhetoric, which is an old Russian trick, accuse them literally of the worst thing. What am I supposed to say in that two weeks when the world is coming down? And so 40 NSA former security officials come out and they say this has all the earmarks. We're not saying that it is, but it's all the earmarks of Russian propaganda. And then Twitter, which was. Twitter suppresses the story for a 24 hour period of time, not because of the content of the story, but the content of the photographs, which were nude photographs of me, which violates their terms of service. That's the only reason is New York Post put on the front page page me with my private parts blurred out naked, which by the way is against the law because of the bill. Melania had just passed the Take It Down Act. But then that becomes a suppression story and they would have won the election if anybody just had known what was in the laptop. Okay, well, now you've had seven years. Everybody, all of you, and I include the two of you and me and everybody else, you've had my entire digital footprint, unlike anyone that I know of in human history, available to you for a 25 year period period of time. What do you find? Literally nothing other than I was a degenerate crack addict and I was in rooms I should not have been, and I was with people and prostitutes and dancers and drug dealers smoking crack and doing other drugs and 90% of the text messages. But you do not find anything about foreign corruption or bribery, anything, anything like that. Finally, after two years, they come back and they offer me a plea agreement because I failed to pay my taxes on time in that period of time, which I had subsequently paid with penalties and interest of over $800,000. After I got sober and found out that I had not filed my taxes, so I paid them with penalties and interest. And that during that period of time, I'd bought a gun and I checked a box to say that I was not currently an addict. And at the time, this is honest. When I walked into that store, I didn't think I was an addict. I was at least three days clean.

[Lily Padman]

Well, yeah. You're not going to say you're an addict.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, even if he bought it up,

[Lily Padman]

I mean, that's the end of the day. They're just not doing that.

[Hunter Biden]

Here's the thing. Every single person today in the United States of America, based upon the law that I was prosecuted for, if you have ever smoked pot, or you smoke pot even remotely on a regular basis, which means more than once a month, basically, and you own a gun, you're in violation of that. That same law, which means about 85 million Americans are pregnant, but they prosecuted me for it. We can't find a single other case. Woe is me. Oh, no. I. You know, being held to a higher standard, like. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, let me ask you this, though. This would be like if I sponsored you, right?

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Which I don't. And I don't claim to have any more knowledge than you do, but let's just say for one second we're role playing.

[Hunter Biden]

We'll see how the question goes. Whether I asked you to be my sponsor.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you foresee a future. Sure. Where you could actually let all that go?

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah, I've let it all go.

[Dax Shepard]

You think you have.

[Hunter Biden]

No, I get it.

[Dax Shepard]

If I had been accused of a lot of stuff I didn't do, it would be nearly impossible for me not to defend myself.

[Hunter Biden]

So here's the thing. That is a completely fair question, and I hope that this is as honest an answer as I think it is, which is I have let it go. Other people have not let it. Let it go. And so, for instance, the only time I spend a lot of time thinking about it is when I come and I sit down with you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Because you're nervous it's gonna spark up the hole.

[Hunter Biden]

No, it's because I'm answering the question. And so when I leave here, I'm able To put it down. And I guess when you say let it go, am I angry? No. I think that the most dangerous emotion that any addict can have is uncontrolled anger.

[Dax Shepard]

Let me come at it from a different way.

[Hunter Biden]

God damn it.

[Dax Shepard]

Is it possible? Is it possible I'm never angry, that the most evolved version of yourself, the most peaceful, the most serene version of yourself might come around to having gratitude, as crazy as that sounds? No, Giuliani, although you didn't do all those things. Things, if you're dead sober, none of

[Hunter Biden]

those things happen 100%.

[Dax Shepard]

So I'm not victim shaming. But we also agree, had it been even a little bit lighter on you, maybe you're dead.

[Hunter Biden]

Well, it really sucks. Maybe with another addict, he's not going

[Lily Padman]

to let you off the hook.

[Dax Shepard]

Maybe you don't have a wife, maybe you don't have a new son. So maybe you owe those guys almost everything.

[Hunter Biden]

Everything. The greatest lesson I learned in this, this go round is exactly that, is that when they tell you to make your gratitude list, I always thought, and it is appropriate thing, and he doesn't have to be an addict to get up in the morning and benefit from making a gratitude list, which is like every day In Southern California, seven out of 10, you're like, I'm grateful for the weather.

[Lily Padman]

Yes. Literally, yes.

[Hunter Biden]

You know, I'm grateful for my wife, I'm grateful for my son and the relationship that I've rebuilt with my daughters and friends, for my painting and the coffee that tasted so good. And like all the good things that are going on that's well and good. What it really is is being grateful for every awful thing that ever happened to you that brought you to right there. Have you ever read the Gnostic gospels that they found in Naj Khamini? I'm not a scripture guy, but there's a great thing I listen to, audiobook of a famous book called the Gnostic Gospel. He says, basically, I'm paraphrasing is learn to suffer as I do and you will be able not to suffer. And it was like, yeah, that's it. Be grateful for all of that suffering because there is no way that you are here sitting in this chair right now without all that, without all of that, I would have never ended up here in Southern California. I would have never met Melissa. I would have never had Beau. I would never have the depth of my relationship with people that I love now, and particularly the depth of the relationship that I have with my daughters now. I would never have had the wherewithal to understand that this was for me a question of life or death. And each one of them, I was a little bit perceptibly, by self perception, able to get a little bit better about the gratitude in the moment. And when it really hit me was when the verdict came in in Delaware. So I decided not to testify because what they'd done is they'd put my family on the stand. They were good if I testified that they were going to bring as a counter witnesses and ask and like, it was just awful. And the jury came back, and when they pulled the jury, they were like, ugh, I hate it that we had to come to that because it's bullshit. But the law, technically, yeah, we believe that he violated the law. And I remember in everybody, he was like, oh. I looked around and there were literally the entire prosecution, like a wedding prosecution's people sat on that side, My people sat on this side. And I looked back and I literally saw every single person, almost every single person that I cared about, my mom and my sister, my uncle, my Aunt Mouse, the guy that grew up with my dad, you know, Reverend Bullock. And all of these people from the community that had known me, all those people that I said that were my aunts and uncles.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

They were still there for. For me. All the people that I thought that I had lost, that I was ashamed because I had been the embarrassment. They were all standing there proving to

[Dax Shepard]

you, despite what you're telling yourself, that you're worthy of love. And the closet's open and here's all the skeletons. And now I'm convicted. And yet you're still here. I didn't even think you'd be here if I was perfect. And yet you're here and I'm at my worst. Yeah, it's powerful.

[Hunter Biden]

Really, really powerful. There's some players in this that don't have much social redeeming value. Value. But they gave me an incredible gift. They gave me the gift of being able to be honest with myself. If they never released out of any this stuff, I wouldn't have admitted to anybody. I'm not sitting here talking to you out of some insane courage that I got because I went to Reishi Catch for five years and meditated. I'm sitting here because you know what?

[Lily Padman]

It's already out there.

[Hunter Biden]

What are you gonna do?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Lily Padman]

That is a gift. There's nothing to lose.

[Hunter Biden]

Huge gift.

[Dax Shepard]

You named one of your companies Seneca? Yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So you were into the Stoics or. Yeah, there's a stoic road forward Exactly. Those people. You're powerless over them, right? I mean, you are as powerless over those people 100% as you are over crack. It's none of your fucking business. I would have an impossible time executing what I'm suggesting. Let me own that.

[Hunter Biden]

No, you wouldn't.

[Dax Shepard]

No, I have a thing where I had. Listen, I had violent stepdads, and I decided when I'm 18, no one will ever get one over on me. There will be no me being subjugated. So I have a overly activated sense of, like, you're fucking with me. I will go to the end.

[Lily Padman]

I'll die.

[Dax Shepard]

I'll die over it. I know this would be, like, the hardest challenge for me, but also, it's not happening to me. So I can kind of see from the outside that any piece of your heart taken by those people is a wasted piece.

[Lily Padman]

I think potentially you actually could get there if it was just. Just you. But his family is.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah. Forgive.

[Lily Padman]

And that's. You would kill everyone.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yep.

[Lily Padman]

So I understand you can look at it and tell him that.

[Dax Shepard]

I. I'm owning that it would be nearly impossible for me, but I also know that's the truth.

[Lily Padman]

If your mom was getting dragged.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lily Padman]

And people are talking about her, and people have all these opinions about her that are wrong. You'd go. Go nuts.

[Dax Shepard]

I would.

[Lily Padman]

And so I have to give you some credit. He can be your sponsor, but I can be, like, your friend. I give you credit.

[Hunter Biden]

It isn't out of any. And I really mean this. I'm not just being, like, humble. It was not out of any courage on my part. It was so ubiquitous that I didn't have any other choice unless I wanted to die. That's what I'm trying to point out.

[Lily Padman]

But some people die.

[Hunter Biden]

Some people do. Oh, I'm proud, number one. I'm most proud of anything. I'm proud of my sobriety over the last seven years in the heat of all of that. 100%. I have an enormous amount of pride. I have an enormous amount of pride that I've gotten to where I am, but I really mean it. It's more than just, like, a few people saying bad things about you or your dad or your kids. It was at one point, it felt like. Because it kind of was like half the world.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, sure, sure. And the machinery of the government.

[Lily Padman]

Exactly.

[Hunter Biden]

That's what I mean. The machinery of the government, which no one can. Unless they've been subject to it. It is staggering. I mean, like, people say, well, you know what? You got a pardon and you've never faced any consequences. Probation officers coming into my bedroom and my wife is still in the bath naked because they could over the course of a three year period of time.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I would even say they've got it wrong, which is I would sit in a jail for six months in a heartbeat over deal with the emotional damage I caused. You didn't get out of the consequences of your behavior. That's your feelings. Father hugging you at the end of his driveway, crying, saying to you, I just don't know what to do.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah, that's exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

I would sit in jail before I'd have my dad say that to me.

[Hunter Biden]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

God, like, that's not even the harshest punishment. Yeah, you don't really get out of any of that.

[Hunter Biden]

And here's the other thing. Melissa is still ready to kneecap a lot of people. I go, honey, you can't say that we're going to get a visit from somebody like you got to. You know what I mean? And you then really become to realize is that you, when it's all directed to you, it's so much, so much more overwhelming and hurtful to the people that truly love you.

[Lily Padman]

I love you, my kids.

[Hunter Biden]

Yes, dad. And that's what nobody understood with my dad, too. Now my dad and I talk literally almost every day. So long. It's like, honey, I'm so sorry. I'm like, dad, what are you sorry about? Jesus. You know, like.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, well, yeah, it's going both directions. He's thinking, if I weren't running, this wouldn't have happened. You wouldn't have been a tool. Yeah, it's all sadness. That's my last question for you. And again, in the most apolitical way possible. I can't even really imagine what it was like to be by your dad's side and watching him in public, coming up short. How protective you must have felt during that time, how stressful that must have been. What was the experience of watching your dad not at his best, have to be at the height of the struggle?

[Hunter Biden]

Oh, the first thing that you do is know. You. You get incredibly defensive. But you're right. What happened? Culminating in an incredibly obvious instance of the debate in which my dad didn't rise to the challenge that's just objectively true, is that my dad did lose a step. He didn't lose his marbles. Not one single person on the record in this entire time has ever said that Joe Biden was not available, present, and capable of executing on every single decision that this administration had to execute on not one. Now, did he trip over a sandbag and fall and look like an 83 year old trying to get up at the Air Force Academy speech? Did he freeze on the debate stage and look like he was 83 years old? 100. 100%. Did he lose a step literally where his gait got shorter? 100%. All of those things are true. Which by the way, it's a whole nother discussion about how we are as a society going to start to treat and deal with people as they physically become more infirm, but still are all mentally there. Is everybody that's 83 years old that shuffles a little bit have dementia? I don't think that that that's true, by the way. And I don't hold any animosity and that's not a hard question for me.

[Dax Shepard]

But I'm more interested in the emotional again, the powerlessness and somebody who just endlessly had your back in the most beautiful way. You have such an enviable father. I mean truly, from everything I've read about you guys, what a beautiful father. It would kill me to have America talking about my dad again.

[Hunter Biden]

Not because I've figured out some meditative process by virtue of who I am. You better figure out how to be able to stay in this country when no matter what president you are at any given point in time, anywhere between 40 and 60% of the public thinks you're akin to the devil. It is like a constant barometer of favorability, unfavorability. He's the worst president, he's the best president, he's the greatest person. He's a dark cemented clone that did all of these things. All I have to say is that my dad has his record, he will have his legacy. I think that he was unique as a president of the United States in that I think that the job by definition requires a level of narcissism that almost any other job in the world does not require. And that he came to that office without that narcissism, I think that he had more empathy and compassion, compassion for normal people because he was the most normal person to ever occupy the office.

[Dax Shepard]

You know my favorite moment of his, I know you've seen this. They did an incredible two hour Frontline on Putin.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And there's a moment where they're sitting across the table from one another. It's before he's president. I think he's vice president at the time. And he looks directly at Putin and says, I think you're soulless basically, I'm paradox. Paraphrasing. And then Putin says, this is the first guy who's ever liked him.

[Hunter Biden]

Exactly.

[Lily Padman]

He respected him. Probably.

[Hunter Biden]

George Bush had gone and said. He goes, I looked into his eyes and he saw a soul. And so my dad's sitting across from Putin and he looks in his eyes, he goes, I look into your eyes and I don't think you have a soul.

[Dax Shepard]

There we go. And Putin likes it.

[Hunter Biden]

Whether he liked it or whether he's smart enough to have pretended to like it in the moment because he thought it, it was tough. I mean, there's a whole nother cat,

[Dax Shepard]

but he's the only dude we've had thus far who's looked Putin in the eye and said, you're soulless.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, he has a lot of integrity.

[Dax Shepard]

Everyone's had an opportunity and he's literally the one human being on our side who did that.

[Hunter Biden]

And that's what I mean about my dad.

[Dax Shepard]

I love McCain for the single moment.

[Hunter Biden]

And that's why they were best friends

[Dax Shepard]

on the presidential campaign. When his supporter calls Obama a Muslim and he goes, well, hold on, hold on, that's not true. These little moments of integrity. Well, even worse is like the idea

[Hunter Biden]

that that was a deal breaker. But regardless, my God, in a four year period of time, coming out of a pandemic, my dad created more jobs than any other president with two terms by double in the history of the United States. He cut child poverty in half. He passed more legislation than any president since Lyndon Baines Johnson. He had a better midterm even though he lost that house, than any president, said FDR in 1932. He expanded NATO. He stood up to Putin. He added two countries for the first time in NATO's history to NATO. Finland and Sweden. He re established our connection and alliance with the Pacific Rim countries and Japan and Australia. I mean, I could go on and on. And all of those things are lost in the mix of the insanity of what's now the chaos, the fire hose of falsehood and insanity. A UFC fight on the lawn of the White House and we're painting it reflecting pull blue. And he made 3,700 stock trades in the month of February alone. The first president in history that's made one, let alone 3700. And we're building a tower in Abu Dhabi and we're putting Trump Tower in Saudi Arabia and we're going to turn Gaza into a golf course. I mean, it's just like, you got to stop. You can't take a all in. But if we get back, which I pray to God we do. Because I love this country and I'm not just saying that like rah rah. I love this country. I'm fully aware of what this country is capable of and the horrible things that it has done in the name of our democracy. I am fully aware of my history. But at the same time I truly still do believe that we are the greatest single hope for. I'd like to put it, it's a Star Trek future future and not a Star wars future. I don't know of any president that just as a human being is as good a man as my dad.

[Dax Shepard]

I love that. Well, look, I admire anyone who's gone to helm back and shares it deeply. You and I will have a connection that's deeper than all these extraneous other things that are spectacular because we know what it's like to be completely, completely humbled and destroyed by something. It's a unique ride. I think it's a kind of a bonding 100. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you could have any political leaning.

[Hunter Biden]

I feel bonded to you too. What are you talking about? I feel much deeper connection.

[Lily Padman]

I love that. No, it's really helpful.

[Hunter Biden]

What? You're much more gentle with me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hope is I've had this experience a bunch of times in the meetings I go to where often people arrive in their big headlines kind of arrive. People who need a lot of privacy come to some of the meetings I go to. And I've had a couple moments where the people that walked in I hated publicly. This one dude was like all this anti gay legislation then got caught in the bathroom. I was like this fucking hypocrite, you know, I just hated him. And this person started sharing. I, I was like, this person was completely devastated and destroyed by this thing and they know the depths of hell. And I have compassion for this person. What a unique experience to have on earth. If not for this condition I have, I wouldn't have had that. So again, I'm so grateful that I could value something about somebody. Their honesty can cut through all the shit. And I love it. It's so powerful, it's almost magic. Magic.

[Hunter Biden]

It's incredible. The self control. Do the next right thing and show compassion. Pass it down. And that's what I learned from it. And I often fail at the self control but I don't fail in the way that I used to. And I sometimes don't have the compassion for the people that I find so offensive but can't. And I don't always do the right thing. But I know. At least that's what I think about every day.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, this has been a delight meeting you.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah, thanks for having me.

[Dax Shepard]

I hope you had fun. This has been great.

[Hunter Biden]

I had a great time. I watch you guys all the time for so long. When you guys said that you'd like to have me on, I was like, all right.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, good.

[Hunter Biden]

I love what you guys do.

[Dax Shepard]

And if you want to hear the very harrowing tale of all this, I encourage everyone to pick up Beautiful things. Your memoir about this whole life of yours, which is worthy of a book, if nothing else.

[Hunter Biden]

Thanks, man.

[Dax Shepard]

So great meeting Ian. Thanks so much for coming. He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here. She's gotta let him have the facts.

[Lily Padman]

Both wearing vintage shirts.

[Dax Shepard]

I wish.

[Lily Padman]

Looks like it.

[Dax Shepard]

I would have to call mine, unfortunately, a retro. I mean, it's from an old, old Pink Floyd thing, but it is a new shirt.

[Lily Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Yours is really from the 80s?

[Lily Padman]

Well, that's what I'm told. See, I could. It could be a lie.

[Dax Shepard]

How would one know?

[Lily Padman]

I wouldn't. Well, the sweatshirt's definitely old. I can tell by, like, the tag and the stuff. But they could have plopped that right on.

[Dax Shepard]

But, yeah, they can fake Rembrandts and stuff and have real experts sign off on them.

[Lily Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

I bet they could get up.

[Lily Padman]

They could get one over on me for sure.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah, sure.

[Lily Padman]

I'm not that good.

[Dax Shepard]

We're recovering, I guess.

[Lily Padman]

Do you want to talk about it?

[Hunter Biden]

I mean.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, we were just recording.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Armchair Anonymous.

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

And not only were we recording Armchair Anonymous, it's a prompt that elicits some emotions, for sure. So the person we were speaking to was at the apex of their emotional journey of the story. I felt very, very inclined to be present for that.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, of course.

[Dax Shepard]

And I hear Rob's door open.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

My first thought is like, why is Rob thinking he time to go outside?

[Lily Padman]

I thought he was getting the food.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay. That's good.

[Hunter Biden]

I know better than all those things. I know better than any other.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, exactly. I know you know better. So I'm just like, this is a strange move.

[Lily Padman]

Right. And it was a little. It was. It wasn't. Like, if Rob was going to get the food, he would have done that quietly.

[Dax Shepard]

It was loud.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And then I went to. Oh, man. What? My kid. I gotta get my kids. Understand, they cannot interrupt me at work. And then it was Kristen.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And immediately when I saw her face, she was crying. Crying.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, she was like very panicked.

[Dax Shepard]

Panicked and crying.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And now I literally have my real life wife panicked and crying. And then we have a guest who of course I care about, who's also crying. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm gonna have to tell this lady I gotta go. But I had to go.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, we didn't end the call, but I had to get up.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, it was fine because I was chatting with her.

[Dax Shepard]

Come, come, come. You gotta go right now. You gotta put this bird out of its misery. I'm like, what happened? So. And I think I've been reporting on this. We've been having the sweetest two or three month affair with these crows that have really come and taken to walking around our yard.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

They walk around and we've named one of them.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, it was maybe.

[Dax Shepard]

And we've been feeding, putting out food and they've been taking it. I was just. Last night I was in the sauna and because the screen was down, I can see out of it, but obviously the crows, they were just directly in front of the sauna for 20 minutes. I'm watching them just like interact and I'm like, like, I just, I feel so lucky that there's these beautiful crows in the back here. My favorite animal.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I'm just watching them. They're getting more and more comfortable. I go outside and what has happened is a friend's dog has attacked one of the crows really bad. The all the other crows are in a tree directly above the fallen crow and they are yelling worse as they should.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm so bummed for them.

[Lily Padman]

Of course, they just watch bump for

[Dax Shepard]

you and my family is every. Lincoln's bawling. She watched the whole thing. And then I gotta find something. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

You didn't use your hands. We'll just say that I did not use.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, I'm glad. It was terrible. I hated it. It was terrible. This little crow. I've been watching who I like and then I know that that's his mom up in the tree and his siblings. Sibling.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. I bet the mom obviously feels guilty.

[Dax Shepard]

And then I'm like, okay, that's done. I get the crow wrapped up and then I gotta quickly try to nurture my family to check in as everyone stable and then come back here and then drop back into that.

[Lily Padman]

Back in that. Yeah, yeah. At least it was a kind of dark story we were hearing. It wasn't like you had to just like be happy again.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm so sorry. I got to go blow out birthday candles.

[Lily Padman]

Right. Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

It wasn't frivolous. Although we didn't tell her what the emergency was.

[Lily Padman]

No, we didn't. No, I'm saying. I'm saying. Sorry. I'm saying this Armchair Anonymous story was

[Dax Shepard]

pretty dark, so my dark energy.

[Lily Padman]

It wasn't like you had to come in and put on this, like, very happy. Funny. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

No, you pooped.

[Lily Padman]

Where exactly? This is the one. Okay. Silver lining. The one time you didn't want an unauthorized evap.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So anyhow.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Terrible.

[Dax Shepard]

Terrible.

[Lily Padman]

I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry.

[Dax Shepard]

I feel like that was the universe making me pay for the pigeons somehow.

[Lily Padman]

You are. You already paid for that. That was a long time.

[Dax Shepard]

It was a long time ago.

[Lily Padman]

Of course.

[Dax Shepard]

Hopefully atoned for that, I think.

[Lily Padman]

Well, I'm really sorry that all of that happened. I'm very sorry you had to it. Be the one to handle it. I get very anxious in those situations.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

For everyone's moods. Like, everyone's in my head. I'm just like, oh, my God. Like, everyone's so sad and so destroyed and, like, it aren't. They're not gonna come back for this. For a couple from this.

[Dax Shepard]

And you know how I feel about emotions, so. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

But I even mean you. I'm like, oh, no. Like, this isn't good. Like, he's killed. He's murdered today.

[Dax Shepard]

My favorite.

[Lily Padman]

He murdered his favorite. Oh, my God. And also, like, murder of crows. You know, there's something in there.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, well, we'll save the word play for another day. Let's just hold off on the word. Or to play for today.

[Lily Padman]

Who was just right there.

[Dax Shepard]

So, you know, I just went back inside, check in.

[Lily Padman]

This is what you guys get for calling yourselves a murder.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, no, no.

[Lily Padman]

I'm sorry.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm sorry.

[Lily Padman]

So sorry.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, it's a very cheap shot. So I went inside, and now people are going up to the store to get materials for a grave.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, that's good.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I guess. That's.

[Lily Padman]

That's nice.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. No one knows what to do. You don't know what to do.

[Lily Padman]

No one knows what to do. But I. Yeah, I was like, I don't think I should. We had ordered food, the food I thought Rob was running out desperately to get.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

And so we finished our Armchair anonymous. We had a little break before the next one. And so I was like, I'm gonna go the long way to go get the food.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. You didn't even want to deal.

[Lily Padman]

I don't want to cry. It wasn't Deal. I was like, they might be like, how insensitive is she to go get her food?

[Dax Shepard]

Anyone hungry? I got extra chips. I don't think I'm going to eat this third one.

[Lily Padman]

I mean, that is something I would do in a nice way. Like, can I help with the things I have?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Anyone starving right now? Anyone feeling really hungry or is anyone distracted by other emotions or should I just eat crude.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, I'm sorry. They're everywhere. Sorry.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. It's too soon.

[Lily Padman]

Okay. I really.

[Hunter Biden]

It's a little.

[Dax Shepard]

It's just a bit too soon.

[Lily Padman]

But this is how, this is how it is being friends with you. This is how it is being friends with you.

[Dax Shepard]

I bet. Okay, so maybe I am now getting.

[Lily Padman]

But I don't want you to have. I don't want you to have repercussions.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

So I take it back. Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Any who I still feel, feel like, like fighter. Flighty.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[Lily Padman]

From that experience of running in and running out. And I was like, thank God. Obviously. Of course, when Kristen runs in, I think it's something with the children.

[Dax Shepard]

Same. So there is a level of relief.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But it's very partial.

[Lily Padman]

I know. But yeah, but I heard something about Bert Crow, and I thought you said Lola, another dog. So I was like, oh, like. But yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You have the dynamic of that it's someone else's dog.

[Lily Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

So all of their stress.

[Lily Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

I thought of having brought their dog over and they killed our favorite members of our family. Well, I mean, sincerely. No, they shouldn't feel bad. Favorite members of our animal family.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, your animal.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, if, yeah, for me.

[Lily Padman]

For you. Yeah. But if the dog killed Frank, you might be happy. But that would be like, really?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. It feels weird to speculate, but I, I, I definitely think Whiskey would have been a push for the family.

[Lily Padman]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

You think they'd be out there right now just laughing and doing work if Whiskey was dead right now? No, I really don't.

[Dax Shepard]

You're probably right.

[Lily Padman]

But it's okay. Your favorite member. Your favorite animal members, for sure. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

In the beginning of something that was quite fun and beautiful happening. No, they're not coming back. There's no way. Crows have incredibly good memories. See, the other thing, this is. And this is where it's probably selfish of me. I'm like, this dog did this. But I. These crows are watching me right now. They're staring and they're going to watch me do that.

[Lily Padman]

Why is that selfish?

[Dax Shepard]

Because they're going to remember. They remember for there's all these instances where crows. Remember for, like, 30 years.

[Lily Padman]

No, I'm saying that's not selfish of you.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm like, I've been trying to be friends with these guys so hard, and now they're going to hate me for sure.

[Lily Padman]

Well, did you tell. Tell them?

[Dax Shepard]

No. I don't know that they understand English well.

[Lily Padman]

They're smart.

[Dax Shepard]

Although they could.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Also, by the way, they saw what happened, so they know it wasn't you.

[Dax Shepard]

I hope. But maybe they thought I was going over to resuscitate this crow.

[Lily Padman]

I think they knew it couldn't be resuscitated, or they would have come down and grabbed it.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm glad that wasn't happening. Well, that would have been brutal.

[Lily Padman]

They're trying better if they, like, go down and grab it, bring it back up to their area. Area.

[Dax Shepard]

No, because they want to succeeded at that. And then I would have been having to shoo them away so that I could. You can't have this thing suffering in the yard. That's off the table.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, real life will find you.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, you. We've. We've created this little cocoon that we. Like, virtually nothing can happen.

[Lily Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

We're just sitting here chalking. Yeah, we can get in a fight, but whatever, we'll get through that. And then life just, you know, find you.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

But I feel bad because, like. Because you're so tough and you had to be the one to do it. And it's like, oh, yeah, he'll. He's like. He's like.

[Dax Shepard]

That's why we have him, is basically.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

We deal with everything for this moment. You better do the thing.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

That you bring to the table.

[Lily Padman]

But I do think I want them to know. Know that it hurt your feelings pretty bad.

[Dax Shepard]

I think they know you. Don't think so.

[Lily Padman]

I think it's my job to tell them, remind them, you know, that was really hard on Dax. Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yay. You're gonna be a. Just come in. Wow, that's nice.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

I did feel it was hard on you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

I didn't like that.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, thank you.

[Hunter Biden]

Thank you.

[Dax Shepard]

Anyhow.

[Lily Padman]

See, and I. And then I tried to make jokes like you do to make it better. It didn't work. So I get it.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah. It's just. It was very soon. Yeah. And puns already. I just, you know, on a good day. Puns are questionable.

[Lily Padman]

I know. But they were both pretty good.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. I'm probably not in a good.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Later. Maybe later.

[Dax Shepard]

In a few years. I'LL hear this.

[Lily Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

You know what? That was a really good joke. Oh no.

[Lily Padman]

Well that was a lot. I'm really sorry that happened.

[Dax Shepard]

Shake it off. What's up? Summer's here. Kids are getting out of school. I'm gonna go to a graduation tomorrow.

[Lily Padman]

Oh yeah. We are going to a little baby's graduation.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, it's so funny.

[Lily Padman]

Must be sad.

[Dax Shepard]

So the, the fifth grade dance was Friday night.

[Lily Padman]

Oh. And she wanted to go with her girl girlfriends memberships.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I think I'm gonna told the whole story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was Friday night. And what was rad was this just makes me so happy. She said can we drive to Lincoln? Like she wanted to show up at the dance looking rad and we delivered.

[Lily Padman]

Did you bring her friends or you just. You dropped her off?

[Dax Shepard]

Mom and Delta and I. Oh and you're on a big grass field where everyone parks. Parks and yeah, we pulled up in the Lincoln. It's already low but in the grass it's just like. Right. And all boys ran up to the fence. They're asking what kind of car that is. So that was primo. She's in a dress. Oh yeah, it was great.

[Lily Padman]

Did she do her hair and stuff?

[Dax Shepard]

Oh of course. She had ringlets. Yeah, she looked incredible. What's interesting is when Lincoln had her fifth grade dance because it is the end of elementary. It's the last thing they're really going to be together. So when I picked up Lincoln, the entire class, well all the girls were crying, they were balling, they were hugging each other. It was so sweet. And then maybe people remember the overall demeanor of Lincoln's class versus Delta has been night and day as you know like they were. Delta's class is so naughty they had to rearrange the recess structure cuz they couldn't be trusted around the pre K kids or whatever. This is a naughty class. Naughty group. Cops coming. No, those were for her classmates last year.

[Lily Padman]

Oh right.

[Dax Shepard]

So roll back up to pick her up and they're still raging and Del just like I danced the whole three hours and I'm like yes. That was cuz I. You know I loved school dance. My favorite memories of junior higher this dance dances. So she did it. She danced so hard. So anyway there's a photographer that would do these like 360 shots of cute. Yeah. So she would get in a group with her friends and then the camera goes around them and this is embarrassing to admit but I'm looking at this first all I see of course because I'm the dad.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It's like, oh, she's the cutest girl that was ever born.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, when I'm looking at her and all her friends, I'm like, oh, she's the cutest one.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But then all of a sudden and I go, well, she's really quite short.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, really?

[Dax Shepard]

I'm going to show you the video and see if you have the same reaction. I was like, I don't think of her as short and she's such, like a little leader in her class and everything. But I just had this moment was like, oh, she really has had the Kristen experience where Kristen was like a tiny, tiny person.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, me too.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. You know, know. And I just didn't really realize Delta,

[Lily Padman]

I didn't realize that either, that she was necessarily. Let's see. That's so cute. Oh. Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I mean, she's a head shorter than all of her friends.

[Lily Padman]

So cute. It's crazy. There's another shorty.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, there's one other shorty, but you won't say her name. But, But Delta is. Yeah, I was like, oh, she's the little girl in class.

[Lily Padman]

She's even shorter than the Indian girl. Girl.

[Hunter Biden]

Sure.

[Lily Padman]

I don't know if I'm allowed to say that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I think she's Lebanese. But no, she.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, okay. So she's on the shore.

[Dax Shepard]

She's a tiny.

[Lily Padman]

I know. I didn't know either.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it was really, it was like I, I, I finally came out of the water and saw clearly for the first time. And then I said to her, I said, you know, I just, I noticed from these photos you're a shorty, aren't you? And she goes, oh, yeah, dad, I'm like the shortest girl in class other than. And so. And so.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah. I mean, once. So she's just like, yeah, I'm the short girl. Like, once you are the short girl. You just are her, you know, like, you don't even think about it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And it does a little bit explain, like, you know, she's in such a hurry to lose her teeth. You know, it's like an ongoing thing. And then she got her X ray that said they were still not coming out for a while. And she was, like, devastated in the. And I never really am like, why are you in a hurry to lose your teeth? But I think if you're the tiny one, she like, let's get the show on the road. Let's get rid of these teeth. Let's give me some puberty. Let's let's get a few inches.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It might be informed by the height.

[Lily Padman]

It might be.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. What's great is I've never heard her complain about it. That's why it was not even on my radar. Like her best friend who I thought was really tall.

[Lily Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

I now think is probably average. Yeah. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Whoa. That is weird.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I was like, oh, she's really tall.

[Lily Padman]

Because one of her other friends is also not that tall. A little taller than her in the middle, but like. Yeah. Interesting.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. I mean, I didn't. I mean, I wanted to look completely different, but the short thing never bothered me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

I don't know why. For whatever. I had so many other things that were higher.

[Dax Shepard]

It is a lot easier for the. For a girl to be the little girl in the club than the Big Bird.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Of course, that's a much harder row to hoe.

[Lily Padman]

Of course.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Well, maybe she should be a cheerleader. She could be a flyer. You know, short. Short people have a lot of advantages in a.

[Dax Shepard]

That way they don't have cheer where she. Why I don't know that for sure, but I don't think they have cheer where she's going. Because it's an all girls school.

[Lily Padman]

I know. They should still do competition. No, they should still do competition. Cheerleading. No, because competition has nothing to do.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not cheering for the boys.

[Lily Padman]

No, it's not.

[Dax Shepard]

I knew feminism was going to ruin this country and here it is.

[Lily Padman]

God.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more Armchair experts if you dare. All right, well, wanna do some facts on Hunter Biden?

[Lily Padman]

Sure.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

Let's do a few facts.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I found this to be.

[Lily Padman]

Wow. Yeah. This was. This was a good one.

[Dax Shepard]

It was, it was. Again, did you have feelings about him before?

[Lily Padman]

I didn't know much about him.

[Dax Shepard]

Same. I really just knew his name and I knew him. Of all the crazy allegations. I knew about the computer.

[Lily Padman]

Yep.

[Dax Shepard]

And I hadn't seen his face until that interview I watched. Which made me interested in him.

[Lily Padman]

Right. Yeah. I mean, Yeah. I knew the same thing everybody else knew. Very. But very surface even.

[Dax Shepard]

And I didn't even really know he had such a legitimate career before all the dust up. You know, I didn't know he's a lawyer and he'd gone to the great schools and.

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

All that.

[Lily Padman]

Well. And then obviously the. What we talked about, the, the. The debate where Joe Biden is. Where Trump references him and then Joe Biden is defending him and it's like very.

[Dax Shepard]

I remember that moment. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Upsetting. Yeah. He has to defend his son yeah, yeah. And he's like, he's working so hard. It's heartbreaking, honestly. But

[Dax Shepard]

I also, I don't want to suggest that there's. These are comparable levels of culbability. They're not. But it felt like he was making fun of him that his son had cancer. I mean, that's what it felt like. Like your kid has this life threatening.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Illness and I'm gonna shame you over. There's no.

[Lily Padman]

And then he really got himself into crazy because he said it. And then Biden was like, Said something about him dying and he was like, no, your other son. And he's like, yeah, he's working. Really? And it was like, yeah. You're making him talk about, like the absolute worst things a parent could possibly imagine. It's horrible. But I also, like, I don't think I knew the extent of the tragedy they had all dealt with.

[Dax Shepard]

I didn't either. I kind of knew. Right. I knew that Joe Biden had a real big tragedy. And I think I knew he lost his first wife.

[Hunter Biden]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, I didn't know the extent of that. I know he's sworn into the Senate in the hospital. Oh, he's 29. All this stuff. Like you imagine dealing with that at 29, baby. No.

[Lily Padman]

I mean, no, no, no. Like, absolutely not. It makes me. It makes me have so much respect for him, honestly.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah. I've told three or four different people post interview. I'll go like, do you know the whole story? And no one does.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

That I've talked to.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And the two different times that kids were present, what do you think their

[Lily Padman]

follow up question was when you said,

[Dax Shepard]

like, the station wagon, Ugh, did the dog die? And I'm like, I didn't ask.

[Lily Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

But it goes to show, you know this rule in movies. You cannot kill a dog in a movie.

[Lily Padman]

I know. Brains are crazy.

[Dax Shepard]

They are. I think it's because the innocence, almost the opposite. It's like, we know humans come in every shade of good and bad and. And so, like, there's bad people. You know, you can imagine easily someone dying that wouldn't bother. Bother you at all. Like, if Putin gets shot tomorrow, I won't care. In fact, they'll be happy.

[Lily Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

There's no dog. I'm gonna be happy that was killed. Unless he ate people, I guess. But, oh, this just came full circle. Like, I wouldn't be happy if the dog that killed the crow got hurt. No. Because I don't think the dog's capable of malice.

[Lily Padman]

Right, right, right.

[Dax Shepard]

Anyways, there's something intrinsically more innocent about these animals.

[Lily Padman]

Of course.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. But funny prior sliding scale of priority.

[Lily Padman]

And I obviously, as a bad person, like, don't get it. I mean, I get it. I do get it intellectually in that way. Like, oh, yeah, there's an innocence. There's a bl. But I don't feel that ever. So I don't. I'm. Of course, my question is, like, the children.

[Dax Shepard]

Uhhuh.

[Lily Padman]

Like, I would never think about the animal.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, right, right, right, right. It's really telling and interesting and fascinating that we. Because we're social primates, like, we're built to think some people deserve certain things and punishment is built into the system. And, like.

[Lily Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

It's just interesting how we view each other versus how we view almost everything else.

[Lily Padman]

I know. But again, I think there's anomalies. I don't know. Know that. I don't know. I mean, obviously you can speak for yourself, but I don't think you really believe that people should be punished. And I think I believe it less and less and less.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. I think people should be removed to keep other people safe.

[Lily Padman]

Yes, me too. But that. Not in a punitive way necessarily.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. What are we doing it for?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I think you're not gonna make anything better.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. My level of wanting someone to suffer. Suffer, like, feel bad because they did something wrong is. Is pretty much gone.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Like, there's still a stepdad alive to my knowledge that, you know, I didn't, like.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't want him to be suffering.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't. I don't really.

[Lily Padman]

Well, it does nothing.

[Dax Shepard]

No, that's the thing.

[Lily Padman]

Although, I mean, again, to be fair, like, I've never, ever had a loved one murder. Exactly. And in that case, maybe I would fully just be like. Yep. Want them to suffer for the rest of their life. Because I have to suffer for the

[Hunter Biden]

rest of my life.

[Dax Shepard]

If you killed someone in my family.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Hunter Biden]

Yep.

[Dax Shepard]

That is the paradox.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, I know.

[Dax Shepard]

We just have a lot of very fascinating hardware.

[Lily Padman]

I know. We do.

[Dax Shepard]

That controls how we. It's this whole thing where it's like, if these 1 million people died for this reason and these 1 million people died for this reason, we can put such different values on that. You know, like, if we think someone deceives someone in the pursuit of that, or if we think it was a natural cause, or we think it's like the death's. The death, you don't. You don't have the person anymore. But it makes such A big difference to us how that happened, which is a bit all in our mind. You know, it's like the objective tragedy is that someone you loved is gone.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. But prematurely feels or by the hand by un. Unnatural.

[Dax Shepard]

Unnatural cause, like cancer at 25 years old is as unnatural as getting murdered by somebody. Right. It's as unexpected.

[Lily Padman]

This is unexpected. But I do think it's like, that's the way their bot. It's. That's. That was their body. Their body couldn't handle this life or whatever. There's like, a lot of things you can say to yourself, but when it was really avoidable.

[Dax Shepard]

Uhhuh.

[Lily Padman]

That feels. Yeah, that's. It's too maddening. Like. Yeah, it's very upsetting. I mean, just don't murder, you know?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Like, let's just not do that.

[Dax Shepard]

But it's just like we have all these sliding scales. It's like if there's a. A Just a legitimate accident in an intersection, if a light's out, that's one. One thing.

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

There's not a light out. Someone blew his stop light. Now we ratchet up, that person's drunk. Like.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, I know.

[Dax Shepard]

The objective thing's all the same. Someone was killed operating a vehicle, you know, and then we've got, like, a huge range of how we feel about that.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. I think, again, on. On the. The scale is about the level of which it could have been avoided. And if it's just someone making a decision in their mind, I hate this, but I'm gonna kill them. Or, like, I'm just gonna shoot all these people like that. That. That is so far on one end of the spectrum of avoidability.

[Dax Shepard]

It's harder to accept.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, but because it didn't have to happen. Yeah, it didn't have to happen.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, I guess what I'm saying is the aliens might go like, oh, this person had a partner. Now they don't have a partner. Therein lies the heartbreak and the anguish. And then if you told the monkeys. Well, no, there's a big sliding scale of heartbreak and anguish within that. That's where they would get fascinating. Like, oh, please, t. Tell us about why there's different versions of losing a partner.

[Lily Padman]

I know. I bet even the aliens would get it.

[Dax Shepard]

You think so?

[Lily Padman]

I kind of do. Well, I don't know what they're like, you know, I haven't met any.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

But. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

Just for that whole thing.

[Dax Shepard]

No, you don't want to knock on one because you want to meet aliens.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, no, that was just for all the death and murder.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Okay.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. I have no problem eating aliens as long as they're nice.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You know they're going to probe you, but you might enjoy it.

[Lily Padman]

Do they have to?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that's standard. That's the only consistent thing across all alien.

[Lily Padman]

What are they trying to see?

[Dax Shepard]

They got to figure out, like, what makes you tick.

[Lily Padman]

That's not the way.

[Dax Shepard]

For them. It is. They put that anal probe in. They get all the answers.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, God. Yeah. We had a guest we recorded yesterday that was so fast. Fascinating. About some murders. And we also just want answers so badly when something horrible happens. When a horrible tragedy happens, we want answers so badly that we're really willing to overlook a lot of things.

[Dax Shepard]

We feel better with the wrong answer. That's what I'm.

[Lily Padman]

That's what I'm trying to approach. That I. I'm like, no, no, no, no.

[Dax Shepard]

That's what I'm trying to approach is like we have just all these weird built inside biases that don't actually make sense.

[Lily Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, if you gave someone that option, would you rather think the wrong thing?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Versus not know. They would go, well, not. They would say not. No. But then in the situation, they want to.

[Lily Padman]

They want to think the. They want peace. Like, I get it. You want peace. But.

[Dax Shepard]

But that's why we're getting somewhere. Because that's why, like, Buddhism is a compelling thing.

[Hunter Biden]

Thing.

[Dax Shepard]

It's like, that shouldn't be what gives you peace.

[Lily Padman]

I know, but it also, in these cases where it's like murders and stuff. It is. It is like, well, are they going to murder other people? Are the. You know, there's. There's that element too. Like, if they're out. Outstanding.

[Dax Shepard]

Literally, that would even heighten the reason to not think it's the wrong.

[Lily Padman]

Well, I agree. I agree.

[Dax Shepard]

But we all would be susceptible to that.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, I think. I think that is right. Okay. Who's the hypnotist who makes. Makes people stop smoking? Carrie Gaynor. There are a few listed online, but this is the only one with a crazy. Oh, with. With the toupee.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh. Because he had said there was.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Okay. Dax quotes.

[Dax Shepard]

Can you tell this is a toupee? It's looking more and more like one. Right. Well, no, I'm having like a. I'm having a wild wolverine phase of my grow up.

[Lily Padman]

It is. It doesn't look like a toupee, though.

[Dax Shepard]

Just a mop.

[Lily Padman]

No, it's just growing.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Dax quotes Hunter saying, you add up all other drug deaths and the number of alcohol deaths is five times drinking deaths versus other drug deaths in the USA. Alcohol related deaths 178,000. All other drug deaths 70,000.

[Dax Shepard]

Not good. And we have a inordinately high amount of drug Deaths in the U.S. u.S. Yeah. And his was worldwide. Everyone's drinking except for the Middle East.

[Lily Padman]

True. Hunter says he was on the COVID of the New York Post more than anyone else in a one year period.

[Dax Shepard]

Couldn't really find that you didn't go through every single.

[Lily Padman]

To be fair, Emma did this.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

And she couldn't find it.

[Dax Shepard]

Well then I trust that it can't be found.

[Hunter Biden]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

President Donald Trump holds a record for the most appearances on the New York Post covers. While Hunter Biden was prominently featured in the late 2020 and 2023 regarding his laptop and legal issues. Figures like Trump, sitting presidents and prominent New York politicians such as Anthony Weiner or May Eric Adams have accumulated vastly more covers over the decades. So that's over a longer period of time.

[Dax Shepard]

Wiener.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Ding, ding, ding. Joe Biden had one of the funniest things with Anthony Weiner.

[Dax Shepard]

What did he say?

[Lily Padman]

He like I wonder if I can find.

[Hunter Biden]

It worries me, Mr. Vice President.

[Dax Shepard]

Folks are going to go to the

[Hunter Biden]

polls or have already gone to the polls and they don't know what to make of this.

[Dax Shepard]

They're in the dark.

[Hunter Biden]

What should happen now. I think it's unfortunate. I think Hillary, if she said what I'm told she said is correct, that she released the emails for the whole world to see. The whole world to see. They can continue their investigation. It won't the best of my knowledge, it won't prejudice the investigation, but that's sort of the stilted language the agency always uses and it doesn't mean anything. And so it's unfortunate. I'd be remiss if I didn't note that if she had released all the emails from the get go, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Well, that's true but I don't know where this email, where these emails came from. What?

[Dax Shepard]

Apparently Anthony Weiner.

[Hunter Biden]

Well. Oh God. Anthony Weiner. Oh God. Should not come in an Anthony Weiner. I'm not and I wasn't before he got in trouble so I shouldn't come at Anthony wer.

[Lily Padman]

So.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh God. Just exas.

[Lily Padman]

It was just so real. Such a real moment. Oh, really made me laugh. How old was Hunter when Jill came into the picture? Hunter was seven. When Joe and Jill feel married.

[Dax Shepard]

When they married.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So before she might have been in the picture. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

For Yeah. I assume Hunter claims ibogaine or. Ibogaine.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah. The drug.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, yeah. Is the strongest or one of the strongest hallucinogens on the planet. That drug is not necessarily the strongest hallucinogen in terms of potency, but it is classified as one of the most uniquely powerful and intense psychoactive substances. It is highly potent with a deep, long lasting, dreamlike experience that fundamentally differs from classically. From classical psychedelics like LSD or psilocybin. And that's it?

[Dax Shepard]

That's it. Well, dude, I'm amazed he made it out of that hole. I mean, that is many years. This is the second person this year we've had that spent years smoking crack. I don't know how you come back, Charlie.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, I know.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, it. That amazes me. I know as someone that smoked it sporadically and I found it to be pretty devastating for the next week. Yeah. I just don't know how you ever come. Oh, my God. God love you.

[Lily Padman]

All right. Love you.