Jack Antonoff

Summary

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Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Guest: Jack Antonoff

Date: May 4, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features acclaimed music producer, songwriter, and Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff. Dax and Lily dig into Jack's origins, creative philosophy, and remarkable career arc — from Jersey basement shows to Grammy-winning albums with Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, Lorde, Kendrick Lamar, and more. Antonoff is candid about grief, family, artistic drive, pop culture, creative partnerships, and the paradoxes of success. The conversation is full of humor, warmth, introspection, industry insights, revealing anecdotes, and even some spontaneous dancing.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Jack’s Comforts and Superstitions

• Jack shares his fixation on small daily comforts like a favorite almond butter – tying them to feelings of stability and superstition in his routine. There’s playful banter with Dax and Lily over their own habits.
  • Quote: "My life outside of my work is so...I eat the same thing, I do the same thing. So if I get into something, it's hard for me...it helps the thing." (03:10, Jack)
  • Notion of "utils": Dax explains a fictitious term for mental energy, leading to a riff on how language and nuance shape experience (04:03–04:23).
  • Swearing & “the importance of words”: Jack humorously rails against broadcast radio’s forbidden word policies, contrasting them to the actual disturbing news content that’s allowed (04:42–05:19).

2. The Changing Nature of Culture and Community

• Grief, growth, and cultural fatigue: Jack reflects on cycles of cultural outrage, the hunger for community, and widespread boredom with “unmovable” conversations and personalities (06:28–07:51).
  • Quote: "Growth is everything. It's all we have...when we're trapped in these endless conversations of people who are not gonna do anything differently, it's almost like a new kind of boredom." (07:31, Jack)

3. Family Origins and Sibling Dynamics

• Middle child syndrome: Jack opens up about his upbringing in suburban New Jersey. The kids were self-supervising, especially after his younger sister became seriously ill.
  • Talks about being unsupervised, craving attention, channeling it into “doing something worth attention” (10:22–11:06).
  • Influence of sister Rachel (well-known fashion designer) on his worldview and comfort with strong women (29:47–30:41).

4. Suburban New Jersey and Artistic Ambition

• The unique energy, proximity, and 'outsider' mentality of New Jersey shapes Jack’s creative identity:
  • Quote: "There is New York City packed to the brim, a very small body of water, and then most of New Jersey just stares at it. Scientifically, how much literal energy comes off New York...all the ash sprinkles over New Jersey." (26:59, Jack)
  • New Jersey moves from something to escape to a touchstone he returns to and celebrates in his work (28:01–28:54).

5. DIY Music, Community Rules, and Anti-Sellout Ethic

• Jack discusses the serious, often rigid code of punk and local music scenes:
  • Shows had to double as fundraisers, venues charged minimal cover plus a canned good, and “selling out” was a cardinal sin (12:41–13:15).
  • Dax and Jack riff on how “purity” and liberation can give way to self-importance but also protect creative intent.

6. School, Music, Outsiderhood, and Drive

• A rough stretch in public school (“like the 50s, bullying-wise” [25:36]) gave way to creative worlds at Professional Children’s School in Manhattan, surrounded by other ambitious young artists (37:38–38:52).
  • Jack was deeply serious from a young age, sometimes overwhelming peers.
  • His family, rocked by grief after his sister’s death, became more open to him and his siblings “doing what’s in their soul”, prizing real passions over conventional success (23:40–24:24).

7. The Relentless Tour Hustle

• Jack narrates the grind from his teen punk band (Outline), through ten years in Steel Train, eventually to fun. and Bleachers:
  • “We toured for, like, a decade...playing to ten, twenty, fifty people...all we did was tour.” (43:51–44:28, Jack)
  • The joy and deprivation of van touring, doing everything for the love of music, not approval.

8. Early Fame and Bleachers as a Solo Project

• Joining fun. brought mainstream success (“We Are Young”), but also an identity crisis, as Jack wasn’t the primary songwriter:
  • Quote: "I started working all night. I also didn't like the idea of having to play We Are Young forever...it wasn't my song, it was my lyrics." (46:47, Jack)
  • He started Bleachers to reclaim personal artistic voice and control.

9. Creative Process, Collaboration, & Protecting Inspiration

• On producing, songwriting, and "magic" in collaboration:
  • “Preciousness, it’s a house of cards. Someone walks in, you’re building something only you see and they’re like, ‘what’s that?’…I would just walk out and fly off the roof.” (59:04, Jack)
  • Chemistry is unpredictable: even “1+1 rarely equals 2, let alone a million – usually it equals 0.7” (61:20, Jack).
  • On working with Taylor Swift, Lorde, Kendrick Lamar, and others — always rooted in mutual vision, not genre or demographics.

10. The Nature of Pop, Sincerity, and Cynicism

• Jack reflects on why pop music matters, his love of un-cynical, emotional sincerity, and the futility of trying to please everyone:
  • “Music is made because you feel compelled to articulate something, because you're a little bit in anguish...the act of releasing [it], you're chucking messages in a bottle.” (51:07–52:02, Jack)
  • Shows, movies, art — the best stuff “just is, you can’t make it cynically, it’s too much work” (64:00–64:11).

11. Vulnerability, Success, and Paradox

• On conflicting feelings about widespread recognition:
  • “When so many people are telling you you must be so happy, which isn’t a real thing...you get isolated by this dissonance.” (50:25–50:49, Dax)
  • “You will die. And there are things you want to do with your time.” (51:02, Jack)
  • On being perceived or typecast as a creative, and the desire to reclaim agency through new work (68:09–68:35).

12. Ephemeral Inspiration & Creative Anxiety

• “The uncomfortable truth for people who do work like this is that [inspiration] does dry up...So I've been in a phase recently where I'm very surprised every time.” (52:21–52:55)
  • “It’s a little net. I was, like, catching...” (52:55, Jack)

13. Spontaneous Moments and Closing:

• The episode features a spontaneous, vulnerable moment as Dax dances exuberantly to Bleachers' “Upstairs At El’s”, communicating his pure joy.
  • Jack observes: “It was upsetting, and then it was really beautiful…like, Anthony Michael Hall in Breakfast Club…This is not cynical.” (91:51–98:02)
  • They riff on making this a new recurring bit—Dax dances at the end of every episode.

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Notable Quotes

• On swearing and language:
  “Motherfucker at this point just means anyone. Like, ‘this motherfucker was talking’ – it's not even bad.” (04:42, Jack)

• On grief as clarity:
  “When you're deep in grief, it's so clear what matters... It just strips away the fog.” (24:16, Jack)

• On creative motivation:
  "If the goal is to not sell out, you're kind of liberated from trying to figure out what people want." (13:05, Dax)

• On New Jersey as a creative crucible:
  “All the amazing energy turns into sad ash and sprinkles all over New Jersey... You are staring at it, face to face with what you’re not. It is so potent.” (26:59–27:45, Jack)

• On musical collaboration:
  “You can make something with someone else or you can't. And if you can't and you try, you are going to make something so bad.” (61:09, Jack)

• On performing and sincerity:
  "You cannot go to a show cynically. It's not possible. If you did, you would just get eaten up by the sincerity at the show." (63:03, Jack)

• On inspiration drying up:
  "Everything you write is the last thing you’ll ever write until you do it again. The uncomfortable truth for people who do work like this is it does dry up." (52:21, Jack)

• On personal joy:
  “Most of the time, I think we're all like, I feel like thinking about what I want for dinner and then blowing my fucking brains out is often a feeling, you know?... So when I have those moments [of joy]...makes me feel very alive.” (78:54, Jack)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Jack arrives, habits, language, & words — 02:19–05:19
• Cultural fatigue, growth, loss of fun — 06:10–07:51
• Family, sibling dynamics, growing up in Jersey — 08:47–12:41
• New Jersey’s musical/psychic landscape — 26:59–29:43
• Path to pro music, anti-sellout code — 10:59–14:03
• Early bands, relentless touring, artistic drive — 36:01–46:32
• Fun. success, Bleachers origin & purposeful confession — 46:32–49:47
• Working with Swift/Taylor's leap as a pop artist — 53:40–60:21
• Discussing collaboration & the myth of supergroups — 61:09–62:08
• Industry cynicism, art vs. math, creative uncertainty — 63:03–65:12
• Multiple Grammys, 'everyone for 10 minutes', success paradox — 66:13–69:47
• Bleachers’ sound, New Jersey as musical muse — 74:10–76:08
• On joy, earning and expressing it (“Upstairs at El’s”) — 76:08–79:16
• On dancing, vulnerability, and spontaneous joy — 87:13–98:02

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Memorable Moments

• Dax’s Dance: Dax Shepard dances with abandon to "Upstairs At El’s" while Jack, Lily, and Monica (in the control booth) watch, alternating between cringing and delight. Jack narrates the emotional journey: "It was upsetting, and then it was really beautiful…like, Anthony Michael Hall in Breakfast Club…"
  • (91:51–98:02)
• Jack’s description of New Jersey’s cultural psychic energy: “You are face to face with what you’re not...it’s dead serious.”
  • (26:59)
• On Joy as Earned: (77:47)
  “I believe it’s always the good old days. We are, like, living in the good old days. And I want to write a song about that.”
• Recurrent theme: The “magic” and danger of creative collaboration, the importance of chemistry, and the fragility of inspiration.

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Takeaways

• Jack Antonoff grounds his prolific output and collaborations in a childhood steeped in grief, outsider-ness, and an obsessive, sometimes rigid DIY ethic.
• Open discussions of mental health and artistic vulnerability run through the episode.
• His work with superstar artists is less about industry calculation and more about mutual vision and emotional honesty.
• The episode models true creative vulnerability—culminating in Dax’s dance—as both comic and deeply earnest.
• Underneath mainstream success, there’s an ongoing wrestle: with recognition, expectations, and the always uncertain wellspring of inspiration.

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For Listeners

This episode offers much for fans of music, creativity, and anyone fascinated by the collision of ambition, loss, authenticity, and the ever-present threat of self-doubt. It’s also a showcase of the unique, vulnerable space Dax and Lily create for their guests—and themselves.

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Recommended track to play after this episode:
Bleachers – "Upstairs At El’s"

Everyone For 10 Minutes, the new Bleachers album, is out May 22.

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Transcript

[Dax Shepard]

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

[Lily Padman]

Hi there.

[Dax Shepard]

And today we have one of the most successful music producers of the last decade and also an incredible singer and songwriter in his own right, Jack Antonoff. He has produced acclaimed albums from Sabrina Carpenter, Kendrick Lamar, Lana Del Rey, Taylor Swift, Florence Welch and many more. His Bleachers albums include Strange Desire, Gone Now, Take the Sadness out of Saturday Night, the self titled Bleachers fourth, and now the fifth album, Everyone for 10 Minutes. And I was so grateful for this episode because I was in the dark on bleachers and now I'm in a

[Lily Padman]

new now you're in the light.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh my God.

[Lily Padman]

One song got you staring directly into the sun.

[Dax Shepard]

As you'll hear, please enjoy this very sweet artist, Jack Antonoff. We are supported by Apple Watch. Scroll long enough, you'll hear it all. Miracle diets, fitness trends, craze, celery juice, you name it. Well, with iPhone and Apple Watch, you get meaningful insights about your health that are backed by science. And best of all, the information you're getting comes from a very trusted source, your body. Because the information you get should reflect the body you're in. With Apple Watch, you can track your sleep quality, your cycle, your cardio fitness and more. Then you can dig into all of that on your iPhone. All of these health insights are developed with clinical experts from start to finish and and you can even share that data directly with your doctor. Find out [e-mail] health this message was brought to you by Apple and T Mobile. Apple Watch is not a medical device and should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice. Thank you to our presenting sponsor. Grubhub. Gold Days is here, which feels like a dangerous time to be ordering food because suddenly everyone in your life is very interested in what you're eating. Grubhub plus members are getting nonstop savings all month long. And if you're not a member yet, you can join for just 99 cents a month for six months. That's a 90% discount off of the usual price. Grubhub plus membership, auto renews and terms apply. Sign up now in the app [e-mail] plus gold.

[Jack Antonoff]

He's an object.

[Dax Shepard]

He's an object expert. You got a coffee you like? Topo Chico? They're very rare now. Do you know there's a shortage?

[Jack Antonoff]

I love them. I'll take one. Yeah, Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I want you to have like one of our four reserves.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, it's really good.

[Jack Antonoff]

I didn't know about the shortage.

[Lily Padman]

$96 now.

[Jack Antonoff]

The big shortage that I'm dealing with in my life. And I know there are more important things around in the world, but the kind of almond butter I like.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, almond butter.

[Jack Antonoff]

The kind I like.

[Dax Shepard]

Dustin's.

[Jack Antonoff]

No, I like a company called Woodstock. The one I like seems to be discontinued.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, no.

[Jack Antonoff]

I think I spent more money than people should spend on almond butter. Like getting a case stockpiling it.

[Lily Padman]

What's your favorite?

[Dax Shepard]

Me too.

[Lily Padman]

Tell me about it. The texture.

[Jack Antonoff]

I don't know, I just love it. My life outside of my work is so like, I eat the same thing, I do the same thing. So if I get into something, it's hard for me, which I think is bullshit. I can say that loud. But internally I'm like, this helps the thing.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, I see. You connect it to, like, your overall. Oh, interesting. Almost a superstit.

[Jack Antonoff]

I got really anxious.

[Dax Shepard]

Otherwise, I'm painfully the same. Yeah, I just ate an oatmeal just before you got here. That I eat 100% of mornings I eat the exact same oatmeal. If I'm in a situation where I don't have my protein powder or my almond butter. Yeah, I think like, oh, my sanity's really on the verge here.

[Jack Antonoff]

Here's the upside. When you are robbed of your little comforts and you're completely fine, you're quickly reminded.

[Dax Shepard]

That's nice.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Yeah, right?

[Jack Antonoff]

How fucking stupid it all is. And it's more. If I don't have to think about my life outside of the important things, the people I love, my work.

[Dax Shepard]

Why blow utils on it?

[Jack Antonoff]

Utils?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I think this is this term of like energy units for your brain.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, okay.

[Lily Padman]

I think our friend Eric actually made it up.

[Jack Antonoff]

And Y o u utils.

[Lily Padman]

Maybe he just.

[Dax Shepard]

We learned it from him and he does mispronounce everything. But I've now, like, that's the real.

[Lily Padman]

You've been using it as if it's a real word. And I don't know that it is, but please use it.

[Jack Antonoff]

Sure, yeah. I mean, reality is as we perceive it to be. Deem it and say it. We all of our names for things are just people like us sat and thought of them.

[Lily Padman]

That's true.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, just noises your tongue makes. This is how I feel about swearing with my children. I'm like, it's just a noise that comes out. You assign to it whatever you want.

[Jack Antonoff]

Lately I've been throwing my albums. I've been on the radio here and there and they're like, you know, no, fuck, shit, piss. All this stuff. I'm like, okay. And then we're talking and then cuts to commercial and they're like, you know, 11 dead and blah, blah, blah. Torn apart by this gut. Strewn everywhere. Shot in the face. And I'm like. I can't fucking just, like, say, like, this song is fucking driving me crazy. That is not a problem in the world anymore. Cursing is not exactly, you know, it's their motherfucker at this point is just like. Means anyone. Like, this motherfucker was talking. It's not even bad.

[Dax Shepard]

It's colloquial.

[Jack Antonoff]

I just think the stories and words we generally hear in life feels like maybe it's time as a world that we're just like. If a kid says fuck, it doesn't matter.

[Lily Padman]

Okay, let's catch up.

[Dax Shepard]

My thing is, like, as long as they use it, first of all, they're not allowed to use it out of the house.

[Jack Antonoff]

They gotta use it funny.

[Dax Shepard]

They gotta be good at it. And both of my kids are good. They don't just do it for the point of it. It's like every now and then, one comes out and it's perfectly timed, and I'm like, perfect. Keep on it.

[Jack Antonoff]

Like, if I had a kid and they were like, pick up my fucking toy. I'd be like, this is bad. But if they were like, the new whatever is unfucking believably cool.

[Lily Padman]

I'd be like, nice use.

[Jack Antonoff]

Or like, if they were like, this piece of shit tried to take my lunch.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, there's a moment.

[Lily Padman]

But I imagine words are actually very important to you more than anything.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yes. But I have an amazing split in my head about when I'm thinking in terms of imparting a feeling and when I'm just talking shit. So a lot of times I'm just sitting around being like, ooh, you have, like, two zones. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I gotta tell you something. I'm sure they told you, but, like, anything that we talk about that you don't like tomorrow, you're like, I wish I hadn't said that thing about Rachel. We cut anything out. So just start there.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's nice to hear. Because, you know, my work is so much fun. And talking about my work and the interesting experience I have has always been so much fun. And I feel like we crested into this place where it became not fun. And I think we're cresting back into a place where it's can be not just. When I say fun, I mean interesting. Deep.

[Dax Shepard]

What was the peak of when it was not fun, what do you think was happening?

[Jack Antonoff]

I just think for good reason. The people running the show have been so disappointing that we've all, for good reason, been holding each other to a very intense standard of dignity. As dignity has completely gone out of phase, I think that's coming back in a way. But I try to see things. You know, I have my own personal feelings about things. Then I have, like, my feeling when I, like, pan back and see, like, well, what are people feeling right now? I think feel like people are feeling starved for community. I feel like people are very bored with things they didn't think were possible to get bored about.

[Lily Padman]

That's interesting. Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, well, that's my essential feeling.

[Dax Shepard]

I feel like people.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Have grown. Thank God. Fatigued of being angry at everything or

[Jack Antonoff]

realize how limiting it is.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

And we're surrounded by a lot of people who. I think about this a lot. A lot of the people who are meant to shock us. And I'm not in any way minimizing how horrible and shocking their actions are, but them themselves is not shocking. You imagine like, Trump got up there and was like, I gotta talk about my dad. I think there's something wrong with me.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

We'd be like, I know. Even when I see people who I have remarkable differences with having, like, some moment of growth, I'm stunned by, like, growth is everything. It's all we have. And so I think when we're trapped in these endless conversations of people who are not gonna do anything differently, we know exactly what they're gonna do. We know exactly how they're gonna do it. It's almost like a new kind of boredom.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

Sadder boredom. Not a fun boredom.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. That's interesting.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. I want to start with saying I'm very, very excited to meet you. And as we just discussed a little bit off mic, I'm friends with your sister Rachel.

[Jack Antonoff]

You know my family.

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Your older sister.

[Jack Antonoff]

You know my family.

[Lily Padman]

I was invited to Rachel's fashion show, so I did get to meet her there.

[Jack Antonoff]

Cool.

[Lily Padman]

I can't say I know her, but

[Jack Antonoff]

hopefully one day she's the most well liked person.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

I've experienced that holds. The reviews are, like, pretty unanimous.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

If you got a problem with her, you gotta go.

[Dax Shepard]

And I remember so back when we were doing Parenthood, so I don't know if this was 2010 or 11, maybe nine, I was in New York, and May and I were there to promote the show, and I was hanging out with May, and she brought your sister along. And then I came to like her a lot. And then they were telling me, yeah, Rachel's brother's a musician. I was, like, learning about you. This is pre 2000, I guess, 14. Everything kind of exploded.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yes. I'm like, in a van smoking pot. And you're like, great. And they were like, do you want to go to a show? There'll be nine other people there. And you can't leave because he'll see if you leave.

[Dax Shepard]

True. I don't know why it's so rewarding to have gotten this notion of you back then, of you're a musician, but you're kind of coming up like a punk kid. I don't know. And then. Yeah. To see you kind of take over the world from a distance, I've always been like, I love that. I have another example of that. Me and Aaron, my best friend from childhood. We were in California when we were 21. We were at a house party. This girl was talking. He's like, oh, yeah, my brother's band is really good. It's getting big. And we're like, what's the name of it? And she's like, korn. And Aaron and I were like, this is fucking sweet name for a band. You, like thought it was ridiculous that this girl's brother was in corn. And then years later, of course, we were like, oh, yeah, this was sick. It's just kind of fun.

[Lily Padman]

But your little brother or big brother, I forget.

[Dax Shepard]

Middle child.

[Jack Antonoff]

Middle child.

[Dax Shepard]

Same.

[Jack Antonoff]

Is this sort of invisible space in a nice way you can choose to be really anonymous?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

I was just there in my room experiencing my ocd.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And what's the gap between Rachel and Sarah?

[Jack Antonoff]

Me and Rachel are two and a half years apart. Sarah's five years younger, so we could have similar friend groups. And we did. Sarah was, like, younger. So when I was 15 and starting to get high, she was 10. That's a stretch.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, it is.

[Jack Antonoff]

But until I was 18.

[Lily Padman]

And, yeah, we know each other, but

[Dax Shepard]

I would argue you might have been in the same stitch. I was. It was five years and then six years and I was in the middle. So there was a teenager that was going berserk, and then there was a baby on the scene. So between, like, the crying and then the teenager that was going berserk, I could have been downstairs lighting things on fire. No one would have known.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, I was pretty unsupervised. I mean, it was the time I was growing up, living in the suburbs, being a middle child. And then my younger sister was also Born with an illness. So nothing was pointed at me. No one was watching me. In a cool way, my parents are wonderful, but I just. I lived kind of maybe those last years of that suburban dream of you just sort of would leave the house, get on your bike and not come back.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And no one's looking for you.

[Jack Antonoff]

And I was just gone. And I would have lots of thoughts. A lot of that. Good boredom.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I think there's tons of trade offs and positives.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, I don't. I think it's a net negative. But wherever I think I know I

[Dax Shepard]

was also starved for attention.

[Jack Antonoff]

Clearly.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, the second I could, I came here to try to get as much attention as I could. So clearly I craved it.

[Jack Antonoff]

I did too. But I also believed so deeply in doing something that was worth attention and had, like a real intense construct around that. But that also came from, like, the type of music I was listening to in that community. I was very obsessive about what mattered, what didn't. The rules in my head were very heavy.

[Dax Shepard]

Then give me an example.

[Jack Antonoff]

I sort of wake up to the world. I hear my parents music, which is great music. What did they like, 60s, like, the great stuff. And then I started to hear, like the music of the 90s coming through like the radio. And that was a pretty heavy stuff too, in terms of what was real and what wasn't. It was made very clear to me. They don't feel now like, this is shit. This is the real stuff. There were all these rules coming out of the Seattle and all this stuff, the grunge. You just felt all the intensity. I remember when Green Day put out Dookie quite quickly, hearing about how much shame they had after Kurt. Like, it was just a lot as a kid. I'm like, fucking 10.

[Dax Shepard]

Being a sellout was a really big thing.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's a big thing.

[Dax Shepard]

Eddie Vedder was quitting virtually. He's like, I'm a sellout.

[Lily Padman]

Pop was coming into its height. I feel like.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, in a different way. And I missed a lot of music of my time because it was so off my radar. But it was just made very clear. Like the music I was listening to at that time, that was mainstream. The artist would get to a certain point and just wig the fuck out. They would just be like, this sucks. And that kind of actually was pretty beautiful. But then I got quickly into local music where the rules were even heavier. And then my world got really small. The idea of a major label, if you didn't literally do it yourself, you were a piece of Shit, if you weren't Ian McKay, you were crazy. But I kind of loved it because it was community. We had a lot of great roles. You didn't put on a show unless there was also a fundraiser.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Jack Antonoff]

There was no show that wasn't $5 or $4 with a can of food. There was political action everywhere and the fucking music was great. And the scene was so rigid that it really did weed out anyone who didn't just love it. It's like how I hear people who do theater talk. No one's there doesn't want to be there.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, right, right.

[Jack Antonoff]

It pays nothing and it's too hard.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Very pure.

[Dax Shepard]

I think the downside is it was a little self pretentious.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, for sure.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I would think, though, that the liberating thing about it is if the goal is to not sell out, you're kind of liberated from trying to figure out what people want.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's weird. And I take so much with me. I wrote about it so much on this album. But there's a part of it that is just who I am. And then there's a part of it that is separate to me. The concept of selling out, being full of shit, phoning it in, assuming the worst of people, assuming people are dumb, that's all in the music. If you believe any of those things in the music, if you think people need to be pacified or pandered, then that's the worst selling out of all time. To me, it all lives in the music, the shows. What I would and wouldn't charge the audience for not trying to pull on over on people. Like, we just live in a think we're getting out of it. But I think there's been this kind of get the bag time period where a lot of bad actors have pulled one over people. And you don't want your work to be for a very small group of people who can afford something that's incredibly boring. How'd you guys meet?

[Lily Padman]

I started out as their nanny.

[Dax Shepard]

Peripheral member of our friendship group.

[Lily Padman]

No, no. Yeah, we were.

[Dax Shepard]

Which led to babysitting.

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Jack Antonoff]

I don't know this story.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, yeah, sorry. For the listener who's heard it.

[Jack Antonoff]

Full disclosure, I can't listen to people talk much, so I don't hear Freddie podcasts, which I think is kind of maybe interesting. And I try so much and there's so many things. I can only watch something.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, first of all, we're on YouTube now, so that helps.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, cool.

[Dax Shepard]

But what happens when you're listening to audio only? Podcasts.

[Jack Antonoff]

Well, when I was coming up, it wasn't a time of great diagnosis, but when I listened to people talk or it can happen when I'm reading, too. I can get sort of, like, flustered and anxious. I have to be very focused. It's not like I can't do it, but I don't get the joy that other people like. For me, listening to music, watching a movie. That's the thing that I've heard people describe of, like, their friends on the podcast.

[Lily Padman]

That's so interesting.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's interesting. So I have no relationship in. My cousin Jacqueline Novak has a podcast called Poog, which is, like, brilliant, very big, and she's one of my favorite minds to ever exist.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Can't do it.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. I mean, I literally can, and I do. But, like, it's like, it's really weird.

[Dax Shepard]

Ours is not that good. So this is a blessing that you didn't listen. You might not have listen.

[Lily Padman]

We just found out.

[Jack Antonoff]

You can only say that if it's the opposite D. He's trying to be. So what you find out today?

[Lily Padman]

The third most. Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm sorry.

[Jack Antonoff]

Fourth.

[Lily Padman]

Fourth most streamed podcast of all time.

[Jack Antonoff]

Of all time. That's amazing.

[Lily Padman]

Pretty good.

[Dax Shepard]

I was happy to see that.

[Jack Antonoff]

Is number one, two, and three upsetting?

[Dax Shepard]

No.

[Lily Padman]

Well, no.

[Dax Shepard]

One I hadn't heard of, though. Number two I've never heard.

[Lily Padman]

Never heard of what?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, let's.

[Lily Padman]

One was Joe Rogan, which, of course,

[Dax Shepard]

number one of all time.

[Lily Padman]

Two is something I didn't know. My guess was international.

[Jack Antonoff]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

And three was crime joke.

[Dax Shepard]

I never heard of.

[Jack Antonoff]

Number two, then. You all are the only one of your type. It's a German comedy.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a German what?

[Jack Antonoff]

German comedy Podcast. German comedy. My favorite genre. I do a lot of bits in Germany that don't land. It's my favorite genre. I try, and for good reason. They're.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, they're just not.

[Jack Antonoff]

But I'm always trying bits and. And they're not liking it. It's one of the most successful places for my band, really, is Germany. I think the Germans have an understanding of American heartland music that's very pure or something for real.

[Dax Shepard]

I believe that.

[Lily Padman]

Well, hopefully they listen to this and then they start listening to the German audience.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's. We know. Then we move up to it. That's right.

[Lily Padman]

We get to that number two slot. Okay. Our origin story. So we had friends in common. Then I did an episode of Kristen's show House of Lies.

[Dax Shepard]

As an actor.

[Lily Padman]

As an actor. I did a two line Thing. And she was like, oh, I know you. We chatted. They just had their first kid. And I said, well, I am an actor, but I'm really a babysitter. That's how I make all my money. So if you ever need babysitter. She called the next week, Date night, babysat for them. And then they had their second kid. They needed a little more help, so I came on as a nanny, worked as a nanny for a couple years. Their second went to preschool, and they were like, oh, we don't really have a need for her anymore, but we like her. And so what should we do? And Kristen was like, well, would you want to be my assistant? So I said, sure. And then I started doing that. And then I started just kind of taking on extra projects of hers. Like, I would write stuff for her. They'd ask, hey, do you want to do this thing for this magazine? I'd say, like, I could write that for you. And she was like, oh, you do that. Then I started writing all her speeches, and I started writing her commercials. And then we became creative partners, and then Dax stole me right out.

[Dax Shepard]

Cause all this time, she's around, and we have very differing opinions on most things. We'd love to argue in our kitchen. It was our hobby.

[Lily Padman]

Quite the different, really.

[Dax Shepard]

Yep. Very different.

[Lily Padman]

Well, we have.

[Dax Shepard]

There's more overlap.

[Lily Padman]

Yes. There's more overlap than.

[Dax Shepard]

But we like to make a meal of the differences anyways. We love debating each other. And so I was like, I'm gonna start a podcast. I love being on them. We should do it together. And then we did.

[Jack Antonoff]

And now the only thing in our way is the Germans.

[Lily Padman]

We gotta get them. We gotta get them. Yeah. It's quite a story.

[Jack Antonoff]

Really is. It's wild.

[Lily Padman]

It is weird.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

This is the part she hates, but that I love. She built a house that's bigger than ours across the street.

[Lily Padman]

It's not bigger. Okay. I can't.

[Jack Antonoff]

I can't feel nice.

[Dax Shepard]

It's such a great American story.

[Jack Antonoff]

Here's the problem with everything. It's like the truth doesn't matter. We're just going to go with what's funnier. You mean? So it's like. I'm sure you're right.

[Dax Shepard]

Anyway, she has a house called street is Beautiful. Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

Massive.

[Lily Padman]

It is a beautiful house.

[Jack Antonoff]

Must be nice.

[Lily Padman]

It's a nice house.

[Jack Antonoff]

They have all that space, you know, so much space. Yeah. Honestly, space helps me think. I think that's a good idea.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not Electric Lady Studios. You have your rooftop.

[Jack Antonoff]

That's Actually quite small, but it is a space that helps me. Some places you're just your fucking best. Some places you're your fucking worst. And that's helpful. I kind of use all of it. I love making music in an anonymous space, like a hotel room. And I also love making music in a space where the literal objects and walls have been there at my worst or my best. But you play with it. I feel like I burn spaces out and then I reenter them. And I'm here in la. I have a studio here. I go back to Electric Lady. I'm sitting in my apartment, I go there for a week. I'm on tour, I'm working in the hotel. I don't want to be anywhere ever for too long, except with the people I love. But I get very buzzed out.

[Dax Shepard]

Because you're afraid you're gonna run out of the inspiration that's implicit in that space?

[Jack Antonoff]

No, I think I myself over at a young age. I just started moving around, started touring when I was like 14, 15. I just think it's like a nurture thing. It's just what I do.

[Dax Shepard]

And you're smart and evolved and, you know, like we are very much products of context. So it's like the context keeps shifting and that's gonna probably promote different points of view for your art and everything else.

[Jack Antonoff]

I just think it's healthy also if you're like someone who's hard on yourself, it's the beauty of touring. Right. This happened in Cleveland. This is how I felt. Let's say the show was good. I felt off well tomorrow in Columbus. It's the most literal wiping of this brand new, different place. There are different people, there's a different venue. It's all different. The repetition of starting over every day is very beautiful for me. I've heard a lot of people in my line of work who feel that too. And there's a danger to that too. You don't want to become a non human where you're just starting over and over, no roots. You don't want to be the type person that's like, stay at a hotel near home when you get back from tour. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And if you're afraid to sit still, yeah, that's problematic.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's just a device in my life that I go back to. I look forward to trips. I think about them. I think about what if I went here and recorded. I have a lot of like hope in that way and I like to stay there. A lot of people around me feel that way. I like to dream about Doing things.

[Dax Shepard]

I was watching a 60 minute segment on Ted Turner. I've since also watched a doc. That's great about it.

[Jack Antonoff]

Watch a doc on him too.

[Dax Shepard]

Isn't it incredible?

[Jack Antonoff]

Incredible. What an interesting character.

[Dax Shepard]

What an interesting character. But on the 60 minutes one, Jane was talking about what it's like to be married to him. And she said it's hard because he has a jet. And every four days Ted's like, let's go. And I was like, that's my dream existence. If every four days I could say, let's go. Oh, that sounds good.

[Jack Antonoff]

My happiest is to have no schedule and choose to just go places.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

And my most unhappy is when the schedule's too rigid. But that's why tour's beautiful, because it's scheduled, but you're also just sort of gone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting to integrate into your adult life realizing who you are. That's not going to change. And then realizing which parts of those things work and don't work. And Tor has been a real fun one because I just kind of like just drag everyone with me now.

[Lily Padman]

Well, if you were a middle child and you were running out of the house and not coming back all day, I mean, that's maybe where that stems from. It's like you're kind of nomadic from the get.

[Jack Antonoff]

There was a lot to run away from and a lot to come back to. I don't know. I think I'm a little more free. I think I used to think it was like a problem, but now I'm surrounded by people who appear to love me through it.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. What did mom and dad do for a living? Rick and Shira. Shira.

[Jack Antonoff]

Strange name. Shira.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. When I read it, I was like, is it Shira or is it Shira? Shira.

[Jack Antonoff]

Like you think?

[Dax Shepard]

H I R A. Yeah, that's what I think. She's a nurse and rec.

[Jack Antonoff]

He is an amazing guitar player and studied in New Jersey with Reverend Gary Davis Jr. Who's a brilliant ragtime player. And then went to college. They met in college and then when he graduated college. Sounds like a Springsteen song, which is what happened. His dad was like, cut your hair, you're coming to work at the shoe factory. And that's what happened.

[Dax Shepard]

So grandpa owned a shoe manufacturing facility.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. Called Phoenix Footwear.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, trusted brand.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. He dies in a car accident. His name is Jack Antonoff. That's how I become.

[Dax Shepard]

So you never met him.

[Jack Antonoff]

Never met him. And he looms. Loom sounds like a bad word.

[Dax Shepard]

That's okay.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's not bad, is it?

[Lily Padman]

It's not bad.

[Jack Antonoff]

A better word for loom. That's more beautiful. He hovers, buzzes beautifully. Or dazzles. When I think of loom, I think of like a looming.

[Lily Padman]

Because you're thinking of gloom.

[Jack Antonoff]

Is that what it is?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I think no, looming. Looming means like there's an impending.

[Jack Antonoff]

My mother just looms over.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, but like, loom's large.

[Jack Antonoff]

He clearly was wonderful and was the head of the family and also died at a bizarre. You know, I've experienced death on both sides, shocking and non shocking. My dad tells the story and actually it's like a movie. My mom was a nurse at Holy Name Hospital where I was born. And my dad called my mom when he found out and he said, don't go to work, my dad's there. I mean, it's so stunning of a line. It's crazy. And my mom's like, what? And my story, my parents story, they're all sort of colored by these big moments of loss. So my dad had the shoe factory. They have Rachel, they have me. This is really in the air. Something happens with the government where you can now just import. I don't know what point of the

[Dax Shepard]

80s, the shoe factory, they started competing with China or wherever else.

[Jack Antonoff]

My dad tells the story like it was just one day. It was over.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, fuck.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. But he's like a business guy. He's gotten involved in different things. When we were growing up, he had a company that did carpet cleaning. We lived a very suburban, normal life. Our world was very rich but small. We did things. We tried sushi.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

I never went to Europe. I went to Disney World.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, same.

[Jack Antonoff]

I went to Burlington, Vermont.

[Dax Shepard]

But I think anyone on the outside would go like, wow. There are two surviving children. One's this incredibly creative and wonderful fashion designer. And one's this incredible, incredible musician. I think you're just inherently curious. Like, what do you think the quintessential thing they provided for you guys?

[Jack Antonoff]

There's layers to this. So the first thing I would say is, when our sister died, I noticed this. And I won't take any credit away from my parents, who were very open to us having our passions. But when she died, I was 18, Rachel was 20. They were so disconnected from what mattered. People my age were like fighting tooth and nail to get into a better college. They were just like, who gives a shit? I was already cooked at that point. Cause she had been sick. It's really hard to care about things other than what's in your soul when faced with that. Which is actually why it's a really good time to make decisions. When you're deep in grief, it's so clear it matters. When you're in grief, you're not having coffee with something you don't want to have coffee with.

[Lily Padman]

Yes, that's so true.

[Jack Antonoff]

You're not going to see a movie you don't want to see. You're not staying on the phone too long with someone who's bothering you.

[Dax Shepard]

You're not ruminating on some object you hope to buy.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, you don't care. But you do care about the jokes. You care about the food you like. It's not everything serious. It just strips away the fog. And so my parents are. You can live at home as long as you want. In my community, I was a fucking loser because all my friends are, like, going to college. And it was that time before the college myth had started to unravel a little bit. It was also a time when making art and things like that for both Rachel and I. What's your backup plan? Was everything.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Well, you're in a suburb, and so everyone's pretty much college bound.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. And the kids who weren't, it wasn't like, do you. It was like, is so and so gonna be okay? It's a group of people. The first time. My album is really about this. Breaking the generational pact, your ancestral pact. But most of the community I grew up in were people whose parents had it worse and their parents had it worse and their parents had it worse, and they arrived at this suburban place where having food on the table, having a roof over your head, and a good education was the top of existence safety. Which, by the way, I don't think they're wrong. But Rachel and I, because of when we were born and because of the circumstances of our family, both kind of severed that and tried some and then both ended up living home until we were, like, 26, seven. Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

You're both there for. Oh, forever.

[Jack Antonoff]

Okay. Wonderful.

[Dax Shepard]

What kind of boy were you? I know you were in a public school for a while.

[Jack Antonoff]

Public school is terrible. It was like the 50s, like, bullying wise jocks, cheerleaders, and, like, me and three other people.

[Dax Shepard]

That's how I grew up.

[Jack Antonoff]

Some of us were gay, some of us weren't, but we were all, like, gay. You know what I mean? It was so bizarre. I wasn't, like, ahead of my time or anything, but I was just sort of like, guys, what is up? And it was so apparent to me at that Time how kind of weird and repressed other people were. I would have to be like, jim, like, you're gay and that's great. Yeah, yeah. You should just, you know, instead of, like, beating the shit out of my friends.

[Lily Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

So you were a little Miss Vitty outcasty.

[Jack Antonoff]

Well, I was just so into music. The music I was listening to was very fucking serious. And I was vegan, I was political, and I was talking about all these things, and I was listening to Papa Ragandi's Let's Talk More rock and shouting Meat is murder. And still believe those things, no matter what twists my life has taken. Those are great educations, you know, this is very New Jersey story. I was desperate to get out. Now we've moved back, but I was desperate to get out.

[Lily Padman]

I was, like, so ironic. We always make our way back, you know, Jersey.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, no, no, but we're in a string right now. We had Charlie Puth on, who was talking about his love for Jersey. And then we just had Tom Pelfrey. I don't know if you watched Task. Did you watch Task, the HBO show?

[Jack Antonoff]

I didn't. He's this beautiful actor, but I'm pretty hip to anything hbo. I think that's like one of the great.

[Dax Shepard]

If you got to take a gamble, that's. That's a platform. But he's from there, and he was just talking about it. And then, yeah, the Springsteen of it all.

[Jack Antonoff]

The best way to put it, there's suburban mentality. There's outside the window, the party mentality. There's younger brother mentality. There is no place on earth where it's that literal. Louisiana sprawls out. Tokyo, London. There is New York City packed to the brim, a very small body of water. And then most of the population, New Jersey, just stares at it. Think about it scientifically. How much literal energy. Yeah, comes off New York City, amazing energy turns into sad ash and sprinkles all over New Jersey. You are staring at it. Every band is playing there at any night. Everyone's having sex, everyone's doing drugs. Every Broadway show, every bar, movie stars live there. You are fucking face to face with what you're not. It is so potent. All the other cities I've been to, and I've been a lot of them, they sort of, like, subtly sprawl. It is dead serious.

[Dax Shepard]

You're not here.

[Jack Antonoff]

You are not there.

[Dax Shepard]

Robert De Niro is like a mile from you as the crow throws me. You'll never see him.

[Jack Antonoff]

He's not thinking about you at all maybe once a week. You're the butt of a joke.

[Lily Padman]

Maybe it's like on planes, when you're in the seat behind. Just like that, like, it's staring.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, man, I'm going to take that.

[Dax Shepard]

So probably everyone has a really healthy, less than chip on their shoulder.

[Jack Antonoff]

You were one of the other. I grew up with people who haven't been to New York City in years and live six miles away. They're like, why would I go there? To, like, get a. To get a shittier Italian meal for twice the price. To see Annie get done, like, no, thanks, worst pizza. There's truth to it, but. And then you have people who are enamored with what else is out there in the world. It's like a storybook. I mean, it's medieval. It creates a fire in you that is wonderful and chippish.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the beauty of it is if you can be there with your cup full. I had no experience with Brooklyn. I went to a friend's house with, like, a rooftop thing, and I was like, oh, wow. This is better than living in the city because you actually get to see it. You get to see what the poster was, and you see the Brooklyn Bridge. And then you see that, and the whole thing's there, there, and you feel wonderful. It's almost like the most beautiful vantage point of the whole thing.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's where you're telegraphing from. Like, no matter what I do in my life, I'm someone who is cooked in New Jersey, and I'm telegraphing from what I call the shadow of the city. From the outside. You hear it in the music. I meet kids who grew up in the city, they're just like, what's up? Like, they don't have anything to prove.

[Dax Shepard]

No way.

[Jack Antonoff]

They saw it all. They did it all. And that's why the Velvet Underground sound the way they do. That's why the Strokes sounded that way. Music and your soul is telegraphing from. You can't ever get it out of you. And I always wanted to talk about it, but in my early years, I had way more like New York was exploding. When I started playing music, we'd go into the city and go to the Mercury Lounge, and it was every label, every band, it was just. It was fucking happening. And it wasn't because we were there. It was that time, you know, 99, 2000 downtown was 1 of the great moments. Then it moved to Brooklyn, and I was always right outside of it. And it was beautiful and sad, like being from New Jersey.

[Dax Shepard]

All right, I want to, because I have some theory about you based on nothing other than reading about you.

[Jack Antonoff]

Jewish.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know you're Jewish.

[Jack Antonoff]

If you're not Jewish, your whole thing is a big fucking problem.

[Dax Shepard]

I will say when I see the amazing success you've had working specifically with female artists. I think, yeah, he got trained great as a younger brother by an older sister. I just have some sense that you're comfortable with someone being older and a little bit dominant and you're not threatened by it and you know how to work with it.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, for sure. Rachel is. My parents will hate hearing this. My parents raised me great. Rachel also raised me in a different way. That was very lucky.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

Rachel always says, like, I love my parents. I'm not shitting on them. And they will definitely listen to this. But Rachel always jokes. You know, when I came into the world, I was just like. So I guess this is normalcy. And then when I came into the world, Rachel was like, this is weird. You know, she was, like, telegraphing to me, like, hey, it's weird here.

[Lily Padman]

Don't worry.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, don't worry.

[Lily Padman]

I see you.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. A lot of weird stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

You're not crazy. This is the moment my brother and I would always have. Like, we'd look at each other. This is nuts, right? Yes. Okay, good. Then as long as you know it's nuts and I know it's nuts, then we can. We're good.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. I had the luxury of having that telepathy right away where she was three and I was one. She was just like, they're weird. They do weird shit. But I got a lot of weird shit.

[Lily Padman]

Yes, yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Did you watch Sentimental Value, the movie?

[Jack Antonoff]

I fucking haven't yet, but it's one of those movies where it's just like, everyone who I love is like, you'll love this movie.

[Lily Padman]

Yes. You basically just said the most important scene in the movie, which is this older sister and younger sister. And she said, the difference between our childhoods is that I had you.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, I see. Rachel is on the front line.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

You know, storming Normandy. Like, coming out of the boat and bulls are flying. And I'm like, nine ships behind me. And, like, you guys are gonna clean it up.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

And then we'll come in and just sort of like, poke at the bodies. What's for lunch? Are we gonna grill on the beach? Someone said that? I don't know.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. We are supported by Allstate State. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. That's smart. Not checking your phone's battery before heading out. That'll get you every time. Of course, your phone dies on the way to meet someone, leaving you wandering around quietly panicking about being in the wrong spot. Yeah, checking first is smart, so check all state first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary, subject to terms, conditions and availability. Allstate North America Insurance Company Affiliates Northbrook, Illinois we are supported by Quints I'm pretty picky about what I wear. Not in a fashion, way more in a if this bugs me even a little, I'm outweigh. And this time of year always makes me want to reset a bit, clean things up, keep my closet simple. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. The fabrics feel elevated, the fits are thoughtful, and the pricing actually makes sense. Quince makes high quality everyday essentials using premium materials like 100% European linen and their insanely soft flow knit active fabric. Their linen pieces are lightweight, breathable and comfortable. Perfect for spring. And they strike that balance where you look put together without trying too hard. I got their linen pants and honestly, I was surprised how good they feel. Sometimes you think linen could be coarse, but these are so soft and luxurious and nothing really flows like linen. The best part is the pricing. It's 50 to 60% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories. Refresh your wardrobe with quince. Go to quince.comdax for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. Go to Q u I n c-e.comdax for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comdax this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. So May is Mental Health Awareness month. And I've been thinking about how we all have those things that keep us up at night.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, and it's so easy to think you have it all figured out on your own, right?

[Dax Shepard]

But the truth is no one has all the answers. Having someone with you, someone to actually listen and understand, it makes a real difference.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, and that's what therapy can be. It's not about having everything figured out. It's about having unbiased support when you're feeling overwhelmed, stuck, or just unsure.

[Dax Shepard]

And betterhelp makes it easier to find that support. They match you with a licensed therapist based on your needs. With over 30,000 therapists, they usually get it right the first time. And if not, you can switch anytime.

[Lily Padman]

I have therapy tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to it. I have nothing to talk about and it's going to be the best session ever. You just get to the root of things.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. You don't have to be on this journey alone. Find support and have someone with you in therapy. Sign up and get 10% [e-mail] Dax that's better. H E L P.com Dax.

[Lily Padman]

My eldest daughter syndrome is real.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's wild. Rachel carries it all. I'm more transient because I have the luxury to be so.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Okay. When do you start playing music?

[Jack Antonoff]

Kind of always.

[Dax Shepard]

Dad taught you how to play guitar, I presume?

[Jack Antonoff]

Somewhat. He would play to us. I would always pick it up, I'd bang on a piano. It got serious around like 1213, but I just always did it.

[Dax Shepard]

And a lot of time alone in your room. That's what we were doing my whole life.

[Jack Antonoff]

It made me feel seen in a way that I didn't feel anywhere else. And then when I started writing music, which is around 1213, I felt, for lack of a better word, like I could feel myself in a way that I hadn't ever before.

[Dax Shepard]

Control.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. But also it's a very out of control thing, but just more a bit like how I hear people talk about God and religion. I just believed in it with zero cynicism. There was no edges. It was pure belief. I feel that way to this day. But like communication. I was shy in some places, kind of when I was growing up. And when I was writing music or making music, I felt like I was communicating with myself. And then an imaginary person who got me. I felt alive. Right around then everything else in my life really stopped.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you think though, that it was a medicine? That without it you would have been in a much worse state?

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, I think I'd be dead. I had all these weird tendencies. I was such a collector when I was a kid. Like I went to like a baseball card collection and like a stamp collection.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you have ticks?

[Jack Antonoff]

A lot of ticks. You know, had to do this or everyone would die. Still have that? Yeah. I try to keep it in check and I go back and forth on it. Cause like on one hand it's bullshit. But then no, it's sort of also like one's religion. As long as you can put it in a good place. It is nice to imagine yourself at the whim of someone you're praying to. But once I found music, that was it. What's interesting when I look back. Cause my work, there's different sides to it, but it's kind of one thing, and I'm always sort of asked to explain it. And I always just go back to the beginning. I always loved writing and singing. I always loved performing, and then I always loved helping my friends with their music. In a way, my life is no different. It's just, you know, the hotel rooms are obviously nicer and I get to be in studios and stuff, but it's that thing and the community around it. My biggest anxiety is ever. I was always worried someone's gonna, like, quit the band, which was really hard back then because a lot of people did music for fun, and I was so serious.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you think you stressed other people out around you?

[Jack Antonoff]

I think so, yeah. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, just relax.

[Jack Antonoff]

It used to drive me crazy when everyone talk about their plants.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I still have that a little bit.

[Jack Antonoff]

Really?

[Lily Padman]

When Dax will talk about the future and his future, it's like, well, what about this now? Why are you thinking about that?

[Jack Antonoff]

I love a no one leaves pact.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, I have that.

[Jack Antonoff]

My band now. I have my partner. We have my family. Like, that comes from the family. No matter what the fuck is going on in my family. And not everyone has. This is like, you don't leave. You work it out. And I didn't realize how precious that was until I saw other people's families. Some people leave.

[Dax Shepard]

Now. The most unappealing trait of yours is named for a school I've ever heard. Is the one you went to, which is professional children's school. Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

Rachel says it sounds like tiny lawyers, right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, it sounds terrible. Tell me, what is the professional children's school? Because it becomes your gateway to Manhattan.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, yeah. So it was a public school in Jersey, and then Rachel was in the musical theater, and she found this place where you could go, and it was for, like, ballerinas and people in theater. I went from a New Jersey public school where everyone would say gay slurs to me, which was strange, to a school where I was the only straight kid. A beautiful flip

[Lily Padman]

flop.

[Jack Antonoff]

The point of the place, I think it was made for the ballet dancers, was to give you time to do your thing. And I was starting to tour, but I used it as a way out. And like I said, my sister was sick and I convinced my parents because they were just sort of like, yeah, sure. Is that gonna make you happy? Nothing matters.

[Dax Shepard]

And we have a lot on our plate, so if you've figured something out for yourself.

[Jack Antonoff]

And that was a beautiful time. It saved my life in the sense that I think I had more fear Chip rage About the things I wanna do in my life. Cause everyone was artic to me why it wouldn't work out. Which is a terrible thing we do to artists and is not even the truth. There's a lot of work in the field. Ironically, as recent history has shown, you might be better off wanting to do something in recorded music than being a lawyer at this point.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

I could do a million years on that alone. But I got there and I just was surrounded by people who weren't afraid of their hopes.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it wasn't embarrassing to have dreams and aspirations.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, there's a lot of rage when you declare that you want to do something.

[Dax Shepard]

Why would you believe in yourself? I don't believe in myself.

[Jack Antonoff]

Say American. In other countries, you know, being a singer, being an actor, being in the theater playing music, the government deems it important enough to subsidize. So it's not. Fuck you. You want to go play music? Well, I got to work this job. It's like, cool. And I love doing this. I'm a teacher. And in America there's this sense and it cuts in different ways. I always say, when you go see a band at a club or a bar, right? No one's going to work for free. The bartender doesn't go for free. The secured doesn't go for free. The band goes for free.

[Dax Shepard]

Free.

[Jack Antonoff]

I was taught to eat because I was so lucky to be there. And I have so many different feelings about that now. And it's interesting when you tour the world and you see how art is treated in different places. But yeah, there's a lot of that. There's a lot of, oh, you want to do this? Well, then you better fucking get your ass kicked out there. It's a badge of honor. But it's also like, that was heavy.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But I think what's going on underneath is I'm afraid to pursue the thing I want to pursue. You somehow have this confidence that you don't deserve. And I'd be delighted if you failed to confirm that. I shouldn't have tried. I'm totally sympathetic to that. It's scary to try.

[Jack Antonoff]

When I was 15, I was in bands. The kids in public school were like, fuck you. Why don't you come to do the shit we do? You think you're better than this. When I was 18, all my friends were getting into college and I was still in the van. They were like, how you doing when I'm 21? And they're realizing that maybe college isn't going to lead to Their dream job and I'm still in the van. They're like, good for you, man. I'm cool again. When I'm 24 and they can pay their rent and I'm living at home, still in the van.

[Lily Padman]

It's.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's like, how you doing, man? Like, it goes in and out. But you do make that deal or you don't. You're not going to get anywhere toying with what else you could do in anything in life. You just have to make that deal and live by it.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I think this is an adorable chapter. So at I guess 15, when you're at the school, professional children's school, you form your first band. Or maybe it wasn't your first band, but outline.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

With friends from elementary school.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And then you figure out how to tour. This is a part of the story that gets glossed over. I think ambition is very required. This is such an ambitious thing.

[Jack Antonoff]

We had a book called Book youk Own Fucking Life. It was a book that went around. It had all the phone numbers of the local promoters in the scene. And that's me and my friend Evan, who was in another band called Random Task. We did the tour together. I think they got from Austin Powers. But we sat down and we called and we said, hey, can we come play in Austin on this date?

[Dax Shepard]

This is the Bill Gates part where it's like you get a job designing this water and power program at 15. Like you're calling around businesses.

[Jack Antonoff]

We thought it was a fucking honor to go on a tour. We weren't like, are we going to play to anyone? Is it going to be worth it? All saved up a bunch of money, all the bands and we went on this tour and we slept in rest stops and we absolutely loved it. It was freedom.

[Dax Shepard]

And you were in your mom's minivan.

[Jack Antonoff]

My band borrowed my mom's minivan. One member could drive and did all the driving.

[Dax Shepard]

This is adorable.

[Lily Padman]

Drive. I didn't even think about his mom's van.

[Dax Shepard]

But he can't drive.

[Jack Antonoff]

But it was crazy. I mean, it was so dangerous. Like the panhandle in Florida. It's just wild. What could have happened also if you

[Dax Shepard]

would have gotten pulled over and the cops would have been like, where there's an 18 year old and a 15 year old and a 14 year old.

[Jack Antonoff]

They all have drugs. They all look like they're nine.

[Lily Padman]

Were you guys. You must have love weed immediately.

[Jack Antonoff]

I loved weed. Drinking wasn't that big a part of my culture. But I fucked myself up. I don't Want to jump ahead. But height of grief, I took a bunch of acid. Hence that line, I want to get better pain at the acid test and ruin myself. And it really changed my relationship to getting up forever. I got burned out quick.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, boy. What age was that?

[Jack Antonoff]

20, 21.

[Dax Shepard]

20?

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. Somewhere in there.

[Dax Shepard]

Maybe that's a gift.

[Jack Antonoff]

I didn't come back for a while. It was terrible.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Jack Antonoff]

I got even like talking about it. Okay.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, God.

[Jack Antonoff]

Car. Sorry to anyone listening who.

[Dax Shepard]

Pro acid.

[Jack Antonoff]

No, not pro acid. I'm happy for those people. I'm sorry to the people who I'm triggering because they had that bad trip.

[Lily Padman]

I see. I see.

[Jack Antonoff]

Because I can go there. I just lost my sister. I'm with the band. We're, like, out on the road, and we just got some acid, and we're like, let's just eat all of it. There was no. It was a different time.

[Dax Shepard]

It wasn't guided. No.

[Jack Antonoff]

It wasn't guided.

[Dax Shepard]

No integration.

[Jack Antonoff]

Afterwards, it was really hard for me. Called a family friend who was a doctor, and I was like, I did this. I'm not. Okay. They actually weren't that helpful. They were like, well, it can change your brain chemistry.

[Lily Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Just what you want to hear when you're convinced this trip's gonna last forever.

[Jack Antonoff]

But it did kind of save my life because a lot of my friends got real fucked up on drugs after that. And I was scared straight. Yeah. I was just trying to, like, hang on to my sanity.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

Without it all.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so that band goes on. You meet a lot of different folks while touring. And the next band is fun.

[Jack Antonoff]

No. Steel Train.

[Dax Shepard]

Steel Train. I'm so sorry.

[Jack Antonoff]

There's a band in between.

[Dax Shepard]

And Steel Train. You convinced two people to drop out of college.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So how.

[Lily Padman]

That's a big story.

[Dax Shepard]

How do we go from outline to Steel Train? And is there any band Breakup Sadness. There were these all easy transitions.

[Jack Antonoff]

They were easy ish. Because I felt like a lot of my life, I was surrounded by people who were naturally moving into a different phase. And I was just on the same track. And then I think I attracted people who. Steel Train toured for, like, a decade. There is no more legitimate band on the road story who would go out and we would tour 200, 250 days a year. And we played at 10 people. Then we played at 20 people. Then we played at 50 people. People. 75 people.

[Dax Shepard]

You're doing 200 a year for 10 years.

[Jack Antonoff]

For sure. We were just gone.

[Dax Shepard]

This is like the Beatles in the German brothel story. Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

We were Gone. We lived on the road. It's all we did. All we did was tour.

[Lily Padman]

Still in the van. Oh, okay.

[Jack Antonoff]

That van, really not even close to the bus. I mean, you get good at it. You figure out all the hacks of how to get a good hotel for less money. You pull up and you say, we're a church group.

[Lily Padman]

Don't you kind of miss that time?

[Jack Antonoff]

I miss it with every fiber of my being and don't want to go back to. At the same time, I'm more in awe that it happened. It's nice when there's facts of your life that show exactly who you were. We just wanted to be there.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

It was beautiful, though. And it was right before it all got really complicated in music. All we could do was play. I hold no judgment over anyone right now. But it got complicated. And all we could do at that time was just go and convince people to let us play. Convince Bance, let's open for them. Tell all the fucking press and TV shows that were there at a moment's notice. Someone cancels. We get to play Conan. It's our big break at, like, the gas tank. For me, I. I was cooked. I was just going to stay, but like everyone else, like, just when it's like we're not making any money, this sucks. We'd get a slot early on at a festival. Buys us another six months. Yes, we get to play Conan. My grandmother's like, oh, you know, these things fill the tank back up.

[Dax Shepard]

And you were approached by two dudes for fun at this point?

[Jack Antonoff]

Well, we had all toured together a long time ago.

[Dax Shepard]

We had all toured together.

[Jack Antonoff]

I think the three of us recognized Liferness.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. Like each other three hell or high water, we're not deviating from this.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, that was a side project we started for fun.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so from the time you form fun. Is that 2012?

[Jack Antonoff]

Earlier, maybe 10.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. When does the hit song drop? Is that 12?

[Jack Antonoff]

I think somewhere.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so you have this wildly popular song, we are Young.

[Jack Antonoff]

Do you remember that thing you do?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. That movie.

[Jack Antonoff]

It felt like that hearing yourself on the radio, like all these things that I thought were not only impossibilities, they were so off my radar. I was so disenfranchised from the mainstream. I thought my path was like. I just looked at Spoon or Wilco and just strictly wanted to just play. Find my audience. Audience and play to them forever. I never thought about being cast out in that big net. You know, it's easy to talk about all like the shame and intensity here in Iowa, and your cousin comes to show and there's no one there. There's obviously all those feelings, and I carry them today, so I get into them. But truthfully, we wore that, like, armor, man. We were like, we're here. No one's paying us to be here. No one's asking us to be here. This isn't some, like, American Idol where we have a panel of judges. You know, it's a group of people who. No one said, oh, my God, you're amazing. We played music that we felt like we had to make opposite of talent show music, as I like to call it, which is a lot of my favorite bands. It's like, you can't really pinpoint exactly. And we would roll up and play to fucking no one and load our gear and sleep on the floor.

[Lily Padman]

Fuck, yeah. No one likes us.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. We would love when people came, but we were so empowered by how much it meant to us.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. It wasn't for approval. You didn't make it for the approval. So then when it was on the radio, where you. You embarrassed.

[Jack Antonoff]

I was stressed because I'd spent my life doing what I do, which is really about my lyrics more than anything. And then I had joined this band for fun, and they weren't my words. And then it got really big, and it really. For you, crisis. Oh, yeah. I started working all night. I also didn't like the idea of having to play We Are Young Forever. It wasn't my song. It was my lyrics.

[Dax Shepard]

It hurt a little bit.

[Jack Antonoff]

Well, it was weird because I was getting everything I wanted.

[Dax Shepard]

But you felt like it wasn't yours.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. And so I just went and did my own thing.

[Dax Shepard]

You do bleachers as a solo project in. In hotel rooms as you're touring with Fun with this huge hit.

[Jack Antonoff]

It helped.

[Dax Shepard]

You had money now.

[Jack Antonoff]

Some. Maybe less than you'd think because of how it all works. But I remember, you know, that first year starting to be like, oh, my God, maybe I could get an apartment.

[Dax Shepard]

Also, when you toured with Fun, you're presumably sleeping in a prevost.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yep. That was exciting. That gotta be fucking titties all complicated.

[Dax Shepard]

Didn't feel right.

[Jack Antonoff]

Well, I'll tell you what happened. I felt so unseen because I had communicated so much of my life through my lyrics that I wrote. Wrote the first Bleacher song, which is called I Want to Get Better, which could not be more of a Cliff Notes in my whole fucking life, almost to an absurd degree. My reaction to that was like, I'm Going to write a song and start a band that completely sifts out anyone who doesn't completely understand who I am. So that first album is so abrasively confessional. But it's cool. It's neat to get something and realize that it's not. We had a number one song and it was really cool. I'm not minimizing it, but I didn't sleep better at night. Night. I actually was just sort of thinking about my lyrics and what I wanted to do and how I wanted to play and felt a little bit like I was getting pulled.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you feel like you were getting offered kind of like the Golden Handcuffs? It's like, oh, this could be a trap. And it's an unsatisfying.

[Jack Antonoff]

And also to be uninvited for so long and then to be invited, it makes decision making very hard. I've had this at many different points in my career. So when that first happened was like, we got to go to Germany, do this thing. Now we got to go Japan. We've got this thing. And your humanity is. Is gone. Because you're just gone. And it's a really beautiful lesson when you learn it, that there's something you want to do, there's something you want to say, and you do it. And when you do it, you do it. Because you do it. Do it, do it, do it. And when people start to fuck with it, even on an absurd degree, people start asking you to do other things. And it feels really good. Oh, yeah. Because all of a sudden you're popular. But I don't want to do that. And I don't want to do that, but.

[Dax Shepard]

And you're afraid if you don't do that, there'll be nothing else ever again.

[Jack Antonoff]

Totally.

[Dax Shepard]

This is the last thing anyone's going to offer me.

[Jack Antonoff]

And you get your group of people around you. Right. Which it wasn't at the time. You're getting weird advice.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. A lot of new people enter the people and they.

[Jack Antonoff]

And they've done it before.

[Dax Shepard]

And you're getting more attention from a label. There's all kinds of stuff happening.

[Jack Antonoff]

And you have this gut that is so clear. Which, by the way, it's so simple. Don't do anything that you're not excited to do. It's so simple. If something feels a little cheesy, it's very cheesy. If something feels like not you, it's not you. It kind of is that pure. And then there's ways of doing things that aren't necessarily you, but you do it. Your way.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

And it's cool. But that was a tough time. I had music bursting out of me and feeling like it was being quieted by the success of something else. Very strange. Guilty feeling.

[Lily Padman]

Very strange.

[Dax Shepard]

That is a bizarre, bizarre experience. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

You feel bad about feeling bad.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. I've had this a few times in my life where sort of people like, wow, that must be the best. And sort of like, well, no, actually it wasn't. It was really hard and complicated because that wasn't my goal.

[Dax Shepard]

We've talked about this with several actors. The one that comes to mind right now is Wednesday.

[Lily Padman]

Jenna Ortega.

[Dax Shepard]

Jenna Ortega. And I can so empathize with her, which is like she has this moment of enormous opportunity and everyone around her, it's such an exciting thing. And they're saying, you must be so happy. And then when so many people are telling you you must be so happy, which isn't a real thing, they're just

[Jack Antonoff]

projecting all over you. They're just saying, you got something that I've heard is thing to get.

[Dax Shepard]

It's beautiful what they're saying. They're excited for it, you.

[Jack Antonoff]

But no one's ever like, how you feeling?

[Dax Shepard]

Right. Are you scared? I just said to her, like, that's a hard cuz Then you're afraid if you're honest with people, you will appear to be ungrateful. And so now you're kind of locked in. You get isolated by this dissonance of everyone thinks I should be feeling so good and I'm not. What's going on? Am I broken?

[Jack Antonoff]

But you are who you are. I mean, don't make people feel bad. But the spectrum of ungrateful, that's a game you could play forever. One person seems ungrateful compared to someone else. You are living your life and you know when something good has happened. But you also know that you will die. And there are things you want to do with your time.

[Dax Shepard]

It's now yours to lose, which is stressful.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's very stressful. And I've always been super in touch with that. And it's weird when you do a thing that everyone thinks is for everyone else, but it actually isn't. This is something I run into all the time, especially in my work with pop music. This is not a service industry in any way. And because everyone sees it or hears it, they think that it's made for their public. And it's really not. In a mean way. It's really not. Music is made because you feel compelled to articulate something, because you're A little bit in anguish.

[Dax Shepard]

If you can't get that thing out in the way you want it out.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. You have a feeling and you feel crazy because you can't say it and you can't sing it, but you hear it. And you spend all your time turning it into something reductive, but literally that you can press play on. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

And then you want to take it out and celebrate it.

[Dax Shepard]

And then sometimes people love it or

[Jack Antonoff]

not, but the act of releasing, even just now, me talking, putting out an album, you're chucking messages in the bottle

[Dax Shepard]

out in the world.

[Jack Antonoff]

You're not looking for everyone. Just like in high school, it's like, where's that one kid? Something about them. I'm like, oh, my person. That's it. And when you do something that is public, there can be this sense from people that you're doing it to please the people that.

[Dax Shepard]

The puzzle you were trying to crack was, how do I get all these people to like it? But that wasn't the puzzle.

[Jack Antonoff]

No, the puzzle you're trying to crack is like, if you fucking cut me open, what would the music sound like? Everything you write is the last thing you'll ever write until you. You do it again. And you have to do it in a different way. The uncomfortable truth for people who do work like this is that it does dry up. We don't like to talk about it, but very few. You either die, dries up, or you're a total unicorn. So I've been in a phase recently where I'm very surprised every time. The feeling keeps coming, but I don't take it for granted. I don't sit there and think, yeah, this is what I'll do.

[Dax Shepard]

You're dropping a bucket into a well, and you're like, what day will the well be dry?

[Jack Antonoff]

The image in my head is, it's a little net. I was, like, catching.

[Lily Padman]

Marcus Mumford said the exact same thing. Or I think it was him.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, you had, like, a butterfly. Catching.

[Lily Padman]

Trying to catch butterflies.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. Like, I could write a song, but who cares? I'm trying to write that song, and I would never. When I'm producing a record, I can make something. Who cares? It's like we're after something so specific, and you just know it when you have it. Why? It's so weird to me when people get in, like, arguments over music. It's like, so obvious when you're going this way or not, but it's really maddening, and I think. Think it can drive you fucking crazy. I'm In a phase now of feeling really grateful for it. That I do something that I can't control. Makes me feel like there's a mysticism to it. But I wouldn't name names. But I look up and I look at some people, and I'm like, where'd it go? When will it leave me?

[Dax Shepard]

Sure. Terrifying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you come across Taylor's radar? Is it from fun or is it from fun?

[Jack Antonoff]

It was from fun, but we met in Germany.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

[Dax Shepard]

This whole thing was scripted. We love that at the Shanghai Chung Klunk podcast.

[Jack Antonoff]

Exactly. Yeah. Which is when it went number two in the world.

[Dax Shepard]

It's all based on one episode.

[Lily Padman]

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised.

[Jack Antonoff]

What was that movie that had the great slogan about number two? It was the Heinz Ketchup movie. It was a movie where number two and that ain't bad or something.

[Dax Shepard]

Probably crazy people. The Dudley Moore where he's an ad executive and Volvo's a Roxy, but good. Not the Rom.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's like a rom com where, like, there's is a thing that's number two in the world.

[Lily Padman]

We're gonna have to find it for the fact check.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. Someone listening is like. It's fun.

[Dax Shepard]

Someone's punching their dashboard.

[Jack Antonoff]

We're in Germany, we meet the thing, and quite quickly we get talking about Yaz, or, as in Germany, called Yazoo, A song called Only youy. Do you know the song?

[Dax Shepard]

No. Well, sing it.

[Jack Antonoff]

All I needed was the love you gave.

[Lily Padman]

Yes, we all know this.

[Jack Antonoff]

All I needed for another day.

[Lily Padman]

Beautiful song.

[Jack Antonoff]

All I ever knew Only you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Lily Padman]

Great song.

[Jack Antonoff]

Perfect song. Yeah, it does that thing. You could weep to it, you could dance to it, you could drink to it. I could cry talking about it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's got all the beautiful sort of like sad 80s stuff. So she's about to, you know. First time we worked together was on the making, 1989. So we were just kind of humming on this thing together. Somehow we got talking about it. I'm about to make the first Bleachers album, which really has that tone. And we just stayed in touch, and then we started listening to some music. And all the stories of my collaborations are just very simple. You meet, you see the same thing, you hear the same thing, and then you chase it together. I'm really reducing a huge thing that's a mountain, and there's great stories about that mountain with anything I've done. But truly what it is is, like, you have a feeling. So when we first met, whether we were talking about it openly or not. We were basically being like, man, Yaz rips that shit's great. Not bring it back. But that feeling of sort of like the sadness of synthetic sounds, hearing someone fight their emotional way through the machine. It's pop. That's something. I think Alison Moye's voice, I mean, has that thing that all the greats do. It's so listenable and beautif beautiful and so fucking painful. You know, maybe the greatest version ever of that is Nina Simone, where it's just both things are happening at once.

[Lily Padman]

So true.

[Jack Antonoff]

So we're humming on this thing without knowing we're talking about it at the moment. It's simple. I love this song. Oh, cool. Here's what I'm working on. Here's what I'm working on. We should mess with something. Send her a track.

[Dax Shepard]

So it's all done through computer at first. When you say sending stuff, it's just

[Jack Antonoff]

like sending little ideas.

[Dax Shepard]

How does it become official?

[Jack Antonoff]

It becomes official in a very simple way. Okay, so at this point, like I said, I collaborated my whole life, but maybe, like, some doors are opening. I'm starting to write with people and do that because Fun had that hit. And I would inevitably get to this point when I would work on a song with someone where they'd be like, okay, now we're gonna have a producer do it. And I'd be like, well, I'm a producer. And like, totally. What have you produced? And I'm like, all my friends records. And it's like, bye.

[Dax Shepard]

And can you tell us, like, in a literal sense, what the producer's doing?

[Jack Antonoff]

Well, there's many things. So the line between production and engineering is a very blurry one. The most simple way I could describe producing is what will it sound like? What Alpha will aware are the drums like this? Does an orchestra come in? So George Martin, maybe the greatest producer of all time, wasn't playing the strings, but he was saying, well, what if the strings come in here and then what if we play them backwards? The ideas. I happen to also be an engineer, which is a different craft. They meet often.

[Dax Shepard]

What a shortcut. Instead of trying to articulate something to someone else operating, you can do it and quickly figure out, no, that's not right.

[Jack Antonoff]

I like to search. And so at that time, because I was loving Yazoo and Erasure and. And Robin had put out Body Talk and kind of changed everything and, you know, I bought this keyboard that was called a Juno 6, which at the time was like $700, which is lulz now. But, you know, I got it. And a lot of my favorite things come from not knowing something great. I play a lot of, like, cello now or instruments I'm not really acquainted with, because you find things without all the knowledge of what you're doing. So I'm messing around this thing. I'm just starting to make things. And so I was just making tracks that would become the first Bleachers album and would become the first work I did with Taylor. It just all came from joy and a new soundscape. But that's like any time I make an album or collaborate with someone, you have a feeling, but you don't admit it. The feeling is, what if we did the most incredible thing ever together? You know? What if we got together and did something where one plus two equaled a million? But you gotta go in with some armor. You gotta say, like, oh, check out this out.

[Dax Shepard]

We gotta act a little.

[Jack Antonoff]

You know, when you're at the bar and you're playing the game, it's like two pictures the same. It's like two pictures of you and then one of them has no earring.

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Jack Antonoff]

Like coming up on the high score.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

And right in that moment, you get very quiet. And when you beat the high score, you don't jump up and scream. You just keep going.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Jack Antonoff]

I always think about that when I'm making records. It's like, we don't sit around and be like, oh, my God, that's it. Everyone knows something's happening.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

And you just keep going.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you think there's a huge undercurrent of, like, we could jinx any of this at any moment? Because you're dealing with magic. Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

Not could. Like, will.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

That's why my room at this point, like, in the past, you know, sometimes you let someone hear something, something, it would just die from someone else's gaze. I learned that from Taylor, too.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm gonna ruin then one of your songs before you leave. My gaze is gonna be so apologizing.

[Jack Antonoff]

Should I wait?

[Dax Shepard]

I'll be at the end.

[Jack Antonoff]

But the preciousness, it's a house of cards. Someone walks in, you're building something that only you see. And someone's like, what's that?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

Or like, ugh.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

I would just walk outstairs and just fly off the roof. Like, it's like, bye.

[Lily Padman]

It's like, why people don't tell other people what they're gonna name their kid. Cause you'll hear. They'll be like, oh, that's nice. And you're like, well, I can't name it that now because I hate it.

[Jack Antonoff]

Want. What are you looking for? Are you looking for validation? There's nothing good that comes from it. Even if someone's like, you're the greatest to ever do it.

[Lily Padman]

What does that do?

[Jack Antonoff]

What does that do for you? It's such a personal process. And I definitely learned that early on from Taylor and then early on from when I just really started writing the bleacher stuff of like, I know what this is. Well, so to finish the story, we made those few songs that would end up being on a 1989. And I was waiting for her to be like, and now so and so big shot's gonna produce it. And she was like, so when should we send it to? So she was the first person to believe in me as a producer. And it was obviously a monumental cosign. But it takes that. It takes a person to hear something. And you have to remember at that time she landed the plane so well. But making 1989 was a very strange move. There was a lot of people on the inside that were like, this isn't gonna work. Everyone's gonna be bummed about this, this and that. You're gonna lose all these fans. And we did that a few times, then we made reputation and then folk. It goes on and on. Everything's so high stakes with me that I feel like I love that moment where like this is going to land or fucking not land. But we are just right. You're going for it. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You're aiming for the fence.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. What do you think it is about both of your symmetry that comes together? I don't want to tempt you to jinx everything, but you just. Are you able to identify what it is about each other that produces this kind of harmony?

[Jack Antonoff]

We're great friends, which is a beautiful thing, but that's not where it necessarily comes from. We have this third brain we can go to. It's really weird collaboration because it has nothing to do with anything you want. It just is or isn't. You can make something with someone else or you can't. And if you can't and you try, you are going to make something so bad.

[Dax Shepard]

I can imagine two hyper talented people that like each other and are convinced that these two talents combined. You can only imagine the exponential explosion and then, yeah, the frustration of the magic's not there.

[Jack Antonoff]

I mean, it's why we've had such a drudge of poor super groups. One plus one rarely equals two, let alone a million. Usually it equals like 0.7.

[Lily Padman]

That's so true.

[Jack Antonoff]

A question I always get is, who do you want to collaborate with? And I'm not even being like cute about it. I'm like, I have no fucking idea. All my collaborations have taken me by surprise.

[Dax Shepard]

In wild ways is Lorde next? After the success of that, presumably people start reaching out to you.

[Jack Antonoff]

First Bleachers album and then we quickly get to work on melodrama and the St. Vincent album, Mass Seduction. It's not like something needs to come out. And then everyone, you know, it's like people started to understand me. I started to have some songs that people heard that I had co written and then I started to have stuff that was my production too. And it was coming from such a different place because at that time I was really buzzing on this big, sad, kind of John Hughesy feeling, which wasn't really alive in the mainstream yet. It was just where I was at.

[Dax Shepard]

So, yeah, for people who don't know, John Hughes is Breakfast Club. He's Planes, Trains and automobiles.

[Jack Antonoff]

Santa was fire 16.

[Dax Shepard]

Uncle Buck.

[Jack Antonoff]

Uncle Buck's so good is that there's nothing left but grizz and fat.

[Dax Shepard]

No, that's the great outdoors. Great outdoors, yeah. The old 96.

[Jack Antonoff]

He's going to eat the old. I say there's nothing left but grizzle and fat in my head, like four times a day. I say that my friend reminded me of justice for Harambe. And now I say justice for Harambe a lot, which was their tick. They say justice for Harambe a lot in their head, but nothing left but grizzle and fat. Do you know what I'm talking about? The scene.

[Lily Padman]

I've never seen it.

[Jack Antonoff]

John Candy has to eat an entire steak.

[Dax Shepard]

It's called the old 96. Er, if you eat the whole thing, you get it for free. And they put your picture on the wall.

[Jack Antonoff]

He eats the whole thing and he goes, I'm done. And then guy goes, no, you're not. And John Kennedy looks up and goes, there's nothing left but grizzle and fat. And then the guy gives him the look and then he eats the gristle and fat. And that is, in my head, more than music.

[Dax Shepard]

But yeah, John Hughes had this beautiful signature heart in everything.

[Jack Antonoff]

Well, he's not cynical. The act of making things, touring, making music, it's such a hopeful act. I don't think Lou Reed is cynical. I don't think Leonard Cohen is cynical. I don't think it's possible the barrier of Entry to do the thing, to put it out, to be. Be there. I love the subversion. I love playing with things and music that does that. But the beauty of this is it's so uncynical. That's why I love playing live so much. You cannot go to a show cynically. It's not possible. If you did it, you would just get eaten up by the sincerity at the show. So many things in this moment in our lives happen cynically. Most forms of communication are what plays as just the cynical. When you get to a show, it's like, you're not leaving your fucking house, you're not paying money, you're not going through all this stuff. Getting in the car to go somewhere, somewhere. Not even be treated that well because of how the customer is going. We get into that later to get into that room. It's like church. And what we do is so uncynical. And then the world is so cynical that they kind of smash together in this funny way.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

The other way about movies, too. You can't make a movie cynically. It's too much work.

[Dax Shepard]

No, no. And it doesn't work.

[Jack Antonoff]

It doesn't work. It just doesn't play.

[Lily Padman]

But it's like they're also not. They're protecting themselves with the cynicism. But the act of making something is vulnerable.

[Jack Antonoff]

So hopeful.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

Even I know so many people who are like, oh, this is do. But then they get talking to them and they're like, there's something there. Just leave with that.

[Dax Shepard]

No, the cynicism is when Pulp Fiction comes out and it's such an enormous hit that people try to make it as a cash grab. And there's nine movies all of a sudden that are trying to be territorial.

[Jack Antonoff]

The industry is cynical as fuck.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. Yes.

[Jack Antonoff]

That's because they can't admit the one truth.

[Lily Padman]

Exactly. But the creators are not.

[Jack Antonoff]

We're going to put a lot of money behind something and we have no way of knowing what's going to work. And if they could just admit it, everyone would be so much happier and accept it. Because hence class collaboration. One plus one plus one plus one is never. We get to the end of every year. The best albums, the best movies, all the best work. It just fucking was.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

And then there's these.

[Dax Shepard]

There's very little math.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. These, like, things that get smashed together that feel like the only math that

[Dax Shepard]

works is, like, ip. And it's why moviegoers are a little bit cynical in general, because the math does work.

[Jack Antonoff]

I have a friend who says, give Me a movie quote from the past 10 years. And everyone goes, but you go back further. It's like, you know, show me the money.

[Lily Padman]

Right. Exactly. That's scary. Actually.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's an interesting point.

[Dax Shepard]

My curiosity. Curiosity is you've had such success with so many of these artists and I do wonder, is that something you think is part of your skill set? That you. And it's hard to say yes or no. Cause it sounds egomaniacal. But is there something about you that brings out some confidence in these artists? I guess you hold, I would imagine.

[Jack Antonoff]

Well, obviously I'm really dead serious about it. So I can meet people there. And I also feel met there. I mean, there's different ways of doing it. There's the path of more fear based like Eye of the Sauce. Which I. I think is ridiculous. But I think when you decide to take a journey with someone is really powerful. I always feel the analogy of flying a plane. We see something, we're going somewhere, and then we're going to do it. That's how great work is made is like there's a North Star in the room and everyone's chasing it. Not to simplify something complicated, but I think bad work is made in collaboration. When people have different North Stars and they're yanking each other in different directions and then it kind of has no soul to it because it's all spread across something. But yeah, maybe. I mean, hopefully.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so just to run through because it's really bonkers and the list has to be said just so that I can then ask the next question, which is 13 Grammys, but Taylor Swift 2014 Grammy album of the Year. Then Lord's Melodrama, then Lover, then Del Rey's Norman fucking Rockwell, then Folklore, Then did you know there's a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard? Del Rey, then Midnights, then Torture Poets Department, and then Short and Sweet, which. Here's where I really drop in. I am obsessed with that album. My daughter introduced me to her and I can't believe how great that album. It's just every single song is fantastic.

[Jack Antonoff]

I love it so much.

[Dax Shepard]

One quick question. When you're there at the Grammys and you have multiple Album of the Year nominations, that's happened before, right? There's a couple albums.

[Jack Antonoff]

That's.

[Dax Shepard]

Tripp, what do you root for? You don't have to say which is there one?

[Jack Antonoff]

No, exactly what you'd think. It's like, this is crazy.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And will I cancel myself out?

[Jack Antonoff]

I try to take all that shit as just a encouragement. I try to take it two Ways because I've noticed that it brings up a lot for people. I try to take it as encouragement and a moment to be with my family. You know, we don't look back often. My life is so forward moving. I'm on tour, the next city, the next song, the next thing. I'm so focused on what I'm doing next that anytime we get to go to those things, my dad will cry and we'll talk about the old days

[Lily Padman]

and oh, that's so sweet.

[Jack Antonoff]

I like to try to access things at their best because otherwise it brings up a lot.

[Lily Padman]

Because looking back, I assume is too hard because there's so much pain.

[Jack Antonoff]

There's pain and also you just don't do it often. I don't make a lot of space for it. I'm not like a big reminiscer.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Again, you might jinx everything. If you were to acknowledge how successful you've been, it might go away. Is there any anxiety about it or tension with it?

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, sure.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it feels.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

[Dax Shepard]

Again, back to the Jenna Ortega thing. It's like you would think anyone who collaborated on that many hits in a row must be flying high. But I can also imagine it constantly being met with, then what do I do next? Or does it go away? Or any of those feelings.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, things come and go. I think the most potent one I deal with is the feeling of being known or perceived in a way can be beautiful. And also you can feel like a version of yourself is being put on you. On the bleachers record. On this new one, I really got into, like, my origin story and I think the reason why I was so compelled to do that was because I feel feel like not in a bad way, but just it all gets rewritten. And it's weird.

[Lily Padman]

You lost your agency over it.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, like. Like having any digital footprint or public information about you kind of becomes law or becomes Bible. And that's great. That's really neat. Like all the things you just read. Amazing. My soul is in all that stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

But then there can also be this feeling of you're just yourself and that feeling slightly ghostly in a way. And it's a weird twist. Cause I'm also like, extremely private. It's funny. But then I put so much into the music and share so much that you'd have the impression you know everything about me, which would be fair for most of the time. It's like once I'm done with it, it's yours and you can hear me sort of stammering around it like it's just an odd thing and I think it is actually getting better. But I think it was really odd in the past couple years. But I think now there might be more grace towards artists and accepting the idea that part of the work is playing with their own hypocrisy and that the rage you have at your senator might not be for your artist.

[Lily Padman]

Right, exactly. Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

Which makes sense.

[Lily Padman]

Celebrities gotten nuts in the past few years, changed.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. Some people have done some weird ass shit and also the world has gotten to a weird place and you just put it all together and I think everyone's really looking for some answers. But when I'm just sitting there writing, I'm not thinking about any of that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's complicated.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. And I promise you I'm going to do a real nice chunk on everyone for 10 minutes. Worry not.

[Jack Antonoff]

You do.

[Dax Shepard]

Your. The last question I kind of have about your co writing and your producing is I want to know how does Kendrick Lamar come into the picture? For me, I would be like, I've established myself as I can work really, really well with these female artists and it's a very specific thing. And if I were invited in to work with a rapper from South Central, I might have a little bit of imposter syndrome or just fear of like, oh, am I going to be the whitest, nerdiest person this guy's ever met? Like, what kind of feelings did you have?

[Jack Antonoff]

I just am so focused on the soul of what is is happening and that's bigger. That's just articulating a feeling, what someone or group of people sound like at any moment in time. So everything beyond that to me is secondary. Whether it's genre, personality, or age, gender, all of it's all so separate because I boil it all down to there's people in this room, we're all hearing a thing, and like I said, we're trying to literally make it a reality and not just like a conversation or a feeling. So I feel bizarrely comfortable in any situation where that's the goal.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you meet him somewhere and start having a chat about Yaz?

[Jack Antonoff]

No, not no, though I have a band with a guy named Sound Wave and a guy named Sam. Do Wave grew up with Kendrick and has produced all his albums. And they were upstairs Electric lady one day and I was downstairs working on something and Wave texted me. He's like, come upstairs and mess around. Go upstairs, start playing some chords. Didn't leave for three years. And that's often how it happens.

[Lily Padman]

It's like love. There's just chemistry.

[Jack Antonoff]

It becomes like a secret world. That's what I feel like my collaborations are. And that's no different than what it was with that album or any album. It's sort of like you find something and then you go apart and you come together and you revisit and you build on it. It's just a giant secret. No one knows what's happening. No one knows what you're thinking, what you're feeling, what it's sounding like. And then one day, boom, it's just out. It's wild. I love it. I love that wild anxiety of something coming out.

[Dax Shepard]

But I have insecurities, and I guess I might be intimidated by Kendrick.

[Jack Antonoff]

I don't feel very intimidated by anyone who.

[Dax Shepard]

Who is pursuing music.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. Because this image I keep, it's like we're all grabbing at something. And all the greatest people I've ever worked with and a lot of the people you're naming I truly believe to be the greatest of all time. Me in that exact place of we're just all grabbing at something. I would never name names, but the least inspiring people I ever met are the ones who say they know how to do it. Because it's like, oh, do you go do it? And it's often, like a lot of things in life, that the people who can explain exactly how to do it, how they're going to do it, and why you're wrong and they're right are really making up for the. Or something. And then you spend time with people who are known as the absolute top of their craft. And we're all having the same conversation, which is just like, what if? What if? What if?

[Dax Shepard]

You're comfortable in the uncertainty.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's all uncertainty.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. And then knowing when it's done is pure certainty. I also don't understand why people tinker forever. It's like, once you hear it, it's like all you want to do is back up the drive and put a helmet on it. It's like you want to protect it. Like, you want to put it in that thing. In Beauty and the Beast that the rose is in. It's such a protected space, you know? And then if I, like, go hang out with people, I'm like, oh, yeah, I forgot. The world sees you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

You almost gotta go somewhere. You're my friend from the studio who

[Dax Shepard]

we, like, see them through other people,

[Jack Antonoff]

bang on things to try to find new sounds.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. It's gotta be so weird for you to see the way people are around Taylor. Or thoughts around her, the fainting, like, she's your buddy. I mean, it'd be like if that was happening with you. Which maybe it is.

[Jack Antonoff]

It does.

[Dax Shepard]

Everywhere I go, I carry smelling salts with me and have them so frequently. Yeah, like, what are you guys doing?

[Lily Padman]

He's like,

[Jack Antonoff]

yes and no. But also, I do see all this as magic. I'm like, right there. I don't know. There's so many people in my life, different artists who I've had that relationship to, not knowing them, but they very deeply got me through a period of time, saved my life in many ways. So I'm just not casual about any of this. When someone has a wild feeling about someone else, I'm never like, oh, they're just a person. I'm like, yeah, shit's magic. I get it. I've my own experience there.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so everyone, for 10 minutes is Bleachers fifth album.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. And now here's where I will be very honest with you. And I'm embarrassed to admit, although I've heard all this other work you've done, I've not been consuming a lot of Bleachers very oddly.

[Jack Antonoff]

Separate audiences.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, sure.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I was completely missing the boat. I started with the new album and I listened to all those songs, and then I was like, oh, my God, there's so many things I like about Bleachers. I hear so much general public in it.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, cool.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you like general public? Fuck, they got some John Hughes drops, I think. Yeah. I was so into New wave in junior high. That's what I regulated with. I was just so in love with people and so heartbroken. All that music was so perfect.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, it's so dramatic in the best way.

[Dax Shepard]

The horns. I fucking love the saxophone so much. You couldn't make a song in the 80s without saxophone. It was illegal.

[Jack Antonoff]

It became frowned upon, got a little cheesy, so then we lost it. But it's like anything. It's how you use it. I mean, look at the guitar. It's like, you could make the guitar so cheesy, or it could be the most interesting transcendent thing ever. I love the way Neil Young plays solos where he's, like, fighting it. Saxophone's the same thing. Synths are the same thing. I love playing with things that have been distasteful and finding a new voice

[Dax Shepard]

for them just in order. I love Dirty Wedding Dress, take you out tonight. I'm going to say there's a lot of Springsteen in that song, Dirty Wedding

[Jack Antonoff]

Dress, and take you out tonight literally take place where I live at the shore in Jersey.

[Dax Shepard]

I can feel it.

[Jack Antonoff]

That's my music. New Jersey has a sound that is one of the most important sounds in the world, but not documented. The same way that, like, New York, London, Manchester, people obviously know Bruce, but there's so much more to it. There's south side Johnny. Is that whole shore sound.

[Lily Padman]

We're learning so much.

[Dax Shepard]

Charlie is like a historian on New Jersey musicians, and he went to, like, some famous jazz pianist workshop camp or something.

[Jack Antonoff]

Crazy jazz. The way I articulate, the way I use horns, which is very New Jersey, is. Horns are coastal, right? Because when ships come in, you got

[Dax Shepard]

to blow a horn.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, you know, no one, like, hits a harpsichord when the ship's coming in. Like, you got to blow a horn. So you think of horns, you think coastal. You got, like New Orleans type jazzy horns. You got sort of New England, like, Crab Shack. Deep, deep horns. I love this take. Yeah, this is la. Sort of Captain Geech and the shrimp shark shooter type. Another that thing you do reference horns. But then you got New Jersey, which is coastal horns, but big and sad. Big soaring, sad horn lines where it's like there's a duality of. There's a saxophone here, which is supposed to be like a wink, but they're playing this super sad, long line. Very Springsteen. Like, God, that line. Secret Garden, when it's just, like, hanging over. I love that stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. And then this happens to me almost quarterly. Monica will know this. I find a song and I listen to it thousands of times. I can listen to songs on repeat.

[Jack Antonoff]

Me, too.

[Dax Shepard]

For hours and hours and hours, and I never tire of it. And upstairs at el's is fucking.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, really?

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God. Dude, I can't tell you the way I've been going through the last 20 years.

[Jack Antonoff]

Electric Lady Studios.

[Dax Shepard]

Electric Lady Studios.

[Jack Antonoff]

I didn't put periods in it. Did I not?

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, so I did pronounce it wrong.

[Jack Antonoff]

No, you're correct. No. Everyone says upstairs at els, because there's no.

[Dax Shepard]

I didn't figure out. Yes, I did put it together afterwards. It was on me, but I was like, oh, is ELS the friend's house? But then when I listen to the lyrics, I'm like, no, no. This is definitely where you record, finish up a track, send a text. Party on the roof. Everybody get dressed. This feeling, if you're artistic, I feel like I just got zapped. It's like, to me, when I finish a script, and I'm like, I fucking did it. And I Wonder if we have a similar emotional state where it's like, I have to. To earn joy.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And when I earn it, the heights of joy I can reach.

[Jack Antonoff]

I want a party.

[Dax Shepard]

I will let it fucking rip.

[Jack Antonoff]

When I'm there and I get something I like. By the way, that space up there, it's such, like, a secret, rare fried place because it's all my friends. Like, no one's going to come and go live, so we're just actually completely loose and having fun. And so those nights when it's summer, you feel yourself from something you just made, and then you just kind of group text a bunch of people, and we're like, let's have pizza and drink on the roof. Those are the nights. And I'm a believer that it's always the good old days. But I'm like, we are, like, living in the good old days. And I want to write a song about that. The album ends with I'm not joking, which is very intense love song. And then upstairs, ALS is like, the credits rolling. I finished the album. Here we are.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I was kind of shocked. It wasn't like a first song on there, but I guess that makes a ton of sense.

[Jack Antonoff]

Well, that's a funny thing about sequencing. Like, my manager, my label, they're like, this is probably a hit single. And I'm like, neat. The album is my origin story. Then it's people I've lost touch with quite quickly. And then it's my wedding, and then it's depression, and then it's sort of finding God through love. And then the credits roll and I'm at the studio finishing the album. Yeah, but what's cool about these days is people find their ways to things. Yeah, but there's no doubt I understand pop music. Like, that song is very.

[Dax Shepard]

My grievance is you've released three tracks already on the album that I can listen to on Spotify, which I could hit repeat on, but I have got the early things on the website, so I've listened to this song. I'm not exaggerating 50 plus times in the last 24 hours. Hours. And I have to go to my computer and restart it every single time. And it's worth it to me.

[Jack Antonoff]

That means a lot to me.

[Dax Shepard]

This fucking song.

[Jack Antonoff]

I'm not downplaying that song. I love that song. But it says a lot about songwriting, like capturing a feeling. Not everyone comes and hangs out with me at the roof up there, but everyone knows the feeling of. I feel enough joy in life to want to text My friends and hang out, which is kind of a big deal.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Jack Antonoff]

Most of the time, I think we're all like. I feel like thinking about what I want for dinner and then blowing my fucking brains out is often a feeling, you know? Or like, I feel like turning my phone off and pretending no one exists. So when I have those moments where I'm like, let's be together, makes me feel very alive. And I'm trying to do more of it.

[Dax Shepard]

But I could be projecting onto you because I feel like I know that moment so well.

[Jack Antonoff]

You're not projecting at all. It's literally that moment.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you also relate to. And I'm just now at 51. The yolk's coming off a bit. And I have to tell you, it's such a lovely feeling. But do you feel the weight of. I have to do so many things. Everything I think I might be able to do, I must do. The daunting fucking force and burden of that.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. And it's one of the reasons why I love being on tour so much. Because you're like a baby. Do nothing. Cause the show is so big, so it kills that voice.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm shocked you've never become a big addict, because I'll tell you, I'm more and more understanding my addiction. What I realize now more than ever is that the benders were these little breaks I could give myself of, like, okay, no, all we're doing is getting fucked up for three days. We're not going to try to be spectacular at anything.

[Jack Antonoff]

I mean, that's why Phantom Thread is one of my favorite movies. My wife jokes, sometimes when I get sick, it's the best times because everything gets quiet. You know, I'm a little bitch, but I'm not trying to conquer myself in my head.

[Dax Shepard]

That's why I love road trips. Not allowed to do anything.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. I love Christmas time. I'm sure. Sure you, like me, had moments during lockdown that were transcendent just because it took the whole world shutting down for me to get a break.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

These are things I at once long to work on. And then also I'm like, yeah, I am om. I go back and forth. I have a feeling. And maybe. Do you have kids?

[Lily Padman]

No.

[Jack Antonoff]

This is my feeling. And you can tell me this is bullshit or not, but I sit there and I think to myself, I'm running towards this thing, and when that happens, it's going to just, like, rewire me 100. Maybe that's naive. Maybe it's going to happen. And there I'll Be.

[Dax Shepard]

No, it'll a thousand percent. Because the voice of what I gotta do is like at 3 on the volume and the. What do these children need is at 10. And it's so liberating.

[Jack Antonoff]

Well, that's how I feel. My dog. So I can only imagine what will happen to kids.

[Dax Shepard]

I'll stop working. Not true. But I will work in a way that is so much more healthy.

[Jack Antonoff]

Well, I've already started that. Getting married changed that because I always was running. I always had so many negotiations in my head. I was never with the right person. So I was like, am I happy? You know that terrible sort of like, does everyone get everything? Well, I like my work. Maybe I'll just.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jack Antonoff]

And then I met my wife on the roof at Electric Lady.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you did? At one of your.

[Jack Antonoff]

Come over and get your Lana song. Margaret. He met Margaret on the rooftop.

[Lily Padman]

No, I have to go.

[Jack Antonoff]

Lana wrote a song about it.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's really sweet. But, yeah, we met right there. Which is another reason why that place is so special, actually. What's interesting about it is when you find some common happiness, your work gets even better.

[Dax Shepard]

I have to say, your wife, she's one of.

[Jack Antonoff]

She's on your crush list.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God, dude, she's on everyone's crush list. Is she stunning?

[Jack Antonoff]

I noticed that sometimes when she, like, does something, it looks really beautiful, like, go on the Internet. And everyone's like, I'm going to kill you to me. And I'm like, huh?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

He was on failing. He's like, I fight. Find me in the street, I'll fight.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, I like the idea. If someone came up to me in the street, I would. I would be so funny. To me, someone gave. It was like, I like your wife a lot, and I want to fight for her first. I would be like, well, that's her my friend.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. I'm not in charge of her.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, but I mean, it's just kind of Internet lingo.

[Dax Shepard]

This may shock you. I can relate to that. Of course, people like my wife quite a bit. Your wife's the best. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Had you seen Once upon a time before you met her, is my question.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. And she saw Spaceballs before she met me.

[Dax Shepard]

Perfect.

[Jack Antonoff]

No, I was totally aware of her. And I met her once.

[Dax Shepard]

Once prior to the rooftop.

[Jack Antonoff]

Once. And now it's like a great moment that we look back on and. So weird. And what's really weird is I met her a long, long time ago at this party. It was actually Taylor's party. And for Some reason we took a picture. Maybe she saw it in the future. But Taylor just grabbed both of us. And there's a picture of the three of us.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, really?

[Jack Antonoff]

And then two years went by before I ever saw Margaret again.

[Dax Shepard]

Did she go to the children's professional school? Because she's a dancer.

[Jack Antonoff]

There's a lot of weird similarities in her life.

[Dax Shepard]

That was kind of a joke. But she did.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, really? No, it's true.

[Dax Shepard]

I just know that she a dancer.

[Jack Antonoff]

I just assumed that maybe she lived in California and she's, like, from Montana. Grew up in North Carolina. Very similar to me. I mean, I left Jersey, which is a lot closer, but she left North Carolina, went to the same school.

[Lily Padman]

That's wild.

[Dax Shepard]

That is wild.

[Jack Antonoff]

And now we live in Jersey, which is very much how we both grew up. We're really happy to get out. The way people react to pop culture in New Jersey, there's like a sweetness to it because it's out of the sauce. New York, less so. But LA is sort of. If they're like, everyone knows what are you working on? You know, there's a little bit less. We got to Jersey and people were like, you do music? I love Billy Joel. Exactly. Yep. You know, we just saw him and he was really good. And I also love Pearl Jam. And then we are going to see Celine Dion.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. We have a house in Nashville. And same. My neighbor's, like, they've seen three movies in the last four years and they're hardly interested. And it's lovely.

[Jack Antonoff]

They're not like, sitting there being like, well, this was an indie movie. But they spent $20 million on their promotion. So is it, you know, like. It's not that. They're just sort of like, zootopia is very good. And they're not wrong.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. They're not looking for a hot take.

[Jack Antonoff]

Kind of how I feel about movies in a weird way. Like, I hear all the sauce, but I don't care at all. I don't make movies. I don't want to make movies. I like making music for movies here and there, but zero ambition. So when I watch a movie, I am just fucking loving it or not. And that's all I care about. Where I know a lot of people who are in the sauce. It's just fascinating.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, some separation is nice.

[Jack Antonoff]

You get to experience people. People who are hitting you at all different levels. Which is also like the show. When I play, there's people coming together from very different walks of life.

[Dax Shepard]

I like it because it right sizes your thing when you're talking to your neighbors and they're like, yeah, I like music. I like Billy Joel, and I like Pearl Jam. And you're like, oh, right. That's the actual spot it occupies in people's consciousness. And I like being reminded of that. It's like, people like movies, but they like them. They're not fucking obsessed.

[Jack Antonoff]

I just love all versions. And very often, I always tell my friends, you play live, you see. See the 1% of fans that know everything about you, which I love, they know every bit. They know every joke, they know everything. Every inside joke. And it's like, that interaction is really interesting. But there's also, like, Jennifer up in the rafters.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Her friend brought her.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. And she loves the band for a different reason.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

Jersey's fucking chill.

[Dax Shepard]

I think it's very good to get

[Jack Antonoff]

out of the bubble. LA gets hard for me. I don't know if you guys can. Can relate, but it might be because I don't have a home.

[Lily Padman]

He feels that I don't. I love it here.

[Jack Antonoff]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

But I grew up in the suburbs also.

[Jack Antonoff]

Where?

[Lily Padman]

Georgia. Suburbs of Georgia.

[Jack Antonoff]

Like Marietta.

[Lily Padman]

Duluth. Very close to Marietta.

[Jack Antonoff]

There was a club in Marietta called Swayze's.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, I don't know.

[Jack Antonoff]

And they had pictures of Patrick Swayze everywhere.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, good for them.

[Lily Padman]

That's fun.

[Dax Shepard]

I love Swayze.

[Lily Padman]

That's a little more fun than I would expect from Georgia, to be honest. But I like this because it's a departure from that.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. I just have no home, so I'm like, yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Rootless.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Okay, we've had you forever. My last question is, because you've worked with so many people, have you ever been called upon to smooth out a beef between two artists? And you don't have to tell me who, but have you been brought in?

[Jack Antonoff]

I haven't.

[Dax Shepard]

You haven't?

[Jack Antonoff]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's an interesting question.

[Dax Shepard]

I can see that happening.

[Lily Padman]

Me, too.

[Jack Antonoff]

I'm trying to think if there's anything. Not really.

[Dax Shepard]

No.

[Jack Antonoff]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, that's good. Thank God.

[Jack Antonoff]

I would hate that, but everyone's kind of in their own zone. Especially when you're making an album. You're really just, like, off on your own thing.

[Lily Padman]

But are there betrayals? Does it feel like, oh, shit, I guess I can't go work with this person now? Or no one really cares?

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, sometimes. But you always make your own decisions. And I find that the whole world is so different and bizarre and interest and also all high school at the same time. It's amazing. But you have your People and you stand by them and you ride for them. No, nothing that really, like, specifically happened. You know anyone who's really bummed anyone out that I know? I try to hang with my friends.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, everyone, for 10 minutes. It's out May 22nd. You're going to turn me down? As you should. It's a very crazy request. I've never done this, but I just want you to know I am willing to dance with you to that song.

[Jack Antonoff]

Dubstairs dls.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. I've been dancing all morning to it.

[Jack Antonoff]

Okay. I don't know if I want to dance, but here's what I think you should do.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Jack Antonoff]

Put it on. See what happens to your body. And let's just watch you.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. That's really stressful.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

This is already the most embarrassing thing.

[Jack Antonoff]

I've never listened to the song with anyone who wasn't part of making it okay. I'm not asking you to dance for me. To be clear.

[Dax Shepard]

What I know is that.

[Lily Padman]

No, he clearly offered that up.

[Dax Shepard]

What I know is that I can't tell you how I feel about it. I know that you don't have to move.

[Jack Antonoff]

You could talk about it.

[Dax Shepard]

No, I'm going to move and monocle edit out because it's going to be so cringey.

[Jack Antonoff]

What you might be really getting you going is the drums are a thing called a lindrum, which probably most popular, like Prince used a lot. It's this great 80s drum machine, and it's very punchy, and I think it might speak to your hips. And then we play a lot of live drums on top of it. And I think maybe that speaks to your shoulders. Okay, good. I like. I like all this stuff,

[Lily Padman]

literally.

[Jack Antonoff]

Have you ever danced with anyone on the show?

[Dax Shepard]

Never. I've never done this. I know when I. I did this to BJ in Chicago. Kid and Anderson Paak song. That song me up in a way that I had to dance.

[Jack Antonoff]

Really?

[Dax Shepard]

On Instagram. And a lot of my friends were worried about me, but I don't remember Kid relapsed

[Jack Antonoff]

up. Are you here all day?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, basically.

[Jack Antonoff]

Like, do you just spend. Spend all day here essentially, or do you go to your big house?

[Lily Padman]

I go to my regular size house.

[Jack Antonoff]

Is it tough to be here in the small house?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. All I do is look around like, oh, my God.

[Jack Antonoff]

So you're like, dax, it's just like

[Lily Padman]

poor sons of bitches over here. Okay, are we ready?

[Dax Shepard]

No, I'm still figuring it out.

[Jack Antonoff]

So. So like, so what happens after this?

[Lily Padman]

We'll Do a fact check after this. So that's just him and I.

[Jack Antonoff]

Everything was facts.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, we check these facts and it's really fun. But really it's just a chance for us to kind of just talk about nothing. And then I'll like, check some facts.

[Jack Antonoff]

Do you ever do episodes with no guess?

[Lily Padman]

No, but the fact check kind of serves it. Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

I love. I'm almost going to do this just to make Monica glow.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, I mean, is it a good

[Jack Antonoff]

vibe if you and I keep talking and he dances? I know.

[Lily Padman]

I kind of want. Oh, my God. So then what will have So I can't believe you're making him watch you do this.

[Jack Antonoff]

Disseminated list. Finish up a track and send a text. Party on the roof. Everybody get dressed. Monica's upset.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, no, no, no. Do not.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, my God.

[Lily Padman]

Do not make me participate.

[Jack Antonoff]

Is this like a music video?

[Dax Shepard]

I can't.

[Lily Padman]

I'm disassociated.

[Jack Antonoff]

He's free.

[Lily Padman]

I do.

[Jack Antonoff]

I do love this. I'll say this, it's very John Hughes. Dax, the way you're moving. Keep it going.

[Lily Padman]

I do like this song. This is great.

[Jack Antonoff]

I kind of like this now. I didn't like it at first. I kind of like it now. Oh, my God. Why are you raising it? I didn't like it at first. I like it now. He's in really good shape, huh?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, that I'll give him.

[Dax Shepard]

Here we go.

[Lily Padman]

It's like when you do a plank and you have to hold it for the last minute. How much more?

[Jack Antonoff]

Not much, but you truly look uncomfortable. Here we go. Oh, my God.

[Lily Padman]

My eyes. I close and then I open the bath.

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, that's good. I like that.

[Lily Padman]

Okay. It's a new move.

[Jack Antonoff]

Past the mountain corner well, he got married up on the roof. That's. The line is black and that's a little. That's enough for room. This is the show. This is the show.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God. It's like a 20 minute, 20 minute long song. You know why you made this song so long? Yeah. Wow.

[Jack Antonoff]

Very compelling. I'm gonna say something. Okay. It was upsetting and then it was really beautiful. I really feel like you really, like.

[Dax Shepard]

I thought I might get you there.

[Jack Antonoff]

You really did get me there. I wanted to feel like I gotta

[Lily Padman]

just leave the desk or the. You know, look, it's like watching your dad. You know, it's watching your dad.

[Jack Antonoff]

This is how I felt. Okay.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

And I think we need to do five more minutes. Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

I'll sit back down.

[Jack Antonoff]

I felt like first I Was like, oh, my God, what's he gonna do? And then I had that feeling like I'm at a comedy show. Is the comedian gonna bring me up? Y. I'm not even joking. I feel like he's really going to another place. And that's beautiful. And then I genuinely liked a lot of the moves because they felt like, is it Anthony Michael hall and Breakfast Club kind of thing? Ellie Sheedy. And then I quickly realized that what was going on was really about Monica. Her watching you with love.

[Dax Shepard]

Are you sure there was. Well, I know you love me with love and sadness.

[Jack Antonoff]

All it was was like the years you spent together. Like, it was all like. I almost feel like her and her darling goes like, that's Dax. I love him and what am I gonna do?

[Dax Shepard]

Like, I was acting now.

[Lily Padman]

This is him. He's not putting on a show. It's so earnest. And earnest can be.

[Jack Antonoff]

There's a chance that that's the video and that's it.

[Dax Shepard]

I sign up. I can dance much better than that. I was.

[Jack Antonoff]

That was really good. No, you have great moves.

[Dax Shepard]

In my bedroom today, I was like, I was born to dance to this song.

[Jack Antonoff]

I love to move my body. I just don't do it to my own music unless I'm playing it because it feels funny.

[Dax Shepard]

It feels.

[Jack Antonoff]

But I do love to dance.

[Dax Shepard]

I thought that could be the case. Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. It's not that I'm not meeting you. I just. This was about you and then it was about Monica. I actually felt like there was double whatever glass here. I felt like I wasn't here and I was watching you alone. And Monica was like a ghost watching it.

[Lily Padman]

That's good.

[Dax Shepard]

If I'm being honest, of the three minutes, probably 30 seconds of it, I was unselfconscious.

[Jack Antonoff]

That's felt like the whole time.

[Lily Padman]

It did feel like the whole time.

[Dax Shepard]

That's good.

[Jack Antonoff]

I thought when you went to Monica, those were probably the moments of being self conscious. You were like, I'm gonna.

[Dax Shepard]

No, it's you. You're my guest. No, I'm doing something very bizarre in front of you. No, but it is with genuine intention. It's received of thanking you and hoping you can see what that song does to me.

[Jack Antonoff]

I will request other videos of you doing it.

[Lily Padman]

Maybe to each song on the album.

[Jack Antonoff]

I will request.

[Dax Shepard]

Some people have hype.

[Jack Antonoff]

I will request that you just do it. I request that it becomes your apologies to Matt Damon.

[Dax Shepard]

I would love that. I signed up for that.

[Jack Antonoff]

If you have fucking Joyce Carol Oates here, you just kick the table over and just dance in Monica's face. Right. If you have Nancy Pelosi here, you just flip the table and go, you're

[Dax Shepard]

going to watch me dance.

[Jack Antonoff]

I don't want them dancing.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, okay.

[Jack Antonoff]

Okay. It's not. It's not like a cheer tunnel. It's not that. It's a subversive, strange moment where you just interviewed, let's say, you know, Barack Obama. Barack Obama, Right.

[Lily Padman]

Michelle.

[Dax Shepard]

He would have joined though he's not

[Jack Antonoff]

allowed the whole idea because it's not like, where's zany?

[Dax Shepard]

Here's a viral moment.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's not that. It's. I just interview you and now you're going to witness me having childlike joy around someone who knows me deeply and loves me and is embarrassed for me. You have to sit there and watch.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Also, I'm living out probably your worst feeling.

[Lily Padman]

I just said this is my worst.

[Jack Antonoff]

Really? I think we're honest because I think when you're interviewed, you're so vulnerable and this is your guys space. And then I had to have the weird, vulnerable moment of watching you.

[Dax Shepard]

I know. Very uncomfortable to watch me dance. Almost worse than doing the dancing. But that's remarkably.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, but that's why it feels tough. It's like now you're in this position

[Jack Antonoff]

to be like, Dax played with a line. So Dax didn't do something inappropriate, but we all felt like something inappropriate was happening. And that's really interesting. So imagining Joyce carolotes sitting here or whatever, and you do that. Joyce Carol is.

[Lily Padman]

She's coming?

[Jack Antonoff]

Is she coming?

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Jack Antonoff]

Who's coming? Soon.

[Dax Shepard]

Can you not say, wait, who's coming?

[Lily Padman]

That was a joke.

[Jack Antonoff]

But do you announce who's coming?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, well, we don't really, but it's always a secret. It's always a secret.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's always a secret. Okay, so like, if I'm guessing, I

[Lily Padman]

don't know, manifest something for us.

[Jack Antonoff]

Okay, how about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joyce Carol Oates.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Jack Antonoff]

Okay. How about who would I love?

[Lily Padman]

Taylor. Let's use Taylor.

[Jack Antonoff]

She'd be great.

[Lily Padman]

She'd be great.

[Jack Antonoff]

Okay, but she'd be.

[Dax Shepard]

She'd be really comfortable with that. I feel.

[Jack Antonoff]

I feel like she'd be like, you go do your thing.

[Dax Shepard]

Get down. This is what I'm trying to get guys to do.

[Jack Antonoff]

Vladimir Zinsky.

[Dax Shepard]

Y.

[Jack Antonoff]

Wait, what's his name? No, what's his name? Not Vladimir. Oh, my God. Did I just connect? Vladimir Putin and Solinsky. What's Zelensky's first name?

[Dax Shepard]

Voldemort.

[Lily Padman]

Basically the same thing.

[Jack Antonoff]

What the fuck is. Is it really? It's something like. I don't know. Okay. So I'm not way off.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Jack Antonoff]

Imagine you're getting into it with Ted Cruz and you're really going there. Or like, I'm just trying to think of an interesting character. Lindsey Graham.

[Dax Shepard]

Lindsey Graham. That might put him over the edge. He might pass in my present. Yeah.

[Jack Antonoff]

He might hit the rainbow bridge.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, you had to have known Mr. Shepard, that he would have died.

[Jack Antonoff]

This big blue marble.

[Dax Shepard]

Him watching you do something that is so antithetical to what he's about would kill him. You had to. To have known that Mr. Shepherd. This is what they'd say.

[Jack Antonoff]

I'm trying to.

[Lily Padman]

Are you okay?

[Jack Antonoff]

Oh, I'm more than okay.

[Lily Padman]

Okay. Just wanted to check.

[Jack Antonoff]

This is where I live in the place.

[Lily Padman]

And, you know, you were in the

[Dax Shepard]

most sincere, non Bitty way. In the most sincere, non bit y way.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

I feel like I owe you that because of how much joy that thing gives me and how much I relate to the moment, love it and receive it.

[Jack Antonoff]

And put in a formal request for it to be the. And we ran out of time. Matt Damon of this show. Let's get this podcast to number three. Or two.

[Lily Padman]

Let's get it to number two. We gotta. Those Germans. This might get us there. This might get us there.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, this has been a blast. Thank you, guys. It's been a first for me and it's been a blast and not a last. And I can't wait for people to explode to this song the way I just did.

[Lily Padman]

It's a great song. Now I can say, even having experienced

[Dax Shepard]

in the worst possible situation. You liked it.

[Lily Padman]

I really liked it.

[Jack Antonoff]

I did have a thought while it was happening. Was like, is this a new kind of strip club? Not stripping. But is this a new thing where a guy just sort of likes joy and you sit near.

[Dax Shepard]

I think it would be too much for people to handle.

[Lily Padman]

Interesting.

[Dax Shepard]

Watching a man and just gives you joy.

[Lily Padman]

I think it's. No, it's good. It's good to show. What you just did is the opposite of the manosphere. So I will give you credit for that.

[Jack Antonoff]

You think that's the inverse?

[Lily Padman]

I do.

[Dax Shepard]

It was definitely not cynical.

[Jack Antonoff]

Definitely not cynical.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And that's all we're going for.

[Lily Padman]

Okay.

[Jack Antonoff]

I think Monica's gonna unpack it for a long time is how I feel.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

I have a lot to sit with my scheduled therapy.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, this has been a blast. I know. I would like you because I love Rachel so much. And it was everything I you guys so much, and I hope you'll come back.

[Jack Antonoff]

If you cut that part, my little heart will break.

[Dax Shepard]

I can already read the headline. Dax Shepard forces.

[Lily Padman]

Honestly, that's my worry.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Forces.

[Jack Antonoff]

You can't live your life. Yeah. But you know what? You can't do it.

[Dax Shepard]

You just gotta be me.

[Jack Antonoff]

You gotta be you, and you gotta dance for when you have to dance.

[Dax Shepard]

You have to dance for real.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It's the puzzle that needs to be.

[Jack Antonoff]

But next time, you have, like, a dignitary or someone.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. This is just what we do here.

[Dax Shepard]

Jack. This has been a blast. Everybody listened to everyone for 10 minutes. Made 22nd come back. He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here. She's got to let him have the facts. Well, he got a free. He got a free to answer out of it.

[Lily Padman]

He did.

[Jack Antonoff]

He did.

[Lily Padman]

That could be. That just could be the music video.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know what they would have offered me, what the budget would have been, but it was. He got it for cheaper than whatever that was.

[Lily Padman]

He sure did.

[Dax Shepard]

$100 or something. Well, we're both. We both had whirlwind weekends.

[Lily Padman]

We did.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. You here in Found Me in Nashville.

[Lily Padman]

I have my brother and his partner Emily in town, and it was so fun. Also, they loved the house, which was really nice.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Last time we checked in, we made a joke about if they say, like, go to Malibu, you just keep talking, you know, like, they didn't say that. You just keep it. Keep it going, keep it moving. We did go to Malibu.

[Dax Shepard]

Who brought it up?

[Lily Padman]

They did.

[Dax Shepard]

What they say?

[Lily Padman]

My brother was like. Or I just said, what? Is there anything you guys really want to do? And he said, we do want to go to Malibu.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Standard.

[Lily Padman]

God. Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you take Los Virgins, or did you take Canaan Dune?

[Lily Padman]

I took Canaan Kanan.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

I was sort of. I mean, I just follow. I follow my phone on my phone.

[Dax Shepard]

Good advice, Jess.

[Lily Padman]

And I get in fights a lot about which app to use.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure.

[Lily Padman]

I won't say which one he uses. Ways not gonna say it. I'm not gonna say what he uses. I just really dislike the one he uses.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. I only hate one of the three main ones, and I'll remain quiet on which one. But we have Apple Maps, we have Google Maps, and we have Waze. Right. Am I missing one?

[Lily Padman]

Those are the three. I know.

[Dax Shepard]

Rob probably uses a punk rock one that's like, no one uses.

[Lily Padman]

It's, like, really cool.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it's like X traffic.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, shit. I want to do that one. I'm not cool enough.

[Dax Shepard]

Which one do you use?

[Lily Padman]

I use Apple. I use what's on my phone.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

And I love it.

[Dax Shepard]

And I use Google. And I love it.

[Lily Padman]

Okay, but we don't.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it's fine. We're not debating. Generally, when you and I drive together, I know where I'm going. We drove together last week to a screening.

[Lily Padman]

Uhhuh.

[Dax Shepard]

I knew how to get there.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. You didn't put it.

[Dax Shepard]

I didn't need that map.

[Lily Padman]

That's the difference between us.

[Jack Antonoff]

I.

[Dax Shepard]

You would have mapped even that place that you know.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, definitely. I don'. I don't really know that place. Like, I do, but not enough. I need to.

[Dax Shepard]

You know how to get to Sunset Tower on your own?

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Jack Antonoff]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Although, I mean, it's two turns. Go down western at sunset in a pinch.

[Lily Padman]

Okay. This is what I like about maps, though. It can tell if there's traffic. So it will take you a different way.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, it'll never take you the two turns version.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, it doesn't take me two turns.

[Dax Shepard]

No, 30 turns.

[Lily Padman]

Which if I'm going on my own, I can get there on my own. If I didn't have my phone, I could get there, but I'm gonn go two turns.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Lily Padman]

And when I follow the map, I feel like I'm probably getting there faster because it's telling me.

[Dax Shepard]

I think you are. Yeah. I'm living in great stress. If you read all these articles, they're starting to mount cameras up everywhere as a big statewide initiative for. For speeding cameras.

[Lily Padman]

Really?

[Dax Shepard]

They're going to be everywhere. And I think they let you go 11 miles an hour over the speed limit, and then they just automatically send you a ticket. Oh, yes.

[Lily Padman]

Really?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And I got a list of the places they were putting it, but it wasn't terribly exact. Oh, just like this corridor.

[Lily Padman]

This is gonna be horrible for you.

[Dax Shepard]

It is. I'm gonna have to learn all new routes.

[Lily Padman]

They're really pushing you out of this city.

[Dax Shepard]

They want me gone.

[Lily Padman]

They want me gone.

[Dax Shepard]

They do. Wow.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Wait, that is.

[Dax Shepard]

And then I can't really speed in Mount Juliet cause there's so many cops, so.

[Lily Padman]

That's okay. I was actually gonna ask you. Cause in Georgia. Georgia, you cannot speed. They, they. The cops are everywhere. They're in speed traps. There are speed traps. They're in cars that are black, then in black writing, say, like Duluth police. So you can't tell that it's a

[Dax Shepard]

police until you're already Pulled over.

[Lily Padman]

Correct.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

And so it's always been a thing. And I only go five over there every time.

[Dax Shepard]

And that's the vibe. In Mount Juliet on the highway in Nashville, fine people are flying. That's kind of fine.

[Lily Padman]

10 over.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. For people don't know the culture in L. A. It's. Everyone drives as fast as they want pretty much.

[Lily Padman]

Because you actually cannot go that fast because there's so much traffic.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. But there, I got to say, is state to state to state. California is the least. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not running like speed traps and stuff. They're there and they have a whole. I get when we made ships, I got to meet a lot of the CHP people and they. An actual agenda, which is they just are patrolling high accident areas. Right. They're just trying to make everything safe.

[Lily Padman]

Nice. It's good.

[Dax Shepard]

All to say people drive pretty fast on the highways, on the highway.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Everyone's going 80. That's definitely over an 11 over. That's 15 over again.

[Lily Padman]

Only if there's no traffic, which is pretty rare.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But when you get it.

[Lily Padman]

I know. That's why. That's why any.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm. I'm just waiting. I guess they're gonna have like a month grace thing where you'll get tickets but you won't have to pay the fine. And then it kicks in. Then you'll have to pay a fine, but there's no points.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, interesting.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But I just. I don't like the idea of there being a record for your insurance provider.

[Lily Padman]

I love that. But I don't really speed. But I just don't like being watched. Even though that's kind of weird for me.

[Dax Shepard]

Because you're not a libertarian by nature.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, I'm really not. I'm not. I've gotten more into privacy as the older I've got for some. Some reason.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Things happen when you're older. That's just how it is.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Like my mother was just here and she's like her trust level with the government is at a real all time low.

[Lily Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

And I think that's just aging.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, she's always was like a 60s flower power.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Hated Vietnam. But right now it just feels like every. Everything's not to be trusted.

[Lily Padman]

That's true.

[Dax Shepard]

At any rate. So. Yeah, I have to drive pretty slow in Nashville and now it's looking like I'm gonna have to drive slow here. I'm gonna have to move to Germany. Audubon.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's.

[Dax Shepard]

I thought I was gonna retire in Nashville, but not. Not the case.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, well, that's a ding, ding, ding for this episode, actually, because, you know, we are going to try to unseat the number two most streamed podcast, which is in Germany.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

So maybe you should move there to just get, like, feet on the ground.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, we at least know you can have an enormously huge podcast over there.

[Lily Padman]

That's true. And I think you should. I mean, I think I'll stay. Maybe we could start doing. Doing zooms.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Germany doesn't feel like the place for you.

[Lily Padman]

It's not for me, I don't think. Although I do want to visit there. I've never been there. I'm sure I would enjoy.

[Dax Shepard]

Answers the question. What if everything ran perfectly?

[Lily Padman]

Right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, everything. Everything runs exactly on time. Everything's spotless, clean.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

They've got a real ethos there, and

[Lily Padman]

I appreciate that part's Nice things.

[Dax Shepard]

But then you do start feeling like, where's the. The Parisian vibe?

[Lily Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Where's the sexiness?

[Lily Padman]

And they're. Okay. This is the show Gesti Hack. Oh, it's like a game.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, they're playing. They're definitely playing a game. They're also. One of them's younger, so they've been hitting it hard. Either he started really young, or they've just had an explosive ride.

[Jack Antonoff]

Got 341 episodes.

[Lily Padman]

Not that many.

[Dax Shepard]

No. So they're. Yeah, they're getting a lot of downloads.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Everyone. Every single German listens to it.

[Lily Padman]

Do you think maybe they'll have a different flow?

[Dax Shepard]

Right. The guy on the left or right on the right? Okay. Yeah, they both have a thing.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. They're both attractive.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. The guy on the left looks like Diplo now. Is that his name?

[Lily Padman]

That Diplo is his name and being

[Dax Shepard]

fit is his game. Right.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, he looks like him.

[Lily Padman]

I said yeah. Yeah, it does. I just looked up Diplo. It does look.

[Dax Shepard]

It might be Diplo.

[Lily Padman]

What if it's Diplo?

[Dax Shepard]

That would explain why he's got such a huge. Now he looks older.

[Jack Antonoff]

Here.

[Dax Shepard]

That's. That's comfortable.

[Lily Padman]

That's Diplo.

[Jack Antonoff]

Diplo.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I thought. Dude, that's. They're identical.

[Lily Padman]

Wait, is. Maybe it is. Is Diplo's podcast. Hold on. Gish. Oh, no. It's like. It literally comes up in German. No. Felix Lobrecht and Tommy Schmidt.

[Dax Shepard]

Congratulations, boys.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow, man.

[Lily Padman]

Hey, have us on.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Let's get a. I can hit him with my six sentences of German, and then we're out.

[Lily Padman]

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Oh, It's a comedy audio show.

[Dax Shepard]

So lots of. Lots of Shai Sha.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So I went to. I'm fresh off of Nashville.

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

We started the Hulk Hogan documentary.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Which was incredible. So incredible that we had a reservation for Bricktops at 7:30. And we.

[Lily Padman]

Your favorite restaurant.

[Dax Shepard]

Favorite restaurant. We considered not going.

[Lily Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Went to Bricktops. It was delicious. They've taken the ribs off the menu.

[Lily Padman]

Uh oh, that's. You have notes.

[Dax Shepard]

I like, love those ribs. And then Saturday, more boating. We went and watched them unload the coal for the electric plant. Watch them unload the barges. We got so distracted by that. We almost missed our big horseback riding adventure. We're out there just watching this thing.

[Lily Padman]

Such different versions of.

[Dax Shepard]

I know. We were riveted, Monica. The way this pulley system moves the barge and each scoop, it picks it up. I don't know how it picks up that. That cleanly. Yeah. And we just watched them Anyways, then we had to haul ass back because we had horseback riding.

[Lily Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

We had to drive 35 minutes out there for that. That was a surprise for them. I had asked Aaron earlier in the day how much he weighed because they sent an email saying, you can't be over 240. I was like, oh, shit. I don't know what Aaron's weight's at right now. Yeah. And then like, then I wanted to tell him, if they asked you, just say 239. But they did weigh us.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, he was fine.

[Lily Padman]

That's not something to fuck around with.

[Dax Shepard]

He was fine. He was like 2:30. Everything was good. Okay, great. But when we. We pulled up, he goes, oh my God. Horseback riding. Thought maybe we were taking a helicopter ride because you asked how much I weighed. I was like, would that have been cooler?

[Lily Padman]

He wished. He wished.

[Dax Shepard]

So we went. And you know, I thought it was going to be really fun because I like being scared and I'm scared on horses.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, there's. Yep.

[Dax Shepard]

They scare me. I've had some bad experiences.

[Lily Padman]

They're majestic animals, but they are. They have minds of their own. They're in charge. Actually. This is good for you. You. You're like relinquishing. This other thing is more powerful than me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. It's like immersion therapy of some kind. But of course, we start doing this trail ride through the state park and it's beautiful. But little hints are coming out right away. It's like, how old are everyone's horses? Oh, turns out Mine's 25. Right. And they're like, oh, that's about as old as they get, oh, they said he probably should have been retired. Like, now they. Now they start saying, like, maybe they. It's. He's past his prime and he's of kind. Should have already been retired. And I'm like, if they lived at 25 and mine's 25, that's like. That's the equivalent of being 100.

[Lily Padman]

Okay. He's a grampy.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. He doesn't want to be out there.

[Lily Padman]

Uh, oh, okay.

[Dax Shepard]

So he likes to follow the leader's horse. Right. With his face on the horse's asshole.

[Lily Padman]

Do you think he had a little bit of dementia? Just a touch of it.

[Dax Shepard]

He had something going on. He wanted to be nose to butt. But if Heron's horse got even close to mine, he would jump and kick. And so mine was intermittently kicking and stopping and freaking out and doing more kicking. And then Aaron was trying to avoid getting hit by the kicks and almost hit Aaron in the face. And so I just had this complete uneasiness for an hour and a half. Like, when's my horse gonna really do something wild?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. And then were you able to laugh or were you like, I want this to be done now.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, boy.

[Lily Padman]

Both, maybe.

[Jack Antonoff]

Both.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And then another, like, it was a little muddy and slippery, so the horses were slipping a bit. And then one of the Gail said, oh, yeah, these horses been clumsy all day. So it's like this too old. Should have been retired. They've been clumsy all day. I just kept thinking, like, we keep. Kept getting more and more hints that it was going to go terribly awry.

[Lily Padman]

Oh.

[Dax Shepard]

And then we never rode fast where I could have maybe gotten the giggles, where I'd be really scared.

[Lily Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

So it was just this, like.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

My least favorite part of it. I'm just having anxiety if my horse is gonna buck me off or something now.

[Lily Padman]

Did you cycle? I'm more interested in the psychology, obviously. So were you, like, why did I do this? And, like, it was for to be funny. And, like, at what point am I not gonna do this anymore for bits or like, what was happening in your

[Dax Shepard]

mind when you're having a lot of existential stuff.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, you weren't. Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Anywho, it was fine. We started forgetting we were on a horse trip and just started. You know, you have. You have like, a guide in front and a guide in back. Then the three of us.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And first we're doing horse talk, horse questions and state park. And then we're just like, no one is going to talk how we are. And now we're just doing our dumb stuff.

[Lily Padman]

Okay. Fun.

[Dax Shepard]

It was great. It was great. And then we came back, and my neighbor Nate had made this incredible smoked feast for us. Pork butt smoked and two racks of ribs that were impossible.

[Lily Padman]

It's good. Cause you didn't have ribs the night before.

[Dax Shepard]

That's right. Kind of a blessing. So then Nate came over, and then the four of us had dinner, and we stayed up and then we watched some more. Oh, I left one thing out. We had gone for a walk on Saturday through the neighborhood. Tyrell was in the mood for some exercise. So we took this long walk, and there was the cutest little boy. He had to have been between 10 and 12. And he had a little mini bike, an old fashioned mini bike with a lawnmower engine and two wheels. And he was ripping back and forth, and we were, like, cheering for him. Oh, you know, the first thing we saw him is he pulled his before he even knew we were watching him. He pulled his motorcycle over, got off and moved something out of the road, and we were like, what was that? And then when we got up to the road, we saw he had. He saw a turtle in the road, and he pulled over and moved it out so it'd be safe. So we knew he was a really good boy. So we were, like, waving to him every time. And every time he'd drive by, he'd quickly wave and put his hand back on the gas pedal on the throttle. So on Sunday, we got all of my motorcycles out, and we were ripping around the yard, and Tyrell hadn't been on a motorcycle in 25 years, so that was. Was hilarious. And. And then I was like, all right, let's go out in the neighborhood.

[Lily Padman]

Motorized horse.

[Dax Shepard]

He was on a motorized horse. And we went over to the little boy's house. We went out into the neighborhood. He already had his mini bike out. He heard us in the yard, and his dad said, he heard you and got his out. And I said, oh, good. Well, we invite. We've come over to invite him on a ride. So we went on a ride with this little boy. It was so fun. We just did a bunch of laps of the neighborhood.

[Lily Padman]

That is so cute.

[Dax Shepard]

It was really, really sweet.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God. He probably like, I have a cutest

[Dax Shepard]

video I showed you. It's him pulling up and waving.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, he probably. You just, like, made his whole, you know, probably, like, day, because, you know, kids, they forget.

[Dax Shepard]

They reset quickly.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. But wow. It's really sweet. Really? Really?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. For 36 hours.

[Lily Padman]

I can't believe he Moved a little turtle owl.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. He was a nice boy. He had a good heart.

[Lily Padman]

But he liked ripping around boys.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, that's what Aaron said. If we were in Milford, we would saw that kid try to catch air on him.

[Lily Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I wonder if I can jump this turtle.

[Lily Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. And then Sunday massages for all three boys.

[Lily Padman]

Nice.

[Dax Shepard]

Tyrell had never had a massage in his whole life. I can't believe that. So that's 51 years.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Did he enjoy it?

[Dax Shepard]

He loved it.

[Lily Padman]

Okay, good.

[Dax Shepard]

Of course.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. They're the best.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Lily Padman]

But I know. I'm like, I bet my dad. Well, not I bet. I know my dad's definitely never had a massage. He's never had one and my mom either.

[Dax Shepard]

Really?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, there's.

[Lily Padman]

But they won't want it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Tyrell was saying he never wanted one because he has hair on his back. That was the whole reason. And weekly was like, you know, almost all men have hair on their back. I think it would be uniquely disgusting for them in the suit. Massage therapist.

[Lily Padman]

Yesterday I had things I was supposed to do. I had to work. I had to edit. I had to do.

[Dax Shepard]

You're a busy woman.

[Lily Padman]

I'm a busy lady.

[Dax Shepard]

Can't just be hosting the rest of your life.

[Lily Padman]

Well, no, my. My. My brother was gone.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, he left?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, they were gone. So I had, like, stuff. I had a whole day planned of getting. Being productive, and I didn't do any of that.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

I started going through some pictures because I needed to print some pictures. I've decided, you know, currently my house doesn't have many pictures. Personal pictures. There's art. I'm getting into art. That's a. We'll put a pin slash bookmark in that. And I have a couple pictures in my bedroom and a couple in the guest bedroom. The guest bedrooms, but none in the living room. And I was like, you know what? Know what I need? Like, if you walk in here, you don't know who lives here, and you don't know who they love, you know?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

So I. And I had. I knew I had some frames, but I didn't know where they were. They were in the garage, so I had to. You'll be interested in this. I cleaned out my garage.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God.

[Lily Padman]

It was really hard. I hated it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

But I got all my frames that I brought them up, and I was, okay, now I need to print pictures. So I. I went through. I was going through so many old pictures, and I was bothering everyone. I was like, you know, texting everyone. Do you have this picture? Do you have this picture? Do you have any pictures of this?

[Dax Shepard]

You're calling on others also to help.

[Lily Padman]

Yes, I was. And so I was doing that. And then also, you know the photo book I made for Ryan for Secret Turkey last year?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Artifact Uprising. I'll give them a shout out. Amazing photo books. Oh, I hope I don't have another cough attack.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, God, don't leave. You can cough here.

[Lily Padman]

Cali is the one that introduced me to them and she has great taste. So, you know, and you can make these photo books. And they're so cool. They're not your average photo books. Sorry. Average photo book places, but I made three photo books. One was Golden Globes.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

Second was SAG awards. SAG Actor awards. Third was my apartment. This one was hardest because I was like, I. I think I only want pictures in the apartment. I need to boil it down to 50 pictures.

[Dax Shepard]

That's the max.

[Lily Padman]

I was trying to balance, like, pictures of the actual apartment and then some pictures of people. You know, it's a lot to think

[Dax Shepard]

about, your different meals you've hosted and

[Lily Padman]

we did not take enough pictures in that apartment. I was actually kind pissed.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

But again, I'm asking people. I was, I, I. Not to. Not to throw her under the bus, cuz obviously we love her the most here. But I had to ask Kristen for a picture.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

And she's just not. Sometimes she's not the best at responding. So I got a little nervous because I really wanted to get these books in, you know, in.

[Dax Shepard]

You wanted to get it off your plate.

[Lily Padman]

I did, yeah. And I, I asked her, I said, do you have the picture of me, you, Dax and Anna from the Vanity Fair party? I knew she had it, and then she wasn't responding. And so you know what? I, I checked back in and I felt bad. She's a busy lady. She's shooting a show right now.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

I did my due diligence. I first texted Ana.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lily Padman]

I said, do you have this picture? She didn't, but she was on south with Kristin, so she went to get Kristen's phone. This was gonna solve my problems, you know?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

But Kristen had already.

[Dax Shepard]

For the listener. It sounds like you're crying, but you're not crying.

[Lily Padman]

I'm not crying. I have.

[Jack Antonoff]

I'm having a cough.

[Dax Shepard]

One of her cough attacks that are springing up more frequently.

[Lily Padman]

I know. It's really. I don't know. I haven't. And now I guess when I'm talking They're habit. Do you think they're psych. Now I'm getting nervous. They're, like, psychosomatic or something.

[Dax Shepard]

Wasn't everything. At least half.

[Lily Padman]

I mean, I don't. I'm unwilling to accept the. This as psycho. Something like, I. Because, you know, I canceled my doctor's appointment.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay. This. I didn't.

[Lily Padman]

Oh. So I had a doctor's appointment set because I've been getting sick a lot. I've been getting a lot of bugs. And, you know, this is why single people don't. They die, you know? Yeah. They don't live, and they die because they don't go to the doctor. Luckily, I have Jess, who said, I want you to go to the doctor.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. This is too many bugs, and they're lasting for too long. And I was like, okay, sure, maybe next time. You know? And then. But this last bug was lasting for so long. I did make an appointment, had it scheduled, but then I got better.

[Dax Shepard]

That's always the case.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You make the appointment or you show up at the doctor, you start feeling great.

[Lily Padman]

And it was an 8:00am oh, yeah. And I was like, I'm not going. So I canceled.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, great.

[Lily Padman]

I did my break. The news suggests yesterday that I didn't go. And he was mad.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

And now I'm mad, I guess, because I'm. I still have. I. I thought I was better. And I have a little bit of a cough attack, but that's okay. I'm gonna edit all out. So no one's gonna even know what we're talking about.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. They'll be like, what are they talking about?

[Lily Padman]

Anyway, so I got the picture. She. I pestered her. I said, sorry to be a pest, but, you know, sometimes you have to be a pest in life to get what you want.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Sorry to be a pest. I just really want to get the. This book in today. And so she sent it to me and. Great. That one sent in.

[Dax Shepard]

Perfect.

[Lily Padman]

The Sagor one sent in. I had asked on. I know it's really pestering Anna a lot for those. Do you have any pictures of Kristen while she's on stage?

[Dax Shepard]

You guys, you. I gotta finish this book today.

[Lily Padman]

I did. She was like, what's going on?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. What's the rush?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. And then the apartment, that was real. I. I reached out to a lot of people. Anthony, Allison, Rachel, Jen, Anna. But it was fun for me because I was going back through all my pictures and looking and just like, man, have we changed.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Because you know what's really fun about the Apartment. I moved in March of 2018. We started this show February of 2018.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow.

[Lily Padman]

So it really bookmarks that time.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

And it's really sweet to, like, see over the course. Course of the past eight years, how much has changed. Just us personally growing, but also just look wise and also what we've all been through.

[Dax Shepard]

Me the most. Right.

[Lily Padman]

You look so different.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

But not. You don't look older. You just look different because you've changed your body so much.

[Dax Shepard]

I know. Do you think people think I had, like, reconstructive surgery?

[Lily Padman]

Well, you have, and I can.

[Dax Shepard]

I can confirm we haven't done that, but, yeah, it's changed so much. It really. I feel like if you did a before and after, a random picture from parenthood and now. Yeah. You could make some case that I've had, like, some kind of a face transplant.

[Lily Padman]

Rob, will you put two pictures up? One of Dax during parenthood and one of him at the Golden Globes this morning or this morning?

[Dax Shepard]

You're taking photos of me this morning?

[Lily Padman]

I think, actually, I really did. It was interesting because, you know, I'm always like, why are you. You don't need to, like, keep working out and whatever, but I've been noticing some other people aging.

[Dax Shepard]

You mean you shouldn't work on our eyeshadow?

[Lily Padman]

You.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, right, right.

[Jack Antonoff]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

Well, like, just, like, you're so big, you know, muscular, and I get worried that it's. It's causing you to have dysmorphia and, you know. But when I was going back in time and looking at these pictures, and also simultaneously, I'm watching some other people in the sphere age, I was looking at other pictures of people as I'm. Yeah, as I'm.

[Dax Shepard]

It's all right there.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. I was like, oh, wow, he does look healthy, like, and that's good. So he probably should still continue on this path. So I have to give it to you.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow. Thank you. And I'll meet you halfway, which is, I think, the area where it's going to be problematic. And this was the Hulk dock.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, okay. For the listener, we have a very beautiful picture of Dax and Chris and at the Golden Globes and then Dax unparented. Okay. You do look younger, but you don't look old at all.

[Dax Shepard]

You look completely different. I look super masculine on the left and not on the right.

[Lily Padman]

You look very.

[Dax Shepard]

My beard came in. And since then, like, I couldn't grow full beard back then.

[Lily Padman]

You look very boyish on the right.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Jack Antonoff]

Can you.

[Lily Padman]

Sorry, Robin, because I know you're like, doing some cool, like, stuff. I wonder if you can get a picture of Dax and Kristen at the CHIPS premiere.

[Dax Shepard]

Yep. Oh, wow.

[Lily Padman]

She's looking so good.

[Dax Shepard]

Just perfect. She's doing great.

[Lily Padman]

Amazing.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Started hot and ended hot

[Lily Padman]

from A to Z.

[Dax Shepard]

And I started at a six and went to a seven.

[Lily Padman]

No, no, no, no, no.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I mean, a lot of it is just.

[Jack Antonoff]

I was so.

[Dax Shepard]

I was clean shaven a lot.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Yeah. She looks the same. Yeah, you look. Yeah, you're right. You don't because you don't have cars, sailing, facial hair.

[Dax Shepard]

I look like I could sell you a car in this photo from the chips from you.

[Lily Padman]

I don't think so.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, what are you in the. Are you have a large family, sir? Do you. How many passengers do you carry normal?

[Lily Padman]

You guys watch the fact check? The fact check has visuals now.

[Dax Shepard]

There's so many visuals.

[Lily Padman]

And like, this episode's pretty visual heavy.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

So I would recommend coming in and watching. And also look how fast Rob worked his magic.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, he is good on a computer. It doesn't get better.

[Lily Padman]

Okay. This is actually great because, well, you can't see your eyes. You're wearing sunglasses in the one on the left.

[Jack Antonoff]

That let me take them off.

[Dax Shepard]

Take off the sunglasses and pain in my eyes, but make them look my current eyes, not eyes from chips.

[Jack Antonoff]

If I had Photoshop, I could. I got another one.

[Lily Padman]

No, it's okay. I mean, there must be a picture of you without your sunglasses. Yeah, you're wearing sunglasses there.

[Dax Shepard]

Sometimes I do. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, why not?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, sure.

[Dax Shepard]

Jack Nicholson always did.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. I mean, look, they look nice.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't think he ever took his off outside of a movie. He's at the Lakers game indoors. He's got an interview. He's got his shades on at all the award shows. Yeah, it's kind of cool.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, there we go. Very nice. Okay, this is a picture without his sunglasses on.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I just look more like my dad.

[Lily Padman]

Wait, what's happening? Why is Chris.

[Jack Antonoff]

This is a Golden Globe of your.

[Lily Padman]

Before maybe years ago. This is from this year.

[Jack Antonoff]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Is that.

[Lily Padman]

Yep. So this is from a couple months ago.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

And the one on the right is from chips. So again, she looks the same, actually wearing complimentary outfits. I really like what's going on here.

[Dax Shepard]

Dashes of green and.

[Lily Padman]

And black and purple. Pretty. Okay. And it's the facial hair, but also. Yeah, you look. It does look like your face has changed. Change shape, but it's because the neck of. Well, yeah, the muscles.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah, yeah, it's weird.

[Lily Padman]

It's really interesting. Oh.

[Dax Shepard]

But I was gonna say, watching the Hulk doc, the thing that I think could be in my future that's problematic is both the Hulk Hogan doc and the Ronnie Coleman doc. Both these guys still lifting weights and they can't walk.

[Lily Padman]

No, you can.

[Dax Shepard]

Or they can barely walk. Right. They have a cane. He can't get up off the machines, but he still walks. Lifting a ton of weight. And I'm like, what's going on there? Where? It's like, you're still very strong, but you can't walk. And you just keep lifting weights because the idea of getting smaller seems terrible.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, you can.

[Dax Shepard]

That's a trap. I could definitely fall.

[Lily Padman]

I'm glad you saw that as a cautionary tale.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I can still walk pretty good.

[Lily Padman]

Just out of curiosity, now I want to. Can you show me at the CHIPS premiere and me at the Golden Globes? Okay. Yeah. So on the left.

[Jack Antonoff]

We don't own that photo on the left.

[Lily Padman]

What?

[Jack Antonoff]

We don't own that photo on the left.

[Dax Shepard]

There's a lammy on it.

[Jack Antonoff]

The watermark all over it.

[Lily Padman]

We don't. We don't own that picture on the left. But we own the one on the right.

[Jack Antonoff]

We don't own either, but

[Lily Padman]

yeah. Do you think I look different?

[Dax Shepard]

Everyone weighs pretty similar. What do you think?

[Lily Padman]

I actually, I look. I mean, I look. Yeah, I guess I look younger. On the left.

[Dax Shepard]

You also look like you're going to a nightclub.

[Lily Padman]

I do. I'm wearing. But I'm, I'm smiling with my teeth, which is nice.

[Dax Shepard]

Your eyes are very dark.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah, but my eyes are pretty dark on the right.

[Dax Shepard]

Same thing.

[Lily Padman]

I actually don't think I look that different.

[Jack Antonoff]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

No.

[Lily Padman]

Huh. But I, I just.

[Dax Shepard]

You just look like nine years younger. Yeah, younger, but.

[Lily Padman]

Huh. Interesting. I think I, I, I actually think I look better on the right. Okay. No one here wants to comment on that. That's okay. You don't have to. You don't have to. But I do think you like how you're trending.

[Dax Shepard]

You look great in both. I don't know that we can really say which is better. Just a little different with some age.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Have my features changed?

[Jack Antonoff]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, if you were smiling with your teeth in the right, I think we would. It would be a better comp.

[Lily Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

But you've, You've said goodbye to that, right? We don't smile with teeth anymore.

[Lily Padman]

There are pictures with my teeth. I, I do both, but.

[Dax Shepard]

But are people advised not to? I mean, I don't really know the rules.

[Lily Padman]

Not necessarily.

[Dax Shepard]

It just like, I never figured them out.

[Lily Padman]

It is supposed. I think you're just like. It's like more model. Yeah. Or chic or whatever. It's stupid. People should smile. Whenever I home with my friends at home and we're taking group pictures, they always make fun of me. They always say, monica, smile with your teeth.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, really? Even in group photos?

[Jack Antonoff]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

So it's not just a red carpet thing.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Now I'm just, like, used to doing it, so I.

[Dax Shepard]

That's your natural way.

[Lily Padman]

Now it's become a little more common when there's a camera to not smile with my teeth. But these people who've known me my whole life are like, absolutely not. You smile with their teeth.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lily Padman]

And I like that they're keeping me grounded. Keeping me grounded. That's right. All right, should we do a little facky?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Lily Padman]

Okay. So this is for Jack. Oh. For the people who haven't guessed or known or watched this episode. This is the one where Dax dances.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. So hot off the presses.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Which may or may not be in the episode.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

We don't know.

[Lily Padman]

We still don't know.

[Jack Antonoff]

We don't know.

[Dax Shepard]

We'll see.

[Lily Padman]

But just reminding everyone, Jack loved it.

[Dax Shepard]

He's requested that I do it at the end of every episode.

[Lily Padman]

So much so that he texted you as, like, really doubling down. Please do that at the end.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And I don't know if it's all just a big trap to embarrass me or. But I kind of trust him. He seems like a very trustworthy guy. He had a beautiful knowledge of himself.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I text him.

[Lily Padman]

Then I thought, you know, obviously we didn't get into this in the episode, but Jack has a quite a list of ex lovers. Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Lily Padman]

And I get it.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

I get why.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

He definitely makes you feel very seen. He connects. He makes eye contact. He's asking questions.

[Dax Shepard]

It's that easy, guys.

[Jack Antonoff]

It's literally that easy.

[Lily Padman]

Literally that easy.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

But apparently it's not easy.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not easy. It's scary.

[Lily Padman]

It's scary.

[Dax Shepard]

Boys are really scared when they're talking to a girl they like.

[Lily Padman]

I know. But you guys, you can do it. You can do it. You just ask.

[Dax Shepard]

No more lions to fight. There's no more tribes to fight off.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. You're okay.

[Dax Shepard]

The last thing you gotta do. That's risk.

[Lily Padman]

Risk Heavy. And you, you just look people in the eye. You ask questions. You do. You do need to be a little vulnerable. But he wasn't too vulnerable either. It wasn't like, we've had more.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Lily Padman]

So. But I. I really. I understood it. He connected.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a duck.

[Jack Antonoff]

Duck.

[Dax Shepard]

Goose. I was in my bedroom and I could overhear Tyrell getting a massage.

[Lily Padman]

Uhhuh.

[Dax Shepard]

And this was an hour into the massage. And as I, like, walked through my bedroom, I could hear him in there asking her a million questions. He was still talking to her some. She's incredible. And I literally thought, like, oh, yeah. Tyrell, whose women have always liked.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Is very engaged in just asking questions and curious.

[Lily Padman]

Just curious.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And she's married and all. But I was just like, oh, right. That's what. That's how people like each other as they engage.

[Lily Padman]

Do you think the phrase curiosity killed the cat is the reason, like, all of. All of these men are confused?

[Dax Shepard]

No, I just think for some reason it's counterintuitive, but I think for some reason. Reason men don't know what to ask. Like, they think it's more complicated than it is.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Or they. I think maybe they feel like they should have the answers so they don't

[Dax Shepard]

need time to, like. Yeah. Show them.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

What kind of a catch they are.

[Lily Padman]

Right. Right.

[Dax Shepard]

You don't need to do that. No.

[Lily Padman]

And. Oh. For people who are definitely going to ask. I want to cut this off at the pass. Last week, I think it was when I said I engaged with something that a lot of people like, but I didn't like. Or maybe I even said I read. Was reading something.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

It is not Lena's book.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay.

[Lily Padman]

It's not Lena's book. So I. I know that's maybe people. I think people are going to assume that. Okay, I am reading it, and that is not what I was talking about.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, great.

[Lily Padman]

All right. Topo. Chico Shortage.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Let's talk about it.

[Lily Padman]

It. Let's talk. Okay. Shortage is going to last through the summer of 2026. That's this summer.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Why is it happening? Coca Cola conducted maintenance on the bottling factory and found geology issues in the source wells.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, boy.

[Lily Padman]

All right.

[Dax Shepard]

That can't be great if you've bought a company and it's all dependent on one source. Well, but you didn't figure out if that.

[Jack Antonoff]

Wells geology.

[Lily Padman]

This is like ding, ding, ding to your peptide. Your peptide was rancid. Your. Your peptide wasn't rancid that we know of. But you're something in the bottom.

[Dax Shepard]

Was the bottling no good? Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

This is weird. This happened to you twice. Remember when you had that, like, rancid water flavored water and you got a.

[Dax Shepard]

At the ranch.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. And you got a crazy haunus and puking.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Food poisoning.

[Lily Padman]

Food poisoning. Thank you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Lily Padman]

You got crazy food poisoning.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. But everyone else was fine. Oh. Like other people had drank those and no one else had a problem.

[Lily Padman]

I thought it was in your trailer. And it was like.

[Dax Shepard]

It was just this brand with this flavor. Anytime I had it, it made me sick. That was a one off batch.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, I thought it was.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I think the three times I. I've had it, I. I've gotten sick.

[Lily Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

I think there's just something specific I'm allergic to.

[Lily Padman]

So then. Then we. Then it isn't food poisoning. It's. You have an allergy.

[Dax Shepard]

I guess I didn't hear anyone else complaining about it.

[Lily Padman]

Interesting.

[Dax Shepard]

And there's big gaps in times when I've tried the product.

[Lily Padman]

Really? You sure you tried it again? Why would you do that?

[Dax Shepard]

For fun. I think it was like. I think it was like. Like one of the normal water companies made flavored water for. Right. Yeah, it was those.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And one of the flavors. Black cherry or something. No bueno.

[Lily Padman]

Okay. I mean. Yeah. Because it wasn't just Hannes. You. You were fully growing up. Food poisoned.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Not good. Okay. We are Young Release Date September 20, 2011 that was a fact.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

What is the rom com movie that mentions the hind slogan? It's probably what Dax said. Arthur 2 On the Rocks, the sequel to the nineteen 1981 hit starring Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli. The film references the famous marketing slogan Heinz 57, number two in the world. And that ain't bad. Other options. Agent Cody Banks to Destination London also lightly mentions Hines, but it isn't a rom com. Other famous ones are When Harry Met Sally, but that's just product placement.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. That's standard.

[Lily Padman]

What year has Jack been at Grammys with multiple album of Jimmy the Year awards? He's been in this position three times. That's awesome. Wow. He was the first person to ever be nominated in all three major categories. Album, record, and song of the year.

[Dax Shepard]

Whoa.

[Lily Padman]

For two different artists in the same night in 2026, the only other people who've been nominated for multiple albums and album of the year is Serbian Gania. This feels a little bit like the Spotify list.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

Pharrell.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure.

[Lily Padman]

And Tom Elmhurst.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know Tom Elmhurst.

[Lily Padman]

Me either. Years he had multiple nominations in album of the year category. 2020. He did not win. This one is a technicality because he was not technically nominated. But he did produce the second album on the list. Norma Rockwell, Lana Del Rey. And then Arizona baby Kevin Abstract. 2024. He won. With Midnights. Midnight. Taylor Swift. And did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard? Lana Del Rey. 2025. He did not win. Tortured Poets Department. Taylor Swift, Short and Sweet. Sabrina Carpenter, Wolf. 26. I know, but they didn't win. Oh, okay. 2026. He did not win. Man's best friend, Sabrina Carpenter, GNX. Kendrick Lamar. Man, he has some amazing albums under his belt. This is so cool.

[Dax Shepard]

No, he's kind of the producer of the last decade.

[Lily Padman]

I know, I know, I know. It's so cool. Okay. The president of Ukraine. This was upsetting. Yeah. Vladimir. So it is. So. It's not Vladimir.

[Jack Antonoff]

Vladimir.

[Lily Padman]

Very close. Yeah, we knew that. We just.

[Dax Shepard]

Honest mistake.

[Lily Padman]

Honest mistake.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Honest mistake.

[Lily Padman]

Ding, ding, ding. Okay. Those are facts for Jack.

[Dax Shepard]

I loved him.

[Lily Padman]

He was really.

[Dax Shepard]

I love him.

[Lily Padman]

Great. Yeah, great. I really enjoyed him, too.

[Dax Shepard]

He's a real artist.

[Lily Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

He is a. That's exactly right. He's a real artist.

[Dax Shepard]

Real artist.

[Lily Padman]

And how should I say? I probably shouldn't say it, but I think I'm going to.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Lily Padman]

I think being a real artist, truly, madly, deeply, TLC is a bit of a burden of.

[Dax Shepard]

Of course. Yeah. All of these phenomenal writers wrestle with depression and anxiety.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I think it goes hand in hand.

[Lily Padman]

It's a lot.

[Dax Shepard]

With the willingness to sit in a room with uncomfortable emotions and convert them into something.

[Lily Padman]

And like, it's a need that must be met. The need to create. It has to be met. And in a way that's different from me. Or I won't say you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. You can say me.

[Lily Padman]

Me or you. Right. Who are creative and have the only.

[Dax Shepard]

I've ever felt it is just writing or it's like there have been things I have to sit down and write,

[Lily Padman]

but other than that, I love it. I love writing and have written and I love creating things. But I don't feel like I'll die if I don't.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. Yeah. And I have too much fun with other people.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. I can do other. I know I can do other things in this life.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

And not cease to exist, you know? But he is one of those in the category. He just has to. He has to do this.

[Dax Shepard]

This is a ding, ding, ding. I happened to read this this morning that Michael Jackson one time called the guy who was producing his album at like 3am and said, Wake everyone up. Get them to the studio right now. And when he was there, he explained to the musicians the reason they had to come tonight is that God sends songs down, and if he doesn't catch it, Prince will see. It was literally like, either he's gonna catch this song right now, or Prince is gonna. So he has to wake up and do it now before Prince catches it.

[Jack Antonoff]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

It's really.

[Dax Shepard]

And I think he believed that.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Yeah. And now I don't. Who's to say it's not true?

[Dax Shepard]

Every time we talk to one of these super prolific, talented songwriters, they're all describing it the same way.

[Jack Antonoff]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Who am I to say it's the other way?

[Lily Padman]

Yeah. Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

And I'm grateful. These people, who I do think in general, suffer a little more and then give us these incredible artists.

[Lily Padman]

Me, too. Me too. I have a lot of compassion for these artists. Cause their brains are working in a much different way, and that has bad. There are bad things to that. But then we get to benefit from their genius. Yeah. And we also have so many opinions about all of them. Right.

[Dax Shepard]

It's like how they should behave.

[Jack Antonoff]

Behave.

[Lily Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Lily Padman]

Just maybe not fair. All right. Well, that is it.

[Dax Shepard]

All right. Love you.

[Lily Padman]

Love you.