Josh Brolin Returns

Summary

Podcast Summary: Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard – Episode: "Josh Brolin Returns"

Host and Guest Details

• Host: Dax Shepard (Armchair Umbrella)
• Guest: Josh Brolin, award-winning actor known for roles in The Goonies, No Country for Old Men, Sicario, Dune, and author of the memoir From Under the Truck.

Release Date: January 13, 2025

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1. Introduction and Episode Overview

In this special episode of Armchair Expert, Dax Shepard welcomes Josh Brolin as his guest. The conversation revolves around Josh’s latest memoir, From Under the Truck, exploring his tumultuous upbringing, career challenges, and personal growth. The episode delves deep into Josh’s life experiences, providing listeners with an intimate look at his journey both on and off the screen.

2. Discussing Josh Brolin’s Memoir

Dax Shepard initiates the discussion by expressing his admiration for Josh’s book:

"I can't remember a book I've read that took me more through it personally." ([12:20])

Josh reflects on the vulnerability required to pen his memoir, emphasizing that it's not merely a collection of Hollywood anecdotes but a raw portrayal of his struggles and triumphs.

Notable Quote:

"There’s no juggling of it. It is what it is." – Josh Brolin ([34:34])

Josh explains that From Under the Truck is more about his relationship with his parents and the journey from nurture to nature, rather than focusing solely on his acting career.

3. Navigating Personal Struggles and Sobriety

The conversation shifts to Josh’s personal battles, including his sobriety journey spanning over a decade. Both Dax and his wife Monica Padman share their experiences in recovery, fostering a space of mutual understanding and support.

Notable Quote:

"I relapsed. And did I learn anything else? No. But I chose to do it, and I take full accountability for it." – Josh Brolin ([61:28])

Josh candidly discusses his struggles with addiction, his relapses, and the impact on his personal life and family. He underscores the importance of accountability and the difficulties in maintaining sobriety while managing a demanding career.

4. Childhood Trauma and Family Dynamics

Josh delves into his challenging childhood, marked by his mother's erratic behavior and involvement in a pyramid scheme. This turbulent upbringing significantly shaped his resilience and approach to life.

Notable Quote:

"As an 8-year-old, watching the scary dude in the corner that mom's getting in the face of also is terrifying to no end." – Josh Brolin ([22:48])

He recounts instances of his mother's manipulative tactics and the environment of fear and instability he endured. These experiences fostered a deep-seated need to understand human behavior, influencing his acting and personal growth.

5. Relationships and Professional Encounters

Josh shares anecdotes about his interactions with notable figures in the entertainment industry, such as Nick Nolte and Oliver Stone, highlighting the complexities of maintaining genuine connections amidst the chaos of show business.

Notable Quote:

"Walking into his house and you go, Nick, are you there? And he'd go. And you go, I guess he's here, you know." – Josh Brolin ([52:24])

He discusses how these relationships provided both mentorship and challenges, contributing to his development as an actor and individual.

6. Reflections on Parenthood

A significant portion of the conversation centers on Josh’s role as a father. He reflects on balancing his professional life with his responsibilities as a parent, emphasizing the profound influence his children have on his perspective and decisions.

Notable Quote:

"I’m telling you my story, but when you're hearing it, you're actually now the audience. And now you're like, God, do I sound like that all the time?" – Dax Shepard ([17:54])

Josh speaks about the joys and struggles of parenthood, illustrating how his children inspire him to strive for stability and present authenticity in his life.

7. Writing Process and Creative Challenges

The discussion transitions to Josh’s writing process for his memoir. He details the emotional and psychological hurdles he faced while recounting his past, grappling with self-criticism and the fear of judgment.

Notable Quote:

"When you're writing it, you're really just broadcasting the way you do in life." – Dax Shepard ([16:50])

Josh emphasizes the therapeutic aspect of writing, despite the associated pain and vulnerability. He shares how feedback from his literary agent and trusted friends helped him stay true to his voice.

8. Memorable Stories from the Book

Josh narrates poignant stories from his memoir, such as the harrowing incident of attempting to save a sheep, which serves as a metaphor for his internal struggles and resilience.

Notable Quote:

"And I had to prepare myself. I am a killer. I kill innocent beings. I'm not funny. There is nothing funny about me." – Josh Brolin ([57:54])

These narratives provide listeners with a profound insight into Josh’s character, portraying him as a man accustomed to confronting chaos with courage and introspection.

9. Impact and Reception of the Memoir

Josh discusses the mixed reactions to his memoir, acknowledging that while some readers found it disjointed or lacking Hollywood glamour, others appreciated its raw honesty and depth.

Notable Quote:

"If somebody says I didn't learn anything about him, they're saying something very specific. And they're saying I didn't get spoon-fed the People magazine, that I was expecting some hot gossip, which is okay." – Josh Brolin ([34:34])

He explains that the memoir’s purpose isn’t to entertain with celebrity stories but to offer an authentic portrayal of his life's complexities.

10. Closing Thoughts and Reflections

As the episode nears its end, Dax and Monica reflect on the profound nature of Josh’s stories, expressing admiration for his ability to convey vulnerability and strength simultaneously. They emphasize the importance of embracing one’s imperfections and the continuous journey of self-improvement.

Notable Quote:

"The power of example within massive discomfort." – Josh Brolin ([56:42])

Josh reiterates the significance of accountability and the courage it takes to expose one’s deepest truths, inspiring listeners to confront their own challenges with honesty and resilience.

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Conclusion

This episode of Armchair Expert offers an unfiltered glimpse into Josh Brolin's life, unearthing the layers beneath his on-screen persona. Through heartfelt dialogue and compelling storytelling, listeners gain a deeper understanding of Josh’s journey of self-discovery, his battles with addiction, and his unwavering commitment to personal growth and parenthood. The conversation underscores the messiness of being human and the transformative power of vulnerability and accountability.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

1. Josh Brolin ([34:34]): "If somebody says I didn't learn anything about him, they're saying something very specific."

2. Josh Brolin ([61:28]): "I relapsed. And did I learn anything else? No. But I chose to do it, and I take full accountability for it."

3. Josh Brolin ([22:48]): "As an 8-year-old, watching the scary dude in the corner that mom's getting in the face of also is terrifying to no end."

4. Dax Shepard ([16:50]): "When you're writing it, you're really just broadcasting the way you do in life."

5. Josh Brolin ([57:54]): "I am a killer. I kill innocent beings. I'm not funny. There is nothing funny about me."

6. Josh Brolin ([56:42]): "The power of example within massive discomfort."

These quotes encapsulate the essence of the discussion, highlighting themes of accountability, vulnerability, and personal growth.

Transcript

[Dax Shepard]

Wondry plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now. Join Wondry plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome welcome welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dax Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hello, our good buddy is here today. Yeah, he's wild Josh Brolin. He is an award winning actor, the Goonies, no Country for Old Men, Sicario, Dune Milk, and a book I absolutely loved which is out right now called from under the Truck and we daringly asked him on the spot if he would read one of the stories Cold Read Cold read of my favorite story in the book. And he obliged that sweetheart that he is.

[Monica Padman]

Also this episode's on video if people want to watch it.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh yes, yes, yes, this is on video. Josh is so fucking handsome. To not watch the words come out of that gorgeous mug would be. It'd be a travesty. So go over to YouTube and watch this. Enjoy. If you love iPhone, you'll love Apple Card. It comes with the privacy and security you expect from Apple. Plus you earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase, which can automatically earn interest when you open a High Yield Savings account through Apple Card. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Apple Card and Savings by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch Member FDIC terms and [e-mail] we are supported by Quints. When it comes to winter, cozy is king. For the ultimate cold weather necessities made from premium materials, you've got to check out quints. With quints you can treat yourself to true quality at an affordable price, like something everyone needs in their closet. Quince's Mongolian cashmere sweaters, which start at just $50. For real cashmere, that's a great deal. Or their super soft fleece sweatpants which are a major upgrade to those old sweats you've had forever no matter what you're looking for. All Quint's Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands and they use premium fabrics and finishes for that high quality feel in every piece.

[Monica Padman]

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[Josh Brolin]

Oh really?

[Monica Padman]

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[Dax Shepard]

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[Josh Brolin]

He'S an upchurch.

[Dax Shepard]

You were here three years ago, which kind of shocked me.

[Monica Padman]

That's crazy.

[Dax Shepard]

As I listened this morning on my.

[Josh Brolin]

Bike ride, the last time I saw you.

[Dax Shepard]

That's true. You pulled into the driveway because you did Ted's podcast.

[Josh Brolin]

That's right. Was after that when I thought I was having marital problems, but I wasn't.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, did you? Yeah. Okay.

[Josh Brolin]

No, I fluctuate.

[Monica Padman]

Shared.

[Josh Brolin]

I always share because I'm one of these guys. Kind of like a book where you have to manifest it in order to get it out of you because you know the you that it's happening in is not perceiving it correctly. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You know enough to not trust your assessment of things.

[Josh Brolin]

And that has nothing to do with a program thing. I just know that.

[Dax Shepard]

So what's tricky though is. And I think we do the same thing is my wife. Well, and Monica as well, because we talk so much. There might two kind of check ins. They'll say to me you're crazy right now. That theory makes no sense. I know you've convinced yourself that's what's happening. But what's tricky is if your kind of check system is the person you're having trouble with, where do you go? So where do you go? I have a specific person I go to.

[Josh Brolin]

I usually go to Dax Shepard.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, you're not checking out. I don't remember hearing any of your crazy filed.

[Josh Brolin]

No. Who do I go to? There's a couple of people. You have one person that you go.

[Dax Shepard]

To and ironically it is your doppelganger.

[Josh Brolin]

Matt Damon.

[Dax Shepard]

No, Tom Hansen. I don't know if we've discussed.

[Josh Brolin]

Yes, we have. Not that Matt Damon is my daughter.

[Monica Padman]

There is a Venn diagram there of handsomeness.

[Dax Shepard]

Really?

[Monica Padman]

Tom Hanson.

[Dax Shepard]

Tom.

[Monica Padman]

Handsome Tom.

[Josh Brolin]

It didn't actually end up happening, but you and I spoke about this. Is that Tom kind of coerced me into his thing. We had a great conversation. We talked about surfing. We had everything in common that there was to happen. And apparently, which I never really saw that we look like each other. So why he's not my lawyer doesn't make any sense. Other than Cliff Gilber. Lori, who brought me in, which is how business works. And you learn that later. They bring you in as a top dog and they go, you're amazing. We want to represent you. And we've been Trying to represent you since before you were born. And you go, and they flatter the out of you. Then you get in there and then you never see that person again.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that's the big bait and switch. You meet the owner of the agency and then you never see them again. Quit. And then they call you again when you're quitting.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah, yeah. What are you doing? Hey, why are you changing? We have been focusing. Do you know how much time we've put into you? I go, you don't even know my name, bro. You had to look it up. I have to say this to finish that thought.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

Is the hand me downs that I've always gotten have been better than what could have been had I gone with the top dog.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

Because those hand me downs turned into the top dogs.

[Monica Padman]

And they care and they care.

[Josh Brolin]

They give a. There's something very personal still. Wendy Kirk is my lawyer and she is with JSSK and what she has done. They even offered her a partnership when she changed and she said, no, I don't like what it does to me.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Josh Brolin]

And they forced her to be a partner. So she's a partner. She works with Obama. I mean, she's a high end.

[Dax Shepard]

There's a really great metaphor here, which is, yeah, the person under the owner, of course, wants to get in with you and they can have some ownership over the ride, which is what we all want. Right. They want to collaborate in a sense. If they inherit Jack Nicholson, there's really no ownership. And I mostly just think, well, I should be with that person because that would prove I'm of value or I have status or something, and I would deny someone this great opportunity to help me and allowed myself to be helped. So back to Tom Hansen. So when you were saying you met with him, it was in a professional capacity, but it could very well just been in a sobriety capacity. I interviewed him and he's very open where we spoke openly about it.

[Josh Brolin]

When you were saying program, you know.

[Dax Shepard]

No, he outed himself in the episode.

[Monica Padman]

That goes out the window in this podcast.

[Josh Brolin]

But even in the rooms, it's not anonymous. I never understood it. Somebody goes, do you want to share? And you go, yeah. So today. And they go, hey, what's your name?

[Dax Shepard]

That's what's your name?

[Josh Brolin]

And you go, why do I have to say my name? Cuz back in the day, the first hundred that the book is based on, you never had to say your name. You just had to say, I'm an alcoholic.

[Dax Shepard]

That makes a little more sense.

[Josh Brolin]

So it doesn't make any sense. The hypocrisy of hello, State. Identify yourself.

[Dax Shepard]

And people take a certain pleasure out of going, who are you?

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah, totally. And I'm usually the guy that says, shut the up. It's an anonymous program.

[Monica Padman]

And I start getting fights in AA meetings.

[Josh Brolin]

No, I don't.

[Monica Padman]

Well, I know you almost got in a fight once with Eric Dane. We talked about that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, at Tom Hansen's house.

[Josh Brolin]

Seriously?

[Dax Shepard]

With the actor Eric Dane? Do you know Eric Dane?

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah, of course.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He and I walked out to Tom's driveway in the middle of a meeting.

[Josh Brolin]

Because you got into it. Really? Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I was sponsoring this kid, and he yelled at this kid. And I already had a ax to grind with them, so I go, let's go, motherfucker.

[Josh Brolin]

Really?

[Dax Shepard]

It's a low point. But anyways, when you were saying Tom Hansen was going to bring you in.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It very well could have meant he was inviting you to the meeting. That's where my head went when you said, yeah, because that's your experience.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah, my experience is purely on a professional cap.

[Dax Shepard]

But I was just with him. And he does look like you guys. And you guys are both blessed. You're both very handsome. Okay, so I have. And I just text you this the other day. You are in my algorithm on Instagram in a way that only Corey Feldman is. I see. Doing.

[Josh Brolin]

I understand the parallel. There's no Connective Goonies tissue. That's not why it's there. I know that.

[Dax Shepard]

Monica, really quick, just for a fun question. What human is in your algorithm?

[Josh Brolin]

You constantly see this person come up and you know, it has its moments where it's like, this person will show up for this two months.

[Monica Padman]

Am I following them?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, that's what's interesting. Probably I'm following Josh, but I'm not following Feldman. But I guess people who like the shit. I like cars or whatever, they like these Feldman videos. So it knows that I might like them. And I liked a couple, but then I didn't like them anymore.

[Josh Brolin]

It was really fun for like a month. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And then I don't like it at all.

[Josh Brolin]

And you know what you did, which is what I did, is you forwarded them to other people. You were like, oh, my God, look at this lead that he did. By the way, I have nothing against Feldman.

[Dax Shepard]

No. How could you?

[Josh Brolin]

What I questioned the whole time was, does he know? And I think that's what drew everybody in. When you sit there and you're just going like this, do you know anything about this?

[Monica Padman]

Not really. He's not in my algorithm.

[Dax Shepard]

Felt.

[Josh Brolin]

You're a Goonies fan, Right? I remember that from before. No, you're not a Goonies fan.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, I.

[Josh Brolin]

That was a look of absolute, almost disgust. That's no panic.

[Monica Padman]

It was panic because it was. I think I have to say. Yes, but that's a straight up lie. I think maybe I've only half seen it.

[Josh Brolin]

Only have seen it half. Oh, half seen it, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Whenever you're not in the movie, she fast forwards.

[Josh Brolin]

No, but I kind of like the idea.

[Monica Padman]

I only saw your part.

[Josh Brolin]

Only have seen it. Meaning I didn't react like everybody else. I just saw.

[Monica Padman]

I didn't like or dislike. I just had plain and simple. So, no, no, you must be thinking of your doppelganger Matt Damon, Goodwill hunting. You're just confused. But Corey Feldman. Sorry, no. What's happening?

[Dax Shepard]

So he tours. He's a musician and a lead singer and a guitar player. And he's on tour seemingly many dates a year because the videos come hot and fast.

[Monica Padman]

Good for him.

[Dax Shepard]

He does guitar solos and he sings.

[Josh Brolin]

Which he's been doing for a very long time. It's. He went on a tour, he was opening for Fred Durst, and Fred Durst brilliantly created this whole thing called, like the worst tour in the world. Oh, I can't remember. It's not called that, but it's something like that. So it's intentional from Fred Durst point of view. But I think he took which was genius, Corey Feldman, and said, you open for me and then we're going to come out and do our bullshit. And Fred has a huge white beard now and comes out with basically what he wore back in the day. And it's just fucking funny. But when you see Corey doing his thing, which is what he's always done, there' no difference in what he was doing during the Goonies back in that day and what he's doing now. There's just a seriousness to it that confuses so similar.

[Dax Shepard]

Exact same thing. And I didn't forward to anybody. I did immediately text my best friend Aaron and say, like, are you seeing these felonies? Like, it's all I'm seeing. And yes, the great curiosity, which, by the way, not even to be political, that was always my great curiosity about Trump. That's what I'm most interested in. Is he in on any of this or is he not in on it? That's what I'm not sure about.

[Josh Brolin]

He is.

[Dax Shepard]

But all to say, Brolin, for much different reasons, has just infiltrated my algorithm.

[Monica Padman]

That's exciting.

[Dax Shepard]

I love it. And I text him the other day, and I'm like, I watch four or five interviews with you a day.

[Josh Brolin]

A day? A day.

[Dax Shepard]

And I like every single one of them.

[Monica Padman]

How many interviews are you doing?

[Josh Brolin]

I'm getting to. That's the point.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

So first question. Is this the most press you've ever done for anything? Let's start there.

[Josh Brolin]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

To promote your book.

[Josh Brolin]

Yes. I have hoard myself out to this dog and pony like I never have before.

[Dax Shepard]

Selfishly, when we have a guest coming up and I start seeing that the guest is everywhere, I just kind of go, ugh, I'm bummed.

[Monica Padman]

Like, what new are we gonna get?

[Dax Shepard]

Two things. Yeah, what new are they gonna say? And then are people just sick of this person? Because I know I've seen them six places. So I saw you everywhere, and my first thought was like, oh, bummer. Like, we're gonna be less. But then my true belief in what you and I share, that we could also have something completely original and different.

[Josh Brolin]

That's for sure.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I don't want to. To be hyperbolic. I want to make sure I'm being honest here, But I can't remember a book I've read that took me more through it personally. And I don't want to make this about myself, but.

[Josh Brolin]

But why not?

[Dax Shepard]

I am also writing something. I imagine we have some of the same fears about writing something, and I'm just reading it, and I'm like, this could be my book. I could be writing this book.

[Josh Brolin]

I could see that.

[Dax Shepard]

And I'm extra mean to you because I'm extra mean to me. And I'm like, oh, yeah, we have the same story. The fucking story. Like, I'm getting really mad at my. Myself reading the book. Oh, but in a glorious way.

[Josh Brolin]

No, but tell me why the amount.

[Dax Shepard]

Of things we had to do to be dangerous and scary so that no one would try to hurt us. How exhausting for everyone. I'm like, reading my own inventory.

[Josh Brolin]

Oh, yeah, now I know what you mean.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm also having great forgiveness for myself because I have great forgiveness for you because I just adore you.

[Josh Brolin]

I agree. It's very mutual.

[Dax Shepard]

Thank you. But I'm reading it in a way that I don't read other books just because it feels so familiar to me. And I am constantly checking myself and going, really? You're just a fucking egomaniacal piece of. And I'm so mad at myself. Then I'm reading your book, and I'm like, What the fuck else was this guy gonna do? He grew up in a cage with a wolf. Like, what was this?

[Monica Padman]

With a chimp, Right?

[Josh Brolin]

Did you read it, by the way?

[Monica Padman]

No, I don't read the books on purpose.

[Josh Brolin]

I love when people are honest. Like, I did Rogan. I go, so, where's the book? And he goes, I don't know. Where is the book? And I was like, you mean where the book we sent you the book? He was like, yeah, where is it? I'm like, so you didn't read the book? Read the book.

[Monica Padman]

The Goonies situation? I was, no, no, no. But I do it on purpose in case things get too esoteric for people who have not read it.

[Dax Shepard]

It's actually by design. So I'll have read some crazy book on, you know, astrophysics, and all of a sudden, me and the person, we've left the planet. And I was like, hey, no one knows what you're talking about.

[Monica Padman]

Even this. Like, I want to know specifically the. Why. The parts that you resonate with.

[Josh Brolin]

Well, wait, let me interrupt you for a second. First of all, the fears in writing a book. I didn't have a fear. I've told this story before, but there was only one moment where I kind of said, you need to be just a little bit more inspiring in order to be attractive to a wider audience. And I wrote probably 40,000 words with that in the back of my head, having told nobody. And then my lit agent, she read the first chapter, and she said, first chapter is really good. You've smoothed it out. It's very clear. You've simplified a lot of things. It's great. What the fuck happened with chapter two?

[Dax Shepard]

And that was the one you were going to protect yourself with?

[Josh Brolin]

Not even protect myself, but just give it a little more positive. Umph.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

First of all, I fell in love with her at that moment because I was like, you see me. Which I think that's the biggest thing you see behind the tough and the thing and the guy. And she said, you need to go back and rewrite it. I said, the whole thing? And she goes, what part? Go back and be you. If you cheat or if there's an affectation or if you're trying to write for somebody else, it's never going to. The other thing is, the fear didn't come until I was two days into the audible. I speak well. I speak in front of an audience well. I can read other people's books well. There was something about reading through my own book where I was tripping through every sentence. I was started to shame spiral. And then within that shame spiral, I started to say, I wish that I could burn any evidence that this thing ever existed. Even as an idea. I've done the dumbest thing. I should have just wrote when I did the Goonies. Me and Corey Feldman used to go to lunch together. And it was so fun. He was so smart. And he was playing music then, too. And there's some people that have reacted to it like, this is the worst book I've ever read. Because wasn't he married for nine years? Where's that spoon? Fetus. The shit. Which I understand there's a certain amount of that when you call it a memoir that you want. This is really more about children and parents. That's what it is to me. It's like surviving nurture to get to nature. Trying to get rid of the habits that you acquired during nurture and then confronting those and hopefully thriving within that nature, figuring out a way to thrive within that nature. So then children come in and all that kind of stuff. And I've learned that through people's reaction. Because people's reaction is either really negative because of the form, because of how it's laid out, or super personal and emotional.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, put me in the ladder.

[Josh Brolin]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

And that's kind of what I'm saying. I probably didn't do the headline correctly, but I'm just saying I'm judging you so unfairly and severely because I hear myself and I hate myself a lot of the time.

[Josh Brolin]

You hate me, therefore.

[Dax Shepard]

And I really relate to that. Reading your own thing out loud. Because when you're writing it, you're really just broadcasting the way you do in life. I'm telling you my story, but when you're hearing it, you're actually now the audience. And now you're like, God, do I sound like that all the time? A B. That's really tragic. What I'm acting like was no big deal. That, to me, is really the heartbreaking part. And that's the stuff that I found, like, a ton of compassion towards you. And I do this a lot. And I think for Monica and the people in my life, I have such a nonchalant way of going through all this stuff. And when I'm hearing your nonchalant version of it, I want to go, yeah, you were really scared. This is a very, very scary ride you were on. You were a little person. You have little people. I have little people.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

There's no way you weren't terrified. And there's no way I wasn't terrified. I don't know. Your book has helped me kind of really embrace that part. Like, go ahead and acknowledge that no, you were terrified a lot of the time. And it's colorful and cool and it's my story now. But let's also be honest about the fact that you spent a lot of your life quite scared of everything going on around you.

[Josh Brolin]

There is an indictment, and Howard Stern brought this up. I think YouTube the most, took it very personally. And he took it very personally because he had a parallel thing with his mom. And he was like, this is not fucking okay. I want to hear you admit that it's not okay. And you go, yes, of course there's an indictment. I can see it clearly, especially now, in how I parent my kids, how I've always parent my kids, albeit messily. But how I feel about that time is it was a trauma or a tragedy or whatever it is because of this narcissistic vortex that I was living in. Are you unable to celebrate the child? If your child does a drawing for you on a post, it. Are you going to put it on your chest and wear it around so the child can go, oh my God, that guy loves my drawing. Or I don't understand what this is. Well, can you make it more like this and more like this, or can you dress more like this? So when a picture is taken with me and the child, it makes me look like, you know, that's all narcissistic bullshit. And it goes back to one image. And that one image that my dad would say, my D was very open about this. I don't know if he found it funny or if he just found it informational and just didn't care how it was perceived. But my dad used to say, I remember when your mom was in the driver's seat, you were in the passenger seat and you guys were arguing and my dad was in the back with his hands over his ears. And you go, that's a family tree. And you go, who's the husband? The kid. Yeah, the eight year old kid who's going, man, just drive. Like, why do you got to stop the car and argue? Just drive, whatever. And then the dad's in the back with his hands over his ears and you go, okay. So that was how that whole thing was set up. And by the way, where's my brother? He's not even part of that diagram because he was a guy that didn't have the fight that you have, that I have. He just got lost in it. He didn't have the fight. So he lives his life in a very, very simple way.

[Monica Padman]

Now, just for people listening, I think that is a version of fighting.

[Josh Brolin]

Absolutely.

[Monica Padman]

We had this conversation sort of recently, randomly, where we were at odds at how to handle a situation that affects both of us. And he was like, well, we're just different. I'm a fighter. And I was like, I'm a fighter too, but I fight differently. There's just all ways of surviving.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

They're all just survival mechanism mechanisms. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And whatever works best.

[Josh Brolin]

How do you fight though? I'm curious.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, I did fight version also, so that's why also I was like, what are you talking about? We yelled and screamed at each other last night.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I think you'll fight with the people in your circle and I'll fight with strangers. I think maybe that's the diff.

[Monica Padman]

I think I learned early on being a. A marginalized person, that wasn't going to work for me. Yelling and screaming, that would just remove me from the. I was already on the cusp of getting removed, so that wasn't going to work.

[Josh Brolin]

That's my wife.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. It's getting actually close to those people.

[Josh Brolin]

Oh yeah, that's right.

[Monica Padman]

That's right.

[Josh Brolin]

How funny is that?

[Monica Padman]

It is.

[Josh Brolin]

That's a cultural thing for sure.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. Getting close, understanding the person and figuring out what they need from you in order to stay, to move forward. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I had some epiphanies reading it. So just to lay it out to people who haven't read it yet, I really recommend it from the bottom of my heart. But also in your previous interview, we got a taste of the chaos. Right. You were living in an animal life or an animal way station. Your mother collected these animals that were by all accounts wild.

[Josh Brolin]

By all accounts, by all accounts, wild.

[Dax Shepard]

And she also was a very active drinker. She was sexually very active.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah. Yeah. I found out more and more now. People have come out to the woodwork, out of the woodworks and maybe I.

[Dax Shepard]

Shouldn'T even say sexual, but she engaged men non stop.

[Josh Brolin]

The sexuality was just as much psychic as it was everything. It was a mental game, it was a sexual game. It was a physical game, it was a spiritual game.

[Dax Shepard]

You were regularly though, at truck stops at shitty hotels. She was a vagabond. She was dragging you guys around. God knows what she was looking for, but she was interacting with. Again, this is where it's. No matter what you think it is or when you tell it to people, she's going up to truck drivers and restaurants and going like, that's a stupid hat. What's going on with that hat? Her technique to engage people was to nag them and be aggressive and be fearless. And sure, there's some fun and excitement in watching her navigate that and land the plane safely every time. But Also, as an 8 year old, watching the scary dude in the corner that mom's getting in the face of also is terrifying to no end.

[Monica Padman]

So unpredictable.

[Josh Brolin]

But you don't know why. Why? Because it's all, you know, it's like a kid being beaten. They know it hurts, they think it's standard.

[Dax Shepard]

But some primitive part of you goes, there is an animal that's 300 pounds and there's another animal that's 105 pounds. And the 1/3 animal is shouting that, you know, there's a reality.

[Josh Brolin]

Totally.

[Dax Shepard]

The swing she was taking, that had to be quite scary. Even if you come to expect she would pull it off.

[Josh Brolin]

I remember my mom being drunk and there was a church called Joshua's and Joshua was turned into a bar. And I remember a bar in Paso Robles.

[Dax Shepard]

Josh, what a rebrand.

[Josh Brolin]

I know what a rebrand. And I remember my mom pulling somebody. Oh, it was James Lee Barrett, the writer. And he was a writer way back in the day. And I remember her pulling him across the table to give him a kiss. Right? Yeah. So my mom, who was tiny, had that superhuman drunk strength that you know and I know, but it was always a display. She couldn't just get up and go to the other side. She had to pull him across the table. And I told somebody else this the other day and talk about fear. Not that I forgot about this. Just there were so many things to write about. It's like, what do you land on? And the book starts to dictate itself and then what do you cut? I had at 1.450 pages or something and then knocked it down. But if you flipped my mom off on the freeway, you were done. She would actively run you off the road at 80 miles an hour. Or on the CB she would call a bunch of truckers and you would see that car that had been identified now get boxed in and literally get run off the road by several truckers. But she would freak the fuck out. And when you're an 8 year old in a car, it was wild. And how ironic that she died hitting a tree with a car, chasing a dude.

[Dax Shepard]

A lover, 25 years for Junior.

[Josh Brolin]

Oh yeah. Monica's traumatized right now. I just saw her peripherally.

[Monica Padman]

We talked about this. You get two people in Life, if you're lucky, who are safe spots. And so if one or both are not safe, they're unpredictable. You have no choice. But your cortisol levels are at a totally.

[Josh Brolin]

That's exactly right.

[Monica Padman]

You're moving through.

[Josh Brolin]

That's exactly right. But the whole point, I think ultimately it's like, do you feel that this was cathartic in some way? And I go, no. But now I can say yes. It's starting to become cathartic because of people's reactions to it. To me, what's the point of me writing the book other than just loving writing? That's my first and foremost. You know, I'm going to go to Skylight after this because I used to be on the floor of Skylight reading Russian novels and reading Tolstoy and Turgenev and Gogol and Flaubert and Guy Dumont Pisson and all that kind of. When I was 18, 19, 20 years old. And now I'm going to go there and I'm going to see my book on the shelf, which is going to be amazing. But ultimately, how do you accept the chaos of what was and not live the rest of your life as a victim of it? That's the biggest thing.

[Dax Shepard]

But again, I don't think you and I run the risk of seeing ourselves as a victim. I think we have the opposite complex.

[Josh Brolin]

Which is what?

[Dax Shepard]

Which is. I think you need to acknowledge a little more.

[Josh Brolin]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't think you need to be policing yourself about whether, poor me, I was a victim. That's actually not the thing you need to be on high alert of. It's the. Yeah, and I walk through that shit and made me this. I think that's more the fucking thing to monitor. But what is clear throughout this book is you absolutely love your mother.

[Josh Brolin]

You're one of the few people that.

[Dax Shepard]

Have said that you admire her. You've been kind of trying to be her in some manageable way.

[Josh Brolin]

Totally.

[Dax Shepard]

She made a fucking impression. No one ever met her and forgot they met her. There's like a lot of attractive stuff about her. I've never thought about the fact that if anyone, not just us, anyone that that's the child of a divorce has witnessed that one of the parents left. That's an option, truly, in the most simple way, it's an option that these people can leave. You know it now you're down to one. You better fucking love and cherish and perform.

[Josh Brolin]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

For that one person. Because you're down to one. I hold true that I love my mother. More than anything. And she is the greatest woman to ever be on planet Earth.

[Josh Brolin]

Also.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know that I had a choice to feel otherwise.

[Josh Brolin]

That's what I was going to say. Do you have a choice now? Somebody leaves and you go, wait a second, if they leave, you can leave. That means you can leave. You can leave, you can leave, you can leave. Once you get outside of the family, then are you reacting to the potential of anybody leaving?

[Dax Shepard]

I just think once you put a kid in a situation where they only have one parent left, I just don't know what else that kid could do other than a be really grateful that one didn't leave. So there's this true gratitude.

[Josh Brolin]

But you just said it. Performing, then you're performing, then you're going. How? How do I assure that I'm not down?

[Dax Shepard]

That never occurred to me at all reading your book.

[Josh Brolin]

Interesting.

[Dax Shepard]

I was just like, huh, that's a element. I need to again, go through the catalog and just apply that a little bit ironically.

[Monica Padman]

That's a version of the fight I was talking about earlier. That's you fighting in a different way to survive that. And it's not fighting with yelling, it's fighting with love and affection and being the right thing for her and all of that. It's the same thing.

[Josh Brolin]

You become less reactionary. And the thing with my mom, which didn't work in life, life was my mom loved the high octane volley. So you had to be up here. I still deal with that because I like the high octane volley.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

That's why I like Italy, because everybody's. It's culturally like what you said about Georgia, it's culturally at that place all the time. So when I get there, they're like, ah.

[Monica Padman]

And I'm like, hey, no one's getting.

[Josh Brolin]

Their feelings, no one's getting their feelings hurt. Whereas here I may do something and people go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Dax Shepard]

Right?

[Josh Brolin]

Relax, what's the problem? And then if I'm feeling surly or whatever, I go, why does everybody want to be fucking monotone all the time? Everybody wants to be in yawn mode. And I go, it's okay, let's wake up. And interestingly enough, and this is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, I have my 36 year old Trevor, my 31 year old Eden, my 6 year old Westland and my 3 year old Chapel. And I see it in my older kids. My son is a little more docile than what we're talking about. My 31 year old is the only person on this earth probably who scares me. All she has to do is give me a look and I'm just like.

[Dax Shepard]

You said, she was born with your menacing look.

[Josh Brolin]

She just has that brolin brow, I call it that kind of Neanderthal pronounced Brow Ridge. My youngest daughter has it more pronounced than anybody. So you have the six year old, but I was listening to him this morning. I was trying to say something and this is often because we're around our kids all the time. I'm a very present parent. So I go, hey man, don't talk for 30 seconds. I need to say something to your mom. And they literally go, okay, Papa, go ahead. And I go, okay. And they go, 1, 2, 3. But I listen to their volley back and forth and their volley is phenomenal. To me, it's always on this level.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

And my wife is always trying to bring it down and I'm always laughing because I go, that's pretty cool. Yeah, you guys are on a different. So I'm still a component of that thing, just not destructively.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. We are supported by Squarespace. If you've been to the Armchair Expert website, you've seen Squarespace in action. Wabi Wab made our website using Squarespace, the all in one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed on. What I love about Squarespace is aside from the functionality, it's just so visually pleasing. And Rob was able to whip this up in no time with all the incredible templates that were available to him.

[Monica Padman]

And it looks very professional.

[Dax Shepard]

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[Monica Padman]

That's nice.

[Dax Shepard]

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[Monica Padman]

Yeah, that's a good one. I'm starting to journal more Journaling.

[Dax Shepard]

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[Monica Padman]

I love electrolytes. We all know this. This is tried and true.

[Dax Shepard]

That's your religion. Break the mold and own your ritual. Just one stick plus 16 ounces of water hydrates better than water alone. So embrace your ritual with extraordinary hydration from Liquid IV. Get 20% off your first order of Liquid IV. When you go to liquid I.com and use code DAX at checkout. That's 20% off your first order when you shop. Better hydration today using promo code dax@liquid I.com it's rough when your whole environment was an 11 and then your interaction interacting with people, that. That feels very uncomfortable. And I get it that it feels uncomfortable. I wrote way too many notes. I see.

[Josh Brolin]

I love it.

[Dax Shepard]

We're on sentence one of 15 pages. But back to conceptually the book. I wanted to ask you because you told me some people fucking hate it and some people absolutely love it. And I was wondering why people hated it. And then my hunch was you've already alluded to it that they wanted this to be your Hollywood stories. And so I imagine for you it's probably hard to juggle that because that in itself is one of the most complicated things to understand the Hollywood show business fame part of this equation. And so if it were me, I'd be like, that's not what I'm trying to share with you. Like do you want to fucking know me or not? Because it's not about that. But then on the outside I would go, but also it's so much of you. How could it not be?

[Josh Brolin]

If somebody says I didn't learn anything about him, they're saying something very specific. And they're saying I didn't get spoon fed the People magazine, that I was expecting some hot gossip, which is okay. Like I said, I don't have a judgment of that. That's not what this book is and there is no juggling of it.

[Dax Shepard]

I wanted to know, did you have to step over the hurdle of wanting the book to be as well written as Cormac McCarthy like that you want so bad for it to be the thing that you loved so much? I think that's one of my continual hurdles when I write.

[Josh Brolin]

Well, first of all, if you're writing then you're one of.0001% people who are actually writing their own memoirs or writing their own books. When I found found out how many people don't write their own memoirs, I go, but that's a biography. Yeah, you got paid for.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, right, right.

[Josh Brolin]

And the writer didn't. So that's a cheat. And I understand. I had a great back and forth with Sharon Graham Norton and I absolutely fudgeing, adored her. She's kind of mom ask mischievous but super honest, fearless but vulnerable. Said something during and then was looking for me afterwards to say. I didn't mean to suggest this. So conscientious. 77, 78. I was like that fucking broad is great.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. No, she's a gangster.

[Josh Brolin]

But her book, legendary icon. So I do want to know what happened in those nine days that she was married to Greg Allman. Why Was it only 9 days? Take your time.

[Dax Shepard]

I want to hear about every day.

[Josh Brolin]

Every day? Yeah, every hour. Absolutely kind of thing.

[Dax Shepard]

But you journaled throughout the day.

[Josh Brolin]

I was in Austin, Texas and people paid for a book signing and then a picture and all that. And some guy came up to me and like of all the things he could have said, he said, you're too young to write a memoir. And then he left. I was like, who the fuck was that dude?

[Dax Shepard]

How old was he?

[Josh Brolin]

He was like 40 or something. 45. But he's right. It's like if I were to write a tell all, I would at the.

[Dax Shepard]

End of my life in Hollywood.

[Josh Brolin]

But going back to what you said, writing a good book that's well written meant everything to me.

[Dax Shepard]

But it can be daunting.

[Josh Brolin]

It can be incredibly daunting if you care about the writing style and you care about somebody who's written thousands and thousands and thousands of pages. Me, I probably have 91 full journals now. I've written several books. I've written several books of poetry. I've written a novella and I just.

[Dax Shepard]

Put it in a corner way too long.

[Josh Brolin]

Screenplays. Never wrote a screenplay.

[Dax Shepard]

Wait, I thought the submarine in the lake next to Florida.

[Josh Brolin]

No, that was a joke. That was always to break the silence and to create a discomfort that made me really happy.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God. That's not even clear to me in the book, by the way. You got me poorly written.

[Monica Padman]

Wait, so what's happening?

[Dax Shepard]

This comes up multiple times. So to set the stage, the structure of the book is like two page stories, four page story. It's not linear. We're bouncing back and forth from childhood to Goonies to 2023 to this to that.

[Josh Brolin]

It's all over the map, as your memories do.

[Dax Shepard]

And I think for people on the first approach, it probably is a little off putting. It's not clicking into their normal format. But I will say, if you stick with it, I do think when I put it down last night, I'm like, I have the whole picture. It didn't come out in the way that I'm used to it coming out. But it's almost like a Nolan movie. I tell people, don't try to figure it out. It'll all of a sudden be clear to you.

[Josh Brolin]

And Nora takes you and it says, well, is it this or is it that? If you spent all your time watching a Nora going, is it a comedy?

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Josh Brolin]

Or is it a satire? Or did this really happen? Is this based in truth? And you're looking at your phone, Just fucking follow it, right? Just go yourself to the craziness and the messiness that life always seems to hand out. The thing is, is that we're always trying to get away from it. What if we just sit in it for a while? It can be super funny, it can be super absurd, it can be super emotional.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, that's our desire to control. I'm scared because I don't know what this is. I can't enjoy this because I don't.

[Josh Brolin]

Know what this is.

[Dax Shepard]

The submarine.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So this comes up in many different things. He's telling Oliver Stone about this idea. He has the audacity to tell Joel and Ethan Cohen about this, that you.

[Monica Padman]

Have an idea for a script.

[Dax Shepard]

And he says, the script is 357 pages long, and it's about a Russian submarine, and he has a budget. He doesn't know how much. A Russian sub. I thought all this was real. And I'm like, how dare you? You tell the Cohen brothers about you. What do you. They only direct. They write. Why are you even selling? I know. It's great now that I know it, but I didn't get the joke. I can admit out loud, I would say.

[Josh Brolin]

And they don't talk. There's no small talk. I mean, now there is. Maybe because we're close and all that, but we would sit around and nobody would be saying anything. And what's the one thing that you don't say on set as an actor?

[Dax Shepard]

I have a script, especially to them. Tarantino. We could list the three worst people.

[Josh Brolin]

So we would literally sit there, nothing. And I'd be like, I'm so bored right now. And I'd go, hey, listen, I don't want to be inappropriate here. I have an amazing script. I didn't want to bring it up, but I think now is the right time. And then you'd hear, like, one clearing or throw, and then I would go off, literally until we shot.

[Monica Padman]

That's hilarious.

[Dax Shepard]

And Joel or Ethan, I don't know, said like, yeah, the submarine part sounds scary. And he goes, exactly. Think King Kong.

[Monica Padman]

Performance art. You're just doing this around town. Directors.

[Josh Brolin]

That's exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm, like, kind of reanalyzing every single time I read that. I'm like, God, he really thought this was a great thing. And it's the town next to Fargo. So the movie would be called Wichita Papa or whatever.

[Josh Brolin]

No, it was while Patton, which is actually. I had to look up. I was like, what's next to Fargo? Okay, but it's not Fargo. But it's the town next to Fargo. So dumb. Oh, that's. It's like, how can you waste somebody's time? Torturously waste somebody's time. Wait, But I do want to say this, that going back there is a point in writing. Had I just started writing, I think that it would have been affected by my need to be perceived like somebody else. And I wasn't because there was some point in the trajectory of my writing that I found my voice. And I know it's my voice. I gave this book while I was writing it to only two people. They're both in New York, they're both Jewish, they're both neurotic. Zev Boro and Ethan, Ethan Cohen. And they both were super honest with me. And Zev said, if for nothing else, this book is 100% you.

[Dax Shepard]

That was the objective.

[Josh Brolin]

It's not me trying to be this. And somebody goes, oh, Bukowski or so, oh, Hunter S. Thompson. There were so many influences and people I tried to copy for years. And you go, no, that's me. That's how I write.

[Dax Shepard]

I think it's kind of actually a. Well, there's two things. One of the things in the room is ego. We'll keep that aside for a second. The other thing is a really beautiful and sweet part of us, which is like, I read Bukowski and I felt a connection and I felt being seen in a way that if I'm gonna do this, I'll really want that for other people. So part of it's like a really kind of altruistic and beautiful task, which is like, if I'm gonna do this, I want it to do the thing the things did to me.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But now I have to think of those things that did that to me. That's in my mind. And that can be really arresting.

[Josh Brolin]

But that wasn't necessarily the case with me. The greatest exercise of this book was Clari find. There's a great story about Raymond Carver. And Raymond Carver wrote, I think, Cathedral that he won the Pulitzer for and short stories. And it was a sober.

[Dax Shepard]

He's my all time favorite.

[Josh Brolin]

Just the best and the most clear. You know, you think of Hemingway, short stories, same thing, very, very clear, but 100% them. And when his editor, he was writing and they were like, look, you know, you have sentences that are roughly 16 word sentences. Let's try to bring it down to 12. It was like, why the you trying to change my sentence? That's what I want to write. And he was like, yeah, but if we can just economize it and get it down to 12. And then that volley, he finally said, get out of here. I don't want you as my editor anymore. And a new editor came in and he said, okay, so look, roughly these sentences or 12 word sentences, let's see if we can get it down to nine.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Josh Brolin]

And they were right. Because when you start slashing and when you start taking all the vividity of it and the colorizing and all that kind of shit. And you go, what am I trying to convey here? And try to do it in the clearest way possible. There's a story toward the beginning where it's a little four year old kid and all this chaos is going around the mother throwing cups through the window at the father and all that. But it's written like a Dr. Seuss story.

[Dax Shepard]

I took a picture and sent it to Monica of the book, because you used Susian. And the day before we were on the fact check and I said one of my favorite terms is Susian. And literally within 14 hours, I read.

[Josh Brolin]

In your book, favorite writer of all time.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, we were watching Grinch, you soul Christmas with the kids the other day.

[Josh Brolin]

It's the greatest.

[Dax Shepard]

And I go, this guy really needs to be held in the same regard as Salvador Dali or something. He's like one of the great thinkers of all time, the great artists of all time. The language, the image, everything. He's an artist on a level of Picasso. Okay, so my favorite. There's some fun Hollywood ones, actually that I like. The punchline of Goonies is a really good one. And I think people will know this lore of Goonies, which is the kids in Goonies were not allowed. Hopefully this is the half of the Goonies you saw. I don't know if you remember, there's a point where they threw out the.

[Josh Brolin]

One thing that, you know.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, we interviewed him as our favorite interview.

[Josh Brolin]

He was.

[Monica Padman]

We had him on. It was the best episode of the year by far.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God. It's the only episode I've ever made my children listen to. He's so special. Is he special?

[Josh Brolin]

And then took off back to China for 20 years. 25 years doing fight coordinating and all this. Saw crazy rich Asians and said, well, maybe I should go back and try it again.

[Dax Shepard]

What a story. Within a year, he was on a boat coming here as a refugee and then he was on a first class flight to Sri Lanka to work with Harrison Ford.

[Josh Brolin]

It's like crazy.

[Dax Shepard]

The worst luck in the history, history of mankind and the best look.

[Josh Brolin]

And I was there in the beginning of that. Like literally his family would be on the side, you know, trying to understand.

[Dax Shepard]

What the problem was going on in this country. Yeah, okay, so famously, they built the whole pirate ship and they didn't want the kids to see it. Do you know this lore?

[Monica Padman]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you're the one they wanted. When the kids came down the water slide and came out of the water and saw that pirate ship that they had built, that they would get their real reactions. That was the goal. Very, very cool idea.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah, great idea.

[Dax Shepard]

And so what happens?

[Josh Brolin]

Okay, so basically they kept us away from it. A practically built ship on the biggest stage in all of Hollywood, which was on Warner Brothers, filled with water, 110 foot high, long ship. And they blindfolded us and they finally let us. And we tried to see it, and there was no way. And there was security outside and they backed us in. And then they said, look, we're going to put you underwater. We have speakers underwater, which didn't exist. It was like some high tech thing. And then we went under and they said, we're going to say, 3, 2, 1. We want you guys to come up, turn around and see the ship. And we want that organic reaction. And finally we went under and we go, three, two, one, go. And we all came up and turned around and I saw it and I went, no. It was one of the. I was like, holy. Whatever. I said it was the most organic reaction.

[Dax Shepard]

Think about the amount of work it took to get that first reaction.

[Josh Brolin]

Basically brawling up the shot. What? Do it again.

[Monica Padman]

Really funny.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, this is fun. Because Damon famously turned down Avatar and he was offered 10% of gross. This is now a really fun story about Matt Damon.

[Josh Brolin]

Really?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

I turned down Avatar.

[Dax Shepard]

That's why I bring it up.

[Monica Padman]

What?

[Josh Brolin]

I never knew that Matt turned down Avatar with a.

[Dax Shepard]

On the phone call.

[Josh Brolin]

10%.

[Dax Shepard]

10% of gross for all. So this is literally a Hundreds of millions of dollars.

[Josh Brolin]

Literally.

[Dax Shepard]

Literally. Few people can remember a time when they go, no, thank you. And that resulted in a $200 million.

[Josh Brolin]

Loss of income, maybe more. That's crazy.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. You didn't know that?

[Josh Brolin]

I did not know.

[Dax Shepard]

Isn't that.

[Josh Brolin]

And I love that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. And he has a great attitude about.

[Josh Brolin]

Because you don't know.

[Dax Shepard]

You don't know.

[Josh Brolin]

I mean, one of the things that I look back at, like Keith Ledger was supposed to do no country and then dropped out at some point. And then they looked and looked and everybody wanted it. And they said, no, we have a very specific guy. And then I auditioned for it and I sent the video in and they said, who lit it? And all that kind of. And it wasn't until I got. Who was it? Matt. Matt was supposed to do Milk. Then he had a scheduling conflict. And then Sean Penn, who I had just spent time with in Canada, said, what about Josh? Wow. So it's. It's always. I was supposed to do Birdman. I pulled out A birdman. Because I needed to go see my son, who was living in Thailand at the time. And then that ended up being Edward Norton.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my goodness.

[Dax Shepard]

Jurassic Park. Chris Pratt.

[Josh Brolin]

I just talked to Pratt the other day.

[Dax Shepard]

Walk me.

[Monica Padman]

Wait, you were gonna be him?

[Josh Brolin]

It wasn't. I was gonna be him. It was gonna be me.

[Dax Shepard]

He was gonna play Chris Pratt.

[Josh Brolin]

Chris told me when we did Avengers together, we were sitting there talking to each other about whatever kids, and he goes, yeah. When I show showed up, it was your face on all the drawings, which happened to me for Deadpool 2, which was supposed to be Brad Pitt at some point. And I remember going and seeing all the drawings for Deadpool do and seeing all Brad's face. And I was like, sorry, I'm cheaper.

[Dax Shepard]

How would you like the Brad Pitt mic version?

[Monica Padman]

Jesse Eisenberg was just talking about this with Adventureland because it was supposed to be Michael Cera. And he just spent the whole shoot being like, I'm not Michael Cera. I'm not Michael ceramic panicking the whole time.

[Dax Shepard]

They wanted Michael Zara and they didn't get him. And now I'm here.

[Josh Brolin]

Is that the one he directed?

[Monica Padman]

No, Adventureland was Greg Mottola.

[Josh Brolin]

Oh, got it. Right, right, right, right, right.

[Dax Shepard]

The one he just directed is fantastic.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah, I heard it's really good.

[Dax Shepard]

It's really, really good. It's really interesting and original.

[Josh Brolin]

Okay, back to the book. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So there is fun. My own selfish curiosity. And I'm glad you developed a relationship with him, but you have this funny beginning and end to Nick Nolte. Explain the first time you saw him to Monica.

[Josh Brolin]

My editor. No, Noah Eaker at HarperCollins, who's been really wonderful. And he didn't suggest a lot during the ride. I thought there was going to be this whole, you need to change this and flip this into this. And it wasn't but one suggestion he did make. Because I wrote the story about how I had gotten into a thing with my wife at the time. And I was going down Columbus Avenue with just pants on, no shoes, no shirt, kind of out of my mind. And I looked over and there was this guy sitting at this cafe, and it turned out to be Nick Nolte, who I recognized. He had no reason to recognize me.

[Dax Shepard]

And like Monica, he hadn't seen Goonies.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah, exactly. It was like Nick and Monica. But I remember a slight smile on his face, and it was almost like, get ready, kid. Like, it gets way.

[Dax Shepard]

And I would have thought the same thing as, like, he saw in this young shirtless man. That looks familiar.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Josh Brolin]

I saw my future and he saw his past or whatever, whatever it was. So my editor said, is there a follow up to that? And I go, there's actually several follow ups to that. And then I chose the Night Watch story where I'm cutting off my thumb. Part of the reason that I chose that it was because this guy who hadn't gone anywhere for a long time, had these moments during that 22 years. Night Watch or Flirting with Disaster, where it could have been a big hit and then it wasn't necessarily. Flirting with Disaster was a really revered and is still a revered movie.

[Dax Shepard]

My top three comedies I listed all.

[Josh Brolin]

The time, but not a lot of people have seen it. Have you ever seen Flirting?

[Monica Padman]

I have seen that. It is unbelievable.

[Josh Brolin]

It's an unbelievable movie.

[Monica Padman]

Watch it. Maybe. And I loved it.

[Josh Brolin]

Mary Tyler Moore, George Seagull, Patty Arat, Patricia arquette, Ben Stiller, T.A. leone, Richard Jenkins.

[Dax Shepard]

Richard Jenkins kind of steals. He's your lover in the movie.

[Josh Brolin]

He's my lover.

[Dax Shepard]

He's my lover in the movie.

[Josh Brolin]

And that was a moment, you know, it was like, I'm acting with Nick Nolte.

[Dax Shepard]

But you say when you're in this scene with him, he wants to breathe with you. When that scene happening, he's actually not Nick Nolte. The magic is real.

[Josh Brolin]

And when you're looking in somebody's eye and you don't see them, and that's whether it be the book, whether it be acting. Even though I didn't grow up in Hollywood, my dad was an actor. There was a celebrity thing in it because he went from total unknown to Marcus Welby, M.D. which was basically like the friends of its time. So there was all this attention and how he dealt with that attention, there was a lot of irritability and a lot of confusion. And, you know, you have to go do this and you have to be this and you have to present your wife. It was not great.

[Dax Shepard]

Didn't come natural to him.

[Josh Brolin]

So there was nothing about it in that way that was attractive to me. But behaviorally and I think if you go back into this book, you go, oh, it was so behaviorally chaotic for me as a kid or my brother as a kid that of course I would be obsessed with why people do what they do and what a great way to explore that in acting.

[Dax Shepard]

That was the toehold for you.

[Josh Brolin]

That was it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

It's a version of a psychology.

[Josh Brolin]

Totally. That's exactly what it is. It's like, would you become a psychologist just to Be around people who are constantly talking about this thing that is endlessly interesting to me, or experientially be inside of it. And then you're with Nick Nolte and you're like, this is crazy. Nick ended up saving my life. Later there was a whole relationship.

[Dax Shepard]

You ping pong?

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah. Well, he's a ping pong kind of guy.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I only know the lore. Never met him. I've heard some. The best, almost impossible to believe stories about him.

[Josh Brolin]

I mean, literally walk into his house and you go, nick, are you there? And he'd go. And you go, I guess he's here, you know.

[Dax Shepard]

And then you go, is he like an armchair chemist? He's like growing things.

[Josh Brolin]

No, that's what I mean. So you'd go in the back room or whatever, past the living room, and he'd be sitting there looking into a microscope and studying his blood. He like six bandits on his arms. You go, hey, man. And by the way, not on drugs. Not no. Sober. Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

But he has also partaken in drugs. He has? Yeah. Because I've heard some fantastic stories.

[Josh Brolin]

He has.

[Dax Shepard]

I got left with a few questions and I want to touch in on my absol. Favorite zone you get into in these many different stories. I have a favorite story in the book.

[Josh Brolin]

Oh, great.

[Dax Shepard]

By a landslide.

[Josh Brolin]

I'd be so interested to know.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Mull over whether you have a guess before we get to that.

[Josh Brolin]

I do have a guess.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. You're raised on this crazy ranch. Life's nuts. You guys moved to Santa Barbara. This is where you get involved with the Cedo rats. We know about that. We talked about that the last time.

[Josh Brolin]

Created the cedar rats.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm sorry, Created proprietary recipe of rats. But mom was involved, you see. She was like one of the lead people in a pyramid scheme that was just kind of raining mind money. Yeah, but I need more info. What was the.

[Josh Brolin]

Do you know the pyramid scheme?

[Dax Shepard]

I know what a pyramid scheme is.

[Josh Brolin]

Well, there was the pyramid scheme of the seventies.

[Dax Shepard]

What was that?

[Josh Brolin]

And it was the beginning. It was the first one. And what you do is if you have the ability to kind of. Whether you'd say manipulate, but she was so good at cold calling people and saying, hey, if you give $5,000 to this pyramid scheme. So if you have eight people on the bottom, that works itself to six people, four people, two people, one person. And then once you get more people on the bottom, you get money has been accumulated in that pyramid. And then you start a new pyramid. She would have 20 pyramids going at once she could call 100, 200 people a day and get people involved.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

So she was getting that money, one bag after another, dumping bags of money on the table. She would come in with literally grocery bags full of money. And then she'd dump it. I can see it right now, it was right on the side of her bed. And she'd dump it and she'd say, count. So I counted. I count 50 grand. And then at some point, she was put on a hit list. Ultimately she found was the third person on the list. And the first two people had not been killed, but had been severely beaten.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Josh Brolin]

And those are the people who didn't get their money back.

[Dax Shepard]

Also, simply because I'm obsessed with money. It's like the whole time I'm reading the book, I'm like, what is mom doing for a living? It's like, where does this ranch come from?

[Josh Brolin]

My dad.

[Dax Shepard]

Your dad. Okay. And then this pyramid. So then a windfall of money, which is fascinating. And then you're stealing a good deal of it. Maybe six grand of it. You found. Yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

While you were counting, you were so.

[Josh Brolin]

I knew it was around there somewhere. And when you're a 13 year old kid, you're not even 13. 12 year old kid who has this pension for addictions. Yes. That you don't even know about yet. And then you're taking each piece of furniture, saying there's got to be a hollow spot in the floor or whatever. And then finally hearing that chunk, chunk or a piece of wood go rock hard and falls out. And you're like, yes. And I paid her back.

[Dax Shepard]

You did.

[Josh Brolin]

After I did. Goodies. I gave her a check for six grand and she didn't know what it was for. Did she know it was gone because she had money coming in and out.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. It's like these cartels, people, they lose hundreds of millions of dollars.

[Josh Brolin]

She was a drug dealer.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Josh Brolin]

She was a kingpin.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And I just can't imagine anything more exciting than being 12 years old and having access to six grand and how much fun me and my friends would have had.

[Josh Brolin]

Oh, my God. Mike Herbert, who's still one of my closest friends, he looked older. So he would go to the drum shop or he would go to this Mustache Herb estate. The Herb estate. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Okay. So the times I like the book the most is when you're telling on yourself.

[Josh Brolin]

That makes sense.

[Dax Shepard]

It's crazy how that's the most beautiful part of people.

[Josh Brolin]

It is the most beautiful part. Accountability.

[Dax Shepard]

It's just so counterintuitive.

[Josh Brolin]

To some. Most people, not all.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I guess.

[Josh Brolin]

A.

[Dax Shepard]

Was that stuff hard to write? Or has our 30 years in AA helped us get to a point where we know we'll be loved on the other side of that? Was it hard?

[Josh Brolin]

It's hard after you do it and you put it out there and somebody says, this is the worst book I've ever read in my life. And you go, huh. But ultimately it's even better because then you start to realize the thing that you've learned early on in the program is. Has everything to do with them and not about me. They're like, I don't want you to reveal shit, man. That means I have to reveal shit.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Josh Brolin]

And if I have to reveal shit, I don't want to do that.

[Dax Shepard]

We just talked about this. Or the story I've been telling myself, which is no one will love me if I tell these things might be incorrect because you're doing it and people love you. And so it's very threatening to the core story they've been telling.

[Josh Brolin]

Power of example within massive discomfort. I love the idea of anybody, even with acting, you know, you're like, hey, you got a scene coming up. We have to cry. So I think about my dead grandmother. Never made me cry. So crisis mode puts me in a different place now. If I think of a mother lifting a car off her kid, like, even when I say it, forget it. Same, same, that's it. I'm done. If I think of people who go beyond this design of themselves that they feel that they have to adhere to the betterment of humanity, I lose powerful.

[Dax Shepard]

Me too. So the tragedy that makes most people cry to me, feels very expected. Of course that person died, and of course this happened. Life sucks. And it's going to get worse when people are.

[Josh Brolin]

Can't say that in front of my eyes.

[Dax Shepard]

Genuine.

[Monica Padman]

No, I get it.

[Dax Shepard]

When they're genuine and earnest and sincere in the face of how risky it is to be, I lose it, bro.

[Josh Brolin]

I lose my.

[Dax Shepard]

When someone's sincere and earnest and they do it out, I'm like, thank you so much. The being earnest and beautiful in this world where people are going to call you all kinds of things for being that way is, oh, that's it.

[Josh Brolin]

My daughter had, you know, whatever fears, she did it. Last night we went to the ice cream shop. I said, go ask for another spoon. She dropped her spoon and she was looking back, and I could see building up the whole, oh, my God, I'm gonna have to go in there. What if it doesn't come out right. And I said, don't think. Just go. And then finally she went and she did it and she came back with a smile. Smile on her face. Dude, forget it. Bravery. Just bravery.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so the part of the book I don't relate to you on, and I've really been spared this, and it's the thing that really probably gave me the most compassion for your story is I never was out there in the bowels of my addiction with kids. I had my mom as my voice, right? Like, I would be at the depths of some deplorable.

[Josh Brolin]

You didn't have kids yet.

[Dax Shepard]

But I would think of mom.

[Josh Brolin]

Forget it. I would have been a dead God.

[Dax Shepard]

If my mom saw me buying this crack right now. And, you know, like, oh, my God, what would my mom think? I think I know what shame I've carried around. But so many of your stories, when it is crazy and you're in your craziness and you're getting stabbed in Costa Rica, of course you're like, I have fucking kids. I have a son I love. I have a daughter. Why aren't I with them? That layer of disappointment in yourself and shame of that I have been spared. And I'm just so compassionate to. It must have been so painful to be in those states, just thinking, why aren't I with my kids?

[Josh Brolin]

I was 19 years old when Debbie got pregnant, and we were living at 2020 Beechwood Villa. Just the worst apartment down here on Beechwood Canyon. And then, by the way, when I got off the freeway at vine, then we moved from 2020 Villa, once we found out we were going to have Trevor went to Hollywood Towers.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

And then we went over to Kenwood in lo. You know, we just didn't have any money. And that was a really shitty part of town. Just like gunshots all the time and all that stuff. But I was looking at 14 years in prison, and I'd fought six cops, so six felonies. Basically thought I was Bruce Lee. And they taught me a big like, yeah, I told you that story. It's just the dumbest story. Literally most embarrassing story ever. But great. So again, you're in the habit, you get sober, and then you're like, okay, it's okay. And then you're responsible. And then you go back and go, God, this sobriety feels like a ball and chain. I want to have fun. My life. I'm 23 years old. I should be having fun. You convince yourself in all those ways, and then you go back out and it doesn't get worse. It just gets gnarly. It was always gnarly. But I will have been a parent from 20 years old, and my youngest right now will graduate when I'm 70.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Josh Brolin]

So I will have been a parent my entire adult life. So I don't know. Life without kids.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Josh Brolin]

So whether it's me going off and whatever this messy trajectory is of a human. Human being, which we're all messy, and you just have to accept these moments, not that they're okay. It's like people saying they needed to relapse in order to find out. I don't agree necessarily. I relapsed. And did I learn anything else? No. But I chose to do it, and I take full accountability for it. There's stuff that I haven't written in the book that my family and I talk about everything. So it's all open and it's all out there. But there's things that I've done that really put my family in jeopardy. And I always tried to keep it separate. I tried to live this life, and then I tried to live that life.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, you have that goal. But obviously, thing is more powerful than you.

[Josh Brolin]

When it would cross over and bleed over and things would happen, you just go, this is awful. But no matter what I did, whether it was involving addiction, because it wasn't always. There's a story in the book where I go to Portland, Oregon, to be discovered. Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

For My Own Private Idaho.

[Josh Brolin]

My own Private Idaho. I stayed in a flop house. I mean, I stayed in a true whorehouse. There were, like, hookers going in and out. And I'm reading Rambo at the time, trying to be.

[Dax Shepard]

Let me tell Monica too. It's a Gus Van Sant movie about male prostitutes, River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves. Beautiful movie. So he's like, I don't know what it's like to be a male prostitute. Maybe I should go figure it out.

[Josh Brolin]

I can't get an audition for this thing. Okay. I have enough money to fly to Portland, Oregon, and I'm gonna walk around Boystown in Portland, Oregon. And Gus Van Sant obviously hangs out in boys.

[Dax Shepard]

He's probably scouting for the real deal.

[Josh Brolin]

Scouting for the movie.

[Dax Shepard]

This is your camping trip.

[Josh Brolin]

And he's gonna see me and he's gonna go, holy.

[Monica Padman]

Wait a minute.

[Josh Brolin]

Have you ever thought about acting?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

And I go, I have, actually. I'm doing a movie right now. No way. I'm totally available. And by the way, I have to provide for a wife and child right now. So anyway, I Ended up. I ended up. Yeah, but not like this. We end up in the adult booths and you got glory holes, big dicks.

[Dax Shepard]

Come through the wall.

[Josh Brolin]

I went full into it, freaking out, and then also thinking, what am I doing?

[Dax Shepard]

You have the right ratio of delusion and reality. So it's like you're delusional enough to go up there, but you're also there going, I'm a fucking fraud. I don't know what I'm doing. This isn't accomplishing anything. I suck. I have a kid. Why aren't I at home?

[Josh Brolin]

That's it. And by the way, that's not the first time I did. I did it with Oliver Stone for the Doors. Then I heard Val Kilmer got it, but I was walking around looking like Jim Morrison.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure, sure.

[Josh Brolin]

In Tucson, Arizona. Like, I thought somehow it would get. It's so sad that the irony is, and I think what the book suggests is, you never know, man, if you keep putting yourself there, you don't know what your life has in store. You just have to keep doing that. You keep having to lift the car off the child. You have to keep being brave. You have to be willing to go through the meat grinder and get ground and ground and ground and ground and ground, because you don't know what's going to be sculpted out of it. So the only time I get nominated so far, Gus Van Sant.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Josh Brolin]

I ended up doing W with Oliver Stone.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

How crazy. That's insane.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you tell them, Oliver? Hey, man. I was, like, wandering around acting like Jim Morrison.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah, he.

[Dax Shepard]

He didn't care.

[Josh Brolin]

No, he doesn't. And I loved working with him. And I love him. And I don't say that just to say it, but great working relationship. I think he was slightly afraid of me, which was probably a good thing.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. It takes a lot to scare him.

[Josh Brolin]

It takes a lot to scare him. And he's usually this guy that's creating chaos. Talk about creating a vortex that he controls. There was a great. Can I tell you this quick story? Okay. During W, there was a thing and Richard Dreyfus and I don't know what Richard was going. I don't know if he was sober. Not sober. I think he was sober. But we had a seven page scene and we chose to eat sandwiches. We chose along the lines of doing this movie. We thought. I think he uses his hands a lot. So he's eating potato chips or eating sandwiches. Are always popping a candy or whatever. We had a scene between me and Dreyfus and it was just Seven pages of going back and forth informationally, and I'm eating a sandwich during the time. And I'd say my first line, I go, you know, so, Vice, what's today hold? And he goes. And I go, this is literally the first line. And he goes, what? I go, it's your line, man. And he goes, what do you mean?

[Dax Shepard]

What do you mean, dude?

[Josh Brolin]

It was just that over. And every time we did the take, he would stare at me. And then Oliver comes in. He goes, what's the problem? I go, I don't know. I don't know what's happening. Study my ass off of the scene. I don't know what's happening. And the drivers were still steady there. And he goes, what? And I go, what do you mean, what, dude? I don't understand what you're talking about. It's not a monologue. There's a dialogue. I'll hold this up so you can read it. He was like, why would you do that? I go, so you can speak. And I didn't know. I thought it was like one of those Alan Font things where I was like, definitely being punk.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I wouldn't know if he was trying to get control over me.

[Josh Brolin]

I don't know.

[Dax Shepard]

Did he not know his lines?

[Josh Brolin]

And you never know with actors because that goes on all the time. I got mad. And then Oliver was like, no, I can't have you getting mad. I can't. You're getting emotional. You can't get emotional. Go over there. And then they're yelling at each other. I didn't know what was happening. Yeah, I did not. I still, to this day, it's either Dreyfus is a genius or something was going on.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. We are supported by All State. Some people just know they could save hundreds on car insurance by checking All State first. Like, you know, check that you have all the ingredients for a recipe before you start cooking dinner, or checking if you need to use the bathroom before you start recording so you don't need to take a break mid show. Checking first is smart, so check all state first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. This content is intended for audiences in the US Only. Savings vary terms apply. All State Fire and Casualty Insurance company and affiliates Northbrook, Illinois.

[D]

New year, new resolutions, and this year on the Best Idea yet podcast, we're revealing the untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with. And we promise you have never heard these before. Ever. Wonder how the iconic Reese's Peanut Butter cup was invented because it was by accident. HB Reese, a former frog salesman.

[Dax Shepard]

True story.

[D]

Stumbled upon the idea after other accidentally burning a batch of peanuts.

[Monica Padman]

Classic.

[D]

Proving that sometimes our best ideas arise from what seem like our biggest mistakes. And Jack, did you know there's a scientific explanation why humans crave that surprising combo of peanut butter and chocolate? I didn't, but it sounds delicious. It is delicious. So if you're looking to get inspired and creative this year, tune in to the best idea yet. You can find us on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're looking for more podcasts to help you start this year off right, check out New Year, New Mindset on the Wondery App. Who knows your next great idea could be an accident that you burned. This is Nick and this is Jack, and we'll see you on the best idea yet.

[E]

On January 5, 2024, an Alaska Airlines door plug tore away mid flight, leaving a gaping hole in the side of a plane that carried 171passengers. This heart stopping incident was just the latest in a string of crises surrounding the aviation management manufacturing giant Boeing. In the past decade, Boeing has been involved in a series of damning scandals and deadly crashes that have chipped away at its once sterling reputation. At the center of it all, the 737 Max, the latest season of Business wars explores how Boeing, once the gold standard of aviation engineering, descended into a nightmare of safety concerns and public mistrust. The decisions, denials and devastating consequences bringing the tide tightened to its knees. And what, if anything, can save the company's reputation now? Follow Business wars on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge. Business wars, the unraveling of Boeing early and ad free right now on Wondery plus.

[Dax Shepard]

Again, back to My favorite part is always when you're telling on yourself. This is a story that could happen to me any given day and it would be a fucking bummer. Your sheep story.

[Josh Brolin]

I knew it.

[Dax Shepard]

You did? It's such a beautiful story. I read it out loud to my girls last night and my wife was listening and she said wow, I can't believe what a great writer he is. I totally want to read that book. Wow, it's such a great story. Super cool and I would love for you to read it. And if you don't want to read it, I'll read it.

[Josh Brolin]

Oh man.

[Dax Shepard]

I want people to hear this story because I think it would make them want to read this book.

[Monica Padman]

It's a good cover too.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah, the COVID was Joey Feldman, who's sober buddy of mine. Okay. Dang. All right.

[Dax Shepard]

This is great because you didn't know you were gonna have to do this.

[Josh Brolin]

No. And by the way, I never wrote down the story. And I did take my younger kids to this very place where this happened. We revisited at the Karang. Let's see if I can pronounce this stuff right.

[Dax Shepard]

When I was reading out loud, I was like, I'm just gonna flub this. They won't know.

[Josh Brolin]

I'll probably flub this to 1999, 2000. My girlfriend was getting minor surgery. I had my 11 year old and my 7 year old with me. We were visiting her in. She kept pushing that we should travel. So we eventually came up with Scotland. I've always had a thing for Ireland, but Scotland never really came up before then. The Isle of Skye is a paradise. I would learn later that most of our ancestry comes from the Highlands of the Isle of Skye. Clan Ross and Clan Reed. Maybe that would explain the feeling we had when we were there. The kids and I had a banter. Where are we going to sleep tonight? I'd yell. To which they'd reply in equal decibels. We don't care. We didn't care. We were carefree and happy. We were Clan Brolin. We were a unit. One day, about five days into a very nomadic vacation, we came across the Karang, A landslip on the northernmost part of Trotter Nish, Isle of Skye, Scotland. There was no car park at that time, but for a little soggy dirt lot along the edge of the road. Everything was new to us there. Everything was a discovery. Clan Brolin just rolling along with whatever came along. A trail was barely visible in the distance and from it overlooked a stunning portrait of the valley below. We decided to trek and make use of our whimsy. No water bottle, no idea how long it was. We took off Eden, my 7 year old holding my hand and Trevor bringing up the rear. The walk was precarious at times. Right from the trail's edge shot down hundreds of feet. It seemed in moments I questioned myself and my ability abilities as a parent. What am I doing up here? Why do I do this with little kids? What about a typical playground? Why don't you do what is already set up for children? The trail would even out with the pitch of landscape and we'd be back freely being our lively selves. Sheep are in high population in Scotland. They are everywhere. And here was no exception. Blue dots on white riddled parts of the mountainside. Red dots on others, I surmised the colors sprayed onto their thick wool ripples represented ownership. Farmer Blue and Farmer Red. Fine. I like sheep. So do my kids. We've had sheep. They are funny. Cartoon funny. I suddenly ran toward a flock of them, my arms flailing. I thought it'd make my kids chuckle, watching them run down a hill, then up another. The sheep were scared, but no harm, no foul. My children laughed more at me than at them. Our papa's crazy, and I loved living up to the legend I imagined myself to be in their minds. We love crazy, Papa. As I stopped running and waving my hands and just started to turn around toward my kids, I heard a snap. I didn't know what it was. Then, as I refocused on the herd beyond, now running up a hillside, there was one whose legs were dragging behind it, the front paws desperately scooting the body forward in fits and starts. Poppy, what happened to that one? I jogged down to where the flock had been and the lamb was still there, struck, struggling frenetically. The closer I got, the more it tried to scamper away, but it couldn't. Something wasn't working in its body. I hoped it was in shock because of the sudden change in pitch. I hoped that maybe the sheep's body had temporarily spasmed and frozen. I put one hand on the back of its neck to try to calm it, and the other. I slowly pulled down the length of its spine. Vertebra. Vertebra. Vertebra. Vertebra. The sheep let out a yell. It was a screech of pain. We were two miles away from the car. That part of its back had collapsed. It moved. Something is broken. I've been raised with wild animals my whole life. Bobcats bit my cheek until it bled. And I've cleaned the cages of wolves, mountain lions and bobcats since I can remember. I know how to deal with crisis. I would have been a good soldier. I'm calm under copious amount amounts of stress. I looked over my shoulder to my kids. They were staring at me, waiting for a sign of how to react. Stay there, I told them. Please stay there. I don't know what to do. I was kidding. I was making a joke. This goddamn sheep's back broke. How the did that happen? It was only meant as a joke. What do I do? But I kept a face on. I looked around for anyone else on the trail. Nobody. I looked up to the peaks of the Qurang. How the fog was just caressing the tips of him and suddenly felt the cold front of death enter my body. The sheep scooted slightly farther forward and bleeded. I grabbed its body and attempted to swing it onto my shoulders. I couldn't. It was too heavy. I wanted to be that parent who could lift cars to save their child. But no matter how hard I tried to hoist it, it failed. I look back to my kids, who looked sad and anxious but stoic. They had in them that ranch kid grit that didn't allow for an instant reaction. They knew it was going to get worse, and to react now would be premature. Turn your heads. They did. I could break its neck, I thought to myself. One startling snap and it would be out of its misery and pain. What if I weighed it? Would it be better? Where is everyone? I avoided it as long as I could. The sun was getting lower in the sky, and all I knew was that I was going to have to kill this innocent animal. I grabbed its muzzle with my left hand, then brought my right hand over the left side of its head, leveraging my left. I'm going to pull as hard and as fast as I can and it'll go out like a light. One, two. Turn your heads. Cover your ears. They did. One, two, three. I pulled as every organ in my body fell into this hell of my own making. B the Screaming the sheep kept screaming. Its back legs were splayed out and it just screamed and screamed as it kept reaching forward, away from me. It knew. It knew I was here to murder it. There was no sign of physical trauma. None. Can we look? My son yelled over his shoulder. Not yet. I didn't know what to do. My kids were watching me. This was a seminal moment. There was no pride in trying to kill the sheep. There was nothing but shame and inadequacy. I didn't know what I was doing. I should know. I was 31 years old. I grew up on a ranch. I grew up around wild animals. I had to assist in the deaths of animals all the time in our house. House. Cancer. Age. Trauma. I wrapped my hand around the nape of its neck. I told it I was sorry. I was sorry. I didn't know what to do. I had killed wounded animals before. A stork on a beach with a broken neck. Birds flying into windows. Who could never fly away again. I put my dog down when he was riddled with cancer. I should know how to do this. We were 50ft from the edge of the cliff. I could throw it off, but what if it survived? I don't know. Know what's down there. What if there's hay or a soft bog. I looked up and the other sheep were watching me from afar. My daughter was crying by now. It was a soft cry, a silent cry. Just tears. My son put his arm around her. Ranch kids consoling each other through each of nature's traumas. But this was because of me. Do they think if I kill this sheep that I would kill them? Not now, but at any point in their lives? If I do this, will it always be living somewhere under their skin, itching at them? I dragged the sheep up the hill while it continued to bleat and try and hold its ground with its front hooves. There was a loose rock. It was an old rock with a layer of micia and a slight fur of moss covering it. I picked it up and there were two sharp edges visible. I ran my hand over them. They were as sharp as they looked. I imagined the sheep telling me to put it out of its misery. But I knew that wasn't the case. It had no say in the matter. It was all in my head. The truth is, we were all dying on that land slip. But soon one of us would be dead. My aim had to be right on. Turn your heads. Cover your ears. My daughter wiped away the tears on her face with the backside of her hand, then put the palms of her hands over her ears. My son followed suit. I lifted the rock above my head. One eye stared up at me from near my feet. The grass along the trail was a deep green. I imagined blood on it. I tried to prepare myself. I am a killer. I kill innocent beings. I'm not funny. There is nothing funny about me. Don't think. Aim. Save this animal from the pain I caused it. Aim. Please, God, please let me get it right. I stand tall. The rock suspended above me. Thunk. A d dull sound. It's moving. Please, God, keep your heads turned. Small bursts of wind came. Lift, thunk. Lift, thunk. Lift, crack. Silence. The wind is picking up. My children are cold. I am cold. The world is cold. I feel my children inside me. I see their pain through me. I feel for the pulse of the animal. Silence. Except for the winds, none of us move. I am looking down. My children are looking away. The sheep is dead. We stand for a long, long time. We stand there to this day.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my, that's beautiful. I mean, it's tragic, but it's beautiful.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, man, that's like fucking Carver esque, my friend. What a story for me. Of course, I'm always walking this tightrope of trying to give everyone the most Spectacular experience.

[Josh Brolin]

That's exactly right.

[Dax Shepard]

And I'm irresponsible and it goes wrong. It's so selfish of me that I. I do things and it goes wrong. I mean, I'm reading that Chris and I were in Africa. I see this huge herd of giraffe. I have it on video. It's part of our video video. It worked out. I ran at the giraffes and they all started running, and it was great. One could have tripped if I'd have killed a giraffe trying to entertain this gal.

[Josh Brolin]

And that's with them for the rest of their life.

[Dax Shepard]

And that's the kind of things I play with. And it's irresponsible and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. I gotta live with the fact that, you know it doesn't. Yeah, that one hit me because that's really, really a metaphor for how I've been living my whole life.

[Josh Brolin]

That's it.

[Dax Shepard]

Watch me jump off this thing. Watch me.

[Josh Brolin]

We talked it in the beginning. It's like when you said when one parent leaves, and then you're sitting there and you're having to perform, and then there's always this performative sense of self, like, you're the funny guy, you're the crazy guy, you know, Especially while drinking. I went out with a guy once, he was from Canada, but we were in LA and we had a certain relationship where I was in my craziest phase. And he brought somebody from Canada and flew her down and said, hey, I'm going to take you out with Josh, and you'll see. Buckle up.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

And I, for some reason, I wasn't drinking at that moment, had a day, maybe three days before, and I was like, okay, I'm gonna stay off this sauce for a while. And we went to one of the few times I've been there to the Viper Room, and he said, what do you have to drink? And I go, I'm just gonna have water. And he goes, what do you mean? And I go, I'm not gonna drink tonight. And he said, dude, I brought my friend down from Canada.

[Dax Shepard]

It's time for the Josh.

[Josh Brolin]

And I was like, holy, I'm your clown.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

I'm the jester.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

And I think that's what my mom was. And it was only toward the end of her life that she started to come to terms. She had thought of a really great story for a series, and she wasn't involved in Hollywood at all, but it had to do with chimps and people. And ironically, this series is out now. I called you the first call, literally, and she had thought of that story. And somebody said, I love that idea. Let's develop it. And I remember my mom in the kitchen really profusely crying, which she never did. And I said, what's up? And she said, I've never been taken seriously in my life, so you have the bleed over of that, which is me, some masculine form of that, who's doing that same song. And Nance, who realizes on his own terms, luckily younger, and says, you know what? I don't want to be this jester all the time. I don't want to be the one that people are happy to escape, but they're happy. That exists because they're living life, some version of chaos through me.

[Dax Shepard]

You're living out their fears, weirdly.

[Josh Brolin]

Whatever.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. You're the horror movie they go to.

[Josh Brolin]

I'm the horror movie that they go, that's it. Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

And then under all that is, could we love you just because you exist?

[Josh Brolin]

That's it.

[Dax Shepard]

You don't think so?

[Josh Brolin]

No, I don't think so. I've gotten the same thing from. I understood people who are obese. And you go, hey, we can do this. Or we can do gastro surgery. We can do this, we do that. And they go, no. There's this reticence to work out and all this. And then I got it because I paralleled it with the drinking. Oh. Without your extra weight, you don't exist. It's the thing that people are always talking about. At least it's something.

[Dax Shepard]

Without it, you disappear. Maybe you're invisible.

[Josh Brolin]

And I always felt that about drinking. Whereas I'd go out and it was like, you know what you did last night? I go, no, tell me. And they go, you were nuts. It was so much fun. But then you did this thing and we jumped and you thought you had a parachute on, but you didn't.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

And I lived off that for years.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, well, it's the power of identity we put on ourselves. Like the whole story where you like being the crazy dad and then in one second, you're not the crazy dad. You're a person.

[Josh Brolin]

That's exactly right.

[Monica Padman]

That's all we really are.

[Josh Brolin]

You're just another person.

[Monica Padman]

That's it.

[Josh Brolin]

And can you just find something? It was just terrifying. You get to that place eventually where you can say, I'm okay just with what I have around me, my family, the few friends. I don't have to charm everybody. Not everybody has to like me. It's okay. I'm gonna go write a fucking book.

[Dax Shepard]

This has been incredible. I guess the only thing I wanted from the book. And maybe it'll come in another book, is your mom deserves an explanation. Why is she? That.

[Monica Padman]

That too.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Something happened to her.

[Josh Brolin]

I used to talk to her about it because my mom was in Camarillo State Hospital. She wasn't there for very long, but her sister was in and out of Bellevue for 30 years. Severely alcoholic, really crazy. And I got to know her sister later. But I would ask her, and she said my parents were amazing.

[Dax Shepard]

She was down in Texas. Corpus Christi.

[Josh Brolin]

Corpus Christi, Texas. And she said I'd sneak out my window and my parents would come back. They'd be so worried about me. I would yell at them for waiting up for me. She said I was the chaos. And she very readily admitted that, but a thousand percent, right, Maybe.

[Dax Shepard]

Because, again, her whole thing was she couldn't be vulnerable. So she had power over that story. If it was just her. But I don't know, maybe. Maybe, maybe. I don't know.

[Josh Brolin]

Maybe we don't.

[Dax Shepard]

We may. We may never know. Well, I adore you.

[Josh Brolin]

I adore you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I'm so glad. Thank you for taking your one millionth interview. I got everything I wanted.

[Josh Brolin]

I'm telling you, it's not like the others.

[Dax Shepard]

All right. I love you.

[Josh Brolin]

I love.

[Dax Shepard]

We'll do this again. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Thank you for coming.

[Josh Brolin]

Thank you.

[Monica Padman]

So lovely.

[Dax Shepard]

All right. He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here. She's gotta let him have the facts. We are coming to you live from an apocalypse.

[Monica Padman]

Not live five days late, but five days ago.

[Josh Brolin]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

We were in the midst of an.

[Dax Shepard]

Apocalypse Wild sky this morning. Yeah, I got up really, really early. You know, part of this resolutions biz is I gotta. I gotta wake up so early to get the things done.

[Josh Brolin]

Oh.

[Dax Shepard]

Now that I'm back to writing again in the memoir, after the journal.

[Monica Padman]

Got it.

[Dax Shepard]

So I woke up super early. I checked my emails to see if Delta's school was closed. There was no emails. She was also incredibly excited to go to school. She was out sick the day before, but she could not get there fast enough today because she bought Freddy in Mexico City a fidget spinner with grenades on it.

[Monica Padman]

That's thoughtful.

[Dax Shepard]

And the cutest thing was when we were walking down the street. Street with all these little tiny market stands with selling different stuff. Of course I'm checked out. Right. I can't stand shopping, so I'm just kind of like standing and then she ran over to me and she's like, dad, I need your help. What would a boy like?

[Monica Padman]

Oh.

[Dax Shepard]

So I went over, we looked at this thing and her conclusion after playing with it the whole trip was, it's the best fidget spinner she had ever. Performance wise. She spun it. Watch how long this thing spins. Anyways, we drive to school. School right away, even when the sun came out, because I watched the sun come up and I was like, that is the eeriest sky I've ever seen in la. It's like dark as hell. We get to school, we were, we were early. We were out of the house on time and I was like, oh, I love getting here early. Parking's a breeze. Wow. Parking's really easy.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Walk up to the school. It's closed.

[Monica Padman]

I would have been surprised if it was open.

[Dax Shepard]

Open my phone. 7:20am that cancellation came in, so I was 20, 20 minutes early. So then we drove up to Freddy's at 8 in the morning and gave him that present, which was really, really fun.

[Monica Padman]

Cute.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And then got home and we have a couple different groups staying at the house who have been evacuated.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

People. Yeah. So yesterday at like, I guess two, I guess, or one early, a fire started in the Palisades, which is on the west side, so. So far from us. Normally these fires happen in Malibu.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, Palisades. That's the first for me.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Palisades was new and closer, more inland. And it just kept going and going and going and everyone there had to evacuate. And it's gone. The Palisades is gone. The Palisades village is completely gone.

[Dax Shepard]

All the stores.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow. I was watching late last night in the high school was on fire. I was like, whoa. But the winds were.

[Monica Padman]

They were insane.

[Dax Shepard]

They were insane.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. And. And that's why the fires got really out of control. And apparently they were. That Palisades fire was moving at five football fields a minute.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow. Okay, so five football fields, 500 yards. That's a quarter mile a minute.

[Monica Padman]

Crazy.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

The winds were blowing 60 miles an hour. The embers were like just. Yeah. I don't know if you saw like the. The female newscaster was given thing and she just gets engulfed in embers and she's.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Appropriately so. Panicking.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I was having a moment watching that this woman is in the pit of hell. She is standing.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Across the street from the high school that's on fire. And then the other side of the street is on fire and there's Amber's whipping around everywhere. And she's breathing in tremendous amount of smoke. And of course everyone else is scurrying to get out of there.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

And she is there.

[Monica Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

And I was like, this is the greatest example of like when you have a goal and you want to do something. Like she wants to be a reporter on the fucking ground when the shit's hitting the fan.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So for her, it's one experience and it's. And it just, it illuminated for or illustrated perfectly what your mindset does to your experience in a situation.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I mean, a lot of journalists have a. They chase that. Like that's a part of their personality. I feel like when we had Anderson Cooper on, we talked a little bit about that, that it's. In some ways it's like an addict's brain. Like there's some element of, of chasing a chaos.

[Dax Shepard]

I guess what I, my conclusion was you think a situation is objectively a thing, but really if you want to be there, it's one experience. And if you don't want to be there, it's a completely different experience. The context is identical. It's like I said, if you're. If you're on a football team and you want to tackle the person, you' completely oblivious to the amount of pain you incur because you've chosen to run as fast as you can and tackle the person. If you're sitting on the sidewalk and you're having an ice cream and you're. That's not what you want. You don't expect it. And you get hit with the same velocity. It hurts.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

It doesn't hurt when you want it and it hurts when you don't want it. And it's just so interesting, the power of our brain. So if you want to be in that situation, you're where you want to be and it's all tolerable. And if it's just came up on you out of nowhere, it is a nightmare.

[Monica Padman]

Lights on fire.

[Dax Shepard]

See, she said something like, okay. Like it was a self talk of like, okay, we're in the shit now. It was the attitude of someone that wanted to be there.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I think if you get out, you can then reflect back and have that opinion. But if you're in the hospital, but.

[Dax Shepard]

Even experientially in the inferno. Yeah, that's fascinating to me.

[Monica Padman]

So that happened and then there was a lot, lot of warnings that likely more fires would start popping up in the night because it was supposed to get much worse. The winds were supposed to increase between 10pm and 4am and hit like 100 miles per hour.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

You know, everyone's started, like getting these warnings and stuff. I had this app and yeah, I'm just like staring at the map of LA and just like watching them just pop up all over the place.

[Dax Shepard]

Then it became a two front war, because on the west side of us, it was. Was that. And then Altadena.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

And Bri lives in Altadena.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Did she have to vacuum?

[Dax Shepard]

Come over if you need to. She's like, oh, we got a hotel. Shockingly.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, good.

[Dax Shepard]

And I'm like, I'm watching that thing. I'm like, where are all these people going? Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

[Monica Padman]

Looking at all of this, I was so confused. I was just like, I don't know fires, like, I don't understand them. I don't know where you're supposed to go. If there's a fire on all sides, how do you get anywhere? Yeah, how. How early are you supposed to leave? Should I be going somewhere now, just in case? Because, yes, this Altadena one is on one side of us and at this point is moving into Glendale, which is very, very close to us. And it's like I. I just felt like I have no idea what to do. And it was.

[Dax Shepard]

You were scared.

[Monica Padman]

Very.

[Dax Shepard]

You were very scared.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I was up till three, staring at this thing, worrying. And then I lost power and then I lost cell and Internet and I couldn't communicate with anyone and it was scary.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, sorry. You were scared.

[Monica Padman]

That's okay. Yeah. Sometimes it's hard to be by yourself, but it was fine. Obviously we're fine here. Thank God. We're so lucky to be in a place that we did not have to evacuate. We know people well.

[Dax Shepard]

One of our friends in the Palisade's house burnt to the ground.

[Monica Padman]

Yep. We know people whose houses have burned down, many people who've had to leave.

[Dax Shepard]

I found myself on hour two of watching the coverage myself, getting annoyed with human nature. People must be thinking this all over the country, which is like, how many times do we spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the wake of it and continue to put almost nothing into prevention? I know, I don't understand. Like, is at some point the governor going to go like, we got to cut the shit and get fucking serious about preventing this stuff? Because, I mean, and it'll be expensive, but these start because the winds blow the power lines down, they start a fire.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

We got to get the power lines underground. I don't know that step one, power line Shouldn't. That's going to cost a fortune, but there's no way it's going to cost as much.

[Monica Padman]

Is all that.

[Dax Shepard]

Those houses that were burning in the Palisades, those are like, $40 million houses. The bill on that Palisades thing is going to. It's just going to be gargantuan across the board.

[Monica Padman]

It's like, when we think about where talent and energy is being spent, when the. The city is on fire, you really start evaluating, like, what is the point of all this other extra accoutrement when we can't even get a fire under. It's still. Like, I think the Altadena fire is still at 0% containment.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Like, yeah, it's wild. Even military. I'm like, why? Why?

[Dax Shepard]

No one could fly in it last night. The winds were way too bad to fly. Like, I think they're doing a great job. In fact, I was watching it and I was seeing that, like, already Arizona had deployed a bunch of firefighters. Towns north of us had deployed. They had. You know, they're coordinating all this stuff. And I was like, when you're at a bar saying you hate the fucking government, that's the government. Somebody comes to help.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Thank God there's this huge system in place. They don't have their hands on it now. They're gonna. Without them, the entire city would burn to the ground. You'd have no city. And you go, yeah, good. No government. What the.

[Monica Padman]

And then no repairing it either. Like, exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah. It's like, you hate the government. That's who's come to rescue firefighters.

[Monica Padman]

And then also, even today, just all the landscape workers, like, there's so many people out there, like, trying to clear out. There's a huge tree, that huge. That fell on Los Feliz in Commonwealth. So that whole intersection is completely blocked by a tree. And, like, you see these guys out there, like, trying to get it out you. Yeah, it's. It's wild. It is wild. It felt very end of days.

[Dax Shepard]

It's funny because we had done an episode of Armchair Anonymous yesterday. Yesterday. And we interviewed a nurse who was telling us there was a bomb threat.

[Monica Padman]

Yes, I thought about those.

[Dax Shepard]

And so there was a nursing home that they had to evacuate. Evacuate in Glendale. And there's footage of it, and there's just all these old people in wheelchairs and on beds. And I'm like, again, thank God there's nurses.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God. I know.

[Josh Brolin]

Rescue people.

[Dax Shepard]

Infrastructure.

[Monica Padman]

Yes, yes, I know. Oh, I know. I. I agree. I fully agree.

[Dax Shepard]

That must be Part of the reason they build prisons out in the middle of absolutely nowhere, because what would you do if you had to release all the prisoners?

[Monica Padman]

So scary. That's probably also maybe if they escape, then it's more time to find them before they, like, hit a community. Maybe it's part of also why they're remote.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure, sure, sure. Well, and they're looking for cheap land and no one gives a shit. They don't. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a. Numerous reasons. But I was thinking, like, yeah, what happens if. When you have. When there's a bomb threat at the prison, do they just go, like, tough shit, we're going to ride this out. The guards are going to leave. Like, what happens? You can't just let inmates out.

[Monica Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Wonder if that's ever happened.

[Monica Padman]

We can't search. Yeah, yeah. We don't have Internet here, so we can't do any searches.

[Dax Shepard]

This is about doing the podcast in 1994.

[Monica Padman]

Regular radio.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. On 4K cameras.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Ignore that part.

[Monica Padman]

But yeah, anyway, it's been. It's been a wild 24 hours.

[Dax Shepard]

Very eventful.

[Monica Padman]

Very eventful 24 hours in Los Angeles. Oh, and for people who will probably ask, because in today's episode, we reference that we did a commercial and that it's out, but it's not out yet. We did postpone putting it, or the company decided to probably rightfully postpone. So just as nothing else, I mean, what else has happened since?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Nothing really compares.

[Monica Padman]

Nothing beats that, really.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Josh Brolin, I think, lived in Malibu, so that's a ding, ding, ding.

[Dax Shepard]

He did live in Malibu, but I think he relocated.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Still journaling.

[Monica Padman]

Yep, still journaling.

[Dax Shepard]

What are we at? Eight for eight.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Today's eighth, right?

[Dax Shepard]

Is it seventh? Eighth.

[Monica Padman]

Today's eighth. So eight days.

[Dax Shepard]

Eight.

[Monica Padman]

Eight days of journaling. And I'm also day of journaling.

[Dax Shepard]

I wrote down a secret.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Now I have to burn, but I can't because if I. Oh, shit. It would be insensible to burn my journal.

[Monica Padman]

And it interesting because, you know, people were like, make sure you have your stuff ready in case you got to go fast. And I was just sort of like, looking around my apartment and I was like, what do I. Should I take? Like, what is important to me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And all I took was my passport and my medication.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I didn't put anything in there.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I remember I was shooting meeting baby mama in 2005 or six, and Griffith park was on fire and they evacuated all the houses on Los Feliz. Boulevard, one of them being mine. And so Carly called me and said, hey, they're evacuating your thing. You want me to go? What do you want me to grab from the house?

[Monica Padman]

Oh.

[Dax Shepard]

And I was like, everything I've written is on the computer. Grab that. I don't want to lose everything I've written. Yeah, what about. No, just grab that and get the out of there. Did your power go out?

[Monica Padman]

It's out currently.

[Dax Shepard]

It's out currently.

[Monica Padman]

Rob's went out. Yeah, we've been out since much earlier last night.

[Dax Shepard]

7. Yesterday. 7:00pm 7:00pm Yep. What did you guys. Did you light candles and stuff? We did, and then our neighbor's window.

[Josh Brolin]

Flew out of the frame and shattered in the side of our house.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow.

[Monica Padman]

The winds were so.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, they're crazy. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And you could hear it like so loudly as if it was like a thunderstorm.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Fires are observable and they're predictable. You know where they're at, you know which way the wind's blowing. There's some prediction that can be made. The wind's like, where did that come from? Why now? When's the next one? You don't know. And they're. Yeah, they're like 60, 70 mile hour gusts.

[Monica Padman]

But. Okay, but. So this is for Josh Brolin, our friend.

[Dax Shepard]

I love them.

[Monica Padman]

Just. That was lovely.

[Dax Shepard]

Love him.

[Monica Padman]

I'm so happy he read his book for us. That was so kind, kind him to do.

[Dax Shepard]

Someone had heard it on the early release and they said that they cried during that. That was nice.

[Monica Padman]

That's very nice. Yeah, it was very touching and moving. Okay, so the Fred Durst Corey Feldman tour is called Loserville, which we don't like.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, we don't. We don't love the name of that.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, I'm not blaming them for make calling it a bad name, but it makes me feel sad that they called it that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Well, what I think is happening is Fred Durst, who I don't know personally, I've never met him. I seem, I follow him on Instagram because he loves Station Wagons. That's my full extent. But he seems to be a pretty self aware person and I think he's very aware of that doc Woodstock and the fact that they were at least in that documentary, kind of credited with this terrible toxic masculinity, all the gnarly stuff that happened at that festival. I think he's aware that people are associating him with all that.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I think he's probably not that as a whatever age guy he is. And I think he's trying to figure out how to own it and continue on being a musician. I don't know. I think he's in an interesting situation.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I think this was probably the best attempt at that.

[Monica Padman]

Well, this says the wild mostly sold out summer tour that brought together two pop culture icons who know exactly. Exactly what you think of them in the description. Yeah. And then he talks about Skylight Books, which is down the street from us.

[Dax Shepard]

You love Skylight Books.

[Monica Padman]

I love Skylight Books. It's a great bookstore.

[Dax Shepard]

How often do you find yourself in there?

[Monica Padman]

Sometimes I like to just go on walks. And that's a nice destination for the walk because it's a good amount of distance. Yeah, but. And then it has a nice little ending. It's cute. It's really cute to walk around there.

[Dax Shepard]

I did my sprints yesterday.

[Monica Padman]

How'd they go?

[Dax Shepard]

You know, it was part of my res.

[Monica Padman]

Huh.

[Dax Shepard]

Do sprints once or twice a week. I think they're the worst workout you can do.

[Monica Padman]

They're hard. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I think they might be the very. There's probably something worse that I just haven't done it yet. Yeah. Because biking up the mountain is really terrible. But the sprints are worse. But I. I did them and. And then today I'm a little taught. What does a sprint workout look like? I did one half pace. Well, I start at the gate, and I run to the far end of the property. I think that's probably about 75 yards. And I do a half pace, one first, then a 3/4 pace 1 second to loosen and warm my tendons and muscles up. And then it's as fast as I can humanly come out of my blocks and run done to the end. And then I'm allowed to walk back to regain my breath, which I barely do. And the second I'm back there, I have to turn and I'm using your clicker. Finally.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, nice.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. You got me very early on, for my birthday, an usher's clicker.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Because I always wanted to operate one.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I have had it and really not had any great use for it. I don't tear tickets often in life, but in the past, when I did sprints, I'd have, like, a pile of rocks. I moved every time.

[Josh Brolin]

Oh, geez.

[Dax Shepard]

You got to lose track.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So this time was like, walk back. The second I'm at the gate, I have to turn, drop, click, sprint.

[Monica Padman]

Nice.

[Dax Shepard]

And So I did 11 sprints.

[Monica Padman]

Nice.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. At full pace.

[Monica Padman]

Well, the wind probably didn't help.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I wasn't noticing it too much at that time. Yeah. But it could have been rough.

[Monica Padman]

Could have been a factor.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. The good thing about sprint sprints is they're over quickly. But you can't do sprints for an hour.

[Monica Padman]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

At least the way I'm doing it where it's just. They're back to back to back.

[Monica Padman]

Now, we've talked about this many times, but I. I always. I always feel like it's not correct. So I always check it about Matt Damon and 10% of Avatar. That's. It's correct.

[Dax Shepard]

It's still correct.

[Monica Padman]

Yep. It's still correct. It'll always be correct.

[Dax Shepard]

It's still correct.

[Monica Padman]

10% of Avatar.

[Dax Shepard]

Avatar. There's. What do we at? There's three of them. There's two of them now.

[Monica Padman]

That's the part I haven't reconfirmed.

[Dax Shepard]

Let me see what the grand. Those movies worldwide. Avatar number one in 2009 is 2.92. $3 billion. We can call that $3 billion. So that's 300 million. And let's see Avatar 2. Oh, we're at 3. 300 million. Let's see the way of the water. We got a grand total on that bad boy of 2.3 billion. Is another 230. So we're looking at 530 million. Half a billion dollars.

[Monica Padman]

Wow. Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Thank God. He's doing it for the right reason.

[Monica Padman]

He is. He.

[Dax Shepard]

That doesn't seem to hurt him at all. That would.

[Monica Padman]

He just laughs.

[Dax Shepard]

That would be. Yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Almost made a half.

[Monica Padman]

I guess that's what you have to do also.

[Dax Shepard]

And he's made plenty.

[Monica Padman]

He's done great. Great. He's done great.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a lot of row.

[Monica Padman]

It is.

[Dax Shepard]

You buy the company.

[Monica Padman]

They would never sell it. Never. Too much integrity.

[Dax Shepard]

But what were they just valued at? 600 million?

[Monica Padman]

No, a billion.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, at a billion, yeah.

[Josh Brolin]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

So you can buy half of it. Controlling interest. And part of your stipulations were that the girls had to go out for wine with you a lot to pitch you the new product lines.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, that sounds great.

[Dax Shepard]

Can you imagine sitting with wine and they were showing you sketches?

[Monica Padman]

I wonder if they're wine girls. I don't think so.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

They might be more martini girls. I would put them more in the martini category. Sophisticated.

[Dax Shepard]

They're too cool.

[Monica Padman]

They're cool.

[Dax Shepard]

Wine's too pedestrian.

[Monica Padman]

A little. I love it. I. I love it. But I'm pedestrian. What can you do? All right, that's it for Josh.

[Dax Shepard]

Those are all the facts.

[Monica Padman]

Love you love you.

[Dax Shepard]

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