Keegan-Michael Key

Summary

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard: Episode Summary – Keegan-Michael Key

Host: Dax Shepard
Guest: Keegan-Michael Key
Duration: Approximately 93 minutes

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, host Dax Shepard sits down with the multifaceted comedian, actor, producer, and writer Keegan-Michael Key. The conversation delves deep into Keegan's journey in the world of comedy, his formative years, his collaboration with Jordan Peele, and his insights into the evolving landscape of comedy and entertainment.

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Early Life and Background

Keegan-Michael Key shares anecdotes from his childhood in Southfield, a suburb of Detroit, highlighting the unique cultural and social dynamics of the area.

• [12:17] Keegan-Michael Key: "I was born in Southfield... which is a suburb of Detroit. Growing up in the city, you encounter people who say they're from Detroit, and it's always like, 'But where exactly?'"

Keegan discusses his immersion in the local scene, attending performances and being exposed to diverse cultural influences.

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Path to Comedy and Education

Keegan recounts his high school experiences, where a pivotal moment led him into the performing arts.

• [24:14] Keegan-Michael Key: "I got cast as Jesus in Godspell. That was when the click happened."

He details his time at the University of Detroit Mercy, emphasizing the unique approach to theater there, including casting actual adults for adult roles, which provided a high-quality theatrical experience.

• [40:17] Keegan-Michael Key: "At U of D, we often auditioned grownups for roles. It was a small theater town connected to the university, ensuring high-quality plays."

---

Improv and Second City Detroit

Keegan discusses founding the Planet Ant, an improv troupe, and his involvement with Second City Detroit. He highlights the importance of improvisation in shaping his comedic style and fostering collaborations.

• [44:11] Keegan-Michael Key: "We started doing short-form improv shows, which laid the foundation for our future work."

His collaboration with Jordan Peele is explored, detailing how their shared experiences and dedication to refining their craft led to the creation of Key & Peele.

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Key & Peele: Evolution and Success

The conversation shifts to the inception and development of Key & Peele, discussing their initial approach to writing and the balance between structured sketches and improvisation.

• [73:10] Keegan-Michael Key: "In the second season, we experimented with pieces that allowed for interpretation, blending strong writing with improv."

They reflect on the virality of their sketches on platforms like YouTube, which significantly amplified their reach and popularity beyond traditional television audiences.

• [75:35] Keegan-Michael Key: "Our sketches started gaining millions of views on YouTube. It was a surprise but a game-changer."

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Philosophy on Comedy and Storytelling

Keegan shares his thoughts on the role of comedy in society, emphasizing the blend of humor with social commentary.

• [46:14] Keegan-Michael Key: "Our aim was to make people laugh while also making them think about deeper societal issues."

He discusses the importance of writing evergreen content that stands the test of time, allowing their work to remain relevant and impactful.

• [48:47] Keegan-Michael Key: "We focused on creating timeless sketches that our grandchildren could watch and still find humorous."

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Insights into the Entertainment Industry

The duo explores the challenges and dynamics of the entertainment industry, including the competitive nature of comedy, the significance of residencies in blockbuster movies, and the impact of modern platforms like TikTok on comedy's reach.

• [74:36] Dax Shepard: "You're like, I discovered this. I'm in on this. I'm sharing this."
• [75:21] Keegan-Michael Key: "Our sketches became like a viral phenomenon, with 25 million hits on certain sketches."

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Transformers Movie and Voice Acting

Keegan discusses his role in the animated Transformers movie, highlighting the creative process behind voice acting and the importance of character development.

• [85:21] Keegan-Michael Key: "The movie explores a primal story of power and brotherhood, aiming to connect with audiences on a deeper level."

He emphasizes the balance between maintaining the nostalgic elements of the Transformers franchise while introducing fresh narratives and character arcs.

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Personal Reflections and Closing Remarks

Towards the end of the episode, Dax and Keegan share personal anecdotes about their friendships, experiences at events like Comic-Con, and their perspectives on maintaining authenticity in their work. They reflect on the importance of passion, resilience, and continuous growth in the creative fields.

• [57:39] Dax Shepard: "You and I should do like a 20 part history channel."
• [73:10] Keegan-Michael Key: "Comedians need to keep hustling, adapting, and pushing boundaries to stay relevant."

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Notable Quotes

• [07:33] Keegan-Michael Key: "They hate small talk. It's because it's too laborious."
• [46:14] Keegan-Michael Key: "Our aim was to make people laugh while also making them think about deeper societal issues."
• [85:27] Dax Shepard: "People would go, 'I discovered this. I'm in on this. I'm sharing this.'"

---

Conclusion

This episode offers a comprehensive look into Keegan-Michael Key's journey, his creative philosophies, and his contributions to modern comedy. Through candid discussions and insightful reflections, listeners gain a deeper appreciation for the intricacies of comedic storytelling and the dedication required to excel in the entertainment industry.

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For those interested in exploring more about Keegan-Michael Key's work and his adaptation in the Transformers universe, be sure to watch the new animated movie and check out previous episodes of Armchair Expert featuring other notable guests.

Transcript

[Dax Shepard]

Wondry plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now. Join onedry+ 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 Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman.

[Monica Padman]

Hi there.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm Def Leppard. That was the thing that Kathryn Hahn wanted to do. Did people say no? I ended up listening to that episode. Yeah. After the fact.

[Monica Padman]

Def Leppard. Okay, there we go. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Def Leppard today with a very musical name. Name. Keegan Michael Key. Keegan Michael Key.

[Monica Padman]

He's a genius.

[Dax Shepard]

He is. What a blessing. He is an award winning actor, comedian, producer and writer. Key and Peele, Keanu Wonka, Mad TV Schmigadoon and his new movie that's out right now, Transformers 1, an origin story for the Transformers universe.

[Monica Padman]

We got to hear a lot about comedy in this episode, which was really.

[Dax Shepard]

Fascinating, as you pointed out. Could have been an expert.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Turns out he is an encyclopedia of the history of comedy.

[Monica Padman]

It's incredible. And we get to hear a lot about Camp Peele, which is fun.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. Great episode. Please enjoy. Keegan Michael Key. We are supported by Audible. We know you love audio content. Thanks for listening to the show. But if your ears are craving more audio, Audible is the place to go. I probably, in truth spend more time on Audible than any other place, any other app. Yeah, I'm listening every night for an hour before bed. There's more to imagine when you listen. Whether you're searching for the latest bestsellers and new releases or you want to catch up on a classic title, you can find it all in the Audible app. And as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog.

[Monica Padman]

What are you listening to now?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I'm just finishing the Worlds I See by Feife Li. It's so good and moving and I love it so much. I'm. I'm sad it's ending. Now listen. New members can try Audible for free for 30 days. Visit audible.comdax or text DAX to 500500 that's audible.comdax or text Dax to 500. 500. The new Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist. And it's the fastest charging Apple watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. Introducing the all new Apple Watch Series 10, now available for the first time in Glossy jet black aluminum compared to previous generation. IPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.

[Monica Padman]

Yes, I did stand up for you, even though I am.

[Dax Shepard]

She's very sore.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Sore.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Apologies for my errands. Tardiness.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, you're fine.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you are tardy. Now I'm mad. You would.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

If you hadn't said, I wouldn't have made a difference.

[Dax Shepard]

I wasn't giving a. We were in here. What were we just talking about?

[Monica Padman]

Chit chatting.

[Dax Shepard]

We were talking about the business.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

The business. Oh, talking about the business. Monica, why are you sore?

[Monica Padman]

Because I started with a trainer on Tuesday day.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Ah, that'll do it. Your first time with a trainer?

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And they're still learning you.

[Monica Padman]

That's right.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So they're just going to push as hard as they can the first time.

[Monica Padman]

Getting a baseline.

[Dax Shepard]

Got to get a baseline.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Got to get a baseline.

[Dax Shepard]

W. Will you turn Keegan down in mine and me up a tiny bit? There's a nice.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Okay, I bet it's a nice.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a very nice pronto. Prego. Do you know any Italian words?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I know echo. I know it is an Italian word.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And I know prego. Grazie. And I know uomo means man. I don't know why.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know which is woman in English.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Isn't that funny? I try to always see what all the. This is a weird thing to say. I just said always.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I always try to see what all of the similar words are in Latin languages. That's something I always.

[Monica Padman]

That's always.

[Dax Shepard]

You're always doing.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So it's uomo. Right. In Italian. Om. In French. Is that man. In French.

[Monica Padman]

That sounds right. H, O, M, M, E. O, M.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

M, E. And then hombre.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. In Spanish, hombre, Bad hombre.

[Monica Padman]

And then we have man. It's a big departure.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Isn't everything in our language, people go, you're so lucky to be an American. The luckiest thing about being American is that you learned this language first. This is the worst language.

[Dax Shepard]

How so?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It has so many roots. It has Latin roots, it has German roots. It has Saxon roots. It has French roots. It never ceases to amaze me. But a person can move from Guangzhou province and go, I'm gonna open a restaurant in Nebraska. There's Chinese restaurants in Nebraska.

[Monica Padman]

How?

[Dax Shepard]

Couldn't do it. No.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Could not open a burger joint in Guangzhou province.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Now I'm going to counter with a couple of things. First of all, I have my grievances about this language. Spelling it makes zero Sense. It's so annoying.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That's the big one.

[Dax Shepard]

That's my main issue now. But I'm gonna hit you with something that's interesting.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Get me Dax.

[Dax Shepard]

Two things. One, I've always been suspicious that Spanish was less efficient than English based on watching shows in Spanish, seeing the English subtitle, and thought, well, they talked for two minutes. Then we had this unique experience where they converted an episode of our show with AI into Spanish where we're speaking Spanish. It's this full Spanish episode and it's hot. Yes, it's incredible.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That's amazing.

[Dax Shepard]

But our hour and 45 minute long episode in Spanish was 3 hours and 20 minutes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Are you kidding me?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. That's the factor.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

A straight transcription.

[Dax Shepard]

Straight transcription. And then we were in India getting this demonstration about Microsoft's new AI thing, and they were explaining to us that it cost double as much to run AI in different languages because English is so efficient, it takes way less data.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So it's easier to train the AI in this language.

[Dax Shepard]

It was cheaper. It was shocking.

[Monica Padman]

What else is shocking is that you hate this language. You talk about it all the time in a very pejorative, negative way because of your dyslexia, yet here you are because it's your team now. Now you're sticking up for your team.

[Dax Shepard]

Hold on. I have a different take on it, okay. Which is, you know me, I just gotta go the opposite direction. So Keegan was like, this language sucks. I'm like, let me think of three things that are contrarian.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I cannot argue the efficiency thing because you mentioned Spanish. Then I think about German. You know how they just add a word to another word to another word to another word and they just make super long words.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And then I don't know any about Nordic language, but it doesn't look easy for me.

[Dax Shepard]

You hear a couple of French lovers whispering to each my God, that's the.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Most mellifluous, beautiful thing.

[Dax Shepard]

Two lovers arguing over the dishwasher. And I'm getting so horny and emotional. And then when I hear a couple Swedes going at it, I'm like, woo.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I have no idea what they're saying, but they always sound like it's a het piet.

[Dax Shepard]

It sounds like a little bit of coughing to me. A lot of consonants.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

A lot of consonants.

[Monica Padman]

Consonant heavy, but also breathy.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

They sound like they just finished a rigorous walk.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh my God, we just cracked the most amazing thing. They hate small talk. And it just occurred to me, it's cause it's too laborious.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Oh, good.

[Dax Shepard]

Place. Yes. It's not that they're fucking above triviality.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Exactly. Yeah. It's just I don't have to wanna move my mouth. I don't want my mandibles to be sore.

[Dax Shepard]

My mastoid.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

My mastoid.

[Dax Shepard]

We're cooking now.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Mastoids. That's that Milford education right there. That's what that is.

[Monica Padman]

Ding, ding, ding.

[Dax Shepard]

I didn't learn a goddam thing. And milber it might surprise you to learn really? No, I learned how to like suss out who I should run from and who I should fight.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You see how I just slipped that in there? I just thought to myself, how soon do I get to the Michigan stuff?

[Monica Padman]

I'm glad you did it fast.

[Dax Shepard]

Also, do you play spades by chance?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I play spades, but I play more euchre than spades.

[Dax Shepard]

Euchre is a quality game.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Quality game. Do you know Monica? This game? If you spend any time with him and Kristen, you've got to know this game. Where are you from?

[Monica Padman]

I'm from Georgia.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Then they taught you. Cuz nobody in Georgia plays euchre.

[Monica Padman]

Never heard of it until they taught me spades.

[Dax Shepard]

Heavy country.

[Monica Padman]

I didn't grow up on spades. But we have a friend who loves spades and he taught us. And now we're like spades crazy. Spades crazy.

[Dax Shepard]

Anyways, in spades the joker high is the thing. So Milford for you was like you were sitting on the joker high.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I get it. When I'm going to play Milford. When in this conversation is our big cat going to come up so I can just slip a panther situation in there? Which was a ruse. Right?

[Dax Shepard]

You want to hear something insane? I actually have the inside scoop on this.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Do you really?

[Dax Shepard]

Which is going to blow your mind. And if I were you, I wouldn't trust me. But I'll tell you regardless.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

And we got to bring Monica up to speed. You're a couple you years older than me, so you probably really were aware of its news coverage.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yes, I was watching it on the news. I'm from Detroit. I'm from the actual city. So Milford's a world of difference between my urban experience and his rural experience.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

And we had an inordinate amount of serial killers there. We were on the news for serial killers. And then we were on the news a bunch that there was a panther loose in Milford.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

The Milford panther.

[Dax Shepard]

The Milford panther. People even made shirts and it would pop up in the news occasionally. Right.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It was almost as if the newscaster said, and if we've forgotten, the Milford panther is still on the prowl.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Or another thing would happen in Milford that defied explanation. And the most logical thing was that there must be a panther. Dog died of old age, Right? Fucking panther was.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Panther ravaged him.

[Monica Padman]

Was this an escaped panther from the zoo?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Very good question. Do you have any insight on that, Dax? Because I don't understand. Why would there be not indigenous to that part of the country?

[Monica Padman]

Not that I know.

[Dax Shepard]

No. Even North America. But the zoo was in Royal Oakland, too far away for a panther to make it to Milford. It would have stopped and eaten things long before.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Way before it got to Milford.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so this is going to blow your mind. I'm not going to give the people's names away, because God knows what the liability is.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Oh, sure. No, I got you.

[Dax Shepard]

So the original reason it was believed that we had a panther is that a horse was killed and was killed by the neck. And they saw the animal get away. It was a large black animal. So I developed a friendship with this kid who, by the way, went to St. Mary's he was a rich kid, but he lived on the outskirts of my town in a very big house on a lot of property. And I came to know him in high school. And we were drunk. One time they had this black Great Dane and he goes, our dog killed that horse.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

He had the smoking the dog.

[Dax Shepard]

The dog came home and was covered in blood. They had no clue what happened. They thought it fought another dog.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Any number of things could have happened.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. They were like, we got to go to the vet. It's totally fine. They're like, oh, my God, it must have fought something. And then on the news, promptly thereafter, that horse lived, like, in their neighborhood.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

It was their dog. Was the black panther dog.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Was.

[Dax Shepard]

The panther is a Great Dane.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Any Michigander listening to this podcast right now is going to drop whatever they're holding. This is a big Michigan. I also want to mention the vantage point of where I'm sitting is thoroughly ironic because you are sitting in front of a painting of a great date.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God, you're right. What if I told five more stories?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Every story involves a great date.

[Dax Shepard]

This dude's just obsessed with Great Dane.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That's so funny.

[Monica Padman]

And did you see the dog with your own eyes?

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was older at that point. They don't live very long.

[Monica Padman]

They don't because they're too big.

[Dax Shepard]

Their hearts turn. They'd say, I know.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I never understood. And he rolls on his back at the Great Pyrenees and the Saint Bernards of our day. Their hearts turn.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

But back to horses.

[Dax Shepard]

That's also what happens. The horses, their intestines turn. Yeah. You heard that?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I have heard that, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

They're lying down, they pop up.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It goes inside their. Like a balloon and it closes off the. Whatever.

[Monica Padman]

Maybe that was happening to the horse.

[Dax Shepard]

Maybe he put another horse out of the misery.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, he may have put the horse out of his misery.

[Monica Padman]

He's like ice. See you. This happens to me too.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow.

[Monica Padman]

Isn't that true crime?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It is true crime. I can't believe you just revealed that to me.

[Dax Shepard]

I know. I've never said it in public.

[Monica Padman]

Did you tell friends?

[Dax Shepard]

Of course. Weekly knows it was their dog. My best friend.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But I've never said it in public, man. Okay, so let's start at the very beginning. You were born in Southfield.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I was born in Southfield. Now, Monica, again, a lot of context in this podcast today. Suburb of Detroit. I don't know who did my Wikipedia page guarantee they're from Southfield, because if I had had anything to do with my Wikipedia page, I would just say Detroit native.

[Dax Shepard]

There's some pride to be had.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah. It's not that Southfield's a bad place. It's just that I grew up in the city and very often you come across people who say, I'm from Detroit. And I'll go, but where are you from?

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

But I'm from Detroit.

[Dax Shepard]

And Sam is as well. I just interviewed Sam Richardson.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Sam is from the city, Boston. I said, I'm sure it's the same. I'm from Atlanta. But are you from Atlanta?

[Monica Padman]

I know. No.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, yeah. You're not. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Nope.

[Dax Shepard]

And I'm guilty of this. Although I did live downtown. Now.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You lived in the city.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And Sam lived in the cities. And Tim Robinson Clarkson.

[Dax Shepard]

That makes a lot of sense because that's hillbilly.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

He's going to listen to this and go, you know, I'm up from fucking Clarkson.

[Monica Padman]

Well, he should come on and tell us himself.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Exactly. Well done. Gauntlet Throne. But born in Southfield, raised in the city, and when I was a little boy, I lived behind U of D, the University of Detroit. Small little corridor north of the Cass corridor off of Wyoming.

[Dax Shepard]

But for context, we must say Kaz corridor was the area of Detroit that always over indexed out of any borough anywhere in the country for murders.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So for a decade, when Detroit was the murder capital of the globe.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

The whole world. So people say in 1983, you were safer walking on the streets of Beirut, Lebanon.

[Dax Shepard]

And they always Said Beirut.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It was the 80s. It's Beirut. That's the most dangerous place. And Cass Corridor was the epicenter. So the most concentrated place where those kind of crimes took place was the cast corridor. Now the cast corridor is filled with coffee shops and antique shops, Shinola watches.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Do you know Willis Street? 404 Willis?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

So I used to go to punk shows all the time at 404 Willis. At the nadir of that, like when every couple hours, people just dropping like.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Flies in front of the club.

[Dax Shepard]

So I used to go to 404 Willis all the time. And I drove by there recently, and I was like, that cannot be 404 Willis.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Right, right. Or the old Miami.

[Dax Shepard]

I would take my children here.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's completely turned around. It's unbelievable. Yeah, it's amazing.

[Monica Padman]

Why do Detroiters. I'm asking both of you. I don't know.

[Dax Shepard]

He's the only real Detroiter, but go ahead.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. Thank you for saying that. And I don't know if this is true, but I'm gaining this information. Why do you guys love talking about the names of streets and the names of geographical things so much?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

For me, personally, because I'm a bit of a history nut. Detroit's old city was founded in 1701. Fort Michilimackinac was a little fort there. And I like talking about the streets because a good deal of the hub of Detroit downtown, it's not a grid. It's like Boston. It's an old city that has streets that kind of go through streets and go in circles and streets where things just stop because they put a building here where there used to be a cable car or a streetcar track. It's a city built on a phenomenon or an industry, and then a new industry slapped up on top of that and another one slapped up on top of that. And also because we identify. I think everybody does this, but you identify neighborhoods by certain streets. So when he says Willis, I know right where he's talking about.

[Monica Padman]

But it's so, so funny to me because, like, if we have Atlanta people on or suburbs up, I'm never saying Rogers Bridge and Peachtree Industrial, but Dax does do this all the time with people from Michigan.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

From Michigan.

[Monica Padman]

Interesting.

[Dax Shepard]

And I'm going to add into it, and I don't think it's terribly unique in this way, but the little pockets were quite distinct.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

They were distinct.

[Dax Shepard]

So it's like if I say ham tramc, that doesn't mean anything to the rest of Detroit. It's all white Polish people in a city that's 92% black, that needs to be separated out from what we're talking about.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Not to mention the fact that Hamtramck is an actual enclave, and you don't see enclaves anymore. I mean, enclave in the traditional sense, that it is a municipality that is surrounded on four sides by another municipality, has its own fire department, its own police department, its own mayor, its own chamber of commerce.

[Monica Padman]

But it's kind of like Beverly Hills.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's like Beverly Hills.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's surrounded by Detroit. And you're right. And for it to be that kind of community, completely white now, there's lots of people from the Balkans there, and there's lots of people from East Africa there.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, no kidding.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So it's changed.

[Dax Shepard]

When I was a kid, it was straight up Polish.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

We called it Polish town. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You couldn't even be another version of white and be safe.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You had to be Polish. You had to be Polish. The fascination with the streets, they're like burrows, like New York, where they're very distinct pockets and distinct areas. So Boston Edison, where Sam grew up, there are beautiful old houses that were built by the auto barons.

[Dax Shepard]

The most elaborate mansions of the day across the country. And then they're in this totally burnt out, destroyed. At least in the 90s when I was living there. So it's very unique to see these mansions on these streets in the middle of all this other stuff.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah. In the midst of all this kind of blight. And then all of a sudden, you turn down a street off of Woodward Avenue in the Boston Edison area, and you're going, what are these?

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

It's like a movie. You turn a corner and you're in Labyrinth. And then additionally, you gotta add. So the people that went down to Detroit in the 90s, they went to Greektown, they went to Joe Louis arena, they went to Lafayette, Coney island, and that's it.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And they go to the Fox Theater. And then you got out as fast as you could. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And you went in a caravan.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah. And I used to work downtown at the Second City, the building across from the Fox. It was interesting at Second City because we had a different experience. A lot of Detroiters ended up going to Chicago to work at the Second City. It was not a parallel move. It was definitely a promotion, because if you got to go to Chicago, you knew that at some point in time, Lorne or some of his producers were going to come and scout. So when we were in Detroit, the advantage we had was because there was no tourist base, we'd have to write three or four shows a year because the same people came to see the shows.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, interesting.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Whereas in Chicago, you're always gonna have the groups bought out or a group that's coming from India. This is what you do in Chicago. You know, if you had business people coming from other countries. Let's go to the comedy show at the Second City. This is where John Belushi used to work. And everybody would do that. So they only did one to two shows a year. We got the experience of writing a show all the time and coming up with new material. It was a really great training ground by the necessity of the fact that we had a lack of a tourist department.

[Dax Shepard]

Of course, I envied it when I was in the Sunday company, but I have a tremendous amount of gratitude now that, like, we did a new show every Sunday. And I was like, oh, the main company gets to do their show for, like, three months. And I was jealous of it. But now, in retrospect, I'm like, no, I wrote hundreds of sketches in a year.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, I think that's great.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, we got derailed. So you're in the murder capital.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So Eight Mile in Woodward.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Is where I grew up. Everybody's heard of 8 Mile.

[Monica Padman]

That's right.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So I grew up a block south of 8 Mile. So Ferndale was the first north suburb. Yeah, you're right.

[Dax Shepard]

By Softball City.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Softball City.

[Dax Shepard]

And that weird motorcycle gang clubhouse, the Renegades.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's either the Vandals or the Renegades and Monica.

[Dax Shepard]

They had a full motorcycle mounted to the outside of their clubhouse. Yeah. Very memorable.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I grew up across from the Michigan State Fairgrounds. At home, at night in bed, I could hear the concerts.

[Dax Shepard]

So it'd be Bob Seeger, Ted Nugent.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, Ted Nugent.

[Dax Shepard]

Uncle Teddy Wanko Tango.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I remember one year at the state fairgrounds. Hulk Hogan and Don the Rock Morocco.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, baby. And the Iron Sheik, Dax. Oh, my God.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And I stood in front of the GU Gate for five hours with my little neighbor. His mom said, y'all gonna go to the wrestling. Wrestling? Take Damon. I'm like, okay, Mrs. Sharp, but I think that it's gonna be eight hours in the sun.

[Dax Shepard]

He.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

He. All right. Y'all need to come back, get some water. Come get some water. I was like, okay. But you couldn't come back because you'd lose your spot. And we stood there for five hours and we paid 350 or $5 or whatever it was and saw Don the Rock Morocco. And Hulk Hogan wrestled.

[Dax Shepard]

That's pre WrestleMania Silver Dome. 80. Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

This would have been 82, and I think WrestleMania was 85. I just see your eyes lit up just like Don the Rock Morocco.

[Dax Shepard]

Holy. But the Iron Chic, too. I don't know if you can have that character anymore.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I'm not sure.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

The great thing about those 80s stereotypes is they were so thin. It's total. The lack of awareness of even what they were parody.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

They didn't even know what they were parodying. And so I grew up right there. I grew up on a street called Woodstock Drive. It's the first block south of eight Mile Road. And there was a field. Very strange that this would be in this town, but there was a field. There were no homes on it at the end of our block. So we'd play football, and we'd play soccer, and we'd play baseball in the field. You had a good, conscientious neighbor who'd take his lawnmower. He lived three blocks away, and he'd walk it down and mow the field.

[Dax Shepard]

I still think this when I go home. My friend Aaron now lives in Beverly Hills. Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

By Pleasant Ridge.

[Dax Shepard]

And I drive through his really expansive subdivision in the meticulous nature of how people keep their yards. And 70% of the people are out there actively doing it because it requires, like, hours a day to get it as good. I kind of love that.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I loved doing that when I was a kid, like, with the hedge clippers. Just get that one little edge when you couldn't get the edge.

[Dax Shepard]

And if there was a neighbor on your street that didn't mow their lawn, the whole neighborhood hated their guts.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Absolutely.

[Dax Shepard]

My mom, you. You want to look like the writings. That was like. You couldn't look like the writings.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Oh, no. I want to get out there right now.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I'm on it.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Give me the edger. Give me the weed whacker. Not the writings. Are you kidding?

[Dax Shepard]

So did you live in that house your whole childhood?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, we lived off the 10. Oh, my God. I can't believe I just said the 10. The Lodge.

[Dax Shepard]

The Lodge.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I just said the 10 because of somebody in my life who lived out here for a long time and then moved to Detroit and said it by the numbers as opposed to the names. There's different types of Detroiters.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, let's hear it.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

There's two different things. Older people would say, that's the Fisher Freeway, but Dax and I would say that's 94. But then the interesting thing is there are other people in Detroit who will say, so I took the 94. And then there's a Reuther, which is the 96.

[Dax Shepard]

But you would always say, I'm taking 96.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

But nobody took the Fisher, which is the 75. Everybody takes the 75. No one ever called it the Fisher Freeway.

[Dax Shepard]

No, no, no.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

No one ever called it the Fisher. You called it 75. So we also do that with the names of our road. With. What is it in Georgia? It's the Perimeter, but we have a.

[Monica Padman]

75 and an 85.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You have same 75.

[Dax Shepard]

And you don't say the though. Correct.

[Monica Padman]

I don't.

[Dax Shepard]

That's a California.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's a California thing. The 10, the 101.

[Monica Padman]

What's the perimeter?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

275. 275.

[Dax Shepard]

I just want to air this grievance.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

You're coming south, and, you know, you want to avoid Atlanta because it's going to be Russia. Or you're driving to Florida from Michigan. Michigan. Do I go east or west on this loop?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, it's a big old.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a big crapshoot.

[Monica Padman]

We call it Spaghetti Junction.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you do?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Spaghetti Junction. Oh, that's a good name. That's a clever name.

[Dax Shepard]

Does anyone. Do Californians move there and call it the Spaghetti Junction?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Well done.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so you lived there the whole time. What's interesting is you and Kristen went to the same school.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Same high school. And we had the same, I'm saying, drama teacher. Just so everybody understands it. We didn't have a drama department. We had the choir. And then we had the elite choir, which were called the Goliards. Oh, I don't know if Kristen was in Goliards.

[Dax Shepard]

I've never heard. You ever heard of that. And what the fuck is a Goliard exactly?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Because our high school mascot were the Knights. I think a Goliard must be like the English version of a troubadour. I'm totally pulling this out of my ass.

[Dax Shepard]

I like that.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I have no idea if it's true, but I'm going with that because we were called the knock.

[Dax Shepard]

It sounds like a pejorative for a bad goal.

[Monica Padman]

We'll fact check it. We have an actual fact check, like debates.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So I. I went to this high school. Kristen and I both had a teacher. Her name was Mary Rashid, and she was really instrumental in getting me into the program. My parents divorced. We had a family therapist, and the family therapist said, I think this young man should go into the arts. I think that would be a good way for him to express himself. When the therapist found out what High school I was going to. He said, the woman who runs the choir program and the music program at that high school is a friend of mine.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I will let her know that he's coming. And I'm freshman, little string bean of a kid with a big bushy hair, if you can believe it, walking down the hall. And she came out of her room and saw my face, I guess from his description of me, and she just grabbed my arm and she said, you're teaching Michael Key, right? We're getting you involved.

[Monica Padman]

Aw.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And that first year, the musical was called Just for openers. And the whole whole program was simply the opening number from musicals from famous music.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, that's fun.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That was the show. I ran the follow spot and then she left our high school my junior year. So she left my high school and went to Groves in Birmingham to go chase the money. She chased the money.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, it's so fancy.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Groves is fancy. Yeah. And then I don't want to cast aspersions on Groves, but she came back to Shrine.

[Dax Shepard]

By the way, if you can't on the rich kids school, what the.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Can we on.

[Dax Shepard]

My sister wonder all those.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Your sister go to Cranbrook?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, she did. Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I love how patient you are being because this podcast has been so insular so far and you're showing, like, genuine interest.

[Monica Padman]

I am.

[Dax Shepard]

You're going to see a look come over her face when we mention Cedar Point that you'll never.

[Monica Padman]

I think maybe we could skip it.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Can I just tell you, it'll be the second time I talked about Cedar Point today.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

You know what's incredible, Monica, is you're still not intrigued.

[Monica Padman]

No. Like that's something further and further away from intrigued. Yes. The door is closing on Cedar Point.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Anyone that's in a three state area that we have as a guest, there's at least 25 minutes on it. And Sam was here.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. But we're gonna skip over Cedar Point. Yeah. But we'll sidebar.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I'm gonna say one thing about Cedar Path. Just one thing.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. You have to.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You understand that Cedar Point is actually. And you can factor check it. It's like the second best amusement park on earth.

[Dax Shepard]

Which one's better?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

There's some amusement park, apparently that's in Japan, which makes sense.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

But Cedar Point is top five in the world. Anyway, I'm done.

[Monica Padman]

Do you know it's been purchased by Six Flags?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Cedar Point's been purchased by Six Flags.

[Dax Shepard]

Isn't that a bummer Oh, I hate.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Every second of that.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. Some people me would say that Six Flags must in fact be the second best.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't even want to talk.

[Monica Padman]

I'm just, you know, let's move on.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Well, that rained on my parade. Yeah, it's not a good weapon, Monica. Weaponize that fact. You want to shut people down on the Cedar Point stuff?

[Dax Shepard]

You and I should do like a 20 part history channel.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Every year of Cedar Point's existence. Welcome to Sandusky, Ohio, where dreams come true.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

I am dying to know who started it. How do you pick Sandusky?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I guess Lake Erie, but there's other.

[Dax Shepard]

Lakes that are more picturesque and maybe closer to Cleveland. That would be three.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I would be fascinated. Monica could just produce it. She doesn't have to be there.

[Monica Padman]

I'm here in spirit.

[Dax Shepard]

And your title card as a producer would be like a middle finger or something. You'd have to express your absolute hatred for this project you produced.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so back to Shrine.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

She went to Groves, and then Mary came back to Shrine, and then Kristen had her as the teacher.

[Dax Shepard]

So, Keegan, without this intervention with the therapist and then her. Did you have any aspirations?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I think I did and didn't know. And let me see if I can articulate that, because television was the window of the world to me. I love to read, but I loved television. And I used to watch Marlon Perkins Wild Kingdom with my dad when I was a little kid. Sponsored by the Mutual of Omaha.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And remember that?

[Dax Shepard]

And Marlon Perkins Wild Kingdom, Mutual of Omaha. They bought the whole thing.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And it was mutual. And so I remember I used to love watching like, the guys in the helicopters with the big kind of plexiglass bubble. One guy would lean out of the side and dart a polar bear.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And then they'd tag them so they could keep track of them. And I thought, God, that would be a great job. And I remember watching specials about people in Greenpeace going between whaling boats and the whales. And I loved animals, so I thought I was going to be a vet. When we'd go to sessions, like for family therapy, what would happen was I would act out the trailers to movies that I wanted to see. And I think that's what he keyed in on.

[Dax Shepard]

Pun intended.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I'm like, Empire Strikes Back. I do the. Then the ad. And then he flew around and the machine went around the legs and then fell down and he blew up. He would just sit there and listen very intently to my stories, but I would act them out.

[Dax Shepard]

So this was eighth grade. Were you already watching S Live and doing the bits? Like, remember Martin Short when we were a kid and he had the triangle and the hair, and I would put my hair up like his.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Ed Grimley.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, like ed Grimley.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yes. 84 is when I actually started watching it at night. Because my dad loved Eddie Murphy. He loved Eddie Murphy because he loved Stevie Wonder. It's funny. What we're talking about right now is in me and my wife.

[Dax Shepard]

Ls did a history of sketch comedy.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Sketch comedy. So a lot of the book. What Elle did is she. She framed it out that the thread that you hang everything on in the book is kind of my story. And then the stories of the history. And the Greeks did this and the Romans did that, and medieval people did this. Because she's brilliant. So we just linked it all together. But my dad loved Stevie Wonder. And because Eddie Murphy did a Stevie Wonder impression. Oh, he wanted to go see him in concert. He just thought he was the greatest. And he'd let us stay up and watch SNL those years. 84 to 86. Right. When Julia Louis Dreyfuss was still there and Gary Kroger and Piscopo and Brad hall and those guys moving into that last Dick Ebersol year, which was Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest. They told Christopher Guest, would you like to be on the show? And he said, if I come on the show and I'm in the capacity of one of the head writers of the show, you've got to let me do what I want and pick who I want. And then Chris got to do Weekend.

[Dax Shepard]

Update because there's some weird story, too, about Billy Crystal. Too. Right. He didn't want to do it.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

He loved hosting it. He had hosted it a few times. Times. And then he came on to do it. And at that time on the show, what's interesting is they would rotate the news hosts and Billy would host the news as Fernando Llamas. I didn't know that Fernando Llamas, when I was younger, or even three months ago.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Was a real person.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm learning that now.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Not only was he a real person, he's Lorenzo Llamas's father.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

I don't.

[Dax Shepard]

He was a big sex symbol action.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Star in the 80s.

[Dax Shepard]

Maybe he had a show where he rode a motorcycle.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Renegade.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, Renegade. Oh, Renegade. Motorcycle Renegade. Eight Mile Renegade.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Mc.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Bingo. Brought it back around.

[Dax Shepard]

Holy. Ding, ding, ding.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

We were at Shrine.

[Dax Shepard]

So you were watching.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I was watching.

[Dax Shepard]

And you were intrigued. Did you know you could already do voices and impersonations.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yes, I could do that. And I could make my friends laugh and they would make me. We were all just doing Eddie Murphy. Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

It's all about memorizing what you code from Saturday Night Live, then going to school the next day. And whoever could repeat the most of the sketch was a king.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Was the king.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. We are supported by the new holiday action comedy Red 1. The mission to save Christmas is on. Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans star in Red One from Jake Kasdan, who I love, as you know, director of Jumanji. Welcome to the jungle. After Santa Claus, codename Red One, played by J.K. simmons, is kidnapped, the North Pole's head of security, played by Dwayne Johnson, must team up with the world's most infamous bounty hunter, played by Chris Evans, in a globetrotting, action packed mission to save Christmas. This is Christmas fun like you've never seen before. See Red 1 only in theaters November 15th. Get tickets [e-mail] we are supported by Audible. I love Audible. I've been listening to so much Audible lately because I've been taking these naps a lot. I always like to listen to Audible to go to sleep. Now, look, it's a special feeling when you encounter a story that truly sparks your imagination. Whether it's imagining new worlds and possibilities or discovering new ways of thinking, there's more to imagine when you listen. That's why we love listening to the amazing titles they have on Audible. Right now I'm listening to Wim hof.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. And you are really into it. You were explaining a lot of the pieces to me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And I lost you a little bit.

[Monica Padman]

I'm listening to Intermezzo by Sally Rooney.

[Dax Shepard]

Is it great?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, it's great.

[Dax Shepard]

Audible truly has the best selection of audiobooks, without exception. From bestsellers to new releases to exclusive Audible originals, there's always something to discover. As an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. New members can try audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.comdax or text DAX to 500. 500. That's audible.comdax or text Dax to 505. We are supported by Sonos. Oh boy, oh boy. Sonos is my favorite product in my whole life. I'm listening to it all day long. I'm in the gym listening to Sonos. I'm at home, listen, watching TV with my Sonos soundbar. I mean, it's.

[Monica Padman]

It really changes the whole experience of listening.

[Dax Shepard]

Look you're listening to the podcast right now, but how are you listening if you're not listening on a Sonos speaker? You don't even know how amazing the dulcet tones of our voices can sound. Sonos is known for having the absolute best sound quality of any speaker on the market. You've got to hear it. And as good as Sonos can make us sound, imagine listening to Pink Floyd on a Sonos speaker or hearing the booming dramatic music in a great action film on a Sonos soundbar. Game Changing Another incredible feature of Sonos, their integrated sound system makes it easy to play anything in any room.

[Monica Padman]

I love that it's easy to use.

[Dax Shepard]

Too, so you can keep your dance party going throughout your whole house. Visit sonos.comdax to learn more. That's sonos.com/stacks we are supported by Peloton Are you tired of the same old workout routine or struggling to find motivation at this busy time of year? It's time to check out Peloton.

[Monica Padman]

Peloton is so great. We all know this. Also, not only is it a good workout, which I did at our friend Molly's house. Uhuh, it's a great workout. But it's also like pretty. It's sleek.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it is. It's a good looking piece.

[Monica Padman]

Very aesthetically pleasing and you know that matters to me.

[Dax Shepard]

I know. I agree. Well, Peloton has a variety of training programs. They got pilates, 5k, 10k, half and full marathon programs, strength training, boot camps. There are so many ways to challenge yourself.

[Monica Padman]

It's so helpful to have a set plan. It takes the guesswork out. It just makes it easier to get started on your fitness journey.

[Dax Shepard]

It's great. And there's so many options on Peloton so you can find a workout that gives you exactly what you're looking for.

[Monica Padman]

Kind of workout are you feeling today?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I got to tell you, I was recently advised by a doctor to incorporate some more blast, some high intensity blasts that you get this special. He said, look at sprinters, right? Why do they look like that? Because they're in this really high heart rate for some period of time. It's really beneficial. So I'm looking to go hard. Hard.

[Monica Padman]

Cool. Well, whatever you're looking for, Peloton has the workout for you and they have world class fitness instructors to push you to the next level.

[Dax Shepard]

Find your push, find your power with [e-mail].

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Anything my dad liked, I liked. So I became a huge Peter Sellers fan. My dad loved the pink Panther movies.

[Monica Padman]

Because of the panther in Detroit.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Because of the Milford.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, right.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Well done. I also had a Best of SNL cassette and I would listen and memorize. There was this song that the girls sing. Chevy had hurt himself or he wasn't on the show. Chevy, Chevy Whenever you fall down each Saturday night on my TV oh, my Chevy Every time you take that fall I wish that you were falling Falling for me oh, Lorraine Groundling, you are a historian.

[Dax Shepard]

This is blowing my mind.

[Monica Padman]

This is incredible.

[Dax Shepard]

This is a master class.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

They sang that song that's on the cassette. It's good because it's a bunch of sketches where the writing was very strong. You didn't need the visual. But then there were other sketches where you could have used the visual. Okay, I still put them on the cassette. Yeah, it was all first three, four seasons.

[Dax Shepard]

Did they put a Mr. Bill commercial on it?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Not in that cassette. One of the physical bits that they put on anyway was Belushi talking about March goes out like a lion and April comes in like a lamb. And then he did this whole bit about why not March going out like a gazelle and in like an aardvark till he gets so frustrated that you hear him go and he falls over. You hear him, but you can't see it. And then I couldn't wait to see it on a VHS Best of Tape later in my life.

[Dax Shepard]

The blow was not there.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

There was no punchline or button for it.

[Monica Padman]

It was weird.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

They would put that.

[Dax Shepard]

You lived with the setup for years.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

For years and years and never got to see it because I was too young when it actually aired.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so once you start with her at Shrine, clearly you go major in theater at Detroit Mercy. So when do we go like, oh, no, we're all in.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

The flip happened at Shrine. You're a freak, right? And then you find your tribe. I think that happens to every theater person. Are you a theater person, Monica?

[Monica Padman]

I majored in theater in college.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You know how this is. Everybody finds their tribe double major.

[Dax Shepard]

Marketing as well, just in case.

[Monica Padman]

Opr.

[Dax Shepard]

But opr. I always say marketing.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Marketing. We're going to pr.

[Monica Padman]

I just want to make that clear.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Two different things.

[Dax Shepard]

Only Monica.

[Monica Padman]

I have to.

[Dax Shepard]

No one in the real world. Thank God you straighten that out.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So I decided probably when I was a sophomore, they did Jesus and Amazing Technical Dreamcoat. And I played one of the brothers, I played Dan, and I played the baker and two guys that are in prison and they tell Joseph their dream and he interprets their dreams. And I sing that song. And I found all these people who I thought were so loving and warm and attentive and saw things the way I saw things. Then I realized math, not my favorite subject. It requires a lot of it to be a veterinarian.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, sure, yeah. Yeah, sure.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And so that started softening me a little bit. And then when I was a junior, I was cast as Jesus in Godspell. I remember doing it the opening night and the next night and I went, oh, no, no, no, no. That's for the birthday birds. I'm doing this.

[Dax Shepard]

Whatever this, animals that. Animal medicine.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, I'm doing this.

[Dax Shepard]

They'll be fine.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

There's a bunch of other animal medicine people that can handle that. This is it for me.

[Monica Padman]

I'm Jesus.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, but I missed the point. I'm gonna be a savior. I'm gonna be a messiah.

[Dax Shepard]

I want to be.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

This is like a coming of the. Yeah, that was when the click happened.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. And I'm guessing not comedy at first because you're just doing what you did and it works. And you're like, oh, yeah, right. Theater.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I think like everybody did. Unless you live in chic. You don't know there's comedy school.

[Dax Shepard]

Also. There wasn't a second city yet in Detroit.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

No. 93. I was scared to death of doing stand up. I didn't want to be a stand up, even though I loved. Same thing with you. Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I was like, I have to be a stand up and I'm too afraid to do it.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Me too. What would the other avenue be to get into comedy? You just go to theater school. I could have gone to like Mark Ridley's comedy castle.

[Dax Shepard]

I drove by it a million times. I parked in front of it. I stared at it. I'm like, I'm gonna walk in there.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Me too.

[Dax Shepard]

It's too scared.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And there was another club in Wyandotte or Livonia and I could have gone there.

[Monica Padman]

Are they clown schools?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

No, they would teach you.

[Dax Shepard]

It's where touring. By the way, I didn't even know they would teach you. I probably would have entered a class, but I was like, I'm going to do an open mic night. But I couldn't do it. But that's where the touring comedians that would come to Detroit.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So if you were going to go to a top shelf comedy club, you'd go to Mark Ridley.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So anyway, I didn't know what to do or how to go about that. But I did love. My aunts were very colorful women and kind of roughnecks. They babysit me or watch me when I was like 12 or 13, they're like, what movie do you want to watch? And I'm like, I want to watch Taxi Driver. And so they'd let me watch Taxi Driver Driver. And then Bob De Niro was my hero. So I was like, I like that too.

[Dax Shepard]

I'll be Jesus. I'll be Robert De Niro.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Or this guy. Marlon Brando.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

This other guy.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Or Eddie Murphy. Yeah. So you just went to college. And I said, I'm going to major. And I remember being in like a seminar class in the beginning of the year. And a lot of people did not know what their major was going to be. They're like, I just know I got the money. And my parents are like, you got to go to college. I was one of the few people I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Where did Kristen go to college?

[Dax Shepard]

NYU. And she knew since 6 she was putting herself on VHS tapes, redoing the Le Press on Nails commercials. Really?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Oh, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

She has tapes of her. She can say it so fast. We've had her do it on here. She can do the whole Le Press on Nail commercial, like as fast as can humanly be done. She was doing that by herself.

[Monica Padman]

She was also in singing lessons when she was little.

[Dax Shepard]

Trained up rather, so she just knew.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

She was going to be a performer. I performed and my mom even encouraged me. But that's not a job, you know what I mean? My parents were social workers. There's no connection to it. And so I went to school. School and had a very unique experience there because unlike Wayne State, so Wayne State was our city university in the aforementioned cast quarter. The University of Detroit Mercy was a small, private, liberal arts, Catholic Jesuit school. I had gone to a Catholic grade school, Catholic high school at a Catholic.

[Dax Shepard]

College and played Jesus along the way. Played Jesus along the way. You got a big dose of it.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I didn't think anything was different until I met people from Wayne State. You go to college, Monica, you said, okay, I'm going to go into performance or I'll study performance. And then other kids. Kids did technical stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And other kids got into stage management. We didn't have any of that at U of D. We ran the program. So we went to classes. But then I was a theatrical lighting electrician. I hung the lights, hung the wires, focused the lights for the technical director, did a little bit of construction. I was horrible at that. So that's why I stuck with the lights. And then if you auditioned and happened to be cast it was great. The best thing about the University of Detroit was just called the Theater Company was that we often auditioned grownups and people that were right for a role. At wayne state, you're 19 and you're going to play the 78 year old grandpa. But at U of D, we hired a 78 year old grandpa.

[Monica Padman]

Oh.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Because it was a very small theater town, the theater company was treated as a regular theater and it happened to be connected to the University of Detroit. So if you came to see a play, you needed to see like a high quality play. So adults needed to play adults.

[Monica Padman]

That makes competition hard.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Very, very hard. And so you got used to how this business works.

[Dax Shepard]

There's another interesting. Ding, ding, ding. Really quick is just the second enormous venue I was at non stop was the Grounds Grounds Coffee House. That was the punk mecca in the 90s. Was the ground. Was it really? Yeah. Ud. We would go to shows every weekend.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

When grounds opened in 90, 91 or 92. So I started school in 89. I graduated in 93. I performed at Grounds. I was in a rock cover band.

[Dax Shepard]

You were there in 93. And that's when I was going on stuff.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

We absolutely have to have been there at the same time when those punk bands would come and perform in the.

[Dax Shepard]

Venue almost every weekend.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That's like triple dig.

[Monica Padman]

It is.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That's amazing.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And this is why I wish there's just like video of everything ever and you could go back and you could find it. Did you see there was a video that just surfaced of just Justin Bieber meeting Steven Baldwin, the actor. Yes. He was just becoming Justin Bieber. So he's young. And Steven's like, hey, you know, nice to meet you. This is my daughter and it's Haley. It's his current wife.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's his wife. It's literally his wife.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. And there's video of it, of him.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Introducing when they're eight.

[Dax Shepard]

Wait a minute. His wife is Stephen Baldwin's daughter.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Haley Bieber is Stephen Baldwin daughter.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh.

[Monica Padman]

And you see her as a little girl. It's like, hey.

[Dax Shepard]

And they don't give a.

[Monica Padman]

She does not care.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now they're married.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Isn't that cool? I agree with you, Monica, that I wish that we had more tapes. When you see Timothy chalamet rapping at LaGuardia.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God. I know.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's the greatest thing that ever happened because it shows you the essence of who he is still now to this day. Could you imagine you and I were banging heads.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It is at U of D that I started improvising. I started improvising backgrounds. There was a guy who was a part of the touring company for Second City. He was an understudy to the touring company. I didn't know what any of this meant. I remember his name was Ed. He and I were in the same fraternity. But before that he wanted to put together an improv group and he did a couple of improv shows and people were really impressed with him. He was very good. That nobody knew of improv back then. There was no Whose Line Is It Anyway? He didn't even know what it was. He didn't get into the touring company. So he came back home to Detroit and he went to school and he started this improv troupe. And we perform at grounds. Short form stuff, games. That was where the taste came from. And it's also at the same time that In Living Color came out.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So we had that influence. And how were we writing? So we had snl. But this new thing I loved In Living.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, God.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

In Living Color. Jordan Peele always says that the best thing about In Living Color was how mischievous it was. I think it's a great way of describing it is mischievous because it's like a lot of winking at. Like we're being really naughty.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. They were nasty and they weren't supposed to be there. And all of it was great. 100% eye girls.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

What this is like, what is this? And they had enough elegance.

[Dax Shepard]

Again, it was punk rock adjacent.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It was punk rocket.

[Dax Shepard]

Jason, he was like, oh, this is not SNL and SNL's already punk rock accomplishment to out punk rock.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Punk rock. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You thought you might see something that they would have regretted airing. There was a danger to it. I heard Todd Phillips in an interview say at one point that he thinks all great comedy, the underbelly is dangerous. Danger. And for me, he's my favorite comedy director and it's very apparent in his stuff.

[Monica Padman]

Key and Peele is a hundred percent.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That I think what made us dangerous was its dark underbelly. In Living Color had something very much in common with Mad tv. It's nasty in that it's a little catty.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, Mad TV was a little bit more tabloidy.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

We wanted to roast famous people. Whereas In Living Color would say, here's something nobody's talking about and we're going to just go right into it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. When you're watching, you're like, there might be blowback from this. Which is a fun feeling.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yes. Going to get in trouble for that sketch, did you feel that we did.

[Monica Padman]

That on Can Peel in the best way? It was calling out truths that needed to be told in the absolute funniest way possible.

[Dax Shepard]

I would say you guys are opposite of In Living Color because I think In Living Color was in your face. And it was dangerous on the surface, but then it was pretty traditional at the core of it. And I think your shit was, like, really happy and nice and approachable and friendly. And then the subtext was like some real shit.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That's what you're saying right now?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Completely different package.

[Dax Shepard]

Like a reverse. It's like, oh, these guys are friendly and nice, and I trust them. Wait, what are they actually pointing out? Oh, yeah, that's some real.

[Monica Padman]

But they weren't like SNL sketches, which are. You're just there to laugh. You guys were saying something important as well.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's interesting that it ended up being that way because everybody's philosophy informed everybody else. So we informed the writers, and the writers informed us. And Jordan informed me, and I informed him. I know for a fact that Jordan's big deal was, it's gotta be funny first. We've gotta get the architecture right. Then we can slap something social on it. If President Obama is hamstrung because he can't get angry, or he's an angry black man and he can't say nothing, or he's an ineffectual black man, how do we help him? So we invented Luther, right? But it's dangerous because you're saying, hey, fucking white people. This is what he's thinking.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly. And also takes you a second. First it's hilarious. And then you're like, oh, wait a minute.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Also, because Jordan is so masterful and so brilliant, that concept, which came from SNL in the early days, when Chevy Chase used to do Weekend Update, they would do these little segments where he'd say, and now our next segment is sponsored by the Society for the Deaf. Our top story tonight, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. And there'd be a little box. And in the box is Garrett Morris. And he'd go, our top story tonight.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

General. Now he's doing it for a practical reason. But Jordan's idea was, what if you were screaming behind me? What if you were yelling out my frustration and anger? And it's such a goddamn clever idea that even in the midst of the indictment of the double standard of how you have to act as a black person, white conservative people will go God damn it.

[Monica Padman]

That's clever, right?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I gotta give it to him. Cause I've seen that guy. He don't ever yell.

[Dax Shepard]

I bet he is pissed off.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I bet he is pissed off.

[Dax Shepard]

He's worried to them right then.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Right then.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Also, we had to write scenes in a very thematic, evergreen way. Even when you air this and publish this, what I'm about to say will be on the podcast, but won't make any difference in a year. So, like, if we wrote a sketch about Tyreek Hill being arrested in Miami. Okay, that works if SNL's on right now. Today, we again tried to make lemonades out of lemon, which is okay. We have a 13 week writing process. We can't write any topical stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

We got to write evergreen stuff. The hope is our work will stand the test of time and that hopefully that we're making a comment on something that is obsolete. My hope would be that our grandchildren will go, I don't get it. Yeah, wouldn't that be awesome if our grandchildren said, I don't get the sketch?

[Dax Shepard]

That's a weird goal to have as an artist.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Wouldn't that be amazing if it made no sense in 10 years?

[Monica Padman]

It's like that hugely popular riddle about the son going to the hospital.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

And the doctor performs surgery and it's the mom.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's the mom.

[Monica Padman]

And that's a huge shock that a mom could possibly be a doctor.

[Dax Shepard]

We gave our kids that riddle and they're like, this isn't a riddle. It's the mom. I was like, oh, that's cool. When I was a kid, that was impossible.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It was impossible, especially. It broke my brain. Wait, the mom's the doctor?

[Dax Shepard]

How the country are they in?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

What. What year is it?

[Dax Shepard]

3041. This is shitty riddle. Because it's fucking impossible. You can't.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Can't be the mom.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly. So that's what you're saying.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You're hoping in an ideal world our sketches would be obsolete.

[Dax Shepard]

Some things do get sorted in a degree where you're like, well, this doesn't have an engine really anymore.

[Monica Padman]

Thank God.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Thank God.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And also just looking at our consumerism, when you see gay men in commercials or interracial couples in commercials, it's just a thing that we do now.

[Dax Shepard]

You would never think totally normal. So Second City opens in Detroit in 90. How quickly are you taking classes there?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I left in 93 and went to graduate school at Penn State. And then when I came back home to Detroit, I started a theater in Hamtramck. Called the Planet Ant.

[Dax Shepard]

Sam hung out in Hamtramck exclusively.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Sam spent all of his time there. I was the coach for Tim Robinson's sketch group.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you were? I was wondering if there was going to be overlap.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yes, he had a sketch group. They were called you'd Fat Friend, which you can't name.

[Dax Shepard]

Also.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Also not a name that could be a name of a group. No. And I saw Sam in it. Show. It was a commedia dell'arte show at the Planet Ant.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know what comedian we had.

[Monica Padman]

Commedia at University of Georgia, but I didn't do it. I was too scared.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Commedia dell'art is a mask art form that started in the 16th century in Italy. There were different scripts and different scenarios that were set up, but all the characters are the same. Carlo Godoni was the most famous commedia playwright. There's a bunch of different commedia playwrights. And they'd say, okay, this story is about the young couple that's getting together, but they're not supposed to get together. And the one father hates him, but he's having an affair with. But every single play has the same characters. When you got up on Saturday mornings and turned on abc, you'd watch a bunch of cartoons, but Bugs Bunny is in all of them and Porky Pig's in all of them and Yosemite Sam is occasionally in them. All of those characters on those cartoons that we watch when we're kids are based on commedia characters.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Axel Foley, Eddie Murphy's character.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Detroit is based on a commedia character called Arlecchino. So is Bugs Bunny any street smart, quick witted scamp. Charlie Chaplin, the Tramp is an Arino character.

[Dax Shepard]

What is your theory or belief? Are people independently recreating that or are they aware of that?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I think most people inherit that archetype.

[Monica Padman]

They're archetypes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

They're archetypes.

[Dax Shepard]

They just started there.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That's right. Somebody figured out how to codify the archetypes in the 1500s. People intrinsically know them and go, I'm going to play the parasite. I'm going to play the sassy man. Florence from the Jeffersons is a commedia character named Kalina.

[Dax Shepard]

Gotcha.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's crazy.

[Monica Padman]

It's so cool.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So cool and fascinating. So I saw a commedia show with Sam in it. That's the first time I ever met him. And then he and Tim used improv and they wrote shows that they performed at the Planet end. And they worked and they did all that until they Got their own show called the Detroiters that was on Comedy Central. So I started that theater with my eight friends. It used to be a coffee house, by the way. It is the coffee house where Meg and Jack White. Meg.

[Dax Shepard]

No.

[Monica Padman]

What?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my Lord.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That's where they met. They met at the Planet Ant coffee house.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So we gutted the coffee house and turned it into a black box and started doing plays. And then I auditioned for Second City Detroit, and I got in. I didn't have to take classes, so it wasn't as organized as it was at the Groundlings or the Second City or ucb.

[Dax Shepard]

How great. You're just doing shows.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I'm just doing shows. And then they said, do you want to teach? And then I started teaching. I was just fully immersed.

[Dax Shepard]

Every.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Every day. I'm reading Improv by Keith Johnstone. I'm reading Viola Spolin. I'm going to work. I'm teaching. It was a really fervent, fun, fulfilling, educational time.

[Dax Shepard]

Has it ever gotten more fun?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's never gotten more fun.

[Dax Shepard]

No. Isn't it crazy because you're there aiming for here.

[Monica Padman]

I know.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And then you get here and you.

[Dax Shepard]

Go, oh, that was it.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's like when you talk to athletes and you go, but how do you stay? Forget every athlete who's 23. Good for them. It's when you're 33 and God forbid you're successful, how do you. You keep the passion going? Some of the most fulfilling work I ever did in my life was at that time when I went to Chicago.

[Dax Shepard]

How long were you in Detroit before you went to Chicago?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I was there for three years and 11 months to the day.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow. Okay.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

From 1997 to 2001. I left in July of 2001, moved to Chicago. They put me into the new show. I was replacing a guy who was leaving to move out here. I went into that show. We started our rehearsal process for the next show. We were probably three weeks out from pre. I woke up in the morning on a Tuesday, just like everybody else in this country, and heard that two planes had flown into the World Trade Center. I remember we went to work and everybody's shell shocked. The director of the Main Stage show, he was beside himself. His name's Jeff Richmond. He's Tina Fey's husband. He was trying to figure out musical. Musical director, how the hell do I get to New York to my wife.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It was crazy from a creative standpoint, because, again, topical. Their show was now obsolete. And our show, we had written most of it like, three quarters of the show, we didn't know what to do.

[Dax Shepard]

Of course, you must question, are we even allowed to go be funny in this time?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And I remember I was going home one night with the stage manager because we lived near each other and we'd share a cab sometimes to go home. We were on Lakeshore Drive, and the cab driver was Afghani and he had stickers of American flags. Yeah, yeah. All over his cab. My stage manager, like, this poor guy, he's got to try to be as patriotic as he possibly can. If you're Afghani or you're Iraqi or you're Persian and you're watching the news, the first person who was killed or lynched, if you will, was a Sikh, which means that white people don't know shit about anything.

[Monica Padman]

If you're brown, you're in trouble.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

If you're brown, you're in trouble. I'm like, they killed a Sikh. And so then we created a character where I played an Afghani cab driver who wore Uncle Sam hat so that anybody that got into his cab, he knows I live America. America, country in the world. We did that and we opened the show. I remember the first time we touted out that character on stage to audition the material, the laughter was thunderous. But, you know, it wasn't regular laughter. It was cathartic laughter. And I went, oh, my God. I think my job might be important.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It was a wonderful feeling.

[Dax Shepard]

So how long were you in Chicago? Was Jordan there?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Jordan had studied there before I got.

[Dax Shepard]

There, but he was with Boom.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

He went to Boom. I was there from July of 2001 until December of 03. So two years. And then they did a cast swap. The cast from Boom, Chicago came to Chicago, and our main stage cast went to the Netherlands.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you go?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I did not. I was on the Etc. So I got to know Jordan and we saw each other's shows and it was instant comedy love. And we enjoyed each other. We had similar backgrounds, being raised by single white mothers and were biracial. We had a lot in common. And. And then he auditioned for Mad.

[Dax Shepard]

Look, can I say one thing about him while we're talking about him? Because we interviewed him.

[Monica Padman]

It was fantastic.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it's one of my favorites. What was revealed in that is that he was actually kind of a real lonely kid living in a very scary big world in New York.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yes, he was.

[Dax Shepard]

And it's like the sweetest part. I just loved learning that side of him.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

He was a lonely kid. He's also a brave person. Because he would traverse that city by himself.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Jordan is one of these people who kind of just gets on with life. He just pushes through. It's why get out exists. Eight years it took him to write that movie.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Really pushed through. I really admire him. My two partners are the two people I kind of admire most in the world. I admire my wife and I admire Jordan, their work ethic and their spirit. He's amazing.

[Dax Shepard]

Plotters really impress me. People who can plot.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

People who plot. Yeah. Grind.

[Dax Shepard]

I gotta lose, you know, I'm lightning in a bottle.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That's why we're here for two hours, right? Because you're like something's going to stick.

[Dax Shepard]

Something will stick.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

But yeah, Jordan and Elle are both very much of that school of let me just keep writing it until it's right. I'm going to do what I have to do to get it right. And our first season of camp Jordan used to say, it's just got to be bulletproof, man. We just got to out hustle everybody else. Just work harder than everybody else.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, Like I got into improv to be off the cuff, baby, that's me.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Jazz, baby, Jazz, Jazz.

[Dax Shepard]

You can't try to control.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Don't control me.

[Dax Shepard]

His mistress. Exactly.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I'm like you. I'm exactly like you.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm like, throw me in chaos, make me feel like I'm about to fall down and then you'll see the best side.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That's me too. Put me in a crisis and then I'll perform.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

But if you give me time to write it, I'm not a good self starter in that way.

[Dax Shepard]

I need the survival thing to click in like I'm drowning right now.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I have to perform right now. Don't ask me to perform right now. I have to perform right now or it's not going to happen.

[Dax Shepard]

That's the race fuel.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

So you did know him. And then ultimately do you go to New York for a Mad TV audition and did you ever audition for snl?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I never auditioned for snl. It all happened in a pressure cooker. And so Andrew Alexander, who owned the Second City, very, very good friends with Lauren and known him for years and had supplied him so many talent. Yeah, him and Bernie Sains. And Bernie Sains ran the Second City before Andrew purchased it. So he and Lauren, both Canadians, very good friends. I got scouted by Mad TV.

[Dax Shepard]

What year is this?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

This is 2003.

[Dax Shepard]

Because I want to know if you had the same feeling I did, which was, and I'll say this delicately, I ultimately respect a great deal everyone that did Mad and was on Mad. But when you started at the Groundlings and you went through that four year process I went through to get on that stage, the goal was sering it live and people would leave and they'd go to Mad TV and you just felt like, I'm not in a position to not take work. I honestly hoped I didn't get presented that decision cause I wanted to be on Serient Live and I would have been on Mad TV because I was penniless and I wasn't getting any work.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I hear you. It was strange. I am a person who, I don't want to say I succumbed to the panic, but there was a bird in the hand.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That's this business. Right.

[Dax Shepard]

And by the way, you chose correctly for your life.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It worked out perfectly for my life.

[Dax Shepard]

But it was a weird scenario. When you were doing sketch and improv.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

If you're a groundling or you're a second citizen, there's just no way. Everybody wants to be on snl. You want to be Will Frell or I go back to Belushi or Gilda. That's who you want to be. And what was funny is I remember doing my work and doing the show and casting director was there. And what was funny is there were three women who were coming off or potentially coming off of MADtv. I'm the one that got the call to go audition, right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I was like, I don't have a vagina. What do they need me for? And they already had Aries and they just hired Jordan. But I went out and I auditioned. And the executive producer, David Salzman, also a Detroiter, an adopter of Detroit, he's a New Yorker who went to Wayne State. And I auditioned. I remember talking to my agent and he said, look, we can talk to the producers who work with Lauren. You know, they're not going to get Lauren to leave Amon Gansett, his summer house in Maine.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

He doesn't know me from Adam. Andrew said, I know Tim's leaving the show soon. Tim Meadows. You might want to look at one of my guys. But Lauren's not going to stop his vacation to go to 8H and just see me. So it was weird, you know, like you're looking at your dream. You're like, so am I just going to consciously give up? Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

That's the thing you're declaring. That's that for my SNL dream. Because no one will ever go from Mad tv.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Never. Are you going from Mad tv To sl.

[Dax Shepard]

It's an awesome opportunity. It's tv. It's doing what you love. But you are saying goodbye to something you've been singularly for. Or I was singularly focused on.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I wasn't focused on it in Detroit. It was unrealistic. Until we did a show. Sometimes people would be in the audience, Right. But Dave Coule.

[Monica Padman]

Full House.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Full House. He's from Detroit. So Dave Coule and Bob Saget were in the audience.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, how exciting.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Couye had to leave or something or he was going to go see Darren McCarty's band or something like that. Darren McCarty's a famous red hockey player.

[Monica Padman]

Red Wing.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And Saget came backstage and came and improvised with us. Lovely man.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Generous guy. And then they told their managers about one of my castmates because Chris Farley had just died and one of my castmates resembled Chris Farley.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

He and another one of my castmates, they were asked to come put a showcase together. These guys came to town and watched our show.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

They were managers. And all of a sudden, for the next two years, it got weird at the Second City. Really weird.

[Monica Padman]

It's like, oh, this could lead to something.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

This actually could lead to something more. As opposed to us just being here at home in Detroit, entertaining the people.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Once you introduce dudes are flying in to pluck someone out of here, it's everyone's head up, everybody's head up. Yeah. Then people hate each other. And competitive. Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I hear about stories about, like, really great improv troops and the worst thing in the world, it's a three man improv troop who's excellent and poetry in motion. And then one gets cast as a feature player and one gets cast as a writer and one's left out in the brutal. Brutal, Absolutely brutal.

[Dax Shepard]

Savage business.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It is.

[Monica Padman]

I think it was so good of you to take. Well, obviously we know it worked out for you, but even just the singular goal thing doesn't exist, actually in this industry. You have to learn to drop that so early on in order to succeed at all. There's no such thing as a single singular goal in Hollywood.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You can't do it.

[Monica Padman]

You cannot succeed that way.

[Dax Shepard]

But you got to host.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yes. Now, that was an amazing experience.

[Dax Shepard]

What's cool about it is, like, I still got here.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

The best moment of that whole experience. First of all, I was in London shooting a movie when I got the offer. I started kind of freaking out a little bit. And thank God Fred Armisen was in the movie with me. And he said, Just understand, it's going to go by so fast on the actual day, when you do the dress rehearsal and then you do the show, it's a blur. Try as you might to be in the moment, the best moment was whatever the longest commercial break was. I had finished my quick change, so they were showing a video and then going to commercial.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, great.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Right. So I actually had two and a half minutes.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And she's so sweet. The stage manager was standing next to me and I was just going. And Cecily's getting her change done, and I'm kind of just standing back backstage. And then the stage. Come here for a second. There's a crawl space area where clearly people have to crouch down a bit to get under this little scaffolding area. And on this piece of cement by the scaffolding area, there was a sign that said, caution, watch your head. And then written in pen, under the word head, somebody had written the word Farley. Caution, watch your head, Farley. And I think it was David Spade.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Specifically for Chris.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And then I almost started crying. Yeah, And I almost started crying. That was my one moment in the midst of the chaos where I got to just take a moment and remember, first of all, it's right before you walk on stage.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I can't imagine.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And that moment. So those are the two moments I remember. Everything else is kind of a blur. That moment was sublime.

[Dax Shepard]

That's great. I'm so glad you got that.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I think to host is, as I said, that's the actual dream. Absolutely sublime experience.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, it's funny is I'm now at a point where I was thinking, even if it ever came back up, somehow I had some triumph that would warrant me getting. Being invited. I'm almost at the age where it's like, I don't know if I have that anymore.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I have absolutely not a doubt in my mind, Dax, that you would excel.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm going to take that to heart.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You would take the bull by the horns and you would absolutely murder it. I think your muscle memory would kick in. Everything you learned at the Groundlings would kick in.

[Dax Shepard]

This is a more general question. Do you feel yourself getting less brave as you get older and you've been doing it longer?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I kind of do, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

What I did in Idiocracy, I couldn't do that now. I would be like, that's too big of a swing. I can't pull that.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You were younger and you made great comedic choices in the context of that movie. Idiocracy is actually one of the more important movies made in American cinema, which is insane. It is perfect American satire.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. We are supported by Wayfair. Oh my goodness, I love Wayfair. My feet are on a Wayfair coffee table right now that I'm in love with. I cannot believe the holidays are just around the corner. If you're hosting this holiday season, it's definitely that time where you need to start prepping the house to make things festive but also functional for your guests. Wayfair is the place to get great deals on things your home actually needs this time of year. Cozier blankets, maybe a few extra dining chairs, holiday serveware. You name it, they have it. If you've been eyeing a few things on Wayfair, now is the time to get them. They have huge holiday deals going on right now and you can get up to 70% off during their Black Friday Friday deals. That's huge. 70%.

[Monica Padman]

As you said, we have a coffee table. We have side tables in the studio. This whole place is Wayfair.

[Dax Shepard]

We are decked out. Wayfair also offers free and easy shipping, even on the big stuff, and they'll help you set it up. One less thing to worry about this busy season. Don't miss out on saving big with Wayfair this holiday. Head to Wayfair.com now to shop Wayfair's Black Friday deals. That's W A Y F A I R We are supported by 23andMe plus total health. Advocating for your health and the personalized care you need and deserve in today's one size fits all health care system feels impossible. 23andMe + Total Health is a longevity platform that uses cutting edge genetic testing and blood biomarker analysis to help you create a health plan that's unique to you. With their advanced genetic screening, you'll get access to insights into your potential future disease risks, which can help help lead to early detection and even prevention.

[Monica Padman]

23Andme is how we learned about misophonia. That's right, it's how we gave it credit.

[Dax Shepard]

And I just ordered a supplemental test that already was there. They just had to analyze it for our Isaacson panel. With 23 me plus total health, you get comprehensive blood testing beyond routine labs, which can help you get a better understanding of how your health is changing throughout the year. Best of all, it's FSA HSA eligible. Check with your administrator to confirm eligibility. Advocate for your health today. Go to 23me.comdax to receive 10% off that's 10% off at 23andme.comdax we are supported by Skims. If you're in the market for holiday presents, Skims has got you covered.

[Monica Padman]

Boy, do they. They just launched their holiday shop with some incredible gift ideas. You know I like giving you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. You're a gift expert and you approve?

[Monica Padman]

I do. And when I gave for a white el, I gave a skims robe once before. It was a huge hit.

[Dax Shepard]

It was stolen immediately. Immediately.

[Monica Padman]

And they do. They have this amazing soft lounge sleep set from the Skims Holiday Shop. Really cute seasonal colors. It's so nice to get festive and get in your skims and bop around.

[Dax Shepard]

You gotta have ventize.

[Monica Padman]

You gotta.

[Dax Shepard]

It's so fun. And who doesn't love a gift list? It makes holiday shopping that much easier. Shop Skims holiday [e-mail] available in styles for women, men, kids, and even pets. If you haven't yet, be sure to let them know we sent you. After you place your orders, select podcast in the survey and select our show in the dropdown menu that follows. Do you know what was great about that? My mom went to the premiere and she said to me in the kindest way possible, well, it's not my favorite thing I've seen you in.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

She didn't like it.

[Dax Shepard]

She didn't like it. I'm like, okay, I can accept that. And then maybe three weeks later, she called me and she goes, I just went to Walmart and I'm starting to think that movie might be really good.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Oh, that's terrific.

[Dax Shepard]

Isn't that interesting?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's so societally sticky. A satire can only do two things. It can only preface what's going to happen or project what a future could look like. And the only other thing it can do is become that future.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, right.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And it is becoming that future. I'm thinking of idiocracy, and I'm thinking about the presidential debate.

[Monica Padman]

I know. Interchangeable.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's interchangeable.

[Dax Shepard]

And also, even just the consumer stuff is really making materialize in a way. It's like I'll constantly be watching something and I'll be like, oh, my God, they're wearing billboards now while they play this game.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Irrigating your crops with monsters with Gatorade. So good.

[Monica Padman]

But I do know what you mean. Going back to what you were saying about being brave, because I do think when you're young, you're so risky. And then as you get more and more and more success, there's more and more and more to lose, which Inherently then makes you less risky, which can make you less funny. It's this weird.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yes. Especially if that's the measuring stick for funny. Jordan said to me one time, I always have an interesting Jordan take on something because he says such brilliant things. Also, when you're younger and you're poor, you are living the life that most people are living.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

If you're middle class or lower middle class. So you can stand on a stage with a microphone and say, you guys ever notice? Because they do notice.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

But you can't say, did you ever notice when your private plane is like 20 years old and you're a little afraid about getting on it?

[Dax Shepard]

Like what? You're like, I paid 70 grand for this charter and it's got an interior from a G4.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

From a G4. Yeah. Yeah. My chair only swivels 90 degrees. What is going on?

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I mean, if we were in a Falcon X7, that'd be different. But I mean, this is a G4 chassis.

[Dax Shepard]

Hope the aeronautics have been updated, especially.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

If you start to isolate yourself. I get nervous for somebody who might want to jump back into the world of stand up or comedy after being wildly successful for a long, long time ago. But do you have any connection to the people who are in your audience?

[Dax Shepard]

So my observation, that's very similar to that. And I specifically watch it with Will Ferrell because at some point I was like, he does a lot of period pieces. You know, he done anchorman. He did another anchorman. Then he did the basketball one. Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Semi pro.

[Dax Shepard]

What I think is interesting is you're no longer subjugated by a shitty boss, a shitty teacher. Most people's life, they're dealing with someone above them. And you do transcend that with success. So really, your well is going to be back in time because that's when you can remember really having to deal with some other. And that's when I really thought about that. It's like, yeah, that's the peril of success is that you're no longer really having to deal with some crazy personality that's above you that you have to placate.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And you're at their mercy.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. You're picking up every little annoying thing they do and you're just crafting this character. And even when you're doing your first exercises in comedy theaters, it's like, do a teacher, do a boss. You know, it's these people you hated.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah. People that you rail against.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Because you're young now.

[Monica Padman]

You're the character.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Now you're the character what am I supposed to play? I'm gonna do a movie about a guy who's having an existential crisis about being the boss.

[Dax Shepard]

Because everything else is that movie.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, even any existential crisis, like, oh, all your other problems were solved. So now you're at the existential.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

The philosophical stuff. Right. Which always makes for great dramatic action. Yeah, It's a conundrum.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Comedians in particular, historically, don't age very well. I think that's why Bill Murray is such a phenom. Is like, somehow that guy held on to the same angle for almost 50 years.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Because I think about the work that we didn't see him do at the Second City before he made it to Saturday Night Live.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

He is a phenom because there's no way to classify him or describe him. You want his career, and you also don't want his career. I want to admire his career, but I don't know how I would navigate that. How would I even try to emulate that career, truly.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so just fast forwarding through the couple things I thought were fascinating about Key and Peele that I learned researching you. And you already alluded to it, which is initially, Jordan was like, this has to be written. Bulletproof. And that the first season was almost. No. No improv.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yep.

[Dax Shepard]

I found this fascinating. And then at some point, you had to say to him, like, hey, how.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Do you feel about us? Open up the playbook a little bit.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Like, we also do this thing that's really special in electric, and we're not doing that at all.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

He was feeling so confident about his skills, and he was. He was at the top of his game our first season of the show. So he felt, I know I can write this in such a way that I can force the laughs to come. I know where the punchline comes, I know where the turn comes. I know where the jokes are going to be. And let's just make sure that we give Peter, our director, everything thing he needs to give us the best possible product to look at. And then it was the second season that we started. It was a controlled experiment. We're going to have some pieces that are completely and utterly dependent on the writing. And if we can interpret them in an interesting way, so be it. But then let's also have playtime. So traditional straight man clown scenes and sometimes what we call peas in the pod scenes. So, you know the two car valets that we play.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Liam Neesons and the Batmans and the Bruce Willis and all that stuff, they were written, but I Don't know if you guys know Colton Dunn.

[Monica Padman]

Yes, yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So Colton's always very versatile. He's good at writing skeleton scenes that you can fill in. And he's also good at writing fun, joke, offbeat scenes where you want to get the lines right so that you get the quirkiness of it. We started sprinkling that in. And then early third season, we started doing more macabre stuff where if you watch the third and fourth seasons of our show, it shouldn't surprise you too much that Jordan is a horror director, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

In retrospect, the clues were there. Do you think this show's more popular now than when it was on tv? I do.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I think it's way more popular now. I don't know what the share numbers are, but I think we used to hover around 1.6 to 2 million viewers a week. Two million tops. It wasn't until when sketches started going onto to YouTube and people had a sense of ownership about the sketches. Like, I found this thing and I sent it to my friend. Also, it created a narrative that we never intended. It's funny what people don't pay attention to, they don't pay attention to the bug in the bottom of the screen. There's the double C. This is from Comedy Central.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

From a show. Who are these two guys making these great videos on YouTube?

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, it's like a band at that point.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You're like, I discovered this. I'm in on this. I'm sharing this.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You give them ownership over it. That's what started the phenome. And now what is bizarre to me are when 15 year olds. Our show went off the air in 2015, right? Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

They were six when it went. Six years old. Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So that's because of TikTok. It's amazing. It's absolutely amazing.

[Dax Shepard]

It is. And you know what's cool about it too is I use it that way probably once every six months. I miss the hat sketch so much that I have to go watch it. Yeah. I cannot believe that sketch. For anyone who. Who's not seen it, two dudes come out, I'm in their dog. I'm in their dog. I'm in their dog. I can't tell you how much Chris and I would go, I'm in their dog. I'm in there.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Tuck it.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm in their dog. I'm in their dog.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I'm in there, dog. I'm in there.

[Dax Shepard]

But you guys come out. One guy's still got the receipt on his hat, which is a thing. And the other dude feels really bummed, like I just got shown up. And then he shows up the next day, and he's got his hat. It's in the bag. I can't remember the total progression.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah. First one is, you know, the kids wear the hats with just the stickers on them.

[Dax Shepard]

Yep, stickers.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And the next guy has his hat in the bag with the receipt and wearing it. The bag in the bag on his head. And then the next guy has the hat in a plexiglass display case on his head.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And then the other guy literally has a woman, a Chinese woman, sewing.

[Dax Shepard]

He has a sweatshop on his head.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I wanted it to be a kid. I don't know why they wouldn't let us have a kid. Like, one of the young Asian kids making the hat. I didn't care where they were from. They could have been from Taiwan or Bangkok with that. Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

That. We just had a guest on recently where he and I geeked out about that sketch for a while. The other one that I'll have to watch, too, once every six months is any of these Terries get froggy.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That's a Colton Dun special. Yeah. That sketch is ridiculous. The best part about that sketch, first of all, Malcolm Barrett's amazing in it, but the woman who did all of her hair and wigs through the last season of the show, every product, she goes, do you guys think there's any sketch where we could put the braid guy in those guys? The way that we're dressed?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Are two real people okay? Two real people. She found crazy images, and she went, this guy's afro is shaved into a hat. And I was like, I don't know where that's going to fit. Might have been Jordan was like, maybe the terrorist guys. That might be a good look for those guys.

[Monica Padman]

And the substitute teacher. That's a enormous.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I mean, that thing. Who knew?

[Dax Shepard]

And I'll tell you, you've affected people's lives. Because my best friend in the world is Aaron Winkley, and I can't tell how many people call him Aaron.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I'm really happy to be here talking about it. To sketch people. We do, on average, six sketches a show. So two sketches a week would go online. We have them out there in the world for people to see as marketing. And then we put something at the end of the sketch saying, check out next week's episode of Key and Peele. So we were picking the sketches. I don't even remember what the other sketch Was. But I remember whatever it was, we went, ooh, that one. And then we said, what should the second sketch be? And I think it was me and Jordan and other two showrunners. We're just sitting in an office one day and we're like, maybe the teacher one. Maybe the teacher one. But that was actually all of our attitudes was, that's a very good sketch. It's a clever sketch. But when you're surrounded all day, five to six days a week by sketch writers, everyone just kind of goes, oh, that's a good one.

[Dax Shepard]

It's super misleading because inevitably the stuff that was all of our favorites would get on stage on Sunday and it would tank. And then the one we were all ho hum about was a huge hit because you get two essays esoteric in it. It was too pedestrian, maybe.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That's what I wanted you to say. Yeah, for a sketch comedian. Yeah, it was too pedestrian. It's like, it's pretty much by the numbers.

[Monica Padman]

It's on the notes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Anybody could write this sketch. Except not except for. It's the best sketch ever. We're like, God damn it, Rich. The guy who wrote it. We're like, that's clever. That's a good. And we all piled on, and everyone had their own names they wanted to add to it. And the comedic game was clear and clever. Yeah, but who knew?

[Dax Shepard]

The legs of it are really fascinating. You just don't tire of it. It's not like you want to hear three names and be done. You want to hear a hundred names.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You wish it could go on and on and on and on.

[Dax Shepard]

There's a riddle in it. You're trying to figure out. You're, like, actively listening, and you're going.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Now what's he going to say next? And am I going to be able to figure out what the name. Really? Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It was like a weird game. There was probably something dopamine level happening. There's like a slot machine aspect to.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It, which a lot of sketches do. It's funny. The two most popular sketches in the history of Key and Peele both have to do with names.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, really?

[Monica Padman]

Really.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

The football name sketch, where the guys say their name and what school they went to, and they said, now, let's meet the players from the West. You know, Jack Marius, Tech theatrics, Michigan State University. You know, all those people. The first time my manager called us and said, did you see on YouTube how many hits. This is 12 years ago. So I went online and he's like, look up the substitute teacher sketch. And I was like 25 million hits.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh my gosh. That would be like the season finale of Friends, right?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Exactly. I mean, it was like, what's happening? We had no idea. It was just a random, like, let's put the teacher sketch on there and look at it now.

[Dax Shepard]

That's so interesting. Okay, we must now talk about Transformers 1.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Now, before we talk about that, this is just a really nosy question. You are in so many mega movies doing vo, Lego Movie, Hotel Transylvania, Angry Birds, Super Mario Brothers, Toy Story, the Lion King, Pinocchio. There's way more. More. Have you made more money doing voice over than you have acting?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I'm going to say no.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

But I think it's got to be close.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Maybe Transformers 1 puts you over.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It might. Because one of the things is you don't always get paid a ton, especially in a franchise. If it's the first movie, you get paid a kind of a nominal fee up front and then you hope it does well at the box office and you make money in your bumps.

[Dax Shepard]

I want to say Kristen might have made 50 grand for frozen one, probably before the bonuses.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And then who knows what she made on frozen two.

[Dax Shepard]

$650 million. She had 61% of is put into this attic.

[Monica Padman]

That's right. Can't you tell?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

That's a good nosy question. Yeah, cuz where you crush it. The residuals of it too. It's a residual residual. Like we are in a normal. We like without a paddle. Lifetime residuals. I don't know what they've hit maybe 200 grand or something. I know it mostly cuz stuntman friends of mine get real residuals. And some of these stuntmen are in all the Marvel movies.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Of course.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm like, oh, These are making 700,000 year on these. Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Anybody who isn't an A list actor who's in that movie, the 200 actors you made, more than all of them put together.

[Dax Shepard]

Once you're in these billion dooll movies.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Man, you get the resids.

[Monica Padman]

Well, that's what the strike was a lot about.

[Dax Shepard]

All about the resid. Okay, so now Transformers 1. It's fantastic, it's fun, it's exciting. It's a animated version of Transformers.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yes. So it's the second animated Transformers film. The first one came out 19. 1986. And man, is it a strange movie. The cartoon came out in 84 in the states and became such a huge hit. And then the thing about this movie that's also very exciting to me because I'm a big Transformers fan, nostalgically speaking, from childhood.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you have any of the toys?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I had one of them, but I can't remember which one it was. And I think it was a hand me down toy.

[Dax Shepard]

I have some resentment against Transformers because.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You never got to have.

[Dax Shepard]

I didn't have them. And there's kids in your class were transforming them.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yep, yep.

[Dax Shepard]

And there's a group gathered around sometimes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I'll be honest with you, I couldn't transform it. It was too complicated. They're very hard and they're not easy to.

[Dax Shepard]

When I got my hands on one.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

This is barely fun at all.

[Dax Shepard]

And they give us. Snatch it out of your hand.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

If I wanted a Rubik's Cube, there was one in particular that I wanted called Sound Wave. He transformed into a boombox.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And he had the little cassette shoot. And they're little cassettes that turned into mini.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, that's.

[Dax Shepard]

There was a little two in one.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And the little bird. There were spies also.

[Dax Shepard]

The two biggest things in the world at that time were fucking jam boxes and Transformers. They combined the two.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I watched the movie recently, the old one, and what he does is he goes. And he turns into the boombox. And then one of the little spies, the bird, goes inside of him into the cassette chute. And then he plays what the little bird recorded. Oh, you see?

[Dax Shepard]

He plays what the bird recorded.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah. It's very analog. We had such a great time. This is one of the good things. And I think this applies to biopics as well. This seems pretty obvious, but do what you can to write a really good story. And then it's almost like slap the Transformers on later. Take all of the intertextuality and all the nostalgia out of it. Write a standalone movie that I would want to go see and get invested in the story and then can slap all the other stuff on later. What's the kernel of the story?

[Dax Shepard]

And it has a very primal story, which is in search of power. Right. They can't transform.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

And we also meet. We're not ruining anything because it's in the trailer. Such a friendship and a bond of brotherhood between the two lead characters. And if you watch how the movie progresses and evolves, it's heartbreaking. It's about filial love. It's about brotherhood. It's about friendship and what can rip a friendship asunder and inequality.

[Dax Shepard]

Like not being allowed to have what.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Other people have and being fleeced and the system is against you. Yes, I know. The stakes are very high in the movie. But it's also about letting go. Something that you could let go of, that you don't let go of. I'm trying to be vague, but if the attribute of being able to forgive or let go existed in this one character, there would be no Megatron. The Character's name is D16. We would not have the world of the Transformers that we have.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Because this is an origin story.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

This is an origin story for everybody. And it's interesting because also we hear about in all the Michael Bay movies how we left Cybertron and Cybertron was destroyed and it was ravaged and it was under attack. Cybertron. Cybertron. And you never see Cybertron.

[Dax Shepard]

It's Superman's origin planet. Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

The Krypton origin. Whereas this whole movie, there's no humans in this movie. They're all Cybertronians or whatever you want to call them. And you get to see Cybertron. For people who love Transformers, they're just going to be like, oh, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

They're going to be jizzing all over to be sticky.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, fun.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you get to record with anybody? No. Is that bummer, right? Like, you're in a movie with Hemsworth.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah. And Scarlet.

[Dax Shepard]

My main obsession is Brian Tyree Henry. I just love this guy so much.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I do, too. There's such depth to his work. I like a chameleon actor. A chameleonic actor.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, chameleonic. I've never heard.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

When you see him in Bullet Train and then you see in Atlanta, the.

[Dax Shepard]

Show is so authentic that I am thinking, which is my favorite thing is like, oh, they found this guy in Atlanta. He's not an actor.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

He's so good in Atlanta. He is.

[Monica Padman]

He's Juilliard trained. Right.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

He went somewhere.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's either Yale or Julia. Yeah. It's not the street. Yes, right. Exactly. He didn't go to the school of hard knock. No. He's like a classically trained actor. We met before. It might have been. He did a movie called Hotel Artemis with Jody Foster and Sterling K. Brown, and I think I met him there, and he was a K. Peel fan, and I had seen him on Atlanta and we talked a little bit. So we know each other a little bit. We got to go to Comic Con together. It was me and him and Chris. We did a Comic Con panel.

[Dax Shepard]

What's it like being with Hemsworth at Comic Con? Because he's Thor.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's exactly what I expected it to be. In my experience, there's such a different dynamic. I know television doesn't really exist anymore, but Between a television performer and a movie star.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And an action movie star.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Action movie star. So when people did recognize him, it was always. It's that.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

When people recognize. Recognize me, they come up to hug me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, Right.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Because I'm a human. Forget that he plays a superhero. He doesn't look like a human.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

In real life, because nobody can look like that.

[Monica Padman]

No, no.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So he is a superhero. And so people are in awe.

[Dax Shepard]

Don't you want to walk around as him for just, like, a day?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Just a day. Just to feel what it's like to breathe?

[Dax Shepard]

Or like every time you turn over your shoulder, everyone you just passed and they're like. They're like, trying to collect themselves for a day. As long as the streets. All women.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. If the street is all women, I don't want to turn around and all the dudes on the street are staring at me. I want all the women on the.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Street because some of those dudes want to fight you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Could you imagine being Stallone? I don't think anybody ever thought they could beat up Arnold, but I think people think they might have been able to beat up Stallone.

[Dax Shepard]

I agree.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Why is that?

[Dax Shepard]

And he's Rocky.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I could say yes, you know?

[Dax Shepard]

But fantasy that you could get so tough no one would ever fuck with.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You again invites more.

[Dax Shepard]

Bumblebee's a good guy to play.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

He was a lot of fun to play. And he's kind of exuberant and fun and positive. And also the fact that we got to give him a voice. Dan Gil Ro, I think was his name, the guy who played Bumblebee in the 80s on the TV show when he could talk. But I love the storyline from the Michael Bay movies when he couldn't speak. It kind of endeared him to people.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. We like a little robot that can't talk. Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That can't talk. He's got a little Wally quality to him.

[Dax Shepard]

A little. Johnny Five. Yeah.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Johnny Five.

[Dax Shepard]

Johnny Five is alive.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Johnny Five.

[Dax Shepard]

This is neither here nor there. You have probably worked with this guy. He's a good friend of mine, Clay Cullen. He's a stunt coordinator, and his father was the original Optimus Prime, Pete Cullen.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You know, Peter Cullen.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And he has had secretly this whole life of supporting himself by being Optimus Prime.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Oh, absolutely. Especially back then when you could get paid handsomely for doing voice work. And he did it through the 80s, right. In the current movies. And there was a character on the cartoon Called Jazz, who was an Autobot, who was voiced by Scatman Crothers.

[Dax Shepard]

Who's Scatman?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Scatman Crothers was the old bald janitor in the Shining.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That's Scatman Crothers.

[Dax Shepard]

And bought a home and everything. Like when you. Yes, I love.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

He did tons of voices. He did voices of like the Harlem Globetrotters cartoons. All those kind of cheap Korean made cartoons that came in the late 70s and 80s that were on Saturday Morning. And Scatman Crothers, he wasn't Buckwheat. He was Stymie from the Little Rascals.

[Dax Shepard]

No way.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

So Robert Blake was a little Rascal and Stymie was a little Rascal. I know a little bit about childhood actors. So Uncle Fester from the Addams Family. Jackie Coogan is the kid.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, the Coogan principal. The Coogan father.

[Monica Padman]

The Coogan account.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

The Coogan account? Yes. Jackie Coogan, the kid from the Tramp. The little kid that's in the movie with Charlie Chaplin is Jackie Coogan, who played Uncle Fester.

[Dax Shepard]

And you know how much your parents have to rip you off to get known as the Coogan Account?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

The Coogan account, Right. That it's named after Jackie Coogan and not after Gary Coleman.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, it's a very, very good animated movie. Like it's so well done.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Josh Coy, the guy who wrote it and directed it, his pedigree is second and none. He's a Pixar guy. He did toy story 4. That's where we met. And he's really quite brilliant. And so people should see this movie. It's really terrific.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it really is. It's very cool that they decided to do an animated version.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

An animated version of it. I think it's right. Because you can do anything you want.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. The very last thing I'm going to ask you to do. I've been trying to get him on passionately with emails and friends of friends. First six and a half years have offered to fly to go interview him.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah. Shaquille, you trying to get Shaquille? Do I interview Shaquille?

[Dax Shepard]

I would like to interview Shaquille for just a few minutes. Shaquille, you're down in Atlanta or Florida now?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Florida sometimes. We're trying to. Trying to get back on the tnt. Oh, get our show back. Trying to get our show back.

[Dax Shepard]

And are you're in the boating now?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Did I see I'm in the boating? I'm the anchor.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, that's so fun.

[Dax Shepard]

Love, Shaquille O'Neal.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Shaquille O'Neal.

[Dax Shepard]

He's the single best follow on Instagram.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

He. You know what he is? He's the Snoop Dog of bas. He's the other Snoop Dogg. You're absolutely our coolest uncle. Jack's the other coolest uncle.

[Dax Shepard]

They're the two mascots for fucking having fun. Once a month, he has fallen in love with a song and he's learned the words, and now he's just gonna do a dance routine and sing the whole song for you while he's doing whatever else he's doing. And I was like, could this guy be happier and more fun, loving, content? When you interview anyone that's worked with Shaquille, they're like, oh, greatest two years of my life being teammates.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Don't forget to have fun. Winning's good, but, like, your life is the other. He's really inspirational.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You're right. Don't forget to have fun. And you go, oh, that's frivolous. It's not. It's important.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, Keegan, I always love when I bump into you. It happens occasionally and we get on so well.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

It's always great. We always have a good time when we see each other. The problem is when I'm here, I stay in Century City.

[Dax Shepard]

That's perverted.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I live in Los fellow Felix for 17 years, so if I can hook up with Jordan, we'll have dinner. And I was like, I will come to you. And part of that, to be honest with you, is I might bump into Dax and Kristen.

[Dax Shepard]

We could definitely put some effort into arranging that. We would love to.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

That would be great.

[Dax Shepard]

Century City, you have a favorite hotel there?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, the Fairmont Century Plaza. We love it there.

[Dax Shepard]

Directly across from ca.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Directly across from caa.

[Dax Shepard]

Are you represented there?

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I am representative.

[Dax Shepard]

One of those long. No, I get one of those, like, Pirates Binocular. Just the one long telescope.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I would try to see my making deals.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

This has been amazing.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So much fun. Thanks for long time coming. I'm glad you're here. Everybody see Transformers 1. It's fantastic. You're fantastic. This has been a blast. Let's do it again.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

You're fantastic. You're fantastic.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm in their dog. Tuck it.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Tuck it.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm going.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Tuck it. I'm going tuck.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. Apple Card is the perfect card for your holiday shopping. When you use Apple Card on your iPhone, you'll earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase, including products At Apple like a new iPhone 16 or Apple Watch Ultra. Apply now in the Wallet app on your iPhone. Subject to credit approval. Apple card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City terms and [e-mail] Stay tuned for the fact check so you can hear all the facts that were wrong.

[Monica Padman]

Hi.

[Dax Shepard]

Hi.

[Monica Padman]

Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome.

[Dax Shepard]

Who did I want to say that? Oh, I was trying. I was rehearsing the other day, doing it as Steven Seagal. I was wondering if I could do a whole intro with him.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow. You probably could.

[Dax Shepard]

I got stuck on talking like him. You know how I do around the house.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my mother. Every time I talk, I had a comment and say, you don't know this about me, but I've been a sheriff for 22 years in Wayne Parish. Welcome, welcome.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, see, yeah. This is what happens.

[Dax Shepard]

You don't.

[Monica Padman]

Can't stop.

[Dax Shepard]

I know. I know why he talks like that. It feels good.

[Monica Padman]

Really?

[Dax Shepard]

You should try it in your apartment tonight. I know you won't do it here live.

[Monica Padman]

I won't.

[Dax Shepard]

But it's. It feels good. It's like almost drunk.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Yeah. It's like half in, half out.

[Dax Shepard]

My algorithm just will not stop delivering me. Every day I see five or six new funny videos where he claims he taught someone a lethal kick. And he. It's incredible.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So we have. I have some. Some, I guess housekeeping or just some update on Aaron and I's crazy trip.

[Monica Padman]

Let's hear it.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, some people will know, but Aaron and I went to. We landed in Dallas, picked up Big Brown and immediately went to a Sprouts and did a beer tasting of Ted Seeger's. And they're 90 minutes long. And we met several hundred armchairs. And the things that armchairs are doing in the wild. Okay, I sent you some of them. One is a gal showed up. Did I already tell you this one?

[Monica Padman]

Oh, no.

[Dax Shepard]

Showed up with a baseball hat that said really great station. I mean. Yeah, you're not going to get better than that.

[Monica Padman]

No, that's so good.

[Dax Shepard]

Two lovely, unassuming ladies. This was, I think, in Memphis. Showed up in no other part of Dallas. Showed up in two matching shirts with unicorns on them because they know I don't like unicorns. And it says spray all day.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And there's. Did you notice that? Because I sent you a picture. I said, look at these shirts. I don't know if you. Do you see it said spray all day. I did.

[Monica Padman]

I'm just trying to act like, oh.

[Dax Shepard]

You'Re Trying to act like you didn't see it. That's helpful. Yeah. Okay. Keep playing along like that. So there was these shirts, and there were unicorns on it. And guess what it said.

[Monica Padman]

What?

[Dax Shepard]

It say spray all day. What?

[Monica Padman]

That's brand new information. Do you think the unicorns came from the unicorn conversation about the mug?

[Dax Shepard]

I do. Wow. That. I don't like unicorns.

[Monica Padman]

They're on top of it.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, they're really, really fast. So many cool things. We got a really. Oh, we got a framed photo of Chris Lydon.

[Monica Padman]

Stop.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

Where is it?

[Dax Shepard]

We got so much stuff. The bus is full of fun stuff. I couldn't bring it all back in this trip. I'm gonna have to be bringing it back after Christmas or something.

[Monica Padman]

These sweet arm cherries.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God. So many sweet arm cherries. We did seven of these meet and greets in, like, 50 hours.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, you did a lot. You packed in a lot.

[Dax Shepard]

And we drove 700 miles in the bus. It was scheduled. I should have looked better at the schedule.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. You felt overwhelmed.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm in a. I'm in a pattern right now of I should have paid more attention to certain things. I'm kind of at a low point.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

It's important to delegate.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And so you can't not.

[Dax Shepard]

Or you got to do way less stuff.

[Monica Padman]

You have to delegate. And you did that a couple times.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And you don't love the result.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, well.

[Monica Padman]

But that's life.

[Dax Shepard]

Listen, I also. I love the result. Erin and I had so much fun. We met. You know, we met a couple thousand armchairs.

[Monica Padman]

Were any of them not armchairs? Or was everyone in armchair?

[Dax Shepard]

There were a couple folks that, like, saw there was a commotion in the store.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Then recognized me from a movie.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But I think for them, it was probably really confusing because people would come up. I hug everybody, and then we would talk for a while, and I. And I heard some really, really powerful and heartbreaking and beautiful stories. People's family members who have od. People with addict parents, you know? So I think for the person that had just seen me in chips, sure, they were a little confused by what was going on. Like, what is this. This guy. This guy from the movies hugging everyone? He's talking for real long talk about chips.

[Monica Padman]

Well, it would make sense because you're in a grocery store, and it's like, maybe he's bringing back chips. Chips, too. And it's a tie in with potato chips.

[Dax Shepard]

Back to that initial confusion over the title. Oh, and this hilarious thing started happening where people were bringing their babies and the babies kept getting younger and younger. And we're holding the babies in the photos and bouncing the babies, and I'm playing with their toes. And I love babies.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, Babies.

[Dax Shepard]

I really. I remembered how much I love babies on this trip. But the babies kept getting younger. And there was a moment where we were holding identical twins that were five weeks old. Did I send you a picture of that?

[Monica Padman]

No. If you did, I'm going to pretend like you didn't.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, right. Right now I won't know what I. Okay. It's going to be hard to navigate this. And we're like, well, that's got to be the youngest. Five weeks old. Nope. I held a baby that was two weeks old.

[Monica Padman]

What?

[Dax Shepard]

And then our joke became, we're going to hear a woman in labor in, like, the next aisle. And they were going to hand us slippery baby. This baby is just born in this grocery store.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God. Literally kissing babies.

[Dax Shepard]

I felt like I was like, maybe running for an office. He has so many babies. And now I know that's the favorite part of their job because you get those little, tiny, little soft, little babies.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And they all look so different. There's a great variety of babies, even though they're all miniature.

[Monica Padman]

I wonder if I should say what?

[Dax Shepard]

I think some of the babies weren't attractive.

[Monica Padman]

Well, I didn't see any that wasn't.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, they were all very attractive babies.

[Monica Padman]

I'm sure they were very hot babies. Hot, hot babies.

[Dax Shepard]

Sexy babies. They were very.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, of course. But I like babies, once they're some.

[Dax Shepard]

Months old, they feel too fragile for you. Knock on wood all the time when you're with them.

[Monica Padman]

I know they're not fragile. They just came out of a vagina and a vulva and they got yanked out of there.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, and they get handled like a chicken when they come out. Exactly.

[Monica Padman]

But I do think it. They're scary. You know, they're brand new. You don't know them yet. And it's like, who are they? They're strangers. And then. I'm just going to be honest. I don't think they're cute yet.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow.

[Monica Padman]

I don't think they're cute until they're three months old. And you know what's funny?

[Dax Shepard]

Hot take.

[Monica Padman]

Very hot take. I know. I wonder if it's really going to bite me.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, you know.

[Monica Padman]

And it's my truth.

[Dax Shepard]

It's your truth. What? A couple fights. You've picked. Dog community. Huge, thriving, well organized, militant. And now the new moms community.

[Monica Padman]

Don't forget the Rhode Islanders.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, little brother Energy and Arizona State. Oh, yes. But you've taken back your.

[Monica Padman]

I have. Because of that one guy. Really turned it all around.

[Dax Shepard]

That's all it takes. Sometimes it's one person's story.

[Monica Padman]

One vote can make a difference.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

They don't like, interact with you with their cute eyes and stuff until they're about three months old.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, that's the challenge. When you get this little 18 day old baby, you see if you can get a little reaction. Startle it, spook it. No, I didn't. I didn't spook any of them. Can I tell you one funny thing? All the babies liked me a lot, but. A lot. Most of these babies have been hearing my voice since they were in utero.

[Monica Padman]

They think you're their dad.

[Dax Shepard]

I am their dad.

[Monica Padman]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, right. That's how cult leader thinks that.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I was like, oh, I'm starting on a great footing with these babies. They've already heard my voice a bunch. Because when he first walk up too tall, too many drawings on his arm, he doesn't look right.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Scary. Then hear the voice and all of a sudden, Goo Goo Gaga.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. But also, you know, they can't really see colors yet, and they only can see black and white at first.

[Dax Shepard]

Are you sure about that?

[Monica Padman]

Yes, I am.

[Dax Shepard]

That doesn't feel right.

[Monica Padman]

It is. Hold on. Newborns see in black and white and shades of gray, but they can detect some color if it's highly saturated, relatively large. That's you, that's me. And a certain hue, like red. You don't have red.

[Dax Shepard]

My skin sometimes looks red.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. Speaking of that, sometimes I think we look pretty orange. And I want to just tell the people I don't look that orange in real life.

[Dax Shepard]

Someone did mention that I was wearing too much makeup and I was like, maybe I got a little heavy handed with the bronzer.

[Monica Padman]

Wa. I didn't.

[Dax Shepard]

That could have been.

[Monica Padman]

It's not makeup.

[Dax Shepard]

It's the tint of the something's happening.

[Monica Padman]

That'S making us look orange.

[Dax Shepard]

I like it, though.

[Monica Padman]

I know. I know you do. Then I actually, in my head, I was like. Because before we started. Started the show, we were like all going through the video and making notes and stuff, and I was like, it's looking orange to me. And you were like, I like it.

[Dax Shepard]

And I was like, yeah, but we did change.

[Monica Padman]

And then we changed. But then I thought maybe you secretly told Rob to change back.

[Dax Shepard]

I didn't do that. Right. Rob Correct. You did not. Yeah, yeah, I did not do that.

[Monica Padman]

We just naturally got hair on your baby.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Swearing. My baby.

[Monica Padman]

We just got black and white.

[Dax Shepard]

We just got naturally oranger. I think I'm not orange. I don't have a ton of integrity. But when there's group vote.

[Monica Padman]

No, I know.

[Dax Shepard]

And I lose in this dynamic. Happens pretty frequently. I, I, I don't bring it back up.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

I accept my outvotedness.

[Monica Padman]

I wasn't mad, but I was like, ooh, ooh. This is not looking. This is looking a little orange for me. And I just want to tell people.

[Dax Shepard]

That I want it to be more appealing to the half of the country. We've, we've slowly made some adjustments. Like the, even the bookshelf lights are now on, and they weren't when we did the color test. So there is going to be an adjustment overall.

[Monica Padman]

Well, we might need to adjust again.

[Dax Shepard]

I'd rather be looking too warm than too cold.

[Monica Padman]

I know, but see this? Wow. We're about to get into something deep.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, Great. Racial.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

You know, the world is used to lighting white people well. You know what I mean? Really, though, like, the same lighting for is gonna look much different than lighting for me.

[Dax Shepard]

When Kristen and Cheadle were in a scene together, it's almost impossible to light them. To get Cheadle's face to be really bright and sharp, Kristen would be blown out.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly. This is real. And we can't because we all switch places and do like, I sit there sometimes. I sit here sometimes. So we can't really dial in. Do perfect lighting. But just in case any suitors, like, it's mainly this is towards suitors.

[Dax Shepard]

Just know you're not as orange.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. It's not like something we're doing for Halloween or like fall. An orange tint. It is what it is. And I don't look this way. And also.

[Dax Shepard]

But you know, you do look this way because everyone's saying, you're saying, well, I don't.

[Monica Padman]

So if you do like it, I also don't look this way. And be prepared. And if you see me in real.

[Dax Shepard]

Life, it's so interesting to have three different looks potentially, because we have what people thought we looked like in photographs upstairs. Now we're on video. And then you also have real life.

[Monica Padman]

Three versions.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

You remembered.

[Monica Padman]

Ding, ding, ding.

[Dax Shepard]

Or completely new thought.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, Completely new thought. But you'll see why I got here. I did my cognitive test yesterday.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm really glad you're bringing this up. I did mine too. On Friday.

[Monica Padman]

You did?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Do you guys have your results back yet?

[Monica Padman]

No, I just did a yesterday.

[Dax Shepard]

I didn't know there were results. Oh yeah, there's results you'll get. I got mine yesterday.

[Monica Padman]

Got his results yesterday day.

[Dax Shepard]

I did.

[Monica Padman]

What do you want to brag about? Go ahead. Or are you not bragging?

[Dax Shepard]

No, I'm bragging.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, okay.

[Dax Shepard]

I want to say like I'm trying to. I'm trying to frame this in a way where it's not repugnant that I'm going to brag. And the way I did that at home was to say it's very nice to hear with my childhood. Yeah, I like it. A doctor.

[Monica Padman]

How many times though are you going to have to hear it? Like you did the test. It's like it's your scores and it was the same situation.

[Dax Shepard]

You're super high but your scars are still with you, right?

[Monica Padman]

No. Oh, I don't have any.

[Dax Shepard]

You feel beautiful. I don't have any total unanimous consensus. And it's not penetrating.

[Monica Padman]

I'm totally fixed. Okay, wait. Okay, so go ahead and I want to know about your results.

[Dax Shepard]

He was like, he was blown away. He's like, I maybe because I read dumb as well. Maybe. But no way. But you know, whatever.

[Monica Padman]

Don't do all this. Just tell us.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay. Sorry. I was 99th percentile on two things and I was 100th in one. I set a record on the test.

[Monica Padman]

What was the one? You. What was the hundredth?

[Dax Shepard]

I'm guessing.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

The thing I'm imagining I said 100 on is when they would give me a letter and I would think of words because I was just blasting. Were you?

[Monica Padman]

I was rough on that.

[Dax Shepard]

I did terrible. I think it's probably normal to be bad at that.

[Monica Padman]

But part of it is. And I kept thinking about this after cuz this was my own self defense where I was like, could this be test anxiety? Because there's a person there administrating the test. You're not on your own.

[Dax Shepard]

It's time you say as many words that start with an F in a minute.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly. There's one section of the test where she goes away, the real life lady goes away and you're doing some pattern recognition and it's just on the computer and so no one's watching you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

And I was really good at that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And there was a part of me that was like, I think it has to do with feeling like I have to perform for this woman.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, so you think it was the last.

[Dax Shepard]

I think we made a mistake in all of this because I was well rested. It was ideal situation, blah, blah, blah. We hadn't recorded that day. I'm almost thinking, well, fuck, I'm just not gonna do as good on the test in two years. And it's gonna look like I have Alzheimer's, but really, it's just like, I happen to have. I was on fire that day. Yes.

[Monica Padman]

I also struggle with this because the night before, I had girls dinner at my house where I cooked. And of course, we had wine. And I was like, I thought about, should I not have wine because I have this cognitive test tomorrow. Then I was like, but that's dumb because I normally have wine.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, right, right.

[Monica Padman]

So I want to get the baseline, the real baseline. And then I did think, well, that will be interesting if I do, like, take a big break from drinking and then take it again.

[Dax Shepard]

And they go, oh, you have reverse Alzheimer's. Your brain's getting better and better and better, and we don't know how to stay.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, okay. Well, I'm proud of you, and I'm not surprised.

[Dax Shepard]

I was really delighted.

[Monica Padman]

I think you probably did really good. Really, really good. On. There's a section where she tells a story, and you have to repeat back as many details as you can from the story. And, like, best case scenario, your baseball.

[Dax Shepard]

Player goes fishing and he gets bit, but he's still able to go and perform well. Star quarterback, 17 stitches.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, I think I said 14. It was on his left hand, left ring finger. He played for the Atlanta Panthers.

[Dax Shepard]

I think you did better than me.

[Monica Padman]

And he was. Well, I did it yesterday.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh.

[Monica Padman]

And he was still able to perform on Sunday against the Thrashers. And so I also had a. I had a leg up because there's no Atlanta Panthers. And I know that there is Atlanta Thrashers, though. That's the hockey team.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow.

[Monica Padman]

So I knew a little more about.

[Dax Shepard]

You feel like you had a regional advantage.

[Monica Padman]

And he was the captain, and the quarterback added captain in very last minute. She was like, is anything else? And I was like, no. And then I was like, captain, I bet.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I think you did better than me at that one. I said, do you think this is nature or nurture? This is my job of three times a week learning everything I can about a person and a subject and then having to repeat it. And so much verbal practice. So much verbal dexterity. Just practice from talking so much, you know? Or is it my activity? I have noticed there's this. I think there's a system suspicious level of clarity. And alertness among talk show hosts as they age. Like, Stern still sounds 40 years old. Letterman still sounds like, yeah, I think the job has something to do with. It must.

[Monica Padman]

It's like any job. I mean, you're working a muscle and a skill. And that's why after people retire, often there's a huge drop off.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I thought about that might make you happy. I was like, well, shit, if I'm not doing this job, am I going to be in the 10 percentile?

[Monica Padman]

There's a lot to glean from these tests. Like, they should do it midway through someone's career, then at the end, then after retirement, and like, see what's happening. I'm nervous to get my results. But also I. I told. I was like, this is humbling. And she was like, yeah. She's like, you have no idea. People get so mad. She's like, I've had a lot of people leave in the middle.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure. They're embarrassed, they're upset.

[Monica Padman]

They think they're operating at a certain level.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you fallacy of above average? Everyone thinks they're above average at everything. Remember these tests we learned?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

What did you just say? What one?

[Monica Padman]

Remember the drawing one where you have to do like 1A, 2B? I liked that one.

[Dax Shepard]

I like that one. But I fucked one of them up.

[Monica Padman]

Really?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I started going too fast and I missed one. So you're going to be 100th and everything because this sounds like you did better than me.

[Monica Padman]

No, I didn't. The one thing that I do know I did well at because I could see her surprise. And I think. I think it was surprise because I was not good at the other ones. I think people will find these interesting. So I'm going to say what some of the games were. Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

By the way, I had to have a talk with Dr. Richard Isaacson. He's like, how much are you going to be talking about on the podcast? I was like, oh, very fair question. Let's talk.

[Monica Padman]

Are we allowed?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Like, what do you. I go, you know, it was introduced on an episode, so it's like. So I said, it's funny enough. I go, I know, we'll talk about the cognitive tests.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

He's like, oh, yeah, that's fine.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. Yeah. There's like a. This is like an hour and a half long thing. There's lots of different tests. And the first one, yes, she tells a story and you have to repeat back as much as you can. Then there's like a list of random words. A list of random words. Five. There's. First she just does five, and then you do that, and then later she does a list of 15 words, and then you come back to it like an hour later.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God. This morning I was trying to remember. I was trying to see if I could do them today. Yeah, of course I can do some. Should we try it?

[Dax Shepard]

I did so bad.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

I got like three.

[Dax Shepard]

When we found out Rob was too stupid to work with us. The beginning of.

[Monica Padman]

You probably had test anxiety.

[Dax Shepard]

And then I did, and I didn't sleep well either. You do this thing where you find that out, and then you'd start replaying every interaction you've ever had with Rob, and you go, oh, yeah, maybe that time is.

[Monica Padman]

Maybe it's just. Cause he. You can only remember three words.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. But when they had them all listed on the grid, I was able to get them all there.

[Monica Padman]

I got them all there, too.

[Dax Shepard]

I was pretty confident in that.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Okay. So there was one where she would give a list of numbers. She'd say, six, eight, nine. And you'd have to repeat them back in backwards order. 9, 8, 6. And then she kept adding numbers to that until you made a mistake. And she said, I did really well on that.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wonderful.

[Monica Padman]

Proud of that. Anyway, it was. It was interesting. It was really interesting. I really. Actually, it was stressful. I was. So by the time I was doing the patterns, I was like, I'm so tired. Another thing I think I did quite well on, though. I don't know for sure, but I feel very confident that I got 100 on the smell test.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah. And I certainly didn't.

[Monica Padman]

Did he tell you?

[Dax Shepard]

No. Did you guys finish any tests early?

[Monica Padman]

I finished the pattern one so early, I had to wait five minutes, you know, because they.

[Dax Shepard]

Because on the computer, the one way.

[Monica Padman]

Because I want enough time to pass before you do that original pattern thing.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, Yeah. I had to wait. I had to wait an hour.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

What about the ones from.

[Dax Shepard]

The ones from the lady?

[Monica Padman]

I don't know. What do you mean early?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, the color one, I had like an extra 15 seconds. And she was like, oh, you got 15 extra seconds?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I didn't.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't think I had that.

[Monica Padman]

I didn't have that. I don't think I finished it. Were you supposed to? I mean, of course you were, but, like, I thought most people couldn't. Oh, it's so stressful. Like, I want to take it again tomorrow.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't ever want to take it again. I did. Good. Now I don't want to touch it again.

[Monica Padman]

That's how we're very different in that way.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I want to keep taking it until I am 100th in every.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a good sense of, like, sometimes you get lucky. Don't mess with it.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Interesting.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Okay, back to the Aaron trip.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Because I haven't given any review. Aaron and I, first of all, we slept at Gordon Keith's house.

[Monica Padman]

So fun.

[Dax Shepard]

Which was so fun. Friend of the pod. We went.

[Monica Padman]

Go back and listen in our archive.

[Dax Shepard]

Listen. Go in the archives also. Just sniff around the archives, revisit stuff.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Even if it's for two minutes. But we had a really fun dinner out with Gordon. He was such a good host. He picked us up at the bus and all. It was wonderful. We watched that first night we started Kristen's show. Nobody wants this first episode. Good. Like, it. Second episode.

[Monica Padman]

That kiss hits at the end of the episode. Yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God.

[Monica Padman]

I love that.

[Dax Shepard]

We were both like, oh, my God, that's the best kiss scene I've ever seen in a show. I put it at number one. Erin goes, has she ever kissed you like that? And I go, oh, no, not at all. And Erin's like, I don't know who I want to be in this scenario. Him or her.

[Monica Padman]

Everyone. Everyone.

[Dax Shepard]

We. You would have thought we watched the battle scene from, like, a Gladiator or something. We. It was like an action set piece.

[Monica Padman]

It's a great scene, but that's also how we're different.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

It's such a good scene. And they have incredible chemistry.

[Dax Shepard]

It was shot perfectly. Everything was done perfectly. And the fact that they come back to it for a second hit at the end.

[Monica Padman]

See, I don't even. I don't remember that.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, they're gonna have their one big kiss, and then they had it. Ooh, that was something. Then they chat for a minute, and they're like, okay, this is.

[Monica Padman]

Let's do one more.

[Dax Shepard]

And they fucking do it again.

[Monica Padman]

Can't help himself.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And Aaron and I were both like, we're gonna watch this kid. Did you spray all that over and over again? We spray all that.

[Monica Padman]

Were you like, fuck, I'm so glad I'm married to her.

[Dax Shepard]

No, I'm.

[Monica Padman]

I would have felt like that.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm. Well, I'm, like, proud of her.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. She killed me.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm like, her flirt game in the first episode was so.

[Monica Padman]

Well, that's what I was about to say.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

So for me, like, the kiss is great. The thing that was making my eyes like Pop out of my head. Was the combo of. In the first episode, the dinner.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

Well, basically, since she walks into that party to when she gets in her car, there's like so much flirtation from.

[Dax Shepard]

Both of them and it's done so confidently from both.

[Monica Padman]

They're both like so confident and it's so playful and there's so much banter. And that for me, is that titillating. Titillating part?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

More than the kiss for me.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So I was really proud of her.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, she really nailed that whole thing, so I was so proud of her. I was so impressed with how Brody handled that whole thing. Like the. The way he put it on her with the hand. The whole thing. I got it now. With the hand.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. You guys, if you want to go back and listen to our episode with Kristen and Adam, we, you know, we talk a lot about this.

[Dax Shepard]

Even if it's only for a couple minutes. Just listen.

[Monica Padman]

Just listen for two minutes. And in fact, actually what you should do is go back in the archives and listen to all the episodes we've done with Kristen and we've done one with Adam as well. So yes, if you want to listen to two minutes of all of those.

[Dax Shepard]

We would appreciate it. Yeah, we would love that. Yeah. Get into our catalog, even if it's just for two minutes at a time.

[Monica Padman]

Anyway.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, we had lots of fun.

[Monica Padman]

That's so good. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

How was your trip to home?

[Monica Padman]

Oh, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Now it's my turn to act like I have no clue.

[Monica Padman]

I went home for a couple days. It was nice. I saw some old friends, which was really nice. I went to my brother's new apartment, which was lovely.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, how's that?

[Monica Padman]

Really nice. Really nice. And in a really cute area by the brave stadium. The area right around, it's called the battery. And it has like all these restaurants and it's really cute. So we walked to dinner and it was lovely. And I don't think I was my best self.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Which felt sad. It felt like a slip up because my parents came in the summer and it was. And my brother came and it was such a great trip.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

It really was very good and important for me and like, great. It was great.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

But then I just sort of like reverted.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, you're in your childhood bedroom.

[Monica Padman]

I'm not.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, I'm in the childhood house, but different bedroom because my brother took my bed room, obviously.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

I also had a bug.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

As we established, I got confirmation before I left. I was hanging out with this person. They were Tired. And I was like, oh, hope you don't have my bug.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And I was like, did you. Your pants as a joke. And they said, yes, they had.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah. Your pants bug.

[Monica Padman]

It was.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, it was. So I. Then I was like, oh, my God, this bug is real. Yeah, it just lingered. That thing. I think it's over. I think I'm over it now. For real. Thank you. So, anywho, I had that little bug still there. So I didn't. It was eating up all the energy. Mental energy I had that normally goes to me being, like, nice. My best self. And so it ate all my best self parts. And so all that was left was my not so great self.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Now, do you think you're. When you leave, your parents are hurt, or are they just like, oh, who cares?

[Monica Padman]

I don't like thinking about it.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, let's not think about it.

[Monica Padman]

I'm sure. I'm sure they don't feel awesome. And also, I think they'd rather me be there because your cranky self.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Which is also sad.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. They'll take what they can get, these parents.

[Monica Padman]

I know. It's such a thankless job. I feel so bad for all of you.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, thank you.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, remember what Delta said the other day?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. She's gonna name her child after you.

[Monica Padman]

That was so cute.

[Dax Shepard]

We're driving down the road and she just announced, I'm gonna name my daughter Monica.

[Monica Padman]

So cute.

[Dax Shepard]

You know what she's gonna name her son?

[Monica Padman]

Dax.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that came after. So you were first. Oh, no. And if she has a boy.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God, she is so cute.

[Dax Shepard]

We'll have to retire at that point because it'll be too problematic for the children.

[Monica Padman]

But you know what could be so cute? They could take on the business, take it over, and then it'd still be Jackson, Monica.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, that sounds good.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

I like that. That sounds. That's probably like 45 years away.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, that's a while. Okay, let's do a couple facts. Okay. This is for Keegan.

[Dax Shepard]

Keegan.

[Monica Padman]

What fun.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God. Also, encyclopedic knowledge of comedy.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. Intimidatingly so.

[Monica Padman]

We were like, we could have had him on. On a Thursday as an expert in comedy.

[Dax Shepard]

Really? Truly.

[Monica Padman]

And we probably should have. Okay. So speaking of Kristen, he. He mentioned. Because obviously they went to the same high school. He mentioned the Goliards, and he was like, I don't know if she was in that. Also, Goliard is a group of generally young clergy in Europe who wrote satirical Latin poetry. In the 12th and 13th centuries of the Middle Ages. Okay, so I texted Kristen this morning. I said for Keegan's fact check. He asked if you were in Goliard. I guess it was something at your high school. And she said yes, I dominated Goliards.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, great.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

She was dominant.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, she was dominant. And she said it was our singing group in high school that got to skip school and go perform at the Elks Lodge and stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, sure. Where I was trying to sell hugs, not drugs advertisements.

[Monica Padman]

You guys could have crossed paths there.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, probably.

[Monica Padman]

Weird.

[Dax Shepard]

I doubt she went to the South Lion Elks Lodge, though.

[Monica Padman]

Well, there's only so many, and they have to get out of school a lot.

[Dax Shepard]

That's true.

[Monica Padman]

So maybe. Okay. Spaghetti Junction. I got a little nervous that I was wrong about Spaghetti Junction, but I think I'm right. Spaghetti Junction is a name given to the intersection of Interstates 85 and 285. It's like where everything's crossing and it's a big junky mess.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a big spaghetti.

[Monica Padman]

Speaking of.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh.

[Monica Padman]

It took us an hour and 50 minutes to get from the airport to my parents house.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God.

[Monica Padman]

And I think that's part of what happened. And I got a little off kill filter from that.

[Dax Shepard]

Huh. That's like the time I landed in Austin and sat in line for the rental car for longer than my flight to Texas was. Yeah, that was. It's hard to rebound from that. It is.

[Monica Padman]

It really is. Yeah, it sets a tone. Traffic. Traffic was just so nightmare, so bad. Which leads me to my next fact.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, great.

[Monica Padman]

Which is, what are the 10 cities with the worst traffic in the world?

[Dax Shepard]

In the the world?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow.

[Monica Padman]

This is from U.S. news.

[Dax Shepard]

Top five got to be in China now.

[Monica Padman]

Well, let's see.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Palermo is number 10. Miami is number 9. Oh. Philadelphia. Number 8.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Toronto. Number 7. The thing is, a lot of these places have public transport, which makes it easier.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Six is Bogota, Colombia.

[Dax Shepard]

That sounds right.

[Monica Padman]

Five. New York City.

[Dax Shepard]

Mm.

[Monica Padman]

For Boston.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Infamously bad traffic. The Big Dig.

[Monica Padman]

Oh.

[Dax Shepard]

Supposed to get rid of that.

[Monica Padman]

3. Paris.

[Dax Shepard]

Never driven in Paris. I can't say that I've driven in Paris to Chicago. There we go. Traffic is so bad, there's construction always everywhere.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

That's how Detroit is. I think it's because of the freezing and thawing. It's so hard on the roads. Tracks them to you.

[Monica Padman]

No one's gonna like what I'm about to say, but I don't trust this list.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Cuz.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow.

[Monica Padman]

It's fine. Now it's turned. Because number one's London. And that means LA is not on it. And there's no way. Well, there's no way.

[Dax Shepard]

So on the US list, LA is 6.

[Monica Padman]

US traffic list.

[Dax Shepard]

I can't believe there's nothing in Asia. I did this. Did this report include Asia?

[Monica Padman]

Doesn't say. Maybe it's phob.

[Dax Shepard]

Maybe it's my own xenophobia. I've seen some Shanghai traffic jams that seem like. Oh, you'd have to get out of your car.

[Monica Padman]

What about India?

[Dax Shepard]

India?

[Monica Padman]

I mean, how many?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Over a billion. 1.3 maybe.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. Same source, US News for US is saying Chicago number one. Boston, New York City, Philippines, Philadelphia, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, Houston, Atlanta. There's no way at. Oh, Atlanta and Houston are tied for delay hours. But.

[Dax Shepard]

But 2022 could have gotten worse.

[Monica Padman]

Maybe I just.

[Dax Shepard]

Maybe there was a big issue. We're just. Movies are moving there. Is there a president in town or something?

[Monica Padman]

I don't know.

[Dax Shepard]

Could have been a marathon.

[Monica Padman]

No, it's always like. It's a nightmare. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

I just think in my head, it's LA number one, Atlanta number two.

[Dax Shepard]

Anywhere you go.

[Monica Padman]

New York number three.

[Dax Shepard]

Austin number five.

[Monica Padman]

No, Austin's pretty good.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, it can be rough.

[Monica Padman]

It can be, but not like this. That's what I'm like. This is such an extreme.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And also in LA say it's. It's the amount of miles you're going.

[Dax Shepard]

Which is very small.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

You're never going more than eight miles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of crazy.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

When you map. When you. I always. Good job on MapQuest. Like maybe because they were first. When I still say I'm gonna say you. I still say I'm gonna map quest something, which is so interesting.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I never say I'm gonna Yahoo something or any of these other. But yeah, I'll say I'm gonna map. So when I map quest any location in LA, it's always like 7 miles, 56 minutes exactly. And you're like, this is nuts. At some point I could walk seven miles in an hour.

[Monica Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

I kept up my pace. That's the motorcycle. It's savior. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

That's nice for you. Okay. Is Spanish longer than English? Spanish text, so you know that would Translate. Is about 20 to 30% long. Longer than English. Okay. The Milford panther. Oh, I can't believe you outed your friend.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I didn't say any names.

[Monica Padman]

Where are panthers indigenous? Panthers are native to Africa, Asia, Central and South America. And Florida.

[Dax Shepard]

Florida panther. We talked about it. Now heavily mixed with the Texas panther.

[Monica Padman]

That's right. We did talk about that on another episode. Listen to all our. Our old episodes.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Go back. Even if it's just for a couple minutes. Just start them up and then switch to another one.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. Where did Brian Tyree Henry go to college? Because I said. Oh, didn't he go to Juilliard? He went to Yale.

[Dax Shepard]

To Yale.

[Monica Padman]

Lupita, who's a previous episode.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

If you want to go back.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. Enjoy. Bryant, she Princeton or Yale? I think she's Yale. Yeah. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Is she?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I thought she was Stanford.

[Dax Shepard]

No, she was either Yell or Princeton, but I think y'all.

[Monica Padman]

Y'all. And then also Paul Giamatti, Yale. Go back in the archives.

[Dax Shepard]

No, he's Harvard.

[Monica Padman]

No, he went to.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah, he did. He did. He did. With Edward Norton.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, Junior.

[Dax Shepard]

I almost had a good.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, so if you want to listen to all our Yale guests, you can go back in the archives. Paul Giamatti, Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Joy.

[Dax Shepard]

Bryant, Brian Tyree Henry.

[Monica Padman]

We haven't had him yet. Yeah, but we will want to.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Not to mention our experts.

[Dax Shepard]

Anderson Cooper.

[Monica Padman]

Cooper.

[Dax Shepard]

Anderson Cooper.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, right. Oh, Claire Danes.

[Dax Shepard]

C. Daines.

[Monica Padman]

That's in the archives.

[Dax Shepard]

That is deep.

[Monica Padman]

You got to go back deep in that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yep. Just listen to a couple minutes of it and then two plus listen.

[Monica Padman]

Like approximately two to three minutes. Anyway, that's all. Keegan was awesome. He's so delightful.

[Dax Shepard]

So much energy, so fast thinking, such an interesting story. I adore him.

[Monica Padman]

Me too.

[Dax Shepard]

Perfect podcast guest.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Yeah, he's an easy one. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like a Bobby Lee.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, True.

[Dax Shepard]

That's a great episode.

[Monica Padman]

Check it out a couple minutes ago in the archives. If you just want to, like, just two minutes.

[Dax Shepard]

I love you. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short [e-mail] survey.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her. And she wasn't the only target. Because buried in the depths of the Internet is the kill list, a cache of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses, and specific instructions for people's murders. This podcast is the true story of.

[Dax Shepard]

How I ended up in a race.

[Keegan-Michael Key]

Against time to warn those who lives were in danger. And it turns out convincing a total stranger someone wants them dead is not easy. Follow Kill List on the Wandery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more. Exhibit C True crime shows like Morbid early and ad free right now by joining Wondery. Plus Check out Exhibit C in the Wandery app for all your true chrome listening.