Sharon McMahon (law and government teacher)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard – Episode Featuring Sharon McMahon

Host & Guest:

• Host: Dax Shepard
• Co-Host: Monica Padman
• Guest: Sharon McMahon, podcast host, best-selling author, and renowned America's History Teacher

Episode Overview: In this insightful episode of Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, Dax is joined by Monica Padman to host Sharon McMahon, affectionately known as "America's History Teacher." Sharon delves deep into the intricacies of the U.S. government, the evolving role of the Supreme Court, and the significance of unsung heroes in American history. Her new book, Small and the Mighty, profiles 12 ordinary Americans whose actions have profoundly impacted the nation's trajectory.

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1. Sharon McMahon: America's History Teacher

[01:05]
Sharon McMahon is celebrated for her nonpartisan approach to educating the public about the U.S. government. With over a decade of teaching experience, a degree in Anthropology, and four years of improv training, Sharon brings a unique perspective to her discussions, making complex governmental structures accessible and engaging.

2. Understanding the U.S. Government Structure

[17:09] – [18:19]
Sharon provides a foundational overview of the U.S. government's three branches:

• Legislative (Congress): Comprising the Senate and the House of Representatives, responsible for making laws.
• Executive (President): Tasked with enforcing laws.
• Judiciary (Courts): Interprets laws and determines their constitutionality.

Notable Quote:

"The legislative branch of the federal government is Congress. Congress has two houses in it, the Senate and the House of Representatives."
— Sharon McMahon [17:09]

3. The Supreme Court: Politicalization and Legitimacy

[22:19] – [27:30]
Sharon discusses the perceived politicization of the Supreme Court, highlighting a decline in its legitimacy among Americans. She explains how lifetime appointments were designed to insulate justices from political pressures, allowing them to make principled decisions independent of public opinion. However, recent ethical concerns and highly politicized cases have fueled skepticism.

Notable Quotes:

"There is absolutely a perception that the Supreme Court has been overtly politicized... it's very low."
— Sharon McMahon [23:24]

"The role of the court has evolved over time significantly... They have gotten more overtly political."
— Sharon McMahon [27:30]

4. Historical Perspectives: George Washington and Earl Warren

[08:13] – [35:47]
Sharon shares captivating historical anecdotes about key figures:

• George Washington: Despite lacking formal military leadership experience, Washington's ability to lead the Revolutionary War was augmented by self-education, exemplifying the theme of "being ready by learning on the go."

• Earl Warren: Former Governor of California and Supreme Court Chief Justice, Warren navigated personal regrets from his past actions during WWII incarceration camps to champion landmark cases like Brown v. Board of Education and Miranda v. Arizona, showcasing his commitment to justice and reform.

Notable Quote:

"George Washington had to buy a how-to book on how to be a general... it's a great lesson for today in that how many of us feel like, I'm not ready to get started because I don't know how to do that thing yet."
— Sharon McMahon [09:11]

5. Current Political Issues: Gun Control and Abortion

[25:26] – [43:48]
The conversation shifts to pressing contemporary issues:

• Gun Control: Sharon emphasizes that a significant majority (87%) support universal background checks for all gun buyers. She advocates for common-sense measures like background checks, safe storage laws, and restrictions on certain firearms to ensure public safety without infringing on lawful ownership.

• Abortion Rights: Discussing the Supreme Court's upcoming cases, Sharon outlines the complexities surrounding transgender medical care for minors and age verification for adult content online. She highlights the Court's role in interpreting laws beyond their original constitutional intentions, leading to modern-day debates.

Notable Quote:

"The majority of Americans are pro choice in at least some circumstances... some people don't realize that if you believe that there should be exceptions... that actually falls under the purview of being pro choice."
— Sharon McMahon [23:24]

6. Sharon’s Book: Small and the Mighty

[81:22] – [94:56]
Sharon introduces her book, which spotlights 12 ordinary Americans who enacted significant change without wielding traditional power or recognition. She underscores the importance of hope and proactive action over mere criticism. Through stories like Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus before Rosa Parks, Sharon illustrates how individual courage can reshape history.

Notable Quotes:

"Hope is a choice that we can make. It is not a feeling that we wait to feel."
— Sharon McMahon [85:57]

"History is full of people who changed things without having access to the levers of power that we traditionally think you need to make a difference."
— Sharon McMahon [85:16]

7. The Importance of Active Hope and Compromise

[97:04] – [102:00]
Sharon and Dax discuss the necessity of active hope—choosing to believe in and work towards a better future despite prevailing cynicism. They explore the critical role of compromise in a functioning democracy, likening it to a healthy marriage where both parties must sometimes yield to achieve mutual goals. Sharon warns against the pitfalls of blind allegiance to political parties and advocates for intellectual humility and the readiness to admit and correct mistakes.

Notable Quote:

"If you want to be a critical thinker and intellectually honest, you have to be willing to admit when your preferred ideology gets it wrong."
— Sharon McMahon [50:37]

8. Conclusion: Empowerment Through Action

Sharon encourages listeners to embody the spirit of the individuals profiled in her book—taking actionable steps to effect change rather than merely critiquing existing systems. She emphasizes that meaningful progress stems from incremental efforts and the collective will to uphold democratic principles over partisan interests.

Final Notable Quote:

"Change is incremental. You have these two forces... The conservative breaks are an important component because it's too easy to go quickly, too far afield if you have nobody being like, slow down."
— Sharon McMahon [102:00]

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Key Takeaways:

• Educating the Public: Sharon McMahon plays a pivotal role in demystifying the U.S. government, making it accessible to a broader audience through her teaching and podcasting.

• Supreme Court's Evolving Role: The Court's increasing politicization challenges its legitimacy, highlighting the need for transparent and principled judicial processes.

• Unsung Heroes Matter: Small and the Mighty underscores the impact of everyday individuals in shaping history, advocating for proactive hope and action.

• Democracy Requires Compromise: Effective governance hinges on the ability to compromise and prioritize democratic principles over rigid partisan divides.

• Act Rather Than Critique: Meaningful societal change is achieved through action and perseverance, not merely through criticism or online activism.

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Recommended for Non-Listeners: If you're intrigued by the complexities of American government, the role of the Supreme Court, and the power of individual action in history, this episode offers a comprehensive and engaging exploration. Sharon McMahon's expertise and passionate insights provide valuable lessons on civic engagement, hope, and the importance of understanding our governmental structures.

Follow Sharon McMahon:

• Podcast: Check out her podcast for more in-depth discussions on U.S. government topics.
• Book: Small and the Mighty is available for purchase here.

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Stay tuned to Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard for more enlightening conversations and expert insights.

Transcript

[Dax Shepard]

Wondry plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now. Join Wondry plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman.

[Monica Padman]

Hi.

[Dax Shepard]

Hi. We have one of the most likable experts imaginable today.

[Monica Padman]

So fun.

[Dax Shepard]

Sharon McMahon. I don't know, I'm gonna be honest, it's MC. I would say McMahon, but there is an H in the middle and I'm very scared.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

McMahon. McMahon.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's how Vince McMahon spells his last name.

[Dax Shepard]

Vince McMahon. Yeah, they have. I noticed that when we were interviewing because I just watched the. Mr. McMahon.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I wonder if that's his. Her dad. Well, yeah, her dad. It's not her dad. I know her. His daughter was in the. She was in the dock. But anyways, Sharon is a podcast host, a best selling author, and a law and government teacher. She's known America's history teacher. And this was great. And we could have done six more hours.

[Monica Padman]

We get to like, we didn't get enough.

[Dax Shepard]

Get a really like fundamental understanding of how the government works. And she's just great. She has a very, very nonpartisan approach to trying to educate people on how all this works. She has a new book out now called the Small and the Mighty where she profiles 12 ordinary Americans who really changed the course of history. It's a very hopeful and encouraging book and she has a great podcast. Here's where it gets interesting. So if you want more of her, go. She covers every topic you might be curious about as pertains to the US Government.

[Monica Padman]

Someone posted something about her the other day and I was like, she's huge. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Kristen was like, did you have Sharon today? Like Kristen follows her and is a devotee.

[Monica Padman]

Well, also we should say we asked the armchairs who they wanted as experts on and she was the most requested.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah. That's really relevant.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I almost forgot that. Congrats to you guys. You were right and you were right. Thank you.

[Dax Shepard]

Thank you. And we'll do that again because you guys are a great source. Last thing I want to say, and we get into it a lot, she and I have a very similar objective of hoping to bridge this insurmountable gap between everyone. She has a great movement in this direction. And you can go to www.startswith do us not starts with us. Something starts with us.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, I like that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Sneaky and wonderful.

[Monica Padman]

That sneaks.

[Dax Shepard]

So go to www.startswith.us. please enjoy. Sharon McMahon 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 listen 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 in 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 or later required charge time and actual results will vary.

[Sharon McMahon]

Did you guys hire a designer to like do all your shelves?

[Dax Shepard]

Rob.

[Sharon McMahon]

Rob, you're a designer too?

[Dax Shepard]

He has such an aesthetic. Isn't it impressive?

[Sharon McMahon]

He was styling. Shelves is actually a pain in the ass.

[Monica Padman]

It's hard to do.

[Sharon McMahon]

It's hard to do. Well, it just looks like cluttery junk.

[Dax Shepard]

Tell me more because you do video for your podcast.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah, I do. And I have shelves. And I'm aware of what a pain in the ass it is. I like your sorting hat and your like little mice. A nice mix of tchotchkes and books. Yeah. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So he did a perfect job. So blown away. And it's all Rob. He very thoughtfully thought of all these things behind us. She has more than I do. Let's not get hung up on that. Well, but some of the books we haven't read. Now, I would have insisted that only the books that we've read have made it up onto the shelves.

[Sharon McMahon]

But they have to be color coordinated. That's the thing.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, it's A color thing.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah. You have to have the blues together, the reds together.

[Monica Padman]

Those are obviously antiques.

[Dax Shepard]

And I should just look at it as an opportunity to rise to the occasion.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's right. It's an opportunity to better yourself.

[Dax Shepard]

If ever you're bored, I'm sure you have. Because you're a history nerd. You have a fun term for yourselves. Governor.

[Sharon McMahon]

Governor.

[Dax Shepard]

That's really cute.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God, that's so cute.

[Dax Shepard]

But have you read the Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich?

[Sharon McMahon]

Of course.

[Dax Shepard]

Of course. Yeah. I think for people who don't love history, the notion of reading that book is preposterous. I can recognize how silly it is, but what a book.

[Sharon McMahon]

It's not a book to read because you think it's going to have good ideas. Well, but it's a book to read if you want to understand your enemies.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

And that's actually an important part of being a good historian or an important part of understanding what's happening in the world. You have to understand what you're working with.

[Dax Shepard]

What is your all time favorite history book?

[Sharon McMahon]

Oh, my gosh. That's like asking me to choose a favorite child.

[Monica Padman]

So many.

[Sharon McMahon]

There's so many.

[Dax Shepard]

Give me top three.

[Sharon McMahon]

Okay. I have so many friends who are history writers.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, it's getting personal.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. If any of your friends are listening, pause it or plug your ears.

[Dax Shepard]

We commit to wrapping this up in 30 seconds.

[Monica Padman]

Yep.

[Dax Shepard]

So you are only out 30 seconds.

[Sharon McMahon]

Okay. So David Grahn is one of my favorite history writers. He wrote the Wager and he also wrote Killers of Flower Moon. Fantastic history writer.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm embarrassed. I've not read any.

[Sharon McMahon]

He's one of those people who, when one of his books comes out, it stays on the bestseller list for like, oh, 17 weeks, 39 weeks. Okay, great.

[Monica Padman]

It sounds like he deserves it if he's your favorite.

[Sharon McMahon]

He does deserve it. And he also wrote a blurb for the front cover of my book, which I feel extremely honored.

[Monica Padman]

That's awesome.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. If your favorite historical writer.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's right. Yes. I also love Timothy Egan, who wrote a book called Fever in the Heartland.

[Monica Padman]

Did he write a blurb too?

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes. Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

You got that pattern quick. You only needed one.

[Monica Padman]

That's right.

[Sharon McMahon]

You're good at pattern recognition. Recognition.

[Monica Padman]

That's why.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Have you dabbled in Chernow? Is that too pedestrian for you?

[Sharon McMahon]

Chernow's great. He's a very serious historian. He doesn't write popular history, and there's a difference.

[Dax Shepard]

Tell me.

[Sharon McMahon]

Academic history has a different audience than popular history. So if you think about the book Hidden Figures, that is a popular history book. It is meant for a broad, general audience. It's meant for somebody to be able to pick up and read with their middle schooler or make a movie about. That's sort of the genre that David Grann and Timothy Egan work in. I do love academic history, though, and that's kind of where the Ron Chernow is and the David McCulloughs and people in that genre, the John Meachams, they write in a different style and for a different audience. And it's really important work, but it's a little less accessible for the average person. You have to really be into it to pick up a book this thick about the life of one dude. Yeah, you gotta be real into it.

[Dax Shepard]

Or the building of a single bridge.

[Sharon McMahon]

Do you like reading books about people that you can sort of emulate or idolize?

[Dax Shepard]

Almost the opposite. I really like reading books about people who are opposite of me. So George Washington, the fact that he never spoke. All I do is speak. I'm trying to impress upon everyone at all times that I'm smart. He became viewed as really smart by not talking in a group of men who talk too much.

[Monica Padman]

But in some ways, you do want to emulate that. It's different from you. But you found that admirable and super aspirational. Yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So it's almost like I want to dive into something that's the opposite of me and maybe find purchase or a toehold. Maybe I could strive to be like.

[Sharon McMahon]

I'll tell you one thing about George Washington. Maybe you didn't know this. Maybe you did.

[Dax Shepard]

I bet I didn't.

[Sharon McMahon]

George Washington, this is something that fascinates me about him, is that when he was appointed to be sort of the head of the army in the war against the British, he had never commanded a large army before. He'd worked in the Virginia Militia, but he didn't have any, like, big general, nationwide experience. Not even at, like, a lower level where you often sort of work your way up. And so on his way to fight in the Revolutionary War, he had to stop by a bookstore and buy a book on how to be a general. And I was like, hmm, there's a lot to unpack there. George Washington had to buy a how to book on how to be a general.

[Monica Padman]

It was such a thing back then.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes. I mean, it wasn't like how to Be a General for Dummies, Black and Yellow. But if you think about it, he would have had to go into a small shop where all of the goods were kept behind the counter. He would have had to ask for a specific book on how to become a general. And I think it's a great lesson for tea today in that how many of us feel like, I'm not ready to get started because I don't know how to do that thing yet.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, I'll wait till I'm ready.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's right. I'll wait till I finish the degree or have worked at that company for five years. When, in fact, history smiles the most kindly on people who just went for it. People who just tried stuff who just did something no one else had done. Sometimes they fail at it. George Washington had failures. In fact, he was almost fired from being the head of the revolutionary army. History does not smile kindly on the timid. Or the critics.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. Which your book deals with exclusively, or. That's the paradigm we're looking at.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

All right, I'll add one. I like that he accepted that job and immediately bought a super fancy outfit.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

All out of his own pocket. He looked absurdly well dressed compared to everyone else.

[Sharon McMahon]

He loved fancy outfits.

[Dax Shepard]

He was like you, Monica. He had a total shopping addiction with this place in England. Half of his correspondence he wrote, we're ordering this bolt of linen or something. Ooh, velvets.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes. He loved fancy wine, like Madeira wine.

[Monica Padman]

Is he me plus 250 slaves, but yes. Oh, yeah, that part's not me.

[Sharon McMahon]

He had expensive taste, unlike Abraham Lincoln, who's like, I grew up in a little log cabin and I had nothing and my clothes are too small. You know, like, he has this vibe. I taught myself how to read.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God. Dad says that all the time.

[Dax Shepard]

We both might have had. Oh. What's the disease? Marfan's.

[Sharon McMahon]

Marfan syndrome. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, that's true. I have the phenotype of someone with morphins. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

No, you don't have morphine.

[Sharon McMahon]

I don't think you do.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't think I do. But I am the phenotype of that. Really tall and lanky and gangly.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah, but you're not, like, excessively tall.

[Dax Shepard]

That's only because I've packed on some muscle. I think if you saw me in 11th grade, you'd be like, that boy is too tall and skinny.

[Sharon McMahon]

No, see, I wouldn't. I'm six feet tall.

[Monica Padman]

That's true.

[Dax Shepard]

We would have been looking eye to eye.

[Sharon McMahon]

I would have been like, finally, there's one person taller than me. I can slow down this entire school. Oh, man.

[Monica Padman]

At what age did you become six?

[Sharon McMahon]

Six feet 14. The best stage for any girl to be six feet tall.

[Monica Padman]

14, that's early and that's really.

[Sharon McMahon]

It's real rough, you guys. Even in Minnesota, where people are above average, as Garrison would say, it's so rough. But of course, George Washington was famously tall too.

[Dax Shepard]

He was in a physical specimen. It wasn't just that he was tall, it was the way he handled his horse. People would talk around the country of what a good horseman he was, like how athletic he was on a horse.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's you as well.

[Monica Padman]

That's also me.

[Dax Shepard]

You're a great horse woman.

[Monica Padman]

I can't really ride a bike, but that's fine.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, what's great is you are going to educate us on a lot of things. We're going to talk about the small and the mighty. But before we do that, we're going to have some fun with all of the many lessons you're regularly giving out and are known to give out.

[Sharon McMahon]

I love it.

[Dax Shepard]

I think the timing is pretty perfect. As we enter an election. I think there's a lot of things people know and they're not quite certain really how it works. Like everyone knows there's an electoral college, but do they really know what that means and how it came about and what it means to democracy and whatnot? So you are our number one. We turned over to the armchairs who what expert they wanted to hear the most and you were number one.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's incredible.

[Dax Shepard]

You won a poll.

[Sharon McMahon]

That is huge.

[Dax Shepard]

Your nickname is America's Government Teacher, which is very endearing. Okay, so let's just get into your background a little bit. You're from Minnesota.

[Sharon McMahon]

From Minnesota. I live on a dirt road.

[Dax Shepard]

You still do?

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes. Outside of a town of 80,000 people and 150 miles from the nearest Whole Foods.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my God. Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

So that means that at least the vaccine level's probably high where you're at.

[Monica Padman]

That's true, yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

But you know, I grew up in a lower middle class family. My dad was a blue collar worker.

[Dax Shepard]

What was his trade?

[Sharon McMahon]

He was a carpenter. He was a disabled Vietnam vet who later died of his war related injuries.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow.

[Sharon McMahon]

Enough food to eat and things like that. But there were times where each person got a ten dollar Christmas gift. So neither of my parents went to college. I certainly was not well positioned for this trajectory from my childhood. But what I did have was a library card and I did live one block from the library and that was very instrumental in who I have become. The unfettered access to books has been super Instrumental in what I do now.

[Dax Shepard]

And then you ultimately became a teacher?

[Sharon McMahon]

I did.

[Dax Shepard]

Where did you teach and for how long?

[Sharon McMahon]

I taught for 12 years in California. I taught up in the Bay Area.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, you did?

[Sharon McMahon]

I did, I did.

[Dax Shepard]

How did that happen?

[Sharon McMahon]

My husband's job. And that was great. I've taught in Minnesota, but I taught for the majority of my career out in the D.C. suburbs, which is very different animal than teaching in the Bay Area. When I was in the Bay Area, it was middle class. High school was like a performing arts magnet. Great people. I loved teaching there. But we had no hot water. We had no toilet paper or soap in the bathroom. Children carried around toilet paper in their backpacks.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Sharon McMahon]

We had rolling blackouts all the time where the power would just go out. We did not have TVs in every classroom. The media center was closed because there was nobody to work at it. We did not have even like whiteboards and overhead projectors. I wrote a grant proposal to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation seeing if I could get whiteboard screens, like the projector screens and the overhead projectors that people use.

[Dax Shepard]

The wax pen.

[Monica Padman]

I loved that.

[Sharon McMahon]

Like the transparency.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, transparency.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm so jealous of the teacher getting.

[Monica Padman]

Her right with the wax about transparencies.

[Sharon McMahon]

I discovered that 32 of the classrooms in my school did not have overhead projectors or the transparencies or the screens, nor did we have any of the other options to go along with it. Additionally, all of our textbooks had been destroyed in a water main break.

[Dax Shepard]

And then it swelled to like 10 times the number.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes. And then it exploded into the hallway. There was no budget to buy new books. The icing on the cake. Every teacher had a 15amonth copy budget. You could make $15 a month worth of copies. And if you wanted more than that, it literally came out of your paycheck.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, geez Louise.

[Sharon McMahon]

So we had no material. Nice middle class area. Those were the conditions on the ground in the schools.

[Monica Padman]

Oh.

[Sharon McMahon]

Moving to the suburbs of Washington, D.C. where people are absolutely rabid about public education was very eye opening. They have $2 billion a year operating budgets. Whoa.

[Dax Shepard]

You in Maryland or Virginia?

[Sharon McMahon]

Maryland. Every supply you could ever want. And of course, the Maryland suburbs are very competitive with the Virginia suburbs. Everyone wants to see who has the better public schools. So there's this sort of competition between the two. The one school that I worked in had five computer labs. It was just sudden. A different environment than DIY toilet paper.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the way, already you don't want to go number two at School, you want to hold it till you get home. But the notion that you're carrying your own toilet, I just imagine, even if I knew that was necessary, be like, I can't blow up my spot if I've got toilet paper. Obviously I'm up to one business.

[Monica Padman]

Well, for boys it's different.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, you have a justified reason for toilet paper, but you could have said.

[Monica Padman]

Like, oh, it's for my girlfriends in case they forgot all my girl, I.

[Dax Shepard]

Can'T carry a lot.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my girlfriend.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow, wow, wow.

[Sharon McMahon]

Here in California, they make you take this class about bloodborne pathogens so that you don't contaminate the children when the kid's bleeding on the floor at the school. So you have to get this, like, certification in order to get a license to teach in California. And so I remember going to the bloodborne pathogens workshop. They're giving you this whole spiel about, like, and then you will run your hands under more hot water and soap, 20 seconds and blah, blah, blah. And I raised my hand and I was like, what if we don't have hot water and soap?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Sharon McMahon]

Because we literally did not all that. Did say, I've taught in a few different places and every spot in the country has their own educational vibe.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, everything's got a culture. Okay, so in high school, you were teaching what, government history. History. And does one of those interest you more than the other?

[Sharon McMahon]

They're very related. You can't learn government without learning the history of government. So in terms of like a class that I preferred to teach, government was always my preferred class. I also taught upper class electives in law. Those are also a big favorite of mine.

[Dax Shepard]

Let's quickly talk about how the government has been set up structurally, what's understanding of it? Oh, God, scary. So I think we have three branches of government. We have the executive, that's the president, the judiciary, that's our judges, and the legislative, they're writing the laws. And the way it's supposed to work is this group writes laws, this person enforces laws, and this group determines whether those laws are constitutional. So far, so good.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's roughly right. The judicial branch does more than just constitutional challenges. But that is part of what they're doing. Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, great. They're interpreting the law.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's right.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, there's still ultimate ultimately going, this is unconstitutional. Do they have another knockout punch than saying that?

[Sharon McMahon]

Well, yeah, they can determine whether or not a certain governmental action, for example, is in the confines of the way the law was written.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay.

[Sharon McMahon]

So it's not just is this law constitutional, it's is the way the Voting Rights act was implemented in Alabama in keeping with the original intent of the Voting Rights act, or things along those lines, too.

[Dax Shepard]

Interesting. So what percentage do you think is one of those two things?

[Sharon McMahon]

They hear far fewer constitutional challenges. Oh, they do, because a lot of the constitutional challenges have been adjudicated. We're still hearing new constitutional challenges. Like right now, the Supreme Court is just coming back into session, and they are hearing a case this term. They work in these terms really quick.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. The terms, are they quarterly or are they semiannually?

[Sharon McMahon]

They start in October and they end in June, and then they're done from July to September.

[Monica Padman]

I didn't know that. Yeah, I already didn't know.

[Sharon McMahon]

They are still hearing emergencies during the summer, but they're not hearing their regularly scheduled or what they call oral arguments. They get about 7,000 requests, requests a year for oral arguments like please take my case. And of those 7,000 requests, they take about 80 of them. So it's a tiny percentage of the cases that make it to the Supreme Court. One of the big cases they're going to be hearing this term is about transgender medical care for minors and whether a state banning transgender medical care for minors violates their constitutional rights to be free from gender discrimination. So, for example, if you are a teenage girl who wants to get breast reduction surgery because your back hurts and you have medical issues with the size, why is that permissible? But it's not permissible if you are a trans boy who wants to have surgery to be in alignment with your perceived gender. Right.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Sharon McMahon]

Is one of those discriminating against somebody because of their gender. Of course, these are issues that the Supreme Court did not take up in 1792. Right. So these are sort of like the new generation of constitutional challenges that are coming. Coming down the pike. Another case that they're hearing, the founders never would have seen this one coming, is whether or not a state law in Texas that requires the operator of a porn site to verify the identity and age of the user in the state of Texas, whether that violates their First Amendment rights or not.

[Dax Shepard]

Can I tell you the most crazy. This is such a sim moment. I was in Texas three days ago. I was with my best friend, Aaron Weekley. He would not mind me telling the story. We slept somewhere. The next day, we're chatting, and he tells me he went to go on a pornographic website to do his nightly exercising. No. So then it had this really lengthy verification of age thing. And then he Just decided, I'll just watch tv. What? First of all, maybe that long.

[Monica Padman]

And he's definitely of age.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, he's nearing 50. But I just found out that was a thing literally days ago because a friend tried to use a pornographic website in Texas. So that's already happening in Texas, Monica?

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes, it's already been implemented and some people have sued the porn site. Operators, of course, are not into this because, well, like Aaron, he watched TV instead. Watch TV instead. But also, your friend might not want his name to be recorded.

[Dax Shepard]

You shouldn't necessarily have to give all of your documents to a website.

[Monica Padman]

Understand the age component, right.

[Sharon McMahon]

The other things like if you're going to purchase alcohol or you're going to purchase tobacco products, they have to verify your age. They can't just be like, oh, First Amendment. Right. So it's a unique question about how do we enforce the law to keep certain materials out of the hands of minors, but yet not infringe on the rights of adults? That's a legit question. These are things that people have not thought of before that are finally getting to be decided by the Supreme Court at this season.

[Dax Shepard]

And would you say because that right now you've already brought up one that's really great and complicated and has merits on both sides. Do you think people's general stereotypical view of how the Supreme Court is being used is that it's solely political? And in general, anything coming before is really going to align with either the left or the right and that we know how they'll line up? Do you think there's a perception that's maybe not entirely accurate? So many of the cases that make the headlines are these kind of very politicized issues. Some of them are like, yeah, new thing has arisen, very complicated arguments on both sides. Let's figure this out.

[Sharon McMahon]

There is absolutely a perception that the Supreme Court has been overtly politicized. The number of people who think that they're doing a good job, that everything's above board, non biased, it's very low. This is one of the lowest points in US History in terms of perceived legitimacy of the Supreme Court. And some of that has to do with abortion. The majority of Americans are pro choice in at least some circumstances. I think some people don't realize that if you believe that there should be exceptions for things like rape and incest, that that actually falls under the purview of being pro choice, that there are some circumstances in which abortion should be legal. Overwhelming majority of Americans think that. And so some people, they really really view the Supreme Court's recent actions on abortion as delegitimizing the court. And then the other aspect of it is the ethics concerns related to a couple of the justices on the court now, where they're taking all these trips with billionaires and they're not disclosing them, and they're supposed to be disclosing them, and then they're like, oh, my bad. I didn't realize the form was supposed to be filled out that way. And it's a little bit like. But you're in charge of determining if people fill out the forms. Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, also, one of the main things a court would point out, ignorance of the law is not a defense.

[Sharon McMahon]

Not a defense, exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. So that's kind of your job is pointing out that everyone's supposed to know.

[Sharon McMahon]

Right. And so one of the challenges there is people feel like, I would never get away with that at my job.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Sharon McMahon]

If you are just a normal federal government employee, let's say you just work in a Social Security office helping people get Social Security cards. There are very strict ethics rules that do not allow you to accept gifts greater than $20. I cannot send you a copy of my book because it costs more than $20. Right. And so there are very strict codes of ETH for federal employees. It's meant to make sure that things are transparent and above board, and you can't just send gifts to grease the wheels and make things happen and that it's treating citizens fairly. And so when you see that some Supreme Court members are taking trips with billionaires on private yachts and going to their private hunting, fishing retreats and the private jet trips, and it seems like the rules are for thee, but not for me.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

It makes people feel salty about it. Like, I would get fired if I let you take me out to lunch. It's easy for Chipotle to even cost more than $20.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, exactly.

[Sharon McMahon]

If you just add on enough queso. Some Supreme Court justices have even talked openly about that, that when they go out to lunch with friends, they insist on paying for themselves. They do not even allow themselves to be treated by a friend to lunch to keep things above board. But that has not been the case with a couple of justices on the court. So all that to say that there is a perceived imbalance in terms of how political they have become to where they're supposed to be, the number of cases that are unanimous. If you look at the number of cases they hear where at least one of the liberal justices is in the majority with the Conservative justices. You look at the number of cases where one of the conservative justices finds with the liberals, you would find a different pattern. However, you would find a pattern in which their behavior overall is not as politicized as the news would have us believe.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, that's really A, shocking and B, cumbersome, comforting.

[Sharon McMahon]

It's the big name cases, it's the heavy hitters, but it's the political case.

[Monica Padman]

It is the ones that get the attention.

[Sharon McMahon]

Exactly. And this is the other thing that's true about the court, is that they take the cases they want to hear. They get to choose which cases they want to hear.

[Dax Shepard]

What consensus has to exist.

[Sharon McMahon]

Four people have to want to hear the case. Out of 7 out of 9.

[Dax Shepard]

Just forgot my first big. No, keep it in.

[Monica Padman]

Wow, that was nice of you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Got my first.

[Sharon McMahon]

Four people out of nine have to want to hear it. But here's the other thing is that there's not a law, there's no law that says four people have to want to hear. They just decided that for themselves. They could change that at any point. They make all of their own rules. So yes, the tradition of four out of nine have to want to hear the case is just a tradition. There's no external governing body that dictates these things to them. So four people have to want to hear it. And the fact that they have a six person ideological consensus means that they are more likely to take up political cases. And so even though the majority of the cases are not highly political, the majority of the cases are kind of boring. They're administered, they're pertaining to one specific criminal doesn't extrapolate to the country at large necessarily. Even though that is true, the willingness of the court to take on these highly politicized cases like affirmative action, like abortion, like transgender medical care, because they now have a crucial majority who wants to hear a certain type of case.

[Dax Shepard]

Meaning there's six of the nine are conservative.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes, that's right. Two varying degrees. Even within the six, there's a spectrum.

[Dax Shepard]

They'll shock you all the time. That's what's kind of fun.

[Sharon McMahon]

They feel empowered to take up cases that they maybe would not have felt empowered to take up before because they have a level of consensus amongst themselves that the case is going to be decided in a way that they feel is favorable. When it was 5, 4, or when it was a more liberal swing to the court, the conservative members would not have advocated for taking up these cases because they know they're not going to be decided in Their favor. And so now the opposite is true. The pendulum has swung to the right on the court.

[Dax Shepard]

And am I right? I listened to More. Perfect. Did you ever listen to that podcast? So good. The Supreme Court's role has evolved over time. And as I understand it, they have gotten more overtly political, more about steering the direction we're going in, as opposed to course correcting.

[Sharon McMahon]

I think that's absolutely true. The role of the court has evolved over time significantly. Members of the Supreme Court used to literally ride around on horseback to hear cases. They didn't even have a building.

[Dax Shepard]

They're in the basement.

[Sharon McMahon]

They were in the basement of the Capitol. They didn't even have a building until the 1930s. And so if you think about the visibility of. Or the optics of we meet in the basement of the legislative branch, the optics are very different than the building they have now, which is like on the top of the steps with the big marble pillars. And it seems very grandiose and official.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

The way the court views its role is on a pendulum spectrum. If you think Back to the 1950s, during the time when we were making rulings about things like Brown v. Board of Education, school integration, the person who was in charge of the Supreme Court at the time was a chief justice named Earl Warren, who was actually formerly the governor of California. He was also the only governor of California to ever have have won both the Democratic and the Republican primary elections to be the governor.

[Dax Shepard]

He won them both.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Sharon McMahon]

So Earl Warren, very popular figure in California history at the time. He's a former prosecutor.

[Dax Shepard]

Is the Warren Commission his name?

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes. Same guy. Earl Warren was not a judge when he got appointed to the Supreme Court. He was the governor of California. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Was he a lawyer at least? You have to be a lawyer. Yes.

[Sharon McMahon]

You actually don't have to be a lawyer.

[Dax Shepard]

I could be on the Supreme Court.

[Sharon McMahon]

You could be on the Supreme Court.

[Dax Shepard]

I like the time off. I like that there's a summer break.

[Monica Padman]

I'm like, all three.

[Sharon McMahon]

Three of us can be on the Supreme Court. There are literally no constitutional requirements to be on the court.

[Dax Shepard]

Even foreign born?

[Sharon McMahon]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow.

[Sharon McMahon]

The constitutional requirement is you have to be able to get approved by the Senate. That's it. And so if the Senate says you're good, then you're golden.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. God, I gotta retract some statements.

[Monica Padman]

I think it's too late for you.

[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 globe trotting, 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 500. 500. We are supported by Sonos. Oh, boy, oh boy. Sonos is my favorite product in my whole life. I've listened 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 sound 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.comdax we are supported by Peloton. Are you tired of the same old workout routine 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, 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's 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]

That'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 gotta tell you, I was recently advised by a doctor to incorporate some more blasts, some high intensity blasts that you get the 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 and 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].

[Sharon McMahon]

Anyway, Earl Warren gets on the Supreme Court. He gets appointed by Dwight Eisenhower. Dwight Eisenhower kind of later regretted appointing Earl Warren because Earl War Warren went about changing some stuff. He had been in charge of the state of California during the time period that the United States was actively incarcerating Japanese Americans during World War II, where we rounded up more than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry and moved them into incarceration camps away from the Pacific coast because of the attack on Pearl Harbor. And those people were by and large US citizens who had been accused of absolutely no crime. Many of them were children. They received no due process whatsoever. And Earl Warren cooperated with the Department of Justice and cooperated with FDR in the removal orders to move Japanese Americans to these camps. Later he wrote about in his autobiography how deeply he regretted those actions. And then he spent the rest of his life on the Supreme Court trying to make up for the fact that he had deprived hundreds of thousands of people of their due process. And so he is the Supreme Court justice who comes into position during Brown v. Board of Education. He's the person who steers the court to making sure it's a unanimous decision. He's the person who oversees Miranda v. Arizona. We've all heard of your Miranda rights, the right to remain silent. Everything you say can will be used against you. That was a Supreme Court case under the Warren Court. He was also in charge of Gideon v. Wainwright, which says that people have the right to a court appointed attorney if they cannot afford one. So the court saw a hard pendulum swing to the left under Earl Warren in because of his guilt over what he had done during World War II.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow. Talk about making the best of a terrible thing. Yeah, that's admirable.

[Sharon McMahon]

Earl Warren's father was also murdered. He was a prosecutor at the time up in the Bay Area, and he knows people that are investigating his own father's murder. His dad was literally sitting in his house one night, and somebody broke into his house and hit him in the head with, like, a pipe. And he was dead. And they get this line on, like, we think we might be this guy. And it's a guy who's already in prison. If you wanted, we could, like, put a wiretap in his cell and see if he's talking about it to anybody and gain evidence against this guy that way. And Earl Warren was like, no, we're gonna play things above board. We're not gonna secretly wiretap anybody. That's violating people's rights. So he, even as a prosecutor, was somebody who wanted to play by the rules, so to speak, even if it meant not solving own father's murder.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that's a level of integrity not seen often.

[Sharon McMahon]

His father's murder is still technically unsolved all of these years later, although people now feel like it's very likely this one guy, There's a good amount of evidence.

[Dax Shepard]

Like Hodel and the Black Dahlia murders.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes. And it was the guy who was in prison who he could have wiretapped and didn't. He's the most likely suspect in having killed Earl War Warren's dad.

[Dax Shepard]

But again, if you believe in the principle that it would be better to have a guilty man free than an innocent man in prison, which I do, and our system's built on. You gotta play by that.

[Sharon McMahon]

I think you're right that first of all, it is better to have a guilty man free than an innocent man imprisoned. You might think to yourself, yeah, I agree with that. But I think in times like today, that's a big ask for some people. People would rather be safe.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

And if that means putting in some innocent people in prison, then that's the choice they're gonn. Do you agree? Do you see what I'm saying there?

[Dax Shepard]

I 100% agree with you. And in fact, look, I'm a liberal, but I try to do my best to make a really strong case for the right as often as I can. And we had a guest on saying that for people who think that the canceling has gone too far, he said, ultimately, it's all worth it. Look how things have changed. And I'm like, that's fine. And I agree they've changed for good. But if you can anchor the opposition's belief in this premise of our judicial system, which I bet you can, can you yourself agree it's better to have an innocent man out of incarceration than a guilty. Yes. So do you see that that premise applies to trying people in public and then they lose their thing and sometimes we get it wrong. Can you at least see that that's a defendable point of view, whether you ultimately agree with it or not? You see, it's a substantive pushback. And yeah, I think people are having a really hard time making a good faith argument for the other side or at least spending 10 minutes trying to figure out what point they're making and if it's on solid footing.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah, I agree with you. And I think it's really easy when you are operating from a position of fe. In some cases, a fear for their own safety, a fear for their own livelihood, their way of life, or their religious whatever they feel like, well, you know, sometimes that's the way it works. They don't extend that idea to its logical conclusion, that sometimes in a system run by fallible humans, it does mean that guilty people will walk free, but that we have to err on the side of not incarcerating or putting to death somebody who there's even a small chance of being innocent. When push comes to shove, and it's your own family and it's your community, people have a really hard time.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, it works both ways.

[Sharon McMahon]

Both Ways.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, my mom's murdered, but I can own that. Right. People go, I'm not in favor of the death penalty. What if your children were raped or murdered? I'm like, yeah, I would want those people killed, but I shouldn't be a justice in that case.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's right.

[Dax Shepard]

And I shouldn't be the police officer that arrests the people. I should have some distance. They think that's a gotcha, and it's like, no, no. Yes, I would want that. Which is why I shouldn't be deciding it.

[Sharon McMahon]

It's your normal human instinct to be like, you should no longer walk the earth if you did that to my children. And that. That is why we can't have laws based on our base instincts.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, exactly.

[Sharon McMahon]

Right. That is why we need to have laws that are principled and not based on the emotional anger that somebody feels in a given moment.

[Monica Padman]

Also, those people don't think it's a possibility that they would be wrongly incarcerated.

[Sharon McMahon]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

They want to walk into court being presumed innocent.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. And they also think a group of people who is being incarcerated is much different from them. And maybe they did do something bad.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Maybe it wasn't this. But they probably. I mean, I've heard all this. Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Until they look down. They heard something in their front seat go on the floor, and they look down at that, and then they look up and they kill a pedestrian.

[Monica Padman]

You know, like, it's a lot of arrogance.

[Sharon McMahon]

I think you're right.

[Dax Shepard]

But that point we were just on is a great kind of segue into term limits or lack of term limits. Another job that the court has, as I understand it, is to be removed from the swell of emotions of pop culture that we see things. Pearl harbor would be a great example. In the wake of Pearl harbor, we're going to make some really rash decisions. We're human, we're reactive, we're hurt. And so the court is supposed to be semi removed from the swell of popular outrage. It's purposely slow. It's supposed to build in a little gap between. And so, A, is that true? And B, is that where we get into life appointment so that there's no political pressure or daytime pressure to react in a certain way?

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah. I mean, it is true that they are not supposed to be making decisions based on what is pop, which is what politicians often do. They make decisions that will help them get reelected as opposed to principled decisions. So, yes, that's the idea behind it, that we are removed from public opinion. That's why the members of the Supreme Court have lifetime appointments. And so there's almost always a gap between what happens theoretically and what happens on the ground. Right. Theoretically, it insulates you from popular opinion so that you only make principles decisions. What it can also mean is that it allows people who potentially are corrupt or people who potentially are not playing by the rules. It allows them to stay in power excessively because it's too difficult to get rid of them. So there's always a give and take when it comes to these issues. Yes, it's a good idea in theory, but in reality it means the following things. But you're right that there's meant to be a lack of reactivity to public opinion on the part of the court system. And sometimes a court gives wrong.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

Sometimes the court has gotten it wrong. They got it real wrong when it came to Plessy v. Ferguson saying that African Americans were not citizens of the United States even if they were born here. They got it real wrong in the Korematsu case, which is what found it constitutionally permissible to incarcerate Japanese Americans. The Supreme Court actually said it was fine that they did that. So you can look back and point to a variety of cases where you're like, oh, hell no, that is messed up.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And again, I don't know, like years ago when the premise was explained to me, it made sense. And now that I find myself on the wrong side of the politics of the supermajority or whatever we'd call what is existing now, I of course, am seeing the fallibility of this. And then I wonder, well, is it if it's good for the goose, is it good for the gander? Why didn't I. You know, you're always trying to self correct. Like, am I just caught in my own silo of opinion? Or do we think that these lifetime appointments are problematic? I also think again, as the writers of the Second Amendment couldn't anticipate AR15s, we can't anticipate justices living to 94. Like that wasn't in the realm of what was going to happen.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's so true. You are absolutely right that if you are taking a principled look at this, if you dislike the conservative bent of the Court today and you feel like it's just become so political, oh my gosh. And chain making so many decisions that impact so many people's lives, then you are feeling exactly how conservatives felt during the 1950s and 60s where they're like, what the f is this cart? And they felt like the Court was radically reshaping American society during the 1950s. And they were. We just today feel like they were reshaping it in the right way, Right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yep, yep, yep, yep. Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

To be fair, they were reshaping in the right way. You know, like, segregation was not acceptable. It's not. Okay. So it's easy for us to look back on that today and be like, yes, sometimes the court should radically reshape society because lawmakers who are concerned with consolidating and maintaining their own power care more about that than about doing the right thing. Or lawmakers are themselves bigots. But then we feel really uncomfortable if the same principle is extended to its logical conclusion. And it means that sometimes the court swings to the right.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. God, there's so many tasty things. And I feel like we're semi aligned, which is really fun. I feel quite alone in screaming like a democracy is first, forget whatever your issue is. You have an issue and it's legit, but it has to come second to democracy.

[Sharon McMahon]

I totally agree with you. Principle over party. That's how I say it. The principles of democracy are more important than any party allegiance to somebody or.

[Dax Shepard]

Any your single issue. It's like, we cannot have a minority of people running a majority of the country. And so with that said, I get in this argument sometimes. I sounded off the other day about it, and now I'm a little worried I might be actually wrong. So I'm going to ask you, and this does seem to be a favorite comment from people on the far right, which is, it's not a democracy, it's a republic. My issue is like, yeah, motherfucker, that's a version of democracy. You could have direct democracy. You could have representative. So please just start with, are we a democracy?

[Sharon McMahon]

Dax, you're right. You are correct.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, thank God, because I've been.

[Sharon McMahon]

It is both a democracy and a republic. A republic is a structure of government. A democracy is a government of the people. That's literally what the word means in Greek. And there are different ways to structure democracies. Direct democracies, constitutional republics, a variety of different kinds. You can have a figurehead, like a monarch in, like they do in England. We don't have that here, but yet the UK is still a democracy. So there's more than one way to structure a democratic government. But democracy just means government of the people. And this far right talking point about, like, it's not a democracy, it's a republic. My question to you is like, and what is your point? Their point is that they're Repeating a far right talking point from the 1950s.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, that starts in the 50s.

[Sharon McMahon]

In the 1950s.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, this is so fun to learn.

[Sharon McMahon]

It started with a far right group called the John Birch Society who wanted to put forward this idea that it's not a democracy. Because if you were going to have a democracy, that would mean that everyone, including people of color in the south, would have to have equal rights.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

And so this idea of like, it's.

[Monica Padman]

A republic, so they're not defending democracy, they're saying, it's not a democracy, it's not a democracy. Try to say it is. Like, don't.

[Sharon McMahon]

They don't like it when you say it's a democracy. They will try to correct you and say, it's not a democracy, it's a republic.

[Monica Padman]

Which is why we can have like electoral college and things like that that aren't. It's not just a popular vote.

[Dax Shepard]

Those terms aren't mutually exclusive.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's exactly right.

[Dax Shepard]

It's like saying it's not a democracy because it's a communist. And it's like, no, that's an economic system.

[Sharon McMahon]

So all constitutional republics are democracies, but not all democracies are constitutional republics. America is both of those things. It's both a republican and democracy. And this is one of those things that like gets under my skin. I'm always so curious what the point somebody is trying to make when they say that.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I have found that that comes as the last ditch. I'm out generally. For me, it's their point. Didn't hold up all that much. And then that comes in at the end is like, hopefully unravel everything we just covered.

[Sharon McMahon]

Well, you don't even understand it because it's not a democracy.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not a democracy. Okay, so none of this stuff we just argued about is relevant now.

[Sharon McMahon]

Democracy is mob rule. This is thing people will say, democracy is like two wolves and a sheep trying to decide what to have for dinner. This is another thing that people will.

[Monica Padman]

Say, oh my God.

[Dax Shepard]

First of all, I like that. That's pretty funny.

[Monica Padman]

Two wolves and a sheep trying to.

[Sharon McMahon]

Decide what to have for dinner.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, it's pretty good.

[Monica Padman]

I don't get it.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, the two wolves are going to vote to eat the wolf.

[Sharon McMahon]

The majority are going to vote to eat the sheep.

[Dax Shepard]

So it's almost like implicit in a democracy is that the majority will victimize the minority.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's right.

[Dax Shepard]

This would be a great time to introduce baked intentions that are from our conceit. We have liberty, inequality, and these often are in opposition to one another. There are two ideals we're going to try to juggle and get as close to both as we can without infringing on the other. The other is this union in this republic, the states rights versus federal rights. And these are long standing tensions that the political parties tend to gravitate towards.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's absolutely true. Literally from the very, very beginning, before the modern Republican and Democratic parties, which have not existed in the format that they exist today for very long. You have the Federalists and the anti Federalists, which were very much this idea of how much should the federal government do versus how much the state governments do. And obviously leading up to the Civil War, we have this continual tension between what states have the right to do and the federal government has right to do. You see it with abortion today, another states rights issue. What should the states have the right to do? Of course, you understand Los Angeles needs different environments, mental rules than northern Minnesota, where I live, where we have too much water as opposed to not enough water, you know, where we have almost nobody that lives there. Of course it makes sense that there are certain things that fall under the purview of states, but to what extent, to what end is it fair that women in one state should be able to receive a certain type of medical care, while somebody in another state should not be able to receive that kind of medical care? And so you're right that this is a continual balancing act, that the federal government is trying to find the right happy medium. And right now with the more conservative leaning Supreme Court, they're tipping backs towards this sort of states rights issues.

[Dax Shepard]

And in general, we could probably say the modern left and right, the right is about the individual and the left is about.

[Sharon McMahon]

More about the collective.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, both are really valid. I also want to scream that often, yes, you know who was the minority who was getting shit on by the majority were gay folks, Jews. We've had a lot of minority groups that were getting fucked by the majority. So it is a very good principle to be defending of the individual's rights right to pursue their happiness here.

[Sharon McMahon]

I bring this point up all the time too, that we actually cannot have one political party. We need multiple political parties. One political party is a dictatorship. Right. So we can't just be like, well, I hope the people I like get into power and screw the rest of y'all. That's actually not a healthy democracy. We're better off by having our ideas challenged and by having the best ideas rise to the top. We should have enough allegiance to the country and to the Constitution to be willing to acknowledge when somebody who belongs to a party that we do not vote for when they have a good idea. Yeah, like we should have enough humility to be able to be like, you know what? I didn't vote for you, but I think that's a good idea.

[Dax Shepard]

And integrity.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes. Some of the best leaders from history have done that exact thing. I know you have Team of Rivals on your shelf right above your head just learning that. But Team of Rivals the door. Doris Kearns Goodwin book. It's a great book about how some of the best leaders from history have brought people into their cabinets who some of them did not agree with them. They did not just hire a bunch of yes men who were like, whatever you think. Great idea. Of course.

[Dax Shepard]

Wasn't Lincoln famous for this is what he did.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes. That's what this is about. Team of Rivals. So is George Washington. George Washington hires both Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson who hate each other. The thinking behind that is, I don't want you to just pat me on the head and tell me I'm pretty and I come up with all the good ideas.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. This is important stuff.

[Sharon McMahon]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

And back to what you said 10 minutes ago about theory versus practice. Each side has a scorecard just riddled with failures and successes nobody has the lock on.

[Sharon McMahon]

We've historically had all the good ideas. That's ridiculous.

[Dax Shepard]

My side's had a lot of well intentioned stuff that in practice split up families in the inner city that incarcerated people. You know, we've done a lot of well intentioned things that in practice turned out terribly. That we got a course correct.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's right. And the right thing to do is to admit when you got it wrong and to do what you can to make it right. And I think too often our leaders today view admitting any kind of change in thinking or any kind of, you know, like, I thought it was a good idea and then ultimately it ended up not working out the way I thought. They're so penalized for exiting those kinds of things. When personally, if we're having an interaction together and you call me on the phone, you're like, you know what? I really screwed that up. I am so sorry. I did not realize how it would impact you. I'm going to make changes. You would have respect for that person. Oh, so who did that to you personally? But yet on a broader political scale, we're like, oh my God, they're a flip flopper.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, it's the public's fault for doing this, for villainizing that type of behavior from a powerful person. Why can't they change their mind?

[Sharon McMahon]

They should change their mind when presented with better information. That's what a person with intellectual integrity does.

[Monica Padman]

It was like with COVID a bunch of people were very upset that the initial stuff that was coming out, they ended up being like, oh, actually, now you don't need to probably Lysol your fruit. They're like, oh, you were wrong. And so we don't trust you at all. It's like, well, they're just figuring it out.

[Sharon McMahon]

We probably don't need to put every book in an autoclave. Right? You know, but yet the initial responses to a global pandemic. We're not perfect. We're not perfect.

[Dax Shepard]

One thing even more depressing is like, I'm not even sure how I feel about all this. Let me check in with my tribe and see how they feel about it. And now I know that, to me, was the much more scary. And I think we have a similar concern, you and I. The notion that something like a global pandemic got funneled into one of two camps, police. It's like, if the fucking aliens come up with the laser beams, are we going to actually decide? Is that going to be political? Like, what would be the threat, where.

[Sharon McMahon]

We would stop, where we would come together?

[Dax Shepard]

Also, I just want to say too, I think both sides were wrong about a bunch of stuff.

[Sharon McMahon]

Totally.

[Monica Padman]

Of course everyone was wrong. It was a brand new thing. Like, that's the whole.

[Dax Shepard]

But just the notion that anyone could come out of it and go, like, my side was vindicated. I also think it's a total fantasy. It's like, they were right about some stuff. We were right about some stuff. We were wrong about some stuff. They were wrong about some stuff.

[Sharon McMahon]

I totally agree. And now we should be willing to do a post mortem on that.

[Dax Shepard]

Kids should probably go to school if they're going to survive. That's something the left got completely wrong.

[Sharon McMahon]

Now we know the learning loss from not being in school was too great a burden to bear. But yet you can also understand how children are not the only people in the schools. Right. That the adults that work in the schools also deserve a safe working environment. And that that's very tricky when you have small children who don't understand basic hygiene, who don't know how to cover their cough, who don't know how to wash their hands appropriately. What about the adults in the schools? Don't they deserve to not die from.

[Monica Padman]

COVID And also the kids that go home to environments where there's a lot of people in a small environment. Yes. A lot of adults, grandmothers, grandparents. Like, again, we don't live in that type of environment, so it's easy for us to forget that that exists. But that's a lot of people.

[Sharon McMahon]

A lot of people. The black and white thinking, I don't think is particularly helpful here, because, yes, the children should be in school, and also, yes, the teachers should not die from COVID Both of those things are true.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, Right.

[Sharon McMahon]

And the idea that only. Only my side is the correct side, and if you don't agree with it, then you're a Satan worshiper or whatever it is.

[Dax Shepard]

Again, though, I don't think it's helpful to call it the other side's failures in some way. Like, they're not listening to me.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's true.

[Monica Padman]

It's not fair because. Yes, because it's not fair. Because you actively say I'm a centrist. You've stopped saying you're a liberal. So if you're a centrist, then you do need to call out both sides. It doesn't feel fair to me.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Well, okay. So on the right, it was insane. They're hosting Covid parties. They're intentionally endangering themselves, themselves to prove a point. And there was no period where they could even wear a mask for five minutes to see where this goes. Like, there was a lot of belligerence and insolence on that side, for sure. But there was a bit of hypocrisy on our side, which was like service. What was the term we used? Essential workers.

[Sharon McMahon]

Essential workers.

[Dax Shepard]

If I'm on the right, that's a total elitist, bullshit thing. So all the professionals with college degrees just didn't work. And everyone else had to work. Somehow it was not unsafe for this whole section of our economy to be working every day. They never stopped. Everyone that I know stopped and was in quarantine.

[Sharon McMahon]

Worked from Zoom.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Relocate. If you work at Chipotle, there's no fucking work from home. So it was also very elitist in the way that it was executed. If I'm on the right, it's not hard to see that. And that's legit.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes. And both of those things can be true at the same time.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

And people's weddedness to their political party of choice blinds them in some ways to the things that their own party is getting wrong. And this blind allegiance has never led any civilization somewhere worth going. Blind allegiance to a party or blind allegiance to a leader that has always led to dehumanization that has always led to dictatorships, that has always led to further marginalization of vulnerable groups.

[Dax Shepard]

Incarcerated opponents.

[Sharon McMahon]

Exactly. The idea of blind allegiance no one deserves. Not me, not any of y'all. Nobody deserves your unexamined loyalty. Right. And I think we're seeing the effects today of some people who have unexamined loyalty to a party or a person. And it's a dangerous direction to be headed in.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

If you want to paint yourself as a critical thinker and as an intellectually honest person. And I think most people would want to be labeled a critical thinker. Right. Most people. If I'm like, well, you don't know how to critically think, you'd be offended.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

Right. We all want to feel like we're good at critical thinking. If you want to be a critical thinker and you want to be intellectually mature and honest, you have to be willing to. To admit when your preferred ideology gets it wrong. You really do. I think it's a failure regardless of what your preferred ideology is. And if you cannot listen to a single criticism of your preferred ideology, then you don't have the intellectual maturity enough to be able to say, yeah, you know what? We screwed that up. We should not do that again in the future.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And you're right. We admire people who do it so much.

[Monica Padman]

They've been showing clips of old debates.

[Sharon McMahon]

John Kerry.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Mitt Romney and Obama. And everyone's laughing and there's agreement. It's just normal. You have your ideas about how you want the country to go, but you just don't have to hate the opponent or it doesn't have to be so extreme.

[Sharon McMahon]

And no, you're totally right. It doesn't have to be this way. It's this way because we're permitting it to be this way, and we're participating in it. People don't realize how much money there is in producing outrage content on the Internet. They do not realize how lucrative it is to create this kind of division. And I'm not somebody who's out here like, oh, the media is ruining the world. The media has an important job. Press is an important role in society. But you don't have any idea how some of these people who have very popular YouTube channels are making $20 million a year pumping out hate content. The idea that, like, it's somehow the media and what they mean by that is legacy media, ABC News or whatever, that it's somehow their fault, when in reality, they are very willing to ignore the people who are getting paid $20 million a year to make fun of ABC News. This is somehow corrupt over here. But what you're doing is complaining. Completely legit. Yeah, sure. Also, the idea that some people are getting paid $20 million a year to like roll Clip and then they watch President Biden like stumble on the steps of Air Force One and then they spend 15 minutes making fun of what an old guy he is. Those clips that go uber viral. That is a tremendously lucrative line of work if you have enough eyeballs on your content.

[Monica Padman]

Oh yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

And when you understand the business model behind the hate content that is online, it's eye opening. It pays far more to be a hyperpartisan pundit. I could make so much more money than I make right now getting a gig on some news network and talking about how shitty XYZ person is, why this person's an idiot, et cetera. The amount of money that exists in that hyper partisan space is so much more than somebody who exists where common sense lives. There's not cash in common sense. Right. And so if I have a choice between a giant check and having common sense, listen, it's very enticing to be like, I'll take the cash and I'll buy the sweaters.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, again, it doesn't even have to be personal to anyone. It's. You're observing what the system creates and the incentive structure. And it's a system and it produces a result.

[Sharon McMahon]

The incentive structure.

[Dax Shepard]

And it's producing the exact result. It's designed, you know.

[Sharon McMahon]

Precisely. It's producing the exact result that is designed to produce. And everybody is willingly participating in it without even realizing what the incentive structure is though.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, exactly.

[Sharon McMahon]

And that's the problem.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, well, I have done a bad job. Because you're so interesting of mowing through a lot of these things. I wanted to explain. I feel like we could do 20 hours together. I would love to, but I think people would like to know too, the difference between the Senate and the House of Representatives. Right, That's a little confusing.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah, it is. So the legislative branch of the federal government is Congress. Congress has two houses in it, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate has a six year term and they're meant to be slow and deliberate. Every state gets two senators. And so consequently small states like Wyoming get exactly as much representation as giant states like California. And a lot of people feel like, how is that fair? Wyoming has less than 1 million people in it and they get two senators just like California does. This was something they argued about when they were writing the Constitution. They fought like cats and dogs about this. And the House of Representatives has allegedly proportional representation, where a state gets a certain number of representatives based on their population. And all of those representatives serve two year terms. So there's 100 senators and 435 representatives. And together those 535 members make up the entirety of Congress. There are a few people, they have kind of more advisory jobs to Congress, they're delegates to Congress and they represent places that are United States territories, places like Guam or Puerto Rico, Washington D.C. places that are not states. They're allowed to go to committee meetings and make their voice known, but they can't vote on legislation. So the problem with proportional representation is still that there is a finite pie that has to be divvied up. Every 10 years they go through and re divvy up the pie again. These 435 seats after the 2020 census, California actually lost a seat in the House of Representatives, even though California is bigger than it's ever been. Of course. Right. And that's because other places grew. Grew faster than California did. So the number of people that are being represented by one representative in Wyoming or North Dakota is much, much, much smaller than the number of people that are being represented by one representative in the state of California, for example. That's one of the big criticisms of Congress, is that the way people are represented is not equal across the entire country.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. It's okay if we have a representative democracy, assuming that each person is represented.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes. Or at least relatively equally. Nobody's saying it has to be perfect, but get us in the ballpark here of one representative for every 500,000 people, or, you know, whatever it is. So the way that it works, there's an actual commission that goes through and divvies up this pie of 435 people every 10 years. Inevitably, some states are going to lose some people and some states are going to gain some people. But together, those two houses of Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives, some of the roles they have are very similar. Similar, but they each have some specific roles. Like the Senate has to confirm president's appointments. They have to confirm people to the Supreme Court. They're meant to act differently because the House of Representatives is being reelected every even year. Congress is on recess right now until after the election for six weeks. They're off of work.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh my God, maybe I'll be a congressperson.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah. Yeah. Because they're gonna do that on my break from being.

[Monica Padman]

No.

[Sharon McMahon]

So you can't be in two branches of government same all right.

[Dax Shepard]

That'd be a complex.

[Monica Padman]

Hey, that's enough.

[Sharon McMahon]

They're all off because they're campaigning for reelection. Imagine having to campaign for reelection every other year.

[Monica Padman]

But also that you don't have to do your job because you're campaigning. I don't like.

[Dax Shepard]

Their term is only every two years.

[Sharon McMahon]

Two years. It's meant to be more immediately responsive thinking. People have short memories. And if you screwed up last year, I'm going to remember it this year. Yeah, I'm going to vote you out. That's the thinking behind it.

[Dax Shepard]

For legislation to become law that will be enforced by the president, the executive branch, it has to pass both.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yep. It has to pass both and then.

[Dax Shepard]

Be signed off by the president.

[Sharon McMahon]

You know, I won't go into the whole, like, how do committees work? The whole structure of how every aspect of Congress works. But the bottom line is, yes, both the Senate and the House of Representatives has to pass identical versions of the same law to land on the president's desk for him or her.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more armchairs 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 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.com we are supported by 23andMe/total health, advocating for your health and the personalized care you need and deserve in today's one size fits all healthcare 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 genetics screening, you'll get access to insights into your potential future disease risks, which can help lead to early detection and even prevention.

[Monica Padman]

23Andme is how we learned about misophonia.

[Dax Shepard]

That's right.

[Monica Padman]

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 23andMe.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 gifts.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, you're a gift expert. And you approve?

[Monica Padman]

I do. And when I gave for a white elephant, 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 eventize.

[Monica Padman]

You gotta.

[Dax Shepard]

It's so fun. And who. Who doesn't love a gift list? It makes holiday shopping that much easier. Shop skimsholiday. [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. And if we want to change the Constitution, it requires a two thirds vote in both houses. In both houses, yes.

[Sharon McMahon]

But then it also has to be ratified by three quarters of the states.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

When's the last time this has happened?

[Sharon McMahon]

The Constitution has been amended 27 times.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, when was the last?

[Sharon McMahon]

In the 90s.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, what was the last amendment?

[Sharon McMahon]

The last amendment. It had to do with the way, like, if Congress is going to adjust its own pay, it said that the change in pay would not go into effect. Until after the next election.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, that's a pretty good. So it can't be self serving, right?

[Sharon McMahon]

So they can't be like, everyone gets $20 million and then they get a check tomorrow. They have to wait till after the next election. So it has not been amended since the 90s, but we have amended it 27 times. And the framers of the Constitution wrote two different ways to amend the Constitution into the document itself. This is not holy scripture. This is not forever and ever. Amen. Thus saith the Lord. These are two different ways. Like, listen, if we got something wrong, here's two ways you might go about fixing it. But please do fix it in the future. They were at least smart enough to understand that they didn't know what was coming down the pike. They had no way of knowing that there's going to be the Internet and porn websites and transgender medical care for minors.

[Dax Shepard]

60 rounds a second guns.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah, exactly. Semi automatic weapons that kill children in their classrooms in Texas. They had no way of it anticipating these things. And so consequently, even though they did get a lot of things wrong by today's standards, namely the rights of women, the rights of people of color, they got a lot wrong. They at least knew that they were fallible people. They did not view themselves as gods. And I think some people today hold up the framers of the Constitution as like Thomas Jefferson, like he's some kind of deity, right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. It's biblical. The document, what's the second way to amend it?

[Sharon McMahon]

You can have a convention of states in which the states can decide to circumvent Congress and be like, forget you, we're going to do it ourselves. And there actually is a movement on the political right right now to have a convention of states to amend the Constitution and to sort of refashion portions of the Constitution in the way that they view as preferable.

[Dax Shepard]

Interesting.

[Monica Padman]

And how many states would that require?

[Sharon McMahon]

Three quarters.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, still three quarters. Okay.

[Sharon McMahon]

What's interesting too is how would states decide who gets to go to the convention of states? That's the million dollar question. Question. Is it me, my friends?

[Dax Shepard]

Is it the governor?

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah. Do they have to be elected? Who gets to choose? Because who shows up at that convention of states would be real, real important.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So it's never happened.

[Sharon McMahon]

We've never used it, but it's there for the using.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, wow. Well, that kind of gets to. One of my other questions is this gap between. There's a few examples of it you've already brought up. One of the most Glaring at the moment. There's these times where the representatives do not reflect at all what the national consensus is that we find out in polling. Of course, Roe v. Wade is the most salient of those examples. Right now. It's in the 70s or some crazy majority.

[Sharon McMahon]

Guns are another one.

[Dax Shepard]

Not like abolishment of guns, but gun control.

[Monica Padman]

No one, even Kamala is like, I have a gun. I'm not trying to take anyone's guns away. No one's saying that. I mean, maybe like there might be tiny percentage, but most.

[Dax Shepard]

But again, just like we respond to the ding bad baddiest on the right, they're responding to the ding baddiest on the left. So yeah, there are socialist Democrats, there are no guns.

[Monica Padman]

But the one who is representing this side, she's like, no, there's more guns.

[Sharon McMahon]

Than people in the United States. You can say we need to get rid of all of the guns all day long. But practically, how does one do that? Right. I know, it's like saying we're going to deport 80 million immigrants. How does one do that practically? What does that even look like? Are the cops going door to door?

[Monica Padman]

I know.

[Sharon McMahon]

No. Are the cops even, even going to cooperate with that? No. The idea that that's somebody's concept is like come and take my gun. That's just silly. It's not even a real idea. There's no practical way to carry that out. But what the overwhelming majority of Americans want, 80 plus percent, are just really common sense laws. How about we just do universal background checks to make sure you are not a domestic abuser. How about we make sure that you haven't been flagged for being potential school shooter? How about we just have safe storage laws that require you to lock up your weapon and lock up your ammunition. If you are a law abiding citize, you should want other people to be law abiding citizens. Just like when I am driving safely on the road, I don't want it to be permissible for drunk drivers. I want you to follow the rules of the road as well.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Sharon McMahon]

Just like I want to follow the rules of the road. Normal firearms owners want other people to be law abiding firearms owners.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Sharon McMahon]

What about the rights of children to not be shot in their schools?

[Dax Shepard]

It's not.

[Monica Padman]

People agree with that. That's the thing.

[Sharon McMahon]

Exactly.

[Monica Padman]

So it shouldn't be an issue.

[Dax Shepard]

But that's what you can imagine maybe one of these state conventions rallying around one of these issues that is like a ubiquitous super majority that everyone agrees.

[Monica Padman]

With, but also that should be able to just get passed through Congress, but then we can't because there are lobbies and things.

[Sharon McMahon]

To your point, if Congress is supposed to reflect, generally speaking, the will of the people and they are absolutely shirking that duty, it makes people feel like the government is not legitimate. It makes people feel like I'm not going to listen to what they have to say. I'm just going to violate whatever rules they come up with because they're not a legitimate lawmaking group. This has been the least productive Congress in United States history. That's not my opinion. I mean, like in the number of laws that have been passed, the least productive Congress in US History, again, that doesn't play well in Peoria. If you're from a blue collar area like I am, where people literally work on ore ships or they mine iron ore or they work in healthcare like they are working hard for their money. It seems really frustrating that I should pay you 170+ thousand dollars a year, plus great benefits to sit around and do press conferences about how stupid your opponents are.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

You know, like that really sticks in people's CR where they're like, I'm working two jobs to put food on the table and y'all are sitting around being shitty on television.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Sharon McMahon]

Like, that's not how it's supposed to work. Meanwhile, it's fine that the kids keep getting shot in the schools and we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to go on TV and say, well, it's just an unfortunate reality is how it is. We're not going to do anything to fix it. That doesn't fly in any other line of work. If you just straight up refuse to do the job that you were hired to do, you would soon find yourself out of a job. Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Unless you had lifetime appointment.

[Sharon McMahon]

Unless you have a lifetime appointment.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, last thing. And then we're going to talk about the book, which is so worthy of talking about on its own for two hours. But maybe another pet peeve of mine is do you think people in general exaggerate the role of the President?

[Sharon McMahon]

Oh my God, yes. This is also a pet peeve of my ind.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Like we're crediting them with the economy or crediting them with supply chains. We're crediting them with a pandemic. We're crediting them. I mean, it'd be great if one person could whip everyone into shape.

[Sharon McMahon]

The problem with it'd be great if everybody could do it is that they could also wield that power to do bad things. Right. If that person has too much power, that's how we get dictatorships. They intentionally restrained the power of the President significantly on purpose, because the framers of the Constitution were all coming from monarchies where the governments were saying, here's the religion you have to belong to. The idea that whatever I say, whatever whim that's at the top of my head, we're just going to go with that thing. They intentionally created a system that could constrained the power of the President. This is one of my pet peeves. When a president is like, I've created 82 million jobs.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly.

[Sharon McMahon]

No, you didn't.

[Dax Shepard]

How?

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah, you sure did not.

[Dax Shepard]

You were sitting there when the tech boom happened. That was convenient. You were sitting there when this bad thing happened. That was inconvenient.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes. You might have some ideas that can help promote job growth. Maybe you have some ideas and you can call up some of the people in Congress and be like, listen, we should pass the CHIPS Act. We should start getting more microchips made in the United States. We should start passing some tax incentives so that people bring manufacturing back to the United States. Yes, you can do things like that, but the idea that you could like, ooh, attaboy, pat on the back, you made all those jobs, that's really annoying to me. Also, the same is true of the economy. The President gets a lot of blame or a lot of credit for how the economy overall is doing. When the economy is so multifactorial and so complicated, the factors that go into creating low unemployment reach so far beyond what a president has the power to do with his little pen.

[Dax Shepard]

It's so simplistic in that there would be a lever in this incredibly dynamic multinational breathing organism.

[Sharon McMahon]

Pull it down and move it to the low position or we want low unemployment.

[Dax Shepard]

And it undermines what the Fed is doing and the amount of power that they're wielding and how much they're in charge of. Totally. And we spent all this energy and all of our cultural capital fighting over this one role. And I think you point out your life is far more impacted by your state government.

[Sharon McMahon]

Totally. To your state and local government has a lot more to do with your day to day. Because on a day to day basis, with the exception of a few big hot button issues, if you are in the military, sure. I'm willing to grant you that the federal government has more impact on your life if you're in the military or if you're a federal employee. The things that they're doing impact you More. But if you just, like, live here in a normal neighborhood, you have a job and you're not the recipient of government benefits, by and large, you're just working for a living. The things that are impacting your life are like, what kind of schools do my kids have to go to? How well are my streets cleaned? Do somebody pick up my trash? Do I have clean drinking water?

[Dax Shepard]

Are we sending addicts in my community to rehab, or are we just putting them in prison? Yeah, yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

Do people have the ability to pursue an education, you know, if they can't pay for it? By and large, these are state schools. They're stated. And local programs, their local school boards that are impacting our daily lives. And we get so hung up on who the president is. This is not to say they're not important, because they are. That's not to say they don't set the tone, because they do. And that's not to say you shouldn't vote for president, because it does matter.

[Dax Shepard]

It's just about. Right. Sizing it. It's a very important role, arguably the most important role in the world. Perhaps I'd stand behind that. But also, they can't do as much as you think they can do.

[Sharon McMahon]

If they could just like, oh, they lowered gas prices, right? Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

You obviously don't know how.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. What affects gas prices is where you fucking live. Because In California there's $6. And I was just in Tennessee and they're 2 80. That has nothing to do with the President. It's like 2x and that's a state issue.

[Sharon McMahon]

I live near an oil refinery that gets its crude oil from a pipeline from Canada and they refine it and then put it on trains and trucks, put all over the world. And gas is like 285 near my house.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Sharon McMahon]

And we don't have $4 in state taxes, but neither do we have 35 million people trying to occupy a very small area of environmentally fragile land.

[Monica Padman]

It's complicated.

[Sharon McMahon]

It's very complicated. Anybody who tries to reduce the economy into the words a president speaks into a microphone or a telephone either does not have an understanding of how the economy actually works and thus we shouldn't be listening to you. Or they do understand how it works and they're lying. In which case we shouldn't listen to you.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

So that person should be regarded with suspicion. If they're like, well, such and such had low gas prices, why explain the mechanism by which gas prices were low under their presidency, then.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, let's talk about the small and the mighty because we kind of just spoke about the big and who all gets the attention. But yeah, the book is about. You single out 12 unsullied young Americans who changed American history. And as you said earlier, these are doers and not the critics. Why is that a distinction that we make?

[Sharon McMahon]

I think it's really easy to feel like on the Internet criticizing people. It creates this heightened emotional state. A great example of this is Hurricane Helene. Absolutely devastating to people in North Carolina, in particular Florida, Georgia, six states that have been affected by this hurricane. So many people have lost everything. And people look around and they see what they view as an inadequate female response, federal government emergency response to to this natural disaster. And they feel like if I am mad about it and I'm posting about how mad I am about it or I'm posting about how they're not doing enough, that that is in some way activism, that being mad on the Internet is activism. They feel like it is because they feel a heightened emotional response. They feel like by criticizing the federal government or criticizing the governor of such and such, blah blah, blah, that they're doing something. I think it's worth remembering that there's nobody in our history book who went down as somebody who really changed the world. And that person was somebody who just wrote mean tweets or somebody who just wrote letters being like, your response is terrible. I don't approve of anything you've done. The people who history smiles kindly upon are the people who actually did stuff that they're the doers. I think it's important for us to realize that like did anybody get clean drinking water because of my post on X today? Does anybody go to bed with food tonight? Because I've left some mean comments on Facebook. Probably not. Nothing has changed.

[Dax Shepard]

The only bad thing. I will just say one thing because I'm with you.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

The only problem where it is effective is it can influence the news cycle back to what's fucked up about the media is unfortunately those dumb groundswells of outrage. You see it on your mainstream media. They read these inane tweets and then it starts to feel like it's consensus sorts majority. It does get really misleading. If I just look at the news cycle feels very led by the tail end of these reactions.

[Sharon McMahon]

I can see what you're saying that there's enough social media outrage about something that that can influence what's covered by the news.

[Dax Shepard]

I still don't think that person isn't.

[Monica Padman]

Going to change anything. Even though they're talking about it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. They would have to land on something that really everyone just felt by accident.

[Sharon McMahon]

Right now, just using the Helene response is another example. The news is spending an inordinate amount of time debunking lies on social media about how FEMA works and about what the actual response is. And that actually makes it so that resources are diverted away from people who actually need help. If these organizations, instead of publicizing ways to get help, ways that FEMA can help you, where to go to apply for assistance, how to contact your homeowner's insurance, et cetera. If they are spending all of their time being. Being like, no, the hurricane wasn't man made to try to win the election for Kamala Harris. That's literally what the New York Times is spending its time doing. That's a waste of resources.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, exactly.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's a waste of effing time. Let's focus on helping people who actually need it. There's a difference between raising awareness of something like, these people really need our help. Over the last few days, I have personally raised a half a million dollars for people who are impacted by Hurricane Helene. I can simultaneously talk about, yeah, Congress doesn't fund FEMA well enough to actually help all these people. I can say that thing as a true thing. That's my belief that Congress needs to get their rear in gear and stop spending time arguing on TV cameras and actually do something on behalf of the American people. I can simultaneously hold that as true while also actually not just spending all my time running my mouth and actually move my hands and feet to do something to help. Can I do everything? No. Can I do something? Yes. I can leverage my platform to do something instead of just criticizing. I think we just feel like if we're angry, that will change things. And ultimately running your mouth doesn't produce the kind of change that you think it should.

[Monica Padman]

But do those people even want change? Like, I don't think they care. I think they just want to be loud and feel like they contributed their. Their voice or it's like selfish and arrogant.

[Dax Shepard]

It's the sweet, sweet hit of self righteous indignation. Yeah, it's talked about in AA a lot. We love self righteous.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah. The dopamine hate of as soon as I'm like, you know who is the worst fema. And you're like, yeah, I hate them too. Like, you get this like, validation of like, we both hate the same thing, and then we feel like we're on the same team and it produces this feedback loop in our brains. You feel like you're making a difference because other people agree with you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. How did you even begin to pick your 12?

[Sharon McMahon]

Well, you know, I've been teaching for a while. I teach, teach on the Internet now, and I used to teach in a classroom, obviously. And it's very apparent to me that people in this moment, they feel really hopeless. They feel like nothing they do matters. They feel like nothing they will ever do matters. They don't have billions of dollars. They don't have a weirdly shaped rocket ship to blast off into space with. They don't have millions of followers. They're not in movies. They don't have any kind of capital on which they can access the levers of power. They know those levers exist, but they feel like there's nothing they can ever do to be able to them themselves. And they feel like, I've written letters, I've voted, nothing has changed. And it feels really hopeless to people. And I hear that, you know, I get more than 10,000 DMS every day.

[Dax Shepard]

Jesus.

[Sharon McMahon]

And a huge amount of them are people who are like, I just feel like nothing will ever change for the better. And so I know from experience how meaningful it is to hear about people who have changed things without having access to the levers of power that we traditionally think you need be able to make a difference. And history is actually full of people who did such consequential things, not because they woke up in the morning and felt hope, but who chose to have hope. And I think that's a distinction that we really, really need today. That hope is a choice that we can make. It is not a feeling that we wait to feel. Our ancestors who did incredible things in this country, who built schools for children, who had no access to them, who reformed prisons, people who wrote incredibly consequential words, people who were incred incredible philanthropists, people who changed the course of history without access to the levers of power, did not wake up in the morning and feel hope because the totality of their life circumstances in many cases were such that none of us would ever want to trade places with them. We would never be like, yes, let me get her life. Instead, people who were falsely arrested or incarcerated, people who were fired from their jobs, who grew up in the segregated south, people who. Whose parents were enslaved, people whose children died, people whose husbands were liars, who had second lives or married to another woman, had kids with those people, we would never look at the totality of their life circumstances and say, I would love your life.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, they were super well positioned to Change the world around them, right?

[Sharon McMahon]

No, we would never say that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Tell me about Inez.

[Sharon McMahon]

Inez was a suffrage worker whose story is really remarkable. But one of the things that I find really amusing about her is that she used what she had, and what she had was her beauty. And she also was very smart. She went to law school at a time when women did not go to law school.

[Dax Shepard]

What year is it?

[Sharon McMahon]

19 teens.

[Dax Shepard]

19 teens.

[Monica Padman]

Have you seen suffs?

[Sharon McMahon]

I have not, but I want to. The producer reached out to me and was like, please come see it. We'll get you tickets. I'm going to. Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a film or a show?

[Sharon McMahon]

It's a Broadway show.

[Dax Shepard]

Broadway show.

[Sharon McMahon]

And Inez, she is. Inez is a character in the Broadway show Mil Holland. Yes. She's very beautiful and also very smart. And she is somebody who really changed what suffrage meant in this country. Suddenly, suffrage grew up with temperance movement.

[Dax Shepard]

Let's just say suffrage is a movement to get women the right to vote. Yes.

[Sharon McMahon]

To enfranchise women. And the temperance movement was the movement that led towards the fact that we made it illegal to sell alcohol in the United States for a period of time. And we quickly also amended the constitution to get rid of that amendment. These are two branches of the same vine. Temperance and suffrage. It was women who were working on this for decades, 30, 40 years. And so by the time we get to the 19 teens, many of these women are in their 40s and 50s. And here comes Inez, who newspaper reporters said things like, her white satin dress clings to her with the tenacity with which she clings to the suffrage cause.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, very flowery.

[Sharon McMahon]

Suddenly. Suddenly, suffrage became sexy.

[Dax Shepard]

Now I'm paying attention.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah. She was a very, very attractive woman who was willing to be at the front of every parade, who was willing to carry all the banners. She had a car, and the idea that, like, women could drive. That is noteworthy. Get a nez in her car. She was willing to use what she had. And I know that there are a lot of feminists, myself included, who feel like women shouldn't have to trade on their looks in an effort to make change in society. But let's also be real is one of the levers of power that women have always had access to. Right. Is their ability to make themselves attractive in conventional sense. But Inez ultimately is a martyr for the cause of suffrage. And I won't give away how she goes about becoming a martyr for the cause of suffrage. But her efforts are a precursor to the passage of the 19th Amendment. And I think one of the things that's worth remembering about Inez, of course, she married, murders herself, and so her sacrifice is noteworthy. But ultimately she dies before the 19th Amendment is passed. And one of the things that people say about her after she's gone is that no work for liberty can be lost because it becomes part of the fabric of the nation. And I think that's really worth remembering that even if we don't see the ball make it into the end zone, whatever we're working for, even if we don't see the ultimate, ultimately, and the bill was passed and they all lived happily ever after, ultimately, the fabric of the country is changed because of your efforts. We are made incrementally better because of your efforts. And these are the kinds of messages that I think people need in this moment when it seems like the rich and powerful have usurped the reins of power for themselves. This is a phrase from George Washington in his farewell address. Beware excess partisanship and factionalism, lest unscrupulous men usurp for themselves the reins of government. And I think Americans, maybe they wouldn't say it in those words. Unscrupulous men usurp for themselves the reins of government, but they feel that sentiment. Yes, that unscrupulous men and women have stolen the reins of power from the American people. And the people in this book show what it means to be able to make change, because you make the choice to have hope.

[Dax Shepard]

What about Claudette Colvin? Why don't I know her name? But I know Rosa Park's name.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's a great question. Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on the bus before Rosa Parks ever gave her a seat up on the bus. And Claudette colvin was a 15 year old girl when she refused to give up her seat on the bus. And in the moment these white law enforcement officers get on the bus and are telling her to give up her seat, there's a white woman who wants not just her seat, but she wants all of the African Americans in that row to get up and exit the row because she refuses to sit even in the same row. That would mean they were equal if they could sit in the same row. And Claudette Colvin is like, I paid for this seat. I am sitting in the black section of the bus. I have every right to sit here.

[Dax Shepard]

The white one was trying to commandeer the. Oh, wow. Yes.

[Sharon McMahon]

Because the white section has filled up.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure, sure, sure.

[Sharon McMahon]

The bus driver is yelling at everybody, you know, move back, move back.

[Dax Shepard]

We got More whites, everybody.

[Sharon McMahon]

Precisely. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. And Claudette says in that moment, she feels the hand of Harriet Tubman on one shoulder and the hand of Sojourner Truth on the other. And she feels them sort of like pin her down in her seat. You know, if she had been alive today and she had seen Hamilton, she would know the phrase history has its eyes on you. That she refuses in that moment to get up. They actually pick her up and carry her off the bus and bring her to jail. They bring her to an adult jail again. She's 15 years old. She's sitting in the back seat of the police car while the two officers who are driving her one wedges himself in the backseat next to her. They're having a conversation about her bra size amongst themselves while she said she's riding in the backseat of the car, like, pinning her knees together, repeating scripture to herself that she will not be sexually assaulted by these police officers. Because for hundreds of years, black women were sexually assaulted by white men and nothing ever happened as a result of it. In fact, Rosa Parks was a rape investigator before she ever became the face of the civil rights movement. She worked for the NAACP investigating rapes. Wow. So eventually, Claudette Colvin gets pregnant. And so she is a pregnant 16 year old during the Montgomery bus boycott. And she is essentially excluded from being the face of the civil rights movement because she's a pregnant teenager and she's not the right one.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

And one of the reasons. Right. The optics of it were important. They needed somebody who was regarded as.

[Dax Shepard]

Quote, unquote, respectable and sympathetic.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes. And pregnant teenagers of any race were not viewed as respectable people.

[Dax Shepard]

We gotta kick them to the curb.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's right.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

Way to kick Claudette out of school, which is what they did. You weren't allowed to stay at school. And Rosa Parks was viewed as, again, quote, unquote, respectable. She was a seamstress. A quiet, mild mannered, pleasant looking mom figure who was not viewed as, quote, unquote, problematic. Like perhaps a pregnant teenager would have been. But Claudette Colvin ultimately feels abandoned by the civil rights movement. Like they just cast her to the side when she gives birth. Nobody contacts her and tries to help her with her baby. Nobody sends her a welcome baby gift.

[Dax Shepard]

Do we know the father? A much older person?

[Sharon McMahon]

No. She has never publicized who the father of her baby was, but some people presumed that he was a white man with whom she had a consensual relationship. But yet Claudette talked openly about how she had absolutely no idea where babies Came from. She was taken advantage of by an older man who was married, but we don't know his identity. We don't know for sure if he was white. But she talked about how they had a consensual relationship with each other. But again, she's a teenager.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

How consensual can it be?

[Dax Shepard]

That's what I'm saying. If you're a black girl in that era, in that place, it's not like she's safe. When she got away, away from the police. Oh, my God. You're just not safe.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's right. She gives birth and she raises her child and all of these things. And ultimately, Claudette Colvin was the party to an important civil rights lawsuit regarding the bus boycott, Browder v. Gayle. The Supreme Court ultimately declared segregation on Montgomery buses unconstitutional. And she has the courage, even though she's been abandoned by the civil rights movement. On the morning that this trial is starting, she's one of the witnesses on this trial. She has to, like, pump her breast milk because she has a new baby.

[Dax Shepard]

With a 60s pump.

[Sharon McMahon]

Nothing fancy. So that she's not a breastfeeding teenager leaking milk everywhere in a courtroom where she knows that the opposing counsel is going to try to destroy her character. And she was smart enough to anticipate what it was that they were trying to do to her. They kept trying to trip her up. They kept trying to get her to admit that Martin Luther King put her up to it. Kept trying to get her to admit that she was a pawn in this bigger party conspiracy. Yes. And she's smart enough to know that she shouldn't take the bait. And ultimately, the lawsuit was successful, and she had an incredibly important role in the first domino that falls in segregation in the United States. But because she was a pregnant teenager, she was relegated to the sidebars of history. She's actually convicted of multiple crimes as a result of refusing to get off of the bus. Claudette Colvin's still alive. It wasn't until recently that her criminal record was expunged that she filed a request with the state of Alabama. She's like, I did nothing wrong. Your laws were unconstitutional. And so within the last couple of years, she has had that conviction removed from her criminal record. Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow. Oh, my gosh. Okay. I guess the thing that I would maybe like to go out on, it's a very hopeful book. And I think it's good that you point out. You gotta kind of choose it. Yeah, I wrestle with that all the time.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah. Do you find yourself struggling with Choosing to be hopeful. Do you find yourself struggling with cynicism?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I have these two voices in my head. One is I'm just a pessimist by default or who knows by nurture. But then I also have Steven Pinker's Long Arc of History in my mind. So I know that the ideals of the Enlightenment are coming true. I know life's getting better. I know society is getting better. I know that we have less infant mortality. I know we have less starving people. I know all the metrics are good. So I must always keep that in the back of my mind that it is getting better. But I. I get a little pessimistic about where everyone's at and I get pessimistic about the road out.

[Sharon McMahon]

Are you naturally cynical?

[Monica Padman]

That's a good question.

[Sharon McMahon]

No shade if you are. No, I think it's a very common way to be.

[Monica Padman]

I think I'm skeptical.

[Sharon McMahon]

Skeptical is healthy.

[Monica Padman]

I don't know if I'm cynical. What do you think? Do you think I am? No, I don't think I am.

[Dax Shepard]

You're not cynical?

[Monica Padman]

Actually, I do think that I am hopeful, even in the face of a lot of things that don't seem it.

[Dax Shepard]

My pessimism stems from the fact that both sides have a winner takes all mentality. If you're on the left, the solution is for the left to win and dominate. And if you're on the right, the solution is for the right to win and dominate. And it scares me that you have a marriage. This is what no one wants to admit. We are in a marriage in this country and we're not getting out.

[Sharon McMahon]

There's no way to end the marriage.

[Dax Shepard]

We're not dividing up the country into the coast. That's not happening. So I look at it in a Gottman Institute way. It's like, okay, well, we're married. How do we make the best out of this marriage? And when I hear that both sides opinion is how to make it better, is winner takes all annihilation? Yeah. I get really hopeless. I'm like, the marriage will never get better if both people are still stuck on who's right. That's the truth. And so it's really hard for me when I look through that lens to see who, who's going first, who's gonna have the first huge act of generous leap of faith, who's going to treat the other side with some respect. I just get scared. Cause as you see in marriages back to Gottman, they can watch a one hour conversation between a couple and predict 96%. If they'll get divorced, they can watch five minutes and still be in the high 80s. And it's contempt. If you have contempt for your partner, the marriage is gonna fail. And the level of just ubiquitous contempt for each other is so disheartening to me.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah, you're not wrong that the level. Level of contempt is very high. I think where it might be helpful to you to think about this is we cannot wait for a person on a white horse to ride in and be the plan.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

The plan is not a dude with a scroll that arrives with a trumpet and is like, I have arrived and here is the plan.

[Dax Shepard]

I've just spoken with God.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah, that's right. By the way, if a dude does arrive with a scroll that says the plan, they want to be a dictator.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Sharon McMahon]

Okay. Like, the dude with the plan is the dictator. Be scared of the dude with the plan. We cannot sit around waiting for someone to go first, for someone to come save us, for a political figure to be the voice of reason because we're the plan. The political party is not the plan. And if you are wedded to a political party being the plan, you are going to be disappointed and you are going to be cynical because that political party is going to fail over and over. They're going to fail if they compromise. In your eyes, we didn't get everything we wanted. When in reality, compromise is the only way anything gets done. Anybody who's ever been married will tell you that it can't be all your way and it can't be all their way. Sometimes we have to eat food we don't like. The compromise cannot be viewed as a failure. The change is going to come when we decide that that's how it's going to be. That's a tremendously freeing feeling because I am no longer subject to external forces that I have no control over. I don't have to wait for the right person to get elected. The world's shittiest human can get elected. And I can still do everything I can. And I can still impact the world for good. And I can still change the course of history, despite my external circumstances. And this book is full of people who prove exactly that. Most of the big and important things that have happened in this country, the lasting change that has been created has come about from ordinary people. The pregnant teenagers of history, the people whose parents were enslaved, the wrongfully accused who just kept doing the next needed thing, the people who just kept trying things nobody else had ever done before. The people who were willing to let Other people watch them fail, were afraid to let people watch us fail. But the great Americans of history have failed over and over and have set aside the fear of judgment of others and have just decided I can work with my enemies because my enemies might have a change of heart at any moment. And how will our enemies ever have a change of heart if we are not there to show them the light? How will our enemies ever change if we are not a force for good in their lives? If we have blocked, deleted cancellations and unfriended the people who ideologically oppose us? So that orientation of your spirit does not come from a place of everything is going great, comes from the knowledge that things will improve when I choose to hope that they can.

[Dax Shepard]

I love it. Yeah, I know. The compromise is set up as this binary. Compromise is failure versus the reality of it, which is compromises. You get some of the stuff you wanted.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes. And then you can build on that from there.

[Dax Shepard]

True binary is. Or you get none of it, or you get nothing. Or you get some of it for four years and then it goes away in the next administration. It's really the choice between nothing and something.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's exactly right. And then you can build on something. That is how all long term change happens. Anybody who is advocating for like a revolution, revolutions have happened infrequently. They are all always bloody, they're always highly destructive.

[Dax Shepard]

The party that comes out on the other side of it generally fucks it up even worse for the next 15.

[Sharon McMahon]

20 years, complete unknown of what is going to happen afterwards. We view the American Revolution as like the standard of which to judge all revolutions.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Your enemies 3,000 miles away by.

[Sharon McMahon]

That's exactly right. And the British were like, you know what? Fine. They were willing to let it go.

[Dax Shepard]

Truly, we really rally around it and I'm grateful for it. But I mean, at any point they could have gone all in. I mean, we barely got through.

[Sharon McMahon]

Right? Well, and they tried to come back in the war of 1812 and then they tried to like light the White House on fire and light the Capitol on fire. And eventually they were like, fine, you what? Never mind. We're better off as friends. Let's both hate France. You know what I mean? They let it go. But the idea of a revolution within the confines of your own border is an entirely separate matter. Change in a pluralistic society should not be advocated for in a revolutionary sense. Change is incremental. You have these two forces of like this very progressive force that wants to have a trajectory of change at a rate that the conservative breaks are not willing to tolerate. And ultimately, the conservative breaks are an important component in this relationship because it's too easy to go quickly, too far afield if you have nobody being like, slow down.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, the only thing the left and right agrees on is social media is terrible. And that's something that had no breaks.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, that's true.

[Dax Shepard]

It was just like, go, let's see. And now we're going to do it again with AI. We'll see. Okay, go. Yeah, no breaks. Oh, my Lord. Well, Sharon, you got to come back. I didn't get into. I didn't get into the electoral college. I didn't get into the function instruction. Oh, come on.

[Sharon McMahon]

Any old time, you just give me a jingle.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, everyone, check out the small and mighty 12 unsung Americans who changed the course of history. Also, listen to your great podcast. Here's where it gets interesting. You're over 400.

[Sharon McMahon]

400 episodes. Yep.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

You know what it's like.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sharon, this has been so fun and the small and mighty. I hope everyone checks it out.

[Sharon McMahon]

Thank you.

[Dax Shepard]

And I hope everyone opens the door to 10% more hopefulness, myself included.

[Sharon McMahon]

Thank you.

[Dax Shepard]

You're radical. I see why you have a huge following.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

Thanks for inviting me. I loved it.

[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 cart 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 branch terms and [e-mail].

[Monica Padman]

Stay tuned.

[Sharon McMahon]

Tune for the fact check.

[Monica Padman]

It's where the party's at. I said I already had to start walking to work. And can you please make sure that doesn't happen again? It's happened a few times where there's been a car right there. And she said, I have workers in the building. They will potentially be here tomorrow, too. Like, that's not the appropriate answer.

[Dax Shepard]

They can't park there.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I know.

[Dax Shepard]

Say, well, the workers definitely can't park behind our cars.

[Monica Padman]

What is wrong with everybody?

[Dax Shepard]

I'm totally in a spiral right now myself.

[Monica Padman]

What the fuck is going on with the world?

[Dax Shepard]

Something's going on. Something's going on. Do you wanna hear this recent one? Yeah, I'm like, I'm having an oversized reaction for sure. I know it. Yeah, it's weirdly related to Us talking about the Cluster of obs episode. So, you know, I did another commercial, and then as they do, they send out, like, a release for tattoos.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Dax Shepard]

And so I send it to her. She's, you know, last time she signed, and when I got them, I specifically said, you know, I would never want to work with a tattoo artist that tries to get paid from their tattoos. When you act like, I don't want to get tattoos, that I can't. I can't act anymore, basically. So I send her a thing saying like, hey, would you sign this, or do you want me to sign it? Because she even said, last time, just sign those. Like, cool. This is the vibe I'm looking for.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So she sends. She sends me back a text that's like, yeah, literally a bunch of language that sounds so weird and legal. And I'm like, what is going up? First of all, you have a little sweat here and you'll regret it when you watch it. There you go. Yeah, the wording is so weird. And immediately I'm like, what is going on? So then I call her and I go, hey, what does this text mean? And she's like, well, I am sick of people using my art. And you were in a Super bowl commercial. And I go, I was not in a Super bowl commercial. And she goes, yes, you were. And I go, I don't want to say her name. Yeah, I was not in a super. I. I know I'm not in a Super bowl commercial. And she's like, this business should pay. And I'm like, listen, what you're doing right now is setting up that every time I ever work, because they always ask, are you going to be able to get those signed off on? And I say, yes, because we have that arrangement. And now I'm going to say, no, you'll have to negotiate with her. And they're going to say, you have to be in a long sleeve. So I just want you to know, like, what you're telling me is that, sincerely, I can never do my job again in a T shirt. That's like the fallout of what you're saying.

[Monica Padman]

But she had already agreed.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The last go around with the commercials, it signed, oh, my God. And in my mind, I'm like, okay, I'm trying to make a good argument. I'm like, how has she decided people are profiting from her work and she's not getting a kickback?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. It's like, one thing. If you were doing a tattoo commercial.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. It'd be Another thing about selling like an action figure of myself. And you could argue this is part of. You know.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But like, I'm just either. So I'm having this very oversized reaction of like, I feel like I have to get my whole fucking arm lasered off because I can't be held hostage.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, well, you won't have to do that. I'm sure it'll get worked out.

[Dax Shepard]

But like, I'm so. I'm just hurt by it. Like, I. I finally text her. I'm like, I'm just really hurt by this. Every time she ever gave me the bill. I promise you, I'm not bragging. This is just relevant. I always gave her twice what she ever asked for. Like, I was. I went out of my way to try to be.

[Monica Padman]

I am sorry. That's so annoying.

[Dax Shepard]

It's so annoying. And now I feel like I have this. Like, I. I'm. I'm overreacting. But I'm like, I'm gonna get them all lasered off and then I'm gonna have different put. You know, whatever. It's just a crazy. For literally for the rest of my career, I have to wear.

[Monica Padman]

But you don't.

[Dax Shepard]

Or go through two hours of makeup and get it all covered.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, can't is. Oh, God. I guess, like, it wasn't in writing from the beginning that you could.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I. I wish I would have known, like, if I ever got a tattoo. Be like, hey, I want a tattoo, but I need.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

In you to give me the rights. At least in my arm. I'm not asking for the rights to reproduce the image and sell still of it or sell anything. Just if it's on my body. I gotta be able to walk around and do things like, how dare you? Like, I feel like I got branded now.

[Monica Padman]

It's like it feels violated.

[Sharon McMahon]

It does.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I'm sorry.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. It's a re. Again. I know. I'm. It just happened. So I'm really, like, hot about it. I feel so powerless. Like, okay, well, that's a wrap on that.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God, I hate people today. I do. Today only. Well, I don't know how much. How many more days, but I don't know what's going on.

[Sharon McMahon]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I'm glad I vented.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. That's very frustrating. People are. Are we leaving that in.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, that's what happened.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Both of us are in the middle of some bureaucracy bureaucratic crises. I don't like the way I'm being spoken to.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh my God.

[Monica Padman]

At all.

[Dax Shepard]

You're being talked to by a lawyer. I've read some of this stuff, and I'm actually. I'm gonna applaud your restraint.

[Monica Padman]

Thank you.

[Dax Shepard]

Cause I have wanted to come unglued. The way this lawyer's talking to you.

[Monica Padman]

It'S so disrespectful and condescending.

[Dax Shepard]

Condescend. Apex.

[Sharon McMahon]

Condescending.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. Yes.

[Monica Padman]

I will say this to anyone who's listening. This is a psa. If you are being represented by someone, you really need to know how they're representing you. How they're representing you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Because during this process, a lot of what I've thought is, holy shit, I need to make sure no one on my behalf is ever speaking to anyone like this, ever. Because even if I might not know, and this happens in this job too, with Pablo's and agents, and one time it happened, it was so. It was so rough. The representative was so rough that we were like, well, we're not gonna do it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And I know this person. And I was like, I need to tell this person because they did you. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh. And what was their response?

[Monica Padman]

They were like, I had no idea. And I'm so sorry that that happened. And like, I wonder how many other times this has happened.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. Well, just to make one counterpoint. Okay. Because I was privy to three and a half years ago, a ton of correspondence between lawyers, some that were representing me and some that were representing another entity. And I will. I can admit I was so much more agitated by the way the lawyers were talking than the lawyers were.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I do think they have a really, like, weird baseline aggressive, condescending, like what? If anything, it just made me really happy. That's not my day to day, drafting letters like that and stuff that seems. I just don't think I'd go down my lunch break and feel great.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Just being engaged in this, like, really sharp back and forth.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, maybe you're right. I just think there's different levels of it. Like, I know a lawyer well, who I know doesn't.

[Dax Shepard]

Max.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, me too. Tom Hansen.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, I know I know multiple lawyers, and I think there's a scale of how they speak to people.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And I think a very good lawyer does not speak.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Condescendingly. They speak very directly.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think the ones that, long term, I think you can get, like, little pic victories along the way and be misled. But long term, this is kind of similar. This is tangential, but related. Actors, there's a ton of them get away with Horrendous behavior.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

While their movies are working.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And while their shows are working. And like I have been given a lot of second chances in show business. Business for sure.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like so grateful for that. I had peers that all hit at the same time as I did. Some of them were really, really hard to deal with. And when they had downturns, there was no second chance for them.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You know.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Kristen.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

She had like lows in movies after. What's her name? Sarah Marshall. Couple that just were okay financially.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But people stand in line to work with her.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. If you're kind of nice and easy to work with and good at your job, ultimately you long term. Yeah. It works out for you. But that's all to say, I think you, you really have to keep an eye on who's speaking for you because it. That can change the. The public opinion of you or the personal opinion of you. Like it's. Yeah, it's. It's dicey. Anywho, I guess it's a ding ding ding. Cuz this is for America's Go government teacher.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Who we love.

[Dax Shepard]

That was so fun. And we only got to like two or three things on my whole list.

[Monica Padman]

I know we could have talked to her forever.

[Dax Shepard]

I feel bad about being cranky on a fact check, but I guess it's okay.

[Monica Padman]

At least we're saying.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I was playing.

[Dax Shepard]

I just knew I couldn't get. I knew that I was so upset when we sat down.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

That I feel like me hiding it would have. I'm not even sure I would have been able to hide it.

[Monica Padman]

It's not even I. On my walk. Wait, when did we start recording? Did we talk? Did we get on air that my.

[Dax Shepard]

You were blocked. No. No. You walked here.

[Monica Padman]

I walked here unexpectedly. Cuz I went to my car and it was blocked.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Someone's parked behind you in your parking spot.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. And I couldn't back out and I just got my car fixed and I was like, I'm not like going to attempt to try to.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I guess I'm. Now I have a grievance because. Because I really wanted to see the door.

[Monica Padman]

You should be mad about it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Anyway, and so I texted my landlord and I was like, somebody's parked here. Can you ask them to leave? Yeah. And then I'm not hearing back, so I'm like, I gotta walk. So I started walking and then I got a text back that I did not like that didn't feel. It's like. It's just easy to say, oh, I'm sorry that happened. Yeah, we'll handle it, or, yes, you know, I'm not there all the time, but we'll figure it out. Like, it's easy. I don't understand. What happened happens to people's brains when they. I guess they feel attacked, even though this has not. It wasn't like I was like, you did this? You son of a. Yeah. Anyway, so I had to walk here.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm gonna be 20 minutes late to work because of you.

[Monica Padman]

I walked here. I was itchy.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it's hot.

[Monica Padman]

It's hot. I put makeup on. I was like, my face is gonna break out because I'm wearing makeup and I'm walking.

[Dax Shepard]

You wore an outfit for a car ride.

[Monica Padman]

I did, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And you didn't have time to go in and change, Put on shorts in a tank?

[Monica Padman]

No, I didn't. So I. I. On my walk, I planned on saying, I'm in a really bad mood.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, that's what you were going to do.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I was going to tell people I was in a bad mood, and then you told me you were in a bad mood. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, that's kind of nice. I like that word.

[Monica Padman]

Two bads make it good.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I'm already happier.

[Monica Padman]

Me, too.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. This is a good venting session. I don't feel as alone in the thoughts.

[Monica Padman]

That's why we have support.

[Dax Shepard]

I started ruminating in the. You know, the examples are getting more and more dramatic in my head.

[Monica Padman]

It's going to be okay, but. I know, but it is my arm. No, we almost lost.

[Dax Shepard]

By myself.

[Monica Padman]

We almost lost a finger this week.

[Dax Shepard]

And an arm and a Toes on the way up.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, yeah. How's the toe?

[Dax Shepard]

A lot of people are really mad at me, and I understand why. They're like. They're. They're like, get to the Dr. Shepherd. Yeah. And that's fair. That's really fair.

[Monica Padman]

They care about you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it's really sweet.

[Monica Padman]

Speaking of outfits, since I walked here in this outfit, I want to shout out this sweatshirt.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, great.

[Monica Padman]

It's from. It's from Kristen's show. No. Member Kmart. Do you want to tell people what happened to Kmart?

[Dax Shepard]

I almost can't, especially with this other upset. I read an article that they closed the last Kmart. I hated that.

[Monica Padman]

It's really sad.

[Dax Shepard]

Also, in the article, it said there was years where they were making 36 billion a year.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

How, like, if you're sitting on top of a. Yeah, I think so. But can you. You're sitting on a company that's making 36 billion a year. I don't know how you imagine, like, we're going to be completely bankrupt in a few years. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

How longer than a few years, Right?

[Dax Shepard]

Probably. I'm sure it was a gradual.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, well, RIP Kmart.

[Dax Shepard]

I know. I loved going to Kmart with Papa Bob. Get those Hot Wheels, wake him up, put some washcloths on his face, get punched across the room, and then go get the mongoose and on to Kmart.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. No.

[Dax Shepard]

What? Rob, there's apparently a couple of them.

[Sharon McMahon]

In Guam and the US Virgin Islands.

[Dax Shepard]

If you wanna go. Remember I said that to you? I don't know if. Globally, they're done. No, that was the last American one closed. Last American one closed.

[Monica Padman]

So we gotta go to Guam. All right.

[Dax Shepard]

I've never been to Guam neither.

[Monica Padman]

I would like to go. Okay. No, but this sweatshirt is not from Kmart. It is from. Hey, gang.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

And it is from Kristin's show. Oh, she. Her show. Nobody wants this. Kristin, in one of the episodes wears this sweatshirt. She says, oh, it's my favorite sweatshirt and I'm gonna ruin it for you. This dog.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And I obviously asked her where the sweatshirt was.

[Dax Shepard]

And that's the dog that looked weirdly like a two and a half times size whiskey.

[Monica Padman]

It did.

[Dax Shepard]

It was exactly like whiskey, but two and a half times.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I was triggered a little bit.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Because of the bag.

[Dax Shepard]

Ptsd.

[Monica Padman]

So, yeah, I asked her and she was like, yes. Get it, get it. Now get two.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, that's what she said.

[Monica Padman]

She told me to get two.

[Dax Shepard]

And you did.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, obviously I did.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, smart.

[Monica Padman]

So in case one goes gets, you.

[Dax Shepard]

Know, in case you find a dog. Life imitating art.

[Monica Padman]

So anyway, it's a great sweatshirt. Highly recommend it. Get two.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Now I want to say something that. I know it's going to make you really nervous, but I feel. I'll tell you why I really feel compelled, because I can relate. So, first of all, lots of people have been having fun with Two Minutes in the Archive. So it's going well for the most part. It really is. But a lot of people are really, really confused. And for those people, because I'm a bit. This way, this is a bad characteristic of mine. It's not bad in them, but in me, it's bad is if I feel like I'm being manipulated or tricked or. I don't like that.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So when I. I heard. I heard enough of those where I was like, you know, for the me's in the audience, I Feel like I just want to be honest.

[Monica Padman]

And this is also why I said we shouldn't be doing that bit.

[Dax Shepard]

I know, but I've really thought this through and I think it's okay. So for those people, the long and the short, I can't get into why we're in this situation, but I do want to say that it's incredibly helpful to us if people check out the archive. Yeah, that's it.

[Monica Padman]

And no pressure, no pressure, no pressure. But we do have some good episodes in there.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And also you can go to YouTube.

[Monica Padman]

Also watch us on YouTube. Watch the fact check on the. You on YouTube. Because it is fun.

[Dax Shepard]

It's fun.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I enjoy. I enjoy it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

I took a hike this morning. I had been feeling really rough for a week and really tired and sleeping every chance, chance I could.

[Monica Padman]

And you had hanas.

[Dax Shepard]

And I don't. Yeah, I don't. I had a hana.

[Monica Padman]

You had the bug I had.

[Dax Shepard]

I think I had the bug you had. But anyways, today I was like, I think I got it in me. And I did go for a hike. And something happened about two thirds of the way through the hike. On the way down, it kind of broke. I found myself dancing as I was coming down the hill.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I was skipping and I was listening to a great song and I was really just dancing. I was feeling. Feeling really good.

[Monica Padman]

Before you got the.

[Dax Shepard]

Before the tattoo thing. Yeah. So I was feeling really good. And then I got home and I was like, oh, I gotta get the trailer ready for the hayride because I'm going out of town tomorrow morning.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And when I land, it's virtually Halloween, so I gotta be on it. Which meant I gotta take the razor out of the trailer. Of course, the battery in the razor's dead. As you would expect, it's a whole thing. And then this was the most non linear little string of chores I've ever done. So I go to charge the battery that's not working. Then I realize I gotta jump the battery. Also, they've stacked so much stuff from the remodel of this garage for this studio on the trailer. So there's just trash everywhere. So I'm dealing with trash. And then I go in to get my leaf blower. Cause I wanna blow out all the crap of the thing. And I see my chainsaw and I'm like, oh, I've been meaning to cut.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my. Oh my God, that's so crazy.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm like, oh, fuck. I've been meaning to cut that branch off of that ficus that's by the sauna. And so I grab. I Now I have my chainsaw and my leaf blower. And then. I mean, I'm doing way too many things at once, and I'm like, I gotta fill the tires with. And then I park the razor. I get it going, I jump in. I gotta park the razor on the side of the yard, where I realize there's too much junk in that side of the yard. I'm gonna start piling it up behind the garage. So I'm doing that, and I keep moving the chainsaw. Then I go and I cut the tree limb down. And then I got to take it to the driveway and cut it in a bunch of small pieces to put in the thing. And when I came in, because I went right from my hike to starting this thing, and I was in a little white tank top and my little blue hiking shorts. And by the time I came in, Carly was inside, and it looked like I had laid down in a pile of leaves and rolled around for 20 minutes because I was so sweaty before I started all this stuff, and my face was dripping with sweat.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my.

[Dax Shepard]

It was about an hour and 30 minutes of, like, me hustling and then looking at that and deciding to do that again. Very scattered approach to all these tasks. So when I walked in, Carly looked at me. She just goes, what. What happened to you?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, that's a fair question.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I guess it's time for me to remind you that last episode, you were very concerned about me using a very tiny tool to try to get my ring off. And here you are juggling chainsaws and leaf blowers and chopping and chopping and.

[Dax Shepard]

But I put the leaf blower down when I operated the chainsaw.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, I'm just going to say it feels a little lopsided.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Okay. But if you saw me using the chainsaw and I was cutting the. The tree limb, and my. And I had my leg below the tree, like, in the path of the chainsaw, you would go, that's a bad game plan. And I just think a sharp knife.

[Monica Padman]

Trying metal was cutting away from my finger, FYI.

[Dax Shepard]

But a sharp knife in a under. You'd have to go under the.

[Monica Padman]

I was under. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And then the. The finger is a water weenie. It's a big balloon.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And so you're either going that way towards the balloon, or you're coming this way towards your artery.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, God.

[Dax Shepard]

Both of those are really Okay.

[Monica Padman]

I don't like that.

[Dax Shepard]

They're bad. I Don't like hearing plans. I think you're right. Okay. Now, I probably did do some things along the way that you would have not liked. Certainly didn't put my safety goggles on when I used the chainsaw. That's a.

[Monica Padman]

No, no, that's not good.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, don't do that.

[Monica Padman]

Don't do that. Wear your safety goggles.

[Dax Shepard]

They're very good for you.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. There really are not that many facts. Because she's a teacher, she has the facts. We talked about the different kinds of democracies, and there are so many. You know, there's a direct democracy, a popular democracy, a representative democracy, a parliamentary democracy, Westminster minster democracy, Jacksonian democracy. Oh, I'm sorry. Parliamentary, Westminster, Jacksonian are all types of representative democracies.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, what about dictatorship democracies? You don't see those.

[Monica Padman]

There's organic or authoritarian democracy.

[Dax Shepard]

Ooh, how does that work?

[Monica Padman]

Democracy where the ruler holds a considerable amount of power, but their rule benefits the people. The term was first used by supporters of Bonaparte.

[Dax Shepard]

Ah, Napoleon Bonaparte.

[Monica Padman]

There's also a demarchy. It's a form of government where people are randomly selected from the citizenry through sortition to either act as general governmental representatives or to make decisions. And specifically, specific areas of governance. That feels dicey. There's religious democracies. There's types based on location, types based on ethnic influence. There's autocratic democracy, anticipatory democracy. There's so many.

[Dax Shepard]

There's so many.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, there is democratic dictatorship.

[Dax Shepard]

How does that work? You elect a dictator.

[Monica Padman]

People's democratic dictatorship is a phrase incorporated into the constitution of the People's Republic of China and the constitution of the Chinese Communist Party. The premise of the people's democratic dictatorship is that the CCP and state represent and act on behalf of the people. But in the preservation of the dictatorship of the proletariat possesses and may use powers against reactionary forces.

[Dax Shepard]

What feels undemocratic about a dictatorship is I'm not aware of any dictatorship that had term limits. So, like what? You vote one time and then the person serves until they die? That seems to be how these dictatorships go. Or they hand it off to their son and then they die a couple weeks later. It seems kind of antithetical to democracy.

[Monica Padman]

I don't think it's real.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And if you're a dictator, you could just end democracy the day you get elected.

[Monica Padman]

Or you just don't leave. Okay. The number this was in 2023, but 87% of voters surveyed said they support requiring criminal background check. For all gun buyers.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. That's huge.

[Monica Padman]

That's overwhelming.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I'm looking at a Gallup poll also on abortion and the amount of people who think it's over 50%. The amount of people who think it should be considered in certain circumstances.

[Dax Shepard]

Just over 50. Well, I keep hearing, like, 70, but.

[Monica Padman]

It says legal under any circumstances. The percentage is 35, which. That's high. Or I think sort of legal. Only under certain is 50.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Illegal in all 12. No opinion. 3. So actually legal is.

[Dax Shepard]

We're missing quite a bit of. To make 100 here.

[Monica Padman]

No, that is 35, 50.

[Dax Shepard]

12. 3. 35, 50. 85. 12. 97. 3. 100.

[Monica Padman]

So really, it was 12 illegal in all.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh.

[Monica Padman]

So really, if it's legal only under certain, that's 50. And legal under any being 35, that is.

[Sharon McMahon]

Oh, okay.

[Dax Shepard]

That makes sense.

[Monica Padman]

Really high.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. So, like. Yeah. So they're saying, like, 85% think that it should be legal under some.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly. Situation or circumstance, which is similar to the guns.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

What's your graph?

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I just thought this was interesting. I read it this morning. This was also in Malcolm's book, Revenge of the Tipping Point. There's very few social issues that change really rapidly, and one was gay marriage.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

As outlined in that wonderful episode. I always encourage people to listen to When Will Met Grace or something. Something revisionist history that changed in, like, 10 years. Like, radically changed. So U.S. adults that supported legal marijuana use in 1970 was. From this graph, it looks like about 5%. Okay. In 2000, it was 31%, and now it's 70%. Wow. That's nuts. Yeah. It's like more than two back since 2000. Very few things do 70% of Americans support.

[Monica Padman]

I know. Yeah. That's pretty crazy.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm all for it. Alcohol use drops generally in all the states that legalize it.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I'm definitely for it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I don't know if I love that everywhere you walk in New York smells like weed. I mean, I can deal with it. I'm not like. It's. But, yeah. It's just interesting. The whole city smells like weed now. That's.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I guess our city on the road smells like weed. As I always say when I'm riding my motorcycle, I'm just in a constant cloud of.

[Monica Padman]

I never smell it.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, you're in your car, driving next to one. I'm, like, blowing by a ton.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

At lights with their windows down, smoking or whatever.

[Monica Padman]

It's not for me, but it's great.

[Dax Shepard]

For have you done much pot smoking? How many times have you smoked?

[Monica Padman]

Not very many at all. Every time I've done it, I don't like it.

[Dax Shepard]

How many do you think did you smoke weed?

[Monica Padman]

A couple times.

[Dax Shepard]

Smoked or eight times?

[Monica Padman]

No bong.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that's smoking it.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, I never smoked a joint, I guess is my. That's different. Right?

[Dax Shepard]

So you smoked a bong?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

If you weren't choking, you ain't smoking, and that happened.

[Monica Padman]

I guess I coughed. I don't, I don't know if I did it right. I'm not very good at inhaling.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, maybe you didn't inhale.

[Monica Padman]

I don't know if I did that.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. And then. Have you ever had a gummy or anything?

[Monica Padman]

I've never had an edible, I don't think.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. Never had a pot brownie. That's what you did before they were legal.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, No, I don't, I don't like, I don't like it.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not for you.

[Monica Padman]

I think I've used the pen, the vape, the marijuana vape. Yeah, I have used that. I, it's not for me.

[Dax Shepard]

You don't like it. I never liked it either.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Especially when I was drinking. It was a disaster.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

Every time I smoked weed when I was drinking, I ended up throwing up. And I would convince myself like, once every year to try, like, ah, just. That's not gonna happen this time. Yeah, it always happened.

[Monica Padman]

I just don't think I felt like I got anything from it. Positively.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Well, what I always said is it made me inarticulate, which is the only thing I love about myself.

[Monica Padman]

I know, but I think booze can.

[Dax Shepard]

Do that with enough of it. Yeah. Yeah, but I can. I think I was, I was pretty good at staying at the, like, Maybe I lost a 8% of my verbal dexterity.

[Monica Padman]

I think it makes me smarter.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, I. A thousand percent. When I went like two drinks in, I'm like, I'm on fire. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I'm like, these shots are just coming.

[Dax Shepard]

The brain is firing.

[Monica Padman]

But I wonder if I was with sober people, if they would be like, if they would think that you sound dumb.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, this is very anecdotal, but I think people liked me more. Now, look, there was a zone where people didn't like me as much. I don't think I'm completely unobjective about, about this, but I do think me one, one through three drinks, people liked me more because I just friendlier.

[Monica Padman]

No, you're friendly. Sober.

[Dax Shepard]

Friendly enough. All right.

[Monica Padman]

I, I, I I doubt it. I doubt it.

[Dax Shepard]

You doubt you smell a rat? If there was a pill that absolutely ensured that I would only have two drinks anytime I drank.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

That's a curious thought.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Would you do it? I don't think you would do it.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, I want to say no, because my life's great, other than my tattoo issue, which will pass shortly, and I'll be completely over it, and I'll regret. Regret even bringing it up on this, but in fact, I think I already regret it.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, do you? Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. But my life is so good. Why. Why would. Why do I need anything more? Everything's fine.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I have a great life.

[Monica Padman]

And you don't miss it.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly. I'm not. I'm not a wall flower. I don't need it as a social lubricant. You know, married. I'm out. I'm not out. Hitting on girls, wanting a little courage.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I don't see why you would.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Even as someone who loves it, I don't.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't see why you would. Is certainly linked to what we know about me, which is just, like, it's too dangerous to ever play with, but that's what you have to really believe. This procedure makes me only drink.

[Sharon McMahon]

No, No.

[Monica Padman]

I am. I'm really thinking, like, I don't see why you would. Because, for one, you're like. You're also, like, you have a really strict diet. Like, it doesn't really make sense for you to incorporate it back in, even if it was only two. Oh, hi.

[Dax Shepard]

Who do we got there?

[Monica Padman]

That's okay. Hi.

[Dax Shepard]

Hi. I've got the trailer, as you see, ready for you and I to bail. I ran home. You did.

[Sharon McMahon]

I'm worried about its condition, though.

[Monica Padman]

I just stood on it.

[Dax Shepard]

And you worried about the condition of the trailer? You did a little integrity test, and you think it's below. I think it. I. I really hope this Halloween we don't have above the Legend. Okay, well, I'll walk around on it, and we might have to put some additional plywood or something down. Oh, yes. I would love that.

[Monica Padman]

Or you guys.

[Dax Shepard]

Funny you'd say that.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, very funny. We're gonna hire very nice lawyers to deal with whoever sues us. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

All right. We'll get out of here so I can finish and we can go. All right. I love you. Welcome home.

[Monica Padman]

Bye, buddy. Okay, so.

[Dax Shepard]

And then that happens, and I go. I don't. I don't care about my tattoo. Tattoo thing. What do I.

[Monica Padman]

So you're gonna erase them?

[Dax Shepard]

I cut My arm off.

[Sharon McMahon]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

Just to prove to you I can.

[Monica Padman]

No. With your chainsaw.

[Sharon McMahon]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

You know what I would do? Do you know how they castrate bowls?

[Monica Padman]

What? No, of course I don't know that.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. They just put a rubber band around their balls and then they just fall off at some point. That's how they do it.

[Monica Padman]

It's literally what I was doing with my finger.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly. That's exactly the point I was trying to make. So my idea would just be I'll just tie a shoestring around my arm and cut off the circulation until one day it just falls on the ground.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Sharon McMahon]

Oh, my God.

[Monica Padman]

Listen, you're not going to need to do that.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

I'll just say I don't think you would drink again.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I just think you. I don't know that you'd like it anymore.

[Dax Shepard]

One thing. I would like it.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, but you're Two drinks.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I love that. Windows down in northern Michigan. Bob Seeger playing Camel Light a couple beers. I mean, that was good.

[Monica Padman]

You liked the feeling of it.

[Dax Shepard]

Love. And it's the first two, as we already now learned. It's dopamine. The rest is shitty. I don't miss any of. I don't miss drinks 4 through 12.

[Monica Padman]

I just wonder now though if like you're going to wake up and you're going to have a little bit of a headache. Like it's going to. It's. It's. Your body's also so different. Yeah, I'm old and it. And you're probably going to be like, oh, boy, this isn't the same. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

My thing is more an ethical thing. Or it's kind of like your ring where you considered your all your luck is gone. Yeah, mine is. Like, that would feel greedy. Like I have such a good life. I have so many good friends and I have a great family. And it feels a little greedy to want more. And I feel like if I had the pill, if I took the pill so I could do that and get more, I would pay the price somehow. I just have this weird cosmos y feeling about that. Does that make any sense?

[Monica Padman]

It makes sense.

[Dax Shepard]

Like the gods would go, your life is good enough. You don't need more. Just focus on what you have. It's so great. And by wanting more, I would somehow ruin something.

[Monica Padman]

But it's not wanting more. If there is a pill that just is available. Available. It's not like you're like, I'm spending. I've devised voting some of my life.

[Sharon McMahon]

Ew.

[Dax Shepard]

Mosquito.

[Monica Padman]

I think it was a. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Squados are hot right now. My zapper is going off like crazy.

[Monica Padman]

Geez. I. I hated that because I'm already so itchy. Yeah. I'm very itchy.

[Dax Shepard]

I know. You had a. That walk was rough on you. I should come and pick you up. I didn't see that text for a minute.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, that's fine.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

It's not like you're saying I'm going to devote two hours every day to figuring out a pill that is costing you, that's taking away from your good life. But this, if it's just available, it's a shot. I wouldn't.

[Dax Shepard]

It's gene editing or something.

[Monica Padman]

Unless. And if we knew for sure it wasn't going to hurt you. But if you're saying it's. We don't know for sure if it's going to hurt you, then you shouldn't do it.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, but this is. We know. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Then I don't see.

[Dax Shepard]

It's been on the market for 20 years and everyone who's taken has never ever had a third drink. Fourth. Let's keep it at three.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. Then I don't see why there would ever be a problem.

[Dax Shepard]

Well. Right. It's just this weird feeling. It would feel like a lack of gratitude.

[Monica Padman]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

For this great life I have.

[Monica Padman]

That's really warped, I think.

[Dax Shepard]

Is it?

[Monica Padman]

It's not either or. You can be happy with your life and then also have a certain. And there's this other cool thing that I can have with no cost.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

It just feels greedy.

[Monica Padman]

That's like saying like. That's like saying like, I shouldn't go to any parties because my life's so good. I shouldn't enjoy myself.

[Dax Shepard]

A really good time.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I don't know why I feel that way. But I.

[Monica Padman]

Interesting.

[Dax Shepard]

It's linked to that kind of.

[Monica Padman]

It's probably good you feel that way. Maybe that's because of a. Like, maybe you're just. Maybe it's ingrained.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I think. You know, permanently. You know, even if they invented a pill, it's. I don't want to call it brainwashing, but it is brainwashing in a very, very productive way.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You reformat your brain to think in a certain way. And I hear this from people all the time that, like, go back out.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Even if they do it successfully. People certainly do. I'm not one to say that, like, no one returns to it successfully.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But even the ones that return to it successfully. And when I've talked to them and they're honest. They're like, you know, it's still in there. They're like, even though it's fine. The like guilt and shame or I'm doing something I shouldn't do. Like. Yeah, that's kind of a wrap on that. I. I don't think you ever get your head back into it not being a very loaded thing, even if you succeed at doing it moderately or something.

[Monica Padman]

Sure. That makes sense.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. My thought. I do believe people do it. Like, I don't think they're lying to me when they say it's going fine. I can only imagine myself doing it, which would be. I could do it, but it would require so much agony to control.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

That it just. I don't think it would be a net win.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like when I did drink for a week and without a paddle before the wheels came off, you know, like we were talking with Matt and Seth. Like, I drank a glass and a half of wine every night or two glasses of wine for a week. And I can do that. But it's like I'm laying in bed after two glasses, white, knuckling it and going, you can have a third. Don't have a third. If you have a third, you've broken your rule. No, you can have a third. Who cares? Third's nothing. No, you got to keep it at 2. That was the rule. Like, just take. The madness of it is it's so not worth the two glasses I was able to have.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And also wine. That was part of the strategy. I'm like, I don't like wine. I'll get wine. I should. I should be able to resist having a third glass of wine.

[Monica Padman]

Wine's so good though. Well, and martini.

[Dax Shepard]

It wasn't for me. You know, people have booze that they'll claim makes them mean.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, a lot of people have this. I don't drink Wild Turkey.

[Monica Padman]

They don't drink a lot.

[Dax Shepard]

Last time I did, I slapped my mother in law. It's like, okay, I don't drink tequila. Makes me angry.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, a lot of people can't drink brown liquor. That seems to be a thing.

[Dax Shepard]

Which is racist. I know all alcohol is. But let me just say that my most embarrassing, regrettable nights of drinking 90% when I drank too much wine. Really? Oh, yeah. I mean, I have one in particular that is so humiliating. And I think about it probably once a month.

[Monica Padman]

You do? What happened? What kind of wine was it?

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, fuck. A red. I always drank a red.

[Monica Padman]

Sure. Like a cab, Aaron and I. I.

[Dax Shepard]

Mean, I can't even believe I'm. This is so embarrassing, by the way. I just want to add to. Aaron is perfect at. It's not like he doesn't correct my bad behavior. No. We both have a huge tolerance for bad behavior with each other. But there is. We're also semi responsible, so there's. We have gentle ways of going, like, yeah, you were a little out of control. Yeah. So I was doing a car show in Carmel at the. That famous golf course had something to do with the Course d'elegance. There was like a Buick car show.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Pebble Beach. And we're at this hotel. And my brother had just started drinking. He hadn't drank for like 15 years. And he started drinking again. Proved to not be a great idea. But yeah, he was sweetly kind of excited to drink with his brother because I had been drinking that whole time. So he's like, oh, great, we're going to drink. And, you know, I lost control. I drank, you know, I drank a few bottles of red wine.

[Monica Padman]

By yourself?

[Dax Shepard]

No, with. With Aaron and my brother.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, a few bottles split.

[Dax Shepard]

No, no, I had a few bottles.

[Monica Padman]

That was my ass.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I think because we were close to wine country and we woke up in the morning, I was so hungover and it was a total blackout. Like I was missing a couple hours of the night.

[Sharon McMahon]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

And Aaron gently said. Do you know how many times you asked your brother if he knew what the starting point.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, I can't even say it out loud.

[Monica Padman]

You have told me this before. I have, yeah. Yeah, you have.

[Dax Shepard]

I. I commend.

[Monica Padman]

I commend you that you talk about it.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, fuck. Yeah. That's when the monster in me would come out. When I was really, really.

[Monica Padman]

Say it again. Because I'm not sure because I know.

[Dax Shepard]

I always say, can you say it? I mean, it really still sears my soul. He said, do you know how many times you asked your brother if he knew the starting grade point average at ucla?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, my God.

[Monica Padman]

It was funny. Is that you're so embarrassed by that.

[Dax Shepard]

And like, it's because I know what I was doing. I'm trying to self aggrandize myself. I'm like in that bad zone of drunk I would get sometimes where it was like I couldn't slake my ego's lust.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, interesting.

[Dax Shepard]

I needed to, like, br. Like, I needed to be important. I needed to be. Yeah. And I just. And I'm like, no. How many times he goes, dude, I mean, oh, my God. Maybe 30. I was like, oh, My God, what was it like dealing with slurry me? Oh fuck.

[Sharon McMahon]

Did.

[Monica Padman]

But did Aaron, was he blackout too? Like I assume everyone was blackout.

[Dax Shepard]

No, he. Aaron was drunk, but he didn't blackout.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, and your brother also wasn't.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't like I could drink a fifth of Jack, no problem and not blackout. But this wine got me. As it often did. And then another time I just took Nate to task one time on a balcony.

[Monica Padman]

What do you mean?

[Dax Shepard]

Most regrettable way imaginable. And I just, I woke up the next day, I was like, oh my God. I was saying things I don't even believe.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

You know what it really was? I was heard I didn't have a bigger role in the movie he produced. That's what was really going on.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, because you were vomiting.

[Dax Shepard]

That's right. I was vomiting at the party. And I think I wanted to character name. And I was hammered on his ex girlfriend's balcony with him on wine. Oh wow. Inside. And I just really started being horrendous.

[Monica Padman]

Oh no.

[Dax Shepard]

But I remembered that I guess it wasn't a blackout. Cuz the next morning I was like.

[Monica Padman]

And you apologize?

[Dax Shepard]

What were you saying to Nate?

[Monica Padman]

Did you apologize?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, that's. I always apologized.

[Monica Padman]

That's like a lot of people, I. I've done it like where I am. Like I don't think that was like my best showing, but also I. But if everyone else is drunk, you.

[Dax Shepard]

Just kind of hope everyone do a.

[Monica Padman]

Bad job of not appalling. I'm just kind of like, let's just. No one needs to talk about anything anyone did because everyone did embarrassing shit.

[Dax Shepard]

And that's a covenant. Like my friends in Detroit who we all drank so hard. I mean that's what we did. We all were. I'm not going to call them anything, but we were all fucking drinking to excess till six in the morning and you know, getting ugly.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And we had a pact. Yeah. You didn't really have to ever say sorry.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

But there were, there were definitely incidents where I don't think there was any other option. Like I woke up in the morning, I was like, well, that was damaging to our friendship.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like that was. If I just never said anything to Nate, that would have been, I think very damaging to our friendship because it was a very ugly side of myself that I, I don't. I mean you, you could argue, well it is a side of yourself because it came up. But I like, I can't even really relate sober. I don't even have those thoughts. I was having. I don't think any of those things.

[Monica Padman]

That is what's interesting for me. I think in, in these. When there's like scuffles or fights or emotional stuff. Yeah. That happen sometimes. I do apologize now, but it's tricky because often whatever is being said and what's coming out, I do believe.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

I want those things out there.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

And it. Sometimes it's not good that it takes the alcohol to say it, but you.

[Dax Shepard]

Don'T regret that it's known.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly. So then it gets like, it's a little bit tricky. I mean, of course it's apologizing for the way it happened.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

But then you're sober and then you have to revisit it and like. I know.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, my God, there is nothing like laying in your bed with a pounding headache and, and just replaying all the event. I mean, it's, it's, it's so morbid.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I miss it so much. This was a processing fact check.

[Monica Padman]

It was. It was. Which is a ding, ding, ding to the government.

[Dax Shepard]

That's right. They process.

[Monica Padman]

They process stuff. All right.

[Sharon McMahon]

I love you.

[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] hey, Armchairries.

[Sharon McMahon]

Quick question for you.

[Dax Shepard]

Have you ever stopped to wonder who came up with that bottle of Sriracha.

[Sharon McMahon]

Sitting in your fridge?

[Dax Shepard]

Or why almost every house in America has a game of Monopoly stashed away somewhere? Well, this is Nick and this is Jack, and we just launched a brand.

[Sharon McMahon]

New podcast called the Best Idea Yet.

[Dax Shepard]

It's all about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and.

[Sharon McMahon]

The people who brought them to life.

[Dax Shepard]

Like Super Mario, the best selling video game character ever. He's only a thing because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye or Jack. How about McDonald's Happy Meal?

[Sharon McMahon]

Believe it or not, the Happy Meal.

[Dax Shepard]

Was dreamed up by a mom in Guatemala. Every week on the Best Idea yet, you'll discover the surprising stories behind the most viral products of all time while picking up real business insights along the way. We guarantee you'll be that person at.

[Sharon McMahon]

Your next dinner party.

[Dax Shepard]

Dropping knowledge bombs at the table. Follow the Best Idea yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to the Best idea yet early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus.