Sunita Sah (on defiance)

Summary

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard: Episode Summary featuring Dr. Sunita Puri on Defiance

Release Date: January 22, 2025

---

Introduction

In this compelling episode of Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, host Dax Shepard is joined by co-host Monica Padman and special guest Dr. Sunita Puri, an award-winning professor at Cornell University and an expert in organizational psychology. Dr. Puri discusses her insightful new book, "Defy the Power of No: In a World that Demands Yes," delving deep into the psychology of defiance, obedience, and the intricate balance between adhering to authority and standing up for one's values.

Book Discussion: "Defy the Power of No"

Dr. Sunita Puri introduces her book, which explores the concept of defiance in various contexts, from everyday interpersonal interactions to high-stakes environments like law enforcement and the military. She emphasizes the societal pressure to comply and the often overlooked importance of defying when actions conflict with personal values.

Dr. Sunita Puri [24:06]: "I think a better definition of defiance, considering everything that we've spoken about, is that to defy is simply to act in accordance with your own true values, your core values, when there is pressure to do otherwise."

Defiance and Obedience: Psychological Perspectives

The conversation shifts to classic psychological experiments that illuminate human behavior under authority. Dr. Puri recounts Stanley Milgram's infamous obedience experiments, highlighting how ordinary individuals complied with authority figures even when it meant inflicting harm on others.

Dr. Sunita Puri [09:12]: "He was like, I really thought this was something unique about German culture. But everybody is doing this."

She also touches upon the Stanford Prison Experiment, underscoring how situational factors and assigned roles can drastically influence behavior, often overriding personal morals.

Personal Experiences of Dr. Sunita Puri

Dr. Puri shares personal anecdotes that shaped her understanding of defiance and compliance. She recounts an incident where she was unable to refuse a doctor's recommendation for an unnecessary CT scan, despite her professional knowledge about the risks involved.

Dr. Sunita Puri [19:42]: "I had the knowledge in that situation, and I should have said no. And yet I just couldn't say no."

This experience became a pivotal moment in her research, leading her to investigate the barriers that prevent individuals from acting against their better judgments.

The Five Stages of Defiance

Dr. Puri outlines a structured approach to understanding and practicing defiance, which she describes as a five-stage process:

1. Tension: Recognizing the initial discomfort when faced with a request that conflicts with personal values.
2. Acknowledgment: Admitting to oneself the presence of this tension rather than ignoring it.
3. Vocalization: Expressing discomfort to another person, making it harder to rationalize or backtrack.
4. Boundary Setting: Clearly stating the inability to comply with the request.
5. Final Act of Defiance: Taking decisive action to uphold one's values.

Dr. Sunita Puri [27:07]: "These are five stages of defiance. The first one... you feel some kind of tension... Then you acknowledge that feeling, and then you vocalize it to someone else."

Defiance as a Skill

Contrary to popular belief, defiance isn't an inherent personality trait but a learned skill. Dr. Puri emphasizes the importance of training and practice in developing the ability to defy when necessary.

Dr. Sunita Puri [27:03]: "If I can do it right with the upbringing I had, I think most people can learn how to defy. It's just you have to learn that skill set."

She suggests that through anticipation, visualization, and rehearsal, individuals can strengthen their capacity to stand up for their values without succumbing to undue pressure.

Defiance in Various Contexts

The discussion broadens to examine how defiance plays out in different spheres:

• Policing: Dr. Puri reflects on the George Floyd case, focusing not just on the officers involved but on the rookie officers who struggled with the ethical dilemma presented.

  Dr. Sunita Puri [17:48]: "What would I have done in that situation with George Floyd with a police officer wearing a gun? That's how difficult this is."

• Military: Sharing stories from military personnel, Dr. Puri illustrates the extreme pressures soldiers face to comply with orders, even when they conflict with personal ethics.

  Dr. Sunita Puri [50:21]: "He's like, I'm not gonna be that police officer."

Tools and Strategies for Defiance

Dr. Puri introduces practical tools to cultivate defiance:

• Anticipation and Training: Preparing for potential high-pressure situations through mental rehearsal can mitigate the fear and anxiety associated with defiance.

  Dr. Sunita Puri [38:07]: "Training aspect is so key... anticipation is so key."

• Defiance Compass: A framework comprising three key questions to guide decision-making aligned with personal values:

  1. Who am I? Identifying core values.
  2. What type of situation is this? Assessing safety and effectiveness of defiance.
  3. What would a person like me do? Aligning actions with values.

  Dr. Sunita Puri [66:32]: "These three questions came from James Marsh, who's a sociologist... they help us reduce the gap between intention and action."

Challenges and Hierarchies of Defiance

The conversation delves into the societal hierarchies that influence the ease or difficulty of defying authority. Dr. Puri discusses the "defiance hierarchy," where individuals from marginalized or less dominant groups face greater consequences for defiance compared to those from privileged backgrounds.

Dr. Sunita Puri [42:22]: "It's what I call the defiance hierarchy. Some people are allowed to defy, even rewarded for it. And others, they have more costs, there's more severe consequences."

Examples from Dr. Puri's Work

Dr. Puri shares poignant examples from her research and interactions:

• Parental Defiance: She recounts witnessing her mother's unexpected act of defiance against a group of aggressive boys, a moment that deeply impacted her understanding of strength and protection.

  Dr. Sunita Puri [55:29]: "And that does give quite a bit of hope."

• Rookie Officer's Story: Highlighting the internal conflict of a young officer who refused to follow unethical orders, leading to personal and professional repercussions but ultimately fostering a more ethical policing approach.

  Dr. Sunita Puri [52:30]: "He knew with all due respect, I knew that we didn't have any standing, and we shouldn't have gone in."

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with reflections on the importance of defiance as a proactive, value-driven force in society. Dr. Puri encourages listeners to view defiance not as an act of rebellion but as an essential alignment with one's core values. By redefining defiance and equipping oneself with the necessary tools, individuals can navigate complex social and professional landscapes while maintaining personal integrity.

Dr. Sunita Puri [64:30]: "Understanding that defiance isn't just for the brave or the extraordinary. It's available and it's necessary for all of us."

Dax Shepard and Monica Padman commend Dr. Puri for her enlightening perspectives, underscoring the episode's central theme: the empowering potential of defying unethical demands and upholding one's values in a world that often pressures conformity.

---

Note: This summary excludes advertisements and non-content segments to focus solely on the meaningful discussions and insights shared during the episode.

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 Shepherd. I'm joined by Monica Mouse.

[Monica Padman]

Hi hello.

[Dax Shepard]

Today we have Dr. Sunita saw on. She is an award winning professor at Cornell University and an expert in organizational psychology. She has a new book out called Defy the Power of no In a World that Demands.

[Monica Padman]

Yes, I loved this topic. Yes, I think it's really important to know how to stick up for yourself and when to stick up for yourself.

[Dax Shepard]

When to know. Yeah, I see this book as being enormously helpful for a huge amount of the population. Yes, it's very, very, very good. And also, also the amount of her own story she includes and acknowledges how hard it is for her I think is always helpful.

[Monica Padman]

What we like on this show is sort of looking at the opposite side of it and we talk in the episode and she starts the book with George Floyd and the rookie cops that were there and we get into all that and it's really fascinating and thinking about if you really put yourself in that position, what would you do?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. What would you do versus what you think you would do?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. And what you should do.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how you. Yeah. Some tools to make sure you do what you think you would do.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Please enjoy. Dr. Sunita saw if you love iPhone, you'll love Apple Card. It comes with the privacy and security you expect from Apple. Plus you earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase, which can automatically earn interest when you open a high Yield Savings account through Apple Card. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Apple Card and Savings by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch Member FDIC terms and [e-mail] we are supported by Allstate. Some people just know they could save hundreds on car insurance by checking Allstate first. Like, you know, check that you have all the ingredients for a recipe before you start cooking dinner or checking if you need to use the bathroom before you start recording. Recording. So you don't need to take a break mid show. Checking first is smart, so check all state first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. This content is intended for audiences in the U S Only. Savings vary Terms apply All state Fire and casualty insurance company and affiliates Northbrook Illinois.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

He's an unchanger.

[Dax Shepard]

He's an. What's more popular? Monica for Indian kids to be a.

[Monica Padman]

Neil or a Monica, they're both pretty common.

[Dax Shepard]

Cause Neil, I'm finding really is common. If I'm life or death and I've gotta guess what someone's name is, I gotta go Neil. It just feels.

[Monica Padman]

Highest percentage.

[Dax Shepard]

Really? Yeah. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I think you should go.

[Dax Shepard]

J. Oh, really?

[Monica Padman]

Uh huh.

[Dax Shepard]

That's the most common.

[Monica Padman]

Do you disagree?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Because you've been here for 16 years.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Oh my goodness. Has it been that long?

[Dax Shepard]

It'll be 17 this year. 2025. 2008.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah, 2008. Wow. You're making me feel nervous. That's no wonder. My son says that he's American now, right?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, right. How long has he been.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

He moved when he was one. We almost went back to the UK in 2020 during the pandemic. So I got offered a position at the University of Cambridge. We were all like, let's go. And then he said, no, I am American.

[Monica Padman]

Wow. He really planted a flag. Literally.

[Dax Shepard]

But you all were living there when he was five, when the Olympics came.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

To town, we went back when you said 2008. So that last year I finished my PhD and I was doing my postdoc down at Duke. We were living in Chapel Hill. And then you get one year of this extra. You can stay. Sure. And then the second year of my postdoc, my family didn't get visas, so they went back to London and I was going back and forth.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh boy. You travel a lot. Even just now, before Monaco's here. You're saying you're teaching in Utica, is it?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Or Syracuse, Ithaca and Roosevelt Island.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Those are on opposite ends of the state of New York.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

It's about four hours between four and a half hours.

[Monica Padman]

And you're doing that at the same time?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Occasionally. It hasn't worked that well now, just one semester in one place, one semester.

[Monica Padman]

In the other place.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Because going back and forth, that's a lot.

[Dax Shepard]

You grew up in the uk?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. And your parents had. They emigrated there.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I was one when I came to England.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I grew up my whole life there and also in Scotland. So my dad first came to England from India and did his PhD, then went back to India and then brought the family.

[Dax Shepard]

You are a polymath. You've done many, many things. You've studied a lot of things. You've done research in a lot of things. But you were first a medical doctor.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

That's right.

[Dax Shepard]

And so tell Me being a kid, when do we get the idea to be a doctor? And what is that experience before change course.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So in our community, medicine is one of the best things you can do, Right? So I had the grades. I was a good kid. I asked my dad when I was young, what does my name mean? And he said in Sanskrit, sunita means good.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And so I mostly lived up to that. I was good girl in their eyes. So I did exactly what I was told. I did all my homework as expected. I was what in Yorkshire they call swatty, which means you're a swat. You work really hard, you do all your homework. Maybe it's equivalent to nerd here.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay. Yeah, I guess if you ask me word. The derivative of nerd, nerd comes from. I have no clue. Because I was gonna say, where does that originate? Swat? What is that an abbreviation for? Who knows?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I don't know. But when you talk about SWAT now, especially at business schools, it means something totally different. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. That's not what it means. When I was growing up.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, okay.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So I got the grades and it's like, why wouldn't you want to do medicine?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And I was like, well, I'm not sure it's really for me, but in the uk, it's a combined undergraduate and graduate degree. So you basically start at the age of 18, medical school and you finished? I was on the wards in my early 20s.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, no kidding. From entering your first Intro to Biology class to having a patient. How short can that be in England.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Biology, we had to do as A levels before you go in. At that point, it was five years, I think. But when you say first seeing a patient, the first two years are pre clinical, so you're learning things. Then the third year, you're on the wards and you're a clinical. By the time you're 22, 23, you're qualified, you're on the wards.

[Dax Shepard]

Wow. Okay. Is that better or worse?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

There's pros and cons here. You have to work so hard. I got all my education for free, which is pretty impressive. There's a small cost now in the uk, but I went through the whole of medical school. I mean, earning peanuts once you start as a junior doctor. But that aspect of working earlier is great, so you can get through making the decision so early. Questionable.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Although I say my career is perfectly planned, Right? It was perfectly planned how I ended up here. But suddenly there was a lot of pressure and I lived up to those expectations of going to medical school and Then finishing medical school and ended up working as a doctor.

[Dax Shepard]

And did you enjoy being a doctor?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I knew it wasn't for me. There were certain aspects I really loved, like the analytical part. I'm always analytical. I was always thinking, always questioning.

[Dax Shepard]

It's problem solving.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Ye. I'm really fascinated by people as well. So just talking to people, meeting people, learning about their lives. So that aspect was great. I wasn't actually into the blood and gore aspect. I remember talking to my teachers about that, like, oh, I don't know about medicine. And they were like, it's just two years pre clinical. You're going to do that fine. And then just get through the clinical years and then you can end up doing research.

[Dax Shepard]

So when do we get interested in organizational psychology?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I was always interested in psychology. So when I was at medical school, I did my two years pre clinical, and then I took a year out to do what they call an intercalated degree in psychology. So they basically throw you in the fourth year of psychology and you catch up on the four years in that one year. But that was such a wonderful year. It was amazing. That's when I started reading about Milgram, Stanley's famous experiments, Obedience to authority. I became fascinated with that. Who did what we call the electric shock experiment.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So Stanley Milgram was really fascinated by why the Nazis in World War II always kept saying, I was just following orders afterwards when they were being investigated for war crimes.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And so he decided to set up this experiment, which was quite elaborate, where he would bring people in from the community and they would be an actor. It was designed as an experiment on memory. That's what they thought they were coming into. And whether sort of giving someone electric shocks would help them learn better.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So that was the setup. First experiments were conducted at Yale in their basement, I think. So people would come in, they would meet somebody else that they thought was another participant, but it was actually an actor that they had. And they would rig it so the actor would be what they call the learner. So then he would go into this room and the participant who was the teacher would see him being rigged up to what looked like an electric chair. And they would feel one of the shocks, 15 volts or something, so it all looked really real. And then the teacher would go to another room and they would be sat in front of this box that was sort of labeled from 15 volts to 450 volts, and it would go up in 15 volt increments and it would be labeled. So right at the end it was 3X's danger, huge shock. So they are, they can be lethal shocks at that point. Then the teacher had to read out some word pairs and the learner had to memorize and repeat them back. And if they got something wrong, they would get a shock and then it would go up 15 volts.

[Dax Shepard]

And the test subject would be in charge of administering the shock, right? Yes.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So they had to read out the word pairs and the experimenter was usually in the room just sort of overseeing. And if the teacher protested, they would tell them, you know, please go on with the experiment. They had like four prompts to tell them, please go on. It's essential that you continue. The experiment requires that you go on.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And when psychiatrists predicted beforehand what would happen, they thought that most people would not go past 150 volts. And in fact every single participant in the first experiment went past that. Ah, and the actor is screaming about 150 volts. There's thumping on the wall and there's verbal complaints. I don't want to go on with this.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't want to go on.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Oh my God, get me out of here. I refuse to go on with the experiment. And it was also told to the participants he had a heart condition and so. Oh my God, this is like really horrifying. They predicted only about 1 in 1000 would go up to 450 volts. But they found that everyone pulled the lever for 150 volts. Everyone pulled it for 300 volts and 66% went up to 450 volts.

[Monica Padman]

Holy shit.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Even Milgram was shocked. He was shocked at the results because he didn't think that he would find that. And he was like, I really thought this was something unique about German culture. But everybody is doing this.

[Dax Shepard]

I understand that you're in a class, you learn that that is intrinsically interesting. I think everyone would be a bit interested in that. But then I also am cur. Was there an additional layer for you personally where that is extra interesting?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

As I said, I was always known for being an obedient daughter and student, but I was fascinated by people who could defy. And I was good friends with someone at high school, let's call her Clara, she was able to defy. I started at St. Joseph's College, which is an all girls Catholic school at the other side of town. My dad thought that gonna get a good education there. So I would catch two buses to go to St. Jo. It was the roughest school I've been to.

[Monica Padman]

Oh wow.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I don't know what he thought, but it was also a lot of fun.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't know where you want to send your good girl.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And Clara came in two weeks late. She had moved from Hastings in the south of England to the north. And so she was different a little bit. I was also different. I was just one of a handful of non white girls at the school. And we became really close friends, even though we were so different from each other.

[Dax Shepard]

Were you so attracted to her ability to defy?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Absolutely. I was like, how can she do that? Because she just wanted to. We had this sort of checkered blue and white blouse that we'd wear and a red sweater. She walked in without the red sweater. She just stood out so much. And I was like, who is she? Especially because the headmistress had said before, I want everybody in their red sweaters because when I look out, I just want to see a sea of red.

[Dax Shepard]

Can I bring up to speed a little bit on our own personal dynamic? Her other best friend other than me is 6 foot 7, redhead, the most assertive, loud. He's openly gay without any fear of it.

[Monica Padman]

He's so him.

[Dax Shepard]

He's fearlessly himself.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And then I will fit in that box a bit as well. So there's a fun thing with Monica and I and then Monica and Jess.

[Monica Padman]

Cause I was also very good. Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I was gonna say you're still very good.

[Dax Shepard]

You're a good girl.

[Monica Padman]

Thank you.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Is it a good thing though?

[Monica Padman]

Right. And I think I've grown into. I totally defy.

[Dax Shepard]

You've transcended from what I know about your school experience and trying to acclimate and blend in and all those things. I don't see you as that at all. But certainly you did spend a good deal of your life.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, yeah. Just trying to be good. Just trying to do everything I needed to do to not get removed or singled out society or singled out. I grew up in Georgia and as you're saying, you were one of the only brown kids. Yeah. You just wanted to be. I did just want to be like everyone else. So, yes. When there's someone there. I actually commend you for being attracted to that at that time. Because if there's someone there who's being so themselves, that at that time would have terrified me.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, they might have sucked you in. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And then if I become friends with them, then everyone's gonna be so aware of me. I didn't want anyone to be aware of me.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I remember, I think a few years before that Maybe when I was at middle school, my dad got me these bright red, like, warmers. When my dad bought them for me, I was like, I just didn't wanna wear them. They're too bright. Give me black so I can kind of blend in. And it was like, no, we can't return them now. So I have to wear these things to school. And it was excruciating, right? I was trying to hide them with my coat. I was like, no, no, I don't wanna be wearing. But then I kind of changed when I went to St. Joseph's and when the headmistress said, like a sea of red, I was like, I'm not sure about that. And I had the song of Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd kind of playing, right? So I was getting quite attracted to.

[Dax Shepard]

These kind of things, like rebelliousness.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I was more questioning, oh, that's right. Why do they want us to conform so much? Because I was so used to obeying. Right. And doing and getting rewards for that. I would see teachers doing things that I thought were unf. When I was at middle school, I saw one of my teachers beating up another kid.

[Monica Padman]

Oh.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And that was horrifying to me. And I remember meeting him in the corner shop that we had just down the road. And I was really scared, but he was so nice and friendly to me. And in my child's mind, I basically thought that was because he thought I was good. Yeah, you were good.

[Dax Shepard]

He only beats bad people.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

He only beats badly people.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And so I tried like hell never to be bad so I wouldn't get treated like the way that boy got treated. But it really unnerved me, Right. It left something there as to why our teachers expected us to behave in this particular way. And when I realized that people in authority can do things like that, they can be unethical, incompetent, and just plain stupid, then you start to question the people that are in charge, maybe have our best interests in mind.

[Dax Shepard]

The structure has put them there, not their character. And when you kind of realize that, like, oh, the principal of the school has a title doesn't mean that he's been vetted as a good person, necessarily. There's a real dissonance when you recognize, oh, no, they're humans. And who knows? I'm friends with a ton of addict doctors, and people will be shocked that doctors are addicts. I'm like, do you think they're different people?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

In some ways, it's excessive at medical school right now. And when I came to the Us, it was fascinating when we were trying to find an apartment to rent. As soon as you say, I'm a doctor, some of the people I know that are completely wild and off track are doctors.

[Dax Shepard]

Of course. Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

There's a lot of stress released.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. If you want to have a good night partying, go out with some nurses or some doctors, and it's on.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Oh, yeah. We had some good nights, though.

[Dax Shepard]

So I'm really, really interested in that as well. I'm aware of that experiment. And then, of course, the Stanford Prison one's very famous and people are kind of aware of that. But your book starts out in a really wonderful and timely place. And you start by looking at the George Floyd case. And there were elements of this. I had no idea. And it's really something. So you're not focusing on the asshole that had his knee on his neck. What's far more interesting is there are two rookies there. One guy's on his third day, a black rookie, and then the white rookie is on his fourth day at work.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

That really haunted me because they were rookie officers and the guy with the knee on the neck was their training supervisor. So that image of George Floyd is ingrained in lots of people's minds, and it's horrific. Also, when I think about the rookie officers, I always think, what would I have done? Because they're obeying. They're in a line of hierarchy. They've been trained to obey. And even though in the manual, if your officer is asking you to do something unethical and things you should defy or say something, it's impossible. And people are saying, why did they do that? Why did they not say, no? It's so impossible to do that in certain situations. Especially if you haven't anticipated it, confronted it before, know how to react, practiced it, Rather than just intellectually knowing if.

[Dax Shepard]

We'Re inclined to judge them, we have the benefit of knowing the outcome of that, which is. It resulted in a death.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

I think their backstories are really compelling as well. The white cop's grandfather was a homicide detective. His great grandfather was the chief of police in Minneapolis. The black rookie intentionally joined the police force to help change it from the inside to build a root. You wanna talk about the right values and intentions. These two have it in spades.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah. And so often our actions just don't align with our values. And we see this time and time again. And this is what I wanted to study in more depth. Why is that? We can sit in our armchairs, right. And just say, oh, we wouldn't do that. We would act in this particular way. But when you're actually in that situation, it's so difficult.

[Dax Shepard]

You're up against a lot of forces.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So you end that description by saying, I'd like to think I would have done differently, but here's a situation I was in that I also would have thought I would have done differently. So talk about going to the hospital with chest pains.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

That day. I had this immense central chest pain, and I hadn't felt any pain like this before, so I was worried about it, and I thought, I need to get this checked out. I was fairly new to having moved to the US and so I went to the emergency room, and immediately, there's loads of tests being done, and they did an electrocardiogram, which was the main thing I was concerned about, like, am I having a heart attack or not? And everything was normal, thank goodness. And the pain was subsiding. It was going away. So I thought, great, I'm gonna be discharged. And then the doctor came in. She was kind of young and confident, and she just said, oh, I'll need you to have a CT scan before you go. And I was like, why? And she was like, oh, we just want to make sure you don't have a pulmonary embolism. PE is a blood clot in the lungs, and it has a specific type of pain. And I worked for six months in respiratory medicine, which you call pulmonary here. And this type of pain when you have an embolism in the lung is what we call pleuritic chest pain. It's a sharp pain. It catches your breath when you breathe in and breathe out. And I didn't have that type of pain. I didn't want to have this. This CT scan she was talking about because it's on average, 70 times the amount of radiation of an X ray. And even though it's still small, why have ionizing radiation which can cause cancer many years into the future? Why take the risk? Right. If you know? Yeah. So I had the knowledge in that situation, and I should have said no. And yet I just couldn't say no. And so I was then wheeled into the room with a CT scan and the technician and I couldn't even say no. Then I would just ask questions in this polite way like, oh, it's not a lot of radiation, is it? Because I wanted them to pick up on my discomfort and say, oh, do you not want this?

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And that didn't happen.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So I ended up having this CT scan. Why couldn't I just say no. In that situation, it was safe for me to say no. It would have been effective. And yet something held me back. The only reason I had it was because the doctor told me to. So here's the doctor in a safe situation. She's even smiling. I can't say no. And I'm a doctor myself. So what would I have done in this situation with George Floyd with a police officer wearing a gun? That's how difficult this is. It's terrifying when you think about it. And there was a survey of 1700 crew members of commercial airlines. About half of them did not feel comfortable to speak up when they saw an error.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, and then there's a really disturbing. Not disturbing. Actually, it's kind of encouraging that we can figure this out. You can correlate these. Culturally, there are different fears of power. So then you have this cultural element on top of it. Right.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So there's this psychological process that I call insinuation anxiety that I uncovered in my experiments. But the actual experience, I experienced it when I was having the CT scan. I knew this feeling for years and years. The name for it only came after I started doing research in it. And insinuation anxiety is this aversive emotional state that we have when we believe that not complying with someone else will be a signal of distrust to that person. So it basically insinuates that the other person is incompetent, biased, corrupt and trustworthy in some way, and you don't want to give them that signal. And so the co pilot's telling the pilots, you haven't observed this, you're doing something wrong here. Like, I don't think we should do that. It's really difficult.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And I see it in experiments in the hospital as well, in surveys. Nurses can't speak up when they see their colleague making an error for the same reason.

[Monica Padman]

Well, especially if they're in charge of you, if they're your boss or they're above you, how can you.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Even with physicians. In this particular survey, it was less than 1% whether you had a supervisory role of the physician or not. Less than 1% could actually tell them if it was something about the physician's incompetence. You don't want that. You want your co pilots to speak up. You want supervising physicians and nurses working with physicians to speak up if they see something going wrong. Because these life and death situations are huge. But even when it's not life and death, and sometimes you don't know, like as the rookie cops. Right. Probably didn't know this was going to turn out to be an unfolding murder or a life and death type of situation. But you don't want to end up in those situations because you're so wired to go along with it. You're so socialized to say, okay, I'm going to obey.

[Dax Shepard]

Let's start by defining defiance. I think that would be most helpful.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of defiance is to challenge the power of someone else boldly and openly. And I shouldn't really disagree with that, having been brought up in English, but I do. I think it's way too narrow. And. And I think a better definition of defiance, considering everything that we've spoken about, is that to defy is simply to act in accordance with your own true values, your core values, when there is pressure to do otherwise.

[Dax Shepard]

Ooh, I like that. Because, you know, part of the social angst of it all is that we all have a relative amount of codependency as well. We're not prone to hurt people's feelings or call them incompetent or insinuate things. But if it's just about you, when you depersonalize that and detach from that, it's just like, no, no. It's actually just living in accordance with my values really has nothing to do with that person. Yeah, I like that. That feels liberating.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And also, values can involve other people, too. Speaking up when you see somebody causing harm to someone else is really a communal act in a way. So redefining, reframing defiance from this negative connotation to being a proactive, positive force in society. Because if you think about it, every single act of consent and dissent and compliance that creates the society that we live in.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. You say defiance is the exception and obedience is the rule. So let's talk about the forces at play, what happens neurologically.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So if you're socialized to comply from a young age, if you're rewarded for being compliant. And I know I was. You probably were. I don't know if you were.

[Dax Shepard]

I was rewarded for being rebellious.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Really.

[Dax Shepard]

I got lucky in that. I have a mother that prized that.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

That's fascinating. So for many of us.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I think most. I got very lucky.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

That was encouraged. Right.

[Monica Padman]

So can you say. I know what you're about to say.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I don't know.

[Monica Padman]

And I think it should be something.

[Dax Shepard]

But we come from a family with a lot of trauma. We've been victimized a lot. My mother's been victimized a lot. I was victimized a lot. So Our family was like, fuck this. We're never getting victimized again. We've paid that price, and we won't pay it again. That was the ethos in the house, born out of a lot of victimization, unfortunately. But I do like the result of it all.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

One of the things that I really noticed in the people that I've interviewed is if you have seen your parents defy as well, it's so powerful. And I do have one or two moments where my parents did defy, even though they were compliant most of the time. And that stayed with me way more.

[Dax Shepard]

Than the times they were acquiesced, probably. Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And it changed my view of compliance and defiance being personality traits. I realized this is a skill. We can choose to use it or not. Because even the most compliant person, my mother, she does all the shopping, the groceries, looking after all the family. I had very neatly put her into the box of being compliant. And one day when she was defiant, it just blew my mind. I was like, wow, that's so impressive. She's actually really strong, and she can be defiant when she needs to be.

[Dax Shepard]

It could be harder for some of us than others, but it's also possible for everyone.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

If I can do it right with the upbringing I had, I think most people can learn how to defy. It's just you have to learn that skill set. You have to get out. So if you're talking about neurologically, I was reward for being compliant. That's when the neural pathways start to form, like obedience. It becomes our default. We start equating obedience with being good, compliance with being good.

[Dax Shepard]

You get good chemicals, you get dopamine, the reward center is activated. And it does change the format of your brain.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Absolutely. So we become what I call wire to comply. Right. It becomes the default without thinking. Somebody says to do something, we go along and we do it. And so that's really powerful socialization. The messages that we get to obey, to be polite, you know, don't make a scene, don't question authority, listen to them. And that makes a difference to the rest of our lives, in a way, and our default setting. But if we think about situations where we learn how to defy, we need to really practice so we can change that default setting. The more that we practice, the more those other pathways start to strengthen. For example, I have these five stages of defiance. So the first one, like, usually when we're in a situation where we want to defy or we think we should, we feel some kind of tension. So our body immediately tells us we don't think this is quite right. So I felt it with a CT scan. I'm sure you've been in situations where you felt like, oh, I don't know about that.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And so often we just ignore it. We think it's not worth our doubt.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly. Is it worth it?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah, it's worth it.

[Dax Shepard]

You say you might feel anxiety or nervousness or dread. Sweaty palms, fast beating heart, not in the stomach. These are all signals.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And we probably have our own signs. Right. People will probably feel it differently. Maybe for some people it's a headache. Maybe for some people it's their throat constricting. Maybe it's feeling butterflies. So we all have a sign that comes up and then the second stage is to acknowledge that rather than disregard it, is to admit it to yourself. Right. I'm feeling something.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Because I think most people are stuck in a pattern of. So I'm feeling these things. That's my actual cue to push through and ignore and compartmentalize and. And throw away.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah. Avoid it. And that's a shame because it's a warning sign. And if we actually listen to it, it could help us because we just need like, why am I feeling this way? What does it actually mean? I felt it with a CT scan and I was like, okay. But it actually got worse as I carried on having the CT scan. It didn't go away.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. You didn't push it aside.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And so I felt it more. And then I felt so much regret afterwards. Like, how easy would it have been for me to say no? Why couldn't I say no? Actually wasn't that easy. But what can I do to make sure I say no next time? And so feeling the tension, acknowledging it to yourself. And then stage three is the real critical stage, is just vocalizing it to someone else. And the reason that stage is so critical is because if you tell someone else you're not comfortable with this, you've stated how you feel, you can't then go back and rationalize to yourself, I was actually okay with it after all. Right. You know, it was fine. So once you've said that, all you have to do then is continue saying it. And this was the same in the Milgram experiment. So there were people. Even though two thirds of the subjects went up to 450 dangerous shocks and they were called the obedient subjects, not all of them did this willingly. Right?

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I'm going to shock that person.

[Dax Shepard]

Let's go. I wish this thing went to 700. Let's get some memorization. Going, guy will know this on his deathbed.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Milgram called them the moral imbeciles. But they were groaning. Nervous laughter. They had these signs of tension, the nervous laughter. Oh, I have that for sure. And then I will smile. I have what a colleague of mine called the crocodile smile. Is that as soon as I'm uncomfortable, be like, yeah, okay, that's funny. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Imani, you'd call that fawning?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

It's an appeasement. Okay. I'm not a threat.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

I can't let my face betray me.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I can put on the most exaggerated version of my face.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

That third stage, if you could say, I'm not comfortable with this or people in the Milgram experiments, is he actually okay? If they had resisted four times, that was the experiment, There was four prompts, then the experiment would have ended. So you just then need to continue. And stage four is that threat of non compliance. I can't go through with it.

[Dax Shepard]

Could we call that a boundary? Like stating a boundary?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah. Stage three, you're still in a subservient position.

[Dax Shepard]

You're saying how you feel about it. You haven't said you're not going to do it. You're just saying, I feel this way.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yes. And then four. Four is stating that you can't. And then five is your final act of defiance.

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more Armchair expert if you dare. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever.

[Monica Padman]

Making it even more comfortable on your.

[Dax Shepard]

Wrist whether you're running, swimming or sleep. Sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Compared to previous generations.

[Dax Shepard]

IPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. We are supported by cookunity. A lot of people think about their health in January and what you eat is a huge part of that. But if the thought of spending hours of your free time planning and meal prepping doesn't sound appealing, CookUnity is a great solution. CookUnity partners with award winning chefs from across the US to bring you an at home dining experience you can't find anywhere else. These are healthy, balanced and incredibly delicious meals made with the very best ingredients. They use fresh, seasonal produce, humanely raised meat and even organic ingredients when possible. Convenience plus quality make a great combination so you have time and energy to focus on your other 2025 goals. What I love about cookunity is the.

[Monica Padman]

Variety and it's convenient, which I really like. We need that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. Reset your routine with convenient mouth watering meals crafted with local ingredients by award winning chefs. Go to cookunity.comdax or enter code DAX before checkout for 50% off your first week. That's 50% off your first week by using code DAX or going to cookunity.comdax we are supported by Better Help. The start of the new year brings you 365 blank pages waiting to be filled. What do you want your 2025 story to be? Maybe you're ready for a plot twist or maybe there's a part of your story you've been waiting to revise. Think of therapy as your editorial partner, helping you write new chapters and become the author of your own life. I know for me, I want 2025 to be filled with, with a lack of codependency.

[Monica Padman]

That's nice.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. If you want to start your therapy journey in 2025, join Better Help's over 5 million users worldwide. BetterHelp is fully online, which helps make therapy affordable and convenient. You'll have access to a diverse network of more than 30,000 credentialed therapists with a wide range of specialties. And you can easily switch therapists anytime at no extra cost. Write your story with BetterHelp Help. Visit betterhelp.comdax today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp H lp.comdax.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So understanding those stages, it might not be linear. You might skip some stages. There are certain situations that I found that I find it easier to define. And you can go from stage two to stage five and we can all find those places where, oh, this is actually more natural for me to do it.

[Dax Shepard]

I need to add some of the stages in as more my direction to be better. I go from tension to act of defiance. I'm gonna tell you right now. So you can't go any further with this.

[Monica Padman]

You know, I think it also just depends on the situation because it depends.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

On the punishment, on the consequences.

[Monica Padman]

The consequences, exactly. Don't you think sometimes it isn't worth it?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Right. So there are consequences for being defiant for sure. That's what holds us back a lot of the time. So, you know, when we think about why don't we defy, why do we actively even resist defiance? Number one, immense pressure from other people to do what they want you to do. The insinuation anxiety aspect, all those psychological processes. And then number two is actually we don't really understand what consent and dissent actually is we don't understand what defiance actually is. And I'll come back to that. And then the third one is about once you want to define, you understand that you don't have the skill set to defy. So we need to learn it. But the consequences of defiance people always think about is going to affect this relationship. You know, I'm going to disrupt the harmony. It might even cost me my job or might be some physical danger. So we do need to think about the consequences of defiance. Like what type of situation is this? There's sort of two questions we ask. Is it safe for me to defy and will it be effective? But what we don't often think about are the consequences and the costs of complying. Because there's a lot of costs for continually complying with other people and putting aside your values. If you're always bowing your head to someone else, disregarding your values, it really has an effect on you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So that's where my personal willingness to do this is. I have two kind of very seminal moments where I didn't defy, and it was both destructive and painful. But beyond the events, the shame and disappointment in myself was so intense for so long that for me, any other option was worth it. Like, I just experienced such a level of regret and shame and self flagellation for not getting myself out of a couple different situations that for me, I can immediately go to what that feels like. And so, yeah, this feels uncomfortable, but that feels like a 20. I know what that is. And I can do a very quick cost benefit analysis. For me, it's very crystal clear. It's like, I know what that other thing feels like. So it's very easy for me. I guess that's the benefit of those things.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

If we reflect on what happened in that situation, you in these particular incidents that happened me with a CT scan, and then think about what factors enable our defiance and what makes it harder for us. Understanding that is really key. But anticipating, even when we think about all the big heroes that defy and had huge moments, like Rosa Parks saying, no, I'm not gonna move on the bus, there were lots of compliance moments before that moment. And so we shouldn't have so much shame. But that rumination is actually really helpful to think about. What is it I wish I had done in that situation? Because if we can then visualize it, if we can anticipate it, then that takes away the surprise. Right. So the next time I was asked to go for some more radiation that I didn't need, I wasn't as surprised. I was anticipating it. I had practiced what I wish I would have said and then I was able to say it.

[Dax Shepard]

And we could probably get in quickly to the biology of that, which is interesting, which is if you anticipate versus it comes up on you in a flash and you're not prepared, you've not thought this through at all, you don't have an executive game plan and now you're just scared and frazzled and you're in a part of your brain that doesn't do well with that. So, yeah, the benefit of not being taken off guard is half of the battle, perhaps.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Oh yeah, absolutely. That anticipation is so key. There's this famous saying that's often attributed to Bruce Lee, but it's actually a Greek poet that said, like under duress, we don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to our level of training. And so that training aspect is so key, and I didn't realize it right, because it does change those neural pathways. So anticipating and we can anticipate more than we actually think. Sometimes we're caught off. But I know because we've experienced situations before when at the workplace a particular colleague is going to say something inappropriate or they're going to make a sexist remark, we can kind of predict things that might happen. So we can start anticipating.

[Dax Shepard]

If you've been out to a work dinner with a co worker who has five other times made a sexist joke, pretty good odds that's coming your way.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Again, then we can visualize it and practice it. If you don't have like that behavioral training of actually practicing, if it's just the intellectual part, it's not going to make a difference. So you need to actually practice it. And this presentation workshop I went to, I just love the phrase that they use. If you practice, your ears get used to hearing it and your mouth gets used to saying those words, that's really useful to know that that's makes a difference.

[Dax Shepard]

Can we go back to the forces at play? Because I want to talk about the social one. Of course. I want to interject kind of my anthropological lens onto it. I think it could reduce some of the shame people experience from not being able to rise to that occasion. I think the primary hardwired evolved state we inherited is we are a social primate. 300,000 years ago, if you you weren't obedient, you got kicked out. And 3,000 years ago, to not be with your group is death. And that's real evolution. That's actually how your brain's still functioning. So give yourself a little bit of a break. Although it is menial, it's, you know, the person at Starbucks or whatever it is, your body doesn't know that your body thinks to be excluded from my group right now is death. So you have a very over exaggerated response to what our modern world is. But let's just grant everyone that we're not designed, designed to be defiant.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Even the insinuation, anxiety, feeling. I've said it's an aversive state. It's uncomfortable for a reason. Because your defiance might be causing harm to someone else or you. Yeah, it's there for a reason, that somebody is expecting something of you. What does it mean? Right. So I think understanding that too, sort of naming it and knowing that we have two kind of ideal selves, especially in America. We have this ideal independent self. We want to act on our agency, we want to do what we think is right. But we also have this interdependent self, which is that we want to remain in harmony with everybody around us. And there's two sort of ideals like Hazel Marcus and Shinubu Kitiana. Talk about these ideal selves. We can't ever achieve one state or the other state. And they're there for a reason.

[Dax Shepard]

It wouldn't be great to achieve either state exclusively.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Exactly. And so we do need to think about that, but we also need to hold dear to ourselves what are our values.

[Dax Shepard]

But if you're at home going, I'm a spineless piece of shit, no, you're a social primate. And then you have to kind of transcend some of the stuff that is not useful anymore or that is vestigial and doesn't serve you. I want to maybe acknowledge it's not across the board. It's not totally equal for every group of people. And I think we should acknowledge that. It's easier for me to be defiant than I.

[Monica Padman]

That's what I was gonna say earlier when I said, oh, I think you should say it. That's what I thought you were gonna say. Some people have a little bit of a leg up doing it with less consequences.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I got a double whammy. Like my sister still will fight anybody over nothing. She came from the same culture as I did, so she got that leg up. But then I have also the leg up of being 6:2 in male, over and white.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

It's what I call the defiance hierarchy. Some people are allowed to defy, even rewarded for it. And others, they have more costs, there's more severe consequences, there's more Backlash for being defiant. And it's interesting that the people that are in that category, which is anything from sort of the dominant norm, the tall white male, anything that deviates from that group, you actually need to be defiant more often because you're expected to be more confined.

[Dax Shepard]

Here's the paradox. You're going to need to be defiant more, and you're going to be more harsh.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Partially punished.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

It's so unfair, the gift that keeps on giving. Sometimes I just get so tired. Don't you just get exhausted of having to just constantly be that person?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

It can be exhausting. You have those extra burdens that you.

[Dax Shepard]

Carry, but not to put a silver lining on it, you get all the upside of the extra challenge. So you get a skill set. My trauma gave me something too. So it's negative. But also you have an empathy probably that other people don't have. It's a. Of behaviors and thoughts.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I mean, it'd be interesting what people might choose between those things. It's one where I often describe as being on a balance beam. For some people, there's only a narrow set of behaviors that are possible for you to do without being punished. But sometimes you can get to firmer ground where you can find this is now safe and effective for me to defy and find places where. Where that is accepted.

[Dax Shepard]

What's the difference between compliance and consent?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So compliance is something that we just go along with someone else. It's usually externally imposed or default. We're not really thinking about it. We kind of slide into it.

[Dax Shepard]

I like the word reactive in there as well. It's kind of put on you, and you're reacting all of a sudden.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Exactly. Consent. I take the definition of informed consent in medicine and I apply it to the other decisions that we make in life, which I find really useful. There's five elements that are required for informed consciousness. Consent. So first of all is capacity. That we have the mental capacity to make a decision so we're not under the influence of drugs or alcohol or we're not sick. And then knowledge. So we need to know about the situation, have full information about that situation. And third, understanding of that, do we understand the risks, the benefits, the alternatives? Then number four, do we have the freedom to say no? In some situations? We don't have the freedom to say no might be too risky. Your life might be on the line in some situations.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, it could be structurally defined. You could be in the military.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Exactly. You might not have the freedom to say no. Another one is if you're a Black guy and you're stopped a traffic stop. Right. That's not the place to defy.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So freedom to say no. And then if you have those four things, the fifth element is your considered authorization of an informed consent. And if you want to say no. Informed refusal.

[Dax Shepard]

I think that's one of the trickier zones. My personal experience with this was my father was dying of small cell carcinoma and it had spread everywhere. And we had done all the treatments and it was clearly towards the end. We knew the time horizon was three months to begin with. And at the very end of this experience, the oncologist comes on to say he'd like to do brain radiation. And I said, is it worse to die of brain cancer than the lung cancer or the bone cancer everywhere it's at? And he said, well, yeah, it could be worse. And I said, okay. It just feels like it's another treatment and we're towards the end and it's going to be one of these cancers that gets them. And then I asked my dad and he had been letting me make all these decisions, but of course I was running them all by him. And I said, do you want to do this brain radiation thing? And he said, I do. And I said, okay, I don't think it's going to, you know, but ultimately it was his cancer and his. So I backed away. Did it. The result was nothing positive and it severely impacted his cognition. And I'm so resentful at that whole experience. Now I at least have the distance of he made the decision. I did say I think it's a bad idea. You know, I'm not carrying around a ton about it, but it pissed me off. And again, I think a. I'm totally up for a confrontation. I'm in the best situation possible for this. Still didn't go my way. But yeah, your average person, there's a doctor telling them this is a good idea and what are you to do?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And we do have trust in our doctors and it would be a shame if that disappeared. Right. That element of public trust. But there's also a lot being written on end of life treatment and how aggressive it can be. But it's really difficult. Again, it's an ideal that can never be fully attained in medicine and elsewhere.

[Dax Shepard]

Now, here's a great example of where the anticipation's helpful. So, like Atul Gwande will advise, you have an end of life plan. What do you wanna do in this last few months? Do you wanna go out with your kids and have ice cream?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

What's quality of life for you.

[Dax Shepard]

Because if you just show up and you get bombarded with all this information, you don't understand, you're gonna react and you don't really know. But that's a good use of an hour of your life to kind of map out what you want that to be at the end.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I think if people want to have that conversation and then even as Atul Gawande talks about people prefer different types of care. Right. Somebody wants the paternalistic advice, just tell me what to do and I'll follow it. Other people want more of a guided, informed, shared decision making and the doctor to be more of a coach.

[Dax Shepard]

I want a buffet of options that are explained to me and then I want to pick.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah, some people find that really hard and overwhelming.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. What's a true yes?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So a true yes is consent. So having those five elements there would be your true yes or a true no is the same. The informed confusal is just having those five elements. But sometimes you have those five factors there, but you decide to actually do what I call conscious complaining. So you consciously comply because the costs might be too big or this is not the right time to do it. And because as you said, it's exhausting. So you need to choose. Is this situation going against my values? Otherwise we'd be defying every day. We wouldn't get anything done. And we need to really choose what situations are going against our values. That this is worth me speaking up and saying something about.

[Dax Shepard]

I couldn't help but think of some situations where I felt like, I don't know if defiance is productive to the mission. Do we want a battalion of soldiers thinking we should go over the left flank and they think we should go over the right? Are there not some implicit situations where it's like, no.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I interviewed a few of my students that had been in the military, which was really fascinating to hear their stories. And in fact, one of the first ones, and I remember it really well, Cause we were speaking on Zoom on a Sunday afternoon. I was calling Matthew. He told me about when he went into the military. And he did it because he grew up with 911 sort of seared into his memory. And he wanted to prove that he's an American, he's a patriot, and he was deployed to Iraq. And his best friend got killed in the first few months. And there was an incident where they were on some nighttime mission. And he's like, nothing usually happens at nighttime, but there was this flash and then a grenade going off that was too close for Comfort. And they immediately started opening fire. Some people went off in his squad, and they came back with four prisoners. One of them, Matthew had and had to look after. And this person was just screaming out in Arabic. And his supervisor said to him, he's talking too much. He's screaming. Shut him up. And Matthew said, what should I do? And he was like, oh, it's simple. He did it in the mouth. And so he looked at the man, and there was blood coming out from his nose into his beard. So he hit him. And the man didn't stop talking. And his sergeant said, he's not stopped. Hit him. Hit him in the stomach. And Matthew just looked at me, and he just said, and that's what I did. And then later on, he told me that he found out that these weren't insurgents at all. They were young teenage boys.

[Dax Shepard]

Wrong place at the wrong time.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

They were 15 or 16 years old. He couldn't understand what they were saying, and he felt really bad about it. And he said in that instant, he just trusted he had no option. The next time they were on some kind of mission, and. And they stopped, and they basically formed like a circle. What they do in war, right? And what he told me is that you're not supposed to get out and just spray and pray. You have to have a target, otherwise you can hurt civilians. And he said, but they just got out, and they did spray and pray. And in that moment, he did not do that. He kind of turned around and looked at the desert behind him. And later on, his superior said to him, what were you doing? And he said, oh, I was just providing security. I was looking at providing cover. And he said that was the only thing he could think of for not doing it. But it actually was. Cause his feelings were getting really complicated about whether he was doing the right thing or not. And he didn't describe his actions as defiant. He even said they were kind of cowardly. If he had actually said what he felt, he would have gone to military prison. And he said, and maybe they'd be right. But that one incident that he said was half crime. He did start becoming a little bit more defiant. So I call that quiet defiance, where you're not actively saying no to someone else, but you're not going against what you think is the right thing to do.

[Dax Shepard]

You're not betraying your own ethics in service of this other person.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And so later on then, he became less quietly defiant. There was another nighttime mission that he thought was way unsafe. He involved going out at the nighttime with goggles Very close to a cliff edge. And he went to see his superior, and he just said, I don't think we should do this. It's far too dangerous. Dangerous. And his superior was just like, shut up. Do as I say. Are you disobeying me? He's like, no, but I'm adamantly against the idea. And of course, the mission went ahead. People came back after half an hour. It didn't work out. It was too unsafe. But he wasn't rewarded for that. He was basically punished. He didn't get his promotion, but he said it was the right thing to do. And he became a little bit more comfortable with sort of saying those things. But, yes, in the military, I hear time and time again from my students that have been there, it's yes, yes, yes. And one of them said, you are trained to do, not to think.

[Dax Shepard]

And it's very complicated. Right. So you're talking. Talking to a guy who's seemingly intelligent and thoughtful, and then there's also a dipshit there who shouldn't be doing a ton of thinking. So it's a very complex situation. It's not clean.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah. So in war, that type of compliance is very helpful on the battlefield, for sure.

[Dax Shepard]

I was thinking about something much more benign, which is a movie set. So what is a common conflict between an actor and a director, and both have very legitimate points of view, is the director will go to the actor and say, okay, let's do it again, but this time don't be so. And then the actor will say, that's what my character would be in this moment. My character would be this sad. And now the director's juggling the entire movie. Not the moment, not the scene. If you cry in this scene, your next scene, we need you crying at a 10 for the arc of your character. I need this to not be what is true to you right now, because we have to service this broader thing. So that's like a very benign example.

[Monica Padman]

That doesn't feel too much like a vowel.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Values driven to change.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I think so. If you've dedicated your life to being an actor and you went to Juilliard and your commitment is to tell the truth every time you open your mouth, that's your North Star.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah. I think there's many situations where it is complicated. That's why we struggle with it, too. If it was that simple, then we would get it right every single time. And we don't.

[Dax Shepard]

I've added on a set early in my comedic career where you would still make homophobic jokes that Was standard. And I remember getting in a huge fight with one of my directors. Like, I'm not saying that there's a 12 year old kid gonna watch this who's gay in Michigan.

[Monica Padman]

That makes a ton of sense. That to me is like so value driven. Not as an actor, because that's an identity we place on ourselves.

[Dax Shepard]

It's an occupation.

[Monica Padman]

It's an occupation, A value of. I refuse to take someone down. That makes a ton of sense. And I think that is fully worth defying.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I think that's definitely worth. I'm with you totally on that.

[Dax Shepard]

You have some good historic and contemporary kind of examples in the book. Is there any that you would like to share with us that are your favorites?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So when I said earlier on that there's some stories of my parents defying that have really stayed with me. One of my mom is one that really, I think was transformative. So I was about 7 or 8 and I was walking back from the grocery store with my mom and it was quite a long walk back and we had this rickety shopping cart and we were rolling that back home and we decided to take a shortcut through what you call in Yorkshire a snake, which is just a narrow alleyway. Right. So you gave it that adorable name.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, Snicket. Yahtzee. What were you if you were Swatty Swatty.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

When I went to elementary school, I was not supposed to go through that Snicket.

[Monica Padman]

See, you were testing.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I just realized that it was brewing the whole time it was there. But anyway, Mum and I, we went through the Snicket and we were confronted by about seven or eight teenage boys and they blocked our path and they started shouting out some stuff to us, like some racist comments. Go back home.

[Dax Shepard]

We're trying to. We're trying to get down.

[Monica Padman]

Literally. We're on our way right now.

[Dax Shepard]

Shitty carriage through this naked.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

That would have been a good idea, but my reaction was instant. Which is what you had described before. Right. Immediately, eyes down, averted. All I wanted to do was not look at them and maneuver my way through and get home as fast as I could. And my mom, she's petite, she's smaller than me now. She was taller than me at the time, but she's like 4, 10. She had like her hair very neatly plaited back, single braid at the back. And I had thought of her as completely compliant person. And she did something that really surprised me that day. She put the shopping cart up vertical and she put one hand on her hip and she looked at them and she Said, what do you mean? Mean? My fear was going up at this point. So I grabbed her arm even tighter, and I started whispering to her. I was like, come on, Ma.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And I wanted to be the compliant person and that. And she shook me off, right? She was like, no. And she looked at them again, and she said, what do you mean? They stared at her. She stared at them, and then she said, oh, you think you're big tough boys, right? Big strong boys. And she started telling them off in broken English, oh, wow. And then, like, just looking at each other, thinking, what's going on here? And one of them just said, let's go.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And they just dispersed. And I was like, what happened? My mom grabbed the cart, and she walked as fast as she could through that Snicket. I never thought the day would come that she would tell off a group of boys on the street in that way.

[Dax Shepard]

There's something sad and beautiful about it, which is people will do that for their children. Children, exactly. Because even before the social primate evolution.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Protection, responsibility, and people do, like, I can defy for my son so much easier than I can defy for my son.

[Dax Shepard]

And isn't that sad? That's the sad part.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

The beauty of it is there's something beautiful about having responsibility for someone else.

[Dax Shepard]

I do, too. What's heartbreaking to me is that you can't advocate for yourself, but you can tap into that. That's a tool. Even imagine this is being said to your exact.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Exactly. To a loved one. What would you do in that situation? I say that to my son at times when he gets stressed about things like, what advice would you give a loved one? What would you tell someone who's in ninth grade right now how to handle a situation? But what that really taught me was that defiance is a skill set. It's a practice. It's not a personality. And even though compliance might be our default, it's not our destiny. So we can change. I had seen her come home several times, and she would be muttering away, so I'm pretty sure she had seen those boys before and not said anything. But now I was with her, and she showed me that. And even though it might have changed her, because I do think defiance changes your brain, how you react, it also changes the people that observe it, because that had a ripple effect on me and made me feel like we can all be defined if we want to be. And that does give quite a bit of hope.

[Dax Shepard]

One part I like about your book, too, is whether it's explicit or not, you do it by example. Well, it's also a good call to monitor yourself when you're doing it to other people. So you have this example where you want your 5 year old to see the Olympic torch pass.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yes. We were in London and we were on our way to see the flame that they hold and it was like, oh, this is a once in a lifetime experience. And he's like not impressed with this at all. And he just wouldn't walk there. And he sat down on the pavement and I was like, no, come on. I was like pulling his arm and trying to pick him up and I could only get a few steps. He was heavy at the. I was like, no, I can't carry you. And we just completely missed the whole thing. And we went home and he's just not realizing this moment in history that I have now missed is lost forever. And I said to him, why can't you be good? And that kept me up at night. I was like, why did I say that when that's what I learned, right? This whole obedience equals good and defiance equals bad. And here I was just repeating that. Really took me back to, why is it so strong? Even when he was a baby, I would have relatives asking me, is he good? He's a baby, right?

[Monica Padman]

There's no such thing.

[Dax Shepard]

No, he's bad. We got a bad one.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And what they mean is like, does he sleep?

[Monica Padman]

Is he crying?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah, does he cry?

[Dax Shepard]

Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. We are supported by Noom Noom Leaders in behavior change. Weight Loss now offers Noom GLP1, a compounded semaglutide. It's affordable, starting at just $149 for those that qualified. Noom GLP1 is available and ships to your door in seven days. And Noom offers more than just medication alone. Noom pairs GLP1 meds with their proven weight loss program that has helped millions of people lose weight. NOOM helps you build new new habits for a healthier lifestyle that can help you sustain your weight loss. And with Noom GLP1 you get access to a doctor, a coach and a supportive community all from within the app on your phone. Ask your care team anything and get support with medication and side effects management. Noom GLP1 starts at 149 and is delivered to your door in seven days. Start your GLP1 journey today at Noom.com that's n o o m Noom the smart way to lose weight. Not all customers will medically qualify for prescription medications. Compounded medications are not reviewed by the FDA for safety, efficacy or quality. We are supported by Peloton. Peloton can keep your goals on track no matter what season of life you're in. Whether you're starting a new chapter or looking for a way to mix up your routine, Peloton has a variety of classes and class lengths that adapt to all the seasons in your life. Whether you want to try a new type of exercise, from cycling to Pilates to yoga, running, and so much more, there are a huge variety of classes to fit whatever you're looking for that day. Or if you just want to try a new trainer, Peloton has world class instructors to keep you motivated.

[Monica Padman]

I was at Molly's gym and she has a peloton and every time I'm there I try to sneak up there and get a little sash. Steal a sash because it is so fun.

[Dax Shepard]

It is the whole instructor part in the class.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. And any chance you can make working out fun, I'll take it.

[Dax Shepard]

Peloton is everything you've ever wanted to try whenever you need it. Find your push, Find your power with [e-mail] we are supported by Squarespace. Maybe you've got dreams of turning your hobby into a side hustle this year or finally opening an online store. Maybe you want to share your knowledge with the world and make an online course. Squarespace is the perfect partner to take your website to the next level and help you accomplish your 2025 goals. No matter what type of site you want to build, Squarespace can help you make it. If you're starting an online store, Squarespace makes checkout seamless. Their flexible payment options including credit cards, PayPal and Apple Pay make it easy for your customers to check out and Squarespace has all the tools you need to create and sell your own online course. Start with a layout that fits your brand, upload videos and customize everything with next generation editing technology. Create engaging lessons your audience will learn. Love. Then add a pay wall and set the price. Take what you know and turn it into income. We use Squarespace to make our lovely website incredible and it functions, it's pretty.

[Monica Padman]

It'S effective, it's efficient and highly functional. Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to get started, go to squarespace.comdax to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com dax to get started to today.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

It's amazing what we equate with being good, which is not being a bother to someone else at all?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, yeah, you say it really explicitly and beautifully. You say, to be good is for him to do what I want. I want him to sleep through the night. I want him to eat on a schedule. Those are my wants.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And sometimes that's how we feel in organizations, right. When we work, managers love the yes man or the yes woman. Do as I say. Don't question it. And we then just sort of narrow our vision to how well we are pleasing the boss rather than the wider, like, what is it we're actually doing that has a value to the world?

[Dax Shepard]

What kind of tools, other than anticipating is a good one and kind of modeling what you're gonna get into? But are there some other things that you could recommend?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

One of the major things that was really crucial to sort of changing how I thought about defiance is getting rid of some of the myths that defiance has to be aggressive, loud. You have to have a larger than life personality. You gotta be me. You gotta be you.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Tattoo. Too much muscle. Let's go.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Monica and I are never going to be you.

[Dax Shepard]

Don't rule that out. I can put you on a program.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

We can find our own way, right? We can be defiant in a way that's unique to us. So understanding that defiance isn't just for the brave or the extraordinary. Right? It's available and it's necessary for all of us. I think that's one mindset shift that we can really all use and understand. And then the other is what I call the defiance compass, which I think is very useful, which is when we're faced with a situation and we're trying to decide what to do, we have that tension. Then we take the pause and we try to understand. These three questions came from James Marsh, who's a sociologist. But I've sort of adapted them to be not just three questions that we ask implicitly for every decision, but to put them in a circle, because I think it is a circular thing. So the first question is, who am I? And that's really connecting with your values. So if you aspire to be someone who's fair, compassionate, has integrity, that's what you really need to think about. That's who you are. Because that's really important. If you've not found that out, spend some time doing that, because people that clarify their values are more likely to act in alignment with them. And also there's research showing that it reduces your stress and cortisol levels if you actually know what your values are. So really know. Who am I? You can ask Yourself of that. And then the second question. So that's internal. Then you go external. What type of situation is this? Is it safe and effective for me to defy? And then the last question is, with these particular values, fair, full of integrity, all those things. What does a person like me do in a situation like this? If you believe you're one type of person, but you're never acting in that way, you want to sort of start thinking about whether that really is who you are or not. And I found those three questions really powerful in terms of. Of knowing this is what I would like to do. Really tapping into our aspirational selves. I wanna decrease that gap between the intention, what we think we'll do in a situation, and how we actually act.

[Dax Shepard]

Also, that first question, I think all of us would go like, I know who I am. But then we haven't actually listed it. Cause I remember I got judo'd by a therapist, like 20 years ago because I was laying out this list of grievances I had about my father. And on this last trip this happened, he smashed my truck. He did this and that. And I said, you know, at this point, I just don't know that I really need to have a relationship with him. I just don't think I want to do this anymore. And he said, you're totally entitled to make that decision with this list of things you've just given me. But very simply, do you think you're the type of person that doesn't talk to their dad? And I was like, oh, fuck. I don't think I'm the type of person that wouldn't talk to their dad. That's very incongruous with this thing I want to do. But, yeah, in a very simple way, do I think I'm the type of person that doesn't talk to their dad? I don't think I'm that type of person. I don't want to be that type of person.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

So I guess we're just going to have to do a lot harder work to figure out how I am not that person yet. I don't come out on the wrong end of all these interactions.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Right. And that's fascinating.

[Dax Shepard]

I was telling him this, thinking he'll sign off on this, and I'm never talking to my dad. I've worked it all out in my head.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

But you wouldn't have felt good about it in the long run.

[Dax Shepard]

No, it's the simplest question I wouldn't have asked myself.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So powerful.

[Monica Padman]

I also like the last question because it Sort of depersonalizes it. If you're saying, what does a person like that do in this situation? It's not like, what am I going to do in this situation? It's what does someone that holds those values do? You can remove yourself. And I think that's really helpful.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And in experiment after experiment, I've seen people say they're one thing and then behave in a different way. So anything that helps us reduce that gap.

[Monica Padman]

Gosh, I want, I wonder if they repeated that experiment and before going in the shocks, they made them write down their values. I wonder if that would have impacted it.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So the people that could defy, they're really fascinating. So, I mean, I told you the sort of basic setup of the Milgram experiment, but when you look at all the different deviations that they had, that's where I find the work really fascinating. And the people that defied, what was it about them that they defied? And many of them it was because of responsibility. So one was a professor of the Old Testament. So values. Right. Were there and very high on that. So even though he was stuttering and things, when they said the experiment requires you to go on, he kind of asked, does it? Like maybe if we're in Russia, but not here.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

So he was able to stand up to that because he'd done so much thinking about those types of values and humanity and not harming another. And then the other person that really stands out for me was an engineer that had the knowledge of how powerful these shocks are.

[Monica Padman]

Interesting.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And he lived through World War II, and so he was fascinated by this afterwards. And he said he just felt really bad that he went as far as he did before he stopped. Because he's like, if you throw the responsibility onto someone else and just say you were taking orders, that's really quite a cowardly thing to do. You're the one that's causing the shocks to someone else. And I know what kind of harm those shocks can do. And there was another participant, a woman, that said the same thing. I don't want to be responsible for causing harm to another person. So I do think that responsibility element is really powerful. When we think about what does a person like me do in a situation.

[Dax Shepard]

There's so many variables though, as well, because even engineers, they over index on disagreeability on the personality test. Right. So it's like you start with, there's been a filtration.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Really.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I'm just saying that because my son wants to be an engineer.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. And your son, we need to tell him to not play his Xbox. He walks right in there and plays his Xbox.

[Monica Padman]

He won't go to the.

[Dax Shepard]

Not be bothered by the Olympics.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Not as he wants to be an engineer.

[Monica Padman]

Well, my dad always says this. Engineers are hyper focused on seeing problems. That's the whole point of the job. Cause a building will collapse if they don't do so. It is looking at the world with a critical lens, which I do think can come with some defiance.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah, I think so. The critical thinking element of it is key of knowing actually when to defy or not to defy too.

[Dax Shepard]

Have they ever done versions of this test? So my assumption about the electrocution test is that the participants were probably students.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

No, they weren't actually.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I guess you just listed some people that weren't students.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah, members of the community came in, they had different races and he ran a bunch of experiments. But there was one experiment that was all women. And in that experiment, same rates of compliance as the other ones. There wasn't a gender difference, surprisingly.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. So what I was curious about as we're sitting here talking and learning about it is I wonder if they looked at age. I have some intuition that as you get older and older and older, you're.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

More likely to be defiant.

[Dax Shepard]

You're more likely to be defiant.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah. Maybe because you have more knowledge. More.

[Dax Shepard]

You have more knowledge, you've lived through more stuff, you see the racket, you care a little less, you've achieved your social status, you have cultural capital, you have raised your kids like anecdotally. Talk to some old people, they'll tell you like it is. Yeah, they're not seventh graders. What's everyone doing? They've somehow transcended that through life experience.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I think that would be interesting. Those rookie officers, if they had that situation again, wouldn't do it. So how can we learn from the experience of other people? Yeah, and that's really fascinating because I was speaking to another rookie officer and he was trained during the time that the incident with George Floyd took place and he thought about it a lot. And so when it came to a situation that he was on this night run with his partner and a few others and they wanted to go and search a garage for stolen bicycles, he said, no, we can't just go in there without permission of the homeowner to go. And they were like, no, we're just gonna go in. And he said no. So he went and knocked on the door and it was about 4:00 in the morning, no answer at all. But the car was there. And the neighbor said, oh, I think he's there, he's just asleep. And so he was the only one as this rookie officer that refused to go in. And the reason he did that wasn't because he was brave or anything like that. He said he was motivated by fear because he saw what happened to the rookie officers. And in his mind, he went to the worst case scenario that we're gonna go in there and we don't have any standing to go in there. There's no blood, there's nobody screaming, no probable cause. Yeah. And so he knew the law and he'd just been trained. And then he was with police officers 20 years older than him saying, you're telling us to do effort, we're going in. He refused to go in because he thought, the homeowner's gonna come out with a gun. Yeah, something terrible's gonna happen over some bicycles. So he said no. And homeowner came down and actually thanked them and everything. So everything was fine. And the ride back to the station for him was just awful. And within an hour, he was called in to see his supervisor. And it was a bit like, read this, you got it wrong. And he was like, no, with all due respect, I knew that we didn't have any standing and we shouldn't have gone in. And he said to me, you know, his childhood stutter came back. But he knew in this job it was gonna be difficult and he was gonna be asked to do some things that weren't right. And because he'd seen the George Floyd thing, anticipating, anticipating, he thought, I'm not gonna be that police officer. But he was ostracized for a bit. He said the whole thing went round the station, even though he was right. But he ultimately got transferred to another unit where he said they were younger officer, had more understanding of the law, and he's very hopeful and very optimistic about a new era of policing. So that was great to hear. But it also shows that learning from other people, I think would be wonderful.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, it's a wonderful book. I so appreciate you coming in. This has been wonderful. Unfortunately, I need a book that says, just fucking get with the program. I need like the opposite book. But I still very much appreciate it. And I live and love so many people that have a really hard time and I can see the amount of weight on them.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I'm thinking, is there a thing as being too defiant? Because I'm not talking about defiance as a knee jerk reaction to the defiance, but more considered defiance. So maybe that's what you need as.

[Monica Padman]

Opposed to just get with the program. She's saying, like, instead, I think what.

[Dax Shepard]

I could do is give a lot more benefit of the doubt to people around me and not assume from my past that everyone's trying to get one over on me. It's all my own baggage.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Healthy amount of skepticism, but not too much.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I have too much. The book is called Defy the Power of no. In a world that demands. Yes. I think so many people will be very empowered by this. And I think you make it very simple to follow how you could start advocating for yourself and staying true to your values.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

I appreciate that.

[Monica Padman]

That's a great topic. It's important.

[Dax Shepard]

It is. Thanks so much for coming.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Thank you. This is wonderful.

[Dax Shepard]

Hi there. This is hermium permium. You like that? That you're gonna love the fact check. Ms. Monica. Steady. Are you ready? What's going on? You don't know that song, do you? Soul to soul.

[Monica Padman]

You sing it a lot.

[Dax Shepard]

I do. But you don't know the source, do you?

[Monica Padman]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

Does it ring a bell when I sing? It doesn't. Right.

[Monica Padman]

I don't know it. I didn't grow up on it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, it was hot and then it disappeared.

[Monica Padman]

One hit wonder.

[Dax Shepard]

Keep on moving, don't stop. They have two.

[Monica Padman]

Two hits wonder.

[Dax Shepard]

Does that ring a bell? Keep on moving, don't stop.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Really nice. Really nice. I guess maybe neo soul dance music. 92.

[Monica Padman]

Ooh. 92. I was five. I wasn't listening to music then.

[Dax Shepard]

You weren't going out dancing much when you were five?

[Monica Padman]

Not that I know of.

[Dax Shepard]

You may notice I'm feeling a little energized because I just blew past one of my goals and I'm just feeling incredible.

[Monica Padman]

What was it?

[Dax Shepard]

Well, I got these bike riding goals.

[Monica Padman]

Yep.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm gonna back up. I had an issue with my bike that I love. It's so beautiful. The chain got sucked into the sprocket. It bent the sprocket. Now it's having a really hard time staying in gear. So when I ride it and I'm putting a lot of force on it, it's hopping gear. It's rough.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

And I bought it used a while ago and I decided on Sunday perhaps sustainable. Sustainable.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. That's a good job.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. Well, then you'll like where this story goes. So then I was like, okay, I've prov. I'm into this. I need to get a bike with clip ons and the whole nine and really commit.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Looked online, was going to go to Pasadena, found a bike Store was looking at all the options. They looked. It's really funny. If you've ever priced a bike. These bikes are imperceptibly the same. One's $15,000 and one is 1,900.

[Monica Padman]

This is like sweaters.

[Dax Shepard]

And I'm like, what? I can't see what's different. I mean, presumably one's carbon fiber and all this ship. So I'm looking at it, and I'm already going through my game plan. Like, I'm going to get there and go, listen, buster, I know you think I'm here to buy an 18, but I'm not. I don't care. I just want to be able to change things.

[Monica Padman]

You had your sword and your belt.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I was all fired up to go to battle with a salesman. And then I thought, okay, my friend Jeff McFarlane, who I love, shout out Jeff McFarlane. He's helped me navigate many things in life. He's not too dissimilar than me. He loves cars. He loves things.

[Monica Padman]

You don't love things. I'm gonna go ahead and say that you love cars, but I don't. I would never classify in motorcycles.

[Dax Shepard]

He loves motorcycles and he loves cars, motor stuff.

[Monica Padman]

But I. I don't think it would be fair for you to say you like things.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. I don't have. I don't. Whatever.

[Monica Padman]

The point is, I'm trying to be nice and say that.

[Dax Shepard]

Thank you so much. I appreciate you defending me to myself, but Jeff competed in Ironmans. Wow. Which there's a huge biking portion.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Knowing him, I just crossed my mind. I'm like, I bet he has a lot of bikes.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Because you have all these different applications. And also, I know that he is downsized. He is 61 now. He's just been appointed a judge. He has been a lawyer.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. It's really exciting.

[Monica Padman]

Congratulations.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I'm so happy for him. So he's gonna be an LA superior judge, which is really cool.

[Monica Padman]

That's awesome.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm gonna go to the swearing end, but at any rate.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, cool.

[Dax Shepard]

I know. He's like. He's like. He's getting older. His kids have moved out. And he's like. He moved into a smaller place. And then I thought, I wonder if he wants to get rid of bikes? So hit him up. Hey, by any chance, do you have any bikes that you want to get rid of? And he said, as a matter of fact, I do. Come over. So I go over and I go into his garage, and there's three hanging on the Wall.

[Monica Padman]

What colors?

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, man. Couple that are like black, carbon fiber, and then this one that is like silver and orange.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Ooh, flames.

[Dax Shepard]

Not flames, but still silver and orange. And as I'm looking at them, I'm realizing I'm in the same situation I was with the bike shop, which is. I know these are. These are to compete in Ironman.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I know what these price tags can be.

[Monica Padman]

Sure.

[Dax Shepard]

So once I look at them, I go, jeff, I realize this is a disaster because I was gonna spend basically blank on a new bike and I don't want to try to rip you off.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And he said, but, dude, the bikes are 10 years old. I don't know how else to get red foam. He's like, I'll give you one for 2,500 bucks. Which is what was going to be my budget for, to be honest. And I was like, okay, well, I'll give you more. The bike was hand built. It's a crazy. He's like, everywhere you go, people are going to want to talk to you about this bike.

[Monica Padman]

Is it the flames one or is it a black one?

[Dax Shepard]

No, no, I got the flames one.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

All to say, I have this insanely beautiful, beautiful hand built bike. Wow. I don't even want to say what it costs. Brand new, it was like a $22,000 bicycle.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

So the thrill I had of getting a bike that expensive that I myself would have never bought.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. Just put a pep in your step.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. So I'm so excited about the bike and I come home and now I need to buy the shoes that go into the clip on pedals. I ordered those. They're coming on Saturday. But I'm too impatient today. I'm like, I. I wonder if I can ride it with the clip on pedals, but just with normal shoes.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

I can't. I just can't wait. Basically.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So this morning I went. That's why I asked if we could record a little later.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, okay. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Said a hunch, I might do this. So I went all the way up to the observatory. Then I went on a road that's closed. You can bike on it. Up to the Hollywood sign, down the backside of the mountain into Burbank.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

To travel town.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Then all the way through Griffith park, past the. The zoo.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Then out onto Los Feliz Boulevard. Past your house. I looked over as I was pedaling. I mean, that was. That was the end of. I was like an hour and 45 minutes in at that point.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, shit.

[Dax Shepard]

And so I was a little. I looked over, and then I was like. I was in a state by that point.

[Monica Padman]

Wow, that's so long.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. So I did that.

[Monica Padman]

You're like a bonafide biker now. Bicyclist now.

[Dax Shepard]

I have to. Because I have this absurdly special bicycle that I got for such a deal.

[Monica Padman]

I understand. This can be the chicken or the egg with items. This is a lot like fashion.

[Dax Shepard]

Sure.

[Monica Padman]

Like you. Sometimes you go on the RealReal Great website. Not sponsored yet.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And there's like a. A very fancy purse, let's say. A purse.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

That, you know, is outrageously expensive.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, was originally ten grand or something.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. Yeah. And then it's there for one grand, one gram. And you. And you start doing this whole, like, oh, my God. Obviously I have to get it.

[Dax Shepard]

You think you're making $9,000? Like, when I left, I was like, oh, my God, I just made $18,000.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Shopping mats. See, you get it. You get it.

[Dax Shepard]

I finally got it.

[Monica Padman]

And then you have the purse, and it's like, well, I have the purse, so I guess I gotta get the scarf so that I'm this person. Like, I'm this person now that carries this bag. So now the rest of me has to fit.

[Dax Shepard]

You have to live up to the item.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. It's a slippery slope.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you remember when my therapist Mark had said that, like, often you change to a complex something, and other times you get something that you have that will force you to grow into it or you'll lose it. And I thought that was interesting.

[Monica Padman]

I like that. That's true. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. So that was really exciting. And then I got back, and then I. And then I lifted weights.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Because I'm going to Detroit, and I have to look as swole as possible because that's where all the guys that wanted to kick my ass live.

[Monica Padman]

You think you're gonna run into them?

[Dax Shepard]

I hope so. Cause I'm ready.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, my God.

[Dax Shepard]

I've already had a fantasy. Cause, you know, Kid Rock picked the fight with me one time.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Years ago. And he was with two buddies. And I did stand up to him. And then it got. It got kind of mitigated or. Or de. Escalated.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I was like, oh, wow. You know, he'll likely be at this game.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, you think? Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

He's from Detroit.

[Monica Padman]

But does he go to all of them?

[Dax Shepard]

I. I don't know enough about him.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Me.

[Dax Shepard]

But it did cross my mind. You got to be ready. Who knows? You Bump into Kid Rocky takes another run at you.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

And I'm ready.

[Monica Padman]

I like that.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

You're allowed.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. This is like Kristen is only greenlit. Yeah, I've only got a couple green lights where fighting's. Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Sure.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

I'm fine with that.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a bummer, actually. Cause I love Kid Rock's music, and I wish he was.

[Monica Padman]

You do?

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah. There's some great stuff.

[Monica Padman]

You love Bawa Ta Ba.

[Dax Shepard]

No, I don't love that one. But he likes Southern rock, and I grew up loving Southern rock.

[Monica Padman]

I know you're trying to find middle ground, but let's be his. No, Bawa Taba was on trl. Not for so long. And I hated it so much.

[Dax Shepard]

I can imagine. It was a very scary.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, it's a white dude with long.

[Dax Shepard]

Blonde hair and a Trans Am.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. He hated me then and he hates me now. But yeah. And that song was just so. It was so aggressive. Like, it's. Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

But I think the Lions are bringing people together. Cause Aaron told me that. Of. Of course. I was talking to Aaron about this. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Is he ready? Is he pumped?

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

He knows. What? Yeah. And he said, oh, yeah. Now. Now Kid Rock and Eminem are friends. They've become friends, and I think because of the Lions.

[Monica Padman]

Oh.

[Dax Shepard]

And Kid Rock had to say. Right. Aaron informed me that they're friends officially, and that Kid Rock said, we don't have the same political views, but we. We have found common ground as friends. So I think Lions are bringing people together.

[Monica Padman]

That's nice. I mean, sports will do that.

[Dax Shepard]

Sports have that power.

[Monica Padman]

They do.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, I have some more updates.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

I did something really cool last night.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

I saw on Instagram. I don't even know how I saw this. It was a video of a man meeting a guy in the 711 parking lot to receive a pizza.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

And then the guy opened it up, and it was the most gorgeous pizza. And then he took a bite, and he's like a pizza reviewer.

[Monica Padman]

Oh.

[Dax Shepard]

And he said, yeah, it's the best pizza in la.

[Monica Padman]

Wait, it's like, black market.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. The guy makes them in his house.

[Monica Padman]

No, I want this.

[Dax Shepard]

I'll turn you on to him. So I see that. So you have to order through. Only through Instagram. There's, like, no number to call. So I DM the guy. The guy is incredibly sweet. He's got a sourdough he uses. And I was like, okay.

[Monica Padman]

And you ate it.

[Dax Shepard]

If I am ever to eat bread, it is very. It's best to Eat sourdough because it has the lowest gluten content.

[Monica Padman]

Got it.

[Dax Shepard]

In fact, I think you can almost make sourdough without any gluten. And it has no brewer's yeast, which is also. Some people like Eric is not gluten insensitive, but he can't have brewer's yeast, which is. It's in everything with gluten virtually, but not sourdough. So I was like, okay. I love the idea of meat in a parking lot and a guy opens his trunk. It's very my drug deals back from the old days. So I arranged this whole thing. I was supposed to get on Wednesday the night first fires broke out. Oh, that was my first appointment.

[Monica Padman]

Got it.

[Dax Shepard]

And mind you, it's at 6 and I gotta drive to Sunland. Which for people who don't know, driving to Sunland during Russia.

[Monica Padman]

Did you drive to the east side?

[Dax Shepard]

No. No.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow.

[Dax Shepard]

He's got a dude that works for him that drives a very short distance from wherever he's making them to this side.

[Monica Padman]

They gotta stay hot.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, they're piping hot. And he tells you take a bite of. And he wants you to take a bite of a very specific pie.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my God.

[Dax Shepard]

So I got the four different varieties he makes and he said take a bite of the hot piggy immediately.

[Monica Padman]

Hot piggy.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

What's on?

[Dax Shepard]

Pepperoni with I think a little bit of hot honey. Oh, Monica. So.

[Monica Padman]

Oh my God, that sounds so good.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so this kind of worked out brilliantly. Lincoln had a soccer game in West Lake.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Which is virtually like driving to Santa Barbara. Westlake is very far away.

[Monica Padman]

God.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, so we left at 2. Took an hour to get to the game.

[Monica Padman]

Yesterday.

[Dax Shepard]

Yesterday. Then watched the game. I think that's an hour and a half. Get back in the car at 4:30. And now we gotta get to Sunland by 6. Which is not gonna be an issue. I think it's only supposed to take an hour and nine minutes. It said on my.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, this is miserable. Oh my God. Thank God you got pizza reward.

[Dax Shepard]

Side note, all of Simi Valley didn't have any power.

[Monica Padman]

Still.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, so yes, I thought still. But this morning. Not even this morning. Seven minutes ago I was in the shower. My hair is still damp. If you don't believe me.

[Monica Padman]

I didn't. I couldn't tell cause your hat.

[Dax Shepard]

I didn't look like you didn't believe me. So I had to show you. Thank you. I was like, God, maybe they actually turned the power off intentionally. Cuz it was the last day of the Santa Anas. That would have been smart. So I don't know if they had lost their power or they preemptively got it, turned it off, which would have been very bright. Couldn't help but notice because it's a strip mall after strip mall. Nothing's open.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Anyways, Lincoln's got a pee. I'm telling you, way too much. Try to stop at a Starbucks. Someone blew up both Starbucks bathrooms. Both were inoperable from duty. So then they had to go to the grocery store.

[Monica Padman]

A bomb.

[Dax Shepard]

I mean, they. They painted the place. Okay, so it's a whole saga to get to the toilet in this strip mall in Sunland. Then I was getting nervous. Oh, my God, we're gonna be late. I thought I was gonna get there a half hour early. The girls were gonna get impatient. I was gonna have to put them in an Uber to send them home while I waited for the pizza. But as it turned out, it took so long to find a bathroom. We rolled in at like 5:59. The appointment was at 6. 6:00. Guy in a black car pulls up. I get out. Fucking cash. Pay. Get these four pies. Get in the truck. I did exactly as he instructed. First one was.

[Monica Padman]

Did you bring your gun?

[Dax Shepard]

I didn't have my gun.

[Monica Padman]

Just in case.

[Dax Shepard]

I gotta tell you, it was, as I said, it was very reminiscent of the old days in a very good and healthy way. It's like I'm meeting a guy in a parking lot that I don't know. I'm gonna pay cash, and then I'm. Something really good is on the other end.

[Monica Padman]

You're still getting that high. But it's healthy.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a high that it comes with no cost.

[Monica Padman]

Does your voice change when you talk to them?

[Dax Shepard]

I'm here for four pieces. Like that?

[Monica Padman]

No, like, more like you're trying to be serious.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I'll be like six. It was all on text.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, wow. Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

No, I was very nice to the guy. There was another guy there that was also picking up some pies, which is really funny. It's like me, two dudes, me and the drug dealer at the same time. That's funny. Get in the car, open it up right away. It's so beautiful. The pepperonis are so tiny.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, I love those tiny ones dished.

[Dax Shepard]

In the cooking process. And there's oil in them. And I can see the honey and I take a bite, and by God, it's fucking so good. Oh, you got a picture of it. Oh, wow, that looks.

[Monica Padman]

Baby. Oh, my God. I'M starving.

[Dax Shepard]

I got the girls that pineapple Hawaiian which was outrageous. I don't even like Hawaiian pizza, but that was my second favorite. We got umami hot pepper pizza which was a million peppers and it was hot. Very good. And then the hot piggy and I said umami and then. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Is that there cheese? Is that just like a cheese one?

[Dax Shepard]

That's a great question. What's on the upper far right?

[Monica Padman]

It looks kind of like a margarita.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I should ask him about that cuz I'm going back.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Looks so good.

[Monica Padman]

It looks so crispy.

[Dax Shepard]

It's great.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, I'm going to have to go. Looks delicious.

[Dax Shepard]

So the car ride home is long From Sunland at 6:00 on a weekday.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I ate and then, well, Kristen had two pieces of hot piggy. I the remainder. So I ate three quarters of the hot piggy.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I ate a third of the Hawaiian.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

And then I had a slice of hot pepper and a slice of. So I had like a pizza and a half or two pizzas.

[Monica Padman]

Wow, that's a lot of pizza.

[Dax Shepard]

No wonder I tackled that hill today and kept going.

[Monica Padman]

It's probably because you had all the energy, all those carbs, fuel, glycogen.

[Dax Shepard]

So that was really fun. That. That was. I really liked it. That was a fun experience for the whole family. Being in that parking lot, watching the guy roll in.

[Monica Padman]

Very fun.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Yum.

[Dax Shepard]

Lot of updates. Are you watching Bad Sisters season two?

[Monica Padman]

No, I didn't watch the first season.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, you didn't?

[Monica Padman]

I started it. It seems so good. I'm sure it's fantastic. I'm sure it's fantastic.

[Dax Shepard]

What happened?

[Monica Padman]

You know, I sometimes don't like British content. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. I guess this is Irish in this kind of thing.

[Monica Padman]

I know, but it's the same. It gives me the feeling they would not like that. But yes, as far as the feeling I get, it's the same. And can you articulate? No, it's.

[Dax Shepard]

It's the feeling.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I've talked about it a lot on here. The only person who really gets it, gets it is Anthony. He can always. He can always tell me. He's like, that's gonna give you the feeling. Don't watch it. And then I watch it and it is exactly right. He like knows.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And it's just really hard to explain. There are a few things that I know that trigger it. Suicide stuff often triggers it. Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

I don't think there's any suicide, but continue.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. But British and I guess now Irish stuff often Does. Which is weird. Cause I love London so much. I love it.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I don't get the feeling when I'm there, it's all like media. It's movies and TV and stuff. And then the first time I identified this feeling was Wonder Years when I was young.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh. That's the origin of the feeling, the of original feeling.

[Monica Padman]

I don't know, I just feel. It just makes me feel really, like, really uncomfortable. And Anthony says things that are overly earnest.

[Dax Shepard]

Did you even like Fleabag, though?

[Monica Padman]

I did. I loved it. So some things make their way through. I don't know. It's hard.

[Dax Shepard]

It's hard.

[Monica Padman]

But I started Bad Sisters and it gave me the feeling, so I had to stop.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

I'm making a new mocktail that my friend Maddie taught me about. It's called. It doesn't have a name, but it is seltzer water. I've been using Pan Perrier and a little bit of 100% tangerine juice.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, is that hard to find? 100% tangerine juice.

[Monica Padman]

The brand is Natalie's Shout Out. Shout out Rob. And it isn't that hard to find. I found it at Lazy Acres.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, great. Okay. 100%.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Is it rich?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. It's not sweet at all.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, it's not?

[Monica Padman]

No. It's very citrusy.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Crisp, clean.

[Monica Padman]

Nice. That's nice. Matty invented it. I need to give her.

[Dax Shepard]

Is this seltzer and 100% tangerine juice.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. What ratio?

[Monica Padman]

I just do a splash of the juice.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

And mainly the seltzer.

[Dax Shepard]

And how many of those will you have? Ice cubes.

[Monica Padman]

No ice cubes.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

But I do freeze the glass.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, great.

[Monica Padman]

If you freeze. I do. I ventize it.

[Dax Shepard]

And is it satiating your cocktail urge?

[Monica Padman]

It's helping.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, great.

[Monica Padman]

It's helping.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

What's been interesting is. So I think we talked about it. I'm trying not to drink Monday through Thursday.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Then the world got really turned upside down.

[Dax Shepard]

Uh huh. Topsy turvy.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. And I. I said fuck that. So I drank last week. I think Wednesday and Thursday.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And Saturday and Sunday. I think I forget all the days, but I definitely didn't stick to my thing.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

But what has been interesting. And you told me to do this in my journal. I've been journaling to like. It's a good place to tally and mark.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yes, yes.

[Monica Padman]

So I've been doing that and it is in my head when I'm about to drink. Like, well, tomorrow I'm gonna have to put zero or you have to write one.

[Dax Shepard]

Day one.

[Monica Padman]

Well, I.

[Dax Shepard]

You'll go day zero.

[Monica Padman]

I do zero.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

But it's like, back it. Nothing. You know? And I think about that, and even just the thinking about it for a second is nice. It makes me really make the decision, like, do I really want it?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. I think it makes you just acknowledge there'll be a tomorrow.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I will have to account for this decision.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And sometimes the answer's yeah, I don't care if I have.

[Dax Shepard]

Who cares? I love writing.

[Monica Padman]

Cause yours are fun. And other times, I'm like, I. I don't really. I don't really need it. I don't really want it. So overall, even though I've broken my goal, I am drinking much less.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay, great.

[Monica Padman]

Which is helpful.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm going to make a small pitch for not zero.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Because it is the morning.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And it is day one of being sober.

[Monica Padman]

I see.

[Dax Shepard]

It's not day zero. Day zero doesn't exist. Exist.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

So day day one, it's. This is the date, and this is day one. And I'm not gonna drink today. This is a one. You see, now, if you write zero in some weird way, there's almost nothing to lose because if you drink later that night. But when you write one, you're also committing to. This is. This is day one of not drinking. Does that make any sense mentally?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, it does.

[Dax Shepard]

It's a commitment. It does because I'm on this date. Olive had one day of not drinking, which is true. I didn't drink that day.

[Monica Padman]

That's day one in the morning, though.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. So you gotta make it through the night. But it's true. So long as you don't drink that night.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I think that makes sense.

[Dax Shepard]

And then it's a little more positive.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I guess for me, it's not. It's because I'm not trying to be sober. I'm trying to get to day four. Really?

[Dax Shepard]

I see what you're doing.

[Monica Padman]

I'm mainly just like, you're saying I.

[Dax Shepard]

Have zero days of support. Sobriety in the morning.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. I. It feels a little. I don't know why. It feels a little, like, intense to call it sobriety also. Because that's really what I mean.

[Dax Shepard]

Sober. What do you want to say? Clean? No drinky poo.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like you have one day of no drink.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. I didn't drink last night.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

That's what it is. It's like, yeah, that. That I didn't drink. I did drink, so I'm at zero days as opposed to one day that I. I didn't successfully.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

Anyway, what else? Anything else? Let's see. Are you reading any new books?

[Dax Shepard]

I'm listening to We Contain Multitudes. Ed Yong's book. As I told you, I was listening to Immense World over and over again. And then I decided to go and try the first book, Bernie Owens's first, but the previous bestseller. Oh, it's mind blowing.

[Monica Padman]

Oh God.

[Dax Shepard]

It's all about microbes and your microbiome. Biome. Thank you. Microbiome.

[Monica Padman]

Wow.

[Dax Shepard]

Your body has so many. It says £9. Did I already tell you this? The average person has nine pounds of microbes in them. And there's. There are many animals that couldn't even exist without the microbes. They would die. Right. The microbes perform all these tasks that they really. They've evolved with the microbes and they, they themselves can't even exist. Then there's this, all this weird stuff where they raise these rats completely free of microbes, which is almost impossible. But they're born into a hermetically sealed case and they don't ever accumulate any microbes and they can eat however they want and they don't gain any weight.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Doesn't matter.

[Monica Padman]

That's wild.

[Dax Shepard]

And then they introduce different microbes and then they'll eat way less food and gain weight. Way more weight.

[Monica Padman]

Huh?

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And then all the health stuff, like there's so much health stuff.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And then talks about, you know, this kind of scary proposition that you're supposed to get all, as we know, all these microbes from your mom's vagina as you come out.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

And then the other huge source is breast milk.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

And a third of children in the US are now born cesarean sections. So they're not getting the vaginal microbes.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

And then if they also don't breast breastfeed.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

You know, they're, they're ripe for some issues. A lot of allergies and a lot of different things.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I went to my acupuncturist, that's the first thing she asked about.

[Dax Shepard]

Your gut health.

[Monica Padman]

No, if I was vaginal. Vaginally.

[Dax Shepard]

That was her first question.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah. And I was.

[Dax Shepard]

And you were breastfed.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

I was not.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, you were.

[Dax Shepard]

I have an autoimmune disease and allergies. That's right. And heroin. Don't forget the heroin.

[Monica Padman]

Not to get controversial show, but I, I do, I feel like I'm pro animal testing. Oh yeah, I know, but people hate that.

[Dax Shepard]

They. Yeah. Some people hate it. Some people.

[Monica Padman]

Like, how will we learn anything?

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly. If you subtract animal testing from our.

[Monica Padman]

History, we just lost a lot of listeners. But I think.

[Dax Shepard]

No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think it's a very fringe group that do not want mice to be tested on.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Now, a lot of us.

[Monica Padman]

I'm a mouse, so I can say that.

[Dax Shepard]

Yes. It's kind of preposterous to think you should test on humans instead of mice, which you can. They procreate so quickly. Their lifetime is very short. Anyways, blah, blah, blah. Now, I think it's a sliding scale. I think probably most of us don't want to see chimpanzees tested on.

[Monica Padman]

Right, right. And I guess it's a scale of what you're testing. Like, I know, like the beauty products. That's bad.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And I do think that's bad.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

But, like, learning about.

[Dax Shepard]

What microbes would eliminate obesity before you'd ever even need Ozempic or would eliminate allergies or eliminate. Of course we must do that.

[Monica Padman]

I know.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I don't think any rational person has that point of view.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. People have all kinds of points of view.

[Dax Shepard]

They do, they do. And they're entitled. We have a country that has free speech, so you can think anything you want. That's right.

[Monica Padman]

I'm rewatching Sex and the City, and it's been a long time since I watched it. And it is funny. There are some things that are very ahead of its time, like some of the things they're talking about, and I don't know, it's been really interesting to watch. But also separately, they have two episodes where they're in la. And it is so funny because they're, like, pointing out the differences between LA and New York, and it's so cliche.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. New Yorkers love to do this, certainly with Annie Hall.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, exactly. They're being so extreme. But then I had to recognize, like, they make a joke about this guy. Miranda comes and visits his. Her old friend who now lives in la, writes for a TV show and used to live in New York. And he's really positive. And she's like, what's. What happened to you? We used to hate on everybody. And he was like, yeah. I just. I'm so much. I am so much happier here.

[Dax Shepard]

I know somehow people don't. They distrust that. Or it's like, fake.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Big thing on the east coast is calling someone fake is a huge thing. Remember, like, in even Jersey Shore to be fake was as low as you can get. I don't even hear people in LA ever say that as a pejorative or a put down.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, I say that about people. Some sector of the South.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, would it be more. Okay. Do you think it'd be more accurate to say, like, insincere? Aren't you really saying, like, a lot of the hospitality feels obligatory and insincere? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

But that's just another word for it, I guess.

[Dax Shepard]

Fake is a total character assassination. It's like, they're fake.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, they're a fake. I think that's what they mean. But anyway, it was just so funny because he was like, I'm so much happier here. And then he ordered. He took her to this, like, macrobiotic sandwich shop, you know, some place that I was like, oh, that does sound good.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

And then he was like, let's go on a hike. And that was like the. The culmination of the joke.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, okay, right.

[Monica Padman]

Let's go on a hike. And I was like, yeah, I'm. I'm here, I'm indoctrinated.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

It's funny.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. We're into health or being positive to health. We're feeling good and eating good and exercise. And that's true.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, I don't know why anyone would be mad about it.

[Dax Shepard]

Exactly. I can't really lock into the why. That's frustrating for people, I think, like, the Woody Allen joke, if I have it remembered correctly, is like, in la, their definition of culture is the right to turn on red, which is great.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I like it. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

We have no history.

[Monica Padman]

I mean, we do, but that's not.

[Dax Shepard]

Fair to say to the indigenous folks or the Spanish missionaries that were here. But, you know, we don't have. We don't have New York's deep cultural history.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, I suppose.

[Dax Shepard]

But once we got in the mix, boy, we really started shaping it.

[Monica Padman]

I was thinking about when we did our first fact check of the year while you were gone, and we were doing it virtual and I was saying that I was. This is the first time I was calling LA home.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And not Georgia home. Even though we realized I was calling everything home.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

But in light of what's been happening the past couple weeks, I've been thinking about that and.

[Dax Shepard]

And, like, maybe leaving.

[Monica Padman]

No. God, no.

[Dax Shepard]

I think a lot of people are debating whether they're going to leave or not.

[Monica Padman]

I under. I understand why, but I don't feel like that at all. I feel I feel, like, doubled down.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, great.

[Monica Padman]

In that I love it here and I'm so happy to be here and grateful. And it is funny. This is not to disparage any other place and how they handle situations, but in a lot of places when bad things happen, there's a lot of requests for prayers and for God to intervene. Yes. And for, you know, meeting at the church and X, Y and Z. And that's great. Like, I have nothing against that. We didn't have that. I didn't see. I saw maybe, like, one person say it.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, John Mayer said he's gonna say a prayer.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. He said, I don't do this, but yeah, yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

This will be my first time doing it.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, exactly. And, like, some people I do know are religious, and we were. But overall, the city, no one was.

[Dax Shepard]

Saying, no one thought the solution was going to come from a border.

[Monica Padman]

No. And. But what is so heartening is, like, I've never seen a city mobilized so fast. No one was asking for prayers. They were asking for meet. Here, give this, do this. It was instruction and it was specific. It was action. And I really. I was like, yeah, yeah, that's. That's in alignment.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

With me. So anyway. All right, okay.

[Dax Shepard]

Fact.

[Monica Padman]

Let's get factual, let's get facts.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, one last thing. Many people in the comments suggested this, and I want to tell them we had already done it. So a lot of people were like, invite Nikki Glaser on. I just want to say we. We. The second after we had that long talk on the previous fact check, we were like, we should definitely invite her.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

So we have invited her.

[Monica Padman]

You even said. You said, set it on.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, I did.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, you did. And then we did. And we're trying.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare. We are supported by Lenovo and Intel. If your computer could use an upgrade, we've got your solution. Lenovo and intel have joined forces to engineer the best laptops in the industry. Cool.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Cool.

[Dax Shepard]

Quiet, thin and powerful. Lenovo Aura Edition AI PCs boast best in class, battery life and astonishing graphics. They've thought of everything so you can focus on things that you actually want to do. Working in a cafe. Shield Mode guards your privacy. Taking a meeting. Collaboration Mode optimizes your camera. They also have a Smart Share feature which lets you transfer photos from your phone to the Lenovo Aura Edition PC with a simple tap. No more waiting for uploads. You'll get that photo on your computer in seconds. How cool is that? And if you need support, they offer smart care. Elite support teams will help rapidly resolve any issues. And they're available 24, 7, 365 days a year. Whatever you want to create, it's possible on your Intel AI PC. Learn more about Lenovo Aura Edition AI [e-mail] Aura.

[Monica Padman]

Okay, so this is for Sunita.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Which I just thought was a great episode. I love her message.

[Dax Shepard]

I experienced it.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, let's hear.

[Dax Shepard]

I just experienced it. Yeah. I was getting blood drawn and the nurse basically told me that the doctor that they work for forced them to get a flu shot and they didn't want it. And I thought, yeah, here's a nurse who is very qualified opinion. It's not like they're ignorant. If they've. They've probably made some analysis and probably she would have liked to have said no somehow.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. It's really tricky. And especially in that situation with her. I don't know the details of how that works, but he's her superior, I would assume.

[Dax Shepard]

Employer. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. And that. It's so. It's so hard. It's. It's so much easier said than done.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

To stick up for yourself when your job is on the line or when your employer is upset with you or. I mean, there's just things that you. That honestly put you into. Fight or flight.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

And it's.

[Monica Padman]

It's intense.

[Dax Shepard]

I find myself. Myself. I don't want to say it's hard because it's not. And again, I'm the beneficiary of having not said no. And it haunted me for the rest of my life. So that's like. That's a huge gift for me for the rest of my life. I just don't, you know, And I have so many options.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, if this person is pressuring me to get this shot, I don't want it. Like, I have options. I can go to another doctor. I can. You know, I'm gifted with. With a ton of luxuries. And so. And even me, I'm like, okay, we gotta say no and we gotta hold our ground. Like, you know, it's a hard.

[Monica Padman]

It's really hard. I too, have been thinking a lot about what are my true beliefs and values? Kind of what she said. She's. You know, she said, think about your values. Then ask yourself, what would a person with these values do?

[Dax Shepard]

Yes.

[Monica Padman]

Not what I do, but really, you know, force yourself to sort of be objective about who you want to be.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And what actions match that. And. And, yeah, I think it's good to know the parts of yourself that you're unwilling to forego for peace, really. I mean, that's what it. That. That's what it can come down. Down to. And that sucks. But at the end of the day, all you have is you and. And those beliefs and those values. So, like, you really just can't let people take them.

[Dax Shepard]

Also, a good moment to check your own pushiness as a person. You know, like when you're in a position. People do with their kids all the time. Yeah, I watch kids. People force their kids to do these things.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

That really don't have much of a significant impact on their life. It's how they did it, and they would like it done that way. Yeah, it's very tempting, but, you know, and probably, you know, a lot of people are bosses.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And it's very tempting and easy to want to keep pushing. So I think it's also a call to every one of us who are in charge when we have that role that we check our own pushiness.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Also for people in charge to think about why, like, why there's a pushiness or why you're forcing the nurse to get the thing. I think that's also an element of control, and maybe there's a feeling of lack of control, and so there's a grasping for it.

[Dax Shepard]

I think a lot of people feel this way, and I have felt this way as a parent many times. Like, you feel like if you let this go, it's going to be a domino effect and then you'll not have any say in anything.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

[Dax Shepard]

It can be kind of misleading in that moment.

[Monica Padman]

Totally. So, yeah. I thought this was a great, great episode. Okay. She was talking about visas, the types of visas I wanted to go through because I was sort of dumb enough to think that you could just, like, ask to come here and it would take a while, but that, like, you could.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

And you can't. You have to have a reason to come. You have the student visa, tourist visa, business visa, transit visa. So that's a temporary visa that allows travelers to pass through a country for a limited time.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Work visa, immigrant visa, a visa for people traveling to a country to live permanent, permanently. So I don't really know.

[Dax Shepard]

Is that kind of like.

[Monica Padman]

That's kind of what I thought.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Like, I just like. I like it there. I would like to live there.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. But I don't think we have that here in the United States.

[Dax Shepard]

Really.

[Monica Padman]

I don't think so.

[Dax Shepard]

We have to because we have tons of legal Latino immigrants that didn't get here on an H1B or student.

[Monica Padman]

They probably got a work visa. Maybe not H1B, but there's different kinds. I think H1B is specific to tech. Maybe.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Sure.

[Monica Padman]

Let me see, actually, because. Okay, now I'm curious.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Oh, God. So many news articles.

[Dax Shepard]

How would you feel about one that was just hot?

[Monica Padman]

Hot? If you're hot, you can. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Like, of course, if you're incredibly intelligent and have a skill set that would benefit the country. Come on in. We want that. Clearly.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

What about hot? If there was. That was just like. You're a smoke show.

[Monica Padman]

I'm for that.

[Dax Shepard]

Let's keep this place.

[Monica Padman]

If you're single.

[Dax Shepard]

Gorgeous people. If you're single. That's a great point. Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

If you're single and hard.

[Dax Shepard]

Because then that way you could. You could.

[Monica Padman]

You could procreate.

[Dax Shepard]

You could procreate and you could lift.

[Monica Padman]

That's right. Bring people up.

[Dax Shepard]

The whole. Yeah, the whole of Americans.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the girl who was half Indian.

[Dax Shepard]

Right, right, right.

[Monica Padman]

We need more of that.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. H1B status is available to a person who has been offered a temporary professional position by a US employment employer. Bachelor's degree or higher in a related area is the minimum educational level. Okay. So it's not tech, it's just any with the degree. I guess that. Duh. Because my. My dad and my grandpa got H1BS.

[Dax Shepard]

But engineering we were not.

[Monica Padman]

That would be tech. But my grandpa was a professor.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

All right.

[Monica Padman]

Although he came on a student visa.

[Dax Shepard]

I guess, and just stuck around. Got a job as a professor.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Then got a work visa.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, exactly. Then became a citizen, Then became very patriotic.

[Dax Shepard]

Then became xenophobic.

[Monica Padman]

No, never. He did become very patriotic.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, I bet.

[Monica Padman]

Okay. Anyway, so can't just come here.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. Can't. See, I like the weather and that's why I'm going.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Swatty. Swatty is the nerdy term. It's the term for nerd In British. In British English. And it started as an army slang meaning sweaty. I think it's a variation of sweaty. But slang referring to hard work.

[Dax Shepard]

And we're nervous about it. Cause it sounds very much like a derivative of swastika and twat. Antwat.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

But also, we think a swatty potty would be a very cool invention.

[Monica Padman]

Invention for the Brits.

[Dax Shepard]

For the Brits. For the brainiac Brits.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Stanford Prison Expansion Experiment. The guy's name is William Randolph. I wanted to see if I could remember it. Yeah. And I can't. Again.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, that's okay. He's not relevant. The takeaway is what's relevant.

[Monica Padman]

No, don't say that about him.

[Dax Shepard]

Philip Zimbardo. Zombardo Zimbardo.

[Monica Padman]

It sounds like a football coach. It sounds exactly like Anthony's last name.

[Dax Shepard]

And a football coach.

[Monica Padman]

And a football coach.

[Dax Shepard]

And a Cubs pitcher.

[Monica Padman]

Carlos Zambrano. Okay, so between the three of us, why don't we remember it and it comes.

[Dax Shepard]

I've already declared. I'm not even committed to mem. I'm committed to knowing about the Stanford prison experiment and what the result was. That's important for me to know. It's not important for me to know.

[Monica Padman]

If everyone remembered Armchair Expert, but they didn't know it was you.

[Dax Shepard]

That's fine. That's fine.

[Monica Padman]

Really? Yeah. I guess you're dead, so. Who cares?

[Dax Shepard]

I'm dead.

[Monica Padman]

Rob, can you. Can you join me in a pursuit to remember his name? Yeah. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Maybe we can write it. It somewhere and, like, touch it every.

[Monica Padman]

Time we leave to memorize it. Yeah. We'll see it, though, and.

[Dax Shepard]

And commit it. So I'm going to have to ask you guys sp randomly.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. All right.

[Monica Padman]

Okay.

[Dax Shepard]

He recently died.

[Monica Padman]

Just recently.

[Dax Shepard]

October 2024.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Whoa.

[Dax Shepard]

Whoa.

[Monica Padman]

I feel bad for saying he's dead. I mean, he is, but just recently.

[Dax Shepard]

You feel bad for being right.

[Monica Padman]

I almost was wrong.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

You feel bad.

[Dax Shepard]

Feel bad for assuming he was dead.

[Monica Padman]

I'm. I care. Charles Dunn. What's the guy's name on the podcast again?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Christopher Lyden.

[Monica Padman]

Christopher Lyden.

[Dax Shepard]

Christopher Lydon. Oh, God.

[Monica Padman]

All right. Okay. The Greek poet that said, under duress, we don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training. That's attributed to Bruce Lee, but it was a great Greek poet. Archalochus. I don't know if that's how you say it, but.

[Dax Shepard]

And you're not gonna try to memorize that, right?

[Monica Padman]

No.

[Dax Shepard]

See, this is interesting. It's very arbitrary.

[Monica Padman]

Fine.

[Dax Shepard]

I will.

[Monica Padman]

Archalochus. All. Archipelago.

[Dax Shepard]

Archipelago.

[Monica Padman]

Everything. I mean, I like to remember everything I can.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. If I have to choose whether I know an individual's name or I know a concept, I'm gonna definitely favor the concept. Cause that's gonna help me process the reality.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Someone's name's not gonna help me do anything.

[Monica Padman]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Other than seem well read at a party.

[Monica Padman]

I think I'm. I think overall, I'm pretty good at names.

[Dax Shepard]

It is impressive.

[Monica Padman]

Thank you.

[Dax Shepard]

I am often impressed that you remember someone's name, actually. More than I'm impressed. I'm just grateful because I'm trying to reference the person and I don't. I don't have their name.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. Hung Van Gogh. That's a name I know.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh wow. What's that? Who's he?

[Monica Padman]

He's a makeup artist.

[Dax Shepard]

Oh, Hung Van Gogh.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. He's great. I watch his videos. All right. Do engineers over index on disagreeability? According to research and common perception, engineers are often considered to be the lower end of the agreeableness. Geez. Agreeableness spectrum on personality tests, meaning they may sometimes be perceived as disagreeable due to their strong focus on logic, data and problem solving, which can sometimes lead to a more direct or critical approach when discussing ideas or solutions.

[Dax Shepard]

You think it's kind of just a long way to say because they're generally right.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. No, sometimes. Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

I think that's really what it is.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

It says.

[Monica Padman]

However, this is not always the case and individual personalities vary greatly within the engineering field. They AI had to say that.

[Dax Shepard]

I'm glad they put that caveat in. I'd hate for anyone to.

[Monica Padman]

I do think though there is. My dad and I have talked about this because he.

[Dax Shepard]

He's disagreeable.

[Monica Padman]

He's disagreeable. He's my.

[Dax Shepard]

His stepfather. Both stepfathers that were engineers were highly disagreeable.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. He is picking apart everything.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. He's looking for a flaw.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly.

[Dax Shepard]

His job is literally to look for a structural flaw.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. Or things will collapse and that will be on his shoulders. People will die. So he and I, we talked about this once. I was like, is it chicken or the egg? Were you drawn to the career because that's your personality or has that job made you like this? We don't really know.

[Dax Shepard]

I think egg.

[Monica Padman]

I do too. He thinks B.

[Dax Shepard]

Well, yeah. It implies more growth on his end. Well, but it's more flattering. We like to think we. We achieve this thing, not that we were just born with it.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

All of us.

[Dax Shepard]

You know your dad's not unique.

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

No, I know.

[Monica Padman]

Well, he is. He. I've been kind of like, what are you doing? Cause the sim's been rowdy.

[Dax Shepard]

Uh huh. But that's all part of it.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, it's part of it.

[Dax Shepard]

There's no highs without the lows.

[Monica Padman]

That's true. And then yesterday I was doing connections and one of the answers was big. Mr. Big from Sex and the City as I was watching it.

[Dax Shepard]

Right.

[Monica Padman]

So he. Trying to make up for it a little bit.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. Just saying. Hang in there. I'm still. I'm still watching.

[Monica Padman]

Still here yeah. Anyway. Yeah, he. If you talk to my uncles, they. My dad doesn't really let them talk too much about this, but they like have all these stories about my dad. Like, I think he was more like my brother.

[Dax Shepard]

No kidding?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

Really?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I don't believe that.

[Monica Padman]

Well, they knew him when I didn't, like, as a kid.

[Dax Shepard]

Are they older?

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, they're older.

[Dax Shepard]

That's why I don't trust him.

[Monica Padman]

He's the youngest.

[Dax Shepard]

Right. Older brothers that you can't trust their opinion. Well. Because they see him as a baby and incompetent and all these things. And all they're really seeing is an age difference, but they don't realize they're single.

[Monica Padman]

Well, that's a little bit fair. But there's also personality traits that come with being the youngest.

[Dax Shepard]

Don't start with little brothers.

[Monica Padman]

Little bro brother syndrome.

[Dax Shepard]

I do not have little brother syndrome.

[Monica Padman]

They have a version of his personality that I don't know, that I never saw. And I think that's interesting and sort of lends itself to maybe he did grow into a lot of these traits.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Or. Or they just got sharpened, probably.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. I'm gonna go along with whatever. I just. I really feel in my heart he's. He's exactly who he was.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, that's probably right. That's probably right.

[Dax Shepard]

My dad was always a salesman.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

My dad was born to sell shit.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

He didn't grow at. I mean, he got better at it.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

But he was a salesman. He wanted an extra slice of cake. He figured out how, you know, he. He's charming. He got what he needed.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. And I guess you can tell down the line, right. Like, I have a lot of those qualities that he has and I'm not an engineer, so I probably got it from him.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

Which means it's just.

[Dax Shepard]

You're disagreeable. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Monica Padman]

I'm certainly with him. I'm doing what Sunita tells me to do.

[Dax Shepard]

You're already. You're already at the finish line for that. Can you think of times that though, you did go along with stuff?

[Dr. Sunita Puri]

Yes.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay.

[Monica Padman]

Yes. I think I spent a lot of my life not going along with. I mean, going along with stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

Because you define yourself as being some that never succame to peer pressure.

[Monica Padman]

Exactly. That is true. But I was walking a line. Right. Because I also. I wasn't gonna add a dinner table with my friends whose parents had much different political views than me or even just things I thought were wrong.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah.

[Monica Padman]

If I'm at a dinner with them I'm not gonna say. Oh, actually, I disagree. Like, I'm going to agree. So I can maintain that friendship. Kind of like you. Who you. For different reasons. Much different reasons. You feel like you are rewarded for speaking up for yourself.

[Dax Shepard]

Yeah. And I just. As an ethos, I'd rather have been wrong and I'd rather be the victim of a bad decision. So long as it's my decision.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And some people don't feel that way, which is totally fair.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah.

[Dax Shepard]

And I just do. I would rather. Again, if I'm gonna die in a car, I better be holding the steering wheel.

[Monica Padman]

Right.

[Dax Shepard]

No fucking way am I letting you know.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah. And I think I have a lot of that too. For these other reasons. Like I'm not gonna.

[Dax Shepard]

And also, we might just genetically be this way.

[Monica Padman]

Maybe again. So hard to.

[Dax Shepard]

It's hard to know.

[Monica Padman]

Hard to know.

[Dax Shepard]

It's hard to know.

[Monica Padman]

Anyhow, that's it.

[Dax Shepard]

Okay. Well, I loved her.

[Monica Padman]

Yeah, me too.

[Dax Shepard]

I hope I didn't make her do anything she didn't wanna do.

[Monica Padman]

Hopefully she would stood up for herself. What if you.

[Dax Shepard]

What if I was manipulative? And I was. Yeah. And I planted tests.

[Monica Padman]

Let's start doing weird stuff.

[Dax Shepard]

Don't miss out on trying that coffee. It's the world's best.

[Monica Padman]

Drink it.

[Dax Shepard]

Drink it now.

[Monica Padman]

Why haven't you drank it? Drink it.

[Dax Shepard]

A man made that. And on a. Brought it here on a bicycle. He wrote it. 60 miles to bring you this coffee. All right. Love you.

[Monica Padman]

Love you.

[Dax Shepard]

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 the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short [e-mail] survey. New year, new resolutions, and this year on the Best Idea yet podcast, we're revealing the untold origin stories of the products you're obsessed with. And we promise you have never heard these before. Ever wonder how the iconic Reese's Peanut Butter cup was invented? Because it was by an accident. HB Reese, a former frog salesman. True story. Stumbled upon the idea after accidentally burning a batch of peanuts.

[Monica Padman]

Classic.

[Dax Shepard]

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