Dave Eggers (writer and publisher)

23:21Vacations were Kentucky, you know, to see a cave. Mammoth Cave? Or the lesser caves. A lot of them. But, you know, I've been in the Bay Area, what, more or less 34 years now. It really is, to me, the colors, the palette of a place is really important. The topography and the landscape. It's an incredibly dramatic city. It's so dramatic. And then you really only have to go, if you go over the bridge and into the headlands, It's exactly three and a half miles from basically the center of the city. And you are in wild open land all the way up to Oregon, basically. There's nothing on the road. There's redwoods directly on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

23:57Near woods, the oldest trees there are. And I never thought I would stay in one place for so long. It's not really my way of thinking about moving through the world. But I haven't been to a prettier urban environment. How quickly do you find your footing as a writer there? You put out might pretty quickly after, yeah? Day one. No one will tell you no in the Bay Area. That's the great thing and the burden of it. Every stupid idea happens because there's no friction. You already knew you were going to write when you got there? No. Oh. I had no clue. I got there, and the first summer I spent painting furniture.

24:34I thought maybe I would decorate furniture for a living. Sure. And then I worked as a temp until I was 28, more or less. You know, if you needed a graphic design, if you wanted somebody to make a lawn sign, I would do your graphic design for that. We had clients all over the city. And then we put out might at the same time. But I didn't make a living as a writer until I was 30. So not Berkeley the school. No, but Berkeley. The area. Okay, I got a little confused. I thought you went to Berkeley the school. Yeah, that was easy. Let's pretend I did. Let's say I did. Okay, let's rewrite that. We can blur that line a little bit.

25:10Yeah, but we put out that magazine. There was five of us. Nobody ever made a living, but we had a blast doing it. At that moment, had it changed at all? I mean, I know you have a degree in journalism, but was it still art first at that moment? No. When do you remember changing? Like, no, no, it's going to be writing. It was probably college because I worked at the Daily Paper every day for four years. And I did graphic design and illustration for that paper. But I did a little bit of art school and realized, like, the immediacy and the impact you can have in journalism, you know, front page paper there's a strike there's a protest there's a war going on whatever compared to i'm going to sit alone in a studio and maybe sell a painting 10 years from now and maybe nine very wealthy people that'll put it in their bathroom you know so that to me i was like ah that doesn't sound like what i want to do journalism is instant gratification and it just impact every day you write it you're finished at sometimes 9 p.m goes through copy editing call it the slot they write the headline you're there pasting it up because i was a paste up guy and you send it off at midnight and then two hours later or three hours later it's like on the street that rush you could never yeah some guy's taking a dump reading it within hours that's the goal yeah that's a high water market journalism if a guy yells to his wife from the commode honey you're not gonna believe what i just read that's the real nobel and it goes away Pre-internet, if it wasn't good, it's completely forgotten.

26:39And then you're on to the next thing. But every so often, there'd be something that would really make an impact. And then I edited different sections and magazines of the paper, and you get to bring up other voices and maybe discover somebody in your little way and help them get a platform, I guess. So that was what I'm still doing now. It's much more fun publishing other people than publishing your own stuff, always. Because? There's no complication. It's like producing a movie where, A, you're not on the masthead or on the marquee, so it's not your fault if it's not good. You can take all the credit if it's...

27:13You can just sort of, you know, be in the wings and say... It's egoless. It's totally egoless, and it's such a pure celebration. We had a writer for the Believer magazine win an award a couple nights ago for the National Magazine Awards. We've only met this writer a few times, but it was way more pure joy than any other thing that we can do as a company because we're so tiny. It's like really six full-time people. But every so often we have a chance to kind of elevate a voice in our little way. How old were you when you started writing for Salon? Probably 24. Was that your first kind of pay? Yeah.

27:50And was it enough to live on, support yourself? I was a cartoonist, so I had Salon graphic design work. and then I had a weekly cartoon in the SF Weekly. Those three things combined, I was making decent money. We had this little design company where I looked at these invoices that we used to send. I'm looking through all this old stuff lately. Our main client was the SF Chronicle. We'd do like their in-paper ads, like read the Chronicle. But you were on the inside and the outside. A little bit, always. I mean, in journalism, it's that way. An ad would take us half an hour to make, but we had to just make up some number that sounded like, So it'd be like$507.32.

28:27No, all these numbers that I saw us make up were so ludicrous. There's no math or consistency, but we were undercutting the real businesses. An established place would charge 10 times that much. So we made really good money by being nimble and quick and cheap. And so I always tell anybody, like out of school, if you undercut the bigger companies in any business, you'll do incredibly well, whether it's making rugs or landscaping or temping or design or whatever it is, there's a very easy way to just be a little cheaper and a little faster than anybody else. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

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30:04In 98, you start McSweeney's. Right. What prompts that? I was working at Esquire, a big corporate magazine for the first time. Mike got us all jobs in real industries for the first time. So we were offered different jobs. Like Buddy and mine, one of the other might editors, we were offered a gig writing for Letterman, like the two of us. No kidding. As a team, I guess. And it was Rodney Rothman, who was the head writer at the time. And he was younger than us. We were like 27. I think he was 24. Wow. And the producer was Kate Adler. And we all met. And it was like the most exciting thing that you could ever imagine.

30:40This is when he just went to CBS, it would have been. I think so. Yeah. Wow. We worshipped Letterman as growing up. Chris Elliott and had everything taped and we watch everything over and over. But the hours and the uncertainty, you'd get like a 12 week contract, I think at the time. And then you had to renew. I was not in a place where I had that kind of uncertainty. I had a dependent and then the hours. You can't be a parent and write as a young person. Yeah. Trying to prove yourself. But then I took this magazine job and I really learned quickly that I was not meant to. I had never had a nine-to-five anything.

31:15I never had to wear clothes of any kind to any job. In the Bay Area, it was all shorts every day. Nobody cared. So to have to wear pants and a button-down shirt and then try to get things published and they say no, I was like, these are all brand new ideas to me. You were just doing whatever you wanted prior to that, right? In the Bay Area, again, no one says no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So suddenly it was 90 % no. It's not their fault. Like, there's only so many pages in a magazine. So we started McSweeney's. It was all stuff that was rejected from other corporate magazines. And it was like the land of misfit writings.

31:48And so we did that, published it out in my apartment in Brooklyn, and just a couple of us. Oh, so you had moved to New York at that point. Yeah. How did you do in New York? Manhattan was not my thing, but once I moved to Brooklyn, it was much calmer. It was really Oakland-y and great near Prospect Park, which is a beautiful park. I just have to be close to some kind of open space. So suddenly, you know, we had a ball. Putting out McSweeney's was just everything you wanted to be. You go from this corporate constraint, everything, to just being back in your kitchen with a couple friends, doing anything you want to do, printing the book in Iceland, which we did.

32:23I got to go to Reykjavik for each press check and spend a week there, going back and forth to the printer among all the blonde press men in their blue jumpsuits. The whole thing was so surreal, but so much fun. Was it always like this? Was it always like in a fun? Oh, okay. The first three were just white paperbacks, like black and white. They were really nicely made, but just black and white for the most part. And then the fourth one was a box with a bunch of booklets in it. And we made that. It was the first time. There's no boxes in Iceland. They have no pulp. They can't make anything like that.

32:55There's no trees. So it was such a big thing. It was a big meeting. How are we going to make a box, you know? And all these Icelandic guys trying to figure out how to make a box for this. So much fun. But that started this thing where I thought, well, why don't we reinvent the form every time? Because if you're going to pay us and subscribe to us, maybe we'll surprise you each time with what it looks like. So we've done a lunchbox in the last few years. Yeah, we got a lunchbox recently. That was what we got, yeah, a lunchbox. There's definitely the archetype of the lone wolf writer, but you clearly like the communal aspect of it, yeah?

33:30I can only think of a handful of actual lone wolves. in the visual arts too. It's a trope that isn't borne out that often in real life. Bukowski is one of those guys, right? And you have Van Gogh, whoever. John Vontae, probably. There's a handful. But the people that I've known or met, I don't know a lone wolf writer. I can't think of one. I would feel so comforted if I had surrounded myself with other people who are just like banging their head against the wall, fucking getting that rejection, SE, fucking postcard. Or, you know, I tell this to students in MFA programs all the time. I was like, there was two of us in a kitchen that started McSweeney's for$2 ,500.

34:12That was the print bill for the first one. You sell those 2 ,000 copies. You have enough money to print the next one and print 5 ,000 copies. You sell those. You can certainly print 7 ,500, which was our trajectory. It's such simple math. I can't add anything together. I cannot balance a checkbook, but I could do that simple math. and so we just published everybody we wanted to publish so that built up this little community of people and you start something the magnet you know you just everybody's drawn to it whether it's upright citizens brigade or the ground you know it's the same kind of thing everyone's like looking for somebody to start that thing and then they're like thank god because not everyone is necessarily a starter i guess or ambitious or organized a little bit you need people to fill a little gas Yes.

34:59Like Melissa McCarthy, this would crack people up, but like Melissa McCarthy and Ben and I, we had this comedy troupe. Nobody came. We did shows. It was like Melissa was the manager. She told us where to be. Wow. She negotiated the theater rentals. She delegated, you're bringing beer. Someone has to get the space and do the thing. She was organizing on it, and we were like, okay, I'll bring beer. Ask Melissa what we're supposed to do. Well, if she has you there to help do those things, then yeah. You only need two or three people. I saw a student of mine that was at a crossroads he's 35 now but I knew him when he was in high school and I was like just find a couple people because alone it's just sad and lonely or whatever but a couple people you're like a little cadre of people and you're going to buck them up if they're down they can buck you up if you're down and together you can get you know a lot more done on a given day and it's going to be a lot more fun so the idea in any art form of being that lonely person in the cabin throwing crumpled up sheets of paper in the corner is a canard.

36:00I don't know it very often to be true. And also it's so unnecessary. Sometimes you need isolation. I can only write when I'm alone, but then I can send a draft to all the different writers, mostly in the Bay area. Like, Hey, what do you think? Is this anything? And then you're in community with people that are like, yeah, keep going. And then you feel, okay, you have jet fuel, but the idea of like, I'm not going to show it to you for seven years. And then you create some mangled Frankenstein novel that nobody wants. It's such a mistake on so many levels. I think that always trying to figure out, is this the way I want to do it where it's fun?

36:38Or is there some other way to do it? It's like worth the moment that you can spend. I worked in my garage for years. It was exactly like this, except for one window in the corner. But it was the only space that was free and big enough to have all the stuff I needed in it. But it was really kind of grim. And I was like, boy, I really don't want to be inside in a dark garage eight hours a day. Like there's something wrong here. So I just had to like think about it finally after 30 years or however long it was. And I was like, well, what if I had a friend, it's funny to say this, but she's a ship captain.

37:11Has a giant ship. I don't have any ship captain friends. Yeah, that is. She sails in the bay. And I was like, would it be possible to get like a little sailboat that I could work in. And I'd find a slip in one of the marinas in the bay. And she like guided me through this process and helped me buy this boat. So now I've been working in this boat, which is, you know, not so much bigger than this table really. Was it moored in Sausalito? It's moored like right under the Golden Gate Bridge on the north side. It's an old Air Force base marina, but it's a rickety, ridiculous marina. And I'm outside mooring, you know, I'm like, there's so much more going on.

37:45you get mad thinking like, why didn't I do this 20 years ago? And I think sometimes just to take that moment, whenever you're at a transition moment, and I don't know about you, but a lot of my friends at our age are like in between jobs right now. So there's like a thing that's going on in the business world in particular where they get priced out. Maybe they're too expensive for their company. They get laid off and they're looking for the next thing, but we're all talking about it, maybe it's an opportunity to like think hard about exactly what you'd like to do, how you'd like to do it. How do you want to spend your days and hours?

38:20And sometimes if you can get a little bit like, I definitely don't want to do that again. I don't want to commute an hour. And so you can get a little bit closer to something that can never be ideal, but you can get closer to an intentional way to live a life. Well, I definitely think for me that comes with age in And that the motivation at the beginning is like, you're a piece of shit. You're a failure if you don't do this. You know, it's just hatred. It's like self-loathing, right? Self-loathing, you need a little bit. And then at some point you go, well, what's the point of all this if I don't learn to enjoy the process?

38:52This is all a waste. So I'm going to die with like a bunch of posters hanging. That's the proof of this thing. You realize this isn't worth doing if I don't enjoy the process. It can't be about the reward. Well, are you enjoying the podcast? Oh, absolutely. This is the greatest job I've ever had. Yeah. You've had, I guess, periods, right, where you've taken breaks. For sure. Every three years, I'm like, what if I instead? Yeah, yeah. There's so many other things to do. Nature photographer, wouldn't that be cool, right? Sit there looking for the snow leopard all day. Like, I really honestly see that as a thing.

39:24But then you also have to pay the mortgage and stuff. I do have a question about the heartbreaking work of Staggering Genius. You had so much going on at that time. Was it hard for you to carve out the time, the commitment to sit down and finish that book? I had to quit the job at Esquire to do it because I couldn't do both. Yeah. I would need eight hours a day of writing time to get anything done. I just have to get my head clear. That's like the first half. And then the self-loathing kicks in at hour five. Like, what are you doing? Like, you've been there four hours. You find that little wind in your sails.

39:56And you're like, oh, I got to get as much out as I can. In the afternoon, you're more urgent about it. And maybe you could hit a word count that makes you feel like you've done something that day. What a life. It's still there, right? I'm trying to make it a little bit more fun. And then there are books that just come out a lot easier than others. Now, The Eyes on the Impossible was a couple years ago. That was like the most fun I'd ever had. And I was like, how do I stay in that zone where it's fun? And a lot of it has to do with voice and it has to do with writing about something that you love.

40:25And so Contrapposto was like, I love talking about and thinking about the art world and these characters. And so I was like, okay, that book too was just pretty much joy all the way through. But as a journalist, that's not as fun because you feel the duty to cover Trump or to cover a disaster or go to Ukraine or whatever. And then you have to write it out and you have to get every last word right and check every fact over and over. It's a slog that you are happy to have done at the end. Right. And you feel like maybe you enlightened a person or awakened somebody. But it's really no fun in any point of the process.

41:02Yeah. How did you take on the success of that book? That was new to you, right? I mean, you were a finalist for the Pulitzer for that book. The main thing, I mean, I'm looking at McSweeney's stuff because McSweeney's was brand new too. And so we were able to kind of take that new readership and sort of channel a lot of them. And so we went on the road because I was finding all of these show runs. We went on the road with They Might Be Giants. And it was like me, writers like Arthur Bradford, Zadie Smith, some others, and we would do a variety show. And there'd be, you know, sometimes have like exotic dancers doing stuff.

41:40And then there'd be the band. And then Arthur would smash a guitar on the stage. He did this whole act. It was like to try to enliven what at that point was the most boring thing you'd ever could imagine, which was going to a bookstore to see a reading, you know, people would just get up and read for an hour. And we were trying to sort of shake that up. And I saw Arthur, who was like a filmmaker, the other night, and we were just reminiscing. He would buy an acoustic guitar in every town we would tour in. And then he told the story while he played. And then he would, during a crescendo of the story, he'd raise it up above his head and then smash it as like the punctuation mark of the story.

42:17And then a stagehand would come out and hand him a new guitar. And then he'd finish the story with his acoustic guitar. So he had to buy two guitars in every town we went to. but it was a ridiculously fun time. But to think that at this point, like I don't love getting on stage. I don't love having to follow They Might Be Giants or anything like that. It's like, I can't believe that we did that because these days I'm much more content to be in a smaller setting, a bookstore setting, not a big hall. But at the time we thought, well, maybe we could make books slightly less sedate and slightly less predictable.

42:50Have you ever been to a Sedaris reading? Yeah, sure. That was right then. Naked had come out. 1 ,500 people would come and he would just read his work. Sarah Vowell was in our little coterie and she was really tight with Sedaris and Sedaris did benefits for our nonprofit in New York, 826 New York. And so he was always a hero to us and a mentor. What he's done though, like reading literature out loud is insane. I currently can't stop listening to the live recordings. Beryl Fever was how I met my editor, Jeff Klosky. He was the editor of Sedaris' first collection. He made humor literary. Before that, there was always the picture of like the humorous mugging on the front.

43:30But then he put it in sort of a literary format. Jeff Klosky, this editor, did. And I thought, okay, whoever did that, I want to meet. And so that's why he became my editor. It's a fun evolution, too, to watch. Because like Naked, you can tell it's written without any real notion that it'll be read out loud. And then now his writing is done like a stand-up by doing a draft, reading it out loud, rewriting. His workflow is so fascinating. Well, really, I mean, it started with the Santa Land Diaries. That was a This American Life thing first, I think. And that was performed from minute one. And that was just like a thunderclap.

44:08Everybody was like, what the hell? You could do that. Wow. Because there used to be something in the New Yorker called Casuals. They were like long format literary humor, kind of like that. And then it sort of went away. And then Sedaris started that up again, where you could have like a 20-page essay slash comedy. Yeah. And then people would go out to it. But, you know, what's funny is that he's still, there's him, there's Sarah Vowell, there was David Rakoff for a while. There's not that many people that still do it. And it just shows how hard it is to do. And he's gotten better and better. There's points where it's like, I'll listen to the most recent ones, like maybe Calypso on tape.

44:43And I'm like, I don't know, man, you put him up against Chappelle, Laugh for Laugh. in a fucking one-and-a-half-hour show? It's the precision of the writing. It is. Yeah. Everything is about extra syllables. And Chappelle's really good at that. Seinfeld's talked about it, but one extra word, and there you don't get to laugh. You've got to be there at the end of the sentence before they're ready. And Sedaris is unique in that he never puts on extra verbiage or whatever to sort of make it. It's lean. It's really lean. Yet it's so full. And then he's funnier in person even than on the page. It's just his voice and his attitude.

45:21And then if you go to one of those events, he's signing books for six hours afterwards. He sings every single person. And he's writing wild shit in there. He's like the amount of creative output just to write in their fucking... He's connecting with each person. Well, to me, that's my favorite part too. And I would much rather just be signing books and chatting with people because the high wire act of being up there with a microphone is a lot different. So to me, I'm always looking forward to the sitting and signing. but I do feel for the people that are waiting. So there it's waiting hours, but they go in knowing it and the venue knows it.

45:51But the times that you're there and there's like a union venue and they're like, you got to get out of here. So then you're on the street and then the cops come. You got to get out of here too. You can't be there. That's happened to me. But to me, that's the most fun part is just the reader to reader. Because in person, all people are normal. If you're just talking to an actual person with enough time, human to human eye to eye this solves everything this is our conclusion after a thousand plus episodes is like we have guests semi-regularly that i don't like that i've had interactions with around town i'm like i don't like this person it's like we gotta have them they're great guests and 100 of the time dave at the end of two hours i'm like i fucking love this person i'm like literally i challenge someone to sit for two hours with someone and be sincerely curious and I just challenge you to not like the person.

46:41Well, the body wants to find common ground. Just chemically, we want this. So I covered a lot of Trump rallies as a journalist and I would embed. I never presented myself right away as a journalist. So I would just wait in line with everybody, get to know people. Hope you take this as a compliment. You could blend in. You're not coming across as like some lofty professor. You should see my full uniform because I've got the trucker hat and I have my flannel. well, these are clothes I own. So it's not like... It's not a costume. It's not so much a costume. And, you know, I sort of believe hate the sin, love the sinner.

47:16The folks that you meet, the people that you've seen on TV are usually the fringiest fringe. Oh, yeah. But in the middle, I mean, I do think it's so misguided and he's by far the worst president that has ever been or could be conceived on so many levels and certainly the most corrupt that we're seeing recently. But the people voting for him, I would find common ground with everybody and they would have some reasonable explanations for supporting them, for the most part. Out of every hundred people, there'd be one true lunatic. Sure, sure, sure. Wow, that person. But as a journalist, you really, especially if you're listening, and not like hit-and-run journalism, but like, I'm going to give you as long as you want to talk.

47:53I'm going to learn an explanation that I wouldn't have thought about. And sometimes they're voting in very narrow. My 401k went up last time he was elected, and I need that money. Okay? Can't really argue with that. My parents waited 17 years to immigrate from the Philippines. I want everyone to wait the same amount of time. I live in a border town. 250 ,000 people have come over this month. That scares me. Well, I did cover the El Paso rally. So that was Beto O 'Rourke on one side of the street having a rally when he's running for the Senate. About 4 ,000 people came to that one. Crossed the street, 90 feet, 15 ,000 people to Trump in El Paso.

48:30A week after he said that El Paso was a dump and whatever, it doesn't matter. 50, 60 % of that crowd was Latino. They laugh at this idea. I interviewed so many people that like the border. People are going up and down, back and forth every day from El Paso. It's very porous. There's underground tunnels. There's all these different things. But then you have that conservatism of recent immigrants, right? So there was a family where the mom came over from Mexico illegally, got her green card. One daughter is a cop and is a Trumpy and won't talk to the mother anymore because she broke the law to come over.

49:06Oh, wow. But she's an American because her mother. Yeah, that's stressful. And so now no one's talking to each other because she's iced out the mother. The sister won't talk to the other sister. And it's all because of one guy. Yeah. And so, you know, you got to back up and say it wasn't this way for so long. The border was much more porous. you'd work in the U.S. because wages are higher, and then you'd go back home because it's cheaper to live in Mexico. It was just back and forth for farm workers, for construction, for a lot of different things. And then suddenly it wasn't Trump that did this, but everything became much more heightened and sort of you have to pick a side and choose.

49:44It's wildly mismanaged. I don't have the solution in this podcast, but I will say that like... If he dropped the solution. I know. Hey, why were you sitting on that song? We're on year 10 of this. Yeah. I do want to say this. I cannot remember, but I bet it had to be Kimmel who told me to. But what was the first book of yours I read? Okay. And I talk about it on here all the time. I just love that book. It's just outstandingly beautiful. You know, Valentino and I, we went to Kimmel's taping a year or two ago. Jimmy Kimmel and Molly have given money to Valentino's schools in South Sudan. He has a foundation.

50:20And so it was really weird. There was a guy doing crowd work before. And he was like, where is everybody from? I want to see who's from the furthest place away. And he happens to find Valentino sitting next to me. And he's like, where are you from? South Sudan. You won. You got it. After the book came out, we went back to South Sudan. And all the money from the book went to this foundation. And then he had the decision to make, like, what do you do with it? And he decided to build a high school in his town. He was so successful that he became the minister of education for his whole region. So basically New England size.

50:55And now he's running his own schools in a town close to Mario by where he grew up. You read about him till he was probably 22, I guess. Was it Atlanta that they got sent to? The heartbreaking part of this book, if you haven't read it, I really encourage. One of my very favorite books. But, you know, what these kids went through to cross the desert. I mean, there's literally lions picking guys off, which is just unimaginable. And they have this notion of getting to America. and then they go to Atlanta and just the violence that's happening in the motel that they're at. And this speed of life. Like when I met Valentino, he just got in an accident like two days after getting his driver's license.

51:31They had three months of aid from USAID or whatever group it was. Maybe it was the UNHCR, but then they're on their own. And it's like independent nonprofits and churches that supported the Lost Boys all over the U.S. But to the credit of the churches and our ability to absorb refugees and people from the toughest post-conflict zones, they were absorbed and did quite well almost everywhere. And it was mostly the churches that did it because most of the kids were brought up Catholic. The churches reached out, whatever you need, come to us, you're part of our family. And then in Atlanta, it was Mary Williams who started the Lost Boys Foundation and got in touch with me.

52:08but you had 4 ,000 mostly boys, all unaccompanied, 18 to 25, sent to Fargo, sent to Omaha, cheaper places to live, San Jose, never in the middle of a city. And suddenly after three months, it's like, well, you got to pay that electrical bill. What's an electrical bill? Okay, well, and you've got to get to school now. You have to have a job within three months. You have to know everything it took all of us 18 years to figure out. You have to know it in the next three months. Three months. Most of them, if they were lucky enough to sort of have a family that takes care of them. Valentino had this couple, the Mazes that are still in Atlanta, that became sort of surrogate parents and guiding them through all these questions.

52:48And you realize like whether it's the Lost Boys or whether it's first in their family to go to college in this country, you just need an advocate. You need somebody to pick up the phone and be like, okay, no, that's not what you do. Pick up this form. You got to fill this out. I'll help you do it. I'll file that for you. go to this website because otherwise it's just reading sumerian and at the speed of light and if you don't do it you're on the street like all of those things at once you realize like i've been to kakuma which is the refugee camp that they grew up in and for the most part there's not electricity or running water and a lot of these camps they were lucky to have a meal a day for years these refugee camps are still there because they become cities unto themselves right and And they're still called refugee camps, even though they've been there at this point 34 years or something like that.

53:37But there's a simplicity sometimes or a system you know. And our lives here in this country are so complex. We don't even realize how complex and needlessly complex they are and how irrational so many of our systems are. Until you go to somewhere else, these cities in South Sudan, now that there's been relative peace for some time, are growing exponentially. Like Juba, the capital, when we were first there maybe 20 years ago, I think it was maybe 20 ,000 people. Like you could really get across it in an hour or two. And now I think it's two and a half million. And it just grows out and there's entrepreneurship everywhere and things popping up in schools.

54:15And if people have anywhere, whether it's this country 200 years ago or South Sudan, just if there's relative peace for a little bit of time, everything can happen. People will flourish. They'll figure it out. They'll flock to these centers. They'll solve problems. and it's the job of the international community to just invest, not aid. Invest in businesses there. So you have Ethiopian and Eritrean restaurants and businesses and places from Uganda that are going to South Sudan to make money, which is good, right? They employ people, they're selling them phone plans. This is the way that countries get out of a post-conflict situation.

54:54It's like actual living, not just aid, but actual investment. And Valentino's doing a lot of that, too. Okay, well, I've eaten up way too much time. I would have loved to have talked about The Circle a little bit in The Every because I like hearing you talk about the post-apocalyptic cyber age we're in. Find it. You're fun to listen to talk about this. But at last, your newest book, which is what we're here to talk about, is Contrapposto. That's the name of my Botox place, by the way. Is it really? Yeah. I didn't know this term before the book. Oh, I've never seen it anywhere else. Yeah. It's the first time I had heard it.

55:28It's a form, right, in painting where a portrait subject is holding two positions that are in tension. Yeah, it's like the Michelangelo's David would be the first or best known example where the pose is off balance a bit. You're putting weight on one leg or your hips are one way, your shoulders are another way, as opposed to a stock still kind of rigid pose. So most poses we know could be qualified as contrapposto. But it's something you learn in art school, and you ask of the model, and I like the word always, and I felt like it applied to the relationship between cricket and Olympias, where there's sort of balanced imbalance between them.

56:09Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

56:21So the book starts with a little boy, Robert, and he ditches that name because he has a shitty, not a stepdad, but mom's boyfriend. It's terrible. You're not going to let me draw any parallels. I never had a stepdad. He sounded very familiar to me, but Cricket gets this name because he doesn't want to be called Rob because it's now associated with Robert who's upstairs, right? The book starts with like this sanctuary this little boy has. Do you want to describe it a little bit? Yeah, his grandfather lives at home in the basement and then it's created kind of like a botanical garden almost in the middle of a Indiana basement in the middle of winter.

56:58It's frozen outside and white and probably below zero. But down there it's humid and full of plants and green and... And spiders. He likes spiders. Yeah, insects. So it's this humid, sort of fertile, kind of womb-like world almost that Cricket spends most of his time down there with his grandfather, who's pretty old and not super mobile. He doesn't really leave the basement. But he draws on the floor in front of him while listening to records and his father reading above him. And I think that those early sections about the grandfather, I just wanted to establish that when you're a kid and you can draw or if you can write or whatever you're doing, there's this like incredible piece that comes over a kid that he's got all this chaos going on upstairs.

57:44But on that page, he controls everything, can create any universe or world he wants to. He has validation from this grandfather that loves everything he does, which is what grandfathers are supposed to do or grandparents. Well, he treats them seriously, which is like this huge gift that someone can give you when you're a kid. For sure. It's different as mother's working full time and is under all kinds of stresses. But down there, you know, I think every kid needs that sort of place where you're validated, I guess. You're competent. You're good at something. Everybody's got to find something that a kid is good at.

58:17And that's the parent's task. It's like go to karate, tai chi. I mean, anything you can do. But until you find that, it's tricky. Once that kid finds that he's really good at something, then that competence carries over into everything else. Like, all right, good. I have a place. I can do this one thing well. But then, you know, that leads into him taking more and more sort of art classes around and leaving home. Grandfather doesn't last too long, but has taught him, I guess, the skills. Well, also this thing he's good at becomes a bridge also to friendship and to potential romantic interests, right?

58:55He's encouraged. It's kind of discovered that he's a good drawer and he's encouraged to graffiti. Yeah, everybody knows that kid, right? That can draw the angel guy in the Led Zeppelin cover, right? So, hey, can you do that for me too? Or Eddie from Iron Maiden. There's a couple kids in every high school that could draw Eddie. Same in prisons, right? If you can draw, those guys make money doing it. Like I've met a lot of those guys. But yeah, for cricket, it's really just like he's a quiet kid, but he meets Olympia who recognizes that he has a talent and then of course uses it to have him deface a public play structure using some form of calligraphy via a giant Sharpie.

59:35And so I wanted to take it away from being like too cute. They say horrible things on this play structure, but in an ornate kind of almost old English sort of font. But he's madly in love instantly with this girl who's maybe a year older. She's very worldly and provocative and dangerous, right? Yeah. Not to spoil it, but the rest of the book is about them together over the years. But I think that she's so captivating. And at every stage, she's captivating in different ways. She morphs and shape shifts a bit. But she's always infinitely more sophisticated than he is and more verbal and more worldly.

1:00:11And she knows how to sort of navigate through the art world. Whereas like he generally doesn't have a clue and doesn't seek to. We get into your kind, or I'm assuming your take on art. We're exploring a lot this kind of tension between it's pretentious, it's exclusionary, it's inclusionary. Like it has all these dynamics. What were you able to get off your chest about art? Well, it was fun because I don't think I would ever write a book about the book world because I'm in it and that's to me maybe just too close. And also for me being adjacent to it, like I paint and make prints and I draw and sell them and stuff and I have a little gallery that sells them for the last 15 or so years.

1:00:50So I have like a little bit of a foray into that world. I used to write about art and everything, but there is something really unique in all art forms, like music, you go to a concert and, well, it used to be$20 and you'd see your favorite band and it's$15 for the CD and you could take it home and own it and look through the booklet and it's very democratic. The art world and the visual art world in the last hundred years or so is incredibly exclusive and very hard to like just experience as a regular person. You can't really own much. You could tear out a piece of paper from a magazine with your favorite painting.

1:01:24That's as close as you can get. Well, even like the Banksy rise is so fascinating, right? Because it starts as like incredibly democratized. It's for all to see on the side of a building. And then I have been to Billionaire's House who has an enormous Banksy in his... Oh, is that right? Yeah, in his hallway. Somebody tore it off a building, maybe. No, Banksy does artwork for sale. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. He did a piece on the side of the McSweeney's building years ago. Oh, that's cool. So he got in touch when he was coming in San Francisco, and he said, I'd like to do something on the roof, and one of our staffers let him in at midnight and let him up to the roof.

1:01:59Did he have to sign anything? That's a good question. Or did he have to be blindfolded when he let him in? I mean, that's funny. I always want to ask. They've just discovered who he is, right? Have you been following these guys? It's like an English dude? Yeah, he's always been an English guy. We didn't know. It was Chris Ying who was on our staff. He led him up, and then he did this really cool mural, sort of, I don't know what you call it, picture on the side of what he would consider the roof or the wall on our roof. But we have a flat roof, and he did it there, and we were so happy. We'd wake up, we'd see it.

1:02:30People were stopping on the street for a week in the middle of traffic. It was a big deal. Everybody knew that he'd done it. It was before social media, though, so it was like just word of mouth. And then one day we wake up and it's gone. And we realized it was on the building next to us. So our roof is flat, but then there's an apartment building next to us. They painted over it? And we didn't even think to tell this guy because we, anyway. So it was painted over within a week. And we could have, I don't even see a picture of it in years. It was tragic. There's a few other pieces in San Francisco, go one in the port that they're trying to figure out what to do with and authenticate because he won't authenticate either i really like his work always have i like the way he goes about things on his own i don't love the secondary or tertiary people making money off of his stuff but i was always looking for and i think trying to explore in this novel like how do you bring it to that democratized kind of level that music and even books books are so simple you buy it's 25 bucks you take it home, that's the experience.

1:03:31Anybody can access it. There's no exclusive part of the book world. But art is mostly exclusive, meaning like if you want to own anything and that person is really making a living doing it, it's incredibly expensive. That's where I've called bullshit on art a little bit, which is like, why is the print to you not valuable? I love the prints. Yeah, I'm just saying most people, yeah, like if what you love is this image, you can't tell the difference. Right. What are we talking about? Why is that not desirable? Or the lithograph versus the real thing. They make comparatively so few. So if an artist is doing 40 paintings a year, they only make a couple prints or lithographs of those works, and then maybe a book at the end of a show.

1:04:15I did different series of prints that looked exactly like the original, so no one could tell, and I would sell them in a portfolio. You see them anywhere in people's houses, and you cannot tell the difference, and I did that on purpose. Did you mark the original? No, I just signed it, you know, so it has the original signature in the corner. So if you were going to really look closely. I like the idea of someone has the original. Yeah, you don't know who. Right. It's kind of fun. That takes place in the real world all the time. What you think is an original in certain museums is not the original.

1:04:44There's often a fake there because of wanting to preserve it or rest it or the danger of theft or whatever. So you don't always know. But I do think that this sanctification of these certain little objects and Mona Lisa must be so much better than the painting next to it. And this sort of hierarchy, all of these things are very unique, I think, to the art world. Whereas there's so much phenomenal work being done every day by people that we live among. And L.A. is obviously such a fantastic art city. But there's something intrinsic to it that's snooty and that really attracts kind of a snobby sort of person, unfortunately.

1:05:21And at all twists and turns, we've got to try to favor the artists, the curators, the gallerists, the museum directors, everybody that makes it accessible, makes it more fun, explains things. Why is that on the wall? Why is that Barnett Newman on the wall? Why am I supposed to like that? If you can't explain that, then you shouldn't be doing the job. You know, you should explain why a white square is on the wall and is worth$6 million or whatever. And I think that for so long, it's getting a little bit better now. it's pretty pluralistic atmosphere now. Like if you go to LACMA, you'll see every kind of work imaginable, which is how it should be.

1:05:58But for a while, 60s, 70s, 80s, it had gotten so exclusive and so narrow where it was all about abstract work and abstract expressionism, little conceptual art, but anything outside of that, representational figures, anything like that was like really frowned upon. Passé. Yeah. And it was like an art form uniquely susceptible to that. And you would never find that in music where it's like, well, now from now on, John Cage has brought us to this place where only silence and... Stones are over. Yeah. Yeah. We don't like the rolling stones anymore. Everything else is invalid, but we had reached that place with visual art for a while.

1:06:33It was a tough place and very unaccepting and very close-minded. Yeah. My grievance is like, it's the apex of arbitrary. I just moved into a house and I was like, okay, I need art for my house now and this has been crazy similarly my parents bought me a housewarming present and it was a painting and it's not a cheap painting and then i got it and i love it i do love it but when i'm staring at it i'm like why is it why was it that much so do you like the painting i do i love the painting and i look at it and i look at this print that's much cheaper that's framed next to it and i'm like yeah none of this makes any sense yeah i was talking to a friend she just had a show all of her prices are super random.

1:07:14She has a formula that's actually based on like area, you know, based on what you were charging the San Francisco Chronicle for your, it's exactly the same. It just came to mind. So is it like by square footage that you're doing this? Like, why would this be$412 and that one's$600? And if it's by actual area, isn't that seem weird? Like you're charging by the foot. But I think that that goes again toward how they've created a sort of a self-seriousness about it and a little bit like I could explain it to you, but you wouldn't understand that kind of thing. Well, it reeks of elitism, the whole thing.

1:07:51You don't find that in any other medium. Even classical music, like the first thing they want to do is explain it to you. You know, like, okay, here's why. This movement is about this, not like, well, I don't know. You have a degree in music theory, then maybe I could talk to you. Yeah, it's like if you don't get it, that's on you. So you kind of have to be like, no, I get it. We should add, too, the world is filled with more criminals than any other. There are more paint salesmen who have gone to prison than any other art medium. They're just riddled with crooks who are selling paintings they don't have.

1:08:20They're selling fake paintings. There you go. And why is that? Why does it attract so many charlatans? And it's always been fascinating to me because you really just don't see as much of it in any other form. But the art forging stories, I do love those, like watching those. And also you'll see the gallerist in between who's sort of winking and nodding like, does she or doesn't she know that she's selling a fake for five and a half million dollars to this gullible couple? And is she just running out the string before putting that in a Swiss account or whatever? And then somebody is going to get caught, but she's just the pass through.

1:08:53It's fascinating, but there is no equivalent in music or writing or whatever where you could defraud one person out of five million dollars based on picture. You know, like a bunch of paint on a four by four canvas, which the intrinsic value of that is like one hundred and fifty dollars, right? Of like materials and everything else is about this sort of suspension of disbelief or this shared illusion that we are all going to dream together, that this is worth something now. It's comforting, weirdly, to go like, oh, there's a handful of things that are so beautiful, they're invaluable. Something about that story is appealing.

1:09:31Well, and also there are people in between, like art consultants that will say this one's appreciating and that one's not. This one's on the downslide and that artist's star is rising. So a lot of it is sort of stock market-like. It's like vaporware or crypto or whatever, where if we all believe together that this person is on the rise, then we can justify that. And then you do have a lot of manipulation. you'll find the same buyer buys a painting for a million dollars shows it in some gallery or traveling show which raises its profile sells it to some friend for 10 million who sells it again for 20 and everybody's sort of in on this creating the marketplace there's a famous story of the christopher wool painting that says whatever that quote from apocalypse now and it's just type and it's like a long tall painting within a handful of years it went from 800 000 to like 22 million No.

1:10:23And it was just like this turning. Also, there's no sympathetic victims in any of these cases. You don't really feel bad for someone who has an extra$22 million to get taken advantage of. Right. Now, I do want to bring it back to the book. For once, I've got to say, though, although Cricket's obviously observing all that madness, Cricket's also experiencing the real value of art in two kind of pivotal moments in the book. One being he gets singled out in high school for this painting of a weasel, right? Even before, I think they're like 10. And that is extremely hurtful to Robert. He puts his stepdad or whatever's face on a weasel that's been hit by roadkill.

1:11:04Police put on an art fair and it's sort of like a PSA about careful on the road or something. So he uses it as a way to get back. Yeah, so he experiences the power of it. And then he's working at this store. He makes a painting of someone that's dear to two people in his life. Well said. And it gets hung up. And he experiences the love of art, right? The transmission of love. Yeah. So he's felt the power of it. Yeah. He's felt the love of it. So there are these glimpses of what it's really about. For sure. I mean, I think at every step, cricket, in the moment, and I don't know if you've had this experience, but with any art form, I certainly have painting.

1:11:45Where you're painting, and in the moment, there's nothing better in the world than moving color around a canvas. and you think you're doing some masterpiece every single time, especially if you're really up close to it and you're inhaling the fumes and stuff on every level. And then you back up and it's a piece of garbage. It does not look like anything like what you intended to do and it's not working in any way. But how can you sort of like stay in that moment when you were in love with the process and what you were doing? And cricket always is struggling with transferring that moment of being in it to like the result, which is never what you want it to be.

1:12:19And then there's that second stage, that artwork being put out into the world, which is often a miserable process that you don't want to have anything to do with. So I think he never masters it, whereas Olympia would and most people or a lot of people would master like, okay, well, I'll figure this out. But he never can transfer the love of what he wants to do in that moment or a tribute to his friend or drawing spaceships on the floor of his grandfather's basement, but to something else and do something in public or make a living at it or master the business side of it. Because the teacher, Carpenter, at one point is like, probably the most talented guitarist in the world is playing for a Journey cover band in Reno.

1:13:02But there's many different reasons why that person isn't heading up some innovative band, but there's so many other things that you have to do to sort of achieve whatever kind of success, however you might define it. But it's not just talent. And there's a lot of other things. Showing up on time. There's having or being burdened by ambition. And cricket really doesn't have any. Olympia applies this ambition to, come on, do this thing. Show up at this one thing. Do more of that. People will buy this. At no point can he do it. And I'm fascinated by those people. And I can't say I know a lot of them, But like every so often you will find some artists in a little town off the beaten path in Alaska.

1:13:45And they just do this brilliant work but never want to go anywhere else or do anything else. It's very clear. Yeah. I often ruminate the stories. I consider telling. They're my fears, right? Like I think about writing a movie about something with children because I'm so afraid of that. Yeah. Do you think some part of you recognizes how fucking precarious the whole thing is? What an improbable result that you have made a living and a good one out of pursuing something artistic in that, you know, somewhere in the back of your mind, like, I could also be cricket. Sure. For anybody that has the luck of being able to do this for a living, and it's really just about a publisher saying they'll publish the next thing.

1:14:24That's all there is. That's the 100 % of the success of it. It's like, really? You're going to do? Oh, all right. Good. And if you can pay the bills doing it, you won the lottery. But these days, even though not everyone's reading as much as they used to, there are more readers by a factor of a million new people every day than there have ever been in the history of the world. 1900, how many literate people were there, right? It's a tiny percentage of the globe. And then suddenly we have almost universal literacy around a globe of 8 billion people. So even where some things are getting a little harder, probably the best time ever to be trying to make a living as a writer.

1:14:59because there's just more people, more ways to do it. The internet gets the books out in different ways. You can get the word out. There's Substack now. Everyone can have their own Substack. Yeah, if you can make that work, that's income. But in terms of publishing and in terms of it being a time to do this for a living, it's really the very best time in the history of human evolution to try to be a writer making a living. There's more people making a living at it than ever before. Because 1900, you could probably count as a few dozen people, right? as novelist. Yeah. My other last just curiosity is I went through this program, The Groundlings, I think 3000 people enter for every 15 that get to the Sunday company was the number that was given to me.

1:15:42Maybe that's right or wrong. The point is I saw and worked with and met so many people that were better at doing characters than I was. They were better writers than I was. They didn't have some combination of ambition or show up and do whatever the thing was. I have this kind of weird survivor's guilt, and I could imagine myself writing this book motivated out of that a little bit. In my travels, I met crickets, and it's not fair, and I want to honor a cricket. Yeah. I mean, I always say to my students, I've met a lot of brilliant first draft writers that will not revise. They do the one thing, and that's it.

1:16:21Enjoy. My offering. I honor you. Feel free to read it multiple times. I honor you with my first draft and I'm going to lunch. Those people, we know what happens to them, right? They can't do the work. So humility is a real thing. And I'm not endorsing Cricket's Wave because I don't live that way myself. I'm happy to take feedback. I'm happy to like do the 20 drafts. I want to learn. And I also know how bad my first drafts are. And so when you come up through newspapers, you're beaten down. You have no choice but to be humble because they chop every single thing you do. But then it makes you a little bit less precious and a little bit stronger.

1:16:57And you meet deadlines and you work a little harder. You can do an all-nighter without a problem. But I think there's so much humility involved. And also knowing, I don't know, I mean, the guilt part, I feel bad that... That you don't have it? That I don't. Well, because I always see anybody that does the work, I see, and I always believe, every good book will be published. We're all looking for them as publishers. So if you put in the work and do the 10 drafts or 12 or 15 like the rest of us do, and you listen and there's maybe some spark there that's something unusual, it'll get published. We're all looking for those books.

1:17:33So I think, again, it's the most democratic medium because you don't need a degree in anything to be able to do it. The problem is people's bar isn't just to get published. It's to be a you, you know, to be a household name. And that's ego, really. Depends on who. Then we get into like, how do you measure success? For a lot of people, it's publisher will put out your next book and then they spend a lot of time teaching. Maybe, you know, they're teaching at UCLA. That's a great life to have. The luckiest life anybody could ever have is being able to convey what you know to the next generation. You get your books out every few years.

1:18:07Yeah. I have so many friends doing that. And they are unbelievable teachers. A couple at USC. USC has an incredible department. You know, there's so many people making a living adjacent to. We have Rita Bullwinkle, the editor of McSweeney's, as a novelist, too, and she's balancing those two things, but that's a very lucky life, too. But there are way more options than there ever were before. Do a little advertising writing. You do a screenplay there. Maybe there's this, there's that. There's a sub stack. There's a podcast. Two, people are probably writing tweets and they're writing Instagram copy, you know, as a side hustle.

1:18:42People are managing other people's accounts. One of the funniest writers I've ever met has been at Facebook for like 20 years, writing like internal stuff. Oh, really? A little brighter, but raising kids on it and doing great. And she's been treated very well. Yeah. And if she wants to do side stuff, then that's great. What Cricket learns early when he's working at this gallery is that the ambition and the gap between where you want to be and where you reasonably should or could be, that's where misery comes from. Yes. It's like I should be this, but I'm not realistic about getting there or I'm not willing to do the work to get there.

1:19:14or maybe I just don't belong there, whatever it is. That's where you get the tortured artist. And so trying to find like, where's my equilibrium? What don't I love about this? Cricket learns he can't possibly be at an art opening with his paintings surrounding him, people pouring wine on him or whatever. So how do you rule out? You've probably done this a hundred times. Like, how do you rule out the thing I really don't like to do? Is it auditions? Stop you, yeah, yeah, yeah. And say, okay, well, how do I gravitate to this and put together a different mosaic? of the things I really like. And it might be on a different scale.

1:19:47You might not live in New York, but you'd live in Indiana or whatever. Cut your expenses by 90%. You know, all of these different things, you sort of have to think about it at so many stages of life to be like, well, now that the kids are out of the house, what does life look like for us? And are we happiest as opposed to just moving along at the expected rate of things? But I'm not saying I successfully do this all the time, but periodically you can assess what you need to cut out. What miseries can you cut out of your life? There are no longer obligations. I just want to say, I just love 826 Valencia.

1:20:23I got to see like what you've done with these places. The first one, I guess in the mission, right, to have the lease that you guys had to sell shit. Yeah. Zoning obligation. Yeah. So they sell pirate stuff, Monica. And it's really just a place for 826 Valencia is where kids can come and get tutored and they can get help writing and they get mentorship. But you can't just open up a mentorship clinic in certain zones. You have to sell products in the storefront. So a lot of these locations now, there's one in Echo Park, right? Yeah, Echo Park time travel, Mark. It's a 7-Eleven from the way back.

1:20:57Do you know how that place was funded? How? So Judd Apatow has been a supporter. He had an idea one time. He's like, let's do a fundraiser. He had been giving money for years, but he's like, let's do a fundraiser. where we parody LA's tendency to pat themselves on the back for any sort of charitable stuff that they do. He's like, let's do a night of good intentions where we honor Seth Rogen. This was a long time ago. He had only done Freaks and Geeks. We're going to honor Seth Rogen for the philanthropic work he's considering doing in the future. I love it. And so Will Ferrell gets up and Ben Stiller and like Foo Fighters all in one night.

1:21:34They're like, you know, we're so proud of you, Seth, for considering possibly in the future doing something for somebody. And then he gets up and he's like, I have no idea who these people are. I mean, I don't know what A26 is. I don't know any of this stuff. I don't know what anyone's talking about. But Judd charged like$1 ,000 a plate. And so all the people in L.A. came. He had the 10-day-old flower arrangements from the Golden Globes. He had like Rocky V decorations. But it was a really fun night to parody all of that. and then he raised enough money to build the entire center in Echo Park.

1:22:08Oh, wow. Which is like, you know,$250 ,000 in a night by parodying L.A.'s... Self-indulgence. Self-congratulatory indulgence. So that one's been open almost 15 years now. It's a beautiful spot. After school help, publishing. It's been home to a couple generations now of kids that have grown up there. And they publish these kids' work. These kids get to have published work and the books are solid. They're fucking, yeah, it's the coolest. We've got a library of 2 ,000 of these books now up in San Francisco. So if you're ever up there. Yeah. But come by there because it looks like a 7-Eleven. You walk right past it because it's exactly a 7-Eleven.

1:22:45Like bad robot, help decorate it. And then Mac Barnett, who's a children's book author, he's the ambassador for children's literature right now from the Library of Congress, but he was the guy in charge. He was the executive director at the time. They all built it so you'll walk right past it. But then if you go in, there's a secret door that leads to the back. And then that's the tutoring center. So for kids that get extra help, there's no stigma about it. You know, it's like going into this cool place as opposed to the sterile after school help for kids falling behind sort of spot. So all of the centers around the country have different themes.

1:23:17Yeah, you don't want to be behind a glass window with classmates like fucking looking in. I mean, these places exist. It's horrifying. And usually you're paying for that tutoring. And to be seen, I won't name these ones that I know of, but it is horrifying. This is all free. Everything's free. If people want to support 826 Valencia, is there a website? 826 Valencia, 826 LA is the one down here, 826 Boston, whatever city you happen to live in. We accept money. Yeah. People wanting to donate it. We still accept it. That's so awesome. It's very cool. I watch a lot of footage of these kids and they have these assignments.

1:23:52Like go out on the street and interview people right now. And like these little kids bump into someone who's like, this woman's the very first test tube baby. That was my class. Okay, it was your class. In San Francisco. I sent my kids out to interview the most interesting person they see. And they went to a bookstore and they met the woman that says, well, it happened to be the first test tube baby. You got lucky. So they interviewed them, came back, wrote this up. I mean, the other thing is you end up, we have about a thousand tutors down here. So you end up meeting kids that you share the city with.

1:24:24And these kids meet all these caring adults that give a few hours a month. So it sort of tightens the fabric of a city, especially a vast one where you can feel disconnected by roads and neighborhoods. But there, it's like, oh, I saw you live around the corner in Echo Park. You see the kid at the grocery store. You're both there. And it's like you get to know the parents, everybody. And those kids, especially right now when they're being villainized and, like, ostracized because their parents are their immigrants, this is like a way to say, no, you belong. You have all of us. We're all behind you.

1:24:53You got a thousand advocates. You got a thousand allies. Come to us. And so these are real safe havens, especially in the last 10, 12 years. The work has been a lot more urgent. Okay, the last thing that's very frivolous and not philanthropically motivated is, did you go to the Jetpack Academy? Yeah, in Moorpark, California. You've been there? I have not. I didn't know one could receive training for jetpack flight. So it's still there. I mean, you're only like an hour away. You got to go. Okay. It's in an avocado farm. What's the propulsion system? Just jet fuel. It is an actual jet engine. It looks exactly like the cartoon of a jet pack.

1:25:27Okay. He's modeled it after every image you ever saw in sci-fi. And a version of it was in the Olympics back in like 1980. The guy came in and landed in the opening ceremony. So it looks the same. It was this crazy Australian guy that made his version of it. And you've got whatever, 12 pounds of jet fuel or however you measure it on your back in the two things. But you're on a tether. So you're testing it in the middle of this avocado farm. And, you know, there's a, you know, landing strip. You know, you pull the throttle, you do a little bit of this and that, and then you're on a tether, which makes it extremely difficult because it catches.

1:26:04Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're like, and then blah. You can't really get a feel for it. No, it's not as romantic as you want it to be. And then it burns the absolute shit out of your feet because, like, there's got jet fuel coming and it's spreading out on the concrete where your feet are. So it's not a super romantic process. I really like experimental flight. I've tried a lot of different weird. Yeah, the drones are going to work. I'm watching people fly drones around. Any minute. Those are the most promising. The problem is fuel and like how do you carry enough to take you really as far as you want to go.

1:26:36They all have pretty limited scopes. What I almost did up in Ventura is the motor paragliding. Yeah. That interests me and you can do that in a weekend. I've done ultralights. So that's more like a motorcycle with a hang glider on top of it. But my friends that know what they're talking about say that they're called parasailing. No, it's not parasailing. But that's the better vehicle. It's like motor and paragliding mashed up somehow. It's got that sort of fan in the back. Yeah, I watched a dude laying on the beach in Malibu. I started talking. I'm like, where did you take off? He's like, oh, I took off from Thousand Oaks.

1:27:07Yeah. And I'm like, well, this is not. This isn't that thing where you're like in like the bat suit and all these people die. No, that's a wingsuit and those are deadly. That's very. Yeah, everyone that does it dies. This is you have a paragliding parachute above you, and then you have a gas engine on back with a fan, and it propels you, and you can fly. Oh, another, I was doing this movie without a paddle, and the stunt coordinator had shipped his to New Zealand, and we had to go into this jungle. It was either an hour and a half drive, or they started helicoptering us because it took so long, and this dude was flying from his hotel, his motorized paraglider to work, and I'm like, what a stud.

1:27:38Look at this. If you have a field that can land on any kind of field, you see a lot of it in like Nebraska. That's where they fly a lot of those. Yeah, yeah. And you don't even need a license because it's ultra light. It's below the category where you need a license. But I check every time they get a little bit closer to one of these, they're super expensive still. I mean, the real drone technology is like half a million dollars or something. And I need a really good self-deploying parachute that noticed I'm falling quicker than I would want to fall. Yeah. I mean, it's fun to go see the jetpack.

1:28:07The other problem with it is that you can only carry enough, even if you knew how to fly it. The problem is you can only carry enough fuel for two, three minutes. Right, right, right. So that's why you never see them anywhere. Because it's like, you know, you're back. But it's kind of fun. Well, Dave, even though you don't like talking about yourself, we got through it. I want to applaud you. We did it. Yeah, you revealed just enough for us. So gentle. I think you're just a beautiful writer. And Contrapposto is in keeping with all of your really wonderful work. So I hope everyone checks that out.

1:28:40What a delight to meet you. I've been hearing about you from Kimmel and you deliver. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Absolutely. See you guys. Just a quick reminder that as part of our summer break, here's a rerun of one of our favorite fact checks. From your picture board? No, this one wasn't on my board. This one's impromptu? Oh, wow. Improvised? It's great. You know, it's funny as I was in the shower today, and I've been ordering a lot of slacks. You've seen me in them. There's new slacks. Yeah. Drawstring, little baggier. Trousers. Trousers, pantaloonis, multiple colors. Yeah. All this to say, I get them, I like them, I put them in my closet, and they're gone forever.

1:29:19You forget about them? Well, I wear the same two that are in front of me. And I actually was thinking in the shower, like, I need to do what Monica does. Exactly. Or just another thought I had is, like, lay out seven outfits, and that's what I'm going to wear that week. Over the week. Have you ever tried that technique? Yeah, that's a common technique. It's very common. Okay, so I didn't discover anything new here. No, you did. You're on the brink. You're on the precipice. You should because it's stupid to buy clothes and not wear them. And then I think I don't have any because I wear the same two pants that I like.

1:29:50And then I get more. And then as I'm putting those away, they're next to brand new other pants I bought that I like. That's a guy thing because I have the same way with my pants. Oh, you are? I don't think it's a guy thing. I think it's an everyone thing. People have their go-to jeans and their go-to. You forget when you buy new stuff to mix it up unless you commit yourself like I have to fashion. Did you see my closet video? This could be, no. Oh my gosh, I posted a closet video. Oh, and does it include your photographs? Yeah. Oh, wow. It's a bit regretful because it was also impromptu, improvised, very random.

1:30:26Jess came over. Okay. And I was telling him about my fashion endeavors and then I was like, oh, I should show you my closet. So then I was doing that and then he was filming. So you didn't even realize it was something that you might post, but then you saw it and you're like, I'm gonna post it. Yeah, I was like, oh, it's funny, but it is funny. Uh-oh. It's not fashion. Aspirational? Yeah. I know, I know. It's sad. Well, you gotta stay a little relatable. That's true. I am relatable because right now my clothes smell bad. This outfit smells bad. Oh, God, what kind of stink? I don't know if it's from the dry cleaning.

1:31:03Uh-oh. I did walk, so the sweat probably made it worse. Oh, it smells like sweat. Well, no. That's great. Pheromones? It doesn't. It smells like a weird smell, and the sweat, I think, exacerbated it. Okay. If you had to compare the smell to something, could you? Well, then I wondered, like, is it moth smell? But then I don't know what moth smell is. No, are you thinking of moth balls? Yeah. Yeah, moths don't smell. Moth balls smell to repel moths. Oh. Yeah. That's the thing I'm always curious about. There's always kids in school whose mothers just chalk their closets full of mothballs. And then they reek like mothballs.

1:31:42But guess what? It's human repellent as well. Because it's nasty. Okay, well, that makes me feel good. It's not moths. I thought mothballs were made from moths. Oh, okay. I thought they were like spiders, you know? Like they leave webs. Ew. Anyway, so it's not that. So it's the dry cleaner. Oh. Fuck. Well, okay. It definitely is. I've noticed it on a lot of my clothes lately. This makes me think of something that I don't think I should share, but I'm going to. So I was in my Miami trip, and I have a system when I travel. I throw all my dirty clothes in the corner of whatever room I'm inhabiting.

1:32:16And at the end of the trip, I have two sides of my suitcase. I keep all the fresh ones on one side, and I put all the dirties in a ball in the other side. Then when I get home, I just take that ball, I put it in the hamper, and then I put away my fresh clothes. So I had showered. I did very minimal things. And I went to work out and then I, you know, I pee next to the garage. Today? No, no. This is maybe a week and a half ago. It was after Miami. Okay. This resulted from Miami. Okay. I think I know. You do. I think I can continue. Well, take a guess. That could be fun. Okay. So you peed by the garage.

1:32:52And when you peed by the garage, you took your underwear down. And when you looked at the underwear, it was definitely dirty. because one of the dirty clumps moved into the clean clump. Okay. Close. And it was poop stays. No, okay. Okay, so I guess it's not that bad. Oh. I don't in general have shit streaks. I wouldn't guess that about you. Yeah. You're pretty clean. I'm pretty meticulous. Well, just specifically, I don't even think I'm that clean. My anus is an obsession of mine. You know, I have the - Bidet. I have the brondle and I squirt water in there and I'm just, yeah. And you put your fingers in.

1:33:23I do rub my finger on that. People don't like that, but I do. You know, fuck it. I put my finger on it in the shower. I clean it. And then I use toilet paper to dry off. And then I wash my hands. Yeah. Okay. So. Okay. So I peed next to the garage and then I went in and then I sniffed my fingers as you do. Yeah. I thought, oh my God, there's a little bit of like ball smell. Like I would, which I don't, again, I also don't really ever get stinky balls. I have to not showered for a few days to get that. But I just showered that morning. I was like, what the fuck? How could I already have stinky undercarriage when I just showered?

1:34:05It was driving me bonkers, right? And then I peed another time, and I'm like, God damn it, it's there. Maybe it's even worse. Now I'm consumed with it. So when I finish my workout, I'm like, I'm gonna have to shower. Well, actually, I didn't think I'm gonna have to shower again. I'm gonna have to wash my testicles and penis in the sink, which I sometimes do. And so I went upstairs and I was about to do that. And all of a sudden I just thought, oh my God, I'm going to smell my underwear. I took off my underwears, lordy lord. What's obvious is they were not clean. Yeah. So although I was very clean, I put on my undies and it contaminated my testicles and my penis.

1:34:43Dirty one made its way into the clean section. That's exactly right. Okay. And I'll add, I can't remember having pantaloons, undercarriage, men's unmentionables that even smelled that bad. Right. Why would it smell that bad? Well, Miami. Okay. Sweat. Very hot. Yeah. Very humid. Sure. Then take them off and they're, God knows, you know, and they're just not getting any better smelling. And then they're in the. Okay. Oh, God. Anyways, what a humiliation. What a humiliation. Well, you were by yourself at least. That's true. That's true. I'm like you. I go to the worst place. Like I have a headache.

1:35:16Okay. I got a tumor. So I'm like, oh my God. Now I'm someone whose balls stink three hours every day shower. That's scary. What's happening with me hormonally? Yeah. I'm going to all these crazy explanations, never even thinking, maybe my panties smell. And they did. Wow. Well, that's an easy fix. So best case. Yeah. I haven't experienced it since. But now I'm a little shook about that pair of panties. And I love that pair of panties. They're dark black with very colorful hearts on them. So I wore them the other day and I sniff, sniff. Because I was like, were they clean? And they're permanently, something's wrong with them.

1:35:50Oh. But then I sniff, sniff, sniff, clean as a cucumber. But I had some anxiety all day. I was like, every time I peed, I was like. You thought maybe it was going to get released? Yes, just because I had had that traumatic experience with them. Well, you know, I mean, there's reason to fear. Because sometimes when pheromones get crossed, weird stuff can happen. I think you're referencing when you borrow a girlfriend's shirt. That's right. And the girlfriend doesn't have BO. Zero. And you don't have BO. I hope I don't. You don't. I've known you for quite a while. Yeah. Never smelled BO on you. And then.

1:36:21But when I wear the shirt, I do have B. It smells crazy, but it's the mixture of the pheromones. Yeah, and you know which friend you can't share tops with. Callie's one of them, right? No. Is she one of them? No, she's not. It's not gross because neither of you have B. I know, but it's not her. Ding, ding, ding, Callie. This is relevant. So I had dinner with her, and she just got out of COVID. And during COVID, she got really into Drive to Survive. She did not. Yes. Oh, her MX? Yeah, they've been watching it. And so she was cross-referencing with me a lot. Like, okay, do you like this person? Do you like this person?

1:37:04Who do you like? You know, that type of thing. And then she had probably a whole new jealousy that you're friends with Daniel Ricciardo. Okay, this is what I'm getting at. Oh, my gosh. No, you're not going to like it. Okay. Okay, so she said, what teams? And I said, I just like whatever Danny's on. He's my favorite. And she was like, really? And I was like, yeah, what do you mean? I was like, I love Danny. He's the best one. And she was like, oh, he seems a little full of himself. And then I said, oh my God, that's the thing Dax was talking about on the show where some people think he's - Sincere about that.

1:37:39I guess, or something. And I was like, oh, that's that thing. But then I told her that he's perfect and lovely and very nice. and she said, oh, I was wrong. Yeah, nicest manners in the world, gentle boy. Not arrogant at all. No. That's his character. I had to correct that. I had to right that wrong. She was receptive to it. Oh, good. I'm glad she was flexible in her judgment. She was. Who does she love? She likes Sains. Okay, sure. When you look at Sains, you go, this guy is dirty. I do think that when I see him, but I think the same thing about Leclerc. Like they all stink bad. No, not stink.

1:38:18No, no, no. Stop saying that. You're perpetuating a false rumor. I'm saying like nasty. Like get in the bedroom. He's throwing you all around, moving your body, doing all kinds of advanced Spanish lovemaking techniques. That's what I think. Okay. I think she's responding to his carnal sex appeal. Okay, maybe. Like Leclerc is much better looking than Seng's. Well, that's all in the eye of the beholder. To me, I'm only speaking for myself. Okay. I think LeClerc is much cuter than Sainz. But if I had to guess, there were 10 volunteers who slept with both of them, my guess would be Sainz comes out as the better lover.

1:38:57That is my spidey sense intuition. Okay. You're worried about me perpetuating rumors? That he's a good lover? Well, also that LeClerc is not. Didn't say that. No, basically. Did not say that. That's what he's gonna hear. No, he's not. What he's gonna hear is I think he's better looking. and then I think that Sainz is a little bit better of a lover. Although LeClerc is a very generous lover. Although no, last time I was talking about LeClerc, I was hypothesizing that he was a two-pump chump. Exactly. For fun. You've really made it clear you think he's bad. No, I love LeClerc. Anyway. He's in my top three drivers.

1:39:34What if I said, you know, Dax is obviously better looking, but I would much rather have sex with. Oh, yeah. Well, that's true. Yeah, you'd hate that. Well, hold on, though. That was really good. It was kind of a cheap shot. But also, Bradley Cooper would be mad that I said the other part. Well, so what you would need to say, though, it's got to be identical. You'd say you're much better looking than Bradley. But I think if you and Bradley had sex with 10 women, the women would prefer having sex with Bradley. Okay. And that's still rough. I guess pretend I said that. That's rough. But not as bad as what you just said before.

1:40:11Well, I say. He's way better than you Yeah that's what you're saying I didn't say that stop putting words in my mouth I said that signs is Preferred not way better

1:40:26You are splitting Hairs That's what we do here Nuance Non-binary Preferred I'll change my verbiage to preferred 10 girls would prefer sleeping with Bradley over you. They preferred the experience. Preferred the experience. They had sex with both of you and they preferred the experience. You'd hate it, of course. Well, of course I'd hate it. You know what a good question is? We're getting somewhere good. We're actually, we're approaching something good. Okay. So here's an option. You only get one of these two. Great looking or great in bed. What would you rather be known for? Oh, known for. I know for me what it is.

1:41:07Well, I know for you what it is. What is it? Good in bed. Oh, yeah, of course. Because that's where the rubber meets the road. I think everyone would rather be good in bed. I don't know. I think some people who don't really give a fuck about sex, they're not super sexual. They'd rather just walk through the world being super attractive and people smiling at them and buying them drinks and whatnot. And they're like, I don't care if I'm good in bed. I'm good enough. Now, what would you rather be, Robbie? Good in bed. Yeah. Good, three for three. The hard thing is if you're not good looking, it's hard to prove you're good in bed.

1:41:41This is the conundrum. Right. Anyway. So does she want to start watching? Is she going to start watching races and shit, Kaylee? She wants to, I think. Now she's in. She loves it. Great. Yeah. Owen might have to have him over for a race day. Oh, they would love that. Max asked if I liked Pierre Gasly. That's my brother's favorite. Really? Yeah. He loves him. I said he looked greasy.

1:42:09But then Max said no, it was just a sweat from driving. They're playing a sport, basically. Like, you would never call a basketball player sweaty. No, I didn't call him sweaty. Greasy. Oh, greasy. That's a different one. That's got a little bit of a potentially a racist connotation. Why? He's white. I know, but there are certain populations of white people that have a reputation of being greasy. Who? I'll tell you off the air, but I'm not going to do it here. Tell me. No. Anyway, okay, so Max likes Pierre. Does anyone like Max? No. Oh. That's pretty... Universal. Yeah. Wow. He's so arrogant, Dax.

1:42:47You know that. He's not even arrogant. That is not the word I would use to describe him. Okay, okay. Like, he never says he's great. That's not, for me, required. First of all, he's the best driver in Formula One. I don't disagree. Yeah, and he doesn't even really say that. I don't love a fuck-off attitude in general in life. I'm not attracted to anyone who's like that. He carries himself like that, so he's not for me. I know, but you love Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan was punching his teammates in practice. But Michael Jordan does not have a fuck-off attitude. He's not like... Go ahead. If someone who doesn't know as much as him tells him what to do, he has a very fuck-off attitude.

1:43:28And that's what you see with Max quite often. But even just the way he talks to interviewers, He refuses to play the game even a little bit. And I don't like that. I'm like, these are fans. These are people who are paying a lot of money to see you. Can you cut him a little bit of a cultural break that he's Dutch? They don't do the pleasantry thing. Everyone in the Netherlands, in the North, they don't believe in the little small talk, the pleasantries. They get right to it. I don't believe in small talk either. I hate it. But you are a popular sports figure making a ton of money, doing exactly what you love.

1:44:06You have a great life. Just be a little, just be a little nicer. Okay. I'm just going to make an argument for him. Okay. Which is he's not paid to do any of that stuff. He is paid to win races for Red Bull. Hold on. You said your piece. Okay. He has one job, win races. That is his job. And that's why he gets paid more money. If you wanted a PR guy, you should have hired a PR guy. If you want a guy that thinks about nothing but winning races, is a psychopath about winning races, then hire me and I'll go win races. But if you need a guy to go sell Red Bull as a beverage or sell Formula One as a sport, I'm not the dude.

1:44:45I care about a single thing, winning races. I respect that. Okay, that was my piece. I get it. I get what you're saying. It's not attractive to watch someone be rude or. Short with everyone. Could care less when people are excited. Like it's, to me, very off-putting. Even when he wins, though. Do you ever listen on the radio when he wins? Like when he comes across the finish line and they'll go like, that was P1, Max. And I'll go, oh, all right. That was a good race. That's it. The other people are like doing backflips in the car and screaming and stuff. he's just a very you know robotic yeah I'm not trying to convince you to not like him you know I don't think you are love him, you can keep loving him but not my preferred personality I like Danny who's nice and kind and always looking out for the little guy and who's conscientious I like that personality, that's what I'm drawn to One of the questions lobbed my way was, what do you think of Will blank?

1:45:54I forget his last name. The journalist on Drive to Survive. Back up. What now? That was a question from Callie to me. Oh. You know, like, what do you think of this person? What do you think of this person? What do you think of Will Buxton, the journalist? That's great. He's handsome. The English dude, right? Yeah. Yeah, he's very handsome. He kind of looks like a driver a little bit. She's deep if she wants to know what you think of Will Buxton.

1:46:21Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

1:46:33Okay, what does Ashante mean? Ashante means nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. I can't really say it to you because I met you a long time ago. I know. It also does, it does say enchanted. Oh, good. But maybe we get enchanted from that. It's a very elegant word. It is. Yeah. It's greasy. Farts on an airplane. Like snakes on a plane, farts on a plane? Why you fart so much on planes? Is that how it was said? Why you fart? Not why do you? Oh, it's why you fart. It's an answer, not a question. Yeah. This says, as it turns out, there's a scientific reason people often fart more while traveling on planes or climbing high mountains.

1:47:19And it's even got a name, high altitude flattus expulsion. Ooh, flattus expulsion. The gastrointestinal syndrome was described in a 1981 study as characterized by an increase in both the volume and the frequency of the passage of flattus, which spontaneously occurs while climbing to altitudes of 11 ,000 feet or greater. I've never heard flatulence just shortened to flattus. Oh my God. Excuse my flattest. Ashante. That study found that as air pressure decreases at higher altitudes, gases inside your body expand and need to be let out. Although it was based more on being up in the mountains than inside a pressurized plane.

1:48:01But additionally, a 2013 study that had participants record how often they farted while driving up an Australian mountain hypothesized that quickly moving from a low altitude to a higher one draws more carbon dioxide into your gut. Oh, wow. Isn't that great? It is, you know, and if you think about it, it's the reverse of the bends. Yeah. So you have less pressure on you, so the gas comes out. But when you have extra pressure, it condenses it so much and gets in your bloodstream. Wow. Less pressure in your asshole, more pressure in your bloodstream. Keep it in your asshole, folks.

1:48:35Oh, man. Oh, Jesus. Okay, this is the trans-ish. Okay, so backstory. story. Almost the second after I said that the Benz is on the ups and scale. We stopped down, as we say in the biz. What did we call it? Stopped down. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, wow. Okay. I'll tell you some things. Stopped down and we did a really cool interview. And then things got cray. Then we stopped up and all of a sudden the kids were home from school. Yes. So this next section of the fact check includes some guests. It's chaos. Please enjoy the chaos. We had just finished farts on an airplane. I was a kid in my class today, and I don't know who it was.

1:49:19But I was suspecting him. You sit over here, love. So someone ripped in class, and you were trying to figure out who it was? Yeah. This is a ding, ding, ding to our fart story, because what happened today? But I was just sitting there, and everything was normal. We are redoing a multiplication unit. And then I just smelled something in the air. And I was like, oh, it's just a small. And then it came at me. It came at me so hard. Oh no, it grew and grew. Yeah, I had to stand up and pretend to stretch. Oh really? Yes. Did you look around the classroom to make eye contact with other people? Like, are you smelling this too?

1:49:56I have farted in weird places. So I know what position I love to sit in when I fart. So it just is silent. I saw the people sitting next to me and I looked at Harper. And she was sitting on her knees and I said, that's not a good place to fart. It would have skimmed against your feet, so it would have made a loud sound. Oh, right. Really good sleuthing. And then I looked at Draven, and she was sitting in the crisscross applesauce. And I was like... No way. No, you're just sitting on too much weight. So then... That'd be thunderous. If you farted during crisscross applesauce, it would be like a trumpet in your pants.

1:50:38And then I looked at Dylan, and he was sitting, he was hugging his knees technically. I was like, that's not a good place to farm. Also a blast. That'd be a trumpet. Unless you rolled up a little bit. You're right. You know? Imagine pulling your knees tight to your chest. It would be like. Yeah, it would fucking rip. What you're trying to get is your buns as pushed together as possible, no pressure anywhere in your body, so you can let it leak out. Exactly, you want it to leak out. Wait, you guys, I have a much, this is fascinating, I have a much different tactic for a silent fart. Yes, I want the butt cheeks to be spread.

1:51:21Splayed open? Yeah. Oh, so you'll what, do the splits? You'll bend over and split? No, I mean, I guess I don't really fart in public anymore. Yeah, if you bent over and spread your butt cheeks and then it smelled a minute later, You might as well have just made a noise. Okay, normally I do this if I'm in like a public bathroom. Oh. So I can use my hands. And you spread your butt cheeks apart physically? Yeah. Oh, my God, that's great. Oh, wow. That's wonderful. Was anyone doing that, Lincoln? Not that I saw. And then I identified the culprit. Okay. Okay, and was it a male or a female? It was a female.

1:52:00Okay. Good for her, I will say. Me too. Yeah. I was afraid you were only gonna blame it on a dude, because we're gross. You are. Yeah, that's right. I'm the worst. What kind of position was she in? I'm just slowly lifting up my butt. Her butt was like high, so. Oh, wow. Okay. Wow, I'm impressed. You figured it out. And then did she ask to go to the bathroom like five minutes after that? No, but then I actually had to pee during that time. So maybe I thought, oh no, did somebody think it was me? Were you scared? I was like, I actually had to go to the bathroom before the fart came. Sure. And TJ said, I can't go right now.

1:52:41So wait two minutes. Oh, boy. And then the person started just letting it air out. It was like load and load and load. Oh, wow. There was this one time where I thought I was gone. And I was like, fresh air. And then new round. Second wave. And it was even worse than the first. Oh, oh, oh, oh. And I feel like it was another person. This was also a female. She always points out farts when somebody farts, and she did not point at that. So... Oh, never smelt it, doubt it. Oh, no, that's the opposite. But she was sitting in crisscross applesauce. So maybe she lifted up her butt. She might have a different technique like Monica, but I have to say that's a really good proof if she's always busting people about farting, and it stunk in there like a dead raccoon and she was quiet, that's very incriminating.

1:53:36Unless the teacher pulled her aside at one point and said, please don't do that anymore. It's embarrassing for the students. And I wish the teacher would do that because that's mean. Well, you should be embarrassed for farting and stinking up the classroom. Sure, but we must agree some things are embarrassing in society because this is what I think I feel bad for you kids is like you're in your home. You've been farting since you were born. We don't care at all. We think it's funny. And then we send you to this box that you sit in with other kids and we haven't even told you it's not cool to fart in public and you gotta learn the hard way, right?

1:54:10Mm-hmm, yeah. Like, did you ever get embarrassed at any point? Like, did you rip one at any point that someone busted you? No, nobody caught me. You just knew somehow to keep them down low. Nobody caught me, unless I accidentally didn't know it was coming. Yeah, sure. Surprise fart. Yeah, sure. That was a good fart noise. That was good. I'm proud of that. I'm impressed. Okay. I do think maybe it's evolutionary that we know not to do that in front of strangers. We'll get removed from the group. Yeah, you'll be exiled. Because of stinkiness. Yeah. That's a good reason. You look like Zazzy today.

1:54:47Zazzy. Oh, thank you. Okay. Last question. Yes. How frequently do you smell farts in the classroom? Is it every day? There's only been, I don't know, three or four or five farts. this month. That's not bad at all. So people have been holding them in or just haven't had to fart. Okay. Do you think it correlates to the school lunch? Great theory, like whatever hot lunch is, like cabbage, kimchi. The weird thing is, a lot of people fart before lunch. Oh. That's interesting. Breakfast farts? Breakfast farts, maybe. Well, maybe they didn't evacuate in the morning. Oh, they're not on a good sketch. Who's there?

1:55:27Delta. Hi, D-Money. Oh, she fell. Oh my gosh. She left. Oh my gosh, purple hair. Yeah, we did this morning. That beautiful purple hair. Purple hair. It looks so good. Oh, and it matches your sweater. Uh-huh. You look like a little rock star. You look like a little rat. Delta, did you smell any farts in your class today? A coffee thingy called Teddy Bear? Yeah, that's a Starbucks teddy bear, but it has to stay in here because David brought it for the attic. You can come up here and play with it. That's fine. She doesn't have every single stuffy. She does. That's from New Zealand, my love. That's from a faraway country, like 17 hours in an airplane away.

1:56:15But you can come up here and play with it. It'll give you something to look forward to when you come up here. But did anyone fart in your class today, Delta? Oh, criminy. Now you got chocolates. Yes, those come from New Zealand as well. They're not that good. They're not good at all. They're terrible. Don't tell David. It's like a Skittle, a chocolate Skittle. Those aren't bad. Mikey likes it? You want to take it? Oh, boy. When's the last time you smelt a bad fart? A Friday. Friday. And what happened? I just smelled a toot. Oh, you did? When you smell a toot in class, do you say, Ew, somebody farted, or do you just keep it to yourself?

1:56:55I just give it to myself. That's nice. Because that's nicest. Yes, exactly. How often do you fart in class? 20 times a day. That's 20 times a day. So it does smell like farts in the classroom, just your farts. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Well, you're making a real name for yourself because you've got purple hair and you're farting 20 times a day. I think the sky's the limit for you. Wait, what is this? What are we on? We're on television right now. They can see us. We're on television.

1:57:30We're doing a podcast and then Lincoln was up here, so we invited her to chit chat. You know, after the interview is a fact check. So just Monica and I talk. And Monica busts me on what facts I got wrong. A fart check. Fart check. This has become a fart check, yeah. But why did it end? Oh, I do have like one. Yeah, well, listen. Why don't you guys shut up and listen to Monica and you guys will learn. Oh, wow. So now you're shutting me up. You know, this is what boys do, I think, because I was explaining a math problem today and Draven didn't get it. And then Dylan said, don't worry, I'll explain it.

1:58:01And I said, excuse me, this is my problem. I can explain it. Oh, there you go. I'm proud of you for doing that. You can explain it. You're capable. Boys are the worst. That's why you guys don't want. No one wants to sleep with dad. Yes, no one wants to snuggle daddy. No one absolutely wants to sleep with dad. Because of the farts? No. No, those are bad also. But I feel so bad for dad. Daddy has to sleep with his stuff. That's what they, no one wants to sleep with me at night. They're a fight to sleep with mom. And I said, you guys, how do you think I feel? I always have to sleep with daddy. Let's just be practical about it.

1:58:36What about sleeping with mommy is better? Mommy, I don't know. She's just not daddy, which is enough. Lincoln, you were so little. Three, maybe, or four. and I was carrying you and you said that... Did I poop my pants? No. Well, sure. I cleaned up lots of your poop but I was carrying you and you said something like I can't hold you like a mom holds you and I was so sad. But it was also the truth. I know. These kids are heartbreakers. This was very recent moment. This was when we were in the old house and I was in the bathtub. I didn't know why but this fart just came up and said, hello. And I turned around to grab the shampoo and I found that I pooped in the bathtub.

1:59:26Ah, yeah, that'll happen. These things happen from time to time. Lincoln, did you name your poop? You had a baby. A poop baby. We have a pee baby, Monica and I have a pee baby, so why not have a poop baby? Yeah, that's right. Wait, what's a pee-bee? A pee baby is I peed in a toilet and there's no flush and then daddy had to pee so he peed so then our pees were in the same toilet and never flushed so they turned into a baby. We said it turned into a pee baby. She lives at my house. Still there. Just getting out of kindergarten at this point I think. Can I tell the one story about you Delta? Yeah.

2:00:05I'm ready? I love this story. I was putting you guys to bed. Delta you were probably three and you said oh I gotta poop. I said okay you went in and you took a poop and it was the size of a moose's poop like I thought a moose had pooped in the toilet and I said oh my god honey when's the last time you pooped and you're like I couldn't I don't remember that was the biggest poop you'd ever taken so then I put you in your diaper and then I put you in bed and I put Lincoln in bed and we read a book and we snuggle and then I go outside I shut the door and I just turned on the tv and all of a sudden I heard Daddy I farted It's diarrhea And then I went in there I thought how could you have possibly Just had diarrhea You just had an entire evac I went in there I picked you up Your diaper was completely ruined I took you into the bathroom If you remember and you had poop on your back And your butt crack Full blow out And I was like, where did all this come from?

2:01:10That's great. Daddy, I farted. Okay, last thing. This is the last time you're going to get to talk, Delta. Will you do your song? Okay.

2:01:27What is that? She just learned this. Do you want to do it one more time? That's my favorite new thing in the whole world. Do you want to do it?

2:01:42She did that 1 ,100 times this morning before school. De-da-dee-do-do. De-da-dee-do. De-da-dee-do-do. De-da-dee-do-do-do. Wait, where'd you learn that? That's what, Mommy does that. Oh, wow. Oh, I love you. Thanks, D-Money. Oh, my God. All right, now you guys have to be quiet so we can do our business. Wow. We got a great fart story and we got a great dee-doll dee-dee-do. Yeah. Oh, that was great. Yeah, let's hear the fact. They got to see how the sausage is made. Okay, we have one fact left. The fact is, oh, and actually this is relevant. Lincoln loves F1. Excuse me, everybody. Eyes on Monica.

2:02:26Okay, the fact is about how many employees work on the Mercedes team. Oh, good. More than 950 employees. An F1 team, but this isn't specific to Mercedes, but an F1 team directly involves between 300 and 1 ,200 people, depending on whether it's at the front or back of the grid and how much in-house manufacturing it does and whether it produces an engine or buys one in. Yeah. And then how many people work at Mercedes? More than 700 employees work 24 hours a day. Oh, wow. That's confusing, because that would have to be 1 ,400 employees, 12 hours shift. It makes me wonder if they're talking about, even though the thing is how many.

2:03:07No, Mercedes has a million employees. Right, okay, then yeah, it is saying that. And then the other one said 950. More than 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the Brackley site. Daddy, do you think my D-Daddy Dodo is better than Mommy's D-Daddy Dodo? Oh, boy. This is the tough question. Mommy's is technically better Because she's got control of her instrument Yours is 20 times more entertaining So how do we know? How would I decide? Wait, what do you mean? Mommy's sounds identical to the actual JibJab song, right? Because she's a mimic And yours is yours And it's incredible So I would say I would rather hear yours than Mommy's And I got a hunch I'm gonna tonight Can I do it one more time for a goodbye?

2:04:01For a goodbye? Yes. Is there anything you want to say before we go? Farting in public should be weird. Okay, great. Good to end on. And then we're going to go out with a song. This is not an original. This is a cover song from the artist formerly known as Delta.

2:04:19Beautiful.

2:04:24You did it. You look like a chipmunk when you do it. All right, I love you guys. I love you. Love you, love you, love you.