Teddy Swims
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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Doug Barrington and I'm joined by Lily Padman. Welcome. I'm Lily Padman and you're Doug Barrington. I want to be, I want to be... Doug Lyman? Michelle. What if it was Doug Barrington and Doug Lyman? I want to be Michelle Montana. Do you know why? Tell me. Because my first street in LA was Barrington Avenue and you lived off Montana. Oh, so there's your form?

I didn't live, I wish I lived off Montana. Mother, you lie. No, that's where the rich people live. You told me you lived off Montana. No, I didn't. In Santa Monica. No, I lived off of Broadway, in between Broadway and Santa Monica Boulevard. Montana's where the nice people live. I guess I'll be Michelle Broadway then. There you go, Michelle Broadway. That sounds slutty. Yeah. Yeah. I grew up on Barrington. You were-

Doug Barrington. Yeah, right, right, right, right. And so I will be Michelle Broadway, Montana, hyphen. Okay, Michelle Broadway. Okay, great. We sorted it out. I wonder if you're a listener and you're like, you guys, it's time to hang up. Just say your names and get out. No. That would be a fair, would that be a fair criticism? No. Okay. Okay.

Okay, Michelle. Michelle's got boundaries. Yes, she does. And I respect them. Thank you. One of her boundaries is Broadway, which runs east and west in Santa Monica. I wouldn't mind having a... Pseudonym? Not... What's the other word for it? Nom de pluris?

No, it's like persona, but... Yeah, alter ego? Alter ego, thank you. That's the word I'm looking for. An alter ego, Michelle Broadway Montana. Oh, you're adding all of them now. Yes, she's hyphenated. Because she came from a family where the mother refused to give up her name. Yeah.

The mother was stubborn. Yeah, so I love her. I want to be her. Yeah, okay. I'm going to be her. Great. Michelle Montana Broadway. Broadway Montana. This is what happens when you hyphenate people. Yeah, that's y'all's fault. As long as I get both names in there, you should be happy. No. Yeah, why'd the order matter?

You're saying one order is better than... What if we said Dax Shepard Randall? Great. Enjoy. Okay, I will. We have a sweet boy on today. Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet boy. Yeah. His name is Teddy Swims, but I think it should be Teddy Sweets. Oh, yeah. I like that. He's so sweet. He's so fucking sweet. Yeah, this was fun. It's so talented. Yeah, outrageous. Outrageous. Raw. You, of course, like everyone else...

fell deeply in love from his last album. I've tried everything but therapy among those songs. I lose control. He's so fucking good, but mostly he's a sweet, sweet boy. Please enjoy Teddy Montana Broadway Swims.

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He's an upchair expert. He's an upchair expert. He's an upchair expert.

Get a car lift going, I see, man. That's sick. Oh, thanks for noticing. I mean, you would understand. This is a dream of all dreams. Yeah, hell yeah, brother. I have a fucking car lift in my garage. Hell yeah, brother. That's awesome. Horsepower sitting on it. That's what you like to see, baby. Success, baby. We love to see it. I got to take you in a little bit. Okay. This would be really inappropriate if you were a female guest, but I'm going to let my eyes start at your toes, and I'm going to

Follow your legs up very slowly. I'm going to look at every. Do a body scan. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm immediately curious who some of these portraits are of. So let's start on your left leg there. Who's that gentleman? Okay, this guy is Chris Farley dressed as Han Solo. Oh, my God. Incredible. Wonderful, wonderful. And I got a little Dave Chappelle right here. Oh.

We love him. He's the best. Have you met him and got to show him your thigh? Yeah, I didn't get to show him the thigh. I got to go to his Grammy party, and he was doing this kind of like open jam thing, and I got to go up there and sing, and it was so sick, man. Thundercat was playing bass. Corey Henry's on the keys. It was the coolest shit ever, man. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Ardra Day got up and sang. It was just star-studded over there, man. So I got to go up there and meet him. Does he make you nervous? He was already like three sheets to the wind and inviting people up. And he was like, Teddy, everybody says you're awesome. Let's fucking hear what this is about. And so I was like, dude, I got a tattoo of you on my leg right here. I wasn't going to just drop Trow in front of him, you know? Sure, sure, sure. If I was in shorts at the time, but I was already in my suit, so it would have been like awful to just...

Look at this, bro. Yeah. It would have been a lot of production. He would have known for a while what was coming. It's better to have drawstring on and just drop. Yeah, exactly, baby. He makes me nervous.

I'm saying that. I haven't even met him, but I know he would make me nervous. I'm very intimidated. Yeah, I was thinking I was going to be, I think it was just the environment. If it was just me meeting him, like walking into his house or something to do something like this, I would probably be freaking the fuck out for sure, you know? But it was just such a big party going on. So it was easy to just like, hey man. And I got called up the stage to sing. I immediately knew I was going to crush that. That's the gift you have. I don't, I don't have anything to come wow him with, right? I think the reason he intimidates me, it's anyone that I've labeled so cool.

It's not like talent. I've met a lot of talented actors, but it's the cool factor where I'm like, I feel so fucking dorky around this guy. That's how I felt meeting John Mayer. That is the coolest fucking guy I've ever met. He's just cool as hell. And I know a lot of things must bug that guy. I mean, he's got problems, surely, but he just looks like he's just the coolest. Like nothing gets by him. He just looks like he's fucking chill and you're talking to him, asking questions. I just keep asking questions. I was like, dude, if I'm wearing you out, please let me know because I just was like, what about this? I'll go all night. How about this record? Poppy energy. I could not.

stuff. Now, you gotta help me understand because, and this is not shade to John Mayer. Truly, I think he's talented and everything. I wouldn't be intimidated at all. I don't think he was the dude in my high school. I was like, hey, what are you guys doing after school? What is it about him? Is it the career? Is it the laundry list of A-list dating partners he's had? What's in the mix? When I was first coming up playing and singing and stuff, he

From Room for Square on, he's just always been one of the guys for me. Everything he's done too has been completely alone. I'm a huge collaborator when it comes to writing and using my guys to write and play. And he's done everything by himself. That level of trust you have in yourself to write the good thing and not have any outside opinion and to nail hits after hits after hits and never listen to a label to say, oh, we got to do this more poppy or go into this side or pitch you a record and say, how about this little shit pop record, you know? And he just doesn't seem like he's ever quite given in to anybody else's opinions.

His integrity is just firm. His conviction and self-confidence is the thing you're looking for. Yeah, it's crazy. I also find that musicians in particular really do respect him. He's the musician's musician, the artist's artist, but also has the hits. Whatever thing about trying to be like a big artist, you can do it the John Mayer way and really never give up your integrity and make things that are good for artists to listen to, singers to listen to, players to listen to, but also still get a number one slot by doing that and

I think he's what that is for me versus like, I'll take the shitty record and I know this is gonna be the number one single. I try to avoid those at all costs and just try to do it the way that makes me feel like my integrity's intact. - The Mayer Method. - Yeah, the Mayer Method. - The John Mayer Method. - Absolutely. - You should write a book called The Mayer Method. But we do have to take what you just said with a grain of salt because we met one time recently.

And you claimed that Without a Paddle was a seminal movie in your life and that I was very a part of your childhood. Absolutely. So we need to just qualify that. I think that's a good counterbalance. Dude, I love you. And I'm so glad to be doing this now. Me too. Because it came in hot, dude. As soon as I saw you standing there watching me, I was like, Dax, Dax, Dax, dude, I love you, bro. You're my fucking hero, dude. I loved it so much because what you were helping me through was I was having a moment where I was like,

man, I am 49. Everyone here is young. Everyone knows what's happening. I'm starting to not know what's happening. And then I see you and I'm like, this motherfucker. Well, there was a great conversation I had. It needs to be said. This is with another gentleman. And he said, just wait till you hear him sing. He's going to blow you away. And then you finished. And I was like, my God, you were right. That just fucking

Hugged my soul. Incredible, incredible. So then I'm thinking like, God, I'm so asleep on this genius. Now, mind you, when I hear the song, I know the fucking song. I just didn't put it together right away. And then I'm like in a shame spiral that I'm so disconnected. And then you came up and you were so kind to me. And I was like, oh, look, I still have a place here.

You actually made my whole night. Always, dude, always. I'm glad to hear that. That makes the world of me. It was really a lovely moniker. It was a Spotify party. We were both there. We were posting it. I have no excuse to be out of the loop, so I'm embarrassed for sure, but I was like, I don't know him. And then you started singing, and we were both like, oh, my God. Yeah, is that just good? It actually fills you with deep shame that you're not on to it. Yeah, totally. Totally.

I'm glad to hear that, but that's not the shame part. I love that. I'm grateful that there's always ways to get out there. And, you know, you hear it firsthand. And I think that's the most beautiful thing that we try to do is just every place we can be, whether it's a 200 cap or anywhere. Yeah, we were like 12 feet away. If we wanted to rush the stage and stab you or something, you were very vulnerable to our attack.

We were very close. We were. Yeah, I was quite moved by the whole thing. And I'm just like you. I will go out and let it rip on people. If I see someone I like, I'm like, buckle up. If I'm too much for somebody, then they're just not for me is what I think. I come on hard and strong and fast. And I'm just like, I love you. One thing I've been trying to learn in my love life is to not do that.

You kissed me once. Are we in love forever? I've had to stop doing that. That's been a long learning lesson, but you know, we take it slow in the current relationship. I mean, it's been really rewarding. I think there'll be an explanation for that as we walk through your whole life. Yeah, probably. I can relate big time.

Georgia, you're with a fellow. I'm from Georgia. Oh, right on. Where from? Duluth. Yeah, a lot of my homies are from Duluth. You know Duluth. I sure do. I've been constructing a mental image of it for the last 10 years we've been friends. I have yet to go, but I've heard so many details. Is it a haven of malls? There's a good amount of malls.

A lot of them have shut down during the pandemic and stuff, and I think some are making its way back. I'm actually going back on Friday. My aunt's getting married in Monticello. It's going to be a hilarious wedding. She's marrying this lady, and I'm ordaining the wedding, and I'm going to be doing it on the dock, and I think they're rolling up on a jet ski. This sounds like something out of Eastbound and Down. It's going to be absolute white trash. Yes, absolute white trash wedding. It's going to be sick. Anytime the bride and bride arrive on a jet ski, you're seeing something special. Steampunk theme, they said. I don't know what the...

What does that even mean? Yeah, how does one dress for steampunk? I mean, Rob would have a great answer. What should he be in? Suspenders, leather pants. But it's like gears and stuff. Mechanical things added to that. Oh my God. Almost Mad Max-y. Yeah, yeah, that kind of thing. Oh, that'll be fun.

Have you started writing the, not your nuptials, but your ceremony? No, but I got to call her eventually and ask like, what do you want to do? Are you out of just trying to fly through this thing? Or do you want me to do some scripture or something? Because you never know. Sometimes people want, even if they're not Christian, they want some Jesus-y part of it. Now, listen, I'm going to advise you to prepare basically two versions of this because you have to account for the fact there's at least a 15% chance one of them will sustain a pretty serious injury pulling up to the dock.

Exactly. Because jet skis are highly unpredictable and they often end in failure. So you need to have one that's like, let's get this done because the ambulance is waiting. And then you need one that's, they made the perfect entrance. They docked it beautifully. It didn't tip over. No one's wet. Let's settle in. And we're probably going to have to cut from the video where I'm trying to pull them up on the- Yeah, you might want to wear life preservers.

It's part of your steampunk routine. Maybe make it look like a bulletproof vest or something. Yeah. Try to go for that kind of look. 50 Cent slash buoyancy compensator. Oh, man. Okay, so tell me about Conyers, Georgia. Oh, man. I wouldn't say it's a beautiful place, but it's my place. I love it there. I went to school called Salem and was a big theater kid. Our place was really tight-knit. My mom, my dad.

both sides of my grandparents, my great-grandparents, all from Conyers. There's this one little diamond of area. And my grandparents, my mom's mom and dad, who are Pentecostal pastors, lived right there. That's the south side of the diamond for the West, right? Yeah, yeah. And then on the north side of the diamond, there was actually my mom's

granny's church that they used to go to. And then my granddad's church was, you know, a little ways down the road. And so all around the sides here are like my granddad's like brothers and sisters, daughters and kids outside of the diamond. There's another kind of diamond around it. My whole family's right there. Wow. So you're surrounding the whole area. Yeah. And so I always live with my dad as much as I possibly could because he was in like Covington or something. And every time you do anything wrong, there was like 40 people

Just like... Someone could see you in every corner of the county. What kind of population are we talking about? I could tell you the population. I don't know about... I would tell you that there was times in my life where you can't throw a rock far enough without hitting a Curbo or a Demsdale in that town because we have generations. So I would have to do like...

family trees to date somebody, you know what I mean? Yeah, oh God. 23andMe posted on your chest. It's scary, yeah. We're thinking that down. 18,000. 18,000. Okay, because it's only 24 miles east of Atlanta, but was it rural? The older I got, the more it became more suburban-y in a way, but

When I was younger, I remember my grandparents having chickens and stuff like that in their small yard. But over the years, more people came in. And it's right next to Covington, too, which is a little further east. And Covington, over the last few years, has been doing a lot of filming. And Tyler Perry's kind of the one that spearheaded all that stuff. And then Vampire Diaries and...

A bunch of things started getting in. So Covington's becoming this huge place of filming. That's so weird. If like Highland, Michigan, the town next to mine became a hotbed of Hollywood activity, I would have a hard time understanding that. But I think in Georgia, there's a bunch of tax write-offs or something. So mom and dad, were they married? They divorced when I was probably three or so. So I don't remember them quite together. As we're talking now, they've weirdly been like kind of dating again, weirdly, as of 31. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. It's been...

- It's really weird. - It's gross, right? - Yeah, they came to our show in Vegas together and then they called me on the phone. He's like, "Baby, it's probably weird hearing us together." And I was like, "Dad, I don't know how I feel about it. If it makes you happy." And he's like, "Is there one thing to say if I'm just hitting it?" And I'm like, "That's way worse, dude. That's way worse, bro." - Well, I don't know. We gotta really think this through. - No, that's his mom! - Whatever makes you guys happy, but I'm not trying to parent-trap you guys or anything, so fuck that. - I'm the same. So my dad left when I was three, but they remained really great friends.

And they'd be together. And even occasionally, if they were being mildly affectionate, I'd be like, guys, don't even think about going back down that road. Why? It's a weird, gross feeling. It's like your brother and sister are going to get... I don't know. Yeah, it's weird. It doesn't seem natural. It doesn't. It was always just yelling about this or that forever. And so, like, they always kind of just despised each other in a way. You don't have to name names, but did someone get sober in this equation? None of them really ever had, like, a big...

drinking issue or nothing like that. So that's been great. My mom was married to a guy from the time I was like four to about 18, who was a massive alcoholic and had dad and dad, dad and mom. They're a big line of alcoholics, but my parents, they'll smoke some weed here and there. My dad would get down every once in a while. As needed. Yeah. I've never had alcohol abuse within my parents. Oh, that's lucky. Yeah. That's really beautiful for me. You had a lot of church, obviously, between the grandparents. Yeah, with my mom. Yeah, but

On my dad's side, it was never that way, which was great. On the weekends, I'd go over there and we could do whatever. We could eat all the ice creams we want. I mean, we was watching Martin, my favorite show. I got a picture of Jerome back here on my side. Yeah, was dad... Right, he's my everything. Was dad spending money differently than mom? Because, like, we'd go to my dad's on the weekend. He drove a Corvette. He had cable TV. We could order pizza. It was like he was rich, even though he wasn't. It was very tough on my pop side.

My mom, she was with a guy who was pretty well off. He was gone all the time working. But my dad, on the other hand, he got with a woman who's schizophrenic and bipolar and had two more boys that are eight and 10 years younger than me. And so she was always in and out of prison and methed out. And that was really tough on them and us. And so me and my older brother helped my dad raise my two little ones. And he was always waking up at like 2 a.m., going to bed at

10 p.m., trying to do homework by himself. My dad is truly the greatest man I've ever met. Oh, that's lovely. He put these four boys on his back and just trucked through it. Oh, man. How much older is your brother? He's about 14 months older than me. Okay, so really close. Yeah, he's my best friend. He lives out here with me now. And so growing up, what kids were you in the social hierarchy of kids?

I've always just kind of gotten along with everyone. I've always been that way. You have a very sweet face. Yeah. It's the opposite of punchable faces. I appreciate that. You're familiar with punchable face? You have the opposite. Yeah, I've just always been able to get along with anybody and everybody. You know, it's just been easy for me. And was your older brother bigger than you? They're all bigger than me. My shortest little brother is, I think, still 5'10", but the rest of my family is in 6'. I got stuck at 5'7". Well, I bet you got the singing things.

So it all comes out in the wash. Was your brother protective of you? Absolutely, man. All of us. When I first had this thing picking up and going off, we'd started our merchandise business and I just employed my older brother to do it because it was kind of like he didn't really get to start a life until just this last couple of years when my little brothers got older because

As I was going doing this and my dad was trying to put my little brothers through high school, Kalen, my oldest brother, was their mother for so long. He had to kind of take care of all of us in a lot of ways. While you're surrounded by sweet men, that's not always the case. Women, on the other hand, have been a little treacherous. I think I've continued to pick those. It's such a different thing than what a lot of people go through because I have loving, gentle, hugging, kissing men in my life. Not so much that way with women in my life. Your stepdad, would he fall into the great or not great category? He's an awful person.

I loved him when I was younger, but he was just an alcoholic and he was gone all the time and he's working and he's really abusive in ways. And I haven't heard from him since. He raised me from four to 18. He was a second dad to me, you know? And one day he was just gone from my life and my mom's life and all of our lives. And I'd never talked to him again. And I do carry some resentments in ways towards him because he was a part of my life for so long. And then he was just gone. And I was just like, how do you raise somebody? And I know you and my mom split up, but

No, like, hi, buddy, or I love you, this isn't your fault. Just abandonment. Yeah, I think it really did fuck me up. I still think of that sometimes. Well, you start rewriting the entire history, right? Which is like, oh, he was only ever nice to me because of mom. Now he doesn't have mom, so none of that was sincere or genuine. But also, you're smart enough to know you lost him to addiction. At some point in your life, you might even have compassion. Yeah, I try. I know as I'm on the road and how easy it is to fall into this

spell of just drinking every day. And last year, all year long, when we was on tour for nine months, it was almost like a nine-month bender of just anything to keep this dopamine flow going. That's been the hardest thing for me this year is as we've been touring and trying to, like, get to this point of staying calm and being able to, like...

okay, we don't need all these people in the green room. We don't need a constant party every day. We don't need this dopamine. And I was talking to Bert Kreischer the other day about this re-entry thing because we got really into this thing about when you get back from tour. And I just got back like a week or two ago and I find first couple of days I'm home, it being kind of depressing. And I just get in this place and my baby starts to be like,

You're not sad. You're just used to this level of dopamine that hits you when you're in front of thousands of people and you can't sleep. Adrenaline. Yeah, the adrenaline junkie you turn into. And then so when you get home and you're not getting this constant affirmation like, yeah, you're the best. You kind of get in this like, shit, man, I don't know. Am I okay? You get in this turmoil spot. It's so easy to just like, well, I know how to regulate.

And I have to try to do things like get sun, go to the gym, try to get my life back into order for a week or two and try to get a routine going again. But then you're back. Get stable and then do it all over again. I'm grateful though. The best job in the world. You're like coming off of cocaine, but you don't have any downers and you're just in your hotel room. So it's like, what are we going to do with all this? That's the feeling. And then you're laying there till 3am. And even if you got to get up at 6am to go radio, you're like, I can't turn this adrenaline off. And there's always a mini bar to start tapping.

into or something to get you a little bit more tired. That's just a tough thing to do. I try to do the first two or three weeks of this last Europe tour sober and bring my PlayStation and just get something to focus my brain into because there's always Kyle from the second grade somewhere and he happens to be in like Manchester and you're like, what are you doing here? We got to get hammered tonight. Of course. And it's tough. And then for me, the justifications became more and more preposterous.

Yeah. You know, like, yeah, they were kind of legit at first. And then it was just like, I mean, it's almost 11, 16, whatever the thing is. But it's chemical. That high, the drop of being on stage and having all those people. It's an actual chemical drop. They're just like, oh, that sounds hard. But it's physiological. Absolutely. Of course you feel that way. It's not weird that you do. It's your chemicals. All of ours. Well, and it all makes sense when you look back at how almost...

I don't want to be careful with my wordage here, but every performer I loved growing up was struggling with it. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I don't know the one that was like the Billy Crystal of rock and roll who somehow was doing it from a healthy place. Maybe. And managed it beautifully. Yeah, maybe. But he wasn't like going to play freeze tag at the end of the show with his friends. You know what I mean? He was going and partying. Oh, maybe Paul McCartney. He seems to be the guy who escaped. He's still with it. I'm sure he's had his time.

Even these ones you didn't think, like Prince and Michael Jackson both OD'd. They both died of drug overdoses. However you want to qualify it. Well, he had an opiate prescription. Oh, he was just trying to go to sleep. Whatever the case is, like these are two men who died. I think the more I do it, the more I realize like, oh, that's why we're all alcoholics and drug addicts. That's why we can become that so easy. Yeah. So my probably number one guy I love is Waylon Jennings. And also my fantasy of his life is number one.

which is on the road, up for six days on speed, writing music, playing for people, sweating bullets.

And everyone in his life's being let down, but the music's so good, they all overlook it. I was like, I gotta figure out something I do good enough that everyone will let me live as shitty as I want and not kick me to the curb. I missed Waylon Jennings a lot when I was coming up. I didn't quite come up on a lot of his stuff or his life or that matter, but I definitely could understand that feeling. That's what I thought I was doing with this career originally. I thought I could just be a degenerate all the time. And now it's like when you got a 3 a.m. lobby call to get to a radio station, I'm like, what the fuck?

is this? I did not sign up to music to do this bullshit. I wanted to stay out till 3. I wanted to be up till 9am and then sleep till 4pm and hit soundcheck. That's what the vibe was, what I was walking into, but it's not that. You can't avoid adulthood with anything you do, I don't think. Yeah, once you're inside the fantasy, you're like, oh, this isn't quite how I pictured it.

It's beautiful, but it's like, fuck, man, I just got to wake up and feel like shit or wake up, make sure I don't feel like shit. I would argue, too, your specific story is a very extreme example of it, too, as far as, like, the highs and lows. We're only one year out from Lose Control coming out. Yeah, it's like a week from now or something? Yeah. Wow.

Doing well, making baby steps, baby steps, getting closer, getting closer. And then the floodgates, most listened to song of the year. Obama's favorite song. Yeah, that was sick. That was such a cool moment for me. What? I was lit up about that. Yeah, I made his little playlist. It was so sick. That song just goes to show you how the old way of doing something still works. Because I had thought for so long that maybe a good song wasn't enough to just

go anymore because there's like a hundred thousand songs come out a day on spotify right a lot of these are backed up by trends via tick tock instagram whatever have you and when those trends start to happen those songs start to hold up their hand and it does make the playing field very even a 15 year old can record it in his bed and do what i could

never do when I was 15 or what I could do even now. So I think it's a beautiful way of even in the playing field. But when I look at that song in particular, it's not been a flash in the pan and it's been not backed by a trend, but also us going to every place and touring on this song for over a year and hitting every radio station and shaking every hand

and asking them to play it and meeting and bringing them to the show, having a drink with this guy from the radio station, making great friends with them and working the song. And you can still work it that way. The promo is so important. Meeting those people are so important because the next song, they're like, that's my boy, Teddy. I want that guy to win. And whether the song is...

trash or good. It has to be good to some degree, I'm sure. But I think now when you make those connections and when you go over to the UK five times, six times in a year, and you meet all those people and you shake all those hands and even your label people, you're not just a name that slides across their desk to them. That's my dog. I want to win. And when you get that real personal connection with people, then I think that will always take you farther in life. I would find it more satisfying if I were you as well, that it wasn't even in a genre that's working at number one.

It's not like you listen to that and you're like, yeah, that's the one that'll catch on. It's not resembling any of the other top. It just went last week number one on R&B radio. It's already been number one on pop radio and it's number one on Billboard and rock radio it's worked at and every different place it can be. Okay, but back to Conyers. You were playing football as a little guy and then you...

You eventually discovered musical theater or theater in 10th grade? Yeah, 10th grade I got in. But who were you socially? Everyone kind of liked you. You were a good time Charlie? Yeah, absolutely. Did girls like you yet? I was always nervous about that. I had a bunch of girls that were friends. And I was always kind of like a serial dater where I was just jumping into a relationship and then being that for two, three years and then jump right into another one. And I kind of did that for a lot of my life. Starting in what grade? My first one I got serious about was...

ninth grade. We were together for, I think, two, three years. That's a long time. From high school, yeah. We were broken up for like all of three days when I got into another one for like another three years. It was insane. It's been that way except for where I'm currently at. I took months off before I dove back into something because I've just been that way. Like, oh,

I love you. I can't help it. I fall in love so quick. Now, do you, well, we'll get to that, I guess. But when you start doing musical theater, you do Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Yeah, the first one we ever did actually was a show called Damn Yankees. So me and my best pal Jesse, who still plays with me, his dad was a guitarist and sang and their whole family was big into music and

When I first started hanging out with him, that was the first time I ever saw somebody play and sing. He was in his basement, and he had this PA set up, and he started singing, won't it get over that? And I was like, dude, your dad is fast, bro.

Yes, bro. Seen a million faces. Yeah, it's so sick, bro. So me and Jesse started playing all the time, and we sucked so bad originally. What age is this? 13. We were coming right out of eighth grade. We'd get dropped off at the movie theater and take that 20 bucks our parents gave us and not go to the movies, do what you would think 14-year-olds do with $20. We'd just sit out there and sing acapella, trying to harmonize, trying to sing for anybody that let us sing. His sister got us in a theater when I was in 10th grade, and I remember still to this day, us doing that damn Yankee show, and I had two lines, I think, in it.

My mom was crying so bad when I told her, I was like, I don't want to play football anymore. I'm done with football. And she pulled out all this old memorabilia, you know, where she had the magnets and all my trophies. And she was like, why would you do this to us? We play football.

Why would you do this? Was your brother playing football? Well, my older brother, he never played. So I guess we're not all playing football. Why do you suppose that was an important endeavor for her? I don't know. My dad did and my other brothers did. It's a Southern thing. And we always did since I was a little kid, since I've been like five. She watched me on the football field. But do you think she was worried about you missing out on the teammate experience? I'm trying to imagine what it is she thought.

football was giving you? I think it was the fear of change that I was going to do something else. But it wasn't until I did that first show and I sang my two little lines and I get out and my mom was like, baby, I'm so sorry. That's where you belong. Oh, she flipped. Yeah, she flipped so sick. All she had to see me was on stage. Two lines. And just be like,

Wow, baby, you go for it. That's good. She was the sweetest after that. Oh, good. You won her right over. Yeah, right over. And then you started singing in the chorus in high school? Yeah. Funny enough, my senior year, I was kind of really falling behind. I was such a bad student. And we had this credit recovery thing where you would go in class and you could

do a few weeks of online bullshit and get your credits there. So I found this thing called Alpha Omega and Conyers, and it's basically you go pick up work every week for like eight weeks, and you'd read a chapter, and you could pretty much Google all the answers, do the test on the back, and then turn it in. You get credits. So I went over one summer going into my senior year, did all my senior core classes, and all my credits I was behind because I was still practically in 10th grade going into senior year. So I was like, fuck it, if I just do all these, I can come back and not have to do anything. Right.

Smart. So I'd already had my credits. And so I remember the principal calling in my office and talking to my mom. And she was like, I'm not signing off on this. You're just coming in here to do theater, chorus, show choir, and video production. That's not going to happen. You can't do that. And I was like, well, I already got the credits. So I am doing that. So that's what I'm doing. Yeah. And she's like, well, I'm still getting you in the classes. And I was like, well, I'm not going.

And so I stayed all my core classes my senior year. I just didn't go to it. I got zeros. I graduated at the bottom of my class, but I did graduate. So fuck her, you know? Yeah, you did it. Because she could say I couldn't do that. But they passed a law in Rockdale County now that they can't do joint enrollment in places. I think I ruined it for some of the kids that were getting college credits. And maybe for the best. Stay tuned for more Fire and Fire Expert. If you dare.

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Did you have any fantasies about like going to do musical theater? Yeah. I still one day want to pursue that again eventually, but I've kind of put myself in a box on roles I can play. With the tattoos. Yeah. It's got to be a specific role now if it comes to acting again. I was thinking that.

Well, when did tattoos start? I got my first one when I was 16. I got it covered up. It was a cross, and it had my last name in a bander. It said Demsdale, and it said established 1992. It was so corny, bro. And I'm cutting the sleeves off my shirt like, yeah, dude.

By the time I was 18, I was like, what the fuck? This is so stupid. It's not that I don't think kids should get tattoos. It's just that they can't pick a good one. I'd almost sign off on it, but they need like a panel of elders that approves your tattoo. I agree. And not that I'm the one to take advice of tattoos from, but I think 16-year-olds might be too early. Kind of the first one you see, you're like, that'd look awesome. Doesn't really matter what it is you see. And I thought I was having a...

cross my name and like, you know, I was like, you really thought it through. Yeah, I tried anyway, but I just wanted something. You know what's cute, Monica? I heard him say in an interview that what he wanted to be when he grew up was tattooed. That was a destination. Yeah, that wasn't a real job. Obviously doing tattoos is one. Receiving them, yeah.

I remember my mom used to give us $10 at the end of the week when we did our chores for the week. And so on Sunday, we'd have to go to church and then we'd have to give 10% of our tithes and offerings, which is a good thing. And I appreciate that principle now, but giving up a dollar out of $10, I was like, fuck.

Fuck, I'm broke now. And my older brother would always give $5 because he's a fucking overachiever. Wow. Yeah, what a weenie. I would go to the Mexican restaurant every Sunday or Henderson's and they have those fake tattoo machines and I put them cords in and just cash out. Slap them, stand in the mirror all over my body. Feeling awesome. Yeah. And did you feel protected by them? Like, what was the draw? I know, I just felt tough. All the people I looked up to had tattoos and they were badasses. My first concert I went to and fought this bug for was 2007 Warped Tour. Paramore was there, Circus Survive. I probably went to Circus Survive.

Yeah, he was like, "Girls, Coheed and Cambria." There were so many great bands at the time that were just my world. And what actors did you think were cool? Adam Sandler is my fucking dude. Not Jack Black! Jack Black is my dude too, but Adam Sandler is, I mean, I guess that's quite a classic, Billy Madison tattoo and Carl Weathers from Charles Peterson and Happy Gilmore right here. My dad raised me on nothing but Adam Sandler and Martin Lawrence and Chris Farley and SNL cast. You want to know a trip, Teddy?

The CEO of Ford right now is Chris Farley's cousin. No way. Jim Farley. And we interviewed him and it's uncanny. Yeah, they're so similar. I was tripping out thinking at times I was talking to Chris. I think that blood really runs thick. Very specific. Yeah. I just recently listened to the book, The Chris Farley Show. His brothers got together and wrote and it's beautiful if you haven't ever read it. Oh, I haven't. Oh, it's about his whole life. The ending of it is just the last words he says in his life is just so sweet.

sad. He's been up for four days. His prostitute is leaving his hotel and he goes after her and he collapses. And then she takes his watch and stuff and leaves him a note. And last thing he says to her before she goes is, please don't leave me. And then they find him dead like the next evening. Yeah.

Yeah, such deep loneliness. God, it's so sad. I mean, especially if you were struggling, his story would just have you in absolute tears. It's so powerful and sad. Yeah, it is. There's a lot of things in that stew. It's not just addiction. It's also these highs and lows we're talking about. Yeah.

And then, yeah, loneliness and then an ability to connect with anybody but also not being with anybody ever. That's so much of it, too, is that ability to always want to please and want to be around. And as soon as people are around, you've got to make them comfortable. But then you kind of feel more alone in a lot of those rooms, too, where you're just always turning it off and turning it on. That's the biggest thing I struggle with, too, is that there's times I'm like, oh.

fuck, I can't deal with all these people, you know? But as soon as I do, it's always the turning it on is the hard part. But once I'm on, it's like, how am I going to get this off? There's just this black and white thing that's going on all the time in your brain. There's no in between. It's just on or off. What kind of things were you struggling with as a kid in high school? Sounds like you had friends. You fucking finagled the school system. You're performing. You got a good dad. A lot of what I struggled with is a lot of stuff with my mother. And I wanted to live with my dad. And I

I don't want to like, I don't know if I'm ready to quite talk about certain things with my mother and her man she married and that whole side of the family. It's not something I've really publicly spoke about. And I don't know if my mom would be like, yeah, you don't want to hurt your mom. Yeah. But we went through a big, really tough time. And with her decisions she made with that man and I had to get out of there. And there was a lot of times where they were doing fine, but I'd rather live with my dad and struggle in the hood and raise my brothers. And it was always a love there that I was getting.

Love was so much more than just this fake picture of what a beautiful house and a beautiful life looks like. I think there was a lot of it too in regards to my upbringing in church and seeing the inside and outs of it. A lot of smoke and mirrors to it. Not that my granddad was ever not who he said he was. There was also some things about it that was so strong, like this is right and this is wrong. There's no gray areas. And the way he believed everything was right. And if you didn't believe it exactly how he believed it, the way he believed it, then you were just wrong and you were going to hell. Right. It wasn't just a disagreement. It was you're amoral.

and you're gonna end up in hell because of this difference. - Yeah, and if you don't believe it, just like he did, I mean, he was headstrong so much that he wouldn't even go to a restaurant where there was a bar in it. He had a wood shop. He would never take money from the church as a pastor. He's like, "We don't do that." He was working on building houses. He was a carpenter. He had to be exactly what he read Jesus was, and sweet man, but if it wasn't this way, I remember one of the first things he said to me, he wanted me to come sing at the church when I really started getting music, and he was like,

All these kids out here nowadays breakdancing and hip-hopping and all that for the Lord. And I was like, Pop, nobody's brokedancing since my mom was growing up, dog. We're not breakdancing for the Lord. I was over breakdancing for the Lord. Let them breakdance for the Lord, man. It's not a sin. It's not bad to breakdance.

do rap songs for Jesus. If they want to do that, let them kids do that. I mean, the songs will probably be bad, but there's nothing wrong with it. And my mom was always thinking I was up to something. I knew that came from a place of her just trying to seem like she was perfect, but also she was a pastor's kid. And now that I'm older, I'm like, oh, you were a fucking wild one. And you were thinking I was doing shit that I was not even doing. She was thinking I was into all sorts of drugs at like 12. And I was like, mom, I don't

I don't even know anybody that does that. I haven't even seen anybody doing crack in front of me. What do you think I'm doing? Nailing my window shut like, "Oh, I know what you did. You snuck out, you jumped down here, you jumped off the roof." I'm like, "No, Mom, I'm just walking out the front door if I'm going anywhere." I got into boozing way too early. When I was at my mom's, they had a bar downstairs, you know, my stepdad had, and I could just go in there and kind of fill up a water bottle. I had been probably drinking since I was like 10, just slugging them back,

on the bus, you know, and being a little hammered at school. And I'm like in seventh grade and we're like, what comfort did it give you? The only time I was really optimistic in life was when I had booze in me. When I think about why I started drinking or why I started smoking cigarettes, it was truly to be cool, you know? And that was all there was to it. I just wanted to be cool. And I was hanging out with these kids and they were smoking weed and I wanted to smoke weed. And if I could be the one to get the alcohol, then I was a fucking legend and I could

get it at any point. No telling what we were drinking. We were just mixing shit up in a water bottle and like I was bringing it out to the boys and we're walking through the neighborhood like slugging it back or hey mister and somebody at the gas station like hey mister can you get us a 40? Can you get us a pack of cigarettes? And there's always somebody that would. You knew better than to say hey ma'am. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Hell no. Okay, so music takes off. You start really committing to it. You start messing around with the piano and the ukulele. You're watching YouTube to learn singing technique. Which, by the way, is kind of mind-blowing that, yeah, if you're born in 92, this is... It's an option for you. It's a total road. I wouldn't have had that.

Yeah, it's a perfect time. I think it's super powerful. That's why I think kids these days are so much more well-off. You know, you can school at any moment and there's an 11-year-old doing what we think we are good at way better than we'll ever be at it. Their access to information and being able to learn and play is so much harder than what even I had. And I'm grateful for that. I could just Google, you know, if I wanted to watch Marvin Gaye and watch him live, I could see videos of him sitting there singing and watch his mouth and what he's doing, how he moved. And I could watch

Grammy performances with Michael Jackson. I remember the first time I saw Michael Jackson do that one where he beats the record, he gets seven Grammys. He goes on to get an eighth one that same night for "Thrill," and he's like, "I promise that if I win another Grammy, which is seven, which is a record, I take my glasses off. And I really don't want to, but I'm only doing this for Miss Hepburn because she's a dear friend of mine." And he just pulls them up and everybody's like, "Ahhh!" And he puts them down and he just waves and he walks off. And I was like, "That is the most gangster shit I've ever seen."

- I know, can you imagine having America excited to see you take your glasses off? - Just your eyes. - He was so sick. He was so badass to me. And I just like knew from that point, I was just watching him. I was always like, God, what a fucking badass dude. - Did you watch that Greatest Night in Pop music documentary on Netflix? - Oh, I have not, no. - Oh my God, your head's gonna spin. It's about them coming together to make We Are the World. And you've got like Quincy Jones.

And Lionel Richie kind of orchestrating everything. And it's every single greatest singer alive in this one room. The kind of two undeniable standouts of the doc are Michael Jackson. He's somehow on his own. Everyone else is together, but he's on his own. And when he sings, you're like, yeah, that's it. There's just really no comparing. Bob Dylan, he's not that kind of singer. So he can't really find his way into this song. And they're all struggling. They're all struggling.

And then Stevie Wonder imitates Bob Dylan to Bob Dylan. And they're on his back. And when you're watching it, you think it's Bob Dylan singing. So Stevie Wonder's singing in Dylan's voice, explaining to him what notes he should find to work his way into this song. And he kind of saves Bob Dylan's performance. And you're like, okay, well, that guy's just a phenom. What a monster, man. Stevie Wonder. Yeah, Songs of the Key Life, number one for me. Man, I'd love to be breathing the same air. He's the one.

So you join a bunch of bands. I'm imagining it takes you a minute. A, you're probably just saying yes to any opportunity that comes your way. These dudes want you to sing with them? Great, I'm in. How do we get from saying yes to everything, being in a hair metal cover band, being an R&B band, being in an alternative rock band,

how do you discover what you're really supposed to be singing? I had the same guys. It was kind of a tight-knit community of musicians, and a lot of kids were doing metal from when I got out of high school till even now, you know? And I was still in a metal band called Heirs at the time, and this band called Wild Heart. Me and my buddy, Addie Maxwell, who plays guitar for me still and writes a lot with me. So weird, man. I had everything kind of happen to me once. As a girl, I was with it at the time. It left me. My car had broken down. My roommates had moved out. I walked like the last two miles to my work, and the

place was closing down everything just hit the fan at once and really bad off at the time what age is this i must have been 26 27 this was right before teddy swims really started happening and at the time i was with this girl who had a child and her baby daddy wasn't around and i was even about to go get this full-time job and was trying to like think i was like you know what man maybe i just need to raise this kid he's worth it and i almost gave it up and all this just hit the fan all at once and i called my dad and i was like man can i move there to your house and i just really need to place a crash for a couple months so i put my mattress

basically on the floor in his garage and just trying to like camp out there. And there was no carpet or anything. And my buddy Lee, who had recorded most of my metal bands, was actually in Loganville. He was right down the road from my dad's house. And so we started just kind of messing with stuff. And he got me in this band, Wild Heart, and that started going somewhere. And me and Eddie started doing hip hop music because he was making beats for some rappers and sending it out. And we decided to make a hip hop song. And we did one song. And my pal Tyler Carter was in this band Issues. He comes over and he's doing a solo tour. And he hears our one song and he's like,

man, this shit's badass, dude. Give me like 30 minutes of music and you guys come on tour with me. I'm like, we only have one song. He's like, I'm going to the UK with issues. It's only four minutes long. He's like, I'm going to the UK with issues and I'll be back in a month. You have a month to get like 30 minutes of music. So me and Addy grinded out a bunch of hip hop songs where we're rapping on these songs. Is the quality going downhill quickly? It's getting better. Oh, it's getting better. Yeah, it's getting better. We're getting better at rapping. Addy's crushing it.

I'm okay, but it's not my thing. I'm here to sing. But this is my opportunity to go on tour, so fuck it, we're here. So we get back, we have this thing trying to figure out our name. I was going by Swims by that time, and it was just someone who was a me play this character of this rapper. Tyler's like, well, why don't we just put Teddy in front of everybody calls you that? And then boom, you're Teddy Swims. And I was like, dude, I really kind of fucking hate that.

And then he's like, well, it's my tour, so I'm putting it on the flyer. So it was Addie Maxwell and Teddy Swims opening up for Tyler Carter. Is your Jayton Colin Dimmesdale? Yes, sir. Jayton, that's a pretty unique name. Yeah, it is. I've never met another one. Me either. But you were going by Teddy? Yeah, I've always been called Teddy because while I was waiting tables and stuff, Jayton's hard. They're like Jake, Jamie, Jason. So my look is just always, oh, there's our Teddy. Oh, like Teddy Bear? Yeah, and that's where it just kind of came from. Oh, sweet. Jayton, that's so sweet.

Yeah, I've always been Teddy. Yeah, yeah, okay. We ended up doing this tour and this was March of 2019 and then we get back and the Teddy Swims thing was kind of cool. Maybe I could do shit as Teddy Swims and I just used the name Teddy Swims and uploaded a Michael Jackson cover of Rock With You. Watched it this morning. It's incredible. June 25th of 2019 and that was 10 years after he died and so we wanted to just pay homage and it started going crazy and we were like,

guys, why don't we just turn this shit into Teddy Swims? Let's see what happens here. And we kept doing the covers. And most beautiful thing is my manager, Luke, who lives out here, he hopped in a car and drove a Prius with a U-Haul in the back of it all the way to Georgia. And we moved into this little house in Snellville. It was a five bedroom house. Me and all my friends,

About 12 of us moved into this place and we built plywood walls and built two studios in there, split rooms into two rooms. I was like, dude, if we get six months, we started making our merch and distributing it out of the garage, filming our own stuff, singing and recording our own stuff, playing and writing our own stuff, doing the covers. I quit my job, was getting floated by my boys and just six months of this, guys, this will work. And I kid you not, December 24th of 2019, a day less than six months, we get signed to Warner Records and I get this...

million dollar deal and put all my buddies on salary. The manifestation of just you and your friends coming together and be like, guys, we can do this if we just all put our heads together. Yeah. It's kind of the full commitment moment. It feels like you're so behind on life. It's always at the 28, 29, 30 mark. You're just like, God, I'm so far behind. And the kids that are coming up too, that are making music, like you got Billie Eilish crushing at 16. I'm like, God, what the fuck am I doing here? I'm a decade older than her. What's going to happen to me?

Why pick Rock With You? I want to applaud that. I think Off The Wall is the best of all those albums. Yeah, I got it hanging on my wall now, man. Rock With You, weirdly enough, because it was that time we had found the stems of it online, sometimes producers want to just take something and mix, you know? My producer was just going in and he had found the stems of it and was like, I want to mix this out, which is really cool because you can hear Rod Timberton, when you get all the stems of the song, you can actually mute a bunch of the stuff and there's the original mumble track of it too. And so you hear Rod like, Bunt the boo, bunt.

And he's just like kind of doing the mumble where they wrote it to him. And it's so cool. It's like they had the instrumental done and he went and made up the melody with his mumbles and then they went and wrote the words to the mumbles, which is so sick. And is that in the finished song? The mumbles aren't, but when you get the stems...

you can hear that they kept that in there. It's so crazy because it's similar to a lot of times we do the same thing where you just kind of come up with a mumble of the melody first and then sometimes you might be almost saying a word and you're like, what are you saying there? Oh shit, that sounds like you're saying this and then you come up with some beautiful words. My song The Door, for instance, my buddy just already had the beat and the mumble of it

And we'd kind of just, oh, it sounded like you said, started writing to this. You reverse engineer it, kind of. Yeah. And so it was cool to see that happen and see that was still the way that it was done. Yeah. Now, Rock With You got, I don't know, 10 million views or something, or maybe more when I looked at it this morning. It had 10 million views. But you're still the one by Shania Twain.

Seems like a very from left field choice. Oh my God, I need to hear that. And that one has 167 million views. It was monster. Yeah, that's probably the one that gets Warner Records attention. I think the biggest thing is because the original version we did of it, I dedicated it to my mother and I was like, this goes out to my mom, you know, I love you and the touch people. It's kind of a mystery because Rock With You seems more in tune with you personally.

It just doesn't seem like you're going to sing that. I think there's also some of the mixed messages of looking at you singing that song is very interesting. That's the thing that first worked out for me on Rock With You is once it hit this 500,000 views, people were looking at my face and my whole thing going on and singing that song.

They were like, okay, either this is going to be funny or this is going to be really good. Yes, yes, yes. Or it's going to be both. And it ended up being, I think, quite funny and actually good. People were like, I did not expect this guy to sing this way. So we kind of leaned into that gimmick so much. And it's been a thing that's really pivotal in my career. Real music videos have never worked for us. Just playing the song really quite works for you. I just find that it's always when somebody says, like, listen to this guy. Okay, now look what he looks like. You know, it's always been my thing. And so we just totally fucking rocked.

pedal to the metal on making sure my face is in everything and why I'm singing so people were like whoa that's a good voice but I don't think it's as good as the juxtaposition versus what I look like people are fucking stunned and it's helped me out so much that makes sense yeah if you look the part perfectly it would be a foregone conclusion yeah so there's nothing novel or interesting about it WWE you gotta work the fucking gimmick you know you gotta have some gimmick that gets people's attention but do you

think it's by design a little bit, even just in life? Do you like presenting one way? I had a buddy of mine, my best pal from school, Julian Seltzer, man, he's my dog. And he told me one time, it was a few years ago before all this, he said, you're really an icon when somebody can dress as you for Halloween and people can know it's you. And I remember hearing that and being like,

okay, what do I got to do from here to make sure that's the case? And I've spent forever trying to be like, okay, what do I like to put a little bandana on, grow my hair out this way, tattoo my face? What do I got to do here to make me different? Yeah. But I definitely put a lot of thought and effort. Certainly people went as you to Halloween last year. Yeah. Have you seen any pictures? Yeah, I have a picture. Also, my buddy, Kurt, my door manager, his little cousin, they'd written all the, and I had this one, I can't remember the family on Instagram. They did a video. It's lose control. And he's like kind of mouthing it. They came to my show and my meet and greet.

and he had his all dressed up and shit with the tattoos going and they drew him on. It's so cool, bro. Watching kids do that especially. Yeah. It's so awesome. Obviously, I have tattoos, but I have no face tattoos. What's the chat in your head as you go in and you're like, wow, we're going to go all in on this? Well, the first one I got, so it says Home at Last up here. On your hairline.

My granddad had passed away. It was really the first time I ever saw death right there in front of me. So he was in his room, and they had separate rooms within their 52 years. You know, eventually, I guess you just get separate rooms. She got sick of hearing it. Yeah. She wasn't doing it right, probably. So I'm sitting there playing piano. Like I said, we're all in this diamond. So there's like 50 of us by the time I get there. Everybody in the family is so quick to go right there. So my grandma was trying to be all strong, and she sits there with me after everybody walks out of the room, and she finally breaks down, and she said, He's home at last. He's home at last. And then she goes...

but you left me behind and sobs and sobs. He'd always told me to never get my face tattooed because calling a God is without repentance, son. You don't ever want to get your face tattooed. And as soon as he passed away, I just got one in commemoration of him just to be like, I love you, brother. I love you, Pop. You're the fucking man. If heaven exists, then he owes me an ass whooping when I get up there, you know?

And then from there, I just kind of got a little carried away. Now I just fucking get them. Sometimes I just get the itch. And there's been times where I've been on the road too where it's been bad. Like last October 5th, my bassist's birthday, we had a tattoo artist come in and he wanted to get like a little party hat right here on his wrist. And I was like, just do it on my face, dude. I got this dumbass party hat right here.

I was so hammered. I wake up the next day, like, trying to lick it off. And I was like, oh, shit, when did I get that, dude? Okay, so that one you regret. I mean, it's there. It's whatever. I did immediately have regrets to it. And they were like, bro, you don't remember all night you were walking around just bouncing your eyebrows like, party jumping, party jumping, party jumping, party jumping. I was like, dude, y'all should have put me to bed way earlier then. Why the fuck was I doing that? What a piece of huge trash I was. Yeah, because...

I guess I sometimes assume the saddest thing when I see people, like, let me put it this way. I have none on my left arm. Well, I have a couple, but I'm not covering my left arm because I actually like how my left arm looks. I got a good vein in my bicep. Well, I don't want to cover that up.

So what I know is that if I really like it how it is, I'm not drawn on it. So then I reverse engineer that. Sometimes when I see people with a ton of tattoos on their face, I'm like, they didn't think there was anything to lose. I can see where you're coming from. Maybe it's just me being older. But first of all, when I look at dudes with tattoos, I think they're like me, which is I got

fucked with and abused as a kid and I want to send a message not to fuck with me. I want to be tough. Maybe there's a piece of that too. I've been too approachable sometimes. Maybe there's a piece of it inside that subconsciously I do want to look tougher or maybe there's always this piece of me that feels like I'm judged for being this and I want to turn people's minds into not judging a book by its cover. I've not

put a lot of thought into much of it. So I wouldn't say it's a deep rooted thing, but also when you bring those up, I'm like, yeah, I mean, it could be a subconscious thing that I'm doing that I couldn't tell you you're wrong about, but I didn't go into it thinking that I was compartmentalizing or overcompensating for anything. Yeah. How about this though? So the other thing was I was very into punk rock as a kid. And what I liked is there was like a costume. So I had the crazy hairdo that would distract you from me. I had crazy clothes on that would distract you. And this character I was playing was,

Was seen as super confident. Girls were like, oh, this guy is so confident. He's got this crazy hairdo no one else does. But it was a total illusion. That's a lot to do with it, 100%. That confidence level is something that I've worked on a lot. Over the pandemic, I was so fortunate. And I have a tattoo of him right here. Diamond Dallas Page, man, one of my heroes in my life. Who's he? I'm sorry. Diamond Dallas Page is a WCW legend, like an old wrestler. And he started this thing called DDP Yoga. And it's this mixture of yoga and calisthenics.

It saved a lot of people, got a lot of people that were injured back on the field. There's this guy, Arthur Borman, you can check out on YouTube. And this guy was 300-something pounds and was on Walker. Ended up doing DDP for this little time. And his whole body healed in this miraculous manner. He was running 5Ks after that. And it's rehabilitation and calisthenics. And it's changed so many people's lives. And it's been a beautiful thing. And I spent about six months or so with DDP. And we talk.

once a week and he just got this thing into me. He's like, it's really the story you tell yourself. Once you own this six inch piece of real estate between your ears. And there was so many things I was doing when regards to my weight, when I was coming up, I really had a lot of insecurities and a lot of beaten down of myself. And it was also what was fueling my alcohol and my drug abuse. It was

definitely because of a lot of insecurities that I was scared. I'd even watch some old plays and I see myself doing this number while I'm doing plays and not really being confident on stage. And I used to hate watching myself or hearing my voice. And there was the time that I went through with him that I constantly have to tell myself these little bitty things. Like when you look yourself in the mirror and say, I love you, you are beautiful. It took me forever to get to a point where I even want to take my shirt off in front of people. You know, I even just the other day I did this shoot. I had to be just kind of shirtless. As confident as I feel with my shirt off now, doing a shoot that's going to be a

on a Times Square billboard or something. Oh my God. Scared to death doing that. Of course. There's 50 people on this shoot that are just staring at me like, okay, now turn this way. And I've just never been that exposed to people's like eye. They're like, come here, let me get some makeup here. Let's get some more oil going right here. They're finding problems. They're making adjustments. Oh God, pulling my shorts down. I've never been in that place. It was a really big eye-opening thing for me. You have to accept yourself and that's like the hardest thing in the world to do. And when I see people like my beautiful girl now, she's just kind of

perfect body for her to have body dysmorphia. We all have that and there's nobody more beautiful that doesn't have the same thing going on. When I stopped feeling so alone in that and I started just accepting this is what I have. So I do think a lot of this was to take away from the, especially these tattoos all in here. It was distracting from my gut or my boobs to kind of give you something else to look at. There was a lot to do with that for sure, brother. Of course.

And what's funny is I think the route to liking yourself, Monica and I have too many conversations about this, but if you're comparing yourself to Brad Pitt, yeah, you're out. I'm out. There's nothing we can do if we're comparing ourselves.

But if we remember that actually novelty is what's so beautiful. Yeah, come on. In specific, like, no, no, that's what you look like. And you, as defined by who you are and your character, you're the physical representation of your spirit and identity.

We can all come to think everyone's super attractive. If that inside's good and you recognize like, oh, I'm the only one who looks like this. Anytime I can really hone in on that feeling of like, this is the only one. That's awesome. It's not Brad Pitt, but I'm the only one like this. And you're the only one like that. Monica's the only one like that. Although I am starting to wonder now with AI and the sim that there's just like 10 cookie cutters. We're all just 10 cookie cutters with like a little bit of different...

Different hair. You know, I can see that. There are certain types. Yes. A big thing for me, too, is I stopped worrying about what I look like in pictures now because I see myself on stage and people post these pictures of me and I'm just up there like looking crazy. Sure, sure. And so nowadays, I don't really worry about the way I look because you can't control the way you look. The way I look at myself in the mirror is probably even still a fixed up version of myself. Oh. I know before I even walked to the mirror, I already got the face picked out and I don't even know I'm choosing. Right. Yeah.

I'm cool Joe today. As soon as I leave the mirror, this little sucking I had going is immediately out. You're so right. I don't think any of us have any true idea of what we look like. No, we don't have no clue. This will comfort you. Bradley Cooper was on here saying that he genuinely thought when he won Sexiest Man Alive that it was like a bit, that people were fucking with him. He sincerely thought that.

You're like, well, that's comforting. He is sexy. He is a motherfucker. My God. Yeah. Okay. Let's get to you writing Lose Control because you're prolific. You have that six months of focus. You get signed.

You have two EPs, and then within two years of that, you're releasing I've Tried Everything But Therapy Part 1, your album. You're writing hundreds of songs, right? Yeah, I just got back a couple of days ago from another writing camp. We were there five days and split up into two rooms, eight of us, and it turned out probably 20 songs. Writing Loose Control, I think, was the one that we'd kind of been building this sound for a long time. I was also in a really toxic situation.

thing at the time with an ex I was with. It was bender to bender and I think we both kind of got to this place of being really codependent on this lifestyle we were sharing and these high highs, these little loves. Lifting each other up out of shame all the time or piling on shame all the time. Leveraging each other's shame against each other. That shit, exactly, bro. You know that too well. We kind of were into that

place. And weirdly enough, we wrote that song and The Door too, which is top 42 on the same day. I had broke down that day and was just sobbing and sobbing about the situation because it just seemed like it couldn't get better. And every time I was doing something, it was like, where are you? What are you doing? I was coming to a head with her and our situation. By the way, that's already a familiar pattern because mom thought you were doing bad stuff you weren't doing. Yeah. So like the familiarity. I think so. Yeah. We mistake familiarity, I think, a lot with

Comfort. Comfort and love and all these things. I think there was just always that piece of it. There's a lot of patterns that I will say that I chose in toxic relationship I had with my mom at some point in my childhood. Yeah, that's what we do. Yeah, we all do that. It's so weird too because we had written these songs about this certain thing and it's so nuts that we wrote The Door, for instance. The night I saved my life when I showed you the door and I wrote this song and I was talking about this song and I didn't even realize because I was just numbing myself to the situation that

Like I knew the song "Lose Control" was gonna be special. I knew it was gonna change my life. I knew we had nailed it, but it wasn't until way later after it come out and I got out of this situation that I like listened to that song. And then I listened to "The Door" and I listened to a lot of those songs we wrote then and a lot of that album. And I was like, my subconscious was telling me what I should be doing and trying to save me. And I was just numbing it, not even hearing it for what it was. I heard my own words back to me a few months later, just broke down in my car like, what?

Where was I for myself? You know, myself was like talking to me. I was putting things into words that I needed to hear with friends that wanted to also tell me what I needed to hear. And I was so numb to that. I love the idea that songs can do this because I write and often I've written on experiences I've had. And as I'm writing them, I don't really understand them. And then I read what I've written afterwards. And all of a sudden I go, oh, okay, now I actually understand it. But I had to write it first.

And that's cool that a song can do that as well. I think that's the beauty of writing, though, because I find that if you're going through an issue and you come to me, I got the exact advice to give you. But if I'm going through that, I'm a fucking wreck. Yeah, of course. And so I think it's just turning yourself into something that you can read that gives you advice to yourself. You need some distance from yourself. Exactly. When you turn your words into a friend that somebody else would say to you, then you're like...

Oh, thanks, bro. Appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're so close to the thing. The separation from yourself is really truly like, okay, I see it now. I'm having nightmares every night. I'm freaking out about this thing. I didn't know that it was that cut and dry in my brain, but I had clouded it up with so much shit and I was running from it so much and I just couldn't catch up to myself.

It's kind of crazy how brilliant the subconscious is. It's mad, dude. Well, it's there to protect you, too. Sometimes we're not ready to feel it or understand it. So when you're ready is when you can hear it. So maybe you just weren't there yet. Certainly not.

To some degree, I wish I would have listened to myself sooner, but it's so great that I did go through those things and I was able to talk about them in a way and put them in a song in a way that was actually super life-changing for me and turned it into such a positive thing. And now I touch so many people and I hear beautiful stories about it touching people's lives and changing people's lives. And when we play those songs or they come on in a party, everybody can celebrate to this absolute pain and turn it into

Something we can revel in and we can celebrate this pain and agony. And that's such a beautiful thing. Well, you give people the gift of not feeling alone because they can feel what you're going through. And they do the same for me, dude. And it's a powerful fucking thing. 2.6 billion streams. It's fucking nuts. Wow, wow, wow. That's crazy. I mean, the title of the album is I've Tried Everything But Therapy Part One. And then I did hear you in another interview say that you're terrified to change.

Because you're afraid that all that stuff is the source of all the creativity. And I'm wondering how you feel a year out from all that. Have you gone to therapy? I guess that's the first question. Well, I talked to my mentor. Because I think I got the guy for you. Really? Yeah. I would love to try. I'm guessing. I'm projecting. But I have a very hard time. I'm a paradox. I want everyone's adoration. And when I get everyone's adoration, I can't feel it or experience it or accept it. And then that leaves me feeling completely fraudulent and unworthy of it.

And then my reaction to it has been so varied. Like, I don't want to take pictures. Why? Well, the truth is because I don't really feel worthy of you wanting a picture with me. So I'm annoyed. I'm experiencing being annoyed, but that's not even what was going on. It was like, oh, no, I just actually don't feel like I deserve to be in someone's photo. And this dude that I've been working with for two and a half years has got me to a place where I totally accept that.

And it's been crazy breakthrough for me. And it's decompressed all the highs and lows of it. Connecting with him. Yeah. I think that's been the biggest thing is if I've talked to somebody here and there and DDP is the closest guy I've got to it because he's also been able to help me navigate this growth in this rocket ship and how fast

fast life is changing right now. I would love to talk to somebody that knows those kind of things because just going to a traditional therapist, I mean, they can help. You're a pretty foreign object for them. Yeah, and I want to talk to somebody that knows what I'm going through right now on the journey to become whatever it is I'm...

Yeah. Aiming to do. And don't you have this pull or I have this pull, which is to acknowledge I am good would be sacrilegious. That's flying too close to the sun, right? That God's going to smite me if I actually believe I'm worthy of it. Yeah, absolutely. But it's so awful though. Then you don't experience any of the wonderful magical things that are happening to you because you think to do so would be to anger the gods, that you would be getting too big and bold and

egomaniacal just to accept not to parade around like I'm Teddy swims, but just to fucking accept it. Yeah, totally. That that's okay. And you're not smiting anyone. You're not flying too close. You're not an egomaniacal asshole.

You're just like going, I can own the fact that I opened up my mouth in 2.6 billion times. People wanted to hear that because I found something special. It's hard. Please. I'm right there. Thank you. See it right through me. Yeah, for certain. And then when you're drunk, you can accept it. Oh, God, I'm the best. Yeah. Now, no worries about being too egomaniacal when I'm hammered.

I'm like, yeah, maybe. I find too that my writing, you know, using that as a tool, it allows me to feel like my ideas are super strong. And sometimes I'll have the same ideas if I'm sober, but it's been taking me forever because I'll be like, oh, maybe this could be, or maybe this could be a chorus like this. But when I'm a drunk asshole, I'm like up and like, dude, what if it's, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, and I'm just jumping around. I'm like, this is it. Okay, this is the next part. There's this confidence to me. And this song is great to me that even if after the next day, it's absolute garbage. I was so confident and every part of it was correct. You weren't afraid to take a huge swing. No, I feel like sometimes in the room, I'm trying to now learn you don't have to be hammered to write a good song. You could not drink and write a great song. And learning that has been impeccable.

thing in my life. Yeah, because the broken math in your equation, it's not being drunk that allows you to do that. It's confidence that allows you to do that. And that's just a version of getting confidence. And there's other versions. But the fear that the magic that is you would disappear without it is bullshit. If anything, it might be hindering. It's absolute bullshit. And also will dictate whether you get to do this for five more years or 40 more years. Yeah, exactly.

But entertainment slittered with that. I mean, Jackie Gleason never performed sober. In his mind, he couldn't do stand-up sober. He couldn't be in movies sober. He acted hammered. But that was a lie. Jackie Gleason could have been Jackie Gleason without anything. Last year, I did my first Europe tour sober, and I did this year most of it sober. And I try to make sure I take those times to try to do shows. But I always find that when I'm going back into doing shows sober, the first couple are just

absolute nerve-wracking. Oh my god, I don't have this energy, but the energy's gonna be there as soon as you hear the adoration and the love in the room. It just turns right on. It's walking to the wings of the stage. Yeah. Once you're at the stage looking, doesn't something take over you? Yeah, absolutely. I don't need it, but for some reason there's that piece of my brain that says I'm just funnier, I'm cooler. It's

It's scary, all this stuff. Alcohol removes fear. It literally removes inhibition. That's what it does. So everything that's objectively scary becomes less scary. But you have to get through the fear four times and then it's over. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Although I will say one time I interviewed Monica in Denver. Our guest fell out. Their plane didn't come. So she became the subject of the live interview.

And we got some wine bottles out there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I drink. I'm not saying that I'm immune to this. That's why I can say that because it makes things less daunting. All of it makes time change. It works. It works. It makes it so much easier to get to know somebody and not be afraid to step out and be like, yay, what's up? The inhibitions are just, yeah. There's a piece of me that always loves me that way. I love that guy.

But also that guy can be achieved without. Totally. But I just haven't figured that guy out yet. Well, you're 31. Hey, this guy is awesome. You're young. You have time. Yeah. I got sober at 29. Also, it's funny. When you're in it, you do love the person. You love the drunk version of yourself or the inebriated version or whatever. But if you're on video and then you see...

You don't like that person. I don't know. I had a zone, Monica. I got a sweet spot. It's hard to live in the sweet spot. Six, Jack and I, it's like I can watch that video. How do you know? Have you? Well, yeah, we used to take so much video back when I was drinking. And yeah, there's a sweet spot. There's one in particular. We go on this tubing trip in Michigan. We get on the bus. We're running a lot of video. And we're only about seven, eight beers deep.

And then we decided let's do a second run down the river three hours later after drinking. And then the footage from that parking lot, I'm not as funny as I thought I was. That one right there is a little, yeah. Stay tuned for more FarmShare Expert, if you dare.

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Bye.

So you're going out on tour soon. You're going back to Europe. We're going to Australia on the first lot. We're doing our first arenas in Australia and New Zealand. Arenas, dude. So cool. How exciting. So you start in New Zealand and then you go to Australia. It's my favorite place in the world. Australia, you've already been. Yeah, we've been out there every year we go and we've been building this thing up to be to that point. The big thing about touring now is that it's such a different business now than it used to be. You can have a hit and not be able to sell 500 cap rooms.

and you could be number one song and not be able to sell those tickets. Frames doesn't quite put asses in a seat. We go and we played everything from the 300 cap to the 1,000 cap to the 1,500 cap. Every place that'll let us in that we haven't played at, we're playing. Whether it's a 5,000, 10,000, whatever it is, we're playing those places. We're putting that flag down somewhere. You have to do that in order to maintain. Because I know now if anything else doesn't get any bigger in my career than this,

All the new music I ever put out, I have a foundation of people that will always come see me or have kids or growing up on me that will also bring their kids eventually if I'm so lucky to do this for that long. And you have to build your touring business. It's so different than your music. Well, right. You don't make any money anymore selling albums. If you don't have a touring business, you don't have much of a business. You can have a number one hit and not sell 300 tickets. And it's crazy how that can work.

How do you like having money? How's it going? Oh, it's great. I like it a lot. Have you bought anything stupid? I haven't bought anything stupid. When we hit number one, me and my manager, we got the Cartier tanks together, which was really cute. Okay, that's sweet. My stupid little buy, but it was like my first little watch. I bought a new Bronco, too, last year. I got the fucking Wildtrak, the Raptor engine in it. When I moved out here full-time, I was like, I got to get a damn Bronco. But other than that, I haven't done anything other than I send my mom money every month. But also, you learn.

you learned early on, you said the house with your dad, with the love was more important to you than the house with the stuff. And so that's a good lesson to learn early. Yeah. The first thing I did when I got signed to Warner was get my dad a Ford F-150 Lariat. We had been breaking down and pushing and I could put a damn starter transmit, whatever the fucking anything. So I got him a real good truck when I first got signed. First big purchase I made. Oh, that's so sweet before you got yourself. Yeah. He's my hero.

But I haven't really done anything stupid yet. I spend a lot of money on food. I will always go get every fucking appetizer there is. I don't mind dropping a bag on a meal for me and my friends. That's where I'll go crazy. And you live in LA now? Yeah, Sherman Oaks. You like it? I love it. It took me a minute to find my footing. You know, the people I like to see, the places I like to go. So many people like to be seen places rather than be places here. And once you find that grounding, Sherman Oaks has been like back home in Atlanta. I bought a Camry there. I'm not going to look like a Target.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Don't take the fucking tires off your shit if you got something nice. Sure, sure, sure. You got to leave the window down. Door is unlocked. Nothing of value in your car. Just make it easy for them to get in there. Sign that says unlocked on the outside of the door. Yeah, just please don't bust the window. Yeah. It's unlocked. Yeah.

Well, listen, Teddy, it's been so great to talk to you. I loved getting to see you perform. I feel so lucky about that. Did you stick around for John Batiste? No, I didn't get to. We were doing the schmooze thing, so I didn't get to see him. He's incredible, though. Between you and him that night, it was such an embarrassment of riches. That was quite a party. I love that.

that. Yeah. What a beautiful way to say. But it was so nice meeting you there and I'm so glad you came in and chatted with us and I hope everyone checks you out on tour. Where do people go to get tickets? TeddySwim.com probably. That's a good website to have. You didn't have to do like Teddy Swim. Teddy

Swim sings like that could have been a backup. Oh, sure. You're right. Confusing. Is he swimming or singing? Dot edu. Actually, one night, first time I ever met Max Martin, I was working with my buddy Johan. The last story I'll tell you. We were there and we're eating food and Max comes in and I was so stoked. Max Martin's the biggest producer ever, right? And so my buddy Johan says, hey, Max, I'd like you to meet somebody. This is Teddy. Teddy swims. And he gave me this look like, does he? Like,

Like, if he saw my stature, he's like, no, Teddy Swimps is his name. He's a singer. He goes, this is my daughter. This is Doris. Doris Bicycles. Oh, that's great. Because to be in his house, I must be damn good at swimming. But 5'7", 260 pounds, there's no fucking way that guy's a fucking gold champion. Does he? That's hilarious.

This is my friend. Have you worked with him? I have not worked with Next. Do you have a dream collab? Yeah, man. Adele, certainly. Oh, you guys would be great together. Of course, Stevie, Paul McCartney, while they're still here. We're going to manifest that. I like that pic, Adele. Me too. She's the fucking one, bro. Yeah. John Mayer? Yeah. I got a chance to write with him one time. Oh, you did? Yeah, but we kind of wrote a couple choruses and I spent a day with him and it was just

Beautiful, bro. He's fucking cool as hell. I love it. I love him when she loves him. You're going to have him tattooed on your leg soon. Yeah. All right, Teddy. Great having you in. Thanks so much for coming. Anytime. Everybody go see you on tour. Go to teddyswims.com. Be well. Stay tuned for the fact check so you can hear all the facts that were wrong.

We have numbers? Mm-hmm. Okay. It sucks that Rob's not here because I saw this in the comments, and could this possibly be true? What? It said, loved seeing Wobby Wob on Celebrity Family Feud. Yeah, he told us he did that. He did? Yeah. Yeah.

I feel like I would definitely remember that. Yeah, he did it with, I think, Rachel Bilson's show. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Did he win money, prizes? That I don't know. What if he had a new car when he came to work? That would be cool. Can you win a new car on Celebrity Family Feud? Or do you got, you probably have to play for a charity if you're doing celebrity, right? It should be. Like Wheel of Fortune. I almost called it Spin the Wheel, but I think that was the show I was on. Yeah.

Was it? Mine was just maybe called the wheel. No, I think it was spin the wheel. No, because he also had the wall. What do you owe me? Oh. A cake or something? Yeah, I'll buy you a big, big cake. Okay. I think it's called the wheel. I'm hoping. I think the more I say, I think it's called the wheel as you search it, that'll up the odds that I was. Spin the wheel. It is? Yep. Spin the wheel 2019. There you are.

That's you. But hold on, hold on. Spin the Wheel was our saying. No. It wasn't called The Wheel? No, look. Look at the Wikipedia. Oh, yeah. It says Spin the Wheel. Oh, God.

Boy, that was a rough. I had a hard time surrendering. Yeah, you did. I'm there now, though. Okay, but anyways, how exciting Wabiwab was on Family Feud. I know. Well, I think we should ask him if he won. I'm sure I asked and I don't remember. Yeah, what do you think he'd be more prone to remember? That he was a big winner or a big loser? Big winner. He would remember if he was a big loser. We all would.

No, I think he would remember if he was a big loser, but the world would remember if he was a big winner. That's a nice way to think of it.

Yeah. I just think we all take losses pretty hard is my point. Personally, though. That's what I'm saying. But the rest of us don't. No, we don't care. We like people more when they lose. That's the funny thing. Not really. I don't think so. Okay. Because I saw some other stuff yesterday. Rob was in another game show that you didn't tell us about? No. Well, I talked about it on Sync just now, so it feels redundant. But I did find some other comments on another person's page recently.

Not ours. Because I know not to look at ours. I got to say, while you're on that topic, the comments are getting so funny now because they say, I just read them this morning. It says, Monica, I love your outfit. Hope you're not reading this. Now they're all like, I love your outfit. I hope you're not reading this. It's an interesting thing.

Thing we've invented kind of, I think. I don't think any other comments go that way. I appreciate those people who are doing that. And I'm not seeing it. Well, a lot of people really loved your outfit from the Moonshousen episode. Oh, my black shirt. Oh, here's the thing. This is a theory. No, continue on with the comments you read and then earmark other comments I read. Okay. So I...

I went to a new dermatologist yesterday all the way in Santa Monica. I'm sorry, esthetician. All the way in Santa Monica. Yes. I'm not sure if she's a dermatologist or an esthetician. Yeah, who knows? Everyone plays it kind of fast and loose. She's all the way in Santa Monica, but worth it, worth the trip. I also...

You know, I always do this figuring out of hacks of time. So I went early and then I stayed in Santa Monica until 8. The whole night? Yeah. What did you do? I met Molly for a quick like hour after and then she had to leave and then I just worked. Okay. And where did you, did you eat somewhere fun? Did you eat at R&D? No.

We went to Baltair, which is in Brentwood. That's where Molly and I met. And then I just stayed at Baltair for another two hours. Loitering. Yeah, I did. I was loitering. At first I had my computer out and then that felt like it wasn't the right space for that. Right. So I just, I did it via my phone. Oh, wow. So yeah. Anywho, but then it was great because it was only a 30 minutes home and then I stopped for a go Greek. Oh, in Beverly Hills. Yeah.

No. In Studio City. Oh, it's open. Yeah. It's so good. Oh, wow. I'm PMSing. Okay. Congratulations. Thank you. Things have been so topsy-turvy. I feel very overwhelmed and stressed out. Okay. I also feel really clumsy. Oh, yeah. Like everything's falling down. Right. I have a meaning to tell you. What?

You broke something? I scratched the whole side of my car. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. I've been trying to ignore it. You drug it along something? I was pulling out of the gas station and there was that pole. Oh, wow. And I thought I could get through because there was someone behind me. Yeah. And then I couldn't get through. Yeah. And I...

I am annoyed by my beautiful car that I do love so much. Yeah. I am annoyed by it because it beeps at everything except when I hit my car. Well, to be fair to the car, it has sensors on the bumpers in front and then back. Because no one's really sideswiping things. They're parallel parking. Okay. All the time. Okay.

Don't you also just come to ignore all the beeping? Because I think the beeping, like although well-intentioned, people just end up filing it in a white noise. I could do that. If I'm in a car, of course, all minds are turned off. I can't stand all those detection things. Yeah. Like leave it to me, you know.

I can handle myself. Yeah, but when I'm in a rental car or in someone else's car and they have all that shit, I just, I don't even listen. It's overly cautious. Well, except not when it counts. Side swiping. Yeah, it doesn't have any sensors. Because think if you opened your door, it would start beeping as the, I don't know. I don't know why. It seems like at this point.

they should be able to know when you're about to hit a pole. - Hit a pole, yeah. Did it dent it or just scrape it? - I think it's just scraped. I honestly haven't looked too hard 'cause I'm too stressed. - That's a good method. Often if I scratch my wheels parallel parking, I don't let myself look at it when I get out of the car. I just carry on with whatever I'm gonna do because if it's in my head,

when I get to wherever I'm going, is this going to ruin my whole thing? And I have succeeded sometimes in forgetting to even look at it. Yeah. And then weeks later, I'm like, Ooh, that rim's fucked up. Sure. But now it's like someone else did it. Oh God. Okay. Yeah. So whatever. That's part of the PMS is, and of course, you know, I was like, of course this happened. Cause I don't know how I'm functioning. Like I feel crazy. There's a big one. It is.

They're getting worse. They're getting bigger. I think because perimenopause. No, I know you read that book, but you're not there yet, okay? There'll be plenty of time for you to be perimenopausal. I know, but it seems odd that they're getting worse and blood's getting less, but the pain

but the symptoms are getting worse. Like, it's not great. It's not ideal. Okay. Anyway, you're at my apartment right now. Right. I just wanted to say behind the curtain, because we're doing work on the attic. Yes. We recorded here and you...

He said, I need to warn you, my house is a disaster. And then I just walked in and there's a lot of cargo in the living room. There's tons of huge boxes. Some say bounty on them, not a sponsor, but let's give you a free plug, bounty paper towel. There's a huge box of paper towels. And then an enormous box of toilet paper, like enough for barracks of an army base.

I didn't mean to do this. Yes, and you told me you didn't realize the quantity was so big, but I was actually envious and I'm like, I can't find that quantity on Amazon. And then I was like, is there a portal for like big box shopping on Amazon that you wandered into accidentally where all the units are like 100 plus? Anyways, you had a very funny joke because there's a lot of boxes. And then I said, oh, I'm going to grab something to drink. You said, oh, let me get it for you. You didn't want me to go into the kitchen space.

And then when I was in the kitchen, you said, are you going to call in a wellness check? Yeah. I'm not going to call in a wellness check. But then I sat down on the couch and I noticed you don't have a shade on your lamp. That really worried you. Well, I'll tell you why. That looks like you were fucking partying. Like that looks like you're drinking hard in here and like lamps got knocked over. So that to me signals...

A different thing, muscle memory. Interesting. Although, of course, you didn't do that. But when you add in all the boxes and the other stuff, and then there's like, I think the lampshade got broken last night. Then it looks a little bit more like you've been in here for four or five days drinking. Or shooting up. Well, no, you're very docile when you shoot up. You would have just sat on the couch. You wouldn't have made this people mad.

Okay, well, the lampshade is aesthetics because I got a beautiful lampshade. I was just afraid to say fucking anything, but I have a beautiful lampshade that I got when I was in New York earlier this year. And it has a pattern. And the lampshade that was on this lamp that you are noting, which is a table lamp, also had a beautiful pattern.

But they don't go together. It's too much beautiful pattern. So I had to take one off. It's too busy. I got you. Okay. This is meticulous style. Well, yeah. It requires a lot of tinkering. Also, one of those boxes is a food processor from Prime Day.

Oh, really? Yeah. They had a bargain and you, oh. Yeah, that was exciting. Oh, wonderful. Okay, now back to, I went to the dermatologist. Yeah. I found this person from another podcast, To Niche, which I have shouted out on here. Yes. Remember, because I said I was surprised by the way the host looked.

Because I had a whole vision in my head and then they didn't match that, which was funny. It's just funny when you have an idea in your head and then it doesn't match up. Yes. In which I immediately followed with, I assume this happens all the time to me, which is interesting. Yeah. All to say, when I said that on that episode, they took that clip and...

And they did a video of them reacting to it, which was very funny. And they're great. I love them. They posted that and, you know, that's that. So then when I went to the dermatologist, I came back. I DM'd the host of that show because she had shouted out this place. And I said, you know, I just tried this place that you recommended and thanks for recommending it basically. Yeah.

And so when I was on the page, I saw that video again. Yeah. And I was like, oh, yeah, that was funny. And I clicked it. And then... You got into the comments. Yeah. Yeah. And? And they were so mean. Oh, they were? Yeah. Oh, to them or to you? Me. To you? Yes. Oh, my God, Monica. Yeah.

Very sorry. Classic insufferable Monica. Oh, my God. Mean stuff. Mean stuff. Oh, my God. And I'm already feeling sensitive and topsy-turvy and wellness checky. Uh-huh. And it just wasn't. Too many paper towels. Too much toilet paper. No lampshades. Wasn't the time for me to see that. When was that? Yesterday? Yeah, yesterday night. Oh, boy.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, we're going to get through all this. We are. We're in a moment of processing all this and we're going to get right through it. I haven't had therapy since all of this has happened and I'm seeing her on Saturday and I'm sure she'll...

Help. Okay, now here's one that's a debate because again, these go either way for me, right? Like, so I think those CD comments were really warranted and I was very grateful to have gotten that criticism and then we got the expert and it was wonderful. So everything worked out that way. But I saw a handful of comments this morning on the Moon Chosen episode and several people were like, this should have had a trigger warning. And I was a little bit like,

The fucking episodes, Moon Chow's in by proxy. Like that in itself. I don't understand how if I go see Friday the 13th, I don't need a trigger warning. This is what it is. Yeah, it's horrific. That seems redundant. Yeah. Yeah, so I guess I didn't agree with that. Yeah, I mean, it was just a reminder that the internet is a bug.

Scary place. Yes. I don't like it there. It's a dangerous place. I really don't like it there. I think eventually in life, not right now. Uh-huh. You'll leave there. I think I'm going to not be on there forever. Yeah. Look, I'm on there and I love it. And I also think that a better version of myself would exist without it and probably everyone. We feel so peaceful.

Yeah. How about what would you miss? So you got to DM the hosts of that and that's great. I loved that. Like using it as a phone book is radical. Yeah. Or like I started following, of course, George Kittle today and I wrote him a really lengthy DM about how radical I think he is. Yeah. And so that's lovely. I want to be able to do that. Well, it's nice to share positive

things. Like, of course, anytime anyone is able to share anything positive or thank people, yes, that's great. But it is not used for that most of the time. And it just, it bums me out personally, of course, but it really, I get very heady about humanity. Right. And that's not good for me to think the world is bad and that people are bad. I wonder if there's been like some big meta analysis of what percentage are bad.

I'd be curious. Or mean? Yeah, mean or bad or negative. Because I think it's probably...

As we know, we've had neurologists explain this, like the chemicals for negativity are stronger, right? Nine people say, I love you. One person says, you're a bitch. It's a stronger chemical response. Yeah. So I wonder if it's outweighed in our head. It's actually smaller. Like, let's just say, theoretically, they did this huge analysis and they found out only 7% of stuff on Instagram was negative. It's still...

I don't like it. You don't like him. It might be small. I'm just suggesting it might be smaller than we think. I'm sure it... I don't think it is. It's a breeding ground for people who might not in life...

that way, but for some reason, this anonymity and I think it brings out the worst in people. Well, it's like how people behave in a car as well. Right. Exactly. Yeah, that's a very fascinating one. It is. And some people, you know, of course, again, you're right. There's like so many nice people on there. Yeah. There's so many people that are like, no, she's just kidding.

kidding or like whatever. A lot of defense, which is sweet. But then even that, even when you say this is why you can't take any of it because first of all, it's a roller coaster. You're like, oh, that's nice. Oh my God, that's horrible. Like it's too much. And there is like one person who said...

I like that you have a voice picked out for her. Yeah, yeah. You already have a voice picked out. Because it was nice. But she said, she delivers things weird, but she means well. Oh, okay. And I was like, that's actually not helpful. Yeah. And then, of course, I'm like, do I deliver things weird? Like, what is happening? Now, I will tell you this. Okay. You're not interested in my approach to all this, but I'm going to tell it to you.

So like when I'm on other people's things, like I was on Theo Vaughn's podcast. I'm not gonna dare look at those comments. I was on Peter Atiyah's. I'm not gonna dare, like I saw his post of our interview saying,

And I'm like, stay away. Because people don't love you. Well, because they're there for that host. And then I also, this could be my story, but I also think a lot of people on the right think I'm like a super far left liberal. And so I'm just immediately...

No matter what I say, I'm a libtard perpetuating this terrible. So I just know in an audience, like if I go on a show where an audience is more right-leaning, I just don't even, I would never even glance at that because I just assume a couple hundred of those listeners are just going to, it's a great opportunity to sound off about the left. In those instances, I do choose to think, well, Theo's got a million listeners and

And I bet most of them just liked it because we like each other. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's going to be this handful that are going to come out hard because it's sitting right there. Anyway, so... Anywho...

Oh, so see that someone in their car laying on their horn. They're so mad. And they would never in line at a grocery store go, like they wouldn't just yell. Yeah. I did get really paranoid. The person who said I was insufferable and that had like 22 hearts, I clicked on her. Okay. And she was private. So I couldn't like really see much. But then I was like looking at her picture and trying to, you know, I, I,

I've become crazy. Who the enemy is. Yeah, you got to identify who to look out for. These things, it's so contagious in such a negative way. So yeah, I'm looking at her and then I thought, what if this person is one of the people who's come up to me and said something nice? Oh, sure. Then I started to get paranoid about all the people who come up and say nice things. I'm like, well, what if they're nice in person? Because people are nice in person. Sure. But then they go- Then they're alter ego. Yeah. Yeah.

Kitch Witch. Your sister? Why did I think that's Kelly's? What's hers? Kitch Witch was your sister's cooking thing. Yeah, what's Kelly's? K-Watch. So close. There's a W and a C and an H and a K. She's private though, so don't follow her. Okay, well, you could apply. Okay.

That's how you do it when someone's private. You apply to be their friend. I've applied to many people's. Me too. Yeah. I actually think it's fun because then it's harder to get. Yeah. Can I bore you with one update that's very long overdue, but people so deserve to finally hear an explanation because-

God bless the F1 listeners. We had a really, really wonderful fan base for that show that was super supportive and they really liked it. And we really enjoyed, we got to meet a ton of them when we went to the race and stuff. And of course we didn't do it this season. And so many people were, I don't want to say upset, you know, they wanted the show understandably upset.

And obviously, now that we've announced that we're going to Wondery, because of the nature of when that show would have started and ended, I would have been in the middle of a contract if I had resumed it for a second season. It would have hugely impacted Armchair. Mm.

Expert. That's the show we're currently on. Yeah, that's our show. I also couldn't talk about that for the last four months while that was all happening and people were getting more and more agitated why there was no explanation. I see. So my deepest apologies. That's what was going on. Additionally, I'll add, I did get a kind of a cease and desist letter from Formula One in the midst of all this. Really? Yes, yes.

Yes. I almost want to read you my response to the lawyers. But we got this long letter from their lawyers basically saying that the name of our show can't be F1 because there's a trademark on F1, which by the way, it's EFF. W-O-N. So they insisted we take down all of our videos. And I wrote back one of my, once a year I write a really mean email. This year was twice. Really? Well, I sent your neighbor one.

Quite a heavy handed one, as you recall. But then I sent them one that was just basically like, we're promoting your show with our love and giving all of our attention and resources to promote your product. And this is the response.

I know. I don't, I think it's very short-sighted. Charlie and I were obsessed with this cease and desist letter. I'm like, how do you explain this? Do they have an official F1 podcast? No. That would be the only thing would be, we have this, this is pulling from that. Right. No, we were just something then added a totally different fan base to that sport as well. Because once again, even F1 tilted female fans.

Just like armchair does. That's interesting. Yeah. So my letter was like, you're welcome and we'll see you. That's a bummer. Yeah. So that was going on. There was a legal thing and then there was also our contractual thing. And so my many apologies, that is the explanation. And TBD if we do it down the road, we'll see. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Was there something, you said earmark something. The trigger warning, I wanted to earmark. Did I earmark something else as well?

Oh my God. This is going to be a useless story to tell because really it only matters if you see the photographic evidence. So I haven't seen Nate tuck in a while.

Natuck has really become my medicine. That's nice. Yeah, like if I'm feeling like I'm in the doldrums and I just can't break out of, like I need to get enthusiastic about life again and I'm having a hard time, one breakfast with that son of a bitch sets me straight for like two weeks. So yesterday, completely random, this was a total shot in the dark. I said, I am mad.

I'm mad at myself, I didn't see "Bad Boys" and I really wanna see it before it leaves the movie theater. Any chance you could go today, this was yesterday. And he's said, "Oh my God, I can." So we met at Americana at 4:00 PM. It's so fun to go meet him at the movies at 4:00 PM. Also it's hot as Hades in LA, everyone needs to know.

So I was also like, I want to beat the heat. I love, I get really in the mood to go to the movie theater. You and Kristen love to say beat the heat. You got to beat the heat. It's imperative. And so I have so much muscle memory from not having air conditioning and spending my whole day at the AMC 7 in Santa Monica to

beat the heat. I buy one ticket and then I go right into every single theater without paying. Yeah. So we go there and clearly other people are there to beat the heat too because we get in there and at first we have the entire movie theater to ourselves, which is so fun. We're so excited to be in there completely by ourselves. And then some older gal wanders in and

I mean, right away, it doesn't look like she's there for bad boys. It definitely looks like she's there to beat the heat. And then she probably came from another movie that just ended because she came about five minutes late. Okay. And then she just sat down in the very first seat that was offered. You know, the first seat coming out of the hallway. Yeah. No one would pick that seat in an empty movie theater. Okay. There's a lot of clues here. Okay. She sat down and then within...

seven or eight minutes, she was out cold. She was beating the heat by going... Oh, she was taking a nap. Yes. And I'm talking dead asleep. And there was one point where the action got so loud that in her sleep, she covered her ears. And you're not going to like this, but of course, I started taking pictures. And it's not a good look for me to do that, but

Tell me you're not happy I did this. I want you to scroll to the left, okay? There was a couple times where we thought she passed, as you can see in the photos. This is why this story is not very good because, of course, I'm not going to post these pictures. Oh. Okay, but now do you find the one where she's sleeping with her hands over her ears? Because there's tons of gunfire and explosives going on. She's so upset that her sleep is getting disrupted. And then they'll...

But worse was I kept... I had to take... Every time she changed position and... She looked so...

Yes. Thank you. You agree, right? Our assessment is spot on. She was like doing her best to beat the heat. She's got a fucking Gatorade bottle in her drink holder. She's so sweaty. She is. Yeah. And she kept getting more and more slunk over in the chair. So I was taking pictures and I had taken three or four and it went great. I just had to hold the camera really still because it's dark in the movie theater. Sure. But then one time my flash went off.

And then we like panicked. But she didn't notice at all. And you guys were the only other people? Yes, it's just Nate and I. Okay. And this woman who's maybe passing. And then the end, movie's over, we stand up and we're leaving. We've got to walk right by her because, again, she sat in the very first seat out of the hallway. And now the young boy who works at the theater is there with his broom and his... He has to shake her awake. Exactly. So...

Nate and I, we start chatting with the guy. We're like, what are you, what's your plan here? Are you allowed to touch her? You're going to have to, you're going to have to touch her. No. He's going to have to. He's going to have to get close to me. Ma'am.

Yes, he's going to do all that. And then she's just going to, in her sleep, cover her ears. And he's going to have to touch her. And he's like 17. You know, he's a teenager. Where is the best place to touch someone to wake them up? The shoulder. We talked about that. Oh, you did? Yeah, you got to poke it. Just the same way that guy poked me at the gas station. You got to just give him a poke to the shoulder. Well, that did not go well. No, but I wasn't asleep at the movie theater. Right.

I actually, my instinct is the knee. That's- Too close to the private parts. Yeah, yeah. You're like, you're touching her legs. Shoulders like the- But shoulders close to the breast. Well, no. I think it's the most standard place, point of contact with a stranger. But then what if his finger slips into the nipple? Like someone's about to cut you off, like you're walking and there's going to be a collision and you've got to actually like touch them. You always grab their shoulders. Go for the knees. Grab their inner thighs. Yeah.

Yeah, interesting. Okay. Oh, we loved it. Like this is the exact type of thing that makes Nate and I so happy. Just thinking about this young boy. What a gift for you. Yeah, we had a lot of gifts. We love Dane, Eric Dane. He's so handsome. Friend of the pod. Check him out. Yeah. If you've missed him. I was at the Americana two days before that. Seen a movie? I wasn't beating the heat. I was in the heat. I sat outside. Wow.

To work in the heat. You don't really need to beat the heat as much as us Northern Europeans do. Well, to blame it on that. I do. Even though I think it's just, I have a high tolerance. I know. You want it to be like you earned it. Well, I do have a high tolerance. When I got my chin filler and also yesterday when I went to my new dermatologist esthetician. Did you get more filler? This is the slippery slope of filler. I didn't.

I didn't. She doesn't do that. But you're going weekly now for a filler? No. She doesn't do that. But she was doing extractions on my face a lot. Oh, was it awesome? Well, it is, but, you know, it does hurt. Because they're putting a needle deep in there? Well, they put a needle at first, but then they, like, push. Yeah. Yeah. That's disgusting. But she was like, I can't believe you're handling this like this.

this. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then also that's what they said with the chin filler. So I feel that... And you're cheerleading. Yeah. I feel that I have a high pain tolerance. You have a high pain tolerance. Yeah, yeah. And so I can also beat the heat on my own. But hold on a second. I think you're conflating two things. Nope. Are you in pain while you're outside? Sometimes.

Because when I see you out there baking in my backyard, you're happy. No, I'm happy. Yeah, when I'm in the same situation, I'm sweating bullets and I'm like, I gotta get to the movie theater. No, I'm sweating. Like I was sweating-

So much in hummus. I mean, it's just an open tap. Yeah. Oh, speaking of the devil. And what a nice display of your clumsiness. That bottle is so far from you and you just knocked it over. I know. Yeah. You'd almost have used your leg to reach it and you somehow did. I still did it. Anyway, it's painful, but I can do it and I like it. Okay. All right. I have a very high pain tolerance too, but I didn't earn it.

I just have it. Well, I earn mine. Oh, okay. Yours is an accomplishment. Yeah, exactly. Because it is not that it doesn't hurt. It's that I'm unwilling to say it hurts. Oh, my God. This is, yeah. Did I tell you this great conversation Lincoln and I had on the trip about fear? Yeah.

I told you I looked up and I saw her like on the fourth floor going on the outside of the balcony. Doing some adventures. Yes, yes, yes. And I waited a few days to bring that up because it's never a good idea right away because you're likely to embarrass the child. So I eventually said a few days later, I said, hey, I happened to catch your stunt work and I'm all for it.

I think it's radical. I said, "I want you to just add in, I want you to lean on that pole on the balcony side first. I want you to test your equipment like you're a stunt person. Like get up on that balcony and lean with all your weight and jerk towards the balcony before you go out on the outside and just trust that it's gonna..." All I'm asking is you add in some safety measures for these fun adventures.

So she's like, okay, she took it kind of well. But then we were on a long walk through Copenhagen and she really started getting in her head about it. And we had this long talk. She's like, I just started getting afraid of everything. Like I'm so scared of everything. When I think about how I'm afraid of everything.

And I said, "Honey, I'm completely afraid of everything. I think I'm probably the scaredest person you actually know. All this stuff I do is a reaction to the fact that I'm very scared of everything. I'm a scaredy cat." - Yeah. - I said, "When I watched

The documentary about MotoGP and I saw the guys dragging their knee on the ground at 130 miles an hour I was sitting there going that is so fucking scary. Why are they doing that? It's so scary. I have to do it because

The only thing for me worse than being scared is being controlled by something. Being controlled by something is my absolute worst feeling. Yeah. And it has led to all of this ostensible bravery. I was so afraid of fist fighting, more than all the other kids I knew. But I couldn't be controlled by that fear. And she goes, oh my God, that is exactly what I'm doing too.

That's why I got to go on the outside of the thing because I hate that I'm so afraid of it and I don't want to be controlled by it. Interesting. And then I was wondering how much of people who are daredevils, that's in the mix. It doesn't seem so for like Sean White. He just seems to be completely fearless. Yeah.

But I wonder what subset are like me and Lincoln, which is like we're doing things, but we're actually doing them for a completely different reason. Yeah. I bet a lot. And it sounds like your chin thing because I can relate. Like when I get tattoos, I go, yeah, that's annoying and it's painful. Yeah. But I refuse to be controlled by it or dominated by it. And so I will overpower and ignore it. Yeah. I mean, I think there's multiple things.

always at play. For her, it's interesting because I definitely understand you with being controlled because you were in situations where you had no control. Yeah.

But she must have her own things around control that you may not know, she may not know yet. This is the weird privilege of having kids that starts to challenge your story. So again, I, yes, I think I don't like to be controlled because of the stepdads and stuff, but I might genetically be that way. Yeah. And she might genetically be the way. But it might be multi, there's so many, it's not just one or the other. Sure, sure, sure. It's all this big mix. Some ratio.

Yeah, and I think for me with pain, the original thing was you don't want to cause any ripples in the ocean so that the more chances of getting removed. Yeah, but now it's more like I want the result. So I don't care about what it takes to get there. I mean, I pushed through a lot across pain.

life in general. I'll do a lot of things that I think people wouldn't do or stand for or do whatever because I want the result and I can see that. I can always see the end. Yes. Which also probably cheerleading was a big thing. Like, yeah, this sucks. Like there's so much of it sucked. Practice sucked. Weight training sucked. But you know why you're doing it and then that works. Right. You know, you see it.

Yeah, you're right. There's a million ways to skin that cat, I guess. Yeah, it's not so simple. No, but I'm shocked pretty regularly about just to witness how much of my stuff Lincoln has. Yeah, that is interesting.

a remotely similar childhood. And just more often than not, I'm going like, oh, wow, I'm giving my story a ton of credit. It probably only deserves some. Yeah, exactly. That's true, I think. Okay, well, this is for Teddy. Oh, Teddy Swims. Yeah. Sweet, sweet Teddy Swims. Very sweet. He brought up Covington, Georgia. And he said there's a lot of filming that's happening there. It reminded me that my first act

acting credit ever uh is drop dead diva that was shot in peach tree city it was a lifetime show i think i had two lines and you did that while you were still living in georgia yeah after i graduated and i had an agent there i worked there for a year and that was my first oh and did you join sag from that no i it took a while okay i think you got eligible from that yes exactly do you do any commercial work there in atlanta

I did one hand modeling. Oh, wonderful. And dropped at Diva maybe one other thing. I can't remember. Not very much. I was only there for a year. Maybe an industrial maybe. Sure. Sounds right. God, I should know the project that I got SAG. I don't though. It might have been the Herbal Essence commercial. Probably. Probably had to join at that point.

Yeah, must join. They call you a must join. Must join. Another update. On this trip, Lincoln said to me at one point, you really got to start trimming your leg hair. Why? Well, here's the thing. I kind of thought my leg hair was nice. Is this before or after? This is after. Yeah, it looks trimmed. Yeah, because yesterday I trimmed it.

With what, like clippers? Yeah, clippers. It's not bald. It's just it got brought down a couple inches. Is this like the young kids? I don't know. Young kids, I mean 11 are doing. Well, she just was like, your legs look crazy. They're so hairy. You really got to trim them. And I thought, all right, I'll give it a shot. Okay. And I did. And I'm going to go back. You're going to go back to hair. Yeah, I'm going to go back to full hair. I kind of like hairy legs. Yeah, I don't.

I don't like this look. No, no, it looks fine. It looks great. But it does. First of all, I never once noticed that you had hairy legs, which means you probably didn't. Well, I do. I will say I have a very incongruous hair distribution, which is I have no hair on my chest and none of my legs. I don't have much on my stomach. I'm pretty hairless.

Cut to legs. Legs are fully hairy. They're inordinately hairy, especially given how hairless I am everywhere else. All right. Well, I'm glad you tried it. It's always good to try things. Fuck it. I don't, you know, I was like, okay, I'll do this. And then when I was doing it, my sister was in and out of the scene. God, your poor sister.

I think she has to witness of her brother. Yeah, I was doing it on the balcony of my room with Lincoln so that the hair will just blow off into your house, hopefully, land in your backyard. All your rats. Yeah, and my sister goes, what's happening here? And I said, oh, well, Lincoln really thinks it was time for me to trim my leg hair.

And she said, oh, what a nice father you have. I used to beg Barton to cut his chest hair and he never would. So I was like, oh, maybe this is a thing. Maybe kids hate how hairy their parents are. It is so gross if you're young and you're like, why are you so hairy? Well, no, it's just life. God, we're so mean to each other. Ding, ding, ding. Kids in particular, they let it rip.

Oh, yeah. I wonder if the person who wrote I Was Inseparable was actually a kid. Could have been a kid who just wanted you to trim your hair. Right. Okay.

He talked about the 2007 Warped Tour. Uh-huh. And it reminded me that Callie and I went to Warped Tour. You did? Uh-huh. In 2003, I checked with her the date. I thought maybe that was the one I'd been to. Uh-huh. In Atlanta? Mm-hmm. Was it fun? Yeah. Or were you scared? I think I was a little scared. Yeah. But we also had fun. Callie was more... Adventurous. Yeah.

Adventurous is the word. Okay. But yeah, I guess maybe it's the word. But she was fearless? Is that what we're going for? I guess. She wasn't scared. Right. So adventurous. Yeah, but she's not... That's not a word I would ever use to describe her. So it's a... Confident. Mature. I think she was... No, I was mature. No, she...

I think she was a little bit more spunky maybe. Okay, savvy? No, I was very savvy. Okay, she was spunky. I forgot to mention this the other day when we were talking about Noah's birthday party, Strawberry Boy. Yeah. Max's dad, Robert, I want to shout out Robert. Oh, interesting. Because he came up to me and he said, Monica, I'm an arm cherry. No. Oh my God. So, so sweet. He must be such a good dad if he's an arm cherry. Yeah.

He is a very nice person. Oh, wow. Very nice. Shout out, Julie. She also listens. That's Max's mom. Okay. While we're at it, I should shout out Callie's dad, Dan. He also listens. Oh, my gosh. I know. All these nice parents. Yeah. Really nice. Oh, I think my friend. Okay. I don't mean. I guess. I think my friend Christina's parents are so nice.

Thank you, guys. I really, it is so sweet that people who are in our lives, especially parents, I don't expect any parents to ever be listening. Does it scare you at all? I don't like thinking about it. You don't think on it too hard. Yeah, I don't want to think on it too hard, but I do think it's very kind. Anyway, okay, oh, I wanted to play this. I'm sure you'll get right up to their mouth on the screen. Yeah.

Girl, close your eyes Let the rhythm get into you Don't try to fight it There ain't nothing that you can do Relax your mind

I want to run with you.

He's so good. He's so good. I admire anyone who tries to do Michael Jackson. That's why when I saw at the Bowl when they did the Quincy Jones retrospective and they had people singing the Michael Jackson songs, I was blown away at a couple of the singers. They actually sounded better. So that was impossible. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's so good. Okay, I found the exact timestamp of...

The episode of Acquired on Taylor Swift where they start talking about the music industry. Okay. And I was going to listen and then recap it. You're going to play it? People should just... No, it's long. It's long. But people should listen to that because they do such a good job of breaking it all down.

and how little money streams make and how it's all like broken down between the songwriter and this and that. It's very complex, but okay. So if you go to acquired and you search Taylor Swift, it starts because these episodes are so long. Yeah. They're like four hours. Some of them, right? Yeah. It starts at one hour, eight minutes and 38 seconds.

So I highly recommend that. And then we talk about Max Martin. Max Martin, speaking of Taylor...

Ding, ding, ding. What? They've worked together. Oh, okay. He's just very well-known music producer. Huge. Swedish. Ding, ding, ding. So wasn't, so was like Dog or whatever, Shania Twain's husband. He was Swedish too or Danish or something. Yeah. I think Swedish. Yeah. That's interesting. Yes, they have a big...

You didn't meet any when you were there? Any music producers? Maybe that guy who was mad at me at the gas station was a huge music producer. That would explain how, like, he thought things should be going exactly. Was it this guy? Fuck, that was him. No. That man's much younger. Yeah, Max Martin's 53. We should have him on. That would be great. All right, well, that's it. That's all the facts? Yeah, let me just double check to make sure I got them all. Talked a lot about tattoos.

Yeah. I was going to... Explain to people what a tattoo is? Yeah. Okay.

I have one interesting fact about tattoos. Okay. This perplexed me for like 20 years. Once you learn that your full dermis replaces itself every few years, like no part of your skin will be here in a few years. So how the fuck does the tattoo stay? And I asked doctors this question. I asked people for like 20 years. Okay. And finally someone explained to me that what's happening is

is that the ink is forever sinking. It just sinks through every new layer of skin that comes. To the bone? Well, no, obviously it doesn't get inside and disappear, but that it just, it sinks as the skin grows up.

Isn't that fascinating? I don't really get it. You don't? I mean, I do in some ways, but. Like it's not, well, one interesting thing about that is like, it's not fixed. Knowing that it's sinking, it's almost shocking. It doesn't like get obscured more. Right. It's like not permanent. That's what's interesting. It's on the move. It's like forever on the move, sinking down into these new cells that are growing up.

But just through each individual pore, though. Yeah, or cell or however the cell works and it incorporates the sinking ink, I guess. Should I look it up? Let's just see. Okay, sure. That's one thing I never did do is search it on the internet, which is curious. Why don't tattoos...

Okay, this says, okay, there's, AI says, tattoos can be, I hate that, by the way, that now AI is the first thing you see. Yeah, and you just don't know if it's telling you the truth or not. Exactly, but I'll read it anyway. Tattoos can be permanent because the body's immune system and the skin's dermis work together to hold onto the ink.

When a tattoo needle punctures the skin, the immune system sends macrophage cells to the wound to close it up. The ink is a foreign invader, so the macrophages eat it up and get stuck in the dermis. When the macrophages die, they pass the ink to the next generation of macrophages, and this cycle continues indefinitely.

So that's the mechanism by which it's sinking. It's passing onto the new cell. Yeah, just passing through all the new layers that are coming up. This other thing from Mad Rabbit Tattoos says, the reason tattoos last permanently is because of their location in the dermis layer of our skin, where the macrophages cells that live there hold onto your tattoo ink and pass it to future generations of cells like a microscopic family heirloom.

So weird. Yeah, that's cool. I'm glad we talked about it. Me too. I don't think that's like a super common curiosity. It's just permanent. That's that. You hear it's permanent and you're like, okay, next thing, next topic. How do we beat the heat? Which we're not doing terribly well in here. It's hot in here. I told you. I told you. I would say that the ambient temperature in here is probably like 83. Yeah, I live like this. Monica, we need to get you to a pool. Still haven't been to a pool. Yeah.

All right. Love you. Thanks for having me over. Bye.