James Doty (on the neuroscience of manifestation)

Dax Shepard
Welcome, welcome. Welcome to armchair expert. Experts on Expert. I'm Buck Rogers, and I'm joined by Monica Lightyear. Hi.

Today we have Doctor James Doty. He is a Stanford neurosurgeon, a serial entrepreneur, and a best selling author. His books include into the Magic Shop and a new book out right now called Mind the Neuroscience of manifestation and how it changes everything. It's a very fascinating topic, and a little backstory is required. BTS.

BTS. So, I can't remember how much of this we've already said in the past. It doesn't matter. It's important for this interview. We got our calendar days mixed up.

Monica Padman
Yeah. An entire day's work was put on a Thursday that actually was supposed to be on a Wednesday. Yes. And we were already recording armchair anonymous that Wednesday. Yep.

Dax Shepard
And we were midway through talking to someone, and rob all of a sudden said, oh, my God. Our expert for tomorrow just texted me that he's five minutes away. And I was like, well, tell him he's here a day early. Blah, blah, blah. Rob was typing around his f, and then all of a sudden, Rob said, no, it's us.

Which has never happened to us. So Tiffany Haddish. Yep. Was the same day from Monday. Yeah.

And James was that day, too. Yes. It was so stressful. So we salvaged the armchair anonymous. And then James was nice enough to come back.

Monica Padman
Yes. So this was his seconds. Yes. We felt terrible. I'm proud of the fact that this is the first time this has happened.

I'm shocked. It is. Yeah. But, boy, did we feel stupid. Yeah, we did.

Dax Shepard
So anyways, that's the backstory of James arriving, so let's just start with thanking him for coming back. Exactly. Please enjoy Doctor James Doty. We are supported by intuit, the technology platform that builds your financial confidence. There's some things that school doesn't really teach you, like how to handle the financial world.

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Dax, this is the best bagel place in the world. What's it called? Porridge bagels. And the line is 6 miles long, but Rob somehow has it dialed in. He has some hook up there.

Yeah, my friends own it. Yeah, that's a pretty good hook. That'll help. It's actually better than owning it. Yeah, it's like having a friend with a truck get access, but you don't.

James Doty
Have to deal with the details. No headaches, just the fun food. All right, well, if you're ready, I'm ready to start chatting. Boy, thank you, Rob, for that courage bagel. So tasty.

Dax Shepard
And did you get Jim a fun drink, too from Maru? Yeah. The other thing is Maru is the coffee shop here in town, which also has a line 2 miles long. And of course, Rob also has a connection there. Sweaters from each, too.

James Doty
Really? Wow. This is sweater from courage. And. Oh, from each.

Monica Padman
Oh, wow. They have sweaters now at Maru.

No, it does not. Oh, wow. Oh, my God, I need that. Oh, that's great, Krington. That's incredible.

James Doty
I'll give that to my wife. Well, thank you. I bet if you wear that on campus, all of a sudden they'll be like, oh, shit, I didn't know, Jim. Kinda sounds like a little bit of a sexual innuendo, though. Queen's up it up.

Yes, to say the least. So, on campus. I don't know, actually that somehow connected in my mind. I was reading some article on. What do they call it?

Death scroll? Doom. Scrolling. Doom scrolling. And it said, man with largest penis in the UK doesn't want surgery.

Dax Shepard
No surgery. I'm good. Yes. I wonder how that would be known, that he has the largest penis in the UK? Is that on the.

Like, maybe in Sweden where the health data is in a database. I was trying to figure that out because, you know, it's not like something you just go around and wear a t shirt that says, I have a huge penis. Yeah. And also not a standard part of a physical. It's not like the doctor's ever like, well, we gotta get this penis measurement for your jaw.

Monica Padman
Were there dimensions in the article? Yes. No, there wasn't. What did they say there was? Twelve inches by, I think, eight or something.

Twelve by eight. No, it didn't show it, sadly. Twelve inches. He went to Oxford, actually, and he's sort of a nerd, and he's not a big guy, and he's probably looks. Even bigger than that.

He's not handsome. No, no. Not like us. I'm really sure he's not Rob, that's for sure. That's why Rob has access to all of these things.

Exactly. You know what's also relevant, since we're on this train of thought, is it's standard that you up it by, like, 20%. If you're six inches, you would say that you're seven and a half, just like height. And now women, unfortunately, have adjusted their thing, right? Their boyfriends have been telling.

Dax Shepard
So he probably has to lead with, like, I have 14 and a half inches, I'd imagine. Look, no one wants. No one wants. There's probably the smallest of subset of. That are interested.

James Doty
Like, anything. I mean, there's always this 5% over here. Thank God for the Internet, for him. But this is unfortunately, the problem with comparison, which is so common with males and females. Okay.

Dax Shepard
Boy, we could start in so many places. First and foremost, you come to us by way of Jon Hamm, which is interesting. How did you guys come to know one another? Actually, it's interesting. He has an agent.

James Doty
I don't know if you know him. Guy named Ryan Ibushi. Never met him. So I wrote a book that came out in 2016 called into the Magic Shop, a neurosurgeon's quest to discover the mysteries of the brain and the secrets of the heart. It is a memoir that includes contemplative practice, meditation, and neuroscience that ended up being a New York Times bestseller.

It was bestseller in eight countries. And, in fact, have you heard of this group called BTS? Oh, yeah. Oh, the band. Yeah.

So they used it as the basis for their third album. No way. Yeah. Their album is called love yourself tier, and the third song is Magic Shop. When you listen to that song, do you see the connective tissue?

Dax Shepard
Or you're like, I don't understand. I'm in Korea. Okay, so you're not connecting so much. But the words are very nice because BTS is very focused on emotions and caring for others. They're very focused on mental health, doing the right thing, and that's probably why the book resonated with them.

Yeah. So then I'm assuming ham stumbles across the board. So Ryan Ibushi read the book. He says it's his favorite book. He distributed to all his clients at CAa.

James Doty
Then John got interested, we met, and then we decided to do a movie. And so he had sort of the rights or toying with that for a few years. A docuseries or a narrative, actually, about. The book itself and my life experience. Okay, so where did you grow up?

I grew up early on in Ashland, Kentucky, but then we moved to Lancaster, California. At what age? Seven or eight. Also moved around in various and sundry other locations. Do you have memories?

Dax Shepard
One of my great fascinations is the culture of honor or the culture of pride that is prevalent in Kentucky. My whole family's from Kentucky. They migrated to Detroit. Many of my neighbors had that same culture of pride. Very, very retaliatory group trending high on the violence scale.

A lot of fighting, a lot of standing your ground. Were you old enough to have yet observed all that? I did not observe it, but it's interesting you say that, because I had an older brother who was a year and a half older, and he was gay. Early on, he was out. Well, he couldn't hide it.

Yeah. And he was a brilliant guy, but he would be bullied all the time, and I was bigger than him, so I would always be his defender. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So when trouble would happen in the household. My father was an alcoholic.

James Doty
My mother had had a stroke when I was a child, so she was paralyzed, had a seizure disorder, chronically depressed, attempted suicide. We were on public assistance as a child, but what would happen is my brother, if there was any stuff going on, he would go hide in his room and close the door. Yeah, yeah. So I would have to be the guy who either go to the bar or call the ambulance, go with the ambulance to the hospital. You had to get responsible very quick.

Yep. Obviously, it's an unfair burden for a child, and it fucks you up in a variety of different ways. Who we become as adults is a manifestation of the baggage we carry from our childhoods. And actually, when we talk about, let's say, changing our lives, you can't change your life unless you face your background and the drivers of your behavior, because I'm sure you've experienced, you keep making the same decisions, and you sit there and go, I don't understand why this keeps happening. Yeah.

Dax Shepard
Expecting a different result. And it's because you have a subconscious driver that has been embedded in you. As an example, if you've had an abusive parent and then they abuse you and then they hug you and tell you they love you, you get this whole fuck up between love and abuse. Yeah, you connect it. It's horribly unfortunate.

The abuse is obviously horrendous, but you're constantly being won back over, which is also wonderful. And so your expectation of love is also quite heightened. I also think it fucks you up on the other side of the scale, which is like, I get this intense rebuilding and repair because some adult is in shame and winning you back over and spoiling you and hugging you and apologizing. And so normal kids aren't getting that side of the spectrum either. So it's just very bipolar and extreme on both ends.

So it's like when you're experiencing probably normal love, it's not even registering because that's not what you associate with it. But I think you're in a really unique position. Increasingly, we're starting to understand that it's not just your memories. There is circuitry formed from a childhood like this. There is adaptive properties that arise in the brain that you will then carry with you.

You'll have an exaggerated immune system for life. Tell us what happens physiologically when you're. Constantly activating your sympathetic nervous system, of course, which is your flight, fight or fear response you're trying to decrease. And so you do all of these things. Your brain doesn't develop completely until you're in your mid twenties.

James Doty
And certainly when you're a very young child, seven 8910. I mean, this is a very formative period, and there's a whole body of knowledge about attachment theory, bonding, and that can go awry, and the circuitry can get screwed up. Now, the wonderful thing is that you can change your brain. I mean, your brain has an incredible power to change, but if you never learn that reality or how to do that, then you're sort of locked in. And what happens to a lot of people is they keep looking for something outside of themselves to help them change them.

And it doesn't work for most people, even for myself. I mean, my whole life, I've sort of kept looking for a father figure and, you know, it never came. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You want that senior person who says, you know, you're okay, you're doing a good job, keep at it. I'm proud of you.

Or, hey, listen, here's some advice. Or let me introduce, because if you grow up in poverty and you don't have access to mentors or financial resources, even your parents, they can't help you. Well, you're stuck. And if you're an intelligent kid, it's torture, because frankly, you look around at other children who have more traditional, and I hate to say that, because most of the people I read across have actually had fucked up childhood, even though we keep looking at people. Yeah, yeah.

Dax Shepard
It's like you learn molesting figures and you're like, oh, shit. Yes, the majority of us. You learn physical violence in the house. It's the majority of us. You know, it's so funny, the only person who I've ever met who seemingly had really, a perfect life was an indian kid I met.

James Doty
Really, and I met him on a plane and we were both heading to the Kentucky Derby. But it was so funny because his father was an engineer and immigrated to somewhere in Pennsylvania. He started there at like three, lived there his entire life. And he has like six or eight friends who he's grown up with. Nobody moved from the block.

They all stayed connected. They were all friends. They still remain friends. And he's in his early forties. He expects stability.

Yes. What happens to people who don't have that environment? You're always wondering what the subtext is versus if you're with people who care about you, who you trust. You just naturally assume everybody's looking out for your best interests and cares about you. It's such a preferred way to go through life.

Dax Shepard
Assuming that. Cause it's not gonna have an impact. Like, I've lied to myself over the years. Like, no, no, no, I'm great. I'm a bullshit detector.

Yield any positive results? Life is what it is. You're gonna get x amount of con artists in your life. You just either live expecting that or it happens occasionally. Well, the problem is people have a tendency to project those types of fears or anxiety or expect failure or expect people to take advantage of them, and that becomes reality for them.

As you've led us directly to the theme of your book. Yeah. And therein lies the problem. Now, the great thing is there are tibetan monks, and I'm sure you've heard of Wim HoF, have the ability to control what are typically subconscious or unconscious behaviors of your body. You can control your body temperature, you control your heart rate.

James Doty
And in fact, I've been a meditator for a very long time. I mean, I can drop my heart rate 2025 beats just through thinking about it. So you can do it, but obviously, it takes work. And, in fact, there's a fellow named Mathieu Ricard, who's a buddhist monk. Some people have called him the happiest man in the world because he's been a compassion meditator.

But the thing is, under an MRI, you can sit there and say, I want you to be empathic, and there's certain areas of the brain that will light up, but you can sit there and say, I want you to be 25% empathic. No way. Or 75%. And you'll see the metabolism in those areas. Now, the problem is, if you say, I want to be empathic, or, I want you to be empathic, you have to take on the emotional state of another, and in this context, suffering.

So you can imagine, actually, that's very painful to do because you're taking on that emotional state. But, yeah, there are people who can actually do that. And if you also take it to the next level and say, I want to be compassionate. I care for others. I want the best for others, you will see the pleasure and reward centers in your brain.

Activate. Okay, so along your journey, Lancaster couldn't have been. I mean, I don't want to be disparaging to Lancaster. I go there often. I've been disparaging.

Dax Shepard
But I can't imagine the environment improved all that much. I just can't imagine it was a bounty of support and wonder up there. Was dad present? Well, as you know, you can be physically present, but not mentally present. If you're an alcoholic, and that's the driver, as an example, he would get a job, and then there would always be something that would occur, and then he would go on a binge.

James Doty
Then he'd disappear for days to weeks. Then, of course, he would come back and be very apologetic and sorry and shamed, and then it would start over. And, of course, you could never predict when that's going to happen because of the chaos and uncertainty that activates your sympathetic nervousness system. Right? You're in a constant state of turmoil.

People talk about post traumatic stress disorder related to military veterans, but this happens to children. When children grow up in these types of environments of uncertainty and chaos, they're always anxious and stressed, their muscles are always tightened, because there was no ability to predict what's going to happen. And as a result, you have all the negative effects of engaging your sympathetic nervous system. And the thing is that when that system's engaged, this part of your brain called your executive control network, which is in your frontal areas. That gives you access to memories, experiences to make discerning or thoughtful decisions.

If you're in a constant state of trauma and worry, that actually shuts down because you're only trying to survive. So you're finding the quickest solution. That's what's so insidious about it, is it puts your thinking in an area of your brain that prevents you from using the tool you need most to. Get out of it. It's very detrimental.

And of course, you have all the other secondary effects because it impairs your cardiac function, it impairs your immune system. Insulin, even. Yeah. And the expression of stress hormones like cortisol and the expression of inflammatory proteins, which are associated with chronic disease states. So it can be horrible on a long term basis because our sympathetic nervous system has been with us throughout our evolution as a species, but it was never meant to be chronically turned on.

Dax Shepard
Yeah. You explain in the book Life on the Serengeti, which some people will be familiar with, but, yeah. What would be a normal percentage of activation in hunting and gathering life? Probably be less than once a day. But the thing is, it would happen.

James Doty
And then either you survive or you dove. It's not just lingering. No. Well, the problems of pre civilized society were very acute. There was an animal.

Dax Shepard
There wasn't like a bad credit score that's slowly sinking the entire ship over the course of years. Right. It's like the threat is so elongated now. And that's what's so unfortunate, because not only do you have, as an example, the need to support yourself, which in modern society requires a job, but you have to feed your family, you have to pay rent and also care for children. And this is what's so disturbing on some level, is, you see, over the last few decades, and I would suggest probably since Reagan, where there is an attempt to remove a social safety net for people.

James Doty
And of course, it's horrible because if you don't have anything and there's nobody who can help you, there's no shelters, there's no food banks. Now, of course there are, but there's not enough. And frankly, the problem is, too, we have a minimum wage, although it's recently increased in California. But can you imagine raising a family on 725 an hour? No, not possible.

And that means both parents have to work. And who takes care of the kids? They did a study. Average discretionary income in all comers is only $400. That's not talking about poor people.

Let's talk about the average amount. So you can see how the very nature of living in modern society is horrible. Okay, so somehow you get yourself to UC Irvine. Did you see that as, like, okay, that is gonna be my way out of this entire experience? Did you even have lofty goals like that?

Yes. I had a physician come to my class in fourth grade, and he so impressed me because he just exuded kindness. And when you ask him a question, he looked at you, he treated you like an equal, and it made you feel good. And he was talking about how it's a privilege to be a doctor, to care for people. So that had a huge impact.

Now saying you're going to be a doctor and actually having it happen, two completely different things. So that was always in the back of my mind, I want to be a doctor. But how I ended up at Irvine is as follows. I had no clue that there was actually the time frames associated with applied to college. The way I found out was I was at a science class and there was a girl next to me, and she was filling out her application.

And I looked at her and I said, oh, what are you doing? She said, I'm filling out college applications. I go, oh, really? It was complete news to me. I said, well, where are you going?

And she said, I'm going to use her five. And she looked at me, she said, where are you going? I said, you sierravide where? I just didn't have panic. Yes.

And she said, well, you haven't filled out your application. I said, no, I didn't get it. And she said, well, I have an extra one. Oh, my God. I applied to what college?

Dax Shepard
Were you a good student in high school? I was a good student when I was a good student. If I'm tied up with issues at home, everything else suffers. Yeah, because you don't have a place to study. There's always a tv on, there's smoke filling the room.

James Doty
There are fights. I had the potential to be a good student, and I could be a good student. It's always interesting because you'll see kids from more affluent environment. And I'm not complaining that somebody's affluent or can be wrong, but, you know, they have their own room, quiet place to study. Parents can pay for tutors.

Monica Padman
Yeah. They get the sat prep thing. Yeah. Yes. They're not worried about, do my shoes have holes?

Dax Shepard
Is there electricity? All these basic things? Yes. After Irvine, you go to Tulane, and you do go to medical school at Tulane. And then this is a fun detour, and I want to know what motivated it.

You end up doing your residency for neurosurgery at Walter Reed. How did that come about? And then how do you end up in the military really quick? If I'm graduating from medical school, I'm like, where are the porsches? Get me to the porsches as quick as possible.

James Doty
The problem is Tulane was a private school. You can either take loans and end up about $150,000 or $200,000 in debt. Then, yeah, or you could join the military and then you don't have any debt. So you did it for what we would have called the GI Bill. They called it a health profession scholarship.

But backtracking the two lane. I had to leave college multiple times to deal with family issues. I had friends in college, and nothing is worse than you tell a friend or even a loved one, you know, I have an aspiration to be a doctor. I go, you're never going to do that. Look at your grade point average.

That's a joke. So when I applied to med school, my grade point average was 2.53. Now, the average grade point average at that time was 3.792.5. Doesn't sound med school biomass, if I'm being honest. We used to have a pre med committee, so you had to go before the pre med committee and they would write a letter.

So I go to the secretary and I say, I want an appointment with pre med committee. So I get my letter and she looks at me and she says, I'm not giving you an appointment. And I said, why? And she said, because it's a waste of everyone's time, right? I said, well, I appreciate what you're saying, but I'm not leaving here until you give me that appointment.

And she did. Now, you remember those photographs of Putin sitting at one end of a table and you have these people at the other end. So I walk into this room and there are three people at the end of the table, and the guy in charge, he has my file and he takes it and he throws it on the table and he says, say what you have to say so we can get this over with. How cruel to a young person, inexperienced. So I looked at the guy and I said, I am not going to allow you to objectify me.

To a great point. I proceeded to lecture him for 20 minutes, and the two other people with him, and at the end of it, they were all crying because it's easy to objectify somebody because you don't have to deal with the emotional issues. You're separating yourself. If you force them to look at you as a human being, they can't look away. And by the way, if you hear someone's story, it becomes increasingly impossible not see that they're a person.

Exactly. As I was leaving, that the woman who refused to give me the point, she says, listen, I think this will really help you. And she gave me a brochure, and it was for a summer research and educational program at Tulane for socioeconomically disadvantaged students and minority students. And she looks at me and she said, you know, the deadline has passed, but I don't think that will have any impact for you. Uh huh.

So what happened is they ended up giving me the highest letter of recommendation, and then I talked my way into the summer program, and I applied to one medical school, and that was Tulane. And actually, I didn't graduate from college. Initially from UC Irvine. Right. Well, it came out a couple years later because they let me transfer some courses.

So I got in with a 2.53 and no degree. No degree. Wow. Oh, my gosh. You could have written that book, too.

Dax Shepard
That could also be in your book how to go to med school with two, five and no degree. Well, that only happens to one person, but none of us have the ability to judge someone's ability to accomplish something. So if you were to fast forward, Tulane is in New Orleans, and after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans flooded, so the med school closed for a couple years. The students went to Houston, to Baylor to continue. The dean actually resigned.

James Doty
Library was destroyed. So if you fast forward, they were looking for a new dean because the guy resigned. They had a guy from Harvard who wanted to come, but he wanted an endowed chair. And I don't know if you know how endowed chairs work. No.

Dax Shepard
What is that? In academic institutions, having an endowed chair means there's a donor who comes forward, puts on several million. The chair is named after him, that money goes into an endowment, and that person is able to spend the revenue from that investment for equipment, the lab, whatever it is. So I ended up rebuilding the library and endowing the dean's chair. So the deed to this day is the doty professor, and I'm on the board of governors.

James Doty
It was a great honor for me because I was also asked because there's something called the white coat ceremony, where for the incoming medical students, they have a physician speak who exemplifies, nominally, the highest ideals of medicine. So they asked me to give that lecture again. None of us can predict someone's ability to have an impact. What happens is people create these limited beliefs about what's possible for them, and they're held prisoner by it. So how you escape that is really the key.

Monica Padman
Yeah. We're gonna fast forward a bit. I wanna get to the next, what feels like the pivotal part of your own story, which is. Yeah, you go to medical school, you train at children's Hospital, you get pediatric certification, you become an inventor, you take a job at Stanford. At some point, I feel like the really, for me, important part now is kind of the.com era on what happens to your life in that phase of now being an established voice in this world.

Dax Shepard
You are a part of a startup cyberknife. You're doing a lot of things. You're realizing all of the goals that someone might have that goes to medical school. And at a certain point, this is very fortuitous. There's a lot of abundance.

What is that ride like, that middle section of your life. Let me take a step back, please, because we talked about the title of my first book, which was into the magic shop, which tells my story from being a twelve year old, but it was walking into a magic shop, thus the title. But I met a woman there who was one of these people who had this radiant presence about her. She looked at you like she cared. She looked you in the eye.

James Doty
She was in no way demeaning to you because of your age or how you looked. It turned out she was the owner's mother. Can I say something really quick? Sure. What's so heartbreaking and so obvious already?

Dax Shepard
All of your stories, all of these mile markers? Someone took the time to look at you. Exactly. Yep. Yeah.

It's fucking heartbreaking. And that's all it takes. I know. Yeah, it's pretty simple. And the reality is everybody has the capability to do that if they just take the time to get you stuck.

In your life, tallying how much you've received that. And I think at a certain age and in a certain evolution, you have to flip that to, like, how many people am I looking at and giving that to? Cause that one's actually far more fulfilling. That's where we'll get to. So what happened is this woman took the time.

James Doty
She said, I really like you. And again, she created what we call a sense of psychological safety, where I had a calmness about me, I wasn't tense, I wasn't anxious. And she said, listen, I'm here for another six weeks. If you show up every day, I'll teach you something. And she taught me a meditation practice that included a self compassion practice and how to change your negative narrative and also to look through a different lens.

Cause when you beat yourself up all the time. You're hypercritical of everyone else. Let's really drill in on that. You can only extend as much compassion to others as you're extending to yourself. When you think of yourself badly or you do bad things, there's this transference towards others.

And we see this with one specifically of our political candidates. It's funny you say that, because I give this example all the time. And this relates to Viktor Frankl. I don't know if you've read. It just came up on Chris Pine.

Monica Padman
We just had an episode where this came up. How weird. It's called man's search for meaning. But there's a statement in there that's very relative. And it's one I use as an example, is between stimulus and response.

James Doty
There is a pause. And within that pause lies your freedom. And it's, how do you extend the pause? Because we're so reactive. And I give this example so often about driving.

Somebody cuts you off, you assume they're rude, they're selfish. But if you change the narrative to say, this is a husband, they're in the car, the wife's nine months pregnant. Her water's broke. He's getting her to the hospital. You go, fuck, yes, let me help you.

But it shows you how in a microsecond, you can change and have a completely different response. So the key is, how do you train yourself not to have that reactive response? And I do pretty good with that. I am certainly not perfect. I'll add a piece to it.

Dax Shepard
That was a stumbling block for me, which is I'm also caught in a loop of. I won't be duped. I won't be taken advantage of. I won't be bullied. I won't be subjugated.

James Doty
Right back to your kentucky. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So in that moment where I'm deciding what to do, the way I think I'm defending myself would be to not allow this, to tell this guy to get out of the car, I'm gonna knock you the fuck out. You're never gonna do that.

Dax Shepard
I'm gonna teach you a lesson. I'm gonna protect everyone else from the same behavior. It never occurs to me, or in the past, never occurred to me, that the very greatest thing I could do for myself is give that benefit of the doubt. Because now I don't have a cortisol dump. I'm not in adrenaline.

Forget that guy. My victory is a huge loss for me. The huge loss for you is actually your victory in the sense that you're not activating yourself. Exactly. I had to redefine what it means to be conquered.

James Doty
Well, it's not even being conquered, it's acceptance. And it's not having a reaction to that acceptance, because it's not failure. Frankly, it's irrelevant. I have had some people, like all of us, who've done horrible things. In fact, I just went through a very painful situation with an individual who literally was trying to destroy my professional career out of jealousy.

I was the chief of service and had reprimanded him multiple times. So he basically plotted how to destroy my career. It was very painful and it caused a lot of stress for me, even though I meditate and try to control that. But, you know, especially when you've built a career, let's say in medicine, where you're highly respected, and then near the end of your career, somebody's trying to disparage you for complete bullshit. It ultimately got completely resolved.

But I'm not angry at him, I feel sorry for him and I refuse to go down that path. Now, obviously I didn't to defend myself, but this is the challenge for all of us, because they're always going to be these ups and downs. So the key is how do you have equanimity or this evenness of temperament as you go through life? Because they're always going to be the ups and downs. Yeah, yeah.

Dax Shepard
The woman in the magic shop, why was she so well versed in all of this? Well, that's a good question. Remember, I was twelve, so I wasn't an investigative reporter. Yeah, yeah, she was in her fifties. I have to assume that she had somehow ended up in Haight Ashbury.

Okay, right, during the sixties residual and. Had some into meditation. Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. We are supported by betterhelp. Listen, I understand that sometimes you want to keep things to yourself, process your emotions in your own time, but if you keep everything bottled up, it can have some serious consequences.

Monica Padman
I have therapy on Saturday. I'm really looking forward to it. I had therapy this morning. Yeah, you did. Yeah.

Dax Shepard
And it put me in the greatest mood. We had a long big day and I just felt much better for having. Since you were not to out you. You were a little grumpy going in. I was, I was, I was.

Debes. Robin. I received some texts. Yeah, I was locked out of my therapy setting, which is this attic. But then you felt much better after.

I felt much better and I even made some apologies. Talking things out can be so helpful. And if you want a safe space for that conversation. I recommend therapy. Check out betterhelp if you've been thinking of trying therapy, it's entirely online, convenient and flexible.

It's also easy to get started. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. You can even switch therapists at any time for any reason for no additional charge. Get it off your chest with Betterhelp. Visit betterhelp.com dax today to get 10% off your first month.

That's betterhelphelp.com dax. We are supported by Squarespace. Guys, we have a Squarespace website that. It's just gorgeous that wabi wab, you built that yourself using all the templates? Yeah, I sure did.

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You had a toolkit already. You were successful in exploiting it, but you were focused on a very specific thing, which is the material. Exactly. Because again, if you come from poverty and you buy into the western capitalist narrative, its wealth, power, position, and then you equate that with success and happiness. I did get everything that was on my list.

James Doty
You know, I had the cars, I had the house. I was flying around in private jets. Where was the private island? It was in New Zealand. It was beautiful.

It was between north and South island. And it was 6500 acres. Can you imagine? Wait, you had your own private island? Well, I was buying it when everything collapsed.

Dax Shepard
But yes, he had a mansion overlooking Newport Bay. He had every cool thing. Wait, and this is just because of medicine? Well, he had this. He was a part of this company, Cyberknife.

He was an angel investor. It was the.com era. He's dialed. Look, he has access to all of the people creating all of the things we're going to use by virtue of where you're at. Yeah.

James Doty
So I ended up being very successful. So here's the problem. Of course, I did get everything. In fact, on my list was a Rolex watch, right? So, you know, and a Porsche, this mansion, and being a millionaire, et cetera, et cetera.

As a neurosurgeon, we're among the highest paid physicians. So we make more than 99% of people. But I was also a successful entrepreneur and investor. When the.com thing happened, I lost. When the crash came, almost $80 million in six weeks.

Dax Shepard
Oh, six weeks. Six weeks. Okay, hold on 1 second. Don't blow through this at all because I regularly play out what that feels like. And you have lived through it.

I have a very, very unhealthy relationship with money. It represents safety in a way that it actually can't make you safe. I fetishized it. I coveted it. It was going to result in all of my problems being solved.

I have such fear of scarcity. It doesn't matter how much I get. I'm terrified. And so basically, you lived through my greatest nightmare. But I looked at it actually differently at the end of the day.

James Doty
So I had borrowed $15 million because when you had that much in stock in a public company, even though you. Were restricted from selling it, you could borrow against it. Yeah. So I borrowed 15 million, and I bought this penthouse and all the various and sundry cars and things. I was now $3 million in the hole after selling everything.

And actually, I had no retirement. What happens is two people become your best friends. One is your banker. What age were you when this happened? I was 42, 43.

Monica Padman
Oh, wow. So he called me and basically said, when are you paying us back? And then I had to deal with my lawyer because I had all these different things going on. And I had made some commitments to charity, but they were really primarily for tax things. It wasn't because I was, like, a great guy.

James Doty
I would still like to think I'm a pretty good guy, but it was for tax planning. So he said, look, Jim, it turns out we did not file the final paperwork. You don't have to give any of that stock away. It was stock in a company, accurate, that hadn't gone public. And I went through this period of reflection.

What did I miss here in terms of the lessons that Ruth had taught me? And the reason was every action I was doing was for external affirmation. You'd climb a mountain, and then you'd wait for people to go, hey, you're a great guy, with the hopes that that fills the empty and the shame and insecurity. You have to be honest with you. At the height of all of this, I had all these friends going, God, Jim, you're living the life, man.

I was more miserable than I had ever been in my entire life. And so when I lost everything, though, I said, what the fuck happened here? And what I realized was every action I was doing was about me. I want this. And this is the classic woo woo pseudoscience narrative of the secret.

The universe should give you whatever you want, and you deserve it. And if you want to be a millionaire, that's great. The problem is, that is a dead end to unhappiness period. When it's all about you, it has a huge negative effect on your physiology and your brain function. And it's not who we really are.

Who we really are are the people who focus on being of service to others. And after that period of reflection, I told the attorney, I said, go ahead and give it all away. So that should be $30 billion. When I went public, they had $29 million and donation. But it was an incredible gift to me, because what it did was.

You're talking about scarcity. I was no longer worried about being poor, because what was driving me was the insecurity of not having anything. And it liberated me. I was no longer attached to that. Now, I don't want to imply that losing all that money, I was suddenly on the street.

In fact, Oprah was going to do a story because there was an article on the Wall Street Journal. We saw you lost all this money. You gave all this money away. You know, are you living in your car? I said, look, I'm a neurosurgeon.

My worst day is I'm doing fine. But what I tell people is I went from rags to riches and back to rags, essentially. But the greatest gift I got and the thing that actually gave me a different type of riches was I ended up founding this center at Stanford, which studies compassion and altruism. The Dalai Lama ended up being the founding benefactor. He and I became friends.

I became chairman of the Dalai Lama foundation. Then this led to me meeting Desmond Tutu thich nhat Hanh Eckhart Tolle, Byron, Katy Amma, the hugging saint, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Saadh guru. So being able to hang out and be friends with some of the leading spiritual leaders in the world and to see how they look at the world, which is through the lens of caring, compassion, love, non judgment, it was an incredible gift to me, and it made me look through the lens of how can I be of service? And if you look through the lens of how can I be of service, it changes several things. One, there's a difference between often as we're talking about what we think we want or need, and typically, like I said, chasing what society defines a success, but also when you look through that lens, you change what you realize is important.

So you go from what we call hedonic happiness, which is the things like porsches. And of course, that's shallow and transient, if you want to call that happiness. If you look through the lens of compassion and being of service, that shifts things completely. It is deep, it is meaning, it is long lasting, and it gives you purpose. And that's what we're designed to do, because that's how we evolve.

This is species. Our offspring need to be cared for. We have a imperative that makes us care. And when we care, this results in the release of certain neurotransmitters, such as oxytocin and others, which are the bonding or the love hormone. When you're of service to others, it stops you ruminating about yourself and the issues you have.

And so all of these things are very powerful. And I think that's the fundamental message in this new book. Yes. So the new book is mind magic. How the neuroscience of manifestation can change your life.

Dax Shepard
So let's define manifestation, and then we're gonna link it to some physiological things, and we're gonna link it to some science, which I think will be a great relief to skeptics and cynics like myself. I can't believe that if you. I'm not a cynic when I'm a skeptic. How would we define manifestation? It's the ability to embed an intention such that it has the greatest likelihood to occur.

And I was curious, because a concept we're very fond of on this show, and a lot of our guests are, and people are familiar with it, is we talk a lot about our story, the power of our story and who we are and what's happening in the world we're in. And then what that invites in, of course, is confirmation bias. Right? So if my story is, I always get taken advantage of. I am only scanning for moments where people are trying to take advantage of me, and I'm excluding all of the contrary data.

That would suggest, no, a lot of people are not trying to take advantage of me. They're trying to help me. And so I think of, our story is a version of manifestation, and I'm always policing myself on what story I'm telling, because the story I tell is the one that come true, because I will not see any contrary information, and I will only see proof of my story. How are those things related, or how do they differ? They're related in the sense of essentially what you're doing is you are embedding your confirmation bias into your brain, and then it seeks out ways to confirm what you wanted to confirm.

James Doty
Now, of course, if you don't have self awareness and insight, that can be very pathologic, and you may get confirmation of you being a jerk and thinking everybody's out to get you, but that's not going to make you happy in any way. And again, it gets back to the negative narrative you have about yourself, because you're basically saying, everybody's out to screw me, which, of course, activates your sympathetic nervous system, because you're always looking around. And as a result, yes, you can have that intention manifest as a truth, because the brain has no ability to determine truth from non truth, only what you believe. So it happens. The problem is, for many people who.

It's all about me, what I want, it's the same type of thing. Because people who are in that mindset, they're insecure, they have shame, they're afraid, and they're trying to bolster themselves. So by having things. The problem is that when that's your mind frame, that actually has a negative effect on those parts of the brain which are associated with actually manifesting versus, if you're looking at it through the lens of compassion, caring for others. That is when you shift from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system.

That is when you are stimulating your reward and pleasure centers. And it's when your physiology is working at its best. And that includes brain physiology. This is your rest and digest state. Correct.

Getting back to the brain though, so there are basically four networks, or cognitive brain networks that interact. And if you're stressed, one of the most important, which is your executive control function. And we talked about this in relation to the guy who cuts you off, it gets shut down and it decreases your options. But that is the CEO that actually makes the action of responding to your attention happen. So then that impairs it.

And that's not to say you can't be a jerk or selfish and manifest something, it's just not the best way to do it, and it's not healthy for you. Those areas of the brain are what we call our default mode network, and that's activated when we are daydreaming or mind wandering. It's self referential who you are painting the picture of how you define yourself, but that's also where you have dreams and aspirations. So you have to then embed that there. You have to pick who you want to be.

Yeah, but then the next question is, well, how do you get there? So you have to have the ability to embed or what we call value tag that intention so that it gets into your subconscious. That then affects what we call your salience network and your attention network. And what happens then is that once you've made it salient, then it puts your subconscious in the position of like a bloodhound trying to find situations that actually will help you manifest. But it also narrows what you're focused on, your attention.

So once your attention is focused on that intention, then the bloodhound goes to work, and once it then goes to work, then that allows the CEO to make it happen. Here is an example for you. I'm sure you've been to a party and it's noisy. If somebody says your name though, you immediately turn. Well why is that?

Because who you are, your name is one of the most deeply embedded things within you, so you turn to it. Well, if you embed your intention correctly, what happens is, I'll give you a recent example there's a project I'm working on. You know, it's not commonly talked about. And I was at a coffee shop, completely noisy, you can hardly hear anything. Yet I heard two people talking about exactly what I was trying to do.

Well, I would never have paid attention to that if it had not been tagged. And that led to me going over, introducing myself and having a conversation. And now we're working together. That's bonkers. The subconscious, as I understand it, it's like taking in the enormous block of stimuli that's all around, and then it's filtering and deciding what's going to make it into your consciousness.

Yes, and I would say all of us are manifesting all the time. The reality is, though, most of us do it inefficiently and unintentionally, because today's going to be a great day. You know, this is going to happen. Well, that's, in a way, manifesting versus doing it in a very systematic way that embeds that intention. And it has to be done where there's repetition, because what fires together wires together.

So through repetition, you create and strengthen neural pathways. And this is why this idea of manifestation, which is in popular culture and wrapped in pseudoscience and woo woo, there are certain techniques that have been learned experientially over time, and those are, as an example, writing it down, reading it silently, reading it aloud, visualizing it, and those are the things that strengthen those pathways, but you have to do the work. When I was a kid, I literally made this list of ten things, and I would go through that exercise at least 10, 20, 30 times a day, every day. And so that's the way to do it. But again, if they're all about you, actually it may happen, but it's not in your best interest to happen.

And if you want it to maximally happen, you have to activate, as an example, the executive control network. So it does have the ability to act, verse, being impaired by your own stress and anxiety. What have we been told about manifestation? That's wrong. The popular narrative is it's about you.

The secret. There's a classic example, it's you ask for a million dollars, you should get a million dollars, you throw it out into the universe, and you have this thing called the law of attraction. So if you put positivity out there, you're going to get what you want. The challenge with that is it oftentimes then if you don't get it, it says, well, you did something wrong, you're a loser, you can't manifest. And that's not the case at all.

There is nobody out in the universe who cares about you. In fact, Jon Hamm was on your show. He and I were talking about this, and he responded to the first sentence of my book, which is, the universe doesn't give a fuck about you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he said, well, at best it's indifferent and it's true.

There is no magic person or father figure that's gonna save you. And this is where we give our agency away. Because so often we're waiting for somebody to say, it's okay, or you can do it. That's not a horrible thing when you get encouragement from somebody. But if everything in your belief system is such that you have to have that, then you're giving your own internal power away.

And you have so much power that you don't appreciate. And we talked about compassion and this idea of self compassion. We have what's called negativity bias in the sense that when we were on the savannah in Africa or the Serengeti, we were always on the lookout for negative events because they put us at risk. And this is why we also, in the modern world, we don't see good news channels, and we have the same bias that gets into our head about negative statements about us when we repeat, I can't, it is not possible. I am not worthy.

That becomes truth. And so then you've created a limited belief system. And this is what I used to do. And what I would say is I was building my own prison brick by brick. And the walls got higher and they got darker, and it was hard to even think about escaping because once they get so high and it's so narrow and dark in there, you don't know what to do.

But when you realize that you have immense power within yourself, then things can change. Now, the challenge there is, and I'm sure you've probably met people like this, there's nothing worse than a reformed reformer. You know, it's like the guy, I'm morbidly obese now. I run 20 miles every day. And if you don't do it, you're a loser.

Nobody's a loser. Yeah. All of us have different experiences. We're in no place to judge people because what happens is you're picking a narrow slot that has worked for you. And now you feel you're able to look down at others and tell people they're losers.

Nobody's a loser. Nobody wants to be poor. Nobody wants to be obese. Everybody is worth, everybody has dignity. And when you interact with people in that way, it's much more effective than listening to somebody tell you, well, if you don't do this, man.

And it's really unfortunate there's a well. Worn pattern among humans, is we really are prone to proselytize. And I really do want to look at that through the anthropological lens. Like, what is it about? The moment you've done something, almost the very next thought is proselytizing about it, and I want to know what it's served.

Dax Shepard
Nice. It could be nice. Yeah, there is some. Like, I'm going to pass on a cultural tool that's going to help survival. Like, it probably was beneficial at time.

Like, oh, my God, you guys, I just dipped my arrow in this frog's back, and I barely grazed the antelope, and it's dead. I learned how to do this. You can do it, too. Yes, it's been co opted somehow. But this is our ego at work.

James Doty
Right. And this is actually a detriment to so many of us, and we see it within religion. Well, I'm a Christian, and you're not. Obviously, you're praying to the wrong God. Now, it's interesting because the reality is, and I don't know if you know Karen Armstrong.

She won the Ted prize in zero eight. She's a former nun. She's written a number of books about religion, and she's a great writer. But she also started something called the Charter for compassion. She met with 19 spiritual and religious leaders, and they all agreed that at the core of every religion is compassion and the golden rule.

And what has happened is from when we lived as a nuclear family, then we lived in tribes, we knew from experience that being kind, compassionate actually increases your ability to survive. We knew that. But then we started wrapping it around the dogma related to our culture. And that's how religions, or some people could argue how religions were created. But again, unfortunately, the natural thing about humans, and it's actually related to this tribal instinct, is to say, my tribe is better than your tribe, and we're against you.

And it leads to all sorts of problems in life because we are no longer in a tribal society in the sense that it is a global community. And when we try to isolate ourselves, it's to the detriment of us. And of course, obviously, the detriment to so many people in the world. Yeah, the trajectory is getting scarier and scarier. Well, yeah, we're seeing it.

Dax Shepard
Okay, so manifesting is broken up into six parts, and you've already touched on a few of them. What you give your attention to is very valuable. I want to go through some of them. How do desires play into a manifesting plan? We talked about being self oriented.

James Doty
You have to understand what are the desires that are actually beneficial for you and ultimately beneficial for others, because that's how you activate these cognitive brain networks to work their best. So you have to be careful what you're asking for. I have had these discussions where somebody will say to me, so are you telling me that to manifest you have to live as a pauper, be poor and forsake everything and help everybody? And that's not what I'm saying at all. The difference is that, yes, I live in a very nice house.

Yes, I'm very blessed, and I have access to things that I'm thankful for. I have no attachment to them. If they are all gone tomorrow, I will be just fine. This is the difference, because if you look at from the other perspective, people's identities are wrapped up in those things and if they lose them, they're terrified. Well, that in and of itself is worthy of evaluating why you would pick certain things, like anything that could be taken from you in 2 seconds.

Dax Shepard
You would think, oh, maybe not the best thing to hang my identity on. It just makes it very fragile. Well, but that's the life of so many people in western society. But I lost everything. I was liberated.

James Doty
If everything ends tomorrow, I cannot complain about anything. We are very fortunate to even be sitting here. This all has to do about mindset, because that sets the tone of your life. How do you see the world? How do you see your place in the world?

What is your job in the world? And when you can connect with that and feel this energy that you are of service to people and you're trying to model yourself on, how can I be the best person? We talk about how one person can change somebody's life. If you look at the lens like that, you cannot not be happy. People come up and go, how you doing today?

I say, if I wake up in the morning, I'm the happy person in the world. Yeah, there is an order, though, and I think the order is really relevant because I'm sure there's a lot of people that are going like, yeah, yeah, I kind of relate. I got the job I wanted, we bought the house, we got the boat. Check, check, check. And I'm kind of feeling directionless, purposeless, empty.

Dax Shepard
I think it's a pervasive feeling. I would love for you to walk us through Anula's story as kind of an ordering of events when you think about how you might approach this. This is an interesting young lady. She's from Sri Lanka. She is from an immigrant family.

James Doty
They were probably middle class or maybe. Above middle class microbiologist. So he was fine. Yeah, well, but then they moved here and he, I think, drove a cab. And she worked as a care worker, but very low pay.

So their circumstances were essentially poverty. And they look to the daughter as sort of the savior. She's going to be the successful one. She's going to make things happen. Expressly said to her, you have got to do this.

Yes. And so what happens there is now, it's not her wish. She is trying to live up to her parents wish to become a doctor. And these cultures are basically two jobs. You either become a doctor or you become an engineer.

She was attached to that. So she was doing an action which was to become a doctor, but it was not through the mindset of how can I be of service to help people? It's, I have to do this to make my parents happy and live up. To their expectation and justify all this suffering. In an interesting way, it's the same parallel to a gambling addict who the lie is, I just have to get to zero.

Dax Shepard
So it's like I just gotta neutralize all this suffering or guilt. It's a lot of guilt. They gave up everything for me, and. So she was suffering. But when you suffer, that creates anxiety, it creates pain, it creates fear, and then that's the worst thing you need when you have to take exams or perform.

James Doty
And unfortunately, she did not perform. And she applied to med school three times. Now, the interesting thing about my first book is that as a result, I get emails from people like this very frequently. And for whatever reason, what she wrote me struck me because she said, I read your book. It was very powerful to me.

Can you help me? And we ended up having conversations on the phone and talking about how she needs to change, how she sees the world, not anxiety about living up to her parents expectations. Do you want to be a doctor? And if you want to be a doctor, that means you're being of service to people, you're caring about people, and that is the most important thing. And when you focus on that and do these different types of meditative practices, which is fundamentally a significant part of the lessons we're talking about, then it will decrease your anxiety, it will decrease your fear.

Dax Shepard
Well, she had health problems as a result, living in the arousal state. The flight or fight. Her body was attacking itself. She couldn't possibly have studied for the MCAT or done anything. I think it's an important step one for people who are imagining approaching this.

You need to get into the parasympathetic system. That's step one. But also exactly what you said. What is the point? I think this is a lot of people in college and was sort of me in a lot of classes in college.

Monica Padman
I just want to get the a and b done with it. But if you think I want to learn this, you're going to look at it in such a different way. It's not about passing the test. It's about actually understanding something. We've talked about this difference between Monica and I, which is, I was out here to be a comedian, but I was going to UCLA so my mom would pay my rent.

Dax Shepard
I wasn't getting a job. I literally was like, what's interesting? Oh, cool. Anthropology. This is weird.

I retained almost everything I learned there because I was there to learn. My son goes to a very, very competitive public school in Silicon Valley. Both of my boys did. But the thing is that these kids are. I don't know if brainwashed is the right word.

James Doty
They're told that their value is them performing. You have to get an a, and it becomes a zero sum game. It's, I have to win, therefore somebody has to lose. The problem is that you're not accepting a child for who they are. You're translated into your child's mind that their value is in getting an a.

And it's a very horrible, pathologic, stressful thing, because if you don't get that, then you're worthless. And at my son's school, there are multiple suicides. Yeah, it's a big thing. Yeah. Because of this exact same thing.

It's not only immigrant parents. It's the subset of parents who also have gone to Harvard and Yale or Stanford. Yes. And they inculcate that. You have to perform because you're from us.

We're a family that performs. Now, there's some people who are up to the challenge, but it also leads to an immense amount of stress. The other thing is, if you look at what's happened in a number of elite colleges, and maybe not so elite is cheating. It's not about integrity and doing the right thing. It's about how do I get an a and what do I have to do to get the a.

And if it's you'll do anything, then cheating is just another part. And the horrible thing about that is it's not like, oh, well, I just cheated on this test in middle school. It's. I cheated on test in middle school. I figured out what I had to do to take advantage of the situation in high school.

Oh, now I'm applying for a job. How can I manipulate that situation? Or cheat, if necessary? And it goes on and on. This doesn't go away when you create these types of.

Of habits or ways to see the world. And when you're doing it that way, of course, it's a very selfish, narcissistic. Behavior, and you are lying to yourself the whole ride. You're like, I'm gonna cheat in high school to get into college. And then we're there.

Dax Shepard
That was the thing. But then you're there, and you find out, oh, no, there's a new objective, which is to go to grad school. Okay, then I'm gonna cheat just to get to there. It just never ends. And then you're in your job, and there's performance ratings, and you're gonna manipulate that system.

James Doty
Now, the interesting thing is, we all lie. All of us lie to ourselves. It's the foundation of intelligence. Deception. Well, yeah.

Having some degree of self awareness, you have to be cognizant of the fact that you're painting a picture of how you want to be perceived but how you think you are. But I can't tell you the number of situations where I've met extraordinarily wealthy people who have a perception of how great they are. One is, they'll sit there and go, well, I'm a philanthropist. Well, you're worth several billion dollars, and you gave $5,000. Or that the nature of their success had to do.

And I can't tell you the number of people I've met, and I'd love your opinion. Where they sit there and say, I made it on my own. Nobody helped. Except my father had this high position, and he got me this internship, and through that, I got this. So having that degree of self awareness and humility to understand, even in my own circumstance, even though I had a challenging background, I was white.

Oh, yeah. And tall and good looking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Smell great. Athletic.

Monica Padman
In your story, you've credited a bunch of people having helped you. I feel like you, of all people, could say, I did it on my own. And even you are like, no, I didn't. That is looking at this through a lens of truth. Hopefully, none of us has gotten anywhere without somebody helping us.

Exactly. And if you don't acknowledge that, then you're lying to yourself. We all need other people. Now, this is an interesting reality, though. The higher you go up on the socioeconomic scale.

James Doty
The interesting thing is these people lose their empathy. And the reason they lose their empathy is for most of us in society, we need to rely on other people to help us, whatever that is. If you are at this high level, everybody is replaceable. Well, they didn't do what I asked them to do. You're out of here.

There's a subset of people who want to be around power, and they'll do anything. But the people in power, they will replace you in a heartbeat if you don't go along with them. And this is a very unfortunate thing, because, again, if they look through the lens of empathy, compassion, you would do all these things. Because I don't know what you do with a billion dollars or 5 billion or ten or 100 billion. Yet there's so many areas in the world, or even in the United States, where even a fraction of that amount of money could have a huge, huge impact on another human being's life.

That should be the biggest thing on your mind. This isn't saying you don't have your car or your garage full of cars. You live in the mansion. But comparative to their wealth, that's like a miniscule part. Did you watch the Phil Stutz documentary by chance?

Dax Shepard
Yeah. Is that Seth Rogen? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no. Jonah.

Jonah is very common. I even went along with it for a second. Yeah, yeah. I get a completely. And I have to keep remembering in my mind the two of them.

James Doty
And I don't know why. I get confused, but do you remember. He'S drawing all these fun pictures, and one of them is that, well, of interconnected dependence on one another. And that was a real moment for me because I didn't feel like I was getting the support I wanted. My thought was, well, I will transcend needing anyone.

Dax Shepard
That'll be the solution, is I will be this monolith that creates and provides and does all this stuff, not recognizing what you're robbing yourself of the human experience and the joy of the interconnected and interdependence. And I had to really go, oh, wow. We strive to rely on other people. That's counterintuitive to myself. Selfish, reptilian brain.

James Doty
I think you're right. It's not unnatural to want to be an obelisk who stands there and is impenetrable. The problem is, just as you said, first of all, it's not possible. But second of all, it robs you. And this is also the nature of attachment.

I mean, the greatest cause of suffering is attachment and craving. And the problem is there's a subset of people who are so focused on, let's say, becoming the monolith that they forget that getting there, actually, that is where all the action happens. Yes. That's where the life experiences, that's where you get wisdom, that's where you get joy. Focus solely on that goal and you get to the goal.

There's nobody there with you. It's lonely and it has zero value. And yet we have so many people in business, they'll go, you know, I've worked 30 years to get here and I've had three divorces. My kids hate me, and yet I live in this 20,000 square foot home. I have all these cars giving myself diabetes and lopsided heart.

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Dax Shepard
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What is the Alphabet of the heart and how does it help guide us? Actually, I talk about that in the first book. I was talking about getting into two lane and giving this talk to the incoming medical students, which is the white coat ceremony. They give you a white coat, you take the oath of hippocrates the weekend before. And then there's an inspirational speaker.

James Doty
And I was that speaker. It was an extraordinary honor to be asked to do that. You know, in medical school you have to learn all these mnemonics to remember stuff. So I was saying, can I create a mnemonic that can inspire these students not only to be good doctors, but good human beings? That is something easy to remember and that relates to my own personal journey.

So I came up with this Alphabet of the heart, and it's the letter c through l. And actually, this is a practice I do as part of my meditative practice, which I go through. So it's c, compassion for self and others. D, recognizing the dignity of every person. E, practicing equanimity or evenness of temperament.

Dax Shepard
Elaborate on that one. We were talking about this reactivity as an example, in the context of somebody cutting you off road. Rage. If you're able to maintain an evenness of temperament regardless of the circumstances. As an example, let's say you have an attachment to a goal and you don't get that goal.

James Doty
People can be devastated. But if you're able to let go of that and understand, and I wanna. Know who gets this ringtone. Cause I've heard a couple different ringtones, and this one's specific. It's my spousal unit.

There you go. I had a hunch this one was more relevant than the others. Oh, I didn't put an airplane. My wife is gonna go. Why didn't you answer the phone?

Dax Shepard
You started that interview an hour and 35 minutes ago. What the fuck are you doing in there? Is it turned into an orgy? Well, I should probably believe that when. You give her the cream top sweatshirt.

Monica Padman
For sure. You guys are sick bastards anyway. Where were we? At equanimity. Oh, equanimity.

James Doty
So the thing is that when you're attached to a goal and you don't attain it, then that causes suffering and unhappiness. Well, if you understand that you should not have attachment to that, you should enjoy the experience. You should enjoy trying. But the world doesn't end if you don't get that. But people always want to live in that space of, oh, I accomplished this.

I'm getting all these accolades. It makes me feel good. Well, we cannot always be in that state. You have to accept that reality. The other side of the coin is just as accomplishment is transitory, or these goals, oftentimes, so is disappointment.

We're going to have ups and downs in our lives, and nobody wants to be unhappy or have bad things happen to them. That is the nature of life. But if you really closely examine it like the other side, accomplishing things, you can't always live there. It's transitory. That is the same way with downtimes.

Unfortunately, people will translate that the experience they're having is lasting forever, which then leads, of course, to rumination, depression, and sometimes suicide. But if you look at it from the perspective of it being transitory, you don't get lost there either. You have this evenness of temperament, understanding and appreciating each part. Because while the accomplishing part or achieving is wonderful, it doesn't really often give you the sense of purpose or meaning necessarily, especially if it's a focused, I want type of thing. Versus the downtimes, though, if you examine that, where do you learn your greatest wisdom?

Where do you see how resilient you are? Where do you see you have the powers within? And this is when, oftentimes, you survive a difficult challenge. And that's what gives most people an immense amount of knowledge, insight. So you don't want that not to happen.

You don't want it to last forever, though. So having this sense of evenness, of temperament, enjoying the good times but not getting lost in them, and the same with the down times. It's interesting. I have a modern art boot at the end of my pool. It doesn't have a head.

It's more modern. Yeah, very too modern.

It looks nice, but it's also holding a persimmon. The purpose of that is to remind me of two things. One is the tendency for us all to get lost in our head. So by it not having a head, it sort of forces me to be in my heart. But the other part is to recognize that a persimmon, it's like pain and suffering.

It starts out hard and bitter, but if you're patient, over time it becomes soft and sweet. And so that metaphor makes me appreciate even the down times. So equanimity. F is forgiveness. A thing that's very common?

Is so many of us attach an emotion to either an experience or a negative interaction with the person. And the problem is, if you don't let that go, every time you think of that experience or that person, it actually stimulates your sympathetic nervous system and makes you suffer. Na. We say resentments are like drinking poison, hoping your enemy dies. I know those statements from AA.

Dax Shepard
By the way. There's been twelve. I just silenced myself and didn't say. But yes, it's incredible how littered the big book is with buddhist stuff. I still have the same sponsor I've had for 28 years.

No kidding. Yeah, same time. Do you fear he's going to die? And what will happen then? Thanks for bringing that up.

James Doty
I never thought of that before. Don't worry, there's only a temporary fear. It'll pass. Just like that was a phone call? No.

Well, anything is possible. But he's been an incredible blessing for me. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway.

Gee, gratitude. We know from a variety of studies that having a gratitude journal, writing down three things every day that you have gratitude for, has a huge positive impact. I think it's important. Ed, too. They can be very inane.

Dax Shepard
People think they have to list something incredibly profound. But like this is a stuts, encouragement, anything you're happy, there's milk in the fridge. It doesn't have to be profound. It's just the act of putting your thoughts in that part of your brain. I remind myself 50% of the world's population lives on less than $2.50 a day.

James Doty
And so everything I feel blessed by the other humility. And this in some ways relates to dignity in the sense that recognizing you're no better than any other PErSon. And unfortunately, as an example, being a neurosurgeon, being at Stanford, that can for some people become an ego trip. And I always tell people, I can always tell the good doctor. The good doctors come in and they know the nurse's name.

They also honor the people who are sweeping the floors, people who are changing the bedpans and the sheets, the way. People treat their assistants in this world. That's exactly right. And even in the operating room, the way I look at it is I cannot do my job without these people. They're critical aspect.

And in fact, if something happens in the or, I always point at myself first. You know, there are people who raise their voice and they'll throw instruments and say, you idiot, if you have not directed the people in the correct way, honored who they are, understand who they are, have painted a picture of what you want to accomplish, everything is your fault, period. That also humbles you, because if you say, it's all my fault, I can't scream at people. So I try to look at it that way, and then I is having integrity or values that bound your behavior justice. I use that in the sense of our obligation and our particular positions to care for the vulnerable.

Then k is kindness. So you don't have to suffer. You simply need to be a human being just to care for another person for no reason. And all of this is contained by love. Which of those d through l is hardest for you?

Dax Shepard
Be honest, Jim, you bastard. Which one of those do you give yourself a c on? I think having humility. Yeah. Yeah, that's a hard one.

James Doty
I've been blessed on some level to have done some things that people compliment me on, but I have to remind myself, yes, that's wonderful, but the talents that I have did not magically come because of me. They're a product of a whole variety of circumstances. And this is what's sad, is people are being honored for things they did nothing to get. And even people who've done certain types of accomplishments, let's say athletes. I appreciate that, but that doesn't also make you more important than anybody else.

You know Robert Sapolsky? Yeah, we just had him on recently. Oh, you know, I have a podcast called into the magic shop. Oh, I didn't know that. Well, why the hell not?

Dax Shepard
I thought, you know, I know I teach the research. I didn't stumble upon that he and. I were talking about free will, and one of the arguments, of course, is that we didn't choose what we got, and so why are we bragging or. Thinking we're particularly or being judgmental? Behave's my favorite book ever, but the new one pisses me off to no end.

Monica Padman
But why that tenet is so real. To make it binary, there's no free will or there is free will. I think it's maybe a spectrum of free will, and maybe it's down to 8%. I do not believe the future is predictable, even if we know the placement of every atom in the universe. Universe.

James Doty
If we did it is, but we don't, so we can't. But I get where you're coming from. There's divergence. There's a lot of principles that interfere. He's a fucking beast, though.

He is brilliant. Ed, we had a very wonderful conversation. Okay, so this is interesting. Do you find that humility is hardest when you're intimidated? So Sapolsky's a triggering person to me.

Dax Shepard
Like, I read, behave, and I go, how did this man become the premier expert on baboon societies? And he's not an anthropologist. He spent 33 years. Yes, and he is the number one expert. Expert on this.

And that's not even his field. The intellect is enormous. And so when I sit with him, it brings up insecurities of me. The dyslexic kid's going to be talking to him. There's all this stuff.

And then what seems like an easy antidote is now to bolster myself with all these other terrible qualities I have that I would elevate. Well, no, I can because of X, Y and Z. Like, do you find that certain situations make humility harder to achieve because you feel fearful or thrilled? Now, this may sound strange to you. I just don't care.

James Doty
Because I have been blessed by having experiences with some of the major spiritual, religious leaders, political leaders, the Jon hamms of the world. Are we calling him a spiritual leader? Maybe we shouldn't go back. He was phenomenal in season five of Fargo. But I don't know if I'm gonna bring my existential crises to him.

But my point is, they're just human beings. And having spent time with many of the religious and spiritual leaders. People, like, worship these people. What the. They're human beings.

And frankly, being in the inner circle, if you will, on some level, they're just as fucked up as all of us. So somehow attributing like there's something special here. Yes, they may be special in this realm. Well, listen, this is coming full circle to attribution error, which is by practicing never feeling superior to anyone else and recognizing everyone's intrinsic value. You're weirdly affording him to have that view of you.

Dax Shepard
You're reaping one of the benefits of your practice because you're going, well, I'm not talking to the guy with an 8th grade education feeling superior because I refuse to let myself do that. So I'm not even open to the notion that Sapolsky is going to be talking to me, going, what a dumb motherfucker. Why did I come down here? Kind of comes full circle to being in traffic. And if I cut people off, I'm going to have to have the worst interpretation of being cut off.

James Doty
And the thing is, I have this unique experience of being able to converse with anybody, and we're all the same. And I don't get lost. Now, I will use that knife for dickheads, somebody who comes up to you and starts trying to tell you how important they are or jack around. I mean, I can be a real dickhead. You can be a cervix if you like.

Well, most neurosurgeons have the ability to be complete fucking listen. We've interviewed a lot of surgeons, and there is a fucking type. Yes. The difference I have, and this may be self serving, is that I did not decide to be a neurosurgeon until late. I was going to be a family doctor.

And the reason I was going to be a family doctor is I had this naive notion that I would do pediatrics, deliver babies, take care of older people. But the only place you can do that because you're held to the standard of the specialist in whatever community you're in, well, you can't possibly know as much as somebody fully trained, board certified in something. And so I realized that the only place I could actually do that was like, in rural Alaska, and I did not want to go to rural Alaska. Although it was a great tv show. Northern exposure.

Yes. But the other thing was that I actually met some neurosurgeons in the army, actually, when I was doing my internship, who so inspired me because I was going to actually do general surgery, become a plastic surgeon, and then do cranial facial surgery on children to reconstruct their faces. And that's really what I wanted to do. But after ten years of training, my wife informed me that she was fucking tired. Sure, that's a long time of you.

Dax Shepard
Becoming more and more specialized, going nowhere. I had done neurosurgery, and I said, well, I'll just be a neurosurgeon. I'll stop there. But I thoroughly enjoyed it and was very good at it, and so I have no regrets whatsoever. And in fact, I ended up doing cranial facial surgery with plastic surgeon.

James Doty
But my path wasn't to be a surgeon. So I would like to believe that I didn't become that person. But I will assure you there is at least a few people who say, jim Doty's an asshole. Sure, you haven't lived if there isn't a handful of folks, but I'm with you. I agree.

Monica Padman
Based on this, I mean, we've done six and a half years of this and we have people like you multiple times a week. It's crazy. But my takeaway is never, oh, my God, we're so stupid, or we're not worthy. It's, oh, everyone is special and everyone is not. Special is the same.

Dax Shepard
Yeah. The aphorism is, you are unique and special just like everyone else. If you look at the world through that lens, it always keeps you humble and it makes you understand everyone is special. And if you treat people that way. Again, one of the big things in my life that I learned when I changed the energy that I put out to people, because I used to be very critical because of my own insecurities and I would be judgmental when I changed how I looked at the world and had a sense of openness, caring and understanding that everyone's suffering.

James Doty
Actually, it changed how people interact with me. And what people don't appreciate is that we have a certain vibrational energy. And of course, that also heads off some people in the woo woo side of the house. But we do. And our hearts actually put out energy about five or 6ft outside of our bodies, and it can be responded to by other people.

How you carry yourself, how you look at the world, affects other people around you. Yeah. And create your own ecosystem. Kind of, yes. Well, Doctor James Doty, this has been a real pleasure.

Dax Shepard
I hope everyone checks out. Mind magic, how the neuroscience of manifestations can change your life. And I definitely understand why. Jon Hamm's a huge fan. I will say, I just want to thank you personally, because, as I already said, self proclaimed skeptic.

I'm enjoying so much people connecting these things that are kind of old and robust and true. I'm newly into Buddhism, but it's shocking, just since I've been reading about it, how much of it surfaces in all these other conversations. We're talking to a memory expert. We're talking about the context that you're in will affect how you retrieve your memories. It'll alter your memories.

Right. And this is all Buddhism. There is no consciousness. There is consciousness arising out of a given context, which is ever changing. And so I'm really delighted when people like you are linking the science to it.

I think it just will help get people over the hurdle, myself included. It's very comforting to know, like, no, no, we're looking at the brain in an fMRI and this is happening. This isn't woo woo. Well, and this is the challenge as people attach woo woo and pseudoscience. So they'll say a statement that in part is true, and then they'll add all this baggage to it, and then they'll push that out there.

James Doty
My belief is, if we can honestly lay it out there as it is, and also how to get rid of the woo woo stuff, make you understand how it works best. And I think in terms of manifestation, it's really important, because this book is really about the power of your mind to change your life. And there is no other magic beyond that. Your mind has immense power. You just have to understand how it works, and you can actually manifest an incredible amount of things.

Now, that being said, I don't want to sit there and imply that, well, if you do this, everything you want will come true. There are some forces, either systemically in our society that may prevent things. There may be other competing interests. You may not have clarity about what it is you really want. I think that's a big one.

Dax Shepard
By the way, I have friends who are like, I want to family like, do you? Because everything you're doing is kind of contrary to that goal. This gets back to, what are you manifesting today? And if you look at their path and they've never looked at it, they don't understand what it is that's driving them. Because making a statement like that typically is in response to, if you're with somebody who has a family and they're happy, and they go, oh, well, I sort of want that.

James Doty
But they don't really want that. They want something else. Now, most people, frankly, want the easy way out. The brain is lazy. Well, let's call it efficient.

Dax Shepard
It wants to expend the least amount of energy possible. That typically is repeated the same habits you've done. So you have to put the work in it. Even though the first sentence says, the universe doesn't give a fuck about you, I would also say, God only helps those who help themselves. You have to show up, you have to do the practice, you have to be motivated, and you have to understand the power.

James Doty
And I think, though, one of the other things just to throw out there is you don't need to read this book. Oh, I'm going to do this tomorrow. It's going to happen. I'm going to get everything I want. The best way is to start with baby steps.

Do a few exercises that show you the power you have to change your habits, which is what we're talking about. How do you create a habit? If you do these baby steps and you do a few things go, oh, okay, I get it. And then you do more. And it's like learning how to run a marathon.

You don't run a marathon by running a marathon. You run a marathon by getting up at six and walking around the block. At first, I just love how perfectly infused the entire book is with all the science that's happening. It's like we get into any one of these six things, it's immediately accompanied by what's happening in your brain and what system is enacted. It's very, very concrete and very well rooted.

Well, and I think the other part that's nice, at least for me, is to connect it with stories, people. And you mentioned Anula, but there's actually a story about Jim Carrey in there and others, because these are things that so many of us face. Until we understand that, we somehow think it's about us, and then we realize it's really not about us. It's about how can we be of service? Then a light goes on to go, oh, wow.

Here are all the positive things I can get while still getting what it is that I really need. And most people, if you ask them deeply, they want a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives in this period of time, which is very short that we're on this planet. Back to aa. Service just relieves you yourself and, wow. The result of that's actually pleasant.

Dax Shepard
Counterintuitive. Well, and just as a final point, not to forget that every one of us, every day, has the ability to improve the life of at least one other person. Yeah, that's a great way to end it, Jim. Thank you so much. This has been a blast.

Again, everyone, check out mind magic. I hope we get to talk to you again. You will. Okay. We won't cancel on you last minute next time.

James Doty
I don't believe you. Sons of bitches fool me. Want shame on you. Yes. All right.

Dax Shepard
All right. Be well. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Unfortunately, they made some mistakes.

Monica Padman
I want to be a baby panda just for one day. They, like, have a built in airbag or something. Yeah, they're jelly. They do not care. They're so stupid.

Dax Shepard
And I don't know, it's funny. An animal's never been more linked to anything to me than them and China. Right? And I can't help but watch them. And then also pair that up with my global stereotype of the Chinese, which is, like, very hard working, right.

And on it. Yeah. And then their kind of spirit animal or their signature animal is this lazy goofball that's, like, falling out of trees and stuff. It's really funny. I guess it's mixed messies.

It'd be like somehow if Sweden's national animal was a miniature something. Sure. A mouse. Yeah. It's like, oh, these people are known for being inordinately tall.

Monica Padman
Yeah. And then they have a miniature gorilla. That's fun or something. Yeah. Pygmy.

Dax Shepard
Do you think about the Chinese of it when you're looking at the pandas? You know they're in China. I know they're in China, I guess. But mainly the only reason I notice is often the account accounts are written in Mandarin or. Right.

Monica Padman
They're not English. And so I guess it reminds me of that. Oh, speaking of which, similar, you know, the auto suggestions that it sends to you, which, by the way, I'm in favor of. I don't know if people like that or don't like it. I sometimes don't like it.

Sometimes do. It's pretty spot on for me on Instagram. Yeah. But of course, what's clear is I'm definitely changing the algorithm because I send you those panda ones. And then now it's just like every time I sign on, there's more and more pandas.

Dax Shepard
My feed's gonna be entirely pandas, which I don't. I like them, but I don't want that either. Oh, my. So happy. Well, it's.

Cause it would take the place of some of the other stuff. And here we go. So I also get a lot of motorcycle videos. Sure. And I get a lot of these.

Monica Padman
That's mixed messies. You have a lot of pandas? Pandas and motorcycles and the occasional bar fight. I like those, too. But.

Dax Shepard
So among the motorcycle stuff is, like, the stuff I'm accustomed to, like, motorcycle racing, dirt bikes. But then there's also all these videos that are, like, basically bicycles with engines on them. Okay. And guys racing them. And it's all indian.

Monica Padman
Oh, do you think it's because they know you went to India, so now they know you're kind of interested in India? Well, certainly it's building on the motorcycle interest, but, yeah, maybe it cross pollinated with my recent interest in India. Yeah. But again, very unique to the region. All these regions have a kind of signature motor sportsy thing.

Really? They do. Like, say the whole Middle east area is mostly these, like, really totally dorky, pedestrian looking tiny suv's or, like, utility pickup trucks. Okay. But they have put, like, 2000 hp turbo motors in them to climb sand dunes.

Dax Shepard
They're so specific. Like, you don't see these anywhere. Else in the world. Interesting. And they're everywhere.

And then also big in the middle east is like drifting these super boring looking passenger cars with guys hanging out of the window. That's very unique to the region. Last one in that region is driving the jeeps on two wheels is a big thing over there. They'll be on the highway. They're on two wheels.

The guys that are better at it, they'll have guys. This is true one of the videos. It's a jeep driving on two wheels. That means the top front wheels. No, front right wheel and rear right wheel on its side.

Oh, right. Not doing a wheelie or driving on the front wheels, but driving complete, like dukes of hazard sideways. So the car's leaning like this. Right? And then guys in the passenger window and passenger rear windows down, come out of the jeep, take the tires off of the tires that are in the air, trade them, put them back on, and then it drives.

And this is all done on a public road. Not, it's not closed. So they're running and they're hanging out the window of. So the jeep is tilted up on its side, driving. Yes.

It's flying down the highway. So they're hanging up the window of the passenger seat, leaning over, unbolting the top, the wheels taking them off, trading them, putting them back on, and then they come back in the window, and then the guy driving puts it back on four wheels. This is very dangerous on a public road. Wow. Yeah.

You're only going to see that in the middle east. Cool. Yeah. Scandinavia has a thing. I know.

We've run its course is the last one I'll tell you about.

Monica Padman
What is it? Their unique thing is they love these crazy hill climbs, but, like, the hills are impossibly steep. It's always the sides of a quarry, like a rock quarry that's been dug out. And they have these four wheel drive jeeps again with these like, monstrous nitro fucking supercharged 2000 hp motors. And they're at the bottom of the quarry, and then they just fucking floor and they just scream up the top, and they're almost like straight up and down, getting to the lip of it.

Dax Shepard
And then you're only seeing that in Scandinavia. I kind of like the regional. Yeah, that's fun. It is unique. Well, because people have to play in their environments.

Monica Padman
Are you letting your beard grow out? Yeah. I'm surprised you noticed. Yeah, yeah. I haven't shaved since I went to Austin.

Dax Shepard
For no particular reason. Yeah. Better or worse? Be honest. No, no, I don't think better or worse.

It's not better or worse, but it's different. I can tell. Yeah. Because I haven't had a haircut in a while either. So if I let.

When I let my hair grow longer, I tend to let my beard grow longer as well, like, proportionally. I feel like you're gonna. So are you gonna grow out your hair? I have no clue what I'm doing with my hair. I just simply haven't got it cut.

Monica Padman
Okay. What I like about it is way more gray comes out, and it kinda is back to my punk rock roots where it's like, I'd have some of my hair dyed. Yeah. But my body's just doing it for me now. Well, I got kind of nervous when you walked up.

Cause I saw your beard, but I didn't notice your beard on whenever I saw you last, which was probably two days ago Thursday. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it grew a lot this weekend, maybe. And I knew you were dealing with a sick kid, so I thought maybe you were sick and the beard had to do with you being sick and.

Dax Shepard
Like, was protecting me. Like, grew faster to insulate me. Like, so sick your body was, like. Making hair, and my nails grew out really long. Now, one thing I.

It's been a while since I did let my beard get a little longer. And what I'm pretty certain of, I'd have to go back and look pictures. It seems to have degrade a bit, really, which I know is not possible. But do you remember it's possible? Cause it's certainly gray.

But I feel like it used to be grayer when I grew it out, which I don't know how that could have possibly happened. Huh. Maybe my hair is just gobbling up all the gray ingredient and now maybe. I don't know. I mean, I think, isn't it, like, it's dead now, so it's gonna be gray.

It's growing. I know. I don't understand gray hair. Yeah, I don't either. This is supposed to be dead, but then, yeah.

No, it just loses its pigment. But I think it's also dead. That's why some of them are, like, curly and wonky and spry on this topic. Are you ladies envious at all that we have so much to play with just to keep things novel? I can just decide, yeah, I'm gonna change the total look of my face over the next month and a half and grow this preposterous.

Monica Padman
No, because I think we have that with makeup. Oh. Like, we can play with our face a lot I mean, men can too, of course, but women can do all kinds of different looks with makeup. Yeah, I guess I feel like you guys are actually more limited. All you have is the beard.

Dax Shepard
He has the hair. Yeah. Do I want hair on my head or hair on my face as well? Also, I'm timing this completely wrong as I usually do. This is always.

I don't know why I do this, but I generally have short hair when it's cold and then I'll tend to grow my hair out, my beard out when it's hot and it's backwards. Yeah. But here I am inclined to let everything grow for a while. And it's getting warmer and warmer and I don't know why. That's my instinct.

Monica Padman
I think long hair for summer is nice. Oh, okay, great. Like, I think sometimes women like having long hair for summer. That's a huge general statement. We said sometimes my girls both just got their hair.

Well, I don't know about the younger jen. Yeah, we can't speak on that. I can't speak on that. But my Jen, mainly me and Callie. You like it long in the winter.

Or in the summer? I always like it long. My hair's long. But Callie would often grow her hair out for the summer. So that like for a bathing suit.

It'S kind of like mermaidy look. Oh, sure, sure. It's gotta be linked to a bathing suit somehow, right? Yeah, like maybe it's like, covers your boobs. Oh, okay.

Dax Shepard
Oh, so she's not. If you don't wear a top, if. You decide.

Monica Padman
If you want to sunbathe but cover up your nipples. But can women really make that much of a change? Like if you go like a minute. Right. Like if you go, I'm gonna grow my hair long for the summer, it's probably only gonna be 5% longer.

Dax Shepard
Whereas for me, like, my hair is currently twice as long as it was a month ago. Cause it was so short. Right. But Kali's gonna go from like eleven inches of hair to twelve inches of hair for the summer is interesting. No, no, no, she.

Monica Padman
Cuz Kali has had a lot of hair looks in her life. She's kind of more like you, I guess. Remember we said that. Yeah. And you're.

It's getting, I guess, proven overall. I'm gonna let you prove it, though. She's. Yeah, she's played with a lot of looks. What I pointed out for the listener.

Was I was on here. Oh, it was it again. Oh, just, I think it's interesting that people pair up in a. I think a mutually beneficial way, which is you're very risk adverse. And Callie, for at least from my understanding of her, she trends high on the risk.

Dax Shepard
Like, she's a little more risky than. She's more risky than me. So she probably pulls you along into some places, and then you've probably tempered her riskiness. Now, I don't think. Okay.

Well, at any rate, all I observed is that I feel like Kelly and I, in some way, fulfill the same role in your life. You were saying that Erin and I and Charlie were similar. Three of your close friends were similar. And then you said, and it kind of makes sense. Cause maybe Callie and I are similar.

Monica Padman
And I pushed back. But I guess we're finding. The more you think about it, I. Guess we're finding a couple more crossovers, one being the hair. But she.

You know, when I had my astrology reading, my astrologer said, it's good for me to be around water signs, and she's a water sign. Oh, okay. Okay. Cause it's very different from me. While we're on the topic of Callie, I have had such an arm's distance connection to her just through you.

Yeah. And so I know very little about her, but what's fun about being on this connections thread. Yeah. You get to see her. I get to see her more.

Dax Shepard
And when I'm seeing. And I'm sure you've observed this with Erin and I, which is like, oh, we have a similar sense of humor. And so what I'm learning is that Kelly's really quite clever. So. Clever.

Yes. And I didn't know that. I haven't interacted with her enough. But, like, when she. My best friend, wouldn't be anything but great.

Monica Padman
Right. But really, she's my Aaron. I know. Soulmate. So my best of all time is gonna be cool.

Dax Shepard
Well, I knew she was cool. That's obvious just from looking at her. And I knew she had an aesthetic. If you go to her instagram page, it's very beautiful. Yeah.

What I didn't know is that she's very funny. Clever. So, the one that really got me the other day was when she said that she felt like we were communicating with. Oh, you liked that? I loved that.

Did you see, I had a follow up that was like. Or maybe it's a dead relative. Like, she was saying that she thought that there was a pattern being placed in connections. That was someone communicating. Communicating with us from outer space.

Monica Padman
Right. And that's such a unique, abstract, funny thought that I really liked. She is. She's not very this is the first time I'm having this revelation. I don't think Callie is a people pleaser.

Dax Shepard
Right. Or even an approval junkie. Exactly. I don't think she needs it. Right.

That's what I'm saying. There's an economy to when she is witty, so she's not someone going for a joke all the time. There's no neediness to her. Yeah. Which is very appealing.

Monica Padman
I feel that about anything, Aaron. Totally. It's like when the time's right, he lets it rip, but there's no neediness. Anywho, it's been fun. Now, do you think.

What do you think about me and her? What have you seen? Well, once I saw this side of her, I'm like, oh, I get it. I bet their text chains to each other are fantastic. Yeah.

Do you think it's similar, or do you? Yeah, you're both very, very clever. Mildly sarcastic. Yeah. I like you say with Nate and probably with Aaron.

I have no sense of competition with Callie. Right. At all. Yeah. But there are people in my life with varying degrees of that.

Cause that's very human. But, yeah, there's none. It's a very safe relationship. I get it. It's also a little bit what phineas was saying, which is when you truly love somebody, you're genuinely happy to see them get approval and be shined on.

I know, but I think that's a little basic. Like, I think you can really love someone and it's still be. There can be triggers, and it's not normally about the other person. It's just you. Right.

It's about whatever you're going through. Yeah. But I would argue maybe those triggers and those character defects that are preventing you from rooting for the person would be a good measure of how much you actually love them. Well, I think they would say that to me, that your baggage is standing in the way of you actually loving them. I guess.

Dax Shepard
Truly. I think, though, I think you can be 100% rooting for someone and want only the best for them and get jealous. Like, I think that's very human, and I don't think there's actually a problem with that. As long as you're not, like, I don't want it for them. I don't want it.

Monica Padman
It's just things can bring up for you. Like, I want that. I mean, I've experienced it on my side, and I've been on the other side of that, and I think it's fine. I understand if there's jealousy that comes into play as long as they're not, like, upset by my success, I understand if it's, like, triggering something in them that they don't have and want. Yeah, I know what you mean.

Dax Shepard
I'm not sure that I agree with you, but I do know what you mean. Interesting. Anyway, so I think it's funny. Cause I know you think you and Erin have the. I mean, you obviously have a cohesive sense of humor.

Monica Padman
Like, you balance you. Like, we get into a rhythm with one another, and we build on each other, and we have the exact same very specific thing that we love to. Build on that you like and enjoy. Yes. Now, like, yes.

Dax Shepard
If you meet Aaron at a bar and you meet me at a bar and the kind of ways he'll be funny in the kind of way probably independently, are different. Right. But when we're together, they kind of fuse in this. There becomes a third sense of humor that he and I own collectively. Yeah, totally.

Monica Padman
I think that's common in friendships. Yeah. Yeah. And I. It's always when he's here that I'm reminded how much I enjoy that silly zone he and I live in.

Yeah. So fun. It's so fun. I'm in a good spell right now. I just hiked with David Walton.

Oh, nice. He's another person who I just have this, like, deep when I'm with him. It's just this feeling of joy. Oh, that's nice. And symmetry between whatever.

Dax Shepard
We're just. It's a very easy balance between the two of us. That's great. Yeah. But also a rough weekend.

Yeah. Very sick child. That's sad. We had a sick kid, too. What's that?

Calvin was sick, too. Really? Yep. So Friday night, first Lincoln came in, and she had a nightmare, so Chris person went and laid with her in the middle bedroom, and then Delta came in. She was crying, and she's super sick.

So she laid down next to me, and she started snoring. It can't even be called a snore. This is what it sounded like. Oh, God. Ew.

Monica Padman
Oh. Did you think she was dying? I was worried. It sounded like she had sleep apnea. Right.

Dax Shepard
Cause her nose was just 100% clogged. She couldn't breathe through it, but she was trying to breathe through it, so then she was breathing through her mouth, so it's just insane amount of noise coming up next to me. Oh, man. And so I put on my noise canceling headphones, and I'm trying to sleep next to her. And it's your safety blanket.

Yeah. It sounds like there's a grizzly bear mauling a deer next to me. And then every 20 minutes she starts crying in her sleep because her throat is sore from breathing through her mouth. So then she's just crying, but she's still asleep. Oh, no.

Did she cry for 20 minutes? And then. Oh. And so it was the. I mean, I felt like I had been captured by the Taliban.

And this was one of these ways that they sleep. Deprive you to make you crazy and give up secrets. Like, it felt more than just. It felt like calculated and. Yeah, it felt like torture.

It felt like a. It does feel. Okay. The snoring. When.

Monica Padman
Snoring. When you're in that zone and someone is snoring. Say it. Aaron's snoring in the motorhome. Yeah.

It feels aggressive, hostile. It feels hostile. It feels pointed and on purpose. And they're doing it to you. Yes.

Dax Shepard
But then you add in the crying, which is, of course, I love her and I'm not gonna be able to just like, listen to her whimper and cry. So it's like it was this great back and forth between, like, wanting to put a pillow over her face and murder her. Cause the noise was so loud. And then this crying and tenderness where I wanted to nurture mixed with her what we call star fishing, which all night long she throws her body around, spins around in the bed. So it was like there was a physical assault.

It was so much going on. So of course I woke up Saturday and I was like, I'm not sure we got anything done last night. Restoratively. And then Lincoln went to the cute. First of all, this is so cute.

Went with pals to Malibu at the beach. Oh, my God, that is so. I think it was one of those. So adult. It was like a kid.

One of the kids birthdays parties, had like get a little volleyball. Then it turned into they played football. And she rode with, you know, a friend and her mom. She did. She got picked up.

She got picked up, which is rare. So she had like a whole excursion. It felt very Malibu Barbie. Like she was going out to the beach. It does.

It was a terrible day, too. It was like 60 degrees and cloudy on Saturday. She got in the ocean anyways, God bless her. But. So she was gone the whole day.

So then it was just Delta and she was in just the foulest. And she was insistent on going to the park and she wanted to go to a very specific park. Even though she was sick. Exactly. And you're like, this is not a.

You don't want to be at a park, like, let's get you in front of the tv and have you pass out. But we went to the park. On the way there, we watched a semi smash a car. Oh, my God. Yes.

It was the craziest fucking thing. It was all I could do to not get involved. This dude, you know, on Los Feliz Boulevard, right at the 101 one, that intersection with Riverside, and that this semi was in the very far right lane. And then as it's coming through the intersection, it starts trying to merge over into the other lane. And I was.

And then I look, I'm like, why does this guy got to get in that other lane? Now all the traffic's backed up. And then I'm like, oh, this motherfucker is going to try to make a left turn across four lanes from the right lane because he got off at the wrong exit. And I'm basically. I'm like, on it because I'm in the left turn lane.

I'm even thinking about going directly in front of him so he can't do this. But then it would have pinched traffic even worse. And I'm like, not your job to be the sheriff. Very hard for me not to get involved. And sure enough, he just goes.

I'm waving to him, dude, you can't go. There's cars all next to the. Just fucking goes. Plows through a car in the intersection. Yes.

And then takes down off down Riverside. What? Yes. I watched the car spin, and I think, well, they're definitely going to follow the semi and get its license plate number. They then went in the opposite direction and blasted out of there with a totaled car.

Monica Padman
What? So I'm like, what did we just see? Is that person not have a license? Are they in a stolen car? Have insurance?

Dax Shepard
What the fuck? And these two were made in heaven. This guy just drove over a car with a semi, and they ran. That's. So it was a weird omen to go right before you get to the park.

Get to the park. Of course, she didn't want to be there. We set up all the bullshit. She looks at the thing for five minutes like, I want to go home after we. Oh, my God.

It was just one of those days. Yeah, sure, but highlight. We then that night went to see. Well, Friday night, we saw Bill Burr at the Hollywood bowl because it's Netflix as a joke weekend. Oh, nice.

And Kristen's doing a show for Netflix, so we had access to all these tickets. So we went to Bill Burr Friday night, and then Saturday, we went and saw Shane Gillis at the Greek. Wow. And I gotta say, might be the best stand up show I've ever seen. It was unreal.

I know. Best comedian of all time? Well, no, that's Richard Pryor. So it was great. Letterman and who else did we say?

James Doty
Bill Murray. Jerry.

Dax Shepard
At any rate, it was incredible. It was so good. I can't believe how good he is. Just. And you know what it is talking with Dave on the walk today, because Dave's starting to do stand up.

75% of it is. How comfortable is that human being standing in front of all the people on stage? It's so infectious, like, when they have that complete calmness and steadiness and confidence like that does so much of the lifting. And I gotta say, I don't know if I've ever seen someone just so comfortable sitting there telling stories on stage. It was just wonderful fun.

It was really fun. Your weekend go on Friday, we did drive by Bob's big boy, and Bob was gone. What do you mean? Mean? You know, the big Bob.

The big big boy? Yeah, the big boy. The big boy in his overalls is checked Bob. No, Bob is the franchisee. Oh.

Like in Michigan they were Bob. It's big boy. Big boy is the restaurant change. Like. Like McDonald's?

But in Michigan, most of them are owned by Elias brothers, so it would say Elias brothers. Big boy here. It's Bob's. Bob's big boy. They varied state to state.

Monica Padman
I'm bummed. Isn't that wild? I thought his name was Bob. No, he's big boy. I thought he was Bob big boy.

Dax Shepard
Then it should be big boy Bob. No, like, if there was a big boy named Bob. That's worth. Earmark that. Okay, yeah, I think it would be Big Boy Bob, but it's Bob's.

Big boy Bob's McDonald's. Fuck. So. But the actual statue. Never even knew it.

The statue was down, though. You. You said. Yeah, they retired him, apparently. What do you mean?

Oh, was he problematic? The new mascot? A little blonde girl named Dolly. No, guys, how the fuck you gonna rename Big Boy? Wait, are you Dolly?

Monica Padman
Are you serious? The iconic big boy mascot is getting the boot after almost 90 years. No. What a dumb fucking decision. Still be named Big Boy, but a new mascot will be introduced.

Dax Shepard
It'll be named Big Boy, but there'll be a little girl named Dolly. What? Who on earth greenlit this idea? Why? I mean.

Monica Padman
Oh, my God. They're like, we gotta keep up with the time. But then why wouldn't they change the. Name to little dollies? Yeah.

Wait, we thought this was some sort of prank. Well, the big boy statue has been stolen multiple times. It is a common prank. Yeah, we thought it was Burbank High. We blamed it on Burbank High.

Dax Shepard
That would make sense. Fuck. Wait till I tell everyone this. Were they old cars still. Still there?

Monica Padman
Yeah. Okay. Not everything is crumbled. What are they thinking? You can't have a restaurant named Big Boy and then switch to a girl dolly.

Dax Shepard
Oh, my God. Are they trying to keep up with something? It sounds like they are, but they're not doing a good job in general. Cause then you should just change the whole thing. Scrap everything.

Monica Padman
Yeah. Oh, my God. Okay, well, I don't wanna get too hung up on that. I. I'm shocked Ceci hasn't been canceled for bad behavior.

Well, is Dolly Bob's wife? Like? Well, there is cartoons. There's like a whole cartoon series with big boy in it, like, on the mats. When you eat at big boys, they had cartoons in known characters.

Dax Shepard
She clearly was probably one of the characters in the big boy comic strip. I don't. Guys, this is insane. I think they're just desperate. I guess I feel sad that they're getting desperate.

Monica Padman
No, the iconic big boys. Oh. Oh, this was 2020. Yeah. That's when.

That's what you're seeing. Yeah. They just now got around to it for you. Yeah, that doesn't make sense because it's says, bob's Big Boy recently announced a new mascot, a more obscure character from the nearly century old diners history, to help launch a new item. The blonde ponytail dollar, who made her first appearance in Bob's Big Boy canon via the restaurant chainz comic books, is now the face of the brand in a limited run fried chicken sandwich.

But not everywhere. It says the downy location. Staying the course with big boy. I don't think this is why.

Dax Shepard
Okay. I think this was a missing. We got quick to conclude. We quick to jumping to conclusion. It's scary, though.

Okay. All right. Any who big boys. Okay. At the Shane Gillis concert, first arriving, walking through a big crowd of people, and a big dude is with a gal, and he comes up to me and he's big, intimidating looking, and he steps right into my face and he goes, you eat ass.

Monica Padman
What? Yes. No. Yes. And my first thought was like, this dude wants to get down right now.

Dax Shepard
Like, he's coming right, right at me. And I'm looking at him, but then he has half a smile on his face, and I realize, oh, my God, he's talking about chips. You eat ass. Everyone eats ass. Everyone does not eat everyone's ass.

He's quote, chips to me. But it. It was a crazy 4 seconds where I'm like, a stranger's stepping up to me, and it's go time right now. Didn't bump into him. Didn't wait, whatever.

And then I was like, oh, my God. Yes, of course I eat ass. Fist bump. Everyone's happy. We walk away.

But it was. I kind of got. I created my own problem here. If you had punched him, I literally. Thought that, like, what if I just panicked and fucking cold cocked him and then he's on the ground?

And then it hit me. He loved chips. I would have been, like, completely devastated. Yeah. This is a good lesson.

Oh, my God. Kristen watched the whole thing happen. Wow. You weed ass stranger. Right in your face, big guy.

Monica Padman
That's crazy. Okay, well, this is for James. This is for James. Yes. And our neurosurgeon, neuroscience professor.

Compassion. Compassion. Yes. Manifesting. Okay.

So he said that BTS, the band, the korean band, made a song based on his book. Oh, yes, yes. Magic shot. Yes. So I have it.

Dax Shepard
Oh, you have a taste of it. Make sure you hold up to the mouth of the singers on screen.

Sure.

How does Dody know this is about his song?

Well, the coldplay's got a song called Magic, too.

James Doty
I heard. I do believe in galaxy. Is it a little bit of English in there, too?

Monica Padman
Okay. All right. That sounded good. I can see why they're a hit. Yeah, it's very catchy.

They're a big deal. Okay. So then he said another thing. He said. He also said, well, I looked up the average pay of a neurosurgeon.

Dax Shepard
Okay? It's by state. Yeah. It's highly regional, isn't it? Yeah.

Monica Padman
So it says in California, it says annual salary, top earners is 394,761. Seems a little lower than I thought. Me too. I think of a neurosurgeon as making millions a year. Yeah.

Or a. Every time I look these up, they're very confusing. I feel like. Because it's an average somehow. I just don't know.

Dax Shepard
Cause you listen to, like, doctor death. Uh oh, wait. On salary.com, it says the average neurosurgeon salary in LA is 754,000. That sounds a lot more. Yeah.

Because I remember leaving high school and learning that the highest paid career at that moment was an anesthesiologist. That was 700 grand. And that was in 93. Three. Right.

Monica Padman
Also, I think that was not real. And also, I know these doctors around la, they live in $12 million houses. They're clearly making millions a year. Yeah, they are. I sure wish Dodie would have told us exactly what he made.

Yeah, he didn't. He just. He said he's doing fine. In this episode, he brings up equanimity. Yes.

And equanimity is one of my favorite words. Talk about it more because I just recently looked it up. Yeah, I had it wrong, kinda. Oh, you did? I thought of it more as equality.

Oh. But it's not. It's an emotional state, like ease, contentment, peace. I first learned about it, though, because Dave Chappelle had a special called equanimity and the bird revelation. Oh, yeah.

Dax Shepard
That's where you fell in love with it. That's when I first found it. And then I liked it and I looked it up and then I forgot what it meant and I looked it up again and I forgot what it meant and I looked it up again and then I committed it to memory. That's what they say. If you want to own a word, forget it three times.

Monica Padman
They do say that. That's the popular saying today on connections. We both made a blunder. Same blunder. It was the same blender.

Well, there's no way for me to know if it's the same blender. But it's the same color. Yeah. All green in one. Purple.

Purple. Oh, so I bet it was the same. It was like maybe handful. Yeah, one of those. Yeah, handful they were.

Dax Shepard
I never used. I've never heard handful used in the way they were. Oh, really? I have. There's such a handful.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I have. You're right. Yeah. Thanks for correct.

Monica Padman
Why not? Why not? Oh, should we admit what we thought? Oh, I mean, it's very gross. It's so gross.

Dax Shepard
It's so gross. And it's not true. I don't know. It's not. But let's say.

Okay, three of the twelve words, one was ace. Yeah, that one's a stretch. Armchair expert. That's the abbreviation. I know, but not very many people are thinking about it like that.

Monica Padman
But okay, okay. Ace expert. Dax. Dax and soulmate. Dax was not one.

But it wasn't soulmate expert and ace. And then I thought, could she be. But listen, I wouldn't have ever had this crazy thought if we hadn't just talked about her for a very long time. Yeah. And I run into people often that we talk about it generally gets to them.

That's why I'm very careful about can get to people. Yes. How we talk to them about anyone, because it can get. Get to them. Yeah.

Dax Shepard
So when I saw that, I thought, well, we just really did an hour on Wyna. Is it possible she's winking back? Right. Okay, okay. So I side texted you in the morning, and I said, expert and soulmate are on.

You missed Ace. That's what was crazy. Well, I saw it, but that, to me, felt like a stretch. A lot of people call it Ace. Rob, don't you associate ace with our show?

Yeah, I see it in the comments a lot. People call it Ace. Yeah, yeah. I like ae better. I generally say ae as well.

If I'm, like, too lazy to say it. Right. I say ae, like, oh, the AE shows are on these days. And then. Yeah, but Ace is really, really common.

Monica Padman
Okay, okay, okay. And it's very. It's the most accurate. Well, actually, it's not. It's when people have armchairs, two words, which we.

It's inaccurate. But that's fine. I also saw it, but I thought, that's narcissistic to look at that and think it's connected. Yeah, it's problematic. I owned it, but.

Dax Shepard
And then I put it on the channel. I hadn't read yours. That's what I want to say. That's what I want to say. So I sent to you.

Monica Padman
Oh, wow. Soulmate and expert are on today's connections. And I thought that was just gonna be, like, a fun little sidebar for us. Yeah. Great.

Then you on the chain. Bring it. You bring it to the chain. And then I was like, oh, no. Well, hold on a second, though.

Dax Shepard
So, you know what happened for me is I do connections before I look at my text. I don't look at text, period. I don't open the up. Got it. I get on the.

I finish journaling. I go straight to the toilet and open up connections. Okay. Or if I have to post, I post. Then I open up the end of connections.

I look at my text. Okay. And then I look at my email. That's the order. Okay?

So what I first did is connections, and then I immediately send my results. So now I'm sending a text to everybody. I still haven't looked at my text. And then I write and I own it. I say, at the risk of sounding really narcissistic, I feel.

I feel like wino winked at us today. Yeah. I was relieved to say Max said he thought it immediately. I was so nervous about what any of them were going to say you would be. And Max did a nice thing and.

Said, I don't think that's Max personality. No, he. He feeling bad for me. No, for me. Why would he feel bad for me?

I'm the one who said it, but. It'S about both of us, so he probably. I was the only one that was being a narcissist. I know, but. So if he was relieving my narcissism couldn't be like.

Monica Padman
No, it includes both of us. It's a nice thing, I think. Look, listen, I acknowledge that it was. I know, I know. But also, I think.

Dax Shepard
And see, now why not? If you were intending to wink at us and have fun, now you've fucked up my whole life. Cause now I sound like a complete narcissist. Monica thinks I embarrassed both of us in the chain, so do better. Like, hit it right on the nose next time, please.

Monica Padman
That's how I felt. I was like, should we even give. Her the words right now? No, but I thought dyslexic. I thought if cheerleading, if Cherry was on there, it would have been a bullseye.

Would have been a duh duh duh duh. Even if the words didn't go together. In fact, they probably shouldn't go together. No, they wouldn't go together. Yeah, we don't deserve that.

Dax Shepard
I want to be clear. We don't deserve to be a category. I don't think that at all. Yes, I agree. But it's just.

It's like, wink, wink. Yeah. Too. I don't. I just think cherry would have been more.

Yeah. And, um, Dax and Monica would have been pretty clear. Put that on there. That won't work for anything. No.

Monica could. Because if it was Monica. No. Well, yeah, that could work, but it would be Monica, then it would be wedding, then it would be saturate, and then it would be sunshine, and it would be beginning with days of the. Week, which she did do that.

Monica Padman
Yeah. So mon for Monica would be Monday. Yeah, but she didn't do Monica that day. Do Monica. So here's what you need to do.

Dax Shepard
Dyslexia monica. Harry, what if she does narcissist? She can. Yeah, but what I think was a sweet wink has now ruined my reputation.

Monica Padman
No, it was fine. I just was also like, why couldn't that just be a sidebar between me and you? Because then it's not risking narcissism or arrogance if it's just between us. But when you bring it to the world, then it is. But this is the thing, and this is where we differ.

Dax Shepard
I'm not terribly ashamed of my thoughts or what. Like, I don't think I need to hide that. Yeah, that's right. That's the truth of what I thought. And if you think I'm a bad person or narcissist because of it, I can live with that.

I'd rather just share my real thoughts with this group. I like sharing my thoughts with on the puzzle that day. Yeah, I get that. And I'll take the risk, I guess. But regardless, she needs to be a little clearer.

So that because this has happened a couple times, at least with other podcasts, we've had, like, back and forths. Yeah, yeah, no, it. It's possible. That's why I sent it to you. I was saying, hey, this is interesting, but I wouldn't have said that to them.

Right, but you're dealing with much more 20 year friendship constraints than I am, because this is an old friendship circle. Yeah. I think you're probably more mindful of never seeming like you've gotten too big for your britches. That might be true. Because it would tinker with an existing dynamic.

Monica Padman
That's probably true. I think I'm a really good participant. You are. You are. You are.

Dax Shepard
I'm trying to make everyone shine, and when it's my day to shine, I'm gonna let it shine on me. We. When yna winks, we don't know it. I also was good to include them because it's true what we were talking about. Why not involve them?

Monica Padman
It does involve them. So if it was a wink, they had some ownership over it, truthfully. I agree. So I wanted them to share in that. Like, guys, I think we may have.

Dax Shepard
Why that was. It was definitely, like, guys, we may have yna's ear. Guys. Us. I know.

Monica Padman
I agree. Yeah. I don't think you did anything wrong, or I don't think you did a bad job. I just. I just didn't understand it.

Cause we're different, and we're different in a way that I'm not above the thought. That's what I'm saying. I had the same thought. That's why I shared it with you. But I am picking and choosing when to share those thoughts and when not to.

Dax Shepard
Right. Right. And I do think you're right. Probably. Maybe the old existing friendship dynamic, but also just in general, I think I'm a little more in my head about humility.

So that you'll get. Because you'll get excluded. Yeah, it's like old stuff. I don't want to. Tall poppy, I guess.

Yeah, tall Poppy. And I'm already the tallest in that group. So it's like, I can't even be small, Poppy. But it's close. Don't even suggest.

Monica Padman
Okay, I won't suggest it. Cause I'll be over there in the next five. I think you're the same. You guys are the same height. Well, I thought you were gonna say, I think you're the second tallest.

Well, you might be. Listen, I'm the first to say Max has better thighs than me. Should I ask? So it's not like I'm not giving it up where it deserves to be given up. But Max is not taller than me.

Okay, I'm just gonna. Oh, I forgot. I turned my phone off. Do you want me to hit the chain? Can you send to the connections chain?

Max, how tall are you? Great. Great. Hi, guys. Comma, we're having a bit of a debate.

Dax Shepard
No, I don't need to say all that that's triggering. That's me, tall, popping. I'm just gonna say, hey, comma, Max or Callie, how tall is Max? Question mark. Okay, TVD.

But I'm pretty sure my first question, if I were Max or Callie, is why? Well, of course. Yeah, we'll tell them out anyhow. So how did we get on? Okay, so whyna.

Monica Padman
If you want to do six two, that's also. That won't work either. Monica. I feel like I need to explain how the game works. I'm doing pretty good for someone who doesn't understand the game.

Six two, 5ft and a half inch. A Virgo. Capricorn. Oh, yeah. Pisces.

Yeah. Who's pisces? Callie. Okay, this not gonna work. And by the way, they're not an armchair expert.

Dax Shepard
I'm sorry, but they. It's not a nod to our. It's not a nod to our chain. It's a nod to the show. Why can't it be a nod to the chain?

Oh, fuck Netflix, then his law firm. Max's law firm. This is nuts. That would be great. Ace.

Monica Padman
Netflix, Shapiro and whatever. Kauffman, Shapiro, Galaxy and sons. Maybe we do cologne. Okay, we're getting really off. Okay.

Dax Shepard
Anyway, everyone stopped listening. Yeah, they stop listening. Anywho, humility. Humility. Ding ding ding.

Monica Padman
James. Humility. We talk about it. Okay? Yeah.

Dax Shepard
We're not displaying a lot of it. Well, I like to keep my arrogance to find. Yeah. Confined. Oil subsidies.

Monica Padman
Every year, oil, gas and coal companies harvest billions of dollars in federal subsidies. Subsidies. And Walmart, giant retailer, has received more than $1 billion in economic development subsidies from state and local governments across the country. I think he was also adding into that that they're supplementing their employees life through Medicare and food stamps and stuff. I think he was saying that a lot of the employees are also on government assistance because they don't make enough money.

Dax Shepard
So he sees that as a subsidy as well. Yeah. He is basically saying these companies that make so much money, their workers aren't getting paid enough, and then the government. Has to step in. Yes.

Monica Padman
Okay. He said that a heart puts out energy five to 6ft outside your body. And there is a psychology today article that says the heart's energy is said to reach about 3ft outside the physical body. Okay. Oh, what'd they say?

Six. This is a lot. Not. It's not. This is a.

Dax Shepard
This is shameful. They're claiming he's six. Four. I think he's. And then Max.

Row and a half. No, dax, I. I don't think. That's. Okay.

We'll see. I'm sorry. I'm never gonna. Well. And what I know now is I'm never gonna see him again intentionally, so I can live in my fantasy.

Monica Padman
I will say if you wanna put second tallest. Listen, I wanna be clear about this. I actually. I don't give a fuck who's taller than me or not. I really don't.

I know you should. But I really remember when I meet people that are taller than me. Cause I rarely meet people that are taller than me. That's just a matter of fact. It's very rare that I'm talking to someone looking up at them.

Dax Shepard
I just was with Walton. Walton's taller than me and it's very memorable. He's just not. He's. He's not that much.

Monica Padman
He's just a tiny bit. So, to you, you were probably like, we're at the same height. To be honest, we only hung out in a field. And maybe I asked him his shoe size. I may have been standing a little uphill because it was uneven, like field.

Dax Shepard
So maybe it's on me. Maybe I was just like. He was in a little bit of a depression and I was standing up on a little bit of. A taller bit of grass. Soil.

Monica Padman
Yeah, well, Callie's taller than me and you're taller than me, and Max is taller than me. You would never remember that someone's taller than you because just everyone's taller than you. But I bet you remember people who are shorter than you. Does that stick out okay? Yes.

But actually, if someone's exactly my height. Sure. I also think they're shorter than me because I'm so used to everyone being taller than me. Right. So if you're just even looking level, it feels tall.

Weird. Well, while we cleared that. Yeah, that was a good fact to clear up. I'm just gonna write to them. That didn't go much.

Okay, well, I think that's gonna be it. That's gonna cover everything. Oh, you know what I really liked? What? And I guess this is a ding ding ding to your story about the semi and you not getting involved.

He says, between stimulus and response, there's a pause. And within that pause lies your freedom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the goal is to extend that pause. And I really liked that.

Dax Shepard
Really good. It's really good. It's funny because when that. That semi thing happened, it really shook Kristen up. She's like, I really didn't like that because it was loud and it was scary.

Monica Padman
Scary, yeah. And I was just really conscious of the fact of, like, how different our perspectives in life and the roles we've assigned ourselves. So she very much saw herself as someone that could get run over by a semi. And I very much. I'm like, there's a man acting out of control.

Dax Shepard
It's my job to stop it. Yeah. So weird. It's the same event. Yeah, of course.

And we're having way different, like, parasitic. What did Delta. How'd she feel about it? She was in a fucking cold coma. What happened?

She made us explain it, like, 20 times, and we were annoyed because we were already annoyed. And. Yeah, everyone was at wit's end. Oh, boy. It was a harbinger of bad things.

Monica Padman
Yeah, that's like, one time outside of all time, this guy had this crazy road rage, and he got out of his car and he bam. I remember this. Yeah. And it really scared me so much for, like, I'm still scared of it. Right.

Dax Shepard
Yeah. And I had a different frustration with it. I fucking blew it. I could have stopped that. I was supposed to stop that.

I saw that coming. It was my job to stop that. I bet Max probably feels that way. Cause he's so. Shut up.

Shut your mouth. Oh, my God. Oh, boy. All right, well, that's it. Love you.

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James Doty (on the neuroscience of manifestation)

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1: Introduction to James Doty

2: The Science of Manifestation

3: Practical Applications

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