Dax Shepard talks with Anderson Cooper about grief, fatherhood and friendship

[0:00] Welcome to All There Is. Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, I'm glad you're here. [0:06] My guest on the podcast today is Dax Shepard, host of the podcast Armchair Expert. He's also [0:11] an actor and a writer. I spoke with Dax a couple of weeks ago in New Orleans at BookFest, which [0:16] is an annual event at Tulane University where dozens of authors come and speak. I'm still [0:22] going through boxes of things in my basement that belong to my mom and my dad and my brother. [0:26] And the other day I came across some grainy pictures of me on a trip to New Orleans with my [0:31] dad. There was one taken in a photo store on or near Bourbon Street, one of those places where [0:37] you dress up in costumes. All the others are from a cheap Instamatic camera I had. That's why the [0:43] pictures are so grainy. But seeing them brought back the memory of that trip, wandering around [0:49] the French Quarter in an old cemetery with its above-ground tombs. I remembered the way my dad [0:55] made me feel. [0:57] I remembered his love and the way he treated me as a person worth listening to and worth [1:02] including in on everything. I hope that's how I can make my boys feel. The photos on the back [1:09] all have the date that they were processed, July 1977, which means I had just turned 10 on that [1:15] trip. And in less than six months, my dad would be dead. When Dax and I sat down in front of an [1:22] audience at BookFest, I talked with him about his dad who died in 2012 and also about his friend [1:27] Eric Dane. [1:28] The actor who died last month after a 10-month battle with ALS. We'll have that conversation in a moment. [1:34] Welcome back. As I mentioned, I spoke with Dax Shepard a couple of weeks ago at Tulane University [1:41] during New Orleans BookFest. It was a moving and at times funny conversation, and I wanted you to [1:47] hear it. We were talking in a large auditorium in front of hundreds of people. So the audio and the [1:52] video is different than we normally have, but I really enjoyed the conversation and I hope you will too. [1:56] Thanks so much for being here. [1:59] Thanks for having me, Anderson. [2:02] Last night when I was going to bed that I read the program, and it says that our exchange will balance humor and [2:08] humanity while offering attendees a resonant, compassionate look at one of life's most universal [2:13] experiences. [2:14] Easy lift. [2:15] I mean, I think that sets the bar kind of high. [2:18] No problem. [2:19] Yeah, so. [2:20] We'll throw in some stock tips too. [2:26] To me, New Orleans is so much a city of memory, and it's very much, I think for me, a city, [2:32] associated with Hurricane Katrina. I spent about six weeks here during the storm, and afterward, [2:39] every time I come here, I mean, I'm staying near the convention center where Ethel Freeman, [2:43] who was 91 years old, I don't know if anybody in this room remembers that name. Ethel Freeman was [2:48] the only person to die at the convention center. Her son, Herbert Freeman Jr., was told to put a [2:53] blanket over her head and wield her to the side when she was left there. Her body went unidentified [2:58] for a long time in the morgue. Jerry Peters was found. [3:02] And on the roof of a car in the Ninth Ward, I went by him on a boat and for years never knew his [3:08] name, and only a few years ago learned who he was. The Bain family who died, drowned in their living [3:14] room in Waveland, Mississippi, a mother and father and their two kids. So for me, this city is very [3:20] much kind of associated with loss and with memory. And I love how New Orleans honors the memory of [3:27] things. My dad went to Francis T. Nichols' school here, which is now the Booker T. Washington [3:32] Academy. And I think that's one of the things that makes New Orleans so special to me. And I think [3:32] that's one of the things that makes New Orleans so special to me. And I think that's one of the things [3:32] that makes New Orleans so special to me. And I think that's one of the things that makes New Orleans so [3:32] special to me. And I think that's one of the things that makes New Orleans so special to me. New [3:33] Orleans kind of layers memory on top of memory. But I think grief is something that we just don't [3:38] talk about very much. And yet everybody in this room has lost somebody. Or if you haven't, you [3:44] sadly will. And yet we as a society are not comfortable talking about it, and we're not [3:49] encouraged to. Yeah, I remember reading this incredible book on killing, and it talked about [3:55] how separated we've become from death. A hundred years ago, you processed animals that you were [4:02] farming. And you said, I'm going to kill them. And you said, I'm going to kill them. And you [4:03] said, I'm going to kill them. And you said, I'm going to kill them. And you said, I'm going to kill them. [4:03] You still have them. I mean, grandma and grandpa died in the home, you probably buried them in the [4:05] backyard. Everything's been so removed that we have no real connection to it anymore. And in that [4:13] kind of loss of experience, I think we start abstracting things and getting quite confused by [4:19] And in that kind of loss of experience, I think we start abstracting things and getting quite confused [4:19] by them. You lost your dad, Dave Robert Shepard. Can you talk a little bit about the experience, [4:26] you were able to spend time with him at the end of his life, he really wasn't there for you much [4:30] during the beginning of your life? Yeah, my mom, my dad, is not alive anymore. And there were a [4:33] and dad got divorced when i was three my dad was a very large and gregarious man he was a car [4:40] salesman and uh he was also an addict um and so we would go see him every other weekend and um [4:50] that generally meant he would take us directly to my grandparents house which was great because they [4:54] were wonderful so yeah i had kind of limited time with him and my brother who's five years older [5:00] than me he was eight when they got divorced so he had great memories of riding motorcycles with my [5:04] father and everything i didn't really have any so i didn't pine for him i didn't want them to get [5:10] back together the way divorced children sometimes do and and i was quite judgmental of him um we [5:18] lived very very modestly and he drove a corvette he had two children and would pick us up that's a [5:25] two-seater for people don't know about corvettes they're not built for a family as it turns out [5:30] and uh nor was he no no and if you think it's bad transporting them in a two-seater drinking [5:38] doesn't help the situation a ton nor the snowy roads in michigan but alas yeah i was pretty [5:43] judgmental of him and he got sober he got sober when i was about 14. things started changing a [5:48] bit then he got in this horrendous car accident when i was uh 15 and i moved in with him for a [5:54] couple years and that was probably the the core of our relationship going forward in my [6:01] life um but i think that was really critical of our relationship going forward and to the [6:07] judgment of him i also i think uh i kind of prided myself on being the one person who wasn't afraid [6:13] to confront him all through my 20s we had moments of real connection um and then moments of us [6:21] arguing and not talking for periods of time all this to say that when he got diagnosed with cancer [6:28] ironically i was in a position financially [6:31] and be a part of taking him to chemo [6:34] and doing all the things that need doing. [6:37] And it's also relevant that I had been supporting him [6:41] at that point for probably five or six years. [6:44] And you and I talked last night about the strain of that [6:47] when you're your parent's caregiver, [6:49] every time the phone rings, there's this anxiety of like, [6:52] well, what is it now? [6:54] What problem do I have to solve? [6:55] So that's how I went into it. [6:58] I'm insanely grateful for that three-month experience. [7:02] I went home almost every weekend [7:05] and a lot of things were resolved during that time. [7:11] Maybe most poignantly is he is this man [7:13] who was larger than life and I was so judgmental of, [7:17] but he was reduced to wearing diapers, you know, [7:20] and I changed those diapers. [7:23] And that was a bit of a blessing to see him infantilized [7:29] because I was like, oh my God, [7:30] I was able to go, oh yeah, [7:32] he's just a little boy like all of us. [7:35] You wrote about it in a blog. [7:36] You said the car rides proved to be shockingly therapeutic. [7:39] One of the hidden benefits of cancer [7:41] is that it can erode grudges the way WD-40 dissolves rust. [7:45] It just finds its way into all the nooks and crannies [7:47] and starts loosening. [7:49] Before long, the once formidable chip on my shoulder [7:51] had melded into something the size of a nicotine patch. [7:54] Apologies were exchanged, tears were had, [7:57] hugs were frequent and lingering. [7:58] I spent the majority of our time together, [8:00] running my hand lightly over the tiny little hairs [8:03] peeking out from the back of a soft bald head. [8:05] He let me do that for hours. [8:07] Became one of the more beautiful experiences of my life. [8:11] Oh, I wasn't expecting that. [8:16] Yeah, he had the cutest little hairs on the back of his head. [8:18] He was bald as a motherfucker. [8:20] You'll see a picture of him. [8:22] But he held onto those back hairs. [8:24] Yeah, I think the most poignant moment for us was we were, [8:28] I was photographing this welfare apartments [8:30] that my brother and my mom and I moved into immediately [8:33] after the divorce and we were in the parking lot [8:35] and I was taking a picture and he just out of nowhere said, [8:37] he goes, yeah, I remember I had to bring a couch over [8:41] to the house your mom wanted a couch [8:42] and I pulled out of this parking lot [8:45] and I couldn't make it through that light. [8:46] I was crying so hard I couldn't see and I pulled over [8:49] and I just sat there crying thinking [8:51] I'm driving away from my life. [8:54] And I didn't think until that moment he gave a shit. [8:58] I thought we laughed and he was like, [9:00] party time, let's get a vet and go to the bar. [9:03] And so again, I hadn't made any room for that, [9:07] that he had, that that had been a painful experience for him. [9:10] Do you feel grief still? [9:13] Oh, I've had the, I've had waves of grief. [9:17] When he initially died, let's say like the first couple [9:20] of months after he had died, I felt relief. [9:24] I felt unburdened. [9:25] I wasn't, I didn't have someone to take care of. [9:28] I didn't have to go home. [9:30] And then I felt this real shame of feeling relief [9:33] that he was dead. [9:34] And I guess I had this fear it was going to get really, [9:37] really ugly and it didn't get ugly. [9:39] And I had some gratitude about that. [9:41] He kind of passed peacefully and quickly. [9:43] Then I wrote this thing. [9:44] I really didn't know how to process what was going on. [9:46] I knew intellectually I should be feeling some sadness [9:49] or some loss and it just wasn't coming. [9:52] And so what I often do when I'm confused is I just write [9:55] what happened and then in writing [9:58] and it really kind of opened up a lot of emotion. [10:01] I remember I was in my, pulled into my driveway [10:03] and I was listening. [10:04] Bob Dylan's Comfort in the Storm came on [10:07] and I just started bawling. [10:10] And I thought, oh, he's following comfort, you know? [10:14] So I'd had these waves and then I had our, [10:19] we had our own children and man is that, [10:23] I couldn't encourage people to try it more [10:25] because it's so revealing. [10:28] The thing that had occurred to me when my, [10:30] our oldest daughter was probably a year and a half old, [10:35] in my story of my life, [10:36] I was the victim of the storm. [10:37] I was the victim. [10:38] He had left me and I was the victim. [10:39] And now I had this beautiful little girl [10:41] and the notion of missing even two minutes of her life [10:46] is so heartbreaking. [10:47] I can't imagine the grief I would feel [10:50] to not see her do all the things. [10:53] And I went, oh my God, he was the victim. [10:56] I wasn't the victim. [10:58] The thing he missed is a lot harder to miss. [11:01] And I felt real compassion for him. [11:05] That was like a wave. [11:09] And now that little girl's 12 [11:12] and she has taken on the same role I had, [11:15] which is she loves to confront me. [11:18] She's the one person that's not afraid of the big, [11:20] open the house. [11:22] And I'm now able to go like, [11:23] oh yeah, I was a little difficult, you know? [11:26] You see yourself in her. [11:28] Yes, yes, yes. [11:30] And I have the capacity and the resources [11:33] to be patient with that. [11:35] You know, I know that I wasn't what I thought I was. [11:38] He wasn't what I thought. [11:39] I thought he was. [11:41] And even more, I was very quick [11:46] with the list of things he hadn't done [11:48] and the things that he let me down in. [11:50] But now, 14 years later, [11:54] I can say my dad was so affectionate with me. [11:58] Oh my God. [11:59] He was such a hugger and a kisser. [12:02] This is Detroit in the 80s. [12:04] Men weren't hugging and kissing and squeezing their boys. [12:07] My father had a bunch of gay friends, you know? [12:10] No one's dad had gay friends. [12:13] He was in AA for, he died sober, [12:16] maybe, I guess, probably 28 years sober. [12:19] He introduced me to that. [12:21] And not just introduced me to it, [12:22] but he built this incredibly fun life in there. [12:25] He modeled that sobriety could be really fun. [12:29] He did that for me. [12:31] He was flamboyant. [12:32] He danced. [12:34] All my emotional confidence to be emotional in public [12:38] or to be mad, [12:40] masculine, yet vulnerable. [12:42] Those things, he really modeled that [12:45] way more than most dads in the 80s did. [12:48] And that gives probably much better [12:50] than if he came to my basketball games. [12:52] It's so interesting to me how, [12:53] one of the things that I've learned, [12:55] I knew nothing about grief. [12:56] I never grieved. [12:58] My brother died, my dad died when I was 10. [13:01] My brother died by suicide when I was 21. [13:03] He was 23. [13:04] And then my mom died in 2019 at the age of 95. [13:10] I never grieved. [13:11] I pushed all that stuff down. [13:12] I propelled myself forward. [13:13] And it's only in the last couple of years [13:15] that I've started to kind of turn to it [13:16] and try to develop a companionship with it. [13:19] In the words of Francis Weller, [13:21] who's a writer who I think is very powerful, [13:23] who writes about grief. [13:24] But one of the things I've learned [13:25] from doing interviews about it with people, [13:27] which is the only way I've really learned about grief, [13:29] is that you can still have a relationship [13:31] with somebody who has died. [13:32] And that relationship can actually, [13:35] it can change and it can grow. [13:36] I have a closer relationship with my dad now, [13:39] than I ever had before. [13:41] Yeah. [13:42] I now, I know my dad better. [13:44] I mean, I was 10 when he died. [13:45] I saw him through the eyes of a child. [13:47] I see my dad now through the eyes of an adult. [13:50] I look at my children and I see what my dad saw [13:53] through his eyes when he looked at me. [13:55] So I understand what he was thinking when he looked at me. [13:58] And in that way, I know this man and I'm closer to him. [14:02] And I feel him, excuse me, [14:07] I feel him inside me for the first time. [14:10] Yeah. [14:11] And it's extraordinary. [14:12] Your relationship with your dad has continued. [14:14] Oh yeah, it's the best it's ever been, [14:16] which is the most, [14:19] which is the most heartbreaking part. [14:21] You know, I can't help but be bummed [14:23] that I didn't have all these realizations [14:27] and life experiences. [14:28] And thank you, you just reminded me [14:29] of the most important thing I left out [14:31] about the affection is like, my dad fucking adored me. [14:35] He adored me the way like I adore my little girls. [14:38] I know that now, cause I- [14:40] You didn't know it. [14:41] I didn't know. [14:42] Cause I was judging him on the choices. [14:44] And if he had adored me, [14:45] why was he gone for, you know, 12 years or whatever? [14:51] But I just, I, not only do I look at them [14:54] in the same way that he looked at me and I recognize it, [14:57] I annoy them in the same way he annoyed me. [15:00] You know, he just wanted my attention so bad. [15:03] And I found it very annoying. [15:04] And I am like constantly policing myself. [15:07] I'm like, oh, I'm doing exactly what my dad did. [15:09] So I know this is how he felt about me. [15:11] Do you find yourself talking to him? [15:14] No, but I dream about him a ton. [15:16] I know I asked you last night [15:17] if you have any dreams about your mom or anything. [15:20] And then I'm saddened for you that you don't. [15:22] But I have this, not only do I have dreams about him [15:26] but he was really diminished the last decade of his life. [15:28] He also had, you know, terrible heart disease. [15:31] My father, when he ate a pizza at night [15:35] he would have a frozen pizza and that was just the base. [15:39] And then came hot dogs and salsa and chicken fingers. [15:44] Things that he would create. [15:46] You know, he was indulgent. [15:50] And so unfortunately my memory of him for a long time [15:54] was clouded by that diminished state he was in. [15:56] But now when I have these dreams with him [15:58] I kind of interact with him at my age. [16:01] Well, probably him even younger [16:03] when he was like a really a gunslinging car salesman [16:08] who was a smooth talker with ladies. [16:11] Again, the gift he gave me. [16:14] This man was defying me. [16:15] This man was defying me. [16:15] This man was defying me. [16:15] He was defying me. [16:16] He was defying me. [16:16] It's fine by getting girls way out of his pay grade. [16:18] Well, by the way, let me just, let me just jump. [16:20] I must've got that from somewhere. [16:22] Let me just jump in because one of the things you said [16:24] is that he was in the hospital in his final days [16:28] and not even really very communicative with you [16:32] but there was a moment when a nurse came in [16:35] and he had to pee and I'm sorry if this offends anybody [16:39] but I'll read what you wrote. [16:41] She was helping him pee and you wrote, [16:43] she was manipulating his penis [16:45] into the mouth of the jug when he mustered up the strength and focus to say something pervy [16:49] into her ear he had stopped talking for five days i was like oh he's done talking this is [16:56] one of the last stages and i was like no he definitely just spoke in her ear [17:03] yeah he said he had lost the will to eat and you were able to decipher a few words [17:08] what he said but none of them good no yeah toward the end though you actually were able to give him [17:14] a gift and you write about it you say at one point and unbeknownst to both of us my wife [17:20] walked into the room she'd flown in from l.a without any warning it was a surprise it was [17:25] an amazing incredible perfectly timed surprise do you want to talk about what she did yeah [17:31] i mean it's hard to uh she's done so many incredible things uh over the 19 years [17:41] we've been together but she's intuitive is like crazy so i was there and i was growing [17:47] really really upset with the amount of people visiting my dad and they were all really well [17:53] intentioned these were people who had been through a.a with your dad and he had really [17:57] showed up for them yes and so his room was an unending parade of many many people and they [18:03] were all lovely and well intentioned but it put me in the position of them grieving and [18:08] me having to comfort them and i was starting to resent that i couldn't just be in there with my [18:12] dad and uh i was starting to get really quite overwhelmed with that and uh [18:18] i went outside to sit in the car to get a breather and i kind of i called kristen to [18:24] to just vent about it i mean it's unbelievable this story kristen bell is your wife yeah [18:29] princess anna uh i was complaining and she said it's okay i'm here look to the left [18:42] mind you we live in california and i'm in detroit and i look to my left and she's standing there [18:48] seven months pregnant she had flow she knew i was struggling and she had [18:53] õne and not told me and figured out where this hospital was it was standing next to the car [19:00] yeah what a champ you know and then uh so then we went in and visited my dad [19:07] and again he wasn't talking i'm going to nurses at that point [19:14] and uh and yes she she came in and and uh he he got to feel her belly [19:22] uh yeah there's a picture of that i'd like to show look how cute she looks with that belly too [19:33] His head and her belly, that's quite a, what's rounder. [19:38] I just want to read what you wrote about that moment. [19:40] You said, she lifted her shirt up and he put his hand on her swollen stomach. [19:45] He left it there for the better part of an hour. [19:49] He was smiling from ear to ear, sitting contentedly, unable to put together a sentence, [19:54] but still capable of connecting to the new family member we were creating. [19:58] He wasn't going to make it to the birth, but that didn't get in the way of him meeting the new baby. [20:03] It was an emotional and triumphant moment, one I will never forget. [20:07] If I live to be a thousand, I will still be in debt to my wife for giving him that one last thrill. [20:17] She's a gangster, y'all. [20:20] I have come through my forgiveness and growing love for my dad [20:30] and my acceptance that I'm so much like him. [20:34] And watching this little girl who's unfortunate or fortunate enough for her, very much like me, [20:40] I don't see the divisions. [20:43] Any more of the compartments that I thought of as like, he's one thing and I'm a thing and she's a thing. [20:48] I can feel we're this thing that's moving through time. [20:53] And it's so special. And I'm glad he got to touch the new iteration. [20:58] Can you talk more about that? [20:59] This connection through generations, through time? [21:03] Yeah, I mean, if you think of like Dawkins' book, The Selfish Gene, [21:07] and how really we think of ourselves as animals evolving, but we're genes evolving. [21:12] And when you think about evolution on a gene level versus an animal, [21:15] or a population level, it's just a fascinating way to think about how things are just traveling through time. [21:21] And of course, half of my genetics are him, and they happen to be the ones that seem to be most expressed, [21:27] which is interesting. [21:28] And then those same ones just zip through me to her. [21:32] There's not a break in those genes. [21:34] You know, they don't know that they were in that body and this body and that body. [21:38] They're those genes. [21:39] So I just think the unending fluid nature of that is, [21:46] is a little beyond comprehension. [21:49] It's a little, it's a little spiritual. [21:51] It's a little spooky. [21:52] You feel connected to your dad in a way you never did before. [21:55] I don't know that there's a difference is where I'm approaching. [21:57] I don't know that there's a dad and a me and a her. [22:00] I think there's this like river. [22:02] And through so much luck and good fortune, the river keeps getting better. [22:08] You know, he had an incredibly challenging life of his own. [22:14] He had addiction. [22:15] He had a lot of things to overcome. [22:18] I did too, but I did that a little better and a little quicker. [22:22] And then this little girl of ours is, you know, she's a much superior version of me. [22:28] I'm so optimistic when I see the trajectory of this fluid line of genes. [22:35] We're going to take a short break. [22:38] We'll have more with Dax Shepard in a moment. [22:40] Welcome back to my conversation with Dax Shepard at Tulane University [22:47] during the New Orleans Book Festival. [22:49] You lost a friend also recently, Eric Dayen. [22:53] Yeah. [22:54] Yes. [22:55] So Eric Dayen, I can now say I met in recovery. [22:59] And we hated each other. [23:03] I hated him. [23:04] This guy is so fucking arrogant. [23:06] You hated him from the beginning? [23:08] Oh, I hated him. [23:09] I hated him. [23:10] Based on things he was saying in AA? [23:13] Uh-huh. [23:14] Okay. [23:15] All right. [23:16] Yeah. [23:17] It's not all hugs and flowers, Anderson. [23:20] We're just like any other group of people. [23:23] We're prone to dislike each other. [23:25] I mean, he exhibited so much. [23:27] He exhibited so many things that I hate about myself. [23:30] Was he hogging time? [23:31] Or what was he doing? [23:32] I thought he was arrogant. [23:34] I thought he lacked humility. [23:36] I thought that he was having a very hard time. [23:40] He had had a big chunk of sobriety, then came back and was having a really hard time putting [23:44] more time together. [23:46] And I thought he was a bit of a bully. [23:49] And we were in a meeting at a friend's house. [23:51] Again, this was told on the podcast, so I'm not speaking out of school. [23:55] He threatened a younger member of the group. [23:58] And this had been simmering for a long time. [24:00] And I said, let's go outside right now. [24:03] It was on. [24:04] And we walked outside to fist fight in the driveway of an AA meeting. [24:10] It's not the general outcome of an AA meeting, thank goodness. [24:14] And people intervened, and it was broken up. [24:17] And then, God bless both of us, we kept coming back to the same meeting like neither was [24:22] going to not show up. [24:23] And over the course of the next two years, I found myself starting to kind of relate [24:32] to him. [24:33] I also think he was getting maybe more honest, or I was open to it. [24:37] But I started, I heard his story for the first time. [24:40] His father shot himself in his house. [24:42] I didn't know that. [24:43] When he was a little boy. [24:45] And his mom came upstairs and said, I'll tell you what happened if you promise that you [24:50] won't cry. [24:51] And so that little boy held on to that. [24:55] And then that little boy grew up without a dad like I grew up without a dad. [24:59] And he was so in search of masculine validation. [25:02] And it took all these shapes that I hated, that I'm sure he hated in me. [25:07] And I remember he had a share one time. [25:10] And then when it got around to me to share, and you're not allowed to crosstalk, it's [25:14] a great rule of at least the group I'm in. [25:18] You can't respond directly. [25:19] No, you're not to like, advise or give your two cents. [25:23] That's, we call it crosstalk. [25:25] It's no good. [25:26] But I kind of broke that rule. [25:28] And I said, I can't believe I'm going to say this, but that's one of my favorite shares [25:32] I've ever heard. [25:34] I said out loud in reference to Eric. [25:37] And then maybe a week or two later, in one of his shares, he said, I can't believe I'm [25:42] going to say this, but I think I've come to fall in love with Dax. [25:46] And everyone in the group had seen us go out into the driveway a year or two before. [25:50] And then we became friends and I, and I heard his story and I would go to his house all [25:55] the time. [25:56] And we would chat and connect on this, like the vacuum left when you don't have a dad [26:02] around about how does one know if they're meeting these markers of becoming a man. [26:07] And in place of that force, you rely on your peers, which aren't the greatest evaluators [26:15] of masculinity when you're 12. [26:17] And I came to fall in love with a very scared man trying. [26:25] And hoping he had become a man and I related. [26:29] And yeah, I ended up loving him so much. [26:32] And then on that episode of the show, this was only two years ago, maybe he said on the [26:40] in the episode, he said, yeah, my arm's been like atrophied on the right. [26:44] They think I have a virus. [26:46] I'm like, oh, that's so weird. [26:49] A virus that atrophies your arm. [26:51] And then maybe eight months after that, he discovered that's not what it was. [26:57] It was ALS. [26:58] And then it was just an insanely rapid decline. [27:03] They asked me to say some things in a tribute to him for this big ALS benefit right at the end. [27:10] And for a person who was so hellbent on being hypermasculine and incredibly fit and strong [27:20] and virile, for him to have agreed to become the face of this disease completely diminished, [27:27] I found to be the bravest thing he had done in all these procedures. [27:29] In all these pursuits of manliness. [27:32] I found that to be mind blowing and highly admirable. [27:36] Knowing what baggage he had with it. [27:40] My fear would be that you saw any cracks in my strength because you will pounce and attack and subjugate me. [27:47] So for me to do what he did would be very, very hard. [27:51] And I'm pretty blown away by it. [27:53] Do you show yourself as vulnerable to your kids? [27:56] Yeah, I'll say that my kids have gifted me this, which is, [28:00] I had not cried from probably eight, nine years old until about eight years ago. [28:09] My other soulmate, other than my wife, is my best friend from childhood. [28:14] I got a call that he was in intensive care and it looked very, very, very bad. [28:18] For me, my tether has been connected to this human, Aaron Weakley, since I was 11. [28:22] And he was my refuge from this pursuit of masculinity. [28:26] He also had a crazy childhood. [28:28] And the two of us were able to be vulnerable with each other, [28:31] which I think was very, very rare for boys in Detroit in 87. [28:35] And the thought of him not being here really, really opened something up. [28:41] And I was trying to tell Kristen the news I just got in that I was going to fly to Detroit. [28:46] And I just couldn't really get it out. [28:48] And my kids were there. [28:50] And then that was the proverbial crack in the dam. [28:54] And it just hasn't stopped. [28:55] But these little girls bring it out of me so much. [29:00] And they, [29:02] they love it. [29:04] They laugh at me. [29:05] They tease me nonstop. [29:06] There's dad crying. [29:08] My weakness, my Achilles, is any documentary about a female singer. [29:14] I watched the Sinead O'Connor doc purposely in my bedroom, [29:23] middle of the day, knowing I would maybe have an issue. [29:27] And sure enough, I see three little faces peeking around the corner. [29:31] Are you crying, daddy? [29:34] No. [29:36] Yeah, if you're a woman who's been through some shit, [29:39] and you step on a stage and open up your mouth and let it rip in spite of that, [29:43] I'm on the ground crying. [29:45] So, yeah, they see me cry a lot now. [29:48] My dad used to cry a lot, like, at anything. [29:52] If the song Amazing Grace was playing anywhere, he would, like, weep. [29:57] We saw a movie called Conrack with Jon Voight. [30:00] And it was about a guy in the South who was a teacher. [30:03] And I just remember him weeping in the theater. [30:05] You know, you have this great obligation when you have kids to, [30:08] for me, the way I frame it, maybe it's right or wrong, [30:10] which is, like, I'm the guy in their life. [30:14] And so I'm setting the bar of what they think they deserve. [30:18] And so I think they deserve someone who takes them very seriously [30:22] and listens to them all the time. [30:24] And I think they deserve a man who's willing to be emotional [30:31] and be present and not be afraid of their emotions. [30:34] And I have to get over my fear. [30:36] I have to get over my shit to be that man in their lives. [30:39] That's my job. [30:40] Yeah. [30:41] I'm just glad I've lived this long to be able to do that for my kids [30:44] and with my kids. [30:45] There's nothing better. [30:47] I think we're out of time. [30:48] Dax Shepard, thank you. [30:49] Oh, so fun. [30:51] Thank you, everybody. [30:52] I want to thank Dax Shepard for that conversation [30:56] and the New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane University [30:59] for letting us share it as an episode of All There Is. [31:01] And I want to thank Walter Isaacson for inviting me there. [31:04] A couple of upcoming things to tell you about Thursday, April 9th. [31:07] I hope you join me at 915.com. [31:09] I'll be back at 9pm for my streaming show, All There Is Live. [31:11] It's our live show about loss streaming on our grief community page, [31:15] cnn.com slash all there is. [31:17] You can also communicate with others who are watching at the same time. [31:20] One of my guests will be Julie Devaney Hogan, [31:23] a wife and mom to three young kids who was diagnosed with breast cancer, [31:27] which was treated but has now come back as a very aggressive form of brain cancer. [31:31] My biggest fear truly as a mother is that they certainly will be given permission to cry, [31:40] but will they still find joy and humor and ways to laugh in life? [31:47] Will they come to family events and will they be treated as the child who lost their mother young? [31:53] Or will they be scooped up and brought into a joke and brought into a laugh [31:58] and brought into a song as our family typically does? [32:01] So I have found I have to be really direct in sharing with my family and my close friends [32:06] what I want right now. [32:08] What I want is for us to continue to laugh. [32:11] I want the raw, gorgeous grit of our family to continue to exist as it is. [32:17] To watch All There Is Live, just go to cnn.com slash all there is [32:22] on Thursday night, April 9th at 915 p.m. [32:25] If you miss the live stream, it'll be posted the following day for a week on the site. [32:29] All the older episodes of that show are available on demand for CNN subscribers. [32:33] Coming up on the podcast, my interview with Sarah Wildman. [32:36] She's an editor and writer at the New York Times. [32:38] Sarah's daughter, Orly, had a rare form of liver cancer and died in March 2023. [32:44] She was 14 years old. [32:46] I came across some of the pieces that Sarah has written in the Times about Orly [32:50] and was so moved by them I reached out to her and been wanting to talk with her ever since. [32:54] And we just sat down together a couple weeks ago. [32:58] There's something so profoundly off-kilter about having nurtured someone from birth [33:09] and seeing them leave. [33:11] And I know I'm not the first one. [33:14] I'm not the first person to have done it. [33:16] But it felt so out of order. [33:18] I felt like in free fall. [33:21] What does it mean now? [33:24] What does anything mean? [33:26] How do I put one foot in front of the other? [33:28] How do I relate to anybody? [33:30] How do I go out looking like a person? [33:34] How do I not appear to every single person that I'm completely shattered? [33:38] What's so strange is what allows us to get up again each morning [33:42] or do the things that we're supposed to do. [33:46] I almost wanted to run. [33:48] That's Sarah Wildman on an upcoming episode of All There Is. [33:51] If there's something you've learned in your grief that you think would be helpful for others [33:54] who'd like to hear from you, leave us a voicemail at 404-827-1805. [33:58] Thanks for listening. [34:00] Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, you're not alone.