Dax Shepard had a message for his listeners ahead of his podcast episode with Andrew Schulz.
“Today we have a guest that I’ve been following on Instagram for a couple years now,” Shepard, 50, said on the Monday, March 17, episode of the “Armchair Expert” podcast, before talking to cohost Monica Padman. “This is fun because you were on the fence about Andrew, about some of his comedy. And before he came, I said, ‘Come on in. We’d love to have you, but there’ll be some pushback.’ So this was a very unique and fun episode. You guys got to really hash it out.”
Shepard explained that this episode was “really political” despite the podcast typically trying to “avoid politics.”
“I was like, ‘There’s no way we do this without going all in,’” Shepard recalled. “For me, it was very fun because we never do it. And also in the middle of it, I was like, ‘Yeah, this is why we never do it.’ Because we’re getting very granular about this policy or that and this year and whatever. But I thought it was thrilling to sit kind of on the sidelines and watch the whole thing.”
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In the episode, Schulz’s unfiltered humor was on full display. While discussing his new Netflix comedy special, Life, which addresses his journey to fatherhood with wife Emma, Padman asked Schulz about his joke about special needs children.
“I can say it because they’re my embryos,” Schulz, 41, said of the R-word adding, “If I have r—— embryos, I can call them whatever I want. They’re mine.”
Padman pointed out that Schulz doesn’t have a child who has special needs, and could cross paths with an upset parent who saw the joke at his daughter’s school.
When Padman asked whether he would “care” about a viewer being upset, Schulz replied, “Well it depends how they feel about it. If they see it and they’re like, hey, that really hurt me and made me feel really uncomfortable. Then in that personal interaction, I’ll feel bad that somebody was hurt by it, a person. … I don’t feel bad about people telling me to feel bad on behalf of people that we don’t even know if they feel bad.”
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Elsewhere in the podcast, the trio began discussing trans rights.
“There’s a thing that people don’t say, which is, ‘Should they compete against [cis] women?’ … No. But we can also say, ‘It sucks for them. That is so unfortunate that you’re in that situation,’” Schulz said, to which Shepard replied, “Let’s make a category. I actually am supportive of their right to compete, and I acknowledge that they’re a woman. I want that right for them, but not at the expense of 20 other people.”
Schulz noted that “there’s not even a room on Twitter for the little bit of empathy in the middle” when discussing these issues.
“So it seems so rigid and harsh, and we’re getting things in 180 characters, or whatever the character limit is, there’s room to be like, ‘Man it sucks as that person.’ Because I do believe that there are trends with things. So I think that there are some young kids that are probably identifying as trans that might not actually be not only trans. … And then there are people who are trans. My guess is that competing in the Olympics is not even the top 100 of the things that those people care about. … And now they’re the talking point of every show, and they’re just out here going, ‘I’m just trying to be a barista at this thing and everybody who comes up wants to ask me if I should be a swimmer.’ And you’re like, ‘I don’t give a f— about swimming.’”
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For Schulz, he “loves” having conversations with people who share different views than him because his opinions “get sharper.”
“I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m hitting this too bluntly and I’m ostracizing all these people. I would do that with the trans athlete thing. I didn’t have space for how much it must suck to be a trans person and not having anywhere to go, and just acknowledging that makes my opinion way more digestible.”
Schulz also addressed his friendship — or lack thereof — with Shepard’s friend Jimmy Kimmel, whom he recalled was having a back-and-forth interaction with Aaron Rodgers. (Kimmel and Rodger’s feud dates back to 2021, but was reignited in 2024 when the NFL player insinuated that the late night host should be worried about the names on Jeffrey Epstein’s list. Kimmel slammed the allegations and threatened to take legal action. Rogers later said he wasn’t “accusing” Kimmel of being on the list.)
“I felt like he started with jokes, and then Aaron had a joke, and then I think Jimmy got some real life circumstances that affected him. I think he got some death threats and that kind of s—,” Schulz explained. “There’s a lot of crazy people out there. Then he made it not about jokes. I was like, ‘Yo, you opened the door with jokes.’ He responded with jokes. And then you were like, ‘What you’re doing is dangerous.’”
Schulz continued, “Jimmy is always someone who I’ve looked at and admired. He has iconic TV shows, comedy history. That to me, I felt a little let down. You clown this guy on national TV, on one of the biggest shows, he clipped you back. To me, I’m like, ‘That doesn’t seem fair.’”
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Schulz may not also have a fan in Shepard’s wife, Kristen Bell. Shepard recalled the couple, who tied the knot in 2013, attending Schulz’s show — and one joke that didn’t land.
“I had Kristen on board, she was on the Andrew Schulz f—- train. And then this joke about abortion, you lost her,” Shepard recalled, to which Schulz replied, “Yeah, it wasn’t a good joke. … It didn’t have the silliness of the joke.”
Schulz explained that the idea behind the joke was “how many abortions is too many” for one person. “If it goes to, like, 20, I think that there has to be an intervention where it’s like, ‘Alright, we gotta do something here.’ The idea is the beginning of a joke. Making it silly is a joke,” Schulz said, to which Shepard explained Bell took issue with men not being included in the joke.
As they continued to discuss his controversial humor, Shepard said the first time he became “scared” for Schulz was during an alleged feud with Kendrick Lamar.
“He put out an album, and he had a line in it. He was like, ‘Don’t ever let no white comedian talk about no black woman, that’s law,’” Schulz said, claiming he “got confirmation” the line in Lamar’s “Wacced Out Murals” was about him. “I didn’t respond for weeks. I had to shoot my special, I didn’t really care. That wasn’t even the thing that bothered me about the line.”
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Schulz continued, “The next line is, ‘And to the n—– that coon, the n—– that bein’ groomed, slide on both of them.’ … So slide is like assault or kill. I’m thinking, and the world is thinking, he’s talking about Charlamagne and Alex Media, the two Black dudes that are on the show. So once you tell people to kill my friends, you get whatever I give you.”
Schulz noted that Lamar said a “stupid thing” to him, adding, “you don’t tell your fans to kill two of my friends or slide or assault or whatever it is, even if it’s not serious, you’re putting that energy out there. So don’t be surprised if you get some energy back.”
Schulz, who responded to the song, recalled people making the reply “racism so fast.” Schulz claimed that his response was “fair” after Lamar allegedly suggested for his “fans to kill my friends.”
“It’s about as playful as a f— you, I’ll kick your ass, that be done. But now I’m really worried about you because I’m like, ‘Well, he thinks that he’s a rational person.’ Kendrick is a national treasure. He’s a Pulitzer Prize winning, couldn’t be more talented or loved. And I’m going, ‘Bro, is this the fight you’re going to pick? We gotta pick our battles. Is this the one?’ You were fine.”
