Dax Shepard opens by flagging that Alan Ritchson is not just a mega-star but the subject of a prior on-air debate between Dax and Monica about the viral motorcycle confrontation in his neighborhood. After rattling off Alan's resume — Reacher, War Machine, Blue Mountain State, Fast X, the new film Motor City — Dax welcomes him and the conversation kicks off with a charming exchange about Nashville. Alan reveals he and his family only recently settled there after years of nomadic living on the road with his three sons, who finally broke down crying in New Zealand during the War Machine shoot because they wanted real friends. It's a breezy, character-establishing opening that hints at the more vulnerable terrain ahead.

Alan paints a picture of what he calls his ideal life: traveling like a circus with his wife Catherine and their three boys, working on set, coming home to family. He genuinely loved it — but admits that was selfish. The breaking point arrives during a cinematic golden-hour dinner on cobblestone streets in New Zealand. Everything looks perfect. Then his eldest son bursts into tears at the sight of local kids playing together, and quietly says he just wants to have friends. The moment cuts through the adventure, and Alan and Catherine look at each other and understand they've been prioritizing the version of family life that worked for them, not for the boys.

The episode's emotional engine fires up when Dax confesses that his first response to anyone's mood being 'crooked' is the panicked thought 'what did I do?' Alan recognizes it instantly as hypervigilance — the survival mechanism of reading the room to stay ahead of danger. He then discloses, for the first time publicly, that he's been diagnosed with ADHD and suffers from rejection sensitivity dysphoria: a sickening, physically violent reaction to even minor criticism that he will do absolutely anything to avoid ^{[1] — Alan Ritchson "Alan Ritchson reveals he's been newly diagnosed with ADHD and CPTSD — and that the evidence is everywhere: volatile relationships, rejectio…" 03:10 Play} . Both men laugh at the recognition, but the honesty is real — Alan says his gas tank before 40 ran on cortisol and fear, and that the ADHD brain is a superpower only until the fuel cost becomes too high. Dax adds his own layer: he has learned from his kids that repeatedly asking 'did I do something wrong?' actually hijacks their upset and forces them to comfort him instead.

Moving from ADHD into deeper diagnostic territory, Alan discloses he was recently diagnosed with CPTSD — Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He explains what he has learned from psychiatrists: that single-event PTSD is significantly easier to treat than the kind caused by repeated childhood trauma, especially when it occurs without secure attachments ^{[1] — Alan Ritchson "EMDR bilateral stimulation: Alan Ritchson described using EMDR therapy — with vibrating pulses in each hand to keep both brain hemispheres …" 08:15 Play} . CPTSD, he says, is chronic small-t trauma compounding over time under conditions like narcissistic or abusive adults at home. He then describes EMDR therapy, where vibrating handles in each hand keep both brain hemispheres online during trauma reprocessing, preventing the shutdown mode that makes talk therapy so difficult. His therapist interrupted a session mid-way to tell him what he was describing wasn't 'little t' — it was big T trauma, and he had been absorbing blame for it as a victim often does.

The conversation sharpens when Alan describes the particular hell of emotional dysregulation with full self-awareness: seeing the reaction building like an out-of-body experience, intellectualizing it in the moment — this is rejection sensitivity, this is childhood survival circuitry — and still being completely powerless to stop the damage ^{[1] — Alan Ritchson "I can see it happening in the moment like an out-of-body experience and then still have zero control over it. I can't stop it. And then it …" 10:28 Play} . He admits there is too much volatility in his home, that he feels bad for his wife and his kids, and that the evidence of it is in the three relationships that matter most to him not working well. Dax reframes it: the difference between someone who has this awareness and someone who doesn't is enormous, because the aware person is at least committed to reducing the gap even when they fail. Monica adds the corrective most needed — that Alan is so focused on the harm he causes that he fails to see the joy he also brings, and that no one stays married for 20 years for the damage alone.

Dax steers toward the roots. Alan grew up the middle child of three boys, moving from North Dakota to Illinois to Niceville, Florida in the 5th grade as his father's Air Force career progressed. His older brother set a relentlessly high bar — a national-level runner, International Baccalaureate scholar, chemical engineer who funded his own education. Alan always looked up to him but felt compelled to protect him, not the other way around — a dynamic illustrated by the story of his first punch, thrown in his brother's defense in 4th grade. He then paints a deeply moving portrait of his father, who Alan credits as a hero ^{[1] — Alan Ritchson "Chief Master Sergeant — top 1% of Air Force: Alan Ritchson's father achieved the rank of Chief Master Sergeant, which only 1% of Air Force …" 20:51 Play} : Chief Master Sergeant, the highest 1% of Air Force enlisted ranks, running the largest Air Force base in the world at Eglin. When the family budget couldn't cover the boys' extracurriculars, the father took a humiliating second job as a night airport security guard, enduring the mockery of lower-ranked colleagues. Alan heard those conversations through the walls and cried, knowing his father was doing it so he could compete in a chorus event.

Alan's adolescence in Niceville reads like a tragicomedy of self-expression in the wrong zip code. He loved ballet — earning enough credits to eventually receive an Associate of Arts degree in the discipline — but felt deep shame about it in the Deep South. He rollerbladed to chorus practice, did musical theater, and idolized Jim Carrey so completely he dressed as him every Halloween and performed Carrey routines at lunch tables full of kids telling him to get away. Running beneath all of this was something worse: starting around age 15, his chin began growing sideways like, in his words, 'the Elephant Man.' His mother initially hoped the other side would catch up ^{[1] — Alan Ritchson "Jaw tumor discovered at 15: Alan Ritchson had a large tumor growing in his jaw at age 15 — discovered accidentally during a wisdom-tooth X-…" 22:20 Play} . It took a wisdom-tooth X-ray to reveal the jaw tumor — a large mass requiring surgery that peeled back his gums, removed the tumor, filled the cavity with bone material, and shaved the overgrown mandible. The surgeon chose a more invasive internal approach rather than leave a facial scar, calling it prophetically. Alan remembers the immediate social aftermath in the school hallway: girls jumping out of the way.

With a full vocal scholarship and enough academic credits to stay in college, Alan chose to leave — and eventually followed a Miami modeling call that had been coming in for months. His father, who had sacrificed so much to give his sons opportunities, was furious. But the modeling industry delivered something far worse than his father's disapproval ^{[1] — Alan Ritchson "The male modeling world isn't just a few bad photographers — it's a system built to deliver young men to predators. Alan Ritchson describes…" 26:10 Play} . Alan describes a predatory infrastructure: models traded between photographers and clients who expect sexual access, agents who facilitate knowingly, and a system where saying no cost you the good work. He worked JCPenney's, which paid him without expectation. Everything else, he says, was the rest of the industry. When an agent sent him into an abusive shoot for the last time, Alan stormed straight to the agency, pulled the man out of his chair, and told him he would kill him. When MeToo exploded years later and allegations against photographer Bruce Weber emerged, he read account after account and thought: yes, that happened to me. He considered going public but couldn't. The story lands with a perfect symmetry: that same agent ran into him at the lobby of the Reacher Season 1 premiere, ebullient and oblivious.

Dax delivers a mid-episode sponsor read for Allstate, weaving in a relatable moment about the particular agony of locking your keys inside the car and watching them through the window. The pitch: check Allstate first for an auto quote that could save hundreds, and consider adding an Allstate Roadside Plan for when you inevitably do something like that.

Dax asks whether Alan could ever fully let go of his resentments. What follows is the intellectual and emotional heart of the episode. Alan is viscerally opposed ^{[1] — Alan Ritchson "Alan Ritchson refuses to release his resentment — and makes the case that anger is the only thing that gets things done in a corrupt world.…" 29:57 Play} : releasing resentment, he argues, just lets the predatory fucking around continue unchecked — the White House, the Catholic Church, political corruption. He uses his anger as fuel to accomplish things that benefit the world. To become content would be to lose all inertia, and inertia is the only thing that fights injustice. Dax counters with AA's hard-learned insight: resentments are drinking poison and hoping your enemy dies, and for people wired like them, resentments don't stay contained — they corrupt relationships and require medicating. The binary Alan is presenting — let them all win, or carry the fire forever — has a third option. Monica finally breaks through: she agrees with the substance of the fight but argues that the operating range needs to be a 3 to a 7, not 10s and 1s. Alan, against his own instincts, says he can buy into that.

Alan reaches for Lois Lowry's The Giver as a metaphor: in that world, one person receives all of society's memories and pain, becoming the vessel for what the community can't hold. Some people, Alan argues, are meant to be the giver. He got a canary tattoo after this conversation with his middle son about deeply feeling people who are the first to sense danger — the canary in the coal mine ^{[1] — Alan Ritchson "Not everyone is built to be a warrior — and not everyone should be a monk. Alan and Dax agree the tribe of 100 needs people who will meet t…" 34:50 Play} . Society needs archetypes: fighters, healers, feeders, empaths. Not everyone is a warrior. Not everyone is a monk. The tribe of 100 needs someone who will meet the enemy, and that means tolerating some volatility in that person. Dax shares the most honest corrective he ever received from Kristen: he thought he was protecting her, she told him she felt the most unsafe with him because anything could happen at any moment. It didn't make him stop being a protector — but it recalibrated where and how he deploys it.

After Monica's 3-to-7 reframe lands, Alan steps back and shares the theological foundation underneath all of it. He describes himself as a Christian in the most stripped-down sense: Jesus, he believes, came less to establish a religion and more to demonstrate a way of leading with self-sacrificial love — love that costs the giver something real. The idea of heaven and hell as transactional afterlife rewards misses the point entirely. Heaven and hell are things we build right here with our tongues, our words, our actions. Every moment is an opportunity to be a light or a source of damage in the world we're blessed to occupy. It's a quietly moving statement that recontextualizes everything he's said about resentment and justice: he's not just angry, he's trying to build something.

Dax pivots to a fact most people don't know: Alan was a Top 86 American Idol contestant who made it to Hollywood Week and got cut. What struck him wasn't the rejection — it was the person next to him doing a dead-cockroach wail at the news. Alan watched and thought: what is it like to want something that badly? He'd never felt that about anything. Rather than reassuring him, this worried him — maybe he wasn't really an artist if he didn't feel he'd die without it [1]. But that energy drew him to LA. He wanted to be in a city full of people that passionate, wanted to understand what it felt like to need something that much. His wife Catherine was on board — both had grown up in small Florida towns and knew they needed something bigger. The modeling world had already been giving him ways into acting rooms, and eventually, as Aquaman on Smallville, something clicked.

Alan's first big break was Aquaman on Smallville, where he debuted in Season 5 and the episode set a ratings record. The studio smelled something and moved to give him his own spin-off show — complete with a fixer calling to clean up his future bar fights. Then a Warner Bros.-UPN merger put a new president in charge who looked at a guy with no resume and cancelled it. It happened again: a new actor got trouble, the deal came back to Alan, then Justin Hartley came off Passions and was better suited. The lesson Alan took was never to hold on tight until the cameras actually roll. Blue Mountain State followed: three seasons, number-one in the 18-35 male demo on Spike but missed because Spike didn't have a scripted TV audience. Sold to Netflix and became the number-one comedy on the platform [1]. Alan was in South Africa when the recognition found him, and rather than feeling grateful he felt entitled and arrogant — a mindset that nearly cost him everything at his Thor audition.

The Thor audition is Alan's career turning point, and he tells it with total candor. He walked in with his sides still in his hand, performed in a theater with a spotlight and two silhouettes in the dark, and thought it went well enough ^{[1] — Alan Ritchson "Alan Ritchson walked into a Thor audition with his sides still in his hand, half-assed it on a spotlight-lit stage before two silhouettes i…" 53:10 Play} . The casting director called his team: 'If he had the craft, this part is his. He does not have the craft.' That hit Alan like the floor dropping out. He spent weeks obsessing over those sides with an acting coach until, during one run-through, something clicked and the coach said: 'That. That's the craft.' He then fought his way into Deb Aquila's masterclass — head of casting at Paramount — who initially refused him because she knew him as 'the guy who yells on that stupid show.' He passed her test and earned his seat. On his first day, two students performed a ten-minute scene entirely in sign language — work no audience outside that room would ever see. Alan cried. He walked out understanding that the best actors in Hollywood were doing work like that for fifteen people in a room, not for money, not for applause. He never complained about work again.

After the craft revelation, Alan describes years of relentless self-belief punctuated by near-misses. He walked out of his Titans audition so sure he'd booked the lead that he called Catherine and told her he was buying a Tesla P100D — one of the fastest production cars at the time — before receiving any offer. He got the call: they wanted him, but not for the lead. He turned down Hawk five times ^{[1] — Alan Ritchson "Held at Titan/Hawk audition — turned down 5 times: Alan Ritchson turned down the role of Hawk on Titans five times before finally accepting…" 1:02:00 Play} , convinced Shazam was his destiny. Geoff Johns finally called and told him the Shazam director wanted someone else and this was the last Titans offer. Alan took it, and his career accelerated. Then came Reacher: a call from the studio about his workout was the first sign this was different. Weekly body update photos. And the day before shooting began, executive producer Don Granger — Tom Cruise's longtime Skydance partner, now at Paramount — delivered a five-page handwritten letter detailing every nuance of the performance: when to clench the jaw, what a relaxed Reacher looks like, moment by moment. Rather than feeling insulted, Alan absorbed it completely.

The conversation shifts to what Reacher has become: 56 million global viewers in a single week for Season 2 ^{[1] — Dax Shepard "Reacher — 56M global viewers in one week: Reacher Season 2 attracted 56 million global viewers in a single week, making it one of the most-…" 1:04:56 Play} , concentrated on one character rather than an ensemble, unprecedented in streaming history. Alan is visibly grateful but notes that the scale of it — unlike Stranger Things — rests almost entirely on a single person, which is a gift and a weight. Dax then pivots to Motor City, which he watched the night before with Kristen Bell, who was blown away. It has no spoken dialogue — a concept Alan traces to Greg Silverman, then Warner Bros. president, who wanted a film that everyone worldwide could experience identically without language getting in the way. The script had been on the Hollywood Blacklist since 2009, was greenlit nine times, and had every major leading man in Hollywood attached at some point. Alan read it and called it a masterpiece. Dax compares it to Cirque du Soleil: deliberately internationally accessible as a spectacle. Also discussed: Runner with Owen Wilson (September) and an Arnold Schwarzenegger Christmas film.

Alan describes working with Arnold Schwarzenegger as a revelation about fame at its absolute apex. When Arnold moves through a space, people feel a disturbance before they see him — a gravitational pull, like a meteor. His level of recognition is 100% of everyone around him, not the partial recognition Alan experiences [1]. Yet Arnold stops for everyone, always: even mid-scene on a locked set, banging on the glass from outside to take a photo. Alan looks at this and thinks: if this is Arnold's attitude at his scale, I have no excuse at mine. His wife Catherine disagrees — Arnold doesn't have kids with him. The tension is real: every fan doesn't know they're the 30th interruption of the day, and the family seizes up because they become invisible. Alan is caught between not wanting to disappoint fans and protecting his children from feeling like they don't exist.

Dax finally arrives at the event everyone's been waiting for, and Alan gives the full context. He had just received a custom, exceptionally loud motorcycle built for vertical acceleration — never leaving first gear — and was riding slowly through the neighborhood with his kids for the first time ^{[1] — Alan Ritchson "Alan Ritchson owned a body-cam chest pack for a year and had never once worn it. On the morning of the confrontation, he felt an inexplicab…" 1:22:40 Play} . He'd never met the neighbor. The man stepped in front of his bike, was visibly drunk at 11 AM on a Sunday, and Alan tried to leave twice before being physically shoved off his bike. He hit the man enough to end the confrontation, not to hurt him. The neighbor's camera caught only the last ten seconds and was sold to TMZ within six hours. When Alan checked the video back, he saw the man was approaching again for a third round while Alan was trying to restart his bike. Here is the providential turn: Alan had owned a body-cam chest pack for a year and had never worn it. That morning, an inexplicable feeling led him to dig it out and put it on. When police arrived to arrest him based solely on the neighbor's clip, his footage cleared him. He calls it a gift from God. What still hurts: his kids won't ride with him anymore, and that shared joy hasn't come back.

Dax closes the interview by telling Alan he finds him radical and deeply admirable — connecting both over their shared warrior temperament, anti-bully instincts, and willingness to work on themselves despite the difficulty. He pitches Motor City to listeners (theaters July 24th), compliments Alan on its bravery and execution, and jokes about having him back for Season 9 of Reacher.

The Fact Check opens with a light exchange about Dax and Monica's accidental joint use of an unflushed toilet in Monica's not-yet-functional new house, spawning a running joke about a 'pee baby' they may have inadvertently created. The episode pivots sharply when Dax brings up Gladwell's chapter on suicide: town gas in London was the leading cause of suicide deaths, and when it was replaced with natural gas, the rate dropped dramatically rather than transferring to other methods [1]. Gladwell calls this coupling — the link between suicidal ideation and available opportunity. Of approximately 500 people interrupted in Golden Gate Bridge attempts over 70 years, only 25 went on to die by suicide. Dax, a gun owner, takes the data seriously: 20,000 Americans kill themselves with handguns annually, and Gladwell's evidence suggests removing access would cut at least 10,000 of those deaths. Monica and Dax then extend into The Morning Show's portrayal of Lauer-adjacent workplace abuse and the blurry line between assault and apparent consent — with Dax acknowledging, guided by Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill, how much of what looked like consent wasn't.

The Fact Check winds down with a trio of quick verifications. Titanic set its domestic box office record between December 1997 and October 1998, making over $650 million — yes, it was the biggest domestic movie ever at the time. Dax guessed that psychology is about 150 years old as a science; Monica confirms it began in 1879, making it 141 years — Dax is only 9 years off, or less than 1% of the actual figure. A Google device in the studio helpfully does the math. The SoHo artist-in-residence zoning law from 1971 is confirmed: 200 commercial lofts in SoHo and NoHo were restricted to certified artists only. The Fact Check closes with the running 'pee baby' thread, a discussion of which New York neighborhood has the best burgers (West Village vs. Brooklyn), and a detour into Monica's jealousy at her grandmother's daycare that surfaces a thoughtful moment about only-child psychology and attachment security.