Podbit · Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
John saved his most disturbing story for last: a patient who identified as a cat and wanted to experience what it felt like to give birth to kittens — with three actual live kittens. She died of sepsis after keeping them for days. Dax's only ethical line: you cannot involve other animals.
Where this was said
At 26:18 · chapter starts 21:55
John's story begins with a patient arriving by ambulance with abdominal pain and a small amount of bleeding, initially denying any foreign object. A rectal exam produces clear plastic on the doctor's glove — the casing of a bratwurst — and a CT scan confirms three of them, arranged in a pattern that looks like a fidget spinner. The patient had been home alone, wife out of town, and one bratwurst felt good, so he tried two, then three. Surgery was required. Days later, the surgeon casually mentioned that the same man had previously been treated at the other hospital in town. John's second and third images reveal an apple (cored and strung with a retrieval string) and a toothbrush holder — the latter requiring the surgeons to open his belly, remove dead bowel, and fit him with a permanent colostomy. [1] — John "John's 2013 patient lied through the whole first visit, but a CT scan revealed three bratwursts. That already led to surgery. Then John's c…" 14:34 Dax draws an immediate parallel to his own addictive escalation logic, noting that 'one pill felt great, so two must be better' is exactly the same algorithm. John then drops a bonus story about a patient who identified as a cat, wanted to experience giving birth to kittens, inserted three live ones, and died of sepsis. [2] — John "John saved his most disturbing story for last: a patient who identified as a cat and wanted to experience what it felt like to give birth t…" 26:18
The bratwurst patient visited two hospitals in the same area across multiple incidents and ultimately required a colostomy after his bowel died from a toothbrush holder obstruction.
AI nailed Andrew Huberman's vertigo-vs-low-blood-pressure diagnosis because that pattern has been reported millions of times. But every patient's liver is different and data on liver surgeries is scarce worldwide — making solo robot surgery dangerous. The rule is simple: data abundance means AI can help; data scarcity means keep the human in the loop.
Fei-Fei Li's father had liver surgery performed by a da Vinci robot guided by a surgeon. The result: 10 times less blood loss than a typical procedure. This isn't replacement — it's the gold standard of human-machine collaboration, where the human's judgment and the robot's precision combine.
US drug overdose deaths fell from 110,000 to roughly 70,000 — the biggest CDC-recorded single-year drop ever. Men's rates fell 27% in one year, and the steepest decline of all was among 15–24-year-olds, down 37%. The crisis narrative around young men needs to make room for signs of genuine progress.
Kessler thought his grief expertise would protect him. It didn't. When his son David died unexpectedly, he found himself on the floor — and eventually realized that acceptance alone wasn't enough. That unmet need became the sixth stage: finding meaning.
Grief isn't just death — it's any unwanted change. Kessler lectured at Coca-Cola and General Mills not because they had lots of funerals, but because change management is grief management. People who grieve well live well.
Witnessing someone's grief isn't just emotional support — it's an essential act of healing. Kessler argues grief is a severance and connection heals it. But real witnessing has two steps: seeing the pain AND affirming the person's capacity to recover.
Avoiding grief isn't free — it's exhausting. Kessler's beach ball metaphor nails it: pushing a small balloon down is easy, but holding a massive beach ball underwater takes constant, draining energy. Unattended feelings don't disappear; they just consume you.
Most people try to control their environment to avoid triggers. Kessler flips this entirely: triggers aren't problems to manage around — they're a detailed map to your pain and your healing. Every trigger points directly to what needs attention.
Running from pain doesn't leave it behind — it accelerates the chase. Whatever we run from pursues us, and whatever we face transforms us. Both Kessler and Lewis Howes testify to knowing both roads firsthand.
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