What happened to the Armchair Umbrella?

i'm frothing at the mouth to know the behind the scenes drama

I am a recovering Armcherry.

If you haven’t listened to even one episode of Dax Shepard’s popular podcast, that’s what Dax and his co-host Monica Padman call their fans. According to Wikipedia, Armchair Expert is a podcast that has a monthly audience of 20 million listeners; it’s one of the top 4 highest earning podcasts in the United States.

I have been listening to Dax and Monica interview celebrities since the podcast’s debut in 2018, on the recommendation of a lifestyle vlogger I was watching regularly back then. And until the middle of 2024, I was listening to various shows in the Umbrella multiple times a week. There was a time in my life where I debated knitting my own merch for the podcast (I would put cherries on the sleeves). There have been several times where I casually drop a random celeb fact into conversation, and when asked how I know that, have to answer that I heard it on Armchair Expert. When it debuted, Armchair Expert was just a weekly celebrity interview (dropping every Monday). But pretty soon after it started, they added an interview on Thursdays called Experts on Experts, where Dax & Monica sit down with an expert any field. I’ve never been a regular listener of Experts, but I would tune in when something caught my eye, like Dog the Bounty Hunter.

Those two shows were the staple shows, the bread and butter of the Armchair Umbrella. But that didn’t stop the two hosts from branching out, putting together several limited series shows; a show called Nurture versus Nurture with Dr. Wendy Mogel featuring parents going to therapy¹, a ten episode special series with Monica and Dax’s wife Kristen Bell about women², a show called Race to 270 with Dax’s friends Aaron Weekly (trying to lose weight) and Charlie Curtis (trying to gain weight), a show with Monica and Liz Plank about freezing their eggs called Race to 35, a show called Monica and Jess Love Boys about dating³, a show with David Farrier about cults (Armchaired and Dangerous), a show called Yearbook with Chad Sanders. All of these were limited series from the jump; they were never going to be regular features on the feed. A lot of them were better than the original conceit of Armchair, mostly because Dax is an interviewer who talks about himself a lot.

Monica is a big reason why I’ve stayed listening to the show all these years. She started working for Kristen and Dax as a nanny, before becoming Kristen’s assistant and friends with the husband/wife duo, and then eventually Dax’s cohost. (If you’ve listened to enough episodes, you know that they started Armchair Expert because Monica & Dax loved Serial and they loved arguing with each other). When they first started out, Monica was editing all of the episodes herself. She still does a lot of editing of the show, though they now have an assistant who does a rough cut first. I’ve long felt connected to her, because I don’t often see representations of successful single women in media. I used to decide how much I liked a guest by the way that they treated and talked to Monica. I think that she’s the first podcast host that I felt could be my friend.

One of the things I liked the most about listening to the show is the dynamic between Monica, Dax, and their producer Rob Holysz (affectionately referred to as Wobby Wob). The trio seems to be more a group of friends than they were coworkers. Each holiday season they do a holiday special, that for a few years featured a gift exchange between the three of them. Part of the charm of Armchair Expert and Experts on Experts is the fact check at the end of the episode; when the podcast started, Monica would actually fact check the interview and quote stats that the celeb or Dax might have gotten wrong. This portion has evolved—there are still a couple facts, but it’s mostly the three of them hanging out. It’s when Monica’s voice is heard the most, and she’s most likely to call Dax when he says something slightly…misogynistic. Dax likes to play the devil’s advocate a lot, something that can get pretty annoying. But Monica has gotten pretty good at holding him accountable.

In 2021, Armchair inked a deal with Spotify. They became a Spotify exclusive podcast, meaning their main two shows would only air on Spotify. Their first guest exclusive to Spotify? Barack Obama.⁴ This didn’t really change much in the functionality of the podcast; basically, any of the shows that featured a lot of Dax had to be on Spotify. But the special shows would still air on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen to podcasts. This same year, David Farrier came to the United States from New Zealand to work on his cult show (Armchaired & Dangerous). He got stranded here due to a wave of COVID, so Dax asked him “if you could make any show you wanted, what show would you make?” Flightless Bird was born. David talked about a deeply American subject each week, creating a mini audio documentary, and then played that doc for Monica. Monica and David would then have a little chat about the topic. Dax (and the podcast) sponsored David’s visa, and he became a fixture of the Armchair Umbrella. Even though Dax wasn’t on Flightless Bird regularly (that pesky Spotify deal), David rounded out the friend group, at least in my mind. He was part of the holiday gift exchange, he had a lot of banter with both Monica and Rob, very occasionally Dax would drop in to weigh in on a topic he has particularly interested in.

In 2023, both Dax and Monica branched out. Dax started a Formula One podcast⁵ with his friends (Jethro Bovington, Charlie Curtis, & Matthew Collins) called eff won with DRS⁶, and Monica started a weekly show called Synced, with former Race to 35 cohost Liz Plank. This meant that Armchair was airing at least five shows a week, sometimes more. And more often than not, I was listening to them all. There’s something unique about a podcast that makes the listener feel like a part of the friend group, especially after spending 7 years hearing them in your ears multiple times a week. Sure, the way Dax talked to Jonathan Van Ness in their interview rang some alarm bells. And the fact that he is constantly talking about taking testosterone. I did start to feel like I was listening for Monica, for David, for Liz. But I found myself making excuses for Dax’s sometimes off-putting interview style, excuses that sound a little nuts when I think back on them.

In July of 2024, Armchair Expert signed an $80 million deal with Wondery⁷. Almost immediately after this announcement, both Flightless Bird and Synced announced that they would be moving to their own feeds. The Armchair Expert feed would just be the Monday show, Experts on Experts (moving to Wednesdays, when Synced used to air), and Armchair Anonymous on Friday.⁸ eff won with DRS had been missing with little to no explanation about why for months, even though the F1 season started in February of that year. Dax explained away the absence of it after the Wondery announcement, saying that it was hard to negotiate a deal while making the racing show⁹. No one on Armchair really addressed the Flightless Bird or the Synced move.

On the last day that Flightless Bird aired on the Armchair Expert feed David Farrier posted this newsletter to Webworm, his Substack. There are a lot of things about this update that are interesting to me; David found out about the Wondery deal via a Deadline article, they gave him under three weeks to figure out how to make the show on his own, Monica unceremoniously stopped co-hosting Flightless Bird. At least Dax let David own the IP, and continue making the show on his own? And I’m very glad that Rob continued to produce this show and stepped in as a cohost; Rob and David’s dynamic is actually more entertaining than David and Monica’s. Flightless Bird is still going strong, and David is still doing some incredible reporting that is very entertaining. Since it’s his own show, he has more freedom to explore topics he might have shied away from. It’s weirder! It’s more critical of the US government! I highly recommend checking it out.

Unfortunately, Synced didn’t make it much longer past the transition. It aired on it’s own feed maybe twice before just…disappearing. Two weeks passed with fans wondering where the hell the show was before anything was said by either of the cohosts, and when something was said it was a vague post on Instagram (with the comments turned off). It’s hard to tell what really happened. One of the perks of the Wondery deal is that subscribers on the Wondery app get the fact check portion of the Armchair shows early (and on video, something Dax & Monica said for years they would never do). When scrolling through Reddit a couple months ago, I saw that someone pointed out that in a subscriber-only fact check right after Synced disappeared, Monica talked about being disappointed someone went through lawyers instead of talking about something directly to her. This didn’t make it into the fact check that I heard as a non-subscriber. But the theory is that after the transition to their own feed, Liz wanted to feel more secure in this show that had become part of her job. Honestly, I think that it would be smart to go through lawyers to talk about business like this. I think it’s always a little tricky going into business with your friends! It’s better to have security and a third party moderator, in my opinion. I don’t think Monica feels the same. It feels strange to me to not provide your listeners with some actual explanation about the disappearance of a show. For weeks before seeing the statement, I consistently checked the Synced feed, excited to listen to Monica and Liz banter. It was disappointing to realize that it wasn’t coming back.

Herein lies my problem: did I think too highly of these celebrities, this friend group? Did I put too much stake in Dax, because he made it possible for David to continue working in this country? Did I make up a story in my head about how close these people seemed to be? I tend to do this; I forget that what these people are presenting to me might not actually be how they are in real life. Frankly, it’s pretty shady to ink a deal with Amazon and not tell your collaborators and business partners about what’s going on. I understand both David and Liz not being included in the deal; Dax (and at this point, probably Monica) are what will make the money of the Armchair Umbrella. But to not give these people, seemingly people you think of as friends, a heads up that they might be losing their means of income? In his Substack, David makes it seem pretty much like he was blindsided by this announcement. This is a man who was producing episodes, doing some pretty hardcore reporting, weekly. From what Dax said about eff won, he probably told those guys what was happening. Why did they have the right to know, but your more frequent collaborators didn’t?

(By the way, eff won is back with a new name (Party Mode) and without Dax. It seems like he’s still pretty close friends with those guys, but recording the show and editing it isn’t something he has time for. To be fair, that show was always in it’s own feed; instead of Monica editing it, Dax did it himself. Now Jethro, Charlie, and Matt are figuring it out on their own, which I’m happy to see; even though I started listening to it because of Dax, I’m pretty happy he isn’t involved anymore because he seems to always have to be the loudest person in the room.)

I’m sure a lot more went on behind the scenes here, and I know it really isn’t any of my business. But I spent 7 years listening to these people, feeling like I knew them. Sure, I would sometimes take a couple months off when I wasn’t really vibing with the guests. But seeing Monica in the spotlight, especially, really resonated with me. And with the behind the scenes moves, that look pretty shady from the outside, I feel a little betrayed. It’s easy to accept this behavior from Dax, because at the end of the day, he’s just a man. But it’s harder to recognize that Monica is a fallible person to; for some reason, I expected more. It’s not that I don’t want her to benefit from the success of the podcast that she’s been working hard on for 7 years; in fact, I’m proud of the work she does, and the fact that she’s made enough money to buy the house across the street from the Bell/Shepard compound. Is it right of me to hold her more accountable in my head than I hold Dax, just because she’s a woman? To my knowledge, Dax hasn’t really done anything horrendously wrong either. Am I really owed an explanation for shady business moves, just because I feel like Dax and Monica are my friends? They’re not really anything to me, because they don’t know me! When will I learn to stop convincing myself that podcast hosts would be my friends, are somehow less fallible, just because I listen to them once or twice a week?

I haven’t stopped listening to Armchair shows completely. I did move it to the bottom of my PocketCasts¹⁰ display. I like the listener call in show; if I run out of my other regular podcasts, I’ll see if any of the recent guests pique my interest. I just no longer feel dedicated to either of the hosts. It’s like I went through a friend breakup, with people who don’t even know I exist.

Disclaimer: I looked up a couple of dates and figures, but most of the dates and numbers here are estimations I made based on what I remember happening. I’m not a reporter or a real journalist, so if I got the timeline a little messed up, oh well.

1. I didn’t ever listen to this, so this could be…wrong.

2. This originally had a title that a different podcast already used (and I think they almost got sued), so the title changed to We Are Supported By a couple weeks in.

3. This show was also unceremoniously shelved; forever, Monica and Dax teased a second season. But that season never happened. Fans theorize that Dax and Jess had a falling out, probably because Jess asked to be paid for working on the podcast. Monica still references hanging out with Jess, who is also a waiter at a restaurant they mention a lot.

4. When they were teasing this, I was convinced that it would be Taylor Swift, so I was in fact pretty disappointed with the former President.

5. I credit Dax & Monica’s second interview with Daniel Ricciardo for the beginning of my F1 fandom, so this was especially exciting to me.

6. DRS stands for both Dax Randall Shepard and Drag Reduction System.

7. For more thoughts about podcast deals like this, read this article by Alex Sujong Laughlin.

8. This is a listener call in show, where listeners tell horror stories about shitting their pants or near death experiences.

9. F1 also started to crack down on any podcast that used their name in it’s title; almost all of the Formula One podcasts I listen to had a midseason title change.

10. I stopped listening to podcasts on Spotify or elsewhere because of this article.