transcript

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[00:30] Hey, Pashi. Hey, Sufi. We had a Pashi sighting in New York City. Oh, yeah. Oh, I was like, who? But yeah, me. That's the other Pashi. You know, tall Pashi. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Had a little afternoon hang. We had an afternoon hang. It was a really beautiful spring day in New York City. You came to pick up with me. We got the boys. We hung out with Ash for a bit. And then we got Addie, eventually Axel. But it was like really a great night because we just kind of hung out in my apartment as the sun set in New York City. Golden light come through the windows. My in-laws, Tom and Joanne came over. You were walking. I was walking with Ash and you were walking with another uncle, Tolia, my brother-in-law. Ash at one point said, Pashi and Tolia are really getting along. They know each other. We've always gotten along. But it's just like, I just like he was like, because again, he doesn't see the two of you guys together that often. It was just kind of sweet that he thought that was a nice thing to observe. It was adorable. Addie got home and it was adorable. She was in her ballet gear. Yeah. You were like, when she comes in the door, you're like, hide, hide. But then she comes in and she's sort of like, she's always just a hair's breath away from laughing at anything. Anything. So walked in and sort of like laughed just to see you and then saw me and kept laughing. Yeah. It was really great. Yeah. She just this morning, Alexi is on a family trip right now with Axel. First time the two of them have taken a trip together. They're going out to California to see a friend of Alexi's whose daughter is very close with Axel. So that's very exciting. And then me and Addy this morning had a really nice morning. She has a little ukulele now and she did a show. And she went into a room and closed the door and told me, I had to turn over like one of those little hourglass, plastic hourglasses that come with board games. I had to turn that over while she set up chairs. And then I went in and I'd love to send you a video of her song. But when I came in, she said, no cameras. Yeah. It's sometimes nice to just have to experience it. A hundred percent. It was a great show. And I'm really glad that I was in the moment. But I think she went to like a magic show where they said no cameras. And so now she's like, no, no, no, this is a show. Yeah. Yeah. She did have that little hourglass timer when I was over as well. And at one point we were all sitting around in the living room and she said, no one talk. No one make any noise until this is done. And she really was hard and fast to that rule. And I gotta say, it was delightful. It was delightful. When she really, when anybody even giggled, she would press her finger right against her mouth. Yeah. Make her eyes real big. Yeah. She's also, she's very demanding. She had me turn that couch in the little TV room into her pirate ship. Yeah. Oh, I posted a fun video online. Where you were. Yeah, she insisted that I get inside and I sort of had to belly crawl into this little between these two little, what can I not think of those? Cushions? The foot rest. Oh, like Ottomans? Ottomans. Yeah, it's like two Ottomans with a pillow over them to the couch. And I had to squeeze my way into that little tight space. And she kept telling me I wasn't in yet until I was fully all the way underneath. It was pretty great. She did a thing. What was the, she, you were ordering pizza from her and she was on a pizza boat. Pizza, yeah, yeah. She was the captain of the pizza boat. It was pretty, pretty confusing. Yeah, I didn't know what was going on, but I was also- I know this, you didn't get your pizza. You did, yeah. At one point she gave me my pizza, but that was just her hand saying, here's your pizza. Yeah, it was a magic pizza. Our dog Woody found a piece of pizza yesterday at the park. There was a birthday party going on and he went up to this- And did he then try to return it to the rightful owner? No, he was truly like the dog that caught the car and that he had a full piece of pizza in his mouth and didn't know what to do about it. He couldn't just take one bite. He just sort of was walking around with it in his mouth like, I don't know what to do. So I pulled it away from him and he got a healthy bit, but clearly some kid had dropped it and at this birthday party, they were like, we'll clean this up later, but Woody got it and was pretty psyched. That's great. Good for Woody. I'm happy. I'm happy when nice things happen to that dog. Yeah. He deserves it. He's the nicest dog in the world. I will report back soon. I'm taking Ash to his first Red Sox game. We're going to meet up with mom and dad. We're going to be very touristy in Boston. We're going to do the duck boat tour. We're going to go to the Boston Tea Party Museum. We're going to go to the aquarium. We're going to go to Faneuil Hall. We're going to go to a Red Sox game. Great. Pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Amtrak, we're going to take the train. We're very excited about it all. Yeah. I'm very good. I'm very lucky because once again, shout out to my in-laws, but like I can, you know, Alexi is on a trip with Axel, I'm taking a trip with Ash, and we can leave Addie with her grandparents, with her aunt, with her uncle, and she's equally excited about it all. Has Ash spent any time in Boston? No, not really. And he's read a lot of, he's at the age where they've read a lot about the Revolutionary War, so he's pretty excited. Although he was huge, he did root for the British, so I think it'll sting a little bit. Yeah, he liked their coats. He did, he did. Those red coats just were sharp. Did we talk about Axel's outfit on his golden birthday? No. I mean, so were you aware of golden birthdays when we were kids? Kind of, but it sort of, I don't know. It almost feels like it was an early, I know it was pre-social media, but it feels like a social media thing, right? So, you know, it was Axel turned eighth on the eighth. He knew it was his golden birthday. He was very excited about it. So much so that a month out. Just to explain, it's the day of the- When you turn the year of the day it is. So my golden birthday was when I turned 28 because I'm born on the 28th. Yours was your Axel, you're an Axel. Mine was on the what? Axel, eighth. Okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you're an Axel. Sorry. Just check it. And that, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, oh, so he, a month out, he told Alexia he wanted to wear all gold. So she bought him a full gold suit, gold shoes and pretty rad. And like, we just went to like teacher conferences and it is very nice when they're like, yeah, I've never seen a kid like Axel. In a good way. Yeah. In a good way. They're never like, we've never seen a kid who reads as well as Axel. That never happens. But a lot of the fashion stuff. That outfit. Yeah. They're never like, hey, you know the movie Beautiful Mind? He's like that, but for gold suits. Man, Elizabeth Banks. Yeah. Speaking of Boston, you're just a good old-fashioned New England lady. Yeah. I mean, been a fan from The Jump, from the Wet Hot American Summer Days. We were going to have her on for something else, like a year ago or a year and a half ago, and it didn't work out and it was a bummer. But then it was like, well, it's Elizabeth Banks. She's going to keep making stuff. And sure enough, she did. She's got The Miniature Wife has just come out. And great reviews as well. Yeah. So check that out on Peacock and enjoy our friend, Elizabeth Banks.

Speaker 1:
[09:39] Hey.

Speaker 2:
[09:40] Hi, buddy.

Speaker 1:
[09:42] I realized it was popped on.

Speaker 2:
[09:44] That's how it happens. We're happy to have you.

Speaker 1:
[09:46] I know.

Speaker 2:
[09:46] We just talked to Jason Schwarzman, who said hello.

Speaker 1:
[09:49] Hi, Jason. Oh, man. Can we do all, that we should have done all four of us.

Speaker 2:
[09:54] He was very mean because he did not like that we were wrapping up with him to talk to you.

Speaker 1:
[09:59] Well.

Speaker 2:
[09:59] So there was some cruelty at first.

Speaker 1:
[10:01] Yeah. Isn't he just the cruelest?

Speaker 2:
[10:04] He is, yeah. Once, that was the word, finally, yeah. We told him we had to cut him off, and he's like, why? What do you guys have? What are you doing? If you want to call Elizabeth Banks and tell her that we're still on with you, you're welcome to do so. Then we said you were doing, he goes, what's she doing? What's she promoting? We said The Miniature Wife with Matthew McFaddy, and he said, oh, he's the one who said yes to that? How are you, friend?

Speaker 1:
[10:30] What's up, guys? How are you guys doing?

Speaker 2:
[10:32] What's happening? We're thrilled to talk to a fellow New Englander.

Speaker 1:
[10:36] I literally was just thinking the same thing. You guys are in New Hampshire though, right?

Speaker 2:
[10:39] Yeah, we're in New Hampshire.

Speaker 1:
[10:40] Right, right. Close enough.

Speaker 2:
[10:42] Where's Pittsfield?

Speaker 1:
[10:43] Were you on the border? Where are you from?

Speaker 2:
[10:46] We were close enough to the border. But it was about 50-50 to get to Boston, right, Posh? Yeah. We drove to Boston half of the time. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[10:54] Got it.

Speaker 2:
[10:54] But you're Pittsfield, that's way west.

Speaker 1:
[10:56] Yeah. Oh, as west as you can get before you're in New York. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[11:00] Got it. My wife is from Shelburne Falls, which is about an hour from here.

Speaker 1:
[11:04] Of course, of course. I just did Finding Your Roots, which was incredible. But the very first question that Skip Gates, Henry Louis Gates Jr. asked you when you're on there is like, where are you from? Where do you think your people are from? I'm like, I'm Massachusetts from the beginning. They got there, they went from England to New England, and then they never went anywhere else. That is totally true. It turns out, I was correct.

Speaker 2:
[11:34] He's like, we did a world map to show where the Banks' are, and there's like two red dots.

Speaker 1:
[11:38] It's literally also, it's so funny, I'm so Irish. And if you were from the British Isles, nobody got to you. It was like the British Isles, maybe a Viking got in every once in a while. And maybe if you could take a boat to Northern France, you maybe got a little of that. But that was it. Like they did not, we are just, just boom, that's all I am. 95% Irish basically.

Speaker 2:
[12:02] Were there a lot of Bankses in Pittsfield, Mass? Did you have like aunts and uncles and stuff?

Speaker 1:
[12:06] Well, wildly, there are no Bankses cause that is a made up fake name. Oh great. Yeah. I had to make up a name cause Elizabeth Mitchell was in SAG. That's my real name. I'm Elizabeth Mitchell. And there are a lot of Mitchells, yes, Mitchell, much more like English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh Mitchell, right?

Speaker 2:
[12:27] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[12:28] Yeah. So.

Speaker 2:
[12:29] Did you enjoy having the opportunity to pick a new name or were you bummed that you couldn't bring Elizabeth Mitchell to the world?

Speaker 1:
[12:36] It's so interesting cause in the moment, I was super bummed and it was really that, I felt like my, it's such a funny Massachusetts thing too. I wanted my parents to get credit for me. And I felt like if I changed my name, people would be like, nah, she's not your daughter. You know, and like, like I was worried for them cause I just wanted them to be proud of me. And I thought like, oh, they won't be as proud if they don't get to be like, no, really that's my daughter. Not thinking that like women change their name all the time when we get married. Right. And so of course someone said that to me. And then also it was actually David Wayne and Michael Ian Black and the whole gang from What Had American Summer. I had to literally change my name to be put in the credits of that movie. And so they all changed their names and they're like, who cares? Like, just do it. And so I did it for What Had American Summer. It became Banks. I literally made a list and put it in alphabetical order and called SAG. And I said, is Banks available? And they said, yeah, it's available. I go, I'll take it. It was like, how's it?

Speaker 2:
[13:42] I also think there's a fear in New England, not just that your parents wouldn't be like that. There's a thing of like the New Englanders would be like, why'd she change it? 100%, 100%.

Speaker 1:
[13:51] Yeah, some little shame, she get in trouble, she get in trouble.

Speaker 2:
[13:55] I love New England and yet there's still a, I don't know, like a haunting lack of trust about the people that I call my closest companions.

Speaker 1:
[14:06] A haunting lack of trust. The way I like to think of it too is, well, the state motto is, you're not better than me, right?

Speaker 2:
[14:13] Right.

Speaker 1:
[14:14] And so I also think there's just that, like, oh, you changed your name, what are you fancy now? Like, what are you? You know? It's a lot of...

Speaker 2:
[14:21] One of my favorite, there was an SNL, when Nancy Kerrigan hosted SNL, they did a sketch about her being in, like, a home, because she was from Massachusetts, like, a parade where she came back after the Olympics. And Adam Sandler crawls in the back of the car and goes, how did you get that job? And she was like, as a skater? And it's just, like, the best. Like, there's some sense of, like, somebody pulled a string for you to be an Olympic skater.

Speaker 1:
[14:47] Of course. But then, ultimately, changing my name became super weird in that I feel like I was able to create this alternate personality that is the actress Elizabeth Banks, that actually has nothing to do with my real life in a way. They've obviously melded more and more over time. But I remember my husband, who I've been with now for 34 years, he would say to me all the time, like, after I changed my name, I'd be doing stuff. I'd be doing so I'd get all dressed up and then I'd do something stupid and he'd go, oof, there's Liz Mitchell. There she is. That's a real Liz Mitchell right there.

Speaker 2:
[15:28] You can tie a Banks bow and a Liz Mitchell but every now and then it comes undone.

Speaker 1:
[15:32] There she is.

Speaker 2:
[15:33] What were your, so what was your vacation life like being from Western Mass?

Speaker 1:
[15:38] Well, I, so because I'm from this giant Irish Catholic family, my dad is from eight and my mom is from seven kids. And so we had so many aunts and uncles all over the place. And so most of my family trips were just car rides to visit people, right? Like we were just going to go visit, you know, my granddad moved to Chicago and it's like, well, we're all going to, we're getting in the car and driving to Chicago. And maybe we would stop along the way and visit like an aunt in Cleveland. Like it was always never like the exact route. It was like, well, we got to stop off places and visit any other relative we've ever met.

Speaker 2:
[16:18] Because if you don't, are you, are those people offended?

Speaker 1:
[16:21] You drove through and you didn't come for lunch, right? You know, yeah, you got to stop over. So we did a lot of car rides and train rides. Loved Amtrak growing up. We took Amtrak to Chicago several times when my grandfather was living there. And then he moved to Cleveland. So it was like Cleveland and Chicago. And then my dad's family was all South. So everybody, the Carolinas and Franklin, Tennessee, and then we would go down to Florida. So my grandparents, late in life, ended up in Central Florida. Not by the ocean, mind you. In Central Florida, living down there in the winters, because Massachusetts winter is no joke if you're 80 years old. And they drove like a VW Vanagon. Like there are now, they're like back in Cooligan. The ones with like the table in the back. And we would pile into that thing. My grandpa's VF Van. And that was my favorite thing to drive around. And me and all my cousins, I had so many cousins. We were always going to visit people. So mostly it was car rides to visit people. I didn't go on an airplane until I was 12. And it was on People's Express.

Speaker 2:
[17:40] Wow, yeah. No memory.

Speaker 1:
[17:42] No memory.

Speaker 2:
[17:43] People's Express.

Speaker 1:
[17:44] People's Express was like, I think it was lowlier than Spirit Airlines would be now.

Speaker 2:
[17:50] Their tagline, we're more peoples than plane.

Speaker 1:
[17:55] Pretty much. So we took a People's Express plane to Washington, DC to visit my uncle, obviously, and go stay with him and see the monuments and do the Smithsonian and all that stuff. And we dressed up to get on the plane because we thought, if you're going on a plane, you're a rich person. You got to get fancy if you're riding on an airplane. So yeah, it was trips like that. I mean, I didn't have a passport until I was in college and I was going to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with a production of, what was it called? Like Odysseus, like a really old.

Speaker 2:
[18:34] A college production?

Speaker 1:
[18:35] A college production of that, that we went to.

Speaker 2:
[18:39] So Josh and I did Edinburgh in our early 20s.

Speaker 1:
[18:42] Yeah, I would have been 22.

Speaker 2:
[18:45] I mean, greatest summer of your life?

Speaker 1:
[18:48] One of the best times. I still think about it all the time. Actually, the craziest thing that happened there, I just brought this up to somebody because we, I can't remember, we were traveling somewhere and we couldn't pull up a Google map.

Speaker 2:
[18:59] Right.

Speaker 1:
[19:00] And I was remembering back then, no maps. We went out, we went out, I don't know where we were staying in some dorms or something, the University of Edinburgh. And like, we went dancing one night out pubs and then just like late night party, party, party. And then it was freezing, which is of course in August. Right. In Scotland, it was freezing. It's nowhere else in the world is as cold as this in August. And we were shivering in a taxi stand, trying to get home, like, you know, drunk and like coming down off like the best side of our lives. We get in, we wait 40 minutes in a taxi line, freezing. The taxi pulls up, we pile into it. We tell him where we're going, he rolls his eyes and drives us around the block. Like literally drives us 500 feet. He drove us and was like, you were right here. You never needed a taxi. You could have been home an hour ago. You didn't need to be cold. We had no idea where we were. You know, we were in like a foreign city. We thought it was like, you know.

Speaker 2:
[20:03] It is really fantastic having fully crossed the threshold into, you can't believe how hard it used to be. You know what I mean? Like just the amount of like, I mean, that's also like, you know, that's a story about what it was like without Uber, you know, because there was so much of my European life was taxi lines.

Speaker 1:
[20:19] Taxi lines and not really knowing where, you know, there was no map. What are you going to bring a paper map to the club to go dancing? Like, you know, that's what we were relying on. Like paper, foldable paper maps that we would stick in like purses.

Speaker 2:
[20:34] We used to live in Amsterdam. There was like that unique experience of like going out and maybe having like a sort of a narcotic aided evening of dancing, where you just really start thinking like, oh my God, we're all going to live forever. Everybody I know is magic. Like smash cut to like rainy cab line. And you're like, you know, we're all assholes. We live in a city of assholes.

Speaker 1:
[20:57] Exactly. Oh man. Yes, a lot of cards.

Speaker 2:
[21:01] Hey, we're going to take a quick break and hear from some of our sponsors. Support comes from hims. There's a lot of noise out there about hair loss, Pachi. Ten in one shampoos, random advice, expensive clinic visits. Hims cuts through all that with real trusted treatments at 100 percent online process. Hims offers convenient access to a range of prescription hair loss treatments with ingredients that work, including chews, oral medications, serums, and sprays. That's a lot of different options. I think that's nice. I think some of us prefer a chew, some of us like a spray, and it's nice that Hims has all those for you. Yeah. You shouldn't have to go out of your way to feel like yourself, and Hims brings expert care straight to you with 100% online access to personalized treatment plans that put your goals first. Also, you can find the right hair regrowth treatment for yourself with flexible subscription options, access to 24-7 provider support, and once a day treatment options that fit your daily routine. For simple online access to personalized and affordable care for hair loss ED, weight loss and more, visit hims.com/trips, that's hims.com/trips for your free online visit, hims.com/trips. Featured products include compound drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness or quality prescription required. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information. Individual results may vary based on studies of topical and oral, minoxidil and finasteride. Support comes from Yahoo Mail. Now, with Planner. Hey, Bajie. Hey, Sufi. Oh man, I need to get my life organized. You host a podcast, or in my case two podcasts, or in your case two podcasts, and it's easy to get them all mixed up. Yeah. Well, Planner brings your tasks, reminders, and events into one simple view, so you don't have to jump between apps or piece your day together. All your tasks and events are in one place. You can get a clear organized view of what matters most. You can quickly understand your day without digging through e-mails. Planner pulls key details from your e-mails like reservations, school events, and bill reminders and turns them into actionable plans saving you time and effort. By surfacing important tasks and events at the right time, Planner helps you stay organized, reduce mental load, and keep life moving without things slipping through the cracks. Don't miss important tasks or events in your inbox. Stress Less with Planner from Yahoo Mail. Support comes from Shopify. Hey, Bajie. Hey, Sufi. I mean, when we started this podcast, we didn't know what we were doing. Yeah, that's true. So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure will work out. It can be hard to make that leap of faith. We know, and Shopify is the partner you need when you're about to start a new company, launch a new product. Shopify is the commerce platform by millions of businesses around the world. 100% of all e-commerce in the US from household names like Allbirds, Magic Spood or Momofuko to brands just getting started. Get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready-to-use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style. Best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world-class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping and processing returns and beyond. What if people haven't heard about my brand? Would Shopify help? Hit me like maybe up and running with an email or social media campaign? Yeah, they do that. It's great to hear. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/trips. Go to shopify.com/trips, shopify.com/trips. In partnership with Airbnb, we'd like to share a travel story. Hey, Pachi. Hey, Sufi. I've got a friend of mine's turning 40 in May, and the problem with it is that party is going to be raging at all hours, and I've got a small subset of my friends because I'm not 40, Sufi. I'm a little bit older than that, and we need something a little bit more low-key. So we got a lovely, charming nearby home on Airbnb that is going to be sort of our chill out, wake up, have coffee, get home, talk about the day pad for the more reserved set. Fantastic. We've got our own pool. It's just going to be such a port in the storm for us. It's very nice, and it's a reminder that with Airbnb, you can find homes for the night owls, and you can find homes for the early birds. Booking a trip on Airbnb makes for a better trip. You can be traveling with your family or looking to discover authentic and local experiences.

Speaker 3:
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Speaker 2:
[26:14] Did your family come over to visit you while you were in Edinburgh, or is that one that they just let you?

Speaker 1:
[26:20] No. My mom got a passport for her 50th birthday. We got my mom her passport, she went to London and Paris. I sent her for her birthday, good daughter that I am. And then with my one of my sisters went, she got to go have this amazing time. And then ultimately my mom ended up like going to China and standing on the Great Wall of China, like all these amazing things that happened later in life. But you know the save act guys is something that would really affect someone like my mom. My mom has her passport expired, she doesn't travel anymore. Like she's married, her birth certificate is not her name. I just want to say for anybody that was ever-

Speaker 2:
[27:04] By the way even if her birth certificate was her name, who has their birth certificate? My birth certificate is long gone.

Speaker 1:
[27:09] By the way I changed my name from Mitchell to Banks. I don't have a birth certificate that matches my ID.

Speaker 2:
[27:13] By the way once you do that, you lose the right to vote as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 1:
[27:18] Well, I'm also a woman.

Speaker 2:
[27:19] I don't want to be that guy, but that's crazy.

Speaker 1:
[27:21] I'm of the, you know.

Speaker 2:
[27:23] A woman who changes her name to not the name of her husband has lost the right to have a say in our election.

Speaker 1:
[27:30] That's definitely what they think.

Speaker 2:
[27:32] Can I ask you real quick? I have a lot, I love a train, but I also feel like a lot of my train life was first Europe where obviously they care a lot more about their trains and then Acela, which is, is the trip to Chicago, I want to romanticize it in my head, but is it a good ride?

Speaker 1:
[27:55] It's a great ride. I'm also very comfortable with that Northeast corridor, guys. That is my whole, because I went to Philadelphia for college, and so to get home, it was always taking that Acela or the Amtrak. We loved it. The greatest memory I have though was we went out pre-holiday, between Thanksgiving and Christmas to go visit relatives, to then be home for Christmas morning for Santa was coming, and there was a massive snowstorm. Where I'm from, Pittsburgh, Massachusetts, as we said, a little town in Western Mass. The train really stops in Albany, and it goes to Springfield and Boston, and that's it. If you have these little towns in between, you are in a snowstorm, the train is like, we can't stop because if we fully stop, we won't be able to get going again, right?

Speaker 2:
[28:49] Right.

Speaker 1:
[28:50] Because they're sitting on tons of snow on the track. Coming back from Chicago, I remember, because I was like six, and my sister was little, and then my mom had my baby sister, a literal baby. They were like, came to us and were like, we're not stopping. So if you want to get off here, you can go to Springfield, where we had no car, no way to get back to Pittsfield in a snowstorm. They're like, we're going to slow down, and we're going to toss you off this train. And that is literally what happened. So I remember my parents being like, okay, here's what's going to happen. And with the conductor and the guy, they took our luggage with my dad, and they started before the train got to the station, just chucking our bags out into the snow.

Speaker 2:
[29:38] Just into the snowdrift.

Speaker 1:
[29:39] Into the snowdrift. And then my dad jumped down, and my mom, the guy threw me out, and I just went into the snowbank. It was the most fun thing in the world. My dad left me. My sister next just gets tossed in the snowbank. We think it's the greatest time of our lives. Then my mom has to throw, like come down the stairs and try and toss a baby to my father, who's trying to go sideways in a snowbank. And then my mom jumped out and like that was us. So it was like well-planned, and it was the most fun as a kid. It was like, oh my God, it's the most fun thing ever.

Speaker 2:
[30:17] Yeah, you changed your name to Banks.

Speaker 1:
[30:20] I remember my dad having them to trudge through the snow to go get our bags, which were like hundreds of feet down the track. To pick up our luggage and bring it to the car. And it was completely insane. But that was so fun.

Speaker 2:
[30:38] I have so many questions about this incredible moment.

Speaker 1:
[30:42] It was so fun.

Speaker 2:
[30:43] So fun for you. Was your, were your parents like, this is fun?

Speaker 1:
[30:47] Or were your parents like, oh my God, this is, I'm sure that they were in a full panic about it. Weirdly, the people on the train were like, we're gonna slow down. Like it's gonna be okay. And, but I mean, it was sort of like, it was like they were doing us a favor. Like we're doing you the favor of getting you off the train where you want to get off. But to be clear, like we're, it was just like, look, it's, we're Jeff, we're just definitely not stopping for real.

Speaker 2:
[31:15] Were they, or do you feel like there were other families that were getting chucked at different stops on the way?

Speaker 1:
[31:19] Other people got off, I remember, like jumped off there, but not with three kids, a baby in tow. That's what was really crazy. But at the end of the day, I'm telling you, it was a four foot snow bank. Like you could literally just like fall off the train and you were in the snow.

Speaker 2:
[31:35] It's actually weirdly good for a person and bad for the luggage.

Speaker 1:
[31:41] The hardest part was having to trudge back and get the luggage for sure.

Speaker 2:
[31:45] And I feel like they threw the luggage and then there's, because luggage has no concern. Luggage is like, I'm fine to jump. And then there's that hesitation before the first person in your family is like, oh wait, we're doing this. And then you get further away from your luggage.

Speaker 1:
[32:01] Yeah, because my dad got off, I was like, oh, fun, whee. Like, you know, I was like, this seems like the best time ever. And I grew up playing in snow, so it didn't seem weird. But looking back on it, I don't know if they do that anymore.

Speaker 2:
[32:16] Yeah, that doesn't seem like a thing they do. I don't think they do.

Speaker 1:
[32:18] So nuts.

Speaker 2:
[32:19] Do you, was that immediately family lore? That's such a good story. Is that like something? I mean, that's the greatest. Because I would say like, once you're safe and in the car, you must immediately, I would hope your parents would know, oh my God, this is an all-timer.

Speaker 1:
[32:33] It was so fun. I think it was in the moment, yes, it's become family lore. There are a few stories like that of traveling stories. That's one, because it was just so crazy. And it's like, well, what are we gonna do? We're gonna go to Springfield, and then who was gonna pick us up? And how are we gonna get home?

Speaker 2:
[32:47] In a snowstorm, right.

Speaker 1:
[32:48] It's even worse.

Speaker 2:
[32:48] And then it's Christmas, and you're trying to beat Santa.

Speaker 1:
[32:51] Yeah, so we had to do it. We had to jump off that train.

Speaker 2:
[32:54] So how many siblings did you end up with?

Speaker 1:
[32:58] I'm the oldest of four. I have a baby brother who is 11 years younger than me. He was not born when this happened.

Speaker 2:
[33:05] And is the rest of it, is it girls and then him?

Speaker 1:
[33:08] Yeah, three girls and then a baby brother.

Speaker 2:
[33:11] Unbelievable.

Speaker 1:
[33:11] Master Mitchell. The other family lore great fun story is we had that, I don't even think they allow these anymore because they're so unsafe. The car, the station wagon that had the backseat that faced backwards.

Speaker 2:
[33:28] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[33:28] Remember that? Like the best, right? So we did a lot of trips in that car. And so we loved sitting in the way back. We called it the way back. And so we get to sit in the way back. And you'd face backwards. There was no AC back there at all, as I recall. You'd spend so much summer travel just like dying back there. So we would sit back there. And I remember we were on the Mass Pike. And there are a lot of rest stops on the Mass Pike. So we had pulled off to a rest stop. It was a McDonald's, I remember. It was a big deal to go to a McDonald's and get a Happy Meal when you're little, right? And so we went to the McDonald's. And as we were pulling out of the McDonald's, I remember waving to my sister who had been left behind.

Speaker 2:
[34:20] It's not being that helpful.

Speaker 1:
[34:22] Oh, whoops. Bye. Like, oh well.

Speaker 2:
[34:26] So you didn't call it out?

Speaker 1:
[34:28] I think I was confused about it.

Speaker 2:
[34:30] Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 1:
[34:31] You know, like, wait, is that her? And why are we driving already? And I don't know. Just getting, I'm sure there were cousins in the car. It was probably, as I think about it, like, we might have been going, we were probably going to, like, a softball tournament with a bunch of kids in the car or something. And I just remember the only reason we even knew we left her there is because I was facing backwards and could see her, you know, like, waving, like, running after us, like, coming out. And I remember we used to, when you went into the rest stop, you know, they always had those, the pinball machines and, like, the claw, you know, and we would just sit at that claw and, like, watch people try and do it and never really putting me money into it. We would always beg to do it and could we get candy and all the things that kids do at those places. And I'm sure that my sister was just, like, hanging out looking at the claw when everybody got in the car and drove off. So we had to, like, do the thing where you go to the next, my mother in a full panic for the next 25 minutes of, like, driving around, go to the next exit, get back on, get back off, come go to the next exit, get back on, go back, you know, to get my sister, who was fine and was there and was not a big deal. But, you know, those 25 minutes.

Speaker 2:
[35:46] But thank God, I would imagine if your sister had not seen you way better. Like, she probably had faith that, like, all right.

Speaker 1:
[35:52] They're coming back.

Speaker 2:
[35:53] They'll be back. Liz is on this.

Speaker 1:
[35:55] But also, where is she gonna, I mean, she's not gonna get in a car with a stranger. Lord knows we knew enough not to do that.

Speaker 2:
[36:00] Yeah. Yeah. Mass Pike, going north, please. We gotta catch that car. See the girl in the wagon? That's the wagon.

Speaker 1:
[36:08] So, yeah, that one. And then we took a trip on the way to Chicago once via Canada. So we went on the Canadian. It was an amazing trip in Canada. But my father is no longer welcome in Canada and hasn't been for 30 years.

Speaker 2:
[36:24] What went wrong with your dad? This is Mark Mitchell. Mark Mitchell.

Speaker 1:
[36:30] Bless him. Mark got into a mini car accident that he absolutely claims and is probably true. We got rear-ended. And I find in a rear-ending situation, it's usually the person that hits you that is-

Speaker 2:
[36:44] Famously.

Speaker 1:
[36:45] Right?

Speaker 2:
[36:45] Yeah, famously.

Speaker 1:
[36:46] Aren't they supposed to be the person?

Speaker 2:
[36:48] That's what my dad would always say. If you hit somebody from behind, it's your fault. No questions asked.

Speaker 1:
[36:52] Yes, like no questions asked. Anyway, so I remember getting rear-ended. I remember the car. We were meant to go to a... We were in Toronto. We were going to the Toronto Blue Jays game that night, the baseball game. And I had never been to Toronto, but now I know the city fairly well. And I know exactly kind of where we were down by the marina, on the waterfront, when this accident happened, this car accident happened. And my dad ended up getting a ticket for something. I don't know what. Maybe he was making a left or you weren't allowed to or something. And that's why he got, I don't know exactly what happened. Cause again, I was facing backwards. Yeah, of course. I just saw the guy hit us. We were all fine.

Speaker 2:
[37:30] Oh, you saw the accident.

Speaker 1:
[37:31] I saw it all happen. We were all sitting there. And so my dad gets into this whole tizzy with the police there. And long story short, it was a ticket he never paid. He was like, just could not, just did not believe he owed any money to Canada and was never going to pay this ticket. And I was like, dad, you know, like, you really can't go to Canada now. I mean, he's like, yeah, I believe at one point, he's like, there might be a warrant out for this. Like I definitely owe Canada something. And I'm like, okay, well, maybe, maybe we're not going to Canada.

Speaker 2:
[38:08] A lot of actors obviously work there now. And it's probably very good that you're at Banks.

Speaker 1:
[38:12] He's never gone back to Canada that I know of.

Speaker 2:
[38:14] Do you, so you though had the vantage point being in the way back. Do you feel like what you saw, your dad was at fault?

Speaker 1:
[38:21] I really don't know. I just know that the guy hit us and then was like really mad about it.

Speaker 2:
[38:25] Got it.

Speaker 1:
[38:26] The things I remember from that trip, that trip was sort of epics. We didn't, we did a lot of like, like I said, car rides. This one, so many things went sideways. We went to Niagara Falls, which is incredible and I recommend. I don't think enough, I think people are sleeping on Niagara Falls these days, to be honest.

Speaker 2:
[38:43] Yeah, it comes up a lot on the pod and everyone's always pro, I will say.

Speaker 1:
[38:48] It's a wonder of the world. Yeah. That made of the mist.

Speaker 2:
[38:53] Made of the mist, people say Canada side.

Speaker 1:
[38:56] Yeah, yeah, you gotta go to the Canada side, of course. The American side is, it's all just capitalism writ large. They're just trying to sell you stuff. But man, that, we did Niagara Falls, we did the bed with the, we put the money in and it jiggles, like we did the jiggle bed.

Speaker 2:
[39:12] Yeah. Oh yeah. Magic fingers or whatever.

Speaker 1:
[39:15] I just thought it was for kids. Now that I'm older, I realize what the jiggle bed is really for.

Speaker 2:
[39:20] Although also as I'm older, I don't know if that would make it better.

Speaker 1:
[39:24] No, I agree. I agree. For the lady.

Speaker 2:
[39:28] Oh, interesting. Okay. I was looking at it through the wrong, through the male gaze, once again, my problem.

Speaker 1:
[39:33] Yeah, that's right. I'm going to put it into the female gaze. I think it's not bad. So the jiggle bed, I remember, but the thing was my brother was born at this point, and he was little, and he, again, the AC barely working in this vehicle. We have all the windows down, we're driving around, and my brother, right before we went through the checkpoint, the border checkpoint into Canada, threw his bottle out the window, just out the window, and my mom, I remember thinking, she was basically like, I only brought like two or three bottles. So she's like, I gotta get out, get the bottle. And so we pull up to the checkpoint, and my mom's hiking back to try and find this bottle in the road, which I believe she came back empty handed, and someone yelled at her to get back in the car. She gets back in the car, my brother has the last bottles, whatever, he thinks it's the funniest thing in the world that he threw his bottle out the window. Then gets a pacifier, immediately throws that out the window. That's gone. It was just one of these really fun trips. Also, my dad, this is disgusting, and his family lore that was happening all the time. My dad has post-nasal drip, and which I have inherited. But he made a big loogie, spit it out the window on the highway, it came back in the back window and slapped my sister on the face. Oh my gosh. The loogie out the window, boom, right back in the window. That happened on that trip. The bottle out the window on that trip, the car accident in Toronto on that trip, the jiggle bed on that trip, the maid of the mist on that trip. Like we really loved, we got to see the Toronto Blue Jays. It was a really epically fun trip and we also went to, in the St. Lawrence River, Thousand Islands, which I also highly recommend. Nobody, I feel like I don't know anyone who goes here. Thousand Islands are all these islands in the St. Lawrence River, which is the border between the United States and Canada up there off of Lake Erie. And you can visit little islands there where half the islands in America and half is in Canada. So they have flags on both, like a house will be there and it will have flags for both countries. And it's, and there's like, there's a giant castle there that's like the Hearst Castle of this area that we got to tour. And I just remember thinking this was like the most, the coolest notion of like, you're in, are you American or are you Canadian? I just thought it was the coolest thing and you take a boat trip through all these islands, the Thousand Islands. Anyway, I highly recommend, it's really magical place. Yeah, in the St. Lawrence River.

Speaker 2:
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Speaker 3:
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Speaker 2:
[46:31] K-pop demon hunters, Saja Boys' breakfast meal and Huntrix meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans.

Speaker 1:
[46:38] What do you say to that, Rumi?

Speaker 3:
[46:40] It's not a battle. So glad the Saja Boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.

Speaker 2:
[46:45] It is an honor to share. No, it's our honor.

Speaker 3:
[46:49] It is our larger honor. No, really, stop.

Speaker 1:
[46:52] You can really feel the respect in this battle.

Speaker 2:
[46:56] Pick a meal to pick a side.

Speaker 1:
[46:58] Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.

Speaker 3:
[46:59] And participate in McDonald's while supplies last.

Speaker 2:
[47:04] Did you have a, were your siblings like a four? I mean, obviously, your brother is so much younger. With the three girls, were you a threesome? Were you a trio or did you guys kind of pair off?

Speaker 1:
[47:15] My sister, Sarah and I are Irish twins basically. We're 13 months apart.

Speaker 2:
[47:19] Got it.

Speaker 1:
[47:20] And then my little sister is five years younger, and then my brother 11 years younger. So we were kind of in, like my sister Sarah and I were like basically, you know, raised nearly like twins. So like did everything together, dressed the same at the holiday, you know, always wearing the same outfits, did the dance classes, the tap dance, you know, recitals together and stuff, played softball together, et cetera.

Speaker 2:
[47:47] Would your younger sister say, if she could say it in secrecy that you guys were good older sisters and bad older sisters?

Speaker 1:
[47:56] Well, we're really close now. So my hope is that she would say we were good older sisters. I mean, we're a very, very tight family now, but I'm gonna be honest with you, I barely remember her existence. I would say, you know, that time when you're like 12 to 18, when you just become so self-involved and so like about your friends and like you're never really home and you're like, you leave home at seven in the morning or like you're doing your sports and your activities. And I did the play and like, it's like I came home like 10 o'clock at night. Like I have no idea. I don't know who her friends were. Right.

Speaker 2:
[48:31] I don't know much about 12 year old girls, but I know the least interesting thing to them is a seven year old girl.

Speaker 1:
[48:36] The least interesting thing in the world is a seven year old girl.

Speaker 2:
[48:41] That's so funny though, that life where, you know, and again, your kids, it's probably already happening for, mine are a little bit younger, but like, right? They just have their own lives and you just don't see them.

Speaker 1:
[48:52] I say, we just, we, you know, we had a nanny forever. I'm a working mother. I build a village. So I have great help in my life. And I recently, we transitioned to what we now call just like the family assistant. Because I'm like, oh, I just live in a house with four very busy people, all of whose schedules need to be coordinated.

Speaker 2:
[49:12] Right.

Speaker 1:
[49:12] My kids tell me nothing about what they're doing, right? Like, I'll be like, OK, so we're, and I'm very, I need it to be very organized. Am I, on the daily, I'm like, so you're picking them up at four. And it's like, no, he texted me, he's coming home at seven. And I'm like, wait, what's happening? What do you mean? Every day, it's just like, oh, actually, he's at this other kid's house. I don't know where he is. I don't, I never know where my kids, what's happening. They tell me.

Speaker 2:
[49:39] In LA, it's all, I mean, it's all cars.

Speaker 1:
[49:42] It's all cars. It's all about the pick up and the drop off. My kids don't drive yet, and so somebody has to coordinate to get them home at some point. I've actually recently started really letting it go. I don't know, they're almost six feet tall. Nobody is messing with them. If they had to walk four miles, they could. Do you know what I mean? They know where we live. They'll figure it out. They'll get home. I've become more accepting of just like, I don't know, that's how I was. Like you just got home.

Speaker 2:
[50:17] Yeah. Are you boys close?

Speaker 1:
[50:20] Yes, they are. They're really close. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[50:22] Must be the best feeling in the world.

Speaker 1:
[50:23] It is. They're only 18 and a half months apart. But also, we traveled so much for work. So I would bring, it's like we went and lived in Germany. We went and lived in Ireland. We've lived, so they had to be each other's playmates for so long. They were each other's like best bud. And then the pandemic, what's the whole thing? I hope, do you remember that? Guys, we were locked in our houses.

Speaker 2:
[50:46] Dude, yeah. It's crazy, I have like two soft pandemic jokes, like when I do stand up, just about like masks.

Speaker 1:
[50:55] Right.

Speaker 2:
[50:55] And it's crazy. You really feel the audience be like, oh, right. Like it's the, like the collective memory loss, which I feel like is part of the coping.

Speaker 1:
[51:07] 100% is our trauma response. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[51:10] Which is like-

Speaker 1:
[51:10] A million people died.

Speaker 2:
[51:12] A million people died. It was a major 18 month disruption. We're just like, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[51:19] We're like, oh, yeah. Isn't that crazy?

Speaker 2:
[51:21] We did play hearts once, Elizabeth.

Speaker 1:
[51:24] That's right, we did.

Speaker 2:
[51:25] Mid pandemic. We played hearts.

Speaker 1:
[51:26] We played hearts in the pandemic.

Speaker 2:
[51:27] We crossed paths in our lives, but then like Liz Kokowsky was like, hey, you play hearts. I'm getting on a Zoom to play hearts with- Oh, you played Zoom hearts. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[51:39] Well, there's a website that you can play hearts on. So my family plays pitch. And so I was playing pitch a lot. And hearts is also on the same site that you can log on to and you can play with people all over.

Speaker 2:
[51:52] Is pitch a four person game?

Speaker 1:
[51:53] Yeah, it's a four person trick taking game like hearts.

Speaker 2:
[51:57] And was pitch like a family game when you were a kid?

Speaker 1:
[52:00] Yes, and it's still very much a family game.

Speaker 2:
[52:02] And so was that your parents and you and your Irish twin, were the pitch teams?

Speaker 1:
[52:08] Yes, my dad and I play against my mom and my sister. And by the way, played not that long. My parents are divorced, but we played pitch together last summer, I want to say. And it was one of the greatest. It was like, it was so much fun because my parents are so competitive. They're also insanely good card players and they've like handed it down to us. I'm a very good competitive card player, but I'm not as good as my parents, even to this day. And they were like just digging at each other, we were dying laughing. I mean, we were having the best time and it was like I was a kid again.

Speaker 2:
[52:54] How often are they together physically in the same space?

Speaker 1:
[52:57] They're friendly, so like they'll do it. When we're all there with the grandkids and stuff, they'll get together. It's not a big deal.

Speaker 2:
[53:03] That's so great that they don't have to sacrifice any of that.

Speaker 1:
[53:06] No, it's not a big deal.

Speaker 2:
[53:07] We were a big hearts family and I will say like one of the only downside I can think of the fact that I have three kids is it's gonna be a problem with hearts.

Speaker 1:
[53:16] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[53:17] But we have it's very sad, which is at the end of every hand, our mom forgets all the rules to hearts.

Speaker 1:
[53:25] What?

Speaker 2:
[53:27] So it's a little bit, it slows it down a little bit because we have to do it. Seth is very, very critical because the teams are me and my father versus Seth and my mother. But for only the last 35 years.

Speaker 1:
[53:40] Yeah, exactly. But my son made a shoot the moon joke like yesterday and I don't even know what it was in response to but I'm like, I like that he had that reference.

Speaker 2:
[53:51] So are they, and do you guys play?

Speaker 1:
[53:54] Yes, we play, the four of us play. It's a nice, nice round number. We, I've literally just packed it. We're going on spring break and I just packed the cards. And like, we have a little pad of paper where we keep the score going.

Speaker 2:
[54:05] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[54:06] Yeah. We haven't quite shaken out the teams. It's usually me and my oldest and my husband and my youngest. But we'll mix it up a little bit.

Speaker 2:
[54:15] So we should have mixed it up, but then ultimately we're creatures of habits. I mean, we sat at the same, we had a little, when the first time my wife, Alexi saw the table we ate at in the kitchen, she was like, oh, you guys did not build your life for visitors.

Speaker 1:
[54:31] It's like a five-top.

Speaker 2:
[54:32] The tiniest little table in the kitchen we all ate at. I'm like, I don't even know where you'd get another chair from. Yeah. We were like, oh. Yeah. It's like, where do I sit? I'm like, I don't think you do.

Speaker 1:
[54:44] Oh, no.

Speaker 2:
[54:45] I think there's a later seating for your breakfast.

Speaker 1:
[54:48] I have multiple card tables in my home because we play a lot of cribbage. We're big game families. We play a lot of cards, a lot of cribbage. I have been teaching everyone in my life mahjong. I taught Liz Kukowsky mahjong recently. I'm a huge mahjong. My mother plays, my sisters play.

Speaker 2:
[55:13] Are you part of the mahjong boom? Is this something you were doing 10 years ago? Because it feels like this is the last year and a half I'm hearing about mahjong.

Speaker 1:
[55:20] I am a bit part of the boom. I would say I'm an early to the boom.

Speaker 2:
[55:24] Yeah, gotcha.

Speaker 1:
[55:24] I've been playing now for a little over three years. So my first card was the early 2023 card. That's how you know how long you're playing. We just got the 2026 card.

Speaker 2:
[55:34] Can I ask, do you know what the boom was? Because I remember the poker boom was because of like Bravo Celebrity Poker, you know, or whatever, or the, or the, the pook. I shouldn't say the poker boom was because they figured out that camera and then it was on.

Speaker 1:
[55:47] That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[55:48] What was Mahjong?

Speaker 1:
[55:49] I don't really know. I, I, my friend grew up playing it and had wanted to teach us for so long, constantly talking about, and she, I play hearts with her. I had a card game with her every Tuesday night for 10 years. So for all this time I've known her, she's been like, let's learn Mahjong and it's intimidating to learn. I won't deny that. There's a barrier to entry when it comes to Mahjong. And she finally was like, I'm just going to bring a teacher over, like let's get a group together and let's do it. And so she brought a teacher. I think she was playing more in the pandemic. I think the pandemic got a lot of people playing these kinds of games. So bringing it back to that wonderful time, I think was part of the kickoff, the boom. But yeah, I don't know. So yeah, we started playing a few years ago, and now I have a day group and a night group that I play with.

Speaker 2:
[56:48] That's fantastic.

Speaker 1:
[56:49] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[56:50] Are there in your family when you're playing, are there ever like little fights? I know your parents might take jabs at each other, but do people get upset?

Speaker 1:
[57:00] No. It's all good-natured. That's good. The other thing is like my parents very rarely make mistakes in cards, right? So that's the other thing, like they're playing, if there's like the best card to play at any given time, they know what they're playing it. Like they're not messing up, right? So it's usually like at one point my mom lives in a like assisted living, but like, you know, kind of fabulous place. And so she's over playing cards with us and she's like, gosh, I've been playing with like the memory care people, you know, I haven't been playing that often. And my dad literally goes, oh, and they beat you too. So it's like jokes like that, you know, like they're fun jabs.

Speaker 2:
[57:50] We have a lot of fun when we play cards. We don't like, you know, beat up on anybody for bad play. But we are also, which I guarantee, you are Elizabeth Banks, nay, Liz Mitchell. You are probably, you adhere to the rules of every game.

Speaker 1:
[58:06] I do.

Speaker 2:
[58:07] My wife's family, the way they play games, is just like the loosest adherence to the rules. And it has been an issue because we're not together that much, both families. But like at Thanksgiving's, it's like, let's play like a board game. You cannot believe. And again, when we try to, when we just try to enforce it gently, it is taken as a personal attack. I feel like Josh, I feel like they're still stung by like, what's the spy game? Codenames.

Speaker 1:
[58:41] Codenames. Love a code name.

Speaker 2:
[58:42] Great game. And there's a lot of like, like they do that sort of thing.

Speaker 1:
[58:46] Right, right, right. Shut the fuck up. No. One word. One word? One word.

Speaker 2:
[58:51] Yeah. Them's the rules.

Speaker 1:
[58:53] Them's the rules.

Speaker 2:
[58:54] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[58:54] I got banned from playing Settlers of the Catan a while ago.

Speaker 2:
[58:58] Gotcha.

Speaker 1:
[58:59] Because I got really into the negotiating part of it with a friend of mine who's also like a hardcore negotiator, my friend Joe. And essentially all this, my husband and her and the wife, my friend were like, we shouldn't, you two can't play this together anymore. Like it's too intense for the rest of us. Like, you know, I'd be like, I need that wheat and you don't need it. And I'm giving you a break. Like, what do you mean? I mean, we would go 20 minutes of negotiating before someone would like.

Speaker 2:
[59:30] I love, by the way, the idea that you're going on spring break and you're packing cards because that, you know, it's interesting. I kind of forget what a big part that was of our family vacations, Josh, was like to have dinner maybe at some like, you know, Florida hotel and then go back to a hotel room and just play cards. And that made us very happy.

Speaker 1:
[59:51] Yeah. We play, my husband and I played gin rummy before, like we'll go to cocktails. It's our favorite thing to do. It's like go to the bar, have a cocktail, play gin, wait for the table, get seated, dinner, hang, and then that's our night. We love it.

Speaker 2:
[60:08] I feel like I saw that in, my wife and I were in Ireland last year for like a week before we went to this wedding. But I would see these Irish families in pubs with decks of cards, like there would be the traditional music going on, but there was a lot more card playing out in public. And I just think it's great.

Speaker 1:
[60:26] Do you know what's funny though, because I did it in Ireland a lot. We were in London recently in a hotel. We were in the fabulous bar, dressed up. I'm sure I had done like Scram Norton or something. All dressed up, I'm like, I can't wait. I'm gonna have a martini and we're gonna play gin. And the waiter came over and said, you can't play cards in here. And we were like, what are you talking about? And he's like, no, it's a weird, it's an old gambling law. Like we don't know, we can't allow gambling. And so, and we're like, well, it's just the two of us. We're just playing gin. And he's like, no, we cannot have cards on the table here. And we were shocked. It was the only time in my life I've been told we can't play cards in the restaurant. Old gambling law.

Speaker 2:
[61:09] We were in Ireland with a couple of our old friends from Amstam and our parents playing, what was, what's the other one? The group game, Josh. The crew. The crew, fantastic family game. The crew is a cooperative trick-taking game. There are two versions of it. There's a space one and an underwater one. The underwater one is maybe fix some things that were, it's built on the first one, but it's a great game.

Speaker 1:
[61:33] I love getting a new game.

Speaker 2:
[61:35] You're going to love it. It's such a fun four-person game. I think you can play with six too, maybe? I think you could play with five. But it was just so fun. But there is this thing where you have to, when you're with a bunch of people, when you're on a trip playing cards, it's also like you need to be with people who understand, so we'll chat in between hands.

Speaker 1:
[61:54] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:
[61:56] But we can't, I can't play hearts where I'm ostensibly card trick counting. And that's also a problem with my mom.

Speaker 1:
[62:06] With crew and your mom, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[62:07] Well, mom, well, she has so many questions. She has to ask questions all the time, so yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[62:13] I'm a big card counter too. I mean, that's how you win at cards. You have to know what's already out.

Speaker 2:
[62:19] Yeah. Did you ever get all Mitchells together? Are there ever any big family reunions?

Speaker 1:
[62:27] Guys, we have so many reunions. It's really, there's one coming up in Texas that I probably won't be able to go to. It's going to be one of the first ones I've missed. We do it every two to three years. We were doing it every three years and then we've kind of upped it to two because the older generation is getting up there and we like getting together as much as we can while they're all still here. That's my dad's side. So we have a Mitchell family reunion and then I have a Howard family reunion on my mom's side every summer on Cape Cod. Every summer on Cape Cod.

Speaker 2:
[63:02] Whereabouts in Cape Cod are you guys?

Speaker 1:
[63:04] Hyannis is where my aunt is and where we would always go to the little cottage every summer based in Hyannis. Yeah, right around the corner from the ferries.

Speaker 2:
[63:15] Did you, when you got married, was it in New England?

Speaker 1:
[63:18] I got married in LA in an attempt to have less family come because I was paying for the wedding myself and they all came. If you put out a sign that says free liquor and a party, they're all showing up, it turns out. It also is like people went to Disneyland, I remember. You know, it's like people really made like a whole trip out of it, which was unexpected. My wedding was 188 people and I want to say 120 was my family. Like my husband's friends and family were much like maybe a quarter or a third.

Speaker 2:
[63:54] Do you think based on that, have you folded your husband, has your husband Max folded more into your family than obviously the other way around?

Speaker 1:
[64:01] Well, his family is just much smaller and they're more spread out and so my family is just like so big. I mean, I think he has cousins I've never met, for instance, and I have cousins he can't name when he sees them.

Speaker 2:
[64:19] I think there's cousins of ours I haven't seen in years. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1:
[64:24] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[64:25] And Alexi has never met them.

Speaker 1:
[64:27] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[64:27] And likely never will.

Speaker 1:
[64:29] I have, he has cousins I've never met, so and never will, whatever. We'll see.

Speaker 2:
[64:34] And what goes down at either of these family reunions, if you're be at the Cape or the Mitchell ones, is there a big group activity? Is it a barbecue kind of a thing?

Speaker 1:
[64:46] Yeah. There's always, well, the first thing is there's, I will say technology has made family reunion planning so much easier and better these days. It is kind of wild to just send out like a Google link to everybody, just be like, what's your t-shirt size? And like, you know, so because it's always about, you got to have that group photo with everybody wearing the same shirt, you know, no matter what. There's always a logo. We're always like making the logos nowadays. How it works in my dad's family is our generation, all the cousins, we basically each of the eight, we call them the grade eight, they each family has to plan it, right, in wherever they want to do it. So it goes through the family. And so when it was my siblings, me and my siblings turn to host, we hosted it in Utah. We did. We had a logo. We got to get cups. You got to get beer koozies. You got to get, you know, all the merch for the reunion. And it's usually like we try and keep it cost effective for everybody, want everybody to come and have fun. So it's a lot of like state parks and like get a pavilion in the state park and put on, you know, a bring your own. Everybody's got their coolers and their whatever. And we're like buying, you know, frozen burgers at Costco and doing that. Okay, we keep it like really just like very relaxed. And then there's usually a big activity. So in Utah, we did a giant river float one day, which was just so fun. I mean, my 80 year old aunt was just like out in a tube. Like my dad was just tubing down a river in his 70s, you know, it was pretty fun. It was really wild.

Speaker 2:
[66:31] Did your boys get excited about a giant Mitchell family?

Speaker 1:
[66:35] They do. I think there's enough kids like my generation has so many kids now that they all know, you know, it's really fun. I mean, I just was back in Massachusetts. I'm an investor in the Boston Legacy NWSL team.

Speaker 2:
[66:49] Oh, fantastic.

Speaker 1:
[66:49] The women's soccer team that's just starting. We literally just had our home opener at Gillette Stadium. And I got a suite and I had like 46 people come and I'm related to all of them. Do you know what I mean? Like the whole, if there's a chance to get together, like we do it. We really try to take it. We really all love hanging out with each other. It's really fun. We grew up together.

Speaker 2:
[67:10] You have, I mean, that's a credit to you for delivering a pretty cool place to hang out.

Speaker 1:
[67:15] It was a cool, it was a fun, it was a fun day. Yeah. Still just burgers, still just maybe Costco burgers, but it was a great time.

Speaker 2:
[67:22] This is the inaugural season for this team?

Speaker 1:
[67:25] Inaugural season, yes. They and Denver are the two new expansion teams in the NWSL.

Speaker 2:
[67:31] That's fantastic. How many teams are there in the NWSL?

Speaker 1:
[67:34] Now there are 16 or 17 and there are about to be two more.

Speaker 2:
[67:39] That's fantastic.

Speaker 1:
[67:40] It's really cool. And I think it's... Boston, I think, is really primed currently to welcome women's sports. I mean, obviously, it's such a storied title town. I mean, we have these incredible teams and they've won a lot of championships. And the places where they play, Fenway and the Garden, these are storied places. And I feel like the soccer team, there's no other women's team, professional women's team. We have women's professional hockey that I think the Olympics just like really helped put on the map, which is going to be incredible. And that's going to grow too. But in terms of growth, the NWSL is doing an amazing job. And I think Boston is really primed to welcome them. And we're building a stadium simply for the team, White Stadium down in Franklin Park, which is sort of Jamaica Plain. By the way, where my great grandparents grew up, which is really cool. So I'm excited for that as well. It's at the end of the Greenway in Boston.

Speaker 2:
[68:46] Amazing. I'm very excited about your show with Matthew.

Speaker 1:
[68:49] Yes, The Miniature Wife coming on Peacock, April 9th.

Speaker 2:
[68:53] April 9th, very excited. I'm very excited when Peacock makes shows.

Speaker 1:
[68:56] Peacock's making shows.

Speaker 2:
[68:58] It's really exciting.

Speaker 1:
[68:59] People just watched The Burbs was just out, and Mini Wife is coming. I mean, they're really, they're doing it. Yeah, I agree. Really exciting.

Speaker 2:
[69:08] We also had, we just had Samara Weaving on the show.

Speaker 1:
[69:11] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[69:12] And her husband just, I just wanted to use her husband as a reason to shout out Cocaine Bear one more time.

Speaker 1:
[69:17] Yes, her husband Jimmy, Samara Weaving's husband Jimmy, wrote Cocaine Bear, which I love talking about.

Speaker 2:
[69:24] I mean, it does, I mean, I feel like while we're talking about Family Trips, it does not encourage camping.

Speaker 1:
[69:29] It's not particularly, well, look, I, that was a really particular case.

Speaker 2:
[69:35] Yeah, what are the chances? Yeah, what are the circumstances? Yeah, a big bunch of cocaine is going to fall out in the woods?

Speaker 1:
[69:42] Yeah, it's unlikely, it's unlikely.

Speaker 2:
[69:45] But I also just wanted to say, you've had such a, it's such a cool career to follow, and the things you do are, I mean, and then to find out you're also, you have your hands on an inaugural Boston women's soccer team, of course, makes perfect sense based on everything else you've done.

Speaker 1:
[70:00] I really love Massachusetts, like I said, it's my roots and I really wanted to build a legacy there. I mean, I like enjoy living in California, but again, I have no family here, like my husband and I have really had to like build the whole village here, and it's lovely. But I think people forget too when you're an actor in LA, you rarely work here unless you're on a television show that shoots here, which is rarer and rarer these days. You spend half your life like out and about. At one point, my son had lived more time in Louisiana than anywhere else in the world. He was basically a citizen of Louisiana. So we made the Pitch Perfect movies there, and that's where he was. Basically, I had him on my hip, like the first movies, and then was doing Hunger Games and making those in North Carolina and Atlanta. And so, I mean, we were never really here. So it's interesting when people are like, aren't you from there? I'm like, well, my kids are from here, but I'm not from here.

Speaker 2:
[71:04] I've been talking to some Massachusetts people lately who are still pretty mad about you changing your name, but they do feel like you're slowly working your way back.

Speaker 1:
[71:11] Thank you.

Speaker 2:
[71:12] They feel like this, Sokka. They said that you're like 40% back.

Speaker 1:
[71:14] Thank you. I'm trying to make up for it. If the Boston Globe will print anything nice about me, that will go a long way towards my reputation.

Speaker 2:
[71:22] Means the most to my dad. The amount he sends me, if the Globe says something nice, if Matthew Gilbert says something nice, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[71:30] Yeah, that's it. Are you in the Globe?

Speaker 2:
[71:34] Before we let you go though, you have to answer Josh's speed round questions.

Speaker 1:
[71:37] Oh gosh. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[71:39] Okay. There we go. You'll be fine.

Speaker 1:
[71:41] You'll do great.

Speaker 2:
[71:41] You can nail them. You can only pick one of these. Is your ideal vacation relaxing, adventurous or educational?

Speaker 1:
[71:48] Relaxing, but I'm in a fight about this with my husband currently, because I just want to go to beaches and he literally just put a mandate down, no more beaches.

Speaker 2:
[71:57] Oh my God.

Speaker 1:
[71:57] He because he's worried that our kids are getting too, we're not going to have them much longer, which he's right about and we've not done the cities of Europe. We've not done home, you know what I mean? He's like, we got to go take them to places where they learn educational stuff, like take them to museums and I'm like, I just want to do nothing, so lie around, but no.

Speaker 2:
[72:20] His instincts are right, on paper, but I just don't think your kids are going to learn anything.

Speaker 1:
[72:27] Okay. I'm not going to tell him that you sided with him.

Speaker 2:
[72:30] No, no, I didn't. I think it sounds good and then your kids are like, I don't want to be a-

Speaker 1:
[72:34] Yeah, they don't want to walk around all day and say anything.

Speaker 2:
[72:36] That's what college is for. I'm confident there are some hotels in Rome that have beautiful pools, and you could just hang there and be like, go show them the stuff you want them to see. I'll be here. I'm going to say, I don't know if they do. I don't think European cities have good pools. Well, I'm saying there's one.

Speaker 1:
[72:59] I bet there's a couple. I'm going to seek it out, is the point.

Speaker 2:
[73:03] But I'll tell you this, it ain't heated. And there's three weird guys in it right now. And they're going to be in it later.

Speaker 1:
[73:09] Banana hammocks, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[73:11] Yeah, exactly. What is your favorite means of transportation?

Speaker 1:
[73:18] My favorite means of transportation is gross. I obviously love any private jet I can get my hands on. And that is rare, rare, rare. So I would say the train. I'm dying to go on the Orient Express. Yeah, I really want to do it.

Speaker 2:
[73:35] If you could take a vacation with any family, alive or dead, real or fictional, other than your own family, what family would you like to take a vacation with?

Speaker 1:
[73:44] I shot a film once on a boat, on a beautiful yacht off of Malta. And the guest book had the McCartneys in it, the hall, and the whole family. And to this day, I was like, man, that would have been a really nice way to spend a week of my life.

Speaker 2:
[74:01] I think they're a good vibe to travel with.

Speaker 1:
[74:02] That would have been a fun, fun vibe. So probably that. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[74:06] If you had to be stranded on a desert island with one member of your family, who would it be?

Speaker 1:
[74:11] My dog Saucer.

Speaker 2:
[74:13] Great. What kind of dog? No hesitation.

Speaker 1:
[74:18] Saucer is a schnoodle. But he's got just enough terrier hound in him, I think, that he would catch me some food, right?

Speaker 2:
[74:27] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[74:27] I think he would help me get fed and he would just be, I think, he would be a help.

Speaker 2:
[74:34] I like that you're trying to frame this as anything other than you like him the most.

Speaker 1:
[74:38] I just, it's a survival thing.

Speaker 2:
[74:41] It's not about anything but survival, the rest of my family.

Speaker 1:
[74:44] No, he'll just help me survive. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[74:47] What is your dream destination for a family vacation?

Speaker 1:
[74:50] I really want to go on safari. I've never been on safari. I really want to go safari in Africa big time.

Speaker 2:
[74:58] You are from Pittsfield, Massachusetts. If you had to get more families to come visit Pittsfield, what would you tell them about the town?

Speaker 1:
[75:04] Pittsfield, I would say tons of arts organizations in Pittsfield. There's so much to do and see in terms of Tanglewood and Jacob's Pillow and Berkshire Theatre Festival. The summer is glorious there. I really love being in there in the summer. My kids go to camp back east in the Berkshires, and it's because in the summer, it's like you're at camp. You can kayak and it's just so lovely. That's the cell.

Speaker 2:
[75:32] Then Seth has our final questions. Elizabeth, have you been to the Grand Canyon?

Speaker 1:
[75:37] I have.

Speaker 2:
[75:38] Was it worth it?

Speaker 1:
[75:39] Yes. It's so worth it.

Speaker 2:
[75:42] But given the choice, if you were talking to somebody and they're like, I can either go to Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon, where should I go?

Speaker 1:
[75:48] Niagara Falls, I think.

Speaker 2:
[75:49] Thank you. Because it's just you get it, but you can do it in two hours.

Speaker 1:
[75:54] The Grand Canyon, I also think about, you got to go to Zion and you got to go to Archie. There's so many. There's almost two. You need a whole week. You need to go to all. There's so many places to go. And there's some that I haven't been to and some that I have. And also then you've got Yellowstone and Yosemite.

Speaker 2:
[76:13] Hey, I'm sold. I'll see you in Niagara Falls.

Speaker 1:
[76:16] So Niagara Falls, you're like, you did it. You can do it in a couple of hours. You go in the maid of the mist and you're like, your brain is blown out of your head.

Speaker 2:
[76:24] Perfect. This has been delightful. So nice to see you. Love to you and your family.

Speaker 1:
[76:29] Thanks guys. It's so fun to see you guys too. And anytime you want to play Online Hearts, you know where I am.

Speaker 2:
[76:36] Yeah. And check out the crew. Also Skull. I don't know if you've played Skull. Skull is my new favorite game that's come out of nowhere.

Speaker 1:
[76:44] Okay, Skull. I'm into it. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[76:46] All right. Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[76:47] Bye guys.

Speaker 2:
[76:48] Bye. Bye.

Speaker 1:
[76:49] Bye!