Jonathan Van Ness Says 'Significant Pieces' of Dax Shepard Podcast Were Edited Out

Jonathan Van Ness has started to open up about their tense and triggering discussion with Dax Shepard on a recent episode of his podcast Armchair Expert.

Van Ness went on Keke Palmer’s podcast, Baby, This Is Keke Palmer, where they talked about many issues, including the now infamous podcast episode.

Van Ness and Shepard’s discussion on Armchair Expert back in September started to get heated when Van Ness disagreed that The New York Times is a left-leaning newspaper as it regularly publishes articles and op-eds that are anti-trans.

From there, Shepard told Van Ness that “some people are very uncomfortable about teenagers transitioning,” and said women’s rights could be infringed upon by making trans rights more expansive.

Throughout the podcast, Van Ness told Shepard they “feel like I’m talking to my dad,” and was brought to tears.

Palmer was asking Van Ness about the conversation with Shepard when she said that the discussion “went really left, unfortunately,” to which Van Ness quipped “No, it went real to the Right.”

“I’m grateful that he had the courage to release that episode and I do think that he brought a conversation into more people’s homes than would have been having that conversation would he not,” Van Ness said, although he admitted that what we heard wasn’t the whole conversation.

“If you listen to podcasts, you know what an edit is. And that was an edit,” he told Palmer, adding that “there were some significant pieces of that conversation that were left out that did ultimately have me end up in tears.”

When Palmer asked what triggered Van Ness the most during the discussion he said that “it was realizing that this person who represents so much of opinions in the United States has these types of deep-seated opinions. Just, like, realizing how widespread the misinformation and disinformation is around queer people.”

When Van Ness first shared a promo image for the

Armchair Expert episode, he hinted that he would share more about the conversation.“I don’t quite have words for this yet, but I will someday,” he said in an Instagram Story.