Miley Cyrus has long been known for erratic behavior, pulling reckless and eccentric stunts like choosing to be a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience. On the September 2 episode of Rogan’s interview podcast, which Cyrus recorded before the VMAs, she spoke about mental health, her 22 pets, and growing up both extremely famous and extremely country. When describing why she likes to take “SPECT scans” of her brain, Cyrus mentioned, “I had a head injury when I was, you know, 2 years old.” When Rogan asks what happened, Cyrus talks about how Billy Ray Cyrus had her ride with him on a dirt bike, leading to the injury:
It’s bad. My dad had me — this is really bad, but he can’t go to jail, I don’t think, because it’s a long enough time away. He had me in a baby backpack and I was on a dirt bike with my dad. And he was riding, and a tree had fallen, and he ducked, I didn’t, and I hit my head on the tree. It was bad. So that’s what’s wrong. Everyone’s asked me that for years.
Cyrus counters this story of achy breaky head trauma with more positive stories of having Billy Ray Cyrus for a dad, including the time he helped her steal chickens from a barn and then their dogs killed them all, or the time he tried to lure a bear onto a hiking trail with catnip, or how for his most recent birthday, she ordered him a custom “five-foot pizza” with her face on the box. Still, she believes that the time he strapped a small child to his back on a dirt bike and slammed that child into a tree probably had some lasting impact, and her therapist Dr. Amen agrees:
“Maybe it knocked me into this identity, or something. He knows that there’s something to that. Dr. Amen, we’ve talked about that a lot. So when I get really overwhelmed … I also have a tendency, when I know something’s really stupid, I just gotta try it, to know that it’s stupid, which makes it stupid, ‘cause I already knew about it. Sometimes I’m like, is it better to know it’s dumb and do it? Or not know it’s dumb and do it? That’s the head injury.”
You can watch the full two-hour interview if you also want to hear Cyrus talk about her fax-based relationship with Dolly Parton and how she rubs a powder called “Monkey Butt” on her bulldog Kate Moss’s unsightly ass twice a day.
