Speaker 1: There's a thing as a comedian I realized where you
Speaker 1: kind of have to just like say stuff randomly when
Speaker 1: you're in comedy, you know what I mean, You have
Speaker 1: to like let your mouth lead. If it occurs to
Speaker 1: you to say something, you just kind of have to
Speaker 1: start saying it and then hope that by the time
Speaker 1: the sentence is over you've come up with a punchline.
Speaker 1: You sort of like, I just need to embrace that.
Speaker 1: And that means that sometimes you end up annoying people.
Speaker 1: If the thing you said wasn't actually funny, then you
Speaker 1: just did say something weird and everyone's like, why did
Speaker 1: you say that? Right? Hello, my name is Adam Conover.
Speaker 1: I'm a comedian and I'm the host of the new
Speaker 1: show The G Word, out now on Netflix. Hello, Hello,
Speaker 1: gentle listeners, and welcome back to another episode of Off
Speaker 1: the Beat with Me Here now your host Brian Baumgartner
Speaker 1: my guest today because a genius, or at least a
Speaker 1: true comedy genius, Mr Adam Conover. Now you may know
Speaker 1: him from shows like Adam Ruins Everything or The G
Speaker 1: Word on Netflix, where he has continued to bring his
Speaker 1: unique brand of comedy, which is basically ruining everything we
Speaker 1: love to the masses. Unlike many in the business, Adam
Speaker 1: he doesn't shy away from the hard topics because at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, he not only wants to
Speaker 1: make us laugh, he wants to make us think. And
Speaker 1: I can safely say that his jokes would have probably
Speaker 1: gone over Kevin Malone's head. But I, Brian Baumgartner, I
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan and I can't wait for you
Speaker 1: to get to know him like well like I do.
Speaker 1: This was such a fun chat. Let's get it going,
Speaker 1: Mr Adam conover, Bubble and squeak. I love it. Bubble
Speaker 1: and squeak, Bubble and squeaker, cooking at every moment, left
Speaker 1: over from the nut befole. What's up, Adam? Hi, Brian,
Speaker 1: how's it going. It's going all right. How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing great. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining me. Now. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you're aware of this or not. I was given an
Speaker 1: opportunity to work with you on your show. Adam ruins everything. No, waituh,
Speaker 1: tell me more and I'll and let's see if it.
Speaker 1: If it jogs something loose, well I will tell you
Speaker 1: I was I did not know your show. Of course
Speaker 1: I had heard of it, I had not watched it,
Speaker 1: and I was asked to do your show. It was
Speaker 1: about the t S. That's what I remember, and it
Speaker 1: made me deep dive into watching your show because I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I gotta find out what this about.
Speaker 1: Ultimately we could not work it out. I don't know
Speaker 1: I was in out of the country or something, but anyway,
Speaker 1: I have been a fan of yours ever since then.
Speaker 1: I don't know who you eventually got to get cast,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure they don't remember either my memory of that.
Speaker 1: So we on Adam Ruins everything. We used to go
Speaker 1: out to special guest stars all the time and try
Speaker 1: to get you know, recognizable, incredible comedic actors such as yourself,
Speaker 1: and let me tell you something, it rarely worked, especially
Speaker 1: because that first that that t S A episode is
Speaker 1: in our first year, so we hadn't aired on True
Speaker 1: TV yet. We had only been on YouTube. So I
Speaker 1: wouldn't blame anybody in Hollywood to say, what is this
Speaker 1: true TV show? I gotta show up at six am
Speaker 1: four and they don't have any trailers. We didn't have
Speaker 1: talent trailers our first year. We were really shoestring, so
Speaker 1: you know, maybe better for you that you didn't make it.
Speaker 1: And know all right, well, I was aware because I
Speaker 1: had done some work in the past with college humor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is obviously where the show started. But before we
Speaker 1: get into all of that, Adam is here with us,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to go back to your childhood a
Speaker 1: little bit and maybe investigate how you came to be
Speaker 1: you and there by your character, which I really want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about. I've I've heard some interviews
Speaker 1: with you describing Adam, so I want to talk about
Speaker 1: that a little bit. But you were grew up in Smithtown,
Speaker 1: New York? Is that right? That is? I think that's
Speaker 1: actually my place of birth. Okay. I grew up in
Speaker 1: a town called uh in two towns Port, jeff Station,
Speaker 1: and then Waiting River on Long Island, Smith Downs, not
Speaker 1: far far, not far away. I think that's just where
Speaker 1: the hospital is. All right, Well, that makes sense. A
Speaker 1: family full of PhD s. It's been said you're the
Speaker 1: only one in your family without a PhD. Is that
Speaker 1: is that right? That is true? My uh dad? This
Speaker 1: is I'm not going to recite a stand up joke.
Speaker 1: My dad's a marine biologists. My mom is a botanist,
Speaker 1: my sister is a nuclear physicist. I'm here talking to
Speaker 1: you right now. Do you think that that intellectual curiosity,
Speaker 1: though that existed clearly in your Do you think that
Speaker 1: that influenced your your comedic style? Absolutely? It did, Absolutely
Speaker 1: it did. I mean in a number of different ways. Um.
Speaker 1: Number one is that growing up, we watched a lot
Speaker 1: of educational television. We watched a ton of PBS and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there was kind of a golden age
Speaker 1: of science on television. And then in the you know,
Speaker 1: late eighties, early nineties two and you had shows like
Speaker 1: Bill Nye's Show. There's a show called Beatman's World. There
Speaker 1: was a whole bunch of great stuff on on PBS
Speaker 1: like three two one, Contact and Square TV. And so
Speaker 1: I loved all those shows. And I didn't actually realize
Speaker 1: until two or three years into making Adam Ruins everything
Speaker 1: that I had kind of reproduced that same format or
Speaker 1: updated it of you know, this very animated host telling
Speaker 1: you things with you know, lots of comedy and lots
Speaker 1: of sound effects and visual effects. Um, And I realized, oh,
Speaker 1: that's why kids gravitated towards my show, like I never
Speaker 1: thought that we'd have a fan base of kids. The
Speaker 1: show was on at ten thirty at night at on Tuesdays,
Speaker 1: but very quickly kids started really watching and falling in
Speaker 1: love with the show, and I realized that has something
Speaker 1: to do with it. But then, yeah, apart from that,
Speaker 1: I was just always trying to live up to the
Speaker 1: family business, you know, learning more about the world and
Speaker 1: communicating it to people. My sister actually went into science communication.
Speaker 1: She's now a science reporter, a physics reporter for Science
Speaker 1: News magazine. So we're kind of in closer lines of
Speaker 1: work than I would have expected, where we're both communicating
Speaker 1: with the public about research and facts and interesting things.
Speaker 1: Right when did you realize that you had an interest
Speaker 1: in performing? Was that early on for you? Oh? Man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. I remember there being some not even school play,
Speaker 1: just some kind of class presentation for some class in
Speaker 1: like sixth grade, and I made up like a funny
Speaker 1: little care stor of like a real estate act agent
Speaker 1: with like a funny miscellaneous European accent for it. I
Speaker 1: don't remember why or what the context was, but and
Speaker 1: I did. I had like a catch phrase, and the
Speaker 1: catch phrase was hi ya hia hia, you want to
Speaker 1: buy a house. I don't remember what what that was
Speaker 1: supposed to mean, Like what the context of this was.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what the context of it was.
Speaker 1: But I remember kids coming up to me in on
Speaker 1: like the playground afterwards asking me to do the line
Speaker 1: that they had seen me do in class. They wanted
Speaker 1: me to do it again. This is my first time
Speaker 1: ever telling this story. It's a very deep memory of mine,
Speaker 1: and I remember really liking that they wanted me to
Speaker 1: do the line, and so, yeah, I did you know,
Speaker 1: I did theater in high school stuff like that. Actually,
Speaker 1: let me back up a second, because I was also
Speaker 1: diagnosed with a d D as a kid, and I
Speaker 1: was a very impulsive, shouting out kind of kid. I
Speaker 1: was always you know, like, you know, messing up in
Speaker 1: social situations and like being disruptive in class, and so
Speaker 1: I was yelled at a lot as a kid and
Speaker 1: so and told to shut up and be quiet, and
Speaker 1: a lot of that went into me too. So I
Speaker 1: did do theater in high school, but then by the
Speaker 1: time I got to college and it kind of been
Speaker 1: beating out of me, and I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I liked performing, like I'm not sure it's
Speaker 1: for me. And then my friends created a sketch comedy
Speaker 1: group and I knew I wanted to join the group.
Speaker 1: I joined and I started writing sketches. But for the
Speaker 1: first year I didn't perform because I was like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not that's not what I do. I'll just be
Speaker 1: behind the scenes and all right stuff, until I finally
Speaker 1: figured out that like I liked, I really loved performing,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, so I'm assuming you're referring to Old English.
Speaker 1: This is the name of the sketch comedy group, correct,
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't get more intellectual sounding than that. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess, except we were named after the malt liquor bran.
Speaker 1: That is true, that is, I mean, that is what
Speaker 1: we like to drink. At Bard College, was was forty
Speaker 1: ounce bottles. It's an expensive school, so you gotta save
Speaker 1: your money where you can. My my image was totally different, like, oh,
Speaker 1: the nerds at Bard College coming up with oh English,
Speaker 1: it sounds like Renfair's exactly what I thought. Um, so
Speaker 1: you started just writing yeah. I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: the other people in the group were also doing improv.
Speaker 1: Like the thing had happened where one of the members
Speaker 1: of the group. You know, in between semesters during the summer,
Speaker 1: had spent a summer in New York City and took
Speaker 1: like two UCB classes and then came back and taught
Speaker 1: the rest of the group. No, no, no, we're not
Speaker 1: doing whose lines anyway style improv anymore. We're doing the Herald.
Speaker 1: We're doing long form improv. And then proceeded to like,
Speaker 1: you know, do the worst long form improv you've ever seen,
Speaker 1: which is a story so many college sketch groups, some
Speaker 1: improv groups, I'm sure, but I didn't join the improv
Speaker 1: side of it because I was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to sort of be out there and
Speaker 1: and you know, et cetera. I had, like a I
Speaker 1: had a fear of working that way. I guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a thing as a comedian. I realized where you
Speaker 1: kind of have to just like say stuff randomly when
Speaker 1: you're in comedy, you know what I mean, You have
Speaker 1: to like your mouth lead. If it occurs to you
Speaker 1: to say something, you just kind of have to start
Speaker 1: saying it and then hope that by the time the
Speaker 1: sentences over you've come up with a punchline. You sort
Speaker 1: of like, I just need to embrace that, and that
Speaker 1: means that sometimes you end up annoying people. If the
Speaker 1: thing you said wasn't actually funny, then you just did
Speaker 1: say something weird and everyone's like, why did you say that? Right? So,
Speaker 1: as a kid, I was saying stuff like that all
Speaker 1: the time. You know, I was just constantly whatever I
Speaker 1: thought came into my head. And that was specifically what
Speaker 1: I was like yelled at and chastised over, was like
Speaker 1: why are you why did you sit think before you speak?
Speaker 1: Why are you spulsive? Yeah? And and so for that reason,
Speaker 1: I never felt comfortable doing improv, and even when it
Speaker 1: came to like sketch performing, I was like nervous about
Speaker 1: it um And it took me years to sort of
Speaker 1: break myself of that until you know, I became a
Speaker 1: comfortable performer again. And then when I did I I
Speaker 1: finally I felt it solved a lot of issues for me,
Speaker 1: Like really diving into stand up comedy and live performance
Speaker 1: like cured me of a lot of social awkwardness and
Speaker 1: things like that. I'm bighead a little BITO. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you're trying to go chronologically interesting, No, I
Speaker 1: think that's fascinating. So in what way, did did that
Speaker 1: help you? Well? So, throughout my college years, in high
Speaker 1: school years as well, but also my early twenties, I
Speaker 1: kind of felt very socially awkward. I felt like, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm different from other people. When I talked to them,
Speaker 1: They're like, who is this weirdo? I'm not good at parties.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone can tell there's something sort of wrong
Speaker 1: with me, and I should really spend my time alone
Speaker 1: inside playing video games or I remember specifically, Uh, I
Speaker 1: liked the very very early years of online dating because
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm better online than in person. I
Speaker 1: like to send chats, you know, I had that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. I can control that situation at a bar.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit confused, you know. UM and I
Speaker 1: and I had had basically what i'd call now social anxiety.
Speaker 1: Uh So, let's let's fast forward a little bit. I
Speaker 1: have a college sketch group. We all moved to New
Speaker 1: York City. We did sketch comedy there with some success.
Speaker 1: We were making videos for some website eights and things
Speaker 1: like that. For a couple of years. We had live
Speaker 1: shows at U C B and e'll swhere. Then the
Speaker 1: group broke up and I was like Okay, I want
Speaker 1: to keep doing comedy. I need to, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to keep having this feeling of getting laughs and
Speaker 1: it's the best feeling in the world. And how do
Speaker 1: I do that? So I started doing improv and stand
Speaker 1: up simultaneously at U c B and also just doing
Speaker 1: open mics around New York. And I did um open
Speaker 1: mics for oh, you know, eight years or something like that.
Speaker 1: You have to do open mics for a long time.
Speaker 1: And by the end of me doing that, by the
Speaker 1: time I was a stand up comic, it cured me
Speaker 1: of my social anxiety because stand up is like intensely social.
Speaker 1: Like you go to the open mic, you go to
Speaker 1: the show, and you see all the other comics. Hey,
Speaker 1: how are you doing, how you good to see you,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah. You know, you're sort of
Speaker 1: being chippy with them, tossing you know whatever, just tossing
Speaker 1: lines back and forth and just sort of being in
Speaker 1: this kind of social soup. You know, you're just you
Speaker 1: go and you give everybody like a quick backslap hug,
Speaker 1: and you know, then you go up there and you're
Speaker 1: just in it. And but after I've done it for
Speaker 1: like five or six years, I started to wait, I
Speaker 1: don't feel awkward in social situations anymore. Now I feel
Speaker 1: like the most comfortable person here. I'm the person at
Speaker 1: the party who makes other people feel at east because
Speaker 1: I'm so you know, just like, hey, how's it, what's
Speaker 1: up everybody? You know, um, just sort of like fluidly
Speaker 1: moving in this situation. It's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I try to encourage people to do stand up. You know,
Speaker 1: people have a fear of stand up, uh improv. Now
Speaker 1: there's a culture of people taking a level zero improv
Speaker 1: class even if they have no intention to performing, just
Speaker 1: sort of like for fun, you know, to get out
Speaker 1: of their shell or whatever. When no one does have
Speaker 1: for stand up and I kind of wish there was,
Speaker 1: because it's so many people's greatest fear is to go
Speaker 1: stand up in front of other people and be exposed
Speaker 1: to them. When it's just you and a microphone and
Speaker 1: those eyes are looking at you, you're totally exposed. You know,
Speaker 1: they can see the truth about you no matter what
Speaker 1: you do. They can see if you're nervous, they can
Speaker 1: tell if you're overconfident. They can you know, if you
Speaker 1: say something that isn't funny, then everybody knows it wasn't funny.
Speaker 1: That kind of exposure is very frightening to people. So
Speaker 1: a lot of people, oh, I could never ever do
Speaker 1: stand up. I could never do it, and I was
Speaker 1: accursed as people. Just give it a try, go a
Speaker 1: couple of the mics, like, yeah, it's gonna suck, You're
Speaker 1: gonna bomb. Sometimes you're gonna realize that it doesn't kill you.
Speaker 1: And you're also gonna have the experience of getting a laugh,
Speaker 1: because everybody can get a laugh at some point in
Speaker 1: their first couple of times, and you'll know what that's like.
Speaker 1: And if you do it over and over again, then
Speaker 1: you're you're doing stand up. You might not be good
Speaker 1: at it yet, but you're you're a comic if you
Speaker 1: want to try it. I do try to encourage people
Speaker 1: to do that. Right. Did you consider yourself more at
Speaker 1: this point a stand up comedian or an improv guy?
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that means. Well, at that
Speaker 1: time I was doing stand up and improv simultaneously, and
Speaker 1: after about three years of doing both, I realized, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm a stand up guy, Like because I would. I
Speaker 1: took all the improv classes. I got to the advanced levels.
Speaker 1: I was in an independent group. We had practice sessions,
Speaker 1: you know, I was doing improv, and I realized, you
Speaker 1: know what, I still don't want to step off the
Speaker 1: back line, like when when a scene is happening, I
Speaker 1: still feel like, I hope I don't need to tag
Speaker 1: in because I'm not comfortable with it. And what I
Speaker 1: realized is is I really like being funny and thinking
Speaker 1: on my feet. But as myself, I enjoy just being
Speaker 1: there with the audience. Hey, all of us are in
Speaker 1: the same room together. What's happening over there? You know?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, someone dropped a plate. Let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: That sort of thing as opposed to having to think
Speaker 1: on my feet as another person as a character, was
Speaker 1: not my way of being funny. And so I, respectfully,
Speaker 1: with with great respect for improv, stopped doing it and
Speaker 1: did not regret it. Okay, well, it's fascinating. It was
Speaker 1: almost as though you knew what direction my question was going.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So in improv, right, you are you're you're
Speaker 1: essentially it is a series of characters that you're creating
Speaker 1: with stand up, and that was what I was going
Speaker 1: to ask you, Like it is you and but to
Speaker 1: what degree is that a character as well, or do
Speaker 1: you consider it that it's you? That is such a
Speaker 1: good question, I would say, other comics might disagree. I
Speaker 1: would say it's not a character, uh, but it is
Speaker 1: a constant struggle to create a stage persona that feels
Speaker 1: as much like yourself as possible. So you do create
Speaker 1: to a certain extent of stage persona, but to me,
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like putting on a costume or a
Speaker 1: change of clothes. It feels like just accentuating a party yourself,
Speaker 1: or finding a part of yourself, accessing a part of
Speaker 1: yourself and bringing that onto stage. And the hard part
Speaker 1: is accessing it in a way that feels natural. So
Speaker 1: what I always tell people about stand up is that everyone,
Speaker 1: almost everyone. I wouldn't say everyone has had the experience
Speaker 1: of being funny to their friends, right, telling a funny
Speaker 1: story at a party. Most most people, almost every Probably
Speaker 1: probably a couple of people are such dead fish they've
Speaker 1: never told a funny story. But everyone's at the experience
Speaker 1: of laughing with friends. Right. The trick is of stand
Speaker 1: up figuring out how to be that version of yourself.
Speaker 1: You're not always that version of yourself, right, Sometimes you're
Speaker 1: at home and you're sleeping, you're watching TV, and you
Speaker 1: don't want to tell a funny story right now. But
Speaker 1: sometimes at other times your your party self, where you're
Speaker 1: up and your energized. And so how do you access
Speaker 1: that part of yourself on demand whenever you want, whenever
Speaker 1: you need to go on stage, no matter how you feel,
Speaker 1: You've got to access that part of yourself. So the
Speaker 1: trick of stand up is having a conversation with the
Speaker 1: audience that feels natural, even though it's a one sided conversation.
Speaker 1: It's a conversation where one party never speaks the audience right,
Speaker 1: all they do is laugh. It's against the rules for
Speaker 1: them to talk. They get yelled at if they talk.
Speaker 1: You know my case, I'm on tour right now. I'm
Speaker 1: going to be Emboston this weekend and I'm going to
Speaker 1: be on stage talking for an hour straight. And I
Speaker 1: need to make that feel like a natural conversation rather
Speaker 1: than a speech or a lecture or something like that.
Speaker 1: And so that's the challenge is accessing who you naturally are.
Speaker 1: What I really want to do is I want to
Speaker 1: give people access to that, to that real self that
Speaker 1: I have. That's how I think about it. Yeah. Interesting.
Speaker 1: I do find that that fascinating, that idea, and I
Speaker 1: think that you're right in general, you know, unless you're uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a comic who is very specifically playing a
Speaker 1: character Larry the Cable Guy, for example, is not that's
Speaker 1: not his name, that's not his name. Yeah, But but
Speaker 1: for you finding a perspective which I think ultimately makes
Speaker 1: then your comedy more personal or at least appear more
Speaker 1: personal to you and who you are. So you start
Speaker 1: working for College Humor as at least a staff member
Speaker 1: in now, is that your first experience posting things or
Speaker 1: had you? Had you been on posting things on the
Speaker 1: site before you went to work with them? That was
Speaker 1: my That was my first experience posting anything on College Humor.
Speaker 1: I had posted things to other websites in the past,
Speaker 1: but never the College Humor until I started working there,
Speaker 1: and and by that time I had had been doing
Speaker 1: standard for a couple of years. When I was working there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why did you decide to join them? Was there something
Speaker 1: specific about them and what they were doing that interested you?
Speaker 1: Or yeah? I mean it was first of all, was
Speaker 1: it was one of the only comedy jobs in New
Speaker 1: York City that I felt that I could get. You know,
Speaker 1: there were also you know, there's Late Night and SNL
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, but those are the most rarefied
Speaker 1: jobs in the world. You know. It isn't like, you know,
Speaker 1: in l A there are sort of these low level
Speaker 1: comedy jobs, you know, you could write for, you know,
Speaker 1: an award show or something like that. In New York
Speaker 1: it's like those big shows or nothing. And so College
Speaker 1: Humor was like one of the only places that was
Speaker 1: actually employing comedy writers. And I had actually just worked
Speaker 1: my first writer's guilt job I had. I had written
Speaker 1: for a v H one sketch show that aired in
Speaker 1: eleven that I honestly did not have a great experience at.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I don't want to move to
Speaker 1: l A. And I was like, no, I want to
Speaker 1: stay in New York. And I happened to email a
Speaker 1: friend of mine who worked at College Humor and was like,
Speaker 1: are you guys looking for writers? And that's a question
Speaker 1: that almost never gets a yes, Like you don't don't
Speaker 1: even really send emails like that. You know, people was
Speaker 1: gonna send me an email are you looking for writers?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, no, I hire writers. For like two
Speaker 1: weeks once every three years, you know, like I've never
Speaker 1: looked these slots never come up. But I had emailed
Speaker 1: him and and he had right at that moment, decided
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quit my job, and he recommended me to
Speaker 1: his boss. Later, my boss Sam Rich and said, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: this is this guy's good. We should we should hire
Speaker 1: him because he had been a fan of mine, UM,
Speaker 1: which is like one of the biggest favors anyone's ever
Speaker 1: done me. It really was a kickstart to my my career.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean College Humor was really a comedy
Speaker 1: writer's paradise in those days, because you know, you got
Speaker 1: a middle class New York City income. I had health insurance,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It was a it was
Speaker 1: an office job, um, which was good to be able
Speaker 1: to have the health insurance and the stability. But then
Speaker 1: my entire job was to write two comedy sketches a week,
Speaker 1: and they could kind of be whatever I wanted them
Speaker 1: to be, Like it really was funny first, what makes
Speaker 1: us laugh in the room, Let's make that, and they
Speaker 1: made them. And also as a writer, you got to
Speaker 1: sort of produce the episode, like or produce the sketch.
Speaker 1: You didn't like have to do any of the production
Speaker 1: production work, but you talked with the director, you could
Speaker 1: go be on set um, you could supervise the edit
Speaker 1: and give notes on it. And so you know, it
Speaker 1: was a huge benefit to my writing to have to
Speaker 1: actually be out putting, you know, two sketches a week,
Speaker 1: and then one of them would get made and then
Speaker 1: would gets to post it on YouTube and see how
Speaker 1: it did. And uh that eventually, you know, is what
Speaker 1: led to Adam Ruins. Everything was I hadn't ruins Everything
Speaker 1: was originally a comedy sketch that I had written, a
Speaker 1: college humor. Yeah. By the way, I worked with Sam
Speaker 1: Rich on a project that I did a college humor
Speaker 1: as well. I always had a great experience with those guys,
Speaker 1: and my experience was that yeah, yeah, like you said,
Speaker 1: there was there was a total creative freedom to to
Speaker 1: explore just what what you as long as it made
Speaker 1: other people laugh there. Yeah, you were given the opportunity
Speaker 1: to do it. Yeah, it's incredible. It was a strange
Speaker 1: moment in time because the reason we had that freedom
Speaker 1: was because you know, College Humor was owned by Barry
Speaker 1: Dealer's i a C giant media company, and he had decided, Hey,
Speaker 1: for the next couple of years, I'm gonna bank roll
Speaker 1: this and see what we can turn it into. And
Speaker 1: you know, so we got to basically operate as at
Speaker 1: a loss for years and then finally, you know, Facebook
Speaker 1: eight the entire you know, online media business and killed
Speaker 1: it purposefully. They did it. I've talked about that publicly
Speaker 1: before and uh, you know, Dealer said okay, well that's
Speaker 1: enough of that and pulled the plug. And you know,
Speaker 1: now they're they're soldiering on as a as a subscription
Speaker 1: service called Dropout, which is doing really well. But that's
Speaker 1: sort of like golden era of online comedy. Just it
Speaker 1: was a blip, you know, and it'll it'll unfortunately seemingly
Speaker 1: never happened again. Yeah, but there were some amazing thing
Speaker 1: things that came out of it. One that I must
Speaker 1: mention the Mitt Romney style based on this Gangham Scott style.
Speaker 1: Thank you for mentioning that it currently has over sixty
Speaker 1: five million views. Still, were there any other specific sketches
Speaker 1: that that bring you fond memories of your time they're
Speaker 1: at college humor? I mean, let me just talk about
Speaker 1: Mitt Romney style for a second, because that was such
Speaker 1: a massive hit, and I wrote that with my colleague
Speaker 1: Emily Oxford. We wrote it together. Um, but I did
Speaker 1: the voice of Mitt Romney um in the in the
Speaker 1: Mitt Romney rap. And that was ten years ago now,
Speaker 1: which is really bizarre to think about. But if you think,
Speaker 1: you know that's when Gandam style was huge ten years ago,
Speaker 1: it's a decade old. Uh. Also of course dates to
Speaker 1: the presidential election. But it was literally just I was
Speaker 1: obsessed with Gngham style. I loved Gngham style, and I
Speaker 1: think my girlfriend Lisa said I was trying and she
Speaker 1: was like, what about Mitt Romney style? And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's perfect and I and we wrote it all up.
Speaker 1: It fit perfectly. The Ganga style is a song and
Speaker 1: you can tell you if you want to speak Korean,
Speaker 1: it's a song about wealth and about you know, like
Speaker 1: celebrating this ostentatious kind of dorky wealth. So it works
Speaker 1: perfectly from it Romney. But it was an absolute like
Speaker 1: sensation and we worked in you know Thetcent line that
Speaker 1: you know, his famous gaff and it was produced the
Speaker 1: whole thing is wish up by Vincent Pone, who's a
Speaker 1: wonderful director, and it was like, really, he produced the
Speaker 1: hell out of it. It's beautiful. It like mimics shot
Speaker 1: for shot GNGA style. It cost tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars to make. Not in a million years could you
Speaker 1: get that kind of money for a YouTube video anymore,
Speaker 1: Never in a million years. And so it's something that
Speaker 1: I'm still like weirdly proud of, despite it being the
Speaker 1: most dated piece of content. I still go watch it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, we fucking nailed it with this. Uh, they're
Speaker 1: as well. You created as a pitch in the room,
Speaker 1: Adam ruins everything where you debunk common misconceptions and reveal
Speaker 1: sometimes awful truth about the things that people love. How
Speaker 1: did you first come up with this idea? I had
Speaker 1: been doing in my stand up, this routine about the
Speaker 1: Beers and the diamond engagement ring. Just years before this,
Speaker 1: I had read an article about how the diamond engagement
Speaker 1: ring was a marketing creation by the De Beers Corporation
Speaker 1: and that you know, just eventually became part of our culture,
Speaker 1: even though it was just something that they shoved into
Speaker 1: ads to make you think you had to buy a
Speaker 1: diamond engagement ring. And it had blown my mind when
Speaker 1: I learned at I did. I was just remembered it,
Speaker 1: and I eventually wrote a stand up joke about it
Speaker 1: where I explained that to people, and I noticed they
Speaker 1: started reacting more than they did just to my jokes.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're when you're in the trenches doing
Speaker 1: stand up every night in bar basements and you know,
Speaker 1: back rooms. After a while, you get pretty good at
Speaker 1: making people laugh, and the challenge becomes, well, what do
Speaker 1: I do after that? After I make them laugh? How
Speaker 1: do I you know, what do I do that makes
Speaker 1: them remember me? That makes them want to come to
Speaker 1: my next show? And I realized, oh, if when I
Speaker 1: tell them this information they sort of leaned forward as
Speaker 1: they get a little bit curious, they want to hear more.
Speaker 1: So I started working more and more material like that.
Speaker 1: In my accident, I had to write two sketches a
Speaker 1: week of College Humor, and I said, well, all right,
Speaker 1: let me write this up as a sketch. But what
Speaker 1: I did was I had previously written monologue style sketches
Speaker 1: before while I was explaining something to the audience, but
Speaker 1: they never got greenlit. And I remember the other writers
Speaker 1: being kind of like, this is kind of didactic. You know,
Speaker 1: you're kind of ranting on and on about this. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not that likable. And so what I did was
Speaker 1: Emily and Murph, two of my coworkers, fellow writers of
Speaker 1: college humor, I just wrote them into the script making
Speaker 1: fun of me for saying this stuff, you know, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, why are you telling us this is
Speaker 1: so annoying? We're trying to I'm proposing to my girlfriend here, man,
Speaker 1: why you gotta bust in and tell me all this
Speaker 1: ship about the diamond engagement ring. And that ended up
Speaker 1: being the comedic engine of the entire series. Was you know,
Speaker 1: people people chastising me for saying the thing, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, fits very well with what I'm I told
Speaker 1: you earlier. You know, as a kid, I was constantly
Speaker 1: chastised for blurting things out, for saying more than I
Speaker 1: should have. And so really what I was doing and
Speaker 1: Adam Ruins everything was turning my childhood pain and this
Speaker 1: thing that I was here as a kid into comedy.
Speaker 1: Um I was. I was accessing that previous version of myself,
Speaker 1: that child that you know, Adam ruins everything, that character
Speaker 1: version of myself is often I think of based on
Speaker 1: myself as a kid. Um not able to understand social cues,
Speaker 1: um not able to understand when people want you to leave.
Speaker 1: Like it's a little bit high voiced, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's a little bit the pee wee Herman version of me. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's sort of where all those themes come together. Right,
Speaker 1: But unlike your stand up, is that a character? Do
Speaker 1: you consider that more of a character? I do? I do? Yes, No,
Speaker 1: Adam Ruins everything that is a character. I mean, it
Speaker 1: has my name, but you know, we developed that special
Speaker 1: hairstyle for that character. I have. It was my real hair, right,
Speaker 1: but we made it taller, We made it this big
Speaker 1: sort of three dimensional quaff and you know, the specific
Speaker 1: way of dressing where where I dressed very self consciously nerdy,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of way too much of men'swear. And
Speaker 1: so you know, there's there's elements that match my real
Speaker 1: life and elements that don't. But yeah, that was a
Speaker 1: character version of me. Right, it occurs to me. You
Speaker 1: talked about it it returning back to some of the
Speaker 1: stuff that you watched as a kid, Bill Night, the
Speaker 1: science Guy, that's sort of high energy it relating to kids,
Speaker 1: but it's also when you think about today's you know,
Speaker 1: media style, fast, funny, accessible, and able to tell a
Speaker 1: full story in well a relatively small amount of time,
Speaker 1: a happy accident that it sort of begins to fit
Speaker 1: into what's popular in media today, or or was that
Speaker 1: intentionally drawn that way? And I hope that we helped
Speaker 1: make media that way, you know, I hope that we
Speaker 1: helped bend that curve. I mean, I I really wanted
Speaker 1: to create something that was very information dense because I
Speaker 1: hated nonfiction television where or documentary television where they take
Speaker 1: so long to tell you anything, where it's just drawn out.
Speaker 1: I want to give me the information quickly. So we
Speaker 1: would pack you know, these entire stories into seven minutes
Speaker 1: that would hopefully, you know, we we try, we try
Speaker 1: to have three stories that blow your mind plus a
Speaker 1: conclusion every single episode, and every episode was you know,
Speaker 1: twenty three minutes long or whatever. I could get the
Speaker 1: exact runtime twenty one thirty maybe, and so that, you know,
Speaker 1: the show had to move quickly. And then we wanted
Speaker 1: to pack in jokes and pack in visuals and you know,
Speaker 1: we want to throw the kitchen sink in there. I mean,
Speaker 1: when when we created the show, I was like, this
Speaker 1: is my one shot. You know, I'm lucky to get
Speaker 1: a pilot. I'm a sketchwriter at a at a at
Speaker 1: a website. This is my shot to like make a series,
Speaker 1: and all I want is one season. That's all that matters. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I was like, I gotta pack everything in
Speaker 1: there that I can. UM. You know, there's no holding back.
Speaker 1: Every moment needs to be funny, every moment needs to
Speaker 1: be visual. Nothing is just static straight to camera. It's
Speaker 1: almotion all the time. And you know, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of that came from anxiety, and maybe it was
Speaker 1: a little bit too much. UM. But I also think
Speaker 1: it's helps. It helps. It's what drew people to the show,
Speaker 1: and it's what made it memorable for people. So what
Speaker 1: made it also work on TV and on YouTube? You know,
Speaker 1: one segment from every episode was posted on YouTube made
Speaker 1: a big difference. A lot of people still think that
Speaker 1: I was just a YouTuber. Um. They didn't realize that
Speaker 1: it was a television show as well, that they've only
Speaker 1: seen a third of it, that there's like more segments
Speaker 1: on HBO Max that they could go watch right now, right.
Speaker 1: What thing did you debunk that you're the most proud of. Oh,
Speaker 1: that I'm the most proud of. Uh, that's a really
Speaker 1: good question. I think the ones that I'm most proud
Speaker 1: of are the segments about the criminal justice system, of
Speaker 1: which we did many. Um. We did an episode called
Speaker 1: Adam Ruins Forensic Science about how polygraph tests don't work
Speaker 1: and fingerprints don't work and I witness testimony is like
Speaker 1: deeply flawed. Um. We did Adam Ruins Justice, which is
Speaker 1: about you know, how people can't get a fair trial
Speaker 1: and about how public defenders are disadvantaged over you know,
Speaker 1: district attorneys, um. And this leads to people being sent
Speaker 1: to jail when they shouldn't be. And then we did
Speaker 1: Adam Ruins Prison, which is all about you know, the
Speaker 1: prison industrial complex and mass incarceration and you know, I
Speaker 1: mean these issues. To me, mass incarceration is like next
Speaker 1: to climate change, It's our greatest national sin. Like this
Speaker 1: is what we're gonna be looking back on a hundred
Speaker 1: years from now going, can you believe that we did
Speaker 1: this to each other, That we you know, imprisoned more
Speaker 1: people than anyone else on earth, that that you know,
Speaker 1: most the majority of people alive on earth today who
Speaker 1: are in prisons are in American prisons. UM. And We're
Speaker 1: the wealthiest country in the world. We're just locking each
Speaker 1: other up for having you know, an eighth of weed
Speaker 1: in in in our pockets. Um, it's unconsfordable. And so
Speaker 1: the fact that we did multiple episodes about that and
Speaker 1: I got to meet for It's like Darryl Atkinson, who
Speaker 1: is formally incarcerated man himself, became a civil rights attorney,
Speaker 1: got his law degree and now works to get other
Speaker 1: people who are wrongfully imprisoned out of prison, and he's
Speaker 1: working to reform the criminal justice system. Like, oh, that
Speaker 1: is the most important thing to me. And yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: really really proud of that work. Yeah, I remember I
Speaker 1: became aware of those episodes right around the time that
Speaker 1: the you know, the sort of documentary focusing on a
Speaker 1: crime thing start happening. Making of a Murderer and well
Speaker 1: they're staircase and the idea that we we think about
Speaker 1: eye witness testimony especially or even some forensic evidence you think,
Speaker 1: is you know, infallible. And you know, I think you,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, have taught me something but
Speaker 1: really begin to give a different perspective to people, which
Speaker 1: I think is is really cool and ultimately important. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I mean Yeah, I'm really proud to be able to
Speaker 1: do that. And it's true that, you know, the true
Speaker 1: crime field overall is just rife with misinformation about the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system. You know that it's the structure of
Speaker 1: it is sort of you want to say, Okay, the
Speaker 1: the purpose caught in an interesting way, and so forensic
Speaker 1: science often comes into it. And unfortunately, like forensic science,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of it is not scientific period um.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, the main function of our criminal justice system
Speaker 1: is to is to lock up people who shouldn't be
Speaker 1: locked up. Oh, sorry to tell you that. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: the the individual stories of the you know, diabolical you know,
Speaker 1: rare serial killer murders that are solved by sub detective.
Speaker 1: It's not like they don't happen, but they're like the
Speaker 1: the outlier of all outliers in terms of what the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system is. The criminal justice system is about,
Speaker 1: you know, roughing up and incarcerating people of color. That's
Speaker 1: what it's for. That's what it does. That's what it does,
Speaker 1: like on a on a massive level. And um, and
Speaker 1: you know a lot of these techniques that they that
Speaker 1: the cops come up with, things like from the manual
Speaker 1: that they use to interrogate prisoners, you know, has been
Speaker 1: called a manual for false confessions, you know, for producing
Speaker 1: false confessions, because it's this way of like browbeating people
Speaker 1: until they say whatever you want them to say. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just like these are techniques that that
Speaker 1: cops used too, you know, be able to pin the
Speaker 1: blame on someone who they found in the vicinity rather
Speaker 1: than a scientific method that they used to figure out
Speaker 1: who actually did it. Unfortunately, that is like the practice
Speaker 1: of our criminal system system works, and just being able
Speaker 1: to like share that with people on cable television was
Speaker 1: was really meaningful to me. And it's not like we
Speaker 1: were able to change those practices just by exposing them,
Speaker 1: but being able to spread the word was really mattered
Speaker 1: to me. And it's still works that I continue to do.
Speaker 1: What episode had the most surprising backlash? Oh, the most
Speaker 1: surprising backlash? Good question. Um. I mean I would always
Speaker 1: hear from people who were personally involved in the industries
Speaker 1: we would cover, Um, like, we did an episode about death,
Speaker 1: and we did an episode about the funeral home industry
Speaker 1: and how what a racket it is, and you know,
Speaker 1: people who work in funeral homes were like Hey, we
Speaker 1: were nice. We try our best. You don't don't tell
Speaker 1: us were bad. Um, Like, no, I'm not saying you
Speaker 1: individually are bad, but you like work in an industry
Speaker 1: that's like full of scams, and you know it's like
Speaker 1: sort of designed to scam people. Sorry, it's like you know,
Speaker 1: we've compared to them a car salesman. Right, everyone knows
Speaker 1: car salesman or scammy funeral home people are just as scammy.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean that every single car salesman's a piece of ship,
Speaker 1: but it does mean, like, you know, don't trust the
Speaker 1: car salesman. Um, so we would get a lot like that.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes we get weird backlash. We did an
Speaker 1: episode about Lexotica the glasses monopoly and how they check
Speaker 1: up the prices if I wear for everybody, and Laxotica
Speaker 1: didn't hassle us, but the Huffington's Post wrote an article
Speaker 1: about our episode, and Luxotica sent like a season assist
Speaker 1: to the Huffington's Post, which makes no sense. They didn't
Speaker 1: change anything because that any post is like, well, this
Speaker 1: is all true and it's like covered in it is
Speaker 1: like journalism. Like everything I do like I'm getting it
Speaker 1: from journalism right, I'm I'm I'm just repeating what's in newspapers,
Speaker 1: what's in scientific studies. You know, I don't do anything
Speaker 1: that isn't fully backed by the research, so I always
Speaker 1: have really strong grounds to stand on. So there there
Speaker 1: isn't much that they can say. They just got like
Speaker 1: kind of cranky at the Huffington Post. I guess, um. Oh.
Speaker 1: The one that got the most surprising backlash was we
Speaker 1: did uh uh. We did a segment on alpha males
Speaker 1: about how the idea that you see on the internet
Speaker 1: there's alpha males and there's beta males, and you gotta
Speaker 1: be an alpha. You don't wanta be a beta. This
Speaker 1: is beta behavior like that kind of thing. It's all bullshit.
Speaker 1: It's not scientific at all. There's not two types of
Speaker 1: men out there. It's not part of science, right, Do
Speaker 1: I even need to say this. It's like astrology, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just like a literary way of understanding people that's
Speaker 1: not based in anything. It's also not based you know,
Speaker 1: in wolf packs, which is what it comes from. The
Speaker 1: guy who coined the idea of there being alpha's and
Speaker 1: betas and wolf packs eventually retracted it because he realized
Speaker 1: he was just looking at parents that like the wolves
Speaker 1: don't like choose an alpha or whatever. It's not based
Speaker 1: on behavior. It's just the dad of the wolf pack
Speaker 1: is like bosses everybody around you know, so and so
Speaker 1: does the mom. Uh So. Anyway, we did a pretty
Speaker 1: straightforward segment on this, and I just was swarned by
Speaker 1: so many dudes online being like beta, you're a beta
Speaker 1: And I'm like, no, that's not an insult to me.
Speaker 1: Is that doesn't exist? Like it's not real. It's like
Speaker 1: someone said, like it's like I'm like, yeah, unicorns didn't exist.
Speaker 1: And then they're like your unicorn. I'm like, no, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I said they don't exist. What are you talking about? Idiot?
Speaker 1: That got that got a fair amount of meathead backlash,
Speaker 1: But you know, it was still fun to tell the story.
Speaker 1: You know, it was like kicking a hornet's nest sometimes
Speaker 1: you know you're doing it, you know, right, all right,
Speaker 1: here's one more. What was the biggest thing that was
Speaker 1: ruined for you by your staff or a researcher or
Speaker 1: a writer on the show where you were like, come on,
Speaker 1: I mean the one I always say is we just
Speaker 1: say went on the Olympics, and you know, I love
Speaker 1: the Olympics. It's my favorite sporting event. But the Olympics
Speaker 1: itself is like the worst organization. It's one of the
Speaker 1: most corrupt organizations. It's bad for everybody, and it's bad
Speaker 1: for the athletes who are not paying aid. We talked
Speaker 1: to an athlete who is literally living out of his
Speaker 1: car the same year that he wanted gold medal for
Speaker 1: the United States, you know, because they're they're not paid,
Speaker 1: nor can they use the fact that they're in the
Speaker 1: Olympics to like earn money from endorsements or things like
Speaker 1: that unless it's like approved by the Olympics. Michael Phelps
Speaker 1: is able to make money from being on the cover
Speaker 1: of the Wheati's box, but nobody else is. You know,
Speaker 1: the fencers aren't making any money. They're paying their own
Speaker 1: way to go and be on NBC at two am.
Speaker 1: And uh. The cities where the Olympics are hosted are
Speaker 1: devastated by the Olympics because they build all this infrastructure
Speaker 1: that's specific to the Olympics and is never used again. Um,
Speaker 1: which is why there's like a big movement of people,
Speaker 1: you know who who are against the Olympics coming to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, for instance, because it's just like, you know,
Speaker 1: a huge money suck and it benefits nobody, but you
Speaker 1: know the developers and you know the crowds who come
Speaker 1: there for one weekend. Now, I'm still gonna go to
Speaker 1: the Olympics when it's in Los Angeles. Yours I am,
Speaker 1: because I you know, I love the sports, but the
Speaker 1: structure that that creates them is terrible. Uh, it's bay
Speaker 1: s done a lie? You know. Do you have a
Speaker 1: new show now, The The g Word about the well
Speaker 1: the government? I hear it's it's loosely based on Michael
Speaker 1: lewis book The Fifth Risk Undoing Democracy. How how did
Speaker 1: you get involved with the series or did what was
Speaker 1: your pitch to do it? Well? So here's what happened.
Speaker 1: I had read the book The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis.
Speaker 1: Michael Lewis is one of our very best journalists, one
Speaker 1: of the best, you know, narrative writers that we have,
Speaker 1: narrative nonfiction writers. I had read the book. I loved
Speaker 1: the book, and I had said, you know, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I would love to do some of these stories on
Speaker 1: television if I have a chance. Adam ruins everything at
Speaker 1: this and had been canceled as a result of the A.
Speaker 1: T and T Time Warner merger. We were one of
Speaker 1: the most popular shows on True TV. But you know,
Speaker 1: this merger went through and they literally fired everybody from
Speaker 1: True TV, just like happens after every kind of corporate merger, right,
Speaker 1: there's huge layoffs. Stay in this case, acts the entire
Speaker 1: network and then put it all under t BS and
Speaker 1: t n T had those executives run it, and those
Speaker 1: executives started canceling all the shows until they finally canceled
Speaker 1: Mine Juny. But I was like, all right, I'm looking
Speaker 1: for a new TV project. I read this book. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: this would be fun to do on TV. Sometime about
Speaker 1: six months later, my manager calls me and says, hey, so,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you'd be interested in this. Barack
Speaker 1: and Michelle Obama's company Higher Ground have optioned the rights
Speaker 1: to this book, The Fifth Risk. Do you want to
Speaker 1: go pitch on it? And I was like, the book
Speaker 1: that I just read and loved, Yes, I would like
Speaker 1: to go pitch on it. And my pitch was essentially
Speaker 1: by the way I did not pitch the Obama's I
Speaker 1: pitched the people who worked for the people who work
Speaker 1: for Obama, but I I pitched them. You know, well, hey,
Speaker 1: I'll do it in my sort of very visual, you know,
Speaker 1: nonfiction investigative investigative journalism style, and we'll you know, we'll
Speaker 1: do somewhat like Adam Ruins Everything type segments that are
Speaker 1: scripted in a visual sketch comedy world. But then I'll
Speaker 1: also go to the places meet the incredible government workers
Speaker 1: or people affected by things the government does not so
Speaker 1: well and meet them. And uh, they liked it. They
Speaker 1: been it, and we you know, they have a big
Speaker 1: deal with Netflix, So we did that Netflix and we
Speaker 1: uh spent the last three years working on that show.
Speaker 1: It's been about three years exactly since we first pitched it.
Speaker 1: But uh, and we were delayed because of COVID. That's
Speaker 1: part of why it took so long. It would have
Speaker 1: only taken two years probably if not for COVID. Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was pretty it was pretty wild, but
Speaker 1: you know for the show. The show came out in
Speaker 1: May and is available on Netflix now. People want to
Speaker 1: check it out. It's a documentary series about how the
Speaker 1: government works. All in all, it's fast, it's both good
Speaker 1: and bad. It's me trying to figure out for myself,
Speaker 1: what exactly is the United States government? What can we
Speaker 1: say about it? And Um Penn and teller guest star. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's I fly through a hurricane with the Air Forces
Speaker 1: Hurricane Hunters. We visit a car Gild beef processing facility
Speaker 1: to see how the U s d A does their work.
Speaker 1: It was a really remarkable experience and I'm very proud
Speaker 1: of the show. I hope folks can check it out.
Speaker 1: Oh that's awesome. Yeah, it's it's fascinating to me. And again,
Speaker 1: you do use your unique brand of humor, but I
Speaker 1: think with the segments where you're actually going to the
Speaker 1: places and talking to real people, I think that there's
Speaker 1: it adds an additional level of humanity to you and
Speaker 1: to the work that I find really pleasurable as well.
Speaker 1: So congratulations on that, Um, thank you for saying so.
Speaker 1: And you've got to work with Oscar Nonaz I saw
Speaker 1: so I know, I know he is a big fan
Speaker 1: of yours and uh, and that that's really fun. Oh.
Speaker 1: He had he had been also on Adam Ruins Everything,
Speaker 1: Um in one of our first season episodes and it
Speaker 1: was called Adam Ruins Work and he was so fun
Speaker 1: to work with. He puts his all into everything. Again
Speaker 1: This is our We had not even been on the
Speaker 1: air yet. In This is Like, he came and joined
Speaker 1: us on set and put his all into this character
Speaker 1: on this on this dumb basic cable show. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so of course we wanted to bring him back for
Speaker 1: the new show, where he plays a very harried FEMA
Speaker 1: agent who is really really destroyed by bureaucracy. And he's
Speaker 1: just so funny in such a pleasure to work with
Speaker 1: and great guy. Um, I was gonna say that, yeah, big,
Speaker 1: just speaking about the character of the show. One of
Speaker 1: my big goals for this show was to drop the
Speaker 1: character for an ruins everything and instead just be myself
Speaker 1: on camera and this show it's just me. Hey, it's
Speaker 1: me Adam Conover. I'm talking directly to you the audience.
Speaker 1: Aren't you curious about this? I've always wondered that, like,
Speaker 1: aren't you mad about this? I'm angry about that. So
Speaker 1: it was really interesting because I started to feel to
Speaker 1: get the sense that I was like acting but as myself,
Speaker 1: like I'm like trying to summon my own reactions. Okay,
Speaker 1: I need to be angry in this scene, but it's
Speaker 1: my own anger about how the federal government let down,
Speaker 1: you know, American citizens of Puerto Rico when it lets
Speaker 1: so many of them die after Hurricane Maria. I just
Speaker 1: summon that anger back again, so it's still there. It's
Speaker 1: funny because there's acting, but it's it's me as myself,
Speaker 1: you know. It's it was a really fascinating process to
Speaker 1: work that way. So in a way, returning to your
Speaker 1: stand up roots and trying to find a heightened version
Speaker 1: of yourself that you can summon anger or sadness or
Speaker 1: despair or comedy. Yeah, it's interesting, exactly right. Um, all right,
Speaker 1: I want to play a game with you, rapid fire game.
Speaker 1: I'm calling this Adam ruins things in a rapid fireway.
Speaker 1: That's the name of this new game. All right, as
Speaker 1: quickly as cuminly possible. I want you to tear the
Speaker 1: following things apart from people already. AI oh ai is
Speaker 1: fake man, it's not real. It's not our I mean, look,
Speaker 1: the algorithms do their thing, but they're not artificially intelligent, alright,
Speaker 1: like we we need to stop calling them artificially intelligent.
Speaker 1: It's like calling a regular car a flying car. You
Speaker 1: know it. It goes from place to place, but it
Speaker 1: cannot fly, you know, artificial intelligence, These are just algorithms
Speaker 1: that you know, sucking data on one end and spit
Speaker 1: out output on the other end, and we need to
Speaker 1: need to start looking at them that way. So like
Speaker 1: the you know, the chat bot cannot think, right, it's
Speaker 1: just outputting text and you are acting as though it
Speaker 1: can think. Your self driving car cannot really drive itself.
Speaker 1: Um has a very limited number of self driving features.
Speaker 1: Don't take your hands off the fucking wheel. So the
Speaker 1: big problem with artificial intelligence is people believe in it
Speaker 1: too much, and as a result, they crash into barriers
Speaker 1: and die, and they start to fall in love with
Speaker 1: a dumbass algorithm that Google gave them. So that wasn't
Speaker 1: that rapid fire. But comedians, comedians, my god, Well could
Speaker 1: I just say that, like we have an inflated opinion
Speaker 1: of ourselves, Like we're just fucking comedians, like something. I'm
Speaker 1: really sick of hearing a comedians go Like I literally
Speaker 1: heard this is a quote from I think Chris Rocky
Speaker 1: was like, we don't have philosophers anymore. Comedians are our
Speaker 1: new philosophers. What the Because he's talking about we have philosophers,
Speaker 1: there are philosophers, Chris, go to any university there are
Speaker 1: people studying philosophy. I talked to philosophers on my podcast. Factually,
Speaker 1: I interview philosophers all the time, and we talk about philosophy. Okay,
Speaker 1: comedians are just repeating dumbass ship that they hurt. They're
Speaker 1: not thinking about how do we know the world better,
Speaker 1: how do we separate truthhood from falsehood? Most of the
Speaker 1: time they're just like repeating common wisdom in a way
Speaker 1: that makes people laugh. And that's fine, there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with that. But the amount of comedians who are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a philosopher. You ever think kids these days aren't
Speaker 1: as tough because they're not getting bullied anymore. It's like,
Speaker 1: come on, that's your fucking philosophy. Is this old man
Speaker 1: bullshit that people have been repeating for decades, Like give
Speaker 1: me a like, have a little bit of humility about
Speaker 1: what it is that you're doing. You're just a guy
Speaker 1: who knows how to liver punch lines into a microphone
Speaker 1: or a gal. You know, why don't you just accept
Speaker 1: that that's what you are? Or if you want to
Speaker 1: be a philosopher, start by reading some fucking Plato, know,
Speaker 1: like do something like read like reads some fucking Martha
Speaker 1: nous bound like engage with some philosophy if you want
Speaker 1: to call yourself a philosopher. Um either that or just
Speaker 1: you know, stick to dick jokes. Puppies. I mean this
Speaker 1: is a very easy one. Pure Bred puppies are. It's
Speaker 1: very bad for the puppies. If you get a if
Speaker 1: you want a particular breed of dog, you are hurting
Speaker 1: the dogs. Uh. Dog breeding is bad for dogs. Dog
Speaker 1: breeds are not real. They change over time, and almost
Speaker 1: all dog breeds are getting worse because of inbreeding. The
Speaker 1: dogs have horrible health problems. And what you should really
Speaker 1: do is get any kind of what they call mixed breed,
Speaker 1: which when you hear mixed breed, it just means regular
Speaker 1: dog as opposed to a fucking genetic freak that some
Speaker 1: weirdo made in their backyard. That is like hurting the dog.
Speaker 1: You know, just get like now, don't just get any rescue.
Speaker 1: You want to find one that is you know, get
Speaker 1: him as young as you can, when it's been fostered
Speaker 1: as great. There are a lot of really wonderful rescues
Speaker 1: that can hook you up with a dog like that.
Speaker 1: We got our dog from one of these rescues. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you if you're like I gotta
Speaker 1: get a little labradodle puppy, you're setting yourself up for
Speaker 1: a miserable dog who's gonna make you and themselves unhappy.
Speaker 1: That's that's a pretty rough one. I'm sorry, No, I
Speaker 1: am gonna point I am going to point out that
Speaker 1: our a laborate doodle is technically a mixed breed. But
Speaker 1: other than that, that's true, that's true. It's an example
Speaker 1: of how people it's technally a mixed breed because someone
Speaker 1: made up the breed recently, right, that's why they combined
Speaker 1: a labrador and a doodle. But that's what all fucking
Speaker 1: dog breeds are. Like the Labrador retriever itself has only
Speaker 1: existed since like the Victorian times. It's like the nineteenth century, right,
Speaker 1: it was it was created by someone else to like,
Speaker 1: very few dog breeds are older than that. In fact,
Speaker 1: most of them were created during this vogue for fancy breeding,
Speaker 1: which was also the same time that eugenics was in. Like,
Speaker 1: people were just into genetic customization of creatures. And it's bad.
Speaker 1: Now there's there's some breeds there like much much older
Speaker 1: on that, like working breeds. But you know those are
Speaker 1: those are a little fewer and further between. All right,
Speaker 1: the office, your show the office, or the workplace, the office,
Speaker 1: your show of the office. Yeah, okay, okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go out on a on a limb here, all right,
Speaker 1: And and don't don't don't be mad at me, Brian,
Speaker 1: all right, but I have I actually have a real
Speaker 1: substantive criticism of this period of comedy, of cringe comedy.
Speaker 1: Is that okay? Is that okay to share? Sure, of course,
Speaker 1: And it's really a criticism of Ricky Gervais more than
Speaker 1: it is of Steve Carrell or because I am I
Speaker 1: am an American office partisan, alright, one of the greatest
Speaker 1: shows in the history of television. Okay, criminal By the way,
Speaker 1: Steve Carrell never want an Emmy for that role. Can
Speaker 1: you believe that one of the one of the greatest
Speaker 1: comedic performances by an actor in American history by far?
Speaker 1: Incredible character. But the general trend of cringe comedy that
Speaker 1: was pioneered by Ricky Gervais in the original Office, I
Speaker 1: think has aged very poorly because a common troope that
Speaker 1: you'll see is you'll see the white person in the scene, right,
Speaker 1: they will say something that is quote accidentally racist, and
Speaker 1: then the people of color in the scene will be like,
Speaker 1: what did you say? Or they'll just cock their heads
Speaker 1: and look quizzically, and then the white person goes and
Speaker 1: Ricky Gervais had so many scenes like this, would go,
Speaker 1: oh no, no, that's not what i'mant No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's no, no no, no, no, no, oh no, it's a
Speaker 1: little awkward. Isn't a little awkward that I said that
Speaker 1: thing that could be racist? But it's not really, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? And if you look at what
Speaker 1: was happening in comedy at the time, this is a
Speaker 1: time when the entire media industry was still controlled by
Speaker 1: white people. Right. All the writers of these shows were white,
Speaker 1: all the stars of these shows were white. But they
Speaker 1: had started to get the message, Oh wait, I shouldn't
Speaker 1: say like racist stuff. But what I've done instead is
Speaker 1: I've constructed a situation in which I do get to
Speaker 1: say the racist stuff on television, but the people of
Speaker 1: color in the scene I don't get yelled at. They
Speaker 1: just go like, huh, like it's a little awkward. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's kind of cute. It's kind of funny, and then
Speaker 1: a white person has to backpedal and get out of it,
Speaker 1: and then nothing really bad happens to them because they
Speaker 1: said something like racist at work. Right in real life,
Speaker 1: when people say something racist at work, like it is hurtful,
Speaker 1: it harms people. You know, it's fucked up. It's not
Speaker 1: like a cute, little awkward moment. But it was this
Speaker 1: way that like white people rewrote racism as being something, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just a little faux paw, rather than being like,
Speaker 1: you know, a systemic form of like exclusion from workplace environments,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And that's what I think
Speaker 1: of when I go back and look at the show.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying those scenes aren't funny, but I am saying, oh,
Speaker 1: we constructed this little fictional idea for ourselves of what
Speaker 1: racism was, and that's never what it was. It was
Speaker 1: never about just like, oh, it's slightly awkward. It was
Speaker 1: it's something much more serious and fucked up. And I
Speaker 1: think there's a reason that people don't write comedy that
Speaker 1: works that way anymore. People don't write that kind of
Speaker 1: joke about cringe joke about racism that we were writing.
Speaker 1: And by the way, as I was a sketch comedy
Speaker 1: right at the time. I wrote jokes like that too,
Speaker 1: because that was what I was watching on television. I
Speaker 1: thought that was funny. But you know, in the way
Speaker 1: that people say, comedy evolves and our tastes evolved, and
Speaker 1: we you know, I think comedy does get better over time.
Speaker 1: I think that's like an advance that we've made since
Speaker 1: that time. It's like, you know, not every joke on
Speaker 1: the Office is like that, But when I look, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a joke that nobody would write today, because I
Speaker 1: think we kind of have a different view of those
Speaker 1: things now. I don't. I'm really curious what you think
Speaker 1: of that, as being someone who was who is obviously
Speaker 1: on the show. Well, I think it's an interesting perspective.
Speaker 1: I think that how it was used on the show
Speaker 1: was to expose expose real ideas that quite frankly, since
Speaker 1: and maybe you would have an issue with this too,
Speaker 1: but really issues of race in network television comedy hadn't
Speaker 1: been dealt with at all since like all in the Family,
Speaker 1: which is like it just became like something that nobody
Speaker 1: would talk about or deal with. And I think that
Speaker 1: what I was often tremendously proud about the show for doing.
Speaker 1: Despite taking your point about potentially being able to still
Speaker 1: say a funny joke that really, in reality you shouldn't
Speaker 1: say and don't have much consequences. I feel like people's
Speaker 1: individual racism where it was actually being talked about for
Speaker 1: the first time, like it was actually conversations that came
Speaker 1: out of it about race. I mean speaking specifically about
Speaker 1: Diversity Day or gay witch hunt, which is not about
Speaker 1: race specifically, but it was actually talking about sexuality, actually
Speaker 1: talking about race and exposing people's ideas. And despite that
Speaker 1: it may just be a raised eyebrow, it was an
Speaker 1: entire group of sixteen people responding negatively to that comment,
Speaker 1: which is that you you can't say that, And I
Speaker 1: would argue that the joke, the laugh, more often than not,
Speaker 1: came from the response as opposed to the joke. That's
Speaker 1: what I would say, Oh, oh, absolutely absolutely that you're
Speaker 1: enjoying watching Michael Scott get yelled at um. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons my one of the reasons I have
Speaker 1: the preference for the American Office is I think the
Speaker 1: American Office did did a good job of exactly what
Speaker 1: you're saying, where Ultimately, the characters who are responding are
Speaker 1: the characters who are right that the ones who are
Speaker 1: empathizing with And you know, Michael Scott really does get
Speaker 1: like browbeaten, you know, in a way. I think Gervais Office.
Speaker 1: I think gervass work generally didn't do that to the
Speaker 1: same extent. You don't get the sense that like his
Speaker 1: word and I'm talking about his other you know, his
Speaker 1: other shows as well, didn't in my view, take those
Speaker 1: issues as seriously, you know, didn't like actually engage with
Speaker 1: like what is racism in the workplace or what what
Speaker 1: are these conversations at all? Um, Whereas I think the
Speaker 1: American Office actually went there and actually took the extra step.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's more of a criticism of that
Speaker 1: entire period of comedy that I have that not re
Speaker 1: show dealt with well. But I think you know, the
Speaker 1: American Office is one of the better ones, right, Um,
Speaker 1: I know you have to go factually, podcast, You've done
Speaker 1: an amazing number of episodes. You're continuing your work well,
Speaker 1: debunking things for people, but talking to as you say,
Speaker 1: philosophers and and different people, really examining all facets of life.
Speaker 1: And yeah, well You're able to do more right than
Speaker 1: just the twenty three minutes on television. Yeah, absolutely, I
Speaker 1: mean so unfactually, I interview a different expert from around
Speaker 1: the world of human knowledge. You know, every episode we
Speaker 1: have philosophers on, we have scientists, we have journalists. Sometimes
Speaker 1: we're doing you know, current event based stories. Sometimes we're
Speaker 1: just doing um, general knowledge. Like on the episode that's
Speaker 1: coming out, Um, I'm talking to uh See Brusatti, who's
Speaker 1: a paleontologist, and we talk about why the dinosaurs died
Speaker 1: out and you know, the birth of mammals and why
Speaker 1: mammals eventually took over the world, and it's just a
Speaker 1: cool general fiance episode. Then we'll have on, you know,
Speaker 1: a constitutional scholar to talk about what's going on with
Speaker 1: you know, the overturning of Roe versus Wade, and what
Speaker 1: the constitution really is and how the Supreme Court really works,
Speaker 1: and try to get a deeper view of how our
Speaker 1: government works and and you know what, what what are
Speaker 1: the deep legal issues that go into the changes that
Speaker 1: we're seeing today. So I like to be able to take,
Speaker 1: you know, a topic that people are talking about and
Speaker 1: access it in a in a deeper way than than
Speaker 1: we normally get on CNN our cable news, UM, and
Speaker 1: I really follow my own curiosity, you know, I asked
Speaker 1: these experts, Hey, this is what I'm curious about, like this,
Speaker 1: I want to figure this out, you know, help me
Speaker 1: understand um. And so it's incredibly rewarding to get to
Speaker 1: do it. And we've got a really dedicated audience who
Speaker 1: tunes in, and uh, I hope, I hope people check
Speaker 1: it out. I'm I'm extremely proud of it. And it's
Speaker 1: a it's a lot of fun. If you love to
Speaker 1: laugh and you love to learn, come listen to the show.
Speaker 1: I am funny on the show, by the way, I
Speaker 1: do do my best and while we're talking about constitutional law,
Speaker 1: and still do a joke every now and again. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: congratulations on on the podcast, on the new show The
Speaker 1: g Word, UM, such an interesting, interesting guy. I appreciate
Speaker 1: you taking the time to talk to me today, Adam.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, and good luck. I will I promise
Speaker 1: you this I'll be watching. I really appreciate it so much. Brian.
Speaker 1: I've I've been a fit of years for you for
Speaker 1: years and so it's so wonderful to hear you say that,
Speaker 1: and and thank you for your if you're wonderfully informed questions.
Speaker 1: Not a lot of interviewers do their research like Brian
Speaker 1: baum Gardner does, so I think can't thank you enough.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Adam, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining me. I am happy to report that you did
Speaker 1: not ruin this episode of Off the Beat. You might
Speaker 1: ruin everything, but you can't ruin me, my friend, not
Speaker 1: in the slightest. This was so much fun. Listeners, I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you next week for yet another episode of
Speaker 1: Off the Beat. I can't wait. Off the Beat is
Speaker 1: hosted an executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner, alongside our
Speaker 1: executive producer Langley. Our producers are Diego Tapia, Liz Hayes,
Speaker 1: Hannah Harris, and Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan
Speaker 1: Papa Zachary, and our intern is Sammy Cats. Our theme
Speaker 1: song Bubble and Squeak performed by my great friend Creed Bratton,
Speaker 1: and the episode was mixed by seth Olandski