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Over 25 years ago, on September 29th, 1998, we watched a brainy girl with curly hair drop everything to follow a guy she only kind of knew all the way to college. And so began Felicity. My name is Juliette Littman, and I'm a Felicity superfan.
Join me, Amanda Foreman, who you may know better as Megan, the roommate, and Greg Grunberg, who you may also know as Sean Blunberg, as the three of us revisit our favorite moments from the show and talk to the people who helped shape it. Listen to Dear Felicity on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. ♪♪♪
All right, boys and girls, we are back with another edition of the Ben Domenech podcast brought to you by Fox News. You can check out all the Fox News podcasts at foxnewspodcast.com. And I hope that you'll rate and review this one and subscribe. I want to tell you it's just a pleasure to be able to introduce our guest for today's episode. Adam Carolla is a journalist.
God within the podcast universe. He's someone who is known for the popularity of the Adam Carolla show, obviously, but also his long history as a co-host of Loveline, of The
co-host of The Man Show, and all of the different projects that he's had over the years. He's also the author of a number of different books. His most recent one, which came out last summer, is I'm Your Emotional Support Animal, Navigating Our All-Woke, No-Joke Culture. And he really is someone who I think is at the real edge of all of the comedy wars that are going on today in
conflicts over jokes, over whether it's actually even a good thing to have stand-up routines that result in you laughing as opposed to a quote-unquote trying to force you to think and
And he's someone who really takes on the cancel culture in a very straightforward way as someone who comes from a Hollywood background and with the experience that's born of it. He also has a lot of opinions on all manner of issues in front of us today that relate to the culture and that are at the center of American conversations around sex, around race, around sexuality.
the way that we have confronted this pandemic and the way that the nation has been changed because of it. Adam Carolla was kind enough to join us for a conversation. I hope you'll listen. We'll be back with more right after this.
Thank you.
way to run your household, customized to your family's needs, and the easy way to raise financially smart kids. Get started with Greenlight today and get your first month free at greenlight.com slash Spotify. Adam Carolla, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. It's a pleasure to finally have the chance to talk to you. Thanks for having me, Ben. I probably tried to call in to Loveline back in the day at least a dozen times. Never got through. What was your bias against me at that point?
You know, you were in the demographic as far as age, but we were trying to diversify a little bit in terms of females and skin color and things like that. So we were looking for more female Puerto Rican 14 to 51. Yeah.
I am Puerto Rican, but I'm not female. So that works. Are you actually Puerto Rican? Yeah, I actually am. Oh man, you should have told the screener. No, it's okay. I'm informed by Nicole Hannah Jones of the New York Times that I am white passing. So that's the, you know.
Oh, yeah. It's the pigment. It's not where you're actually from. Yeah, that's how it works. I wanted to talk to you about cancel culture and comedy. I am extremely disappointed and depressed by what I see happening in comedy as just a fan and someone who appreciates the art over the past couple of years because it seems like people are
kind of afraid to say good jokes now? Do you think that's the case? Yeah, I think there's certainly elements of that in comedy. People are vetting their jokes before they're doing their jokes, which isn't something that you want your comedians doing. You know, you want this sort of straight line between the person who thinks something is funny and then the person who says that into a microphone.
And now there's a little chicane in the straight line, which is, well, wait a minute. How are people going to perceive this? And then what might be the ramifications? And that's an interruption of that sort of supply and demand line. You know, it just creates a little interruption and there should never be an interruption there. What seems so insulting about all of it is that
There are people now who are being targeted, who represented basically corporate comedy back in the day, you know, that, that they had sitcoms, they were on mainstream network TV. And yet they're turning out to be problematic as people are binging friends and old episodes of the office and stuff like that on, on Netflix and the like saying, Oh my gosh, I can't believe they told this joke.
What is the reason for the lack of reflection on, well, maybe if this was funny eight years ago or 18 years ago, I should kind of slow my roll when it comes to analyzing it through whatever woke dimension I'm currently told is gospel.
Well, I think people are on a sort of woke scavenger hunt. They got their marching orders and they're now just looking under every rock. I don't know when it became in vogue. I don't know when it became acceptable to go back and look at old episodes of sitcoms or variety shows or whatever it is, and then see if you could use that.
your way back machine to kind of pick them apart. It's nonsensical to me. Obviously it's nonsensical because it's sort of like
you know, saying, well, I'm going to find this elderly person because the elderly person when they're in the forties would use the term Negro because that's what society used, you know, or whatever the term that fits whomever there's a gay version of that. There's a Latin version of that. And then I'm going to go slap Nana and grandpa because 52 years ago, they said what was a cultural norm.
And so, you know, when you look at take someone like Jimmy Fallon and he's playing Chris Rock on SNL, everyone in the audience is laughing. The bit has been vetted all week by the writers. No cast members upset. Nobody nobody says anything. And the reason nobody says anything is because that was the norm at the time.
So it seems nonsensical to go back and try to punish somebody who was doing something that was the norm of the time because that's endless. So 20 years from now, someone will come back and look at something that was said today and then repeat the process over again. It is the standard perpetual motion thing.
Is the standard particularly unfair for comedians because you test the bounds of what is acceptable speech? It seems like you're the ones who are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to, oh my gosh, this person says something so unacceptable. They have to be canceled. They can't get gigs. They shouldn't be allowed to be on this TV show because everybody else is so many tiers down from where good comics really work.
Yeah, I mean, first things first, and the way I look at it is if you're saying something and you're a comedian, then you are protected by the umbrella of comedy. So everything that comes out of your mouth because you're a comedian should be beyond reproach. You're coming at it from a comedic standpoint. If you're a politician or the principal of a high school, that's a little different than
a different approach. So comedians should be a no fly zone for all this woke BS because they're not even there. The attempt is, I always give this example. And another thing that people don't really realize, like as a comedian, you're there to sort of agitate and use hyperbole. And, and, you know, you take something like stereotyping, comedians have to stereotype, right?
You know, you can't, there's no joke that says, you know, I'm in a rush and I get behind this Asian elderly woman on the freeway. And now not all Asian elderly women are slow drivers. Not all, not all, not all. But this particular lady, the joke's gone at that point. So that's, by nature, you know, if you think of just the statement of saying,
Every time I'm running late to the airport, I get some ass wipe in front of me on the freeway. But of course it's not every time. But if you start the joke with some of the time, not often, some of the time when I'm running late, there is no more joke. So by nature, comedians have to kind of stereotype and use hyperbole. Have you seen Louie's Me Too movie that he made?
No, I have. I love you, daddy. Well, first off, I'll just say it's great. I recommend it to you. I feel like it's a phenomenal work. He's slowly making his way back. He's appearing here and there, often with little warning, and to crowds that are enormously receptive to him. What do you think about his predicament? And what do you think about generally the attitude toward people in comedy who
not getting any chance to come back in a serious way. Well, I believe it's now in, you know, the writing is on the wall. Everyone has read the tea leaves.
And now it's sort of in incumbent upon comedians to sort of diversify their portfolio. So there isn't going to be any more network gigs for Louis CK. There just isn't, there's not going to be any more network gigs for me. There's not going to be any more network gigs for many, many voices, many comedians. So with that in mind,
Those are the rules of the game. You can argue about it. You can be upset about it. You can be angry about it. But those are the rules as I understand them now. Now it's time to open your own shop. So it's basically somebody saying,
Oh, you're really good mechanic, but there will be no more work for you at the Ford dealership or the GM dealership or the Audi dealer. There will be no more work. So what do you do? Well, you're going to have to hang your own shingle. Yeah. You're going to have to open your own garage. Does that also infuriate you given that, and this is not to in any way diminish him or to go after him, but...
You know, Seth MacFarlane has like four different shows that are still on TV, you know, and says things that are just as objectionable. Yeah, well, there's probably a couple things. He's a friend of mine. A, if you're making a ton of money for the man, they're always going to figure out a way to kind of look the other way. So...
If you are a running back for a team and you're producing big time and you know, there's filming you in an elevator, punching your girlfriend, we're going to suspend you, but we're not going to throw you out of the league. If you are, if you are not, you know, if you've got a big fat contract and you're averaging two yards of carry, we'll figure out a way to get you out of the league. So, um,
If you're earning for them, they'll figure that out. That's number one. You say he's a friend. I'm not asking you to compromise any friendship. But as someone who, look, I think he's a comedic genius in a lot of different ways. I think he's underappreciated. But he's also someone who clearly delves constantly within the realm of broad racial stereotypes within his comedy.
Do you think that there will eventually come a time where, you know, the instant that he has a season that's down, suddenly everybody turns on him? I mean, I, I, you cannot close the chapter on anyone's comedic book and their employment these days. We've seen way too many instances of way too many people being canceled when you thought they were untouchable or above a reproach. So, uh,
yes, that could happen. But, you know, Seth also, he has two things. He's an earner
and a producer and really makes a lot of money for these people. And then B, after doing the racial stereotype jokes, he then goes and sends a bunch of super woke tweets, which keeps him in the sort of good graces of those people. I believe... But is that what's required now? You have to do that. You have to do the, oh yeah, maybe I told these jokes, but also here's my correct hashtags for the next week. Yeah, if you went...
and did all those jokes, and then on your free time just mirrored the politics of Tim Allen, then yes, your time for network TV, you will not be long for network TV. I have to say, as someone who has appreciated so much of your work in growing the podcast industry, I have to ask you,
Why do you think you've been so successful? Well, I started early and I never taken a day off. So I, you know, haven't missed a daily podcast in over 12 years. So for me, it's, it's consistency, um,
And it's treating it like a job, you know, not a fanciful, whimsical hobby or anything. I always treated it like a job. Even when I wasn't getting paid, I treated it like a job. So to sort of get up and go to work. I mean, obviously, you have to say things that make people laugh or make people think. You have to have interesting guests on. You know, there's...
more to it than just showing up and bloviating into a microphone every day. But for me, it's just, you know, it's like, I don't know, a waffle house. You know what I mean? Like what's the key to success? Get up, open it, make eggs, go home. You know what I mean? I know that you are someone who doesn't just, you know, appreciate late night TV, but someone who knows the power of it culturally. Yeah.
Late night TV when I was growing up was an incredibly powerful social phenomenon. You know, people tuned in to see Leno and Letterman and the like. And yet when you look at it today, it is a barren wasteland in terms of ratings compared to where it used to be. It used to be at the center of American life. Now it's so spread out and there's so many other options to watch. People just don't watch it anymore. What would it take to have late night TV again?
really resurge as something that was a unifying element of American life where everyone was watching at the same time, you know, in a, in a kind of powerful way. Is that even possible or is this something that has just gone away with all of the developments that we see when it comes to the plethora of entertainment that's out there? Yeah. I mean, when I was growing up,
you know, an episode of Duke's a hazard would get 35 million viewers and the country had 210 million people in it, you know, and there was just no choice. It was, it was like stadium food. It's like, you go in, these are the nachos you get. This is the hot dog you get. That's it. You have no choice. Now there's so many different choices and,
And, you know, it used to just be stadium food and now it's a huge food court at a mall, you know? And so people are saying, well, how come the Dodge, the Dodger dog place used to sell a thousand units on a Tuesday. Now the Dodger dog play sells 86 units on a Tuesday. And it's like, because there's a Jody Maroney's across from the place. And then there's a boy, a local up the thing. And there's a taco bell.
So it's kind of so you go, well, what can we do to get the Dodger dog at the food court back up to a thousand units a day? And it's like, I don't know. I mean, there might be some version of a better Dodger dog that that kicks it up incrementally. But I do not know we're ever going to see those days again just because of the crazy diversity there.
of channels and outlets. And, you know, I got 14 year old kids. I don't even think they watch TV really. Yeah. It's YouTube and everything else. They'll watch the late night clips on YouTube maybe, but that's, we're never going to go back to that place where everyone was getting into bed, turning on Johnny Carson. Yeah.
You mentioned diversity. One thing that late night doesn't have is diversity. And the few token, I would say representations of diversity are not particularly impressive. Samantha Bee just went on a podcast with Dan rather recently and admitted that she had nuked some jokes that would have worked at Joe Biden's expense.
Why is it that white guys dominate late night to the degree that they do? Because the one thing that seems to me to prove the existence of affirmative action for white dudes in comedy is the existence of Seth Meyers' show. Well, you know. Feel free to disagree with me on that. No, I've been thinking about it. It's like they do a thing. So here's what it, here's from what I understand.
I mean, from being involved with it. Late night is late night. TV is a real specific skill set and it takes a long time to develop those chops. And, you know, that's why you don't see a lot of like 22 year old guys that are, that are doing it. It's like a real specific thing and it just takes a real time.
diverse history. You know, you've got, you know, it's good if you know sketch, it's good if you're a standup, it's good. It's good if you have all these tools in your toolbox. And so what happens is you take someone like Michelle Wolfe,
She did the White House correspondence thing. She got a lot of heat. And then they immediately kind of grabbed her and threw her on Netflix or whatever they did. Like, we're giving you your own daily late night show on Netflix. And it didn't work. And the reason it didn't work is because
she didn't have that history. You can't just pluck a person because they're female or black or whatever. You can't pluck a young person and throw them in there because it'll fail. It's why affirmative action fails oftentimes. You can't take a mediocre student and put them at Harvard.
They're not up to the challenge. They should find UC Santa Barbara. There's a skill set dynamic there where people who have to host these shows, they've got to be five tool players. And sometimes you find somebody who's really good at one thing
But that's the only thing they can do. They can only do the monologue at the beginning of the show. They're terrible at interviewing. They can only do the interviewing. They're terrible at the monologue and terrible at the sketch. But it's depressing to me because I love that kind of format. I mean, I love watching the old stuff on YouTube where you can find all these old dynamic shows that have incredible guests and hilarity to them.
Did you actually, did you watch those shows as any kind of tools before you launched the man show? I was aware of all those shows. I...
When I worked, I was a carpenter for my adult life before I got into show business. So I had to be up at six, six 15 every morning. So it wasn't a lot of hanging out, watching late night on a Wednesday night. Cause my schedule was, I had to be asleep by 1130, 12. Otherwise it was going to, you know, next day it was going to be a bitch, you know? Um,
But of course, I was part of the culture and part of the society. And, you know, those shows dominated. And I'd certainly seen a lot of them. And I don't know how much it influenced me. I just enjoyed them as a as a viewer, always with maybe a thought of, wow, maybe one day I could be a guest on Letterman or or do a stand up set on Leno or something like, you know, that that kind of thing. But it was all kind of a pipe dream.
I grew up in a group of people who loved Conan because he was, you know, kind of the rabble rouser, different, you know, weird. I wasn't surprised that he failed when they tried to export that to the broader audience, though I think that failure is a little bit too strong of a term. When I look at Late Night today, though, I see a bunch of politicians, including your former partner, but also, I mean...
Stephen Colbert is a very funny man. You know, I've followed most of his career, you know, through the years. He's a very talented guy. And yet it seemed like, you know, his show was starting to diminish in ratings. He decided to just become a pure partisan. We do these long monologues trying to explain every different thing about a current scandal that was playing out on CNN.
Is there going to be anything that can happen in the post-Trump era that can bring late night back to the point where it's actually trying to be funny? Well, I think it tries to be funny for sure. It's just...
when you're comparing it to Leno or Carson or Letterman, that was a 100% dedication to be funny. And now it's, we're going to carve out 34% for politics and commentary, and then we'll have 66% where we'll try to be funny or, and it probably, you know, it'll vary from night to night, of course.
I don't know that there is a changing of the late night format per se that's in our future, but I will say that it will leave openings for other folks with other opinions and other voices on the other side. So you have like a Gutfeld now, right? So it's like, okay.
let's offer, you know, I always just kind of say, if everyone is selling Mexican food, then just open an Italian food joint and I bet you'll get business. And someone will go, well, what if the Italian food joint isn't even as good as like the Mexican food? It's like, it doesn't really matter. It's, it's an alternative.
So I think it'll open it up to alternatives on the other side, and then you'll decide what kind of food you want tonight. I listen to a lot of comedy podcasts, including yours, including Bill Burr's, Mark Norman and Joe List, a lot of folks who are out there who do a lot of different comedy. And one of the things that is an ever-present point of conversation is, oh, well, there's a joke I just told that'll get me canceled.
It doesn't seem to have happened to the degree that it might yet. But when it does happen, eventually, when folks come around, the Cancel Culture comes around to all of you, is there kind of a backstop for comics to have some kind of defense mechanism there?
to have an agency that won't drop them, a podcast network that will defend them, you know, a newsletter focus that will allow them to continue to communicate with their fans? Or is that just all up in the air? I wouldn't count on any network, whether it's CBS or CNN or a podcast network,
I wouldn't really count on them defending or going to bat. I have not seen examples of it. I'll put it to you that way. Things could change. I wouldn't depend on that. I would depend on...
your audience and your voice. And if you got, you know, if you have to go pure, uh, pure subscription, fine. You know, and if you have to just go out and travel and do live shows, then that, that may be where it is. Or if you might want to write a book and you're going to have to find a publisher who is more on your side of the aisle than the other side of the aisle, you know,
There's look, everyone wants to make money. And if there's a bunch of mainstream publishers, I've written a bunch of books. I was with, you know, mainstream Manhattan based, you know, pretty liberal, you know, kind of all the names you would know, kind of publishers at a certain point when I wanted to write my fifth book, those people didn't want anything to do with me anymore.
So I said, okay. And I found a publisher who did want something to do with me. And it's, you know, smaller and not Manhattan in a completely different vibe. But that person thought they could make money off of me. And, and they did. So there's always going to be someone who wants to make money. And, you know, if Bill Burr gets canceled from whatever Bill Burr gets, but if Bill Burr still has an audience and he wants to write a book,
then maybe it's not going to be any of the woke Manhattan publishers, but others shall pop up and crop up. Let's go out on this. You obviously are not just someone who's famous for your radio work, your podcast work, your comedy, but you're also someone who's recognizable. What's the best fan experience that you've had recently?
someone coming up and recognizing you and telling you something about the way you've affected their life. Hmm. I tried to block off any positive interactions with fans emotionally. I did have a funny, um, I had a funny thing. Uh, if you want to go recently, like literally yesterday, now, uh, the day before yesterday I was, uh, in Nashville, I was getting ready to do a show at Zany's. I was waiting out front of the hotel, uh,
And a couple of people came by. They recognized me. How you doing? Hey, big fan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was completely gassed out. I was as tired as I could be. I've traveled and been working, traveling, and I was trying to frantically jot down some notes, some beats, some funny stuff to say in front of the audience. I was doing a live podcast. I always like to start with a little 10 minutes of stand-up, but it's always just generated from Nashville or that day or the travel or whatever. And I was...
kind of frantically trying to make these beats out and everyone was coming by. I had a few people came by. Hey man, how you doing? And I'm like, yeah, good, good. I was trying to be nice, but I was getting picked up in five minutes. I had nothing to say on stage. And at some point car drove by and there was a dude in it. And he's like, Hey Adam. I was like, yeah, yeah, there you go. And, uh, it was comedian Brian Callen who was playing the late show. And I gave him the total high hat because I was just like, yeah, yeah, great dude. Keep driving. Thank you.
Yeah. So thankfully he parked his car and came around and said, did you know that was me? And I was like, oh no, sorry. It was just a dude in a car who was honking. I was in wave it off mode. So I felt bad, but that was my most recent interaction. So, you know, you have that, that solid comedian tunnel vision. Adam, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. I appreciate it. Thanks, man.
I have welcomed your responses to the early going of this podcast, and I am glad that you are enjoying the conversations that we're having. I know that it's a diverse group of folks and that we're trying to bring in a number of different people who can speak to issues from a unique perspective and in different ways than you might normally hear within the space of political news.
That's something that we're going to continue to do, obviously. But one thing that I do want to do when it comes to politics is to make sure that I give you occasional updates when it comes to issues that I think are important enough that we ought to be thinking about them.
The incident that happened recently when it came to 60 Minutes coverage of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis falls into this category. I feel like it's a signature moment, something that is going to be remembered for quite some time as a reflection of
that illustrates the changing nature of our corporate media and their relationship with Republican politicians. Prior to Donald Trump's rise, I think there was a real naivete on the part of a lot of Republican politicians about the nature of the media and how much they are invested in destroying conservatives and everything that they really stand for.
During the Trump years, there was a lot of attitude, I think, toward the idea that it was Trump alone who was receiving this kind of coverage, that in reality, you know, it was driven by animosity between him and the media. And those tensions would presumably evaporate the moment that he was no longer in office. The DeSantis incident, again,
is one that illustrates that that's just not the case. In fact, you see a situation there where 60 Minutes, one of the most vaunted institutions of journalism in America, felt so confident about their smear of a reporting job, which was criticized across the board in a bipartisan manner, that they didn't take any kind of criticism as requiring them to retract or to reassess anything. Instead, they doubled down.
And that shouldn't surprise anyone at this point. They weren't doing this by accident. They didn't botch this report out of any kind of mistake or being sloppy or anything like that. They wanted a narrative. They wanted to establish that narrative and they wanted to close off any kind of facts that would go against that narrative. DeSantis' political success in Florida is obviously setting him up for a potential 2024 run. It makes him a threat and
And the media is going to use every tool they can to take him down in service of the democratic party. Politicians on the right need to wake up to this fact and not have any illusions anymore about their relationship with the media.
I've noted that the media effectively guides the Democrats now as opposed to just doing their dirty work or displaying political or cultural bias. Republican politicians should therefore treat their questions and their interviews with the appropriate level of skepticism and with a real attitude that they're looking for a way to screw you over and to take down your agenda.
This is something that conservatives need to understand. And I think the sooner that they do, the sooner that we can get to a point where we're honest about how biased the media truly is and that that bias isn't just cultural. It isn't accidental. It's intentional and it's not going to go away. I'm Ben Domenech. You've been listening to another edition of the Ben Domenech podcast. We'll be back next week with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.
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