Elon Musk sucks so bad, dude. We all know this already. Unfortunately, however, he remains one of the most consequential people on the planet. This means that understanding him, his philosophy, and his goals for the planet (and human species) is actually… kinda important. This week, Adam speaks with Ben Tarnoff and Quinn Slobodian, authors of Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, about who Elon really is and the dark nature of the ideology he’s trying to inflict upon us. Find Ben and Quinn's book ...
Jun 03, 2026•1 hr 29 min
(In addition to your regularly planned episode of Factually, we’re bringing you a Friday news roundup where we check in on the week’s biggest stories as well as some that need amplification.) This week, Adam is joined by political writer and podcaster Erin Ryan and comedian Andra Whipple to discuss the Texas primary, the Pope dunking on A.I., and the new trend book publishers have of updating old references in books to appeal to “the kids.” How very “skibidi 6-7” of them. See Privacy Policy at h...
May 29, 2026•46 min
Adam has been friends with LA city councilmember Nithya Raman for a long time now, and certainly didn’t expect that one day she would be running for mayor of Los Angeles. This week, Adam sits with Nithya to talk about her vision for what this city could do for its residents, how it’s already one of the greatest cities on Earth, and how Nithya made Adam believe in her before she even got into city politics. -- SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconover SEE ADAM ON TOUR: http...
May 27, 2026•1 hr 5 min
(In addition to your regularly planned episode of Factually, we’re bringing you a Friday news roundup where we check in on the week’s biggest stories as well as some that need amplification.) This week, Adam is joined by comedian Guy Branum and show producer Sam Roudman to talk about the LA mayoral race, the Supreme Court dumping minority voting rights, and Harvard dumping giving out so many A’s. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/p...
May 22, 2026•48 min
Like it or not, we all have our limits. But this world seems to want to make us feel guilty for not constantly trying to outdo ourselves—we’re made to feel like failures if we’re not always becoming more efficient, more optimized, more “together” versions of ourselves. To put it frankly, this sucks. Author and previous guest Oliver Burkeman has written a book on how the pursuit of optimization just drives us further away from the core of happiness: embracing ourselves as we truly are. This week,...
May 20, 2026•1 hr 12 min
(In addition to your regularly planned episode of Factually, we’re bringing you a Friday news roundup where we check in on the week’s biggest stories as well as some that need amplification.) This week, Adam is joined by journalist Brian Merchant and comedian Andrea More to talk about the mountain of wealth that boomers have hidden in a figurative mountain hoard, like some kind of greedy dragon that’s way too into Western shows on Paramount+. The group also talks about the growing cultural rejec...
May 15, 2026•50 min
Did you know that there are other podcasts out there besides Factually? And some are even… good?! This week, Adam talks to Headgum network colleagues Charley Bardey and Natalie Rotter-Laitman from Exploration: LIVE! about how to balance the business of being funny with the sheer horror of everyday existence. Check out Exploration: LIVE! wherever you get your podcasts. -- SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconover SEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/ SUBS...
May 13, 2026•1 hr 34 min
When the world gets to be too much, contemplating the endless wonder and beauty of the cosmos can be a huge relief. After all, we’re insignificant in the grand scale of space and time. But cosmic thinking can also teach us so much about ourselves. This week, Adam sits with Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, professor of physics and faculty member in women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire, to talk about the truths we uncover about ourselves when we search for the truths of the unive...
May 06, 2026•1 hr 15 min
(In addition to your weekly Factually! episode, this week we're bringing you a monologue from Adam. This short, researched monologue originally aired on the Factually! YouTube page, but we are sharing audio versions of these monologues with our podcast audience as well. Please enjoy, and stay tuned for your regularly scheduled episode of Factually!) Trump's tired. Constantly owning yourself is hard. Visit https://groundnews.com/factually to stay fully informed, see through biased media and get a...
Apr 30, 2026•19 min
The Amazon warehouse floor is infamous for poor working conditions, but the workers themselves know it best. Recently, the workers of warehouse JFK8 in Staten Island successfully organized to gain the basic working conditions many of us take for granted. In the face of one of the largest companies on the planet, and without the aid of a major union, they secured a huge victory. We’ve previously covered this while talking to the producers of the documentary Union, but today Adam sits with Amazon ...
Apr 29, 2026•1 hr 3 min
After a year and a half, Adam has finally capped off his standup tour. Friend and fellow comedian Sammy Mowrey was there to open for him at nearly every single date, and together they encountered the high highs, low lows, and strange strangeness of performing comedy across America. Today, the two look back at 18 months of touring to talk about giant puppets, Rhode Island sandwich shops, and whether Waffle House sucks or not. -- SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconover SEE...
Apr 22, 2026•1 hr 13 min
The video game industry is in a state of chaos. Layoffs, buyouts, studio closures, mergers—the entire industry seems plagued. Except for Nintendo. The Japanese video game giant is over one hundred years old, and since they dominated the home console market in the 80s, they’ve been generally unwavering in their success, and all without succumbing to the pitfalls of other game companies. But they’re also tremendously secretive, operating with very little behind-the-scenes publicity and deploying t...
Apr 15, 2026•1 hr 28 min
It’s easy to feel powerless with everything going on, but there are normal people out there every day banding together to change the world for the better. Even so, their stories are not amplified as much as they should be. Over the past few years, over 30,000 Michigan home health care workers were able to successfully form a union despite not having a shared workplace, or even having coworkers. It was a feat of monumental willpower that will have a long-lasting, positive impact on all of those i...
Apr 08, 2026•59 min
Trump’s assault on immigrants is ongoing. ICE continues to raid neighborhoods, kidnap people, and commit the occasional murder. Time and again, it’s been proven that standing together with the community is the most effective response. Memo Torres is a multimedia journalist with the esteemed L.A. Taco, which had roots as a local food scene blog before becoming an award-winning journalism outlet. This week, Adam talks with Memo about the current state of the ICE raids and the crucial role of local...
Apr 01, 2026•1 hr 16 min
For nearly two decades, prospects for college graduates have been dwindling. The worth of a degree has suffered greatly, and it’s become increasingly clear that college grads suffer many of the same hardships as those seeking employment without degrees. With this change, there’s been a push to the left as well as a new level of organization in industries that previously had been without unions. This week, Adam talks to New York Times reporter Noam Scheiber, author of Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt ...
Mar 25, 2026•1 hr 22 min
Will AI obliterate all of humanity? Will it destroy all of our jobs? There are so many questions swirling around the existential threat that AI poses, and even more completely hypothetical answers. This week, Adam brings back past guests Arvind Narayanan, professor of Computer Science at Princeton, and Princeton PhD student Sayash Kapoor to give expert perspective on our current moment. Their newest essay, AI as Normal Technology, is a rational and evidence-based exploration of AI that offers an...
Mar 18, 2026•1 hr 18 min
(In addition to your weekly Factually! episode, this week we're bringing you a monologue from Adam. This short, researched monologue originally aired on the Factually! YouTube page, but we are sharing audio versions of these monologues with our podcast audience as well. Please enjoy, and stay tuned for your regularly scheduled episode of Factually!) Timothee Chalamet needs to be looking at his own industry. Visit https://groundnews.com/factually to stay fully informed, see through biased media a...
Mar 13, 2026•15 min
The news is relentless in pace as well as issues, isn’t it? This week we’re trying something a bit different: Adam sits with previous guests Jason Koebler, tech journalist from 404 Media, and comedian Dylan McKeever to wade through the muck of this week’s biggest stories. The trio talks about the government’s stiffy for AI-powered war machines, the whoever-wins-we-lose Warner Bros. Discovery merger, and a glimmer of hope for trans rights. SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adam...
Mar 11, 2026•1 hr 25 min
What are we doing in Iran? No, seriously. Why? Call it what you will, but we’ve just gone to war for seemingly no reason whatsoever. In a bonus episode, Adam invites past guest Reza Aslan back on the show to make sense of what’s happening, how this will affect the people of Iran, and what this means on the world stage. -- SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconover SEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/ SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on: » Apple Podcasts:...
Mar 06, 2026•1 hr 4 min
Actor and comedian Joel McHale isn’t just one of the nicest people working in entertainment; he’s also got a unique, firsthand perspective on the massive shifts that have occurred in the television industry over the past twenty years. From the TV-skewering comedy of The Soup to the metatextual self-awareness of Community, Joel’s career has served to comment on the evolution of the medium of television. Today, he takes a bit more of a direct approach and sits with Adam to talk about the massive s...
Mar 04, 2026•1 hr 23 min
Why is it that the anti-trans movement is so ferociously set on upending the livelihood of people who are simply trying to live their lives? As it turns out, it’s because it’s part of a larger playbook to dismantle civil rights as we know them. Paisley Currah is a Professor of Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, the author of Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity, and the writer of an essential new essay in the New York ...
Feb 25, 2026•1 hr 10 min
The tech industry no longer serves human needs. According to legal scholar and writer Tim Wu, the tech industry has shifted away from providing services and now only exist to extract our money, data, and time. This week, Adam sits with Tim to talk about his new book, Age of Extraction. Together, they chart exactly how we came to find ourselves in this mess and what it might take for us to dig our way out of it. Find Tim's book at factuallypod.com/books -- SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www...
Feb 18, 2026•1 hr 28 min
The scoring mechanics of video games are ostensibly how the player is directed to have fun. Scores put interesting bounds on the experience of play, lead to creative solutions, and even inspire entirely new models of play, like speed running a video game. But when systems of metrics are applied to our actual lives, it’s… not as nice. “Gamification” is just one symptom of our society’s obsession with metrics, and while we tend to like to see Number Go Up, attempting to maximize our “scores” in va...
Feb 11, 2026•1 hr 32 min
After the madness of the past decade, it can feel impossible to tell where we’re at in our political story as a country. Between Trump kidnapping the president of Venezuela, his ludicrous threats toward Greenland, and the ICE murders in Minneapolis, are we seeing the literal death of American democracy, or are we seeing the last gasps of a dying reactionary movement that has overextended itself? This week, Adam sits with Osita Nwanevu, a columnist at The Guardian and Contributing Editor at New R...
Feb 04, 2026•1 hr 18 min
For decades, the threat of total nuclear annihilation cast a long shadow on everyday life. Nowadays, it almost seems like an old-fashioned kind of fear. Unfortunately, the possibility of human civilization ending at the touch of a button is more real than we think. Journalist Annie Jacobsen’s book NUCLEAR WAR: A Scenario outlines an excruciating and fascinating play-by-play of how the world as we know it could go up in smoke. Find Annie's book at factuallypod.com/books -- SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PAT...
Jan 28, 2026•1 hr 24 min
Susan Orlean is one of the greatest living nonfiction writers. She has an uncanny ability to find stories in mundane, unexpected places, and approach them with such a level of authentic fascination that the reader can’t help but become fascinated too. This week, Adam sits with Susan to talk not just about her work, but the very idea of what a storyteller is. Find Susan’s new memoir, Joyride, at factuallypod.com/books -- SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconover SEE ADAM ON...
Jan 21, 2026•1 hr 33 min
Would you rather that your attention were a resource freely directed toward your interests, or a measure of how many ads can be propelled into your eyeballs in a single session? Our attention has been commodified, and an entire industry is trying to wring out every possible instance of it. D. Graham Burnett, a professor of history at Princeton, and experiential organizer Peter Schmidt are two of the spokespeople of ATTENSITY!: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement. This week, Adam sit...
Jan 14, 2026•1 hr 25 min
It kind of seems like political corruption should be illegal, doesn’t it? Whether it’s happening on the right or the left, the whole filthy ordeal has made our government more dysfunctional for everyone. How did we get to this place where corruption isn’t just allowed but expected? This week, Adam talks with investigative journalist David Sirota about his new book, based on his podcast, MASTER PLAN: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. Find David's book at factuallypod.com/books --...
Jan 07, 2026•1 hr 27 min
Even if the AI bubble bursts, the technology won’t just disappear. We’re going to live alongside some version of AI, so we have to ask: what does our future with AI look like? This week, Adam invites Ethan Mollick, AI expert and professor at Wharton School of Business, to challenge his skeptical view on AI and look at how it might impact our daily lives. Find Ethan's book at factuallypod.com/books -- SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconover SEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.a...
Dec 31, 2025•1 hr 29 min
Why should we assume that AI is safe? As the technology has grown at an alarming rate, companies like OpenAI have seen wrongful death lawsuits begin to stack up as their product drives users to suicide. With the mental health risks, the societal risks, and the unknown risks, we have to ask, can AI ever really be safe? This week, Adam speaks with Steven Adler, an A.I. researcher who led product safety at OpenAI, about the dangers of AI and our best prospects for living alongside this technology. ...
Dec 24, 2025•1 hr 35 min
